ikag-guy-a-draft3

Suggestion: on the ship, the subject changes to Mr A and all the rumors surrounding him. Darien brings up that Mr A is rumored to be able to bring the dead back to life. Rudy patronises Darien, which he interprets as friendliness and causes him to remember Rudy and Conner (who was sat next to him).

Because Darien can't get to Rudy on the day they leave, he throws Conner the books at some point when they're boarding the ship, Conner assumes Darien was being targeted by bullies and didn't want his stuff thrown overboard. Conner starts reading the books that night to check if they're normal notebooks or if they contain banned material or what.

Sequence of panels of Conner well after reading the books - wide-eyed, failing to fall asleep.

The next morning at school, Darien is looking around for (and eventually bumps into) Conner. Darien asks for his books back. Conner instead asks if he has superpowers, to which Darien replies no. Conner is concerned about him (believing he's either a headcase horror writer or he writes records of experiments he wants to do/tries to do but doesn't have the powers for it), however he tries to work up to the subject with some tact. Conner explains that the books' contents (using superpowers to try and resuscitate the dead) feel like wish-fulfilment and go into a weird amount of detail and instructions. He asks if Darien is obsessed over this 'bringing the dead to life' business and why? This gives Darien the impression that Conner is working up to "you're a creep and I'm reporting you/confiscating these", so he apologises and tazers Conner before running off with Conner's bag (or dragging it behind him while other students watch). Nobody cares what happens between lower-rank students.

Alarms start ringing around the school. Emergency shutters activate, the front and back yards of the school begin to empty, the security systems all activate. Rudy's classmates wonder what the cause of the shutdown is - is there a surprise guest? An inspection? Both? Rudy wonders where his friend is in all the commotion.

Mr A arrives at the school and begins panicing in the reception area. He wants his books back before they fall into the wrong hands [someone misreads them, tries to perform experiments anyway, etc etc]. At first he's extremely annoyed at the councillors and teachers for letting the theft happen in the first place - then as time passes and no-one comes to fill him in on what's going on (except for the receptionist who explains there's an inspection going on), he starts getting even more annoyed that he was told to come all the down to the school to pick his belongings up and he's being left ignored. Mr A finds directions to the principal's office, threatening to sue the entire establishment (for wasting the time of sick and injured people). However he finds the principal's office is empty.

Amelia, Bucky and Frank are in Rudy's classroom. Seeing a problem-child student missing, Amelia non-verbally suggests Bucky look for Conner while she and Frank start checking the other students' belongings. The inspection distracts the student councillors from outside interference - all part of Mr EO's plan.

Mr EO launches an attack on the school to serve as a smokescreen - no-one would notice the diminuitive Darien escaping in the chaos. The attacks consist of an airstrike of Mr EO's signature shockwave bombs; low-energy bombs weak enough to shatter windows and disrupt a person's bowels, and higher-energy bombs strong enough to cause internal bleeding and organ rupturing. When some of the students more suspectible to shockwaves begin to cry or pass out, Mr A orders the stronger students and the councillors to gather the injured so he can heal them en masse.

Mr EO gets a phonecall from an upset Darien - he did everything Mr EO asked of him (steal the books and hold onto them to give to Mr EO) so that his sister could be saved, but this is going too far. Mr EO doesn't care about the collateral damage, he simply wants the books in his hand.

Before too much more damage can be done, Princess Daughter summons up her strength to form a psychic barrier around the school, blocking Mr EO from getting in and anyone else getting out. While Mr EO is at the front yard of the school, flanked by a number of armored bipedal robots, Darien is trying to escape through the playground on the side of the eastward department. However he's blocked off until Princess Daughter's barrier weakens enough for him to slip through, and before Darien can make progress on slipping through, a voice beckons from behind.

Mr EO and his robo-flunkies, Mr A, the student councillors and several prominent students (such as Rudy) have a standoff. Mostly Mr EO grandstands while waiting for Princess Daughter to weaken in strength and/or for Darien to make his escape so that his usefulness can come to an end. Mr EO has no qualms about injuring the students that get in his way, or even just injuring students to use for a demonstration - if anyone of them are hurt, Mr A can hold hands in a circle. If anyone of them get more than just hurt, well, Mr A should be able to bring them back more mindless and obedient than before. This surprises everyone - including Mr A himself.

"Isn't there something you'd like to tell the rest of the class? Something about a dirty little secret called, oh, I don't know, 'bringing the dead back to life'?"

Mr A, realising the extent of Mr EO's plan and seeing no other choice, finally tells Mr EO and everyone else the true purpose of the experiment documentation - records of failing to resuscitate the dead despite his amazing powers; records of bringing the recently deceased into a kind of braindead state. Nothing like what he was searching for. Hence why he hid the books in shame. Mr EO refuses to believe Mr A's "fairy tale lies" and "stalling for time" and threatens vengeance against him when he eventually manages to break through. Perhaps it's time for the more experimental "super-high-energy magnum shockwave", or "s.h.e.m.s" for short...

Unbeknownst to Mr A nor Mr EO, Conner and Darien have their own confrontration. Because they're both under the impression that the documentation can actually help in resuscitating the dead, Conner needs to convince Darien to give himself up and return it to Mr A, rather than let that power fall into someone else's hands. Darien explains himself at last, and he doesn't care if Mr EO is evil or even if he's lying - he's the only chance Darien has of bringing back his sister, who passed away in an unforeseeable accident involving a thrown car the year before. The psychic barrier ripples and dims, and Darien sees his chance - but Conner catches up to him at an alarming speed and pins him to the ground, trying to find the right words to win him over. ("Sometimes I really wish Rudy was here right now...") Darien is pinned down but he struggles, kicking, begging for empathy, lying that he's calmed down so that Conner can loosen his grip, etc. Conner instead looks around, decides he'll ask for forgiveness from the councillors instead of permission, and unlocks one of the handcuffs around his hand so he can lock it around Darien's. Conner tells him that he won't patronise him with bullshit about "growing up and moving on", or "letting the wound heal", or "celebrating the life she had instead of crying", because to Darien it won't sink in right now. Conner knows he won't understand because he's been in that state of mind before. Darien continues to struggle and scream.

Princess Daughter is on the floor rapidly losing strength and the councillors steel themselves for a confrontation as Mr EO laughs, juggling his magnum-shockwave pistol. Some of the students have to be restrained from trying to break through the barrier and break Mr EO's face for what he's just done. However it quickly disappears anyway - any moment now, he gloats, his little pawn will scamper off into the sunset and all that valuable data will soon be his. A long silence follows, and Mr EO irritably restates all that valuable data will soon be his. What's taking so long? He should have rung back seconds ago! Frank steps forward to apprehend Mr EO, who laughs at the notion and fires another round of his "s.h.e.m.s" pistol. It hits Frank square in the stomach, causing him pause for a second, but he strides forward as if nothing else had happened. Mr EO recovers from his shock and rallies his robo-flunkies to attack, but they're all destroyed in a single swing of Frank's treetrunk arms. Mr EO hadn't calculated for that. He turns to run, but Bucky is right behind him in the blink of an eye - another blink, and Mr EO's "s.h.e.m.s" pistol is in Bucky's less-than-capable hands. Mr EO stumbles back, prepared to throw another bomb, but possibly not prepared to have himself caught in the blast radius. He is quickly surrounded by several superpowered students...

As Mr EO is sent to the hospital with an escort of policecars, the councillors apologise for getting Mr A involved in so much trouble. Mr A is soon approached by Darien (cuffless), who hands over the books and apologises for everything. Mr A and councillors waste no time in chewing Darien out for his reckless, thoughtless actions, and he is promptly suspended for two weeks. Amelia reconsiders... make that three weeks. But where is Conner in all this? Did Bucky find him before? He didn't, but he teleports off now to check... and returns in a couple seconds with Conner, with his familiar bag on his back. Amelia asks where Conner has been in all this and when he replies "bunking off", she [reads his mind to see what he's been up to and then] chews him out for trying to skip out on an inspection and wandering around during an attack where he could have been injured or worse. Conner chooses to interpret that as Amelia being worried about him ("I worry about all my students! Our students, I mean.") and then tries to shift gears by talking to Mr A, who wants nothing more to do with the school and simply wants to go back home.