When Roy and Bastion ran into the office, two men in gray had already started blasting.

  Mayor Big Time had taken cover behind his desk. Roy took note of the way it protected him. If someone wasn’t using a theme, then bullets, or more relevantly plasma, would tear straight through thin layers of wood or metal like tissue paper.

  Of course, in fiction, different rules applied. Action movie heroes could take cover behind a crate, a car door, or even a fluffy sofa and be as well defended as they would be behind a six-inch-thick sheet of steel.

  Non-themed objects only gained magical properties when someone nearby made them a part of their setting.

  That meant Mayor Big Time was using a theme, though Roy couldn’t pin down what it was exactly. A boss? Was that a theme? He supposed anything could be, if the idea of it existed.

  Roy was still thinking about what a boss theme might do when his sword connected with the back of an enemy's neck. He went down instantly, and when Roy turned to face the other one, there was already a bolt stuck in the back of his head.

  The office looked different in the dark. The cosy ambience of a room full of books was ruined now that so many of them had been reduced to ash, and the book on theming where Sir Protagonist had appeared was missing its cover and still burning.

  Flames licked at the desk as Roy and Bastion rounded it. The Mayor cautiously rose.

  “The treasure hunters return!” Big Time exclaimed. “I’ll make sure you’re rewarded for this, after we make our escape.”

  “Yeah, that might be tricky,” said Bastion. “We kind of dropped the stairs on two of those guys.” He casually aimed his crossbow at the two prone forms on the other side of the desk.

  “There are more of them? Oh, what am I saying, of course there are. You can’t try to rise without someone trying to knock you back down. It was only a matter of time before some group or other tried to take me out of the picture.”

  “Any idea who these guys are?” asked Roy.

  “No, but their theming is top-notch. Shows how much progress I’ve still got to make in outfitting the town guard. Nautical dress won’t cut it against these types. I just hope they’re holding their own by the time we make it down there.”

  “Which brings us back to the problem I mentioned,” said Bastion. “Unless there’s another stairway, we’re stuck here.”

  “Why would we need a stairway?” asked Big Time. “I picked this room for my office specifically because the elevator opens right into it.”

  Bastion laughed. “Yeah, the elevator’s broken too.”

  Nevertheless, a second later its doors opened. Actually, “opened” was the wrong term here. It was more “melted from blaster fire.”

  Roy ducked behind the desk as purple light flooded the room. It shuddered violently as the blast washed over it, and molten metal dripped from the edges. Orange embers whirled above. Any hope of saving that book was well and truly gone.

  He peeked over the top and saw the spikes of a grappling hook clamped to one of the elevator rails. A man in a gray suit swung into the office, holding a comically small gun.

  The pistol was made of green plastic and looked like a toy. Still, Roy knew better than to underestimate it. Something had just melted those doors, and he knew better than most what plastic weapons were capable of.

  It fired with an ear-piercing CRACK and a purple flash. Roy’s ears rang as the shockwave blew out the wall behind him. Only a small desk-shaped section remained as wind and rain whipped through the breach.

  In front of them, the desk was still pristine, though the papers on its surface smouldered with violet flames.

  Roy chanced another look over the top and saw the shooter stumbling back. The recoil on that thing had to be crazy.

  He held up his shield and baited out another shot.

  The gun fired. Roy ducked. As soon as the flash faded, he rose again. This time, the recoil had pushed the shooter right up to the edge of the elevator shaft.

  His finger went for the trigger again, oblivious to Roy’s glowing sword.

  Roy slashed. For a moment, the room was illuminated by a blue-white light. Just long enough to highlight the shooter’s surprised expression before he was star-blasted over the edge.

  The gun went off in the shaft, the blast echoing through a mix of rumbling rubble, followed by the splash Roy had been waiting for.

  Only one star left. He’d have to be careful with that one, since he might need the light source. The problem with that idea was that he’d already only been using it in life saving situations so far.

  “How’d he climb all the way up here?” said Bastion. “I only climbed one floor up that shaft, and it was really, really hard.”

  “I saw a grappling hook,” said Roy. “Miniaturized, like a silver gun with compressed rope inside.”

  “Oh, like those you mean.” Bastion pointed to the open section of wall behind them, where no less than five silver spikes had hooked onto the brickwork.

  Beep Beep. Beep Beep.

  As soon as Roy heard it, he instantly let loose with his final shooting star, blasting both stopwatches out of the air before they could activate.

  Then he dove backward over the desk. As he landed, he heard more beeping. At least three stopwatches volleyed over his head. A crossbow bolt took one of them apart mid-flight, but the others skidded to the far side of the office, and by the time Roy hit the ground, he was already slowing down.

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  He kicked against the floor, flipping himself upright with a rush of resonance as he moved to help Bastion and Big Time.

  Five men in gray suits leapt up to the edge of the office with coordinated, efficient movements. Identical, except for their equipment. Two Thunder Cannons, two Storm Carbines, and one in the center with the deceptively deadly little green gun Roy had mentally named the Shock Pea. Worse, the Thunder Cannon wielders to the far left and right each sported a pair of shades, already charged with light.

  It was too much to take on all at once. The way Roy saw it, he had three options: destroy the stopwatches, run out of their range, or try to fight in slowed time.

  He’d have to turn around to get to the stopwatches, leaving him exposed to the guns and glasses. The only place he knew for sure was out of their range was the edge of the room where the five gray men were standing, and getting there meant running straight into a storm of plasma and lasers.

  The one thing he had going for him was the invulnerable desk, though both Bastion and Big Time were on the wrong side of it, and if Big Time went down, his theme’s effect on the desk would go down with him.

  His only hope was to try to magic his way out of this. Bastion might get a boost from quickly shooting the stopwatches, but for Roy, the path to power lay in acting like a knight.

  Charge, he thought, not able to speak fast enough to shout it.

  He’d been worried that the stopwatch’s effects might stack, but when he leapt forward, resonance boosted his speed just as much as it had before.

  Plasma filled the air: blue orbs, green bolts, and a purple cloud that rapidly expanded. They aimed at all three of them, though the worst of it was clearly directed at Big Time.

  What alarmed Roy more were the sunglasses. When they flashed, he forgot all about the plasma. Those laser beams would travel instantly, so fast they’d be unaffected by the time-slowing field. They’d burn slower, sure, but there was no way to dodge them. It was dishonourable, unfair, what Bastion would call “absolute bullshit.”

  The lasers fired, aiming straight at Roy as he vaulted the desk—and missed.

  It took him a second to process what had happened. The beams had been aimed at Roy until they’d entered the sphere of slowed time, then they’d bent, criss-crossing each other and flying past him, veering to the opposite sides from where they’d started.

  Then he remembered: the beams weren’t instant at all.

  Roy had learned about the speed of light from a movie called “Fish Fight,” in which chemical waste gave a group of fairground goldfish super-intelligence. They’d battled a group of similarly enhanced aquarium sharks, who used a lot of laser weapons.

  A key plot point was that light moved more slowly in water and changed directions when it entered it. That had to be what had happened here.

  The men in shades looked confused and tried to readjust the beams’ paths. Bastion fired a bolt at one of them, while Mayor Big Time reached for the clock hanging around his neck.

  They struggled to aim. One shifted his beam toward Big Time’s head as the other tried to dodge the crossbow bolt.

  Roy swung his shield around, getting it between the beam and the Mayor just in time.

  It reflected, shooting back out of the time-slow field, swerved left, and struck the Shock Pea.

  The explosion demolished half the room in an instant, then slowed as it hit the time field, inching toward them along with the rest of the plasma fire.

  A Thunder Cannon blast hit Roy in the chest, burning slowly through his armor, making him glad he’d squeezed on the second chest protector. A green bolt flew straight for his head. Bastion jumped back in slow motion as the wall of purple advanced. Mayor Big Time took two plasma bolts to the arms as his hands wound the clock—and released it.

  Roy closed his eyes and used his hands to shield them from the blast. They moved faster than he expected, and he ended up slapping himself in the face as something boomed behind him.

  Time was back to normal.

  The burning in his chest was gone too. When he opened his eyes, he found the room had somehow moved around him.

  Bastion had moved too, and Mayor Big Time stood next to him, holding his crossbow. Roy didn’t know where any of the gray-suited men were until he heard their screams, fading as they fell, burning, from the building.

  Mayor Big Time grinned. “I have to say, that was the best bit of theme magic I’ve pulled off yet.”

  “How did you do that?” asked Roy.

  He jingled the clock. “You could say I've been keeping this one close to my chest. Literally.”

  “That thing stops time?” asked Bastion. “OK. You have to tell us about your theme.”

  “I call it Big Boss, and it usually isn’t this effective. A full wind normally only gets me a fraction of a second. It’s probably working better right now because I’m defending my town. Which I need to finish doing, by the way, so the rest of the details will have to wait.”

  Roy’s mind was racing, idea after idea leaping out at him as he tried to put together exactly what Big Time had done.

  He must have moved Roy and Bastion away from the blast and the plasma bolts. Did the clock cancel out the effects of the stopwatches to let him do that? Or did he have to destroy the stopwatches to give himself enough time? It must have been hard to decide what to do first if he didn’t know how long he’d have.

  Roy had never seen theme magic like it. It felt overwhelming compared to anything he’d been able to do so far.

  “So,” said Bastion. “Back to what we were saying before that little interruption. How’re we getting down?”

  “What about that?” said Roy, pointing to a chrome panel on the wall. “Is that some kind of air vent? I’ve always wanted to try crawling through an air vent.”

  “It’s a sort of elevator,” said Big Time.

  “Great,” said Bastion. “Let’s go.”

  “It’s only meant for food. We can’t use it…unless.”

  “Unless what?” Roy asked.

  “I’ve seen Ben the bellboy ride up in it when he thinks I’m not looking. If one of us went down, they could get help and put some ladders in the main elevator shaft. But with the power out, we’d have to cut the line and drop someone, and that someone would need to be skinny enough to fit in there in the first place.”

  Roy and the Mayor turned to look at Bastion.

  “Oh no. No, no no. No. No more elevators. Not after what we just went through climbing out of the last one.”

  The Mayor sighed. “Then we’ll have to take the fire escape.”

  “Fire escape?” exclaimed Bastion. “There was another way out of here this whole time, and you were about to drop me in a metal box?”

  “This is scarcely safer,” said the Mayor, shaking his head.

  “What, is it some kind of crazy helter-skelter slide?” asked Roy. He was kind of hoping it was.

  “No. It’s stairs. Just… not the kind you want to walk down. Or stand on. Or be anywhere near, really. But Bay Town needs us, so we have to face them.”

  “It won’t be the first danger we’ve faced,” said Roy.

  “It’s not just dangerous,” said Big Time. “Its theme is danger. There’s a reason those assassins didn’t try to climb up it.”

  On that rather ominous note, they headed toward a door so rarely opened that the off white paint went over the hinges and frame. Roy heaved it open, then stepped out into the rain, ready to find out what exactly the Mayor meant.