“Dad, Dad, Dad! Pleeeeez!” Joy clings to Justin’s clothes as we stand in the tunnel, looking at a full blown space war and two mecha exoskeletons taken out of what Justin has identified as an Anime TV show battle each other. “Put me in! Let me help her!”
Charlie steps to the edge. “Maybe I should go in?”
Just as he does so a laser cannon from the big alien ship blows up a small fighter spaceship and it explodes.
“Nope, nope, nope,” Charlie takes a step back.
“Daaaaad!”
“Joy, look at me! It’s not just winning this battle. Sure, I could put you in a super strong suit, and maybe you’d even win the war, which I don’t think you would. The dreamer, that woman,” he points to the woman in the mecha suit battling the red mecha, “needs to dream this. So if we change her dream, she’ll invent something else that does the same. Even if I could protect you from the mechas, I couldn’t protect you from whatever surprise she’ll come up with next.”
The woman gets a shot in, knocking the red mecha out. But then the red mecha disconnects from the ship, and a chase begins.
“Come on,” Justin urges Joy. “Let’s get out of here. We saw what’s in this dream. It’s too dangerous and it’s too big a temptation. Let’s go.”
The red mecha turns the tables on the Dreamer and blasts her from behind. Some of her armor is knocked out but she can still fly.
Joy shakes her head and turns her back to the action. “Let’s gooooo,” she drones sadly. “When I’m bigger that’s what I want to do.”
Charlie and I begin to take a step away from the entrance to the dream as Joy looks back. The red mecha catches the dreamer’s mecha in a grip and aims their flight at a meteor.
“Excuse me for a second,” Master Mind walks forward. A rocket launcher has come out of his arm, and he aims the weapon into the dream.
“Master Mind, no!” Justin is fast enough to grab Master Mind’s arm, but the arm doesn’t budgeband Master Mind launches the rocket.
The rocket flies out of the tunnel, out of one of the suns, into outer space, past spaceships, and explodes when hitting the red mecha suit. The two suits separate.
“We must run!” Master Mind says, his voice excited. “Run run run!”
We all start running down the tunnel, Joy and Charlie screaming and laughing. “Master Mind, why did you do that?” Justin tries to shout, but he’s also laughing.
We reach the end of the tunnel and are back on the Shroom. I have to catch my breath. Joy high-fives Master Mind. ”My circuits have never experienced so much fun,” he says. “I may engage in shenanigans more often.”
Justin shoots the killer robot a look. I sense a lecture coming on.
(To be continued…)
—Told by Grampa Walt