Director: Darlings, darlings, everyone come here! (Waves hands around and waits for everyone to circle about her. When no one does or even listens to her, she bashes her foot into the ground) HEY! Everyone get over here now! (Everyone does, crowding around her)

Kain: What's the problem?

Director: As everyone knows, the crowd is getting restless! (Parts the curtain for every actor to see the Sarafan and vampires and Seraphim beginning to fight; Mortanius and Bane have just entered and they're trying to get their own seats; ushers are being ripped in half and thrown through the air along with refreshments and umbrellas)

Vorador: That cannot be good.

Anamae: Duh.

Vorador: Shut up, whelp! So what are you planning to do then, director?

Director: We're going to place both scenes 4 and 5 together so Act 1 will be over quickly and everyone can go out to stretch their legs during intermission!

(Collective groans from the actors)

Raziel: Are you insane? Do you even know what could possible happen?! I have to go out there for my cue and I do not want to foul up!

Ariel: Neither do I!

Melchiah: What happens if we lose our lines and we all mess up!!! Imagine what could happen then!

Anamae: Well, there have been some parts where we've fouled up but it seems to be working quite well! (Malek turns to her)

Malek: You have no real part in this play other than to speak of the next scene. You do not know the pressures put upon us, child!

Anamae: Child?! (Gets angry)

Rahab: At least I can still sit this act out. (Wanders off since he doesn't care to be part of a fight)

Malek: Yes, you're a child! You shouldn't even be here at all, but out there in the crowd next to that HORNY toad Moebius!

All the others actors: Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Anamae: I resent that! I'll kill you! (Runs at Malek and grabs him by the throat and begins to choke him to the best of her ability)

Vorador: (Pushes her aside and takes over) No, you're hands are to weak girl!

Umah: Pound the hell out of him, Vorador!

Janos: I really don't think we should be doing this with only thirty seconds to the next scene!

Ariel: Malek, kick him in the groin! The groin!!!!

Kain: That's low!!!! Dumah, pin Malek down while I kick him in the gut! This is for when your character Paris tries to take Juliet away from Romeo!

Malek: It's a play, you stupid vampire, and not real life! Ahh, that hurts, you moron!

(Soon the scene has changed from one of actors worrying over the next scene to one of Malek being chocked by Vorador, pinned down by Dumah and Kain kicking the Guardian of Conflict in his stomach. Everyone has also begun to place bets as more of the Sarafan race in to help their commander; sounds of the struggle are heard in the audience, which has gone quiet to hear the actors)

Director: Stop, everyone stop or you'll ruin everything! (Runs into the fight. No one really knew what happened next, but someone either kicked or hit the director and she was knocked out on the ground. Silence descends)

Anamae: Shit.

Turel: What do we do now?

Anamae: Well, the show must go ahead! (Everyone looks at her) And I declare myself the new director until the knocked out director comes back to consciousness! After all, I am the authoress and it is only right that I take over at the moment! I'm the sanest person here tonight because I had coffee and beer mixed together!

(Everyone screams and runs away with Anamae chasing after them)

Anamae: Places everyone, places! Raziel, Kain and the peasant dude playing Benvolio, get your butts out there! Scenery, get ready! Ariel, touch on the makeup and Dumah you can get off of Malek now, the fight is over! All right, the opening to scenes 4 and 5! Places everyone!

* * *

(A street outside the Capulet mansion. Sounds of a party beginning are heard within and Raziel, Kain and Benvolio come out from the wings, also with extra actors carrying torches to add to the night effect. The crowd quietens as the play 'Romeo and Juliet' take up once again. The fan girls begin to giggle as they see Raziel dressed in his good-looking costume and Kain just looking so…. disturbingly romantic)

Raziel: What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?
Or shall we on without an apology? (Gives a grin to the crowd; Kain slaps him upside the head for stealing his thunder)

Benvolio: The date is out of such prolixity:
We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf,
Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath,
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;
Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke
After the prompter, for our entrance:
But let them measure us by what they will;
We'll measure them a measure, and be gone.

Kain: Basically do we all have our costumes in place and don't look like idiots? (Looks very nervous as the scene of him meeting 'Juliet' gets closer and closer) Give me a torch: I am not for this ambling; Being but heavy, I will bear the light.

Raziel: Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance. (Laughter from the Sarafan. Kain waves a hand in their direction and his spell 'Flay' takes effect. Over the screams)

Kain: Not I believe me: you have dancing shoes
With nimble soles: I have a soul of lead
So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.

Raziel: You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings,
And soar with them above a common bound.

Kain: I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
To soar with his light feathers, and so bound,
I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe:
Under love's heavy burden do I sink.

Raziel: (Going out of character) Oh for the love of the Dark Gods, for once in your life Romeo actually do something instead of mopping on and on about it. I am not going to pull you out of the gutter!

Kain: Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,
Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

Raziel: If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
Give me a case to put my visage in:
A visor for a visor! what care I
What curious eye doth quote deformities?
Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.

Benvolio: Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in,
But every man betake him to his legs.

Kain: A torch for me: let wantons light of heart
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels,
For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase;
I'll be a candle-holder, and look on.
The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done.

Raziel: (Moves towards the entrance to the mansion, waving his torch above his head) Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word:
If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire
Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick'st
Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho!

Kain: And we mean well in going to this mask;
But 'tis no wit to go.

Raziel: Why, may one ask?

Kain: I dream'd a dream to-night.

Raziel: And so did I.

Kain: What was yours about? (Whispering) Not about that fledgling you have the massive crush on, am I right?

Raziel: O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,

Turelim vampire: Get on with the story!!!!! We don't care for fairies, unless they happen to be half-naked and looking damn fine!

Raziel: Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she-

(Out of nowhere and to lighten the mood comes this little black fairie on a chariot; screaming about the room the Queen Mab runs amok through the theatre until one Sarafan grabs her, then passes the queen over to a Seraphim and places her in a bottle. Everyone goes back to watching the show, not listening to the little fairie queen about how she will seek her vengeance upon them)

Benvolio: Man Mercutio that is one messed up dream!

Kain: Peace, Mercutio, peace and tell no more of your dream, even if they truly mean nothing at all!

Raziel: True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

Kain: I fear, too early: for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels and expire the term
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.

Benvolio: To the party!

(All enter into the mansion and in a feat of special effects and a bunch of other stunning stuff, the scene changes to the Capulet party, where everyone is walking around in costumes that took too long to make and servants walking around with real food that everyone is grabbing for. A hallway in the Capulet household. Janos, Ariel and servants meeting the guests and maskers)

Janos: (Looking very dashing in his outfit and the Seraphim give a big cheer for the last of their race; Vorador also claps his hands off-stage and Anamae pokes him in the side for him to be quiet, which then turns into the vampire throwing her across the wing and onto Rahab's lap, but then she's not complaining) Welcome, gentlemen! Ladies that have their toes
Unplagued with corns will have a bout with you.
Ah ha, my mistresses! Which of you all
Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty,
She, I'll swear, hath corns; am I come near ye now?
Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day
That I have worn a visor and could tell
A whispering tale in a fair lady's ear,
Such as would please: 'tis gone, 'tis gone, 'tis gone:
You are welcome, gentlemen! Come, musicians, play.
A hall, a hall! Give room! And foot it, girls.

Fan girl number 1: I'll dance with you Janos!

Fan girl number 2: No, me, pick me you stud!!!! (Both girls begin to fight and one of the few ushers goes to break it up. Back to the play)

Janos: Feast, drink, dance! More light, you knaves; and turn the tables up,
And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.
Ah, sirrah, this unlook'd-for sport comes well.
Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet;
For you and I are past our dancing days:
How long is't now since last yourself and I
Were in a mask?

Sarafan acting as Capulet member: (Kind of scared standing next to the scourge of Nosgoth and had slowly reaching for his dagger) By'r sir, thirty years.

Janos: What, man! 'tis not so much, 'tis not so much:
'Tis since the nuptials of Lucentio,
Come pentecost as quickly as it will,
Some five and twenty years; and then we masked.

(Kain walks into the hall and stops a servant)

Kain: What lady is that, which doth
enrich the hand of yonder knight?

Servant: I dunno, mister. I just work here part-time.

(Anamae bashes her head against the wall and begins to understand the director's stress. Some people just couldn't learn proper grammar, couldn't learn lines and...that boy would be trucked back to the orphanage very quickly)

Kain: O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

(Dumah/Tybalt walks onstage, sword always at the ready and a grim look on his face)

Dumah: This, by his voice, should be a Montague.
Fetch me my rapier, boy. What dares the slave
Come hither, cover'd with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?
Now, by the stock and honour of my kin,
To strike him dead, I hold it not a sin.

Janos: (Stops Dumah) Why, how now, kinsman! Wherefore storm you so?

Dumah: The toilet, where else old man? Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe,
A villain that is hither come in spite,
To scorn at our solemnity this night.

Janos: Young Romeo is it? Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone;
He bears him like a portly gentleman;
And, to say truth, Verona brags of him
To be a virtuous and well-govern'd youth:
I would not for the wealth of all the town
Here in my house do him disparagement:
Therefore be patient, take no note of him:
It is my will, the which if thou respect,
Show a fair presence and put off these frowns,
And ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.

Dumah: Then I shall not be present here as long as a villain lies within this household.

Janos: He shall be endured:
What, Goodman boy! I say, he shall: go to;
Am I the master here, or you? go to.
You'll not endure him! God shall mend my soul!
You'll make a mutiny among my guests!
You'll be the man!

Dumah: Why, uncle, 'tis a shame.

Janos: Go to, go to;
You are a saucy boy: is't so, indeed?
This trick may chance to scathe you, I know what:
You must contrary me! marry, 'tis time.
Well said, my hearts! You are a princox; go:
Be quiet, or--More light, more light! For shame!
I'll make you quiet. What, cheerly, my hearts!

Dumah: Then I shall gladly go from your halls, dear uncle of mine. (Walks off-stage, but in a flash of improve not called for in the script, Dumah trips a servant with wine, sending the red liquid splashing onto Melchiah's dress. Exits with a maniacal grin)

(Kain and Ariel move along their respective paths on the stage until they meet each other. Music cues from the speakers as each give one another a long look. Nupraptor, who has now just woken up on the floor, sees the meaning in Kain's eyes and begins to get angry)

Nupraptor: Oh hell, he's not going to move in on my girl! I'll show him- (Collapses onto the floor again after Mortanius and Moebius bashed him over the head with their staffs)

Dejoule: (Whispering) Is he always like that?

Bane: Worse. Oh, here it comes, here it comes! (Back onstage)

Kain: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

Ariel: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. (Takes Kain's hand a kisses it. The smile that comes across his face is in fact real and not made up)

Kain: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

Ariel: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

Kain: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Ariel: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

Kain: Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

Ariel: (Beginning to blush as well but unaware of the effect) Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

Kain: Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.

Ariel: You kiss by the book.

(Zephon/Nurse breezes in and with more force than intended pushes Kain out of the way and stands in front of Ariel)

Zephon: Madam, your mother craves a word with you.

Kain: (Thinking thoughts of revenge against his son) What is her mother?

Zephon: Marry, bachelor,
Her mother is the lady of the house,
And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous
I nursed her daughter, that you talk'd withal;
I tell you, he that can lay hold of her
Shall have the chinks.

Kain: Oh, another suitor, I see. Is she a Capulet?
O dear account! My life is my foe's debt.

(Benvolio quickly comes to his friend's aid)

Benvolio: Away, begone; the sport is at the best.

Kain: Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest.

Janos: (Walks up with a wine glass but that's no blood inside) Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone;
We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.
Is it e'en so? why, then, I thank you all
I thank you, honest gentlemen; good night.
More torches here! Come on then, let's to bed.
Ah, sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late:
I'll to my rest.

(Everyone follows Janos towards the banquet hall itself, leaving Zephon and Ariel onstage alone)

Some Sarafan: You better not talk too much, nurse!!! Cuz if you do then you'll- (Doesn't finish sentence as another Zephonim vampire spins the guy into a web and sticks him to the wall)

Zephon: Much better.

Ariel: Come hither, nurse. What is yond gentleman?

Zephon: (High-pitched voice) The son and heir of old Tiberio.

Ariel: What's he that now is going out of door? What's he that follows there, that would not dance?

Zephon: I know nothing of it, young lady.

Ariel: Go ask his name: if he be married.
My grave is like to be my wedding bed.

Zephon: My, have you a flair for the dramatic. His name is Romeo, and a Montague;
The only son of your great enemy.

Ariel: (Places a hand to her forehead) My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.

Zephon: What is this? What have you to speak?

Ariel: A rhyme I learn'd even now
Of one I danced withal.

(At this point the director was suppose to say 'Juliet, come hither' from off in the wings, but Anamae feels that the play is lacking something and on a dare from Turel says what she thinks should be said)

Anamae: (Offstage) JULIET! Get your ass in here, girl!!!!! (Dissolves into laughter with Turel)

Zephon: And this is where everything begins to fall apart. (Walks offstage with Ariel and the curtains fall)

* * *

Ariel: What the hell was that? You ruined the whole moment!

Anamae: Well, it needed some spice!

Turel: Yeah, give the authoress a break!

Ariel: And how is the director coming along?

Rahab: (Walks by with a cold compress and a book) She hasn't woken up yet. And I still can't believe that I'm a friar and poisoner rolled into one. What would the real church think about this?

Melchiah: Ariel, we need your help! Kain and Malek are back to fighting each other again and this time they're using weapons and hostages! I don't think the stange mice can survive the encounters – they're so tiny!

Ariel: Very well.

(Umah walks up to Anamae)

Umah: You should tell everyone now that they can go out to get their snacks or go to the bathroom. Intermission, director-for-the-moment.

Anamae: Oh yeah! I'll be back! (Rushed through the curtains and slides onto the stage. Spotlight comes on) People, people, this is the end of Act 1. Now you may leave your seats for the twenty-minute intermission to go to the washroom or to get some food. But we ask all vampires in the theatre hall not to walk across the street and prey on the Children's Daycare Centre and that the Sarafan restrain from killing the vampires. Thank you!

(Everyone piles out of their seats in an undignified matter and crams out of the doors. Only Moebius and the knocked out Nupraptor are left)

Moebius: And excellent play so far, young lady. Of course I believe the special effects have worked too well as I am covered in the props from this play. But I am sure this was all accidental. (Motions to the blood, popcorn, guts, water and soda strewn over his clothing)

Anamae: Not really. But then you're the Guardian of Time so I'm sure you will see what's going to happen next to you.

Moebius: Not really.

Anamae: Then you'll have to wait. (Walks backstage)

Sarafan cocooned to the walls: Help!!! Someone help us! Anybody, somebody! Little help?