Chapter 3 – Unknown Terrain

"Uhhhhhhhhh, does anyone know where we are?" Yakko asked. "The better question is, how did we receive text messages with no signal?" Dot added. Yakko and Wakko looked at the screen on their phones again and noticed that there truly was no signal. "Perhaps we had a signal when we received the messages." Wakko deduced, suddenly his cell phone rang again and, looking again he didn't have a signal even when he received that message. His new message read, "Guess again." Wakko looked up from his phone and said, "Now I'm even more confused than before." "That didn't take much." Yakko retorted. Wakko's phone rang again and this time when he checked the message, it was a map that looked like it was drawn by a three-year-old. The map had a clear path and some crappy sketches of a few obstacles and land marks. "Hey look guys this map is pretty good!" Wakko said to his siblings while showing off his new message. "Whoa, dumber than advertised!" Dot said under her breath.

"Well, I guess whoever led us here wants us to head toward this castle." Yakko said. "Now if we could just read the map properly." Dot retorted. Suddenly, from behind us, we heard deep breathing as if something big was standing there. We all turned around to see a large tiger-like creature. As large as a bear, shaped basically like a tiger (stripes included), also it had a lions mane that was also decorated with tiger stripes. It reared back and let out a huge roar that sounded like a cross between both a lion's roar and a tiger's roar. Dot snagged the left side of its lip and said to it, "We're trying to figure something out. Could you hold that..." rather than allowing Dot to finish her gag, the "tiger-lion" made a quick attempt to literally bite her hand off.

Yakko snatched his sister away before Dot was less one hand and told her, "I don't think our gags are going to work on something like this." "Suggestions?" I asked with panic in my voice. "Uuuuuuuuuh, RUN!" Yakko yelled. Our group then turned away and ran as fast as we all could. Apparently, Ace had even snapped out of his trance at the creature's roar and began to run alongside Runt and I. "Where are we going, mom?" Ace turned to me and asked. "Ace, we are being chased by a large cat-like thing. Think about it." I responded. Ace looked back at the creature and said, "Away from that, right." "Yah, and you don't suppose you could somehow, oh-I-don't-know, slow it down?" I began to panic. The giant creature was closing in and getting ready to feast on us, until Ace deliberately entered his sage mode, the silvery blue light emanating off of his body. The large creature skidded to a halt, knelt down and slowly backed away as if it was bowing to Ace. When it got far enough away, it turned and simply walked away. Ace, slightly confused, exited sage mode, his light slowly fading away. We all were actually confused at what just happened. Ace cocked his head to his right side trying to make attempts to figure it out. Suddenly, he closed his eyes as if he was in slight pain, and walked up to me. "Mom, I think I overcooked my brain." He said to me. I just looked at him with a slight frustrated look and said, "The most powerful creature on the face of Earth and you can't even think for very long without hurting yourself? You have been hanging with the Warner brothers for too long." Suddenly, Dot blurted out, "And the Warner sister" to complete the phrase. Ace simply perked his head up and gave me that goofy grin.

"Hey guys, I think we might wanna get moving before that thing comes back with 'friends'." Yakko said sarcastically. "What about your 'pet' Dot?" Wakko asked. Dot reached into her back pack and pulled out a small box about the size of her hand. "You mean this?" she said as she slowly removed the lid. Normally a random creature of evil incarnate would jump out, scare people and jump back into the box. However, this time there was nothing. The scene went so quiet you could hear strange shaped bugs that looked like a cross between a cricket and a spider chirping away. Puzzled, Dot looked inside the little box. "Uh, oh!" she then exclaimed, "I think it got loose." "I don't wanna see what that thing decides to turn into when it returns. Let's go!" Yakko stated with a tinge of fear in his voice. The six of us continued on to what we thought to be the direction the "map" was taking us. We had to stop several times to search for the land marks depicted on it.

We had a long walk ahead of us, apparently whoever brought us to this world, failed to mention anything of mixed creatures and strange phenomenon. We barely knew why we were here in the first place. So many questions ran through my mind. Why were we here? Who called us to this strange world? Where are we? So many questions that my head was spinning. I looked over and Runt was carrying little Ace on his back. It wasn't long until we reached our first land mark. It resembled the Roman Coliseum and at the same time somehow resembled a school.

As we walked inside to investigate, I was awestruck at some of the decorations inside. The building itself was designed like a ring cut into multiple segments. Each segment was almost 200 feet in length from the outer wall to the inner wall. What seemed to be a library was located to the immediate right of the entry way the library, which spanned around 300 feet long and had a wall divide it from the next room which happened to be rows of classrooms, each around 50 feet from wall to wall, and each having doors connecting one to the other. On the right side of the entry way was located another library about the same length with a similar wall dividing it from the mess hall (or the cafeteria). It was hard to tell what was beyond that point, however, the center of the building resembled the battle arena of the Roman Coliseum and (to my guess) was actually what it was used for.

As we were looking around this amazing structure, none of us notice Wakko sneaking off toward the cafeteria in hopes of finding a "magic refrigerator" or something. He continued through the right side library and into the mess hall. There He saw rows of wooden tables and benches like you would see in a medieval movie, and in an area toward the outer wall of the building there was a serving area, also resembling something from medieval times. Wakko went through the cupboards the storage areas and everywhere he could think of to find food, and found nothing. Slightly disappointed he placed his hand on his stomach and listened to it growl. He decided to look inside his backpack for sustenance and still found nothing. Apparently he had eaten his entire lunch at the zoo. Unable to stand the frustration any longer, Wakko screamed out loud.

The rest of us heard his frustrated cry and ran to see what was wrong. "Wakko, what's the matter?" Yakko asked his brother with worry in his voice. "We have no food! And I'm hungry! What are we gonna do?" Wakko whined. "Uh, oh. No food is bad. Definitely, definitely a bad thing." Runt agreed. My stomach was beginning to growl now too. We had no idea how long we had been here. However, one by one our stomachs began growling. It was pretty apparent that we were all hungry. Wakko suddenly began to cry and blurted out at the top of his lungs, "I WANT THE MAGIC REFRIGERATOR!" Suddenly, Yakko got an idea, "Wakko, do you still have that 1960's fridge in your gag-bag?" Wakko stopped crying long enough to nod at Yakko's question. "But...but it's still empty..." he then added. "Not for long." Yakko stated. "Dot, Ace, search the libraries for anything we can use to make the magic fridge." Ace didn't say anything, but simply saluted Yakko and dashed off to search the shelves for a spell book. "Now I know how you feel half of the time." Yakko solemnly said to me. Dot took off to the library that Ace wasn't at to help speed up the search.

An hour later, our stomachs were beginning to roar rather than growl. I was curled up in a ball trying to sleep off my hunger (with no luck at all), Yakko burned up his spare time playing with his little paddle ball toys (He had even gotten the hang of using his feet to play), and Wakko at one point tried to eat one of the rotten benches at one of the tables, but it splintered all over his tongue. It was quite amusing, he took a huge bite of the bench, chewed on it for a bit, made that silly face he makes when he had eaten something really awful, spat out the remains of the bench he had chewed on, and stuck his tongue out to reveal that it looked quite like a red cactus with wooden needles. So he spent the rest of his time painfully plucking the splinters from his tongue. Runt was running around sniffing everything he was capable of seeing.

Suddenly, Dot's voice could be heard echoing from a good distance away, "I found it! I found it!" We all looked off in the distance Dot was coming from. Apparently the appropriate book for the specific enchantment was lost somewhere in one of the classrooms, until Dot poked around and located it. It was an exact replica of the large red book from the magic space, which was destroyed upon its collapse. The two of them searched the book and eventually found the spell that created the magic refrigerator. It was called "Food from thought enchantment" or in the language of this world, "Ken sano dun thresta". (Don't ask) Two and a half hours went by before Ace finally learned how to cast the spell properly. During that time, Dot had located some sort of magazine from this world and began to read it. I, being unable to even read the title, asked, "Whatcha reading?" "It's called 'Creations Lately'. It's like the Cosmopolitan magazine back home." Dot responded. "What's the main article?" I asked. "Household spells made easy." She quoted. "Did everything on this world use magic for everyday needs?" I asked myself, out loud. "Pretty much." Dot responded. "That was rhetorical." I said slightly frustrated. Ace finally walked up to Wakko and they completed Yakko's idea. Wakko reached into his gag-bag and pulled out an ugly cream colored 1960's fridge complete with lead lining...no idea why Wakko never updated the contents of his gag-bag. Ace then stood in front of the hideous fridge and cast a different spell before he began, transforming it into a 1980's fridge. "Why you never decided to update and repair this thing I'll never know." Ace then said to Wakko sarcastically. Wakko simply shrunk his head into the collar of his shirt. Ace then cast the "food from thought" spell and that was that. No flashing light, no fantastic spectacle, nothing. Just words and a soft clicking sound. Yakko then walked up to the fridge and opened it, inside there was the fixings for deli sandwiches. "Now if I can get you to make the magic TV..." before Yakko could finish his sentence, Dot cleared her throat and gave her brother the dirtiest of dirty looks. Yakko simply shut his mouth and bashfully smiled.