-note- This one's for Golden-Sama. Happy Birthday! What does it feel like to be seventeen?… the world may never know. Heh heh. Or at least it seems like I won't. looks at calendar only 2 years, 8 months, and 1 day left. How can I wait that long?

-note- yep, there's some conflict in this one...and mushiness. And another obscure character. Can you guess which one? Oh yes. And a little better explanation of the AUC thing… Hm. The pizza place is based on a pizza place I used to go to before I moved. Kind of. Just parts of it, anyway.

Chapter Nine

Victor is very protective of his car. The sleek and shiny silver surface of the vehicle he build (mostly) by himself gave him pride, including his burglary system. If someone put too much pressure on the wrong spot it would howl like a donkey during mating season - loud enough for everyone who was not even nearby to hear. And imagine the fear stirring in that person's heart when they would see Vic jogging towards them with an evil look on his face when all they had done was lean on the door.

You can only guess what his reaction was when the suggestion of taking his car to drive them to pizza was.

"What!" he had exclaimed, and, after looking at all of the faces continued, "with, like, ten people? You gotta be kidding me! My baby can't take that kind'a pressure!"

So, in result of this and the fine weather conditions, they had decided to walk towards their destination; pizza.

"Shouldn't you two be… on a date or something?" Dick raised his eyebrows above the upper rim of his sunglasses at his two dark skinned friends as they walked along.

The large group of friends was slowly proceeding down the white paved sidewalk; crusted, broken and pushed around by protruding weeds and roots, most in their own separate minds. Well, not all of them. Mostly just Garfield, who, along with Victor's PSP (which he had, so kindly, stolen) was walking by himself, lagging behind the rest of the group.

In the head of the group walked Raven, Achilles, Rayne, and Winter, who were sharing a quite - erm - exciting discussion about theatre. Well, at the time it seemed exciting. Mostly it was just ranting about good plays and musicals; giving their own accordance of their exploits in the theatre area of life. All of them loved the drama part of art a good deal (though the other forms did not displease them) and found common ground which they could speak there.

A little ways behind them, graced with the incredibly less interesting topic of 'girl stuff,' were Betty, Kori, and Emily. But, mind you, when I say that Betty was there, that does not mean that she was actually participating in this 'girl talk.' She would comment on something that one of the other girls would say every so often, but the rest of the time she would float in and out of everyone else's conversations. One of these that she interrupted quite regularly was the conversation between Dick and Victor; talking about quite the opposite of Kori and Emily, the 'guy stuff,' "Cars." Just now, though, after Betty and Victor had begun a heated argument over the carburetors on Mercedes and Dodge Vipers, was when Dick dropped this comment.

Both of the friends' eyes bulged though for reasons that both intertwined and had differences. First of the ones that they shared was the fact that he was implying that the two of them would actually go on a date together. Sh'ya. Like that would ever happen (cough-hack-cough… excuse me.). Victor's bulged because now he would either have to explain 'the (master) plan' to Dick (bringing Winter's painful vengeance on him) or succumb to the wrath of Betty by saying that he did say it. Why was Betty's eyes bulging? She was just so damn confused, I tell you. Confuzzled as muffins can be.

This was where Victor had to make a choice. The choice mentioned previously in the last paragraph, as a matter of fact. He thought fast. He seemed to be doing a lot of that today; what with the whole '(master) plan' and everything. In his mind he was weighing his options and his eyes were trying to make contact with Winter's, the girl who started this whole mess (but did not get him into the dating part) to figure out what she wanted him to do about it.

A whole lot of good that did him. The season named girl was busy trying to distract Vesta who had spent the last five minutes getting Achilles to show her his tongue. She claimed that it was important to see if 'a Bishi' had a cute tongue - or at least something around that general area of topic. Winter was in no position to help Victor out.

So the African American Quarterback tried to lie.

"It was a different Betty…?" he tried. Unfortunately, Dick could read faces to see if people were lying. It probably was a good thing that he couldn't see Victor's face when the original lie getting him in this mess had started; who knows what would have happened.

Dick shook his head, a slight smirk coming through his face. "No it wasn't," he countered, "I asked you that myself. And you said specifically that it was Betty Eddens; our Betty Eddens."

The black girl turned to Victor and shouted at him, "YOU TOLD HIM WHAT!"

Vic ignored her and continued to argue with Dick, "You must have heard me wrong. I wouldn't say that!"

"No, I'm positive that is what you said. I have excellent hearing." Richard continued to poke at his friend (and not in the perverted way you perves!)

"SO NOW I'M NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!"

"I did not!"

Mr. Grayson shrugged. "I remember it exactly as it happened. You told me that you didn't want to go on a treasure hunt with me because you had to go on a date. I asked you with whom and you informed me that it was Betty. I did not believe you at first but you insisted. Is this right?"

Betty looked like she was about to shout something else at Victor before he even spoke but stopped herself as if something had suddenly made sense in her brain. She made a look on her face as if to have suddenly understood everything in the world and then spoke in a much quieter voice than she would have originally.

"Yeah," she said, latching her arm to Vic's, "We were gonna go out tonight, but, man, this dawg can't keep his calendar straight. And 'sides, going out with you guys is fun."

Both the other boys looked completely flabbergasted. Betty was a much better actor than Victor was, and this was a very convincing scene.

So Dick's only solution was to begin to stutter again, and that was how the two left him, arm in arm. When they were out of sight Betty hissed three words to the larger boy that stroked fear in his heart. "You owe me."

Raven, seeing Dick's predicament, approached him while he walked and just listened to him speak for a few minutes. If you can call the gibberish flowing from his mouth in grim defeat speech.

The nearly violet haired girl patted Dick on the shoulder before returning to her original place and conversation. "Don't hurt yourself."

"Ten," Dick said to the seating lady at the entrance to the pizzeria. She was a teenager; probably only working here as a last resort, and popped chewing gum between her teeth while wrapping strands of fluorescent yellow hair around her finger. She was giving the friends an odd look.

"Yeah," she said, rolling her eyes and slowly getting off the stool on which her bum resided and walked to the part section of the dining area. It was empty, but one of the tables still had favours from the previous party (which of course they bypassed) and the lights were a bit dim. To the left of where everyone stood was another doorway (without any door) which led to a video game room.

Gar took this opportunity to sit down immediately on one of the seats and take the menu from the girl standing boredly beside them all. "We'll have two large vegan cheese pizzas, one vegan pineapple pizza and Doctor Pepper."

The green boy said this so confidently that no one interrupted him.

With a snap of her chewing gum and a look saying that she believed Gar to be stupid on her face the girl replied, "Uh, I'm not the waiter. He'll come later."

After dropping that comment she turned to leave. Everyone had some form of a nervous smile on their face as she disappeared back where she'd come and they were left alone. Now is when the yelling began.

"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING!" Of course this outburst came from Victor, "WHAT IF SHE WAS THE WAITER? WE WOULD HAVE BEEN STUCK WITH YOUR TOFU CRAP!"

"Hey," Winter said, trying to add the comic relief that would certainly not be used by Gar in this part of the chapter, "At least he got Doctor Pepper. Nobody can NOT like Doctor Pepper. I mean, it's the best -"

"So are you saying that I'd be fine with only something to drink?" Of course Victor was not mad at Winter (or at least not that we, at this time, know of), but he still had to blow off SOME of that steam.

A few people shrugged. One of them was Raven. "Fighting is pointless. Fighting over something that did not even occur is plain stupid."

Garfield, who certainly did not want Victor yelling at him any more, ran up to Raven and grabbed her arm, pulling it up into the sky as a coach would a wrestler after winning a match. "Hear, hear!" He exclaimed with enthusiasm, gaining a glare from the purple hoodied girl and the dark boy, Achilles, standing nearby.

"Come on everybody," he said with a grin, "Let's just sit down."

Luckily everyone followed his advice. No groans were even heard as the scraping of chairs being pulled away from the table was the resounding noise (though it also helped that no one really was complaining).

Raven sat between Achilles and Garfield. Chaos is not insured. This could be trouble.

Garfield, the fool that he is, made the first move (slaps Gar on head. Stupid, stupid Garfield).

"Hey Ra-a-ae," he said with seductiveness in his tone, "There's video games right over there. You know you wanna play 'em."

Raven rolled her eyes and raised one eyebrow a little bit. "You really have bad memory. Don't you."

He scrunched up his face, trying to remember what his dark friend was trying to jump start his brain to remember, but failed miserably. The green boy shrugged. "Yup."

"So you obviously do not remember how I mentioned to you quite how much I detest video games."

The green boy did remember. So he put on his best puppy dog face and tried to beg her. "Please Raven," he said in a small, almost whiny tone, "I'll be lonely if someone doesn't come with me."

Raven sighed, and for a moment Gar thought she would give in. Ha. Fat chance. He can't tell the difference between a sigh of exasperation and a sigh of giving up. That poor boy. "Then get Victor or Achilles to play with you," she droned.

Garfield pouted. Not to any extremity, but it was apparent that he did not get his way and was disappointed. Before long (less than thirty seconds) he began to squirm and began to beg his 'Goth' friend again, though this time for a different thing.

"Can you make sure that they get something without meat? PLEASE!" It was a relief to Raven to hear him ask her something other than to play video games.

"Why?" she asked monotonously, "Winter doesn't eat meat either; just ask her."

Raven shrugged and pulled a tattered old book from the pocket of her hoodie. This conversation was pretty much over. She flipped through the pages until she came to where she had left off that afternoon and began to read, hardly noticing when Gar hopped off to do whatever he wanted to do. The dull din of voices having conversations by her were lulling and, a few minutes later, a louder voice made her jump.

She looked to see who had approached and saw red hair. Long red hair. A very professional looking red suit over an incredibly muscular and a towel over an arm. And long red hair. (Bishi! )

He was speaking in a loud obnoxious voice, in a language that she could not comprehend. Kori obviously could, though, because she replied back in the same language and they conversed for a few moments before the female redhead turned to the rest of her friends (who were now staring) to explain.

"This is Twig!" she said excitedly, "He came to, upon our table, wait, and we have realized that he came from the same country as I - Tamaran!"

Well this made sense; they had the same hair (Long red hair) and his eyes were the same fantastic green that Kori's were. Not to ignore the fact that they both spoke Tamaranian quite fluently.

After taking their order, which, Raven noted, did include a vegan cheese pizza, Twig went away. (though that is quite obvious.) Kori was quite excited.

"Is it not wonderful that we have found a friend who is of the same nation as I?" Kori chattered to Dick who was sitting beside her, on and on, about her 'new friend Twig.' The poor tinted glasses wearing boy looked like he was about to barf. Or at least a little bit close. There was also a chance of him spontaneously combusting.

On the other side of the table, though, unaware (mostly) to Kori's talking, sat Winter, Rayne, Vesta, and Emily. They were trying to figure this whole thing out.

"But it's Twig!" Rayne said, "Twig's awesome!"

Emily shook her head. "You don't understand. Don't you remember how Starfire drooled over him in Betrothed? If he sticks around there'll be trouble."

Vesta did not seem to care. Rayne understood; she had understood from the point when he had appeared holding a notepad and asking (with a Tamaranian accent) if he could take their order, but, as she had said, who could not love Twig? Vesta grinned. "Twig's a bishi too!"

Winter rolled her eyes. "What happened to Achilles, exactly?"

"Nothing," Vesta said simply, "It's not like we're dating or anything." She then gasped at a thought that came to her mind, "But Achilles DOES have a cute tongue!"

Emily, Rayne, and Winter sweatdropped. (or would have if they were in an anime.) "Um," Rayne said, "That's good to know."

"Come on guys," Winter said, "Focus!" She was having trouble focusing herself. But it always makes you look better when you're the one who says it.

"So how'd he get in?" Emily asked, "I KNOW we don't have an AUC operative on Tamaran - and he wasn't on earth last time I checked."

Rayne was the one that came up with the answer to this one, "All right, think about it. It controls Alternate Universes but it's still a dream. In dreams really weird things can happen. Since some things, like where we are, is… regulated… by the controller, those things won't change from second to second like in a real dream. But if someone accidentally begins to think about another person I think that they might actually show up. We'll have to ask Ana when we get out of here, but now we just have to act on theory."

"You do realize that I may be the only one who understood that, right?" Winter asked Rayne.

Emily seemed a little indignant to this comment. "I did!" she said, not wanting to be out of the loop. Emily is smart; she probably did understand it. Or at least… most of it.

Vesta didn't care whether or not she was labeled as less intelligent. She understood what Rayne had said; she'd hung around Winter and the redhead long enough to understand how they spoke, but still just shrugged it all off.

"Okay then," Winter said, "We'll just have to keep an eye on everybody and make sure that Beast Boy doesn't wish Terra here or something…"

Twig wordlessly put the pizzas on the table with a captivating smile. He was about to walk away to go back to work but Kori stopped him in Tamaranian.

"Would you like to eat pizza with us?" she asked him in her native language.

He shook his head. Twig had work to do. He then wrote something on his notepad, tore it off and handed it to Kori before walking away. "Call me sometime," he replied in the same language.

Dick did not look but looking is not necessary when you know what something is. He was seething.

Garfield, after spending about half a pocketful of quarters on one player video games between brief bites of pizza and sips of soda, decided to try his luck once again.

"Hello, Raven," he said, planting himself on the seat beside her. Achilles was occupied by Vesta (not literally) on her other side so she wasn't busy, only reading one of her books.

She looked up briefly and nodded in greeting before returning to the words which seemed to captivate her.

"One game."

"No."

Raven had lashed out her answer at the green boy almost before he had even given her the request.

Gar whined. "Raven, it's not even really a video game. It'll be fun. Just one?"

"Thank you, but no."

Pulling his hands down his face in exasperation he tried, "Dude! What does it take to get you to play one measly game?"

Raven still did not move her face from the book. "A 'please' would be a good start."

Gar's face lit up and he regained his optimism - "Will you pretty, pretty PLEASE play a game with me? Vic's no fun!" -

Only to have it torn back away when Raven replied, once again with a resounding, "No."

The moment it had escaped her lips, though, the whole other side of the table, consisting of four girls with major mental issues (guess who), shouting, "JUST GO ALREADY!" at her, causing her to jump up in surprise and to be dragged away by an obnoxiously hyper Garfield.

As they wound through the video game consoles, on their right by a wall Raven could see a glimpse of red hair, and, looking harder, both Kori and Twig. Kori did not seem to be in a good mood - she seemed to be rather angry at the other Tamaranian, and was speaking to him with great force in the alien language.

Raven almost pitied the boy, but realized that for Kori to be angry he must have done something pretty bad. Or at least really stupid.

She continued to be dragged along by the arm until Garfield stopped in front of the largest gaming console in the entire arcade; Dance Dance Revolution. The violet haired girl could not help but emit a moan at seeing it.

"You have got to be kidding me," she said in an almost warning monotone.

With a shrug, Gar fished out two quarters from his pocket and replied, "You're the queen of sarcasm. You tell me."

DDR takes a lot out of you, especially when you get into it like Raven eventually had. The two of them, Gar and Raven, ended up having a lot of fun playing the dance-step game to the bad j-pop music it had in its memory and Raven had even laughed at one point at Gar's antics.

So it seemed like all too soon that Kori came up to them and told them that the rest of the group was leaving. It was a Friday night and the school curfews were later, but they still were there. Raven nodded her head and they followed the redhead out. The toned violet haired girl wanted to ask Kori what had happened with Twig but she realized that Kori probably did not want to talk about it in front of everyone else. So instead she kept quiet.

They met up with everyone else at the front door, the rest had already been assembled and stood, some (like Winter) less awake than others. Together they all walked down the same route they had on the way there until they came to the corner where Harrisfield students went one way and Lemington, the other. Goodnights were said, huggles all around and waves from others, and Dick stretched a little bit, looking at the little deli on the corner where they all were separating. The rest of the group was already on its way, but not far enough that the spiky haired teen had to speak loudly to be heard.

"Hey, anybody want coffee?"

He asked this in general to the other Harrisfield students; Victor, Betty, Kori, Raven, Rayne and Winter, but his eyes locked immediately on Kori's. Noticeably, she was the only one who answered with a yes, but no one commented or even snickered within earshot.

"What flavour do you want?"

Dick and Kori stood together at the coffee counter of a small deli they had found on the corner. The two teens were not uncomfortable around each other; they both knew the other so well that something like that was out of the question, but Dick was a little bit nervous about talking to her.

"The strawberry kind looks delectable," she said, examining the choices of flavoured coffee. Dick smiled and put the cup under the spigot, both of them watching the hot substance pour into the insulated container. After it had filled, the spiky haired boy also got one for himself; paying before the two left the shop.

"You have fun?" Richard asked the redhead walking beside him. She was blowing on the steaming coffee, waiting for it to become a cool enough temperature to drink.

"I most certainly did! It was a fantastic experience to meet another Tamaranian so far from home!" Kori seemed to be too drunk with happiness for Dick to make her sad by insulting the red haired bishonen she had met that night. He kind of changed the subject.

"He gave you his number, right?"

Not as per expected, Kori's face fell a little bit. "Yes, he did, but I do not wish to call him."

This and her look threw Dick off. He had been expecting her to be jumping for joy, but she looked rather disappointed instead. "Are you okay?"

The redhead looked up with a smile on her face. "Yes, of course I am. Why do you ask?"

"You just looked a little sad, that's all," Dick said with a concerned look on his own face. She may have not been interested in him romantically (hey, I'm writing this from his perspective, not mine) but he still cared about what happened to her.

"No, I am not sad," she said, "Though it does disappoint me that Twig was not as kind a person as I would have liked him to be."

Dick knew better than to ask what she meant by that although it was a lot to resist that urge. Instead he brought his steaming cup to his lips and sipped the hot liquid, allowing her some free air.

They both walked together in this silence for a few moments, and Kori did continue, but not immediately.

"It was wonderful to meet him, as I said, but I do not wish to meet him again until he, what would be the American way to put it - grows up."

"So you don't like Twig?" Dick's face couldn't help but light up a little bit with hope.

"His lack of integrity and intelligence does not delight me one bit," Kori said, shrugging her shoulders as if careless and tossing the now empty cup into a nearby trash can. She turned to Dick and took his hand, causing him to become surprised though he did not complain, "So I believe that it is time for us to return to the school of learning now. It's late."

I LIKE REVIEWS!

Queen-of-Azarath: Really? You like answering questions? Yep. I think they're fun too. So I don't have time to put any in this chapter but I'll put some interesting ones in the next. :-d I am so late. I hated this chapter. Heh heh... BTW- sorry there wasn't a cafe scene in this one - i forgot about it until after I uploaded this and didn't get the chance to write it. I am so late. (once again)

The Devils Nightmere: lol. It's all my fault, I know. How can you hate Starfire? gasps Well I guess that's your choice :-d. Thanks for reviewing!

Rose: Aw, don't worry, they'll be playing the eppie over and over and over again anyway. I hope you get to see it!

Golden-Sama: All hail Kind Salad! Dude, that name is so cool. Hm. Holy Cow. My friend Hillary (also known as Vesta) downloaded Stranded off the internet. She came up to me this morning in the hallway with Caitlyn and they were both uber excited - that girl (meaning Hillary) felt that she had so much power over us (meaning Paula and Caitlyn… lol) because she knew everything about the episode and could torture us by telling us only in small fragments. Ag. I am going to steal it from her. Did you know that Mother Mae-eye (sp?) is out too? And the End parts one and two come out like next week in some places? Oh dear. Heh heh. I rant a lot. I was watching TROQ again right after I updated my story last Thursday and near the end when they are all standing together on the top of Titan's Tower - and for a second there I could have SWORN that I saw Beast Boy and Raven holding hands for a second there. They weren't; I had to rewind the tape to check it again, but - soddin' muffins, man - it LOOKED like it! They're standing next to each other and… yeah. We can wish, can't we? Anyways, happy birthday again! (hehe.)

-note- Okay, so thechapter sucked and it was mushy. Euh. That's life. Guess what! My sister's coming home this weekend! So that means I'm going to be in the car for a grand total of about eleven hours this weekend. Mmm. Good writing time (but only if I get down to it). I have a couple other projects to work on, but I'll try to work on next week's chapter so that it is a decent length etcetera. So I'll see you next Thursday! (May 26)

Sneaky Peaky: "Chapter Ten"
Okay, we're 1/3 of the way there. To where? The end of course. Oh my this will be fun. The next chapter is something… a bit more… mature I could say? Poking fun at girls and vampires… and what happens when they come to visit (the vampires, not the girls. Oh dear I don't believe that made any sense to you. It will when the next chapter comes)