Following on from Barwell and Periplum making the netting, a ChronoLocust was caught.
"A simple extraction," Alistair Graves remarked, leaning on his umbrella. He looked at the creature with the distaste one might show a particularly large stain on a rug. He was immaculate in his charcoal suit, a stark contrast to the apocalyptic surroundings. "It is a pest. A temporal termite. Bag it, Maximillian, and let us be gone. This place smells of ozone and disappointment."
Safe on the ridge above the crater, well beyond the immediate danger, the observers watched in tense silence. Amethyst, the forest nymph whose land this was, gripped her sister Periplum’s hand, her eyes wide as she watched the intruders interact with the blight. Beside them, Barwell, the bearded mortal, shifted uncomfortably, looking like a man who very much wished he was back in a pub.
Down in the crater, Hanavari crouched near the creature's head, her hand wreathed in violet light. She was projecting a geometric grid over the beast, "auditing" its biological code. "It’s not just a termite, Alistair," she murmured, her brow furrowed. "The code is... recursive. It’s looping. It’s not eating time; it’s anchoring it."
"Details, details." Maximillian laughed, tightening the golden tether. "It will look magnificent in the menagerie. I wonder if it eats wristwatches?"
That was when the Locust stopped thrashing. Its multifaceted eyes, previously dull and insectoid, suddenly focused with a terrifying, human intelligence. Its mandibles clicked open, and a sound emerged—not a screech, but a deep, distorted drone, like a choir of slowing clocks.
"The... End... Is... A... Verb..."
As the last word vibrated through the air, the laws of physics didn't just bend; they melted. The golden net holding the beast aged a thousand years in a second, turning to rusted dust that blew away in a wind that didn't exist.
"Oh, bother," Maximillian said. He tried to step back, but the rock he was standing on decided that gravity was merely a suggestion. It drifted lazily upward, carrying the Trickster with it. "I appear to be buoyant. Alistair, I believe I am becoming a balloon."
Alistair scowled and raised his umbrella to strike the creature—but the umbrella was no longer rigid. In his hand, the silk and steel drooped, transforming into a giant, wilting black tulip that dripped dark, inky nectar onto his polished shoes.
"This," Alistair said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, icy calm, "is unacceptable."
Hanavari scrambled backward, her violet grid flickering and sparking. "I can't patch it! It’s broadcasting a logic bomb! It’s rewriting the local environment! It’s turning hard data into soft data!"
The Locust clicked again. "Time... Is... Fluid... Drink... Deep..."
As it spoke, the horizon cracked. The sky above them turned the color of a fresh bruise, and a massive tear opened in the fabric of the dimension. Through the tear, a colossal, unblinking eye stared down—The Watcher of the Wastes.
"The Anchor!" Hanavari screamed, shielding her eyes from the glare. "The Locust isn't the threat! It's the pin! That thing in the sky is trying to push through, and the insect is holding the door open!"
Alistair looked at his tulip-umbrella, then at the floating Maximillian, and finally at the giant eye in the sky. He reached into his pocket—checking to ensure his phone hadn't turned into a hamster—and pulled out his comms device.
"Felix," Alistair said, his tone commanding but tinged with urgent relief. "Bring the car. And bring the heavy calculator. We have a relativity leak."
There was no sound of an engine. One moment, there was empty, melting desert. The next, the air shivered with a sound like a plucked violin string, and the Silver Teardrop—Felix’s extradimensional vehicle—folded out of space and slammed onto the ground.
The gull-wing door hissed open. Felix Moreau stepped out. He looked like a man who had been waiting his whole life for exactly this phone call. He wore thick, multi-lensed goggles reflecting the chaotic sky, and on his right arm was a bulky gauntlet glowing with a fierce, Cherenkov-blue light.
"Spectacular!" Felix shouted, grinning maniacally as he scanned the giant eye in the clouds. "Absolute textbook breakdown of the space-time manifold!"
He strode toward the Locust, ignoring the fact that his footsteps were echoing three seconds after he took them.
"You called the right department, Alistair!" Felix yelled, tapping his gauntlet. "That's a Quantum Anchor! It’s emitting a localized tachyon field. That eye in the sky is a supermassive gravitational entity. It’s too heavy for this dimension, so it’s pressing against the membrane of reality like a bowling ball on a trampoline!"
"Can you fix it?" Maximillian called down from twenty feet in the air, where he was currently trying to swim through the atmosphere.
"Fix it? I'm going to invert it!" Felix shouted. He adjusted a dial on his gauntlet, and it began to whine like a jet engine. "If I reverse the polarity of its tachyon stream, I can use the Locust's own gravity well to slingshot the Eye back into its own dimension! I’m going to punch physics in the face until it behaves!"
He looked at Alistair. "I need three seconds, Alistair! Hold it still! Not physically—chronologically. Use a stasis ward. Give me three seconds of absolute 'Now'!"
Alistair straightened his cuffs, discarding the wilting tulip. "Three seconds of absolute order. I can do that."
"Ready when you are!" Felix shouted, the blue light from his gauntlet turning the sand into glass beneath his boots.
Alistair stepped forward. His eyes ignited with a malevolent, crimson light. He raised his hand, palm flat, fingers rigid—the ultimate gesture of a Magister imposing his will.
"By the ancient covenants of linear progression," Alistair intoned, his voice booming with a resonance that drowned out the ticking distortion. "I hereby file a motion for Immediate Cessation!"
He slammed his hand down.
A cage of solid, crimson light slammed into existence around the Chrono-Locust. It wasn't a wall; it was a pause button. Inside the crimson cube, time stopped absolute. The dust motes froze. The creature’s mandibles locked mid-click.
"Target locked!" Hanavari yelled, her violet eyes wide. "Zero latency! Felix, hit it!"
Felix didn't run. He slid. The boots of his suit magnetized to the unstable ground, propelling him forward like a railgun projectile.
"Newton sends his regards!" Felix screamed.
He drew his arm back. The gauntlet whined, the pitch climbing beyond human hearing, turning the air around his fist into a vacuum of superheated plasma. He didn't punch the locust’s shell. He punched the event.
CRACK-THOOM.
The impact didn't sound like meat being hit; it sounded like a suspension bridge snapping. At the point of contact, reality shattered. For a microsecond, the world inverted—the sky turned black, the ground turned white, and everyone saw their own skeletons in harsh X-ray detail.
A beam of pure, concentrated Rejection—a swirling vortex of blue radiation and raw mathematical denial—shot out of Felix’s fist, passed through the frozen locust, and rocketed straight up the invisible tether connecting the insect to the sky.
High above, the Watcher—the colossal Cyclopean eye—widened in shock. It had expected a meal; it received a tactical nuclear strike of reversed polarity. The energy beam hit the pupil of the giant eye.
The sky screamed. It was a sound like tearing metal. The gravitational anchor snapped. The giant eye bulged, then imploded, sucked backward into its own dimension by the sudden reversal of the tachyon stream.
"And stay out!" Felix yelled at the clouds.
With a sound like a wet pop, the rift in the sky sealed shut. The purple bruises on the horizon vanished, replaced by a boring, comforting, grey sky. Gravity, realizing the boss was back in town, returned with a vengeance.
Maximillian plummeted from the sky. He produced a silk handkerchief, held it over his head like a parachute (which did absolutely nothing), and landed with a dusty thud next to Alistair.
"Oof," Maximillian said, standing up and dusting off his diamond-patterned knees. "A bit abrupt on the re-entry, Felix. I bit my tongue."
The Chrono-Locust, severed from its power source and slammed by the reality punch, was no longer a giant monster. It shriveled rapidly, the paradox collapsing in on itself until all that remained in the center of Alistair's crimson cage was a regular, garden-variety grasshopper, looking thoroughly confused.
Felix stood up, steam hissing from the vents of his gauntlet. He flipped his goggles up, revealing eyes bright with adrenaline. "Status?" he asked, breathless.
Hanavari lowered her hand, the violet glow fading. She looked around at the solid rocks, the non-melting cacti, and the linear flow of time. "System restore complete," she said, letting out a long breath. "No data loss. Though I think we lost about five minutes of Tuesday."
Alistair looked down at the tiny grasshopper. He dissolved the crimson cage with a flick of his wrist. "Acceptable," he said, straightening his cuffs and brushing a speck of imaginary dust from his lapel. "Though next time, Felix, try to be less... loud. You cracked the lens of my sunglasses."
From the ridge above, Barwell peered over the edge, squinting at the tiny green insect that had nearly ended the world. He looked at Amethyst, then at Periplum.
"I think," Barwell said shakily, "I’m going to need a bigger drink."
Amethyst and Periplum are @wrestlegirl1
Barwell is @thebarwell