The sunset from above Madril was a gorgeous display of oranges and pinks with just a hint of purple. The sound of the waterfall cascading down the rocks created a music that no mortal musician could ever hope to match. All around, the trees were just starting to change color; bright green mixed with red and orange in a stunning collage. The whole scene was like something out of an artist's imagination. It was the perfect romantic spot.

Two nightmarish lovers shared the scenery. One wore a blue suit with tails and had a white cow's skull for a head. The other would almost have been pretty with her black hair and pale blue skin if not for the tentacles that replaced her arms and her clawed, reptilian feet. She wore a green evening dress that accentuated her eyes, but anyone observing the two would have been hard-pressed not to notice that most of her skin was actually scale. She also had horns.

James really liked horns. He thought that Natasha's horns were her most striking feature. Many a man would have agreed, though not for the same reason.

"But, Jamie," the demoness was saying. "This could all be ours. Why won't you talk Stan into taking over the world?"

James sighed. They'd had the conversation before. Both of them wanted to take over the world, but James didn't have the power to do that. His master, Evil King Stan did, but Stan only seemed interesting in tormenting his slave Ari. He had explained that many times before, and he knew Natasha understood. As he watched her, however, he sensed something different. Instead of his usual response, he asked, "Is something wrong, my sweet?"

Natasha sighed prettily and batted her luxurious lashes. "Oh, Jamie. You know I love you, but I just can't stay with a man who doesn't see himself as anything more than a butler."

James was dumbstruck. He and Natasha had been seeing each other for centuries, and his position as Evil Butler had never bothered her before. It's what he had always done, ever since the Evil King Mortimer had created him.

"But-but…My pet…" James stammered, at a complete loss for words.

Natasha sniffed slightly. "I know, Jamie. But this is something I have to do. Either prove your love for me by taking over the world, or I'll have to leave you."

James opened his mouth to give his usual canned response, then shut it as a thought crossed his mind. "You know," he began slowly. "Master Stanley really isn't the greatest Evil King in history, is he?"

"No, he's not…" Natasha answered, a bit nonplussed by the apparent turn of conversation.

"No, he really isn't. In fact, don't you think I'd make a much better one?"

Natasha squealed with glee. "Oh, Jamie, do you really mean it?"

He nodded emphatically. "All I have to do is knock Stan out of power, and I know just the thing." He chuckled maliciously. "Let him see himself for what he really is. A stupid imbecile."

Together, James and Natasha laughed and planned until well after the moon had risen.

The village of Tenel was a quiet and peaceful place. Nothing bad ever happened. Everyone knew everyone else. Everyone was happy. Life was good.

It's enough to make an honest Evil King sick, thought Stan, the resident Great Evil King. Stan hated Tenel. In fact, the only reason he was there now instead of out conquering the world was because-

"STANLEY HIHAT TRINIDAD! I WILL FIND YOU!"

-he was too busy hiding in a closet from his slave's girlfriend, the once Princess Marlene. She had been so nice and grateful in the beginning, after Stan and Ari and their (well, Ari's) friends had defeated her father and brought an end to Classification. Then she had started to remember all the things she'd had as a princess and wishing she had them back. All the years she had spent hiding in Triste were forgotten in the face of what she considered poverty.

In the beginning, she had actually been relatively polite to Stan. Now…

Now, when she deigns to notice me, she yells! he though angrily. I didn't even do anything to her this time. What on earth is she yelling about anyway?

Apparently, he wasn't the only one who wanted to know. He could hear Annie ask what happened. She sounded way too close for comfort.

Marlene huffed. "Stan's done it again!"

"Done what?" Annie asked. Ari's sister didn't have much in the way of life-preserving instincts.

"What do you think?" Marlene shouted. Stan could almost hear Annie flinch.

"Well…I…uh…think I left something burning…" Annie's footsteps pounded back down the hallway.

She must have better instincts than I gave her credit for, Stan thought with a mental snicker.

Marlene huffed and shouted and stomped around outside Stan's hiding place for several more minutes. Finally, however, she seemed to grow bored and stomped away. Stan stayed where he was for a long time, just in case she hadn't actually left. Suddenly, the door opened.

"You can come out now."

Stan let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "Slave!" he yelled for no reason. "I wasn't hiding!"

"I know," Air said with a shrug and that infuriatingly knowing smile of his.

"I was just making sure that there weren't any ghosts in here."

"Sure, Stan."

"Because I saw one come in here earlier."

"Whatever you say."

"…So where is that girlfriend of yours, anyway?"

The boy stopped smiling in favor of a long-suffering expression with rather exaggerated pain. "Looking for you in the bar."

Stan leaned nonchalantly against the doorframe. "Oh, so that was her yelling a bit ago."

"You'd have to have been deaf not to have heard it," Annie said, poking her head around the corner. "Especially since she was standing right there."

Stan stamped down a retort in favor of an uncaring shrug. "Whatever. If you'll excuse me, I have very important things to attend to now." He brushed past them towards the door to his room.

Once the door was safely slammed shut, Annie chuckled. "Did he really think he was fooling anyone?"

Ari shook his head. "But that's not the point," he answered. "Stan would die before he'd admit that he was hiding in there, especially when he could have blown Marlene to pieces with little more than a thought."

His sister's expression turned thoughtful. "He really doesn't make a very good Evil King, does he?"

He laughed and shook his head. "Just don't let him hear you say that."

In his room, Stan snorted and pulled his ear away from his door. "What does she know, anyway? It's hard work being an Evil King."

"Indeed it is, Master!" James announced brightly.

Stan barely succeeded in repressing a shout and whirled around. "What have I told you about sneaking up behind me?" he demanded.

"Sorry, Master," James said, not sorry in the slightest. "I just couldn't appear in front of you because of the door."

Stan looked at the door then back at James. "Oh, right. So what do you want?"

James grinned hugely. "Does the Master know what today is?"

If looks could kill, Stan's withering glare would have made a wasteland for miles around. "Just tell me. I'm not in a good mood."

James was completely unaffected by the show of malice. He'd seen it before, after all, in much more dangerous forms. He was, however, a bit incredulous. "You don't remember your own birthday?"

Stan opened his mouth, then closed it again. He looked at the calendar, but that was no help because he hadn't changed it for several months. He wasn't even certain it was the proper year anymore. He looked back at James and opened his mouth again. Then he shut it again.

James sighed. "I was afraid of this. Your long time in imprisonment has caused you to forget your own birthday."

"I have other things on my mind," Stan retorted, though he couldn't help but spare a glance at the bottle he'd spent three centuries in. He liked to keep it where he could see it. If it weren't unbreakable, he'd have shattered it long ago.

"It's all right, Master!" James said, his happy mood returning. "James is here to remind you!"

"Oh, joy," Stan muttered.

"And your faithful James brought you a present." Suddenly, he had Stan's complete attention. "Well, actually, it's from me and Natasha." And he lost it again.

Stan didn't like Natasha. He'd never actually met her, but as far as he was concerned, she was the reason James wasn't a very good servant; the ghostly butler spent almost every waking moment with her. He fully expected the present to be something stupid, like clothes with pink flowers on them or something.

James waved his arms, and a puff of smoke brought a tall, oval thing draped with a sheet into the middle of the floor. "Ta-da!"

Stan pulled the sheet away to reveal-

"It's a mirror," he observed bemusedly.

"Ah, ah, Master," James said, waving his finger. "This isn't just a mirror. It's a magic mirror."

The destructive-minded Evil King perked up slightly. "What's it do? Does it destroy things?"

"Oh, it can," James agreed with a mysterious smile that Stan didn't notice.

"Well," Stan demanded impatiently. "How does it work?"

"You just have to stand in front of it."

"What? That's it?" He tilted his head slightly to the left, but his reflection didn't follow the movement. Alarmed, he jerked back and tried to demand to know what was going on, but his reflection reached out and grabbed him. Before he could react further, he was yanked through to the other side. Although he recovered quickly, when he whirled around to move back through, his hands encountered only glass.

The mirror Stan looked around at itself, then looked at James.

"I hope you like your new home," James said, smug. "You'll be there for quite a while."

"James!" Stan shouted. He beat on the glass, yelling, "Let me out of here, now!"

Instead, James glanced at Mirror Stan, who was glaring at him in mild annoyance. "A decent job," he said. "Break it."

Stan, knowing instinctively that the mirror was his only means of escape, became more frantic. The being shrugged, sneered, and lifted its hand to shoot a beam of energy that blew the mirror outward into thousands of pieces beneath Stan's hands.

His hands were bleeding; blood wasn't particularly new to him, as it was to some of the other denizens of what had been jokingly dubbed Marlene's Playground. It was unnerving to see his own, however. Taking a handkerchief from one of his pockets, he tore it in ragged halves and tied them around his hands before turning to survey his location.

Mirror shards littered the floor of a room that was a perfect mirror image of the one he'd left. Glass crunched beneath his boots as he strode across to what should have been the door to the rest of the house. But, although the knob was really there and not just painted onto the door, it didn't turn at all.

He walked back across the room to the window, thinking perhaps he could break it and escape, but it wasn't a real window. Even from right in front of it, the view didn't change. It was like watching a painting that moved; the trees swayed in the breeze and a bird flew by every few minutes or so, but the scene didn't actually change. It was just the same several minutes repeated endlessly. The clock on what could be considered his bedside table was the same way. It counted a certain amount of time, from the time Stan had unveiled the mirror to the time it had been shattered, then it started over.

He strode over to the mirror version of his bottle, intending to take out his aggression by throwing it around, but he couldn't even lift it. It wasn't that it was heavy; the bottle was attached to its table, which was, in turn, attached to the floor.

He backed away until his knees hit something very hard and yelped more from startlement than pain as he fell backward onto the bed. He shouted as his head hit the unyielding surface and sat up quickly. Naturally, a knot began to form.

As he looked around the unchanging environment, he was struck by a sudden realization. "I'm going to go mad."

James nodded with satisfaction. The only thing left of the magic mirror was its charred frame. He looked around the room as though searching for something. "It really was a nice place," he muttered. "Madam fixes the best omelets… Burn it."

Some out of place light on the floor arrested Stan's attention: the mirror shards were glowing red. He picked one up and dropped it with a yelp, then stuck his fingers in his mouth to ward off the unexpected heat. It was several minutes before he understood.

"He's destroyed the mansion…" he muttered as he dropped onto the bed. He wasn't concerned as much about the pointless violence as he was about James' behavior. Such behavior was completely out of character for him.

"That Natasha!" he shouted as inspiration struck. "This is all her fault! When I get my hands on her…" He trailed, unwilling to face the knowledge that he might never escape to claim his revenge.