Anya skittered backward on the pool table, her head striking a low-hanging pendant light. “Jonathan, don’t die for me!” she shouted back, imploringly clasping her hands. “Your tiny body won’t be enough to satiate them! Save yourself!”

“No!” Jonathan protested. “I owe you this!”

Anya dropped her hands with a shrug. “Yeah, okay, that’s true.”

A spray of blue lightning indiscriminately blasted and shrank the hell bunnies. Blue blood and black bones shot into the air, splattering against the bottom of the balcony platform and hailing down onto the nearby demons. The kickback from the shrink ray jolted Jonathan’s arm, sending the beam of electricity in a dangerous arc. A passing Fyarl demon, still outfitted in his waiter’s apron, jittered under the blast, his insides lit up in the moment before he shrank down to the size of a ballpoint pen.

“The Fyarls are on our side!” Anya screamed. “Your antidemon prejudice is not a good look right now!”

“It was an accident!” Jonathan said. Panicked, he dropped the shrink ray and lifted the small-scale waiter. He set him on the pool table in front of Anya.

“Shoot him again!” she demanded. “He can’t earn a living wage that size!”

“Taking two blasts from the shrink ray will kill him!” Jonathan protested. “Or send him to the Quantum Zone. We’re not really sure what happens if the gun manages to double-shrink someone. Mostly, it just explodes them on the second try.”

Anya crouched and prodded the Fyarl’s teensy horns with the pad of her finger.

“Then how do you unshrink someone?” she asked.

Jonathan shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “The embiggen ray is still being blueprinted. But all the bunnies are gone!”

“That’s what truly matters,” Anya said. She jumped down off the pool table and retrieved her ax, holding it close to her chest. Bending to put her face near the miniaturized Fyarl, she promised, “We’ll come back for you when the technology is available! Unless we all die in here!”

The air on the dance floor started to shimmer, portending the opening of another portal. Demons crammed together to be the first in line to take on the slayer. When the portal appeared, it was empty. The crowd in front of it went still, none of them willing to set foot in the shimmering unknown.

“There’s no need to push,” the Mayor said, bobbing in the air and wagging a finger at the demons below. “We’re all on the same team here. A kill for one of us is a kill for all of us.”

The slayer popped out, grinning. An extension cord trailed behind her into the open portal. In her hands was a blue plastic blaster, smaller than Jonathan’s shrink ray, but with a much larger fan attachment in the back.

The 1.0 freeze ray. The slayer must have stolen it out of the Trio’s garage.