Believe it or not -- and, let's face it, this is me, so not --I actually have this entire thing written. It's all sitting on my hard drive ready to post. Tonight, I'm posting this prologue and Chapter One, and the rest is hopefully to follow if this is well-recieved.

I'm not sure what this is, to be honest. Random idea that popped into my head and which I wrote. It's set in the future, before Wyatt turns evil, and is slightly AU because Chris is more than fourteen and Piper isnot dead yet. This is just... high school fic with Chris and his friends, or what I think of as his friends. Originally, I wasn't going to post it, because it was just for fun, but then my Beta, who, by the way, I love, thought that it would be worth posting. So here it is.

I'd say enjoy, but I fear that that's presumptious, so just... Take a look. Or not. Heh.

Twisted Flame

"Guess what I just heard?"

Bridget turned, tucking escapee black hair behind her ear angrily. Nixa was standing at her elbow, practically vibrating with excitement, pressing her lips together to hide a smile but failing to do so. It was spilling out both in the upturn of her mouth and the dancing of her blue eyes. She jumped a little on the spot, the loose curls that her blonde hair was fixed in today bouncing up and down.

"Okay, this is taking perky way to far," Bridget informed her stonily, tiredly arching an eyebrow and fixing her with a bored, brown gaze. "This much too far." She demonstrated by holding out her hands a little wider than her body. When she was done with the visual aiding she tossed some books back into her locker, glad to be rid of them.

"Guess!"

"You're actually starting to scare me," Bridget said warily, eyeing her friend up and down. This wasn't just bubbly. This was something way past bubbly. This was bubblier than a kid gone insane with dish soap in a Jacuzzi.

She'd done that once, okay? Once. They didn't have to keep taking it out on her.

Nixa rolled her eyes as Bridget slammed her locker shut in answer and started walking down the hall. The blonde hurried after her, readjusting the strap of her bag with her thumb to try and disperse some of the weight in it. "You have to guess," she said again impatiently, catching up with Bridget and falling into step next to her.

Bridget groaned, resigning herself to not being able to get away from Nixa's guessing game and came up with both the best and most extravagant scenario that she could think of. "The cafeteria exploded?"

Nixa shook her head tightly. "Better. Way better."

Bridget stopped walking and looked at her, cocking her head, a sudden interest in the game catching her now. "Huh. O…kay… Principal Minch exploded. Please, please say that happened?"

"Can't you think of anything else but violence and explosions?" Nixa asked, exasperation creasing her face as she almost stamped her foot with frustration.

Bridget huffed, walking back down the hall, dodging past people in the crowded space. "Fine. There was this… cute little bunny rabbit. And it was soft and furry and had a twitchy nose and a fluffy tail." She paused as someone knocked into her, her immediate reaction to spin on her heel and try to see who it was. She couldn't pick anyone out in the throng so she sighed and took out the tie holding her ponytail in place, putting it into her mouth so she could redo it. She turned back to Nixa and told her in a muffled voice, "And then it exploded."

"Nothing exploded! I'll just tell you," Nixa said as they stopped next to Ben and Chris.

Chris was rooting through his locker. "You'll tell her what?" he asked, only semi-curious, more intent on finding the book that his locker had eaten.

"Apparently something exploded," Ben said with a shrug, closing his own locker and leaning against it, searching them both with hazel eyes for an explanation.

"If one more person says something exploded, I'll explode," Nixa warned dangerously, before turning to Bridget. "Josh Muse. Pool party. Friday."

"Josh Muse?" Bridget asked.

"Uh-huh."

"Hm…" Bridget said, smiling slightly. "I see…"

Chris pulled a face as his locker threatened to eat his entire arm. "Why is his last name Muse? He's too stupid to inspire anyone."

Bridget smiled almost dreamily. "Trust me. He makes up for it."

Ben snorted. "How?"

"By looking like that," Nixa murmured, gesturing to Josh.

Ben stuck his fingers down his throat and pretended to vomit as Josh rounded the corner. Bridget smacked him on the arm. Hard. Harder than she looked like she could be able to hit, which was totally an unfair advantage to her.

"Ow!" he complained good-naturedly, his standard knee-jerk reaction to being hit by Bridget. It came out even without thinking about it now, what with the amount of times a day Bridget pummelled one of his biceps

"Quit whining," Bridget snapped as Chris finally slammed his locker closed, dragging out the required book from its dark depths.

Josh stopped at the top of the hall and his group stopped too, practically blocking the entire corridor. But that only made the group of cheerleaders and various jocks in their usual predictable gaggle look bigger as they forced the traffic in the corridor to navigate their bottleneck.

"Why are you so bothered, anyway?" Chris asked, trying to cram the book into his bag any which way it would fit. "It's not like he's actually going to invite you. We're part of the 'Undesirables' remember? The ones the velvet ropes are for?"

"For some reason, people think we're freaks," Ben agreed, still rubbing his bruised bicep absently. He shifted the pile of books he had in his arms to do so. "Can't work out why."

Bridget looked him up and down. "I can think why," she said dryly.

"Could it be your attitude, tendency towards black, your obsession with weapons and your pathological inability to be nice to anyone?" Ben shot back immediately.

Bridget gave him a long hard stare. It was The Stare that frightened strangers and small children but, of course, had no effect on Ben whose own eyes twinkled with amusement. The Hunter swung her bag into his leg and he dodged out of the way. The bag slammed into the lockers with a loud metallic clang.

"God, what have you got in there?" Chris asked, looking at the bag.

"Put your hand in and find out," Bridget deadpanned.

"Ah. Her favourite pickup line. I bet she says that to all the guys," Ben said.

Bridget turned to him with her hand raised and the witch shied away from the blow that was about to come, but the Hunter lowered her hand. "Nope. I'm not going to hit you. I'm going to rise above it all because I know that I'm better than you." She crammed her hand firmly into her pocket. "Yup. I don't need to be a wiseass and I have better dress sense than you could ever have. See? Better than you."

"Don't forget, when he says a rhyme, magic happens," Nixa reminded her absently, wondering if she was looking in Josh's direction too obviously.

Bridget narrowed her eyes. "Maybe we should gag him." Ben wiggled his eyebrows at her. "Or take out his tongue."

"I think he's going to come over here," Nixa said breathlessly, grabbing Bridget's arm without looking at her, focussing solely on Josh.

Bridget grabbed the blonde's wrist and pulled it off, shoving it back down to Nixa's side. "Super strength. Please stop forgetting that."

"You can't blame me for being excited," Nixa said, turning to her and wondering if Bridget was going to blame her for being excited. She smiled uncertainly. "Aren't you?"

Bridget shrugged. "It's a dumb party. There'll be drinks laced with God knows what and people making out in the hot tub. I'd have more fun killing something."

"Did I not tell you that it's a pool party?"

"Yeah…" Bridget said, not following. She cocked her head to one side with her eyes narrowed, Nixa's train of though completely lost to her.

"Two words," Nixa said, grinning. "Swimming. Trunks."

Bridget made an understanding noise, Nixa's grin finding its way onto her lips. "Ah… Which day did you say this party was again?"

"Oh, come on. You're both shallow enough to let ants wade through you," Chris told them tiredly, leaning against his locker. He folded his arms across his chest and shifted so that the corner of one of his books wasn't stabbing him in the spine.

"And how," Bridget said, smiling wickedly and pulling her ponytail tighter.

"He's not going to invite you," Chris warned for the second time, sounding almost singsong. "He'll remember the time you set the sprinklers off and wandered around school with fire axes looking for a demon. Of course, to everyone else it just looked like you were walking around in the sopping wet with fire axes."

"The demon was weak against water," Bridget said, as if it justified her actions. "And besides. Where were you when that was all happening? We were hunting the demon, as we always do. You know, what destiny gave us our powers for?" She wound her hair tie tighter.

"Is this going to be a long guilt trip?" Ben asked. "Because I didn't go to the bathroom before we left."

"Don't forget, we got a special mention for it. We were 'thoughtful students who risked their own lives in an attempt to save their beloved school'," Nixa quoted. "So nyah."

"Fine! Or the time you were crawling through the ducts which gave way," Ben put in. "Didn't you crush the Homecoming Queen? Josh's girlfriend?"

"I only broke her wrist," Nixa dismissed with a casual wave of her hand. "And if she actually ate more than half a cucumber slice a day she would have had something to protect her bones anyway. Her fault. Not mine."

"Please don't tell me that that was the defence that won your court case," Ben said. "Because, suddenly, I've lost all faith in the justice system."

Nixa rolled her eyes and used her thumb to shift the strap of her bag again as Chris picked up on the tag team.

"Okay, how about the time—"

"Sh!" the Hunters hissed as one.

Both Ben and Chris thought at the same time that had there been any bushes nearby, they both would have been shoved into them. As it was there were only the metal lockers behind them to lean against and exchange smiles as Josh came down the hall. He was so going to pass them by. While some of his cheerleaders in the herd would sneer and smirk and perhaps throw in the odd, 'Freak'. The usual day for them. Not that Chris actually disliked being an oddity. It meant he didn't have to be false to attempt to cram himself in like a cylinder into the square hole. He was happy enough being himself, thank you very much, and all of the Josh Muses in the world weren't going to change that.

Bridget turned and gave them both a final death glare that warned them to be quiet and then turned and feigned conversation with Nixa.

"I didn't realise we'd become such a liability," Ben commented, watching the group come closer.

"Maybe we're just bigger freaks that we thought?"

"I like to think that they're the freaks for not being able to move things with their minds or turn things to ice."

This time, both Bridget and Nixa turned and glared, almost exasperatedly but also pleadingly. The glare in stereo was a little more intimidating than the glare in mono, but both of the witches were too used to it now to react all that much. They understood, however, that those glares meant stop the weird talk now. Or else. And an unidentified threat was something that did intimidate them.

Ben pretended to be interested in shuffling the books in his arms around. He needed a bigger backpack. Or maybe he could just toss some of the old stuff out of his existing one. That might work… although he didn't know what he'd find lurking at the bottom.

"It's Nina, right?"

Ben looked up, so surprised that he nearly dropped his Trig book. Josh had actually stopped by them. Perhaps he'd got a freak vaccine from somewhere?

"Uh, yeah. Hi."

"Apparently, she's so shocked that we were wrong she's forgotten her own name," Chris whispered to Ben, gesturing to the star struck Nixa.

Ben snickered. "This could be good," he hissed back.

"And, uh—"

"Bridget," the black-haired teenager cut in before Josh got her name wrong and she had to murder him. "It's Bridget."

Josh looked kind of startled at the sudden, brutal address and Nixa's breath hitched in her throat, praying that Bridget hadn't blown it. She put on her best winning smile and said, "Did you want something?"

He smiled back at her and she felt her own widen and become more genuine. She tilted her head slightly to one side and played with a strand of her hair, twisting it a little around her fingers to emphasise the curl in it.

He blinked and then grinned some more, delving into his bag and pulling out two blue, pre-printed invitations and held them up, fanning them out. "I'm having a party on Friday. Do you want to come?"

Bridget looked past Josh at the bored cheerleaders snapping gum and looking disgusted at him for inviting them and smirked, immediately snatching the invites from his hand fast enough for her arm to be a blur. She didn't register the speed that she had used and looked down at the invites momentarily before smiling up at him, the thrill of actually having one up on the cheerleaders giving her a head rush. "We'd love you. To."

He blinked again, his mouth slightly open. Nixa could and did count each of his dazzling teeth before he closed it again and smiled. Wow. He had a lot of them… "Great. My place at eight."

"We'll be there."

Ben and Chris exchanged eye rolls as Bridget and Nixa turned around. Bridget was still clutching the invitations tightly in her fist and Nixa was about to squeal when Josh turned around and spoke.

"Oh, Halliwell. Olsen. Didn't see you there."

Ben and Chris both looked up and frowned at Josh, their suspicions aroused. Civil pleasantries were not something often exchanged between them. Scratch that — never. Ben looked him up and down and hid a sneer. If somehow Josh had hit his head really hard and was going to invite them to the party then he wouldn't go anyway, and he was pretty sure Chris wouldn't either. Why bother?

It was probably to turn around and laugh at them or something. And sure enough, Josh shoved Ben lightly back into the lockers and slapped his hand on the books in the witch's hands, sending them tumbling to the floor. Ben sagged with annoyance and the sheer cliché of it all, rolled his eyes and sighed, making no effort to pick them up.

"Whoops," Josh said, sticking his face into Ben's and smirking.

"Huh. Just so we're clear: this is the tough guy, Josh, right?" Ben asked, feigning sincerity. "Because I'd hate to get him confused with jerk Josh and moron Josh."

Chris looked down and moved his foot, Ben's Trig book falling from his sneaker. "Wow. You really are a clumsy loser, aren't you?" Chris said. "I would have though all that dancing around on the baseball field would have done something about that."

Josh's eyes narrowed and he turned to Chris. "Just for that, Halliwell, you don't get an invite to the party."

Chris gave a short laugh and then scoffed. "You weren't going to invite us anyway. It would be bad for your image."

Josh shrugged and laughed, and his claque laughed as well. "True," he said. "But you would have come anyway begging to be accepted if I had invited you, though."

"I wouldn't come to a party of yours if you paid me," Ben said. "Oh, and you have spinach stuck in your teeth. Right there." He pointed to Josh's mouth and the jock reared back, scrubbing the general area with a finger until they could hear squeaking. "Oh. My bad. It was just your tooth," Ben deadpanned.

Josh's eyes narrowed. "Remember, you may have grown up a little bit, but I could still shove both of your skinny asses in a locker. The same locker," he was hissing now, his lip curled.

Ben shuddered involuntarily, hoping it was light enough for Josh not to notice. He bent to collect his books, feeling the metal walls of the locker closing in on him as he struggled to breathe… He closed his eyes, willing the claustrophobic thoughts away by reminding himself of the enormity of the hallway that he was standing in. He retrieved the last textbook and he stood up straight again, more composed.

"Is my ass really that skinny?" Chris wondered, trying to get a look. "And there's me thinking I'd been working out. Nice of you to look and warn me though, Josh. Thanks."

Josh snarled and walked off, shoving Ben and Chris backwards into the lockers and striding down the hall, pulling more invites from his bag.

Ben saluted at his retreating back. "Ah, now there's a prince and a half for you."