Castle Bleck Craziness

Another Outdoor Episode

One Void Day, Count Bleck walked into the living room. "Bleck," Mr. L cursed from where he was lounging on the couch.

"Bleck!" Count Bleck replied for no particular reason.

"I wasn't calling you," Mr. L scowled.

"Un-Bleck."

"I was just using your name in vain because the tv signal was lost in the middle of the Smash Bros. Championships," Mr. L complained, punching buttons on the remote. He had been watching it for two and a half hours. Dimentio sat on the floor watching, and was now spending time conjuring up bugs and then squishing them.

"Maybe you should watch something more wholesome, like baseball, said Count Bleck," the Count said.

"Haha. You just wanna see the Cublecks beat the Marioners," Mr. L scoffed. Count Bleck opened his jagged mouth to protest, but just then the tv flicked back on. "It's back with only one minute to go!" Mr. L cried.

"And the winner is..." boomed the tv.

Then the power cut.

"BLOODY BLECK!" Mr. L screamed.

"Mr. L!! We will not use the count's name in vain EVER, k?! ...Thanks," Nastasia said, walking in.

Dimentio rolled his eyes but no one noticed.

"Anyway, PERFECT timing, Mr. L. I was going to boot you off the tv now anyway," Nastasia continued.

"What?? Why?" he demanded.

"Because she secretly likes that dorky show Starship X-Naut," Dimentio said.

"No," Nastasia said in annoyance. "Because its a lovely day in the Void, and the wind is blowing and the purple grass is swirling," she said, pulling aside a curtain so they could see said purpleness.

"Get to the point," Dimentio said suspiciously.

"I'm just saying you should take a break from all the screens to appreciate your surroundings."

At that moment O'Chunks and Mimi walked in. "What's going on, Count? Dimwits?" She asked, looking back and forth.

Before Dimentio and Mr. L could beat her up, Count Bleck answered. "Count Bleck has realized it is a horrible day. So he commands us all to go outside!"

Mr. L and Dimentio looked so horrified that they were normal, Mimi and O'Chunks looked kind of happy, and Nastasia looked quizzical. "Again?? Um, Count, don't you think that'll... raise rebellions?" She asked, readjusting her glasses.

Count Bleck thought, then turned to his minions/family. "Rebellions are forbidden," he decided.

Dimentio rolled his eyes again, but quickly kept his creepy smile going happily.

Out in the dark yet slightly grassy field of Castle Bleck, Nastasia set out a blanket under a black tree. Mimi was doing cartwheels and shapeshifting into bunnies, while Mr. L sat in the tree and tried to kill it by picking off all its leaves. Count Bleck sat on the blanket, admiring the blackness of it all. Dimentio was drinking water so it looked like he was doing something.

"I packed supplies for baseball, plus a kite in the shape of a Boo," Nastasia said.

"I'll fly the kite!" Mimi offered. But when she went to grab it, Nastasia stopped her. "I know you will," she said, "but will he?" She pointed at Dimentio.

Dimentio froze. "Never! Not in a billion years would I fly a kite," he declared. "Mature magicians do not wrangle with cheap toys, like a child playing with no dignity!"

"Ha! Got that right," Mr. L yelled from the tree.

Mimi grabbed the kite and brought it over to Dimentio. "Come on! Please?" She begged, making googly eyes.

Dimentio growled for fifteen minutes, then grabbed the kite and threw it into the air. A giant gust of wind caught it and Dimentio began wrangling with it.

"Yes! There goes his dignity!" Mr. L cheered. He was videotaping from the tree—an excellent vantage point. While he was recording, Nastasia called up, "Hey, why don't you come down here and play baseball, k?"

"Hngrfph, fine," Mr. L replied, and climbed down.

O'Chunks prepared to pitch. Mr. L grabbed a black bat and stood at the ready. When the ball came, he blasted it into the sky so far it went clear out of the void.

Old Man Watchitt jolted up in his armchair when a baseball came smashing through his window. Having been woken from his nap, he shook a fist out the hole and yelled, "HOODLUMS!! WATCH IT!!!"

Back in the void, Mr. L shrugged. "My bad. I don't remember being so good at baseball," he pondered.

A short distance away, Nastasia pitched balls to Count Bleck, who tried to whack them with his staff. They were awfully small compared to the stuff he usually whacked with his staff, so he wasn't the greatest.

After an hour of exercising and forcing people to do things they didn't want to do, the Bleck family headed inside for lunch. "So, how did everyone like the outdoors, inquired Count Bleck?"

Mimi was about to say something positive when Mr. L spoke up, "I like them better outside of my life." No one laughed at his lame joke, not even Dimentio, who painfully agreed with him.

"My clothes are dirty, and I have grass stains where grass stains should never be," he stated with a blank face. Then he remembered he was supposed to be smiling so he kept doing that.

Count Bleck waved them off. "We probably have some Oxiclean for that," he replied, sipping his lemonade.