Raltise ran after the group, holding onto a bunch of vitamin pills.

"u shal fell the rath of helth!!!1111" he yelled, throwing some at everybody.

"onos :(" Mike shouted, dropping to the floor. "everthingz goin blak..."

Joe ran over to him and shoved a bottle of whiskey down his throat. He began chugging it furiously, and then jumped back up.

"tanks joe :0"

"no prob ;)"

The group charged at Raltise, but he then did something unusual. He raised his hands into the sky, and then it began to rain graemlins.

"run 4 ur life :O" Simon said, running around.

"so dats y our fecez don't shuw up" Mike said, dodging the falling 2-d menaces.

Jim picked up a few that were scattered about, and then they grew into shurkiens. He aimed them at Raltise, and threw with all his force.

"u cant defet me >:O" Raltise sneered, jumping over them. But somehow one appeared out of nowhere and burst into a thousand graemlins that started to rain right over Raltise.

"onos :'(" he screamed.

"tatl show u!!!!1111" Mike yelled, sounding a woop.

The tiny creatures swirled around Raltise in a flurry, and then disappeared suddenly, as did the body of Raltise. Everyone did a little jig and Falcon shouted, "A winner iz us!!!"

The happy and confident group was about to proceed through the castle when they heard a disembodied laughter. They turned sharply to see a vortex of pure evil floating in the middle of the room.

"Wat the asterisk, exclamation point, pound, at symbol?" Inquired FZ, raising his machine guns. The laughing stopped and an evil looking figure in a suit as black as night emerged from the vortex. He gazed around the room, dusted himself off, and smiled at the group.

"Hey there. Remember me?" said the new villain cheerily.

The group collectively shook their heads.

"Aww, it's the new suit isn't it? It'sa me! Evil FZ! Yeah, that's right, Evil FZ. I fell into a plothole awhile back but escaped with this!" He pulled a pitch black laptop.

"This is the Laptop of Everlasting Evil and such. It was created when I was due to the fact that FZ had a laptop on him when everything went all inverted and evil and whatnot. Well anywho, I'd better get this whole vengeance thing over with before Raltise gets back from where I sent him, or I'll be one dead evil super villain. Any questions?"

FZ meekly raised his hand, "Um, mEEster evAl me sAr? Cun yuo fix our voicas?"

"No."

"Ten yuo go squish nowXorz!" FZ and Falcon threw aside their old weapons and drew their weapons of OLDSKOOL. Falcon his Defender Daggers and FZ his Pitfall Whip. Evil FZ smiled and held his hand out to his side, his suit seemed to liquefy and extend out over his hand, hardening and forming a mace.
-------------------
Trez landed at the castle gates and let off the others. The group proceeded cautiously to the front gate and prepared to enter, when Giampi stopped suddenly.

"Hey, do you guys hear something?" Sure enough, a faint yell could be heard as the group looked up to the sky. They could see what appeared to be a man being attacked by flying graemlins.

"It's probably no concern of ours at the present," Mr. Accident interjected. "Obviously, the pitched battle that rages elsewhere while we make our way through the castle will conveniently provide a gripping scheme of alternating measures of action and suspense."

An awkward moment shuffled by as the group stared at Mr. A.

"What?" he blinked. "I thought we were in agreement that the fourth wall no longer exists."

"Less chat, more splat," Skulryk interrupted, gesturing meaningfully at the castle gate with his DK Hammer. "We've got to get in there. Let's bust down the door."

Stepping back a few paces, he broke into a run and slammed the hammer into the door with as much force as he could muster. The hammer made a "bling" noise, and the door shuddered, but held.

Skul frowned thoughtfully, and then hit the door again. The dark iron gate showed no signs of damage.

"Maybe one of the other weapons of OLDSKOOL will work," suggested Giampi.

The GunJoustinir, Save the Pac-Man, Pong boomerang, and Asteroids Axe were all tried in succession, but none managed to do anything whatsoever to the massive doors.

The group sat down in front of the gate. "Well, this is just great," Skulryk muttered. "We go through all the trouble to get here, and we can't even get inside."

"Wait! I've got it!" Liar shouted triumphantly. He got up, strode over to the gate, and struck a commanding pose in front of it.

"Mellon!" he shouted at it. The door stayed put. The others looked at him like he was an idiot.

"Well, it was worth a try," Liar said defensively as he sat down again.

Suddenly, JP realized he was sitting next to a pile of dog poo. A plastic pile of dog poo. A sudden thought occurred to him and he grabbed it. Sure enough, there was a little hollow space beneath it, and inside there was a key. Running to the door, he quickly found a small slot that appeared to be meant for a key. He jammed in the key, turned it, and a loud grinding noise ensued. Slowly, and with a sound like a million cats being stepped on by rusty robots, the gates ground open, revealing a long dark hallway.


**************


Dark Figure watched the group through the SpyCam software on the Golden Laptop. He sipped some coffee and frowned intently.

Maybe the key-under-the-fake-dog-poo wasn't such a good idea, he thought to himself. Ah, well. If they think they can outsmart me, they're in for a few surprises...

Taking another sip of coffee, he popped up a web browser and headed over to ebay.com. A few clicks brought him to the "My Bids" page.

Ah. Looks like I'm going to pick up that lawn gnome set cheap...
He scrolled down a bit.
What?! Some pathetic fool has dared to try and outbid me on the ToastMaster 3000XR? He will pay!
A few more keystrokes.
Hmmm... I should probably up my max bid on that fondue pot.


**************


The entry hallway was dark. What little light came from outside reflected dully on a floor that appeared to be some kind of marble, and gave a dim sort of illumination to walls that were painted a particularly depressing shade of burgundy. In between black pillars that were spaced intermittently down both sides of the hall were what appeared to be paintings of Raltise and Dark Figure, in various dramatic and evil poses. There was a door at the other end of the hall. The room was completely silent.

Giampy was the first to begin moving cautiously forward. JP placed a restraining hand on his shoulder.

"Careful there; it's probably a trap." Digging around in a pack, he came up with a box of corn starch. He tossed a generous handful of this down the hall, and as the cloud of fine corn by-product descended to the floor, several bright red beams crossing the hallway at knee level became apparent.

As the rest of the group carefully navigated the lasers, Mr. Accident stayed behind, frowning thoughtfully.

"It's kind of obvious, isn't it?" he mused. "I mean, the laser thing has been done before. Heck, even bakeries use them these days. Practically anybody who plans to infiltrate anything knows to bring along some cornstarch or talcum powder, or something. It doesn't make sense that evil persons of the caliber of Dark Figure and Raltise would employ such minimally effective security strategies. An inventive villain would use something like infrared, or -"

"Ninjas!!!" Skulryk shouted. Liar had inadvertently triggered the Infrared Ninjamatic Evil Death Alarm, and ten thousand razor-sharp shurikens sped towards the group at three times the speed of awesome.

Without even thinking twice, Giampi and JP grabbed Giampy and placed him before the group so that he shielded everyone with his body.

"Hey! What's the big idea?!" His clamors were met with angry looks from the two authors.

"You're nigh indestructible, remember?" Giampi tapped the tip of the Save the Pac-Man against Giampy's head. "You can shield us and nothing will happen to you."

Giampy protested. "Where the heck does it say that I'm night indestructible."

JP shrugged. "Right here, of course."

"Oh. Touché."

Giampy spread his arms out while everyone hid behind him. Trickles of cold sweat poured down his face as he tried his hardest to control his wobbly knees and increasingly uncontrollable bladder, although he feared it was a losing battle. No time for that though, the shurikens were fast approaching...

The hallway was filled with explosions as the shurikens hit Giampy because ninjas can make exploding shurikens if they want. Pillars crumbled, ceiling tile fell. Soon after the dust cleared...and Giampy was still standing, without a scratch on him.

The AC looked himself over and, after checking himself for bruises, found that he was completely unscathed. He smiled.

"Cool."

Then a piece of debris fell on him.

Authors and ACs looked upon the troop of ninjas that was fast approaching, ready to slice them into ribbons. They brandished their weapons of OLDSKOOL and struck dramatic poses as the music changed from dark and somber to some upbeat, techno-ish thing that everybody recognized but nobody could really name because they always just hear it at the club, and they don't really ask what the-

"Ah-hem."

Oops. Sorry.

Soon the hallways were filled with the sounds of fighting.

***

Evil FZ swung his mace violently at Falcon, who ducked and rolled under the blow while he slashed at the villain with his Defender Daggers. While Evil FZ was distracted normal FZ lashed at him with his Pitfall Whip. When FZ turned to retaliate Hobo Mike stumbled drunkenly into him and offered him a bottle of booze. This caused Evil FZ an enormous amount of damage.

"Argh! I've had enough of this!" Evil FZ threw Hobo Mike to the side and began swinging his mace around. "You know what time it is now!"

"what," replied Joe. "wtf r u tlakin abuot."

"I noe," replied Falcon, who hoisted his daggers in front of him. A small smile crept over his lips, and he spoke lucidly for the first time in several hours.

"It's go time."

***

Dark Figure pounded his fist on the armrest of his chair. "Curses!" he yelled. "That guy outbid me on the fondue pot again!"

He stopped himself before doing anything he might regret later, and rose from his seat. He walked over to a giant wall of monitors on the far side of the room and looked them over, careful not to miss any detail of the battles raging not too far from him. A single thought crossed his mind.

When this ordeal is over, that "High Bidder" is going to pay.

***

Raltise hit the ground hard, and the little graemlins swarmed over him while they clawed at his (expensive) suit. The little critters were too weak to even hope to injure the Master of Illusions, but that suit had cost him a bunch, and dry cleaning these days cost a fortune.

With one well-placed blast Raltise destroyed the winged creatures. Then he got up and looked himself over. Unfortunately one of the wretched things had managed to pry a button loose.

"Oh my," said Raltise as he checked the button. "This won't do." He summoned a plothole and, rather inexplicably, a dry-cleaning stand/frosty machine hybrid materialized before him.

After checking in his suit and donning a new one, Raltise headed over to the large metal door that was the entrance to the castle. He pushed against it with his palm, but it remained firm.

Raltise cocked an eyebrow and tried again, with both hands this time. Still no luck.

The Master of Illusions growled and banged against the door. "Open up, you fools! I'm outside!"

Nothing.

Raltise scratched his chin for a few seconds. Then he took a few steps back, spread his arms and breathed deep.

"Mellon!!"

The door remained shut.

Raltise crossed his arms and sat on the floor, clearly annoyed.

"Aw, crud," he muttered to himself.

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