The scissors-lights have filled the scissors-panel. There\u2019s just one bright and brilliant glare.<\/p>\n
The wolf-light is flashing. The wolf-magnet\u2019s come on. On the marvelous threat-tracking displays of the space station of the House of Dreams, the wolf-hairs \u2014 like cross-hairs, only for wolves instead of crosses \u2014 drift slowly towards the location of the boot.<\/p>\n
The scissors-shield\u2019s grid\u2019s monitor sulks with a dismal, powerless grey.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we can still do this,\u201d Cheryl says. \u201cWe can still kill them.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s rubbing at her nose. She\u2019s thinking about folding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we do is, we send over an away team of origami soldiers,\u201d she says. \u201cTo kill the life support on the enemy ships. And we hold off on stomping until we\u2019ve got Peter up here and launched. He\u2019s got a Scissors-Smushing Cannon that should smush the scissors. And then, once he\u2019s out there and going, wham<\/em>, flat wolf. Is there anything else threatening the world right now? Do we need to tackle global warming? Hell ants? Anything?\u201d<\/p>\n Tom glances at the Hell ant monitor and the global average temperature index.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re good,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThank God,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n She pounds on the Anything-Ending Button, experimentally. It\u2019s mostly depleted \u2014 it\u2019s not an Everything<\/em>-Ending Button \u2014 but it still ignites one of the Fan Hoeng warships in a brief, fierce flame. She kicks a scissors-grappling button with one foot and sends a bootlace lashing out to grapple with the scissors. An elbow activates the Saint-Speeding Turbo-Device and dials it up to full.<\/p>\n Tom looks amused for a moment. Then slowly the smile on his face fades away.<\/p>\n \u201cCheryl,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m busy<\/em>,\u201d she says. Her precognitive heart monitor flatlines. She rolls her chair to the side until it kicks up again. A Fan Hoeng laser bursts through the pseudo-glass and scorches where she\u2019d been.<\/p>\n \u201cCheryl,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n She stops. She turns. She looks at him.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was a kid,\u201d he says, \u201cyou\u2019d have been there, doing this to me and my brother.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cI would have been all, grr, I\u2019m a world-ending threat, and this kid here\u2019s the antichrist, Linus, and you\u2019d have been all up here in a boot, going grr, argh, bam, gragh, fire!\u201d<\/p>\n She makes a face. Then she sighs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not the same, Tom.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have to die,\u201d she says. \u201cThere isn\u2019t any alternative. If they don\u2019t die, then \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen?\u201d<\/p>\n She sighs. She beats her head against the Head-Powered Anti-Alien Missile Battery, and finally rests it there.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s Gotterdammerung, Tom,\u201d she says, without lifting her head. \u201cThey have to die.\u201d<\/p>\n He licks his lips.<\/p>\n Then he nods.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to go do forbidden things,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t switch sides,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to switch sides,\u201d<\/em> he says. \u201cI\u2019m just going to \u2014 you know . . . do stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOK.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGood luck with that . . . apocalypse-fighting thing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d she says. \u201cThanks.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCheryl,\u201d he says. His voice is rough.<\/p>\n \u201cYou told me not to die,\u201d she says. She looks out at an endless wall of scissors; at the Fan Hoeng scissors-ships; at the indicator for the world-devouring wolf. \u201cThis isn\u2019t fair, Tom. Surviving is hard enough.\u201d<\/p>\n And she flicks the Tom-Ignoring Screen upwards with a finger, and there\u2019s nothing more that he can say to her; and he watches as she kills them, the ships of the Fan Hoeng empire, and all their screaming, living, breathing soldiers, one by one.<\/p>\n Then he goes off.<\/p>\n To do, you know, his stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The scissors-lights have filled the scissors-panel. There\u2019s just one bright and brilliant glare. The wolf-light is flashing. The wolf-magnet\u2019s come on. On the marvelous threat-tracking displays of the space station of the House of Dreams, the wolf-hairs \u2014 like cross-hairs, only for wolves instead of crosses \u2014 drift slowly towards the location of the boot. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-6823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-20","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Hat_1_blankbg.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6824,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823\/revisions\/6824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6823"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=6823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}