"Fuck you."

Nathan just stared, dumbfounded, at the girl in the corner, the flat, snaking beast of fire up her leg nothing in comparison to the look in her eye. She hugged her arms as close to her as she could, as if staying warm would return control to her limbs. But there was nothing she could do - even less that she should be capable of doing. How could she even speak? How could she even track him with her eyes?

But she said it again: "Fuck you."

The man in the suit, his black leather work gloves curled tight around a small syringe, strode into the white portion of the studio, but his approach did not turn her attention, latched as it was to Nathan himself. He couldn't move. He felt like he couldn't even breathe.
She finally seemed to register the other man when he crouched down beside her, pinning her by the forehead to the wall, and pushing it off to the side to reveal her neck. But for whatever spasms occurred in her hands, they were nothing as powerful as it would take to stop the needle in her neck.
"Now now, Ms. Amber, try to practice some . . . professional civility."

It was just another dream. As Nathan shot awake, his body slamming back into the driver's seat of his car, he remembered that it was just another dream. He quickly pressed 'off' on his radio, which was playing some stupid modern rock shit, and leaned his forehead against his steering wheel, which was, admittedly, exactly what got him into this position in the first place. He could have sworn he'd turned the radio off, seeing as there were no dedicated rap stations around Arcadia, but it seemed not.
And then he saw the truck pull in. It was about the same size as his, but a hell of a lot more beat up: it was nearly impossible to say what color it was. It turned much too sharply for comfort as it pulled, then quickly accelerated into the parking lot against the demands of the 5mph sign at the entrance. It zoomed in with no further ado, and he could hear the brakes screech as it parked across two handicapped spots. He didn't even raise his head, but rather shrunk slightly as the blue-haired bitch hopped out, not even bothering to lock her door.

He wanted to give her a minute and ensure that they met at their established rendezvous. He really didn't need any part of this conversation happening in public, and honestly, it was bad enough that they were meeting at Blackwell. That punk-ass feminazi probably thought that it could keep her safe to meet in such a public place. It probably didn't even occur to her how invincible he was in a place like this. Still, he needed this to go smoothly, or he could kiss his agreement with Jefferson goodbye. He'd just be a pawn for who knows how long - however long it took him to die, at least.
In that line of thinking, he looked down at his messages. Just this single glaring fuck-you that had fucked up everything for these past few days.

?: You want me to treat you like an adult who can get things done on his own? Impress me. I'd like nothing more than to be proud of you. I'm not there yet.

This fucker talked just like his dad. No wonder they got along so fucking handily - if they weren't so dominant in their spaces, they probably would be literal butt buddies by this point. Then again, they were probably too old for each other.

Nathan rolled down his window and had a smoke, trying to settle his nerves a little. They didn't seem to be working, as in the past class period he'd ditched he had accumulated the butts of a good five cigarettes, soon to be a sixth.
God, he just couldn't get that image of her out of his mind. The look in her eyes as they all went cold. It had taken them over an hour to realize what had happened to her, but he should have known just by looking at the eyes that said 'fuck you'. He was always going to remember her as Rachel in the dark room - the memories of her as Rachel his friend were ashes. The fucker had laid a curse or something on him before she died, because he just could not seem to piece together those memories at all. Just Rachel in the fucking dark room.

Opening the door of his truck, Nathan grabbed his handgun from the central compartment between the seats, slipped out, and stuck it in his jacket pocket, pulling his jacket down to help conceal it. He could probably pay this bitch off if he really had to, but there was always the possibility that she would demand more, later, and he could not have that. He could not have one more goddamn person with power over him. No, she was going to go away, and she was going to shut up. That was the only possibility.

She was still talking to people out on the campus as Nathan skirted the edge of the quad in front of the gym, trying his best to avoid being seen before the rendezvous. It looked like she was talking to the skater punks that Rachel had been tight with before she moved past spice and weed and became a proper junkie. Best to move quickly, though - he had no idea how she would respond in public, so he needed to get into a situation he could control.
Luckily, no one inside the building was paying the slightest bit of attention, and there was still enough foot traffic inside that Nathan didn't draw any attention to himself as he slipped inside the girls' bathroom.

He made a quick check along the stalls, but they were all loose enough in place to indicate that there was nobody in them. He exhaled, raising his hands to his hair in frustration. That would have been his one simple, simple delay on this whole thing so he could come up with a better solution - that there'd be someone in here. But there wasn't.
He tugged his hair briefly, but then he tried to calm himself down, but it just wasn't working. How the fuck was he going to get this girl to keep her mouth shut?
"It's cool Nathan . . . don't stress." He moved his hands a little, as if this were proper dialogue, "You're okay, bro. Just count to three . . ."

His breathing was heavy and he just now realized that. He was wired to an extreme, on top of the half-pack of nicotine, and he needed to be calm for this whole thing to go down. He gripped the sides of a sink, the cool ceramic doing nothing against the heat of his own skin.
"Don't be scared - you own this school." Yeah, that was right. What the fuck could anyone do to him? He finally looked himself in the eye - haggard though he was, he was a scary motherfucker, and the knowledge he had left him with complete freedom. What could this bitch do? "If I wanted, I could blow it up. You're the boss."
He knew that wasn't true, and it forced him back into third person - maybe the person on the other side of the mirror believed they were the boss, but he sure didn't.

He tilted his head to the side, hearing footsteps coming straight towards the door, and only gripped the sink tighter as the blue-haired chick in the beanie entered with a face so pissed-off she had to have plastered it on before entering. It was a game face. His wasn't on just yet, so he didn't bother to turn.
God, he was freaking out. "So, what do you want?" he asked.

She didn't focus on him immediately, though. She was overconfident - she strode down the line of stalls, opening them individually to check them. "I hope you checked the perimeter, as my step-ass would say." What the fuck was that supposed to mean? "Now, let's get down to bidness."

So it was money. Of course it was. What else did it ever take to hush people up but money and violence? "I've got nothing for you," he responded, the bitterness cutting in to convey his seriousness. This girl was not getting shit out of him - she was lucky to have escaped so much more luckily than others.

She turned, having reached the end of the row: "Wrong. You got hella cash."

Oh god, this girl has no idea what she's fucking saying. "That's my family, not me," he bantered, knowing this would do little to dissuade her. People didn't think things through when they could get their hands on a few dollars. They rarely seemed to consider the cost of money.

Her voice sounded like rolling ones eyes felt: "Oh boo hoo, poor little rich kid. I know you been pumpin' drugs n' shit to kids around here..." - ah, no wonder. That's why she'd been talking to those punk kids before. She knew about his business with Frank. She really knew too much.

And that was a fact she seemed to realize - she snapped over to Nathan's other side, grabbing the sink's end and putting her face just inches from his. "I bet your respectable family would help me out if I went to them."
Just the words 'respectable family' made Nathan cringe, and he averted his eyes even from the reflection of his girl. Was she seriously so stupid that she thought they would bother with hush money? Nathan was too fucking valuable for a girl like this to get in their way. She'd fucking disappear if she breathed a word to Dad.

She just wouldn't stop taunting him, though. "Man, I can see the headlines now-" oh, oh, and she wasn't the only one. She needed to back off, or she'd end up in a junkyard just like Rachel. She needed to back off. She thought being drugged and taken to a dorm room was bad? He needed to handle this himself - for everyone's sake.

"Leave them out of this, bitch."
She just wouldn't stop.
"I can tell everyone Nathan Prescott is a punk ass who begs like a little girl and talks to himself-"

That did it. She'd seen him. She had seen him that night. He hoped she would remember nothing, or close to nothing. But she must have heard what he'd said that night through the camera.

Nathan reached into his pocket. "You don't know who the fuck I am or who you're messing around with!" Why couldn't she just let it go? How could she not realize, how could she not see how much worse she was making this for herself?
He leveled the gun at her face.

Her eyes darted around, as if someone might burst out of the stalls she'd already checked to save her. But no one was going to save her. This bitch just needed to shut the fuck up, and there was no one who could make her but Nathan. "Where'd you get that? What are you doing?"
Nathan lowered the gun a little, but stepped forward, making sure she wouldn't immediately escape. He needed to threaten her, scare her, make sure this would never come back. He just needed to fix this.
"Come on, put that thing down!" she yelled, but he knew it was a plea. She was powerless as soon as something got real. Of course she was. She had no idea what she was up against on any level.

"Don't EVER tell me what to do." Nathan slammed his fist up near her ear and leaned close, as intimately as if he were going to kiss her. As he'd learned with Rachel, there was little more intimate than the threat of death. "I'm so SICK of people trying to control me!" This girl couldn't. She had known her place when she was curled up on the floor, staring helplessly away. She'd been nothing. And reminding her that she was nothing made Nathan feel like something other than nothing.

She started trying to diffuse as he dug the barrel of the gun into her gut. "You're gonna get in hella more trouble for this than drugs-"
But who cared? No one would do shit to Nathan. Maybe nobody cared about Nathan, but he was valuable. This girl was nothing. And there was no way somebody like her was going to get in the way of what he could become, no way that she would ruin everything for his family.

So he remembered a few words. Words that helped to remind him that he was nothing. They came out his own, but they reminded him deeply of words he'd heard before: "Nobody would even miss your 'punk ass' would they?" He dug the gun further into her gut - a final warning. She had to accept the situation at hand. She had to just give up.

But instead, she fought. With whatever ounce of panicked strength she had left in her, she brought her hands up to Nathan's chest. "Get that gun away from me, psycho!" Her voice was like a child's. But as Nathan tried to grip something, to steady himself, frightened by the force, he squeezed the trigger.

BANG!

The kickback was more intense from a little pistol than he imagined, and he stumbled back as the girl's body fell forward, onto her face.

Oh god, what had he done? As his hand released the gun, he didn't even process the shout from behind him - it was hardly any different than the shouts he heard all the time. But still, it was there for a moment, "No!" and he knew somebody was behind him. Rachel, probably . . . she was always there in her posters, watching him.

"Oh no . . ." he cried as the body hit the floor. The blood began to leak out immediately like he couldn't even imagine, her arms extended in front of her as if that shove that set off the gun would be immortalized. "No no no no no!" he said, crouching down beside her, hesitating for a moment before placing his hands over her wound. She was dying so fast, so fast. He didn't know people could even die this fast or this warm.

But then, he could see her, out of the corner of his eye. Not Rachel - just some girl he'd never seen before in a gray hoodie. In his panic, his facade broke entirely, and his own voice sounded boyish and weak to him. He raised up his hand to her, and begged, "Help me."

Her hands began to lower from her mouth, held there in shock as they were, but they moved so slow, so slowly. And, in fact, he noticed that his own hands moved in much the same way - as if passing through water, and slowing down all the time. What was going on . . .?
And then, it all stopped. Just for a second, the whole scene froze.

The girl's hands went back up to her mouth. The body's blood began to flow back into its wound while leaving no stain. Nathan stood upright, and the gun snapped up from the ground into his hand. The girl's body flew back up as if carried on strings, and flung itself against the wall, and Nathan stepped forward until her arms were against his chest, and she was yelling at him, and she was walking into the room, and he was walking to the school, and-

Nathan jolted awake in the driver's seat of his car. The truck turned sharply and roared into the parking lot before, wheels screeching, stopping across two parking spaces. The blue haired girl got out.

Nathan was breathing heavily in the raw panic, and it wasn't until she was out of his sight that he remembered that he hated the music on, and turned it off.

The time was 3:57, and class was about to end.

Was it . . . just another dream? No way, there was no way. And perhaps the best evidence that it was not a dream came in the form of what was different about right now than it ought to be - in Nathan's trembling right hand there was a silvery gun, leaning against the dash after having turned off the radio with the clip. There was blood on the barrel. "No fucking way. No fucking way. WHAT THE FUCK!"

So, he'd had a vision of the future. Or, more properly, he had reset time. He'd gone back in time. He had erased what he'd just done. He was given an opportunity to keep everything from crashing down around him. And he knew a few new things to help that be true.
- The blue haired girl would fight back
- But he couldn't kill her.
- There was a girl watching.

But what could he risk changing? It was not like he'd never seen TV - changing things always caused problems. But if he wasn't supposed to change anything, why was he even given this chance?

It took him a few minutes of rumination, but finally, he settled on a plan. He'd have to do it over. He would still have to go to the bathroom . . . but he'd make it go better this time.

Nathan pulled out his regular cell and scrolled down near the bottom of his contacts until he located Trevor, whose last name he still had yet to get. He clicked and waited about eight seconds for a reply.

Trevor: "Yo, Nathan, brother what's up? I'm on the other line with Dana."

Nathan: "That's real fuckin' great. There's a girl you're going to talk to in a minute - blue hair, beanie, tall. And she's going to ask you about my dealing. If you haven't said anything yet, don't. Say you don't know shit and you'll get a discount this week."

Trevor: "Huh, what? Y'mean Chloe? She didn't mention she'd be stopping by. But, hey, I mean, your business is your business, I won't say anything. You doin' all right, man?"

Nathan: "I'm fine - keep to your own business too."

And then, he hung up.

Now, for the most part, he could let things play out much as they had the first time. The primary difference - he had to not shoot. Just before she pushed him, he'd have to back up all on his own. He had to control the situation. He could not lose his cool. And about that girl that watched . . . once Chloe was gone, he could handle her on his own. It couldn't be that hard - she was even less noticeable than this Chloe girl, though that might have plenty to do with the fact that she hadn't been making a nuisance of herself for the past few months, plastering posters of a face Nathan wanted nothing more than to forget all over town.

When he entered the bathroom, he was quick to notice what he should have recognized the first time - a torn photograph in the center of the room. He took a step forward and looked down, and could recognize even from the halves that the girl in it wore a gray hoodie, and stood in front of a big wall filled with polaroid photographs.

When he turned towards the mirror again, it was not the fear of the unknown variables in this situation that filled him, but fear of the known ones.

"It's cool Nathan... don't stress. You're okay, bro... just count to three."
"Don't be scared - you own this school. If I wanted, I could blow it up. You're the boss."
Out of the corner of his eye, Nathan could see movement in one of the mirrors - that girl was still here. Why was she around that corner? Either way, it didn't seem he could avoid that fact. The girl was here.

Chloe entered.
"So what do you want?" He was breathless.

"I hope you checked the perimeter, as my step-ass would say. Now, let's talk bidness."

This was all the same. Nathan Prescott had gone back in time.

"I got nothin' for you." And he still didn't. At least, he hoped. He had a bullet that would produce the dried blood on the gun in his pocket, but she had already gotten it once. She didn't need it again.
"Wrong. You got hella cash." It was about the money. Of course. She had no idea. Still, after all of this, she had no idea.

"That's my family, not me."

"Oh boo-hoo, poor little rich kid."
To confirm his fears, this time around, she stayed quiet while she moved to Nathan's other side - she didn't bring up his dealing. She just gripped the sink, but this time she didn't have as much leverage. She wouldn't push so hard.
"I bet your respectable family would help me out if I went to them. Man, I can see the headlines now-"

"Leave them out of this, bitch!" But she just wouldn't stop. She was so fucking stupid.

"I can tell everyone that Nathan Prescott is a punkass who begs like a little girl and talks to himself-"

Nathan was surprised how reflexive it was to retrieve the gun this time around. It was so easy, even if the rage felt so different. He was trying to keep her alive, and she was so incredibly ungrateful. But she just wouldn't stop pushing.

"You don't know who I am, or who you're messing around with!" And that was the fucking truth.

Oh, she trembled once she could see the gun. "Where did you get that? What are you doing? Come on, put that thing down!"
She wouldn't get the message if he stopped now. He was going to have to go right to the edge if he was going to never hear from her again. "Don't EVER tell me what to do. I'm so SICK of people trying to control me!"

SMASH!

What?

The fire alarm began, and Nathan lowered his gun as he looked around. What? The fire alarm hadn't gone off . . . the first time. "No way . . ." he growled, his the role broken, confusion coloring his face.
And then, there was a rather sharp pain between his legs as Chloe's knee smashed his testicles against his pelvis with the force of someone who knew that their life was in danger - for the second time with the same man.
He bowed over in response to the pain, giving out a loud groan, as her fingers tripped his shoulder and shoved him to the ground. "Don't you ever touch me again, freak!" she shouted as he fell, dropping his gun on the ground.

She was out the door in a flash, but Nathan tried to take another moment to recover. As he turned around, he noticed that the girl around the corner was thoroughly hidden this time, and he saw no indication that she was there. His hand landed near one half of her photo, though, and he took a brief moment to note that she was brunette. Then, he grabbed his gun.
"Another shitty day," he murmured as he got to his feet, knowing how much worse it could have been, perhaps not knowing precisely how bad it had become.