Tom panted heavily as he hid himself within the darkness of the rental-building's small basement of which had primarily been used for storage over the past decade. His panicked breaths were just as shaky as the hand of which he had been using to cover his mouth in a vain attempt to stifle them, his heart was pounding so hard, that it felt as if it were about to burst from his chest like an alien offspring from some sort of cliched, cheap, Nineties film. Tom could barely make out anything that was being said upstairs since the thick, concrete walls muffled all voices that were on the other side of them, regardless of if those voices were shouting or not. Tom gradually began to relax when a deafening silence fell over the building only to tense back up with a newfound sense of urgency to find an escape at the realization that Tord and his army may have just begun to look for him at that very moment. Tom began to desperately fumble around in the darkness, in search of a way out, still temporarily blinded since his eyeless sockets had never been able to adjust to darkness well.
"Holy sugar, honey iced-tea!" Tom cried out after having been startled when he had unintentionally bumped into the two, mysterious figures of whom were hiding within the darkness of the basement along with him. He thought for certain that he had run into Tord or even some of his followers, that his life as he knew it might have been about to end, tragically until the small, bright light that emitted from the night-vision-mode of a video-camera exposed the two, familiar faces of whom he had just bumped into.
"What the bloody-Hell did you bring the camera down here for?!" Tom hissed with minor irritation, in a whisper despite being relieved to see both Eddie and Elliot standing before him, unharmed.
"I didn't realize I was still holding onto it after we blogged this morning..." Elliot whispered back. The group was then startled again by the soft sound of the sobbing that now filled the darkened room.
"What was that?!" Eddie gasped as Elliot peered through the camera's night-vision lens and began to scan the small basement for any other signs of life. He nearly jumped out of his skin upon spotting a shaking, crying Bing curled up into a tight ball, in the corner of the room, just barely hidden behind a large, wooden crate.
"Bing?" Elliot questioned, startling Bing to jump and release a small gasp, afraid for his life, that he had been found by Tord, if only for a second.
"Oh, great..." Bing growled softly as he narrowed his eyes at Tom in particular. Tom was the last person of all people that he would have ever wanted to die with, let-alone the last person that he ever would have wanted to see him in the weak, vulnerable state that he was currently in now.
"Bing, are you okay?" Tom asked gently as sympathy and regret filled his once-empty eye-sockets.
"My best friend was just sliced in half in front of me; of course I'm not okay!" Bing snapped as he practically shouted back at Tom.
"Keep your voice down!" Elliot was quick to shush Bing out of fear that Tord and his new army of rebels might still be upstairs, executing any survivors of their attack of mass-genocide.
"What was that?!" Eddie then whimpered once he had taken notice of a muffled voice that sounded as if whoever it belonged to was not far from the other side of the basement-door.
"Somebody's out there..." Elliot whispered back as everyone became silent in order to not only keep themselves hidden but to also attempt to make out what this mysterious, new voice was saying.
"I married my dream-girl! I married my dream-girl but she didn't tell me her credit was bad! Now, instead of living in a decent Summer-home..." The voice from the other side of the door began to cheerfully sing.
"That's just a bloody T.V..." Bing hissed in annoyance at the realization that they had all just been scared, nearly into tears by some, goofy, insurance commercial, despite all being grown-men.
"Do you think he's still out there?" Eddie shakily questioned, referring to Tord as he trembled with pure terror.
"I don't know but I don't want to find out; there has to be an emergency-exit down here, somewhere..." Tom quietly noted, just in case the now-deranged Tord was indeed, still inhabiting the room above them.
"Follow me..." Elliot boldly instructed as he held his camera back up to his eye so he could use its night-vision-mode to search for an exit-door or even a window of which they would all be able to escape through at the very least. Tom and Elliot helped the now-broken Bing up from the concrete floor, forcing him to follow Elliot alongside them as they all searched for a safe way to escape the basement, together. Finding the one and only emergency-exit-door was not too hard to do since the basement was so small; however, there was still one problem:
"The moment I open this door, it'll set off an alarm..." Elliot then voiced one of the many consequences that could follow attempting to escape through the basement's only, other exit. If Tord was still in the building, he as well as his followers would most-definitely know where Tom and his acquaintances were once this alarm had been triggered. Tord would be able to reach them quickly with the help of his new army and they all had guns on-hand.
"Well, that won't do us much good..." Bing sighed in defeat upon realizing that they would be put into danger regardless of if they attempted to escape or stayed right where they were. Now was just a matter of deciding what was the lesser between the two evils.
"We'll have to make a run for it..." Elliot stated their slim but only chance at surviving against Tord's army.
"On the count of three..." Tom boldly made his decision to flee. He knew it would be a risky move but this exit-door was their only chance at escape. It would be a risk Tom would need to take if he ever wanted to see his girlfriend, Charlie or his puppy, Squidge ever again.
"One...two...three!" Elliot counted before shoving the door to the emergency-exit wide-open. Tom, Bing, Eddie and Elliot all darted into the massive parking-lot as the ear-piercing alarm loudly began to blare.
"Why did we have to take a Taxi today of all days?!" Tom complained as they all ran for dear-life. Tom knew that none of them would be able to outrun a bullet, especially in the physical-shape that he and Eddie were currently both in. His circumstances looked bleak with no sign of immediate escape in sight but Tom just kept his mind focused on the small family that he had waiting for him, back at his home as his motivation for survival.
"Section.B! I parked in section.B! Follow me!" Bing then suddenly remembered where he had parked his own car, which offered the group a small sliver of hope. Tom, Eddie and Elliot all followed Bing to his black Cadillac. Bing wasted no time fishing his car-keys out of his back-pocket and pressing the button that would unlock all of the doors at once.
Bing naturally got into the driver's seat since it was his car, Tom got into the passenger's seat since he was the second to be running the fastest out of the group whilst Eddie and Elliot were both quick to hop into the backseat, both boys practically climbing over one-another as they did so. Once everyone was seated, Bing was quick to start up his car and peel out of the parking-lot, faster than a race-car driver.
"What are we going to do?!" Eddie began to openly panic now that it was safe for him to do so.
"I don't know!" Elliot practically sobbed, beginning to panic just as much as his friend currently was.
"Do you think they'll follow us?!" Eddie then wondered out-loud as he glanced out of the vehicle's back-windshield, in search of any suspicious people or vehicles.
"Get away from the window! They have guns!" Tom shouted a reminder, which quickly caused Eddie and Elliot to crouch down to the point where they were now lying down, on top of each other.
"Everyone just shut up so I can think!" Bing snapped as he began to drive across London's main bridge, only to be forced to slam on the breaks, bringing his car to a screeching-halt when a large, red tentacle emerged from the ocean beneath, slamming onto the bridge and wrapping itself tightly around it, affectively blocking their path. A few cars had been crushed in the process as the concrete began to crack beneath the tentacle's strong grip, the bridge's shape beginning to warp as the tentacle's grip tightened around it.
"What the Hell is that?!" Bing exclaimed as he wondered if this were Tord's doing or if London were genuinely about to be attacked by a real sea-monster on top of everything else.
"Holy turd-balls!" Tom cried out, in a state of disbelief of what he was actually witnessing. He was now convinced that this had to be a nightmare; it just had to be. There was no way any of this could really be happening, right?
"Everybody out of the car!" Bing instructed as he and Tom both got out of the car. Elliot was the next to get out of the car as Tom and Bing began to run back, toward the direction of which they had all just fled from until another tentacle emerged from the sea to once again slam upon the bridge, this time hard enough to destroy a small section of it. This effectively separated Tom and Bing from their other, two companions.
"Eddie?! Elliot?!" Tom called out to the only two friends he had left in his life as he stared down at the massive hole in the bridge that now separated them. As the road began to crack beneath him, Elliot was quick to run over to the bridge's railing, clinging onto it, desperately upon realizing that he had been cornered by his current circumstances.
"TOM! EDDIE!" Elliot called out for help as the bridge crumbled away beneath him, sending him plummeting into the potentially-dangerous, sea-monster-infested waters below.
"No!" Tom cried out as he extended his hand in a vain attempt to rescue his friend of whom was already too far away from him to reach to begin with. Luckily, Elliot resurfaced from the salty waters with a gasp and a few coughs. Temporarily, Tom was relieved until he remembered that Eddie was still in Bing's car of which was now in the process of slowly tipping over the edge of the hole that had been created by the gigantic tentacle's previous attack.
"Eddie!" Tom called out to Eddie of whom at this point, had decided that the only thing left for him to do to protect himself would be to quickly shut the door that Elliot had left open.
"Oh, my..." Bing gasped as he watched his car completely tip over the edge with Eddie still trapped inside. Elliot screamed once he had finally taken notice of the massive car that was about to fall on top of him as he quickly began to swim toward the shore. He managed to swim far enough out of the way to not get hit by the falling-car but he was still pulled beneath the current by the gravity of the heavy vehicle crashing into the ocean, so closely to him.
"NOOOOO!" Tom screamed as tears finally fell from his eye-sockets. All that followed was an eerie silence as neither one of his two friends returned to the surface this time.
"Tom, come on!" Bing quickly grabbed Tom's shoulder, interrupting him from his grief-stricken trance. The two once again began to run, Tom solemnly looking back toward the hole in the bridge where he had just lost his two, replacement friends as he ran. The two, British men had almost reached the other end of the bridge when they were stopped in their tracks by yet-another tentacle smashing into the bridge, taking out a good-sized portion of it in the process.
"Over here! See the railing!" Tom was quick to point out that the monstrous tentacle had indeed missed the bridge's metal railing. He led Bing over to rail and helped him climb up, onto it.
"Don't look down!" Tom called out as Bing stood up, holding his arms out, beside him in order to maintain his balance and with a deep breath, the brunette carefully began to walk across the thin, iron railing as if he were walking across a tight-rope, in a Circus. Tom turned to look toward the beach at the horrifying sound of numerous people screaming in terror. When he saw that several people were running away from the two, giant tentacles that had just slammed onto the sandy beach's shoreline, he nervously turned his attention back to Bing of whom at this point, had successfully reached the other side of the destroyed-bridge, falling to the ground, on his hands and knees, once he had jumped down from the railing.
"Hey, guys! Wait up!" Hellucard called out to Tom and Bing as he struggled to outrun all of the chaos that was currently unraveling around him. He had done a good job at avoiding all of the snapping support-cables as well as the streetlight that had just fallen onto a car that had been abandoned by its fleeing-owner but unfortunately, he was unable to avoid the gigantic tentacle that had knocked him from the bridge by slamming violently into his side with enough force to splatter his tiny body like that of an insect that had just been swatted.
"Oh dear..." Bing covered his mouth in shock at the sight of yet-another human-being getting brutally slaughtered before his very-eyes. Tom was then sent rolling across the still-cracking concrete when the side of the bridge that he was currently still standing upon began to slant due to the final support-cable that once held up the left side of the bridge snapping. He was quick to dig his fingers into one of the bridge's thick cracks to keep himself from falling into the ocean along with the various vehicles and screaming-people that had all just been flung from the bridge by the sudden-tilt. Tom watched as Laurel tumbled past him, managing to grab onto the edge of the bridge before she could fall into the waters below. As she attempted to pull herself back up, a construction-truck that was filled with scalding-hot oil tipped over, spilling the molten-liquid all over her.
Laurel let out a horrific scream of pain as the tar-like substance melted into her skin. Tom cringed as he watched Laurel's now-skeletal hand slip away from the bridge. She released an inhuman gurgle as her final words before what was left of her corpse plummeted into the ocean below. Climbing back up, onto his feet, onto the now, slightly-slanted bridge, Tom ran toward the ledge and jumped onto the bent, damaged railing that was still attached to the side of the bridge's ledge that Bing was currently resting upon. Tom and Bing fearfully watched as the other side of the crumbling-bridge wobbled until it had completely collapsed into the ocean, leaving nothing more than severed-cables dangling in its place.
Tom and Bing then felt their blood begin to run cold at the sight of something slowly beginning to rise up, out of the water, just a mere, few feet away from them, something huge. At first: It started out as just two, long, twisted horns. The two men initially mistook the horns for more tentacles until the gargantuan head of a fifty-foot-tall skeleton began to rise up, out of the water along with them. Tom frantically began to climb up the railing of what was left of the bridge, in order to make himself less vulnerable to the gigantic creature that was now using its collection of tentacled-legs to drag itself up, onto the shores of the beach.
"Come on! You're almost there!" Bing called out to Tom as he offered a hand out to him to help him up. Bing managed to successfully pull Tom back up, onto the bridge just before the railing broke apart and fell into the now-dangerous waters of the ocean below. Once he had been pulled back up, to safety, Tom turned to look up at the massive creature, in order to better examine it. Though the creature's body was mostly concealed beneath an old, tattered, pale-red cloak, it did not take long for Tom to realize that this creature was a robot but not just any robot; this robot was The Horned King Animatronic that use to be the main part of The Cinderella's Castle Mystery Tour in Tokyo Disneyland, hence why Tom had been able to recognize it so easily.
Tom knew from the YouTube video that he had watched on this attraction out of boredom: That once Cinderella's Mystery Tour had been discontinued, The Horned King Animatronic had been stolen from the park along with various, other animatronics from the several, other, discontinued attractions that were in Tokyo Disneyland. It was then that Tom remembered a comment from an Eddsworld-fan that Edd had read out-loud in one of his livestreams. Edd had done a livestream about a month or so after Tord had quit Eddsworld. During the stream, Edd had read a comment out-loud from someone who had claimed to have seen Tord or at the very-least, someone who looked exactly like Tord at Tokyo Disneyland. Edd never replied to the comment, just moved on to the next question as if the previously-read comment had never even existed.
As Tom remembered the disturbed look that rested upon Edd's countenance once he had read that comment, Tom began to slowly piece together the fact that not only had Tord, somehow been the one of whom had stolen all of those missing animatronics from Tokyo Disneyland but that Edd very-well may have known something about it as well. That would also explain why this animatronic now had tentacles when it originally did not. Tord must have attached the tentacles that once belonged to The Giant Squid Animatronic from the discontinued Fifty-Thousand Leagues Under The Sea dark-ride, to the bottom of The Horned King Animatronic, in order to enable the once-stationary animatronic to be able to move around more freely, to become more of a weapon of mass-destruction, possibly to even resemble Cthulhu a bit more since it was a well-known fact that Tord did indeed have an obsession with that particular, legendary sea-beast. Tom's train of thought was then abruptly interrupted by a loud screech that emitted from The Horned King Animatronic's mouth as its skeletal-jaw slowly began to stretch open as unnaturally wide as it could. It had been the screech of a loud-speaker beginning to turn on at full-volume. Tom and Bing covered their ears to keep their eardrums from bursting as The Animatronic began to speak.
"This is the story of Pelle's bathtub..." The Horned King's original audio had been replaced with an old song that Tom found to be all-too familiar to him.
"Do not bathe in Pelle's bathtub! Why not? You may ask! Well, let me tell you: That bathtub is, a pure death-trap! Stay away from Pelle's bathtub!
To bathe, in it, is a deadly risk, because, it is full, of life-threatening fish!" The Animatronic began to sing as Tom, Bing and anyone else who just happened to have not yet fled from the Animatronic's destructive arrival, all stared up at the giant-robot with mostly bewilderment as well as pure terror. Tom recognized this tune as Badekarat Til Pelle: The song that Tord had chosen for his very-first, animated music-video. Everyone had been so distracted by the juvenile song of which the gargantuan animatronic had been singing, that no one had even taken notice of the fact that the sea-level was now beginning to drop, drastically as The Horned King began to suck the salt-water up, into its undercarriage.
"In the bath, there is a shark, a piranha and a Ninja-fish that says: 'Hi-ya!' A fish that gives you large suppositories while another puts on overly-strong glasses, one with a knife that stabs you repeatedly while another one sings only D.D.E. songs, a fish that smells like a fifty-year-old bus-driver and another that reads out-loud from an old See and Hear!" The Robot loudly sang as it released from its undercarriage a tidal-wave of water that was so filthy, that its coloration was a sickening mixture of green and brown, cloudy swirls. Tom and Bing watched in horror from what little safety they had on their high-ground as the disgusting wave crashed into the city of London. The screams of men, women and even children were all literally drowned out as nearly every building, regardless of size was demolished by the intense water-pressure.
Vehicles were swept down the streets alongside the crumbled remains of the fallen-buildings as the toxic waters flooded the entire city. Those who attempted to keep their heads above the rushing-waters were soon ripped to shreds by actual sharks and piranhas. Jon, Eduardo and Mark all watched from their hotel-room's balcony as they had all been spending the week of Comicon together, in a fancy, expensive suite that was on the top-floor of one of the few, surviving buildings.
"Whoa! We're not goin' anywhere today..." Jon chuckled as if the World ending around him were merely a joke. In his defense: The Horned King Animatronic was treating this mass-destruction as if it were a joke by mocking the deaths of many with that silly song that it had been programmed to sing.
"Pelle's bathtub, is not for the faint of heart; fish, will eat and torture you, with imitations of Kristian Vale Huffameg! In addition, the bathing-water is quite dull; it is: Light milk from Nineteen, Ninety-Five and Cola-Light as well as a little mustard, mayonnaise and poop! Dressing too! Yes, what a daze! Petrol, pee, coffee, tomato-juice and cod-liver oil!
Rotten-eggs, rotten-cabbage and rotten-banana! The bathing-water is probably a bit lousy, maybe a little more than necessary! The bathtub of Pelle, ah-baby! The bathtub of Pelle, ah-baby!" The Horned King Animatronic began to do The Hand-Jive as it sang, swaying lightly to the beat of the song of which it was continuing to sing, causing the entire city to shake beneath its massive weight in the process.
Bing turned to look over his shoulder upon hearing the sound of a gentle splashing emitting from the waters behind him. Tom turned to look as well upon hearing Bing scream at the sight of one of The Horned King's new, gigantic tentacles swinging toward them. Tom and Bing were both knocked into the water once the tentacle had completely destroyed the remainder of the bridge that they had both initially been sitting upon.
"THE BAAAAAATHTUB AT PELLE! Uiuuuu! The bathtub at Pelle Uiuuuuu..." Tom could barely make out the voice of the massive animatronic that was currently still mocking all of the destruction of which it had just caused as he desperately fought to keep his head above the filthy water. This was a hard task to preform due to the force of which the animatronic had been expelling the water from its undercarriage and Tom had already swallowed a vast amount of the foul-tasting water, coughing heavily, in an attempt to keep the substance from entering his lungs.
"The crocodile in the tub is quite huge and on top of it is a lion and a tiger, next to the hook for the bathrobe, stands a Serial-Killer with automatic-weapons, the shower-head is a poisonous, angry, snake, under the tub, there are many, large bombs but I have not said what the worst part is yet!" As The Animatronic neared the end of its little song, Tom looked up to see a crocodile that was far-too large and cartoon-like in appearance to be real, emerging from the water. Tom knew that this had to be another animatronic, most-likely the one from the Tokyo Disneyland's River Rapids ride as he watched the mechanical-beast sink its sharp teeth into a nearby, metal streetlamp with enough force to effortlessly snap it in half.
"Your mother washes her underwear in it!" The Horned King sang the last part of the song as the streetlamp fell onto Tom's head, knocking him unconscious.
"The Bathtub of Pelle, ah-baby! The bathtub of Pelle, ah-baby!" The Horned King quietly began to chant whilst continuing to Hand-Jive in the process as the unconscious-Tom was swept beneath the rushing-currents.