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For a while, Geoffrey merely sat and watched the house.

“What should I do?” he mused. “Hmm. I do not want to just rush right to the good part. It has to be something special. Obviously, I need to make him watch his reaper die, but what else? Umm... oh! The children! Of course the children! I couldn’t make Mr. Colt watch them die, so I can make Hector watch, instead!”

Geoffrey furrowed his brow and folded his arms. “But wait. He is much stronger than Mr. Colt. Removing the children from his possession without killing him first could prove difficult... Maybe if I lure him away from the house...? Well, let me think. It is the middle of the night... and he is rather protective... How can I get him to leave without taking the children with him? Hmm...”

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Back in his room, Hector sat practicing with metal, trying to improve his speed in the creation of gauntlets again. He’d found an old stopwatch and decided to time himself. After a few attempts, he discovered that he had managed to shave a whole second off the process.

“Only another fourteen and a half minutes to go,” he mumbled.

He was about to give it another try when a distant pop interrupted him. A small tremor passed through the room, and the light from his desk lamp flickered and died.

“What was that?”

‘An explosion, if I’m not mistaken.’ Garovel flew up through the ceiling.

Hector waited in the dark. ‘The power isn’t coming back on...’

‘It’s not just your house. Several blocks just went completely dark. I think we can assume the blast came from the power plant.’

‘What do you want me to do? Should I go check it out?’

‘I’m thinking so, yeah.’