Chalkzone 1. The Art Show

_(Author's Note: If you haven't seen the ChalkZone episodes "Snap vs. Boorat" or "Indecent Exposure," parts of this story will not make sense. This story also makes references to other episodes such as Hole in the Wall, The Big Blow Up, and Follow the Bouncing Bag, but they're not as important to understanding the plot as the Snap vs. Boorat/Indecent Exposure episodes._

_Also, be aware that there is no romance in this story. So if you're looking for that, this isn't the story for you. This is a story that focuses on friendship._

_All that aside, I hope you enjoy this first chapter.)_

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><p><strong>Cryptic investigation<strong>

**Chapter One – The Art Show**

Midday morning sunlight filtered down onto the grounds of the elementary school as several children ran across the blacktop inside the enclosed area of a fence surrounding the red brick building of the school, shouting excitedly to each other. While most of the children were outside on the playgrounds or in the schoolyard for the remainder of lunchtime, two of them had decided to spend their free time elsewhere. In a disused classroom away from the prying eyes of teachers, Rudy and Penny had decided to take their lunch break in ChalkZone.

"The last time we were here," Penny said as she, Rudy and Snap looked over the wide, grassy area near the portal which led to Mr. Wilter's classroom, "these plants were only a third of this size. That must mean that they grow extraordinarily fast compared to real world plants if they managed to acquire such a height over just the weekend."

Rudy glanced up from where he sat with his sketchbook of comic pages to look at the tall, wavy-looking purple plants with wispy branches, each of which was sprouting several party balloons and hats, that had started to grow in the middle of an otherwise fairly empty field. Penny had been so interested to learn about them last Thursday and Friday when they had first discovered them growing in the ChalkZone field on the other side of the vacant classroom's chalkboard. He watched as Penny began excitedly scribbling in the book of ChalkZone plants and wildlife that they'd been working on for quite some time. "Yeah," Rudy added cheerfully, "They're probably a whole new species, too."

"Well, we certainly haven't found them anywhere else in ChalkZone," Penny replied, not pausing to look up from what she was writing.

"Okay, this is nice and all," Snap interrupted, with an impatient look at his two friends, "but uh, weren't we supposed to go exploriatin' today?"

"Well, yeah, but we wanted to look at these plants really quick," Rudy replied, realizing as he said it that they hadn't been 'really quick.' "Besides, lunch time is almost over. We'll have a lot more time after school, and this weekend too. Remember, it's a three day weekend and we have a lot of time. And it's about time we finally explored Chalklantis!"

"But-" Penny began, but Rudy hadn't heard.

"Besides," he continued, "the school is having an artist come in today to talk about his work. A _real_ artist, a professional! Right after lunch! I was thinking if I got there early, he might be willing to help me out with this." He held up the comic page he'd been sketching. "It's my new Vampire Cannibals comic. I'm sure this one is going to be even better than the last ones. I-"

"Well…maybe you should go and talk to him then," Penny told him with a sigh. "We don't have a lot of time left. I'll stay here until lunch hour is over. I want to check on the group of these party balloon plants that's started to grow over in the field by this one." Behind her, Snap gave an irritated sigh. "Also, Rudy-"

"All right," replied Rudy as he walked over to the portal, not hearing her last few words, "but don't worry about it. We'll have plenty of time to study these plants and go "exploriatin'" after the school week is over. Remember, it's a three day weekend!"

"That's also the three day weekend of the science field trip, _remember_?" Penny stated.

Rudy stopped in his tracks. "Oh…" He'd forgotten about that. There was a science field trip (thankfully an optional one) that the school was hosting for the weekend…only somehow he'd gotten that confused with some other weekend. He now remembered with a sinking feeling that the field trip was to leave on a Friday afternoon – _this_ Friday afternoon – and come back Monday afternoon, taking up the _entire _weekend. And Penny had signed up to go. He knew she was excited about this, but he still couldn't help feeling disappointed. A three day weekend had been the perfect opportunity for the three of them to explore ChalkZone, and since he'd confused it with a later weekend, he'd already told Snap about how that weekend would be the perfect one to explore Chalklantis.

"What?" Snap cried soon after Penny had explained. "You're goin' on some field trip? After we'd been plannin'-"

"I'm sorry, guys," Penny told them, ignoring Snap's outburst. "I know we've been planning a trip to Chalklantis and to be honest I didn't know there was going to be a field trip until last week. I know we would've had more time this weekend, but there's always the next one! And there's a lot we can do after school too. We can have smaller explorations this week, and then the next weekend we can try and find Chalklantis." She sighed. "I'm really sorry, Rudy, Snap…I thought I mentioned this to you before, but-"

"It's okay," said Rudy, trying to disguise his disappointment as Snap merely folded his arms and stared off angrily at the ground. "I know you wanted to go on the field trip. Besides, I just finished a page of my comic, so I should probably go see if the artist is finished setting up." He headed towards the portal again, hearing Snap mutter something angrily about the field trip as Penny turned back to look at the plants. "There are plenty of other places to explore," Rudy told his blue and white friend. "You and me can still go on adventures until Penny gets back and we can all go to Chalklantis together."

"Yeah…" Snap muttered, still sounding just as disappointed at the postponing of their adventure as Rudy felt, "I guess you're right." He turned to Penny. "But I still don't see how you could pass this up to go on some stupid field trip!"

"I _wanted _to go," Penny replied crossly, folding her arms across her chest. "And anyway, I've already signed up and my mom knows I'm going, so it's not like I can just cancel it."

"Don't worry, guys," Rudy told them. "We can make up for it by going exploring after school until Friday. We may not be able to go to Chalklantis, but we can still find new places and add to our map of ChalkZone. And, I guess we can plan the Chalklantis trip for next weekend," he added, a hint of disappointment still in his voice.

"Yeah, I guess so…" Snap muttered, still not satisfied. He turned his attention to the still open portal, which Rudy had started to walk towards as he talked to them. "So, uh, just who is this artist you want to talk to so bad anyway, Bucko?"

"His name is Bob Newland. I heard he does all sorts of cool art. I could learn tons of stuff from him," Rudy answered.

"Well, couldn't ya just wait for the presentation to start?" Snap asked.

"Not if I want his opinion on my new comic," Rudy replied, resting one of his hands on the edge of the portal.

"Oh, right, well, that's a good idea! Not that you need any help of course," Snap added. "Well, all right then, Bucko. See ya!"

Rudy climbed through the portal into the deserted classroom, quickly pulling the world map down to conceal the portal before walking out the door and into the hallway. Mr. Wilter had told the class that Newland's presentation was going to be held outside in the schoolyard; apparently the artist had insisted, and the principal had granted the request, seeing as it was such a beautiful day outside.

He hurried through the hallways until he reached the doorway leading outside. Once he pushed open the doors, he quickly noticed two things. One, the visiting artist had already set up a wide array of drawings and paintings on easels and boards on the far side of the blacktop, each one showing a drawing Rudy just knew would look amazing up close, and two, he now realized he wasn't the only one who'd wanted to talk to the school's visitor.

He hurried over toward the art set up table, pausing at the back of the small group of other children to look at all the different drawings the artist had set up around that corner of the school's fenced in area. Each one showed a vastly different drawing, each extremely detailed and vivid. Some were realistic depictions of people or animals or scenes, and others were his favorite kind – a cartoon style. He was amazed by how different and unique each one was; they all looked so different from each other and each so well executed. _'Wow…'_ Rudy thought as he looked at the drawings. _'I hope one day I can be this good.'_

He also realized that Newland must have finished setting up, because he saw a tall, thin man with dark hair – obviously the artist – talking to a few of the other children in the group in front of Rudy about one of the paintings. "You see," he was telling them, "this picture won _first place _in the Orangeapolis art contest two years ago…" He made a large gesture toward a painting of a realistic depiction of a griffin, then pointed to one of a French man in a beret and a striped shirt and began talking about that. As Rudy waited his turn to talk to the artist, he overheard Mr. Wilter nearby, talking to another teacher.

"Well, I sure hope when he focuses on the more realistic types of drawings when he does his presentation," Mr. Wilter was saying grumpily to the other teacher. "The last thing we need is more_ cartoons_!" Rudy rolled his eyes and stepped forward as the two children who'd been talking to Bob Newland walked away.

"Mr. Newland," he began excitedly, hardly pausing between breaths, "I really love your artwork! It's so great you were able to come to our school and show us all these amazing paintings of yours! Can I see you draw something?"

Newland turned and gave him an odd look. "Eh, sure, kid," he muttered with a shrug after a few seconds, then turned to a desk set up in the center of the half ring of displayed drawings, and quickly scribbled something on a piece of paper. "Okay, here you go."

Rudy picked up the drawing. It was a Chinese dragon that looked far too detailed to have been drawn in such a short time. "_Wow_," he said in admiration. "That's amazing. And you drew it so fast, too."

"I know," Newland replied, pausing to smile as the other children gathered around also echoed their approval of the drawing.

"Can I keep it?" Rudy asked.

"No," said Newland, his smile vanishing as he snatched the picture away.

"Oh," said Rudy, slightly surprised. "Well, that's okay. Uh, anyway, I was wondering if you could give me your opinion on this new comic I'm making." He held up his sketchpad and handed it to Newland, who gave him an annoyed expression before looking at it with a skeptical gaze. "You see," Rudy continued, "it's called Vampire Cannibals-"

"What?" the visiting artist said with a laugh. "Are you kidding me? That's all you could come up with, kid?"

"Well, no," said Rudy quickly, taken aback, "I mean...I have other ones if you want to see them. I can go get-"

"Vampires are stupid, overused, and writing a story about them is a very bad idea. They're too popular!" he said, flinging the notebook to the ground in disgust, making a rather unnecessary display of stomping on it. "I can only appreciate art that's actually_ creative_."

"But…" began Rudy as he slowly leaned down and picked up the notebook off the ground. "You don't even know the story yet. If it isn't good, maybe you could help me-"

"It has some stupid vampires in it," he snapped, "I already know it's not good! Now leave me alone. You're wasting my time. I didn't come here to entertain _you_, kid!" Newland shoved him aside and turned to talk to a third grade girl who'd ran up to show him something, apparently oblivious to the fact that Rudy had just failed at doing that same thing.

Rudy looked at the art on display sadly and slowly turned and walked away. He hadn't thought his idea was all that bad…but after all, Bob Newland was a professional, and he had to know what he was talking about. But all the same, Rudy wished he'd at least bothered to _look _at it. He walked to the edge of the schoolyard and sat against the fence a little ways away and flipped through the pages of his now dirty sketchbook slowly. He didn't see how the comic was that bad…but maybe he just wasn't experienced enough to really see the flaws in it. He wasn't sure. He glanced over at Newland's drawings framed beautifully on his display. Well, the Vampire Cannibal comics certainly weren't as good as what a _professional artist_ could do.

**ooo**

"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all," one of the teachers said to Mr. Wilter as they watched Bob Newland continue to talk to the now smaller group of kids around him in an increasingly irritated voice.

"What do you call this?" Newland was saying, his voice actually sounding angry as he waved a piece of paper depicting a dog-like creature that seemed to have been colored with every crayon in the box in front of a second grade girl.

"Her name is Angel!" the girl said proudly.

"This is disgusting," he said, pointing dramatically at the paper. "How can you live with yourself?"

"Yep," the teacher sighed. "He's a disaster."

"If only we could have gotten Ms. Tweezer to come back," Mr. Wilter sighed.

"Wolves aren't _rainbow_," Newland said in a nasty voice as he tore the paper in half.

"Uh, Mr. Newland," Mr. Wilter said as he walked over, shooing the children over toward the other side of the schoolyard. "I don't think this is the proper way to teach students about art. And couldn't you at least save your _teaching_ methods for when lunch period is over and you're ready to do your presentation?"

"I wasn't planning on teaching them before then," Newland snapped back. "They just wanted to show me their stupid pictures instead of admiring my artwork like they were supposed to. I was trying to set up early, because it's not every day students at this school get to see art of_ this_ sort of quality."

"I'm quite certain they see enough of this kind of thing," Mr. Wilter replied, pointing to a stylized, cartoony portrait of a cat. "We've already had people like Drew Yerface come here. We don't _need_ another artist who makes cartoons."

Newland gave him a nasty glare. "You have a problem with my art? You should be _grateful_ that I took the time to come to this run down excuse for a school to show these children art none of those pathetic other artists could ever _dream_ of doing. I don't care if you have a problem with me or the art I choose to show here, but Principal Stringent gave me express permission to hold this assembly and there is nothing_ you_ can do about it."

Mr. Wilter glanced around, wishing Principal Stringent wasn't too busy to come outside at the moment, and sighed. "Just hurry up and get this over with," he muttered, walking back to the other teacher. Newland folded his arms and gave the teacher a nasty grin as Mr. Wilter and the other teacher walked back toward the school.

Rudy hadn't been paying attention to the conversation; he was too busy looking through his comic sketches and wondering if it really was better to scrap the whole idea after all. Maybe if he could get Penny's opinion…

He paused, hearing a vehicle drive up along the road facing the fence he was leaning on. He turned around, and realized with a jolt of surprise that it was a vehicle he recognized – Terry Bouffant's news station van. "Oh no…" he whispered, standing up quickly. He watched the vehicle drive by and stop somewhere around the corner and out of sight. He glanced back toward where Mr. Wilter and the other teacher had been, but they had already headed back into the building. He looked at the van to see Terry step out, followed, he realized with dread, by Vinnie Raton.

He hardly had time to wonder what the two of them were doing together. Knowing that Terry Bouffant had no problem walking onto school grounds or looking through the classrooms, considering she had done so before, and that the teachers had just vanished around the side of the school, he was sure they'd come to try and, yet again, get information about ChalkZone from him. He was starting to get up and move away from the fence when he suddenly remembered Penny. And the open portal. Alarmed, he bolted around the side of the school toward the nearest doors that were out of sight of the front of the school, hoping the two hadn't seen him.

Rudy hadn't been the only one to notice the van's arrival. Newland, who'd been staring at his watch, waiting for the lunch period to be over, suddenly looked up in surprise. "They sent a reporter," he whispered to himself in mild surprise, "to showcase _my_ art? Well," he added, straightening himself, "that was a good idea. That shows that at least the_ principal_ appreciates what true art is." He quickly set about organizing the papers on his desk that some of the annoying children from earlier had disturbed.

"Are you sure this is gonna help?" Vinnie muttered as they walked along the edge of the blacktop. "I'm sure we've already got every bit of info we could find in this stupid school. I don't see how this is actually gonna help us."

Terry quickly pulled him aside, lowering her voice. "Earlier this morning I saw Penny arriving at the school with a strange book that I'm pretty sure had 'chalk' written on it. I didn't get close enough to see anything else, but if we can search their classroom again while it's still lunch time, we may be able to find it and find out more…" Terry paused, her gaze moving toward a figure running around the side of the school. "There's Tabootie," she whispered. "He must have seen us, come on!"

On the other side of the front schoolyard, Bob Newland gave his display one last satisfied look and turned around, proudly standing by his artwork as the reporter and who he guessed was her assistant…ran right by him. "What?" Newland couldn't help crying out loud as they darted past his table. "Uh, HELLO?" he shouted. "I'm over _here!_ Can't you see how I've set up my-" When his only answer was the slam of a door from the school building, he angrily got up and followed them.

**ooo**

As Rudy ran through the hallways, he soon realized, though not with great surprise, that Vinnie and Terry were following him. Knowing he had to distract them somehow before he could warn Penny, he took a different turn and ran into another classroom that he knew had more than one door. He slammed the one he'd come through shut, and pushed a few of the desks against the door, then bolted out of the other one and into a different hallway toward his and Penny's classroom.

Terry and Vinnie quickly reached the door to the classroom, not seeing Rudy leave the other door into the next hallway. While they struggled to push it open, Newland, who had tried to follow the sound of their footsteps through the school, had found himself lost.

"Hey! Miss reporter person!" he yelled angrily, glancing through each classroom as he walked by it. "I've been trying to tell you…" He couldn't see which way she had gone so he picked a random direction. "_Hello!?_" he yelled. "My drawings were right outside! _How_ could you miss that?" Indeed, how she could have missed his display of quality drawings was beyond him, but he was determined to find her and get some answers. This was beyond rude.

He turned another corner in the hallway, feeling very angry that the reporter hadn't even stopped long enough to glance around, when he heard something from inside one of the classrooms. Knowing that the children were outside for lunch, he knew it had to be the reporter and her assistant. Well, that or a teacher, but he was willing to bet it was the reporter, and if it wasn't, well, the teachers shouldn't get mad at _him_. They would be honored to have him visit their school. As he stepped toward the door, he heard voices.

"Penny, you've got to come out now," a boy was saying. A boy who sounded sort of familiar, but Newland didn't really care much at the moment.

Someone else replied to the boy's comment, but Newland had already turned away from the door, not really caring why two of the kids were in the classroom. Then he suddenly realized…maybe one of them could tell him where the reporter had been going, and opened the door.

He was met with the most bizarre sight he'd ever seen. One of the children he'd met earlier in the schoolyard was standing next to the chalkboard, which looked like it had some sort of strange, glowing circle through it. But a moment later, a second child stepped straight _through _the circle, climbing down to stand beside the first child who grabbed an eraser and wiped the circle off the board.

"_What the-?_" he whispered under his breath.

In his confusion, he didn't notice someone coming up behind him until he was nearly shoved off his feet by someone rushing into the room. It was the reporter he'd been trying to follow, followed by her assistant. The two children hadn't noticed him when he'd first entered, but they did now.

"What do you want?" the boy asked in a surprised tone, glaring at the other two adults, sounding worried.

"Rudy, let's go…" he heard the girl whisper as she began trying to edge closer to the door where Newland was currently standing, not paying any attention to him.

"Why so worried?" the reporter replied. "Are you hiding something in here? Something to do with the _chalk world_?"

"Chalk world?" Newland repeated, but everyone else in the room continued to ignore him.

"Yeah, we're on to yous kids," the reporter's assistant told them. "You can't keep it a secret forever!"

"There's nothing to see, Ms. Bouffant," Rudy said with narrowed eyes as he moved over to his desk, sitting down and making sure he was between her and his backpack. He was pretty sure that's what she'd come back here for; to try and find his magic chalk again. After a moment and she refused to leave, he simply slung it over his shoulder and walked past them out into the hallway, beckoning Penny over. As she followed, she gave a curious but surprised look at Newland who glared back at her.

"I _know_ you were hiding something!" Terry responded. "Why else would you be running?"

But Rudy and Penny ignored her, focusing on walking down the hallway toward the nearest door leading outside, knowing that while they had the backpack, there was no way she'd be able to steal the magic chalk from them. Still, Rudy now realized he was going to have to be a lot more careful in the future; he needed to keep the chalk with him at all times whenever he brought it to school, and it would probably be safest not to bring it to school at all for a little while.

"You'd think she would have given up by now," Penny said worriedly as they hurried through the hallway.

"Maybe she finally will this time," Rudy said hopefully, though neither of them believed it.

Angrily, the two strangers walked out of the room and down the hallway toward the nearest exit, muttering to each other. Newland ran after them. "Wait!" he cried out to them, meeting them just as they reached the nearest exit to the school.

"Ugh…listen," the reporter told him, rolling her eyes impatiently, "we are NOT here to look at your stupid art projects. Now leave us alone. We're busy." She turned and pushed the door open.

Newland wanted to say a few choice words to her for calling his artwork 'stupid', but because of his curiosity, he refrained, though not without difficulty. "No, it's not about that," he replied. "What were you saying to those two kids? The ones that had that portal in the chalkboard?"

At this, the reporter stopped in her tracks, the door only halfway open. "Portal in the chalkboard? And you saw it?"

"You know what it is?" Newland asked, confused.

The reporter and her companion glanced at each other. "Follow me," she said.

"But…but what on earth was that?" he said as he followed them out the door. "That was impossible! She stepped _through the chalkboard_! What do you-"

"Look, meet us at the front of the school once school is out," she replied. "We'll tell you then."

Newland watched them walk away for a moment before heading back over to his art display, thoroughly confused by what had happened, but very, very curious about what the reporter knew.

**ooo**

"Rudy, I think that visiting art teacher might have seen the portal," Penny whispered as they walked out with the rest of the class toward Bob Newland's art display once it was time for the presentation.

Rudy had been too busy worrying that Terry Bouffant or Vinnie Raton were going to try to steal magic chalk from his backpack or something to worry about what the visiting art "teacher" had been doing standing there by the classroom. In fact, he'd hardly even noticed him at the time, but now that he thought back to it, he could see why Penny was worried. All the same, he didn't want to start thinking about that now, not when Terry Bouffant and Vinnie Raton were bigger problems. "Well, he was trying to talk to Ms. Bouffant, so…he was probably just following her and didn't see until after we erased it."

"I hope so," Penny replied, looking across the schoolyard at Newland as he waited impatiently for the teachers to bring the rest of the students there. He didn't seem to be acting strangely…or at least not the sort of strange that would indicate he had just seen something seemingly impossible, so she tried to put it in the back of her mind.

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><p><em>(Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed it so far!<em>

_Also, a few of the episodes mention them wanting to go to Chalklantis, but they never get to. Sorry, Rudy and friends, today isn't your day either.)_


	2. Sinister Alliance

_(Author's Note:_ _Be aware that chapters are going to vary in length, sometimes a lot. Such as this one (compared with the first chapter). This is because I plan for each chapter to end with a certain event, and I write as much as I need to in order to get to that event.)_

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><p><strong>Cryptic investigation<strong>

**Chapter Two – Sinister Alliance**

"So, now that you've told me all this, do you actually have a plan to find a way to get _into _this world…that will work?" Bob Newland asked, not even looking at Terry but instead looking all around the walls of the now very cramped news van that he, the reporter, and Vinnie Raton were all currently standing in. They had driven to place in Plainville where they knew they wouldn't be disturbed, and Terry had begun showing him all the evidence she had gathered. Bob had been fascinated by everything she'd told him; the idea of being able to bring his creations to life was something he'd certainly never dreamed possible. And if it _was_ possible in some way, he was going to do everything he could to find the world that made it so.

"So, let me get this straight; you _don't_ think we're crazy?" Terry asked as she set the stack of papers she'd been holding down.

"I sort of do," Bob replied, "but I believe your chalk world theory, and I guess that's all that matters! So, what you're telling me is that whatever gets erased comes alive in that other dimension? And that you two have both _been there_?"

"Yes!" Terry responded. "Vinnie even got pictures of it." She motioned to her companion, who quickly handed Bob a stack of photos. Terry watched as Bob Newland slowly looked through the photos. He had practically demanded to know more about the chalk world the moment he'd left the school that afternoon. She had only been too happy to start telling him all her theories, but the fact that someone else was actually starting to believe her was so surprising that even though he'd claimed to have seen the chalk world portal himself, she couldn't help but be suspicious that he was only listening because he found the whole thing amusing. After all, that seemed like something a person like him would do.

"You have no idea what this means to me!" Bob said as he continued to flip through the photos. "Having people's own creatures come to life is, well…something you'd see in some stupid cliché fantasy book, actually, but this…_this_ is real! This…this is an entirely _new_ way to create works of art! And for people to appreciate it, of course! My drawings becoming living, breathing beings that people could admire? I could create whatever I wanted to. I'd be the most famous artist in the world for discovering this!"

"You weren't the first to discover it," Terry replied crossly. "Anyway, so, are you going to help us?"

"Of course!" Bob shouted enthusiastically. "An entire universe where anything I create becomes real before my eyes? Why_ wouldn't_ I help you? I mean, I've always thought my animals were unique and inventive enough to deserve being real, but I never thought it was actually possible! And with this…this, it can be!"

"Okay, good, you're hired," Terry replied absentmindedly. "Now, Vinnie and I have been thinking of ways to get magic chalk so that we can get in. As far as we know, only Rudy has it, but it's possible that Penny might as well."

"Yeah, okay," Bob replied, "so how do we take it from him?"

"I don't think we'll be able to," Terry replied. "At least not for a while. Those kids knew exactly what we were looking for when we came to the school today and I doubt they'll be foolish enough to leave the chalk somewhere we can find it anytime soon. We're going to have to use the chalk world itself to get it. Remember what we told you about Boorat?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Newland replied, giving her an annoyed look. "Well," he began, "from what you told me about how your drawing couldn't find its way back in your world, you're obviously missing something. If you're really so sure that this creation of yours knew your orders upon coming to life in the chalk world itself, there are still any number of things that could have stopped it. Perhaps, maybe, it simply didn't know where to find you?"

"Maybe if we'd known where that portal was gonna be it woulda' been easier…" Vinnie muttered.

Bob thought for a moment. "Well, maybe you should show me, in more detail, everything you've tried so far. But is there somewhere else we can go? This stupid van of yours is far too small." He kicked aside a box of papers near his feet.

"Well, I dunno," Vinnie shrugged. "We can't go where anyone else would be around. They'd think we're crazy."

"Look, I have an idea of what to do about your 'creature not finding you' problem," Newland said. "But first, let's go somewhere where it will be easier to talk about this." He opened the doors in the back of the van and stepped out. "And I think I know just the place."

**ooo**

That very same afternoon, Rudy and his friends had decided to make use of what time they were going to have before the weekend to wander some of ChalkZone's uncharted areas, knowing that Penny would have to leave for the field trip that Friday. This time, they had decided to wander farther than they usually did in the afternoons after school got out. On this day, their travels had led them to a place that appeared to be some sort of maze-like forest made up of candles, all of them different sizes, shapes, and colors. Many of them towered high over the trio's heads, but there were also several smaller and shorter ones scattered throughout the area. A few of them were even lit, and on some of these candles, melted wax dripped down the sides, which the trio was careful to avoid. The place smelled different depending on what sort of candle they were standing next to, and in certain places it was almost overpowering.

"I don't think we've been to this part of ChalkZone before," Penny stated as she glanced around the surrounding area, pausing to write a few notes in their book. "Either that or it's changed a lot since we have."

"I dunno, Penny, did you see anything like this on the old map?" Rudy asked, stopping to look at what she was writing.

"No," she replied. "But these candles could have started growing here later, so it could be one of the places we've already marked down…" She turned the pages of the book to go back to one of their early maps.

"Hey, Rudy," Snap asked as he walked over to them, holding an ice cream cone that Rudy had drawn for him earlier, "so, what did that art teacher who was at your school today say about your comic?"

"Huh? Oh…" Rudy paused, remembering what he'd told Penny right after school, just before they'd gone into ChalkZone. He had explained to her what had happened when he'd tried to show Bob Newland his Vampire Cannibals comic before Terry Bouffant and Vinnie Raton had appeared, and he realized Snap didn't know anything about what had happened yet. "Uh…well, he didn't like the idea of the comic," he began, turning away to fix his stare on the base of one of the massive candles, "and I'm not sure he liked the art style either. He said it wasn't any good."

"What?!" Snap cried, clearly surprised. "You've gotta be kidding me! He said that about _your_ artwork?"

"Yeah, but, you know, maybe he's right. I mean…"

"What was he talkin' about, Bucko? Your drawings are great! Come on, what does he know? Don't listen to him! He just doesn't know how to appreciate real art!"

"Yeah, but…" Rudy began, "he's a professional and he knows what he's talking about..."

Snap, however, didn't seem to have heard. "He wouldn't know good if it hit 'im in the face," he continued. "Not if he said that about YOUR drawings! I mean, come on! That's ridiculous, huh Penny?"

Penny turned from Rudy to Snap and nodded. "Yes, it is. I mean, he didn't even get a good look at your drawings." She glanced at Rudy, who still didn't look convinced. "But…try not to worry about it now. You can always make changes to it later. And it's not like Mr. Newland knew anything about the story anyway. He was simply judging it based on the cover."

"Yeah, I guess you're right, guys" Rudy sighed. "Plus I can always try again, right?"

"That's the spirit, Bucko!" Snap cried. "If anyone can draw well, it's you. Come on; let's go see what's on the other side a' this forest!"

Rudy let Snap lead them through the candle forest, and since none of them really knew where they were going, nor were they in any hurry to get anywhere, they were content to simply wander around until Penny caught sight of something up ahead.

The forest had thickened out, and it was hard to see anything over the candles, but Penny still noticed something odd…a vertical line marking the start of a darker area up ahead, where the sky was a different color, but unlike NightZone, this one didn't seem very dark. Perplexed, Penny pointed it out to the others and they hurried on toward it.

They followed the twisting pathway between the candles until they suddenly stepped into a darker clearing and realized that they weren't in NightZone at all. They were in a place that looked in between. It was hard to see what lay beyond the forest, so Rudy quickly drew a ladder, which he then set against one of the taller and thicker of the candles. The three of them climbed up and sat on the top, glad that the flame wasn't lit, and looked out over the area they had just discovered.

Gazing ahead, they could see that the landscape before them looked almost like a very vivid sunset painting. Well, a vivid sunset painting with a very odd, in real world terms, landscape. There was a large hill made up of socks near them, and beyond that was a grove of odd looking blue trees that looked to be growing bowls of lime gelatin. Somewhere off in the distance was a random patch of snowy area that stood out starkly from everything else, and in the distance, a range of mountains with very odd rock formations covered in thick forest towered over the land. All this was lying beneath a vivid red and yellow sky that gradually got brighter as it reached down toward the mountains. As they gazed at it, it reminded Rudy of those large detailed chalk paintings some professional artists drew, and he wondered if that was what had created this strange sunset. He'd certainly never seen anything like this in ChalkZone before.

"I've never seen anythin' like this before!" Snap stated, looking at his surroundings in confusion; clearly he was just as much a stranger to this place as the humans were, so Penny figured that the sunset drawing must be a very new addition.

"Wow!" Penny exclaimed. "I never knew there could be a…a SunsetZone…at least, I think that's what it is, in ChalkZone…" She turned back to the DayZone part of the candle forest and noted how the border between them was a straight line, just like the difference between NightZone and DayZone.

"Hm…well, the sunset may be new, but this part of ChalkZone doesn't look familiar either," Rudy mused, staring out over the landscape and the forest covered mountains beyond it. "Let's go check it out!"

"We'll have to hurry," Penny reminded him as they struck off into the more dimly lit part of the candle forest ahead. "We don't have much time left before we'll be missed back at home."

"Yeah, you're right," said Rudy, stopping. Since they'd meandered so far that day, it had taken up a lot of the afternoon just to get to where they were, and he'd lost track of time. "Maybe we can come back tomorrow right after school and explore it then. That way we'll have more time."

"Good idea," Penny replied. "Then we can officially add this area to the map."

Rudy and Snap agreed, and they made plans to spend the next afternoon fully exploring their newly discovered area as they began heading back the way they came toward the place in ChalkZone that corresponded with Rudy's room.

**ooo**

"You really want us to come up with our new plan in _this_ place?" Vinnie asked skeptically as he stepped through an old wooden door into a very strange old building.

"Of course I do!" Bob snapped. "Don't question me! And anyway, this is the perfect place! No one comes here and it's too far away from most of the town for anyone to bother us. And we needed a place far away, so no one will notice if strange creatures are running around it." He grinned as he surveyed the large, two-story building as he stood in the center of the room they had stepped into upon entering. They could tell at once that the old and decrepit building was hardly in good condition; it was mainly composed of filthy concrete with several old and broken looking wooden doors leading to other rooms, and a rickety-looking wooden stairway leading to the upper floor, which they could see from below, as the room they were standing in was two stories high. From what they could see of them from their vantage point on the lower story, the rooms upstairs looked to be in just as bad a condition. All of the windows they could see around them were disgusting and covered in cobwebs, and everything seemed to have a fine coating of dust. Strangest of all, the building seemed to be filled with all sorts of broken and discarded furniture and other items. From what they could see of the top floor, it looked even more cluttered. It was as if someone had simply come to dump a bunch of garbage and old furniture there and left it. Either that, or all this was what was left of the building's old, battered furniture. When they walked through a door on the other side of their room, they could see into one of the rooms upstairs through a jagged hole in the ceiling. However, Bob was satisfied with their new, as he called it, 'secret hideout'. Like he had said, it was on the outskirts of town, on an all but abandoned street with other disused buildings on either side of it. It was, he believed, the ideal place to put his idea into motion.

"What a dump…" Vinnie muttered, kicking aside a broken skateboard as he passed by the pile of junk. "My brother should have demolished this place long ago!"

"Good thing he didn't," Bob replied. "It's just what we need."

"And _why_ exactly do we need it?" Vinnie asked.

"Are we even allowed to be here?" Terry muttered, seeming almost as skeptical of their new 'hideout' as Vinnie was.

"No one will know," Bob said with a shrug as he walked toward the stairs, then paused to look back at the others. "I chose this place_ because_ it's abandoned." His voice, sharp and impatient, echoed eerily, and the other two noted that for some odd reason, the building seemed much larger on the inside than it had from the outside. Bob was certainly right about one thing; a drawing from the chalk world could easily hide here if need be, and Terry had to admit that that was a definite advantage to using this place. "And it would be easy to spot so one of my creations can find us once it gets to our world," Bob continued. "It can stay here and wait for us if it happens to come when we aren't meeting here. And, of course, it'll be a great hiding place for the drawing," he added, saying exactly what Terry had been thinking. "Until we prove the existence of this chalk world, our creations cannot be seen. We need them to bring us the magic chalk, and if anyone saw them, they would likely be captured." He turned back around and headed up the creaky wooden stairs that led to the gloomy-looking upper floor.

The other two glanced at each other and hesitated for a moment before they followed the artist up the creaking stairs and onto the second story of the building. Terry noticed that a long hallway extended the length of the building's interior, rooms along either side of it except for where the big room opened up into the top story, and she also noticed that if there had ever been a rail, along the area where the upper floor met the area with the large room, to prevent people walking the hallway from accidentally falling to the first floor, it had long since been broken and removed. The hallway itself was, as they had seen from below, filled with broken and useless clutter; there was hardly any room to walk without stepping on something. Dirty old carpet lined the floor they were now standing on, and looked as if no one had walked up there for years.

They took a few moments to follow Bob as he looked in all the upper floor's rooms, all but two of which were also filled with clutter and trash. He then proudly announced that he'd found the best one, and led them into one of the two empty, and at least relatively clean, rooms. There were no windows in it, and it was fairly small, but at least it didn't look quite as bad as the others.

"Vinnie, hand me the chalk board," Bob said.

Vinnie, who had been carrying the small chalk board he'd brought from Terry's van, handed it to Bob, who began to set it up on the wall opposite the door.

"So how exactly is this idea a' yours gonna work?" Vinnie asked.

"Well, from what you told me," Bob began, "your creation didn't reach this world even though you're pretty certain that chalk drawings can remember the orders you give them. However, you didn't tell your creature much other than to bring the magic chalk to you, and then you waited around where you thought your drawing might appear. What _I_ think, is that when we make our new drawing, we should tell it exactly where it should go to look for us. You know, give it directions it can follow easily. That way it can come to us whenever it manages to get through the portal. We don't have to sit around waiting for it. We'd only have to come here once a day until it works."

"That's a great idea!" Vinnie replied enthusiastically. "Oh, and by the way, Terry and I have been comin' up with new ideas for creatures. We weren't gonna use 'em, but I figured that since, now, you're helping us-you could see which one ya think would work best?" He pulled out a small notebook from his pocket and flipped through the pages to show Bob some crude sketches of different types of creatures.

Bob gave the designs a look of disdain. "These are _pathetic_," he muttered. "If we're going to do this right, you're going to need to do a lot better than that. Actually, on second thought," he began, giving his two companions a disapproving gaze, "you two shouldn't be doing any drawing at all. Leave that to me. _I'm _the expert." He turned to face the chalk board. "This creature has to be something swift, strong enough to fight back if anything tries to stop it…yet small enough to fit through a portal a kid could. Hm…I have the perfect idea!"

Terry and Vinnie both watched Bob expectantly as he proceeded drew a griffin-like creature with a lion's mane, making sure to give it powerful wings, and a curved beak. It had feathered ears, a long tail, and large talons on its front feet. "You know, in case some pathetic creation in the chalk world gives him trouble," he explained. "Heh heh, feel free to slice apart any worthless drawing who gets in your way!" he muttered under his breath as he added a few finishing touches.

"Be careful, though," Terry warned. "We don't want to hurt Rudy, just take the chalk from him."

"I told it to attack the _chalk creations_ that try to stop it," Bob replied, rolling his eyes and turning back to the chalkboard. After he finished the drawing, which, Terry and Vinnie had to admit, was better than anything they could draw, he stepped back and looked at it. "See?" he stated, turning to them with a smug look. "_That's_ a good drawing."

"Well, you'd better give him a name, then," Terry responded flatly, crossing her arms.

"Hm…" Bob began, trying to think of good names as he listed them off the top of his head. He wasn't about to name his creation something simple or normal; it was too unique for that, after all. He'd make up his own name. "Inari, Topher, Dooth…" he muttered aloud. No, he thought to himself, those wouldn't work. He was about to mentally discard those ideas and think of new ones when Vinnie spoke up.

"Dooth?" Vinnie repeated. "That's a stupid name."

Anger flared up inside Bob, and he glared at Vinnie as if daring him to say it again. "It is NOT a stupid name!" he yelled, furious that he would say that about a name _he_ made up, even one made up on a whim. "It's an original name! And what would you know about originality?" Making sure to drive the point home, he added, "You know what? Dooth is actually the perfect name for this creature. And of course you wouldn't realize that…." He turned back to the chalkboard, muttering as he drew a few last finishing touches on the drawing. "Now what?" he asked Terry.

"Just tell it what you want it to do," Terry replied sharply.

"All right," Bob replied as he faced the drawing. He had to admit that he felt quite silly talking to a chalk board; this wasn't something he would have ever been able to picture himself doing, and in spite of what he had seen and the evidence he'd been shown, he had the sneaking suspicion that Vinnie and Terry just wanted to laugh at him. "Okay, then…" he began, glancing at the other two with a suspicious look, but they only watched him expectantly. "Okay, _Dooth_," he began, glaring at Vinnie as he mentioned the name, "go into that chalk-world, find…uh…"

"Tabootie," Terry stated.

"Right, Tabootie. Okay, find him, get his magic chalk, do it before he can draw anything to stop you, and go back through the portal into our world." He then quickly went on to describe the building's exact location, and added, "Go there when it's night, so it'll be dark, and wait for me, and when I come back, give me the magic chalk. And make sure not to be seen by anyone in this world other than the people in this building, got that? So, find the magic chalk, then as quickly as you can, bring it back here."

"You said that already," Vinnie pointed out, and Bob just glared at him, then turned back to the chalkboard.

"Oh, and…make sure not to fail like their 'Boorat' drawing did," he added another annoyed look at the other two, and erased the drawing. "Now we wait," he stated. "And see if Dooth manages to find us soon."

"Well, we'd better get going; we can come back tomorrow," Terry sighed. "What time should we all come back?"

"At around eight o' clock tomorrow evening," Bob replied as he started to walk down the filthy wooden stairs. "When it's dark. That's when it will be safest for my creation to be on the move."

**ooo**

Rudy reached his room barely three minutes after he was supposed to be home. He had already taken Penny back to her house through ChalkZone. Just as he was stepping through the portal, he heard footsteps coming toward his room. Quickly jumping to the floor, he barely managed to turn his chalkboard over so that the side with the portal was against the floor before his mother opened the door.

"Oh…uh, hi, Mom!" Rudy said, hoping she wouldn't bother to ask why his chalkboard was knocked over.

"Have you been drawing your comics all afternoon?" she asked, glancing at the pieces of paper on the floor that Rudy just realized he'd accidentally knocked off his desk when he turned the chalkboard over.

"Huh? Oh, yeah!" he replied, casting a quick glance at the overturned chalk board. He'd only been half listening, still thinking about the excursion he was planning into ChalkZone tomorrow.

"Well, all right," Mrs. Tabootie replied, "you can work on your comics as much as you want after school, as long as you get all your homework done before you leave for that field trip over the weekend on Friday."

"What? Oh, I'm not going on the field trip," Rudy replied, tearing his gaze away from the chalk board and bending down to pick up some of his half-finished comic pages. "It's optional, and I'm not really interested in science."

"Well…your father and I already signed you up."

Rudy dropped the pieces of paper he was holding. "WHAT?" he cried. "Why?"

His mother seemed surprised at his reaction. "Well, you spend so much time alone drawing, I thought this would be a nice chance to-"

"But…but I wanted to stay here!" Rudy cried.

"Oh, don't worry. It'll be fun," she replied, "not like school. Besides, Penny is going."

"Yeah, I know," Rudy said quietly, "but…"

"You'd be alone all weekend if you stayed here," she pointed out. "Besides, I'm afraid it's too late now-you're already signed up. I really think this field trip could help you raise your grades. Besides, if you really want to, you can bring your drawings and work on them there, so you can still finish your comics."

Rudy glanced down at the papers strewn around his feet. That wasn't why he wanted to stay, and if he did stay, he wouldn't have to be alone…but he couldn't tell his mother and father that.

"Okay…" he sighed. "I'll go…"

**ooo**

It was a peaceful day in the city, with cars driving leisurely down the street and other Zoners taking walks or exploring the shops, when Bob Newland's drawing materialized on a street corner not far from the Stick Figure Bakery. Luckily, he appeared only a few feet above the ground, so he landed quickly and easily on his four mismatched feet. He blinked against the sunlight, taking in his new surroundings – the bustling streets, the different vehicles, some of them quite oddly shaped, driving down the road, the lines of shops that extended in either direction on both side of the street, Zoners walking in and out of them – and took a moment to get his bearings. He knew where he was. All erased drawings knew. He didn't know this specific area, but he knew, as plain as the DayZone sun above him, that the place he was in was called ChalkZone. And he had been created with a name, an identity. _A purpose._

Dooth took a moment to turn his feathered head around, looking at his powerful dark brown feathered wings, his long lionlike tail. The claws and talons on his feet. He then turned around to look at his reflection in a shop's window. He grinned, realizing immediately that, compared to the, in his opinion, quite pathetic looking drawings walking around the city's streets, he was quite well drawn. Of course, he thought, admiring the reflection, considering who his creator was, how could anyone expect any different?

Dooth paused as he realized that someone behind the shop's window was staring at him oddly. He gave the stick figure-like creation a glare and turned away, beginning to walk down the street. After all, he had something to do. Something important to his creator. And if it was important to his creator, then it was _very_ important.

And as he gazed around, adjusting to this new environment, the mission he had been given became clearer in his head…as did the reason for it. Looking around his new home, Dooth could think of nothing better than to have his creator here himself, someone who could vastly improve upon this world, and he, his creator's drawing, could say that he had been the one to help bring about this great change. And thus, it was of utmost importance that he find the item – and the person – Bob Newland had instructed him to.

Dooth immediately decided that it would be best to ask one of the other Zoners for information. Watching them as they strolled along the streets, walked into shops or drove by in their vehicles, they didn't seem threatening; he was sure he could make them talk if they refused. Flexing his talons, he looked around for one that seemed suitable enough to ask. He immediately passed over a silver husky – there was no way he was going to lower himself enough to talk to a drawing of such a common subject as a dog – and ignored a group of young stick figure children who looked too stupid to tell him anything, and then rested his gaze on the next nearest Zoner, a small orange bear drawing that stood on its hind paws that was walking slowly past some shops on the other side of the street, carrying a backpack on his shoulders. "Eh, that'll do," Dooth muttered to himself with a shrug. Sure, this one seemed just as dim-witted as everyone else, but it wasn't a drawing he'd be _too_ embarrassed to be seen talking to, if anyone happened to be paying attention, even though it was obviously drawn by an amateur. And one without much creativity, Dooth thought. Spreading his wings, Dooth quickly glided above the street, coming to and abrupt landing in front of the bear just as it turned from one of the shops.

"Huh?" the other Zoner yelped in surprise, jumping back a pace.

"I'm looking for Rudy Tabootie," Dooth said forcefully, shoving his face right in front of the bear's. "Where is he?"

"The Great Creator?" the stranger replied, and to Dooth's annoyance, confusion – and then suspicion – clouded his teddy-bear-like face. "What do you want to see him for?"

"That's none of your business," Dooth snapped. "Just tell me where he is!"

The young bear started to back away. "No…just…leave me alone-"

"If you know something," Dooth growled, dropping into a crouch and stepping closer, "then tell me!" Thinking that he'd be able to get the drawing's attention another way, he remembered the reason he had been given his large talons, and in one swift movement, he swiped them across the bear's face.

Immediately the other Zoner began howling in pain, his forepaw raised toward his muzzle as he turned and fled, and as Dooth watched, several startled cries from behind him made him quickly whirl around. He hadn't noticed a moment ago, but he now realized that his actions had attracted quite a bit of attention, and there were more city-goers around the shop he was standing in front of than there were before. They were all staring at him, and more were arriving, wanting to see what the commotion was.

"What are you staring at?" Dooth snarled. "Do you have any idea who I _am_?"

"What do you think you're doing?" one of the shopkeepers, standing in the doorway of his store, shouted at him.

"I'm calling the police!" someone else shouted from nearby.

Infuriated by the angry shouts, Dooth arched his wings over his head and lashed his tail. "You can't speak to me like that!" he roared, outraged. "I was drawn by a _professional!_"

However, it was clear that he had drawn too much attention to himself, for he heard police sirens coming from somewhere down the street. Still indignant, but knowing that staying in this area would be detrimental to his mission, Dooth took to the sky and soared above the buildings until he found a secluded alley to rest in while he tried to think of what to do next.

Keeping an eye out for any police cars, he paced back and forth, knowing it wouldn't be long before he'd be likely to have to find a new place to hide from those Zoners back in the other street. He couldn't just go up to anyone and ask them like that again; these stupid drawings were all on Tabootie's side! Really, he thought, it was pathetic how they had overreacted to him slicing that stupid bear. Why did the bear matter? There were plenty of stupid drawings like him. They shouldn't have cared so much. Then again, he realized, they were just as pathetic as the bear was. Nearly all the drawings here were. This place could definitely use the improvement his creator would bring. He stood up on his hind legs, leaning against the wall of the alley and thumping his tail against the ground. Maybe, he thought, if he could find some place secluded enough to corner one of them…

As he thought more about it, Dooth still had a hard time believing he'd let the other Zoners chase him off. He'd wanted to stay there, to fight them off, but he'd known his creator's mission was more important. He knew that if he could help it, he'd avoid fighting Rudy as well. After all, even though he had been encouraged to attack other Zoners, he had a feeling that his creator did not want him to attack Rudy if he could avoid it. He wasn't sure why this was, but he decided that knowing the reason wasn't important. His creator certainly knew what he was doing.

After a short while of pondering, he decided it was best not to try and force information out of the other Zoners again just yet, at least not in the busy city. Maybe, he thought, it was better to explore the place and get an idea of where he was, and then he could figure out the most likely places Tabootie would visit.

Confident in his ability to perform his new task, Dooth spread his wings and took off again, landing on top of a building next to the alley and surveying the city beneath him. He took to the sky again after a moment, viewing the buildings and streets from overhead and descending whenever he noticed something interesting. However, he quickly decided that searching the large city was far too big of a task, and decided he'd get someone to give him more information on it whenever he had the chance.

Instead, he headed out over the city's outskirts, feeling satisfied when the buildings thinned out and what looked to be an easier place to search could be seen beneath him. Feeling tired, he decided to ignore the urgent thoughts in his head telling him to find Rudy for the moment – after all, the boy might not have even arrived yet - and decided to rest his wings until he'd regained some of his strength and could search more efficiently. However, the thought of his creator's urgency drove him to search anyway, on foot for the time being.

He walked down a quiet, narrow street, passing a large gray building with a massive fence circling some sort of courtyard. Looking closer at both the strongly reinforced fence and the towering building whose windows were barred, he realized the place was a prison. Remembering what some of the other Zoners in the city had said about calling the police, he was about to leave, when he heard something that made him stop.

"It's because of Rudy I ended up back here…"

Dooth stopped in his tracks, his head turning around toward the sound of the voice, and he noticed that a group of prisoners were standing near the fence a little ways away from where he was standing, and further away from the sight of the guards that were standing in the courtyard than most of the others. A hulking figure wearing a gray jacket, who he assumed was the speaker, was turned away from the fence and toward his companions, one of which who was replying, "Well, that's what happens when you run people over with your motorbike right in front of the Great Creator's friends, Butch."

His fears about the police forgotten, Dooth launched himself at the fence, climbing to the top and peering down at the now startled prisoners.

"Did you say Rudy? Rudy Tabootie? What do you know about him?" he demanded, not bothering to try to explain anything. He didn't need to. He just needed information.

The imprisoned Zoners, a short, squarish robot, a panther, what looked like an oven with arms and legs, and "Butch," all turned to look up at him. They simply stared, and Dooth was about to again demand that they tell him what he needed to know, when a police officer began strolling toward that side of the fence, and Dooth quickly flew off the fence and dropped down until he was crouching as low as he could in the tall grass at the base of it.

The griffin drawing waited for the police officer to pass before turning back toward the group of prisoners, who to his surprise had started to walk to the other side of the courtyard. "Wait!" he hissed, gripping the lower bars of the fence. "Come back here!" However, they seemed to have no interest in talking to him, and it wasn't long before they were out of range of his voice. Furious that they had only ignored him, Dooth turned to leave when he heard a new voice speaking to him.

"_You're _trying to find Tabootie?"

The griffin's feathered ears swiveled toward the sound, and he whirled around to see a drawing that looked like a large gray rat running up to the bars. Dooth would not have thought to approach this Zoner on his own; he looked like a simply plain animal, nothing interesting or original, and had a ridiculous orange fluff of hair on his head. But something about the look in the drawing's eyes as well as his strange curiosity made Newland's creation draw closer. "You know something?" he asked, quickly checking if any officers were near that area before standing in front of the fence and facing this new stranger.

On all fours, they were roughly the same height. The ratlike drawing was covered in gray fur and oddly, its tail was thin and zigzagged, and only a few inches long. But the other Zoner's appearance wasn't important now. Dooth stared into his eyes, demanding the creature tell him whatever it was he knew.

The rat drawing didn't seem intimidated. "What do _you_ know?" he hissed back.

"I have an important mission to find Tabootie in order to bring back something for my creator," Dooth replied. "What I know is none of your business. So don't bother asking me-"

"What?" the rat drawing cried, stepping closer to the bars. "That was _my_ job!"

"No it isn't," Dooth replied, annoyed, "and besides, you don't even know what my job actually_ is_."

"You need Tabootie's magic chalk," the rat stated plainly.

Dooth froze. "What?" he hissed, shocked that this lowly drawing could have guessed what he was after. He realized immediately that his reaction gave away the fact that the imprisoned Zoner was right, but that was no longer important to him as curiosity overcame him. "Okay, then…" he began, trying not to seem too annoyed that someone else wanted what was rightfully his own creator's, "you're right. That's what my creator told me to do. I guess our creators had the same…idea." He was trying to keep his annoyance of the drawing who apparently shared his special mission down to a minimum; he needed information, and right now this creature seemed the best one to give it to him.

"Yes, my creators wanted me to bring it to them too," the other Zoner hissed in a low whisper, also seeming like his curiosity was keeping him talking. "Perhaps we have the same creators?"

"Not likely," Dooth scoffed. "My creator is clearly far more talented than yours were. But…" He paused, as something in his mind, some memory of his brief time after being drawn on the chalkboard but before he was erased, triggered, and he didn't even hear what the rat creature said in response to him, nor did he care. Instead, he asked, "What's your name?"

"Boorat," the creature replied.

"I remember now!" Dooth cried happily, a bit too loudly, he realized soon after, for someone not wanting to attract too much attention to the fact that he was conversing with a random prisoner.

"Remember what?"

"My creator…knows your creators," Dooth continued, a smug grin appearing on his face. "He mentioned you. You were that failed attempt!"

Boorat's eyes narrowed at the words 'failed attempt,' but like Dooth, he was too curious about the other Zoner and the fact that he'd been given such a similar task to dwell on it much.

"Look, you know ChalkZone more than I do," Dooth continued, standing up on his hind legs and leaning against the fence. "You might actually be useful, unlike the rest of the garbage that walks around here. I'll give you a deal. I get you out, and you help me get magic chalk for my creator. What do you say?" He reached taloned "hand" through the bars, waiting for a response. After a moment of hesitation, Boorat nodded and reached out his paw to shake hands. Dooth smiled to himself. He wasn't sure Boorat wouldn't try to run off with the chalk himself in order to give it to his own creators once they got it; in fact, he almost expected him to, but he knew very well which one of them would win in a fight. And he certainly had no qualms with attacking another Zoner.

"All right. So how do we do this?" Boorat whispered.

"I fly you out over the fence, of course," Dooth replied, rolling his eyes at the question.

"We need a distraction," Boorat pointed out, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder.

"Hm…" Dooth began, tapping a claw to his beak as he thought. His eyes wandered to the other prisoners he'd seen upon first arriving near the prison grounds. They were now near a section of the fence on the other side of the courtyard.

"We need some of them to attract the attention of the guards…" Dooth muttered. Then he got an idea. "I know!"

He crept away from the area where Boorat was and toward the group of prisoners he'd briefly confronted earlier. He then took a moment to fly around the surrounding area, spotting a nearby building under construction that was currently unoccupied, and, cutting a long piece of rope off of one of the pulleys, he flew it back toward the jail wall facing his chosen group of prisoners. Sticking his foreleg through a gap in the fence, he waved toward them. "Psst! Over here," he whispered, causing them to look up at him with confused expressions. "I've come to bust you out!" he whispered, making sure that, at the moment, the guards weren't looking that way as he held the rope up and waved it in front of the fence.

The prisoners looked at each other, and the biggest one, Butch, stepped closer, followed by the others who were now all staring at the griffin in confusion. Dooth flew up to the top of the fence, tying the end of the rope around it as quickly as he could and dropping the other end down into the prison courtyard. He then dropped to the ground again. "Make sure to hurry," he said in a warning voice, "or the guards might see you."

One of the other prisoners, the robot, gave the rope a worried glance. "Wait, can't you just give us the rope, so we can go later when the guards aren't-" However, he was too late, for the guards had already caught sight of something strange, and Dooth had already whisked away.

The griffin chuckled to himself at the sound of the guards' angry cries and the prisoners talking loudly, obviously trying to explain what the rope was doing there. He took to the air and soared over the fence, diving down and grabbing Boorat's scruff in his claws and hoisting him into the air. Though the rat was about Dooth's height, Dooth was still stronger, so he managed to summon enough strength to lift him over the fence, and in mere seconds they were both on the other side, Dooth immediately feeling the strain on his wings and opting to drop Boorat the last several feet.

"Argh! Watch it, will you?" Boorat hissed as they sped off across the street and then away from the city, quickly heading past a group of French toast trees that Dooth noted would at least hide them from view from a distance.

"At least I got you out, didn't I?" Dooth panted as he ran, his wings still too tired from lifting both him and Boorat into the air. "Come on, we've got to go somewhere where we can talk in peace." They kept running, sticking to the areas with trees and foliage to help conceal them in case anyone at the prison had realized Boorat was gone yet. Dooth wasn't worried about Boorat running off and leaving without telling him anything now that he was free; he didn't seem interested in any such thing at the moment, and Dooth knew he could force him to bend to his will if he really needed to.

**ooo**

Hiding in the edges of the Mumbo Jumbo Jungle, Dooth was fairly certain no one would follow them there, if there was any way they'd have known where they were in the first place. They weren't deep enough to attract any unwanted attention from the jungle's inhabitants, and as far as Dooth could tell, none of them were near enough to provide any distractions from this important meeting.

"All right, I don't think they'd follow us here," Dooth said with satisfaction as he surveyed the mass of leaves, vines, and towering tree trunks around them. "So, before I do anything else, I need you to tell me what you know about Tabootie."

"Why don't you tell_ me_ about what your creator is doing working with mine?" Boorat responded, clearly annoyed by Dooth's demand.

"How should I know?" Dooth muttered, shrugging. "I have no idea what he'd want with them either, but he must have a good reason!"

Boorat didn't seem convinced, but he didn't try to question him again. "Fine then. What's your name?"

"Dooth," the griffin said proudly.

"Dooth?" Boorat replied, grinning. "What kinda name is that?"

"It's an ORIGINAL name!" Dooth sneered, glaring at his newfound companion. His tail lashed, scattering some of the leaves off the tree behind him. "Of course_ you_ wouldn't think so. You don't understand creativity, considering you were drawn without any!"

Boorat just rolled his eyes. "Listen, if you want my help, you're going to have to get me some magic chalk to bring back to _my _creators too."

"Fine," Dooth muttered darkly, his eyes narrowing. _If we can get two pieces…_ he added to himself.

Boorat went on to explain what he knew of Rudy Tabootie, and Dooth was frustrated to know that it was mostly the same things he'd been told. Did Boorat's pathetic creators not know anything HIS creator didn't? How typical, he thought. "So how did you end up failing this mission of yours?" Dooth asked after a moment.

"Failing?" Boorat cried. "At least I got farther than you did on your own. At least I actually got to the Real World without asking anybody for help."

"Wait a minute," Dooth stated, staring at Boorat oddly. "You made it to the Real World? _With_ the magic chalk?"

"Yes," he went on. "And I was stopped by Rudy's pathetic _sidekick_! He followed me into the real world and sprayed me with fixative, then brought me back to his pathetic little friends, who then got the police to throw me in jail."

"I bet that was frustrating," Dooth said with a nonchalant shrug. "But this time, _I'm_ here. And I actually know what I'm doing. The stupid chalk police won't be able to stop me. I'm smarter, stronger, _and_ more cunning than any of the other drawings walking around here. Rudy won't stand a chance."

"And just what is your brilliant plan?" Boorat asked, growing increasingly annoyed, but Dooth ignored him.

"We need to know where Rudy enters into ChalkZone. Considering that it's late afternoon, we probably won't see him again until tomorrow. We just need to figure out the area he'll appear from…Hmm…" He absent-mindedly began tearing up a clump of mushrooms with his claws as he tried to think of something.

"Actually, I do know where Rudy might come from," Boorat said crossly, to which Dooth looked up at him in surprise. "I know where the portal materializes."

Dooth was taken aback that Boorat had actually known something he didn't after all. Of course, that was what he had wanted originally, but it still felt annoying to have to admit it. "Okay, then, where is it?" he demanded.

"I'll show you when we're ready to get the magic chalk," Boorat replied, obviously wary that Dooth would decide he had no more need for him and abandon him to steal the chalk for himself.

Dooth, sighed and rolled his eyes. "Fine," he muttered. "But remember, if we only find one piece, we take it to my creator first. He knows yours, so he'll share if he feels like it."

Boorat did not reply, but Dooth knew they'd come to an unspoken agreement, even if reluctantly on Boorat's part. He knew that although Boorat seemed wary enough about confronting Rudy on his own to stick with him instead of going off to find the boy, it was possible that he could desert, and if that was what he chose to do, Dooth was going to put a stop to it. His plan was coming together, and his creator would be proud. He was determined to have the magic chalk by the next day and by tomorrow evening would be presenting it to his creator. And no one…_no one _was going to ruin that for him.

**ooo**

The next day, Tuesday afternoon, Rudy had already packed his supplies for their afternoon of exploring the Sunset Zone they had planned yesterday. He'd brought food and water for the trip, and, after a bit of thought, grabbed a few extra pieces of magic chalk and hid them in the bottom of his backpack. He had planned to meet up at Penny's house; it was a good way to ensure that his parents wouldn't come looking for him that afternoon, and Penny's mother would be too busy working with the animals she was taking care of to interrupt them. As he stood in his room, just about ready to leave, he realized that bringing along a backpack full of supplies to Penny's house would seem odd, so he drew a portal on his own chalkboard and dropped his backpack down into ChalkZone, making a mental note to stop by that area to pick it up before they headed to Snap's new house. After he set it down on the chalky grass on the other side of the portal, he heard his mother calling him and quickly rushed out the door.

**ooo**

After arriving at Penny's house, he quickly joined her up in her room. "All right!" Rudy cried excitedly as he began drawing a portal on the side of Penny's chalkboard that wasn't covered in math equations. "Let's go!"

He climbed through the glowing circle and dropped down to the grass below, Penny quickly following. "Where's Snap?" Penny asked, noticing that it seemed odd that their friend wasn't waiting for them there.

"Oh, he'll be at his house," Rudy replied as he began drawing them an electric scooter to ride.

"Uh…which house?"

"His _new_ new house! Right by ChalkZone City. He moved there a few days ago, remember?"

"Did he really have to move just one week after moving into his old house?"

Rudy just shrugged in response as he completed his scooter drawing. He and Penny got on, and he quickly drove toward ChalkZone City, smiling as they passed by some of the familiar ChalkZone sights. However, his smile quickly faded as he realized he still had to tell Snap that he would be gone the entire weekend, just like Penny would be. He'd tried to convince his parents to let him stay home, but it didn't matter; they had already signed him up and paid the fee, and they seemed to think he would somehow be happy about it once he got there because Penny was going, as well as the fact that he could still work on his comics during the trip. He sighed, taking his gaze away from the scenery around them, and focused only on the way ahead of him and the city that they were quickly nearing.

Once they reached it, Rudy easily spotted Snap's new house, which lay on the outskirts of ChalkZone City. Unlike a lot of the houses further into the city, Snap's house had several trees growing around it, and a rocky path that led from the front door to another path that led to the main city. The house itself was somewhat small, especially compared to most of the buildings nearby, but it was away from the noise of the city and faced toward an open field that led down to the Wait N' Sea.

Rudy walked up the steps toward the front door and knocked, and was almost immediately greeted by his other best friend. "Hi, guys!" he said cheerfully, looking excited. "You ready to go?"

"Uh, yeah!" Rudy replied as he and Snap walked back down the pathway toward Penny. "But…there's something I have to tell you," Rudy began with a sigh. "You see, well, my parents signed me up for that field trip Penny's going on, and…"

"Wait a minute, what?" Snap cried, stopping. "But I thought it was just Penny who was going on this-"

"Well, I didn't want to go," Rudy replied, "My parents decided I have to." He sighed. "But don't worry. I'm sure I'll be able to find a way to sneak into ChalkZone at some point during the trip, even if it won't be for very long." He realized that he likely wouldn't have much time to sneak away at all, but he was determined to at least try.

"Well…couldn't they cancel it or somethin'?" Snap asked, looking worried.

"I doubt they'd even try," Rudy sighed. "They've already decided I'm going and paid the fee."

"Well this is just great!" Snap muttered. "How are we ever supposed to go to Chalklantis now?"

"We'll definitely plan to go next week. And I'm certainly going to try to sneak back to ChalkZone whenever I can this weekend," Rudy muttered determinedly.

"All right, I guess that's the best we can hope for," Snap muttered.

"We'd better get going," Penny began, deciding not to mention the science field trip again. She watched as Rudy drew Snap his own backpack full of supplies for the afternoon. "Did you bring the book, Rudy?"

"Huh?" Rudy replied, looking up as he finished drawing the backpack and handed it to Snap. "Oh! Yeah, I did! It's…" He reached for his backpack and paused, realizing that he wasn't wearing it, and then remembering that he hadn't retrieved it after he'd left it by the portal to his room before going to Penny's house. "Oh…I think I left my backpack back at the portal by my house."

"Don't worry, Rudy, I'll get it for ya," Snap offered.

"Okay, thanks, Snap!" Rudy replied. "We'll wait here. I'll start drawing some transportation for us so we can get there faster." He began sketching as Penny sat down on the steps in front of Snap's house as Snap jumped on Rudy's scooter and headed toward the portal.

**ooo**

Dooth had let Boorat lead him to where the rat drawing had seen Rudy's portal before, and, despite his annoyance at having to be led around rather than simply told, he was feeling quite satisfied that he'd managed to find a Zoner who had proved to be somewhat helpful after all. And so far, he'd shown no sign of deserting, and at least he'd kept to his word and there was no need for any violence that might attract attention.

They hadn't even reached the particular field Boorat had been heading towards when the two chalk animals noticed the distinctive look of the portal, hovering a few feet off the ground in the distance. Dooth was surprised to see it open with no one in sight, and he looked around, expecting to see Rudy around somewhere, but there was no sign of a ten year old boy. He turned back to look at the portal, noting how odd it looked; a random circle of some other world hanging suspended in midair. It was foreign, eerie, yet at the same time, fascinating. Dooth felt a strange longing to explore it and see what was on the other side.

However, that would have to wait. They needed to find Rudy first. Now that Boorat had outlasted his usefulness, Dooth ran up ahead, stopping near the portal and peering through it, hoping to see Rudy, but finding nothing but an empty room. Disappointed, he realized he'd have to wait. At least, after all, Rudy had to come back this way; it was only a matter of time. After taking a moment to look around the interior of the room beyond the portal, he stepped back, and only then did he notice that there was something lying on the grass beneath it.

"Huh, that's odd," he muttered, picking the object, a backpack up, and noting that there was something strange looking about it. He quickly realized what it was when he compared it to the room beyond the portal. This thing_ looked_ different, lacking any sort of ChalkZone texture. He quickly realized what the object was.

"Look what I found! It's Rudy's backpack!" he cried, turning around and showing it to Boorat, who had previously been crouching down behind a clump of bushes, obviously trying to lie in wait for Rudy when he returned, or something like that, Dooth figured.

Suddenly interested, the ratlike Zoner left his hiding place and bounded back over the portal as Dooth opened the backpack, finding a couple of notebooks and other random items. He reached his foreleg inside and reached around, and then with a smile pulled out a white piece of chalk.

**ooo**

Snap was nearing the area where Rudy's portal usually appeared, in a hurry to get it and return so he and his friends could resume their adventure. However, the moment he came close enough to the field to see the portal itself, he also noticed that something strange was going on. He stopped the scooter in surprise, staring.

Two Zoners were standing next to the portal, their backs to him. One of them, who looked to be some sort of griffin, was holding an object in his hands. Stopping in his tracks, Snap looked at the other one, realizing with a jolt of surprise that it was none other than _Boorat_.

The griffin started to turn around, and Snap quickly ducked behind an eyeball bush, pulling the scooter in with him, and peered through a gap in the leaves. He knew that approaching these two would be dangerous, especially since Boorat would recognize him. The fact that these two were near the portal at all and obviously interested in it was alarming enough, but he also realized that the thing the griffin was holding was Rudy's backpack.

Alarmed, Snap wanted to run over and confront them, but he stopped himself, realizing that it would probably be futile, and at this point it would be best to find out what they were doing before deciding to take action. That, and he wasn't too keen on facing Boorat again, as he was sure to be angry after what had happened in their last encounter, and he certainly didn't want to confront him while he had an ally beside him. Or at least, the griffin had seemed like an ally. However, at the moment, the two seemed to have started some sort of argument. Snap was on the other side of the field, and couldn't make out what they were saying, but from what he could see, it didn't seem like they were fighting over the backpack. At least that was a good sign. If Rudy had any spare magic chalk in there, and they managed to find it, well…he didn't want to think about what would happen.

After a few moments, Snap decided that the best thing to do would be to go back and get Rudy and Penny, and hopefully before the two Zoners decided to wander into the portal. He thought nervously about how Rudy had a magic chalk stash somewhere in his room; and he strongly hoped it was well hidden. Knowing he needed to leave fast and find the others as quickly as possible, he was about to turn away, when something in the griffin's other hand caught his eye.

Snap then realized that the griffin was holding that something out of Boorat's reach, and even from where he was kneeling a small distance away, it took only a split second for him to recognize what it was. A piece of Rudy's magic chalk. His heart skipped a beat, and he didn't dare move from the bushes he was hiding in, but he cast a terrified look at the backpack, which the griffin had now set back down, lying by the two creatures' feet. He knew he couldn't attract attention to it, in case Rudy had brought more than one spare, and after a moment his eyes wandered back to the squabbling animals.

"I said, back off!" the griffin yelled, talking loudly enough for Snap to hear him for the first time. He looked about to attack Boorat, but seemed to decide that getting into the Real World was more important to him, so, still gripping the chalk in his talons, he turned toward the portal. Ignoring the obviously unthreatened Boorat, he climbed toward it, folding his wings close to his body as he balanced on the edge before jumping inside.

Snap wasn't sure what was going on, but he knew that there was no longer any time to fetch Rudy and Penny; if he didn't act now and they got away with the magic chalk, ChalkZone would be exposed its inhabitants put under serious threat. He had no sort of plan, and there wasn't time to think of one.

As Boorat leaped into the portal after the griffin did, leaving the field clear of inhabitants once again, Snap did the only thing he could think of; he bolted from his hiding place and sprinted toward the floating circle, leaping through it and into Rudy's room after them. As soon as he landed on the floor of the bedroom, he realized that the two creatures who had leaped in before him didn't even seem aware that he was there; they were at the other end of the room, near the door, too busy trying to take the piece of chalk from each other to notice him.

"I don't care if it was your job first," the griffin snarled. "_I'm_ taking it back. My creator can get all the chalk he wants for yours when he gets into ChalkZone!" He quickly whisked the piece of chalk away from Boorat with his tail, holding it further out of reach as he tried to shove the large rat creature away from the door so he could get through.

While the two were still momentarily distracted by each other, Snap darted across the room and swiped the piece of chalk from the griffin and ran back toward the portal. He was stopped a split second later as the larger Zoner leaped over his head, landing on all fours in front of Rudy's chalkboard, his eyes narrowing furiously. With Boorat blocking his only other exit, the door, Snap had no choice but to back up toward Rudy's desk.

The two creatures, both larger than he was, were advancing on him, and Snap didn't think there was any way he could get through the portal and erase it in time, even if his escape route hadn't been blocked. His gaze wandered around the room quickly, resting on a glass of water on Rudy's desk. _Water._ Making a sudden dash for it, he dropped the piece of chalk into the water.

"No!" he heard Boorat shout, and he was roughly shoved aside as the griffin reached for the glass of water and plunged his right hand inside. Almost immediately he wrenched it back out, staring in shock as his talons melted away right before his eyes. As the griffin stared at the glass, Snap noticed as well as this stranger did that the piece had dissolved; being from a mine in ChalkZone, it dissolved much quicker than a normal piece of White Lightning would.

"What did you _do_?" the griffin cried, slamming the cup back on the desk and whirling around to face Snap, his eyes blazing with anger.

Snap didn't bother to answer; he turned and sprinted straight for the portal, but was stopped almost immediately as Boorat stood in his way. The griffin drawing was now staring at his damaged hand; only the very bases of the talons were left. His gaze flicked upward to look at Snap again, a murderous look in his eyes. Before Snap could react, the griffin grabbed his shoulders, lifted him and then slammed him down against the desk, holding him there with one foreleg.

"Where is the magic chalk?" he snarled. "My creator asked me to bring it to him and I'm going to do that if it's the last thing-"

"It's gone now, Dooth!" Boorat cried furiously. "The water here dissolves drawings!" The two of them briefly glanced at each other before turning angrily back to Snap, their previous disagreement now apparently forgotten.

Furious at having come so close to completing his mission, only to have that victory torn away from him, he leaned closer to Snap. "Then you have_ five minutes _to find a kid named Rudy Tabootie and bring me another piece before I tear you to pieces," the griffin, apparently called Dooth, growled at the smaller drawing, his raised forelegs and look of fury in his eyes making it clear that he meant every word.

Snap stared at the griffin in wide eyed terror. He'd expected them to be angry with him, maybe even try to hurt him, once he thought about it, but he hadn't guessed that this Zoner would be one who would think nothing of murder. He realized that, whether he'd managed to dissolve the chalk or not, he'd likely made a huge mistake in trying to chase after this stranger. "W-wait a minute, hold on!" he cried, his thoughts racing as he frantically tried to think of something to say. He was very sure that even if he did manage to escape back into ChalkZone, he couldn't outrun something that could_ fly_. Not knowing what else to do in his panic, he turned his head toward the portal and called for Rudy as loud as he could.

The griffin slammed his fist down on the desk. "Shut up! Someone could hear us!" he cried, apparently oblivious to the noise he'd just made by striking the desk. "We can _not_ be heard, so be quiet or I'll give you something to REALLY scream about!"

"But...well, uh, that wouldn't solve your problem, would it?" Snap said nervously.

Dooth lifted Snap up and slammed him down again. "I_ said_ be quiet!" he hissed.

For all he insisted on being quiet, Dooth certainly wasn't adept at it himself. Snap glanced at the door, expecting Rudy's parents to come and investigate the noise, but there was only silence. He realized they must be away from home; there was no way they wouldn't have heard that if they were in the building.

"Uh, look, can I just say one more thing?" Snap began, making sure to be, as Dooth had requested, quiet, or at least as much as possible while speaking. "Why do you have to do exactly what your creator says? Why don't ya just do what you want; you know, think for yourself instead?"

"I AM thinking for myself! And I'm thinking that my artist being a creator in ChalkZone would _greatly_ improve it. And trust me, it could use a lot of improvement."

"W-wait a minute…_what_?" Snap gasped, confused. Was this guy drawn by the same people who drew Boorat? No, he thought, he had mentioned a 'creator' while Snap remembered Boorat mentioning two. So was there a _third_ person in on this plan?

"I'll warn you again," Dooth growled, ignoring Snap's perplexed statement. "Keep quiet and don't call for help, or there'll be one less piece of trash some kid dares to call _art_ roaming around ChalkZone. Now, I want you to take me to Rudy Tabootie."

Snap could tell he was serious, and knowing there was no one near at the moment, and that he had no other choice, Snap fell completely silent. This drawing had absolutely no regard for his life at all, and clearly neither did whoever created him, and at the moment Snap was even more at a loss for what to do. There was no way he was going to lead this psychopath back to where Rudy and Penny were waiting. He had to think of something else, something that would get him out alive and keep these two away from his friends and the magic chalk.

"Now," Dooth hissed at Snap, bringing his frantic thoughts to a halt, "are you going to do what I say?"

"Forget it! He won't listen!" Boorat spat, glaring at Snap.

Snap desperately glanced at the still open portal on Rudy's chalk board, seeming quite far away from where he was pinned against the desk. He could only hope Rudy and Penny had noticed he'd been gone for a while – wait, _had_ it been a while? – and were coming to look for him. But he couldn't hear anything from the ChalkZone side of the board.

When he turned back, he noticed that Dooth was looking curiously at the glass of water still sitting on the other side of the desk. Suddenly the griffin eagerly reached toward it. "Well, then, if that's the case…I have an idea," he said, a bit too cheerfully in contrast to the angry demeanor he'd shown previously, Snap thought. "If we can't send him back to find the chalk, he's useless to us, so, heh heh, let's see what happens to Zoners who drink this stuff. Watch him dissolve from the inside-out!"

"What?!" Snap cried, staring at Dooth in shocked disbelief as he approached him with the water. He tried to lean his head back further against the desk as the griffin held out the cup of water disturbingly close to his face. "All right, all right! Just listen! Look, I-I'll get the chalk for ya," he said, his eyes darting from side to side as he rapidly tried to think of some way he could get them to let him back into ChalkZone so he could make a run for it and warn Rudy, "j-just hold on a minute…at least let me explain…" He closed his eyes as Dooth held the glass of water even closer.

But a few seconds passed and he realized he was still alive. He opened his eyes to see Dooth looking confidently at Boorat. "See? I'm persuasive!" He swung his right arm around as he let go of Snap's shoulder and turned toward his 'partner in crime,' carelessly letting drops of the dangerous liquid splatter near the desk and perilously close to his own feet.

"Hm…maybe we could use him to persuade Rudy," Boorat muttered thoughtfully, looking excited.

"Why would he care?" Dooth muttered with a shrug. "Unless you're saying the idiot considers it his job to protect every stupid little drawing-"

Still grinning, Boorat pointed right at Snap. "_He_ is Rudy's best friend! _His comical sidekick_…"

Dooth turned to look at Snap with newfound interest. "Really?" he muttered. "_You _are what Rudy comes up with for a best friend? Ahahaha! Why am I not surprised…" He began laughing, once again making no conscious effort to be quiet. After a moment, he straightened up again, facing Snap and glancing at the cup of water he was still holding in his hand. "Eh, we don't need this," he muttered, casually tossing it behind him. Snap heard a yelp as Boorat jumped to the side to avoid it. "You're coming with us," Dooth announced, his voice once again taking on a serious tone. "If Rudy knows our creators have you, he'd surely be willing to part with a few pieces of magic chalk in exchange for your safe return, wouldn't he?"

Upon realizing what his captors had decided to do, Snap was filled with newfound horror; the portal that was merely feet away now seeming further out of reach than ever.

"Well, that settles it," Dooth said, a bit more cheerfully. "Not exactly what my creator wanted, but it's good enough. It's not like he'd be disappointed in me."

"What about _my_ creators?" Boorat growled.

"I'm sure Rudy can bring back enough pieces for them too," Dooth said with a shrug, "if you help me bring him back to the meeting place." As Boorat fell silent, Dooth turned his gaze back toward with Snap. "But listen carefully," he began, stepping away from the desk and leaning his foreleg on Rudy's chalkboard, knowing that that was where Snap was currently focusing most of his attention anyway. "If you do _anything_ to give us away, or to try and attract attention from anyone while we go to find my creator, we forget the whole thing, and instead we leave a nice chalk message for Rudy to read on his blackboard when he comes back…" He traced his claw over the board as if pretending to draw a message, then finished, "…drawn in your own _blood!_ Do I make myself clear?"

"Uh, very." Snap, who'd been thinking of trying to call for help from ChalkZone again – not that he thought anyone was nearby to hear him – immediately rejected the idea. He glanced over at Rudy's door, then looked again at the ChalkZone portal, but Dooth was still standing next to it, his eyes boring into his own, and the ChalkZone area beyond the portal remained silent. There were no signs of any help coming.

"We need a way to make sure he won't run away," Dooth continued. "My creator specified that I must not be seen and once we are outside this house, we're going to have to hide until nightfall."

Boorat suddenly looked excited again. "I know just the thing," he said, in a nastier – or nastier than usual – voice, and bounded out of the room.

Snap had no idea what he had in mind, but he didn't want to think about it. He didn't dare try to make a run for it with Dooth standing so near, so he was forced to wait, his heart beating frantically, until, finally, Boorat reappeared.

He was holding a can of something in his mouth, and as he got closer, Snap realized, with a sickening feeling in his stomach, exactly what it was.

Dooth, however, did not. "What is that?" he growled. "And just what do you think-"

"Fixative," Boorat replied. "And trust me, this will work. Now, step back."

Dooth hesitated for a moment as Boorat approached. He seemed doubtful, but as Boorat got nearer, Dooth exchanged another confused glance with Booat and backed away from the portal, clear of the spray can's range. Snap didn't have time to move out of the way as Boorat sprayed what he knew was fixative right at him.

Almost instantly he felt his whole body go rigid, and instinctively tried to move, only to realize, though not with great surprise, that he couldn't. He wasn't even able to open his mouth to make any noise; only his eyes could move, and his gaze darted frantically around the room as the two chalk animals approached him.

Dooth looked impressed but curious. "What…did you do?" he asked, and Boorat simply handed him the spray can before walking over to Snap.

"Hah! See how you like it!" Boorat grinned nastily and knocked him down on the floor. Snap felt Boorat's foot pressing down on his head, and he couldn't see what Dooth was doing now.

"Well, that'll work," the griffin was muttering. "For now…let's just get out of the house and find a place to hide. The kid's parents might have heard us. I mean, he_ was_ making a lot of noise!"

Snap heard footsteps across the room, but at the moment he could still see nothing but Rudy's floorboards. Lying in this position with his face pressed up against the floor was rather painful, but he couldn't have cried out if he'd wanted to. He was still trying to move, in some vain, desperate hope that he'd be able to, but his body remained as still as a statue. His thoughts kept going back to Rudy and Penny, who would be waiting for him, not yet realizing anything was wrong…

Snap felt one of his captors tugging on the backpack he was wearing until he managed to take it off. Still facedown on the floor, he could hear them rummaging through it.

"Look! He brought food."

"Give me that!" Dooth growled, and from the sound of it, he had taken the backpack away from Boorat. "We can bring this to our creators too."

The next moment, Snap was hauled roughly upright again, getting one last glimpse of the portal before he was carried out the door and into the main part of the house. He glimpsed Boorat holding his backpack again. As Dooth carried him down the stairs, Snap still saw no sign of Rudy's parents. Dooth reached the front door and opened it slightly, glanced outside, then stepped out onto the sidewalk.

"This way," he whispered, and Boorat closed the door behind him as they ran along the side of the house, passing some small bushes. Snap only got a fleeting glimpse of Rudy's window-where the portal still was-before Dooth rounded the corner of the house, ran into the backyard, and quickly flew over the fence bordering the back of Rudy's yard and landed in some much larger bushes. Pausing once again, presumably to see if anyone was watching, Dooth whispered, "hurry up!" to Boorat and crawled backwards.

Snap was dragged deeper into the bushes as Dooth and Boorat crouched in the small space beneath the branches, both of them peering through them.

"Why do we need to hide?" Boorat whispered. "We can find your creator now!"

"No!" Dooth growled. "My orders were to not be seen! I know what I'm doing! We leave at night."

"Why night?"

"Because it'll be dark!"

"Dark?"

"That's what my creator told me!" Dooth snapped. "Maybe the DayZone here turns to NightZone when it's nighttime…I don't know! But I'm doing what he says."

Out of the corner of his eye, Snap saw Dooth's long claws flex and gouge the dry earth. Whoever Dooth and Boorat's creators were, they certainly weren't going to have anything good in store for him. From the position he was lying in, Snap couldn't see outside the bush, let alone the window to Rudy's room, which wouldn't have been visible from this place anyway. He hoped desperately that Rudy would be able to trace his path and find him before nightfall, when it would be too late and Rudy would have no idea of where to find him. But there was no sign of Rudy or Penny's voices, no sign that they were looking for him anywhere near the house in the Real World.

_Bucko_, he thought desperately, _where are you?_

**ooo**

Rudy and Penny were sitting on the path by Snap's house, Rudy having completed his car drawing. Penny was quietly looking over some papers with notes she'd written down for things to add to their book, and Rudy kept peering down the road to see if Snap was coming. "What's taking him so long?" Rudy wondered aloud. "He knows where the portal is."

"Well, he could have gotten sidetracked," Penny replied, setting the papers down. "I'm sure he'll be here soon. After all, he's just as excited to explore that Sunset Zone area as we are."

"I don't know…it's been longer than it should," Rudy replied, "and it's not like him to get distracted when we're about to go 'exploriatin'.' Let's go back to the portal and meet up with him. Then we can head to the Candle Forest from there," he suggested.

"Good idea," Penny replied, picking up her papers and her backpack and following Rudy as he climbed into the car. They set off across the road and into the grassy field beyond it and toward the portal's location.

They saw no sign of Snap on their way, and upon reaching the portal and getting out of the vehicle, the first thing Rudy noticed was that his backpack was still lying on the ground beneath the open portal, just where he'd left it. It didn't look like Snap had touched it. "Well, that's weird," he said, picking it up and quickly looking inside to verify that everything he'd brought was in there – their book, his water bottle, his food, a couple pieces of spare magic chalk at the bottom that he'd hurriedly thrown in before leaving – and nothing seemed to be amiss. He then peered into the portal, but his room was quiet and empty. "Snap didn't get here yet," he muttered, his voice tinged with worry. "But then, how come we didn't meet him on the way here either?"

"I don't know, but we'd better go and ask if anyone's seen him," Penny responded, and the two immediately ran back to the car and took off back the way they'd come, following what they were sure was the route Snap must have been taking. As they had left in haste, they failed to notice the scooter still well hidden underneath the bush, and the portal remained open, but the earlier occupants of the room had already gone.

* * *

><p><em>(Author's Note: Big thanks to Flareonwolf for editing this before I posted it. She stops me from doing stupid things like having Rudy and Penny run all over the place when they have a CAR.)<em>


	3. Searching

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Three – Searching**

Night was beginning to fall over Plainville, cloaking the streets with a slowly growing darkness. The street lamps in the surrounding area in front of the houses were beginning to flicker on, but the row of bushes behind Rudy's house was almost completely dark.

Dooth lifted his head, his eyes scanning the skies overhead as his tail lashed in frustration. "It's still too light over there," he muttered. "And I don't know if these Real World NightZones get any darker. It must be all those stupid lights." He crept forward and peered through the gaps in the fence toward the house and the street beyond it, seeing that the streets were still well lit. "I don't even think I could risk flying. Someone would see."

"Then why don't we keep going _behind_ the houses?" Boorat hissed from beside him, irritated about having to wait so long. "It's dark enough for that." He crawled out of the bushes and stood up, looking ahead at the line of dense shrubs stretching onward behind the row of houses.

"Fair enough," Dooth growled, irritated that he had to agree with Boorat when, in his mind, he was supposed to be the one in charge, but at the moment the quest to find his creator was far more important. "We'll get to the meeting place and wait there until my creator arrives."

"How long do you think that'll take?" Boorat muttered as he leaned against the fence.

"He should be there around now. If not, we wait until tomorrow," Dooth replied.

'_Wait until tomorrow?_' Snap thought, his mind racing as he imagined Rudy and Penny, desperately searching for him…and in all the wrong places, while he was locked away in some Real World building somewhere. He hoped that, once they got to wherever they were meant to be going, his captors would at least have the decency to wash the fixative off so he could move again, but he seriously doubted it. From what he could tell, they were treating his backpack and his chalk food and water like it was useful evidence they could show to their creators. Snap could do nothing but wait to see what would happen. Although it had been extremely uncomfortable to be forced to stay in the same position for hours, that seemed like the least of his worries. He was trapped in the real world with no way to call for help, Rudy and Penny obviously had no clue he was there, and he had no way to tell them.

"We'd better get going," Dooth muttered, glancing down at the captive, his eyes narrowing. "But I might have to fly overhead a few times to see where we are. Not that I don't know where we are, that's just what my creator told me to do!" he added. "You bring the captive."

Out of the corner of his eye, Snap saw Dooth pick up the backpack and walk out of the bushes and alongside the fence. Boorat, looking annoyed at having to take orders, simply grabbed one of Snap's legs and dragged him along behind him.

Ahead of the others, Dooth went over Bob Newland's instructions in his head, but though he would never admit it out loud, he found himself growing confused. Having to travel quietly behind the houses limited what he could see of the city, and he was quickly growing irritated. Whenever he felt he could risk it, he flew overhead to get a better look, and soon he had his bearings again. He smirked as he faced Boorat, wondering why he had ever doubted himself.

"We need to cross the street and keep heading along the back of those houses for a while," Dooth announced, flicking his tail in the direction of their intended path of travel. They had nearly reached the end of the row of fences behind the houses on the street and now stood near a road that lay between them and the next row of buildings. Dooth could see that the buildings were more houses, and though their lights were on, he was sure it was safe to travel through the backyards.

They waited until there were no cars or humans visible and quickly scurried across, then leaped over the fence into the backyard of the first house. Snap noticed, even with the limited visibility he had, being unable to turn his head, that there was a wide window facing the backyard they were currently in. He could see Dooth slinking around through the grass near the edges, but Boorat was being far less careful. He wondered what would happen if the house's occupants spotted them, and realized he wouldn't be able to explain anything to them, so getting help was out of the question, and if they saw Dooth or Boorat, the secrecy of ChalkZone could be compromised.

Suddenly he heard some weird sort of clicking sound nearby, and before he could start to wonder what it was, water began spraying up from the ground in certain parts of the yard. Boorat cried out, leaping off of the grass and onto dry ground, luckily pulling Snap to safety with him in the process. Dooth had fled to the opposite end of the backyard, staring at the grassy area in horror. Boorat stuck to the edge of the fence as he carefully made his way over to his 'partner', and they climbed over to the fence and into a small "alleyway" between the houses.

"What was that?" Dooth snarled, rounding on Boorat. "You should have warned me-"

"How was I supposed to know that water was going to come _shooting out of the ground_?" Boorat snarled.

"You've _been here_ before!"

"Not outside!"

Dooth turned around, muttering, "Shows how useful you are. Anything else around here that's going to kill us?" Without waiting for an answer, he took the lead again, pausing to take to the air so he could calculate where to go next. He landed, grinning. "This way," he stated confidently, and continued on.

They carried on like this for what seemed to Snap like an eternity, and luckily, there were no more sprinkler incidents, and no one noticed them; well, Snap still couldn't figure out if that second thing was lucky or not.

As his captors continued onward into the backyard of the next house, he could only begin to wonder what would happen to him, whether he made it to the 'meeting place' or not.

**ooo**

Rudy and Penny had thoroughly searched the surrounding areas of the path Snap had taken and asked whoever they happened to meet if they knew anything about Snap's whereabouts, but could find nothing that told them what could have happened to their friend. By now, it was almost time for them to have to go back to Penny's house; Rudy would be expected home soon.

"He couldn't have just vanished!" Rudy cried as they left the city and made their way back to the field near Penny's portal. Penny could tell that he was growing more worried, as their time to search was running out. It was seven o' clock, and Penny knew they had to be back at her house.

"I just don't understand," Rudy sighed as they stepped out of the car he had drawn before Snap had gone missing and climbed up the large pile of numbers toward Penny's chalkboard. "It's like he just vanished. There has to be some way we can find out what could have happened…"

"I know," Penny replied, "it's very strange. But someone had to have seen something. Maybe we need to look further away from the route Snap was going to take. Somebody could have seen something near…wherever he ended up." She didn't want to say 'captured,' and she wasn't quite sure that was what had happened, but she couldn't think of any other reason that Snap would simply disappear. When they had first begun their search, a brief thought had entered her mind that Snap had merely gotten distracted by one of his other friends, such as Rapsheeba, needing help with something, but it hadn't been long before she had to dismiss it, realizing that Snap would have gone back to her and Rudy so they could help as well. As much as she had hated to admit it; there had been no explanation other than that something had gone wrong.

"Maybe you're right," Rudy said shakily as he climbed through the portal and into Penny's room. "We can try to look everywhere he might have gone, and…keep asking everyone to see if anyone knows anything. I guess that's all we can do…" he sighed.

"Don't worry," Penny said, trying to sound reassuring. "Most Zoners in the city will have known by now. They'll be looking out for him." Seeing he wasn't convinced, she added determinedly, "We'll find him." Reluctantly, they climbed back through her portal, planning to ask Penny's mother if they could stay over longer, and have a bit more time to search.

Luckily, they had no trouble convincing her to let them stay over for a bit longer, using the excuse that they wanted to do homework together. Rudy would have to be back at his house by eight thirty, so that at least gave them a little bit more time. As soon as they were alone again, they headed back into ChalkZone, continuing their frantic search.

**ooo**

Eight o' clock had already passed, and Terry and Vinnie were still waiting in the van outside of the abandoned building, which now looked quite spooky in the moonlight away from the lights of the main part of town. It looked, if possible, even more unwelcoming, the upper floor windows dark and empty. There was no one else around.

"Look!" Vinnie said suddenly, causing Terry to look up from the stack of papers showcasing some of her chalk world evidence.

"What is it?" she asked, her voice excited. "Do you see the-" Her voice broke off as a single, shiny black car began driving up the street toward him. She recognized it instantly. "Oh," she muttered, disappointed. "It's just him."

As the car pulled up next to the building, Bob got out of the car. "Hey, what's the matter with you?" Vinnie muttered angrily. "We've been waitin' for you for over half an' hour!"

"I was busy!" he yelled back, dragging a large case of art supplies out of his car and slamming the door shut. "Now come on!" He gestured toward the building. "I need to talk to you two about what we're going to do once we do get our hands on the chalk."

"In there?" Terry asked, giving the building a disdainful look.

"Yes, in there!" he replied. "Where no one nearby by is going to hear us."

Terry couldn't see anyone around the street at all, but she shrugged and followed him down the path that led to the building's door.

"Did you have to bring all that stuff?" Vinnie asked as Bob made his way toward the doorway of the old building with difficulty, holding the art supply case which contained at least a very large sketchbook and more art supplies than anyone would ever need while sitting in a building for an hour or so.

"Hey! I want to have something to do while I wait!" Bob snapped as he gripped the door knob. "I'm the one who came up with this idea, so stop your complaining." With a loud kick, he pushed the door wide open and strode inside, dust fluttering down on him from the open doorway.

To Vinnie and Terry, the building looked even creepier at night on the inside. The windows were so cracked and thickly covered in dust that instead of shining through it, the moonlight seemed to create a strange eerie glow. In one of the rooms in front of them, strange shadows from some window up above patterned the floor beneath the gaping hole in the upper story.

"Ugh, it's impossible to see through these windows," Terry said as she rubbed at the glass of the window near the front door. "How are we supposed to tell when that creature shows up? Maybe we should go back outside."

"Nah, he'll know to come in here," Bob replied. "We can just wait here on the ground floor. Besides, it'll seem suspicious if we're standing outside a building we're not really even supposed to be around in the first place."

"And the fact that the van and your car are parked right outside isn't at all suspicious?" Terry muttered.

Bob gave her an exasperated look. "Please," he said. "Just…just stop complaining. Okay, fine, if you really want to go outside, go ahead." He turned away from her, rummaging through the large art supply case and hauling his sketchbook, which was over half his height, out and propping it against a badly damaged desk near one of the far walls.

Terry faced the window again, but decided against going outside, and began pacing around the room, going over some of her evidence using a flashlight she'd brought with her.

For a while, the three of them waited in silence, then Vinnie angrily kicked aside one of the broken items strewn across the floor. "Your animal had better be smarter than that Rudy kid!" he yelled. "Because if he doesn't show up soon, that's gotta mean that Rudy kid stopped 'im."

Bob froze, his eye twitching. "Rudy is too _stupid_ to stop my creation!" he shouted back defensively. "There's _no way_ that is going to happen. You just wait," he growled, pointing at Vinnie, who seemed completely unfazed, "he'll be back here tonight. You'll see."

Vinnie turned away and shrugged. "Well, let's hope you have more luck with that than we did with this-"

"Quiet, you two!" Terry told them suddenly. "I hear something outside."

Vinnie and Bob suddenly became silent, the only sound being that of one of Bob's many pencils being dropped to the floor. Then both of them got up and walked over to the window. "I think I see something!" Bob said happily as the three of them peered through the gloom.

**ooo**

"You sure this is it?" Boorat's voice hissed from the shadows as the two of them crouched beneath some bushes – though there was little need as the street was deserted – and looked at a massive gray building that looked to be in a state of decay.

"Of course I'm sure," Dooth snapped. "My creator will either be waiting here, or he'll come soon."

"And what about mine?"

"I'm sure he can contact them," Dooth murmured. "If he feels like it," he muttered under his breath.

Seeming satisfied, at least for the moment, Boorat turned toward the building. "So, if they aren't there, we go inside and wait in there until tomorrow night?"

"Yes."

Dooth grabbed Snap, who was almost relieved to be at the destination after having been practically dragged all over Plainville, and headed toward the building. Moving carefully through the shadows the other buildings cast over the ground, he and Boorat ran up to the door and stood in front of it, before Dooth lifted his claws to knock.

At the moment, Snap was being dragged along on his back, so he had a clear view of the building as his captors approached. The looming structure looked quite different to the other buildings he'd seen in Plainville before, and he could tell that no one had occupied it for a long time. That is, until whoever had drawn Dooth had decided to use it as some sort of hideout for his creation. He heard the griffin knock on the door and after a moment of silence, it opened.

Snap couldn't tell who was standing there, he could hear a voice exclaim in complete elation, "It worked! You were right! It's-"

"Get inside!" a second voice hissed, and shock flooded through him as he realized it was Terry Bouffant's voice. If she was behind all this, that was doubly bad for both ChalkZone and himself. "You want anyone else to see?"

Snap had no idea what to make of the situation as he was dragged inside the building. He was still in shock upon realizing that she must have been Boorat's creator to pay much attention to anything else. Almost as soon as they made it inside, Dooth let go of him and ran toward the three human figures. Snap quickly realized that not only was Terry Bouffant there, but Vinnie Raton as well, another person who had infiltrated ChalkZone and tried to use it for his own gain. '_They were working together now?'_ he thought, confused. He didn't recognize the third person, but anyone who would willingly team up with those was sure to be bad news.

Terry walked over to close the door as one of the others, the person Snap didn't recognize, kneeled down again so that he was more level with Dooth, who was standing on all fours. He seemed completely oblivious to the presence of Boorat or Snap. "He's real," the man stated to no one in particular. "My drawing…it's real…_alive_…"

"Yes," Terry replied, sounding just as excited as he was, and from what he could see, she and Vinnie were just as excited about the arrival of the drawings, though less astonished, as he knew they had already been to ChalkZone themselves, "and ours as well. This proves everything we've been telling you. If you had any doubts," she told him as she petted Boorat, "consider them gone. And if you think this is amazing, wait until you see the Chalk World itself!"

"Actually, I believe it is called _ChalkZone_," Dooth pointed out, not seeming to care when Bob grabbed one of his wings to examine it more closely in awe.

"ChalkZone…?" Terry and Vinnie's partner muttered, looking up from where he'd been inspecting Dooth's feathers and staring into his creation's face. "Well, you can tell me all about it! All my own creations…I could see them alive…we could make a fortune…we….wait a minute, did you get it?" he suddenly asked the griffin eagerly. "Did you get the chalk?"

"Well, no…" Dooth replied, but his confidence didn't leave his voice. "I mean, I did have some…but, it was destroyed…by _him_!" He turned and pointed at Snap, who could only stare back helplessly. "Don't worry, though," Dooth added quickly, seeing the dismay on his creator's face, "This Zoner is Tabootie's best friend. All you need to do is send messages to Tabootie through the chalkboard. Tell him you'll bring his friend back safely if he hands the chalk over to you. See? That's a perfect plan!"

Snap noticed that everyone in the room apart from Dooth was now looking at him as if they'd only just noticed he was there. "Snap…White?" Terry said, her voice sounding both confused and angry, the latter likely due to a reminder of the last time Terry had encountered him, Snap thought. After she'd stolen Rudy's magic chalk from the school, he and Rudy had devised a plan that had ended with Rudy setting a wiggie on her and humiliating her on the TV station she had been trying to expose ChalkZone on.

"So this is…Tabootie's drawing?" the stranger asked.

"Yes," Terry replied, "Snap. Like we told you before."

"Well, let's hurry and write that message!" Vinnie cried, sounding impatient. "If Rudy's gonna hand over the chalk, we need 'im to do it soon."

"And you two need to go back to ChalkZone" Terry told Dooth and Boorat. "We don't want either of you to be seen. If this doesn't work, we'll need your help again." Boorat nodded in response, but Dooth just stared her down, as if he didn't like taking orders from anyone other than his creator.

Snap moved his gaze away from the three humans and their Zoner minions, and looked out of the corner of his eye (as it was the best view he could get of any other part of the building) at the clutter all over the ground; a bunch of broken furniture and other junk, some random art supplies, a small chalkboard and…his backpack. Then he watched as Terry approached him. The look on her face did not make him feel better about the situation, and he could tell that she was, understandably, mad at him after what he and Rudy had done after the last time he'd been kidnapped into the real world.

"Uh…what happened to him?" Terry asked, nudging Snap's arm with her foot and realizing that he was completely immobilized.

"Ask him," Dooth told her, with a glance at Boorat. He turned to look at the third person again, who still seemed completely mesmerized at seeing the creature he'd drawn earlier that day as a living animal, and refused to focus on anything else. "And maybe while you're busy waiting for Tabootie, Snap can tell you everything you want to know about the chalk world." At this statement, the tall stranger suddenly seemed interested in the fact that Snap was there, and his attention was, for the first time, diverted from his own creation.

"Fixative," Boorat was telling Terry and Vinnie. "It freezes anyone from ChalkZone so they can't move. Trust me, I know…" He gave Snap a very unpleasant glare.

"Well, can you fix it?" Terry asked. "We need him to talk."

"Why bother?" Vinnie said with a shrug. "Let Rudy fix it! It's his drawing! Once we send a message to Rudy that we have his friend…"

However, no one was really listening to him at the moment. Boorat just shrugged. "If you want to talk to him, then wash it off," he told Terry.

"Okay," Terry replied. "Well, I don't know about you, Bob," she stated, briefly turning toward the third member of this strange Real World group, "but I think Snap might know where Rudy keeps his chalk…it would be a good backup plan." She reached into a small bag she'd brought and took out a water bottle.

The moment Terry took out the water, there was no mistaking what she was about to try to do. Panic surged through Snap as he realized there was absolutely no way he would be able to warn her that pouring real world water on him would _dissolve _him, not help. Completely oblivious to this danger, Terry knelt down and unscrewed the cap on the bottle, looking down at Snap as if she felt reluctant to do him what she thought was a favor. However, she must have seen his eyes grow wide in fear because as she was about to lift the bottle of water over him, she hesitated, looking confused.

"You want to talk to him, don't you? Then I wouldn't do that," Dooth told her casually, looking at the scene before him with only mild interest. "This happened when I dipped my claws in water." He showed her the missing claws on his right foreleg. "The water here is…dangerous to the inhabitants of ChalkZone. If you've decided that killing Rudy's best friend is not in your best interests, you need to find a different solution."

"Here! I brought this, too." Boorat shouldered Dooth aside as he picked up Snap's backpack. He pushed it across the floor toward Terry, who picked it up. "There's chalk water in there," Boorat told her. "You can use that."

Terry took out the water bottles from Snap's backpack and then handed the backpack back to Boorat. The person who was apparently named "Bob" walked over and snatched it out of his hands and began looking through it curiously as Terry opened the water bottles and poured the chalk water over Snap.

Snap suddenly began to find himself starting to be able to move again, but there was nowhere to run now. After Terry poured the last of his water over him he felt normal, and quickly used his newfound mobility to back away from the three humans and their two animals and against the wall.

Snap looked at Terry, who he assumed was the one behind all this. "What do ya think you're doing?" he cried, his gaze flicking between all five of the others in the room. "Rudy's not just gonna hand over his chalk to-"

"Actually, I think he will," Bob said, stepping forward with Dooth at his side. "He'll have to if he ever wants to see you again. Come on." He grabbed Snap's arm and started pulling him toward the stairs at the far end of the room.

"What? Hey! Let…go!" Snap cried, trying to pull away. "You're crazy if you think this stupid plan's gonna work. Rudy-"

"Look," Bob hissed, stopping for a moment. "I'm Bob Newland._ I'm_ a professional artist. Rudy is a stupid ten year old kid! You really think he's smarter than I am?"

"Wait a minute," Snap muttered in confusion, momentarily stopping his struggling. "You're Bob Newland? _You're_ that artist Rudy wanted to talk to? And you're tryin' to-"

"Oh, right! Rudy had that stupid vampire comic that he wanted to show me," Bob replied. "Obviously that kid can't think of anything decent to draw, if that comic and _you_ are any example." He turned to look at the other two Zoners who were standing near the front door. "Go back into ChalkZone," he told them, not even seeming to notice Snap trying desperately to pull his arm away. "Wait for us there," he added with a grin.

Snap watched Terry open the door for them and close it after they left, and the moment they were gone, Bob turned and started to drag Snap up the stairs again. "Let go of me!" he yelled, dragging his feet, which didn't even seem to slow his captor down at all.

"Scream all you want, no one's going to hear you," Bob told him offhandedly. "And if the police notice anything, we'll just have to pour water over you to get rid of the evidence." He paused at the top of the stairs and turned left toward a long hallway that was also filled with broken junk and lined with heavy wooden doors on each side. Snap could hear Vinnie and Terry following quickly up the stairs.

"Rudy's not gonna fall for this!" Snap shouted, still trying as hard as he could to get away, and to no avail.

Bob didn't even bother responding this time. Snap was dragged over to the second door on the left side. Bob opened the door and forcefully pushed Snap down onto the floor of the room. "Hope you like it in here," he told him, peering around inside the room, "because you're going to have to stay here until I get Rudy's chalk." Snap quickly realized that he the room he was now lying in had no windows or other doors, and unlike the rest of the building, there were no piles of junk in the room either; in fact, there wasn't a single object at all. The walls, ceiling, and floor looked to be made of concrete, and he knew the only way out was the doorway that Bob Newland was currently standing in.

Snap pushed himself up off of the floor and glared at him. "My friends'll come and find me, and when they find out what you did to me-"

"Your _friends_?" Bob sneered back. "Do you really think that they are going to be looking for you in their _own_ world?" He gave Snap a nasty grin before he slammed the door shut. Snap could hear a whoosh of air as it did so, and when it closed, he was plunged in complete darkness. There wasn't even any light coming from underneath the door, and when he ran over to inspect it, he realized that the door was one of the kind that sealed completely against the floor; even turning two-dimensional wasn't going to help him make an escape.

Outside the door, Bob checked to make sure that it was properly locked. "Well then," he stated, ignoring the muffled shouts that soon emanated from behind the door as he casually looked through the contents of Snap's backpack. "Now we should-"

"We need to put something in front of the door!" Terry told him.

"Why?" Bob asked. "It's locked." He tried turning the handle to show her. "No way out!"

"Is there any way he could get under it?" she asked.

Bob glanced down toward the bottom of the door and turned back to her with an annoyed look. "No."

"Beings from this chalk universe have two-dimensional abilities in the real world, remember?" she asked, and Bob's confused look told her 'no'. "This door looks secure," she muttered, "but we'd better make sure of it. Find something to block the door," she insisted. "Just in case."

"Okay, _fine_," Bob muttered, rolling his eyes and walking further into the hallway.

From where he stood on the other side of the door, Snap tried to listen to what was going on. He knew from what he had observed upon first being thrown in the room that there were no other windows or doors, but not having any other options, he decided it would be best, once those three had left, to check the room for any cracks in the walls or items he may have missed or – _anything _– that may be able to help him. But knowing that searching would be no easy feat in complete darkness, he tried not to think of it at the moment and leaned against the door and tried to hear what was going on in the hallway outside.

"We're going ask him some questions soon, right?" he heard Terry call down the hallway.

"We won't need to," Bob called back. From the sound of it he was dragging something heavy. "If Rudy hasn't come back by tomorrow, then sure. But let's just see if he gets our message first." Vinnie said something as well, but Snap didn't hear what it was.

"All right, when we come back tomorrow," Terry said as Bob dragged the heavy object closer. "We'll see if Rudy's given any magic chalk to our chalk creatures, and if not, we'll see if Snap knows anything else that could be of use." Snap heard the dragging noise reach the doorway and stop.

On the other side of the door, Bob had managed to haul a large, heavy table with broken legs in front of the door. "This should work," he said, making sure it was set firmly against it. "Now, go bring the chalkboard up here," he told the others, and Vinnie ran down the stairs to get it.

After he had retrieved it, they set the chalkboard on the wall in the only other clean room, and Bob began writing his message. "I'm not sure about this," Terry muttered as she watched him. "What if someone hears him while we're gone?"

"He won't alert anyone-" Bob said confidently, not seeming to understand what she was so worried about.

"Are you sure?" Terry asked. "I already had the magic chalk slip out of my grasp once and I don't want it to happen again."

"No one's going to hear him!" Bob shouted, now visibly annoyed. "Most of the town's too far away and I doubt they would be able to hear much of anything through that room anyway." He finished writing his message on the board and read over it confidently before erasing it.

"You're sure Rudy's gonna find that message?" Vinnie asked.

"He's got to," Bob replied. "He'll be looking all over the place for his friend." Certain that his plan would work, Bob left the chalkboard on the wall and walked down the stairs with the others.

In ChalkZone, his message materialized and fell apart into a heap of letters on the ground.

**ooo**

Luckily for the two interloping Zoners, Dooth was able to find Rudy's house much faster than he'd managed to find the building, and the fact that they hadn't seen many people around had definitely helped. Dooth had flown Boorat up to Rudy's window, which had been partially open, and snuck back into the room, pleased to see the portal to ChalkZone still open.

As he crossed the room, Dooth's ears picked up something from outside the door. He turned to it, realizing that it was probably one of Rudy's parents, or Rudy himself, returning to his room. He and Boorat leaped through the portal and once on ChalkZone ground, stepped out of its view, waiting out of curiosity to see who was in the room.

They heard small footsteps, and then an adult's voice called from somewhere else in the Real World house, and a voice – a young boy's voice – from near the portal yelled, "I'm coming!" and then erased the portal.

"Should we wait for him?" Boorat hissed as the two examined the empty air where the portal had been.

"Nah, we've done our job," Dooth replied, walking off. "You're not doubting that my creator's plan will work, are you? Once he gets the message, he'll come find us. If we approach him now, he might fight back and we might have to fight him. And my creator doesn't want me to do that. I don't know why, but he doesn't. So I'm not doing it."

Boorat hesitated as he looked at the spot where the portal had been, but then he followed his companion as they headed toward a group of hills. Dooth knew that they'd have to keep away from the city for the time being, until his creator came and stopped the police's attempts to arrest them, but they weren't going to go far. Rudy would be told to seek them out, and they would be waiting.

**ooo**

The next morning, Rudy and Penny sat in Mr. Wilter's class, their minds on the events of last afternoon. Their previous night's search had turned up nothing. Early that morning, they had gone into ChalkZone upon arriving at the school in the short period of time they had before class started to see if anyone from ChalkZone City had discovered anything about what had happened to their friend. But they'd found no answers. No clues for where to look. He knew that all they could do was keep searching. But it had already been nearly a day…who knew how far away Snap could be now?

It was Wednesday, and that meant they only had today and the next day to find Snap before they both would be sent off on the science field trip. The thought of it taking another day longer or more to find Snap filled them both with horror, but they had to plan for what to do if they had to leave while he was still missing. Rudy had been trying to think of excuses he could come up with to get his parents to let him stay home from the field trip, but none of them seemed satisfactory enough to be convincing.

He looked over at Penny, who was distractedly trying to write down notes on Mr. Wilter's lectures. She had brought her own pieces of magic chalk with her to the school so she could search for Snap herself in case for whatever reason they were separated during a time when there was a chance to briefly escape into ChalkZone. Rudy could still hardly believe they were sitting in a classroom while Snap could be in some terrible danger…

"Mr. Tabootie!" Mr. Wilter's voice called.

"What?" Rudy said quickly, jumping.

"I asked you a question," Mr. Wilter replied, sounding annoyed.

"Oh…uh…"

"I know the answer, Mr. Wilter!" Penny said quickly, raising her hand and casting a worried glance at Rudy.

Mr. Wilter still looked annoyed, but nevertheless he moved on and called on Penny. After she answered, she shot Rudy another worried look, and he knew she felt just as helpless to do anything for Snap at the moment as he did. Rudy wasn't even trying to focus on class as his thoughts kept drifting back to his friend's disappearance. How had Snap simply vanished without a trace? Was he captured somewhere? Trapped? Injured? Or worse…? He tried not to focus on that, instead thinking of what he would do once he could take another trip into ChalkZone.

The moment school ended for the day, Rudy quickly met Penny outside the school in a secluded area. Despite how much he'd tried not to think of what might have happened, he couldn't help mentioning some of the theories that had come into his head over the course of the school day. "What if…what if Skrawl captured him?" Rudy began frantically, quickly checking to make sure no one could hear them. Penny's mother was picking them up that day, so they had a brief chance to discuss things before they were taken home and could go back into ChalkZone.

"Trust me," Penny replied, "if Skrawl had kidnapped him, the news would be all over ChalkZone by now."

"Okay, okay, but maybe this isn't Skrawl's doing," Rudy replied, starting to quickly pace back and forth in front of the red brick wall of the school building. "I just don't know what else could have happened…"

"I don't know either, Rudy," Penny replied sadly, "But we'll go right back to ChalkZone when we get to your house. I'll convince my mom to let me stay over for a while longer. We'll go back to the city…and well, _someone_ we haven't talked to yet is bound to know something by now." She was again trying to sound hopeful, but Rudy could tell she was doubting her own words.

They both turned as they heard the sound of her mother's truck pulling up. Without another word they both turned and walked across the schoolyard, each lost in their own thoughts.

**ooo**

ChalkZone City's bustling streets and array of unique shops seemed much less friendly when Rudy and Penny arrived after being dropped off at Rudy's house. They were on a desperate mission, but most of the Zoners they passed walked by as if nothing was wrong. Rudy knew that none of the ones they had asked had known anything, but he wished the ones aware of the situation would try to do more to help.

Frustrated, Rudy ran up to some of the nearest city dwellers, asking them if they knew something – anything – about what had happened to Snap, but as before, he got no answers. "This is pointless!" Rudy cried, realizing afterward that he'd said it louder than he would have liked. "No one here knows anything! Let's just go back and keep searching ourselves."

Penny was about to agree when something caught her eye. "Rudy, look!" she cried, pointing into a crowd of Zoners near one of the nearby shops on the edge of the street they had been standing near.

At first, Rudy had no idea what she had noticed. Then he realized that one of the city inhabitants was sitting on a scooter, the one he'd drawn yesterday. He remembered that Snap had used the scooter to get back to the portal – or he had tried to, before he'd disappeared. "That's our scooter!" Rudy exclaimed to Penny, turning toward her and feeling, for the first time that day, hopeful. "That Zoner might know something about what happened!"

They raced over toward the scooter driver, who happened to be very large red ant. He looked up as the two children approached, seeming confused.

"Where did you get that?" Rudy asked before either Penny or the ant could speak, and pointed toward the scooter.

A look of fear crossed the ant Zoner's face as he replied, "I…well, I…I found it."

"Where?" Rudy demanded.

Penny could sense that the ant seemed worried, and quickly interjected, "We aren't angry with you. We just want to know where you found the scooter. If you tell us, you can keep it."

Looking a bit relieved, but at the same time uncertain of Rudy and Penny's motives, he hesitantly replied, "It was in one of the fields outside the city. That way!" He pointed, and after a moment, Penny determined that it was indeed in the direction of Snap's house and the field beyond.

"Okay," Rudy began, trying to make his voice sound calmer, "where in that field did you find it?"

"I…I don't remember," the Zoner replied. "It was lying in some bushes somewhere. I thought someone had thrown it away."

"When did you find it?" Rudy asked.

"Early this morning," he replied.

"Are you sure you can't at least remember the scooter's relative location when you found it?" Penny asked.

The ant shook his head. "No," he replied. "I don't know that area well and I was only wandering around. I just remember that it was in some eyeball bushes."

Rudy's spirits fell. That didn't tell them much at all. However, it was better than nothing, and since he could see that this Zoner didn't know anything more, they thanked him and headed back to the field where Snap had presumably disappeared from.

They were dismayed when, once they started looking, they found that there were plenty of spots with eyeball bushes scattered all throughout the area between Snap's house and the place where Rudy's portal had been. He realized, that, to a Zoner with no idea what to look for, it would be hard to remember which bush he'd found the scooter in, especially since all the clumps of eyeball bushes looked pretty much the same, and there hadn't been any portal that morning for the ant Zoner to see to guess how close Snap had gotten to it before whatever had happened…happened.

After a while of searching the bushes, Penny could see absolutely nothing that would give them any clue as to what had happened to Snap, and she realized that they would be wasting their time here; if there was some sort of clue, it would probably be long gone by now, and they weren't even sure what they were supposed to be looking for. They had traveled around the field, searching every clump of eyeball bushes, and were now standing in front of the last one anywhere near the area, but they had found nothing there either. Even the film strips in the bushes' root systems hadn't provided any help; either the roots could only provide recently seen information, or one way or another, they had missed seeing whatever had happened to Snap. They hadn't even managed to find the scooter in any of the images, so either the ant Zoner had taken it out when the eyeballs weren't looking, or their roots were too short to record much at a time.

"Rudy," she sighed, starting to pace worriedly, "I don't think we're going to find anything here. Maybe we should…go back to the city…or look around the other areas near here, or…"

"No!" Rudy interjected. "There_ has _to be something here…there has to be!" Frantically, he started pushing aside the branches of the already thoroughly searched bush, ripping off the leaves when they got in his way as he anxiously searched for something they both knew wasn't going to be there. The eyeball stalks on the bushes all turned toward him, their expressions beginning to look angry, and the ones closest to him leaned back as if they were afraid he would pull them off the plant as well.

"Rudy, this isn't helping!" Penny told him. She tried to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, which wasn't so easy as he was moving too frantically. "Look, we'll go back to the city, and we'll talk to-"

"No!" Rudy snapped, turning his head toward her. "There's no one there who knows anything, Penny!" he cried, his voice rising in volume. He held out a crumpled film strip root that was caked with dirt. "Try this one! Maybe this one will show us something!"

Penny hesitantly took it from him and put it in the camera-like device Rudy had drawn, and began looking at the still images as Rudy went back to digging. As she expected, the pictures were all of the field – peaceful, with a few Zoners passing by on occasion – but nothing unusual. "Rudy, I think it's too late," she began, trying to keep her voice from shaking. "If the eyeballs _did_ see anything, it's not in their root systems anymore. I think we should go talk to Biclops. He might help us-"

"I should have thought of this earlier!" Rudy cried before she could finish, standing up and kicking aside a few of the bushes' branches before walking past Penny to begin pacing in the middle of the field. "If I had only done this yesterday we might have seen what happened!"

Somewhat shocked, she looked at him and shook her head. "Don't blame yourself, Rudy. Neither of us thought-" She paused. She had been about to say that they hadn't thought Snap would be gone so long, but she realized that saying that would probably only make Rudy more worried. She lowered her head, avoiding Rudy's gaze. "We really should go find Biclops and-"

"What can he do?" Rudy yelled, turning around to face her, looking more panicked than he had been all day, as if he'd finally reached some sort of breaking point. "He didn't see what happened! I'm not going to waste time on something that's completely useless!"

"Rudy, listen! We'll…we'll find him." Penny tried to sound reassuring, but when they had nothing to go on, how could she reassure him? Or herself? She was usually very good at thinking up solutions and explaining things, but at the moment she was completely lost. Her suggestion to talk to Biclops – who probably already knew about the incident by now – was just a shot in the dark. She had no idea how to help Snap now, or Rudy, for that matter. But she was determined to try anyway. "The news will have spread around the city by now. Someone there will tell us if anyone finds anything…And if not, we're sure to find something soon."

"How can you be sure?" Rudy snapped, rounding on her. "We have absolutely NOTHING to go off of! We've searched this entire field, talked to all those different Zoners in the city, and the only one who knew something led us to a dead end. There's nothing HERE!" He angrily kicked at a clump of grass near his feet. "We don't even know where Snap was when he vanished! He might not even have been around here. But if we keep looking in the wrong places, we're going to run out of time!" He stood glaring at her for a moment, then his expression saddened and he turned away. "Sorry," he said quietly. "I just don't know what to do when we have no idea where to look. I don't even know if Snap's all right."

Penny wasn't sure how to reply; she knew that what Rudy had said was true. They didn't have a lot of time, and they didn't know what sort of situation Snap was in or whether HE could afford to wait for them much longer, and they didn't even have a good idea of where to begin searching. One thing was clear; Snap wasn't anywhere around this field, and they had to start looking elsewhere, but they weren't sure what to be looking for. He could be anywhere. She really wanted to give Rudy – and herself – the hope they needed right now, but she could think of nothing to say. This was one problem she didn't know how to find the solution to. "I know it seems hopeless," she said, "but we have too keep trying. That's all we can do. But we're not going to find anything else here."

"All right," Rudy sighed in defeat, all the franticness gone from his voice. "Let's go talk to Biclops."

He sounded so hopeless, that Penny wished there was something to do to help, but she wasn't sure she had any real hope to offer. "Listen, Rudy-"

"Let's just go," he interrupted her, walking back toward the car he'd drawn the previous day, Penny following quickly behind. They headed off to the chalk mine, hoping that somehow, Biclops, or anyone else, would have some sort of clue as to what had happened to their friend.

**ooo**

Alone in the abandoned building, Snap had long given up calling for help and had spent the night trying to find some way out of the room he was imprisoned in. No matter what he tried, he had not been able to unlock the door. He had explored the room to look for other ways out, but there weren't any large enough cracks for him to slip through using the two dimensional powers he had in the real world, and things certainly weren't made easier by the fact that he was trapped in complete darkness.

The lack of windows and blocked door made it impossible to see anything; he had had to feel around the walls and floor for any sort of escape route, though he had found none. After becoming exhausted from searching and deciding to take a break, Snap tried to remember exactly how long it would be until the afternoon, when Rudy would see the messages his captors had sent and at least realize he was somewhere in the real world so they could begin looking for him. He thought it had been at least a day, so if it wasn't afternoon already, it was close to it, but it was hard to tell without anything to give him any clue. If it had been, that made sense. He hadn't been able to sleep at all since he'd been here, not helped by the fact that there was nothing but concrete floor to rest on, and he was completely exhausted. Occasionally he would start to drift off, but he always woke up a few moments later. He was also very hungry; he hadn't eaten since before he'd met Rudy and Penny the day before.

Far worse, however, was thirst. His mouth and throat were completely dry, as he constantly confirmed when swallowing brought about no saliva, and being without water for so long made him feel light headed and weak. His thoughts were constantly drifting back toward water and thirst, no matter how hard he tried not to think about it, and there was no relief from that torment. In response to the thoughts, his tongue would often search his mouth for any sign of spare moisture, only to encounter something akin to a desert. He would have gladly agreed to go without food or sleep another day if he could just have some water.

As he sat beside the door, at a loss for what to do next, he began to wonder if Rudy and Penny would even be able to find him after they'd seen the message. But they _had_ to be doing something right now. Maybe they were already searching different chalkboards. Maybe they had already figured out some clue as to where he was. The more he thought about, the more he started to convince himself that they would come and free him from his prison very soon.

Voices from outside the door reached him, and he barely had time to get up and back away from it before he heard the heavy object sliding across the floor and then the lock on the door turning.

The door opened, and light entered the room. Though it wasn't very bright, it was still more light than Snap had been used to seeing and he had to look away for a moment. Once he turned back to the door, he realized that it was Bob and Terry who had opened it, but Vinnie was nowhere in sight. Terry carried a stack of papers with her, and Bob was sipping from a bottle of soda, looking at Snap with a very annoyed expression, as if he blamed him for the failure of his "brilliant" plan so far.

Leaning toward him, Bob gave the Zoner a nasty grin. "Are you thirsty?" he asked, thrusting the bottle toward him and laughing when Snap recoiled from it.

"All right," Terry began, ignoring her comrade as she closed the door behind them. As she turned, Snap noticed for the first time that she was carrying his backpack as well, but then the door closed and he was plunged into darkness again. A moment later, however, and Terry flicked on a large flashlight to illuminate the room. "It's been a day and our creatures haven't showed up. So we're going to ask you some questions."

Snap just glared back at her. No matter what they were going to do, he wasn't about to give away anything that could jeopardize his home and the other Zoners.

Terry ignored it and flipped through the stack of papers she was holding, taking out one that Snap realized was a newspaper clipping, which she held in front of his face. It read: 'Orangeopolis News: Plainville Kids Win Gee Wiz Awards.' The newspaper had a picture of Rudy and Penny standing in front of a strange looking obelisk…which he realized must be the one Rudy and Penny had come into ChalkZone to try to uncover a secret about.

"Just how did these two figure out the mystery behind that obelisk, Snap?" Terry asked. "Did something in ChalkZone tell them the answer?"

"How should I know?" he cried back, annoyed that his voice sounded scratchy and weak after a day without water.

"Oh, look at this!" Bob said cheerfully as he picked up another newspaper clipping from the stack of papers, which Terry had set down after she grabbed the first one. Bob straightened out the newspaper and started reading the words under the headline on the front cover. "A huge conspiracy about a factory was recently uncovered thanks to three kids; Rudy Tabootie and Penny Sanchez from Plainville, and Snap White, from Greenland...huh, _Greenland_? Is that your code for _ChalkZone_?" He grinned as he looked over at Snap, who met his glare evenly. Bob didn't seem to care. "Your little secret isn't going to be so secret anymore," he said with a grin. "Everyone's going to know the real story behind all these strange occurrences." He picked up the rest of the evidence Terry had brought and held it in front of Snap for a moment before carelessly tossing it back toward the door.

Terry looked momentarily annoyed, but seemed to decide that the newspapers weren't important. "Okay, look," she began, "I need you to tell me where Rudy-"

"I'm not telling you anything!" Snap shouted back.

"Well, I would if I were you," Terry said smugly. "After all," she added, holding up the backpack, "we control your only access to food and water."

At the mention of water, Snap felt himself flinch. He swallowed dryly, his eyes drawn to Terry's, and he stared, trying not to give away any sort of hint that he would have done nearly anything to get it from her.

"That's right!" Bob said suddenly, grabbing the backpack out of Terry's hands and waving it in front of Snap, who watched it closely, though didn't have any hope of reaching it. You'd better cooperate, or you could be locked in here for weeks…and if you are, you will starve to death and then you will die. And Rudy will be very sad."

"No way!" Snap shouted. "Rudy will…wait a minute…you're not going to let me die, you need me to-"

"Well, no," Bob replied. "But if Rudy takes too long, there's nothing we can do." He picked up his soda bottle again, and, to Snap's dismay, emptied it over the backpack until it was completely dissolved. "No more food! If I were you I'd be helping us learn how to better contact Rudy so you can get back-"

"What did you do that for?" Terry muttered, glaring at Bob. "We could have used that to-"

"Don't worry," Bob replied. "Now the only food source is back in ChalkZone. Which means we'll have to get what we want first, right?"

"Hm…I suppose you're right," Terry responded, though she still didn't seem happy about it. "Now," she began, turning to Snap, "if I were you, I would cooperate, or else I can make things very miserable for you. Remember, I still haven't forgotten how you and Rudy humiliated me at the TV studio. We're going to ask you some new questions."

"First of all, does Rudy go into ChalkZone every day?" Bob asked. "Or are we just wasting our time here?"

Snap didn't reply. Now that they'd erased his only access to food and water, he didn't see any point in bothering to answer any of their stupid questions, even if he'd wanted to.

"What about his magic chalk?" Terry asked. "Where does he keep his stash in the real world?"

Again he refused to answer, and Terry cast an annoyed look at Bob, who looked back at her with confusion, as if he couldn't understand why she'd be displeased with him. Terry looked like she was about to ask another question when the door slammed open and Vinnie stood there, looking at the other two angrily.

"What are you doin' here? I thought you two wanted me to come here so we could figure out how we're gonna reveal ChalkZone," he muttered.

"We can do that later," Bob muttered.

"Well, we do need to figure out just what we're going to do once we get the chalk," Terry said as she collected her papers and the flashlight and stood up. "At least once we have it, it'll be easy to convince another TV studio to take us seriously. And let's face it," she glared at Snap. "He's not going to tell us anything useful right now."

Bob hesitated for a moment before following her, not seeming satisfied about not getting any answers. The door slammed closed after them and Snap heard the table being dragged back in place.

Now back in the dark alone, Snap was feeling less defiant and more hopeless. He had been sure that Rudy and Penny would have seen the ransom note and worked out where he was, but if it had already been a day, they probably were having more trouble than he'd realized. But even so, it just didn't make sense that they wouldn't have found the chalkboard that Terry and the others were writing messages from. They had to be searching every one they could find, so why was it taking so long?

Though he tried to keep doubts from coming into his mind, his efforts were beginning to become useless, for as much as he hated to admit it, he was beginning to think that maybe Rudy and Penny had no idea what had happened to him at all.

* * *

><p><em>(Author's Note: The thing with the newspaper and the factory was a reference to an old ChalkZone story I wrote in 2005 (it's not online, so don't go looking for it or anything xD).)<em>


	4. Interrogation

_(Author's Note: Okay, people who read my stories have probably realized that I love long chapters, but this was one was just ridiculous in terms of length, so I split it into two chapters and that's why this one is short (the end of this one was the only good place to cut off). _

_Also, big thanks to FlareonWolf for helping me write this one! She wrote part of this chapter and it's definitely because of her that I've been able to improve my writing!)  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>Cryptic investigation<strong>

**Chapter Four – Interrogation**

Thursday morning was even bleaker to Rudy than the previous day had been. Snap had now been missing for two days, and he and Penny had still been unable to find any clue as to where he had gone or what had happened to him. Even the weather seemed to reflect their hopelessness; there was a thick layer of gray clouds in the sky, casting the school grounds in a gloomy light. Rudy hated the fact that he had to stay at school for the day when Snap was in some kind of trouble somewhere, and he should be continuing his search. No one in the Real World could help him or Penny, or even understand that they had to do something important, and there was no way to explain it to them. In ChalkZone, they had many of their Zoner friends on their side, but here, they were alone in this.

As Rudy walked up to the school building, the thick layer of dark clouds obscuring the sky only seemed to add to his dismal thoughts. He and Penny both knew that with the field trip looming ahead of them tomorrow, this was the last day that they would have a long enough period of time to thoroughly continue their search before Tuesday.

When their classes began, neither he nor Penny were able to pay any attention to the lessons; they spent most of class staring out the window, pondering what else they could do to find Snap, or desperately waiting for class to be over so they could try to do something about it.

However, having been too busy searching for Snap the previous day, Rudy hadn't done any of his homework. This landed him in detention with Mr. Wilter during the lunch period, which ruined all his plans of sneaking into ChalkZone during that time. He knew that at least Penny had brought her pieces of magic chalk to school again, and she had done at least enough of her homework that she didn't get detention, so she would be able to search without him. But at the same time, he felt useless just standing in the classroom writing sentences over and over again on the chalkboard. The entire time he was copying lines, he kept pausing to look out the window toward the schoolyard, frustrated that he couldn't tell Mr. Wilter that someone needed his help and he shouldn't be standing in the classroom wasting time. He sighed and continued writing, knowing that even though he wouldn't finish with enough time to go into ChalkZone before class started again, at least he might be able to talk to Penny and see if she had any other ideas, or better yet, had found something.

Outside in the schoolyard, Penny was equally frustrated that she hadn't managed to find anything on her brief excursion into ChalkZone. Knowing that lunch would be over soon, she had been forced to come back into the Real World. Walking back and forth near the main entrance to the school building, she waited for Rudy to reappear, staring up at the miserable looking clouds covering up what should have been a blue sky.

"I don't see why Tabootie's so mad," she heard Reggie mutter as he walked out the door, presumably coming back from some task Mr. Wilter had given him. "I get detention all the time!"

Ignoring him, she glanced up at their classroom's window, hoping Rudy would be finished soon. She realized that if Reggie had just finished and Rudy was still inside, he must have been really distracted, and she didn't blame him. She was wondering whether Mr. Wilter would let her help him with his detention when Rudy appeared out of the school's front doors, looking furious.

"I can't believe this!" he shouted, without caring who heard him. "Of all the days-"

"Rudy, calm down!" Penny told him, standing up and walking toward her friend.

"Calm down?" Rudy shouted. "I was supposed to be helping you! I shouldn't have been stuck inside! We should have been looking-"

"Shh!" Penny warned, glancing warily at the other kids nearby. "Look," she said in a whisper, turning back to Rudy, "we'll start looking again right after school. I know you're worried…I'm worried too…but we can't do anything about it now…"

Rudy found this entirely unhelpful. "I know!" he replied. "That's the problem!"

"I know…" Penny sighed, then tried to sound hopeful. "But we talked to a lot of people in ChalkZone. They're all looking. One of them is bound to find out something soon."

"Maybe…" Rudy sighed. He looked up gloomily as the school bell rang. He felt a few rain drops and looked up, seeing that it had started drizzling. Rain meant that they would likely end up cooped up in the classroom during the next recess. There would be no opportunity to search ChalkZone then. Rudy felt his last remaining bit of hope dwindle. "But what are we going to do when we have to go on that field trip tomorrow, Penny?" he asked. "If we don't find Snap… I mean, it'll be hard enough as it is to sneak into ChalkZone, let alone with enough time to search…" He was starting to think that their only opportunities to look for Snap during the field trip were going to be at night, and even then it might be difficult to sneak away.

"I don't know…we'll find some way, but…" Penny paused as a teacher walked by, telling the remaining students to get inside. "We'll talk about this after class. Who knows, maybe the recess won't be cancelled after all." They went back into the school building, Penny heading to her locker to store her magic chalk – she didn't feel safe just keeping it in her backpack after Terry Bouffant had showed up recently – and then quickly following Rudy back to their classroom.

**ooo**

However, luck was not on their side, and they were forced to stay inside the classroom during the last recess. Together they huddled at the back of the room, pretending to be working on Rudy's comic together, and conversed with each other in low whispers, planning out what they would do once they got into ChalkZone after school. None of their plans seemed efficient enough, and Rudy was having trouble keeping calm. He knew that anyone in the Real World noticing something was wrong would only hinder them, not help, as they needed to be left alone to think about it, but as the day had gone on, he'd become increasingly desperate.

"Okay…well, we can meet up at your house again, and say we want to do our homework together," Penny was saying. She and Rudy both realized that, otherwise, it might be hard to convince their parents to let them stay so long after school again, when they hadn't fully completed any homework in the past two days, but they had to try.

"Yeah, good idea," Rudy said with a nod, though he certainly didn't feel as hopeful about this as Penny was…or at least was trying to seem. He glanced over at the windows; the rain had already stopped, but they wouldn't be able to go outside as the school grounds would be wet. The rain had come at the worst possible time.

After school, however, things got even worse.

Penny's mother had refused to let her go to Rudy's house until she completed her homework, which Rudy knew could take a long time, especially part of it involved finishing up a science project that she had taken on for extra credit last week and had to be completed before she went on the field trip. He spent the early afternoon searching ChalkZone himself until he was forced to come back for dinnertime. He knew that Penny would have tried to give up on the science project in order to help him, but he also knew that her mother would find that strange, especially if she couldn't come up with a good excuse, which would be hard to do, since she had been working hard on it before the events of that week had occurred. It would seem very strange for her to stop now, but he hoped she could think of something.

**ooo**

Snap awoke in a slight daze. A muffled noise had disturbed his sleep – as uncomfortable as it was – and he groaned to life and looked up, staring forward into the blackness in confusion as he tried to ignore his pounding headache. It took him a second to remember where he was: the abandoned building he'd been dragged into at least a few days ago... He knew he couldn't have been asleep for long; he'd only managed to fall asleep for a few minutes at a time since he'd been in this place, and he felt like whatever sleep he'd just gotten hadn't been much longer than that. As he woke up more fully, the reality of his situation dawned on him again, much stronger this time. He was trapped, deprived of food, water and comfort. And his friends... He missed them so much. Isolated for even a short period of time was painful, and he longed for their company. Why hadn't they come yet? Didn't they have some sort of plan regarding the ransom notes his captors had been sending? They would know he was in the Real World, and this place had a chalkboard…so why hadn't they come?

He hadn't wanted to believe that his beloved friends had abandoned him or their search. For hours on end, he had repeated the same persistent thoughts: they were coming... They would find him before his stomach shriveled with starvation, or before the deprivation of sweet, sweet water would finish him off. But now, as his tongue began to dry and his head pounded each and every second with the constant reminder that he was alone, he was beginning to lose faith in his friends. He was nearly out of faith for himself. And he knew it was only a matter of time before that faith was gone completely.

He had been in the same room for a while now... It was getting difficult to determine how many hours or even days had passed. He knew it had to have been at least two or three days, but how was he to tell? There was no light in the room, and no windows, so he was unable to even know the time of day by the changing Real World light outside. He couldn't even guess if it _was_ night or day. This had made sleeping difficult, as he fell asleep at random times when he felt drained, but would always wake up almost as soon as he did.

His back ached, his brain had lost a large portion of its water, and it felt as if something with large talons was clawing at his stomach, demanding to be filled with _something_. He was constantly feeling dizzy, and it took a lot of effort even just to stand. But, worst of all, his captors – the reason he was imprisoned so barbarically – would not be able to feed or provide him with water. They didn't possess magic chalk like Rudy did. However, he knew that was what they were after... He wished with his entire being that the magic chalk would never fall into their hands, but at the same time, a tiny voice in his head tried to convince him that he wanted Rudy to suddenly appear and give in. He was suffering without a way to reduce it, and felt like the only way he would get out of this alive would be some kind of miracle. Either that, or Rudy cooperated, and gave them what they wanted…

A suction sound reached him as the door to his 'prison cell' opened. His instinctive action was to leap to his feet and shoot through the door, but the scenario only played out in his head; he was far from capable of jumping to his feet in his current state. The door opened, but instead of showing him a way to freedom, it revealed only the hall of a deserted building. He swallowed hard as he felt a sick feeling in his stomach.

Two tall familiar figures invaded the room and sealed the door closed behind them, severing any hope Snap might have had of leaving the confines of his prison. They carried chairs and set them in the middle of the room, as well as a larger and brighter light than the one they'd brought in before. Terry sat on the left and Bob on the right, the latter carrying something large and requiring both arms to hold. The object was wrapped in a cloth, and Snap furrowed his brow and tried to guess what it may be, and what they'd brought it for, but he had no clue. And whatever it was, this man certainly seemed to think it would somehow aid him in getting what he wanted.

"Alright, _Snap_," Terry began with a hiss, attaining her authoritative composure, "It's been two days and Rudy hasn't given up any magic chalk, so it's time for you to give us answers."

She pulled her seat closer, and her captive pressed his gloves against the wall behind him for support as he shakily rose. He didn't respond, but merely kept his eyes narrowed.

"How often does Rudy enter ChalkZone? Would he for sure have seen our messages by now?" she snapped, almost calmly at first. Snap continued to keep his mouth closed as his chest heaved, and she growled and repeated the question, shouting this time.

"I already told you," he began, swallowing again to gain some moisture with little success, "I ain't tellin' you anything!"

But to Snap's rather serious response, the man beside Terry only laughed. Terry turned to him with confusion, unable to determine the cause of his laughter. Snap was confused as well, and after Bob stopped laughing, the two stared at each other and Snap was unsure how to react. Did he find his suffering amusing?

"What's so funny, Bob?" Terry grumbled. Bob ignored her, however, and showcased a sinister half-smile.

"I have ways of making you talk!" he boasted, indicating his wrapped-up object. Snap's eyes fell to the strange mysterious item, and his curiosity quickly turned to something closer to dread. Whatever his captor had hidden, it couldn't be pleasant.

Terry turned her focus back to Snap and sighed. "Tell us what we want to know, or things are going to get worse for you. Would Rudy have gone into ChalkZone and seen our messages yet?"

After Snap still refused to speak, Bob took his object, stood up, and placed it on the seat behind him. He began pacing across the room for only a moment before he said, "Your precious friend has abandoned you, hasn't he?" He gave his captive a condescending smile.

Snap's attention was immediately drawn to Bob, and he glared with newfound intensity. "Rudy wouldn't abandon me!" he said as loudly as he could manage.

"Wouldn't he?" He stopped a moment just to see Snap's reaction, then continued. "Then that's why you won't tell us anything about him. You _don't know_. You don't even know if he bothered to come looking for you."

"That's not true!" Snap shouted, but Bob didn't even flinch. Snap's fists tightened and his teeth ground together. "Rudy wouldn't..." He trailed off as he began to contemplate it himself. There had been no sign of Rudy, or Penny, at all. As much as it seemed crazy to think about it, and he hoped he was just too exhausted to think straight, it did seem as if, for some reason he couldn't even begin to guess, his friends had abandoned the search.

"You keep thinking that, then," Bob said with a smirk. "Now, as you've already been told, we need to know some things." He looked toward Snap, confident that soon the answers would follow. "Tabootie doesn't appear to value your friendship." He stopped pacing, and he faced Snap again, staring down at him with disdain. "I've written him letter after letter, but I haven't gotten a single response. Rudy hasn't gone looking for us, our creations haven't arrived with the magic chalk, and there's simply no sign he cares at all-"

"Tell us whether Rudy would have seen our messages yet or not!" Terry intervened, and Bob looked rather aghast. Snap got the impression that Bob was usually the one to interrupt.

Once again, Snap remained silent. He could only think of his friends now, and the picture was beginning to solidify; Bob was sending them letters, but they weren't responding at all, and Rudy hadn't even thought to look through the chalkboards. His doubts for his friends were growing, and although he tried his hardest to fight the absurd thoughts, he was starting to believe them.

The door opened with an audible sound, and a short, dark-haired man poked his head inside. Snap looked up, focusing first on Vinnie Raton and then on the airspace above him. He still could see nothing distinguishable; the walls were all dark and there was only a small amount of light coming from another place somewhere further down the hallway.

"This is pointless," the man murmured. Snap imagined he'd been listening to their conversations somehow. "He's not gonna talk!"

"Do not interrupt, Vinnie!" Bob cried.

"We...we've been comin' back to this building to talk to 'im for two days now! If he won't talk, then I say we pack up and go," he insisted, but the other two adults merely scoffed. Bob turned away and crossed his arms, frustrated. He was about to spin around with an argument when Terry spoke up.

"We'll do this our way," she replied, slightly hushed as if she thought it would prevent Snap from hearing their somewhat unprofessional discussion. "Have you got a better plan?"

"Well, no—"

"Then leave us to the job, and go back to planning your theme park!" Terry exclaimed, and watched as her associate scrunched his face but made no further move to retort.

As he pulled the door closed, Vinnie mumbled, "Still think your griffin's smart enough to come up with a decent plan _now_?"

Bob's eyes widened, but right before he shouted after him, Terry growled, "Do NOT reply, Bob!"

"Don't tell me what to do!" Bob shouted. But instead of taking his anger out on his accomplice, he swung around to Snap. "You'd better tell us soon!" he boomed, his patience wearing thin and his temper on the brink of exploding.

"What makes you think...I'd tell you anything?" Snap questioned, his head hanging and he stared back at him. Just witnessing the three uselessly debate made him feel heavier with exhaustion.

"Because I am the one and only Bob Newland, creative genius and creator of animals much smarter than he thinks." He pointed dramatically at the door that Vinnie had just left through and continued, "I'll get what I want because I am inventive enough and smart enough to obtain it." He clearly took pride in himself, and he pushed out his chest as if trying to show off the pocket on his shirt.

"You're not so special. There are heaps of Bobs in ChalkZone!" Snap sneered.

Bob's eyes narrowed, and his face became contorted with disdain and utter indignation. He snatched the object from his chair and ripped the cloth off, revealing a large water gun which was looked like it was filled with a tank of water. Deadly Real World water.

Snap's heart skipped a beat. He was thirsty, but not crazy enough to even think about wanting to drink Real World water. No, this water would wash away his very body, and the thought of this lunatic having that ability at his command was more than terrifying. If he made one mistake...told one transparent lie, he could lose a limb, or worse.

"Woah, woah, woah!" Snap yelped, springing up and leaping back to thud against the concrete wall behind him. He stared at the water gun in horror and began breathing heavier than before.

"If you don't cooperate, I'll start by spraying your foot off!" Bob threatened, his teeth bared.

"And then you'll regret keeping quiet," Terry added confidently.

"All right, all right!" Snap began, raising his voice. "Just...lower that thing, will ya?"

Bob seemed slightly satisfied by Snap's compliancy, but it was clear that he had no intention of relinquishing that which gave him power. Snap was still staring at the water gun, and now he knew he was in trouble. His interrogators now had means of torture and a sure way of convincing him to respond to every question asked.

"Answer our question," Terry started, shoving her face into Snap's with wide, hungry eyes.

"I already told you," he growled, "I don't know."

"You're lying!" she accused, looking to Bob. Snap guessed she expected him to threaten him.

Bob kept the gun at Snap's eye-level, and the defenseless Zoner began to feel increasingly outmatched. "I swear I don't know!" he cried.

"Then I'll ask you something you do know," Bob began, grinning again. "Where does Tabootie keep his magic chalk?"

At this, Snap felt a stab in his chest. It was true that he wasn't sure why Rudy hadn't done anything about the ransom notes, but he did partly know the answer to this question. "I..." he threw his eyes restlessly about and lowered his tone. "I don't know."

"I know you're lying," Bob hissed, his finger teasing the trigger.

"It-it's true!" Snap protested, his arms still pinned against the wall. His voice shook and he licked his lips with nervousness.

Bob applied the needed pressure to the trigger, and a forced string of water gushed from the nozzle. Snap was utterly horrified for the brief moment he thought his hand was melting off, but as he opened his eyes, he realized that the wall beside him had taken the shot, not his glove! He felt a small bit of relief, which was quickly replaced by alarm as his interrogator fired it again, and he dodged to the right and away from the splashes. However, Bob was quick to let go and swing the gun back to his prisoner, and Snap froze instantly, his eyes stationed on the barrel once again. As Bob demanded that he spill the truth, Snap caved and held his hands up again.

"All right, all right! I know!" he yelled, and Bob fell silent, holding his weapon steady. "I don't know where Rudy keeps his spare chalk," Snap continued, and Bob's eyes lit up again. "But! ...I know where he gets it from."

"Do go on," Terry encouraged, sounding gleeful now that the water gun had had some effect.

Snap's gaze switched between the two adults, and he held his tongue, but as soon as Bob's finger began edging closer to the trigger of the water gun, the words tumbled out. "...The Magic Chalk Mine! There's a magic chalk mine in ChalkZone. It grows inside and it's where...Rudy gets it." After he'd finished, dread filled his mind as he realized what he'd just told them. Though he knew they had no way of accessing the mine from outside ChalkZone, it still didn't sit well with him that they knew, and he wished he could have thought quick enough to make something up.

"Excellent," Bob grunted, a tiny smile tugging the corner of his mouth. But he wasn't about to stop there. "Now, tell me why Rudy hasn't responded to any of our messages. He would have gone into ChalkZone again since we started writing them, wouldn't he?"

"I…don't know," Snap said warily, barely taking his watchful glare from the water gun. Truthfully, he didn't know; he had no idea why Rudy and Penny hadn't already devised a plan to free him, and he could only begin to guess what could have been keeping them from doing so.

He looked up to see Terry make her way to the room's only exit. She opened the door, leaving it ajar (probably to taunt Snap with a suicidal opportunity to try to escape), only to return moments later with a small chalkboard.

Bob grabbed the chalkboard by the edge and propped it against his chair in front of his captive. He grabbed his piece of regular white chalk and wrote a few words. "Your Rudy friend refuses to respond to my ransom letters. I've sent him many already. He either doesn't care about you, or somehow they aren't reaching him. Doesn't your useless town have a postal service?"

"As a matter of fact, we do," Snap huffed.

"Well then, why isn't your precious _friend_ begging me to release you?"

Snap was starting to have greater trouble focusing. Everything kept going blurry in front of his eyes. As the chalkboard in front of him faded in and out of view, something suddenly clicked, and he understood. "If you're just writing words and then erasing them," he began, "they'll just fall in a heap on the ground. How do you expect people to make sense out of them then?"

"Tell me how to work it, then!" Bob demanded, slamming the chalk into the section of the wall above Snap, who watched fragments crumble into the ground.

"You need to draw it like a letter." Snap hardly cared what Bob's reply was going to be. He had suddenly understood – finally understood – why Rudy and Penny hadn't come for him. There had been no way for either of them to read the ransom notes. He felt ashamed for having doubted them earlier. Of course they hadn't given up – they'd just had no idea where to_ look_.

"What?" Bob blurted. He turned back to Snap, silently demanding answers.

Snap had quickly realized that, although Bob's lack of knowledge of ChalkZone provided clarification on why his friends hadn't arrived, it also meant that they were nowhere near being able to find him. His sudden burst of energy had faded, and he was back to feeling weak and disoriented. "You need to..." Snap wanted to get up and snatch the chalk from Bob and show him personally, but he felt too weak to attempt it, and he was sure it would only make his captor angry. "You'll need to draw a box around the words, so it looks like a letter. Then erase it."

Bob narrowed his eyes, possibly embarrassed by the simplicity of the problem. Obeying with slight reluctance, he drew a rectangle around his words. He stepped back to admire it before erasing it and getting busy and writing a proper letter.

Snap breathed a sigh of relief as Bob seemed to believe him, and suddenly noticed something. The door to the hallway was still open. Terry hadn't bothered to close it. Snap's line of sight was directly through the entrance, and he suddenly felt a tingle of excitement. He could escape. If he convinced his legs to speed out the door, he would be free. His heart began to thump wildly in his chest, and his mind raced with warnings, excitement, and questions with no answers. This was an extremely rare opportunity; Terry wasn't paying attention and Bob wasn't even watching. He stood up a bit taller, his feet tingled, longing to propel him in the desired direction. He had to do it.

Frantically his eyes darted from Terry to Bob, whose back was turned, and he readied himself. He remembered little about the building's structure, but maybe if he ran out, he would— _'Oh, no!'_ he thought desperately as Terry stood and crossed to the door. He gritted his teeth and felt his stomach pang with disappointment as she shut it loudly. He felt his entire upper body drop as he acknowledged that what may have been his only chance to escape had slipped from his grasp. And, not surprisingly, it was foiled by one of his captors. Yet, when he thought about it, he was glad he hadn't attempted it, because he knew that he wouldn't have made it far.

"I'm assuming this is right?" Bob questioned, getting Snap's attention. The words were arranged in letter format, and a rectangle bordered them. Regretfully Snap nodded, and Bob made a doubtful noise, taking one last look at it before clearing it from the board.

Following that was a bombardment of questions Snap hardly knew any of the correct responses to, and came close to being sprayed with the water gun several times. Terry and Bob had grown impatient and immensely aggravated with his lack in knowledge, and in the end had stormed out, only marginally satisfied. The unpleasantries involved in further interrogation took its toll on Snap, and after a few hours, he was completely drained of energy. Not that he had had much to begin with; he had felt weaker and weaker all day. After they left him, his mouth was drier, his stomach was hungrier, and his head pounded with the incessant continuation of pain. But the worst part was over…at least for now. At least he was away from them and the threat of being dissolved, even if it meant being in a cold room with no light, but now that he'd realized why his friends hadn't come, he knew that he was still far away from being rescued. Since Terry and Vinnie had probably come in the afternoon or evening, as that seemed the most likely time, and the interrogation had lasted several hours, that it had to be evening or night by now. Rudy didn't normally come into ChalkZone that late, so he was probably too late to see the message that night.

**ooo**

After dinner, Rudy ended up stuck having to complete his own homework downstairs, having been told by his parents that he couldn't go 'back up in his room to draw' until he finished it. He knew that it was because he hadn't done his homework in the past few days, but he was too worried about Snap to care about doing a good job. As he tried to hurry as fast as he could, he continually checked the time or looked out the window at the even stormier sky outside, realizing with growing disappointment that Penny must not have been able to talk her way out of finishing her science project. At the moment, he wished more than ever that she could be there with him. He hadn't realized it before, but her confidence and words of hope had been helpful to him, even just a little bit, and he only noticed now that he was alone. He tried to convince himself that she would stumble upon the answer to Snap's disappearance soon; after all, she was good at figuring things out. But as the time ticked by, and he realized that this was their last day before the field trip, he knew that they were running out of time. They had talked about meeting up during the night in ChalkZone, but it still simply wasn't enough time.

Luckily, Rudy managed to finish his homework fast (especially since he wasn't bothering with accuracy), but he knew that until Penny could come over, he would only be able to go into ChalkZone in short intervals; if she called, his parents would come up to his room to find him. It was getting later, and he was starting to worry as he climbed back into his room from the portal after having done one of his quick searches.

"Rudy!" his mother's voice called, causing him to hurriedly erase the portal. He went downstairs to find that Penny had called him at last. Feeling a little hopeful again, he took the phone into his room.

"Penny! Are you ready to-"

"Rudy, I'm really sorry…" Penny's voice came back at him, making his hope fade away immediately. "I'm not going to be able to come over there to help until a little later. You see, I had to help my mom with some of the animals, so I didn't get to work on the project until now."

"Do you think you'll still have time to come over afterward?" he asked. "If not, I guess we can still sneak into ChalkZone at night…"

"Well," Penny began hesitantly, "I left my magic chalk back in my locker at school. I guess I was too worried about Snap…but don't worry, I talked to Mom and we might be able to have a sleepover tonight, since tomorrow is the field trip. After I finish the project, of course. You can give me another piece of chalk then."

"Okay," Rudy replied, feeling relieved. "Good idea. I'll go ask my parents about it too. How long do you think the project will take?"

"Not much longer. I just have to go to the library to pick up a book first. That shouldn't take long either. My mom's busy so I'll have to walk, but I'll be quick."

"Walk?" Rudy replied, looking out the window at the evening sky. It looked even more gloomy now that it was a bit darker. "But it's stormy outside."

"Well, it hasn't rained since we were at school today, and it's not dark yet. I promise I'll hurry."

"Okay," Rudy replied. "I'll talk to my parents about the sleepover!" Penny got off the phone and Rudy ran down the stairs to talk to his mother and father. If they could have a sleepover, that would give them much more time, and they wouldn't have to sneak away. He would still have to make his trips into ChalkZone brief, because he would need to be there when Penny called back, but he was feeling a bit more optimistic already. This was their first stroke of good luck, and he could only hope it would last until they found their missing friend.

**ooo**

The dull sound of thunder rumbled throughout the confines of the building, but it barely registered to the captive who, after what seemed like quite a while since Bob and Terry had last left, was losing hope that Rudy was going to show up any time soon, even though he now knew that a proper message had been sent. Snap knew that he and Penny had to be looking for him; there was no way they would have just given up, but he also knew that it would take them a long time for them to find him. He realized now that they hadn't found him before simply because there had been no way to get the messages that Bob had been writing to them earlier, but since they hadn't showed up after that…maybe it _was_ too late for them to sneak into ChalkZone that day. Snap had guessed that it was around late evening, and if Rudy and Penny hadn't had time to see the message Bob Newland had sent, that would mean…he would probably have to stay in the room another night.

As he lay on the floor, hoping he'd somehow be able to go to sleep despite his hunger and the burning dryness in his throat, he stared at where he was pretty sure the door was – not that he could even see his glove in front of his face in the darkness – and a sudden panic overtook him as he realized he might not even last that long. How long could someone go without water? How long had it been already? Terry had said two days, hadn't she? It was hard to tell; his memory was so fuzzy. But it had to have been two days, at _least_. He was faced, certainly not for the first time, with a desire to keep frantically looking for some way out of the room, as futile as that was, but he knew the only thing besides the door and its wooden frame in there was concrete, and he'd tried unlocking the door several times the previous day, and the frame, though old, held firm. Before, he had tried exploring every corner of the room the best he could in the darkness, over and over again, looking for some way out, but he hadn't found any such place. And now he was so weak, he didn't even think he had the energy to try again.

But if he didn't do something, what would become of him in this place? Slowly getting to his feet, which took even more effort than he'd thought it would, he shakily moved toward the wall and felt his way to the door, ignoring his pounding headache which had gotten even worse after the interrogation session. When he reached the thick wooden frame he stopped, a sudden wave of dizziness overcoming him and making him collapse to his knees on the floor. He closed his eyes, waiting for it to pass, and then opened his eyes again to look at the black nothingness that he knew was the door. Feeling another wave of panic, and out of sheer desperation more than anything, he grabbed the door's handle and weakly moved it back and forth, knowing in the back of his mind that there wasn't any point in trying to open it, but not caring until…he realized that the handle was actually _moving_.

It wasn't locked.

Snap's heart skipped a beat, he shakily stood up once again and, summoning what little strength he had left, started to pull the door open. He was lucky that it opened toward him, since he didn't think he'd be able to push it open with that heavy object in the way outside the room. He struggled a bit since the door was heavier than he thought…or maybe it was just that he had almost completely run out of strength.

Once he'd opened the door, he found that he could see a little bit. There was some very dim light flooding into the hallway from some window somewhere, and even with the obstruction in front of the doorway he could still faintly see the outlines of light beyond it. He put his back against the table and tried to push it out of his way. Not surprisingly, it didn't budge, and he quickly became too exhausted to continue.

However, he soon noticed in his dazed state that there was a small space between the door frame and the table on the left side; it must have been put back pretty hastily. Remembering that they would probably notice him soon, he flattened himself against the side of the desk and slid out through the small space, feeling glad for once that he was in the Real World where he had that ability. Once on the other side, he detached himself from the desk, then stood up and looked around.

The hallway, which he had only briefly glimpsed before, was only dimly lit, and it looked to be a cloudy evening outside, from what he could see from the window at one end of the hallway. The dim lighting illuminated a long, filthy narrow space crowded with all sorts of broken furniture and trash. He had seen this before when he had first been taken here, but only briefly, and in this surreal darkness with the occasional flash of lightning from the window, it looked eerie.

The sound of voices reached him and he turned to look in the other direction, the side of the hallway that he knew led to the stairs that would take him to the bottom floor, and to the door that would lead out of this terrible place. From one of the rooms on the side opposite the one his prison's door was in, he could hear Bob, Vinnie, and Terry discussing something, yet he couldn't make out any of their words.

Not wanting to waste any more time, he carefully snuck around the piles of junk, his vision growing more limited the further he walked away from the window. He passed his enemies' door without incident, and soon arrived in a place that was better lit than any other part of the building on the top floor - the big room that opened up into the downstairs floor. Standing near the edge of where the upper floor dropped off – he wondered why there was no longer a rail here – he could see all the way down to where the building's front door was – his ticket to freedom.

Hardly daring to believe this opportunity had arisen after such a long time of hopelessness, he carefully walked down the stairs, well aware that they were both old and made of wood, and were likely to make a lot of noise, and made his way down into the junk-strewn room on the bottom floor.

Once again he had to rest, feeling like even that short journey had taken every last bit of energy out of him. But there was no way he was going to stop for long, not with freedom so close. He felt another wave of dizziness but the moment it cleared he moved to the door as quickly as he was able to, paused to glance upstairs for any sign of movement, and, seeing none, opened it.

What he saw outside completely horrified him. The sidewalk and the street beyond it were all covered with a thin layer of water, which he could now see was steadily beating down from the cloudy sky above. "What?" he gasped, not realizing that his voice was rising in volume as he opened and closed the door repeatedly, not wanting to believe what he could see plainly before him. "No…no no no no NO! This _can't_…be happening!" Even as he watched it, he could see the rain beginning to beat down harder, and he realized, with a sickening feeling, that the rainfall had just barely started. He was too late. His only hope…his one opportunity for freedom, was now completely cut off.

Just as he was frantically contemplating what to do next, where it would be safe to hide, a door opened upstairs and he heard footsteps. Turning around, he saw Bob Newland standing at the top of the stairs, looking only mildly surprised and annoyed.

"Oh no, guess I forgot to lock the door," he muttered in a mock-worried voice. "Well, congratulations," he told Snap. "You're _oh so clever_ at escaping that you've earned your freedom. Guess there's nothing I can do from all the way up here." He leaned against the stair rail at the top of the stairs. "Well, go on," he said, watching as Snap stood frozen by the door. "The door's open. You're free." Snap didn't move as Bob walked down the stairs and over to him. "Yeah, I didn't think so," he said with a smug grin, slamming the door closed again and grabbing Snap's arm, beginning to drag him toward the stairs. Though Snap tried to drag his feet on the floor, he didn't have much energy to fight back with, and he could not resist as he was roughly hauled up the stairs and thrown back to the floor of his room. "Now, _stay _in there!" Bob yelled, now suddenly sounding as if he had been furious all along, and he stepped out of the room and slammed the door shut, and locked it, behind him.

"Vinnie, go get some fixative," Snap heard Bob say from behind the door.

"We don't have any!" he replied.

"Then go buy some!" Bob shouted. Snap heard the door where the three of them made their plans close, and everything was silent again except for the now louder and steadier sound of the rain lashing against the sides of the building.


	5. Foreboding Storm

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Five – Foreboding Storm**

Alone once again in the dark confines of the room, Snap knew that it wouldn't be long before all hopes of ever getting out of the building were cut off completely. If Vinnie came back with the fixative, there was no way he was going to get out, even if the rain stopped, and Rudy and Penny were not likely to find him anytime soon, and even worse, he wasn't sure he was going to last another day.

In the minutes that had passed since Bob and the others had left, Snap frantically tried opening the door again, but to no avail; Bob had certainly made sure to lock it this time. Snap had quickly grown exhausted and had to rest by leaning against one of the battered chairs Bob and Terry had left in there from the interrogation. As he sat wondering if there was any chance he could make a run for it once they opened the door – not likely in his current condition – and try to hide somewhere in the building, he heard another loud rumble of thunder that told him that the storm was far from over. It was followed by a brief flash of lightning that hardly did anything to illuminate the room.

Snap was in such a daze that it took a few seconds for it to register to him. _Lightning?_ How could he have seen a flash of lightning? He quickly turned toward the door, the direction he'd thought the flash had come from, and waited for what seemed like an eternity until another one appeared. At first he thought it had come from the crack between the top of the door and its frame, but he knew that Bob would have made sure that any cracks in the door were blocked, so that didn't make sense. He waited for the next flash and when it occurred, he realized this time that the light was escaping through a few long narrow cracks in the top of the door's frame. During the brief illumination, he could see, once he focused on it, that the wooden frame surrounding the door was badly damaged at the top.

Even after the flash faded, he stared at the doorway, hardly believing that there was a weakness in the room he hadn't noticed before. The room was so dark, he hadn't seen it, even when Terry and Bob had brought in the light. He'd checked the door and its frame for weaknesses more times than he could count, but he hadn't been able to reach the top of it, nor had he thought about it after he'd proven the rest of the frame to be solid.

With renewed hope, as desperate as it was considering he had no idea what to do if he managed to make it out of the room, Snap pushed one of the chairs up against the door, ignoring his exhaustion and mounting headache as he went to get the next one. With great difficulty, he managed to climb up on the first chair and drag the second one onto it. And then, making sure they were as steady as he'd be able to get them, he climbed onto the second chair and waited for a lightning flash so that he could examine the damaged door up close.

He felt the chairs shaking beneath him and gripped the top edge of the doorway for support. The last thing he wanted was for them to come crashing down and Terry and the others to hear it. He carefully leaned closer to the wall, trying to keep the structure steady. As he waited to make sure it wasn't going to come toppling down, a brief lightning flash illuminated the hallway, and he could see that there was one particularly large crack running along the length of the top of the frame, perfect for him to slip through in his two-dimensional form. He realized how lucky it was that the furniture his captors had used to block the door didn't reach high enough to block the cracks; he figured that they simply hadn't noticed them in the dim lighting within the hallway.

Flattening himself against the door with his hand gripping the edge of the crack, he pulled himself upward through it, emerging on the other side by the edge of the large table that was blocking the door. Detaching himself from the wall, he landed on it, pausing for breath. He only allowed himself to rest a moment, and focused on the floor below. He didn't know what to do now that he was out of the room, and he didn't think there was anywhere he could hide. Yet he also knew that this was his last chance of escaping; whatever he was going to do, he had to do it quick.

Making a great effort to make as little noise as possible, he climbed down from the table to the floor and looked around. Now that he was out of the room again, he realized that the hallway seemed even darker than it had before, likely because of the worsening storm. Without pausing by the door he was sure Bob and Terry were still somewhere behind, he headed toward the stairs and walked down as quickly as he could without making too much noise. Once he reached the bottom and could see through the windows, his worst fears were confirmed; the rain showed no sign of stopping, and he wasn't sure how much time had passed since Vinnie had left. He knew that if he stayed there, he was sure to get captured again and brought back to the room, and frozen with fixative again.

As he stood there hesitantly, he realized that although the building was filled with junk, there was nowhere to hide where he wouldn't be easily found. And when he was found, he'd be trapped with no way to get out or get to ChalkZone and find water, and since Rudy and Penny still had yet to see the message, let alone begin looking for him, he knew that their help probably wouldn't come in time for him.

That left him with one choice. He was going to have to find something to protect him from the rain, and _leave_.

Snap's attention turned to all the broken objects covering the floor. He began looking through them as fast as he could in his frail state, searching for anything that might protect him. His heart leaped when he spotted an umbrella. _'Perfect!'_ he thought, picking it up and pulling it open…only to find it was full of holes. Discouraged, he threw it aside and started looking for something else. He managed to find two small paint cans that, once he quickly experimented with them, seemed like they would be useful for protecting his feet.

However, there didn't seem to be anything that would provide him any shelter. Most of the objects were pieces of furniture, and they were all either too small or too heavy to lift. Snap didn't dare walk back upstairs to search there, and he frantically cast his glance around until he spotted what looked to be a gigantic sketchbook, likely belonging to Bob, as it wasn't old or broken like everything else in the room. Its length was nearly twice his height, and, while not ideal, it was the only thing he could see that looked like it could fully block the rain. Quickly walking over to it, he picked it up, relieved that it wasn't too heavy to carry in his weakened state, and made sure he could balance it easily before facing the door. He approached it more slowly, already trembling from the effort of holding up the large book. Nevertheless, he walked to the door determinedly and slowly opened it.

As soon as he saw the rain pounding down onto the ground ahead, his resolve failed him. He froze, shaking as he stared out the doorway, unable to force himself to take another step. The sketchbook he held seemed flimsy in comparison to the merciless torrent. What he was trying to do was _crazy_. Absolutely insane.

There was no way he could do this. He'd just go back inside, find somewhere to hide…_somewhere_…and if they found him, he'd…

Footsteps and a clatter sounded from somewhere in the building behind him. He froze, waiting to be discovered, but nothing happened. Once quiet regained, he turned to face the open doorway again.

That had settled it. He knew that, waiting in the building, he had even less of a chance. There were worse horrors waiting behind him, and with his protection, he_ did_ have a chance of making it somewhere safely through the rain. He had to do this. Staying at the building could mean his death. Right now, he didn't have a choice. This was his only chance.

He watched the rain lashing the sidewalks as he stood poised on the doorstep, keeping the overly large sketchbook balanced over his head. He paused to check that paint cans he'd put on his feet to protect them from the water were on securely, then turned his gaze back to the rainy streets. He knew that if he was discovered to be missing anywhere near the building he would easily be brought back, so he had to leave _now _and get as far away as possible.

Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself, made sure the art board he was carrying was balanced, and stepped out across the doorway and onto the rain-soaked sidewalk.

He stood there for a few moments, his heart pounding as he checked to make sure that the board was angled a bit in the direction the rain was pouring down so as to better protect him. He paused for a second, realizing how bizarre it was to be standing out in the middle of a Real World rainstorm with water falling and dripping all around him. When he stood there for a few moments, and he was still perfectly dry and safe, he set his gaze toward the next building over. There was a patio roof attached to it that would shelter him if he needed to rest, though he didn't like the thought of stopping until he was somewhere he knew was safe and away from the horrible people who had imprisoned him in that dark room.

Careful to walk as fast as he could without unbalancing the sketchbook, he made his way as quickly as he could to the other building and stopped briefly to rest before heading on, keeping to the shadows of the buildings in case Vinnie's car showed up. He quickly realized that making sure that his makeshift shield stayed at the right angle to prevent the rain from hitting him took a lot more focus than he'd thought, and as he moved as quickly as he could between the buildings, he made sure to walk in any sort of relatively sheltered place he could find; the cardboard and paper he was carrying over his head had to be getting wet, and he couldn't let it get soaked through. He thought of hiding in one of the other buildings, but they were sure to be locked, and even if they weren't, that was going to be the first place his captors looked once they found him missing along with the things he'd taken. He definitely needed to keep going.

Once he'd reached the end of the street and paused to rest under a sheltered – but out in plain sight, he realized nervously – part of a building structure, he realized that the part of town looming ahead of him through the gloom was completely unfamiliar. He tried to think back to when he'd been taken through the town and what the areas he'd passed had looked like, but it wasn't coming back to him. He hadn't had a good view of the areas anyway, but he was disappointed to realize he couldn't remember even any small details that would help him.

He heard the sound of a car through the rain, and in a panic he darted around the side of the building. He saw the car's headlights move across the ground by the street, but couldn't tell if it was Vinnie's car or not. He held still, knowing that the rain pounding against the sketchbook above his head was probably soaking into it, but he didn't dare move. The lights passed and he waited for several seconds, making sure the car wasn't going to return, before moving on.

The street ahead of him split two ways, and he took a random direction, not having any idea where he was going. Up ahead, the street seemed to be filled with shops, but there were still no pedestrians he could see; everyone seemed to want to avoid the rain. There were few cars. He suddenly realized that Vinnie could be in one of the shops, buying fixative. Turning around, he chose the other direction, going down the next street over, which seemed to be lined with vacant work buildings and a few houses, moving as quickly as he could without unbalancing the board and resting under the eve of a roof of one of the buildings, and leaned against it, completely exhausted.

He realized that he was shaking, and his head still hadn't cleared, not to mention, it had taken pretty much all of his strength to get this far. However, this wasn't a safe place to rest. It was too narrow; he had to press himself against the wall of the building and hold the board out in front of him to fully protect him from the rain. Even after having moved quite a way from the building, he still could hardly believe what he was doing. But as long as the rain didn't get worse, he was sure he could make it…

…if he only knew where Rudy's house was. It occurred to him once again that he had absolutely no idea where he was going, or if he'd even manage to stumble upon somewhere where he could wait out the storm. None of the buildings nearby seemed accessible at the moment, and he still felt that he was too close to Terry's hideout. As he looked down the street toward an area that was more brightly lit and had to, Snap figured, have some other shops or something he could shelter in, he pushed his fear aside and got ready to keep moving. He'd made it this far. He could make it the rest of the way.

He glanced around at the other buildings and saw one across the street that definitely looked like it would provide a better shelter, as it had a small patio roof. There were no cars coming by, and in fact, he couldn't see anyone around this area at all. Snap repositioned the drawing board before darting back out into the rain again. He had only barely reached the street when the whole world suddenly titled crazily before his eyes.

He staggered backward, shutting his eyes tightly and fighting to keep his balance even though he was just standing still. Even with them closed, it still felt like everything was tilting. He waited for the feeling to pass, but when he opened his eyes, everything still looked blurry and out of focus. He then realized that the board he was holding was damp – not damp enough underneath to cause him any damage, but it was certainly heavier, and the thick cardboard had started to warp, making it bend over and, Snap realized, beginning to make his protection less efficient. He tried his best to focus on the next sheltered space outside the building across the street, and made a dash for it.

He realized very quickly that that had been a mistake. As he ran toward it, the sound of the rain around him became a blur, and everything began growing dimmer. He tried to focus on the wide patio roof over the building's porch, but nothing would stay in focus. He kept going, reaching the sheltered place, but before he could register what was happening, he collapsed.

Snap slowly opened his eyes, wondering for a second where he was. His head pounded worse than ever and it was still hard to make out certain shapes and colors in the area around him.

Then his vision started to clear, and everything came back to him rather suddenly. He realized he couldn't have been lying there for long; it hadn't grown darker at all. But the rain seemed to be pouring down harder now than he had last remembered it. He shakily looked up, quickly checking to see that all his limbs were still attached, and glanced to his side until he noticed Bob Newland's sketchbook lying next to him beneath the shelter of the overhanging roof. Completely exhausted, he contemplated staying there to rest; he didn't feel strong enough to stand up, let alone keep running, when he noticed that there was water on the ground near him. Instantly more alert, he struggled to push himself to his knees, noticing that the water was slowly seeping onto the patio, and with a jolt of horror he realized that if he'd stayed unconscious a few minutes longer, it probably would have washed him away.

He got to his feet, feeling like his legs could collapse underneath him at any second, and leaned against the wall, trying to figure out where to go next. The buildings here were all vacant, or at least they all looked like it, and there didn't seem to be any open public buildings, but it was so hard to tell, everything looked so confusing, and it was so hard to think…

He still couldn't see any pedestrians in the immediate area. He knew that was probably a good thing; if someone had found him unconscious before the water did, they might have tried to carry him out into the rain. At least nothing of the sort had happened, but he had no idea where he'd find a building he could take shelter in until the rain stopped…let alone where he'd find Rudy or Penny's houses. He couldn't stay where he was; it was too out in the open. He had to get somewhere_ inside_.

Knowing the sketchbook wasn't going to hold up much longer, he was forced to dart from building to building along the street, barely keeping track of where he was going. He ended up on a long sidewalk that looked like it led to an area with a section of small shops up ahead, but he couldn't tell for sure. The rain looked like it was lashing down even harder – he hoped it was only his imagination – and, panicked, he ducked underneath a tree, but could still hear rain splattering against the board he was carrying. Worse, there was nowhere dry to rest, and he didn't know how long he could keep going until he collapsed, and he certainly couldn't collapse here. He knew he_ had_ to find a building he could shelter in, and fast. However, he didn't see any that he could just walk into.

It suddenly dawned on Snap that he might not be able to make it to a building in time. Either he was going to pass out again, or the water would seep through the sketchbook and start dissolving his hands, and then…

Glancing about in a panic, Snap's gaze settled on the nearest building, a large, yellowish-tan two-story brick building on the end of the sidewalk he was currently standing on. It was hard to make it out clearly through the rain, and his own hazy vision made it look blurry and indistinct, but it was far too large to be a house, so it had to be some type of store. From his position on the sidewalk, he was standing a ways behind it, so he couldn't see if its lights were on or not. He could only hope that it was open and he would be able to get inside of it.

Knowing that his strength was about to run out, he made a dash for it, bending over and keeping the board low to his body so as to reduce the risk of unbalancing it. As he turned the corner of the sidewalk, he could see through the haze of rain and his faltering vision that it had two sets of black double doors at the front, and although he was finding it hard to focus on it enough to make out any other details on the building, its windows were dark.

However, the shops across the street seemed too far to reach in his state; he knew he was about to collapse. Terrified, feeling like the rain around him was starting to intensify even more, he turned to the large brick building. He had to try this one. He realized too late that he hadn't noticed there was no overhanging roof over the doors of this building either, and in sheer desperation, he forced himself to move up the steps leading to the front doors. He reached out to grab the handle…and hesitated, realizing that it was wet.

Staggering down the steps, he shakily tried to walk toward another tree right next to the building's side that he'd passed before getting there, hoping he could find something dry enough to help him pry open the door. As he got back on the sidewalk, he noticed a clump of bushes sheltered by the low wall that bordered that side of the stairs leading up to the double doors. The wall shielded the bushes from the worst of the rain, and cautiously crouching down next to it, Snap located a stick beneath the bushes that seemed dry, and after warily prodding it, he carefully extracted it, making sure not to touch any of the wet branches or leaves, and shakily climbed back up the steps.

Using the stick, he tried to open one set of doors, but found to his horror that they were locked. In a panic he tried the other ones, knowing what he was sure to find, but he was surprised when one of the doors swung open. Without hesitation, he darted inside, not caring where he ended up. Once in the shelter of the doorway he flung the soaked art book on the drenched steps outside and slammed the door behind him.

He collapsed to the building's floor, his strength completely gone. He heard the door creak open a bit, but didn't try to get up and close it fully; he was away from the rain now, and he was simply too exhausted. He knew he had pushed his body to its limits. He felt like he could hardly breathe; his chest was heaving as he tried to draw in air, and he had started shaking uncontrollably. Still, one thought above all entered his mind – '_I made it. I'm still alive…' _He could hardly believe he'd made it, and just barely. He didn't know where he was and at the moment he didn't care; all that mattered was that he'd somehow managed to get out of the rainstorm alive.

It was a little while before he could bring himself to move again, and when he did, the first thing he did was look himself over to make sure that he was still in one piece. After this was confirmed, he let his body fall back again, and tried to forget what he'd just been through.

However, that was hard to do with the sound of the rain beating against the side of the building so close to where he was lying. Even if he'd bothered to fully close the door, it still lashed against the windows loudly and he couldn't stand being so close to it. Reluctantly, he began to crawl forward further into the building and away from the door, until he simply ran out of strength and collapsed again.

He lay there for a few minutes before finally opening his eyes again, and got a faint look at the area around him, taking notice of his surroundings for the first time. At first everything looked hazy and blurry, but gradually it all came into focus. Tall shelves towered over him from several feet away, and he could see more of them in the room beyond, showing up faintly in the gloom. Each of these shelves was covered in rows of books. He was in a library, but one that was closed and completely dark. Thinking about this, he realized that it was only by sheer luck that he had managed to get in at all, and he silently thanked whoever had forgotten to lock that one door. He realized, through his haze of exhaustion, that he had to get to Rudy's house…once the rain stopped…he had to find Rudy's…

As he slowly got to his feet, using the lower shelf of one of the nearby bookshelves for support, the whole world suddenly titled crazily in front of his eyes and he had to close his eyes and lean against the shelf to avoid passing out. Once the dizziness passed, he opened his eyes again, but he realized with dread that there was no way he could make it anywhere in this state. He didn't know if, even after resting, he'd be strong enough to wander around Plainville until he found Rudy's house, but he tried not to think about that. Hopefully, he thought, he'd be better if he managed to get some sleep…

He needed to find somewhere to rest; at this point, he didn't care much where, as long as it was somewhere where he couldn't hear the pounding of the rain so loudly. He staggered away from the shelf, picking a random direction to walk in. His feet would occasionally trick him, sending him into a spiral which ended with him landing on the paved floors, or he would simply stumble, having to fight for balance before he continued through the building. It seemed much bigger than he'd expected, and the all-too-familiar feeling of being in a building he had not much choice of being in haunted his mind, and he only suffered the demanding longing for thirst and hunger for food with more intensity.

After a good number of minutes, he paused to rest, slumping against a wall. He spent a few moments panting before he closed his eyes and leaned his head against his bent knees. He brought his arms around his legs, wishing that he was back in ChalkZone and eating an oversized cheeseburger. Beside it would be a large canister of water with a few iceblocks, and waiting for him after that fulfilling meal was the cushy, comfy luxury of his bed. His head would lower to the pillow and the dense blanket would cover his tired body. Blissfulness would circle in the air above and enter his mind, giving the light push needed to send him into the finest and deepest night's sleep.

He jerked awake suddenly, and almost toppled over, finding that his brain had lulled him into the sweet illusion of near-sleep which had lasted only a few moments. He kept his knees bent, however, and instead clonked his head against the wall behind him. His momentary drift into the void of dreams was bringing him back to the ominous reality of his situation, and he held a hand to his head, rubbing it back and forth in an effort to calm the thumping.

The thing that plagued his mind most heavily...his mad dash through the rain still spooked him to no end. He hadn't been more relieved to escape something since King Grimm's pet, Slurpy, had come close to removing his spine. In fact, he was even more relieved. Nevertheless, trying to think about it was only going to make things worse. As he sat there, leaning against the wall, Snap realized that he wasn't sure that the dark library was a very safe place to hide. He didn't know what would happen if anyone found him there in the morning, and what they would try to do. They might simply just force him to leave, but if it was still raining, even that could be disastrous. As far away as the place may have been from Bob and Terry...he really had no real idea of how dangerous or safe it really was, especially when the people who worked there came back the next day.

A sound reached him, and he lifted his head in alarm, trying to see through the darkness. It had sounded like footsteps, and he tensed, and when no one appeared, he continued to watch, unsure how close or far the sound had been. After a few more moments, he noticed a mouse scuttling across the tiled floor a few feet away, and relaxed, wondering how he'd managed to confused footsteps with a mouse. Snap, aware that his senses were likely completely unreliable in his state, tried to forget about it as he leaned back against the wall again.

However, the thought of being found here the next morning, out in the open in the middle of this room, compelled him to get up and begin searching for a hiding place. At least something less obvious. He staggered through a doorway and into another room, barely taking note of where it was in relation to the entrance or what sort of place he was in. Finding a hiding place was still only a vague concept in his mind, and he had no real idea where he was going.

His thoughts turned to finding somewhere comfortable, and he figured finding a room with carpet would be useful. Perhaps curling into a corner would provide him with a bit of peace, and he may even be able to find an old piece of cardboard from a box as a blanket replacement. It wouldn't be warming or soft, but it may be all he was going to have access to.

Strolling away from that section of building and entering another large room with a row of windows, he noticed that, as well as the rain, it was growing darker outside. He knew it probably wasn't very late, but within an hour or so it would probably be NightZone-dark, and he'd be unable to make out most details of the building's insides. He kept going, walking into an open area with a few sets of stairs leading to the upper floor, occasionally throwing his eyes from left to right and over his shoulder as he searched for an area that looked secluded and away from windows and the sound of the rain.

It took him a moment to notice that it was easier to see everything. The room was a bit brighter. Turning his head to look across toward the other end of the room, Snap's eyes found their way to a dim shine of a light. The light was coming from beyond the top of a staircase and bounced off each step, creating shadows on each one. He tilted his head, not knowing who would have turned the light on and why, and if they were still there, and hesitated before hesitantly walking to the base of the staircase. Though he was worried about being found there, he was curious as to what that light was doing on, and whether there was anyone still in the library. He felt that if there was, he should at least find out, and then he'd know if there was any danger of being found during the night. He stared up; it wasn't many steps, but his energy levels were extremely low, and any degree of climbing was going to take its toll.

He slowly trudged up the stairs, resting on his knees when he got to the top, panting as he looked at the door from which the light was coming. He heard another sound, and instantly he flicked his head back up, his attention firmly locked on something behind a halfway open door, where the light was emanating from. He was unsure about venturing into possible danger, but followed his curiosity while maintaining a low profile, and tip-toed his way over to the door. As he peered into the doorway, he realized with a jolt that the person who occupied the small space was staring straight at him. He felt something inside him explode with panic, but the horror lasted only moments. He thought he had to be hallucinating as he realized who this person actually was, and his jaw dropped. He hardly remembered how to breathe any longer.

"...SNAP?!" the girl questioned with such incredulousness that Snap nearly leaped back a step.

For a few seconds of silence the two stared, their eyes wide open and their movements restricted to the unnoticeable inflation of their chests.

Snap tried to reply, but it came out as a mere squeak, and involuntary tears welled quicker than Penny could leap forward and attempt to catch him as he tilted. He steadied himself, stared her in the face as her eyes erupted with questions and uncontained bewilderment, and suddenly lunged forward, wrapping his arms around her neck, resting on her shoulders. He blubbered with overwhelmed emotion, saddened, terrified and greatly relieved.

Her eyes widened, and she was stunned as she patted his back for a few turns, and then eased properly into the embrace.

It must have lasted for at least a minute, their eyes both closed and both minds whizzing with long, unanswered questions. They were both speechless as they held their positions until finally, Penny broke away and stared at her small, chalky friend. She was still having trouble realizing that this was possible, and that Snap was actually in front of her.

"Snap, w-what are you doing here? I..." He stared back at her with watery eyes and a partially open mouth. "I didn't know you were in the Real World!" she gasped; in fact, she would not have guessed that he would be anywhere but ChalkZone. How he managed to end up in this building…especially since it had been raining…completely baffled her. However, she knew he couldn't have been in here for long, and he certainly seemed like he had only just been running from something. Looking down at him, she could easily conclude that he had been somewhere unpleasant and which lacked the decency to provide him with any kind of care. He was dirty, shaking and weak, and looked sleep deprived. His body was a shivering mess, and she could tell she was probably not going to get much out of him at this stage. However, she needed to find out what was going on, and how he got that way. "How long have you been here?"

Snap only shook his head, and Penny hesitated before placing both hands on the sides of his arms and holding him still. It was somewhat comforting, but also restricting.

"Snap, you have to tell me," she insisted, worry spreading across her tone. Her voice was steady and her eyes held a firm grasp on his, just as her hands grasped his arms, and she lowered her head to be level with his.

The chalk boy figured that saying anything would at least give Penny an indication of his incapability to respond properly in his state, and wheezed, "Trapped," with the help of as much saliva as he could find in the desert of his mouth.

It took a few times for Penny to understand him, but when she did, she repeated the word and fit it into a sentence. "You were trapped here?" Snap nodded, and Penny glanced around, as if checking for anyone who may be around. "In this library?" she asked, turning to him, her expression one of complete confusion. However, Snap shook his head. "Then where…"

When Snap merely turned his head toward the ground, looking too exhausted to say much more, she decided against asking him any more questions. He could tell her later; right now they needed to get back to her house and get to ChalkZone, as fast as possible.

She thought back to the fact that she'd left her magic chalk in her locker at school that day, and that she would need to call Rudy before she could get Snap back home. It had been purely luck that she'd found him at all. Not long ago, she had left her house, and even though it had started raining, she had simply grabbed an umbrella and walked out to the library anyway, planning to find the book she needed and run back as quickly as she could. Once she reached the library, she had realized with dread that in her panicked state of mind, she had forgotten when it closed, and she had arrived too late. However, to her surprise, one of the doors had been left open a little, and thinking someone might still be there after all, she had walked inside.

Upon finding the library deserted, she realized that it had been left unlocked by accident, and her first thought would be that she should just leave, but her desperation to finish the project and help Rudy drove her to hurry to the section of the library she needed to, find the book and quickly write down notes on the information she'd required, and then go back. She'd made sure to close the door after she'd entered the library, and she'd planned to make sure it was locked again before she'd left. But the last thing she'd expected to find here was Snap.

Turning back to her friend, she thought over what she could do. She could try to convince her mother to let her finish the project at Rudy's sleepover, and she could even show her the progress she'd made, and if that didn't work, she could just finish it as quickly as she could, though she knew that wouldn't be ideal, as it could take time even if it was done sloppily. She needed to help Snap as soon as possible, and she realized, as she thought over the events of the past few days, that if Snap had been trapped in the Real World for the time he'd gone missing, then he would not have had access to any food or water for two days. She also noticed that Snap was wearing what looked like old paint cans on his feet, and it dawned on her that there could only be one reason for that, and the way Snap had reacted when they'd met suddenly became more clear. He had to have somehow….navigated through the _rain_.

Pushing her thoughts aside, she revealed her basic plan to her friend. Barely waiting for a response (for counting on one was probably unwise at the current point in time) Penny took Snap's gloved hand and began making her way toward the front door of the building, assuring Snap that he would be safe under the umbrella she'd brought.

However, when they neared it he stopped, pulling back on her arm with what little strength he had. "I ain't…goin' out there…again."

Penny hesitated, torn between her desire to get him help as soon as possible and not wanting to make him face what he'd just been through. She turned toward the windows, noting that the storm seemed to have calmed down a bit, but that could have just been her imagination; she hadn't been paying much attention to the rain before. Lightning flashed again, illuminating the room they were standing in and the dark shelves of books beyond. "We can't stay here," she told him.

Snap looked torn as well, but she could tell that fear was making him hope they could wait until the storm stopped. However, she knew it could go on all night. "I promise," she insisted. "You'll be safe."

Snap looked anything but convinced, and she certainly didn't blame him, and when she thought about it, she wasn't sure he was strong enough to make the journey back to her house, and in the end, she decided that letting him rest for a little while, even if it wasn't long, would help.

As they waited, the storm grew a bit calmer, but after about fifteen minutes, Penny knew she would have to be back home. She explained this to Snap, promising that they'd be able to get back to ChalkZone when Rudy arrived, and he reluctantly agreed. With her support, they stepped outside.

Penny didn't need to study her surroundings for long before deciding it was getting late, but still not late enough for her to organize to go to Rudy's house for a sleepover, and for him to say he was going to hers. Realistically they would be spending the night in ChalkZone and hope their parents wouldn't discover that neither was where they said they would be. They had done it a few times before, and Penny was just glad it was close to the weekend. The fact that it would be their only chance this weekend, due to the field trip, would likely help their parents to agree.

Penny narrowed her eyes against the pounding rain as she and Snap made their way along the sidewalk, taking the quickest route possible to her house. She was careful to make sure her umbrella completely shielded him. She was worried about him not being able to make it; he looked like he was barely able to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She wished they could have waited until the storm stopped, but considering that it seemed like it could go on all night, that hadn't been an option. Besides, Snap needed help fast.

Penny knew the routes back to her house well, and was sure to stay near any areas where they could be more shielded from the rain at times; although Snap was fully sheltered by the umbrella, she thought the extra protection would be more reassuring. Occasionally she would encounter a person and a few cars which drove by, none of which paid Snap much attention. She wasn't worried about it, as she recalled the time Snap had gone to their school and pretended to be a foreign exchange student. They continued down the street, avoiding pedestrians if they could, and made it to Penny's in less than ten minutes.

When they arrived, Snap was utterly exhausted, and once they entered the house, he collapsed on the floor in a heap. Realizing this, Penny bent her knees, squatting beside her friend in blue who lay nearly motionlessly.

"Snap," she hissed with urgency, concerned both for her friend and the idea of her mother finding him here while he was in this state. She wasn't quite sure if Snap was even going to be able to make it up to her room, as his reliability was already teetering. "You have to get up," she insisted, apologetic but rather keen to bring him to his feet. "Once we get upstairs, you can rest while we wait for Rudy."

Snap barely reacted as Penny quickly ushered him up the stairs and addressed her mother, who called from another room. She welcomed her home, and Penny said her hellos before disappearing into her room. She had snatched the phone along the way, and she shut her door, noting Snap situated on the floor while leaning against her bed. His head was back and cushioned against the softness of her mattress. She decided to leave him as he was and dialed Rudy's phone number.

"Rudy!" she yelped when she heard his voice on the other end. "Rudy, I found Snap!"

It was a moment before Rudy registered. "WHAT? S-Snap?! Where?"

"He's been trapped in the Real World since the day he disappeared!" she exclaimed.

"In the Real World?" Rudy questioned, utterly astounded. "I…but…but how? What happened-"

"I don't know," Penny replied, and wasted no time, quickly inviting him over. "But ask your parents if you can come to my house now. Make sure you bring your portable chalk board in your backpack, Rudy."

"Okay," he replied shakily. Penny raced downstairs and politely explained to her mother that she wanted to go to Rudy's house to sleep over, and luckily, her mother gave her permission after she explained what she'd done for the project so far and that she was going to finish it at Rudy's house. Rudy soon told her that he had had similar success, and Penny told her mom she would pack and wait for Rudy to pick her up. Not long after, the two friends hung up their phones and began getting ready.

Penny darted back into her bedroom and packed her backpack, scurrying down to the kitchen to grab some bottles of water and assorted foods. When her mother expressed her curiosity for her peculiar choice of luggage, and she hastily fabricated a plan about camping in Rudy's backyard. She believed it, and Penny sighed, zipping back to her room to tend to Snap. Seeing that he seemed to have drifted off, she laid her bag next to him and shook his left shoulder with utmost delicacy, lulling Snap out of the momentary lapse into unconsciousness.

"Are you awake?" she asked softly, immediately feeling a bit silly for asking the question as his eyes continued to blink open and look in her direction. "Rudy will be here soon," she assured him.

"He will?" he muttered happily, excited but still extremely drained. He let his head flop against the bed again. "Hurry, Rudy..."

"I hope he does," Penny added, hopeful that he would appear before Snap dozed off again. She didn't want to have to wake him a second time in a row.

After no more than a few minutes, Rudy rang the doorbell, and Penny heard her name echoing downstairs once her mother answered the door. She hurried down and grabbed Rudy by the wrist, rushing him up to her room. He was just as intent on making it up there, and burst into Penny's room with his heart pounding and his eyes tearing. His worry calmed as relief flooded his mind, and he dove onto his beloved friend, smothering him in an embrace that Snap returned as best he could.

"Bucko," Snap whispered, a weak smile forming under his closed eyes.

"Snap," he mumbled, grateful to finally see his friend again. It felt as if they had not seen one another for weeks. While on his way over to Penny's, he had constantly repeated to himself that their phone call had actually taken place, and that the discovery of Snap's whereabouts was not a cruel trick of his mind. However, as he continued to hug his friend with immense relief and gratefulness, he was sure that his reality had brightened, and he had no more need to worry. He still knew, though, that Snap needed water, and fast; from what Penny had told him, he'd been trapped here the entire time he'd been missing. Food was also important, and he knew escaping to ChalkZone right away was absolutely necessary.

"Come on, Penny, let's go!" Rudy insisted, slipping from the embrace with Snap.

"Okay, we just need to convince my mom we're going over to your house," Penny confirmed, gathering her and Rudy's things. She passed his backpack to him, and they both helped Snap to his feet once they slung their gear onto their backs. They supported him equally, and carried him to the door of the room.

Suddenly footsteps met their ears, and Penny was quick to slide from supporting her friend, and instructed Rudy to drag Snap against the wall on the opposite side of where the door would open. She quickly opened the door, slipped out of her room, and shut it behind her, her hand on the knob in case her mother – who was approaching from downstairs – was to attempt to enter her room. Penny flashed a sheepish smile as her mother neared. "Oh, hi, Mom."

"Penny," her mother began, "are you ready?"

"Um..." Penny stuttered, feeling her eyes jump aimlessly about. "Yeah, almost…"

"Do you need me to drive you to Rudy's house?" she inquired, and Penny suddenly wasn't sure what to say. If she and Rudy were driven to Rudy's house, then his parents would become extremely confused or suspicious. She realized she would have to think of something believable, and fast.

"Well, no... His parents...uhh...they're...they're waiting outside to drive me there," she lied, clearing her throat and looking up from the tilted position of her head.

Her mother's eyebrows lowered as she mentioned, "Rudy's car isn't outside."

Penny was momentarily stumped, and shortly before her mother had a chance to question her unexplained guarding stance, she quickly came up with an explanation that would fill the cracks in her story. "Rudy's parents said they had to pick some groceries up from the market, so...they...will be back to pick me up after that." She adjusted her glasses and gave her mother a reassuring, satisfactory smile.

"I...see..." Her eyes remained narrowed and she unfolded her crossed arms.

"I'm just getting ready now, and I'll wait by the front door for them before they arrive!" she commented, and added that they might wait outside further down the road so that they didn't have to drive all the way down.

"Okay, Penita," she finally said, and walked away, leaving Penny to sigh and return to her room.

"That was close!" she told her friends, and they nodded, having heard that conversation through the wall.

"Let's get outta here," Rudy suggested, and Penny took Snap's arm once more and left the room.

Penny nodded and led the way downstairs, Penny noting that, luckily, it was now barely sprinkling outside, though she knew the rain could get worse. She and Rudy both had umbrellas, so they were sure to shield Snap as they walked out the door and rounded the right side of the house and edged alongside the wall. They went around to the back and kept walking until they reached the back of the stables, and hastily got inside. Rudy had asked some questions along the way, but Penny had kept him quiet in case, by some chance, Penny's mother heard them.

When they got inside, the immediate scent of a barn invaded their nostrils. Snap and Rudy both cringed a bit, but Penny was more accustomed to the smell than her friends, and ignored it while Rudy let go of Snap and reached into his bag for the small portable chalkboard.

"You see, by placing the portable chalkboard in the barn house, we can conceal the portal and neither of our parents will discover that we're here."

"That's brilliant, Penny!" Rudy responded, still focused on Snap. "Let's go." He pulled out the chalk he kept in his pocket and drew along the borders of the board, and it glowed for a second before ChalkZone appeared in the rectangular space. He looked over his shoulder. "Come on." He and Penny hauled Snap into the portal, and Penny followed. Rudy jumped in last, landing on the grass below and erasing the portal.

**ooo**

The trio had journeyed to ChalkZone City's outskirts to reach Snap's home. It sat peacefully away from the main part of the city, surrounded by nature. Trees bordered it and a peaceful stone path weaved from a larger path toward the city to Snap's front door. The three friends trudged along the path, the grainy stones grinding against their shoes. They continued until they reached the house's door, and Rudy turned the knob and swung it open. It creaked with a warm welcoming and showed them the way in. They helped Snap inside and sat him on his living room couch. He relaxed into it and cocked his head back, resting it against the headrest and closing his eyes for a moment. After entering ChalkZone, he was mildly replenished, but he knew it would take some decent hours of sleeping to regain more of his strength. However, he would not be allowed to rest for long if he attempted to immediately, so he figured that keeping his eyes open and focusing on what Penny and Rudy were going to ask him was the best idea. He hadn't completely recovered mentally as well as physically from the events that had taken place, so his friends' questions, although it was necessary, were going to take their toll.

Penny pulled Rudy aside, her back to Snap and her tone hushed. "Rudy, are you sure this is a good idea right now?" She glanced over her shoulder, noting the blue chalk boy's legs folded and angled. His gloves were paired and against his stomach, and he resonated a feeling of longing and deprivation. Penny's eyes clouded with sympathy. "His condition isn't exactly ideal for an interview."

"I know, Penny," Rudy groaned, just as reluctant as Penny. "But we need to know what happened to him. The longer we put it off, the worse it's going to get." He sighed and turned from Penny, facing his other best friend. As his gaze scanned the resting Zoner, he realized what she was saying. Despite the fact that he had drawn food and water which Snap consumed as soon as they had arrived in ChalkZone, he was still considerably weak. He wasn't sure how much information he could pry from Snap's mind, but he needed to try, even if the results were minimal. He knew that although he could give him more information later, it was important to know if there was any further danger to him or ChalkZone.

He carefully made his way to the couch, and sat beside Snap. Snap's eyes opened and he uncurled, watching as Penny took a wooden chair and drew it up to the couch. She sat down and glanced to Snap guiltily.

"Snap, we need to ask you some questions," Rudy began, looking down at the floor.

"Yeah, I know, Bucko. Ask away," he sighed.

"The first thing we need to know is...how did you get into the Real World?" Penny asked, clasping her hands and leaning forward so her arms rested on her legs.

"I was captured..." Snap sighed, looking down. A flicker of disdain crossed his face. "That Boorat drawing and some crazy griffin were takin' your magic chalk back through the portal and-"

"Wait, Boorat?" Rudy cried, uncertain of what to make of anything that Snap had just said, but that particular part of it standing out to him in particular. "I thought we…"

"And you wanna know who his creators were? It was Vinnie Raton and Terry Bouffant!"

"What?" Rudy exclaimed, rather aghast.

"So they're trying to employ the help of their own creations in these plans of theirs now?" Penny asked, seeming just as shocked.

"Yes," Snap replied. "And it wasn't just them. That artist you was talking about, Rudy, Bob Newland? He was _helpin' _them!"

Rudy stared back in utter shock. "You mean Newland? _Newland_ did this to you?"

"But how did he-" Penny began.

"I don't know that, all right?" Snap cried.

"Right…I know, sorry," Penny sighed. "Do you know what was he trying to do? What his plan was in…capturing you?"

"He was trying to send ransom notes to Rudy," Snap replied, "but it wasn't working because he didn't even bother to draw a box around his message. But he was trying to get you to hand over your magic chalk to his creation, Rudy."

"My...my magic chalk..." Rudy repeated, still trying to take in everything his friend was saying.

"Yeah…he didn't get any…I dissolved it in water when those creatures went into your room."

"And this happened when you went back to get my backpack?" Rudy asked, moving on. Snap nodded in reply. "And they imprisoned you...to get me to give them my magic chalk?" Rudy repeated, more a statement than a question, as he began to feel the guilt of the incident seep beneath his skin. His best friend had been punished...because of him?

"...Yep," Snap sighed. "Don't feel bad, Bucko." Rudy knew that Snap didn't believe him to be at fault for anything, but he couldn't help but carry a portion of the blame because of the captors' motives.

"What did they...do to you?" Rudy asked, his eyes worried and regretful. He hesitated when it came to the details, as he wasn't sure he was so keen on knowing the depths of this terrifying experience.

Snap stared at the floor for a few moments. "Empty room. No food or water. Nothing to sit or lie on... Not even a light." He glanced about the room, grateful to see familiar and welcoming surroundings rather than the place he was describing. "Crazy people trying to blackmail me into exposing my best friend...nearly washing me away with a water gun…" He looked up at Penny, who was upright and with her hands in her lap, and Rudy, seeing that they both looked horrified. "But, guys... That Bob guy was sayin' some pretty crazy stuff." The other two continued to watch, sure he would elaborate, but Snap gave them one simple assumption: "He was goin' to help those two expose ChalkZone and let anybody come in, and if the three of 'em are workin' together..."

"They just locked you in there for two days?" Penny replied, astonished. She already knew what Terry Bouffant had been planning to do with ChalkZone, so that didn't come as a surpise. "They didn't even care?" Snap shook his head, and, Penny, noting what he'd said about the water gun, realized that if Bob Newland knew what water did, as he obviously would have if he was using it as a threat, the fact that he had disregarded the danger it posed to Snap and even used it as a potential torture device was very unsettling. She also wanted to ask Snap how he'd managed to escape, but thought better of it. He probably wouldn't want to talk about it now, and he could explain later if he wanted to.

Rudy was just as shocked, and once again, he felt guilty about it. He thought back to when he'd left the portal open in a hurry, and he realized that if he hadn't, they wouldn't have been able to take Snap into the Real World. Even though he knew it was only an accident, he still felt partially responsible.

"Well, they don't have anything to threaten us with anymore," Penny reminded the others. "They'll have to start over with some new plan." She realized that she and Rudy were going to have to be very careful about bringing their magic chalk places like the school, and they would have to watch out in ChalkZone for any more activity from their adversaries' creations.

"Until we figure out what it is, we'll have to be extra careful," Rudy stated, echoing her thoughts. "I don't think they're going to give up that easily."

"Hey, err, Bucko? You mind gettin' me a drink?" Snap inquired quite casually, turning his head to the side for a moment.

"But we can't let them do this!" Rudy clenched his teeth and stood up, clearly adamant about his decision. "We've stopped them before, and we can do it again."

"That's great, Rudy, but... Drink?" Snap wondered, his obvious hints not obvious enough.

"Rudy, we'll need to gather as much information on the perpetrators as possible," informed Penny, her voice as solid as her friend's.

"How do we do that?" he questioned, his mind narrowly focused on Penny's speech.

Snap emitted a small chuckle and tried quickening his phrasing. "I dunno. But the cups are just over there, and the sink is not far from—"

"Snap could tell us what he knows," Penny replied. "And we can tell everyone in the city and its surrounding areas to look for the two Zoners who tried to steal the magic chalk."

"Snap…" Rudy began, realizing that as much as he wanted to know about what Newland and those others were planning, he also knew that Snap might not know much, and even more importantly, needed to rest, and these questions certainly weren't helping. "Did you hear anything about what else they were trying to do? Any other plans to steal magic chalk?"

"Well, I'd actually love a glass of water first," Snap requested with utmost innocence, melting into the couch.

"Oh…yeah, sure. Sorry," Rudy responded, grabbing a cup and filling it with chalky water. He passed it to his friend.

"Great. Wonderful." Snap downed it in one go and continued. "To be honest, I didn't hear much. They mostly kept to themselves in another room. But I think it's obvious they wanna expose ChalkZone to the Real World, build theme parks, and become rich and famous. And they're not picky about how they get the magic chalk either. And I...Rudy, I told him about the Magic Chalk Mine."

"What?!" Rudy yelped, nearly bouncing back.

"They don't know where it is! They just know it exists..." Rudy seemed relatively disappointed with the news of those three having knowledge of the chalk mine. "It was either I told him, or I got sprayed with the water gun. At the time, I didn't know if I'd even get to see you again...and I wasn't thinking straight, and..."

Rudy expelled a sigh and mumbled, "It's okay. It's not your fault. You got brought to the Real World because we left the portal open."

"At least it's over now, Bucko," Snap reassured, extending his arms in front of him. "And I'm still in one piece."

Penny smiled, pulling two water bottles from her backpack and handing one to Rudy, who retrieved another glass of water for Snap. They all relaxed into their seats, the quiet of pleasant silence soaking the atmosphere.

Penny grinned. "We're just glad you're back."

**ooo**

"We were _this_ close to finding the chalk world. _This close!_" Vinnie cried as they scanned the damp streets in Terry's news van, searching for signs of the escaped prisoner. First believing him to be hiding in the building, they had searched it thoroughly, but it wasn't long before Terry discovered that the huge sketchbook Bob had brought was missing, and they all figured that he had used it to shield himself from the rain when he ran off.

"We'll think of something!" Terry cried. "If he hasn't found Rudy yet he could still give us the cha-"

"Look!" Bob shouted, reaching over her to point out the window.

The other two followed his gaze to see the sketchbook, tattered but recognizable, lying on the steps of the Plainville Library. Confused, they parked the van and got out, walking up to the large building and ignoring the steady drizzle around them.

"He went in there?" Vinnie muttered, running up to one set of double doors and trying, unsuccessfully, to open it. "It's locked!" He turned to Terry. "I'll bet he locked us out!"

She shook her head. "No, the library would have closed before he escaped. I think someone must have picked him up here."

"Are you saying his friends actually came to rescue 'im?" Vinnie asked.

"They could," Terry responded. "They may have gotten the message and organized some escape plan through another chalkboard somewhere – I don't know! Do you have a better explanation?"

Bob, meanwhile, was crouched next to the remains of his sketchbook, flicking through the soaked and ruined pages the best he could. As several of the pages easily tore and fell apart, his eyes narrowed and his hands clenched into fists as he stood up. "That's it…if I see that kid again I'll kill him!" he shouted, but neither Vinnie nor Terry were paying him any attention; they were too busy conversing among themselves. "We're going to have to come up with a new sort of plan," he announced, hoping to get their attention this time, and smiling when he did.

"Do you have anything in mind?" Terry asked, turning toward him, the frustration at losing her captive clearly evident in her face.

A grin slowly spread across Bob's face. "As a matter of fact, I think I do."

**ooo**

As soon as they arrived back in their 'hideout,' Bob cleared the broken table he'd used to barricade Snap's door and set it against the wall for support, then spread a large sheet of paper over it. "I'm going to draw some _new_ creatures," he growled, as Terry peered over his shoulder, wondering what exactly he had in mind.

"If you're going to draw another creature," Vinnie called after him, "make it something big, dangerous, and destructive this time! Something that'll cause a lot of damage!"

"But we need it to be able to fit through a portal a ten year old could," Terry interjected. "If you design your creature to be massive-"

"…Cause a lot of damage?" Bob repeated. "Actually, that's just what I plan to do. If Rudy's so interested in protecting this chalk world, he'll have no choice but to, well…to protect it. But he won't be protecting it from us."

"We need to be sure Rudy gets the message this time," Terry added, catching on to his plan.

"I'll do that," Bob replied, already sketching ideas out on the paper. His two companions huddled around the table as he began to draw, watching as the new plan began to unfold.


	6. A City Under Attack

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Six – A City Under Attack**

Something strange woke Rudy from his sleep early the next morning. Disoriented and groggy, he opened his eyes, and when he noticed nothing amiss, he sat up in his sleeping bag and looked at the clock hanging on Snap's wall. It was certainly too early to go back to their houses yet. The light shining in through the window near him was as bright as midday, but Rudy could tell by the time that it wouldn't even be light yet in the Real World. Still trying to remember what it was that had woken him, he glanced over at the others; they were still asleep.

As Rudy was debating whether to try and go back to sleep and get more rest before the field trip they would be leaving for that afternoon or to stay awake and wait for the others to wake up, he felt it again – the thing that had woken him. He felt it only barely, a small tremor that moved through the floor of the house beneath where he was now sitting. Confused, he leaned down toward the floor to see if he could hear anything from below it.

Suddenly the floor of the house shook again, this time with much more force. Over on the couch, Snap suddenly jerked awake, briefly staring around the room with wide-eyed terror before recognizing that he was in his own house. "What was_ that_?!" he cried, looking at Rudy in confusion.

"Snap?" Penny muttered tiredly, opening her eyes and turning to look up at him in confusion. "What's wrong?"

Before she or anyone else could say anything more, the whole house suddenly shook violently, causing a few of the chairs in the room to tumble to the floor. As soon as it passed, Rudy untangled himself from the sleeping bag and stood up. "We've got to get out of the house!" he cried, running over to a dazed Snap to help him to his feet. He didn't have a clue what was going on, but what was important now was getting to safety. "We have to-" He paused as another tremor passed through the house.

Rudy glanced toward the doorway and started to move toward it despite the shaking, but Penny pulled both him and Snap back, urging them to duck beneath a table until the shaking stopped. Luckily, it passed fairly quickly, and nothing in the house seemed very damaged.

They waited a few moments, and when everything remained still, they quickly made their way out of the room and to the front door of Snap's house. They could hear noises and screams from outside, and as soon as they opened the door, they saw that the part of the city they were currently next to was filled with chaos.

"What…what's going on?" Rudy couldn't help but gasp as he watched several of the city Zoners frantically fleeing the city, many of them already gathering others and urging them to flee as well.

"A chalk quake?" Snap suggested, looking perplexed. He'd seen one before when he had the misfortune to visit the Disaster Park, but he had no idea if they were similar to that in other places, and he'd never heard of one striking ChalkZone City.

Rudy had a bad feeling about all of this as he and the others cautiously approached the growing group of Zoners outside the city, most of whom were talking amongst each other in loud voices or urging others to move farther away, but there were so many that it was hard to make out what any of them were saying.

As they hurried towards the group, Rudy noticed that on the surface, the city looked just fine. As he was about to ask Penny what she thought might be causing the earthquakes, the ground shuddered again, only weaker that time, and once it stopped, the three of them ran to the nearest cluster of worried and confused city dwellers.

As soon as Rudy appeared, many of the Zoners turned toward him.

Many of them were calling to him loudly, and it was hard for Rudy to make out any of what they were saying. Penny and Snap were practically pushed out of the way as the growing crowd surrounded him, demanding, Rudy assumed, for an explanation or some way to solve whatever the problem was. He assumed that whatever this was, it was no ordinary chalk quake, for it seemed strange that the city Zoners would react this way.

"Wait a minute! Stop!" Rudy cried, trying to make his way back to his friends. "Does anyone know what's causing this?" Several of them began answering him at once, and he had to raise his voice to be heard.

"Rudy!" a familiar voice shouted, and he was relieved to hear the voice of Rapsheeba among the crowd.

"Rapsheeba!" he called, moving past the other Zoners and over to her. "What's going on?"

"Something's been causing a bunch of chalk quakes in the city!" she exclaimed. "They started over on the east side and have been spreading throughout the city and getting stronger. One even reached the Globe Theater! Everyone's being evacuated."

Rudy turned toward the city streets again, and he could see that what she'd said was correct; large crowds of city goers, much larger than the first groups who had fled early, were being quickly ushered through the streets and away from danger by the police. Rudy was relieved that the Zoners had that under control, but he still wanted to be sure they were safe.

"I'd better go help see if there's anyone still trapped," he said, trying to ignore the growing noise of the crowd around him.

"Some of the flying Zoners are looking right now," a gray and white chalk husky spoke up.

"That's good," he replied, "but I want to help." Penny and Snap managed to reach them, both looking bewildered.

As he quickly explained what he planned to do, Rapsheeba turned to Snap, looking at him in relieved surprise. "Snap! You're back!" she shouted, and Rudy instantly began to feel guilty that he hadn't thought to tell any of Snap's friends what had happened the previous night that he'd been found. After everything that had occurred, he and Penny's focus on helping Snap, what their friend had ended up telling them, and their own exhaustion, he'd completely forgotten.

"Yeah," Rudy told her. "It's a long story…I'll try and explain everything later…" He paused, realizing that she wasn't actually listening; his voice had been lost in the noise of the confused crowd. As he stood there, he felt another small tremor ripple through the ground, and he realized that these Zoners still needed to move further away.

"Are you okay?" Rapsheeba was asking Snap.

"Yeah," Snap replied, not wanting to worry her, "but what's goin' on? I've never heard of there being chalk quakes around here before!"

"I dunno," Rudy interjected, "but I'm going to check it out."

"You're gonna go in there all alone, Bucko?" Snap asked, giving the city streets ahead a worried glance.

"Don't worry, I have these!" Rudy replied, quickly drawing a pair of rocket shoes on his feet and showing Snap before he took off into the air.

Snap and Penny, as well as many of the confused city dwellers, watched him from down below, their expressions as bewildered and confused as he felt about all this. A few moments later he passed over a few buildings, leaving them out of sight. He kept going until he was near the centermost part of the city. Almost immediately he noticed that it was much more silent here, and figured that everyone in this area had been evacuated. Though everything seemed all right, he knew there could still be a Zoner in trouble, so he focused on the city streets, looking around for anything unusual.

It wasn't long before he found something, but it wasn't a trapped Zoner. It was something completely unexpected. On one corner of a street, there was a very large hole in the ground. Startled, Rudy cautiously flew closer, realizing that if the ground had caved in, someone could have easily been hurt or trapped.

Hovering a few feet above the hole, Rudy peered into it. It was black, and seemed to extend very deep into the ground. It certainly didn't look like it had collapsed. The sides were smooth and it was too symmetrical. He couldn't see beyond a few several yards, and he had no idea how far down it went.

He contemplated going down into it, but something made him decide against it. There was something that just wasn't right about the situation. Making a note of where the hole was, he instead flew upward above the buildings to get a better view of the city. Once he was much higher, he could tell that the strange hole was far from the only one. There were several, starting from the other end of the city from Snap's house and mostly clustering in the middle, further from where he was. This gave Rudy the odd feeling that whatever was doing this was meant to come somewhere where a lot of civilians were.

Landing on the ground near the hole, he examined the street around it, noting almost instantly that parts of it were badly damaged from the quaking. Some of the buildings even seemed ready to collapse. But luckily, there were no Zoners around to be harmed in such an event. The place was deserted, he realized, and probably well before the tremors had reached Snap's house and the other edge of the city.

As he was looking at the damaged buildings, he noticed that it seemed like he was looking at everything through a haze. Confused, he squinted his eyes, and realized with a jolt of surprise that not far ahead of where he was standing, the streets were filled with a pale, almost completely transparent blueish mist. Rudy had no idea what it was or where it had come from, but whatever it was, it certainly wasn't good. He started to back away, not knowing what it would do to him if he touched it, as he noticed that it was slowly expanding in different directions.

Then he felt a tremor beneath him that nearly knocked him off his feet, accompanied by what sounded like some sort of…digging. He whirled around, kicking off into the air as something huge erupted out of the hole behind him. Luckily he'd taken off at just the right moment, for a second later he felt a whoosh of air as something swiped at him, coming close to striking his back. He turned around, his rocket shoes propelling him higher as he looked at the thing that had attacked him.

It was some sort of gigantic, metallic-looking insect-like creature. Its hide was a dark blue that looked almost like metal. It had a segmented body with many pairs of legs – he couldn't tell how many, as most of it was still underground – and massive claws that looked suited to tunneling. Even only partially out of the ground, it towered over some of the smaller shops. The creature stared at him as he hovered, just out of reach, through tiny orange eyes that rested above its gigantic mandibles. As he stared back at it, he realized that it had far too many little details and intricately drawn strange markings over its armor to be an ordinary sort of chalk drawing.

As Rudy hovered in the air uncertainly, a strange blue mist, looking exactly like the kind in the city streets behind him, began coming from the tips of the spines along the creature's back. Rudy didn't have to know what it was to know that he had to get out of there fast. Swerving away into the next street, he looked around frantically for any Zoners still left behind, but to his relief, that part of the city still seemed deserted. As he moved on, he could see other holes in the streets, and began to wonder if there were more of those creatures.

He made sure to stay clear of any areas with the blue mist, knowing that it had to be some sort of poison, and went back to the edge of the city, where he heard voices, and realized that he'd come to a place where some of the city's inhabitants had not all been evacuated yet. And, as far as he knew, none of them realized what was currently lurking underneath the city.

With another burst of speed, Rudy flew into the area where Zoners were being gathered, looking confused but otherwise not too panicked. He landed on the pavement, attracting the attention of most of them as they turned to look at him in surprise.

"The Great Creator?"

"What's he doing here?"

"Do you know what's going on?"

"You've got to get out of here!" he shouted. "Now, are you sure that everyone in this area-"

"Of course we're getting out. We know that," one of them, a stick figure that looked like he could have worked at the Stick Figure Bakery, said to him. "We're just gathering our belongings before the quakes get worse-"

"There's no time for that!" he cried. "Something much worse is coming! I-"

Though a few of them cut him off to begin to argue, he could see that most of the others had stopped what they were doing to stare at him in confusion and alarm.

"Hurry and find anyone you can who is still here," he called, looking to the police Zoners in particular, who were the ones telling the others to leave. They looked confused, but nonetheless nodded, and continued their search.

Luckily, they weren't too far from the edge of the city, and Rudy knew that they would be evacuated quickly. As quick as he was able to, he helped them to search, and when he was sure the last group had escaped, Rudy returned back to the main group waiting outside the city limits, heading for his friends.

From what he could see, Penny had been explaining something to them, probably about Snap's return and what had been going on the past few days. Catching up to her, Rudy stood in front of the crowd and quickly explained what he had seen in the city, much to the astonishment of everyone who had heard. As the Zoners began talking among themselves and Penny and Snap just stared back at him with shocked expressions, he realized something about the termite-like drawings he had seen back in the city. "Bob Newland must have done this…" he whispered under his breath, glancing back at the city.

"What?" Penny asked.

"Those creatures!" Rudy replied. "They looked like Newland's art! It had to be him who drew them!" Frantically, he turned to Snap. "What did Terry Bouffant and the others say about this?" he asked him, looking frantic. "Did you hear anything about what they were planning to do?"

Snap shook his head. "No! They didn't say anythin' about this!"

"Rudy?" one of the Zoners in the crowd called, but Rudy ignored it, hoping that somehow Snap would remember something that would help them. However, the more he thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed that Snap's captors would have discussed anything related to the city-destroying creatures when they were around him.

"Rudy!" the voice repeated, louder this time.

"What?" he cried irritably, turning around.

"Look over there," the voice, which he realized now was coming from Blocky, stated. Rudy's first chalk creation was pointing toward the city, but as Rudy glanced in that direction, he couldn't tell what he was supposed to be looking for. "Follow me," Blocky said, and glancing at his friends, Rudy shrugged and followed, starting to feel bad for snapping at Blocky and feeling determined to listen to what he had to say.

Several city dwellers from the crowd, who were also curious, trailed behind Rudy along with Penny and Snap as he walked along the city's border, passing a group of tall buildings and suddenly coming upon what was, quite obviously, what Blocky had been trying to tell him about.

It was a gigantic billboard, decorated with completely unnecessary designs and pictures, as if Newland couldn't resist showing off his art skills even for a simple message. The drawings took up enough space that if Rudy had been looking at it from further away, he might not have thought to give it a closer look, and would have just assumed it was just an oddly placed decorative part of the city itself. Now, as he flew toward it, he quickly realized that the writing on it was addressing him. The sign read,

DEAR RUDY TABOOTIE. DO NOT TRY FIGHTING MY CREATURES. YOU WILL NOT WIN. THEY'RE ONLY IN A HEAVILY POPULATED AREA NOW, BUT THEY WILL SOON START TO SPREAD UNDERGROUND, SO YOU HAVE A BIT OF TIME TO THINK. YOU CAN EITHER HAND OVER YOUR MAGIC CHALK TO ANY CREATURE DRAWN BY BOB NEWLAND, TERRY BOUFFANT, OR VINNIE RATON AND LET THEM INTO THE REAL WORLD, OR YOU CAN WATCH CHALKZONE BE DESTROYED. IT'S YOUR CHOICE.

Shocked, Rudy turned to look back at the crowd, many of whom were approaching him, all either staring at the sign or looking at him with hopeful eyes. He knew they expected him to come up with a solution, yet he didn't know what to do. However, he was determined not to give up. He and his friends would think of something.

Kicking off the ground, he hovered near the sign with his rocket shoes. "Don't worry about what this sign says!" he told the watching Zoners, holding up his chalk and drawing a gigantic thick, black pen, which he used to mark out the words. "We'll find a way to stop those monsters!" As he looked toward the board, he realized that Dooth and Boorat, the Zoners who had captured Snap, were probably the ones he was meant to bring the chalk to. Wherever they were now, they were probably well away from the city and any danger, and no doubt they would show up sooner or later to try and demand that he hand the chalk to them. If they did, he certainly wasn't going to listen.

Seeing that most of the Zoners seemed reassured and confident in him, he flew back down and landed near Penny and Snap at the edge of the group. Turning to the group of refugees from the city, he warned them to get further away from the city's edge, and once they began to move away, he landed near Penny and Snap. "Well, the creatures are underground, so let's try to come up with something that can-"

"Well, from what you told us, they're heavily armored and it doesn't seem like much could damage them," Penny said as she glanced toward the city, as if wondering whether one was going to appear somewhere near where they were. "Perhaps we should-"

"I've got an idea!" Snap cried. "Let's flood them out! Then-"

"Then we'll be able to trap them when they try to escape out the tunnel entrances!" Rudy finished.

"Well…" Penny glanced back at the city, uncertain. "If that brings them to the surface, we'll have to make sure the traps will work quickly enough to stop them before they escape into the city."

"I'll make sure they will," Rudy replied. Without wasting time, he flew over the city, quickly drawing a massive cage over the tunnel entrances he could find. It was fairly difficult to do with the mist, so at times he had to settle with drawing the trap higher up from the ground and letting it drop over the entrance. When he had finished, he returned to Snap and Penny. "When the monsters come up to the surface, the bottom of the traps will close," he explained. "I'll stay near one of them and see if it works as soon as the water fills the tunnels."

Penny and Snap watched nervously, at a distance, as Rudy drew a large pipe from the Wait N' Sea to the city, and the nearest of the tunnel openings, a recent one that was close to the outer edge of the city and away from the mists. "This will bring water into the tunnels quickly," Rudy shouted to them, "and they'll have no choice but to come out."

The three of them watched as the water started to flow into the tunnels, Penny and Snap moving closer to Rudy to get a better look. Rudy and Penny stood facing the city, standing poised beside the pipe, while Snap simply flopped to the ground, completely exhausted. As they watched, they realized that it could be a long time until the tunnels were filled, and they had no idea how fast the animals could dig. Rudy and Penny glanced at each other worriedly, suddenly very unsure about the idea, while Snap seemed much more confident about the plan, and despite his exhaustion, he watched the closest trap expectantly.

To the trio's surprise, water began flowing out of the hole after only a few minutes. Realizing that it could start flooding the streets, Rudy hastily turned the water off.

"I don't understand," Penny said, turning to him. "It couldn't have filled all the tunnels yet. They must have blocked most of them off after the water started coming in."

"You're right," Rudy replied worriedly as he looked at the still empty trap. "But maybe we could…"

He trailed off as the trap he'd set above the hole suddenly began to collapse, and after a few moments, it toppled to the ground and pieces of it began to be pulled into the tunnel opening, which was still filled with water. That made it clear that, whatever those things were, they didn't seem to have a problem with water.

"Now what?" Rudy cried, at a loss for what to do. The threat being underground meant that it would be hard for them to come up with an effective plan to stop it.

"Well," Penny began, "we might be able to-"

She was interrupted by an enormously loud crash as one of the small shops down the street ahead of them collapsed in on itself, leaving a gaping hole through which they could see, even at a distance, more of the creatures coming out of, most of which went straight to attacking the walls of the other buildings.

"They're getting too close," Rudy began. "We've got to move everyone further away from here." He glanced toward the now massive crowd of Zoners, many of which were still hanging back close to the city, obviously waiting for him to come up with some sort of quick solution.

"You're right," Penny agreed. As she looked toward the city, she could see that more of the creatures, although mostly smaller ones, were swarming over several of the buildings, though luckily at a distance. There were far more of them than she had first realized. Though they were of varying sizes, even the small ones were destructive as they climbed over the buildings.

As quickly as they could, the three of them made their way back to the Zoners, urging them once again to get farther away. They believed them without hesitation, especially now that many of them could see for themselves what was going on since many of the termite monsters were above ground.

After they had explained, Rudy realized that the Zoners all looked quite a bit more worried about the situation. He guessed they'd expected him to at least have an idea of how to stop them, but he hadn't mentioned anything like that, and they probably knew that he didn't have much of a plan. However, it certainly wasn't the first time it had taken him a while to find a solution that would work. The monstrous living mall that had been erased into ChalkZone a little while back had seemed unstoppable, but he'd managed to find a way to solve that problem in the end. This would be no different.

As he watched some of the city inhabitants take charge and began leading the more hesitant groups away, he wondered just _what_ he could do to stop so many creatures. He turned to Snap. "Are you sure that none of your captors mentioned _anything_ about this?" he asked. "Even just something-"

"I already told ya, Bucko…if they did, it certainly wasn't when they were around me," he replied.

Rudy sighed. "Well, we'll just have to keep trying. One thing is for sure, I'm_ not_ handing any magic chalk over to the people causing this mess. We should try to get a closer look at those things and see what we can come up with." He began to walk back to the city, but stopped, turning to Snap again. "You'd better stay here," he told him. "Keep well away from the streets. We'll come back and tell you what we've found." While it felt somewhat strange for Snap to stay behind rather than help them, Rudy could tell that Snap was still far too weak to do something such as scout out the city with them. Snap seemed to understand exactly what he meant, as he only nodded tiredly. "We'll be back soon," he promised.

He and Penny quickly returned to the edge of the city streets, and stood at the end of a still mostly undamaged road, looking ahead uncertainly. "At least they haven't started moving beyond the city yet," Rudy muttered, watching a few of the smaller creatures moving around several buildings from where they stood. "Well…there aren't any tunnel entrances around here. We can probably get a closer look without one of the bigger ones showing up."

Hesitantly, they started to move closer, after Rudy had drawn rocket shoes for Penny as well, in case they needed to make a quick escape. However, they hadn't gone far when Penny pulled him back. "Rudy, what's that?"

He looked toward where she was pointing and saw more of the blue mist he had encountered earlier. He had mostly seen it closer to the center of the city, and wasn't aware that it could spread so fast. "I'm…not sure. But it can't be good."

"It has to be some sort of poison. It might not affect humans, but…I don't want to find out."

"That's what I was thinking," Rudy replied, already beginning to draw gas masks for himself and Penny.

They hurriedly put them on, approaching the blue mist hesitantly as it moved across the street in front of them. Rudy was beginning to worry that the effect of the mist might be something completely different. Even with the mask on, he wasn't willing to step into it, but if he wanted a closer look here, he'd have to. It was surrounding the nearby termite creatures as well, and the cloud of fog was at least as high as most of the buildings.

Warily, he took a few steps toward the mist, pausing to glance down another street off to his left and realizing that by now it had nearly spread throughout the entire city. At least it hadn't gone beyond it…yet. He crept closer, suddenly less sure of his plan. The mist might not be poisonous at all, but might have some other, more sinister function. It could render him unconscious, leaving him helpless as the 'termites' swarmed over him, or it could paralyze him…

As he hesitated, a section of the cloud of mist began wafting toward him, and he took a few quick steps back, but not before a small portion of it had blown across his mask. Startled, he backed up toward Penny, but to his relief, he felt no sign of being paralyzed, poisoned, about to pass out, or any other ill effects. His fear starting to fade, he turned toward her.

"Rudy…" she began in a frightened voice, "…the mask…"

Confused, he began backing further away as he took it off to examine it, realizing instantly what Penny had meant. Though there wasn't much damage considering he hadn't spent long near the mist, he could clearly see that during the brief time it had touched the mask, the mist had started to corrode it.

Alarmed, both he and Penny looked at the buildings ahead of them through the fog of mist. They could see merchandise in the shops starting to be corroded through, and paint was peeling from the signs. It surprised them that they hadn't noticed it at first, that they'd been too busy paying attention to the mist itself. "We've got to get out of here," he stated, and they wasted no time in fleeing the streets, keeping well away from that section of the city and meeting up with Snap. Together, they hurriedly ran to an area that seemed less affected by the mist, stopping just outside the city near Snap's house, where Rudy and Penny quickly explained what had happened.

"We have to stop that from spreading!" Penny gasped, her eyes still on the city and what she could see of the blue mist.

"I have an idea," Rudy replied, a relieved smile crossing his face as he realized that there was something he could do to help with that particular problem. "Remember when that storm cloud nearly destroyed the Globe Theater? The fan I drew solved that problem!"

"Yes, but when you tried to use fans to stop that purple haze someone drew during that comic book convention, it only spread to other places," she countered, remembering what Rudy had told her about his attempts to stop a strange haze that dissolved chalk matter while she and Snap had searched the Real World for answers. The mist here was almost like that haze, although it seemed to corrode things at a much slower rate, and, quite possibly, could affect humans as well, though she sincerely hoped they would not have to find that out.

"You're right…" Rudy sighed. He turned away from the city, briefly closing his eyes as he tried to think. "Wait, I know!" he cried. "If I draw fans all around the city, and we turn them on at once, it should keep it all in the center and it'll stop spreading!"

Figuring it was worth a try, and knowing they could immediately turn the fans off if it posed a problem, Penny began to help him set up fans at different points on the city's outskirts. Not being used to drawing with the chalk like Rudy was, Penny took a longer time to draw each of hers, but regardless, with Rudy's guidance and the two of them working together, it wasn't long before they had drawn many of them stationed all around the city.

They headed back near Snap's house, and, picking up the remote he'd linked all the fans to, Rudy warily looked ahead at the city streets, feeling relieved that at least the monsters were still too occupied attacking the buildings to spread to where they could harm anyone. Remembering what Newland's sign had said, he knew that their enemy was giving them at least some time to make a decision before they wreaked havoc over ChalkZone. Confident that at least they weren't coming to attack them yet, he flipped the switch on.

Almost instantly, he could see the mist being pushed back, and he gave Penny a hopeful look. However, just after he did, he realized that the mist was still slowly creeping forward. At a much slower pace, but it was still moving. Worried, Rudy turned the fans up as high as they would go, but even still, they could see it slowly creeping.

"At least we've slowed it down," Penny shouted over the noise of the fans.

"Yeah," Rudy replied worriedly, taking the remote as far away from the city as the cord allowed and setting it down, then hurrying after Penny as she ran toward where Snap was waiting.

The three then huddled together and after Rudy explained what he had Penny had found, they tried to come up with another idea.

"Well, we've slowed down that mist for now, so we're safe from it here, but if those things get out of the city, it'll just keep spreading. There's got to be some way to stop them…" He crossed his arms, staring at the ground as he tried to think. "Well, they're bugs, so maybe some sort of pesticide would work."

"I don't know, Rudy," Penny responded, "that could endanger the other Zoners. Especially if the creatures carry the pesticides with them to other areas. And I wouldn't be surprised if it only made that mist they produce _more_ poisonous and destructive. Newland would have had to think of that."

"You're right," Rudy sighed, defeated. "We're going to have to think of something else." He and the others turned toward the city again, all at a loss for what to do. At least the creatures seemed reluctant to leave the city for the time being, but if they kept spreading, he was sure they would cause insurmountable damage. "I just don't know how long it'll be before they start tunneling beneath other parts of ChalkZone," he muttered aloud, watching as one of the larger ones emerged from a tunnel at the edge of the city, but simply focused on the nearest building rather than going farther. Newland had to have designed them to head for the nearest populated area upon being erased, according to what his message had said, and his eyes narrowed as he realized that, even before the real destruction had really begun, he was already affecting the lives of countless Zoners.

"Well, I don't think Newland wants these things to destroy many parts of ChalkZone if he can help it," Penny replied. "From what his message said, he obviously wants us to give us enough time to find out about all this and make a decision."

"Yeah, but how much time?" Rudy responded, noting with anger that the only thing the 'termites' weren't attacking was Newland's horrid sign.

"I don't know," she replied. "He might have designed them to stay in one area for a while to give us time to find out about it." _Might_. In reality, she had no idea. She wasn't sure if Newland or the others knew that they went into ChalkZone nearly every day, and therefore how much time they would have before the creatures moved on, if she was even right about the theory in the first place. And there was no doubt in her mind that, once this time, however long it was, was up, Newland and his comrades would rather the creatures ravage ChalkZone than continue to be denied access to it themselves. "If they don't know how often we enter ChalkZone, they might have given them a few days to wait here, just to be safe, to make sure we can discover it and read the message."

"A few days…" Rudy replied, his voice trailing as he noticed movement from underneath the ground near the city's edge. He tensed for a moment, afraid that Penny's theory was wrong and it was about to come speeding from under the earth toward them. However, instead, it made a beeline for Snap's solitary house, and several seconds later, the building began to shake and collapse, until it was nothing but a pile of broken rubble. Then, the path of the creature's tunnel began moving back toward the city.

"What!" Snap cried in shock. "I just moved there!"

"I'll fix it later, don't worry!" Rudy quickly reassured him. "But right now, we need to find a way to stop those things! And I'm not waiting a few days to do it!" He turned to the others. "Any ideas?"

"Maybe we should try to stop them with something that can move underground," Penny replied after a moment. "Rudy, draw some paper or a notebook or something. I have an idea."

Rudy did as she requested, and after handing her a pencil, he and Snap watched as she began sketching her idea. It looked a bit like the drilling machine Rudy had once used to tunnel into the mountain above the Chalk Mine in order to try to stop the garbage he'd carelessly dumped into ChalkZone from reaching the magic chalk and dissolving it. This one, however, was clearly not designed for anyone to ride in, and with good reason, as such a mission would be extremely dangerous.

"Well, Buckette…" Snap asked, sounding skeptical, "what does it do?"

"It'll cave in the tunnels on top of them," she explained. "Rudy can draw a tracking device on the machine and we can see where the best place to collapse the tunnels will be."

"But that's gonna make the whole city collapse!"

"No it won't," Penny replied. "There won't be enough tunnels for that. I know it'll cause a lot of damage…but if we don't do something, the city and other parts of chalk will be destroyed anyway. And it's better than people getting hurt when those creatures migrate to other places."

Rudy and Snap glanced at each other. They couldn't argue with that. "But won't the monsters hear it coming?" Rudy asked.

"I thought it could be designed to deploy a sort of sleeping gas once it goes underground. That way, the termites won't cause trouble."

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Rudy stated, beginning to feel confident about their new plan. With Penny instructing him, he began to draw her machine, going a bit more slowly than he would have liked to make sure he was drawing everything correctly the way Penny specified it. When he was finished, he looked to Penny, who gave him a nod of approval. He then drew a remote control, complete with a screen that would show the machine's location once he put the tracker on.

"We'll need to see the tunnels," Penny pointed out, and Rudy quickly added lights and a small camera to the front of the machine, as well as an extra screen panel on the remote.

As soon as he'd finished, they turned on the machine. Snap looked almost excited as it revved to life, and, looking eager to help stop Newland's menace from further spreading poison and wreaking havoc on his home, volunteered to pilot the machine. Rudy handed him the controls and they watched as it speedily drilled into the ground and vanished from sight. Snap held the remote steady while Rudy and Penny watched the screens, standing on either side of him. They watched as their machine neared the city and the tunnels underneath. Unlike the shallow tunnels the termites had made, their drilling vehicle was tunneling deeper, so there was no raised patch of earth to indicate where it was. They were relying on the tracking device to tell them that.

"All right," Penny began, looking at the tracking screen, "it's beneath the center of the city now."

"I know that," Snap muttered irritably as he continued to focus on the screen, but Penny ignored the comment.

"Move the machine upward, Snap, and try to find a tunnel-"

"Uh…I think I already found one," Snap interrupted, pointing to the left screen. Before, the video screen had shown nothing, as it had still been drilling, but now the lights of the machine revealed that they had indeed stumbled upon an open underground space.

"That's odd. I guess the tunnels go deeper than I predicted," Penny mused.

"So what? We've found them!" Snap replied, turning the knob on the remote that would signal to the machine to release the sleeping gas, and then moving it forward again.

As Penny began trying to calculate where best to collapse the tunnels, Rudy realized that he couldn't see any of Newland's creatures on the screen, and thought with satisfaction that they must all be in the upper tunnels or on the surface, focusing on the buildings. Even if the collapses they made only managed to trap the smaller ones, that would still be most of their enemies gone, and with the sleeping gas, they could find a way to get rid of the biggest ones as well. There was no way that Newland's plan was going to work.

Suddenly, however, the video screen went blank just as Penny was instructing Snap to drill through a column. "What the-" Snap began, fiddling with the controls. However, the tracker indicated that the device was no longer moving.

Dread filled Rudy as he looked at the screens, shocked that there had been no warning, or anything to indicate what had happened. "Let me see that," he said, and after Snap handed him the remote, he adjusted the controls, still seeing no movement from the pulsing red light on the tracker screen.

"I don't get it!" Snap cried as he grabbed it back, testing the controls himself again. "That sleeping gas shoulda' knocked 'em out by now."

Both Rudy and Penny looked ready to express their own bewilderment, but neither of them had a chance as all three of them noticed the telltale signs of one of Newland's monster termites burrowing through the ground straight toward them. They froze, and Rudy tensed, ready to flee, realizing that he'd have to fly Snap out of there to safety, seeing as he didn't have rocket shoes of his own, when the tunneling suddenly stopped.

The three cringed as a gigantic hunk of steel shot out of the ground at the tunnel's stopping point, slamming into the field several yards from where they stood. The tunneling termite then abruptly turned around and headed back to the city, leaving the three staring at the lump of steaming metal that was what remained of their drilling machine.

Penny and Snap were staring in shocked disbelief; Rudy could tell that they had both been very certain that the plan would work, yet they hadn't even been able to get far enough to begin collapsing one of the tunnels.

"Maybe you should…draw another one?" Snap asked uncertainly as he looked at Rudy.

"No," he replied. "That's not going to work. Obviously the sleeping gas doesn't work on them or they know how to avoid it, and it's probably too easy for them to hear a machine like that coming. And well, now that the fans are on and they haven't touched those…the mist is still mainly in the middle of the city, so if I can go into one of the closer tunnels-"

"Rudy, you can't go down there yourself!" Penny cried, shocked. "It's too dangerous."

"I have to!" he cried. "Nothing else has worked, and we haven't even been able to get a close look at what we're up against! If I can collapse a tunnel…or at least get a better look at the tunnels so we can figure out what to do next, I might be able to stop at least some of them. There's not much we can do from out here. Maybe it's time to go head to head."

"What? That's crazy, Bucko! You could be killed!" Snap cried.

"He's right," Penny agreed, "Rudy, it's too dangerous! Please don't do this."

"Look, I'll be careful," he promised. "I won't go far, and if there's any sign of trouble, I'll turn back."

"But-"

"If I don't try, people could get killed!" he exclaimed, starting his rocket shoes and hovering a few feet above them. "I _promise_ that I'll be careful." Without waiting for a response, he sped off toward the city.

Penny started to head after him, wondering if she could get used to using the rocket shoes fast enough to be able to help him in some way, before turning to look at Snap. "Stay here," she told him, knowing that, whether he had rocket shoes or not, he was in no condition to head into any sort of danger, let alone this. "I have to bring Rudy back."

**ooo**

Rudy had wasted no time, and locating a vacant tunnel entrance with no sign of mist near the edge of the city had been easy. He made sure that he was far away from the nearest of the 'termites' so as not to be noticed, and as carefully as he could, he lowered himself into the tunnel. It was surprisingly dark, even with the light of DayZone shining through the opening above him. With his rocket shoes, he hovered just above the 'floor' of the tunnel, looking nervously around him.

As his eyes began adjusting to the light, he could see at once that the tunnel system was far more complex than he'd thought. There were far more tunnels, many of them interconnecting, but there were several columns of earth that seemed to serve as support beams, and Rudy knew that if he could find a way to damage them without putting himself in danger, his plan might work. He quickly drew himself a helmet with a light attached, allowing him to better see his surroundings. He briefly worried that the light would attract attention from the tunneling animals, but as he looked around, there didn't seem to be any nearby, though to be safer, he dimmed the light as much as he could while still allowing himself to see things better.

However, although there were plenty of tunnels he could collapse, he couldn't see any big rooms or a main tunnel that would affect a large area at once; from what he could see it might only be possible for him to cause small collapses.

Still, he had to try. Flying up to the nearest "support beam," he examined it carefully, trying to quickly think of the best way to damage it without putting himself at risk. He continually glanced over his shoulder as he did so, wary of any of the creatures finding him, and on the third time, he noticed a sudden movement in one of the tunnels, frighteningly close to where he was. He froze, the eerie look of the damp underground of the tunnels the only thing staring back at him.

He hardly had time to react as a large group of the creatures – he couldn't guess how many – swarmed toward him from the tunnel across from the circle of light made by the opening he'd flown into, cutting off his retreat. Having no other choice, he darted behind the pillar and used his magic chalk to trace a circle – an opening – in the center of it.

When the circle was complete, the section of the pillar vanished, and all at once the wall above it began to buckle and cave in on itself. Quickly swerving around it and out of the way, Rudy had no choice but to fly down a random tunnel, as his exit route was still blocked by the termites. As he passed it, his eyes widened as he noticed some of the mist they'd seen before in the city seeping throughout a few of the tunnels. He darted deeper into the tunnel he'd escaped to, not sure whether that one was safe or not. He paused to glance back, and to his surprise, the entrance to the tunnel he'd flown through was collapsing as well.

He backed up further and closed his eyes as he heard a deafening crash, shielding himself as a wave of dust from the tunnels up ahead washed through his tunnel. He waited a few moments as he continued to hear the sound of earth shifting, and then all was quiet.

He headed cautiously toward the collapse, noticing that the tunnel opening leading to the city above was now much wider, as wide as the tunnel itself and a lot longer. There was no sign of the creatures that had been coming down that tunnel, and he wondered if his plan had actually worked.

And then a moment later, one of the creatures burst out of the rubble, looking a bit confused but not at all distressed. Shocked, Rudy realized that it didn't look damaged at all, and even the smaller ones that were starting to emerge only looked as if they had been stunned. Terrified, he watched as it dawned on him that he'd made a grave mistake.

Without hesitation, he flew down his escape tunnel, as the air near the entrance he'd come through had begun to be filled with mist from the termites emerging from the collapse. He had no idea where he was going, and his terror mounted as he was plunged into near complete darkness, the dim light from his helmet the only thing he could see by, and the sounds of the creatures following him the only thing he could hear.

Quite often, a fork in the tunnel appeared, and he would pick a random direction without thinking, desperately hoping to see some sort of light, some sort of escape. Left, right, right again… He kept choosing random directions, only to be met with the same sort of stretch of damp underground over and over. He had no idea where the other tunnel entrances were. He had no idea if he'd strayed from the surface tunnels and gone deeper without realizing it. He just kept moving. Trying to stop and draw something, if he could even think of anything that could be useful, would likely be a death sentence.

Up ahead, his tunnel split again, and without thinking he took the left path, only to nearly run straight into a group of the monsters. With a cry of shock, he veered around, swerving into the next tunnel, realizing he'd lost precious time…when he noticed a much brighter light ahead. One of the exits! He'd found one!

As quickly as he could, he flew out of the tunnels, greatly relieved to find that he hadn't flown into a cloud of mist during his swift exit. He was still close enough to the city's outskirts that the poison didn't pose a threat.

However, as he glanced around, he hesitated a moment too long.

Without warning, something slammed into him from behind, knocking him out of the air and onto the street below. Luckily, he didn't have far to fall, and he was relieved to be unhurt, if a little stunned.

His relief didn't last long as, struggling to get to his feet, he turned his head, seeing one of the monsters…one of the larger ones, towering over him, its clawed forelegs raised. Now that it was rearing over him, it looked much bigger than it had seemed before, each of its digging claws longer than his body.

With a start of surprise, he tried to start his rocket shoes, only to find seconds later that only one ignited, propelling him forward across the damaged street as he tried to turn it off. He managed to do so quickly, skidding across the street a few more feet until coming to a halt, his helmet falling off his head and rolling away from him.

He looked up, seeing the attacking termite moving toward him on all its legs at a speed he was surprised something so large could have. Knowing that he could either attempt to draw a new rocket for his shoe or he could spend that time trying to save himself, he chose the second option, getting to his feet as quickly as he could and darting into a store that still looked intact.

He ran through it, dodging the debris that littered the floor and not bothering to close the door, as that would be a pointless waste of time. He leaped over the counter of the shop and ran into the back room, knowing there had to be a rear exit somewhere…

He heard a deafening crash as the front of the shop took a heavy blow from his pursuer, and he paused to replace the rocket booster on his shoe with a freshly drawn one and continued through the back rooms, looking frantically for an exit. He heard the building shudder again and kept looking, not seeing one…but seeing a window.

Running over it, he tried to push it open, finding that it didn't budge. After a few more seconds of trying, he managed to get it un-jammed and flew out, but only to come face to face with another one of the monsters.

Before he could react, before he could fly away, begin to draw any sort of protection, or anything, the massive creature's claws pinned him to the side of the building.

His arms completely immobilized, he struggled helplessly as he stared up into the small black eyes of the creature holding him there, something that was drawn to refuse to show any sort of mercy to anything it captured. He did not think it knew that it was holding the Great Creator in its claws, the one that its own creator needed to bring him and his partners the magic chalk. It likely only saw him as another part of ChalkZone. A part of ChalkZone to be destroyed.

He gasped as he was suddenly pushed harder against the wall of the building, the air being driven from his lungs. "Wait!" he cried, as loudly as he could manage, which wasn't very loud at all as his voice was strained and weak. He didn't think the creature was going to listen to him, or believe him, or even understand what he was talking about, but he couldn't think of anything else to do and was acting out of sheer desperation. "I'm…Rudy…I have…magic…chalk…" He found he suddenly couldn't breathe at all, and his vision started to waver as the creature stared down at him. For a moment Rudy thought it had understood, and was contemplating what to do then, but then it raised one of its other forelegs, and Rudy realized it had probably only hesitated out of curiosity for his different, non-ChalkZone-like appearance.

His eyes widened. He wanted to look away, or to close his eyes, but his body wouldn't obey him and his stare remained fixated on the descending claws. Then, suddenly, they stopped.

"Rudy!" a panicked voice shouted, and he glanced to the side, seeing Penny suddenly appear around the side of the building, looking terrified.

The termite creature's forelegs turned and lunged for her, but it still kept Rudy helplessly pinned to the wall. Penny quickly backed out of range, looking unsteady using the rocket shoes Rudy had drawn, but all the same managing to make a quick escape. Rudy tried to keep focused as he struggled to breathe. The termite tried to swipe at Penny, who was keeping just out of range, and unknowingly loosened its grip, giving Rudy more room to breathe. With a gasp he frantically started to draw in more air, feeling his head beginning to clear. He turned to look worriedly at Penny, afraid that more of the monsters would arrive. He could still hear crashing from the front of the shop he was pinned against, and was glad that at least the other one was still distracted.

Rudy continued to try to twist out from under the creature's claws, but he was still being held against the wall too tightly, and he could do nothing more than feebly struggle. Penny seemed to realize this, because she gave him a worried glance. He stared back at her desperately, helpless to do anything but watch.

All of a sudden, Penny's head turned, and she quickly vanished around the side of the shop. "Penny?" Rudy cried, confused, as the creature looming over him moved closer to the building, and Rudy wasn't sure whether it wanted to peer over it to try to see where Penny had gone or make an effort to kill him again.

Suddenly the entire building shook violently, and Rudy was dislodged from the termite's claws. He slid down to the ground, mildly stunned and not quite sure what had happened. A moment later, he felt Penny's hands grip his arm and drag him to his feet, and they both sped into the air on their rocket shoes, Penny guiding him as they weaved between the buildings, at the same time gaining altitude until they were well above the threats below. Passing over the giant fans Rudy had drawn, they quickly made their way across the grassy field to where Snap was waiting, looking very alarmed. Once he landed on the ground, Rudy collapsed to all fours, gasping for breath.

"Bucko!" Snap cried in a panicked voice. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Rudy gasped, still trying to register what had happened. "You saved me, Penny," he said, turning to his other friend. "How did you-"

"I followed you…" she replied. "Luckily you came out of a tunnel near the edge of the city close to the first one, otherwise..." She trailed off, looking at Rudy worriedly. "You can't try anything like that again."

"Believe me, I won't!" Rudy replied, shutting his eyes as he tried not to recall the details of what had just happened. He realized how much he had turned around down there, if his frantic fleeing from the termites had led him so close to the place he'd first entered. "I managed to collapse a tunnel," he gasped, "but it didn't do anything!"

"You shouldn't have gone in there…" Penny replied, not sounding angry, just terrified, and he knew that those creatures had posed a far greater threat to them and ChalkZone's inhabitants than they could have imagined upon first discovering them.

"I know," he gasped. "I wasn't thinking clearly. If it weren't for you I would've…" He paused, thinking of something. "How did you get that termite to let me go…without it seeing you first?"

"I lured the other one damaging the building up on top of it," she explained. "It was beginning to collapse and the one holding you was distracted and lost its grip."

"Well, thanks," Rudy replied, giving her a small smile. However, his smile quickly faded as he realized that they were no closer to solving their problem. In fact, it felt like they were farther. Now that going into the city himself again was clearly not an option, as he had no idea what else those things were capable of, he wasn't sure what else he would be able to do. He turned to look at the city, seeing that the termites still seemed unwilling to leave it just yet. If they had stayed in that one spot for so long, then Penny must have been right. Newland clearly must be giving them time to make the discovery before they started ravaging the world he, Vinnie Raton, and Terry Bouffant wanted full access to themselves. But…how much time?

His eyes narrowed as he spotted the large billboard with Newland's message scrawled across it. Even though he had marked it out, it still stood as a reminder of the situation, and how much trouble ChalkZone would be in once Newland's time limit ran out.

"I don't think we can fight these things," Rudy said slowly. "Not alone, at least. We're going to need help."

Penny nodded in reply. All three of them knew that trying to keep coming up with these new plans was too dangerous, and they were out of ideas. They needed help, or some sort of advice that would give them a clue how to stop the creatures. "We can't keep guessing," Penny stated firmly, "we'll have to find out a way to stop them that will work. Find out a weakness."

"But how do we do that?" Rudy asked.

"I'm…not sure," Penny replied worriedly.

A cry from somewhere further away into the field distracted them, and Rudy's attention was brought back to the fleeing city Zoners, realizing that, until they could find a way to solve the problem, he needed to help keep them safe. "Come on," he told the others, starting to make his way away from the city and over to the nearest group. Even the most curious of them had taken his advice and moved far away from the city outskirts, but nevertheless they caught up to them fairly quickly. The vast majority of them had gathered in one spot, milling about uncertainly, unsure what to do or where they should go. Rudy realized that they had to still be very confused about all this; his brief explanations hadn't been much, but he wasn't sure if he could explain further when he wasn't sure about the situation at the moment either.

"They're going to need somewhere to stay," Penny pointed out, saying exactly what Rudy was thinking.

"Yeah…at least until we can figure out what to do," Rudy answered with another glance in the direction of ChalkZone City. As he turned back to the group of Zoners they had come upon, he noticed for the first time that there were several who were injured. Many of them were only minor injuries, and they were already being helped by others, but Rudy still felt worried. However, he knew that the most important thing he needed to do then was help them find a safe place to stay, and try to make sure, the best he could, that they wouldn't be attacked.

Lifting off into the air again, he moved above them, making sure that all of them could see him, quickly drawing a megaphone so he could be heard. "All right everyone!" he shouted. "The creatures attacking the city haven't left its boundaries, and we believe they won't for at least a few days."

"A few days?" someone shouted from the crowd.

"You haven't stopped them yet?" another asked.

Trying to ignore their cries until he got the message out, Rudy continued, "We're still trying to find a way to put a stop to them, but until then, you'll need to stay far away. I'll draw a building you can shelter in that's far enough away to be safe. But while me and Penny aren't in ChalkZone, I want some Zoners who can fly to check the city frequently in case those creatures move farther. If there's any sign that they're starting to spread to different areas, make sure everyone evacuates and moves to safety!"

Most of the Zoners, to his surprise, appeared calmer at these words. Now that they had some plan of action if anything happened while Rudy was gone, they seemed more confident, if a little uncertain about the fact that the Great Creator hadn't managed to solve the problem. He was confident that they would be able to sort these things out themselves while he was gone, but the main problem, the termites' attack, still rested on his shoulders.

"Come on," he told Penny and Snap, starting to make his way away further away from the city, urging the other Zoners to follow him. Penny led the way beside him, while Snap trailed behind, doing his best to keep up in his weakened state. Seeing this, Rudy quickly drew him another scooter, but even then he could see that he was unenthusiastic, and Rudy realized that he really hadn't gotten much of a rest at all after his ordeal in the Real World.

It wasn't long before they reached what Rudy deemed a safe enough spot, away from the city and in a rocky field across the Amazin' River, which Rudy thought would cause the termites delay if they managed to get that far. Maybe they didn't seem to mind water in their tunnels, but a swiftly flowing river would be a different story. While he waited for the entire group to cross over the temporary bridge he'd drawn, he set about drawing a gigantic building that was many stories high and that would act as a temporary hotel for the Zoners for as long as it took him to figure out how to save their city, and for it to be rebuilt. Even with its sheer size, Rudy knew that the building would be crowded, even though he knew that some of the city dwellers would have gone off to stay with family members or friends somewhere else. He reminded himself that it was a temporary arrangement, and he promised that he would try to make their stay here as short as possible.

Once he'd finished the drawing, to his relief some of the Zoners from the city began taking charge, and he walked aside with Penny and Snap, hoping they would be able to come up with something that would help them formulate a new plan.

"Well, one thing's for sure," Penny stated, "it's too dangerous to keep trying to stop them ourselves. There must be something someone else knows about them, or even digging ChalkZone species in general, that can help us. There has to be something we haven't tried."

"You're right," Rudy replied, musing. "This can't be the first time something like this happened. There has to be a way to stop these things, and someone had to have done something similar before to stop a threat like this. These can't be the _only_ monsters with those sorts of traits to appear in ChalkZone."

"Yes," Penny agreed. "We have to find someone who might know."

"Barney! The encyclo-centipedia!" Rudy cried, his face lighting up with excitement. "He would know if anything like this happened before!"

"But…he flew off after we saved everyone from the Balloonemia disease, remember?" Penny replied.

"And…we don't know where he went," Snap added.

Rudy paused, realizing that they were right, and that trying to look for him all over again with no leads would waste precious time. "Biclops!" he said after a moment of thought. "Maybe he would know!"

"Good idea," Penny replied, but a look of worry suddenly crossed her face and she glanced down at her watch. "We'd better hurry, though. We don't have long before we'll need to be back in the Real World."

"Oh…right…" Rudy replied. After all that had happened, he'd nearly forgotten about school. "Well, we'll hurry and ask Biclops. And…" his voice grew more discouraged as he remembered something else, "hope that we have enough time that nothing will get worse while we're on the field trip."

"Wait a minute!" Snap cried. "Field trip? You're still goin' on a FIELD TRIP? _Now of all times?_"

"Well…I…" he trailed off, but quickly tried to push his negative thoughts aside. "I'm still not going to let this happen. We'll sneak off to ChalkZone during the trip whenever we can. We'll figure out something!" Looking back at Snap, he could see that his friend wasn't convinced at all. And Rudy wasn't sure he was convinced himself, either.

"Well, we could try to get our parents to allow us to us stay home," Penny suggested. "Although I'm not sure what we could say to convince them…"

"We'll have to think of something," said Rudy as he began drawing a small plane that would quickly take them to the Chalk Mine.

It didn't take long for them to reach it, but Rudy was still worried when they stopped by the river in front of the large gaping entrance to the mine. "How much time do we have?" he asked Penny.

"Less than a half an hour," she replied worriedly. "Let's ask Biclops what he knows and then we can work out how we're going to stop those creatures after we leave for school."

"And how we're going to convince our parents to let us stay home from the field trip," Rudy added glumly.

They ran through the mine's entrance and into the main chamber, where, to their relief, Biclops was standing, having just come out of one of the deeper tunnels of the mine. "Biclops!" Rudy cried. "We need your help! We-"

"Rudy Tabootie, do you have any idea what's going on?" Biclops asked, looking almost panicked as he ran over to them, his steps shaking the ground and causing them to nearly lose their balance.

"Yes," Rudy replied, starting to feel worried himself all over again. If Biclops was worried about the attack on the city, then he probably wouldn't have any sort of answer to their problems. But they needed to try anyway. "You see…" He quickly explained what had happened since Snap's disappearance, knowing that there wasn't much time, but still quickly telling Biclops every detail he thought might be important, including their failed plans to stop Newland's termites. While he did so, Penny and Snap waited nervously, Penny pausing to check her watch every so often while Snap leaned against the wall, trying to get a brief rest.

"You see," Rudy said as soon as he'd finished, "we think if we can find something that will tell us if anything similar to this happened before and how it was stopped, we could use that to come up with a real plan. Something that would work."

"Yes," Penny added. "Do you know of any place that keeps records of ChalkZone's history? That would have information on past attacks like this, I mean." She glanced at Rudy, and they both knew that, unless it was some sort of major event that affected a lot of Zoners, it would be hard to find a record of random monsters that had caused problems, especially if it happened somewhere far away. Thinking of something, Penny turned to Snap and asked, "Libraries here might keep records like that. Do you know of any?"

Snap shrugged. "I'm not sure. I don't think most of 'em have any history books that talk about certain types of drawings attackin' like that."

"Are you sure?" she asked, wondering how much Snap would have bothered to look at those types of books and whether he was just assuming this.

"I'm afraid he's right," Biclops interrupted, leaning down a bit towards the trio. "Records that detailed and going far back are very rare. That's why everyone was so eager to seek out the encyclocentipedia's information when he returned. Most of the sort of information he had just isn't widely available."

The three friends looked at each other hopelessly. They were stuck without a lead, and they didn't even know where to begin now.

"Wait a minute," Snap began suddenly, looking quite hopeful, which caught Rudy and Penny's attention, and they turned to him, eagerly waiting for him to speak. "What about King Mumbo Jumbo? He's Barney's best friend! He oughtta know where he is! Let's go find 'im!"

To his surprise, Biclops shook his head. "Many Zoners have tried asking him that. He does not know. Barney only comes to visit him, but he disappears for a while after that."

Snap stared up at him in disbelief. "Well that's just great!" he cried. "So we're supposed to just sit around here waitin' for him to come back?"

"No, that'll take too much time!" Rudy cried. "There has to be someone else who knows!" He looked toward Biclops desperately. "Do you know of anyone…or any place…that could tell us the sort of stuff Barney knows?"

Biclops was silent for a moment, and then began, "Well, I know of one place where you could find what you're looking for. The only thing is, it will be difficult to find."

"So we'll be off on a wild goose chase?" Snap asked, folding his arms. "That's not much help!"

"Not exactly," Biclops replied, sounding a bit more hopeful. "There is a map."

"If there's a map," began Rudy, sounding confused, "then why is this place hard to find?"

"Well, for one, it's…difficult to get there," Biclops responded, straightening up again. "The map itself is not hard to come across, but it was a copy of one made a long time ago. Lands in ChalkZone have changed drastically since then, but you would probably be able to find it if you follow it carefully, as the main landmarks should still be there."

"Okay," Rudy replied hesitantly, "what exactly is this place anyway?"

"You see," Biclops began hesitantly, as if he wasn't quite sure this was the best idea but couldn't think of another area to look in, "there was an ancient library long ago, and part of it held dozens of books recording things that took place in many different areas of ChalkZone. As far as I know, no one's quite sure how much information was there, but it is believed that some of it might even be older than Barney."

"A library?" Penny stated, sounding very interested. "What we're searching for is a library?"

"Well…not exactly," Biclops replied. "The library was, to our knowledge, destroyed long ago."

"But then-"

"However," Biclops continued, "before it was destroyed, many of the books were salvaged and hidden in a mountain quite a ways from where the library once stood, in a remote place so they could not be stolen or damaged by those who destroyed the library. But…there are many accounts of Zoners stumbling across this cave, and while its exact location is unknown, we do know of a rough map that will guide you to that area."

"But how do we know if those records are even still there?" Rudy asked.

"From what we know, those records were important to Zoners from that area at the time," Biclops answered, "and they would have been one of the first items recovered and hidden. Different Zoners who had found the cave long ago claimed that they had actually managed to find them, but left them there, where they believed they were safe."

"So no one's found this place in a long time?" Penny asked, and Biclops shook his head.

"It's not a journey most try to undertake," he continued, still sounding uncertain, "but there is bound to be more who have found it. And for you, with the magic chalk, getting there won't be nearly as difficult as it would for Zoner explorers seeking it."

"Yeah," began Snap, "but if we manage to find this place, we're not goin' to have time to search an entire library of books!"

"I do believe that you will know the record books when you see them," Biclops replied, seeming a bit more hopeful. "From what little we know about that library, the records were very important and made much differently than ordinary books. At least, that's what those who claimed to have seen it say."

"That still doesn't tell us much," Rudy replied, though he could feel a faint hope flickering inside him at the thought that there was _something_ out there that could have what they needed, if Biclops was right about it and they were able to find it.

"If what you need to find is recorded anywhere," Biclops continued, "it will be there. There may be another place you could get the information from, but I don't know of one. And at least this is a place that is confirmed to exist, if you can find it."

While Rudy knew that if Biclops believed the information was hidden there, it probably was, he wasn't sure they had time to try to follow an outdated map and then search through a gigantic stash of hidden books. If what Biclops said was true, and the record books would be easy to spot among the rest, that would narrow things down, at least. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was the only lead they had. But he trusted Biclops when he'd said that there was a vast amount of information and events recorded there, and there, if they could find it, would be where they'd likely find their answer…if only they had enough _time _to search.

"All right," said Rudy, conscious of the time they were quickly running out of. They would need to get back to the Real World soon. "Can we see the map?" He really hoped that Biclops had it with him, seeing as they didn't have time to head off to another location.

To his relief, Biclops turned and walked into the side tunnels, disappearing for a few moments and then returning with a book in his hand. "Ah, here it is," he began, swiping some dust off the cover. It looked tiny in Biclops' hand, but when he set it down in front of the trio, they could see that it was quite bigger than the books they were used to. It looked to be some kind of book about documenting hidden treasures in ChalkZone, though from what they could see as Biclops flipped through the pages, it didn't seem useful for actually _finding_ any such thing, and most of the places in the book seemed to be things that would have been discovered and made accessible after it was published anyway. One page showed a crude drawing of the route to King Mumbo Jumbo's temple in the Mumbo Jumbo Jungle, and Rudy knew that the location to that had certainly been known for a while. Biclops took a minute or so to search through the book for the page he needed, as if it had been quite a while since he'd read it. "There!" he said with satisfaction as he stopped on a certain page, and the trio gathered closer, peering down at it.

The map, like Biclops had stated, looked to be a copy of a very old one, but it was much more detailed and well plotted than the one of the Mumbo Jumbo Jungle. However, Rudy only had to look at it for a few seconds before he became crestfallen. "Biclops…I…I don't recognize any of these places. How are we even supposed to get to the first thing on the map?"

"From these mountains." Biclops pointed to a range of mountains at the bottom of the page, but as Rudy looked at them, he couldn't recall ever seeing them either. Biclops seemed to notice this, and continued, "They're by far the easiest thing to find on the map, and what the book said that explorers usually started from. They were described as a range of blue mountains that did not lie too far from this one." He paused to lift his hand from the book and gesture around at the Chalk Mine's cavern, and Rudy realized that, even if the map had been drawn by someone to whom the Chalk Mine had no importance, being a Zoner who would have no use for it, the mountain itself would be a notable landmark to follow.

"Okay, blue mountains, somewhere sort of close by, right?" Rudy asked.

"Maybe not close, but you wouldn't have to journey too far," Biclops replied.

"Okay, but do you know which direction to go?" Rudy questioned, starting to feel more hopeful about the plan, now that they had a solid map to follow once they could find those mountains. Outdated or not, at least the map would provide them with a solid direction.

"There's only one range of blue mountains anywhere near here," Biclops continued, and the three looked up with hopeful expressions. "They're called the Mist Mountains, and I believe they lie farther than you three normally travel to, and I can show you the direction as well. I have seen them before." He pointed to the picture of the mountains on the map, which Rudy saw had been tinged a light blue. "The mountains are made of blue stone, and have a thick covering of blue fog shrouding them."

At the mention of the fog, Rudy shuddered, thinking of the poisonous mist he had encountered while facing the termite monsters in the city, but it was obvious that Biclops knew that the fog in the mountains would be harmless, so he didn't mention it.

"You can avoid the worst of the mist by traveling on either the topmost or the lowest parts of the mountain," Biclops went on. "However, I must warn you, it will be much safer to cross the mountain ranges on foot or in some kind of land based vehicle. There are many dangerous creatures that roam the skies there, and they will detect you, one way or another. It's not a risk I think you should take."

"Are you sure they ain't gonna attack us even if we're on the ground?" Snap asked skeptically.

"I don't think they will, but it's best to be careful. Now, once you pass the Mist Mountains," Biclops continued before Snap could reply, "you'll be able to use whatever mode of transportation you want to. And you will need to be able to be extra watchful for the landmarks, as the areas could have changed greatly, and will appear much different on the map." He waved his hand in front of the book, and the three peered down at it again.

Penny, after looking at the map for a few moments, looked up with a worried expression on her face. "But, Biclops…by the size of these mountain ranges, it would take us at least a day to travel through them even with a vehicle. That's a lot of time to waste just getting through the first part of the journey. And it could take us a while to follow the rest of the landmarks _and_ find the cave itself."

"I know…" Biclops sighed. "It may be a long first part of the journey, but the Mist Mountains are the only landmark I'm sure about. From there, however, I must warn you again that the path will probably be much less obvious. ChalkZone has changed a lot since when this map was written; many of the other landmarks are much, much smaller and may be hard to find. Some might even be missing, so you should try to look for the main ones, and follow the map from there." As he spoke, he scribbled quick directions to the Mist Mountains on a small piece of paper and handed it to Penny.

"Well, at least we know a place to start," Penny said, looking doubtful about the whole thing, and Rudy knew why. There was no way they'd be able to find a time where they could spend that much time on a ChalkZone journey.

"I don't know about this," Rudy whispered after a moment. "I mean, I believe you know that the records are there," he told Biclops, "but they might not be complete. How do we even know this library will have the information we want?"

"Well, at least we have an idea of where to go," Penny replied. "We have no lead on where Barney is, and we need to find a way to stop the termites as soon as possible. I think right now this is the best chance we have, if we can find a way to get there."

Rudy sighed. "You're right. If we can figure out a way, this might be the best chance we're going to get."

Picking up the book again, Biclops carefully tore out the page with the map and handed it to Rudy. "I believe that you can find it, Rudy Tabootie."

"Thanks, Biclops," Rudy said after a moment of looking at the map. "We-"

"Rudy!" Penny told him in a panicked voice, making him jump. "We don't have much time left. We have to get back to the Real World soon."

"I know," Rudy sighed. "Thanks for your help," Rudy told Biclops as they hastily scrambled toward the Chalk Mine entrance. He barely heard Biclops shout good luck to them before they were back outside by the river.

"Rudy," said Penny, turning to him, "what are we going to do if we solve this and…Newland just tries something else?"

"We'll figure out what to do then," he replied. "But first, we've got to stop these things before they start spreading to other parts of ChalkZone and putting people in danger. Besides, if he doesn't get a reply, he'll probably think I'd rather have ChalkZone be destroyed than give him the chalk, and maybe he'll give up. And if not, we'll find a way to stop anything else he draws."

Even with the determination in his eyes, Penny couldn't help feeling doubtful, but she knew he was right. There wasn't anything else they could do. "You're right," she said, nodding.

"So what do you think we should do now, about this?" Rudy pondered, holding the map as they made their way back over to the plane he'd drawn to take them there. "This journey could take days! It's too long for us to be able to make during the field trip or even while at home and-" He paused, stopping in his tracks.

"Uh, Rudy?" Snap asked, realizing that Rudy had stopped walking and turning around to face him.

"That's it!" Rudy cried, his expression suddenly much more hopeful. "The field trip!"

"Whaddaya mean, Bucko?" Snap replied, confused.

"We could _pretend_ to go on the field trip," Rudy answered. "That way, we could stay in ChalkZone until Monday night and no one would know we were gone!"

"But, our parents signed the permission slips," Penny responded. "The teachers will know something's wrong if we suddenly don't show up."

Rudy thought for a moment, and smiled. "I have an idea."

**ooo**

After school that day, Rudy and Penny were briefly taken home to bring what they had packed for the field trip. Rudy quickly grabbed the supplies he'd stored for the field trip and went outside to wait for Mrs. Sanchez's car. She was going to be taking them to the school to wait for the field trip bus. He'd made sure to pack extra food and water for the trip, and he knew Penny had too. He stood outside his house, waiting worriedly. If they arrived at the school right as the bus arrived, their parents would have to watch them get on it, and their entire plan would be ruined.

Luckily, Penny's mom's car arrived quickly, and soon they were heading off to the school. When they arrived, they were relieved to see that the bus hadn't gotten there yet. They told Penny's mother to pull up on the opposite end of the school from where the bus was parked, saying it was closer to their classroom and that they needed to get something there.

"Our class is over there," Penny told her mom, pointing to the group of students near the building. "We know where to go from here."

"Are you sure you don't want me to stay here?" she asked.

"No, no," Rudy replied. "We're fine. We just need to get something from our classroom before we leave. It won't take long."

"Well, all right," she replied.

"Thanks," Rudy said quickly, turning around and running toward the school. "Bye!"

"Have fun on the field trip!" she called after him.

Rudy and Penny waved to her, and then hurried around the school, taking care not to be seen by those waiting for the field trip buses. They snuck around the walls and sipped in through one of the back doors.

"Okay," Rudy said as soon as he and Penny entered one of the vacant classrooms. Rudy opened his backpack and took out a strange chalk device that looked like a microphone. "Let's head into ChalkZone."

After drawing a portal and dropping their supplies off, they quickly made their way toward the area that corresponded with Rudy's room, and Rudy drew a portal and stepped out of his chalkboard. "All right, let's hurry."

They crept downstairs and into the kitchen, relieved that neither of his parents were there. Rudy took the phone, and, checking to make sure there was no sign of his parents in either of the adjacent rooms, quickly dialed the school's number. "Let's hope this works…"

"Hello?" a voice on the other end said. It sounded like the school nurse. Rudy turned a dial on the microphone device he'd drawn, and held it up to the phone.

"Uh…I'm sorry to inform you…" To his and Penny's relief, the voice that came out of the microphone sounded just like Rudy's father. "But Rudy is sick and won't be able to attend the field trip….uh, yeah….can you tell Mr. Wilter?"

Penny waited patiently as Rudy continued to talk on the phone until he finished and hung up.

"It worked!" he said happily. "Now we'll pretend your mom is calling and we can find Snap and start looking for what's left of that library." He handed Penny the device and they headed up to his room, planning to quickly go to Penny's house and call from there. Rudy thought that for the first time today, they finally had real hope of keeping the inhabitants of ChalkZone safe.

**ooo**

When Rudy and Penny arrived back into ChalkZone, they easily found Snap waiting for them near the Chalk Mine, where they had planned to meet up. Snap looked up as he saw them approaching.

"Did it work?"

"Yes," Rudy replied, sounding relieved. "We have until Monday evening to search. Hopefully that should give us enough time."

"Let's just hope this library still has the books we need," Snap said uncertainly.

"Well, it's our best bet at finding something right now," Rudy replied, and then paused. Snap still looked very weak, and he didn't think that dragging him on a three day long journey would be a good idea. He still hadn't had nearly enough time to rest, and it would be a lot more difficult when they were traveling. "Snap," he began, "you don't have to come with us if you don't want to. I mean, it'll take a long time and-"

Snap, however, shook his head firmly. "I wanna help you!" he insisted. "And I'm not going to be able to do anything to help ChalkZone from here!"

"Are you sure?" Rudy asked. "I mean-"

"Yes, I'm sure!" Snap responded. "Believe me, I wanna help stop this Bob guy from doing this in any way I can!"

"All right," Rudy replied, a faint smile crossing his lips. Though he'd thought it would be best for Snap to stay behind for his own sake, he felt greatly relieved that his other best friend had wanted to go with them. He certainly didn't want to undertake a long and likely difficult journey without him. "As long as you take it easy."

"Don't worry," Penny told the others. "He'll be fine. We won't be walking. I'm glad you wanted to help us, Snap."

With that sorted out, Rudy pulled out the paper with the quickly drawn map Biclops had given him. "This will take us to the Mist Mountains," he told the others.

"Right," Penny replied, "we can fly there using a small airplane, and then we'll use a land-based method of transportation until we pass the mountain range. From there we can decide the best way to find the rest of the landmarks and the way to what's left of the hidden library."

"All right," said Rudy who was already starting to draw another plane, this time one a bit bigger so that it could carry their supplies as well. "We'll go back, pick up our stuff, follow Biclops' directions..." He held up Biclop's hand drawn map, which he passed to Penny, and then spread the map from the book over the ground. "…Then we'll start here." He pointed to the bottom of the map and the large blue mountain range. "The Mist Mountains."

**ooo**

Thanks to Biclops' map and Rudy's plane, it did not take very long to reach the edge of the Mist Mountains. It was only early evening, and Rudy was confident that they would soon be on the right trail. He only hoped that when they got to their destination, they would be able to find the books they were looking for. Carefully, he landed the plane a short distance from the mountains, staring up at the peaks. He could see, though far off, a few large creatures circling the air around the higher peaks, their outlines blurred by the mist, and was glad that their plane hadn't been close enough while they had been flying there to attract their attention.

Looking up at the mountains, he could see that they were exactly as Biclops described. They were made out of a strange, jagged stone that was tinted a light blue, and further up, getting thicker the higher it was, was a strange pale blue mist that shrouded the mountains until up at the highest peaks, which stood out clear in the open sky.

"Well, it doesn't look very welcoming," Snap muttered.

"Biclops did say that we'd be much safer traveling if we aren't flying over the mountain range," Penny stated, "so as long as we're careful, we should get through it all right."

"It's the mist that worries me," Rudy replied. "If we can't see where we're going, we could fall off a ledge somewhere…" he trailed off, looking at what he could see through the mist ahead of him, and how the mountain rose in jagged shapes and odd rock formations. Parts of it looked as if the rock had broken off and collapsed, and other parts looked like they were simply drawn in that strange way.

"We could try using a fan to blow away the mist," Snap suggested. "Like you did at the city."

Penny shook her head. "We can't carry around one that big. And a small one wouldn't be powerful enough to make much of a difference. However, the mist isn't so bad nearer to the ground. Biclops said that if we travel through a mountain passage low enough, we'll avoid the worst of the mist."

"Sounds good to me," Rudy replied.

Rudy began drawing their vehicle, a large truck with plenty of space to put their belongings. "This should carry us easily through the mountains," he stated once he was finished. "I designed it to be able to ride on all sorts of terrain. And it can carry all our supplies too."

"Er…so are you gonna draw some for me?" Snap asked as he examined the shiny green vehicle. "I didn't exactly have time to bring anythin' before-"

"I figured that I could just draw anything you might need on the way," Rudy replied. "Me and Penny have most of our supplies, but if we need anything else too, I can draw it later. We'll save a lot of space that way."

They began to load the truck, and once he and Penny had their food, water, sleeping bags, and other supplies stored, Rudy brought out one last bag from the back of the plane. "I made sure to bring a lot of extra magic chalk," he explained, holding it up for them to see. He knew he had to have at least a few dozen pieces in there, more than enough to last them through the trip.

"Good idea, Rudy," Penny replied as she got into one of the back seats of the automobile. Snap got into the other one, and Rudy climbed into the front, placing the bag of magic chalk on the seat next to him.

As Rudy started the truck, Snap reached over to the front seat and picked up the map, looking over it. "So, let's see…" he began, "the first thing we need to find is this weird sorta old temple, and from there we go on past these weird lookin' rocks…are these the landmarks Biclops was talkin' about, Rudy?" he asked, looking up.

"I think so," Rudy replied. "If they were important enough to draw on the map, they must be." The truck started to move forward, and Rudy looked up as the mountains slowly began to loom over them, closer and closer.

"After that," Snap continued, "it looks like we cross some sorta river, then we're out of the Mist Mountains and we end up in some kinda prairie or desert. Hm…" he narrowed his eyes as he looked at it, but without enough detail, there was really no way for any of them to tell exactly what these lands looked like, or if they even still were the type of terrain shown on the map. The landmarks were really the only things that would show them the correct trail. "Huh," Snap continued, seeming doubtful, "I guess we'll find out when we get there."

Snap set the map down and Penny picked it up, looking over the map herself, remarking that they were not only going to have to cross over the desert area, but some sort of strange large forest or jungle, and then what looked to be several large interlocking lakes. After that was a series of strange canyons and rock formations, an odd area of the map that was left blank except for a few notable features, and then, finally, another mountain range, but one that was smaller, where, apparently, the remnants of the destroyed library were hidden somewhere. The map was vague on exactly where, but the relative area was marked, and if they could get there in two days, they would still have plenty of time to search.

As they got closer to the foot of the mountains, the mist seemed to clear a little, or perhaps it was just easier to see through once they got close to it. However, the curtains of mist higher up remained as opaque and impenetrable as ever.

Looking around, Rudy spotted a fairly gentle slope that led up into a narrow ridge that looked to lead to a very thin canyon. Seeing that it seemed not only the safest place to enter the mountain range from, but that it also had only a thin layer of mist, he turned the vehicle toward it, making sure to go slowly as they climbed up the rise.

Though Rudy and his friends had no idea what they would really be facing once they passed the Mist Mountains, they now had something to guide them to a place where they could find a way to help ChalkZone, and at the moment, that was all they could have hoped for.


	7. Into the Mist Mountains

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Seven – Into the Mist Mountains**

The first thing that Rudy noticed as they began to enter the narrow gap between the nearest mountains was how strangely dark it was. A combination of the mist above them and the rock walls on either side made it seem almost like they were in NightZone. The ground beneath them was smooth at first, but began to get rougher as they moved further in, and often the vehicle would shake unexpectedly when one of its wheels struck a large rock, but to Rudy's relief, no harm had come to the truck yet. Not that that would be much of a problem; with the chalk he could simply draw a new wheel, but it was comforting to know that the vehicle he'd drawn was sturdy enough to not be damaged easily. The front of the truck had been drawn without a roof or windows, so they could easily see out all around them, and the back had a cover to ensure that their belongings wouldn't tumble out due to any sudden jolts, and they tried to relax a little as they headed further into the chasm.

"Rudy," Penny began uneasily, "we're going to have to get to the upper parts of the mountains in a little while. We won't be able to see any of the landmarks down here."

"I know," he replied, "but at least we're safer here for now. We've got a bit farther to go before we're far enough to see that weird old temple."

Penny nodded in reply, picking up the map from the section of the seat between her and Snap and looking over it quietly. Rudy glanced at her for a moment, seeing that she was probably trying to determine the point where they would need to find a way to higher ground – and in closer proximity to those flying monsters, he thought worriedly – so they could look for the first landmark. By her side, Snap was merely staring at the rock wall as they drove by. His head started to droop, but he almost immediately jerked upright again, and then, looking annoyed, resumed staring at the wall. Rudy turned back to the path ahead.

"I hope we can find an easy way to get up there," he mused, glancing up at the narrow line of sky, or what would have been sky were it not for the mists, overhead in between the towering rock walls. "I guess I could draw something to pull the truck up there, if there's no way to simply drive out. I just hope Biclops is right about us being safe as long as we stay out of the air."

"Well, he said he'd been here before, right?" Snap asked, turning to him.

"He said he saw the mountains," Rudy replied. "That's not the same as being there. But don't worry," he quickly added, "I'll make sure we all get through this okay."

They were all silent as they continued on. There was no real change in the uneven "road" in front of them; it was still a jagged path with the occasional small boulders, stretching on into the distance. The only thing that was changed all that much was that in some places, the mist drifted down to obscure their path, but luckily those places were few and far between.

"Hey," Snap said all of a sudden. "Do you hear something?"

The other two strained to listen, and after a moment, the faint sound of tumbling rocks from somewhere far overhead reached their ears and they froze, but the sound simply faded away into a faint echo a few moments later.

Rudy looked up toward the mist-covered edges of the cliffs on either side of them, but saw nothing. Nervously, he kept the truck moving forward.

Every once in a while, they heard the cries of strange creatures from somewhere up above, but in the foreign landscape it was impossible to tell how far away they were. In spite of hearing their cries, they could not actually see a single mountain-dwelling ChalkZone animal.

"Ya know, I'm starting to think we'd be safer up near the top of the mountains," Snap said worriedly. "I don't like the looks of this place."

Looking ahead, Rudy had to agree. The passage got noticeably narrower further on, and darker as well. The walls were also starting to curve inward, and as he glanced up, he could see that it looked easy for rocks to fall from either of the overhanging ledges. He stopped the truck. "Yeah…I think you're right," he replied. "I don't think it's safe further down there. We should try and move toward the top."

"That would be ideal," Penny stated. "The rocks in these mountains don't seem to be very stable in a lot of places." Almost as soon as she'd spoken, they heard the distant sound of a few rocks falling, and once silence regained, they looked at each other worriedly.

"Okay," Rudy began, stepping out of the vehicle, "the space overhead looks wide enough. We can pull the truck out of the chasm here."

Penny offered to help Rudy draw a pulley system, and when he eagerly accepted her help, she stepped out of the truck and ran over to him, examining the walls around them and talking to him excitedly as she began to formulate a plan.

Snap leaned back, too exhausted to really care about the details of how they were going to get up to the higher areas of the mountains. At least it would be soon, so they wouldn't have to travel beneath the more unstable places and risk the possibility of falling rocks or unsound walls.

Suddenly, there was a noise that made all three of them freeze where they were. It was a strange, eerie echoing howl that resounded loudly about them, seeming to come from every direction at once. It sounded too loud and too near to come up from above, however, and that left two directions, either in front or behind them. Snap whirled around to lean over the rim of the truck's front half, his eyes scanning the path they had just traveled through as Rudy and Penny cast glances back and forth.

"Uh…think you can speed this up, Buckette?" Snap asked with a nervous smile. He turned around to keep his eye on the road behind him, and another howl sounded throughout the area, making his blood run cold.

Before either Penny or Rudy could reply, several thin dark shapes appeared out of the gloom in the distance behind their vehicle, headed straight toward them. In a panic, Rudy and Penny ran back to the truck and leapt inside, knowing there was no time to plan out their method of getting to higher ground, just as the creatures, seeming impossibly fast, came closer and into view.

While Rudy was busy trying to start up the vehicle, Penny and Snap got a close look at the creatures. The first word that came to Penny's mind was 'wolf,' although they looked like no wolf she had ever seen, even in ChalkZone. Their pelts were a strange shimmery light blue, making them look almost like the mist around them itself. Their eyes were small white pinpricks of glowing light, not light that was reflecting off of anything, but actually _glowing_. Strangest of all, their backs, necks, tails, and legs were covered in long, sharp spines with multiple bands of different blue and purple hues circling them. From their behavior, she could instantly tell that these wolves were not interested in hunting them. Their howls had to have been some kind of warning, and if they were looking for prey, the creatures wouldn't have alerted them to their presence. This had to be some sort of territorial behavioral response, and she realized with dread that this chasm must be a part of their claimed land.

Just as the vehicle started up and Rudy began fumbling with the truck's controls in a panic, the nearest one skidded to a halt just behind it, glaring up at Snap and Penny with its unusually long teeth bared. At this close a distance, they could both see that the creature had been drawn with strange swirl patterns in its fur, reminding them of the mist that drifted above them.

The wolf's spikes suddenly stood up along its back and neck and then pointed forward, and Penny and Snap had only barely begun to duck behind the rim of the front part of the truck before six or seven spines thudded into the back of it, piercing the metal and standing straight out like arrows. Snap cast a quick glance at the nearest one, barely an inch away from where he was gripping the edge of the truck. If it had been any closer, it would have gone straight through his arm.

The truck lurched forward a second later as Rudy slammed on the gas pedal, sending them speeding further into the chasm. The wolves howled as they gave chase, racing after them and not seeming daunted at all by the truck's speed.

"We've gotta move faster!" Snap cried, seeing that the nearest few were soon only a few yards behind them.

"I'm trying!" Rudy cried back, and, despite his fear of hitting a large rock before he could stop, he drove the truck on faster after another spine embedded itself in the dashboard.

"Rudy, hand me a piece of chalk!" Penny yelled.

Still keeping his eyes on the path ahead, Rudy quickly handed her the bag, and she quickly used the chalk to draw a shield attaching to the back of the front half of the truck to protect her and Snap from the spikes that were still being shot in their direction.

She could hear several of them thud against the newly drawn barrier, a few falling to the ground afterwards but the rest embedding themselves fairly deeply into it. She and Snap leaned away from the shield, hearing a few more of the wolves' spines striking it.

"Don't they ever run out of those things?" Snap gasped as one pierced the shield and only stopped after it was embedded more than halfway through.

Penny looked at the spine closely, and the first thing she noticed was that it looked like one a porcupine might have, only larger. She glanced over the side of the truck, and noticed with a jolt of horror that one of the creatures was running right alongside it.

The spines on its body flicked toward her and Snap, and for a brief second she noticed that it didn't seem to be running out of spikes at all, and the thought flashed through her mind that the 'porcupine wolves' must team up and take turns attacking so no single one used up all of its defense. Her thought was only fleeting as she and Snap ducked down against the seats, hearing several thuds as spikes hit the side of the truck and a few whistles of air as the others sailed overhead. Penny cried out as one grazed her back, and she heard Rudy shout her name from up ahead.

This was soon followed by a much louder cry from Rudy.

In a panic, she looked up, regardless of the danger, but what she saw was not at all what she had expected. Up ahead, the chasm opened up into a much bigger area that looked like a small valley. There had to have been mist up ahead for Rudy not to have seen it earlier, but now it was all too clear. And Rudy, who had been distracted for a brief moment by Penny's cry, was too late to stop the vehicle as it began to plunge over the edge of a steep precipice.

Having no way to stop it, the three could only watch as the front of the truck tilted downwards and picked up speed, skidding along the steep slope at an increasingly alarming pace, the rocky ground of the valley below speeding up to meet them.

Penny gasped and gripped her seat tighter as the back of the vehicle began to jolt violently to the right, and for a moment she was terrified that it would topple onto its side, but then it evened out as the truck hit a more even piece of ground. However, it wasn't enough to slow their descent and their mode of transportation continued to speed downward, skidding over the rocks it encountered and causing several to tumble down ahead of them.

All at once the ground was before them, and as they plummeted toward it, the wheel of the truck rolled over a large rock, offsetting its balance and sending it skidding further into the valley, where luckily the ground evened out and slowed their pace. A large, strangely shaped boulder loomed into view, and Rudy hurriedly pressed harder on the breaks, and they came to a stop, the front of the truck resting right at the base of the boulder.

For a moment the three sat panting, frozen with fear as their minds tried to fully register what had just happened.

"Uh…Rudy!" Snap cried in a panicked voice, and Rudy turned around to see that the entire pack of creatures that had been chasing them were still running after them down the slope.

With a panicked cry, Rudy backed the battered vehicle up, turning it around the boulder and heading out across the rocky valley in the opposite direction of their pursuers. The howls grew more frantic as the wolves gave chase, easily running down the slope as if it were even ground and then speeding across the valley.

They quickly caught up, and Penny and Snap ducked as far as they could against the seats as the spines from the creatures continued to strike the shield, some of them even going completely through it.

Rudy was doing his best to navigate their bulky vehicle around the lumps of rock scattering the ground, which wasn't easy as the mist soon became much thicker, choking the valley and obscuring their vision. Penny tried to focus ahead of them, but things only got more and more unclear. She was quickly distracted as another quill penetrated the shield and zipped by a fraction from the left side of her face. Rudy was having a hard time keeping ahead of the pack and avoiding obstacles at the same time; in the hazy mist, large objects seemed to jump out in front of them from nowhere.

Snap noticed one of the porcupine wolves moving up alongside the vehicle again, and moved back as several spines jutted into the side door next to him, piercing the metal easily. It was then that he noticed that this wolf looked to be one of the bigger ones; even its quills looked longer and tougher. He ducked down again as the wolf's spines pointed in his direction once more, but before it could fire, Rudy gave the truck a swift turn to avoid an oncoming boulder, and the creature leapt back to avoid being hit as the automobile swerved.

But as that one was slowed down, several more of its pack members were still keeping up their pace, and soon the three could hear them on either side of them, closing in. Penny tried to keep track of them, but in the thick mist the only thing she could see was the occasional flash of their eyes.

"Penny!" Snap's voice cried next to her. "Come on, draw something!"

"I…" she paused as the truck swerved again and both of them had to hold on to their seats. "The shields aren't going to do enough good!" she cried back, but nonetheless she picked up her piece of chalk and got ready to draw new, thicker ones around the backs and sides.

The truck suddenly jolted violently, causing Penny to drop the piece of chalk. She quickly scrambled for a new one, ignoring the noises around her until Snap suddenly gave a panicked cry. She looked up, and nearly screamed as well.

One of the larger porcupine wolves had managed to leap onto the back of the truck, and was glaring down at them menacingly. Its spines moved forward, and Penny and Snap could do nothing but try to shield their faces helplessly before the spines could be shot right through them, but the attack never came.

The truck turned wildly again, and the wolf's claws scrabbled for a grip as it managed to slip off, whimpering as its claws skidded across the covered back of the vehicle and its spikes, with missed aim, shot off at an upwards angle, missing the two huddled in the back seats but only narrowly avoiding Rudy. The wolf rolled off the back of the truck with a startled cry, tumbling a few times before coming to a halt and fading into the mist as it staggered upward with angry growls as they left it behind.

"All right, Penny, now draw somethin'!" Snap cried, turning to her with a panicked gaze.

Penny reached down to pick up another piece of chalk, but immediately she noticed something. "Wait!" she cried. "They're stopping."

Snap risked a quick look around the back shield to see that she was right; the wolves were fading away into the mist, staring back at them but standing still, no longer giving chase.

"Rudy, they're stopping!" Penny cried, seeing that Rudy was still frantically trying to avoid the boulders looming through the mist. "Slow down!"

Rudy immediately did as he was told, but he still kept the truck moving at a fairly fast rate, not sure the animals weren't still going to come chasing after them again. They waited for several minutes, but no attack came.

"We must have left their territory," Penny said with a relieved sigh, breaking the silence that had settled over them in the aftermath of the event.

"Yeah…" Rudy replied in a quiet voice. Even though the threat had gone, he couldn't stop shaking.

"So much for being safe!" Snap cried angrily. "What was Biclops thinkin' when he sent us to a place like this?"

"He couldn't have known about that!" Rudy replied. "He was trying to help us avoid the mists…and…"

"And those things nearly killed us! And how do we know somethin' else isn't about to jump out at us, huh?"

"I don't know!" Rudy replied, starting to feel panicked himself all over again as he glanced at the mist around him. "Look…we'll head for the top of the mountains. That should be safer!" Truthfully, he wasn't sure, but at the moment, anything seemed better than being stuck in that misty valley.

"Let's hope you're right about that," Snap muttered, seeming too exhausted to push the matter any further as he slumped back against the part of the seat that wasn't near any of the embedded porcupine wolf quills.

"Rudy," Penny said after a few moments, "perhaps you should draw some sort of protection around our vehicle, in case of any more attacks."

"Good idea," Rudy replied.

Stopping the truck, he picked up his piece of chalk and began drawing a thick outer shell for the vehicle, designing it so that it could retract to the sides if needed, so that they only would have to use it if anything threatened them again. Once he'd finished, he added a button near the steering wheel so that he could easily put up their new shield in the event of any danger. At the moment, he let it relax against the sides. He made a mental note to himself that if they encountered another place where there could be danger of falling rocks, that they would be sure to use the covering for protection. At the moment, however, there was no threat of that. They were in a valley with mountains sloping on either sides, but where they were standing, the only rocks were the massive boulders around them, and as far as he could tell they didn't seem to have gotten there from falling from the cliffs. If they had, he thought with a shudder, a shield on their truck wasn't going to protect them.

Pushing the thought from his mind, he got back in the front seat, peering ahead as well as he could through the mists for a way to the upper reaches of the mountain. He didn't want to risk flying, even if just to get higher up, after what Biclops had said about the flying animals lurking in the skies above them.

"Uh…Penny? Are you all right?" Snap asked from behind him. As he did so, Rudy turned to notice Penny reach around to feel where the spike had grazed her back and pull her hand away with a small smear of blood on her fingertips.

"Yeah," she replied, looking relieved that the wound wasn't worse, "it's just a scratch." Noticing that Rudy looked worried, she added, "I'm fine. The quill only grazed me."

"Speaking of which, we'd better get these things out," Snap stated, looking at the tips of the pointed spines sticking through the side door and shield.

Working together, they did their best to remove the spikes, particularly the ones sticking out of the back of the seats and through the doors. A few stuck in the back compartment containing their supplies remained firmly embedded no matter how hard they pulled, and in the end they simply gave up and left them there, eager to get out of the valley and reach higher ground.

To their relief, some of the mists cleared enough for them to better see the mountains around them, and Penny pointed out a gentle looking slope that led upward on one of them, and they headed that way, wary of any other dangers that they could stumble upon.

For the first part of their ascent, everything went smoothly. There were no signs of falling rocks or hostile creatures, and they could all breathe a sigh of relief. However, it wasn't long before they remembered why they had started their journey by going through the chasm in the first place.

The mist around them quickly grew to be incredibly thick, and they had to creep along at a snail's pace to avoid hitting any unseen boulders or falling over any sudden drops. Wary that they'd end up in a dangerous area without realizing it, Rudy had put up their protective shield, only to find that it limited visibility quite a lot and put it down again.

"Any idea how far up we are?" Snap asked after what Rudy was sure had been at least an hour of slowly and cautiously moving along.

"No idea," he replied, shaking his head.

"From the size of the mountain, I'd estimate that we're about halfway up," Penny answered. "Even with all the twists and turns we've been taking, we've been moving uphill at a fairly even pace."

"That's good," Rudy replied, though it was hard to feel positive when he had no idea what could be lurking around him. At least they hadn't encountered anything like the porcupine wolves since they'd begun climbing up the mountain slope, and that was reassuring.

He focused on the way ahead, squinting as he tried to see anything amidst the swirling blue shapes formed by the mist. Suddenly he realized that the front left wheel of the truck was very close to a steep edge, and as he tried to move it away, the other side thumped against what he soon realized was a wall of rock.

They had somehow ended up on a narrow ridge with a vertical cliff on one side and a sheer drop on the other. As some of the mist around them drifted, the three of them stared down over the edge, horrified.

Rudy wanted to go back, but there was no way to turn the vehicle around, and he certainly wasn't about to try and drive it backwards. The way ahead looked like a fairly even 'path,' so, more cautiously than ever, he kept going forward, and as they moved into an open area between two of the mountains, with another, much steeper valley down below, he realized that the mist had cleared somewhat to one side as if it liked to cling to the mountain face, leaving the open area above the valley to their left fairly clear. However, he remembered the other valley they'd stumbled upon being swamped with mist, and realized that the clarity might only be temporary.

Sitting up in her seat, Penny leaned toward him. "Maybe we should-"

She was cut off as a strange type of birdlike cry – only much louder than any bird they'd ever heard – filled the air. The three sat petrified as a large shape, about the size of the condor Penny had drawn when Skrawl had captured her and tried to get her to become a Chalk Queen, appeared through the mist. It did look to be some sort of massive bird, but as it came closer, they could see that it was also somewhat dragonish in appearance, clearly some artist's own fantasy creature. It sailed by without noticing them, and faded away into the mists again.

"Let's get outta here," Snap said urgently as soon as they were sure it had gone.

Now that he could see where he was going, Rudy quickly obliged, and they continued on as fast as they dared, keeping away from the rim of the ledge. They continued on for at least another half hour, and then, with relief, they noticed that up ahead, the path rejoined with a wider area that led up the mountain and away from the steep cliffs leading to the valley. They had been steadily climbing as they followed the ridge, and Rudy sincerely hoped they would be near the upper reaches and away from the worst part of the mist soon.

Without warning, a familiar sound reached their ears and the three of them froze, hearing the telltale signs of tumbling rocks. This time, it was close by. Rudy looked up frantically, trying to guess where they were coming from so he'd know whether to move out of the way or to stay put, but as he did so, one of them slammed into the ground a few yards in front of them, rolling off the side of the cliff and taking chunks off of the edge of it as it fell. Rudy frantically pushed the shield button and their protection sprung up around them, locking together at the top. They paused, hearing a few more crashes on either side of them and a few little ones as a couple small chunks of rock struck the roof.

They held still, listening as a few more pebbles pinged off of the truck's new roof, and then all was silent again. After a moment, Rudy focused his attention on the path ahead of them, noting that the mist had started to thicken around them again. Carefully he moved the vehicle forward, glad that the truck's wheels provided good traction against the uneven ground and he was able to keep far enough away from the edge.

They couldn't have gone more than a few feet before a deafening crash sounded behind them and they felt the entire cliff face tremble as more rocks came cascading down behind them, a few missing their automobile by mere inches.

In a panic, Rudy drove forward, following the curve of the mountain as he stayed as clear of the steep ledge as possible. He rounded a bend and suddenly found himself face to face with a steep incline leading upward to a much less narrow passage, and without hesitation he moved the truck in that direction, and they quickly began to climb higher as the tumbling of rocks faded into the distance behind them. Gradually they got up to a smooth, even stretch of ground, away from steep drops and without any towering cliffs to the side of them from which rocks could fall.

But they soon realized that the mist here was far worse than any of the places they had gone through before. It was mere moments before, even after Rudy put their shield down, they could hardly see _each other_ through the fog. Their surroundings were eerily dark; it was almost like being in some very strange part of NightZone.

"Well now what?" Snap cried. "We can't even see where we're goin'!"

Rudy cringed at the noise, afraid that something like the porcupine wolves was going to jump out at them again, but there was no sign of anything or anyone near, and after a moment he glanced around for the map. It had been thrown to the bottom of the seat next to him, and he hastily picked it up, looking over the drawings of the mountains carefully. However, there was no detail, nothing to indicate what the actual passage through the mountain range would be like, no specific route to take, just a series of simple blue outlines with the landmarks pointed out. He had no idea how they were going to find them and get on the right track.

He set it down again, feeling hopelessness beginning to override his previously determined thoughts. Biclops had had no idea what sort of dangers the mountains possessed other than the flying creatures and the mist, and the map told them only the bare details. They were practically on a wild goose chase, and a large part of him wanted to turn back and admit defeat, accept that the search was hopeless.

But he knew that he couldn't go back face the city dwelling Zoners, those who had been injured or lost their homes, or those who could be the next victims, without finding something, and this was the only real chance of discovering some sort of answer that he had at the moment, and he also knew that if he didn't give it his best shot, Zoners were going to die.

"We'll find some way," he replied. "We've got to be close to the top of the mountain range now. Maybe the mist will clear later. It's probably starting to get late anyway. We can camp here until morning and figure out what to do then."

Neither of the others argued; in fact, they seemed relieved at the chance to rest, and Penny opened up the back of the truck for their supplies as Rudy set about drawing them a tent. The three of them kept pausing to glance around nervously, but there was no sign of any hostile creatures lurking in the mists, and after a little while, they gradually relaxed, realizing with relief that by some stroke of luck they had stumbled upon a safe place.

Rudy finished drawing their tent, which, thanks to the magic chalk, was far more elaborate than any tent they could have brought from the Real World. He'd drawn it to be very large, with enough space for all their belongings and even a side compartment for their truck to keep it from getting wet due to all the mist. Instead of using the sleeping bags he and Penny had brought with them, he instead drew them all beds, and added some lights and a few other pieces of furniture to make it more comfortable. He knew that they would have to leave most of this behind, but he didn't mind having to redraw it the next night.

As soon as they moved everything inside, they settled down to sleep. Penny and Snap fell asleep almost instantly, but Rudy stayed awake, thinking back to what had happened before they set off. As he tried to keep calm enough to sleep, thoughts of it kept drifting into his head. He wondered if Penny had been wrong and if the termites were starting to swarm to other parts of ChalkZone already, or if the fans they'd drawn didn't work or ended up getting destroyed and the poisonous mist was spreading faster. He tried to block out these thoughts, but they kept coming. Eventually, however, he managed to drift off into a troubled sleep.

**ooo**

When Rudy woke up, the first thing he did was look through his backpack for the small clock he'd brought so he could see what time it was. Looking at it, he noticed the time was 7:42 AM, Saturday morning. He carefully put the clock back, not wanting to wake the others, feeling glad that it was morning and light enough for him to see it without having to turn on any of the lights he'd drawn in the tent, which might wake his friends.

Then he paused. _Wait a minute,_ he thought,_ ChalkZone doesn't get lighter…_

Confused, he made his way to the tent's main entrance and unzipped it, stepping out into an area much brighter than he remembered. And it was easy to see why. Somehow, during the night, all of the mist had drifted off, leaving the place he was standing in completely clear. The surrounding area still looked strange and foreign with its weird formations of jagged blue stone, but the sinister and eerie look was gone. He stood facing the area they had come from, and he could hardly see the slope they'd driven up the previous night due to the mist that was still there behind them. Looking around, he wondered if they were high enough that the mist cleared from time to time.

Circling the tent, he went to test his theories and see what the way ahead looked like. He could still see other tall peaks off to the side, and knew that they weren't in the highest reaches of the mountains yet, but perhaps the way ahead would be clear as well.

As he rounded the back of the tent and climbed over a small rise to look at the land beyond, what he saw took his breath away. Spread before him was a vast landscape of mountains, their blue hue looking beautiful under the clear DayZone sky as oddly shaped clouds scuttled above the area peacefully. The way ahead was almost completely clear of mist, and he grinned to himself as he realized the mist had to have only been affecting part of the mountain range, and they'd gotten through the worst of it. Without the haze, he could also see that the way in front of them was covered in lush plants and grasses in many places, quite unlike the bare rock of the areas they had been traveling through. He couldn't make out the details of the vegetation from his distance, but he could tell that it looked lush and exotic, spreading over the blue stones in a wide array of colors. A newfound hope came to him as he realized that, somewhere out there were the first landmarks he needed to find, and without the mist, he could easily do so.

Excited, he ran back to the front of the tent. He didn't like the thought of having to wake the others, but he was eager to get going and find the cave as soon as possible, and they needed to leave before the mist drifted over into the place they'd chosen for a camp again.

"Penny! Snap! Wake up! You have to see this!"

The two opened their eyes, looking at him in confusion before groggily following him out of the tent and marveling at the fact that the mist had completely cleared while they had been asleep.

"Well, that's certainly odd," Penny noted as she stared back at the mist-covered land they'd traveled through. "It seems the mist generally only stays in this area. Look over there," she pointed off to the side, showing the others that the mist seemed to form a uniform 'line' across the mountains, and very little of it drifted beyond that point. "For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to drift far beyond it. It would be fascinating to study if we ever came to this area again."

"Yeah, well let's hope we don't have to," Snap muttered, eyeing the line of mist with a much less enthralled gaze.

"You've gotta see this," Rudy told them, urging them to follow as he ran around the back of the tent and over the ridge. His friends caught up with him and they stopped just beside him, looking at the way ahead in awe.

"Well, that's more like it!" Snap cried, and Rudy nodded, feeling much more confident about their journey. Even the slopes seemed gentler; there were not many sudden drops and it looked like the going would be much easier. He breathed a sigh of relief. Though their journey had gotten off to a rough start, it looked like, at least for now, it was going to go a lot smoother.

**ooo**

After they had gotten ready and left their campsite, Rudy found that he had been right. The going was much easier on this terrain, the air around them was clear, and they were in no danger of rockslides, so there was no need for the barrier Rudy had drawn for the truck to be up. There was also no sign of any dangerous creatures; the ones they passed by all acted docile and paid them no heed. Snap found it easy to relax while the other two went back and forth over the map, studying the drawing of the odd looking temple that seemed to be their first major landmark.

"It should be easy to spot with these tall spires," Penny noted as she looked over it again. "It would be much easier to see from the air, but…" she trailed off, sighing as she realized that even here, the large flying creatures would still be a danger, and they had seen several of the territorial animals flying overhead, though they paid no attention to them on the ground. "Maybe if we could get up to one of the taller peaks, that would give us a safer place to look."

Rudy shielded his eyes against the glare as he peered ahead, seeing a place a little ways into the distance where a large hunk of rock jutted up to a higher level. From there, it would be easy to see if the temple they were looking for was close. "That one looks high enough," he responded. "But it'll be too hard to bring the truck up there. Maybe we could climb it ourselves. Or even fly up there. As long as we stay close to it, I don't think those weird animals are going to notice us wearing rocket shoes."

"Good idea," Penny replied. "From that vantage point we should be able to have a good view of the surrounding area."

After agreeing upon that, they headed toward the spire of rock, reaching it in about twenty minutes. They all looked up at it, and Rudy decided that he would go to the top alone in order to reduce the risk of attracting attention from any of the hostile flying creatures. Making sure the skies were clear, he stood at its base, next to a clump of bushes that seemed to be growing some kind of bizarre-looking candy, and peered upward.

Up close, the stone pillar looked a lot taller than he'd first realized. He shrugged, adding the finishing touches on his rocket shoes and lifted off toward the peak. As he steadily climbed higher, he made sure to keep close to the rock face so as to stay out of sight of any airborne animals. As he did so, he suddenly felt something grab his ankle, wrenching him downwards and he let out a cry of shock before realizing that what had caught him was some sort of strange wavy red vine. He tugged himself free, noting with a bit of alarm that the vine seemed to voluntarily retract its tendrils as it did so, then a moment later seemed harmless, lazily blowing in the wind. Rudy moved away from it, making a mental note to give those plants a wide berth.

He continued to ascend until he reached the peak, which was a small, flat, and somewhat slanted slab of stone with a few of the red vines growing at its edges. Avoiding them, Rudy landed in the center, peering out at the land beyond.

From here, he could see much more than he had previously been able to, though several of the mountain peaks blocked his view of places in the distance and he narrowed his eyes in frustration. He continued to look, his eyes following the curves of the different peaks and the lower areas, the land before him vast and mystifying. Then, he noticed it. Faintly in the distance, beyond two closely-set mountain peaks, was a single, tall and thin spire.

His eyes lighting up with hope, he ran to the edge of the rock to peer down at Penny and Snap. "I found it!" he cried, excitement filling his voice. "I found the first landmark!"

However, instead of looking happy, a horrified look came over their faces. Penny lifted her hand to point upwards. "Rudy-"

It was then Rudy noticed that a shadow had fallen over him. He barely had time to look up before something with massive talons descended rapidly toward him.

He had no time to think as he ducked and rolled over, hearing the talons clench together above his head and narrowly missing him. He turned his head to see that his attacker was some sort of massive red bird with flecks of multicolored plumage and a long, curved neck, like a swan. It had to have been lurking on one of the nearby peaks to have escaped his notice until it was too late. The bird stood over four times his height, and as he tried to scramble to his feet, he felt something wrap around his right arm and shoulder.

Looking downwards, he realized he'd backed into one of the red vines, and as he frantically tried to pull his drawing arm free, the strange creature stepped closer. Feeling a rush of panic, Rudy brought his foot up to the vine, igniting his rocket shoe and burning through it. The force propelled him back across the rock, but he wasted no time in getting to his feet as the bird's sharp beak slashed down toward him. It was a narrow miss, and he quickly leaped off the rock, zooming downwards toward his friends and away from the threat.

Rudy landed back in the truck, putting up the barrier just moments before he heard the claws of the animal slam against it. Though he knew that this creature wasn't big enough to lift up their vehicle, he glanced worriedly at the windows, knowing that it likely could easily break through them.

"You'd better step on it, Rudy!" Snap shouted as several of the bird's talons began to penetrate through the metal, and Rudy started the truck, driving forward and away from the small peak. The bird lost its grip, and their truck hurtled into a small field of swaying grass that was accompanied by an odd sort of hum, before Rudy turned and headed into a gap between two large rocks, stopping when they were far enough into the crevice to avoid a direct attack. Safe for the moment, the trio watched as the frustrated bird hovered next to it. It was too narrow to fly into, and it seemed reluctant to land on the ground below the peaks and try to walk inside, where it would be less able to attack. After a few more moments, it circled and flew away.

"What was that thing?" Rudy gasped after a moment.

"I have no idea," Snap replied, watching the animal as it lifted off toward one of the higher peaks.

Rudy knew that if Snap didn't know, that probably meant that there wasn't much information about these mountains that was widely known to the rest of ChalkZone, and he realized that it was no wonder Biclops hadn't known about the other dangers.

Climbing out of the truck and creeping forward, Rudy reached the edge of the gap between the rocks and peered out, telling the others that the coast was clear. "Well," he said as he got back into the vehicle, "I don't think I'll be trying that again. We'd better stay well away from the highest points." He paused. "At least I found out where the temple is!" he said with a small smile. "I saw one of its spires while I was up there!"

"Yeah," Penny replied, still looking startled, "at least we know where we're going now."

Carefully, and pausing to glance up at the sky every so often, Rudy edged the vehicle out of the crevice, but to his relief, no other flying creature made any move to attack them, and gradually, the three of them relaxed.

Now that Rudy had seen a direct route, they were able to make good time owing to the fact that the slopes were much gentler and easy to drive over. Before noon, they managed to reach the two peaks that had nearly hidden the temple's spire beyond them.

Heading into the chasm, they were relieved that there was no sign of any rock slides, and thankfully, no sign of porcupine wolves either. It was also pleasantly bright, as there was no mist and the gap between the rocks was certainly wide enough to let in plenty of light. The walls around them were lined with all types of interesting plants (which they were wary enough not to touch) and a few flying pencils flitted about near the peaks.

Once they had made it through the passage, they ended up on a fairly flat stretch of ground, in the center of which stood the tall spire of ornately carved stone that Rudy had seen from afar earlier. The strange thing, however, was that it was only a spire. The rest of the temple was gone.

Stopping the truck, Rudy and the others got out, Rudy saying that it would be a good time to take a short rest stop. As they curiously approached the tall structure, Penny glanced back and forth between it and the map. "The drawing on the map shows that it originally had five spires," she muttered as they approached its base. "This one must be all that's left of it."

She continued looking at the map, trying to estimate how accurate it was in terms of the distance between the different points marked on it while Rudy and Snap stood right below the pillar, looking up at it in awe. It had to be nearly as tall as the Chalk Mine, and the base was almost as wide around as Rudy's room. It didn't seem to serve any function that either of them could see; it was just a strange monument that looked worn down by age. As they looked around, they realized that whenever the temple had been destroyed, it must have been long ago, for they could only see a few bits of rubble out in the field beyond it. The rest of it must have been long since cleared away, but by whom, they could only guess.

"You know," said Penny behind them, turning their attention to her, "if this is all that remains of the temple, there might not be a lot left of the other landmarks. And I don't think this map is very accurate at all." Her brows met together with concern. "Here, the temple is drawn in relation to the mountains as if it should be further than this. Along with the lack of any sort of detail on it, this leads me to believe that the map must have been drawn from memory after the journey rather than made along the way with a focus on accuracy."

"Great," Rudy mumbled, sighing. The last thing they needed right now was for things to be made more difficult. "Well, at least we found it. That's a good start, right?"

"Yes, I suppose so," Penny replied, but he could tell that she was worried. It was easy to tell why; with an inaccurate and very outdated map, there was no way to tell if any of the landmarks still looked like they did when the map was drawn, and the Zoner who created it seemed to have slapped landmark drawings on it in somewhat relative locations without caring to explain where they actually were.

Snap walked over to Penny, looking at the map. "So…we won't know when we're supposed to come across those weird rocks?" he asked, looking at the map skeptically before turning to the others.

"I don't think so," Penny sighed. "But we do know it's somewhere between here and the river, at least a while away from either of them. Since we can't view the area from an airborne position, we'll just have to keep going in this direction and try to find them. If we miss them, we'll look for the river instead…" She pointed to the river drawing at the end of the mountain range. The place where they were supposed to cross was marked and in line with the drawing of the rocks, which then led to the next landmark, so it seemed like they did have to find the rocks first to know which direction to take, but they knew that if the map was inaccurate, they might only have to find the general area and cross the river somewhere near there.

"We'll figure it out," Rudy assured her. "If those rocks were marked on the map, they must be big and easy to spot. We'll find them."

They rested beside the remains of the temple for a short while, then continued on. By mid afternoon, they had still seen no sign of the cluster of rocks drawn on their map, and they were beginning to wonder if they had long since toppled over or broken apart by now and they'd missed the area where they'd once stood.

They were currently on a gently sloping rise covered in long grass. As they drove by, they noticed several pale brown animals grazing nearby, and in spite of her earlier worries, Penny excitedly brought out their book of ChalkZone wildlife which she had thought to bring along and began writing down notes. A few of the creatures, which looked like some sort of cross between a deer and a mountain goat, lifted their heads as they passed, and they noticed that their horns looked to be made of musical horns. Each of the animals' horns seemed to spiral in a different way, and as they watched, a few of them used their horns to trumpet at the others, each one producing a unique sound, and the herd started to gallop away.

Penny sighed with disappointment as she watched them run down the rise they had been driving upwards on. She set down the book, reminding herself that even if they weren't likely to be near the next landmark, it was still best to focus on the task of finding it at the moment. However, she couldn't help but watch as the strange creatures made their way to the bottom of the slope and turned to run into an area shadowed by a large outcrop of rock a little ways off…

And then she noticed something. Her eyes widening, she turned to the others. "Rudy! Turn back! I think I see something down there."

Surprised, Rudy halted their automobile, looking at her in surprise. "What is it?" he asked.

"There's something odd in the shadowed area by that cliff," she responded, pointing. From where they were, she didn't have a good view of it, but as she and the others peered closer, they could see the faint blue outlines of strangely shaped rocks amidst the shadows.

"That could be our next landmark!" Snap cried excitedly as he leaned over to get a better view. "Let's go and see!"

They headed down the rise and into the shadowy area, noting immediately that in the center of the clearing was a group of tall, oddly shaped smooth blue rocks that looked quite out of place compared to the flat stretch of grass around them and the jagged cliff beside them.

As they got out of the truck to examine the boulders closer, Penny began to feel troubled as she looked at the map. "This doesn't make sense," she said after a moment. "Why would the person who drew this map mark down a landmark that was so well hidden like this?"

"It must've been what he remembered from travellin' across here himself," Snap said with a shrug. "At least we found it."

"It looks different on here, too," she said as she looked up at him. "Of course, things could have changed, but…" She sighed. "I'm…worried we took a wrong turn somewhere back there."

"Well, this is the only place like this we've come across," Rudy replied, gesturing toward the towering rocks.

"Let me see the map," Snap stated, and when Penny shrugged and handed it to him, he held it out in front of him, turning to face the rocks. "These look nothin' alike!" he said after a moment, frustrated. "We did take a wrong turn!"

"Either that or we haven't found it yet," Rudy replied. "And…and this might be it!" He turned to Penny. "You did say it seemed like the person who drew this drew it from memory, didn't you?" Rudy asked.

"Yes," she replied, glancing up at the towering stone monoliths again, "but I'm just not sure we're in the right place. The mountain range is huge…we could have easily gotten turned around."

"Maybe," Rudy said after a moment, starting to feel doubtful himself as he took the map from Snap, "but still I think this could be it. Let's keep going until we reach the river. We can travel along that and see if we can see the next landmark from there. We'll still be fairly high up and the next place is a desert, so it should be pretty flat, and we can probably find out where to cross. We should have a good view of our route once we get to the end of the mountains."

"I guess you're right," Penny replied, smiling a little. "Whether this is actually the rock landmark or not, we still need to keep moving forward and find the river."

With this decided, they began to head back to the truck again. Rudy and Snap both looked fairly confident about their plan, but as she followed them, Penny couldn't help but feel that finding their path was going to be much harder than she'd thought. The map was obviously not as accurate as she'd hoped, and it seemed like they were either lost or going by landmarks that weren't obvious, and there was no way to tell for sure which it was.


	8. Imminent Hazard

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Eight – Imminent Hazard**

As they continued to travel into the evening, taking a somewhat wandering and uncertain path, Rudy was beginning to believe Penny's suspicions that they were heading in the wrong direction. He knew that Snap wasn't sure about the whole thing anymore, either. The three of them had kept an eye out for any other clusters of rocks, but had seen none, and while Rudy tried to tell himself that since the map was drawn from memory, they might have already found the right ones, he wasn't sure he believed it. They had still not reached the end of the mountain range or sighted the river yet but that wasn't what bothered him. He knew that with so little detail on the map, there really was no good way to tell exactly where they were supposed to go, even if the group of rocks they had found _were_ the ones marked down on the map. The map provided them with only the simplest guidance, and he was deeply worried that it wouldn't be enough. There wasn't time to look all over for the right landmarks; it was going to take them long enough to get to the cave as it was.

Knowing they didn't have much of a choice, they simply kept going, hoping to stumble onto the place they were searching for. Though the areas they traveled through were still free of mist, and no dangerous animals had threatened them since the bird Rudy had encountered while trying to look over the mountains from a higher vantage point, they still felt lost and discouraged, and were steadily growing to doubt that they were still making progress.

"I've been thinking about our next destination, Rudy," Penny began, looking at him worriedly, "I suppose the river should be easy to find if it moves along the entire outer edge of the mountain range. If it doesn't…we'll just have to keep looking until we find it. It shouldn't be hard to find the river, and we can see what it looks like and try to determine when to cross when we reach it."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Rudy replied, though the uneasy feeling did not leave him as he moved the vehicle up a steep rise. "I just hope we can get there before tonight." He didn't like the fact that he had now left the Zoners back near the city alone for an entire day, and he had no way of telling whether or not they were still safe. He knew that, logically, they should be, but that didn't stop him from worrying about it, and he wondered how much time they really had before Newland's creatures started ravaging the rest of ChalkZone. 'A few days' was a very vague estimate, but when he thought about it, he was almost completely certain they at least had that amount of time. Almost.

"Same here, Bucko," Snap replied, looking annoyed as he glanced at the map once again, then tossed it back on the seat and leaned back. "At this rate it's gonna take us a whole week to get there!"

"At least we'll be able to pick up speed once we're clear of the mountains," Penny reminded him.

"Yeah," Rudy interjected, "but it could still take a while to find all the landmarks. I want to get through the mountains as quickly as possible. We're going to need a lot of time to keep searching for the right places the rest of the way." Now that a day had already passed, he was growing increasingly determined to find the hidden cavern as soon as he could, and he greatly feared what would happen if they ran out of time before they had to be back at the end of the field trip.

"Look at that!" Snap cried, jolting Rudy from his thoughts. Peering ahead, Rudy instantly saw what had caught his friend's attention. Standing in the middle of a slope a ways ahead and to their left was a ring of tall, strangely shaped boulders. Staring, he peered back at the others in bewilderment. "I don't understand," he muttered aloud. "I thought-"

Penny immediately brought out the map to compare the shape of those rocks to the drawing, and a puzzled expression crossed her face as she realized that this bunch didn't look alike either. Scanning her gaze across the surrounding mountainside, she made out other dark shapes in the distance. "Rudy, there are lots of strangely shaped rocks out here."

"So you mean the ones on the map could be _any_ of these?" Rudy responded, dismayed. He stopped the truck so he could turn around and look at the map with the others.

"I guess so…" she replied. "But the ones drawn on the map must have been noticeable in some way." She lowered the map down and spread it over her lap, pointing to the drawing of the rock formation. "We should try to look for a group of rocks with these shapes in this arrangement. If we do that, we can probably-"

"But we don't have time to search the whole mountainside for them!" Rudy cried, the frustration in his voice much more evident now.

"Then why don't we forget it and just try lookin' for the river?" Snap asked. "I'm sure we can figure out what place we're supposed to cross."

"Yeah, good idea," Rudy replied quickly. "Let's do that."

"But wait a minute!" Penny cried, looking concerned. "We're supposed to find a place to cross that aligns with the group of rocks. The rocks might actually be relatively close to the river if we're meant to do this, so we really should try and look for them. We can find the river first and then try to locate the rock formation."

"But you don't know where the rocks are!" Rudy replied, growing increasingly agitated. "What if they aren't close to the river? We can't waste time doing this. This journey has taken up a lot of time already and we aren't anywhere near the cave yet!"

"I still think we should try," she replied. "If we don't find them, we could get lost further on, and then it'll be harder to-"

"All right, fine," Rudy muttered, turning back around. "But if we don't see them soon after we get there, we're crossing the river anyway."

Knowing there was no use arguing with him, Penny didn't reply and turned to look at the landscape as they drove by. She knew where Rudy was coming from, and she admitted that if they didn't find anything, his plan of action would be the best one to take. She just hoped he wouldn't rush past and miss something important when they could have found it. They had to be nearing the end of the Mist Mountains by now, and she hoped that her theory about the rocks being close the river was right. She had a bad feeling that they would end up very lost if they did not find the real landmark. They had no idea what the 'desert' area beyond the mountains was like, and if it was important to follow those landmarks to find their way, she knew that it wasn't wise to simply pass one. She knew that Rudy was getting worried about them taking too long, but she was more concerned about whether or not they were on the right path, and she thought that taking a little longer to make sure that they were would be worth it in the end. She glanced at Snap, knowing that he had sided with Rudy. She thought about discussing it with him, but decided not to, as she didn't want to make Rudy even more worried by bringing the subject up again. She figured that they would work out what to do when they reached the river.

They traveled on for the next hour or so until they realized, with great relief, that up ahead, the mountain peaks that lay in front of them seemed to be the last. Beyond them, they could see open sky, and with great relief, they realized that they were nearing the end of the Mist Mountains at last.

Rudy wondered what the desert-like area on the map was actually going to look like as he found the easiest slope to climb and they headed upward, knowing that once they reached the top, they'd be able to see the land beyond and find out for sure. He was wary of more of the flying creatures coming to attack them, but with the higher peaks on either side of them, he felt a bit safer. He wondered if, once they reached the top, they would be able to see where the river was from that height, and maybe even the rocks Penny had been talking about. He just hoped that once they left the mountains, the journey would go a lot faster, and they could make up for the time they'd spent having to travel so slowly across their first main obstacle.

As they reached the top of the ridge, however, the sight that greeted them in the land down below was not what they had been expecting at all. It was indeed the end of the Mist Mountains' range, and what lay before them did look like a wide expanse of land, but it was no longer a desert, if it had ever been. It was an icy cold tundra, or some sort of strange ChalkZone equivalent. The land looked to be entirely flat, like a gigantic sheet of ice, but they could tell that the flat surface was made up of the joined upper sections of massive outcrops of icy stone that littered the entire plain, creating a vast sort of maze. There was no landmark in sight, and he realized that it must be somewhere quite far out there, and he wondered if it even mattered where they crossed the river at all; it would be extremely hard to find the next landmark either way. Looking at the others, he could see that they were just as astounded and surprised, and Rudy wondered if this was an example of what Biclops had said about the land changing over a long time. Even with a plane or a helicopter, he didn't think it would be easy to spot anything in there; the top of the rocky outcrops interconnected so often that they formed almost an entire roof. His spirits plummeted as he realized that traveling that vast expanse could take even longer than the day they'd already spent traveling, and he felt nearly ready to panic.

"Rudy," Penny began, causing him to momentarily drag his eyes away from their next destination, "look over there. I think_…that's_ supposed to be the river."

Rudy and Snap looked away from the ice and saw that there was indeed a river flowing near the base of the mountains, but there wasn't just one. There were multiple rivers, and strangely, they crossed over each other at places, and at these spots, one would move upwards over the other in an arch, completely defying gravity, before plunging back down once it passed over the other river. It seemed utterly bizarre, and even Snap looked astonished as he and Rudy stared in awe.

But that wasn't what Penny was pointing at. The others quickly followed her gaze, and it was easy to see what had caught her attention. Quite a ways off from where they were was a single, lone mountain peak. It was quite small compared to the other mountains, but what was strange about it was that it was riddled with large caves, and out of them flowed the rivers. Some of them, they noticed with astonishment, seemed to defy gravity in a much more spectacular way than the small arches, twisting upward through the sky before plummeting toward the ground and snaking around the base of the mountains. Others formed strange swerving patterns in midair, interlacing and creating bizarre rainbow patterns in the sky under the DayZone light. Almost all the rivers flowed around the mountain bases, and a few even reached into the ice plateau. They also noticed, with a feeling much closer to dread than astonishment, that the mountain seemed to be a gathering spot for many of the flying creatures that had threatened the skies during their journey through the mountains, and Rudy made a note to himself to avoid getting too close as he watched a few of them flying around the twisting water near the peak.

"I don't understand," Penny murmured in astonishment, "why wouldn't this be on the map, unless…it was drawn afterward…which means that the river we'd be looking for can't be one of the ones coming out of the mountain." She glanced at the mountain again, and to her astonishment, one of the rivers stopped flowing from a cave, and after a moment, an empty cave began spewing massive amounts of water, creating a river that moved in a completely new direction. "It's absolutely fascinating though. If we could get a closer look on the way back…"

'_The way back…'_ Rudy thought as Penny continued to talk about the rivers in fascination. He was still worried that they wouldn't have time to go back and forth from the cave before Monday night. At least they knew more about the Mist Mountains, though, but it wouldn't make the journey all that much shorter. They'd probably need most of Monday to get back, and that meant that…somehow, they needed to get to the cave and back here by Monday morning, and that would probably mean they would have to travel through the night, too. "Well, I can't see where all the rivers are coming from," he said after a moment, "but most of them go in the same direction, and the map says we have to get over there anyway…" He pointed to the icy maze. "So I guess we'll just have to head in that direction and find the way ourselves if we can't find the rocks."

"I guess so," Penny sighed, taking her eyes off the river mountain and looking instead at the towering ice plain. She shuddered, already imagining how cold it would be once they were in there. In ChalkZone, it was possible for the climate to change drastically from one area to the next, even if they were right next to each other, and she dreaded to find out what it was like traveling through those passages.

"Well, we'd better hurry up then," Snap muttered, casting a nervous glance at the flying monsters as they clustered around the river mountain.

To Rudy's relief, the descent down the mountain slope was easy and they made it down quickly. Now that they were closer to ground level, they could see that the ice maze towered overhead much taller than it had looked when they were up on the mountain, and that the insides of the crevices looked completely dark. Even from across the strange rivers, they could see that the ice looked forbidding and dangerous.

As he glanced over the arching forms of ice, Rudy thought that it looked even less stable than the rocks had been on their journey through the first part of the Mist Mountains. He also knew that the others were thinking the same thing as they looked at it.

"I say we just fly over the top of it," Snap stated as the three of them stared ahead at their new destination. "We can pick up looking for the landmarks when we reach the end."

"I don't know," said Penny uncertainly, seeming conflicted. "That ice wasn't on the map, so the place must have frozen over somehow after the map was made. We don't know how far on it goes, or how much of our route it takes up. If we ignore the landmarks here, we might get lost. However…" She lifted her hand above her eyes to block out the sunlight as she peered again at the towering white cliffs. "…We may be able to walk or fly slowly over the top and drop into the crevices once in a while to check the area beneath it. It would be easier than going through the maze, and there's bound to be a lot of cracks in the top."

"That sounds like a plan," Rudy replied, feeling a bit relieved. He didn't want to go into those dark passages for any longer than he had to, and going into one to look around every once in a while seemed much safer than trying to navigate through the maze with their vehicle. "Well, there's no sign of those funny rocks anywhere. We'd better find a good place to cross the rivers," he told the others, starting to drive the truck toward them.

"All right," Penny sighed. Though she had wanted to find the rocks, it was clear from looking at the mountain slope that there were none in this area, and since they'd discovered how dramatically the landscapes had changed, she realized there wasn't much they could do other than carry on. She still didn't feel quite right about it, but at this point, they didn't have a choice.

Rudy was formulating a plan in his mind to draw a device that would safely float their vehicle to the other side, as he didn't want to risk flying with all those dangerous creatures on the mountain, even if they weren't very close at the moment, and he was sure he wouldn't feel safe doing so until they were well out onto the ice. When they got closer to the rivers, however, it was apparent that Rudy's floatation device plan was not going to work.

From far away, he hadn't noticed it, but up close it was obvious to all three of them that there was no way the rivers could be crossed safely. They were almost impossibly fast, ripping through the area and carrying anything that got caught in them off into the distance at incredible speeds. He could see several series of rapids in parts of some of them, and he stopped, staring in disbelief.

"We'll have to go around," he told the others, steering their vehicle away and traveling along the base of the mountains, looking for a place that was clear to pass through.

As the three of them kept a look out for a safe place to cross over to the ice maze, Penny noticed that, strangely, she couldn't see many ChalkZone creatures here. The only ones she noticed, apart from the big winged ones by the mountains, were a few flying pencils. She started to get a bad feeling about the place, and looked toward the towering ice cliffs nervously.

"Hey, look over there!" Snap cried, pointing ahead to a place where a river, instead of continuing to flow straight, doubled back on itself and formed a sharp turn from which it headed to the base of the ice maze, leaving an open space to travel through, a direct path to the ice.

"Good job, Snap!" Rudy cried as he drove them toward it, grateful that there was at least an opening in the rivers, and they wouldn't have to risk attack from the territorial flying animals. Even if there wasn't much chance of them attacking them so close to the ground (though Rudy was unsure of even that), it wasn't something he wanted to risk.

As they passed by the strange looping river, Rudy gave it a wide berth, noting how powerful it was. The river remained well out of their way as they passed it, and they carried on through an open field, looking at the rivers behind them one last time before turning ahead to the icy cliffs in front of them.

They towered overhead, and as they got closer, they could see some of the dark, winding tunnels and even hear the faint clinking of falling ice chunks of the now fainter sound of the rivers. Some parts of the 'roof' near the edge looked thin and unstable, and Rudy realized that it could be easy for one of them to fall through.

"If we're going to have to walk along the top for a while, we'd better be careful," Rudy told the others as they approached, dipping into a dry riverbed that rested near the first outer fringes of the ice. "I'm not sure if it'll be safe enough to fly yet with those things around." He glanced back toward the mountain and its gathering of flying animals.

Then, so suddenly it took him a moment to register it, a roaring sound reached his ears. He heard one of the others shout out his name and he whirled around, only to see a massive wall of water heading straight toward them. There was no time to think, to grab his magic chalk, or even to wonder what was happening. In a split second, the water had slammed into their vehicle.

Rudy was nearly thrown overboard as the truck tilted on its side, nearly toppling over before righting itself, but even then it was all he could do to hold on as the vehicle moved up and down and everything around him surged by, the blue cliffs of ice a mere blur as he watched in terror before shutting his eyes when a wave of water washed over the side of the truck, drenching him.

Somewhere in the middle of his shock and panic, the thought that he needed to get the magic chalk came clearly to his mind above everything else. What he was going to try to draw, he had no idea, no idea if he even _could_ draw anything while in the grip of the massive torrent, but he knew that he needed to have it.

Though as strong as that thought was, he first took the chance to look over the seat to see that Penny and Snap were still inside. To his relief they were, but he knew they were too busy trying to hold on to be able to help him at the moment. The entire vehicle was rocking so violently that it was hard for him to see much of anything, but by some miracle, when he reached out, his hand fell on the piece of magic chalk he'd left on the seat beside him. Gripping it tightly, he tried to think frantically, and the thought that came to him first was something that could fly. Dangerous creatures or not, it was the only thing he could come up with.

Still holding on to the truck with his other hand, he tried to make a few strokes in the air, noticing with dismay that there was no way he could draw anything with the vehicle bucking so wildly, and as he realized this, a group of rapids up ahead caught his eye. Penny and Snap had seen it too, and Penny wildly began gathering a few of their belongings – the map, her watch, her glasses – and shoved them into her backpack along with their Flora and Fauna of ChalkZone book, and then, realizing something, looked frantically around for the bag of magic chalk.

She did not have time to locate it, for merely seconds later they hit the rapids, and all three of them, along with all the loose belongings they had in the front of the truck were launched into the river.

For a moment all Rudy could see was darkness as he fought to reach air, and then his head broke the surface and he gasped for breath, panic rushing through him as he saw nothing around him but thrashing water, hurling him along at an incredible speed. There was no sign of the truck or his friends. He remembered the chalk, but as he pulled his hand up, it gripped nothing but water. His magic chalk had been wrenched away from him when he'd fallen into the torrent.

He didn't know where he was. Amidst the swirling white foam, he couldn't see the other rivers, the shore, the mountains, _anything_! He fought to stay afloat, looking desperately for anything that could indicate he was near a shore so that maybe he could find something to grab onto. The river roared in his ears as he tried to make sense of his surroundings.

Suddenly a massive white wall loomed in front of him, and he realized the newly formed river path flowed right next to a part of the ice cliffs, the sides of the river thrashing violently against it as it passed. Helplessly, he watched as the river carried him straight toward it, and he closed his eyes, knowing that he was sure to be dashed against the wall, hoping it would be over quickly, when suddenly the current wrenched him in another direction. He opened his eyes, watching as the cliffs sailed away from him and faded into the white spray of the water around him.

Suddenly he noticed someone else in the water nearby, and though he only had a brief glimpse, it was enough to realize that it was Snap. In a panic, he struck out towards him, moving as well as he could against the current, but all he could see ahead of him now was thrashing water. Nevertheless, he kept going, hoping against hope to find his friend in the middle of the torrent. Just when his strength was about to give out, the current pulled him further ahead and he suddenly found himself right by Snap's side.

Reaching out, he grabbed his friend's arm, trying to keep them from being separated as he frantically wondered what to do. All of a sudden the roar of the river became much louder, and as they glanced around, the area in front of them suddenly cleared, and they both realized they were staring down the edge of a waterfall.

The two of them stared wide-eyed in terror, knowing there was nothing they could do to prevent themselves from going over. They could only close their eyes and brace themselves as they neared the edge. A moment later, they were both thrown over, and Rudy felt a surge of panic as he fell, only to hit the water a second later. Coming up for air quickly, shocked that he hadn't fallen far, he saw something large and dark to the side of him and reached out for it, managing to grab onto what he realized was a spur of rock near the waterfall's base. Seeing Snap, he quickly reached out and pulled him toward it as well, panting as he tried to climb higher up the rock and help his friend up as well.

Luckily, although it was wet, the outcrop of stone was easy to grip and not smooth enough to be slippery, and the two soon managed to cling onto it half in and half out of the water, but climbing any higher seemed to be impossible; the rock was too steep. And now that Rudy was above the worst of the thrashing water, he could see the shore, but it was too far away to jump, and letting go of the rock would only ensure that they wouldn't reach it.

As Rudy gripped the stone tightly, feeling the spray of the water lash against him harshly and realizing that he or Snap could lose their grip at any moment, he glanced up at the newly-made waterfall, seeing that it couldn't have been higher than twelve feet. He felt a bit of relief before a sudden shadow appeared over them from the top of the waterfall, and something big loomed over the edge.

It was their truck, and for a split second the two boys could only stare in shock as it seemed to hang over the edge above them, almost as if suspended in midair. Then it began to fall, and the two ducked their heads down, hearing a deafening crash as the vehicle struck the rock they were clinging to desperately, missing their heads by mere inches. Then, as if in slow motion, it turned and rolled off of it, crashing into the water in front of them and sending up a spray that drenched the two all over again. Rudy watched as the truck quickly began to be carried away, his heart racing as he thought of what could have happened had they let go of the rock or climbed higher. Then he wondered where Penny was, and a new panic took hold of him.

He heard Snap's cry as the Zoner lost his grip and was wrenched away from the rock, and almost as soon as Rudy heard it, his friend was lost among the writhing water, carried along with the truck around a bend further on, leaving Rudy unable to see him anymore. Terror-stricken, Rudy didn't know what to do. He wanted to go in the water after him, but how could he help Snap then? He wondered if it was best to somehow…_somehow_ try to get to the shore, or whether his initial instinct to go after him was right and he was delaying too long. His internal dispute did not last long, however, for soon he too was torn away from the rock and sent hurtling down the river again.

He struggled wildly, hoping to be able to come across Snap or Penny and somehow find a place where they could drag themselves to the shore, but again his vision was severely limited, and he had no idea if his friends were even near him anymore. However, as he was carried on, he realized the water was soon not thrashing him quite as much, and he knew that it must have started to reach a very flat and level part of the riverbed.

As the river became somewhat smoother, he realized that something was moving along in the current beside him, and for a brief instant he glanced at it, realizing that it was one of the doors to their vehicle. Suddenly the river pulled him under, and Rudy panicked as he realized he could see only swirling blackness. Soon desperately needing to breathe, he tried to reach the surface, but he had no idea if he was swimming upward or down, and the water thrashed him around so much he didn't know if he could make it there if he knew.

To his immense relief, his head soon broke the surface again and he struggled to stay above water, glancing left and right for his friends as he tried to keep from going under. It was proving to be harder than he'd thought, and more than once he swallowed some of the water as he tried to take a breath, wondering how long he could struggle in the current.

He then noticed another object float past near him, and he grabbed it, realizing he could use it to stay afloat as the river carried him on. It was part of one of the seats from their truck, and luckily it seemed to float quite well, so, knowing he was utterly helpless, he clung to it, closing his eyes as the water tossed him, fearful of being dragged under or dashed against a rock.

He wasn't sure how long he held on, but gradually, the river began to calm, though it still moved along at a fast pace, too fast for him to try and reach the shore. He looked up, noticing that now that the river was much smoother, he could see more around him. The area he was in now looked nothing like the one they'd started from, but he hardly cared, for now that the river was smoother, he had thought he had caught sight of Penny up ahead.

However, it was only briefly, and then he had to struggle to hold onto the piece of the seat he'd been clinging too. Penny had been far ahead of him, and for a moment he struggled to swim forward, but quickly grew too exhausted and had to admit that, at the moment, there was no way to reach her. He simply had to wait until the current carried him closer or they could get to shore.

He wasn't sure how long he was drifting there, but he gradually realized that it was darker, and he soon noticed that the river had carried him somewhere with several thick trees that blocked out the sunlight. There were many overhanging branches, but although he tried, he could not grab on to any, and he was carried past them before he could use them to climb out of the water.

A little while later, however, he realized that the river was slowing down. He had also drifted closer to the shore than before; either that or the river wasn't as wide in this place, which seemed to be the case as he looked to the other side, and let go of the car piece and paddled to shore, drifting a short distance before he managed to move himself into shallow water and out of the pull of the current.

Rudy slowly crawled up the shallow incline at the edge of the river, collapsing on the muddy bank after he did so. He was too exhausted to move further and simply lay there, letting the river water wash back and forth over him. He had no idea how far he had drifted, and he slowly opened his eyes, taking in his surroundings with hazy vision.

The sight that greeted him was a mass of strange, towering twisted trees, and overgrown clumps of vegetation. Even just a few yards ahead of him, the canopy of leaves made everything fade into a darkness his vision could not penetrate. A strange smell also reached him, and as his vision adjusted and he saw everything more clearly, he realized he was in the middle of a swamp.

'_A swamp?'_ he thought, starting to feel dread all over again. _'There was no swamp on the map! Where…where am I?'_ His heart started to race as he looked around, painfully pushing himself upright and staring across the river at the other bank. More swamp. Panic flashed through him. _'What is this place?'_

As he lay there, weakly propping himself up with his arms, his thoughts flashed back to Penny and Snap. They would have drifted into the swamp too, but he had no way of knowing if they'd gotten out. Worriedly, he got to his feet, looking up and down the river. "Snap! Penny!" he cried, but nothing met his ears but the sound of rushing water and the faint noises of strange chalk creatures moving around in the dark.

Guessing that his friends would be downstream, he broke into a run, as fast as he could in his weakened state, keeping a nervous eye on the river. He raced along the side of the bank, climbing over a small hill that appeared in his path and then skidding down the slippery mud to the bottom, when he saw something that filled him with relief.

"Penny! Snap!" he cried, running faster as he noticed them both up ahead, Penny helping Snap out of the water.

Both of them looked up at him in relieved surprise, and a few moments later he reached them, panting as he tried to catch his breath, but greatly reassured to have found them. After they rested for a few minutes, briefly explaining to each other how they had found their way out of the river, Rudy looked at the others worriedly. "Is anyone hurt?" he asked.

"Not badly, at least," Penny sighed, and Rudy was relieved as he realized she was right. They had all sustained several minor injuries, but no one had been hurt seriously. "I'm just not sure how we're going to get back," Penny continued after a moment. "Those rivers could have taken us _anywhere_."

Rudy knew that she was right. He had no idea how far they were from the Mist Mountains or even from what direction they had arrived here from; the river had turned so much. One thing was for sure, and that was that they were certainly far away from the ice cliffs they were supposed to be traveling through.

"Rudy," Snap began, limping over to him, "ya gotta get us outta here! You still have your magic chalk?"

Rudy sadly looked down, remembering how he had found it missing after he landed in the river. "No…" he said, shaking his head. He could tell from the looks of the others that they were much more frightened about the situation now that the full reality dawned on them.

Penny had been clutching both the backpack she'd grabbed and her glasses, and Snap asked her to open it, telling her that there could be a piece of magic chalk there. He and Rudy watched as she pulled out three small water bottles, her watch, a flashlight that when she tried to turn it on, did not work, and then…the map. More accurately, what remained of it. As soon as Penny pulled it out, the sodden page tore. Penny examined the piece she still held in her hand, seeing that ink had run, making the map completely unreadable. "Don't worry," she told them shakily, tossing the rest of it out of the backpack, "I've memorized it. I still know the way." Rudy and Snap glanced at each other; it certainly wasn't the_ map_ they were worried about. She continued to look through the backpack, finding only a few small bags of ruined food. There was no magic chalk at all. "I'm sorry," she told the others as she looked up, holding the empty backpack, "I tried to grab the magic chalk bag, but-"

"It's okay," Rudy sighed. "It's not your fault." He turned his gaze to the river. "Come on," he told the others, starting to head off further downstream, "we've got to see if any other debris ended up here."

Knowing that finding any remains of the magic chalk stash they had brought with them was of utmost importance at the moment, Penny and Snap raced after him as he took off downriver. After a short while, they saw a few floating remains of the truck, but when they fished them ashore with long sticks, they could easily see that they were useless. Out of sheer desperation, they kept going, and were on the verge of giving up when they suddenly came upon the wreckage of their truck lodged against a massive overhanging swamp tree.

They could tell at once that even if they had a way of retrieving it from the river, the truck was too badly damaged to be of any use. However, they knew that although the front looked empty, and their bag of magic chalk would be long gone, there were still some pieces in the back. The only problem was, the truck was on the other bank, and although the river was not as violent here, it was certainly still strong enough to sweep their feet out from under them if they tried to cross.

Rudy hesitated, knowing that they needed to get to their vehicle in order to retrieve the supplies from the back, but he didn't know how safe it would be to try and cross the river. He looked to the others uncertainly, wondering if they had any ideas.

To his relief, Snap seemed to realize something immediately. "We could use that!" he cried, pointing, and the other two followed his gaze to see a long vine draped over a tree near the one that held their broken automobile.

Looking around, Rudy spotted a long stick and broke it off of its branch, then ran into the shallowest part of the river, where he was sure he wouldn't be swept away easily. He carefully hooked the end of the stick around the vine where it hung on the part of the branch furthest over the water, and carefully pulled it back to him.

Taking the vine in his hands, he pulled on it, finding that it seemed firmly wrapped around the tree, and turned back to the others. "I'll cross over to the other side," he told them, feeling much more confident about the idea now that he had the vine to hold onto. "Tie this to one of the other trees." He handed the vine to Penny, who quickly did as he had suggested.

Once the vine was secure, Rudy edged out into the rushing water, carefully holding on to it. As soon as he reached a place where the water was deeper, he lost his balance and stumbled, still gripping his makeshift rope as he fought to regain his balance. Once he did, he looked back at the shore, where Penny and Snap were watching him worriedly. "Come on, Bucko, you can do it!" Snap cried from the riverbank.

Rudy kept going, quickly reaching a place that was too deep for him to stand. He kept his grip on the vine, using it to pull himself along, until it neared the tree. Here, the vine slanted upward too much for him to use it to help him cross, so he let go and let the river sweep him toward the damaged truck, then gripped the side of it as he was swept by, hauling himself out of the water and onto the shore.

Now that he had a much closer look at it, he could see that it was even more damaged than he had thought, and the back compartment was opened, a section of the covering completely torn off. Rudy lifted what remained of it, looking around before finding only his backpack, one container of food, and their sleeping bags, both of which looked damaged. He pulled them out, thinking with relief that if their sleeping bags and backpacks _had_ been lost, their parents might have ended up calling the school to look for them, and then there would be trouble if the teachers responded by telling them they weren't on the field trip at all. The other containers had been chalk ones he'd drawn himself, like the food container he held as he looked at the remains of their supplies.

He wasn't sure if his backpack had any magic chalk, but before he looked, he decided to check the truck once again to make sure that there was nothing left inside it. He even moved into the water again to search the front compartment, but there was no sign of anything. Worried, he waded back to shore and opened his backpack, knowing it was the one place that would still have his magic chalk if there was any left. He desperately searched through it, only to find nothing but some soiled food and his now soaked Vampire Cannibals comic book.

He stared at the items in his hands in disbelief. This stuff was useless; why hadn't he put more magic chalk in the backpack? He thought he had, but he must have put the extra few pieces in some other container. He had thought it smarter to have most of it closer to him in the front of the vehicle, but now that was gone. He opened the food container, but there wasn't any there either.

He thought back to what he'd done with the magic chalk, and he couldn't remember where he'd put some in the back of the truck. Wherever he had, it was gone now, and he didn't even have anything useful in his backpack. Angrily, he stood up and hurled the comic book into the trees, then dropped the ruined food to the ground.

"Rudy?" he heard Penny's voice call to him from the other bank.

"There's no magic chalk!" he yelled back after a moment. "I searched everywhere!" He could tell that the others were greatly alarmed, but at the moment he couldn't bring himself to meet their eyes. He slowly pulled the backpack and sleeping bags to the edge of the river before opening the one last case of food again. Most of it was soaked and ruined like the food he'd stashed in his backpack, but there were a few cans that were not badly damaged, and he kept those and threw out the rest, putting the case in his backpack. He knew that before they did anything else, he needed to get their remaining supplies across the river fast, because they were still going to have to search downstream for the rest of their supplies, and he knew the others realized that too.

He put the backpack over his shoulders and looked hesitantly at the sleeping bags. "Rudy, can you find another vine?" Penny yelled across to him, understanding his dilemma, and he looked around, not seeing any that looked as suitable as the one he'd used to cross the river. However, he did notice a couple of odd spindly plants that had long tendrils, and he used one of those to tie the sleeping bags together, and then tie them around his waist so he wouldn't have to hold onto them on the way to the other side.

He managed to safely make it across without much of a problem, and reached the other bank where his friends were waiting. They left the backpacks and sleeping bags there and hurried off, scanning the river for any signs of the remains of their supplies. They noticed a few broken pieces of the truck, but nothing that would be useful to them.

They kept going, and soon they reached a place where they knew their search would have to come to an end. They were standing at the side of a cliff at the edge of the swamp that led into some sort of bizarre valley. The cliff itself was completely vertical, and the river poured over the edge to weave its way through the trees far down below. They stared in shock, stepping back away from the edge. The three looked at each other, each wondering the same thing.

"How're we gonna find the cave and get back?" Snap asked, putting into words what they were all thinking.

"I'm not sure…we'll need to find help," Penny responded shakily. Seeming to want something to do as she thought, she began heading the way they'd come, back toward their supplies.

"Where are we gonna find someone who can help us?" Rudy asked, his voice shaking as he and Snap followed her. He shivered a bit as he tried to catch up. The swamp was oddly cold, not like he'd imagined swamps would be in the Real World, and being soaked from his trip through the river only made it worse.

"Maybe we can follow the river back to the mountains," Penny replied, "Someone might be there, and I'm not sure what else-"

"We can't go back through those mountains without the truck!" Rudy replied. "Even if we made it we'd never get back by Monday night. And…and you saw there was no one there but a few pencils and those…monster things." He shuddered as he remembered the bird that had attacked him. He then thought about what would happen if they didn't show up on Monday when the field trip bus returned, and what their parents would think when the teachers confirmed that they hadn't even been there in the first place.

Penny sighed, knowing that Rudy was right. "I know," she said, "but I don't know what else we could do…except for maybe try to find our way out of this swamp and to some sort of civilization."

"It's better than goin' back near those rivers," Snap replied. "Maybe someone lives around here." Before the others could reply, he turned around toward the swamp trees, cupping his hands to his mouth as he yelled, "Hey! Is anyone there! We need help!"

The three waited for a while, but nothing greeted them but the unfamiliar sounds of the swamp. "Snap, I don't think there's anyone who can help us around here," Penny said sadly. "I think if we found our way out of the swamp, we could find someone…" she paused, for they had reached the spot where their truck was lodged against the tree on the other bank, as well as the place they'd left their gear, but their supplies were now gone.

"What?" Rudy cried in shock. "Where's all our stuff?" He ran over to the area he had left the items at, easily seeing the tracks in the mud where he had dragged the remains of their belongings ashore. Panicked, he looked through the trees hesitantly, not sure where whoever would have taken them had gone.

In near-darkness, they could hardly see the tracks in the mud left by whoever had dragged their supplies away, and often they had to stop and find the trail again. Regardless, they followed the tracks as quickly as they could, until they suddenly stumbled upon a medium-sized clearing.

Upon entering it, they realized two things. One was that it was still strangely dark, and the massive trees overhead continued to block out most of the light despite the open area in front of them, and two, that their belongings were lying in the center of it, surrounded by a few various swamp-dwelling creatures.

One of them, a brownish green cat that looked to have smooth scales rather than fur, whirled around to look at them. This caught the attention of the animal's companions, a small alligator, a lizard, and a brightly colored bird with a large beak that looked quite out of place in the middle of a swamp.

"Uh…hello?" Rudy said hesitantly, deciding it was best to act friendly in case the animals got angry or attacked him, and maybe if he was nice they'd give him back the stuff once they realized it was theirs. "Those belong to us," he stated, pointing to the sleeping bags and backpacks, which the animals had previously been examining curiously. "Could you…give them back?"

The four looked at each other, seeming completely baffled, but not at all looking guilty or worried at the arrival of Rudy and his friends. After a moment, the green cat shrugged. "Sure, take it!" he muttered, tossing Penny's backpack to Rudy with surprising ease, then pushing the other three items over to him as well. The cat then turned around and faced his friends as if Rudy wasn't even there.

Confused, Snap narrowed his eyes. "Well, if you didn't want 'em, what didya take 'em for in the first place?"

Instead of the cat answering him, the bird angrily fluttered its small wings, lifting a few feet into the air. "We didn't agree they could have that stuff!" he squawked to his companions. "Make them give it back!"

"Why?" the cat demanded. "It was useless! You said so yourself!"

"So?" the bird screeched back. "We shouldn't just give stuff that _we_ find to anyone who asks!"

The two continued to bicker while Rudy and the others looked on in confusion, and after a moment, the lizard and alligator joined in. Rudy glanced at his friends nervously, unsure whether they should leave quickly or try to ask for directions. He didn't expect to get any help out of these creatures, but maybe they knew the way out.

Penny, obviously thinking the same things, decided on the latter. Stepping forward, she walked into the clearing until she was halfway between the line of trees and the squabbling animals. "Excuse me!" she cried, having to repeat the phrase a few times before getting their attention. Once she did, they abruptly stopped their argument, apparently finding the stranger a bit more interesting. "We're lost," she quickly explained, "and we don't know anything about the area. We'd be very grateful if you could show us the way out of this swamp, or maybe even back to ChalkZone City, or-"

"What makes you think we'd give you any directions?" the bird cried angrily, fluttering upward to land on a branch behind her. "You've done nothing but steal from us!"

"How is it stealing if it was OUR stuff to begin with?" Snap cried, glaring up at him and crossing his arms.

"Look," Rudy interrupted, stepping underneath the branch the bird was resting on, "we just need some help. And, if you want, as the Great Creator of ChalkZone, I can-"

"Yeah!" Snap interjected. "He's the Great Creator! So you'd better listen-"

"If you're the Great Creator, then where is your magic chalk?" the colorful bird scoffed.

"Well…I, uh….I don't have it at the moment," Rudy began, "but…"

"Ha!" the bird laughed. "You're lying!"

"No I'm not!" Rudy cried. "I lost my magic chalk in the river, and that's why I need your help to-"

"You expect me to believe that?" the feathered Zoner cried down mockingly to him.

Snap's eyes narrowed. "What are ya talkin' about? Of course he's the Great Creator! Wouldn't you recognize-"

The bird cut him off, responding only by mimicking his voice in an extremely patronizing way. Snap looked ready to make an angry retort, but Rudy spoke up before he could.

"Look, okay, you don't have to believe me," he stated, "But can one of you please show us the way out of here?" Rudy looked up pleadingly at the bird and then at the other three swamp animals, who were watching with interest, yet made no move to answer his plea.

"What are you doing in this swamp in the first place?" the bird asked, seeming to be growing increasingly annoyed with him.

"We didn't mean to come here," Rudy explained. "We got swept down the river! You see, ChalkZone is in grave danger, and we're trying to-"

"Oh, yes, danger," the bird replied mockingly. "It looks SO dangerous here!"

"The danger isn't HERE!" Snap cried. "But it will _get_ here if you don't help us find the way out! And Rudy here," he gestured to his friend, "is the one who found a cure for Balloonemia, you know, that disease that would have spread all over ChalkZone if he hadn't? So you pretty much owe him for-"

"Balloonemia?" the cat cried from the center of the clearing. "What are you talking about? No one ever found a cure to that!"

"Yeah!" the alligator agreed. "You're making that up!"

"I am not!" Snap protested. "You guys must've really not been paying attention if you didn't know anythin' about that! Plenty of Zoners survived the disease thanks to Rudy, and it's because a' him you never caught it yourselves!"

"You can't survive Balloonemia!" the bird protested. "That's impossible! I doubt the Great Creator even knows what it is!"

"You really haven't heard of the second Balloonemia epidemic?" Penny asked hesitantly, looking around at all the four animals, who either laughed or ignored her.

"I've had enough of talking to you!" the bird cried, fluttering down and hovering in front of Penny's face. "Get out! This is our territory, and we don't want to see any of you thieves again!"

"Oh yeah?" Snap cried. "I'd like to see you make us-"

"Come on, Snap," Rudy said sadly, shaking his head as he turned to walk away as the sound of the animals' jeering laughter rang throughout the area. "It's no use trying to reason with them."

Realizing that they weren't likely to get any answers out of the creatures, if they even knew anything to begin with, which was doubtful, the three grabbed their supplies and headed back onto the path they'd taken, stopping once they reached a relatively clear spot.

"They had no idea what they were talkin' about anyway," Snap muttered.

"I don't think they could have helped us find our way back," Penny agreed. "If they didn't know anything about what happened with Balloonemia, this is probably quite an isolated place. They must not know much of…anything that's happened recently in other parts of ChalkZone."

"You're probably right," Rudy sighed.

They took a moment to take stock of what remained of their supplies. All they had left was the few cans of Real World food Rudy had salvaged, along with Penny's three small bottles of water, the flashlight, her watch, which miraculously still worked, and Rudy and Penny's tattered sleeping bags.

"That's not gonna last us long," Rudy said after a moment, sighing as he started to put the items back into the backpacks. "We'll have to sneak back into one of our houses and get more food once we find our way back."

Penny nodded worriedly as she fiddled with the flashlight, obviously not liking the idea at all. She wished they had money so they could simply go into some Real World store once they retrieved more magic chalk, but neither of them had brought any. "What about Snap?" she asked after a moment, opening up the flashlight and emptying out the remains of the water. "We're going to have to find a clean water source." Looking around, she figured that the only clean water would have been at the river, but after it had been raging through a swamp, she wasn't so sure about that, and thought it would likely be a bad idea to risk drinking it. She voiced her concerns to the others, and in the end they decided to use the container that had held the cans of food to scoop out some river water and store it as a last resort if they couldn't find anything else. They also discussed the issue of Snap finding food, and quickly decided that if they found anything growing, it would be all right to eat if Snap recognized the plant.

Now that that had been decided, they all knew that they had to make a decision and start traveling. Penny had been determinedly trying to fix the broken flashlight, and to her relief, it soon flickered on and illuminated the area around them, though she wasn't sure how long the batteries would last.

After a quick discussion, Rudy put on his backpack and he and Penny each carried a sleeping bag, and they set out. Using the river as a rough source of direction, they headed upstream, and when it curved, they kept going straight, knowing that they did not want to turn back to where the other rivers were, but rather find something or someone that could take them safely back over the mountains, as they knew that traveling around them would probably take several days, if there was even a safe way around them at all. Leaving the river behind, Rudy felt a bit worried, but he knew there was nothing they could do if they ended up back at the foot of the Mist Mountains. They had to leave and try to find something else. He just hoped they hadn't gotten too turned around.

After a short while, they were too exhausted to continue, and had to rest against a group of trees in the least muddy spot they could find. Penny turned the flashlight off, leaving them in almost complete darkness. "What time is it?" Rudy asked as he panted wearily.

Switching on the flashlight again, Penny looked at the watch. "It's 9:42," she replied, turning off the flashlight to conserve its energy.

"We can't spend the night here," Rudy replied, kicking some of the mud lying in front of him.

"Maybe if we found a tree that was easy to climb," Penny suggested, "it could provide us with adequate shelter until tomorrow."

Rudy just shrugged, and despite his exhaustion, he stood up, eager to find a place where they could rest until the next day. He knew he likely wouldn't get much farther trudging through the mud in his exhausted state, and he could only imagine how Snap felt. "Okay," he replied wearily. "Let's find one."

They spent the next ten minutes searching the surrounding area, until they came upon a wide, thick tree with low hanging branches. Luckily, it wasn't hard to climb and the branches were thick and easily supported their weight. They each found a branch, and Rudy lent Snap his sleeping bag, choosing instead to lay on one of the backpacks.

Now that they had stopped traveling, it was easier to focus on their dire situation. Rudy kept telling himself that once they got out of the swamp, they'd find some Zoner who knew who he was and would be willing to help. As for what they'd do after that…he didn't know. Unless they could miraculously find a shortcut through the Mist Mountains, he had no idea how they were going to be able to find the cave once they got back and retrieved more magic chalk. Even if they were far enough away to find another way back to the Chalk Mine without having to cross the Mist Mountains, he had no idea how to get back to the ice maze without going over the mountains again. One of the things that scared him most was the realization that because of their accident in the river, they might have missed their only chance in a long while to find the cave, and they would likely have to start all over looking for something to stop the termites, but this time, without any lead on where to look.

Despite his worries, and the fear that gripped him when he wondered what would happen if they couldn't get back to the familiar parts of ChalkZone the next day, he fell asleep almost immediately, his exhaustion overwhelming him.


	9. Wandering in the Dark

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Nine – Wandering in the Dark**

A massive boom of thunder woke Rudy from his sleep abruptly, and he sat up, startled, as rain began pelting down on him from above. He noticed Penny and Snap stirring as well, and he peered up above through the branches of the trees. Shielding his eyes against the rain, he could see a massive gray thundercloud up above them, one that was much bigger than the smaller ones they normally saw in ChalkZone. Either that or it was a cluster of them together; it was hard to tell, but as he looked upward Rudy guessed that it was simply one giant one.

A jagged bolt of lightning flashed down from the sky, striking the branch of a nearby tree and sending it plummeting to the swamp floor. Flames leapt up along the twisted heap of wood, but luckily the swamp was too damp for the fire to spread. Another lightning strike occurred somewhere behind their tree, and Rudy exchanged a panicked glance with his two friends. "We need to get down NOW!"

Immediately, the other two crawled out of the sleeping bags and hurriedly tossed them down, in spite of of the mud, and Penny quickly picked up her backpack as Rudy grabbed his, and they hastily made the climb down, jumping the last several feet. Rudy felt pain race through his body as he landed, the pain of the injuries he'd sustained from the river incident beginning to return, but he ignored it, instead reaching down to pick up the sleeping bag Snap had been using as he glanced around for any place that could provide shelter. The rain began pouring down harder, making it hard to see much of anything.

"Rudy!" Penny cried, and he turned toward her, surprised at how hard it was to hear her voice over the sound of the thunder and rain. "We have to move away from the tree!"

"Whataya want us to do, stand out in the open?" Snap cried back, having to scream at the top of his voice to make himself heard over the sudden torrent.

"No," she shouted back, sounding a bit panicked, "we need to find a safe place like be a building, or a car, or…"

"You want us to go back to the truck? In the RIVER?" Snap cried back, but Rudy hardly heard him; the noise of the storm was becoming so loud that it drowned out most everything else.

"No!" Penny shouted back, but another crash of thunder prevented both Rudy and Snap from hearing what she said next.

Rudy knew that if they were to have any chance of finding shelter, they'd have to keep moving. This cloud might not be like the weather he was used to in his own world; he had no idea if it would dissipate fast like Real World storms or simply continue to roam around causing havoc, or worse, stay here. Motioning toward the others through the rain, he managed to catch their attention, and began to pelt through the muck, which was now much thicker and stickier due to the rain, hoping to find any sort of structure they could take shelter in.

Up ahead, another lightning bolt struck a tree, and the trio paused in their tracks as, with a rumbling groan, the tree completely toppled over and collapsed into the mud, the outermost branches scraping the ground only a few yards ahead of them. Rudy cast a glance up at the trees around him. He thought back to one of the times a storm cloud had caused problems in ChalkZone. It had been during Rapsheeba's Rapunzel play, and although that cloud had been much smaller than the one currently threatening them, it had caused massive damage to everything it struck. He remembered how lightning had hit the tower on the set and caused the top of it to break off. It had nearly hit Rapsheeba, but Snap had pushed her out of the way, though the tower piece had struck him as he'd done so. _That_ cloud had been dangerous, but this one was much bigger, and instead of threatening them with falling pieces of a set for a play, this one could topple entire trees. Looking at the trees, Rudy could see that most of the branches were thick, like the ones on the tree they had tried to shelter in during the night. If any of those branches fell on one of them, they'd end up with a lot worse than just a head injury.

"Come on!" he cried, and they resumed their blind running, the rain pouring so thick that every few seconds, one of them would trip or stumble over a root or a bush they hadn't been able to see.

"So, you got any ideas, Buckette?" Snap cried, glancing up at Penny as he untangled himself from a cluster of vines, remembering how she had been talking about finding a safe place before. Penny glanced at him and shook her head, looking around wildly, but like the others, she could barely see through the rain.

Another lightning strike somewhere close by startled them, and they followed Rudy as he kept running, trying their best not to stumble in the thick mud. Another bolt of lightning hit a nearby tree, and Rudy sped up, gripping the backpack and sleeping bag tighter. He looked frantically around at the swaying branches above him as he ran, not stopping even when he encountered deep mud or thick foliage.

Penny, who had been taken by surprise when Rudy took off, caught up with him, trying to shout to him to slow down, since it was hard for them to see each other beyond a certain distance in the rain, but the storm had grown so loud that she couldn't hear her own voice, and she was sure he couldn't hear her, either.

Reaching out, she grabbed his shoulder and he stopped running, looking at her in confusion. The roar of the storm was so loud he had to cover his ears, cringing as another strike of lightning lit up a nearby area. Without words, Penny tried to get him to understand that he needed to slow down, and that he had nearly left her and Snap behind during his frantic search, and gestured back to the path they had taken, only to realize as she did so that Snap was no longer behind them.

Panicked, they ran back, stumbling in the thick muck. Rudy tried to call out his friend's name, but as before, the constant relentless crashing thunder and heavy rain made it impossible to hear his shouts. Giving up, he kept going, hoping that it was the right way, until he reached the spot where he was sure they had last been all together. Trying to peer through the pounding sheet of rain, he attempted to force himself to stay calm and keep looking when another tree branch fell close by. He couldn't see Snap anywhere, but it didn't look like any other trees had fallen. However, that certainly didn't rule out the possibility that they were in the wrong area and Snap wasn't here, or that he could have been injured – or worse – by the lightning.

After searching the area as quickly as he could, Rudy was ready to believe that Snap wasn't there and that he should go look somewhere else. He began to head back along their rough trail, Penny beside him, both of them panicked as they looked desperately around for any sign of their friend. After a few moments they realized that they were completely turned around, and they had no idea where the rough path they had been taking was.

"Snap!" Rudy cried, but as before his voice was lost in the storm. He couldn't even hear his own cry himself. He stared wildly around, seeing nothing but sheets of rain and green and brown blurs where the plants and trees were.

Suddenly Snap appeared in front of them, looking quite panicked himself until he caught sight of them, and the worried expression was replaced with one of relief. He shouted something to them, but they couldn't make out a word. He tried to repeat it, but again the torrent completely drowned out his cries.

"I can't hear you!" Rudy yelled back out of sheer frustration, shaking his head, and although Snap obviously couldn't hear him either, he understood the meaning, and stopped trying to yell. Rudy assumed that Snap had been asking them why they had left him behind, and tried to mouth an apology, but to his surprise, Snap completely ignored it, and instead gestured to their left.

Rudy and Penny both looked in that direction, but saw nothing but pounding rain and swaying trees and vegetation. Snap motioned toward it again, and began walking, indicating that they follow. Confused, but nonetheless eager to see if Snap had found anything that could help them, they followed him, their hearts racing as the sounds of other nearby lightning strikes reached their ears. Snap kept moving, and they ran right behind him, until suddenly they stumbled upon what looked like the end of the swamp.

However, after a moment, even with the pouring rain, they could see that it was not the end of it, but more like a gigantic clearing penned in by swampland all around it. They could just barely see the lines of the trees through the torrent, forming a rough circle around the area. But it wasn't the trees that held the most of their attention, for in the center of the clearing, seeming completely out of place, was a truly massive dull gray building.

It looked to be the size of a shopping mall, and what it was doing here, they could only guess, but at the moment, they didn't care. They hardly even thought about the fact that whoever lived there might be able to help them find their way back to familiar parts of ChalkZone, or that they might also be extremely unfriendly. All they could think about was getting to safety.

Gripping his sleeping bag and backpack strap tighter, Rudy prepared to make a dash across the clearing. Most of it was an open field of marshy grass, which he knew meant that running across it would be dangerous. Yet they were not safe among the trees, especially in a wet place like the swamp. They had to make it to the building. It was the one safe place they were going to have a chance of getting to.

Wasting no more time, they sprinted out across the field, racing as fast as they could toward the building. The rain made the grass slippery, but they kept going, not daring to stop until they reached the front doors. With their gazes focused on the tall gray structure, they tried not to think about the sound of crashing thunder around them, and did not slow their pace at all until they stood directly in front of the building.

As the sound of the thunder continued to clash over them, Snap pounded on the door, calling for whoever was inside to open it. Knowing the Zoner wouldn't be able to hear, if there even was anyone inside, Rudy ran up beside Snap and tugged on the door handle. To his surprise, it swung outwards instantly, and the three wasted no time in getting inside and slamming the door behind them.

Once inside, the rumble of thunder was muted a bit, though they could still hear it quite loudly, and the walls of the building seemed to shake. However, they would be able to hear one another now, and they were safe, so they set down their supplies, slumping to the floor as they tried to catch their breath.

Looking around, Rudy could see that the room they were in was completely devoid of furniture. It was dull and gray, with only one window, which was above the door they had just darted through, and a single, square door set in the opposite wall, looking just as drab as everything else. Snap remarked that it reminded him uncomfortably of the room he had been imprisoned in after Boorat and Dooth had captured him and brought him into the Real World.

Observing her surroundings, Penny didn't want to have to sleep in a place like this. She stood up after a few moments, wondering aloud if any of the other of the building's rooms would have any beds they could rest on.

"Yeah, why don't we go look for some?" Snap suggested, hurriedly heading over to the door. He looked even more uncomfortable about the place than Penny did.

"Good idea," Penny said wearily as she followed him. When they reached the door, she turned back to look at Rudy.

"I'll wait here," he told her, feeling too exhausted to go wandering around a large building in the middle of the night. Penny gave him an understanding nod and followed Snap out the door.

Alone in the room, Rudy moved further away from the door and window, settling in a corner with the sleeping bags and backpacks. He quickly realized that they were coated in muck from the swamp, as were his own clothes. Too exhausted to care, he slumped down against the sleeping bags, closing his eyes, but only to jerk them open again as a particularly loud boom of thunder sounded above him. Knowing that he wouldn't be able to sleep while the storm was that fierce, he started to look through Penny's backpack, thinking about getting a drink of water. Realizing that they didn't have much left, he thought better of it, and set the backpack down again, leaning back against the sleeping bags. He watched the window warily, and as silly as he thought it was to be worried about being alone while he was within the safety of the building, he hoped his friends would be back soon, and that they'd find a place where they could get a decent rest.

**ooo**

Penny and Snap had quickly come to realize that the building had long since been abandoned. They had no idea what it was doing out in the middle of the swamp, and at the moment, there seemed to be no purpose to anything in the place. The building seemed to be composed of several floors of aimless hallways lined with doors, but most of the rooms seemed to have no real function; they were simply empty, and the ones that did have furniture had only random things that were completely useless. There were no other windows, and nearly every room and hallway seemed to have the same series of lights that gave off a dim blue glow and made a pulsing sound as they slowly flickered. What they were powered by, the two could only guess. Snap and Penny were becoming quite frustrated and in the end, they decided to give up the search and head back to Rudy.

"I really don't understand what this building was meant to be used for," Penny muttered as they turned back toward the hallway they had been coming from. She pointed out the staircase they had taken to get up to the hallway and they walked down it, throwing more confused glances at their surroundings. They were too tired to ponder too much about the strangeness; they had to get back to Rudy, and hopefully, find a place that was decent enough to sleep in, or that would at least be away from the worst of the noise of the storm. They couldn't hear it so much in their current location, but it was still frighteningly loud back where Rudy and their supplies were waiting.

Once they reached the bottom of the staircase, a confused look crossed Penny's face. "That's strange," she muttered.

"What?" Snap asked, looking confused and somewhat annoyed.

"This hallway turns left…I could have sworn it was turning the other way when…" She trailed off. "Oh, of course," she muttered, feeling frustrated at her mistake. "This was the wrong staircase. There was another one branching off the hallway back up there. That must have been the right one." She headed back up the staircase, and Snap sighed and followed her. She reached the top, walking over to the next staircase and looking down. "Yeah, I think this is it," she confirmed tiredly, and she and Snap walked down it.

"You sure you remember the way back?" Snap asked in an irritated tone, wishing that he had stayed behind with Rudy. Their search for a comfortable place to rest had turned up with nothing, and he hoped he wouldn't have to walk around the building for much longer.

"Yes, I _do_," she responded, stopping at the bottom of the staircase. "See? This hallway turns right. This is the right one."

"All right, if you say so," Snap sighed.

They continued on, and Penny began to realize that in their wanderings, they must have actually gotten very turned around somehow, because they found themselves in a completely unfamiliar place.

Snap cast Penny an annoyed glance. "You don't have any idea where we're going, do you?"

"I do remember the way back!" she snapped, but as she glanced around the unfamiliar hallway, her doubts began to grow. "I mean…if we could get back to that hallway we were in before, I'm certain I can remember the way back to Rudy-"

"Oh, sure," Snap muttered, but he didn't say anything more.

Dejected and frustrated at her miscalculations, Penny turned around and began walking back to the door she'd taken to get to their current location in a misplaced attempt to retrace her steps, but found it was hard to tell the doors apart. She had to try a few before she saw a hallway that looked like the one she had come from. "I…think this is it…"

"You _think_?"

"Yes, I _think_," she replied, figuring that it wasn't worth arguing about. She was fairly sure of her direction as they walked off down the new hallway. As she did so, she noticed that Snap was beginning to seem less irritated at her and more uneasy about their surroundings. Even as she started to wonder why, she began to have a strange feeling herself, and she realized that it would be easy to get lost in a building this size, especially with all its doors and hallways that looked so similar to one another, and she had to face the fact that she was lost. It confused her, since she had kept track of their progress the entire time they had been exploring, but she tried not to think too much about how she had made the mistake, and instead focus on the problem. Still, she thought, the building didn't go on forever, and they were sure to find Rudy eventually. There wasn't much they could do other than keep wandering until they ended up somewhere familiar.

As they walked on, the hallway became shrouded in complete darkness. There were no lights here, and they ended up having to feel their way along the walls, the only light up ahead a faint glow outlining an open doorway, coming from a light inside the room beyond. This didn't worry her, as they'd crossed a few of these types of places already. From her position, however, she couldn't tell if they'd been in the room up ahead before or not. She couldn't see any detail of it, the light was so faint. As she approached it, the light didn't seem to get any stronger, and she had to continue to slide her fingers along the wall as she passed….until her fingers were no longer touching wall.

At the same instant, her foot plunged down into empty air, and before she could stop herself, she began to fall forward, and panic gripped her an instant before she heard Snap shout her name and felt him grab her shoulders, pulling her back. She stumbled a bit before righting herself on the hallway floor, and was completely shocked as the low light level illuminated a sudden drop that, as her eyes grew used to the somewhat brighter light at the end of the hallway, she could see reached about twenty feet down below them.

Penny could see that the room ahead was massive, and the hallway seemed to end right in the middle of its wall, but there was no staircase leading from it to the floor. She wondered if there was originally a place to walk there, like a partial upper story, but as she looked down, there was nothing to indicate that there was ever any such thing. She shook her head in bewilderment as she scanned the room as well as she could in the darkness. This just didn't make any _sense_.

Snap was also confused as he realized the same things she did, and he carefully peered over the edge. "Who would build something like this?" he questioned, just as perplexed as she was. He stared around the room curiously, wondering how one was meant to enter it. "You think there's any way down?"

"Not if you don't want to break your leg," Penny stated, giving the drop another nervous glance. "Come on, we'd better go back."

Snap nodded and they headed back down the dark hallway. Penny was growing more and more uncertain about the place, and she could tell that Snap was too. They stuck close together as they navigated their way back to a familiar hallway, but even from there, it was unclear which way was the way back to Rudy. As they walked, Penny was sure her calculations had been correct. There was no reason they should have gotten lost, and she couldn't help feeling that there was something very wrong about the place.

**ooo**

Rudy was getting anxious as the minutes ticked by, the loud boom of the thunder keeping him from being able to rest. As he reached into the backpack and checked the time on Penny's watch, he realized it hadn't just seemed like they'd been gone for longer than they should; almost a half an hour had passed, much longer than it should have taken them to get back.

Worried, Rudy was unsure whether to go after them or stay put. He could try to follow them, but that would mean that it would be harder for them to find him. What if they returned while he was gone? Then he would be lost and they would have to come looking for him.

He eventually decided that they had been gone simply too long. Something could have happened to his friends, and he didn't want to wait around any longer. Grabbing the sleeping bags, he managed to hook them onto the backpacks using the straps that held them in a rolled up position, put his backpack on, and quickly looked through Penny's until he found the flashlight. He knew the building was probably darker further on, and though Penny and Snap hadn't come back for the flashlight and therefore had probably found places with windows, he wanted it with him just in case. Carrying Penny's backpack as well, he walked to the door.

Once in the next hallway, he realized there were no windows at all. In fact, it was pitch black. Utterly confused as to why Snap and Penny hadn't come back for the flashlight before wandering off, he flicked it on, noting that the hallway was oddly wide and with a low ceiling. There were doors placed completely randomly in the sides of the walls; some were spaced far from each other, while others were lined up right next to each other, making Rudy wonder how small the rooms they led to were. The doors were also oddly shaped in some cases as well. There were a few oval ones, one that was a wide, large square, and even one that looked zigzagged. Rudy ignored the doors, instead heading down the hallway in search of his missing friends. He quickly found that it was exhausting to carry the backpacks around, and his legs began to ache worse than ever, but he kept going, turning into different hallways and ignoring the rooms. He figured that if Penny and Snap were lost, they would be in the hallways looking for a door at the end of one, like the one that led to the front room. Rudy wasn't sure if he could remember the way back, so he started to make a mental note of the odd things he noticed around him.

Rudy wasn't sure how long he'd been wandering around the dark hallways of the building looking for his friends. The flashlight Penny had managed to repair after their terrifying trip down the river was his only source of light. No matter which way he turned in this place, nothing looked familiar. In fact, it only seemed to look more bizarre. The hallway he was currently walking through often twined back and forth in a completely erratic way, and the doors that lined it were just as odd; they looked as if someone had taken a bunch of completely random doors – everything from what looked like it could be the entrance to a grocery store to a huge metal one that looked like the entrance to a giant vault – and stuck them in the same place.

After a minute or two, Rudy came across a glass door. Peering through it briefly, he noticed another hallway on the other side. Hoping it would lead to wherever his friends were, he pushed the door open, and stepped inside. This hallway was completely unlike the one he'd just been in. It was straight and the doors that aligned it looked more or less the same.

Relieved to see something more normal-looking, Rudy made his way along the new hallway, following a turn around a corner and seeing that up ahead, it opened up into some big room, but with the limited light, he couldn't tell what the room contained or how big it was.

Picking up speed until he broke into a run, he headed for the dark opening that marked the end of the hallway, shouting out his friends' names. If the room was big, it was probably easy to stumble across, so it seemed reasonable that the others might have-

Rudy stopped in his tracks as soon as he left the narrow hallway and came to stand in the darkness of the big room. _If you could call it a room._ What he was actually staring at was too big to just be a normal room. In the dim lighting, which was now provided by a series of faintly glowing blue light bulbs placed at regular intervals as far as he could see, it looked like he was standing in the interior of part of a gigantic shopping mall.

He was on the upper floor of the "mall", on one of two large walkways halfway between the floor and ceiling. Across from him, another walkway lined with shops identical to the ones on his side stretched on far to both his right and left, and down below at ground level, he could see similar shops, but not whether there was actually anything left in them. He turned back to the shops on his level, seeing that they were built into the wall along with a few random doors. It was odd, but there wasn't anything broken or damaged that Rudy could see. It was almost as if someone had just built the mall and abandoned it for some reason. Weirdest of all, he thought he could see windows in the ceiling high above. But if they were windows, and not just dark panels, no light shone through them. The mall looked far too big to be able to fit in the building along with everything else he'd passed, and he wondered if he'd somehow ended up underground.

He took a few steps forward toward the railing that lined the edge of the wide upper floor walkway, cringing when he heard how eerie the echoes of his footsteps sounded in this strange place. "Penny? Snap?" he called. There was no response, no sign of his friends, and in this place, if they were anywhere near here, they would definitely have heard him.

Knowing the batteries of his flashlight probably weren't going to last much longer, Rudy shut it off and stowed it back in the backpack, deciding to let the dim blue glow of the lights set up in between each of the stores light his way instead. Despite his efforts to keep calm, he was beginning to grow more and more worried about the others. There was just something so completely _wrong_ about the place, and though it seemed safe enough, he wasn't sure, and he tried not to let his mind wander to any worst case scenarios whenever he tried to imagine where his friends were. He began walking further down the walkway, the only sound being the echo of his footsteps and a faint pulsating noise from the dim blue lights. When he neared the end of the walkway, he could see two wide sets of doors.

Thinking that it was more likely that Penny and Snap had gone that way if they had passed through the area before, he tried to decide which door he should go through when a sudden scream stopped him in his tracks. He froze, instantly recognizing the scream as Snap's. He had sounded…in pain. As the sound faded, Rudy looked around, trying impossibly to pinpoint the direction the sound had come from while his hand instinctively reached into his pocket…only to find nothing. Rudy was once again painfully reminded that he didn't have any chalk.

"Snap!" he called back, but there was no answer-his voice only rebounded back at him several times as if mocking him. _"Snap!"_ He paused for a moment, listening, but there was no other sound. He figured the sound had to be coming from one of the doorways; he'd still be hearing Snap if he were in this mall, as every noise seemed to be amplified there. He was wasting time. Snap was in trouble somewhere, and probably wouldn't be able to answer him. Not knowing whether he was making the right choice, Rudy dashed headlong toward the left doorway, racing past the empty, black-windowed shops, and then bolted into the doorway into the hallway beyond. He pelted through it, shouting his friends' names, not expecting a response, but feeling a wave of both relief and panic as he heard Penny's voice drifting toward him from somewhere further on. He kept running, still reaching for the flashlight, and felt his hand close around it. He glanced down at it as he pulled it out of the backpack, trying to find the switch, when suddenly he crashed headlong into someone else in the dark.

Both he and the other person toppled over, and there was a moment of confusion before Rudy managed to switch on the light, and realized that the person he'd run into was Penny.

"Penny?" he gasped, completely confused as he struggled to get to his feet. "Are you all right? Where is Snap? Is he-"

"Rudy?" Penny cried, looking back at him with a completely bewildered expression. "I'm fine. How did you-"

"Rudy?" a second voice cried, and he instantly recognized the voice as Snap's. Looking further into the hallway, he could see Snap standing near the end of a staircase, looking just as baffled as Penny was.

"What's going on?" Rudy asked, looking from one to the other. "I…I heard you scream and I thought one of you was in trouble…"

Snap shook his head. "No, I just tripped on the stairs," he muttered, limping over to the others. "It's too dark to see anythin' in this place. I don't understand why practically the rest of the entire building was lit but not this hallway."

"What do you mean?" Rudy replied. "Everything was dark when I went looking for you. That's why I brought this." He held up the flashlight, and Penny and Snap exchanged confused glances.

"Maybe the lights turned off before you started lookin' for us?" Snap said with a shrug.

"I don't know." Rudy looked around nervously. "This isn't right…"

"At least we can't hear the storm much anymore," Penny muttered as she stood up, searching the surrounding hallway with her gaze. "The cloud has probably dissipated or moved on to another area by now. We should try and find a way to get out."

"You're right," Rudy agreed. He handed Penny her backpack and sleeping bag and walked to the end of the hallway to find another door. Turning the knob, he opened it, only to find another hallway.

The hallway that lay before them was just as strange. It was filled all sorts of random doors, just like the first hallway Rudy had been in, and a few even looked merged together. What purpose those melded doors served, Rudy had no idea, because he found they were completely nonfunctional when he tried to open them. "Let's go back," he said hurriedly, backing away as it fully dawned on him that there was something very, very wrong about the place. He could see that Penny and Snap looked equally unnerved. He turned and walked briskly back to the door that led to the mall, his friends following quickly behind. He threw open the door, expecting to see the wide expanse of the two story mall greeting him, but instead…there was just a normal sized room.

Then it suddenly struck him.

_The building could change…_

With a jolt of shock, Rudy backed away, closing the door. From the looks of Penny and Snap's faces, he could tell they'd realized the same thing. _How on earth would they find their way out of here?_

"Rudy…" Penny began, "we need to find a way to get out as quickly as possible."

"If…if I had the chalk I could-"

"Well you don't!" she quickly replied, looking increasingly worried. "We have to think of something else!"

Rudy thought back to when Penny had mentioned that the rooms were lit when she and Snap had gone through them, and it suddenly made sense to him as to why they had been dark when he'd entered. They had been in completely different parts of the building, even though they'd entered through the same door. His heart began to race as he realized how much more difficult finding their way out would be, and he tried to calm himself by reminding himself that with the flashlight, they'd be able to see if any of the rooms they were about to walk into were familiar to them or not. However, if the flashlight batteries ran out, he knew things would be much more difficult. Looking at it, however, the batteries didn't seem to be wearing out at all, at least not yet. All the same, as much as he tried to convince himself that the building was just strange and confusing, he still had a very bad feeling about the place.

"I guess we'll just have to keep goin' until we find the way out," Snap stated, glancing around wearily at the surrounding doors. Picking one at random, he opened it to find a wide room with several doors. This was even stranger than any of the other rooms they had seen so far. One half of it looked like it belonged inside a fancy mansion, but the other half looked like it would belong in a haunted house. In the middle, the walls and floor met in a disarrayed jumble, and even a few pieces of the furniture looked like two different things melded together.

"That makes sense…" Penny whispered to herself under her breath.

"Uh, excuse me, Buckette, but HOW does that make any sense?" Snap gestured wildly toward the room, looking at Penny with a confused expression.

"No, not that!" Penny replied, shaking her head. "I mean, I think I figured out why the building's like this. I don't think the Zoners built it…it had to have been drawn. I think the person who drew this place had several ideas for what it could be, but never decided on one. So it-"

"So it can't decide if it's a mansion or a mall or just a jumbled mash up of things," Rudy finished, looking at the strange room in awe.

"Yes," Penny replied. "It must be constantly rearranging itself."

"Well, come on. We'll just have to keep going until we find a way out," Rudy replied, and they carefully walked through the jumbled up room, choosing a door on the fancy mansion side and entering yet another hallway. It unnerved Rudy that there were no windows to be seen at all. He hadn't seen a functional one since the first room they had entered when they discovered the building. It was strange to think that without windows, they wouldn't be able to tell if they were near an exit, and that they might easily miss a door that could lead them out.

They chose doors at random, knowing that trying to use logical reasoning to find a proper direction would be useless in a place that never stayed the same. Despite trying to choose rooms that looked harmless and at least somewhat normal, they ended up in a section of the building that seemed to be entirely modeled like a haunted house, much like how half of the room that they had found earlier looked. Rudy was unsure if it was actually haunted, as they hadn't seen any Zoners anywhere in the place, but he didn't rule out the possibility. They were in an uncharted and possibly dangerous area of ChalkZone. Pretty much anything could be lurking here.

Soon it got dark enough that even the light from the flashlight seemed like at any moment it could be swallowed up by the blackness. Rudy tried not to shine the light on any of the eerie paintings on the walls as they walked further on, having no clue how long the hallway would go on for.

Then, without any warning, the part of the floor that Rudy stepped on suddenly gave way. Rudy cried out as he fell through the opening, the flashlight falling from his hand. Both Snap and Penny ran forward to catch him, but before either of them had a chance, Rudy had fallen through and hit something solid and hard. Sitting up, Rudy lifted his gaze to the place he had just been standing-which now was the ceiling, and was relieved to find that he hadn't fallen very far.

"Rudy, are you okay?" he heard his friends calling from above him.

"Yeah!" he called back to them, standing up. He realized suddenly that the flashlight had gone out-he couldn't tell where it was.

Reaching around, he finally felt his fingers lock around it and he picked it up, fumbling with it until he managed to turn it on again. He shined the light up toward his friends, seeing the outline of the rotting floorboards he'd fallen through. "I'm all right!" he cried, standing up. He then took a brief moment to examine where he was, but it just seemed like a random room with a very low ceiling. It was completely dark, and he couldn't see much of it, but as far as he could tell, it didn't go anywhere, so he turned to the others again. "Help me up!" Penny and Snap managed to pull him up out of the hole, and the three of them sat in the hallway above, taking a moment to rest as they decided what to do.

"We need to travel to a safer part of the building," Penny stated, "this section of it is practically falling apart." The other two nodded, eyeing the creaking floorboards nervously. "Then we can rest for a while before we try to find a way out," she continued.

Snap sighed. "It'll take us ages to find our way outta here! Why don't we find a safe place and then rest for the night?"

"Good idea," Rudy agreed. As much as he didn't like the thought of spending the night in the strange building, it was preferable to wandering around.

"I guess so…" Penny sighed. "Then we can resume looking in the morning."

Rudy realized that she was probably worried about their wanderings through the building taking up too much time the next day. He understood, as he was also very worried about getting back in time to start the journey again, and finding a way out of the building could take a while, but he knew that he simply couldn't go much further, and neither could the others. They had to rest.

As they walked along the hallway, they continued to look for doors until they finally found a suitable one near the end. The room was large and looked to be very old, or at least the building's imitation of 'very old', but it had a few soft chairs and that was more than Rudy could have hoped for. Not even bothering to take off his backpack, he climbed onto one and curled up, the strangeness of the building no longer able to bother him as exhaustion completely overcame him.

Over on another chair, Snap did the same, but Penny hesitated, standing in the center of the room and gripping the straps of her backpack nervously. "I think one of us should stay awake," she stated.

"Be my guest," Snap replied, his eyes already closed.

"We should take _turns_," she clarified, "in case anything happens." She didn't know if there was anything dangerous lurking in the building, but she wasn't going to take the chance of them being ambushed by anything in their sleep. She knew they'd be safe if they were only going to be shuffled around with the building's changes; they were fairly lost anyway, but she couldn't help being worried that something else was lurking there, and if they were moved close to whatever it was, they would have no way of knowing. Looking at the others, however, it felt wrong to ask Snap to keep watch for them, as he was the one who had been through the most in the past couple of days, but looking at Rudy, he didn't seem much better off at the moment, and she felt bad asking that of him as well. She knew that she couldn't stay awake the whole night herself, however, so she suggested something else. "Maybe we should just take a quick nap. We could stop every once in a while, sleep for a little bit and one of us can stay awake and wake the others after a half an hour or so and we can keep going."

"But-" Rudy began in reply, but he never finished. Penny and Snap, who had started trying to speak at the same time, were suddenly silent as well. For all three of them had noticed a sudden change come over the room.

It was eerily quiet. Of course, even with the storm, the building had been almost completely silent before, but something about this was _wrong_. It felt like they were in a vacuum rather than a room which simply had no other occupants. There was absolutely no other sound at all, not even the faint pulsating noise that came from the dim blue lights on the walls, and the change had come so suddenly that they all had noticed it.

Thoughts began racing through Rudy's head. This had to indicate something bad, but what? Was something going to jump out at them? He turned to look wildly around the room, and heard his friends do the same, their movements almost painfully loud in the strange silence, as they all gazed around fearfully, wondering if there was danger, what it was, and where it was going to come from. Penny started edging toward the door, continuing to glance around the room, while Snap and Rudy remained frozen. No one wanted to move much in case the increasingly loud sound of their movements attracted anything lurking within the confines of the building.

Rudy was peering up at the ceiling, more than a little concerned by the fact that it was too dark to see what was up there, and the fact that he had no idea what could be going on, when he felt Snap reach over from his chair to grip his arm tightly and pull him around to face toward the far side of the room.

And then he realized what the danger was.

On the other side of the room, everything seemed to be vanishing into thin air, fading completely out of existence. It started from the top corner of the room but crept outward and down, dissolving everything it touched into nothingness. Staring into it was startling, like looking into a blank void. It was at first somewhat slow, but it was picking up speed, and before the three could even react, the strange destruction was racing toward them.

"RUN!" Rudy cried, leaping off the chair and racing toward the door. He needn't have yelled at all; Penny and Snap were already running headlong toward it as well. Rudy urged himself to move faster, feeling the backpack and the attached sleeping bag weigh him down. He thought of simply discarding them, but trying to take off the backpack would only slow him, and he had no choice but to keep running, his feet pounding the floor as he willed his body to move faster and faster, fear giving him the strength he'd lacked just moments before. He thought he could feel the floor vanishing from underneath his heels, and though part of him realized this was probably just his imagination, he forced himself to put on a burst of speed and reached the door, which Snap and Penny had already flung open.

"C'mon, Bucko!" Snap cried in a panic, and Rudy felt his friend reach out and grab his wrist, yanking him the rest of the way through the doorway and then slamming it closed.

The three continued to run for several seconds before Penny stopped and called, "Wait!" Out of surprise at her actions more than anything, the boys stopped. "It's stopped," she pointed out, indicating the door, which remained as solid as ever.

"Yeah, but for how long?" Snap replied in between gasps of breath. Ignoring his question, Penny waited a few seconds before reaching for the door handle. "Wait! What are you-"

Turning it, she pulled the door open, and then stepped back with a perplexed expression. Realizing from her reaction that there was no immanent danger, Rudy and Snap crept forward until they were close enough to see that there was nothing but wall where the room once had been. Confused, Penny closed it again, and opened it, this time to find that a much smaller room with a fireplace had replaced it. "So it creates new rooms," she began, her voice shaking, "and the old ones just vanish…I thought that was what might be happening."

Snap glanced along the hallway, looking like he expected it to start dissolving into thin air at any second. "And what happens if we can't get out when it does?" he asked, his eyes wide.

"Well…" she began, stepping back from the door, "it could be…fatal…or we could be trapped in limbo somewhere until the room reappears…if it does at all…"

Rudy and Snap glanced at each other. "We've got to find a way out," Rudy said. "We'll keep going through rooms until we come across one that leads outside." He was stating the obvious, but it was more to convince himself that they had some sort of a solid plan, even if it wasn't much of a 'plan' at all.

"Yes, but we should only enter rooms that have multiple doors," Penny suggested, "so there's likely to be one near that we can escape through if it happens again. And at least the rooms don't seem to vanish too often; we were wandering around for a while and nothing like that occurred, so that may mean it's a somewhat rare incidence." She looked at the others, and saw that they didn't look at all convinced, and when she thought about it, neither was she. It was very likely they could have just been lucky until that moment.

"Come on," Rudy cried, turning and running down the hallway to check one of the several doors. Snap, looking just as eager to get out of the place, started looking as well, and Penny joined them.

"Over here!" Penny cried after a few moments, opening a door to what looked like some sort of old-fashioned ballroom. It was mostly empty, but some of the most elaborate chandeliers any of them had ever seen hung from the ceiling. It was a very vast room, and like many other parts of the place, it was lit with a dim, blue glow, which seemed to be one of the only things constant about the building. The room had several doors lined around its interior, which would provide quick escape routes should it begin to disappear.

Rudy ran into it, his shoes skidding a bit on the marble floor as he came to a stop. He looked around at the doors circling the room, trembling a bit as he also checked for any signs that the place was about to be wiped from existence. "Do you think we should split up?" Rudy asked, knowing that since the room was so large, it could take a while to look through each door until they found a suitable path of travel.

"No, we oughtta stay together," Snap insisted, and Penny agreed, knowing that if they had to run, they could easily get separated.

Quickly they ran to each of the doors, frantically opening them and then shutting them if they didn't look like they provided enough escape routes. Their panic was mounting as they moved from door to door, glancing over their shoulders and listening for any sign of the strange silence that seemed to accompany the dissolving of the rooms.

Rudy managed to find a door that led into another hallway, but unlike most of the others they'd found previously, this one was wide and had several doors, most of which seemed useable. He and the others ran into it, soon finding another door through which to go, and continuing their frantic dash.

After several more rooms, they were simply too exhausted to carry on, and they had to rest for a few minutes. They sat by a door in the center of the hallway they were currently in, ready to run through it if there was any sign of danger. However, the hallway remained as it was when they had entered, with the faint pulsing of the lights clearly heard in the silence, along with their own gasping for breath. They watched the hallway fearfully, their hearts pounding. There was no sign of any danger, but the uneasiness didn't leave them even after they had rested and were on the move again. They found another hallway with several doors, but none of them seemed to lead to any place that looked easy to quickly escape from.

However, when Rudy opened the last door in the hallway, he was surprised to see that he had stumbled upon the same gigantic mall area he had been to when he had been searching for his friends. The others stared around in awe as they stepped inside it, not having seen a room in the building that large before. Looking around, Rudy spotted things that he hadn't noticed or cared to look for the first time he'd been there – namely, smaller doors. Apart from the main ones he'd entered and exited from earlier, there were doors all over the place, most semi-hidden in or near the shop fronts that made up the outer walls. He felt a little bit of relief; a room this size would take a while to vanish completely, and there were plenty of doors they could escape through. They strode through it, feeling a bit safer but still keeping alert for any sign that they would have to run.

All at once there was a massive groaning mechanical sound from somewhere further on, and the three froze in their tracks. The noise became louder, and Rudy began to bolt to the nearest door, calling his friends' names, when Penny shouted, "No! Wait!"

Rudy stopped dead in his tracks from pure astonishment, and cast a frightened but confused look at Penny. He had no idea what that sound meant, but he couldn't understand why she hadn't followed them.

Penny pointed up to the ceiling, and Rudy and Snap followed her gaze to see that parts of the roof were shifting, rearranging themselves, spreading apart or coming together to create an entirely new appearance. At the end of the mall room, where they'd come from, the room seemed to be stretching and expanding to create an even bigger space. The three were so transfixed by what they were seeing that they stood completely still, huddled together as they looked around them with both awe and uncertainty.

Rudy knew that Penny wouldn't want to leave a place with so many doors without first choosing a good one to go through, so that meant that she probably just wanted to wait the room's rearranging out. Another mechanical sounding groan reached them, and the platform beneath their feet shuddered and began to move. Rudy and Snap tensed, wondering if it was going to fall lower or shrink back into the wall, but instead it merely reached out toward the opposite upper walkway, expanding until the two met, forming a solid and complete upper floor. The two sides locked together, and the rails that had guarded the edges of both walkways simply retracted back into the ground, looking as if they'd never been there once they finished. Some of the stores around them shifted or changed sizes, and a few even moved higher up along the wall, making them practically inaccessible, to make way for some new odd tiled patterns along the walls below, then the noises faded and all was still once again, the pulsing lights continuing to form a rhythm in what otherwise would be silence.

Breathless, the trio of friends stared at each other. "What was THAT all about?" Snap asked incredulously.

"I guess the individual rooms rearrange themselves at times, too," Penny responded, nervously glancing left and right, but the faint pulsing of the lights told her that there was no danger near.

"At least that was all it was," Rudy replied, his voice shaking as he walked over to the nearest shop front that was still level with the floor, and looking through the windows inlaid in the wall for a possible route out.

Despite there being so many doors to choose from, it took a little while for them to find a place that looked suitable. With each new door that failed them, the three had grown increasingly worried, wanting to leave the mall area and keep moving as soon as possible despite the lack of immanent danger. After the room had shifted itself, the three were growing more and more convinced that it could easily do it again soon, and they certainly didn't want to be around if it started to vanish.

Eventually, they did manage to find one, and walked through a wide circular room with a low ceiling but many doors. After passing through what seemed to be the most ideal door, they found themselves back in the 'haunted house' section of the building. They were in a hallway that twisted and turned jaggedly, and since it veered off sharply to the left up ahead, they couldn't tell how far it went. The lights here seemed dimmer than usual, but still had the same strange pulsing noise. They hesitantly began walking, checking doors along the way but finding nothing suitable. They kept going, reaching the bend in the hallway and turning to find that it was much, much longer than any of the other hallways they had been in before, seeming to stretch for what they thought might be the entire length of the building, though it was impossible to tell in the darkness. They ran to the nearest door, opening it to find nothing but a tiny closet, and hurriedly shut it closed, then carried on.

As they rapidly moved through the hallway, checking doors as they went, Rudy grew more and more anxious. He wasn't even sure they were getting any closer. They could be going in a giant circle. So far, the only thing he'd seen that had worked as an exit was the room they had first come into upon entering the building. It had had a window…the only window he'd seen that showed anything of the outside world. Maybe, he thought, if a door had a window above it, that would mean that there was an exit on the other side of the wall. He turned to the others. "Guys," he began, "I think we need to be looking for a window. A window in a wall must mean-"

"That a door in that wall will lead to the outside," Penny finished. She looked to be pondering this information, but Rudy could tell from the look on her face that she couldn't recall seeing any other windows either.

"Where're we supposed to find one, then?" Snap asked as he closed a door. Seeing that there weren't many ahead, he curiously opened it again, but it only led to the same area. Knowing it probably wasn't going to change, he gave up and they headed into a part of the hallway that only seemed to have a single door a little ways ahead, the section of the hallway further on shrouded in shadow.

"I don't know," Rudy admitted after a few moments. "We'll just have to keep going, and…"

"What?" Penny asked, noticing that he'd trailed off.

"I can't hear the lights pulsing."

The three froze, not knowing which way to run, as they couldn't see beyond their circle of blue light from the lamp nearby; the intervals between the lights on the wall were so far that some were nearly lost in the darkness up ahead. They were in a part of the hallway where the nearest door either way was a short sprint, and Rudy pointed to the one up ahead, choosing at random, not knowing which end of the hallway the vanishing would start, but knowing they had to make a decision fast. "That way!"

They pelted toward it, the sound of their pounding footsteps incredibly loud against the sheer silence. Penny reached the door first and pulled it open, stepping back in shock when she realized there was nothing but solid wall behind it. If there had been a room there, it was now gone.

They bolted forward blindly, entering a dark spot but seeing a light up ahead. Rudy chanced a glance behind and realized that they'd been lucky enough to choose the right direction; he could see the lights behind them being swallowed up by blackness one by one, but they'd been running away from it, not towards it. He looked ahead again, straining to reach a place where there were more doors and knowing that if they didn't have a good lead on whatever was making the room dissolve into nothing, they might not even be able to get the door open in time. Strange paintings on the walls flashed by him in a blur, and he focused on the next puddle of blue glow up ahead, not having any warning as his foot slammed down on a weak floorboard that snapped under his weight, and he tripped, his momentum causing him to slam into the floor.

Penny and Snap instantly stopped and whirled around, running back to him and quickly pulling his foot out of the newly formed hole. Having no time to rest, they supported Rudy as they continued to race down the hallway, searching the walls frantically. Through his haze of panic, Rudy remembered how he had fallen through the floor in this part of the building earlier, and terror gripped him, but there was no time to check if the floorboards were safe. They simply had to speed onward, hoping the ground wasn't about to collapse beneath their feet.

Finally, Snap cried out and pointed to a door up ahead, one that looked rather small, but seemed to be the only one anywhere near. Slipping from Rudy's side, he reached it first and pried it open, finding it completely dark but running inside anyway. Rudy and Penny were right behind him, and they slammed the door shut once they entered, relieved to hear that although there were no lights in the room they had found themselves in, they could still hear faint sound; they were safe for the moment.

"Come on, let's keep going," said Rudy, not wanting to be anywhere near where the vanishing effect had just occurred. He stood up, relieved to find that his leg wasn't hurt badly at all, and after the initial pain faded, he could stand and walk without a problem. He turned on the flashlight, shining it around the room, and was dismayed to find that they were in a very small closet. The only door in it was the one they'd come through. They all looked to it hesitantly.

"I'm not sure I wanna see what's left behind that," Snap said uneasily. Rudy shook his head in agreement, feeling the same way.

"Well, what if _this_ room disappears?" Penny said worriedly. "We wouldn't even have time to get out before-"

That decided it, and Rudy quickly pulled open the door. He saw with surprise that there was already a new room there. It was also completely dark, and Rudy shined his flashlight around to see that it was rectangular, and seemed to be very long. The range of the flashlight wasn't big enough to see the end of it, and that made him nervous. He wasn't keen on walking into it, and he knew that if he had seen this room out of multiple doorways, he would not have chosen it. But it was the only direction they could go, so they quickly shuffled inside, leaving the small closet behind.

They began to run down the room, but as they looked at both walls, they couldn't see any doors at all. They started to fear that there was no way out of this room, and they were trapped between the two until one vanished and a new one appeared, or one shifted to make a door.

"Rudy, I don't think there are any doors here," Penny said after a moment. "We should go back and wait by the other one. If we're away from it, we could end up trapped at the back of the room…"

"I…guess you're right," Rudy said reluctantly. He hated the thought of being trapped, and he couldn't see the far wall clearly enough to make out any doors, but Penny's logic did make sense. They might need to wait by the one door they were sure of in case of an emergency. He shined his light toward the opposite wall again, but still couldn't tell if he was just seeing more plain wall.

"I think we should go check it out," Snap suggested, clearly not wanting to be trapped between the two rooms either. "Who knows how long it'll take for one of the rooms to change? We could be waitin' there for days. I say we should at least look an' see…" He paused, and Rudy and Penny noticed his body stiffen and his eyes grow wide, and they whirled around as well, hoping they weren't about to see what had immediately entered their thoughts. Yet as they turned around, they could see that the doorway they had come through had vanished, and the strange emptiness was spreading across the room toward them. Since the room had been dark, there had been no absence of the pulsing sound from the lights to warn them, and their debating over where to go had momentarily distracted them from the oppressing silence.

Having no choice, they turned and sprinted over to the opposite wall, coming to a sudden stop when they realized that they were standing in front of nothing but a solid wall. Glancing to either side, Rudy noticed with immense relief a single door across from them near the wall. They raced for it, noticing that the bizarre emptiness was quickly closing in on them. As soon as Rudy reached the door, he flung it open, a much brighter light temporarily dazzling him as he flung himself through the opening, his friends following suit and pulling the door closed.

They lay panting for a moment, looking wildly around the place they had found themselves in, which was a brightly lit, at least compared to the other rooms, hallway, but although it was much brighter, the light was the same eerie sort of blue, and the odd rhythm from the pulsing continued to reach their ears.

"Why did that room disappear if the one before it did only a minute ago?" Snap gasped, looking around the new hallway like he expected it to be whisked out of existence as well at any moment.

"I don't know," Rudy replied, "it-it must just happen randomly or something."

"Maybe it happens if we stay too close to the place it first happened!" Snap replied.

"Maybe," Rudy replied, already scanning the nearby doors. "I just hope you're wrong."

"Same here," Snap replied, running to the nearest door and pulling it open.

The room behind it had rows of doors that were at frequent intervals, so they chose it. They continued along in this manner, trying to stay in each room for as little time as possible. They had no idea if they were getting any closer to finding a window, and there was no way to tell.

Sometimes they would stumble across a room they had been in before, but its doors would lead to completely new places. The lack of logic of the place made them start to feel almost as if they were going a little crazy, and Snap thought that he would much rather brave the thunderstorm than be lost in this deadly maze any longer as he led the others down a new hallway that looked to have as many doors crammed into it as possible; there was hardly an inch of space between each one, and there were even some on the ceiling.

Knowing they had plenty of places to choose from, they went along periodically, ready to bolt into the nearest exit if there was any sign of danger. Penny found a door that led to a library, and since there were many doors, they decided to take that route.

As they passed massive towering shelves that easily dwarfed the Plainville Library, Penny couldn't help but pick up a book after verifying that the lights were on and creating noise, and stood by a door, quickly flipping through it as Rudy and Snap checked for a good exit. "That's odd…" she said after a moment.

"What is?" Snap asked as he gave a disappointed shake of his head and closed another door.

"The pages in this book are all blank," she replied. "So is the cover." She looked at the others, pulling a few more off the nearest shelf, and found that although the books were all different sizes and colors, none of them had any words or pictures. She felt somewhat disappointed; she had hoped that in some strange stroke of luck she could have found something in the books to help them, but she knew that they wouldn't have time to search this library, or do more than grab a couple of books before they would have had to flee again, so the thought had been completely irrational. She sighed, setting the book back down as she turned to help her friends. The books were as blank and pointless as the building they resided in.

They were still looking when Rudy cried out in alarm as the room suddenly became silent. This time, however, they were near a door and they quickly exited, realizing instantly that they were in another place with low lighting. As they turned around, they were surprised to see that they were once again in the massive mall area, in its modified state with a complete upper floor and no view of the lower story.

"We're back here?" Snap cried, sounding both frustrated and panicked. Even though Rudy and Penny knew that the doors would likely lead to different areas now, they couldn't help feeling as if they were going in circles and they felt as frustrated as Snap did. And even worse, it was becoming harder to fight their panic at the thought of being trapped and one of the vanishing rooms managing to eliminate them.

"R-remember," Penny stated, trying to sound calm and confident, "the building switches around, so we aren't necessarily going in circles. Let's just-"

A loud noise reached her ears, and she realized that parts of the room were changing again. The last change had been harmless, but the trio still shuffled backward nervously as they looked around, waiting to see how the room would modify itself this time. Looking at the others, Penny could see that Rudy looked on the verge of panic, his wide-eyed gaze darting around as he looked completely trapped and terrified. "Let's-" She began walking to a door, but Snap stopped her.

"No!" he said. "Let's wait in here. At least while it's shifting it probably ain't gonna disappear. If we step into one of the other rooms it could vanish an' take us with it at any moment, but this one's busy doin' somethin' else!"

Penny paused, realizing that what he said made a lot of sense. "You're right, Snap," she agreed. "Let's wait until it's done changing."

The three tried to stay near the shop windows set into the wall, seeing that it looked like the floor they were standing on was starting to split down the middle again, probably separating into the two upper platforms it had been previously. Penny was about to suggest they take cover in one of the shops until it was over when suddenly the room became brighter, and they looked up to see, to their astonishment, a window that was being uncovered.

It was a gigantic mall type of window, spanning across a large section of the ceiling nearly above the row of shops in the opposite wall and consisting of dozens of smaller panels. It looked impossibly high to reach, but Rudy realized that if there was a window above the other side of the room, then the doors there must lead to the outside.

"We need to get across!" he called to the others, already bolting toward the slowly spreading floor. The sound of mechanical creaking was much louder than it had been earlier, which made him wonder if this time, the change to the room was going to be much more drastic.

As the three neared the center of the room, they found that the shifting floor was hard to run over, and they found it difficult to keep their balance and run fast enough as they neared the ever-widening gap between the two pieces of the floor.

Just as Rudy was nearing it, he stumbled, nearly sliding over the edge as the floor retracted and he skidded across the tiles. He found himself half leaning over it as he came to a halt, and stared wide-eyed down below. He hadn't realized how far down the lower story was on his first visit, but to him at that moment it seemed miles beneath him. Scrambling up and backwards, he looked forward and realized that the gap between the two sides of the upper story was now about seven feet, much too far to risk a jump. He turned his attention to the left and right, seeing that in one place, the two sides seemed to have formed a small extra balcony-like area that curved in a half circle and stuck out from the edge of the platform. He and the others made a dash for it, knowing that it could be their one last chance to jump to the other side and reach the doors that would lead them out of there; he could not see any bridges or pathways being formed between the two sides at all.

Ignoring their mounting exhaustion, they careened toward the half circle, reaching it in a series of seconds. Seeing that the distance was only a few feet, Rudy took the first jump, leaping over to the other side with relative ease. He quickly moved out of the way to give the others room, and Snap quickly made a running leap, jumping over the rails that were starting to protrude upward around the edges and landing at Rudy's side.

Penny, however, hesitated several seconds, staring at the now larger gap and the growing rails in terror, before she forced herself to follow them and vaulted over the edge. As she did so, her foot caught on the railings for a split second, minimizing the impact of her jump, and causing her to plummet before she reached the edge. With her hands outstretched, she managed to grab on to the opposite rail and halt her descent, trying to hold on and not think about how high up they were as Rudy and Snap attempted to pull her up. The floor suddenly stopped moving and locked into place with a shudder, and Penny nearly lost her grip before her friends managed to haul her to safety.

Rudy started to run toward the nearest door, but stopped in his tracks as something truly bizarre began to happen. The doors, along with the shops built into the wall, were being pushed upward toward the ceiling. He looked back at the opposite wall and saw that shops they had just been standing near were also being rearranged to line themselves up along the upper wall or even near the ceiling. In their place, an intricate tiled pattern appeared along the wall near the floor, forming a complex but odd design. The floor, now separated again, remained where it was. He couldn't see any sense to any of it, but then again, nothing in the jumbled building had at all made sense.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Snap cried over the sound of the shifting walls and ceiling.

Rudy was at a loss for words as he looked back at him. He had no idea. They could try to wait for everything to shift downward again, but that could take ages, and it wasn't guaranteed to happen. Not to mention that, by then, the window might be gone and the room may have moved somewhere else.

"Look…" Penny began, pointing toward the wall. "I think…to reach the doors, we could ride on those."

Her voice shook as she said it, and Rudy looked to see what she was pointing at, and realized that the lower wall of the mall on this side had had a couple of small ledges running the length of its side beneath the doors and shops. They had formed almost a series of shallow steps leading up to the doors, but now they were separated from the shops, which were currently several yards above them, and were rising as well, but at a slower pace. The ledges did not look wide enough to be able to stand on easily or safely, but knowing what would await them if they stayed in the building, Rudy wasn't sure they had a choice. Even though they were moving upward slower, the ledges were still already too high for them to reach, but beneath them, another odd tiled pattern lining the base of the wall was forming into some very odd elaborate design, but as it did so, many of the tiles jutted out from the wall, forming makeshift steps.

Seeing the opportunity, Penny was already running toward it, and Rudy and Snap followed, each of them finding a place with jutting tiles and starting to scramble up the wall toward the small ledges that were still steadily increasing in height.

Once he was a few yards above the ground, Rudy felt one of the tiles suddenly move beneath his feet, retreating back into the wall. His leg slipped, and as he tried to quickly find his footing again, another tile jutted out beside him, and he realized if it had been closer, it would have struck him and knocked him down to the floor. Panicked, he continued to climb, trying to focus only on his destination and hoping that the tiles weren't going to shift when he was trying to use them as a ladder.

He was almost at the top of the tile area and near the ledges when he reached out for a tile, only to lose his grip as he stretched his arm out. He swung backwards, feeling for a terrifying second that he was about to plummet to the floor several yards below, when Snap quickly reached down from a couple feet above and grabbed his arm, stopping his descent long enough for him to grab onto another tile. Knowing he couldn't let fear cause him to stop, he kept going, focusing on the rising ledges that were lifting upwards along the shifting section of the wall.

At last he was close enough to climb onto the ledges, and he and the others hurriedly climbed higher. They barely managed to clamber onto the ledges as they suddenly began rising at an increased pace, stretching up from the floor that was now far below them. They tried to stay perfectly still; there was absolutely nothing to grab onto, and they were quickly gaining on the shop openings and doors that had transferred to the top of the wall.

Rudy looked up as the ledges approached one, seeing the shop seem to lock into place on top of the ledges right beside him. Inching his way along it, he started to reach out his hand to grab the knob before catching sight of the dizzying sight below, clear down into the lower story, and wrenching his arm back, flattening himself against the wall again and trying to make sure he kept his balance. After a moment, he reached out again and managed to pull the door open. To his surprise, no light shone through it at all, and as he angled his head to look inside, he saw only another room dimly lit with blue light. That was not an exit, as he thought it had been. They weren't next to the outer wall of the building at all. There was no way out.

No way except…the _window_.

Rudy angled his head upward toward the window in the ceiling, which was growing steadily closer as their section of the wall moved upwards. He dared to look out at the rest of the room, and saw that everything–walls, floors, shops, and even several parts of the ceiling – were moving around and rearranging themselves, forming a mall room that looked completely different to what they'd first entered.

The ledges they were on suddenly came to a jarring stop, and the three pressed themselves against the wall, trying not to look down as they kept their gazes locked on the window. The ceiling curved upwards, the highest point being along the center, and the lowest point, right above them, being about twelve feet above their heads. They couldn't reach it, but there was no way back down, either. Rudy looked at the door to his left and then at the shop window beyond it. The shop had a section of a "roof" sticking out of the wall over its windows, decorated with a colorful banner that hung down in front of the windows. If he could make it over there, it looked easy enough to climb onto. From there, he might be able to reach the first panels of the window. Doing this without any sort of safety precaution, not even a rope he could hold onto, filled him with horror, but as he was the closest to it, he knew he would have to be first. Taking a deep breath, he edged toward it.

"Rudy, what are you _doing_?" Penny cried in alarm.

Rudy looked at her and Snap, who were both flattening themselves against the wall as far away from the edge as they could, trying not to move. "I'm going to climb up there!" he told her, reaching his hand carefully along the wall to point to the shop. Without waiting for a reply he started to edge around the door, and as he did so, he caught a glance of the bottom of the room. The place he was standing seemed impossibly high up in comparison, and the second floor walkways seemed to have retreated into the wall completely, leaving a sheer drop to the bottom floor, where he could only barely make out the pinpricks of light that marked the lower story's shops. He froze, his back against the door as he contemplated escaping inside it and looking for another way out. Yet the thought of wandering those hallways, where sudden danger could come at any time and wipe them out of existence, kept him from trying to open it again. He averted his gaze from the floor, focusing instead on the shop windows a couple yards to his left. If he kept going and was careful, he would be able to make it. Inside a building, there was no wind that could knock him off the ledge, which had stopped moving, so he wouldn't fall if he kept his concentration.

Seeing what he was doing, Snap started to follow him much more hesitantly, with Penny giving him a determined glance and beginning to do the same, though she was just as reluctant as Snap was. Carefully, Rudy edged his way to the shop window, peering inside and seeing nothing but a blank wall, and, grabbing the trailing banner from the shop's 'roof,' stepped onto the window ledge and gripped the roof section, using the topmost edge of the window to place his foot and hoist himself up.

Once on the roof ledge, he had much more space to stand and no longer had to keep so close to the wall. He was right beneath the ceiling now, and the nearest window panel was barely more than a foot or so above his head. Reaching up, he felt along its edge, looking for a latch or anything of the sort that he could use to open it with. Feeling something, he gripped it, finding that it was a small handle. He turned it with some amount of difficulty, and the window swung downward, nearly hitting his head as it opened, leaving a bright passageway to freedom.

Rudy turned his head as Snap reached the window pane, and moving back to the end of the ledge, he reached down to help his friend up, and Snap then assisted Penny. "How are we going to climb up there?" Penny asked, backing against the wall as she stared up at the narrow space.

Rudy wasn't quite sure. The way the panel had opened, it had swung outward, away from him and the ledge, and although he could reach the panel edge with his hand, it wasn't low enough for him to be able to grip it strongly enough to pull himself up.

"I have an idea," Snap said, standing beneath it to Rudy's left. "Give me a boost, Bucko!"

"All right…" Rudy said hesitantly, leaning down so that Snap could climb onto his shoulders. Keeping as far away from the edge as he could in case he staggered, Rudy stood up straight, watching nervously as Snap gripped the edge of the window and pushed off Rudy's shoulders so that he could climb up. Once Snap was safely out, he repeated the process with Penny, and Snap helped her to climb up from above.

Now the only one left, Rudy edged away from the wall so that he was directly beneath the open window panel as Snap and Penny both reached down. They gripped his arms and began to haul him up, though it was more difficult considering that he didn't have anything to stand on to help him.

Before they had managed to pull him through the opening, the entire section of the ceiling with the window shifted violently toward the other side of the room, and Rudy barely managed to hold on to the edge as he was wrenched away from Penny and Snap. In his terror he wondered if the outside of the building changed along with the inside, or if it was only the windows that moved around, and Penny and Snap were still standing on something solid and unmoving on the outside. The window came to a sudden stop, and Rudy found that he was staring straight downwards to the bottom of the mall, looking much higher than it had even before now that he was in the very center of the room where the ceiling was the highest. Raindrops pelted him from above, and he realized he had completely forgotten the storm outside; he hadn't even noticed it when he had been helping the others up. It was only sprinkling now, but it was enough to make the edges of the window slippery, and as he stared down at the dizzying drop into blackness beneath him, unable to tear his gaze away, he didn't dare move his hands to try and get a better grip in case he slipped. His backpack and sleeping bag weighed him down, but he couldn't reach around to unhook them from his shoulders, and he wished he'd thought to hand them to his friends up above before trying to get up himself. His heart beat faster than ever as he felt his fingers slip an inch or two.

Suddenly he felt someone grip his left arm, and another pair of hands grabbed his right. Together, his friends began pulling him out, and a several seconds later, he was lying on the outside roof of the building next to them, the opening of the window beside it.

"Come on," said Penny urgently as she helped him stand up, "we've got to get away from here. The window was moving along the roof before and it could move under us."

Wasting no time, the others got up and followed her, ignoring the rain as they ran to the nearest edge of the roof, wondering how they were supposed to get down. Rudy backed away from the edge once he saw how high it was, and looked around, the thought that it was lucky there no longer seemed to be much lightning from the storm clouds above faintly entering his mind. One thing he noticed briefly as well was that even from his high vantage point, he couldn't see the end of the swamp, and his spirits plummeted even further than they already had.

"Look over there!" Penny cried, pointing across to a series of jagged metal stairs that zigzagged downward from the top of the building by one of the roof's corners. Apparently, it must have been designed with an opening leading up to the roof originally, either that or it was another incomplete idea its creator had, but whatever the reason, the three friends were just grateful that it was there. Reaching the stairs, they hurriedly raced down them, and when they stepped on the marshy grass below, they quickly began putting as much distance between them and the building as possible.

Once back into the thicket of trees making up the swamp, but having no real idea if they were back where they had been before or in a completely new place, they all sat down to rest, not caring about the mud that was now much deeper and thicker than it had been previously. As the rain slowly pattered down on them from above, no one said a word to each other, not even one of relief.

Rudy thought he should feel relieved and safe after escaping that place, but he only felt terrified. They were facing the complete unknown, a section of ChalkZone where even seemingly harmless buildings could be deadly. Even looking around the swamp, he had no idea what horrors might be awaiting them there, and earlier they had spent a good part of the night stomping through it, hardly giving a thought to what dangers might have been lurking in the darkness. Now, however, he was fully aware that there could easily be some sort of hidden danger there, and it made him afraid to take another step into it. He thought back to their wanderings through the building, and he knew that if he had had the magic chalk with him, he could have simply kept drawing doors until they reached one of the outer walls and could get out. They would not have needed to try to outrun the spreading void as the rooms vanished. Even through the dangers in the Mist Mountains, he had always had some sort of defense, but now…he did not. Without it, he and his friends were simply a group of lost little kids, helpless in a place they had no knowledge of and without the faintest idea how to get back. They couldn't get home, and he couldn't protect his friends…couldn't protect himself, and he certainly couldn't protect ChalkZone.


	10. A Question of Time

_(Author's Note: Thanks so much to Flareonwolf for helping me with a part of this chapter!)_

* * *

><p><strong>Cryptic investigation<strong>

**Chapter Ten – A Question of Time**

Later in the night, the storm clouds drifted off, but in the dark gloom of the swamp, the trees still obscured most of the light, so it was impossible to see the bright sky overhead. Looking at her watch with the flashlight, Penny could tell that it was around 3:00 AM, early Sunday. She was reminded that they only had Sunday and most of Monday before they would have to be back in the Real World, and unless they could somehow find one of their missing pieces of magic chalk, she didn't think there was any way they could get back with enough time to search for the cave. Trying not to think about it, she leaned back against the tree she was resting on, feeling too exhausted to keep walking, but finding it impossible to sleep.

Rudy and Snap were in a similar state, and every time they heard some strange sound from within the depths of the swamp they would look around frantically, as if expecting something harmful to leap out at them from any direction. Rudy especially seemed worried, and every once in a while he would stand up and walk around the small clearing they had sheltered in, peering through the trees for any sign of danger.

It was hard not to imagine that every rustling sound, every twitch of leaves or branches, was something that could bring them harm. Rudy knew that he certainly didn't usually feel this way in ChalkZone, but having no magic chalk with which to protect himself or the others, and being in an area he knew nothing about made him feel more vulnerable than ever. He turned to his friends. "Maybe we should try to keep going," he said uneasily.

They both looked back at him with reluctant expressions, and Rudy knew that even if they tried, they weren't going to get very far without resting first. He sighed. "Never mind…" he said quietly. "We'll wait until tomorrow." He lay down, facing the darkest part of the swamp. He knew that even if the others managed to fall asleep, he wanted to stay awake in case anything happened. Maybe he couldn't protect anyone with the magic chalk, but he wanted to at least be able to warn them if any danger was coming.

A while later he opened his eyes to realize that he'd drifted off. Alarmed, he looked around, but everything looked exactly like it had earlier, and Penny and Snap were now asleep. Still unnerved, he stood up, determined not to fall asleep again. He paced back and forth, trying to keep his eye on as many places around them as he could, thinking frantically to himself that something could have happened to one of them while he'd dozed off, and he was sure that it wouldn't happen again. He wanted to check Penny's watch to see what time it was, but he didn't want to wake her. He just hoped that they could start moving soon. He didn't like the thought of staying there, waiting for something to happen…

After a while he grew tired again and sat down, fighting to keep himself awake. In spite of his fear, everything that had happened had simply taken too much of a toll on him, and he was completely exhausted. But he couldn't just sleep…he had to wait until one of the others was awake if he absolutely couldn't stay awake…

A sound from the bushes alerted him, and he stood up in alarm, his tiredness fading. He watched the bushes up ahead nervously, stepping backward and hoping that the sucking sound the mud made as he walked through it wasn't going to alert anything dangerous to his presence. However, a second later a creature appeared through the leaves, and he stared at it in confusion. He recognized the Zoner.

It was the green, scale-covered cat he and his friends had run into earlier. The cat was carrying a fish in its mouth, looking quite pleased with itself as it strolled across the clearing on the opposite side, not even seeming to notice Rudy standing there.

"Wait!" he cried, and the cat turned its head.

"Oh, it's you again," the cat said, briefly putting down the fish. "You're the one who brought the strange items here, weren't you?"

"Yeah, well, that's not important," Rudy quickly said, greatly relieved that at least he was fairly certain this animal was harmless. "We-"

"And you said you were the Great Creator."

"That's not important either!" Rudy cried. "You don't have to believe what we said. We just want your help, and…" He paused, peering into the darkness of the swamp and wondering if the cat's friends were nearby. He hoped he wouldn't run into them; the cat had seemed the most reasonable out of the four, and without the others around the swamp-dwelling creature might be inclined to help them. "Can you show us the way out of this swamp?" he finished, hearing Snap and Penny, who must have been woken by their voices, standing up.

The cat looked back at him, then looked away thoughtfully, as if considering it. "Yeah, all right," he said with a shrug after a few moments. He then picked up the fish again started walking forward, and the others hurriedly followed.

However, they needn't have hurried at all. The creature seemed to be in no rush. In fact, it looked as if he was taking his time, walking along at a steady but slow pace. Snap narrowed his eyes, a bit irritated. "Uh, would ya mind hurrying this up?" he asked.

"Don't worry," the cat responded, "we'll get there."

"Look," Rudy replied, "we really need to get out as soon as we can, so do you think we can go faster? Or that you can tell us which direction to go?"

"It's much better if we do it this way," the cat said simply, carrying on at his leisurely pace.

Too tired to argue, they continued to follow him until they began to suspect that they had passed certain trees or bushes before. "Are you sure you know where we're going?" Penny began, her eyes narrowed in suspicion as she ducked beneath the branches of a tree to avoid being scraped by the twigs.

"Pretty sure," the cat replied.

"Just…pretty sure?" Rudy asked, starting to feel doubtful himself.

Snap rolled his eyes. "This is gettin' us nowhere…" he muttered to Rudy. "Let's just find the way out ourselves!"

Frustrated, Rudy was inclined to agree with him. However, he didn't want to throw away a potential chance to get out of the mess they were in, so he shook his head. "Let's keep following," he whispered. "If we don't see the end of the swamp soon, we can try to find our own way out."

Snap sighed. "If you say so," he answered.

They continued to wander for what seemed like quite a long while, and Rudy was beginning to seriously consider leaving so that they could find an exit on their own when he noticed bright sunlight streaming through the branches of the trees in a clearing up ahead. Speeding up as well as he could in the thick mud, he reached the clearing and could see that the trees thinned out up ahead and beyond them was a clear area. They had reached the edge of the swamp at last.

"Oh," the cat said, as if pleasantly surprised, "there it is. That was quicker than I thought."

Snap gave him a disapproving look. "We would've found it a lot quicker if you'd-"

"Uh, thanks for helping us," Rudy quickly cut in. "I think…" he added to himself under his breath.

"Do you know what we'll find out there?" Penny asked, pointing through the trees and toward the new land ahead of them.

The cat shrugged. "Never been there. Anyway, I should go, so…goodbye." Without bothering to wait for an answer, he headed off into the darkness of the swamp in a completely different direction.

"He doesn't have any idea where he's going, does he?" Snap sighed.

"I dunno," said Rudy, "but he doesn't seem bothered by wandering around the swamp. And at least we found the exit."

Running into the next clearing, they noticed that it was significantly less muddy, and the ground underneath was firmer. As they walked through the trees, they noticed that beyond the clearing, even though the trees were sparser, the sunlight faded, and Rudy soon realized that it was because there were clouds blocking the sky up ahead. Luckily, they didn't look like storm clouds.

After a few minutes, they left the trees behind and came upon a small hill, which they climbed onto in order to get a better look at their new surroundings. Upon getting a glimpse of what lay beyond, the three felt disappointment and hopelessness well up inside them again. This looked like nothing they had come across before, and certainly not like anything on the map.

The land that stretched before them certainly didn't seem like it held many dangers, though of course none of them could be sure of that, but there was something desolate and completely hopeless about the place. It looked like some sort of sandy desert, except that the sand was hard packed and a dark gray in color. There were several hills scattered throughout it, but apart from that, there was little change to the landscape. The gray dusty sand stretched on as far as they could see, and what seemed to be many heaps of discarded metal items and other garbage lay in random places, and there were several metal signs sticking out of the ground, but the symbols and pictures on them were complete nonsense. The whole area was overshadowed with a layer of clouds, as if all the gray clouds in ChalkZone had for some reason gathered here, and although there was no rain or thunder and it was certainly light enough to see everything clearly, the whole place looked gloomy and dim. If there was any relief for the trio, it was that this area was not hot; in fact it was almost chilly.

"We're not anywhere near the map _or_ the chalk mine, are we?" Rudy asked, though it was more a statement than a question. The land ahead of them was dark and foreboding, but at the moment, anything was better than the swamp. He took the first few hesitant steps out of the trees and onto the sand, which even looked and smelled dirty.

"Maybe we should rest for a while," Penny suggested. "It seems safer here, at least."

Rudy walked up another small incline, standing on top of the hill to overlook what lay before him. One again, there was nothing but hills and sand as far as he could see.

"Rudy?"

"Yeah…good idea…" he sighed, trudging back to them. At the moment, he didn't want to think of having to walk through all that, especially when they would have no help. The area was completely vacant.

Once they found a relatively clean area away from any garbage, they set down their supplies. They were all very hungry, so Rudy and Penny set about trying to make a fire while Snap wandered off to go forage for food, as he had done every other time Rudy and Penny stopped to eat. They didn't like the thought of him going alone, but they knew that he was unlikely to encounter danger in the outer fringes of the swamp and he certainly couldn't eat their food.

Rudy looked at the pitiful remains of the food he and Penny had brought. They only had three small cans of soup left out of everything they'd brought, and he knew that it wasn't going to last them long. He was already starving, but he knew they had to save their food, so they shouldn't open more than one for now. He then looked at their three water bottles. Once they had sat down to rest, he and Penny had each taken one, and before they'd realized it they'd drank nearly half of each of the bottles, and afterwards they had quickly decided that they would need to be very careful about conserving it in the future. He looked up as he realized that Penny had managed to light a fire with the sparse dry grass and sticks they had found near the area. Together they carefully set up a small platform out of sticks that held the can above the fire. After a while, Snap returned and they sat in silence for a short while.

Rudy silently poured some soup into his mouth, thoughts churning as he tried to map out the remaining time they had before they would need to return to the Real World. "Penny...? What's the time?" he asked, glancing at her with a worried expression.

Penny looked at her watch. "It's ten-thirty," she responded, trying not to give too much emotion away. She returned to her soup can and Rudy stared at the ground.

"Penny, I'm... What if we don't get home in time?" he asked solemnly. Penny gazed at him sadly, unable to answer. "We don't even know where we are!" he continued. "We had to rely on someone else to help us out of the swamp... What if we can't find anybody else to help us?"

"We have to have hope, Rudy," she replied, though he could tell that she was worried as well as she said it. "We have more than a day to get back, and I'm sure we'll find some way." She attempted to give him a small smile, but it wasn't reassuring.

"But Penny...we don't even know where to start." He glanced at their supplies; it went unspoken that their resources were diminishing at a startling pace.

"We'll figure out something," she said tentatively, trying to sound as reassuring as she could manage. "If we were to get back to the Magic Chalk Mine, we could retrieve as much chalk as we need, and then we could return to the Real World and think about what to do next there."

"On the contrary, Buckette," Snap began, taking a bite out of a strange looking apple he had managed to find in the swamp. "I think your time would be better spent if you stayed here in ChalkZone another few days. You need all the time you can get here... The city Zoners need it."

"And the rest of ChalkZone," Rudy added, staring at the ground as his mind raced in circles.

Penny gave a light frown, setting the can down so the metal's heat didn't burn her skin. "We need to get back home, Snap. Can't you see we don't have much water or food? And we need the rest...badly. I doubt you've recovered."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous. I'm fine!" he insisted, but both Rudy and Penny knew that he couldn't have been telling the complete truth. They, who had gone through the journey without the unpleasant experience of imprisonment that lasted two days prior to their expedition, were positively worn out. Rudy had no idea how they had managed to keep going the whole time. He knew Snap was only trying to be hopeful. "Look," Snap continued, "All I'm sayin' is that we can't wait too long. You two go back into the Real World and you only give those creepy termite things more opportunity to deal damage." He paused to see their reactions before holding his adamant tone and continuing. "After we get more chalk, you can get more supplies and then we could come straight back out here and keep lookin' for that cave with those books."

Rudy's eyes remained on his friend as he mulled over the proposition. It was a good idea in theory, as protecting ChalkZone and its inhabitants was certainly their top priority at the moment, but he was unable to make a decision. His eyes flicked to Penny when she began talking.

"Snap, we can't do that!" Penny retorted, her head shaking continuously. "Remaining in ChalkZone for another few days would compromise its secrecy. If we don't tell our parents where we've gone, they'll think that something had gone terribly wrong and that we could have run away. They would certainly call the police to look for us." She couldn't see how sneaking away for days without the cover up of something like the field trip would turn out well at all, for them or even for ChalkZone's secrecy. It was far too risky; with school for the next four following days, they couldn't possibly make up a reason to disappear for another few days.

"But it's the only way to save ChalkZone!" Snap responded, reluctantly accepting that she was right. However, he certainly wasn't ready to abandon his homeland and watch passively as the creatures simply destroyed it. His face flickered with contempt as he thought of Bob Newland and his mindless cronies. "If you can't come back soon, then ChalkZone's doomed."

Rudy remained silent, his mind running through everything his friends had said. They had stated just the thing he had been afraid to face for the past few hours, and hearing them say it only made it all the more real. They were running out of _time_, and even if they managed to get back, their one window of opportunity would already have been firmly closed. He had already been thinking along the same lines, but it hadn't fully dawned on him until just then exactly how correct his doubts had been. It really was too late to complete their journey.

The others had fallen silent again as well, and Rudy wondered if they felt the same way he did. There was no way they could sneak away for long during the school days, let alone long enough for a several day journey, yet he had no idea how many more days they had before Newland's creatures began wreaking even more havoc. He wasn't even sure whether or not they already had. He felt a wave of hopelessness descend on him as he mentally went through his options, each time realizing that there was no chance of accomplishing his goal. Even if they had a lot of free time over the weekend, the journey over the mountains alone was simply too long. They really did have no way of reaching the cave anymore, and he wondered why it had taken him until just then to realize it.

After they had rested a while and Snap had gathered some more food as well, they continued on, still lost in their own thoughts. Having no idea of where they were going, they simply started walking in a random direction, hoping to come across some change in the landscape, or better yet, a Zoner who could help them. However, the further they went, the more deserted everything seemed.

After a while, they stumbled upon some strange black paths, but after following one, they found it led in a giant circle, and if it had ever served any sort of purpose, it certainly didn't anymore. After wasting so much time, Rudy was determined to ignore the paths and keep heading in a straight line; at least then they were bound to come across something eventually.

It was already noon, and Rudy was realizing more and more that Penny was right. They had little more than a day left, and he had to admit to himself that their search for the cave was over. It was no longer an option, and they were going to have to find something else. What that would be, he had no idea, and even less of an idea how much time they had left before Newland's creatures would begin destroying other parts of ChalkZone. On top of everything else, he was also beginning to doubt they would even be able to make it home by tomorrow evening.

"Rudy," Penny began as they passed yet another hill. "We're running very low on water." She showed him that they only had two water bottles remaining, each only half filled. Rudy stared back in shock; he hadn't realized they had so little; as they had been walking, he hadn't even kept track of how many times he'd gotten a drink. "We'll need to save the rest," she continued, "in case…in case we don't make it back home tonight."

Rudy nodded solemnly; he realized that they would very likely still be wandering the wasteland by nighttime, but it was getting back before Monday night that worried him now. If they couldn't make it in time, he knew that the secrecy of ChalkZone could be jeopardized even before Newland, Raton, and Bouffant got their hands on it.

Snap had luckily managed to find a small pond that had looked clean enough to take water from, and using the one remaining container that Rudy had brought along, he had been able to store enough for himself for a while. Rudy was glad that at least Snap would be able to find resources for himself, as he certainly needed it, but the same couldn't be said for himself and Penny. They could only use what little they had left.

As they kept walking, the gray sand crunching beneath their feet, none of them spoke a word for quite a while, except for the occasional comment about an odd piece of useless junk lying around or musing about where the place might lead to. Rudy was trying not to think about what Penny had said earlier; somehow, hearing that come from her had made everything all the more real. ChalkZone was certainly in a dire situation.

"Look up there!" Snap stated after what seemed like hours, and Rudy slowly made his way up to the top of the small hill of sand he was standing on and squinted as he peered into the distance.

Up ahead, the landscape certainly changed, but into what, he wasn't sure. It looked much more flat than the hill-covered wasteland, but there were odd vertical structures sticking out of it that looked almost like gigantic spikes. He couldn't see anything else there, but he froze at the sight of it. Memories of being trapped in the building filled his mind and he started to feel terrified all over again. Without the magic chalk, he had no way to defend himself or escape anything that could be dangerous there, and he was reminded of that fact all the more painfully.

"I don't know about this, guys…" Rudy began.

"We have to keep going somewhere," Penny replied, throwing him a worried glance. "There's no one in this wasteland, and well…that place might get us somewhere…" She turned back to look at it, and Rudy could tell that she was worried too.

"Well, let's go then," said Snap, not giving the others a glance as he strode forward, making his way toward it without looking to see if they were following. Rudy and Penny glanced at each other hesitantly, then slowly followed.

As they made their way toward the strange flat landscape, Rudy found himself growing increasingly thirsty. He had started to want a drink of water soon after Penny had mentioned saving it, but now it was becoming almost unbearable. He'd noticed that the further away from the swamp they'd gotten, the less chilly it had become, and it was now fairly hot, even with the covering of clouds, and this was made worse by all the traveling they had been doing. As much as he tried not to think about thirst, it was impossible to ignore, and he was starting to feel dizzy. He kept his gaze focused on the odd spike-looking objects in the land ahead of them, trying to ignore it.

It wasn't long before the new landscape was close enough for them to be able to get a good look at it. It was sandy, like the place they were in currently, but this sand was more of a dark brown color, and the odd spike shaped things they had seen turned out to be massive rock pillars that tapered into a sharp point at the end. They looked as if they had been drawn that way rather than carved or changed over time. As they approached the area, they couldn't see much of anything else, but after their recent experiences, they didn't want to let their guard down.

Once he stepped into it, Rudy realized that there wasn't going to be anything in this place that could help them. It was just as barren a wasteland as the one they'd come through, and he knew that they were far, far from any of the places on the map. Hopelessly, he sank to his knees, too exhausted and discouraged to take another step. There was no one here, no one who could help them, and he had no way of getting to somewhere where they could find any help at all. The more he stared around at the towering pillars and desolate sandy landscape, the more hopeless and desperate he felt. Not wanting to look at the strange place any longer, he sat down, burying his face in his hands.

Behind him, Penny and Snap had been standing silently, both staring at the bizarre terrain in front of them. Snap, looking at Rudy, ran over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Bucko?" he asked. "You okay?"

"No!" Rudy cried, lifting his head. For some reason he wasn't sure of, anger flared through him as he stared at the way ahead of them. "How would I be okay?" he snapped back. "How are any of us okay? We don't even know if we're going to get back home, let alone save ChalkZone!"

"Rudy…" Penny began, sounding a little shocked. Snap looked surprised as well, and it was evident he hadn't expected that sort of reaction.

"You said so yourself," Rudy continued, rounding on her. "There's not enough time to find a way to get to that cave, and…and what are we supposed to do once we do get back? Hand over some magic chalk to Newland?"

Penny looked down, averting her gaze from Rudy's. "I don't know…" she said after a minute.

Rudy paused, suddenly sorry that he had yelled at the others. He knew that Penny had been right, and Snap had only been trying to help, and he sighed. "Newland's animals are going to start destroying everything before long and…I just thought we would be able to do something before it started happening…" he said after a moment.

"We still can," Penny insisted, also glancing at Snap as she did so. "We don't know how long Newland wanted them to wait. But first we have to focus on getting back and retrieving more magic chalk. We'll try to think of what to do then."

"But we don't have anywhere else to look," Snap muttered, crossing his arms.

"Biclops might be able to help us again," she began, though uncertainly.

"If he had a better way he woulda' told us!" Snap retorted.

"No, I don't think Biclops will be able to help," Rudy agreed sadly. "We're going to have to keep looking…for someone who might know what to do. We can't help ChalkZone on our own this time."

No one said anything in response. After a moment, Rudy felt a faint wind pick up, and had to shield his face as sand whipped into the air. He noticed the area around him getting brighter and looked up, seeing that several of the clouds were being pushed away, making way for more light…but also more heat, he realized. He stood to his feet nervously. "Let's keep going," he said, though not with any confidence that they would find anything that could help them. He just hoped they'd at least find a place where they could have adequate shade to rest in, and with any luck, get out of that place before it got unbearably hot.

For a while, they kept moving, and as Rudy had predicted, it soon grew hotter, and by late afternoon, they barely had any water left, and there still seemed to be no end to the sand. There were hardly any clouds over this part of the wasteland, and the pillars were now few and far between. Even when they found one, it provided little shade at all.

They were all completely exhausted, and realized quickly that they once again needed to stop to rest. They lay down near the only nearby rock pillar, though it did little to alleviate the heat. Rudy knew that although it was almost evening, in ChalkZone, it wouldn't simply turn dark at night and cool off. No matter what time it was, it was always going to feel like the middle of the day in this place. The only comfort he had was that nothing had threatened them yet, though after their experience in the building, he certainly hadn't stopped worrying about it.

After a while they kept going, and the three of them simply stumbled in a random direction, but as the afternoon wore on, they still saw no sign of any Zoners apart from a few small animals they weren't able to communicate with. The landscape had changed, but only a bit, and instead of pillars, there were now just flat boulders spaced at random intervals across the sand. There was no shelter from the heat, and in spite of their efforts to save it, all three of them were nearly out of water. Rudy and Penny had used up the last of their food as well; in the end they had realized that they needed the energy to keep going until they could reach somewhere that was easier to travel through, or at least wasn't so hot, if they even did find one.

Penny was aware that their exhaustion was slowing them down, but they had no choice but to keep going, hoping they would stumble upon a more hospitable area soon. However, by nighttime, they hadn't found one, and simply had to stop to rest.

Rudy found it bizarre that it was nighttime, yet the sun blazed so brightly overhead. Before when he had slept in ChalkZone, he had been in Snap's house, and the past few days, in an area covered with mist or blocked by swamp trees. He had never had to spend the night outside in the middle of DayZone without any cover before.

They used two of the flat boulders as a shelter, spreading their sleeping bags across the gap between them and using the backpacks to hold them in place. With a small amount of shade, the heat was less unbearable, and though there was no comfortable place to lie down, the three of them were too tired to care.

"Penny," Rudy said after a moment as he leaned with his back against the rock, "what will we do if we can't get back before the field trip ends?"

"We'll make it back," she replied, though she didn't sound as confident as she hoped.

Rudy was also feeling less than optimistic. It wasn't likely that finding a Zoner who knew of something else that could help them would be easy, and he knew that they were quickly running out of time. He could only hope that Newland had told his creations to wait for more than just a couple of days. If they waited a week, they might have a chance, but out here, away from the city, they had no way of knowing what the state of things currently was.

**ooo**

The next morning seemed to come quickly for all three of them. Upon awakening, they had all realized, much more strongly than before, how little time they had left. They had until that evening before they would have to be back in the Real World, and they needed to move fast.

They hadn't been going for long, however, before Rudy realized how hungry and thirsty he was. They hardly had any water left, and he didn't dare drink any even though he hadn't had much water since the previous day. As they carried on, he realized that this must be similar to what Snap had felt being locked in Bob, Vinnie and Terry's hideout in the Real World for two days. Snap wasn't much better off than he and Penny were, though he did have a little more water.

After several hours, Rudy still had no real idea where they were going. There was a haze of fog up ahead that made it impossible to tell what lay behind it. He felt more and more discouraged as time ticked by, and he found himself increasingly worried, imagining how frantic his parents would be once they realized that not only had he not come home from the field trip, but that he had never been on it to begin with. He could tell that Penny felt the same. He had no real idea if they were heading closer to familiar areas of ChalkZone or farther away, and how long it would take them to reach the Chalk Mine even if they were heading in the right direction.

Despite their tiredness, sheer desperation kept them going, but the fog up ahead remained, and they had no idea what they were headed toward. They could only hope that it was somewhere where they would be able to find help.

However, after a while, they began to notice a strange outline among the fog. It was hard to make out, and Rudy was squinting at it when Penny suddenly gasped in astonishment.

"Rudy! Snap!" she began, her eyes widening. "It's…the Mist Mountains."

Rudy stopped in his tracks, noting that the thin outline he could see did look like mountains, though they didn't look like the same part of the mountains they had gone through. The fog, he now realized, did look blue, however. He'd thought it only looked that way from a distance before, but now that they were closer, it certainly did look like the fog from the Mist Mountains.

"This must be another part of the mountain range," Penny pointed out. She understood now that they must have gone in a wide circle while wandering through the swamp and the wastelands and had come back around to another part of the mountain range. "Obviously we're far off the map, but if we can find a way to cross it, we should be able to find our way back."

"You're right," Rudy replied. He was relieved to see that the mountains didn't seem nearly as tall here, though he was unsure about how they were going to cross them at all.

As they got closer, the outline became clearer, and they could tell that it was definitely a smaller end of the mountain range. Penny remarked that it was probably only a small spur, and therefore not as wide, so they should be able to cross it quickly, but Rudy could tell that she was worried they wouldn't make it through before evening.

To their relief, some of the mist seemed to drift away as they got closer to the mountains, and they hurried along with somewhat renewed hope. The wasteland that they had been walking through rose higher up ahead before dropping off, and they knew the rise would give them a good view of the surrounding area once they reached it.

Rudy ignored his tiredness and thirst as he ran up toward the edge of the rise, hoping that from there, they would be able to see a good path through the mountains. They'd be able to see the foothills from there, and hopefully find it an easy climb.

When he managed to reach the top, the sight that greeted him filled him with dread. "Oh no…"

"Rudy?" Snap called from behind, noticing that his friend had stopped in surprise. "What is it?"

Rudy found himself speechless, instead letting Penny and Snap catch up to him. They stared down at what the raised portion of land had previously hidden, a small valley between the wasteland and the mountains. What lay inside of it filled the three of them with horror.

A large stretch of the icy tundra they had first seen after their foray into the Mist Mountains lay before them. Though it wasn't nearly as wide as the portion of it they had seen a few days ago, it was certainly big enough to get lost in, and it stretched far into the distance in either direction. They all knew that if there was any chance of making it back, they would have to walk through it. There was no way they could walk over the top; even if they could be sure it was safe, they had no method of climbing up it.

"How are we gonna get through that?" Rudy asked incredulously. He now knew from bitter experience that wandering through anything mazelike, especially without the magic chalk, would be extremely difficult and dangerous. He could feel cool air wafting toward him from the ice cliffs, and though it felt pleasant after walking for so long in the heat, all he could think about was how cold it would be inside. Neither he nor his friends had any clothing designed for cold; he hadn't thought to bring any, assuming he could just draw winter clothes for them if they needed it.

"We'll just have to keep going until we find our way out," Penny stated, determinedly beginning to walk down the slope. Rudy and Snap glanced at each other uneasily before following their friend.

Penny wasn't very confident herself, but worry about what would happen if they couldn't get home, both for herself, Rudy, and ChalkZone, drove her to force herself to move forward. They couldn't stop to rest, not when they were finally close and had so little time.

She stopped at the base of the ice, peering up at it. It seemed so much taller up close than it had from the top of the rise, and she looked into its depths warily, hearing a faint clunking sound as chunks of ice fell from somewhere and skittered down to the floor. It was very dark inside, with only the occasional stream of light coming from a crack in the ceiling. She took a deep breath as the two boys caught up to stand beside her. "Okay," she said, looking to each of them. "Let's go."

Hesitantly, they walked into the nearest crevice, determined to head in a straight direction whenever they could to reach the opposite side. The cold air soon chilled them to the bone, and Penny shivered as she kept walking, keeping her gaze fixed on the closest patch of light. The cold had gotten to her faster than the others, for her shirt didn't have sleeves, and she rubbed her arms in an attempt to warm herself up. Every time she or one of her friends exhaled, they could see their breath against the cold air.

A painfully loud sound of ice cracking reached them from overhead, and the three instinctively ducked down, shielding their faces in case any shards of ice fell down from above, but nothing happened, and the creaking sound faded.

"Hand me the flashlight, Rudy," Penny stated, hearing her voice echo back at her several times as Rudy looked through the backpack and gave it to her.

She shined the flashlight up ahead as they passed a thin crack that let in a trickle of light and plunged into darkness again. The path ahead split into two ways, and neither of them led straight forward. She chose the left one, noting to herself to try and choose a right path later if she could. In the darkness, she nearly tripped over a chunk of ice the size of her fist, and she nervously glanced up, knowing that pieces that size dropping from the ceiling could cause a serious injury.

Up ahead, the path split off in one direction, but upon entering this side path, they quickly discovered that it led to a dead end. Doubling back, they found the path they had been taking before and continued to follow it, but it only seemed to snake back and forth, and it didn't take long for them to get completely turned around.

"Maybe we should go back," Rudy stated, his voice magnified by the echoes. "We could try the other path."

Penny agreed and they came back to the fork in the path they had first discovered, this time choosing the right one. This one seemed just as winding, and Penny knew they didn't have much choice but to keep following it, hoping it wouldn't lead to a dead end. The light of the flashlight reflected oddly off of the shining blue ice, making the whole place seem even more eerie and surreal. The three were now stiff with cold as they continued down the passageway, hoping they would be able to make it out of the maze soon. Sometimes they tried to warm their hands by holding the rolled up sleeping bags and putting their hands inside, but it didn't do much good.

After they had passed many twists and turns, Penny had the feeling they weren't headed in the right direction at all. It was impossible to tell for sure, and now that the passages were narrower, they had to walk in single file, and she, at the front of the group, mainly made the decisions on which path to take.

Rudy, at the back, kept nervously looking up at the cracks in the ceiling, many of them illuminated by a faint glow caused by light shining through. His arms were numb with cold, and he sincerely hoped they would reach the end of the ice soon. It wasn't nearly as vast as the section they had first come across near the rivers, so it couldn't be much farther, he thought to himself. _Could it?_

Another loud grating, cracking noise came from overhead, and this time they were showered with small shards of ice. Quickly ducking down and shielding their heads, they waited for it to pass before glancing upward. Penny shined the light toward the ceiling, and they could see long cracks running through it. They waited a few seconds before carefully moving on.

Suddenly, a cascade of falling ice tumbled down in front of them, causing Penny to leap back and nearly knock Snap over. They quickly backed up, looking on with shocked gazes until the last clumps of ice tumbled to the bottom, forming a large pile that partially blocked their way.

"That's it!" cried Snap. "Let's turn around. Surely there's another tunnel that'll-"

"I think this place is dangerous no matter what tunnel we're in," Rudy replied worriedly. He glanced back down the way they'd come, and remembered that it had seemed like that section of the ceiling had been about to collapse at any moment. He realized with a twinge of fear that he wasn't quite sure of the way back out to the wasteland, with all the twists and turns they'd taken.

They waited in silence for any sign of another collapse, but could hear nothing but the sound of their own frantic breathing. After a moment, Penny hesitantly approached the pile of collapsed ice. Placing her foot on it carefully, she hoisted herself up, cautiously stepping down to the other side and waiting for the others to follow. Rudy was the last to climb over, and as he did so, chips of ice tumbled from the ceiling onto his head, and he quickly slid down the other side of the ice pile and rejoined his friends. He could see now as well as they did that they had come to a part of the crevice that opened up into a bigger 'room.' There was a chunk missing from the ceiling, and Rudy wished they had some way to get up there to see if they were close to making it to the other side. He could only hope they weren't going in a circle. It was too easy to get turned around in a place like this.

The next moment, the three had to cover their ears as an immense crashing sound came from someplace nearby, sounding impossibly loud in the confines of the crevice. The entire place seemed to shake beneath their feet as they ran beneath the jagged circle of light from the ceiling, looking around wildly to try to determine where the collapse was coming from. They saw one of the walls in a nearby tunnel topple over and crash into the other wall and floor, and as a result, one of the walls of the room they were standing in began to crack and bend outwards, and the three friends hurriedly backed into the opposite wall as the section caved, shattering on the floor and sending a flurry of icy snow swirling around the room.

After a moment, the rumbling stopped, and they looked up to see a much wider crevice now that a section of the two next to each other had joined due to the broken wall. Part of the fallen wall led up in a slope toward the top of cliffs, but it was frustratingly too short to reach the top by climbing along, not that any of them were particularly keen to try scaling a massive block of broken ice.

"We need to find our way out of here fast!" Rudy cried frantically, starting to walk into the tunnel furthest away from the partially collapsed one.

The others were quick to follow him, and now knowing that the walls could cave in with little warning, they raced through the tunnels, choosing new paths at random and hoping to stumble across a crevice leading outside. Whenever they heard the sound of cracking ice overhead they increased their pace, ducking into wider tunnels or moving to areas where the ceiling looked less likely to collapse, though it was hard to tell which areas were dangerous and which were safer, and they were mostly guessing.

They had been trying to conserve the flashlight batteries, and therefore had kept it turned off whenever there was light, but now the tunnels were starting to get darker and darker, and they guessed that they were somewhere in the center of the thin section of tundra. It seemed, if possible, even colder here, and Penny's fingers were so numb they could barely switch on the flashlight. The light flickered feebly, and the three had to squint as they edged their way carefully along the uneven ground between the two ice walls. They had noticed as they got deeper and deeper that the sounds of shifting ice were quieter and less frequent, and they wondered if it was the edges of the ice that were the most dangerous.

"Careful here," Penny, who was once again leading the way, warned the other two as she climbed up a small slope and carefully stepped down onto another jagged part of the icy ground. As the others followed suit, she crept forward, finding that the tunnel grew narrower up ahead and the ground was more rugged.

A sudden, frigid howl rang throughout the area, and they whirled around, fear turning their blood to ice.

"Oh, what now?" Snap cried.

"I dunno, but let's go!" Rudy cried hurriedly, turning back to the other two up ahead. As they hurried forward, he wondered what could have made the sound. He thought back to the porcupine wolves they had encountered on the Mist Mountains. They were near the mountain range, so did those creatures live here, too? No, he thought, the strange sound they'd heard hadn't sounded like a wolf. It sounded like nothing he'd ever heard.

The trio found it hard to move fast in the cavern-like maze when the tunnels had grown so narrow and the floor often had shards of rock or ice jutting out of it. A few times, Rudy nearly cut his arm or leg on one of them that seemed to appear in front of him unexpectedly, but regardless, he did not slow down.

Up ahead, Penny suddenly cried out in shock as her feet plunged into icy water. Right behind her, Snap didn't have time to stop before he too stumbled into the pool, and Rudy had to make an abrupt stop as his friend came to a sudden halt.

Penny shined her flashlight around and they saw with surprise that they were in a massive cavern filled with water. There was little light, only a only a dim glow of sunlight faintly shining through the ice, and there were dozens of tunnels circling all around the room. Penny noticed with dread that the water got deeper further on, and she knew it would be dangerous to get wet if they wouldn't be able to leave the cold soon.

Penny turned left and right, looking for the nearest tunnel that looked like it led ahead. The closest ones were across the room, and she suggested they walk around by the wall, since the water was deepest in the middle.

Rudy and Snap both knew they would rather turn back and look for a different way, but they had seen no side tunnels in the one they had come through, and the strange howling noise was still fresh in their minds, so they followed Penny, wincing at the painful sensation of the frigid water.

Trying to distract themselves from it, Rudy and Snap looked up at the ceiling as they passed, seeing odd patterns in the ice as it reflected the shimmery wave patterns of the water. They were both colder than they had ever felt when they climbed out of the water to stand beside Penny in front of the new tunnel.

"All r-right…" she said, shivering, "t-this one looks l-like it leads ahead…t-to the other side…" She paused, looking up, as the faint roaring sound reached them again.

Before they could move or even ponder what it was, an icy blast of wind surged through the cavern, causing the three to duck down into the tunnel to avoid the worst of it as they saw small shards of ice rip through the air along with the wind past them. A few moments later, it had passed, and they looked up, both confused and relieved that that was all it had been.

However, the relief didn't last long. The shards of ice that had been blown along with the wind had left deep gouges in the wall near them, and they looked at each other for a moment before hurriedly moving on. "What was that?" Rudy asked as they continued on through the tunnel.

"I don't know," Penny replied, "but if that wind flows through tunnels and can carry pieces of ice like that, it's no wonder we haven't seen anyone here."

They passed several winding tunnels, and Penny was beginning to doubt they were actually getting anywhere. As hard as she tried to calculate where they were going and what turns they had made, the place was so massive and confusing that she knew they could be going in a huge circle.

A few times they encountered the strange gusts of wind blowing through the caverns, sometimes getting knocked off their feet. Luckily, they didn't encounter any more that moved shards of ice through the cavern. They had made their ways through the tunnels quickly, and were heading into another narrow one when the flashlight battery suddenly gave out.

Everything around them was plunged into darkness, and Rudy and Snap stood waiting hesitantly as Penny tried to get it to work again. The thought of having to navigate this frozen maze in near complete darkness filled them with horror as they looked around, unable to make out any of the nearby tunnels.

After a moment, the light flickered on again and the three of them breathed a sigh of relief. As they carried on, they heard the roaring wind moving throughout the tunnels, but it was not near their location. Though they couldn't have been wandering the caverns for long, it felt like it had been an eternity when they finally saw wider tunnels with cracks spilling in light up ahead. Now they were either almost through, or had gotten turned around and were close to where they had started. They hoped it was the former.

The new tunnels were wider and easier to walk through, and it was even a bit less cold. However, they soon started to hear the cracking and shifting sounds of ice up overhead, and sped up, running through tunnels as quickly as they could. Now that there was more light to see with, Penny turned off the flashlight, knowing that they could easily need it again.

It wasn't long before Penny gave a shout, and pointed up ahead to where sunlight was streaming at the end of a short tunnel. Greatly relieved, they ran into it, through the new tunnel and out into the open once again. They were standing on a small grassy area lying in front of the mountains, and around them were several trees and spots of lush vegetation, the first they had seen in what felt like a very long while. However, that wasn't all that lay there.

Rudy's spirits fell. They were at the foot of the Mist Mountains, for sure, but ahead of them surged one single, raging river. It was just as fast and dangerous as the other ones they had encountered by the Mist Mountains earlier, and he could tell right away that there was no way any of them could swim across.

"Don't worry," Penny told them, "we'll go around. Look!" She pointed to their right, and they peered into the distance to see that at one point, the river swerved into the side of the mountain and vanished from sight.

Rudy breathed a sigh of relief. "Great," he replied.

"Now we just have to find a way over the mountains," Snap muttered, looking doubtfully up at the peaks. Though they were not nearly as high or numerous as the ones they had journeyed through before, it still looked like an impossible climb, especially considering they would have to make it before that evening.

"Let's head to where the river enters the mountain," Penny suggested, "we might find a suitable place to climb." Knowing that they were at least making some sort of progress by skirting around the river, she led them until they came to stand by where the river surged into the mouth of a cave tunneling deep into the mountainside.

Here, the rock walls of the mountain were steeper, their blue surfaces glistening with spray from the river. It was certainly too dangerous to climb, and they set about scanning the base of the mountain for anywhere that looked like they could try to make it up without breaking their necks.

"Guys, over here!" Snap called, and Rudy and Penny, who had been walking along the base of the rock walls, turned to see him still standing by the river. "I think I found us a way through!"

He looked more optimistic than he'd been the entire time they'd been lost, and they approached him, looking confused as they peered into the cave, seeing no ledges or anything of the sort they could walk on. "Snap," Rudy began, "what do you-"

"No, look!" he cried, directing their attention to a large pile of rocks near the cave entrance. Here, several erased numbers had gotten trapped in a small pocket of water near the shore. There were many of them, and Penny and Rudy realized that one of the rivers must have picked up the numbers from near someone's chalkboard somewhere and carried them along, leaving these ones trapped here. "Remember when ya built a raft outta these, Buckette?" he asked. "We could use 'em to ride the river to the other side of the mountains!"

Penny stared at him incredulously. She did remember when she had used floating numbers to construct a raft when they had been on a quest to find a cure for Balloonemia, but that same raft had been easily smashed apart when it struck a rock wall. "Are you _serious_?" she replied. "We don't even know where that river leads!"

"It has to let out somewhere," Snap replied. "Come on, Buckette, you're not gonna make it back in time if we have to climb that thing." He peered up at the mountain.

"Snap's right," Rudy began, uncertainly, "but…it does seem really dangerous…"

"Of course it's dangerous!" Penny replied. "We'd have to make sure the raft didn't strike anything that could break it apart, and we aren't sure the river doesn't lead deeper underground, or…"

Rudy glanced from one of his friends to the other. He understood what both were saying, and in a way, he agreed with each of them. But he could see that even Snap was looking a little doubtful about his plan as he peered into the mouth of the cave.

"I think we should do it," Rudy said at last.

"What?" Penny said, turning to him in surprise.

"Snap's right…this could be our only chance of making it back before the field trip bus arrives," Rudy told her. "Or before we die of thirst," he added. "I know it's dangerous…but we probably wouldn't last against the creatures in those mountains even if we did find a way to climb up. And the river would have to let out on the other side, or at least somewhere in the mountains. If we could build a good raft, that river will carry us much faster than our vehicle could, and these mountains aren't nearly as big, so we might be able to make it across quickly."

"Uh, yeah, what Rudy said," Snap put in, seeming confident once again as he looked at Penny. "Better than gettin' mauled by porcupine wolves."

"Well…" Penny hesitated, glancing from the trapped numbers to the darkness of the cave. "I suppose…I should see if I can build a stable raft first."

"That's the spirit, Penny!" Snap cried, reaching down to pick up some of the nearest numbers. "Now come on, let's get outta here so we can find a way to stop Newland's creatures once an' for all!"

Together, the three gathered as many of the numbers as they could and lined them up on the grass. As Penny went to work putting them together, Rudy and Snap went to search the foliage growing near the mountain for anything they could use to tie their backpacks down. They came back around fifteen minutes later, carrying, to Penny's surprise, pieces of the wavy red vine species that had attacked Rudy when he'd tried to get a better look at the remains of the destroyed temple during their first journey across the mountains.

"This'll work great," Rudy told her, pulling over his backpack and hooking the end of the vine around the straps. It instantly tightened around them, and Rudy beamed at her as he held up the rest. "We had to be careful digging these out, but they'll be perfect for making sure we don't lose our stuff."

"That's great," Penny began as she worked on adding the finishing touches to her nearly completed raft, "we can use those to keep ourselves tied to the raft as well."

Though still hesitant about the plan, she felt a bit better when the raft was completed. She had made sure to add a few layers of numbers so that it was sturdy, and the three of them tested it by picking it up and ramming it into the rock wall of the mountain. When it didn't shatter on impact and appeared to have no damage, they deemed it ready and set about tying down their belongings. Penny knew that the raft was not likely to survive being thrown against a wall of solid rock with the strength of the river behind it, but at least she was convinced that it was fairly durable and would easily manage being bumped against the cave walls. Rudy and Snap went on another quick search and came back with three long sticks that would serve as poles to help them maneuver the raft. Once they had created safety ropes for themselves using the vines, the three set the raft by the river and clambered onto it, keeping to the center.

"Okay…" said Rudy, setting his pole against one of the rocks clustering near the shore, "…here we go." At the same time, the three pushed against the rock, propelling their raft forward and into the river.

The instant the raft hit the water it was torn away from shore and whisked into the cavern. They were nearly thrown off their feet as it surged ahead, moving along at an incredible pace. It took Rudy's breath away as he thought about how the river had carried him to the swamp. Then, he hadn't realized just how fast it had been going, since he had not been able to see much of what was around him, but now he could see the dark cavern walls flying past him at incredible speed before darkness enveloped them.

A light flickered on in the darkness as Penny turned on the flashlight, which was fastened tightly on the top of their small pile of supplies near the front end of the raft, providing them with at least a little light as they were frantically carried along past the tunnel walls.

The raft bucked a little, and Rudy gripped his vine harness tightly as he peered ahead into the blackness, scanning the way ahead for rocks and ready to use his stick to maneuver the raft away from any obstacles at Penny or Snap's signal.

The tunnel they were in seemed to head straight through the base of the mountain, not winding or turning much at all. Rudy couldn't see any obstacles in their direct path, but he still watched nervously, knowing that something could easily take them by surprise.

Snap's sudden shout made him lift the stick he was carrying, but it soon became apparent that what Snap had seen wasn't a rock. Up ahead, the water dipped sharply downward, and the three held their breath as a split second later, the raft was tossed over it.

Gripping onto the tied-down supplies in a panic, Rudy closed his eyes as he felt the raft plunge. A moment later, it hit the water, and the three friends were drenched as a wave washed over them, but the front of the raft quickly came up out of the water again, the light of the flashlight still shining weakly but steadily up ahead. Rudy exchanged quick relieved glances with his friends before turning to look up ahead again.

The river had started to take a strange turn. Sometimes, like the rivers they had seen upon first reaching the end of the Mist Mountains, it would arch upward and then flow back down. At first, Rudy and his friends had panicked at the sight of an arch up ahead, but both the ascent and the descent were surprisingly smooth, though startlingly fast. It was almost like being on some sort of theme park ride, and Rudy thought to himself that he would probably feel exhilarated if he'd had the magic chalk or a sturdier method of transportation to ensure that it was at least a bit safer.

After a short while, Snap couldn't help grinning as they rode the river along another arch, this one reaching almost to the top of a massive cavernous ceiling. The bare rock walls were not close enough to be a threat as they were swept swiftly downwards, the slope just gentle enough that they did not risk losing their footing. Rudy gave a small smile as well as they were carried smoothly down to the bottom before another arch lifted them up, carrying them straight into a tunnel higher up in the cave wall. Though the walls of this tunnel curved, the river was carrying them so smoothly that they did not hit the sides.

The river carried on in this manner for what seemed like quite some time, the raft smoothly running along the arches, twists and turns as the river flowed throughout the cave, whichever way it wanted to, ignoring the boundaries that would have limited it in the Real World. Looking at his two friends, Rudy was beginning to feel confident that they were going to make it home, amazed that they were getting closer using such an amazing means of transportation.

A few minutes later, their raft was carried into another large cavern. In it was what looked like the biggest arch they had seen so far, though it was hard to tell how big it was with so little light. The arch was so steep that it slowed the raft down, and the three held on tightly to their supplies in case they lost their footing and fell. Once at the top, the river sped up again, the descent still smooth, but much steeper. They were then carried into another tunnel, seeing that, from what they could observe from their small light source, the way up ahead looked less gentle.

Without warning, the raft struck a small protruding rock, and it swerved to the side and clunked against the wall, as the flashlight suddenly flickered and the light vanished, dropping them all into complete blackness. Rudy couldn't see his hand in front of his face as he fumbled with the flashlight, trying to find the switch, but although he tried several times, the light didn't return, and he knew that this time, the batteries were dead for good.

Panicked, the three ducked down against the raft, knowing that now, they had no way of seeing the obstacles and the only thing they could do was brace themselves. Holding on to the number raft with one hand, Rudy struggled to detach the flashlight, hoping there were still some way he could get it to work, when the side of their raft suddenly struck a rock – or a wall; it was impossible to tell – and sent it spinning sideways to knock against something else, and in the confusion Rudy, who had just managed to detach the vine from the flashlight, dropped the light source and heard it roll across the raft and into the water. The raft suddenly bucked violently, and the three held onto thin segments of the numbers with both hands to keep from being thrown off.

After a moment the river smoothed out again, but the three didn't dare let go as they started to be carried up another arch. The raft started to dip down soon afterwards and soon they splashed into what they thought was a normal-flowing part of the river, but it was impossible to tell for sure.

"I can't see anything!" Rudy cried, more out of frustration than anything as he looked around for some speck of light but saw nothing. He felt the side of the raft opposite to him hit another wall, and this time he heard a few letters dropping off upon impact. "Penny? Snap?" he asked, worried that one of them had slipped even though, logically, he knew that he would have been able to hear them fall into the water if they had. They didn't have time to answer, however, because the raft suddenly swerved to the side, a spray of water drenching them as they passed under a small waterfall. They had changed directions quite suddenly, and he wondered if they had been sucked into a side tunnel. He started to panic as he realized that Penny might have been right, and they might end up trapped somewhere if the water went through a tunnel too narrow for their raft, where there was no air, or if it swerved around and came out somewhere at the base of the mountains near the ice cliffs, back where they started.

No sooner had he thought that than they suddenly entered a large cavern that was lit. Dimly lit, but lit all the same. Streams of sunlight filtered down from small holes high up in the ceiling, and it was barely enough to make out a bit of the area around them, and the fact that the river was now much wider than it had been. Rudy wondered if more than one river joined up in this place and they all flowed out to a certain area.

They passed by the big cavern in less than a few seconds and were surrounded by darkness again. At least the river seemed smoother here, and the trio held on throughout its twists and turns, each of them wondering how long it would take for them to come out on the other side.

After what seemed like an eternity of holding on and hoping nothing was about to smash their raft, Rudy heard Snap cry, "Look!" Lifting his head, he could see a spot of light that was rapidly approaching. As it came closer, he broke into a grin. Daylight. They were almost out. Whether they would end up on the other side of the mountain or not, at least their river ride was going to be over soon. Though as for how they were going to get to shore, he wasn't certain.

However, that wasn't all that dampened his hopeful spirits. As they came ever closer to the tunnel opening, Rudy realized that something wasn't right. Now that he was close enough to see better, the rapidly flowing river was not heading out the tunnel. There was no water moving through it at all.

"We have to get out of the river," he told the others, and now that the light allowed him to see their faces, he could tell that they had noticed what he had as well.

They had barely started to scan the sides of the tunnel to look for a place they could climb out before the river took a sudden drop. The raft took a nosedive, hanging in the air at a nearly vertical angle before plunging over the edge. The three immediately lost their grip and were thrown in the water below.

Rudy found himself plunged deep into icy water and he struggled to reach the surface before looking around at his new surroundings. He felt the vine harness he'd been attached to pulling at nothing more than a small clump of numbers, and he could see the drop – at least twenty feet in height, but not his friends or the rest of the raft, though he quickly realized what had happened to the latter as several loose numbers floated past him. It was then that he realized that here, the river had slowed down. He looked around and saw that it had formed a massive pool in this cavern, and was flowing at a slower pace into several much smaller side tunnels.

Paddling his way to a thin outcrop of rock, he climbed out of the water, lying on it to rest for a moment as he watched the pool desperately for his friends. He spotted a cluster of numbers with their supplies on it, and quickly pulled it up as well. Looking around the cavern, he soon saw Penny and Snap making their way to the rock ledge from different areas, and he was relieved to see that neither of them seemed injured.

Once they had all climbed onto the ledge and confirmed that all their supplies were still tied together, they looked up at the exit, many feet above them, where DayZone sunlight was streaming brightly through. They could see a series of stone ledges leading up there, and as exhausting as the climb seemed, not one of them wanted to wait.

The rocks were really wet and slippery, but they luckily weren't too hard to climb as they made their way up to the exit. Not sure what they'd find on the other side, they climbed up onto the ledge in front of the exit.

The light streaming through it was so bright that they cringed, having been so used to being in the dark. As soon as their eyes adjusted to the light level, they could tell instantly that they were on the other side of the mountains; there was no sign of the ice cliffs anywhere.

Rudy wasn't ready to feel relieved yet. They still had to get back to the Chalk Mine, they were running out of time, and he wasn't sure of the way.

The land ahead of them was a flat grassland. There didn't seem to be any Zoners nearby at all, and they had no choice but to start walking. Rudy wasn't sure if they should stick close the mountains until they came upon the spot they had first arrived at on Friday; it would be better than wandering around with no direction, but he had no idea how far they were from the places on the map. Looking back toward the mountains, he could see that this was a much smaller portion of the mountain range, not what they were meant to cross through. Still, he thought, they had to be close.

"Come on," he told the others, "we've got to walk back along the mountain until we find the way we came from again."

"But…Rudy," Penny began, looking at her watch, "We…we don't have a lot of time…"

He sighed. "I know." He couldn't imagine what his parents would think once they found that they hadn't been on the field trip at all, and had in fact been missing for several days. He would have no way of telling them he was all right until he got back, and then he would have no way of explaining his disappearance. "But we don't have much of a choice," he sighed.

They set off, traveling at as brisk a pace as they could in their worn out state. However, it wasn't very long at all before they had to stop and rest. As he lay down on the grass, trying not to drift off into sleep in what seemed like the one safe place they'd come across in the past few days, Rudy wondered how they would manage to get back at this rate. They were simply too exhausted. After a moment, more out of sheer determination more than anything else, he forced himself to stand up and keep walking. He moved as fast as he could, and soon heard the others following him.

"Hey! Slow down, Bucko!" Snap cried, obviously lagging behind.

Rudy halted, turning around to face the others. Snap struggled to catch up and stopped next to Rudy, panting as he leaned against a small boulder. Penny, however, remained where she was. Rudy was about to ask her why she had stopped when he realized that something must have caught her eye. As he opened his mouth to ask her what she'd seen, Penny pointed upwards at something and Rudy faced the mountains to look.

The mists near the bases had cleared, revealing something large and colorful on a rock ledge about twenty feet above them. At first glance, Rudy thought it was one of the massive birds, but then the mist drifted to the side and he realized it was not a bird, but a balloon.

It was a red, blue, and green striped hot air balloon that had its basket lodged against a couple of rocks. The balloon portion hung over the side of the cliff, reaching down almost level to where they were standing. The three were awestruck, hardly able to believe what they had stumbled upon.

"Wow!" Snap cried. "You think we can fly it?"

"There's only one way to find out," Penny replied, running to the base of the cliff. She could see enough small ledges that would enable her to climb up to the top, and pointed them out to the others. "Wait down here," she told them, "I'll see if I can dislodge it."

"Be careful!" Rudy cried as she set her backpack and sleeping bag down and began to ascend, but luckily the climb looked fairly easy, and Penny reached the basket in no time.

The others waited, watching as she assessed the situation and then called back to them, "The basket has been punctured by a rock and seems to be stuck, but I think we can get it loose!"

Rudy discarded the supplies he'd been carrying as well and he and Snap climbed up beside her, looking at the basket. Just like she had told them, it had struck a rock which had created a large hole in the bottom. The basket was fairly small, and the three of them together were able to lift it over the rock it had snagged on.

Once they had done so, the weight of the balloon portion dragged the basket over the side of the cliff before they could get a proper grip. Alarmed, they scrambled down to the bottom and pushed the fallen basket upright again, relieved to see that it didn't seem damaged. As Rudy began checking the balloon fabric for any holes, Penny and Snap examined the basket and burners.

To his relief, Rudy found no tears, and stitched on one part of the balloon was a small patch with the name of some Zoner's company, now faded beyond recognition, and beneath that, small words saying "ChalkZone City." He hoped that if this balloon was made by a Zoner in ChalkZone city, that that meant they weren't too far away.

"The balloon still has some fuel," Penny called to him from over by the basket. "I think we'll be able to fly it if the rest of it is in good condition."

"It seems like it to me," Rudy answered. "I wonder why this was just left here…" He trailed off, suddenly remembering the territorial birds that attacked anything flying over the mountains. Perhaps the Zoners in the balloon had tried to rapidly descend, striking the rock. At least there had been no signs of any struggle, so it was likely they had gotten away, and he understood why they hadn't tried to fly it again. Glancing at the others, he could tell that they were thinking along the same lines, and he began to wonder how far away from the mountains they would have to be to be safe from the predators.

To be safe, they dragged the balloon further away from the mountain edge, but quickly became too exhausted. They could only hope they'd be able to move away from the mountains quickly once they were in the air.

Rudy was relieved that not only had Penny read about hot air balloons before, but Snap had flown one, although it had been one that Rudy had drawn while they'd been in Barney's Impenetrable Forest. He spread the balloon out as Snap and Penny tipped the basket on its side and began to inflate the balloon. They waited around fifteen minutes before the small balloon began to lift, and hurriedly put on their backpacks and got into the basket, knowing there was nothing tying the balloon down. They made sure to grip the edge of the basket tightly and keep away from the hole in the center.

In a few minutes, the balloon began to lift, and Rudy could see many parts of the mountains through the gaps in the mist. Beyond that, he could even see part of the wasteland they had traveled through. The balloon ascended far more rapidly than he had expected, and he wondered if there was something about this balloon that made it faster than Real World ones. He looked over the side of the basket, seeing some of the lower peaks of the mountains nearing them.

"Snap, we're drifting toward the mountains!" he cried worriedly.

"Try to go higher and find another wind current," Penny told him, gripping the basket tighter as a thin layer of mist from the mountains washed over them.

Snap nodded. "I'm on it," he replied, and turned the lever on the burner, and the balloon ascended. To Rudy's relief, they soon started to drift away from the mountain peaks. He could see that they were headed further out, drifting in a diagonal direction, which meant that they should soon be able to see the place they had entered the Mist Mountains from on Friday evening.

"How long do you think it'll take us to get back, Penny?" Rudy asked, looking toward her hopefully.

"I don't know, Rudy," she replied. "Hot air balloons aren't exactly an ideal method of travel for those wanting to reach a certain location…but we should be able to see the way at least, and it's still much faster than walking if we can manage to keep it on a straight path to-"

A harsh cry rang through the skies, and the trio whirled toward the mountains, seeing dark shapes circling around the mist in the upper regions. They froze, knowing that if one of the creatures that lurked there tore their balloon, it would be over for all of them. They waited in silence, wishing the balloon would move faster, as they waited to see what the large animals would do.

Luckily, an attack never came. Realizing that the creatures must have thought the balloon was too far away to bother with, Rudy relaxed, and peered out across the landscape ahead of them. It seemed familiar, and he squinted, trying to make sure that what he was seeing up ahead was what he thought it was. "I recognize those fields!" he cried out after a moment, pointing ahead. "We flew over them in the plane on the way here!" Beyond that, he could see some small houses and a small town, and he felt relief flood through him. "Let's try to land there," he said to the others. "Someone will be able to take us back!"

Feeling just as relieved as Rudy had since, finally, they had found their way, Penny and Snap nodded, and for the first time, it seemed like luck was finally on their side. With a strong wind behind them, they were able to reach the area within a half an hour, knowing that finally, they could go home.

**ooo**

Around forty five minutes later, Rudy frantically headed back to the area that corresponded with his school with Penny on a new motorized scooter he had drawn. Upon reaching the small town they had seen from the hot air balloon, they had quickly managed to find a kind Zoner who drove them back to the part of the Amazin' River that bordered the Chalk Mine. Biclops had been happy to give him more magic chalk, though Rudy had to tell him that their excursion had been a failure. He hadn't given any more details, and, promising to tell Biclops about it later, he had rushed to the hotel he'd drawn to hurriedly check on the ChalkZone citizens. They had told him that although the termites were luckily still within the city, some of them had dared to go a bit further, and Rudy knew, with a sinking feeling, that they likely did not have much time.

He hadn't had much time to dwell on that though. After leaving Snap back at the hotel, he and Penny had checked the time once again, and they both realized that the field trip bus could arrive at any moment. Getting back on the scooter and racing toward where they knew their classroom's chalkboard was, Rudy nearly ran over some of the balloon and party hat plants that Penny had been studying just a week ago. Seeing the writing on the chalk board, Rudy ran up to it, pulling out a piece of magic chalk. "I hope we're not too late."

He knew that it was evening and there wasn't likely to be anyone in the classroom, but just in case, he drew a small peephole sized portal in the chalkboard and peered inside. "There's no one there," he said with relief, and drew a bigger circle.

He and Penny quickly hauled themselves through, erasing the portal and running out into the hallway. They paused as they passed a drinking fountain, taking a much needed drink of water before hastily washing the mud off of their backpacks and clothes. Luckily, being chalk mud, it came off easily and they were soon racing toward the school doors, knowing that their clothes would dry off fast.

Rudy reached the front doors, peering out first in case the bus hadn't yet arrived, but he quickly spotted it by the front of the school, several of the students still gathering their belongings or waiting for their parents to arrive.

"Do you see your car?" Penny asked, remembering that Rudy's parents had offered to pick them both up on the way back.

"No…not yet…" he replied. He wanted to go out there so he had a better view of things, but thought against it, knowing that Mr. Wilter would certainly demand to know what they were doing there, and that would blow their cover.

"Let's wait until the car shows up," Penny suggested, "then we can go out and say we were just getting one of your comics from your locker or something."

"Good idea," Rudy replied.

They waited a few moments, and then Rudy noticed that Mr. Wilter was calling to the students, and a moment later he began walking toward the very doors Rudy and Penny were standing behind.

Alarmed, they ducked into the nearest classroom and waited until their teacher had come through the door and walked into the hallway. They waited silently until his footsteps faded into another room. "Let's get out and go around the side of the school so we can see if the car's coming," Rudy whispered, and quickly they ran to the classroom door, peered into the hallway to make sure Mr. Wilter wasn't heading back that way yet, and then ran out the door and onto the school grounds.

Avoiding the group of students, who luckily seemed to be too busy talking or gathering their belongings to notice them, they quickly ran outside the fence and onto the sidewalk, where they knew that if they were spotted by any of the teachers, at least it would seem like they were just walking by. Maybe if they were seen, Rudy thought to himself, he could tell the teachers that he and Penny had brought their sleeping bags so they could go camping in the park. The teachers probably wouldn't believe them and would know they wouldn't be allowed to do any such thing, but at least they wouldn't be suspicious of them sneaking around the school.

They peered ahead along the street and to Rudy's relief, he noticed his parents' car heading toward the school. He and Penny ran to the corner of the block, then waited on a portion of the sidewalk they knew would be blocked from the view of the teachers by the school building. Rudy waved to his father as he pulled the car up next to them so that he and Penny could get in.

"Did you have a good time on the field trip, son?" his father asked as Rudy hurriedly climbed into one of the back seats, hoping his dad wouldn't notice how tired he looked.

"Yeah," he said quickly, and Penny voiced her agreement as well, starting to tell Mr. Tabootie several things about the field trip that they would have gone on.

Rudy was grateful that Penny could make up these stories so fast; he hadn't wanted to answer any more questions, and she made it look like they really had gone on the field trip after all, not that his parents would have any reason to believe otherwise. His father briefly mentioned wanting to talk to Mr. Wilter, but luckily, he and Penny were quickly able to convince him that they were tired and just wanted to go home.

It was only after Penny had been dropped off at her own house and he was back alone in his room after a short while that the realization of how dire their situation was really set in. One small accident was all it had taken to ruin their chances of finding the library they were searching for. Now that searching for it was impossible, he had no idea what to do next. He could talk to Biclops again, as he'd promised to do, and hopefully be able to find out some other way to find the information he needed, but he knew it was an illogical hope, as Biclops certainly wouldn't just happen to have the map to another ancient library that was in closer proximity to them than the first one.

Resting his head on his desk, Rudy realized that now, more than ever before, he felt truly lost. It was his duty to protect ChalkZone, and he had made a complete failure of his first attempt…and the best chance he would get. And now, to help the world he loved, he would have to find another way, but he didn't even know where to begin.


	11. Perilous Escape

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Eleven – Perilous Escape**

Rudy had little time to talk to Penny that afternoon, seeing as her mother had only allowed her to come over to his house for an hour. He hadn't had much of an opportunity to sneak into ChalkZone, either, since his parents had wanted to spend time with him downstairs. Ever since he had gotten back home, he had constantly been thinking about ChalkZone and the Zoners who'd lived in the city. He wondered what they had thought after he, Penny, and Snap had returned from their journey empty handed, not having even come close to finding anything that could help them. Was it possible that they could be ready to give up on him? He had to admit, he was about ready to give up on himself. He remembered what Penny had said about an hour ago, soon before she had left, clearly in his mind:

"_Rudy, if they haven't started their full-scale attack yet, I think Newland probably has given the termites about a week…maybe a little less. That does give us a bit more time."_

That had made sense, and he knew that Newland, Bouffant and Raton wouldn't want ChalkZone to be destroyed if they could help it, but he knew they were counting on him bringing them the magic chalk, and he was sure they would spitefully have ChalkZone destroyed rather than call off the attack via a message erased from the chalkboard if he refused to give in to them. There was no way to tell if Penny was right about the time being around a week. All he knew about the termites' plan of attack was what the Zoners from the city had observed and told him, but from what it sounded like, there wasn't much time left at all. If he were being optimistic, he'd guess that they had a couple days left at most. However, he couldn't even be sure of that.

Despite his exhaustion, he couldn't rest. After dinner, he told his parents that he wanted to go ride his bike for a while, and to his relief, although it was somewhat late, they agreed to his request and told him to be back by dark. He thought that it would be a better chance to slip into ChalkZone, as he knew that if he did while his parents thought he would be in his room, they could be likely to check there and find him gone, much more likely than usual since they kept wanting to talk to him about the field trip, a conversation he had been trying to avoid. He knew that as he rode through the town, he'd have to look for a secluded place to draw a portal, and be careful, but the thought didn't bother him. He'd done this before.

As he took his bicycle out to the sidewalk, he could see that the sun was starting to set. It certainly wasn't dark, but it was enough to remind him that one more day was almost over; they had little time left. He wouldn't have long to stay in ChalkZone, either. As he got on his bike, he tried once again to think of some idea, some sort of solution they could find to stop Newland's creatures without endangering themselves or anyone else. He knew it wasn't likely he would come up with anything – he hadn't been able to even when he and Penny were together – but he hoped he would at least be able to have a faint idea, some sort of hope, before he met up with Snap again.

He began riding down the street, idly glancing at the houses, yards and sidewalks as he passed them by. Even though children in the neighborhood sometimes drew with sidewalk chalk around there, he knew that this was not an ideal place to make a portal. He thought about heading to the park; at least it would be easy to see if there was anyone there, and there were plenty of sections of sidewalk that had been drawn on with chalk that he could use.

However, upon reaching the park, he could see immediately that there were several children running around and playing, in plain view of all the sidewalks. One thing was for sure: he wasn't going to be able to escape their attention there. Sighing, he turned and rode on.

As he passed a row of shops, he went over all the ideas he had managed to think of that day, each one sadly more hopeless than the last. The worst part of it was that even if he did know exactly what was going on, he was powerless to stop it without some sort of help. The remains of the library Biclops had told them about were simply too far for them to reach, but it was clear that none of the Zoners had any idea what to do, and if they had, they certainly would have done something by now. Yet, he certainly wasn't ready to just completely give up. Maybe one of the Zoners had a lead, like Biclops had. He certainly planned to ask around as soon as he entered ChalkZone, and although his chances of finding anything were slim, he had to try. He knew he wouldn't have much time during his 'bike riding trip,' but he was ready to stay up all night if he had to, and then the next night, even if he fell asleep in class and got detention and wouldn't be able to visit ChalkZone during school. The world he cared so much about was facing a dire threat, and he was going to do everything he could to prevent it.

He pulled his bike up next to a wide, short alleyway ending in a brick wall between two old buildings. Seeing a few words and pictures in chalk scrawled on it, he grinned, riding up to it and dismounting his bike, leaning it against the wall as he took his magic chalk out of his pocket. He quickly glanced out toward the street, but there was no one around to peer into the alley. Knowing that if he left the bike there, it could easily get stolen, he drew a larger circle, lifting the bicycle onto the ChalkZone grass inside of it before hurriedly climbing in and erasing the portal.

Looking around, Rudy could see that he was in another large grassy ChalkZone field, and this one had several exotic plants, including small forests of paintbrushes like the ones he and his friends had come across once when searching for the chocolate chip cookie tree. As he peered around, he quickly noticed the outline of the hotel building he had drawn for the Zoners. Setting his bike against a nearby bush, he quickly drew himself another motorized scooter and zoomed off toward it.

As he approached, he quickly realized that something was wrong. He could hear confused shouts and a few yells of panic, and fear gripped him as a dozen possible scenarios raced through his mind, each more horrifying than the last. Accelerating on the scooter, he reached the building swiftly, looking around at the confused crowd of Zoners gathered at the front of it as he came to a stop.

"What's happening?" he cried, jumping off the scooter and running to the crowd, who noticed him for the first time.

"Rudy!" a voice cried, and he turned his head, relief flooding through him as he recognized it as Snap's.

"Snap, what's happening?" he asked, making his way through the crowd toward his friend. He hoped that Snap knew; he wanted to hear the news, whatever it was, from a close friend he knew and trusted. Whatever the threat was, he certainly didn't want to be up against it alone, and now more than ever he wanted a friend to be beside him as he faced the danger.

"Apparently there's some crazy drawing that's been erased," Snap told him, speaking loudly to make his voice heard over the sound of the anxious chatter. "From what I heard it was attackin' some village a little ways from here, and they all think it's headin' this way." He waved his hand toward the crowd, some of which, Rudy noticed, had started to flee the area, many casting worried glances at the Zoners who still remained.

"Well, why hasn't everyone left then?" Rudy asked, nervously watching them.

"A lot of Zoners were injured when Newland's creatures attacked the city," Snap replied worriedly. "They're sayin' they can't get 'em all out."

"Well, I can help!" he insisted, looking around at the gathered crowd again. He felt a twinge of anger as he realized that no one seemed to be doing anything to try to help the situation, nor did anyone seem to have a fully accurate idea of what was going on.

"Good, 'cause it doesn't seem like anyone else has any idea what to do," Snap replied. "Took me a while just to figure out what was goin' on, and then you showed up and-"

"Well, I'll make sure everyone's safe," Rudy replied firmly, the determination on his face clear. He quickly drew a pair of rockets on his shoes and lifted into the air above the crowd to more easily get their attention. "Listen up, everyone!" he called out. Almost instantly, the talking faded and in a few seconds, all the Zoners gathered outside the building had their eyes on him, waiting to hear what he would say. Confident that he had their attention, Rudy continued. "If there's some sort of danger headed this way, we need to get everyone out of the building and away from here. Now, I want all of you to-"

A sudden scream cut him off, and Rudy froze as the crowd's focus was suddenly completely diverted from him. He whirled around, and his gaze quickly locked on what had obviously stolen the Zoners' attention.

Emerging from behind a large hill was a truly massive golden scaled dragon. On all fours, it stood what looked to be nearly twice Biclops's height, and it likely had a wingspan much longer. Its back was ridged with large spikes and it had a menacing appearance, but its looks weren't what alarmed Rudy so much. The dragon was spewing flame at anything and everything it came across, and was rapidly heading in the direction the building.

Rudy's attention was momentarily diverted to the gathered Zoners as many of the ones who remained started to flee. A few remained behind, some rushing into the building to attempt to warn the ones who weren't yet aware of the danger or to try to help the injured ones to safety. Rudy and Snap were left almost completely alone by the hotel's front doors, glancing at each other in horror.

"We have to find a way to lead that thing away from here," Rudy stated urgently, "they're not going to get everyone out in time."

"Y-ya don't think this is connected with Newland's creatures do you?" Snap asked fearfully as his friend quickly drew rockets on his shoes as well.

"I don't know," he began, glancing up to peer at the creature, which was now a little bit closer. As he did so, he saw that it lacked the level of detail that Newland's drawings had, but that didn't rule out the possibility of it being drawn by Terry or Vinnie. His mind raced as he watched it pace closer, pausing to incinerate plants or abandoned structures. Why was this happening _now_, Rudy wondered to himself, when ChalkZone was already vulnerable?

Finishing the drawing, he and Snap took to the air and quickly moved over the section of the Amazin' River flowing in front of the hotel, then headed out into the field where the rampaging dragon was currently sending a grove of jagged-looking pine trees up in flame. Having no idea how far the dragon's flames could reach, Rudy attempted to get its attention from where he was, shouting and waving his arms in the hope that it would follow him and he could lead it away. What he would do then, he wasn't sure. The main thought in his mind was getting it away from the injured Zoners in the hotel.

He wasn't sure the dragon would fall for such a silly distraction, but to his surprise, his distraction worked well. Exceedingly well. Upon seeing two living beings in the field it was currently destroying, the dragon seemed to completely forget where it was going or what it was doing, and instead unfurled its wings and launched itself straight for them.

A look of sheer horror crossed Rudy and Snap's faces at the sight of how quickly the dragon moved, and they sped off through the air, heading away from both the hotel and the dragon. The beast followed them intently, and they soon realized that it had started to gain on them; it was at least a bit faster than their rocket shoes, but that was all it would need, and if they couldn't get to safety it would be only a matter of time before it caught up with them.

As they tried to keep a good distance ahead of the gigantic beast and high enough to avoid having to swerve around obstacles, Rudy constantly looked around, veering away when he saw buildings or anything that looked like it could be the home for Zoners who might not have any idea what was coming until it was too late. The dragon didn't seem interested in burning its surroundings anymore, but he didn't want to take any chances. He could see that Snap had realized this too, and was looking frantically around for some area that looked unoccupied. Rudy risked a glance back at their massive pursuer, relieved that at least it wasn't trying to launch flame at them; they had to be still out of range, though he didn't think they would remain so for much longer. He turned back ahead, and the dull, tattered remains of a line of large buildings and skyscrapers came into view. "Snap!" he called, pointing. "Head to the city!"

"What?" Snap replied, giving Rudy a confused look, but Rudy didn't have time to explain his reasoning.

All he knew was that it was the only place he could think of where there was sure to be no innocent Zoners who could get caught in the crossfire if the dragon tried to ignite the area, and he knew that if they stayed above ground, they should be safe from Newland's monsters.

To his relief, they were able to reach the city and, swerving between the buildings, throw the dragon off their trail long enough to hide behind the bulk of a large, tall, and brightly colored shop as the monstrous drawing approached. Rudy had a vain, impossible hope that it would be distracted by one of the termite creatures and try to follow it underground, but as he looked around, he could see the signs that the termite monsters were digging, but couldn't see any of them out of their tunnels at the moment.

He could hear the dragon landing, and chanced a glance around the edge of the building's wall to see it curiously standing in the street behind him, its long, thin muzzle moving back and forth as it observed its surroundings. He moved away from the edge, trying frantically to think of what to do next. The dragon didn't seem like it had any clear purpose or objective, unless, he realized with dread, that objective was chasing after him or Snap. However, it could just as easily chase after anything that moved, he thought, and he wondered just how he was supposed to stop it. If it was in any way connected with Newland, it likely had some sort of nasty surprise, but there was no way to tell if it really had anything to do with Newland's plan or not. Peering around, he tried to make note of any suitable hiding places in case they had to make a run for it. Further into the city, he could see the edges of the corroding mist, and he knew that he and Snap would have to stay close to the outskirts.

"What do we do now?" Snap whispered, hearing the large creature making its way down the street, but not seeming to get distracted by the termite activity underground. They both knew that trying to move to a new hiding place when it was so close would mean risking getting seen.

"I don't know…" Rudy quickly replied. There had been no time to think of any sort of plan; he'd had to lead the dragon away from the Zoners in the hotel as quickly as possible. But now, as he thought to himself, his gaze rested on the damaged potions of the streets, where he could tell there were tunnels near the surface. "Look," he said, pointing them. "If we can stay close to the ground – but not too close – the dragon will have to walk toward us…it's too big to fly between these buildings! If it opens up the tunnels, those termite monsters might scare it off, and then-"

"And then it'll just attack someone else!" Snap responded, and Rudy felt his hope vanish when he realized that his friend was right. He really wasn't sure what he was going to do. If he had more time to think and draw something, he might be able to trap it, but he would need _time_ to draw something that big.

Any further conversation was cut short as they realized that the dragon was quite close to the building they were currently sheltering behind. As quietly as they could, they hovered above the ground and hurriedly darted to another building close by.

They had barely made it to the new building's door when Rudy noticed that the monster had seen them. It lowered its head and stampeded toward them, the street shuddering at its every step. Glancing wildly around, Rudy noticed another building – that looked like their safest option at the moment – a large brick construction near the edge of the city that looked to only have a few relatively small entrances.

Pointing it out to Snap, Rudy headed for it as fast as his rocket shoes would go, Snap following him closely. From his vantage point in the air, Rudy could see that most of the building's lower entrances were blocked by rubble, so he and Snap flew through a window instead, entering a vast room with a very high ceiling. They quickly moved away from the windows and landed on the floor, the flames on their rocket shoes extinguishing and giving way to the near-darkness around them. They waited to see what would happen as they looked around at the walls, hoping they were sturdy enough to withstand blows from a creature that big. Rudy was doubtful about it, especially after the damage the termites must have done, and he realized with dread that the building could be far weaker than either of them realized.

A sudden stream of flame erupted from one of the window openings, lighting up the entire interior of the dark room and showing both of them the large cracks snaking through the brick wall in many different places. The fire was too far away to cause them any harm, and there wasn't much left in the building to burn, but Rudy and Snap still shrank back in fear, glancing around nervously at the rest of the windows.

"We've gotta get out of here," Rudy cried, starting to run toward another window space in the room. He had to stop abruptly as the dragon's flames began to pour from that opening too, and Rudy realized that it was trying to attack from any place it could, and he looked around at the unstable walls fearfully. "Let's try to get to get to the bottom floor," he cried as they raced for the nearest door. "We can sneak out there."

Rudy pulled the door open, revealing an even taller room that encompassed a part of the bottom floor. The staircase that had once led to the bottom was completely demolished, and a large part of the ground level floor was strewn with broken rubble. Landing on the lower floor with the use of their rocket shoes, the two friends looked around, and Rudy held up his magic chalk, scanning the walls for a good place to draw an exit.

"What are you waitin' for, Bucko?" Snap asked worriedly as he noticed Rudy's hesitation growing as he looked from wall to wall.

"I don't want to draw a hole somewhere where the wall can come down on top of us!" he replied, walking to what looked like the sturdiest wall and examining it carefully before drawing a rectangular opening.

Luckily, he had picked a good place, and sunlight streamed through into the darkness. Stepping over the strewn debris, Rudy looked ahead and could see the edge of the city not far from where he and Snap were standing, the Wait N' Sea beyond that.

A massive crash and the sound of the entire building shaking sent Rudy and Snap fleeing out of the newly created exit and toward the edge of the city and the sea, dodging the falling bits of brick that rained down toward them as they cleared the building. They had no real idea where they were going or whether they would escape the dragon's notice, but it had quickly become clear that the city certainly was not going to offer them any more safety than the open field had.

Almost instantly they could hear the dragon moving after them and kept close to the ground, knowing that the creature couldn't hope to catch them if it was flying above the buildings. It didn't seem likely that its fire breath could reach far enough either, considering the height of the buildings they were flying beneath, so they knew it was likely to follow on all fours.

However, Rudy was quickly realizing that there was no way they would be able to outrun the creature once they left the city, nor could they stop it without a plan. They needed a quick escape if they wanted to avoid being burned to death, and a plan to stop it would have to wait until they were out of immediate danger. He only hoped the dragon would stay near the city until he could come up with a way to put a stop to its destruction, because at the moment, he and Snap needed to get to safety above all else.

Then he saw it. A series of random, floating doodles indicating a chalkboard surface. Although Rudy hated the thought of leaving ChalkZone behind, he knew that this was likely his and Snap's only chance, and he didn't plan to leave ChalkZone to that beast for long.

As Rudy headed to the chalk surface, Snap momentarily caught his eye and then veered to the side, attempting to distract the dragon long enough to give Rudy time to create a portal. As the monster's head swerved in Snap's direction, Rudy reached the section of floating markings.

Trying not to focus on what could be going on around him, he tried to draw a circle, staring in surprise when the large glowing curve he made abruptly stopped, and it took him a second to realize that he had been trying to draw a portal that was too large for the board and he'd gone off the edge; this chalkboard had to be small. Readjusting his circle, Rudy completed the portal and started to climb into it.

He had little time to look the room over, though from a quick glance he could see that it was very old and had filthy concrete walls. The room was fairly empty, though he could see the outlines of broken furniture and a cluttered, dirty hallway beyond it.

A cry from Snap sounded from behind him, and a jolt of horror gripped his entire body as he turned around, trying to locate his friend. He didn't see Snap, or even any part of what was going on, as a split second later, the dragon, which had been in the process of following his friend, whipped its tail in Rudy's direction, and the boy didn't have time even to blink before the tail tip slammed into him. His hand loosened and the magic chalk dropped to the ChalkZone grass below as he was sent crashing through the portal. His head knocked roughly against the concrete floor and he slid almost sideways into the wall and came to an abrupt halt. The glow of the portal, now seeming faint and blurry, was off a ways to his left. The last thing he saw before everything went black was a bright stream of flame shooting out of the narrow opening.

**ooo**

Snap stared on in horror as the dragon tried to force its snout through the small portal opening. Snap was still breathing hard after having narrowly avoided being fried to death, but it had only taken a second for the dragon's attention to switch to the portal, where Rudy had gone. He watched as the creature fired a stream of flame into the hole, then gave up and turned its golden body back toward him.

Snap was nearly too frozen with terror to react fast enough, and he dodged the dragon's burst of flame at the last second. The beast began to unfurl its black-edged wings, but as it took another step toward him, the ground beneath it cracked and crumbled, sending the dragon awkwardly crashing to the ground as the earth gave way, locking its leg underneath. Snap realized that it had stepped on a section of the ground with a termite tunnel close to the surface. He tried to stay at a safe enough distance, from the thrashing beast but it looked as though, by some streak of luck, the dragon's leg was caught firmly, and it didn't look like it could lift off, though it still stood between Snap and the portal where Rudy had entered the Real World.

Watching as the beast tried to free itself, Snap stayed at what he was at least relatively sure was a safe distance as he waited for an opportunity to reach the portal. Luckily the creature was too distracted by its trapped leg to focus on him much, but he wasn't sure what would happen if he got too close at the wrong moment.

Watching as the dragon's head turned again toward the section of collapsed tunnel its leg was trapped in, Snap made a break for it, using his rocket shoes to power toward the portal opening and managing to dodge a swipe of the beast's tail at the last instant. He reached the portal, placing his hands on the edge and nearly gagging as the powerful scent of smoke flooded over him. His heart started to race as he caught sight of powerfully burning flames and wondered what could be happening to his friend inside.

When he dropped from the portal to the floor of the room, it felt like stepping into an oven. The heat was unbearable, and he could scarcely breathe as he looked around, his eyes watering from the smoke. Already the fire had spread; pieces of broken furniture and anything else flammable – including the open door to the room – were aflame, and through the haze of smoke he could see more brightly burning orange flames in the hallway beyond. In the darkness and confusion, it took him a moment to locate Rudy. Thankfully, he was lying away from the blazing pieces of furniture and also far enough away from the portal that he would have been well out of the line of fire when the dragon shot flame into the opening.

Rushing over to his friend, Snap could quickly see that Rudy wasn't moving. "Bucko?" he questioned, gently shaking him as he kneeled beside him, but it quickly became clear that his friend was out cold. "Aw, c'mon, Rudy, ya gotta wake up!" he cried, his voice rising in panic. Looking over his unconscious friend, he couldn't see any blood or other injuries, but the short relief that came from that didn't last long as he noticed the air blackening around them. He glanced back at the portal, knowing that he needed to get Rudy away from the flames and smoke.

Getting to his feet, Snap ran to the small chalkboard hanging on the wall and tried to detach it, hoping that he would be able to move it somewhere where they could get back into ChalkZone safely. His attempt didn't last long before a roar from the dragon made him freeze, and he caught a flash of its teeth as it attempted to attack him through the portal, and he stumbled onto the ground in shock before quickly moving back to his friend and hooking his arms under Rudy's, then starting to drag him to the doorway as quickly as he could. He would have to find another way out, and as quickly as possible.

As he quickly moved past the blazing door and into the hallway, Snap realized with grim astonishment that the layout of the place was surprisingly familiar. It took him another moment before the truth fully dawned on him. They were in _Newland's hideout_, the very same place he had been imprisoned in for two days prior to their journey.

Newland and the others obviously weren't around currently to be a threat, but the thought that he was once again standing within the place he had suffered terribly in sent shivers down his spine. The piles of junk in the hallway had allowed the fire to spread nearly its whole length, and Snap realized that if the flames were able to reach the wooden stairs, there would be no way for them to get down and out of the building. He moved Rudy toward the left as quickly as he could manage, knowing that that would be the direction to the stairs from that side of the hallway, from what he remembered of the building, but the thickening smoke made it hard to see much of anything. He realized that trying to use his rocket shoes to try to move faster would likely only end up causing injury to himself or Rudy, especially considering how little he could see.

However, Snap remembered that the room that he'd heard Bob, Vinnie and Terry talking in had been close to the staircase, and that had to be the same room they'd come through, since it had the chalkboard. He searched for a clear path through the burning debris, hoping that he would be able to make out the stairs soon and get out as fast as he possibly could. The heat was increasing at an alarming pace, rapidly turning the building into a death trap.

As he pulled Rudy through a clear opening between the debris and toward the other side of the hallway where he knew the opening to the large room that extended from the bottom to the top floor would appear, he found it harder to be sure of where he was going. Even away from the worst of the flames, the smoke was so thick that he was having more trouble breathing than even before, and he leaned down to try to avoid the worst of it, working as fast as he could to drag Rudy away from the danger as well. The small space they were confined in was almost completely dark now, and he knew that the fact that there were so few windows in the building would make the danger even worse.

Yet as he looked around, he was confused. He thought he could see the stairs, but it was hard to tell, he was feeling dizzy; disoriented. He couldn't see much of anything and it felt like he was choking. _Where were the stairs?_ They had to be near. He'd remembered them being close by the room that Newland and his comrades had been lurking in, but at the moment, he had no idea if he was even heading in the right direction.

**ooo**

_Ten minutes earlier:_

After her dinner, Penny had attempted to call Rudy, only to find that he had gone out for a bike ride. She wanted to wait for him to return, but she had quickly figured that if he had gone to ride his bike, he was probably looking for a way to sneak into ChalkZone, and that it likely wasn't a good time to do so in his room. Perhaps his parents wanted to spend time with him after the field trip and there just wasn't time. Whatever the reason, she was sadly certain that they might not be able to discuss a way to help ChalkZone until they could sneak through their chalkboards and meet up at night, as they had discussed earlier. She spent the next few minutes thinking over what she and Rudy had talked about, but as before, they really seemed to be stuck without a solution.

Wanting to do something to try to help, even if Rudy wasn't there, Penny grabbed her backpack and a water bottle and took her own piece of chalk, using it to draw a portal on her chalkboard. She knew that her mother was busy at the moment and unlikely to check her room for a little while. After the portal formed, Penny climbed through it and carefully made her way down the pile of numbers beneath the board surface and to the grassy ground beneath it. From here, she could see the nearby city, and the sight of its damaged buildings, some collapsed or barely standing, filled her with dread, and she wished more than ever that Rudy was there with her. She knew that, at the moment, he might be unable to, but she could seek out Snap, and she quickly headed in the direction of the hotel using a scooter that Rudy had drawn for her earlier for when they planned to meet up during the night.

It had only been a few minutes and she hadn't even passed the city when she noticed that parts of the field up ahead of her were aflame. She stopped the scooter in sheer shock, wondering if Newland had launched another attack, as she watched several Zoners attempting to put out the fires. To her relief, they were doing a good job of it, and the sections of flame she could see were small. Alarmed, she looked around for Rudy, wondering if he really had told his parents he was riding his bike to give him time to sneak into ChalkZone, but there was no sign of him.

She heard a furious roar and turned in shock toward the city, speeding up until a group of large buildings passed by and she could see the form of a massive dragon drawing struggling on the ground, firing bursts of flame toward the city in frustration. Its fire seemed weak, however, and its struggling feeble. She then realized that a group of tough looking Zoners were around it, and wafting around the dragon was a strange gas that seemed to make it grow weaker by the second, and she realized it must be a sort of sleeping gas, like the one Rudy had tried to use on the termite creatures.

Startled, Penny's first thought was to go back to the Real World and warn Rudy as soon as she could, but there was no way of telling how long he would be gone, and she couldn't be sure that he wasn't in ChalkZone already.

Then, she noticed something. There was smoke rising from somewhere near the dragon, but it seemed to be rising from thin air, just beyond the massive fans circling the city. There was nothing burning beneath it. Her eyes widened in realization as she took the scooter closer, knowing that she was taking a risk getting so close, but she had to find out if her theory was right.

She didn't have to get very close to the dragon at all to see that she was right about the fact that the smoke was coming through a _portal_, which could only mean one thing. Desperately, she looked around for any sign of Rudy, but there was none, and she knew he wouldn't have left an open portal in some random place in The Real World on purpose.

Frightened, she moved closer to the city while still making sure to stay beyond the furthest termite tunnels, looking around frantically for any chalk surface she could use to get to the Real World, as it was clear the smoking portal currently there was not safe.

After a moment of searching, she spotted some scrawled chalk lines, tall enough that she realized that it must have been drawn on the wall of an alley, and ran over to it, speedily drawing a portal and stepping through it. She was indeed in an alley, a narrow one between two disused buildings. Quickly erasing the portal, she rushed out onto the sidewalk to find the area completely deserted. However, a few buildings away she could see one that was massive and built mainly of concrete with the telltale signs of smoke rising from its few windows. The sky was darkening as the sun set, and she knew it would make the trails of smoke harder to see from a distance, and the fact that the windows were so small would make it even worse. She wasn't sure how long it had been burning, but she figured it couldn't have been very long at all, seeing as how no one in the town had seemed to notice yet.

She ran back to the chalk graffiti wall, quickly drawing a small portal and using it to draw a phone in ChalkZone before erasing the portal again. Carrying the newly drawn phone, she quickly ran out to see what street she was in. She needed to call the fire department as quickly as possible, and if Rudy was in there…she certainly hoped they would arrive fast enough.

**ooo**

Snap looked around in a panic, wondering if he had indeed miscalculated and had taken Rudy in the opposite direction of the stairs that would lead them to the bottom floor. He looked wildly around, his terror rising as he realized that all he could make out were flames and blackness. Picking a random direction, he kept moving, knowing that staying in the building much longer would be lethal for both of them.

Snap found the building's stairs by complete accident as he was trying to move Rudy away from the flames, which were now spreading along the filthy carpet. Quite suddenly, his foot landed on nothing more than empty space, and for a terrifying moment he thought he'd stepped over the edge of the upper story and was about to plummet to the floor below, but a second later he had stumbled backwards onto the top steps of the stairs.

The heat was still steadily rising and Snap attempted to control his terror as he tried to pull Rudy down the stairs as carefully as possible, watching as the dragon's flames caught on the top step of the wooden stairs. He needed to get to the door as soon as possible, but he didn't dare try to use his rocket shoes so close to the wooden stairs, and there was still a great risk of injuring Rudy if he tried, not being able to see anything in the darkness. His only relief was that the smoke was far less thick as he edged his way closer to the bottom of the stairs, realizing that at the moment the smoke was still mostly gathering near the top of the stairs and in the narrow hallways and rooms.

He noticed movement from Rudy and turned his attention to him, wondering if his friend would be able to get up and run, or at least walk, with him to the exit. "Rudy...?" he coughed, finding with surprise that his voice didn't sound like his own at all, and barely came out as a hoarse whisper.

"Snap?" Rudy sat up abruptly, looking at his surroundings in sheer confusion. His voice, at least, sounded much clearer and stronger, and Snap realized that since he'd been lying against the floor, he'd avoided breathing in the worst of the smoke while they'd been in the upper floor. However, he still looked dazed, and Snap could tell that the fire was starting to spread along the top of the stairs far too quickly.

"C'mon, Bucko, we gotta get outta here!" Snap cried as he helped Rudy to stand up, quickly moving him away from the stairs and down onto the rubbish-strewn floor below. Even down at the very bottom, it was hard to see much of anything through the blackish-brown haze, but the faint glow from a window that Snap knew had been near the front door pointed the way for him. Still supporting Rudy, he made his way over to it, finding the door handle with some difficulty and opening it, and then rushing out of the open doorway and collapsing on the edge of the street.

Rudy was still trying to piece together what had happened, thinking back to the dragon attack as he looked over at Snap, who was bent over and coughing beside him near the sidewalk. He heard another voice calling and looked to his left in time to see Penny reach them. He had no idea how she had found them there, but at the moment he was too confused about everything else to question it much.

Penny stopped next to them, glancing at the building worriedly before turning back to her friends. "What happened?" she said in a panicked voice as she glanced from one to the other.

"He got knocked out…trapped…" Snap rasped between coughs, casting a worried glance at Rudy, who was shakily trying to get to his feet.

"We've got to move further away," she stated, realizing that at the moment, getting the full story about what happened wasn't important. She and Snap supported Rudy as they moved to a safe distance away from the building, and Penny felt relieved as she heard the sound of a fire truck approaching.

"Rudy, are you all right?" she asked, helping him sit down on the sidewalk once she was sure they were far enough away to be out of immediate danger.

"I dunno!" Snap answered before Rudy could speak. "He was out cold and wasn't wakin' up until-"

"Yes, I'm okay!" he insisted, sounding much more alert than he had previously, though the worried looks didn't leave his friends' faces. "What happened?" he asked, looking from Penny to Snap with a wide-eyed, frightened gaze. "What about the dragon? What-" He broke off, hearing the sound of an ambulance approaching and shot his friends another alarmed look. "Is someone else-"

"When I called the fire department I told them someone might be in there-" Penny paused as she glanced to Rudy's feet, noticing the rockets he'd drawn on his shoes. "We have to take those off," she stated, and when Rudy gave her a confused look, she explained that they couldn't risk someone in the Real World seeing them or what they could do. Luckily she had thought to bring a water bottle on her ChalkZone expedition, having expected it to be longer, and after Rudy and Snap had removed the rockets, she washed them away on the edge of the street.

A shout caught their attention and they realized that someone from the fire department was running towards them. Knowing that both he and Snap were covered in dust and soot from the building, Rudy realized that it would soon be clear to anyone arriving on the scene that they had been inside the building, and there was no way they'd simply be able to say they were fine and walk away. Fear filled his mind at the thought, and he shakily tried to stand up but Penny stopped him, giving him a look that told him that she was very worried, and not about the thought of being questioned by anyone about the situation. He paused to glance back at the building. Even though there was little to see through the small windows, almost as soon as the water from the hoses started pouring in, the smoke and the flames vanished, and he knew with relief that the water would have quickly put out the chalk fire, and none of the firefighters would be harmed searching the building to make sure no one else was inside. That, and the portal was sure to be erased.

"I'll explain what happened," Penny told him, noticing that the worker who was approaching them could tell Rudy was injured in some way and was calling the ambulance over.

"But…" Rudy didn't bother to finish his sentence. He knew that she was only trying to help him. He crossed his arms over his knees and lowered his head. He hoped that she could come up with a reasonable excuse as to why they had been near the building, but he didn't think that finding one was likely in this situation. At least, he couldn't think of one. Maybe Penny could. He didn't know. His head continued to throb as he tried to think back to what had happened before he'd woken up in the building, and he felt tears forming at the corners of his eyes as he realized that once again, their situation had taken a very bad turn, and he felt farther away from being able to help ChalkZone than ever before.

**ooo**

On the other end of the street, Bob Newland rolled down the window of his car as he stared in disbelief at the smoke and flames pouring from the windows of the tall gray building a moment before the water put it out at a pace he knew to be impossible. Beside him, Vinnie Raton stared equally dumbfounded, and the two exchanged incredulous glances before Bob parked the car and hurriedly got out of it, slamming the door as he walked toward the scene, his associate quickly following.

"What's goin' on 'ere?" Vinnie cried, staring around the entire street ahead of them in complete confusion.

Bob didn't answer; his gazed was fixed on a group of people a few buildings away under the dim light of the fading sunset, and he strode in their direction, not close enough for them to notice him, just close enough to be sure of who they were. His eyes narrowed as he realized that he had been right.

It was Rudy, as well as the girl that he knew was Penny, and Snap, along with a paramedic who was talking with the girl while he checked Rudy for injuries. His gaze flicked to Snap. "Look who survived the rain," Bob muttered through gritted teeth as Vinnie came to stand alongside him. The children were too distracted to notice them standing at a distance, and by now a few other curious onlookers had arrived on other parts of the street nearby. Though Bob stood a ways away, Penny's voice drifted toward him and he could hear a bit of what she was saying from where he was.

"…and Rudy thought he heard someone calling for help," the girl was saying, motioning to her friend. She said a few other things Bob didn't quite catch before he heard, "…he said he hit his head on something and was unconscious for a little while, and my friend tried to get him out…" She gestured to Snap. "…and I tried to call the fire department…" Penny carried on with her explanation, the ambulance workers around her seeming to take her word as truth. He of course, knew it was a lie.

Bob scowled. "Oh…aren't you _clever_?" he sneered as she continued to explain away their situation. He could tell that one of the paramedics was calling their parents, and he realized that Penny was going to come up with some witty excuse for Snap's lack of parents as well. He watched as another told her they were taking Rudy to the hospital to make sure he was all right, and following that was some sort of brief argument about whether Snap needed to be checked out at the hospital as well. Bob just rolled his eyes at that point, walking away and motioning to Vinnie to follow him. "We've got to find Terry," he muttered. "We-"

"Looks like she's already here," Vinnie replied, pointing to Terry's news van, which had arrived at the scene on the other end of the street.

Bob's eyes narrowed as she got out of her vehicle along with her assistant, and almost immediately began filming, Terry standing a safe distance away in front of the still lightly smoking building as she began to speak.

"This is Terry Bouffant, coming to you live from downtown Plainville where a mysterious fire has broken out in one of the buildings…"

Leaving Vinnie behind, Bob started walking toward her, ignoring Vinnie's confused shout from behind as he passed her van. "Terry, we need to talk!" he snarled. She ignored him, continuing with her broadcast and he sped up, reaching her side. "This is important!"

"Not now!" she hissed, giving him an icy glare before continuing on with her report.

Stepping right in front of the camera, he pointed wildly toward the building. "Did you see the way those flames-"

"Bob!" Terry cried. "I'm doing a report! Now get _out of here_!" She shoved him out of the way, and her cameraman, who had been simply staring in confusion, resumed filming.

Furious at watching her go on with the report as if nothing had happened, Bob angrily turned around and stomped back to Vinnie, who was looking at him in complete confusion.

"What was that all about-"

"Did you _see _how fast that fire went out?" Bob snarled through gritted teeth, pointing to the building which now no longer had even the faintest traces of smoke. "Fire _doesn't_ go out that fast. That…" he paused, glancing around him, but everyone near the scene was either far enough away not to hear what he was saying or seemed to be making a point to ignore him. "That was_ ChalkZone_ fire!" he hissed. "And there's only one way ChalkZone fire could have gotten into our world."

"You mean-"

"_Rudy_," Bob finished. "He was right here on the scene. He must have set the building on fire to try and get us to stop damaging ChalkZone rather than hand the chalk over like we said."

"Why would 'e wanna burn the building down?" Vinnie asked, confused. "A concrete building?"

"I don't know," Bob snapped "And I don't_ care_ what his reason for this was! Maybe he was just trying to threaten us or something – I don't know – but that's not important! I _know_ what happened here. He tried to set it on fire and got caught in it himself. And you know how he found this place?" He paused, giving Vinnie an angry stare. "Because that little brat _Snap_ escaped, and told him where it was! So he and Snap got the _brilliant_ idea to try and send us a little 'message' in return, and it backfired on them!" Vinnie stared at him in astonishment, and he continued. "They were covered in soot; it was obvious they were the ones who did it. And why do you think _Penny _was around here, huh? _Standing guard_ outside to make sure we didn't come back while they were the building…_that's_ what she was doing!"

Vinnie seemed too shocked to give a proper response to his comrade's tirade, and instead turned his gaze to the building. "You think the portal's still in there?"

Bob rolled his eyes. "It washes away with _water_, Vinnie," he replied. "When the water reached that room it would've vanished, and likely before anyone noticed." He looked over to where Rudy and his friends had been, but they were gone, likely taken to the hospital along with Rudy to meet up with his parents and Mrs. Sanchez. "Serves them right," he muttered, and turned back to Vinnie again. "Look, as soon as Terry is done with her stupid news report, we need to talk to her."

"Think she realizes already?"

"I don't know," Bob replied, "but I'll be sure to tell her what I saw. This makes one thing very clear, Vinnie," he continued, giving his companion a look that clearly showed his fury at the situation, "Rudy's not going to give us the chalk. He'd rather risk his life doing something stupid than give up being one of the only people able to access the chalk world. One thing is for sure; I'm not going to wait around for him to give it to me any longer." He turned away, walking back to the parked car.

"What are you gonna do, then?" Vinnie cried, hurrying after him.

"We'll meet up and come up with something tonight," he muttered, throwing another furious glare in the direction of the building before slamming the door.

**ooo**

Late at night, Rudy still could hardly believe what had happened. He knew now that he shouldn't have tried to go into the Real World during the dragon's attack at all, but at the time…it had seemed like there was no other option. Maybe he could have thought of something else – he wasn't sure what – but it was too late now. There was nothing he could do until the next day.

The past few hours were now a blur to him. Luckily, the doctors at the hospital had confirmed that he was all right, but in spite of his protests, both the doctors and his parents had insisted that he stay overnight, just to make sure he was completely fine. Alone in the dark room, he kept reflecting back on what had happened. Everyone had believed Penny's story, at least, and knowing that he hadn't wanted to talk about it, they hadn't questioned _him_ much. When they had, he was relieved that his answers were satisfactory enough, at least for the time being. He certainly wasn't looking forward to having to talk about it again with his parents later.

Penny had told him that they had run into the issue of someone wanting to interview Snap for a newspaper, to thank him for saving Rudy's life, but luckily he had caught Penny's alarmed look and refused. Now Rudy realized, with a feeling of shame, that he'd never even thanked Snap. He couldn't until the next day; no one was allowed to visit in the _middle of the night_, and he didn't even have his magic chalk to sneak into ChalkZone with. It was back by ChalkZone City near where the dragon had attacked.

Luckily, Penny had been able to come back a little later to tell him that the Zoners had the dragon attack situation under control, and that they'd put it to sleep somehow while it was trapped and taken it to a secure location by the time she checked that area of ChalkZone again. At least that threat was gone, but the threat Newland held over them was just as strong as ever, and he had no way of knowing if the termites hadn't begun any worse methods of attack in the night, or whether they were spreading the corroding mist to other areas yet. Whatever was happening, he couldn't do anything about it until the morning when he would be allowed to go home.

He shut his eyes, trying to block out the dull room around him as he pulled the covers up closer to his head. He wasn't badly hurt; Penny shouldn't have told the ambulance worker he'd been knocked out. He knew she had been worried, but it had turned out that he was fine after all. Now he knew it would be harder to sneak into ChalkZone. Sure, he would stay home from school the next day, but his parents were likely going to check up on him frequently, leaving little time to try to help the Zoners. He was going to do his best to convince them that he was all right, but he didn't think they were going to believe it. He tried to calm himself, knowing that Penny would be keeping an eye on ChalkZone, as he tried to think of what he would do tomorrow.

He planned to go into ChalkZone as often as possible, even if only in short bursts of time, hopefully draw reinforcements to the hotel or move it to a more secure location, and then…he wasn't sure. He and the others were simply out of ideas. However, he certainly wasn't going to give up. In spite of the dragon incident, he only felt more determined than ever to find a way to help the citizens of ChalkZone and prevent Newland from causing any more destruction. It was his job to protect them, and he was going to find a way…somehow.

It wasn't long before he realized he was getting nowhere with his frantic attempts to come up with a plan, and in the end he decided that all he could do now was rest, and promised himself that he would start to figure something out in the morning.


	12. Frantic Hunt

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Twelve – Frantic Hunt**

The next day, Rudy was still frantically trying to think of a way he could help ChalkZone. He was staying home from school, and while that did give him more time to try to think, it also meant that he was separated from Penny. They had planned to meet up during lunch time, but his parents had insisted upon him eating lunch with them, so he hadn't been able to get to ChalkZone at the correct time. He hoped Penny would understand when he explained to her later.

He'd already told Snap why he hadn't appeared at the planned time, and Snap had explained that he and Penny hadn't been able to think of anything together either. Rudy wished he could have been there, even though he wasn't sure he would have been able to help them with their ideas much. He had not had the chance to try to move the hotel in ChalkZone to a safer location, but to his relief, there wasn't any sign of the termites heading out to invade other parts of ChalkZone, and he guessed that Penny's estimation about them waiting a week could be correct. However, he was also keenly aware that it could possibly happen at any moment, and there would be no way to tell. There might not even be any real warning, and that thought scared him the most.

He was glad that his parents seemed to be done talking about the incident the previous night. He hadn't wanted to talk about it at all, and he'd honestly tuned out most of what they said. He'd replied quite frequently that he certainly had no intention of wandering into old buildings again.

As he'd predicted, his parents frequently checked on him whenever he'd been in his room, so he'd had to make his trips into ChalkZone short. Luckily, Snap had been content to wait outside his portal for whenever he could arrive, and for that he was grateful. In the afternoon, as he waited for Penny to get home from school, Rudy decided to let Snap stay in his room and try to come up with any ideas there; it wasn't like he could find a place to move or redraw the hotel in such short bursts of time anyway. He would probably have to do it at night. He made sure that if they heard one of Rudy's parents coming, Snap was to quickly dart back into the portal, or, if that wasn't an option for whatever reason, into Rudy's closet. So far, they'd had good luck, and hoped that luck would continue and Penny would be allowed to stay over. That was far better than having to take quick trips into ChalkZone to meet her.

"Okay," said Rudy while they waited until it would be time for school to end, "since we couldn't find anyone who could help us stop these things…maybe we can look for another book. There has to be other libraries. I know Biclops said they wouldn't have the same type of records the one we were looking for had, but they've still got to have something. Do you know of any other libraries?"

"Uh…I think there's a few in towns near ChalkZone City," Snap explained. "I guess we could check 'em."

"Yeah…" Rudy sighed. Spending time looking through books in libraries had been his last resort, seeing how time consuming it would be as well as being unlikely that they'd find anything, but they didn't have anywhere else to turn. They were getting nowhere trying to come up with ideas themselves, and they certainly needed some kind of outside help or advice. "Penny would be good at that," he stated, a bit more positively. "We could tell her after school and she could help us search."

He was worried, however, that Penny wouldn't agree to sneaking into ChalkZone during the night. Earlier, she had insisted that he should rest, despite his repeated claims that he was fine, and that helping ChalkZone was more important. He knew she was probably saying that because she knew there wasn't much they could do anyway, but he wasn't ready to give up.

**ooo**

Once Rudy knew that school was out, he called Penny, but to his disappointment, she told him that she wasn't allowed to stay over. With a long ChalkZone trip still out of the question due to the risk of his parents checking on him and finding him gone, Rudy and Snap were forced to stay in his room, frustrated that they couldn't start searching one of the small libraries that Snap had mentioned. Rudy was trying not to think of the previous night's events, but it kept coming back to his mind, as it had all day, and he realized how impossible everything seemed. His only comfort was that there was no sign of other newly erased dangerous drawings around.

Later in the evening, Penny managed to sneak into ChalkZone and meet up with them at Rudy's portal. They quickly told her about their idea to search the smaller libraries, and she agreed that it might be worth it. They made a plan to do a quick search of each of them during the evening to see if they had any of the type of information they were searching for, and if not, abandon the search to try to find more Zoners to talk to.

**ooo**

By nightfall, the trio had managed to arrive at and search for books in three of the libraries, but each of them seemed to have the same type of books, and nothing remotely related to underground monsters. In the end, they were completely exhausted, and Penny had told them, in spite of the dangerous time limit ChalkZone was under, they needed to rest. Reluctantly, they had agreed, realizing that they would probably get closer to forming a plan when they were rested and awake, and most Zoners were more likely to be active in the daytime hours as well. Maybe one they hadn't talked to yet would know something.

However, as night fell, Rudy wasn't willing to give up on the library idea, at least not yet. There were still a few other libraries that they could search, although they were small and not likely to have much of use. He could also go back to one of the others they had been to and possibly look through other types of books rather than just the ones they thought might relate to the termite threat. It was a long shot, but he figured it was worth a try. He couldn't sleep anyway, and he didn't think he'd be able to rest at all until he had some sort of plan.

As he snuck over to his chalkboard, he knew he was taking a risk, as he knew it was possible that his parents would want to check on him in the night, especially soon, because it was still early compared to when he usually went to bed. However, he disregarded it, thinking it at least a somewhat unlikely possibility, before changing out of his pajamas and into his normal clothes and then drawing a portal.

Landing on the grass beneath the portal, he heaved a sigh of relief when he noticed that there were still no signs of any terrible destruction…yet. Everything seemed as it normally did, save for the fact that the place was vacant of Zoners. He realized that all of the ChalkZone inhabitants in the nearby areas were very well aware of the threat that loomed over their heads, and it was likely that many of them had tried to flee to areas further away from the city. Pushing the thought from his mind, he climbed onto the scooter he'd been using and rode toward the hotel, hoping that Snap was still awake. He didn't like the thought of spending hours searching in a library alone.

When he arrived at the hotel building, he walked up to the front doors, a bit uncertain. He realized that even though he'd drawn it, he'd never actually set foot inside the building, and now he couldn't quite remember the layout he'd thought of when he'd created it. He was wary of disturbing anyone, knowing that most Zoners would be asleep or getting ready for bed by now. He confirmed this thought by glancing upward at the windows, many of which were covered with star-print fabric. Carefully, he edged the door open and peered inside, recognizing and then remembering the type of interior he had imagined when he'd created the hotel, and closed the door.

The building was truly massive, and he could see from where he stood in the main lobby that it stretched upward many stories, and each level had several hallways. He'd known it was big when he'd drawn it, but somehow it seemed more enormous when he was standing inside it. The lobby was completely dark, with thick nighttime themed fabric pulled over the windows, and he could see no one around, which alarmed him a little. They had simply left the door open with no one guarding it, and he quickly turned around and locked the door, thinking of Dooth and Boorat or other unsavory Zoners who could just waltz right in. As he resumed looking around at the empty place, he wondered if most of the Zoners here had simply fled, leaving the hotel unguarded and without anyone in charge. It was a very disconcerting feeling.

Rudy started to walk toward the center of the lobby, his shoes echoing loudly on the tiled floor as he looked from left to right, examining the plain-colored walls that stretched far above his head, and the faint lights shining through the many hallways – none of which had windows – up above. The place felt almost eerie, and he wished there was some Zoner around he could ask for help. He had no idea what floor Snap was on, let alone what room he was in. Snap had never had a chance to tell him; they had always planned to meet up by his portal since Snap had had to stay there.

Sighing, he headed over to a nearby staircase and began climbing, choosing the first hallway he saw and walking down it. Almost immediately he noticed that most of the doors were thrown open carelessly, and when he peered into the rooms, they were completely vacant, some of them still containing belongings that had been hastily left behind. He tried knocking on a few doors, and the first few times received no answer. On the fourth try, he got an angry response, and when he tried asking where Snap was, the Zoner only shouted back at him that he didn't know.

Disheartened, he walked back to the main lobby and was about to try another hallway when he heard footsteps coming from somewhere up above him, and he peered upward, surprise and relief flooding through him as he realized that the Zoner was someone he knew well – Blocky.

"Blocky!" Rudy called, making his way back up the staircase and up a few more floors to reach the one where his drawing was standing.

"Rudy!" Blocky called cheerfully, running up to him and grinning widely. "Did you find a way to stop those monsters yet?"

"Er…no…" Rudy replied, feeling almost ashamed as he realized how much faith Blocky seemed to have put in him with that question. "But…we're going to come up with a plan," he added quickly, seeing the green rectangle's crestfallen look. "But I need your help. Do you know what room Snap's in?"

"Yeah!" Blocky replied happily, his confidence in Rudy seeming completely restored. "He's in room 4D, just in that hallway." He pointed, and Rudy grinned.

"Thanks!" he called, dashing to the hallway Blocky had pointed out. Due to the lack of windows, it was dark, but luckily he had envisioned lights set up at intervals along the dark parts of the building when he'd drawn it, and it wasn't difficult to locate the door with a large golden '4D' emblazoned on it.

Lifting his hand, he knocked on the door, waiting a moment after he got no response. He was worried that Snap might have tried to go to sleep early, like he had, and was contemplating going off to search on his own after all when his friend suddenly opened the door.

"Rudy?" Snap looked alarmed and rather shocked at seeing him there, and he peered into the hallway, looking left and right. "What's goin' on? Is anyone bein' attacked-"

"No, it's nothing like that," Rudy quickly interjected. "I just…couldn't sleep, and I wanted to look at one of the other libraries or…maybe one of the ones we searched again. We didn't have time to look at any of them for very long, and there might be other books that can give us some idea of what to do." He waited for Snap's response, realizing only as he said it that his plan sounded hopeless and desperate.

Snap gave the hallway another glance, as if expecting that there _was_ actually something terrible approaching, before turning back to Rudy. "You really think that's gonna help, Bucko?"

"I don't know, but what else are we supposed to do?" he replied, trying to keep his voice to a whisper so as not to disturb any other Zoners nearby. The building was almost deathly silent, and any sound they made seemed much louder than it was. He turned back to Snap, who looked much more exhausted than Rudy felt. He knew Snap had hardly gotten a proper rest since the kidnapping incident, and he felt guilty asking him to accompany him, but at the same time he couldn't stand the thought of trying to find something without one of his friends by his side at the moment, and he knew it was probably too late to ask Penny. "Please, Snap?" he asked. "We could…we could just go to one or two and if there's nothing we can go back, and Penny can help me tomorrow instead."

"Well…all right," Snap sighed. "You know I wanna help ChalkZone as much as you do."

"Thanks," Rudy said gratefully, making a mental note to himself to make it up to Snap later. "This is really the only thing I can think of to do," he admitted as they began to walk down the hallway, finding that when they reached the lobby, Blocky had already gone to wherever he had been headed. They passed the front door, Rudy making sure to lock it again before closing it.

After the darkness in the hotel, the bright sunlight seemed abnormally strong. Shielding his eyes, Rudy walked over to the scooter as he tried to remember which of the libraries was nearest. He told Snap that going to the closest one would be the best use of their time, as it was just as likely – or unlikely – to have anything useful in the books they hadn't looked at as one of the other ones would, and he wanted to make their trip as brief as possible for Snap's sake.

They rode the scooter to a small nearby village made of brightly colored buildings, each of them oddly shaped and uniquely designed and painted. They had been there earlier in the evening, and Rudy had thought it would have been a nice place to visit, had the circumstances been different. They stopped right in front of the library, a small building with one main room that from the outside looked like a giant row of books, each one a bright, vivid color with patterned designs. As they walked in the front doors, they noticed, though not with any great surprise, that it was mostly empty, one sole librarian being the only person there.

The librarian – an owl, Rudy noted with amusement – didn't look up at them as they passed, immersed in reading a book herself. They walked into the main room, gazing at the neat row of shelves around them. The tables in the center, however, were anything but neat, and there were piles of books strewn all over the place, a reminder that there had been several Zoners there earlier.

"You know, they really should put these back where they belong instead of leavin' 'em out here for everyone to trip over," Snap grumbled as he followed Rudy toward the center of the room. He peered at the shelves. "So…where do we start?"

"I don't know," Rudy replied. "We looked through all the books on ChalkZone creatures, and all the ones about things underground…so maybe we should start looking for books about places. Maybe there's something we missed and one of these might talk about how to deal with danger lurking under the ground." He picked up a nearby book and flipped through it, Snap doing the same. Finding nothing, Rudy put it back on the shelf, then grabbed an armful of them and carried them all back to one of the tables, pushing aside the books someone had left there earlier.

Once Snap joined him, they began looking through their stack of books, taking care to move quickly through the pages while trying to be thorough enough to spot anything that might be of interest. It wasn't long before Rudy set the first book down and reached for the second, only to find a few minutes later that it was just as useless to their cause as the first.

After around an hour, they had both gone through not only that stack of books, but several others as well, leaving their table and a large area of the floor covered in them. Completely exhausted, Snap muttered something about how he now realized why the Zoners earlier hadn't bothered to put the books away. Rudy was going through them much quicker now, searching desperately for anything that might aid him, only to end up tossing each book aside to add to their growing accumulation of useless books. Sighing, Rudy slammed another book cover closed and leaned his head down, crossing his arms on the desk.

"What's the matter?" Snap asked. "Another headache?"

"No," Rudy sighed, "I just…thought we'd find something by now." He realized how silly this idea had been, but somehow throughout everything he had still held onto that hope that by some miracle, they'd come across something that could help them figure out how to stop Newland's creatures. "I guess we'll just have to keep trying," he said, picking up another volume. He watched as Snap, looking half asleep, reached for another book and began flipping through it, hardly registering what was on the pages. "Find anything yet?" Rudy asked, feeling like he was starting to fall asleep himself as he tried to focus on the words in front of him.

"Nah," Snap replied. "This one's talkin' about mountain climbing. I don't even think it was one of the ones we picked up. Musta' been left here from before. Look, here's the Mist Mountains."

He showed Rudy the book, which depicted the iconic mist-covered blue mountains, causing Rudy to sigh. "Who in their right mind would want to go mountain climbing there?" he muttered.

"No idea," Snap replied, still flicking through the pages.

Rudy tried to concentrate on the book he was holding, but his eyes wouldn't focus on the words. He shook his head, trying to stay awake, and narrowed his eyes, trying to make sense of what he was reading, when he felt Snap tapping his shoulder.

"Hey, Rudy. Look at this!" he stated, showing him another picture in the book he'd been looking through.

At first Rudy thought it just another random photograph of the Mist Mountains, but as he looked at it, he realized there was no mist. Not only that, but the blue of the rocks looked a lot brighter. Reading the short text beneath it, he realized that the photograph was taken a long time ago and was very old, hence why he hadn't noticed the lack of mist at first – the quality was very poor, as if the photograph they'd scanned for the book was decades old. "Is that the Mist Mountains…in the past?" he asked, pondering what it must have been like before the horrid mists took hold of such a large part of it. Snap shrugged and the two of them leaned over the book to see what it said, more out of curiosity than anything, but Rudy had a faint, wild hope that it would tell them how to navigate through the tunnels beneath the mountain or show some other sort of shortcut.

The book didn't seem like the type to show anything of the sort, but halfway through skimming one of the first paragraphs, Rudy's gaze stopped on two words. "Indigo Mountains," he said aloud. "That's what the Mist Mountains must have been called back when this picture was taken. It says here that the name changed when…" He trailed off, causing Snap, who had started to nod off, to look up at him in surprise. "…When it was overgrown with forest," Rudy finished, looking a bit confused. "There wasn't much forest in the Mist Mountains."

Curiously, he turned the page, wondering to himself how much ChalkZone could have changed in that space of time. Was that why they had been unable to accurately follow the map? He began to feel a strong, desperate hope, thinking the book might give him a clue they might have missed. He knew that there was no way they would be able to have enough time to cross the mountains again, but that hope and curiosity, although irrational, drove him on. Flipping the next page, he was met with a picture of a desert with captions saying that what lay beyond the Indigo Mountains was dangerous to cross on foot. The page after that, the end of the desert, then a jungle, the next page, a series of lakes, the next, a jumble of canyons and odd shaped rocks, another page, a black wasteland, then another mountain range, and then the book resumed talking about mountain climbing and the hazards of that particular mountain.

"These were the places on Biclops's map," Rudy stated in a stunned voice, "or at least they were before they…before they…" He paused, turning back to the photograph of the Indigo Mountains. As he stared at it, closer than he had before, he noticed a few new things he hadn't caught when he'd first looked at it. A clump of small blue trees in one place, and in another, more obviously, a strange patch of snowy area that stood out brightly amongst the green of the rest of the land. In the foreground of the picture, where the edges of the photograph had faded so much he hadn't seen it at first, was a tall, cylindrical object…a candle.

Suddenly he was transported back to a day of the previous week in his memories. He and his friends were sitting atop one of the giant candles and peering out a scene very much like the one in the book. He saw the blue trees, the snowy patch, and, beneath the strange sunset-colored sky which he knew was a new addition to the area, a mountain range covered in forest. Biclops's words came back to him as he remembered the conversation they'd had in the Chalk Mine…

'_They were described as a range of blue mountains that did not lie too far from this one…'_

Shocked, he stared blankly at the page a moment before slamming the book down on the table. The librarian shushed him and gave him an annoyed glare, but he didn't notice. He stared at Snap, seeing his shock reflected in his friend's face as well as he too peered at the picture.

"We were going the wrong way the whole time…"

There was stunned silence between them for a moment, and then Snap cried, "What? You mean Biclops told us ta go the _wrong_ _way_?"

"No!" Rudy replied. "I mean, he wouldn't have known. He must have never been to the Indigo Mountains back when they had that name. There were two blue mountain ranges and he picked the one he knew of…he couldn't have known there was another one or he would have told us, but…" He shook his head. "That's not important right now. We need to find Penny."

Without waiting for a reply from his friend, Rudy grabbed the book and ran to the front of library, dropping the book on the librarian's table. "I'd like to check this out please!" he said hurriedly, and she gave him an annoyed look and told him that he'd need a library card. Rudy considered going through with the sign up process as she presented him with a sheet of paper and a pen, but in the end decided that there was simply no time. "Never mind!" he said quickly, picking up the book and running to a nearby table. Leaving it lying with the page depicting what were formerly called the Indigo Mountains, he hurriedly drew a sloppy looking camera and photographed the relevant pages in quick succession, then he and Snap ran out the door.

"Isn't Penny gonna be asleep by now?" Snap asked as they climbed back onboard the scooter and set off toward Rudy's portal.

"I dunno, but we need to talk to her as soon as possible, so I've got to try," Rudy replied, determination clearly outlined in his voice. Snap wasn't sure what the huge hurry was, but he remained silent throughout the rest of the ride, too exhausted to question it.

Once they'd stopped at the portal, Snap sat down on the grass to wait as Rudy climbed back into his room. Knowing that he had to act quickly if he wanted a chance to reach Penny on the phone, Rudy snuck downstairs as quietly as he could and picked up the phone in the kitchen. Dialing Penny's number, he held his breath as he waited for someone to answer, hoping he wasn't too late. They had cancelled their plans to meet up at night, so there would be no other way to tell her before tomorrow. After a few moments, he heard someone's voice on the other end.

"Hello?" the voice, belonging to Penny's mother, stated.

"Hi, it's Rudy," he said, trying to keep his voice sounding calm. "I need to talk to Penny really quick. Is she still awake?"

"She's getting ready for bed," Mrs. Sanchez replied. "Is it really so important that it can't wait until tomorrow?"

"It'll only take a few minutes!" Rudy replied, realizing that he sounded a little desperate. "I promise. I just need to ask her a question about…about school. My parents said I might be able to go tomorrow."

There was a pause, and then, "All right. But make sure it's quick." Rudy heaved a sigh of relief and waited until, a minute or so later, he heard Penny's voice over the phone.

"Rudy?" his friend asked, sounding extremely worried. "What is it? Is something happening in ChalkZone?"

He realized she must have assumed he was calling her because of some sort of emergency, and he felt bad for worrying her. "No, no danger yet!" he quickly assured her. "That's not it…nothing's changed, but-"

Penny sounded confused now, and Rudy realized she must have picked up on how excited, and even hopeful, he'd sounded. "Then what…"

"It's about the library! I mean, the hidden library Biclops told us about!"

"But Rudy, we-"

"I think I know where it is."

There was a pause, and after a moment, Penny replied, "But…but what do you mean? We had the map, but we couldn't even follow it accurately. How do you know-"

"As soon as it's safe, come into ChalkZone and meet me by my portal," Rudy replied, realizing that the longer he stayed out in the kitchen, the more chance there was of his parents discovering he wasn't asleep. "I'll explain everything there."

Penny agreed, although a bit hesitantly and with much confusion, and Rudy quickly set the phone down and rushed back upstairs to his room to wait.

**ooo**

Back in his room, Rudy had spent the time waiting for Penny to arrive pacing back and forth restlessly, his previous tiredness completely gone. He and Snap had tried to pass the time reading his comics, but Rudy couldn't focus, his thoughts continuously dragged back to his recent discovery as he looked through the photographs he had taken over and over again. They weren't the clearest, as he had taken them in quite a hurry, but they showed the images from the book well enough.

"So…Rudy?" Snap asked, peering at Rudy over the edge of a comic book. "What do you suppose we're gonna do now that-"

He broke off as Penny's voice called quietly up to them through the other side of the portal. Running over to it, Rudy watched as she climbed up the ladder he had drawn, taking her hand and helping her through the portal until she stood in his room.

"You don't think your parents are going to come in here, do you?" she asked nervously, taking note that all three of them, plus the open portal, were in plain view.

"I don't know," Rudy said quickly, "they might want to check on me, but I'm not sure. You two can just go into ChalkZone if we hear them coming. But look!" He showed Penny the photographs he'd taken, explaining what had happened and what he'd found out.

Penny realized he was happy to finally have some beacon of hope, but she couldn't understand why he was in such a big hurry to tell her, or even how he thought he was going to manage finding the time to get there in the first place. She was as shocked about the whole thing as her friends had been upon making the discovery, but as she analyzed the photographs…it all fell into place.

"….and _that's_ why we couldn't find any of the correct landmarks! It all makes sense!" Rudy continued, in a voice a bit louder than Penny thought was safe.

"I…I did think it was strange that there were hardly any ruins around that temple spire we found," she continued, speaking much more quietly. "If it was knocked down, there should have been more remains or at least signs that it had been cleared away. The spire we found must have been something completely different. And the rocks…none of them matched up…" She looked up to see that Rudy looked so lost in his own thoughts that he wasn't paying any attention. She glanced to Snap, who merely shrugged, and back at Rudy. "Rudy, what do you think we should-"

"We're going to find those hidden books," he told her, and without waiting for an answer, he walked straight to the chalkboard and began to climb inside.

"What? _Now?_" Penny cried.

"Yes," Rudy replied firmly. "Right now. What if Newland's creatures _weren't _told to wait a whole week? Those monsters could attack the rest of ChalkZone at any moment! We don't have any more time! What if the attack is really tomorrow morning? People are going to get hurt! Or killed! We have all night to reach the library and come back. There won't be any flying monsters, so _this_ time, we can fly over the mountains, and…and there won't be any ice tunnels that we have to navigate to find anything in; we'll probably be able to see all the landmarks from the air!"

"But…"

"Going through the Mist Mountains alone would have taken up two days total of traveling if everything had gone to plan. We would still have had time to cross the other areas there and back_ and_ look at the books. We have all night to find them now, and if we use a fast method of transportation we can be back before my parents wake up. I really think we can do it!" He stood with one foot up on the edge of the portal, looking at his two friends, both of whom looked fairly shocked as they tried to take in what he'd just said.

"Rudy…I…are you sure?" Penny began. "The trip would take, at minimum, a few hours each way, and that would leave us with maybe…three hours at best to search the cave. And that's if nothing slows us down, or-"

"We _have_ to try!" Rudy replied, feeling a sense of desperation at Penny's words. He knew that she would want to help, but that she was also thinking about this more logically than he was, and if it turned out they would not be able to make the journey, he had no idea what he would do.

Penny seemed conflicted herself, her worry for both the fate of ChalkZone and what the journey could mean for her and her friends both prominent in her mind. However, she knew as much as Rudy did that time was running out, and acting quickly could mean the difference between life and death for Zoners who might not be able to get out of the path of destruction quickly enough. "We'll…have to be careful."

"Well, let's get started then!" said Snap, jumping up from where he was sitting. "We don't have a lotta time."

"Right," Rudy agreed, relieved that he had the support of both of them. He had no idea what they could face on the way there, and although completing the entire journey from the sky was safer, he was still wary about it, and he was very glad that his two closest friends would be alongside him.

"We'll need to pack some supplies," Penny told him. "Just basic things like food, water, magic chalk…a first aid kit…" She trailed off worriedly.

"Good idea," said Rudy. "I'll go get some water from downstairs. I'm sure we have a first aid kit around too," he added.

"Wait!" Penny hissed in a whisper as Rudy neared the door. He looked at her in confusion. "What about your parents?" she stated worriedly. "You said they might check on you sometime in the night…what will we do if they look in the room and you're gone?"

Rudy thought for a moment, realizing that the scenario Penny had presented them with was a very real possibility. It was still fairly early in the night, and it could be likely that his parents would check in the room around 10:00 or so. Luckily, an idea came to him quickly. "_I know_!" he whispered back, running to the ChalkZone portal with his magic chalk. Leaning into the portal, he quickly drew something with the chalk on the ChalkZone side, and turned back to the others with two objects in his hands. One was a tiny video camera, and the other a small watch. "Here's what we'll do," he said, briefly pulling in the ladder from ChalkZone to allow him to climb up and set up the camera over his window, so it was overlooking the whole room. Afterward, he pressed a button on the top that made the device vanish, rendering it undetectable to anyone who walked into the room.

"The camera will show me if anyone comes in," Rudy explained. "I'll be able to see what's happening on this watch!" He held it up and then quickly strapped it to his arm. "I'll keep track. This way, if I see them coming into the room, we'll turn around and go to your house, and make up some excuse as to why I was there, okay? And…and if I miss anything, I can just rewind it quickly when we come back and see if my parents came in, and if they did, we'll know if we need an excuse."

"Good idea, Rudy," Penny said, though he could tell she was worried. At least she knew that it would seem a plausible enough excuse, and wouldn't cause her mother to worry about her as well, as she knew there would be no reason for her own mother to check her room during the night. "However, I'm not sure if it'll be able to transmit the video unless you keep the portal open."

Rudy shook his head firmly. "I'm not risking that," he stated. "I'll…leave a tiny bit open on my portable chalkboard." He ran to his desk, picking up the object in question and drawing the tiniest portal he could in one corner. "I'll make sure no one can find this," he stated, opening his closet door and burying it beneath a pile of his other belongings. "That should work," he said. "Let's get the supplies."

Rudy picked up his backpack, pausing to empty his school supplies on the floor near his closet, before reaching into his drawer for his box of magic chalk. It was running a bit low, but that didn't bother him, as he had another hidden supply. He grabbed all the pieces that weren't broken and dropped it back in the drawer before quietly heading out the door to get the water, food, and first aid kit.

Fifteen minutes later, they were all standing beside the heap of numbers beneath Penny's portal, Rudy and Penny each carrying the supplies they needed. To Rudy's relief, the camera idea had worked, and he could see the video screen showing his room clearly on the watch. There was no sign of his parents. Everything was going according to plan.

"Everyone ready?" he asked. The other two nodded, Penny briefly checking the backpack she'd brought from her room. "And you remember the map?" he asked Penny.

"Yes, every detail of it," Penny replied confidently.

"Good," Rudy replied. "Now let's go find those hidden books."

**ooo**

Rudy held tightly onto the reigns of a gigantic red pterodactyl as they soared over a landscape teeming with color and life, the multi-hued light of the SunsetZone streaming down on them. This hadn't been Rudy's first idea for a travel method, but after Snap had mentioned something about pterodactyl sailing and then remembered that there were some who were used to flying long distances in exotic locations, they had visited a Zoner who owned several of the magnificent creatures. Snap had told them that the pterodactyls that flew over large distances were experts at avoiding dangerous areas, especially ones they knew well, and the Zoner who owned them eagerly lent one to Rudy once he explained why it was needed. At first, Rudy was afraid the mode of transportation would not be fast enough; they needed to follow the landmarks as quickly as possible, but now he knew he needn't have worried. The creature was amazingly fast – startlingly so, even – but not so fast that they missed anything as they peered below. And it knew the areas beyond the mountains by heart; the addition of the sunset sky to the lands in front of them made no difference to it.

Looking down, Rudy could see the strange blue trees he'd seen in the library book, only now much bigger and more numerous, as well as the funny patch of snow he'd taken notice of on his first sighting of the place a week ago. Looking upward, the brilliantly colored sky was even more breathtaking from the air; the vast array of colors seemed to be all around them, bathing everything in a warm orange light. The wings of the pterodactyl stretched to either direction of him, soaring effortlessly on the wind currents, and Penny and Snap sat behind him, both also marveling at the scene around them.

"Here we are!" Snap cried from behind him, resting a hand on Rudy's shoulder, and Rudy could see that they were almost upon the mountains. Beyond the first peaks, he could see where the SunsetZone gave way to normal DayZone again. "Now our journey really begins!" Snap shouted.

Rudy couldn't help but smile, in spite of the dire situation. It was great to see Snap sounding so hopeful, especially after all that had happened. They had gotten a second chance to find the library, and Rudy was determined to make sure it did not go wasted.

For several minutes, they soared over the mountains, passing its peaks and ridges at an astonishing pace. They left the SunsetZone behind, and were once again flying under bright DayZone sunlight. "Look!" Penny cried after a short while, pointing excitedly past Rudy and Snap's shoulders to something beneath them.

Rudy's eyes widened as he realized what it was. A gigantic, crumbling temple ruin appeared from behind a peak as they flew overhead, its five spires jutting up into the sky. "It's just like the one on the map!" he cried, and as the temple faded into the distance with the pterodactyl's astounding speed, he peered ahead, intent to find the rock landmark.

It wasn't long before the end of the mountains came into view, and Rudy guided the pterodactyl lower, knowing that the rocks were likely to be smaller, and they scanned the mountainside until Rudy pointed them out, the circle of rocks looking just as the ones on the map had. From here, they could see the river they were meant to cross, heading straight forward from the point the rocks had been, and beyond that, a desert with several bizarre looking towering stones.

The stone formations proved to be no difficulty to them; as they flew above the desert, they could still see the landscape clearly, as the rocks did not hide it like the ice cliffs had done. Once or twice the pterodactyl had veered off course to avoid some potential danger or other, but thanks to Penny's calculations, they quickly got back on track, finding the next few landmarks with ease.

They then arrived over a strange looking jungle, which Rudy recognized from the photo in the library book. This one was much smaller than the Mumbo Jumbo Jungle, and they had no problem keeping on course there either, with the pterodactyl avoiding any dangerous spots as it carried them above it.

The time flew by as they crossed over the area with the massive lakes, which by now had simply formed one giant one, and luckily the landmark there was still recognizable, and then soared above a land riddled with canyons and odd rock formations. Rudy looked up in amazement as the pterodactyl dove beneath a massive stone arch spanning across one of the largest canyons, then carried them up above again to give them an astounding view of the canyon and the river winding at the bottom of it. All around them were towering masses of stone, each of them banded with bright colors, some that would be impossible to find in the Real World. After a short while they soared even higher, seeing the many canyons snaking below them. "We can see everything from up here!" Rudy cried in exhilaration, grinning as Snap pointed out the next landmark, a massive rock that was shaped a bit like a muffin or cupcake.

After they passed the land of canyons, an odd, flat landscape stretched out before them. The dirt – or sand, or whatever it was – was pitch black, and stretched on far into the distance, the sky above it looking oddly hazy. Rudy felt a sense of awe as he looked at it. This has been the last area on the map before the mountains that held the cave entrance. It had been left blank on the map apart from the landmarks, and now he could see why. There was really nothing that seemed distinguishing about it, though he wished the creator of the map had thought to label his or her drawings. Now, however, it didn't matter. They were on the right course.

As they began to fly over the strange land, Rudy looked down and could make out that the dark substance seemed to be glittering black sand. As soon as he had gotten a good look, the pterodactyl suddenly veered sharply upwards, causing Rudy and his friends to grip onto the reigns tightly. "What was that for?" he asked once they were far above.

"I dunno. Must be some sort of danger down there," Snap replied, peering at the blank landscape below.

Rudy only shrugged, knowing their pterodactyl would know what it was doing, and scanned the area for the landmarks. Even at their speed, it was a little while before one appeared in the distance, an odd shaped jagged rock that towered above the area, standing out starkly against the haze that seemed to fill the air above the place. "Was that on the map?" he asked Penny.

She stared at it a moment before replying, "No…no, that must be new. We should just pass it by."

Rudy nodded, and as they approached, he realized there was something strange about the rock. It took until they soared above it for him to figure out what it was. The massive object wasn't a rock at all, it was a gigantic formation made of the same black sand as the rest of the area, and as they passed overhead, they could see that sand was seeping out of the top, adding onto the formation. Penny remarked that it must seep up from the ground and form these strange towers as it was pushed up to the surface.

"So those things on the map weren't landmarks?" Rudy asked her.

"No, I don't think they were," she replied, "just the formations the traveler saw when they were here. I don't think we need a landmark anyway. We should see the mountain any time."

"Yeah, it's not like a mountain is hard to miss," Snap agreed.

"Exactly," Rudy replied with a nod, his eyes scanning the horizon.

A loud, rumbling sounded from somewhere behind them, and the three turned around to see a gigantic pillar of sand erupting from the wasteland surface like a gigantic geyser. Unlike the slowly seeping sand that formed the strange formations, this was fast and violent, spraying masses of sand in all different directions at its base. They felt the pterodactyl start climbing steadily higher into the air, probably to ensure its safety a bit more. Luckily, the strange 'geyser' was far behind them, and didn't reach high enough that it would have struck them had they been flying over it.

As he turned around, Rudy could finally see the outline of a small mountain range through the haze up ahead. "There it is!" he shouted in excitement, his friends echoing their own exclamations of wonder and relief. "We're almost there…" he said to himself. Now he needed to count on finding those books of old records, and he trusted what Biclops had said about them standing out from the normal books. _'We can do this…'_ he thought. _'We can save ChalkZone…'_

They passed the remainder of the sand wasteland without incident, seeing several more sand formations and a few other geysers, though they were distant. A ways before the foot of the mountains, the wasteland ended to give way to a lush green prairie with a river snaking through it and several exotic ChalkZone plants.

It looked friendly and inviting, but they knew that now was hardly the time to stop and explore. They were rapidly approaching the mountains, which they realized were very small, even without being compared to the Mist Mountains, and a few minutes later their pterodactyl mount began to head downward and alighted gracefully on a peak about halfway up the mountain.

The trio carefully jumped to the ground, looking at their surroundings. The mountain was rocky, but was also covered in trees and vegetation in places. Penny was mildly surprised that it didn't look strange at all. The trees and plants looked like things they usually came across in ChalkZone, and they could even see the familiar sight of eyeball bushes dotted across the slopes. Compared to all the places they'd been to, this one looked 'normal.'

Rudy suddenly remembered that he hadn't been checking the video watch nearly as often as he should have, and in fact hadn't checked for the past hour or so. He glanced at it, and was surprised to find the screen completely blank.

"What's wrong?" Penny asked, seeing his worried look.

"The watch signal's gone," he muttered, watching a small red flashing light that he'd drawn to tell him in case the signal from the camera failed to transmit. "I think we're just too far away."

"Don't worry," she told him, "we can rewind the footage when we get back like you said. If your parents came in during the night…we'll go to my house."

He nodded. However, he didn't feel right about not knowing whether his parents had entered the room or not, and not having the ability to check made him nervous. He dearly hoped for their sake that they hadn't thought to check on him that night. If they saw him gone and panicked, it would be several hours before he'd be able to get back and see them again. He knew that if they had gone to check on him, it would have been before now, probably an hour or so ago. He also realized that they hadn't thought of the possibility of his parents calling Penny's house. He knew they'd have to come up with a different excuse then, and he hoped they would be able to create a believable one if it came to that. He tried to put the thought out of his mind, knowing there was nothing he could do until he got back to his room, but the uneasy feeling still haunted him. He put the watch in his backpack, knowing that he would need to focus on the task ahead, and he followed Penny as she began to walk across a sloping part of the mountainside.

"You stay here an' wait for us, all right?" Snap told the pterodactyl, who obediently settled down and curled up, as if ready to take a nap, on the flat topped peak.

"So where did the map say this entrance was going to be?" Rudy asked, looking around.

"It didn't say," Penny replied. "Just specified a general area. It was on this side of the mountain, likely somewhere along the middle here, near where we are now."

"Well, let's start looking," he replied, and the trio split up, knowing that there wasn't a whole lot of ground to cover, and figuring that it would probably be easy to see the entrance to a relatively large cave.

Rudy had thought about searching from the air, but he realized there was no need. Apart from the occasional tree, the mountain was smooth with little that could block their view of a tunnel entrance. However, as he scanned the mountainside, he saw no sign of any entrance at all. Even after checking behind trees and bushes in case the entrance was unusually tiny, he soon had to admit defeat and meet back with Penny and Snap.

"Find anything?" Snap asked as the trio met up.

"No," Penny responded, sounding confused. "There's no sign of an entrance anywhere, or even that there ever was one. Nothing seems to have caved in, and there's not much it could be covered by, and whatever we saw that could be in the way, we checked."

"Do ya think we went the wrong way _again_?" Snap asked, giving Rudy a horrified look.

"N-no!" he cried. "It has to be here! I know what I saw in that book!"

"Maybe it's on the other side, then?" Snap suggested.

"No, the map specified that it was this one, facing out toward the way we came," Penny replied, pointing toward the black landscape in the distance they had recently crossed over. "If the entrance is here at all, it's in this area somewhere."

"I don't understand…" Rudy muttered, looking around at all the mountain slopes, realizing that Penny had been right. There was no sign that anything had caved in or that there was ever a tunnel at all; a lot of it was solid rock. "This can't be right!" he cried, running up a slope to get a better vantage point of the surrounding mountain. He was met with a similar sight. Gentle slopes and huge rock walls, but absolutely nothing that could conceal a tunnel. He sank to his knees, giving the area around him a devastated look. They'd come to a dead end.

"Let's take the pterodactyl and circle the mountain," Penny suggested. "That way we can be sure if there's nothing here." She was trying to sound hopeful, but the others could sense the doubt and confusion in her voice.

"Come on!" Snap cried, racing back to where they'd left their mount. The pterodactyl looked up at them as they approached, getting to its feet and stretching its wings as if eager to go for another flight. Snap leaped onto its back, waiting for Rudy and Penny to climb up behind him.

They took off, Snap telling the creature to fly low as they swept up and down the mountainsides, searching for any sign of a tunnel. Yet even after circling the entirety of the small clump of mountains, there was no sign of a cave entrance, or anything it could possibly be hiding behind. Nothing.

With a heavy heart, Snap led the pterodactyl back to its perch, slipping off its back and staring around wildly, desperate to spot something that he knew he wouldn't see. Rudy climbed down after him, not willing to leave empty handed after coming so far. Penny glanced at the other two, having no idea what to say to them.

"We can't just go back," Rudy said after a moment. "Come on, Penny! Let's keep looking!"

Penny slowly climbed down from the pterodactyl's back, following her friends as they began walking, searching the slopes of the mountain with desperate eyes. She looked as well, hoping against hope that her theories on the matter, however logical, were wrong.

"No…no, we can't have come all this way for nothing!" Rudy cried as he was again met with the same sight. "I can't go back a second time without finding anything!"

"You did the best you could," Penny told him. "And…" She tried to sound more optimistic. "We're not done looking yet."

"Of course we're not done!" Snap replied. "Come on, Rudy. If there's no entrance, we'll make one! Let's drill into the mountain and find that cave! If it's big enough to hide most of a library, it should be easy enough to find-"

"Wait!" Penny cried, looking suddenly alarmed as Rudy took out his chalk in response to Snap's statement. "If there's a cave down there, you could cause a collapse that could damage or destroy the books, not to mention…it could collapse on us." She watched as the other two gave each other worried glances, realizing her point. "It's not the same as drilling into the Chalk Mine where you know what the cavern beneath it is like. And…there might not be a cave to find," she finished, unable to stop herself from saying it.

"There has to be!" Rudy yelled. "We followed the map and everything was like it was drawn!"

"Maybe there's another mountain around here somewheres?" Snap muttered. "Maybe we took a wrong turn at those newer sand formations?" As he said it, the three of them looked toward the horizons, but there was no sign of another mountain.

"Maybe there was no hidden library…" Rudy said after a moment, and he was numbly shocked that it had been him to say it. The others did not respond to try to correct him or offer words of hope, which made him feel much worse. He turned his gaze downward, not wanting to meet their eyes.

"We can't give up just yet," Penny told him after a minute, and he looked to her in surprise. "I know there's no sign of an entrance now, but…maybe this landscape changed…at least a bit…" She trailed off, and Rudy knew that she would have realized if the mountains looked different to the drawings on the map, and from her worried expression, he could tell that they didn't. "Let's keep looking," she said firmly. "One more time. To see if there are any signs."

"All right," he replied shakily. He didn't have much hope in her plan, but he was determined to try. He was glad that Penny and Snap seemed eager as they took off in different directions, and he tried to put his doubts about the map and the legend behind him.

Soon the sound of the others' footsteps faded into the distance, and Rudy set off on his own route. This time, he headed toward the foothills of the mountain rather than trying to go further up. When he thought he was far enough down, he peered upward, hoping to see something different in the mountainside from that angle. There was nothing.

Drawing himself a pair of binoculars, he held them to his eyes as he scanned all around him, seeing nothing but brush, trees, and rock. After a moment he gave up and shoved them into his backpack.

Still hoping there was something to his 'looking from down below' idea, he started walking along the lower edge of the mountain, pausing every so often to look up at the slopes overhead. Everything looked much the same, and he was starting to feel silly for having such a strange and pointless idea.

As he walked, he came across a shallow gully a few feet above where he was walking, though it was immediately clear there was no cave entrance in it. He felt infuriatingly frustrated; the gully, apart from the small mountain peaks, was the only place the entrance to a cave might have been concealed from sight if one wasn't looking head-on, but here it was just as empty and flawless as the rest of the mountain. He started to head past it, still glancing upward at the peaks overhead.

As he was doing so, his foot struck a rock and he cried out, leaping on one foot as he gripped his other shoe, nearly stumbling backwards. He heard a worried cry from Penny somewhere up ahead, and he steadied himself, calling back, "Don't worry! It was just a rock!" Looking back at the stone he'd stumbled on, he picked it up momentarily out of curiosity, wondering if it had fallen from somewhere. However, it was smooth and round and obviously hadn't been chipped off the mountain or come from a collapse, and in sheer frustration he hurled it into the nearby gully.

Instead of striking the bottom of it, the rock vanished in midair. Rudy stared in pure shock, and a moment later he shakily picked up a small pebble, tossing it into the gully to be sure he hadn't been imagining things. Once the pebble reached the back end of the gully, it too vanished.

"Penny! Snap!" he cried, glancing up to where his two friends had started to meet back together while carrying out their own searches. Noting his tone of voice, the others could tell he'd found_ something_, and hurriedly ran down toward him.

Rudy, however, wasn't sure_ what_ he'd found. Whatever it was, it was certainly out of the ordinary, and he waited until his friends had approached before picking up another pebble. "Watch this," he told them, flinging it toward the gully and watching as it vanished as well.

Penny and Snap stared at the place where the rock had vanished, and then at each other. "You don't think that's the hidden entrance, do ya?" Snap asked after a moment.

"I'm not sure," Penny replied, "but it's certainly something."

"Exactly," Rudy replied. "Let's go."

"Wait," Penny told him, putting a hand on his shoulder and stopping him. "There was no sound of that rock hitting the ground after it vanished. We…we can't be sure it's safe."

Rudy immediately understood her concern, and for a moment he thought of the void that had chased them while they were wandering around the changing building. "Maybe it….keeps sound out too?" he asked. _'Or maybe the tunnel goes so far down we just didn't hear it hit the bottom…'_ he thought with a shiver.

"I'll go first," Rudy told the others after a few moments. "And I'll…be careful." He could see the others were terrified as he stepped toward the gully, stopping just before the place he'd seen the rock vanish. Taking a deep breath, he reached his hand out in front of him.

He blinked in shock as his hand vanished. He had been expecting it, but the sight was still utterly bizarre. Yanking his hand back, he was relieved to see it still in one piece. He looked to his friends, who seemed somewhat relieved, and then turned back around and carefully edged his foot forward. Even as it vanished before his eyes, he felt solid ground, and, taking a deep breath, walked through the concealing barrier – or whatever it was – to step into what was beyond.

Once he was through, he realized that he could still see the mountain, but the area he was standing in was much different. It wasn't a cave entrance, it was a narrow rock channel, and from what he could see, it snaked quite a ways further around the base of the mountains. There was no danger he could see as he looked around, and he turned to call back at his friends.

"It's okay!" he shouted, only a moment later realizing that they were probably unable to hear him. He stepped back through the invisible barrier, appearing before his very relieved friends.

"Rudy, you're all right!" Snap cried in relief as they ran up to him.

"Yeah, it's all fine," he told them happily. "There's a trail that leads around the mountain, and I think we're meant to follow it." He thought of something else, and asked, "You didn't hear me shout from behind there, did you?" He angled his head toward the gully.

"No, we didn't hear anything," Penny replied. "We were a bit worried something had happened."

"I guess whatever that is and whoever put it there, they really didn't want what was behind it to be found," Rudy stated. "Let's go."

The three walked into the gully, soon emerging into the winding channel that Rudy had first seen. Looking up overhead, he could see the bright blue sky, and he realized that there must be more cloaking devices to keep the channel from being seen from above. He briefly wondered what would have happened if one of them had stumbled into it, or whether there was something there to prevent that happening and the only way someone could enter was through the gully.

"All right, let's see where this leads," Snap stated, taking the lead as he walked along the winding path between the steep rock walls, which extended several feet above their heads.

The going was surprisingly easy, as the rocky ground was smooth and there weren't many places where they had to climb up a slope. The only difficulty was the fact that it was very long and winding, and the trio, who had not had much sleep at all in the past week, not helped by the fact that it was currently the middle of the night, were quickly becoming exhausted. Nevertheless, they continued on, wondering just how far around the mountain they would have to walk.

Up ahead, the tunnel veered sharply to one side, making it impossible to see what lay beyond the turn. A bit wary, Snap peered around it, before stepping back in complete confusion. The others caught up, realizing that the bend ended in a solid rock wall. Rudy ran up to it, running his hands up and down the rock surface, but it was completely solid. There was no cloaking device here.

"Is the entrance sealed up?" Snap asked, sounding alarmed.

"I don't know," Penny responded, perplexed.

"There might be a lever or something somewhere," Rudy called back to them. "There has to be something here. Why else would it be hidden?"

Determined to help, Penny and Snap began searching the area for any sign that there was something they were missing. Rudy took out his chalk, trying to draw an opening in the rock, but all it managed to do was create a shallow tunnel through solid stone that ended with only more rock.

"This isn't the entrance," he stated, walking away and examining the small space in the turn of the path. "It must be around here, though…"

"Maybe it's back along the trail somewhere," Penny suggested. "Maybe whoever put the books here wanted to fool others into thinking the _end_ of the trail was where the cave was hidden."

"Good idea," Rudy replied, glad that she had thought of it. "Let's go back and see if there's any sign of where the entrance could be hidden."

They quickly doubled back, scanning the walls of the channel intently, searching for anything that might give them any indication of where the entrance was. The walls all looked the same, solid dark gray stone, but the trio refused to give up, checking frequently for any illusions that may be hiding what was really there.

For the next fifteen minutes they found nothing, but they were undeterred, moving back further along the channel and knowing that the entrance could be anywhere, even back where they had first started. Then, as Rudy was carefully examining a section of the wall somewhere in the center of the trail, but further back toward where they had started, he spotted something.

On one part of the wall, nearly hidden in the shadow of a ridge made by the rock, was a strange engraving. It was nothing but a simple rectangle, but it was clear that it had been carved at one point. He called the others over, and they quickly searched for any sign of a barrier, finding none. Touching the carving and the area around it had no result either, and the three wondered if it was another possible dead end.

"Wait…" Penny told the others, and they paused in their search to listen. "Step back." Rudy and Snap backed against the opposite wall along with her, examining the wall in front of them. "Do you see it?" she asked. "Those ridges form the corners of a rectangular shape. A _door_."

Rudy squinted at the wall, and after a moment realized that she was right. It was hard to see and barely noticeable, and the shadows of the light made two of the ridges more visible than the others, but it was there. Curious, he picked up a small pebble and tried to toss it over the rock wall, but it merely bounced back. Just as he'd suspected, there was an invisible barrier above the narrow passage as well as concealment, and it was obvious they weren't meant to climb over. How they were meant to open the door, he had no idea, but there was no need to spend the time figuring it out. Picking up his chalk, he drew a large opening in the wall, and this time, light streamed in when the drawing was complete.

It was daylight, and he was puzzled as he stepped through the rock wall, realizing that there was another path bordered by rock ahead of them. Snap and Penny stepped through after him, Penny remarking that it might not have been a good idea to leave a gaping hole in the rock 'door'. Rudy shrugged and quickly outlined the opening again, sealing it up with rock. He knew that she was worried about the possibility of some ChalkZone creature stumbling in and damaging the library, and she seemed to feel more at ease once the makeshift entrance he had created had been repaired.

They headed off quickly down the new channel, wondering if there was any more trickery they were likely to encounter. Rudy took the lead this time, following the winding path excitedly as he let his hand run across the rock, just in case there were any more invisible passageways. The others followed closely behind, and suddenly the path veered sharply again, and they turned and raced along it to find that they were suddenly standing in a fairly open area.

This place was also rimmed with rock walls, and daylight streamed down into it just as powerfully as it had on the mountainside, though Rudy knew there was no way to see or access the area they were standing in from above. They were on a flat space of ground facing a rock wall taller and wider than the others around it. This, however, was no mere solid wall.

At the base of the cliff was a six foot high opening that was about ten feet wide. A few misshapen stalactites hung down from its mouth, and a damp smell wafted up from it, along with cool air that washed over them, providing a welcome relief after so much walking and hiking in the DayZone sun. The jagged opening was pitch black, and from what they could see, it led sharply downward, far into the earth. The three friends felt a sense of awe as they looked at it, surprised to have come upon it so suddenly after so many disappointments and failed search attempts. Rudy moved closer, his voice almost shaking as he stared at what he'd thought, only less than an hour before, he would never find.

"This is it," he stated. "This is the entrance to the hidden library."


	13. Land of Light

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Thirteen – Land of Light**

Rudy stepped up to the cave entrance and leaned forward, peering downward into it and seeing a steep slope before everything faded into darkness. His friends stood beside him, marveling at what they could see of the tunnel, both seeming equally as astonished and relieved as he had at the fact that they'd managed to find it at last.

"We're going to need light," Rudy said to himself as he began drawing them each helmets with a light attached to the front, knowing that this way they wouldn't have to worry about dropping their light source. Once they put on the helmets and flicked the lights on, they could see that the tunnel didn't drop as steeply as it had first seemed, and it would be safe to walk down.

Rudy went first, treading carefully to avoid slipping on any of the loose rocks that cluttered the uneven floor. He pushed a few aside with his shoe, watching as they tumbled forward and then down deeper into the tunnel, making clattering sounds for several seconds before coming to a stop somewhere below, beyond where his light could reach.

"How far down do ya think the books are hidden?" Snap asked as he followed, sending a few more stones skittering downward as he reached Rudy's level.

"I have no idea," he replied, continuing to carefully make his way down the slope. "They might be pretty far down, since whoever put them here certainly wanted to hide them."

The three of them continued onward down the sloping tunnel, and it wasn't long before it took a sudden twist and the light from the entrance vanished, the shine from their helmets now the only source of light. The tunnel was narrower there as well, and in some places Rudy and Penny had to duck to avoid scraping their helmets against the ceiling. Gradually, the tunnel became less steep, but it still continued to slope downward, leading them further and further underground.

After twenty or so minutes, there was still no sign of a bigger cavern where the books could be hidden, and Rudy started to grow somewhat uneasy as he walked through the winding tunnel. It was eerie how dark and quiet it was, such a contrast from the sunlit world above. He noticed the tunnel was getting narrower, and he hoped it wouldn't get so narrow that they would have to try to squeeze through. Even though he knew his magic chalk could get them out of a potentially dangerous situation, he didn't like the thought of getting trapped.

Suddenly his feet met water with a splash. He turned his head down, seeing that the section of the tunnel up ahead was partially flooded. The passage sloped downward, and he felt a sense of dread as he looked at it.

"Wait, hold up, Rudy," Snap said from behind him, peering forward. "If that tunnel's flooded, doesn't that mean everythin' else down there is too?"

Rudy hadn't even considered such a possibility when he'd entered. From what Biclops had said, it had sounded like no Zoner had managed to get to the books in a long time, and maybe this was why. If it was, he realized with foreboding, then the books would have been long ruined by the water.

"It might even out further on," Penny suggested, moving forward to stand beside Rudy. "We aren't sure what the tunnel is like up ahead. It may climb upward, so the water will have only collected here."

"I sure hope so," said Rudy as he hesitantly stepped forward into the water. It was cold, but not uncomfortably so, and it only reached up to his waist. He heard splashes as the others waded in behind him, and he began to walk forward, feeling along the walls in case he slipped.

The tunnel narrowed sharply up ahead, and Rudy had to turn to the side and edge through it to pass. Once through the narrow part, he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that just as Penny had theorized, the tunnel sloped upwards, the slope rising higher and clearing the water. As he clambered out of the water and up the slope, he could see that the passage regained its downward direction again further on.

"Hey, look up there!" Snap cried after they had walked down the new dry section of the tunnel for a few minutes. The others looked up ahead to realize that the tunnel widened quite a bit not far from where they were.

"That might be where they kept all the books," Rudy said hopefully.

With renewed strength the three ran toward it, realizing as they approached that there was an odd sort of reddish glow coming from the opening to the cavern. Rudy briefly wondered if whoever had hidden the library's books had left some sort of permanent light source there, or if, more strangely, there was someone in the cavern currently.

As they curiously stepped into the large open area, they quickly realized they were standing on a sort of stone platform far above the floor of the cavern. Ahead, a narrow ridge spanned the length of the room, providing a place for them to walk. The cavern itself, however, was utterly massive. As Rudy stared around in awe, he thought to himself that Chester A. Arthur Elementary could probably have easily fit inside it.

As they stepped up to the stone bridge, Rudy looked down and realized that the strange lighting came from below, filling the whole cavern with a faint reddish glow. As he stared at the cavern floor, he realized there was some sort of glowing red river snaking along it on one side beneath the arch. He was too high up to see it closely, however, and he stepped back, confused, and looked to his friends, who were both puzzled as well.

"What's that red stuff?" Snap asked, giving the others a peculiar look.

"Beats me," Rudy replied. "But come on, the books are probably in here somewhere." He took the first few steps onto the narrow and gently sloping arch that formed the bridge across the cavern, realizing that they would have to walk in single file. In spite of the lighting from the strange red river, it was hard to see much of what else was down at the bottom floor, and by the time he'd reached the center of the arch, he had grown frustrated. "We're going to need more light," he muttered, taking his magic chalk and drawing a lantern. As soon as the drawing was complete, an almost blindingly bright light filled the area around them. Rudy quickly drew a rope that he thought was long enough to reach the floor of the cavern and tied it around the lantern. Then, placing his magic chalk in the pocket on his shirt, he slowly lowered it down.

"Why don't we go down there and see for ourselves?" Snap asked, looking to Rudy in confusion.

"I don't think I wanna fly down there until I know what it is," Rudy answered uneasily.

To his frustration, the lantern stopped just short of reaching the river, and it was still too far down for them to make any details. However, nothing was happening to the lantern by simply hovering over it, so they concluded that it was probably harmless, at least if one didn't touch it.

"Rudy, I don't think the books are here," Penny remarked as she peered down at the cavern floor on the other side of the arch. "I can't make out much, but there seems to be only stones and stalagmites here."

"Yeah, I think she's right, Bucko," Snap replied with disappointment. "I can make out a few rocks, but if the library books were stashed here, we woulda' seen some by now."

"Yes," Penny agreed sadly as she stepped back from the edge. "There's no way an entire library of books is hidden down there."

"Well, where else would they hide them then?" Rudy asked.

"The cavern must widen out again further on," she replied, but as they walked across the arch, she had the anxious thought that someone might have looted the books from the place before they'd arrived.

"You don't think whoever hid them was trying to trick us by leading us here, do you?" Rudy asked.

"I don't think so," Penny replied. "They would have made an effort to hide the cave entrance at the end of that second path we followed if they wanted to try to throw us off even more. I don't think they wanted to prevent anyone from finding the lost knowledge, just prevent animals or Zoners who just didn't know what they were looking for from stumbling across it."

"That makes sense," Rudy replied, though he wasn't completely convinced. Finally deciding for sure that the faintly lit cavern wasn't the hiding place, they continued on along the stone bridge until they reached the opposite side. Once they did so, they realized that the floor beneath sloped upward here, so it was much closer than it had been in the rest of the cavern. The red river was closer too, and as Rudy glanced at it, it seemed to…_glitter_.

"Rudy, Snap!" Penny cried, suddenly excited as she knelt down and looked over the edge. "That's not a river…it's a bed of _crystals_."

Rudy and Snap leaned over as well, squinting their eyes at the glowing mass until they realized she was right. The 'river' was a shallow dip filled with minute red crystals, each one giving off a faint glow. Together, they lit the cavern faintly, producing the red glow that had led them there.

"This place would be absolutely fascinating to study if we ever returned here," Penny remarked. "I'd love to analyze the components of those crystals."

"Yeah, that's great, Penny. But come on, we've got more important things to worry about right now," Snap stated, his voice edged with annoyance.

"Right," Penny responded, pulling her gaze away from the crystals below. She and the others stepped off the rock bridge and onto another ledge, where they could see a faint tunnel opening ahead of them. It was long and narrow, and reminded her uncomfortably of the ice tunnels they had traveled through. She shivered, hoping that the path would be clear and they weren't walking into a maze.

Rudy walked forward into the passage, jumping back when he realized that it dropped off steeply.

"What is it?" Penny asked, moving past Snap to stand beside him. They both peered down to see a sheer drop down a narrow vertical shaft. The light from their helmets could only penetrate so far, and there was no telling how deeply it reached.

"Well, I don't want to try to fly down there without knowing what it's like further down," said Rudy, taking the chalk out of his pocket. "We'd better go slowly." He proceeded to draw them all harnesses and rope which they could use to lower themselves down with, this time making sure that he drew a longer rope, using up the last of his chalk halfway through and having to take out another piece to complete it.

After he'd finished, they hurriedly lowered themselves downward, finding it quite easy and fast to repel off the sides of the wall. Even with the much longer rope, it still fell short of the bottom, though Rudy could see by the light of his helmet that the ground was only a few feet beneath them.

After they'd climbed down, Rudy decided to simply leave the rope where it was and ran on hurriedly after they'd discarded the harnesses and stored them in Rudy's backpack. The ground was smooth up ahead, a welcome change, though it still sloped steeply downward.

"This is ridiculous," Snap gasped as he came to a sudden halt, panting, "how far down does this place go?"

"It can't be much farther," Rudy replied, pausing for a brief rest as well. He glanced at Penny, who also looked exhausted. They were completely worn out, but he knew that drawing a vehicle to carry them would not be a good idea. There was too little light, and it wouldn't fit through narrow passages. They just had to keep walking, and they would find the hiding place soon. "We've got to keep going," he said determinedly. "We need as much time to search the library as possible."

The others looked at each other, then back to him. He could tell they were tired, but they also knew that he was right. Wearily, they continued to follow him as he led the way, determinedly keeping up a fast pace in spite of his aching limbs. For a while, they walked through an increasingly steep tunnel leading deeper underground. After a few more steep drops they had to repel down, they finally reached another area where the ground was relatively flat, but still sloped downhill a bit.

After crossing a few small caverns, they realized that the one that lay ahead looked…different. Like the larger cavern they'd seen before, this one also seemed to be lit with a faint glow. Immediately curious, the trio rushed forward, stopping at the entrance as frigid air wafted toward them.

The cavern that lay in front of them was completely coated in ice. The temperature change was so drastic that the trio stepped back in shock, shivering as they stared into the strange new room. They couldn't see any glowing crystals, and they wondered how the glittering ice cavern was lit. Once they stepped into it, however, it was readily apparent. The cavern was only roughly the length of Rudy or Penny's house, but the ceiling stretched far upward, and a gleaming circle of light shone down on them from the top of the chasm. It looked tiny from where they were standing, but they knew that it had to be big for enough light to reach them down there to illuminate the glassy cavern. That meant that the ceiling must go all the way up to the mountains themselves. The thought of how high that would be made Rudy dizzy.

"Well, if we'd known that was there, we coulda gotten down here a lot easier," Snap grumbled.

"That opening must be covered with an illusion and a barrier too," Rudy replied, craning his head back to peer up at the light. "Anyway, we'd better keep go-iiing!" He cried out as he tried to step on the glassy surface and ended up sliding several feet ahead of him, coming to a stop when he landed clumsily on his knees.

"Are you all right?" Penny asked, treading more carefully as she walked over to him.

"Yeah," Rudy replied, standing up again and taking a moment to regain his balance.

Snap waited a moment, then stepped on the ice and pushed off the wall, sending himself sliding across the glassy floor and slowing to a stop near Rudy and Penny. Rudy glanced at him with amusement, then turned his gaze to examine the icy walls. Although the cold was making him shake, he could see that the next cavern was normal and not icy at all, and concluded that drawing them winter clothes would be a waste of time.

Penny continued to make her way to the other side, remarking that it was highly unusual, even for ChalkZone, for the cave to have such a sudden climate change in this one area. "It's so strange," she murmured as she examined a spur of ice on the wall near the floor. "I wonder how this part of the cavern remains cold while the rest doesn't." She continued to look wildly around the room incredulously as she followed the others.

"Maybe it's like Lars's igloo," Snap stated as he resumed sliding across the icy floor. "He lives on the beach and it stays cold just fine."

"Yes, perhaps," Penny replied. She tried to push her questions about the cave out of her mind. Now wasn't the time to wonder about such things, as strange as it all was. She hoped that they would have a chance to come back to the cave to study things in more detail, but for now there was only one thing they needed to do, and it was far more important.

They reached the end of the cavern and walked through the entrance to the next, immediately welcoming the warmth that washed over them. The way ahead of them was a wide tunnel with a ceiling not much higher than the one in Rudy's room. It was covered with large boulders and rocky outcrops, which Rudy knew would make it tiring to cross. "Well," he sighed, "let's go…"

Navigating around, and sometimes over, the boulders was just as tiring as Rudy had expected. The floor was rugged and uneven, and twice he stumbled, and several times he nearly cut himself on a sharp edge of one of the rocks. The other two were having just as much difficulty, and the three were greatly relieved when they finally stood at the end of the cavern in front of another tunnel opening.

Rudy was beginning to worry that they were somehow headed in the wrong direction. There was no way to tell if that was true or that they simply hadn't found it yet, and the thought worried him. He knew they might have missed a side path somewhere, and he knew that it would take a lot of time to go back and look for one. Knowing that thinking about it would do no good until they saw what was at the end of this passage, he tried to put the thought out of his mind.

They walked through the next opening, which was quite large, and into another downward sloping tunnel. They wearily followed it and saw that it flattened out quite suddenly at the bottom, and they also noticed a bit of light showing from somewhere up ahead. Intrigued, they kept going, reaching the bottom and coming upon a truly bizarre sight.

The tunnel stretched forward for several yards, and ended with another large opening. There was a bright white light shining through, but despite it, they couldn't see what was beyond it, and in fact it was _because_ of the light that they couldn't make anything out. The entrance was filled with a glow so bright the trio had to look at it with squinted eyes, and even as their eyes adjusted it was too hard to make much out, but from what they could see, it looked like the cavern up ahead was another big one.

After taking a moment for their eyes to get a little more used to the light, they walked forward, relieved that here the ground was smooth and easy to cross. They passed through the opening and closed their eyes, blinded as the light suddenly intensified.

Rudy turned around, facing the entrance they had come through as he tried to make out what had caused such a bright light, but through his squinted eyes and still blurry vision he could only see some odd looking white structures right next to the opening, and they appeared to be what was giving off the light. He turned away from them, noticing that as he did so the lighting became more tolerable, and he opened his eyes fully, looking around in a bit of a daze before his vision returned to normal and what he was looking at dawned on him.

He and his friends were standing on a rocky outcrop in front of a slope that led down to the floor of the room they had just stumbled upon. The cavern they were looking at was more massive than Rudy could have imagined. The ceiling arced far, far above their heads and the room was immensely wide, so wide that Rudy was sure that six or seven elementary schools could have stretched across it, and he could only begin to guess how high the ceiling was. The cavern was twice as long as it was wide, and stretched far into the distance, making a sudden turn at the end, but he could see enough to know that the cave was far bigger than just what they could see from where they were. Most astonishing of all was the reason he _could_ see everything. The entire cavern – the walls, the pillars, stalactites and stalagmites, the ceiling, even the floor in places – was dotted with massive luminous crystals, each one giving off a glow that lit the area around it. Clusters of them together formed beautiful light patterns that illuminated the already colorful stone of the cave walls, creating a spectacular array of light like he'd never seen before. The crystals were beautiful from a distance, and as Rudy turned back to look at the ones he'd passed while coming through the opening, he could tell that they were blindingly bright up close, and quickly averted his eyes. Looking around at the other ones close to him, the smallest crystals seemed to be around his height, while the largest ones were much, much bigger. The whole cavern was bathed in an astonishing array of different colors, patterning the ground and walls around them and standing out starkly in the middle of the blackness further on. It was one of the most amazing sights he had ever witnessed, and Rudy wondered how a cave this big could exist, and whether it was even possible in the Real World.

He wrenched his gaze away from the lights and focused on their way ahead. While he couldn't see every detail, he could make out the shape of the slope leading down from their rock platform and beyond that, several sections of the floor as well, and it felt wonderful to be able to see those things after having spent the last little while in near complete darkness. Here, however, there was no need for light, and he flicked off the light on his helmet, removing it from his head and watching as his friends, equally in awe, did the same.

Something else caught his attention near where the cavern turned further on, and though, further away, the crystals and a very small area around them were the only things he could make out in the darkness, he could see a pink crystal near the rock wall blocking his view of the rest of the cavern, and something lying beside it. No, he thought, a _pile _of something. His eyes widened.

_Books._

"Rudy!" Snap cried, excitement filling his voice as he spun around to look at his friend, obviously having noticed the same thing. "We did it, Bucko!" he shouted, joy and relief clearly evident on his face. "We made it!"

"We did…" Rudy replied, almost in disbelief as he continued to look in astonishment at the cavern in front of them. After everything that had happened, he couldn't believe he was standing right in the place they had been searching for all along. He looked back at both of his friends, seeing their amazement and wonder reflected back at him. "We did it!"

In that moment, Rudy felt happier than he had in days. After what had seemed like an eternity of thinking there would be nothing he could do for ChalkZone, he had found real hope at last. He was standing _right in front_ of it! This was something completely different from simply finding the correct route. This was lying right there before them. They were actually _here. _They had _found it_!

"C'mon, let's go!" Snap cried, his tiredness forgotten as he charged down the slope leading to the cave floor, Rudy and Penny following behind. As soon as they reached the bottom, Rudy drew a three person scooter that would carry them quickly across the cave floor. They got onto it, still looking around in astonishment at the brilliant lights around them as Rudy drove the scooter toward the pile of books.

"This is _amazing_," Penny cried as she looked around them, craning her neck back to peer at the crystal-covered ceiling. Some of the crystals formed massive clusters that hung down from the ceiling, looking almost like giant, bizarre looking chandeliers, each portion a different color. "I've read about caves in the Real World, but there's nothing like _this_. Even caves with massive crystal formations like Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico-"

"Hey, I've never heard of anything like this in _ChalkZone_, Buckette!" Snap called to her over the noise of the scooter. "Who woulda' thought that all this time this was lyin' underneath those tiny mountains."

"I was expecting a big cave," Rudy mused as he focused on the way ahead, "but not_ this_ big!"

Despite the overwhelming desire to stop and look at any of the many bizarre cave and crystal formations, they kept moving, slowing down as they reached the pink crystal that Rudy had seen from afar. Shielding their eyes from its light, they peered at the pile of books beneath it.

Despite what it had seemed like from afar, it was only a small pile, and it rested on a rock ledge, which Rudy realized had made it seem higher than it was. Rudy knew that even if these books were all that was left, the records were bound to be there. Eagerly, they started shuffling through them, reading the titles and discarding the books when they could see that they wouldn't be relevant.

As Rudy put aside another book, he suddenly realized that from here, he could see further into the deeper parts of the cavern, and what he saw took his breath away. "Guys…" he muttered, and Penny and Snap stopped their frantic search to look at him. "Look over there…" he told them, feeling his voice falter as he lifted his hand to point in the direction of the deeper reaches of the cavern that had been blocked from view when they'd first stumbled upon it.

The first thing Penny and Snap became aware of was that the next section of the cavern was noticeably darker, not so much that they could not see into it, but enough to make it difficult to make anything out. The crystals were less numerous and spaced further apart in that section of the cave, and it took them a moment to realize what Rudy had pointed out.

When they did realize, it filled them with dread.

Reaching far into the darkness of the cavern ahead of them were massive piles of books. The smallest of the piles would have easily towered over Rudy and Penny's school building, and from what they could see, there were many of them. Dozens. And there was no telling how many were beyond them. The trio froze at the sight, knowing that there was no way they would have time to search the entirety of them. It would take days…weeks…and they only had a couple of hours.

"Hoy caloy, how many books were in that library?" Snap cried, his eyes widening in astonishment as he stared at the sight, overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the library's remnants.

Rudy felt his hope vanishing at the utterly overwhelming sight of their search area which loomed in front of them. He would have never guessed there would be so many books. He had pictured about as many as it would take to fill the Plainville Library, but this…this was something else. It made him wonder how big the library originally was, if this was just what the Zoners of the past had managed to _save_.

"Wait a minute," Penny stated, turning back around to face them. "Biclops said that the historical records the library kept were really important at the time and that they would have been one of the first things recovered." She turned her head back around toward where the huge passage turned. "So they're most likely to be further back, set up somewhere apart from the others."

Rudy felt some of his relief return, but he still wasn't sure. "Wouldn't Zoners who came here before have moved them around, though?" he asked, still feeling worried.

"I'm not sure, but there weren't ever many visitors to this place from what it seems," Penny replied. "And Biclops also mentioned that the records were made differently to the normal books. So we're looking for books that look unusual or stand out somehow."

"At least that narrows it down…a little," Rudy replied, still not liking the idea of having to search such a large area.

"Well, what are we waitin' for?" Snap cried, already heading back to the scooter. "We've gotta hurry. We don't have much time!"

Knowing he was right, Rudy and Penny got on the scooter behind him, and as they turned the corner of the cavern and headed toward the massive stacks of books, much of the bright colored light from the main section of the cavern was blocked out, and they carried on in near darkness, putting their helmets back on and turning on the lights so as to better see their surroundings.

Snap stopped the scooter next to the first of the massive piles of books, and the trio decided to go the rest of the way on foot, not wanting to miss anything. Up close, the book piles seemed even taller than they had from a distance, their massive forms looming over them and making them feel miniscule in comparison. There was no order at all to any of it; the books seemed to have simply been thrown onto the piles. The upper portions of these bizarre towers were nearly lost in the blackness up ahead, the crystals on the walls and ceilings too far away to illuminate them.

"I don't understand," Penny muttered, stepping off of the scooter, "why would the Zoners who hid these books want them all piled up like that? Even if one could reach the books in the middle, that whole thing could come toppling down…quite easy if one were to try." She finished her sentence nervously, trying to peer into the darkness to see how high the towers were.

"They might have just brought them here in a hurry," Rudy replied, wondering just what it would take to transport so many books.

"Maybe…but if these towers haven't collapsed by now, you'd almost think it was because they arranged them a certain way to avoid that happening," Penny replied.

"Or," Snap began, "maybe no one cared enough to disturb 'em." He looked at her and shrugged.

"Your guess is as good as mine," she sighed, completely puzzled as she began to walk with the others between the massive stacks of books. Despite her insistence that the ones they would be looking for would be at the back of the cavern, she couldn't help but pause and read the titles of some of the books sticking out of the piles. Many of them mentioned subjects she'd never heard of before, and as she looked at Snap, he looked baffled by some of them as well, making her wonder just how many secrets were hidden here. Other books were completely blank, and some looked to be written in strange languages. She noticed one lying in the middle of the floor up ahead between two piles. As she passed it, she scooped it up, flipping through the pages as she continued to walk with the others, who were peering around for any signs of a strikingly unusual looking book. The pages of the book she'd found contained nothing but pictures, but the images made no sort of logical sense. Frustrated with it, she closed the book and set it down on one of the books in the pile they were currently passing by. She picked up another one, and this time found it was a simple storybook, quite a lot like ones Real World children would own, she noted as she read a few lines before setting it back. As she looked around for anything that stood out, she realized that none of the books here did. They were all different colors, shapes and sizes, many of them differing drastically in those attributes, but nothing that seemed like it was made to look very special or important.

Rudy and Snap had noticed that it was getting harder to see, and the further they progressed, the fewer crystals they could see nearby. Snap remarked that whoever had salvaged the remains of the library should have put the books in the brightly lit area as he continuously looked around, feeling frustrated as they passed tower after tower. "I don't see anythin' unusual here, Bucko," Snap sighed in defeat. "Maybe Biclops was wrong about those books bein' different."

"Maybe, but let's at least see how far these go," Rudy replied worriedly. With the limited light from his helmet, he couldn't see far into the distance, and could only make out the outlines of the book piles against the dim, faraway glow of the place's scant crystals. Penny, who had been looking at another book, quickly caught up with them.

Rudy was simply walking by, scanning his gaze over the books in the nearest tower quickly and without more than a little curiosity, when he saw it. There was a book that had an odd metallic sheen to it, and though it wasn't much bigger than a book he'd find in a Real World library, it was very thick, and it had a cover far more ornate than any of the other books he'd seen. It was clear that a lot of care had been put into making it, and it looked absolutely ancient. As he approached it, he saw the corners of two others just like it beneath a few other books in the pile. "P-Penny…Snap…"

His friends turned at the sound of his voice and rushed over as Rudy pulled out the first book he'd seen, wiping a layer of dust off the cover before giving it a closer look under the light of his helmet. The book was indeed very skillfully made, with very beautiful golden swirls and patterns on it. A heading at the top of it read:

_Records of ChalkZone History: Ancient Cities_

"This is one of the record books…" Rudy whispered to himself as Penny and Snap stared at it a moment before reaching for the other two books.

Snap stated that his talked about volcanic activity and Penny, who had remained silent as she stared at the cover of hers, slowly turned it to face them. Rudy and Snap read the heading:

_Records of ChalkZone History: Underground_

After thinking that finding the books would be almost impossible, Rudy found it hard to believe that one was staring him in the face right now. And one that would very likely be the exact one they needed. It was strange to think he'd found it just sitting there in one of the piles, and not sectioned off someplace like Biclops had thought it would be, and he wondered if someone had moved it when they were last here.

Rudy and Snap gathered around Penny as she knelt down, opening the heavy cover of the book and flicking through the pages. Images of strange creatures showed up on some of them and she gave a satisfied sigh of relief.

"That's gotta be the one we're looking for!" Snap cried as Penny stood back up after skimming a few more pages and placed the book in her backpack. It was heavy and took up a lot of room, but she managed to fit it with the rest of her supplies.

"Do you think we should take the other ones?" Rudy asked, wondering if the Ancient Cities book he was holding could be useful.

"Just take that one," Penny said, nodding to the book in Rudy's hand. "We can't carry all of them and I'm pretty sure information on volcanoes isn't going to help us." In response, Rudy nodded and put the book in his backpack.

"Do you think we should head back?" he asked.

"I don't know," Penny replied, "I want to find the other records and see if there's anything else that could be of use. We should look for them before we do anything else. If we don't find any within a half an hour, we can start looking through those ones."

The others agreed and they set off, but after a moment, Rudy paused, taking out his magic chalk again.

"What'd ya stop for Bucko?" Snap asked, turning around.

"I just thought it might be useful if we could carry more books around," he replied, getting to work drawing a vehicle, "at least until we decide which ones to take with us."

"Great idea!" Snap replied with a smile.

"You two can go ahead," Rudy called to them. "I'm going to stay here and draw some transportation for us." As the other two walked further into the cavern, Rudy focused hard on his drawing. He drew the basic outline for a truck-like vehicle he knew would be small enough to fit through the openings leading back out of the cavern, or at least until the ice cavern. He didn't think they would be bringing out so many books, but he thought it would be nice to have the option. He figured that once they reached the narrower passages again they could find another way to move the books through. He only hoped it wouldn't be necessary, and the book they had found would have the answers they needed. Completing the vehicle's outline, he watched as it formed a solid structure, its metallic black covering shining against his helmet light and reflecting a few faint crystals from the ceiling above on its surface. He quickly drew a front seat and steering wheel, then paused before he added anything else. He remembered the rocky terrain they had crossed before reaching the crystal cavern, and wondered what sort of wheels it should have. He ruled out flying; it would be too dangerous in the darkness of the cave. He needed something that easily climb over rocks, or maybe over walls.

"Rudy!" a voice called back to him, and he turned around, jolted from his thoughts as he noticed that Penny and Snap were few book piles away, the lights from their helmets the only thing he could see. "Rudy, you have to see this!" Penny's voice sounded alarmed, and worriedly Rudy got up and left the half completed drawing behind as he ran up to them. He reached them in a surprisingly short amount of time, and it made him realize just how dark it was if he could only see a small distance ahead of him and beyond was just blackness with strange lights.

"You're not gonna believe this, Bucko," Snap said as he approached, "but I think someone didn't want this knowledge to be found."

Snap motioned toward the area ahead, and Rudy could see that it was a wide empty area strewn with books, but many were completely torn apart, their covers ripped off or in pieces, and pages stamped into the damp ground ages ago. It was as if it was some sort of dumping ground for books that someone who had come here had destroyed…but why?

"You don't think the other record books are in here, do ya?" Snap asked, looking a bit worried as he surveyed the area.

"No…I don't see anything like them," Rudy replied, scanning his light over the place. The blackness seemed to swallow it up, but he could make out enough to see that there was no sign of any golden books.

"Let's go back to the rest of them and keep looking," Penny decided. "The record books we found were located in one of the piles, so the others probably are too."

They headed back toward the pile they'd found the first three record books in, searching the surrounding book piles for any signs of a similar looking book. It was frustrating to try to see the tops of the towers in the darkness, but if they looked long enough, they could start to make things out. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to see the details of the books higher above the ground.

Rudy was looking up and down a massive stack of books near his incomplete vehicle drawing when a sudden noise broke his concentration. He froze as a strange tapping sound echoed throughout the cavern, strangely loud in the near silence. Penny and Snap froze as well, turning their heads and shining light in all directions, but seeing nothing. After a moment, the sounded faded, and three waited at least a minute before one of them spoke.

"What….was that?" Snap asked incredulously as he turned back to the others.

"I don't know," Rudy replied, "but if there's someone down here…" He trailed off at once, for in one of the book piles, he'd spotted the corner of another detailed golden book. He walked over to it as Snap continued to look around nervously and Penny directed her attention back to the upper section of the tower across from Rudy's. Looking at the corner, Rudy could see that the book was buried under quite a few others, and he pushed them aside, cringing at the noise they made when they clattered to the floor.

"Uh, Rudy?" Penny's nervous voice sounded from behind him.

"What?" he replied, still focused on the book as he managed to clear enough away to make it visible. He gripped the edges of it and tried to pull it from the pile, but it was surprisingly difficult to dislodge and he had to put a lot of effort into it, placing his left foot against the pile for leverage as he tugged at the book. As it finally came away, he realized with shock that it was still attached to the tower with thick strands of some sort of dark colored goo, which covered the entire back of the cover. He dropped it in disgust. "What the…"

"Rudy…" Penny stated again, and he glanced to her and Snap, realizing that they hadn't noticed his strange discovery, their eyes focused on the topmost part of the other tower. He followed their gaze and looked up, trying to see whatever they had noticed as Penny continued speaking. "There are very large holes near the tops of these towers," she continued. He narrowed his eyes, and gradually he began to make out what Penny was talking about. "I think something made all these books into _nests_."

Rudy had no idea what to make of that claim as he too focused on the tops of the massive book piles, beginning to realize that many of them were stacked in such a way that they would have fallen apart long ago had they not been stuck together. The books around the edge of the bottom were simply piled there, but higher up, some of the towers formed bizarre looking shapes. He started to back away, fearing that whatever had made those 'nests' was going to come crawling out of them.

As he watched the openings, however, nothing happened. He turned to look at his friends, who tore their gazes away from the towering books to look back at him. "Let's get out of here," Rudy said, lowering his voice to avoid causing an echo. The thought of searching for more of the record books had been completely erased from his mind; he knew they very likely already had what they needed, and there was no telling if whatever had formed the books into those towers was still lurking around somewhere. He spotted his half-completed vehicle nearby and gripped his stick of magic chalk, eager to leave the cavern as quickly as possible.

Halfway to the incomplete vehicle, he and the others froze. Something was approaching them from the area leading to the better lit section of the crystal cavern that they had come through before. In the near darkness of this cavern, the distant pinpricks of light of the scant crystals on the ceiling and walls the only source of illumination apart from their helmets, and whatever the thing was, it was out of range of their vision.

Without anyone needing to say anything, they whirled around and pelted away from it, abandoning Rudy's unfinished vehicle. They were nearing the end of the line of book towers, the section where the destroyed books were lying immediately up ahead.

"Take off your helmets!" Penny yelled at them in alarm, throwing hers to the ground as she bolted into the area strewn with torn books.

In spite of their fears of running into complete darkness, Rudy and Snap did the same, knowing that the light from the helmets stood out like beacons against the darkness, and hoping it would provide at least a decent temporary distraction for whatever was coming after them. They had no idea whether whatever it was even needed light to see by, but at least if it was following them they would be a far more difficult target without the bright lights attached to their heads.

Almost immediately they realized how truly blinding the darkness was. They could see the lights of the crystals in the distance like colorful stars, but they did nothing to light up the area they were currently running through, and they simply had to blindly stumble through the blackness, tripping over discarded books, scrambling back to their feet and continuing on with no direction.

Rudy felt the weight of the heavy book in his backpack dragging him down, but he knew there was no way he could discard it. They needed those books, and leaving them would doom ChalkZone to the attacks from Newland's monsters.

Rudy could still hear the creature – or whatever it was – following them, making a noise like scurrying, only much louder, and his only relief was that either it wasn't very fast, or it was distracted by the helmet lights for the moment. Holding onto his magic chalk, he tried to think of something he could draw to help them, but he was spending too much concentration trying to keep running and avoiding falling over as he stumbled into objects. Blood pounded in his ears as he tried to put on an extra burst of speed, ignoring his mounting exhaustion as he charged blindly ahead.

A bit of light shone in front of him, and he realized that it faintly outlined the edge of a rock wall. He swerved and moved around it, knowing he would have crashed headlong into it were it not for the yellow crystal positioned on the wall a few yards above his head on the other side of the twist in the rock. It was the addition of light that made him realize something.

Penny and Snap were gone.

Terror shot through his mind as he realized that he was completely alone, and there was no telling if his friends were safe. He rationalized to himself that he would have heard if they had been caught by the thing, and kept running, the panic not leaving him in spite of that small comfort. He was alone.

With a shriek he came to a skidding halt, scrambling backwards as a massive drop loomed almost right beneath his feet. His sudden change in momentum threw him backward and he landed awkwardly on his back, sitting upright immediately and staring down into what he realized was an enormous chasm. Crystals lined its edge, giving him a good view of just how deep it was. Shock flooded his mind as he realized that if it weren't for that yellow crystal, he would have ran straight over the edge of the precipice.

He gasped for breath, using the source of light to examine his surroundings. He was in a narrow channel, the ceiling still high above him but rock walls on either side. He quickly realized that he had come to a dead end; the chasm blocked his route and there looked to be nothing but sheer wall on the other side of it. Rudy didn't dare call out Penny and Snap's names, especially knowing that they weren't around this area, and had probably run in a completely different direction, not even knowing they had been separated in their panic.

He stood up and lifted his foot, ready to draw rockets to enable him to fly over the chasm and find his friends, when something caught his eye and he realized that there was a narrow ledge leading along the cliff that he hadn't noticed before; most of it faded in the darkness. It was a few feet below the rim of the chasm and began a few yards to his left, and from what he could see, it wound all along the edge of the cliff, or at least for a while.

The sound of something large coming from behind him made Rudy realize that he'd stopped a moment too long. Panicked, he whirled around, abandoning the rocket idea and ready to bolt toward the ledge he'd spotted. In doing so, he caught a glimpse of the thing that had been chasing them.

He froze for only one moment. It looked like a monster out of some artist's fantasy novel. Rudy had never seen such a creature, but the closest equivalent he could think of was 'spider.' However, it looked like no spider he had ever seen in the Real World or ChalkZone. The creature stood on several long, bent and spindly legs – Rudy didn't have time to tell if there were actually eight – that were banded with bright green and yellow and tipped with sharp claws. Its head, from what he saw in that split second, looked far more like a Real World insect's than the type of head and face ChalkZone spiders and bugs were typically seen with. The artist who had drawn this creature certainly had intended it to be terrifying, and it was made, if possible, even more so by the fact that parts of it were crudely drawn, giving it an even more grotesque look. The final thing Rudy noticed was its massive fangs as it reared over him before he tore his gaze away and continued running toward the cliff ledge.

He had been wrong about the creature being slow. It was startlingly fast, and a second later he felt its enormous fangs lodge themselves in his backpack and wrench him clear off the ground. Rudy cried out in shock as his feet were torn away from the cave floor, nearly dropping his magic chalk. The creature started to turn, then stopped and began moving its head rapidly up and down, almost like it was trying to dislodge the backpack, and everything became a blur to Rudy as he frantically tried to draw something to help himself escape, but his strokes only formed jagged lines as he was swiftly jerked upward and downward. The creature's forelegs brushed against his side a few times and tugged at the backpack; the animal obviously confused by what it was and trying to remove it to get at him. Rudy vaguely wondered if the creature had even seen a humanlike being before as he felt a fang puncture through the other side of the backpack and scrape along his back. He quickly abandoned the drawing attempt and reached for the backpack straps, trying to twist his way out of them.

He managed to do so just as the creature stopped moving its head and turned around, apparently having given up the attempt and deciding to simply carry him away anyway. He hit the ground roughly but scrambled upward immediately, not daring to glance backward as he pelted toward the ledge. As he leaped onto it and started to run, the thought entered his mind that his backpack had contained the rest of the magic chalk, and he was left with the one piece he had. The book was gone too, but it didn't matter. Penny had the one they needed.

Rudy knew he had little hope of outrunning the creature once it came after him – which would be any time now – and he quickly turned around, using his chalk to draw an invisible barrier between him and the monster, hoping it wouldn't sense it and climb around the walls, before hurrying onward.

As he suspected, the cave dwelling animal came charging after him a moment later, and he put on another burst of speed, hearing it hit the barrier behind him. Rudy knew it would find a way around it, and he kept running, feeling with his hand along the cliff wall as the light that had guided him before faded away.

To his shock he heard the barrier he'd drawn completely shatter, and he drove himself to run even faster, despite knowing there was little chance he could escape. Maybe he could have used the time the creature had been delayed to draw something, but the barrier had lasted only a few seconds against it. There wouldn't have been enough time.

He rounded a corner and suddenly was met with a blinding light; a blue crystal was growing right on the edge of the cliff. He shielded his eyes from the painful glow, realizing as he tried to open them again that his vision was dotted with bright spots, making it nearly impossible to see.

"Rudy!" a voice cried from somewhere beside him, and he felt a gloved hand grab his arm, helping him to scramble off the ledge and back onto even ground.

"Snap!" he gasped, his sight still not recovered as he tried to make sense of what had happened. "We've got to run. There's-"

"What? There's another one _here_?" Snap cried in a panic, and he felt Penny's hand grip his other arm as the two swiftly led him into what he figured was a very small tunnel near the crystal.

"This way!" Penny cried, leading him forward and into another side tunnel. They had to crawl on their hands and knees, and as Rudy's vision began to return to normal, he realized it was completely useless here; there was no light.

"Where are we going?" he panted, sensing his friends' panic as they went onward into the darkness.

"I don't know," Penny replied, her voice sounding frantic, "but we can't go back the way we came because-"

She broke off as they could hear the sound of something scraping against the rock. It was not only in one area, it was all around them, as if more than one creature were trying to reach them.

Snap heard one close to his left and realized that there must be another opening. He whirled around, gripping his friend's shoulders and shaking them lightly. "Okay, Rudy, you've _really_ gotta draw something!"

"I'm…not Rudy…" came Penny's confused voice.

"Don't worry, Snap, I'm on it!" Rudy gasped as he edged away from the direction he thought the nearest sounds were coming from. However, as he lifted his drawing arm, he realized he wasn't sure what could help them at the moment. He knew it was too dark to try to draw something like the rocket shoes – he grimaced as he imagined drawing them at a wrong angle and aiming the flames close to his foot – and realized that at the moment, what they needed was a quick exit. He could hear rock crumbling and realized that whatever those creatures were, pursuing prey hiding in the tunnels was nothing new to them. The way they seemed to block what appeared to be every opening was systematic and clever. He knew that if he drew an exit on the ground level, they would be caught as soon as they emerged. Their only option was to go upward. Lifting his hand, he drew a circle, or at least something close to a circle, in the ceiling, watching with surprise as it materialized and he could see dim light filtering down to where they were. Up above was a series of interlocking tunnels, but he'd made an opening through the roof of their own, and the rest of the way up was mostly clear.

Knowing that their time was limited, he scrambled upward, using the ledges and spurs of rock to haul his way to the top of the hunk of rock they had sheltered in, the others following behind him as they heard the sound of their pursuers breaking open some of the bottom tunnels and knowing that there was no time to stop and try to use the chalk.

As Rudy reached the top and climbed onto it, he realized he was standing on some sort of flat platform on top of an oddly shaped thick rock pillar. It was close to the cave wall, so the light of the crystals gave them a decent enough view from that vantage point. Penny and Snap quickly joined him, hardly daring to breathe as they pondered what would happen if the cave dwelling animals noticed they were up on the top.

Penny could see that at one end, the rock sloped down to the floor, and she took the risk of looking over the edge to see get a view of where the creatures hunting them were. They were still focused on the lower tunnels, but it startled her to see how many had crowded on the edge. Food must be scarce here, she realized, and as she got a good look at the animals, she could see that they did resemble some sort of arachnid, but the way they walked was strange, and their legs seemed to move up and down with a strange precise, almost rotating movement, and the legs seemed to point forward rather than off to the side as in normal spiders. She inched back away from the edge, looking at Rudy, who seemed to be struggling to focus as he held his magic chalk, trying to think of something.

"Rudy, we need something that can carry us away from here fast," she said, making sure to speak as quietly as possible over the noise of the crumbling rock below.

"I…I know," Rudy stammered, still struggling to think of something as he tried to catch his breath.

"Not something that flies," she warned as she looked further out to where everything faded into darkness. Crashing into something like a rock pillar in the dark while airborne would be disastrous, and even if they had lights, it probably wouldn't be enough to see any danger in time.

Rudy knew that whatever he drew, it would have to be quick and simple – there was no time to draw a detailed or large vehicle – and he started to draw the first thing that came to mind, another motorized scooter like the one they had left behind by the piles of books.

As Rudy was drawing, Penny and Snap heard the sound of pattering feet and a moment later, several animals, each at least the size of themselves, scampered out of the opening in the top of the rock and ran past them. At first the three tensed in fear, but they realized that these creatures were quite different. Many of them were carrying small crystals in their mouths and as they darted by, not paying the trio any heed, Penny and Snap could see that they looked like some sort of squirrel or cat with jewels along their bodies. The jewels did not glow, and Penny suspected they had merely adapted to this place – perhaps because the glowing crystals provided a food source – rather than having been here since the cave's beginning. She also realized that these creatures were probably prey for the spiderlike monsters, and it seemed a bit like they had been drawn by the same artist. She thought that the tunnels through the rock could have possibly been a habitat for these ones. They watched the creatures scamper over the rock ledge and jump upward to cling to the massive rock wall that Rudy had appeared from behind when they'd found him by the cliff. The animals scurried across the side of the wall effortlessly and vanished.

All at once, the monsters around the base of the rock stopped their digging efforts and shifted their focus entirely to the scampering creatures. With a speed that startled the three as they watched from above, they swiftly scurried around the wall after them, obviously finding the squirrel-like animals a more appealing prey source, and disappeared.

Rudy finished his drawing, jumping onto the scooter and driving it up to the slope. He waited for Penny and Snap to get on as well and then took off, the steepness of the incline taking his breath away for a moment before they hit even floor. Rudy stopped it for a moment, holding up his magic chalk again. "We're going to have to risk having a light," he muttered as he quickly began drawing one on the front of the scooter. "Otherwise there's no way we'll get through that fast enough!" He angled his head toward where he knew the pile of ruined books to be. He also knew that it was likely the monsters could follow them anyway, light or no light, but the thought of the scooter standing out like a beacon from far away still unnerved him. However, he knew it was the only way they were going to make it back without crashing into anything.

In spite of the light and the fact that they had to often swerve around uneven ground, they reached the towering piles of books with no sign of any more of the spider creatures. As they passed a few towers, Rudy noticed his unfinished vehicle lying near one of them, and abruptly stopped the scooter. "Wait…we should use this. It'll be faster and we can travel over rougher ground," Rudy stated, stepping off the scooter and running over to his unfinished creation.

Eyeing it, he quickly added some lights to the front of the vehicle, then looked down to where he was meant to draw wheels, frowning. Even the toughest of wheels wouldn't be able to ride over the sharp rocks they had had to climb over to get the massive cavern, so that was out of the question.

"Wait, Rudy!" Penny cried, moving closer to the unfinished drawing. "I have an idea. Those spider creatures could move fast and easily over the rocks of the cave. You could draw the vehicle to have appendages like they had." Rudy stared back at her, a little lost, and she realized he probably hadn't gotten a good glimpse of the creatures' legs. "Here, like this," she said, taking the chalk from him and drawing sturdy metal beams with the same type of joints as the legs on the cave species, designing it to have the same sort of quick motion that would also enable it to climb over boulders and steep slopes. The leg pointed upward a bit, sticking out from the body about a foot before turning forward and coming down to touch the floor, the highest point of the leg almost level with the edge of the car door.

After she'd finished, Rudy looked at it and nodded and Penny handed him the chalk back, and he quickly went to work copying her drawing seven more times around the vehicle, knowing that since he was more used to using the chalk, he could work faster to complete her design. He tried to keep the movement she described to him as he did so in his mind, imagining how it would move and function as he heard Penny's words. Afterward, the car stood completed. It certainly was an odd looking vehicle, but Rudy had certainly seen stranger ones in ChalkZone.

Snap jumped up into the front seat, looking urgently at his two friends. "C'mon, let's get movin' before those things show up again!"

Rudy and Penny were quick to oblige, getting into the back compartment Rudy had drawn to carry books, as he hadn't had time to draw extra seats before. They sat against the rim separating it from the front part of the car, their gazes facing behind them in case of any sudden attack. The machine revved to life as Snap started it, and the lights flickered on, shining powerfully up ahead. Rudy had made sure to draw them large enough that they would be able to see a decent distance in front of them, and as he turned toward the front to look, he was relieved to see that it worked better than their helmet lamps had.

Snap began driving back to the first piles of books they had seen, where they knew they could turn into the first cavern. As Penny had predicted, the car moved very fast and easily over the rocky terrain, but the ride was extremely bumpy, and Rudy and Penny had to hold on tightly to the edges of the car compartment to ensure they wouldn't be thrown over the side if it struck a large object.

Suddenly Snap brought the vehicle to a screeching halt, his alarmed scream causing Rudy and Penny to whirl around toward the front of the car. One of the creatures, a new individual with different stripe patterns, was standing in front of them, and another was emerging from one of the book towers, looking strangely sleepy as it joined the other. Snap whirled the car around, and Rudy and Penny had no chance to warn him before the back of it struck one of the massive book piles. The entire structure shifted a fraction, the loose books at the base tumbling down and scattering across the floor. Snap quickly moved forward and turned it fully around, then sent the machine speeding in the opposite direction.

Rudy and Penny looked on worriedly as the multi-hued light they could see shining from the first crystal cavern grew farther and farther away. They were likely headed into worse danger, but there was no way they could go back in that direction. The creatures could easily snatch one of them out of the car, and they couldn't hope to try to circle around them when the creatures were so fast.

Unsure where he would turn around to head back to their exit, Snap looked left and right, suddenly spotting another group of the creatures heading toward them. Whether they were the same ones from earlier or the others' excitement had woken up more of them, he had no clue. Turning sharply left, he headed into the only escape route he could see – a large side tunnel to the left of the area with the torn apart books.

As soon as they entered the tunnel, they immediately found themselves in near complete darkness, only the lights from the vehicle making anything visible. It was hard to make things out, however, and they hadn't gone far before the car came to a sudden halt, nearly throwing the trio from their seats.

"What happened?" Rudy asked, standing up to peer over the front half of the car toward where the only light source was.

"I don't know!" Snap replied, jamming his foot on the pedal.

The car's legs strained to move, and Rudy quickly drew a flashlight and turned it on, peering over the edge. He realized at once that they had stumbled upon a pit of the strange goo he had found out was holding together the towers of books in the large part of the cavern. He briefly wondered if the creatures harvested it from here or it was something they created somehow. Turning his gaze from the pit, he examined the vehicle's legs, which seemed to be stuck fast and were sinking at an alarming rate, and he hadn't noticed in the darkness.

Rudy almost considered pouring Real World water from their water bottle over the parts of the legs that were coated in the stuff, but he knew that would erase sections of the machine as well, even if he had enough of it. Instead, he quickly drew a bucket of chalk water, hoping against hope that it would help, but knowing in the back of his head that it was a pointless endeavor. He splashed the water over the mechanical legs on one side, dismayed as he realized that it did absolutely nothing, and he had no idea what would dissolve the substance.

The sound of a loud scurrying combined with the clicking of claws made him turn around in terror as he realized that the creatures pursuing them were nearly upon them. Snap seemed to hear it as well, for he slammed his foot on the pedal even harder, and the machine lurched forward.

Slowly, it began to pull its legs free, and after a few more moments it managed to clear the pit and reach back up to solid ground. As soon as it was freed, the vehicle lurched so violently that Rudy and Penny were thrown back against the back side of the compartment as the machine shot forward into the dark. Snap didn't dare slow down as he followed a curve in the tunnel, knowing that the creatures following them could likely move as fast as the car.

"Rudy!" Penny suddenly cried in alarm, and Rudy whirled around, shining his light behind them to see one of the monsters a mere couple of feet behind them.

The animal's legs gripped onto the back rim of the car compartment, slowing the machine down drastically but failing to bring it to a complete stop. Knowing he had to move fast, Rudy hurriedly crawled to the back of the car, reaching it in seconds as he tried not to think of the possibility of the creature hooking its claws into his flesh. He held out his magic chalk, trying to turn a part of the back of the car into empty space so the creature would have nothing to hold onto, but the ride was so bumpy that he found it hard to even hold on to the chalk, let alone steady his hand. He managed it at last, and the monster fell back. Rudy quickly scrambled away from the newly drawn opening in the back, knowing that he could easily fall through it, and he wasn't going to risk trying to draw it back when the car was shaking up and down so violently.

Their vehicle rounded a corner and the trio were suddenly blinded as a pink crystal seemed to appear out of nowhere, coating everything in an intense light. His vision nearly obscured by the unexpected brightness, Snap swerved to the side, but a second too late, and the side of the car smashed into the crystal, shattering the top of it and causing the car to lurch. Rudy heard Penny's cry as she lost her grip on the edge and quickly grabbed her arm, pulling her toward him before she could slide through the opening in the back.

Suddenly Snap cried out again, and Rudy and Penny felt a wave of terror as the car dipped sharply forward. The back of the machine rose up until it was at a near vertical angle, and then they plunged over the edge of a steep precipice.

For a terrifying second, Rudy thought they were plummeting over another cliff, but then the car's legs hit the ground again, though they were still heading down a steep slope at an alarming pace.

"Snap, slow down!" Penny cried, gripping the side of the car in terror.

"I'm tryin'!" he called back, and it soon became clear that there was no way to slow the descent, and trying to stop completely would likely topple the car. Rudy wondered why the vehicle couldn't get a grip on the ground like he'd drawn it to, but he realized that the slope was probably simply too steep and the machine too heavy.

He heard a loud snap as a piece of one of the metal legs broke off, Snap still trying to slow down the car. The vehicle tilted as one of the remaining legs on that side snapped as well. Rudy felt the back of the car lifting, and he realized that it threatened to topple over. He could do nothing but cling to the rim of the back of the car, hoping the violent jolting wouldn't throw him overboard as he closed his eyes, feeling the car beginning to pick up speed.

Suddenly, almost as soon as it had begun going faster, their descent slowed and the car began to level out, and they realized that the slope was much gentler here. Rudy looked up and ahead, seeing a large side cavern with a few crystals in the ceiling bathing the medium sized cavern below in purple, green, and blue light.

The car skidded to halt on the bottom of the cavern floor, screeching as it did so, the broken legs trailing after it and scraping loudly against the rock floor before it came to a stop. Snap sat frozen in the front seat, looking terrified as he gripped the steering wheel, not moving a muscle.

"We've got to repair it," Rudy gasped as he leaned over the side. He knew that detaching the damaged legs would take too long, so instead he turned to Penny and asked for her water bottle. After she handed it to him, he quickly poured the water over the joints attaching the two legs to the car, seeing the liquid eat through the chalk metal and causing the mechanical legs to drop off and clatter to the floor. Jumping down as well, Rudy hurriedly began drawing replacements, knowing that now was not the time to focus on being completely precise.

Penny watched him with a worried expression, wishing he hadn't lost the backpack so that she could have a piece of chalk to help him with as well. A sound from up the slope they had tumbled down reached them, and she jerked her head up, seeing the shapes of creatures making their way down toward him, not having any of the difficulty the mechanical imitation had, and moving startlingly fast. "Rudy-"

"Done!" he shouted, jumping back onto the car through the jagged-edged opening he'd created before.

Snap drove off, but Rudy could tell that the car did not work as efficiently as before. It wasn't as smooth, not that the ride before had been easy or pleasant, and Rudy and Penny were having a hard time holding on. There was no time for Rudy to try to draw extra places in the front compartment. The creatures were right behind them, and it was all they could do to hold on.

They turned toward a steep slope leading up, the top of which had light shining through, which they all knew meant it was likely close to the main part of the cavern. Rudy stared at the cave creatures following them, shock gripping him as he realized that the closest was only a few feet behind the vehicle. He backed up as far as he could away from the edge, Penny doing the same.

The creature's twin forelegs reached out as it scrambled after them, its claws scrabbling against the smooth metal of the inside of the back compartment of the car, just barely out of reach of the two of them. Rudy knew that Snap was unable to do anything, having to focus on the way ahead, and as the slope they were climbing grew steeper, Rudy felt himself slipping on the metal. Unlike a normal truck compartment, there were no grooves in it to help keep his feet in one spot; he had drawn it entirely smooth. His hand slipped down the side of the edge of the compartment and he glanced to Penny, who luckily had managed to stand up and grab the rim that separated the front and back of the car, and was looking at him with a terrified expression as she noticed his predicament. Rudy felt claws miss his leg by a hair and watched as another of the monster's forelegs reached for him, helpless to do anything but try to hold on as the claws wrapped around his leg and pulled him down.

He slid down the car compartment, frantically trying to twist away. Luckily, with how much the vehicle was jerking due to the newly and inaccurately drawn legs, he managed to break free. Dangerously close to falling out the opening in the back, he watched as the creature's forelegs loomed over him again.

Suddenly, the car swerved and Rudy was whisked out of the way of the creature's path of attack. He turned around, noticing that the ground was evening out again as Penny reached out her hand to him. He took it and with her help, was able to make his way back to where she was, realizing as he looked around that they were once again in the cavern they had first come in through. It was still dark enough that their frantic escape was risky and they could likely strike a crystal or rock formation at any moment, but they could see much more of their surroundings now, the light patterns across the entirety of the cavern standing out as beacons against the darkness.

In the front compartment, Snap caught sight of the slope that led to the cavern's entrance, the white crystals bordering the cave entrance at the top of it.

He narrowed his eyes, focusing on those crystals out of all of the hundreds that surrounded him, putting on a burst of speed that the addition of more light allowed him to risk. He could hear from behind him that they were still being pursued by the cave-dwelling creatures, wondering briefly if they were so determined because food was so scarce and realizing that if that were true, desperation would make them even more dangerous. He could see the slope nearing and braced himself as the car reached the bottom and began to climb upward.

The vehicle's mechanical legs dug into the ground as it propelled itself upward, clearing the distance at a startlingly fast pace. As it reached the top, the car's momentum caused it to lurch forward and _upward_, Snap's eyes widening as he realized it wasn't quite going to be able to clear the opening, which looked only just big enough. He ducked, hearing an earsplitting ripping sound as the back of his seat was torn off by the top of the tunnel entrance and the car landed and leveled out with the ground again.

Now in a tunnel, things got noticeably darker and he tried to slow down, the car pounding across a flat surface then heading up the sloping tunnel they'd come through earlier. Before he knew it, it had charged into the room with jagged boulders, the mechanical legs having trouble finding purchase on such drastically uneven ground, nearly stumbling as it awkwardly clambered over the rocks. It began to drift to the side, and Snap tried to steer it on course, seeing light from the next tunnel opening and recognizing it as the ice room. He turned toward it, heading for the light as he heard the sound of some of the creatures – hopefully distantly by now – behind him.

The car raced through the entrance to the next cavern and, immediately, its legs slipped out from underneath it, unable to find any purchase on the ground. The legs on the car's left side flew out from under it, sending it crashing to its side and causing the three to tumble onto the icy floor.

Snap looked up as the vehicle continued to slide, crashing into the opposite wall and sending shards of ice raining down on it as several cracks appeared in the ice on the wall. He stood up shakily, relieved to find that he wasn't hurt, and that Rudy and Penny only looked startled as well. That was certainly lucky, but he wasn't sure how they would manage to get out now. He was ready to bolt into the next tunnel, thinking the ice would slow the creatures down when Penny stopped him.

"Wait!" she cried, seeing what he was about to do. "Those creatures can probably fit through small spaces like that…they had to get into the cave somehow! But…" She thought of something, turning to Rudy. "Maybe we can block the entrance!"

Rudy instantly remembered how easily the creature had shattered the barrier he'd drawn, and how they'd crushed the rock tunnels. A barrier wouldn't hold them back for long, and there was no way he and his friends could navigate through the dark tunnels fast enough, even _with_ something he could draw. He watched as Penny and Snap neared the tunnel anyway, knowing that the other areas of the cave would be far less bright than this one. At the thought of brightness, he lifted his head. He could see the tiny circle of light far, far above him. _A way to the outside_.

"Rudy, come on!" came Penny's urgent voice from the other side of the cavern. She was obviously wondering why he had suddenly stopped, knowing they had little time.

"That won't work!" he called back to her, racing to the fallen vehicle. "We'll have to go out that way!" He pointed upward. "Up to the top!"

His friends stared at him in panic from where they stood at the edge of the tunnel as he quickly began adding to the machine. Rudy looked back at them, hoping they'd understand why he knew there was no way they'd escape that way.

"Rudy, there's probably a force field blocking that exit!" Penny cried.

Rudy remembered the ones that had prevented them from being able to step on the path leading to the cave, and realized that she was likely right. "I'll draw an opening in it," he called back, hearing the sounds of approaching creatures as he pressed a new button on the machine.

The car suddenly lifted upward, using the small rockets Rudy had drawn along its side, looking like larger versions of the ones he frequently drew on his shoes. The machine righted itself, pointing upward toward the top of the cavern. Rudy climbed into the front seat, reaching a hand out to his friends to help them climb into the seats behind that he'd quickly and crudely added on to the vehicle. The larger rocket boosters on the back of the car flared up, and Rudy looked to the top of the cavern.

The car shot up toward the ceiling almost as soon as one of the creatures forced its way through the opening leading into the ice room. As they sped upward, Rudy found that the car was a lot harder to control than he'd thought, but luckily the tunnel leading upward was wide enough that there was little risk of hitting the walls if he was careful. His gaze was locked upward, seeing the glowing circle that was the source of light growing larger and larger, getting closer and closer at an astonishing rate.

All of a sudden he realized that they were nearing an opening, but it wasn't the exit from the cave. It was the entrance to another cavern right beneath the exit. Before he had time to react, the side of the machine slammed against the side of the opening, throwing it off course. Rudy quickly swerved as the vehicle shot toward one of the walls in the icy cavern, unable to avoid knocking the side of it against an icy column reaching up to the ceiling as he did so, gasping in dismay as one of the rockets on the car was torn clean off.

He was forced to bring the vehicle to a stop, landing it awkwardly on the slippery cave floor. The three of them climbed out, for a moment too shocked and exhausted to do anything but kneel against the floor and try to catch their breath. Here, they were sure they were safe; there was no way the cave creatures were going to climb up all this way in a completely different climate to come after them; their claws weren't likely to be able to hold onto the slippery ice anyway. They had made it, but barely.

Rudy got to his feet, suddenly feeling the effects of the cold all around him. As he surveyed his new surroundings, he realized they were in a fairly large cavern, but compared to the cavern with the crystals, it was absolutely tiny. It was dark in most places, but from the light pouring through the exit and the lights of their machine, he could see enough of what was around him.

A grinding, splintering noise reached his ears and he turned to see that the pillar he'd struck with the car was begging to crumble. He tensed as it cracked and broke in several places, leaning toward the wall they were resting near. He and the others darted for safety as it struck the wall, sending ice shards flying in all directions, some of them narrowly missing the trio as they ducked.

They heard a crashing, rumbling sound behind them, realizing that sections of the wall and ceiling were splintering and falling as well. The entirety of the ice coating the cavern seemed to be cracking and breaking apart, and with a rush of panic they headed toward the circle of glowing light.

Rudy quickly realized that with the chasm opening right beneath the circle of light, they weren't going to find any shelter there. He needed to draw something that would allow them to get out quickly. He held his magic chalk, thinking of some sort of shield they could carry to at least provide some protection and started to draw, not realizing that he was slowing down as he did so.

A deafening shattering noise sounded above him, and he glanced up in time to see several massive chunks of ice falling directly toward him. Having no other choice, he abandoned his drawing and ducked, catching sight of Penny and Snap's terrified gazes as they looked to him before closing his eyes and waiting for whatever would happen.

He heard an enormous crash as the rocks struck each other somewhere above his head. He couldn't feel any pain, but he could still hear rumbling and crashing all around him, and he ducked lower, hoping that it would be over soon as the ground beneath him trembled violently.

After what felt like an eternity, the sounds of crashing ice faded, the small clatter of falling pebbles the only noise that reached him. He opened his eyes, realizing at once that the plates of ice that had fallen from the ceiling had crashed against each other as they struck the ground, forming a barrier over his head that had protected him from the rest of the falling ice. He knew that the makeshift structure that had formed around the small area could likely collapse, so he quickly scrambled toward the nearest opening, where light was shining in.

He heard the cries of Penny and Snap as he forced his way out of the opening between the fallen rock shards and stood up. "I'm all right!" he called to them, and froze when he saw that a large part of the cavern floor was covered with sheets of ice, all of which had fallen from the unstable ceiling and walls around them. The hole in the floor – the place they had come through – was completely blocked off. Penny and Snap were standing at the far end of the cavern, the only place the fallen ice hadn't reached. As soon as they saw Rudy, they bolted over to him.

"Rudy!" Penny cried as she reached him, throwing her arms around him in relief.

"Bucko, are you all right?" Snap asked, giving him a concerned look.

"I…I think so," Rudy replied, feeling a bit shaken, but that was all. As he looked around, he could see that other ice sheets had piled up in such a way as the ones that had protected him, and he realized how lucky he had been to be underneath an area where it happened. In fact, it was a miracle they had all only escaped with minor injuries.

"We thought you'd been crushed by all that ice!" Snap cried, still clearly alarmed.

"Don't worry," Rudy replied, wanting to reassure him. "I'm fine."

"It's…very lucky you were right there…" Penny stated, somewhat shaken as she stepped back from him, looking at the pile of ice. Trying to push it from her mind, she stared up at the light beaming down from the ceiling. The place was still dangerous, and there wasn't time to talk further.

"We'd better get out of here," Rudy told the others, who readily nodded.

They began to pick their way over the piles of shattered ice carefully, stopping when they reached the place where the vertical tunnel they'd used to reach the place was covered with debris. Rudy drew a quick staircase up to the exit, adding each few steps as he went, and soon he was standing beneath the sunlight. Reaching his hand up, he could feel that there was definitely a barrier there, and drew a wide circle, transforming that part of the barrier into an exit. They climbed out of it, finding themselves on the top of one of the slopes on the mountain.

Rudy collapsed exhaustedly to the ground, desperately relieved to finally see daylight and grass again. He could tell that the others felt the same, and for a moment they simply allowed themselves to rest on the grass.

However, Rudy knew that they would have to get back to Biclops and the other Zoners. Although they hadn't spent nearly as much time in the cave as he'd originally thought they would, they still needed to find their answer and hurry back. It was possible, although a bit unlikely, that Newland's creatures could attack at any moment. He looked at Penny, who was still wearing her backpack, and was suddenly reminded of the fact that he'd lost his. He realized that until he managed to buy another backpack, he'd have to replace it with a chalk one so his parents wouldn't question him about it. He'd also lost their first aid kit, which he'd have to replace soon as well.

_His parents…_ Rudy had no idea if they'd checked on him earlier in the night, but he tried to tell himself that it wasn't as likely as he'd thought it was, and pushed it from his mind. There was nothing he could do about it right then. He needed to help ChalkZone first.

"Penny, hand me the book," he asked, reaching his hand out as Penny took off her backpack. She opened it up and handed him the one volume they'd managed to bring with them.

As he took it from her, he noticed something about it he hadn't before. The title of the book was not Records of ChalkZone History: Underground, it was Records of ChalkZone History: Underground Discoveries. The second word had faded so much that he hadn't noticed it in the dim lighting of the cave. Wondering what it contained, he opened it to the first page.

"I wonder how those spiderlike creatures got in the cave in the first place," Penny mused to herself as she and Snap moved closer to examine the book. "Or when. It's obvious Zoners have found it before there was any such danger, so-"

"Personally, I don't think it matters why they're there, as long as we don't have to go down there again," Snap muttered, peering at the words on the page as Rudy began skimming it.

It was obvious that the first section was going to be of no use. Its heading was 'Strange Minerals and Stones,' and he flipped quickly through the pages, seeing several different types of rocks, some gems, the glowing crystals in the very cavern they'd just escaped from, and even a section about the chalk mine which even included a picture of the red chalk, then reached the next section, which talked specifically about caves. He didn't think that would be much use either, but he quickly flicked through the pages anyway, finding that this section took up the vast majority of the book's contents. Frustrated, his eyes scanned every heading, finding nothing about dangerous creatures. The next few sections were more or less the same, and as he reached the last one, he breathed a sigh of relief. It read: _Underground Discoveries: Creatures_. He and the others looked closely as he turned through the pages, searching for anything that looked like Newland's termites.

However, the more he looked at each of the strange animals on the pages, the clearer it was to him that this book gave no record of past attacks, only information on where, when and how the animal was discovered, what it ate, where it lived… Still, he kept looking, thinking it might give away a weakness that would stop Newland's termites, but there was no sign of any of these animals causing destruction written there. Whenever one of them saw a picture of animal that looked big and powerful enough to be dangerous, they stopped turning the pages and read, finding that some had been aggressive to the explorers, but none seemed to have done anything like Newland's creatures did. They were all cave dwellers, not tunnel diggers. They kept looking, and each time were met with nothing relevant to what they were searching for.

Rudy was numb with shock as he reached the back cover of the book. He stared at it blankly, his eyes hardly focusing at all. "It was the wrong book…" he said after a moment, echoing his friends' thoughts as they stared down at the object in his hands in horror.

Rudy knew that if they'd found the other records, of which there were probably a great many, they likely would have found one documenting attacks from animals or even natural disasters that were similar, but they had come upon no such thing, and there was no way they could go back to look with the creatures still lurking down below. Rudy felt more lost than he ever had, and as he looked back to his friends, both of whom reflected devastated and hopeless looks back at him, the truth fully sunk in.

They had failed.


	14. Rudy's Surrender

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Fourteen – Rudy's Surrender**

Staring down at the book in his hands, Rudy had no idea what they were going to do next. Everything seemed almost unreal; he could hardly believe the book they had found had failed to tell them anything that could help them, and suddenly the hope he had felt earlier that night, as well as the journey, and even the race through the cave seemed so far away, like it had happened days ago rather than during that very night. He couldn't believe that, after all that, they'd ended right back where they started. The thought of going back to Biclops and the other Zoners empty handed was terrible, but Rudy knew they would have to; there was absolutely nothing more any of them could do here. It had all been a terrible waste.

Standing up, he numbly handed the book to Penny, who hesitated before taking it. He understood her reluctant look as she placed it into her backpack, any fascination she might have had with the information it held completely gone. They had no use for the book anymore, and it seemed pointless to take it back with them, but after everything they had been through, none of them wanted to lose the one piece of ChalkZone history they had managed to salvage. Perhaps it would at least make a unique addition to one of the libraries they had visited. Rudy thought about bringing it to the one he and Snap had visited earlier in the night; maybe it would make up for the two of them making such a mess of the place. However, he froze as he realized that the library he wanted to give the book to might not last very long. They had no way to stop Newland's creatures now.

The others suggested they find the pterodactyl and head back, and Rudy only nodded and followed them without a word. He knew he needed to talk to Biclops, but he had no idea what he was going to say. He hated the thought of facing the Chalk Mine's guardian after yet another failure, but Biclops would need to know what had happened. It wouldn't be right to just leave him and the rest of ChalkZone without any information, even for another day. Penny seemed to realize this as well, because she assured him that they still had plenty of time to get back to their homes and speak with Biclops.

The ride on the pterodactyl as it headed back to its owner went by as a blur to Rudy. Neither he nor his friends spoke much at all during the journey, and even the fantastic sights failed to catch his attention. He even averted his eyes from them many times, unable to face the thought that this might be one of the last days they were left standing and intact. The return journey was quicker than the one that had led them to the cave, as now the pterodactyl was simply heading home rather than having to follow their guidance every so often, and it was clear that it knew the fastest way.

On the last stretch of the journey, Rudy was surprised to find that he'd drifted off for a short while, leaning against the front of the creature's saddle. He sat up abruptly, remembering just how late into the night it was and becoming suddenly worried that he might really have to go to school the next day. He _couldn't_ go to school. He needed to stay here and help ChalkZone…in whatever way he could. Even if it was likely a hopeless endeavor, he certainly had to try.

It didn't seem long before they landed back at the place the pterodactyls were being kept, a large open field with several artificial perches built at regular intervals. They exchanged few words with the owner, a short goat-like Zoner, who they could tell easily realized that they had failed to succeed on their mission. Rudy was glad he didn't ask questions; at the moment, he didn't want to have to tell anyone anything other than that.

As soon as they found a section of the Amazin' River, Rudy drew the three of them a raft, knowing that it would take them to Biclops and the Chalk Mine, which wasn't too far away. Snap suggested drawing a motorboat, but Rudy declined, being in no hurry to face the mine's guardian. Penny had stated that they still had an hour or two before they needed to be back home, and though Rudy knew that taking more time to visit the Chalk Mine was not ideal, he needed some time to think before he told Biclops what had happened. Luckily the others didn't object to the raft idea; Rudy thought that they either felt the same way he did or were too tired to argue.

Though the water was calm as they floated down the river, Rudy was unable to find any enjoyment in it, and unable to drift off to sleep again either. He sat with his shoulders slumped at the end of the boat while Penny and Snap quietly conversed. He still couldn't fully grasp the fact that they were completely at a dead end, and though he wanted more than anything to find a way to help ChalkZone anyway, he had nowhere to begin. The only thing he could think of was to move everyone in the nearby areas somewhere further away, but that would only be a temporary solution, and there was no way of knowing how fast the termite monsters could move and cause destruction. Trying to put the terrifying mental images that thought brought out of his mind, he stared down at the ripples in the water below where he sat at the back of the raft, watching a few chalk fish swim by. Near the front of the raft, he could hear that Snap and Penny were now going through Penny's backpack. He briefly wondered if they were reading the book, but as he heard Penny ask him if he wanted something to eat, he realized that she had just been looking at her supplies. The book remained in the backpack out of sight; clearly no one felt much like looking at it.

"No," he replied, shaking his head in response to Penny's offer. He continued to stare down at the water, locked in his own sheer desperation to think up some sort of answer. After a few moments, he sighed. "We should have never gone in there," he said, still not sure he really wanted to talk about what had happened or not. "I don't know what I would have done if one of you two had gotten hurt or…or worse…" He trailed off.

"Look, Bucko," Snap stated, "_No one_ coulda' known that the whole place'd been renovated by monsters! And…and you're the one who managed to _find_ it! That's gotta count for something!"

Rudy gave Snap an annoyed glance. If he hadn't found that entrance, they wouldn't have ended up in such danger and wasted precious time. "That doesn't make me feel any better," he muttered, before turning back around.

"Well," Snap continued, "you're also the one who got us out."

Rudy was a bit taken aback, but getting them out of the ice cavern hardly made up for initiating a journey that was ultimately pointless. He looked back toward his friends. "Well, maybe, but-"

"I believe he's right," Penny added, "it was your quick thinking that got us out of the ice cave. If we had tried to go out the way we came, we probably wouldn't have made it." Seeing that Rudy didn't look very convinced, she added, "None of us had any way of knowing what was down there. And I suppose…it's not all a waste…at least we got a part of the lost history back. I'm sure we've inadvertently managed to help some of the Zoners here who could have been looking for this."

"But what can they do with it if those monsters in the city destroy everything?" Rudy retorted. He could see that Penny looked a bit shocked, and immediately regretted responding with anger. "I mean…"

"Rudy…" Penny began, and though he could tell she was hesitant, she went on anyway, "we're not going to let this happen. Someone will have to know something that can help us. We just have to keep trying. We still have time; we don't have to give up yet."

"Yeah, Bucko," Snap replied, "we'll find some other way."

It was all too clear to Rudy that behind his false words of comfort, Snap was nowhere near as confident as he sounded, and neither was Penny. They were all lost. At the moment, he wished that someone else was ChalkZone's protector. Someone who would know what to do. Someone more clever and better at finding what they needed than he was.

"C'mon, Rudy, they haven't won yet!" Snap cried, though Rudy could tell there was some desperation in his friend's voice, as if he was frantically trying to convince himself as well. "I…I mean, you're the protector of ChalkZone! And…and if you can find a cure for Balloonemia, you can certainly find an answer to this!"

To Rudy's surprise, that time Snap had actually sounded fully confident in him, in spite of the situation. It was a small comfort to him, even if he didn't know how he was going to go about protecting ChalkZone this time.

"And you certainly won't be alone," Penny added.

"Yeah," Snap agreed, glad that she was sounding more hopeful as well. "We'll get through this just like we always do."

"We just need to find the right person to help us," Penny added.

"Yeah, and whatever you end up doing to find that person and stop those crazy monsters, we'll be right there with you through everything," Snap stated.

"We'll do whatever we can to find a way to stop all this before it happens," Penny responded. "There is a way…somehow. We just need to find it."

Rudy started to feel a bit relieved, the hope his friends were showing beginning to allow him to have some small hope as well. "Thanks, guys," he replied quietly. "I know I certainly wouldn't have gotten this far without either of you." On all his adventures, he'd always had at least one of them at his side, and they'd always helped him through whatever disaster was thrown his way. "I'm just not sure…where to start with all this."

"We'll talk to Biclops and figure out what to do from there," Penny replied, putting a hand on his shoulder. "He should know how to help, in some way, or at least help us find somewhere to start."

There was a bit of hope to Penny's statement, and he realized that, if anything, Biclops was another person ready and willing to help them. Rudy couldn't help but admire Penny and Snap for trying to give him some courage and optimism even in such a dire situation. Even though they were doubtful and afraid, his friends weren't ready to give up and accept that it was hopeless. And, as he thought about it, neither was he.

For a short while they sat in silence, each of them thinking to themselves, knowing they could discuss their predicament more when they met up with Biclops, and being too exhausted to keep up any kind of conversation about something else. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Rudy found it hard to keep awake as the river brought them smoothly closer and closer to the chalk mine. Annoyed, he leaned down and splashed some of the river water in his face to try and wake himself up.

A panicked shout sounded from somewhere nearby. Rudy jerked upright, panic flowing through him at the thought of an attack from Newland's termites. It seemed so strange that they might attack now, so late at night, and he tried to tell himself that it was likely something else as he and the others stood up on the raft, trying to determine the source of the sound.

They soon found it when they noticed a panic stricken Zoner pelting across the grass near the river. It was a pink colored cat about the size of one of the children, and it had a round head and nose. It paid the three on the raft no heed as it darted in their direction, spotted the river, then abruptly changed course.

"Wait!" Rudy shouted, waving his hand to get the cat's attention. He hoped to get some sort of information from the panicked Zoner, but the cat vanished into a grove of trees further away from the riverbank before it could hear him.

The trio exchanged confused glances, wondering if the incident had anything to do with the creatures in the city or if it was just a random occurrence. Either way, Rudy didn't want to let something potentially dangerous wander uninhibited around ChalkZone, so he drew a large pole, punting the raft toward the shore and stepping onto the grass. While tying the raft down, he turned to look at the others, who were standing behind him on the raft. "I'm going to see what the problem is," he told them.

"We'll come with ya, Bucko," Snap replied, stepping onto the grass beside Rudy. Penny nodded as she followed him.

Rudy could tell that the others were as eager to help him as they had said previously, and he was glad to have them by his side. "We'd…better check out the city first," he told them worriedly, "just to make sure. Then we'll check the hotel and see if anything there might have caused that Zoner to panic. If not, we'll come back here and see if anything's wrong." They nodded in response, knowing that the biggest potential threats needed to be addressed first.

After quickly drawing a small but sturdy plane, Rudy and the others were headed for ChalkZone City. They were not too far away, and as soon as they were close enough to get a good view, they realized that it didn't look to have any further damage, and the surrounding areas were fine, but, wanting to make sure, Rudy landed the plane at a safe distance on a small hill so they could see for themselves up close.

"Well…looks like everythin's still all right here," Snap stated as he looked at Rudy, shrugging his shoulders. "Could have just been somethin' random that startled-"

"Snap! Rudy! Look out!" Penny cried, her alarmed voice gripping the boys' attention as they whirled around to see what had startled her.

They barely had time to leap out of the way as something nightmarish reached the top of the hill and reared over them. Rudy's eyes widened in shock as he got a glimpse of it. It was a massive black horse, sprouting saber fangs from its mouth and having a tail that looked like some sort of lizard's or crocodile's. As Rudy moved out of the way of its slashing hooves, he realized they weren't hooves at all. They were massive _claws_.

"Woah!" he cried, stumbling backward as the creature crashed back down to all fours, lashing its head as it looked from one target to another. Knowing he had only the one piece of chalk in his hand, as the rest had been lost in the cave, Rudy did the first thing that came to mind. He drew a quick line up from the ground then darted to the left as the creature charged for Snap, creating a quick trip wire.

To his surprise, it worked perfectly; the creature raced into it and stumbled, crashing to the ground as its speed propelled it into the wire. As it flailed in blind rage, its front legs became entangled, giving Rudy and his friends time to get out of range of its lashing claws. It was then that Rudy noticed the way the horse had been drawn, the odd patterns in its mane to the attention to minute details over all its body. He knew that style.

_Bob Newland._

Shaking the shocking new distraction from his mind, Rudy quickly added rockets to his shoes and took to the air, proceeding to draw a cage around the creature. He knew it wasn't an ideal enclosure, as there was no way to draw a floor, but he made sure that it would be strong and heavy.

It didn't take long for the creature to untangle itself and begin to pound its forelegs against the bars. It lashed out at the surrounding metal in fury, and Rudy realized that although it was ruthless and destructive, it didn't seem at all concerned with him or his friends now that it was in the cage. Sure, he knew being caged would distract any Zoner, but this one acted as if they weren't even there, and that Rudy hadn't been responsible for its confinement. There was no focus, no fierce determination to attack them…the creature seemed to simply lash out at anything. Rudy realized it could probably have just been one of Bob Newland's doodles erased into ChalkZone, but it still felt strange that he was seeing one that didn't seem to have a purpose.

A roar from somewhere off to their left startled them, and the three turned around, seeing a massive lumbering bear creature off in the distance. Like the horse, it didn't seem to have any clear direction, but it held its head proudly and seemed to be daring anything to come near it. Even from this distance Rudy could recognize the detail and skill that had been put into the drawing, and he felt a wave of confusion as he watched the animal lope off in a different direction. It wasn't doing anything specific or planned, it was just roaming around, looking for a fight. He wanted to chase after it and stop it as well, but as he readied himself, he spotted another animal, this one near the city and walking near one of the fans. It was a white lizardlike creation, another that was obviously Newland's.

"I…I don't understand," Rudy cried, looking from the place the bear had vanished to the lizard, and then to a third creature that resembled some kind of six-winged insect as it zoomed over the shore of the Wait N' Sea. He had no idea which one to go after or even how to gauge which of them would be the most dangerous if it encountered anyone else. The creatures seemed to have no clear objective…or no objective at all, simply wandering across whatever place they happened to be erased in. Some of them, at least, were still dangerous and aggressive, and as he looked at the horse, he realized that it was likely that they all were. "These are Newland's drawings…why are all these things just showing up now?"

Penny and Snap looked equally baffled, and exchanged confused looks with him before Penny answered, "Well…Newland _is_ an artist…he probably just drew these things to relax…"

"But Newland_ doesn't_ just draw things to relax," Rudy replied, his eyes narrowing as he focused his gaze on the ground at his feet. "At least not chalk drawings, and not when he's _this_ determined to get into ChalkZone. This is the first time we've seen…"

He trailed off. Something wasn't right. As he looked at the city ahead of them, he realized what it was.

The fans they had drawn to keep the poisonous mist back were turned off.

Alarm flooded through him and he felt adrenaline rush through his body, ready to aid him once he propelled himself toward the fans to turn them back on before the mist could spread. He wondered why he had never thought of the possibility of Newland's recent drawings being there to try and foil his attempts to stop the first plan, as random and unfocused as the creatures seemed. Turning to his friends with a look of horror, he pointed ahead. "The fans!" he gasped. As soon as he knew Penny and Snap had seen what he had, he started to dart forward, but Penny's shout interrupted him.

"Rudy, wait!"

He stopped, realizing that she was probably worried about the lizard creature walking near the city, though he was hardly afraid of that at the moment. He turned to his friend. "But, Penny-"

"Rudy, the mist isn't there anymore!"

Taken aback by her response, Rudy took a moment to fully comprehend that he'd actually heard what she'd said correctly. "W-what?" he sputtered.

Just as surprised as Rudy had been, Snap looked ahead, his eyes widening as he realized that Penny was correct. "See for yourself, Bucko," he stated.

Rudy forced himself to hold still as he peered ahead at the city more closely than he had before. With many of the buildings in varying stages of decay, he could see into some of the further streets not blocked by large buildings. He soon confirmed that Penny was right. The mist was gone. He had previously been able to easily see at least part of it from this distance, but now there was nothing.

"Some Zoner must've found a way to get rid of it!" Snap cried, looking to the other two incredulously.

"Guys…" Penny began, focusing intently on the city as well. "There's no sign of termite activity either. It looks like they've gone…"

Rudy felt his blood run cold at the statement, but as he looked at the city, there was no sign that the creatures had left or were traveling either.

"You could hear rumbling when they moved," Penny continued, "even from a distance…but there's no sign of anything…no moving ground, no noise…"

"They must have gone deeper underground…" Rudy gasped, suddenly realizing that this could mean there could be an attack at any moment, and no way to tell where they would strike.

"Rudy, I don't think it's likely they would dig so deeply that we wouldn't feel it beneath us," Penny replied, understanding what he was thinking. "Newland wanted them to attack things on the surface. He'd want everyone to watch as everything was destroyed. Why would he waste time with a surprise attack? The attack would be no surprise. And…he wouldn't even expect you to be in ChalkZone right now. He'd want you to come back to…to see as most damage as possible. Rudy, I really think the termites are…are _gone_."

"But where would they _go_?" Rudy cried, looking at his friend in confusion. What Penny had said made sense, but something about it didn't feel right.

"Perhaps someone…somehow managed to find a way to stop them," Penny continued, "or perhaps they simply became too exhausted and needed to rest, or-"

"That doesn't explain why the mist is gone," Snap told her, looking more than a little perplexed.

"Look, I'm not sure how this happened either," she replied, "but there's been no further destruction and it seems like the problem…was…somehow solved without us."

Rudy had to admit that it did seem that way. If that were true, then that would be wonderful beyond belief….beyond anything Rudy could have hoped for, and Newland would have no way of knowing if his plan had worked or failed, so he would probably figure that ChalkZone had been destroyed after the allotted time had passed. But would Newland stop there? What more would he and the others do after days or weeks of frustration? He continued to look at the city, the angry sounds of the horse monster's futile attempts to escape its prison hardly registering to him. It did look as if, by some miracle, the entire threat had been removed literally overnight. But there was something _wrong_. Something they were missing.

"We have to find someone who knows what happened," Rudy stated determinedly as he glanced to the others. The whole situation was just too strange, and they needed to get information fast. As he looked at his two friends, he could tell that they had the same foreboding feelings that he had. Something about this just _wasn't right_.

Getting in the small plane, Rudy dearly hoped that the fierce Newland drawings he'd seen weren't causing any more trouble. He wanted to go after them, but first he had to make sure there wasn't some bigger threat. After the others were seated behind him, he flew the plane overhead, wondering if he should head to the hotel or find the first random group of Zoners he could and ask them.

He opted for the latter plan, and it wasn't long before he spotted a group of them far down below, beside a big lot of parked cars. A very large sign at one end of the group of vehicles read "We R Cars." Rudy couldn't tell who the Zoners in the group were from his height, but he could see that one looked fairly large and monstrous, and had three heads. He quickly veered away from it and moved the plane downward, not wanting to attract attention to himself, flying very low to the ground until he managed to land beside the base of a hill that would overlook the lot and the group of strangers if he stood on top of it.

Climbing out of the plane, he wondered if it was even worth trying to ask the Zoners beyond the hill. He had no idea who they were, and the biggest one could be one of the rogue Newland drawings. However, the thought of someone being cornered by the beast was what ultimately drove him and the others to climb the hill, keeping low and out of sight until they could determine if the monster really was dangerous or not.

Crawling through the grass as he reached the top, Rudy brushed the strands of vegetation aside and peered down at the group clustering around one of the vehicles. They weren't far away, although the grass made it difficult to see, but he could start to make them out now. The first thing he noticed was that the hulking beast was a gigantic three headed dog covered in thick, shaggy brown fur. He could tell that it would easily tower over the horse monster that had attacked them just several minutes ago, but it didn't look like one of Newland's drawings. He crept forward through the grass to get a better look at the others, and stopped dead.

"_No!_"

His gasp came out as a barely audible whisper. There were_ humans_ in ChalkZone. The last three humans Rudy wanted to see. He hadn't even been able to glimpse them at first in the shadow of the dog, but now it was all too clear. It was Vinnie Raton, Terry Bouffant, and Bob Newland.

Petrified, he and the others could only watch, fear freezing them there at the top of the hill. So many questions were running through Rudy's mind that he barely even registered any of them, let alone tried to think of answers, his gaze faced on the scene below with cold horror. He could tell that Penny and Snap were in the same state, unable to look away. Rudy could not believe what he was looking at. Somehow, the three must have found a way into ChalkZone while they had been searching for the library.

They realized that the Zoners closest to the car their enemies were all gathered around were Dooth and Boorat. However, the two clearly weren't interested in the car. Boorat was holding another Zoner, the walrus car salesman who ran We R Cars, against the hood of the vehicle, while Dooth paced back and forth, his tail flicking in agitation as if he wanted to tear their captive apart at that very moment.

"I'll ask you again!" Rudy and his friends heard Bob Newland shout. "Where. Is. The. _Magic. Chalk. Mine?_"

"Oh no…no! They can't…" Rudy heard Snap gasp beside him, and he suddenly remembered what Snap had told them after he'd been kidnapped. He'd let something slip about the Chalk Mine. Rudy wanted to tell him this had nothing to do with him and that it wasn't his fault, but he was too fixated on the terrifying scene below him to reply.

The walrus lifted up his hands, muttering something before Dooth yelled at him to speak louder. He quickly obliged, talking loud enough that Rudy and the others could hear him. "H-heh…look, buddy, I ain't nothin' but a humble salesman, and I'm not exactly sure that what you're-"

Dooth pushed Boorat aside and confronted the walrus himself, staring straight into the hapless Zoner's eyes. "Listen," the griffin growled, "either you spill your guts or I spill them for you! Got it?" For emphases he lifted his claws and positioned them above the walrus's midsection, making a slicing motion in midair.

"All right, all right, fine!" the walrus cried in a panic. "I think I might've once heard some Zoner say that…that the Magic Chalk Mine's over that-a-way!" He pointed, and Rudy could tell that Vinnie and Terry were exchanging words with each other, but he couldn't hear them.

"See?" Dooth shouted, backing away from his victim. "That wasn't so hard. But…if by any chance you're wrong, you're going to pay dearly when we get back. You can't hide from a _creator_!" He spat the last words, glaring down at the defenseless Zoner as if demanding respect for the artist standing before him.

"Uh, heh-heh, well, then, in that case, you might want to take the short cut that way," the walrus replied nervously, pointing in a completely different direction. "Just-just follow the river and that'll take ya straight to it!"

"Very good," Newland replied coldly, and he and the others, along with their group of creatures, began to head in the indicated direction, the direction Rudy knew would lead them straight to the mine, while the walrus hurried to hide somewhere in his car park, running as fast as if he was being chased by one of Newland's creatures at that very moment.

Rudy felt frozen with fear. He knew he had to act, and he had to act _now_. He stood up, knowing that his enemies weren't looking his way, and gripped what remained of his magic chalk. A fierce determination overcame him as he watched the small group of humans and Zoners making their way in the direction of the river, the humans riding atop the chalk Cerberus. He wasn't going to let them get anywhere near the mine. If Newland was asking where the Chalk Mine was, he probably didn't have any chalk left of his own. How he'd gotten some in the first place, he had no idea, but that wasn't important now. "Come on," he called to the others, who were still frozen where they were crouched in the grass. "We've got to stop them before they have a chance to get close." He kicked off the ground with the rockets attached to his shoes, still eying the enemy on the move.

"Rudy, wait!" Penny cried. "What are you going to-"

Before she could finish, Rudy was already heading toward the retreating enemies. They weren't far from the hill, and he sped toward them, knowing that by the time they realized he was approaching he would already be drawing something to stop them. He readied himself to draw some sort of trap for the three headed dog, something like a cage or a ditch in the ground around it. Once that animal was trapped, they would be able to stop the rest of them.

He reached them in just several seconds and as they looked up in surprise, he was already beginning to sketch the outline of a cage as he zoomed around them as quickly as the rockets allowed him to, the massive dog turning to snap at him as he flew by, but unaware of what he was doing. However, after a split second, when he'd managed to draw the top edge of a side for the cage, something slammed into him, and for a moment he thought he was going to tumble out of the air. Then he felt someone grab him out of the air and lower him, dropping him the remaining few feet to the ground.

It took Rudy a moment to realize that his attacker was the griffin Zoner Dooth; Newland's loyal minion. Snap had described the creature to him, but this was the first time he had seen him for himself. The griffin's thick mane was fluffed out in agitation and his ears were plastered to the back of his head. The look in his eyes made Rudy shrink back. He felt the griffin's claws grip his shoulder more tightly, and he suddenly worried that the claws were going to puncture his flesh. He turned to the side as he noticed the three humans dismounting the dog, turning to stare at him incredulously. Bob's eyes grew wide. "I don't believe this!" he cried, almost in amusement. He signaled to Dooth to move aside, and the griffin released Rudy.

Rudy slowly got to his feet, standing shakily as he stared at the three humans and their drawings. He briefly glanced behind him, seeing that Penny and Snap had frozen halfway between the hill and where he was, and when it was clear that they had been spotted as well and that trying to run would be pointless, they dashed to Rudy's side.

"Rudy, are you all right?" Snap asked as he came to stand beside him, putting himself between Rudy and the griffin.

"Yeah…I think so…" Rudy began, backing away as he watched his enemies warily.

"Rudy?" Bob continued, taking a step forward. "I didn't expect to see you around here, especially this late at night. Did you get bored of the hospital?"

Rudy glanced from Dooth and Boorat, who were slowly advancing toward him, and back to Newland and the others. He knew that if he attempted to draw anything, one of them could easily stop them, and he would need to think fast if he wanted to find a way to put a stop to this. He suddenly felt incredibly foolish for rushing ahead to stop them without a solid plan, disregarding Dooth's ability to fly in the midst of his desperation. He was going to have to be careful now, yet he reminded himself that he was still the one with the chalk. He had the advantage, he just had to wait for the right moment to use it. His eyes scanned the area around them, wondering if any Zoners would come to their aid if he could delay Newland and the others long enough.

"Hand over your shoes, kid," Bob sneered.

At first Rudy was confused, but then he realized that Newland obviously meant the rocket shoes. Fearing what would happen if he didn't, but not inclined to actually give up his shoes, he simply removed the rockets and held them out for Boorat to pick up.

"Good," was Bob's sharp response.

Boorat swiped the rockets from his hands and brought them back to Bob, who simply sneered and threw them on the ground behind him. Rudy heard the crunch of metal as the three headed dog looming behind his enemies stamped its paw down on them. While Boorat had been handing off the items, Dooth seemed to have become the self-proclaimed guard of the 'prisoners,' and was pacing back and forth in front of them. It was then that Rudy noticed that the claws that Snap had said Dooth had accidentally washed off in the Real World had been replaced…with long jagged pieces of hooked _metal_. He shrank back a bit, feeling almost defenseless as he held on to his single piece of chalk.

His gaze then flicked to Newland, who turned back at him while Vinnie and Terry talked quietly to each other beside the massive dog. Rudy knew that he was going to try to get him and his friends out of the way before they headed to the mine so as to ensure they wouldn't interfere, and his only thought was to delay that as long as possible. Knowing what he did about Bob Newland, he could think of one thing that might work as a temporary distraction. "How did you manage to get in here?" he asked loudly, making sure he had Bob's attention. "What was your plan? How did you…outsmart us?" He gritted his teeth at the last words, but he knew that it would likely make Bob all the more likely to want to brag to them about whatever he had been able to accomplish.

However, instead, the tall man just shook his head and chuckled. "I outsmarted you because I'm smarter than you, kid," he replied, simply. "And look…" He extended his arm, turning slowly as if he was showing Rudy an impressive view of ChalkZone. "We've got access to the world ourselves now. Your refusal to give us the magic chalk did nothing in the end."

"C'mon, let's go!" Vinnie suddenly spoke up, causing Bob's attention to snap to him. "If we're gonna get on that television show this morning-"

"Stop interrupting me!" Bob shouted back, turning back to Rudy again. "We've got plenty of time."

Rudy was shaking now, his eyes narrowing in anger at the three who wanted to exploit the entirety of ChalkZone for their own selfish purposes. "If you wanted ChalkZone for yourselves, why did you try to destroy it?" he blurted out, unable to stop himself.

To his confusion, Bob only laughed. Shaking his head, he replied, "I was_ never_ trying to destroy it!" He grinned widely as Rudy and his friends stared at him in shock. "I only wanted to damage it enough to make you worry, make you _think_ it was going to get worse…and it worked! Well, not the way I'd _imagined_…" His voice took on an angry tone as he said the last word. "…But still, in the end, we were able to get here, and the place is in pristine condition…or, well, close enough, anyway. As soon as we arrived, I put a stop to the destruction my creatures were making to the city. Really, you would have never guessed what their weakness was, Rudy. It's something only _I_ would be clever enough to think of. Anyway, they've been exterminated, and-"

"You…you destroyed your own creations?" Rudy replied, taken aback.

"I can draw new ones," Bob replied with a nonchalant shrug. "I'm actually _capable _of being creative, unlike you, who still hangs around with something he drew as an _eight year old!_" He pointed to Snap, who looked startled before giving Bob an angry look back.

Rudy had no idea how to react; the seriousness of the situation only seemed to dawn on him more and more with each passing second. Beside him, he could see Snap narrowing his eyes as he glared at Newland and his accomplices, and on his other side, he noticed Penny looking at Dooth, and realized she was probably wondering what the griffin thought of Bob's casual destruction of his other creations, but Dooth didn't seem bothered; he even sneered along with his master.

Bob continued to grin as he looked around the area. "It doesn't even look like that horribly unoriginal dragon monstrosity Vinnie drew-" He shot a glare at his companion, who simply folded his arms and rolled his eyes. "…did much damage. Good."

"Hey, look," Vinnie replied, "I thought if it attacked some chalk people, the kid might've been more willing to-"

"You should have just gone along with the plan!" Bob shouted back, pointing a finger accusingly at him. He then turned to Rudy and his friends again, who had hardly moved a muscle as the brief exchange took place.

"Anyway," Bob went on, "after that little stunt you two-" He pointed to Rudy and then to Snap, who only stared back in confusion. "…Pulled off at our hideout, I realized that the three of you weren't going to cooperate. So I took matters into my own hand."

"We didn't do anything to your hideout!" Snap cried angrily, directing Bob and his accomplices' attention to him. "You're makin' that up! And how did you-"

"Snap…stop it!" Penny whispered to him, and Rudy realized that it would definitely be a bad idea to anger their enemies, especially while they were in a field with nowhere to hide, and no way to outrun their Zoner minions. They needed some kind of a distraction, but getting them angry would only make things worse. He glanced at Snap, who reluctantly kept quiet and fixed Newland and the others with another icy stare. Rudy understood his anger, and tightened his grip on the stick of chalk in his hand. There was no way he was simply going to let them walk off to the Chalk Mine.

"_We _took matters into our own hands, actually," Terry continued. "And anyway," she snapped, addressing Bob, who was standing closest to the three kids, "that's enough talking. We need to-"

"And _so_, as I was SAYING," Bob continued, stepping in front of her to address the children, much to Terry's irritation, "we decided to sneak into the school. Even managed to get into your room while you were at the hospital-"

"You broke into my house?" Rudy cried, unable to help himself interrupting, even though he badly wanted to know how Newland had gotten his hand on the magic chalk in the first place.

"Yes," Bob replied, as if proud of himself. "It was actually quite easy. You were at the hospital, your window was still open…"

"Just get to the point," Terry snapped.

Rudy tried to keep himself from shouting at them in anger. That wouldn't help the situation, and he had to be smart about this. He still had his magic chalk. He could still find a way out of this somehow; he simply had to keep distracting them and wait for the right moment. The termites were no longer a threat, and now he just had to stop these three from getting magic chalk that they could showcase on a television show. He told himself firmly that he could; Newland and the others had no more magic chalk, and he did; if he could outsmart them, he would definitely have the advantage.

"The point is," Bob continued, pacing back and forth slowly in front of them, "that earlier tonight, we managed to find a piece of your magic chalk. Unfortunately, it was just one small, broken piece. And now we seemed to have run out." He stopped pacing abruptly, giving Rudy an icy stare. "I would most…_appreciate it_…if you would give me yours."

"No!" Rudy cried, taking a step back. He watched as Bob gave him an annoyed look, but held firm, knowing that no matter what, there was no way he could hand over his only means of not only protecting himself and his friends, but the whole of ChalkZone. He was frantically trying to think of some way out of the situation, some way he could put a stop to their creatures and prevent them from nearing the mine, but he was coming up with nothing as the eyes of every one of his enemies was on him. He didn't dare try to draw anything yet, knowing that Dooth and Boorat would simply stop him before he could draw more than a couple of lines.

"We don't have time for this," Terry muttered. "Forget him and let's just go." Beside her, Vinnie nodded, looking just as impatient.

"Don't tell me what to do!" Bob snapped at her, turning around.

Rudy's gaze darted back and forth between the intruders. It was clear that Bob's companions simply wanted to head off to the Chalk Mine as soon as possible, while Bob wanted to stay and gloat. He tried to calm his terror, reminding himself that they at least had a temporary distraction. Seeing Bob arguing with Vinnie and Terry, he lifted his hand once Dooth and Boorat turned their heads as well…

"All right, then," Bob replied, gesturing to where Terry and Vinnie were standing beside the three headed dog. "You start heading to the Magic Chalk Mine. I'll meet you there once I've drawn a faster mode of transportation than your stupid, overrated, overused _dog…thing_!" The three headed beast turned its heads in Bob's direction, but he merely glared right back at it. "Go on," he muttered, waving his hand as if to shoo it away.

Terry responded to his sneer with a roll of her eyes, and Vinnie just shrugged, following her as she climbed on the back of the dog, which looked just as eager to get moving as they did. Bob gave an annoyed look at them as it started to head off in the direction of the river, and worry flooded through Rudy's mind, knowing that they had but a limited time to stop them. As the dog hurried off into the distance, surprisingly, Boorat made no move to leave as well, and it took Rudy a moment to register that the rat creature still had a very good reason to be angry with him and his friends.

"Don't think I don't know what you're up to," Bob snapped suddenly, looking at Rudy in disgust. "You three probably have another nasty little plan in store for us that you were going to use that chalk for the moment we were gone, am I right?" He paused, seeing Rudy and his friends' wary looks. "Well, how about this?" He snapped his fingers, and suddenly Rudy found himself cut off from Penny and Snap as Dooth and Boorat shoved them roughly away from him and came to stand between him and the others. Bob held up his hand, ready to snap his fingers again. "Here's the deal," Bob told him, the amusement gone from his voice to be replaced with cold seriousness. "You hand over the magic chalk, and you won't have to take another trip to the hospital."

Rudy felt his blood turn to ice at those words. He didn't know if Newland was actually serious about his threat this time, or if he simply didn't care what happened. Either way, Rudy could tell that he expected him to simply give in and give up the chalk. Whether or not he actually meant his words, Rudy could see that Dooth, as the griffin began circling around him, looked all too eager to attack. Without his friends by his side, Rudy only felt more vulnerable and helpless, even if they were standing only a few feet away. He knew that they would be powerless to do anything if Newland actually did set the two creatures on him. Yet despite the frightening turn of events, he knew he couldn't just hand over the only defense he, his friends, and the rest of ChalkZone had. There had to be a way out of this. He still just had to come up with it. Surely Bob would at least think twice about ordering his creature to attack him, he thought, but he wasn't so sure. Bob certainly had thought nothing of his termite creatures harming thousands of Zoners in the city. Rudy glanced between Dooth and Boorat, wondering what he could possibly draw quickly enough to subdue them if they tried to attack. He didn't doubt that_ they_ would harm him, if ordered to do so; Boorat had enough reason to be mad at him, as he had sent him to prison after Snap had stopped him from stealing the magic chalk, and Dooth simply looked as if he was eager to try out his new metal claws. Suddenly, Rudy's nerve failed him, and he started to back away from them slowly, knowing there was no point in running, but unable to simply relinquish the item that would give them so much power over the world he loved. There was no reason the animals wouldn't attack him, as well as Penny and Snap, after he gave up the chalk anyway, and he wasn't going to give up their only protection. He couldn't let that anything happen to his friends or ChalkZone because of a mistake he had made in confronting them too soon.

"Wait…wait a minute!" Snap cried, breaking Rudy's concentration as he turned from the creatures advancing on him to his blue and white friend, wondering what on earth he was trying to do.

"Snap-" he began, not wanting him to be threatened as well, but Snap ignored him, walking right past Rudy, Dooth, and Boorat and stopping a couple feet from Newland. The two hostile Zoners gave him suspicious glances but remained primarily focused on Rudy. Confused, Rudy looked to Penny a few feet behind him, but she only gave him an equally perplexed look.

"What do you want?" Bob snapped, looking down at the blue Zoner. "If you don't want your _friend_ back in the hospital, I suggest you-"

"You can't hurt Rudy," Snap said simply, narrowing his eyes as he focused on Newland.

Bob laughed as if what Snap had said was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. "Oh, and I suppose you're going to try and stop me?"

"I won't need to," Snap said with a smirk. "If you do anything to Rudy here, his parents are gonna find out. And if you expose ChalkZone to everyone else and allow them entry, the police will be able to trace it straight back to you. They're gonna know somethin's up if Rudy went missin' or came back with wounds from some creature they'd never heard of."

Rudy was a bit shocked at the statement. In the middle of everything that had been happening, he hadn't even considered something like that. He was surprised to see that even Newland looked taken aback. Boorat was also wary, looking at Newland as if wondering whether injuring Rudy would get his creators in trouble as well. Dooth, however, paid the comment no heed, looking as eager to attack as ever.

"Oh, well, _that_ complicates things," Bob muttered, his voice rising in volume as he threw his arms up in the air in frustration. "We can't do anything to Rudy, or his _parents_ are going to find out! Oh…_no_!" He cried out in a dramatic fashion, his voice becoming one of mock distress. "However…" Bob continued, his voice returning to its normal volume as he gave Snap a glare, "You don't have any parents, _do you_?" He turned to Boorat and Dooth. "Get him," he muttered casually.

Rudy watched in alarm as Snap suddenly whirled around to face the two creatures between him and Rudy, his expression quickly changing from one of confidence to horror. "Wait-" Rudy cried, knowing that his shout was useless as Boorat and Dooth left his side. He saw a flash of triumph cross Boorat's face as he darted forward, a slimy grin crossing his features, and in that brief second, Rudy remembered that Boorat had a far greater reason to be angry with Snap than he did with him. Snap had no time to move or evade the attack as Boorat reared onto his hind legs and slammed his fist into Snap's jaw, sending him sprawling to the ground. Rudy heard Penny gasp behind him and he made a move to run forward only to be pushed down on the dirt by Dooth, who then turned away from him and to Snap, who looked stunned. Dooth flexed the claws on his right hand, which Rudy suddenly remembered were now shards of _metal_ as he raised his arm for a blow. Rudy struggled to get to his feet, knowing in the back of his head that he wouldn't be able to intervene in time. His heart began to race as the muscles in his arms tensed in response. "NO-"

"Oh, wait a minute, you two," Bob casually stated, causing both hostile Zoners to freeze and look at him. Dooth looked disappointed as he lowered his claws, but it was clear that his respect for his creator overrode any annoyance he felt about not getting to use his new weapons. Boorat, on the other hand, looked quite pleased with himself as he turned to Bob and waited to see what he would say. Rudy held his breath in anticipation, waiting for him to continue speaking. "It seems Rudy wants to tell us something," the artist continued, looking to Rudy expectantly.

"I …" Rudy exchanged a quick glance with Penny, hoping for some idea of what to say to avoid the situation spiraling even further out of control, but she only looked back at him with eyes as wide and frightened as his own. She was shaking her head, and he bit his lip, looking toward Newland again. He was desperate to prevent any further harm from coming to Snap, but he had no idea what he was going to say.

Bob sighed. "Are you really that stupid?" he muttered, annoyed at Rudy's hesitation. He scowled, folding one arm across his chest as he glared at Rudy with contempt. "I told you what I want. Just hand over your magic chalk."

Rudy gritted his teeth. He knew that handing over his only protection would in no way guarantee Snap's safety, and giving it up would obliterate ChalkZone's. At least if Newland's companions hadn't reached the mine yet, there was still time, but now…now he wasn't sure what to do.

He heard a cough and turned his head immediately at the sound as Snap struggled to rise, lifting himself to his hands and knees as he sputtered a few times and spat out a small mouthful of blood before turning to Rudy. "Don't listen to 'im, Ru-"

Snap was promptly shoved face-down into the dirt as he opened his mouth to speak again. Dooth held him there as Bob merely smirked. "That's right, Rudy," the artist said, almost calmly. "Don't listen to him."

Rudy's eyes darted to Penny again. He felt too shocked to move, and the look in her eyes reflected his own feelings. He wasn't sure what they could do to get out of the situation. Snap's words had made him even more afraid to hand over the chalk, and he silently reminded himself once again that they would be in a far worse position if he did relinquish it. They'd also have nothing to bargain with anymore; Newland and the two Zoners could harm Snap further simply because they wanted to. He didn't trust them to keep their word. All he could do now was keep distracting them.

Thinking fast, he started to hold out the chalk as if he intended to give it up, but didn't move closer to Bob or the two animals. "Okay," he began, trying to keep the shakiness out of his voice. He caught sight of Penny's worried glance and Snap's look of horror as the Zoner managed to lift his head from the ground despite Dooth's attempts to keep him from doing so, but Rudy quickly averted his gaze from both of them, focusing instead on Newland. He had a plan. It wasn't much of one, but it was a plan. He took a deep breath before beginning. "I'll give it to you, but first, you need to promise…" He quickly ran through a list of possible negotiations in his mind, wondering what ones Bob would be the most likely to argue with. He knew it wouldn't do much other than buy them a little time, and hoped that he would be able to come up with something else in the meantime. "You…you need to promise that…"

"Is that a 'no,' then?" Bob stated icily as he gave Rudy a look that told him he knew exactly what he was trying to do. Rudy's eyes widened as he stared at him in horror. "Very well." He snapped his fingers, and the two animals immediately became alert, focusing their attention to Snap again.

Luckily, in a momentary distraction, when Dooth had been looking proudly to Bob for approval, Snap managed to twist away from his grasp and move back as the griffin turned around and swiped at him, burying his metal claws into the earth where Snap had been a moment before. Rudy noticed that the blow was delayed, as if the claws were heavy and Dooth wasn't used to them. Snap staggered back, eying Dooth as he tore his claws from the ground, spraying dirt in all directions. A look of fright crossed Snap's face as he realized that could have been _him_.

Ignoring Penny's warning shouts, Rudy darted toward Snap, only to be intercepted by Boorat, who lifted him bodily off the ground by his arm and tossed him back toward Penny. He landed roughly on the ground, numb with shock as he tried to stagger back to his feet.

"I wouldn't try that again if I were you," Bob stated calmly, not even looking at Rudy. "It might turn out worse for your friend."

Snap, in the meantime, found as he tried to flee that he suddenly was face to face with Dooth. The griffin lashed out at him with his metallic claws and Snap managed to evade the attack by quickly backing away, but it was soon followed by another slash, this one aimed directly for his face and eyes. He swiftly darted to the side, feeling the tips of two of the claws slice across his upper arm and the other two shred his cape.

From his position halfway off the ground, Rudy could see Boorat leave him lying there and rush toward Snap again, and he saw that his creation's face was no longer one of defiance, but of sheer terror. Rudy was frozen to the spot, unable to move or speak as Boorat slammed his fist into Snap again, winding him and causing him to drop to his knees. First one, then another of his enemies landed a blow on his friend, and they did not stop. Every time Snap was struck, Rudy felt himself flinch, as if he could feel it too.

Snap was clearly panicked as he struggled to scramble away from the two approaching Zoners. "W-wait! WAIT!" he cried, holding his hands weakly out in front of him when it became clear that he wasn't going to be able to get away. "I didn't-"

Dooth only responded by lifting him bodily off the ground and slamming him back down. From the cry Snap made as he hit the ground, Rudy realized that the collision had hurt him more than he'd thought it would, and he felt fear grip him even stronger as he watched, unable to look away. He couldn't come up with something to try to say to get Newland to stop, but he had to do something. As he shakily rose to his feet, he could see that Snap was trying to get up and run, but it was clear that something was wrong. As soon as he stood up, one of his legs gave out beneath him and he collapsed, unable to move as his enemies landed another blow.

As much as he wanted to tear his eyes from the onslaught, Rudy found himself frozen still. He desperately wanted to put a stop to it somehow, using any means…any means but relinquishing his magic chalk. Yet it was looking more and more like that was his only option. But how he could he give up the one thing he had to protect his friends, when there was no guarantee they wouldn't hurt Snap afterwards? He desperately tried to think of something…some way he could help his best friend out of this. "Snap-"

"You see, Rudy," Bob was saying, snatching Rudy's attention from the scene of the attack for a moment. "It would have been a lot easier if you'd just given me what I wanted in the first place instead of trying to resort to your pathetic tricks."

Rudy wasn't entirely sure what Bob even meant, but at the moment he didn't care. He could still hear Snap's pained cries and the sounds of the ruthless attack so close to where he was, and as he turned his head back toward his friend, he could see Boorat lifting Snap into the air, ready to aim a punch at Snap's face. Snap, clearly terrified, stammered a few desperate words, and this time Rudy couldn't help but look away as the blow landed, unable to block out the sound of the strike and Snap's painful shout. He turned back to Bob, now coming to the conclusion that there was one way to possibly prevent Snap from getting injured further, and one way only. "All right!" he cried. "You can have the chalk, just-"

"I'm sorry," Bob said, shrugging as he glanced at Rudy, giving the child a fake pitying gaze. "You've already made your choice."

"N-no!" Rudy cried in response, his heart beginning to race. "I didn't mean…I…I change my mind!" he shouted, trying to catch Bob's eye while hoping against hope that he would choose to listen to him. He didn't care what he had to do in order to prevent Snap from being harmed any further. It didn't matter—he had to make this stop.

"It's too late," Bob said calmly. His eyes were averted. "You had your chance."

Rudy stared at him in horror, realizing that Bob was not inclined to do anything to call off his beasts.

"Mister Newland, please!" a voice pleaded, and Rudy turned to see Penny racing up beside him. She held her hands out in front of her, a desperate look in her eyes. "You must stop this! _Please_!" Rudy watched her with a trembling gaze, not used to seeing Penny look so frantic and scared. The sight of _Penny_, who was usually so clever and rational even in dangerous situations, resorting to desperate pleading filled him with even more terror for Snap. But Newland did not respond.

Rudy forced himself to look back toward Snap, feeling painfully helpless to do anything. Snap could only do his best to try to protect his head and face from the worst of the blows, but he could not avoid them. Over the sounds of the struggle, he could hear Penny continuing to try to plead with Newland, but the man disregarded every word that came out of her mouth.

"I want to ask you something, Rudy," he heard Bob say calmly from somewhere behind him. "Why did you try so hard to keep us out?" Rudy tried not to listen, not wanting to think about how much danger ChalkZone was in now on top of all that was happening. Yet even in the midst of his rising panic, he could not block out the words. "Did you really think you could keep an entire universe to yourself? Did you think you were that _special_?"

Rudy certainly wasn't inclined to answer his question. Newland's words only served to drive home even further how he had failed to protect ChalkZone. He wanted to cover his ears and scream. But instead, he kept his eyes focused on Snap again. He watched, knowing that if he tried to interfere, Snap would only be punished even more harshly for it.

"Well, you're _not_," Bob continued, his words like a poisonous thorn in Rudy's mind. "You're just a stupid little kid with _stupid_ ideas who never deserved to find this world in the first place. And yet…you honestly believe you have the right to control who enters it?"

Rudy's breath came in quick gasps as he watched Snap, his eyes finally brimming with pent-up tears. "I…I'm sorry!" he cried, not knowing what else to say as he desperately searched his brain for anything that could at least make Bob consider calling off the attack. He didn't care what he had to say to get them to stop, just as long as they put an end to it. He couldn't bear to see Snap get hurt any further. His friend's condition was only rapidly worsening, and he could do nothing to help.

"You're…sorry?" Bob hissed. "Oh, _please_. Do you really think I'm going to believe that?" He turned away from Rudy, staring off in the direction his companions had gone as if suddenly uninterested in everything that was happening around him.

Penny broke away from Newland and stationed herself beside Rudy, who hardly registered her presence. She brought her hands up to her mouth, her glasses fogging up as her tears continued to well. Those tears had already traced paths down her face, something that Rudy's tears only managed to do in that very instant. He felt Penny grip his arm and bury her face into his shoulder, but could not bring himself to respond physically or verbally.

Boorat suddenly took Snap into his paws and shoved him to the ground. This time, Snap didn't even move. Before Boorat could hurt him again, Dooth screeched at the gray rat to leave him alone. As Boorat saw the griffin flex his new metal claws, he grinned and moved away.

From his position on the ground, Snap started to stir, attempting to push himself up, but it was a futile attempt. "Rudy…" Snap rasped; his voice sounded scratchy and weak. Rudy could hardly believe the sound had come from Snap. He had never heard his friend sound that way before. "Rudy…please..."

That small cry for help seemed to dig deeper than any other time Snap had called for his aid, and it chilled Rudy to the bone. At the moment, nothing else seemed real. The journey through the seemingly endless Mist Mountain ranges, the arduous search for the books beyond the Indigo Mountains and all that they had endured in between…it all seemed very far away, as if it had just been a dream. Any hope they had gained and fought for in that time was now dashed to pieces. Snap was suffering at the mercy of the monster who had caused the nightmare to begin with, and Rudy could do nothing to help. No matter how much he wanted to leap to Snap's rescue, he was completely powerless. He could do nothing.

"SNAP!"

Instantly Rudy's attention shot toward Penny, who had screamed upon noticing what had taken Rudy a split second longer to see.

Dooth had closed in on Snap from behind, his claws outstretched. Rudy didn't even have time to shout as the griffin raked his metal claws across Snap's back. The shriek Snap released was unlike any Rudy had heard come from his mouth as an atrocious ripping noise reached his ears.

Dooth soared into the air, splashes of blood dripped from his claws and onto the ground in small, scattered patches, and Snap slammed forward against the ground. Rudy gave a shout of horror as he watched the scene, finally tearing himself from it and racing toward Newland.

Despite his desperate need to accompany Snap in that instant, the boy, still riddled with terror, gripped his magic chalk as he came to a stop in front of Newland, spilling apologies as he reached out toward his enemy, the chalk in his hand. He thrust it out in front of him amidst his flowing tears, practically holding it to the monstrous man's face. "Here, you can have it!" he cried. "Just please _tell them to stop_!"

For a moment, Bob didn't even respond. The wait was agonizing as Rudy stood still, glancing from him to Snap, fear and anxiousness clouding his mind even further. Newland finally turned around, albeit slowly, casting his eyes down at Rudy as if he was something disgusting, meeting his pleading, tear-ridden gaze with careless contempt. Without a word, he swiped the chalk from Rudy's hand and began walking further out into the field. After a moment he paused and turned to Dooth and Boorat. "You can stop now," he stated calmly. "We're leaving."

Boorat, in one final act of vengeance, approached Snap and lifted him up, slamming him to the ground again. Snap's body instantly went limp, and he flopped to the ground lifelessly. Dooth sneered at the large rat, as if annoyed that he got the privilege of the last move, before following his master. Boorat shoot Rudy a nasty look of satisfaction before trailing behind after them.

Forgetting all about Bob and the others, Rudy raced to Snap's side. He knew the loss of his magic chalk was a devastating blow to ChalkZone's safety, but at the moment he couldn't even focus on that. As he and Penny collapsed to their knees next to Snap, Rudy gave a sharp gasp as he took in the ugly gashes Newland's griffin had left across his back.

"He's only unconscious," he heard Penny say softly in relief from where she sat beside him.

Another sound, coming from Newland's direction, distracted him, and he looked up in alarm, fearing another attack. However, he only saw Bob beginning to quickly sketch a car, the drawing done much faster and more detailed than anything he could ever achieve, but once he noted that the man didn't look to be targeting them again, he turned away.

He placed his hands, probably a little too roughly, on the back of Snap's shoulder. "Snap!" he called, shaking him lightly before stopping. His motion faded to nothing as he took in Snap's injuries again and cringed at the horrific sight. "N…no…" he murmured, hanging his head and clenching his eyes closed again. Tears pattered onto Snap's clothing, creating small spots of darker color. Penny also murmured some inaudible phrases, words of obvious concern, but Rudy's mind was far from set on her. He blubbered aloud, opening his eyes to a smudged version of the Zoner he cared so much about. To Rudy's alarm, he realized that his tears were beginning to burn holes through Snap's clothes and he tore away, pulling up his shirt as a tissue. He would never have forgiven himself if his carelessness landed Snap in a worse position than the one he lay in now, his exposed back to the sky.

He heard the distasteful noise of Bob's voice from somewhere behind him. He wanted to ignore the horrid man, but Newland's words cut right to his heart. "This is your own fault, Rudy," the adult's voice, calm and factual, sounded from where he stood by his newly drawn car. The words echoed in Rudy's mind despite his efforts to force them out. "If you had listened to me in the first place, this never would have happened."

Rudy couldn't even bring himself to look over his shoulder at the man. He closed his eyes, letting his tears hit the ground as the vehicle began to chug away. He forced himself to turn back to Snap, his own guilt quickly melting to sorrow for his fallen friend. His chest jerked at untimed intervals and his breath caught several times as Penny made her attempt to comfort him.

They could hear the sound of the car's engine begin to fade, leaving the broken trio completely alone.


	15. Desperate Destination

_(Author's Notes: Again, thanks to Flareonwolf for editing help!)_

* * *

><p><strong>Cryptic investigation<strong>

**Chapter Fifteen – Desperate Destination**

The field was deathly quiet as Rudy and Penny crouched beside their unmoving friend, still barely able to comprehend what had happened. The sound of Newland's car had gone, and there was nothing but the wide field and the empty 'We R Cars' lot further away. They were alone.

The fact that their hopeless quest to try to protect ChalkZone was over hardly registered to Rudy as he sat beside Penny, both of them looking down at the motionless Zoner. Rudy tried to avoid looking at the grisly looking wounds along Snap's back as he shook his friend's shoulder in some vain attempt to get him to awaken. He hated to see Snap lying so still. "Snap?" he said quietly, knowing that his friend was unconscious, but having some small hope that he would wake up and hear him.

"Rudy, don't!" Penny quickly told him, startling him a bit.

Realizing that he was probably making the situation worse, Rudy jerked his hand away and moved back a little bit, feeling suddenly silly after his pointless endeavor. Snap still showed no sign of moving. "H-how badly do you think he's hurt?" he asked Penny, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"I'm not sure…" she replied, her voice shaky.

Rudy knew that at the moment, there was no way to tell for sure. He could at least reassure himself that Snap's leg didn't look broken, but that did little to calm him when he thought of the extent the other injuries could have. He looked toward Penny again and his gaze fell to her backpack. His eyes widened as he realized something, and he felt horribly ashamed that it had taken him so long to think of it. "Penny, give me the backpack!" he cried.

"What?" she replied, looking at him in complete confusion.

Figuring she was simply too shocked to think clearly and that that was why she hadn't realized what he'd meant, he quickly insisted, "The first aid kit!" He really had no idea how much use it would be, or if he and Penny would even be capable of treating wounds like this, but it was certainly the most logical step to take to helping his friend.

However, Penny only stared back at him. "Rudy…that was in _your_ backpack."

Rudy's gaze dropped to the ground as the realization dawned on him. He thought back to earlier that night, when he had grabbed his parents' first aid kit from downstairs and stored it in his backpack for the trip. The backpack that had been lost in the cave. Guilt and hopelessness overwhelmed him as he realized that he couldn't even draw a new one. That would require getting back into the Real World and finding the chalk stash in his room, but there was no portal for them to go through. They were stuck here, and without the chalk, powerless to do anything to help their friend. He felt completely helpless, and as he looked to Penny, he could see that she felt the same. "What do we do now?" he asked, not bothering to hide the panic in his voice. "There's no one around here who can help us-" He cut off as a distant roar that sounded like one of the wandering Newland creatures reached them. "Those dangerous drawings are all around here…" he continued, alarm racing through him as he realized that there was no way they'd be able to protect Snap or get him to safety if one got near enough and tried to attack.

Penny looked up at him, and for a moment he expected her to give him some words of comfort, but instead her response was to give him a terrified look. "We need to find help," she said.

"There's no one near here!" Rudy cried again. "And…and what are we supposed to do? Carry him all the way to the hospital ourselves? The hospital which, by the way, was _destroyed by giant termites_?" Panic edged his voice as he looked at Penny desperately, hoping that she had some idea of what to do.

"I don't know…" Penny replied quietly, suddenly avoiding his gaze. She looked instead at Snap, who still showed no sign of moving.

Rudy stood up and looked back and forth over the surrounding area, searching desperately for any sign of help, but knowing that he would find none. It wasn't long before he had to force himself to admit defeat. There was not a single Zoner anywhere in the area. Even the car salesman seemed to have fled the field, though Rudy doubted that he would have been able to help them either.

"We'll have to stay here and wait for someone to come and help," Penny began quietly. "Even if we could leave…it's probably too dangerous to wander out there with all of Newland's new drawings wandering around." She made no effort to hide the worry in her voice. "Until Snap wakes up, there's not much we can do."

Rudy didn't reply to her statement, instead turning to Snap, but immediately regretting it as his gaze came in contact with the wounds again. "We have to find some way to help him," he said desperately. He waited a moment for Penny to reply, but she didn't. His thoughts briefly turned to the Chalk Mine, and he knew it would only be a short time before it was in grave danger, but there was nothing he could do. He'd given in, and it was all over now. The worst part of it was, that if he had done things differently, this wouldn't have happened. He lowered his head, feeling tears coming to his eyes again. "This is all my fault…"

To his surprise, Penny's response was immediate, and she sounded shocked. "_What?_" she gasped, before firmly shaking her head. "Rudy, forget what Newland told you! It was _not_ your-"

"It was!" Rudy shouted back. "I…I tried stopping them before I even had a plan, and if I hadn't done that…none of this would have happened." He turned from Penny and closed his eyes, shaking as he thought back to his foolish decision.

When Penny responded, she sounded taken aback. "Rudy, the only ones at fault are the ones who did this, not you!" She tried to look at Rudy directly, but he wouldn't meet her gaze. "I promise you, none of this is your fault. I know you're worried, but right now…" She glanced at Snap again. "…We have to-" She paused, realizing that Snap had started to stir. She and Rudy quickly focused their attention on him.

"Snap?" Rudy began, resting his hand on his shoulder as Snap slowly roused. He blinked a number of times and groaned, forming an immediate grimace as he reacted to the pain which must have instantly set in. "Snap!" Rudy exclaimed, a mild wave of relief washing through him.

Still scrunching his face, Snap glanced questioningly to Rudy but said nothing, and then threw his head around, as if searching for something. Rudy and Penny looked with him before he stilled himself and squinted his eyes, opening his mouth a little. He was clearly confused. Rudy wanted to ask him where he was hurt worst, but before he could, Snap spoke to them.

"Rudy…what…what happened? Where's Newland?" he asked promptly, a deep, worried frown engraving itself into his brow. "And...Boorat and Dooth?"

Rudy shifted his eyes to Penny and bit his low lower lip before returning to Snap. "They're gone," he answered simply.

"What…" He spotted Rudy's hand, realizing that something was wrong. Something was missing. "Where's the chalk?"

Rudy only stared back at him sadly. Obviously Snap wouldn't have seen him give up the chalk to Newland; of course he would be confused. Rudy didn't want to be the one to have to tell him what had happened. Luckily, he didn't have to, as Penny spoke for him.

"Newland has the chalk now," she said, casting her eyes downward as she did so. "He and the others are headed off to the Chalk Mine…"

Snap's eyes widened as the some of the disorientation left him. "What?" he gasped, attempting to push himself upright, but he only collapsed again.

Rudy looked at him in alarm, and it was clear Penny was shocked as well. "No! Stay still," Penny said hurriedly, looking at Snap again. Rudy felt utterly useless. If he'd had the chalk with him, he'd be able to draw something that could help his friend, at least until he got proper help, but without it, he was completely helpless to do anything.

Snap continued to lie still after what Penny had said, but Rudy could tell that he was starting to come fully to his senses. His eyes traveled around the field as the confusion began to leave them, and after a moment he cringed and lifted his uninjured arm to his head.

"Snap?" Rudy asked. "Are you okay?" He realized as soon as he said it that it was a silly question; it was as clear as DayZone that Snap was anything but okay. He glanced worriedly at Penny again before looking back to Snap. Though he wanted to comfort his friend, he didn't think there was anything he could say or do that would help. He wanted to place a hand on his arm to let him know he was there, but he was afraid that touching him in any way would only aggravate his injuries. He wasn't entirely sure where they all were, and although he desperately wanted some way to comfort his friend, he was more wary of ensuring he didn't feel any more pain. The awful feeling that came with being unable to do anything for him when he was in this horrific state began to sink in.

Suddenly Snap's eyes widened in shock and he reached his hand to the gashes on his back, jerking his hand back immediately after he did so. A look of pain and horror crossed his face and he began to writhe, tensing his muscles and whining at the same time. Rudy nearly panicked, concerned he was going to worsen his injuries and stretch the skin that was already wounded. Helplessly, he threw his eyes to Penny, hoping she could support him.

She had been thinking the same thing, and looked to Snap, nearing him with out-stretched arms. "Snap! Calm down!" she insisted, placing a hand on his arm. Rudy was glad to see that he didn't have a pained reaction to the touch. "It's alright… We'll…we'll find help soon." Snap's rapid breathing did not slow, but he allowed his body to lock up, hesitant to search around for more wounds. He remained still, moving himself slowly back to how he had been lying. His face was against the ground as he breathed heavily and continued to exchange glances with them contorted with discomfort and fear. "Just hang in there. We're here," Penny added, and Snap gave a small nod.

Seeing that he still looked somewhat panicked, Rudy added, "Just keep still…like Penny said…we'll…we'll try to find someone who can help…" He trailed off, wondering just how they would do such a thing. It wasn't safe for any of them to simply walk off alone while the dangerous creatures were roaming around, and he knew they couldn't leave Snap on his own. His mind also wandered to Newland and the others, and he realized that they could be halfway to the Chalk Mine by now. He could see that Penny looked just as worried as he did. She was trying to keep herself calm, but unfortunately wasn't doing it well. "What are we going to do?" Rudy asked her, realizing that the question rendered his words of comfort to Snap useless. He had no idea what they were going to do.

When Penny didn't answer, he focused his attention on Snap again, who he could tell was more fully awake and much less confused about the situation, but was still constantly holding his breath and releasing it again in a jagged manner, grimacing each time. After a few rounds of repeating the same thing, he opened his eyes and laid them on Rudy. "What's the plan to…stop them?"

This was another question Rudy had no answer for. Judging by Penny's silence, he knew that she didn't have one either. "I…I don't know," he replied quickly. "I'm not sure if we can."

For the next few moments, there was silence between the three of them. Rudy knew his attempts to give Snap faith for the situation were faltering. Snap repositioned his eyes again to look at Rudy. "Rudy, I'm…I'm sorry." Instantly the boy gave a frown of perplexity. "I'm disposable to Newland and he…realized that when I brought it to his attention. Because of me, you had to hand over your…magic chalk." He coughed, groaning from the pain it caused him afterwards. "And now Newland's got it and ChalkZone's...well, it's…"

Rudy was shocked as he heard this, and immediately cut Snap off before he could finish a sentence that was better left incomplete. "No, it wasn't your fault!" he cried. For a moment he stared, blinking slowly. "It…it was_ mine_." He felt shame overwhelm him again as he said this, and ignored Penny's further attempts to convince him that it wasn't, shaking his head in defiance. He was the one who should be apologizing, not_ Snap_. "Don't say it's your fault because it's not! Newland would have realized one way or another and you were only trying to protect me…" He tried to give a smile of gratitude, but it failed miserably. "I had the chalk and… I couldn't protect _you_."

Snap and Penny simultaneously widened their mouths, both taken aback by his odd confession which neither of them believed true. "No…" Snap rasped, but that seemed to be all he could get out. Penny's previous attempts to rid such thoughts from Rudy's mind hadn't worked, and she knew that any further persistence with the same thing was only going to be deflected again. As much as the two disagreed with their friend, they had no idea what to say.

Each sat in silence, either gazing at the ground or occasionally to each other. Apparently nobody could think of the right words. Rudy's thoughts continued to twirl in his mind, and he felt his face fall with utter depression at their situation. On top of everything, the trio was extraordinarily exhausted, and Rudy, for one, was entirely unsure how he or either of the others was going to sustain themselves much longer.

"Rudy," Penny suddenly said with an urgency that surprised him, and at first he thought it was going to be another pointless try at convincing him of his innocence, but he realized that she wasn't even looking at him. Her gaze was fixed on the direction Newland and the others had gone. There was a new determination in her voice, and he wasn't quite sure where it had come from. "We have to find a way to stop them. Before they can get to the Real World." She looked at Snap again, and felt her eyes steering clear of his wounds. A flicker of sympathy stroked her heart as she looked at him forlornly. "ChalkZone won't be safe for anyone if-"

"You mean…you think we should follow them?" Rudy cried, completely confused.

"We have to stop them before they get to the mine," Penny responded.

"How would we do that?" He couldn't begin to imagine how she thought they could possibly do anything to halt their enemies' progress, especially that now that_ they_ were the ones with the chalk. "We'd never catch up to them!"

"We'd need some sort of transportation," Penny replied, saying it more to herself than to him as her eyes scanned the surrounding area. "We'd need…" She stopped as her gaze rested on the massive 'We R Cars' sign.

"…A car…" Rudy finished, his eyes widening upon realization that some sort of hope, however small, had been lying so close to them, and they'd been too distracted to even think of it before. Though Rudy had to admit, the last thing he wanted to do was try and catch up with the others. It seemed hopeless, and they needed to help Snap…somehow. But at the same time, he knew that if Newland and the others exposed ChalkZone, Snap certainly wouldn't be safe, and neither would any of the other Zoners. He wasn't sure how much hope Penny's plan had, but fresh panic at the thought of ChalkZone's exposure filled his mind, and couldn't bear to dwell on what could happen to Snap and the other inhabitants if Newland's plan succeeded. Suddenly acutely aware of how little time they had, Rudy stood up.

"We have to hurry," Penny continued worriedly, giving Snap another concerned glance. "But we do know ChalkZone better than they do. If we can find a fast vehicle we can probably get there before them. And Rudy…" Her gaze darted around the surrounding area again wildly, resting on a tree not far from the hill they had first spotted Newland and the others from, on which a few birds were roosting. "See if those birds can talk," she said, pointing. "If they can, tell them to head to the mine and tell Biclops to…to block the entrance. That should buy us some time."

Rudy merely nodded and then sped off toward the tree, knowing that any amount of hesitation could cost them precious time. In the back of his mind, he was terrified of the thought of running into Newland and the others on their way to the mine, but he ignored the feeling. They would be going to the river first and then following it, but he and Penny could simply head straight to the Chalk Mine. He told himself that unless they encountered Vinnie and Terry or Newland when they got close to the river, they could make it to the mine first without ever intercepting them. He still didn't want to think of what would happen if they did.

Reaching the tree, he called out to the birds, two of which simply squawked at him and fluttered away at the sound of his voice. The last one, however, hesitated, looking at him in confusion. He realized that this was the first lucky thing that had happened to them all night; this bird could clearly understand him. He quickly gave it Penny's instructions, and the bird flew off without hesitation, leaving Rudy to wonder if it had seen what had been going on or simply recognized him as the Great Creator and was happy to do what he said. Turning away from the tree, he ran back to Penny, who had been waiting in hesitation, wanting to move toward the cars but unwilling to leave Snap's side.

Looking down at his injured friend, Rudy felt once again unsure what to do. Snap was certainly in no condition to travel anywhere, and if they ran into Newland on the way, well, it could turn out disastrous. However, he knew they couldn't just leave Snap there, especially when the surrounding areas were being prowled by Newland's new drawings. It was clear that Snap fully understood the seriousness of the situation as well.

"You two gotta stop them!" Snap said, gritting his teeth. "Y-you can leave me here, you-"

"NO," Penny told him firmly. "We are NOT leaving you. We'll…we'll head to the back of the Chalk Mine and you can stay there. They won't see you. And…and immediately after we stop them, we'll find someone who can help you, and…find a way to make sure those three intruders stay out of ChalkZone for good."

"Okay..." Rudy said shakily. He wanted to ask Penny if she was sure they could do this. It seemed crazy, and he knew she was probably just acting out of desperation, but he couldn't think of anything else to do himself. He thought he would have felt better now that they had at least some sort of plan, and one that seemed like it might possibly work, but he couldn't help feeling terrified. ChalkZone was about to be revealed to everyone, which would lead to parts of it turned into a theme park run by ChalkZone citizen slaves, and the rest of it ravaged by people from the Real World, people who wouldn't understand or care for its well being.

He looked to Snap again, realizing that he wouldn't be able to stand in his current state, and he and Penny still weren't sure of the extent of his injuries. However, they knew they needed to move fast. Rudy hated the thought that they would have to force him to move, but he reminded himself that after they protected the Chalk Mine, they would be able to head straight from there back to the hotel, and if no one there could help, they would find someone who could.

Kneeling down toward Snap, Rudy put his friend's arm around his shoulder, careful to avoid the two gashes Dooth's claws had left on Snap's upper arm, as Penny did the same with the other one, and together, they helped him to his feet. Moving as quickly as they could, they half-carried Snap over to where the parked cars were, trying their best not to injure their friend further.

As soon as they reached the edge of the cars, Rudy and Penny quickly scanned the area for one that looked suitable to use. "I dunno about this," Rudy whispered worriedly as he looked from one car to the next. "I'm not really sure how any of these cars work…it's…it's different when I draw one and I can imagine what it would be like to control it…"

"These can't be _that_ much different," Penny replied, but he could tell she was worried as well.

"Maybe…but we'll need one that's fast…" He quickly slipped from Snap's side and began running along the rows of cars, hoping he would be able to choose the one that could take them to the mine quickly enough. He knew he was wasting valuable time searching, but he had to be sure they had a fast enough transportation to make it before Newland and his associates did.

Suddenly, one of the lined up cars caught his eye. It had obviously been drawn by some kid imagining speed as its primary function, as it looked more like a gigantic toy rocket than a car. Its appearance was almost silly, like it was something that would belong in the Dome of the Future, and Rudy could only hope it functioned much better. It certainly seemed like the fastest option, and he peered back down the row of cars at Penny and Snap. Penny was watching him, obviously worried about the amount of time it was taking him to look. He ran back toward her, quickly explaining what he'd found as he helped her bring Snap up to the vehicle.

"I…I'm not sure about this, Rudy," Penny said, looking it over the strange car uneasily. "We can't really be sure it's safe…maybe we should try one of the other cars."

"I want to look at this one," Rudy told her. "The kid who drew it obviously wanted it to be fast…" Leaving Snap's side again, he opened the front door and climbed inside, realizing that the interior was unlike any car he had seen, and was covered in all sorts of strange knobs and buttons. There was no steering wheel, and in its place was a dull screen with a hazy map on it, and as he relayed this information to Penny, he added, "I think you're meant to tell it where to go, like the futuristic car Snap got from here once."

Penny, however, still didn't seem convinced. "Rudy, that car was _dangerous_."

"I know, but…this one doesn't seem voice activated," he replied, recalling what Snap had told him about his mishap with the vehicle he'd gotten in order to attend a car show. "It's probably the only thing fast enough."

He wasn't sure if Penny was going to agree, but to his surprise she just gave him a determined nod. "Okay."

As Rudy waited for the others to get in the back seats, he noticed that someone was shouting at them. Confused, he looked out of the still open door, and realized that the walrus salesman who owned the place was heading toward them, looking very alarmed. He was surprised to see the Zoner, as he had been sure he'd run off, but he looked very concerned, and at first Rudy thought that one of the hostile creatures Newland had drawn recently was approaching. However, it was soon clear that it was _he and his friends_ who were upsetting the Zoner.

"Wait, whataya think you're doing?" he was calling as he approached them. "Do you plan to pay for that?"

Rudy couldn't believe that the Zoner would be concerned with such a thing when he knew that ChalkZone's secrecy and safety was in great danger, and had met that danger face to face several minutes before. However, he didn't feel like trying to explain it to him further. "I'll draw you another one when I get back," he called, shutting the door and turned to the screen with the map.

The walrus Zoner, however, continued to shout to him about paying for the car before he came closer and noticed Penny, who was trying to help Snap climb into the back seat. "Stop!" he cried. "That's a-a brand new car! And he'll get blood on it-"

"Look, I'll draw you plenty of cars later if you want!" Rudy cried, feeling a bit of anger, in spite of the situation, at the Zoner's ridiculous statements. "But we need this one now!"

Penny ignored the angry salesman as well, and as soon as Snap was inside, she shut that door too, and leaned into the gap between the front and back seats to watch Rudy as he tried to figure out how to program a destination for the car. To his relief, it was quite easy with Penny's assistance. He simply navigated to the right place on the map using the buttons near the screen and selected an exact spot. He chose one right behind the mine, out of view of anyone approaching from the river route. In spite of the situation, he gave a small smile, feeling a bit of his confidence return. Maybe Penny was right. Maybe they did have more of a chance than he'd thought.

"Okay…" Rudy began, ignoring the still angry shouts of the salesman outside as he peered at the screen, which now had a red mark circling the destination they had chosen. "It knows where we're supposed to go…how do we get it to start?"

Penny only shrugged, unable to make any sense of the rest of the buttons and levers, and Rudy tentatively tried a few as Penny got back in her seat, strapping her seatbelt back on and watching Rudy worriedly, acutely aware of how time was running out. Snap was simply leaning against the car door, his eyes half closed.

"It's not working!" Rudy muttered as he gritted his teeth in frustration. Most of the buttons he pressed didn't seem to do anything, and the lever he pulled only turned on a startlingly chilly air conditioning. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to anything except the screen used to choose a destination, and he was quickly growing worried. Rapidly, he began pressing buttons and pulling levers, ignoring when the windows rolled down and music started to blare loudly throughout the vehicle.

"Rudy, try to turn that off!" Penny cried, cringing as one of the buttons he pressed increased the volume exponentially.

However, in his frantic state, he had no intention of trying to go back and find the exact button he'd pushed. They didn't have time. His heart racing, he reached for a lever on the far side and pulled it down.

All at once he heard a blast from the back end of the car and in alarm, looked out the open window, seeing flame streaming from the rocket-like car's back end. It reminded him instantly of the rockets he often drew on his own shoes, and his eyes widened in horrified realization. He had a split second to pull his head back inside before the car suddenly blasted forward at an alarming speed, leaving the cars around it and the salesman in the dust.

Rudy was thrown back against the seat as the rest of the cars in the lot began to pass by in a blur. Their rocket car rammed straight into one, but to Rudy's surprise, the car they'd run into was the only one that took any damage, and it was swiftly knocked aside as their strange vehicle careened forward, taking no heed of anything in its path.

Rudy realized that he'd made a dreadful mistake. The car seemed to be taking a _literally_ direct route to the back of the Chalk Mine, and if they ran into anything like a hill or water, it would probably try to move straight through that. Frantically, he tried to find the lever that he'd used to start the car, but somehow, all he managed to do was somehow make the blaring music even louder. With the car moving so fast, he found it difficult to focus on the levers, and it only made him grow more confused.

"Rudy!" Penny cried from the seat behind him, and he looked up from the control panel, seeing that they were headed right toward a grove of trees.

He braced himself, shielding his face as the car slammed right into the first one, breaking it clean in half and causing the entire car to jolt violently. Regardless, it did not slow down, and he had to lean away from the windows to avoid being hit by branches as the car sped onwards.

Almost as soon as they had arrived, the trees around them vanished, and they were in an open area once again. Rudy could see the ground zooming past him at an astonishing speed, and now that the car was steadier, he hurriedly looked around and reached for the lever he'd pulled and moved it a bit in the opposite direction, hoping to slow the car down. However, it did nothing, and he realized that the screen he'd used to set the destination was still flashing. He turned his attention to that, wondering if there was some way to stop it or alter the route.

He realized that although they wouldn't have to cross the river to get around to the back of the Chalk Mine, they were certainly going to run into other obstacles. He wasn't sure what to do, however, and as he tried to fiddle with the buttons around the screen, it seemed to be locked on that destination, unable to change course until it reached it. He realized with a jolt of panic that something like this _did_ belong in the Dome of the Future. It was no better than the car Snap had gotten before!

"Rudy, you…you have to find a way to slow down!" he heard Penny call from behind, but at the speed the car was going, he didn't want to try turning around to look at her.

"I can't!" he cried, frantically jabbing at the buttons surrounding the screen.

Up ahead, the ground sloped steeply downward, and Rudy could do nothing but warn the others as he braced himself for the fall, his eyes widening in terror. Almost as soon as he'd noticed the ledge, the car shot straight over it, suspended in the air for one terrifying second before its wheels jolted back against the ground and it continued its frantic pace.

The thought that they might hit an innocent Zoner terrified Rudy, but despite his efforts, he could do nothing but sit and watch as the ChalkZone landscapes zoomed by, unable to stop the car from plowing through trees, foliage, and in one instance, a small empty house. However, he could tell by the map that they were rapidly approaching the mine, and the one calming thought that reached him through his terror was that they were certain to be ahead of Newland and the others now. He gripped the armrest of the car tightly, his eyes focused on the way ahead, when suddenly a dull gray shape appeared in their path.

"There it is!" Rudy cried, feeling relief that there didn't seem to be any more obstacles in between them and the mine. He could also see the river, and there was no sign of Newland and the others either. That was definitely good.

As he looked ahead again, he realized that the car was heading for the Chalk Mine at an alarming pace, and terror raced through him as he noticed that the car wasn't slowing down.

Penny had obviously noticed as well, because she called out for him to stop the vehicle's progress, but he was already frantically pushing any button within reach. The Chalk Mine, growing startlingly closer with every passing second, loomed over him, and he had no time to react as the massive gray rock of the mountain was suddenly only yards from them. He had no time to duck, no time to even blink as the car continued on its collision course toward the solid rock. A scream caught in his throat as all of a sudden the gray wall was the only thing he could see through the windshield.

However, just before the tip of the front of the car struck it, it came to a sudden and complete stop.

Rudy knew that if it weren't for the car's seatbelts, he would have been thrown onto the control panel. Hardly able to move due to shock, he stared down at the screen, which was now flashing with a cheerful looking "You have arrived!" message scrolling across the bottom, along with a completely unnecessary display of virtual confetti raining down across the map.

After a moment, he slumped back against the seat, feeling the fear slowly ease from his mind. Numbly, he opened the door to the car and started to climb out, knowing that there wasn't any time for them to wait around.

Penny started to feel her terror retreating as well, and she realized that throughout the whole ride, she had been tightly gripping Snap's arm. Quickly apologizing, she took off her seatbelt and climbed out of the car after Rudy, who had run around to her side to make sure she and Snap were all right. He stood beside her as she stepped onto the grass and then looked at Snap, who looked just as shocked as Penny had.

"What was he thinking, trying to sell a car like that?" Penny gasped as she stepped back from it.

"The same thing he's thinking when he tries to sell any other car," Rudy muttered, remembering what Snap had told him about his misadventures with the vehicles from We R Cars. He turned to Snap again. "Wait here," Rudy told him. "We'll be back soon." Snap only looked up to him weakly before closing his eyes again, resting against the seat. Rudy promised himself that he _would_ come back soon. He could only hope it would be with good news.

"Come on," Penny told him urgently, and he reluctantly tore his gaze from Snap and followed her as she began to follow along the mountain and head to the front of the mine, knowing that any wasted time would be giving Newland and the others a chance to reach the rest of the magic chalk. "Let's hope Biclops had time to block the entrance!"

As they ran alongside the stone wall of the mountain, Rudy felt suddenly panicked at the thought of leaving Snap alone. What would happen to him if Newland's group found him there? He knew that he was out of sight of the mine's entrance, out of the way Newland was traveling, so it wasn't a likely probability, but he couldn't ignore the fact that until they stopped Newland and the animals that were now running rampant in ChalkZone, they weren't safe.

Rudy tried to run the next part of their plan through his mind. It was simple. Get some magic chalk. Stop them before they get to the chalk mine. Help Snap and stop the animals from causing any more problems. Then try to fix the parts of ChalkZone that had been damaged. As he thought this, he realized that it wasn't really that simple. Anything could go wrong. But this time, he was going to make sure that he didn't do anything reckless if he could help it. He wasn't going to let Snap, or Penny, get hurt again. No one was going to suffer for his mistakes this time.

They heard the sound of the Amazin' River up ahead and ran around an outcrop of rock to the flat stretch of ground in front of the Chalk Mine. But when they turned around, the sight that greeted them made them stop dead in their tracks, and they realized that right now, Snap wasn't the one who needed to worry.

The entrance to the Chalk Mine looked like it had been blasted open with dynamite. Small chunks of rock littered the ground around the entrance, as well as the tattered remains of the sign that was usually positioned over the opening. There was no sign of Biclops…no sign of anyone. It was a bizarrely eerie and unwelcome sight for a place that was usually so familiar.

Rudy began to feel himself start to tremble all over, unable to move his gaze from the sight as he stepped back further away from the scene and began shaking his head in disbelief. "We're…too late…" he stated, unable to keep the fear and devastation from his voice. "They've already taken it…" He froze, knowing in the back of his mind that he should go back to Snap, try to find Biclops, or at least do _something_, but his body refused to move.

"No…" Penny began, her gaze scanning something on the ground as she caught Rudy's attention. Rudy looked as well, and it took him a moment to realize that what she was staring at were faint indents in the ground, shaped like giant paws. They had obviously been made by the three headed dog Vinnie Raton and Terry Bouffant had drawn, so he wasn't sure what about them had held her attention, but after a moment, she continued, "These marks were made by their Cerberus drawing. They only go one way...which means they're still in the mine." This news surprised Rudy, as he'd expected they'd merely grab a few more pieces of magic chalk and run to the Real World, but then he remembered that, earlier, they had obviously stayed in ChalkZone for a while to test out the small piece of chalk they had stolen from him earlier that night. Still, he thought, what were they still doing in the mine? Had they just entered? "You know what we have to do." Penny looked up at Rudy. "We have to go in after them."

"What?" he cried, staring at her as if she'd gone insane. "No…we have to get out of here…before they come out! We should go find help-"

"Rudy, I…I don't think any Zoners would be able to help us, even if there were some around," Penny quickly interjected. "But if we can get some magic chalk, we might stand a chance at-"

"How? They'll see us as soon as we set foot in the entrance!" Rudy cried. "We won't get as far as five steps in there, let alone to where the chalk is! And they still have those creatures with them…" He trailed off. Newland had seemed to realize that the reason Snap had said he couldn't hurt Rudy, due to the threat of the police finding out, was a legitimate one, so he at least knew Penny was safe from injury. But they were not safe from capture, and Bob could easily find a way to keep them trapped and out of the way before they could do anything to stop his plan from going forward. And as he thought about it, Rudy wasn't quite sure Bob was actually sincere about not wanting to injure him after all. "I just don't want anyone else to get hurt…"

"Rudy…" Penny began, pausing to glance back at the mine, knowing that there wasn't much time to try to reassure him. She put a hand on his shoulder, and he looked at her, the panic in his gaze begging her to run. "It _wasn't_ your fault Snap got hurt. You were only trying to do what was best, but…" She briefly paused to glance at the entrance to the mine. "We can't give up now. We can _still_ help ChalkZone."

Rudy realized as she said this that, as dreadful as it all seemed, she was right. Even if they were captured and stopped, it was better than a hopeless plan of trying to find a Zoner who might have some chance of helping them in time. If he was right, and Newland really wouldn't harm them, there wasn't much they had to lose by trying. They would have to be returned to their homes, and without injury, so it was unlikely any harm would come to them. Newland would have no idea Snap was near, so he wouldn't be able to use his friend's safety as blackmail this time.

"I think we can do it," Penny continued determinedly, "but we need to go now. I'm not frightened of any of them, and they know better than to hurt us. You won't have to worry about that." She paused, realizing that the look of terror did not leave Rudy's face. "But if you want to, I'll go in alone and you can stay here. You can choose."

Rudy wasn't sure how she could be so confident in such a crazy plan, but seeing that she believed it could work helped him have some hope. And as he thought about the awful wounds Newland's Zoner minions had inflicted on Snap, he realized that if they didn't try something, many more ChalkZone inhabitants could end up that way, or worse, and none of them would be safe if the world was made openly accessible to those in the Real World. He felt anger beginning to return to him as he thought of the destruction the three intruders' plan would wreak on ChalkZone. The Zoners who would be hurt and killed, or without homes, or forced into a life of slavery, or simply damaged by someone who did not understand how fragile some of the inhabitants were. He knew that Penny was right about Newland being unlikely to harm them, and at the moment, they were the only two, who, in the short space of time they had, might be able to help save this world.

He looked at Penny and nodded. "Okay. Let's go."

All too aware of the urgency, Penny gave him a small smile and dashed toward the entrance of the mine. Even with the wider opening, it was hard to see much of what was inside due to the contrast in light, but they pinned themselves against the outside of the rock wall on the edge of the entrance, knowing that they'd stand out starkly against the DayZone sun from the inside. Penny quickly took off her backpack, knowing it would only hinder her and set it down before peering inside. There was no sound from within the mine, and the two gave each other quick, still somewhat scared glances before they ducked against the wall and crept inside.


	16. Confrontation

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Sixteen – Confrontation**

The light dimmed around the two children as they quietly edged their way into the Chalk Mine, keeping their backs against the stone wall. Rudy could feel his heart hammering in his chest as he followed Penny, realizing all too well that one small mistake could destroy their chances of helping ChalkZone, and this time, it would be for good. He tried to steady his breathing, fearing irrationally that the people in the mine could hear it.

They kept going, moving slowly and not daring to increase their pace. It wasn't long before they heard voices, and they quickly ducked behind a large rock that Rudy knew must have tumbled from the walls when Newland and the others had forced their way inside. He glanced around at the floor, but the damage hadn't reached the clusters of magic chalk; there were no pieces on the ground he could pick up.

As he peered carefully over the top of the boulder, he stifled a gasp as he realized that in the main chamber of the mine, not far from their hiding place, Biclops was lying on the stone floor, unmoving. However, after the initial rush of panic, Rudy realized that the Chalk Mine's guardian had no visible injuries, and he looked not as if he'd been knocked out, but almost as if he'd simply fallen asleep. He realized that the intruders would want to make sure he wouldn't wake up while they were in the mine themselves, so they had to have done something to make sure he would be asleep or unconscious for quite some time. He wasn't sure what, but he guessed it was Terry Bouffant and Vinnie Raton who would have done it. He knew Bob Newland would likely have resorted to much more barbaric methods.

Shifting his body so that he could peer around the side of the boulder, he could now make out Newland and his accomplices. His eyes narrowed as he realized that they were taking as much magic chalk as they could fit into large sacks that one of them had drawn. Bob was talking with Vinnie, though he couldn't hear their words, as Terry walked around the cavern with a video camera.

"I'm going into the tunnels," Terry announced loudly after a moment. "Are you coming?" She turned to the other two, and Vinnie shrugged and followed her, but Bob shook his head.

As their massive three-headed dog turned to head after its masters, one of the heads suddenly froze, lifting its muzzle to the air and then turning in Rudy and Penny's direction. Alarmed, they ducked against the rock, hoping the mine would have enough unfamiliar smells to the beast so as not to give their position away.

After a moment, Vinnie cried, "Come on!" and a few seconds passed before Rudy risked a glance around the rock, seeing the dog reluctantly trailing after its masters into the tunnels.

He heaved a small sigh of relief, but fear and frustration threatened to overwhelm him at the knowledge that Newland was still in the main cavern, and it was likely that Boorat and Dooth were as well, and there was no way he could sneak to the magic chalk.

Suddenly, Penny nudged his arm. He looked to her, about to ask in a whisper what she wanted to tell him, but she only held a finger to her lips and slowly pointed upwards.

Almost directly above their heads was a small cluster of magic chalk Rudy hadn't noticed before. It was so tantalizingly close, but still well out of their reach. If they could stand on the rock, Rudy was sure that one of them could grab a piece, but with Newland so close by, he knew that if they left their hiding place, they were sure to be spotted.

Peering around the boulder, Rudy wondered what Newland could be doing to make him want to stay in that single cavern rather than explore the tunnels with the others. It frustrated him, and as he watched the man walking around the cavern casually with a stick of magic chalk in his hand, he silently willed him to go off and try to explore, or at least look into the tunnels long enough for one of them to swipe a piece of magic chalk. He glanced at Penny, and he could see her eagerness and frustration reflected back at him. He tensed, waiting, as he silently watched the cavern, hoping that Vinnie and Terry would be occupied long enough so as not to return for some time. If they'd wanted Biclops to stay asleep for a while, they must have been planning to film the entire mine, or at least a large part of it. It gave them more time than he'd thought they'd have, and he waited anxiously to see what Newland would do.

Someone roughly grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him away from the rock, lifting him until his feet were dangling above the ground. He was promptly turned around to find himself staring into Boorat's grey-furred face.

"What do you think you're doing?" the rat Zoner growled, and Rudy could do nothing but stare back at him in horror, wondering how he and Penny had been so distracted that they hadn't noticed him creeping around the cavern to their hiding place. A helpless terror rushed through him, and he found himself unable to form words as Boorat demanded an answer to his question, shaking him back and forth in frustration when he didn't answer.

Rudy heard a cry and turned to the left after Boorat stopped his attempt to get him to talk, seeing that Penny had been captured as well, and Dooth held her hands firmly behind her back. His metal claws were positioned right in front of her face, but she only glared back defiantly, and though Dooth looked annoyed enough to harm her, Rudy knew that he would know better than to try.

"Leave her alone!" Rudy managed to shout anyway, hoping that at least Dooth would focus his anger on him instead.

Yet neither Dooth nor Boorat reacted at all to the statement, and instead Rudy and Penny were dragged unceremoniously into the middle of the cavern and then held standing right in front of a very surprised Newland.

Rudy wasn't sure what he expected the artist to say, but instead of looking angry, like he'd expected, Bob only seemed confused and mildly annoyed. "How did you get here so fast?" he asked, giving Rudy and Penny a perplexed stare.

Rudy was certainly not inclined to tell him the truth, and thus give away the fact that their car…and Snap…was nearby, so he chose to ignore the question entirely. In spite of the fear and the shame he felt about being made to stand there in front of his enemy like he was guilty and receiving a detention, he lifted his head and met Newland's cold stare with one of his own.

"Oh, I see," the man muttered. "You're still trying to stop me." He shook his head. "Ridiculous." Breaking away from Rudy's gaze, he walked toward one of the walls opposite of where Biclops was lying, quickly sketching something while Rudy and Penny waited worriedly. He stepped back, and they realized that what he'd drawn was a cage. He nodded to Boorat and Dooth, who roughly hauled both kids toward it and shoved them inside through a hatch on the top, which was quickly closed and locked.

The cage was so small that Rudy had to crouch down, unable to even sit up straight as he gripped the bars next to Penny, frightfully glancing up at the door on the cage's ceiling and fiddling with it only a moment before determining that it was useless. Penny was casting her gaze all around the outside of the cage, looking for any fragments of chalk that might have fallen from the ceiling, but there was nothing. Rudy turned back to Newland, who was completely ignoring them, leaving Dooth to guard the cage while Boorat took to exploring the cavern, satisfied that they wouldn't escape.

Examining the cage, it was clear that it wasn't designed to be opened easily, and Penny quickly confirmed that there was no way to open the door from the inside. The brief moment of hope Rudy had felt no less than a minute earlier only made it all the more devastating that they had been captured and imprisoned so easily. After another futile attempt at finding a weakness in the cage, he grabbed the bars in front of him tightly. The thought of all that Newland had done – and would do – to ChalkZone and those who called it home filled him with anger and frustration as he accepted that there was nothing he could do from inside the cage.

Bob seemed to notice his glare, as he looked to Rudy with another glance of annoyance. Beside him in the cage, Rudy noticed Penny shooting him a warning look, fearful of angering their captors, but at the moment, Rudy didn't care. There wasn't much else they could do to them.

"Why are you so angry?" Bob sneered at him. "The chalk world isn't _yours_. Don't they teach you kids how to _share_ in school?"

"You don't understand!" Rudy shouted back, knowing it was hopeless to try to explain the damage exposing ChalkZone to the Real World would do. He knew that Newland wasn't going to care even if he did understand. He cared nothing for the inhabitants of ChalkZone, not even some of his own, if he had so callously killed off his termite species. "I actually _care_ about this place, unlike you!"

Bob didn't even bother to reply to his statement, instead shaking his head in mock sadness. "So much anger. Really, Rudy, calm down. I've done nothing to _you_."

"You hurt my friend!" Rudy called back.

Bob shrugged. "You'll get over it."

"Snap didn't do _anything_!"

Bob sighed, exasperated. "Look, just be quiet, will you?" he muttered. "I'm busy."

Rudy had no intentions of keeping quiet, but as he got ready to yell something back, Penny gave him a warning look and shook her head, and he reluctantly nodded in response before averting his gaze from Newland. He instead looked at the cage floor, then back at the bars, wondering to himself briefly if it would be possible to dissolve them with his own saliva. He knew there would be no way to erase part of a drawing as thick as the bars were that way, and he quickly discarded that idea. He wished Penny hadn't left her backpack by the entrance to the cave, as she had had Real World water in there. As he thought about it, he realized neither idea would work even if they were probable; Dooth was watching them and would catch them if they tried anything. Even if they had the means to, dissolving the bars wouldn't do anything but put them back on the receiving end of Newland's anger.

Penny, meanwhile, was watching the artist, unsure what he was doing as he looked around the cavern. She wondered if he planned to use it for anything later, and cringed at the thought of Newland being the one in charge of magic chalk access. Bouffant and Raton, she knew, would never allow that, but she knew that having any of them in charge would be disastrous, and all three of them together…would certainly be worse.

Sighing, Rudy slumped against the bars in the back of the cage, out of ideas as he watched Newland writing notes down in a book of his. He glanced toward the tunnel Vinnie and Terry had gone down, but they showed no sign of returning. He knew that if they wanted to film as much of the mine as they could, they would be gone for quite a while. As he remembered from when he and Snap had snuck off into the forbidden tunnels one time, there were miles of underground pathways in the mine. He wasn't quite sure which tunnel Terry and Vinnie had taken.

Casting his eyes downward, he wasn't sure why he thought that it mattered how much time the intruders' exploration bought them, unless by some miracle they could find a way out of Newland's cage. Bob showed no sign of wanting to go off exploring himself at the moment, and seemed content to wait among the bags of magic chalk he had stored, casting an occasional glance at Biclops. Rudy wondered if he was there to make sure the giant didn't wake up. Bob, however, didn't seem worried, and Rudy guessed that he didn't expect him to wake for some time. Still, Rudy looked to Biclops desperately, silently hoping that he would regain consciousness and manage to help them. However, there was no sign of him awakening, and even if there was, Rudy feared what Bob would do to him. He could draw faster than any artist Rudy had known of, and without losing any accuracy, and in ChalkZone, that ability was a serious threat.

"You should've gone home, kid," Dooth muttered from near the cage, completely ignorant, Rudy realized, to the fact that there had been no portal for them to go home through. "My creator might just put you on his 'banned' list once he starts letting other people into this place because of your snotty behavior!"

Rudy avoided the griffin's haughty gaze. He certainly wasn't afraid of getting locked out. If the magic chalk was given out freely, it wouldn't be hard to find someone who would give him a piece. But Dooth's empty threat was not what made him so devastated. It was ChalkZone itself that he was worried about. Ignoring the jeering taunts of Newland's creation, he closed his eyes and rested his head against the bars, wondering if it was even possible that there was anything left he could do.

**ooo**

Snap was beginning to realize that Rudy had been gone a strangely long time. As he'd waited in the car, there had been no sound of a conflict from outside the mine, no sound of any other group approaching, and once the car had stopped and shut down all its obnoxious functions such as the blasting music, everything had been eerily silent. He was growing extremely worried, and as much as he tried to convince himself they might still be making preparations with Biclops, he knew that Newland had to have reached the mine by now; too much time had passed for him to still be traveling. There was only one clear explanation. Rudy and Penny had arrived too late.

Snap realized that if Penny and Rudy hadn't come back yet, and there was no sign of a conflict, something bad had to have happened. His friends were likely captured or stopped in some way, as he realized they would have come straight back had they found the mine empty. But what if it was worse than that? It had seemed like ages had passed, but he couldn't tell for sure. Had it really been that long, or was it just the pain making everything seem longer? As Snap had waited, the pain of his injuries had seemed to grow even worse. Pain wracked his entire body, his head felt like it was about to split open, and he felt like his back was on fire. At first he had simply been waiting, trying to count down the seconds and waiting for Rudy and Penny return, but he had come to realize that it had simply been to long. It was clear that something wasn't right. And unfortunately, he thought again, the only plausible explanation was that they had been captured and forced to stay out of the way.

He thought desperately to try to think of something he could do. He didn't dare try to use the car to find help, and he didn't think there would be any help to find at the moment, either. He tried to picture what could be happening in his mind, realizing that Terry, Bob, and Vinnie were probably in the main cavern gathering magic chalk. That made sense. If they were there, Rudy and Penny probably were too, as they'd want to keep an eye on them to make sure they didn't try anything. He knew the place was full of magic chalk, and it seemed like it would be so easy for Rudy and Penny to grab a piece and use it to escape. They had to be preventing that, or watching them, as he knew Rudy and Penny would have quickly done something if they could.

He thought that somehow causing a distraction might give his friends enough time to grab a piece of magic chalk and use it to draw something, but he also knew that simply walking into the Chalk Mine would only end with him being punished in front of Rudy and Penny again. He desperately tried to think of some other way, and thought about trying to maneuver the car around into the mine using several short destination areas on the screen, but he knew that if the vehicle blasted into the Chalk Mine…it could easily hurt Rudy or Penny. After all, he had no way of knowing where in the cavern they would be, and by the time the car was near enough for him to find out, it would be too late to change course. He tried to think of anything else that could possibly help his friends, but due to the pain, he found it difficult to think clearly. However, he soon thought of one _crazy_ idea.

Not long ago, Biclops had asked him to guard the Chalk Mine for him while he competed in a race. Snap had eagerly agreed, but it hadn't taken long for him to become extremely worried at the prospect of intruders. That day, he had spent a long time setting up various traps around the mine. It had turned out to be a disaster, as instead of trapping intruders, he'd managed to get both himself and Biclops caught. Biclops had been furious at the time, but soon after that, all the traps had been removed. Well, all but one.

On a more recent visit to the mine, Snap had noticed that one of his traps was still lying in the main chamber, hidden cleverly out of the sight of anyone who wouldn't know it was there. He'd placed the trap there during his brief time as the mine's guardian in case an intruder tried to avoid the main traps by sneaking around the walls, and Biclops had apparently missed it when he got rid of the others. Knowing that bringing the subject up with Biclops would anger him, Snap had decided to simply not tell him and just hope he wouldn't notice. It was behind a lump of rocky stalagmite, well out of the way anyone would normally be walking, so he had figured there was no harm in not saying anything.

He had an idea…a crazy idea…that if he could lure Dooth or one of the other Zoners into it, Newland and the others would be distracted long enough for him to find a piece of chalk and give it to Rudy. He knew it was a risky plan, and just thinking of Dooth using his claws again filled him with horror, but it was the only sort of plan he had, and considering what was at stake, he couldn't simply _not try_, and he was determined to act before he had a chance to change his mind or talk himself out of it.

He realized that in his state, it would take him ages to get into the mine if he tried to walk. However, he could try to maneuver the car close to it so he wouldn't have far to go, and he decided on that. He hadn't seen exactly what Penny and Rudy had done to work the controls, but he knew it wasn't difficult, as they had figured it out quickly, and he leaned forward to look between the front seats at the screen still displaying its ridiculous cheerful message.

Gritting his teeth, he slowly crawled to the front of the car, pausing for a moment to rest once he reached the front before hauling himself onto the chair and turning to face the screen. Luckily, the controls were not hard to figure out, and he quickly set a destination a few yards to his right, knowing that the car would avoid the rocky edge of the mountain. He'd briefly seen the lever Rudy had used, and reached for it, bracing himself.

The car turned itself a bit and then shot forward, coming to an abrupt halt a second later which nearly threw Snap against the control screen. The frigid air conditioning and painfully loud music which Rudy hadn't been able to turn off earlier had returned, and both only increased his headache as he stared at the annoying flashing "You have arrived!" screen an inch away from his face.

Straightening himself slowly, he set the next destination, this time more prepared for the sudden jolt. The car moved a few yards further, before coming to another abrupt stop, the flashing "You have arrived!" starting all over again. Snap quickly moved it further, using that method to slowly edge his way around the mine. Luckily, he soon managed to have the car parked in front of the Chalk Mine entrance, or as close as he dared, knowing that the mine's occupants might easily hear it. He slowly opened the door of the car, frustrated that he couldn't see what was going on in the mine from there. He gave himself a quick mental map of where the remaining trap was, knowing what he'd have to do to position himself between it and Dooth. He knew he'd have to move fast, and he hoped his leg injury wouldn't prove to be too much of a problem.

Waiting first to see if anyone had heard the blaring music, which thankfully turned off not long after every time the car came to a stop, he watched the entrance of the mine. There was no sign of anyone, and he opened the door wider, lowering himself to the ground.

A lightning bolt of pain shot up his right leg, causing him to cry out in spite of the fact that he knew he had to be silent, and he collapsed to the ground, his mind racing as he fought to block out the pain. He certainly hadn't expected it to be that intense, and as he waited for it to ease, he started to wonder how he was ever supposed to complete his plan.

After the worst of the pain was gone, he leaned against the car, slowly pulling himself upright again. He gingerly set down his injured leg, realizing that if he didn't put much weight on it, the pain was tolerable. If he was careful, and didn't aggravate any of his other injuries, he could still walk, although badly. He looked at the mine again, realizing that his idea was just as likely to make things worse as it was to make things better, but he simply didn't have any other options.

As he staggered toward the mine entrance, he knew there was no way for him to be inconspicuous, so he would have to, somehow, stall them long enough to get behind the trap so Dooth would run into it when he came after him. He had no doubt that the griffin would attack him, but whether he would be close enough to the trap when it happened, he wasn't sure. He just knew he had to do something, or it would be all over for ChalkZone.

**ooo**

Rudy had noticed that Dooth became tired of trying to taunt them, and at one point, he seemed completely bored of guarding them. However, Newland had quickly ordered him to pay closer attention, and, as eager to please his creator as always, he began pacing back and forth in front of the cage with vigorous enthusiasm, shouting at the captives whenever they shifted themselves or touched the bars of the cage. There was still no sign of Vinnie and Terry, and Rudy was growing increasingly worried as he watched Bob sketch out several random items with the chalk, then test whether they worked how he imagined. He seemed completely preoccupied with this, and Rudy realized he wasn't going to go search for his comrades any time soon.

"Perfect," he heard Newland mutter as he held up a device that looked like some sort of cross between a toaster and a blender. He then carelessly threw it over his shoulder, ignoring the crashing sound as the glass of the blender part shattered on impact, and began drawing something new. It was so wasteful, and in spite of their dire situation, Rudy couldn't help but feel a little annoyed at Bob's casual carelessness.

"Hey!" Boorat shouted from near where Newland was, making Rudy jump at the sudden noise. The giant rat pointed a finger somewhere near the mine entrance, and as Rudy looked to see what he was pointing at, his blood ran cold.

"Snap?" he gasped in horror, gripping the bars as he peered out at his friend, frozen like a deer in headlights against the wall of the mine, which he had obviously been using to help support himself as he edged his way along it. "Snap!" he cried again, louder this time, as he felt his mind race, wondering what his friend could possibly be doing here. Newland would be careful not to hurt him and Penny, but certainly wouldn't extend the same caution to a Zoner. "Get out of here!"

Snap heard Rudy's shout and looked to his friends. He had realized upon entering that the rocky stalagmite the trap was hidden behind was very close to Rudy and Penny's cage, and he knew that it would look like he was trying to get to the cage to free them. He realized with dread that he would be stopped before he got near enough to the trap, and remained leaning against that section of the wall, his eyes wide with terror.

"What on earth are_ you_ doing here?" Bob sneered, walking toward the center of the cavern where Boorat was waiting.

Snap realized that he couldn't get closer to the cage – or the trap – without triggering an attack from Boorat or Dooth, and met Newland's gaze, trying not to look as terrified as he felt.

"Trying to free your friends?" Newland asked mockingly. "Oh, how noble. It's pathetic how much you seem to follow Rudy around. Obsessing over your stupid, unimaginative creator who really should have moved on to better things." He cast a glare at Rudy, who was too busy staring at Snap in alarm to notice him.

Rudy and Penny were both watching the scene in terror, knowing that Snap had made a _terrible_ mistake. Whatever he had thought he was going to do, it was too late to do it now, and they knew it was probably only Newland's desire to mock him that was keeping him from telling Dooth and Boorat to tear him apart that instant. Rudy wasn't even sure how Snap had gotten into the mine; he looked like he could hardly stand, and it was clear from his friend's expression that the pain was certainly terrible, and he found it hard to imagine what could have driven Snap to try to do such a thing. Unable to fight his rising panic, Rudy gripped the bars of the cage tighter. "Snap, what are you _doing_?" he whispered to himself from between clenched teeth.

Snap had started trying to slide along the wall closer to the cage, and Bob merely watched him, realizing that he was trying to near it, but doing nothing. "Go on," he muttered, his voice almost emotionless and dripping poison. "_Try it_." He raised his hand, glancing to Boorat and Dooth before doing so, ready to snap his fingers and set off the attack.

Rudy saw a look of surprise and, to his utter confusion, even hope cross Snap's face, and he continued to move closer to the cage, to Rudy's horror. He knew that Snap had no chance of freeing them. _Why was he still going to try?_ "Snap, no! Go back!" Rudy cried, hearing Penny shout something similar, but Snap ignored both of them, still nearing the cage. Then Snap suddenly stopped, and Rudy's view of him was partially blocked by a thick lump of rock sprouting from the floor, and he turned to Newland, who gave an annoyed look.

Snap fought back fear as he looked at Dooth, hoping it would be him who was caught in the trap and not Boorat, since Newland would be much more likely to be distracted if it was his own creation who was caught. Realizing that although he was between the trap and his enemies, and that they would have to move behind the stalagmite to reach him the quickest way, no one looked to be ready to come after him. Snap looked at Dooth and, hardly believing what he was doing, called out, trying to imitate the griffin's arrogance in spite of the weakness in his voice, "You know, one of the reasons…I came to free the others is because…ChalkZone's sure to become a worse place if designs as bland and lacking in creativity as_ his_…are what the new Great Creator is going to produce." He gestured to Dooth, who stared at him in shock.

The griffin then turned to his creator, lashing at the ground with his claws. "Let me shred him! I'll-"

However, to everyone's surprise, Newland wasn't listening. His eyes flashed with anger as he stared at Snap, disbelief etched into his features. Ignoring Dooth's questioning cries, he strode toward Snap, pointing a finger at him as he snarled, "You really think it was a good idea to say that to _me_? You don't know the first thing about creativity, especially when your creator thought it was creative to draw-"

He wasn't able to finish his sentence, for a few seconds after he had strode past Rudy and Penny's cage, he had come to stand in front of Snap…or would have come to stand, if he hadn't stepped down on the very place Snap's trap was hidden.

Everyone in the room, including Snap, stared in shock and surprise as Newland suddenly stumbled forward. Before he could hit the ground, a hidden rope tightened around his ankle and wrenched him toward the ceiling. A split second later he was hanging suspended upside-down amid the hanging clusters of magic chalk, causing everyone in the room, except for Snap, to stare in utter confusion.

Rudy could only gape as Newland began screaming at Dooth to get him down before he heard a clattering sound on the ground and realized that Bob had dropped his magic chalk, which had rolled right next to the cage. Wasting no time, he reached for it, pulling it back inside and using it to draw an exit, and he and Penny quickly crawled out, but only to freeze as Boorat loomed over them.

Dooth wasted no time in flying up to the ceiling and slicing the rope holding Newland above the ground, causing him to fall unceremoniously to the cavern floor. He stood up shakily, his eyes blazing. Grabbing a piece of chalk from the nearest low-hanging cluster, he gave Snap a murderous look as he strolled toward him, quickly sketching something with the magic chalk. Realizing the danger he was in, Snap frantically started to back away along the wall, though his injury greatly slowed him down.

Rudy ducked as Boorat reached out to grab him by the arm, racing around the large rat and pausing briefly to get a glimpse of Snap's predicament before he turned around, seeing Penny darting for cover as Boorat lunged for her instead. He quickly intercepted Boorat as he used the chalk to draw a rope, causing the large Zoner to stumble long enough for Rudy to quickly draw another rope around two of his limbs before he darted away.

Rudy then turned toward Newland again, feeling a bit of relief at the thought that there was no sign of his partners returning yet. He quickly grabbed another piece of magic chalk and handed it to Penny.

Snap faltered as he edged along the wall, knowing that there was no way he could make a break for the mine entrance and have any hope of moving fast enough to escape. He looked at Newland, who was holding up the item he'd been drawing, which Snap could now see looked like some sort of blowtorch. A twisted grin formed on Newland's face, but beneath it Snap could tell that he was still shaking with anger.

"You think getting beat up hurt?" Bob cried, his mocking voice doing a very poor job of hiding his sheer rage as his eyes widened in fury, his gaze boring right into Snap's as he turned on the device, which emitted a burning white-hot flame, and his grin widened. "Well, I hope you enjoy ChalkZone's burn ward, you little brat!"

"Leave him _alone_!" Rudy cried, suddenly racing between Snap and Newland, standing in the direct path of the weapon. A moment later, Penny came to stand beside him. Bob only looked at the two in surprise; he obviously hadn't even noticed they'd escaped.

Dooth appeared at his master's side, followed shortly by Boorat, glaring at the two children standing protectively in front of their friend, but making no move to attack. Rudy realized they must be waiting for orders, and as he looked at Newland, whose face was still a mask of pure fury, he wondered for a horrifying moment if he was going to use his newly drawn weapon to harm him or Penny anyway.

After a moment, Newland lowered the blowtorch and tossed it aside. "You're right. I can't do anything to you two," he muttered coldly as he looked from Rudy to Penny. "But still, your parents would think anything of a broken arm or leg after finding out you've been sneaking off to a _dangerous_ other dimension, and got injured one time, by..._accident_, of course." He motioned back toward the cage, making it clear what he wanted them to do, but regardless of his threats, Rudy had no intention of leaving Snap at his mercy. Seeing this, Bob only continued, "They'd think you were just a little too clumsy when you climbed in here before you were supposed to…" He paused, seeing that neither of them were moving. "Get back in the cage!" he screeched, pointing.

Rudy still refused to move. He quickly glanced at Penny, willing her to run, but she only shook her head. He didn't dare keep his eyes off Newland long enough to see what Snap was doing, but it was clear from the silence behind him that Snap wasn't moving either. There was no way his friend could run, he was likely on the verge of collapse as it was, and it wouldn't take long for Newland to send Dooth after him if he attempted it. Rudy knew that although Newland clearly thought nothing of maiming Zoners, he did seem to hesitate at the thought of harming someone from the Real World, even if only due to the prospect of getting himself into trouble for it. However, the blind rage had not left his eyes, and Rudy knew from both that and his words that he and Penny were hardly as safe as they'd previously assumed.

"BOB!" an excited voice shouted, directing everyone's attention to the tunnel entrances in the back of the cavern. It was Terry Bouffant, standing in the entrance with her video camera. "Do you want to come now or not? We're still getting footage for the show and…" Her voice trailed off as she noticed Rudy, Penny and Snap. "What are they-"

However, that momentary distraction was all Rudy needed. As Bob, Dooth and Boorat turned at the sound of her voice, he had started making a very simple drawing. A cylinder, a triangle, then a thin, short string…by the time Bob turned around and noticed him, he was already drawing a match.

"Hey!" Bob shouted. "What do you think you're-" As he reached down to grab the object, Rudy's newly-drawn firework went off.

The entire cavern was suddenly filled with multicolored light as dozens of tiny rockets burst from the cylinder, spiraling crazily around the room with a loud shrieking noise and filling the whole area with thick, colored smoke. Rudy ducked as one whizzed above his head, glancing worriedly at Biclops and feeling a bit relieved when he realized that most of the rockets were on their side of the cavern, not reaching the place where Biclops lay.

Penny raced over to Snap, who ducked as a rocket slammed into the wall inches from where he was standing. Quickly supporting him, she helped him limp toward the mine exit as chaos erupted in the cavern.

Rudy could see Dooth and Boorat scrambling for cover as Newland tried unsuccessfully to draw some sort of protection for himself, having to stop every few seconds to get out of the way of an oncoming firework. Wanting to give Penny and Snap time, he raced toward the tunnels, noting that Terry had vanished into them again the moment the rockets had gone off. He stifled a cry of pain as one struck his hand as it zoomed by, feeling a burning pain and nearly dropping his piece of magic chalk. As he turned to avoid another rocket, he could see that Dooth had escaped from the worst of the onslaught and was now blocking the entrance off from Penny and Snap. They turned around and headed back toward Rudy, and Dooth's efforts to follow them were quickly thwarted by the spinning fireworks.

Rudy lost sight of his two friends as the smoke in the mine suddenly thickened, rockets still streaming from the large one he had drawn to start with. He realized he hadn't even specified a number of rockets when he'd drawn it, he had just thought of a vague 'a lot,' and it was becoming impossible to see. He ducked toward the tunnels, wincing as a small firework struck the back of his leg. He noted that, due to their small size, they weren't incredibly harmful, and it dawned on him that the panic their enemies were experiencing wasn't going to last long.

Suddenly a bit of the smoke cleared, and he had time to see Penny and Snap stagger into one of the tunnels further into the mine. Rudy knew that they would be able to find a hiding place somewhere in there, and at the moment the maze like passages were probably safer than the outside of the mine, as Newland was less likely to find them there. However, his fear returned a moment later when Boorat hurtled after them through the opening, and after he vanished into the tunnel, the shrieking noise of the fireworks made it impossible for Rudy to tell whether he'd caught up with or captured his friends or not.

He was about to follow when a dark shape lunged at him through the smoke and he staggered backwards, recognizing it as Dooth. The griffin paid no heed to the fireworks despite the singe marks on his fur and feathers as he lunged again, and Rudy quickly ran through the thickest of the smoke, hoping to throw him off.

The smoke and blinding brightness of the fireworks seemed to do the trick, but he could hear the griffin still stumbling after him as he reached a clearer spot. Out of nowhere, Rudy felt a blow to his head, luckily without the use of claws, as Dooth appeared from the brightly colored clouded smoke and knocked him off his feet.

He collapsed roughly to the ground, feeling his leg knock into something that felt like metal. He sat up, realizing that there were only a few fireworks zooming over his head, leaving the space mostly clear of smoke. Dooth appeared again, striking out at him as he tried to sit up and sending him crashing back to the floor. He was still not using his claws, and Rudy understood that Dooth only meant to capture him, not harm. All the same, he knew that he would be in great trouble if he allowed himself to be captured by Newland again. Turning, he saw that the metal object he'd knocked into was Newland's blowtorch, the flame still spurting out the end, and he grabbed it, holding it protectively out in front of him as he faced Dooth and scrambled back to his feet.

He had no intention of using such a weapon on any living creature, but Dooth obviously had no knowledge of this. The griffin shrank back, a look of something that was almost fear crossing his feathered face. Rudy took the opportunity to dart back into the smoke and run.

Seeing a tunnel opening up ahead, he realized as he noticed the smoke clearing around him, and the fireworks becoming less and less frequent, that he had no choice but to run into it. Knowing it would only slow him down, he quickly turned off the blowtorch and threw it aside once he entered.

As the cavern came back into focus, Newland watched the boy flee into the tunnels. His eyes narrowed as he gripped the piece of chalk in his hand, realizing that he and Dooth were the only ones left in the cavern. Turning his head sharply toward his creation, he pointed in the direction Rudy had gone. "Follow him," he hissed. As Dooth nodded and turned to leave, he added, "And oh, I give you permission…to _attack_." He followed his words with a snap of his fingers.

**ooo**

As he emerged from the smoke, Rudy realized that he was in the place he and Snap had seen before, where the tunnel split off into several. He picked one at random, making sure to avoid the one that was partially boarded up, knowing all too well where it led.

The sound of wings behind him suddenly reached him, and he barely had time to move out of the way as Dooth dropped toward him from above, his claws – both normal and metal – outstretched toward him.

Rudy ducked, quickly moving to the side as the griffin came to a clumsy halt on the cave floor, shuffling his wings awkwardly as he landed. Rudy knew that at least there was too little space for him to fly properly, and he quickly set off running, knowing that there was no time to draw something to aid him.

He sped onward as quickly as he could, hearing the clinking of metal on stone as the griffin raced after him. Swerving into a side tunnel, he briefly glimpsed Dooth leaping onto the rock wall and then pushing off of it to gain momentum, his metal claws creating a jagged screech on the stone. Rudy saw the same claws headed toward him as he fought to get away, and the memory of Dooth slicing the talons across Snap's back filled his mind with renewed terror.

He ducked, and felt a small gust of air as the claws whistled over his head. He recalled that they were heavy and Dooth used them quite clumsily, but the fear didn't leave him. Continuing to run down the winding tunnel, he dodged another swipe as the griffin charged after him, taking the twists and turns in the pathway whenever they appeared.

Dooth swiped at him again, and Rudy darted toward the tunnel wall to avoid it, but felt a white-hot pain sear across his right arm as the tips of the metal claws found their mark. Ignoring the pain, he kept running, gripping his arm as he felt warm liquid running down it. Although clumsy, Dooth was certainly fast, probably faster than he was despite being unable to use his wings properly in the tunnel, and he knew he couldn't keep up the pace for long.

However, Dooth was obviously finding running difficult due to the larger new claws, so, ignoring the pain in his arm, Rudy forced himself to put on a burst of speed, increasing the distance between him and the griffin until he felt it safe to stop for a few moments. He stood in front of a flat section of wall and quickly drew a door, then flung it open and leaped inside, slamming it closed behind him.

He knew he needed to draw a lock. His arm trembling and pulsing with pain, he found drawing difficult, but managed to draw a lock in spite of it, which he promptly turned upon completion. After doing so, he fought to catch his breath as he examined the wounds on his arm. They didn't look too deep, and he felt a bit of relief before he realized that his entire arm looked red. It wasn't the wounds, it was the _lighting_. Turning around, his breath caught in his throat as he realized where he'd stumbled into.

It was the red chalk chamber.

The sound of splintering wood made him jump, and he saw the tips of Dooth's metal claws breaking through the door. He backed away, realizing in a panic that he hadn't thought nor had time to draw a door made of sturdier material, and readied himself to draw a barrier before the door was suddenly knocked completely off its hinges.

He had no time to react as Dooth slammed into him, knocking him into a cluster of chalk. On impact, many of the pieces broke off and scattered across the floor, which Rudy collapsed against suddenly. He focused his gaze on the griffin standing over him, wondering what he could use his chalk for a moment before realizing it wasn't there. He had dropped it, and as he looked around, the red glow of the cavern prevented him from seeing which of the pieces scattered along the ground was the white one.

Dooth grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him to a sitting position, the tip of his beak a mere inch from Rudy's face as the griffin's eyes bored into his. Rudy could see anger directed at him as well as grim satisfaction in his enemy's gaze, and he felt cold terror stab him in the chest. Dooth hadn't shown any mercy to Snap, and he wasn't going to show any mercy to him.

"Dooth!" a voice cried, and the griffin's head turned to the makeshift doorway, which Newland appeared in front of, panting. "Good," the man stated. "You got him."

Rudy watched with terror-filled eyes as Newland stepped into the cavern, giving him a disgusted look. Dooth looked at his creator, grinning as he raised his metal claws. Rudy stared at the steel talons in horror, his rapid breathing refusing to slow down as he tried helplessly to twist away.

"Wait a minute, Dooth," Newland began. "I want to talk to him first."

Dooth made a noise of frustration and released Rudy, causing him to fall back against the cluster of red chalk. Rudy didn't even bother to try to get up and run; he knew it was useless without his magic chalk. He could only stare at Newland in horror as he approached.

"That was a clever little trick you pulled back there," Bob snarled, his voice laced with sarcasm. "Fireworks. How original. I would advise you not to try anything like that again." His voice took on a dangerous tone as he glanced at Dooth for a moment, then began to casually pace in front of Rudy. "You really don't stand a chance against someone like me, a _professional_, who is much cleverer, smarter, and more creative than you, in a world where _drawings come to life_!" Stalking away from Rudy and leaving the griffin to guard him, he surveyed the room and then, to Rudy's horror, broke a piece of red chalk off of one of the low hanging stalactites. Looking at his white piece as if it suddenly uninterested him, he cast it aside. Rudy tried to follow it with his gaze as it clattered to the floor, but he lost sight of were it went as Newland claimed his attention once again.

"Don't!" Rudy cried, his terror becoming something much larger than the thought of physical harm from Dooth's attacks. He stood up, staring at Newland in alarm. "Put that down! Don't use it!"

Newland sneered at him. "Begging for mercy this time?" he muttered, clearly unimpressed with Rudy's pleading. "I guess your childish tricks finally ran out."

"No! You don't understand-"

"Shut up!" Dooth snarled, lifting his metal talons again threateningly as he moved closer to the boy.

Rudy, however, wasn't even paying attention to Bob's creation. "Don't draw anything with-" His voice was cut off as Dooth lifted him and slammed him against the chalk cluster, winding him and rendering him unable to speak as he sank back to the ground, doubled over and fighting to catch his breath.

"Well, Rudy," Newland continued, acting as if the boy's outburst had never happened. "Why don't I show you what a true…what do the Zoners refer to you as? _Great Creator?_ …Is capable of!"

Still unable to move or speak, Rudy could only watch as Newland began moving the chalk in long, arching shapes, darting around the cavern quickly as if whatever he was drawing was meant to be huge. He could tell that the red chalk was aiding him, driving him in certain directions as he raced around the room. Rudy wasn't sure if Newland even realized the chalk was leading him, and he thought that the artist likely assumed it was only his own skill that was being used to create the drawing. But Rudy had had experience with the red chalk, and he knew from bitter experience that it certainly had a mind of its own. He fought to get his breath back, his voice coming out as nothing more than a hoarse squeak as he tried to call to the new creator, knowing in spite of everything that Newland had no intention of stopping.

At a speed that, even knowing how quickly and efficiently Newland could draw, greatly surprised Rudy, the drawing was complete. As it began to take form, Rudy's eyes widened as he realized what Newland had created. It was a massive Chinese dragon, and for a moment he was reminded of the dragon Newland had drawn for him when he'd come to do a presentation at Chester A. Arthur Elementary.

But this dragon was far more monstrous. It looked like something out of a nightmare. Its eyes were enormous white slits emitting a startlingly bright piercing glow, and its long muzzle was filled with pointed teeth, the smallest of which Rudy could tell were longer than his arm. Two giant teeth pointed upwards from its bottom jaw and reached higher than the muzzle, while another two jutted nearly as far downward from the top of its muzzle near the front of its snout, and as it shifted its head, he could see a row of jagged spikes running down its spine. Its gigantic, red scaled body had been drawn coiled in the center of the cavern, and as its head lifted toward the highest of the chalk clusters, Rudy could tell that it easily could have reached the ceiling; the two long horns jutting from its skull nearly touched it. The dragon got to its feet and stood, its body curved in a wide circle around Newland as it stared down at Rudy, still helplessly lying against the ground. The face of the dragon seemed to be fixed in a permanent angry snarl where all of its teeth were visible, although the creature was obviously relaxed at the moment. The long red mane around its head flared back and moved as if blown by wind, though there was obviously none in the mine, and its eyes were completely empty of anything resembling emotion, even though they were narrowed as if in anger.

Newland looked the creature up and down, seeming satisfied before he walked toward Rudy. The dragon arched a segment of its long body upward as he got closer, allowing him to pass. Standing before the boy, Newland gestured toward the massive beast taking up most of the cavern's space. He sounded quite pleased with himself as he began to speak. "Now, normally I'd say dragons are a bit too…overused for someone like me, but I guess that only proves how skilled _I_ am if I can add originality to one like this. And this," he gestured wildly toward the creature again, "is originality!"

Rudy could do nothing but stare at him in horror, shakily pushing himself up from the ground as he caught his breath again, his body trembling as he stared up at the enormous dragon. He hardly noticed as Dooth blocked the doorway he had drawn earlier, unable to tear his gaze away from the sight.

"Now," Newland began, still holding the red chalk in his hand as he pointed to his new creation, "I want you to-" He paused, for the creature had suddenly turned toward Rudy, its face distorting into a hideous snarl more terrifying than the one it normally had. "Hey!" Newland cried, turning away from Rudy to face the creature. "I haven't given you your orders yet! I want you to find the other two brats and bring them-" The dragon did not listen, its gaze focusing on Rudy and then Dooth. "Listen to me!" Newland yelled, pointing toward the door Rudy knew one was meant to enter the chamber through. "Break down that wall and start looking. I am your creator, you listen to _me_!" He emphasized the last word by stomping his foot against the ground.

All at once the dragon rounded on its creator, the searing glow from its eyes suddenly making it seem almost as if Newland were being held under a spotlight. The brightness only made it all the more clear as realization set in and Newland's expression turned to one of confusion, and then terror. As Rudy half-lay on the ground, his body locked up in fear, he remembered vividly what had happened when both he and Reggie, who had entered ChalkZone with the red chalk at one time, had tried to rebel against it.

It had quickly turned on them.

His face covered in disbelief, Newland began to back up toward Rudy, his gaze riveted to the drawing looming over both of them. The dragon's lips curled backward, revealing the _real_ length of its enormous fangs.

"He told you to listen!" Dooth shouted in anger, and Rudy wasn't sure whether the griffin was brave or simply ignorant of the situation. He charged toward the dragon before driving all four of his metal claws in between two of the scales on its foreleg.

Rudy could see that the claws went all the way into the dragon's flesh, but the creature had no reaction other than to lift its leg and fling Dooth off, sending the griffin crashing to the cave floor. Rudy heard a snap as Dooth landed on one of his wings, followed by a shriek of pain as he scrambled awkwardly to his mismatched feet and backed up near the wall, dragging his wing limply behind him. The dragon focused its eyes on him, maneuvering its massive snakelike body so that it was no longer coiled, but ready to spring. Rudy fought to catch his breath as he staggered to his feet and readied himself to run, feeling the weakness gradually ease from his body.

"Dooth!" Newland's voice reached a panicked level as he backed away, his body shaking, and watched the dragon's shifting body. "Do something! You-"

The griffin only shot him a terrified glance. "Sorry," he said quickly before he turned and bolted through the door and vanished from sight.

With Dooth gone, the dragon turned to the two humans, and as it readied itself to strike, one single thought ran through both Rudy and Newland's minds.

_Run._


	17. Race Through the Catacombs

_(Author's Note: Thanks again to Flareonwolf for help with editing this story!)_

* * *

><p><strong>Cryptic investigation<strong>

**Chapter Seventeen – Race Through the Catacombs**

Penny had luckily managed to subdue Boorat long enough for her and Snap to dart into a secluded tunnel and hope they wouldn't be followed. She had drawn a trapdoor leading to a small pit that the large rat had stumbled into as soon as he rounded the corner of a tunnel as he chased them. She had only barely managed to complete the drawing before he'd appeared, and felt lucky that she'd had enough time to do it at all. She knew Boorat wouldn't be trapped for long, and worriedly, she headed further along their current route, unable to move quickly due to needing to help Snap maneuver through the tunnel. Her friend could hardly walk, and as she looked to him, she could tell that his strength, what little he had left, was rapidly failing him. As she looked around, she couldn't tell where their current passageway led, as she had never been this deep into the mine before, and never had an opportunity to learn any part of the layout beyond the main chamber. Feeling unsettled at the thought of being lost without a clear path, she wondered if Snap knew where they were, as he had explored some of the forbidden tunnels himself before. However, before she could ask, Snap spoke up instead.

"Wait…Penny…slow down…" he gasped, his voice hardly above a whisper as he fought to match her pace. She looked to him in minor shock, as if only just recognizing how much faster she was going than she should have been. Snap was in a terribly unfit state for travel, a fact which seemed to slip her mind on occasion. He was doubled over enough that Penny had been leaning down to keep his arm from slipping off her shoulders, and the fact that their already slow pace was clearly too much for him worried her.

She slowed to a stop despite her fears that their pursuer would soon resume chase, and Snap collapsed to the floor before she could catch him. "Snap…" she gasped, realizing all too late that she had said it too loudly. She leaned down toward him, trying to rouse him to his feet again. She felt terrible for it; Snap was clearly in no state to walk, but she knew that it was too dangerous to stop. "We have to keep going," she said, her voice sympathetic.

"I'm tryin', Penny!" Snap replied through gritted teeth, shaking as he tried to push himself to his knees.

Looking at Snap, Penny could tell that moving around the mine had only worsened his injuries. The gashes along his back had started bleeding again, and he'd been progressively limping worse as they'd moved along. She could only imagine that it had aggravated his other injuries as well. His body was shaking, his head lowered down toward the floor. It was immediately clear that he wasn't going to be able to get much farther in his state.

Her mind darting to a new possibility, she turned her attention to the chalk in her hand, then looked at the tunnel wall. Drawing an escape route that could be easily concealed would be difficult, but it seemed like the only option for getting Snap out of harm's way.

A low growl stopped her in her tracks as she moved toward the wall. Both she and Snap looked up toward a bend in the tunnel further ahead of them to see the hulking shape of Vinnie and Terry's large three headed dog appearing around the corner. Its three heads were snarling at them, showing their massive yellow fangs, and its thick fur stood on end.

The two froze, each wondering if it was about to attack them. Penny frantically tried to think of some sort of defense she could conjure up with the magic chalk to protect them in time in case that was a real possibility. Hesitantly, she moved in front of Snap, standing between him and the beast. She had barely done so when Terry Bouffant herself rounded the corner, staring at them at first with shock and then irritation. She was still holding her video camera, which she lowered at the sight of them as her arms dropped in surprise.

"What are you still doing here?" she stated, obviously perplexed at the fact that she'd run into them again in one of the tunnels. Her voice was tinged with annoyance, though Penny noticed that she seemed a bit more concerned with their presence than Bob had. She figured that Terry had thought Bob would have ensured that Penny and her friends were detained after the firework incident, though it was clear that the reporter was becoming increasingly concerned as it set in that Bob had somehow failed to contain them.

"Is Bob 'ere yet?" another voice called from around the tunnel bend. Penny and Snap immediately recognized the voice as Vinnie's. The short man stopped in surprise as he appeared and noticed Penny and Snap, his gaze flicking back and forth between both of them. "What d'ya think you're doin' here?" he cried, pointing a finger at them. "And where's that Rudy kid?"

Before anyone could say anything more, the sound of pounding pawsteps reached them and Boorat appeared behind Penny and Snap, looking furious. He paused for a moment to examine the scene, realizing that Penny and Snap clearly had nowhere to run, and pointed toward Penny, crying, "She has the chalk. Take it!" Then, in a fit of anger, he turned toward Snap, lifting him by the front of his clothing and pinning him roughly against the wall. The large rat raised his fist and Snap gave Penny a terrified look, his weakened gaze desperately begging her to help. "It's _his_ fault they got out!" Boorat cried, shooting a glance toward his rather confused creators as he readied a blow.

"Hey, cool it, will ya?" Vinnie muttered to his drawing dismissively, waving a hand toward the rat creature. "They ain't goin' anywhere!" He turned to Penny. "C'mon, kid, follow us."

Terry nodded as well, glancing suspiciously at Penny and indicating that she was meant to walk with them further down the tunnel. Knowing that she had no choice, Penny gritted her teeth and stepped forward, knowing that if she tried to draw anything, the chalk would be taken from her, and she planned to hold onto it for as long as possible.

Boorat muttered something in irritation and let go of Snap, only giving him a few seconds to attempt to regain his footing before simply grabbing his arm and dragging him after the others, ignoring the blue and white Zoner's shrieks of protest. Although Penny loudly objected to such harsh treatment of her friend, neither of the other humans were paying Snap any attention anymore; their concern was focused solely on her, and she knew exactly why; she was the one who could use the chalk.

They hadn't gone far when they reached a wide open area. The walls were dotted with tunnel entrances leading, Penny guessed, all over the mine, or at least a large area of it. Here, Terry, Vinnie, and their oversized dog stopped, and as they turned toward her, Boorat caught up, depositing Snap unceremoniously next to Penny before taking his place beside his creators.

Taking another look around as she helped Snap up, Penny realized that Terry had set up some of her equipment here, and she wondered if this was where they had decided to wait for Bob to return. There was no way they could have explored more than a small fraction of the tunnels in the time they'd had, and she figured they would have gone on to explore the rest if Terry hadn't been confused by the presence of her and her friends in the main cavern when she went back for Newland. She probably had been going back to get Bob's explanation when she'd run into her and Snap in the tunnels.

"All right, look," Terry said crossly, looking from Penny to Snap, pausing a moment in confusion as she took in his various wounds, but quickly moving on and glaring at Penny again. "I don't know what you think you're doing sneaking around here, but if you think for one moment you can…"

She trailed off, her stern voice fading into little more than a whisper. Everyone around her fell into silence as well, for all who were present in the room had suddenly picked up the sound of screaming.

Everyone froze, both groups nearly forgetting that their enemies were there for a moment, as they stared intently toward the section of tunnels the sound seemed to be coming from, growing louder by the second. The echoes of the cavern distorted the cries, and Penny found it hard to tell where they were coming from or who exactly was shouting.

A moment later she heard the sound of footsteps pounding from one of the tunnels, and fear filled her mind at the thought of Rudy having to flee from some new weapon Newland had drawn. She remembered all too vividly that Bob was willing to come up with excuses to cover up any injuries she or Rudy obtained while in ChalkZone, and that left him with the freedom and the will to harm them if he pleased.

However, her panic quickly turned to confusion as the person from the tunnels burst into the room the group was currently standing. It was not Rudy, but Bob Newland himself. His face was a mask of pure terror, and he ran right past the group clustered in the middle without even giving them a glance, pelting into one of the random tunnels on the opposite side.

"Bob?" Terry cried, clearly just as confused as the rest of them as she turned in the direction he had gone. "What-"

The next moment, Rudy arrived from the same tunnel, looking just as terrified, his face drained of color. Penny could see four long scratches on Rudy's arm, but at the moment he hardly seemed to notice them. Unlike Newland, Rudy saw the group and stopped, his eyes widening in shock as he noticed that the humans and Zoners were standing there. "Newland's found the red chalk chamber!" he cried, his gaze darting frantically from Snap to Penny, who immediately looked to each other in horror.

"The what?" Terry cried, looking to Rudy in complete bewilderment.

The sound of something massive moving somewhere deeper in the tunnels stalled any further conversation, and everyone turned to see the back of the passage that Rudy had run from light up with the orange glow of flame.

That alone told Vinnie and Terry all they needed to know, and they quickly abandoned their captives and raced into the tunnel Newland had disappeared in, Boorat and the dog creature following them.

Penny looked to Rudy, knowing that Snap would not be able to follow them, and quickly handed him the chalk, seeing that he was without a piece of his own. He was more experienced at using it, she realized, and she watched as Rudy drew another motorized scooter as quickly as possible, disregarding any wobbly lines or misshapen parts, and they hurriedly helped Snap climb onto it with them and shot into another tunnel.

Rudy knew that there was a possibility they had lingered long enough in the bigger cavern for the monster to see where they went, and he hadn't wanted to lead it to Vinnie and Terry's group. At the moment, the threat they posed was of no concern to him, but as he thought about it, he realized that Newland had still been holding the red chalk. Rudy and Bob had managed to escape the red chalk chamber as the dragon was breaking its way out, but now it could use the tunnels, and he had no idea how fast it could move. He imagined what sort of impression Newland had made on the creature when he'd drawn it. He had obviously meant for it to be something terrifying…powerful…and likely intended it to be nothing but a mindless servant. All that merged with the red chalk would be a deadly combination.

Rudy realized that the beast would be following the tunnels first and foremost, but although its thin body could fit through most of them, it wouldn't be able to follow them through a small one easily. He knew that it would be far safer to draw a smaller side tunnel rather than continue along the one they were currently traversing. He slowed the scooter toward the stop, his heart racing as he realized he could still hear the sounds of the dragon on the move reverberating throughout the tunnels, but there wasn't any real way to tell where it was. It sounded far enough, though, and he quickly began to sketch a small opening in the wall while Penny waited on the scooter, Snap leaning against her shoulder.

"Okay, hurry, in here!" he cried, ducking through the newly drawn tunnel to the cavern on the other side as he glanced at the others. From what he could see of the new cavern, it was fairly small but had several clusters of chalk growing, luckily white.

Penny maneuvered the scooter into the opening, pausing as she took in her surroundings and tried to calculate which direction they should go. Rudy began drawing a sturdy door to block their passage, and as Penny waited after grabbing a piece of chalk herself, she turned to him. "What…exactly did Mr. Newland draw?" she asked, her voice shaking.

Rudy opened his mouth to answer, but a sudden trembling, which reverberated throughout the entire tunnel, startled him and caused him to drop the chalk by accident, making his drawing nothing but an incomplete mess of lines. Before any of them could speak, they saw a massive red shape flash by the opening, little more than a blur beyond the small opening and going by at an alarming pace yet still taking several seconds for the entirety of its body to pass. Even after the last of its body vanished, the tunnel still shook for a time after.

"What was_ that_?" Snap cried, looking to Rudy in shock as the rumbling gradually settled.

"That…was Newland's dragon," Rudy replied breathlessly.

The air seemed to chill as the three cast wordless, astounded looks to one another. Snap was positively petrified, understanding that he would be in the most extreme measure of danger if he had the misfortune to encounter it due to his condition, and Penny was just about as afraid. She eyed Rudy desperately, hoping he had some sort of plan for how to stop it or at least suppress the power it appeared to have, but it soon became clear that he was as utterly helpless as she was.

Penny was shocked by the fact that, had they stayed in the tunnel much longer, there was no way they would have been able to outrun the beast, even with the scooter. She then wondered where the monster was going. If it was created with the intention of following Newland's orders and nothing else, it might simply be blindly searching for a way out of the mine, or else searching for anything that came into its path to attack. A sudden jolt of alarm ran through her body as she realized that if it reached the mine entrance, it would find Biclops defenseless. She looked toward Rudy. "We have to stop that thing before it reaches the exit to the mine!" she cried, and she could tell that Rudy immediately understood her urgency. Not only that, she knew, but it would also be next to impossible to try to contain such a creature if it left the mine and came into any other area of ChalkZone. They would need to find a way to stop the monster's path of destruction before it got that chance.

"You're right. We'll go back to the main chamber," Rudy told her quickly, abandoning his attempt to conceal his tunnel. "We'll draw a barrier in front of the tunnels and-"

"Stop it from getting further?" Snap finished, but he sounded panicked rather than confident in Rudy's statement. "What if it just makes another exit?"

"I…" Rudy trailed off. He knew the creature was powerful enough to break a new exit out of the mine, not to mention break down any barrier he could draw, and in the moment he'd come up with the idea, he hadn't thought of that. "I don't know," he continued, "but we have to protect Biclops before it finds the real entrance!" He tightly gripped the piece of chalk in his hand, getting on the scooter in front of Snap and Penny and turning it toward where a tunnel curved away from the cavern they currently resided in.

He sped off into the new passage, knowing that they were likely heading in the direction of the tunnels that led to the main entrance, but as he rounded a corner, he nearly rammed straight into Terry and Vinnie's three headed dog. He swerved at the last second, coming to a halt an instant before he hit the tunnel wall. To his surprise, one of the beast's heads snapped at him, and he stumbled out of the way, tipping the scooter over and sending himself and his friends tumbling to the ground in the process.

Rudy winced as pain shot through his injured arm, and he looked up to see both of the dog's creators, along with Boorat, appearing behind the hulking creature, looking confused and panicked. Rudy had no idea where Newland and Dooth were, but he figured the griffin would have already fled the mine. Where Newland had gone, he had no way to tell.

He heard Terry call her beast back, and the dog reluctantly obeyed, lowering its heads as it eyed Rudy angrily, as if it still saw him as an immediate enemy in spite of the danger of the situation. Terry herself stepped forward, eyeing Rudy with a look that was a mixture of fear and something that made her seem as if she were stern or angry with him.

"_What _is going on?" she asked him, and Rudy noticed that she was still holding her video camera despite her frantic escape. "What was that…that _thing_?"

"We don't have time for this!" Rudy cried, leaping up. "We have to get out of the mine!" He turned to Penny, ignoring Terry when she tried to respond. "Once we get out, you can take Snap somewhere safe and I'll try to…" His voice began to shake, but regardless, he attempted to sound determined. "…I'll try to stop that dragon somehow."

Penny just stared at him in shock. "Alone?" she cried.

"Look, we gotta get outta here!" Snap cried, pushing himself to a sitting position with some difficulty.

Rudy nodded in reply, reiterating that there was certainly no time to discuss any of this now. "What are you doing standing here?" he cried to the still confused group of adults and their drawings. He realized that despite their obvious fear, they had no idea of the true extent of the danger they were in. Watching as they started to head away with some uncertainty, he righted the scooter, he and his friends getting back on it.

A shout came from up ahead and Newland appeared from the same direction Terry and Vinnie and their creations had, looking clearly panicked, his eyes wide as he paused to catch his breath, but only for a moment.

"I wouldn't go that way if I were you!" he cried in an uncharacteristically frantic voice as he charged past the astonished group, back the way Rudy and his friends had come from.

Rudy noticed the red chalk still clutched in the man's hand as he darted by. "Mr. Newland! Let go of it!" he cried, but Newland had gone, and Rudy wasn't sure if he'd even heard. He didn't know if Bob would even be able to let go at that point. It hadn't taken long for the chalk to fuse to his hand during Rudy's own encounter with it, though he wasn't sure if enough time had passed yet, but it would soon if Bob hadn't heard. He had barely started to turn around to follow him when something monstrous loomed in the tunnel from the place Newland had come.

It wasn't the dragon, nor anything nearly as big, but it was clearly another one of Bob Newland's creations, immensely detailed even though it had to have been hastily drawn. The creature looked like a bizarre cross between a crocodile and a tiger or some other type of big cat. It had a vaguely cat-like body covered in scales with the jaws and tail of a crocodile. Its paws, much bigger than an ordinary big cat's, sported talons that from a quick glance Rudy could tell had to be at least three inches long still sheathed. The animal's body was a bright, vivid red, and it was painfully obvious how its existence had come about. The creature had stopped momentarily in surprise as it noticed the figures gathered in the tunnel, but it was shock that it quickly overcame.

With a cry of alarm Terry flung herself against the cave wall as the animal charged, Vinnie reacting in a similar way on the opposite side of her. Boorat rushed toward Terry, who dropped her camera in shock as the red monster came closer, but only to charge past her toward the snarling three headed dog, which bared its fangs in a challenge and lashed its forked tail. The red chalk creature's massive paws crashed down on the camera as it rushed toward its adversary. In spite of the situation, Terry couldn't help but let out a shriek of dismay as she heard the sound. However, the distraction gave her, as well as Vinnie and Boorat, time to duck past the dog and the other beast and rush past Rudy and his friends, who were quickly turning the scooter around.

Rudy glanced back momentarily to see the two large animals clash, snarls filling the air as they slashed and snapped at one another. Turning away, Rudy started to follow Terry's group, a little unnerved at how readily they'd left their creation behind without even a glance. The tiger crocodile was only half the dog's size, but it was made from the red chalk, and therefore exceedingly dangerous. As destructive and mean-spirited as the monster dog seemed to be, Rudy couldn't help but hope it would be all right.

As the sounds of the fighting Zoners faded in the background, Rudy's thoughts drifted to the dragon and where it currently was. Although they couldn't hear it anymore, and therefore it wasn't likely close, panic filled his mind at the thought of the creature. He did his best to quell his fear, knowing that at the moment, they needed to focus on finding another way to the mine's main chamber.

**ooo**

Having not yet begun to explore the Chalk Mine previously, Bob Newland had no idea where he was going. This world was new and strange to him, and he couldn't understand exactly what power he had supposedly awakened. Anger flashed through his mind as he thought of Rudy. The little brat had led him straight to the place with that dangerous chalk. He wondered if Rudy had planned it all along, if it was like his previous plan when he had set their hideout on fire. If it was, then like that plan, it had backfired terribly. He and the boy had been lucky to get out before the dragon had started trying to break down the wall, and it had been delayed long enough for them to put enough distance between them and it.

His anger at Rudy, however, was brief and fleeting as he brought himself back to a more pressing problem. He had quickly found himself unable to drop the chalk in his hand. It seemed that the harder he tried to rid himself of the accursed thing, the stronger it fought back. His efforts to draw something to remove the object from his hand had only backfired dangerously, and it had recently started to control his own movements, forcing him to draw creatures against his will.

The first creature he'd been forced to draw had proved just as dangerous, and he had immediately fled, only to be forced to stop and draw another, the crocodile cat that was likely currently attacking the others at the moment. He could only hope it was one of the ChalkZone inhabitants that were being threatened; he didn't want Terry or Vinnie harmed, and Rudy and Penny arriving back in the Real World with severe injuries would be difficult to explain. He knew the red chalk could control his hand again at any time, but at the moment all he could focus on was getting as far away from his twisted, disobedient new creations as possible.

He wracked his mind, trying to remember how to get back to the main chamber, but the Chalk Mine seemed extensive, and he couldn't tell if he was running in circles or even going deeper underground in his frantic attempt to escape. In the back of his mind, he could hardly register how his sweet and glorious victory over ChalkZone's "protector" had taken such a nightmarish turn. Gritting his teeth, he pushed his exhausted body further, determined to find a way out and reach Real World water – which he knew could dissolve the red chalk – as soon as possible.

**ooo**

Rudy drove the scooter back into the tunnel where they had fled from the red dragon, realizing from the lack of any sound that the beast must still be further away, deeper in the mine. They would have clearly heard it if it had come anywhere near them or the mine's entrance. What it was doing so far down in the tunnels, he had no idea, and could only conclude that it must be extremely lost. They had passed Terry and Vinnie's group on their scooter, and as Rudy glanced behind him, he realized they must have gone a different route, because he couldn't see them. He felt a twinge of panic, knowing that the three really had no idea what they were up against, and he wished they had chosen to follow him instead.

As he emerged into the wide tunnel the dragon had careened through only minutes earlier, he realized with shock that he had come face to face with Newland's crocodile creature again. The animal's large catlike eyes narrowed and its jaws opened, revealing teeth longer than any Rudy had seen on the Real World crocodiles at the zoo.

With a yelp of terror, Rudy tried to maneuver their scooter out of the way, but was too slow, and as the beast swiped its massive paw at him, he felt it connect with the front half of the scooter, sending it crashing on its side again and sending him and his friends skidding along the floor several feet away. He and Penny were immediately on their feet, but Snap couldn't recover fast enough.

Rudy and Penny darted in front of their friend as they stared at the drawing composed of red chalk. They had no idea what tunnels it would had to have followed to reach them so fast, especially so soon after attacking the dog, and with a jolt of panic Rudy wondered if it was stronger than he'd guessed. He briefly thought of drawing fireworks again, though before he had a chance, the creature lifted its tail, which the boy could now see wasn't at all like a crocodile's, even though it had resembled it in appearance at a glance. The tail was immensely long and whip-like, and as Rudy lifted his drawing hand, it lashed toward him.

Rudy hit the ground with a crash as the creature's tail swiped his feet out from under him. He heard Penny shout something as his head connected sharply with the rock floor and the chalk rolled out of his hand. Immediately pain hammered though his skull and he groaned, momentarily immobilized.

His vision in a haze, he let out a shriek of panic as the creature's jaws snapped close a fraction from his shoes; realizing that if he hadn't managed to scramble backward at the last moment, the beast could have torn his leg off. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Penny stepping in front of him with her own piece of chalk, and as she did so, the creature's attention turned on her. Penny backed up as much as she could while still standing in front of Rudy and Snap, obviously trying to start a drawing but unable to finish before she had to leap to the side as the creature swung its long whip-like tail at her. Rudy also noticed that Snap had even managed to get back to his feet beside him, fear overriding his pain for the moment. Penny dodged another swipe from the crocodile cat's tail and avoided its snapping jaws as she darted toward the opposite wall, possibly planning to draw them a quick escape route, but Rudy knew in an instant she wasn't going to have enough time.

However, before the creature lunged at her, it paused, turning its head toward a tunnel entrance further along the passage as something even larger hurtled out of it.

The trio stared in shock as they realized it was Vinnie and Terry's Cerberus drawing, wounded, but not badly, and more furious than in pain. It launched itself at the crocodile cat, all three heads gripping parts of the other animal's body at once. Taken by surprise and with its main weapons all but disabled due to the awkward position it was being held in, the creature lashed its tail in fury, trying to dislodge it from the third head's mouth.

Rudy had no idea that Terry and Vinnie's creation would have had any incentive to save them, and he wondered if it had really intended to or if it had gotten into the fight thinking that fighting the red chalk creatures would protect its own creators. Either way, it was bigger than the red chalk monster and definitely had the advantage at the moment, but he doubted the beast could match a red chalk drawing's strength for long.

Rudy could see that the scooter he'd drawn was closer to the fighting creatures than they were. Seeing the crocodile creature break free and face the dog, its tail lashing across the floor so close to where Rudy was, he didn't want to try to retrieve it.

He and Penny hurriedly helped Snap limp toward the wall as the fighting between the two monsters grew more intense before both creatures shot into the tunnels, the dog howling as it perused its quarry. Penny drew them a quick exit in the wall, which led them to another long tunnel.

As soon as he emerged in the new area, Rudy heard a voice that sent new terror rushing through his body. "You!" the voice of Newland's griffin drawing called as Dooth raced toward him from one end of the tunnel, his eyes wide with fury. His injured wing hardly seemed to slow him down at all as he loped toward them at an alarming pace. Rudy let go of Snap, turning away from both him and Penny as he attempted to run, hoping that Dooth would at least not have any interest in attacking his friends. Knowing he could lead him away from the others, he sped up, pelting down the other end of the tunnel.

Penny watched in shock as Newland's drawing raced past, not even seeming to notice her and Snap. She quickly gave a glance to her friend as she stood up. "Stay here," she told Snap as she darted off after them.

Snap knew his injuries left him without much of a choice, but as he watched Penny leave and vanish around a bend in the tunnel, he wished with a pang of worry that there was something he could do to help Rudy as well. However, he had to acknowledge that in his current state, he wasn't going to be able to follow, let alone help, and he could only hope that his friends wouldn't be harmed. "_Aw, Bucko…I hope you'll be all right," _he whispered to himself worriedly, unable to tell what was going on in the passage ahead as the shouts of his friends and Dooth faded.

**ooo**

Rudy had no idea if he was getting further or closer to the mine entrance. His sense of direction was so turned around that he had no way to tell, and this section of the tunnels was completely unfamiliar to him. As he ran, he passed a cluster of magic chalk and quickly grabbed a piece, not slowing his pace as he heard the furious Zoner pounding after him.

He took a side tunnel branching off from the one he was in, having no idea where it could lead. He was absolutely clueless as to why Dooth was so focused on taking his anger out on him when everyone in the mine, including the griffin himself, were in such danger, but he didn't have much time to wonder about it.

Rudy rushed into another wider area with several tunnels branching off in different directions. He could hear Dooth coming up behind him and heard the swipe of the Zoner's talons, but again the blow was made clumsy by the heavier metal claws, and Rudy managed to duck out of the way as he ran. However, he was too close to the griffin to keep outrunning him, and in a frantic hurry, he quickly drew a lopsided shield and held it out as Dooth aimed another strike.

The force of the blow knocked Rudy back, and he nearly dropped the shield as Dooth's claws penetrated into it at least an inch, luckily missing Rudy's arm. The shield was quickly wrenched out of his hand as Dooth pulled back, finding that his claws were stuck fast and pausing a moment to angrily slam the shield sideways against the wall in an attempt to dislodge it as Rudy shakily stood up.

As he struggled to his feet, Dooth turned his gaze toward him, forgetting about his trapped claws. With his other hand, he gripped Rudy's shoulder and pinned him against the wall, thwarting any attempt to escape. His eyes bore into Rudy's, and the boy felt his jagged breathing hitch for a moment. "_What_ is happening to my creator?" he hissed, his voice tinged with fear, which Rudy hadn't expected of him.

"I can't explain now; we have to get out!" Rudy cried, hoping that the griffin would see sense and get to safety.

"The dragon isn't here now," Dooth hissed, not releasing his grip. "But there is something very wrong with my creator and you are going to tell me what's going on! _How do you stop this?_" He dug his claws into the boy's shoulder and Rudy cried out.

"You can't!" he yelped, knowing that he obviously meant Bob's lack of control of the red chalk. "Not here!" Rudy's gaze suddenly darted toward the section of the tunnel he'd come from as Penny emerged from the gloom. Unfortunately, his sudden surprise registered to Dooth as well, and he turned to face her.

Penny had started to draw something as the griffin turned to her, and Dooth suddenly seemed to realize that if he tried to stop her, Rudy would only retaliate with his own piece of chalk. Newland's creation froze, before quickly placing his trapped hand against the wall, putting his back leg against the shield and wrenching his claws free with a mighty tug. Holding Rudy still, he lifted the metal talons to the boy's throat. "Stop right there," he hissed to Penny. "You try to do anything to hurt me…" he started, his voice edged with fear and desperation, "and you will deeply regret it."

Penny froze, and Rudy shot her a terrified glance. He wasn't sure if Dooth was serious; he_ had_ to realize that his creator didn't want him or Penny dead. However, the griffin looked frightened enough by her ability to use the chalk against him, as well as his recent experiences in the mine, that Rudy feared that he could be easily driven to do something drastic. He hoped desperately that one of the adults would arrive and tell Dooth to stop, but there was no sign of any of them.

For a few moments both Dooth and Penny looked at each other without moving a muscle, each uncertain of what to do. Penny, although she was shaking with fear, held her gaze steady as she looked Newland's creation in the eye. Dooth was staring back just as intently, but with the claws so close to his neck, Rudy couldn't try to struggle free. He could tell that, underneath his threat, Dooth was reluctant to seriously harm him, even if only for his creator's sake, and was only acting out of worry for what Penny could do. He found it odd to see the griffin acting afraid when he had so willingly launched himself at the monstrous dragon earlier in the red chalk chamber, but seeing his creator panic must have affected him in a way he wouldn't have predicted. Stiff with terror, Rudy didn't dare move in case he accidentally came closer to the claws.

The sound of something approaching from within the mine stole their attention, and to Rudy's shock, Dooth instantly released him, turning toward one of the side tunnels in fear before sprinting off into it. Glancing at each other, Rudy and Penny made a run for a nearby passageway, managing to duck into it as another one of Bob Newland's drawings, obviously made of red chalk, raced into the chamber and then through another tunnel, luckily without seeing them. Rudy only caught a glimpse of it, seeing that it had looked like some sort of strange four-legged amphibian, but it had vanished before he'd gotten a good look.

Once he was sure the creature wasn't going to return, he stepped out into the more largely spaced opening again and looked at Penny in fear. "We have to go back and find Snap," Penny stated, and Rudy nodded, his gaze lined with worry as he thought of his injured friend, completely helpless against anything dangerous that might come across him. At least the monster hadn't headed in Snap's direction.

A massive rumbling sound made them freeze in shock, giving each other panicked glances as they realized that the noise was far too large to be another one of the new red chalk animals Newland must have drawn. This was something much, much bigger, and they knew in an instant what it was.

Rudy hurriedly darted toward one of the side tunnels, hearing the sound of the approaching monster growing louder at an alarming rate. He heard Penny shout his name and turned to see her running into a different tunnel, but it was too late to follow her.

His eyes widened in shock as the massive form of Newland's dragon exploded out of one of the larger tunnels, its massive head lashing across the cavern and causing its long spiraled horns to break off clusters of magic chalk hanging from the ceiling and scatter it all along the floor. It then turned its fearsome head toward one of the other tunnels and plunged into it, twisting its massively long body and nearly filling the entire room with its shifting scaly coils before the beast vanished, its tail giving a final lash against the ground that crushed many of the chalk pieces into powder and shook the ground beneath their feet, hard enough that Rudy gripped the wall out of fear of the quaking sending him sprawling on the ground.

He held his breath as clumps of dirt and small pieces of stone tumbled to the ground near where he was, some of it falling on him and causing him to shield his eyes, but it settled after a few seconds. He knew that he and Penny had only escaped because the creature hadn't known they were so near. He only dared to breathe again once the sound of the retreating monster had faded.

"Rudy!" Penny hissed to him from the other side of the cavern. He turned to her voice, but she was already running over to him, knowing the immediate danger was gone for the time being. "Are you all right?"

"Y-yes…" he stammered, instinctively glancing over himself to check that he was for sure free of any serious injuries. He looked up to Penny and could tell in a moment that she was even more terrified than she had been before, now that she'd gotten a good look at the creature. They both stared at each other for a few moments, each wondering the same thing. _How on Earth could they stop that thing?_

Rudy wasn't sure where the dragon was headed or if it even had a specific direction, but he knew it wasn't going toward the entrance. The sound had faded somewhere deeper in the mine. Fear for the rest of those trapped in the tunnels filled his thoughts, and he tried to reassure himself that at least the dragon was heading to a completely different part of the mine, not in the direction he had seen the others go. Forcing the thoughts aside for the moment, his first thought was to get back to Snap. He stated his concern quickly to Penny, who nodded urgently. Although Rudy had gotten turned around, Penny luckily remembered which of the tunnels they had come from, and they hurried back toward the place they'd left their friend.

They encountered no one else as they raced along the tunnel, soon catching sight of Snap. "Rudy? Penny?" their friend cried, looking up in great relief as he saw that both of them had arrived back. "Rudy, that monster's around here somewhere, an' I thought…" Snap's gaze flicked to Rudy's shoulder, where Dooth's claws had torn his clothing a bit. "You all right?"

Rudy was puzzled for a moment, having completely forgotten about the injury. He glanced at it, seeing that although a small amount of blood was seeping through his sleeve, the cuts were very shallow, and he found that it didn't even bother him anymore, though in the back of his mind he realized it was probably fear keeping the pain at bay. "Huh? Yeah…it's fine," he muttered, feeling a bit strange that he was being asked if he was alright by Snap, when the Zoner had much more severe injuries. "It doesn't matter anyway. We've got to get moving."

Knowing that not only was time running out, but the dragon could move fast enough to make it an almost immediate threat even from a fair distance away, Rudy quickly began sketching them a mode of transportation. He realized that the only reason he'd managed to outrun the beast in the first place was that it had taken some time to knock down the wall and exit the red chalk chamber. However, if the walls were thinner where they were, they might not have that sort of time during the next encounter. He quickly completed a crude drawing of a car-like vehicle. It was much smaller than a real car, but would be much more easily maneuverable. He thought of giving it the type of robotic legs he and Penny had drawn on their truck while in the crystal cave, but decided against it once he took into account the time it would take, and opted for tough, sturdy wheels that would be able to handle at least fairly rough terrain instead. The vehicle wouldn't move as fast as the car, as he knew he wouldn't be able to control a machine moving that fast in the winding tunnels of the mine, but he hoped it would be fast enough.

After helping Snap into the back of the small vehicle, Rudy sat in the front along with Penny, who hurriedly pointed him in the right direction. With her guidance and calculations based on the paths they'd taken, navigating the mine in the small car was fairly quick and easy, but Rudy still couldn't help feeling like they were going nowhere. It was taking all his focus just to keep driving the car, concentrating on where they were going instead of the panic threatening to overwhelm him. However, he still couldn't stop himself from repeating in his mind the fact that he had no idea what they were going to do when they got to the main chamber. It was a vague goal in his head, to draw a barrier to delay the dragon, but after that…what next?

In spite of her small experience with the mine's forbidden passages, Penny's directions were accurate, and soon they arrived in the area where the tunnels first began branching off, and a few moments later they had entered the main cavern. As soon as they came to a stop, Rudy's gaze darted to Biclops, who still showed no sign of waking. Fear twisted within him at the realization that the mine's guardian was still completely at the mercy of whatever might enter. He wondered if he could draw something to wake him up, only to remember that Biclops was not sleeping normally, and anything he tried was unlikely to work. Stopping the vehicle near the wall of the chamber away from the tunnel entrance, he climbed out and stepped back, facing the way they'd come, toward the tunnels leading into the rest of the mine.

His first thought had been to draw a barrier to prevent the dragon from getting to Biclops. However, he now realized he couldn't do that. Even if he drew one strong enough to give the beast a large amount of trouble, Terry, Vinnie, and Bob were still lost in the mine, along with their creations. _He would be blocking their only way out._ And a barrier would only delay an attack in the end. He needed to think of something else.

Penny stepped down out of the vehicle, Snap clumsily following her and leaning against the wall. Realizing that he was still getting worse, Penny instructed him to stay there, and Snap did not object as she walked over to join Rudy. "We'll need to draw a trap," Penny stated, giving Rudy a determined but frightful look. "Something that only the dragon's weight would set off."

"You're right," he said, nodding, desperate to do something to prevent the dragon from getting to his friends. He knew that a trap would likely only temporarily hold the creature, but they didn't have time to wait around and think of something else. They had to do something now. He briefly glanced toward Snap, telling himself that at the moment, staying in the main chamber was about as close to safe as his friend would get. There were places to hide there, but if Snap were to go outside, he would be a much more easily visible target if the dragon got out, not to mention a target for Newland's other dangerous creatures. Yet at the same time, he realized that if their trap didn't work, it might not make much of a difference. And _Biclops_ couldn't hide.

Rudy and Penny stepped back toward the area where the main chamber joined with the tunnel entrances. Rudy glanced at his friend as he hesitated, wondering just what could hold such a massive creature.

Penny gave him some brief suggestions, and though he was doubtful, he set about drawing some gigantic steel shackles along the wall of the open area in front of the tunnels that, he and Penny had decided, would latch onto the dragon when it triggered the trap. Knowing that it was likely to break out of them, he made sure to draw several along the walls of the area, hoping they would at least slow it down until he could think of a better plan. There was no sign of the creature approaching as he and Penny completed the last of the set of drawings, their color camouflaging them against the walls of the mine. It wasn't perfect, but the parts of the trap would be easy to miss in the lower lighting level, especially to a creature moving quickly. Rudy then drew a panel along the ground that, when stepped on by the dragon, would activate the trap. This too matched the color of stone in the mine. To test it, he briefly walked along it himself, satisfied that the trap stayed in place. He then turned to Penny and nodded. It was as ready as it would ever be.

Running back through the opening and into the main cavern, Rudy halted, feeling once again at a loss for what to do. They both knew that the trap was only a temporary solution, and Rudy had no idea if the dragon would stumble across it first, or run into Newland or any of the others still in the mine. The thought filled him with horror, but he realized regretfully that at the moment, there wasn't much he could do. They had to stay there and wait for the dragon to fall into the trap, to be ready to come up with a second solution they could implement when it inevitably broke free. There was still no sign of it at the moment, and, exhausted, Rudy leaned against the wall, lowering his hand as he felt a jolt of pain race up his arm.

"Rudy?" Penny stated, and he turned to her again. "What are we going to do when the dragon breaks free? We need a plan; we don't know how long it will be contained."

"I know, I know!" Rudy cried, shutting his eyes tightly, realizing that she was reiterating what he'd just been thinking. Immediately his mind went to Biclops, and he silently moaned at the fact that he was one of the only Zoners who Rudy knew could give him advice. In the past, the giant had contained the red chalk drawings after Rudy had unleashed a few of them by mistake, so he was more likely than any other to have an idea for what to do. Rudy couldn't help but feel a possible solution was so close and yet painfully unavailable, as, even if he did attempt to rouse Biclops from his deep sleep, he had no idea what he would need to draw, or how long it would take to find the right thing. It was precious time he was not willing to forfeit for a more than likely dead end. The thought was not going to stop clawing at his mind, however, as the time he had to formulate a suitable plan was rapidly dwindling, and the mine's guardian may well have been their only chance to succeed.

After a few moments, he opened his eyes, looking toward Snap, who had moved further away from the danger zone, looking at him in a helplessly terrified manner. He'd wanted to see Snap's confidence after seeing Penny so worried, but it was clear that at the moment, neither of his friends could provide him with any. He felt himself start to shake, his fear that he couldn't protect those he cared about threatening to overwhelm him. "I just…need some time to think," he stated, closing his eyes again. He wondered if there was much of anything they _could_ do. He thought of somehow putting the creature to sleep once it was trapped, but he had no idea how long that would last, or if it would even work, as he remembered how a similar tactic had failed to affect the termites in the city before.

If the dragon got loose before they could do anything, he and Penny, as well as Snap and Biclops, would be in immense danger. Perhaps Snap could hide against the wall without being spotted, but he and Penny would likely be exposed in the middle of trying to draw something to stop it, and Biclops couldn't move. He felt worried at the thought that they'd drawn their trap so close, but at least here the dragon was sure to cross it if it tried to get out of the Chalk Mine, and was more likely to run into it there than if they had drawn it in a random cavern, but if he couldn't stop it…he didn't want to think what would happen. Even if he and Penny managed to get Snap and Biclops outside, there would be no hiding from the creature there, and it would be nigh unstoppable. The moment when it was trapped was going to be their only chance at halting its path of destruction. However, he had no idea what he could do to stop a creature that big, let alone one made out of red chalk. He felt even more hopeless as he thought about the last aspect. How were they supposed to stop something that big and mindlessly destructive…and made of _red chalk_?

Suddenly, an image swam into the front of his mind, something he'd forgotten amidst all that had happened, and he was a bit puzzled as to why he suddenly remembered it now. He recalled being on top of the small grassy mountains after escaping the remnants of the hidden library in the crystal cave, staring down at the book he'd been slowly realizing was going to hold no solution for him as he flipped through its pages. He could see himself looking through each page with growing desperation, flicking past different things, and once briefly seeing something about the chalk mine, and then the red chalk…

"Penny!" he cried, opening his eyes. She looked at him in surprise, a little startled by his sudden outburst. "I…I just remembered something."

"What?" she asked, but he was already running toward the mine entrance, ignoring her question. "Rudy, where are you-"

He didn't respond, but stopped right at the edge of the ruined entrance to the mine, leaning down and picking up the backpack Penny had left there when they had snuck in to stop Newland earlier before racing back to her.

"Rudy," Penny began, looking confused as she stared at the backpack, "you're not thinking of using Real World water, are you?" Her eyes grew wide. "That's too dangerous, and there isn't enough of it and…and, even if there was, the dragon hasn't been erased off of a chalkboard before, so it would just appear back here the first time…" She trailed off as she remembered the incident with Howdy Rudy, only to realize that Rudy wasn't paying attention as he dug through the contents of the backpack. He threw the first few things aside – the remains of Penny's food and the water bottles, she noted – before pulling out a heavy object and setting it against the floor. She looked at the ornately decorated book in confusion, then glanced at Snap, who only looked on with a wearily confused gaze.

Rudy flipped through the pages until he came across the section he'd been looking for, the one on the magic chalk mine. He scanned the words and pictures, remembering that he'd only briefly looked at this part of the book earlier as it had had nothing to do with what they'd been searching for. He looked over the first few pages quickly, seeing nothing of interest and turning them, stopping when he came across the red chalk page again.

He hadn't looked at it in any sort of detail before, but now as he peered over the page, he could tell that the information was fairly minimal, and his heart sank. Nevertheless, he kept reading, his fear and nervousness increasing. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Penny glance worriedly toward the entrance to the tunnels, but she did not interrupt him. He looked over the words on the page, realizing that whoever had made this book knew what the red chalk was capable of, one way or another, as it was made clear that it was extremely dangerous. However, there was little mention of its ability to control an artist's hand, and the fact was only briefly mentioned as an 'unproven possibility.'

His hope plummeted. This information was clearly outdated, and there was absolutely nothing to tell him if there was any specific method or thing that would be effective in combating the red chalk. As this information fully sank in, he suddenly felt extremely foolish, and wondered why he had thought there would be such a thing in the first place.

"Rudy?" Penny's voice reached him again, and he realized she must have seen his frantic search come to an abrupt halt.

"I…" He trailed off, realizing that he'd only been wasting time. "I'm sorry…" he stated, his voice shaking in spite of his efforts to keep it fairly clam. "I thought…I thought there might have been something that would help us…I'm not sure why…" he admitted in defeat. His body felt suddenly floppy, as if it had deflated along with his hope. He paused for a moment, met only with silence from his friends, then looked down at the book. Out of desperation more than anything, he turned the next few pages. He stared back in surprise at one, seeing a simple, sketchy layout of the Chalk Mine's tunnels, or at least a large amount of them, seeing as some parts of the map were marked as unfinished and other tunnels snaked off the page without showing an end, and his eyes widened, not having realized there were so many. "Penny, look at this…"

Pausing in her effort to watch the tunnel entrances, telling herself they would hear the beast coming anyway, she knelt down beside Rudy. Snap, as he lay against the wall several yards from where they were, looked over in their direction, bewilderment clouding his expression. Penny stared down at the page detailing the tunnels, but Rudy quickly directed her to the next page, and her eyes widened.

The picture on the other page depicted something strange that neither of them had ever seen before. It looked like a place in the Chalk Mine, but one Rudy didn't recognize, and he immediately concluded that it must be one of the many caverns lying in the forbidden tunnels that he had never had the opportunity, or the inclination, to explore. The room depicted was oddly small, if the chalk clusters on its ceiling and wall were anything to go by; there were only a few, and the room had one large entrance with a few other smaller tunnels. However, that wasn't what was so strange. The chalk growing in the clusters wasn't white, or even red, but _light green_.

Rudy stared at it in surprise, realizing from the description of the picture that it had been sketched by someone visiting the cavern and who had created this drawing of it before leaving, which told Rudy that it was likely to be fairly accurate. Penny looked astounded by the whole thing too, and as she leaned closer, she read some of the words beneath the picture.

"From what little is known of this type of chalk, it appears to create things that are much stronger and more reinforced than drawings of the white chalk type. Objects or creatures created with this are incredibly hard to destroy or harm, often needing another object created with this chalk type to do so…" She tailed off, her eyes scanning the rest of the words before she turned to Rudy. "Do you think Biclops knew about this?" she asked, clearly astonished.

"I don't know," he replied, shaking his head. "He never told us about the red chalk until…well, until me and Snap stumbled across it. But…if that really does what it said it does…"

"We can use it to draw a better trap," Penny finished. However, a moment later, a look of concern flickered across her face. "The book is pretty old though…the only information would have had to come from someone observing a creator of long ago-"

"Well, the book was right about the red chalk!" Rudy replied. He suddenly wondered if there were even more different kinds they didn't know about. He wasn't even quite sure if Biclops knew about this kind at all. If it was hidden in some deep secluded cavern somewhere, it might have escaped his notice as well. He wished he could ask him; maybe Biclops would even know more, but he acknowledged regretfully that, at the moment, it was impossible to communicate with him. He flipped through the next few pages, but there was no mention of another type. Whether that meant the writers of the book had found no others or they had, but knew nothing about them, he wasn't sure. The fact that many of the tunnels had obviously remained unexplored by the book's creators filled him with a sense of awe as he wondered what else might be hidden in their depths. He glanced at Snap, who had been listening from where he was, and he looked just as surprised as he and Penny had been.

Penny was still shocked that they had stumbled across such a thing. The fact that it_ could_ draw barriers or objects that were near indestructible deeply unsettled her, and she realized this was something that she would never want to touch under normal circumstances, and she was sure that after his experience with the red chalk that Rudy would be hesitant as well. More grave than that was the idea of revealing the chalk's existence to other human creators, such as Newland, Bouffant and Raton. For a moment, she dearly hoped that they had not stumbled across chalk with such power, or of any other kind.

"The map says it was found here," Rudy stated, distracting her from her thoughts as he pointed to a remote tunnel deep in the mine on the map covering the previous page, marked with the number of the page showing the cavern in detail. "Can you remember the route?" He looked to Penny, who looked shocked as she stared back at him. She slowly nodded.

"Just…give me a minute," she stated, studying the book. "Rudy, how are we supposed to get there before-"

"If the dragon's lost in the tunnels, we…we still have a chance," Rudy replied anxiously, already moving toward their vehicle.

Penny followed him, still looking apprehensive about the idea but realizing that they had little choice; they had no other plan, and there likely wasn't anything they could draw that would be enough to stop the creature for long.

"As we're coming back, we can leave some sort of trail for it to follow into the new trap," Rudy was saying. "We can draw the other trap over this one and wait for it to come."

"I suppose so," Penny replied, but Rudy could tell that she was still doubtful, and he was as well. He looked over toward Snap again, instructing him to stay against the wall and out of sight of the tunnel entrances. For a moment he felt a little bad about deserting their friend and leaving him without conscious company, and quickly uttered, "Stay safe."

Rudy started the car and sped off down the tunnel, knowing that if they were going to find that small cavern, they needed to move as quickly as possible. Penny had already memorized the map and was guiding him, pointing up ahead and telling him to turn into one of the first of the branching tunnels. As they careened through the dimly lit passage, Rudy looked around and could see no sign of anyone as several side tunnels flashed by, not even the other red chalk drawings Newland had made.

As Penny pointed him in a new direction and they entered one of the side passages, a wide tunnel with many more entrances lining its walls, it was clear that the dragon had been causing damage to the mine as it ran through the tunnels. He could see chunks of rock missing from the walls, and there were broken pieces of chalk littering the floor around them; many of the clusters had been completely crushed. He glimpsed this briefly as the car sped onward, going as fast as Rudy dared in the confines of the mine. They rounded another corner, and almost immediately, Rudy heard shouting and came to a sudden halt.

The car came to such an abrupt stop that he was nearly thrown forward, and he took a moment to steady himself before he glanced off to a side tunnel in one of the walls, the most likely place for the shout to have come from. Confusion clouded his expression as, for a moment, no one appeared.

Then, he could see the outlines of people approaching from the darkened tunnel entrance, and realized from the voices as they came nearer that it was Vinnie and Terry. At first he was unsure if Bob was with them, but as they appeared in the tunnel opening, he could tell that he wasn't.

The two humans looked panicked and confused, their gazes darting around the walls of the tunnel, but Rudy realized that they had still little idea of what was going on, not knowing about the red chalk. He gritted his teeth in frustration as he realized that they would be unlikely to find their way out of the mine without Penny's instructions, and he and Penny needed to get to the secluded chamber as soon as possible. There simply wasn't enough time to lead them back; Rudy wasn't even sure if they had enough time to find the green chalk and go back or not.

For a moment the two groups stared at each other, each seeming uncertain of what to do before Terry stepped forward, her eyes narrowed. "Show us the way out," she demanded, her voice with an authoritative edge to it. Rudy could tell that she was confused and frightened, although she was obviously trying not to seem that way to him. He could see that she still had a piece of chalk in her hand, but this was no time to worry about what she could do with it.

Rudy glanced to Penny, wondering for a moment if she should head back with them while he carried on alone. Everyone needed to get out of the mine's tunnels, but as he thought about it, he wasn't sure he would make it back to the main chamber without her directions. He figured that the two adults were going to have to come with them, but he was going to make sure not to let them set foot in the chamber if that strange type of chalk was really there. There was no way he'd let them get their hands on it. Newland had already created more than enough disasters with the red chalk, and he shuddered to think of the kind of permanent damage the other adults could cause with a material that was practically indestructible.

A new idea clicked in his head and he pointed to the wall of the mine. "Draw yourself a hiding place there and wait until we come back," he told them, watching as they gave him distrustful glances. "We have something important to do and-"

Clearly, neither of his enemies were keen to take orders from him when he wasn't planning to do exactly what they'd asked. "You really think we want to stay here while that…that_ creature_ is running around the place?" Terry cried.

"There's no way we're stayin' in here!" Vinnie agreed. "You know the way out, kid, so show us!"

"Either show us the way out now or draw something to stop it," Terry continued. "You're the ones who know this world."

"I don't think we _can_ stop it!" Rudy shouted back, and he could see that both of them were a little taken aback. "At least not at the moment. But there's something we have to do, and you-"

"Rudy…" Penny's voice came to him sounding terrified and quite unlike her own.

He turned his head to see her looking down the tunnel, in the direction they had been heading towards, seeing a massive shadow moving around the corner up ahead. _The head of the dragon._

He hadn't even heard it approaching. There had been no rumbling or loud noise this time. No warning. He stared in complete shock for a moment before he drove the car into the side tunnel, seeing that Vinnie and Terry had already fled into it, knowing that if anything, it was likely that the dragon would have a harder time turning into the side tunnel than moving straight.

He noticed Terry and Vinnie running into a side tunnel up ahead as he and Penny sped into the main tunnel, having just a moment to take in the layout of the new area before he heard what he knew was the sound of the creature snaking its way in after them.

Shouting, he swerved their vehicle to the left, shooting into a side passage as the tunnel behind them became engulfed in flames. The searing heat they felt from behind them wasn't enough to burn them, but it nearly made Rudy cry out in shock before the vehicle was far enough ahead to be away from the worst of it. Looking ahead, Rudy spotted another tunnel and swerved toward it.

The stream of flames followed them as the dragon turned its head toward their first escape tunnel, but Rudy had already driven into the new path, feeling the heat sear the air behind them. He froze, unsure where Terry and Vinnie had gone and feeling lucky for their sake that the beast hadn't been focusing on them when they had no means of escape.

They entered a tunnel that sloped downward, and Rudy, realizing that they were not going to be able to flee fast enough, shot a glance to Penny, telling her to drive as he stopped the car. They switched seats in a brief second and Penny drove forward, taking another side tunnel, while Rudy quickly doodled rockets onto his shoes.

As they turned into another tunnel, Rudy quickly took to the air and used his chalk to draw a barrier, finding it a bit more difficult than usual due to his injured arm, before moving ahead and drawing another escape tunnel, which Penny quickly drove into, Rudy quickly getting back into the car. As they carried on down the passage, Rudy peered behind them anxiously, knowing his quick barrier wasn't going to last very long. Suddenly they arrived in another place with several tunnel entrances in the walls leading in all different directions. They entered one, but a moment later Penny stopped the car, and as Rudy heard the creature approaching, he realized that if they kept the car moving, they would certainly be heard. Ducking lower against the seats, they waited in the shadows of the rock wall.

They could only watch as the creature snaked into the cavern, the glow from its eyes scanning the area and causing Rudy and Penny to shrink back even further, desperately hoping they wouldn't be spotted. Rudy got a look at the dragon's monstrous face and teeth as its gaze swept the cavern, and he froze, scarcely daring to breathe and fearing that the faintest movement or breath would give them away, before the beast finally turned and entered another tunnel.

After a moment, Rudy and Penny slowly sat up. The sounds of the dragon moving in the tunnels were now coming from further back in the tunnel they were sheltering in. Alarm flooded through his body as he realized that the exit the dragon had taken was connected to their own hiding place.

Quickly steering the car around, his heart pounding in his chest, Rudy headed back into the open area, his sight set on one of the tunnels along the opposite wall. He felt Penny grip his arm and turned to see her pointing toward the place the dragon had escaped from, realizing as she did that the creature had only been moving slowly and examining the path it had chosen, not running through it; he could see its outline in the darkness, and it had obviously heard them reentering the wider cavern. Its long tail was snaking around the cavern as it began to move backwards. However, Rudy could see that the dragon was too large to turn around in the tunnel, and seemed to have a hard time backing up in the narrow space. He drove toward the tunnel he'd been focusing on, unsure how far they would be able to get before the dragon would be chasing them again.

Too late, Rudy saw the dragon's tail lash toward his vehicle, and before he could blink, it had slammed into the side. For a moment, he felt the car lift off of the ground completely, before it, as well as Penny and himself, came down again, the vehicle landing on its side and sending both children crashing to the ground. Rudy ducked as the machine flew over his head and collided with the ground again further on, only to spin into the wall and come to a jarring halt. He was frozen with shock, but only until it was broken when he felt a new pain in his arm. Looking down at the injury, he could see that now in addition to the cuts Dooth claws had left, his arm was badly scraped from the fall.

Feeling a small bit of relief that at least it wasn't something bad enough to greatly inhibit his drawing abilities, Rudy cringed as he pushed himself to his knees, his vision blurred for a moment before it cleared and he set his gaze upon the tunnel they had been planning to flee through. Getting up, he ran over to Penny, who had recovered a bit more slowly, shaking her head a moment before she got to her feet. They both hurried toward the tunnel. Rudy noticed that Penny was limping, but there was nothing either of them could do as they avoided the lashing tail of the dragon, which had now nearly fully backed out of the tunnel. The two shot into the opening of the one they'd chosen as an escape route just as it turned its head.

Once in the narrower tunnel space, Penny drew a quick escape route and they scrambled into the next tunnel, knowing that if anything, it would take the dragon longer to break down the walls than to simply run through them, and this new passage didn't seem to have a link to the cavern they'd just come from. Moving as fast as she could despite her injury, Penny drew another opening in the opposite wall.

Running through Penny's new passage, they emerged in a very narrow tunnel with no lighting further on, but neither of them dared try to draw a light in case it led the monster right to them.

"This way," Rudy whispered, nudging Penny and then taking off to the left, reaching out with his hand until he felt the opposite wall and using it to guide him along. Penny followed suit, knowing that the way Rudy was heading would lead them further in the opposite direction of the beast. Though she was keeping up as best as she could, Rudy knew her injured leg was hindering her, and though he wasn't sure how serious it was, there was no time to check. He slowed down as well, making sure he didn't get too far ahead of her.

They hadn't gotten far when the wall opposite to the one they were running along suddenly caved somewhere further behind them, sending chunks of rock flying into the passage and smashing against their wall. Rudy and Penny ducked as they were sprayed with pebbles and dust, the sound of larger rocks crashing just beside them heightening their fear and they cringed, their eyes wide as they scanned the darkness, their hearts hammering in their chests. A moment later and it had passed, and Rudy could see a bit of light coming from the passage beyond the broken wall. A shiver of panic passed through him as he realized that the tunnel walls were a lot thinner here than in the red chalk chamber. They could hide easily in the maze-like tunnels, but a wall could collapse on them at any moment.

He and Penny quickly shuffled backward and away from the damaged wall, realizing with relief that at least the worst of the damage had been done further away from them, where massive heaps of rock now covered the tunnel floor. Minds racing with panic, the two began to flee in the opposite direction.

"Rudy, wait!" Penny said as loudly as she dared, stopping beside the wall to draw a new exit, knowing that their current route was far from safe, and in Rudy's panic, he had only been thinking of getting away from the place the red chalk monstrosity was likely to emerge from.

He stopped beside her as she began to draw, and as he did, he saw the entire passage suddenly light up with an orange light. _Fire._ He instinctively pushed himself against the wall in some vain effort to get out of the direct path of the flames, only to realize, once his vision adjusted to the brightness, that the dragon's head was pointed down toward the other end of the tunnel. However, it was sure to turn its head and aim the flames in their direction, and he quickly scrambled after Penny through the new hole she had just then completed.

Once in the next tunnel, they reached the opposite wall and drew a new exit, but as they climbed through, they heard the sound of another wall crashing down and ran for it, realizing when they did not touch another wall that they were in a much more open area. This time, the orange glow from the dragon's fire shining beyond their small escape routes gave them a little light to see by, but not enough for them to glimpse very far into the distance. As he peered harder into the gloom, Rudy saw a faint glow from a few chalk clusters up ahead, but it was dim, and he wondered if this chalk was becoming too old, or "rotten" as Biclops had called it when he and Snap had seen him cleaning out the mine on their first visit to the red chalk cavern. Running up to one of the clusters, which was sprouting from the wall near the floor in a fairly unusual position, and ducking behind it, the two stopped to try to catch their breath.

They could still hear crashing and rumbling from the place they'd come from, and Rudy realized that at least they had one advantage; it would be hard for a creature so large to find such comparatively small prey in such a vast, dark, and confusing place. However, that didn't stop him from being terrified as he realized that it would be easy for the dragon to simply spew flame into each tunnel or room it came across like it had done in the dark tunnel they had briefly passed through, and he and Penny would not be able to outrun it. Together, they huddled behind the cluster of chalk, knowing that the space of the cavern they were in was too large to make a break for any tunnel entrances when they were so exhausted, and it was too dark to tell where all the potential exits were.

It wasn't more than a few seconds later that the wall in the direction they had run from shattered and caved in as well. Rudy ducked further behind the chalk cluster as he saw the massive creature emerge from the space it had created, its enormously long body looking much more graceful and quick now that it had a much more open space to move in. The dragon looked even more threatening now that Rudy could see its entire body, and more clearly this time than he had when it had been coiled in the red chalk chamber. He was sure the biggest fangs protruding from its mouth were at least twice his height, and he shrank back against the wall further, knowing it wouldn't take the creature much to crush him or snap his neck. Its legs were quite thin in comparison to its body, but he knew that the creature was capable of breaking through the walls, so they were a lot stronger than they looked as well, and would certainly have no trouble breaking every bone in his body. He found himself wishing the chalk cluster could shield them better, as they were somewhat exposed, but at the moment their only real chance was in getting as far behind it as possible and staying against the wall.

He and Penny watched as the dragon darted toward a wall opposite to where they were, its body arched high as its gaze scanned the room. A moment later, it lit up the entire cave with flames that seared the stone wall, moving its head toward any tunnels, cracks or crevices it could find. Despite the fact that they were a fair distance away in the wide cavern, Rudy could feel the air in the room rise in temperature and he cringed, not knowing whether to risk running or continue hiding out of fear of attracting the beast's attention. He felt Penny's hand grip his as he stared in shock, unable to make himself move. She pulled him back and he snapped out of it, following her silent instructions and running along the wall with her toward a darker, more secluded area. Penny's urgency was clear, and he realized that despite the risk, they had to move; the dragon wouldn't take long to start searching their area of the cave.

The beast's head turned, and though the stream of flame coming from its mouth had stopped, they could see the white glow of its eyes as it peered in their direction. Heart stopping panic flared through Rudy's mind as his eyes connected with those of Newland's rogue creation, and he tore himself away, running with Penny to the wall and helping her draw the quickest and smallest opening they could. Slipping inside, the two both ignored their searing wounds and blocking out the sounds coming from the room behind them as they willed themselves to move faster.

It soon became clear that the tunnel Penny had formed to link the cavern they had left with the next was quite long, and they both realized that had to mean that the walls here were thicker. Knowing the dragon would reach them before they reached the end of it, Rudy drew a hasty doorway in the wall and flung it open. "In here!" he cried before Penny could pass him, and they ran inside, following the new path for a few moments before they emerged into another wide cavern, but one that wasn't quite so big. There were tunnel entrances all around them, and he and Penny ran across the room, toward the ones that were well away from the wall they knew would collapse when the dragon reached it.

Running into the next area, it wasn't long before they could hear the rock wall starting to break, but they did not slow down, and turned whenever they saw a side path, hoping to throw the creature off their trail. Suddenly the sound of the beast coming closer made them halt in their tracks and then race toward the other wall, trying not to make any sound. If the dragon was able to easily hear them moving, they knew their only hope at the moment was holding still and hoping it would choose a different path.

They heard a loud collapse and froze, despite knowing that the sound was coming from quite a ways behind them now. They held their breath at the sound of the monster snaking its way through the passages, but after a moment, the sound faded into the distance. The dragon had taken a different tunnel.

When it was clear that the beast was not returning for the moment, they both allowed themselves to slump against the wall, gasping for air. Rudy turned to Penny, who looked terrified as she returned the glance. He didn't want to voice what he knew they were both thinking – that they weren't sure they would be able to stop such a monster. He was horrified to think that at one point or another, it would try to get out of the mine and head toward Biclops and Snap if it managed to get past their trap. He wished they could draw a new trap in another place, but he knew they likely didn't have enough time even if there was another area they were sure the dragon would find. They had to find the chamber with the strange chalk and get back to the others before they did anything else. He only hoped there would be enough time to move his friends to a safer place once he did.

They hadn't rested for long before they were on the move again. Rudy quickly drew them a new vehicle, though it was somewhat sloppier, as he had rushed the drawing, but once they tested it out, he found that it still worked properly, even if it was a bit uncomfortable to sit in. They continued onward, Penny using her memory of the map they'd found in the book to navigate them back on course. Rudy couldn't make much sense of the winding tunnels himself, but he trusted Penny's directions.

They hadn't gone far when they heard voices up ahead, and Rudy stopped near another tunnel to see Vinnie and Terry inside, and though from the sound of their voices they obviously weren't trying to hide, they both seemed confused and panicked and appeared to be arguing about where to go or what to do. He could hear them talking frantically as he strained to listen, but couldn't make out their words.

Stepping out of the vehicle, Rudy stood in front of the tunnel and shouted to them, "You have to get out now!"

Both adults looked startled to see him as they turned around, horrified looks crossing both of their faces before they realized it was only Rudy and Penny. However, before either had a chance to reply, Penny began explaining what route to take to get out of the mine. As soon as she had explained, drawing a quick, yet accurate, map for them, she and Rudy waited to see their reactions. At first, Terry and Vinnie looked almost ready to argue with them, but after a moment, they simply nodded and sprinted off as fast as they could run in the direction Penny had pointed out, Vinnie shouting something about drawing transportation as Terry grabbed another piece of chalk from the ceiling. Rudy watched nervously, both afraid that they would run into one of Bob's animals and afraid of what they would do with the chalk while out of the mine. However, he knew that they were heading toward safety and with Penny's map, would be able to get there quickly. It was he and Penny who were heading into even more danger. Knowing they had to keep moving, the two children got back in the car and continued to drive through the near-darkness. They realized with dread that they still had no idea where Bob, Dooth, Boorat, or the Cerberus were, but at least they were sure Vinnie and Terry would make it out fairly quickly. Following Penny's directions, Rudy was able to navigate the tunnels fairly quickly, and it wasn't long before Penny confirmed that they were back on course.

As they sped into the deeper tunnels, the noise of the car sounding oddly loud against what was otherwise silence, Rudy could see that a lot of the walls had been damaged or even widened or partially collapsed by the dragon moving through them. He cringed at the thought of more of the Chalk Mine ending up in this state or worse, and he could only hope that he'd be able to repair it when all this was over, if they managed to stop the red chalk drawing at all. The trail of destruction continued as they went onward, and he narrowed his eyes in confusion. The dragon had certainly been in these tunnels. The walls were badly damaged in places, and every one of the magic chalk clusters had been smashed to pieces, coating the ground with fragments and dust. As Rudy looked at the tiny pieces of chalk scattering the ground in certain places, too small to use, he wondered suddenly if the creature had been actually _trying_ to destroy it. He hadn't ever had any experience with the red chalk creatures trying to do such a thing, and it confused him, so he pushed the thought from his mind.

Soon reaching a strange side-tunnel with no lighting, Rudy hesitantly asked Penny if that was the one they were meant to follow, and when she confirmed that it was, he quickly stopped the vehicle to draw a set of strong lights on the front. He added a button near the steering wheel and pressed it, watching the lights flicker on and realizing with a twinge of worry that it would stand out like a beacon in the gloom. However, they were in a small, one-way tunnel that already showed signs of damage from the dragon, and he could only hope the beast wouldn't come that way again, seeing as there were no side tunnels to escape from, and they'd have to rely on having enough time to use their magic chalk. It didn't seem likely that it would return to a tunnel it had already been to unless it had seen them going there – and it was obvious it hadn't seen them, or it would have been upon them by now – and he relaxed a bit.

"We'll need to keep following this path for a while," Penny began, keeping her voice down in spite of the lack of anyone else – Real World human or Zoner – nearby, "and then take the left tunnel when the path forks. Then it should be a straight trail to the cavern we need to access."

"Okay," he replied, just as quietly. He was trying not to think of what could be going on in the rest of the mine in their absence. Knowing that time was increasingly running short, he pushed harder on the gas pedal of the car, going as fast as he could while still being able to keep in good control of the vehicle. He reminded himself again that the dragon had headed off elsewhere in the mine, not toward the areas Newland or any of the others had been wandering in when he'd last seen them, and it wasn't going toward the entrance either, and Vinnie and Terry were probably already out of the mine by now.

Luckily, with the speed of the car, it did not take them long at all to pass the fork in the tunnel that Penny had described and follow the route to a small cavern that Rudy knew had to be the one he'd seen in the book. It lay at the end of their narrow passage, a dark looking opening the only thing they could see. Rudy moved the car and its bright lights closer, and, looking through the wide entrance, he could tell the room was fairly small and circular, just as the book had depicted. Suddenly unsure what he'd find when he stepped into it, he stopped the car and hurriedly raced inside, only to be greeted with a sight he didn't expect.

The cavern seemed even smaller on the inside than it had when he'd been looking into it, and he could tell in an instant that the dragon had been there as well. There were large chunks missing from the walls, and in one place, a portion of the ceiling seemed to have collapsed, scattering the floor with hunks of rubble. He could see a few other tunnels in the back of the cavern, but he didn't want to have to enter them if he didn't have to; the book hadn't shown where they went, and they didn't have enough time. Casting his gaze around frantically, he tried to locate any source of light, any tiny glimmer or glow, but the only light he could see came from his vehicle. There was no sign of any other type of chalk, and he suddenly wondered if they had gone in the wrong direction, or if such magic chalk didn't actually exist at all.

Though, with the thought of his friends alone in the main chamber, his mind was screaming at him to head back, he couldn't just give up on the only real plan he had. He fixed his gaze on the tunnels in the back and began to run toward them. Whatever lay behind them, he'd keep looking for any sign of what they were searching for. He frantically told himself that it would be possible. If they had found where the ancient library books had been hidden, they could find this too.

As he raced toward the back tunnels, he stumbled in the darkness, falling on his hands and knees and scattering pieces of rubble as pain shot up his leg. Regardless, he scrambled back to his feet, moving with a determined stride toward the tunnels, when Penny shouted his name and caused him to hesitate. He turned around to look at her, and in doing so noticed exactly what she had – underneath the bits of rubble he had tripped over, there was a faint hint of a glow, growing stronger as Penny pushed some of the smaller bits of debris aside.

Abandoning back tunnel entrances, he ran to Penny's side and got down on his knees, beginning to dig through the dirt and chunks of rock as fast as he could, Penny doing the same. After a few moments, they could see small patches of chalk dust littering the floor, and even a few tiny pieces that were too small to use. Still looking, Rudy frantically hoped that it hadn't all been destroyed; they couldn't have come all that way and left Snap and Biclops on their own for nothing.

The further they dug, the more dust and scattered chalk fragments they found, but there was nothing they could actually use. Rudy was growing more desperate, and they soon were left with only rocks that were too big for them to lift. Rudy knew he could have used the white chalk in his hand to draw something to lift them, but he knew just from looking at them that nothing underneath them would have survived being crushed. Casting his eyes about, he located another pile of rubble and began to dig, Penny spotting another and limping over to it, beginning to dig as well.

There was little chalk dust beneath the rocks that Rudy pushed aside, but he found a few small fragments and continued looking. Then, almost by accident, he noticed something in the crevice between two rocks, and he pushed one aside and pulled the object out. He was staring at a piece of chalk that, at first glance, didn't look much different to the magic chalk he was used to. Due to the low light, it took him a moment to recognize that the piece he now held in his hand was a faded light green instead of white, and he examined it with a bit of awe, feeling a bit odd that he was now holding something he'd only ever heard of in a book. The piece was not very large; in fact, it was much smaller than a normal piece, and had to have been a fragment that had broken off. He realized that there wasn't going to be a lot he could draw with it, and he turned to show Penny, who immediately raced over to him as fast as she was able, and examined it as well.

"This is all that's left?" she asked, and Rudy gave an uncertain nod, having found no other sign of any more. Just to be sure, he quickly sifted through the remains of the rubble pile, but still found nothing.

Rudy stood up and walked toward the back of the cavern, peering into one of the tunnels. "I'll see if this leads to any…" he trailed off as he realized that the tunnel sloped into darkness as far as he could see, and as he looked briefly into the others near it, they looked the same.

He knew there was no time to search tunnels that would likely get them lost, or at the very least make navigating difficult. There was no guarantee that anything was there, and he knew they needed to get back to Biclops and Snap.

"Rudy," Penny stated, seeming to realize the same thing as she looked at the tunnels, then at the chalk Rudy was holding, "I don't think there's much we can draw with this…we might be able to draw a large sort of box to contain the creature, but I'm not sure there's enough to do more than that."

"Maybe…" Rudy trailed off, trying to push aside his fear for his friends and the others in the mine as he tried to think. "Maybe we can draw a cage around it while it's already in the first trap we drew," he suggested, "or we could set up the new trap around the first one, and wait for it to come, and then-"

"The dragon wouldn't just blindly run into it," Penny quickly stated. "Even if it were moving at high speeds and in darkness, the light from the mine entrance would immediately-"

"Maybe we could make the trap invisible," Rudy cried, his eyes lighting up with hope at the idea. "Draw a cloaking device for it! With the regular chalk, I mean. That way we could set it up before the dragon arrives!"

"That might work," Penny replied with a nod, a small smile crossing her face at the thought of Rudy's idea.

Turning to Penny, Rudy broke the one piece of chalk he'd managed to find in half and handed one piece to her. "We'll need to do this together," he told her. "There might not be enough time if only one of us is trying to draw it."

Penny slowly took the chalk from his hand and nodded, but her smile faded, and he could see she was not only frightened, but very apprehensive as well. He wasn't sure if it was because she wasn't as used to using the chalk as he was, or if she was fearful that something about their plan would go awry. His mind wound back to the details about the green chalk's properties. If Penny was not overly confident in her ability to use regular magic chalk, he realized that it made total sense that she doubted her ability, or at least questioned her accuracy. They had so little green chalk to spare, and therefore it was imperative that they did not make errors that could waste valuable time and resources. However, he assumed it was more likely that Penny was concerned about the success of the trap in general.

"Don't worry," he told her, though he knew saying such a thing was all but useless. "We'll find a way to make the trap work." Penny merely nodded, and they quickly scrambled back toward the car. "I'm starting to wonder if it really is trying to destroy all the other chalk in the mine," Rudy said as he climbed into the front seat.

"It could just be destroying anything it comes into contact with," Penny replied, getting into the seat beside him. "The red chalk is good at doing that, though I do wonder why it didn't firstly head to the outside of the mine." She looked deep in thought as Rudy turned the car around and began to head back. "It may be lost, or…maybe it's focusing on destroying any chalk it finds…because there are other creators in the mine."

Rudy hadn't thought of that, and as he sped up the vehicle, he realized that she could be right about the dragon acting this way because there were other creators nearby. He had been the only Real World person in the mine when he'd found the red chalk, as had Reggie during his time as Reggie the Red. Now that there were _five_ individuals who could use the magic chalk, it did make a bit of sense that the dragon would turn its destructive powers on the mine itself. There was no way to tell for sure, and even if it _was _focusing on the mine, the distraction would only last so long, and if the creature ran into anything living again…well, he didn't want to think about that.

As they sped through the tunnel, Rudy thought of the piece of chalk he now carried in his pocket. Though he wasn't sure he could trust the information in the book completely, the idea of something that would create anything very near unbreakable, save for against another drawing by the same type of chalk, or Real World water, unnerved him, and he only hoped it behaved in a neutral way like the white chalk did. He told himself that whoever had made the book had figured out that the red chalk was dangerous, so they likely would have known if there was anything horribly wrong with this one, and he decided to trust it. It wasn't like he had much of a choice. Rudy could only hope that his friends had remained safe in the main chamber of the mine, and that the dragon or the other red chalk creatures hadn't encountered anyone else.

Recalling the map, Penny guided Rudy back into the section of the Forbidden Tunnels they had traversed before, near some paths that she knew would take them back to the main cavern. It wasn't long before they came to a place that showed no sign of damage from the dragon, and Rudy suddenly stopped the vehicle. Penny shot him a questioning look, and he turned to her, saying, "I have an idea!"

"Wait, what do you-"

"You said the dragon might be trying to destroy chalk, right?" he stated, and when Penny nodded but gave him a questioning look, he got out of the car and ran toward the wall. Getting out his white colored chalk, he began to draw a chalk cluster on the wall of the tunnel, ignoring the pain racing up his arm as he gritted his teeth in concentration.

"Rudy, drawing magic chalk isn't going to work," Penny stated, still a bit confused as well as anxious about getting back to Snap and Biclops. "If you try to do that, it'll just turn out as regular chalk, and-"

"But that's not the point!" Rudy stated quickly, finishing his drawing. "Look, we can leave a trail of fake magic chalk for it to destroy. We can lead it into our trap! That way, it'll go there and get caught in the trap instead of finding the others."

A look of understanding crossed Penny's face, but she was still worried. "We should lead it to a different area," she stated, "away from the others. And draw a new trap once we reach it." Rudy nodded in understanding, and Penny glanced around nervously. "We'll have to move very quickly," she stated urgently. "But I think you're right. If we draw these at regular intervals, it should choose to follow this tunnel once it comes across one." She gave him a determined look, but he could tell she was afraid. There was still so much that could go wrong.

As quickly as they could, they carried on, hurriedly drawing chalk clusters wherever they would be most easily visible, then rushing back into the car and carrying on to the next spot. They knew that they were taking up more time this way, but it was their only real plan to get the red chalk monster into the trap before it harmed anyone else.

As they drove through the tunnels, keeping a wary gaze on all of the looming entrances to other paths, Rudy suddenly noticed movement up ahead. It took him a moment to realize that the person moving was a human, and one he recognized all too well. "_Newland?_" he gasped.

Rudy's eyes widened in panic as he realized that Bob was not only standing in their way, but he was standing in the direct path of their trail to lead the dragon to the trap. Rudy came to a halt, facing Newland as he looked to them as well, an expression crossing his features that Rudy could only barely see in the dim light. He couldn't tell for sure, but he thought Bob looked angry.

"You have to get out of here!" Penny cried, turning and pointing toward one of the side tunnels. She swallowed, clearly afraid, but tried not to focus on anything but business. "Hurry and make an exit through there, or-"

Newland didn't appear to be listening. Lifting his hand, Rudy could see that he was still holding the red chalk. As Bob stepped closer, into the light of the vehicle, Rudy realized with a growing sense of dread that he didn't look angry at all, but utterly terrified, his eyes wide and panic-stricken as they darted around the room, his feet creating an awkward scuffle as he moved forward…or was _forced_ forward, and it suddenly sunk in that what he was doing was not of his free will.


	18. Cost of Courage

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Eighteen – Cost of Courage**

Rudy and Penny watched as Newland's hand was ripped upwards and began to trace a line through the air, his other one shooting up and gripping the wrist. He made small noises of protest, clearly disturbed but not knowing what to say in his fear. When he reluctantly accepted he couldn't stop the shapes that followed, his wrist working at such a rate that he looked unsure of what exactly he was drawing, he cringed in a way that told Rudy that he had been through this process before—and it was not a good thing.

Rudy hardly noticed as his knuckles whitened under the pressure of how tightly he was gripping his steering wheel, his panic rising as he realized that Bob's rapid art was quickly taking shape. Penny shouted something to him that he wasn't quite paying attention to, but the sudden voice threw him back to reality, and he accelerated in the opposite direction, taking a right turn into another cavern. As he sped past a flat-topped boulder in the center of the room, he suddenly realized something: the cavern had no exit. The wall that he neared at an alarming rate stretched on until it met the left and right walls, harboring no tunnels or escape routes.

He jammed his foot on the brake pedal and came to a screeching halt, forcing the wheel to the right and skidding until he faced the front of the room again, the back of the car to the wall shortly behind them. He and Penny frantically looked about, searching for a good place to make a tunnel to go through and hoping that the solid rock wasn't dense enough for the chalk to make only a shallow doorway.

A roar ripped through the cavern, and for a terrifying moment, the two thought the creature Newland had drawn was about to enter the room. However, it soon became apparent that it vanished down the passage and away from where they were. For a moment they were relieved, but their relief quickly disappeared.

Newland appeared in the doorway, startling them both. Dread flooded Rudy's mind as he laid sights upon Newland's widened eyes, which was all he needed to understand how serious the situation was. As the artist lifted his arm again and began drawing, a new layer of panic entered the two children. Penny bit her lip as Newland quickly completed the head of his new creature, complete with sharp mouth pincers and two thin antennae, alarmed by the rate at which he was able to draw. She felt her breath quicken as she turned to Rudy. "Rudy, you must stop him!"

Rudy's mind was whirring as fast as it could, and he was finding things difficult to compute. "I-I don't know what to draw!" he shouted, pulling out a stick of chalk but holding it suspended. He flicked back and forth as Newland continued to construct his creature, his worry growing as nothing popped into his mind. The red chalk was zipping so quickly that he was unable to pinpoint anything that could match its speed or counteract its power. He shook his head in distress. "I don't know what to draw!" he reiterated, fright taking hold.

"Anything," Penny breathed, but soon it was too late, as the creature began to fill in with assorted color.

A screech sounded from the newly drawn creature, whose triangular red head held vicious, soulless eyes. Its body was capped with a tough exoskeleton, resembling a cockroach, but its body was elongated like a praying mantis'. It stood on only its hindmost legs, which held several spines which looked suitable for grip. The feet, which hooked into the ground, looked strangely unstable, but held the weight of two other sets of legs. The top ones were curved and positioned the same as a praying mantis, but had the design of a cockroach's. It made disturbing clicking noises as it stepped mechanically forward, hissing as it planned its meal.

Fear overtook them both as they stared at the horror before them, unable to think of a solution to such a terrifying problem. Rudy felt like slamming his foot on the gas, but he had no idea if the vehicle screaming toward the creature would even make it flinch.

The thought that followed in his mind was that, if he could distract the creature, he could power past it and hopefully Newland would simply jump out of the way. He glanced to his chalk and immediately doodled a sphere, throwing it toward the beast as it took scuttling steps forward. The sphere landed by the creature's feet and clicked open, releasing the weak beginning of a bolt that aimed to stun. The creature, however, angled its head down and spat up crimson goop, which took no longer than two seconds to completely dissolve the device, and proceed to burn a shallow dip in the rock.

"Rudy!" Penny shouted in newfound panic, and Rudy, shocked and horrified at his failed attempt, snapped to her, open to any idea she may have had. "It appears to resemble a praying mantis and a cockroach. Draw bug spray!"

Taking her idea without objection or alteration, Rudy leapt from the vehicle in spite of his shadowing nervousness and drew two straight lines from as high as he could reach to near the bottom of the cavern floor, drawing a circle above and below it to create a large cylinder standing taller than him and almost twice as wide. He added legs from the bottom, which quickly lifted the giant can of insecticide and carried it toward the cockroach-mantis. The red creature, who had been advancing on Rudy and Penny, showed not a single sign of fear, and for a second, the two thought that their idea had failed. However, as the spray can expelled misty poison from inside and it touched the creature, it shrieked, the moisture coating its eyes. It howled with pain before blindly charging out of the room, its creator quickly stepping out the way before it slipped by.

Rudy, understanding that he was extremely lucky to have been able to draw something that could counteract the insect without having to wrestle with it first, exhaled heavily and turned to Penny with a flicker of relief etched between his features. She was much the same, but the two's minor rejoicing came to an abrupt halt as they heard Newland struggling once more, and threw their expressions toward him in an instant.

"S…stop that!" he yelled, his anger returning to fill the gaps between his fits of fear. "Do what I tell you!" As expected, the red chalk disregarded his pleas and dragged him into the room as he dug his heels into the ground. He left a trail of unearthed pebbles and stones as he drew nearer, and Rudy, not returning to the vehicle, readied his chalk again. Although he was frightened by the red chalk and its abilities, as well as Newland's already-dangerous talent, he knew that he would have no choice but to attempt a defense mechanism. There was no way he would allow his friend to be hurt, or himself, after all.

As the man reached out, the red chalk guiding him, he stumbled into the boulder on his right, disturbing his balance and causing him to trip. He reached out in front of him and his right hand, the one holding the red chalk, scraped along the side of the boulder. Rudy silently hoped the red chalk would dislodge somehow and roll free, but to his dismay, albeit expectation, it stayed firmly attached.

Instantly Rudy dashed forward, seizing the opportunity, and clutched his chalk tightly. Bob was recovering from the fall, about to get up, when he saw the boy coming. When Rudy was right before him, Bob's right hand flew upwards, and but Rudy had already begun drawing a square sheet, which he finished without a split second to spare before it clattered onto the man's hand, disabling the chalk for a moment. He continued the square around the hand but it jerked away, and instantly Rudy yelled at Bob to hold it still. Bob, already employing the action, as it had conceived in his mind before Rudy mentioned it, clamped his hand around his wrist and allowed Rudy the second he needed to complete the metal cage.

As soon as it was done, Newland involuntarily drove his hand toward Rudy, who widened his eyes and recoiled back, avoiding contact. When the metal box retracted back to Newland's side, Rudy took a moment to register that it had been the red chalk which forced his hand forward. Noticing that the box was right beside the boulder, he made a quick action to round the boulder as the man tried to strike again, his body jolting forward as the red chalk took control, and he again held his arm back in an effort to ensure he didn't again trip.

Whilst Newland was distracted, Rudy launched himself over the boulder and laid on his front on the top of it, slamming his chalk into the box and then to the side of the boulder, connecting the two with a powerful rod. Newland immediately tried to pull free, but the rod was stuck fast, and he remained at a distance of roughly a foot from the boulder.

Stepping back, Rudy quickly admired his handiwork with a simple, single nod and kept his hand raised, a reflex in case there was any further need for it. However, the metal rod appeared sturdy enough to hold Newland for at least a while, and without access to another piece of chalk, Rudy knew that he was unable to break himself free. The red chalk could likely find a way out, but he imagined that if it could, it would take a while.

Rudy edged around the boulder to the right, ensuring to stay clear of Newland as he tried to swipe at him with his free hand, his rage for the boy returning as the revelation that he was stuck bloomed in his mind, and began to yell a string of insults.

Once back to the vehicle, Penny gave a smile, one as bright as the situation would allow, before Rudy took off again, but stopped at the cavern entrance.

"What are you doing?" Newland demanded, clearly referring to the box around his hand.

"We're finding a way to stop the dragon," Rudy answered, sounding wary but professional.

"How, exactly, do you plan to do that?" questioned Newland, clearly skeptical.

"Rudy found something in a book that might help," Penny responded, her tone stony and reproachful. She produced a glare that was clearly accusatory, but the reciprocate only glowered back.

"Don't worry…" Rudy dismounted the vehicle and began to seal the entrance to the cavern with a rock wall that he continued to draw, climbing atop the vehicle to reach the top. Before he could complete it, Newland's cries of enraged alarm met his ears.

"What do you think you're doing?!" He lurched forward, as if about to bolt to the entrance, but the rod pulled him back and he remained in the same spot.

"I'm blocking it off so the dragon doesn't see you!" he called before completing the rock.

Rudy stared for a moment at the wall he'd drawn, before Penny's voice drew him back to the matter at hand and he turned around, seeing her motion toward the vehicle. They climbed in it again and quickly drove further on, well away from the wall behind which Newland was trapped, and Rudy and Penny got out of the car and began to draw another cluster of chalk on the walls.

Rudy had just finished his side of the drawing when he froze, as somewhere in the tunnel behind him, a loud rumbling shook the area. He turned around with a renewed sense of apprehension, his hand still poised by the newly finished chalk cluster as he saw the curved shape of the dragon's head and neck snaking around the corner of the tunnel a ways behind them. It was at a distance, but he knew how quickly that distance could be cleared. "PENNY!" he shouted, though he needn't have done anything, as she was already racing toward the car.

They jumped into the seats as fast as they could, Rudy stepping on the gas pedal and sending the car speeding forward. Now there was certainly no need to draw any more chalk clusters on the walls. The dragon would go after anything living first and foremost; they knew they were now literally fleeing for their lives.

Rudy was moving the car faster than he had previously, finding it difficult to control as he swerved with the path of the tunnel. However, he knew it wouldn't be long before the dragon was right behind them, and there was no way he was going to slow down.

He felt a burst of intense heat a moment after he rounded a corner and shot into a side tunnel, realizing that they'd likely just missed being in the direct path of the flame. Following Penny's instructions, as she was already knowledgeable enough about the layout of the mine from memorizing the map, he headed into another side tunnel, making sure to turn as often as possible as the sounds of the creature crashing after them grew to be deafening.

He knew that now, there was no time to draw another trap. Their only choice was to flee toward the one they'd already drawn and hope they could make it there. He could only hope the trap would work properly and secure the beast's jaws shut, eliminating the danger of the fire until they could enclose it in a barrier. Though at the moment, he was terrified that they wouldn't even be able to get that far.

Knowing that the creature was close enough to follow the sound of their vehicle, Rudy weaved in and out of tunnels, knowing that leaving any open space between them and the creature would leave them in the path of the dragon's flame. He also knew that having to weave its massive body in and out of tunnels would slow the monster down a bit, and he tried to focus as Penny instructed him on which tunnels to take to keep him on course to the main chamber, as she had obviously realized the same thing he had about there being no time to draw a new trap. As the tunnels around him flashed by, Rudy hardly paid attention to them, focusing only on where Penny was instructing him to go, trying to fight his mounting panic as the sounds of the massive beast chasing them grew ever louder.

Suddenly the section of tunnels leading to the main entrance loomed into view. Rudy was glad the trap was well hidden as they sped across the surface, quickly entering the main chamber and swerving to the side near the wall, out of the path of any stream of fire that might come from the entrance to the tunnels. "Snap!" Rudy shot a gaze toward his friend, who was still slumped against the wall, focused on something else in the chamber, but still gave him an alarmed glance as he and Penny appeared. "Get further back along the wall!"

As Snap began to move back, Rudy turned to Penny, knowing that they had no time to draw a trap with the green chalk and put an invisibility device on it; the dragon would appear before they'd even gotten much of a start. They had to go with Penny's plan, to wait until it was caught in the first trap and draw the barrier around it. He quickly used what little time he knew they had to draw rockets on Penny's shoes that matched his own, knowing that she would need them to help him draw the barriers around the creature.

"Let's get out of here!" another voice called from behind him. It wasn't Snap, nor was it Biclops, but Vinnie.

As Rudy finished drawing the adjustments to Penny's shoes, he shot a quick glance behind him, seeing that not only had Terry Bouffant and Vinnie Raton found their way back to the main chamber, but their creation, Boorat, had met up with them again, and was holding a bag of magic chalk as he raced toward the mine entrance after the humans. He was shocked that they were so close to the danger, and called out a warning, which they appeared to ignore, already nearing the entrance of the mine. Boorat shot Snap a glance as he passed. "Try stopping me_ this_ time!" he heard the rat sneer at the blue Zoner as Rudy turned his attention to the tunnel entrances again.

"N-no!" Rudy shouted on impulse, but he knew there was nothing he could do about the three who had run off right then, and if his trap didn't work, even they wouldn't be safe. As he looked, he also realized that Biclops had gone. He realized that the mine's guardian would not have even known anyone was still in the mine, if Snap had been too weak to get his attention before he realized what had happened and run for help. Glad that at least he was safe, Rudy turned back to the tunnel entrances, worried about Snap. At least the dragon hadn't appeared yet…

He paused. Something wasn't right. It shouldn't have taken the creature that long. It could have followed the tracks their car had made in the dust, or even just the sound of the vehicle, to know where they were going. He could hear it, but it didn't seem to be moving at a fast rate. After a few moments, the noise grew quieter, until it was gone.

"…Rudy?" he heard Snap's uncertain voice from further back in the tunnel. There was silence apart from Snap's voice, and Rudy realized that he had stopped moving.

In spite of the fact that he wanted to tell Snap to keep going, he couldn't bring himself to formulate a reply, and judging by Penny's silence, she couldn't either. He wondered if they had messed up, if they'd gone too close to a large room of magic chalk and the dragon had gotten distracted and gone a different way. Yet that didn't make sense, unless it really had lost their trail. Why would it go after more of the chalk when there were _creators_ trying to oppose it?

"Rudy?" Snap repeated, sounding a little more desperate this time. "Are you sure this is gonna work?"

Rudy didn't take his eyes off the tunnels as he replied, "It…it should." He wasn't sure who he was trying to convince more – Snap or himself. Shakily, he grabbed his stick of white chalk, and, not wanting to waste the more valuable resource of the rarer version, sketched a small machine meant to function similar to a tranquilizer. He was unsure if such a thing would even work, but if there was any possibility it could, he wanted to use what precious little time they had to create anything that might have a chance at aiding them. He wished there was something he could do to help Snap, but at the moment he didn't dare move from his position, knowing that he needed to be ready for the moment when the dragon appeared.

He stood poised, out of the path of any stream of flame that could come from the area with the tunnels, keeping his eye on the entrance to that area as he and Penny stood with their backs near the wall. There was still no sound, and the two of them were getting increasingly uneasy. Rudy looked down to the piece of light green chalk in his hand, hoping that if it actually did what the book had said it did, it would be enough.

The seconds passed, and Rudy was beginning to realize that the dragon had altered its course and hadn't followed them to the trap. He considered the possibility that it had sensed their trap, although he had thought he made it well hidden, especially in the lower light level. Then, another, much more terrifying possibility occurred to him. _What if it had gotten distracted…by another living thing? _Horror flooded through him as he realized that if it had gone after Dooth or Vinnie and Terry's Cerberus, it had been him who had led the creature close enough to find them. Slowly, he looked toward Penny, and she seemed equally as concerned as she looked back.

Snap, however, had less knowledge of what was going on, and was clearly confused as he leaned from the wall to peer at them. "Rudy, what's-"

There was an enormous crash from the tunnels ahead, and Rudy's eyes widened as he heard the sounds of their trap going off and metal clanging together, but a moment later, something massive smashed into the wall, but from his angle, Rudy could not see what was happening in that area. Another large crash sounded, and Rudy darted out of the way as pieces of chalk and chunks of rock clattered down from the ceiling near the walls. Snap, further back, was not in danger of being hit, but he cringed at the sound and looked to his friends in panic. A third crash occurred immediately afterward, and this time, cracks raced along the walls and ceiling near the entrance to the forbidden tunnels, and a large piece of stone smashed into the front of the car right near where they were standing. Realizing that if the dragon was struggling and there was no sign of fire, then the trap must have worked, Rudy and Penny looked at each other and then sped toward the forbidden tunnel cavern, using their rocket shoes.

As soon as they moved away from the wall, they had a better view into the area their trap was set, and they realized immediately that it had worked as planned; the dragon was trapped in place, shackles around its body and limbs holding it in the center of the room, the chains attached to the left and right wall. The dragon was shaking its head wildly, unable to move its mouth due to one of the shackles constricting its jaws. A few bits of flame spurted from between its teeth, but only a tiny amount, and, frustrated, it tried to shake the device off, but its large teeth were in the way.

Rudy edged closer and warily held up the tranquilizer he'd drawn, swallowing hard before firing a dart at the creature. Its twisting body slammed against the cave wall, the space it was trapped in seeming suddenly small as the huge creature's mass filled it with ease. Though the dart struck the dragon's side, it did not react, and showed no signs of getting drowsy, although Rudy had drawn the device to act quickly. Realizing that it wasn't going to work, he gritted his teeth and flung the tranquilizer aside, and he and Penny quickly prepared to trap the dragon again.

Though the dragon's body took up most of the space in the cavern, there was still enough space between it and the wall to draw the barrier. However, as he noticed this, he could also see that the dragon had already ripped out a few of the shackles from the wall, and he realized that he had underestimated the creature; it was breaking away from the trap much faster than they had thought it would.

In a panic, they separated, avoiding the lashing of limbs, tail and head, Penny shouting to Rudy to help her draw the wall using their light green chalk along the right side. He quickly nodded and they split up, Penny drawing the upper line of the cage. Rudy started on the bottom at the front of the room, narrowly avoiding the dragon's body slamming into the wall above where he was drawing his line. Once he reached the back of the cavern, he doubled back to connect their lines at the front, while Penny drew a line from the top to the bottom height-wise at the back end where Rudy had been.

Rudy raced across the cavern, keeping low to the ground to minimize his chances of being attacked by the thrashing creature, and quickly reached the beginning of their lines, connecting them with a new line of his own using the light green chalk.

Immediately one side of the barrier formed, filling in to become a solid green wall. However, as it did so, Rudy noticed to his horror that the chains attached to that side of the wall were severed by the obstruction of the newly formed barrier, breaking away from it and crashing to the ground. He hadn't taken into account that they had been reaching right through the space their barrier would appear in, and he hadn't expected it to slice them like that either. In a panic, he looked toward Penny, who was sheltering behind the barrier at the other end of the cavern. Judging by her frightened look, he could tell she'd clearly realized their mistake as well. Penny pointed toward the front and nodded to him, and he understood what she meant; they would have to draw the front and back of the barrier, and then complete the remaining side last, or else the rest of the chains would be broken in the process, and the dragon would be freed before they could do anything to stop it.

As Rudy hurriedly moved around to the front, near the section that connected with the main entrance, he was relieved to see that the dragon's head was chained too close to the left wall to reach him, but the metal encasing its head, neck and legs was rapidly weakening, and Rudy knew it could break free at any moment. He now understood that their trap had been doomed to fail from the start. It simply wasn't going to hold the creature much longer. The only thing they could do was try to complete the cage.

Dodging a misaimed swipe from the dragon's freed foreleg and hearing a chain from somewhere along the wall breaking, he started the drawing, ignoring the pain in his arm as he moved it. Glancing up once more, unable to keep his eyes from the dragon, he noted with clenched jaws that it was dangerously close to coming free; only a small number of the shackles still held it in place.

As he drew, trying to make his line as straight as possible while he moved his hand along the floor, he realized that since the dragon was trying to destroy chalk, Snap certainly couldn't hide in the mine's main chamber. He had thought earlier that he would be safer where he could hide in the darkness, but in reality, he was in much more danger than Rudy had anticipated, surrounded by the magic chalk in the main chamber. He wished he had had the time and initiative to find Snap some sort of hiding place outside, before it was too late. As he thought this, he completed a line long enough along the floor to enclose the dragon and changed direction, using his rocket shoes to draw a line straight upwards. He knew it was far too dangerous to barricade himself and Penny in the mine, but they had rocket shoes to fly away with…Snap did not.

He considered that at least the beast would have trouble moving around the wall he was trying to complete, and as he focused, he realized that it was not attacking him, nor paying him much attention. With a frown, he risked looking away from the drawing, realizing from what little he could see of the further end of the cavern that the back barrier was not up. With a jolt of alarm, it became apparent that he had no idea what could be happening to Penny. He saw the dragon's head pull free from the wall – although the shackle around its mouth and neck still held – with a mighty tug, and it swerved around, presumably to look for Penny. For a moment he panicked, afraid that it would spot her, but he caught sight of her as she dashed out of the way and into the tunnels. The dragon's attention turned elsewhere and Rudy reiterated to himself that Penny was unharmed and would likely return to draw the back end of the barrier once the dragon was distracted. Similarly, he knew he had to finish his part.

Keeping his eyes focused on his drawing, but knowing that Snap could hear him, he called, "Snap! Get out of the mine!" He briefly glanced at Snap, who was standing against the wall of the main chamber some ways behind him, and his friend gave him a terrified gaze and nodded before staggering toward the entrance. After a moment he looked at Snap again, and saw that the Zoner had stopped, casting a worried glance in his direction. "Go!" Rudy shouted, and Snap needed no further convincing, continuing to move toward the exit.

Knowing that Snap would soon be out of the creature's direct path, Rudy assigned all of his focus into the drawing again as his tired arm worked, hindering him before he completed another side and had to stop for a moment. He cringed as he told himself that he needed to press on despite the pain that grew in his muscles, then moved down to complete what remained. The boy was only a few feet from the end of the first line he'd drawn, just about to complete the drawing, when he noticed, just barely out of the corner of his eye, the dragon's chained foreleg swiping unexpectedly towards him.

Abandoning the drawing with a bolt of shock, he tried to swerve out of the way, but the dragon's leg closed in faster than anything he could avoid and slammed directly into his side. Losing all control, he whacked into the wall with startling force, and the breath was completely driven from his body. He slid to the floor, his vision blurred as he doubled over. When breath returned to him, he tried to get to his feet, still somewhat stunned.

Struggling to move, he realized that he was no longer holding the white piece of chalk, and he couldn't tell where it had fallen. He still had the small remaining piece of green chalk and he tightened his grip on it, trying to blink the haze from his vision as he vaguely heard Penny's shouts.

However, he became distracted as he turned to see the dragon staring straight at him, its head free but the chain around its neck and the one still clinging to its muzzle, although close to breaking, preventing it from attacking with teeth or fire. Suddenly finding his senses returning as he gasped for more oxygen, he tried to take to the air, but the dragon's enormous paw stomped down on him before he could so much as stand.

In the midst of all other thoughts, Rudy couldn't understand why he hadn't been crushed on impact. He was against the ground with the leg pressing down on him, and though it was with enough pressure to prohibit proper breathing, it had not shattered his bones or flattened his body. He then realized that the chain around that particular leg was still attached to the wall, and though the dragon was straining against it, it held fast and prevented it from crushing him. Due to the constant force it used whilst trying to press its foot down, it managed to move the chain out of the wall just a fraction, and Rudy found that his air supply cut off immediately.

His first reaction was solid panic, as his lungs failed to draw any oxygen from around him, before he heard Penny yelling from somewhere else in the room. He knew that she had to be close enough to see him, but considering how worried she sounded, he figured that something must have been stopping her, as she wasn't coming nearer. When her voice reached him, it was faint, but he could still thankfully make the words out. She was telling him that the dragon was targeting him because it saw his green chalk, and, amongst his panic, suddenly it made sense. He realized that Penny had mostly been near the back of the chamber and her possession of the strange chalk would have escaped the beast's attention, while he had been near the head the whole time.

He heard Penny tell him to throw the chalk toward her, realizing she meant to distract the creature, but from his position on the ground, with the dragon's foot pressing into his body and his head between its claws, he couldn't see her. However, he glanced to his right, where his injured arm was still free, still holding the chalk, but he knew it would be impossible to draw anything with any accuracy in that position. He doubted he could even throw it, especially with a distraction as severe as being unable to breathe.

Penny called to him again, but as he looked at the chalk, he knew he couldn't endanger her by throwing it her way. Instead, realizing he was able to take a shallow breath first, he lifted his arm and weakly tossed it toward the opening between his chamber and the main one, the opposite direction of Penny's voice. He heard it clink against the ground, but couldn't see where it went. The tightness in his chest grew as he breathed extremely shallowly, unable to suck in enough air to be considered substantial.

He almost expected his actions to result in nothing, but to his surprise, the dragon's attention shifted entirely toward the small piece of chalk he had disowned. It tried to lunge toward it, but the remaining parts of the trap held it back. Although it did not release Rudy, its leg shifted, and he suddenly had a bit more room to breathe, though he still had no hope of freeing himself.

Penny was still trapped behind the shield she'd created as she had been shouting to her friend, but as she watched him throw the chalk and the dragon become distracted, she managed to draw a hole in her shelter with the green chalk and slip away. In the small space between the dragon and the wall, she could see the chains keeping the dragon trapped were rapidly loosening. Flying toward them, she quickly tried to reinforce them with the white chalk, afraid that they wouldn't have enough of the green to complete their cage, and having near-indestructible chains attached to the wall in the space they needed to draw a barrier could interfere. She also knew she couldn't help Rudy because the dragon was about to break out, and if she didn't keep it restrained, Rudy wouldn't be the only one in trouble.

However, the dragon's distraction did not last long. She could no longer see Rudy as the mythical creature's coiled body shifted, its head turning toward the boy again. It did not seem to be able to squash Rudy completely, as it failed to apply the right amount of pressure due to the chains, but it was hard for her to tell how close it was to doing so, and the fact that her friend was making no sound didn't help. She looked toward the one side of the barrier they had managed to complete, near the opposite wall, spanning the length of the cavern and reaching almost to the ceiling. Using the rockets on her shoes to fly closer, she noted the broken chain on one of the dragon's back legs, intending to draw a new one which attached to the barrier wall. She knew she would have to hurry.

As she sped toward the severed end of the chain, she noticed for a brief instant that the dragon, its head arched above the coils of its body, angled its head so that its eye immediately connected with hers. In that moment, alarm told her she would have to flee, but before she could so much as turn her body to change course, the tip of the dragon's tail whipped toward her. She only had a split second to draw a small rectangular shield with the green chalk, which caused her to drop significantly from the weight, before the dense appendage slammed against it, knocking into her and sending her crashing into the wall.

She felt the breath driven from her as she hit the wall, finding her vision distorted in one eye before she realized that one lens of her glasses had been badly cracked when it had knocked against the shield. As she realized that her quick shield had done what she had intended it to and absorbed the worst of the blow, she vaguely heard the clink of something metal and, out of the corner of her eye, saw one of the rockets from her shoes a few feet away from her.

She stared through the clear green glass-like substance, trapped beneath the shield, which was lying at a very shallow angle against the floor and the wall and created a small space that, although giving her no room to move in, protected her. She saw the tail move away and slam into it again, but the substance, although thin, failed to even crack. She briefly took a breath of surprise before gripping the chalk in her hand and starting to draw a wall for her makeshift shelter. She could see that the dragon still had its eye on her, despite its attempts to get to Rudy, and at the moment, she wasn't sure how she would escape. If she left her small sanctuary, she would easily be targeted, and given that she was safe where she was unless the shield dislodged from the wall and slid down onto her, unlikely now that a side wall connecting it to the rock reinforced it, she figured it was best to remain where she was. Trying to find something else useful she could use the time for, she glanced again to her shoe and quickly thought to replace the rocket which had snapped off.

Rudy realized, amongst trying his hardest to breathe effectively under the weight, that his distraction had only been extremely temporary. It hadn't taken the dragon more than a few seconds to give up on reaching the chalk and turn back to him, and at once Rudy felt his air supply cut off again. Horror filled his mind as pressure built up in his head, his throat begging to feed air to his lungs. He knew the only thing keeping him from being crushed fully were the chains holding the dragon's leg to the wall, and that the others held its body in a position where it couldn't reach him with its other leg, but he could tell that the chains were rapidly weakening. Even the one around its mouth was beginning to split, and as the chain around its leg was yanked away from the wall a few inches, the pressure on his chest increased.

He had no idea where Penny was. He could hear the dragon striking at something again and again with what could have been its tail or its back leg, and it was all he could do to not assume the worst. Yet even that sound was fading. He could hardly see, everything becoming a blur before his eyes. He felt his limbs turning numb, the fear in his mind endlessly swelling as he again tried to wrench oxygen in through his mouth, but all attempts were thwarted by the overwhelming power of the dragon. He could think of nothing else as the pain and phenomenal discomfort continued, and wondered if he really was about to die.

Snap had not been able to get very far before he realized that something had gone wrong. Being so close to the entrance of the other room, he had witnessed the entire attack on Rudy that the dragon had launched, and had been staring, horrified, at his best friend's trapped body beneath the creature's enormous paw. He had frozen in panic, seeing that the dragon's brief distraction when Rudy had thrown the chalk after Penny's shout had been very short lived. Rudy was hardly responsive at all, and Snap imagined that his ability to breathe must have been extremely limited, if existent at all. The notion was extremely frightening, as he had no idea how much longer his friend would last. Based on the time that he had already been pinned, he assumed that it wasn't going to be long.

A cold wave of realization swept over him as a thought crossed his mind. It intruded like a thorn in his mind, but he accepted it without struggle. Although the dragon had been side-tracked by the piece of green chalk which Rudy had thrown in an effort to draw its attention from him, it had not lasted long, and Snap knew that distracting it to the point where it would forget Rudy was going to take something of a much larger scale. Rudy needed that in order to survive, considering more time under the pressure of the dragon's foot would surely bring about his demise.

From his position in the middle of the main chamber, Snap had no way of seeing where Penny was, or even if she was all right. He glanced across the ground, further into the next chamber where his friends and the dragon were, and spotted the tiny piece of lime chalk that Rudy had thrown. He knew that Newland's "mindless" creation certainly had some degree of intelligence, and would therefore be aware that a Zoner was incapable of using the chalk in the same way as a human could. He wouldn't be able to draw the dragon's attention by holding it himself, but if the dragon became convinced that he was handing it off to Penny, who was human…

His legs were frozen. He leaned against the side of the cavern, his mind turning with the choices whizzing through his mind. Drawing the dragon's attention enough for it to think that he was passing the lime green chalk to Penny would give Rudy an opportunity to escape, but at the same time he drew this conclusion, he also realized that if he went through with the plan, there was no way to reach safety before the dragon could lurch forward and destroy him. The revelation was rather horrifying, and he felt utterly cornered, forced to choose between one life or another. While he didn't want to lose his life, his selfless course of action could save Rudy's.

_Choices…_

As he returned his frantic gaze to Rudy, witnessing his terrible condition, he knew that the boy would not have long. There was so little time to act; he could still make it to the mine's mouth before the dragon broke completely free and save himself if he so chose, but that would mean abandoning his best friend. He was terrified, shaking, his body reacting with as much panic as his mind. His fright enveloped him as the notion that a decision had to be made clawed at his stomach, tearing rifts of nervousness and affliction in his gut.

Suddenly his feelings mollified as he repeated the situation in his mind: it was him or Rudy. Choosing to save himself would result in the loss of his best friend, and choosing to save Rudy would end with Snap's last breath. For a reason he could not fathom, the decision suddenly resurfaced as clear as DayZone. He was newly shocked that he had even had to consider both choices.

Snap fixed his gaze on Rudy and, ignoring the pain, he jerked his body forward, leaving the wall and moving toward his friend. Agonizing pain lanced up his right leg and it crumpled beneath him, sending him sprawling to the cavern floor. He gasped in shock, unable to keep from crying out. Pain shot through his entire body, and for a moment he thought he might pass out. But he didn't care; he was intent on saving his friend, and nothing would stop him.

As his vision started to clear again, he looked at Rudy once more and reminded himself that his friend's life depended on him. Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself to his feet again, favoring his good leg as he attempted to dart forward, this time managing to hobble. The pain flared with unexpected severity every time he set his right foot down, and he tried in vain block it out, attempting to focus solely on rescuing his best friend. The pain was unlike anything he had ever had to experience, but his urgency to save Rudy needed to take priority. He wouldn't allow himself to succumb to pain when the boy's life was at stake.

Forcing himself to move in spite of the agony, his speed picked up and he crossed over into the next cavern, absorbing the situation completely. Spontaneously he heard a crash from nearby, close to where the dragon was trapped, and the whole mine began to tremble, nearly sending him to the floor again. He cringed, ducking as a chunk of rock tumbled from above and narrowly missed him, splitting into countless fragments as it met with the ground. When he pulled his hands away from his face, he looked up to see the dragon thrashing about, its tail having slammed into the wall at the same time as its head, its enraged, piercing eyes boring into all that it glared at. Snap was momentarily still with panic, but soon recovered when he snapped to something that he caught sight of out of his peripherals. The tiny piece of chalk Rudy had cast aside was only a few feet away and, with newfound determination, he crawled toward it. He grabbed it and held it tightly, feeling the tiniest flicker of triumph flash through him before he threw his glare to Rudy and the livid dragon. Groaning with the tremendous effort, he managed to drag himself toward them as fast as his injuries would allow.

Although he knew he wouldn't have to press on for long, the time he spent hobbling felt painfully long, as each stroke got him progressively closer to freeing his friend, and his intense pain was not at all a good distraction. It complicated the process far beyond what he had hoped, elongating each second but only making him hunger for success even more. Finally he came to a halt out of reach of the dragon, but close enough for Rudy to spot him, even in his critical condition, and held up the chalk.

Rudy had felt himself fading, losing sight of reality, when the dragon had caused the mine to tremble. In the brief moment that it did, Rudy was able to regain some sense of feeling as he drew a tiny, constricted breath, only to realize that it was not nearly enough to sustain him in any way. He felt like crying out, but saved what little strength he had, although for what, he was unsure. Shortly after, however, he thought he had seen Snap through his blurry vision. After a moment he focused a little, a shocked frown accompanying his blinks as he deduced that he was not hallucinating. Weakly he uttered his friend's name, unsure what he planned to do. However, as he noticed the chalk in his clutches, the nature of the situation dawned on him. Snap was planning to distract the dragon in an effort to help him. _He was using himself as bait. _

After a moment Snap took off toward the wall behind him as quickly as he could manage, going, Rudy vaguely realized, in the direction Penny must have been. He hardly comprehended anything more before suddenly he sobered, his body crying out with relief as the enormous pressure lifted. He felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude as the foot was removed completely, freeing him and allowing him all the oxygen he desired. Feeling in his limbs began to restore, and he heaved in and out with utmost enthusiasm, greedy for the air he so rightfully deserved. After lying for what seemed like an eternity, he gave a full-body sigh, understanding that he was far too weak to actually move.

He cast his glance weakly upwards, toward the dragon, who made more than enough noise without its jaws free to loose roars. It was in a state of pure rage as it glared at Snap's slow and largely ineffective limp, clearly the reason for Rudy's current recovering state. His eyes switched to the restraints, which were dangerously close to dislodging. He bit down, knowing that with a few more tugs, the enormous destructive creature would find its freedom.

Whilst hurriedly shambling across the solid rock floor, his heart racing with the knowledge that the dragon was about to fire itself at him with claws slashing and teeth stabbing, Snap glanced about for Penny. It didn't take him long to spot her entombed inside a tiny fortress of her own making, and as she too noticed him, her face bewildered and bemused, they briefly stared at one another. She was clearly horrified at the situation and didn't seem able to devise a single thing to shout to him through her worry, and similarly, he too had nothing to voice. Snap broke the connection as he shuffled along the wall with no intention of actually leading the dragon toward her. The thought that he would likely not make it as far as where she was before the dragon made its move entered his mind for a second, but quickly dissipated.

As he picked a side tunnel to work his way towards, all the while knowing that he was at far too great of a distance to reach it in time, he mistakenly took one wrong step, and his leg instantly buckled. He crashed to the ground, his large head bouncing against the floor as his limbs did the same, releasing a cry of shock and discomfort. The pain electrified his ankle and rippled up to his knee, clamping its painful jaws around each nerve and causing another shriek to roll from his mouth.

All at once, the dragon finally ripped the chains from their place in the solid rock wall, boulders of assorted sizes thundering down the side of the wall and crashing close to where Rudy was, causing him to shield himself as best he could in his state, thankfully avoiding anything that could cause major harm. As the beast rotated part of its enormous mass toward Snap, the blue and white Zoner flashed a quick glance toward it, panic burrowing into his mind. For a dreadful moment, he recognized that his time had come; it was too late to escape.

With a thunderous clamor of stomps, the dragon shot toward Snap faster than he could register, thrusting his body into the wall with a single, swift motion. The Zoner's head slammed against the wall as his eyes bulged and his breath vanished, his body seizing against the pressure before his arm released a sickening crack. After a moment of slow processing, his body was quickly released, and he dropped like a swatted fly. The collision with the ground that followed was hardly noticed as Snap erupted with howls, his uninjured arm shooting to his newly broken one. All else was completely barred out as he convulsed, unable to breathe in for what he perceived as minutes.

Rudy had finally gained the ability to move himself away from the dragon as much as he could, but as soon as he had done so, the horrible creature pulled away from him and pursued his best friend. As he was violently assaulted, Rudy's mind raced with horrified alarm, his eyes completely set on his friend's slumped form. "Snap!" he screamed, suddenly finding the motivation to try to lift himself up. The recovery process was difficult, however, and he was forced to wait as he gritted his teeth, watching, from what he could see at his angle, the blue and white Zoner writhe in distress and produce chilling calls of agony. It only made him want to try again to stand, and when he did, he shakily made it to his feet, using the wall for support.

Still dazed and whimpering with pain, Snap tried his best to focus, hardly able to see between his tears and the blurredness obscuring his vision, and made a futile effort to scramble along the wall, trying to get away. The dragon, clearly frustrated with the muzzle, brought its massive claws to its face and tore at the metal until the damage it had previously sustained took its toll, and the restraint gave in. It flung the mouth shackle off, the gigantic chain attached to it falling with it after wobbling. As it fell, Rudy stared up in dreaded awe while kicking his rocket shoes, and launched into the air and out of the way just in time. The force of the chain's links digging up the floor reverberated through the mine, and Rudy thought that even the air seemed to shake.

However, his distraction did not last much longer as he realized that dragon, its jaws now free, was just short of casting a jet of fire onto his defenseless friend. Glancing wildly about, he saw his white chalk on the ground and flew down toward it, grabbing it with his injured arm. He cringed as he tried to ignore the pain and searched for the light green chalk but, to his dismay, was unable to find where it fell. Knowing he had no time to look, he immediately soared toward the underside of the dragon's jaw.

He immediately thought to draw another restraint around its maw in order to bind it closed, but the dragon was quick to spot him and, although he drew its attention away from Snap, it began to target him with boiling hot strings of flame. His fatigue took its toll as he tried to move away, doing so just in time while feeling the heat sear past him. He took the initiative to fly further up, toward the roof of the cavern, but the dragon only followed, expelling tornadoes of fire which came dangerously close to striking him. He avoided it until the dragon had to stop tilting its head and cut off its attack, but found that part of the fire followed him despite not being shot in his direction. Shocked, he drew a misshapen teardrop shape in midair which the flame hit instantly after it filled in, vaporizing the water and leaving Rudy panting with fright. He was entirely unwilling to risk more self-navigating fire attacks, and knew as well that the dragon would likely not keep missing him for long, so he quickly devised a new plan.

Rudy sped down behind its head as it angled its neck around, trying to prevent him from doing so but unable to stop him. He charged down, gripping its mane between the bases of the dragon's long, curved horns. It thrashed its head to the side and Rudy fought to hang on, focusing the strength of his body and mind on the single task. After further shaking, it changed tactics and rammed its head against the ceiling, but Rudy's position between the horns prevented him from being touched whatsoever, although he was still thrown carelessly about. The creature then whipped its head to the side, and his grip loosened and broke before he could register what had happened. He was severely dazed for a moment before he snapped back to reality and picked up on how close to the ground he already was, panicking as he tried to activate his rocket shoes again. They ignited right before he hit the ground, and only contributed enough to break his fall, and he was sent skidding across the floor and into the wall, near to where Snap was lying.

Cringing, Rudy looked up to see the dragon turning toward them, assuming that it was readying another burst of fire. Rudy looked instantly at Snap, who was weakly trying to shift his body with little success, and felt his breath hitch. After a moment, he spotted the green chalk on the floor next to him and gasped, slamming his hands into the rock floor in an effort to scramble toward it. He was able to snatch it and use the rockets on his shoes to quickly dart away before the dragon could launch its attack, which it held off as it followed the boy scornfully with its eyes.

He continued to fly as the dragon drove out another line of fire, and he swerved in order to avoid it. It instead frayed out on the wall, Rudy barely managing to escape the backsplash whose blazing heat he could still feel at his distance. Even Penny, who was close by and still encased in the barrier, could feel it. She became momentarily distracted by it and stared in awe before the tail, which had not stopped its attempts to break her shield since she had first placed herself involuntarily underneath, startled her again with the loud crash it ran throughout her shelter. Because of the unending attack, she had not had a chance to break out of it and help Rudy or Snap, which unsettled her greatly.

The dragon tried to maneuver itself around in the small space in order to reach Rudy, who was hovering near Penny's set-up, but even though most of the chains were broken, it still had a considerable amount of trouble moving properly. As it was shifting about, trying to double back on itself, it found that its head didn't have enough room to move properly. That part of the cavern was enormous to Rudy, Snap or Penny, but meager for something as gigantic as the red dragon.

Using the opportunity to his advantage, Rudy flew around the back and up behind the neck before it could turn back again, and drew a new shackle around the neck with the green chalk, all while a nagging voice in the back of his mind reiterated to him that every time he used it, he risked running out. He ignored it and traced a stroke to the one barrier side they had managed to complete, connecting the two with a sustainable line. As soon as he finished, the line shortened, as it was designed to, and forced the dragon's head against the wall, limiting its movement and ability to turn even further.

The distraction was enough to make the creature forget its attempt to get to Penny, who could finally use her green chalk piece to draw a hole in her barrier and slip out, joined Rudy in the air. They quickly conversed, clarifying that they needed to complete the front and back walls of the barrier, so they split up once more. As Penny soared towards the back, her mind wound back to Snap, and she wondered silently how badly injured he was. However, she had no time to check, and told herself she would determine his state as soon as they were safe from danger.

Rudy's first attempt at the front barrier was just a few long lines on the ground, so he concluded with regret that he needed to completely redraw it. He hurriedly did so as fast as he could, making sure to connect it to the ends of the other barrier. The dragon tried to turn toward him, but it could only blast the wall opposite to the barrier it was trapped against, missing Rudy or anything else of significance entirely.

When he and Penny were finished with their ends, they simultaneously realized that they were last required to complete the wall on the side that was in range of the dragon's fire. Rudy hesitantly moved forward, knowing that they really only needed to draw two lines to complete it. From the other side of the cavern he could see Penny, who flashed a worried look to him before she started drawing the bottom line. He swallowed hard, watching the dragon warily as it aimlessly fired more bursts of fire. Soon after it stopped for a moment, he swooped in and started the top line. As he began to work, a number of thoughts rushed through his mind—about Snap's condition, about the dragon, about Penny's safety…

In the middle of his line, he heard Penny shout something from nearby. He was so caught up in his thoughts that he hadn't been paying attention to the dragon and could see a sudden sphere of flames being launched his way from the corner of his eyes, but had no time to react. Instantly he was yanked down as the fireball seared overhead and exploded once meeting the wall. He was confused before he realized that Penny had been the one to pull him out of harm's way, and they both swallowed hard, fear coating their faces. The dragon was able to angle its head toward them once more, as the adjustment was only minor and once more fired a jet of flame. With a shriek, Penny doodled a shield with white chalk specifically designed to repel fire, and held it before her and her friend, who cowered behind it as the heat swelled around them.

The dragon was unable to keep its attack up for much longer, although Penny and Rudy struggled to keep their shield in place, and Rudy wondered for a short time why the fire was not targeting them as it had done before. He assumed that the shield Penny had drawn, if it repelled the fire, muddled up any incentive it had to seek them out.

Eventually the fire lost its strength, dissipating to nothing but hot air. Rudy immediately flew back up again and used his green chalk to continue the line and complete it as fast as he could, while Penny flew about, distracting the beast with the shield. Using up the last of his piece of green chalk, Rudy was a little surprised, and took over distracting the dragon with the shield for Penny as she completed the bottom. He had to fend off another string of fire in the meantime, but the attack became suddenly cut off as the dragon was sealed in the confines of the barrier, shutting it out from the two children completely.

Sighing heavily, Rudy dropped the shield and paid no attention as it clattered to the ground, not caring if it broke or remained intact, his arms aching with the effort. His right one screamed at him, begging to be rested, and Rudy sighed, contemplating drawing a sling before deciding against it. He turned to Penny and they went back to Snap, and for a moment they were afraid the creature would break loose, as it seemed so odd that it was finally encased, but it gradually solidified that it couldn't…or at least wouldn't for a long time. The sounds of the dragon were virtually muted, rendering it something akin to a distant memory.

Rudy had no idea how they would remove the cage from the mine, even if they'd drawn it to have a floor when all the lines connected, unless they widened the tunnel opening to get it out and then drew it back again along with the broken entrance to the mine. After that, he wasn't sure where they could take it where it wouldn't be a threat to anyone, but he hoped that Biclops would know, and thought of how the Zoners managed to contain the dragon Vinnie drew, although it was less dangerous, and figured there must be a suitable place somewhere.

Snap was barely conscious and probably hardly aware of his surroundings. As Penny crouched down by his side and looked him over, she noticed with alarm that his arm looked badly damaged, and judging by what she had seen when he had been attacked, she imagined that it was broken. His leg was clearly in bad shape, as it had been before, and the wounds on his shoulders from when Dooth had raked his claws across them had worsened. The ones lashed across his back had drenched his clothes with maroon, and a small egg had appeared under his mask on his head. Penny had only noticed it when Snap rolled his head a little, and, lifting up his mask, she concluded that he had hit his head pretty solidly against something that was likely to be rock. She glanced to Rudy, requesting that he use the regular chalk to draw Snap a sling, as well as cloths for the blood that wept from his back and his shoulder cuts. As she turned back, she figured that the slam against the wall Snap had sustained would have likely caused general weakness in his body that would not necessarily show up as bruises or cuts just yet, especially if they were beneath his leotard. Disheartened by his obvious suffering, Penny wished desperately that they could seek help for him immediately, but knew that moving him at all was dangerous, and needed to be done with extreme care. She felt nervousness branch out in her stomach and she bit her lip, unsure how to go about it.

"We have to get him help," Rudy told her, and she nodded, fully aware.

"I know…" she uttered, not taking her eyes off the Zoner.

Once Rudy had drawn the things Penny had asked for, they began to dab the blood and used disinfectant to clean the wounds that were smaller and easiest to treat, stopping when Snap cringed and cried with a mumble of incomprehensible sounds at the stinging. When they thought that they had done all they could, they waited around a minute before Penny came up with the idea to draw him a medical bed which had wheels attached.

Penny looked at the pieces of chalk in her hand, and Rudy noticed for the first time that Penny still had part of her piece of the light green chalk left. Uncertain about what to do with it, she simply put it in her skirt pocket, deciding they would talk to Biclops about it when they met him again.

After gently lifting Snap onto the bed, they began their slow journey back into the main cavern, being as careful as they could with Snap. Without warning, there was a shuffle and a cold wind before a figure appeared, quickly revealed as Dooth, and slammed into Rudy, knocking him away from Snap's bed and to the ground, pinning him down. Rudy looked at him in shock; the last thing he had expected after all that had happened was the griffin attacking him again.

"Don't think I don't know what you're going to do now," he growled, his face nearing Rudy's before he shot a threatening glare at Penny, warning her not to make a move. He didn't acknowledge Snap, knowing there was nothing he could do in his current state. "You sealed my creator in a room," he continued, and Rudy had no idea how the griffin had found out, unless he had somehow heard Bob's shouts from behind the rock wall. "…And now, you're going to force him to give up the chalk and make him leave."

Rudy said nothing in reply; he knew arguing was useless, and remembered all too well how eager Dooth seemed to be to attack him. Now that the worst of the danger had passed, fear seemed to have left the Zoner, replaced by nothing but anger.

"I know you're going to try to stop my creator from bringing back magic chalk," he continued, his voice oozing bitterness. He waited a moment before flashing his glance to Rudy's shoulder, running his eyes down to his hand. When he returned his glare, his beak was twisted with a wicked, mocking smile. "But you can't draw anything if your arm is broken, can you? How disappointing would that be...?"

Rudy cast his startled gaze in Penny's direction, his hand gripping the one remaining piece of chalk he had. Yet in the position he was being held down against the floor, he couldn't use it, and he knew that if Penny tried anything, Dooth wouldn't hesitate to harm him.

"You think you're so smart," the griffin hissed, "leading me to the chamber with chalk you knew would backfire on my creator. Well, look what became of that little plan."

Rudy had no idea how Dooth had managed to come up with that explanation when he had been the one giving chase, but he knew that trying to reason with such senselessness was pointless. If the Zoner thought something as absurd as that, he wasn't going to be able to see reason.

Dooth seemed to see his refusal to reply as some sort of victory. He took a moment to glance away from Penny to grin maliciously at Rudy. "You see…"

Suddenly, Dooth was bodily lifted away from Rudy and upward, giving a screech as his claws left the cavern floor. At first, Rudy thought Penny had somehow managed to draw something extremely quickly within that split second, but he soon realized that wasn't the case.

The three headed dog Vinnie and Terry had drawn was standing right in front of one of the tunnel entrances, the middle head's jaws wrapped around the griffin's body. The creature was not biting down hard enough to draw blood, but it held the flailing Zoner firmly. Dooth struggled, his tail and limbs lashing as he swung his metal claws at one of the dog's other heads, which pulled away and growled at him. Making a grimace of annoyance, the middle head flung the griffin to the ground.

Dooth leapt to his feet, crouching down with his forelegs while his lion-like back end was raised, as if he was ready to pounce. Rudy quickly scrambled out of the way, leaving the two creatures facing each other. He readied his magic chalk, knowing that at any moment, either of the two could turn against him or his friends. He noticed Penny glancing toward the remaining piece of green chalk, realizing that if she had to, she would use it against Dooth.

With a snarl, the dog lunged at Dooth, who scampered out of the way only to find his way blocked by the giant canine again. Seeming to finally realize that he was well outmatched, the griffin began backing away. The dog ran at him and he fled, racing out of the mine without a second look.

Rudy stared in surprise as the dog didn't follow him, but stopped at the mine entrance. Then it began to turn around, all three sets of eyes focused on Rudy and the others. It turned and ran toward them.

Rudy hardly had the time to lift his hand to draw some sort of protection before the creature was right in front of him, one of its heads slamming into his body and knocking him down.

The boy's heart raced as he tried to process the situation, shocked that it had happened so quickly. Dooth's attack had been enough of a surprise, and the Cerberus' impulsive act had been just as unexpected. There was a frightful moment of panic before Rudy realized the creature wasn't attacking him. It was just…looking at him. Then, all at once, the dog's three heads broke into wide grins, their tongues lolling out.

Rudy could only watch, unblinking, as the dog creature crouched down, its rump in the air as its tail wagged with excited ferocity. The children stared at the animal in shock as they realized that, some way or another, it seemed to be grateful to them. The only explanation Rudy could come up with was that it either saw what they did to stop the dragon or had simply pieced the situation together itself after seeing the monster encaged.

Realizing the threat of being attacked was gone, Penny lowered her hand, the start of an incomplete drawing clattering to the ground. Still, she moved toward Snap's bed protectively, a precaution in case she needed to shield him, and took the chance to lay her eyes on him. It was then that she came to notice that he was completely oblivious to all that was happening around him. His mental state must have been bridging on unconscious, but although he was still awake, he was unresponsive. She didn't imagine the state would last long, however, before his body settled into unconsciousness.

The dog gave an excited bark, snapping her back to it, which sounded high pitched and very unlike the threatening growls they had heard it emit during all other encounters. Rudy stared in shock as it excitedly fidgeted, looking at him as if waiting for him to throw a dog toy or a stick. It was almost like a puppy, he thought._ A puppy the size of a large car with three heads and six-inch long teeth._

"Uh…I guess you're glad we were able to stop that thing, right?" Rudy asked hesitantly, still a little nervous as he looked at the dog's fangs. In response, the dog's middle head leaned down and licked him, coating him from head to toe in drool. "…You're welcome," he stammered.

"Wait a minute…" Penny began, leaving Snap's side, "I think that dog can understand you."

"Yeah, well, I figure Terry Bouffant and Vinnie Raton would want something that would listen to them," Rudy muttered, trying to wipe his arms clean. He was just glad the dog was grateful enough to choose them over its creators. He then paused. "They…they left with magic chalk…" he whispered to himself, the memory flashing through his mind.

"That means…" Penny paused, fully understanding, now that the danger was virtually over, how little time they had. She turned to the three headed dog, who immediately turned its attention on her and barked animatedly. As it bent down again and waved its paws, the girl cringed and held up her arms, as feeble protection as that was. "Calm down, boy!" she instructed, a little afraid that the beast would accidentally hurt one of them in his excitement. "Look, if you can understand us…we need to know something." To her relief, the dog stopped moving, looking at her curiously as he cocked all three of his heads. "Did your creators tell you when they were going on television?" she asked. "Are they going there immediately after they leave ChalkZone?" The dog shook his heads, and Penny was relieved that the canine had answered her question so willingly. "Okay," she continued, swallowing, "do you know what time it's going to start?"

The creature nodded. Penny wasn't sure if the dog was blissfully unaware of what he was doing in answering her questions, or if he simply didn't care and found she, Rudy, and Snap to be more worthy masters. Whatever the reason, she knew there was no point in questioning it much now. "Okay, does it start at seven?" Another no. "Eight? Nine?" At nine, the dog nodded, and she quickly asked if that was the morning. The answer was yes. Worried, she glanced toward her backpack, where she had left her watch. Quickly running into the main chamber and over to it, she checked the time and froze. "Rudy," she stated worriedly, "we have to get back. Your parents could wake up at any time."

"But what about Snap? Biclops?" he cried back, realizing that although the main threat was under control, there were still dangers in the mine, and they had to make sure Newland left.

"We have to get Newland out of here first," she replied, and Rudy instantly understood her worry, as the red chalk would likely find a way to break out of its confines if Newland did not first. If that happened and the red chalk again had access to talent like his, Rudy feared what it would do this time.

Rudy gave a firm nod, turning to the Cerberus, who looked at him with innocent curiosity, as if awaiting orders. "Can you stay here and guard Snap while we look for Newland?" He rested his gaze on his friend, who was still unresponsive, as he expected. "He needs protection in case any of the other creatures Newland drew get any ideas." The dog-like creature eagerly agreed, which Rudy was thankful for.

The two began to make their way back through the caverns, passing the giant barrier containing the dragon. Its thrashes and were hardly able to be heard, roars being made impossible by the muzzle around its mouth. Rudy spotted their wrecked vehicle to one side of the cavern as they passed through it, and suddenly it came to him that they could travel using transportation. He pulled out his magic chalk and, cringing as his arm once again bothered him, doodled a car roughly the same as the one he had previously drawn. He and Penny hopped into it and he began to drive, exhaustion taking hold as he went. He was thankful that they did not have to walk; he was chronically tired, as was Penny, but understood that his health could not take priority in the current situation.

They weaved through the mine's tunnels, only able to see what was before them because of the car's headlights, as Penny tried to remember the way back to the room holding Newland. They took a few wrong turns at times, but luckily they were able to find the correct path eventually. When they pulled up to the wall, which Rudy had drawn differently colored to the surrounding rock to make it discernible, he exited the vehicle and traced an opening large enough to fit the vehicle through. When the doorway was made, he spotted Newland's small form on the ground, as he sat side-on to him, his right hand still encased in the metal prison.

Instantly Newland noticed the boy enter, and his expression darkened; it was obvious that his previous fear had dissipated and he was back to being hostile. He sneered as the boy walked closer, and narrowed his eyes, as if in minor surprise. "The dragon hasn't squashed you yet?" he questioned, his tone venomous.

Rudy grew a frown but resisted the temptation to respond with something witty and biting. He approached the man and, growing a little wary as he stood up, requested that Penny bring in the car. She did as he asked and he gestured to a space a little ways from Newland, on the side of his free hand, and rounded him in a wide semi-circle. He connected his chalk to the back of the car and began to draw a rope, nearing Bob with caution. The adult extended his arm toward Rudy, muttering a few things, and Rudy lashed forward, drawing the line to his wrist. As the man tried to grab him, Rudy drew a line around his wrist which locked into a link too tight to slip off his hand, but at the same time, Newland's fingers wrapped around Rudy's arm. Alarm took him and his panic flared, dropping the chalk, but he managed to wrench his hand away without much more trouble. He waited a moment before retrieving the fallen piece, snatching it before Newland could attempt to reach it with a foot, and drew back.

"What is this?" demanded Newland, his rage dictating his actions.

When Rudy didn't reply, instead rounding the boulder again, the man was inclined to repeat his question. But Rudy was determined to finish his task, and stopped on the opposite side of the boulder. He reached over it, Newland unable to grab him as his rope merely tugged on the car with no further effect, and drew a circle around the rod that connected the rock to the box around the red chalk. He then returned to Penny and hopped in the car, driving in a wide circle around the boulder and back to the entrance. The rope only just reached, but the rod attached to the rock remained.

"Stop! Do you really plan to break my wrist?" growled the artist, his voice harboring some sort of angered desperation.

"Pull," Rudy instructed, and Newland only cast him a look of annoyed bemusement.

"No!" he shouted, and the car moved forward a little, tugging on his wrist again. He widened his eyes in realization and frowned harder.

"Pull it out," Rudy told him again, hardly inclined to make a more persuasive argument.

Newland, although frustrated, did so, and after two tries, the rock slipped out and smashed into fragments. He was about to question Rudy's motives before he lurched forward as the car began to drive, pulling him along behind.

They drove back through the tunnels at a pace that made it impossible for Bob to attack them with the metal box or to reach for them with his roped hand, which kept him at a suitable distance. When they finally arrived and met up with Snap again, the Cerberus spotted Bob and his hackles rose, growls emitting from his throat. Bob just glared at him in return, running his eyes up and down him as if judging his design.

The Cerberus stayed with Snap while they drove the car out of the mine and dismounted the vehicle, Penny running back into the mine before the dog creature padded out, stationing himself beside Newland.

"Good dog," Rudy praised and glanced at Newland before meeting with Penny inside the mine again. I have to get _him _out of ChalkZone," he told Penny, signaling to the adult waiting grudgingly by the Cerberus.

"I can stay here with Snap," she told Rudy, and he nodded, mentioning that he would take Cerberus with him. Before he left, Penny stopped him. "Where are we going to take Snap?" she wondered, and Rudy paused for a second, trying to think. He was finding it hard to come up with anything due to his tiredness, and he sighed in frustration, knowing that they were running out of time.

"I don't know…" He glanced to Bob and then back to Penny, releasing another bottled sigh. "I'll think of something when I get back." Penny agreed with that and Rudy left with the backpack, binding Newland's hands behind him, and he and Cerberus led the criminal away.

As they walked, Newland gave off a number of sneers and occasionally a cold glare. "Your stupid unoriginal _dog _doesn't scare me," he hissed, but Rudy tried to ignore him. "What do you plan to do? Throw me back into the Real World and _hope _I won't try to return to this place?" He kept his eyes on Rudy, who looked to him and said nothing. Newland scoffed, assuming he had been right. "I've already broken into your house and gotten what I wanted once, and I can do it again."

"I won't let you," Rudy objected, keeping his gaze ahead.

Newland laughed cruelly. "Oh, _really_?"

Rudy didn't respond to a number of Newland's following statements, and eventually Cerberus saved Rudy the trouble of keeping his prisoner quiet with a number of threatening growls. They finally arrived at the same spot Rudy had entered ChalkZone through after riding his bike and finding a good place to make a portal, and Rudy drew a quick ladder, scaling it and making a small circle in the chalk surface. After confirming that there was nobody nearby, in the early hours of the morning, he enlarged the portal and told Newland to climb back into the Real World.

At first Bob resisted, but Cerberus' angry rebuttal convinced him to abide, albeit reluctantly. He stumbled up the steps and looked through the portal, sneering at Rudy as he froze on the top step. "I'll get you for this," he threatened.

"Yeah, whatever," Rudy answered, giving the signal to Cerberus to shove him through. At first only Bob's hands went through, the metal case now in the Real World, and Rudy pulled out a water bottle from his backpack. He climbed the step ladder as Bob squirmed, but dared not struggle again as Cerberus loomed over his side, and Rudy poured the contents of the bottle onto the metal case. The metal, as well as the red chalk in Bob's grasp, washed away just as the bottle emptied completely. Rudy stepped aside and Cerberus shoved Bob further through the portal, his legs still flailing before they followed. "Good riddance," he muttered as he erased the portal quickly, cutting off a string of angry shouts.

He heaved a sigh as he stood atop the stepladder, thinking. He remembered when he had entered through the same place…he had gone immediately to the hotel, which he knew was nearby. Then it struck him. '_I can take Snap to the hotel…the Zoners there might be able to help us find a hospital!' _The revelation was a relief, as he had been wondering what he was going to do with Snap, understanding that they needed to get him treatment as soon as possible. He just hadn't known where to take him.

Cerberus approached while wagging his tail, his head tilted a little. For a moment Rudy wondered what he wanted to tell him before the dog creature whirled around and showed his back to Rudy, offering him a ride. The boy was thankful and climbed on, ordering him to take him back to Penny and Snap.

As they took off, the dog loping with purpose, Rudy felt a small amount of triumph sear through him. He reiterated to himself that they would likely be able to find help for Snap at the hotel, and soon after that, they would find their way back into the Real World and try to stop the broadcast. He hoped that randomly depositing Newland into the Real World would impede his plans to arrive at the studio on time, but knew that he would still likely be able to make it back when he was required. He had been reluctant to return Bob to the Real World, but he had had no choice; leaving him in ChalkZone was an even bigger danger than releasing him, as he could have found a way to break the metal case. The red chalk had already caused enough damage, and he believed that he and Penny could find a way to stop Newland and his comrades from exposing ChalkZone. Or so he hoped.

**ooo**

The hotel stretched far above them as Rudy and Penny glanced up its height, watching as, somewhere near the top, shutters opened and a hand briefly popped out. Rudy was glad he had been able to recall that the hotel had been close to the portal he had drawn, and as he looked back to Snap, on the thin bed he had drawn for him which conveniently fit into the back of the car, he hoped that his friend would soon be in the care of professionals. He had passed out on their journey to the hotel, which told him that he needed help as soon as possible.

Rudy and Penny darted into the hotel, wondering where they should go to ask for help. They decided to split up, and made the decision to, if they could, ask somebody they knew was well acquainted with Snap. They did not have the time to take him to a hospital themselves, as Penny had constantly repeated in her minor paranoia, and therefore decided that somebody who was willing to do so in their place would be suitable, and therefore decided that they needed to find somebody who was willing to do so in their place.

They split up, and Penny rushed through a hall to the right. She briefly peeked through the doors, trying to spot someone who would be appropriate, but most of the Zoners were strangers to her, or ones she had only ever met on one occasion. At some point, she encountered Bathtub Granny, but was not inclined to ask her, as even if she agreed to helping, it would probably have been awkward for her to help Snap if she was in her tub. She scaled a set of stairs and, about to start searching the second floor, suddenly heard a voice she recognized.

She gave a light frown and listened, following it down a corridor that she otherwise would have missed. In the center of it was Rapsheeba, who was conversing with a citizen Penny didn't recognize. She made the choice to rush toward her, figuring the singer as the perfect candidate.

"Rapsheeba!" she called, interrupting her conversation with the stranger. When she turned, Penny hurried closer.

"Penny?" she questioned, complete surprise lacing her tone. "What are you doing here?"

"Snap's in trouble," she began hastily, "and we need someone to take him to a hospital in a city or a town, wherever one is." She panted a little before she mentioned, "I thought you would be perfect."

"Wait, wait—_what?_" she spat, her body freezing up. "Snap's in trouble?" She took a moment to process the information, somewhat distraught that she did not have enough information to piece the situation together. "What happened to—"

"There's no time to explain," Penny informed hurriedly. "Can you take him?"

Rapsheeba paused for a second, suspending her thoughts in the moment of lasting shock to attempt to compute the question. "Of course! But why another city?" She waited for a second, growing progressively impatient, as Penny produced a face of questioning. "There's a temporary one that was set up not far from here. It was to help the Zoners who were injured by the attack on ChalkZone City, and the dangerous animals that started appearin' all over the same area."

"That's perfect!" Penny exclaimed in surprise, delighted by the news. She waited a second before she said, "We have to go now."

"O-okay," Rapsheeba agreed with a deep frown, anxious about the whole situation, and followed Penny out of the building. When she spotted the blue and white Zoner on a bed beside Cerberus, the singer's eyes flicked open wider, partly surprised by the size of the beast but mostly because of what her eyes depicted of her friend. She rushed to his side, only to find him unconscious. "Snap, ma man… What happened?" she uttered to herself, aware that he couldn't respond. She shook her head slowly, taken aback by his colorful array of injuries. Worry clouded her face and Penny released a forlorn sigh, completely understanding her concern. When she realized that Rudy wasn't out yet, she removed her eyes from the three before her and rushed back into the hotel to find him.

"Rudy!" Penny called inside the building. "Rudy, where are—"

"Here!" he shouted, bolting into view and speeding toward her. In his wake was a jogging Lars, who looked as clueless as Rapsheeba had. "Lars said he'll help Snap. He also told me there's—"

"A hospital nearby which was set up for the victims of the termite attack?" Penny questioned, and Rudy, a little surprised, nodded.

"Yeah…how did you—"

"Rapsheeba's waiting outside," she clarified, and Rudy made a noise of understanding. The two rushed out of the hotel and Lars frowned, following behind.

"Uhh…do you still need me?" he asked, and Rudy and Penny stopped, turning to one another before back to the polar bear.

"Two's better than one," Rudy said, and Lars nodded, following.

Rudy and Penny despondently said goodbye to their unconscious friend as Rapsheeba and Lars took the car, a little nervous about what would become of him. Once they were well on their way, the friends once more addressed one another about the issue of time. Penny suggested that they leave immediately, and Rudy asked Cerberus to stay behind and guard the hotel in case any Zoners inside needed protection. If Newland's animals were still roaming about, then they figured a giant three-headed dog would be the perfect sentry.

"We should probably go back to our own houses," Rudy suggested, and to that Penny hesitantly agreed. She was about to suggest that they construct flying contraptions, as she had pocketed magic chalk from the mine while Rudy had been escorting Newland out of ChalkZone, when they heard a deep voice bellowing at them from somewhere in the near distance.

Simultaneously they turned to see the form of Biclops drawing closer, making large waving motions from afar. Rudy felt nearly surprised to see him again, after he had been sleeping for a long while and happened to leave while Rudy was deep in the mine.

"Rudy Tabootie and Penny Sanchez!" he shouted once they were within hearing distance, the two meeting with him. "What in the name of chalk _happened _at the Magic Chalk Mine?" His voice was woven with shock, bewilderment and urgency.

Rudy and Penny looked to one another before they emitted heavy sighs. "It's a long story," Rudy began with something close to a weary smile. Biclops looked at him with a frown of concern as Rudy recited the entirety of what had happened while the giant had been unconscious, Penny filling in any gaps that Rudy missed which may have held significance to the mine's guardian. Similarly, Biclops, although still distracted by thoughts on the story he had just been told, briefed them on how he had been put to sleep with powder that the human adults had doused him with before he had a chance to defend himself. Once again he reiterated his astoundment at their success in containing the red dragon, and repeatedly thanked them for serving their faithful duties. However, with his gratefulness came surprise and a degree of suspicion, which he employed with the question that next slipped from his mouth.

"How did you manage to make such a simple barrier so strong?" he asked, and Rudy and Penny looked to one another. It was clear that Biclops had examined the mine again before coming to find them. They swallowed, wondering if Biclops was aware of the green chalk's existence and wanted to double-check, or if he had never heard of it.

Penny reached into her pocket and withdrew the small piece of glowing lime green chalk she had leftover, and tentatively held it out to him. Biclops' brow furrowed heavily and Rudy drew the book from Penny's backpack, finding the page with the green chalk and showing him. "I had never heard about this before."

Wordlessly Biclops took the book, realizing instantly that it must have been one they found in the ancient library collection beyond the Indigo Mountains, and read for himself. Surprise pushed his brow up before he passed it back. "I have heard about it in passing, but I was neither aware of its power nor of its existence in the mine."

"It's the only piece left. We had just enough to trap the dragon…" Rudy told him, trailing off. "Without it, the dragon would never have been caught."

Silence bounced between them as Biclops carefully took the green chalk from Penny's hand. The seriousness of the situation had left them speechless until Penny revisited something she had wondered since spotting Biclops.

"What brought you to the hotel?" she questioned, curious why he had left the mine.

"I had no idea what became of the humans, since the Magic Chalk Mine appeared to be deserted. I thought that they might have escaped with magic chalk, because the pieces I could find were scattered all over the floors…" His gaze grew stern. "Did they?"

"…Yes," Rudy admitted sourly, clenching his fists. "That's why we have to get back to the Real World as soon as we can." He left the part about the adults exposing ChalkZone on national television out, not interested in dealing with Biclops' reaction.

"What about the dragon?" Penny quickly asked, and Biclops turned to her, explaining that he knew of a suitable place. According to him, it was maximum security; only the most frightening of monsters were imprisoned there, and only the most frightening of monsters were guards. Rudy was unsure how they would transport the dragon to such a place, but Biclops told him not to concern himself, as he would take care of it.

"Do not worry about the other creatures Newland drew," Biclops told them, clarifying that he would assemble a seemly crew to apprehend them and ensure that they would not wreak more havoc than they had already. Rudy mentioned that Cerberus was an appropriate candidate, understanding that he would help if he was told to.

"Right now, me and Penny have to worry about getting home," he said after they settled all other matters, but Penny looked to him with an opposing expression.

"Actually, Rudy, I think they might need a creator to draw traps…" she explained after considering it. She looked to Biclops before flashing her gaze to Rudy once more. "I didn't realize until now that I don't have to be back right away."

"Are you sure, Penny? Won't your mom look for you?" Rudy questioned.

"No, I'll be fine," she insisted, and although Rudy was a little puzzled by her decision, she seemed convinced. "It won't take me long to help out, and then I can go back." It was then that it came to her that she could have gone with Rapsheeba and Lars to help Snap to the hospital, but figured that Biclops needed her for her drawing abilities more. She motioned to her rocket shoes. "I still have these, remember. So do you."

"Well, okay," he agreed, and the two said their goodbyes before he bade them both good luck. He kicked his shoes into action, and he was off.

**ooo**

It was strangely surreal to Rudy to be back in his room after everything that had happened. He found it hard to believe that just the previous evening he had been hurriedly grabbing supplies from downstairs and getting ready to leave. Daylight was streaming through his windows, and he was still shocked that all that had happened in one night.

He quickly used his ChalkZone portal to draw him a backpack fairly identical to the one he had lost in the cave, making a mental note to himself to go to a store and replace it when he next had the time. Hopefully his parents wouldn't notice.

_His parents…_

Suddenly remembering something, he quickly drew a small ladder in ChalkZone and used it to reach the camera he'd set up in his room. After taking it down, he quickly viewed the footage at a fast pace, relieved when he found they hadn't entered his room at all. With a sigh of relief, he put the camera in his pocket and returned the ladder to ChalkZone.

Erasing the portal, he looked around his room, thinking to himself about the 9:00 show Bob and the others planned to expose ChalkZone on. He wasn't even sure if the TV studio was the same one as when Terry Bouffant had appeared on Minnedakota Down and Dirty. However, he and Penny couldn't think of any others relatively close by, and they had concluded that that must be it.

Realizing that he had to at least let his parents know he was here before he and Penny left, he thought about what he was going to do. He clearly looked exhausted, so he knew they wouldn't think it too odd if he said he wanted to sleep in a few more hours without being disturbed. If he had to, he could say that his head had been hurting and kept him up during the night. Either way, it would give him the time he needed to sneak into the studio and, one way or another, stop Newland and the others from revealing ChalkZone's existence.

He had no doubts that Penny would easily be able to fake being sick, but as he looked down at the wounds on his arm, he realized he was going to have a hard time coming up with an explanation for that. His shoulder was also injured, but the injuries there were minor and he wasn't so worried about that. The only thing he could do was to hide the cuts from Dooth's claws until he and Penny could come up with a good excuse. Sighing, he decided that he could simply wait in bed until one of his parents arrived, and then explain that he wanted to sleep longer.

**ooo**

To his surprise, he didn't have to wait long, but to his relief his plan worked without incident, and at around 8:00 he snuck back through the chalkboard to meet up with Penny. He quickly saw that she was waiting by his portal, looking worried but fairly optimistic.

"Did everything go all right?" she asked as Rudy lowered himself to the ground.

"Yeah," he replied. "They didn't go in my room during the evening. And they won't go back in there for a while. Did everything go okay with you?"

Penny nodded, ensuring Rudy that her excuse for staying home had worked.

"Do you think Snap's doing okay at the hospital?" Rudy wondered, his face shadowed with worry. He really had no idea what Penny could say in response, but any input would be welcome, he figured, and any words of comfort she could offer would be appreciated.

"Yes, I think so," she answered, although it was clear she was as unsure as he was how well Snap was going to recover, or how long it would take.

"Yeah…" Rudy trailed off, realizing that they likely weren't going to be able to visit their friend until after they prevented ChalkZone's exposure and caught up on some rest.

Neither of them said a word for a moment before Penny stated, "We need to go to the TV studio immediately. Do you remember which way it is?"

"I think so," Rudy replied, a little uncertain. He had found one of the chalkboards there once, but it had been Snap leading him there at the time. He wished, not for the first time, that Snap could be on this mission with them. "I think I can find it," he told her, walking over to a scooter he had drawn earlier that he'd left near the portal and starting it.

Penny quickly joined him, and Rudy began heading in the direction he remembered the TV studio to be. In the end, it took him longer than he'd liked to find the area he recognized from that incident, and he stopped the scooter, looking around for chalkboard writing while Penny checked her watch, realizing that it was nearly 8:30.

Rudy scanned the place, seeing backwards writing a little ways in the distance and making a beeline for it, stopping in front of it as he drew a tiny portal. Penny waited beside him tensely until he confirmed that no one was around, and he drew a larger circle.

Stepping out of it, Rudy realized that everything would look dark were it not for the portal. He figured that they were in some sort of storage room, or a back room that was currently disused.

To Rudy's confusion, he could see that the chalkboard they had used was one of several resting in the room in random positions, though none of the others had writing on them. Figuring that this would be where they stored them when not in use, Rudy continued to look around and noticed a double set of doors at one end of the room, through which some light was showing from underneath. Pointing it out to Penny, they headed toward it after erasing the portal.

Reaching the door, they both leaned against it, listening for any sound of people walking outside. They knew it was very likely that they would get thrown out if found there, and if not, then at least made to wait in a room and have their parents called. Rudy wasn't even sure what he planned to do, but first they needed to find out where Newland and the others were doing their broadcast. Hearing nothing, Rudy and Penny slowly pushed open the doors.

"Hello, children," a sinister and faintly angry voice stated. Both of them froze, seeing Newland standing right in front of the two doors.

Before Rudy could react, Newland wrenched the stick of chalk he was holding out of his hand. Penny, who still had hers, tried to make a dash back in the room, but Bob quickly stopped her by grabbing her arm, swiping her piece of chalk too. Rudy was astonished at how fast he had managed to do it, and realized that Newland had to have been expecting them to come all along. Before he or Penny could manage to get away, Newland had dragged them back into the room, before turning back to the doors and slamming them. The two heard a sliding lock being put in place, and then all was silent.

"Oh, and I wouldn't try going through any more chalkboards if you still have any magic chalk," Newland sneered through the doors. "These are all the ones in the building not currently in use, and if you sneak out through one of the ones that are…well, let's just say I hope you don't. That would spoil _our_ show."

They heard the sound of his footsteps walking away as they tried to register what had happened. Newland had been one step ahead of them the whole time. Neither had even anticipated something like this in the midst of wondering how they would put a stop to ChalkZone's exposure in the first place. Even if what Newland had said about the chalkboards wasn't true, there was no way they could sneak back through them; they had each only brought one piece of chalk.

"Come on, let's try the other doors," Penny said quickly, and although Rudy knew she was doubtful about finding any success, he helped her in running around the room to each door and trying it. They were all locked.

Rudy briefly thought that if they called for help, they were sure to be let out by one of the people working in the building, but he knew that would also give them away, and ruin any chances of being able to take back the stolen magic chalk.

In desperation, Rudy ran up to the door and started rattling it, knowing it was hopeless to try to get it to open but acting out of sheer frustration. One mistake, and they had landed in another dismal situation.

"Rudy, stop! Someone will hear," Penny warned.

Rudy realized he was being foolish and stopped, glancing wistfully back at the chalkboard they had come through, wishing he had somehow known to leave the portal open for a little longer. "I'm not sure there's a way out of here," he stated worriedly.

"There's got to be," she replied, looking around the room.

"But what if there isn't?" he shot back, regretting that he had allowed his panic to speak for him.

Penny was immediately silenced, clearly at a loss for what to say. At much as she was hoping he was wrong, she did not have a solution of her own. She only hoped they would find one soon, or the whole of ChalkZone would pay for their failure.

**ooo**

Bob walked up to where Terry was waiting for him, outside the room they would be filming in. She turned to him, still looking startled from the incident in the mine, but nevertheless confident as she held the bag of magic chalk. "Did you stop them?" she asked, lowering her voice in case anyone from the other room happened to hear. She cast a quick glance toward the wall.

"Yes," he replied, holding up the two pieces of magic chalk he'd taken from the children.

"Good," she replied, turning her attention away from him again as she checked her watch.

Annoyed, Bob glanced around the hallway in annoyance. "Rudy better not try to set the place on fire," he muttered under his breath.

"You're really overestimating him," Terry replied. "Besides, I doubt he'd try something like that again. And he doesn't even have the magic chalk."

"You're right," he replied. "And we all know how well his plans turn out." Holding the two pieces of chalk up to the light so he could see their faint shimmer, Bob felt confident. In spite of all the nasty tricks Rudy had pulled, he had always outwitted him. Even the incident with the evil red chalk and his forced banishment from ChalkZone had stopped him from outsmarting Rudy and his friend once again.

**ooo**

Rudy and Penny had tried to find a way to get through one of the doors, but it had proven to be futile. Rudy had even managed to open up an air vent, though it was quickly obvious that the space was too small to crawl into. Out of ideas, he scanned the dark room again out of desperation.

"Rudy?" Penny's voice called to him from somewhere nearby. He turned, and could see the faint light of her watch as she checked it again. "It's nine o' clock."

Fear encapsulated his mind as he considered what that meant. His breathing increased and he clenched his teeth, his eyes flickering back and forth as he tried to fight what was clearly reality. _He had failed._ After all that he had been through, Vinnie, Terry and Bob had still won. At any moment, ChalkZone could be exposed, and there was nothing he could do about it. He could only hope that the adults had a lot to talk about before the actual demonstration, but he didn't know exactly how they planned for it to go. He cast Penny a panicked glance that she returned with just as much power.

Pacing back and forth, he frantically tried to think of some other way to escape.

They continued to rummage through the many things in stacks and piles about the room, desperately searching for something that could help them. Nothing was useful; most of what the room held was disused pieces of furniture and old documents. As Rudy was shuffling through a filing cabinet, Penny suddenly raised her voice as if she had found something, and he immediately fell in line beside her, seeing something they hadn't noticed before in their attempts to open one of the door.

Hidden in the darkness and behind a few of the chalkboards was a window. Its shutters were tightly closed, and Rudy wasn't surprised they hadn't seen it at first, especially since they had quickly found that the lights in the room did not work.

Pulling the shutters up, Penny examined the window while Rudy watched, anxious to get out as soon as possible. He was afraid they would have to break it, but to his relief Penny managed to unlatch the window and slide it upward.

Apparently Newland either hadn't noticed the window or hadn't thought they could use it – whatever the reason, they didn't care – but they were simply glad they had found something at all.

Penny quickly noticed that it led out the back of the building, and she carefully lowered herself down on the concrete, cringing a little from her injuries, and waited until Rudy did the same.

"Now we have to find a way back in," Rudy muttered as he looked around. He knew there would be no way to get in from the front, but back here there were a few other small doors. Running up to the nearest one, he found it locked, and, frustrated, tried the next. To his relief, this one opened, and they quickly slipped inside, realizing that if the door was left unlocked, someone had used it or was going to, and they needed to stay out of sight.

Rudy didn't recognize the interior of the building at all. He had only briefly seen it through a chalkboard when he and Snap had stopped Terry Bouffant from exposing ChalkZone before. He again wished that Snap was with them. He had spent an entire afternoon and evening there; he was bound to know something about the layout, but they hadn't even been able to ask him. At least, he thought, Newland's presence had confirmed they were in the right place. They just needed to find where the show was being filmed, and before it was too late.

Suddenly they heard, from somewhere not far away, Terry's voice, and they froze. It was obviously relatively close by, and she was talking loud enough for them to be able to hear from the hallway, and Rudy and Penny glanced at each other in alarm before heading toward the voice. It was unclear at first, but then they began to make out some of the words. Terry was apparently explaining her chalk world theories, but she was quickly interrupted by Bob, who began telling a made-up story about how he had discovered the magic chalk, which earned a reply from Terry with very poorly concealed annoyance that she had known about it before.

The hallway ahead led to a big area with a lot of doors, and a very high ceiling. As they looked up, they could see windows to other parts of the building on the second story, and they realized Terry and Bob's voices were coming from somewhere up there.

Vinnie had just started to talk about his theme park when Penny suddenly gripped Rudy's arm and pulled him over to behind the staircase leading to one of the upper hallways, watching as a small group of people passed. They both desperately hoped they weren't there to use the stairs, as if they did, they would only need to look down to spot the two children. Luckily, they both walked past into one of the doors on the lower story. Realizing that he had been holding his breath the whole time, Rudy exhaled, only feeling a bit of relief after the group had passed.

Vinnie's explanation had apparently been brief, and as Terry's voice rang quietly but clearly through the area they were standing in, they could tell she was ready to simply get to the point.

Seeing no one else around, Rudy and Penny hurried up the stairs before ducking behind the corner of a hallway as they heard someone approaching. They waited in silence as they heard the person stepping down the stairs, and turned their attention to Terry's voice, which was coming from somewhere along their section of the hallway.

"What are we going to do?" Rudy whispered, rapidly trying to think of something. "Is there a way to…stop the equipment from working before they film the portal?"

"I don't know," Penny replied. "That could get us into big trouble and…there's still a lot of people who would see it." The thought of Terry and the others handing out some of the magic chalk they'd taken to members of the audience suddenly occurred to her, and she shuddered.

Rudy realized that the idea wasn't even plausible anyway. He had no idea how they would get close to the equipment, let alone sabotage it. His thoughts raced as he heard Terry's voice explaining how the portal worked, and he knew that he had to act now. Somehow, he had to do something, or he would be far too late to think of a real plan.

To his surprise, his gaze fell upon something that he realized could be just the distraction he would need. A fire alarm. Penny followed his gaze and for a moment he looked at her, almost expecting her to object on the basis that it would get them into trouble or that it was unethical to purposely trigger a false alarm. Instead, she looked at him seriously and nodded, urging him to hurry.

Knowing that an entire world was at stake, he quickly ran over to the alarm, grabbed the handle, and pulled.

Instantly the alarm sounded throughout the whole building. Rudy and Penny cringed at the loudness of the sound and looked left and right, realizing they would immediately need to leave the building or hide before they were seen.

Quickly darting back around the corner, they knew they had seconds to hide before they were spotted by all the people evacuating. Seeing a small closet, they darted into it, hearing footsteps running past as they peered through the small opening in the door.

As they squished together, both wondered suddenly how long they would have to stay inside. It was as if the entire building shook with a stampeded of frightened citizens, and they wondered irrationally if suddenly the door to their closet would suddenly swing open and spew them into the crossfire.

As soon as the sounds stopped, they quickly slipped out and headed back down the stairs, luckily encountering no one. "Where are the back doors?" Rudy asked, knowing Penny would have a better sense of direction.

She considered his question before gesturing in what she assumed was their general direction. "We can try this way." Once Rudy agreed, they began to make their way warily through a corridor. Penny turned to her friend. "Rudy, we have to find Newland and the others," she insisted, and Rudy nodded, wondering how exactly they were going to do that without being spotted by anyone else so close to the building.

"But how are we-"

"I think we can sneak out and then act like we're walking here just to see what the commotion was," Penny replied, already leading him down one of the hallways. They could still hear distant confused voices and sounds of people hastily leaving, but they were lucky to meet no one as Penny spotted a small side door.

They slipped outside, glad that, if anyone had used this door, they had headed away from the building already. They made their way further up the block, intending to act like they had come from that direction. Soon they were able to see the sidewalk and the front parking lot of the building clearly. From what they could tell, everyone seemed quite confused, and the two children were simply relieved no one had seen them. Bob was sure to blame the whole thing on them, and they could only hope no one else would believe him.

As audience members poured out through the doors and to the front of the studio, Rudy and Penny concealed themselves behind the brick wall bordering the property. They watched on as, finally, Newland, Bouffant and Raton filed out after the rest of the crowd, and Rudy breathed in deeply, his mind turning with multiple thoughts at the sight of those who had worked to make the past number of days extremely difficult for him.

The two noticed that Vinnie had his hands on the larger bag, which they had seen Boorat escape with, while Terry held onto a smaller one which housed the chalk they had planned to use to expose ChalkZone. Newland was still in possession of the magic chalk he stole from Rudy and Penny, and as Rudy eyed the trio, he knew that he would have to snag the pieces he held as well as the bags.

The criminals briefly surveyed the area before suddenly Terry, who was holding the smaller bag, was knocked into. She yelped as the bag flew from her arms, and chalk would surely have scattered on the ground if there hadn't been a knot to prevent it from escaping. Rudy immediately fixed his gaze on the bag and thought rapidly, wondering if he would have a chance to swoop in and retrieve it. Penny's eyes were also on the bag, and as they watched more people swarm out of the building, the two turned to one another and Penny gave a frantic nod.

Rudy dashed forward, nearly stumbling as he ran low to the ground and pushed between people who got in his way. They were racing past him in the opposite direction to where he was heading, making it difficult to keep up a consistent pace. He saw through the mass of people as Terry was pushed and shoved, and obviously couldn't regain her balance. Newland and Vinnie had similar trouble, and that was all Rudy needed to feel the determination required to dive for the bag. Feet and legs obstructed his path, but he went for it regardless, finally swiping it from the ground. His heart raced and he scrambled away, trying to escape what he knew were hands grabbing at him.

He had no idea where Terry, Vinnie or Bob were as he scuttled back to Penny, hoping desperately that they weren't about to snatch him up and steal back what he took. When he rolled behind the brick wall Penny was situated behind, he looked back at the three adults, noticing that all three were casting aimless glances in assorted directions. Terry looked furious, Bob practically as angry, and Vinnie was just bewildered by the stupidity of his associate's actions. Each began to bicker with one another, and eventually, they seemed to give up.

Rudy slumped against the short brick wall, heaving repeatedly. His friend's face flushed with a layer of relief. "Good job," she praised, but Rudy was hardly listening. He took the bag to his lap and quickly worked to untie the knot, keen to check the contents in order to confirm that it was what they were after. When he knew for sure that it was magic chalk, he too felt the same relief that Penny did.

"We're not done yet," Rudy added, and Penny gave a light frown of concern. "We still have to get the other bag and the pieces Newland stole from us."

Penny's mind churned as she searched for a solution. Her voice was little more than a doleful murmur. "How?"

"…I think I know how," Rudy told her, and Penny gave a light frown.

He emerged from behind the wall once Newland's group neared, and Penny threw him a glare, signaling for him to return back to her side. However, he shook his head and just before he was spotted by the three approaching with increasing purpose, Penny gritted her teeth and pulled herself out from behind the wall as well, quickly hiding the chalk behind it and joining with Rudy. She swallowed a lump in her throat and held herself still, feeling dizziness due to exhaustion hit her in a mild dose. She had to steady herself, and once she did, she realized that the adults had indeed begun to make their ways over.

"I hope you know what you're doing," she whispered, her voice tinged with urgency. Rudy didn't reply.

"Hey!" Vinnie shouted as he marched toward them. The children felt surges of fear as they watched their adversaries approach, but tried to ignore all demands their minds made to flee.

"That's my magic chalk, you rotten little pests!" Terry screeched, pushing past Vinnie and halting right before Rudy and Penny. The two stood their ground, even when she loomed over them.

"It's chalk you _stole_," Rudy corrected, Penny backing him up. Their deep frowns only made Terry scoff.

"Do you have any idea how hard it was to convince the producers to let us back on that show?" the woman hissed, out of rage more than anything. "If you don't give us the-"

"I know you tried to burn the studio down," Newland interrupted as he stepped in front of her, facing Rudy on his own while his voice steamed with rage. "You tried to pull the same trick _again!_" Before Rudy, who was confused at the comment, had a chance to reply, Bob demanded, "Give it back!"

Rudy inflated his chest and shook his head. "After what you did to ChalkZone? To my _best friend_?"

"Are you seriously _still_ on that subject?" Newland cried out in exasperation while tossing his head in another direction dramatically, causing a few of the people gathered near the building to throw confused looks in his direction. He disregarded them. "Why does that even-?" He paused, apparently trying to compose himself, before he looked at Rudy and held his eyes firmly. He waited for a moment, his upper lip twitching, as if trying to inject the boy's gaze with poison. "Okay, look, tell me where you took the chalk, Rudy," he spoke, a dangerous edge to his voice. Rudy, however, stood firm, knowing that there was nothing Newland or the others could do so close to a large crowd of people. "I'd give it back if I were you," the man continued, "because if we don't have it when we go back on that show, your little friends in ChalkZone are going to get a very unpleasant surprise." Beside him, Vinnie smirked while Terry crossed her arms, glaring at Rudy.

Rudy, however, appeared to be barren of worry, and Penny, who was breathing quickly and failing to devise a solution to the situation, gave him a confused glance. Giving her a quick look that told her he had little time to explain at the moment, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object. "Oh, I understand," he said calmly, facing the professional artist. "I just wanted to show you something. You see, I set this camera up in my room last night, and as I was looking through it today, I saw something…very interesting…"

Bob was at first skeptical, as Rudy expected, but the man's curiosity overrode any other feeling he held as he bent down, about to snatch the device when Rudy pulled it out of his reach. He kept it still so he, as well as Terry and Vinnie, could see. The boy pressed the play button and narrowed his eyes.

For a moment the footage was still when suddenly, Rudy's window, to the edge of the camera's frame, slid open. Newland's head appeared and he surveyed the room before slipping inside, followed by Vinnie and Terry. The three was seen raiding parts of Rudy's room as the film rolled on, and as Rudy watched the reactions of his foes, he readied himself for the retaliation.

A look of fear suddenly crossed Bob's face and he lunged for the camera, but Rudy quickly stepped back again, holding the camera tightly and ready to run toward the crowd if Newland attempted to take it. The man's nose twitched in agitation, his fists clenched. "I think you three should keep quiet about ChalkZone and try not to erase anything that might be dangerous. Unless you want the police to see this."

"How…how dare you!" Bob shouted, but Rudy only sneered.

"Hand over the chalk."

"You wish," hissed Newland, his voice thoroughly embedded with toxins.

"Do it," Terry protested, and to her words, Bob threw her a look of disgust. At the same time, the woman snatched the other bag from Vinnie and resentfully tossed it to the children. Penny carefully took it into her arms.

"What are you _doing_?" Newland pressed, clearly horrified.

"Do you really think I'm stupid enough to risk the police getting their hands on this?" She gestured to Vinnie. "You too, bonehead."

"What'd I do?" he questioned, feigning innocence.

"Listen to Bouffant, _Bob_," Rudy teased, and the man seethed even more, glaring from the video device in the boy's hand to the pieces he had stolen from the children in his pocket.

When it looked as if he was about to explode with rage, Newland ripped the sticks of chalk from his pocket and thrust them to the ground, the pieces splitting immediately. "There's your darn chalk!" he yelled as he leered with pure disdain.

Rudy took the opportunity to collect the pieces before pocketing them, storing the video device in his other pocket, and took off with his friend. As he ran, he felt triumph overcome him, satisfied with his ability to have gotten the chalk after all that they had been through.

"They were really on the camera?" Penny asked him, almost in disbelief despite having seen a bit of the footage as Rudy had shown them. "I thought Mr. Newland said he got into your house when you were at the hospital-"

"He _thought_ I was still in the hospital," Rudy replied. "He didn't say exactly when he searched what place. He won't be trying that again."

"It's a good thing you thought of that," she replied.

"Yeah," he said with a smile.

"Where are we going?" Penny asked after realizing she didn't know where they were headed.

"The last time we came here, when Bouffant captured Snap the first time and tried to put him on TV, I used a portal nearby to get in and out of ChalkZone," he explained, and she gave a delayed nod with a small frown. "We'll use ChalkZone to get back to our houses."

It didn't take them long to arrive in the familiar alleyway, and when they did, Rudy used one of the broken pieces that Newland had to trace a circle in the brick wall. He let Penny climb in first before following her, ensuring to erase the portal behind him.


	19. Reflections

**Cryptic investigation**

**Chapter Nineteen – Reflections**

Later in the evening, Rudy and Penny returned to ChalkZone through Penny's chalkboard. The place seemed oddly quiet as they stepped down through the portal, careful not to aggravate any of their injuries. Apart from the silence, however, nothing seemed amiss, and they hoped Biclops had managed to stop the dangerous drawings that had been roaming the surrounding areas since that morning.

Rudy still felt exhausted as he worked on drawing them a mode of transportation, knowing that they needed to talk to Biclops immediately and make sure that the citizens of ChalkZone would be safe from the vicious drawings that Newland had created. He would have talked to the Chalk Mine's guardian earlier, but he and Penny had first had to make an excuse for their injuries, knowing that they wouldn't have been able to hide them from their parents for long. They'd had to hide them for a little while, as well as the damage to Penny's glasses, until they convinced their parents to let them ride their bikes together. Penny had made up a story about how they'd taken their bikes to the outskirts of Plainville and during the trip, Rudy had fallen down a rocky slope somewhere near the quarry and cut his arm on the rocks. Due to the fact that, aside from the marks from Dooth's claws, there were multiple new scrapes and cuts from when he'd fallen in the mine when their car had crashed, Penny had noted that it looked like they could pass it off as being badly scraped by rocks. Luckily, although his parents had seemed a bit perplexed by how the injury had ended up so severe, they had believed the story after Penny's explanation. Penny's broken glasses and limp were easily explained as having fallen off her bike while trying to get to Rudy, and though they had been told not to go to that area again and knew they would be in some amount of trouble, they were both simply glad they had managed to explain things relatively smoothly.

Getting on the newly drawn scooter, the two of them headed quickly to the Chalk Mine. Upon arriving, they set the scooter at the Amazin' River's edge and headed toward the entrance. The sight of the damaged mountain was still shocking and distinctly unfamiliar, and Rudy made a mental note to himself to redraw the damaged walls as soon as possible after they'd made sure the Zoners were safe and checked on Snap.

Walking into the main chamber of the mine, they could still see the remains of Snap's trap hanging from the ceiling, as well as the cage Newland had imprisoned them in several hours ago. The ground was covered with the debris from the fireworks, and Rudy brushed some aside with his foot as he came to a halt. "Biclops?" he called, wondering if the giant was in the mine after all or if he was still trying to round up Newland's drawings. As they waited for a response, Rudy peered ahead and saw that the tunnel in the back of the cavern had been widened drastically, the cage containing the dragon gone. He paused to wonder where exactly they had taken it, and planned to ask Biclops when they found him.

"I don't think he's here," Penny said after they'd waited a few minutes, hesitant to venture into the tunnels after everything that had happened recently. "Maybe we should check the hotel."

Rudy nodded. They had been planning to do just that immediately after talking to Biclops, and now that he thought of it, it was possible that Biclops had gone there if he was finished dealing with all the hostile creatures. If he wasn't, then Rudy thought he ought to help him, even though he wasn't quite sure how well he'd be able to draw in a dangerous situation; after all the threats had passed, he'd noticed that the pain in his arm was a great deal worse.

They turned and left the mine, passing by the broken remains of the sign that usually hung above the entrance, and were headed toward the river when they suddenly noticed that Biclops was approaching along the river's edge.

"Biclops!" Rudy shouted, running over to him, Penny following a bit more slowly due to her leg injury. "Is everything-"

"Newland's drawings have all been rounded up," Biclops stated tiredly before Rudy could finish. "At least, as far as we know. Several Zoners are still keeping a lookout, but-"

"And the dragon?" Rudy interrupted.

"Taken to the facility I told you about before," Biclops replied, and Rudy breathed a sigh of relief.

He had told Biclops earlier, before they'd gone back to their own houses in the Real World, about how they had stopped Newland and his associates from exposing ChalkZone and taken back the stolen magic chalk. He was glad that, at last, all the terrible dangers threatening ChalkZone for the past week and a half were gone, or would soon be. All that was left to do was to wait and make sure there were no more rogue Newland drawings around. He hoped that at least some of those creatures could become harmless, as Cerberus had, but at the moment he wasn't sure what would become of them in the long run. He knew they were probably being held in a jail or some other confined area somewhere. As he thought about it, he wondered about the place the dragon was being contained, and if it would be strong enough. He decided against asking, however, knowing that Biclops wouldn't have allowed it to be taken there if it couldn't contain the creature. Though satisfied with that knowledge, he was still curious about the whole thing. "Where exactly is that place they took the dragon to?" he asked out of curiosity.

"I'm afraid I can't tell you where it is, Rudy," Biclops replied, and, seeing that Rudy looked confused, he added, "It is a place that is kept secret from most Zoners, and I don't think they'd want me telling anyone else. But I promise you, it is safe."

Rudy nodded, putting the thoughts of the mysterious facility out of his mind. "And the other red chalk drawings?"

"Taken to a prison in another city," Biclops replied.

"Are you sure there aren't more roaming the tunnels?" Penny asked, sounding a bit worried.

"We rounded up several of them," the giant replied. "I do not believe there are any more, but if we find any, they will be taken to the same place as the others."

Rudy could finally feel relieved, glad that ChalkZone was now safe. The nightmare he had thought, just that morning, that he would not be able to prevent was gone. It was almost hard to believe. He and Penny quickly told Biclops goodbye, knowing that they needed to hurry and check on the hotel next, and they were soon headed swiftly toward the large building Rudy had drawn for the Zoners of ChalkZone City.

When they arrived, it was apparent that many of the Zoners who had fled the building after the incident on Monday night had returned, clearly knowing that it was safe again and, for many of them, knowing they had nowhere else to go. As they stopped their scooter in front of the massive structure, they could easily see several of them milling about outside or in the surrounding field, many looking worried or uncertain.

One of them, a black horse drawing, stopped his frantic pacing and lifted his head at the sight of them. "It's the Great Creator!" he shouted, instantly getting the attention of anyone who hadn't seen Rudy and Penny pull up by the building. At once, Zoners crowded around them, many of them asking frantic questions Rudy couldn't even begin to try to hear correctly among all the noise, let alone answer.

"Wait! Listen, everyone!" Penny cried, managing to instill silence after a few repeated shouts. "I understand you are all concerned, but rest assured that ChalkZone is safe from-"

"What about our houses?" a white rat cried. "The city's in ruin!"

"Look," Penny began, "I'm sure the rebuilding will start soon. Right now we need to make sure there aren't any more of Newland's creatures wandering the-"

"I thought you said we were safe!" a small cactus Zoner shouted, causing alarm to flicker through the crowd.

"If you stay here until we can be sure, you will be!" Rudy told them over the noise. He paused to glance over the heads of the nearest Zoners to see Cerberus sitting by the front of the building, all three heads pointed in different directions as he scanned the surrounding area for intruders. However, some of the Zoners didn't seem very reassured, and he realized that it was probably because they didn't have much of an idea of what was going on; he didn't imagine that Biclops had had time to tell anyone the whole story. "Listen!" Rudy cried, having to shout a few times before the surrounding Zoners quieted. "We'll do our best to help rebuild the city as soon as we can. As you all probably already know, the termites are gone. And the people threatening ChalkZone won't be drawing anything else like that." At these words, several of the Zoners turned to each other, most of them speaking in hushed whispers. "Biclops and some other Zoners are helping to stop the rest of Newland's drawings. Until we're sure they're all gone, you need to wait here at the hotel where it's safe."

Some of the Zoners around them looked astonished, while others reacted as if this wasn't much news to them. "How did you manage to stop them?" one asked, and Rudy knew that telling them the whole story would take time they didn't have. He and Penny had had to ride their bikes in order to make up the story about their injuries, so they hadn't been left with a large amount of time to check on ChalkZone before dinner.

"I'll explain everything later," he promised. "Or you can ask Biclops if he comes here again before I do," he added. One way or another, they'd find out the whole story soon enough.

A few more Zoners began asking questions, but luckily another, a tall stick figure, shouted loudly enough to be heard. "You heard what he said!" the Zoner cried as Rudy and Penny began backing away from the crowd. "We'll all find out everything soon enough. And for those of you who still don't think it's safe here, well, any dangerous animal that comes near here will be arrested the same as those other two!"

"Those other two?" Rudy questioned, turning toward him in surprise.

"Yes," the stick figure took a moment to say, "a big gray rat and a griffin who said they were working for-"

"That's Boorat and Dooth," Rudy replied incredulously. "What were they doing here?"

"It was this morning," said another Zoner, a black wolf. "They came by here talking about how we all needed to be ready to submit to their creators, but after they were taken away, Biclops said-"

"Wait a minute!" a third Zoner, a walking palm tree who looked like he'd just arrived in the middle of the commotion, shouted. "They said _what_?"

As several of them began speaking again, some of them obviously still uncertain about the whole thing, Rudy and Penny looked at each other, worried that the most vocal of the crowd would start an unnecessary panic. "Don't worry!" Rudy cried. "We stopped them. They won't be threatening ChalkZone again. That's for sure." At these words, most of the newly arrived Zoners seemed a great deal calmer, and the ones who had been more knowledgeable about the situation looked relieved as they glanced at the others. "Look, right now we need directions to the hospital that was set up nearby. Can anyone tell us where it is?"

Several Zoners immediately stepped forward or raised their hands, and for a moment there was only more confusion, until Rudy singled out one near the front of the crowd, the ant with the scooter Rudy and Penny had seen in the city when they had been searching for Snap during the time he had been kidnapped.

"I know where it is!" he stated excitedly as soon as Rudy pointed to him, raising one hand from the handles of his scooter.

"Good. Can you take us there?" Rudy asked.

The Zoner nodded, and to his relief, the others gathered around them backed off so he and Penny could reach their own scooter. "It's not too far away," the ant was telling them. "Come on, I'll show you!"

**ooo**

It wasn't long before Rudy, Penny, and the Zoner who had volunteered to guide them arrived at the temporary hospital. Stopping the scooter at the base of a large hill near the front of the structure, Rudy thought that it reminded him of the hospital they'd set up for the Santas when, on Christmas Eve, their sleighs had crashed due to a malfunction in the machine that guided them, only the hospital he was looking at now was much, much bigger. It was a large series of connected white tent-like structures, taking up a very big area of the field it had been set up in. Rudy was relieved to see that there were lookouts stationed around the area, each of them a Zoner that looked strong enough to stop any of Newland's creatures that might still be roaming about. Rudy was a bit surprised, and alarmed, that the place needed to be so big, and as he looked closer at the entrance, he realized there was a place outside, with a white piece of tent fabric stretched over it for shade, where other Zoners were waiting. It worried him that there were so many who were in need of medical care, and he began to feel guilty that he hadn't been able to stop Newland's drawings before he and his friends had encountered the man in ChalkZone or to do anything about the earthquakes.

"Well, there it is," the ant Zoner said, sounding a bit unnerved as well as he looked at the place. "I'd better be getting back."

"That's okay," Rudy replied. "Thanks for showing us."

The ant got back on his scooter and drove off, waving at them before disappearing over the hill. Rudy and Penny set aside their own mode of transportation and approached the hospital, passing by the group of Zoners who were waiting to get in. Rudy noticed that they all had relatively minor injuries; near the front of the line there was a kitten limping on three legs, a pineapple with a torn leaf, and a human sized weasel bleeding from claw marks on his leg. Seeing this, Rudy realized that this section of the hospital must be for treating minor wounds; he wasn't sure where the ones with severe injuries, like Snap, were being held.

As he approached the opening to the first tent, he was suddenly pushed aside by one of the nurses, a relatively small stegosaurus drawing in a white coat. "What do you think you're doing?" the Zoner demanded, giving the children an annoyed look. He briefly glanced down at the clipboard in his hand, seeming distracted. "You can't just barge in here and-"

"S-sorry," Rudy stated quickly, backing away from the entrance. "We're just trying to find where-"

"You," the stegosaurus stated, no longer paying Rudy any attention as he pointed his pen at the weasel. "Go in." The Zoner gave the nurse a relieved look and limped through the tent opening. The stegosaurus then walked in himself, flinging the tent opening closed.

"Maybe there's another place we can go in," Rudy suggested as he and Penny walked away, rounding the hospital in a circle to get a better look at the other sections. "That part of the hospital must be busy if there are so many Zoners waiting..."

Rudy watched sadly as a few more joined the line waiting outside. There hadn't been any time to stop more of the creatures before they'd stumbled upon Newland, though he felt he should have been back from the cave earlier. He knew, however, that in that instance at least, he had no way of knowing that they were in such danger.

Penny gave him a worried look. "Well, there must be someone who can at least explain to us Snap's condition and-"

"Wait, there's another entrance over there," Rudy cried as they rounded one of the tents and noticed another large section of the hospital on the opposite end from where they'd arrived, this one looking more like a main entrance than the one they had first assumed was. To their relief, they could see a few Zoners walking in and out of it, and it obviously wasn't one of the places where wounds were treated. It seemed entirely possible that Snap would be somewhere there.

As soon as they walked through the entrance and into the large tent, Rudy noticed that the main room seemed smaller than he'd first thought it would be. There were a few more Zoners waiting in this area, ones with more severe injuries than the others outside, but luckily there weren't many of them. Rudy could also see that the inside of the tent narrowed further on and was lined with makeshift "rooms" that he knew had to be where the injured Zoners were. Despite the size of the place, it didn't reach the size of a normal hospital, and the room spaces looked quite small. He made a note to himself to redraw the city's hospital first as soon as the tunnels underneath and around the city were filled in and it was safe to do so.

They approached the nearest worker, a yellow flamingo-like bird, and asked where Snap was. She looked momentarily confused before recognizing Rudy and instantly understanding who he'd meant.

"Oh, of course…Great Creator," she stammered, seeming a little nervous, and led them down the makeshift hallway lined with rooms.

As they hurried along, Rudy could see into a few of the rooms, seeing Zoners with various injuries from either the termite attack or the recent group of drawings, but he didn't get a good look as he had to walk at a very brisk pace to keep up with the speedy hospital worker. He could also see a few entrances into other tents, but he wasn't sure what any of them were for. The tent fabric kept out a lot of the DayZone light, making the place look a little eerie to him.

They passed through another large opening and into a smaller hallway with more rooms. They were led to one of the first ones and were told they needed to try to make their visit quick, and then the yellow flamingo hurried off to another area, presumably with some errand or another. After she'd left, Rudy and Penny looked hesitantly at each other before approaching Snap's room.

"Snap?" Rudy whispered, creeping into the small sectioned off place in the tent while moving aside a hanging sheet of tarp. He cringed at the sight of his friend lying on his side on a hospital bed that looked rather inexpensive. Penny followed Rudy up to the side of the bed, where Snap opened his eyes in response to familiar voices.

"Rudy?" he breathed, hardly able to comprehend his surroundings for a moment. He stared at Penny, as if confused by her appearance, until he looked to relax.

"Snap...how're you doing?" Rudy asked somewhat hesitantly, frowning with delicacy.

Snap cringed but managed to utter, "I'm alive."

Rudy exhaled through his nose. "We, uh...we defeated Newland. Terry and Vinnie too. We stopped them from exposing ChalkZone. They no longer have magic chalk, and they won't threaten us anymore." He decided not to go into more detail about how they'd stopped them yet, because Snap still looked fairly dazed, but it was clear that he believed Rudy as a look of relief crossed his face.

"Yes," Penny added, a little enthused, "it was thanks to your bravery that we were able to conceal the dragon behind walls of that green chalk."

"Yeah, Snap..." began Rudy, blinking a few times as a smile tested his face. "You saved us all."

Snap did not seem to register at first, and just gave a small frown. He seemed at a loss for what to say until he lightly chuckled, "Heh...couldn't let you...take the fall, Bucko."

"Yeah..." Rudy allowed his gaze to fall to specific spots of his friend covered in bandages that were results of all the damage he had sustained during the ordeal involving Newland and his associates. He stared at the bandages with newfound shock, reliving the memories of how the injuries came about. Time and again Snap had been beaten as a price for keeping his friends safe. That which Rudy had seen on his skin were only _some_ of what he had been through, as Rudy understood that at least some portion of what he had endured was internal. He clenched his teeth as he came across the bandages on his arm and mentally pictured the gashes beneath them which Snap had been cursed with, unintentionally pairing it with the tears in the flesh along his back. His mind was thrown back to that incident, and again he witnessed the pained look on Snap's face. He recalled that Newland had targeted the Zoner because of Rudy, and the fact that he had forced both Rudy and Penny to watch as their friend was torn apart.

He closed his eyes and shook his head. Snap had always been there when he needed him, through thick and thin, and never put himself before his best friend. There were several times Rudy could recall when Snap had been selfless enough to put himself in harm's way in exchange for the safety of those he cared about. And yet...Rudy felt that he had completely let his friend down in turn. Snap would not have had to go through all that he did if Rudy had just handed over the chalk to Newland. He had known all along that it was his only choice in the end, and the fact that he had only prolonged Snap's suffering with his stubbornness made his heart ache.

"Snap, I'm sorry," he blurted at once, earning confused looks from both the Zoner and Penny. They waited, clearly keen for answers, before Rudy opened his eyes to continue. "It was my fault that you were so badly hurt by Dooth and Boorat and...I'm sorry. You don't have to forgive me."

"Rudy...what are you _saying_?" Penny questioned, rather bemused by her friend's odd confession.

Snap looked nearly as bewildered. "I don't know...what you're talking about."

"I should have just given Newland the chalk!" he exclaimed, tensing his arms. "Instead I just...refused, and for that you had to suffer." He glared at the ground, too ashamed to meet the eyes of the friend he had wronged. "I'm really...sorry."

"Rudy," Penny began sternly, turning her body to face him. She tried to catch his gaze, but he was not moving. "Rudy, you have _nothing_ to blame yourself over. It was not you who wished for a monstrosity to be unleashed upon ChalkZone, and it was not you who issued those attacks on Snap." Her eyes wandered to their friend, who frowned in turn. "That was Newland."

"I know I didn't _do_ it," Rudy told her, mulling the thoughts over in his mind. "It's what I _didn't_ do, and what I could have done to prevent the worst from happening..." His eyes ran up Snap's form again, and he gritted his teeth harder, once again acknowledging that he had been the cause of his pain. "I should have just given him the chalk!"

"Rudy...listen to yourself," Penny told him gently after a number of moments. "You are blaming yourself for something that you had no control over."

"Yes, I di—"

"Newland probably would have hurt Snap anyway," she reasoned, and to that, Rudy's eyes slowly rose to meet hers. "He is an evil man. He was certainly in no rush to get to the Chalk Mine, so I am guessing that he would have had the time afterwards to "toy" with Snap...and, as he would put it... "teach you a lesson.""

Rudy stared at her for a moment before returning to Snap. "Still...I'm so sorry, Snap. I never...meant for you to get hurt."

"I know...Rudy," Snap responded weakly, producing a smile despite the situation. Rudy felt himself a little surprised. "It was the red chalk dragon's fault. And that...creepazoid, Newland."

Hearing it from Snap's mouth made Rudy feel somewhat better, but the feeling in his mind remained. He felt responsible for what happened to Snap, even if not completely. When Penny noticed this, she added, "If Snap doesn't blame you, then you shouldn't blame yourself. It's over now... Mr. Newland, Miss Bouffant and Mr. Raton are back in the Real World and they don't have any magic chalk." She gestured to Snap. "Snap is safe at a hospital and will soon start to recover..." She gave a sigh, worry slotted between her features. "Please stop blaming yourself for something that is not your fault."

Rudy considered her words once more, figuring that she was right: if Snap did not blame him, then he had no cause to blame himself. He was not sure if he would be able to move past such a heavy burden so quickly, but he would make an effort to try. He allowed a weak smile to grace his face. His friend was safe here, as were the other Zoners, and the danger had passed. "I'm...just glad it's over now."

"Me too," Snap responded with a smile.

**ooo**

Rudy and Penny could see the ruined city as they made their way back to Penny's portal. They both knew that repairing the damage would take a while, even with Rudy's ability to use the chalk. He could redraw the most important buildings, but not until the tunnels were filled in and the damage underground was fixed. For now, the city's inhabitants would have to make do with the temporary facilities they'd set up and the hotel Rudy had drawn for them. At least the Zoners were safe now, and not even Boorat and Dooth could cause trouble anymore. There had also been no sign of either Newland's red chalk drawings or his normal ones. Rudy fully realized that for the first time in what seemed like ages, he and his friends could finally rest.

Thinking of the city, he imagined that the repairs would start as soon as possible. Hopefully he would be able to begin redrawing buildings soon, and the Zoners could start to return to their normal lives. He was sure the citizens were already planning how to begin the repairs. Glad that he had done all he could for the moment, he turned and followed Penny back through the portal.

**ooo**

Looking over at where a small crowd of Zoners, steadily growing larger, was gathering, Rudy smiled as he and Penny helped a few of them to set up a large table. They were near the outskirts of ChalkZone City, near the section where the tunnels had been filled in already and the underground repaired. After the table was in the right position, Rudy began to draw more plates of food, glad that the cuts on his arm no longer hurt enough to hinder him much. It was a Saturday afternoon, and Rudy knew that he and Penny would have plenty of time to stay in ChalkZone that day. It was the perfect time for them to join the celebration.

It had only been about a week and a half since the incident with Newland and the red chalk, and Rudy was glad that, already, there had been great improvements to the damaged city. One portion of it had already been completely cleared of rubble, the damage underneath it repaired as well. This had allowed Rudy to draw back important buildings, such as the hospital and police station. In addition to that, he and Penny had spent quite a bit of time the past week working to draw new houses for all the Zoners who had been left homeless due to the termite attack. For those who hadn't lived in that section before and still wanted to live in the same area of the city that they originally had, Rudy had drawn nice apartments for them to stay in until the rest of ChalkZone City could be restored.

A few days ago, Rudy had also finally been able to make repairs to the Chalk Mine. Although he was unable to replace the damaged magic chalk, the mine otherwise looked as good as new, and there was certainly still enough chalk the dragon hadn't destroyed. After fixing the damage, he had given Biclops the book they'd found in the crystal cave, knowing that as the guardian of the mine, the section about the Chalk Mine would certainly be useful to him. Rudy had also managed to replace both his backpack and his parents' first aid kit when he and Penny had gone to a store that sold the exact same backpack and kit two days ago. Best of all, in the time that had passed since Newland's attempt to expose ChalkZone, there had been absolutely no threat from him, Raton, or Bouffant, and it was finally clear that the danger had passed. That, along with the start of the city's rebuilding, was the cause for the celebration.

As Rudy stopped to take a break from drawing preparations for the party, he glanced toward one of the early guests, a sixed winged dragonfly-like creature who had volunteered to help with setting up. Rudy remembered how this Zoner had originally been one of Newland's stray drawings created before the man had found the Magic Chalk Mine, and Rudy was glad that he, along with a few of the others, had managed to turn around and find new purposes for themselves, rather than follow the meaninglessly destructive patterns they had been created with. The insect Zoner waved to Rudy as he passed, carrying trays of drinks in three of his four hands.

The grassy outskirts near the city were covered with tables, more than enough for even all of the Zoners who lived in the city. The field where the celebration was taking place was also decorated with large numbers of balloons and streamers and all sorts of food and drink, many of which Rudy and Penny had never seen before, and realized that some of it could be specific to certain areas or types of Zoners. A large stage had also been set up at one end of the field near the city for Zoners who wanted to perform for the guests. Though Rudy knew that he and the rest of the city dwellers still had a lot of work to do, for now, they would be able to relax.

After Rudy had finished drawing, he and Penny headed away from the main celebration area and back to the vehicle Rudy had drawn earlier. Rudy was confident that Zoners could complete the last preparations without them, as they were doing quite well setting up themselves, and Rudy knew that the event would soon begin. He looked up as he approached the red truck he and Penny had used to help deliver supplies from one of the nearby towns, seeing Snap, who had come delivering with them but stayed in the vehicle until they returned, waiting for them in the back seat. After staying for over a week in the hospital, he had felt rested enough to leave during the day and accompany his friends. He was told to return during the night for regular checkups, and in case anything happened during his sleep which he might need immediate medical attention for. Rudy offered to drive him back and forth if he happened to be in ChalkZone at the time, or any other period when it was convenient. As Rudy waved to him, he scanned his friend's body, encountering the bandages again. He had blamed himself for what happened on more than one occasion, but his friends had convinced him otherwise. He knew now that pointing the finger at himself was illogical; he acknowledged that he was not to blame at all, which gave him a sense of peace.

Snap perked up as soon as he saw the other two approaching. "Is everything ready, Bucko?" he asked.

"Almost," Rudy replied. "It'll start soon. I thought before it did I could show you the new city buildings we completed while you were recovering. I know you saw some of them, but you never got a good look, right?"

"Nope," Snap responded simply, seeming happy with the idea.

"Yes," Penny agreed. "The repairs are coming along quite nicely. There has been a lot of progress even after a short time."

"Well, let's go, then," Rudy insisted with a smile, seeing Snap do the same.

Leaving the gathering group of Zoners, which was now rapidly growing much larger, the three headed off in their vehicle toward the part of the city that had been repaired. Snap felt relieved that he would finally be able to go back to his own house, as it had been in the part of the city that was now complete, so he knew he would be able to return to it and was quite eager to see it.

"So, ya fix all the houses yet?" Snap asked, resting his good arm on the side of the truck as he peered out at the newly constructed buildings.

"Most of them," Rudy replied. "Only part of the city is safe enough for that, but most of the Zoners didn't mind having their houses drawn or built in a new place. The others will stay in one of the hotels until the rest is rebuilt."

Snap shrugged, knowing that his house had been in the area that was now reconstructed, and thus he understood that it would be there waiting for him, and continued to look at the newly built section of the city as they passed by.

Rudy was glad that at least now the Zoners could await the rest of the repairs in comfort as well as safety. There was also plenty of food being brought in from other towns and cities, so no one needed to worry about supplies while most of the city was still in such a poor state. He had no doubt that, with all the Zoners helping, the rest of the city's renovation would move smoothly and quickly. As he looked at Snap, he could tell that his friend was impressed with what they had managed to fix so far.

As they skirted the city's edge and began approaching the shore of the Wait N' Sea, Snap grew a puzzled frown. "Uh, Rudy?" he began, turning away from the buildings to look at his creator. "You did draw back my house yet, didn't you? It wasn't where it used to be and I didn't see it back-"

"Yeah, I did," Rudy quickly interjected. He said no more, and gave a small smirk as he noticed his friend's look.

Snap still stared at him in puzzlement, minor annoyance etching itself into his features. Rudy gave a chuckle as they passed some buildings by the Wait N' Sea.

After passing a few more, a large building began to come into view. "Oh…what's _that_?" Rudy began, his voice not at all serious.

Snap could not figure out why his friend was speaking in such a manner until he laid eyes upon the building himself, noting that it was far larger than anything he had ever lived in. It was virtually a mansion, with interesting designs on the walls and a navy blue roof that was fashioned in a particularly elegant but fun manner. Surprisingly large wheels sprouted at its base, making Snap realize that it was mobile. He was impressed with the architecture from the outside, and could only wonder what the inside was like. "Nice house," he commented, switching back to Rudy.

Rudy grew a light frown, his peculiar smile still on his face, before he seemed to realize something. "Snap…that's _your _house."

"Wait…what?" the blue Zoner exclaimed.

"I drew it for you!" Rudy laughed gleefully, and immediately Snap's shock transformed into joy and delight.

"For _me_? Aw, you shouldn't have, Bucko!" Snap analyzed the building from where he was, leaning forward between the front seats as best he could without applying pressure to the injured places on his body. "Wow, Rudy! This is great!" he cried in amazement. When they pulled over, he got out of the truck along with the others and used his crutch to assist him in limping toward the house in order to further examine it. He was clearly pleased with it from a distance, and seeing it up close made him want to bounce about in excitement. His current state prevented such action, of course, but his repeated shouts of enthusiasm and merriment were enough to tell Rudy and Penny what Snap was feeling.

"You see," Rudy began, standing beside Snap and pointing to large wheel-like structures around the house's base, "I drew this house so you could move it. Anywhere you like. That way you won't have to keep moving to new houses," he added with a chuckle.

"We thought that would be a good idea," Penny added.

"Good idea? That's a great idea!" Snap cried in response, unable to keep his eyes off his new abode.

"If you want me to add anything," said Rudy, "just let me know! It'll be easy."

"Really? Thanks, Bucko!" he grinned. "Hmm…well, in that case, I think what this place needs is-"

Snap did not get to finish before a horn sounded, followed by a familiar voice calling to the trio. They all looked up to see half of Rapsheeba sticking out of the sunroof of a moving vehicle only a little while away, coming toward them. "Hey there, guys!" she called, and Snap beamed at her. "Snap, my man! You're out of the hospital! That's great."

"It's only temporary," he quickly told her, and then gestured to the house behind him. "Take a look at what Rudy drew for me!"

Rapsheeba nodded numerous times, clearly impressed with the establishment. "That's one nice crib you got there, Snap!" Snap grinned again and Rapsheeba turned her attention to Rudy. "Rudy, the celebration is about to start! You better get down there soon."

"Oh, well, I can finish this later," Rudy told Snap as he hurried back to the car.

"I guess my upgrades can wait," Snap reasoned, understanding that the party was of higher significance for the moment. He and Penny followed Rudy back to the truck and Rapsheeba sunk into her car through the sunroof.

They drove back to the celebration, noting the many guests who had already arrived. They were swarming the tables and surrounding equipment, interacting with one another and looking to be enjoying themselves. Rudy was a little surprised by the sheer number of Zoners – of all shapes, sizes and colors – but was happy to see that so many people had turned up.

After they exited their vehicle, they made the decision to wait around the tables until the celebration formally started. Rudy thought it would give Snap a good head start on the food, as he knew how many kinds there were and that they were supposed to be extremely delicious. On their way, Cerberus popped into view, which only made Rudy's smile brighten. "Cerberus!" he began upon spotting him, noting that the oversized dog's three heads flicked to him immediately. His great tail began to beat furiously at the sight of Rudy and his friends, snapping any sticks that were unfortunate enough to rest in its path.

Understanding that Cerberus could not abandon his post – no matter _how_ much he seemed to want to – Rudy and Penny approached him with open arms. Cerberus leapt at Rudy and the boy called for him to stop before he was accidentally crushed, and although the great Zoner understood and made an effort not to step on him, one of his great heads began wildly licking his face. Unfortunately this included the rest of Rudy's body as well, and he was quickly drenched in slobber.

"Cer-Cerberus!" he laughed, wiping the gooey saliva off his body. "Stop, please!" Cerberus happily obeyed and sat back, his large tail sweeping the ground and anything on it.

"Good boy!" Penny praised, stroking his head. "You are doing so well as a guard dog."

"I suppose the police force assigned you to guard all these Zoners for the celebration in case one of Newland's animals happened to be roaming around?" Rudy questioned, having drawn a towel for himself. The dog creature let loose a thunderous bark of affirmation, which Rudy smiled at and nodded. When he had finished wiping himself down, he folded up the towel and placed it on the ground near a table close by. "Anyway, have fun guarding!" he told Cerberus, who closed his six eyes in glee.

After another short while, the celebration area was quite crowded, and a band had already begun playing on stage. The band members consisted of clams, and the vocalist, who was smartly-dressed, currently sang a song about his family. Rudy chuckled a bit at this and faced back to the table, which they had returned to after seeing Cerberus.

Seeing and smelling the marvelous arrangement of food in front of him made Rudy wish he was able to taste some of it. He was almost tempted to try some, but he knew it would only taste like chalk, and that was certainly enough for him to discard that idea instantly. Snap was certainly enjoying the food though, which made Rudy happy enough to see, even knowing he was not able to do the same. Occasionally he spotted Zoners he personally knew, but it was so crowded that it was hard to keep track of anyone as they moved from table to table. He shrugged, figuring that they would not have been able to hear him over the volume of the band combined with the countless conversations happening around him anyway.

"Well, it certainly seems like everything is going back to normal," Penny stated contentedly as she watched the performing band on the stage a little ways away from where they were sitting.

Rudy nodded, remarking that he was glad there hadn't been a great deal of trouble from the drawings that had been terrorizing the citizens when Newland first erased them. "Even if some do turn up, we have Cerberus to help fend them off."

"Are you gonna perform on stage?" Snap asked Rapsheeba.

"O' course! I wouldn't miss a chance to perform," she replied, saying it as if the answer was expected. "Though I'm waiting until after the Clamtastic Family performs."

Although Snap was excited that she was a scheduled act for the celebration, he found himself a bit dismayed at the fact that he wouldn't be able to help her with the performance in any way; he couldn't even help set up while his arm was in a sling and he needed his usable one to operate his crutch. It made him feel somewhat useless. "I wish I could have helped," he muttered with a sigh.

Rapsheeba only gave him a look of amused perplexity. "Are you serious?" She held her mouth open in a grin before she chuckled again. "You just helped save the whole of ChalkZone! If that's not helpful, then I dunno what is." At these words, Snap felt himself brighten a little. When he did not look entirely convinced, Rapsheeba continued, "I wouldn't be standin' here if you weren't as noble as you are." He released his frown and suddenly felt a little silly.

"I guess you're right!" he exclaimed in triumph.

"Besides, I got the rest of the crew to help set up," Rapsheeba informed him, eradicating the last of his doubt.

"I think I want to start workin' on my comic again," Rudy told Penny. "Once we get more of the city fixed, I mean. I came up with a better way to start it and I'm confident about it this time round. I really don't think Newland knew what he was talking about," he added with a small laugh.

Penny shared his amusement. "Not at _all_."

Rudy wasn't paying much attention when the band's songs finished, as he had been talking to his friends during the majority of their performance. The surrounding noise of chatter and mirth distracted him from noticing at first, but when he did, he wondered if it was Rapsheeba's turn.

Suddenly a celadon rectangular Zoner approached him, excitement coating his simplistic face. "Rudy!" shouted Blocky, whom Rudy found himself beaming at.

"Blocky!" he responded in turn, happy to see him but a little perplexed as he noticed his overly excited state. "What's going on?"

"They want you up on stage!" Blocky exclaimed, his voice filled with jollity. "To thank you for saving ChalkZone!"

"Huh? I…well…okay," he stammered as several Zoners crowded around the table at once, grinning at him and encouraging him to accept the gratitude. Two husky dog Zoners, one black and white and the other silver and white, nudged him to his feet, each wearing excited expressions. He left his equally surprised friends as he was led up to the stage which was now empty except for several banners relating to Clamtastic Family, and a few remaining props, which were hurriedly taken off the platform as he approached. It was then that he noticed that Biclops was standing nearby, smiling at him.

Once he had been taken up on the stage, Rudy truly noticed just how many Zoners were there. It had to be the entirety of ChalkZone City that was gathered in the fields, and he suddenly felt a spike of stage fright lodge itself into his body. Everyone was looking at him admirably, and he fully realized that, before he had managed to stop the termites, they had probably believed that there was no way to exterminate them and had been fearing for not only their individual lives, but the entirety of ChalkZone. Every speck of their hope had rested on his shoulders, and they entrusted all the faith they could muster to him. He had vowed to himself not to let them down every day as he strived to think of a new tactic, a new way to keep the world he loved safe from harm, and he had stayed true to that promise. With the help of his trusted and brave friends, he had succeeded and the citizens of ChalkZone were thankful that their belief in him did not go to waste.

Rudy wasn't sure what he had been brought there to do or say, but before he could wonder for long, a Zoner Rudy didn't recognize grabbed the microphone. The stick figure Zoner, who Rudy figured was a ChalkZone City inhabitant, tossed his long, shaggy hair back and pulled up his jeans, which looked to be falling down at the hips. "Okay, all you dudes and dudettes! Listen up, because today, what I have to say represents all of us ChalkZone citizens!" the stick figure yelled, enthusiasm in his casual, deep voice. "We're here today to celebrate someone who's always helped us out in the past." He looked to Rudy and gave him a thumbs-up, which Rudy returned half-heartedly. "He's one cool dude. And this is one really cool celebration. And, y' know, it's cool that we're not all dead. Those super deadly termites were, like, destroying our city… They tore up _our _homes and wrecked what we spent several lifetimes building. They wanted to destroy us too, and they almost did. But they were stopped. Then those other creators invaded our homeland and threatened everybody here…" He singled out audience members as he pointed dramatically, holding the microphone on its stand with his other hand. "You…and you. And yes, little lady, even you. But there was someone who wasn't going to stand for that. So those phony creators were stopped and they are no longer a threat to us. And you know what? We owe that to this little dude here. Rudy Tabootie…our Great Creator!" He swung outwards, holding an arm out to signal to Rudy.

Roars of approval erupted from the crowd, with accompanying shouts and hoots of joy. The Zoners cheered, several whistles and positive messages being thrown his way in the process.

Rudy stood in shock, overwhelmed by the appreciation that the Zoners were sharing with him. They had often praised him whenever he managed to save them from a threat, but he had never been in the presence of such a large number who were so grateful to him. Once again he acknowledged the sheer magnitude of what he and his friends had managed to do. It wasn't even just these Zoners, the city dwellers, whom they had saved, but the whole of ChalkZone as well—the citizens and the land itself. They had not only preserved the world's secret, but had managed to put a permanent stop to the destruction Newland and his partners had brought about as well.

Suddenly snapping out of his momentary trance, Rudy reached for the microphone being held by the stick figure who had made the announcement, who was still clapping for him. "W-wait a minute!" he cried, and after a moment the applause and cheers died down, and he could see the Zoners closest to the stage looking at him curiously. "I appreciate all this, but…it wasn't just me!" he called, his voice ringing through the silence. "My friends…Penny and Snap…well, they helped just as much, and I think you should be thanking them just as much as me. Believe me, they deserve the same amount of gratitude as I do. Without them, I wouldn't have gotten very far. And without either of them…I wouldn't be standing here now." He vividly remembered the times when both Penny and Snap had saved his life during their adventures, as well as the fact that there had been no way he would have been able to stop the dragon on his own. Their emotional support had been greatly valued as well, which Rudy had certainly needed on multiple occasions.

The crowd exploded with just as much applause and supportive hoots as Penny came up, Rapsheeba helping Snap along the way. Penny was a little bewildered at first before she breathed out her nervousness and broke into a smile, feeling the influx of support she was getting from those around her. While Snap made his way up, Rudy decided to use the microphone again.

"I would also like to say a big thank-you to Biclops, whose help we couldn't have gone without. So…give it up for him too!" In response, the Zoners only increased their volume and Rudy waved to the mine's guardian, signaling for him to come onto the stage. Biclops obliged and stood beside Rudy. Rudy handed him the microphone and the guardian began to make a speech.

While Biclops explained the premise of Rudy's adventure and the shortened story of how the boy and his friends managed to complete their quest and succeed, Rudy scuttled to the edge of the stage and waited until Snap arrived. "Come on!" he whispered, and collectively, he, Rapsheeba and Penny helped their friend onto the stage. When they approached Biclops again, who was still talking, the crowd resumed their cheering. Biclops gave a chuckle in the middle of his speech, turning to the three as Snap lifted the arm not in his sling while his armpit held the crutch in place, and broke out into a wide grin.

Rapsheeba took the microphone from Biclops and gave a quick speech of her own before she mentioned that she had written a song for the occasion which was dedicated to Rudy, Penny and Snap and their success at saving ChalkZone. The trio was ecstatic with the news of a song written in their name, and were all invited to the first row of the crowd to watch their friend perform.

"Well, guys..." Rudy began as they watched on, all smiling at one another as the crowd continued to cheer. He kept his eyes on Penny and Snap, happy to find himself suspended in a state of blissfulness. His friends were with him, ChalkZone was safe, and he could not be happier with the turnout. "We did it. We really did it. We saved ChalkZone and returned the peace."

"Yeah," Penny responded, her grin almost too wide for her face.

"We certainly did," added Snap with a smirk.

"It really did seem hopeless for a while," Rudy stated, thinking back to the times during their quest to stop Newland when it had seemed like they had completely run out of options. "But you guys always helped me pull through. So, thanks."

"You're welcome, Bucko!" Snap replied with a grin, and Penny nodded happily.

"The three of us..." Rudy began, keeping his friends' attention. His smile broadened. "We're heroes."

**The End**

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><p><em>(Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed the story and that you will enjoy the next one!)<strong><br>**_


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Chalkzone, Adventure, Friendship