September- "Do you"

"Do you WANT to be punched?" demanded Mike, brownish hair standing on end as he waved a fist at Nick. Translated, the threat meant something along the lines of 'I-really-hate-what-you-just-did-so-cut-it-out-will-ya', except much more eloquently and forcefully.

"How come you're always threatening to punch ME," inquired Nick as he exaggeratedly dodged the fist that Mike was waving in front of his face. "Why don't you punch Zach?"

At this Mike paused, Nick straightened, and both turned to look at Zach, who quirked an eyebrow and shrugged. He usually preferred to watch explosions like these from a safe distance, though granted that safe distance was severely hampered by the fact that the furthered he could go in any direction at the moment was about one and a half feet.

"Dunno," confessed Mike, turning to Nick again. "You're more fun to punch..." he ignored Nick's indignant sputtering. "Besides, I might accidentally break his bones...."

Zach decided that the prudent thing to do at the moment was to sit still and keep his mouth shut.

"Well fine!" said Nick, drawing himself up to his full height, which was taller than either Mike or Zach, and glared down his long nose at Mike. "Be that way!"

"I am," said Mike with a grin, promptly returning to his succinct and reckless self.

"Not much options there," said Zach under his breath as he continued his reading. "Forecast said it'll be hot today. Think we can trust it?" he said aloud.

"What's the forecast for yesterday?" asked Nick.

Zach checked. "The same."

"Then," said Mike. "No. Did you SEE the weather last night? I mean...what was THAT?"

"It's called rain," said Nick, and received a glare for his answer.

"I KNOW it's rain, Nick," said Mike, rolling his eyes.

"At least we aren't the only ones stuck with the odd weather," said Zach. "Though, of course that's not exactly reassuring...just think about all the things that'd happened already...terrorists, minor wars, earth quakes, tsunami...."

"Yeah," agreed Mike. "What's with that?"

"...droughts, floods, though in different areas, of course," continued Zach. "wild fires, at least no reported volcano eruptions...yet..."

"Okay," said Mike, "Now you're just making me depressed."

"Let's talk about something happy!" said Nick brightly, at a level of brightness that was over Mike's sunglass-ed tolerance. He got another glare.

"Oh...oh!" said Mike, who's memory was been brought on by the previous morbid thoughts. "Zach, have you ever heard of this theory about the end of the world?"

"Which one?" said Zach dryly, without attempting to be funny.

"Ha. Ha." said Mike. "Right. Any of the main ones. I mean according to the terms, the world going crazy means the world's going to end soon."

"Mike," said Zach skeptically. "The world's been going crazy for years."

"It's bound to happen soon," argued Mike.

"It hasn't happened yet," countered Zach.

"You guys are so cheerful," said Nick, who had spent enough time now to catch along some of the sarcasm.

"He started it," said Mike, pointing to Zach.

"Go me," said Zach, more dryly still.

And that was how the traits of insanity of the world in general was first brought up. In less than three days it became a sort of a joke in which they picked out and made a note of everything strange around them:

The distance of the planets this year with regards to earth, which everyone in the field of astronomy had been goggling over. A perfectly healthy tree which had fallen over for no particular reason and smashed a car to smithereens. Sudden formation of a small tornado in a decidedly not-tornado-land area. Things exploding. Things falling. Things showing up in strange places for on strange reasons and driving everyone around them bonkers. And also the fact that there were people being nice to Mike which, he claimed, was both strange AND scary, which Nick had argued against. Zach, after thoughtfully watching them argue for a moment, inquired whether or not he should add their name to the list of strange things.

"Sure," said Mike.

Thus, their names were added to the list, right below the 456,751,342th cat who had fallen out of a tree that week and the discovery of live cockroaches in a tomb that had been supposedly sealed from the outside world for the past few centuries.
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End of September's chapter...we'll see how goes from here.