Kat Tut closed her eyes and focused. She knew where she wanted the metal ball to go, and it would go where she wanted. She threw it.
It richocheted off an orange peg and smashed into a purple one. It bounced off the purple one and went careening into the air, toward a large cluster of blues. It bounced around in there for a bit, racking up points, before dropping onto another orance and bouncing off the rim of the bucket.
It hit another orange and then a green and shot downward. It was going to fall a few feet to the left of the bucket, and Kat Tut threw her arms into the air and screamed, "PYRAMID POWER!"
The bucket transformed into a pyramid. It covered half the playing field, and the ball bounced off its inclined stone side and smashed into another green.
This was the moment.
Kat Tut closed her eyes. Just like her advisor Renfield had said, now. Focus. Call upon the darkness of your soul and channel it toward the ball, possess the ball with this energy, control the ball, own the ball.
"SPOOKY BALL!" Kat Tut shouted.
Nothing happened.
The metal ball ricocheted off another peg and plummetted downward, missing the pyramid and splashing into the Nile River. "Zounds!" Kat Tut exclaimed. "Foiled again."
She turned and walked away from the river and her personal Peggle playing field. This was hopeless. She had been trying to conjure the Spooky Ball for weeks, with absolutely no results. Perhaps it was as the others said, and one could not channel another's special, even with their blessing and instruction. Perhaps this was futile. Perhaps she had deluded herself into thinking that she could win at all. Maybe she had made a horrible mistake, challenging the Empire above. Maybe she was about to lose her whole kingdom. Would they let her rescind her challenge? No, that was against the rules.
She was going to fail. All was lost.
Just then, a glowing green ball fell out of the sky and conked her in the head, knocking her unconscious. As she lay in the sands, staring up with her eyes open and blank, a grin crawled across her face: she had done it. She had called forth the Spooky Ball.
The Empire would be hers.
