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Felix cracked his knuckles as he saw the dead tree headed straight for his friends, "Alright, time to show what you're made of, Baby Horns," he whispered to himself.

He bucked and ran straight for the tree.

With a loud "GRAAAAGH!" he headed head first into the tree.

And fell back with a horrible pain in his horns...

"OWWW!" he yelled in pain rubbing his horns, but continued to hit it, hoping to get it to stop aiming for his friends and to him.

"Cheaters! Not cool, tree, not cool at all."

Nero ran to the Freak tent and grabbed a large burlap sack and his biggest barbell. He took the weights off one end as he ran back to the party. Hefting it like an ax, he slammed the barbell as hard as he could against the branch holding his beast bro captive.

BAM!

BAM!

CRACK!

Nero caught Kai expertly as the branch fell to the ground.

"Thanks bro. This is way more competitive limbo than I've ever played."

"Yeah, but Chase is loving it."

"HEXTREME LIMBO RULES!" Chase shouted, vaulting over another tree assault.

The two bros turned and watched the brotaur rolling out of the way of branches, laughing gleefully.

"Ok, but everyone else on our team is losing. We've got to step it up! What's in the bag?"

Nero dumped the contents out on the ground and Kai lit up.

"Our act!" he exclaimed joyfully.

"We've been practicing all week, it's time to show off what we can do. This is going to be clawesome!"

"Let's do this!"

They bumped fists and Kai vaulted onto Nero's shoulders. One by one Nero grabbed the chainsaws, started them up and passed them up to Kai. Their heads bobbed along to the music and the juggling began!

Bum-cha bum-cha bum-cha

BBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Gryff's lips pressed together in a thin, hard line. His eyes narrowed.

"Brainwashing, gremlin-stealing, normiearchical, FASCISTS," he spat.

"Uh, Gryff..." Glen said, tugging at the fuming hippogryph's jacket sleeve. The direwolves had turned and were watching these new toys with interest. Shad made a squeaking sound and backed against the tent wall.

Gryff pulled his arm away and looked around the room, spotting a stack of circus posters, each colorfully splashed with Kai's cheerful abstract style. Gryff grabbed several and rolled them up into a long, tight tube.

"Talentless, tasteless, classless, PHILISTINES."

One of the direwolves padded forward, its big claws leaving gouge marks in the dirt. It was making a soft, hungry growling noise.

Gryff strode towards it, brandishing his rolled-up posterpapers.

"Slave-driving, abusive, disgusting, lazy, GREMLIN THIEVES."

"RRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-YIP!"

Gryff brought the roll down hard on the direwolf's nose. It sat back, too stunned to bite anyone. For the moment.

"I know you're just animals and lack the subjective ability to examine your actions but you follow the oppressors and BAD DOG. VERY BAD DOG!"

He whapped another nose with the tube. The direwolves looked at oneanother in confussion. This was not the behavior they were expecting. Normally they would advance and the thing would run away, they could chase excitedly and get a little excersize in before dinner.

One by one they kept lunging at Gryff, each time one got close he'd pirouette out of the way and whap it on the nose.

"Glen, hover that cage down, I'll take care of these mongrels," he called, doing a grand jeté over a leaping direwolf and hitting its nose on the way over.

Glen cast a spell that raised the cage off its hook and slowly hovered it towards them, trying not to attract too much attention. He shouldn't have worried, Gryff was doing a fine job being much more interesting, although Glen did take the opportunity to clunk the cage on a direwolf on the way over, knocking it sideways before it could take a bite out of Gryff's leg.

"Watch your back!"

The direwolves were getting very angry. No one hit them on the nose, not even that fat old witch who was so stingy with the kibble and werejerky nibblets! They pulled back around Gryff, keeping him in a circle. They lowered the head, the ground faintly vibrating with their growls, and with a powerful spring in their haunches leaped forward at Gryff en masse! No one, not even with three rolled up tubes, could stop three angry direwolves launching themselves full force at them.

Gryff didn't even try. At the last possible moment shot upwards. Below him, three direwolf skulls collided with a loud, satisfying clonk of empty coconuts. The animals slid down in an unconscious heap and Gryff flew over to Team Snoop (he was never going to call it Team Green, never).

"That's what happens when you blindly follow the normiearchy," he smirked.

He looked at Lin's cage.

"Anybody got a blobby pin?"

Gryff leaned back at this fresh hug assault, the gremlin tightly clutching his legs.

"ACk! You're getting clown makeup all over my vintage jeans!"

He pointed his poster tube Rory.

"They love hugs, go hug them!"

But before Lin could completely disengage Gryff leaned over and, exceedingly briefly, put his arm around the gremlin.

"Gladyou'rebackyourgrimmawasworriedAnyway, we're not done. The shackles of oppression must be thrown from the rest of Monster High's simpering joiners."

"Uh, guys?" Hellene whispered as she drew the tent flap back and had a look before ducking back in. "It's not going so well out there!"

The Snoops hurry over and look out briefly to see the situation getting rather dim as the dead tree brought to life by Hagetha's dark magic had just ensnared Layla with it's branches and was targeting Dashner and Melody while its roots snaked their way toward the others. Chase again ducked and rolled through a branch swipe but a root tangled itself around his back hooves and drug him back towards it's trunk.

"BOGUUUUSSS!!"

Glen turned to Rory and said, "We're up, cuz o' mine!"

"What are you going to do?" Shad asked as Lin stayed close to Gryff, all eyes on Glen as he dropped his flying skateboard to the ground and pulled Rory onto it with him, and it started to float up.

Glen answered, "I think I know how to broadcast this spell so it frees everyone at once!"

And that being said, Glen and Rory zoomed through the tent flap and up into the air above the circus.

"Look out!" Rory cried as a large shadow loomed down over them from above!

"Ah HA!" Hagetha cackled. "Naughty little brats! I'll teach you a lesson in escaping my crystal ball!"

"Hang on!" Glen called out and he took off with Rory hanging onto his cousin tightly, and Hagetha cackling as she gave pursuit!

The old, portly witch fired off a spell with her wand but like before, it struck Rory and deflected right back off of him and toward her! Hagetha shrieked in surprise and dodged the spell, then attempted another but this time, Glen drew up a shield with his own wand/iCoffin.

"We gotta shake her!" Rory called out as Glen leaned down, gaining some speed.

"We will!" Glen said with a confident smile. "Just hold on -- and try not to toss your cookies!"

"Why?" Rory asked. "What are you gonna dooOOO...!!?!?"

Rory broke into a stark scream as Glen sailed up and over in a perfect 360 loopty loop and came back down behind Hagetha!

"What the!?" The witch yelled and Glen aimed his wand at the end of her broom and with a quick incantation, the brush on the broom caught fire! Hagetha yelled out as the broom fell from the sky, and Hagetha along with it!

Hagetha quickly conjured a parachute and it slowed her descent. She gave a sigh of relief at what would have been a nasty fall, but then a quick green and red blur flew by and the parachute turned into an anvil!

"You BRRRRAAAAAT!!!!"

Hagetha screamed as she plummeted down from the sky! Her parachute got caught on the branches of the attacking dead tree, stopping her fall -- but it *was* a dead tree and the limb snapped -- and Hagetha came down...

"I got you!" Nero gallantly held his arms out and CRUNCH!

Both Rory and Glen winced at that impact and Glen shook his head.

"Yeah I am so going to owe Nero for that one!"

Glen then zoomed past the tree and aimed his wand and called out, "Eert esaeler!"

And the tree promptly let all of the kids go, both circus as well as Team Distraction! The tree went upright once again, and the roots buried themselves into the ground, becoming a tree. Nothing but a tree.

Glen rocketed toward JD's sweet, sweet set up and Rory grabbed a microphone along the way and they did a U turn and sailed up, high into the air and in the center of the circus. Glen held his wand/iCoffin up high (while reading the spell reflected off of Rory's forehead) and said into the microphone, his words carrying out across the entire circus...

"Undo this evil acted here,
Reverse the spell so all is clear!
Forget the Circus! Their cover is blown!
Now and forever, your mind is your own!"

"Wait.. what are you two...?" Ronan screamed as the chainsaw juggling began, left and right branches fell and he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to tune out the horrifying buzz of the blades so close to him.
And then it was over, he breathed a sigh of relief and dared to open one eye, looking down at Nero and Kai, then following their gaze to Farnum. He KNEW they needed more practice.

He winced as Hagitha crashed from the sky and the tree retaliated with a sweeping flail of it's branches, he thought he might be sick as the branches tightened around him and he was shaken violently left and right.
Someone said something over a microphone, but he was too dazed to really know what was going on as the branches unravelled suddenly and he dropped unceremoniously to the ground.

He lay there for a bit, trying to catch his breath and gather his thoughts. It was like a fog had lifted, where in the seven seas was he? The circus? Oh no... he'd walked out of school and joined a ridiculous circus hadn't he? How humiliating, he hoped his parents hadn't' heard about this lapse of judgement.
He sat up with a groan, rubbing his head. Well this was utterly humiliating. All around him were classmates, some looking equally as confused as he, and others looking rather more pleased with themselves.

"W.. what happened?" He managed.

Doriana stumbled a bit, and looked around with confusion. Why was she in a circus? She ran over to Ronan, holding out her webbed hand to help him up.

"R-Ronan? What are we doing here?! Who has time to join a circus?!" Doriana looked up and saw Glen and Rorrim standing up there. Once she helped Ronan up, she pointed up to Glen.

"Him! He's our hero!"