Shaking himself, Oliver switched back to planning mode. "Now, Roger and Little Timmy, this is our only exit. D'khara and I are going to fetch David, and it is vital that this exit remains open for us. We'll return shortly."

The two nodded in understanding. Oliver and D'khara headed for the elevators.

D'khara pressed the up button on the elevator. They waited.

"That Zentech cannon works pretty well," D'khara said.

"It does," Oliver replied. "Although I'd like to procure a heavy machine gun one of these days."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I've spoken with David about it, but it's just not in the budget right now."

"I gotcha. You have one in mind?"

"Not especially. Just something that can output a high volume of covering fire. That would be tactically beneficial in some situations."

"Oh, okay."

They waited some more.

"It wouldn't even be a fight," D'khara said.

"What's that now?" Oliver asked.

"Batman and Aquaman. Not even close to a fair fight once Batman found him."

"That's utterly preposterous. Aquaman's ability to control marine life would have Batman fighting half the ocean before he was able to come near him."

"Nope, Batman would lure him out of the ocean. Nullify his strengths."

"What could he even do to Aquaman? He's basically bulletproof."

"He'd figure something out. Batman's smart and ruthless."

"I find that unlikely." Oliver replied, and fell silent.

They were quiet for another moment.

"Sure is taking a long time," D'khara said.

"I wonder if we shouldn't take the stairs?"

"We could try the other elevator. I don't know that we want to climb eighteen flights of stairs."

"Good point."

They waited, growing antsier by the moment.

"Perhaps it was damaged in the shooting," Oliver suggested.

"I'm sure it's fine. Look, here it comes now."

The elevator car descended toward the Riotfish with stately slowness. It reached the first floor, slowed even further, and gently bumped to a stop at the bottom. The car sat motionless for a long moment, then rang out a loud "ding!" The glass doors finally opened.

D'khara stepped into the elevator, and Oliver tried to follow, but the elevator car had clearly not been designed for orc access. He tried to hunch over and scoot in, but he was too broad to fit through the doors. He turned and angled his upper body to fit in, accidentally elbowing D'khara in the face as he did so.

"Sorry, sorry," muttered Oliver.

"No worries," D'khara scowled, rubbing his nose.

The elevator dinged again, and the doors tried to close, bouncing softly off Oliver's bulk.

"Maybe you'd better go in first," D'khara suggested.

"Right, maybe so."

Oliver backed out of the elevator, pressing one hand against the doors to prevent them from closing. D'khara stepped out and stood watching as Oliver wrangled himself into the small, tasteful glass and brass elevator car. He ended up plastered against two walls, hunched and squeezed and incredibly uncomfortable.

D'khara stepped into the elevator and pressed "18". The elevator's motors, so quiet on the way down, now whined as they struggled to raise the load in the car. After a couple tense moments, the motors overcame inertia, and the elevator began to rise, with the underpowered elevator hiccuping from time to time, just to keep things interesting.

As Oliver and D'khara began the slow ride up to eighteen, Roger and Little Timmy positioned themselves to cover all the main exits to the atrium. There were countless doors and halls leading out, but the front doors were where reinforcements would arrive from outside. The stairs were probably where reinforcements would arrive from inside.

Oliver and D'khara disappeared upward, and it took fully thirty seconds for Little Timmy to decide that he was bored. Roger, of course, was rarely ever bored, since the strange film that played in his head and colored his perception of the world was more diverting than whatever was going on around him anyway.

Little Timmy poked through the remains of the reception desk, and finding nothing interesting there, wandered over to the snack cubby. He plugged a credit chit into the drink machine to get a soda, which he downed in one long chug. Throwing the drink container to the ground, he belched hugely.

He hefted a theatrical sigh.

"Man, how come they got to go do all the fun stuff? I'm stuck here with you in Snoozeville."

Roger glanced upward and giggled.

"Hallelujah," he said quietly.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

A screaming body fell from somewhere far above and crunched into the floor of the atrium. Little Timmy let out a small shriek, but recovered quickly.

"See?" he said. "They're having all the fun up there."

Casting about for something to do, he headed toward the doors that led further into the building.

"I'mma go check over here," Little Timmy said. "See what these saucetags are hiding."

"Pooping rain clouds in the offing," Roger said.

Little Timmy shrugged, and slung his Kealans. Weapons secured, he wandered off. Roger unslung his rifle, leaned over, and began quietly chewing on the remains of one of the potted plants.

Little Timmy randomly pulled open one of the doors, which led to a tastefully decorated conference room.

"Lame," he evaluated.

He pulled open another that led to a room full of cubicles stretching away into the distance.

"Garbage," he opined.

He pulled open the next, which opened into a long, dim hallway.

"Antsy! Pantsies in trouble." Roger called out from behind him.

Little Timmy looked quizzically back at Roger, shrugged, and walked into the hallway, letting the door swing shut behind him. The sound here was muted, softened by dampeners and white noise generators placed strategically in the drop ceiling.

He wandered down the quiet hall and turned a corner to face a group of six heavily armed reinforcements marching toward him.

"Quick, they went that way!" he called, pointing back toward the atrium, which would have been a clever tactic if he had been dressed like a suitman, and not like a hobo wearing the ammunition stockpile of a third-world country.

The soldiers leveled their rifles at him.

"Who are you?" one of them barked.

Little Timmy's face contorted briefly.

"Oh, um. Hello? Am I in some kind of trouble?" Dr. Navarre asked.

A moment of reflection later, Dr. Navarre sighed and raised his hands. "He's done it again, hasn't he?"

----------------------------------------

Oliver and D'khara had just stepped off the elevator and were moving toward the corner office. The elegant walkway, beautiful as it was, creaked warningly under Oliver's weight.

"Maybe we should go across separately," D'khara suggested. "Just in case."

"Yes," Oliver mumbled, staring at the graceful architecture.

"Maybe I should go first," D'khara added. "Just in case."

Oliver nodded, worry settling into well-worn lines.

D'khara darted forward and was nearly across the walkway when a suitman stepped out onto the walkway with him, a small black pistol leveled at the dwarf.

It wasn't clear what effect he intended this to have, but it didn't work. D'khara didn't even slow down. He speared the suitman in the gut with the barrel of his shotgun, lifting him off his feet and lobbing him over the railing.

A disappearing scream sounded as D'khara peeked over the guardrail, his beloved PZ-12 still in one hand. The scream cut off.

"Nasty," D'khara noted. He looked back and waved Oliver over.

Oliver gingerly stepped away from the elevator, and the walkway creaked even louder. It was not made for the kind of single-point pressure Oliver provided. No architect could have planned for an Oliver.

He moved forward another two steps. The walkway began bouncing slightly as he shifted his thousand pounds from foot to foot. D'khara paled as he watched Oliver make his way across.

At the halfway point, the whole walkway swayed with Oliver's every movement. Moving faster, Oliver tried to balance speeding up with not putting too much stress on the delicate architecture. It creaked and complained at every step, but the engineering held, and Oliver was able to step into the hallway.

"Let's definitely take the stairs on the way down," Oliver gasped. D'khara agreed.

The halls were eerily quiet as they made their way toward the corner office. Doors left open showed signs of a hasty evacuation, with scattered drifts of paper on the floor and overturned chairs left lying in walkways.

They arrived at the door to Adler's corner office without encountering anyone else. Oliver laid his hand against the door to force it open. He grunted. He frowned slightly and pushed again. The door didn't budge. He placed both hands against it and pushed steadily.

"Must be reinforced," D'khara said. "Hammer time?"

Oliver grunted in agreement and unslung his hammer.

Oliver's hammer was an enormous, crude thing; less like a manufactured hand tool and more like a basketball-sized rock lashed to the end of a log. The head was unlovely: pitted, moldy, and discolored. The lashings were flat and worn, and the handle was misshapen and lumpy.

The hallway, broad as it was, was too narrow for Oliver to get a full swing going, but he managed by choking up on the handle and short-stroking the hammer into the door.

The door resounded with a hollow boom and a crunch. The classy wood veneer shattered, revealing the underlying steel.

Oliver swung again. The door boomed again, bending inward. Once more, boom, and the edge of the door was pushed in enough to fit a fist through.

Oliver steadily rained blows on the door. The pleasant exterior was torn away, revealing a solid steel door set in a concrete frame. Blow after blow, the steel slab pushed inward, jamming against, then into, then through the reinforced concrete frame.

Oliver's meteor strikes against the door were powerful, but the door was designed to withstand precisely what Oliver was doing to it.

After twenty or so ringing blows, the door was folded nearly in half, crammed backwards through the frame. Oliver was able to get his hands around the edge of the door. With a mighty heave, he ripped the ruined door out of its frame. He gingerly leaned it against the wall nearby.

Oliver and D'khara entered the sumptuous office to find Adler seated behind his desk, taking his fingers out of his ears, looking extremely put out.

The two Riotfish stalked forward with grim intent.

"You could have knocked," Adler said.

"Oh, uh... we thought you'd be in a safe room or something," Oliver faltered.

"This is my safe room," Adler replied acidly.

"Well, you should have had an orc-proof door, I guess." D'khara said.

"I don't have an orc-proof door for the same reason I don't have a giraffe-proof door. Orcs are not part of my threat profile. They are not generally intelligent enough to take direction. Yours is well-trained, I see."

Oliver drew himself up to his full height.

"I'll excuse your ignorance on this sole occasion," Oliver began, "but I'll have you know that I am educated, and a voracious autodidact. Your short-sighted speciesism has clouded your powers of observation and your judgment, but if you recant, I could be persuaded to let it pass."

Adler was visibly taken aback.

"Interesting. Well, I recant, by all means. You are certainly a fascinating product. A result of Project Icarus, perhaps? One of the other agencies? Whose lab did you come out of?"

Oliver was disturbed to speechlessness by the intense calculation on Adler's face, so D'khara decided to step in.

"We're a result of Project 'Where's Our Boss', and we're in a hurry. Tell us where he is and we won't turn you into fascinated axle grease."

"You work for Fleer?" Adler sat back with a small smile. "I'm not sure if you're a measure of how far he's fallen, or that he's on his way back up. Worth thinking about."

"Right," D'khara said. He lifted his PZ-12, and emptied the drum bupbupbupbup around the office, aiming for the most expensive-looking items he could see. After having holed up items worth more than he would ever make in his entire lifetime, he shucked the empty drum, locked in a fresh one, and leveled it at Adler.

"There's only one thing 'worth thinking about' right now. Where is Fleer?"

Adler raised his hands with a distasteful sneer.

"He's been taken away for... debriefing."

D'khara's brows drew down as he cocked his head quizzically.

"Which is to say, processing," he clarified.

D'khara's expression did not clear.

"Disposal? Termination? Permanent demotion? Have you no sense of decorum? How crude and explicit do I need to be?" Leaning over the desk and speaking slowly, he said "My men have taken him away to end his life and dispose of his body."

Adler was so focused on D'khara that he was taken completely by surprise when Oliver gripped the back of his neck and lifted him bodily over the desk.

"Well then," Oliver said, "you can accompany us and show us which way they went."