'TWANG!'
Daniel had just tried the twenty-first guitar string, but failed to like it, as with the past twenty.
"I though that all strings are the same, it's the guitar that counts..." said Hannah in an array of confusion.
"Yeah, but Daniel's really picky about his strings," commented Ben.
"It's like he has super sensitive hearing or something..." Chris added.
"Hey! It's 22 next... he's gotta like this one! Catch 22 and all that..." Ben said excitedly.
Everyone agreed and then looked thoughtful.
"What is catch 22?" Hannah asked.
The three of them stood there in confused silence until Daniel trotted up to them holding his guitar with six strings.
"Ready?" said Ben, snapping out of his thoughts.
"Yep, let's go. Where are the others?" Daniel asked whilst they walked out of the music store.
"Hmmm... god knows," said Hannah. "Knowing Jess, probably..."

Jess, Michael and Steve stood in the bookshop, browsing through random shelves. Jess was still very angry at Steve for being rude about Morecambe and Wise and he was still annoyed at Michael's calm niceness.
"Aha." Jess pulled a book from the top shelf.
"What's that?" asked Steve, leaning over. "Oh, that," he muttered, as he read the title.
"'Howard Katz' by Patrick Marber...hey, is that the same Patrick Marber who runs a Post Office on an island near Australia?" asked Michael.
"Yes, that's right!" said Jess excitedly. "He's my favourite playwright!" She held the book close to her chest. "He was a friend..." she started sadly.
"He was also a pain up the arse," Steve reminded her.
"Look, Steve," Jess started, getting angry. "When people said you were an arrogant b*st*rd, I overlooked it, but now I've actually experienced it I've had enough." She replaced the book. "Just because you've made a few quid extracting cheap laughs from idiots doesn't mean you're not a complete t*sser." She marched out of the shop. Just as she turned the corner, she called, "Oh, and Steve? Mark Gatiss could have played Mole a hundred times better than you in 'The Wind In The Willows' so there!"

Jess stormed out of the bookshop, straight into Hannah.
"See! I told you she'd be here!" said Hannah to Daniel, Ben and Chris who were looking surprised.
"He's so ANNOYING!" screamed Jess.
"Ha ha," laughed Daniel. "Yeah, we already realised that."
"We've just been through heaps of guitar strings." Ben said.
"Does that mean you'll continue serenading Hannah now?" Jess asked Daniel. He had a nice voice thought Jess, but having the same song repeated over and over again was a tad boring.
Daniel looked at his feet. "Is that a problem?"
"Um..." Daniel had thrown Jess. "Well, er, I guess not."
"Good."
"Good."
The four of them stood in silence whilst Hannah walked across to the automatic doors at the mall entrance. "Look, everybody! Someone's coming!"
Michael ran out of the bookshop at an incredibly fast speed for a 50/60 year old man. "This will put my threshold population through the roof!"
The others turned to look.
"Wow, that looks like Kelly Jones from the Stereophonics," said Hannah, squinting.
"And the rest of the band," Jess added. She didn't know what their names were but they had instruments - they looked kinda like a band.
"Is it OK if we set up over here?" Kelly asked Michael, coming over.
"Yes, sure."
Jess came over. "Mike, are they the Stereophonics?"
"Yes. I booked them for the beginning of the big sale which begins today."
"Oh." Jess looked back at the band who were chatting to Silverchair.
"Nice guitar strings," Daniel said to Kelly.
"Oh...thanks. Yours are... OK... I guess."
Daniel scowled as Kelly replied. Damn Welsh.

The mall was beginning to fill up curiously with appearing people. Kelly and co were playing 'Have A Nice Day' and everyone was boogying away. Hannah had danced with Chris, Ben and Daniel already. Jess had waltzed with Michael Palin and done a small jig with Steve but she really didn't feel happy... things simply weren't complete without Patrick...and he was miles away.
"Just out of interest, whereabouts exactly are we?" Jess asked Michael who had a beaming smile on his face since things were going well and as he had muttered many times through the late afternoon, his threshold population was sky-rocketing.
"Well, we're about 105 miles into the sea across from Sydney, inbetween Australia and New Zealand."
"Oh," said Jess. They had no chance of finding Patrick. She trundled out of the mall through the automatic door and went and sat against a palm tree out the front of the mall. She stretched out her legs in front of her and hit something hard buried in the sand. She put her feet up on top of it and suddenly it started moving. The sand all fell off it and Jess realised that it was Superturtle. "Oh...it's just you," said Jess dissmissively. Then she saw what Superturtle had been doing... it had been sitting on top of some unhatched eggs. "Oh my God!" Jess leapt up.
Superturle grinned randomly and sat back on its brood.
Jess ran into the mall and shouted over the noise of the band to Cartman, who was nearest.
"What do you want, hippy?!" he called back.
"Superturtle... he had babies!"
"He did WHAT?!" Cartman followed her outside and stared in amazement. "Woah, Jesus, this rocks!" Cartman poked one of the eggs. "Ooh...they're all squishy!"
"Bless. I wonder where he...erm...she...found a partner."
"Who cares? We get loads of cool decapitating turtles now!"
Jess rolled her eyes. "Just keep an eye on them, OK?"

"Who ARE the Stereophonics anyway?" Daniel said, sitting on the balcony.
"Dunno," said Ben, kicking his legs in the air above the dance floor and stage below.
The three members of silverchair sat there on the third floor hanging their legs over the edge.
"They're stealing all the limelight," said Ben, then seeing his friends reactions added. "Well, er, not that I care..."
"Let's kill them," said Daniel, bluntly.

Downstairs everyone was dancing to the song 'Mr Writer'. It was Hannah's favourite song and she was enjoying standing in front of the stage and watching Kelly sing and play. Suddenly out of nowhere six shoes dropped out of the sky and knocked Kelly, Steve and Richard out cold bringing 'Mr Writer' to a premature end.
"Aw...I was enjoying that!" Hannah moaned. She looked up to see Ben, Chris and Daniel sitting, bare-footed on the balcony.
"You b*st*rds." Kelly groaned, coming around and looking up at Ben, Chris and Daniel.
"Sorry, our mistake..." they lied.

"Dude, look!" Cartman shouted at Jess who ran over.
"What is it?"
"The eggs... they're hatching!"
Cartman and Jess stared at one of the eggs, which was shaking and had a crack down one side.
"Wow..." said Hannah, walking up behind them. "You been laying, Cartman? Thought you'd been a bit on edge lately."
"Screw you," said Cartman, much too involved in the egg-hatching to beat Hannah up.
The first egg to hatch was large with green spots on it. A large zig-zag crack split the shell in half from the top of the shell to the bottom. A little head poked out and Jess was about to go, "Awwww!" when she realised that it was actually quite ugly. It had huge nostrils, scaly red skin, a ridge of scales down its spine, a pointed tail and it was breathing...
"Fire! What the hell?"
The little dragon coughed a few puffs of black smoke and then sneezed a shot of flames which set fire to the palm tree. Michael came running out of the mall to save his tree.
"My God!" he cried. "I thought that was a turtle you had there - not a dragon!"
"We thought it was a turtle too," Cartman said, looking at Superturtle suspiciously.
"Well you'd better be careful," Michael said. "You don't want it burning things randomly around the place."
Steve and Jimmy came outside.
"What's all this?!" asked Jimmy, pointing at the two unhatched eggs and the baby dragon.
"Erm... Superturtle kinda... gave birth." Cartman explained.
"To a dragon?" asked Steve.
"Guess so."

<< back to Book 1.4

� Jess and Hannah 2001