Fractals

Fractals Chapter Thirty One (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN
ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… Yay for
healthy kitties! ;) InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are
wondermous and loverly for archiving/hosting! ProPhile: Nap more.
Morgan: *GLOMP * Readers/Reviewers: The ducks have been subdued…
for now. Thank you a zillion times over for reading/reviewing!

"Did you just hiss at me?"
"No… do you want me to?"
Paige folded dog eared the page she was reading and shut the
book, making a moue of confusion. "I could've sworn I just heard
someone hiss at me."
Theresa sighed and stuck a pencil in the pages of her math
book, recognizing that she was not going to get any more work
done. "No one hissed at you. Why would I hiss at you?" She rolled
her head on her shoulders, popping her neck. "Maybe it's your brain
leaking."
"Ha. No, I swear, I heard someone hiss!" Paige shoved her
book across the table and stood. It was less than fifteen minutes
until they were expected to show up for dinner but she had been
determined to study for all she was worth, knowing that the biology
test the next day was not going to be easy. "Help me find it."
Theresa groaned. "You can't find a hiss, Paige! It's a
sound! It's not like it's going to be in a little cartoon bubble,
floating by over head in a nice font!" She was on her feet, though,
wandering aimlessly around the library to shut Paige up.
Paige muttered something decidedly unladylike under her
breath and proceeded to get on her hands and knees and crawl along
the shelves in the center of the room, peering into the two inch gap
between the bottom shelves and the floor. "Probably the air
conditioner hissing," she said aloud, testing the theory.
"It's forty degrees outside. Why would the a/c be on?"
Theresa responded, finding herself oddly drawn into this. She was
sure she had just heard the tiniest hiss, like the air being let out a b a balloon one room over. "Hmm… could it be the heater?"
Paige grunted in the negative. "The heater doesn't hiss.
It rumbles."
"Maybe it's sick…" Theresa hopped up onto one of the more
stable chairs and stood on her toes, trying to listen at the ceiling
vent. "Could be one of the showers upstairs, the water hissing in
the pipes…"
"That knocks if it makes und und at all," she replied,
sitting back on her heels. "Damn."
"Shhh," Theresa breathed. "Damn it, now I hear it too!"
A soft, sibilant hiss was wending it's way through the room
like a ribbon. Paige stood slowly, her eyes scanning the room for
the source of the sound, fully expecting to see Bobby or Jamie
hiding in plain sight, trying to scare them. Theresa stepped down
off the chairert ert for any shift in the sound's location, her keen
ears straining to find the source. "I think," Paige murmured softly
as Theresa moved next to her, "it's over there." She pointed
towards the reference shelves, the farthest corner of the room,
known for being the place to take someone if you wanted to make out
during school hours. Paige did not even notice as she wrapped her
hand around Theresa's elbow, creeping forward slowly. Theresa sighed
and returned the gesture more out of solidarity than nervousness.

"Shouldn't we have chakram and sais for this?"1

"Hush," Paige ordered, jostling her elbow sharply. They
stopped a few feet away from the shelves. "It stopped…"

"It's probably laughing at us," Theresa replied. She
disengaged herself from Paige's grasp and edged forward, picking up
a heavy tome on the origins of cranberry farming in New England.
Glancing at the title, she sighed. "Well, it bores me to death.
Maybe it'll work on whatever this is."

Paige bit her lip. "Be careful!"

"I'll be careful of the random hiss of unknown origin,"
Theresa shot back. "I highly doubt air can hurt me."

Paige opened her mouth to say something but thought better
of it. Years of living with older brothers had taught her when to
let people get their own comeuppance. She edged a little closer,
though, the hissing growing a shade louder. "Can you see it?" she
finally breathed. "What is it?"

Theresa shot her a look and got on her knees to peer under
the shelves, where the sound seemed to be coming from. "Huh. Looks
like a tube came loose."

"A tube? For what?" Paige was disappointed. She had been
halfway hoping it was something interesting. She got on her knees
beside Theresa and tried to peer past her. "I don't see anything."

"There, against the wall. It's black… maybe it runs to the
dehumidifier the Professor insists on keeping in here." She shoved
her book/weapon aside and reached for the black tube, tugging on it
gently. "Oh, it's very loose…" She froze and her eyes became very
wide as she spoke. "Oh, shit."

"What? Are you hurt? What is it?" Paige heard her own
voice ratchet up a few notches. "Theresa, say something!"

"Snake! Snake snake snake!" She shoved herself backward
and rolled to her feet, shaking her arm frantically. A black snake,
about two feet long, had wrapped itself around her wrist and forearm
and was not amused.
Paige shrieked, tumbling backwards over the study desk. "Get
it off!" she cried.
"Working on it!" Theresa wanted to scream herself but knew
better. She flailed her arm, scared to death that the snake was
going to bite her. "Help!"
Paige grabbed for her un-snaked fingers and held her
still. "Oh, God, what do I do with it?"
"Unwrap it!" Theresa bit out.
Paige closed her eyes and slid her fingers under the snake's
tail, her breath shaking. "Oh, god, it's cold!"
"It's a reptile," Theresa replied, trying to sound calm.
The snake was glaring at her with every ounce of serpentine hatred
it could muster. "Get. It. Off."
Paige nodded and gave the snake an experimental tug. The
snake took exception to this and decided Paige's arm was a much
nicer place to coil around than Theresa's.

Rogue plastered herself against the wall as Theresa and
Paige burst, screaming, from the lib, ru, running hell bent for
leather towards the medical wing. "And that," she sighed after a
moment, "is our library."
The red haired girth hth her smiled faintly. "Looks like
this is going to be really interesting."

A/N Next chapter… just who IS the read haired girl, lol?


1 Xena/Gabrielle reference… *waves to Foxy, lol *