*(A canon-adjacent one-off, supervised chaos edition)*

It began with a loading screen that didn’t load and a menu that felt judged.

“Is the font… duct tape?” Ace asked, tilting her head. The letters were slightly frayed around the edges, as if they had been ripped off a shipping label.

Mai tapped the side of the display with one knuckle. The image wobbled like gelatin trying on gravity. “Sandbox,” she said. “Physics optional. Consent not guaranteed.”

“A gentleman’s arcade,” Bright announced, stepping into the room and making the air commit to mischief. “Gears wants a field log. Try not to be educational.”

The door shut itself as if embarrassed to be a door.

A cheap dealership materialized around them the way a magician produces pigeons. Banners drooped. Confetti existed only in the promise of confetti. A salesman with a smile like a warranty he didn’t honor clapped a hand on air near Ace’s shoulder.

“Welcome to Cardboard City Motors,” he chirped. “Our economy being our economy, we’re proud to offer a wide selection of high-quality cardboard vehicles at several prestigious price points.” His pupils dilated at nothing. “Currently, you have… no money.”

A sign behind him recalculated to zero with the enthusiasm of a depressed calculator.

Ace peered at the row of “vehicles”: boxes with marker headlights; a box with a cutout spoiler; a box with tape. “Do they come with… wheels?” she asked.

“If you earn them,” the salesman said, cheery like a fire alarm. He pointed at a cardboard rectangle that had been told it was a sports car until it started agreeing. “We also have a cardboard *supercar* for discerning clients. Premium.”

“Premium cardboard,” Mai murmured. “So, double-ply.”

From somewhere outside the dealership and inside the god of bad ideas, a voice laughed. It wasn’t words so much as intention: try it. try all of it. The overlay in Ace’s ear helpfully labeled the source: Gray-type operator detected.

“Containment objective,” Gears said via comm, perfectly dry. “Engage and observe. Catalogue behavioral instabilities. Do not— under any circumstances— reward the operator with responsive adjectives.”

Bright leaned toward Ace. “He means don’t let him hear you giggle.”

Ace didn’t promise anything.

They accepted the free car, which was also a box. It wore four bottle caps pretending to be wheels, and a steering wheel drawn in permanent marker. The ignition was the sound Vroom spelled wrong.

“Rules,” said a sudden sign. “Phase One Challenge: Candy Cane Corridor. Survive for twenty seconds. Earn $10.”

The corridor revealed itself like a knife being pleased with you. Huge striped poles spun so fast that friction forgot its own face. The floor gleamed with an enthusiasm not shared by anything else. A timer blinked zero like it had opinions.

“This is fine,” Ace said, driving her box into the first red-white spin cycle and immediately achieving a category of corner not strictly legal in three dimensions. The cardboard flexed as if remembering it used to be a refrigerator container. “Okay, that was not fine.”

“It’s drunk figure skating,” Mai diagnosed, very calm while her box pirouetted sideways, kissed a guardrail, and kept going entirely out of spite. “Stay outside the centrifugal wake. Don’t chase the poles — let them commit to being mistakes without you.”

Ace corrected, corrected again, then made an adjustment that was more art than physics. The box stayed upright through the next spin. Somewhere overhead, the Gray-type operator made a delighted sound like a cat pushing a glass off a counter. The poles spun faster.

Timer: nineteen… eighteen.

“You are bargaining with a concept,” Gears noted. “To be clear, the concept is bored.”

“Bored concepts shouldn’t be given power tools,” Bright said. “And yet, here we are.”

They survived on a technicality and a small mercy. The dealership coughed up $10 with the grace of a grudge. The salesman popped back into a new position as if he had never left the old one and would never leave this one either.

“With your generous winnings,” he said, “you can purchase our finest beginner upgrade: USPS Packing Tape Package.”

Mai squinted at the options. “Is there a ‘don’t make the car airborne by accident’ setting?”

“No,” said the menu.

They bought the tape.

It arrived like a sermon. Thick, glossy tape snaked over the box’s seams until the car felt held together by an oath sworn under fluorescent lighting. Two packing peanuts appeared on the roof as “aerodynamic features,” which is how you say you are not ready for this in the language of chaos.

Ace drove. The peanuts behaved like small gods pretending to be styrofoam. The car’s center of gravity climbed by the height of hubris. The first bump launched them into a shivering parabola that would have made a mathematician call his mother.

“The peanuts have the mass of a dying star,” Mai observed as she executed a perfect micro-adjustment to avoid an upset barrel. “You can feel their intent.”

“They intend comedy,” Ace said. She landed with a sound that less fortunate cardboard makes when remembering trees. “Ow.”

“Phase Two,” the sign popped up. “Water Wall With Landmines. Detonate all to proceed.”

“Of course,” Bright said, good-naturedly appalled. “We’ve been invited to skim the pool with a flammable shoebox.”

The water wall glittered, a vertical sheet bordered by buoys. Small orange disks lurked beneath the surface like polite sharks. The posted instructions read Tap each with the car. The Gray-type operator hummed a tune that should not be hummed around explosives.

They tried the obvious approach first. It failed with craftsmanship. At the second attempt, Mai counted in a steady, even voice — three, two, release — and let half the car ride the edge of the water like a coin does a bar top when a bartender obliges a demonstration.

The first mine popped with eager timing. The second hesitated. The third had wandered further out to sea.

“They’re moving,” Ace said, squinting into the sheet. “They’re learning how not to be where we need them.”

“Procedural mischief,” Gears said, which is another way to say the level designer grew up watching cartoons. “Adjust course to a half-meter deeper entry.”

Ace did. The box kissed the water. The mine triggered. A sequence of delicately insulting thumps rattled the peanut gods. A final explosion down the line synced itself to the beat of the Gray-type operator’s laugh.

The dealership spat $100 at them like a petulant ATM.

“Now you can upgrade to Cardboard Box Transfer Package,” chirped the salesman. “Includes rail-adhesive enhancements and a limited warranty on corners.”

“What does ‘rail-adhesive’ mean here,” Mai asked, “and does it violate civil codes.”

“It means the *tape wants to be destiny*,” the salesman said, unhelpfully.

Phase Three presented a runway of duct tape laid in a straight line so true that surveyors would have given it a small plaque. The rules were simple: stay on the line for ten seconds or be taught new feelings about wind resistance.

“This is just tightrope walking,” Ace said.

“In a breeze,” Mai said.

“In a wind tunnel,” Bright corrected.

They went. The tape sang under the tires in a key only adhesives know. The peanut gods complained quietly. Every micro-correction translated into a jurisprudence decision. Twice, the Gray-type operator tried to nudge them off line with a physics patch. Twice, Mai’s hands were already where the car would be.

“Low release,” she guided, voice steady. “You’re aiming too high by instinct.”

“I was raised on drama,” Ace said, easing the wheel. “I’ll cope.”

They made it to eleven seconds and earned another $100. The salesman manifested with the eagerness of an email notification.

“And now,” he beamed, “for the discerning driver with impeccable taste and disposable income — the Cardboard Supercar Package.”

The *premium* model arrived on a palette like a rumor: a cardboard Lambo, matte tan with aggressive angles, everything sharpened by the knife that had cut it. Someone had taken a marker to draw a raging bull on the hood; the bull looked proud to be an outline. The doors didn’t scissor so much as dream of scissors. The wheel arches held an opinion about speed.

Ace circled it with the kind of smile she only used on paradoxes. “We’re not naming it,” she said.

“Absolutely not,” Mai said, equally reverent. “Let’s just drive it a little.”

Bright looked around for Gears’s disapproval and found only silence, which counted as a yes.

Phase Four loaded with an audible click: The Michael Bay Memorial Speedway. Beyond the starting line: ramps, barrels, suspiciously placed propane tanks, and a choreographed series of explosions triggered by the Gray-type operator’s love language.

“Observe and do not feed,” Gears reminded them, finally back on comm, which they interpreted as try to be the adults.

They launched.

The cardboard Lambo took the first ramp with the kind of dignity expensive cars fake when they can’t demonstrate torque. The second ramp offered them a choice between humility and fire. Ace chose humility and got fire anyway because the Gray-type operator pressed funny.

A propane tank rolled into their landing zone like a choreography note. Ace adjusted midair, a fractional correction that turned a catastrophe into a lesson. The car grazed the tank; a polite flame licked an edge and went out like it had someplace to be.

“Flammability profile updated,” Mai said, still incredibly calm as her own course threaded two barrels that had never met OSHA. “Do not allow prolonged contact. Also, do not sneeze.”

The next set piece was pure Gray: a leap that clearly wanted to be cinematic, timed to a chain of detonations that made the road stutter under the idea of itself. The cardboard Lambo stretched into the gap like a cat deciding a shelf is reachable. The peanut gods sulked about not being invited.

They almost made the landing.

What happened instead was art. Ace felt the phantom engine under her sternum wake, tilt, and settle like a ship smelling weather. The car’s nose dipped too eager; Mai’s voice measured in. Ace braked a breath and not at all; the tires kissed the edge with tragic romance and didn’t leave. The landing aligned itself with a story that did not need cache.

Three more phases stretched ahead: a tunnel of candy-canes upgraded to industrial licorice, a slalom through traffic cones that filed grievances, and a final runway over water where mines had unionized and insisted on holidays. The Gray-type operator’s laughter annotated each success and failure without ever quite being cruel. They failed with flair, succeeded with contempt, and discovered that the cardboard Lambo had one superpower: it could forgive.

At the end of the last runway, a door drew itself on the air. It looked like chalk lines on a gym floor. It smelled like new paper and old light. Above it, text wrote and unwrote in an impatient font:

“EXIT: REDEEM PRIZES / EXIT: REDEEM GRACE / EXIT: REDEEM CHAOS.”

“Take ‘grace,’” Mai suggested, which was her way of returning the room to itself.

Ace nudged the wheel onto the marking. The door opened a fraction; then the sim stuttered.

Gray-type operator: one more. The message wasn’t malicious. It was… hopeful.

The lights changed. The track beneath them smoothed. The cardboard Lambo’s body lines caught an invented dawn. A final sign appeared, the smallest yet:

“Thank you for playing. Try not to learn the wrong lessons.”

Bright laughed, soft and real. “He’s learning manners.”

“Or irony,” Ace said.

“Same thing,” Mai said.

They took grace.

The loading screen remembered it could load. The dealership folded itself back into someone else’s memory. The salesman turned off like an aquarium decoration. The peanuts vanished last, resentfully.

Back in the safehouse, the kettle lied and then told the truth; the two states met in the middle and called it tea. Bright hung his coat where it wouldn’t get ideas. Gears’s report tone threaded the room like a cool thread in a warm fabric.

GRAY BOX PROTOCOL — FIELD LOG
Environment: physics-optional sandbox.
Operator: Gray-type, mischief-forward, responsive.
Artifacts: cardboard vehicle suite (duct-tape architecture, styrofoam mass anomalies, pyrotechnic timing bias).
Risk: memetic low, kinetic moderate, comedic high.
Outcome: containment achieved via grace selection at exit; operator rewarded with non-verbal acknowledgment only.
Notes: Do not give the operator a reload button.
Addendum: cardboard forgives faster than people. Consider cross-training.

Ace leaned her shoulder against Mai’s in the quiet that follows games. “I liked the part where we didn’t explode,” she said.

“You liked all the parts,” Mai said, fondly accusatory.

“True,” Ace said. “But especially the not exploding.”

Bright balanced a coin on the rim of his cup and did not look surprised when it stayed. “Would you like to do the Michael Bay Memorial Speedway again next week?” he asked, faux-casual.

“Define ‘again,’” Ace said.

“Define ‘week,’” Mai added.

Out beyond the window, rain rehearsed. In a corner of the city no map honored, a cardboard car dreamed of scissor doors it could someday deserve. In a comment section shaped like a horizon, someone typed *fox* and meant thank you.

The log chimed once and then behaved.

Wake confirmed, it wrote, as if to reassure itself that humor and gravity were not mutual exclusions.

Ace tapped the line with a fingertip and let it glow a second longer.

“After the quiet,” she said.

“After the quiet,” Mai agreed.

The kettle declined to lie again. The day, which had not been a day so much as an arrangement, slid into an evening that promised not to make trouble unless invited.

They did not invite it.