A/N: As you know by now if you've followed this story from the beginning, I tend to update once every few years. It wasn't my intention and it can be hard on the readers, but I've found that it works. Although it may take a long while, another chapter will always come eventually. Thank you all for bearing with me. I promise that your patience will be rewarded.

Based on some of the reviews, I want to clarify that this is a rivalry, not a dark romance. Gomez and Morticia might very well chase each other with deadly weapons for foreplay, but they do it out of love. Wednesday and Amanda can't stand each other. With that squared away, here's another round of their struggle. Happy Halloween! ;)

Ω

CHAPTER FOUR (Week 2)

She'd never been so embarrassed in her life.

Wednesday Addams paced the balcony restlessly, oblivious to the spectacularly gloomy view of the city below. She had come up here to calm down and think, but two days had passed since the unsuccessful hunt and she was still in a vile mood. Not even taking a red-hot poker to her brothers had been enough to cheer her up.

You had her, Wednesday, she scolded herself. She was right under your nose. Literally!

Six tries. She'd actually felt insulted when Amanda proposed it. Why would an Addams need more than one try to snuff out a sheltered, spoiled cream puff? And a lame one, at that!

Well, no matter. Beginner's luck wouldn't save the girl next time. Wednesday just had to come up with the right plan. The crossbow proved too slow and unwieldy. Too bad an AK-47 wasn't an option; Uncle Fester still hadn't taught her how to use one. Honestly, she didn't feel like shooting the girl with anything this time. Amanda was a waste of good ammunition. She deserved something worse. Something far more gruesome. Something that, upon the slightest contact, could not possibly fail to destroy her.

Think, Wednesday. She's ignorant, thoughtless, oblivious. And everyone else in this smarmy plastic world worships the ground she walks on. What's the best way to dispose of a person like that?

It didn't take long. A wonderfully awful idea floated to the front of her mind, as surely as a corpse on the water. She turned and bolted back inside the house, past a startled Grandmama Addams and down a maze of corridors to Uncle Fester's room. Finding it empty, she marched across the floor to his closet and threw it open. A dozen or so spiders scuttled out of her path; she greeted them with an ironic salute and ducked inside.

She crawled beneath Fester's clothes (mostly long robes in various shades of black, gray and brown) and rolled aside a few cannonballs that no longer had a suitable cannon. Upon seeing the large wooden crate tucked away in the back, she relaxed. An eerie smile stole over her pale face.

Oh, Amanda. If you thought your precious little feet hurt before ... wait 'til you see what's in store for you this time.

Ω

School didn't seem to matter anymore.

Of course, Amanda had never considered her education terribly important. Besides the fact that she was an effortless straight-A student, she was Don and Ellen Buckman's daughter, and that was all she would really need to know in life—aside from the names of her rich and powerful classmates, that is. But only now did she realize how dull it really was.

Dress well. Be on time. Smile. Gossip. Flirt. Breeze through homework. After the thrill of running for her life last week, it was punishing boredom. The school days seemed as long as they were meaningless, an unending recitation of factoids she no longer needed to know. What did she care about the Pythagorean Theorum, or if there had been two Boer Wars and not just one? None of this would help her on the coming 12:00 AM, Wednesday, when the fear took over.

She shivered, remembering its bitter taste in the back of her throat as she stared blankly at the chalkboard and took mindless notes all through Health class. Every lesson the teacher tried to get across was marred by nervous giggles, shrill whispers, and jokes from the other students.

Oh God, can't they all just shut up so we can get it over with? She thought to herself. It wasn't their drama that annoyed her; she wanted to be an actress one day, after all. It was their weakness. How could they be disturbed by something so common, so trivial? But apparently some of these children were, and their show of discomfort prompted everybody else to join in.

What's the big deal anyway? Sex? Babies? I might not even live long enough to have a first date.

All because of Wednesday, and this crazy idea of being her victim. She'd been lucky once, yes; people like her were naturally fortunate. But getting lucky five more weeks in a row? Objectively she had to admit her chances weren't good. But the promise of revenge on Halloween was intoxicating, all-consuming. If she couldn't reclaim what the other girl had stolen from her, then what was the point of living at all?

Dimly she registered the end-of-class bell ringing. Amanda strode through the halls with a smile as dazzling as it was false, waving to the few people who deserved her attention, and stopped in the open doorway of an empty classroom. Something in there had caught her eye. It was a calendar tacked up on the teacher's bulletin board, displaying the month of October.

Molten hatred, dormant since her last adventure, boiled to the surface. Amanda's plastic smile melted from her face. She snatched a permanent red marker from the desk and drew a violent, blazing 'X' across all five Wednesdays.

A devilish giggle escaped from deep within her chest. Undetected, she slipped out of the room and continued on her way.

Ω

"So you came back," Wednesday said. She spoke without emotion this time. Her eyes reflected nothing. "I'm surprised you didn't call the whole thing off, after last week."

Amanda fidgeted as she tried to meet her gaze. She had worn black again, adding a small backpack with some basic survival gear and a spiked charm bracelet with little skulls painted on it. It was the most obnoxiously goth accessory she could find, and she'd chosen it specifically to get on Wednesday's nerves. But her rival seemed unmoved, completely focused on the task at hand. "What for? You couldn't kill me then. What makes you think you can do it this time?"

Wednesday adjusted the brim of her hunter's cap. "You got lucky. Don't expect it to happen again. This is the last time you'll ever set foot on my property."

Her confidence made her more dangerous; Amanda knew this. She had lived through last week by hitting Wednesday where it hurt most, throwing the little misanthrope off her game; maybe she could do it again.

"You'll never be able to kill me." The heiress said scornfully, twisting her face in revulsion. "That's the reason I chose your sick family's property. Because I wouldn't be caught dead in a disgusting place like this."

An ominous pause and a rush of blood to her cheeks were all that betrayed Wednesday's fury. A chill wind whipped through the cemetery, rustling the autumn leaves about their feet. "Enough stalling. Start the timer."

Amanda handed her the second stopwatch and obliged. Then ... nothing. Instead of running away and hiding, she simply stood there and smiled mockingly as the timer ticked away.

"You have sixty seconds to get away from me. I suggest you use them."

"Why bother?" the girl said smugly, leaning against the nearest headstone. "You're not even armed this time."

"Maybe I don't want to shoot you. Maybe I just want to put my hands around your throat and squeeze."

" ... You're bluffing. You don't have the nerve."

Wednesday held up the watch. Forty seconds were already gone. "I hope you're ready to choke on those words."

Her threat had the desired effect. A little shiver of anticipation went through her as she watched Amanda back away unsteadily, then finally turn and run off through the yard - not to the left of the house this time, but the right, where the trees were larger and the leaves on the soil were thickest.

Perfect.

The prey was able to go faster than last week, but her limp was still noticeable as she scampered off. The stopwatch beeped again and Wednesday strolled off in the same direction slowly, almost nonchalantly, as the slender female shadow receded from view. She even bent down to pick a small, pale flower from the dying grass. There was no reason to hurry. This time, victory was assured. All she had to do was wait.

Amanda tried to move quietly, recalling how easily Wednesday had tracked her movements last week, but the environment was not cooperating. Fallen leaves covered most of the ground and punctuated her every step with a telltale crunch. The moon wasn't so bright this time, but poor vision hindered her more than it would her pursuer; she was well used to the dark while Amanda was a novice, fearfully groping her way along as she imagined those pale hands reaching out from every shadow to clamp around her neck.

But she plunged into the thickest part of the lawn without interruption, and as the minutes began to fall away a backward glance over her shoulder yielded no sign of Wednesday. That hardly mattered, though; the freak could be anywhere, watching, undetectable until it was too late. She couldn't afford to relax until all thirty minutes were up.

Her feet did not pain her quite as much this week, but she still didn't have all her speed or agility back. Before the fire she could run like a gazelle and swim like a dolphin; now she clumsily minced her way along, favoring her left foot. She could hardly bear to look at her rough, reddened skin beneath the protective bandages. The doctors told her it would look all right again eventually, but when?

She tripped suddenly over an unseen tree root and sprawled face-down. She whimpered and reached for a low-hanging branch to pull herself up with. As she did, her right hand disturbed a swath of leaves and revealed something that lay hidden beneath them.

It was a small metallic circle with a sort of button in the middle of it, gleaming nastily in the dim light. It looked rather like an old hot plate, but emitted no heat. As she studied the device, she remembered seeing something like it before ... but where? What a strange and curious thing to find in the middle of someone's yard.

Amanda curiously reached out to touch it.

Ω

Wednesday began to shiver a bit in the crisp air. She hadn't gone far from her starting position. She didn't have to. All she had to do was get her victim moving towards the lethal ordnance she had spent all day burying in the grass, an entire crate's worth. Simple physics and the laws of probability should take care of the rest. But a good ten minutes had gone by without an explosion, without a scream, and she was getting antsy.

Where was Amanda? Or rather, the pieces of her that should be raining from the sky by now? Wednesday should at least be hearing the faint crunch of her footsteps, but even that had ceased, leaving a deep silence to settle over the property.

She finally lost her patience and started walking. The leaves under her feet would be audible to anybody nearby, but she didn't care anymore. She needed to know what had gone wrong here—without getting killed herself, of course. She'd planted the mines carefully in a symmetrical pattern on the right side of the house, making it almost impossible for someone to pass through without triggering one of them. Better yet, they were planted close together enough that detonating one would set off the others, and the resulting explosion would dismember anybody within range. Overkill, perhaps, but she wasn't taking any chances this time.

Wednesday slowed as she approached, using the diagram she drew up to avoid stepping in the wrong place. But the area was silent and undisturbed.

Fifteen minutes had now gone by. She clenched her fists, but forced herself to stay calm as her keen eyes swept over the yard. The chances that her prey had cleared the area without stepping on a mine were astronomical, which meant there was only one place she could have gone.

Wednesday tilted her head back and looked up at the nearest tree.

Ω

Can she see me?

Amanda was afraid to breathe. She wrapped her body more tightly around the thick branch, willing herself to blend into the shadows as Wednesday stood about thirty feet below her.

She had come within a handsbreadth of doom before remembering where she saw that funny-looking circle before: in a picture from one of her textbooks, a chapter about some war or another. Soldiers hid them in the ground waiting for the enemy to come along and step on them. And they never planted just one at a time. Wednesday might have more all over her yard; dozens, hundreds, all intended for her. She'd been lucky to make it this far without getting blown to smithereens. Nearly sick with terror, she had managed to reach the tree and pull herself up one branch at a time before the predator came looking for her.

Amanda Buckman was not like most thirteen-year-olds. She felt secure. She loved herself. She loved her body, especially the new nose Daddy paid for a few years ago. Latent narcissism was one possible explanation for this, but Amanda preferred to believe she was simply well-adjusted. Wednesday Addams damaged that body, and tonight she tried to destroy it entirely.

She must really hate me, Amanda thought to herself proudly.

How anybody could hate a perfect creature like herself was a mystery to Amanda. She was tempted to dismiss it as base jealousy; though their families were comparably wealthy, she was blonde and tanned and actually had a shape, unlike the pasty-faced ghoul who hunted her ... but she doubted Wednesday was that petty.

Whatever the reason, it was just another sin that she would pay for.

"I know you're there," Wednesday said sharply. She had stopped near the edge of the minefield. "There's no use hiding from me."

Amanda didn't reply. There was no telling what sort of weapons an Addams might keep on her person, and she wasn't about to make herself an easy target.

"I could just set fire to this tree," Wednesday continued.

Amanda shifted position, putting as much of the trunk between herself and Wednesday as possible. Much as she disliked anything associated with her would-be killer, she had to admit the trees here were ... interesting. They were gnarled, towering, overgrown menaces of course, much like the mansion they surrounded. But autumn's touch had affected them in a most unusual way. Instead of turning brown or red or yellow, the Addams' leaves were streaked with shades of gray and blue and violet. Amanda found herself staring at them for an unreasonably long time, trying to sort out her impression of them. How could something so ugly and freakish be so beautiful?

No. Mr. and Mrs. Addams must love these trees. They wouldn't tolerate them being destroyed. Wednesday was bluffing.

"I'm losing my patience, Amanda. If you won't show yourself then I'm climbing up after you, and I'll kill you. Slowly."

That, Amanda believed. Which left her only one way out of this.

She made her way farther out on the branch, positioning herself carefully. She would have only one shot at this before Wednesday noticed her, and needed to make it count. The wind rustled the leaves all about them as she untied one shoe—the heaviest thing she had. With shaking hands, she held it out over the mine she had exposed earlier.

"Hey," she said loudly.

Wednesday's head snapped around as she spotted Amanda on the branch.

"If I were you, I'd start running."

She had the distinct pleasure of seeing those dark eyes go wide with fear as her enemy realized what was about to happen. Without a word, Wednesday turned and bolted from the tree with her pigtails flying out behind her head. Amanda held her breath and let the shoe fall.

The detonation of the first mine was powerful enough, but the blast from the other twenty-three was audible for miles around. The ground seemed to come apart, showering soil and leaves into the air. Wednesday had just managed to clear the perimeter, but the force of the explosion sent her rolling through the grass and left her thoroughly stunned.

When she opened her eyes, the mouse-head stopwatch in her pocket was beeping and Pugsley was standing over her, pouting.

"No fair, Wednesday!" he cried indignantly. "You blow up one whole side of the lawn and don't even let me watch?!"

Wednesday sat up. Her ears were still ringing, and she had bumps and bruises all over. She looked up at the tree, then all around for any signs of a dead or wounded Amanda. No such luck.

"Life isn't fair, Pugsley," she said.