I do not have red hair.

I'd just like to clear that up right here and now. I've been portrayed and described as a redhead, but it's auburn, okay? And no, I'm not just saying that.

I ended up in this because it was a chance to strike against the Edisons. All of us except Cass were friends with Dave or Sandy as well. I was also going out with Jason Trent at the time. Jason was a transfer student from LA. I'd met him through Syd and he'd come to keep us both company, and because he'd been out racing with Dave on more than one occasion. And because I asked him to. We were in the Mansion for eight days all told, and I don't know how many of those days he actually got to live through. I guess I never will either.

You've read everything in the press, and most of it's bullshit. Everything you're about to read now is the truth. To all those reporters who made up that crud about us, you've had your say, but now it's my turn. Sweet dreams my LA ex.

(from Maniac Mansion Revisited, ch2, p41: "Razor")

Razor picked at her breakfast moodily. She didn't seem to have much appetite lately; she'd lost at least twenty pounds in the last month or so, and she hadn't been exactly overweight to begin with.

The hiss of the shower stopped suddenly, drawing her attention back to the present. A few moments later, Syd stepped in, a towel wrapped around his waist.

"You know your mom called while we were out last night?"

Syd froze, an apple halfway to his mouth.

"Why?" he said carefully. Like Razor, he hadn't been on particularly good terms with his folks before entering the Mansion.

"Said something about renting out your room." Razor picked up an orange, looked at it, felt her stomach writhe in protest and replaced it

"You ought to eat something," Syd said absently, frowning at something in his mind. Razor rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, that's what the counsellor said." She did a surprisingly accurate impression of the woman's high, fluty voice. "'It's not healthy, think of your parents, why aren't you eating, do you want to talk about what happened?'. Makes me sick."

"She's just doing her job. It's not her fault she's shit at it." Syd glanced at her. "Did you keep that message?"

"Sure, it's on the answerphone."

Syd paused, then thought what the hell and crossed over to the phone, hit the playback button. His mother's voice blared out at him.

"Sydney Henderson if you don't stop playing games right now I will rent out your room and your father says he'll disown you completely!"

"I have to say most of that didn't make whole lot of sense to me," Razor remarked to the kitchen, "but she sounded pretty well pissed off."

Syd's face was white with anger as he stalked back into the room.

"Of course she did. She'd been on the drink again; it always takes her that way. Ever since we got back, she and my old man have been bitching about how they've supported me all this time and now it's my turn. If I gave them my bank details, they'd clean me out faster than you can blink. Bastards. Well, if she wants the rent from my room so badly, she can have it; I'm damned if she'll get her claws on my savings."

There was a silence.

"Feel better?" Razor asked.

"Not really," Syd said flatly, "but I'll keep at it."

Razor rolled her eyes.

"Fine. You do that. In the meantime, we'd better get going if you want to talk to this professor about tagging along on the field trip."

The morning passed without any real incident. Razor found this had been happening quite frequently ever since they'd escaped the Mansion; whole periods seemed to vanish from her life. She knew it was lunchtime because the clocks said so, but she had no real memory of what she'd done earlier. A little part of her wondered if this was what it felt like to go insane.

"Hey!" That was Jeff. "I didn't think you guys had classes today."

"We don't," Razor said. "We just wanted to talk about this field trip Wendy and Michael are going on."

"What field trip?"

Syd shook his head.

"Where have you been all week?"

"Surfing," Jeff answered, in an 'ask-a-stupid-question' tone. "What field trip?"

"Some kind of creative course," Syd said dismissively. "You can ask Wendy about it; she's over there."

"Yeah, I think I might." Jeff raised his eyebrows. "You two want to join me for lunch?"

"Well, I guess we might if nobody else comes along," said Razor, who, like Syd, had no intention of doing anything else. The look Jeff gave them said he was well aware of this as he picked up his tray and followed the two of them over to Wendy and Michael. Despite the crowded cafeteria, the table they were sitting at was empty; people who have a reputation for being borderline psychotic tend to find seats easily.

"We have a slight problem," Wendy said in an undertone as the other three came up.

Razor and Syd exchanged glances. A 'slight problem' in their lexicon meant anything from an untied shoelace to a nutcase with a chainsaw.

"Meaning...?" Razor said carefully, reaching over to dunk a carrot stick in Jeff's ketchup.

Wendy and Michael looked at each other.

"They're saying...you can't come," Michael said delicately. He always gave the impression of guarding his words with his life ever since the Mansion, perhaps because his previous slip of the tongue had almost led to his being committed to an institute for the criminally insane.

"What?" Syd said disbelievingly, just as Razor said "Why??"

"It's this new professor. Says she can't let you along unless you cough up the fifteen hundred, same as we did."

Syd shrugged.

"So what's fifteen hundred? We both got a seven-figure bank balance, don't we?"

"It should have been paid in last week."

Syd choked.

"What?"

"She's right," Bernard said, arriving just in time to hear the end of this and sitting down next to Syd. "I got exactly the same reaction this morning. Well, actually the professor left a message on my answering service. That's why I'm a little late; I was busy packing for this trip."

"So if she turned you down like she did us, how come you're still going with them?" Razor said, somewhat sourly.

"I'm not." Bernard reached out and pinched a stick of celery from her plate. "But...well...it's an amazing coincidence, but their field trip is on exactly the same day that I thought I'd take a little drive. I heard there's some very interesting specimens of dermaptera in a nearby museum."

"Der-whats?" Jeff said.

"Earwigs to you, I imagine."

"Oh man, that's gross!"

Razor, who had a slightly better handle on how Bernard thought and who also tended to think along much the same lines most of the time, raised an eyebrow.

"This...museum. It wouldn't happen to be anywhere near where Wendy and Michael are going, would it?"

"Well, you know, it's funny you should mention that," Bernard said pensively, "because now that I come to think about it, it is."

There was a silence, albeit one that was tempered with careful amusement.

"And if we should just happen to check into the same motel as you," Syd added to Wendy, now smirking slightly, "I don't see how you could have foreseen that, much less avoided it."

Wendy shook her head.

"It's not that simple." She glanced at Bernard. "Why would you do something like that anyway?"

"Because I can," Bernard said simply. "As Sherlock Holmes once said, I play the game for the game's own sake."

"Didn't he also say 'A lemon tree, my dear Watson'?" Syd inquired sarcastically. Bernard gave him a 'ha-ha, funny' look, then looked back at Wendy.

"Like I said, I'm in."

"And like we said-" Michael began, then abruptly broke off as a group of jocks paused by their table.

"Hey look," one said, nudging his buddy. "It's the madhouse."

Razor noticed Michael's hand slowly curling into a fist and kicked him under the table.

"We're in enough shit already," she whispered, just about managing to ignore the little voice which whispered a little more shit wouldn't hurt, then, would it?

Punching this jerk's lights out, while undoubtedly very satisfying, wouldn't solve their current problem.

"I would make a suitable retort," Bernard said calmly, "but I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with you as I was always taught it was dishonourable to fight an unarmed opponent. Besides, calling you stupid would be an insult to stupid people everywhere."

"Huh?" The kid's face contorted slightly with the effort of thought. "Wait...was that a shot?"

"I rest my case," Bernard muttered. "And I'm coming with you," this was to Michael and Wendy.

"You can't," Michael said. "Not this time."

"Why not?" Jeff said.

Michael and Wendy exchanged dark looks.

"We're going to Gilroy," Wendy said finally.

There was a silence.

"Gilroy. As in, the same Gilroy as..."

"Yes. We signed our names on the sheet and now we can't cancel."

There was another, more puzzled silence.

"Cancel?" Jeff said, voicing the thought on everyone's mind. "Why'd you want to cancel?"

"Because...because...oh hell, you tell him!" Wendy burst out, looking at Michael, who sighed and pulled out a much folded road map, sliding it across the table.

"We circled the motel we'll be staying in. I was going to ask Bernard to double check."

"Sure, let's have a look." Bernard opened the map up and glanced at the red circle, then looked sharply at Michael. "Is this some kind of sick joke?"

"I wish it were. I've checked it over and over again and I guess I was just hoping you could tell me I'd made a mistake."

"No can do."

"Whaffrong?" Jeff said around a mouthful of burger, reaching out with a fork to skewer the map and drag it towards him. He stared at it for a long time, then raised his eyes to Bernard's. "Oh man. You have got to be shitting me. You're not going to tell me they'll be staying there."

"Um...unless you have another way for me to phrase it, yes," Bernard answered.

There was a long silence, long enough for Razor and Syd to see the red circle around the Mansion.

"Didn't you suspect when she mentioned Gilroy?" Syd said at the end of it.

Wendy's head snapped up, stark terror on her face, angry tears sparkling in her eyes.

"How was I supposed to know?! Gilroy's a fair size and last I checked, the Edisons weren't opening their doors to the general public!"

"Can't you ask her to stay someplace else?" Even to Bernard himself, the words sounded pathetic and the look Wendy turned on him said that she was fully aware of this.

"Oh yes. What do you want me to say? Hey Angela, would you mind paying for us to stay in that hotel because there happen to be a load of psychos in the other place? How long do you think we'll last? In seconds, I mean."

"Alright! Alright!" Bernard held up his hands in surrender. "Bad idea! I admit it!"

"I think he's got something there though," Michael said unexpectedly. "If you guys want to come along, well, I guess we can't stop you, but there's no reason why you should all have to stay at the Mansion."

"What do you think we are?" Razor demanded. "You go, we go. That's what we agreed."

"No, that's what Dave told us," Michael answered sharply, his voice rising. "Maybe the Edisons sold the Mansion to someone else."

There was a scandalised silence.

"Oh yes," Razor said, her voice strangely high. "Yes, I can just see that. For sale, one huge, dilapidated mansion. Ten bedrooms, four bathrooms, large kitchen with walk-n larder, secret lab with pool of radioactive stroke toxic liquid for all your mutating needs. Would suit large family, or first time mad scientist. Serious offers only, please. Oh, and that's ketchup on the walls, not blood, and don't worry about the dead bodies down there; they're a vital part of prehistoric research."

"Yeah, well, that's no stranger than the thought of the Edisons turning it into a motel," Jeff shot back, not missing a beat.

Razor hesitated. Then she said, "Okay, fair point. Question is, what are we going to do about it?"

"You go, we go," Bernard said. Razor shot him a startled look. Bernard had started surprising them all back in the Mansion and he showed no signs of abating.

Michael shook his head.

"Forget it. When we said that, we had no idea what would happen."

"Yeah," Razor shot back, "and if we were the ones who had to go back, would you stay here and watch us go?"

There was a silence.

"You can't," Wendy said dully. "There's no point. You'll wind up as dead as the rest of us."

Michael winced almost imperceptibly. Tom had said those very same words just before he...

"We can't go on the trip with you," Syd retorted, "but I don't see how you can stop us making our own way there."

"By appealing to your common sense, if such a thing exists!" Wendy shot back, not missing a beat.

Bernard shook his head.

"Look. We can sit around yelling at each other all we like, but it's not going to solve anything. Right now, we know Wendy and Michael are going back to the Mansion and need to decide who's going with them."

"Excuse me?" Michael slammed a hand down on the table, upsetting Razor's water and causing a couple of passing freshmen to almost drop their trays. "I don't remember giving you guys a vote in this!"

"You go, we go, remember?" Syd answered sharply.

"That was a long time ago, Syd. We were kids. I don't see letting you throw your life away like-" Michael broke off abruptly and dropped his gaze.

The others exchanged glances. You didn't ask each other questions about what happened to them in the Mansion, not because you were afraid to hear the answers but because you were afraid of what they might ask you in return. But sometimes...you had to take that chance.

"Like what?" Razor said very carefully.

Michael turned away.

"Nothing. I'm sorry."

There was a terse silence.

"I don't see how you can stop us," Bernard said finally. "Like we said right at the beginning, you go, we go. And maybe we didn't mean that at the time, but I know I definitely mean it now."

Another silence. Although he wasn't the kind of person who commanded respect to look at, there wasn't one of them in that room who didn't owe him their life in one way or another.

"So do I," Razor said finally, and nobody except the other five at the table could have any idea how much those words cost her. She held out a hand, palm down. There was a long, long pause before five more were placed on top of it; three perfectly normal, two damaged; Jeff had an ugly scar an inch long on the back of his hand from the Mansion. Razor drew in a somewhat shaky breath, then let it out with a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob.

"Damn those Edisons. And damn Dave Miller too."

Bernard chipped in with a passable English accent.

"And damn my own folly in having lavished my hard-earned knowledge and the treasure of my regard and intimacy upon a cheerleading captain and her boyfriend."

There was a slightly stunned silence, then Razor laughed. It was a shaky sound, and one that appeared to surprise her as much as the others, but genuine enough for all that.

"We don't have long to pack," Jeff said, once Razor had gotten some semblance of control over herself. "Think it's worth taking my surfboard?"

"Not unless you're planning to hang ten in that radioactive swimming pool that the Edisons have," Michael said, in a tone that snuffed the gleam from Jeff's eyes.

"Hey, look man, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"

"Just forget it," Michael shot back harshly, then spun on his heel and stalked out, banging the door behind him.

Razor shook her head. She was starting to worry about Michael. Most of them had found outlets for their feelings that let them continue to walk that fine line of sanity-though she had no idea how Jeff could crack jokes about something like that-but Michael had just...gone somewhere inside himself.

Still, hard as it sounded, that particular problem would have to wait. Although she had no idea why, she seemed to have been elected leader of this little group and there was a hell of a lot to get organised in the next few days.

For they were going back to the Mansion.