Foston Slacks - Good's Intentions

27

"All I'm saying is that it's probably a good idea to go to Hell and check things out." Foston raised his hands and shrugged as though he had said something no-one could possibly argue with. "You know, just to make sure."

Clara knew it. That was how Foston's mind worked. If he saw an ant hill, with carnivorous ants crawling about, minding their own business, he'd want to poke it just to see how carnivorous the ants actually were and whether everyone else had blown their carnivorousness out of all proportion. If he saw a sleeping bear, he'd want to smack it on the backside to see if he could, indeed, manage to climb a tree to get away from it.

Sometimes, she thought he may have a death wish, or was simply too stupid to understand the dangers that they faced all too often. His tendency to walk towards spear shaking hordes, waving and saying hello in as calm a voice as possible infuriated Clara. But, what infuriated her more was her own tendency to follow him into these kinds of dangers because, she hated to admit it, it was all pretty exciting and, if they lived, fun.

"Fine! Let's go to Hell. I mean, it's only Hell, after all. What's the worst that could happen?" She glared at him, knowing how much he disliked her saying that. This time, it didn't seem to bother him. "Just to let you know, I truly, truly, deep down, actually, no, not deep down, right here on the surface, hate you."

"No, you don't." Foston grinned, clapping his hands and turning to face Time and Effort. "Which brings us to you two."

Time and Effort exchanged glances. From somewhere, Foston pulled out the crystal ball holding the captured Breach and held it out for both the entities to take a good, long look at. Neither seemed that interested. They'd seen it before. This time, however, Foston laid the crystal ball at their feet and stepped back, wiggling his eyebrows at them as though urging them to do something that he hadn't yet told them to do.

"And what are we supposed to do with this?" Time tapped the crystal ball with the toe of his shoe. "My crystal ball will hold that thing forever if we want it to. We let that Breach out, it'll try to capture Clara. Not that I'm against it taking the ignorant ape away, but I hate wasting time. Which is ironic, really."

"Whatever it is, I'm ready!" Effort fell into a squat beside the crystal ball, staring at it as though she could start wrestling with it at any moment, despite the Breach sending her to Claras World already. "Just give me the signal, Chief. I'm the metaphorical construct for the job."

With a raised finger, Foston pointed his watch towards the crystal ball and began tapping upon the watch face. Any second now, he would start explaining something that he thought was incredibly clever and expect everyone to 'ooh' and 'aah' at his sheer brilliance. Clara had seen it all before. She glanced at her own watch, but the updates were still downloading.

"Right. I've modified the device. Rather simple, really. I would have thought your technology would be far more secure, Time, old buddy." Time squinted at Foston's use of 'old buddy', but he let it slide as Foston continued. "Now, thanks to my unequalled brilliance, the device can release the Breach long enough for us to pass through it and then suck it right back into the device. Thus giving us a Breach we can then use to exit Hell as soon as we learn what the hell is going on."

With a smug, self-satisfied smile, Foston looked around at the faces that, in turn, thought he shouldn't mess about with other people's toys, should give them something really difficult to do, and should, for once in his life, shut up and do instead of talking about it. The smile never faltered.

"I don't get it." Time rubbed his cartoon chin, one picture of an eyebrow rising far higher than the other. "This Breach goes to that world where all the ape's other versions are. How do we get from there to Hell?"