"I thought you knew enough to stay away from mocking teachers, Bender, but this time you've really stooped to a whole new level of lowness!" Vernon shouted at his sworn archnemesis. "What do you have to say about this, mister?"

"I'm insulted by that, Dick. You have no idea exactly how low I can stoop," Bender responded coolly. Vernon didn't frighten him at all. Even though the two of them had been through situations like this almost a hundred times now. His expression didn't change one iota as Vernon bent down over him, glowering with rage.

"And I suppose you thought putting firecrackers underneath all the teachers' cars was a really funny joke?" the superintendent snarled.

"Well, Dick, I knew you wouldn't find it funy, since you don't think anything's funny," Bender told him. "And although I know you don't care, this wasn't my idea. Jones thought this one up, not me."

"Right. You really expect me to believe that a freshman thought up a prank for a senior?" Vernon yelled with a tone that clearly indicated he didn't believe a word Bender told him.

"No, I expect you to not believe me at all and throw me to the wolves even if Jones comes forward with a confession."

"Well you guessed absolutely right, buster, because this time you're really in for it!" Vernon barked. "You will be spending detention all day on December 23rd, after everybody else has gone home for the holidays. And on top of that, I'll expect you back here for extra detention on the 27th, 28th, and 29th, also all day! And when I call your guardian today, I'm going to tell him to stop being a nice guy with you and start being brutal!"

"You're out of luck with that, Dick; Delbert's in New York all today," Bender told the superintendent. "He won't be back until late."

"Then I'll keep calling until I get him," Vernon got up and stormed toward his office door. "I'm going to see if your little antics caused any real damage to any of the tires. If they have, you'll be here doing detention for the rest of your miserable, worthless life!"

"Yeah, yeah, you're breaking my heart," Bender drawled after Vernon. For once, Vernon ignored his insult and marched off without a harsh comeback. Bender eased back in his chair. He hadn't been lying when he'd told Vernon he hadn't come up with the plan to attach firecrackers to the teachers' cars; freshman Joshua Jones had indeed thought the whole scheme out. Not that it really mattered now; once Vernon caught him in the act of anything, he refused to believe anyone else had anything to do with Bender's pranks, even if someone else was involved. It was getting so that Vernon was blaming everything that went awry in the school on him these days.

Vernon's office was barely decorated at all for Christmas. Indeed, if one didn't know it was Christmas already, he or she might just have assumed it was another time of the year entirely when they entered it. The only reminders of the season were a small sprig of spruce on Vernon's desk and a rather badly deteriorating wreath hanging on the wall over his chair. Like Rooney, he didn't have a particular fondness for Christmas. For many, a day inside the superintendent's office at this time of year was punishment enough, as the drabness of it seemed to truly sap many of their holiday spirit, and with it the willingness to do anything against what Vernon said.

Bender slowly got up and made his way over to his foe's desk. He glanced out the door briefly to make sure Vernon wasn't coming back yet, then sat down in the man's chair. To be on the other side of the desk he'd been in front of so often gave him a feeling of confidence. "I've just about had it with you, Mr. Bender," he said out loud, mocking the superintendent. "When you graduate, you won't go to prison when you break the law, you'll come here to me! You think you're such a smart aleck, well you won't be feeling like one when I get through with you! You're mine, greaseball! "I've..."

His attenion was grabbed by an open envelope lying on the desk just in front of him. He could see it was addressed to a certain female whose name he'd occasionally heard Vernon mention on the phone during previous stays in the superintendent's office. Curious, he took the letter out of the envelope. It read:

Dear Evelyn,
I will be getting off work at two-thirty on December 23rd. We can get together any time after that and really hit it off. I'll make sure Ed takes charge of any disciplinary actions that need to be taken after that time.

Your stud muffin,
Richard

Bender whistled in amazement. "Dick, you fox! I didn't know you were somebody's stud muffin!" he said to himself.

"PUT THAT LETTER DOWN NOW, MISTER!" came Vernon's voice. Bender had been so intent on reading the letter that he hadn't heard the superintendent come back in. Vernon stormed over and snatched the letter out of the bully's hands. "I want you to forget everything you saw in that!" he bellowed. "Is that clear?"

"Don't worry, Dick, your secret's perfectly safe with me," Bender said giving him a big smile.

"And get out from there!" Vernon continued, motioning for him to get back to his original seat. "The school rule is NOBODY behind my desk!"

"Well what if you make a mess and Carl needs to clean it up?" Bender asked, referring to the janitor. Vernon didn't answer. "Lucky for you, Bender, your little firecrackers didn't cause any additional tire damage," he went on, "but I'm still going to make this the worst Christmas of your pathetic life!"

"Well?" Brian asked his colleagues.

"Give us a minute, we're just trying to remember the exact sequence," Gary told him. He and Wyatt were at the latter's computer (the academic team had been given the last period of the day off by the school in preparation for the evening's event) trying to retrace the steps the two of them had taken to create Lisa earlier in the year. Unfortunately, it had been a bit too long since then, and both of them had forgotten how to do it. The fact that Lisa had just left without giving the two of them any idea of how to contact her at all had added another complication to their efforts. They had been trying in vain for the last ten minutes or so. During that time, Brian had been constantly glancing at his watch, and the expression on his face showed that he now believed Lisa to be little more than a figment of his teammates' imagination. "I hate to sound cruel, guys, but we've been at it for almost a quarter of an hour now, and we've only got about an hour or so to eat, so can we put it off until after the competition?" the senior now asked his friends.

"I think we've almost got it now, Brian," Wyatt told him. He and Gary had now tried retracing the creation steps they'd used. All they needed to do now was press the ENTER button. "Stand back. If this works, the whole room is going to light up."

He dramatically pressed the button. Nothing happened. "What?" he gasped, pressing it again and again now, "this worked last time! Why..."

"Like I said, can we get going now?" Brian asked somewhat impatiently.

"Okay," Gary sighed. "I'll shut it down." He clicked the main menu, followed by the shut down switch. At this point, he started getting up from his chair, and as he did so, his hand moved ever so slightly to the left, and clicked on the splashscreen's RESTART button instead of the CLOSE by mistake. The computer thus only went back to the main screen rather than shut down. But this no one noticed.

"Don't take it so hard, guys," Brian said as they left in an attempt to get his teammates' minds off their creation. "A lot of my computer projects went wrong the first couple of tries as well."

"I just don't get it," Gary commented. "It's just not..."

As they went outside and got into Brian's car, a dump truck rumbled down the street by Wyatt's house. The vibrations this caused all up the block dislodged a pair of baseballs from their perches above Wyatt's computer. The first one hit the side of the mouse nudging it downward while simultaneously clicking it. This somehow caused the creation screen they'd almost closed to pop back up. The second baseball landed on the TAB key, rolled all the way over the keyboard, hitting more buttons as it went, and finally bounced off after depressing the ENTER key. Somehow this sequence must have done what Wwyatt and Gary couldn't do manually, as the words SEQUENCE INITIALIZING lit up on the screen, accompanied by the rapidly blowing wind and electrical mayhem (among other crazy effects) associated with the creation of a computer woman.

Andie pulled her car into an open parking space at the Riverview Junction Mall about ten miles west of Shermer. She was going to work for the day, but would be getting off early this evening so that Blaine could take her to out to dinner and later on for a boat ride on Lake Michigan that as an upper class person he had access to. They had been planning this engagement for about a month now, figuring it would be a good way to spend the last days before Christmas.

Although school had only left out about twenty minutes ago, the mall was already packed with students, as it was a popular hangout area for them. Some were in stores getting their friends and families last-minutes presents, but most were just lounging around on benches talking with each other. A few little kids were there with their parents, as evidenced by the long line already stretching from Santa's castle at the center of the mall. Shoppers scurried this way and that, their hands loaded down with bags. The end-of-the-holidays crush was most definitely on.

Andie made her way up to the second level and headed for Trax Record Store at the far end of the mall. Inside, her boss Iona Gale was on the phone with someone--and not looking very pleased. "Oh yeah, well the same to you, pal!" she yelled at the person on the other end. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think YOU were cheating on ME! Oh I can find proof all right! I've got access to the the best legal team in Chicago, and once they get started on a case, they don't stop until they find what they want! You want me to buzz off? Go stick your head in a shark's mouth!" She slammed the receiver down. "Do you believe this guy?" she asked Andie, having noticed her assitant come in. "He accuses me of sleeping with another man when just about every time I called his address a woman answered it for him! Maybe some time in court will cool him off!"

"Just let it go, Iona, it's not that important," Andie told her, accustomed by now to her boss's rows with her boyfriends. "Are we making much headway with the fund?"

"Reasonably," Iona said, gesturing toward a large Christmas package near the register containing money for Andie's fund. "About four people dropped off money today, so I think that brings me to about five hundred and fifty dollars or so."

"Great. We're almost there then." Andie said, dumping her stuff behind the counter. Due to Blaine's warning, she had taken the rest of the money out of her locker and brought it to the store with her. It would probably be safer here, where there would be people around to guard it after dark, she figured. It was with this concern in mind that she inserted the cash one bill at a time down the chute into the giant present. "If Manny is cheating on you, what are you doing for Christmas?" she asked Iona as she finsihed putting hte last of the money away.

"Go home and get drunk on egg nog," came Iona's response. "You?"

"Dinner with Blaine's family," Andie said. "I thought they might be against me coming over, but they said it would be okay."

"I'm glad one of us is set," Iona grumbled as she put some new CDs on the shelves. "You and he have been going steady now for...how long is it now?"

"Seven months," Andie told her. "Undeniably the best seven months of my life."

"I think you and he will go far together," Iona finsished the Cd stacking and headed for the storeroom. "I'll be right back in a minute, honey, I've just got to see if those new Christina Aguilera cassettes came in yet."

"Okay," Andie called after her. She had been working for Iona for close to a year and a half now. It had taken a bit of adjustment when Iona had moved Trax into the mall from its previous location in downtown Chicago back in August, figuring that business would be better there, but she'd gotten over that in good time. The income she got from the job had proved important to her financial situation due to her father's inability to get a steady job, and would figure in well to helpuing her go on to higher education.

"Excuse me please, I could use some help," came a voice from nearby. Andie looked up to see Allison Reynolds not more than five feet away. The two of them knew each other well, having grown up a mere three blocks from each other, and it was due to this association that Andie had entrusted Allison to be one of her fund raisers. Well hello there, Allison," she greeted her friend, "and what can I do for you this afternoon."

"Um, I'd like to know if you've got any of those special Christmas CDs left in store," Allison told her. "I've been looking pretty much everywhere else, and nobody's got them anymore."

"I think you're in luck," Andie said. "Fourth rack over on the left; we're down to about two."

"Thanks," Allison picked up the CD from the shelf and brought it back to the register. "That'll be three twenty-three," Andie told her. "So how are you doing with the fund money?"

"Admittedly, not all that good," Allison said. "I haven't been able to get to enough people who would be able to give sizeable amounts."

"They don't have to be sizeable donation, Allison. ANY amount will do," Andie explained.

"Well I thought you want bigger ones, so I've been holding out for them," Allison admitted. "Sorry."

"No need to be sorry. Just try and get as much as you can," Andie said. Any donation, no matter what amount, is worth giving." She understood deep down why prgress with Allison's donations were slow, as her friend was not really a very sociable person to begin with and normally only talked with those closest to her.

"There's still two more days, so just see what you can do over that time."

"OK, Andie that's for being understanding," Allison gave her friend a smile and turned to leave with her new CD. As she left the store, a short man wearing dark glasses bumped into her, sending the two of them sprawling to the ground. "Watch where you're goin', kid!" he snapped as he got up and stormed off. Allison merely shook her head and headed in the other direction. If she'd looked closer at the man as he left, however, she might well have recognized him from the morning paper.

It had been a long week for Harry Lyme. He had spent two months planning his escape from Joliet, and that had been before everybody else on the cellblock had begged him to let them come along as well. After compensating for a larger breakout, he had spent the last ten days carefully going over his diagrams with his main lieutenants, and last night, they had struck during the prison's Christmas party, when the primary guards were celebrating inside the warden's office. Their relatively green replacements had been overpowered by the sea of cons, who had then highjacked every vehicle in the prison yard and slammed through the main gate in a steady stream. This was more complex then Harry's escape last year, when he'd simply sneaked out during a prison riot.

His plans for this holiday season were to grab as much loot as he possibly could, then hook back up with his fellow escapees after they'd done their looting and pillaging, and together they'd all highjack a plane to the Caribbean on Christmas Eve and head off to permanent vacation in paradise. Harry had already netted a cool thousand or so the previous night when he'd cleaned out the cash registers at a nearby Wal-Mart (and taken the opportunity to dump his prison uniform for more comfortable attire), and had been scouting about the mall looking at where all the valuables in each store were and what the security devices that protected them were in preparation for another hit tonight when Allison had bumped into him. As he stormed down the stairs to the first floor, he shook his head in disgust at the total lack of attentiveness of kids these days. He wasn't out of the clear just yet, though, as no sooner did he start to leave then he was hit in the side of the head with a large rubber ball. He growled and snatched it up as a little boy came running over to him.

"Give me my ball back!" he begged the man.

"Oh, so this is your ball!" Harry snapped at him.

"Yes! Give it back!"

"Ya want it back?" Harry snarled. He hurled it into a nearby fountain. "Go get it, ya little pipsqueak!" He stormed off to a storm of bawling. Harry hated kids. Especially THAT kid. If he had any time left before he left for the Caribbean, he was going to stop by the kid's house and burn it down--hopefully with the kid inside it it.

Harry strode past the line of shops on the left side of the mall. He quickly took into account the number and location of cash registers inside each store as he passed it, as well as any additional merchandise of any value. He passed about seven shops before reaching the food court at the other end of the mall. He headed over to a table near the middle of the court, where he sat down and said to the person already sitting there, "Well, Marv, I've finally got this whole job worked out."

Marv Murchens lowered the newspaper he was reading, which interestingly had "WET BANDITS LEAD MASSIVE PRISON BREAK" as its title, and gave his partner a big toothy grin. The two of them had been working together for close to thirteen years now in the burglary business. Their association had first begun inside the holding cell at the Shermer police station at age eighteen. Harry had been busted for stealing a car (which had unluckily run out of gas right outside the police station), and Marv had been caught robbing a candy store (he'd grabbed the cash register and ran, but had forgotten to unplug it, and as such had gone not more than ten feet before he'd been jerked off his feet and surrounded by the store's security guards). Inside the cell, Marv had been impressed by Harry's modus operandi (as Harry had told the rest of the cons there all about his almost-perfect caper), and, believing Harry to be a great criminal genius, had stuck fast to the shorter man after their release four months later--much to Harry's chagrin, as he couldn't stand Marv half the time due to the tall thug's incredible stupidity (not that Harry was much brighter himself). In that time, they'd gone back to prison five times, including the last two Christmases both men would rather have forgotten ever occurred.

"So what's the plan, Harry?" Marv now asked his buddy and idol.

"We wait until about eight o'clock, then we go into J.C. Penney and hide inside several of the tents inside the outdoors display," Harry told him. "Then we wait there until the mall closes around ten. Once security goes home for the night, we sneak out and head up the mall on the lower level, then do the same in reverse upstairs, emptying all the goods as we go."

"Great plan, Harry, but how do we get into the stores that have those metal grates they lower into place?" Marv asked.

"Luckily, I got just the answer to that," Harry said with a smile. He withdrew a small brass key from his coat pocket . "This is your perfect duplicate skeleton key, Marv. I bummed it off Norton last week during exercise time. It'll fit just about any lock you can think of. All we have to do then is watch out for all the motion sensors on the floor--if they have 'em, that is. Once we've hit every place, we sneak out through the loading dock, fill up the van, and beat it."

"Great plan, Harry," Marv giving his buddy an unexpected high five that sent Harry reeling backwards in his chair to the floor. Picking himself up, the short burglar gave his partner a cold stare. "If you're gonna do that, Marv, wait until I'm ready before doin' it!" he said curtly. "You haven't done anyting to attract attention while I was gone, right?"

"Nope," Marv told him. "I just sat hear and sipped this Coke. About ten minutes ago, a couple of security guys came walking by, but I buried my face in this newspaper and they didn't notice me."

"Good," Harry said, relieved Marv didn't blow the plan before it even got started. He glanced up at the clock overhead. "Well, Marv, I say it's time we go out and get a bite to eat, then come back and get ready for the big heist."

"But it's still early!" Marv protested. "I'm not done swiping the shoppers' wallets yet, either!"

"There'll be plenty of time for that later, Marv," Harry said with great finality in his voice. "We've been in here since noon; security's going to start gettin' suspicious if we stay here much longer without buyin' anything. We'll come back in about two hours, and by then they'll have forgotten all about us. Doesn't that logical to you?"

It took a full twenty seconds for Marv's face to fully light up with realization that what Harry was saying had merit to it. "You're right," he finally said, "but I still want to swipe wallets when we get back."

"Fair enough," Harry said, rolling his eyes. "Let's get goin' then."