Author's Warning: Like everything else, this takes place in my series, set up by the events in my first story "More Than My Friend" where the big event is that Frankie adopts Mac as her "little brother". If you haven't read that story yet, I strongly suggest you do so now, or else you might get confused.

"YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!"

To say that a certain imaginary rabbit was somewhat startled by the earsplitting shriek would've been the understatement of the century. As soon as the unbearably shrill racket assaulted his eardrums, Mr. Herriman instinctively leapt so high that for a moment it looked as if he was about to smack his head on the foyer ceiling before he made a clumsy landing. The moment he gathered his wits about him though, the no-nonsense imaginary friend wasted no time and just moments later was bolting out through the front doors in a silvery gray flash.

"My goodness! What's going on?" he cried as he hurriedly hopped down the porch stairs and onto the snow-blanketed front yard. Alas, his question had been completely redundant. Anyone could've taken one look at the lanky redhead frantically trying to wipe the snow from her face and realized that an unprovoked ambush had just taken place.

"Son of a…" Frances "Frankie" Foster grunted aggregately as she scraped the mess of slush and ice off her cheek. "Holy God, that is so cold-"

"Good gracious!" Mr. Herriman exclaimed in sincere shock as he skidded to a halt. "Miss Frances, what on earth happened to you?"

"Oh, didn't you hear?" the caretaker grumbled sarcastically. "They're called ice facials, and they're all the rage in Paris these days! What do you think, Fuzz-Butt?"

"Watch that tone, young lady!" her employer scolded as he delicately brushed a clump of frozen slush from her shoulder. "I'm only trying to help, there's no need to get fresh with me! Now please, what-"

"What's it look like?" she hissed as her face glowed with a vibrant scarlet, though whether that was from rage or the stinging ice, it was difficult to say. "This isn't rocket science! I was getting the mail when someone chucked a snowball at me!"

"What?" The appalled Mr. Herriman cried in dismay, as if no other crime could possibly be as horrendous. "Everyone should know perfectly well that attacking house staff is strictly forbidden! Who would do such a thing?"

"I don't know!" she confessed miserably. "I was just heading towards the mailbox, and-"

However, that was all that was needed to hurl the rabbit in a spectacular rage. The stonefaced authoritarian had whirled about and was immediately hopping quickly upon the yard, glancing about wildly as he carefully combed the area for any suspects.

"All right! All right! Who did this? Who?" he roared gruffly while he searched the scene. "Wretched scoundrels! Don't think I don't know that you're still here, I know it! Get out of your tunnels or from behind your makeshift fortification this very instant, you fiends! This woman spends all day toiling to make sure you have three square meals and clean living conditions, and you repay her with this cowardly attack? Knaves! Cads! You will drop your weapons and reveal yourselves this very instant! I swear, I will find you, so don't-"

THWACK!

His vicious tirade was rudely interrupted when a slushy missile seemed to fire from nowhere, scoring a stinging blow directly to the back of his head.

"GAAH!" Mr. Herriman bellowed as the freezing pain jolted him. The projectile struck with such mighty force the imaginary friend was nearly thrown off balance, and tottered drunkenly about for a few moments before a quick-thinking redhead nabbed him by the coattails.

"Mr. Herriman!" Frankie yelped in dismay as she steadied him back upon his feet. "Oh my God, are you okay-"

"COWARDS!" he howled, trembling with torrid anger as he roughly pushed her away. "You cowards! Attack the resident caretaker when she doesn't a suspect a thing, and now you have the gall to attack an old rabbit when his back is turned? Ooooh, whoever you are, if you think for an instant you're going to get away with this, then-"

THWACK!

Yet another snowball came rocketing clear out of the blue, striking him squarely between the shoulder blades.

"OOF!" he grunted as this one managed to send him flying onto his paws and knees in a heap. "Oh, you miserable rapscallions!"

"Where are they coming from?" Frankie whimpered, shivering with fright as her emerald eyes darted about wildly. "Mr. H, I can't see-"

"Look harder, then!" he bellowed bad-temperedly as his patience was rapidly sapping by the second.

"They can't be that hard to find, if they're really so idiotic enough to think that they can stay here and continue to pummel us without being found, then I doubt they can hide forever-"

THWACK!

Mr. Herriman let loose with another enraged howl as yet another snowball struck and disintegrated against his cheek in a miniature explosion of stinging frozen particles.

"AAAAAAUUUUGGGHH! FILTHY RUFFIANS!" he cried like a bloodthirsty lion. "Show yourselves!"

"OW! Oh, they're everywhere!" Frankie shrieked as she stumbled by, frantically trying to tear the remnants of a freshly thrown snowball out of her hair. "Oh my God, I still can't see them! Mr. Herriman, I still can't see them anywhere-"

"They better pray then that it stays that way!" he growled as he scrambled back to his feet. "As God as my witness, if I lay my hands on whoever's-"

THWACK! THWACK!

Two more snowballs scored two more direct hits, one striking the back of his leg and another one neatly missing his head but smacking a floppy ear dead-on with the force of a hammer as it passed by.

"OWWWW!" he instinctively grabbed it, howling loudly in agony as he broke into a clumsy hopping dance of pain. "Oh, in the name of-"

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

That time he didn't even have the chance to hurl one ferocious threat towards his unseen assailants before a veritable invisible army of miscreants seemed to pummel him from behind with a massive barrage of snowballs.

"OW! OW!" he could hear Frankie screamed nearby. "Stoppit! OW!"

"Miss Frances, get down!" he cried, desperately trying to avoid the hail of ice and slush.

"Get do-YOW!"

A particularly well-aimed snowball scored a bulls-eye upon his cottontail, forcing him to jump nearly four feet in the air.

"AAAARGH!" the imaginary friend wailed is it nearly froze the fluffy hair on his rear. "In the name of everything that is decent, who's sticking rocks in these? OW! OW! OW!"

Despite the pitiful spectacle he posed, the hail of enemy fire continued to rain down unchecked upon him. As the mysterious foe only intensified the attack, the creature was forced to realize that he had no choice but to cut his loses and make an extremely hasty extraordinarily undignified retreat.

"Fiends! Barbarians! Vile scum!" Mr. Herriman cried, nursing a bruised ego as he charged headlong for the safety of the Victorian mansion. "Whoever you are, don't you dare think you've won the battle! I swear, as soon as I-OUCH!"

"Run, Mr. H! Run!" he heard Frankie start to shriek hysterically. "Get out of here! Go!"

The rabbit needed no second bidding, and in an instant he had scrambled up the porch steps and literally hurled himself inside to safety, with the caretaker's words echoing loudly all the while in his ears.

"Forget about me! Just go, before it's too late! Hurry!" she continued to screech in expertly faked terror as she scooped up two more handfuls of snow, one meant to be fired at the retreating imaginary friend and the other to be thrown onto her face. "Run, you fool! Quick, quick, before it's too-"

The echo of the front door being violently slammed shut told the one-woman ambush that he had managed to escape, leaving her just as completely alone as she'd been when he first found her.

For a few moments, Frankie paused and waited cautiously to see if he'd charge out again. Once convinced he wasn't planning on leaving the refuge of the house, a devious smirk immediately swept across her face from ear to ear as she burst out into shrill peals of laughter in her jubilation.

"Heehee!" she giggled, accidentally snorting with mirth as she victoriously strolled up the walkway. "Toss some snow on my cheeks and get all the free shots I want… I should've come up with that years ago…"

"….'No, your majesty.' Said Edmund, and proceeded to tell her all he had heard before leaving the Beavers' house…"

The lanky nightgown-attired young woman read aloud to Mac while she lay sprawled atop his bed while leaning partially upon the headboard. The child leaned against her and silently followed along, intently hanging onto every word as she acted out all the characters, and changed her voice into a fearsome cackle.

"…'What? Aslan?' cried the Queen, 'Aslan! Is this true? If I find you have lied to-'"

"Er…excuse me? Miss Frances?"

An apprehensive inquiry and the gentle knock abruptly interrupted story time. Automatically both boy and caretaker looked up together in unison at the familiar figure peering in through the doorway.

However, instead of responding with a snappy comment or even so much as an irritated groan, much to Mac's silent surprise Frankie actually appeared to be actively struggling to stifle a grin as she replied rather calmly, "What's up, Mr. H?"

"Um…" Mr. Herriman stammered, keeping his gaze averted as he started to murmur apologetically, oddly resembling a guilty child as he did so rather than the normally dignified Head of Business Affairs. "Before I turn in for the night, I…I-I just wanted to apologize for my…well, my horrific failure earlier this afternoon…"

Frankie immediately snorted as she fought to muffle a wicked giggle or two. "It's all right, you did your best."

"No, no," the thoroughly embarrassed imaginary friend refused. "The manner in which I left you at the complete mercy of those scoundrels was absolutely disgraceful. I'm…I'm terribly sorry about letting you down, I never should've-"

"It's okay," she managed to sputter with a deceptively sweet toothy grin while simultaneously striving desperately to restrain her laughter. "R-really…it h-happens to the b-b-best of us…n-no worries…"

While Mac silently observed his guardian with one eyebrow cocked in bewilderment, Mr. Herriman nodded at the caretaker and smiled wanly.

"Well…thank you for being so understanding." He muttered as he turned around to make his exit.

"No probs." The caretaker replied before fixing her attention back upon the story. "Okay pal, where were we?"

"Uh…" Mac grunted, looking clearly befuddlement by what he had just witnessed. "I…I-I think we were halfway down the page here…"

"Oooh, right! Okay, here we go…'Please, I'm only repeating what they said,' stammered Edmund. But the Queen, who was no longer-"

"Oh, and Miss Frances?" Mr. Herriman inquired gently just before he left.

"Hmmm?" Frankie muttered absentmindedly, not even passing a hasty glance his way. "Yeah? What is it, Mr. Herr-"

THWACK!

The well-aimed snowball scored a direct hit to the side of her head, showering the startled little boy in her lap with a spray of icy cold particles from the spherical winter missile. Immediately, the hallway outside began to echo loudly with the triumphant laughter of a certain oversized rabbit as he swiftly hopped away.

For the next few moments, the pair just sat and looked at each other in dead silence, with Mac looking absolutely baffled by the sudden attack, and Frankie appearing above all else, stunned beyond belief as the remnants of the snowball continued to stick to the side of her head.

As their initial shock began to wear off though, Mac dutifully reached up and began to pluck the ice chunks from her wet crimson locks while the redhead's slack-jawed expression transformed into an angry pout as she crossed her arms and muttered sourly,

"He can yuck it up all he wants, I say it's only funny when I do it…"

The End

Just to clairfy, the book Frankie was reading was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Thanks for reading! All feedback accepted!