pretend ones. So I told them “living creatures” but not houseplants. I forgot “fake living creatures,” GIGO.
That’s the way my ace works. I’m consciously smart enough to know that if there’s a crying doll in a crib with gas jets behind it, I should probably rescue it. But subconsciously, the programmer in me knows that’s not what I said, so my servants won’t rescue it any more than they’d rescue the stuffed animals. They’re not real either. At least not until Dragon Girl gets hold of them, and she’s on another team.
I was extending my power as it was. Usually I only control my servants in the same room as me, or at most send Hazel into the kitchen to fix dinner, but I’m pretty stoked to find I can have that many operating at a distance without me able to see them. I came on the show because I want to test my ace, push it. Maybe get myself those phantom limbs. Or at least get better servants.
But, anyway, about the challenge. If it had been a real baby, I’m pretty sure my servants would have saved it, but thankfully this is just a show and no one was actually in danger. But stuff could have gone better. The Diamonds weren’t really suited to this challenge. Bubbles can take all sorts of damage, but she can’t breathe smoke, so she couldn’t go into the building. And while Tiffani is invulnerable in her diamond form, she’s tiny. The first victims Tiff found were the two big guys feigning smoke inhalation on the third floor. She couldn’t lift one, let alone both, and she spent the whole time trying to rescue them until they called cut. I don’t know about you, but I’d call that pretty heroic.
And Blrr! and Joe Twitch are both speedsters. I’m not certain why we’ve got two speedsters on the same team, but as soon as we saw the fire, they took off in opposite directions to find the nearest fire stations. Which is heroic, certainly, but not dramatic, so all you saw was Joe and Emily outracing the camera crews. And Emily is so fast she was able to come back, vault up the railing into the house and do a whirlwind pass of the ground floor without getting burnt. And she got the damn doll—I mean, “baby”—so would you please tell your daughter it was rescued anyway? Thanks.
As it was, I think we did pretty well. Ivan split into enough little Ivans to control the fire hose, Howie rescued people on the upper floors, my servants got the lower floors, and we rescued everyone except the jumper Howie missed and the two big guys Tiff was still trying to save when they called time.
Of course, fair’s fair, the Clubs had a perfect 10. They won the immunity and we had to vote someone out of the house. Joe Twitch left. I’ll admit I voted for him, but not because he has a nervous disorder—the gods know us crips need to stick together—but because Team Diamonds doesn’t need two speedsters and I want to spend more time with Blrr.
Which I think we’ll do now . . . Hazel, open the door. Jeeves, take me to Emily.
Bye, America!
Confessional: Wally Gunderson aka Rustbelt
I still don’t know about this.
Maybe one of the other fellas should take my turn. Or one of the gals. You know, like that Rosa? She has all them magic picture cards. She always has all kinds of things to say. Opinions and stuff. Or maybe Rachel, that young gal with the stuffed animals. People like kids.
Well, cripes, I suppose I can talk about the challenge. Everybody else sure is. It was supposed to be like a big building was burning up, like maybe somebody had set it on fire or something. They wanted us to rescue all the folks trapped inside. So I tried.
I mean, I went in there on account of the fire not burning me too bad. Sure, I can feel stuff. Just ’cause my skin is metal don’t mean I can’t feel stuff. It just, you know, doesn’t burn as quick. So anyway I ran in there and grabbed a guy and ran out again. I dunno, maybe I got too excited or something ’cause he started yelling and then they had to put a sling on his arm when he got outside.
But there were still people yelling in there so I went back inside again and this time I was more