Chapter Text
Umbrella University - abbreviated “Double U”, to the delight and/or confusion of all who heard it - ranked #30 on the US News 2008 list of Best International Colleges. The school boasted a student population of over forty thousand, a long string of first-place athletic achievements, millions of dollars of scholarships awarded each year, and an impressive budget for the arts.
Meaning, they had a budget for the arts.
Even more impressive, the school had found a way to encourage non-arts-students to participate in theatre as an extracurricular. Some noise about producing “well-rounded, real-world adults”. And most of the time, the students in question didn’t even hate it that much.
[“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!”]
The last bland pop song faded out, and a male host’s chipper voice crackled through the digital radio perched on one of the audience seats.
[“Thank you for joining us on 96.4 FM! Coming at you live at 3 PM on Friday, September 19th, 2008.”]
It was a week before the opening night of Thoroughly Modern Millie . The house crew, saddled with the responsibility of keeping the crusty, quinquagenarian auditorium spick and span, was scattered about the otherwise empty theater. This year, the team consisted of five freshmen. All but total strangers.
[“Seems like we’re gonna be on the lookout for passing thunderstorms in the early evening, hopefully clearing up by sundown.”]
Luther, an astronomy major, stood in Row C of the audience. A steel beam of lights had been lowered halfway down to the seats, at the perfect height to be reached with a ladder. Luther climbed up and down at a monotonous rate, un-clamping lights from last spring’s one-act and fastening on the equipment for Millie .
[“Today in history! On September 19th, 1893, New Zealand became the first country to grant all women the right to vote. In 1960, Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.”]
Diego, a criminal justice major, crossed back and forth across the stage, carrying a series of boxes from the loading dock to storage.
[“But, if I may show a bias, I’m most excited about the one-year anniversary of one of the coolest nationally televised battles in American history!”]
Klaus and Ben swept their way down Row D with a broom and dust pan, respectively. They were roommates, and the only two who even remotely knew each other before signing onto crew. Klaus was undeclared, and Ben was an English major - which, according to Klaus, translated to “basically undeclared, but also pretentious”.
[“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we’re talking about the legendary takedown on Lexington Avenue!”]
Vanya, a music major, crawled along the floor with a scraper and a wad of paper towels, chiseling old gum from beneath the seats.
[“Just outside an off-Broadway theater in New York City, the Hargreeves Five fought in perfect harmony to apprehend repeat-offender Eric James Leroux, a local actor who...”]
The crew was being closely monitored by Allison, the stage manager. She stood on the edge of the stage with her weight on one hip, reviewing a clipboard of to-dos. How a freshman became a stage manager on her first show, no one could quite explain. No one could explain how she was triple-majoring in acting, fashion, and media production either.
“Do you guys see why we're not allowed to have food in the theater now?” She asked, ignoring the radio host’s ramblings. “Over time, it can get really gross down there. And we don’t want another rodent problem like there was last year.”
[“...and though the facial gore is not for the faint of heart, I highly recommend you look up the video and watch it for yourself, it’s really a sight to see. Anyway, thus, we celebrate another day saved by the Hargreeves Five, the super-teens miraculously graced with the powers of invisibility, mind-reading, time reversal, sexual possession, and immortality.”]
Klaus hung lazily off of his broom handle and looked at Ben. “Nothing off the A-list, huh?”
“Can you please focus?” Ben muttered back, tapping his dustpan against the floor. “I wanna go home.”
[“Once again, you’re chilling with me on 96.4 FM all week long. Let’s take a trip back to that good old summertime bliss with a little bit of the Jonas Brothers. This is ‘Burnin’ Up’.”]
Luther reached over to the radio and switched the channel. Allison and Klaus, standing at opposite ends of the auditorium, tried their best to conceal their individual disappointment.
“You ever wonder what happened to the rest of those super-powered kids?” Luther asked into the open air. Not remembering his crewmates’ names, he tried to not initiate eye contact with anyone in particular. “Weren’t there a bunch more mysteriously born on that day?”
“The stories say forty-three,” Diego confirmed. He dropped another box of concessions offstage and reappeared. “That leaves thirty-eight, just wandering the globe somewhere. The poor bastards.”
“Yeah,” Allison agreed. “Could you imagine how crazy it must be to hear about all that, knowing it could’ve been you?”
“And not having any use for your abilities,” Ben added. “Living in the dark. That’s gotta sting.”
“Sucks for them,” Vanya mumbled, her eyes beginning to glaze over from boredom. She crawled over from Row C to Row D.
Just as her scraper was about to hit the bottom of the first seat, she felt something scuttle past her hand. She stood with a start.
“Jesus CHRIST!” Klaus shouted. “There's a rat!”
He instantly leapt into the air, except he… kept going. He slammed his head into the low-hanging row of lights, throwing the steel bar onto a slant.
CLANG!
As Vanya yelped in fear, it felt as though the ground gave a small quake. But when her eyes locked to the menace on the carpet, she let out a scream that undeniably caused the entire building to tremble.
The row of lights swung off of its upwards anchor and began hurtling to the ground. Luther leapt off his ladder and slid into row D like it was home plate, scooping the bar onto his shoulders at the very last moment.
Vanya stumbled away from the creature. The air shook violently once more, and a deep voice erupted from her throat, crying:
“OH MY GOD KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT.”
Luther teetered back and forth wildly, groaning. The weight was no issue, but the beam was too wide for him to balance.
He heard a heavy sigh from behind him, followed by an unzipping of a jacket. Suddenly, the weight was being lifted from his shoulders. His vision was blurry from effort, but he could swear he saw a set of thick, thirty-foot-long tentacles wrapped securely around the length of the bar.
“QUICK! KILL IT! KILL IT!"
Luther whirled around and spotted the fat rodent. "With what?!" He demanded.
Diego sprinted out from the wings and onto the edge of the stage, carrying a fire extinguisher.
“Hey, Big Guy! Catch!” He yelled, preparing to throw it like a football.
It zinged through the air, perfectly parallel to the ground, at a pace just under the speed of sound. Luther caught it, turned, and flung it to the floor, bottom-first.
BANG!
When Luther lifted the cylinder, he saw that the rat was very much dead. He also saw that he’d left a three-inch-deep, fire-extinguisher-sized crater in the floor where it once lived.
The world stopped quaking. The tentacles gently lowered the bar onto the seats. Klaus came down for a clumsy landing.
As the dust settled, Vanya looked to Allison with sheepish, white-irised eyes. “I’m so, so sorry. I… I forgot to take my meds this morning.” Realizing that wasn’t anywhere near a normal explanation, she choked out an extra “I’m sorry.”
Allison stood slack-jawed. All six students were drowning in shocked silence.
Her eyes darted around the auditorium. Okay, it was only them. No one else saw the chaotic display except…
“Miss Allison?!”
She turned her head stage right, where two freshman girls with armfuls of costumes had just entered, eyes wide as saucers.
Allison took one more glance around the space. Yep, no other witnesses.
She leaned in towards the girls and said, “I heard a rumor that you didn’t see any of that, and you were just heading to the dressing room.”
The girls nodded with hollow stares and walked away.
“That new shit my dealer just got is really doing it for me, man,” Klaus whispered loudly, poking one of Ben's tentacles. "I just don't remember doing a hit."
Luther set the fire extinguisher down like a child caught with a cookie jar. Ben let the tentacles slither back into his body (which is an awful sentence). Vanya quickly shook her head, Etch-A-Sketching her eyes back to their normal hue.
When Allison turned back to the house, she fell into the same deep pool of tension that the other five had sat in for the past thirty seconds.
And for whatever reason, they all looked to her, as if asking her for the answers.
What just happened?
What are the odds?
Who else can know?
What now?
“Okay,” Allison began tentatively. “...Let’s get this cleaned up as best we can. House Crew Meeting in the black box in five minutes.”
Somehow, the crew managed a dazed yet perfectly synchronized “Thank you, five.”