A.N.: It's our final installment, which means it's someone's birthday! JAS, you've been such a huge inspiration to all of us in the fandom. Your creativity and kindness has been one of the main reasons this group of oddballs still hangs out in a nearly dead section of this site. We love you!

The cold streets of London were alive with merriment this late December afternoon. People weaved themselves into a tapestry of buying and selling in the marketplace, the sound of coins dropping into hands like merry little bells. And in the midst of the hustle and bustle, two young people stood near an apple cart. The girl stared down at the apples, her wide eyes suggesting worlds of knowledge.

"Both Pranksters were dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that."

"What the heck are you talking about?" her companion asked, startled.

"I'm starting the story!" she explained, frustrated.

"Well, do we have to start at the morbid part?"

"Yes," she said bluntly, "The register of their burials were signed by the clergyman , the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner."

"I'm skipping to a more exciting part," the younger of the two said, snapping his fingers.

Instantly, they were in a dark room, with only a miniscule fire providing any light or warmth. Hunched over it was Francine. She cared not a button for the dark, for it was cheap. Yet, before either of the two teenagers behind her could speak, the fire vanished. The house was cold, colder than even Francine liked it. A shiver ran a scale down her spine as she had the entirely correct sensation that she was being watched. But before she turned around, the two narrators were hidden behind a rather large and lumpy chair.

The house was screaming with silence. As far as Francine could tell, she was alone.

"Bah humbug!" she muttered, beginning to turn around when an eerily familiar laughter began ringing in her ears. Grey smoke billowed all around her when, out of nowhere, two spectres appeared before her.

"Danny? Manny? No, you're dead!" she said, staring in horror.

"Why do you doubt your senses?" Danny asked, tilted his top hat clad head.

"Because a little thing affects them. You may be an undigested piece of beef , a blot of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you!"

Manny, once again cackled before the two male Pranksters began to sing.

"We're Manny and Danny, avarice and greed. We took advantage of the poor, just ignored the-"

"Wait a minute!" Danny cried, stopping the ominous music, "Isn't this from the Muppets version?"

"Yeah, it does seem weird that Charles Dickens would include a musical number in a book," Manny added.

Blushing furiously behind the chair, the young woman snapped her fingers.

Now, in the cold dark streets, the two young people stood several yards away from Francine and a girl with glowing blonde hair.

"Fozziwig's Rubber Chicken Factory?" Lisa read, "Isn't that from the Muppets version?"

"You've got to be kidding me," the young woman whispered, snapping her fingers once more.

Now standing in the middle of the snowy street, Francine and the Ghost of Christmas Present were discussing the merriment surrounding them.

"Finally," the male teenager muttered, "No more Muppets."

"It's in the singing of a street corner choir. It's going home and getting warm by the fire. It's true: wherever you find love, it feels like Christmas!"

"Seriously?" the young man all but shouted, "Have you even read the book?"

His short friend gasped.

"Of course I have! Just… not in five years."

"That was weird," Keith concluded as he dusted himself off.

"You're telling me," Francine muttered.

"How was being dead?" Lisa asked curiously. Danny opened his mouth to reply, but Marcus interrupted.

"Oh, look! More Shakespeare! Come on, guys!"

He opened the book and disappeared, leaving the rest of them standing there.

"I guess we should go after him," Gilda said.

"Yeah, I guess."

After they were all gone, two other teenagers appeared.

"Look, I'm sorry!" the girl said.

"That was totally ridiculous! I thought you knew the book, Tessa!"

"I'm sorry, alright?" she cried, "Can't we focus on the bigger picture? There's nobody here."

The tall boy looked around and noticed the new book on the floor.

"Crap," he muttered.

"Gandalf, what is it?"

"More Shakespeare."

Two factions both alike in dignity,

In New York City where we lay our scene.

"That doesn't even rhyme! Why don't you just put city at the end of the phrase?"

"Because that's not what Shakespeare did!"

"But it's so much easier?"

"Look, you're the one who's gotten arrested by the rhyming police, not me. I'm sticking close to the source right now."

Two factions both alike in dignity,

In New York City where we lay our scene.

From worthless grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal groups of these ten foes

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Doth with their death bury their dear friends' strife.

The fearful passage of their death-marked love,

And the continuance of their factions' rage,

Which, but their member's end, naught could remove,

Is now the story we write on the page;

The which if you with patient eyes attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

ENTER MARCUSO

"Oh! Oh! How my heart is filled with woe! That other people do not know! I reaped and reaped but did not sow. I wish to be taken to the gallow. Perhaps there I'd meet a cello."

ENTER KEITHUTIO

"How now brown cow, what on earth is troubling thou?"

"My heart, dear sir, my heart, my heart! She has torn it all apart! She treats me like an old spare part. Or dumb, like I work at Wal-mart. To prove my point I've made a chart."

"Dear Marcuso, friend, please don't feel sad. I know that it can drive you mad. I know how to heal your… hearty: the plan is simple, let's go party!"

"But in order for your plan to work, we'd have to find a place for me to twerk."

"You have the invitation, right?"

"Yeah."

"Alright, enter stage left."

ENTER MESSENGER

"You two sirs look like upstanding neighbors. Do you not mind handing out favors?"

"Come, Marcuso, we'll give this guy a chance then find a place where you can dance. Sir, please tell me anyway which I could help thineself today."

"My boss wants these invitations delivered with speed, but trouble is I don't know how to read."

"Come on come all to our festive, fabulous costumed ball. We plan to stay until a late hour up in our fine tenth street tower. As long as you promise not to commit a crime, we promise you'll have a marvelous time."

EXIT MESSENGER

"Well, that sounds fun. Hey, perhaps that party is the one! We'll grabs some masks and fancy gear and soon your troubles will disappear!"

"I can't believe you made me say that I can't read."

"Well, if it ain't broke…"

"Fair enough. The ball?"

"The ball."

"Francine! Francine! Have you seen what I've seen? You won't believe it; it's too obscene!"

"If you're talking about Marcuso, you're out of luck. Danny, we all noticed him; he's dressed like a duck. But, frankly, my nephew, I don't give a f-"

"They weren't invited because we have a blood feud. But he wears some feathers and you're suddenly wooed?"

"Nephew, perhaps the party makes your head hazy enough to forget I'm unspeakably lazy. They'll stay as long as they aren't rude. That way is simply easier, my dude."

"Our star-crossed lovers haven't exactly crossed paths."

"These things take time. That's the entire point of the show."

"Can't you just speed this up?"

"Patience, grasshopper."

"Miss, please do not judge or pity. I know I look like an atrocity. I just wanted to say that you are very pretty."

"Your comment isn't terribly witty. Every girl as she walks around New York City gets honked at by men and told that she's pretty."

"Their affections are usually itty-bitty, whereas my feelings towards you can't be expressed through linguality. You see, my affections must fly like chitty chitty or else the bang bang would destroy this whole city."

"That was an extremely unnecessary metaphor that I find charming, though why I'm not sure. Perhaps later tonight you'll join me on the floor, but for now I must return to the duty to which I once swore."

"Are you happy?"

"No, I still think Midsummer Night's Dream would've been way more entertaining to do."

"O Marcuso, o Marcuso, wherefore art thou Marcuso?"

"I'm down here!"

"No, wherefore means why, dear. Forsake thy name, and I with mine shall do the same."

"We must run away. My friends will never except you as my bae. Dear Gildaet, we must be wed before any further blood is shed."

"Though I have a list of reservations, to your plan I shall agree and trust you on the road ahead. After all, you are a bit older, and if it goes wrong, it's not as if anyone will be dead."

SEVERAL DEAD BODIES LATER

"I still can't believe we actually did that."

"Yeah, but it's totally gonna be worth it."

"Have fun storming the… monastery, I guess."

"The worst part of waking up is having to go help people with the plague puke into a cup."

"Friar! Friar! Wait there's a familiar scent on the clothes of thine. It's plague; you must go in quarantine!"

"Oh dear, young Marcuso does not know of our plans I fear. Yet I cannot argue with the lady here. The rules are strict and I must adhere."

"Glad this is wrapping up soon. You've got Wicked set up already, right?"

"Yes on both accounts."

"My wife! My dead dead wife! Guess I gotta take my life. I know of a way that's a real punch-packer: the Skeleckian Alackazoot's Death Cracker!"

ENTER FRIAR, LADY LISA, HECTOR, PRINCE SHOCK, MANNY, AND ANNIE.

"Marcuso, halt my boy! That death cracker is not a toy."

"Oh, shut up, Hector, let him be. His life is already an atrocity."

"I have a question, you all have the time. Does anyone know why we constantly rhyme?"

"Good question, Manny. I seem to recall a time in which we didn't rhyme at all. We jumped into the pages of a book which led to our non-rhyming ability being took."

"Taken, Hector. The word is taken. But how was our reality so shaken? Who in the world could force us to rhyme and drag us in here time after time?"

"Remember that guy way back at the diner? How he ruined a day that couldn't seem finer? The rhyming police took him that day… but I think, perhaps, he somehow got away."

"I remember him! He made me disappear! I think I actually saw him here. He was holding the invitation, the one that sent me to a Prankster celebration."

"Come to think of it, I saw him as well. He was talking to a girl near the citadel. Her hair was short and she really was curvy. Do you think they're the ones who made our lives topsy turvy?"

"We have to get to the bottom of this before those fiends force any of us to kiss!"

Tessa and Gandalf leaped out of the book.

"They're onto us!" she cried.

The Electric Company and Pranksters jumped out as well.

"Get them!" Danny shouted.

"Run!" Gandalf also shouted.

As the two began to make a run for it, Hector, Danny, Jessica, Keith, and Annie began to chase them.

"We can do it!" Gandalf cried.

They, in fact, could not and were dragged back into the library.

"Alright, now what's going on?" Francine demanded.

"Yeah, what's happening here?" Gilda added.

"Okay, okay," Tessa said, giving in, "Okay, so there's a couple of timelines going on all at once and I'm not a hundred percent sure how this works, but there's a timeline in which I saved all of you from evil muffins, so keep that in mind."

"But who are you and what are you doing here?" Hector asked.

"Well, you all know Gandalf from that wonderful little poem of his," she said, "And you remember Buddy?"

"Unfortunately," Francine muttered.

"Well, we all come from a separate dimension where you guys are from a PBS show that got cancelled," Gandalf explained, "And we, minus the bear, write fanfiction about all of you."

Manny paled.

"I really don't want to picture that."

"Ew, no!" Gandalf cried.

"No, nothing like that. Mostly just kissing and merry misadventures," Tessa explained.

"So why are you here?" Keith asked.

"Writer's block," Gandalf said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "Neither of us have updated in months."

"After the poem incident, we started planning a more subtle way to get stories out of you guys without actually having to write anything. We wrote up this library setup and got you all here. Now we have thousands of words of new content!"

"But wait," Jessica interrupted, "How did you think you'd get away with this?"

"Meat!" a low voice shouted, "Have you seen my butt?"

"Oh no," Lisa whispered.

"BUDDY!" everyone shouted as they ran away, leaving Gandalf and Tessa alone in the library.

"I've got some jerky," Gandalf called. The small bear jumped down from a high shelf.

"Gee thanks, mister! Hey, guess what? I am not throwing away my shot! I am not throwing away my shot! You know I'm just like my country; I'm young, scrappy, and hungry. And I'm not throwing away my shot!" the bear sang.

"Let's get home," Tessa said, "We've got some editing to do."

A.N.: That's a wrap! As always, tell us what you thought of it, and give JAS a big happy birthday wish! Before we sign off, credit where credit is due. Gandalf15 and I worked on this concept together and edited all of each other's work. He is responsible for the Scottish Play and Harry Potter sections of the story. I wrote the Pride and Prejudice, Christmas Carol, and Romeo and Juliet sections of the story! We both worked on the intro and outro! Buddy Bear is a character of Jedi Annie Scrambler's. Obviously, we don't own anything… Whew! I think that's it! Toodles!