Casey never rescued April from Timothy in Mutagen Man Unleashed, okay? He doesn't know about mutants yet.

^*^

Chapter 4

I met Casey at the bottom of my apartment building the next morning.

He had a wild look on his face, and I mentally groaned.

"What now?" I raised my eyebrows and adjusted my backpack over my shoulder.

"Check this out." Casey held his phone out to me. It was a picture of a blue blur moving away from a huge crater in the sidewalk.

"I saw this dinosaur thing fall past my apartment window and I got a picture of this as it ran away." Casey explained.

I focused on the picture. The composition of the blurred part proved that the thing had to be huge, at least the size of the crater in the sidewalk.

"Can I see this?" I indicated the dented concrete in the picture.

"We're supposed to be at school in like five minutes." Casey took his phone back.

"We're supposed to stay in at night - we get away with that one." I shrugged and hopped on my skateboard. "Lets go."

###

I knelt by the dip in the ground, grinning involuntarily.

I ran my cold, dry hand around the uppermost part of the ring, intrigued.

"What are you doing?"

"What?" I half turned to my friend, who was standing behind me, crossing his arms.

"You're smiling like its Christmas." Casey rolled his eyes and a strong autumn breeze blew by. "It feels like it enough, but seriously, what's wrong with you?"

"This is cool." I jumped up and stepped on my skateboard forcefully, causing it to fly up into my hand. "It's like a sci-fi movie! Mysterious monsters, suggestive evidence..."

Casey cut me off. "No way, dude. You didn't see the thing. It was huge. It had spikes everywhere. It's teeth we're like knives sticking out from an underbite. He gave me chills, bro."

I tried to stop smiling, but it was too cool.

I dropped my board back to the ground and pushed off. "Race you back to school, Case."

###

"Mr. Larson!" My teacher yelled my name, and my head snapped up.

"Yeah-yes, yes Mrs. Williams?" I spluttered.

She rapped the white board with her knuckles impatiently.

I squinted. "Uh...the...Fourteenth Amendment?" I answered after a pause.

"Thank you," Mrs. Williams exasperatedly turned back to the board and continued working through the Amendments.

We did this last year in middle school.

I rolled my eyes and looked down at my notes.

Well, I thought they were notes.

My paper was covered with a flow chart, with all the lines tracing back to a large sketch of an ominous creature. The drawing had spikes erupting from all ends. The mouth had large teeth jutting skyward.

A ball of paper hit me directly in the nape of my neck. I turned behind me to the left, where Casey was slightly shaking his head and watching me add a large spike to its back.

I gave him a knowing smirk and turned back to my science fiction fantasy.

^*^

Thank you so much to @KennaRaphBUSCUS for the new cover!!!