As soon as the burlap sack went over his head, Todd thrashed around and swung his legs in every direction possible. In his mind, this would dislodge him from the grip of his abductor and he would get enough distance to escape. In reality, the grip of the kidnapper’s arm around his neck was so tight, Todd would sooner pass out than get away. As he grew light headed, Todd slapped and clawed at the the large arm which dragged him away from the computer desks.

The dizziness increased, and Todd suddenly felt very sleepy. His head was heavy, and drooped as Todd struggled to keep his eyes open. He was moments from passing out when the person carrying him screamed and dropped him to the floor. Head still covered, Todd tried to catch his breath and block out the intense pounding in his head. He threw off the sack with feeble arms and fell back on his bottom. Even in his shaken state, Todd recognized that the scene in front of him didn’t lean in his favor, no matter how it resolved: the seven foot tall, giant of a man from outside Mr. Scofield’s office was squared off against the dog creature from the first day of school.

Todd noticed three slashes on the back of the man’s shirt as he faced the creature. His face was pure anger to match the menace from the creature as it barred its teeth and growled from atop one of the long computer tables. Monitors and desktops had been knocked over, some to the floor, and somewhere deep down, Todd just knew he’d be blamed for this mess. The room was lit only by light from the hallway which pass through partially opened blinds and a couple of computer monitors. Todd looked around for a way to escape, but the only door out of the room was on the other side of the large man and the dog like creature; neither of which Todd expected to let him just leave.

The creature roared then jumped at the large man, who caught it and tossed it back across the room. The creature slid on top of one of the computer tables, but quickly got up and ran towards the man again. It moved much faster and with more agility than Todd saw in the old chemistry room. The man picked up anything nearby and launched it at the creature; from chairs to a monitor. The creature dodged it all and threw itself, head first into the man and knocked him backwards. It clamped down onto his arm.

“Aghh.” He bellowed, as he grabbed the creature by the scruff of the neck and pulled it from his arm. He paid no attention to any of the blood drawn and reared back to punch the animal. Todd wasn’t sure if it was the surreal image of a very large person about to punch a very large animal which resembled a dog, but he got up and ran over as the man cocked his arm back, and tried to stop the hit. The man, when he noticed Todd, swung his arm to the side and sent Todd careening into a table. His shoulder took the brunt of the collision and Todd dropped to the ground. The creature whipped its tail into the face of the man, which left scratch marks, and wriggled free from his grip.

The man picked up a table and used a running throw to hurl it at the creature, who dodged the projectile, but was unable to avoid a direct hit from the man. The creature flew across the room, into the wall near the door, and landed in a heap. The man turned to Todd and started to walk towards him as the ceiling started to rumble. He stopped and looked up as a ceiling tile shattered and several hall monitors flew into the room.

The clicking and whirring of the drone like machines filled the room as they floated in formation like a school of fish. The light on what Todd assumed was the front of the hall monitor was red. Several broke off and flew to the side of the room the creature was seen. One produced a green field of light as it scanned the body of the creature. The rest flew towards the large man, and after a few moments and what sounded like several lens shutters, they descended on Todd. He tried to cover his face and keep away, but was quickly surrounded a few began to physically run into him. Todd swiped at the closet monitor to keep it away but his hand accidentally made contact and he almost saw stars; he hit solid metal was afraid he’d broken his hand.

The hall monitors parted as the large man appeared. He reached down and grabbed Todd by the shirt and yanked Todd to his feet. As he was pulled upwards, Todd turned to see if creature was stirring or captured too, and as he did something fell from the ceiling, on top of a hall monitor, and brought it to the floor with a loud crunch.

“Todd Stewart, this is getting ridiculous.” Jun said. Todd felt a sudden giddiness and time seemed to move in slow motion. The large man and the swarm of hall monitors turned to face him, and Jun’s eyes already had a blue glow. The hall monitors flew forward but the man stayed in place. The glow had already disappeared from both Jun and the man, and Jun was mid way through his hand movements from the first day. Todd watched the man go from standing still to flying backwards.

The chain shot out from space created by Jun’s hand sign and it wrapped around one of the hall monitors. Jun shook the chain, which cause the hall monitor to crash into its closed neighbor. He then swung the chain around and turned the snared hall monitor into a blunt object with which to bash the others. One by one the monitors fell to the ground, destroyed. Jun whipped the chain in the direction of the monitors by the door and seized another. Todd watched the familiar blue glow hold it in place, and when it disappeared, the hall monitor rapidly moved back and forth in jerky motions and took down the others in its group.

As the large man got to his feet, Jun turned and pulled a what looked like a white bean bag out of his sleeve. He threw the bean bag at the man and it hit him in the chest then bounced to the ground. The man look down, then at Jun with a furrowed brow. Jun extended the arm the bag came from towards the man. A gust of wind kicked up and a torrent of smaller white bean bags bombarded him. At first, the large man tried to bat them away, as the numbers increased, he tried to move out of the way, but the pile at his feet trapped him in place. All he could do was shield his face from the hits and he was soon buried under a huge pile, with only a hand sticking out. Todd looked at the mound with a slack jaw, and his eyebrows drawn together.

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“Oh, calm yourself, Todd Stewart.” Jun said. “It will dissolve soon...ish.” The distant sound of buzzing caused both Todd and Jun to look up towards the ceiling. “There will be more if we don’t drop the network. They operate through Wi-Fi. How fast do you think you can take this place offline?”

“This place? As in Fillmore? I’ve never done that before.” Todd said. He quickly got to his feet. Jun rolled his eyes.

“Anything to get out of work.” he mumbled. “I’ll do it, but that means you have to keep them off my back.”

“You’re the one with the special powers.”

“And being in two places at once isn’t one of them. Either we drop the network or we deal with swarms until they capture us. I’m not getting captured. Just do what I did and take them out in groups.” Jun said. He ran over to the door which lead to the server room, and after a couple of good hits with his shoulder, forced it open.

Todd felt a quiver in his stomach as Jun closed the door. What was he supposed to do against hall monitors? He rubbed his hand as the memory of his one and only attempt to fight came back. Todd looked across the room. He was curious about the state of the dog creature. It wasn’t clear it was necessarily friendly or on his side of things, but they’d somewhat worked together before, perhaps they could do it again.

Before Todd could check on the animal, the ceiling rumbled worse than the last time and he felt his legs turn to jelly and his heart raced. Todd looked around the room for something to defend himself with, but instead his eyes landed on the desk near the server room where the head of IT often sat. He ran and dove to the ground as he neared the desk, then crawled around to the other side. Todd hugged his knees as the all too familiar mechanical noises permeated the room.

Todd glanced towards the server room door with the hope Jun would instantly emerge and the trouble would be over, but there was no such reprieve; just the sound more hall monitors floating around the room. Todd closed his eyes until he heard the sound of a hall monitor come near. He lifted his lids just a bit, one of the monitors was scanning the door to the server room. It made some sort of short buzzing sound and another monitor came over, followed by a third. There was no way Jun could pull it off, if he could do it at all in the first place, if the monitors got through that door. Todd didn’t have any powers, but he had to do something. Todd took a deep breath.

“Over here!” he shouted as he crawled out from the desk. Todd made a beeline for one of the crashed computer tables and picked up a keyboard. He turned around and swung it back and forth. “Come get...me...” Todd trailed off as he finally caught a glimpse of the monitors; there were over a dozen red lights all pointed directly at him. Todd started to breath quick, shallow breaths, and his nostrils flared. He took a hard swing with the keyboard at the nearest monitor. The keyboard shattered in his hands and the monitor bobbed a little from the impact. “Sorry.” Todd said quietly as he backed away.

The monitors moved as one unit in his direction. Todd stumbled over a chair and fell. The closest monitor flew at Todd and he closed his eyes to brace for impact but all he heard was the clatter of metal falling to to floor. When he opened his eyes, Todd saw the monitors lying, dark, on the floor as Jun stood in the doorway to the server room.

“See? That wasn’t so bad, now was it?” he asked. “We should go before someone-” A scream came from the hallway. Todd ran out of the computer lab.

“There’s no internet. No internet!” a boy yelled. The hall quickly filled with students who waved their phones around for reception, while others collapsed in despair.

“I won’t be able to get my homework done in time.” a girl wailed.

“Attention Fillmore students.” Nedd’s voice came over the intercom. He sounded, more annoyed than usual. “It appears something has caused a network failure. Due to the necessary nature of such a tool, the rest of the school day has been cancelled. Please make your way to the nearest coffee shop or library for use of their network. Hurry, I’m sure space will be limited.” Todd frowned as a stampede of a students rushed to the doors.

“You’re going down Scofield.” he said.

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Todd waited near the bus pickup area feeling absolutely drained. Between whatever that undertaking with Jun was supposed to be, to the discovery of a major bombshell, and the one hundredth impossibly absurd and impossible fight of the last few days, Todd was absolutely beat. He lived close enough to walk, but was allowed to take the bus to a stop not far from his house as another result of last year’s incident; his parents wanted to make sure he had plenty of options to get straight home from school. Todd was so tired he would risk the chaos of a school bus ride in exchange for a few minutes of rest. Not to mention, he really needed to sort things out in his head, there was just too much information to process.

The school called in the buses early with the surprise cancellation, but most students either walked to wherever they could connect online or got rides from their parents. As another bus pulled away, Todd saw Jun standing off the side, practically hugging the side of the school with his back.

“I’m glad I found you.” Todd said as he hobbled over. For the first time Jun looked at Todd with a bit of surprise on his face. He truly hadn’t expected it, and based on interpretation, Todd didn’t think it was a good surprised look.

“Uh huh.” Jun said. He looked around a couple of times.

“You were probably wondering what I was doing in the lab. Well I found something huge.” Todd said.

“I wasn’t, but give me the ten second version.”

“Strange things are confirmed going. We might need your friend’s help after all.” Jun stopped peering at the street in front of the school and turned to face Todd.

“He’s not my friend and he can’t help.” Jun said.

“Oh. I guess I thought-”

“Why don’t you think about that and what you found and tell me some other time” Jun said. He placed his hand to his forehead to block some of the sun.

“Wow. Okay...sheesh.” Todd said. He turned to leave. “You know, I put up with-” Todd fell forward as Jun shoved him.

“Just roll away.” Jun hissed.

“What?” Todd looked up. Jun was pale and his eyes were fixed on a dark blue SUV as it drove through the entrance way. He stepped over Todd and walked to the curb. Todd got to his feet, but before he could leave the vehicle slow to a stop. The front of the vehicle was closer to Jun, so Todd couldn’t see who or what was inside. He could see Jun frown, then sneer, then sigh.

He grabbed Todd by the shirt and dragged him over to the front of the vehicle. “Todd Stewart, I want you to meet...my mom.”