WHAM!!!

HISS!! CRACK!!! CRASH!!

Followed by a soft boom-

"AGAIN?!?! THIS IS ALREADY THE 50TH TIME IT FAILED!"

He stormed up to the side of an odd metal contraption, shaped like a huge ring, with wires hanging around it to supply it with electricity. With one hand, he ripped the wires out from the power grid and threw them side. breaking them in the process. It didn't really matter, he could always buy more with the ridiculous amount of money he had.

Inspecting the incomplete power grid once again, he noticed that two of the wires he had attached during the first stages had not been connected properly. He sighed before picking up his tweezers and fixed his mistake, scolding himself throughout the whole thing.

"Please say it'll work this time," he prayed. For the 51th time, he shut the door of the power grid close and walked up to a small machine that seems to be the controller of whatever he was creating.

Looking down, he typed a combination of numbers and letters on the keyboard that had been installed earlier, carefully programming the machine to do as what he wanted. After typing the in the last few digits of the code, he grabbed the lever with his left hand and slowly pulled it down, praying that it would actually work.

The machine hissed and steamed for a while, causing him to wince. He braced himself for an explosion to come, but got a completely different result instead.

The components of the humongous ring-shaped machine began spinning , slowly but gradually getting faster. The machine hummed with a high pitch, the air particles inside it began vibrating. Beams of light were released randomly, causing him to instinctively turn his face away from it to stop himself from going to blind.

When the lights finally died down, he turned to look at his creation, whooping with delight when he was did.

The machine was no longer a sad-looking metal contraption. Instead, there was a door just inside the machine, glowing bright yellow for unknown reason.  It seemed to radiate some kind of  energy, both powerful and destructive. He was pretty sure that if you were to stand close enough, it would drag you into whatever the heck there was inside it.

And that was where his next destination is.

Finishing up a victory dance, he grabbed the backpack that he had prepared a couple of months ago, ignoring the urge  to check its content again. He picked up a few more documents off his table and stuffed them into the bag, along with some random gadgets he had been working on the past few weeks. After contemplating for a few more seconds, he decided against bringing his shotgun, instead opting to shove some knives into his blade belt.

Once he was sure he had brought everything, he sped towards the portal, but stopped right at his worktable.

Clipped to the board of the table, was a picture, showing a brunette boy with a dino cap, smiling at the camera. He was accompanied by a small group of people who were posing for a group photo.  A black-haired Chinese girl, a Malay girl in a pink outfit, an Indian boy with a red and white strap around his head and a raven-haired boy. In the background, he can see a  familiar shop, with an old man and a yellow-coloured sphere-shaped robot waving cheerfully at the camera.

He reached a hand out and tore the photo out from its pin, staring intently into the photo as if he was trying to murder the people in the photo with  his sight alone.

"I'll see you in a bit, guys. Hang on for me, please." He whispered.

Throwing the photo behind his back, he shouldered his backpack and gave one last nervous look at the workshop he had been staying in for the past few months. Sighing, he walked towards the door, letting the light from the contraption engulf him.

———

The torn photograph swayed to the wind, hanging in the air for a few more seconds before it decided to rest somewhere.

It flew past the worktable it was originally clipped too, zipped past the dustbin and dived down the stair before it finally landed next to a slightly dirtied cap.

An orange-colored, dinosaur cap, to be precise.

Exactly the same cap as the boy's in the photograph.