A/N: oh my gawd, I haven't updated in, what, MONTHS? Er, yeah, I am SO sorry for that. it's the schoolwork, directing a play-slash-musical, this fundraising thing where child labor was so inexplicably inept (I had to draw for more than like…70 customers just 'cause we ran out of junk to sell darn it), the religious camp out thing where you're not allowed to go to sleep from morning 'till the next morning (and that was the day caffeine was short on stock) and many other freakish activities that drives me nuts XD Anyway, sorry, again, I hope you guys are still reading, and here's the next chapter.

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Max's POV

There's really something to be said for limited entertainment.

"You sure you can handle the pressure, Natt? Wouldn't wanna do anything to hurt you—"

"Oh, man up, Gaz. I'm not a cream puff. Or are you just stalling? You aren't…afraid, are you?"

"I just want to make sure you don't do anything you regret. I hate breaking hearts."

"Yeah, we'll see if I regret pounding you to dust."

"Oh, for the love of all that is sane," Angel moaned, and pounded her fist on the table. "Just get it over with. Three minutes."

Natalie nodded, cracking her knuckles. "Bring it."

"You're on." Gazzy took her hand in his and set his jaw, flushing brightly. "Oh, you're going down."

Nudge bit her lip, fighting back the rosy red clawing its way up her cheeks. "Wanna bet? Or can you stand losing to girly girl?"

That was it. Right there. That was my limit on the pre-battle witty banter. Any more and I was going to start asphyxiating. Which, by the way, is a fancy word for 'suffocating from extreme cliché overload'. Hadn't they done enough mental scarring to last me a lifetime? So before they could begin another exhausting stream of overly used repartee, I stepped down from my perch by the window and growled, "BEGIN OR DIE."

They started to leer at each other, but then they caught sight of my face, and decided that it would probably be better for their health if they were to do what I say.

"One, two, three, four," they started singing, fingers clasped together, "I declare a thumb war!"

Yeah, you heard right. Thumb war. THUMB. WAR.

I'm going crazy. No, I think I shot right past crazy when Natt claimed the belching contest. We're locked in a fairly claustrophobia-inducing room, with absolutely no source of amusement other than two caffeine-fuelled hormonal teenage hurricanes known as Natalie and Gazzy. For three hours. I'm INSANE.

This is not what I expected when they said detention.

I mean, forced silences and pencil-backed teachers with eyes like hawks (er…no pun intended), I can handle. Big, intimidating giganto girls that practically had a bedroom in detention were a piece of cake. Heck, a life of secrecy and lies? No biggie. I do it everyday.

But this? This was beyond torture.

Detention hall was a dimly lit room in the corner of the ground floor, with a very scenic view of the school's back alley. The windows had thick iron bars, and the doors had a lock that didn't look like it was the kind that could be picked by a paper clip. To go with the whole jailhouse theme, the school had painted the walls a mind-numbing cement gray, and presumably held handcuffs in the drawer in the teacher's table. But even the most equipped prison cells weren't prepared for two uber-bored, kind-of-crazy adolescents that came geared up with smoke pellets and an unlimited supply of nail polish.

Angel was holding out pretty well. Better than me, anyway. She was sort of the unofficial referee of whatever crackpot game these two thought up in the three hours we were holed up here. At first, I had the job, but then after the Christina Aguilera impersonation thing (surprisingly enough, Gazzy won, hands down—the boy got freaky with his pitch-perfect vibrato rendition of Reflection, and you could practically hear the sounds of three jaws dropping) my ears were ringing so much that I had to sit down. Ange took over after a chair practically fell on me during the hopscotch tournament, and I moved to a relatively safer position by the window. I didn't really mind all that much; the bird-kid claustrophobia thing was really weighing down on me, and the stale, bitter air swirling around the room just made it worse. The fresh air was just a bonus to the distance from the crazy.

And now, after the spitball practice and the paper airplane competition (no dishwashing detergent in the world is strong enough to scrub the memories of that from the insides of my brain), it was the thumb wars. Gazzy was obviously in here a lot, and he came prepared with days worth of activity. Today's theme, apparently, was Post-Preschool, so in his pocket he stuffed 'lots of fun stuff' befitting the recess hours of a playschool courtyard. Which meant chalk, marbles, several forms of disgusting looking goo, a seemingly endless supply of string, and Play Dough. Lots and lots of Play Dough.

He'd also brought one of those mini boxing ring things, with the holes you put your thumb in, and shamelessly pulled out the puppy dog eyes when we tried to object. Natt wanted to arm wrestle instead, trying to prove through physical force that 'Yes, girls can kick the butt out of boys', but then when Gazzy pulled out the tiny spandex thumb-wrestler masks, Natalie had no choice but to giggle and cave.

"You're starting to go for the defense, Gaz," Natalie said, her eyes narrowed in concentration as her thumb darted forward, trying to pin his down. "Come on, you can do better than that!"

Gazzy grunted. "You ain't seen nothing yet."

I glanced at the clock hanging above the blackboard for the umpteenth time. Half an hour. Could I take half an hour's worth of more insanity?

"Don't worry," Angel said, patting my arm sympathetically. She'd caught me staring forlornly at the clock. "You'll get used to it soon enough."

"The detention or them?"

Angel's lips puckered, having no trouble figuring out who they were. "Detention is nothing. Them, on the other hand, well…they're a bit harder to get used to."

"And…three, two, one!" Gaz cheered, mashing Natalie's thumb down. "Aha! I win! Fourteen to thirteen! Uh huh!"

"Big deal," Natalie said, sticking her tongue out at him. "I won last Thursday."

"But I won the day before that."

"And that was after I beat you to an orangey pulp in the cafeteria play-offs."

"Can it," Angel snarled. For someone who was so…well, angelic, she sure was scary when she was mad. Or exasperated. Or maybe mentally battered, like I was. "C'mon, you guys, give Max a few minutes to at least get some of her sanity back."

I shot her a grateful look, knowing that my sanity was probably long gone by now. And, as soon as I saw Natalie's eyes light up, I knew I wouldn't be getting it back any time soon.

"I have an ide—" she started to say, but before she could continue, a miracle burst through the door, a miracle in the form of two surly looking men with matching pitch-black uniforms and shady looking shades, looking downright infuriated.

Okay, maybe I was looking for the wrong kind of miracles. But hey, God just threw me a lifesaver, and I wasn't about to get picky. Not when Tweety and Scream over there are well on their way to driving me to a mental hospital.

The two men reached for something wedged very tightly in between them, and basically tossed in this poor guy who seemed to have hair in an alarming shade of fiery red (that was sort of all I could see from my point of view). Slipping out of the room with the uniformity of trained White House agents—believe me, I should know—the men slammed the door loudly behind them, leaving the rest of the room to watch in (surprisingly enough) stunned silence as the mystery guy straightened up and dusted off his jeans.

I must admit, even though the silence thing felt refreshing after what seemed like an eternity's worth of noise, I was feeling kind of frustrated myself. I've being trying to get those two to quiet down for the past two hours, and all it took was two scary-looking dudes to come in and throw some random guy into the room to make them can the noise? If that was it, then I would've hunted that Ari guy down about a hundred and twenty minutes ago and lobbed him in here as painfully as I could if that was what made them shut up.

Maybe I really was going crazy.

"Hey, Jared!" Gazzy greeted. Jared grunted back—the traditional manly way of greeting one's fellows, as demonstrated by early Neanderthals in that Nat Geo movie—and slipped off his tattered backpack, half-falling into the nearest empty chair. "Where've you been? We thought you'd be here an hour ago."

"I've been kind of busy, Gaz," Jared yawned, looking around sort of sleepily. He grinned at Natt and Angel, but then his eyes met mine. "Well, who's this?" he asked, his voice a little too alert to match the sloth-ish grogginess his face was trying to pull off. After a few seconds of scrutinizing me, like the rest of the student population seems to love doing, he yawned a little bit more to keep up the charade and said, "You're the new student, aren't you? The one who…almost got pummeled by Ari."

I guess I shouldn't really be surprised that he knew me. After all, if Natt and Angel hadn't already broken it before, I was probably one of the first non-testosterone-filled human (or semi-human, at the very least) in this school to stand up to a jock, get Fang to actually make an audible sound, and manage to land myself in a three-hour detention all on my first day here. Ah, well, that's female empowerment for ya.

"But then, almost is a big deal, especially with Ari," he continued, as if he didn't notice me start to redden, "setting aside the fact that you're…you know, female and everything."

Oh, great. Another sexist pig to add to the steadily growing pile.

"So how'd you guys end up in here?" Jared asked, shoving his hand through his hair. He threw Gazzy a meaningful glance, and looked him up and down. "Iggy's missing, and Gazzy's not covered head to toe in some sort of flammable fluid, so I'm assuming it's not the traditional start-of-the-sem bomb?"

"Hey! The start-of-sem bomb was awesome, as you very well know—"

"Rooftop," Angel replied. "The weather was nice, and we wanted to show Max around."

"Yeah, great day today," he agreed, slumping a bit into his chair. I had a distinct feeling he wasn't talking about the weather anymore.

"Then somebody squealed on us," Natalie growled, looking like she wanted nothing more than to strangle the person who did it. Even though I was pretty sure that, with Gazzy here, she didn't regret one bit clocking time in here. If you know what I mean. "I'll bet it was Ari. The rotten skunk goes and gets a grudge against Max, and tries to get her in detention. The guy's a boxing glove on a stick—all brawn, absolutely no brain. It's just like him to pull a stunt like this."

"Sounds about right." Jared grumbled, his eyes shut, looking like he was halfway through falling asleep. And, about two seconds later, fully demonstrating one of the defining traits of mankind—namely falling asleep at mere will—he started to snore.

This made me relax a bit. A bit. Which was a rookie mistake, now that I think about it. I mean, why in the world would I assume that Natt and Gazzy would make the slightest effort to lower down their voices just because someone in the room was clearly bushed and sound asleep?

Turns out, my assumption was missing one crucial fact. According to Angel, Jared was well able to sleep right through a stampeding…well, stampede of wild, raging animals (I didn't bother to ask how she knew that) so the noise thing wasn't an issue. And without further ado, the Post-Preschool Decathlon plunged on, its only two participants paying absolutely no attention to the half-crazed mutant bird-kid crumpled beside the window.

When will this day end?

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Iggy's POV

When will this day end?

I mean, even by my standards, which are pretty high in this case, this has been a really weird day.

Apart from discovering that our best mechanic-slash-freaking-genius had just been brutally murdered, there was the whole violent explosion thing. And then the evading death issue. And, like the boil on top of a sore, the whole assassin-who-might-have-gone-to-murder-my-friends problem.

That all happened in the last ten minutes, mind you.

…

You don't get it, do you?

I'll start at the beginning, so there's no confusion.

It all started around, say, fifteen minutes ago, when we found Jack bloody and most likely dead on the floor of his workshop…

Fifteen minutes ago

"Iggy," Nick muttered. "No poking the dead guy."

"We're not sure he's dead yet."

"Well, Ig, you may be half-blind, but even a bat can say that the guy's no longer alive."

"Bats can't see, you know."

"My point exactly."

Having been a witness to a multitude of battle scars from my and Gazzy's many encounters with faulty bombs and exploding toasters (the day of the flaming Pop Tarts from Hell was the most excellent video we ever made), the sight of blood didn't make my stomach twist anymore. The feel of blood, on the other hand, was a whole other thing entirely. It's kind of gross, you know, all gooey and viscous and smelling like rust and salt. Unfortunately, desperate times called for desperate measures. So, wincing slightly, I pressed my fingers gently against Jack's gashes, trying to feel his wound through all the blood.

"Ew," I said, pulling my hand back.

"What did you just do?" Nick said, looking at the blood dripping from my palm with a disgusted expression. "I just said no poking the dead guy."

I wiped my fingers on the leg of my jeans. "I'm analyzing the crime scene, genius."

"And what have you gotten so far, Sherlock?"

"Messy handiwork," I grunted, examining the torn remains of Jack's shirt. "The knife the killer used was a bit blunt, but whoever it was, they were strong enough to get it in deep enough to do some serious damage."

Nick nodded. He wasn't the kind of guy you expected to be shocked by something as trivial as assassination. His voice didn't have the least bit fear. "No bullets, then? So you mean we have a killer on the loose whose preferred method of murder is violent mutilation?"

"This was no psychopath," I murmured darkly. Gingerly, I tore off what was left of the gore-covered shirt and inspected his abdomen, where a really, really big gash was showing things that, according to anatomy, should not be seen outside the human body. "But this was no trained assassin, either. Whoever wanted to kill Jack sent a rookie to do the job."

Just as Nick leaned forward to look over my shoulder, I heard a soft hiss from somewhere in the darkness, and instinctively, all my senses went on red alert. A bead of sweat rolled down my spine. There was still danger here. I could feel it.

"Uh…that's it?" Nick said.

I held up my hand to shush him. They quieted down obediently enough. Not that they were making much of a noise to begin with. Nick and Fang knew me well enough to know that when I went all still and silent like this, it meant I was trying to listen for something. Something important. My good eye scanned the surroundings, while my ears strained for any sounds in the darkness. There was something there, all right. Hiding in the corner.

"What is it?"

"Uh oh." I heard four heartbeats—including mine—start to pulse a little bit faster. We could all feel it now. Imminent danger.

Carefully, I stood up, my eye trained on the back corner of the workshop.

"What, Ig? Talk, will ya?"

"How fast can you run?"

Nick stopped. He knew me enough to know what that meant, too.

"You hear that?" I asked them. Fang's eyes widened ever so slightly. Nick stood beside me, tensed, waiting.

"Hear what?"

"The…the timer."

Nick slapped the back of my head. "You put a bomb in here? Now?"

I shook my head, internally cursing. If this had been anything other than a life-threatening, we-might-be-seconds-away-from-a-fiery-demise kind of situation, I probably would have laughed. Like I would actually be stupid enough to detonate anything here at Jack's. They knew very well that—if he weren't already dead right in front of us—Jack would've murdered me before he let me bring an ounce of C4 in here. Too many things that were liable to blow up meant any and all forms of gunpowder and/or explosive devices were banned. Why were they being so damn slow? And now? What a time to suddenly find a few brain cells missing. Five seconds before a really big bomb makes a really big mess. Nice.

Sighing, I smacked his shoulder hard in reply. "I didn't put it there."

It didn't take long before realization lit up their eyes.

Big bomb. Not mine. Here. Now.

"Crap," Fang growled, and we set off running.

Three.

Two.

One.

Not a split second to soon, we darted for the door, just as the sonic boom that followed the explosion knocked us all off our feet. Goodness knows that for something as life threatening as this, I'd need to concentrate. But of course, as ironic and inconvenient as double deluxe cheeseburgers at a vegetarian buffet, now was the moment that my half-blindness chooses to kick in, and in the very second where I needed all of the balance I could get out of me, I couldn't even see my left foot.

Before I could find myself sprawled on the gravel, seconds away from living the remainder of my life as fried chicken, Fang caught me by the fabric of my shirt and started dragging me along. When I found my footing, he and Nick—cool, calm and collected, even in a moment like this—sprinted across the parking lot, past the shiny new bikes and towards the low cement wall sticking out of the ground a good four meters away.

Evidently, I had a lot of experience with bombs, and, as any good pyro knows, the first thing to do when the thing explodes is to find some decent shelter, because the resulting flying shrapnel of a big boom can kill you as effectively as two thousand volts to the brain.

"DUCK AND COVER," I shouted, and, without another look at the motorcycles that had been too young to die, we crouched behind the cement wall and watched from a safe distance as our favorite hangout—not to mention the birthplace of spectacular, legendary automotives that did not escape the fiery inferno—and our favorite mechanic had been reduced to a large, messy pile of cinders.

"Bye," I heard Nick whisper behind me, and I found him staring forlornly at the big chunk of charred metal that had been Jack's pride and joy. The 59' Bentley with the eight cylinder engines, the bulletproof-shatterproof-missileproof glass windows, the fingerprint security system and the fluffy pink dice; it was a thing of beauty. Or had been, I should say. And now it looked like something you'd find buried under diapers, empty soda cans and various other garbage dump regulars.

If I had a little less guy-genes in my system, I probably would've sobbed.

You see what I mean about having a bad day?

"What just happened?" Nick asked me, as we sat behind the wall, too stunned to try and move.

"Bomb."

"I know," Nick said, as if stating the obvious. Which he kind of was. Stating the obvious, I mean. "But why was there a bomb?"

I closed my eyes, letting the last thirty seconds wash over me.

"Iggy, you okay? You're not going into shock now, are you?"

Jack murdered, slashed into a grotesque figure on the ground. Lots and lots of icky blood. Ticking, like a countdown. More ticking. Four racing heartbeats—

Four heartbeats.

Four.

"Ig? Yo, dude, you're scaring us here."

"Uh…" I couldn't find the words to say it. Was there any right way to say that you almost just got killed? "Um, the bomb was probably there because of the…uh, the assassin who maybe just tried to kill us."

I might as well have said, 'a giant ten-foot bunny came up to me and gave me some strawberry-shaped rainbow flavored marshmallows' for all the impact it had on those two. Fang stood up, looking fairly unconcerned that he was almost blown to smithereens, and dusted off his jeans as if he just picked himself up from an hour spent sitting behind a wall for no reason at all.

"Oh," said Nick, who was standing behind his brother all of a sudden, and pulled me up by the forearm. "Assassin, huh? Tried to kill us?"

"Guess so," I murmured glumly.

And then it hit me.

The three of us came to Jack's in the first place because Nick said Jack was calling the guys over for a surprise. And then, when we get here, we find him lying dead on the floor, with a bomb waiting for us to stumble across; a bomb that was clearly meant for us. Thing is, the three of us weren't the only ones he was talking about when he said 'the guys'. We weren't his only workshop regulars, after all. Gazzy and Mike were supposed to be here, too.

I threw the two brothers a stricken look. "We have to go," I told them, and started running full out. Again. At least now, my half-blindness was a little more considerate. Being able to see both of your feet really made a difference.

Without another word, I cut across the road towards the makeshift shortcut I made a few minutes ago—a happier time when I wasn't worrying about being slaughtered; it seemed so long ago—and pushed my somewhat genetically enhanced bird-kid legs towards the school. Nick and Fang were right on my heels.

I heard someone clear their throat. "Why are we running?"

"Gaz and Mike," I shouted over my shoulder, not bothering to do a double take when I heard Fang's voice instead of Nick's. I didn't pause to look and see if they got it. It wouldn't matter. All that mattered right now was that we had to get to detention, and fast.

Wow. I never thought I'd live to hear myself say that.

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Gazzy's POV

This has got to be the weirdest first day of sem ever.

And we've had some pretty weird first days, so that's really saying a lot.

Like right now, for instance. Most people would find it weird that I was currently being pinned to the floor by a girl with a passion for beating the crap out of boys (at least, that's what I heard). And I gotta say, I sort of agree with them. This wasn't exactly my kind of normal, either.

"Now, what were you saying, Gaz?" Natt said, making sure my wrists were trapped firmly between her and the floor. Man, for a girl, she sure was freakishly strong.

I sighed. There was no getting my dignity back after this. "That girls rule, and boys drool."

Natalie grinned in approval. "What else?"

"What do you mean, what else?"

"What else are you going to say, Gazzy?"

"Help me," I mouthed desperately at Angel, who was sitting with Max a good three meters away.

"Nope," she mouthed back, while Max stared out the window, lost in her own little world. "You got yourself into this mess, so get yourself out."

I had absolutely no chance of escaping this—if I managed to get myself out of this today, then Natalie will follow me around like a bloodhound until I do—so I resorted to the only other option. Cussing inside my head.

Which did not help. At all. "Come on, Natt, don't make me say it!"

"We made a deal, Gaz, so don't you go and be a sore loser. I'm warning you, if I don't hear those words coming out of your mouth, I swear to God—"

"All right, all right!" I gritted my teeth. I'll admit, the girl knew her blackmailing techniques like the back of her perfectly manicured hand. "Aw, dammit."

"Say it."

My eyes squeezed shut, and I braced myself for my death. Or, at least, the loss of a few pints of testosterone.

"I feel pret—"

"GAZZY!"

Surprisingly enough, this voice was not the voice of a girl who was squealing in high-pitched delight over her diabolical victory. I opened my eyes a teeny, tiny amount and peeked through the gap. There, in the supposedly unbreakable doorway, stood Iggy, panting hard and looking slightly crazy. Over his shoulder, Nick and—to what was probably everybody's surprise—Fang peeked into the detention hall, looking alternately passive and anxious (Fang the first, Nick most of the second) but relatively calm.

"Gaz? You in here?" Iggy's one good eye panned the room. Then he spotted me on the floor. "No bullet holes? You haven't just escaped from a bloody life-threatening attempt on your li—holy CRAP! WHAT THE HELL?"

"Hey, Iggy," I greeted weakly, watching his eyes bug ever so slightly when he realized the…er…position I was in. Manic sniggering burst out from behind me. Jared was awake now. Great. More witnesses to my humiliation. "Not your best timing, I gotta say."

"Oh, hi, guys," Natalie sang, swinging her hair over her shoulder. Iggy—who looked like he was that close to going into shock—calmed down a bit when she turned to smile at him and the others.

"Oh, thank God," he murmured, breathing a sigh of relief. "Oh, it's just Natalie. Whoa, Natt, I thought you were an assassin. Wow, I just about had a heart attack—"

"Um, sorry to interrupt your…moment," Nick said, pushing himself past Iggy into the room. He took in the scene in a brief (and rare) moment of silence, and smirked when his eyes landed on me. "We just came to check if Gazzy hasn't been slashed to death or crushed by a giant anvil in the past ten minutes."

"I'd probably be dead if you'd come ten minutes later," I grunted, looking pointedly at the girl sitting on my chest. "At this rate, I would've suffocated in a few minutes, give or take."

"What?" Natalie yelled. She clambered off of me and looked questioningly at Iggy and Nick. I felt air rush mercifully into my lungs and propped myself up on my elbows. "What do you mean, slashed to death? What happened?"

"Oh, nothing," Iggy said, trying to sound casual about it. "Just a murder, is all—"

"A murder?!?" Natt all but screeched. But her screaming is better than me being tortured, so instead of making a sarcastic comment about how I would never be able to hear anything ever again, like I usually did, I let it go, hoping that she forgot about the little bet we had until I was a good three miles away.

The three newcomers entered the room, looking kind of relieved. Not Fang much, though the guy hardly expressed any emotion to begin with. But the other two looked like there was seriously the possibility that I could have been murdered. Which was weird, since it meant that something led them to fearing that I was dead. Or was about to be killed, at any rate.

Or maybe they just want to make sure Natalie hasn't been overenthusiastic with the convoluted plotting, and I was just watching way too many cop shows.

"Where's your guard for the day?" Iggy asked, leaning against the teacher's desk as he tried to catch his breath.

"Mr. Dowling left an hour ago."

"And he never came back?"

"Let's just say," Angel chirped from behind me, "that he's keeping the brooms and the buckets company. And leave it at that."

We all nodded. When Angel said leave it at that, then it was best to leave it at that. "Why'd you ask?"

Before he got to talking, Iggy tilted his head, probably listening for signs of eavesdroppers. I listened, too, but then his mutant hearing was way more mutant than my mutant hearing, so he had a wider range. When he was certain we were in the clear, he said in his mysterious voice, "Strange things have been happening."

"By whose definition of strange?" Jared asked, his feet propped up on his table. Angel scooted closer from where she was sitting. Even Max was back to Earth, listening to Iggy with wide, anticipating eyes.

"Uh…well, a mechanic was murdered, his workshop exploded, two brand new bikes were mortally injured, and someone just tried to kill us."

"All in the last ten minutes," Nick added, shooting a glare at Iggy. Was Iggy supposed to spill all that out?

"Wait, wait, back up," I said. "What did you say?"

"I said, a mechanic was murdered—"

"No, no, I mean the part after that. Did you say the bikes were damaged? The bikes from this morning? Aw, man, those were sweet—"

"Yeah, and they make the attempt on our lives so insignificant."

"Well, you survived, didn't you? But the bikes—"

"Mortally injured, okay? Period. Done. Nada. Now can we please go back to the part where someone was murdered?"

"When you say mechanic, do you mean Ja—"

"Wait up," Natalie interrupted, rubbing her temples. "This is all some kind of joke, right? I mean, murder? You've got to be kidding me."

"As much as I'd love to have the punch line to this," Iggy said, keeping his tone at bay along with his panting. "I don't."

"When I actually pay attention to an apparent life-threatening experience you had like you wanted me to, you just go ahead and ignore my concern, huh?" I rolled my eyes, brows furrowing at some part of me that actually registered the words that concerned death and motorcycles.

"Ugh, so many side-comments," Jared broke in, yawning. His eyes were deadly cold, and for a second there, I thought his red hair turned a fiery scarlet, lighting up like a flame. "Get to the point."

Iggy averted his attention, staring at the ground as if an ant decided to do the macalana on the ceramic tiles. His brows furrowed, concentrating on a memory. Vaguely, I noticed Angel's sharp gasp, and her hand cupping over her mouth. What's up with her?

Iggy sighed, staring each of us in the eye. "Right after school, Nick, Fang, and I went over to Jack's', just like he asked. When we got there, we—"

"Guys!" Max hissed out of the blue, her voice little more than a loud whisper. "Someone's coming!"

Can timing be so amazingly accurate today? I mean, it did save me from a life-threatening duel between Natalie and her built-in megaphone, but it just had to bring in something to add to our cliffhanger here. Whoever said suspense kills probably didn't know how dead-on he was with that.

"Gah!" Iggy burst out, scratching his head furiously. "Rotten timing."

"Tell me about it," both Jared and I grunted.

Iggy shot a sour look at the hallway behind him, and without so much as a coherent word in his endless muttering—which I could've sworn was a cuss or two…or a dozen—darted across the classroom. Nick and Fang followed behind, letting out identical exasperated sighs.

It took a moment for all of us to clamber back to our seats while Natt and I viciously kicked chairs and tables back where they were supposed to be—it wasn't so easy with all the space and wreckage we conjured up with just four and a half minutes of wrestling, mind you me.

Max tensed for a while, droplets of sweat beading up around her forehead. Her eyes were unfocused as she dragged chairs back to their original places. She smiled meekly when our eyes met, and suddenly, I felt really sorry for her. I mean, on her first day of school, everyone's eyes practically burn her into Swiss Cheese; pretty-boy-Neanderthal-Ari almost pummels her at a sorry attempt at flirting; she spends detention for three hours and then finds out about a murder and an attempt at it against the only people she's interacted with today.

All in one day.

Add to the fact that her sanity was probably very mortally injured in the ten hours she spent with pyromaniac genii, a motormouth and her practically-a-mind-reader-sister Angel.

Heck, even I'm getting dizzy with all that's happening right now.

"Three yards away, you guys," I heard Iggy whisper, his head warily poking up from the window beside Max—who was uneasily staring at his crouched form, probably recovering from post-shock at his head bonking up beside her. "Better hurry up with the broken tiles."

"Broken wha—oh my gosh. How did that…?" Natalie started, staring at the bits of tiles scattered around the room.

I rubbed the back of my head sheepishly. "I think that was the time you tried to crush my head with your wedges and missed, Natt."

She flushed a really cute, deep red, fuming and looking embarrassed at the same time—but mostly fuming. "Ohhh, I knew I should've worn my Flip-Flops today!"

"Yeah, quit arguing about fashion-statements-gone-senile and push the rest of the chairs and tables over the broken ceramics, would 'ya?" Max snapped, alert all of a sudden. Instead of wondering if she was actually still sane, I focused on getting my job done. But I gotta say, for a second there—and maybe a few hours before—I almost thought she's gone bonkers. It's relieving to know that one of the first few girls you could actually spend time even noticing didn't lose it the first day you socialize.

"Sorry," Natalie muttered, giggling a bit. She bent down and started piecing up the tiles, making use of whatever was left of our mayhem (namely Monster Glue and some really sticky string cheese) and trying to fix it.

A pang of guilt shot through me, and I almost reluctantly got to my knees beside her. I flattened the useless bits of tiles within a one-meter diameter of us against the holes and cracks born from our boredom. Beside me, I felt Natt heat up, and the gentle sway of her hair falling to one side of her face, as if to cover it.

"You don't have to help me, you know," Natalie murmured, her eyes trained to the ground. She watched the tiles in her hand wedge against the cement instead of looking at me. "It was my fault I almost crushed that big head of yours."

I grinned, rolling my eyes. I pushed myself up from my squat and held out my hand to her. "Yeah, and it's my fault I had to have such a big head for a bull's eye."

She giggled, wrapping her fingers around mine. I gritted my teeth, trying to stop the blush from going somewhere that could possibly embarrass me more. "You're lucky you've got a face worth saving or I wouldn't have missed. Ari, on the other hand…"

"I don't think you really have to do anything. His face already looks like it's been run over by a bulldozer."

"Yeah, but he hasn't gotten a stiletto scar yet."

I laughed, gliding over to my seat beside Jared—whose head was buried in his arms atop his table, no doubt asleep again. Natalie dragged another chair hastily across the classroom and swiftly landed her butt on the seat next to Angel, conjuring up her compact from thin air along with what looked like Puppy-Pink nail polish and a salmon lip gloss. Either that, or it was gelatin brand Gell-O and a strawberry crayon.

Then again, I never saw a sane-enough teenager with common sense that matches the amount of words she can sprout out in one breath draw on her lips with waxy pink crayons, so I assumed it was lip gloss. Or lip balm. Or lip ice.

To be honest, I preferred the Gell-O.

Don't ask me why I know the girly girl make-up series or something, okay? Let's just say "over-exposure to pink", shall we? 'Nuff said.

Feral dripping echoed from the hallway outside once we were quiet, and my movie-rendered brain immediately deduced some monster with sharp fangs and talons and drippy saliva coming to get the rebellious students.

When the actual anomaly appeared, though, I wasn't so far from correct.

Mr. Dowling was a medium-sized guy. Barely 5-feet, and has flabs sticking out of places I never knew fat could accumulate from. He has tomato-colored cheeks and a bad cowlick comb-over, and he usually wears a suit with a clip-on tie. He's got eye bags the size of a cantaloupe and piercing brown eyes Ig and I used to think was made out of propulsion mechs that fired lasers and skunk gas.

Hey, we were 10. What else could you expect from pre-pyros?

Anyway, that was how he usually looks like—besides whenever it's one of our school Fests and dances where he wears Kevlar under a coat, combat boots with extra leather straps, and a belt-bag stuffed with anti-student tools of destruction, of course. But his fashion style stepped up a bit when he was coated with gooey violet slop from head to toe—mostly from head—his smallish specs tilted in an angle downwards, and his comb over slopped down in an eau Snape fashion, making him look twice the hideous villain he already was.

But it looked better on him, seriously. Compared to the uptight buttons-are-gonna-explode-from-your-suit thing, it's better.

Besides, the buttons already popped out, by the looks of his jacket.

We all tried so, so hard not to just burst out laughing, but it proved a hard challenge. What's not to laugh at, anyway? Just imagine the worst teacher in the world covered in purple goo and you wouldn't even need a punch line. Heck, even the bushes by the window suddenly started to giggle uncontrollably (wink wink).

"Who," Mr. Dowling started, his voice laced with various layers of authority, venom, and half a sticky coating of purple glop. "Locked me in the supply closet?"

\\_-bLudySplATonThuhFlo0r-_//

Iggy POV

Nobody said anything about poison oak.

Nobody mentioned any poison oak.

Nobody friggin' checked if there was poison oak.

Guess what?

There was poison oak.

I mean, the school was here for like, what, a gazillion years? Somebody should have at least tripped and fell on the bush for that duration. There should have been a sign, in the least. Or a fence. Anything. Better yet, school authorities should have burned the damn plants down (no offense to any tree-huggers out there, tho').

Oh, and another thing:

IT ITCHES.

Maybe the first few minutes you spend half-buried in a poison oak bush you wouldn't notice the searing itches, and maybe you don't until you see the hideous glomp of mold that used to be your skin. And when you do, though, you just can't help but keep noticing.

Well, I did get past at least half the monologue Mr. Dowling had prepared for Gaz and the others, and I held some of my laughter back when I saw the teacher, but I don't think I can survive itching like this.

A few minutes ago (before noticing the stinkin' poison oak)

"Who locked me in the supply closet?" Mr. Dowling had barked, eyebrows twitching.

There was no answer.

I was holding off my laughter then. (STILL buried in poison oak, by the way.)

"I doubt no one's responsible," Mr. Dowling spoke again. "I think I've narrowed down my search to just this classroom, what with all of you being troublesome delinquents, here."

"How are you so sure?" Angel asked, her voice perfectly innocent. "We're only the troublemakers that were caught today."

There was a pause while the twisted intensity of the atmosphere was taken in. Angel's voice morphed into creepy, still-angelic, hypnotizing velvet, almost as if she was persuading her opinion. Mr. Dowling, for a second there, almost seemed to buy it.

"Mmhmm," Mr. Dowling muttered, slightly dazed. "Then why is Jared halfway through the window?"

I hadn't noticed Jared's head sticking out of the other window about a yard away from where we escaped through until now. And now that Mr. Dowling had caught him in the act, with a leg perched on the windowsill and his torso exposed (there was not a single plant ready to ambush him with its poison-y itchiness, by the way), he looked more than guilty of whatever he did (in this case, locking an ex-sergeant-general-captain-guy in a supply closet and balancing a bucket filled with purple goo made of who-knows-what precariously atop his bald spot).

"Er, I'm not supposed to..be here," Jared said, glancing at us ever so slightly—and at the poison oak I still didn't notice was clawing its itchy way up my skin.

"Don't think I don't know trouble when you're the epitome," Mr. Dowling spat, out of the daze Ange seemed to have temporarily put him in, returning to the cynical old fart we all know and hate. "And that…Iggy. Ohh, if only I could ship you, Iggy and Fartman here in military school! Juvenile delinquents, you three are! I'd be the one to personally whip you into shape, disregarding your nonetheless impressive Physical Education's grade! I'll bet your little toys, those dynamites, could be of use either way."

Damn, if I weren't in enough trouble with the whole someone's-trying-to-assassinate-me-and-my-friends thing, I would have snapped back corrections at the fatso. I mean, dynamites?! Toys?! I respect Alfred Nobel and all—what with creating the basis of all destructive explosives and making the Nobel Peace Prize thing—but our bombs can't possibly get degraded to that low a level (especially low enough to be called toys dammit).

"They're NOT dynamites," I heard Gazzy whine. "And it's The Gasman, not Fartman!"

"Don't raise your voice, young man!"

"Oh, gee, thanks, da-ad," Gazzy mocked.

I couldn't help but feel proud for the kid. Only a select few could even talk back to Mr. Dowling, or have enough dignity left to even open their mouths in front of him—or open their mouths period. That's what you get when you're a full-time rebel, part-time pyro, all around mutant-bird-freak: one big fat package of heaping trouble.

"Don't you back sass me!"

"Oh, soh-reeh," I could imagine Gazzy rolling his eyes. "But I think I just did."

"That's it!" Mr. Dowling burst out amidst the rigorous chatter and giggling. "Detention for you again tomorrow!"

"Will that include me too?" Natalie asked, and I could've sworn there was a hint of hope in her voice.

More people were laughing now, I was already sniggering, and even Nick had a smirk on (note: STILL in itchy poison oak).

"I'm afraid not, Natalie, no matter how affiliated you are with this boy," the old fart said, and I heard the vague rustle of clothes and the squee of purple goo getting squished against his crossed arms. "Unless, of course, you have a part of..this."

I peeked through the window again, glancing at Max for a bit before taking in the scene.

Gazzy was the first one I'd really noticed, since my sensors were still on red alert after a murder attempt was nearly carried out against us a few minutes ago. His arms were folded across his chest and his legs were propped up on the table on front of him—classic delinquent posture. The look on his face was the perfect mix of amusement, gangster-ish defiance, and total rebellion, complete with a raised eyebrow and a slightly puckered mouth. He was nailing the look, but it wasn't as convincing as when I go face-to-face with a teacher (if I do say so myself).

But you could expect that when you're up against an educator in many ways ranging from military, medicine, biology and physical-slash-emotional torture or punishment, anyway.

Next person I caught sight of was Natalie, her petite form slumped against her chair's backrest with her hands innocently placed against her lap. There was a slight shade of pink glowing in her cheeks, and her eyes spared a few glances at her seatmate every once in a while—seatmate being tall, blonde and has freakish gas power (you could very well guess who that is, now, right?). Her hands were toggling against her compact mirror, flashing lights in different directions and mirroring an image only the students in the room could see or understand.

And then the sisters—or stepsisters, I mean. Angel was wearing a perfectly innocent face, a face that I knew all to well, but to a teacher's eyes, devoid of any emotion that would give her away. Beside her was Max, smirking, her eyes glittering mischievously, usually like the troublesome glints we pyros have in our eyes whenever something's set to explode. She was leaning forward, taking in the atmosphere more than I expected her to. Her blonde-brown hair fell against her shoulders and cascaded down her back, and her feet were impatiently tapping against the floor—a beat only ears like mine could have picked up (sounded a bit like Requiem…or Requiem of Dreams, if I'm not mistaken—pretty epic, by the way).

Mr. Dowling shifted his horrendous weight from one knee to another, glaring daggers at the 'delinquents' surrounding him. He looked about three words away from having an apoplectic fit. If he wasn't there yet, at least. Natalie looked at Gazzy for a second, and then at Ange and Max, before continuing.

"Er, well…I sort of got the key," she said, nailing the guilty look down. Gaz and I taught her well.

Angel sighed and giggled, smiling as she added, "And I locked you in."

Mr. Dowling was an odd shade of purple now—after going through red and orange. I swear he was going to go through the whole color wheel at the rate this was going.

"And I was responsible for the purple slime," another voice finished.

We all turned.

"Maximum?" Mr. Dowling said in what could possibly have been astonishment. "You, of all people, are responsible for this…this…" he poked the goo clinging to his shirt, "this slop?"

To our surprise, Max laughed. Just like that. "Yep. Neat, huh?"

And the color wheel was just presented to us in the varying hues the human face can apparently go through. You could almost see the smoke coming out of the teacher's ears and nostrils when he fumed.

"All on your first day!" he yelled.

"Err, I guess..?" Max said, still smiling.

That moment was priceless. I gotta remind Mike to hack into the school's surveillance system and burn out the video of Mr. Dowling's artistic side blossoming in the form of facial talent. He could give the Screamer a run for its money. It'll be such a hit on the net.

But before I could take note of whatever the hell was happening next, that's when it happened.

That was when I noticed.

-

A harmless scratch was all it took, really. All I did was feel a twinge at the back of my neck and scratch. My finger rubbed against the spot without me really thinking about it, but before long, I felt myself scratching furiously against every inch of my skin. A little later, I was itching all over, reaching for prickles erupting in places they should not have erupted in the first place. I felt Fang and Nick stiffen beside me, and I could've sworn I nearly elbowed Fang's jaw if he didn't have lightning-fast reflexes.

Suddenly, Nick was rubbing his wrist, and there it went. His self-control, I mean. Whatever was happening inside the detention room was beyond us now—our reach stretched only so far as the skin that was exposed to the itchy goodness of poison oak.

Luckily, though, we had a logical mind with us (or two)—you know, the ones with common sense fast enough to react. And it didn't take long for our itchy butts to get dragged away from the itch-inducing bush.

"Agh," I groaned, scratching against my sore arm. "Itchy, itchy, itchyyy."

"Better put some ointment there," I heard Jared suggest, poking at the back of my neck. "And there..and there…ohh, and here. Yeah, most definitely here."

Yeah, cause I didn't notice the mutated potato that used to be my left hand.

"Damn," I cursed, staring at my freakish hand—my other still scratching. "Well, this sucks."

"Tell me about it," Nick grunted, wrapping his knuckles and wrists with bandages. He turned to Fang and Jared (trying not to scratch—and failing miserably) and muttered, "Thanks for dragging us out of there, though. I don't think Iggy'd survive later on if you pulled us out any sooner."

I snorted, still grating at my skin.

"Dammit, nobody said anything about poison oak."

"You should really stop that," Nick said, raising an eyebrow. "It's disturbing. Don't make...it, ah…your hand…er…grow."

I groaned, scratching my ankles.

"Here."

My sight was out in an instant, my only good eye blocked by some cloth-y substance thrown at my face. Twinges blew up in my forehead, and my hands immediately reached up to scratch the sore spot. I pulled the objects off my face and rubbed absently, staring a little forlornly at whatever it was that had to be thrown on my mug.

"What," I started, stopping short my scratch-parade. "are these?"

I didn't know how in the hell Fang managed to get these, or why in the world he had these with him, but reasons why I, or any sane male teenager who's still got functioning brain cells operating in his head, wouldn't even touch these, much less have them in handy somewhere, are very, very evident.

For one: they were PINK.

PINK.

"Mittens," Fang answered, grinning.

GRINNING.

\\_-bLudySplATonThuhFlo0r-_//

Max POV

"Great," I said. "Just great. Three more hours with you two's gonna fry my brain cells."

"Don't worry, Max," Angel said beside me, smirking. Her gaze landed on Natt and Gazzy who were sitting on a bench, their heads close together, like they were talking about something. "They're going for a different theme tomorrow. A bit more…mature, so to speak."

"Mmhmm, if you call hormonal teenagers playing games inside a detention room mature."

"What can we say?" Gazzy piped up, wrapping an arm around Natalie's shoulders. "It's boring in there."

"Y-yeah. Boring," Natt said, her eyes widening all of a sudden. She fidgeted a bit before reluctantly peeling his arm off her shoulders, while trying to cover it up with a shaky laugh. Come on, does no one notice the blush? "In any case, we're so sorry, Max. We dragged you into this, you got detention—"

"Twice," Gaz noted, raising a finger.

"Not helping," Natalie said, nudging Gazzy's chest. "But anyway, it's like, your first day here, and we had to be the gang you get to associate with and everything. You've even gotten into Dowling's hit list, already, and because you spilled purple goo on him—"

"I didn't," I countered. "It was Jared."

Just then, we rounded the corner past the windows of the detention room. The squidgy, almost ethereal dripping sound was still oddly audible here. I glanced inside, having just noticed the wrong seating arrangements, the messed up chairs and tables, the broken tiles, and the small puddles of violet slop decorating the green, otherwise damaged floor. I remembered where I was sitting, beside the third window to the right, where the three unbearable guys had jumped out of. There was a really weird (since none of the other windows really had plants underneath them) but otherwise normal-looking shrub just under the sill. Without thinking, my hand reached out towards a small flower sticking out of the top.

"Don't touch that!"

I jerked my hand away from the flower, and we all turned to look at whoever hollered at me. There stood Iggy, scratching the back of his neck with one hand, and his back with the other, looking like he'd been involved in a huge struggle concerning an army of red ants. Nick walked alongside him, with Fang trailing behind, his hands in pockets like a laid-back god. The sight was pretty impossible to look at, process, or even believe, but with the way my back had been carrying its feathery goodness, I shouldn't be surprised by things so trivial—no matter how untrivial—as this.

"Not…safe," Iggy breathed between scratches. "Poison…oak…ugh…itcheee."

"Stop scratching," Fang said—Fang said, poking Iggy's forehead hard. It would probably have made a bruise, but then you really wouldn't notice a little bit of purple in the middle of a sea of pink and red.

For the second time today, we all fell silent, which, judging by experience, no matter how short, is exceedingly rare.

Wow, if only Mr. Dowling had Fang on his side when it comes to noise control. Fang could quiet down a zoo dedicated solely to monkeys on crack.

"Dude. Uh, dude—Iggy," Gazzy stammered, his eyes bulging slightly out of their sockets. "Are you…are you wearing pink?"

Now that he mentioned it, I didn't see Iggy have any, er, fingers. Even though he clearly looked like he did with all the scratching.

Almost as though he wasn't the least bit embarrassed, Iggy grunted and raised the back of his…er…mittens to face us. "Yes, I'm wearing pink, 'ya dimwit!" he snapped, rolling his eyes. "Does this look like orange to you?"

"Err, no…but…why?"

"Poison oak," Nick answered, putting a hand on Iggy's shoulder. He rolled back his sleeve and revealed a number of big red splotches on his forearm. "Got me too."

My breath hitched when he stepped forward, and I think my throat closed in when he spoke and smiled, showing off his bandaged hand and wrist. I didn't feel any blood rush to my face, though, which is good, in a way, besides getting no warning as to when my face completely drains of blood, that is.

"Iggy was developing mutated limbs and plagued skin so we had to stop him from scratching," he continued, slapping Iggy's flailing hand away from a tomato-colored patch of skin Iggy was about to attack next. "So we grabbed the nearest most helpful thing."

"Mittens," Angel noted, her eyes glittering with enthusiasm.

"Yeah, pretty much," Nick said.

"Whoa, dude, monochromatic much," Gazzy said, his eyes flickering from the pink (sorry) mittens, the bright red that was all we could see of his skin, and finally landing on the mop of strawberry blonde hair on top of Iggy's head. "Bad day to wear a red shirt."

"Ohh, this is so going to sell," Natalie suddenly burst out, hiding her blushes under the backlight of her cellphone. Then, with a lower voice only us girls could here, continued in a devious voice, "Fang talking, Nick smiling, Iggy in pink? This is gonna make us rich."

"Tch'yeah!" Angel said, and slapped her the girly version of the high five. "Hottest guys in school, much."

"Er, not that I'm occupied with whatever gossip you're conjuring up here, but aren't you missing someone?" I said, glancing at the three and then at the clearly oblivious (and pretty shell-shocked) Gazzy, who was still mulling over the pinkness of Iggy's hand. "Isn't Gazzy part of the top five?"

What was up with me?

"Oh…oh yeah," Natalie said, her hold on her cellphone slacking slightly. Her cheeks turned a darker shade of red, and all I did was roll my eyes. Hey, even though it's my first day here, I already know something about Natt that she isn't mentioning in her spurs of nonstop blabber. I mean, it was pretty obvious.

"I'm already on it," Angel sang, walking past us, lugging Gazzy by the collar. He threw Natt a confused look when Angel practically threw him beside the guys, but she just giggled and nodded. I peeked over Natalie's shoulder to watch the scene unfold on the cellphone's screen, trying to force my face's blood circulation to shut down.

"Oh, hey, where's Jared?" Natalie asked.

Angel looked up and shrugged. "I saw him jump from a three-story window two minutes ago. I'm guessing he won't be back anytime soon."

I was about to ask how a human could have jumped a three-story window without ending up being roadkill. But that was like asking how I had wings, so I decided to leave it and watch Natt and Ange squeeze a few ounces of dignity out of the guys through the magic of technology.

Natalie's cellphone had a screen actually big enough to fit Iggy, Nick, Fang—and squeeze in Gazzy along with half of Angel's body—all in a landscape orientation. I spared a pitying glance at my cellphone. Small and insignificant with barely any memory to store more than two games, a cracked screen and outer covering (after it experiencing the sensation of gravity in large doses—er, my fault), and the worst signal you could ever get even if you were standing on a sixty-story skyscraper almost directly under a satellite.

No, seriously. I'm not kidding. I've tried.

"Na-att," Iggy suddenly sang. Both of his hands were pinned to his back by two impossible teens. He closed his good eye (at least, I think it's his good eye) and looked at us in this really menacing way—mostly at Natalie—with an eyebrow twitching with anger. "Are you…recording this?"

I couldn't avert my attention once it was grabbed by the…the unfeasibility of those guys. I still can't get over it, really. I don't know how, or why they were so friggin' impossible (darn, that's the how-many-eth time I've said that about them, huh?). I still can't wrack my head enough.

"Uh oh," Angel muttered beside me.

I blinked, looking up from the screen. Fang and Nick were both suddenly holding back Iggy's strong arms, struggling against his thrashing limbs to keep him steady.

"Argh, let go, you two!" Iggy bellowed, slamming his foot to the ground to give him more leverage. "Let me at 'er!"

"Uh oh, crap, not good," Natalie said, staring with wide eyes at her soon-to-be assassin. Iggy was so close to snapping right there, if it weren't for the efforts put into restraining him brought on by Fang and Nick.

"Yeah, tell me about it," Angel said, noting the screen in Natalie's fingers. "Your cellphone's low-bat."

"Set your priorities, Ange," I muttered, rolling my eyes and keeping a steady stare at the four teens being videotaped.

"Er, right," Angel said sheepishly, blushing pink. "They're kind of distracting, you know."

Turns out, we only had about two seconds left before the cellphone ran out of juice. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guys exchange a relieved glance. I almost started sniggering. Like battery issues was going to stop them. From the little that I know about them, I could most definitely be certain that Natt and Angel would rather spend three more days locked in detention with the Mr. Baldy than pass this opportunity up. Especially an opportunity this…juicy.

She flipped the cellphone shut and turned to Iggy, who still looked kind of—okay, really—murderous. When you look past the hot pink cashmere mittens and the angry red splats that were basically all I could see of him.

"Iggy, can I borrow your phone?' Angel asked, in her sweetest sing-song voice.

"Why?" Iggy said, eyes narrowed. It wasn't really that hard to figure out; he guessed her plan in a heartbeat.

"Oh, nothing."

"I'm not giving you my phone, Ange."

"Why not?"

"Well, for one, it has a video camera on it."

"Really? It does?" Angel sang, feigning innocence (and, quite frankly, pulling it off without a hitch). For a moment, they stared each other down. And then, a few seconds later, Iggy's face went curiously blank.

"Come on, Ig," she pouted, giving him full force and batting her eyelashes. Beside me, Natt started to snigger. "Please?"

"Left jean pocket," Iggy murmured, in a voice as vacant and unfocused as his expression. Uh…creepy much? I would've bet my next month's allowance that any self-respecting human being wouldn't voluntarily give up their cellphones under the risk of embarrassment and future humiliation. Especially not to someone as devious as Natt and Angel. Especially not when they were like this. It's like he got hypnotized or something.

But before anyone could even suspect anything, Angel just grinned, bounded forward, and retrieved the phone from his pocket in one fluid motion.

"Thank you," she said, sliding the phone open. "Oh, hey, you got a message."

Her thumb slid across the screen for a moment before announcing, "It's from Mike."

Fang and Nick stiffened and loosened their grip on Iggy, who practically dove for his cellphone. His face got paler and paler—which wasn't obvious under the rash, but it was there—with every line he read. He went through the message one more time, eyes widening to plate-sized circles, before flicking his phone at Nick, who caught it with predictably perfect reflexes.

"What does it say?" Gazzy asked, shuffling ever so slyly towards Natalie.

"Hey, guys," Nick read aloud, his finger rubbing absentmindedly against his arm. "I'm here at Jack's. Where are you guys? He's looking for you."

I tried to absorb what the significance. Why was everybody so tense? Nick looked like he was half-expecting a murderer to jump out of the bushes and try to gag him with a flower chain, and Iggy…well, Iggy looked like a giant strawberry. A very shocked giant strawberry.

And Fang was…where was Fang?

"Wait," said Gazzy, breaking the silence. "Didn't you just say that Jack was dead?"

"Yep," Iggy muttered, too into his out-of-body experience to retort with the usual cynical comment. He turned to Nick with the manic look of someone who was just about to ride their final hope, and asked, "When was it sent?"

Nick scanned the little screen while we all waited in painful suspense. It finally hit me, why they were freaking out about it so much. "Uh…about half an hour ago."

"Jack was long dead by then," Iggy whispered faintly, more to himself.

"Well, what do you think that means?"

Iggy took a deep breath. "We're going to have to find him, and nothing in hell is going to stop us."

Right on cue, Iggy's breath hitched, and he looked up at the tree behind us, eyes wide. Angel gasped, and Gazzy followed his gaze.

"NO!" he screamed, darting forward towards Natt, just as a sleek silver blade came flying at her from out of nowhere. He crashed into her, sending the two of them tumbling onto the gravel.

"Gazzy!" Natalie yelled. Her eyes widened in horror as she watched a pool of red blossom on the sleeve of Gazzy's shirt, and realized exactly how close she'd come to being the one bleeding on the sidewalk. We all watched, breathless and terrified, as Natalie carefully laid Gazzy down on the ground. "Gaz!"

"I'm okay," he groaned, pushing himself up. Already, he was starting to pale. Sweat had broken out on his forehead, and his face was chalky white. He looked up at Natt, eyes searching for some sign of injury on her, and tilted his head. "Are you?"

"I'm fine," Natt whispered, still a little shell-shocked. Gazzy nodded and closed his eyes. Iggy, having been frozen in place, stepped forward to help him get up, but his eyes fluttered and his head slumped into Natalie's lap.

You could almost here the dun dun dun duuuuun.

Just great. Now, I can cross insanity, intentional felony and attempted murder out from the list of things I want to unwittingly witness before I die.

As Natt started hyperventilating, Nick whistled, and bent down to pick up something silver and shiny and splattered in crimson. "Now, there's the assassination attempt we've been waiting for."

\\_-bLudySplATonThuhFlo0r-_//

A/N: well, there ya go! It's a little long, so…yeah. XD anyway, hope you liked it! My friend helped a lot—since, you know, I was freaking busy and everything and didn't have the time, effort or endurance to write something that wasn't that related to my schoolwork XD thank her for the persuasion, the Alzheimer's attacks (kidding XD—but she does have bad memory) and for writing huge chunks of this chapter with her awesome writing.

Oh, and she's telling me to ask you guys for a specific amount of reviews or something XD you know, to persuade us and everything XD well, I just hope you review! (though a hundred would be nice XD) THANKS FOR READING!