Chester: She won't be happy about this.

Silver [whispering]: Shhh. It'll be fine. She'll probably sleep through most of it.

"EEEEEK!

D.Smiley [startling awake]: Gah! What? What!

Chester: So much for that.

[Silver gazes around the room, whistling nonchalantly.]

D.Smiley: Oh no you didn't.

Chester: Sorry, DS. We'll make it up to you later.

Silver: Yeah, no worries. Chester will do all the cooking for you this week.

Chester: Hey--!

Guards! Thief! Come quickly!"

Chester: That's new. Should we be relieved for the sudden scene shift? Or afraid?

Silver: Afraid. Definitely afraid.

"Really? Well, if you insist..."

Evith sauntered over to the bed on which the recently awakened and upset princess sat.

Chester: There's something odd about that sentence.

Silver: Let's not be mean, now. It's working very hard to be grammatically correct.

Chester: I know, but... "the upset princess sat?" It sounds vaguely...

D.Smiley: ...Seussian.

"Aaa!

Silver [princess]: Choo!

Get away from me!"

Silver [princess]: I've got a cold! It's contagious! Run while you still can, you fool!

"But you said, 'thief, come quickly'. Here I am...so what's the problem?"

Chester: That... is the most awkward attempt at rakish banter ever.

Silver: Evith finished Witty Wordplay 101 at the bottom of his class.

She glared coldly at him; an easy task with icy blue eyes like hers.

Silver: ...And so did the young author, apparently.

Chester: Yikes.

"That is not what I meant, you dimwitted peasant! Now return my crown, and I may allow the guards to spare your life!"

D.Smiley: My, how suspenseful.

Silver: Yes... there are so many questions.

Chester: Such as, "who are these people?" And, "why should we care?"

Silver: And, "will this princess ever form a sentence that doesn't end in an exclamation point?"

He made a point of adjusting the angle of the dainty coronet on his head. His fluffy brown hair made balancing it difficult, but he was having fun and didn't mind.

Chester [wincing]: You know... I'm... almost starting to miss Indra.

Silver [patting Chester sympathetically]: There, there... Don't say such things. We'll get through this.

"Hmm...I don't think I'll need to worry about your guards any time soon."

Chester [Evith]: Why, you ask?

He smiled and gestured toward the door.

Chester [Evith, grinning at the camera]: It's all thanks to Guard-B-Gon™! Now in a handy aerosol spray!

It rattled and shook as the guards tried various unsuccessful techniques of opening it. One of them was shouting threats.

D.Smiley: At the door?

Silver: Apparently.

Evith shrugged at the angry princess. "It seems to be stuck," he said helpfully.

Silver: ...indicating the plot-moving device in the corner.

Then he turned and began looking around the room, occasionally picking up an object, examining it, and putting it back down again.

Chester [Evith]: Royal scepter... slide rule... "plum passion" lipstick... Say, what's in this dresser?

Silver [princess]: Get away from that drawer! My Playwench magazi-- I mean, my diary is in there!

Chester [Evith, reading]: "Knights in Knickers"... "Blackguards in Black Leather"... "Autumn Special Edition: Gaolers in G-Strings"? Dear gods, the horror!

Sounds of indignation and outrage came from the bed behind him.

Silver [princess]: I swear, if you leave fingerprints on those...!

He ignored them and continued his search.

Chester [Evith, still reading]: "Bandits in Bikini Briefs"? Hey, I'm in this one!

D.Smiley: You two are certainly getting creative.

Silver: Yeah, well, this is what happens when the author skimps on description. We start making our own.

Chester: We can't stop ourselves. And believe me, we try.

"Say, Your Highness, don't you have anything valuable here? I-"

Chester [Evith]: If you've got last year's August issue, I could blackmail a fortune out of my brother.

Silver [princess]: August?

Chester [Evith]: "Bards in Brassieres."

Silver [princess]: Oh. Right. I burned that one.

He was interrupted by something soft, yet large and heavy, hitting him in the back of the head and knocking his newly acquired crown to the floor.

Chester: Did she just--

Silver: No.

He staggered forward, unhurt but surprised. "Aha..." As he threw his hands out and caught himself on a nearby table, he found just what he was looking for.

Chester: A personality?

Silver: A witty retort?

D.Smiley: Coronet fixative?

He picked the small object up from the nightstand, and put it in his pocket before turning around. The princess had gotten to her feet and was brandishing a huge, lacey pillow at him. It was a ridiculous sight, he thought.

Chester: Is he really in a position to criticize?

The impression was not diminished by her dramatically billowing nightgown. She advanced on him in a flurry of pink taffeta.

Silver: What an odd choice of nightgown material.

Chester: At least it's probably sturdy.

He was about to laugh at her, but decided against it when he saw the look on her face. He was suddenly glad that the pillow was the most potentially lethal item in the room.

Chester: He was less relieved when he spotted a book called 151 Ways To Kill A Man With A Pillow on her nightstand.

Silver: It bristled with bookmarks, and beside it lay an assortment of well-used highlighter pens.

"Whatever you have just taken," she snarled, "put it back...now!"

Silver [princess]: ...Or I'll show you the finishing move I learned in Chapter Four!

He backed slowly toward the window. "Ah...sorry, but I'm going to leave now. So long, Your Highness!" he called as he made a leap for the sill. He had just made it when the pillow, now airborne, knocked him off the edge.

Chester: Ah, good old #17. Simple, yet elegant.

His heart skipped a few beats, until he realized that he had stopped falling; then it started racing to make up for lost time. He had managed to grab instinctively for the ledge of another window, but was still several stories up.

Chester: I'd sure like to be several stories up from this one.

Calming himself, he looked around for the rope that he had prepared for escape. It was nowhere to be seen...until he looked down. There it was, lying in a semi-coiled heap on the ground--useless to him now.

The princess must have untied it just a second ago. If only he had been a little faster...

Silver: ...he could have grabbed on and fallen down with it.

He tried to pull himself up, but his arms were starting to ache from the recent shock of catching his weight.

Silver: Ache? Is that it? If he hasn't dislocated something, he has the upper-body resilience of the Prince of Persia.

He wondered whether he could land safely if he just let go. "Hmm..."

Chester [Evith]: There's only one way to find out!

'If I push off from the wall, and roll as I'm about to hit the ground...'

Chester [Evith]: ...I'll probably land on my head. But I'm sure this slight updraft will slow my fall adequately.

He was almost ready to test the theory,

Silver: That's it. I hereby dub him Evith Knievith.

Chester: Seriously, how did this guy live to adulthood?

Silver: He has plot contrivance on his side.

when a pair of hands reached out from the window, took him by the wrists, and hauled him up.

Chester: Uh-oh. Wallmasters!

Silver: Looks like he's going back to the start of this level.

"Ah, thank you! Hah, I was starting to fear for...my...life...!"

He trailed off as his "rescuer" came into view, ruffled pink nightgown and all.

Chester [soundtrack]: Reet! Reet! Reet!

"Good. Keep at it."

Silver [glancing to the side]: Hey, DS, did you catch that dramatic cliffhanger?

D.Smiley: ...zzzZzzzZZZzzz...

Silver: Yeah, can't argue with that.

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