(((Sorry for disappearing Lu, I've been suffering from the same illness as Booky. How I hate midterms!)))

Dot moaned as she came to. The explosion had knocked her off her feet and her head had hit the ground pretty hard, so she wasn't feeling all that great at the moment. She slowly sat up, trying to remember what had happened right before the explosion. There was that monster thing. Lady G got away. Lu....what had happened to Lu? Oh, right! We chased Lady G and Lu was beamed away with her. Dot picked herself up, and immediately wished she hadn't as the world started spinning. Reaching out for the wall, she managed to steady herself before wandering down the tunnel looking for the way out.

Lu was still knee-deep in water, unawares to the fact that the battle was now over. She could no longer run due to obvious reasons, so she was mucking about rather slowly, still trying to find her way out of the lower level.

The water continued to rise, and Lu's progress was slower, slower, slower...now she was fighting to keep her head above water. The 'shower-heads' were gushing now and before she knew it, she was forced to swim. She swam and swam until she felt her arms would break, but the combination of exhaustion, darkness and disorientation, Lu had barely a chance of finding the elevators. Besides that, the water was rising her high, high above the floor, doors and anything else recognizable.

Suddenly Lu realized that the high, moldy ceiling was just above her head. Now her head was pressed against it, turning her hair green. Now she had to close her mouth to keep the water out. She quickly inhaled through her nose, then plugged it, just before the water level splashed into her eyes. She was under water. All of her. Even her head, which was still pressed against the ceiling, She had no clue where she was, her arms felt like they were on fire and she was running out of breath. For one fleeting moment, Lu considered diving down and trying to find her way to one of the doors from the 'ocean' bottom. But she quickly dismissed that thought; she had nowhere near enough breath. She would drown.

But she was drowning anyway. What should she...?

My hair Lu thought. My hair feels...weird. Dry? No. Cold? Yes... Lu froze. She must be losing all sense of reason along with oxygen, if she was worrying about where her hair felt 'cold' or whatever when she was about to die.

Oh well, at least I had a lot of fun being a minion with Izzy. I just never thought it'd end this way...

By now the 'cold' feeling was half-way down her forehead. Now it covered her nose. But something had also uncovered her nose as well...

Lu couldn't hold back any longer. She took a breath, filling her lungs with-

"Air!" Lu gasped, drinking more in. The 'cold' feeling had been that of her wet head being free of the warm water and cold, damp air blasting in her face. Air from several high-powered fans, which were now drying everything off after the water drained away. Lu noted with some pleasure that the ceiling was no longer moldy.

Aha, so that's how it works...

Surely the dust would be gone now. Lu tried to float as the water level dropped. Before she knew it, her feet were touching something solid and the water was only up to her chin. It continued draining; now it was to her chest, now her hips, now her knees, now it was merely puddling around her ankles...

As the last of the water slipped down the enormous drain in the middle of the room (That's what that's for! thought Lu), she wrung out her cloak and sighed in relief. She was shivering uncontrollably, but she was alive. She was safe. She was alright.

"I'm back! I'm safe! I'm alright!" she yelled into the echoing corridor, just for the thrill of yelling, being alive and able to yell.

She wrung her clothes and hair out the best she could, then began walking slowly down the squeaky-clean corridor, wishing she had dry clothes and a nice, soft place to sit down. Looking rather like a wet kitten, Lu headed towards her Personal Minion Suite, wondering if the corridor was minion-y enough, being so clean now.

A lone figure crept up to the outskirts of the tower, watching the horizon for any sign of life. It appeared mostly empty, but then again, looks could be deceiving.

Mountie yanked her hood above her head, every nerve in her body on edge. This mission was imperative. If she failed, well... She didn't want to think about that. Then again, accepting this mission in the first place was just as dangerous.

She pulled a walkie-talkie from her Jedi-style belt and held it to her mouth. "3.1 and 3.2, do you read me?"

Not far behind Mountie, Lia was creeping along silently. It had been a long time since any of the Castle inhabitants had heard from the Minions, but they were probably somewhere inside the Tower.

She pulled out her walkie-talkie as it buzzed, hoping that none of the Minions were within earshot, and heard Mountie's voice.

"3.2 here. I can read you loud and clear, 2," she whispered in reply. Hopefully 3.1 was close by and had heard her walkie-talkie.

The Grand High Dark Overlord returned to his tower in an explosion of flame and shadow, of course. He had been far away, attending to other, more pressing matters. The halls of his tower were strangely empty, his minions scattered and vanished. But there were the signs of enemies creeping toward his tower. Sweeping majestically through the halls, he summoned the ranks of his Terminator security guards and sent them off to hunt down the intruders. And if the enemies made it past the cyborgs, they would find him, waiting.

One dark shadow flitted behind a large, craggy rock, it's edges blurred by the chilly mist blanketing the seemingly deserted castle. The pulsating fires that normally kept all cold at bay were still. The previously vibrant Tower was now lifeless and as cold as the weather surrounding it.

Lady C adjusted her dark grey wool cloak closer around her shoulders and squinted thoughtfully at the black Tower looming ahead through the swirling mists. A soft chiming vibrated in her ear and immediately afterward #2 and #3.2's voices came through.

"Affirmative, #2!" she replied softly.

"Affirmative!" repeated another voice that buzzed through the comlink.

Lady C reached up and tapped the over-ear comlink, turning off one of the channels. "Pippin, she can't hear you."

"I can hear her!"

"She can't hear you. Only I can hear you. Your comlink is on a different wavelength."

"She can hear you, right?"

"Not now; I'm talking to you." Lady C frowned at the "empty" space behind her. Somewhere back there, Pippin was hovering. His "invisibility" shield was working like a charm.

Some sounds came through the channel that indicated Pippin was grumbling. Ignoring him, Lady C turned the team's channel back on. "In location LG2H now, #2. Permission to proceed with 'Operation Negligent: Part A'?"

But Lu bever made it to her minion suite.

Now it was over nine months later. Christmas had come and- for most- gone, though Lu was still singing carols to herself as she hopped along the road. She had no recolection of what had happened since that terrible day she had almost drowned. The day she had...what had she been doing? Fighting, or something else just as terrible. She shivered at the thought, then happily smoothed down the skirt of her pale-blue dress. As she skipped along, her blond cork-screw curls joinced along her back, her long bangs kept out of her face with a barret on the back of her head. She had on a white apron and knee-high white leather boots, and kidd gloves. She looked rather odd, as she was eighteen- supposed to be an adult- and looked as though she was dressed up as either a sailor girl, Alice in Wonderland or Mary Poppins- maybe a mix of the three. She smiled and held her large white lace umbrella higher up over her head to protect herself from the ligth sprinkling of snow that dusted the ground and the uncovered toes of her dainty boots. She smiled. Where was her tattered cloak? Gone. Minion-y snakeskin boots? Gone to. Her dirty blond/ light brown, stright hair was exchanged for this blond curled wig. Her hazel eyes were covered by blue contacts. She looked exactly like a little girl, except for her being so tall. But none of these thoughts were in her mind; oh, no. Lu was thinking only of pop-tarts and bunnies and pink, oh my! She was no longer a miniony, she was...she was...

A goody-goody.

She paused as the dark tower loomed up overhead, and a smile slipped onto her naive face.

"Oooooh, maybe there are lollipops inside!" she squealed, not recognizing the place. She hurried inside; no one would have recognized her at all for her sudden change, which no one, least of all, herself, could explain.

Time past as it is wont to do. A curse had fell upon the dark tower, a curse placed upon the monument to shadow and flame by the vile wizard Academia. The inhabitants and minions were scattered to the winds and lost beyond the grasp of the Dark Lord whose powers were sapped and stripped from him. The Tower languished without the guidance of her Pilot. But then joy returned to the land as at last the Dark Lord discovered Academia's hidden weakness and slew the wizard with a magical No. 2 pencil. With Academia dead, the Tower returned to life and the Dark Lord regained his power of old.

[OOC]

Attention! Attention! War in the Fountain! Be there or be a regular quadrilateral!

Lu slipped and fell down a randomly-placed rabbit hole, and slid a long ways, and found some sense shaken back into her brain, and landed in a huge pile of gritty durt, getting covered in it and losing her wig and ending up looking like Chuckie the freaky doll rather than a Barbie. Then she finally stopped for breath and smiled.

She was back. Lu was a minion once more.

And she had discovered the secret tunnel to the rarely-used Minion Dungeon. She stood up, half-heartedly brushed herself off, her thoats on Dark Lord of All, Booky. She must find him.

She must find him immidiately. She must do his every bidding.

The Dark Overlord sat on his dark throne in the Tower where the shadows lie and pondered. He had summoned his Igors back to the dungeons and set them to work producing new mutant abominations. The Terminators had been re-abducted from the alternate future timeline and reprogrammed once more to serve him. Even the Almost Endless Escalator was back up and running, with its theme song capability and confetti dispensers. Pilot was monitoring the Tower and everything was back to normal. But there were no minions and the Overlord had already struck the first blow in a newly revived war with his eternal archnemesis.

By the time Lu crawled into the Dark Overlord's lair, she was a terrible mess. The more ornate clothes one is wearing, the worse they seem to look when they get mussed. Right now, the best way to describe Lu would be to say she looked like Alice in Wonderland if she'd been stuck in a dirt-filled blender and attacked by angry dogs. Her dress was tattered, stained, torn and filthy, and Lu was covered in so much dirt her skin seemed darker than usual, and good luck getting a brush through her hair. Lu couldn't remember it, hardly, but she had been in torture chambers below the Castle of Ivory and Gold. Her usual mischeviously-impish-and-trying-to-look-bad look was gone, instead replaced by, for just a moment, a genuine darkness that made the fake blue contacts in her eyes appear to glow. If omeone had said she looked like a tall, lanky Smeagol, they would have been rather close to the truth.

"What is thy bidding, my Master?" Lu asked, her voice always being, perhaps, deeper and throatier than most girls, but made even moreso but the dust of the tunnel, her dry throat, and the year of torture. She bowed at the Overlord's feet, awaiting his command.

The Dark Overlord was startled from his reverie and looked down upon his minion.

"My bidding? I would have you go to the armory and gird yourself for war. Though a short war it will be if more of my minions do not return."

Lu nodded and, bowing, departed without much ado. She began to step lightly down the dark, crusty hallway that led to the armory. After several minutes of staring around the round chamber and picking up and setting back down various dusty relics, she made her selection; a somewhat thin, round collumn with a blue tip at the end. Smiling faintly, she trotted back to her minion suite o clean up. Minions being dirty? A-OK. Minions being filthier than the ancient weapons hall? Not-so-much.