The maze was full of my literal nightmares. We all ran through the endless halls and dark passageways to find horrors of my past if I went the wrong way. Instead of finding a dead end I would run into my memory of getting hit by a car as a child and my mother’s traumatizing scream as I didn’t make it. In another passageway my prom date left our table to go dance with someone else but this time the person stabbed them for me, and it was Hale.
This was the most twisted mind game yet and I had to eventually just rely on Moto to get us through the long stone hallways as I was mentally drained from the constant trauma. The images wouldn’t appear for him he assured me only the normal dead ends. Eventually after what felt like hours we came to a large center room filled with mud and dead tree moss everywhere.
“Oh this one,” I said quietly.
“We just need to cross this room master,” Moto said. He was back in his singular form as he couldn’t hold his splits very long.
When I was nine our apartment building had a gator cross over into our local lake and a kid’s leg got bitten off. He was an older kid and I didn’t know him very well but ever since then my parents have beat the fear of gator monsters into me. And so of course a giant alligator was sitting in between us and the maze’s crown room behind him. I was relying that Kevin had his own demon to face and met our crown room in the middle.
The creature still had a leg hanging out of its mouth and was over 20 feet long. As soon as it noticed us gaping it charged at us. Moto ran head first at it while I stood around like an idiot at the absurdity of it all. The gator reached moto quickly tried to wrap its massive jaws around the symbiote, but the gorilla split into two as he bit down. Both split Motos formed large swords with their hands and stabbed at the creature’s eyes. The alligator screamed with fury and immediately lashed out at all of us with its enormous tail.
Moto merged back with his other half and we were both slammed against the far stone wall near the maze room’s entrance. The shock of the sudden impact dazed and disoriented me as Moto quickly started to charge through the mossy floor again.
“Just get to the room master. The goal is the crown. This is a distraction like the rest,” Moto said as he split again and ran towards the alligator. The gators tail was moving too fast to make physical sense as it was defending the back exit at all cost, even blinded. I tried to force my way back there just to get hit again full force by the tornado like whirl of the beast’s powerful tail.
Moto was trying to distract the beast but it seemed impossible. The scaled tail’s spins and whirls took up nearly the entire mud filled room and it was hard to move past the very entrance without getting hit. Not only that but I was getting full of mud and I hated having mud on me it sucked. Frustration and desperation started to rise in both of us. The gator was thrashing wildly.
“Just throw me Moto,” I told the symbiote as we dodged another tail swipe.
“What? Oh. Yes master that can maybe work,” he admitted.
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He split into two forms again and while one got to work distracting the blinded alligator on one side of the maze, the other picked me up as I brought my knees up to my chest. Moto’s symbiote arm formed around me like I was in a trebuchet and he was ready to launch.
“Wait for the next tail swipe,” I said as we watched the tail quickly move back and forth and attack the other split symbiote. We got lucky when Moto’s other half was able to land a sword cut on the gator’s nose which paused the tail strikes just long enough for me to be thrown like Jazzy Jeff in an old sitcom my dad used to watch.
As I landed in pain near the exit I could tell the gator was even more infuriated at our success when it heard a thud behind it. My theory was correct after the initial tail swipe. It seems that while I could feel pain I couldn't actually break any bones in the mind game, which made sense in a way I guess. I ran through the final door with a triumph that quickly faded as I saw Kevin already there with the crown on his head and a smirk on his lips.
****
A McDonald’s district manager is born to face untold amounts of emergencies everyday. A supplier suddenly lost an enormous amount of much needed coke syrup for one of his stores? He was already headed to the supplier's competition and bringing a truckload of the stuff himself. One store had multiple call outs for a busy shift? He would grab five employees from the surrounding stores to cover it. Kevin could handle the stress of a giant corporation breathing down his neck this maze was a breeze. The worst part was the nightmare at the end though.
His mom was in that final room telling him he would never amount to anything while chain smoking and putting out the butts on his arm while growing up. Yeah that was maybe a bad one. Good thing his ape employees quickly sorted her out. Mom was never good for much in reality either. It’s ok, the apes were good employees and quickly found their way through the boring maze. He put the black crown on his head but it seemed he untied his shoe so he laced back up as he waited for the boy to come through. A proper appearance was a must, even if his suit was getting quite worn now.
He checked his notification thing as he waited.
Congratulations! You held the crown first.
You have one upgrade available:
Paralyze
Install upgrade? Yes/No/Help
Help: Paralyze will let you command and stop anyone’s body part from functioning for 3 seconds. This amount of parts hindered and time stopped grow with the skill. Can be used immediately.
Kevin installed the command and smiled at the system interface. Between his auto heal and paralyze he was about to have many more employees. The beach boy finally appeared and he smiled at him. The interface said he already had the crown on for two minutes at this point.
“Well I suppose we do need more people at the beaches branches. Though they do have horrible clientele” Kevin said to Jon.
The boy ran towards Kevin but he ordered his orangutan employees to hold him back. They couldn’t hold the ten split forms from earlier but these two would be more than enough. He wouldn’t even need the paralyze skill it seemed.
“Maybe in the next life you’ll learn to let people finish speaking,” Kevin said watching the clock as it kept ticking up.
“And I really hope you learn to read the system right man,” the boy said.
What was he talking about? Kevin double checked the screen.
The timer was almost at three minutes but it was actually under Jon’s name on the interface and not his.
What?! Last time I checked it was under my name?? Kevin thought in a panic.
“You literally never look behind you do you?” someone said from his side of the crown room entrance. Kevin looked at the new voice to see the pathetically sad girl from earlier wearing the black crown.
When? What? How? Kevin was shaking.
“I snuck in on your side and followed you. The game didn’t set any rules about that. And to answer your question earlier. Hi. I’m Juli. I’m part of Jon’s Legion,” the sad girl said.
“PARALYZE! GO APES!” Kevin screamed. The two giant orangutans were already running as the timer struck three minutes.