Ah! I know it was short but I didn't think anyone would ask for the after-the-explosion story. So I guess this would make this the second chapter to the alternate ending #1. Ha ha, I should call this chapter the "After Party". For anyone reading this, feel free to end this story where you want it, I honestly don't care. You can read it as a one-shot or whatever the hell. If any of you care about parallelism and that type of stuff, I have an explanation for the last paragraph of this chapter. I'll make it easy: Dilandau equals Fork.

Natsume: This chapter is just for you, hope you like.

Xanthia Nightshade: Thanks for the review and the comment that it was "well written". I'm pretty much checking everything myself so errors pop up a lot more that I'd like them to. If you read the second chapter, it pretty much sucked in general, but I hope this one is better.

I'll Be Seein' You/Silk Ribbon: Wow, I've never had a "fantasmatical" story before. More chapters (alternate endings) should be up soon.

Chapter 3 - Alternate Ending # 1 Ch. 2

Thousands of students stood tentatively on the edges on the public high school campus. Normally, during one of the few fire drills and bomb threats that ravaged their schools annually, the many teenagers would complain about the harsh, sunny weather or dampened, rainy weather. But not this time, they stood captivated by the sight of the two-story flames and billowing sky-high black smoke. Kids, from the classrooms near the ignition site, stared on in silent horror, partially traumatized by the earlier foreshadowing screams and then the shrieks of baking children.

Sirens roared to the point of deaf ears from the many administrators and policemen staying a safe distance from the burning wing of the school whom served as the student's buffers from the falling, flaming debris. The blue lights of the government aid vehicles and sizzling blaze cast the firefighters in a solemn cobalt and orange glow. They launched water from their water hoses while struggling to keep the fire under control. They knew teenagers had been in there, but they had worked this job long enough to know no one could survive a blaze like that.

Now parents were showing up in their cars to pick up their children, make sure they were alive, andgo home without checking out at the office.The complete families thinking of less violent schools to transfer them to. A few of the dead student's parents shoved through the masses of people, searching desperately for their children. Tears stained the parent's faces as they finally came across high school attendance workers who held laptops with schedule information. The grown women and men croaked out their child's full name and nicknames with a sliver of shining hope; their glimmers of hope soon dying and fading to a pitch-black full of maddening banshee-like cries.

News reporters with their assigned vans and crews found suitable locations to shoot their breaking and seven o' clock news. A prissy blonde news reporter checked her compact, pressing the powder to her face quickly and checking her teeth for stuck food. Hastily she closed the mirror and makeup and swapped it for a microphone. She frowned an appealing, yet somber scowl as her camera man hoisted the black-grey camera up and spread the legs of the tripod, pressing his fingers to the zoom-in and zoom-out buttons. He focused in on her face with the firemen and police in the background, a few of the ex-parents wandering around and screaming belligerently at the busy cops.

The red pin prick of light came on clearly through the smoky air.

The blue glow of the television came on clearly through the stuffy room. The woman with brown hair sighed as she pulled a simple brown, fold-up chair from underneath the card table. She grunted in annoyance when she sat down, the chair squeaking from her weight. Some "employee lounge", she thought spearing her micro-waved macaroni with a plastic fork.

Her eyes glanced up at the TV screen. The breaking news was on, a scene of a local high school in flames. She dropped her utensil and resisted a scream when she saw it was her son's high school on fire.

"…An explosion killed many students and teachers in the west wing of this building. It's not known yet how many students died or are still trapped within the burning walls. The combustion occurred at 11:53 a.m. in a chemistry classroom. The blast caused the fire to spread to neighboring classrooms, all of which were chemistry classrooms housing flammable chemicals..."

She was pretty sure her heart skipped a few beats when she recalled that Dilandau had chemistry after lunch.

The pretty blond woman went on to say the cause was unknown, but was interrupted. A member of her news team shoved a plain piece of paper with scribbled handwriting on it in her face. She snatched the paper while keeping eye contact with the camera. She looked down at it and read what her colleague wrote. "Correction, the firefighters have calmed the fire enough to go in the building. They say the explosion started in the back of a classroom. It's believed a person detonated the fire with a match or lighter." She looked up, "If you're just tuning in…"

The brunette turned off the television. She knew, despite her many parental rants, that her son carried matches with him constantly. Too many things added up for her to speed down to the school in her p.o.s. and search for her child's face among the crowd. She reached down to pick up the abandoned fork, but did not for the pale and stained fork was too far out of her reach.

She wept.