Authors' Note: This idea was given to us by RockSuperstar. Although it is a companion to our story Of Mirrors and Mayhem, you don't need to read that to understand. Please keep in mind that this takes place in the eighties.We do not own the Sisters Grimm

What Not to Do With the Golden Cap

"Morning, Hank," said sixteen-year-old Jake, pushing his older brother out of bed.

"Whaaaaat?" mumbled Henry.

"It's morning. You know, when you have to get out of bed?"

"It's Saturday, dumbass."

Jake grinned. "Actually, it's Sunday. You know what that means."

"Oh, right. Hall of Wonders time," said Henry, getting out of bed. "Let's go."

The two brothers left the room and went down the hall to the closet where they kept the magic mirror. They stepped through the glass, and nearly tripped on Mirror. "Sorry," apologized Henry, smoothing his mullet back into place.

"Why are you up so early on a Saturday?" complained Mirror, pulling the blanket back over his head.

"It's Sunday!" protested Jake, flipping his long blonde hair out of his eyes.

Mirror looked confused, and then shrugged. "Sure, why not? It's Sunday. Go nuts."

"Righteous!" yelled Jake. The two boys raced down the hall, eager to spend the day playing with suspicious magical objects.

"Hey, you know how Dad always tells us to be careful with all this stuff?" asked Henry as Jake unlocked one of the many doors.

"What's your point?" questioned Jake, pulling out a long, sharp sword.

"Well," started Henry apprehensively, "maybe we should start listening to him. Think about it: we've had some close calls."

"Hmm. I think you're right, man," replied Jake seriously. Then they both burst out laughing.

"What could possibly happen?" gasped Henry between bursts of laughter. "I mean, we're not going to do anything that stupid."

"'Course not," said Jake. "Come on, let's check a different door today."

"Cool-o-rooni," agreed Henry. They walked down the hall until they came across a door labeled: Magic Hats.

"Hey, look," said Jake. He pulled out a soda drinking hat that was painted gold. "I'd hate to be the douche that wore this!"

"Actually," said Henry, "I'd love to be the douche that wore that. That's the Golden Cap, moron."

"Oh, right. Wasn't the Wicked Witch of the West a sports fan?"

"Yeah. Mom was talking to Glinda the other day, and she said Glinda wouldn't stop crying because it was the anniversary of the witch's death. Remember?"

"Oh, right. And she kept talking about how cruel it was that the Superbowl was coming up, and the Wicked Witch didn't live to see it, which really sucked because she loved sports."

"That would suck," agreed Henry.

"So… How do we work this?" asked Jake. He picked up the hat and looked inside. "Oh look, here are the instructions. They seem pretty simple."

"Okay," said Henry, reading the directions. "What are you going to wish for?"

"You'll see," said Jake mischievously. At these words, Henry suddenly felt an odd sensation. It was like a little, prickly voice at the back of his mind, saying, don't do it… don't do it, Henry… But he pushed this feeling aside.

Jake then proceeded to stand on his left foot, saying, "Ep-pe, pep-pe, kak-ke."

He switched to his right foot, and said, "Hil-lo, hol-lo, hel-lo." Then, standing on both feet, he continued, "Ziz-zy, zuz-zy, zik!"

There was a long, silent pause. "Was something supposed to happen?" asked Jake. He took off the hat and reread the instructions.

"I think you did everything right," said Henry. "Maybe it's broken."

Jake shook the hat. "You think it needs new batteries?"

"Hats have batteries?" Henry asked, surprised.

His brother shrugged. "Maybe in, like, I don't know, 100 years, hats would need batteries. I mean, it's not like you could plug the hat into a wall and it would—OH MY GOD!"

A plague of large, winged monkeys filled the hall, their flapping creating a gust of wind.

"Mom and Dad will kill us!" Henry yelled. "How are we going to explain that we invited a bazillion flying monkeys into the house?"

"Wait!" yelled Jake. "Everyone stop flying and dropping monkey feathers on my head!" The monkeys actually stopped.

"What is your command?" questioned one of the monkeys, coming forward.

"You—You guys grant wishes, right?" asked Jake.

The monkey nodded, solemnly. "Unless the wish involves breaking a very powerful spell or raising the dead. Or either—"

"I wish I had a Porsche!"

The monkey looked surprised. "You can ask for almost anything and you choose a Porsche?"

"You're right," agreed Jake, reconsidering. "So I want… a flying red Porsche… with extra-large cupholders!"

The monkey sighed. He snapped his fingers, and a red Porsche convertible appeared.

"Yes!" yelled both of the boys. Jake dove into the driver's seat, and Henry jumped into the shotgun.

Jake gunned the engine and drove down the Hall of Wonders, leaving skid marks on the marble floor. They passed by Mirror, who was sleeping on a fancy armchair.

"Hey, Mirror!" yelled Henry as they passed by.

"What are you doing? If I have to clean this floor one more time, I'm telling your mother!" he called after them.

"We'll help you clean it later! Just don't tell Mom!" called Henry.

"Hey, Hank?" asked Jake after a few minutes.

"Yeah?"

"How are we getting the car out of the house?" he asked, finally pressing on the brakes. The car skidded to a halt, a few feet away from the exit.

"Oh, um… Ask the monkeys," said Henry. Jake sighed, got out of the car, and summoned the monkeys again.

"What is your command?" asked the head monkeys once they had all assembled in front of them.

"Can you please transport the car to…New York City?" asked Jake.

"The city? What's wrong with you? We don't know how to drive back to Ferryport Landing!" protested Henry.

"One word, big brother: map."

"Are you sure you want this?" asked the monkey again.

"Yep," said Jake, flashing a grin.

"Get in the car," said the monkey.

There was a powerful wind, and the car spun around multiple times. When the spinning ceased, they were on an unfamiliar road in the middle of a bustling city.

"Hey, we're actually in the city!" exclaimed Jake.

"This is cool—Old lady at twelve o' clock!" yelled Henry. Jake swerved the car. They nearly crashed into an elderly woman, who cursed colorfully at them.

"Sorry, Ma'am!" called Jake. He turned to Henry. "Why are all these people randomly walking through the middle of the street? Don't they realize they could get hit?"

Henry shrugged. "I guess this is how it works in the city," he said.

..~0~..

After driving around for several hours, and seeing the famous sights, Jake suddenly asked, "So, now what?"

"It was your idea. What do you want to do?"

"I don't know," said Jake thoughtfully. "I wish we could get a pizza." Just as he said this, they suddenly noticed a sign that said 'Emerald City Pizzeria'.

"Did you say, 'I wish'?" asked Henry.

"Oh, crap! I think I did. Was that my last wish?" realized Jake.

"I think so," confirmed Henry.

"Well, that sucks." He sighed disappointedly. "Soooooo. Want some pizza?"

Henry shrugged. "Yeah, what the heck. I guess it's my turn to use the Cap."

They stopped the car and walked into the pizzeria.

..~0~..

As they entered the building, they could hear a commotion inside.

"What's going on?" wondered Jake.

"Come on, let's find out," suggested Henry. They walked in and a scene of total chaos met their eyes. There were pizza toppings everywhere: cheese all over the tables, bits of pepperoni lying on the floor, olives caught in the hair of frightened customers, and tomato sauce smeared all over the walls.

"This was a retarded idea, you dumbass!"

"It was your fault it didn't work out, you crazy bitch!" screamed an angry looking man in a chef's hat.

"It wasn't MY fault you decided to feed the customers horsemeat pepperoni!" an angry woman fired back.

"Well, we might have been able to afford regular pepperoni if you didn't spend all our money on those damn designer clothes of yours!" argued the man.

"At least it's not my fault that we're being shut down for selling mucus-infested mushrooms!" yelled the woman. All the customers gasped.

"I had a damn cold!" barked the man. "I'm out of here!" He stormed out dramatically, throwing his hat on the floor and stepping on it.

"Well, so am I, bitch!" snarled the woman. She stomped out of the room, passing Henry and Jake on the way. She looked at them. They looked at her.

"You want the place? Here's the deed," she said. Then she left without another word.

"No, we don't—" Henry started to protest, but the woman was already gone.

Jake stared in utter disbelief. "So we own a pizzeria?" he asked, dumbfounded.

"I guess we do," said Henry.

..~0~..

After a large amount of arguing and nagging and picking the employees' brains, Jake and Henry were sent to the back room to make pizzas. "Don't worry, we totally know what we're doing," Jake assured them.

He shut the door and turned to Henry. "What do you know about pizza?"

Henry looked at him, annoyed. "You don't know anything? Then why did you keep saying that you did?"

"I was hoping we could improvise," admitted Jake.

Henry sighed. "Okay, great. I guess we could just use Mom's recipe."

Two hours later, the boys had managed to create several pizzas. That is, if 'pizza' could be defined as having a purple crust, emerald green sauce that bubbled, and cheese with horsemeat that tasted like apple cider.

They tried to sell it, but no one wanted it. Finally the health inspector came and freaked out.

"YOU CANNOT SELL THIS TO PEOPLE! IT IS CLEARLY NOT FIT FOR CONSUMPTION!"

"Tell that to my mother," mumbled Henry.

"And how old are you boys, anyway?" asked the inspector.

"I'm twenty seven, and he's twenty six," lied Henry.

Jake was confused. "What are you saying? Hank, I think you're inhaling Mom's sauce. You're seventeen, remember?"

"That's it," said the inspector angrily. "I'm calling the police."

The two protested, claiming that they were innocents with no criminal record whatsoever, but of course they got shoved into the squad cars anyway.

"Where do you boys live?" asked the policeman. He had taken them into a room for questioning at the juvenile detention center.

"Ferryport Landing," Henry confessed.

"Never heard of it," said the policeman.

"It's about three hours north of here," explained Jake. "Call anyone, they'll tell you we're innocent."

"All right, I'll put you boys in a holding cell. Don't try anything funny," he commanded. He half dragged them into a holding cell, and they were shoved in.

"Well, this sucks," Henry grumbled.

"Sorry," sighed Jake.

"So, what're you two in for?" asked a voice. They jumped, not having realized that the cell was occupied by another person. The voice belonged to a boy who looked about eleven, with messy hair that might have been blond, but was so matted with dirt that they weren't sure. He smelled like a sewer.

"Serving our mother's cooking," answered Henry. "You?"

"That's lame," said the kid. "I trained my army of chimpanzees to throw garbage at civilians."

"What?" asked Jake.

Henry turned away. "Jake, the kid's a nutjob. The city's full of them."

"I am completely sane!" exclaimed the boy. "How dare you insult me? I am Puck, the Trickster King! The Dalai Lama of Delinquents! The Prince of Low Expectations! My kingdom is on the wrong side of the tracks!"

"Puck, like in A Midsummer Night's Dream?" asked Henry.

"Exactly." The kid pulled a worm from his hair and swallowed it.

"Ever hear of personal hygiene?" asked Jake.

"Ever hear of shut the hell up?"

"Okay, we get it. So you're from the story?" asked Henry.

The kid looked suspicious. "Wait, you believe me? Who are you, then?"

"Grimms," they said at the same time.

"Oh." Puck sat there, thinking hard. "Well, I'm busting out of here. You coming?"

"Hey, we could just wish our way out," said Henry.

"But I used up all my wishes," said Jake.

"I haven't used any," Henry reminded him. He put on the cap and began to recite the odd ritual. Moments later, the monkeys appeared.

"Can you get us out of here?" asked Henry. The monkey flapped their wings and made chattering noises in delight. They grabbed Henry and Jake and flew them out, busting a hole in the ceiling.

"Thanks!" called Puck. He sprouted wings and flew away.

"What a weird kid," said Jake.

"I'd hate to run across him again," said Henry. If only he knew…

The monkeys dropped them off by where they'd parked the Porsche. Except the Porsche wasn't there.

"Wait, what happened?" yelled Jake. "My car! My beautiful car! She's gone!"

"The police must have towed it!" exclaimed Henry.

"Well, what can we do? I've had enough of the police for one day," said Jake.

"We can find it," said Henry. He turned to the monkeys. "I wish we were where the Porsche was." The monkeys, who were looking pretty annoyed by now, picked them up and flew them away.

..~0~..

The monkeys set them down in a junkyard. "Hey, I told you to take us to where the Porsche was!" said Henry. They were surrounded by huge piles of scrap metal, trash, and broken car parts.

"This is where the Porsche is," said the head monkeys. He pointed to a trash pile. At the top, framed by the setting sun, a diamond in the rough, a pristine sight of beauty amongst the disgusting heaps of decay and metal, was a bright red Porsche.

"Woaaaaaaaaah," Jake breathed. "How did they even get it up there?"

The head monkey sighed. "You wished for the car to fly, remember?"

The two boys climbed up to the top of the trash pile. Jake opened the door eagerly, but he moved it to quickly. The car, which was tilting precariously, tipped backward and crashed down to the ground.

"Damn it!" groaned Jake. They hurried back down and checked on the car. Jake pulled out the keys and tried to start the car. It made a sound like a dying donkey, but the engine started.

"Okay, let's get going. Mom will kill us if we get back too late," said Henry. They pulled out of the junkyard, but they'd only been driving for a few miles when the car broke down.

"NOOOOO! DAMMIT!" yelled Jake, pounding on the dashboard in frustration. Henry jumped out of the car and pulled the hood up.

"Looks pretty bad," he sighed. "But I saw a mechanic about a quarter mile ago. Wanna see if we could get it there?"

"I guess we have no choice. We'd better try," said Jake. "We should hurry, the sun's going down."

Henry waited with the car, while Jake ran to get the mechanic. Finally, the man arrived in his tow truck and brought the car back to the shop.

After surveying the damage, the mechanic sighed. "Well, I could fix this, but it would take a lot of time."

"But we have to get back soon," said Jake. "Would it help if we put it on our parents' credit cards?"

"Sorry, son. Tell you what, I'll make a deal. It will take a lot of money and time to fix this up, and I suspect you don't have either. So how about we make a trade. I've got an old car in the back, and that should get you home. In exchange, I'll keep this one. Hey, Ronnie! Bring the old car around."

"Coming, Uncle Phil!" a voice called.

"What? No way!" protested Henry.

"Yeah, that's not fair!" said Jake. "That car's worth millions!"

"And we can just wish for—" started Henry. Suddenly, something that Henry would remember for the rest of his life happened.

The old car that Phil the mechanic had offered to trade to them pulled up, but that wasn't the impressive part. The driver's door opened, and a gorgeous girl stepped out. She walked towards them, her dark curls framed by the last red rays of the setting sun. As she approached them, it was easy to see that she was no fairy-tale princess, with ripped shorts, a baseball jersey, and engine grease all over her hands, but she was perfect all the same. The little nametag on her shirt read 'Veronica'.

"Well, that's my offer. Take it or leave it," said Phil.

"We'll take it," said Henry immediately, still staring at the girl.

"What? No! Come on, just use your third wish!" complained Jake.

"No, Jake. Can't you see? This is beautiful," Henry said in an almost reverent voice. He looked like he was in a trance.

Jake looked at his brother and realized that he had a good reason. "Ooo-ooo-ooh," he said. "Thanks, Phil. We'll take it." He and the mechanic shook hands.

Henry and the girl were still staring at each other.

"So… you like baseball," said Henry, staring into her wide dark eyes.

"Yeah," she responded, almost whispering.

"So, Ronnie," said Jake, interrupting the moment. "Can you give me directions?"

She turned to him, nodding. "Where to?"

"Your heart." Ronnie slapped him in the face and walked away.

"Jacob Alexander Grimm! That is no way to talk to a lady!" yelled Henry, punching Jake.

"Okay! Jeez, keep your mullet on!"

Henry ran after the girl. She turned toward him. "Is your brother always so… cocky?"

"Yeah, but you get used to him," he admitted.

"Well, bye," she said to him, holding out the keys and pressing them gently into his hand.

"Bye," he said. He turned away and walked to the car, dazed. He opened the passenger door and got in. Jake was in the drivers' seat.

"This better have been worth it," grumbled Jake. "This car is a hunk of junk." He was right. The old black jalopy didn't even looked safe to drive. Oddly enough, though, Jake put the keys in and the engine started rather smoothly. "Hmm. Maybe it's not such a bad car after all. It just needs a little love."

"Just a little love," repeated Henry.

"You do realize that you're probably never going to see that girl again, right?" asked Jake after a few miles.

"You never know," said Henry, shrugging. "And drive faster, Mom will kill us if we're late."

"Hey, don't you get a third wish?" asked Jake.

"Yeah. But I think I'll use it to wipe everyone's memory so we don't get grounded again."

"Okay," said Jake. "We have school tomorrow, anyway."

..~0~..

When they arrived home, their mother rushed out of the house, ready to scold. But Henry used his third wish to get the monkeys to use forgetful dust on everyone they'd met that day, so they escaped unscathed.

The following morning, Henry and Jake woke up bright and early for school. They drove their 'new' broken-down car into the school parking lot and tried to go in. But the door was locked, and the place was empty. Finally, a janitor saw them pounding away on the entrance.

"Why are you two kids here? It's Sunday!" said the man, looking confused.

"It is?" asked Henry. "But yesterday was Sunday!"

"Then why isn't anyone else here?" the man replied.

Henry turned to Jake, looking angry. "Come on, Hank! I was at that wild party at Olivia Reilly's house on Friday! I got confused!"

"You made me get up early. On a weekend. Twice," growled Henry. "I am going to kick your ass."

THE END

Authors' Note: We've returned! For all those who follow our story Of Mirrors and Mayhem, the next chapter should be up in about three days. We started this before our computer crashed, and we only recently got it back. We hope you enjoyed this.