I look at the lizardman commander as it takes my crowbar and tucks it behind its belt.

  “Think I can't make too much noise or the T-Rex will find me, but I don’t know if I can defeat it without my gun.”

  As I sit there, I begin to look if I brought anything with me, but unless it’s allergic to ravioli MRE, I will have to fight it fairly. As I’m about to put the pack of ravioli back in my pocket, my fingers brush against the glass bottle I took from one of the guards. I look at the bottle of orange liquid and inspect it.

  “So it’s magic pepper spray? Guess I did get off their security.”

  I quickly look back at where the commander is, and it seems to be doing something near one of the vents. I am about to throw the bottle when a large freight door opens and two lizardmen step toward the lizardman commander. While I can't understand their hissing, I can tell the commander is not too pleased as it sends the two away and enters what looks like a loading bay.

  I follow the lizardman commander into the loading bay, where I completely lose focus as I see a thing of beauty — a goddamned forklift. I can’t take my eyes off what’s possibly the first working vehicle in this place. I begin sneaking up on the forklift, so enamored that I nearly forget I’m in the same room as an underboss — only nearly, as I spot the commander climbing the shelves to be able to look into the ventilation ducts that run along the ceiling.

  I look down at the bottle of magic pepper spray and back up to the commander, who is standing on the narrow metal shelving. I bring out my skills as a baseball pitcher from when I was in the little leagues and chuck it at the commander, and hit the ventilation grate he was looking in.

  “Shit, I missed,” I say — until I see the vapors getting blown straight into the face of the commander. It’s not as effective as it would be if it’s a direct hit, but it still has the desired effect as the lizardman commander stumbles back and loses its footing, falling eight feet down onto the concrete floor.

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  How much it hurt him, I don’t know, but it seriously pissed him off as I watch it draw its weapons and begin yelling something in its broken English:

  “Intruder, show self!”

  I stand up and get ready to face him when he shouts again:

  “Intruder being coward, show self!”

  That potion must have been pretty good if it can’t see me standing not that far away. I silently approach it, but it begins stabbing with its spear in my general direction, and it says:

  “I can smell your food, intruder.”

  I put my hand on the bag of ravioli and think,

  “Of course it can smell the fucking ravioli.”

  I am about to take a ravioli to throw at it to show my contempt before I feel something moving in the bag. I pull it out, and there it is — my lizard friend I thought escaped, covered in red tomato sauce and a bit bigger from all the ravioli it ate.

  “You gluttonous little bastard, that’s where you went.”

  While I’m glad to have him back, right now I’ve got something more pressing to attend to. I put him back in my pocket and turn back to look at the lizardman commander, who is slowly regaining its vision. I start to slowly approach it, and now it doesn’t matter how stealthy I am — he can smell me.

  I stay just out of its spears and wait for it to thrust with the spear once more. It takes a bit of me deliberately tapping the floor with my mace, but he stabs — and with that, I am able to use my mace to hit the shaft of the spear and break it as the mace crashes to the ground.

  This, however, also gives it the chance to attack me, and it kicks me away from him with surprising force. I stumble a bit further away, but I am able to recover without falling — but drop my mace near it. Then it does something that pisses me off: it takes my crowbar from its belt to use as its new weapon. I try to find a way to fight him without getting hit by my own weapon.

  The lizardman commander looks around. His vision has partially returned to him, but it’s still blurry. If someone gets a few feet away from him, he can see me do something. It watches my blurry visage pick something off the ground and spin it around.

  “Is it a shaman? What ritual is this?” it thinks.

  He keeps his distance, thinking I’m bluffing, but he soon regrets it when I release what I was holding — and he takes a pallet to the face.

  I look at it in surprise, as I didn’t think throwing a pallet at it would be this effective — but it was. So I will use it to finish him off. I take my crowbar from the floor that it dropped and stand over it, and raise my crowbar above my head, about to beat its head in when it begins pointing at me.

  “What!?”

  I look behind me — there is nothing there — and look back to see its mouth agape.

  “What are you doing? STOP IT,” I yell.

  As I get weirded out by its odd behavior, I shout:

  “If you’re trying to intimidate me, it’s only working a little.”