Chapter Thirty-One:

Finishing the Video Together

Down in the damp basement of the castle, a rabbit was awakened by the sound of explosions and rumbling as the walls shook. MIPS' ears perked up and his eyes widened as he saw a trace of goop with a massive demonic eye on the ceiling above.

He yelped and scurried around the area, unsure of what to do. Debris rained down from the ceiling and MIPS narrowly avoided a falling chunk of the wall. He spotted a tooth protruding from the floor in one of the corners and noticed another blob of goop with an ugly eye, MIPS trembled and made a break for the door.

Whatever was going on, it wasn't good. MIPS had to escape and to judge by the goop and those vibrations, some malevolent force was rising to consume the world and the castle was one of its targets.

The yellow rabbit valued his own life. He jumped high and grabbed the doorknob, then he hopped out of the basement and headed up the stairs, avoiding rubble and traces of goop.

Back inside the damp basement, Chica activated and looked around, wondering what was going on until a chunk of the ceiling came down upon her. The animatronic sat helplessly as the legs were crushed, then, a dark-red tentacle from a pile of dark-red sludge grabbed what was left of the chicken robot and pulled her in.

Many floors above, in the Tick Tock Clock room, as rubble fell, SMG3 made it to the desk where his former nemesis was tied up near his computer.

"Damn it!" SMG4 grunted, "I don't think I can leave!"

"What's wrong?!" SMG3 asked.

"I... I won't be physically allowed to leave until I finish the video."

"FORGET THE STUPID VIDEO!" He heard his former nemesis yell, "WE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE!"

"Three, you should go..." SMG4 told SMG3, "I'm responsible for all of this..." He smiled sadly, "But at least I'll go down doing what I love."

"YOU STUPID GLITCHY MARIO MEME-LOVING IDIOT!" SMG3 shouted, "You think, after all these years of rivalry, after I pretty much went through a period of growth from being an evil mirror of you to becoming a good guy, and after we teamed up to save all of creation from a cosmic eldritch monster, I'm going to let you die?! HOW SELFISH IS THAT?!"

SMG3 grabbed a chair and sat next to SMG4, much to the meme man's confusion.

"What are you doing?" SMG4 asked.

"What do you think I'm doing; I'm going to help you finish this video!" SMG3 replied, "I pretty much started this mess in the first place. So, since it's also my fault, it's only right that I help you finish this before we get out of here!"

SMG4 looked at his fellow meme guardian and smiled confidently, SMG3 smiled at him back, and then, they shifted their focus towards the computer where the meme man's project was nearly finished. They began typing away, editing and splicing things together and keeping an eye out for flaws. Thankfully, there wasn't much to worry about.

"Make sure that this clip goes here." SMG4 instructed, "That's where it fits in the video."

"And let's make sure this is where that line goes, we don't want people to be confused." SMG3 remarked as he cut and pasted a line from the video's script into a scene.

"That scene stays, animation looks good."

"Ok, now this line could use some fixing and... there, good as new, less wonky and more clear."

Both meme guardians worked as hard as they could, editing and touching up the video, going to the final seconds all while rubble collapsed around them. Seconds later, the video was looking clean.

"Aaaand done!" The duo announced, they tapped the enter button and the video was complete. A message came up, announcing that SMG4's video had been finished and the render was uploaded, it also remarked that the computer hadn't crashed.

The demonic keyboard glowed and the demonic tendrils tying SMG4 down unraveled and released their grip on him, allowing the meme man to move his limbs again. Just then, the smile-y faced TV thing SMG4 encountered days ago cropped up on the screen.

"Congrats on finishing your project, how would you rate your experience?" The TV Adware asked.

SMG3 grabbed the demonic keyboard and threw it out.

"Don't buy stuff from suspicious websites, dude!" He told SMG4, "Remember when you got hacked a few months back?"

SMG4 looked at the file of his new video and copied it over to his USB, which was plugged into the computer. "This is it!" He said with a grin, "My life's work. The online respect that it's going to give me..."

Just then, rubble came down and crushed the computer along with the USB drive. SMG4 and SMG3 narrowly got out of the way, avoiding the collapsing debris, even as the meme man's beloved computer and the hard-drive containing his just-finished video vanished beneath the rubble. SMG4 looked at the spot where his computer had been, his eyes wide with dread.

"AH, CRAP! THE VIDEO!" SMG4 exclaimed.

"Let's get the hel out of here!" SMG3 yelled to him, "Don't worry about the video, we can make another! Remember what I said, we're friends!"

SMG4 nodded, then he and SMG3 made a break for the castle window. They looked out, seeing the crater the castle was falling into. They made a jump, grabbing a nearby ledge that was a trace of the goopy demonic entity. The two meme guardians leaped to another ledge, grabbing on hard, and they looked down to watch Peach's Castle falling into the abyss.

SMG3 yelped as he lost his grip and nearly fell. SMG4 grabbed him just in time and they looked up, determined to make one last leap of faith and escape the pit, to escape the horrendous creature that was devouring whatever remained of the castle where SMG4 had lived in for many years.

He nodded to SMG3 and the former villain nodded to SMG4, then the meme man threw SMG3 as high as he could while he climbed onto another ledge. SMG4 looked up, took a steady breath and then, he made the jump...