About three and a half books later, Brad flushes the toilet and steps out, saying, "You know, I bet there's a way we can turn this to our advantage ..."
He stops as he catches sight of Troll.
Someone has braided together all the yo-yo strings from Troll's collection, and used it to hang him from a big hook in the middle of the living room ceiling.
Brad's eyes open wide. He starts to casually whistle, as he slowly backs towards Troll's bedroom. Suddenly, his stealthiness gives out, and he bolts through the bedroom and crashes out the back window, plunging to the grass, a floor below.
He hits hard, knocking the wind out of him. He shakes his head quickly, trying to clear away the stars and clouds. As his vision clears, he sees an ominous dark figure standing before him, holding a big, nasty knife.
Brad goes into overdrive. The problem is, after a day and a half of running for his life, overdrive isn't much. He starts to crawl away as fast as he can, shouting, "GET AWAY! GET AWAY! I DIDN'T DO IT!"
The ominous dark figure moves forward, almost tripping on the flowing black robes. It brandishes the knife, with unmistakable menace.
Brad's fumbling hands close on a large rock. With a spasmodic surge, he heaves it up out of the ground and hurls it at the slasher.
The slasher slows in order to fend off the granite projectile. Brad gains a little ground!
Brad looks around desperately for more shit to throw! In his terror, he gets a new burst of strength. He uproots a tree and throws it at his steadily advancing tormentor!
The slasher pauses to hack the tree up into little, tiny bits, and resumes the advance-of-doom.
Meanwhile, inside Brad's mind . . .
Up in the control room, Tactical is sitting in the command chair. He shouts, "GRAB THAT CAR! I'LL BET IT'LL FLY GOOD!" Teams of menial muscle-control operators work furiously at their consoles, attempting to carry out the order.
Tactical's attention is momentarily distracted by Doubt pulling on his arm. Doubt screams, "How long can we keep this up!?" Tactical shrugs him off and yells, "As long as we have to!"
Through the din, Confidence yells, "Yeah! Leave him alone!"
From his isolated post, Eyeballs keeps feeding reports back up to the control room, wondering all the while whether or not anyone is really in charge up there.
Undaunted by Brad's torrent of projectiles, the slasher keeps coming on, brandishing the knife.
Brad throws cobblestones, fire hydrants, stray cats, street lights, random pedestrians, doorknobs, bicycles, rocking chairs, Rachel Hunter, The Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, The Rock of Ages, his shoes, Rachel Hunter's shoes, an AST, a Zephyr, a half-eaten box of girlscout cookies, and six republican fundraisers at the slasher, trying to keep himself alive.
The slasher shrugs it off.
Tactical is getting worried. He knows that Panic has been wandering around the control room, lobbying for a change of command.
He looks over to BrightIdeas, hoping for some support. BrightIdeas shrugs, helplessly.
Suddenly, Inspiration leaps up and says, "Short!"
Tactical, still concentrating on keeping the Whole alive, says, "What!?"
Inspiration says, "The slasher is short! Look!"
With a quick glance at the log, Tactical confirms that the slasher is indeed a little on the short side, even for a non-troll. He says, "Thanks! We'll re-adjust our aim!"
"NO!" shouts Inspiration, "Who do we know that's that short and that viscious?"
"Tice!" shouts Tactical. "It's Cathi! Quick! What's the magic word?"
Startled out of his reverie, Memory starts furiously calling up stuff on his terminal, saying, "Uh, I just had that here a second ago..."
Back in the living room, Troll opens his right eye, and surveys the damage. After a moment, he starts struggling with the harness to which the yo-yo rope is attached.
It takes a while, but he finally manages to separate himself from the ceiling, and crashes to, and through, the floor.
He achingly picks himself up from the neighbor's floor and asks if he can use the phone. Not waiting for an answer, he picks up the receiver and starts dialing.
He waits for a while, and says, "Hurry up, or you're gonna miss it."
He puts the handset down, dusts himself off, and walks out the front door, with a wave for the stunned neighbors.
Brad has about run out of stuff to throw. He is on his last legs. The slasher is nearly on top of him with that razor-sharp Bradsticker.
Suddenly, his eyes open wide, and he triumphantly shouts, "SQUEEEEEDGE!"
The slasher pauses for an instant, and resumes the approach!
The control room is stunned into silence by the failure of the magic word.
Tactical says, "I don't understand. She should be rolling around on the ground, helplessly laughing her fool head off."
Timidly, Intuition walks up to the command chair and says, "Um, if the secret word didn't work, that would mean that that's NOT Cat, wouldn't it?"
Tactical stares at him, waiting for him to continue, and desperately hoping he won't.
Intuition continues, "And, uhm, if that ISN'T Cat, and seeing as how whoever it is is now clearly within striking range, uhm, aren't we sort of, well, fucked?"
There is a long, echoing silence in the control room.
Suddenly, SphincterCommander goes nuts! He starts banging on his console, screaming, "LAUNCH ALL PAYLOADS! LAUNCH ALL PAYLOADS!"
Panic leaps up and knocks Tactical out of the command chair! All Hell breaks loose in the control room! People and printouts fly around the room in total chaos! Somebody pops the inflatable sheep!
Brad collapses to the ground, drooling. The slasher begins climbing up his side, towards his chest.
Suddenly, Brad says, "That'll be nine dollars change, please."
Tactical shouts, "GET THE FUCK OUT OF THAT CHAIR!"
MarxBrother shouts back, "Like YOU were doing such a great job!"
Tactical, aided by Desperation, lunges for MarxBrother who tries to fight them off with Harpo's horn.
As the slasher reaches the apex, and raises the knife, Brad says, "HONKHONKHONK!"
The slasher pauses, in momentary confusion, and raises the knife again!
Eyeballs shouts into the intercom, "HEY! GUYS! ARE YOU SEEING WHAT I'M SEEING?"
On the monitor is an extreme closeup of the point of the blade.
"IS THERE ANYBODY THERE? THIS IS IT! HERE IT COMES!"
Unable to watch any more, Eyeballs shuts off his screen and assumes the standard nuclear attack defensive position.
In the control room, everybody freezes as the big wraparound screen shows the blade start to descend!
The slasher stops the blade a mere quarter of an inch from Brad's nose! Suddenly, the slasher says, "You're silly, Uncle Brad!"
The control room is in wreckage. There are panels of fluorescent lights dangling from the ceiling. Half the consoles are going up in flames, the other half have been smashed.
Bewildered is in complete and total control.
Brad says, "GAHgahggshahh."
Amber giggles, throws the knife away, and clambers down from Brad's chest.
From a safe distance, Troll hollers, "APRIL FOOL!"
There is a bit of a pause, as everyone expects Brad to repond in some way.
BLuR walks up and slaps Brad's face a few times. Brad shows no sign of motion.
BLuR says, "Dude, I think you broke him!"
Troll crouches down by Brad's head and says, "You may well be asking yourself how you could be the victim of an April Fool's joke when it's early July. This is a reasonable and justified objection, except that I went and created a new Trolls Guild Calendar, just for the occasion. Now, April First falls on July 3rd, and vice versa. Neat, eh?"
From out of the shattered recesses of the command center, Frenzy lets loose a terrible roar! Fearing for his life, Bewildered bolts from the command chair.
John, looking around at the horizon, says, "Dude, I think things got a little out of hand."
Troll says, "Do you think so?"
John says, "With half the city burning or smashed flat, yeah, I think so. Which is not to say that it wasn't funny as hell, mind you. It's just that I'm a little concerned about what might happen if anyone else found out it was our fault, is all."
BLuR, watching Brad's eyes carefully, says, "Dudes! That's not what I'M worried about!"
"What do you mean?" Troll asks.
He is answered when Brad's previously inert body begins to twitch, and issue a low rumbling sound.
Troll looks at the others, and says, "Gentlemen, I think it's time for us to use those plane tickets."
John says, "'Zilla trashed the airport."
Troll says, "Ohshit."
BLuR screams, "RUN!"
This thing they do, with Brad hard upon their heels.