CHIPMUNK: Well, it's taken a lot to get this back. I did happen to have about 15 pages printed out, but I had to type it all up again and didn't have the changes I'd made after that print. (sighs) And then there's all the rest of it that I've already forgotten that I have to write all over again. But anyway, after all that this story is still very special to me so if you read, please review! (PS -- any anime I happen to mention here, you can be sure I don't own it!)

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Chipmunk blinked at the bell signaling lunch, then sat up and yawned. Well, she thought, gathering her stuff and walking out of her Algebra I Honors class, at least that's one subject I can feel comfortable sleeping through. Ms. Clark was without a doubt the most boring teacher she'd ever had, and her syllabus included nothing Chippie didn't already know.

"Chipmunk!"

She turned around to see Ichigo waving to her from a table isolated on one wing of the patio. "Hey," she said, going over. "Kon'nichi wa."

"Where'd you disappear to this morning?"

"Huh? Um... I guess I can be pretty fast when the need strikes. Heheh."

Aoi Sakura wandered over, yawning as she set her bag down on the table. "Ohayo, Ichigo-sama. Ne, Chippie, tomodachi desu ka? We have a group already," she said, resting her chin on her arms.

"BOB!!!" Annie crashed into the cherryblossom's side, followed by Pocky, who was laughing uncontrollably as she spun to land next to Ichigo. The red-head then lurched across the table, plucking an invisible figure out of the air and stuffing it into a cardboard floppy-disk box. "Bad Bob!" she shouted at it. "Stupid Bob..."

"What the heck --" started Ichigo.

"Hey look!" a loud, cruel voice said suddenly. "All the weird ones have found a sense of security together!"

Chipmunk almost didn't want to turn toward the voice, but decided that if she were to have an enemy already it would be best to know who. She looked behind her. Standing amidst several other girls dressed just like her was a tall, anorexic-looking blonde dressed in designer jeans and a Gap sweatshirt that had been cut up to expose her midriff right up to the ribs. Her face was slender, like that of a model, and set with a mocking scowl that reminded Chipmunk of certain anime villians she hated. Pretear's Mayune came first, then the obvious Queen Beryl, as well as several others.

"Listen up, Nons. From now on you sit at this table every day, and interact only with other Nons. That means, stay away from the Nerds, Geeks, Freaks, Populars, Bohemians, Jocks, everyone who is not a Non. Is that understood? Without waiting for a response she turned to leave.

Ichigo growled. "Who does she think --!"

"Hold on," Aoi Sakura said, standing up and putting her hands down on the table. "I place myself in more than one category: nerd, fangirl, and ruler of the universe. So what are you going to do about me?"

The prep halted, looked around, and located the blue-haired girlafter almost a full minute. She had an expression of superiorty as she said arrogantly, "Listen to me, Non. I am Vermillia Thompson, and I own this school. I've decided you are a Non, so you are. Just do as you're told, you'll have a better year here at CK."

"No one," said Aoi-chan, eyes flashing, "ever got me to do anything by threatening me."

"You'll all be freshmen, then." She laughed, resembling a banshee, and Chippie winced. "You're all probably -- what, thirteen, fourteen?"

"I'm seventeen," said Annie, looking away from the floppy-disk box for a moment to see what was going on. "Hey, who's that?"

"And I'm fifteen," Chippie said. She didn't care at the moment if the others stared at her. Maybe she had an early birthday, what did they know.

Ichigo-sama smirked. "I'm older than your stupid country, human, and powerful enough to prove it." She leaned closer to the horrified prep. "And if you push me far enough, I may just have to do so," she said lowly. "Get -- lost -- now."

Vermillia backed away uncertainly, but Ichigo-sama's smirk widened to reveal fangs curving down over her lower teeth. The prep and her posse vanished with hardly a breeze into the cafeteria.

"Oi. Meiwaku ne."

"That was awesome!" cried Pocky. She hopped around the table to give Ichigo-sama a hug. "I want fangs like that! How'd ya get 'em?"

Ichigo pushed Pocky away, smoothed out her pleated skirt, and sat down. "I sold my soul in a past life."

"Ohh..." said Pocky disappointedly. She went back to her seat.

Aoi-chan was writing something down on what appeared to be a very long, very official list. Chippie read it upside-down from across the table. It was a hit-list.

"So, Annie," said Ichigo, "If you're seventeen, what are you doing in the freshman class?"

"Followed Chipmunk. I was bored."

Chippie laughed. "Aren't you still prime minister of Japan?"

"Jeez, do you know how much paperwork there is to do? No way, I left Gabe in charge and took a leave of absence." Annie beamed. "And guess what? I'm a chorus major! Wanna hear me sing?"

"How about you, Chipmunk?" Pocky asked.

"Huh?"

"You said you were fifteen."

"Oh, um..." Chippie didn't know if the excuse that she had thought up that morning, that she had been living in the Amazon for the past ten years and had never been to school and had only managed to be placed in high school because she was a genius, would go very far with her new friends. Fortunately, she didn't have time to ramble a possibly worse story because an ugly honking noise suddenly blasted throughout the campus and she jumped. "What's that?!"

"Fire alarm," someone at the next table said. "They'll tell us to ignore it in a second. This happens every year."

"It's the first day of school, too," sighed Ichigo-sama. They all waited a moment, but the noise continued. "Well?!" Ichigo-sama demanded of the silent intercom above them. Some of the other students around them began cleaning up uncertainly.

The box on the patio wall clicked then. "TEACHERS AND STUDENTS, PLEASE EXIT THE BUILDING AND ASSEMBLE IN THE DESIGNATED AREAS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. ONCE AGAIN, TEACHERS AND STUDENTS, PLEASE EXIT THE BUILDING..."

"Huh," said the guy at the next table. "I've gone here three years, and there's never actually been a fire before..."

The girl sitting next to him continued to eat her sandwich. "It could be a bomb threat, you know."

"No way, that would actually make sense."

"Maybe we should go now?" Aoi Sakura said.

"And maybe take charge of these idiots," Ichigo-sama added. She produced a whistle from her kitty-shaped bag and climbed onto the table. The whistle carried over the sounds of the ignorant lunchers, causing everyone both on the patio and in the cafeteria to turn and look at the blonde girl. "OKAY!" Ichigo shouted once it was quiet. "This isn't a drill, people! We've been told to evacuate! Everybody get in line and exit the back gates toward the river -- now!"

Ichigo-sama waited for everone to move.

"Did you not hear me?! There's something going!"

"Yeah!" said one girl with emo glasses. "That's why we're not moving. You think we wanna be tricked into leaving just when something interesting is about to happen?"

The strawberry queen looked hopeless for a breif moment, then huffed and blew her whistle again to silence those who'd gone back to talking. "Okay, I lied!" she said. "We're having a walk-out against the rule on PDA."

Cheering, the entire student body jumped up and ran for the river while Chippie, Annie, Pocky, Aoi Sakura, and Ichigo-sama (who was still on the table) looked on. Then Ichigo hopped down from the table, and everyone gathered up their things, and Pocky led them in the opposite direction, toward the football field on the other side of B building.

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"Birds!" shouted Annie as they climbed up the bleachers. She and Pocky ran off after the gulls that were perched along the fence, the red-head squealing in glee and ordering Bob to bite the poor creatures' heads off. The others settled down on the bottom row of benches. The rest of the school was either down at the river or crowded on the bus ramp, but the stadium was peaceful and empty. A good place for slacking off.

Chippie took out her laptop computer. Mrs. Naguchi had just bought it for her, as her first day of school present, and it was the only one of its kind anywhere: the outside was purple, with a large black Majarae symbol in the center that meant "destiny." Chippie's name was written in both Japanese and Majaraen letters on the space below the keyboard. There was also special software installed and disguised as a word processor so that anything Chippie typed there would happen in real life, but she knew not to use that too often. Instead, she opened up her regular word processor and the most recent file, Insanity, Inc.

Aoi Sakura looked over her friend's shoulder at the file, which made good use of every available text color and the calligraphy fonts. "What's that? A story?"

"Um, plans, actually," Chipmunk replied. "I came up with the idea over the summer, but it still needs some work."

"What kind of idea?" asked Ichigo-sama, who'd become interested at hearing the words "plan" and "work."

"Well, I'm very interested in anime, y'see..."

"We'd noticed," Pocky said as she ran past. Annie followed, squealing something unrecognizable that was still taken as an agreement by the other three.

"So I've decided that when I become famous and have enough money from writing, I'm going to start a company that produces anime and manga and fantasy novels and stuff -- kinda like TokyoPop, only a lot of it will be written by me and the rest of my team."

Aoi read down the list and wowed. "I'd like a part in that!"

"Really?" Chippie said, surprised.

"Me too," Ichigo added. "Since I'm into Journalism, I can be your public connection -- research what your audience wants, check statistics, and whatnot. And I also have a knack for organization and rules."

"I'm a piano major, so I guess I can play the music for your anime. But I like to write too, so I want something of mine published."

"Okay!" said the purple-haired girl. "Wow, I can't believe I already have a team starting!" She was so excited, she hugged her laptop, not noticing the continouos beep that emitted from it when she did so. After a moment she turned to Annie and Pocky. "Do y'all want to join, too?"

"Sure!" they said together.

"I call the role of Random Person!" Pocky yelled.

"Not fair! I wanted to be that!" Annie whined.

"I called it!"

"Well, give it up!"

"No!"

"Annie, we'll find something for you to do," Ichigo-sama said. "For now, let's take a look at those plans of yours, Chip."

"Excuse me," came a voice. Everyone looked over to the corner of the bleachers, where a young woman who could have been any age from twelve to twenty was standing on the fence like it was a normal thing to do. Her hair was golden with several streak of bright red in odd places, and went down past the middle of her back. She had on a plain, sleeveless white dress and Grecian sandals that tied up around her legs. Aoi Sakura was reminded of a rather stuck-up and unintelligent person she'd known a long time ago.

Hopping from her perch, the woman walked up and set down the satchel she was carrying, surprised when Pocky and Annie backed away.

"Can we help you?" Ichigo-sama asked.

"My name is Diviny," the person said, smiling.

Aoi gasped. "YOU!" she hissed, clenching her fists on her lap. "You're still alive, you harpy?!"

"Huh?" said everyone else. Diviny blinked. Then blinked again in a dawning-of-comprehension type of way.

"Oh, Aoi Sakura-san. How are you?"

"Don't you give me that!" The girl jumped from her seat, the seafoam-green tips of her wild blue hair curling upward. "Do you realize what you did to me?! I spent one hundred years as a freaking cherry blossom hanging from a freaking twig. I lost all my possessions and my reputation. You... you..." Aoi Sakura drifted off but continued to huff and glare at the strange lady. And her glare was killer. The others wondered if her eyes really could glow red or if the administrators were putting noxious gases in the air.

"Um," Pocky said after a moment of tense flying electricity, "Is this some kind of role-playing game or something?"

"Oh," said Diviny, her own eyes flashing with danger, "Have you not told them yet?" She smirked, and the forgotten four realized that Aoi's eyes were more than just glowing red, they were literally filled with fire.

"Leave. Right now. Or I'll kill you."

But instead of leaving, Diviny turned to Pocky. "Well, that's okay," she said, still talking to the other girl. "After all, this young lady here can just bring me back to life, can't she?"

At this there was an extended silence.

"Who are you?!? Ichigo demanded. Chippie, still gripping her computer, shifted in her seat anxiously.

"What? Can't you just read my mind and find out? After all, that's only a fraction of your true power --"

"STOP," the cannibal said, turning white. She stood and moved so she was face to face with the woman. "My true powers are not to be spoken of aloud. Another word and I swear to the gods that I will not only help Aoi-chan kill you, I'll deliver the fatal blow."

Then Diviny turned to Chipmunk.

"I know," Chippie said before the other could open her mouth. She had been thinking about this for the last thirty seconds. "You're going to say I'm a mage, right? Well, so what? We don't care --" The others were looking at her, a wide range of expressions all around. She swallowed and went on, "We don't care about what we are, but it's really rude of you to just walk up to us and reveal our deepest to everyone."

Annie clapped silently about times, but stopped when no one else joined her.

"And I'm wondering what purpose you migh possibly have in doing that," Chipmunk said, not feeling so scared any more. Whether anything Diviny had said was true or not, she wasn't sure, but realized she believed the words coming from her own mouth. "I mean, we all probably would have told each other eventually, if we were going to become good friends. And if we never spoke to each other again, what sense does it make to know anyway? That kind of information could be used to a bad end. So it must be that you're either trying to start a supernatural war, or -- omitting the possibility that you have a death wish -- you're going to use us for something."

"...Chippie..." said Pocky, "You are awesome."

Diviny smiled again, only this time it was pleasnt. "Well, at least someone here knows how to think. But I wouldn't neccessarilly call it using you. It's more an appointment of position."

"Oh?"" Chippie looked at Ichigo, sitting on her left. Ichigo hmm-ed and turned to Aoi-chan, who shrugged and looked at Pocky. Pocky shifted her gaze from Aoi, to her bare feet, and up (not very far) to Annie. They all seemed to come to a decision at the same time and nodded as one. "We'll listen," Ichigo said. "Aoi-chan, come sit down, and we'll kill her later."

Aoi Sakura complied, but not before pausing to blink the fire out of her eyes so that she turned away proudly with their natural gray color returned. She sat down beside the blonde with a dignified sigh, crossed her right leg over her left, and looked over at Diviny as though she were a lesser being. "You may begin. But I must warn you, you are being timed. Starting... now."

"Well how much time do I get?"

"Not much. Stop wasting it, is my advice."

The woman cleared her throat. "Well," she began, a little uncertain now that she wasn't being threatened (for her life, anyway). "I am the goddess Diviny, as I've said --"

Aoi scoffed. "You're a goddess now?"

"Yes," said Diviny with fierceness. "And I've been sent here by my superiors -- do shut up, Aoi Sakura-san -- to locate the ones foretold to be able to save this school."

"Let me guess," Ichigo said. "That's us."

"Yes, and others will come in time... but for now, it's just the five of you. How you all came to be here at the same time is a mystery -- I mean, the gods didn't plan it, at any rate -- but it was foreseen and part of the vision received by our prophet involves a great evil at this school. An evil only you can stop."

"Wow."

Aoi Sakura raised an eyebrow at the mage. "It isn't that interesting, Chippie. It's like some poorly written shoujo manga or something."

"I like shoujo manga," said Chippie.

"I like shoujo manga with yaoi in it!" said Annie happily.

Everyone turned toward her, stared, then turned back to the goddess.

"Anyway, you must stop this evil before it destroys everything."

"Oh really." Aoi-chan tilted her head to one side in mock curiosity. "And what, pray tell, do we get out of this, dearest Diviny-sama? And I might say that responding with any kind of "good feeling" reward will result in possible decapitation."

Diviny thought for a moment before replying, "If youy destroy the bad guy, I will be able to leave this plane forever and will never need to bother you again. I believe it's a much better alternative to killing me and invoking the wrath of the gods."

"I believe they'd actually congratulate me for it."

"Well, do something!" Diviny said. "Chrissakes, don't you care about your school at all? Whatever, I'm leaving. Godly duties, whatnot. You should all consider that you're a lot luckier than I am, getting to kill people and such. All I ever get to do is serve my higher-ups their wine, and now I'm playing messanger."

"Oh, I'm so sorry." Aoi-chan rolled her eyes.

Diviny shook her head. "Lucky little brats," she said, and then she wasn't there any more.

Everyone looked up dazedly as the bell rang for third period. The rest of the school had long since returned to classes, and now they were late.

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CHIPMUNK: That was rather longer than I meant it... anyway, I've still got other things to work on before school tomorrow (none of it actually schoolwork, if I can help it!) and one of them is Lavander. I have finally brought myself to start the friggin' Chapter of Death (figurative) and I'm at least a page and a half into it (I work in size ten TNR, and the average chap is four pages, so that's pretty good for only a couple hours). So I'll have that next weekend, gods and muses willing. Ja!