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You may remember when Alex last mentioned that she was abducted by aliens, or the last time she was abducted by aliens.

~

[Transcript]

        “Easy, easy, RJ! He knows not what he says.” Ollie had raised an arm between RJ and Max before they could attack him for his cheek—for his audacity.

        “My apprentice...” Johnny grunted, meeting Max’s gaze with grave severity. “There’s lessons you ain’t ready for. Lessons only pain can teach. ‘How bad could a few days of detention be?’ That’s ONE of ’em.” The defiant delinquent crossed his arms, embodying a master who was doomed to die defending the Forbidden Scrolls from his traitorous pupil in the first act of a martial arts movie. “I don’t CARE how bad you wanna be a bully, Max—”

        “That’s been evident,” Max grumbled.

        “—you’re NOT gonna cross that bridge before you’re READY FOR IT!”

        “And there is a bridge,” said Ollie. “Over a moat. Flanked by checkpoints. Only way to reach the front gate of a place few bullies leave...”

        “Beneath the SCHOOL! A subterranean DETENTION FORTRESS! The Student’s Council’s BASE!” Stephen’s cackle withered to a whimper as a traumatizing flashback filled his brain.

        Alex nodded in a daze of deep reflection.

        “they say that it was built by the biddle school’s founder, barnadict biddle”—everybody briefly paused to pledge allegiance to his portrait, which was hanging on the wall—“as a bomb shelter, way back during the cold war.”

        “Why did you guys leave all the proper nouns to the narrator that only speaks in lowercase?” Max asked, but everyone ignored him.

        “it was designed to be impenetrable, a self-sufficient bastion of middle-school-level knowledge. if nuclear fallout destroyed the world above, long division and a very small amount of french and spanish would survive—mostly words that had to do with telling time and food and airports.” Alex sighed. “that was barnadict biddle’s beautiful dream... before it was corrupted by vice principal dunacht.”

        “Now it’s that FREAK’S evil playground,” growled Johnny, slamming his strangely searing fist into his strangely balmy palm. “A place where she can PUNISH AS SHE PLEASES. A place where she pits bullies like us AGAINST each other!”

        “And DuNacht’s not the ONLY creep crawlin’ around down there!” giggled Stephen, who had loped up to Max on all fours just like Gollum. The feral gleam in his eyes had the wet sheen of a symptom. “The fortress’s guards are the Student Council’s Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals, who—”

        “You will not make me learn or care about that faction,” Max said flatly.

        “Even if you sell your soul and try to cozy up to the Council, there’s more to worry ’bout within those walls than just the law.” Ollie shook his head and wagged a finger down at Max. “You think you know your bully bestiary here at Bayview Biddle School... but you don’t. For every class clown that you’ve met up here, there’s a The Joker down below; for every goth, a Gothic horror; for every rebel, an extremist revolutionary.”

        “That’s where they keep the lifers,” RJ added, briefly breaking their vow of silence so as not to be excluded from the thrilling exposition. “Kids with Permanent In-School Suspension. Also known as—”

        “That’s my lore limit, thanks,” Max interrupted. “I’m good. Nope. Straight up full. I couldn’t possibly.” Every second at the Biddle School brought Max still further from the blessed bliss of ignorance.

        “sadly, you join a complacent consensus,” sighed Alex. “there was an exposé about all this last year, in suzy’s paper... but of the few who could believe the truth, there were still fewer with the courage to protest it...”

        “I believed it,” Stephen proudly reassured her.

        “You’ve literally been there, Steph,” said Ollie. “We all have. And if it weren’t for Johnny... we mighta never gotten out.”

        “I can believe anything,” Stephen emphasized, still eager to assert his greatest virtue.

        “that’s what everybody says,” Alex mumbled, giving Max a look of disappointment, “until you tell a boy that you’ve been abducted by—”

        “Wait, wait, wait,” Max rushed to interrupt. His eyes darted from Stephen, then to Alex, then to Stephen. He’d had the bliss of ignorance this whole time after all. This whole time, he’d been standing next to fuel and open flame.

        “—that you’ve been abducted by aliens.”

        Stephen turned to Alex with eyes wider than her character design’s.

        “...You’ve what?”

        “there, you see what i mean? there’s the look again. i know that look.” Alex turned away and let her shoulders slump. “i’ll just start climbing in the locker now and save you guys the trouble...”

        Stephen slammed the locker back shut with his foot.

        “eep!” squeaked Alex. it was the closest she had ever come to capitalizing any sound she’d made.

        “GREY or GREEN?!” the scarred delinquent snarled. Cash Reward growled down at Alex from atop his head as Stephen loomed above her.

        “w-whichever you’d prefer, sir!” Alex sputtered, cowering behind her bangs.

        Stephen stumbled back, as though stunned by some profound revelation.

        “Chameleon camouflage...” he whispered in an awestruck tone. “No—psychic color projection. Of course. Your FAVORITE SHADE, to make you comfortable for PROBING...”

        Alex glanced down at the greyless, greenless, third pink-centric outfit she had worn to school this week.

        “...well, th-the alien did have a sort of... rosy spectral aura... like a gaseous energy that it gave off, and that was pink...”

        This time, it was Max’s turn to turn to her with eyes as wide as flying saucers.

        “...What.” The locker to his right whined as his magnet powers flared in concert with his deep exasperation. “Listen,” Max said, pinching the bridge of his nose as best as his cast would allow. “I know the other day when we were talking at the bar, I said I didn’t—”

        “I WAS TALKING TO HER FIRST,” growled Stephen, biting Max from one side while his dog went for the other.

        “OBJECTIVELY FALSE,” Max squeaked out like a gazelle on its way to the ground, but no such objection had ever stopped Stephen before.

        Alex blushed. She’d always been a minor background character at best. No boys had ever fought for her attention even once.

        Johnny smirked and set a sympathetic hand on a defeated Max’s shoulder (the one that wasn’t occupied by Cash Reward’s incisors).

        “Bro... I think it’s time for you to bow out. The grass is always greener on the other side of hindsight. Or grey or pink or whatever. I didn’t get that part. But I know you fumbled hard.” Johnny chuckled to himself. “Just give it up, man. Stephen is like you but with a cool scar and intact bones and who says confusing words less—”

        “Two hits and a miss,” Max grumbled from the ground.

        “Let the lady upgrade,” Ollie said, finishing Johnny’s point for him.

        “...i’m... lady?” Alex’s fingertips rose to her cheeks. Before she had a chance to bask in her bright new romantic reality, however, Stephen had swooped back in to seize her by the hands.

        “How did you CONTACT our COSMIC NEIGHBORS?! Did you have to climb the radio tower by the reservoir? ’Cause when I tried that they pulled me down with a NET!”

        “i—what? n-no, it just keeps happening to me in math class every couple days. this flying saucer shows up out of nowhere, and—”

        “HUHHHHH?! THERE’S ALIENS HEEERE?! C’MON, LET’S GO, LET’S GO! I WANNA MEET ’EM!” It was the first time that Stephen had ever considered replicating an experiment before fully embracing its hypothesis, if only because he was eager to fully embrace a real extraterrestrial.

        Stephen took off down the hallway, leading a flustered Alex by the hand. RJ followed close behind; Stephen was safer with a third wheel to support him, even if he’d done real damage on a tricycle before—he’d done even more damage when he’d stolen Pleezdoo’s car the other day. Concerningly, they’d failed to factor in their fourth wheel: Cash Reward, who blithely hopped along beside their heels.

        Johnny looped an arm around Max’s sloppy chew toy of a shoulder. 

        “They grow up so fast, bro,” he sniffed, wiping a proud tear from his eye. “One day they’re just a little bitty bully... and the next they got a woman and a wiener dog.”

        “I’m going to class,” said Max, and the bell rang as though signaling his boxing ring defeat.