After another while of riding around hiding in someone’s clothes while they walk around I finally reach my destination. The man I was hiding on walked to a room that required a keycard and retinal scan before it opened. Once inside I realized that this was the man’s office. I was wondering why he had such a large amount of security on the door to his office until I saw the large wall full of weapons. There were all kinds of weapons on the wall. But what I didn’t understand was how low-tech all the weapons were. Based on what I could recall about my past is how advanced our society was. I had seen the army start using laser weapons, why was this man’s office decorated with swords and crossbows and weapons like that. They weren’t even just for decoration, for one thing there were too many. They had also seen much use. Little scratches and chips in the blades, even a stain here and there gave it away.

Maybe this has something to do with the other worlds the lady was talking about.

The man walked over to his desk and sat down, taking a moment to light a thick cigar and puffing on it for a bit. I took this moment to crawl off of him and onto the bottom of his desk. I hid underneath his desk for a while. I’m getting sick of all this waiting, I haven’t been…..whatever I am for very long and most of the time I’ve been here has been spent waiting. It’s frustrating not being able to do anything.

But despite my inner protesting I sat and waited, just watching the commander work. Mostly he had just been looking over some paperwork and typing on his laptop. It was several hours of this boring torture until he did something to make it infinitely worse.

He leaned over and let out a disgustingly wet sounding fart.

He sat there for a moment before getting up and walking a bit stiffly towards a door on the other side of the office, away from the entrance.

Finally, this was my chance!

As soon as he closed the door behind him I set out searching for that device the woman told me about. I slipped a tentacle into each of the drawers of his desk to check those first. The top one just had a bunch of files and a gun. ‘Oh, so he does have a gun’

The next couple of drawers have some things I couldn’t identify like a large amount of small vials and what felt like a tiny bike pump, so I moved on. There was nothing on top of the desk either so I climbed on top of the desk and looked around the room till I spotted something. There was a small bracelet sitting on the desk in a tiny little case. I popped open the case to get a better look. Turns out the case it was in magnified it. It was actually a tiny blue cloth ring with yellow plates mounted in it every so often. It was sort of like the device that the lady was talking about right? It has the right colors at least.

I heard a toilet flush in the other room and the sink started going. I decided to just take it with me, I grabbed it and ran towards the door. I reached the door just as the man was leaving the bathroom. Much to my horror he looked directly at me in front of the door and froze. Neither of us moved and just stared at each other. I saw him glace at the ring around my neck (that was the only place it would fit normally) and he leapt at me. I couldn’t shrink under the door with the ring around my neck. I jumped out of the way just barely dodging his fist. He punched straight into the floor, sending cracks out into the surrounding concrete. I’m glad I dodged, there was no way I would’ve survived that. I stretched my legs out for more speed and escaped. I dodged everywhere I could, sometimes just moving certain parts of my body out of the way so I don’t take and damage.

His office was now covered in smashed furniture and holes in the walls and floor. Even the bathroom door was smashed into tiny pieces. I was running out of things to hide behind, I resorted to trying to hit him instead of just running. I leapt onto the wall full of mounted weapons and started pulling them free, tossing them as hard as I could in his general direction. I managed to get a glimpse of him while I was throwing things and he was still demonstrating his superior speed. The man was simply dodging most of the weapons, some of them he caught set them aside carefully. With every weapon I threw he seemed to get angrier, he started throwing some of them back at me.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Now, not only do I have to keep throwing weapons at him and moving along the wall, I have to dodge the incoming weapons as well. This is getting frustrating, I grabbed one of the last three weapons on the wall. A small spiked mace and threw it at him using as much strength as I could muster. My aim was a little off and I ended up throwing it towards his shoulder. He deflected it with a flick of his wrist, tearing a small hole in his uniform. He must have been getting frustrated too because he deflected it with a lot more force than he needed to use. The mace flew towards the door and smashed almost completely through it. I would’ve thought about just how much force would be needed for that to happen, but I was a bit more distracted by this opportunity to escape. I immediately set into action, throwing the last of the weapons at him to keep him distracted for a bit. The I leapt off the wall and spread out my arms, forming a soft thin membrane between them to keep myself aloft. I was very close to the ceiling so in order to escape I would have to get closer to the rabid commander staring at me with almost bloodshot eyes. I picked up speed by spinning in circles a bit before entering his strike range.

Once I was in range I immediately spun around his head, he may be fast. But he doesn’t seem to be able to catch me. Like he isn’t really used to his speed and didn’t think to try grabbing ahead of where I was to try and catch me.

I spun around his head a few times, dodging out of the way when he tried to grab me. Then as soon as I got behind his head I changed course and sped towards the new hole in the door. The mace hadn’t gone completely through the door but it had made a big enough hole for me to get through with the ring. He tried to grab me before I made it through the door, I could practically feel his huge hand behind me as I folded my arms against my body to fit through the hole. Once I was through I got rid of the membrane and started running down the hall. I heard a loud crunch behind me, looking back I can see the commander went through the door! He must be really pissed I took this thing.

He was way to fast for me to out run him, but lucky for me the nearby guards heard the commotion and were coming by to investigate. When they saw the commander trying to catch me they immediately summoned more guards to try and cut off my escape. This was really straining my mind, constantly dodging the commander’s deadly strikes and shifting my body out of the way when I couldn’t dodge. Luckily It wasn’t much longer before both sides of the hallway were filled with guards sporting all sorts of tools for capturing that I assumed were used to capture escaped experiments. I waited till one of the guards tried to step in and help the commander capture me before I acted. I grabbed the guard’s helmet and launched myself over the heads of all the guards. Once again growing the thin membrane so that I could glide and control my flight.

I dodged all the guard’s attempts to grab me as I passed overhead and landed on the floor behind them. I heard the commander yelling something at the guards, but I had already flew down the hall before some of the guards broke out of their stupor and started sprinting after me. I needed to figure out how to use this device around my neck. It is a little smaller than what the lady said but the man really wanted to get it back so it has to be important right?

I glided down the halls, speeding away from the sound of stomping boots. Whenever I lost speed I grabbed onto the wall and pulled to gain speed as I went. The various scientists got in my way every now and then but they either screamed when they saw a flying mouse with tentacles flying at them or tried to swat at me with whatever was in their hands.

I found that the farther down the halls I go the less people I ran into. There were even less rooms the longer I flew. Eventually I ran out of halls, reaching a large and very long chamber. There was a small stone platform at the entrance that ended just behind a large stone circle. The floor seemed to disappear into nothingness after the platform ended. The stone circle was covered in a large amount of circuitry and devices that I didn’t understand. I could see several more large stone circles directly behind it going in a straight line off into the distance. I couldn’t even see the last one. Each one was mounted on a large floating rock. The way they were floating gave off the impression that they were floating in water, but there was nothing there.

I grew my legs out and landed on the floor just in front of the large stone circle. Once I touched the ground I felt a slight warmth from my neck.

It was the ring!

The ring started warming up around my neck, I wasn’t really sure how to feel about that though. I have no idea what this thing is supposed to do. I was contemplating taking it off when I was once again reminded I was being chased by the sound of boots stomping down the hallway. I subconsciously took a couple steps away from the entrance and ended up stepping closer to the stone ring. The ring was starting to get hot and vibrate. I looked down at it and something smacked me in the head knocking me right through the stone ring.

Then everything went dark.