A/N: New week, new chap. Yay for the page breaks - thank you zilly-pill! The next few chapters are definitely my favorites, so get ready for the good stuff. Not much else to say, enjoy this!

Riddick sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off the headache that had been lurking behind his eyes for the last hour. Double-checking interest on his various accounts of money was tiresome, repetitive, and incredibly boring. He had probably dozed through the last seven or eight pages – he just could not concentrate.

Leaning back in his chair, he happened to catch a glimpse of the clock. 15:28. Shit! He was supposed to pick up Jack in two minutes!

He dropped the list he had been holding and was out of his chair and flying down the stairs before it even touched the desktop. Grabbing his goggles and his sweatshirt, he tore down the street, pulling them on as he ran.

Six sprinted blocks and two hitched rides on the back of hov-cabs put him at the school gates at 15:35, slightly out of breath, but still present. Jack was standing by the gate, a hunched teacher hovering behind her. He jogged the last few metres, and Jack smiled slightly at him.

"Are you responsible for Ms. Fry?" the teacher asked, peering up at him through thick glasses.

"Yeah." He grunted, signing the clipboard quickly.

"You're late."

Frowning, he looked down at the twisted woman. "I was held up at work."

"Well make sure it doesn't happen again, sir. Detention lets out a precisely 15:30."

Riddick blinked. Detention? What happened to art class? But he said nothing, merely shot a glance in Jack's direction – to find her deeply involved in looking at the interesting pebbles beneath her feet.

As they walked away, Riddick crossed his arms over his chest. "Well?"

Jack looked up at him desperately. "I didn't want you to know – it's not for fighting, just for acting up in class."

"Acting up in class?"

She sighed. "I challenged the grade I got on a paper, and got into an argument with Mr. Sauer."

Riddick looked silently down at her, and she blushed. "That's what happened, I swear! I might have said a few bad words, and maybe I threw some paper, but really that's all! I'm not lying!"

He nodded, satisfied for the moment. "All right. Just tell me next time."

She nodded miserably. "Okay." Brightening a bit, she looked up. "I bet you got detention all the time when you were in school!"

Riddick said nothing, just grinned.

Jack smiled as they slid into a table in Planetary Pizza (real pies for real people). This was more like it – no snooty waiters here. In fact, the guy that walked up to their booth with a notepad and pen had a Mohawk, pierced eyebrows, and a sim-cig behind his ear. "Orright lads," he said with a smile. "What'll it be, so?"

Riddick didn't even glance at the menu. "One large pie with everything on it, a large Phader, and a boat of fries."

The tattooed waiter scribbled everything down, then turned to Jack. "And for the lady?"

She blinked and glanced at her menu. "A pepperoni pizza – small, and a small Bubbly."

He jotted her order and winked. "Ah sure, I'll have it up in a minute!"

Riddick leaned back, still wearing his hood up and his goggles, but he looked more at ease. Jack herself felt comfortable in the joint as well – the pounding music, the crazy art on the walls, the colorful people who ate around them. "Do you come here a lot?"

Riddick shrugged, but shifted to rest an elbow on the table. "It's open really late. I usually have a bite."

Jack nodded. "It's cool – I've never seen it before, though."

With a grin Riddick looked around the dimly lit restaurant. "Can you see Imam coming here?"

She had to agree she could not, but then their pizzas arrived, and any further conversation was halted for a few moments.

Eventually Riddick looked up from the sacred ritual of food-to-mouth. "You want some fries?"

Jack shook her head and took a sip of her soda. "I'm fine, thanks."

Confused, Riddick leaned forward. "Is that all you're eating?"

Looking at her pizza, she nodded. "I'm watching my weight."

This time, he actually removed his goggles to stare incredulously at her. "Watching what weight?"

She sighed. "Look, if I ate as much as you, I'd balloon out like you wouldn't believe. I mean, there's got to be 3,000 kcals right there!"

Smirking fondly at his plate, he nodded. "Plenty of energy."

"Well I'm in secondary school, Riddick. I'm not running all over the galaxy trying to escape some mercs. I don't want to be fat."

Taking another bite of his pizza, Riddick chewed, then swallowed. "You wouldn't get fat from a little pizza."

"Shows what you know." She shot back, wiping grease off her fingers with a napkin. "I'd gain like ten pounds!"

"So?"

"So I'd be fat."

"Would not."

"Would too."

"Not."

"Would too! Look, do you really want to get into this right now? I can't gain ten pounds. At school, you're perfect, or you're nothing."

Riddick blinked. He certainly hadn't been perfect when he was her age. He had been loud, careless, and too caught up with himself to care. He'd been on teams and stuff, even had a couple girls, and spent the lunch hour smoking sim-cigs behind the bathroom. But he hadn't been popular, hadn't wanted to be. All he needed was some booze and some music and he was happy.

But when he thought about it, hazy memories surfaced – nerds getting swirlies in the bathroom, or guys with faces like his pizza being shunted by girls – the pressure was there, but he had never felt it. He could only imagine what it must be like for Jack. She looked so different from the other kids – all those calm, mass-produced, designer children.

"So you're worried about being fat?"

She stirred her drink meditatively with her straw. "It's not so much being fat, I guess. It's just I don't need another mark against me. I've got weird hair, I dress odd, and I don't take shit. That's enough reason for people to hate me right there."

Riddick almost said he thought her hair looked cool, but figured it wouldn't help, so he held his tongue. Besides, like he was one to talk.

"It's not so bad, really. At least I don't have loads of pimples. I don't have glasses or braces, I'm not hideous. And unless I eat that pizza, I'm not fat. But I have to be careful. I'll lose what little power I have, then."

Curious now, he shoved his (now empty) plate to one side and rested both arms on the table. "Power?"

She smiled tiredly. "Yeah. I didn't really figure it out until a few weeks ago when some girls cornered me in the bathroom. Apparently, they think that their boyfriends are into me. They wanted me to back off. They don't get it that those guys just see me as a challenge. A rough girl. They don't really like me. It's just that I'm not scared of fighting – I learned a bit from you. I'm like a novelty – who can beat the she-man? Who can tame the wildcat?"

Riddick grinned. "We men always liked a challenge."

Rolling her eyes, Jack took a small bite of her pizza. "Yeah, well if you like someone, aren't you supposed to be all nice to them? Guys just hassle me – teasing, shoving, that kind of stuff."

"Is that what was going on with those guys with the knife?"

Jack sighed. "No. That was different."

Cocking an eyebrow, Riddick snagged a sip of her Bubbly, dodging her halfhearted smack. "How so?"

She snatched his cup to steal a drink of his, but found the cardboard cylinder empty. Glaring, she chucked it at his grinning face. "They're just bullies – real troublemakers. They insult Imam, and pick on the smaller kids. They're in the 5th form, so they're pretty close to the top of the school. No one really stands up to them, so they think they have power."

Riddick leaned back, linking his hands behind his head. "So what has this got to do with you? Do they pick on you?"

Jack took another drink of her soda, stared at it for a second, and then passed it to Riddick with a sigh. "On my first day, they hassled me, just because I was a new kid, and I looked weird. But it was my first day, and I wanted to make friends, so I didn't defend myself, didn't talk back. It was hard, but I ignored them. I even made it two more days – that's like a personal record." She smiled, but trailed off, seemingly absorbed in picking burnt bits off her pizza.

"But…" Riddick prompted when she didn't continue.

"But by then I had figured out that I wasn't really going to make any friends. So I said fuck it, you know? They had started insulting Imam – to his face – and I just couldn't take it. I actually instigated the first fight – jumped 'em right in the middle of the quad. I even got in a few good punches too!" she said proudly. "That is, before Mr. Feiser came and pulled us apart."

She paused again to have some more pizza. "And Imam wasn't even grateful! Besides getting a week's detention at school, he grounded me on top of that! Anyway, after that it was like I had insulted their mothers or something. They were everywhere, and they were pissed. If they weren't waiting around the corner to jump me, they were jostling me in the lunch line, or spitting at me on the stairs. It just kept escalating – teachers didn't do anything except give us all detention."

Riddick finished off the last of Jack's drink. "So it got to the point where they jumped you with a knife?"

She nodded. "That was what happened yesterday. They jumped me as I was coming out of the toilet. I was lucky that Mrs. O'Sullivan came along when she did, or I might have gotten more than just a few scrapes!"

Riddick frowned. This was not something Jack should be telling him. He could already feel the beast uncoiling in him, the desire to inflict pain on these boys. Anyone who messed with Jack was messing with Riddick, and from the sounds of things, Jack was getting messed with pretty seriously. "Is that cut on your nose from them?"

She nodded. "It could have been worse, I guess – only got slashed on my arm and my hand." She held up her left hand, and indeed it had a large plaster on it. "They put some holes in my jumper though."

After a moment of silent contemplation, Riddick threw down some money on the table and stood. "Come on, let's head home. We'll see if we can remedy this fighting problem you're having."

Jack waited, tense, unmoving, trying to guess where her attacker was. She didn't dare turn, staring fixedly at the brick wall across from her – as if expecting it to suddenly turn reflective and show the scene behind her. Her ears strained for the softest sound, her hands balled into fists.

There. The scuff of a boot, the slightest of grunts.

Then a thick arm wrapping around her neck and jerking her off the ground. Scrambling, she kicked backwards, and grabbed at the broad forearm slowly crushing her windpipe. Breathing was hard, and she tried vainly to pull the appendage away from her throat. A pressure was building in her chest, her heartbeats fluttering like butterflies in a jar. She desperately needed to scream, needed to get free, needed to breathe.

And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the arm released her, and its twin lowered her carefully to the ground again. Coughing, Jack stumbled back from her attacker, hands to her throat. "Dammit Riddick! I thought you were teaching me to stay alive, not strangling me to death!"

The convict crossed his arms and frowned. "You wouldn't have been strangled if you had brought your chin down like I told you. Do that first – it has to be instinctive. Tucking your chin will keep an assailant from being able to block your windpipe. And that can make all the difference between life and death. So learn it Jack." He strolled back behind her. "Again."

With a sigh she turned back to the wall, muttering obscenities under her breath. This time, she got her chin down, and found that Riddick was right – he couldn't choke her, not without breaking her jaw or her neck first.

"Now," Riddick's calm voice rumbled through their bodies. "Elbow."

Obligingly, she drove an elbow into his ribs, then the other – hard enough to hurt, not enough to bruise.

"Good," he murmured. "In a real fight, you'd really have to jab, but that was good enough. Groin now."

Clenching her jaw, Jack let one of her hands drop to trail along Riddick's leg. When she found the thick tendon that ran down his inner thigh, she curled her fingers around it and pinched lightly.

"Again, good." Riddick complimented. "Of course, you could also do the same thing with your attacker's balls – that would probably hurt them worse, but it might be unpleasant for you. You'll do it if you have to, though," His chuckle trembled along her back where she was pressed against the rock that was his front. "If your attacker is shorter than I am and hasn't lifted you this high off the ground, you'll be able to stomp on their instep."

He changed his grip so that she was standing on her own feet, her chin smushed into the crook of his arm. "Now, try that."

Gingerly, she raised one foot and brought it down on the buckles of one of his boots.

"Not good enough. I want you to really raise your knee, to your waist if you can manage it. Stomp down as hard as you can now – not on my foot."

Suddenly angry, she brought her knee up as directed and smashed it down on the concrete floor with as much force as she could muster. Immediately, pain sparked up her leg – ankle, shin, knee.

"Now if you can get in a poke at the eyes, or hook your fingers around your assailant's cheek – actually put your fingers in their mouths and yank – you'll do a final bit of damage. But that's too dangerous for you, when you can't see what you're doing behind yourself. Too easy to get your fingers bitten off."

Fuming, Jack stood in Riddick's grip, until he finally released her. Immediately, she clamped her fingers over her knee and hobbled over to a convenient bench. "You broke my fucking knee!"

He actually had the audacity to laugh once. "Aw quit bitching about it. You're fine." When she glared at him, he grinned and knelt, picking up her leg with one hand. "Aw, de widdle giw's hoit hersef, poor baby. Does her want me to kiss it?"

Jack kicked at him, but a grin snuck onto her face. "Shut up, you big bully."

He winked at her, and got to his feet. "Now let's see that again, without me having to direct you through it."

She groaned, but held out her hand. As he pulled her upright, a thought occurred to her. "How many more times do I have to do this?"

Riddick's smirk looked downright evil. "As many times as it takes."

"As it takes to what?"

"To get it right. And then," he paused, and stroked his chin. "I'll teach you the next set of moves."

"There's more?" she asked in horror.

"Oh yeah. Oh yeah…"

A/N: Like the new chappie? Reviews pleaded for! Thanks to last week's reviewers: SueBe, But He Hit Me First, zilly-pill (again, thanks for the help), nj, and SpikeRiddick.

Cheers,

Rama