Chapter 2

"So is Mac still planning to join us on stage today or what?" Tim asked as he and Tara walked towards their second-period class. "I feel a bit sorry for the guy. I mean, we did promise him a chance to sing some Muse, no?"

Tara smiled. "Yeah, but he says he's gonna be fashionably late."

"Yeah, if by 'fashionably late' you mean 'stuck in traffic coming over the bridge from San Castiel,'" Bobby said, laughing as he joined up with them.

"Laugh it up, fuzzball," said Tara, grabbing Bobby's head and ruffling his hair. "Mac's never missed out on us yet."

"What about the time when we went to Less-"

"Oh, God," Tara groaned. "You seriously count that? The one day Mac didn't show up on time was when he was lucky enough to have done so."

"I can see why you like him," said Tim. "Clearly it ain't his winning personality. Or his great taste in music."

"Or his awesome hair!" called Bobby as he kept going up the hallway while Tara and Tim entered their class together.


8:59am. Alexis was en route to Santa Marina and, as was usual for this time of day, the freeways were an absolute bottleneck. The fact that he had a very sensitive task to complete was not helping his nerves. To try and settle them, he tuned the radio to Alice, only for that horrific Maroon 5 song to come blasting from his speakers. Alexis nearly crashed his car trying to change the station back to KFOG.

When the traffic came to a virtually-complete standstill once again, Alexis removed the vial from his pocket and examined it. What he wouldn't have given to smash it open and release it here, just to vent his frustrations...but not only would he kill a vast number of people in their cars, he would kill himself as well. Which Braig had highly recommended he not do.

Alexis pocketed the vial again and knocked his head against the steering wheel, muttering a litany of curses through gritted teeth. In his frustration, he almost forgot that he was taking a different route today, and only at the last second did he finally start making his way out of the carpool lane towards the exit he wanted. As it was, he ended up missing the exit anyway, and was forced to take the next one and double back. Luckily, the traffic flow northbound was much less problematic, and he had no problem getting back on track.


10:32am. Ansem may have predicted any number of potential contingencies that would affect his plans, but even this one he could not possibly have seen coming. As it was, it didn't substantially derail anything, but it was still a nuisance nonetheless.

Waiting for fourth-period gym class to start, a boy called Patrick Jimenez stole over to one of the fog machines that had been set up in preparation for the Lethal Tomatoes' lunchtime concert, and popped open the back panel to see the small tubes of fog juice kept inside it. He had seen a number of fog machines at a number of parties and concerts in his time, but never anything like this. He was fascinated by the oddly shifting rainbow of colors inside the tube.

Patrick touched the tube and, because it was made from some kind of hastily-cobbled-together spare parts, it burst and started releasing pearlescent fog juice. Hurriedly closing the panel to hide the evidence, Patrick ducked away from the machine as if nothing had happened, but then out of the corner of his eye he saw something very strange indeed. A naked woman, who reminded him strongly of some big porn star, was standing in the doorway at the far end of the gym. She beckoned him forward and he followed her.

Ten minutes later, after his gym teacher had noted his absence, the one teacher who was currently on break realized there were strange noises coming from the showers, and upon investigating, found Patrick standing under the stream, still in his gym clothes, but playing with himself quite vigorously.