"Heavy, I don't know about this," the RED Engineer said to his large compatriot, RED Heavy.

"No. You have fun. Trust me," Heavy replied, waddling towards the door of the Inventory.

"Well, alright…" Engineer said, shrugging. He didn't know why he was letting himself get talked into going to that club Heavy always disappeared to Thursday nights. Probably because everyone else on RED was a terrible poker player except Sniper, who was usually busy with kidney therapy on poker night.

The two members of RED team walked up to the blood stained door of the Inventory and waited for the secret elevator to take them down. The elevator nearly buckled under the two men's combined weight, but it served well enough. They were successfully lowered into the club, and the two men took a second to admire the lavish surroundings. They quickly grew bored of that and moved downstairs to Heavy's usual poker table.

"Bunny! Good to see you!" Heavy greeted a small rabbit-like thing sitting at the table. "Who is everyone else?"

"Ah, Mr. Weapons!" the rabbity thing replied. "This is the fresh meat. And Gabe."

"Hi," Gabe said, waving to Heavy and Engineer.

"But first, who's your friend? Is this the Engineer you've told us so much about?"

"Yes, the same one that beat enemy Demoman to death with wrench, saving my life. He is credit to team!" Heavy announced, slapping his pal on the back.

"Um, hi… Bunny, was it?" Engineer replied, scratching the back of his head.

"Max. Call me Max, or I'll bite your leg off," the rabbitoid abomination replied.

"…Ok," Engineer said, slightly horrified.

"Anyway, here's the fresh meat. This is Coach Z, an acquaintance of Strong Bad's," Max said, waving to the manlike thing in green seated at the table.

"Hi, how are ya?" Coach Z said casually. Engineer like his accent and hospitality, but found his odor horribly repulsive.

"And that guy over there is… uh, I don't think I caught your name…" Max said whilst absentmindedly waving towards the creepy looking guy at the other end of the table.

"Scarecrow. Call me Scarecrow," the creepy man responded with a wheezy laugh. Everyone nodded so as not to offend the terrifying new guy.

"Well, I think everyone's here," Max said cheerily, clapping his hands. "Let's get this show on the road!"

"Not so fast," the Host of the Inventory stated, walking up to the table. "There is still one player unaccounted for."

"Who?" Scarecrow asked, seemingly raising an eyebrow. It was hard to tell with his mask.

"Me," I said, walking into the Inventory like a boss.

Everyone else stood staring.

"Um, who invited the freak in the superhero outfit?" Engineer whispered to Heavy.

"I do not know. I blame Gabe," Heavy responded.

"No, I'm not with Gabe. I am the writer of this fic, and as such, I get to be in it," I said with a giant wave of my hand. All of the players at the table shrugged and made room.

"All right," I said, taking my seat. "Let's get this show on the road!"

"Um… the blinds are 100, 200. Buy in is ten thousand dollars," the Host announced, a little flabbergasted at the sudden arrival of me.

"Aw crap, I don't have that much. How's about I just throw in some deodorant and call it even?" Coach Z asked the Host, pulling out the inside of his pockets to emphasize his point.

"Sure, fine," the Host replied. Coach Z fist pumped and set three cans of deodorant on the table. One of them appeared to be half empty. "Max, I see you've bought in with your gun… again."

"Yep!" Max chirped merrily.

"Alright, whatever. Let the tournament begin!" the Host announced before leaving to do stuff that was much more interesting.

I was winning. I was winning a shipoopton of money. Even better, being the writer, I enabled Marty Stu powers so I won every hand (except for a few I gave to Engineer, to make it seem like I wasn't cheating the whole time) and everyone still liked me.

"Damn it, I lose every hand, but for some reason I still find myself enjoying this man's company," Gabe announced after folding an awful hand.

"I know! It seems like I want to strangle him, and then I think of how he can do no wrong and I start wanting to get a cappuccino with him!" Max replied, folding his slightly less awful hand.

"Well, hey. I'm a lucky guy… who isn't cheating. Oh, look, another four of a kind," I said, raking in another five thousand dollars.

"Heavy Weapons Guy is suspicious," Heavy said, eyeing me.

"No you're not," I replied.

"You're right! Suddenly I find myself wanting to become everything you stand for!" Heavy announced. I pulled back my Marty Stu powers. Even when cheating at a poker game, I had to limit the use of my powers. Man was not meant to have Marty Stu powers…

"Now I find myself merely liking you in friendly way a lot," Heavy said, rubbing his temple. Bingo, perfect level of Marty Stu power.

"Yeah, partner, you seem to win a lot of hands," Engineer said, looking me in the eye.

"I'm lucky, what can I say?" I responded, placing my minimum bet into the pot. Everyone folded.

"Huh. Okay. So, Scarecrow, what brings you to the Inventory?" I asked the straw man. He was leaning on his chair and inspecting his Freddy Krueger glove.

"What? Oh, yeah, I don't know how I got here. One minute I'm fear gassing some roaches, the next I'm sitting in the alley outside this place. Seemed alright, so I stayed for the game," Scarecrow replied, fixing one of his glove's plungers.

"Cool. So, let's keep the game going…" I said, clasping my hands together in anticipation of more money.

Then, the lights went out.

There was a rustling of bodies, a general sense of confusion, and a loud cry of pain.

Afterwards, the lights came back on. All of the poker players looked around the table.

"Where did Little Bunny and Straw Man go?" Heavy asked the remaining players.

"I don't know partner, but all of the money's gone, and the charismatic guy's dead!" Engineer replied, pointing at the corpse of Shadowelecman. A knife was sticking predominantly out from his back, and there was more blood then realistically possible shooting from the wound.

"Holy crapoli! This is highly unexpecterated!" Coach Z yelled. He flailed his arms around before settling on grasping his hat and looking panicked.

"Look, I'm sure there's an explanation," Gabe called out, eyeing the inside of the club.

"Yeah. Someone hated this guy, liked his money, flicked off the lights, killed him, and took the loot," Engineer said, looking at the remaining three men at the table. "So, my guess is that either Max or that Scarecrow guy did it. I suggest we look around and try to find them. I'll go with Heavy and search downstairs. You two check around down here."

"You got it! Let's go, Coach," Gabe said dutifully.

"Well, this is better than watching the entire third season of Gilmore Girls like I had planned, so okay! Let's do it!" Coach Z replied. The man and whatever Coach Z was went to the corner of the Inventory's main room and began poking behind curtains.

"Alright Heavy, let's go see what we can find," Engineer beckoned.

"Yes! Let us find dirty coward!" Heavy replied. The two men bounded up the stairs of the Inventory, searching for answers.

Gabe and Coach Z crept around the bottom floors of the Inventory.

"Yipes, this place is creepin' me out!" Coach Z announced, grabbing hold of a fork.

"Yeah, it is a little too quiet…" Gabe responded, reaching for a nearby bottle of whiskey.

The two people crept up to the last curtain they had to check and prepared their makeshift weapons. "On the count of three. One, two…"

They whipped open the curtain and smashed their improvised weapons on whatever was lying inside. "Oh crap! It's Max! We murderized 'im! We're killers!" Coach Z cried out in despair.

"No, no, Max has a knife sticking out of his ribs. We didn't kill him. We just mutilated his corpse," Gabe replied nonchalantly.

"Oh. Ok," Coach Z replied. "Wait, Max is dead! The intrigue! It kills me!"

"Oh, crap, he is dead! What do we tell the others?" Gabe asked Coach Z. The Coach shrugged before they heard a loud noise coming from upstairs.

"Quick! Grab another bottle of whiskey and let's go!" Coach cried out to Gabe.

"No, I think I'll smash this vodka instead. Much less valuable," Gabe replied, inspecting a bottle of vodka.

"Whatever, let's go!" Coach Z responded frantically. The pair bounded up the stairs.

"Engineer! Come here!" Heavy called out to his teammate. "I have found something!"

Engineer walked over to where Heavy was pointing and gasped.

"Blood stains! And they lead into this room!" Engineer said, pointing to a hidden room behind a half-closed bookshelf.

The two RED team members followed the trail into the secret room. What they saw horrified them.

It was the BLU Spy, laughing at the Host. He was tied up in front of a target. Spy was posed to perform his fencing taunt, an instant kill.

"You won't get away with this!" the Host cried out.

"Hah hah! I believe I will, fat man!" the Spy responded, laughing devilishly.

"No, I mean…" the Host started to say, but he was interrupted by the Spy performing his taunt and slashing him across the throat.

"NO! That man raised the blinds!" Engineer cried out in horror. He reached over towards Heavy and picked up the fat man.

"Engineer, what…" was all Heavy could get out before Engineer used him like a bludgeon to beat the Spy with.

"Ow! Stop! Pain! Bones! Breaking! Why! Are! You! So! Fat!" the Spy cried out in the gaps of time where Engineer was not pressing Heavy's massive form against Spy's pencil-thin frame.

By this point Spy was basically a bloody mess in the middle of the floor. He twitched pathetically, but was still alive. Engineer was about to smack him with Heavy again, but Coach Z and Gabe ran into the room.

"Guys! We heard the crash! What's up! Oh, yeah, Max is dead too!" Gabe called out to the enraged Engineer.

"What!" Engineer yelled. He dropped Heavy on Spy.

"Oof! Thanks, Engineer!" Heavy called to his friend.

"Get off of me please," Spy groaned weakly from beneath the Heavy's mighty girth.

"NO!" Heavy called out with a silly looking grin.

"Well, don't that beat all! Max is dead, and we still don't know where Scarecrow is!" Engineer griped in despair.

"I wonder where he is?" Gabe wondered out loud. He was about to say it was a rhetorical question, but Engineer was already going on a tangent.

"Well, that Shadow guy seemed to have some weird powers. And Scarecrow mentioned he came from another universe. So, it's only logical that somehow, the superhero partner's death must've sent Scarecrow back to where he came from," Engineer speculated. The others nodded because the techno babble sounded suitably intelligent to them.

"Alternatively, I'm right here," Scarecrow replied, undermining the intelligence Engineer was busy exhibiting.

"What? What were you doing for the last twenty minutes?" Coach Z asked the confused Scarecrow.

"I was busy pooping," Scarecrow replied calmly.

"For twenty minutes?" Engineer asked Scarecrow, raising an eyebrow.

"This costume is hard to take off," was Scarecrow's only reply. Everyone agreed that this was probably safe to assume, and nodded in unison that his alibi was good.

"Um, comrade Engineer?" Heavy said to his friend from RED.

"What?" Engineer answered.

"Spy is missing from beneath my girth," Heavy noted, pointing towards the exit.

With an impressively evil laugh, Spy decloaked and pushed out from the room. The five remaining poker players ran after him, but Spy was too fast. He was about to escape, but as he opened the elevator a black fist socked him across the jaw and floored him. Everyone stood in stunned silence.

"Shadowelecman! You're alive!" Gabe cried out in shock.

"Well, yeah. What up?" I said to the confused patrons of the Inventory.

"But, we saw your corpse! There was blood spurting from it and everything!" Scarecrow yelled in confusion.

"Yeah, but, dude, I'm genre savvy. I always keep an extra life on my person, sheesh. Do I seem like a moron?" I said, brushing off my shoulder. Everyone else was forced to agree I was very intelligent because of my Marty Stu Powers, but they all still seemed confused.

"But what about Bunny? Is he okay?" Heavy asked.

"Max? Yeah, it's impossible to kill him in his games, except with cutscenes. He's probably doing fine, just poke the corpse," I replied. We all went down to where Max's body lay and poked it incessantly. Within seconds, Max sputtered back to life.

"Ow, my head. What's in my ribs? Oh, knife, charming. Hey, Am I covered in whiskey?" a dazed Max asked the poker players.

"Hooray! Everyone is okay!" Heavy proclaimed, holding BLU Spy across his shoulder.

"Yep! But Spy, why did you do it? Why did you attempt to kill this great guy who up until recently I wanted to kill?" Engineer asked the Spy.

"I don't know, I just walked towards the Inventory, expecting to meet Scout's mother, and boom! Some guy shows up and offers me a ton of money to stab this guy. So I did it. It wasn't worth getting sat on by the fat man here, though," Spy replied indignantly.

"Of course! I didn't know he was there, so my Marty Stu powers didn't affect him!" I muttered to myself, making a mental note in order to avoid future stabbings.

"Well, I'm glord that's all settled," Coach Z said. Everybody laughed.

"One question though," Gabe pointed out. "Is the Host okay?"

"Wait, the Host got killed?" I asked, surprised. "I don't remember writing that!"

"What?"

"Nothing," I replied shiftily.

"Well, I bumped into him on the way upstairs. So I grabbed him and stuff so he didn't tell announce the invisible man's presence. Based on the logic that saved Max, he's probably fine," Spy replied.

"Am I?" the Host asked, pointing Max's Luger at everyone.

He fired a shot into Spy's head. Spy collapsed with a dignified, "Oh, for the love of…"

"Now, I want to play a little game," the Host announced to the poker players.

"Um, what?" everyone asked nervously.

"It is the next game in the Inventory series, old chaps," the Host said with a wicked grin.

We all stared at him with blank expressions.

"Um, you know? That hidden sound file? Max, you're in that, right?" the Host said, trying to jog our memories. We all looked at Max, but he didn't seem to know anything.

"Oh, for the love of, the game is Murder at the Inventory! We're all going to play a bout of Murder at the Inventory!" the Host yelled angrily.

"Sounds awesome! Oh, wait, we're in the Inventory and he has a gun. Decidedly not awesome!" Gabe cried out in panic.

"MHWA HA HA! NOW, GOOD BYE, YOU SICKENING FOOLS!" the Host roared. He reached for a detonator and pushed the large red button.

Things exploded all around. Everything went red and white. All of us went blind.

When we all woke up, we were lying on the ground, miraculously unharmed. The Host was walking down the stairs with a dazed look on his face.

"I say, whatever am I doing with Max's gun? And why is there a rapidly healing slash mark on my chest?" the confused Host wondered.

"Is everyone alright?" I asked everyone unfortunate enough to be at the Inventory that night.

Everyone seemed to be fine. We all brushed ourselves off and looked around.

"Well, I'm glad that nightmare's over," Engineer said to no one in particular. "Heavy, this place seems okay, but if Shadowelecman or Scarecrow shows up again, we bail."

"Da. Is best," Heavy agreed. Everyone laughed again.

"Say, I have one last question," Max wondered.

"Shoot," I replied.

"My gun's accounted for, which is nice, but what happened to the rest of our money?"

All of us stood with blank faces. We looked at Spy.

"Don't look at me, my wallet is missing too," he replied, emptying his pockets.

"Hey, wait, weren't you shot in the head?" Coach Z asked Spy.

"Yes, why?" Spy replied.

"Your gunshort wound's missing from your face," Coach Z pointed out.

"Now that I think 'bout it, the Inventory's still standing. Shouldn't it've blown sky high?" the Engineer asked.

All of us wondered about this confusing turn of events, before the Host finally noticed, "By the way, where is that gentleman dressed similar to a scarecrow? I don't see him about."

I looked at the elevator. "No."

We all looked over and watched as the elevator ascended to the street.

"GODDAMMIT!" we all cried out.

Scarecrow was having a pretty good day.

True, he had been ripped from his universe and forced to play poker with a bunch of weirdoes. But he had successfully convinced that man with the knife and mask to kill one of the players so he could set up fear gas bombs inside the Inventory's bathrooms. True, he hadn't expected the death of the rabbit thing or the Host. And he hadn't expected them all to come back unharmed. But, the deed was done. The bombs had detonated without a hitch. He had stolen off with all of their loot. Even the Host and the Spy had been hoodwinked, he thought to himself as he felt the weight of the two wallets added to his bag.

"I love this town," Scarecrow grinned as he jumped back into the portal to Gotham City. "Say, why does this bag smell like deodorant?"