Thank you for your feedback on the last chapter; I'm glad you all liked it!
Up next is my favourite chapter so far, hope you all enjoy! It's quite long, but I didn't want to split it into two chapters as it would disrupt the flow.
**DO NOT TRY ANYTHING FEATURED IN THIS CHAPTER AT HOME. YOU'LL KNOW WHAT I MEAN IN A FEW MINUTES, TRUST ME.
"Remember, you are to stay on high alert at all times," warned Skulduggery. Valkyrie and Anton were just about to leave for the supermarket, and were now having to endure a lecture from Skulduggery about the dangers of being spotted.
"You are both wanted criminals, so be careful," he added. "If you are spotted, or even remotely recognised, you do not lead them back here, okay? Do not even drive back in this direction. Just cruise around for a bit until you are sure that you've lost them. Remember, leave no traces of yourselves. Do you have everything you need? Anton? Valkyrie? Valkyrie?"
By this point, they had both stopped listening to whatever Skulduggery was going on about, and it was only when he clicked his fingers in front of their faces that they glanced up at him.
"What?" they asked.
"I thought you were listening!" Skulduggery scolded.
"It takes patience to listen, and skill to pretend your listening," said Anton. "I am skilled, but not patient."
Skulduggery sighed. "Do you have everything you need?"
"Yeah," said Valkyrie, and Anton nodded.
"Do you have a form of payment?" asked Skulduggery.
"Yeah, I've got my credit card," said Valkyrie, getting impatient.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, can we just go already?"
Skulduggery stepped forward and gave Valkyrie a hug. He then stepped back and saluted Anton. "Good luck, men," he said.
"For god's sake, we're only going to the shops," muttered Anton, and Valkyrie bolted out of the door, all too eager to get going before Skulduggery found something else to say.
She strolled towards Ghastly's van. They were taking it because the Bentley was too recognisable- no doubt everyone would be on the lookout for it, and the others' flashy sports cars weren't exactly inconspicuous, either. Therefore, they were going in the van.
She got in, and a few seconds later, Anton joined her. They took off, in search of the nearest supermarket.
"They've gone," Skulduggery called to the others, as he stepped back inside the house.
"Now what?" asked Erskine.
"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm hungry," said Saracen. The others looked bewildered.
"You've just eaten a massive breakfast," said Dexter. "Actually, that gives me an idea. I think we should cook lunch today, after Val did dinner last night and breakfast this morning."
There were enthusiastic nods from the others. "Anton already squeezed some fresh orange juice earlier, so that will be his contribution," said Skulduggery. "As the most intelligent of you lot, I will direct you all."
"But you can't even eat!" exclaimed Erskine.
"Oh, don't take life so seriously. You won't get out alive," said Skulduggery nonchalantly.
"What a way to ruin the mood," said Ghastly, as Saracen muttered, "Sarcastic bastard."
"Right, men," began Skulduggery, seemingly in an army officer mood. "Where do your individual skill sets lie?"
"Huh?" asked Erskine.
"What are you good at?" shouted Skulduggery.
"SKULDUGGERY!" yelled Ghastly.
"What?" he replied.
"Calm down! We're only cooking!"
"Oh, you may see it as cooking, but this is a mission. This is a test of how capable we are as men. We do not need Valkyrie and other women in our lives. We. Are. Strong! So I ask you, my brothers, to help me fight for our food. We shall fight the enemy until our doom; we shall fight them in this warehouse, we shall fight them in the Sanctuary, we shall fight them back at my house, but we will never surrender! If you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward. We alone cannot change the world, but we can cast a stone across the waters and create ripples. I have a dream that we will all triumph in the face of evil. We. Will. Succeed!"
Skulduggery looked around him, watching the faces of his fellow Dead Men as his marvellous speech sank in. Just how brilliant was he? Extremely.
None of the others could pull off an astounding speech like that. But wait- they looked... Good god, they looked bored. Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Skulduggery opened his mouth to repeat it, for fear that they had not heard what he had just been saying. True, barely any of it was his own, and he had lost track of it himself at times, but what mattered was that it was good.
"Ahem," said Skulduggery, ready to repeat the speech. "You may see it as cooking, but-"
"-yes, Skulduggery, we did hear you," interrupted Saracen.
"You're taking this all a little too seriously, aren't you, Skul?" asked Dexter.
"Don't call me that," muttered Skulduggery. "Fine," he continued, sulkily, "don't blame me when you all die horrible deaths because you weren't organised."
"Yeah... what happened to all that motivational stuff?" said Saracen.
"You wanna know what my favourite motivational quote is?" asked Erskine.
"Not really, Erskine," said the others, knowing that he was probably going to come out with something that wasn't very motivational at all.
"Well," continued Erskine, ignoring them, "it's that you should always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else."
The others let this sink in. "That's not very motivational at all," frowned Saracen.
"I'm feeling pretty demotivated, guys," said Dexter. "Can we just get on with making lunch before we change our minds?"
"Yeah, that's probably best. What should we make?" asked Ghastly.
"I noticed some sausages amongst the crap that Erskine brought," said Saracen.
"Actually, that's not a bad idea," said Ghastly. "There were potatoes as well, so we could make mashed potatoes-"
"-Bangers and mash!" interrupted Erskine gleefully. He saw Ghastly's withering look, and shut up.
"And we can accompany it all with some veg. I think that'll be enough," Ghastly finished.
"Let's get started then!" said Dexter enthusiastically, and headed into the kitchen, closely followed by the others.
"Do you think they'll prefer apple juice or pineapple juice?" Valkyrie asked Anton. So far, they had nearly finished the shopping, and had picked up a range of supplies, including food, toiletries, leisure items, sports items, cleaning products and other things that looked interesting. All that was left were the drinks. They had managed to find a Tesco in the end, but it had been a one hour drive away, since the warehouse was in such a remote area.
"Pineapple?" suggested Anton, and Valkyrie shrugged and added it to one of the two trolleys they had.
"Sure we'll be able to afford all this?" asked Anton.
"Yeah, I inherited lots, trust me," said Valkyrie casually.
"Thank you, on behalf of the others as well, for using your own personal money to fund our troublemaking," smiled Anton, speaking sincerely.
"It's nothing," she said, honestly. "Do you want anything else to drink?" she asked.
"Not really. We've already got milk and now we have juice... Is there anything you wanted?"
"Well, there was one thing," said Valkyrie, and with that she disappeared off to another aisle, and returned a minute later with a large bottle of chocolate milkshake. She had a massive grin on her face.
"Good choice," Anton chuckled, and she placed it into the trolley and they kept going. Anton liked seeing this side of Valkyrie- the side where she wasn't trying to cover up her emotions, and she was just acting herself. She didn't need to act tough and strong in front of them, but it just came naturally after so many years of doing it with Skulduggery. It was at times like this that he was seeing the real Valkyrie; a beautiful, clever, talented girl, with the mentality of a three year old. Speaking of three year olds...
"I wonder what the others are doing?" mused Anton out loud.
"OH MY GOD, WHAT'S THAT NOISE?" yelled Saracen, as the incessant beeping of the smoke alarm started.
Most of the men, and the skeleton, were in the kitchen, attempting to make sausages, mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. However, that's where it had all gone wrong...
It had started out fine; they made it into the kitchen in one piece, and even managed to find the correct ingredients, which literally were just the sausages, potatoes and vegetables. As easy as this sounded, it was a hard task for them. The next step, however, was working out what to do with it all.
Ghastly had said that the sausages needed to be fried, whereas Saracen had insisted that they needed to soak in hot water instead, although Ghastly tried to argue that it was rice that soaked, not sausages. After a tug of war with a chain of sausages, in which Saracen was victorious (only because Ghastly was distracted by Skulduggery's high pitched rendition of 'Bob the Builder', which he claimed he had already 'performed' to Valkyrie, and she had apparently said it was amazing, which he didn't believe in the slightest), they had put the sausages into a deep pan of water, above a high flame on the gas cooker.
Next, they contemplated the potatoes. It was clear that they had to be mashed, but how? Skulduggery suggested that they just wrapped them in a tissue and walked on them, but Dexter pointed out that they needed to be cooked. So, they decided to put the potatoes in the microwave for half an hour, then take them out and walk on them until they were mashed.
Finally, the vegetables were the tricky ones; Erskine remembered that Valkyrie had said she'd steamed hers, so they decided to copy her and just do that. The only problem was; how do you steam vegetables? Together, Erskine and Skulduggery concluded that they needed something that produced steam, to which Dexter helpfully inputted 'An iron makes steam!' Therefore, Erskine went off to iron the vegetables. Really.
At the moment, the sausages were on the gas, the potatoes were in the microwave, and Erskine was off ironing the vegetables. It was a disaster waiting to happen.
All of a sudden, a bang was heard, and smoke started billowing out of the microwave. Saracen shrieked in surprise, and Skulduggery leapt up, prepared to fight... the microwave.
At the same time, a load of steam started coming out of the pan the sausages were smoking in.
Then, Erskine ran in yelling, "THE VEGETABLES HAVE TURNED BLACK!" with the iron in one hand and a handful of vegetables in the other. Then, as if he had just remembered that he was holding the scorching-hot burnt vegetables, he yelped and went to drop them, but somehow, it seemed as if the command to open his left hand got a bit confused as it was coming from his non-existent brain, and he opened his right hand instead, dropping the iron on the floor. He watched as the iron smashed and became a mess of nuts and bolts, and then dropped the vegetables on top, clutching his hand.
And then, over all the carnage, the smoke alarm started beeping. The men all stopped and looked at each other, wondering how the hell they'd managed to muck it up this badly.
"Anton?" said Valkyrie. The two were now on their way back to the warehouse, having completed all the shopping.
"Yes?" he replied, glancing over at her.
"I have a feeling that the guys have done something stupid," she said.
"Me too," he replied, then added, "I think it would be a good idea to stop at McDonald's."
When they had finally pulled themselves together, Ghastly took charge. First, they needed to turn off the damn smoke alarm. He sent Erskine out to do that, as it was the simplest task. He literally only had to wave a tea towel around it to clear the surrounding air.
However, he managed to go wrong with it. Being unable to reach it, as the ceiling was quite high, Erskine decided to find something to stand on. Then he came to a dilemma- should he get a chair from the kitchen, or should he just drag a sofa out of the living room, seeing as it was closer? Being Erskine, he decided to drag the sofa out of the living room and into the hallway.
This, obviously, was not as easy as it sounded, and it sounded pretty tough. The sofa wouldn't fit through the living room door, so he decided to turn the sofa onto its side, and drag it out that way. He managed to turn the sofa over, but then realised that it was too heavy to push any further; it had taken enough effort already.
When Dexter wandered off to look for Erskine, as he had been gone some time and the smoke alarm was still on and still loud, he found a sofa lodged halfway through the door of the living room, turned the wrong way round, with an idiot sitting on top of it.
Meanwhile, the others were trying to see what had become of the potatoes and sausages. They looked into the pan, to find the sausages black and charred.
They then approached the microwave, and Skulduggery flung open the door. Clouds of smoke rushed out, and the men began coughing until it cleared. They saw that all the potatoes in there had... well, they'd exploded.
The tops were missing on all of them, and had been splattered around the microwave.
"Hey, this one's still intact," said Saracen, noticing a potato that was whole, and had not exploded... yet.
Stupidly, he reached out to poke it, Ghastly and Skulduggery yelling, "Noooooooooooo."
But it was too late.
Saracen poked the intact potato, and it exploded in their faces.
"Guys, we're back!" called Valkyrie. Her and Anton left the shopping in the doorway, and went looking for the others so they could help to carry it in. Although they should have, they didn't expect to see the men in the state that they were in.
The smoke alarm was blaring, and smoke was pouring out of the kitchen.
Erskine was sitting stubbornly on top of a sofa, that was wedged in the doorway of the living room, and had even been flipped the other way round. Dexter was jumping up to the smoke alarm, waving a tea towel around it, trying to turn the damn machine off.
Skulduggery, Ghastly and Saracen were crowded around the microwave, trying to clean the inside of it. The kitchen was full of smoke; half from the cooker, and half from the microwave. For some stupid reason, that Valkyrie and Anton couldn't even begin to guess, there was an iron on the floor, smashed to smithereens. Around it were burnt vegetables. Had some idiot been trying to iron them?
Skulduggery, Ghastly and Saracen heard the two enter the kitchen, and turned. Valkyrie opened her mouth to speak, but couldn't find the words to say. Anton could only raise an eyebrow. A moment later, Valkyrie finally found her tongue.
"WHY THE HELL DOES IT LOOK LIKE A POTATO EXPLODED IN YOUR FACES?"