Title: Do it Again

Author: Marian Wilde

Summary: Life was like a box of chocolates, you never knew which candy the maid had injected with arsenic.

Rating: Mild R for language and innuendo.

Special Thanks: To Nightshade for loving the story and nearly throttling me for the ending, Beige for her glares whilst reading the story, Horse for helping me edit it, and Prof M for making me write a short story. This is not what he had in mind.

Feedback, like manna from Heaven.

Chapter 1: "Veni, vidi, volo in domum redire." (Translation) I came, I saw, I want to go home.

'The clouds were full to the brim with black promise and smiled down at the trudging pubescent peons as it remained impotent in the face of the weather forecast. Weathermen had predicted a blizzard with such vehemence and arrogance that the clouds crossed their ions and held it in just to see the look of disbelief on the post-modern hedge witches and hear the gasps of agony from students who'd pushed homework aside in lieu of planning a chilly holiday. If clouds could have smirked, these would have, as it were they howled their laughter in high winds, ripping the caps and tearing scarves from about the necks of young academic rejects.

There was no place for Phaedra Lane out in the weather, she'd actually done her homework and therefore figured that she deserved a holiday based on her own faithfulness to academia and perseverance in the arts of learning. Her mother hadn't seen it that way however and had dragged her unwilling hide from under her comforter not half an hour before. As she stared up at the marble steps of St. Scholastica's School for the Gifted, she realized that she was cold, she was wet, and if she didn't get a bagel right now that she was going to begin consuming human flesh. The freshman over yonder, a petite thing with floppy red pigtails, looked particularly delicious. Plump pink flesh with a delectable bruise on her arm that reminded Phaedra of a Devil's food donut.

"Do it again," a chill traveled up her spine which had nothing to do with the weather and she licked the scar bisecting her lips. "I dare ya, do it again, yer goin' ta geh in trouble again if ya keep starin' at people with them freaky eyes ah yers."

Breath exploded from her scarred mouth. "Fucking hell, Sal, you scared me." She glared at her friend, trussed up in flannel rags and hanging precariously around the waist of a copper Christ. "My eyes aren't freaky."

Salvation Graves smirked as she leapt off the statue, dirt-colored curls bouncing off her nut brown face with the motion as she strode towards her friend. "Yer eyes look like dirty mirrors and that spooks folk, 'spacially kids." She spat tobacco out onto the marble steps before inching closer as if to poke her nub nose into Phaedra's mouth. "Sommat wrong, Phae? Ya dohn look so hot."

"That's because I'm cold, nimrod." She pushed the shorter girl hard and stepped back, regaining violated personal space. "And my eyes aren't freaky, they're gray. Sure, it'd be nice to have pretty hazel eyes but those were gifted to you to make up for your stench."

"Stench! What tah hell?"

"You reek, my friend, you have befouled the air around me, no, get back, no hug for you today least the rank odor of Copenhagen stick to my clothes. I get into enough trouble without the nuns thinking I have chew stored in my lip." Phaedra wrinkled her nose in distaste.

"Bitch bitch bitch, moan moan moan, whine whine whine, whas got tah hair stuck up yer ass this mornin'?" Salvation stepped forward and swept white bangs out of those dingy eyes, beholding deep purple bruises. "Yer not gettin' enough sleep. Why?"

"Just some bad dreams."

"Is it 'bout wah happen-"

"Stow the messiah complex--" damaged lips twisted in a sneer, "--Salvation, its just a couple bad dreams not a fucking psychotic break."

"Fine, Jeezus Christ, dohn bite my head off jus 'cause yer in a pissy-ass mood." The dark little head peeked hazel eyes up at the sky just in time for a tiny slice of hail to bonk her on her nose. "C'mon, lez geh inside 'fore we turn intuh icicles."

The bell tolled as their collective feet graced the second step and they ran the consecutive twenty-five steps to be met by a crowd of pulsating backs as thirty-six students tried to move as one through a door three feet wide.

"Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem!" Phaedra shrieked, eyeing the crowd with mock ire, she loved using Latin, it improved her day more then anything else because it proved that she was in fact overeducated and thusly lazy rather then stupid. Besides, with Latin, even curses sounded profound. (Translation) Stand aside plebeians! I am on imperial business.

Salvation shook her head, "Yer such a freak."