Saturday, Jan. 18, 2003 - 9:06 p.m.

The four gnomes reappeared in a cold, damp room, with a stone floor, and stone walls. The only light in the room was coming from a small crack in a wall, but the gnomes could still vaguely pick out a skeleton hanging from the ceiling by its legs. There was no way out except through a huge, bolted, metal door. Beardy fainted.

"'Clip?" said Hairdryer. "Why are we here?"

"I don't know! I ordered for us to be taken to a nice warm place with no danger!" The small gnome looked confused.

"So what happened?" asked Plug Socket.

"I did." said the strange looking pixie-creature who was now peering through a gap in the door. "I said that we were going to kill you, and we are going to kill you. Eventually. Finding you took a lot of effort on my part, and I was heavily punished for not killing you before, so I want you to stay here and think about what you put me through for a while first."

"Oh." said Beardy, who had now regained conciousness, but looked very pale. "So.. when is it that we are to be killed?"

The pixie-creature looked at him. "Well, I don't want to tell you that. When the time comes, though, you'll be taken outside and dropped into a lake."

"I can swim!" shouted Paperclip. "I can swim good! I swam a lot when I was outside!"

"Oh, don't worry, we'll cast the necessary paralysis spells on you first. And the lake is full of giant goldfish." The pixie-creature grinned, and dropped away from the door. Beardy started gibbering to himself.

"What can we do?" he whimpered.

"Wait." Hairdryer didn't look happy. "If you hadn't destroyed the Earth, we wouldn't be in this situation, Beardy."

"Shut up! That was someone else's fault! Don't blame me!" Beardy started screaming. "Don't you think it's hard enough trying to lead this group?!"

"You don't lead us, though, you don't even make the decisions, Beardy." said Plug Socket.

"I always lead the charge when we fought in Ytinasnia!" screeched the tallest gnome.

"That's because you're bigger than us, Beardy. You can hurt people more, but you're not the cleverest gnome in the garden, are you?" Plug Socket seemed intent on turning Beardy into an emotional wreck, the other two gnomes didn't try to stop him.

"I know more than you!" Beardy yelled, before collapsing in a heap on the cold floor. The other three gnomes sat down, and stared at the walls. They'd had it better in the room, Hairdryer knew this. He hadn't wanted to leave, at least not using Beardy's methods, but now he was on pixie death-row. He was angry, but he couldn't do anything about it.