Operation: Toast-ocalypse

The sun was low over Knighton, shadows crawling across the castle walls. Inside the great hall, the five Nexo Knights stood at attention—well, most of them. Lance was busy checking his reflection in his shield. Aaron leaned against a pillar, muttering a pun under his breath. Axl had one hand in a barrel of cheese puffs. Macy paced like a caged tiger. Clay, ever the leader, stood rigid in front of Merlok 2.0’s holographic projector, arms crossed.

“Merlok, report,” Clay said. “Monstrox has been quiet for three days. That’s never good.”

“Oh, hush, young Clay,” Merlok 2.0 flickered, his digital beard rippling. “I’ve been monitoring the digital waves. All clear! No viruses, no corrupted toasters, no dancing furniture. Probably just a glitch in his evil programming.”

“That’s exactly what he wants us to think,” Lance muttered, adjusting a strand of hair. “He knows I’ve got a gala tonight. He’s trying to ruin my hair day.”

“Your hair is always ruined, Lance. It’s a lost cause,” Aaron said with a grin.

“Take that back!”

“I can’t. It’s a hair-rending truth.”

Lance lunged, but Macy stepped between them. “Enough. Clay’s right. Something’s brewing. I say we do a patrol—full force.”

“Full force?” Axl asked, mouth full of cheese puff. “Does that mean we get snacks?”

“It means we stop eating for five minutes,” Macy snapped.

Before Clay could restore order, the castle’s main screen flickered to life. The image stuttered, pixelated, then resolved into the grinning, jagged face of Monstrox. His digital eyes glowed red, and his voice crackled like broken glass.

“Greetings, Knights of No-No-Land! I trust you’re enjoying your last few moments of peace?”

Clay stepped forward. “Monstrox. What have you done?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just a tiny digital worm—well, more of a serpent—slithering into Knighton’s power grid. You see, my dear heroes, every light, every elevator, every traffic signal, and every single toaster in this pathetic kingdom is now under my control. By sunset, Knighton will be a city of monsters! Mwahahaha—*cough*—ha!”

The feed cut out.

“He coughed,” Aaron observed. “Villains shouldn’t cough during evil laughs. It’s unprofessional.”

“Focus!” Clay barked. “Merlok, can you counter the virus?”

“Of course, of course! I am a master of digital wizardry!” Merlok puffed out his chest. “I’ll just install a NEXOPixelGuardPro-V2.0 update. It’ll clean the system in a jiffy. Just need to patch it through your Nexo Power cores first.”

“Do it,” Clay ordered.

Merlok’s holographic hands flew across invisible keyboards. A progress bar appeared: *Updating… 5%… 12%…* The knights waited. A faint humming filled the hall.

“Everything feels tingly,” Axl said, scratching his armor.

“It’s the update,” Merlok said. “It’s recalibrating your Nexo Power matrix. Should restore your connection to the Forge of—oh dear.”

The progress bar stopped. Then started spinning wildly. Then turned into an angry red skull.

“What does ‘oh dear’ mean?” Macy demanded.

“It means… well, I may have accidentally wiped the memory of your Nexo Powers.”

Silence.

“You *what*?” Clay’s voice rose an octave.

“It’s a minor bug! I have a backup somewhere. Let’s see… no, that’s my recipe for digital pie. No, that’s a screensaver. No, that’s—Ah! It’s in the ‘Extremely Important Backup’ folder. But that folder is inside Monstrox’s main server tower.”

“Brilliant,” Lance said flatly. “So we’re powerless, and our only hope is to break into the lair of a super-villain who’s just turned every toaster in the city into a potential monster. Perfect. My hair is doomed.”

The castle’s alarms blared. Outside, screams started.

---

The first wave hit as the knights stepped outside. A traffic light morphed into a three-eyed snapping beast, red, yellow, and green rays blinding everything. A mailbox grew legs and spat letters like razor-edged projectiles. A fire hydrant erupted into a geyser of pressurized water, knocking over a cart of fruit.

“Knights, form up!” Clay yelled, drawing his sword. “We may lack our powers, but we’re still warriors!”

“Right behind you!” Aaron shouted, then added, “I mean, literally behind you, because you’re the one with the shield.”

“Hold the line! Assess the threat! Calculate optimal trajectories!” Clay paced, tapping his chin. “If the traffic light monster’s attack pattern cycles every 4.7 seconds, we could—Macy, wait!”

Macy had already charged. “No time for math!” She barreled into the traffic light, tackling it with a shoulder check. The monster wobbled, then spat a red beam that hit a nearby lamp post, turning it into a lashing tentacle. “Oops.”

“Oops?” Lance said. “That’s your tactical assessment?”

“Shut up and fight!” Macy dodged as the tentacle swung. She grabbed a trash can lid and used it as a makeshift shield. “Clay, stop overthinking and do something!”

Clay sighed, then sprinted forward. He slashed at the traffic light’s control panel. Sparks flew. The monster short-circuited and collapsed. “See? Patience and precision.”

“You took forty seconds,” Aaron said. “I counted.”

“Forty seconds is not bad when you’re—Axl, what are you doing?”

Axl was trying to bite the fallen traffic light monster. “I thought maybe if I tasted it, I could get a read on its power source.”

“You can’t eat a monster, Axl.”

“You don’t know that until you try.” He took another chomp. His teeth clanged against metal. “Ow. Okay, maybe not.”

A trash can nearby rattled. It sprouted arms, a head, and a face made of crumpled wrappers. “SMASH THE KNIGHTS!” it roared in a metallic voice.

“Oh, a trash can,” Lance said, wrinkling his nose. “How pedestrian.” He drew his sword—a magnificent, jeweled blade—and pointed it at the monster. “Begone, you dumpster-dwelling disgrace!”

The trash can lunged. Lance sidestepped gracefully, but his cape caught on a lamppost. He stumbled. The trash can grabbed his cape and yanked. Lance spun, crashed into a cart, and landed face-down in a puddle.

“My hair!” he wailed.

“Focus on the monster, not your hair!” Clay shouted.

“You don’t understand! This gel is imported!”

Aaron cackled. “Looks like you’re in a trash situation! Get it? Trash? Because it’s a trash can?”

“Aaron, your puns are not helping!” Macy threw her shield at the trash can. It bounced off harmlessly. The monster laughed—a rusty, grinding sound.

Axl had an idea. He grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher, ripped off the safety pin, and jammed the nozzle into the trash can’s mouth. “Eat this!” He squeezed. Foam erupted everywhere. The trash can monster choked, sputtered, and exploded into a cloud of confetti and old banana peels.

“I got it!” Axl cheered.

“You used a fire extinguisher. As a weapon. Against a trash can,” Clay said slowly.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“By sheer luck.”

“Luck is a valid strategy,” Macy said, wiping foam off her armor. “Now, report: we’ve taken down three monsters in ten minutes. But there are hundreds more. We need to get to that server tower and restore our powers.”

“And we need a plan,” Clay said. “No more charging in blindly, no more puns, no more eating monsters, and no more complaining about hair.”

Lance muttered something about “tyranny.”

Merlok 2.0 appeared as a tiny hologram on Clay’s gauntlet. “I’ve mapped a route to the server tower. It’s three blocks northeast, but the streets are crawling with digitized monsters. You’ll have to go through the old sewage system.”

“Sewage?” Lance’s face paled. “In this armor?”

“It’s that or get eaten by a sentient lamppost.”

“Fine. But I’m suing once this is over.”

---

The sewers were dark, damp, and smelled like a thousand forgotten lunches. The knights moved single file, with Clay in the lead holding a torch. Aaron tried to lighten the mood.

“You know, this reminds me of a joke. Why did the sewer go to therapy? Because it had too many deep issues.”

No one laughed.

“Okay, fine. Why did the—”

“Aaron, if you say one more pun, I will throw you into the nearest puddle of sludge,” Macy said.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

Aaron fell silent.

After twenty minutes of splashing through murky water, they reached a ladder. Clay climbed up first, pushed open a manhole cover, and peered out. They were in an alley behind the server tower—a towering black obelisk bristling with antennas and flickering with corrupted purple light. Digital goons—pixelated humanoids with Monstrox’s grinning face—patrolled the perimeter.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Clay whispered as the others climbed out. “We split into two teams. Team Alpha creates a diversion on the east side. Team Bravo sneaks in through the maintenance hatch on the west. Macy, you lead Alpha. I’ll lead Bravo.”

“What’s the diversion?” Macy asked.

“Make as much noise as possible. Break things. Be you.”

“I can do that.” Macy grinned.

Lance raised a hand. “Which team am I on?”

“Alpha,” Clay said.

“Good. Because Bravo probably involves getting my hands dirty. And I’m not doing that.”

“Actually,” Merlok’s voice crackled from Clay’s gauntlet, “I should mention that the server tower’s internal defenses are keyed to detect digital signatures. Since your Nexo Powers are currently offline, you might appear as generic peasants. That could work in your favor.”

“Or it could mean we get zapped by anti-pixel turrets,” Aaron said.

“Details, details.”

Macy’s team charged out of the alley, screaming at the top of their lungs. Macy kicked over a stack of barrels. Lance threw a rock at a goon’s head. Aaron yelled, “Yo mama jokes are more dangerous than you!” The goons turned and chased them.

“Go now!” Clay whispered.

He, Axl, and Lance (who had slipped away from Alpha when nobody was looking) dashed to the maintenance hatch. Lance had snagged a handful of cheese puffs from a pocket. “I’m not missing my snack break.”

“You’re supposed to be with Macy,” Clay hissed.

“Macy can handle herself. I’m better suited for infiltration. More stealthy. More… elegant.”

Axl snorted. “You just didn’t want to get your boots dirty.”

“That too.”

Clay gave up arguing. He pried open the hatch, and they slipped inside. The interior was a maze of cooling pipes and blinking server racks. The air hummed with electricity. Monstrox’s voice echoed from the walls, deep and distorted: “Intruders detected. Deploying glitch guardians.”

A door ahead of them slid open, and a figure emerged. It was a knight—or rather, a digital duplicate of one. It had Clay’s armor, Clay’s stance, but its face was a static-filled mess. It spoke in a robotic monotone: “You hesitate. You overthink. You calculate when you should act.”

“It’s mocking me,” Clay said.

“What about me?” Axl asked.

Another door opened. A second duplicate appeared—a bulky Axl, but with a permanent bite animation, its jaw opening and closing. “FOOD. FOOD. EAT ALL THE FOOD.”

“Hey, that’s not fair! I don’t just eat all the time!”

“You tried to eat a monster twenty minutes ago,” Lance said.

“That was research.”

A third duplicate materialized behind them—Lance’s, but with exaggerated hair that glowed neon and a voice that dripped vanity. “My hair. Notice my hair. Isn’t it perfect? You wish you had my hair.”

Lance stared at it, horrified. “That’s… That’s not me. I’m not that obsessed.”

“You spent an hour on your gel this morning,” Clay said.

“Style requires effort.”

The glitch Clay advanced. “You will never lead without fear.” It swung a pixelated sword. Clay parried, but his blade passed through the duplicate’s arm as if through air. “You can’t hit me,” the glitch sneered. “I am your own doubt. Your own hesitation.”

“Then I’ll use that,” Clay said. He stopped thinking. He let his body move on instinct—ducked, spun, thrust. His sword caught the glitch in the chest. It shattered into a shower of green code.

“Yes!” Axl cheered. Then the glitch Axl lunged at him, opening its jaw wide. Axl stumbled back. “No biting! Bad digital clone!” He threw his shield. It bounced off the glitch’s face, and the glitch bit the shield. The shield made a groaning noise, then started to crack.

“My shield!” Axl cried.

“Use your head!” Clay yelled.

Axl charged and headbutted the glitch. It exploded. “That worked!”

Lance was having a more difficult time. His duplicate kept striking poses, making Lance instinctively mirror them. “Stop that! You’re making me look foolish!” His duplicate laughed, then did a pirouette. Lance, unable to resist, pirouetted as well.

“Lance, focus!” Clay shouted.

“I can’t! It’s like looking in a really annoying mirror!”

Axl grabbed a piece of pipe and threw it at the Lance-clone. It hit the clone’s hair, and the hair deflated like a popped balloon. The clone froze, then short-circuited.

Lance stared at his ruined shield. “You threw a pipe at its hair. And it worked.”

“Seems like your weakness is your hair,” Axl said.

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

---

They pushed deeper. The server core loomed ahead—a massive glowing orb of purple energy. In front of it stood Monstrox himself, towering and digital, his body flickering like a bad stream.

“Ah, the powerless knights. How pitiful. You can’t even fight your own shadows.”

“We just did,” Clay said. “And we won.”

“Barely. And with dumb luck. But I’ll give you credit for persistence.” Monstrox raised a hand. “This ends now. I will merge with the power grid and become an eternal digital dragon! Behold!”

His body expanded, twisted, and stretched into a colossal serpentine form—a dragon made of electricity and code. It roared, and the whole server tower shook.

“We need our powers back,” Clay said. “Merlok, where’s the backup?”

“It’s in a file called ‘Accidental_Power_Backup_V2_DoNotDelete’. You need to download it from the main terminal. It’s right there, next to the giant dragon.”

“You could have named it something easier!”

“I didn’t expect to forget it!”

Clay sprinted toward the terminal, dodging bolts of digital lightning. Axl and Lance covered him. Axl threw his shield, Lance swung his sword, but they were no match for a dragon. Their attacks bounced off harmlessly.

“We need to combine our attacks!” Clay shouted over the roar.

“How? We don’t have powers!” Lance yelled.

“Then combine without powers! Use teamwork!”

“I hate teamwork!”

Monstrox breathed a stream of pixelated fire. The knights scattered. Axl dove behind a server rack. Lance rolled into a maintenance cart. Clay ducked under a console. The fire melted a hole in the floor.

“We can’t do this forever!” Aaron’s voice came over the comm. “We’ve lured the goons into a bakery. They’re distracted by pastries. But we can’t hold them long!”

“We have to think of something,” Macy added.

Clay looked at the terminal. It was twenty feet away. On the other side of the dragon. He looked at his team. Axl was trying to pry a metal panel off the floor to use as a weapon. Lance was adjusting his hair, even now.

“Axl,” Clay said, “if I give you a boost, can you throw your shield at that big red switch on the far wall?”

There was a giant red switch marked “EMERGENCY OFF” behind the dragon. It was the only thing that might shut down the system.

Axl squinted. “I can try. But my aim’s not great.”

“Better than nothing. Lance, distract the dragon. Throw rocks. Shout insults. Whatever.”

“I’m good at insults,” Lance said. He stepped out from behind the cart. “Hey, dragon! You look like a broken screensaver from 1998!”

Monstrox turned its massive head. “What did you call me?”

“A glitchy mess! Your mother was a corrupted JPEG and your father was a pop-up ad!”

The dragon roared in fury and lunged at Lance. Lance ran, screaming. “Clay, now!”

Clay cupped his hands. Axl backed up, took a running start, and jumped. His foot landed in Clay’s hands, and Clay heaved upward. Axl soared into the air—higher than intended. He spun, his shield slipping from his grip. It flew in a wild arc.

Monstrox opened its mouth to blast Lance with a final beam. The shield—instead of hitting the dragon—ricocheted off a pipe, bounced off a hanging lamp, and smacked the giant red switch.

*CLICK.*

All the lights in the server tower went out. The dragon froze mid-roar. Its body flickered, stuttered, and shrank. Monstrox’s voice came out in a tinny squeak: “No! This can’t be—I was so close! I—*bzzt*—curse you, Knights of—*pop*—cheese puffs?!”

He collapsed into a tiny, pixelated ghost, no bigger than a thumb. He zipped around the room once, then vanished into a nearby toaster that had been left plugged in. The toaster’s slots glowed purple for a moment, then settled.

Silence.

“Did… did that work?” Lance asked, emerging from behind a cooling pipe.

The terminal beeped. A file downloaded. “Power backup restored,” Merlok’s voice said. “All Nexo Powers are online.”

“Great,” Clay said, leaning against a wall. “Now, can we go home?”

---

Back at the castle, the knights collapsed in the great hall. The city’s monsters had deactivated when Monstrox was defeated. The cleanup was minimal, except for the bakery, which had been eaten by goons and pastries.

“I can’t believe a toaster defeated the villain,” Aaron said.

“It wasn’t the toaster. It was Axl’s terrible aim,” Macy said.

“It was perfect aim,” Axl argued. “I hit the switch, didn’t I?”

“By accident.”

“Still counts.”

Lance was examining his hair in a mirror. “I need to touch up my highlights. The sewers did a number on them.”

Merlok 2.0 flickered into view. “Good work, knights! Though I seem to have accidentally deleted the victory celebration music file. So… hum along?”

Clay sighed. “Fine. We’ll hum.”

The knights exchanged glances. Then, slowly, they started humming an off-key, improvised victory tune. It wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t even good. But it was theirs.

From the kitchen, the toaster sparked once, then settled.

Monstrox’s tiny, pixelated ghost appeared in the toaster’s slots, shook a tiny digital fist, and squeaked, “I’ll be back! And when I am, I’ll burn the toast!”

The toast popped up, slightly charred.

No one noticed.

Lance was too busy fixing his hair.