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8:56 AM

Stepping out into his backyard for a moment, Basil looked up at the sky. It was the same as it was minutes before hand. It was sunny.

He could only wonder what was going on at school. If he knew that at that very moment a good number of his classmates were being forced by Blompkins to make clogs and that two were imprisoned inside a giant clog… Well, it would have taken him a moment to process it. Blompkins and his clog obsession made him seem kind of like a supervillain… A Z-list supervillain. He would be Z-list even in the 1950's and the 1960's.

So, what had things been like for him since school started this semester? A bit less normal, but that is something that Basil liked. Then again, how could things be called normal with the Tazelwurm as a school mascot? Well, the Tazelwurm was as normal as things had been. The arrival of a cyborg military man as a principal and his weird cleaners had made things a little less normal and it only seemed to be getting even less so since then. Pranks, the cleaners being robots, cheap phones that easily broke, had the world gone mad?

And then there was a second prank caused by Brad. That pompous, obnoxious spoiled brat momma's boy of a baboon! Brad always had to be the center of attention, didn't he?

Taking a seat on the steps, Basil muttered: "Oh, no! Some guy named Lee Ping pulled off a big prank and is suddenly the most popular guy in school and poor Brad is no longer the center of attention." He then chuckled and said: "Yeah, that pretty much sums it up."

It was not like he could just blame everything on Brad. It was not like Brad had the power to cause the flu to come to A. Nigma… Although that was a terrifying thought.

This entire semester so far had been strange and Basil had not been present for most of it… On the other hand, what had been going on in his own life was no less strange. The Death Bat may have been dead, but where did it come from? Were its origins somehow tied to the Tazelwurm? There must have been some sort of answer to all of this. Why was all of this happening? There must have been a reason.

There had to… Did there not?

Was it possible that there could not have been? No, that could not have been so.

Tazelwurms, cyborg principals, robot cleaners, death bats, what was next? An owlman? That was unlikely. This was Ontario, Canada, not the United Kingdom's Cornwall. Even the prank seemed so strange. Who had that much free time to set something like that up? Were all of these connected? Was there one thing that was unrelated? The Death Bat most likely, just a random thing.