In one of his most productive study sessions of the year, Vell got a whole ten pages into the book before getting interrupted. The daily doomsday had already passed, and the knock on his door was fairly calm, so it probably wasn’t going to be something completely asinine, at least. He popped open the door and saw his next door neighbor, Theo, standing in the hall with a large bruise on his forehead.

“Jeez. You alright, Theo?”

“I’ll be fine,” Theo said. “I think I got another one of yours.”

“What was it this time?”

As Vell’s neighbor, Theo was an occasional victim of someone or something barging into his dorm thinking it was Vell’s. Theo had displayed downright saintly patience about the frequent misunderstandings, but he had his limits. Vell had replaced Theo’s door for him about three times this year.

“Couple randos barged in, yelled ‘lava sneak attack’ at me, and then threw this at my head,” Theo said. He deposited a bucket of coarse black stone on Vell’s floor. “Presumably that used to be lava.”

“Yeah,” Vell said. “I think I know what’s going on. You sure you’re good, Theo? You’re not worried about like, concussions or anything?”

“They didn’t throw very hard,” Theo said. “I’m heading to the med lab just to be safe. See you around, Vell.”

“See you,” Vell said. He mentally added “get Theo some brownies” to his to-do list, right behind a far more urgent task: deal with the source of the lava bucket. Given the utter ineptitude of the concept, planning, and execution, Vell had a sneaking suspicion he knew who the culprits were.

***

“Row, you idiots, row,” Leanna commanded. “They’re gaining on us!”

“I’m rowing as fast as I can,” Chicken squawked.

“And they’re still gaining!”

“We’re ‘gaining’ because you’re not going anywhere,” Kim said. She gave a length of rope a quick tug. “You’re still tied to the docks, dipshits.”

The hasty escape attempt of the Patschke-Puck students had been thwarted, as their plans usually were, by their own stupidity.

“Also, this boat has an engine,” Hawke said. He tapped his knuckles against a metal outboard motor.

“Huh. Has that been there the whole time?”

“I presume,” Vell said. “Did you row here all the way from Germany?”

“I didn’t,” Leanna said. “They did.”

She pointed over her shoulder at Chicken and Cain, who looked exhausted, but had killer triceps.

“Certainly explains why your bucket of lava cooled,” Vell said. He tossed the bucket of hardened volcanic stone back in their boat. “What exactly were you planning to do with that?”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Assassinate you,” Leanna said.

“Cool. Get in line,” Vell said. “Do you have a particular reason, or just fucking around?”

“Revenge.”

“For something specific, or just in general?”

“For Leigh and Harmony!”

Vell racked his brain for a second, and could not come up with any particular reason why Leigh and Harmony would need revenging.

“Because they...graduated?”

“Because they’re dead,” Leanna said. She pointed an accusing finger at Vell. “And it’s all your fault!”

“What? How did they die?”

“They poisoned themselves,” Leanna said.

“And how is that my fault?”

“Because they were trying to poison you!”

Vell didn’t know whether he wanted to strangle Leanna or himself more.

“That’s not my fault.”

“Yes it is!”

Leanna grabbed the bucket of cooled lava and chucked it at Vell. With lightning-fast reflexes that shocked even his friends, Vell caught the bucket out of midair and whipped it right back at Leanna. The bucket made a dull thud as it bounced off a skull even thicker than the stone inside it.

“Enough!”

With a huff of frustration, Vell reached down and untied the boat for the Patschke-Puck students. They’d never be smart enough to do it themselves, after all. Once it was done, he gave the boat a kick and set it away from the coast.

“Just get out of here,” Vell snapped. “And hey, Leanna: you should’ve graduated three fucking years ago! Move on already!”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Leanna snapped back.

Vell’s frustration snapped in half.

“Patschke-Puck is where people go when no one else will take them,” Leanna said. “Maybe it was messy, and maybe Leigh was super rude and bossy, but I belonged with them! I had a role, a purpose, people who counted on me, for the first time in my life!”

Vell experienced exactly two seconds of sincere sympathy before Kim slapped him in the small of the back.

“Cut it out, Mr. Sympathy For The Devil,” Kim said. “Hey, Leanna! That’s real sweet and all, but what does it have to do with you repeatedly trying to murder us?”

“Right, repeated murder attempts,” Vell said. He had a lot of sympathy for a lot of people, but he drew the line at those who tried to kill him (on purpose). “Look, I’m glad you have your little community, but can you keep it far, far away from us?”

“No! I’ll keep coming back, Vell Harlan,” Leanna said. “I’ll never stop until my friends are avenged!”

“I could sink their boat,” Kim said. “Nobody would ever question it.”

“No,” Vell said. “I guess it’ll just be one more thing we have to-”

Any conversation was undercut by the sudden blaring of Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend”, a song fully capable of blasting any thoughts out of even the most coherent heads. Vell and company turned to stare at the boat as Leanna pulled out a flip-phone and answered it.

“Hello? What? Harmony? Leigh?” Leanna said, shock evident in her voice. “Weren’t you- faked your death? Insurance fraud? You need bail money? I’ll be right there!”

Leanna folded her phone and chucked it into the ocean.

“Never mind all that vengeance stuff, bye! I’ll never see you again!”

Leanna took hold of the oars herself and started rowing away, much to the consternation of Cain and Chicken.

“Hey, wait, I still want to beat them at something!”

Leanna paid no heed to her juniors and kept rowing away at high speeds. Cain stood on the prow of the boat and shook his fist at his “rivals”.

“We’ll get you next time, Einsteins!”

At that point, Chicken remembered the motor and turned it on, sending the Patschke-Puck trio speeding over the horizon. Vell watched them go and shrugged.

“At least they’re happy,” Vell said.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Vell put a hand on his chin and thought about it for a second. His forehead wrinkled, to no results.

“No?”

“They say ‘we’ll get you next time, Einsteins!’,” Hawke said. “And then you say ‘you probably won’t’.”

“Oh. Nah, I’m not going to be here next year,” Vell said. “One of you guys can say it, if you want.”

“Oh, oh, can I do it?” Alex asked. “I’m not part of any recurring bits yet.”

“Knock yourself out,” Hawke said.

“You probably won’t,” Alex shouted, as loud as she could. “Do you think they heard me? They were pretty far away.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Vell said. He gave her an encouraging pat on the back. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to buy some brownies and then forget this ever happened. I’ve wasted too much brain bandwidth on those fuckers already.”