Yep, it's another chapter. :) I do not own the Outsiders, or any of the lines I'm using that you recognise. Note: See if you can spot the movie reference! ;)

Finally getting a chance to see my online buddies- most of them, at least- in person, I didn't waste any time describing them in detail in my head, just like Ponyboy would have. You see, us major Rumblers at the fanclub have sort of... taken over the personality traits and habits and everything in between of the Outsiders character we chose to impersonate.

It sounds a little creepy when you word it like that, but really, it's a perfectly healthy arrangement. Two years ago, when I first joined the club, it was a little hard to get into character absolutely, devoting my whole life to the Cause. Once in a while, I'd slip up and say something like, "I'm, like, so in love with the Outsiders!"

Obviously, a greaser from the 60s wouldn't have dreamed of saying something like that. They would've said something more like, "Glory, that book is sure somethin'. Once ya pick it up, it's impossible not to dig it, y'know?"

Of course, I'm no expert on 60s slang... At least, not yet. So I still got a few things wrong from time to time. However, I knew that the key was fighting to maintain the attitude. Passion and spirit were the key to mastering anything, not cold hard skill.

Twihards were good at what they did, I had to give them that much, but they had various degrees of loyalty in their giant fandom, and that made it hard for them to focus their power, the power of a group of fans' love and obsession. They never knew who was a double-edged sword and who was a true fan. Someone claiming complete loyalty one day could backstab them on a forum the next. This was the Rumblers' only advantage- we stuck together.

Getting my head out of the clouds, happy to have the chance to do so, I began to examine Steph, while remembering the things we'd gotten to know about her through the fandom and fanclub.

Steph MacKinnon was sixteen, and intensely impatient for her next birthday. She had the trademark short Rumbler hair, which she curled so it'd be something close to what we believed were Steve's "complicated swirls". She was kind by nature, which was totally- I mean, completely- not like Steve, so she worked day and night to quell the compassion and let her "cocky and smart" side show.

Steph's specialty was focus. Really intense focus. Though, personality-wise, she was very unlike Steve, she worked harder than any of us to achieve total Stevedom. While the rest of us were busy goofing around, she practiced getting into character. That's why she was one of the most convincing ones in the fanclub. If you didn't know her really well you'd never know she was actually really nice underneath all the character-simulation.

I liked Steph only because I knew she had that kind streak. She didn't like me at all- she thought I didn't try hard enough, was too young to take things seriously, and didn't belong in the fanclub.

Selina- Soda's fanclub counterpart- always told me the places the Rumblers were planning to spread the Outsiders awareness as soon as she knew as long as they weren't planning to actually hack in, and that bugged Steph. It wasn't my fault- Selina always told me, I didn't ask her. Sel doesn't think I'm too young.

Tammy Davidson was the oldest of the fandom and the joker of the group, which was a given considering her real-life roleplaying part was Two-Bit. She was someone who took the role naturally, slipping into it like a glove. Maybe because unlike Steph, she was a born Two-Bit.

She was a little chubby, had a constant friendly grin, and always let her side bangs grow out a lot longer than the rest of her hair. Tammy had naturally light brown eyes, though. She wore colour contacts to make her eyes Two-Bit-gray, and I was insanely jealous of it. I guess you're allowed more freedom when you're a legal adult.

Tammy's real name is Tabitha, a name I rather like, but we've called her Tammy so much that the name Tabitha is only her name on legal papers. Not even teachers called her that, and her parents gave up on it a long time ago. Our obsession was a game for Tammy, and she loved to play it.

She was famous for getting huge tattoos to show her love for the Outsiders, and the switchblade she carried around, but never used, of course, to be an even more real version of Two-Bit. It sometimes seemed like the only thing that made her different from her roleplaying role was the fact that she was honest, and never stole a single Tic-Tac.

If I had to pick the real character of the club, though, it'd be Daphne Wang- Dally's counterpart. Even being the awful artist I was, it was easy to draw her because of her unique, yet simple features. I found it interesting, though, that she didn't look a bit like Dallas in any physical way- it was more her attitude and the way she carried herself that made her perfect for the role.

Actually, Daphne was quite the opposite of Dally Winston's description. She had had pure black hair that she always kept neatly slicked back in a ponytail with hairspray, and there seemed to never be a single loose hair that ever fell in her face. She had dark, serious almond-shaped eyes, that seemed to always be contemplating something, and showed her Rumbler strength.

Daphne was small, but no one ever doubted her ability. She was the one who always did the most serious things to promote the Outsiders, like hacking into a computer system or spamming inboxes with Outsiders information. She had spent two years learning all the ways of the internet from a less than legal source, and had been banned from too many sites to count.

She was, undeniably, tougher than the rest of us- tougher, colder, more skilled. The shade of difference that separated the ways of a Rumbler from a Classic wasn't present in Daphne. She was just as fierce and never backed down from a difficult case.

In the training course she took, there were fans from a huge variety of small fandoms, and she blew off steam by debating with them day in and day out. In the real internet world, though, these small fan groups rarely came out in an argument, and the warfare is between the biggest groups.

Oh, there are smaller fandoms that sometimes show their faces to the Rumblers, like the Inkies and the Night Worlders, but there wasn't much rivalry between us, and the exchanges were never very heated.

So Daphne, even though she could get into a good debate sometimes, had no specific thing to hate. No rival smaller group. Only Twihards. And you can't win against them no matter how hard you try, because they've got all the breaks; the numbers; the whole world who knew them and accepted then. And even stumping them good in an argument wasn't going to change anything. Maybe that's why Daphne was so bitter.

She had quite a reputation. As I said before, loads of site moderators had her on their black list. She did everything there was to do on the internet- absolutely everything you could ever think of doing. I didn't really like her, but she was extremely smart and you had to respect her.

Jolie Mackins was the last and least. If you can picture a little dark puppy who's been ordered around too many times and is lost in a crowd of strangers, you'll have Jolie. She was the youngest, next to me, just as tall as the others but looked a lot younger, somehow, with a very slight build.

She had a tanned face, light brown hair that she always left down, and big eyes almost exactly the same colour. Her bangs were long and she hid her eyes behind them so much that it was a difficult job to even see the colour of them.

Jolie had a constantly nervous, worried look in her eyes, and that makeover she got from the Twihards didn't help matters. She was the club's pet, everyone's little sister.

Her father was always trying to take away her love of the Outsiders through yelling at her, and her mother ignored her when nothing helped, except when her bottled up anger at her daughter's stubbornness couldn't be held in anymore. Every time that happened, Jolie would always post a barely-intelligible post on our page, which made it clear how bad it was.

I think she hated that worse than the trips to the psychologist her parents kept forcing her to. She would've given up on her passion for the Outsiders a million times if we hadn't been there. If it hadn't been for the fanclub, Jolie would never had known what love and acceptance are.

And that concludes the descriptions. :) Review?