Never As It Seems

Final Attack

"Are you serious?" said Adam in a hushed voice. 

"Totally serious," Rick replied. "You see the corner right there?" He pointed behind him to a spot that was hard to discern from the surrounding darkness, about ten or so feet away from them. The little light that was provided for them revealed a point where the hallway turned sharply to the left. "That's pretty much the dead end. After that it turns one more time and then there's a room, a huge room, with the Fuzzy Guy in it. There are a ton of guards surrounding him, but he's there. Dead center of attention, which probably doesn't surprise you that much. The guards are pretty serious about it all, though. We just narrowly missed being detected by one of them right outside it - we didn't know the hallway was going to end up in a room, you know? Especially one with everyone and their mother in it. And from what we could tell, the guards there were more deadly than the guards we've seen so far. It's a big deal. So anyway, now we're both sitting here, in the hallway, and we were going to wait for you all before we started planning any sort of... plans." 

"So this is the end?" said Annmarie. 

Rick peered at her, clearly puzzled. "Of what?" 

"Of the maze or whatever this is." 

"Oh, you think it's a maze, too?" He nodded. "That's what I thought. Well, I guess so. All the twists and turns and stuff - and, I mean, where else would it end up?" 

"True." 

Rick sighed and slumped his shoulders. "So. Anyone got any bright ideas as to how we're going to get this guy?" 

"You didn't come up with any?" said Breanne. 

"Nope," said Nicholas. "We actually didn't get here that long ago, maybe five minutes at most. Then we started wondering about you five - if you had gotten through this thing without being taken away from any guards or whatever. We were kind of getting pretty worried, actually. Well, mostly Rick." 

"Not denying it," said Rick. 

"No, we didn't get taken away. Not at all," said Annmarie. "It's funny, though. Flames and I ran into a few guards near the beginning, and we took them out pretty easily and everything, but we haven't really seen any since then. Were the rest of them in that room?" 

"Mostly," said Nicholas. "We took out a few in the middle, though." He indicated Rick, who nodded. "Good thing we had these guns, huh? They're surprisingly useful weaponry tools for overgrown Nerf guns." 

"Whoa, you took out some?" said Flames. "Rick?" 

"Don't sound so surprised," Rick muttered.  

"I just wouldn't expect you to be such an action hero. You weren't exactly too promising in that one self-defense class we took. And now you're beating up guards. Wow." 

"Oh, thanks," he said sardonically. "Well, as for this thing we're facing in the now and present - I don't have any ideas." 

"How many guards are there?" said Samantha. "Like, an estimate. Twenty? Fifty?" 

"Definitely not fifty," said Rick. "Probably closer to twenty, though, I think. There weren't that many, but there were enough to make the whole thing look pretty scary. Of course, I didn't get that great of a look. I sort of bolted away once I realized what was going on there." 

"Hence my surprise," said Flames under his breath. 

"So, are they armed?" said Samantha. 

"Don't know. Probably. They're guards." 

"Makes sense," she replied sarcastically. 

"Well, I don't know. Were the other guards armed? No. But that doesn't really prove much."