His search of the sewers came out with no result, or so he thought. As he turned around, he tripped over something, “OW!” After he sat up on his hands with a scowl, he kicked what he thought was a pipe. But, it never made the clanging sound he thought it would. “Huh?” When, we got to his knees, he picked it up, “A wire? But, what’s this doing down here?” After he looked around, he swore he saw a spark of light from one of the tunnels that the cord ran into. As he walked, dragging the wire in hand, he saw that it was a definite spark flickering colors of purple, fuchsia, red, yellow, and orange on the walls casting a moving shadow of whatever was there with it. He gasped as he entered a large room with pipes and stoves pulsing and wiggling about. “Man, I’m definitely not in Chicago anymore because I’ve just stepped into the ‘Phantom of the Opera’s’ quarters.”

“What!? Who’s there?” As running foot steps were coming out, Heat dove for cover behind one of the pipes. “I know you’re there. If you don’t come out, I’ll gas you dead,” said a voice with a Texan accent.

“….”

“I’m counting to ten! 1…2…ah, forget the count, it’ll be more fun testing my gas on you anyway.”

Heat came out of hiding, holding his hand out towards where the voice came from, “You try to gas me and I guarantee that you’ll die in a blink of an eye!”

“We’ll BOTH die! You’d make an explosion!”

“God, you’re stupid. You can’t see AND you can’t count!” He lit his palm on fire, “I control flames, you dimwit. Now, where’s Frida?”

“Who?”

“Dark girl with blue hair.”

“Her!? I haven’t seen her since the day of contest entries.”

“Huh? Then, what the hell are you doing here?”

“If you put away your flame, we’ll talk.”

“Kitty-Nakajima?”

Kitty-X turns around, “That’s Kitty-N!”

The man looks at Hiro, then back at Kitty-X, “My. You’re taller than we expected you to be. May we ask a favor of you?”

“What is it?”

“Well, we’re part of the advertising committee for the Bust-A-Groove tournament. It will be televised, so we need a commercial-.”

“What are you getting to?”

“Do the commercial,” Hiro shouts.

The man hushes Hiro, “What he meant to say was that it’s a guarantee that you’ll be in the tournament Miss Nakajima and we wanted to ask if you’d like to showcase some of your moves for the commercial”.

“I’d love to.”

“Then will you please follow us, Miss Nakajima?”

She starts to follow, “Why are you filming the commercial so late at night?”

“Well, being one of the last people to audition for the tournament, we could not ask you until you were done. And, you’re a TV star. You should know that wrapping up the commercial as soon as possible saves everyone money.”

“You have a point.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me! The contest CAN’T be a sham!”

Gas-O looked back at Heat, “You have to believe me, Heat. I saw what I saw.”

“So, …I’m supposed to believe that you witnessed two gray aliens refusing to tell some guy about how to make a dancing robot? Tell me, when did this event happen again?”

“This morning. When I was trying to get more wires to juice up my gas machine.”

“Do you remember where you went?”

“Where do you think I’m taking you now?”

“Oh, I don’t know. To a nice, little, quiet place where you could chop me up into little pieces.”

Gas-O laughed at him, “Oh, I’d never do that. Now, you see that tunnel over there?” He pointed to the left. “Go have yourself a peek.” Heat watched him as he went to the source of light and looked down below. He let out a gasp at what he witnessed.