A/N: Kildy, this is for you. I know you've been anxiously awaiting this. };), HPFan, here's more of the story.
Disclaimer: Leena, Mina, Rebo, Brock, Orianna, Kildare, Gavin, Eslin, Neva and anyone else you don't recognize are mine. (Actually, Kildare belongs to a friend of mine who is letting me use her for the sake of the story. It's pronounced: kil-DAR-ey, last syllable is a long 'a'.)
Chapter 5: Black and Blue
The bustling hallways of the high school were crammed with chattering students, overflowing book-bags, and banging lockers. The end-of-the-day bell had just rung and Rebo was walking as fast as the crowd would allow her to. Her hands were clamped in fists of impatience as a group of 'giggler's stopped right in the middle of the hall. How annoying... She gritted her teeth and pushed past, trying to get to the W wing at the other end of the school. Fed up, Rebo shoved aside some lowly freshman and plowed through another group of gigglers. Leena was waiting, arms crossed, leaning against her locker in a would-be casual stance. Rebo reached her finally, closely followed by Gavin and Brock. "Where's everyone else?" Rebo asked grumpily. Leena took her time in answering. "They are busy making sure that no teachers are going to be around this end of the school. Did they accept the challenge?" Leena replied in an airy tone. Gavin chuckled and Brock smirked. "Yeah, they accepted...but only after Mina said it was just to be you and her this time, not a full-fledged rumble," Brock said. Leena nodded and stopped leaning against the locker, letting her curtain of raven hair cascade down her back. "I'm not surprised...All of you are more than a match for her little flunkies, anyway," Leena replied scathingly.
She sighed, looking down at her hands, spreading them out in front of her. Gavin looked quizzically at her hands, then voiced a question which all of the group had been wondering: "Why do you wear the sleeves with holes for your thumbs?" "The better to hide my weapons, my dear," she retorted in a creaky, old voice. Brock and Rebo laughed, but Gavin persisted, "No, seriously, why do you?" Leena grinned a sly smile, then wrapped her hands around his neck. "GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! That's cold!!" he cried as the iciness penetrated his skin. "Any questions now, Gavin?" Leena asked brightly, removing her fingers. Gavin rubbed his neck furiously, trying to get rid of the white handprints left on it. Orianna, Kildare, Neva, and Eslin burst into giggles at the site of him. " 'Bout time you showed up, we were getting worried," Rebo said between giggles. "We had to distract Mrs. Mulciber. You know how she gets," Kildare replied. "Oh, look, here comes Miss Priss..."Orianna muttered.
***
Mina approached the group at the end of the hall, her friends in tow. At the sight of Leena, dressed in her black sweatshirt with the thumbholes, she cracked a sardonic grin. 'Typical', she thought, 'How typical.' Every fight, Leena would always wear black and Mina would always wear a light blue. Each loved having a separate color to go with them when the fought. Both were excellently trained in how to fight and defend themselves and regularly staged fights between each other's friend-groups. Most of the time the groups would end up watching the Twins duke it out. And it always ended up with something expensive getting broken...Last time it was the lockers: One whole hallway had been demolished, with twisted metal and paper littering the floor. Oops... Everyone had escaped from punishment and gotten a week off from school, besides, as it was repaired. And the time before that, the computer lab had been terrorized with half the equipment damaged beyond recognition, not to mention repair and before that, all the lunch tables had wound up implanted in the walls of the cafeteria. Nobody knew how it managed to happen, but it was a well-known fact between groups that it only happened when the Twins fought. They must have had some weird, telekinetic powers that weren't known about.
Leena and Mina met in the middle of the hallway, staring each other straight in the face.. "So, what are we using today?" she said with a grin, breaking the ice. Leena grinned back and said, "I need to practice with choke chains...How about you?" "I think I'll elect to use daggers. I haven't practiced them in a long time. Choose a second." Leena turned and looked her friends up and down, sizing them and thinking of their skills. Mina was doing the same to her group. "Rebo, Kildare: stand at the sides and be ready," Leena decided. Mina bit her lip, frowning. Rebo and Kildare were almost as skilled as Leena herself in weaponry and techniques. "Emily. Inez. Stand ready to fight," she said shortly, trying to keep it as even as possible. Neva squirmed uncomfortably, she had a premonition that this fight was going to be a bad one. Eslin quickly moved behind Gavin, who walked forward for a better view. Brock pulled Kildare aside, wishing her good luck. Rebo stood on one side, bouncing up and down in excitement while Inez and Emily glanced at each other worriedly. Leena and Mina stood back-to-back, waiting for the signal. Gavin yelled, "GO!" and they turned to face each other, eyes glinting in anticipation. Mina snatched her daggers from her sleeves and Leena took her chain from her pocket, stretching it out taught.
***
Each move was fast, furious, and calculated and the spectators were left gasping with astonishment. The cries of fury and angry faces of the twins were almost inhuman, the way they were fighting. Kildare and Rebo were jumping up and down, itching to join in, but Inez and Emily were hanging back. Finally, Leena wound the chain around Mina's last dagger with a clank. "Hey! No FAIR!" Mina bellowed in rage. Leena pulled the chain in a quick motion and the dagger lay at her feet. "Too bad...I win again and you were right; you should have practiced more with those daggers," she laughed. "You guys, we had better split! The teacher meetings are let out right now!" Grace squeaked, a little mouse of a thing from Mina's group. They looked around the hall, dreading what they were going to see. This time, the walls were shredded and cracked, plaster dust was everywhere. Some of the ceiling tiles had come loose and were smashed on the ground. But the lockers had stayed intact this time, as Rebo (ever the optimist) was quick to point out. Mina started giggling, then started walking out the backdoor, her friends close on her heels. Leena covered her mouth with her hands, trying and failing to stifle the laughing fit she was having. Gavin shook his head and started ushering everyone else out of the school, to run quickly away before they got into some serious trouble. Everyone was hooting with laughter once they reached the path towards Leena and Mina's house.
***
After the twins bid farewell to their friends, they walked leisurely down the path towards their house, still laughing about the match. Nothing about it was really amusing, but they always liked to see how much damage had been done and estimate how long it would take to clean up. Leena fell silent as she pondered Gavin's earlier question. She knew why she kept her sleeves pulled down over her hands with holes for her thumbs; the holes were to make sure that her sleeves stayed down. Ever since the summer, she had been noticing a mark on her left forearm that would sometimes itch and appear red or seem to only be a tiny red blotch. But the thing that mystified her was the way it had started coming back more frequently during the past few months and had some sort of shape to it, like a part of a twisted line and something else; it was unintelligible. At first she had thought it to be a sort of a bite, but then realized that it would have disappeared at the beginning. So she kept her sleeves down and never told anybody about it, not even Annie. Thinking about the mark on her arm made her remember some of the dreams she had been having this year, too. A person named Wormtail, the back of a chair, bright green light, a snake...Every weird dream she had this year had involved each of those things and she was no closer to figuring the dreams out than the mark. Quickly, she snapped out of her state of oblivion as Annie stood on front step, arms crossed and a knowing smile playing on her lips.
***
Exhausted, Leena went to bed early, giving the excuse that she wanted to rest up for the final exam of the year. What she really wanted to do was examine the mark in private; it had been hurting progressively all day and the squiggly line and blotch that was connected to it were getting clearer throughout the day. She never had problems like this with it before, so why was it acting weird all of a sudden? She checked the date on the calendar: June 24th. Ok, so it wasn't Friday the 13th...she shook her head and blew back her bangs from her forehead in frustration. Maybe a drink of water would help. She made her way to the bathroom in her pajama pants and tank top, only to find Mina being vain again, brushing her honey-gold hair in front of the mirror with a dreamy look on her face. Leena snorted through her nose, bringing Mina back down to earth. She whirled around to see Leena leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed and smirking. "Don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful..."Mina quipped. "I didn't say anything," Leena replied amusedly and went back to her room. Damn...oh well, maybe getting some rest would help. With that, she rolled onto her bed and fell into a fitful sleep.
***
"Kill the spare" the cold voice said. The figure swathed in black swung his arm down and cried "Avada Kedavra!" and a flash of green light flared past Leena's eyelids. She tossed and turned, but didn't wake up. Her arm felt like it was covered in a bunch fire ants. She saw the tall boy fall to the ground, saw the short figure tie the other boy to a headstone which had TOM RIDDLE inscribed at the top. Riddle....Riddle...It was her own last name! These dreams just kept getting stranger...now the short man was putting something in a huge cauldron, adding a powder from the grave, his own hand, and what appeared to be blood from the boy tied to the headstone. ....and stranger... Clouds of steam billowed from the cauldron and then a tall, skeletally-thin, pale man was visible through the steam, the short man pulled a black robe on the thin man then the thin man stepped from the cauldron and Leena saw bright red eyes set in a serpent-like face, which was as white as paper. ...and stranger... Next thing that happened was the man with red eyes pulled up the short man's left sleeve and Leena saw a vivid red mark on his forearm. The man with red eyes pressed his fingers to the mark and fire shot through Leena's arm, making her cry out. Her eyes flew open and she grabbed her left forearm, looking in disbelief: The mark on the short man's arm was now on her's and it was burning black.