Shade- here you go, I'm updating since I haven't in a while

Transition chapter

--

Chapter 11: You wave when people acknowledge you!

Jackie was standing at the foot of Linden High School. She had been in the hospital for three weeks. Three, incredibly boring weeks. Her treatment was going very well, and the doctor even said that she could leave early, and that she was fully recovered. This surprised Jackie and her family and friends because the doctor told them that it would be a good month before she could leave, and that she would still feel pain after that. But, mysteriously, Jackie was totally fine after just three weeks, she could walk and everything. Her stitches had been taken out and her face looked pretty normal, but you could still make out her scars if you looked close. Jackie was now less conscious of her scars now than she was before, because she finally accepted her appearance in a positive way.

This was the day that Jackie would leave the hospital, and return to school. Over the past three weeks, all her friends, old and new, had visited her. The one she saw the most was Hiei. Since he had nothing to do after school, and the others forced him to, the hospital was the first place he went after school. Torture, then more torture as he said, or at least in the beginning.

"Hello hell." Jackie whispered under her breath as the wind blew through her red hair. Summer was ending and fall was just about ready to start. Jackie was happy because her doctor said that she could finish out the rest of her soccer season with her school team. That meant that she could go to the finals tournament with her team since she wasn't on the sideline anymore and now she could help. Her team just had two more games they had to win to make it to the county high school tournament.

Jackie moved the hair that had flown into her face and put it behind her ear. Her natural blond roots were coming through the top of her head since she didn't have the time to dye her hair the whole month. She started up the steps to Linden High School.

"Jackie! You're back!" Holly and Claire jumped up at the sight of the girl. They ran over to her and would have pummeled her if it weren't for her just coming out of the hospital and all.

"Yes, sadly enough, yes." She replied to the girls. Just then, Sonya walked out of the bathroom and Holly shoved Jackie into her face.

"Look whose back!" She shouted toward the flustered girl. She blinked for a few seconds as she saw Jackie's make-up free face in hers before it hit her that her friend was back.

"Jackie!" She yelled then grabbed her into a death hug as she called them.

"Hello! Urgh!" Jackie struggled to get her words out as the air was being sucked out as well.

"This is so totally awesome! You can play soccer right?" She quickly asked.

"Yep, got the doctor's note right here." Jackie pulled her hand in front of her friends' faces to show the piece of paper to them with her doctor saying she could play, and his signature.

"Cool!" They all yelled. Jackie smiled at her friends' happiness and enthusiasm, and walked off to her first period class with Holly.

"Jackie, you are back in the presence of my classroom. How lovely." Her teacher said, sitting on his desk.

"Good to see you too Mr. P." She greeted him sarcastically. She looked toward the classroom full of students and they were all staring at her face.

"What?" She asked rudely, putting her hands on her hips waiting for an answer. No one did. She looked to each of the gang and smiled. Her last smile landing on Hiei when she was walking back to her seat. She waved frantically at him when he didn't return the smile and she sat down in her seat that was behind Holly and next to Hiei.

"Hello Hiei." She said since he still never smiled or waved or anything to her.

"Hn." He grunted.

"Still as talkative as you were in the hospital I see." She smiled at him. Her glared at her though did not respond as he saw her smiling at him and Mr. Primo had started the lesson.

-After-

"I can't believe Mr. Primo gave me a month's worth of homework!" Jackie had left the classroom with a hand full of papers and about 12 chapters to read.

"Yeah I know, you weren't even gone for a month." Claire pointed out. Jackie glared at her.

"Come on, let's go to second."

"Okay, come one Kuwabara! I'm gonna teach you something in orchestra!" Jackie told him. She grabbed his collar and dragged him off with the others behind to just laugh.

-After school-

"La la la la la la la." Jackie trotted, yes, trotted, to the girls' locker room. She had just gotten permission to participate in soccer practice after school and she was going to get dressed.

-Outside-

"Everybody, let's welcome back Jackie." Their coach said. Everyone on the team was ecstatic that Jackie was back. They jumped up and hugged her. Some of them hugged her because she was ok, some others were just happy that their number one defender was gonna play. They didn't really like her that much outside of soccer, they never talked to her.

"Hewo." She said.

"Ok, now that that's done with, this is gonna be a full practice of scrimmage in honor of Jackie."

"Honor? How does that work?" Sonya asked.

"Do you want to scrimmage or run lines for this practice?" Her coach asked her.

"Scrimmage is good." Sonya agreed and nodded as to not piss her coach off.

"Hey, there are the girls on the field." Yusuke pointed out as they were leaving to go home.

"Yeah Yusuke, they've been there for the last month after school." Yusuke glared at Kuwabara.

"Yes, but this time Jackie is with them. I do not believe Hiei nor have I seen Jackie play soccer. By the way the girls talk about her, they make her out to be some sort of a professional." Kurama said as he looked at the dozens of girls on the field, making up the Varsity, JV and C teams. They saw Botan on the far side of the field with the C team trying to dribble, she then managed to trip over the ball and fall on her face.

"Wow, Botan really sucks." Yusuke said.

"Hn, can we go home now? The more exposure I get to these cretins the faster I can feel my will to live go down." Hiei said in disgust.

"Okay girls, since this is probably our last practice with the exiting summer sun, shirts and skins!" Their coach yelled pointing to either sides of the varsity team showing who was on what team.

As if on instinct, Yusuke and Kuwabara clung themselves to the fence with their eyes popping out of their heads to watch the girls play soccer with just their sports bras on.

"Yes! Girls in bikinis!" Kuwabara exclaimed.

"Kuwabara you idiot! Those are sports bras!" Yusuke yelled, barely taking his eyes away from the high school girls.

"Yusuke and Kuwabara! What do you two think you're doing?" Botan yelled from the far end of the field. Her voice carried over the astro turf very well. Since she was at the far end, everyone heard her, and looked over at the fences to see the four boys.

"Ew, foreign perverts." One of the girls on the soccer team said.

"That's rude! Their just normal males in the world looking at what they like. Granted that scares the hell out of me, but it is what they do. I see your boyfriend doing it all the time with the swim team." Jackie said to the snotty brat, knowing full well she was not on the swim team.

The girl did not reply, and just turned around.

"Good, now," she turned to the four boys, "Kurama and Hiei, tell your nasty friends to go home and do their homework." She yelled at them smiling.

"Gladly." Hiei said as he hit Kuwabara over the head.

"OW! Don't touch me shrimp!" He yelled turning around and looking down at the fully dressed Hiei. He then remembered the near half naked girls behind him, and whizzed back around. Hiei and Kurama sweat dropped.

"Boys. Hey! Little known fact, did you know that boys' heads are softer than girls' heads?" Claire asked her friends.

"No, really?" Sonya asked her, going along with the joke.

"Why?" Holly put in.

"Because God misplaced their brains to a little Souther than ours." Claire said. The girls laughed and got to their positions.

"Dang, their all packed. Abs all round!" Yusuke exclaimed as he still was looking at the girls. By now, Kurama was nervous that he was being seen with them doing their activity, and Hiei was just pissed that he was even being noticed.

"Jackie really stands out with that red hair."

"And her eyes. Their really bright pink, er something, like Botan's." They pointed out.

"Weird."

The guys didn't leave for the next half hour, don't asked why, but the scrimmage was still being played. Thus far, the shirts were down by two points thanks to Jackie as their sweeper. They call her the brick wall on her team because nothing gets past her, and it just gets bounced back with a forceful kick. If you were wondering, she was on the skin team.

Yusuke was now sitting on the ground cross legged watching the girls through the wire fence half heartedly since he some how got bored. He didn't really care for the sport of soccer. Although, Kuwabara was still sucked into the movements of the girls… ugly pervert.

"Come one Kuwabara, let's go. I'm bored." Yusuke said.

"How can you be bored?! This is totally awesome!" He exclaimed.

"Yeah, well not anymore since they're not doing anything amusing."

"Well if you'd actually take the time to watch, you'd see the incredible amount of team work and in sync abilities are needed for this sport. Not to mention the amazing ball handling skills of them all and the speed of both the players and the game, maybe you'd be interested in watching it." Kuwabara said with his nose in the air, taking his eyes away from the game just for a second.

"Wow, you're actually taking in this for more than girls, who the hell are you?" Yusuke said looking up at his stupid friend.

"What? You're able to see that it's a great game if something interests you in it first."

"Idiot human girls running around half exposed?" Hiei asked him. Kuwabara nodded wildly.

"Hn, idiot."

"We really should be going. We all have homework." Kurama said.

"Fine, I'll go." Kuwabara finally said. He slumped as he walked away.

Jackie saw that they were finally going to leave and caught Hiei's eye. She waved at him though he did not return the favor. He turned his back to her, which just made her fume.

"Hiei Jaganshi! You will wave back when people acknowledge you! Be nice for once!" Jackie's voice boomed out of the small body she possessed seeming to float across space and the universe. Hiei went wide eyed, as did the other three, and turned around slowly. The game had been totally stopped because of Jackie and her scream. She was standing, not caring that she brought attention onto herself since she did that already with her appearance, waiting for Hiei to react. He was still wide eyed at her outburst, though did not respond like Jackie wanted. He turned back around letting Jackie get more acquainted with his back again. This just pissed her off more since she was never used to someone around her being cold. She motioned for one of the girls to give her the soccer ball and she passed the ball to her feet. Jackie picked the ball up and positioned it and got ready like she was a goalie. She took a couple of steps before bringing her right foot behind her, then bringing it back to connect with the ball. It flew far through the air till it finally nailed Hiei in the back, making him stumble forward.

Hiei whipped around in anger to see Jackie smirking at him and the rest of the soccer girls looking at him laughing. He met with Jackie's eyes and saw humor in them. So, she was good with comebacks, and getting the last word… or action… into a conversation. He 'Hned' and turned back to the other three laughers and just walked past them.

"Shows you who you're messing with! Jackie Marie Estrella Fernandez Conover!" She yelled, then stuck her tongue out and laughed. She turned back around to her friends whom she high fived.

"12 laps Jackie." Her coach said.

"What for?!" She asked.

"For losing us another soccer ball. I told you the consequences for this kind of stuff would be tough."

"You won't even give me a break? Come on! I just got out of the hospital!" Jackie defended. Her coach didn't say anything, just pointed to the track. Jackie pouted and left to go run. (12 laps 4 miles)

"Where'd Hiei go?" Yusuke asked looking up into the trees around him.

"Probably got embarrassed and ran away." Kuwabara said. Yusuke looked away from the trees and laughed with his stupid face. He had looked away from the trees to early to find Hiei who was in the next tree up.

He stood there looking through the clearing to the soccer field. He was watching Jackie run her laps at a very good steady pace. She was nearly done.

When she did finish, she grabbed a water bottle and sucked the liquid out of it. She raised her hands over her head to open up her lungs and she glanced over to the distant trees. She squinted when she thought she saw something. Jackie finally saw that it was… Hiei. Her eyes widened at the height that Hiei was, in the tree. He saw that she noticed him and quickly vanished. Jackie just stood there dumbfounded.

"What the hell?"

--

Shade- Done. Review. Make happy. Or I won't update.