Danger Magellan's Invasion of Earth

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I arrived at the high school early on Saturday, hoping that my nerves would go away if I had a few extra minutes to practice in the drama room. Dan, on the other hand, opted to stay at home for as long as possible before going to see High School Musical. "I don't want to spend any more time listening to show tunes than I have to," Dan said. "Besides, I have some important business to attend to."

I figured that Dan's "important business" consisted of either playing with his hedgehog or hanging out in Arthur's basement, but I didn't care too much about whatever Dan was up to. I had my own problems to worry about. When I arrived at the high school, I went into a practice room and started warming up my voice. I needed to be ready to sing nearly every song in the musical.

After a while, Mrs. Oswald knocked on the practice room door. "What is it?" I asked her.

"We need to get everyone in costume and ready to go," Mrs. Oswald said.

"Alright," I said. I walked back to the drama classroom and started to get ready to go onstage. However, I glanced in the auditorium for a moment and realized that the stage crew had forgotten to set up balloons for the first scene. It's set at a New Year's Eve party! I thought. How could they forget the balloons? The stage crew is going to ruin this musical!

I walked towards the prop closet, and I was about to open the door when I heard a scream.

I couldn't imagine what could possibly be going on behind that door. Normally, only stage crew members went into the prop closet, and although they were often quite lazy, none of them would ever do something that would produce that kind of blood-curdling scream.

There was no choice but to pull open the door. To my surprise, I found Dan standing in the back of the closet. He was holding a rather bizarre red gun that looked like something out of a science fiction movie, while a badly wounded Cody was lying near my feet. Yellow blood was spurting out of his chest, while Dan's smirk slowly turned to a horrified expression.

"I'm not the Ink, Dan," Cody gasped. "I thought that you had enough brains in you to figure that much out."

"Do you know where it is?" Dan asked as he stepped closer to Cody.

"I heard...from my parents...there's a Purple woman...she knows how to destroy it," Cody stammered, barely able to speak. "Sidhe. District Seven. She lives on Sidhe." Cody slumped back onto the floor as yellow blood spilled all over the prop closet.

"DAN!" I shouted. "What is wrong with you?! How could you ruin opening night like this?"

"Is the musical all that you can think about?" Dan asked. "I think we've got a bigger problem on our hands than your stupid musical."

"I'm telling Mrs. Oswald!" I shouted. I sprinted out of the closet and quickly found Mrs. Oswald. Dan, however, was a much faster runner than I was, and he was out of the drama room before I could catch him. I started to explain what had happened to my drama teacher, but she interrupted me.

"I don't need the details," she told me. "Where's Cody right now?"

"He's still in the prop closet," I said.

Mrs. Oswald calmly walked to the prop closet, but she gasped when she saw what had happened to Cody. "Nora, call 911 and then let Jonas know that he's playing Troy tonight. I'll stay with Cody until the ambulance arrives."

"Jonas is playing Ryan," I said. "Who's going to play Ryan then?"

"It doesn't matter," Mrs. Oswald said. "The show must go on."