The Manual

"I just don't understand!" Cupid cried as he flopped down onto the old broken couch. 

That couch held a prominent position in the brat cave and many of distressed brats had flopped down on it.

"Oh wait! Let me get everyone a drink before the drama act," Dionysus said sarcastically and then Umpf'd as Hermes elbowed him in the stomach.

He pointed to the excuse wall where the excuse `It's not sarcasm; it's wit' had been crossed out. Hermes knew that Dionysus had been the one to cross out that excuse after he'd experienced a late night snack of soap when his top had cleaned out the sarcasm and wit.

"What don't you understand?" Hermes asked Cupid. Hermes had been making a special effort to befriend the Roman God.

"Tops!" Cupid cried out. "I don't understand tops!"

"Who does?" a brat called out.

"Don't even try!" another voice advised.

Another asked in bewilderment, "Who'd want to try?"

Morpheus sat beside Cupid and put his arm around his shoulder. "Is Eros giving you trouble? You want me to give him a nightmare?"

"That'd have you sleeping on your stomach for days," Hermes told Morpheus. "Come on, Cupid. Tell us what's wrong. If a bunch of brats can't solve the problem, no one can!"

"That's right," one brat said.

"Best place to get the right answers is with a brat," another stated with confidence.

"But then how come tops always know everything?" Cupid asked.

The sound of silence after that query was so great, that it echoed off all the lands. The tops at Top School started wondering just what all the brats were up to. They heaved a sigh of relief and continued doing top-type things when the silence was broken.

"Yeah. How do they know?" one brat asked.

One voice way in the back piped up, "I bet they have some sort of secret Top Manual."

"Oh, that's unfair!" A brat cried out.

"Let's steal one!" came a great idea.

A wise old brat (yes there is such a thing as a wise brat) replied, "Even if we did steal one, we'd never understand it."

"Yeah, it'd be Greek to me," Cupid said.

"Everything's Greek to you," Hermes told the cute little Roman. Turning to the rest of the brats, he said, "I'm the god of language. I would've been in on it. So, there's no secret Top Manual."

"Then how do they know everything?"

Hermes thought for a moment and then replied, "It's just one of the great mysteries of the universe. I guess we'll just never know."

Meanwhile, back at the Top Council:

"The first thing that needs to be addressed in the manual is too how to appear to be under control and all knowing to your brat," Aether said in his big booming voice. "Even when you are completely baffled."