Vulkria paused briefly in front of an old decrepit house in the middle of a vast white void, taking in the door-shaped weed garden. The thought that Caboose would spend his time gardening instead of sitting in front of a color changing box all day distracted her from her blinding rage for a moment.

But only for a moment.

Rather than walk through the house to stab Caboose and be reminded of times best forgotten, she decided to take a more direct approach to stab Caboose and conjured a few hundred shovels to dig straight down into Caboose’s basement.

She would have prefered to conjure swords, but swords were not suited to digging. Plus; shovels could be used as weapons too, more so than whips anyway.

The shovels made quick work of the white void and dug into Caboose’s hidy-hole in only a few moments. Suddenly being subjected to void-light, Caboose shrunk up like a vampire. Or in this case a shut-in who does nothing with his life.

From up on high, Vulkria flicked her wrist and with unrivaled zeal, the small army of shovels descended into the cave of depravity and began ruthlessly beating the evil that lay within. In a few mere moments, Caboose was a bloody pulp on the couch floating above an ocean of small, thin, brittle boxes.

Vulkria dispelled her myriad of shovels and jumped down into the pit. When she landed, the ‘waters’ made of those brittle boxes splashed up around her, obstructing Caboose for a brief moment. When the waters crashed back down and Caboose was in her sight once again, he sat on his couch unharmed, as if the previous events never transpired.

Vulkria noted the strange use of his powers. Gods often regenerated when she gravely injured them, but never in such a… veiled way.

“What was that?”

Vulkria was used to fighting Gods, and sometimes they had such big egos that they gave away the secrets of their methods when she simply asked, as if they were so confident in their skill that they thought she couldn’t think of some way around it.

Those Gods are long dead for those wondering.

“An old editing trick I picked up in college. Anyways, what was the shovel thing for?”

Caboose gave a curt lie with a wave of a hand. Vulkria didn’t know what an ‘editing’ was and how you could trick it, but she couldn’t imagine a world where Caboose would go to a prestigious institution like a college.

Ignoring her brother's lies, she answers his question.

“You’re cheating! You’ve set a griffin on my Second!”

“What? One sec…”

Caboose snapped his fingers and the TV screen changed to depict a train that could only be described as ‘on fire’. It was stopped, and a griffin was standing over a small valkyrie and her entourage. They seemed to be talking about something, but the TV was muted so he didn’t know what they were saying. Privately, Caboose noticed Julie pinned to the side of the train, crying while struggling to free herself.

“Uhh, your Second is the small Valkyrie right?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know you cave-dwelling troglodyte! That Griffin showed up out of nowhere and demanded my Second give him her gem! How could you not know!”

“First off, ‘cave-dwelling’ and ‘troglodyte’ mean the same thing. Secondly, why does a random Griffin showing up and asking for a pretty rock automatically incriminate me?! I’ve been doing nothing but watching the LoTR movies for the past 2 years!”

“I have no idea what ‘LoTR’ is but that doesn’t prove your innocence!”

“Nothing you’ve said proves me guilty either!”

“Oh yeah?! How about this?! I know that Julie Fulcreek is your Second, AND I know that she’s had contact with Griffins! So when she figured out MY Second’s identity, she called her little griffin possy to take my Seconds gem without having to fight! ALL UNDER YOUR GUIDANCE!”

Caboose leaned back into his couch to take in the accusation. He looked at the screen.

At the moment, Vulkira’s Second and her entourage were incredibly intimidated by the griffin, who was setting fire to everything that wasn’t moving while taunting the weak humanoid races below him. In his clutches was a purple gem as well as an ornate necklace with a blue gem as it’s center. Julie was still pinned to the train, still crying, and by the looks of it, probably screaming incredibly loudly.

“VuVu, I’m gonna be straight with you”

Caboose leaned forwards towards his older sister.

“I haven’t been paying attention to the game for the past two years. As far I knew, Julie was still stuck in a cave. I’ve been doing nothing but watching movies and a few other errands, but I swear; I haven’t lied, I haven’t enticed any griffins, I haven’t told Julie to do anything, and I haven’t cheated.”

Vulkira narrowed her eyes.

“Who are you swearing to?”

“Pops.”

Caboose didn’t break from Vulkira’s gaze. A long moment passed.

“Fine.”

Vulkira turned away.

“Two things before you leave!”

Caboose called out to her. Vulkira stopped and looked back.

“What?”

“First, did you tell anyone that Julie was a Second?”

Vulkira shook her head.

“I can’t unless someone asks, and no one’s asked.”

“Cool. Secondly, what happened to the screen door out front? I think Vitara did something, but I haven’t had time to check.”

“You haven’t had time to check? Didn’t you just swear that you’ve been doing nothing for the past two years?”

Caboose scratched his head sheepishly.

“The LoTR movies are really dense, and the Silmarillion isn’t the easiest read.”

Vulkira stopped trying to understand what Caboose was saying when the letters ‘L’ and ‘o’ left his mouth. She knew better than to partake in hopeless endeavors. Whatever it was, it apparently took a lot of Caboose’s time, while still being pointless enough that he would call it ‘doing nothing’.

“I didn’t see a screen door, but I did see a rectangular garden in the shape of a door.”

Caboose furrowed his brow.

“Oh.”

With that, Vulkria flew through Caboose’s newly installed skylight and left for her own domain.