Author's Notes: Sorry about the delay. Oh, and sorry, but in order to keep with the story of the original movie, I'm gonna have to do some serious promotion of the aforementioned book Nineteen-Eighty Four. Seriously, you should read it. You can Google in and get it for free in, like, ten seconds.

October 7, 2003

6:59 PM

Strong Bad looked up from the TV and turned around to face the two construction workers standing next to one of the walls in his basement. His wall had no drywall on it, so it was just a layer of plastic on top of that pink insulation stuff.

"Hey, hard-hats," called Strong Bad. "You guys almost finished with my wall?"

The workers glanced up from their red metal lunchboxes.

"Um...hag on," said one of them. Sic.

He turned around, held up a felt-tip marker, and scribbled 'Finished' on the layer of plastic.

"Now we are," said the worker.

"Cool," said Strong Bad.

7:00

Strong Bad pulled open his medicine cabinet b/w mirror to take his pills, like he did every day at 7. He stopped to read the label of his plastic orange canister.

"The Cheat, MD," read Strong Bad. "Hey...I thought The Cheat said he was a PhD..."

He shrugged and stuffed a red-and-white pill in his mouth. He drank a glass of water and swallowed the pill. The water went down the wrong way, and he began coughing furiously. After a few seconds, he pounded on his lungs and looked up again. Something seemed to be wrong with his eyes.

He could see his reflection, but something was different. The fabric of his mask was changing from red, getting brighter, turning to white. Turninginto felt.His eyes were getting darker and smaller. They were turning from green to black. They were changing shape, getting thinner and rounder. His grey horns were getting higher, on top of his head, turning white. His mouth was getting longer, stretching out more, stretching out his face into an underbite. His skin was turning white, turning into fabric. His boots were turning blue. His arms were fading away. He was getting taller, thinner. He was changing shape and colour. His body had turned into the shape of someone wearing a white bunny suit.

Strong Bad's reflection had turned into Homestar Runner.

"Bwaaah!" shrieked Strong Bad. "Mirror phantasm!"

"Hey, man!" said Homestar with a smile. "Sup, man? Destroy any schools lately?"

"Whazzuwuzza?" murmured Strong Bad intelligibly.

"Don't worry, Stong Brad. You got away with it!"

"Why'd you make me flood the school and axe the dog?"

"Beca-ause!" said Homestar in that three-syllable stretched out version of 'because'.

"That's not a reason, that's just a word."

"Oh, really? Is it? Didn't notice. But check this out! Touch the mirror."

"What?"

"Just, like, tap it with your glove or something."

Strong Bad reached up and touched the mirror. He was suddenly surprised—the glass didn't stay still. A ripple spread through it, as if it was liquid.

"Isn't that totally coolsome?" said Homestar happily. "Oh, by the way, I'm kinda thirsty."

Homestar picked up a glass off the sink (or at least made a glass hover in front of him as if he were holding it) and stuck it in the liquid mirror. He scooped up a cupful as if it were water. Just before he drank the glass of mirrorwater, it hardened back into glass. So when Homestar tried pouring the cup into his mouth, the water-in-a-cup-shaped glass slid out of the cup, fell hard onto his face, hit the ground and shattered.

"That sure hits the spot!" said Homestar.

"How did you—?"

"What? Turn the glass into water?"

"Well, actually, I was going to say, 'How did you pick up that cup without arms,' but sure, that works too."

"Well, I can do anything!" said Homestar.

"Except have arms."

"Right. And so can you!"

"Not have arms?"

"No! Do anything!"

"Except grow arms."

"Yeah, sorry man. You can't have any arms."

"Aw...too bad," said Strong Bad. "I've always wanted to have arms. Hey, wait a second..."

"See ya!" said Homestar, and he disappeared. The mirror's reflection turned back into Strong Bad.

7:17 PM

EMERGENCY EATING

EETING

MEATING

MEET-N' GREET

MEETNING

KEETLING

MEELING

PEI-KING

LEETSPEAKE

HALLOWEEN

SUPRASPEKE

MÉLEE

DEEDLE DEE

MEETING

↑ THAT'S THE ONE ↑

You'd be surprised how many words you can fit on those little black signs with the white tile letters and the lines going across that you slid the letters across on that they use at convention centers and stuff. Well, actually, you wouldn't. They had to get multiple signs to be filled up by all the misspellings of 'meeting.' People in Free Country, USA weren't that smart, being it in the field of spelling or in the field of taking misspelled signs down instead of putting new ones up.

Anyway, inside the school, the meeting was in full swing. Which wasn't saying much.

The cramped school library was filled with nothing but picture books for little kids and reference books which students weren't allowed to check and and/or read. The smelled like papier-mâché newspaper covered in paste, due to the school's recent and most definitley failed attempt at remodeling the library.

Four tables had been positioned to form a kind of square that all the parents and teachers sat around (except; one: with a species like the type of vaguely-but-not-quite-human hominids that made up the populace of Free Country USA, you can never really tell if people have parents; and two: the teachers did such a bad job teaching that they barely qualified as teachers). Coach Z was one of the quote-unquote-parents at the meeting. Keywords "quote-unquote", since he was still convinced he was a mom and was allowed to say 'gar-bazje' like that.

A snack table with three-week-old-crab cakes and those little triple-decker chocolate squares with the layer of beige crumb-stuff in the middle was to the side of the square.

The King of Town was milling aro—is 'milling' a word? It doesn't sound like one. Anyway, the King of Town was milling around the room, distributing copies of a book to each P and T in the A. The book was white, with an orange spine. He distributed it cover-down, so no one could see which one it was. No one cared, so no one turned it over.

As a copy of the book was passed to English teacher Marzipan, shewhispered to the King, "What do you think you're doing?"

"Hey," said the King quietly, "there are some things that our students shouldn't be exposed to!"

"You just don't like it 'cause it has big words in it. Like oligarchy. And four."

"My reasons are my own!" said the King defensively.

Anyways, after the copies were distributed, the King sat down in his seat next to Principal The Umpire.

"As you all know," said The Umpire, "Free Country USA School Thing, or whatever it's called, in co-operation with the volunteer police force—"

"It's not volunteering if you don't get paid for it," muttered a quote unquote parent, who happened to be the only member of the town's VPF, in a very surly voice.

"Um...yes, it is," said the Umpire.

"It is?" said the parent. "Oh, well then, nevermind."

"Anyway," said the Umpire, "this school is trying it's very to, uh, you know...solve the case...or...crime...whichever. Several suspects of the case are students of our own school."

"So, you're admitting that your school breeds criminals?" said a parent.

"Um...no," said the Umpire with a frown. "It's...um...it's the dang rap music and all! What with the hip-hopping and beat-bopping...it's all getting out of hand."

"This meeting is about protecting our children, man!" said the King of Town. "Not throwing them in any of one manner of correctional faculties!"

"And what's more protective than a jail cell?" said the Umpire. "Nothing can get in or out. Keyword being in!"

"Step off, State Building," said the King. "I got stuff ter say!"

"King, could you wait just a second?" said the Umpire.

"I'll wait on your fate!" said the King. "I'm a parent as well as a teacher!"

"You're a parent?" said the Umpire.

"Well, the idea's pretty much been scrapped by now, but I used to kind of be! And, since you're the principal, and I'm both a parent and a teacher, I represent two letters of PTA, and you only repremand zero!"

"Be that as it may—"

"My turn now!" shouted the King, and he pushed the Umpire out of the way and took stage. "I am here to talk to you about this!"

The King held up his copy of the book. It was Nineteen Eighty-Four.

"I hold in my copy a hand of Georgewell Greene's The Ninety-Eighty Four," announced the King. "Throughout the book, claims are made by various peeps on TV that they did various nefarious deeds! Such as poisoning the water supply, which is a bad vandalism-type thing involving water! Just like the vandalism thing that this school suffered with the flooding! This book is clearly to blame."

"Those crimes never even happened," said Marzipan. "The confessions were just from brainwashing."

"Brainwashington like the propagation in Fourteen-Eight itself?" said the King dramatically.

"This meeting wasn't called to discuss tomes and/or lore, King," said the Umpire. "It was to talk allsabout the investigation to the PTA."

"I am the Senate!" said the King of Town. "I mean—I am the PTA! And I say this book should be removed!"

"Does the Par-tee-orr ban books?" said Coach Z.

"Well, we should!" said the King. "This is not good!"

"King, you didn't actually read the book," said Marzipan, "and just read a synopsis of it on the internet, didn't you?"

"Never you mind," said the King. "Down with this one!"

He held up Nineteen Eighty-Four. Some people in the audience said, "Yay!"

7:18 PM

"And now I'm back!" said Homestar Runner, appearing in the mirror again, bunny suit and all.

"Raaah!" shrieked Strong Bad. "What's the deal, man? Why'd you make me flood the school down?"

"I already told you! I can't have told you," said Homestar. "Which means, I can't have told you in the future. Which means, in the future, I can't have previously told you. Which means, I can't be telling you in the present. Which is to say, I can't tell you man."

"Why not?"

"Cause they thinks it'd mess up things," said Homestar.

"What thing? Why thinks it'd mess up thing?"

"Um...you know. The guys."

"Which ones?"

"From where I'm from."

"Are you from around here?"

"I'm from Lathan."

"Massachusetts?"

"Lane."

"Seriously, man! Where you at? Er, from?"

"Dost yo believe in traveling through time, man?" asked Homestar.

"Hey, Fightman," said a voice coming to the door. It was What's Her Face.

"Maaah!" cried Strong Bad. "Man, I am doing a lot of shrieking today."

"Who're you talking to?" muttered What's Her Face. "You're screaming's distrupting my college-type essay...tuition...aptitude...um...student loan...test. Remember? I'm going to be going to college? I'm going to be taking English class, and I'm going to study writing stuff like plots. And this essay I'm writing is the device I will use to study plots."

"So, one might say," said Strong Bad, "that you're going to college is a 'plot device', if you will?"

"If I will, but I won't," said What's Her Face. "Anyway, whatw're you doing?"

"Oh, well I was..." said Strong Bad, and then he turned to the mirror to see that he was alone. The mirror's relfection was just that of him and What's Her Face.

"...I was singing," said Strong Bad. "Yeah, you know...tunes and chords and harmonies and melonades...singing."

"Whatever you say, Bootfoot," said What's Her Face, and she walked away.

"Yeah? Well, at least," cameback Strong Bad, "I don't have a buncha blue looseleaf lines all over me!"

He turned back to the mirror.

"You are such a jerk-face," muttered Strong Bad to Homestar, whether he was there or not.

7:19 PM

"Look, Marzipan, alls I'm saying is that this book is fuel for gruel!" said the King. "And by 'gruel,' I mean 'vandalism.'"

"That's an outrage!" insisted Marzipan. "That book is an insight on human nature!"

"It's nothing but people describing their acts of vandalism on television for all to hear," retaliated the King. "The book even ends with the guy coming to love the malevolent force that brings him to do these atrocities!"

"Those confessions weren't true," continued Marzipan. "He only loved his oppresors because he's hypnotized!"

"Hypnotism aside, unencouraging stimuli— is that how you say it? Stimuli? —have no business in our school system!"

"Hey, Kingy," said Coach Z. "Do you even know who this Georgeson Orwelles guy is?"

"Well, I think we've all heard of War of the Worlds," said the King.

"This meetin's boring," said Coach Z. "I only even came here for da free crab-carks."

Coach Z hopped up from his plastic orange chair, grabbed a handful of little yellowish-brownish-orangish things and went on his way. Marzipan followed him as he left the library, but they left from separate doors and didn't speak to each other.

Of course, Coach Z didn't notice that Marzipan wasn't walking with him, and gave a long, heart-felt speech to her about the question of whether people who weren't really friends could ever become more than friends without ever having really been friends or having known each other at all too good. When he was out on the sidewalk and about to get into his car, he concluded the speech with a request to her to think about the theory he had proposed, then he said his goodbyes and noticed that she wasn't there, nor had she been at all any of that time.