Disclaimer: OHMYGOONESS. I haven't updated this since 2008 and aaaaaagh, you don't know how much I missed this. I also have this other story/chat thing for Soul Calibur called "Soul Calibur Chat Rooms… of DOOM*?" and they were pretty silly. I haven't worked on either in forever. And to be honest… my writing style has change a lot over the last few years, and I've forgotten a lot of what I had planned. I might have the old files saved to a disc (I had titles and plots figured out for the rest of the series…) But I think I'm going to just wing it and do whatever. I've been in a fan fiction-y mood lately and this will be my first project. I read all your reviews and I was all, "AAAAWWWW. THEY LOOOOVE MEEEEE." But really, you just love me for my brain. Which is better than loving me for my body, I guess…

Anyway, I don't own Soul Calibur (oh! It feels so nice to say that again!) and please just don't sue me. I missed you all, and I hope you log on sometime after I post this so you can see I've updated (and improved!)

Aaaaaand just for me (and also you) here's a quick list of the team that live in Ostrheinsburg Castle: Talim, Siegfried, Yunsung, Seung-Mina, Taki, Maxi, Curry the Monkey, Ocladan, Cloud (in the hallway closet), Cassandra, Ivy, Kilik, Xianghua, Rock, Sophitia, Setsuka… and I think that's it. If I forgot someone, I'm sorry… But those are the ones that are important. (Mitsurugi? Yoshimitsu? Maybe? Hilde will also be added later on… Because this story was started before SC4 came out.)

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Chapter Twenty-Five: Maxi's Accident

The short brunette girl with a 38C chest, glasses and a rainbow belt of +5 awesome stood in front of the sorry excuse for a team, who all looked ashamed, looking at their feet and fiddling with their thumbs or strands of hair. Her arms were crossed and her foot was tapping the stone floors of Ostrheinsburg Castle. Her shoes were unusual to the team, but they knew better than to question them. They wanted to question all of her, from her T-shirt with a little orange bear in a red shirt to her blue trousers made of some weird material with sparkly designs on the legs, but they feared that if they opened their mouths, this feisty little thing would rip their tongues out and feed them to the guy in the closet with the spiky hair.

"Now, I know I've neglected you for a few years, but that's no excuse for what you did. I thought I raised you all better than this? How… ugh. I can't even talk about it…." She said, her hands coming up to massage her temples. The team exchanged nervous glances.

A hand meekly rose into the air, and everyone's eyes widen in fear at the pathetic soul who was dumb enough to do such a thing.

"What is it, Maxi?" The girl asked, giving up the attempt to rid herself of the headache.

Maxi let his hand fall back into his lap, and tried to meet the eyes of the others, who all quickly looked away - either back at their feet, the ceiling or Curry the monkey, who was sitting on the floor by Taki. Even the monkey knew better than to make eye contact.

"I-I want… I would like to… uhm…." he gulped, wringing his hands. "I want to take all responsibility for what happened. Because, well.. It was my fault. And… I'm sorry…?"

The girl's face didn't flinch from it's emotionless state. Oh, she knew Maxi was the cause of all this, and she had to give him kudos for speaking up and admitting it, but she wasn't in much of a forgiving mood today. She sighed, turned away from the team and walked into the hallway. They heard her opening the hallway closet door and talking to Cloud, what exactly it was they were unsure, but she sounded less angry. There was some scuffling around and then the girl returned carrying in a large body bag at one end and Cloud helping with the other. They set the bag down and she tossed a Scooby Snack in his general direction - which he leaped into the air to catch and then scurried off to the closet again.

"Maxi," the girl said, stepping forward to single out the Elvis-wannabe better. "Do you know what this is?"

He looked down at the bag and then back up at the girl. "… the… accident…?"

The girl smiled, and a chill went through the entire team. "That's right. The accident. Your accident. Should we open it to refresh the memories of the rest here?" She started to lean down to unzip it, but everyone leapt up and yelled a resounding "NO!" which halted her descent. She straightened and pushed her glasses back up her nose. "Well, then how about you tell the class what you did, Maxi? I'd love to hear it again."

The pirate looked down at his lap and bit his lip. "I, uhm… I killed that one guy…"

"That's right. You killed 'that one guy' who just so happens to be our main rival in this little adventure. It escapes me how you were able to single-handedly do this, and really, we should be thanking you, but you did something very bad, which is what brings us here. What will we do now that Nightmare is dead? Oh, and wait. What was that other thing?" She said, sarcasm oozing out of her pores. "Soul Edge is missing! Oh, joys upon joys! Now instead of getting all our allies together and having an epic battle and offing Nightmare then and there and taking Soul Edge to destroy, we now have to search the globe for it. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Maxi had nothing to say for himself. He hadn't meant to kill Nightmare. It just sort of… happened.

Another hand slowly came up and the girl nodded at them to speak.

"Why don't we just ask the guy in the closet for one of those things that bring you back to life?" Siegfried asked. "Those always worked before."

"You want to know why? Because for some reason you all can't stay alive for more than two days. He's out, and isn't planning on buying anymore for a while. Plus, I told him not to. You all need to learn a lesson that life is short. So be careful, and don't make me angry. Because if you do, I will write you out of this story faster than you can say, 'plot twist.' I'm going to leave this here for you to decide what to do with, because frankly, I'm fed up. Just watch yourself." The girl made sure to give a disapproving look to each of them (and a failed wink at Siegfried) before turning on her heel and storming out of the castle, off to where-ever it is authors live.

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The team sat in silence, all eyeing the body bag in front of them. Curry was a bit curious, but new better than to poke his nose in this kind of business, and stayed near Taki, who was glaring at Maxi. Eventually, all eyes fell on him and turned into glares. Maxi squirmed in his seat.

"Well, I personally think you should dispose of the body, Maxi. Because as much as I hate Nightmare and wanted him dead and gone, I wanted to do it myself," Siegfried huffed, leaning back in his chair and giving him his best epic pout face. Many of the others agreed with this and all watched as Maxi stood up and grabbed a corner of the body bag and pulled it out into the hallway, where he heard Cloud playing something with a cute little tune and weird noises when people talked. He peeked in and saw a little spiky hair person on the tiny TV running around with a net and hitting animals wearing clothes on the heads and picking weeds and eating fruit. Weirdo.

He continued hauling the body outside, where a new lawn had been laid in place of the pool that had met a disastrous end in a reenactment of Titanic. Maxi dropped the end he had been pulling and looked around for a shovel. Would he have to dig a grave with his bare hands?

A little voice spoke up from behind him, "Maxi? Do you want some help?" It was Talim, of course, because who else is forgiving and nice and amazing? She had a little gardening spade in her hands. "I don't know what happened to the shovel, but I have this…" She offered it and Maxi grumbled and accepted it. This would take forever, but with this, that meant Talim would have to dig with her hands and he could stay clean.

The two set to digging, and by dark only managed to get a three foot deep grave. They said that was probably okay, and if wild animals dug him up, whatever. He was a bad guy, after all, and there was nothing good about him. They dropped the body bag into the hole and Maxi gave a little salute and Talim tried humming a little song, but the two realized what they were doing and just kicked the dirt back into the hole until the body of Nightmare was covered.

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"UGH. THAT BASTARD!" Ivy yelled, throwing a priceless vase across the room that then shattered against a wall. Siegfried died a little inside. "Not only did he kill Nightmare, he also got the Author involved. I was about to pee my pants; I thought she was going to just kill us all then and there."

"You're not wearing pants…" Taki said, flipping through a book. Her comment was only heard by a few since Yunsung and Kilik began talking over her.

"We should kill him!" "Let's go buy some Phoenix Downs!" "Cloud will know where!" "Okay!" The two skipped off down the hall to try and haggle with him for the information.

"Well, whatever we do," Seung-Mina said, standing up to address the remaining team. "We need to do it soon. If we don't have a plot, who will want to read this?"

"… what are you talking about? Read us?" Sophitia squinted at the strange girl (why did her sister pick such weird people to be friends with?) Taki's eyes widened and quickly closed the book. She suspected they were reading them through the books in the house. She quickly got up and collected the few leather-bound novels in the room and left to find a safe place to burn them.

"I'm not entirely sure," she said, watching Taki leave. Mina shrugged. "I don't know. Whatever. Just… forget it. I'm not feeling well… I… I'm going to go… wash my hair or something?" The bad character was then shunned by the author for almost giving away the fantasy of a story.

Rule 1 of fan fiction: Don't talk about fan fiction.

Rule 2 of fan fiction: Don't talk about fan fiction.

Rule 3 of fan fiction: Keep things going, even when things don't go your way because of some idiot character who decided to do whatever he felt like and ruining everything and landing you in hot water (and not a hot tub or hot spring, either. A boiling vat of water meant for lobsters.)

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For the rest of the evening, things were awkward in the castle. The team tried to just avoid each other for a while so they could think up a new battle plan to find that sword when the one guy who knew its location was buried in their backyard. Maxi was shunned and eventually Mina was allowed to come back and resume her role as the crazy lady (or the Laughing Demon.)

The doorbell rang and they all stopped what they were doing, wherever they were. Was it the author? Was it one of their enemies come to claim Nightmare's body? Was it the pizza Ocladan ordered?

Siegfried, being the owner of the castle, hesitated at the door, but slowly opened it a crack and peeked out, only to be greeted by two breasts covered in armor. "HELLOOOOOOOOOO NUR-" He was promptly knocked out and the team all hurried to see what made Siegfried make a lame Animaniacs reference.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Aha! Finally! A new chapter! Yay! And I'm sure you can guess who it is. Who else wears armor and has boobs? Wait… there are actually a few…. Hmm… Whatever.

Let me know what you think of the new style of writing (because it's how I write now and you better like it.) And if there's anything you've ever wanted to see happen in this story, tell me and I'll most likely include it. I need ideas, and my sister is at class right now, so I have to wait till later tonight for her brain. I'll be starting the next chapter after I post this, but if I get your review before I finish, I might include a piece here and there. And then in other chapters (also, to add those character in the Chronicles of the Sword story? I really liked it, but I dunno if those characters really have a place in here…)