The plaza and its surroundings reached an unprecedented level of boisterousness after that, not only because of Team Underground's party-centric agenda, but also from increased traffic. The data renewal facility demanded the chosen fighters appear more frequently so that never a day passed without someone going in for a checkup, usually two. A custom developed of crowds gathering to cheer and jeer the appointed officers as they left the building.

“How're your frames looking? Unsafe?”

“You doin' any of those 'option selects' Dosellian Urapta told us about?”

“I bet you wish this was a MOBA!”

“Looking good, Darlar!”

Gradis P. Dorenz watched through narrow gaps in the half-opened blinds of his bungalow. “Affection for Darlotte Glofal increases as long as the plebs can talk at her and not to her. I'm on the wrong side of the widening grappler gap.” He wrenched himself away from the window and shed all his languor. “Chief Researcher Hank! What do you have for me?”

“What I have here is a completed, fully operational, plumb-untested prototype!” Hank brandished his invention, a rectangular grill approximately the width of a phone capable of playing Commandment of Hero attached by a bendy tube to a body which possessed the volume of a shoe box but the sleek contours of a Convergence/Divergence toaster, one of those newer jobs that had a computer inside it to monitor your toast and your finances. “With some mathematographical calculations from old Hank, some input from Azalea as to the practical usability profile of the device, and a hefty financial infusion from an unnamed backer, a gold-fingered messiah if you will, the Frame Vacuum is ready for some field testing that might well fall short of calamitous!”

“It was Wruden Calx,” Heartful Azalea said.

“Now why'd you have to go and say that without even being asked? No, that's a question straight outta a head full of helium. It's always been your way to jump before anyone tells you to or tells you not to, and there's no sense faking like I didn't always knowed it. We'd never finish projects of an unconventional variety like this one otherwise.”

“Curious.” Mentor Tendradius Pux examined the Frame Vacuum through his multi-function, multi-ocular head-mounted vision array. “No explosives detected. Exceedingly curious. A man doesn't fund the creation of a better mousetrap so the world can beat a path to someone else's door. Why did Wruden Calx pursue the development of such a potentially useful machine and leave it in our possession?”

Nonneros Under the Moonlight spoke from his slouched position on one of the clubhouse couches, his hat pulled low to conceal his keen, feral eyes. “Maybe he isn't too particular about which mice get caught. Don't believe that? Neither do I. I bet he's plenty particular about who beats down whose door, and when. He's backing Marileanna, right? How many command grabs has she got? What's her favorite Christmas carol? Naw, those New Bloods have got themselves in an agitated state over Poitnems, Beruvos, and Fasdes, not Dorenzes. What does it matter to them if Saint Bigolas leaves any of their competitors a few frames in their stockings? And if it works, you can bet Big Pick over there will remind Balloons over here exactly how loud money talks. He'll get his trap just the way he wants it, don't worry about that.”

“I'm convinced. Let's begin.” Gradis tapped the Frame Vacuum. “How does this thing work?”

“In all cheek-blushing honesty, odds are that it does not,” Hot Air Hank admitted. “But if it does, there's this on/off switch right here under my thumb that even a clever crocodile could operate, which is a danger I'm most powerful eager to correct in the future. Here goes!”

The grill part pointed at the experimental subject and lighted up most festively, though in more of an orangey Halloween style than a classic Christmas display. The machine hummed for a minute before Hank shut it off.

“I didn't see anything happen,” R Tanpendan observed. “Does that confirm time is harder to see than dust?”

“We were told most authoritatively before you arrived that time is a series of wafers,” Ebulan Prav informed him.

“I must think that was more in the nature of a conceptual model than a physical description.” Everyone shrugged in response to Lurdden Casguir's implied question.

Hank held the Vacuum's business end away from any possible accident. “We'll discover the truth via empiricism, which is a fancy way of saying it's time to try it out. Gradis, give us one of those famous jabs. Not against the prototype, though, on account of its fragility.”

“And expense,” Azalea added.

Gradis stood still. “How was that?”

“How was what?”

“The jab. How was it? Somebody get a stopwatch.”

“Sure, but just do it first, so's we can see.”

He persisted in his motionlessness. “There's another one.”

Tiboleus the Experimenter burst from his high chair. “A zero-frame move! Amazing and also useless! Ouch!”

“Ha! It's true!” Gradis P. Dorenz popped all his most dedicated supporters one by one using his unconquerable new technique. “My offense can't be resisted!”

“Yeah, and it can't oof! Be seen either. Owie! They'll drop you urgh! from the game if they can't fix your animations. Blargh!”

“Tiboleus is right,” Hot Air Hank wheezed when he regained enough breath in his well-punched body. “Seems to me that's often the way of it. We'd better put those frames back, but the problem there is, as I'm certain sure you all figured, I didn't make quite the provision for that which I rightfully ought've.”

“Yes.”

“Affirmative.”

“Sure.”

“Certainly.”

“As always!”

“Right enough.”

“Ah, mutual understanding and fellowship. It's a comfort to me after my lonely work of number-fussing. Anyway, I did put in a little something by way of an eject system, so back away a bit.”

Hot Air Hank pointed his invention at the floor, flipped up the cover on the hidden red button, and jammed his thumb down. The Frame Vacuum made a sort of whomph sound like a dog, one not trained by Adigail Zem, that ate what it should not and afterward suffered the dire effects to the misfortune of the carpet. Thin plates clanked as they hit the floor, shimmering in the light as colors chased one another over their surfaces, reds and periwinkles and chartreuses to name a small section of the radiant grandeur.

“See? Dennet would never steer us wrong on purpose. Those are wafers sure as my boots are scuffed.” Ebulan Prav lifted one foot, but only Hank and Azalea felt a compulsion to check. They examined the boot and nodded.

“I never doubted it. Now to take these back, though if I leave a few . . .” Gradis bent over to pick up the nearest wafer. “Stubborn little thing. Ugh. Urgh.” He grabbed the thing with both hands and yanked but to no better result, not even flinging himself backward and rolling through the door in a comical fashion. “I suppose it stands to reason that my frames are as indomitable as I am, but it's time for rapprochement. Model Warlord!” His attempt to suplex the glimmering plate ended with a beautiful bridge but no wafer in his twitching hands.

“They're heavy with the unbearable weight of time! We must pull harder.” Knight-Master Gralles Alianura coordinated a collective effort to raise just one single wafer. It went as well as any attempt to conquer time ever has.

“I don't like these things. They make me feel itchy, and I'm not even a werewolf,” Orrevan C. Hinks complained. Whether he viewed the frames littering the floor or not being a werewolf as the bigger problem remained unclear, but Nonneros had to put up with only one of them.

“I've seen lots of heavies go down with a single punch. Let's see if time is unbreakable too, or if it just needs its doctor to recommend it a slimming diet.” Nonneros got up, shook his hand out before making a fist, and punched one of the plates as perpendicularly as he could get the angle. The discrete temporal phenomenon lost its color at his attack and broke apart into cold gray pieces that soon disappeared.

“Fascinating. Hey, Gradis, did that ouch!” Tiboleus rubbed his schnoz to the delight but deepening consternation of Team 720. “Fine, be that way. Does that mean you got the frames, Nonneros?”

“Casino Claw!” The mystery of the missing frames ended when the officers watched those flesh-ripping hands of the tier-list-topping Reaper float through the air at the speed of a buffering video. The entertainment value of frame adjustments had never before been considered, but Azalea especially began to look upon the wafers with a questioning eye.

Hot Air Hank examined his Frame Vacuum instead. “My theoretical projectimations ran in a trifle bit different direction from how it turned out, and if that doesn't make you think empiricism is a word for a reason, nothing will. It's a shame the results aren't better configured so as to tend toward our success, but technology is more a master than a servant at the best of times.”

“I don't see the problem,” Gradis said. “I break one of these wafers to bring back my moves. The rest of you take one each. It's something of a sacrifice, granted. I'll give you all an extra-nice present for Christmas. Go, my loyal followers!”

“Yeah, I think we're gonna do it this way instead.” Nonneros grabbed Hank, not a command grab but a regular, everyday kind, and lifted him a foot off the ground. “You'd better fine-tune your Vacuum to fix up my Skill Star so nice that it shines, or else the claw marks in every balloon you try to send up will make it real hard to keep the air inside, you get me?”

“Now have you ever known me to be a feller who's slow of understanding, Nonneros?”

“Of course not. That's why I explained the threat. If you'd been a lesser intellect, I would've gone ahead and done it first to give you an example of the trouble you've got coming.”

“That's just about the most praise I've heard in a month or three. All right, put me down and I'll see about seeing this thing through while Gradis gets all his frames back in him.”

“Why should I do that?” So Gradis P. Dorenz said, but the cutting glares of his supporters whittled him down to half-understandable grumbles as he broke apart all the wafers. “Think they're in charge . . . not like animation speed matters in idle mode . . . all they're good for . . .”