The Outcasts Strike Back!

The Outcasts Strike Back! is the eighth episode of Season 3 and the 35th episode overall.

Plot
Lee and the Outcasts are trapped behind some boxes in a large room beneath the school as blue tazelwurms approach. While trouble seems imminent for them, they are soon saved, but their savior turns out to be a Cleaner. To make matters worse, the Cleaner then turns towards the teenagers to face them down.

The day started like any other day, with Lee riding the streetcar with his friends. They were trying to puzzle out why Lynch wanted the Key, but upon arriving at school found themselves distracted by a more pressing matter: Lee's bag has been stolen.

Lee is naturally thrown into a tizzy by this theft, not least because the bag contained the Key, and when they arrive at school he finds Biffy at the end of a long line for retinal scans. After he tells Biffy what happens, Holger confronts Giuseppe Stern, and Biffy decides to assist. Biffy's particular style of interrogation catches Barrage's eye, and soon Biffy finds himself with detention during lunch, after school, and during his one free period. This was part of Biffy's plan, however, as he has been working on a way to get phones to patch through Fort Nigma's dampening effect and needs to spend time in the detention room proper in order to test it.

Cam and Holger aren't going to sit by and let Lee's bag be stolen without saying anything, however, and soon Cam has used his presidential powers to set up interrogations headed by both of them. While Cam is totally ready to play out all sorts of cop show clichés, Holger has decided to go one step further and be Doctor Detective Cop during the interrogations. While Cam is shocked and slightly disturbed by Holger's choice, he is willing to put up with it, and soon the duo begin calling suspects down to the interrogation room, where they are subjected not just to Cam's relevant questions but also to Doctor Detective Cop's medical questions, unrelated questions, and medical opinions.

While Cam and Holger work on getting somebody to reveal themselves as the thief, Lee is unable to do anything but sit in class and watch the news, where Tina is doing yet another story on the newly-erected fence. This proves to be the big break in the case for him, however, as Stepak's camera catches the Outcasts wandering by in the background, carrying Lee's bag. Shocked, Lee realizes that Jenny must have been the one to steal his bag, and calls on Mr. Langhorne to give him a bathroom pass.

Soon, Lee is outside the school, and when he spots Tina he runs over and asks if she saw where Jenny went. While Tina is able to provide him with this information, she finds herself exasperated again when Lee excuses himself to run after them, saying that he doesn't have enough time to explain. The Outcasts, meanwhile, realize that they've been spotted and run for it, diving into some bushes in order to escape. Lee has seen where they went, however, and he soon kicks through the bushes, eventually kicking aside some boards covering a hole in the ground that he falls into.

While on his way down he manages to grab onto a rope ladder. Unfortunately, the rung he's holding on to breaks almost as soon as he's stopped falling, and he falls the rest of the way down and lands heavily on the dirt floor of a recently-dug tunnel. There, he finds his backpack, but the key is missing.

Lee calls Cam to get him to stall Barrage. This will be somewhat easy, as Barrage has taken a personal interest in the interrogations (mostly because it allows him to show his skill at interrogating people), but has been made a bit harder by the fact that Barrage has realized that Lee is on the other end of Cam's phone call. While Barrage is initially driven to try and find Lee Ping and punish him, the entrance of Brad Von Chillstein and his request to be broken in an interrogation so he can practice for an upcoming movie he's in presses all the right buttons, and Barrage sits down again to interrogate Brad.

Meanwhile, in the tunnels, the Outcasts have run into trouble, as a blue tazelwurm is coming after them. They run past Lee, and Lee joins them. However, they end up in a dead end, trapped between the tazelwurm and the electrified shield. Thinking quickly, Lee grabs the backpack and uses it as a bullfighter's cape. The tazelwurm takes the bait and lunges for the backpack only to slam into the shield when Lee pulls the backpack away. The tazelwurm fries, and Lee turns his attention to a more pressing matter: the Outcasts stole his key.

Jenny admits that they stole his key, but claims that they had to in order to get a new whisker after Deuce tried to eat it and inadvertently set it on fire. Furthermore, they needed to navigate the tunnels in order to get a new one, but only had a strange book that they cannot open to guide them. Lee tells them that they could have asked him, and the Outcasts admit that they should have done so, but the group are soon distracted by an announcement over the intercom calling Cleaner reinforcements to the pyramid room, as they are under attack by tazelwurms.

Lou's instinctive response is to run towards the pyramid room, as he assumes that by "tazelwurms" red tazelwurms are intended, although Lee is much more certain that the announcement refers to blue tazelwurms. Despite this, the other three follow Lou and end up trapped in the pyramid room after some Cleaners inadvertently let them in. To make matters worse, the tazlewurms are attacking everyone in the room, which the stationed Council member attributes to interference from the tunnel. However, the tazelwurm attack has one good outcome, as the tazelwurms bite through the wires supplying the shields with energy, opening the escape route. Seeing this, the Council member decides to retreat, and in doing so happens to hold up a key identical to Lee's.

Meanwhile, the interrogations are still going strong. By now, Holger has taken over much of the questioning in a way that shocks Barrage; in fact, Barrage is impressed by Holger's interrogation technique, since Holger is getting results even though he asks odd and irrelevant questions. In fact, the only time when someone other than Holger takes the lead is when Brandy gets called in for questioning and Cam takes the opportunity to hash out a date with her.

Underground, the way out is clear. Lee is still curious as to what the Council is doing there, however, and he investigates some of their equipment. Soon, though, he is distracted by more tazelwurm attacks, and he and the Outcasts have to fight the tazelwurms off. After having some success that leads to a detached Cleaner arm getting lost in a passageway, he and the Outcasts get Biffy to plot them an escape route. The group is almost to the exit when Deuce trips and is confronted with an angry blue tazelwurm. Before the tazelwurm can attack, the Red Tazelwurm arrives and holds off the blue taz and its brethren. Lee and the Outcasts manage to slip out an exit, and the Red Tazelwurm follows them into the library just as the door shuts.

Once in the library, Lou once again asks for a Red Tazelwurm whisker. The Red Tazelwurm rolls its eyes, but provides the requested whisker, and the Outcasts cheer. The Red Tazelwurm then goes over to Jenny, and when the nervous girl holds up her book to protect herself, the Red Tazelwurm bites into the book, opening it. Shocked, Lee and Jenny decide to get together and look through the book for clues about the conspiracy, and not a moment too soon, as Holger has solved the case and fingered Jenny Jergens as the real culprit.

This isn't a problem, however, as this means that Jenny and Lee are together in detention and have more time to look at the book. Of course, by the time nightfall rolls around, Lee has figured out that there's something important about there being two different keys and two different keyholes on the pyramid. Because of this, he decides to stash his key in a safe place: underneath his bed, right next to an undetected bug.

Characters

 * Lee Ping
 * Lou Black
 * Deuce Markowitz
 * Jenny Jerkins
 * Holger Holgaart
 * Camillio Martinez
 * Wendell Barrage
 * Cassandra McAdams
 * Biffy Goldstein
 * Tina Kwee
 * Chaz Monerainian

Trivia

 * This episode marks the second time Lee's bag was stolen; the first time was in Blitzkrieg Bop'd, where it was stolen and replaced with a doppelgänger backpack in order to set up the Prank.