It should be noted that I will not do any shipping in this fic. xD Sorry, Mattecat, but that's just not my thing. Any attempts at a shipping request will be messed with! And it will have an end, unfortunately; the closedown time is March 25th, three months after I pressed the 'Create Story' button. Brilliant Murkrow am I!

x Murky

And you thought Cynthia went to bed.

Nope! She checked FFnet again. Vampire Koneko had some more! Deciding she would do these solo, the woman printed out the list of things to do and looked it over.

Now, i'm pretty sure all those psychic people (Sabrina, Will, Lucian .etc) have these really wierd meditating tapes with boring meditating music. Replace it with a rap beat - that will annoy the heck outta 'em.

"Sabrina isn't even here, but sure." Cynthia nodded and read on, eager to find out what other insanity Koneko plotted for them.

Now, Candice, Maylene, and Gardenia have these stuffed dolls they go to bed with. Cover them with duct tape and make them look horrendous. That will be funny.

"There's just elites and us Champions…"


Have a big girl's night out. Let out some 'Ghosts' (Actually, they're just ghost pokemon like Haunter and Dusknoir.

"All right!" Cynthia got up from the computer chair and snatched some duct tape. Oh! I have to put up the pictures too! She thought. Grabbing the now-printed shots of every male E4 member (except Will, and including Drake and Steven), she exited her room quietly and was immediately met by screams of horror.

She dashed worriedly to the origin of the ruckus, but breathed a sigh of relief when she recognized the screaming of Lance. She opened the door, not bothering to look groggy. "What the heck are you up about?" She complained.

Lance looked up at her – he had apparently been… crying? Lance really likes his soaps, apparently. "I… my soaps… they're all… gone!" He began to cry again.

"Shaddup, you big baby." Cynthia kicked him in the shin. "They didn't release box sets for nothing, you know. So hey, do you want to help me get this stuff done?" She handed the printed sheet to Lance, who had stopped crying long enough to notice. He got up and took the paper, making a show of swishing his cape dramatically. Cynthia watched blankly as his face changed from on the brink of crying again to smiling evilly.

"Ghosts, tape-covered plushies, and half-decent music. Sounds good to me." He swished his cape dramatically again, and noticed the bunch of pictures in Cynthia's other hand. He made to reach for them, but Cynthia decided them up and handed him half of the photos.

"You'll do half, I'll do half. Get some tape, and we'll do the plushies later. After that, we find all the Grateful Dead music we can find. 'Kay?" Lance took the photos and smiled at her. He turned around (his cape hit Cynthia in the face) and took some packaging tape from a shelf. "Let's get going." He exited the room and took the left side of the building. Cynthia went in the opposite direction.

They both had the same idea – tape the picture above the subject's door so that they couldn't reach it. The two met in the Main Hall half an hour later. Cynthia entered through a side door, and Lance swished down the main staircase, cape billowing and humming a remixed version of Duck Tales' Moon theme to make himself seem more epic. They were both pictureless.

"Good job," they said at the same time as they met in the center. Cynthia handed Lance the note, and he grabbed the side of his cape and whipped it in Cynthia's face as he took the piece of paper. "You plot the girl's night out, I'll go nick some Ghost Pokemon." Lance said. Cynthia handed him an Ultra Ball. "Here's my Spiritomb, for a start." He took it (dramatically, of course).

"Alright." The man removed a Great Ball and a Dusk Ball from his pocket as he ran off, crimson red-colored cape billowing. Cynthia shook her head and prepared the Great Hall. After about an hour and a half, she had finished preparing the huge room.

It now had multiple tables set up along one row with a variety of food. The majority of the room was filled with insanity of every breed; makeup, punching bags, and even a designated Pokemon battle arena.

Lance re-entered. "I found a couple of Gengar in a deserted room!" He proclaimed, cape billowing around him.

"Good. Now hide somewhere where nobody can see you, and release the Ghosts when I give the signal." Cynthia nodded to the red-haired man.

"And what's the signal?"

"I'll walk up to the podium and declare that somebody should tell a good ghost story. When the ghosts appear in the story, send them out." Lance nodded and slipped into a corner.

"But do it in a while," he said, "I have to go swap some CDs first."

Meanwhile, in the west wing of the castle…

Will strutted to his computer, purple Anime Spike hair flopping around his masked face. "If they can have their fun, and they're not even thinking of it... there had better be some dares for our dear sweet Champions." He slid into the computer chair, and typed in the name of the story: Elite Fail. It came up eventually, and he stared at the reviews.

Some brilliant little creature named Rayshia brought a good one… stick Cynthia and drake in a closet for a day! Spirits lightened considerably, Will left the room to go meditate. He thumped on the door of his fellow Elite and meditating buddy Lucian, and brought him along too.

When he and Lucian got to the meditation room where they usually did their meditative thing, however, they were met with a red-caped man shuffling in their CDs.

"Lance," Will said coldly, "may I ask what you're doing messing with our meditation music?"

"Oh!" Lance whipped around, cape flying everywhere (miraculously not hitting anything). "So that was your music? That you listen to every day? So… it wasn't a malfunction?"

"No, it was most definitely not a malfunction." Lucian growled. "Now replace our music before I hit you over the head with a large book I can never seem to finish."

"Besides, messing with our music is against the rules." Will pointed smugly to a poster on the back of the wall. In large print, it proclaimed: "DO NOT MESS WITH THE MEDITATIVE MUSIC!" Lucian stared at him, horrified.

"Will… you just mentioned… oh no, here it comes…" Lucian put his head in his hands as Lance gave a loud roar of triumph. "He's going to quote… Seto Kaiba…" He recoiled as Lance did, indeed, quote Seto Kaiba:

"SCREW THE RULES, I HAVE DRAGONFORCE!" The red-haired man roared.

Lucian screamed like a young girl, and leaped to the side to evade a barrage of flying Children's Trading Cards that came out of nowhere. As Lance continued to laugh, more and more flashy lighting and Children's Trading Cards flew in every direction. The CD collection was smashed by a Dark Magician, and the various mirrors around the room were all destroyed by Blue-Eye White and Red-Eye Black Dragons.

Will fainted – but only because Lance rammed him down as he leaped out of the room, cheering. He also came quite close to running over Koga, had the man not punched him in the gut in time. Lance recoiled from the blow, and turned in a different direction and set off again (hitting Koga in the face with his cape). As he fell silent again to rejoin Cynthia in the Great Hall, Will made an odd request…

Growling, Will demanded that Lucian name the most boring closet in the castle. Slightly irked, the other purple-haired Elite suggested the cleaning supply closet.

Giggling madly, Will pranced off leaving Lucian to question his sanity and complain that he never got around to meditating. Shrugging, he returned the meditation room to its proper order, collecting the cards to sell on eBay later on. As he pressed the 'play' button on the radio, the opening notes of Through the Fire and Flames quickly urged him to turn it off again.

A few seconds after he had turned it off, the intercom sprang to life as Cynthia's voice blared across the entire castle. "Will all female residents please report to the Grand Hall? I demand partying."

Almost immediately, the female members of the Elite Troop wandered in to the Great Hall, only to find it was all decorated for a party! Pleased that they would get a break from the insanity in the rest of the castle (Lance was running around screaming like a lunatic, after all), they all flicked off into smaller groups. Cynthia walked down from the intercom system and joined the party as well.

A few hours passed uneventfully. Feeling it was time to spring the trap, Cynthia walked up to the front of the room and tapped on the microphone. "Elites." She proclaimed. "Elites. Elites… ELITES!" This got everyone's attention. They all whipped their head towards the pale woman on the stage. "Now, as fun as this has been, it's getting late and you know what that means."

"Bedtime?" Young Sabrina chirped into the silence.

"Nooope." Cynthia smiled. "Ghost stories!"

As she expected, Phoebe perked up immediately. "I have a good one! Can I tell it, Cynthia?" She nodded and beckoned for Phoebe to get on stage. "Okay, so there was this old ruin in the Orange Islands…" Cynthia took this opportunity to slip into the darkness where Lance was supposed to be hiding.

"Lance?" She whispered. "Lance, you might want to get ready so-" But she was cut off by someone pulling on her jacket. Hard.

She tried to scream but found her mouth covered by another person's hand. It was held there while a rag was tied over her mouth. Thankfully, it was a clean rag; otherwise this would have been much worse an ordeal. She was pushed into a closet. Thinking she was alone, Cynthia tried to sit down; but when a muffled scream broke the silence, she stopped. Quickly pulling the rag off of her face, she whispered, "Who's there?"

A muffled shout. Reaching downwards, Cynthia felt around until she felt something soft; she pulled it and the gagged person screamed louder. Cynthia's heart skipped a beat, and she abandoned the idea of pulling the rag off in the darkness. Feeling around, she finally found a light switch. As she flicked it on, a sigh of relief sounded from the corner.

Turning around, Cynthia saw a red-haired man in a stupid-looking cape, gagged up in the corner of the room. "Lance?" She muttered. Reaching out, she pulled the rag off of his face. Gasping for air, Lance managed a weak smile.

"Thanks." He croaked.

"What happened here?" Cynthia asked, worried.

"Well," he recalled, "I was lurking in the doorway like you said. I heard footsteps and turned around. I didn't see anyone and figured Phoebe had let her Pokemon out again. So I turned back around, except then this gloved hand reached out and shut my mouth. Another person held me still while the first guy put on this gag, and he shoved me in a closet."

"Did you see what he looked like?"

"No, but I noticed he had a mask on."

"A mask on…" Cynthia tried to think of someone in the castle who had a mask on. "I can't think of anyone." She said. "The guy must have put a mask on beforehand for this."

Lance opened his mouth, but Cynthia began to pace and stepped on his foot.

"Hey! That hurt!"

"Oh, sorry…"

SOMEWHERE IN THE ORANGE ARCHEPELAGO…

"Holy- that's a lot of Children's Trading Cards this dude is selling! Does eBay even allow that much?!?"