-note- Erm… Once again I am late. This time I am much later, but life is a pain that way I guess. You'd think that in the summer I would find myself with much more time etcetera but things just don't work out like that….

-note- I'm lost. I've gone to find myself. If I should return before I get back, tell me to wait.

-dedication- Woo! TTHPfan this chapter is dedicated to. An awesome reader/reviewer she is. And, er, I'm going to stop talking like Yoda now. :-d

Chapter Seventeen

Winter yawned, typing slowly at the keys on her laptop. Slowly the pitter patter turned into a pattern, sounding almost like a quiet stream of steady raindrops. There was a different kind of crowd, she realized, when it wasn't a Wednesday night, and she almost enjoyed the difference. Variance is good.
"What are you doing here?"
The voice was male, and the red and blonde haired girl recognized it before she even turned around, which, by the way, was an action she didn't take. She continued to type while she said to the voice, "John. I didn't know you worked weekends."
"I could say the same thing," John replied, moving into Winter's line of vision, "So what are you doing here on a Saturday? You came Wednesday. Don't tell me you're going to start showing up more."
"So what if I do?"
John's eyes narrowed. "Is that a threat?"
"So what if it is?"
The door of the café opened slowly, and a lone figure wandered in. She looked a bit like Winter, though her hair was dark brown, almost black, and the younger teen recognized her immediately.
However, she ignored this recognition.
"Heh, heh! You can't think of a come back to THAT one, can you!" Winter pulled her right hand off the keyboard to waggle her pointer finger at the waiter.
Steena, Winter's older sister who had just entered the scene, stepped between the two fighting teens and held them apart, making sure that they were in a non-fighting distance from each other.
"Let it be."
The older girl left Winter and John watching her in silence, and she left as quickly and quietly as she had entered. They were so entranced that they forgot their immediate bickering.
"John –" Winter said expectantly.
"One water, coming right up."

Nursery rhymes are usually learned when children are young – linking their arms together with other preschoolers and dancing around in circles or jumping over multicoloured ropes to a beat and chanting them at the top of their lungs. There are so many of them that sometimes one cannot tell whether they are a nursery rhyme or not, though there are a few who know the difference.

There are especially a few when it comes to the weather; more specifically the rain. The young ones spend so much time trying to chase it away that it surprises one occasionally that the condensed droplets continue to fall evermore, especially during the damper seasons of the year.

The most amusing thing about nursery rhymes, though, is that they all have at least one hidden meaning that nearly no children, and most adults, do not understand. For example, almost all children grow up singing "Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posies…" not understanding at all that the song is speaking of a plague and of dying.

So of course there must be multiple hidden meanings for all the others, including the ones of rain, right?

Well tell me I'm still a child and ignorant, but there are none that immediately come to mind in this case. Of course, though, what I think is not always the same as what my friends think. And, seeing as it was raining even as the sun came up the Tuesday morning of September Seventh, they thought about it a lot.

It all began about third period.

"It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring," Vesta chanted to Achilles as they both sat down in the still nearly vacant classroom. Outside the rain was slanted directly at the glass and making a soothingly loud pounding noise which was enjoyed by the wavy dirty blonde haired teen. "He went to bed and wet his bed and died in the morning!"

Achilles released a little bit of a yawn. "That's not how it goes."

Vesta grinned back at him while saying, "Yeah, but my way is better, right?"

"Stuff like that's pointless," was everything that the black haired guy could think to say. His eyes rolled and he pulled out a book. It was an old edition of a collection of Shakespeare's plays; focusing on the tragedies. He had begun his journey of making his way through the series of those plays yesterday, beginning with that very same book, and was making a very good effort. He must have been at least halfway though Romeo and Juliet.

Her shoulders sagging, Vesta seemed a little bit hurt. Then she figured out a way to get him back with an evil light of a smirk on her face. "Then how'd you know how the original nursery rhyme went?"

People were beginning to enter the classroom; trickling slowly like honey off of a spoon. Only a few came in at a time. Being early to places was not a priority to most students at Lemmington. Soon Garfield would be there as well and Vesta decided she would use her green skinned friend to completely ignore Achilles pointedly.

"Because I didn't know stuff was pointless when I was a kid," Achilles mustered up, trying to look completely engrossed in his book. Don't get me wrong, he was interested, but he was still paying a lot of attention to what Vesta was doing.

Vesta pouted. Then she began to sing again, though she did it more quietly this time. "If my lips ever left my mouth, packed a bag and headed south, that'd be too bad; I'd be so sad."

Tossing a tress of shaggy black hair out of his eyes, he raised that very part of his face to look directly at Vesta's own eyes and told her the following: "Everything's pointless. Even the lips song."

"I love my lips." Her eyes were big and happy-ish.

Achilles seemed to need a double take. He looked at her, and then he relaxed. Then once more he looked at her questioningly, realizing she had said what she had and asked, "What?"

"I love my lips."

"Still pointless." The goth boy rolled his eyes.

"Shakespeare's pointless then."

This one was serious. There is just a couple things that Achilles did not like being bugged about, and one of those was theatre. "Don't mess with classic lit'."

Vesta shrugged, putting on a mischievous face and returning to the original topic. "Will my lips be pointless if –"

Their little jabber was interrupted by none other than a short, blonde girl named Emily. Oh yes. Did I neglect to mention that she also shared the same third period Spanish class? Once again I must say, "Oh yes." I must get back to how she interrupted them now.

"Have you seen Garfield?" Emily's eyes lit up a little bit when she said the name. She ignored the fact that she had interrupted their quite interesting conversation, but instead intently waited for a reply.

With a shrug, turning her whole body away from Achilles to show that she was NOT talking to him, she replied, "No. We were waiting for him, though."

Emily threw her hands above her head in mock anguish. "What is the world coming to? All I want is to have an unintelligent conversation with someone who doesn't have a brain when I'm bored out of my mind and he just refuses to show up! Why must fate be so cruel!"

"Because it doesn't like you."

Vesta gasped through a grin and jokingly slapped Achilles. "'Chilles! That's mean and bishis shouldn't be mean!"

Neither Emily nor the black haired teen had time to roll their eyes because a large voice began to belt the lyrics to another children's song, also regarding the rain to go away.

"Oh Mister Sun, sun, mister golden sun, please shine down on me. OH Mister Sun, sun, mister golden sun, why are you hiding from me!" Garfield was dramatically making motions to the lyrics he sung tunelessly, and quickly, without even really stopping the other song, be began to sing, "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make all the gray skies go away, you'll never know you yellow burning orb, how much I miss you, get your backside back here today!"

The class hooted and hollered in response to Gar's mini-concert, and he bowed majestically as if he were on a stage and all of his class-mates were his fans.

"Thank you," he said with a terrible fake accent, then he quickly found his way to his other friends; Emily, Vesta, and Achilles, who were watching him and laughing and clapping along with all the other teens. Er, at least Emily was. And Vesta was grinning but not jumping around or anything like the others. Achilles on the other hand remained with his nose in his book, not seeming to care about the world around him.

"So what's up?" He asked, pulling himself onto a plastic and metal desk beside the ones his friends inhabited.

Emily bounced around Gar, giving him random answers and giggling randomly about, well, random things, and Vesta continued to pointedly ignore her black haired bishi by watching the two of them converse good naturedly with eyes that said she was certainly only watching them and NOT looking at Achilles out of the corner of her eye.

Achilles turned a page. And eventually another.

"Good morning, class," a lady with stiletto heels and a work suit entered the room. Her face was excellently done up with makeup and she looked like she wasn't a day older than twenty-five. "If everyone would take their seats now we'll start up today's agenda with a new book."

While everyone else simply went to their desks, one guy in the back of the room raised his hand. "Miss Teacher!" he called, "Is this social studies class?"

While the teacher explained to the confused student that no, this was not social studies but an English class, and that yes, he should leave and find the correct room, Vesta turned away from her ignoring for a second or two to watch him being engrossed in his literature. She pushed down the top of the book to his lap so that the only place he could look was her face and said,

"You know what, Achilles? You are a stupid bishi."

Betty had an intense look of concentration strung on her features. She was sitting alone at the table closest to the window, and the rain constantly on it was not helping her concentration. She attempted to tune it out, but found, to her discontent, even tuning out the pitter-patter of the raindrops did not help her improve at the task at hand. The African American girl's teeth bit over her bottom lip as she slowly followed the directions the teacher dictated to herself and the class and nothing seemed to make her mess up less than she was.

"Ouch," she exclaimed quietly, moving her pointer finger into her mouth. The teacher, an old lady with a fraying face of wrinkles and a mass of short and curly silvery white hair, came immediately to her aid.

"Betty, what seems to be the problem?" the short old lady asked as a grandmother would ask her granddaughter.

With an almost embarrassed laugh, Betty put her hand behind her head and said, with a grin, "Oh it's nothing; just pricked my finger."

A flair of evil and fury sparked through the eyes of the teacher. She exploded at her teen pupil as if someone had been killed and she was a judge.

"You – you – you're complaining about a little prick of a needle!" the lady practically roared. The rest of the Home and Careers class continued to slow, most not even glancing up at the quite angry teacher, "I have had more holes in my little finger than the population of Minnesota and you're complaining about ONE?"

Betty leaned back in her chair, attempting to stay as far away from the crazy lady as possible, and tried to defend herself. "I'm not trying to complain, it was an accident-"

"I don't want excuses young lady!" she was indignant (haha… funny word…). "Go down to the principal's office right now!"

Rolling her shoulder a little bit in worry, Betty tried timidly, "Don't I need a pass?"

"Why should I care what you need? You disgrace the proud name of Franken-celery."

Betty would learn later, after picking up her books timidly and making her way to the disciplinary section of the school offices, that her teacher did that to at least one student in each class every quarter. Each for something or another; today was complaining about a pricked finger and next class it may be for doing their homework much too well. So Betty would spend the rest of the period sitting in the assistant principal's office discussing wiring techniques with the owner of that office and sipping a can of Coca-Cola.

It is strange how some students can simply blow off their classes for a multitude of periods and still continue to get excellent – nay – above average – grades in them. Maybe it was the fact that the students were already simply genius in their knowledge of the subjects they were ignoring, or maybe their teachers were just so easy on them that they didn't have to worry about what they were learning.

Whatever the cause was, Dick and Victor had seemed to have mastered it. For example, in their third period maths class they spent the entire period playing rock, paper, scissors, shoot, dare and the teacher was right nearby, telling the class to copy the notes off the dry-erase board and not saying anything other than that about the words and symbols that had been written.

"Rock, paper, scissors, shoot," Vic said, and they both moved their hands into a different position. Dick was scissors, Vic was rock. With a laugh the African American continued, "Okay, I win. I dare you to write a sappy love note and throw it under the teacher's feet."

Dick chuckled, running his hand through his spiky raven-black hair. "You're on."

This was the kind of dare that Richard Grayson got a kick out of. He and Victor had begun to play this kind of game when they were much younger, long before Winter and her ridiculous, complicated Truth, Dare, Double Dare, Promise to Repeat, Asparatuckle, Fire house, Bottle games with more rules than they found fun. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot, dare, was just as simple as the original hand game; rock, paper, scissors, shoot. In fact, the only difference whatsoever between their version and the original game was that the winner of each round got to dare the loser to do something.

The letter which Dick wrote began with a very flowery introduction to a girl named Penelope who, according to the letter, was more beautiful than a cactus in the autumn time and more poetic than a social studies book. It said in the letter that she was more fun to be with than being at war, and that he was thankful for her setting his clock for him.

He signed the letter… 'Tim.'

(from Monty Python and the Holy Grail – "There are some who call me… Tim?")

Dick slaved on this letter, and both he and Vic had to constrain themselves when the man, who was probably in his thirties, who taught maths picked up the note and read it aloud to the class as to embarrass the writer out.

When he returned to the board to write, Victor and Dick resumed their game. "Rock, paper, scissors, shoot," Dick whispered, and they both complied. It turned out just as bleak for the dark glasses wearing boy as it had the game before. He had, this time, picked rock, but Victor had cleverly chosen paper – a choice which won over the rock.

Dick moaned a bit exasperatedly and awaited his fate. But instead of talking at first, Vic pulled out his cell phone.

There have been some bad memories of cell phones in maths class, including one involving Kitten programming her number into Dick's phone book every day. More recently she had backed off, sitting with her other friends in an ignoring way, making a point to say that she did not want to talk to him, but he still kept his cell phone well protected when he sat in that class.

Dick's moan, this time upon seeing the phone, was a bit of a whine. But, of course, he straightened up to figure out the situation at hand.

"So what do I have to do?" he asked. Victor handed him the phone. Looking at the screen, though, Dick could see that one name was highlighted in his phone book.

That name was "Speedy."

An eyebrow of his rose questioningly, so Victor whispered his directions to Dick.

Dick questioned the dare in his mind for a second, then another, but soon decided to not even bother asking aloud – he would not get an answer. Instead he used his thumb to type out the first of many messages anonymously to Speedy that Victor had instructed him to send.

"Spedy
i dont like daffodils."

"Well I was going to begin our first actual unit today," The theatrical director and teacher, a nice tall man with a short trimmed beard, "But we don't have enough time and tomorrow you're going on that field trip…"

He droned off, staring away into space, and Raven, Kori, Winter, and Rayne all looked in at each other in confusion. They weren't the only ones. Nearly every other teen in the class (not including those not paying attention) was doing the same, whispering questions about his statement to each other and simply becoming more confused as a whole.

"Er," one girl near the front of the classroom asked at the same time as raising her hand. When the teacher saw her and nodded consent to her speaking she went on, "We're going on a field trip?"

"Didn't you know?" he asked, confused. The whole of the class's blank stares and shaking of their heads seemed to give him a good answer so he went on, "Well since you don't know then there's all the more reason that we can't start a new unit. I have to tell you about the trip!"

Most of the teens in the classroom – more girls than boys I must say – leaned forward a little bit and excitedly listened to what he had to say.

"It's gonna be great," he exclaimed. Man, he really was a good actor, "You guys are gonna go to the Planetarium a few miles from here and you'll get to learn about constellations…"

He continued, but Raven leaned back and yawned, ignoring everything he was saying. She murmured to Kori, who sat beside her, "I'm not going."

Stifling a gasp, Kori looked at her violet haired friend, and, just as convincingly as the teacher had, exclaimed, "But why not, my friend?"

"Because," she said blandly and monotonously, "Planetariums are in dire need of a better school program. They are much more interesting when you go by yourself. When you go with a class it's just not worth it."

Winter and Rayne, with confused looks on their faces, leaned over to Kori. "What is she blabbering on about?" Winter complained, looking at her roommate with an exasperated expression in her eyes.

"She does not wish to go on the trip of the field!" Kori explained earnestly. Raven could still hear them, in fact she was listening quite clearly and waiting for an opening in the conversation but did not say anything. Winter and Rayne did not seem too worried about Raven not being interested but the redhead seemed quite distressed that her friend did not want to accompany them.

"But Raven," she began sincerely, "I know that you do not enjoy venturing with us often, but think of the joy you will find with looking at projections of the night sky – and when it is really daytime as well!"

"Yippee," Raven stated.

"Come on, Kor'," Rayne comforted her, "Raven just doesn't want to go, it will be fine. She'll find a way to… amuse herself when we're not around."

The two author's created characters in this story exchanged a meaningful smile, both thinking in their mind something that involved a teen with a slightly green hue, and then turned back to Kori, who was not quite as sure.

She was going back to her original, more direct approach. "But Raven," she whined.

Raven put a finger to her lips, signaling that the teacher was about finished with his speech about the great field trip that the students would be undertaking, and when he began to allow the asking of questions to him about the trip she replied, "Because, Kori, I don't want to go."

With a "Hmph," Kori turned her gaze to the front of the classroom and folded her hands on the desk in front of her.

Rayne turned to Raven. "I have a feeling that she'll get over it."

Kori flipped her hair in annoyance. "Hmph!"

1. What is your favourite word? (The one you find to be most cool looking/interesting)

-- Ni. Nufu.

2. Would you consider me immature?

-- Truly and truly. For the most part, that is. But who's to say?

3. Why could Rayne not appear on the intermission (in the previous chapter)?

-- 'Cause she was in Seattle.

-note- Erm… There is not much to say. I actually updated; that's always a good thing. Especially in the depression times when I decide to discontinue this strange fic… Sorry i don'thave time to do reviewrepliesright now - I have togo call my friend back who I said that I would call but I haven't... heh heh heh...Well the next update is on July 28. Talk to you all then! And I really will try to update on time this time!

Sneaky Peaky: "Chapter Eighteen"
This is the one we've all been waiting for. You know you have, you just don't know it yet. Because I'm going to leave it as a surprise. You'll all like it though. I hope.