"Tell us about it," István said, curious as to what my bad idea was.

"Well, you know how this is supplying a flow of power to everything by sending energy out along the pipes? What if we sealed them off. Wouldn't that create a scenario where it eventually built up too much pressure and failed?"

The scientist put his hand on his chin, thinking about the proposition. "There is that, but there is also the case where the backpressure suppresses any new energy from being created in the first place. It would depend on the mechanism." It was a thoughtful analysis of a potential downside to my bad idea. But at the end of the day it was a bad idea, after all.

"I'm all for it," Viktor said, plopping down an cylindrical container that had what were clearly warnings of its propensity to burst into flames all over it. "Some accelerant to make sure all the bugs in that one room also die… her bad idea does not have enough bad ideas in it yet." He patted the container, his deep laugh echoing off of the walls.

"Where on earth did you find that," István asked, using an expression I wasn't familiar with.

"The pipe drilling machine. It apparently uses this to melt through the rock."

"I see. Well, carry on." István turned back to me. "So, how do you intend to seal the pipes off?"

I looked back and hooked a thumb over my shoulder at Viktor, "I brought deconstruction equipment." This elicited a big grin from him.

István looked around. "How many of those do you have?" he asked Viktor.

"Whole room of them."

"Let us put some here, and the rest we can push onto the floor in question as we pass by," István instructed. Viktor trundled off to go get some more bad ideas, while I examined the crucible again. I was watching the rate of decomposition, as the Motes would break down and be perverted into this other form of power, before being sent out.

I had the beginnings of another bad idea to add to our burgeoning stack, but this one could turn out even worse for us, so I had to make sure it was at least a well-reasoned poor choice. I heard clanging noises behind me as Viktor loaded the elevator. I turned back to see István struggling with a container, and hurried back to help him.

"Thank you," he said, "I somehow forget not to use Viktor as a point of reference for how easy it is to lift something, even after all these years."

"He probably thinks the same about you and using Nebula," I pointed out. István's control, like most things in the man's personal life, was immaculate.

"I doubt he even thinks about how to use his power," István said, "As far as I know he has never trained it. He just uses it to potential almost instinctively. The man is a savant when it comes to destruction."

"I think I heard someone giving me a complement," came a voice from back by the elevator, where all manner of clanking noises were happening.

In the end, we wound up placing three around the crucible, and had to displace one of the BeetleMechs off of the elevator to ensure that it was actually able to move at all, with all the extra weight on it. It was making despondent creaking sounds just sitting there at this point.

With everything in place, we moved back to the crucible. Well, Viktor and I did. István was at the elevator, ready to push the button the second we called out. It'd take a while for it to even clear the ceiling of this floor, and the sooner we could get a solid plate of metal between us and any potential accidents, the better.

I put my hand back on the crucible, and very carefully - insofar as I could manage, anyway - moved a minimal amount of Nebula into it. Most of it immediately disappeared into the core at the bottom before I could get it under my control, but a small amount stayed with me, and I was able to guide it towards one of the Motes floating lifelessly in the bed of crushed Artifacts, or whatever the sand was.

As soon as the two touched, the Mote greedily absorbed the energy, brighting up and changing color slightly in the process. It was floating around quickly now, as if looking for more. I felt sorry that I was about to confine it to doom.

Stolen novel; please report.

"Alright, go for it." I said, and Viktor slapped the wall, flattening every pipe in one go. I had detected his brief use of Nebula right as it happened, but he wasted so little that it was difficult to detect, even with my senses.

The sounds of cats fighting inside a pipe echoed as István hit the elevator button, and we took off running down the hall, not wanting to be left behind.

Turns out that despite its protestations, the elevator moved quicker on the way back up than it did on the way down, and Viktor had to lift me onto it before pulling himself up, something the elevator was particularly unhappy about as an unsettling screech and some sparks marked where the lopsided pull from the new mass pushed the far side into the wall.

But we were all on, and before long the gap at the bottom was sealed off. Now just to get to the top. Even as we were clambering aboard, I could hear some ticks echoing down the hall. I wasn't sure how much time we'd have, but the answer probably wasn't all day.

Hopefully we'd get more out of it than just a simple hole in the ceiling, à la Gran's pressure cooker.

After what seemed like far too long, we pulled even with the floor that we'd first encountered the bug cave on, and István stopped the elevator, before hopping into the mech. Using it, he herded an entire passel of the barrels off down the hallway, the high pitched clinking they made being something I wasn't at all comfortable with. Sounded like they had a lot of pressure in there.

With most of them pushed up against the door, we left a few on the way back, a sort of "barrel fuse". We weren't leaving anything to chance with the mess behind the door.

Then it was back on the elevator. I pushed the button and István stayed with the beetle this time.

Our slow ascent continued.

The glacial pace of the elevator slowed down even further near the top. The cats had reconciled their differences and switched from fighting inside a pipe to starting a seven-piece jazz band, but none of the instruments were in tune. Beside me, even Viktor, who would characteristically be excited at the prospect of this endeavor bearing fruit, looked worried. He was still Viktor, so he was still excited, it had just distilled with his concern into a sort of nervous energy that I swore I could feel.

Well, with the kind of Nebula sensitivity I seemed to have, there was a non-zero chance I could feel it.

"This really was a dumb idea, was it not?" István commented, secured inside the BeetleMech. The way his voice echoed outside of it had an interesting, fuzzy sound to it. Like something was messing with it on the way out. It was also louder than I'd expected it to be. It didn't bode well that the guy inside literal armor, who usually wasn't bothered by anything, had reservations.

"I did tell you that from the get go, you'll recall." I crossed my arms and stared at the wall. None of us had any idea how long it was going to take, just that it was going to be quite the spectacle. Or so I assumed.

We couldn't see up into the recesses of the elevator shaft, but I could judge by the cantankerous noises echoing back to us we were getting there slowly but surely. Every now and then it'd give a particularly frightening shudder, but it kept moving gamely.

A crack of light spilled into the shaft, and I looked up. This was a bad idea as I had a small pebble crash directly into the bridge of my noise, which hurt like the dickens and made my eyes tear up.

More debris started raining down, and István controlled the BeetleMech to rear up and form a sort of lean-to that I was able to duck under. Viktor didn't bother, and didn't seemed concerned about the stones and other bits and pieces that rained down on his shoulders, even rolling them once or twice like he was working out the kinks.

The shaft was quickly brightening as we moved up. The inauspicious 'rain' we'd been experiencing tapered off as it ran out of things to drop on our head. It was clear by now that it was a hatch and we were heading towards it.

All of the sudden I was lifted bodily off the ground by Viktor, who proceeded to throw me up towards the surface like I was a sack of potatoes.

I was very confused by this until I cleared the edge of the gap, at which point I had a blast of energy sear past me. The person who fired it seemed surprised that his fish-in-a-barrel target had come flying out.

Oh. That's why.

It appeared that we had a bunch of guests at the terminus of our trip. Viktor had somehow spotted this, then created a diversion.

The diversion in question was flailing her arms and trying to steady herself as she careened through the air, to hopefully have a not entirely inglorious landing. I caught sight of more people as I twisted through the air, the angle of my trajectory meaning I was going to land somewhere outside the path the elevator was taking.

The ambush seemed to be in decent numbers, but I could see more people running over from other locations, which told me that they weren't entirely sure where the surface access for the elevator was. The wind seemed to have covered up any evidence of it after the previous team left to attack us.

As it turned out, I came down directly into one poor unfortunate soul, hitting him almost square in the back as he was looking the other way, towards people yelling and pointing at my flight. The impact sucked a little - with me taking it mostly on my knees and the side of my hip - but it didn't hurt me nearly as much as it hurt him.

All eyes were on the pile of us two sprawled across the arid scrub, as I felt a deep rumble start below the ground. This seemed to knock some sense back into the bad guys, who then scrambled over to the hole to look into it, bringing what were clearly guns to bear on the occupants.

With a massive screech of tearing metal appropriate of its final moments, the elevator was shot free of the hole by the pressure building up beneath it, clearing the surface with a noise not unlike István's 'bloop' gun.

Just then, I heard a blood-curdling scream.

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