Carl chuckled at Donut's complaint but said nothing. Instead, I watched on my minimap as he walked out of the saferoom and stopped three or four meters from me.

"Can you hold them for a bit?" Carl asked. "I want to build something."

Katia: Sure, no problem. On the far side from Carl I extended a pair of calves and put the shoes back on. The sudden absence of pain was heavenly.

Meanwhile, on the near side I started slowly shifting the edge of my puddle, mounding it up and shifting my eyes over so that I could see what was going on. He was in the process of pulling large jagged fragments of dwarf metal out of his inventory and fitting them together.

"The dungeon is weird," he said, clearly only half his attention on the words. "My Valtay upgrade is telling me the magic doors are 'subspace portals', which sounds sciencey, but basic physics doesn't always seem to apply. I can punch hard enough to bend steel and I don't hurt my hand as long as I'm wearing my gauntlet. Donut's claws are sharp enough to gouge metal, Katia can reshape her body and absorb stuff. We cast spells and the monsters have magic powers."

Katia: Clarketech.

He paused, holding an L-shaped shard of metal in place as he looked over to me. "What?"

Katia: Arthur C. Clarke. He was a science fiction writer. He said 'sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' The dungeon technology is sufficiently advanced technology. Clarketech.

"Huh. Sure, that works." He went back to balancing one chunk of dwarf steel against another and binding it in place with wire. "Anyway, the key question is if normal physics still works."

"Is this going somewhere, Carl?" Donut asked. "I'm bored. I thought we were going to get on the train."

"We will. Go back inside and have the Bopca make you some fish."

"I'm not hungry and if I eat now I'll need to poo while we're on the train."

He chuckled. "Yeah, that would be bad. I take it back."

Carl finished wiring the last piece in place and pushed on it gently to verify that it was stable. Once he was satisfied, he dropped a railroad tie on the ground and turned to me.

"Katia, I want to get this guy tied up with rope," he said, pointing at the prisoner on the left. "Can you pull back slowly?"

In response, I undid the part of my mesh that covered the crown of the left-side Kickada's head.

"Cool, thanks. Can I step on you?" he asked.

Katia: Sure. That's a solid layer of dwarf steel. You could jump up and down with cleats on and it wouldn't matter.

"Great. Pull back to his neck, okay?" He stepped forward and tied the towel over the creature's head and started winding the rope around it.

Over the next ten minutes we switched the prisoners' bindings from my flesh to Carl's rope. They shrieked imprecations and snapped their mandibles at him; one of them managed to tear a hole in the towel but couldn't bend far enough to reach the ropes around its neck and body. At the end they were on the ground wrapped from head to toe in heavy rope with an ankles-to-shoulderblades hogtie. As soon as they were free I converted back to my human form and dragged one of the prisoners into the saferoom while Carl hefted the other prisoner over to his steel lean-to.

"Fuckin' hax, dude! Fuckin' twink! Fuck you up, fucker!" shouted Carl's prisoner, the one that had gotten its mouth free. The other was too muffled to understand but the words were just as angry.

"Okay," Carl said, ensuring that his prisoner was completely inside the rough metal cage he had built. "I used to do electrical work in the Coast Guard. We stripped and fixed everything between the bow anchor motor and the pivot controls on the rudder. Sometimes we had to do that at sea, in bad weather, with salt water spraying everywhere.

"In an environment like that, you learn a lot about electrical safety." He pulled out the Battery Fabricator and a battery; a few seconds and half a dozen mana potions later he had a black battery brick with a faintly-glowing green dot in one corner. "There's three basic things to know: Electricity wants to go to ground, it always follows the path of least resistance, and it always moves along the surface of a conductor unless the only path to ground is through." He stooped down and patted the cursing, thrashing Kickada on the back. "For your sake, I sure hope physics works." He stepped up onto the wooden railroad tie, clicked the button on the battery, and jammed the battery's studs against the steel structure.

There was a massive flash and a thundercrack. Carl screamed and fell backwards off the railroad tie, the battery brick flying out of his hand.

"Carl!" Donut shouted, lunging forward. I reached to stop her but was too slow.

"I'm okay!" He sat up, looking dazed and rubbing his head. Donut had two paws up on his chest and was desperately nuzzling under his chin.

"I'm okay, Donut." He stroked her with both hands for a moment, then gently pushed her back so he could stand up. She was disgruntled by this.

"What happened?" I asked.

"The battery arced as it got close to the metal. It's like when you put jumper cables on your car battery, there's always a spark right as the cable jaws are closing."

"You call that a spark?"

"Yeah. A really big one. These batteries are carrying some serious juice. In good news, let's hear it for physics. Our boy here is doing fine." He pointed to the thoroughly terrified and screaming prisoner lying inside the rickety metal cage. "The electricity went to the outside of the cage and didn't touch him. Still, let's try that again, this time a little more carefully."

o-o-o-o

Half an hour later, we had the answer to several previously vexing questions: Yes, electricity usually behaved as one would expect. At least, the electricity from the dwarven batteries did. The 'electricity' created by Carl's Bang Bro spell did not. It refused to harm its caster if he accidentally touched the gauntlet with bare flesh, and it was perfectly happy to damage an ungrounded target.

"Fuckin' dungeon," Carl had muttered.

Spell effects aside, electricity flowed from the battery and through the dwarf steel, politely sticking to the outer surface in a well-behaved electrical sort of way and therefore having no effect on the Kickada sitting in the rough metal cage. ("Faraday cage," Carl muttered. "Used to have them around some of the sensitive stuff aboard.") The batteries carried enough charge that an arc could vaporize a five-millimeter section of a piece of iron, leaving just a blackened pit behind. (I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Carl was lugging a bent fireplace poker around in his inventory, but I was.) The arcs were not enough to damage dwarf steel.

"I think we're done here," Carl said at last. "Katia, you got anything else or should we kill these guys?"

"Wait...kill them?"

"Yeah? What did you think was going to happen?"

"I..." What had I thought was going to happen? "I didn't think about it, I guess. They're prisoners. In the heat of battle is one thing, but like this...?"

He started to respond hastily, almost certainly angrily, and then caught himself. "That's fair," he said patiently. "Yes, it's different. Killing a prisoner is against the UCMJ—the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the laws that the American military operates under. It's probably against the Geneva Convention, too. On the other hand, none of that matters anymore and what other option do we have? If we untie them they'll try to kill us. If we leave them here, they'll starve to death if they can't get out of the ropes or try to hunt us down if they can. In which case they might bring friends with them." He paused and his face twitched in what was perhaps a sardonic smile. "Plus, we'd be leaving behind a lot of good rope." He shrugged. "They aren't humans."

Birgit would not hesitate here. Whenever she faced an invasion of aliens or demons she had no trouble executing enemy soldiers. 'You chose this fight,' she would say. Had said, several times. Usually right before slamming Blooddrinker through the enemy's head. And then Doctor Mauser would chide her for seeking the path of violence when other options existed and Lady Stormborn would point out that he had been fighting right alongside the rest of the Templar Corps so for him to talk about non-violence was a little hypocritical.

Templar Corps sometimes got a little preachy but I had loved the layered viewpoints.

Aaaand, I was letting my thoughts wander. I needed to respond. I knew the right answer: Kill the prisoners. That was, both objectively and pragmatically, the right answer. It wasn't hard; I'd killed a couple dozen of these things not two hours ago and all I felt was relieved and a little proud of my effectiveness. I should nod firmly and say 'Right you are. I've got this' and then do it. Something dramatic—maybe push a hundred kilos of mass into my foot and step on their heads. The AI would love that, and it would probably play well with the audience. Especially if I could toss off a one-liner afterwards. Make my feet enormous for the job and then say something like 'I guess size does matter, Carl'.

I looked down at the struggling, foul-mouthed, terrified insects and couldn't do it. I couldn't stand the thought of their shells crunching under my foot, their blood squelching between my toes, their last shriek suddenly cut off.

"It's fine," Carl said. "I've got it." With one stomp of his pedicured bare foot, he crushed the first one's head. And then he casually bent down and looted its body, retrieving his rope and a small jar of Kickada Extract, an alchemy component. My stomach clenched at the unconcerned way he did it and I couldn't look away.

He straightened up and looked at me. "Problem?"

I shook it off. "No. All good."

He nodded and started to stomp the second one but I quickly cut in. "Wait," I said. "Don't kill him. I've got a better idea."

o-o-o-o

Mongo disliked being ridden. It had taken him quite a while to allow Donut to sit on his back for even a moment, and getting to the point where he was willing to have her actually ride for more than a few seconds was still a hit-or-miss process. Needless to say, he objected very strongly when we started strapping a cursing, struggling, thoroughly tied-up Kickada into his saddle.

"Mongo! Quiet!" Donut snapped. "Be good while Uncle Carl and Aunty Katia tie that mean old thing in place."

"SQUONK!"

"If you have a rider then you get a 20% bonus to your damage, silly bird," I told him. "Now hush."

"Squonk! Squonk! SQUONK!" He was vibrating and quivering back and forth, barely restrained by Donut's scolding gaze from the countertop a few centimeters in front of his nose.

"I don't think he likes it," I said, amused.

"Yes, well, I don't like having some filthy jello monster ride my Mongo," she said grumpily. "That's my saddle. Just think what my fans are going to think when they see me using him as a pack animal!"

"If it helps," I said, "I think they're going to think 'Wow, Donut is so smart! Look at her finding these awesome exploits!' Besides, that soft red glow looks cool." It was true; with a rider in place there was a faint red foxfire glimmer across Mongo's feathers. It was beautiful.

"Hrmph." She preened a bit, trying to look casual.

"That ought to do it," Carl said, pulling the last knot tight. The saddle produced a strap to keep its occupant in place but that was intended for riders who wanted to be there. We were taking no chances on our squidgy friend wiggling loose. Not only was it still virtually entombed in rope, more rope went from its neck to its ankles under Mongo's belly, and there was a heavy chunk of leather duct-taped across its mouth to prevent its mandibles from poking him.

"Good boy, Mongo," Donut said, petting his nose with one paw. The dinosaur grumbled and jerked his head away, glaring at his 'mother' with eyes of betrayal.

"All right, sweetie, it's just for a bit," she cooed. "Come on, let's go kill things."

This time the squonk was much happier. Murder chickens gotta murder, as my students would have said. I really missed my students. And my lecture hall. And the little blue-and-white tea set that I kept in my office.

"Ooh, hang on," Carl said, a wicked smile on his face. He moved to the counter and a stack of paper and pens fell out of his inventory. He scribbled on one sheet and held it up for our review.

Princess Donut's Naughty Little Bug Boy — Thank you, my wonderful fans!

Both of us snickered in delight as he duct-taped the sign face-up onto the Kickada.

o-o-o-o

Fire Brandy, the Lesser Demon MILF who lived in the boiler of the Nightmare Express, was a fascinating woman, and I enjoyed chatting with her as we chugged up the line to station 436. She was a demon with a faint Germanic accent; no problem. She lived inside a train's steam boiler; sure, why not? She was in labor for the next two months, giving birth twelve to fifteen times an hour; okay, I could roll with that. No, the most surprising thing about her was that she was a brilliant raconteur with a wide array of funny stories and an expressive face that had me and Donut laughing uproariously for most of the forty-five minute trip. Which was good, because the engine car was spacious but not that spacious and being jammed in with Mongo and a gagged but screaming Kickada meant that we needed the distraction of laughter.

"Brandy," Carl said as we got close, interrupting the demon's salacious story about a demon torturer who fell in love with two of his victims and attempted to smuggle them back to the world of the living. "Question for you. You know that portal from 436 back to Repair Station? Is there a boss monster on the other side? One of the huge, really dangerous things?"

"Yes," she said. "It's where the Train Baby lives."

"The what?"

"You know, giant baby that likes to play with Daddy's model trains? I've only seen it twice, once when I was hired and once when we went in for repair. Violent little thing, except not so little. I wasn't willing to get in the boiler at first, until they promised me that it wouldn't bother us as long as we were in the repair bay or the Station Master was watching."

"What happens if it grabs us?"

"I never saw it happen, but they told me that it would grab the engine, lift it off the track, shake it like a rattle and pound it on the ground a few times, then throw it across the cavern." Her red nose wrinkled up. "Also, the smell is horrible. It's enough to make me gag, and I'm a demon. I think no one has changed it—agh!--since the train system was built." The interruption was another baby being born, dying, and converting itself into a Sheol brick inside the boiler.

"I saw trains in the repair bay," Carl said. "They didn't go past it?"

"Those trains have always been there, as far as I know."

He nodded thoughtfully. A moment later he glanced at me with a considering expression before shaking his head. "Brandy," he asked, "are you able to leave that boiler?"

"No. The door is too small. They built it around me."

"How wide would you need?"

"I don't wish to leave the boiler. It's freezing cold out there, and I don't know if you've noticed but—" She stopped talking and grunted in pain as another child was born and promptly died with a shriek. "I'm currently in labor."

"Well, I hate to break it to you, but there's a boss fight coming against a thing that crushes trains and you're getting out whether you like it or not. We've got some of those Sheol bricks that we can use to keep you warm."

o-o-o-o

Station 436 was large and empty, a tangle of switches and multiple sets of tracks. More importantly, it was wide enough that we had room to work.

Donut's Hole spell covered a space the size of a manhole. She needed to use several of them, overlapped, to get a space big enough for Brandy to eel out of the boiler, complaining the whole way. Brandy looked like a human woman with red skin, horns, and a belly distended so much that she would have been the same height standing up or lying down. Between Carl and myself we managed to get her and her two living babies transferred to a platform of Sheol bricks a dozen meters from the train. She was polite enough to wait until we had backed away to light them; they were so hot that I was uncomfortable while standing next to the train.

New Achievement! Worst OB/GYN Ever!

You have forced a woman in labor to come out of her nice comfortable birthing chamber and made her lie on hard bricks in wintery cold!

Reward: You've received a Bronze Asshole's Box!

All three of us grimaced in sync as we all got the achievement.

"Let's do this," Carl said, climbing into the engine of the train. "Donut, get the coupling."

"On it!"

Donut and I climbed into the engine and back through the hatch to the gangway between the engine and the passenger car. Unlike in the real world, the coupling between the trains did not have a manual release. Fortunately, Donut had a solution.

Or not. "Carl, it's too thick to cut!" Donut called back.

"Cast it twice!" he replied, grunting as he shoved heavy chunks of metal around.

"Oh, right." A moment later, Donut had cast Hole on the coupling, generating a nine-centimeter-deep hole in the steel. Then she cast another Hole on the bottom of the first, shearing through the remaining portion of the coupling and leaving the two cars separated for the five minutes that it would take for the Holes to wear off.

I braced my legs on one side of the coupling, my back against the other, and started shifting myself wider while simultaneously pushing as hard as my boosted strength would allow. Very, very slowly, I managed to get the engine to roll a few centimeters away from the passenger car. As soon as I was sure it was done, I collapsed to the ground and gasped for breath. It wasn't much, but it was enough. When the Hole spells wore off the affected parts of the coupling would reappear, but they would no longer be connected to the engine.

"Neat!" Donut said. "Between this and the ones for Brandy, my Hole spell went up to level four."

With Brandy out, we left the brakes on and the boiler heating and walked over to where Carl told us the portal to Repair Station was.

He used his implant to take several snapshots from various angles and then messaged them to us over chat. Unfortunately, the portal was one way only—we could stand on the south side and see in to the repair yard but we couldn't stand on the north side and see where the Train Baby would be.

The part that we could see was generally as we had expected: A massive cavern with a tangle of tracks everywhere. Fifty meters to the north of the portal was the repair station proper, five bays into which a train could be driven, three of them currently occupied by an antique steam engine, a futuristic maglev engine, and an electric engine. Each of the five bays had a massive turntable in front of it so trains could be turned and driven out forwards. Walkways running around the perimeter of the bay gave the currently-absent repair technicians access to the train. Chain link fencing lined the walkways, a veritable horde of ghouls milling around on the other side. A mezzanine level above the repair bays contained an office, presumably for a station manager.

"That is a big trainyard," I said after a moment of contemplation. "Even just the part we can see. There's a lot of room to run and dodge."

"But no cover unless we get over to those trains," Carl noted absently. He had affixed a few shards of mirror to a pole, pushed it through the massive train-sized portal, and was angling it back and forth to get a view behind the portal, taking snapshot after snapshot and sliding them to us over chat. He was able to get eleven separate images before the pole was suddenly yanked out of his hands and through the portal, leaving him picking splinters out of his palms. "And you just know that as soon as we get close to that thing we're going to get locked in somehow. Plus there's the ghouls."

I nodded, silently studying the image. That was indeed a lot of ghouls. They were fenced away but we would almost certainly need to face them eventually. The designers were hardly going to leave that gun on the mantle and not fire it.

I started reviewing the pictures that Carl had taken in the mirror, showing the part of Repair Station to the south of the portal. It was mostly the same: A tangle of tracks that led across a wide-open space easily a kilometer wide. A dozen tunnels led out of the cavern, spread in an arc from southwest to southeast.

"I see the boss," Donut said, waving her paws around in midair as she manipulated her interface. "It's in the seventh picture. Bottom left corner, about one third up and one half over."

I mentally pinched out on the seventh picture. It was ridiculously high resolution, and I found myself thinking of all the Hollywood police dramas like NCIS, where one detective would point at some grainy security cam footage and say, "There! See the reflection in that raindrop? Zoom and enhance!"

Sure enough, there was the Train Baby, as promised. Yes, it looked like a human baby, diaper and everything. All except for the dozens of strange, bumpy tentacles growing off its chin. I was at the limit of the picture's resolution and couldn't zoom further, but when I squinted at it at it for a few seconds my brain managed to put together what I was seeing.

"Are those...chains of babies?" I asked, hoping that I was wrong.

"Looks like," Carl said, clearly about to vomit. "Human centipede of little babies, leading into the big baby's mouth. God, this place is disgusting."

"Suddenly, I do not feel bad about this plan," I said. When we had thought that it was an actual human baby magically grown to mythic proportions, I had been very uncomfortable at the idea of injuring it. This thing, as horrifically, inhumanly distorted as it was, I simply could not emotionally connect with as a human infant, and I was going to very carefully not examine the idea that it might be an actual baby that Borant modified.

"Yeah," Carl said. "Small blessings. At least the track in also leads out, so we can just put it in reverse." He studied the images for a moment longer, then smacked his hands together. "Looks like we've got ourselves a plan. Everything shipshape?"

"What did we say about the pirate talk, Carl?" Donut said.

He rolled his eyes. "Are we ready? Let's do the walkaround."

I started ticking off the checklist I'd put in my scratchpad. "Boss located and analyzed. Confirmed that there are other engines we can use. Confirmed that one of them is a steam engine for Brandy. Brandy evacuated from Nightmare Express. Nightmare Express boiler is heating. Engine is decoupled." I walked over to the train and checked that the dwarven battery Carl had duct-taped to the left side of the train was firmly affixed and the green light glowed to indicate that it was charged. It was. Carl followed behind me, checking the same thing. "Left-side dwarf battery solidly attached and charged." I took a moment to examine the battery's properties again.

Dwarven Mecha Battery

A standard monopolar fluorounobtainium power cell for the class BX mining mecha of the Dwarvos Mining Company, best metal miners in the galaxy!

The friggin' lawyers require me to say that. Some kind of advertising/services swap, apparently. Assholes.

This thing is built to withstand a beating, because the miners often use them to beat monsters off. Get your mind out of the gutter you dirty-minded crawler! You're blocking my periscope. The dwarves use them as weapons, not stroke machines. Don't run over them with a train but otherwise you're probably fine. If you do run over them with a train you are very definitely not fine.

Current only flows while the button is depressed. The dwarves aren't big on safety precautions but even they can learn after enough so-called engineers fry themselves.

What's the voltage and amperage? Shut up, nerd.

I chuckled at the AI's lippy descriptions and moved up the train to poke my head into the engine compartment. There was a squared-off U-shaped metal chute braced inside, its lower end immediately in front of the firebox. A one-meter chunk of railway tie leaned against it.

"Boiler is ready to blow?" I asked.

"Not yet, but as soon as I turn those valves the pressure will start to build up. We should have about three minutes before it explodes."

"Great. Confirm slide operation?"

"Use the rag"—he pointed to ensure that it was present—"to flip open the firebox. Put the railroad tie across it to block it off. Dump forty Sheol bricks behind it. The bricks are ready. Place boom jug on top. I've got the jug. Light the boom jug, run like hell. Either the firebox burns through the tie and the bricks slide into the firebox, or the jug lights the bricks and they burn through the tie and slide into the firebox, or the whole thing collapses and there's a massive pile of flaming Sheol bricks burning their way through the engine compartment." He gave me a Gallic 'I honestly do not care which option' shrug.

"I'll wait until the last minute to set it all up," he said. I nodded understanding; this whole lashup was dangerous enough, there was no need to make it unnecessarily worse.

It felt good to be doing simple organizational work again. This was what managing my TAs had been like—keeping lists, ensuring that everyone knew their responsibilities and had the resources to complete them, then following up to ensure that they had completed them.

I hopped down and resumed walking clockwise around the train, pausing as we passed the cowcatcher in order to test the duct tape. "Front-end dwarf battery solidly attached and charged." I continued walking. "Right-side dwarf battery solidly attached and charged." Carl double-checked behind me as I reversed course and walked back around to our starting point. "Mongo in carrier." I grimaced. "Wish we'd been able to put the Kickada in with him, but oh well. Donut and I have our hats on so we can use the portal on foot. Cart ready?"

"Yup. Also, I lined the sides and bottom with some of the leftover dwarf steel. It's not perfect, but it should be decent protection."

"Good. Let's get Brandy loaded and then I think we're ready."

"I check you," Carl said, nodding as he reviewed his own copy of the list. "Let's do this."

We walked over until we were as close to Brandy's inferno as we could stand. "Brandy!" Carl called. "We're going through the portal now. You need to get in this cart so that we can bring you through with us." He gestured to the chain-link mine cart that he had produced from his junkpile of an inventory.

"Are you kidding?" she said. "I'd freeze to death without my fire!"

"It'll only be for a couple minutes," I said, pitching my voice to be as reassuring as I could manage. "We just need to carry you through." It would have been nice if we could have wheeled the cart, but the train tracks weren't conducive to wheeled vehicles that weren't trains.

"We'll have you into a new boiler as quickly as possible," I said. "We've got a few more Sheol bricks to keep you warm, but you can't light them until you're on the other side, okay? We wouldn't be able to get close enough to carry you."

"You absolutely suck. All three of you kotzbrockens. I was nice and warm and comfortable until you—aggh!--came along." Two more babies shot out of her, died, and converted into Sheol bricks which added to the conflagration.

"Please, Brandy," Donut said from where she perched on Carl's shoulder. "I'm so sorry, hon. I know it's hard and it seems unfair, but we're doing our best to protect you and your babies. The way the system designers set this up, there's no way that we can avoid fighting this Train Baby. The train is almost certainly going to be damaged in the fight, and I couldn't stand the thought of you or your babies being hurt. Please don't be mad at us?"

"Well...all right," the Lesser Demon MILF said, mollified by Donut's godly Charisma. "What do I need to do?"

"You need to get in the cart," Carl said, pointing. "You'll hold onto the Ochre-line Engineer's key so that the portal works for you. We carry you through and into cover, then you light up again." He hesitated. "You're completely immune to heat, right? If I put some metal over you for protection, would it hurt you if it melted?"

"Psh," she said, waving one long-nailed hand dismissively. "Your mortal metals melt at ridiculously low temperatures."

Carl's eyebrows went up at that. "Right. Okay, well, good."

"The heat of your current fire is too much for us," Donut said. "We can't get any closer, so you're going to have to get yourself into the cart. I'm sorry."

Brandy growled in annoyance but rolled herself off the pallet of flaming Sheol bricks. As soon as he saw that she was cooperating, Carl ran for the train, leaving Donut with me.

As ridiculously pregnant as Brandy was, she could not stand up or even crawl. Instead she had to crab-walk backwards with her two screaming babies balanced on her chest as she dragged her distended stomach behind her. I could see her breath in the air and by the time she got to us and flopped into the cart she was shivering so violently that the babies were in danger of slipping off.

"Hang in there," I said, heaving the cart and Brandy and all the dwarf steel into the air with a grunt. I had already lengthened and thickened my arms and back in preparation so supporting and balancing the load wasn't a problem but the weight was a lot. I shuffled as quickly as I could for the portal, making sure that the cheap souvenir hat was firmly on my head. Trying to go through the portal without it either wouldn't work or would kill me, I wasn't sure which. I had grown a tendril across the top of it to be sure it stayed in place.

The train was moving by the time I had Brandy loaded into the cart. It chugged forward very slowly, perhaps one kilometer per hour, and slid through the portal with a faint pzzt noise, disappearing from my view as it did. I shambled after it, involuntarily holding my breath in anticipation.

I emerged into Repair Station to see The Nightmare Express had come to a stop and started to reverse course on what would undoubtedly be its last run. Carl leapt from the the engine compartment and ran towards me. "Fifty-five seconds!" he shouted.

"You said we would have three minutes!" I shuffled faster, desperate to get Brandy and the cart into the cover of the repair bay.

"It's an overheating boiler, not a timer! Hurry!"

"What are you talking about?" Brandy demanded, grunting as another baby shot out of her, bounced off the inside of the cart, and crumpled into a Sheol brick.

"The train is set to blow!" Carl said, grabbing one side of the cart and taking as much of the load as he could manage. The cart itself was light and easy to horse around but it contained easily half a ton of pregnant demon and dwarf-steel cladding.

The Nightmare Express was moving faster now, juddering on the tracks with steam surging out of it at multiple points. We were still twenty meters from the protection of the repair bay.

New Achievement: Swing and a Miss!

Your feeble and cowardly attempt at avoiding a boss battle has been denied! Ten points for cleverness, minus a billion points for sniveling cowardice!

Reward: You've received a Silver Sniveling Coward Box!

"Fuck!" Carl cursed.

I glanced behind us to see that the Nightmare Express was frozen on the track halfway to the Train Baby, held in place by a shimmering blue field. The boiler was starting to scream.

Suddenly the cart was tipping as Carl dropped his side. Before I could stabilize it, the whole thing had tumbled out of my grip, dumping Brandy and her babies to the ground with a shout.

"Flip the cart over you and light this!" Carl said, dumping a sack of Sheol bricks and a boomjug next to Brandy. "Stay down and cover your ears, it's going to get loud."

He took off running towards the train, Donut on his shoulder. "We have to vent the boiler or we're fucked!"

I followed as fast as I could, shifting into my Battle Body as I ran. (I didn't care what Donut said, I thought that was a great name.) Despite my best efforts, he easily outstripped me. Not only was he in better shape, I weighed a lot more and had less Dexterity.

We reached the back of the train in a few seconds. The blue field released and the Nightmare Express promptly shot forward. Carl cursed as it surged out of his reach before he could jump into the cabin. Simultaneously, the blue energy field expanded in a blink, ending up ten meters behind us.

B-B-B-Boss Battle!

You have discovered the lair of a City Boss!

"FUCK!" Carl screamed. I echoed the sentiment but couldn't spare the breath to join in it. Running when you weighed over a ton took a lot of energy.

Our faces appeared in mid-air as everything, including us, froze in place. The blood-drenched Versus! logo appeared and on the far side the massive tentacle-faced Train Baby.

The Train Baby!

Level 85 City Boss

The Train Baby likes playing with Daddy's model railroad trains. Unfortunately, in this case Daddy is so big and you're so tiny that you've been riding around in his model railroad cars while thinking they were normal-sized! (Who's an adorable tiny little crawler? You are! Yes you are!)

Note that when I say 'playing with', what I actually mean is 'smashing into tiny little flinders'. Yes, the Train Baby is a pooping, drooling, screaming engine of destruction for anyone stupid enough to get close. How close? Hmmm...about as close as you are now. So long, dummy!

Ladies and Gentlemen, can you feel the excitement?! There will be death! There will be destruction! Let me hear you make some noise for the dumbasses who decided to take on a City Boss with only three party members and an oversized chicken! Aaaand here. We. Gooooo!

The blue field started contracting, moving slowly but visibly closer. I dropped a pebble out of my inventory and flung it against the barrier; it stopped dead the instant it touched, falling straight to the ground as its momentum vanished.

We had intended to retreat to a safe distance and take cover before the engine blew. If the engine exploded with anything like the expected force, we were not going to survive while trapped in the field. Carl was running faster than any human sprinter ever had, but the train was faster still and it was obvious he wasn't going to manage to catch up and vent the boiler to stop the detonation. Worse, the Train Baby was crawling rapidly towards the Nightmare Express and if Carl kept going he was going to be in the boss's reach in about ten seconds.

"CARL! COME HERE!" I came to a stop, checking that the energy field was moving slowly enough that it wouldn't get to me for at least a few minutes. "Donut! Put Mongo in his cage and cast Hole here, as deep as you can!" I pointed at the ground in front of my feet. "Both of you, inside!"

Fortunately, neither of them argued. Donut vanished Mongo and then cast Hole after Hole, emptying her mana reserves and jamming down a mana potion so she could keep going. The math ticked away in my head: Five mana per casting and currently a 52-point mana pool. Ten castings per mana pool, two mana pools with the potion, twenty castings total. Twelve centimeters per casting now that the spell was level four, 240cm total. I didn't know what Donut's potion cooldown was, but we weren't getting the hole any deeper and she was effectively out of the fight until it ticked down.

Carl didn't waste time saying anything dumb like 'hey, if I am in the hole five minutes from now when the spell wears off, it will cut me to pieces just like we did to that war mage'. Instead, he just jumped in, elbows pulled tight around himself so that he could drop straight down. Donut was still on his shoulder and the two of them vanished below ground.

I reached into the hole with both hands and dropped a half dozen blankets out of my inventory, covering Carl and Donut. I had stolen them from one of the first-floor saferooms that hadn't had a proprietor; someone else might sleep cold but right now I was glad I had them to provide padding.

Even while those irrelevant thoughts flashed through my head, I was undergoing the agonizing process of free shifting at maximum speed, collapsing my body into taffy and pouring it down the hole around Carl and Donut. Frantically, I shifted all my armor to the top so that my squishy wet fleshy bits were draped over my teammates and the rest of me formed a plug of dwarf steel eighteen centimeters thick. The hole was only a meter across, not wide enough for Carl to actually kneel while wearing his spiked kneepads, but he crouched down as low as possible.

"Drink this!" Carl said, dropping a potion out of his inventory and jamming it at me. I dragged it into my hotlist and drank without question. My blood started fizzing and a flood of energy buoyed me up.

"Get down!" Donut said. "I'm going to dismiss the two topmost Holes in three, two, one, now!"

I barely managed to yank myself out of the way before twenty-four centimeters of dirt and train tracks reappeared above us, supported only by my back.

Silence fell.

...Silence continued.

......Silence continued continuing.

"Well, now I feel silly," Donut said after a few seconds. "Do you suppose—"

SKADOOOOM!!!

The world became fire and I shrieked in agony as my metal was scoured away.