Dusk was a breathtaking scene, but too cheerful for Laughing Jack's liking. The sun cast far too many colours for something that was about to vanish from the horizon.

The monochrome clown had turned his back on the setting sun, and presently stood leaning against one of the rooftop's high metal railings, arms firmly crossed.

He had his head tipped back to watch the sky - waiting for the light to die.

(The black and white jack-in-a-box sat by his feet. It may have been crafted by an angel's hands, but it was still too heavy even for him to carry for long.)

Some of the silver and gold clouds were shaped like candy. One of them was definitely the exact shape of a swirly lollipop. Or was it just wishful thinking?

A singsong tune started playing out of nowhere. It was the chiming sound of Pop Goes The Weasel, causing a puzzled L.J to stoop down and examine his jack-in-a-box.

The crank was turning of its own accord.

That's never happened before...

Unsure of anything else he could do, L.J gently stopped the crank from turning by pressing a claw against it. It seemed to have worked - because when he lifted his claw, the music had stopped.

A convenient gust of wind breezed past and blew several strands of inky-black hair into his face. While the monochrome clown combed it back into place, someone else arrived on the roof.

And announced their presence by swinging about twenty pounds' worth of apple juice towards his lower back, sending him tumbling head-over-heels.

L.J caught himself in a roll and half-sat up, eying the person who'd pushed him with disdain.

"Who shoved you off the wrong side of the bed, kiddo?" He asked flatly.

Smirky responded with a scoff. And then he flashed him a sharp-toothed smile, though it looked more like a snarl. "I'd watch my back, if I were you."

From behind, he dragged the bloodstained scythe closer. It created a low scraping sound that would've made anyone flinch. His emphasis was clear.

Well, almost anyone.

"You should take your own advice, you hypocrite," L.J chuckled darkly, disappearing in a burst of colourfully dull candy.

The monochrome clown reappeared behind him. They were standing back-to-back.

L.J rolled his head to one side with a sly smile. His breath was cold against Smirky's neck. "After all... You wouldn't wanna get torn in half again, would you kiddo?"

Smirky sullenly whipped around.

He was gone, and so was the jack-in-a-box. Candy littered the tiled floor. All of it was helpfully labeled with skull and crossbones.

Tap.  Tap.  Tippedy tap.

The illusionist creepypasta shifted his eyes to the rooftop's entrance door. Phantom was standing there in all her glory, tapping her foot impatiently against the ground.

"What took ya so long?! Do you have any idea how long I've been without my apple juice for?"

She didn't give him much of a chance to reply before launching into complaint. "Fifteen! Fifteen whole minutes!"

Smirky set down the heavy shopping bags. "I spent ten of those fifteen minutes waiting in line at the supermarket."

"And the other bits of my valuable, apple juice-less time?"

"Three minutes to track down the mugger who stole your handbag. Two seconds to decide how to deal with him, fifty eight seconds to kill him, and one minute to travel back here."

Phantom uncrossed her arms and scooted over. To the disbelief of her sharp-toothed housemaid, she hoisted all four of the heavy bags over her shoulder.

"By the way, what the hell was L.J doing on my roof?"

"I... Don't know..." Smirky's eyes went wide as she turned around with the extremely heavy bags as if they weighed absolutely nothing.

"Well, tell him to stop leaving poisoned candy all over the place. Someone might slip and go tumbling off the roof again. I can't keep paying the medical bills!"

With those departing words of wisdom, the authoress trotted back inside and down the stairs, leaving her creepypasta to decide whether following her was worth getting a glass of water and an earful of complaints.

Something intresting was happening within the walls of the creepypasta's main hideout. Well, two things, actually, but we're going to firstly focus on the first one and then slowly integrate the second one for plot convenience.

Slenderman was hard at work inside his study, multitasking to the extreme.

His tentacles were independently stapling together papers, organising files, doing accounts, and filling out subscription forums.

All the while their owner was sitting stoically at the desk, longingly watching reruns of the Twilight movies on BEN's "confiscated" personal laptop.

If the faceless creepypasta had owned a pair of eyeballs, they would've been wide and gooey. He was clasping his hands together in a manner that suggested love at first sight too.

And then the telephone rang.

Slenderman irritatedly paused the movie and snatched the receiver with a tentacle, yanking it towards his nonexistent ear.

"This is the creepypasta hotline. Press one-"

Slendy! Oh Slendy, my darling deranged brother! How is your wardrobe? You know, I really do wish you'd let me spice it up a little - suits and ties are so last seasonal...

Slenderman held the receiver away from his ear, cringing as Trendorman continued yabbering on about fashion, obliviously.

"Please - yes, yes, I know red and black are winter colours- Could you just- no, I haven't gotten my nails macincured at the new salon and I don't intend- Oh for goodness sakes, JUST STATE YOUR BUSINESS!"

There was a long, thoughtful pause.

Offendy is missing! I mean, I thought he'd just gone off with some scandalous, tasteless women, But I can't find him anywhere and I need his opinion on which hat I should wear to tonight's fashion show!

"Missing? Are you sure about-"

All of a sudden, the receiver sizzled and started to spew out white-hot sparks. Something emerged from within; a wriggling mass of BEN Drowned.

"What in the name of Zalgo-"

"HE'S GONNA KILL ME!" The little elf wailed, crawling across the floor and under the desk. He curled up there and started traumatically rocking back and forth.

And then Jeff the Killer burst into the study, wearing nothing except a tight white bath towel around his lil' pale tushy.

His eyes were bloodshot.

And he was holding a knife with a rubber ducky speared on the end.

"A blonde midget is going to die today!" He screeched. 

His fabulous hair was dyed a lovely shade of bubblegum pink, the likes of which was also streaked across his face and slowly dripping down his back and his toned chest.

"I thought you were someone else!" BEN wailed, hugging onto Slenderman's leg for dear life as the half-naked killer sprung onto the desk.

Slendy's tentacles stood erect out of shock as he leaned back and away. If he had a face, he would've looked anguished. "C-Control yourself, child!"

"I know you're there!" Jeff jeered to BEN, peering down and half bending over.

Dark Link chose the wrong time to enter the study.

"Doctor Smiley asked me to give you this herbal t-t-tea..." He trailed off in a stammer, at a loss for words when he saw the "other side" of Jeff, so to speak.

Crash! He numbly dropped the tray of tea, eyes bulging out of their sockets.

"No, no, no - It's too early for this! At least wait until I've had a few shots of tequila before subjecting me to this level of utter stupidity!"

The psychotic killer turned around and noticed that he had an audience.

"Eh? Aaah!" Jeff had a dawning moment of epiphany and shot back up, mercifully covering himself back up with the towel.

Abandoning the idea of vengeance against BEN, the psychotic killer turned on heel and flew out of the study at top speed, hopefully to put some clothes on.

Dark Link glanced at the mess on the floor, span fluidly on his heel, and causally strolled out of the room to wash his eyes out thoroughly with brain bleach.

Slendy did a faceless facepalm and began trying to salvage what was left of their landline phone after BEN had zipped through it.

The little elf had short circuited the system entirely, and probably damaged Trendy's wireless phone as well.

Internally groaning within the confines of his staticky brain, Slenderman turned back towards the laptop to resume watching the romance unfold with gooey-eyeless.

Oh, but before that, he booted BEN out of his study with the information that both him and Jeff were grounded for a week because of their little stunt.

And meanwhile, a thing of equal interest was going on outside. Ticci Toby, Hoodie and Masky were all sitting on a tree branch, watching the interesting thing while sharing a massive tub of popcorn.

"T-They m-move r-r-really f-fast, d-don't t-they?"

"Mmmhm."

Two mismatched blurs were flashing in and out of the surrounding forest trees, clashing and retreating with equally-matched speed. And no, it wasn't two hedgehogs called Shadow and Sonic.

"Y-You won't win!"

"I already have!"

The spar was brought to an abrupt end as one blur knocked the other to the ground with a sharp whoosh. The victor stood by the tree's thick trunk, resting a hand on it while adjusting their surgical mask.

The loser was left to sulk in a pile of multicoloured leaves. "You own much speed. Kekeke!" He spoke broken English, with a gleeful foreign accent.

This visiting creepypasta owned a strange mask, one half black and the other white, that changed with his mood. He had an equally monochrome stripy scarf wrapped around his neck.

"It was my pleasure to spar with you, Kagekao!" Doctor Smiley called out, looking down. He had lowered his own mask to take a much-needed breather.

The proxies were a little slow to realize that the battle was over - primarily because they were too busy squabbling over popcorn - but when they did, they burst into applause instantaneously.

Their guest had one thing to say. "Forgiveness, English is not my familiar language."

Kagekao twisted his body around in inhuman angles to realign himself back into a position of standing on his feet. That was the only way to describe it.

"Slenderman welcomes all creepypastas to stay in our lovely little mansion for as long as they'd like," Smiley assured him. His tone turned cold after mentioning the word all.

Kagekao was unfazed by that.

"Fun-lacking man! You need to drink from a wine cupboard! Kekeke!"

"Wha- Oh..." Smiley rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. He didn't know at the time - but Dark Link was there already. "I'm a doctor. I'm not supposed to be happy or have feelings."

"I see. Let us not be late to meet this curvy-bodied man! Kekeke!"

Everyone in the vicinity sweatdropped. Even the woodland animals. And the popcorn tub. Somehow.

Now he's doing it on purpose... Went through their minds in unison.

Smiley jumped down from the tree with his astounding agility and led the black and white creepypasta towards their crazy mansion.

Toby tallied up their scores just for fun, earning a weird look from Masky because he was drawing on an imaginary whiteboard. Hoodie just tried to ignore them both in general and wandered off of his own accord.

None of them paid attention to - or in fact, seemed to notice - Smirky as he rushed through the undergrowth at top speed, ducking and jumping to avoid a bizarre array of obstacles as they appeared in his way.

Interestingly (we've been using that word a lot lately), he was late, considering that he'd left Phantom's house an hour ago.

Even more interestingly, he had some still-bleeding scratches on his face that weren't there before. And they didn't look self-inflicted either. Who knows how they got there? Maybe it was a ghostly cat.

_________________________
A/N: We're off to a rockin' start with two thousand words in this chapter!
That was raw, unedited writing right there. Did you like it? Was it funny? Lemme know, yes?
Kagekao is another one of my favourite creepypastas - but he doesn't seem to get as much attention as the rest. Spread the word: Google him today!
Thank you so much for ten reads on the first day! I could never have expected such an instantaneous reaction! And comments too? It's a dream come true!

Toodle-doo!
Final Word Count: 2097