Much to everyone's horror, however, Robot Terry has torn away from his master and ran amuck into the nurse's office. Shooting sparks from his, needless to say, quite defective neck, he raced about in anger and general robot madness. In defiance, he paused by Chauvelin, grabbed his head from the citizen's lap, and placed it once more in its proper place. Chauvelin gasped.
"Terrance Mann is a robot...?"
The robot, in anger of his stolen head, spat out sparks upon the citizen and fled the room. However, in spitting those sparks, he managed to catch Chauvelin's cravat on fire. As chaos ensued, one voice ran loud and clear.
"To the drinking fountain! To the drinking fountain!" screamed the girl in the robe a la anglais. Percy complied by grabbing Chauvelin up in his arms and fleeing out the door, followed, of course, by the teenage hoard.
They made it to the drinking fountain in time to save the citizen, but not his cravat. Chauvelin was too tired to at first hear Percy snickering. "Pardon me for saying so, M. Chomberton, but I simply say good riddance to bad rubbish. Now, as a dear friend, I shall let you simply borrow mine." Chauvelin was too tired to put up much of a fight and, in his exhaustion, fell asleep as the bow was tied. He didn't even realize that Percy had escorted him to the Drama room in his slumber...
The real Terry, upon losing his robot, returned to the stage. However, he bumped into Robot Terry on the way there, who had gotten over his anger to ChauChau and was quite happy to have a head once more. Arm in arm, they entered the gym to find the Cats fans in a heated dispute with ALW over costumes.
"We CAN'T dress in spandex?!?!?!?" they exclaimed, horror-struck. ALW, being the small British guy he was, turned back to the piano with a blush.
"No, for I don't think that a French mob would wear spandex..."
"That's where you're wrong!" they screamed!
ALW began plunking at some more keys on the piano.
"If you can prove it to me, I'd like to see it..."
So, the fans enraged, they set to work building a time machine in a corner of the gym.
Terry and Robot Terry walked up to ALW and sat down at the piano to practice the love song: "Guillotine and the Beast (That Sits Upon It)"
In the drama room, Percy, now supporting himself on a pair of crutches he found in the prop closet, helps the girl in the robe a la anglais dig through the school's collection of costumes, looking for something to replace Chauvelin's soaking wet clothes.
"How about this one?" the Englishman asks with a grin while holding up a frilly pink tutu.
"No."
"But it looks like it would be just the right size..."
"I said no, Percy." The girl takes the tutu and throws it in the pile of rejects which already contains a Santa Claus outfit, a ball gown, a brown monk's robe, something that looks suspiciously like Percy's "Creation Of Man" outfit, and a rabbit suit.
"Fine, then how about-" Percy freezes in the act of reaching for the next costume. "How did you know who I was?"
"Really, Percy," she says rolling her eyes, "you weren't fooling anyone with that student disguise."
"I fooled all those other girls in the nurse's office!"
"Let me rephrase that then. You weren't fooling anyone who wasn't too busy drooling all over you to think coherently."
"Oh." Percy sulks slightly but continues sorting through the costumes. "How about this one?" he asks, pulling out a costume from the previous year's production of Robin Hood. "After all, who doesn't want to wear Blakeney green?"
"No." The Robin Hood costume joins the others in the pile of rejects. They dig through the old costumes some more until the girl suddenly exclaims, "Ah! I knew it had to be in here! *This* will do quite nicely," she says holding up the chosen outfit.
Percy looks at the costume in the girl's hands, trying to hide his disappointment. He had hoped for a chance to force his archenemy to wear something silly, but this one looked almost like it was meant for the little Citizen. Finally he asks, "Just what show is that from anyway?"
The girl smiles as she replies, "it's from Dracula." She makes sure that she has the complete costume, leaving behind only the gold-colored plastic pendant hanging from the red ribbon, and then carries it all across the room to where they left the still sleeping Chauvelin. They peel off his wet clothes, get a good chuckle from the fact that even his underwear is black, and are just buttoning up his shirt when the girl in the robe a la anglais gasps. "Oh no! I just remembered being told that you should never let someone fall asleep if they recently suffered a blow to the head because they might go into a coma! We'd better wake him up!"
"Uh, okay." Percy immediately begins roughly shaking Chauvelin by the shoulder with one hand while slapping him hard across the face with the other.
"Are you nuts?!?" the girl shouts, grabbing at Percy's hands in an attempt to stop him. "You're going to give him a second concussion that way!"
"Well," Percy says slowly with an evil grin spreading across his face, "I *do* know one other thing that might wake him..." Before the girl can ask Percy what that thing is, the Englishman leans forward and kisses Chauvelin full on the lips.
Chauvelin hardly stirs. His only response is some incoherent muttering.
Percy shrugs. "So much for that idea."
"Oh, let me show you how it's done!" exclaims the girl in exasperation. She wraps her arms around the Frenchman and gives him a very long and very passionate kiss. After about half a minute, Chauvelin wakes up, gasping for air.
When he catches his breath, he demands, "What do you think you're doing?!?!" and pulls away from the girl.
"It was his idea," says the girl, pointing to Percy.
"Do I even want to know?" asks Chauvelin menacingly.
"Probably not but we needed to wake you up. We were worried that you would go into a coma if you fell asleep after that head injury."
"I'm so grateful for your concern," he replies with more than a soupcon of sarcasm. He now notices that his clothes seem to be a size too small and that he's wearing a floor length cape. "What did you do with my clothes?!"
Percy laughs merrily. "Oh, isn't it obvious? They shrunk after that encounter with the drinking fountain."
"Percy, this is no time to joke!" the girl scolds. She turns to Chauvelin. "Your clothes were all wet so we found you something new to wear. It wouldn't do for us to let you catch a cold, would it?"
"I'd rather have caught a cold," he says with a look of disgust. He pulls the black cape of the costume closer as he tries to push the repulsive thought of Blakeney removing his clothes out of his mind.
"Enough small talk. We'd better get you back to the nurse's office so that she can look at that bump." The girl in the robe a la anglaise takes his hand and leads him to the door. Percy hops along on his clutches behind them.
As they near the nurse's office, the door opens and the nurse's secretary appears, followed by the dean, who looks rather battered and is limping along with a cane. "I've called a taxi to take you home. The driver should be at the front door within 5 minutes."
"Thank you." The dean starts towards the front door. He then notices Chauvelin and recognizes him as the nut who threatened him earlier in the day. The sight of the Citizen coupled with the stress of the day's earlier events sends the dean into a fit of incoherent screaming and babbling.
At that very moment, Terrence Mann, who has taken a break from songwriting to go looking for a little lunch, arrives with Robot Terry in tow. "Hi, does anyone know where the cafeteria is?" Then, he notices the dean's deranged babbling. "Oh please, not him again," sighs the actor.
The dean, now confronted with ChauChau, Terry, *and* Robot Terry all at once, begins to lose his last tenuous connection to reality. He opens his mouth to order not just the three men (well, two men and an android, but you know what I mean) but *everyone*, including teachers, students, and janitorial staff, out of the building, but before he has the chance to make a sound, Robot Terry's head falls off again and lands on his foot. Completely unable to cope, the dean simply makes a little strangled choking sound and passes out, hitting his head on the drinking fountain on the way to the floor.
Chauvelin eyes the dean's limp body with disdain. "Please tell me that I did *not* look like *that* in Boulogne."
"Most definitely not!" Percy replies with a chuckle. "You were much more graceful. You were like, 'ahhhh...' and just gently crumpled to the floor." Blakeney drops one of his crutches and pretends to pass out in slow motion to illustrate his point. By the time he finishes, he is laughing so hard that even with the help of his crutches he can barely get back on his feet. "La, but you were-"
"Shut up."
"But you asked-"
"I said shut up!" Chauvelin fumes. Blakeney, for once, chooses not to say anything more, but he continues to laugh to himself.
The nurse just sighs, shakes her head, and begins dragging the dean back into her office.
"Boulogne?" Terrence looks blank. "What happened in Boulogne? I must have missed reading that one."
The girl in the robe a la anglaise gasps. "But that's one of the best ones!"
"Oh not you too!" exclaims the little Citizen, sounding almost like he might be a tiny bit hurt.
"I'm sorry, Chauvelin, but it really is a good story. Don't worry. I still like you much better than Percy." The girl smiles and leans in to kiss him to prove her point, but Chauvelin angrily pulls away and goes to stand, sulking, on the other side of Mann and Robot Terry.
Terrence, who is attempting to reattach his robot's head, pretends not to notice. Instead, he asks rather awkwardly, "So, uh, would anyone else like to eat lunch?" Percy, deciding that his ankle doesn't need immediate attention, agrees, as does the girl in the robe a la anglaise, since it really is lunchtime. Chauvelin scowls, announces that he will wait in the nurse's office until she can take care of his head, and then enters the office, shutting the door behind him. Almost immediately, the dean's frantic screaming echoes from within and the nurse pushes Chauvelin back into the hall.
"It appears that I shall be joining you for lunch after all," he says through clenched teeth.
After a brief detour to find some duct tape so that Robot Terry doesn't suffer any more spontaneous decapitations, the girl in the robe a la anglaise, being the only one of the group who actually knows her way around the school, leads them to the cafeteria, where they take part in a gastronomical adventure far more difficult to face than any of the horrors that the French Revolution ever presented.
"Begad! This is worse than the awful slop you Frenchies are so fond of!" Percy is about to fling some of the unidentifiable sticky mess at Chauvelin, who is sitting across the table from him, but then the baronet remembers that it would be his own cravat he ruined, so he returns the "food" to his plate. Chauvelin pays no attention to Percy. The Citizen, having long ago given up attempting to force himself to eat the revolting mixture that an old lady in a hairnet had assured him was three-cheese-chili, sits lost in thought, idly using his fork to scrape the detritus in front of him into interestingly shaped piles. After seeing what sort of food the school sold, he was no longer surprised that there had been so much of it under the table when he had been hiding there earlier.
The girl in the robe a la anglaise sits next to him and happily munches away on a brown bag lunch, consisting of a hardboiled egg, carrot sticks, chocolate chip cookies, and a bottle of iced tea. She offers to share with Chauvelin, but he declines. Mann sits next to Percy and, like the girl, eats a bag lunch (in this case a turkey and cheese sandwich, a granola bar, a bag of Doritos, and a can of soda) which he got in trade by singing a song to some girl he had found reading a book while ignoring her lunch. He had offered to sing any song she wanted, and she had chosen, of all things, Javert's Suicide. She had looked very serious when she requested it but then laughed almost the entire time he was singing, gave him her lunch, and then, still laughing, turned her attention back to her book. He was still trying to figure that one out.
Suddenly, the girl in the robe a la anglaise looks up and begins searching the cafeteria. "Hey, Mr. Mann, where did your robot go?" she asks.
Robot Terry had in fact stood and danced like the Rum Tum Tugger right behind Terrence while he was singing for the sandwich, which was what had made the girl laugh so much. Shortly before the end of the song he had wandered away and was now roaming the halls once more. Soon, he wanders into the gymnasium where the Cats fans are working on the time machine. It had taken them many attempts, they had wasted several gallons of V8 Splash, and one of the Grizabella-wannabes had been electrocuted, but they had finally gotten the machine working and were ready to go back in time to get proof for Andrew Lloyd Webber that French mobs really did wear spandex. Just as Robot Terry gets within range, the leader of the Cats fans activates the time machine, and suddenly the gym is empty.
The time machine, the Cats fans, Robot Terry, and a dirty sock that someone had left lying in one of the corners of the gym all reappear somewhere in the middle of a soccer game. "This doesn't look like Revolutionary France!" exclaims a teen dressed a Mr. Mistoffelees. The Cats fans all start talking worriedly among themselves. Robot Terry just stands there and gets hit in the head with a soccer ball.
Finally, one of the Cats fans discovers the problem. "Some idiot set the controls to 1974 instead of 1794!"
"I knew the trip hadn't used enough V8!"
"Did they wear a lot of spandex in 1974?"
"The 70's are creepy! Let's go find a French mob!"
"To France! To France!" With the proper date entered into the time machine, the fans try again. The leader pushes the button, and once more the time machine, the teenagers, Robot Terry, and the dirty sock vanish, this time taking the soccer ball with them. The soccer players are quite shocked, needless to say, and then next day the local newspaper's headlines proclaim that the town had been visited by giant feline aliens.
The time travelers finally arrive at their desired time and location of Paris in 1794. They split into groups and go to look for French mobs wearing spandex. Robot Terry wanders off by himself.
The kids search high and low but can't find any sign of angry French mobs, or even French people of any sort, wearing tight form fitting spandex bodysuits. Their quest isn't helped by the fact that their bizarre clothes and makeup frighten everyone they approach and very few of them actually speak French. One of the few Cats fans who *does* speak French hits upon the idea of paying a French mob to wear spandex so they could show Andrew Lloyd Webber, but they can't even find *one* person willing to wear such outlandish and scandalous things in exchange for American money, let alone a whole mob of them. Finally, tired, dirty, and discouraged, they gather around the time machine and go home, completely forgetting that Robot Terry is still running around Paris somewhere, causing trouble.
As soon as they arrive back in modern times in the school's gymnasium, the time machine collapses into a heap of useless garbage, but none of the Cats fans care because they are too busy listening to their leader announce his brilliant new idea. He says that if they can't bribe an eighteenth century French mob to wear spandex, then they can bribe modern people to wear spandex while pretending to be a bloodthirsty mob from Revolutionary France. He goes on to say that he knows of a large group of people who should be more than happy to take part in the scheme and that they are present in this very school. He even knows the perfect place to show ALW their spandex-wearing mob! The leader explains the details of his plans and all the other Cats fans clap and mewl with approval. They run off to get started.
Doug and Ffoulkes, who have been wandering around the school looking for Robot Terry ever since the android's first escape, happen to be passing by and overhear the plans.
"This is bad," says Doug, beginning to look frightened. "This is very very bad!"
"What's so bad?" asks Terry as he rounds the corner followed by Percy, Chauvelin, and the girl in the robe a la anglaise.
"We have to get out of here!" exclaims Doug, his eyes wide with terror.
"I have to find my robot first. He escaped."
"We know," interjects Andrew. "We've been looking for him."
"No, I mean he escaped again."
"Oh... well, uh... we've still been looking for him."
"We followed him to the gym," Doug explains, "but all we found was a heap of trash sitting in a puddle of fruit juice. On our way out we heard those weird fans of yours plotting to trick Andrew Lloyd Webber into thinking that people wore spandex in Revolutionary France. We have to get out of here!"
"Wait. They're planning to do *what*?"
"They're going to bribe a bunch of cheerleaders to pretend that they're really a mob of late eighteenth century peasants wearing spandex to trick Webber for whatever reason."
"That's really strange, but I don't see why it should be a reason to panic."
"It's not the plan that worries me, it's the circumstances under which they're going to put the plan into action."
"And those circumstances would be...?"
"There's going to be a pep-rally." At those final words, Doug, Terrence, and the girl in the robe a la anglaise all shudder with dread. Percy, Andrew, and Chauvelin just look confused.
At last, Percy speaks. "So what's so bad about a pep-rally?"
As Doug and Terry attempt to explain the evils of pep-rallies to their companions, the girl in the robe a la anglaise mentally reviews what Doug had said earlier. Finally, she holds up a hand to silence the two actors mid rant. They had just reached the part about hearing loss and mind control, but she feels there is something more important to worry about. "You said there was a pile of random trash sitting in a puddle of fruit juice in the gym?" she asks Doug.
"Yes, but-"
"Is there any chance that the juice was really V8 Splash?"
"Well, yes, I suppose it might have been."
"We really are in trouble, far more trouble than just a pep-rally" she says and starts walking toward the gym.
"Wait! Why would V8 Splash make things worse?"
The girl stops, turns around, looks at them, and asks in exasperation, "Don't you guys know *anything* about time travel?!?"
The mob swelled and screamed as they pressed forward with their captured one.
"An aristo!" they shouted, pushing the accursed forward. "An aristo!"
The oddly dressed man tried to explain himself, but was cut short at every turn by the bloodthirsty peasants. The mob swelled around the guillotine where Forquier-Tinville sat on the steps, holding in his hand a small, white bird attached to a coconut.
"We have found an aristo, may we guillotine her?" shouted the leader of the mob.
Before you could say, "Haven't we already seen this on this messageboard?" Tinville threw the bird aside, thus sending both coconut and European swallow plummeting to the ground. (After all, in a matter of weight ratio, a 5 ounce bird could NOT carry a one pound coconut. Am I right?) Tinville grew happy at the news.
"An aristo? Send 'im on up!"
The mob pushed forward their captured one, who walked with Tinville up the steps, protesting all the way. However, it was to no avail. Tinville laid the man upon the bed, raised the blade, and.... *PLOP!* the man's head fell off. Tinville scratched his head in wonderment.
The heads don't usually come off until AFTER I drop the blade...
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Doug, Chauvelin, and the girl in the robe a l'anglais (<-- what it should be, since the French don't like vowel vowel combinations) burst forward and screamed, "Run for it, Robot Terry!" Filled with the sense of having someone behind him, Robot Terry grabbed his head from the basket, pushed Tinville off the scaffold, and ran off the steps.
After eluding their captors, the group which now consisted of Doug, Robot Terry, Chauvelin, Percy, and Andrew Lloyd Webber breathed a sigh of relief. (Andrew stayed behind to ensure that there would be no confusion between the Andrews, and Terry stayed behind to help the Cats fans work on their choreography. Andrew Lloyd Webber had jumped in at the last moment, hoping for some new inspiration.)
The group of five made their way to the newly constructed time machine they had made, but paused when Chauvelin looked over their numbers and spoke.
"Hey, where's The Girl?"
The girl in the robe a l'anglais, who really should be named before this fic is over, burst forward.
"Here I am! I'm touched that you remembered me, Chauvie..." she said girlishly. Percy laughed. Chauvelin felt like he was going to puke.
"I just asked because you were the one holding the V8!"
Percy nudged him.
"Sure you were, you old Casanova you..."
"LET'S JUST GO!" Chauvelin yelled, to which the group agreed and stepped into the time machine after them. However, misfortune was evidently to follow them. Upon stepping out of the time machine, they found themselves in a forest.
"Umm... pardon me... I don't mean to be a bother, but... um... well... where are we?" Andrew Lloyd Webber asked.
From behind them came an answer of sorts.
"We are the knights who say... Nee!"
Meanwhile, back at the school, Terrence watches the Cats fans practice their dance and offers them some suggestions. The plan that he concocted with the others while building the new time machine was working perfectly. They had agreed that pep rallies were already evil enough and that the students (and not to mention future theatergoers) should be spared the sight of an angry French mob in spandex. So, Terry was to offer the Cats fans help with their choreography. And, of course, they wouldn't pass up the chance to work with an original cast member of their favorite show. This would keep them occupied and distract them from their scheme to bribe the cheerleaders into pretending that they were a spandex-wearing mob from Revolutionary France. Although the plan was working, the dance skills of the Cats fans left much to be desired.
Two of the fans crash into each other and several others forget the sequence of steps. Terry claps his hands to get their attention and says, "Let's try it again from the beginning." He then proceeds to lead the group in their dance.
The Grizabella-wannabe, who the Cats fans thought had been electrocuted while building their time machine, finally regains consciousness. She is still kind of loopy from being zapped and her matted fur coat sticks out strangely but she insists on joining the others. Her coordination seems to have been impaired by her accident and, within 20 seconds, she bumps into another of the Cats fans. This sets off a chain reaction and all of them fall like dominos.
Terry glances over his shoulder to see how they are doing and finds that they're all sprawled on the floor. He sighs and thinks, "This is going to be a *very* long afternoon."
Andrew gets bored of watching the terrible dancing and decides to explore the school. Before setting off, he ducks into the janitor's closet and exchanges his security guard uniform for a student disguise so that he is less conspicuous. As he wanders the halls, he hears snatches of lessons from the various rooms. They mostly seem to involve things that he hadn't heard of before: the quadratic formula, refraction of light, sodium chloride, the Panama Canal and some other things. He finally does encounter a familiar subject. As he passes one classroom, he hears a student butcher the pronunciation of a Latin passage and thinks, "Even I was never that bad with Latin!"
He then turns a corner and hears a cry from the room on his left. Used to helping people in distress a member of the League, he decides to see if he can be of assistance and sticks his head into the room. A quick look tells him that it's an art studio, one which seems to be quite a wreck. He wonders if robot Terry was responsible for the destruction during his rampage. Chairs are overturned, a table is lying on its side, and tubes of paint are scattered on the floor. In the middle of it all, a distraught art student is holding the remains of a portrait with several large gashes in the canvas. "You seem to be upset, miss. Can I be of any help?"
The student gasps, startled by Andrew's presence. "I didn't know you were there. Oh, this is terrible. My latest painting has been destroyed and it is to be graded tomorrow. I just finished my classes for today and came here, expecting to do some work, only to find this mess." She gestures to the chaos and continues, her voice full of despair. "The teacher refuses to accept late work. I must paint another portrait by tomorrow or I'll fail this class. Where am I going to find a model now?" Suddenly, an idea comes to her and hope begins to creep into her voice. "Are you busy? Would you mind being my model?"
Andrew hesitates since he remembers the time that he and Suzanne had a portrait done. The sittings were mind-numbingly long and boring plus he was always incredibly stiff afterwards.
"I'm a quick painter. It won't take long."
Andrew, being a gentleman as usual, decides to endure one more uncomfortable sitting to help the student. The young artist quickly gathers her supplies, clears away some of the mess, sets up an easel with a blank canvas, and gets a chair for Andrew. After giving him some instructions on how to pose, she starts to work.
"When do you think you'll be finished?"
"Oh, it shouldn't take much more than 4 or 5 hours."
"4 or 5 hours?" thought Andrew. He groaned mentally.
Robot Terry, Chauvelin, Percy, ALW, The Girl, and Doug turned in horror to find themselves surrounded by tall figures wearing pointed helmets and chanting an odd noise which threw them to their knees at the very sound.
"Nee! Nee!"
"Stooooop! This is worse than Percy mispronouncing my name!" Chauvelin cried.
"Please... would, if it's not too much trouble, could you consider stopping?" ALW asked politely. "My delicate ears must remain in good condition."
Robot Terry's head rolled off, shooting sparks. From somewhere in the forest where the head had rolled, the mouth cursed.
Fortunately, the Knights stopped.
"We will say "Nee" to you again, unless you appease us!"
"What is it you want?" The Girl asked, taking control as the rest of the group writhed upon the ground.
The leader of the group thought this over a moment.
"We waaaaaaaaant..."
"...A shrubbery!"
"But you already have a shrubbery!" replies the girl in the robe a l'anglaise, pointing at the small plant.
"Well we want another shrubbery so we can make a little path going down the middle!" shrieks the knight. All the other knights shake their heads in agreement. "Our last victims escaped before they could bring us a second one, therefore you must bring us one!"
The girl racks her brains trying to remember how King Arthur and his knights had escaped, but it had been too long since she had seen the movie. However, she does remember that the Knights Who Say Nee are rather stupid, which gives her an idea. "Oh most fearsome knights, how could anyone possibly escape from ones as great as yourselves?"
"Oh, well all they said wa- Wait a second! I'm not going to tell you how to escape! Now go bring us a shrubbery!"
The girl sighs and shrugs. "I had to try." By this time, the others are finally recovering their senses. Percy goes off and finds Robot Terry's head and they all prepare to go looking for a shrubbery. No one is happy.
"This is insane," grumbles ALW.
"Don't blame me. It's your fault," the girl retorts.
"My fault?!?"
"Not you personally, I mean that it's your fault as an Englishman. Monty Python was British comedy, so without the English, this wouldn't be happening."
"Hear that, Blakeney?" Chauvelin smirks. "Here's something you can't blame on France."
"But you can't blame this on me!" the composer wails. "I never even watched it!"
"Wait, that's it!" exclaims the girl.
"Huh?"
"That's how King Arthur escaped!" She turns to the Knights Who Say Nee and shouts, "IT! IT! IT!" Everyone stares at her. The Knights, who remain unaffected, merely laugh. "But... but, I thought 'it' was one of the words that you couldn't stand to hear," she stammers. "Why aren't you clutching your heads in pain?"
"Foolish child! We have developed resistance to the word! If you had been paying attention you would have seen that it had already been used in conversation several times without effect! Now go bring us a shrubbery or we shall say 'nee' another time!"
"Go ahead. Do your worst! I can take-" Percy puts his hand over her mouth before she can bring on another barrage of nees from the Knights.
"Look, m'dear, this little word of theirs might not bother you, but it's giving the rest of us splitting headaches, so we'd appreciate it if you didn't encourage them. Besides..." Percy leans down and whispers something in her ear. The girl's eyes widen and she smacks herself in the forehead as if to say, "now why didn't *I* think of that?" Seeing that she understands, Percy smiles and then turns to address the Knights. "We'll go find your shrubbery now." He motions everyone to get back into the time machine. Finally, Percy himself climbs in and calls, "We shouldn't be gone long!" Then, under his breath he mutters, "What demmed idiots..." as he activates the time machine, causing it to vanish, leaving the Knights Who Say Nee alone in the woods.
A subjective moment later, the time machine reappears in Revolutionary France, December 1793. Everyone climbs out and tries to keep from shivering with cold. The girl in the robe a l'anglaise looks around then turns to Percy. "When you whispered that you'd take us back to the proper time, I thought that you meant... well, y'know... uh... *my* time."
"Believe me, I'd love to return you, Mr. Sills, and Mr. whatshisname..."
"Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber."
"Yes, Sir Andrew... La! What a coincidence! Anyway, I'd love to return the three of you to *your* proper time, but there's just one small problem."
"What?"
"We're out of V8 Splash."
Doug looks around the snowy streets, wondering how they could possibly get the necessary tropical ingredients to fuel their time machine at this time of year. "Yes," he says wryly, "I can see how that would be a problem."
Thoughtful silence surrounds the group until Chauvelin breaks it while wearing his usual sarcastic smile. "It may be a problem for the rest of you, but I for one am in my proper time and am going home to change my clothes. Until we meet again, Blakeney, adieu." He makes a curt nod, then turns and strides away with his hands in his pockets. He doesn't look back.
Fresh flakes of snow begin to fall from the darkening sky and Percy decides that they should find shelter of some sort until they can figure out what to do. He begins to lead the others to one of his hideouts but then notices that the girl in the robe a l'anglaise hasn't moved from her spot in the middle of the otherwise deserted street. Percy motions for her to follow them, but she stands there looking back and forth between Blakeney and Chauvelin, whose sable clad form is rapidly vanishing as the snow increases, bringing visibility to near zero. Finally, with a growl of frustration, she turns and runs after the Citizen.
Meanwhile...
Andrew sat upon a couch, poised with a fair maiden feeding him grapes.
"Wait!" the art student called out. "I nearly forgot! Your costume!"
She held out a large toga... excuse me, chiton. Andrew stared at it in dread.
"You want me to... wear that? Percy would kill me! If it didn't suffocate me first!"
"Hey, you agreed to it! You promised!"
Andrew sat a moment, thinking this over. His honor, or his life.
Thanks to his rigid English upbringing, there really wasn't much of a choice. With a sigh he holds out his hand to take the bulky costume. "Where can I change?" Several minutes later, he is back in position. The girl makes some final adjustments and then begins to paint.
Having nothing better to do, Ffoulkes lets his mind wander. While it was incredibly uncomfortable, the costume *did* give him an idea for a possible plan to use during their next rescue mission. At least the girl painting the portrait would be the only one who saw him in such a humiliating position with a mannequin holding a bunch of fake grapes over his head. Just then, the door to the studio flies open and a pimply teenage boy holding a camera enters. "Smile for the yearbook!"
Terrence Mann, unaware of everyone else's problems, continues to try to teach the Cats fans to dance despite the fact that the loopy electrocuted Grizabella-wannabe keeps disrupting the line by lunging at various people while shouting, "TOUCH ME!"
Men in white coats arrive to take away the dean, and Armand St. Just, who can't even run away from a headless robot correctly, completes a giant circle and finds himself back at the school.
As Armand looks around, bewildered at the fact that he is back at the school, the men in white coats drag the dean by. The dean tries to grab Armand. "Help me! Don't let them take me away! I'm not crazy!" he yells. The men in white coats just shake their heads and continue pulling the dean towards the ambulance.
As Armand wonders what to do next, the school mascot, a guy dressed like a giant stuffed tiger, runs into him. The tiger pulls his head off and says "Oops. Sorry about that. It's awfully hard to see in this thing."
"Eek!" Confronted by the tiger with a human head, Armand screams and runs away from the school again.
The clock continues counting down the time remaining until the pep-rally.
Chauvelin walks down the street, eagerly hoping to lose the girls following him. However, he freezes in his tracks when he notices a large barricade covering the width of the street and feels a revolver in his back.
"Qui va la?" Quoth the unknown man, his French words the few that Baroness Orczy knew, let alone moi. For the sake of our espaņol students, or those that simply speak pig latin, we will translate.
"Who goes there?"
Chauvelin growled. This day was not going well.
"Blakeney, this is not amusing."
"Wrong answer," the man said, grabbing him by the shoulder. "You are under arrest by Les Amis de l'ABC for being a traitor and spy for the French government. Also, under suspicion of being an aristocrat."
"I'M NOT AN ARISTOCRAT!" Chauvelin growled, infuriated. The man behind him chuckled.
"Then where did you get these new clothes, this beautiful new cloak?"
"Would you believe a high school?" he asked cautiously. The man laughed, and from somewhere behind him, Chauvelin heard a small boy shout out, "I want his big carbine!"
The Girl watched in horror from a ways away, then ran to catch up with Percy. She had to rescue her darling after all...
MEANWHILE...
Percy and group,(including the Girl by this time) upon further examination of the time machine, noticed that, while it did say "Revolutionary France: Wear Your Tri-Colors", the date was a little later than had been aforementioned. However, upon looking back up, they noticed that ALW and Robot Terry had wandered off.
ALSO MEANWHILE...
ALW and Robot Terry had indeed wandered off to the see the sights of Paris. As they strolled along, (Andrew to observe, Terry to look for some new parts to hold his head on better) they saw a girl dressed as a boy walk by, singing about her sweetheart. Andrew began writing down the words as they walked by.
"This could make a GREAT musical!" he exclaimed to Robot Terry.
Robot Terry shook his head.
"I think they already made a musical of this," Robot Terry said, speaking for, I believe, the first time in this story. Apparently, he picked up some voice chips from the inn they just stopped by for some rather suspicious tasting sausages. Andrew looked up at him in sadness.
"They made a musical out of a woman mourning the death of her boyfriend because he fell of a balcony in Argentina after he was sorry about his acting career failing because of a better singer who lived beneath the Paris Opera House?" he cried in dismay. Robot Terry suddenly regretted ever accompanying him. "Yeah, whatever."
As they walked, they suddenly noticed a police officer about to throw himself from a bridge. Wishing to do their good deed of the day, they raced up to the bridge.
"Wait!" they cried. "Don't do it!"
"Why not?" Javert called back. "I have no reason to live!"
"That's not true!" ALW called back. "I have a part in a new musical I'm writing that you could do!"
Javert thought this over.
"Could I pretend to commit suicide by walking off a bridge and waving my hands in the air while I hold an incredibly long note?"
"Sure!" ALW said, pulling the man back over. "Come on, let's go find Percy so we can get back to the present. Oh, by the way, you wouldn't happen to know where we could find some V8 do you?"
Javert smiled.
"Actually I do! The students at the barricade have a bunch holed up there in case we lay siege to them."
ALW, Robot Terry, and their new friend Javert smiled, grabbing arms as they set off to find Percy and rest of the ever-growing group to warn them of where they could find some V8. (And Chauvelin, if you've forgotten by now) The entire group (Percy, Doug, The Girl, Robot Terry, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Javert) set off to the barricades...
ALSO ALSO WIK...
Sir Andrew jumped up in anger at the pimple faced man who had just taken his picture.
"You will NOT put that in the yearbook!" he exclaimed in anger, trying to disentangle himself from the twenty pounds of fabric he was wrapped up in. "I shall duel you first!"
The boy appeared not to hear and simply looked up and said, "Alright, what's the name?"
"Pardon?"
"What's your name? I'll put it by your picture."
Andrew got a devilish grin...
Tony had stolen and hid every single one of his cravats the week before, making him several hours late for the Prince of Wales' ball, so this would be the perfect time for revenge. "Antony Dewhurst."
As the yearbook photographer scribbled the name in his notebook, the art student yelled at him. "Get out of here! Can't you see I'm trying to work?!" She throws a tube of paint at him but he runs out of the room, apparently off to find more students to harass. She turns back to Andrew. "Sorry about that. My big brother is always such a pest." She gestures for him to return to his pose and resumes painting. "Could you please stop snickering? I'll never get your face right if you do that!"
So, Andrew put on a serious expression but he was still thinking triumphantly of his prank.
ALSO ALSO ALSO WIK...
Terry began to sweat in worry as he glanced at his watch...
Where are they? The pep rally is almost here!