The Delinquent

I don't own final fantasy 8 or anything else mentioned in this story that probably has a copyright thing on it.

Cheer cheer to those who reviewed my story and to anyone else who has taken pleasure in reading it.

Rinoa turned back to her group of newly found friends to see them all smiling at each other. Some smiles looked a little evil and she was a bit scared by them, she'd known them long enough to know that they were planning something. Even if they weren't vocalizing it yet, there was a scheme in motion.

Squall pulled out of the school car park with his mind clouded with more things than driving. In his mind he was trying to envision what they were going to do tonight. They hadn't gate-crashed in awhile and it was something that he knew it was one of Irvine's personal favorites, much like Selphie unrelenting desire to be put in detention.

Not to mention the fact that he needed to make it special. It was Rinoa's first gate-crash so he needed to make it magnificent.

He had an insistent craving to impress her; it was something he'd never really had before because before he didn't care what people thought of him so what he impressed upon people wasn't his concern. This caring business was starting to make him feel very out of his element, other than anger, sadistic humor, nonchalance and loyalty he hadn't really had much experience with emotions.

He had to admit his loyalty towards his friends and he also had to admit that he did have some feelings about them all; they were his best friends and had stood beside him when even he would've gone and that meant something to him. No matter what he couldn't deny the fact that no matter what he'd always be there for all of them.

Squall shook his head to dismiss these thoughts from his head. He had more important things to think about like tonight. Before he knew it he was driving down his street and happened to glance at his side mirror to see Rinoa driving behind him. She looked quite bored from what he could see but he couldn't exactly see her that well.

He pulled into his driveway and grabbed his side bag out from his backseat. He literally jumped out of his car and approached the fence that separated Rinoa's property from his own.

Rinoa noticed him straight away and smiled, Squall sort of half smiled back but was too worried about giving off a sleazy impression for an actual smile. Rinoa was soon walking towards the fence; her backpack slung under one arm.

"Hey." She greeted before she was all the way there.

"I was just thinking." Squall replied, he paused for a second to see if she was paying attention, which she was and continued. "I don't see the point in both of us wasting petrol so I figure, why don't you just catch a ride to school with me?"

Without even giving off the impression that she'd even thought about it Rinoa nodded happily, a smile spread across her cherry lips.

"Yeah that would be awesome. But every second week I'll drive so it's fair."

"Fair enough." Squall responded.

Squall felt confident enough to continue the conversation. He was a little worried that he was being a bit forward with the question before but saw that Rinoa didn't take it like he was trying to come onto her. Although he wasn't exactly a man of ethics he wouldn't usually go with someone else's girlfriend. Not unless the guy was a dick… or he really liked her… or she came onto him first… or maybe if…

"So you are coming tonight?" Squall enquired.

"I want to, if that's alright." Rinoa replied.

'Hell yeah it is.' Squall thought to himself. "I can't see how that'd be a problem."

"Alright cool, we'll umm…"

"Just come round to my place at about sixish, that's when the rest of them'll probably be round." Squall concluded.

Rinoa smiled vigorously, she was so pleased that they were all making her feel so welcome. She felt so at home with these people, she felt more comfortable now that she'd ever before with any of her old friends. Except Marcia and Lucas, of course she felt comfortable around them.

Well it wasn't like she wanted Lucas to see her looking like shit and Marcia did always comment on her choice in clothing. But they were special to her. She couldn't deny the fact that she did feel at ease with these people.

When she walked in the door she found a note sitting on her kitchen bench. It was from her father and basically told her that he'd gotten the internet on and she couldn't go on the computer now.

Rinoa let out an excited squeal, something that definitely wasn't characteristic of her and ran up the stairs towards her room. There sat her laptop, sitting upon her nicely polished desk that she stole out of her dads study to make the room look a little less barren.

She pounced on the chair and turned it on to begin emailing everybody!

Squall tapped a pencil against his head in deep thought. He couldn't think of anything that would make this a special night, everything had been done and even though Rinoa might not have done it, it was still done before.

Then an idea struck him, he knew it was a long shot, especially with his and rest of his friends' reputations, but it would definitely make it a night to remember.

6:30 PM

Squall tapped his fingers against his desk, waiting impatiently for everyone to get to his house. He couldn't unveil the plan until all were present and two were missing. Irvine and Selphie hadn't been seen in more than an hour and a half so Squall had a fair idea what was going on.

"Fuck it I say we start without them!" Seifer exclaimed.

He slammed his hand down on the bean bag that he was positioned on making a comically soft "chii" sound. Quistis bit her top lip to stop herself from laughing, she put a hand over her mouth to make it less obvious and coughed, trying to make the laughter subside. Unfortunately she was just making it more obvious and others began giggling along with her.

It seemed that not only she had been trying not to laugh, all the while still trying to hide it.

"You's are fucked!" Seifer snarled with a glare to all of them.

At that instant the door swung open, the room all looked over to it to see Selphie and Irvine burst through it.

"I know we're late but Irvine ran out of gas like miles from here so we had to walk. And I'm all scruffed up because we started hitchhiking and I fell over and fell down this ditch. That's when Irvine dived down to save me, explaining his apparent untidiness." Selphie exploded out really fast.

"I can totally back that story up, that's exactly what happened." Irvine added.

"Is that why your trucks on the street Irvine?" Zell laughed.

Squall rolled his eyes and sighed. It wasn't that he'd believed Selphie and Irvine, quite the contrary, he was more disappointed in there weak lie. He would hope that by now they would have more calculated stories, having to have to remember so many.

"What the fuck is wrong with all my friends?" Squall groaned.

Rinoa giggled lightly, hoping that nobody would notice. She wasn't quite sure if they were being serious or not and didn't want to upset anybody. She noticed everyone staring at Squall, who had now stood up. Irvine had sat on the floor leaning against the bed with Selphie sitting between his legs, resting her elbows on his knees.

Soon Rinoa too was staring at Squall, mainly because now he had started talking.

"Firstly I'd like to enquire, has anyone else thought of something original for tonight." Everybody shook they're heads, most of them unaware that they were supposed to. "Good, because I have."

The pure delight that came upon everyone's faces but Rinoa's, she noticed it instantly but couldn't understand why it had occurred. Squall too seemed awfully pleased with himself. She would soon find out that Squall's plans were usually fairly unusual. He definitely had a sinister mind but not in a torturing animals sort of way.

"I thought that we should make this special, seeing as Rinoa is new and quite literally has no idea."

Rinoa was unsure whether she should take that as a compliment, Squall had said it nice enough but it was kinda insulting.

"I figured we should do something big. My first thoughts were obvious; I thought we'd just gate crash, the minority kicking a stink up to the majority. But then I thought about and there are many more people like us. There's the nerds, the Goths… pot-heads and fucking allsorts. So I reckon… wouldn't they like to kick up a stink too? I know that convincing them will be a problem cause nobody really likes us much, but Selphie's performance today earned her a lot of power points. I bet if she talked to everyone then we may have a chance." Squall concluded.

There was silence afterwards. Squall was trying to figure out what they were thinking by their facial expressions but so far it was harder than he thought.

"That is fucking weak…" Zell sighed.

After that there was something that could only be compared to an eruption. The whole room exploded in a chorus of opinions, insults and basic noises of any kind.

Squall groaned, he wasn't aware that his thoughts would cause such a reaction but he couldn't be expected to predict such an occurrence.

Quistis stood up on the bed, earning her the attention of everyone, admittedly she had to do a little bit of yelling but soon enough she had everyone's.

"Well I think it's a damn good idea! Since when has something been impossible for us? I cannot believe I am hearing this! We're supposed to stretch the boundaries, push the limits… do the impossible! Anything is possible and I agree with Squall, we haven't made a real impact on this town in awhile, once we created legends, now we're repeating everything that's already been done. So I say we at least try."

Quistis was always a bit of a dramatic figure; she had a bad habit of getting quite passionate about certain things. Nobody could be sure if she was actually serious about this or if she was just wanted to go against Seifer because he said that it was a stupid idea and couldn't be done. Nonetheless she did put on a pretty good speech and it was obvious that she may have swayed a couple of judgments.

"Quistis is right; I think that it's possible. Everyone hates the preppy fucks a lot more than us." Irvine added.

"Point taken, strike one against the opposition but it still doesn't explain how we're ganna get hold of everybody before its too late and a lot of them are too scared of the 'preppy fucks' to actually do anything against them." Zell replied.

"There too scared to do anything as individuals but should there be a lot of us…" Squall trailed off.

Two hours later

Quistis hacked into the school's computer and had found out all necessary ways of contacting people. It hadn't taken her that long considering she was a prodigy at damn near anything she tried. Quistis was the object of a lot of jealousy from a lot of people for nearly everything she did.

Anything she set her mind to sooner or later she would master as if she was born to do just that very thing.

"We're all set." Selphie announced as she hung up the phone once again. "Only the library nerds said no."

"That was to be expected. They're too busy trying to be the dickheads best friends to go against them." Seifer scowled.

"Nonetheless I would say that it was a complete success." Squall beamed.

Rinoa smirked; she could see just how proud of himself he was. He made no attempt at hiding his delight and suspected that it was more to do with the fact that he thought of the idea rather than the fact that he prevailed.

"They're ganna met us in the parking lot behind the 'fat sow' café". Selphie declared.

Another half an hour

Squall pulled up to the parking lot, Rinoa accompanying him in the car. Once again he had decided that it was a waste of time for her to drive. Rinoa really didn't mind at all, the parking lot was a hell-of-a long way from her house and would waste quite a bit of petrol.

There were already about five cars there and Squall looked pleased with the outcome so far. Rinoa hadn't actually expected the plan to work but was happy that it did. She was a bit nervous about doing this but thought that what Squall had said was quite true, there was a lot of safety in numbers.

Although she knew that even with all these people there would probably still be at least a ratio of three to one. The school had a vast majority of preps and she had a sinking feeling in the back of her mind that something bad was going to happen. The scary part was that she had a terrible habit of her bad feelings being right.

"Are you sure about this Squall?" Rinoa said softly.

Squall turned to her; the most convincing reassurance smile Rinoa had ever seen plastered across his handsome features.

"Course I am. This is ganna be fun Rinoa but if you don't wanna come then you don't have to. I'll drive you home myself."

Rinoa smiled, she was glad to have that comfort, it did make her feel a little at ease but she still couldn't shake off her bad feeling.

"Any time I want?" Rinoa enquired.

"Any time you want."

Soon more and more cars started to turn up; Rinoa was quite surprised at the number of people that had decided to attend but was glad that more people were coming.

People from all over, Goths, punks… even the occasional nerd all came together to make a stand against the one group of people that they all equally hated. The people that went out of they're way to make everyone else's a bitch. This wasn't to say that the same couldn't be said about Squall and co. it was just that popular people tended to be a bit more malicious when it came to getting to people.

Rinoa had seen it, had stood by and watched it happen and had even been part of it, something that she was beginning to be more and more ashamed of. It was a part of her life that she didn't want her new friends to find out about, something from her past she wanted to keep hidden.

She wanted them to think that she was the innocent new girl, it was a look that she was good at and she was innocent. She'd just sat on the other side of the fence most of her life.

"Ready?" Squall enquired, glancing over in her direction.

Rinoa sighed and looked out her window to see Selphie and Irvine making kissy faces at her. Rinoa blushed and turned away. She suspected that they were supposed to be more aimed at Squall than herself but she'd still seen it and knew that if she was an outsider that she'd think they were going to hook up.

"As I'll ever be."

Once Squall made his speech, a particularly insulting one, well at least that was what Rinoa thought. One part included "You don't like us and we hate you even more…"

Nonetheless, they were on their way towards the party. It was now getting on about 8:30 PM and by memory Rinoa supposed that everyone would be either drunk or damn near it by now. She was getting a worse and worse feeling in her stomach and new that this wasn't going to go as well as planned.

"So tell me again why we're doing this?" Rinoa enquired.

"Alright Rinoa, I'm ganna let you in on a little secret. This is payback, and in about a week we can expect something to happen to us. Nothing terribly thrilling because y'know they're kinda dumb. Well not dumb just… lacking in organization skills…"

"Squall," Rinoa interrupted. "You're rambling."

"Ok, this is just comeback; they have to be expecting it."

Rinoa still didn't understand, Squall made it sound kinda confusing. She was used to this where she was from. They had their trouble-makers but she wasn't really accustomed to revenge.

"So what exactly do we do when we get there?"

Squall glanced over at her for a second, but in that second Rinoa saw the most incredulous look she had ever witnessed. Rinoa found it a little insulting.

Squall began laughing to himself, apparently trying not to make it too obvious. At least he was attempting not to insult her.

"Sorry Rin, but I aint never met no one before who didn't know how to crash!"

"Shut up! Just tell me." Rinoa whined.

Squall took a deep breath, a small snort escaping while he did so.

"It's just going in there. Just joining the party uninvited, it's not a new thing Rin. You just walk in and stick with us."

The party

Rinoa could hear the music down the street, it was loud and harsh just the way she was used to. She could see people outside, all of which were wearing bathing suits… a pool party, one of her favorites. Seeing it now she noticed what it really was, a way for perverted men to gawk at half naked women.

Squall pulled up a few houses down from the party; he informed Rinoa that they wouldn't be noticed until they were inside. This was the way this was going to work.

"Ready?" Squall asked as he turned to her.

"As I'll ever be."

Rinoa was startled as her door started to open and she noticed Selphie and Quistis on the other side of it, grinning like wild.

"Let's do it!" Selphie squealed.

Approaching the house was an endurance trial for Rinoa, the feeling in the pit of her stomach was getting worse by every passing second. She didn't want to go though, she didn't want to miss out on this and maybe if something did go wrong then she could help.

She felt something twist around her hand and looked down to see a hand intertwined with her own. She noticed the yellow nail polish immediately and noticed Selphie smiling at her as reassuringly as she could muster.

Rinoa returned the smile but it wasn't quite as convincing as she had hoped it would be, she felt another hand and found Quistis had grabbed her other.

She felt a bit more comforted now, she didn't feel so alone.

"You'll be fine." Quistis whispered.

Rinoa prayed that that was true.

Sorry guys I'm stopping, another chapter where nothing happened but I'm leading up to it. If you haven't noticed, I'll let you in on something; this isn't going to go well.

But anyways… what'd ya think?