Ratchet

The kicking monster did to drift too far away. As ginormous as it is, the slew of One-Eight-Ones that are always nearby, have little effect. It is more the case that the unpredictable motion of the One-Eight-One soup is responsible for when the monster grabs and clips.

With the Twenty ejected and floating freely in the soup, the shape of the nearby monster had relaxed enough to allow the chain of ringlets to slide through the trap. While it was possible for the chain to disengage completely, the pattern of Sixes, Ones, Eights, Sevens and other random atoms elsewhere on this monster, have an affinity for the long remainder of the chain. The neutral action of the One-Eight-Ones provided an environment where the chain could slide, one ringlet at a time, along the slowly curving outside of the cleaving monster.

Once two ringlets had been advanced past the trap area, portions of the monster near the protruding ringlets were pushed away by the ringlets' presence, and this made a small distortion elsewhere along the surface that reduced the slip of the chain significantly. It took much longer for the second ringlet to be advanced than the first. The trap opened a bit to expose the landing site for that once held a charged Twenty, and the firmly held Seventeen was freely exposed to the soup, which slowly swirled and churned across the open and receptive trap.