It wasn't late for a hangout, in any sense.

Matt was sitting in Jeff's car, as he'd usually be during the "gathering" of people. His eyes were transfixed out of the back window, as Jeff, Jay, Sean and his younger brother Dyl sat around him. It was an odd assortment, but it didn't mean the actual hangout would be bad.

They were nearing the mall, making that a second "weird" thing to do. Nobody had actually hung out at the mall in over two years, and nobody had hung out before 11pm in six months! The night was indeed a strange one, as the tan Maxima pulled itself into a parking spot close to the Food Court.

"Well, let's go." Matt said, getting out of the car, leaving the door open behind him.

"Matt shut your door!" Jeff yelled. Matt had left Jeff's car door open.

Sitting together in the same car again, hanging out for the first time early on a weekend night, the entire thing had a nostalgic feeling to it. Work and school had slowly been pulling everyone apart.

It was a real pain in the ass to get everyone back together, but somehow it was pulled off. Jeff opened the driver's side door and stepped out. Shutting the door behind him, he joined everyone else as they started towards the food court entrance to the mall.

"AH, thank God, Jay's smell was really killing me." Sean cracked his back as he climbed out of the car and shut the door. He wasn't exactly sure how he had gotten caught off guard and knocked into a hang out early on a weekend. "Dylan, you still alive back there, or has chemical warfare gotten you?" Sean made his way toward the entrance of the mall, spotting the usual scumbags and scumbagettes on his way in.

"Great, now I smell like a freakin' rotting corpse." Dylan blurted out.

He finally noticed that he was talking to himself. Quickly, he spotted the rest of the group getting through the mass crowds of people and caught up. "So Matt, what are we doing after this?"

Matt retreated back quickly to shut the door before moving on ahead of the group.

He was anxious to get the night going, and it seemed Dyl was also.

"We're probably just going to go to the food court and stuff," he said, responding to his brother's question, "for old time's sake."

Matt zipped up his coat; it was quite chilly out. He briefly watched a puff of fog extrude from his mouth; it was quite chilly out.

"Hopefully there'll be more then the usual tonight." He said, smiling.

((one rp, cant we do 1 rp or whatever without laying into me))

[ Jay, it's Sean. How do you not expect Sean not to do that? Now just post, please. ]

Jay got out of the car and sighed. It was somewhat the usual hangout....except Monique wasnt around to take the heat off of him, which for the first time in a long time he didnt care about because things were almost back to the way they were in highschool, early hangouts at the mall.

He ran up ahead clutching his pants from falling down as he tried to catch up to Jeff and Matt. Things couldnt be going better, the only thing he could think of that could ruin it is if that fucking jew Helfgott showed up.

As the group made there way through the double doors that make up the malls entrance and exit the sounds of the mall came to them.

On a Friday night like this the food court was pretty much filled with teenagers from different high schools in many different groups of people. You had your gothic group all dressed in black, to your more jock like group filled with guys that were big and girls that looked as though they might be cheer leaders. And now a days you had your emo looking group with the stupid glasses and long hair.

"So where to first?" Jeff asked everyone.

(I'm going to do something I most likely won't do again: a time skip. We need it, believe me.)

The night passed at a fairly slow pace, which was really for the best. The mall, in its rarity, was as fun as it was many years ago. The "hang out" was quite a flourish, and everybody seemed to be having a good time... even Jay, who'd withstood only half of the teasing he usually had to.

Yet, time did pass, and soon the mall grew boring.

"I say we take that path we used to take, you know, the mounds?" Matt said quite willingly, due to the fact he was positively sick of the mall, at that point.

Everybody seemed to agree. "The Mounds," was an abandoned construction site on the rear side of the mall, in front of a large patch of woods. It'd always seemed to be there, and withstood the test of time as each attempt to build something in its place would end up being a failure. "Construction site," was an unusual term for it... but that's just what it was known by.

Crossing over a large group of bushes, the five of them made their way to "The Mounds," which was given that term because of the tall dirt mounds that'd been left there for years.

"Well, we're here." Matt said triumphantly, standing upon one of the smallest dirt piles.

Suddenly, there was a faint whistle somewhere above them. The closest thing the sound could be compared to was the take-off of a firework, but without the combustion.

"What the hell..." Matt said, looking up toward the clear, starry night sky.

Many feet above them, was an Andalite space craft, plummeting toward their very position. Yet, at that moment, to them, it appeared to be an unusually large, bright blue star...

"What the hell could that thing be?" Dylan asked, shaking from the current temperature.

As it grew closer and closer to the ground they stood on, it seemed to speed up and the whistling became louder. Dylan could hear the heavy breathing coming from the rest of the group.

He began to realize this wasn't anything he normally would've imagined. Not a reflection of light, a bright star, it was craft and it was only was feet away from them.

In close to a subconscious state, he stood frozen. He couldn't think, move or perform any other function. The crash was only seconds away.

----

...And he really had to go the bathroom.

......Too late.