Xaviers!

"Moo." The tone at which she said it made it obvious to Basil at least that this was her equivalent of "oops". Colette furrowed her brow and looked at her contraption, before hitting a single tiny metal toggle on the side. The length of dryer hose that was hooked up to the boombox led to a front-loading washing machine that she had intended to use as a containment device. But she evidently crossed one of the wires.

In an instant, Chisaki responds by throwing herself in front of Basil to shield him from Fiss and eventually, the blast.

Neither of them end up being injured by either thing, but it still takes her a moment to move away from her defensive position of Basil.

"What the bloody hell!?" Basil screams at the world falling down around them followed by the pixelated murder of the lizard man, though it was still in an American accent.

He cocked a brow at Chisaki's defensive pose, a little taken aback on her willingness to throw herself on the sword so quickly.

Diego blinked at his empty hand. His hairy hand. His blaster and holo-disguise were gone.

"Yeah... what the flarb?"

"Are we on the virtudeck again?"

"I do not remember being scheduled for simulated training...

Also, why are they still here if we were?" Chisaki said, motioning to the two behind her.

Basil had other concerns. He rushed to 'the Blob'.

"Are you alright Madame?" He asked.

Colette was done with her device so she let it drop to the floor, where it flickered briefly and slowly dissolved into an ether of pixels. She looked at Basil curiously; why did he keep calling her that? And why did it sound familiar. And those other two, where had everything else gone? She looked to Diego and then to Chisaki but found herself unable to look at the woman's face once she had glanced at it. Something was telling her not to but she didn't understand.

Still, she nodded softly to answer Basil's question and gently patted his cheek.

As Basil runs over to Colette one of the stone tiles on the floor sinks in under his foot and suddenly a thin circular saw snaps out from between the seams of two tiles, narrowly cutting through the air behind Basil on account of him moving particularly fast towards Colette the Blob.

"We... uhh..." he began, face the definition of perplexed.

His face fell as the unreality of the situation dawned on him.

"We... aren't... no... I'm a space cop. I have to..."

His confusion was interrupted by a random sawblade. "Traps!"

Basil actually felt the air off the blade whiz past his ankle and he froze in place.

After all, nothing like that was happening when they were still.

Even though he looked like he was about to piss himself, he called out " No one move!" He then abruptly took off a shoe and violently threw it at the stone tile in front of him to see if it set off a blade in between the two.

That one doesn't seem to trigger anything. At least for a moment. Then the next tile over, the one Colette is standing on, suddenly sprouts a metal spike that shoots right through the goo-girl's leg and all the way up and out of her shoulder, thankfully missing the nucleus floating around inside of her.

"Nevermind!" He exclaimed. "Get off the tile!" He added, pointing to the closest exit available to them and running towards Colette to make sure she started moving.

Chisaki did as he instructed and stared at the floor as she went to try to find some foreseeable pattern. It reminded her of something she had seen before, but not sure where and when, but she knew that things must have been hiding behind the tiles that were trying to get them.

She also knew that tile cement is what kept tiles stuck to the floor. Her instincts again lead her into holding out her hand, and some unseen force kicked in her adrenaline as she attempted to will the tiles free from the floor to see if would give them an advantage of knowing which ones were booby-trapped.

The googirl watched in fascination at the buzzing saws, unsure of what sort of game this was. When the spike drove through her leg and up through her entire torso she looked mildly surprised and then agitated; not at having been impaled but from having her new outfit ruined just an hour after having gotten it. She let out a "pbbt" of dissatisfaction.

Still, she was smart enough to put two and two together. Saws and spikes may leave her poorly dressed but otherwise she would be unharmed. The same could not be said for Basil or the others. So when he drew close enough Colette attempted to coerce Basil to piggyback on her. The fewer feet hitting the tiles the better was her mindset, and of the two of them she was the one less-likely harmed by having her ankles cut off.

Diego began moving from tile to tile quickly, feline feet touching the ground as little as possible. None of this made sense. Was any of this even real? Was he who he thought he was? Would he disappear too?

Chisaki manages to move the majority of the tiles in their immediate vicinity, slowly tearing themselves from the foundation and into the air. Four of them have now obvious trigger-mechanisms under them and they're all tripped by the tiles moving. One of them is enveloped by a burst of liquid shooting out from underneath it, the tile beginning to fizzle and dissolve. Another sets off a nearby column that topples right on top of it, smashing down a couple of floating tiles. The third tile is snapped in half by a bear trap and the fourth loaded tile turns out to not be a tile at all but some kind of square drone with sharp edges that launches itself at Diego.

Diego gave a dignified yelp of alarm and performed an emergency leapfrog maneuver over the killer floor tile. Unlike a certain mute elf, Jaguars can jump. He, of course, kicked it as hard as possible, hoping to crash it.

Chisaki took the lead, pouncing on top of the fallen column and working on ripping up more of the tiles. Triggering all the traps before they got too close to them seemed like a slightly better idea than triggering them one at a time unknowingly.

"Follow my steps! Walk in the spots I have already cleared! Stay away from the dangerous things!"

That last part was probably obvious.

Basil had *some* dignity and as such, refused to ride his girlfriend like a pack animal.

"Don't worry about me, just run!" Basil called out to Colette as he followed behind Chisaki, seeing that he was not in immediate danger.

Colette plodded along as best she could, able to stretch her legs a bit to take longer steps; fewer steps meant fewer traps might get sprung, right?

Diego manages to avoid the tile and lands a kick on the flat side as he does, sending it flying of and it ends up embedded in a nearby wall.

Chisaki rips up the next section of tiles and sets off another series of traps. A cluster of arrows that hits nothing but empty air, more buzz-saws and, unfortunately, a giant steel ball that drops from the ceiling and rolls towards the group, filling pretty much most of the hallway as it crunches the floating tiles into dust.

Now that she had bought them all purchase, Chisaki had just one last command-
"Run for the door!" She called out. The tiles that were not traps and still whole flew through the air in a stair pattern, and Chisaki used them to skip out of the path of the giant steel ball hurling itself in their direction. They stayed stationary but whether or not they would work for the others was a toss up.

Diego eagerly scrambled up the potentially wobbly floating stairway. He figured it was better than a 100% probability of being turned into a pancake cat.

"...well now I want pancakes..." he muttered to himself as he reached Chisaki.

Colette saw what the others were doing and realized that, at the rate they were going, she and Basil would not be able to make it up the "stairs" in time. In an act of desperation she grabbed Basil by the arm and, from first appearances, looked to be trying to throw him behind her and into the path of the massive rolling ball. Her body contorted in shape and whipped Basil off of his feet, slinging him around herself before hurling him up into the air toward the others.

And then with a very wet smushing sound she was crushed into a big pink stain underneath the ball's tonnage.

With everyone but Colette safely up on Chisaki's floating platforms the giant boulder passes safely underneath them, only crushing empty tiles before it hits the front doors of the mall and smashes right through them and the wall around it, rolling off into the parking lot to casually crush a bunch of cars. In it's a wake a number of bouts of flame, arrows, hidden spikes, blades and toppling wall segments go off.

Basil grabbed the lowest tile and pulled himself upright to follow the others out of danger.

It took Basil a moment to regain his composure before he realized who was missing. He'd be relatively impressed with the carnage the ball left behind, if his girlfriend wasn't part of it.

"COLETTE!" He screeched at the top of his lungs trying to go back down to what was left of her.

"Uun!" Chisaki chided, pulling him back. " There are still flames and sharp objects down there! You will get hurt!"

The pink smear really was only recognizable as ever having been Colette by the clothing within it, the visor all crumpled and sunglasses crushed. As if prompted by Basil's attempts to reach it the smear stopped spreading out and began to draw back into itself, slowly taking on it's former hyper-idealized form cobbled together from the bikini magazine. Even her clothing was being put back in place, torn and ruined, her glasses not really needing arms to hold them on her head.

Through cracked lenses her eyes blinked, the girl looking and acting as though she'd just been woken out of a deep sleep... or come back from the dead. She looked down at herself and her unfamiliar clothing.

"Pourquoi mes seins sont-ils si gros?"

"Oh good, she's unsquishable," Diego said with both great relief and an inappropriate nervous laugh.

"Sorry. Let him go Chisa, the traps are all sprung."

He no longer wanted pancakes.

Chisaki sighed and let go of Basil, looking at Diego with a sidelong look of concern.

As if to say she was gonna blame Diego of Basil got hurt.

Basil struggled a bit against Chisaki to the point he almost fell when she let him go, then stumbled his way to Colette. He had started crying in his panic over his thought to be dead lady friend, so when she reformed herself he was pretty much an emotional mess.

He made it to her and held her face in his hands to get her to focus on him.

"Don't worry about that right now, we need to go." He replied, accent still not right.

"We need to get somewhere safer than here."

Colette wrinkled her brow as she listened to Basil, things just not adding up for her. And for some reason when she responded to him she spoke only in French, and not the accented English she normally used. Chisaki and Diego probably wouldn't have understood it, but Basil would get the message that she would follow, though she had no idea where here even was.

"Yeah, definitely time to flee Aperture Mall," Diego said as he hopped down. "We've got a car outside. Assuming it doesn't also want to kill us."

"Somebody's cheating!" Conduit's voice rings out from everywhere at once. Outside the mall cars are beginning to move by themselves as if they were being pulled together by an unseen force, metal crashing into metal as they assemble themselves into some kind of car-voltron.

Diego sees a blur of black wings out of the corner of his eye.

"You have her attention. hold it. She can't focus everywhere."

Chisaki feels a stir of wind in her hair.

"The more she has to actively engage you, the clumsier she'll be. Use that."

Basil feels warm fingers against his thoughts. It's almost familiar.

"She's desperate. Too many leaks. Not enough plugs."

Colette sees a black feather drifting through her sight.

"Keep fighting. She has limited resources."

Basil hated people in his thoughts no matter how familiar they might be. It was more or less why he hadn't been rushing back to his appointments with Dr. Terrance.

But it was clear in this instance whoever it was that was trying to talk to him was trying to help. Basil looked at the car Voltron assembling itself in the parking lot, and knitted his brow in defiance.

Meanwhile his mouth made an expression as if he had shit his pants.

"Catch it's attention and keep it!" He exclaimed, before running off in a completely opposite direction.

Colette's eyes followed the feather as it descended, the girl suddenly breaking into a smile.

"Je suis capable de jouer le héros? Formidable! Je n'ai jamais été capable de le faire avant! Maintenant, si seulement j'avais un slogan intelligent..."

And with that she was ready to run straight toward the metal monstrosity.

"I was born for distraction," Diego smirked before running out into the parking lot and waving his arms at the automotive robot.

"Hey! Motorhead! Your mother was a Pinto and your father was a Sebring!"

"Baka shōnen!" Chisaki spat at Basil as he ran off, assuming that he too got some kind of message he was following but frustrated that he suddenly developed this need to endanger himself. Her instinct was to follow him, but he deliberately told them not to, which meant it would only cause more attention to him if she did, further endangering him. Instead she started screaming her lungs out and picking up bits of concrete the steel ball had smashed to lob in the general direction of the make-shift mecha, though missing due to it's long range away from her.

"You look like twelve bad Gundam kits bashed together with expanding glue!"

What the hell did that even mean?

While the group was forming a distraction, Basil had grabbed a long wire that had been holding up an event flier that had previously been tied between two lamp posts on the exterior patio of the mall. It had only snapped loose on one end, the other still attached to a upright lamp post.

As he worked, he fell invisible. Entirely and completely. And the thick wire was carefully draped across what should be the machine's path if the group managed to do their part properly.

He carefully spun it around the other toppled lamp post for torque, keeping the line loose so it wasn't obvious.

Then he waited patiently for the hopefully dumb robot to take the bait.