It was a lazy summer day and Unirus2000 was bored.

"Nothing to do, nothing to do, nothing to dooooooo..." she changed as she lay slumped in the bedroom of Leslie's NeoHome staring at her Usuki dolls.  "'Magical Hair Usuki, what do you wanna do?'  'I dunno, Mermaid Usuki, what do you wanna do?'"  The dolls' conversation offered no inspiration.

Elsewhere, a red Korbat by the name of HollyBayBie was flying in circles.  "I have nothing to do.  I am sobored!" she lamanted as she soared over Venus' NeoHome.  Then she had an idea.  "I will go see what my friends are up to..."

Luplee was pacing aimlessly along the streets of Neopia Central, brooding.  He'd been experimented on by Dr. F. Sloth and had his memory blocked; it was returning slowly, and every day his owner Ko-Kira looked more familiar, but he still couldn't say for sure that he'd known her.

It disturbed Luplee that he couldn't get in touch with such a vital part of himself, and on a lazy day like this he had nothing to distract him from his worries.

Suddenly he realized that the sound of soft Lupe paws was on the path behind him.  Looking around, he saw Melony's pet Lu_pe_88 behind him.  "Have you been following me?"

"Well, yeah ... I was bored ... I figured we could go play a little Tug-of-War or something."

"...sure," replied Luplee after a moment, and the two headed off in the direction of the Lost Desert.

JupiterShinozaki was coming back from the Giant Omelette holding a plain omelette - well, two thirds of one.  It was hot and a little sticky outside as he'd approached Neopia Central so he'd eaten part of the omelette on the way, but the rest of it was pretty icky anyways.

Shino longed to go back to the cooler climate, near a volcano but arctic nevertheless, of Tyrannia...

Squiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirt!

A jet of water hit Shino on the back, knocking him over.  He jumped up in annoyane to yell at whoever had squirted him, although it had felt good.  Then: "Oh ... it's just you, Sippy."

MrSippy smiled and turned to hop away.  "Hold it!" called Shino.  "Are you off to squirt more people?!"  The cloud Quiggle turned back and nodded at Shino before heading off again.  "Oh no you don't!" called the electric Bruce, dropping the omelette and running after Sippy.

"Oh ... sorry..." began Luplee.

"Sorry about that-" started Pouncahontas.

"Oops-" Silver almost said.

Squiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirt!

All four pets were suddenly sprayed with a refreshing jet of water.  They turned to see MrSippy, with JupiterShinozaki in hot pursuit.

There was a birst of giggles from nearby: Unirus was there, with HollyBayBie hovering above her, and both were cracking up.

MrSippy, however, had made the mistake of stopping to watch the havoc his squirt created - and in that instance Shino cried "Ah-hah!" and pounced.  "Gotcha! ... hey, what are all of you doing here?" he asked, looking around at all the pets.

"Looking for something to do," Unirus explained.

"Sounds about right," said Silver, and Pouncahontas nodded.

"Ditto," agreed Luplee.  "Except we were going to play Tug-of-War but it's so far away..."

"And it's a hot humid lazy summer day in the middle of the Warf days of summer," added Pouncahontas.

"The Haunted Woods is fairly close," remarked Shino.  "Much closer than the Lost Desert, which is all the way on the other side - and there are games just at the edge of the woods, where it's not too dark."

There were nods of agreement all around.

"We were planning to go to the arcade," explained Pouncahontas, pointing to a deserted-looking building with ghost balloons floating around it and dark rocks carved with glowing jack-o'-lantern faces guarding the entrance, "and play some MAGAX: Destroyer.  Want to join us?"

"Sure, why not?" asked Rebel.  He, HyperMix, Pouncahontas, Shino, Luplee, Lu_pe_88, Unirus, HollyBayBie, Sippy, and Silver therefore headed off to the eerie arcade.

"I don't like this!" cried HollyBayBie as one of the ghost balloons (an Aisha) floated up past her.  "It is too scary for me!"

"We don't have to play," Unirus assured her, "we can just watch Shino and the others.  Shino's pretty good at that, I think."  Still, she shied away as a mutant Chia lumbered past.

"You'd almost think these ghosts were real," remarked Luplee.  "It's too dark to see the strings attatched to them."

"I thought they changed the look of mutant Chias," murmured Rebel, glancing at the one who had passed them.  "And that's moving too fast to be a robot..."

"...they DID," exclaimed Silver.  "Like the mutant Chia in the Battledome!"  She lowered her voice quickly and added, "How can that one still be the original sludgy design?"

"That's not just ANY chia," interrupted Luplee.  "That's EvilChia888 - Sailor Chia's pet!"

"Ohmigosh!" squeaked HollyBayBie.  "We gotta get Venus and the others!"

"Let's just follow him.  We might lose him otherwise," Shino suggested.  "And there's safety in numbers, after all."  So the ten pets snuck after the walking pile of sludge, who was heading around behind the arcade and towards the deeper part of the forest, in which red eyes glowed ominously.

"Yes," replied the Chia.  "Energy gathering hardware has been added to all the MAGAX: Destroyer games.  I'll be standing guard in case somebody notices and tampers with them - and if I may say so, sir, this was quite an ingenious idea.  Nobody notices a mutant Chia in the Haunted Woods, so nobody gives me a second glance."

"Excellent," snapped Sloth, cutting off EvilChia before he could continue his praise.  "Carry on."  There was a click.

Hiding behind a particularly large tree, the pets conferred in whispers.  "We have to go get Venus and the others now!" hissed HollyBayBie.

"And let the Chaos Faerie get tons of energy?  We can't waste any time!" murmured Shino in reply.  "We have to go fix up the arcade games!"

"We have to take out EvilChia first," Silver whispered urgently.  "Otherwise--"

Squiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirt!

It was Sippy who had decided the issue - by squirting EvilChia with his trademark jet of water.

"Run!" yelled Unirus as EvilChia started towards them.  The other pets, having thought of the same idea themselves, dashed off ... not all in the same direction.

"Wait!" called Luplee.  "Slow down!  We're not being followed!"

Slowly the speckled Usul registered his words and came to a halt at the edge of the trees just beyond the Dome.  "Are you sure?" she squeaked nervously.

"Quite sure.  Now we have to go back and find the others..."

Silver_Snow_Goddess bounded up behind them.  "I'm sorry I didn't follow you from the start," she said, "but I just now saw you so I thought..."

"Safety in numbers," replied Luplee grimply.  He looked over HyperMix's head - "What's that cave?"

"Let's go see," said Silver, walking towards it.  "Don't worry," she added, seeing HyperMix's wide eyes, "we won't go in far if it has Barbats or something, or if we can't tell how far back it goes."

So the three pets headed for the cave, and Luplee poked his nose in first.

"Come in, come in," beckoned an old but not slow voice.

The pets turned tail and ran as fast as their paws would carry them.

"We gotta go back, don't we?" asked Rebel nervously.  "And find the others, and stop EvilChia..."

"That's about the size of it," agreed Shino, and Sippy nodded also.  The Bruce looked around the gravestones and darkened shops surrounding them.  "If we can find our way out of here, that is."

"Looking for something, children?" called a voice.  A Halloween-painted Kougra, gray and with wings and fangs and shaggy fur that didn't cover his sharp claws, was looking out a window of one of the shops.

"Y-yes," stammered Rebel.  "The way out..."

"But don't you want to buy something?" asked the Kougra.

"We don't have any money," snapped Pouncahontas.  She had walked up behind the other three while they weren't looking.  How she had found them became clear when a red Korbat flew out of the darkness behind her.  "Come on, guys.  Holly can find the way out."

HollyBayBie nodded.  "I flew off fast! but Pouncahontas followed me," she explained.  "And said I should look for you..."

"Let's get out of here," said Pouncahontas, noting that the Kougra was looking at them almost hungrily and licking its lips.  All too glad to find brighter clearings, the three pets joined her in following Holly's shadowy form out through the shops.

They had run through the trees not caring where they ended up, but had come out in a clearing that was definitely not the section of the Haunted Woods they knew.  In fact, the trees thinned and ended, but there was no Lost Desert here.

Tall black wiry gates on a matching fence faced them, and beyond that a desolate land that looked like a fairground - except that it was dark and deserted and the moon was high above it.

The gates creaked open.

"Was that the wind?" stammered Lu_pe_88.

"There was no wind," replied Unirus in a stunned voice.  "Nothing is moving here."

They turned and started to walk the other way, not wishing to disturb whatever might lurk among the tent scraps and dark tunnels of the deserted fairground...

"We had the scariest adventure-" began HyperMix.

"There was the scariest sight-" started Unirus at the same time.

"That was the scariest place-" Rebel said simultaneously.

They all looked at each other, and then laughed.

"The arcade isn't so scary anymore, anyhow," remarked HollyBayBie, and the others nodded agreement.  "We can take on EvilChia.  I know we can!"

So they strode in proudly and started looking at the backs of the machines.

"Excuse me," said a deep voice.  The pets looked up to see, not EvilChia, but a tall blue Wocky looking down at them intimidatingly.  "What are you trying to do to these games?"

"W-we-we were j-just-" stammered Pouncahontas.

It was Unirus who found her voice first.  "Sir, there's a plot to steal energy and it involves somebody tampering with these machines, and we thought we could stop it if we could find out what had gone wrong..."

The Wocky regarded them with piercing yellow eyes.  Lu_pe_88 looked from the band on his ear to the scar over his right eye and started to put things together.  "Say," he remarked, "you look kind of like..."

"MAGAX: Destroyer," finished Silver.

The Wocky smiled.  "Do I, now?" he asked, and moved forward; they stepped aside, allowing him through to see the machine.  "Yep .. somebody's been messing with them.  In fact, this contraption," and he reached out and ripped a chunk of circuits off of the wires, "isn't even part of it.  Kids, you may just have saved a lot of people a lot of heartache."

The ten pets grinned at each other when another deep voice behind them demanded, "What are you doing to these machines?"  And this time it was EvilChia.

"That's him!" squeaked HyperMix, backing up nervously.  "He put the energy-stealing hardware on!"

"Is this true?" asked the blue Wocky, suddenly seeming to tower over the group.  He certainly towered over EvilChia, who, it is only fair to say, could not have won anyway.  So it's perfectly reasonable that he chose to leave.  Quickly.

The Wocky headed around to the other machines and pulled off chunk after chunk of invading circuits.  None of the other employees bothered him or the pets that followed him; after a long while, all the machines were safe.  He thanked all ten pets wholeheartedly as he chucked the circuits into the Discard pile.

"We should probably go home now," remarked Luplee after a while.  "It's hard to tell in this forest, but I think it's getting late."

"Come back any time," said the tall blue Wocky graciously to them all.  "As your reward, none of you will need to pay to play MAGAX: Destroyer ever again."

"Um, excuse me, sir?" piped up Unirus.  She took one of the free (and cheap) posters that were piled by the door and held it up.  "Would you sign this?"

The Wocky looked rather surprised.  "So," he said, taking it, "you want a poster signed by a MAGAX: Destroyer maintinance worker, do you?  Well, I won't begrudge you the favor.  You have certainly earned it."

"THIS is why you were gone for so long?" she demanded.  "You were off saving the Haunted Woods?  Unirus, dear, it's a great story, but nothing more.  Deserted fairground, evil cave creature, EvilChia stealing energy, it's all rather too radical to be believed."

Unirus was sent to her (actually, everybody's) room, but before she went she asked if she could put something in the Safety Deposit Box.  Leslie nodded, so the Uni rolled up the poster and tucked it in carefully among the plant seedlings and such.  Then she trotted off to her room without a single complaint.  Oh, what a tale her Usuki dolls could act out now!

Curious in spite of herself, Leslie pulled out the poster for a quick glance.  It was the standard picture of MAGAX with flames and ghosts behind him, but there was writing on the bottom right, done in a silver pen.  It read "Happy trails, Unirus2000, and keep up the saving of Neopia.  From a fellow savior - MAGAX."