"Mark! Get out of bed! You'll miss the school bus!"

"Huh, what?" said Ace waking up suddenly.

"Hurry up and get ready," continued Fiona, "your bus will be here in fifteen minutes."

"I have a bus?" asked Ace sleepily.

"Very funny Mark. Now get dressed or you'll be late."

"Oh, right," said Ace finally waking up properly. He got ready as quickly as possible, which actually took awhile since he had no idea where Mark kept anything. He managed to find every thing after a few minutes and was just trying to figure out which way he was supposed to put his pants on when the phone rang.

Ace looked around and saw it sitting across the other side of the room on the desk. He went to walk over and get it, but, as trying to walk with your pants only halfway up is not very smart, ended up on the floor.

"Hang on!" called Ace from the ground. He dragged himself over to the desk and finally managed to answer the phone.

"Hello?"

"Ace? It's Mark." Mark was sitting on the desk in the Thunder Tower, playing with a red bouncy ball he'd found lying around. "How'd you go with my Mum and Dad?"

"Relax, kid. They don't suspect a thing. At least… I don't think they do…"

"Great. Where are you now?"

"In your room."

"What? Ace, you'd better hurry up and get downstairs or you'll miss the bus. What are you doing in there?"

"If you must know I'm trying to put on my pants."

"Okay, I didn't need to know that."

"You asked."

"Right… just get to school before…"

"Mark!" called Simon from downstairs. "What are you doing? The bus just left."

"Too late…" groaned Mark.

"Okay, so I missed the bus. What do I do now?"

"Ride the bike."

"Oh… great."

"Good luck," said Mark, hanging up, "you'll need it."

"Hey, Mark!" said Sparx. "Ready to kick some bad guy butt?! Or… at least some bits of cardboard that look like them… sort of…"

"Why not?" replied Mark. I just better hope I have better luck living Ace's life then he'll have living mine.

Mark jumped off the desk and flicked the red bouncy ball he'd been playing with out of his hand. Unfortunately, he didn't take into account that, with Ace's super strength, a flick would put enough energy into the ball to send it into orbit.

"Mark!!!" yelled Sparx as the bouncy ball flew just over her head, ricocheted off the walls half a dozen times and then flew out the roof.

"Whoops… sorry."

"Right, I guess we'd better work on the super strength thing too…"

Ace had found that the bike wasn't that hard to ride once he'd got on it. But along with just having got a new body and the fact that he'd never ridden a bike before he was having a bit of a problem making it go in a straight line.

"Sorry!" he called out to an agitated driver who he'd just swerved in front of.

"Stupid kid! Watch where you're going!"

Ace finally made it to the school.

"Morning, Mark," called Sam as Ace pulled up.

"Oh, hi," said Ace. He tried to slow down but, as he had forgotten where the brakes were, ended up in the bushes.

!CRASH!

"Ow!"

"Mark, are you alright?"

"I'm not Mark, I'm… ah… Mark!"

"Okay, then… I guess it was a good thing you were wearing a helmet." She helped Ace out of the garden. "I'll see you at lunch."

"Hey, dude," said Chuck, arriving just as Sam went inside. "You don't seem to be having much luck impressing the ladies."

"I don't see how falling into the bush would…"

"Dude… you're not supposed to fall into the bush."

"Right, I'll… try to keep that in mind."

"Just stick with your pal Chucky. I'll look after you." Chuck grabbed Ace and started to drag him towards the school.

"This dimension just gets weirder every day…"

"Ok, Mark," said Sparx. "Ready for this? Just point and shoot like this…" Sparx took a shot at the Lord Fear cutout (conveniently found somewhere around the Thunder Tower). It flew over its head by a few inches.

"Darn! Not like that. Try aiming for the middle." She shot at it again. This time she shot it in the leg. "Close enough! Your turn!"

"Um… Chuck. Can you help me open this?" asked Ace. Trying to rip the door off its hinges hadn't worked.

"Sure, dude," replied Chuck.

"Thanks." Ace looked inside the locker at all the junk. "Whoa… What am I supposed to take?" He settled on taking a couple of books and the pencil case.

He tried to get the locker to shut. It didn't seem to be working so he slammed his shoulder into it, finally getting it to close. "Ow… that hurt." He did it again just to be sure. "Ow! Weird…"

"Mark, are you feeling alright?"

"Sure… maybe a little disorientated. Let's go." He began walking off.

"Dude, class is this way."

"Right, I knew that."

"Like this, Sparx?" asked Mark, having managed to get about one third of his shots to hit the target, though it had taken him nearly half an hour. "Sparx?"

Sparx was shooting at the Lady Illusion cut out for all she was worth.

"Sparx…? Sparx!!!"

"What? Oh, sorry. Stress relief. You're harder to teach than I thought."

"Thanks…"

The Lady Illusion cutout's head suddenly fell off.

"Right," said Sparx, "We're going to need some more targets…"

Orbiting the earth, two astronauts contemplated a strange object floating outside their shuttle.

"What do you suppose it is, sir?" asked the younger astronaut.

"It appears to be a red sphere of some sort. I don't know where it's come from. We don't have anything like that up here. And I don't see how it could have come up from the earth."

"Sir… do you think… it could have come from somewhere else?"

"You mean another planet?"

"Well… yeah. Maybe someone even sent it to us on purpose. I mean, it can't be an asteroid it's too perfect."

"You mean a message from another world? You could be right! Quick! Suit up. This could be a major break through!!!"

In the computer class, Ace was trying to work out how to use the computer mouse. He was playing with the bit on the bottom and accidentally dropped the little ball.

"Darn…"

Ace went under the desk and started searching for it.

"Mark, what are you doing?" asked Chuck.

"Lost the mouse ball," said Ace from under the desk.

"How can you lose a mouse ball?"

Ace finally found the ball and put it back in the mouse. "It fell out."

"Oh…"

"Ok, this isn't going to work…"

Sparx was using the disk-shooting machine to try and get Mark to hit a moving target. It didn't seem to be working though.

"Just a few more," Mark replied. "I've nearly got them."

"Did you notice the holes in the roof?"

"What?" Mark looked up. "Whoops…"

Ace was sitting in class when he felt a piece of paper hit him. Turning around he saw Wayne smirking at him.

"Wasn't me," Wayne mouthed innocently. But he made it obvious that it was.

Ace tried to ignore him but by the time he'd been hit with the fourth bit of paper decided to retaliate. He didn't know if Mark would like him ripping paper out of his book so he waited until the teacher wasn't looking and threw an empty glue stick instead.

It hit Wayne in the head and knocked him out of his chair. The class erupted in laughter.

"Wayne!" said the teacher. "How many times do I have to tell you? Don't rock on your chair."

"Ow…"

"Sparx, I don't mind learning to shoot stuff, but I am not going to fly."

Sparx had Mark up with her on the Lightning Flash and was trying to convince him to fly.

"Come on, it's not that hard."

"No way."

"Fine, I tried it the easy way. Now I guess we're going to have to do this the hard way."

"What?"

Sparx suddenly rolled the Lightning Flash making Mark fall off.

"Ahh!" Mark fell off and landed on the ground. "Ow."

"Whoops… I was sure that would work."

"You know, my lady, you haven't been doing much lately in the way of destroying Ace Lightning."

"You know how I feel about that!" growled Lady Illusion under her breath. She wished Staff Head would keep it down.

"It's just that you don't seem to have been any use to Lord Fear lately," Staff continued. "He could be losing confidence in you."

"Really? I know what you're up to. Don't think it'll work."

"It's just a warning," said Staff with false sincerity. "I would hate to think what Lord Fear would do if he found out you were a traitor."

"It's not my fault!" said Lady Illusion, taking the bait. "And I'm no traitor. I've tried to get us out of this dimension and we can do it without destroying Ace. It's just that the mortal keeps on getting in our way."

"How sad. Pity you can't just destroy him, but of course you don't want to hurt Ace now do you?"

"What? All right, you want proof I'm not a traitor? Fine, then I'll destroy Ace's sidekick right now. He'll be at school so he won't be able to get Ace's help. Once he's gone we'll be able to get out of this dimension… and not hurt Ace doing it!" Lady Illusion morphed out.

Staff shook his head. How Lady Illusion expected destroying the mortal to not hurt Ace in itself he didn't know. Still he wasn't going to point out the fatal flaw in her plan; neither was he going to argue.