"I'm telling you, Carl, llamas can't be in a chart-topping rock band!"

Sheen, looking at his obese friend rather indignantly, crossed his arms across his chest. Carl was not one to let his obsessions shot down so easily. He gave a nasally scoff and folded his own arms.

"How would you know?" he accused, narrowing his eyes and raising one eyebrow, (not a fully workable combination, giving him a rather odd appearance,) "Have you ever seen a band with llamas in it?"

Sheen sighed, turning his face heavenwards. "No! That's my point, Carl!"

"Well, how do you know there isn't one, then?" Carl demanded with an accusatorily pointed finger. "They may just be working their way to the top at a slower pace because they sell their soft, cotton and polyester tee-shirts for a lower price than the rest of the publicity-bloated bands!"

Sheen shook his head and turned away from an outraged Carl. "Jimmy, would you mind telling my friend here that a band's success does not depend upon the prices of their highly uncomfortable and cheap shirts but the quality of the music – and band-member species?"

Jimmy, far too used to the minor and rather strange contradicting arguments between his two best friends to let it hinder him in his work, continued to tinker with the latest invention in his lap, not even looking up as he replied, "Sheen, I'm sure a band could sing Carl's 'Folding and Hanging' song and make it big if their merchandise followed short-living teen trends."

Sheen clutched at his chest, dramatically crying, "Never! Long live qualitable refrain!" He fell backwards, flopping into the grass beneath the tree Jimmy was sitting cross-legged under.

"You've been sharing too much DNA with Libby, Sheen," Jimmy commented, tightening a screw before setting his tool aside. "You're starting to take on her qualities."

"Uhh, excuse me?" a very indignant voice said, approaching the patch of grass where Jimmy was seated and splashing his form with a shadow. The young genius looked up to see Libby herself, one hand on a hip, enraged chesnut eyes burning holes through him and into the tree beyond. Cindy stood a pace behind her friend, arms crossed and face hosting a look that plainly screamed "idiot".

Libby continued, scowling deeply and waving a finger. "That is on'y the business of me'n'Sheen!" She took a seat next to said teenager, taking ahold of his hand but looking no less peeved. Cindy, obviously hoping for a much more dynamic punishment for Jimmy, rolled her eyes.

"What do you two want, anyways?" Jimmy asked, casting a disgusted and cautious look up at Cindy, who smiled nastily back and did not refrain from holding her tongue any longer.

"We just wanted to see what form of world destruction you were cooking up this time," she said cooly, observing the pink fingernail polish on one hand.

Jimmy scowled as he stood, cracking his back in three different places. "Oh, joy. Let me break out the confetti!" He winced and arched his back, popping a few more vertebrae that had settled during his prolonged out-door tune-ups.

"Don't listen to her, Jimmy!" Sheen called into the tree branches as he remained laying on his back. He pointed the hand that was not being held in Libby's up in the air to emphasize his words. "Your mass destruction almost never endangers human life and is highly entertaining!"

Jimmy rolled his eyes upwards, severly irritated at the "helpful" comments Sheen put in constantly. Cindy was torn between a smirk and a overwrought "tch!". She looked from the Hispanic boy to his girlfriend, who was looking pensieve at her choice in make-out partners, to Carl, who had settled himself onto the lawn and was contenting himself quietly by prodding a stray pine cone along the grass.

Turning back to her original victim, she asked, "So what is it, Neutron?"

Jimmy hesitated, not wishing to subject himself to more tormenting but dearly wanting to share his latest product with someone who held the brain capacity to understand.

"It's an animal expositor," he said at last, pausing to put his thoughts into simplified terms. "I've adjusted the settings of a standard vocal language interpreter to project out – in English – what an animal is attempting to communicate by inserting a DNA chip. With 317 animal species and classfications on record, it will work on just about any creature."

Cindy looked at the device in his hands doubtfully, placing a hand on her slender hip. "And just how many times have you checked this thing for bugs?"

"Twice," Jimmy responded confidently, curling a lip at the aprehensive look Cindy shot him.

"So no need to head to the bomb shelter; Goddard's expando-sheild will work just fine?" she quipped.

At hearing his name mentioned, Goddard lifted his head from his paws and looked over at the group, shaking off effects of sleep mode and standing up on the chair in front of Jimmy's clubhouse that he had been laying on in the late-afternoon sun.

"It's fine, boy," Jimmy growled, glowering at Cindy once more as she continued to smirk. "Yes, Vortex, it's perfectly safe. I'll know it's perfectly functional when a proper setting is created to decifer what you attempt to disclose."

Not giving her a chance to respond, Jimmy suggested openly to a stop at the Candy Bar, which was readliy accepted by all in the yard. Libby seemed to hurry out of the yard the quickest, Sheen in tow, obviously wishing to not only escape the sweltering heat of the May afternoon but the explosive temper that had begun to boil within Cindy. Jimmy followed, throwing a triumphantly smug look at Cindy, who tagged onto the group, seething. Carl came lumbering up behind, panting and gasping.

"How brainless do you have to be to actually believe something as scientifically uncorrect and disprovable as that?"

"I don't know; how brainless do you have to be to actually think that Australia is a country?"

"Oh, do we have to bring this up again! I've already disproved you on this; how many repatitions until something gets through to that non-existant mind?"

"Hah! As non-existant as your ability to create a working invention?"

Libby sighed heavily, leaning into a cupped hand. With the other, she swirled her milkshake with her red-and-white striped straw. She, Carl, and Sheen had left the two quarrelers to battle it out some time ago, taking their orders and drifting two or three tables over. The intensity of their argument had risen, though, and with that had come an increased volume. Even Sam had crankily retreated to a back room after trying and failing to kick them out three times.

"Uhg! The sooner they kiss it out, the better for all of us!"

Sheen slipped an arm across her shoulders with a suave, "You said it, chicky-babes. The poor, misguided children."

Carl glanced up from his bowl of ice cream to stare down at the red-faced and still screaming Jimmy and Cindy. "Well, I don't see how making us barf is supposed to help. I can hardly handle you two!" He pointed a french frie at Libby and Sheen before dipping it into his Choco-mundo Surprise and popping it into his mouth.

Making a face, Libby muttered, "As if that wasn't disgusting…"

"Yeah, Carl," Sheen scoffed, sticking out his tongue, "you completely forgot the cherry syrup! What the heck is your problem?"

Libby sighed again, throwing off her boyfriend's arm and letting her head fall onto the table. She muttered into the laminant top, "Or maybe I just need to find new friends…"

Unknown to the present company of friends, an observer chuckled, small eyes fixed on a television screen hungrily. "How delicious," he murmered ino the small, dark, and entirly empty room he was situated in. He pressed a button on the keyboard in his lap, panning his camera from the distraught Libby over to the furious and aggrivated Cindy and Jimmy, still shouting at each other for all they were worth, orders forgotton on the table that was separating them. "Very soon, now…"

A/N: The first chapter of… something. About the shortest thing I've written so far. It's just a side-story to work on while My Life Is A Shakespearian Play is in a state of choas. I wrote a future chapter of this during a VERY boring math class one day – to be introduced about half-way through – so it will be interesting to see where this heads until then. Toss me a review or two; let me know what you think so far. And please, take time to pick out every misspelled word...-cough- (I know, they don't really matter, but they do.)