The journey began in Mount Olympus as Veaderous was walking down the steps of to the entrance because he was banished for arguing with Zeus. He jumped off the stairs to take a short cut and slowly glided down thanks to his tattered wings. 

       “I bet Zeus made that happen because I argued with him,” Veaderous thought as he landed on Earth inside of a Best Buy. He ended up landing right in front of the television section where he heard the news being televised over about 50 flat-screen TVs: “This is a breaking news bulletin. All of the video games in the world have suddenly malfunctioned. Companies are losing money on the stock market by the second and panicked investors have started selling out. Riots are occurring on suburban streets as angry gamers trash local Game Stops looting for solutions like batteries, new consoles, and toilet paper. The president of the United States is asking for calm and also telling everyone to stay inside unless they have an emergency. More updates to come as we get more information.”

       He turned to the nearest exit and started moving at hurtling speeds, then he put his shield in front of him and crashed through the exit, shattering all the windows and leaving a trail of blue flame, but abruptly he stopped at Starbucks for a pumpkin spice latte.

       “Hey, give me a break!” He shouts at the stampede of customers rushing into the store to get caffeinated for the riots. “We don’t have Starbucks on Olympus; let me through!” Veaderous knew he would not get many more chances for pumpkin spice latte since they were probably going to sell out soon, plus it was after the holidays and soon they would be discontinued until next fall.

       “What is your name, sir?” the barista asked him.

       “Veaderous,” he said, with an expectant sigh.

       “Victor?” She asked him.

       Veaderous let out a groan. “Vead-er-ous,” he said slowly.

       “Um, can you spell that for me?” she asked, as the crowd behind him started to get impatient.

       “Victor, just call me Victor,” Veaderous said grumpily as he paid for his order.

       Of course, he immediately forgot he said his name was Victor and they had to call his name three times before he remembered, so when he got his latte it was cold. “This is not a good sign,” Victor said to himself. Oops, I mean Veaderous said to himself.

       He then left but not without a fight for his latte by everyone named Victor. “The gods of Olympus are nothing compared to those absolute destructive forces of nature,” he mumbled, then proceeded to head out to the nearest GameStop – as he could teleport from one to the other – but saw a fake GameStop called GagStep and sighed. “I know it’s a trap, but well, I guess I have to check.”

       Veaderous suspected GagStep of being behind all the chaos. He knew it was under the protection of King Glitch, and this situation seemed like something that evil King would do. But he knew if he went bursting in there without a disguise, GagStep would trap him in some sort of game, which was something they were very good at doing. He looked at his Starbucks cup that had “Victor” written on it and that gave him an idea.

       He took some tape, put it on the bottom of his cup, removed the piranha plant that was normally on his head, and stuck the cup up there.

       “This is probably a mistake but it has to be done,” he said to himself, as he hid his shield and his sword behind a trash can. He walked into GagStep holding the piranha plant and said, “Hi there, my name is Victor, and I am selling piranha plants. I was wondering if anyone here would want one.”

       “Why do you have a Starbucks cup on your head?” asked the GagStep employee.

       “Because that’s what you have to feed your piranha plants,” Victor, I mean Veaderous, answered.

       Then suddenly out of nowhere two men in full black outfits pushed Veaderous into a pitch black room, then the light turned on, and he looked around the room with a sigh, “Why oh why does it have to be an escape room; I hate puzzles so much!” He ripped off his Starbucks cup and threw it at the locked door.

             “Welp, I have to do something,” Veaderous said, then proceeded to hit the door repeatedly as the piranha plant tried to pull him in the other direction.

       Since banging on the door wasn’t working, Veaderous moved on in the direction the plant was taking him. He could see that on one wall of the room was a row of gibberish – letters spray painted in no particular order.

       He sighed. “I can’t read it without something to decipher it.” Then he walked around the room and found a piece of paper that seemed to have been torn in half with the words blue is good red is bad written on it.

       Veaderous went back to the wall and noticed that the letters were all either blue or red. He looked only at the blue letters, which read L+Ox2+K; then a blue arrow pointing down; then the word THE; and then AIR + CH.

       “Look down the arch?” Veaderous guessed. His piranha plant shook her head.

       “Hmmm. How about this – LOOK UNDER THE CHAIR.”

       Conveniently, there was a chair in the corner. Veaderous approached it very slowly, looked underneath the chair, and found the other half of the note, which said: 3 steps forward, 2 steps left, another 3 left, and 1 down – what is the encoded password and object?

       “I hope no one is filming this,” Veaderous mumbled as he followed the steps. He took 3 steps forward, then 5 steps left – but what does 1 down mean? He thought about it for a minute, then got down on his knees.

       After a minute of thought, he looked back at the note and said, “Oh I really really hope no one is filming this,” and then an announcer chimed in saying “It’s your lucky day! We’re live! You have over a million viewers!” Veaderous saw a small camera on the roof, then proceeded to pick up a chair and throw it at the camera, saying, “Dang, that chair is durable!”

       The chair hit the camera, but instead of smashing the camera into pieces, it bounced off the ceiling and transformed into a mechanical bird. The chair, meanwhile, transformed into a set of stairs. The metal bird flew over to Veaderous and dropped a tiny key into his hand, then vaporized with a little POOF! The stairs came down to the ground and stopped right in front of a tiny door located at the top of the wall.

       Veaderous ran up the steps and tried to open the door, but it was locked. Then he tried using the key. It worked! He was now back in the GagStep shop, and by the look of it, the employees were not happy. They saw him and took off running, and two people who were dressed in black suits had a coffee cup with Victor II written on the side. Veaderous saw it and grabbed it while knocking the two guys out, then smelled the coffee and said, “I 100% need this pumpkin spice latte after that.”

       Veaderous downed the latte in two gulps. “I wish they’d ordered a venti but oh well,” he said. On his way out of GagStep he stopped to collect his shield and his sword from behind the trash can. As soon as he did this, he heard something weird coming from inside the can. “Hellllp meeeee,” a little voice said from underneath all the trash. “Ew,” Veaderous thought. “Do I really have to dig through all this trash to see who that is?” 

“Helllllp meeeee,” the voice said again, and Veaderous thought yes, he really was going to have to dig through the trash. So, he started digging. The next thing he knew, something sucked him inside the trash can and everything started spinning around him.

       Then before he knew it, he was in a retro-type area and said,“Out of all the games, why oh why does it have to be Cuphead? I heard that this game is so hard, someone took it up with the CEO of the game, saying he’d never beat it and no one had; the CEO then went to Mount Olympus and the gods said the same thing.”

       I saw a huge shadowy figure in the distance and said, “Wait, isn’t that the final boss of Cuphead? Doesn’t that mean that I don’t have to fight all the bosses?” Then Veadrous headed to the final boss and challenged him. 

The final boss asked, “Do I know you?” 

Veadrous responded with, “No, probably not, but I challenge you to a fight.” 

The final boss said, “Well, is that so – only on one condition: if you lose, you have to sell your soul to me.” 

Veaderous frustratingly said, “Well, I have no other way out, so I accept.” 

The boss said, “Great, get ready to sell your soul to the boss, kid!” 

Veaderous’s vison went black, then came back, and the first thing he saw was a huge throne and the boss ready to kill him. Then he heard a voice say “Start!” and the boss began to attack. Veadrous, being him, decided to dodge instead of using his shield; hr saw the boss spinning the trident but also saw how tall the boss was – then he had a brilliant idea. 

Once the boss spun the trident, Veaderous grabbed the hilt and whoosh! it spun close to the boss’s face. Veadrous kicked his head right off, then grabbed his cup that said Victor, caught the head in it, then said, “Either accept defeat or you’re going to have trouble finding your head!” 

The boss responded with a voice that echoed through the cup.‘Okay, fine, you win,” he said, then the same voice that started the match said Knockout! and Veadrous’ vision went black again.  

Once it came back, he saw the boss and said, “Now I want out.”  The devil snapped his fingers and Veadrous’ vision went blurry; when it came into focus he saw the outside of Gagstep and the trash can that he was sucked into, and said, “Never again will I be trapped in a trash can,” and started walking off.

       But before Veaderous walked away, he spied a shiny silver ticket on the ground. Thinking it might be a coupon for a free pumpkin latte, he picked it up. As soon as he touched it and started to read the words: THIS TICKET CHALLENGES YOU TO – he was whooshed off into space.

       When the world stopped spinning, Veaderous looked around, confused. It appeared he was in some old-fashioned city village, surrounded by shops and restaurants that looked very British. Then he heard the roar of a motorcycle charging past, and the cheers of people who were riding along. He felt the whoosh as the roller coaster rushed past him and knew immediately where he was – the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida! That sound he heard was the Hagrid ride. “I always wanted to ride that coaster,” Veaderous thought, but there was no time for that now, as he was starting to get an idea of what he was being challenged to do. 

The dragon that sat atop Gringott’s Bank was just about to shoot the flames out of his mouth, and a small crowd had gathered around to see it happen. But all those curious faces soon turned to screams as the wings on the supposedly fake dragon began to move. Then its head turned right towards Veaderous! Here we go, Veaderous thought, another challenge.

       The dragon hurled flame at Veaderous so he used his shield and blocked the fire from hitting him or his plant. His thought process was if the dragon was real, so should everything else be, so he rushed into Ollivander’s and grabbed a wand. Then a golden spotlight shown on him, so he knew it was the right wand.

He rushed outside and said as many spells as he could think of. He knew a lot of spells because a year earlier he got a backstage pass to meet J.K.Rowling, who taught him some. He knew that normally a dragon should either be confused or dumbfounded by how many spells he shot at it, but instead, this one just lunged at him. Veaderous barely jumped out of the way as the bricks of the alley sputtered everywhere. Naturally he assumed that the dragon would out-speed him eventually, so he ran into the closest broom store and grabbed a Firebolt. As soon as he got on the broom, it lurched to life and charged like a rhino. 

He thought, “I have some experience; I stole Apollo’s sun chariot one time – spoiler it was a crash landing – Apollo was very mad, but this time I hope I don’t crash,” so he went out of the alley and went to Hogwarts, which at that moment had a light show on it, which seemed to scare the dragon, so he decided to cast the luminos spell. It frightened the dragon, but once it wore off he could tell how angry it was, so he then cast a patronus – which believe it or not was a piranha plant – which then attacked the dragon. That made it rush at him, so he was flying and being chased by a dragon; he could hear music coming from a shop below him, and at that second Veaderous thought,  “Isn’t the name Imagine Dragons ironic?” and he rushed to the gryffin ride, and there was a live gryffin, and guess what happened? It first tried to kill him, yes, but then attacked the dragon which somewhat relieved him; instead of fleeing like he should have done, he cast an impressive spell on the dragon and bound it to a necklace which he happily threw into the ocean later.

       Well, as it turned out, all the guests in Harry Potter World thought this was all one great big show, and as soon as the dragon was vanquished cheers rang out all over Disney World. Veaderous thought the cheers could be heard from space. Then suddenly there was an announcement over all the speakers in the park: “WOULD THE STRANGE CREATURE WHO VANQUISHED OUR DRAGON PLEASE REPORT TO DISNEY HEADQUARTERS – YOUR REWARD IS WAITING!” and the crowds cheered again and high-fived Veaderous as he walked towards the big blue building at the edge of the park.

       The farther away he got from Harry Potter world, the less people recognized him. This part of the park was quiet and unfamiliar; he had never been there before. Maybe this is a new section they are adding later or something, Veaderous thought. Anyway, soon he was the only one in the area. As he approached the big glass doors to what he thought was Disney Headquarters, he expected to be getting a reward – maybe a lifetime FastPass or something – but as soon as Veaderous stepped through the doors he heard a WHOOSH and was astounded as everything around him transformed from a bright blue shiny Disney building to…THE BIGGEST, DARKEST GAGSTEP HE HAD EVER SEEN.

       What would you expect from a person who just walked into a large building they knew nothing about? You would expect them to leave, right? Ha ha, nope – instead Veaderous stupidly decided to go forward into a giant room which housed a massive mechanical mammoth that apparently was out of commission. He quickly tried to leave, but no – the doors locked and the mammoth sprung to life. Veaderous assumed he had to fight it to escape, but it instead broke down the door and let him through. Sometimes configuring a giant mammoth is hard, so afterwords Veaderous clicked the collapse button and it folded it into a neat box. Once he was back at Olympus, he would brag about defeating the beast, but for now he had a bigger problem. 

He went through the opening and saw another set of doors. Now he was wondering how much they spent on doors. Luckily it was open, and there it was, Veaderous’s lifelong Fastpass. But there was another door that was more like a gladiator gate. He stepped through and instantly the gate closed along with the door that was the room with the Fastpass. I knew it was to good to be true, Veaderous thought, and just as he thought that, King Glitch fell from what appeared to be the sky; it was confusing. CGI projection is so good these days, Veaderous didn’t even know how he felt. 

Then King Glitch said, “You are lucky to have gotten this far,” but because he was far away Veaderous heard it as “You big silver onion, I’m going to eat you.” He tried not to laugh which took a lot of strength, and then they started to fight. 

Veaderous realized when King Glitch signaled for cannons to shoot at him that his new shield could withstand the cannonballs as it was the latest edition one with all-in-one cannon protection. He blocked a few of them, and the others flew past him; the King’s cannons were hard to aim. King Glitch seemed annoyed that Veaderous was still alive and yelled up to the cannon: “You had one job! One job! What do I pay you for!” and one of his minions retorted, “You pay with lifelong Fastpasses; that’s it!” but as Veaderous was far away he heard, “Why you no squash the onion? He is an onion, so why you no squash?” Deeply offended at being called an onion, he ran at King Glitch and stabbed him with his sword while his piranha plant bit at the king – which surprisingly did more damage than the sword. Veaderous took a mental note –  don’t make my piranha plant angry – and whilst his plant was chomping on King Glitch’s neck, he rushed in for another blow.

       And with that blow something amazing happened. King Glitch started to dissolve right before Veaderous’s eyes. There were blue and red and yellow lines flashing across the atmosphere like a camera about to break. King Glitch fuzzed in and out of focus, and as that was happening all the lights in the building were flashing on and off. Beyond the building Veaderous could hear cheers as all the rides that were down for maintenance began to work at that very moment. All the long lines started moving so fast it was like everyone had lifetime Fastpasses. “No fair!” yelled one of King Glitch’s minions, but they too were dissolving in and out of shape. His piranha plant made short work of the minion by snapping off his head, while Veaderous used his sword – which was growing larger, he noticed – to lop the crown off King Glitch’s head. All the car alarms in the parking lot starting going off at once. The fireworks, which were not scheduled to be set off for another two hours, all started exploding at once. Veaderous felt something weird happening to his small, tattered wings that were only good for gliding – they were growing bigger and more powerful. They were also getting sharper. Before he knew it he had lifted himself off the ground and flew straight at King Glitch. And with one quick and strong strike, King Glitch was gone into the air. 

Once Veaderous calmed down he realized his wings were fixed and he could fly; he began soaring through the air. He also noticed one other thing: there were two unlimited Fastpasses on the ground. He knew that one was for him but was confused why there was a second; then remembered his MVP – most valuable plant –  and gave the second one to his piranha plant as a token of his gratitude.  Zeus was going to be soooo  jealous he had lifetime Fastpasses. With that battle won, Veaderous felt that King Glitch was not truly gone, because let’s face it, there is no lag-less internet, but he would be ready for when the devious King bobbed his head up again, or whatever he had in the place of one. The main point was, Veaderous was ready.

       The journey back was much better because he could fly, but somehow his piranha plant still beat him back to Mount Olympus. I am putting that in the new Unsolved Mysteries book, Veaderous thought to himself. 

When he got back everyone was congratulating him, even Zeus, although Veaderous thought he was just worried about losing his level in Candy Crush. Veaderous was proud to be a hero and everyone knew it. He spent a good minute rubbing it in Zeus’s face that he had a lifetime Fastpass, and the internet didn’t have any glitches for a very, very long time.