As it opened its mouth, a bulbous tongue appeared, then shot towards them, stretching thin. He could see the goo sliding down, about to drip onto the ground. Dropping to the floor, his movement was so sudden, Olivia didn’t get a chance to dodge, and ended up landing on top of him. If ever there were a moment, he wished he wasn’t kissing the ground, it was now.

Behind them, they heard a scream, and the tongue retracted back into the things mouth, carrying whatever poor creature couldn’t get out of the way in time. Olivia scrambled off of him, and he jumped to his feet. Snake and his lackeys were gaining on them.

Taking off around the toad, they saw it trying to swallow the guy it just ate, but he had some kind of fear reaction, that caused him to puff up to twice his size. If he wasn’t running so hard, Dustin would have laughed at the comical scene. It couldn’t swallow, because he was now too big, and it couldn’t spit him out, because of the sticky tongue.

As they got around it, the putrid smell of its slime was almost overwhelming. He had to get away from that, before it made him gag.

They made it to the cave again, and he paused just long enough to glance back, before darting after Olivia, who had not stopped. The spider-mole wasn’t in sight, which meant she was going to try and catch them again. But he was listening. When the vibrations of her scurrying after them got close, he grabbed Olivia around the waist, and jumped onto the wall.

She went to smack at him, almost as a reflex, but stopped and started scurrying along the wall with her cling ability. He watched her butt wiggle and didn’t have any problems chasing after her. When the spider-mole collapsed the tunnel floor, they didn’t fall into her web trap.

Cursing filled the chamber behind them, as they exited the tunnel into a larger cave room. Tapping her foot, when she hesitated on which direction to go, he pointed towards the ceiling, where a crack was emitting a faint trace of light. Nodding, she followed him as he took the lead. Behind them, they could hear their followers cursing at the spider for collapsing the tunnel floor. The shouting echoed, and reverberated down the tunnels.

Dustin heard a scratching sound as he got closer to the crack, and paused. Maybe he didn’t want to go that way. If there were giant bugs, he could definitely go a different direction.

Spying a group of stalactites, they quickly hid among them, and waited. Their pursuers soon emerged into the large room, looking around like crazy for them. Hilariously, none of them looked up. They watched, while their pursuers shouted back and forth, as the crack began to widen.

Suddenly, a beam of light shot out, hitting Snake right on the forehead, and blowing his head off. It was a laser. Well, Snake had mentioned laser guns. It only seemed fitting that he be killed by one, Dustin assumed.

Everyone below them, stood stunned as his body dropped lifelessly to the ground, before glancing up at the hole, and then darting back down the tunnel, the way they had come.

The sounds of flying bikes vibrated throughout the cave, as the Josagn arrived. None of them glanced in their direction, having caught sight of the fleeing people, and went after them. The cave grew silent after a few minutes, and Dustin itched to check out the hole. When Olivia made a motion to move towards it, he grabbed her arm and shook his head. He wasn’t sure, but he had a feeling there was more to come.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, a second group of them flew down from the hole, and settled on the floor by the body of Snake.

“It looks like we found where they’ve been hiding.”

“It was bound to happen eventually.”

“There should be good hunting this day!”

None of them touched the body, and the sounds of screaming drew them down the tunnel.

Dustin started moving again, but it was away from the hole. There was too much going on at the moment, to try and escape through the hole that the Josagn were using. They would definitely be found and killed. He moved instead towards a smaller cave hole, that was far from the floor. It looked promising as a place to hide for a while. The entrance was hidden behind one of the stalactites, so no one from the ground would ever notice it.

Olivia followed along after a moment of staring at the hole.

He was relieved to get off that damn ceiling. He may have the ability to cling to it, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable. Heading deeper into the cave, he found that he would have to crawl to go very far into it, but once he got past the low spot, it opened up to a comfortable space.

Exploring the entire area, there was no other exits or entrances, depending on how you looked at it, but that was fine with him.

“What are we doing here?” she breathed, softer than a whisper. The noise carried just fine for him to hear, but not to travel outside the current area.

“We can’t get out while the Josagn are on the prowl. Not with laser guns. Even our scales would have trouble with that. Give me those devices and I’ll get our PED’s upgraded finally. Maybe by the time I’m done, they’ll have cleared out and we can get out of this cave.”

She nodded and handed them over. He decided to start with his, asking the PED computer to walk him through it once, so then he could upgrade hers. He wanted to keep them upgraded the same, so that if he got interrupted before he could finish, they would be roughly the same.

In the distance, they could hear screams and wails as a city died.