"Run," the director yells. "It's not dramatic unless you run! They won't know you're scared -- not to mention 'on the run' -- unless you run!" They were running when we left off last week, and they're running still when we join them now. And so Isabel "I Married A Gaylien" Evans and Michael "Security Tard" Guerin run -- through hill and dale, talk shows and game shows, through Enterprise, through Smackdown, through reruns of Frasier, weekend movies bought for nineteen cents and four donkeys that feature the acting talents of a young though always versatile Jeremy Piven, through forty consecutive and identical episodes of Blind Date, through an odyssey of sight, sound, and syndication, at the other end of which I still can't tell the difference between The Hughleys, One on One, The Parkers, and Girlfriends. They run. And then they run. And then they stop running. No. My mistake. They were really running the whole time.
Down a hallway and around a corner, we join the action just as we left it, Michael and Isabel finally coming to rest (they couldn't run forever, could they? But if anyone could, they could) at a map hanging on the wall of a random Meta-Chem hallway. It looks like a guide map in the middle of the mall. Michael points to a spot on the map and belts out in a breathy, poor-actorly hurry, "We got a fire in Sector Fifteen Charlie." Isabel rifles through about six variants of "I'm sorry there's a fire…now stop calling me Charlie" before catching a glimpse of herself in one of Meta-Chem's sixteen trillion chrome surfaces and musing, "I look a lot like someone named Charlie." So, she's Charlie now. Jesse will be thrilled. Michael takes off through the mall for the aforementioned Sector Fifteen, Charlie following close behind, wishing that she could make a quick stop at Cat Burglars 'R' Us so she could return her Cat Burglar outfit. And she doesn't know why she doesn't like it, either. She just thinks it kind of makes her look a little bit…I don't know, cat-burglary? Anyway. They run around another corner, stopping in front of a metal door and holding out their hands. Said door vaporizes, flames bursting from behind it. They shield their eyes -- the blue screen! So blue! -- and Michael bemoans, "I can't put it out!" Oh, for love of all things, already. Here, Powerless Gimpy Alien. Here's a piece of bread. Can you molecularly manipulate it into toast? Can you? Oh, fine. Here's a toaster. Here's a…no, actually, you have to press the button down for it to…oh, never mind, I'll just do it myself. Sigh.
Out of the licking, violent, blazing, stoned-guy-holding-up-a-lighter-before-the-encore-at-a-Frampton-concert-esque levels of sheer conflagration, Porno comes a-stumbling, still bedecked in his security guard finery. He falls to the ground and commences his choking exercises, so Isabel attempts to occupy his mind with thoughts of happier endings: "Where's Max? Jim, where's my brother?" When did he become "Jim," I wonder? I know she's eighteen and all, but societal mores dictate a certain amount of respect be paid to those overnight minimum-wage rent-a-cops that form the backbone of our fragile culture. But Jim Porno has nothing but the happies to report: "He's dead." Isabel responds "No!" in that incredulous happy way that means "Yes!" He repeats it many times, even once phrasing it in the native hick dialect of the desert Southwest he no doubt hopes she'll understand: "He's dead, I tell ya!" A-yuh. Shoulda known a storm was a-comin'.