A/N: Hey, everybody. No references in here today. Well, there is one to the percussion mascot, but he should appear in the next chapter anyway. Enjoy!

Into the Crypt

12:23 p. m., Monday

Crypt

Team Green Seniors

The seniors (and freshman) had been following Elyse's excited directions for about ten minutes when the ominous sound of something rolling met up with them and they turned to see Trisha, a fellow senior. She looked harried and tired, but proudly showed off her object.

"Where did you get that?" Lisa demanded.

"Adobe's room. They only said get something that could contain Travis. This should do quite nicely," Trisha explained, patting the object like one pats a favorite pet. "The only trouble will be getting him to shut up."

Kelly held up a roll of duct tape.

"And once again, I am proven wrong," Trisha remarked to nobody. She switched tactics. "By the way, I want all of you to know that I had to carry this thing down the stairs. By myself."

"Why?" Jenn asked. "You could have made the freshman do it." All of the seniors (minus Elyse) all turned and stared formidably at the freshman, who only rolled her eyes at them and jacked her discman up to the loudest volume.

A few minutes later, when she realized that they were still giving her piercing stares, she pulled off the headphones and sighed. "This is because I'm refusing to tell you my name, isn't it?" she asked nobody in particular, even though ten eyes were giving her their full attention.

"Yep."

"We should have at least brought Little Lisa," Lisa said regretfully. "We know her real name—Rachel." Rachel, a freshman, had gained this nickname after a particularly sticky incident at a colorguard practice. After Elyse had chased Rachel around the gym (armed with a flagpole) for five minutes, Lisa had decided that Rachel deserved some sort of honor and had dubbed her Little Lisa after everybody's favorite "scary senior."

Elyse, who had been chattering busily to herself for ten minutes straight (Ashley was starting to think she had diarrhea of the mouth), suddenly halted dead in her tracks and whispered something.

"I'm sorry, didn't quite catch that," the freshman remarked cheekily. "What was that you said? You wanted to—"

Elyse slapped a hand over the freshman's mouth before she could continue on that thread and said, "I think I found it."

This was met by excited cheers until Ashley asked, "Found what?"

That apparently set Elyse off or something along those lines. She shrieked excitedly. "I've found something BIG! I've found something BIG! I'm going to be the most famous Historic Preservationist ev—" The freshman, already fed up with this, twisted out of her grasp and slapped both hands over the excited colorguard captain's mouth. The next few minutes were spent trying to interpret the garble coming from beyond the freshman's hands.

Finally, Kelly frog-pinned Elyse up against the wall, making her slow down. "Okay, what did you find?" she asked in a voice clearly meant for dealing with eager little children.

"I've found the entrance I've been looking for since I was a sophomore!" Elyse nearly shouted, deciding to ignore Kelly's tone. "It's right over there, see? These hieroglyphics right here are clearly indicating that Saturn is in the fifth square, but the Benzene shape—"

"Just show us," Trisha said in an exasperated voice.

Obediently, Elyse led them to the far wall, where they could see a great expanse of dusty stone. Unlike the wall opposite, though, this wall was completely devoid of all graffiti or hieroglyphics. Elyse seemed to ignore this and was peering it up and down, searching for something. "Aha!" she cried. "Look, see, there's a handprint right here. That's the doorknob. Somebody powerful has to open it…I need somebody powerful…who's powerful?"

"*Captain Insano the percussion mascot?" Kelly demanded sarcastically. "That blue rat isn't powerful, whatever they think—"

"You know," Jenn broke in, "Elyse, you're pretty powerful. You're a colorguard captain and you have a big stick—"

"Flagpole," the freshman, Lisa, Trisha, and Elyse corrected absently.

"Flagpole, whatever it is, you have it. Plus, you're the section leader for the bells," Jenn finished.

"And you're a senior," the freshman added, for once deciding to help out. She quickly vowed to make life difficult for these seniors for dragging her down into this crypt. Although this place had possibilities…

"I'd say that's pretty powerful," Ashley finished it up.

In the darkness, one could imagine Elyse turning bright pink. Of course, one could also imagine her glaring furiously. As four years of being in colorguard had probably hardened her considerably against the cursed syndrome known simply as "The Blush," one would more likely imagine her glaring.

Or one could imagine her being too excited about her discovery to care.

As she was.

So she gibbered excitedly for one short instant before she pressed her hand firmly against the supposed hand print in the wall at just about head height. For a long moment, nothing changed except the slowly increasing disappointment on Elyse's face. "This is no use," she began to say, but stopped.

Her hand was glowing.

It was not the strange red glow that light through a hand makes. No, this glow was bright green and emanated from what could only be her hand. Elyse watched in horror/amazement as the green glow traveled up her arm, spreading to enwrap her in a brilliant glow. And the humming started…

The rest of the group, as much as they would have loved to bolt, remained in their spots as though somebody had duct-taped them to the ground. Well, they remained in their spots until some supernatural force gripped them and pulled them from the ground and letting them aimlessly drift in the air as the glow spread to all of them. Soon there were several very bright seniors, one florescent freshman, and a rather brilliant Secret Device all floating in the air, discombobulated at best.

"Uhhh…I don't think this was supposed to happen today, do you, Lisa?" Trisha asked worriedly as they started to drift higher.

The hum grew louder as Jenn pointed to the object Trisha had lugged down with them and nearly shouted, "Hey! It's getting away! You need to weigh it down!"

"With what?" Trisha snapped back. The rest of the group looked around (minus Elyse, who was still attached the wall by her very, very brilliant hand) for something to hold down their prized object with. Lisa was the first to come up with a solution. She plucked the freshman from the air and plunked her directly into the R2-D2 cooler, slapping the clear plastic lid on over her.

"You're lucky that thing has air-holes," she told the freshman, who glared balefully. She was quite pleased to see that her idea worked. The R2-D2 cooler was definitely not going anywhere any time soon.

12:28 p. m., Monday

Freshmen Hideaways

Team Green Rescue Team Two

Amethyst let Gina and Rachel lead the way into the hideaway while she looked about for the missing saxophone regiment. "Guess Rand was right," she muttered to herself as she climbed into the hideaway. "The whole section got captured. We'll have to save them later." She shouldered the pack she had brought along and helped the two freshman move the heavy door back into place.

Luckily, the seniors had left an obvious path. "Look," Gina remarked, pointing as they came to the staircase that had obviously been the route. "There are the tracks from the cooler."

Amethyst, who knew of the seniors plan to capture Tiny Travis (as she had began calling him) in the cooler, only nodded and followed the two freshman down the stairs, carefully avoiding broken steps. She wondered who had traveled this same route in years gone, and shivered. Most of them probably would be dead by now—the school had sealed off these ways using electronics. Luckily, Rand had busted those codes and now they were traveling into the belfry beneath the school. The thought was enough to make her shiver again.

"Cold, Ame?" Rachel asked.

"No, no, I'm fine. Just thinking," Amethyst replied quickly, caught off guard (pun intended, hee hee). "Are we getting close to where the seniors are?" she asked Gina.

Ginny's look was clearly, "How do you expect me to know?"

Amethyst was caught between a laugh and a sigh. "Never mind." They traveled in a comfortable silence until they reached the bottom of the steps (with some difficulty; Amethyst stumbled twice and Rachel and Gina nearly tumbled down when Rachel tripped on the hem of her jeans). "My dance-shoes are never going to be clean again." The floor was covered in dust, cobwebs, and who knew what else. Mummy remains? Amethyst, who normally kept he dance-shoes impeccably clean, had no desire to touch them now as they followed the footprints of the seniors.

"Creepy," was Rachel's remark to the hieroglyphics on the wall. Amethyst supposed that the color had once been very bright and harsh, but it had darkened with time and age. She studied a couple of the symbols in fascination.

"That's a French horn!" she cried in delight at one point. "Laiva plays that. And look…a flute!" Both she and Gina played flute, so this was a very happy thing for the two of them.

"Is there a trumpet?" Rachel asked, now interested in the wall.

"A very crushed one. Under the big boot over there," Gina joked, pointing. "Look, the boot's got a flute insignia on it."

"Ha-ha."

Amethyst opened her mouth to say something, but was stopped when Gina abruptly started to glow. A bright green light burst from the freshman, surrounding all of them in a globe of green. "What's happened?" Gina cried in alarm. She shrieked as her dance-shoes left the ground and she hovered in the air, starting to drift off. Rachel jumped and grabber her arm, but found herself floating, too. They were floating away, Amethyst realized, dismayed. "Quick—grab on, Ame!"

She did as told, performing a mighty leap and snatching Rachel's grimy dance-shoe as Gina started to speed up and away. Something told her that she should have listened to the voice in her head when it had told her not to get out of bed that morning…

12:29 p. m., Monday

Ventilation Ducts

Team Green Rescue Team One

Laiva and Eve struggled to keep up with Verran and Solan as the two boys led them on a fast-paced sprint through the underground Ventilation Shafts. Laiva was barely short enough to make clearance under the shaft ceiling. She wondered how Verran ran so quickly with his head and shoulders stooped like that. But then the blond boy looked back and she saw raw worry across his features. He raucously called Autumn's name every few seconds, stopping at every branch off to call once again.

They had encountered one Team Puce member already in the hallway on the way to the shaft entrance in the gym. Laiva felt sorry for the poor thing. Verran, in his craze to get to Autumn, had shoved the poor sophomore into a locker. Eve and Laiva had only waited a moment after that, promising the Pucer that they would be back to set him out and put him in with the real hostages.

"This is it," Verran said, stopping so suddenly that Laiva had to dive sideways to avoid hitting Eve. "I'm sure of it. This is where she fell. AUTUMN!" He slithered down that way carefully, feeling for the hole Autumn had fallen into. The four waited with bated breath for an answer. "AUTUMN!"

"Do you have to shout?" an exasperated voice called back. "I'm quite fine, no thanks to you and your desire to kill my eardrums."

"You're alive?" Verran demanded happily. Laiva suspected that he was crying and thought better of suspecting this—the wall was far too interesting right now.

"Of course, I'm alive, you prat," was the response. "It's a soft landing. Just go ahead and drop!" Shrugging, Verran jumped down into the whole.

"Er, should we give them a moment alone?" Eve asked, grabbing Solan's arm before he followed suit. "I mean, he just believed she was dead. That's kind of traumatic and it would be rude for us to watch."

"Eh." And Solan dropped through the whole.

"Well, anyway," Laiva remarked. "Perhaps we'd better give them a couple of minutes alone—as alone as one gets with Solan in the room—just like you said. I've got cards. Wanna play 'Go Fish?'"

"Do you have 'Old Maid?'" Eve asked eagerly.

12:34 p. m., Monday

Crypt

Team Green

Amethyst did not know how long she had been clutching Rachel's dance-shoe before Gina's magical power dragged them to the group they had been looking for. They were all floating somewhere near the ceiling, all of the seniors laughing despite the circumstances. Amethyst could see a cylindrical cooler painted to look like Star Wars droid, R2-D2, floating amongst them. There was something strange about this cooler. It almost appeared that somebody inside was glaring at their group.

A very furious freshman inside, in fact.

"ANDREA!" Gina shouted suddenly, seeing her twin sister stuck inside the cooler. "What have they done to you?" She could hardly talk from laughing so hard. Trapped beneath the plastic, Andrea could only glare at the lot of them (This is not the same Andrea from last chapter. This Andrea plays clarinet, last chapter's played saxophone). If looks could kill, Gina, Rachel, and Amethyst would all be the latest menu items at McDonald's. Amethyst could already imagine it now. McAme…

She shuddered and focused on more immediate matters. "What the heck is happening?" she demanded, letting go of Rachel's dance-shoe to find that she could float as well. Very quickly, she levitated upwards so that she was level with the seniors.

"Don't know, don't care," Kelly told her airily. "Elyse set off some sort of mechanism. She claims it was an entrance. I think it's one heck of a magic-trick. Hey, guys, watch out! The cooler's drifting away again!"

"Drat, guess Andrea's not tall enough," Trisha said, popping the lid open and hauling the slight girl out of the cooler. "Hey, Lisa, pass me another freshman. Preferably a taller one."

Lisa, about to wrangle Gina into the cooler despite Amethyst's protests, stopped. Kelly, however, took the opportunity and plunged Rachel into the cooler. Once again, Trisha snapped the lid back on. Now the seniors, Amethyst, and Gina laughed harder. Andrea was too busy glaring to laugh.

"Any progress, Elyse?" Jenn called down.

"I'm telling you, a door should open," Elyse began hotly, stopping short as a door opened and a rectangle of blue light fell across the cobwebby floor. "See?"

All of the seniors, freshmen (including Rachel, staring icily from the cooler), and Amethyst were dropped unceremoniously onto the ground. They looked at the door and then at each other uneasily. "Can't hurt to try," Andrea finally remarked.

There were quite a few nervous laughs as Kelly led the way through the door.

12:37 p. m., Monday

Belfry

Team Green Rescue Team One

The mattress was surprisingly soft, as Autumn had assured it would be. Laiva landed with a thud, making dust explode in great clouds from the ancient object, before rolling quickly out of the way so Eve could land. She noticed that Verran had his arm wrapped around Autumn's waist and looked as though he wasn't going to let go any time soon. Solan milled about, gesticulating broadly to nobody in particular as he walked. All of them coughed from the dust as Eve landed.

"Where is this place?" she demanded, rising to her feet.

They were all dusty and Autumn had a cut on her cheek that had been bandaged using a bit of polishing cloth in her pocket. Still, they were all bright-eyed, elated by the news of Autumn's survival. "Somewhere beneath the school, I think. I don't think anybody's been down here in a long time," Autumn began to explain.

"It's strange," Laiva commented. She looked about. They were in what she presumed to be an enormously large room, but her surroundings were too dark for her to be completely sure. A great expanse of a dusty floor stood between her and what she recognized to be an old, dilapidated couch. Cautiously, she moved in that direction but stopped abruptly with a small cry.

"What?" Solan demanded, nearly jumping out of his skin. "What's going on?"

"Autumn, I think you're wrong. There've been somebodies here for a long, long time. And they're waiting for us…"

Everybody exchanged glances.

"With spears," Laiva finished, pointing to the one aimed at her throat. There was a soft noise of pattering feet about them, and the group suddenly found themselves surrounded by dark forms dressed in tattered, gray rags. An ashen-faced young man in his early teens held the spear at Laiva's throat. He was dressed, like his cohorts, in rags, probably bits of clothing that he had scavenged over the years. There was dust all over him—dust crowded into his hair so thickly that Laiva could not tell its original color. He did not seem to mind as he danced about her, still keeping the spear firmly aimed at her throat.

"We're good guys, really," Verran tried arguing with the spear-carrying dust-people dancing about him and Autumn. "Do you guys understand English?"

"I don't think they do," Solan supplied.

"No, no, we speak English," the boy holding the spear at Laiva's throat said suddenly. "We speak English quite well, thank you. And just what are you doing in our caverns? No Up-Worlders allowed. Can't you read the no trespassing signs?" The spear roved away from Laiva's throat to point at a dusty "No Trespassing" sign.

"Sorry, we, erm, must have missed it," Eve said. "We fell in here. Didn't mean to cause trouble or anything."

The boy was silent as he regarded her. "You must be taken to the High Council. They will decide what to do with you. We may even return you to the Up-World."

"And what happens if you decide not to?" Laiva asked.

"We kill you." The boy looked nonchalant as he poked Laiva's shoulder with the spear, steering her towards a door she must have missed on her search of the area.

"In fact, that's what we'll probably do. Kill you all, I mean."