In their last adventure (that I want to combine with this one for my screenplay), Jhonfry and Fred, two high-school outcasts and fantasy nerds (who actually know magic) had managed to escape from a sci-fi nerd named Mashbert Monroe who ended up hospitalizing himself due to a lack of knowledge about laser blaster safety. Before teleporting back to their treehouse base, Jhonfry (the scrawny main protagonist) and Fred (the smart one who lets Jhonfry cheat off of him) plan to use a generic playing card spray-painted with chrome silver paint to fool their enemies into thinking it’s an ultra-rare trading card made of platinum that could go for thousands of dollars. But there’s just one little problem that’ll make up most of this story… they need to get the spray paint. 

While discussing the plan with the other three fantasy nerds who weren’t there, those being Sine and Cosine (the two annoying side characters) and Amandalicia (the token girl and Jhonfry’s ex-girlfriend), Jhonfry and Amandalicia decide to just teleport into uTool, the local hardware store, to get the paint. Don’t worry, Jhonfry has a generic playing card and his wallet in his pocket. After searching for a comically long time, they find what they need and head to the cash register, only to find that they’re a few bucks short. The cashier, filled with legally required rage, attempts to chase them out when they try to walk out the door, but Amandalicia uses a gravity spell to encircle the cashier in a wall of cars, allowing them to escape unseen. Once they return, Jhonfry then sprays the card with the new paint, knowing how long it takes to dry before flipping it over to the other side. 

On the strangely normal TV that they just have at their magic-powered treehouse, there’s a news report that someone has been mysteriously surrounded by cars, unable to escape and the perpetrator disappeared without a trace. It’s at this point that our protagonists realize they’re in huge trouble. They wanted to take the chromed-up card to GameShop, a hot spot for sci-fi fans but they’ll probably be found out by the police even if they just walk there. The group instead hastily devises a new plan: just hide in the treehouse until the controversy dies down. Surely, that’ll work. Except it didn’t. The cashier from earlier somehow escaped from the trap and stumbled upon the treehouse while trying to find his way back home after a rough shift and managed to make eye contact with Jhonfry who happened to be peeking through the window at this exact moment. At this point, the cashier was just too tired to try and attack him and just pretended he saw nothing and continued walking. Apparently, despite taking place in the modern day, this guy doesn’t have a phone or a car. 

The group goes for plan C and decides to enchant a busted old wardrobe to make disguises for Jhonfry and Sine, the latter being dispatched just so he can do something in this story besides be marketably annoying… or annoyingly marketable, I forget. The two disguise themselves as Jedi with deliberately bad outfits and toy Lightsabers (remember that the real sci-fi nerds have real Lightsabers and laser guns) and go to GameShop, wondering if anyone there will fall for the fake card. Because using magic would blow their cover, Jhonfry calls up his big brother Jheffry to drive him and Sine instead. Once they arrive, Sine tells the cashier that he’s planning to give the totally legit platinum card to a kid named Randy Punchingham, who you might know from the rough draft as that guy who always bullies Jhonfry and steals his lunch money. 

They wait for hours, staring at shelves of zBox, GameStation 5, and Pretendo Snitch games to pass the time until Randy finally shows up, dressed as if Darth Vader fell in a big old vat of orange paint. Sine, shaking in his poorly constructed boots, hands the cards to Randy, explaining that it’s the expensive platinum trading card he and his gang have been looking for. To everybody’s surprise, Randy totally falls for it, but not before noticing that the card is thinner than he imagined. But then the worst thing ever happened. Some of the chrome paint chipped off and Randy noticed right away that he’s been tricked. 

What happened afterward is probably too violent to be typed in front of those browsing TeenInk or working at Kearney High School, but just know there were many punches thrown and black eyes given. After being publicly humiliated but still not having their cover blown, Jhonfry and Sine decide to call up Jhonfry’s brother to drive them home and never speak of this again, trying to think of a way to get the real card and hide it from those bullies.