"I'll tell ya Marv, he's pushed his luck with us before, but this time he's really gone too far," Harry confided in his partner as they rushed up one of the castle's hallways, hoping to find Kevin, "When I get my hands on him, I'm gonna break every bone in his body one at a time!"

"Just leave some for me, Harry, I want a shot at him," Marv told him. They reached an opening leading out onto a wooden walkway overlooking the east wall of the castle's courtyard. "Now where could he have gone since we last saw him?" the tall crook mused.

Answering his question, Kevin popped out of the window in the keep at the other end of the walkway. "Hey guys," he called over to them, "Having fun yet?"

"YOU DIRTY LITTLE.....!!!!!!!" too blinded by their rage at having it done to them yet again to realize it was probably another trap, Harry and Marv charged across the walkway at their hated foe. Unfortunately for them, the boards had been weakened significantly. Both men fell through them as they reached the midpoint of the walkway, sending them falling a few feet on top on the board to the dunk tank underneath. Specifically, they landed in a sitting position, greatly hurting their crotches. While they were immobilized, Sidney popped up from behind the tank, which had been filled with even more tar. "Splashdown," he chuckled, pressing the dunk button and dipping the crooks. After a minute, they rose up again, gasping hard. "The little sneak!" Harry fumed, "How come he don't ever give up!?"

"Beats me," Marv shrugged. The two of them stumbled slowly up and out of the tank tumbled into the large pile of hay strewn around it. They rolled around in their embarrassing attempts to get up until they looked like disheveled scarecrows.

The sounds of doors pounding opened signified the arrival of the remains of General Blum's command. Of the three hundred or so that had entered the school only about five hours ago, there were only about four dozen since in available for the general's use. The rest had either been arrested back at the school, cemented, snared, or were in one of the Walleyland bathrooms throwing up after a wild encounter of some kind on the rides. "Spread out and find them!" the general barked to his men, "I want their heads mounted on my office wall!"

"We can't mount them on your office wall, sir; your office is in the feds' hands now," Lieutenant Maltin pointed out.

"Shut up!" Blum slugged his subordinate to silence him.

Up on top of the keep, Del and the orphans were readying their latest weapons. "Ready?" he asked them, toasting his concrete block with their bricks.

"Ready," Danny said with a smile. He was really taking to Del. He walked over to the edge of the roof and tossed his brick down, whistling to give his opponents at least a warning of what was to come. Lieutenant Maltin had enough time to look up before the brick hit him right in the face, shattering his glasses. "They're up there!" he screamed to his associates as he crumpled to the ground.

Kayla tossed her brick, which conked Private Ebert on the skull. Everyone else in the courtyard opened fire on the parapet, causing everyone up there to duck down until the clicks of empty gun chambers told them their attackers had exhausted their bullets.

"Reload!" the general screamed at them, foolishly striding too close to the tower, "I want to see some blood for all....."

He didn't get to finish. Del dropped his concrete block on Blum's head, knocking him cold. Several troops tried to throw grenades up at the top, but it was too high up, and the grenades fell back down, forcing them to scurry for cover as it exploded. In the meantime, Skylar had gone down a floor armed with Buzz's BB gun. "You need to be careful with BB guns," he said to himself as he took up position at an arrow slit and cocked it, "You'll shoot your eye out."

He opened fire on the troops. Thinking the BB pellets were real, the soldiers screamed and hit the ground. "I'm hit!" Lieutenant Maltin was screaming, writhing in perceived pain, "There's so much blood! I'm going to get.....!"

"Lieutenant, you're not dying!" Colonel Champlin screamed at him, "Look, no blood!"

"Uh, I knew that," Maltin said sheepishly. He shrieked and squirmed out of the way as another brick came hurtling down, hitting Champlin in the forehead.

Vernon and Rooney stormed into the courtyard. Their comrades-in-arms laughed at their tarred-and feathered appearance. "Shut up!" Rooney shouted at them. He looked around wildly. "I know you're in here, Ferris!" he screeched, "You and your pint-sized henchman better surrender now!"

"Are you nuts!" Harry shouted storming over with Marv in tow, "The kid's directin' the Ferris guy! You've seen what he can do!"

While the four of them squabbled over who was more responsible for their misery, Cameron came over to the edge. "Pop quiz, hot shots," he called down to them, "We've got evidence that convicts all of you up here. If we get away, we'll tell the authorities. What do you do? What do you do?"

"We're coming up to get you, Frye!" Rooney screeched at him, "That's what we're doing!"

"You set my head on fire again you little creep!" Harry screeched, glimpsing Kevin coming up on the roof with Cameron, "Whatdya gotta say to that!?"

"I have to say, 'Don't you know that always happens to hotheads like you?'" Kevin said, "and also, 'WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!!'"

"HUH!??" both burglars exclaimed. "What'd he say?" Harry asked.

"I don't know," Marv shrugged, "I didn't know they taught German in fourth grade these days."

Kevin pushed a large refrigerator over to the edge of the parapet and shoved it over the side. A low thud below told him he'd hit his mark. "Yes!" he shouted in delight. Turning to Cameron, he said, "You're really getting good with all this."

"Well, A, I guess I'm really feeling good about myself doing this, and second, if they end up winning and killing us, at least I get some satisfaction," Cameron said, forcing a bit of a smile.

Below, Colonel Champlin had recovered from his brick bashing. "You there," he directed several men, "Kick that door in!"

The soldiers in question tried to do so, but the door was braced. They grabbed the knob and yanked it--right off the door, which activated the staple gun rigged inside. Soon they were howling with pain as this familiar and possibly overused booby trap unleashed dozens of staples into them. "Oh come on you fools!" Champlin shouted. He gave the door the kick to end all kicks, sending it crashing open. "Charge!" he ordered. Joined by a revived but still dazed Wet Bandits, they started up the stairs......and promptly got stuck on the ton of tar that had been spread on the steps. "This is getting better all the time!" Private Siskel groaned.

"Okay, nobody panic!" Marv announced to everyone, "I know exactly how to handle this."

"We're doomed," Private Ebert muttered.

"Not really," Marv slipped his feet out of his shoes. Just watch out for nails," he advised, leaving his socks on the next couple of steps.

"Nails?" one of the soldiers raised an eyebrow at an associate, who shrugged. Reluctantly, the soldiers all waddled up the stairs, leaving their boots and socks behind as they went. Out of their sight at the top of the stairs, Miles and Maizy crouched down, skateboards in hand. "See, that wasn't so bad," Marv told everyone as they crested the top of the stairs, he and Harry conveniently looking back at the others to see what was ahead of them, "Now let's hope he's got no....."

Miles and Maizy shoved out the skateboards. The crooks slipped on them with a loud, "WHOAAA!!!!" and fell back down the stairs, knocking over soldiers behind them like tenpins. The Russell siblings exchanged high fives and rushed back into the heart of the keep.

Outside, Vernon and Rooney were finally getting up from their encounter with the refrigerator. "I can't believe this!" the principal growled, "If they pull one more of these stupid pranks, so help me God.....!" he slapped his hands to his face. "Now I'm actually turning into those buffoons!" he lamented, "Got to get back to normal!" He slapped himself numerous times, apparently thinking this would have some kind of effect.

"You two," General Blum had also recovered from his latest blow, "Follow me! They are going to pay severely for all this!"

"Sir, I think we're rushing into this too....." Vernon tried to tell the military man, but he was too outraged at being repeatedly zonked to pay much attention. He dragged them into the keep and up the steps, where they all reluctantly were forced to part ways with their shoes and socks like everyone else. Everyone they passed by sniggered at the educators' tarred and feathered condition. "Oh shut up!" Rooney snarled at them.

"You're running out of running room, Private Russell!" Blum shouted, waving his remaining guns wildly, "Nowhere left to hide! We've got you surrounded, just like those Viet Cong in the Huong Xi Valley! You know what we did to them, don't you!?"

Buck opened the door to the keep's dining room. "Yeah, I hear you, so why don't you do something about it, bonehead?" he asked and stuck out his tongue at the general again.

Blum emptied several rounds into the door. "Enjoy the last moments of your life, Russell!" he bellowed. Too blinded with rage to think clearly, he ran over to the door and kicked it open. This triggered the half dozen flamethrowers positioned around the door frame, which were positioned in a manner that they set Blum's crotch on fire. Abandoning his bravado, Blum screeched in pain and horror and ran around blindly looking for water. He spotted a large cistern near a window on the right side of the dining room and dove toward it. The massive explosion that followed blew Blum across the room and out the other window into the moat. Vernon and Rooney, who'd been a little more wary about what Buck may have been hiding behind the door, nodded to each other. "He should have realized by now," the superintendent spoke for both of them.

From behind the thrones, Buck chuckled as he watched his former commanding officer's fiery trajectory out the window. "Glad to know you'd be willing to go out in a blaze of glory, Colonel," he said to himself. He looked over toward the service entrance. "Got the tree almost ready, Clark?" he asked.

"Go over exactly what you want me to do with this again?" Clark asked, putting a ton of lights around the tree.

"Just do what you normally do with your Christmas trees," Buck instructed him, "We're just looking for a lot of voltage."

Down on the stairs, Harry found his hands now stuck to the steps. "Itaughta fatchas shada fuls biggap!" he growled in frustration, slipping his hands out of his gloves. "Get up Marv, he can't've gone far!" he told his partner, whacking him on the head to better stimulate Marv getting up faster. The two of them made their way as quickly as possible up the stairs, walking over other people's footwear whenever possible. "Surrender kid!" the short crook shouted, looking around for Kevin.

"You'll never find him like that, you imbecile!" Vernon told him from the hall bench he and Rooney had sat down on, unwilling to subject themselves to any further aggravation.

"I see him in there!" Marv pointed to the left toward the King's Bedroom. A set of brown pants like Kevin's was sticking out from under the bed.

"Don't fall for it you two; it's an obvious trap!" Rooney shouted at the burglars, but it was to no avail. They rushed into the bedroom like demented people. Marv grabbed hold of the legs and yanked them out from under the bed with a loud, "Aha!" It was only too late that he realized the "legs" were attached to ropes that were attached back behind them to a large cabinet, which toppled forward on top of them. "You and yer stupid hunches!" Harry growled at Marv.

Colonel Champlin, in the meantime, was waving the rest of his boss's command back up the stairs. "This is no time to be lying around on the job!" he shouted at them, "We've got people to kill!"

"Colonel," Sherman approached him, looking infuriated. While he'd been largely spared the devastation rained down on his associates, he was still covered in tar like everyone else. "Colonel, with all due respect, the continued efforts against these people is clearly futile. I strongly suggest we pull out now and regroup."

"Denied!" Champlin shouted at him, "We'll get those codes even if it kills all of us!"

"Is that really what you want to do!?" Sherman protested, "Kill each and every one of us? We can't win, not on their own turf! Why can't you just listen to reason!?"

"YOU are the one being unreasonable, Major!" Champlin shouted at him, "And you're also out of line! Stand down unless you want to be shot!"

"Shot, like you almost shot this Russell guy in Vietnam!?" Sherman shouted at him, "I've asked around; I know everything now!"

Champlin grabbed Sherman by the collar. "You won't live another minute if you don't shut up right now, Major!" he said darkly. Sherman gulped and relented. "All right," Champlin ordered everyone else wearing a green uniform, "They're right here waiting to be cut down! Find them!"

"We're in here, come and get us," came Kevin's voice from behind the closed door to their right. The troops ran up to the door, poured everything they had into it (including bazookas and grenades), they ran in. Their actions had made no difference, for it was another of Kevin's tape recordings they'd been too steamed to seriously consider being anything but the real thing that they'd heard. What was real, however, was the hundreds of tacks that had been strewn from wall to wall that they promptly stepped on when they ran in. And none of them was wearing their boots anymore.

"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!" they all screamed, falling flat on their rears amongst the tacks.

"You see!?" Sherman yelled at Champlin as they dragged themselves into the stairwell and safety, "They're too smart and crafty! If we go any further, we'll just get more of this!"

"I," Champlin drew his knife again, "Have not yet begun to fight!"

"Oh that's terribly original!" Sherman derided him, "What are you going to do now, smart guy? Somehow slit all their throats before they hit you with the kitchen sink, which by the way is the only thing they haven't thrown at us yet?"

The colonel didn't answer. He kicked tacks out of his way as he ran for the far side of the room and the stairway to the tower and control room.

General Blum barreled up the keep's stairs like a man possessed, which by now was what he essentially was. His uniform hung in tatters, and his cap had been destroyed, leaving Ferris's hack barber job visible for all to see.

"Douglas," he told his hawk, who'd lost a couple of feathers on its head in the explosion, "You'd better take a safe place in the rafters, because I'm going to massacre anything I see move!"

Douglas knowingly obliged. His master ran over to the door that had just zonked him. He drew his sword and hacked through the tripwires connected to the flamethrowers, rendering them useless. He ran across the dining hall waving his saber homicidally. "You'd better give up now, Private Russell!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.

"Sure thing, Colonel," Buck called out from behind the Christmas tree. He nodded to Clark next to him, who readied the switch.

"I'm a general, damn it!" Blum ran toward his with the sword raised over his head. He swished it down at the exact moment Clark turned on the tree and Buck held up the cord in the sword's path. With the huge amount of lights on the tree, Blum was easily electrocuted by several thousand volts. He fell to the floor writhing.

"All the power you're supplying, it's electrifying!" Buck taunted his former superior.

"You've never experienced Christmas until you've seen a Griswold family Christmas tree," Clark added. He and Buck high fived each other and exited up a flight of service stairs.

The Wet Bandits pulled themselves out form under the cabinet. Their fingers, which had been caught under the edge of the top, were sorely swollen. "That's it!" Harry swore, "No mercy!"

"Weren't we already at no mercy, Harry?" Marv asked. Harry didn't answer. He charged back out toward where he could see the troops now standing, Marv in tow. Both of them stepped right over the tacks and were left howling in pain again. From their bench, Vernon and Rooney sighed at their associates continued self-destruction. "They just never learn," Rooney muttered. He and Vernon yanked an expensive tapestry off the wall and used it to brush a path through the sea of tacks. "If you gentlemen had thought this out beforehand, you wouldn't be in so much pain," Rooney chided all the troops.

"Ah shut up pops!" Private Ebert shouted at him, "You're not exactly the smartest of men yourself, you idiot!"

It took all of Vernon's strength to keep Rooney form whaling away on Ebert. "Ed, Ed, it's not worth it, save it for those filthy kids," he told him.

"In that case, come on up and get us, Dick," Bender called down from the top of the next staircase. Everyone ran for it, but Harry blocked their path. "Hold it, hold it, hold it!" he shouted, "I've been through this before the last two years. The kid does exactly the same thing at this part every year."

"Oh really?" Private Siskel raised an eyebrow.

"Really," Harry told him. "You guys stand back, he's all mine!" he shouted as loud as he could up the stairs, and stomped his feet on the ground. A paint can swung down, which Harry easily ducked. "Ouch!" he yelled in mock pain, "I think I lost the rest of my teeth!"

"Don't worry Harry, I'll break every bone in his body for ya!" Marv picked up what Harry was onto. He did some stomping of his own, prompting another paint can to be thrown down. "Ow, he broke my nose!" he yowled, "There's so much blood! My skull's fractured! There's....!"

"Marv!" Harry hit him in the arm, "Yer takin' it too far!"

"Sorry," Marv said sheepishly. Harry walked up a few steps and called up, "Well, that really didn't hurt us. Come on Marv, we're tearin' him limb from limb!"

They stomped together. An iron bar flew down, missing them completely. "That's all," Harry told the soldiers, "He's outta ammo."

"You sure?" Vernon glared at him.

"CHARGE!!!" Colonel Champlin was convinced enough. Everyone rushed up the stairs firing whatever ammunition they still had. No one had noticed the hole opening in the floor behind them after the paint cans had been tossed down leading all the way down to the dungeons. At the top of the stairs, Kevin smiled. Everything had gone as he'd hoped yet again. "FULL SALVO!!!" he shouted to everyone else around him. All twenty-eight of them picked up two paint cans of their own and hurled them down at their attackers. Soon the sounds of loud thuds and screams as the soldiers were knocked into the dungeon filled the air.

At the height of it all, General Blum staggered into sight, still shaking form his electrocution. "WWWWWWWWWWhere'd they ggggggggggggggo?" he asked Champlin, "I have to rip out several spinal cords!"

"Guess," Champlin muttered (he'd avoided being hit, as did most of the non-soldiers), pointing up the stairs.

"Guys," Buck radioed his friends in the control room, "Set those cables underneath them as tight as you can. I want their lives filled with colors once they land."

"Nice try kid, but we're still standin'!" Harry shouted up at where he guessed Kevin was standing. He and the others who'd avoided getting hit stormed back up the stairs.

"Not for long you won't be," Buck chuckled. He and the other men pushed a steel I-beam they'd managed to bring over from the construction sites in the water park off the railing. Everyone running up the stairs stopped as it swung into view. "Uh oh!" Marv groaned seconds before it walloped him and everyone else in the face and sent them screaming down through the hole into the dungeons. Before they landed, they broke through several ropes that the people in the control room had set taut across the room, breaking open several large vats that had been built all around the dungeon and dumping hundreds of gallons of paint all over them.

"YES!!!" the Shermerites exclaimed, slapping each others' hands. They'd taken on their enemies against overwhelming odds and had emerged essentially victorious. "Roger, call the cops," Buck radioed his buddy, "Then seal yourselves in the control room. We're getting out of here."