Dreams Come True

Crack In The System

"That's pretty cool!" McGee said happily. His smile fell as he looked up at the sword. "But... why here?"

Gladius shrugged. "Who knows. Maybe just for the view, maybe for maintenance or construction purposes, or just because someone decided to mess around." Gladius quietly chuckled. "I remember most of the crews being very prank heavy thousands of years back whenever they were on break in the Capital."

"Sounds fun", Rory said off-handingly. He squinted outside, and then leaned back. "I still find it so freaky this is just a whole planet that's slowly dying." He looked at his wife. "Do you think there would be a place like this in our universe?"

Amy shrugged. "Maybe..."

"This isn't anything like my home", Baby said. "Even then, I don't remember much of my life before I got stuck like... this." She looked down at her chest with a sad glint in her eyes.

I patted her on the back reassuringly, and she flashed me a grateful look. Looking over my shoulder to the sign above the door, I saw that we were just passing level -1, which made me internally groan. Deciding to do something else to pass the time, I pulled out my walkie-talkie and clicked it on.

"Hey guys", I called into the speaker. "Doing a quick update, how are things going?"

There was a bout of static for a moment, and a voice came from the other end. "Going good here, dude", Corey said. "We found the other switches, so we're just waiting on you guys."

"Cool. Hey, one thing that I was worried about is if there's any switches we could miss."

"Luckily, no!" Blossom's voice came through in response. "I ended up finding a bunch of notes from a long time ago that had a map of all the breaker boxes. The last one is right next to the generator, so we're good!"

"Awesome!" McGee cheered.

"Sweet! We'll keep you guys posted." I looked up at the electronic sign above the door and sighed. "We're in a really slow elevator, so this might be a while."

"Well, you might want to hurry", Blossom said firmly. "Zomboss and Who are almost done fixing the gateway, so when you get that generator on get up here ASAP."

"You got it, boss!" I called in a goofy tone. The pink-clad Powerpuff broke into a fit of giggles, and the call was disconnected. I put the device back into my pocket, and leaned against the wall.

"Gladius, why is this taking so long?" I asked.

Gladius quickly looked at the sign above the door, and then the button pad. "Well, it's because there are these massive gaps between the basement floors."

"Why, though?"

"They need to put all the piping and wiring somewhere."

I opened my mouth to retort, only to close it at the sound logic. This place was massive, so that made sense.

"Alright, fair. But it still sucks."

"MAbe there's a way to speed this thing up?" Baby inquired. She rolled over and looked over the buttons, pressing the -3 floor one again.

We all jolted when the lift stopped, then shot down at a much more reasonable speed. We all flashed Baby with thumbs up and smiles, which made her look away in humble embarrassment.

With the elevator at a much more normal speed, we reached basement level -3 in no time, with the doors opening up to show us a branching series of hallways lined with pipes, wires and metal. All of it looked worn, rusted and dusty.

Carefully stepping out, me and the Ponds clicked on our flashlights, illuminating the dark halls. As we took a few more steps, we jumped when the elevator played an off-tune ding and closed the doors.