Bruno & Boots: Small Time Gangsters

by crimethinker

Bruno & Boots books: This is fanfic, but I doubt anyone's read the books. I wrote this STAND-ALONE juvenile parody when I was 13 or 14. It's about a couple of schools: in the course of the schoolyear, about 200 people get murdered. How? Read on!

Bruno & Boots: Small Time Gangsters

A/N: The main reason why I have posted this ridiculously crude and violent story is for future reference when I post a slightly better story that is this story's sequel. It sucks that this story's target audience is too young to get past the R rating, so chances are nobody'll read it in its entirety. Still, if you feel like reading a lot of violence (not senseless violence, there is a point to it all, though sometimes it's a terrible point), a lot of sex, and a lot of swearing, then read this.

Unimportant A/N: For the benefit of Americans: Torches are flashlights Rounders is a sport kinda like baseball, but the sissy version: the bats are small enough and light enough to be wielded in one hand

Bruno Walton and Melvin 'Boots' O'Neal stepped off the school bus together, still arguing about who got laid the most during the summer holiday that had just passed. It was the first day of their third-to-final year of secondary education at Macdonald Hall, a boarding school for boys. Bruno grinned as he looked across the road to Miss Scrimmage's Finishing School for Young Ladies. In particular he was thinking about Catherine Burton and Diane Grant, a couple of girls he knew over there. As well as being really fun to talk to and scheme with, they were great lays, not shy in the least and didn't mind if they weren't the only girl in the bed with the bloke.

"I'm telling you, the brunette and redhead bisexuals across the road from my house both screwed me." Boots lied. "First the redhead, then the brunette, then both at the same time - What is it?"

Bruno gestured to the girl's boarding school. "I forgot how much I like Cathy and Diane."

"I didn't forget at all," snorted Boots. "So, what sort of shit should we get into this year?"

"You mean apart from the Macdonald Hall Mafia, gratuitous carefree sex, and large scale vandalism?" inquired Bruno.

"We did that all last year, it's lost its novelty," said Boots. "I want to do something that will really leave a legacy in this place. Something to be told as a favourite story ten years on by people who never saw our faces. Something that will finally get us an entry in the Secret Binder." The Secret Binder (always capitalised out of respect) was a binder that had been created in the 1950s that contained entries about all the most outrageous things that had happened in the school. Twenty years before Bruno and Boots arrived at the school, an entire chapter had been made all about the Macdonald Hall Mafia, a secret tradition still carried on in Bruno and Boots's time. They had written about how to reactivate a deactivated gun, how to smoke banana skins to get high, how to sneak into Scrimmage's over the surface, where the secret tunnel to Scrimmage's was, and some of their most bloody fights and adventures, not to mention a hell of a lot more secret stuff that deserved to be written down. Half the SB made a great bedtime story. The other half was very informative and helpful. To get an entry into the Secret Binder, the entire SB clergy had to vote yes. (The SB clergy was made up of the thirty hardest people in the school. Not necessarily the most muscular; anyone who could, at any time, use any kind of force to destroy someone else with ease. A new member was admitted to the SB clergy by successfully destroying another member. Twice random people had tried to destroy Boots. Twice the persons failed and during the next dorm inspection found six kilos of heroin under their bed.)

"Get an entry into the Secret Binder?" repeated Bruno incredulously.

"Yes," said Boots. "It will take a lot of planning, but it will be worth it. Remembered for years to come..."

"How could we get into the Secret Binder?" asked Bruno thoughtfully. "So far, the majority of those who got into the Secret Binder killed someone. Who should we whack? Flynn? The mailman? Pete?"

"Whoa!" said Boots in sudden alarm. "It would be better if we did something spectacular - remember when we hooked up Fishdick to those party poppers?"

Bruno smiled in recognition. The Fishdick was Mr. Sturgeon, the headmaster of Macdonald Hall. He had earned his nickname from a photo taken by a student ten years ago, who personally had two entries to himself in the SB, the tied highest number for any one man. They had absolutely covered his dressing gown in specially prepared party poppers while he slept in his dressing gown. They had glued the strings to different places on the gown, so if he moved too much in one direction, a few party poppers would go off. (Elmer Drimsdale, a big boffin with a truly evil side to him, had drawn up all the blueprints to where the strings would go for the best effect.)

Anyway, when he moved even slightly forward to get out of bed, almost a dozen party poppers went off at his back. He leaped out of bed, accidentally kicking his wife off the other side in the process, as most of the other party poppers went off, setting his gown ablaze. As he scrabbled to take it off, the rest went off in his face. This forced him backwards, into his en suite bathroom. There Boots pushed him into the Jacuzzi bathtub. He fell into the leftover custard in the bathtub, which had taken Bruno and Boots all night to sneak into the bathtub, a bucketful at a time. Then Boots had thrown a bucketful of ants all over Fishdick, who sensed what they were and immediately started trying to scrape them off. This put the coloured toothpaste on his hands all over his body. Then Bruno and Boots jumped out the window they had pre-opened onto the pre-set-up high- jump mats and judo mats, and ran into their dormitory. They had organised quite a raucous dorm riot to happen right there, so not even with CCTV could they track down the culprit.

But of course they had profited from their escapade. They had two still photographs - one of Fishdick running around his bedroom with streamers all over the place and covering the floor, with his bathrobe on fire and his wife falling onto the floor, and another of Fishdick sitting up to his waist in old custard, covered in streamers, confetti and toothpaste, looking murderously at the camera (that doesn't even begin to describe it) - and they had videotaped the entire thing from start to finish. In fact, when everyone saw the evidence, the only student who voted against Bruno and Boots having an entry to their name was Elmer Drimsdale, because they had used and lost his ants without his permission.

Which brings us back to our main point: he wanted to do something that wouldn't piss off anyone of the SB clergy so it had a chance of getting into the SB.

"Yeah, I remember," said Bruno. "If you think of a genius idea like that one, let me know. In the meantime, I'll think of people to whack."

Meanwhile, Miss Scrimmage, the headmistress of the Finishing School across the road, drove up in her pickup truck and swerved into the driveway, narrowly avoiding sideswiping six students. They let out bellows of outrage at the inconsiderate, deluded woman, who made rude signs and marched swiftly up the road.

The headmaster was standing on the driveway, greeting students as they walked past. He didn't know any of their names, so he just said "Hi." vaguely, and the students scowled at him as they walked on, and some vandalised his car when he looked the other way. Miss Scrimmage walked right up to him and began harassing him needlessly like the annoying, paranoid freak she was.

"Your students have been terrorising my poor, defenceless girls over the summer!" she shrieked.

"Oh, my hoodlum gang members of children have now been visiting their houses and raping your girls?" Mr. Sturgeon asked idly, not even bothering to show the faintest traces of fake concern. He knew this slag too well. "It seems to me that far from being raped repeatedly, your girls are actually gagging-for-it slutty whores, you cock-biting glue-sniffing mental asylum escapee."

Miss Scrimmage, being so angry, didn't hear a word, which he counted on. "My school grounds were vandalised!" she shouted, turning every head for twenty metres.

"Then, it wasn't the girls affected, but your precious buildings, you ditzy penis-pincher with tits hanging past your knees." he said warily, waiting for the ridiculous actual occurrence, which he could rip to shreds with ease. In fact, Bruno and Boots had stopped walking and had placed a side bet on how fast it would take Miss Scrimmage to walk away in a dignified huff.

"I was taking a stroll in the apple orchard and I found this in it!" She thrust a weed at Mr. Sturgeon. "Clearly some sort of terrorist weapon, designed to ensnare young, impressionable ladies before merciless forced sexual conduct!"

"I think you'll find," Fishdick said icily, "that these plants are completely natural, and occur all the time. Harmful to the trees, yes, but not your 'impressionable' 'ladies'. They are not ladies, they are girls. And they aren't impressionable, they have already had the impression stamped onto them that dangerous, vigorous sex is the best way to spend time outside of the classroom." Miss Scrimmage walked away in a dignified huff. Boots stopped the stopwatch, and Bruno wailed in annoyance at the fact that he lost by a tenth of a second. Fishdick continued talking, as he knew that the slag wouldn't be listening, she'd be trying to quell the strange stares she was getting. "Go away, fuckface. I have had quite enough of you. Which is why yesterday I rented out a car with the Visa card I stole out of your purse, and drove this car across your hockey fields, through your gymnasium wall, into several classrooms, up the stairs, and came to rest in your living room, where it's still there, with the engine running."

"Let go of that stolen property!" Miss Scrimmage screamed suddenly at some poor fourth year. She ripped the baseball cap off his head and kicked him off the driveway, into the school pond.

"Miss Scrimmage." Fishdick said coldly. "I assure you that is that child's property. There is absolutely no evidence to the contrary."

"Yes there is!" she snapped. "I have seen a young lady of mine wear a hat of that exact description!"

"That is due to the assembly line production of Nike," he said firmly. "If they didn't make more than one cap of one description, then even when they pay the workers in Calcutta 6 cents an hour they would fail to turn a profit."

"Well..." she began, then marched away in a slightly less dignified huff.

"Fucking ugly crone." he called after her. As she walked, she suddenly gave a strangled yell and snatched a bag off a student and punched him in the face, before picking up a two-by-four the construction crew had left after they finished the pond, and began thwacking him across the ribs as he lay on the ground.

"Production lines!" screamed Fishdick and the kid's friend in unison. Miss Scrimmage paused, dropped the heavy board and fled to the pickup.

"What a dumb bitch she is." remarked Bruno to Fishdick.

"The world would be better off without her." he replied and walked away.

Bruno and Boots looked at each other and grinned.

"We just practically got permission from Fishdick himself to waste her." Boots said slyly.

"Let's wait a few days for everyone to settle in properly, then organise a hit." Bruno suggested.

"Nah, we'll have to do it ourselves if you really want fame." Boots said.

"Fuck that, hire some piecashit to do it, then pay him double to keep quiet and tell everyone we did it personally." Bruno answered.

"Good idea." approved Boots. "Come on. Let's go to good old Room 306 and break out the entire stash."

"Oh yeah." said Boots and grinned to himself.

Forty-five minutes later, at nine o'clock, Room 306 was a haze of intoxicating smoke. Heroin smoke, marijuana smoke, banana skin smoke, even mundane old tobacco smoke. The entire SB clergy, most of whom were also members of the Macdonald Hall Mafia, were present. Everyone was incredibly high, bordering on overdose, but they had done this so many times before that they were quite used to it.

They weren't doing anything useful. They were just socialising, catching up, getting high, and when fifteen of the sluttiest girls in Scrimmage's (including Cathy and Diane) were imported through the secret tunnel, even screwing. The celebration lasted hours into the night, but the dormitory supervisor, Mr. Fudge, didn't stop anything, because the old pervert was being bribed with money, drugs and a lap dance.

Because of the large lack of secluded places in Room 306, only a bare minimum of cover was afforded for couples, even after the party was spread to four separate rooms so more people could get laid. Assuming the main crowd stayed in the centre of the room, there were pairs behind couches, under blankets, under beds, and even a few completely out in the open.

After the orgy subsided, and the completely worn-out harlots began shambling home, trying to walk, returning for forgotten articles of clothing, etc. they began talking about the SB. Bruno and Boots put forward their idea of killing Miss Scrimmage, and everyone reluctantly agreed to put it in when it happened, but wished that something more memorable would happen for once.

Then talk turned to the Mafia. All the members, even the lowly minders, were in school and prepared to continue their reign of terror. All the managers were present in Room 306, and someone proposed a new Bedtime Tax, which entailed a bunch of minders going round to every room in the school at bedtime every night and demanding fifty cents under the penalty of Bad Luck. This was grudgingly passed, but many openly complained about its similarity to the Lunchtime Tax.

Then talk turned to world politics, which mainly entailed everyone brutally ripping the piss out of President Bush (Senior and Junior). Then, briefly, Bruno and Boots' weapons stash, which resided in the safe hidden under the floor boards beneath the TV, and contained three revolvers, one scoped .300 hunting rifle, four pickaxes, five swords, thirteen knives and ten baseball bats. Then various other topics, before a daytime bazaar was organised for late afternoon on Saturday, then everyone went to bed three hours before school started.

The next morning Bruno and Boots didn't bother getting up for classes. They got out of bed at 2 p.m. They began the day with lunch and bullying a fat kid. Then they caught a minder before he went to class.

"Heya, Joey, wait up," said Bruno. He and Boots ran up to Joey, who was carrying a burgeoning bag of dimes.

"What's the fuckin' problem?" he asked gruffly. He swore notoriously, all the time.

"We got a job for you." said Boots.

"A great job." amended Bruno.

"Fuck yeah, I like messing up the skulls of mothafuckas." Joey said blandly.

"I want you to pay a visit to Miss Scrimmage," said Boots. This was code/slang for 'Beat her senseless and smash her kneecaps in.' "A lengthy visit." he added. This was lingo he invented on the spot, as very rarely did even a member of the Macdonald Hall Mafia want someone dead. Joey sucked in his breath sharply.

"That's a pretty big fuckin' job." he whistled.

"Here's two grand for the job -" said Boots and passed over the money discreetly, "and an extra two grand for your silence." And he passed some more over.

"God damn silence?" Joey demanded, bewildered.

"We're going to tell everyone we did it personally," explained Bruno. "We want a place in the SB."

"Need-to-know, bellend." muttered Boots. "Are you up for it? Or are we going to have to kill you?"

"I'm good." Joey said defensively, hand edging towards the knife stuck behind his belt. Bruno and Boots backed off, and Joey realised they'd just paid him his average monthly wage for one job. "Actually I'm a lot fucking better than good! Shit yeah! I ain't never gonna tell anyone, my life and four grand are worth too much for that."

"Don't care how, just make sure it's done." advised Boots as the two famous mobsters walked away from the deserted corridor.

They strolled to double geography, arriving twenty minutes late. The teacher knew better than to rebuke them too roughly, and he knew much better than to wake them as they slept. The lesson passed peacefully before the bell, after which Bruno and Boots went back to their room to inject themselves with various substances.

As they were coming down, Joey came into the room. "Come on, mufuggas, it would be more convincing if you knew exactly how I killed the old ho." Reluctantly, they followed. Joey snuck into Scrimmage's with ease, jogging straight for the clearing inside the apple orchard. In the middle of it was the plump, paranoid Miss Scrimmage, cradling her shotgun. She was teaching sewing, holding the lesson outside in the last few days of warmth. The girls who had finished their sewing exercises were running around in the orchard, playing hide-and-seek. Or pretending to, they were generally getting into some heavy californication. Joey crept around the outside of the clearing, hushing girls as he went past, and Boots had some difficulty following. Finally, they were behind Miss Scrimmage. Joey donned a balaclava and took out a long hunting knife. He ran into the clearing relatively quietly, and the rustle of bushes went completely unnoticed amidst the girls' game.

Then, over-eager at his first ever kill, he made his mistake. He roared in triumph, bloodlust getting the better of him, still six feet off from his quarry, knife held in a stabbing position. Miss Scrimmage, being so paranoid, grabbed her shotgun and fired behind her without looking, most of the lead shot impacting his abdomen. It was a powerful weapon, so powerful it nearly ripped Joey in half. Certainly he was dead before he hit the ground. Boots instantly sprinted away as fast as he could, hurtling out of the orchard. Bruno took his tongue out of some topless girl's throat when he heard the boom, realised what had just happened, and pelted towards Macdonald Hall.

The rest of the afternoon was chaotic uproar. Miss Scrimmage took her entire school down to Fishdick's house and screamed that his boys had tried to kill her, Fishdick screamed back that she had killed one of his boys, lawyers appeared as if by magic and coaxed it into a huge lawsuit as well as a legal investigation, all the teachers were very worried indeed, all the students were indifferent and took the opportunity to make out with each other.

What with the furious battle of words being waged in the courts and all the teachers who weren't testifying being unable to concentrate and letting their students out early without restraint, even more socialising and copulation occurred. So everyone enjoyed a nice free afternoon. Bruno and Boots, not wanting to admit they were present at the killing, pretended to know nothing. While Boots went to defend his and Bruno's good names in front of the SB clergy (who suspected exactly what had happened) Bruno had a twenty-minute threesome with Cathy and Diane. When the two joined up together, they got blind drunk and participated in a huge orgy in the rec hall, but remembered none of it.

When they finally recovered from their hangovers, they discovered some odd things. For example, Boots's leg was trapped in the wall, and Bruno was tickling his foot with his breath next door as he slept upside-down while tied to the ceiling. Not least the clear evidence of a puking contest across Room 306's floor, complete with ruler, judges' table and scoreboard, and of course the pungent smells of tobacco, marijuana, speed, cocaine, beer, wine, and liqueur.

"Man, what the fuck happened last night?" groaned Boots, facedown on the table, covered in honey and chicken-feathers. Next door Bruno moaned.

"Where am I?" asked Cathy, wearing a Wonder Woman suit and holding a cardboard bazooka and a tin bottle of Jack Daniels.

"In Dacmonald Hall," said Boots, grimacing at his extreme discomfort.

"Really?" asked Bruno next door. "Then why the fuck am I on the ceiling?"

"I don't know," groaned Wilbur Hackenschleimer, in the same room as Bruno. "Bruno, why are you on the ceiling?"

"I don't know," said Bruno. "Wilbur, why are you on the ceiling?"

"I'm not. You are."

"I'm on the ceiling? Weird. Hey Wilbur, why are you wearing a bloodstained toga?"

"I don't know. Bruno, why are you on the floor?"

"I'm not. I'm on the ceiling. You're on the floor." BAM! "I was wrong. We're both on the floor."

"I'm on the floor? Why aren't I on the ceiling?"

"Hey, Boots, why are you dressed like a turkey?"

"That's not a turkey. That's a chicken."

"No, that's a turkey."

"A chicken."

"A turkey."

"No, that bird on the window is definitely a chicken. Why the hell is there a chicken in here?"

"There's a chicken in here?"

"Damn it, I keep thinking I'm on the ceiling."

"Just a stupid feeling. Trust me, you're on the ceiling."

"Thanks for the reassurance."

"No sweat."

"Yeah there's a fucking chicken in here..."

Things went on like this for quite some time. Finally, people remembered how to move their arms and legs, and they got up and went their separate ways. When the girls went back to their school and were questioned by Miss Scrimmage, they blamed their disappearance on Fishdick. She agreed. The boys blamed their failure to attend lessons on Miss Scrimmage. He reprimanded them, but in his heart he agreed.

Once everyone had cleared out of Room 306, and Bruno had sprayed around near-lethal quantities of Axe to block out all the horrific smells, Bruno and Boots were finally alone, the first time since Joey blew it.

"Okay," said Boots, "I managed to convince the SB clergy that we had nothing to do with Joey attacking Miss Scrimmage. So now we definitely have to try again at killing her, and succeed, and put our names on it, or else they'll know we're lying, and discredit us, and then any old upstart little shit can take us off the SB clergy roster, which'll cost us our Mafia jobs too. Basically, if we don't have a bit of luck, our whole way of life is finished. And once we've been robbed of our power it makes it much easier for our enemies to destroy us, they'll gather in for the kill like the vultures they are. We CAN'T let that happen. We're committed to wasting Miss Scrimmage. It's her or us, and I've already made my choice. Are you up for it?"

"Of course." responded Bruno.

"Then I propose this. WE PERSONALLY get ourselves heavily armed and go and kill her. While she's asleep. Tonight."

"Okay, but when we do, be prepared for anything." cautioned Bruno. "I heard one of the girls talking about Miss Scrimmage's new bodyguard, and some security guards on night-time patrol routes of both schools."

"When was this?"

"Right before she sucked my cock."

"I mean time of day, bellend."

"Around ten last night."

"I'm tired. Let's go to French."

The pair left.

It was during physics that Boots had the brainwave.

"Hey, Bruno. I've got a much better idea for getting into the SB."

"What is it?"

"We blow up Fishdick's house."

"With him in it?"

"No. Neither with Mrs. Fishdick in it. I'd much rather have an incompetent headmaster, so we've got to look out for his safety while doing it. Mainly I just want to see the look on his face and photograph it for the SB. Picture this: Him and his bitch have just come home from some truly delightful and homosexual opera, and have begun to chat about the weather, and are pulling up in the drive, while someone looks at his face through a telescopic camera, and just as he opens the car door the man with the camera detonates the bomb. He then waits exactly three seconds, then takes a photo, then submits it to the SB clergy, then the next day Fishdick opens up a letter and in it we describe what we did, laugh at him and his fishdick, and don't leave a signature. It'll be great."

"Good idea, Boots. I'll tell the clergy about the change of plans myself." Then they continued their round of poker with the chairman of the SB clergy himself, Elmer Drimsdale. The physics teacher knew way better than to interfere with their game. He was working for 62 grand a year, because when his predecessor had given Elmer Drimsdale a detention, his body had been found half an hour later in the female staff bathroom with two swords rammed through his chest and his dick cut off and flushed down the toilet. Therefore, he let them continue to play. He didn't even speak when Bruno snuck a card from his sock in such a way that only Elmer and Boots didn't see it, but the rest of the class did. It didn't help that they were playing with a bloodstained nudie deck in front of a teacher, but as I said before, he knew better than to guarantee his own gruesome murder.

After their poker tournament had gotten boring, they all fell asleep for the rest of the day, waking only to change from one classroom to another when the bell went, and even then they would all fall asleep instantly. Once the end of the schoolday happened, Bruno told the SB clergy what he was going to do. They agreed, and directed him to Mark Davies, the gunrunner of the school.

"Yo, Mark!" called Bruno to Mark while he 'caught up on sleep'. "I need something of yours!" This was, of course, code for an order of weaponry.

"Password?" asked Mark from inside his closed door.

Bruno fished into his pocket and got out a piece of paper, which he had gotten from Elmer. Mark's password system was tough. It was a 10-character string of letters and numbers that changed every midday. There were different passwords for different branches of weapons. Every crook in the school (99.9% of the students and 10% of the staff) knew Mark Davies' password for close-combat weapons, maybe 1 in 65 students in the halls knew the password for his pistols, and damn near no one knew the password for heavy weapons like assault rifles, shotguns and explosives. Bruno read the password, which was for explosives. When he read it correctly, Mark mumbled, "High roller - better send these bitches home and hurry up."

Bruno waited patiently. He knew Mark was getting all of his shit ready; sending the Scrim-prossies out through the window to hide naked in the bushes, dragging his mounds of explosives out of whatever hiding place he had, setting them up like his bare-to-the-walls bedroom was a market stall, make sure he was ready for any surprise, which included an LAPD SWAT team using the armoured vehicle to punch a hole through his wall (even though he was in outer Toronto), and finally, put on his salesman smile.

"I'm about to open the door," he said in a low voice. "There will be a gun pointed at you. Please keep your weapons concealed, and if more than one person tries to enter at a time, everyone in the room except me will be shot." He opened the door. "I hope you're not thinking of smoking right now," he joked.

Bruno gawked. There was at least a hundred pounds of plastic explosive, a ton of dynamite, boxes and boxes of gunpowder, and all sorts of liquid and gaseous explosives in airtight barrels and pressurised containers respectively. His whole room was full of explosives. Damn right he shouldn't smoke at that time. Also, Mark was holding an MP5SD in his muscled, black-gloved hands, the only permanently silenced gun he'd ever seen in his life.

"Uh..." he began. He had a right to be startled. "I need enough explosives to blow up Fishdick's house."

Mark Davies didn't look remotely surprised at this. Inwardly, on a basic level, he was. But he had seen way too much shit to be able to show emotion anymore. He had murdered a hundred, gunned down five hundred, stabbed fifty, and broken the necks of twenty people. He had been caught by some form of authority or crime lord five times, tortured half to death four times, escaped from his captors five times, had been running from someone in at least a hundred chases by rival gangsters, police forces and/or government agencies, and had returned back to Macdonald Hall without severe broken bones or internal bleeding every time. He had blown up dozens of buildings, torched twice as many, and even nerve-gassed two. Basically, imagine completing the entire plot of the X-box game Halo in real life without dying once (obviously). On Legendary difficulty. That was Mark's experience in life. He was so good he hadn't made another mistake for over two years of non-stop crime out of his six-year career.

"Fishdick's house?" repeated Mark. "You have three options: for simplicity, use plastic explosive and a remote detonator. You'll save some money if you get the detonator back to me, completely unharmed, with no fingerprints. For the tight budget, use dynamite, but I don't know how the hell you're going to blow up Fishdick's house with dynamite without destroying anything else and by only lighting one fuse. And, if you're going for the fireball effect, use hot explosive gases, lit at a distance by one of these babies." He indicated a Light Anti-tank Weapon loaded with a rocket that had no warhead in it. "But as much as I would like to finally sell that stuff, I'd have to say that using that stuff on his house would probably melt half the school, so unless you concoct a plan to get the whole student body and staff into the far corner of the school grounds, I really don't recommend it."

"I want to blow it up in his face, but not so close that he's gravely injured," said Bruno. "Preferably right when he comes home from watching an opera or something."

"Hmm," said Mark. "You would probably be best off with eight small amounts of plastic explosive at the bases of the load-bearing walls of his house. But if you want no chance of a piece of shrapnel killing either him or his wife, you'll have to splash out for either protective armour on his house or protective armour on his car. Or you can take the chance. Your choice."

"As always," said Bruno. "I think I'll take the chance. Yeah. Get me 32 pounds of plastic explosive, rolled into balls, eight detonator caps, and one remote detonator. At the earliest I'll need it tonight, but it could wait until next month. I'll get you a more accurate figure in ten minutes." With that he sprinted out of Mark's dorm, being careful to close the door on his way out lest there should be a teacher right outside.

He ran all the way over to Larry, outside the Headmaster's office.

"Larry," he said, "when's the next time Fishdick goes to an opera?"

"Tonight," he said. "He told me he should get back at about one o'clock. Why?"

"Thanks," he said, pressing ten dollars into his hand. He sprinted back to Mark's place and gave the password again. He told Mark through the closed door that he needed the stuff for eleven that night, then walked contentedly back to room 306, and barged in on Boots, Cathy and Diane lying naked in bed.

At eleven o'clock, Bruno and Boots crept down to Mark Davies' room. After giving the secret password, Mark said, "Damn it, I forgot. Fuck off you whores." After five more minutes the door opened, and Bruno went into the room, while Boots stayed outside.

"Here's the PE, the detonator caps, the transmitter and the receivers," said Mark helpfully. "You jam these into the PE and hide the blobs at even locations throughout the house. The transmitter and receivers are extraordinarily clever. You can set the receivers to one of four preset frequencies, and will only detonate if a certain encrypted key is sent over the exact frequency. This key is automatically sent out when you hit the big red button here on the transmitter, but it's quite a long key so expect a two-second delay from when you hit it. You can even set which frequency the transmitter transmits on, on one of the four preset frequencies. So you can detonate them all at the same time, or you can set them off one by one, or in smaller groups, depending on your taste. Just don't forget that two- second delay."

"Thanks." said Bruno.

"That'll be twenty thousand dollars, please," said Mark pleasantly.

Bruno blanched. "Twenty thou...?!" he wheezed.

"Hey, that shit cost me ten grand." defended Mark. "At least it would have done, except I stole it."

"Can we afford that, Boots?" called Bruno.

"Just." came Boots' strangled reply. "But it'll put us in the poorhouse."

"An entrance in the SB is worth it. Go get the rest of our money."

"How much did you bring?" asked Mark offhand.

"Boots brought eight thousand dollars," said Bruno. "I only wanted to bring half that. I had no idea it would cost that fucking much."

"Fine." said Mark in a pained voice. "I can offer you a 40% discount for friendship."

"Thanks." said Bruno gratefully.

Several minutes later, Boots returned. He passed thirteen thousand dollars through the door to Bruno. Bruno handed back nine grand.

"Price drop." he explained and shut the door in Boots' face. Mark and Bruno made the exchange and shook hands. Then the two left to set it all up.

They disguised themselves in black cloaks and hoods and went down to Fishdick's house. First Boots set all the frequencies to preset frequency one and laid one blob on the back patio while Bruno set another in the vegetable patch. They had to wait for five minutes for a patrolman to get at least three hundred metres away, then Bruno walked up to the front door and kicked it in. He headed for the stairs of the tiny house with three blobs. The way was barred by Mr. Sturgeon. There was a long, horrified pause.

"Stink bombs, I presume?" he said coldly. "You must have discovered that tonight I was going to participate in the glories of Die Fledermaus. Unfortunately my wife couldn't go, she has a head cold, and I decided to stay with her. I was just on my way downstairs for a hot water bottle, but this is far more satisfying."

Bruno didn't want to speak, in case his voice was identified later, for he had no desire to kill Fishdick. So instead he hurled a lamp at the limping old man and bolted out the door.

"Change of plans, Boots! Go!" Bruno shouted, as Fishdick hit the fire alarm.

Close to tears at their horrific luck, the duo stumbled on back to Dormitory 3, but the armed patrolmen had somehow identified them and were chasing. They were a good sixty metres behind, but even if Bruno and Boots could meld into the riot that had formed in the fire alarm checkpoint they still had all the bombs on them. Bruno was just about to suggest giving someone else the bombs, but Boots had already dismissed the possibility; what with Fishdick's minions swarming everywhere, nobody would accept them even for money. So instead Boots tossed them over his shoulder, and grabbed Bruno's and threw them backwards too. Bruno swore as he realised that the disaster the mission had become was about to become a very expensive disaster, as they couldn't hide the evidence, only dump it. But Bruno figured the stuff would just end up rotting in some police evidence centre, and he wanted to test Mark's reliability, so he mashed the big red button and pulled Boots into a baseball dugout.

Next second, Bruno knew for a fact that Mark Davies would never lie about his products. He would never even bend the truth. The explosions made three echoes off the woods and buildings, and even levelled the soccer goals, which were a good ten metres off. Miraculously the dugout didn't collapse, but the stands above fell over backwards. Bits of earth and the chasing patrolmen's flesh fell like rain after ten seconds. Bruno and Boots came out of the dugout coughing from all the dust. They looked back at Fishdick's house. Because it was much less concentrated, the two explosions over there only wrecked the patio and totally uprooted the cabbage patch. Fishdick's house itself barely had a scorch mark.

"Fuggin'ell." breathed Boots.

"Come on, let's go blend in." said Bruno, and threw down the detonator in front of him and trampled it with his running foot. They successfully joined the crowd just as order was restored and Fishdick himself took roll call. One person was missing, but it turned out that it was because he was boning Diane so hard in the shower that neither of them heard the fire alarm.

Two patrolmen were dead, one fatally wounded and would be dead within the next twenty-four hours, two others lightly wounded. There was a massive long speech from Fishdick about morality, which nobody listened to, and then everyone's room was searched (they didn't even find anything in Mark's room) before they were grudgingly allowed permission to go to bed.

Searches happened frequently, at least once a week, so no one was seriously worried, even though this time two people had died. The illegal bazaars, gambling and prostitution continued as normal once three o'clock had arrived. They sold more heroin to stupid druggies (they had been drug dealers for three years). Then they went to an all-important SB meeting.

"Bruno and I are sorry to report that, quite obviously, we failed to blow up his house tonight," said Boots, unsuccessfully stifling a yawn. "He was home, though we had good reason to think he wouldn't be. If I had continued laying the bombs, he would have grabbed me and taken off my hood and saw me. Then I would have had to kill him. That should never happen, we might get a new headmaster with a brain. Same result if I had just stood there. It was an oversight that could have been avoided, but mistakes happen. And I didn't want the explosives to just end up getting stolen by rival gangmembers from a police depot, so I set them off. At least I uprooted his cabbage patch and wrecked his back patio, so he'll have to use a stepladder to enter through the back for a long time."

"Shit happens," was Elmer's opinion. "We refuse to reimburse you in full, simply because, as you said, it was a mistake that could have been avoided. But here's five grand from me to make the burden more bearable." He threw Boots a wad of cash wrapped in a few rubber bands. He pocketed the bills in glee. "Now, do you intend to keep trying to blow up the guy's house?"

"No way," said Bruno. "I'm kinda discouraged from that stuff. It would be a lot easier to get into the SB if I didn't mind killing the victim of my legendary-prank-to-be. Which is why I've decided to go back to my old plan of killing Miss Scrimmage." There was a barely audible annoyed moan. "Don't worry, I'll do it quite violently to make it memorable, so the means get into the SB and not the ends."

"We'll do it quite violently," corrected Boots.

"Yes," said Bruno.

"You have heard of her new security measures, right?" asked Elmer.

"Not really," said Bruno. "I heard about a security guard..."

"Much worse than that," said Elmer. "My spies have told me that she has bought an armoured limo to transport her around whenever she leaves the building. She has also bought a retinal scanner for the front door. Only her, her students and her staff can enter or leave. All the other entrances, even windows, have been permanently blocked up with strong reinforced cement. She also has half-a-dozen permanent bodyguards, reasonably well-armed, near her at all times, even if she just goes to the store for some cigarettes and haemorrhoid cream, plus the swarms of night watchmen around both of our schools."

"Gay." put in Boots. "Well, we're still going to do it, but we'll need help."

"If you manage it, you've definitely got my vote." stated Chris Talbot, the school's most used hitman, who usually got one job every two months. (Mark Davies was far too expensive to hire, so Chris Talbot was usually the man for the job.) "There's a large chance of getting killed. Her BG are skilled and ruthless."

"How much do you want for the job?" asked Bruno.

"Two grand." replied Chris.

"Payment upon completion." accepted Bruno. "We can supply all the weapons. If we've got enough cash, we'll hire Mark Davies too. If not, we'll just have to make do with a few other random grunts. We'll tell you the rest of the details once we work them out."

"Whoa, whoa!" exclaimed Elmer. "You mean that you two are short of cash?!"

"It cost an unbelievable amount for those bombs." explained Boots.

"And it's early in the year, we haven't yet started raking it in." added Bruno.

"Mainly because a certain someone has been forgetting to pay us our fifty percent." Boots added loudly to Elmer.

"Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me," said Elmer truthfully. "Let's see, if the underground tunnels have been used... 176 times, at $10 per head, I owe you $880. Hold on a second..." He ruffled in his pockets and efficiently counted out 16 bills. This he passed down the line of SB clergy to Boots. Boots counted and pocketed all the money.

The rest of the meeting (which this time, like the two predecessing meetings, was held in the rec hall) passed in normal fashion, and there was a slight orgy when a few drunk girls wandered nearby. Then everyone left to do whatever they wanted to.

Outside a random person said, "How did the meeting go?"

"Went fine," said Bruno warily. He didn't recognise the guy. "Made a little money."

"Too bad, it's my money now," snarled the guy (who is now labelled Knifeman), who drew a knife and held it at Bruno's throat. Without spending any time thinking, Bruno punched the knife up. Knifeman's reflex was to stab forward, but because of Bruno's action, he stabbed nothing but the air above his head. Bruno grabbed the arm with both of his and pulled him into a very tight half-nelson. Knifeman screamed in pain. Bruno dropped the armlock only to wrestle the knife from his hand, then punched Knifeman in the back of the head, levelling him. Then a different guy (Clubman) thwacked him in the back with a rounders bat hard enough to wind Bruno. He fell to his knees, gasping for breath, but kicked Knifeman in the face before he went down. Boots turned around and saw a guy (Yankee) charging with a wooden baseball bat. He had done a year's tae kwon do, and had learned well. He pulled off a quick roundhouse kick, which sent Yankee sprawling across the linoleum, four inches of forehead skin hanging loose. He expertly grabbed the baseball bat in midair, grabbed it with his other hand too, and swung it at Clubman, who was going for the knockout swing to the head of the near-paralysed Bruno. Several teeth and a large glob of blood flew out of his mouth, and he did a midair flip and lay still on a waist-high table, unconscious.

He turned again and saw a muscled guy (Muscleman) coming with a metal baseball bat. Not an aluminium one, either, it looked like a customised through-and-through pure fucking iron. Muscleman swung at head-height. Boots stuck his new baseball bat up to block, as though they were fighting with swords. There was a crunching sound as the metal baseball bat knocked the wooden one aside. Boots barely ducked under his opponent's bat in time. Muscleman kicked Boots in the balls really hard, who fell back, groaning. Knifeman got up. Muscleman went for a lethal overhead smash onto Boots. Bruno stabbed him in the tricep, severing it completely and making him drop the bat onto his own heel. He screamed like a foghorn and curled into the foetal position on the floor. Knifeman punched Bruno in the back of the head very hard, almost knocking him out. Boots kicked Knifeman in the back of the knee, knocking him to the floor. Then he grabbed the metal baseball bat in both hands and swung it directly onto Knifeman's kneecap. There was a crack like a thunderclap, and Knifeman yelled like a banshee. Yankee got up and began a running charge. The guy could barely see from all the blood in his eyes, coming from the four-inch gash across his forehead, so he didn't notice Bruno pick up the wooden baseball bat and do an overhead throw. It shattered the guy's shin into six pieces. He fell to the floor at Boots' feet, howling.

And all of a sudden, after thirty seconds, all action had ceased. Knifeman had a pulled arm muscle, a bruise on his head and a broken kneecap; Clubman was unconscious and had lost six teeth and cracked his skull; Yankee had a permanent scar on his forehead and a compound fracture on his leg; and Muscleman had a severed muscle and a broken heel. Bruno and Boots themselves had escaped with minor bruises. They had gotten really fucking lucky. If all four had been muggers instead of one mugger and three friends, the result would have definitely been worse off for Bruno and Boots.

The famous duo were the object of attention in the rec hall. Of course they didn't want to press their luck, so they bid everyone a quiet farewell and left for bed.

That night, around 6 a.m., several people gathered inside the entrance to Dormitory 2. They had a very quiet talk for a minute, then they opened the door slightly. When the sentry had passed, they ran out towards Dormitory 3. One person went around the side of the building, whereas the remaining four went in through the front door. These four assembled outside the door to room 306. They all had big fucking knives, at least nine inches long each. One person began jimmying the lock with two nails that had been sawed and filed flat, while the other three began unscrewing light bulbs, until there was no light left in the corridor. The boys waited patiently for fifteen minutes to let their night-vision set in. Then one person mumbled a very quiet question, so quiet that no one could hear. Someone immediately covered the other person's mouth, because they had just successfully unlocked the door. One pushed open the door to Room 306, ready to kill Bruno and Boots for beating up their friends earlier that night.

It was pitch black in the room, but they could see relatively well with the moonlight coming in through the window.

The person who opened the door noticed. From the outside, they had seen that the window was closed and curtains were drawn across the inside. So someone in here was-

"AWAKE!" yelled Bruno, Boots, Wilbur and Larry together. They whipped the thick blankets off their really powerful torches, so the attackers reeled in agony when their night-vision was taken advantage of. In that time four shady figures jumped out from behind the door and under the beds and disarmed the other four. Then they were force-marched into 306. Bruno walked over and closed the door. The attackers, looking scared, were tied to chairs under threat of a cut throat. The person who had gone to the window was already tied up and was sweating like a week-old kebab.

"Right, assholes," said Boots quietly as the rest of the attackers were gagged. "I don't want to spend too much time on petty murderers like you. You can either suffer like you intended we did, or suffer like your friends did. Your choice. Take off the gags, Larry."

Larry did as he was told. The first one voted the second choice. So his gag was put back on. Wilbur took one of their knives, examined it a bit, and plunged it into the person's leg. He shouted into the gag. Wilbur took out the knife and cut him on the arm. Then he was escorted out of the building forcefully by one of the shady figures, limping and still tied up and gagged, then carried across the space to Dormitory 2. The same happened to the rest of the people, because they all realised a knife to the arm and leg was better than their face getting mashed or their leg crunched or their kneecap destroyed or heel cracked open. They were all dumped back inside Dormitory 2 without their stuff (not even the lockpicking instruments or their dormitory keys) and still tied up. In the end, they had to bang their heads onto a sleeping friend's door in unison to wake him up and have him untie the five of them and have him donate pens with which they could pick the locks of their own rooms so they could sleep on a bed until morning, when they could be admitted to the hospital wing.

The next morning was a Godawful nightmare worse than the night before. After all, nine people getting the absolute shit beaten out of them in the middle of the night right after a bunch of cops were killed by explosives kinda made Fishdick - and the Board of Directors - and the police - and the Canadian military - get a little worried about the state of the school. The entire morning was spent getting a huge lecture from Fishdick, the chair of the Board of Directors, and various Canadian politicians. In his speech Fishdick kept trying to psyche out the people who did it by saying he dabbled in crime and he had once killed someone; the chairman kept going on about how negative publicity for the school had an equally negative impact on the salaries of those who ran the school (he wasn't concerned about how these Macdonald Hall terrorists were creating terror everywhere they went, he was concerned about how his salary was going further down than rock bottom); and the politicians kept saying stuff about their plans to lower taxes and turn the debts of third-world countries into interest-free ones, and yet still have enough money to improve education, Canada's wildlife, and working conditions of the average worker, while the chairman and Fishdick tried in vain to change back to the topic at hand.

Miss Scrimmage's school had to attend, too, because Miss Scrimmage thought getting on TV was more important than classes, which just went to make sure that people were too busy staring at each other, kissing, and even fucking to listen to a word they were saying. Bruno and Boots themselves were too tired for that stuff, though, and they spent the entire morning asleep, as did Wilbur, Larry, and the four random people they had hired. Then some sneaky bastard put the soundtrack of a porn film on the intercom system while the secretary was away from her office, and everyone started having sex left and right, and the whole thing dissolved into sex, arguments, and even fistfights. The politicians left then, and the Board soon after. Fishdick left too, after twenty minutes, whereupon the students got even more out of control. The teachers tried to get the students to leave for classes, and most of the teachers were thrown through the assembly hall windows. Then six heavily armed and armoured police teams showed up and stormed Macdonald Hall because Miss Scrimmage had become convinced that they were all being kidnapped and called the police on her brick-like mobile phone. It took the sight of assault rifles, riot gear and tear gas grenade launchers to get the situation under control. Also, during the assembly Miss Scrimmage had to wake herself up with smelling salts twice and had to be reminded of Nike production lines at least fifteen times.

The day went back to normal only at three o'clock, because the lessons from two to three were taken up by lunch. All nine of the people were driven to hospital in ambulances. By one o'clock Bruno and Boots were rested enough to participate in the big orgy with the rest of both of the schools. The rest of the day they both slept through as well.

At eleven, scarcely an hour after curfew, people began sneaking out of their dormitories to the rec hall, Bruno and Boots included, of course. They asked various people who it was that they had beaten up the night before, and he was told that the nine people were all members of a little upstart gang on the second floor of Dormitory 2, who thought they were hard because they could mug people. They had been proved sadly mistaken, and had hopefully learned their lesson; don't fuck with the Mafia. They had also been punished for it, and seemed to be content to be a very localised gang, terrorising only the younger members of Dormitory 2. Bruno and Boots also went to a meeting of the Mafia in Chris Talbot's room.

"So," said Elmer Drimsdale (the leader if you remember) very first thing. "What's all this I'm hearing about another gang?"

"There's this band of half-tough bellends in the upper floor of Dormitory 2 who took on me and Bruno twice last night." said Boots uncaringly. "We taught them a lesson. They won't be a probl-"

"I don't care how troublesome they are." interrupted Elmer. "They're challenging my authority by existing. Bruno, Boots, I want you two to go convince the leader to disband his gang. A grand each."

"Got it." they chorused.

"Got any more details for me about the Scrimmage hit?" asked Chris.

"No." Bruno replied simply.

"Hey, everyone." said Boots loudly. "Bruno and I have come up with a new kind of drug craze: we call it the Ultra Cig. It contains tobacco, weed, crack, essence of banana skin, opium, heroin and hash. Who wants a freebie?"

After the new colour of haze was added to the already stifling array of smokes wafting throughout the room, everyone expressed their satisfaction for the new product and placed large orders. Diane Grant wandered in and was instantly the subject of a gangbang, after which the meeting broke up.

Afterwards, Bruno asked her, "How many different men and women have you had a sexual experience with?"

"About seven hundred." she said coolly.

"How many guys have you fucked this evening?" he persisted.

"Around forty." she answered. "So far." she added slyly.

"You whore!" he exclaimed. "Come on now, let's have a proper fuck."

"Okay." she conceded. "But afterwards I'm going to Dormitory 2. There's this black guy up there with a mammoth cock!"

"No, don't." said Bruno. "There's going to be some violence there soon. Me and Boots are getting paid to smack the shit out of some dude who lives on that floor."

"So?" she snorted. "I could have sex in front of the Prime Minister and it wouldn't put me off. Especially not if the guy's dick is nine inches long and an inch and three-quarters wide."

"But the black guy himself might be the target." explained Bruno. "All we know is that he's the leader of an arrogant, upstart gang who needs to be persuaded to give up. And while we break his legs, you might accidentally get in the way."

"Fine, I'll just go home." she mumbled. "But if you do take out the black dude, I want you to buy me a huge dildo to make up for him."

"Deal." said Bruno. "Now lie down on the bed, dammit."

Afterwards, Bruno went to find Boots so they could get a grand richer. He found him in Room 306, standing behind Cathy, who was bent over the desk naked. When the two had finished, Bruno and Boots took a baseball bat each from the stash and set off for Dormitory 2. They got to the outer entrance and found two men with crowbars standing there.

"Who goes there?" they demanded simultaneously.

"Nobody important." said Boots evasively. "Who the hell are you two?"

"Guardians of the Palace of the Red Snakes." replied one gutturally.

"The Red Snakes?" demanded Bruno.

"The new gang." the other guard smiled.

"Are you better than the Mafia?" asked Boots casually.

"Of course." the two chorused.

After a flurry of powerful blows the two guards were sprawled on the floor. One was groaning quietly, the other had blacked out. Bruno kicked their crowbars into the bushes before the two walked in.

"Maybe we should've interrogated them." mused Boots as an afterthought.

"Nah, they would've raised an alarm." said Bruno. "We'll interrogate the next Red Snake we meet."

They didn't have to wait long. Next second a person wearing all red stepped out of a room. His T-shirt sported a large, mean-looking, venomous snake.

"Where can I find the leader of the Red Snake?" demanded Bruno, taking hold of the kid's collar.

"Get off me." he muttered.

That was a mistake. Bruno punched him in the stomach, hard. The kid fell to his knees, winded.

"I'll ask again. Where can I find the leader of the Red Snake?"

"Don't even think about yelling, or I'll tear you a new asshole." added Boots.

The kid wheezed for a couple more seconds, then managed, "Second... floor... Room... 222..."

"Thanks, kiddo." Bruno spat. He dragged him with them up the stairs, and whacked his head into the door of Room 222 repeatedly by way of knocking. Several seconds passed, then he heard footsteps towards the door.

"Go away. We're busy in here."

"It's important." replied Bruno. "Open up."

"Fine." sighed the other person and undid the chain.

As soon as the handle had been turned Bruno barged through, bowling over the person who opened the door. The crowbar in his hands clattered to the ground. Bruno saw two other people with crowbars and laid them both low. Boots stepped in afterwards, dragging the Red Snake canary by his hair. He whacked the one on the floor in the head, kicked his crowbar away, closed the door, dropped the canary beside the door and whacked him one too. Then he turned to the Red Snake leader. He was, indeed, the black kid with the big dick. And Diane was, indeed, lying naked next to him in his bed, along with some other slut.

To seem more ominous, Boots pretended to not know Diane. He pointed his baseball bat at the stupid hopeful like a sword.

"Lose the bitches," he said calmly.

As Diane and the other ho threw coats over themselves and ran out, they gave Boots looks of hatred. Not because he called them bitches, because he'd just ruined their fun.

"What are you here for?" the kid asked calmly, still sitting naked under his covers in bed. "And why do I feel that my health insurance rates are about to go up?" he added with a wry smile.

Boots smiled back, but was careful to not look nice as he did it. "Hi. We're Bruno Walton and Melvin O'Neal, otherwise known as Bruno and Boots, working for Elmer Drimsdale."

The kid visibly turned deathly white. Which was quite something, considering his skin colour.

"Ahhhh, yes, now the reaction is more befitting." remarked Boots. "You see, Elmer Drimsdale is a happy kind of guy. He doesn't ask for much (per capita) and he doesn't like having to do things other than get high and fuck good-looking girls. But he does have to, quite a lot, which is where we come in, as you know."

Suddenly Bruno noticed movement from a bodyguard. He immediately ran up to him and clubbed him in the back.

"Now we heard about some cock-sucking two-bit assortment of slimeballs down in this dorm calling themselves a gang." continued Boots as though nothing had happened. "Naturally we looked into it. And it seems that you've managed to delude this entire pitiful floor and the one below it that you have a chance of getting somewhere. But you don't. The Mafia is so damn powerful that it has exceeded the normal definitions of a gang, which is why we renamed it 'the Mafia'. It's inevitable that we will win, especially when we have Mark Davies, Bruno and Boots, Chris Talbot and Elmer Drimsdale on our side. It was us two working alone, that's all it took to break through your prime defences. The Mafia will forever control everything. But just to make sure, we were sent over to force you to disband your gang. Now, I'm sure Drimsdale will be willing to forget your actions if you persuade him with a lump sum of forty thousand dollars up front."

"Well, I can't afford it." he admitted.

"What a surprise," he said. "See, the Elmer Drimsdale himself could afford that at least five times over, out of his own pocket. He could afford it at least eleven times over using the Mafia's treasury. And if Mark Davies sold every last one of his weapons, he could probably afford it two hundred times over. And you can't spare a measly forty grand? You see how inevitable it was that we would win, with our huge monetary advantage. Right?"

The guy stayed motionless and silent.

"RIGHT?" Boots yelled, and swung his bat inches from his face. The guy leaned back in bed to dodge.

"Right." he stated pleasantly.

Someone outside knocked on the door. Bruno flung open the door. He saw a big serpent T-shirt. He grabbed the guy and hauled him inside.

"You came at the wrong time, kid," he grinned evilly. Someone on the floor moaned. Bruno kicked him in the face.

"Carry on, Boots," he said.

"Right," said Boots, whose heart had nearly stopped when the door opened. He reared back with his baseball bat-

"Stop!" he commanded sternly. "Don't! I like my face the way it is!"

"Shut the fuck up down there, you assholes!" yelled the housemaster. "I'm trying to get some fucking sleep!"

"Sorry!" yelled Boots. Calmly he said, "You were saying..."

"How much did Drimsdale pay you to kill me?" he asked.

Boots was experienced enough not to be surprised. The gang leader didn't know they weren't intending to kill him. "Five thousand dollars," he said.

"I'll give you more than that if you don't kill Me." he offered. He reached into his pocket. As a reflex Boots swung the baseball bat. The black guy dodged, grabbed the bat and took it off him. Boots drew a knife and put it at the guy's throat before he could even think about hitting Boots with his own baseball bat.

"Drop it motherfucker." he said, pure hatred. The black guy complied, smiling. "Don't try that sort of shit again," he said. "Don't go for a weapon, or I won't stop attacking until you're dead."

"I wasn't going for a weapon," he said, unruffled as ever. "I was getting money for you two. Here, more than your salary each." Boots counted the bills while Bruno watched both people.

"You seem to be four grand short of paying us more than our salary."

"Yes, well, Elmer wouldn't pay five grand for the both of you just to beat the shit out of me," he said. "You can have that three grand each and be happy with it."

"Do you intend to disband your gang and perhaps consider a career in the Mafia?"

"If you're just going to ask me, why did you want money?"

"Because we'll flay you to within an inch of your life if you don't pay us," said Bruno, scanning the bodies all around the room for movement.

"Ah, corruption, greed, distrust. Prime elements for a good organisation. Take the money." Bruno and Boots pocketed their shares of the money.

"Answer the question," repeated Boots. "Will you disband your gang?"

"Yes," he said honestly.

"Good," said Boots. With that he robbed the bodies of their crowbars, money, etc. Then he picked up a stack of shelves, full to the brim with hand-painted pewter figurines, and threw it out the open window. "Pleasure doing business with you." Bruno said amicably. And they left, leaving the ex-gang leader grimacing.

They went back to their bedroom to think about how they could kill Scrimmage. They decided on a very violent plan, as it was more likely to get into the SB, and started drawing up lists of required equipment. They bought a blueprint of Scrimmage's from Elmer for five dollars. They went and interviewed six possible grunts in the rec hall and hired two of them. When they returned to their room, they found Cathy and Diane had already broken in with some other girl and were screwing, although the boys had only been gone five minutes. The girls left. The boys invited them back in, and offered drugs. Three hours later everyone was asleep in the haze of smoke and the blueprint of Scrimmage's was ruined.

This morning was the fifth morning of school. A Friday morning; after that day's lessons, it was freedom for two days, a favourite for gangsters like Bruno and Boots, because they could sneak into Scrimmage's at will and cause all sorts of havoc. Cathy and Diane could do the same in Macdonald Hall.

Classes came and went, which Bruno and Boots slept through. After classes first the two rode Cathy and Diane, then Bruno went round to Elmer's place and bought a new blueprint. They pissed about the rest of the evening. Then Bruno went round to Mark's place.

Bruno knocked on the door, yelling, "I need something of yours!"

"Password?" came Mark's voice.

Bruno gave the password for guns. Five minutes passed while Mark got his shit together and armed himself.

"I'm about to open the door," Mark said in a low voice. "There will be a gun pointed at you. Please keep your weapons concealed, and if more than one person -"

"Mark, it's me, Bruno," he interrupted. "I know the jive, you don't need to repeat it."

"Okay, but the rules of business still stand." Mark warned, and slowly inched open the door. Bruno walked in.

"I need several cheap, two-handed semi-automatic weapons." stated Bruno businesslike.

"The best item of that description is this AK-47." Mark offered, holding up the big weapon with one hand, keeping his MP5SD levelled with the other. "Only six hundred, and fifty for each extra clip. This model's been around for a hundred years, thought up by a particularly brilliant Russian scientist named Mikhail Kalashnikov. It packs a fair punch but has pretty crappy accuracy. Was once the world's very best, and still is, though in a different way (cost). That's why the AK-47 is a favourite among many terrorists today. It also has a newer version, thought up in the eighties, the AK-74 or AK-M. This gun and its variants have been used in over 75 different wars and up to 100 million AK-47s and variants have been manufactured in the world since it was invented. It is now the perfect trademark for the modern gangster."

"I can't believe you bothered to research AK-47s. What's the difference between the AK-47 and the AK-74?" queried Bruno.

"The 74 has a bit more power, a lot more accuracy and costs an extra two hundred." Mark replied. "It uses the same size and calibre ammo."

"Got it." nodded Bruno. "I'll take three AK-74s and six clips of ammo."

"That'll be $2700, please." said Mark.

Bruno handed over the money, shoved the guns into his bag, then decided there was no point in stalling it any longer. "Mark," began Bruno carefully, "me and Boots are going out on Sunday."

"So?" asked Mark suspiciously, putting both hands to his sub machinegun.

"Well, it's not exactly a social occasion." explained Bruno timidly. "In fact, it's purely so we can get into the SB."

"Hey, good for you!" clamoured Mark. "Maybe they can fit it in between my two entries! Ha ha ha!"

"We're going over there after Scrimmage goes to church and we'll set up an ambush." said Bruno, then, to clarify, "We're going to whack that slag Scrimmage."

"What did I need to know that for?" asked Mark, seeing where the conversation was going and knowing its outcome.

"We'd like you to come with us." said Bruno, "so if everything blows up in our faces we'll still definitely pull it off."

"Fair enough." Mark said. Bruno's heart leapt, but his elation was short- lived. "Fifteen grand." stated Mark.

"Fifteen grand?!" shouted Bruno.

"To come along with you." added Mark. "Another thirty-five grand afterwards if I have to get my hands dirty."

"FIFTY THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS?!?!" exploded Bruno. "I haven't got anywhere near that much cash, especially not after you robbed me blind with those explosives!"

"Then rob a bank, make some quick cash." suggested Mark.

"Forget it!" spat Bruno hotly. "It's not worth half that! We'll make do with four attackers!"

"Suit yourself." shrugged Mark. "Good doing business with you. Good day."

Bruno stomped out the door with his stuff.

"Hey Boots." Bruno called by way of greeting, slamming the door so hard the nought of '306' fell off. "He wanted fifty grand to come with us." grumbled Bruno as he dumped the bag of stuff in front of the TV.

"What's that?" asked a masked thug standing in his bathroom. Beyond him was yet another masked thug and Boots. Boots was handcuffed to the toilet, and had had the shit beaten out of him. Both thugs had baseball bats.

Bruno instantly knew to strike now and ask questions later. He dove for the bag, so the masked thug ran at him. Bruno unzipped the bag and yanked out an AK. He swung it upwards and blocked the blow from the thug's bat. The thug kicked Bruno as he lay on the ground, and in return Bruno placed both his feet on the guy's knee and heaved. He went sprawling backwards. Bruno leapt to his feet and pointed the weapon at the thug on the floor, who was going for a gun in his pocket.

"Freeze, motherfucker!" shouted the thug in the toilet. Bruno looked, but kept his aim steady. The second thug had a knife on Boots' neck.

"Drop the gun!" he screamed.

"Fuck you!" snarled Bruno.

"If you don't, your friend will die! I'll carve him up like a Christmas turkey! His blood will drench -"

While the one with the blade on Boots' carotid artery was preoccupied with threats, Bruno decided to make his move. He fired once into the first thug's head, then swivelled the gun round. Boots lashed out with his foot, catching the second thug off-balance. As he began to get to his feet, Bruno shouted, "Don't fucking move!"

The asshole obliged.

"Why does half the school want us dead all of a sudden?" screamed Bruno. "Drop the knife and get to your feet."

He complied. Bruno heard running footsteps of heavy boots in the corridor. Patrolmen, definitely.

"Now run over to me!" commanded Bruno.

He obeyed.

The running reached a crescendo of volume. Voices could be discerned from the cacophony, and even the cocking of firearms.

Smash! The door was kicked in. Patrolmen rushed into the room. Just before that Bruno thrust the AK at the thug's chest and dove face-up to the ground.

"Freeze, asshole!" bellowed one of the patrolmen.

Though bewildered, the thug kept his head. He dropped the gun and raised his hands slowly.

"What was happening here?" a guard asked Bruno.

"Th-they barged into here asking for money." squealed Bruno, adding some fake fear into his voice. "But we t-told them we didn't have any more than that container of change on the bedside table. They became angry. They chained my friend to the toilet there and threatened me with this - this gun - and then I managed to grab it and tried to take it away from him, but he held on, and his friend took out his handgun. I wasn't thinking straight, and afraid for my life, so I - I - I killed the poor kid!" Here he collapsed into huge great fake sobs.

"Don't worry, Bruno." said Boots condescendingly. "You did the right thing."

"I'm sure your friend Bruno here will be cleared in court someday just fine." reassured a patrolman warmly. "On the other hand, this cocksucker's going to jail for thirty-to-life, hopefully. Johnson, get this fuckhead out of here."

"Wait!" the thug pleaded as his mask was ripped off. "You don't understand! It was a frame-up! He killed my friend and then threw the gun at me, of course I caught it, I wanted to avenge -"

"Shut the fuck up!" screamed one of the two dragging him and bashed him in the jaw. They resumed his transportation.

Then the two retold the story until dawn, making up a bunch of shit as to why they were fully dressed but leaving the question unanswered, saying they didn't know. This explanation was aired on national TV as part of an editorial entitled, 'Are Canada's Schools Going Down The Fucking Drain?'.

Then everyone went to bed. Bruno and Boots put the remainder of their swag into the stash, and Bruno vowed to buy another AK-74 and find out who put the bastards up to it. His only immediate idea was the black ringleader, who maybe thought that if Bruno and Boots were out of the picture he could carry on. Maybe he just wanted revenge. It was equally likely that he had had nothing to do with it. But just to make sure, the two agreed to send a minder round to Room 222 and pay him a visit.

Several hours later, after the story had been re-aired on the Morning News, Bruno's mum called to ask if he was OK. Same with Boots' mum, and their grandparents.

The next afternoon Bruno and Boots woke up. It was Saturday, a great time for Bruno and Boots. As usual they went to the rec hall at two in the afternoon and took part in a huge three-hour orgy with six hundred students. They then got stoned off their arses for the next two hours and gambled away a couple of grand to some card shark, before smashing in his kneecaps and taking back the money once they were sober and realised they'd been had. The minder broke both of the legs of the black kid, and true to his word, Bruno bought Diane a huge vibrator on the black market. After supper in the evening they went to an uneventful meeting of the Mafia and one of the SB clergy and got laid some more. They also stormed the staff room with pickaxes, making it look like a bomb site but didn't kill anyone, and were gone before security knew anything was happening. During the night they bought another AK-74 and fended off another attack, this time silently. They held an important meeting with the other three hitmen and issued weapons etc. They got laid yet some more before falling asleep in a drunken stupor at daybreak, prepared for the assassination attempt the next day.

It was ten o'clock in the morning. Miss Scrimmage's office was completely immaculate, spotless walls, clean carpet, gleaming desk. The radio on the desk was playing quiet music to keep the dog-tired Bruno awake. He was armed with the handgun and his rifle. He'd paid off Scrimmage's cleaner to let him in through the fingerprint ID door, and once he was comfortably established inside her office, he locked the door again so it would seem natural. Plus it would stop anyone randomly walking in on him, for Miss Scrimmage was in church, as it was Sunday.

Not that she had the foggiest idea of what Christianity was about; she spent the whole time in church trying to look as though she was above everyone else and failing horribly. She didn't even learn anything the time she went to church when no one was there. That time was also a Sunday, but Superbowl Sunday, so not even the deacon showed up. She spent the entire 'service' on that Sunday fingering herself and wondering where everyone else was. As it was during the Cold War, she concluded it was the work of Russian saboteurs and ordered over seventy platoons of the Army. When they showed up, they saw that there was nothing there, and she had just wasted $20k of the taxpayer's money, and were extremely angry with her, partially because of the waste of time and money, partially because of the widespread panic she caused, partially because she kept calling them satanic Russian saboteurs, partially because she beat up three troops who wore shoes like her brother's, but mostly because she refused to stop fingering herself while on national television.

Bruno yawned and stretched, moving the walkie-talkie about in his pocket to get some relief. He'd been there for an hour already, and would have to wait another two and a half hours for Miss Scrimmage to get home. He checked the revolver for the seventh time, ensuring the quality of the bullets as much as possible short of disassembling them, and returned it to his jacket pocket. He checked out the window behind him, a huge, curving, one-way window (which had been two-way until Miss Scrimmage got into the security craze) affording a spectacular high view of Scrimmage' grounds. Most importantly, the driveway, which was lined with bushes.

Half an hour ago he'd used an electric drill to put four 3cm holes in the reinforced glass. Nobody had heard him because he'd arranged for a girl to set off the fire alarm. Currently he'd blocked up the holes with blank paper stretched taut so from the outside it would look like bird poop on the glass and not a hole into Scrimmage's office. They were, in case you haven't figured it out, sniping holes, so while the other lot ambushed Miss Scrimmage he could give them extra fire.

For lack of anything better to do, Bruno rifled through the objects on and in her desk while wearing gloves. He pocketed anything valuable, especially the money he found ($50). He was trying to break the lock off one of the drawers when Boots' call came in on the radio.

"Update." said Boots. "Update."

"Go ahead." Bruno said into his radio, not knowing the other three had done the same at the exact same time.

"The target is coming, but the old slag managed to ram a Lamborghini. ETA, twenty minutes."

"Why's she home so early?" wondered Bruno to himself, checking over his five-gauge rifle for the tenth time. Then there was a terrific BOOM from the cloudy sky above, and rain began pouring down. It washed all over the windows, drenching everything almost instantly. Visibility was down to forty feet. Bruno was a hundred feet away from anything important.

"Damn!" he shouted and relayed this development to Boots.

Five hundred feet away, unarmed and wearing camouflage clothing, sat Boots in a tree, not taking his eyes off Scrimmage as she and the owner of the car she hit screamed their heads off in the rain. He listened and understood; he also had virtually no visibility.

"What the fuck do we do now?" demanded Chris over the radio, crouching over his AK-74 so it wouldn't get rained on as he lay in the bushes near the driveway.

Boots considered, weighing all the options. As a tie-breaker he looked into Scrimmage's armoured limo and counted the number of BG with her. One, two, three. Only three? Out of six?

"We go ahead with the plan." decided Boots. "She has half as many bodyguards as we thought she would. Even without Bruno's help you should definitely be able to pull it off. Stay. Bruno, you can either go home or get to a location where you can help. The rest of you, I'll keep you posted on Scrimmage's movements."

"I'll go." decided Bruno. "It'll be one friggin' easy massacre for you lot, and I won't be much help. Bye everybody. This is going to get me and Boots into the SB and the rest of you rich."

With that Bruno set about disassembling his rifle and packing it away. He donned his balaclava and swiftly fled Scrimmage's campus like a leaf in the wind.

The two mercenaries shivered in their thin jackets and prepped their weapons, flicking the safety catches off. The motion sent their hearts racing. The two were brothers, with no combat experience, none whatsoever, a fact they lied about in the interview. They both had deep-rooted desires to kill, but hadn't yet. This is it!, they were thinking. The high point of my life!. Amiably the two shook hands and parted to get into better positions for an ambush.

Chris Talbot shivered. He was fighting through a bad cold, but had recently gotten very hooked on Bruno and Boots' Ultra Cigs, so nothing was going to stop him doing this job and making that all-important two grand.

Their radios came to life. "Okay, she's coming, she's coming in fast, very fast! She's doubling the speed limit! I hope to God you're all in position."

They didn't bother replying. They could hear the roaring engine, Miss Scrimmage at the wheel, coming up the deserted roadway. Fifteen seconds later, she swerved into the driveway, knocking down her personal mailbox in the process.

Miss Scrimmage stepped out of the cab, muttering under her breath about Macdonald Hall hooligans as she noticed the downed mailbox. The three bodyguards in the back of the limo followed. The other three stepped out of the front doors of the school, just as Chris took aim and started shooting, not noticing the sudden difficulty increase because of his illness. The other two had noticed, and were very content to abort, but not now that the shooting had started. So they opened fire as well. The three bodyguards around Miss Scrimmage were cut to pieces instantly, but miraculously the bitch herself survived and ducked back into the armoured limo before shutting all the doors.

Her faithful remaining bodyguards fired in the vague direction of where they'd seen the gunfire with their pistols as they ran towards better cover. One of these bullets tore through one of the clips on the belt of the younger mercenary. This set off a bullet prematurely with little force, not enough to penetrate the clip, so instead it bounced upwards and set off all the rounds above it. This caused the clip to explode, ripping a baseball-sized chunk of flesh out of his side. He groaned and dropped his rifle, trying in vain to stem the massive blood loss from two arteries. He died of blood loss twenty seconds later.

But meanwhile, the fight continued. Chris let off two three-round bursts at the three bodyguards before they found sufficient cover, taking one down. The BG lay behind thick, ancient knee-high stone walls, which stopped all bullets. Needless to say, the bushes weren't quite so useful, so Chris and the older mercenary left and got behind trees. En route the older mercenary got hit in the leg three times, the same leg, bullets from both of the remaining BG. He collapsed near the tree and fired back as best as he could, but in the next enemy salvo got shot five times in the chest, and fell back and didn't move. He never even got to kill anyone in his short life, for his aim was poor when firing at Scrimmage.

Chris fired another three bursts at the BG while standing in the tree before stopping to reload. He successfully reloaded and fired once more, but the magazine failed to feed another round into the chamber. He tried manually moving the parts but they had jammed tightly. He loaded in a new magazine but that still didn't help. So he waited for another salvo to pass and ran.

He pelted away, not making a sound except for his ragged breathing. He cursed his luck as he ran on, until first he was beyond the vision of the BG, then beyond their range. He had just reached the highway when he saw a lone security guard running towards the gunfire and, inadvertently, Chris. The man saw Chris, saw his AK, and drew his automatic pistol. Chris reacted incredibly quickly and threw the assault rifle. It struck the man on the shoulder so his shot went wild. Chris crouched down low to spring, drew his personal knife from his sock, and leaped five feet at the man in one smooth motion, knocking him to the ground. The man got a hold on Chris' knife wrist and face and tried to push away both. Though he succeeded with Chris' face, the knife slid down mercilessly into his throat. His flailing lost its resolution, and he fell dead four seconds later. Chris heard noise behind him and quickly picked up the man's pistol. He took cover behind a rain barrel and got ready. Three more security officers ran around the corner. Due to his debilitating illness he didn't notice the other two who came around another corner to his right. If he had he would have hid and maybe, just maybe, gotten away with it all. Instead he fired three times, his skill helping him to get headshots on everyone in the group of three. The group of two raised their pistols and fired twice each, taking Chris down with four holes in his chest. Chris Talbot gurgled once and closed his eyes. He had done well, killing one of Miss Scrimmage's bodyguards and getting a joint kill with the younger mercenary, gunning down another, murdering a security guard while ten feet away armed with a sheathed knife, and blowing off the heads of three more security guards before dying. He reflected on this in the blink of an eye, but his last thought was, "I want an Ultra Cig."

The two bodyguards finally stopped firing into the bushes and trees and tentatively stood up, weapons raised. Satisfied after a few seconds that there were none left, they ran up to the limo and knocked on the door. The window rolled down and they faced a cocked shotgun.

"Miss Scrimmage," began one of the bodyguards, hesitating at the sight of the deadly weapon, "The attackers have either left or all been killed. It is safe, but we are the last of your personal defenders. The rest were shot and killed."

"It's those Macdonald Hall hooligans!" she shouted without evidence. "First they somehow place a large object into my personal quarters, then they sexually assault me and my young ladies in the orchard, then they break my mailbox, and now they attempt to harm me enough that I am unavailable to protect my young ladies from their sinful erect penises! This must be stopped at once! I shall triple my security and start an all-out war with that old goat Mr. Sturgeon!"

"Perhaps we should get you to your bullet-proof bedroom." suggested the other remaining bodyguard courteously.

"Yes, quite right." she said softly. "Please open the door for a lady."

"Shit, we're in for it now." moaned Boots to Bruno as they listened to all the gunfire. "It should have been just that one three-second burst, then shouting, commotion and rioting. Instead it was that three-second burst, then sustained gunfire, then commotion, then light gunfire, then much shouting and rioting. I think the job went wrong."

"Fuck, I should've stayed and helped out." said Bruno regretfully.

"That bitch had better at least be dead." Boots wished.

"Why else would there be so much commotion?" said Bruno suddenly.

"Yeah, a few security guards dying, so what, that happened at our school and there wasn't half as much noise." Boots stated, a grin taking over his face.

"Good, at least she's dead." Bruno said with satisfaction. "We can still get into the SB. God knows we've earned it, we've worked so hard at this."

"But no celebratory drugs, there's bound to be a dorm inspection after that." Boots warned.

"Fine." Bruno muttered.

Half an hour passed. There was a big dorm inspection, which found nothing anywhere. There was a load of interviews of Scrimmage denizens about the attack. Then there was yet another big meeting of Macdonald Hall, Scrimmage's, politicians and military. Again the politicians sidetracked the meeting, while Fishdick and Scrimmage bickered loudly in the corner. Again it dissolved into a flurry of fighting and fucking. Again riot police showed up and stopped everything. Then they were allowed back to their rooms at eleven o'clock.

"How the fuck did that slag survive?" Bruno demanded of the world. "How does that worthless bitch get so friggin' jammy?"

"How did our hand-picked men fail to massacre four people with three AKs?" wailed Boots.

"Now it's personal!" yelled Bruno. "We desperately need to waste her!"

"She said herself during her speech, she's tripling her security." reasoned Boots. "It will take one fucking hell of a lot to kill her now! Unless you feel like using poison."

Bruno dismissed this. "Something as gay as that would never get into the SB. I wouldn't even vote for it. Nah, we're just gonna have to get even more stuff and try to whack her again."

"Come on," sighed Boots, "let's go convince the SB clergy that it wasn't our fault the assassination failed."

"Can't be bothered." stated Bruno and started calling someone on his mobile phone.

"Too fucking bad!" snarled Boots. "Last time, when Joey got himself killed, while I was covering our asses you were getting laid! Now it's my turn!"

"Yeah, well, when I was out buying our shit for that cock-up of a mission you were getting laid too!" Bruno countered.

"Well, of course I stayed behind, Mark only allows one other person into his room! Cathy and Diane happened to come along during that time, and one thing led to another! It was purely natural!" Boots screamed.

"Screw you, it still counts, you could have stood outside the door as backup."

"Fuck you, I'm not going if you aren't!"

"Well I'm not going full stop. So either neither of us goes or you go." Bruno continued dialling the number.

Boots grabbed Bruno bodily and dragged him out the door as Bruno kicked and screamed. Boots slammed the door and locked it, then turned the key another quarter-turn so Bruno couldn't unlock the door with his own key. Boots used this time to jam a heavy chair under the doorknob and lock the window.

"Open up, Boots, you rat bastard!" Bruno yelled. Realising it would do no good, he walked away. Boots turned up the TV very loud, but not quite as loud as the eighteen couples screwing inside the building. Bruno thought for a while, then went to Room 201 in Dormitory 2, Elmer Drimsdale's room. No one was inside apart from two bodyguards, though the door was unlocked, but Bruno wasn't fooled. He lifted the electric fire out of the fireplace, revealing a narrow hole in the floor. He found himself facing a double- barrelled shotgun.

"It's me." mumbled Bruno as he pushed the weapon aside. The bodyguard down the shaft nodded and withdrew. Bruno lowered himself down the ladder and into the underground room. The ceiling was eleven feet above the floor, with intricate arches supporting Room 201 above it. This underground hideout was where Elmer occasionally went, but usually it was just for Macdonald Hall/Scrimmage tunnels. It had furniture, plush carpeting, painted walls and even a pool table and folding cot, plus the much less luxurious tunnel itself. Elmer was there, along with two other bodyguards, the doorman, and three of the very finest young 'ladies' Scrimmage's had to offer.

"Hey, Bruno." greeted Elmer. "What's happening? I heard that Scrimmage came home from church early after getting kicked out for unseemly conduct, and she was ambushed and nearly killed. Did you screw up an assassination on her?"

"Yeah, but it wasn't my fault, it was partially all that rain and mostly the dumbass people I hired." Bruno answered carelessly. "Who are these bitches?" he asked. As well as wanting to fuck them, he also wanted to change the subject so Elmer wouldn't argue over whether or not Chris Talbot had been a dumbass.

"These great-looking sluts just tried to come through the tunnel without paying the toll." Elmer said with great satisfaction. "I've decided to let them, this time, if they will give me a thirty-minute performance. By performance I mean either lap dance, lesbian erotica, dicksucking, or a combination of them. But now that you've showed up, they'll have to do it to us both. How about that deal?"

The girls looked at each other and grinned. "We accept." one of them said super-sweetly and started undressing. The other two followed suit.

Half an hour later Bruno left very contented, with empty testicles and a pocket full of money from his half of the profit from the tollbooth. He even managed to get a girl to follow him. Bruno considered going back to Room 306 to tell Boots that he'd been to see the Mafia, but decided against it because it would mean sharing the girl. So instead he led her to the janitor's closet for ten minutes before she left to have some variety and he left to get high. Bruno and Boots made up with each other just before Cathy and Diane showed up and they all had a bit of group sex, then the SB clergy showed up and they all got really high, which attracted a further twenty girls, causing a giant orgy. Then everyone left at five a.m. So passed the rest of that night before school the next day, where they found that Macdonald Hall's security had been upped exponentially.

All the students, whether they liked it or not (well, not one student liked it), were woken up at five-thirty by a bugle playing reveille into a megaphone.

"What the fuck giznibbit?" asked Bruno.

"Fucking Pakis," was Cathy's opinion.

"Fuck fuck fuck," said some random slut, and laughed out loud. The other forty-odd occupants of the room followed suit and promptly fell asleep.

Immediately Marines sprang out of the tents they had been sleeping in all night, already half-dressed and holding their M-16s. They formed orderly lines, and were quickly counted by their drill sergeant as he hopped past them on one foot, still getting into his trousers. All the marines were accounted for. Then the drill sergeant yelled into the megaphone, "ALL RIGHT YOU LAZY MOTHERFUCKERS, GET YOUR PASTY WHITE ASSES OUT OF YOUR FUCKING COMFY BEDS AND LINE UP IN FRONT OF MY FACE!! COME ON! MOVE IT!"

Not one person moved in any of the buildings. Not even Elmer got up this early, and that was before he became a big-time or even small-time gangster. Not even the police officers that had the early morning shift wanted to get rid of their sleep.

"Okay men, earplugs in!" he bellowed, megaphone switched off. He and his men expertly drew two small objects attached by a string from a very small pocket in their combat shirts and put one small object in each ear. Then he turned on the megaphone, raised his gun, and fired right next to the thing. The sound had echoes off every building. Any overly fragile glass shattered. Then he fired again. And again. On the fourth try the megaphone was completely busted. Then he settled for firing clips and clips into the ground.

After five minutes of such a torturous barrage of sound, one lone person exited Dormitory 4. He looked around, saw there was no one but him, and immediately sleepwalked back inside. Someone shot at him out of annoyance. He pelted right up to the drill sergeant's face and stood stock still, focusing hard on a mole on his forehead. After an hour, the entire school, staff and all, had assembled in one huge line. However, the girls that had entered Macdonald Hall were so hung-over and sleepy they forgot they weren't supposed to be there, and lined up like everyone else.

That whole morning was yet another nightmare. Everyone was shouted at. Half the people fell asleep where they stood, and were promptly beaten. Mr. Sturgeon was beaten too. This caused him to fire all the Marines. They told him to fuck off. He threatened to fire them some more. (He was easily just as tired as the students.) They told him to go ahead. So he hired them again and fired them again. They walked off in a huff, but 'accidentally' squeezed off about a thousand rounds at Fishdick's house. He hired them back and fired them again. They grenaded his house. He hired them six more times and fired them the same number of times. They grenaded his house some more. His house collapsed onto his car. He hired them again and fired them again eleven more times. Someone shot him with a tranquilliser dart, then the Marines finally left after plundering half the school of everything vaguely valuable, including unused paper and light switches. Then the governors were called over to make an angry speech, they invited over some more politicians for God knows what kind of fucked-up reason, they all made speeches about their promises to the Canadian people, and meanwhile no one listened, not even most of the staff, as they all got busy having more sex. Then the day collapsed into spirited shouting matches, Miss Scrimmage tried to call in the American NSA to save her girls even though she was in the Toronto area, but called NASA by mistake, then the Army showed up convinced it was a hostage situation because of the missing politicians (who were screwing the Scrim-sluts), and the guest cottage was run over by an Army APC and smashed to splinters, not to mention the school kitchens burned down during the morning because some students had sneaked into them and had tried to cook up large amounts of speed.

But at long last (and too soon), the shagfest ended, the girls went back to Scrimmage's and told her it was the fault of the Iraqis, the marines and Army left, and the politicians and the board of governors left. After ten minutes Bruno and Boots were forcibly removed from the crowd entering the Scrimmage school gates by police officers and escorted back to their own school. Only then did anyone notice the increased security at Scrimmage's. There were hundreds of ex-murderers and rapists guarding the school grounds, and twenty at the gates. They were all armed with illegal assault rifles and heavier weapons too, like bazookas and flamethrowers and grenade launchers. Boots asked Scrimmage the following questions while they tried to get into Scrimmage's:

"Why do you have convicts guarding your school?"

"They were the cheapest guards I could find."

"What are they guarding the school from?"

"From those rapists across the road in Macdonald Hall."

"Some of these criminals are serial rapists and terrorists. Why do you think they won't do anything to your precious girls?"

"Because that's not part of their job description."

"Why do they have illegal weaponry?"

"It's more terrifying than pistols."

"But those weapons are illegal!"

"It's illegal unless it's kept on private property."

"That's the law for full-nudity strip shows, you dumb slut, and it doesn't extend to weapons of mass destruction."

"It doesn't?"

"No. You could get imprisoned for fifty years for having even one of these items."

"Oh. Would they give back my stuff after fifty years had passed?"

"No." "What happens if I promise I won't take them off my property?"

"Do you remember me saying they're still illegal if they're on private property?" "No."

"I didn't think so."

Then some slut stuck her tongue down Boots's throat, and he was unable to continue the interview. Miss Scrimmage still hadn't noticed Boots was a man, and didn't notice even when he was removed to Macdonald Hall. Miss Scrimmage thought one of her girls was being abducted yet again, and rushed into her private quarters (where the Avis car was still sitting with the engine running) and dialled the military. They hung up on her and issued a restraining order that stopped her from going within two feet of a telephone. She tried to sue them over the phone. They sent round an engineer to disconnect her phone. When it was disconnected, she continued screaming death threats into the phone, and did so for another two hours, when she remembered to turn off the car's engine, refill the petrol tank, and turn it back on again. (She figured it was in her living room for some important reason, so she left it on.)

The day dissolved back into a half-hearted schoolday, then into a normal afternoon. Bruno and Boots slept through the entire of it, since they'd gotten a half-hour's sleep. Then they finally woke up at eleven, where they once again returned to the underground.

Bruno and Boots strolled into a Mafia meeting in the underground chamber. The place was packed. Scrim-whores had been crawling out through the tunnel at a rate of two per ten minutes, duly paying the toll of $10. Nobody paid them any attention. They had a very pressing matter to discuss.

"Well, Elmer, it looks like we're finally paying for all that 'Dormitory 3 superiority' racist crap propaganda." said a member, before pausing to take a long drag on his Ultra Cig. "Those spineless bastards out there somehow found it in them to form a gang."

"They called themselves the Triad." Elmer muttered in disbelief. "What a copy."

"They're worthless pieces of shit." scoffed another member. "In a three-on- one fight between me and three of their best, I'd win easily, without so much as a bruise."

"Maybe, but they shanghaied the entire of Dormitories 1 and 2 into it, they outnumber us two to one." Boots said grimly. "Of course the contents of this room could take on a third of their gang, but don't forget that the rest of our gang aren't so great either. In a straight, full-blown battle, they'd wipe us out."

"It will never be one, security's too tight." Bruno reminded him. "The most they can do is bleed the Mafia. We can wound the Triad, maybe kill it."

"But we definitely do need to kill it." stated Elmer. "Firstly, and most importantly, they challenge my authority. Secondly, their bleeding us will be costly, and I don't like having to repair things. Thirdly, since we can no longer tax the ignorant masses, our income has dried up, income we really need. Fourthly, the secret passage to Scrimmage's is, obviously, in their God damn dormitory, and I want this place to stay as mine. We desperately need to get rid of the Triad fast. We need to identify and destroy the leaders, effectively cutting off the head of the Triad. It is the best we can do."

"We could make an example out of this." suggested a member. "We could, say, blow up half of Dormitory 1."

Elmer shook his head. "No good. I don't want to finish this war by getting rid of a quarter of my income. Plus if masses of students start dying, everyone's parents will pull them out. Then nobody's happy."

"Elmer's plan is fine." said Boots. "We'll get rid of the tiny amount of guts that band of upstarts has, then they'll wither and crumble to nothing."

"Bruno, Boots, sorry, but you'll have to stop trying to get into the SB for the moment." Elmer ordered apologetically. "We'll need every ounce of muscle we can get."

"If we get to do anything super cool we may well get into the SB anyway." Bruno said reasonably. He pulled out his revolver, cocked it, decocked it and added, "The Triad, eh? Bring it on, you chink bastards." He chuckled to himself as he pocketed the weapon. Boots checked his three knives as everyone rose to leave. Elmer paid Bruno and Boots their fifty percent of the recent entries, which totalled nine hundred dollars.

"Hey, why is business so slow here tonight?" demanded a member. "Usually at this time of year, desperate horny girls are pouring out of this tunnel like it's a freaking faucet."

"Yeah, why?" shouted Boots and grabbed a passing girl.

"It's because of all those super-hot sentries around our school!" she exclaimed. "So far tonight I've fucked three of them."

"Damn it, now those security guards Scrimmage hired are stealing most of our pussy!" screamed Bruno. "That does it! Scrimmage is so dead! Hang the Mafia, if she's alive, the guards stay, if the guards stay, we all get laid less than twenty times a week!"

"You'll have a hard job of it." she laughed. "Since the last attack, she bought another two armoured limos and twenty-five heavily armed bodyguards. Whenever she leaves her bomb-proof bedroom, there's about a one-second delay between that time and when she's speeding away in one of the limos. She doesn't leave her room except to leave the grounds, she's giving all school instructions by e-mail. She's reinforced all the walls so nothing short of a tank shell or an hour's worth of pneumatic drilling can get through. She's even put giant concrete pillars around the building so you can't drive a lorry through all the armour. Rumour has it she even hired a double and paid for her to have extensive plastic surgery so she becomes a complete twin. And plus, I want the guards to stay. It'll make all you lot very desperate, and drive my prices to the height that they are now."

"You're a prostitute?" said Bruno. "What's your new price?"

"Fifty dollars." she said serenely.

"That's ten times as much as usual!" Bruno yelled.

"I'll take it." said Boots and thrust the pocket change at her. "I'll bet the prices go even higher."

"Let's go." she said contentedly. Boots led her back to Dormitory 3 very secretly, so as not to arouse the anger of the Triad.

"We need a permanent, competent guard force on this place." ordered Elmer. "I want quality and quantity. As well as this place being very important for sex, it's also my favourite place to hang out. We won't lose it. I will personally be involved in the task force. Bruno and Boots will not. You two will find and destroy the leaders of the Triad."

"Shall we disable them or just destroy them?" inquired Bruno.

Elmer turned a hard, ruthless face to Bruno. "I want you to kill them."

Three hours later, after Boots was done with the prossie (and Elmer, and Larry, and Wilbur, and Bruno were done too) Bruno and Boots set off to the entrance to Dormitory 1. They had two knives and a crowbar each, and Bruno had the revolver. They both wore gloves. They had a slight wait when a sentry crossed the yard, during which time fifteen-odd other people accumulated near them, all waiting for him to pass, then they continued with the recon. Outside the doors were two unarmed people with clipboards and three big, heavily armed eleventh-years. Two of them had two baseball bats each. The third had a samurai sword.

Boots knew much about samurai swords. Modern ones have diamond edges, plus the super-keen ancient blades. In the hands of even the weakest novice they should be feared and avoided. Mark Davies sold them. For two thousand five hundred each. When you mixed the modern way of making blades which can't dull, the ancient Chinese practice of giving blades rock-chopping sharpness and the skill of an advanced swordsman, the samurai sword became an object one should run away from screaming.

Moreover, they exactly suited the Triad. Boots felt that all three should ideally have samurai swords. Could they not afford that?

Bruno wasn't thinking this. He didn't realise the extreme hazard of these weapons. He knew that one of those overpriced oversized knives was more of a threat than two baseball bats, but he didn't know quite how much more. He zeroed in on the targets, Boots reluctantly in tow.

"ID, please." drawled one of the two with the clipboards. One of the people ahead of Bruno and Boots was standing in line near the person registering everyone. Someone handed over his student ID that got a ten percent discount in shops. The person searched over three of his five clipboards before he was satisfied and handed back the ID. Gratefully he accepted it and walked into his dormitory to get some sleep. Bruno and Boots wisely joined the queue. They advanced steadily, the queue shortening ever-so- slowly over five minutes. At long last, it was their turn in the queue.

"ID, please." drawled the main kid, looking over the clipboards. Boots looked at one of the clipboards. At the top was marked, 'Dangerous Enemies - KILL ON SIGHT.' There were numerous photos of people attached to it, with their names and most spectacular battle sequences scrawled underneath. Boots was both horrified and pleased to see a photo of him and Bruno on this list, with 'Bruno and Boots, extremely good Mafia minders, destroyed four muggers, took out a roomful of BG.' written beneath.

His eyes and mouth widened. Before he could yell, Bruno and Boots hurled themselves into the fray. As they passed, both Bruno and Boots, with a knife in each hand, punched out one of the unarmed people, leaving only the eleventh years. Bruno charged into the two with baseball bats and stabbed at them both. Both dodged, but Bruno managed to cut one beside his groin. The tough bastard didn't even flinch. Both dodged separate ways, one either side, backing up to try and make respectable use of their baseball bats. Bruno was determined to stay in close (if he didn't, he would die) so he turned on a dime and got in close with one. He blocked three quick thrusts from the baseball bats, then stabbed him twice in the chest and ran around him, using the dying kid as a human shield. The other big person came after him, and swung viciously, trying to draw the shield in one direction to uncover the other side so he could score a hit. But Bruno was too good for this. He blocked all three double volleys, the impacts speeding up his friend's death. The thug reared back for a double wide hook, which cost him tempo and his life. Bruno threw the dying thug at the live thug, which put him off-balance. Bruno leapt forward and carved out a sizeable chunk of his intestines, then turned to face the mob of people who had been behind them in the queue.

Meanwhile, Boots had gone for the one with the sword. Very first thing, he pushed the handle upwards and stabbed at his opponent's arm. The swordsman dodged the stab and tried to grab the knife in Boots' right hand, missed, and got a gashed hand as reward for his efforts. With his other hand he swiped at Boots with the sword, which Boots ducked, barely. In fact he lost some of the hair on the back of his head. If such a swipe had occurred with any other blade the hair would have simply been pushed aside, but this was a samurai sword, so it was neatly cleaved off. Boots leapt up and pushed the swordsman against the wall. The Triad thug pushed back, and Boots' foot caught. He fell to the ground heavily, between a thick bush and a low brick wall.

The thug reared back for a forceful blow that would sever a breezeblock in two. Boots threw a knife at him, causing the thug to lose concentration. The swordsman sidestepped it easily - it hadn't been a very hard throw - and found that Boots was suddenly on his feet, holding a knife and the crowbar he'd just drawn. Boots lost no time in getting close and jumped in with a war cry worthy of the Celtic barbarians. The thug took the blow to the chest from the crowbar, which he barely noticed, but parried the deadly knife with his free hand. Boots kept tempo, attacking again and again in a blind frenzy, until he hurt the thug enough to make him stumble, when he attacked all the harder and hacked him to death. By the time that he hit the ground, the thug had three knife cuts in his sword arm, seven in his chest, two in the neck and one in the eye, and enough bruises developing that in twenty minutes, despite being dead, he'd look like Violet after tasting the blueberry pie in the banquet gum.

Boots turned around and stared menacingly at the people who had been waiting in line behind him. His murderous eyes and blood-covered knife and arms scared them all off instantly, as they weren't themselves gangsters, merely gang members. He smiled. He cleaned and put away the knife and picked up the sword. Bruno picked up a baseball bat, hefting it experimentally. They looked at each other. They both hid the bodies in the lost and found box, and hid behind it when a sentry came over, interested in the noise he had heard. However, he was far more interested in his Scrim- prossie than whatever happened in a dormitory, so he left very quickly. Bruno and Boots caught their breath then continued on their raid.

They moved around the building. On the first floor there was nothing of value, and deliberately so. There were no other guards at all. At the further of the two spiral staircases Bruno paused. He somehow knew there was some kind of trap in store for them. The lights on the stairs were off. There were no guards on the staircase. That was just obscene. It was the best place to post guards - height advantage and lots of shadows - so why were there none? One part of him told himself that he had gotten lucky, that the staircase was unguarded, that he should just go up it. He had listened to that part of him once and someone had to grab him and pull him back just before he almost got shot in the face. Another part said that the guards were hiding at the top of the stairs. Why would they hide at the top of the stairs? If the enemy got that far, most of the height advantage would be lost. He then realised where they were: under the stairs. The sneaky bastards had dug under the foundations and come out there. There were guards under the stairs with well-camouflaged slits for stabbing with swords or firing with guns. He could see one in the carpet.

No, that was just his imagination acting up, and him being tired. In front of his eyes the slit disappeared. Not covered up, disappeared. He shook his head. Where would they be? He stood there thinking hard for a few seconds. Then he realised they were disguised in the shadows. There was a dark figure next to the window...

No, that wasn't a human, otherwise he would have called for help by now. It was a large lamp. Dammit, he couldn't just stand here all day. He tried to put away the baseball bat, found he couldn't carry it if it wasn't in his hands, dropped it, and got out the revolver. He quickly checked the bullets in it and the twelve in his pocket. Then he started advancing slowly up the stairs, Boots being rear guard.

He got up the stairs to the window, and suddenly he felt himself stop. He couldn't have walked on if he'd tried to, not because he couldn't, but because part of his brain was going crazy in trying to warn him. He did a quick circumspection. Then he saw it. On the other side of the lamp was a laser emitter. It was projecting at the middle of the spiral staircase. He stepped onto the windowsill, then over the laser and up the stairs. Boots followed suit. They went up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs the lights were on. There were guards outside some doors. Bruno and Boots looked at each other. They were both covered in blood, so they would never get anywhere without being, at the least, questioned. So they decided to not try to infiltrate and instead attack.

Bruno stepped into the corridor, looking left, the longer direction. Boots was looking right, the shorter direction. People stared at them. Some drew guns. Boots leaped into action. With a straight stab, he took some poor bastard through the stomach and killed him in seconds. He dropped his gun. Then he kicked the hand of another person, who accidentally fired into the ceiling. Fortunately, the guy was rich enough to have a silenced gun. It was silenced for exactly the wrong time. Boots decapitated the person, stuffed the sword down the back of his shirt (and winced when he cut himself down his back) and picked up the gun. Bruno had a guy hostage with the revolver, and the one gang member fifty feet down the hall was pointing his gun at Bruno, unsure of what to do. Boots aimed with the gun and picked off the guy with one shot to the heart. Bruno punched his hostage in the face and pushed him against the wall, and Boots hit him in the back of the head with his gun. The guy slumped to the floor. But Boots knew he wasn't out cold, only pretending, so he hit him again. Then he was satisfied, and continued down the hall. Bruno followed him, picking up someone's Glock 17 and pocketing the revolver. They got to the door the far person had been guarding and kicked it down. There was some white guy with a prostitute. Boots pointed his gun at the guy. He decided to go for a novel tactic of interrogation.

"YOU'VE GOT TEN SECONDS TO TELL ME WHERE I CAN FIND THE PERSON IN CHARGE OF THE TRIAD! AFTER THAT I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" Bruno bellowed.

The kid was speechless. "I- I-"

"EIGHT!"

"I don't know what you're talking-"

"FIVE!"

"I'm just here with my lady friend -"

"TWO!"

"Room 101!" the kid shrieked and curled into the foetal position. Bruno and Boots charged out of the room and down the stairs. In their haste they forgot about the tripwire.

Both boys' feet passed through the laser. Right above their heads, a customised extra-large grenade emerged from the shadows and fell with a clunk to a step some way above them.

"Move, move, move!" Boots screamed when he saw what the object was. Boots shoved Bruno down the rest of the stairs and threw himself forward the rest of the way. Painfully they smacked into the ground. Bruno raised his head to rub his nose where it had hit the hard wooden floor, but Boots grabbed him and forced him into the floor again.

The grenade detonated. Shrapnel flew everywhere in a thick cloud, utterly ripping apart the spiral staircase. The shrapnel bounced downwards, but by the time it reached the bottom of the stairs it had lost all its force and was being propelled solely by gravity, so neither Bruno nor Boots were hurt. They were finely covered in powdered mortar and small pieces of glass, though. Both boys got to their feet, covering their ears in a futile attempt to ward off the loud ringing inside their heads.

"Fuck me." moaned Boots. Nobody heard him, not even Boots himself.

Then a loud tearing sound shuddered through them. Bruno grabbed Boots and dove out of the way a split second before the remains of the spiral staircase fell and would have crushed them. Both of them knew that they didn't have enough time after a big explosion like that to finish off an errand while patrolmen were pounding towards the building, so the only option they had was to run away. They got up again, drew guns, kicked down the door of a random room in front of them, shot the armed person in the room (with the silenced gun), shot his unarmed companion, vaulted out the window and disappeared into the night, five seconds before the first of the patrolmen barged in. They were back in their room and had cleaned themselves of all evidence fifteen seconds before the huge dormitory inspection. Once again, everyone was too competent to leave anything incriminating out in the open - even the Scrim-prossies were smart enough to escape the rooms/buildings they were in and make it to room 201 on time.

There was the usual outdoor assembly about what had happened, where Fishdick ineptly tried to get the culprits to slip up by asking non- specific questions. Most of the dead bodies all over the place had been hidden very well, but one dead body was found with a huge stab through his stomach (Boots' new samurai sword). Also there was the blood all over the first and second floor hallway walls, floor and ceiling. Then people all fell asleep, since the patrolmen were too vigilant for the rest of the night for anyone to set up illegal shops in the rec hall.

This day was Tuesday.

Bruno and Boots woke up to the sound of a door knocking. They looked up.

"Open up, it's me, Mark Davies," said someone outside.

Bruno and Boots were immediately suspicious. Since when did Mark Davies leave his room when not about to do a job? They got out of bed silently and moved the TV off the carpet. In the secret compartment underneath they got out the rifle and a revolver. They readied the weapons, then Bruno opened the door whilst crouching and Boots stood to one side of the door frame.

Mark Davies was standing there. Bruno checked, the only other person with him was Elmer Drimsdale. He admitted the legends inside. They all sat down on Bruno's bed, since Boots' stank more.

"Why have you come all the way over here so early in the morning?" asked Boots, stifling a yawn.

"I have a mission for you two," said Mark.

Bruno and Boots were instantly awake.

"What did you say?"

"I have a mission for you two."

"Since when are you our boss?"

"Since two hours ago, when my main gang contact outside the school was incinerated by a cruise missile from a rival gang," he said, all business. "The only thing I'm good at is crime, and if I can't do it outside school, I'll have to do it inside. So Elmer kindly let me be ruler for a while, with him as my immediate deputy, until I can go national again."

"Okay."

"We will go and kill the person or persons in Room 101 tonight."

"With what?"

"Either guns or dynamite."

"Guns. Loads more reliable."

"Okay then. Let's go get ready." They all went to Mark's room. He still only allowed one other person in his room at a time, because he had recently wired his room (and probably the whole dormitory) to explode into a quadrillion pieces if three bodies entered his room, measured by an infrared camera. But eventually they all had balaclavas, gloves, black clothing, silenced Ingrams, spare clips, and SWAT-style throat-mikes in place. Then they snuck quickly over to Dormitory 1, evading the patrolmen with ease.

At Dormitory 1 they did the usual starting stuff to an assault - remove all the light bulbs from their sockets so when the door was opened the sleepers didn't wake up, and position themselves around the door as Mark jimmied the lock - but then Bruno stopped it all.

"Guys, I have a really bad feeling about this," he whispered, which his throat-mike amplified through the radio channel. "I'm leaving. Let's blow this place to hell and back. Let's even nerve-gas it. But I'm not going through that door."

"I have misgivings about it myself," he said. "This just seems too easy. But we can't blow it up, that would kill too many students, and the school might shut down. Nerve gas would be much worse than that. What should we do?"

"Search other rooms," said Elmer.

"Why not 101?"

"I think there's no one in there but a defence force. I think the kid who they interrogated would have reported what he had told them to his superiors, and they would have set up a trap. For fuck's sake, we did that to some poor bastards a week ago, and it took us this long to put two and two together?"

"Okay then. Where would they hide their leader? Not necessarily a room."

"The room that's the furthest away from 101."

"You mean Room 199? Never. Springs to mind instantly."

"How about the collapsed staircase?"

"Too obvious. Actually no, it isn't. Let's go."

They started walking very softly down the plush carpet. They got to the collapsed staircase. Looking up, down, everywhere for traps or sentries, they began searching the piles of rubble with their eyes. Boots motioned. Everyone looked where he had pointed and saw a blanket moving up and down slowly behind a particularly large piece of masonry.

"Let's throw a piece of masonry at it, to see if it's a human and not a decoy," said Bruno. So everyone took cover. Because he suggested it, he got the role of carrying it out. He threw the rock and hid. There was a cry of pain, and the masonry inside the stairwell shifted audibly. So the four people came around the corner. At first the man sleeping there didn't notice them, but then there were eight guns jammed into his face.

"Who are you?" asked Mark in a very good fake voice, which made him sound like a southern Englishman instead of his native New Yorker.

"The ruler of the Triad, man," he smiled. "You need a loan or something? And what's with the threatening entrance?"

Elmer looked around. There still wasn't anyone around. But then a guy looked over the stairwell, clearly holding an assault rifle. He was about to ask a question when he saw the four people all around the man in the stairwell. He swung his assault rifle from pointing away to pointing towards the stairs, but Elmer shot him right through the forehead. He dropped soundlessly, and his gun fell down. Elmer put down his own gun, caught the falling one, dropped the gun, and picked up his silenced gun again.

"What was that for?" he asked, face pale.

Elmer lifted up his balaclava, showing his face, before putting it back on again.

The guy fainted.

The unstoppable four looked at each other. Bruno shrugged and fired sixty silent bullets into the still person's face. The other three followed suit. Everyone was then covered in blood and the guy's body was unrecognisable. Mark led everyone back to his room, where he collected all the bloody clothes to be cleaned thoroughly, collected all the weapons to be cleaned, and paid them $500 each before bidding them goodnight.

The morning was yet another big fucking nightmare. The builders who Fishdick had hired found the dead body in the stairwell and called the police. The police searched the building from top to bottom and found the rotting dead bodies in the lost and found and the one at the top of the stairs. This led to a bigger uproar, and the police called in the military. Miss Scrimmage saw the military pull up to Macdonald Hall and screamed for joy at the fact that the boys were all going to get killed. When it didn't happen she ran out with her shotgun and started pulling the trigger. Fortunately she had accidentally used the shotgun shells as hair rollers the previous night, so no soldiers were killed. However, she was nearly killed by eight hundred bullets from the military across the road, but a passing Coca-Cola truck took the whole brunt of the bullets and began spraying Coke everywhere. This made Scrimmage fall over, so the other bullets fired at her went over her. Then the soldiers realised her gun wasn't loaded when she tried to fire at the Coca-Cola truck, and so they just put her into military custody. She was released soon after because they really couldn't stand her.

The whole school was searched less than six hours after the other time, but this time the classrooms were searched as well. Then the police found the Scrimmage girls fucking the cleaners, cooks, teachers etc. in the classrooms. The whole thing dissolved into another lawsuit that was unresolved because Scrimmage refused to follow normal court practice (she yelled continuous insults and punched out two police officers and the judge).

Such lawsuits were beginning to become routine. The whole of both schools again ended up having one mammoth orgy for the whole of the afternoon, during which Davies got a new contact, who was his ex-contact's ex-rival, and so handed over control of the Mafia back to Elmer. He rejoiced.

Since the leader of the Triad was now dead, Elmer reinstated all the original taxation. Bruno and Boots vowed to kill Miss Scrimmage once again. Apart from all the police officers doing detective work on the dozen murders which had been discovered around the school (that school year was the most violent of any school year of any school on the planet ever), everything was back to how it was before the Mafia/Triad conflict.

Or so it seemed.

The next day, around lunchtime, Bruno and Boots were just getting up, though most of the school had been up for five hours. The minders were sent around to collect the Lunchtime Tax. Bruno and Boots each travelled to Scrimmage's via the tunnel for a good hard shag, then returned. They found all the high-ranking members of the Mafia sitting in the room already, in absolute uproar.

"It appears that the Triad lives on." Elmer said gloomily, summing up the past discussion for the benefit of Bruno and Boots.

"Those fucking swine!" snarled a member. "We killed their leader and took away their bravery, but they seem to have gone down to the shop and bought some for themselves, because they still fucking oppose us!"

"How do you know it's the Triad?" Bruno asked.

"Because two hours ago the cops found the corpses of three of our minders crammed into a broom closet." explained someone else. "The corpses had been cut to ribbons with a long blade, and their limbs and cocks had been sawed off. They found a polite note in one of their pockets which basically said, 'The inferior Mafia tries in vain to control the superior Triad. Give up, we'll win, we have more than twice your numbers.' What do we have to do to destroy them, dammit? Bruno and Boots proved that we're superior with their little 'reconnaissance' mission, and plus we doubtlessly have much greater military capacity and money."

"I think I've got the measure of them." stated Boots plainly. "They're a bunch of hopefuls who wish that someday they could tear down the Mafia. The blind fools. Destroying their guts won't destroy them, because they have hope. Hope is what welds together the Triad. We've managed to stop their attacking capacity, but their defending capacity lives on. If we want to destroy that too, we need to destroy their hope."

"But hope is undying." a member said resignedly.

"Bollocks." Bruno snorted. "First of all, listen to yourself just then, you'd given up hope of destroying the Triad. Second of all, hope is brittle, if you pound it hard enough it'll shatter. All we have to do is show them the extent of our raw, awesome power, and if it's big enough, we'll scare them back into line. Third of all, for fuck's sake, hurry up with that bong over there, we want a puff too."

Ten minutes later they were all extremely high. Two hours later Miss Scrimmage managed to ram her armoured limousine into the stone colonnades around the front door of the school, since she had insisted on driving. She blamed it on one of her mercenaries farting and fired him. He torched the apple orchard. She blamed it on Macdonald Hall and tried to fire Mr. Sturgeon. He told her to go fuck her mother. She blamed it on Saddam Hussein and encouraged the USA's new movement against anti-American terrorism. George W. Bush Junior used her as a case study of every American citizen in an international broadcast against Saddam Hussein, even though she wasn't even an American and was, out of habit, fingering herself on live international TV. Saddam laughed at Bush's broadcast. Bush's video artists twisted his laugh into a promise to nuke every G8 capital city. The American people encouraged Bush to fire off the world's entire arsenal of nuclear weapons at Afghanistan, since the American people were too stupid to remember Saddam Hussein was in Iraq. Bush pretended to oppose their wishes, then granted them. But by then Saddam had evacuated his entire country into Kuwait. Bush had watched the evacuation through a spy satellite, and considered calling off the nuking, but then a new Six Feet Under episode came on and he forgot. He told the American public where Saddam had evacuated to. Since they're all very very slow on the uptake, they told him to nuke Iraq this time around. He did, just to see if his men did what he told them to do. They did. Once it had happened, he told them he was just joking.

But enough babbling.

After school that day, at about four o'clock, everyone was in their rooms, except for Bruno and Boots, who were sitting in the underground chamber. They checked their watches simultaneously, then nodded at each other and donned balaclavas. They picked up two rounders bats each and silently left the room. Efficiently they went into every room in Dormitory 2 one by one and knocked out the occupants. They did this by knocking on the door. When someone opened it, Bruno and Boots would say, "Surprise dormitory inspection!" for the benefit of the neighbouring rooms, then tear in and whack the hell out of anything that moved - all headshots, so they'd black out quicker. Then they'd silently drag the unconscious or dead kids down into the underground chamber. Here a task force passed them along a line of people down to Scrimmage's, where they were temporarily kept in the underground chamber there. Once every occupant of Dormitory 2 was at Scrimmage's, a female stooge flipped the fire alarm, allowing much time for as many of the Triad members as possible to be snuck onto the roof of Scrimmage's gym. All two hundred denizens were then lying on the roof, with about thirty of them dead because Bruno and Boots had accidentally been a bit harsh. Then everyone disappeared back to Macdonald Hall and waited for the uproar to begin.

Yet again it was a complete fucking nightmare. The lawyers coaxed the whole thing into a trillion-dollar lawsuit for both sides, and accidentally into a gunbattle when some of her personal bodyguards got a little too riled up. This cost Scrimmage nine bodyguards and Fishdick twenty police officers before the fires of battle were put out. Both sides lost the lawsuit because it was the fifth time in two weeks that Scrimmage and Fishdick had had the same judge for some stupid fucking crime that neither were even remotely responsible for. This caused Fishdick to kick over a pew in contempt and Scrimmage to punch out the judge again, and her bodyguards to torch the building and rob a bank. Canadian politicians flocked in like geese and made campaign speeches for over ten hours (by then, of course, it was well past midnight). The fornication (and plenty of californication) lasted longer than that, because by then all the teachers and Fishdick had gone to bed, and Scrimmage had pulled a bunch of paper dolls back to her school because she was made to think they were her students. The paper dolls weren't even the correct width and they were only a few inches tall, but Scrimmage was fooled. Around two a.m. on Thursday morning, everyone started thinking about leaving for their bedrooms, and with that thought went in for one last shag, which of course ended up not being the last one. Around three it started breaking up as people hobbled away nursing sore erections and pussies. By four it had finally ceased. For once everyone was too fucking tired to hire prostitutes. Part of the eleven o'clock news was an editorial entitled, 'Canada's Schools Definitely Are Going Down The Fucking Drain, And I Don't Know About You, But I'm Sending My Kids To Be Educated At The Nearest Decent English-Speaking Country, i.e. Australia'.

Nobody got to classes on time. Most people weren't awake for breakfast. Some didn't get up in time for lunch, Bruno and Boots included.

"Man, my cock hurts so fucking much," groaned Boots as he pulled himself out of bed.

"I'm never having a quarter-day orgy again," agreed Bruno. "Four hours is bearable, but after five, it just hurts."

"Come on, we got sleep-catching-up time."

They went to lessons.

They soon discovered that the gang had evaporated overnight. The display of raw power made them cower and fall back into line. The minders were sent back around to collect taxes, and this time there were no complaints. As a peace offering many ex-Triad members gave the Mafia all their money, and a hefty forty percent of it was shared between Bruno and Boots. They then had their standard level of cash for that time of year, thirty-five thousand dollars. The SB clergy voted yes on putting the Triad/Mafia war into the SB, but the entry itself only vaguely mentioned Bruno and Boots as 'the main henchmen of Elmer, ruler of the Mafia between 2001 and '. They argued over this with the SB clergy, but they vehemently disagreed to give them the limelight in it, solely because they all wanted Scrimmage dead. Very annoyed were Bruno and Boots as they walked away from the meeting, and immediately called a meeting of the Mafia so that they could discuss the Scrimmage assassination.

"Okay, you two," said Elmer amicably, "tell us your plan to kill Scrimmage."

"It'll be extremely dangerous." Bruno said. "We'll attack her at her weakest point, when she's coming home from an opera or play or something, in her limousines. It must be a play or some other form of theatrical production, so it'll definitely be her and not her double in the limousines. We'll take the heaviest weapons we can find and mow that bitch to pieces. Forget AKs. We're gonna get as heavily armed as Scrimmage's bodyguards. Which will, as one can imagine, cost a holy shit load. May we dip into the Mafia reserve treasury to afford such specimens from Mark?"

"No, you cannot." Elmer said. "It's a completely un-Mafia-related activity. Those funds are in case our main funds get stolen and we can't afford to keep up our infrastructure long enough to get more money. I forbid their use."

"Well, then, we could steal them from the W.W.II munitions dump out in the Yukon." suggested Boots. "Mark Davies told me about it. He said it was pretty much the only one he hadn't raided in all of Canada because it was too far out."

"That's three hundred miles away from here." a member snorted incredulously.

"We'll do it in the Christmas holidays, then." Boots defended. "We could organise a seven-day trip to Toronto, for, say, Christmas shopping and leisure, organise some method of covering our absence, organise transport, food, drink, fuel, weapons, and an unnoticed return."

"That'll take a fucking age and be a bigger op than the assassination itself." someone warned.

"Maybe, but if I know those assholes in the SB clergy it still won't get into the SB because they want her dead so much. We're definitely not short of preparation time, at least. Me and Bruno will save up enough money to buy a bunch of dump trucks for the munitions transportation and assault vehicles and weapons to procure them. By the time that 2002 rolls around, the Mafia's armoury will rival the Colombian Mafia's armoury!"

"Wait a second!" cried Elmer. "Afterwards, the Mafia will get to keep all the stuff?!"

"Of course, except a choice few guns." reasoned Bruno. "As well as the fact that they wouldn't all fit in our storage room, we have no use for heavy machine-guns or rocket launchers after Scrimmage is dead. You can have them."

"Excellent!" Elmer yelled. "If we get to keep most of the fruits of your labour after the op, you can use Mafia funds for your expedition! I help you on with a happy heart!"

"Sweeeet." Bruno purred with satisfaction. "Nation-wide fame, an entry into the SB, and we even get paid for it. I only wish I didn't have to wait three and a half months."

Then the meeting broke up into frenzied lighting of Ultra Cigs as addictions reminded their hosts that they hadn't gotten so high they'd nearly OD'd since the giant orgy.

The next three and a half months passed uneventfully. Bruno and Boots got up to their usual mid-year level of cash, $75k. (The only reason why Bruno and Boots were broke when they came back from the summer holidays is because they spent all of their money on drugs and whores when at home and therefore out of reach of their cash flow, drug suppliers and easy lays.) Prostitution boomed during this time, the average price going up to $150 an hour. Even so the supply didn't come close to meeting the demand, because the slutty girls couldn't be bothered to crawl all the way over to Macdonald Hall to get fucked when they could just stay at home and screw the patrolmen, so only prostitutes came over. Even famous people like Bruno and Boots only managed to get laid three times a week. This was pure agony for them, for they had become complete sex addicts, and wanted to get laid about twenty times a week. Those three months were bad for everyone, and a few foolish people tried to make up for the lack of sex with drugs, but there was such a large lack that ultimately they'd OD. Smarter people made up for it with pornography. Even smarter people, like Bruno and Boots, made up for it by travelling down to Scrimmage's themselves, but as the patrolmen were older and more experienced, they still found it difficult to get decent pussy, and it didn't help that over the years Bruno and Boots had become very picky.

The Mafia cruised on without any nuisances, despite the problem-riddled start to the year. The SB clergy lost a member to some first-year whiz- kid's poison, and he was therefore promoted to a member himself, and was the youngest SB member ever. He'd even skipped two years of school because he was so damn clever, and a nine-year-old kid being a member was astonishing, so people immediately put him up for voting to go into the SB. Bruno and Boots, in an icy, jealous rage, declined, and knee-capped one of the kid's friends. In retaliation, he cracked through the firewall Bruno and Boots had installed on their giant folder of Internet-downloaded porn and inserted a trojan which would alert the entire school the next time that Bruno and Boots opened the folder. Bruno and Boots were duly caught looking at illegal materials and cut off from the Internet. Unruffled, they had the IT monitor executed with a hand-drill and got Elmer to turn their Internet connection back on. In retaliation they also destroyed the kid's- kid's chemistry lab where he made his explosives, not realising that the kid was in the bathroom at the time.

Nor did they realise that his room had been packed with explosives that he was making to sell to Mark Davies. Bruno and Boots accidentally killed him and blew up about six rooms, including Room 201, but thankfully not the underground passage. For this Elmer suspended Bruno and Boots for a whole month. It took two weeks of night work to get the underground tunnel going again. From then on the entrance to the tunnel was exactly where it was before but now out in the open, because Fishdick couldn't be bothered to repair the gaping hole. Prospective parents were merely led around the massive chunk of missing masonry and dozens of body outlines, and were therefore deluded into thinking that Macdonald Hall wasn't the finest example of a hellhole school in all of Canada which was run by a gangster faction.

At last, the time for the operation came. Elmer used some of the Mafia's funds to buy several lorries, an armoured vehicle, and a Land Rover with a mounted Browning M2 heavy machine-gun on the back, then paid some chauffeurs to deliver them to a downtown Toronto garage. He also bought a bunch of guns off Mark for the ten people going over to steal the weapons, including Bruno and Boots. These were hidden in suitcases well enough that they passed the school's casual inspections. They were M-16 assault rifles with added scopes and laser sights. The shopping and leisure week-long expedition to Toronto left Macdonald Hall with the ten assassins on the bus as well as fifty other students and the six most easily bribable teachers. These were bribed with roughly their yearly wage not to tell anybody when the raiding party disappeared from their hotel one night, and also not to put two and two together when the Yukon op became a media sensation. They found the garage, took their heavy vehicles and started driving. The Land Rover, being much lighter than the rest of the vehicles, could drive much faster, and only took about seven and a half hours to drive all the way over to the ammo dump, and spent the next three hours performing reconnaissance on the defences. Then the rest of the vehicles arrived, and there was a lengthy discussion about how to attack the weapons cache inside the armoured vehicle, which was the warmest place they had in the desolate Yukon.

"The defences are a lot smaller than I expected them to be," said one of the members of the raiding party.

"There's a lot more than I thought there would be," countered Bruno. "There's like twenty guys in snow gear with assault rifles. I thought it would be two old women making sweaters, armed only with their knitting needles."

"Did we bring any snow gear?" asked someone.

"Of course we did, Elmer Drimsdale planned most of this operation, you think he's stupid enough to give us swimsuits for a winter operation in the Yukon?"

"Why weren't we issued them before we left? It was freezing in the cab of that lorry, even with the heating on at full."

"And I'm starving."

"We got all the food and the gear in the back of a lorry. Someone go get it."

Two people dutifully left the warmth of the APC, wearing only medium- density winter coats. Twenty minutes later they came back, wearing the ultra-thick snow suits and still shivering from their time outside. They had both eaten lots of food and used all the preheated water, so they would have to use the car batteries to heat up more water. Not that that was a problem, since they had electric kettles with them, but it did take longer. Within an hour everyone had eaten all the food they might have needed for the upcoming battle, warmed up with lots of a hot chocolate/high-caffeine coffee blend, gotten dressed in the clothes and were laying around in a shallow dip in the snow, ready for Bruno and Boots to come back with more detailed reconnaissance information. They were all in sound mind, because Bruno had warned them not to have any alcohol or drugs or anything for two days before the operation.

By the time Bruno and Boots came back, it was 8:00 in the morning.

"Okay, there are exactly sixteen guys around the place, all with M-16s and sidearms. None of them have grenades, at least none outside the building. They have varying patrols, and there are two secret patrols around the back in a camouflaged trench. They're mostly very alert and look like true professionals. This may be biting off more than we can chew. Sixteen guys outside the building, who knows how many inside. Thank God there are no machine-gun emplacements, because we have few grenades and no bazookas. However, there could be mines. We didn't find any, but there could be some, since this is a military installation. How many of you are up to this task?"

All men present said, "I."

"Good, because we're gonna need every bit of firepower and luck we can get. We need a co-ordinated assault on the front doors. There can't be the slightest bit of hesitation from anybody. Shoot to kill, leave nobody alive. If possible, stop the alarm from going off."

"But what are we going to do?" someone demanded, and Bruno began.

Half an hour later, all was quiet in the compound, exactly like it always was. Private Enrico Johnson of the Canadian Army was grimacing at his crappy life. He started out as an intelligent Mexican child, raised in warm but smelly Mexico City. His parents shelled out what little money they had to give him a great education, including very expensive English classes, and his record made him look like a shooting star. But then their small corner shop got behind on their protection payments to the mob, and they were forced to run for it. They were stopped at the Americano-Mexicano border by immigration police and put in a holding cell. During this time the Mexico City Mob caught up to them and hit the place. Enrico's parents were killed. He escaped with his life, just barely, illegally, into the USA. There he ran from the immigration police and Mexico City Mob some more, and could find no rest anywhere in America, so he ran all the way up to Canada. (Ran isn't the right word; he hitchhiked, walked, rode the bus, and carjacked to get to the Great Lakes. Once at the Great Lakes he stowed away on a boat and successfully got to the other side.) Once in Canada, at the age of twenty, he had to throw away his old life because it could only get him killed. He started a new life, the sort of don't-ask-don't-tell shady life, and found the highest-paying legal job he could snag for himself without any past was a post in the army. He had much trouble at the start and an affair with a commander's wife landed him smack in the middle of Goddamn freezing nowhere guarding a piecashit installation with no heating whatsoever containing weapons sixty years out-of-date. This was a similar story to the rest of the guards here. After all, who the hell would want to be in the icy wastes of the Yukon?

Enrico walked out his prescribed patrol route. Not that anyone gave a damn. Last week he had just not bothered leaving the installation for any reason, and there were no consequences, none at all. For half a year before then, he hadn't bothered carrying his AR while on his patrol route, he'd just left it on his bedside table. Life in this fucking wasteland consisted of boring routine, then pure boredom, then more boring routine, and occasionally someone found something to laugh about. These were the only bright points in Enrico's life apart from Christmas dinner. The only reason that he was carrying his weapon right now was because someone had organised a shooting contest later on, and he didn't want any chance of one of his competitors sabotaging his gun or ammo, because he had two month's wages riding on the outcome of the contest.

Thirty metres out from his position were five people hiding in the snow. They were no longer cold now that they had the snow camo on. Their winter- oil-covered M-16s were cradled up against their bodies to offer as little light reflection as possible with the safety catches on. They were waiting for the signal to start running and shooting. The signal wasn't anything subtle. The signal was when all hell broke loose. And it would, in about five seconds.

Enrico stopped along his patrol route near several trees. These trees blocked the wind as much as possible, but still not very much, while he took out a cigarette and a pack of matches. He struck one, and it went out immediately. He struck another, and he managed to singe the end of the cigarette slightly before it went out. As he struck the third, he heard the revving of an engine. Then he got run over by the Land Rover, which was being piloted by Bruno. The Land Rover shot through the trees perfectly in midair, over the snow on its extra-wide snow tyres and closed the distance to the base quickly. Boots, standing at the heavy machine-gun, pulled the trigger. It came to life with a loud roar, its multiple barrels revolving and spraying eight bullets a second. Boots aimed as best as he could as the Land Rover bounced over the uneven, waist-deep snow with hidden bumps underneath it. He walked the stream of death around and through the moving white things some fifty metres away. They fired back, barely denting the front of the extra-tough Land Rover. Boots cut down maybe five of the eight on that side of the building before the guards took cover because of half- forgotten training.

Meanwhile, the armoured vehicle drove relentlessly onward down towards the front doors. Some foolish people began firing at it once it smashed through the gates, and the armoured vehicle was completely unaffected. Once within ten feet of the eighth-inch steel door, the three men inside took up crash positions. The armoured vehicle rammed into the steel door and knocked it down. The driver then got up from his crash position and floored the brake pedal at the same time that he twisted the steering wheel, sideswiping a soldier and a maintenance engineer in a spectacular slide. Without hesitation once the vehicle had stopped, the other two people inside the vehicle whacked the hatch open and clambered out. They shot another two soldiers and quickly ran off in search of the alarm button. The driver of the armoured vehicle closed the hatch and reversed out the hole, accidentally running over a soldier as he ran in. Then he drove after the other soldiers to try and run them over, too.

Bruno and Boots continued driving the Land Rover onwards, still firing at the soldiers with the machine gun, hitting much less often now that they had taken adequate cover. Boots finally murdered the last of the group of eight after expiring the thousand-round ammo belt. He efficiently loaded in a fresh one and cocked the weapon as they went round the next side of the building.

The group of five foot soldiers ran down the main road as fast as they could. They finally got through the busted front door after a twenty-second sprint. They spread out through the installation, looking for pockets of resistance. There definitely were some in the extensive building, they could hear firing every now and then, but they couldn't seem to find the army soldiers before they found them. Out of the seven who went in, only two were alive after they killed the two remaining soldiers in the place.

The installation was appalling; only one big fucking room, with no heating, running water or windows, only enough electricity to sustain a few tired, out-of-date lights and an alarm system, lots of pallets of rotting, disused guns falling into disrepair stacked three high, and not the slightest shred of comfort anywhere, apart from the one and two thirds bottles of home- brewed wine. In one empty corner an encampment with tents, sleeping bags and an open fire had been constructed to live in. In another corner was an office. The walls had caved in on it, and the roof was only being supported here by several makeshift columns of rotting wood that had to be replaced by more tree trunks every summer. The ancient desk that had once been there, which would have fetched £300 on the Antiques Roadshow, had long since been chopped up for firewood by some lazy person who couldn't be bothered to travel far for firewood. There was an old telephone sitting on the floor of the office. The power to it had been cut off thirty years before. The telephone was the sort where you spun a dial a certain amount for every individual number. It had flaking paint and was corroded as hell. The dial had been torn off and painted over to be used as the target for that afternoon's target contest, which would now never ever happen.

Bruno and Boots drove along very close to the camo trench. Neither could see down it, so as they drove Boots simply kept a stream of bullets going dead centre along the trench, hopefully killing most of them at least. Once they had passed that side Boots reloaded the machine-gun again with his last belt of 1000 rounds and efficiently slaughtered the remaining people on the last side, helped along by the armoured vehicle as it tried to run people over. Then the catastrophe happened; the armoured vehicle, the most expensive piece of equipment Elmer had bought, hit a giant tree stump hidden under the smooth layer of snow and went onto its side.

People reported back to the main gates of the building, as they had been instructed to. They all looked at the dead bodies all around them and also at the downed armoured vehicle. Boots was close to tears, more sad about the loss of the APC than his five comrades, and Bruno acted exactly the same. Bruno counted all those present.

"Shit, we lost half of us," he said in annoyance. "There hasn't been a loss of school students this big for a month. Anyway, let's go and work out how we can save the APC."

"No," said Boots. "Bruno, two reasons why not; the police will arrive within four to six hours, it's not enough time if we also want to steal guns, and anyway, we have four lorries and a Land Rover. We can only keep five vehicles, because that's how many drivers we have. Less if some of us can't drive. How many of us can't drive?"

Everyone could drive.

"So if we somehow save the APC, we would have to leave behind a lorry, which would never happen because we want all these weapons, or the Land Rover. It will take too long to save the APC, because it weighs at least two tons, so we'll have to dispose of it. No chance of coming back later for it, either, because it will be confiscated by the police. We'll have to sterilise it and abandon it. Okay, three of us will find and load the necessary weapons into the lorries, one of us will clean out and set fire to the interior of the APC and our friendly dead bodies, and one of us will stand guard on the Land Rover's M2 with spare guns all around him."

The people went about on their separate tasks, with Bruno getting weapons and Boots burning bodies and the vehicle. One person started backing the lorries up to the entrance to the building, and one person handed out necessary equipment to all the people there (except the guy standing guard, who didn't need anything else).

"Come on, guys," said Bruno, "here's an oil drum Boots can use. Direct him to it when he comes in." He accepted the crowbar he was given by a co- worker named Harold. He opened the nearest pallet and forced open a wooden box inside. It was full of anti-tank mines. He dropped the crowbar and, with a can of paint and a paintbrush, labelled the crate 'E1'. The letter denoted what was in the crate, in this case explosives. The number indicated the priority, with 1 being the highest and 4 being the lowest. The priority indicated how useful it would be in killing Scrimmage. Bruno intended for the mines to be laid out on a lonely country road that would be rigged for her use only. Then he put down the paintbrush and paint bucket and got the crowbar again. He opened another box in the same pallet just to be sure it was all mines, then went to the next pallet. Inside were lots and lots of pistols, specifically the Colt 1911, the sidearm of choice in the Second World War. These he labelled 'P3'. This was a long and tedious process, since there were about ninety pallets in the building in no kind of order, but they weren't about to bring back two-thirds of the crates only to find most of it contained mouldy food and spent bullet cartridges, so it was necessary. Also once everything had been categorised, everything with priority 1 or 2 would be quality-checked, so they wouldn't bring home wet explosives or cracked bullets.

Boots first crawled inside the armoured vehicle, rather than collect dead bodies. The heat had gradually bled away since no one had closed the hatch once the driver of it had escaped. He got everything useful out of it, which was just food, pencils, paper etc. This took one trip to deliver to the driver's cab of a lorry. Then he started collecting dead bodies. He was only destroying them to leave nothing connecting them to Macdonald Hall, and he didn't want to do it, but it was necessary. He had his assault rifle on his back by the strap and carried the dead bodies over his shoulders. Their gun, grenade and walkie-talkie were carried on him as well. He dumped each body inside the APC, and their weapons near it. After an hour and a half, there were five bodies in the APC. (Obviously he didn't need to burn the soldiers' corpses, since they weren't connected to Macdonald Hall.)

Then it took him ten minutes to roll the oil barrel twenty metres. He was still one hundred metres away from the downed armoured vehicle, so he opened the cap and let most of the oil out into the snow. Then it took him only twenty minutes to go the rest of the way to the Land Rover. There he slowly tipped the oil-drum towards the open hatch. He was lucky enough for the terrain to be shaped so the APC was leaning towards one end, and he could balance the oil drum on the tree stump while he poured. He got most of the oil into the APC and very little on himself. Then he sat twenty metres away from all the fumes coming out, thinking of the best way to set it on fire without torching himself in strongish winds. He eventually soaked a rag in the oil left in the drum and put it in one of the empty bottles of home-made wine. He dropped a lit match inside the bottle, setting the rag alight.

He allowed himself a good twenty seconds to think of his five dead schoolfriends. He never liked any of them, but he thought it was the least he could do before ensuring their not having any kind of burial. Then he threw the now warm bottle inside the APC, correctly compensating for the suddenly dropping wind. The bottle shattered, the huge pool of oil came into contact with the flame, and a spout of fire came out of the APC hatch. Boots shielded his eyes, then watched to make sure the bodies were burned sufficiently so not even their fingerprints or DNA could prove who they were. There was a chance of their dental records being gauged, but hopefully their teeth would at least be singed or shifted enough to be unrecognisable. He should have removed their teeth beforehand, but it was definitely too late now. Another lesson learned, hopefully not the hard way. He always learned something new on every single mission he went on. Even someone with as much experience as Mark Davies admitted that.

Bruno had long since finished categorising the pallets, some of which had mixed equipment in them. He was, by the time Boots had come back from the APC to help with the crates, most of the way through the quality check of everything important. The other two people were helping him at that stage. Only two-fifths of the things they wanted were in full working order, but out of the useless equipment, half of it could be repaired or dried or resoldered or whatever. The four people went and labelled the things they wanted with a tick or a cross on the pallet, stating whether the contents were in working order or not. Then they finally started loading the things they wanted into the lorries. They had an hour left before their predetermined window of when they had to leave. After all, they wanted at least an hour to get away from there, so they would be less suspicious if police cars passed them. (The Land Rover would be suspicious regardless, what with the huge gun on the back - to get it and the APC there, they had to go along all the back roads, and therefore went at roughly the same speed as the lorries on the highway.)

Loading took much less time than it would have done if they hadn't organised everything they had wanted beforehand, which was of course the point. Organising it would have been much more effective if they had had all ten people to load the crates, but the organisation still helped. They knew exactly what they had to handle with care and what they could literally throw to the floor by looking at the pallet. They knew which stacks of pallets they could leave alone, which stacks they had to load in, and which stacks they would only partially load in. For the first two sections of ten minutes, they tried loading in whole pallets at a time, then loading in individual boxes at a time. The lighter stuff was found to be easiest to carry all at once, like plastic explosives, but the guns were easiest carried in individual boxes, since they could form a sort of assembly line for them. Within the required hour, they had gotten most of what they wanted.

"Okay," panted some random worker, "what should we do? Leave now, get everything we want, or get everything we want and a little more?"

Suddenly there was a huge load of gunfire from outside. Everyone sprinted out the door, removing their assault rifles from their backs. They looked around. The guard was still standing on the Land Rover, though in a tired way. His gigantic gun was still smoking and spinning. At the entrance of the place was a fresh dead body. They could tell because it was still smoking as well. They all ran over to the Land Rover guy in a state of high alert.

"What the hell happened?" demanded Bruno.

"That poor bastard over there was a hunter chasing a deer," he said forlornly. "I saw a deer sprint through the compound. I damn near shot it myself, too. Then this hunter shot it just as it reached the building. He started running for the deer, then when he left the thick forest, he saw the burning armoured vehicle and the trucks. He came to investigate. Then he saw me, aiming this gun at him. He pulled his gun up, and I shot him to save my life."

"Shit happens," said Boots. "Well, that's a little reminder for the police to hurry up to get here. This is bad for us, definitely worse for him, but still bad for us. We don't have time for much else, let's get five more boxes of pistols for self-defence on the way back, then drive away. Come on, let's move!"

Each person, including the guy who had been on the Land Rover, went inside the building and got one box of pistols each. These they each delivered to the vehicle they would be driving themselves and stashed the pistols all around the driver's seat, in case they were pulled over by the police.

Then they all prepared to leave. As a cruel joke, the engine of the second- most-expensive vehicle, the Land Rover, wouldn't start. They didn't feel they had time to see what was wrong, so they sterilised it with an antitank mine. Of course they first removed all the stashed pistols and anything else useful, including the built-in compass but excluding the heavy machine- gun, since it would take too long to remove from the stand. The would-be driver of the Land Rover joined Bruno in the cab of his lorry. They left in five-minute increments, so there wouldn't be a whole convoy of lorries being suspicious on the highways, and only one lorry here and there. They all arrived at the same highway by different predetermined routes, to be less suspicious still, and even at different junctions, to be even less suspicious.

Along the way, two lorries had to pass the same farm before splitting off into their respective ways. A 60-year-old farmer, who was travelling from one of his barns back to his house, noticed the lorries. He remembered the license plate of the second purely by photographic memory. Half an hour later, four police cars arrived at the scene of the crime. They had passed one of the lorries, but didn't suspect it. There they estimated what had happened. They started questioning the locals. The toothless old man was the only one who both saw the lorries and remembered the license plate. He saw the last one to leave, Bruno's and the other guy's one. The policeman immediately put on a nation-wide search for the lorry with that license plate. Three hours later, half-way to Toronto, a police car saw Bruno's lorry. However, he didn't pull him over. That was because, after eighty or so miles of driving, Bruno pulled over and changed the license plates with ones they had bought from Mark's gangster garage, as did the other lorries earlier. Bruno never knew how close he had come to disaster.

They arrived back at Toronto, where they dropped off the lorries at Mark's gangster garage. Then they confronted Elmer back at his five-star hotel (the rest of the school was at a two-star hotel, but he had too much style to be caught dead at a place like that).

"Even though we succeeded in our mission, it was a disaster from start to finish." admitted Boots. "First off the security was masses more than we expected, the army must have quite a few rejects they want to throw away but can't, and as a result we lost half our men. Also the snow was so deep we couldn't see any roadside obstacles so we managed to wreck the APC. Then the Land Rover's engine wouldn't start, so we had to abandon that, too. All in all, we fared badly, even though now the Mafia will never need to buy weapons ever again, and we have enough to take on Scrimmage with extensive losses."

Elmer waved a hand dismissively. "You lost me $100,000 worth of vehicles but brought me $300,000 worth of guns and bombs. As for the lost men, who the fuck cares? All is forgiven. Hell, I even forgive you for detonating my room, you've brought me so much! I'll arrange for those things to be added to the Mafia stash. When you want to nail Scrimmage, just walk right up and take the things you need from the pile. There's plenty enough now. Now enough business talk. I only came on this excursion to take in the big city. I heard about this very compliant whorehouse not far away from here off one of Mark's contacts, and I think that we all really need to get laid. So I'm going there now, and not coming back for fifteen hours, and I'm bringing a bodyguard and five thousand dollars."

"I'm definitely going with you!" enthused Bruno and tucked a self-defence pistol from Elmer's bedside table behind his back. Boots did the same, and the three set off to get some major relief.

The rest of the trip passed fairly quietly. The story of the daring arms robbery turned into a two-day media feeding frenzy, resulting in two blue- suiters getting sacked. Everyone on the excursion spent at least a third of their time at the compliant whorehouse. In fact, on the second-to-last day, the only people at the whorehouse were thirty students of Macdonald Hall and the whores themselves. Bruno and Boots, shuddering at the thought of another week at least of barely getting laid, spent seven thousand dollars on women on the last day, but the rest of the students weren't as rich as they were, so they hadn't gone on the last day because they were completely broke; they could barely afford a chocolate bar between them. The duo were in the same room with no less than ten prostitutes. Every one of them had already been naked for three hours. At that time, it was one of the periods where Bruno and Boots were catching up on their breath and energy levels.

"Boy, this is the very best experience of my life." Boots said contentedly, reclining on a soft leather sofa smoking a joint and an Ultra Cig at the same time, two women sitting on him, watching another three make out with each other.

"No fucking shit, Sherlock." Bruno responded, preparing the next needle very inefficiently because of the woman gently sucking him and the other four gazing at him adoringly, groping anyone near them.

Then they heard it faintly from downstairs. "Down, down, down!" "Hands empty and where I can see them!" "Toronto Provincial Police!" "Freeze, asshole! Drop it!"

"Fuck!" Bruno snarled and pulled out his pistol. "You girls are all absolute dreams, I hope to fuck you again sometime."

"I hope to get paid so very much again sometime." one of them replied as Boots pulled out his weapon and readied it. The prostitutes all pulled on bathrobes and sneakers and jumped out onto the fire escape.

"Freeze, ladies! Police! Hands up!" commanded a voice from outside the door.

Blindly, Bruno and Boots fired through the wall. They heard cries of pain from two different throats. Bruno and Boots then pulled on a bathrobe each hanging on the wall, though they were obviously meant for the whores, as they had sexy female designs on them. If they had had more time, they would have gotten dressed properly. But they didn't have any time. They pulled on their shoes and stuffed their clothes into their pockets.

"Move out of the Goddamn way!" Boots screamed at the shocked prostitutes. They were too shocked to move, so Bruno and Boots shoved them out of the way and jumped out onto the fire escape.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

"More cops!" Bruno shouted and got behind as much metal as he could on a wire frame fire escape. Through it he could see a cop down below, who had rightly sussed that Bruno had just murdered two police officers. Bruno stood up and fired back before ducking down again. But upon closer inspection, he realised he'd hit the officer in the gut, so he stood up again. A cop with an M-16 ran into the alley below and fired a long burst at Bruno, so Bruno had to duck down again. The cop took cover and fired some more.

"I need some help, Boots, dammit!" Bruno cried and fired five times. Boots had dodged back into the room to avoid being hit, but he had his own problems, as Bruno discovered when Boots fired twice with a pistol and a full-grown man groaned and fell to the floor.

"I'm preoccupied, Bruno!" Boots called, as Bruno heard an MP5 sub machinegun blow the shit out of the room he'd been fucking hot women in for three hours. "And I think I'm the one who needs helping out!"

"I'm coming!" Bruno called and sprinted back into the bedroom. The cop in the alley expired his clip at Bruno's running figure, then ran over to the fire escape as he reloaded. Bruno ran into the room firing, taking down two more officers, before crouching behind the sofa to reload. The prostitutes were scattered around the end of the room in poses of surrender. Boots was on the opposite side of the room, lying down behind a fallen grand piano which had had one of its legs sheared off by bullets. He was holding a Thompson sub machinegun.

"Where'd you get the SMG?" Bruno demanded, pulling back the slidebar of his pistol.

Boots leaned around his cover and fired a long burst, hitting nobody. As he threw himself back, just dodging several bullets, he answered, "I brought it, in case there was a gangfuck. I've been bringing extra weapons from the robbery in a backpack every time we came here. Haven't you noticed?"

"No." Bruno said truthfully. "What other weapons have we got?"

"One more Thompson, two Colt 1911s, two spare clips for everything, and two explode-on-impact grenades." Boots answered. "Have your share of that." Bruno jumped up and fired at the doorway to gain some time while Boots threw half of everything to Bruno. Bruno reloaded the pistol again, holstered both pistols, and readied his Thompson.

"There's no way we can take on all these policemen." Bruno yelled. "I'm surprised we aren't dead or arrested already. We need to escape. Let's go out the fire escape."

"On three." Boots suggested. Bruno nodded.

"One, two, three!" Both boys jumped up and fired at the doorway as they ran onto the fire escape. Boots unpinned his grenade and threw it at the doorway to stop them still further. Bruno looked at the ground below. There were two police officers in a huddle with pistols, and the one with the M- 16 was climbing the fire escape. Bruno was on the third floor. The grenade exploded behind him, dicing several cops. He unpinned his grenade and threw it at the huddle, then mowed down the one climbing up the fire escape. The grenade was a perfect throw, and exploded right at the feet of the huddle, spattering gore two storeys up the building behind them. Both boys then descended the fire escape with lightning speed, and had reached the ground when the first of the cops were on the third floor landing. They fired at the duo, but missed. Bruno and Boots fired back with a single burst before pelting down an alley. They got to the end of the alley and found their way blocked by a single police car. This didn't stop them. They shot the two cops and reloaded before sprinting off into the night. They didn't bother ditching their guns to look inconspicuous, the guns had fingerprints all over them, and they'd look conspicuous anyway because they were wearing nothing but seductive bathrobes and Nike shoes. Fortunately, it was so late at night that they weren't spotted the rest of the way back to the hotel.

The two boys didn't stop sprinting until they were safely inside the hotel through the car park lift, and they didn't stop running until they were in Elmer's hotel room.

"Elmer, we need help, fast!" said Bruno.

"No can do," Elmer said. They only just noticed the prostitute in his bed.

"Come on, Elmer, the whorehouse we were just at was raided! Our fingerprints are all over the building! If we're positively ID'd going into another whorehouse Fishdick will go through with his threat to expel us both! Not to mention the increased prison sentence for repeat offenders!"

"What?" he spluttered, his erection down instantly. "Shit, I knew this would happen someday! Come on, put on these balaclavas! What should we do to the building? Torch it? Wash it down with soapy water? Come on, help me think!" He finally found the dozen balaclavas he had stashed in his suitcase and he threw all but one of them at Bruno and Boots. "Come on! What should we do?" He dragged the one in his hands over his head.

"Torching it is bad," Boots said, grabbing one of the balaclavas on the floor and putting it on. "There's buildings all around it. I don't really want to burn down the whole of Toronto. Fuck fuck FUCK! Got any gloves?"

"Yeah, here!"

"We could set fire to the building in a vaguely controlled way, then call the fire department. Man, we are so screwed!"

"No, Bruno, that would never work!"

"Why not? Any better ideas?" Now with his gloves on, he accepted the two silenced Ingrams from Elmer, who was himself wearing gloves.

"No! Hey bitch, give me that kerosene tin under the bed!" She complied. He threw the thing into a different backpack, which already had all the necessities in it: compass, Canadian money, American money, Mexican money, Russian money, Japanese money, pencils, paper, combat knife, continental road map, 2 bottles of bourbon, and random pieces of cloth, string, rope, and twine, but above all, matches.

"While you're there, bitch, get us some clothes!" yelled Boots. "Preferably black!" She threw them exactly the outfits they wanted: black silk inside, black leather middle, black felt outside. They all pulled them on, including Elmer. He readied his weapons and threw a shipload of spare clips at the other two gangsters, one at a time. They caught each one deftly and shoved them into the dozens of custom-made clip holsters on their clothes. Then they sprinted to the stairs.

They ran down eight flights of stairs to the car park. They got into the car and squealed out through the exit, knocking a few dustbins across the road as they did so. They drove at a normal speed after that, remembering that they didn't want to arouse suspicion. They eventually got to the whorehouse. There were lots of police cars and trucks leaving the scene of the crime, carting away the captured gangsters and prostitutes to prison. Only a few remained as Elmer parked on the deserted streets. Then he chanted 1-2-3 and they all got out of the car from different doors. The two policemen standing there arguing looked up and reached for their guns. The three of them fired about fifty bullets in all, and they both went down without firing a shot. They went up to the door, which had been smashed down with a hand-held battering ram. Inside the door was no one. There were already some forensics specialists in the first room, looking for fingerprints, collecting samples of blood and hair, etc. The trio mowed them down as well. They searched every room and killed everyone easily, since there was almost no one left and those left didn't expect anyone to attack them, and certainly not with silenced automatic weapons. Then they set to work. Bruno thought of dragging everyone inside the building, so it was more likely the coroner thought they died in the fire. They put pools of kerosene in all the rooms they remembered visiting. They lit each one with a match each, then legged it. Right after that they called the fire department and told them to go there pronto. Then they drove away, not thirty seconds before the fire trucks arrived.

"And that's exactly what happened on the trip." finished Bruno at the SB meeting in the early evening the next day.

"That's quite a tale." remarked a member and struck a match for his spliff.

"I don't suppose it'll get into the SB?" Boots asked half-heartedly.

"If you do manage to nail Scrimmage, we'll write in every detail of this year, and give your SB fiasco an entire chapter with a highlighted title in the table of contents." a member consoled him. "The trip on its own might confuse the reader as to its reason. We need to put in everything. But we can't until you perform everything."

"Whatever." groaned Bruno. "Now we need some seriously hard mothafuckas to go with us on this mission. Any volunteers?"

The room was silent.

"Volunteers was a bad choice of words. Of course you'll get paid for it." Bruno added disgustedly.

"I'm in." chorused five big, muscled, fearless members.

"Good." Boots said. "The Mafia will supply the weapons. We want you to recruit another five men each, so we can have thirty-two attackers on Scrimmage's ultra-strong limos. We'll pay you ten thousand dollars each, which will also go towards paying your recruits. And remember, people; once Scrimmage is dead, her heir will get rid of all that ridiculous security, so the girls will come over here again, so we'll all get laid many times a day again. And hopefully Fishdick will follow suit afterwards and get rid of all our patrolmen. Remember these advantages, as well as your ridiculous salaries, when you're firing at Scrimmage. It's for the good of us all."

Everyone lapsed into a brief period of silence as they reminisced what it was like to get laid twice a day on weekdays and five times a day on weekends.

Then ordinary conversation resumed.

"Now, people, what should we do about that new so-called teacher of discipline, eh? He's being a right bellend."

"I say we murder him." snarled somebody.

"That goes without saying." Boots snorted. "The question is, how?"

"I think we should hang him."

"Don't bother with fancy shit, just find him and slice his head off!"

"Build some gallows..."

"Pneumatic press..."

"Sulphuric acid..."

"We drown him in the septic tank." decided a member. Everyone roared in approval and sent two members away with crowbars.

"But they won't find his body!" complained the one person less than ecstatic at the gruesome death of a piece of shit. "It'll just sit there and rot!"

"And block up the sewage pipe." finished Bruno. "Then the plumber will go in to try and fix it, and boy will he get a nasty shock."

Twenty-four hours later, after the fiasco of a teacher dying (which included Miss Scrimmage beating up a jury) Bruno and Boots were holding a meeting in Room 306 of the third wave (but officially the second wave) of Scrimmage assassins. They handed out heavy weapons that could have been used in the Second World War but weren't before explaining the plan. They had paid off Scrimmage's cleaner with an astronomical sum of Mafia funds that Elmer had given to them to learn Scrimmage's calendar for the next three weeks. They had formed a well-laid plan and were talking it over with the other thirty men. Eventually everyone knew exactly where, when, how, and who to strike. They all agreed to the plan and left.

Forty-eight hours later, Bruno and Boots were driving eastbound on a little- used B-road in the cab of a lorry. They were cleaning their extensive array of weapons as someone else drove. There were fourteen more people in the back of the lorry, checking over the masses of weapons. They'd been driving through the slight fog for half an hour now, and would be driving for another fifteen minutes. The mercenary driving, a lean second-year, was extremely twitchy, but kept to rigid self-discipline and didn't do anything rash even if startled. Privately Boots felt that he was perfect for the mission, unless he didn't have much experience. One of the volunteers had recruited him, and Boots felt that if somehow the op was reduced to a big gangfuck, he'd like to have this kid at his side. If the kid survived, he was going to be a star, definitely a fairly high job in the Mafia, probably snag a post on the SB clergy, maybe an SB entry. Then Boots smiled at the thought of this term's worth of hard work becoming a chapter of the SB. He'd be famous for generations. This turned into an elaborate fantasy of going national with his gangster skill and luck.

The lorry slowed and turned sharply right across the four-lane B-road. Boots heard the second lorry behind his lorry slew round ninety degrees facing the other way. Then both vehicles started reversing down private country lanes leading to Canadian wheatflour farms. Currently nothing was growing, so the farmers had little to do but sit inside, play rubbish games, and screw their wives if there weren't any children to disturb such activity. Bruno and Boot's lorry stopped when it was out of sight of the highway. Bruno and Boots stepped down from the cab, cocking their Beretta 92 SDs. They strolled up to the front door of the house and insistently knocked on the door. Several seconds later the door opened. Bruno and Boots barged in and quickly assassinated the two fat farmers in the house, then checked the barn and chicken coop. The couple appeared to be childless, so they went back to the lorries. The men were carefully unloading and setting up some huge anti-tank mines, containing 5.4 kilos of pentolite (a mixture of TNT and PETN), in a straight line across the road. Unfortunately for them, they only had enough mines for one row, and to be sure of a hit they had to pack the mines so closely together that when one exploded they all would, thus giving a maximum kill of one vehicle. Then everyone collected their weapons and took up positions.

At this point, it was expected that Miss Scrimmage would only be coming along this path in two hours.

Bruno climbed a tree at a bend in the road a hundred metres up towards Toronto. He had his trusty scoped rifle with him to act as sniper as well as lookout, and to act as lookout he had a pair of x10 binoculars and a walkie-talkie. He was wearing the same snow camos he'd used in the Yukon to battle the cold, but beforehand he'd spray painted them black. He'd also sprayed all his rifle rounds with Teflon to make them slightly faster and more armour piercing, as had all the other soldiers. God knew they'd need to be able to pierce armour. The limos each had an inch and a half of titanium alloy armouring, even on the bottom, and there were a double layer of tyres on the vehicles so they could still manoeuvre after one flat. Plus the bodyguards wore two half-inch Kevlar vests each, and Scrimmage wore three times as much, despite the fact that this weighed her down incredibly and made her look fatter than she actually was. Not to mention the ongoing rumour of Scrimmage's clone decoy.

Boots was one of the foot soldiers hiding in the trees. The trees on both sides of the road were thick and sturdy. They wouldn't withstand bullets, but they would withstand limos driving at them, thus leaving only forwards and backwards as escape routes. This spot had been chosen specifically to limit the directional escape options. With him he had a bazooka firing 2.36in rockets that would punch a hole through most tanks and hopefully an armoured limo. But at least he had five spare rockets, so even if the first one failed to penetrate the next few definitely would. He also had an M-16 left over from the Yukon op. All twenty-eight M-16s (ones that the students and the soldiers had used) had been handed out to the best soldiers of the squad. The rest had to make do with Thompson sub machineguns and M1 repeating rifles. To avoid accidental friendly fire, all the shooters hiding in the trees were on the same height up the hills either side of the road. They were also well spread out to minimise casualties from the enemy grenade launchers and flamethrowers. There were fifteen gunmen in the forest in all, sixteen more being in the lorries and one hiding in a tree a hundred metres up the road towards Toronto. The eight men in each lorry were either handling the most dangerous weapons of the attack force or else merely supporting those who did. Everything was ready in plenty of time. Then Bruno spoke one word into his walkie-talkie that galvanised everyone instantly.

"Scrimmage."

At exactly the same time, thirty-one safety catches were flicked off. The sound reverberated through the wheat fields. In twenty seconds a car came around the far bend, its headlights visible but not reflecting off the Canadian anti-tank mines. The drivers of the lorries started their engines and revved them up. The mens' eyes darted back and forth, adrenaline pouring through their veins.

In the third limo, Scrimmage yawned and fanned herself with the play's leaflet. She was tired and bored. But she was mainly disappointed. Since when did theatres not allow walk-ons or masturbation? she thought. In the back of her head was a tiny spark of intelligence that told her that they never had, which was why nobody else had tried. She dismissed her spark. It was unladylike. She was a lady, not a rocket scientist, she had no need for intelligence (her thoughts, not mine).

Boots watched as the limos, ten feet between each, steadily went forwards. The first limo was still cruising smoothly when it tripped two mines simultaneously. The multiple fireballs of the huge mines shot up to the heavens as the boom ripped at everyone's eardrums. The limo was launched into a spectacular rolling midair backwards somersault and landed the right way up, albeit without an engine compartment. A bodyguard fell out of one of the doors coughing a few seconds after it landed, and several of the gunmen on the hill shot him to pieces. Both remaining limos swung round in power slides, smoke streaming off the tyres. They revved their engines and hurtled back down towards Toronto as everyone in the trees stuck with Thompsons started shooting and didn't stop shooting.

Then the two lorries emerged from their respective driveways at speed and braked just before hitting the trees, completely blocking the road. The two limos were now effectively trapped in a thirty foot by a hundred foot rectangle. They had no real option but to engage, but they tried escaping anyway.

Both limos continued driving straight towards the lorry between them and Toronto. Then the side of it fell away as an assassin chopped a load- bearing rope with an axe, revealing the Browning machine-gun and Gatling heavy machine-gun in two separate armoured machine-gun emplacements. Both opened fire at the same time, peppering the body of a car and scaring the hell out of the driver. He swung the steering wheel automatically to avoid the gunfire, despite the fact that it was completely ineffective against the super-tough skin of the limousine. He crashed sideways into the lorry because he was so scared he forgot about the brake pedal. Nobody in the lorry expected them to go so close, though Boots had, which was why he had chosen to be a foot soldier. The side of the other lorry fell away as well, but the people furthest away from the action, the ones manning the quad- fifty and other Gatling gun, were afraid to open fire and hit their comrades.

Three Rags, fired from Boots and two other random mercenaries, struck the front end of the second limo, liquefying half of the people inside and wrecking the engine. A bodyguard leaned out of a door, despite all the flying bullets in the air, and began torching the forest with a flame- thrower. He had killed one mercenary before he was hit in the chest, causing him to mentally stumble, but he wasn't injured because of the thickness of his Kevlar. Then he got hit twice in the face and fell out of the vehicle, leaving the door swinging. The three worked feverishly to reload their launchers and fired three 2.36in rockets into the limo itself, causing such a heat wave that the leather upholstery spontaneously ignited. Certainly everyone left alive in the limo was instantly cremated.

The third limo, despite taking a vast pounding from all the bullets, still had all its bodyguards alive in it. A furious short-range gunbattle broke out between the BG and the people in the lorry, who were swept away quickly by superior numbers and firepower. One of the BG ran into the cab of the lorry to get it going as the rest began blindly firing at the hills, taking out seven people using rockets, grenades and napalm. (On a side note all that fire also burnt down all the wheat for two miles around.) Then everyone realised that the friendly contents of that lorry were all dead, so everyone immediately fired with everything they had. The lorry shook as seven more Rags whacked into the lorry, plus hundreds of rounds (especially from the Gatling gun in the other lorry, which fires 100 rounds a second ). The lorry flipped over three quarters of a turn, still taking more and more rounds and rockets. After ten more seconds of continuous blowing the shit out of the lorry, everyone diverted their ammunition to the last limo, utterly demolishing it. They pounded it until everyone was out of rockets and grenades and several people were even out of bullets. Then everyone sat back for two seconds to admire it all, before sprinting into the remaining lorry with all their equipment.

"We nailed Scrimmage!" shouted Boots in exuberance.

"No, I did." rebuked Bruno as he caught up, panting. "She got away from the limo as you lot destroyed our own lorry and was running towards Toronto. I shot her through the head three times personally, one of those times from six inches away."

"We still invaluably helped." returned Boots. "Come on! What's the hold-up? We really don't want to be here when the cops are!"

They drove away at a very high speed as the flames in the forest spread and spread. Of course they ditched the lorry once a suitable distance from the crash site, they had only used it because it was faster than running to their real escape vehicles, which were civvy cars. (The cars had been parked a long way away from the ambush site and not on Scrimmage's intended route, so she wouldn't see the cars and get suspicious.) They offloaded the Gatling gun and Browning gun into the back of a fake moving-van, then drove off at high speed in the cars Elmer had specifically rented that afternoon and dropped off earlier that evening. They torched the truck, too, because it had DNA evidence in it. They had also planned to torch the whole forest to get rid of DNA evidence at the site of the ambush, but Scrimmage's personal guards had seen to that.

All the way home no one spoke a word. Everyone could see the jubilation in Bruno and Boots' eyes, but the grunts didn't talk about it because the two- man team weren't talking about it. Bruno and Boots weren't talking about it because they feared that if they did, they wouldn't stop for hours, and so Fishdick would hear them and have them shot.

When they got there, Fishdick still hadn't learned that it was Scrimmage's convoy that had been hit. In fact, he didn't hear the dozens of explosions in the distance, because he was wearing earplugs whilst his wife complained for two hours about how to roll a tube of toothpaste. She heard them, and got very nervous, and asked him what it was, somehow not realising that he had no idea as well. She found he was asleep. She complained even more about him not listening to her, but she forgot to take out his earplugs whilst she did, so he remained in his blissful sleep until the emergency lights of the fire and police trucks woke him up through his bedroom window.

At the scene of the crime, a fireman with a full-body heat shield inched forward, accepting the ice-cold water sprayed at him from behind by his co- workers. He retrieved the rectangle from the mound of ash that had caught his eye earlier using an asbestos-based fire glove, then retreated slowly back just seconds before a tree collapsed on it that would have made it unrecognisable. Back at his co-workers' fire truck, they looked at the rectangle. It was a license plate. The paint had been burned away, but the metal itself was barely dented. The embossing on the thing was still distinguishable as letters and numbers. These he read out to a police officer on the scene. He ran the figures through the police database using the computer in his cop car. The database said the cars were owned by a private school run by Miss Scrimmage. They got the riot police to storm the school. By then Bruno and Boots had already delivered their soot-covered clothes to a chamber under Elmer's bedroom where girls machine-washed clothes with evidence on them, and had done every other countermeasure possible as well that would disconnect them from the crime down the road. So had all of the other soldiers that had lived. So even when the riot police did their less forceful but obligatory enquiry of Macdonald Hall, they found no incriminating evidence. So they were forced to go home empty- handed. In fact, there was a huge gunbattle at Scrimmage's, and the police took all of the escaped convicts back into custody. Bruno and Boots finally celebrated their victory with the other soldiers at four in the morning in the rec hall, along with all the girls at Scrimmage's since there were no hot soldiers at their school to screw any more.

"Man, after a whole school term of having little sex and being skin, we finally have an entry into the SB," said Bruno in satisfaction, drinking whiskey from a keg whilst three girls did various sexual things to him.

"Damn right," agreed Boots. "It was worth it. It was really worth it."

"The meeting starts in two minutes," said Bruno. "The meeting I've been waiting for for three months is going to happen in two minutes. Even if every girl here threw herself at me right now, I wouldn't miss this meeting."

"Well, we won't," said some naked girl in passing. "I'm really pissed off at you. Ever since you started trying to kill her, security has gone up. Now we'll get a new headmistress, one with a brain. And security will be even better. So fuck you."

"Yes please," he said, examining her every curve. "And don't worry. Elmer has taken care of that. Unless the board of directors don't take the huge bribe he's sent them, your next headmistress will be a woman in a coma from Toronto Mental Hospital."

"Really?" she said, her face lighting up.

"Yes," he said with a smile. "Come on, there's plenty of room for more of you."

Two minutes later Bruno and Boots were admitted to the Mafia meeting room where the SB clergy was having its special meeting.

"Okay," said Elmer. "As you are all undoubtedly aware, Bruno and Boots there have been plotting to kill Miss Scrimmage for three months. True, their first attempt failed, but that was because they had bad weather on the day and their men weren't up to scratch. And this time their actions have alerted the police and fire department, and probably the news, we'll know in two hours' time. They have put a tremendous amount of effort into the end result, and they achieved the end result spectacularly. And in the process, by accident, they greatly increased the Mafia's weapons cache. Such a deed has been put up for vote for the entry into the SB. Now, if you have any complaints against what they have done, say them now, because otherwise you must let this be recorded into the greatest history book of them all."

There was a long pause. People looked at each other. Each one was trying to gauge if another had something against their actions.

One person put up his hand.

"I hate how your efforts made it so I had almost no sex for three months," he said.

"Yeah!" agreed someone else, relieved he wasn't alone in his thought.

"Yeah!"

"Hey assholes, if the first attempt had worked, you wouldn't have lost any sex!" he exploded. "Don't take out my dumbass assassins' mistakes on me! I want a fucking entry into the SB, I'm notorious enough to deserve two, and anyway, I lost sex too! For the first time in three years I had to bother to masturbate to get my sexual kicks! I suffered just as much as you did, and more, since I practically have my own girls who I could count on every night to screw me! So fuck you, take back that complaint!!"

"No!" he shouted. "Some things are unforgivable! Me having sex only sixty times in three months - yes, only sixty times in three months - was pure agony! So you can suck your own dick for your Goddamn 'sexual kicks', because I now wish you had never thought of killing Scrimmage!!"

"MOTHERFUCKER!!!" Bruno and Boots both drew both of their pistols from their holsters. He drew two Ingrams. The door guards raised their new M- 16s. The people around Bruno, Boots and the guy instinctively dove to the ground so they weren't hit by a possible bad shot. The other people took cover slightly and drew their own weapons. Elmer stared at this madness in disgust.

Bruno stared down the tops of his Desert Eagle and Beretta, both aimed at the guy's heart. He knew that at this short a range, one bullet from his D Eagle would go through whatever thickness of Kevlar he was wearing.

Boots crouched slightly lower than Bruno and the other guy, his two Glock 17s pointed at the guy's neck. He knew that if he fired one shot from each gun, both together would be enough to take out the muscles on both sides of his neck and his spine and therefore take his head off.

The other guy had his feet twice as wide apart as his shoulders, ready to dive either way, with his two Ingrams pointing at each of his adversaries. He knew he could shoot them both and survive if he ducked whilst firing then rolled to the left.

Each one eyed the other, waiting for the other to make the first move so they could dodge the bullets and shoot their enemies. No one was willing to make the first move, even after they were all ready enough to win the battle and live if they made the first move.

Elmer finally reached down, retrieved a shotgun from under the table, and pointed it at all three.

"Put those fucking guns down!" he commanded.

They all complied. Very slowly, they laid their guns on the table, looking at each other right up until their hands left their guns. Then they felt it was safe to look at Drimsdale.

"You all know that the last time an SB meeting dissolved into a gunbattle was thirty years ago!" he screamed. "Because of it, two got shot by each other, eleven of them got shot by the police, fourteen got arrested, and only three guys weren't caught! Three! I don't want you to attract every police officer for a mile around by using gunshots to alert them to our best copulation centre, and I especially don't want to get shot or arrested because you assholes get upset! So for fuck's sake, you let them have their SB entry, because he's right, they both deserve it!"

There was a long pause.

"Yeah, sorry," he said. "But I still want reimbursement."

"Fine, here's your Christmas present," Boots said. He reached into his pocket, withdrew one thousand dollars, wrapped it in a rubber band from the table and threw it at the guy. He caught the bills and took off the rubber band.

"It's only Christmas Eve, you know," he said, but pocketed the bills regardless. "Christmas Eve ended four hours ago," corrected some random person. "It's Christmas Day, in the loosest sense of the word."

"Merry Christmas, everyone!" said Bruno. "I'm feeling really generous all of a sudden!"

"Are you?" chorused a dozen people eagerly.

Boots grimaced. "He's not generous enough to give everyone a thousand dollars, you cheap motherfuckers," he retorted. "At least the other guy pretended he was angry at us for lessening his amount of sex to get our cash. You guys are just begging, like druggies."

"That's because they are druggies, remember?" said Elmer. "Come on you assholes, stop pestering them, it's just making us all late for the orgy!"

On that note everyone charged out of the room and began having sex left and right.

That day people were confined to their rooms, because Fishdick had finally grown tired of Christmas Day pranks. (Nobody had elected to go home for Christmas because A: They felt no loyalty to their shitty, uncaring families, B: They didn't want to leave behind the extreme fun that was a life of crime in Macdonald Hall, and C: They wouldn't miss the giant Christmastime orgy for any less than ten thousand dollars.) So people had to settle for Christmas dinner being delivered to them by the cooks walking around with tea-trolleys. The students had all been planning a mass sneak- over to Scrimmage's for one hell of an orgy. People were distraught, but not too distraught, because there was another one organised for after lights-out.

The day passed uneventfully, except of course for everyone getting amazingly drunk and high, and the new headmistress coming, and someone pretended that she had somehow sent the order to get rid of all the security. And the colossal load of boring bullshit fiasco from Scrimmage dying. Finally the night came, which the entire of both schools had been waiting for. It was the one night of the year that the girls organised the orgy, so having sex with someone could count as a Christmas present. There was a continuously updated sheet of shaggers on a website Cathy and Diane hosted that said who was fucking whom, and that sheet had started to fill up in late October. By the time the fake shopping trip to Toronto had been organised, the sheet was full. Obviously, since lots of people had died in the events during and after that trip, the sheet was corrected slightly now and then, but it was never not full for more than twenty minutes, since there were lots of people desperate enough to just stare at the list, waiting for a slot to open, for days on end.

The night was also the only orgy that had a theme to it: all the girls wore elf costumes or Mrs. Clause costumes or simply red/green underwear, and most of the boys just wore whatever, since they didn't care what they wore and neither did the girls care what the boys wore. Someone had once tried to organise a theme orgy for Thanksgiving, but that failed, since Thanksgiving just wasn't sexy enough for it. Easter also had a sheet system for the evening orgy, but it had no theme, also because it wasn't sexy enough. The orgy lasted until well past sunrise, and the boys only stopped (as they had been gagging for it for so long) when it was simply pure agony to do another pelvic thrust. The girls (being such absolute habitual sluts) only stopped because the boys stopped. Some of the more bisexual girls still carried on for some time. At three o'clock in the afternoon, the 'orgy' consisted of one very tired girl licking out some other very tired girl in a bored sort of way as they both felt each other's tits. And some weird boy in the corner wanking. It was still a record-breakingly long orgy though, and was sportingly included in the SB. After Bruno and Boots had voted yes to it, they realised that their entry of their twelve weeks of hard work and discomfort had never been finalised because everyone had forgotten about it during the orgy, so they placed the vote again. It was a unanimous yes, and Bruno and Boots then handed out eight thousand dollars' worth of free drugs in celebration. One idiot OD'd, so he was replaced by someone very muscular who no one had ever heard of. He was ridiculously afraid of getting hurt, though, so he was soon found dead and replaced by a super-aggressive kid who always carried a katana. The New Year came and went with a slightly smaller orgy.

Then the months, then years, passed as though by habit. Bruno and Boots went back to their usual routine of fucking, smoking and injecting, beating up, and killing. It was the same shit they'd done for ages, but it had a new edge and was somehow sweeter because they were no longer nobodies. They were somebodies. There were a lot of girls at Scrimmage's who enjoyed screwing famous people simply because then they'd have a story to tell, and Bruno and Boots had been famous enough to get a fair lot of that pussy, but now that they were in the SB girls would do anything for ten minutes naked with either of them. They were up to the same level that Elmer was at, and nearly at Mark Davies' level, and drove such a hard bargain in demanding for favours before they'd fuck a girl that any jury in the world would find them guilty of male prostitution. Except the bribed ones.

After a lot of joy for Bruno and Boots and pain for other people, their graduation day came around. Bruno and Boots hadn't even bothered sitting the exams, but their teachers were so afraid of them they'd given them full marks for every bit of work for two years. They were in the friggin' honour roll, and the mayor of Toronto gave a speech in Bruno and Boots' honour about the success of a school which had started out with problems (he neglected to mention that the problems were in fact ongoing and to do with frequent brutal murders) to produce such fine specimens as Bruno and Melvin and many others. (He neglected to mention that only a handful of other people had gotten the pass mark, and that the honour roll was made up entirely of the SB clergy and high rollers of the Mafia.) Every student found this quite amusing, that the mayor was accidentally congratulating these people on screwing up Macdonald Hall so badly.

And whereas some people go streaking as a joke on graduation day, Bruno and Boots reached offstage, pulled a naked Cathy and Diane up to the podium, leant them over it, and boned them, as Cathy and Diane screamed with pleasure directly into the microphones for a long while before snogging each other. The police got this scene under control and the shambles of the graduation day came to a shuddering halt. Bruno and Boots went back to their room to pack. They were several minutes into it when a thought hit Boots.

"Wow, I can't believe that everything is over." Boots suddenly said hollowly to Bruno. "It never really occurred to me. All the prestige, fame, glory, riches, everything I have is here. Now I'm leaving. I can't believe it."

Bruno started. "Hey, good point. What are we gonna do in the future?"

Boots considered. "Well, we could go to college, start up some form of Mafia there."

"It's still only temporary, it would take a lot of pointless work, and still leave us with this goddamn question; what are we going to do?"

"Maybe we could hover around here, become leaders of the Mafia." Boots suggested. "The position is open, now that Elmer's left for good. I hear he's going into freelance techno-terrorism."

"No, they would never accept us, they'd fight us off. We defeated two badly organised dormitories of people, but we can't defeat four dormitories of organised people. We have to move on."

"But we have nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to help us!" wailed Boots. "Where could we possibly go?"

"No one to help you?" said Mark Davies, appearing in the room as if by magic holding his MP5SD. "That's a bit stupid, isn't it?"

"Of course, Mark Davies!" blurted out Bruno and began rushing over to hug him, then remembering that doing so would result in the death of himself and Boots.

"Mark," Boots began carefully, "Bruno and I are in deep shit. We're useful and famous here, but in the -"

"I heard everything," interrupted Mark, "and I could use a couple of high- class minders in my organisation. I'd like you to work for me."

"I accept!" the two cried in unison.

"But I'm going to use your abilities to the max." warned Mark. "That Scrimmage assassination you did a couple years back? Child's play compared to what I'm gonna need you to do. You two are going to travel all over the world as my personal influencers. See, I'm too good for my job sometimes. When I need to influence someone but not kill them, my reflexes in shooting people are so good that I always accidentally kill the person I want to influence. And if I send any other combination of men, they always fail because the person's security is too tight for those dipshits. That's why I'm gonna have you two, paid seven to eight figures a year, on my team. You will get hurt. You will get tired. You may even get bored after a while. But think about how this is the only decent job for you that there will ever be."

The famous duo looked at each other. "We still accept."

Mark grinned, an incredibly rare occurrence. "Good. Forget this luggage, there's no point in keeping any of it. I will be your permanent supplier. Follow me, I have a plane waiting for us on the runway."

Bruno and Boots simultaneously dropped their bags, checked their pistols, smiled vaguely, and left the room with Mark. Mark dropped a flaming book of matches into the bin to destroy the evidence and stole the hand-held fire extinguisher for good measure, and a limo pulled up to them as they walked out of the building, wearing cool shades, and eagerly anticipating some seriously cool shit.

THE END?