Chapter 1

Virgil and Richie were walking down the hallway to their English, still exhausted from their patrol the previous night as Static and Gear. Because of this their movements could better be described as stumbling better that walking. This went especially for Richie, who was less used to late night patrols than Virgil was.

A sudden muffled "oomph!" was heard from Richie and Virgil turned around to see his friend on the floor.

Surprisingly enough, he was not alone on the floor. There was a girl, the same age as them (15, right?) under his feet. Her eyes were sort of wrinkled with pain from when Richie had tripped over her, resulting in her getting a hard kick in the stomach. She must have been kneeling on the floor to get books from the bottom of her locker when Richie fell.

She got up after furiously pushing Richie's feet off her, slammed her locker shut, and looked up to see Virgil looking at her. When she noticed that she said "Take a picture, it last's longer." With that she started to walk down the hall mumbling a line from the play 'Rent.'

"And when you're living in America, leave your conscience at the tone." Richie and Virgil watched the burnt sienna (AN: it's a paint color) haired head bob out the doorway… in the middle of the school day.

By now Richie had gotten up and he asked, "What's with her?"

Wow, with Richie being a genius, that was a REALLY stupid question. "Well, you would be offended too if someone tripped on you!" (AN: Hey, that rhymes!) Richie didn't answer, his friend was right.

The Next Day

The next day, a new girl must have arrived, because there she was in the middle of the hallway, and no one could recognize her.

In her first class of the day, the teacher announced, "Class, I believe that we have a new student! Would you like to introduce yourself?"

The girl looked extremely confused. "But, Mr. Pascal, it's me. Cassie!" Seeing his openly blank face, she continued. "Cassandra Sanet!" (AN: anyone get the reference w/ the teacher's name? I'd be amazed if anyone did!)

It must have finally struck some thing in the teacher. "Oh, yes! Of course, Cassie! I'm sorry." Having said his apologizes, he began to drone on with a particularly boring lesson about "the amazing physical and chemical aspects of bubbles."

Except for the bit about the bubbles, the same sort of thing happened in each of her other 6 classes. In the middle of the day the day, after her fourth period, there was lunch.

While in line to get "food," she heard Richie's voice behind her, but didn't recognize it. "Check it out! The waffles bounce, honest!" Cassie immediately realized that she was being addressed. She tried it. They did. That's just plain nasty.

"I don't think that waffles are SUPPOSED to bounce." She replied. "But they're still edible, just in the way glue is." She heard him snicker, so she turned around, smiling.

Seeing who he was, the smile immediately dissolved to be replaced by a scowl. "You!"

Now, as mentioned, no one in school could recognize her, and as we all know, Richie is a part of that school. "Have we met?" He was confused, who could blame him?

"Uh, DUH! You tripped on me! I still have a bruise! Now, I don't know about you, but I don't really enjoy being kicked in the stomach and tripped over!"

"Oh… err… That was you? Look, I'm really sorry. It was an accident, really. I was tired and I wasn't really looking where I was going. I didn't see you." He said this, but still didn't recognize her. The girl from the day before had burnt sienna hair and matching eyes. The girl in front of him had layered black hair and her eyes were a dark blue. Such a dark navy, they were almost black. "I just hadn't seen you there, that's all." He looked down at his tray before repeating, "Sorry."

He was sorry. Once his dad found out that he had kicked a girl, accident or not, he decided to punish him. In other words, see how he liked being kicked while on the floor. Over, and over, and over again. Remembering that, he began to rub his miraculously unbroken rib cage.

He was brought back to the real world when Cassie responded, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Oh, yeah. It's TOTALLY great to know that I'm invisible! What's with your chest?"

"Huh? Oh! Umm… nothing! Why?" Richie stopped rubbing his sore chest. His dad hit him from rather often, but it usually wasn't quite so hard.

"Whatever." And she walked away. 'I wonder what he's thinking.' she thought.

Richie found a table and sat down to think for a second before he would eat his lunch.

'Oh, man. If she found out. If anyone found out, I'd be shipped to the orphanage. That was WAY too close.' With that thought he started to rub his chest again. He looked up to see that she was watching him intently, almost as if she was trying to read his mind… He realized what he thought the reason was, stopped rubbing, and turned to his edible rubber compound, or as the cafeteria said, "waffles," which they most certainly weren't. Virgil came up to his table and sat down.

"Hey! Sup? You met the new girl yet? I think her name's Cassandra something, not sure though."

"Hey, nothing much, yeah, and her name's Cassie Sanet. She's…uh…she's the girl I tripped over yesterday." Red was creeping into Richie's features.

Virgil looked at the girl starring at them. She was wearing a celtic knot necklace on a black string (AN: the same necklace I wear. Coincidence? You decide), a black sweater that read "I am the American dream," and was half unzipped to reveal a black t-shirt that said "Bite me" in sparkly white letters. "She looks so…different."

Suddenly, she got up and walked to their table and stood next to where Richie was sitting. She looked at Richie with… Was that pity in her eyes? "Do you have the time, to listen to me whine, about nothing and everything, all I had once."

"Huh?" the boys asked in unison. Cassie just rolled her eyes.

"You don't listen to Green Day, do you? That was from one of their songs. What I mean is, either I sit alone, or I sit with you, all the other tables are completely full, or completely empty. And since I don't feel like sitting alone… Can I sit with you guys?"

"Sure." replied Richie. "I like Green Day, but I don't think Virgil's ever heard of them. It just took me a while to get what you were talking about. I can't help being stupid." For some reason that Cassie didn't quite get, Virgil started laughing, and couldn't stop, at least not until Richie gave him an annoyed look and elbowed him. It was funny to know that the bang baby smarter than Einstein was calling himself stupid.

"Umm… Can I sit down now?" asked Cassie. Richie didn't respond, he just moved down on the bench so Cassie could sit next to him. Cassie just ignored this and sat down between the two boys instead. "You two look really drained. Did you sleep at all last night, or was sleeping through 'the amazing chemical and physical aspects of bubbles' really that exhausting?"

It was Virgil who answered. "Up late studying, ya know? History test today." In truth they had been trying (as Static and Gear of course), and failing to prevent a second big bang.

"That test isn't for two weeks." she replied.

"Told ya Virg." replied Richie. Then he decided to change the subject. He noticed something fastened in her hair with a hair clip. "Is that a key chain in your hair?"

Cassie was glad someone noticed. "Yep! It says 'You laugh because I'm different, I laugh because you're dumb.'" Then she motioned to a pin on her shirt "and the pin says 'I like you, you remind me of myself when I was young and stupid.' Do you like them?"

"Yeah, they're cool." Richie paused. "V, I need to ask you something about that GEAR I brought from my house last night. The walkie talkies (sp?) still have a little STATIC when you use them."

Virgil nodded. "Is this about the new SHIPment at the hardware store?" It was Richie's turn to nod. "K, ask me later then."

"Are you guys talking about the second big bang?"

"How'd you hear about that?" asked Virgil. Cassie, once again, rolled her eyes.

"Static and Gear have to fight a new outbreak of freaks and geeks. Of course it wasn't all over the news and plastered to the front page of every news paper." She took a bite of the hash brown on her tray and made a face, but still swallowed it. "Gross. At least now I know what they do with the soda bottles from the recycling bin."

Richie laughed. "I'd been about to drink my milk when you said that. I you'd said that half a second later, it would be coming out of my nose!"

"What a lovely mental image. At least now I know what I missed." commented Cassie.

Richie noticed something. "Wow! Virgil hasn't said anything for over 10 seconds. Either you're a good luck charm or he died from food poisoning." He looked to where Virgil had been sitting. "He left I guess that's not a bad alternative."

It was Cassie's turn to laugh. Virgil's voice came from behind them. "I heard that! I was getting chips. There's now way they can ruin what they didn't make. Ah, the wonders of prepackaged food."

Later

At the gas station

"You like her, don't ya Rich?"

"V, who? Who are you talking about?"

"C'mon Richie. You know who I'm talking about. You like Cassie, don't you?"

"Yeah, so? It's not like she likes me back. Not after the way we met! I freaking kicked her!"

"This is great! We could go on double dates! I'd take Daisy and you'll take Cassie!"

"Told ya, she hates me. Even if she doesn't HATE me, she still doesn't LIKE me." Richie was getting a little annoyed.

Meanwhile

Cassie's house Phone conversation

"You like that guy you were sitting with at lunch, what's-his- name?" Cassie was on the phone with her friend, Viv. Cassie was dying to hang up, but resisted the impulse knowing that if she did, Viv wouldn't talk to her for a week.

She sighed. "Blond hair or black dreadlocks?"

"Blond! I guess he's kinda cute, but glasses? That's so not you're style. Anyways, you were totally flirting with him weren't you?" Viv pried too much and really needed to learn to shut up.

"Yeah, but what does it matter? He's gotta hate me after the way I blew up in his face in the lunch line today. Either he hates me or he's clinically insane. God, I'm so STUPID!"

"Well…"

"Here's a tip, Viv. No comment IS a comment!"

Viv snickered. "Ohhh… Being defensive now? I didn't realize how serious it'd gotten." So Cassie hung up on her. 'Now, was that so hard? Am I really such a terrible person?' she thought, 'Should have done that sooner.'

Later

Back at the AGSOS

"So Rich, what's you wanna ask me about at lunch?"

"Do you think Cassie's a bang baby? Maybe she can alter her appearance, or read minds, or something like that. When she was starring at me, before you sat with me at lunch, it was like she was trying to read my thoughts or something. What if she found out who we are? Who Static and Gear are."

Virgil sighed. "You know Rich, for a smart guy, you can really be really stupid sometimes, and paranoid. About her appearance, she probably just dyed her hair and got colored contacts."

'Geez' thought Virgil, 'that's dumber than me thinking that Daisy's a bang baby.'

AN: Thank you to every one who reminded me about the "no author's notes chapters" rule, or whatever you call it. Thank you for reading the note, and sorry for being a pain in the butt. This was my first story even though it's not finished yet. So, if it looks like it stinks, that's because it does.