Gristrift

The boys' room looked like any other locker room and smelled of sweat and cologne. A few of the other clones stood finishing up putting on their suits. John noticed that Eridan and Cronus sat among them. "What's the deal with Eridan?" John asked.

"He sat on a stick once and never managed to get up. Very tragic. Cronus is the one you've gotta stay away from. I don't think we're quite old enough for him to hit on, but you just never know. Life is full of surprises," said Dave. "We got to hurry up and eat. Miss your grist for long enough and you lose your powers."

John followed Dave through the locker room and into a tiny cafeteria, still holding his bulky hazmat suit. Dave had dropped his by his locker, but John didn't know where his own locker was. The whole place looked grimy, like nobody had bothered to bring cleaning supplies down. Only a few clones sat at tables, most of them finishing up bowls of cereal by drinking the milk at the bottom. The floor felt sticky, like in a movie theater.

"We eat cereal?" asked John.

"Good ol' Frosted Flakes. It's the easiest way to mix the grist in," said Dave, who led John to the front of the room. A small table contained a stack of bowls; a drink dispenser with choices of full milk, skim milk, and soy milk; a cereal dispenser; and a mysterious black machine which looked like a ketchup doodad. The thing that squirted ketchup when one pressed down on the top. The, you know, ketchup dealie. John had never learned its name. A credit card reader was attached to the side. John made his cereal and waited to see what Dave would do with the machine.

Dave placed his bowl under the squirter of the ketchup thingamajig and grabbed an ID card from his pocket. When he swiped it, a tiny drop of blue, no more than the size of a mosquito, fell into his bowl and mixed with the milk.

"I don't have a card. What do I do?"

"I guess Condelle's going to give you one eventually. For now, you should eat," said Dave.

"What's that blue stuff you put into your food?"

Dave walked over to a table and sat down. "It's called grist and it comes from that Godzilla's wet dream over yonder. When you take it, it enhances your powers. When you don't, eventually your powers go away. If you're one of those dudes who loves killing things and knows the details on every single shitty gun, then boy howdy will you ever love grist because you get it by killing monsters on the other side of the gristrift. It's like this hormone for them. We basically eat basilisk estrogen."

"That sounds gross, man," said John between bites of cereal. "I don't think I want to eat stuff like that. I'm not so attached to my powers that I need to eat, er, basilisk estrogen to keep them going." He scrunched his eyes and stuck his tongue out to show just how 100% nasty basilisk estrogen sounded.

"Ah, so you're more of an ogre testosterone kind of guy. Understandable. I would consider myself a giant beast juice connoisseur. You have to look at the color and the clarity first, of course. Is it that mealy, sticky blue we've all come to know and love? Then you take a deep whiff and see how far you need to cringe away. The farther, the better. The best aromas smell more like battery acid than cough syrup. After that comes the attack phase, when the grist first hits your palette. This is when you-"

"Dave, I get the feeling that you are trying to pull my leg. Let me tell you something here: you cannot beat me in a prank-off. I am simply the best there is."

"Yeah, that was a bunch of bullshit. Grist is pretty much all the same and we have no idea what it actually does in the monsters' bodies. You'll find it in these tiny sacs near their brains. And I mean tiny. Imps and lesser titachnids aren't even worth killing because you can't even get an entire drop of grist. Anyways, we need to go get suited up now because we're almost the last ones here." He slurped the milk in his cereal, which John thought really wrecked his cool guy vibe. "I can't believe you brought your suit out to eat. I think I'm rooming with a giant, oblivious dork."

"Nuh-uh. Those words only work if they are directed at you!"

"Wait! Um, excuse me, you guys. Hi. Yeah, hi." A younger clone rushed up to them and lowered his head in embarrassment as he talked. He had Hispanic features and a flattened mohawk. "I was wondering if you have seen an iguana running around anywhere? He, um, is called Horsaroni, but he does not actually respond to that name, because iguanas do not have enough of the, uh, of the neurons, to recognize things like names. As you probably maybe might have gathered, he is not in the place he is supposed to be in, so yeah."

"Haven't seen him, dude," said Dave.

"I would notice something like that," said John.

"Oh," said the boy. "...Okay. It could be that he is actually not lost at all, because Vriska, who is my hot and gorgeous girlfriend who I totally have kissed, and she sometimes gives indicators that she also loves me back, sometimes, um, she likes to do things to make me upset, and this might be one of them. I will maybe see you in the gristrift. If you are nearby, that is, of course." He scurried away to another group.

Dave and John walked together back to the locker room. John looked at his suit. It was level B, meaning it protected against splashes from hazardous chemicals but not contact from vapors. A scuba tank attached to the back. He followed Dave's lead by putting it on over his normal clothing. "What do we need all this protection from?"

"Well, the air isn't going to burn your skin in there, but it isn't breathable either. And there's puddles of corrosives everywhere you look. Plus, to get the grist, you have to dig through monster gore and that shit can burn your skin straight off." The hand gestures really sold it.

Once he was in his suit, John marveled at how much it felt like being an astronaut. Like Sandra Bullock in Gravity, who could, if she ever so chose, pilot a spaceship with little knowledge and an impending collision with broken satellite bits straight into his heart. Not that she posed any competition for Liv Tyler, of course. Uh-uh. No way.

Okay, maybe a little.

They walked out of the locker room, Dave doing his usual stride and John bounding like he was on the moon.

"Glad to see you finally arrived," shouted Condelle, standing at the front of the room underneath the gristrift.

"Ugh. She is not allowed to use that accent. The way she talks is just insulting and offensive because she isn't black and she does it wrong and just ugh," whispered John to Dave.

"Yeah, nobody likes her. We just stay with her because she protects us from Jack Noir and owns the gristrift. Otherwise, I would already be on my way to being the most famous rap and dubstep hybrid musician ever. I mean, -"

"We done talking here?" shouted Condelle. The last few clones stepped in next to them.

"Shit. Yeah," said Dave.

"Good, 'cause I got a couple of announcements to make. Y'all need to welcome our latest and last clone, John Egbert. He breaks into buildings." She walked over to him, which took a while because holy fuck that room was huge. "Here's your ID card to get some grist when you need it. Don't lose it; I ain't got time to make another one." John took the card, which had a picture of him as a baby on it. Adorable, if not a bit embarrassing. Condelle made the long walk back to the front of the room.

"Second off. I heard some of you been listening in on that locked door, third to the right of the girls' bathroom. No more of that shit. If you was supposed to know what's in there, I'd'a let you know what's in there. Simple as that. Next person I catch with their ear to the door and some kind of notepad in their hand loses their next five grist drops." The entire time she spoke, her head pointed at a girl John recognized as Rose from his room, who had taken the helmet to her hazmat suit off and held it by her side.

"Next. Y'all stepped through a fuckton of nasty-ass oil on the way down here. Whoever's responsible for that better watch their back because Condelle don't hold back when it's punishing time.

"Last thing. You might have noticed this crazy piece of bling on my hand right here." Since John stood near the back of the room, he couldn't see clearly when she held up her hand, but he knew she referred to the ring with the four pearls on it. "My girl Meenah said she heard rumors from one of the carapacians that there's a second one like it. Your main priority is still to find grist, but whoever can get me that ring gets one hell of a reward."

"Carapacians?" muttered John to Dave.

"They're the locals inside the gristrift. Hard black or white shells instead of skin. You know, just like we're going to have once the chitin sets in fully, only they can move. I have a friend over there who's some kind of mayor and he is awesome. Really shines the light of democracy through the horrific otherworldly darkness of the gristrift."

Condelle brought a tall ladder over and set it against the gristrift. It just touched its jagged edge. A chunk of white rock fell into the room and shattered across the floor. "Go!" said Condelle. She sauntered out of the room.

"How does the air in there not mix with the air in here?" asked John.

"There's a barrier across the whole thing that only lets solid objects and the liquids and gases contained in them through. Another great reason to wear the hazmat suits. Otherwise our eyes would be smashed against our skulls or something and the air in our lungs wouldn't make it since there's an opening at our nostrils. Condelle says never to bring anything on fire through, because she made the barrier and she knows what'll mess things up. That only really matters to Cronus, though, because he smokes. It's like the shit cherry on top of his douche sundae of a personality."

They shuffled forward with the rest of the crowd. That ladder sure looked rickety and precarious when John considered what he had heard of the gristrift. Shouldn't there have been a permanent, reinforced staircase instead? Though maybe the gristrift changed where exactly the bottom ended from day to day... the thought made him shudder.

"You should stay with me once we're in there," said Dave. "I'll show you the ropes and make it easy to kill your first monster. A baby could probably kill a basilisk if it had a powerful enough rattle and pacifier and probably an AK-47, so we'll start with that. Maybe we can look for that ring Condelle talked about. Probably some kind of ring of power. One ring to rule them and shit. I don't even know what that fucking ring did. I mean, you hear about how bad the One Ring is all the time, but you never hear about it shooting lasers or summoning velociraptors or anything. Not that I've read the books or seen the movies, so that might be why I don't know. But still, if it's so culturally significant, people should at least talk about what it's supposed to accomplish. And we're here."

"Can you go first? I'll be right behind you," said John.

"Sure thing." Dave grabbed the ladder and began climbing the rungs. With a small gulp, John followed. It had looked tall from the other side of the room, but when John actually climbed it, he realized just how massive the ladder really was. It seemed to never end. For a boy who liked to sit around and watch movies all day it was a real workout.

Dave disappeared over the edge. John hesitated. At the top of the ladder, he could see inside. Red dirt made up lumps of ground that looked more like tumors than hills. Small patches of black spikes dotted the landscape. Black trees stretched higher than any redwood with no branches and enormous umbrella-like tops. The sky swirled with dark yellow and red clouds which cast an eerie light. A small animal that looked like a pink turtle brushed up against a rock and was sucked into it.

Steeling himself for the worst, John jumped over the edge.