A/N: Huzzah! Finally, chapter 2! Didn't take me almost a month or anything. In all honesty, though, this might become a once-a-month upload story, since A) I get busy and am starting school next month and B) It can take me slower to write depending on how much inspiration I have on a given day. This chapter ended up almost as long as the last one, though, so I'm hoping I can keep up the length.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the ideas that belong to the H2O: Just Add Water franchise that are not my own.

CHAPTER 2| FISH OUT OF WATER

Daquiri startled upright at the sound of her alarm going off. She groaned, letting her head thump back down on her folded arms. She'd fallen asleep at her desk trying to get her homework done last night, and subsequently, she felt even more tired than if she'd actually gone to sleep in her bed. She was already predicting that today was not going to go all that well.

Dragging herself up from her desk, she changed clothes and brushed out her hair before heading into the hallway bathroom, locking the door behind her. You could never be too careful when you lived with two brothers and a father.

As expected, her makeup was an absolute mess from sleeping on it, so she knew she'd just have to take it off and start over. Maybe she shouldn't even wear makeup today...

She grabbed a wash cloth and wet it down in the sink before scrubbing vigorously at her face. She hated the feeling of left over makeup...

Not even thirty seconds after she'd started washing however, she felt a weird tingling sensation.

Then next thing she knew she was falling onto the floor.

For a second Daquiri wasn't sure what had happened. She could've sworn...her body looked like it had...

Then she gave a small yelp of surprise and utter confusion when she saw her legs.

Or rather, her lack of legs.

A deep, emerald green fish tail had appeared where her legs should have been, and apparently dragged her clothes with it. Looking down, she realized her top had also morphed into what looked like a bikini halter top, of the same color as the tail, and...scaly?

What the actual hell.

All she could do was stare at this new development with a look of absolute dumbfoundedness.

Was she dreaming?

Despite herself, she pinched her arm just in case. And nothing. Apparently this was actually happening.

She wasn't sure how she was supposed to respond to this.

Then there was a knock at the door.

"Ri? Are you in there?"

Oh, great.

"Um..." Daquiri paused, carefully turning herself over so she was leaning on her hands. "Just a minute, Arak."

"You might wanna hurry up, Fox has to go."

Daquiri's lips pressed together in concentration as she experimented trying to pull herself up and lean on her...tail...like she was kneeling on her knees. "Duly noted," she replied through gritted teeth. She let out a small grunt when she ultimately failed and fell back to the ground.

Well this was seriously the most annoyingly unfortunate thing that had ever happened to her.

She pulled herself forward on the bathroom floor to snatch the bath towel hanging off the door hook and used it to dry herself off, since a sheen of water seemed to have appeared all over her body simultaneously with the tail.

"Daquiri, seriously, can't you do this later?" Arak sounded like he was getting impatient now.

"Not really," she snapped. "Just use the other bathroom for God's sake." She continued drying herself down.

She heard Arak mutter something but didn't quite catch what it was before she heard footsteps moving away from the door. That was one problem out of the way, at least.

It took her a few minutes, but she finally got herself dry. Which apparently seemed to do the trick, because the tail morphed back into her regular body after that, clothes and all.

She breathed a sigh of relief before standing up again.

Looking at her reflection in the mirror, her usual self stared back at her. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, except that half of her eye makeup was still caked around her eyes. How was she supposed to get it off now?

And what exactly had just happened?

Daquiri spent the rest of the morning avoiding water. Which was a lot harder than one might've first thought.

She didn't say much to Arak or even Fox on the way to school, her mind too occupied with how exactly this was possible. It had to have something to do with an event that happened recently. Moving to California? She was pretty sure that every person who moved here didn't get turned into a fish. Plus, it had been a little over a week since they'd moved.

She thought back to last night. There had been that strange cave...the way the pool had bubbled, and the water had floated up and disappeared in the moonlight…

It was like some sort of magic had happened.

But...for how long? Did this wear off? Would it be only temporary?

She sure hoped so. Because if this morning was a pain, she really didn't want to be living this way for the rest of her life.

And what was she supposed to tell Arak and Fox? Could she even tell them? She wasn't sure if there was an easy way to tell anyone that she was a...a...

"Here we go, bud!"

Daquiri looked up as Arak announced their arrival to Fox. She put on a face to say goodbye to her brother and wish him a good day at school, and he trotted off to the front doors without seeming to be much the wiser about her troubled state.

Arak, however, was not so easily fooled.

"Alright, Ri, spill," Arak said once they were moving again.

Daquiri glanced at him nonchalantly before looking back out the window. "Spill what?"

"Ri, your good lying around everyone else counts as bad lying around me."

Daquiri rolled her eyes. "I don't want to talk about it, Arak."

Arak didn't respond to that right away. He took a breath. "Ri, these conversations aren't exactly my favorite, either. But honesty is one of the few things we can control as a family. I'd like to keep it that way."

"You know what isn't my favorite? You sounding like my parent," she snapped.

"Sometimes there's a reason for that," he shot back, frustration seeping into his voice. "I'm not supposed to be the bad guy here."

"Are you really calling me a kid?" She actually turned to her brother now, anger sparking in her eyes.

"Hate to break it to you, Ri, but you're fifteen. You kind of are."

Now Daquiri was legitimately angry. "Me being fifteen does not mean I have to tell you everything, Arak. I don't care how messed up Dad is, you are my brother, not my father." She crossed her arms. "If we'd had normal childhoods, then yeah, maybe I'd still be a kid. But hate to break it to you—I had to grow up even faster than you did."

They had pulled into the school parking lot at that point. When he stopped, Arak ran a hand over his face.

"I really hate these conversations," he muttered. He turned off the car and got out.

Daquiri stayed put a moment longer before sighing and silently following him.

Neither of them said a word as they walked up to the school.

"Just...try to cool off before the day's over," he muttered at her before they headed into the doors.

"Noted," she replied stiffly.

They parted ways.

Daquiri was still in a fairly bad mood by lunch time. She'd avoided talking in class as much as possible, and now she was just glad she could get away with a half hour respite of being alone.

Or so she'd hoped.

Daquiri was in the middle of eating her salad out of the Tupperware container she'd brought from home when her spot on the grass was abruptly bathed in shadow. She looked up from the book she was concentrating on reading to see who was blocking her sunlight.

To say the least, she wasn't very enthused to recognize the culprit.

"Hey, Daquiri!" Gypsy chirped. Two other kids stood on either side of her—on the right a taller Latina-looking girl, with black hair up in a ponytail and rather sporty-looking clothes; and on the left was a giant. Actually, it was a giant she also recognized—it was the quiet boy she sat next to in her home room, Christopher. She'd still only really seen him sitting down, but now that he was standing up she could see that he had to be at least six feet tall, most likely taller, and he had the build of a bear. Sitting down in front of him was like being next to a building.

Altogether, the three of them looked like a rather odd trio.

Daquiri narrowed her eyes. "Not in the mood, Gypsy." She caught the look that the other two exchanged over Gypsy's head before Daquiri returned her attention to her book.

"I brought my friends to meet you!" she said brightly, like what Daquiri had just said hadn't registered. It probably hadn't, actually. "I figured if you didn't like me, you'd probably like them!"

She wasn't sure whether to be irritated or bemused by the fact that her blatant disregard towards Gypsy didn't seem to faze the girl at all.

When she didn't immediately reply, however, Gypsy forged onwards with the introductions.

"This is Suzi," she said enthusiastically, gesturing to the Latina girl.

Suzi made a short waving motion with an expression that resembled a half-smirk more than an actual smile. " 'Sup."

"And thiiiiis—" Gypsy drew out the word in sing-song fashion as she dramatically splayed her arms out at Christopher. "—is Indy."

Indy?

Christopher-Indy nodded his head in lieu of greeting to her.

Daquiri raised an eyebrow despite herself.

"I thought your name was Christopher," she said flatly.

Whatever His Name Was gave a bit of a smile. "It is—"

"—not," Gypsy finished for him. She grinned like she found this confusion particularly hilarious. "It's Indy."

What's-his-head gave Gypsy a sidelong glance. "Well, technically it's—"

"—Indy," Gypsy interrupted again. "Because that's his real name." If possible, she was grinning even more.

The boy gave a resigned look, apparently not finding it worth it to attempt further explanation. Gypsy gave him a triumphant elbow-nudge—which notably didn't appear to have any effect on him at all. It was like he was a brick wall.

"His name is Christopher," Suzi said, her tone rather short and to the point. "Everyone calls him Indy. Long story."

Daquiri's dubious expression stayed constant throughout the so-called "explanation". It still hadn't budged by the end.

"...okay."

She wasn't sure what else to say, and she still wasn't interested in a conversation in the first place, so she just stayed silent and tried to go back to reading.

The key word being "tried".

"Mind if we join you for the rest of lunch?" Gypsy asked, her voice continuing on its bouncy, boisterous streak.

Daquiri shut her eyes for a moment. "Yes, kind of," she said through gritted teeth. If Gypsy was too oblivious to figure out she wanted to be left alone, wouldn't at least one of her friends catch her drift? Because otherwise, the people at this school had serious boundary issues.

Gypsy cocked her head. "Are you sure? You really seem like—"

"Well that's too bad maybe another time," her friend, Suzi, cut in, grabbing Gypsy's wrist and starting to pull her away. "C'mon, Gyp, we should go get some chocolate milk, nice meeting you Daquiri see ya bye." Her words ran together in a succinct stream, seeming to imply that she really thought Gypsy needed to be shoved away from the situation.

Which Daquiri was perfectly fine with.

Christopher looked after his friends before looking back at her for a moment. She'd decided if his name was Christopher, that was what she was going to refer to him as, no matter how everyone else did.

"It was nice, uh, meeting you," he said, his behavior a bit awkward, before quickly following back after Gypsy and Suzi.

She sure hoped that never happened again.

She took another bite from her salad as she went back to her book. And that had been about five minutes out of her lunch time. She looked at her phone for the time. A whole three minutes left. Yay.

"Hey, you're the new girl, right?"

Daquiri wanted to bang her head against the next wall she saw.

"What do you want?" she snapped, looking up to see a small group of guys had apparently moved in to replace the Odd Squad. There were three of them, a tall muscular one with buzzed dark hair, a slightly shorter and leaner one with hair gelled into one of those obnoxious rhino spikes, and the shortest, who was still probably at least 5'11', a tanned blond who looked like some kind of typical beach boy. All probably a little too much on the attractive side for their own good.

So the douchebag crew of the school had finally decided to show themselves. This was her cue to leave.

"New girl is touchy," Beach Blond said with a laugh, kind of like she wasn't sitting right in front of them.

"New girl is hot," Beef Tower sneezed.

"New girl is leaving," she dead-panned, putting the lid on her lunch and getting up from her spot.

"Aw, they're just teasing," Rhino Horn said with a smile. "We were just coming over to say hi. Y'know, friendly welcome for the new girl."

"Hi," she said flatly. "Bye."

"This chick is hilarious," one of them snickered—she didn't really care to know which. All of their comments about her were pissing her off a little more than usual interactions with strangers normally did.

"If you're fully entertained then, I'll be heading to class now." The lack of enthusiasm in her voice hadn't risen a smidge, and with that she shouldered her bookbag and began to walk away.

"Hey," one of them said behind her, "don't you wanna tell us your name first?" When she didn't turn around, a hand touched her shoulder.

She spun around and slapped his hand away. It was Rhino Horn who had followed after her, though the other two were only steps behind. "Touch me again and you'll really wish you hadn't," she snapped, a fierce edge to her voice and her top about two seconds away from completely blowing through the roof.

Rhino Horn frowned at her reaction while his moron friends "ooooh'ed" in the background like the way stupid highschoolers did when someone got called to the principal's office.

"You'd better be scared, Ty," Beef Tower said with a guffaw. "Mini May's gonna get you."

Daquiri glared at him, and it didn't look like the apparent Ty gave him the nicest of looks either.

"Shut up, Drew," Ty muttered at him. Then he looked back at Daquiri. "And you need to chill."

"Or I could just leave," she retorted before wheeling back around to stride away again. "And you can leave me alone," she tossed back over her shoulder.

Ty yelled a rude name back at her, one that her father liked to use for her a lot, but she ignored it. She wasn't about to start some kind of scene on her second day of school.

Though, as she felt stares burning into the back of her head and curious eyes on her all the way to the courtyard door, she realized she already had.

Fifth hour she realized she now had a familiar face in her chemistry class. Luckily it wasn't her lab partner, but Suzi sat at the lab station to the right of her, and they both sat at the edge so there was no one between them.

So that was slightly awkward.

Daquiri looked up when the girl cleared her throat. She raised a thin eyebrow at her.

"I know Gyp can be a bit...overzealous sometimes," Suzi started. The tone of her voice made it apparent to Daquiri this wasn't really an apology, however. "But you were pretty rude for a new kid that could use friends." Suzi's expression was now definitely on the icier side.

Daquiri let out a sigh through her nose. She was getting really tired of people being "friendly to the new girl".

"Contrary to what everyone else seems to think," she said evenly, "I'm not actually interested in making friends. I come here, I learn, I go home. That's all the state of California requires, so I'd appreciate if everyone stopped trying to shove their ideals down my throat."

Both of Suzi's eyebrows had lifted into high arches by the time Daquiri finished her retort. There was a look of clear disregard on her face now, almost bordering on scornful.

"I don't know why Gyp even tried with you," she said, half muttering to herself.

Daquiri just turned her back on the girl. Her reputation really was the last thing she was worried about at this school.

Their teacher had already explained the lab for today, so now it was time to get through it as fast as possible. Daquiri had always been pretty good at science, which was lucky for her since she wasn't sure how much she'd be able to count on her actual lab partner. Not that he looked completely incompetent or anything, but he didn't exactly look the studious type, either.

Then again, she supposed neither did she.

"Well, this looks dumb, but easy enough." Her partner looked over at her. "What was your name again?"

Well, if she had to.

"Daquiri," she said shortly. She still wasn't in the greatest of moods.

"I'm Kalen," the guy returned easily, giving her a lopsided smile.

"Last I checked that was a girl's name," she said dryly.

Kalen laughed. "Last I checked, yours was a delightful alcoholic beverage," he said with a grin.

Daquiri rolled her eyes. "Different pronunciation, different spelling. Can we get on with this experiment?"

"Whatever the queen says," he said with a wink.

Somebody just strangle her now.

"So, uh, I guess you can section off the different paper towels and I'll set up the water for the eyedropper?" he asked as he grabbed a test beaker.

Daquiri eyed the faucet in the middle of the lab station. Best to keep staying away from water for now. "Sure."

She kept her eyes trained on the running water of the tap even as she ripped off the different brands of paper towel, feeling on edge just being around it. If the developments of the morning still hadn't changed, getting wet right now would be a serious problem.

Daquiri glanced over at Kalen when he swore under his breath. "Forgot my lab book," he muttered. He looked over at the teacher before looking back at her. "Hey I'll be right back, my locker's like two seconds away." He wiggled his eyebrows towards her. "Cover for me if anyone asks?"

The redhead just rolled her eyes at him as he got up from the table and slid out the door.

She spent her time waiting for him filling out the pre-experiment information in her own lab book, up until Suzi of all people got her attention again.

"Not that you'd apparently care," she said in a low voice, "but I'd watch out for that kid. He's not as nice a guy as he comes across."

Daquiri drew her eyebrows together. "Kalen?" Sure, he was annoying and irritatingly flirtatious, but he didn't really seem to be the type who was capable of being outright nefarious. "What, is he your ex or something?" Daquiri asked with the slightest of sneers.

Suzi immediately snorted. "What? No," she retorted. "He's just—"

"Devilishly handsome, if I do say so myself."

Daquiri huffed at the sound of Kalen's voice behind her before giving Suzi a look. She apparently wasn't the greatest of look outs. The girl began to open her mouth with a warning look as Daquiri began to turn around again, but she ignored her. She'd had enough of listening to—

"Woah!" Kalen said in surprise, trying to move out of the way, but Daquiri had turned right into him.

And the beaker of water he was holding.

"Sorry," Kalen said with a laugh as Daquiri stared wide-eyed at the water that had sloshed all over her. "At least it's only water, right?"

Daquiri snapped out of her frozen horror. "Excuse me," she said, not even bothering to snap at the boy as she hurried out of the classroom. When she got out the door, she ran. Wheretogowheretogo—there.

She practically sprinted into the open door, pushing the mop bucket out of the way and shutting the door behind her. She'd barely gotten inside before she felt herself change, and she wobbled off balance for a second until she was falling. She grunted hard as she fell onto a crate with a bunch of cleaning supplies.

Janitor's closet. Great.

She sighed, looking over her shoulder to give her tail a bit of a resigned look.

Well. It definitely hadn't worn off.

Even with all the convenient paper towel she found in the closet, it still took her over 10 minutes to completely dry off. One would not believe how difficult it was reaching the end of her fin.

The idea of it was still weirding her out, actually.

When she quietly returned to the classroom, she wasn't entirely sure how to act. A couple of the kids gave her weird looks and stares, which she was sure wasn't helped by the fact that she was new and still almost no one knew her.

She tried to just ignore everyone as she sat back down at her lab station. She fiddled with some of the lab equipment. "So, where were we?"

She could feel Kalen staring at her.

"Are...you okay?" he asked.

"That's what I would like to know."

Daquiri looked up to see their teacher, Mrs. Evans, standing in front of their lab station. Fantastic.

"Um." She smoothed down her dress a bit. "I...got sick all of a sudden." She knew the tricks to believable lying, so she looked Mrs. Evans straight in the eye when she said so, but inside she felt uneasy. What if things like this kept happening?

Mrs. Evans pressed her lips together, her forehead creasing like she was trying to decide whether or not to believe Daquiri. "If that's the case, then you should go to the school nurse to make sure everything's alright."

"I feel fine now," Daquiri said quickly.

The teacher gave a short shake of her head. "If you're coming down with something, you don't want to give it to everyone. Better have someone take a look at it just to make sure. I'll write you a pass."

Daquiri tried not to sigh as she reluctantly packed up her things and got up from her seat with her bag slung over her shoulder. It looked like this whole anti-water thing was going to be even more trouble than she'd expected.

She saw Suzi raising her brows at her out of the corner of her eye as she walked out. So much for going unnoticed at this school; it was twice now that she'd caught the eye of a crowd. She had enough to deal with at home—she'd hoped at least something about her life could be ordinary.

And now she was missing class on only the second day of school for next to no reason, because like hell was she going to the nurse's office to have them poke around at her. She'd predicted from the moment she'd woken up that morning that today wasn't going to go well—and it had gone worse. She just needed to get out.

Forget just skipping class. She was going to skip out on the rest of school to figure this out.

She texted Arak saying she didn't feel well and was heading home for the day by herself. Even if she did head home on foot it wouldn't take too long, but that wasn't where she was going.

She hadn't exactly been paying attention to where she was running the night before, but it actually didn't take her long to find the cliffside waterfall again; almost like she had an innate sense for where it was. It was weird.

She was careful as she sat down to dangle her legs off the side. Even if it wasn't storming and she was suddenly what appeared to be half fish, she wasn't any more eager to have an encore of last night. So far she'd only transformed while on land; what if once she got in the water, it became permanent?

She drew her legs up to her and ran her hands over them. She was still just confused on...why this had happened to her. And whether or not it was supposed to be a gift or a curse.

At the moment, it felt more like the latter.

And there was still the matter of whether or not to keep it a secret. The only person she would ever even think of telling would be Arak—he was right about the family honesty thing. But even that being said, she often kept secrets from him anyway. For now, she supposed she'd just have to wait it out and see how things went from there…

Daquiri looked further along the edge of the cliff, a ways off to where it tapered into a more gentle slope and onto the beach. Going down there and around the bend into the rocky outcrop was where the cave entrance was half hidden. She wondered…

She made her way down to the entrance, looking around to be sure no one saw her, but this part of the beach was barren as it normally seemed to be. Or at least, in the times she'd been there it had been. She slipped behind the hanging lichen into the entrance of the cave. Even just a few feet in, it was so dark she could hardly even see the silhouettes of the stalactites hanging from the ceiling.

She hesitated for a moment before tentatively laying a hand against the wall.

Instantly, the ceiling lit up brilliantly. Daquiri stared at the crystals, the soft blue-green light of their glow almost entrancing. If only the ceiling weren't so high, she'd have inspected them closer. In light of the change that had happened to her, they seemed even more magical than the night before. There was definitely something special about them.

She walked along the path, following the trail of the light every time she came to a crossroads—which was notably a lot. She imagined that without the guidance of the crystals, it would be nigh impossible to navigate the cave without getting lost in the passageways.

It took her longer than she remembered to get to the cavern with the pool, though that might've been because she took longer to look around her at the cave. Even after she removed her hand from the wall of the pool cavern, the room seemed to stay lit up by the ethereal glow of the pool, as well as the skylight above. She walked over to the edge of the still water.

It sure was strange looking. The smooth stones lining the pool looked like they'd been built that way, as opposed to naturally aligning themselves the way they were. But at the same time, Daquiri had the feeling that no one had ever been in here. Like everything here was because of...well, because of…

Magic.

She would've thought she sounded crazy to even herself, but then again, she had a tail, so.

Daquiri sat down crisscross by the pool edge, staring down at the water. It had bubbled and sparkled last night, but now it was completely still. She felt drawn to reach a hand out and run it through the water, but she didn't particularly feel like turning into a mermaid at the moment.

Oh God.

She'd just thought it out loud. Or, in her head. Whatever. She'd just called herself a mermaid.

Not that it was exactly taboo, but she'd been avoiding the idea up until now. Kind of holding out and hoping this would go away. But really, there wasn't anything else to call it.

She was a mermaid.

She placed her chin on a propped-up hand. Some move this was turning out to be.

Daquiri managed to get all the way to lunch the next day without another water incident. Even the morning had gone fairly smoothly.

Arak had wanted to know why she'd gotten home late again last night, but she'd continued to avoid his questions. Which only continued to frustrate him, she knew, but he was also aware she'd always liked having her space. Right now, she couldn't give him much more of an answer than that.

The part she did feel bad about, however, was leaving Arak with Fox the entire time. Even after she'd gotten home, she'd stayed in her room the rest of the night, doing homework and generally just being alone. She hadn't interacted with him again until going into his and Arak's room to kiss him goodnight. She'd ignored Arak then, too.

Many times when she had problems, she'd gone to Arak to confide in.

With this problem, she had absolutely zero people to confide in.

She might have said, 'ergo, she was sitting alone at a cafeteria table,' but in reality, she'd be sitting alone for lunch anyway.

She'd decided to stay inside today, and was off at a smaller table near the corner of the cafeteria where no one else was sitting. For whatever reason, though, other kids really didn't seem to be getting the memo on the 'stay away' vibe that she'd been giving off since she arrived at this school.

She glanced up at the sound of chairs scraping against the floor around her table to see her three absolute favorite guys all sitting down across from her.

Daquiri raised an eyebrow. "Can I help you?" Her tone, on the other hand, said "go away."

The spiky haired one, Ty, pushed his lunch tray and drink up a bit so he could lean forward on the table, his annoyingly white smile grinning at her. "I figured we got off on the wrong foot yesterday," he said. "So we thought we'd come smooth things over, try to cheer you up." His two friends, Drew and whatever-the-other's-name-was, nodded and gave her lazy smiles accordingly.

She continued to look unimpressed.

"You all at least have a class with me," she began dryly. "Why not smooth things over then?"

Ty shrugged. "We figured we might as well all do it together. Gives you two less conversations to listen to, right?" He gave her a quick wink with a slight chuckle.

Daquiri wasn't amused. "I'd say this was still one too many."

Beach Blond went off on a guffaw and Drew snickered. "Man, you are hard to get," Drew said, accompanied by another snicker and a nudge aimed towards Ty.

Daquiri glared at him, her anger beginning to rise again. "Maybe I'd be easier 'to get' if I were an object instead of, oh, I don't know, a person." Her voice was dripping with a mixture of sarcasm and venom, and she was about two seconds away from actually slapping one of these jerks.

"Hey guys, cool it with the commentary, would you?" Ty pushed at Drew's face, seeming to only be half serious about getting his friend to quit it. Beach Blond might not have been saying as much, but he was sitting back with an amused expression on his face that was really getting under Daquiri's skin.

Ty looked back at her with a smirk. "You can ignore them. They're not very good at first impressions. I'm Tyler, by the way, and that's Drew and Clayne," he said, gesturing to Beef Tower and Beach Blond in turn. "We all just thought you seemed cool, and think you should come hang out some time. You know, go down to the beach or something."

Well, there weren't several red flags going up about that offer or anything.

She tried to heed Arak's warning from their first day, about not getting into fights and especially not getting sent to the office. She tried to take a calm breath.

"As tempting as that sounds," she said slowly, her voice dry, "I think I'll pass."

"If I didn't know better I'd say you didn't like us," Ty said with a bit of a laugh, and the smug smirk still attached to his face. It was making keeping cool a lot harder.

"Let me ask you something, Tyler," she said, her tone abruptly changing. All three of the guys seemed to straighten up when she leaned forward.

"Yeah?" Ty said, smiling slowly.

Daquiri narrowed her eyes. "Did all three of you have to work really hard to get to this level, or are you all just naturally top grade douchebags?" She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. "Because I just can't seem to figure it out."

None of the guys looked all too happy with her at that.

"Hey now—" Tyler and his friends started to get up from their seats, but then they got interrupted.

"Hey, guys!"

Yup. Guess who.

None other than Gypsy, Suzi and Christopher had walked up. Daquiri had tensed even more defensively when the douche trio stood up, and now she was close to snapping. She didn't think Gypsy and her friends were about to help the situation.

Tyler still looked a bit pissed off, as did Drew and Clayne, but he gave a bit of a smile when he saw the three. "Hey Gypsy, Suzi." Ty smirked at each of them in turn. Then his eyes flicked to Christopher. "And Indy, of course." His expression got more of its smugness back at regarding the heck-of-a-lot-taller boy.

By the silent look Christopher gave Ty in return, he didn't seem to regard him very highly himself.

Gypsy rocked back and forth on her feet, a smile on her face that seemed to mark her as oblivious to the tension in the air. "Sooo, whatcha guys talkin' about?" she asked cheerfully.

Daquiri kept silent, just continuing to glare at the boys still across from her as her built-up anger was reaching its peak. She really just needed to get out and cool off…

Ty, on the other hand, looked like he was easing up. A slow smile slid onto his face. "Oh, we were just telling little red here that she should really come down to the beach with us some time." Daquiri grimaced at the nickname. Then Tyler looked straight at Christopher with a grin. "You should help us convince her, Indy. Wouldn't you say she's hot enough to be worth seeing in a bikini?"

Christopher looked like he was going to say something along the lines of "shut up".

Daquiri's top blew before he had the chance.

"You know what?" Daquiri snapped, bolting upright. "Why don't all of you just—"

She was interrupted by about ten drinks erupting around her.

Daquiri's eyes widened at the mess that was now everywhere. She looked down at her clenched hands.

Tyler, Drew and Clayne were in the middle of swearing about having their drinks blow up on them. Christopher was frowning at some kind of liquid that had splashed onto his jacket sleeve.

Suzi and Gypsy were staring at her.

"I...have to go." Daquiri hastily grabbed her stuff, leaving half her uneaten lunch and tea on the table and quickly heading for the cafeteria doors. She avoided making eye contact with all the kids that had been disrupted by the commotion. She seemed to be getting worse and worse at this not-making-a-scene thing.

She was halfway down the hall before she heard the door slapping open and closed behind her and then running footsteps.

"Daquiri! Daquiri, wait!"

Daquiri recognized Gypsy's voice behind her, but she didn't bother turning around. She was about 200% less in the mood to talk to people than she'd even been five minutes ago.

That didn't seem to deter the crazy rainbow-dreaded girl from catching up and cutting her off anyway, however.

"Gypsy, I really don't want to talk right now," she said, her voice still on edge. She tried to continue walking around the girl, but Gypsy just took up walking backwards.

"You left your drink behind!" Gypsy exclaimed, hurriedly shoving the bottle of iced tea at her.

Daquiri immediately jumped back a bit at the sight of the sloshing liquid, though it didn't quite go over the lip of the bottle. She steadied herself, trying to stay nonchalant. "Watch it!" she snapped. "You can have it, I don't care."

Gypsy paused, seeming to consider something.

Then out of nowhere, she overturned the drink and thrust it in Daquiri's direction.

Daquiri gasped just out of pure shock of her entire front being soaked. She looked up at Gypsy for a moment, a mixture of anger and confusion in her eyes.

Then she ran.

A/N:Fun fact: the douchebag comment Tyler made to Ri about looking hot in a bikini I got from an actual personal experience. I wasn't much happier than Ri about it.

These first two chapters were a bit slow, I know-had to get all those introductions and such out of the way. That's why I had to end with some excitement! Whee! Hopefully things should pick up in interest from here on out, though.

So, yeah. I think that was all I was going to say. Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave a comment/review! :D