Author's Note: Voldemort is the property of JK Rowlings, Sauron is the property of the Estate of JRR Tolkien, may his rest be sweet, Duamerthrax the Indestructible is the property of Dead Gentlemen Productions (www.deadgentlemen.com), Morenlithe Falconsbane is the property of Mercedes Lackey, Lord Soth is property of TSR,  and The Ghost Pirate LeChuck is the property of Lucasarts Games, and specifically the Monkey Island concept team.  The Space Hamster Aqueeefel is property of me, as is the 7th Circle of Hell Bar and Grill, and The Bunny (Slipper) From Hell.  But the Bunny From Hell Song is property of whoever on the Malkavian Madness Network wrote it.  Oh yeah, and Starbuck's is property of…probably Satan.  Also…I do NOT condone any of the actions taken in this movie, except going to see the LotR and HP films man,y many times. (:

Two Evil Overlords Walk Into A Bar…

            Darkness covered the quiet anonymous urban alley by the anonymous multiplex.  Two figures, remarkable in their all-encompassing black cloaks, slunk out of different exits, to meet by the dumpster in that anonymous alley.

            "Liked your movie, Voldemort." One of the two figures said, his voice deep and dripping with chained menace.

            "Liked yours too, sssSauron.  Thought you deserved more ssscreen time though." The other figure replied, his voice siblant and eerily high-pitched.

            "So, what shall we do now?  Makes no sense to return to our respective dark realms right away.  After all, neither of us get out much." Sauron, Dark Lord of Mordor, asked, his voice surprisingly friendly when speaking to his fellow villain.

            "We could go to the 7th ssCircle, have a few pints." Voldemort, reborn Dark Wizard and would-be World Conqueror answered.

            "Hmm.  Sounds promising.  Wonder if it's free flaming side of wench night?"

            "Only one way to find out.  ssShould be if old ssSmaug is ssstill working the kitchen."

            "Ah…I miss that dragon.  Dragons do tend to spice up a world.  You're lucky to still have yours…even though they're nowhere near the terrifyingly sentient Great Wyrms that Middle-Earth once had on offer."

            "True, but I find the giantsss more than make up for that…"

            And so, through a rather interesting conversation in comparative minion biology and intelligence, the two Evil Overlords walked the various sub-dimensions that made the path to the 7th Circle of Hell Bar and Grill, a favorite hangout for villains, varlets, evil overlords and general bad guys of all descriptions.

            You might expect such a prestigious hangout for villains to be guarded by a venomous giant serpent, or a hideous ogre, or a demon…or at least a decent Ringwraith.  However, there was no guard, and not even a sign announcing to the unwary that they were about to descend into the Pit of Ultimate Evil.  Nope.  Instead, there was merely a plain door in some sprawling metropolis in one of the infinite realms of fantasy that writers have discovered over the years.

            As Sauron and Voldemort passed through said non-distinct door, they passed from the darkness of the filthy metropolis to the most evil place imaginable…a Starbuck's.

            "What?" Sauron and Voldie exclaimed together. "What happened here?"

            "What happened to the dark, oozing stone walls?"

            "What happened to the hand-carved tabless made from the boness of a thousand heroess?"

            "What happened to the Mosh Pit of Hellfire?"

            "What happened to the pink velvet window treatmentss?"

            Sauron shot Voldie a black look. "Anyway, someone had better answer for this!"

            Just at that moment, a gargantuan hamster, massive in proportions and in that typical dirty-cage reek, approached the two dumbfounded villains.

            "Ah, Welcome to The 7th Circle of Hell Bar and Grill, a wholly owned Subsidiary of Starbuck's coffee." The hamster said, sitting back on its' haunches and folding its' little paws over its' hideously fat chest. "I am Aqueeefel, He of Unnecessary Vowels, Destroyer of Planets and Farter-Onner of Dieties."

            "Which means…what to us?" Sauron asked irritably.

            "Which means I'm the new manager, Red-Eye."  Aqueeefel shot back. "By the way, I can get you some Visine for that if you want…"

            Voldemort put a long white hand to his mouth, and snickered quietly.  Sauron sent his burning glare towards Voldie, who did his best to look innocent. 

"Hahahahahaha!" came a laugh from somewhere…down.  The laugh was high-pitched, annoying, and…cute.  Both evil overlords looked down to try and find the source of that laugh, which was making them both shudder. "Visine!  That was a good one, Qee!" the annoying voice continued, still snickering between words.

Both peeved Dark Lords looked down to the feet…paws…appendages of Aqueeefel.  On one of his fat lower paws was a gigantic pink fuzzy bunny slipper, with pink bows tied by its' ears, and huge button eyes that glowed eerily red.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?" Sauron and Voldie exclaimed together, stepping back and clutching each other in terror.  That much sheer, horribly overstated cute was too much for them.

"Exactly!" the Bunny Slipper replied, its' voice made all the more eerie by the fact that it had no mouth to speak with. "I am the BUNNY (slipper) FROM HELL!!! I have my own theme song and everything! Fear me, O Evil Overlords! Aahaahaahaahaa!"

"Betcha the Starbuck's was his idea." Voldie whispered to Sauron, who nodded agreement.

Before the two perturbed Evil Overlords could do anything, music filled the air.  It was as if someone had taken Switchblade Symphony, and mercilessly exposed them to a 12-hour bastardized and badly dubbed Anime marathon.  In short, happy and cute met eerie and Goth with a clash that could be heard three dimensions away.

"The Bunny From Hell, The Bunny From Hell" the cutsey-goth band sang with undisguised fear and loathing in their eyes and voices "is going to kill you all!  The Bunny from Hell! The Bunny From Hell! Regardless of Great or Small!  He'll chew on your flesh, he'll suck on your bones, he'll charge you high interest on Equity Loans!  The Bunny From Hell, The Bunny From Hell is going to kill you all!"

"Have a seat at the bar, gentlemen.  Smaug makes a great biscotti baker, mice and crispy you know."  The Space Hamster said, as the Bunny (slipper) From Hell tapped in time with its' theme song.

"Right." Voldie said, giving Sauron a little nod.

"Byyyeee…" Sauron added, giving a four-fingered wave.

But before our two oppressed villains could make a run for the exit, they each feel a surprisingly strong paw on a shoulder.  Aqueeeefel tsked sadly.  "Now, now boys.  We can't have our biggest potential moneymakers leaving without sampling the wares!"

"Biggest…" Sauron began, eyeing the hamster, and his fellow villain, worriedly.

"Money-makerss?" Voldie finished.  His thoughts were full of a life of slavery, drudgery, daily beatings, and sex with anonymous well-paying partners.  Above all, sex with anonymous well-paying partners.  The area on his face where his eyebrows probably used to be raised, as he eyed the bar for his first client.

"No, not like that you albino snake in drag!" the Bunny (slipper) from Hell fumed.  "You sit, you drink and eat, and WE get to put up signs that say 'The Dark Lord Of Mordor' Sat Here, or, in your case 'He Who Forgot His Name Sat Here'.  Promotions, get it?"

"It'ss HE WHO MUSssT NOT BE NAMED, you button-eyed monstrosity!" Voldemort fumed, bending over to confront the Slipper.

"Best not bend over in a place like this, pal." A voice from somewhere in the dark corners of the "bar" said.

Voldemort stood up at once.  He and Sauron shared a moment of panic, looking around to see what ELSE the 7'th Starbuck's Of Hell had in store for them.

They both breathed a sigh of relief as they saw it was only a demon.  He looked much like you'd expect a demon to look, tall, menacing, red skin, horns, fangs, elongated chin that would make Jay Leno sweat.  He was clad in a snazzy gray suit and matching hat, and had his feet propped up on a table.

"One of yours, Voldmort?" Sauron asked in a low voice.

Voldmort shook his head. "Ever since I saw what happened to your Balrog, I vowed not to work with demonss anymore.  Too unreliable."

"Then how dare you address us, you UNDERLING?" Sauron fumed, rising like a black shadow in his wroth.

"Heh.  Underling schumnderling buddy.  I ain't NOBODY'S Underling.   I'm the star of two feature-length motion pictures!  Better'n both of you."

"Films directed by….students." a silken voice from another dark corner commented.

"I told you to stop that, pussy-boy!  They're Indie.  Not big-budget sellouts like those two!" the demon gestured to the two dumbfounded Evil Overlords.

"Hmph.  Well…gentlemen…want to hear how Duamerthrax the…" the voice laughed cruelly "Indestructible got killed in his second…film?"

"Do we have a choice?" Voldmort and Sauron muttered together.

"He was ran over by a soon-to-be-defrocked Demon Hunter and his weenie boy sidekick in a VW Bus." The voice said, an obvious smirk in its' tone.

"Oh yeah? And want to hear how Morenlithe Falconsbane, star of NO FILMS at all, died at the end of his third book?" the demon shot, rising to his classily-shod feet.

The voice in the other corner emerged from the shadows.  Its' owner was a rather…striking individual, seeming half-man, half cat, all sex. "Don't you dare" Falconsbane hissed, baring rather pretty white fangs.

"Oh shut up you sexually confused bag of cat hair." Duamerthrax laughed. "Anyway, kitty-litter breath was defeated by a fifteen-year-old, a half-trained mage, another mage, this one three-quarters trained, and his own daughter."

"You forget the Avatars and the gryphons…damn those gryphons!" Falconsbane spat.

"Eh, excuses excuses.  Always the gryphons.  Et me a gryphon once.  Tasted like virgin!"

Meanwhile, Voldemort and Sauron were staring at the two bantering badguys.  Voldemort, being from a fairly modern era and having had Wormtail to keep him up on his leisure reading, knew about Falconsbane from the works of Mercedes Lackey.  But seeing as neither one of them lived in the Pacific Northwest, they had no idea who in the Hell (or out of it) Duamerthrax T. Indestructible was.  With seemingly no choice, they let the two continue a debate that had obviously been going on for quite some time, and sat at the bar.

"Arr ye scurvy dogs, what can I get ye?" a rather bad piratey accent asked.

Voldie and Sauron swiveled around on their stools.  Before them was a figure that seemed to be constantly circulating between a pirate-shaped mass of glowing blue light, to a flesh-rotted zombie, to a firey-bearded demon Pirate.  Voldmort reached over and put Sauron's jaw back at the proper level.  It was perilously close to hitting the bar in shock.

"And….you are?" Sauron asked, still in a state of partial paralysis from the series of nasty shocks that had smacked him and Voldie upside the chops. 

"Arrr…I be the Ghost/Zombie/Demon Pirate LeChuck, master of disguise, theme-park building and other infermal powers!" the morphic barkeeper said with a little bow.

"Riiiiight." Was all the two befuddled villains could muster.

"Ye two look a bit shell-shocked.  If it weren't for the fact that my good friend Ozzie Mandrill, he's a dead land developer you know, really owns this place, and I be firmly indoctrinated inta the evil that is Starbuck's, I'd be a mite numb too." LeChuck commented, leaning on the bar in a friendly-barkeeper-type way.

"No talk.  Serve drink."  Voldmort commanded.

"Strong…hallucinogenic…" Sauron mumbled.

LeChuck began mixing up the House Specials, Pan-Galactic Gargleblasters…Starbuck's Style.  Since I know the Space Hamster and his slipper will come by if I give away the recipe, I'll just say it has enough caffeine to keep a herd of elephants awake for a week, and enough "special" ingredients to indeed make it hallucinogenic. Merenlithe and Duamerthrax were having a knockdown, drag-out among the tables, with the other doomed spectators watching and placing bets.  The poor doomed ex-Goth band was trying its' best to continue playing.

"We chose between hell and this place" one of them could be heard singing under their breath "and I think they sent us to Hell by mistake."

Suddenly, the door to the "outside world burst open.  A bank of fog seemed to envelop the entryway, swallowing up a few sleeping evildoers and their chairs, and tables.  A figure in black armor, with what seemed to be a black bucket on his head, came charging through the Mists.  With his last step out, the mists were gone, taking the sleepers, chairs and tables with it.

"I'M FREE!  OH BLESSED TAHKISIS, I'M FREE!!!!" the figure screamed exultantly, falling to his knees.  After a moment of overwhelming bliss, he looked around.  "I escaped Ravenloft for THIS?"

THE END

What will happen next?  Will Lord Soth discover that Ravenloft was preferable to the 7th Starbuck's Of Hell? Will Sauron and Voldie ever agree to do an endorsement?  Will Duamerthrax and Falconsbane EVER shut up?  Give me enough good reviews and I'll write a sequel!