The Springboard Cow
4:53 p. m., Tuesday
Adobe's Classroom
Team Green
The remainder of Team Green stood in the area of the back lab tables and blinked hopelessly at each other. Several of the guard members clutched rifles and two stripped flagpoles each. Amethyst had two small flags strapped across her back, giving her the appearance of a rather delicate butterfly. Of course, the peeved look on her face, which still carried a slight bruise, did not coincide well with the dainty look the gauzy pink flags gave her. The trumpet players, of which there were three, were all holding stripped down poles. The rest of the members carried these, too, with the flags still attached (Elyse blatantly refused to trust trumpet players with her precious flags).
Rand took it upon himself to make the pep talk. "This is it," he said, trying to look valiant. "The big—"
"You say 'Big Kahuna' and I will beat you with a flagpole, I don't care who you are," Meg threatened.
Rand shot her a disgruntled look. "I was going to say 'The Big Fight.' I didn't like our band camp coordinator any more than you did."
"I still win the 'I hate Mr. Boggart' contest," Meg argued. "You're not a drum major. You didn't have to hear him call himself 'the big Kahuna' as much as I did." Still, she lowered the flagpole and subsided, letting Rand finish his pep talk.
"I know the stakes are high against us," he said boldly. "We're one tenth the size of Team Puce. I know they've been capturing us left and right—and that there's a two-thousand dollar trumpet at stake—"
"Congratulations, I think this is the worst pep talk I have ever heard," Rachel, still a bit dizzy from the incident with the cooler and the stairs, broke in. "Why don't you try cheering us up instead?"
"All I am trying to say," Rand stressed, "is that I have utter faith in every single one of you, and knowing that, you can fight to the death with a smile on your face."
Trisha groaned. "Shoot me."
"Please," Lisa added.
Rand then wisely decided to let somebody else make the pep talk. Lisa took the initiative and leaped onto the table, hoisting her shiny blue rifle over her head. "Let's do it!" she shouted.
"I like that one much better," a voice chirped from the doorway. Solan leaned languidly against the doorframe, smiling confidently and still dressed in his Down-World clothing. He had lost the suit-jacket somewhere, but in place of that were about five trumpets, all strapped to him. "A little help from our Down-World friends," he explained, pulling a trumpet off and tossing it to Sebras. "Catch." Sebras caught the trumpet and immediately felt warmth seep through his entire form. Suddenly, things were starting to look up.
"Yeah, but trumpets aren't all they gave us," another voice added. "Yo, Meg, Triphos!" Verran appeared in the doorway, flinging enchanted drumsticks at his cohorts in the percussion section. To top it all off, he threw large cymbals at the two of them, meant to be used as shields. "We've got a plethora of weapons here."
Autumn and Eve entered, both grinning broadly as they handed out instruments to shocked Team Green members. Eve carried sharp, deadly looking saxophones; Autumn passed out wicked-looking clarinets and flutes. Laiva appeared last, grinning. "Gabi!" she cried, shot-putting a mellophone across the room. This was quickly followed by a French horn. Rachel received both as well, grinning. The French horn split into two parts that could be flung like a frisbee and cause a lot of damage. Soon, the only one without a weapon was Becky.
Shane entered without a word and passed Becky a silver violin. "Eve's new guy," Laiva explained quickly as Shane moved back behind Eve. She really didn't want to explain his presence yet—there was too much to do. "He's kind of quiet."
"Where did you find these?" Gabi asked, admiring her new weapons. "Sharp edges and everything." She whistled her approval.
"Shane's a millionaire. Let's leave it at that for now and go fight," Eve said hastily. She raised her bassoon, pumping her arm in preparation. "Sebras, head the way. Pure, raw, armed battle. Go big or go home, right?"
"No, wait, I've got a better idea," Sebras said. "Elyse, can you give our arrivals some weapons?"
The arrivals were given sabres as they passed Elyse, although Amethyst winced while handing one to Laiva. "I've got a very bad feeling about this," she intoned to one of her freshmen.
6:04 p. m., Tuesday
1 Adobe's Classroom
Team Green
"What we need to do first is 'smoke them out' of the band room," Sebras explained when they met again to discuss plans for the next day. "That would leave Elyse, Amethyst, and the guard freshmen to go in and grab our people that got captured." Sebras glanced at Amethyst, who was dictating for Elyse since the captain was gone retrieving a stash of flags that the freshmen had hidden in the Freshman Hideaways, and received a nod.
"How do we plan on smoking them out?" Laiva asked. "Cigarettes disgust me."
"We're not going to surround the band room with cigarettes, obviously. I mean, not very many, if any at all, of us smoke," Rand commented. "Sebras didn't mean it literally, I hope."
"Actually, I did." Sebras held up a small vial of powder. "Miss Adobe mentioned Chemical X in class quite a while ago."
"So we're making Powerpuff Girls?" Amethyst asked in confusion.
"No, we're making explosives. See, Chemical X is popular for producing small, controlled explosions when mixed with another substance," Sebras explained.
"Oh, controlled explosions?" Autumn muttered sarcastically.
"Yeah, controlled explosions," Sebras said, shooting her a strange look. "It has an approximate ten-second waiting period between adding the powders together and exploding. Laiva, if you'll fold some origami bunnies while we talk, that would be great. We'll rig those so that all we have to do is pull a cord and the bomb goes off."
"Paper bunny bombs," Laiva mused. "Why does my lack of confidence in this newest hair-brained scheme of yours not surprise me?" Still, she started folding up squares of paper stolen from Adobe's printer.
"Once we've got them to leave the band room, how do we round them up?" somebody wondered.
"That's up to Gabi to do. Pick a few people and come up with a roundup plan," Sebras told the solemn-faced junior. Gabi was the best to gather hostages—she was strong, determined, and wouldn't be swayed easily with a goal in mind. "Use lots of rope and such," he suggested, continuing. He consulted his clipboard for a moment. "You have a big Pillsbury doughboy, several posters, and paper bags at your disposal. Use them wisely. I'd suggest that you use Meg's freshman—Krista—she has the skeleton key." Krista nodded.
"A Pillsbury doughboy?" Meg asked. "Seriously?"
"It's in the next classroom over. About as tall as Amethyst, maybe a little taller," Rand told her. Amethyst, who was taller than the Styrofoam Pillsbury Doughboy, stuck her tongue out and glared.
Elyse walked in, looking dusty but happy. Rachel and Gina trailed after her, each carrying a bundle of flags. They wordlessly started depositing the ammunition until each member was stocked to the teeth with weapons. "Good news," Elyse chirped. "I've mapped out most of the tunnels while these two collected flags." She waved a very dusty paper at them. "There are these great, big empty rooms all over the place—"
"Great!" Rand interrupted. "We'll use those to store the hostages in."
"And various freshmen that get annoying," Lisa grumbled.
"Anyway, Gabi and her troops will manage to get the captives into the holding rooms in the tunnels, then," Sebras mused. "First, though, we need to make sure they can't get anywhere."
"So block the hallways?" Meg asked.
"How?" Triphos finished.
"Well, we'll flood the downstairs red hallway. We hope to putty the blue hallway doors shut so that the only way they can run is outside—where Gabi will have sentries to bag them," Sebras explained.
"And the downstairs green hallway?" one of Corey's freshmen piped in. "What about that?"
"You leave that to Sebras, Solan and I," Rand said, grinning. He held up a mass of wire. "Needless to say, we'll make the journey…difficult. It won't hurt for too long."
"You're going to shock them?" Laiva asked, goggling at the mass of wire. "Is that all right with school policy?"
"It's perfectly fine." Rand shrugged. "Just a bit of jolt and they'll fall asleep. They'll wake up hostages, no big deal." Rand shrugged again, as though shocking people was perfectly acceptable.
"Your morals, or lack of, shock me," Vanessa punned dryly. "So we're going to shock, smoke, putty, and flood them out. Wow, we are strange people." They all shared a mutual shrug.
"So we just get as many of them as we can?" Rachel asked. "That's it?"
"Basically," Laiva told her.
"Get Travis. That's all that matters. The wiry little rodent has evaded us too long," Sebras swore, driving his fist into his palm.
"Er, just curious, what exactly are we doing?" the other of Amethyst's freshmen asked.
"Tomorrow, we fight. To the death."
7:29 p. m., Tuesday
Outside Near the Red Hallway
Vanessa, Meg, and Becky
Vanessa led her small crew outside, blinking in the dusky evening light. It had been two days since they had last seen sunlight, she remembered. Vaguely, she wondered if the rest of the town had noticed the disappearance of the high school band yet. No matter, really. She looked around. "If we're lucky," she told Meg and Becky, "Occupations of America left the fire hose out."
"How exactly are we going to pump enough water into the red hallway, though?" Becky asked. Vanessa unlocked the shed and they entered, wrinkling their noses at the musty darkness.
"Our school has one of those newfangled things that does the pumping for us," Vanessa explained. "Occupations of America appealed to the jocks to go to the Board of Education for more money. Needless to say, they got lots of it."
"So we have holes and smelly, dirty uniforms because the jocks hate us?" Becky continued, her brow furrowing.
"Pretty much." Meg was now hauling the large, tan hose out of the shed. "Of course, there's also the 'band factor' that comes into play. I don't know if this applies exclusively to our school or schools around the world, but the law states that all that's band and easy will be difficult." She shrugged and gestured for Becky to help her connect the hose to the pump.
"Hope they don't get mad at us for this," Vanessa remarked absently, switching the pump to 'flood.' She moved too early, however, and the hose went psycho. Becky and Meg wrestled with the flailing hose, glaring in concentration. "Oh, sorry." She switched the pump off and the two battling the hose stood up, panting and drenched.
"At least wait until we get the hose secure," Meg snapped. They had left the window to the upstairs red hallway open. Now Becky set up a ladder and Meg climbed up, carrying the hose that Becky threaded to her. The water would trickle down the stairs and into the hallway, flooding it by eight o'clock the next morning. Meg, Vanessa, and Becky would all have to take the long way back to Headquarters, but that didn't matter much. Meg struggled with the duct tape. "Extra durable," she grunted, finally strapping the hose to the sill. Another strip lay across the nozzle for good security.
"Okay!" Becky called to Vanessa.
"Flood her!" Meg added. Vanessa nodded and once again switched the pump to 'flood.' Quickly, they started hurrying around the school to the green hallway entrance, listening to the music of the water pumping into the downstairs red hallway.
"What about the lockers?" Becky asked as Vanessa joined them.
"Waterproof. We puttied every classroom door shut for good measure," Meg explained. "C'mon, let's get back to the team."
8:14 p. m., Tuesday
Downstairs Green Hallway
Sebras, Solan, and Rand
Rand, Sebras, and Solan were all working on the shock device. Well, Rand was working on the shock device, Sebras and Solan were creating an obstacle course for the Team Puce members to crawl through. From the gym, they had procured several basketballs, baseballs, and bouncy balls. Bright, disorienting posters, stolen from a plethora of classrooms, coated every available surface and dangled at random from the ceiling. Bessie the cow statue (taken from the Future Farmers of America Classroom) stood in front of a garish couch (taken from the backstage area), both blocking the hallway. The grand finale, or masterpiece, was a pile of boxes stacked together at the end of the hallway. Sebras and Solan had deliberately left a path off to the side, obviously the way Team Puce members would go. Rand was rigging the shock device to shock anybody who took the obvious route.
Of course, the hallway was also stocked with smaller items. Several objects lay around—an alien head taken from a math classroom, a giant stuffed Taz doll from the physics classroom, potted plants from many classrooms, stands, instrument cases, backpacks, Sprout the Styrofoam figure, and a pink plastic Barbie car complete with working headlights. Sebras and Solan were rather proud of their ingenuity.
"Are you almost done?" Solan asked Rand after they had rigged the a giant disco ball light set to the ceiling and scattered newspapers everywhere. To Sebras, he asked, "Should we add more stuff?"
"No, because our members have to get through here, too," Sebras said, frowning. "I still think our couch/cow combo is a bit much."
"No, we'll just have to be Olympian, like the gymnasts." And Solan sprinted directly at the cow, planting both hands on the back and using his momentum to vault over. One foot hit the couch and he sprang fourteen feet further using only his momentum. He rolled to a stop, narrowly avoiding crashing into the lockers. "Aren't physics great?"
"Olympian?" Rand asked, not looking up from the device he was fiddling with.
"Yeah. Like gymnastics and springboard!" Solan grinned. "The Springboard Cow!"
"Why," said a new voice behind them, "am I scared? And do I have a reason to be?" Laiva smiled and hugged Sebras. "I knew you guys were creating an obstacle course, but this is a bit ridiculous."
"Oh, it's not. There's an easy way through it," Rand assured.
"What? Run like mad and hope for the best?" Amethyst asked. "We brought the rest of the runners so you could show us how to get through here." She gestured at the group clustered about, most still clutching a plethora of weapons, albeit with some difficulty.
Solan nodded. "Well, see, there's a really easy trick to getting through here." He paused, looking around. "Don't go the obvious way. It's rather simple—and obvious." He grinned and turned. "Like this!" He turned and sprinted, legs churning over the newspapers, dodging the basketballs. "And the cow's real fun," he called over his shoulder.
"Yeah, don't try to go around the cow," Sebras warned as they watched Solan vault. "We set up laundry detergent that way and you'll trigger the cow to bash you into the lockers. It's rather painful." Solan had reached the boxes by now. The group watched in amazed silence as he hoisted his entire weight onto a rope and flung himself through a small pathway at the top of the boxes. "There's padding on the other side," Sebras explained hastily.
"Why didn't he just take the way on the ground?" Rachel asked dubiously.
In response, Rand held up a potato. "A simple potato, probably grown in Idaho," he explained, waving it for the group to see. "Watch what happens." He threw it through the tunnel on the ground and a flash of blue light nearly blinded them. "Anybody hungry?" He held up a cooked potato and swore as it burnt his fingers.
"It won't do that to humans, will it?" Eve asked nervously.
"Nope." Rand smiled. "It won't hurt permanently. It's just like taking a nap…where you wake up as a hostage."
"That's very reassuring, Rand," Amethyst said, rolling her eyes.
Solan reappeared, grinning. "Who wants to go next?"
9:23 p. m., Tuesday
Adobe's Classroom
Team Green
"The attack begins promptly at eight o'clock." Becky had been made the official tactician since Sebras had plotted out most of the large parts of the plan. "Elyse, have you assembled your team yet?"
Elyse nodded. "I've got all of the guard freshmen and Amethyst. It's a typical mission—get the captives out and return them safely to base in case they're needed to run. Or have them report to Gabi."
"Hopefully Travis hasn't done anything to them," Dude, one of the saxophone players, grumbled.
"He won't have. Travis may be annoying, but he's not unnecessarily cruel." Becky turned to Gabi. "Who is your team? Who's on it, I mean? I need a head count." Gabi silently pointed at each of her team members in turn. "Could all of you stand up for just a second so I can get names down?" Becky asked, trying to scribble frantically.
Only five people out of Gabi's six stood up. She glanced at the sixth member. "Andrea?"
The freshman blinked at her. "Yes?"
"You're part of the running team. Why aren't you standing?"
Andrea grinned. "I'm going in the kayak," she announced. Everybody blinked in shock. "I figure, the author has the audacity to stuff me in a cooler, I can have the cool job."
"She shoved me in a cooler AND knocked me down the stairs," Rachel pointed out.
"Yeah, but you get to shock people," Andrea told her. "That's a fun job, too. Turning people into baked potatoes definitely constitutes as fun."
"She can go in the kayak, I don't mind," Laiva offered. "It's not that big of a deal. In fact, I'll swim down the red hallway with Meg so that we can pull her out and guide the kayak." She shrugged and tapped both hands on the desk, bored.
"I still need a runner." Gabi frowned. "She's one of the primes to lead Travis down the green hallway."
"I can still run," Andrea told her. "All I have to do is get out of the kayak and sprint. They'll be plenty annoyed when I come in on the kayak, so wouldn't they chase me?"
Becky shrugged and glanced at Gabi. "Will that work?"
"That'll work," Gabi said after moment.
"Good. We all know our assignments, then?" She received nods. "Rand, how high is the water level?"
"It should be up by eight o'clock tomorrow, at this rate," Rand informed her.
"Good. Get some sleep. We attack at eight."
7:45 a. m., Wednesday
Adobe's Classroom
Sebras, Laiva, Rand, Meg, and Andrea
"Is the level almost ready?" Sebras asked Rand as Meg returned from getting the five of them breakfast. Gabi's troop and Elyse's ranks had already set out, so it was only the group left. Becky was at the second base, putting on a cover of being the leader. If Travis's men got the idea to run there, she would be taken captive and be instrumental in getting more captives out. It had been her own idea.
Rand tapped in a series of commands on the keyboard. Laiva watched over his shoulder, curious, as images flashed by. The screen froze on a bird's eye view of the red hallway, now gushing with water. Rand had highlighted the line they desired the water to be up to by eight o'clock in red. Laiva saw that they were a couple of inches short. "Very close," Rand reported.
"Is the kayak ready yet?" Sebras asked, snatching a glazed donut from the box Meg held.
"Almost. We fixed up the hole, but we still have yet to mount the battering ram," Meg told him. "In fact, I've brought the duct tape to do that." Laiva, chewing on an éclair, immediately set to doing that.
"Visuals on Elyse's team, Rand," Sebras ordered, satisfied.
Rand called up the images of a small quartet moving silently about the corridors. "They haven't given the signal yet," Rand informed him. "Oh, no, wait, I see it." He had pulled up a picture of the chorus room, where a hand poked up and place a flag near the piano. "Five minutes."
"Right." Laiva dragged the Jolly Green Giant across the room and set him flat on his belly. Working with Meg now, she lugged the kayak over and placed that on top of him. "One—two—flip!" They flipped both over so that the kayak was bottom-up on the bottom and the Jolly Green Giant was staring at the ceiling. Quickly, Meg applied duct tape. "Super-durable," Laiva observed appreciatively. "Every good Bandie needs some of that."
"Yeah. We fixed up Brorby's old tuba with this last year and went sledding," Meg said, grinning. She finished duct-taping the Jolly Green Giant to the kayak. "It's great stuff."
"Almost as good as Ski," Andrea added.
"Three minutes," Rand reported.
Sebras listened to his walkie-talkie for a long moment. "Gabi's team is in place. You three had better get in position, and wait for the signal!" Nodding, Meg and Laiva hauled the kayak over their heads and, with Andrea supporting the middle, headed out.
"Two minutes," Rand reported some seconds later.
Sebras flicked on his walkie-talkie. "Becky, Gabi, Elyse. Two minutes."
"Affirmative," was the reply from three people.
Two minutes dwindled down to one minute and then… "Showtime," Sebras whispered into the walkie-talkie.
4:53 p. m., Tuesday
Adobe's Classroom
Team Green
The remainder of Team Green stood in the area of the back lab tables and blinked hopelessly at each other. Several of the guard members clutched rifles and two stripped flagpoles each. Amethyst had two small flags strapped across her back, giving her the appearance of a rather delicate butterfly. Of course, the peeved look on her face, which still carried a slight bruise, did not coincide well with the dainty look the gauzy pink flags gave her. The trumpet players, of which there were three, were all holding stripped down poles. The rest of the members carried these, too, with the flags still attached (Elyse blatantly refused to trust trumpet players with her precious flags).
Rand took it upon himself to make the pep talk. "This is it," he said, trying to look valiant. "The big—"
"You say 'Big Kahuna' and I will beat you with a flagpole, I don't care who you are," Meg threatened.
Rand shot her a disgruntled look. "I was going to say 'The Big Fight.' I didn't like our band camp coordinator any more than you did."
"I still win the 'I hate Mr. Boggart' contest," Meg argued. "You're not a drum major. You didn't have to hear him call himself 'the big Kahuna' as much as I did." Still, she lowered the flagpole and subsided, letting Rand finish his pep talk.
"I know the stakes are high against us," he said boldly. "We're one tenth the size of Team Puce. I know they've been capturing us left and right—and that there's a two-thousand dollar trumpet at stake—"
"Congratulations, I think this is the worst pep talk I have ever heard," Rachel, still a bit dizzy from the incident with the cooler and the stairs, broke in. "Why don't you try cheering us up instead?"
"All I am trying to say," Rand stressed, "is that I have utter faith in every single one of you, and knowing that, you can fight to the death with a smile on your face."
Trisha groaned. "Shoot me."
"Please," Lisa added.
Rand then wisely decided to let somebody else make the pep talk. Lisa took the initiative and leaped onto the table, hoisting her shiny blue rifle over her head. "Let's do it!" she shouted.
"I like that one much better," a voice chirped from the doorway. Solan leaned languidly against the doorframe, smiling confidently and still dressed in his Down-World clothing. He had lost the suit-jacket somewhere, but in place of that were about five trumpets, all strapped to him. "A little help from our Down-World friends," he explained, pulling a trumpet off and tossing it to Sebras. "Catch." Sebras caught the trumpet and immediately felt warmth seep through his entire form. Suddenly, things were starting to look up.
"Yeah, but trumpets aren't all they gave us," another voice added. "Yo, Meg, Triphos!" Verran appeared in the doorway, flinging enchanted drumsticks at his cohorts in the percussion section. To top it all off, he threw large cymbals at the two of them, meant to be used as shields. "We've got a plethora of weapons here."
Autumn and Eve entered, both grinning broadly as they handed out instruments to shocked Team Green members. Eve carried sharp, deadly looking saxophones; Autumn passed out wicked-looking clarinets and flutes. Laiva appeared last, grinning. "Gabi!" she cried, shot-putting a mellophone across the room. This was quickly followed by a French horn. Rachel received both as well, grinning. The French horn split into two parts that could be flung like a frisbee and cause a lot of damage. Soon, the only one without a weapon was Becky.
Shane entered without a word and passed Becky a silver violin. "Eve's new guy," Laiva explained quickly as Shane moved back behind Eve. She really didn't want to explain his presence yet—there was too much to do. "He's kind of quiet."
"Where did you find these?" Gabi asked, admiring her new weapons. "Sharp edges and everything." She whistled her approval.
"Shane's a millionaire. Let's leave it at that for now and go fight," Eve said hastily. She raised her bassoon, pumping her arm in preparation. "Sebras, head the way. Pure, raw, armed battle. Go big or go home, right?"
"No, wait, I've got a better idea," Sebras said. "Elyse, can you give our arrivals some weapons?"
The arrivals were given sabres as they passed Elyse, although Amethyst winced while handing one to Laiva. "I've got a very bad feeling about this," she intoned to one of her freshmen.
6:04 p. m., Tuesday
1 Adobe's Classroom
Team Green
"What we need to do first is 'smoke them out' of the band room," Sebras explained when they met again to discuss plans for the next day. "That would leave Elyse, Amethyst, and the guard freshmen to go in and grab our people that got captured." Sebras glanced at Amethyst, who was dictating for Elyse since the captain was gone retrieving a stash of flags that the freshmen had hidden in the Freshman Hideaways, and received a nod.
"How do we plan on smoking them out?" Laiva asked. "Cigarettes disgust me."
"We're not going to surround the band room with cigarettes, obviously. I mean, not very many, if any at all, of us smoke," Rand commented. "Sebras didn't mean it literally, I hope."
"Actually, I did." Sebras held up a small vial of powder. "Miss Adobe mentioned Chemical X in class quite a while ago."
"So we're making Powerpuff Girls?" Amethyst asked in confusion.
"No, we're making explosives. See, Chemical X is popular for producing small, controlled explosions when mixed with another substance," Sebras explained.
"Oh, controlled explosions?" Autumn muttered sarcastically.
"Yeah, controlled explosions," Sebras said, shooting her a strange look. "It has an approximate ten-second waiting period between adding the powders together and exploding. Laiva, if you'll fold some origami bunnies while we talk, that would be great. We'll rig those so that all we have to do is pull a cord and the bomb goes off."
"Paper bunny bombs," Laiva mused. "Why does my lack of confidence in this newest hair-brained scheme of yours not surprise me?" Still, she started folding up squares of paper stolen from Adobe's printer.
"Once we've got them to leave the band room, how do we round them up?" somebody wondered.
"That's up to Gabi to do. Pick a few people and come up with a roundup plan," Sebras told the solemn-faced junior. Gabi was the best to gather hostages—she was strong, determined, and wouldn't be swayed easily with a goal in mind. "Use lots of rope and such," he suggested, continuing. He consulted his clipboard for a moment. "You have a big Pillsbury doughboy, several posters, and paper bags at your disposal. Use them wisely. I'd suggest that you use Meg's freshman—Krista—she has the skeleton key." Krista nodded.
"A Pillsbury doughboy?" Meg asked. "Seriously?"
"It's in the next classroom over. About as tall as Amethyst, maybe a little taller," Rand told her. Amethyst, who was taller than the Styrofoam Pillsbury Doughboy, stuck her tongue out and glared.
Elyse walked in, looking dusty but happy. Rachel and Gina trailed after her, each carrying a bundle of flags. They wordlessly started depositing the ammunition until each member was stocked to the teeth with weapons. "Good news," Elyse chirped. "I've mapped out most of the tunnels while these two collected flags." She waved a very dusty paper at them. "There are these great, big empty rooms all over the place—"
"Great!" Rand interrupted. "We'll use those to store the hostages in."
"And various freshmen that get annoying," Lisa grumbled.
"Anyway, Gabi and her troops will manage to get the captives into the holding rooms in the tunnels, then," Sebras mused. "First, though, we need to make sure they can't get anywhere."
"So block the hallways?" Meg asked.
"How?" Triphos finished.
"Well, we'll flood the downstairs red hallway. We hope to putty the blue hallway doors shut so that the only way they can run is outside—where Gabi will have sentries to bag them," Sebras explained.
"And the downstairs green hallway?" one of Corey's freshmen piped in. "What about that?"
"You leave that to Sebras, Solan and I," Rand said, grinning. He held up a mass of wire. "Needless to say, we'll make the journey…difficult. It won't hurt for too long."
"You're going to shock them?" Laiva asked, goggling at the mass of wire. "Is that all right with school policy?"
"It's perfectly fine." Rand shrugged. "Just a bit of jolt and they'll fall asleep. They'll wake up hostages, no big deal." Rand shrugged again, as though shocking people was perfectly acceptable.
"Your morals, or lack of, shock me," Vanessa punned dryly. "So we're going to shock, smoke, putty, and flood them out. Wow, we are strange people." They all shared a mutual shrug.
"So we just get as many of them as we can?" Rachel asked. "That's it?"
"Basically," Laiva told her.
"Get Travis. That's all that matters. The wiry little rodent has evaded us too long," Sebras swore, driving his fist into his palm.
"Er, just curious, what exactly are we doing?" the other of Amethyst's freshmen asked.
"Tomorrow, we fight. To the death."
7:29 p. m., Tuesday
Outside Near the Red Hallway
Vanessa, Meg, and Becky
Vanessa led her small crew outside, blinking in the dusky evening light. It had been two days since they had last seen sunlight, she remembered. Vaguely, she wondered if the rest of the town had noticed the disappearance of the high school band yet. No matter, really. She looked around. "If we're lucky," she told Meg and Becky, "Occupations of America left the fire hose out."
"How exactly are we going to pump enough water into the red hallway, though?" Becky asked. Vanessa unlocked the shed and they entered, wrinkling their noses at the musty darkness.
"Our school has one of those newfangled things that does the pumping for us," Vanessa explained. "Occupations of America appealed to the jocks to go to the Board of Education for more money. Needless to say, they got lots of it."
"So we have holes and smelly, dirty uniforms because the jocks hate us?" Becky continued, her brow furrowing.
"Pretty much." Meg was now hauling the large, tan hose out of the shed. "Of course, there's also the 'band factor' that comes into play. I don't know if this applies exclusively to our school or schools around the world, but the law states that all that's band and easy will be difficult." She shrugged and gestured for Becky to help her connect the hose to the pump.
"Hope they don't get mad at us for this," Vanessa remarked absently, switching the pump to 'flood.' She moved too early, however, and the hose went psycho. Becky and Meg wrestled with the flailing hose, glaring in concentration. "Oh, sorry." She switched the pump off and the two battling the hose stood up, panting and drenched.
"At least wait until we get the hose secure," Meg snapped. They had left the window to the upstairs red hallway open. Now Becky set up a ladder and Meg climbed up, carrying the hose that Becky threaded to her. The water would trickle down the stairs and into the hallway, flooding it by eight o'clock the next morning. Meg, Vanessa, and Becky would all have to take the long way back to Headquarters, but that didn't matter much. Meg struggled with the duct tape. "Extra durable," she grunted, finally strapping the hose to the sill. Another strip lay across the nozzle for good security.
"Okay!" Becky called to Vanessa.
"Flood her!" Meg added. Vanessa nodded and once again switched the pump to 'flood.' Quickly, they started hurrying around the school to the green hallway entrance, listening to the music of the water pumping into the downstairs red hallway.
"What about the lockers?" Becky asked as Vanessa joined them.
"Waterproof. We puttied every classroom door shut for good measure," Meg explained. "C'mon, let's get back to the team."
8:14 p. m., Tuesday
Downstairs Green Hallway
Sebras, Solan, and Rand
Rand, Sebras, and Solan were all working on the shock device. Well, Rand was working on the shock device, Sebras and Solan were creating an obstacle course for the Team Puce members to crawl through. From the gym, they had procured several basketballs, baseballs, and bouncy balls. Bright, disorienting posters, stolen from a plethora of classrooms, coated every available surface and dangled at random from the ceiling. Bessie the cow statue (taken from the Future Farmers of America Classroom) stood in front of a garish couch (taken from the backstage area), both blocking the hallway. The grand finale, or masterpiece, was a pile of boxes stacked together at the end of the hallway. Sebras and Solan had deliberately left a path off to the side, obviously the way Team Puce members would go. Rand was rigging the shock device to shock anybody who took the obvious route.
Of course, the hallway was also stocked with smaller items. Several objects lay around—an alien head taken from a math classroom, a giant stuffed Taz doll from the physics classroom, potted plants from many classrooms, stands, instrument cases, backpacks, Sprout the Styrofoam figure, and a pink plastic Barbie car complete with working headlights. Sebras and Solan were rather proud of their ingenuity.
"Are you almost done?" Solan asked Rand after they had rigged the a giant disco ball light set to the ceiling and scattered newspapers everywhere. To Sebras, he asked, "Should we add more stuff?"
"No, because our members have to get through here, too," Sebras said, frowning. "I still think our couch/cow combo is a bit much."
"No, we'll just have to be Olympian, like the gymnasts." And Solan sprinted directly at the cow, planting both hands on the back and using his momentum to vault over. One foot hit the couch and he sprang fourteen feet further using only his momentum. He rolled to a stop, narrowly avoiding crashing into the lockers. "Aren't physics great?"
"Olympian?" Rand asked, not looking up from the device he was fiddling with.
"Yeah. Like gymnastics and springboard!" Solan grinned. "The Springboard Cow!"
"Why," said a new voice behind them, "am I scared? And do I have a reason to be?" Laiva smiled and hugged Sebras. "I knew you guys were creating an obstacle course, but this is a bit ridiculous."
"Oh, it's not. There's an easy way through it," Rand assured.
"What? Run like mad and hope for the best?" Amethyst asked. "We brought the rest of the runners so you could show us how to get through here." She gestured at the group clustered about, most still clutching a plethora of weapons, albeit with some difficulty.
Solan nodded. "Well, see, there's a really easy trick to getting through here." He paused, looking around. "Don't go the obvious way. It's rather simple—and obvious." He grinned and turned. "Like this!" He turned and sprinted, legs churning over the newspapers, dodging the basketballs. "And the cow's real fun," he called over his shoulder.
"Yeah, don't try to go around the cow," Sebras warned as they watched Solan vault. "We set up laundry detergent that way and you'll trigger the cow to bash you into the lockers. It's rather painful." Solan had reached the boxes by now. The group watched in amazed silence as he hoisted his entire weight onto a rope and flung himself through a small pathway at the top of the boxes. "There's padding on the other side," Sebras explained hastily.
"Why didn't he just take the way on the ground?" Rachel asked dubiously.
In response, Rand held up a potato. "A simple potato, probably grown in Idaho," he explained, waving it for the group to see. "Watch what happens." He threw it through the tunnel on the ground and a flash of blue light nearly blinded them. "Anybody hungry?" He held up a cooked potato and swore as it burnt his fingers.
"It won't do that to humans, will it?" Eve asked nervously.
"Nope." Rand smiled. "It won't hurt permanently. It's just like taking a nap…where you wake up as a hostage."
"That's very reassuring, Rand," Amethyst said, rolling her eyes.
Solan reappeared, grinning. "Who wants to go next?"
9:23 p. m., Tuesday
Adobe's Classroom
Team Green
"The attack begins promptly at eight o'clock." Becky had been made the official tactician since Sebras had plotted out most of the large parts of the plan. "Elyse, have you assembled your team yet?"
Elyse nodded. "I've got all of the guard freshmen and Amethyst. It's a typical mission—get the captives out and return them safely to base in case they're needed to run. Or have them report to Gabi."
"Hopefully Travis hasn't done anything to them," Dude, one of the saxophone players, grumbled.
"He won't have. Travis may be annoying, but he's not unnecessarily cruel." Becky turned to Gabi. "Who is your team? Who's on it, I mean? I need a head count." Gabi silently pointed at each of her team members in turn. "Could all of you stand up for just a second so I can get names down?" Becky asked, trying to scribble frantically.
Only five people out of Gabi's six stood up. She glanced at the sixth member. "Andrea?"
The freshman blinked at her. "Yes?"
"You're part of the running team. Why aren't you standing?"
Andrea grinned. "I'm going in the kayak," she announced. Everybody blinked in shock. "I figure, the author has the audacity to stuff me in a cooler, I can have the cool job."
"She shoved me in a cooler AND knocked me down the stairs," Rachel pointed out.
"Yeah, but you get to shock people," Andrea told her. "That's a fun job, too. Turning people into baked potatoes definitely constitutes as fun."
"She can go in the kayak, I don't mind," Laiva offered. "It's not that big of a deal. In fact, I'll swim down the red hallway with Meg so that we can pull her out and guide the kayak." She shrugged and tapped both hands on the desk, bored.
"I still need a runner." Gabi frowned. "She's one of the primes to lead Travis down the green hallway."
"I can still run," Andrea told her. "All I have to do is get out of the kayak and sprint. They'll be plenty annoyed when I come in on the kayak, so wouldn't they chase me?"
Becky shrugged and glanced at Gabi. "Will that work?"
"That'll work," Gabi said after moment.
"Good. We all know our assignments, then?" She received nods. "Rand, how high is the water level?"
"It should be up by eight o'clock tomorrow, at this rate," Rand informed her.
"Good. Get some sleep. We attack at eight."
7:45 a. m., Wednesday
Adobe's Classroom
Sebras, Laiva, Rand, Meg, and Andrea
"Is the level almost ready?" Sebras asked Rand as Meg returned from getting the five of them breakfast. Gabi's troop and Elyse's ranks had already set out, so it was only the group left. Becky was at the second base, putting on a cover of being the leader. If Travis's men got the idea to run there, she would be taken captive and be instrumental in getting more captives out. It had been her own idea.
Rand tapped in a series of commands on the keyboard. Laiva watched over his shoulder, curious, as images flashed by. The screen froze on a bird's eye view of the red hallway, now gushing with water. Rand had highlighted the line they desired the water to be up to by eight o'clock in red. Laiva saw that they were a couple of inches short. "Very close," Rand reported.
"Is the kayak ready yet?" Sebras asked, snatching a glazed donut from the box Meg held.
"Almost. We fixed up the hole, but we still have yet to mount the battering ram," Meg told him. "In fact, I've brought the duct tape to do that." Laiva, chewing on an éclair, immediately set to doing that.
"Visuals on Elyse's team, Rand," Sebras ordered, satisfied.
Rand called up the images of a small quartet moving silently about the corridors. "They haven't given the signal yet," Rand informed him. "Oh, no, wait, I see it." He had pulled up a picture of the chorus room, where a hand poked up and place a flag near the piano. "Five minutes."
"Right." Laiva dragged the Jolly Green Giant across the room and set him flat on his belly. Working with Meg now, she lugged the kayak over and placed that on top of him. "One—two—flip!" They flipped both over so that the kayak was bottom-up on the bottom and the Jolly Green Giant was staring at the ceiling. Quickly, Meg applied duct tape. "Super-durable," Laiva observed appreciatively. "Every good Bandie needs some of that."
"Yeah. We fixed up Brorby's old tuba with this last year and went sledding," Meg said, grinning. She finished duct-taping the Jolly Green Giant to the kayak. "It's great stuff."
"Almost as good as Ski," Andrea added.
"Three minutes," Rand reported.
Sebras listened to his walkie-talkie for a long moment. "Gabi's team is in place. You three had better get in position, and wait for the signal!" Nodding, Meg and Laiva hauled the kayak over their heads and, with Andrea supporting the middle, headed out.
"Two minutes," Rand reported some seconds later.
Sebras flicked on his walkie-talkie. "Becky, Gabi, Elyse. Two minutes."
"Affirmative," was the reply from three people.
Two minutes dwindled down to one minute and then… "Showtime," Sebras whispered into the walkie-talkie.
