Did someone say lightning? Here's some lightning! For Caden, for Cora, for Marcus...lightning for everyone.

Sanders, unfortunately, is an everyone.

What the fuck- that didn't even hurt, he feels fine- he feels better than fine, like he just had an energy drink laced with vodka and an erotic massage and worked out twice as much as he does and- okay, there's no fucking time for coming up with analogies, how is Caden was the lightning that struck Caden also some weird hallucination he's the only one who gets to hurt him-

Caden finds 'being struck by lightning, while mostly on the ground' a novel enough experience that he mostly resumes mental coherency. For about two seconds, in which he absently notes that his limbs have gone from feeling sharply painful to limp and pleasantly jelly-like, and smiles at Sandy.

And then he faints.

Marcus starts laughing, looking up at the sky. He doesn't feel any pain, but he was just hit by a lightning bolt- this would be such an absurd way to die, maybe he'll have a cool story to tell in the afterlife.

This would be an incredibly stupid way to die. If there was anywhere to run to, she’d already be gone, but she has to make sure her friends are safe. She half-drags Jackson the rest of the way. If Danny wants to sacrifice himself to help strangers, she’s not going to stop him.

Danny finds being struck by lightning upsetting, even if he’s miraculuously alive. He's trying not to think about it just yet. Presumably between him and Caden’s boyfriend they can get Caden inside?

Yup- not even really difficult, he's pretty thin and Sanders is very good at lifting things even when he hasn't been taking mysterious metaphorical lightning-steroids. Assuming nothing else happens they'll be inside in no time- 

With Marcus tagging along, recovering from his brief hysterical episode when he sees them coming by (though he still looks kind of inappropriately cheerful). He's somehow not dead. Yay.

They can get inside without fanfare. The storm has already stopped. The clouds begin to dissipate, and the sound of thunder has long since passed.

Unless Sanders objects, Danny takes Caden to a bench and lays him down there.

The second that Sanders is no longer touching Caden, he ceases to feel weirdly invigorated, and Danny instead has the privilege of mysterious strength and not!caffeine, which in turn ends when he lays Caden down. This is probably not the time to do experiments, but he pokes his unconscious boyfriend in the leg and- yeah, back again for a moment. His unconscious boyfriend seems fine aside from that adjective, in spite of having just been struck by lightning, and also serves as a performance enhancing drug. The fuck.

"The fuck," he says, out loud this time. "What the hell just happened. Did I miss a news bulletin saying 'the world is going to go completely fucking insane today, weather will be cloudy with a chance of huge-as-shit hail."

"We should stay calm. The storm already stopped, which means...which means something, I guess. Is everyone else okay?"

Cora nods, shifting from foot to foot.

"No doctors. Whatever this is, we don't need to get anyone carted off by men in lab coats."

"I'm sorry, what is this? A freak storm doesn't really seem like our problem. Leave it to Scully and Mulder."

"It's something, for sure. We should all go home, and deal with this tomorrow. Anything else looks suspicious."

"Sure. Not getting dissected sounds great to me." 

"Having my intenstine probed would really mess with my travel itinerary, I'd be devastated. So now I'm going to go home and wait for my boyfriend to wake up and then I am going to fuck him and then I am going to go the hell to sleep, whatever comes after that can come after that. 'Kay? Mark, your car-"

"I'll drive."

"You can't drive for shit."

"Do you really want to drive or do you want to molest my best friend in the back seat while he's temporarily comatose, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, sales are going fast."

"Fine.

Does anyone else have any non-vivisection related speculation they want to share with the class before I fuck off and pretend this fucked up shit didn't happen for the next half-day."

"Where are we meeting?"

"Somebody's house, somewhere at school before or after or during class, we could start a 'definitely nothing suspicious here, no sir' club or maybe a group chat, or have dinner at a fast food place- none of those are sufficient security if we already have government goons watching for weird behavior or something, I'm not really sure which is least suspicious if we're trying to avoid attracting government goons in the first place, houses are hard to listen in on casually but easy to predict and fast food places are the opposite..."

"Mark, we can just lurk in that nook in the corner of the library afterschool tomorrow and find something more permanent then, we don't need to draw out a plan in all seven colors of the fucking rainbow right now."

"You're colorblind anyways."