Day 4 ~~~~

"Rise and shine, Chatterboxers!" The assistant called up the stairs to the sleeping CBers. "It's breakfasttime!"

The CBers had long since gotten used to their living alarm-clock of an assistant, and they slept right through the loud, obnoxious yelling. One thing they simply couldn't sleep through, however, was the sinister, quiet sweeping of the maids outside their doors. In fact, some CBers woke up screaming.

"Don'tletitgetme!" Moonfrost gasped as she woke up to the maid dusting The Bathroom's door.

"Who'sitatthistimeofmorning? It's the murderer!" Puck screamed as the maid named 'Agatha' slowly scraped her broom across the floor.

The maids cracked open all the bedroom doors to glare inside with their overly-makeupped faces. Everybody shivered.

Holly was hiding under her blanket and whispered, "Istg?"

Cappy said, "Itks."

The CBers, AEs, and CAPTCHAs all crept downstairs to an amused assistant. They sat down to breakfast, and dug in to their food.

"Did the maids scare you? That's what you get for not getting up on time. This is a farm, for goodness's sake!"

The AEs all mumbled something like, "Seehowyoulikeit," but quieted down CBers glared at them for being impolite.

"We're sorry, Assistant, we won't do it again," Shadow Dragon said from her large seat at the end of the table. 

"That's okay, I don't mind. Today is the veggie contest! It starts at noon; our workers are hard at work setting up the stage. You can feel free to explore all you want while you wait."

Poetic Panda wanted to go back and see how the lions were doing.  Ookz, Critic A, Turgon, and Over the Rainbow didn't want to play board games inside with the rest of the CBers, so they decided to go with her. On the way out, OtR saw Booksy plalying around on Dragonrider's IPad.

"Cool, what's that?" Panda asked politely.

"It's awesome! Dragonrider is letting me play with her Marauder's Map app! You can see where everyone is going! That's why I decided to sit by the door, 'cause I knew you were coming out this way. 'Bye, guys, be careful out there!" Booksy said, and went back into the living room with the rest of the CBers. The group headed out and mounted their horses, which were obediently grazing in the front lawn.

"Yee-haw!" Turgon cried.

"Gee-yup!" OtR yelled.

"Um, mush!" Panda said, laughing.

"Gdyp!" Ookz said adorably.

Critic A looked on disapprovingly.

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"Oh my goodness! Look, guys! The other lions are back!" Panda exclaimed. She had told them of her former expedition on the way to the wall, and after putting on their helmets, they had rushed over to see if her hypothesis was correct. There sure was a lot of supporting evidence.

There were nine lions now. Six growled and glared at the CBers and AEs, and three groomed Ookz's little head. Looking into the distance, Ookz saw a shadow moving closer. But the sun was beginning it's climb up into the sky from behind the trees, and Ookz couldn't see who the shadow's face resembled. All Ookz knew was that he heard a click and an angry, muffled yell, and instantly the evil lions were on top of Poetic Panda, attempting to eat her.

"Ahhg!" She cried, and crouched lower. This caused the hungry maniac lions to lean down with her, until their necks were touching the fence. With a mewl and a roar, the six literally shocked predators leapt back, and Panda ran a safe three feet away from the big cats' fence. The shadow growled loudly, and threw open the doors of the aviary closest to it. Three enormous birds flew out, and the shadow whistled and pointed to Poetic Panda. The birds went from beautiful to imposing, and Turgon yelled, 

"I'll hold them off for as long as I can! You go!" Strangely, when the shadow saw Turgon running out to interfere with the birds, it faltered. "What, are you scared to hurt an AE? Only CBers, huh? Why? Why do you need CBers? What is it that you want?!" Turgon yelled.

OtR, Critic A, Ookz, and Poetic Panda threw off their helmets as they ran out of the wall. Turgon turned around and headed for the wall, too. He had just reached the rise, behind which was the door, when the birds made a U-turn. They began to fly back to the shadow.

In a muffled, angry voice, the murderer shouted over the noise of frightened creatures, "Tell Poetic Panda I've got a message for her. I'm going to get my revenge."

With that, the encounter with the murderer was over, and the shadow was blocked from veiw as Turgon threw off his helmet and ran out the door. But Turgon had discovered something. To deliver the message, the murderer had removed its mask. Though the murderer was too far away for him to recognize the voice, Turgon was sure he'd heard the hints of a girl's voice.

"Guys," he said as they rode back home for lunch, "The murderer--she's a girl." 

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Thanks, I'm glad you like them! I love writing them!

My horse is a brown Arabian horse with a sleek black mane and big brown eyes. Her name is Ali. 

Turgon has a Clydesdale named Pony. He was very creative when he named her. :) 

TOP!

Even Dolphin said "ttap!" That's... almost sort of right! 

Day 4 part 2~~

Excitement filled the air in a buzz while the CBers got on their coats and jackets in order to head on to the competition. Some of the CBers couldn't remember where they planted theirs, and the assistant sheepishly rubbed the back of her head when she heard this. 'We'll see what we can do,' she had said. Outside, the visitors were offered the option of horse-riding down or golf-carting down. The majority chose horses; what a surprise.

Poetic Panda had recieved her message from Turgon, and did her best to stay calm and enjoy the breeze flowing around her and the beautiful, sunny afternoon. She hadn't told anyone else yet, and to shake that dismal note out of her head, she said,

"It's the first day of winter, guys! Isn't it funny that we're having a veggie contest in winter?!" 

"Yeah, if mine's rotten I'm going to smash it in somebody's face," Rufus agreed. "Imagine having cold slime running down your back!"

"Hmph, if yours is rotten, it probably means that it died of your sour attitude," Princess Icicle said.

"Ihiw!" Chip squeaked. Mortif translated, despite herself.

"Okeydokey, we're here!" The assistant called. Those CBers at the front of the herd got an eyeful: The entire garden had been transformed into a beautiul, festive fall scene. The rows between the twenty-foot or so tall vegetables had been lit up, and there was a fountain and a stage over by the back of the field. Each veggie, they noticed, had had a wheelbarrow squeezed underneath, and a little number hanging on it.

"Welcome to the biggest event of the winter season, everybuggy!" a voice called from up on stage, causing the assistant to jump. She looked closer at the person on stage, and saw...him...carrying a megaphone of some sort. 

"...Farmer?" the assistant asked hesitantly. The man was short for an adult, and he wore a mask with a hole for his megaphone to go through.

"That's my name, don't wear it out." The farmer seemed about as cheerful as Santa Claus, and looked as if he ate the opposite of what Santa ate. He was pretty skinny, and as the CBers, AEs, and CAPTCHAs tried to remember their places, he announced, "Okeydokey, we will have three contests, like the biggest zucchini, pumpkin, and carrot. There's a scale up here. So, um, let's get started."

I take that back. The farmer seemed bored, and eager to be done outside.

The pumpkins were announced to go first, and that was when the CBers realized that some veggies wouldn't have an owner. 

"Hey, what about the dead peoples' things?" Puck asked.

"They have been exterminated. Now, hurry up and GET NUMBER ONE!"

Nobody stepped forewards. Puck began to grow impatient, and thus allowed herself to wander away from her carrot to see where the lazy #1 was. She disappeared around a giant, leafless pumpkin at the front of the row, and screamed very, very loudly.

"OHMYGOODNESSMYPRANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" The sheer pitch of her scream caused Holly's zucchini to crack open, and Spyro and Elsa grabbed onto each other like they had last time the murderer struck them.

"What! What is it?!" The assistant yelled back while she ran to the biggest pumpkin in the patch. All the others threw away their caution to see what was the matter, and they too gasped. For there Joan was, her head poking out of the top of the pumpkin, her leaves tucked neatly on one side of her, pranks growing heavily on her other vines.

"Hi, guys! Do I win the competition for biggest pumpkin?" She asked in attempt to lighten the heavy atmosphere. "Um, what've I missed? Oh, dear, I see the murderer has struck again--a lot... I'm sorry that I'm not of much use over here, I guess I've got to give Puck these pranks; there's really no way I can keep them from her now, I can tell you what happened to me, and who planted m--" Joan the pumpkin was cut off from her longest and last sentence in the world by the farmer, who said,

"If that's number one, somebody bring it here!" The CBers all hoisted Joan further onto her wheelbarrow and pushed her over the short distance there was to the scale. They didn't know what was going to happen next; they thought Joan would be weighed and declared biggest, since she was the biggest pumpkin. Puck stood grinning at her newfound pranks and hoped that her CBer would win; because she had never had bragging rights about that kind of thing. 

  The farmer looked down onto the bottom of the scale and saw that it said 209.87 lbs. Pshewee! He thought. That's heavy! He took the number off of Joans vivid, smooth orange skin and tossed it over the steep hill behind the stage, the hill that led into a bamboo patch where Joan would soon be racing. 

The farmer stepped off the stage and acted like he was about to help push Joan back to her spot. Then he did something cruel and murdererlike: he pushed everybody out of the way and shoved Joan down the hill. All that was heard before she split into pieces was a scream. The CBers looked down and saw a pile of pumpkin 300 feet down the cliff, on a bed of flattened bamboo.

"Joan!" The CBers cried, falling on their knees and weeping. Their friend had just been found; why did the reunion have to be so short?! They turned to the farmer, who was edging away from the angry mob. "Why did you do this?" they angrily asked.

"CBers, this might not be the real farmer. The farmer I know never leaves the house," the assistant warned. The farmer still had not removed his megaphone from his mask.

"How does everyone like my voice changer?" he asked. "You can all thank Rufus's pie blaster for that!" Rufus looked around, and saw that his blaster had indeed been stolen. The murderer whistled and shouted, "Yeee, hoo," and a trio of lions rushed out of nowhere. They whisked the murderer out of sight, and the CBers were left without clues once more.

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The assistant had gotten some workers to haul Joan's pumpkin peices out of the valley so they could be buried. They had a funeral for her, and ate dinner glumly. Dragonrider had been looking on her Marauder's Map app the whole way up from the house, and she claimed to see nothing of the murderer's whereabouts. When the CBers were going up the joint staircase to bed, Mortif and Gwen pointed into The Bedroom, and everyone clustered in there for a meeting.

"Something has to be done about this murderer!" Mortifero whisper-shouted.

"And we are the only ones who are taking action!" Gwen continued from next to the doorway. "You guys are going along with that stupid assistant's stories, and you don't want to do stakeouts, spy missions, or anything else!"

"One problem with this meeting," Joss said, kitten in lap, "is that the murderer might be here, listening."

Dragonrider shivered. The CAPTCHAs looked at each other. The two grumpy AEs looked at each other and seemed to share an idea.

"Well, then, we do a guilt test. First we make sure we're all here," Mortif said.

"Booksy is in the bathroom. She said she'd be right back," Dragonrider said. Mortif looked at Dragonrider as if she had just declared herself the murderer. "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm..." She said. The door opened, and Booksy walked in.

"Oh! Are we having a meeting?" She whispered when she saw all the people sitting in a circle on the floor.

"Yessssssssssssssssss," Gwen hissed, "and we're doing a guilt test right now. You loose a point for being in the bathroom."

Mortif and Gwen looked around and began their interrogation.

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It was ten o'clock when the AEs dismmissed the meeting. Nobody had been declared guilty, so Gwen and Mortif were both feeling grouchy. They all fell asleep in wait of another day. 

:) Good one, Hotairballoon! 

Thanks, Joss!

A bad parent says what?

What?

EEEExactly.

Who needs grammar or capitalization?