Smith, Jones, Jeremy Piven, Marilyn Monroe and a Cat walk into an embassy. Someone decides it's a bad joke and gives order to bomb the shit out of the embassy. Smith grabs his childer (who are resenting his inconsiderate behavior, which he ignores, which they resent) and starts walking briskly out of the building. Magenta, her paranoia pumped up by the chaos and the absurd sensitivity of her enhanched senses, freezes, transfixed by her search for hidden explosives and other obscured threats.

As Smith and childer approach the door, a soldier strongly advises him against it. It's hell out there. To everyone's surprise, Smith choses this moment to gain respect to the concept of free will, so instead of pwnifying the soldier's sorry ass he tries to do what ordinary people would do in the same situation - lie. In an extreme attempt to appeal to the guy's reason, he explains that he has a bad hunch about this place and must therefore leave it at once, but by then the soldier has gotten lost in Marilyn's th^H^H^H eyes.

Magenta finds her explosives, encased in a shiny metal shell that it being hurled down at them from high up in the atmosphere. She manages a muffled noise, and the Cat scratches them a path into the Umbra, which they scramble into before the soldier's startled, soon-to-be scorched eyes.

As on the other side of the veil people at the embassy burn, the cat leads them on a literally torturous path through the echoes of incinerated souls, trying to find a route to the US. Eventually they find a man being burned alive in a necklace of car tire and gasoline, and emerge on the docks of Los Angeles, witnesses to a brutal gang execution by a group of Crips.

Marilyn freaks, and Magenta grabs her weapon and submachineguns both the gangers and their victim to oblivion, despite protests from Smith. Smith checks out the booth of the gang members' car, where he finds some weapons to arm himself and the kids (including a wakizashi). Then he drives them away in the comandeered car, heading for the home of his good buddy, Leo D. On the way, Magenta tries to comfort Marilyn with some tough love, while the kids actually take the opportunity to ask some awkward questions (Marilyn is shocked to learn it's 200x already).

The streets are mostly deserted, except for national guard jeeps, vigilante mobs and rioters, and on the car's radio, Magenta only finds bland reassurances from the government that things are getting better and the nation is pulling itself back on track after the attack (although no one explains what attack anymore).

At Casa DiCaprio, Smith finds a strange man chilling on the lawn, and soon becomes his best buddy. Apparently, a roving gang has taken over the mansion and is now using it as their regular hangout; Leo is no more, having been torched in the backyard, but the gang is still hanging on to his terrorized Israeli girlfriend (let's call her Bar). Smith announces that he is running the place now, and decides to press-gang this gang into his army. He comforts Bar and asks her if she's ever considered a career as a Childe.

As the entourage are settling in among the gangers, the cat slips back into the Umbra and tries to retrace the whole route from the terrified phone-call at the embassy, back to the person who actually gave the command to bomb it. She finds the dude, apparently on an aircraft carrier or some similar isolated location, and when she sends the image of his aura to Magenta, Magenta confirms that it's the Potter.