Author's Note: It has been almost exactly 8 years since I published this piece for the first time. A lot has happened. I am eight years older. Eight years smarter? And although I haven't published here in a long time, I have kept writing. Sometimes I return to old stories, I laugh, I cry, I cringe. And sometimes I want a do over.

So I did it over.

But I didn't want to delete the first version, since I thought it would be rather interesting for people to see the changes I made and how they affected the story. However, [sensibly] does not permit users to publish the same story twice. Therefore, I decided to overwrite the old version with the new, and make little notes at the end about what I changed and why, which you can skip if you like. It's like a Commentary Track!

Given the fact that I rewrote large parts of this over the course of the last 6 months or so, there may be some inconsistencies in plot and formatting. Please let me know if you find a weird section or something that doesn't make sense. Some errors are invisible until someone else points them out.

As the title suggests, this is one in a series of stories about a punk band called "The Irregulars", who are indeed a bit less than regular. Those stories are not required reading, but if you like this story, you may like those as well. Cheers!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.

P.S. When I first wrote this, I had never seen Phantom of the Opera, nor read it. I have since done both, in addition to "Maskerade" by Terry Pratchett, which is really worth a read.

Also, the image for this story is an old poster for the opera "The Pearl Fishers" I got off Wikipedia.

Sunday: The Day After the Night Before

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in the person of Sherlock Holmes, was fond of quoting the Scripture verse, "There is nothing new under the sun." More or less I would have to agree. Take a world lit class and you'll see what I mean. The characters and the details change, but the basic stories remain the same.

Recent events have led me to reconsider this particular axiom. I don't really expect to be believed. I hardly believe it myself, and I was there.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Solei Watson; I'll be your narrator this evening. You'll be meeting my buddy and band mate Alexander Holmes later on. You may have noticed an amusing connection between our names. Pure coincidence, I assure you. Lorelei would call it a sign from the gods, but according to her "Guinness" is also a sign from the gods. It began on Sunday morning.

Sunday

It might be more correct to say it all began on a Saturday afternoon. That was when I got the phone call from Lorelei Moriarty proposing an impromptu shopping spree, which certainly beat the agonizing over fall classes that I had been doing. Shopping turned into dinner at our favorite local, where we met James Mortimer and Alex Holmes, followed by an extremely leisurely stroll to our other usual drinking places.

"The band's all here!" Lorelei shrieked with glee when we encountered Kevin Lestrade, the fifth member of the Irregulars, in the Sundown Bar. Her attempt at a hug was more of a tackle, but Kevin reacted like a true musician: he didn't spill his beer.

It was well past closing when we left, gently steering Kevin into a taxi. Lorelei and James piled in after him, with Lei shouting out the window that she would see me at home as the taxi darted into traffic.

Alex and I tend to be more restless after a night on the town, and we took off down the street. London during the day is crawling with tourists and businessmen; busy people going, going, going. But when night falls, the interesting people come out and you can see the true face of the City, ancient and wise. A thin mist took the edge off the late summer heat.

"Which way?" I asked. Alex was a native to these streets, but even he looked undecided.

"Where are we going?"

Silly question, I thought.

"We were just going," I said.

"Going where?"

Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the moment. But Alex's question somehow took on cosmic significance.

"Where are we going?" I took a running jump and landed rather neatly on a bus stop bench. "What are we going with our lives? I'm going to medical school, and you're going to cop school and James is going off to Switzerland to play with atoms and Kevin is getting a real-person job and Lorelei should get her shit together and be a real musician and stop letting us hold her back."

It was probably the alcohol.

For a moment, Alex looked like he was about to say something sarcastic, but it turned into a grin. He pulled me off bench, grabbed me by the shoulders and pointed me toward the intersection.

"I meant," he said, "are we going to turn right to your flat or are we going left to my flat? They are equidistant from here."

"Oh."

"What was all that purpose stuff about?"

"Nothing."

"Excuse me, dearies." We both turned, startled, to look at the little old woman who had addressed us. She was barely five foot, and pulled the tartan shopping trolley that seemed to be standard issue to a certain variety of elderly English women. "I think you dropped this."

She held out a gold pence piece, which Alex took automatically. I only carry plastic, and in any case Alex was carrying both my wallet and phone, since I have never yet worn a sarong that came with pockets.

"This isn't mine," he said, "hey, wait!"

The little old lady was already halfway down the block, but she turned and called back.

"Keep it anyway! For good luck!"

Alex shrugged and was about to pocket it when something caught his attention. He held the coin out under one of the streetlights, trying to get a better look. I was mostly raised in America, and I never got the hang of British money, which was the main reason I carried plastic, but even I noticed something odd about the coin.

"That's not the Queen, is it?"

"It's a queen. Victoria Regina."

"What?" I grabbed the coin from him and held it close. I had been in England long enough to recognize the rather stern outline of Queen Victoria. The date on the reverse was rather worn, but it seemed to be 1890-something. We glanced at each other and then after the woman, who had already disappeared around a corner.

"This is worth a lot, isn't it?" I asked Alex.

"At least 20 shillings. That's a full sovereign. A pound," he explained.

"That doesn't seem like a lot."

"Of pure gold."

I nearly dropped the thing. Alex caught it and stuffed it into his pocket.

"C'mon," he said. "Before you catch your death out here."

"Are you kidding? This is only like the fifth warm day since I moved here."

Alex had a comeback prepared, but I never heard it. Halfway across the street, I had an attack of vertigo. It was as if the tablecloth of the world had been yanked out from under me. I teetered for a moment and fell to one knee. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Alex was having similar problems. And just as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

"What was …" I started, but I was rather rudely interrupted by the sudden appearance of a horse bearing down on us. We scrambled over the cobblestones for the sidewalk as the carriage thundered by, and the drive nearly fell off the back of the box trying to yell at us.

I couldn't tell you how long we stood there. It took at least a few minutes for my brain to get back into gear.

"Did we just nearly get run over by a hackney cab?" I asked.

"Hansom," Alex corrected automatically.

"Have we gone mad? Look at my pupils, does it look like I have a concussion?"

"How should I know? That's…"

This time we were interrupted by your garden-variety London bobby, complete with truncheon and funny hat.

"What's all this then?" He said, looking between the two of us. Alex, he merely glared at, but he stared at me with an expression of outright disbelief.

"Well," he prodded, after we just stared back at him. "Do you have any kind of reasonable explanation for being out here in the middle of the night, and looking no better than you ought to be, too?"

"No," I said.

"No?"

"Not really," Alex added. This was enough for the bobby, who grabbed Alex by the elbow.

"All right then. Why don't we have a sit down in the station, and you can try and think of a good reason."

Despite being nominally on the side of law-and-order, Alexander Holmes had cultivated a healthy disrespect for authority. I say healthy in that he very rarely openly disobeyed. He smiled and nodded, and went ahead and did things his way anyway. It was generally very effective, but there are some situations you can't talk your way out of.

So when the bobby reached for me, Alex took advantage of the distraction to punch the man in the solar plexus. The man made an odd whuf-ing sort of noise, and collapsed gently to the pavement. A few moments later he had recovered enough to blow his police whistle, but by that point we were two blocks away and accelerating.

Alex led the way initially, but his familiarity with London's streets didn't extend a hundred years in the past. We hit a couple dead ends before we encountered the Embankment. We jogged along that for a bit, before suspicious looks made us turn away from the river and back into the warren of city streets, but we didn't get much further before I had to stop for breath. Running from the cops in flip-flops and a sarong is much more difficult than it looks.

"We need to get off the streets," Alex said.

"And go where? I seriously doubt either of our flats are still there. Were still there?" I swore; this was going to get confusing.

"And if the cops don't lock us up, they'll throw us in the looney bin." I wouldn't blame them either. The looney bin would be a logical place for someone claiming to be from the future.

"We just need somewhere to hide out for a bit," Alex said.

"Maybe a church," I said, after a moment. "Sanctuary, and all that?"

"Maybe not," Alex said, looking over my head. I followed his gaze and saw the word 'London Opera House' picked out in chipped gold lettering on the building behind us.

I had only been to the opera once, with my friend Lorelei. One of the boys she was stringing along at the moment was in the orchestra and he gave her tickets. The relationship ended abruptly when Lei found him making out with the second chair cellist. Lei's romances generally ended in a fit of drama.

But I had been to any number of auditoriums, music halls, theatres and bars with a stage and shoddy sound system. And one thing these buildings generally had in common was an unlocked side door. In this case, it was in the small and slightly damp alleyway that ran behind the Opera House. There were two men standing near it, smoking cigarettes and looking bored with the world. (There's a group of them outside of every theatre. No, seriously. Go check.)

As we stood there, hidden in the shadows, the men crushed out their cigarettes and set off down the alley in the opposite direction. The door they allowed to swing shut behind them, but there was a familiar wooden clack and when we got close I saw there was a small piece of wood jammed between the door and the frame.

The backstage area was silent and empty, barely lit by the ghost light. We tried to move quietly, but every step seemed to echo in the huge auditorium. But either no one heard us or no one was there to hear us, because we made our way up to the balcony without incident.

As I stretched out on the worn carpet, I suddenly felt exhausted. It had been a long day, even before the time travel.

"I'll keep watch," Alex said.

"Against what? Ghosts?" I teased, already drifting off to sleep.

"Maybe," Alex teased back, and I fell asleep.

I woke up several times that night. It wasn't the worst bed I'd ever slept in, but it was definitely in the top five. Each time I woke up long enough to confirm that yes, Alex was still there (he fell asleep pretty quickly), and yes, we were still in an opera house. Each time I dozed off again, hoping to wake up in the right time and place.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!

.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.