A/N: Yay, my first burst angel fic. I personally loved this series. I would have written a fic sooner but I IS A LAZY MOFO. I found my inspiration after reading such a horrible example of a Burst angel's fan fiction. I won't mention the author or the title of the story but if you'd been around the block, or read most of the fan fics here, you'll know which one it was by what I put in this. Seriously! What they condensed into two SHORT chapters I could have made into, like, five masterfully well done ones!!! It's embarrassing to see such a good concept go down the drain like that. Anyway enough of the rant. I'm going to make up for this little...incident(to put it kindly). This is sligthly AU and don't be surprised if the characters have their personalities changed a bit. If it's too OOC be sure to tell me before I get carried away with it. Hope none of you guys are grammar Nazis because this will most likely have a few mistakes, if not alot.

(EDIT): Sorry I just read over this with a fresh mind and realized there were way too many mistakes for my liking. So I fixed them. I might even replace this chapter all together. It's not flowing right to me. Or not. As I said, I'm lazy.

A change in pace

Today seemed to be a busy day for most. Sei was at a meeting, Jo was out upgrading her guns, and even Kyohei was busy with some kind of cooking test that his school held. The trailer was mostly quiet; Or at least it should have been.

Amy and Meg, the only two not busy, were arguing up a storm. It started with a simple disagreement over what show to watch. God knows how the argument got to where it was now. As of this moment, each was extremely pissed off and ready to tell the other to go jump off a cliff. Since there were no cliffs around, it's possible Amy did the next best thing: Attacking Meg's ego.

"Well at least I'm not useless!" Amy shouted over her shoulder as she searched in the cabinet for a box of cookies.

"Useless?! I am not useless!" Meg said, reaching over Amy to grab the cookies before the computer wiz got to them, and then holding the cookies up over her head.

The little girl jumped for them. "Well what would you call it? You're not actually useful."

"What?!"

"Well what do you do around here that counts as helping?"

A bit taken back, Meg hesitated.

Stopping mid-jump, Amy smirked. "I thought so."

"What? That's crazy! Of course I help! I….I help a lot."

"Oh yeah, with what?" Amy didn't let her answer. "Think about it, Sei gets the contracts, I've got my computer, Jo takes care of the dirty work. Hell, even Kyo cooks and cleans sometimes. And just what do you do?"

"……………" Meg's inability to answer pissed her off more than the annoying little girl in front of her. 'Useless. Ha.' The very idea left a bad taste in her mouth.

Shaking her head, she stormed towards the door.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Amy shouted after her, though it wasn't necessary in their small trailer.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm making myself useful!" Meg went to the back to grab her wallet before making her way to the door again. It opened before Meg even touched it. A woman stepped in, but stayed on the bottom step, water dipped from the soaked silver hair currently plastered on her face.

Jo was home.

Sometime during Amy and Meg's fight the gray cloud day had turned into a rainy miserable one. It wasn't raining that hard, merely a heavy sprinkle really. Which meant either Jo had taken the long way home or she was walking very slowly. Either way, Meg suspected something was on her mind, distracting her.

Her partner slowly raised her head, one red eye peering out beneath her soaking hair to meet Meg's blue ones. "Going somewhere?"

Meg smiled. "Just popping out to get some groceries. If you want, I can stop by the movie place on the way back and pick up some movies for us to watch later. I think that new demon hunter movie you wanted to see just came out."

Jo shrugged. "I'm kinda tired right now."

"That's great. You can take a nap now and I'll wake you up when dinner's ready. Then we can watch something together later." She waited for the wet girl's reply.

Jo turned her head slightly to look around her. "It's starting to rain harder."

"I'll be fine. A little rain won't hurt me." Meg snatched her cowboy hat and slid pass Jo.

Jo wasn't sure if she liked the sound of this. Meg had always had a thing for finding trouble. Knowing her, she'd come back with a cold at the least.

As if Jo's thoughts reflected on her face, Meg gave her a reassuring smile. "I'll be fine, trust me. Go take your nap."

'It's not you that I don't trust.' Jo thought idly.

"Hey, do you have to take the cookies with you?" Amy called from inside the trailer.

Finally noticing she had the box clutched to her chest, Meg tossed them over to Jo, who caught them easily.

"Hang on to this till I get back, will ya?" And without waiting for another word, she pulled her hat on and sped in the direction of the nearest market.

-----Several hours later----

Jo was awoke with a shock by the sound of crashing pans. 'That better be dinner ready.' She growled to herself. Unfortunately it wasn't. The sound was just Kyohei trying to stir fry while looking for some spice Jo was sure she had never heard of. Unable to find the spice, a slightly frustrated Kyo had slammed down his cooking a little harder than necessary on some other pans that hadn't been put away yet. (He tends to get a little pissy when his meal doesn't go exactually as planned.)

While Kyo was having his silent hissy fit, Amy, oblivious to the world, sat two inches away from her computer screen doing whatever it was she was doing, and Sei, apparently back from her meeting, calmly flipped though her newspaper. It seemed the meeting went well but with Sei you'd never know until she felt the importance to tell you. Not that Jo really cared. What was curious was that Meg was nowhere in sight.

'Must be doing something else, elsewhere.' Was the first thought that came to mind.

"Has anyone seen the Thyme?" Kyohei's question cut though Jo's train of thought.

"The what?"

"Thyme, it's usually in a blue bottle with small pictures of leaves..on...them." Kyo trailed off when he realized it was pointless to ask. Half the time they didn't even know where the salt was, let alone the thyme.

Not looking up from her newspaper, Sei said. "I did the shopping last time. It's someone else's turn to get the groceries."

At the word groceries, Amy finally rejoined the world of the living and turned away from her computer. "Meg went to go get some."

At this Sei lowered her newspaper. "Speaking of which, where is she anyway?"

"You mean she hasn't come back yet?" Amy had been so absorbed in her computer she probably wouldn't have noticed an elephant stomp though the trailer, let alone a person. "She left hours ago."

"What?" Jo's sleepy mind finally came to speed with what they were saying. 'Meg's missing....again.' She knew something like this would happen. Jo mentally scowled at herself for not going with her.

The gunslinger hurried to get dressed to go rescue Meg from whatever trouble she had gotten herself into. Before heading out the door Sei stopped her.

"Don't take too long bringing her back. We have a job to do later." Their self-proclaimed leader's confidence in the silvered haired girl's ability to bring her friend back was almost touching. Almost.

"I won't be long." Jo nodded before dashing off into the night.

----- Many days later----

"Jo, you can't keep doing this. This is the third time this week you've collapsed from exhaustion." Sei paced around the bedroom like a caged panther as Jo tiredly watched her from her bed. "Recklessly putting yourself out there isn't going to help you find Meg any sooner."

"Sleeping won't bring her back." Jo monotonously replyed.

"Neither will passing out in the street!" Sei nearly shouted.

Catching herself, she took a deep breath and tried a different approach. "Look Jo, Amy's been hacking away all day, checking every surveillance camera and reports of any kind that could help us, using every code and back way she knows and she knows a lot of them. I'm sure she has a bundle of information just waiting to be sorted though. Now if you promise to try to get some rest, Amy and I will sort through it for you so when you get up you don't have to wait around here for some leads. How does that sound?"

As much as she hated to admit it, Jo was really tired and she hated going though paper trails. Maybe it was for the best. The exhausted gunslinger clutched the sheets in her fists. When she got up she was going to rescue Meg, and was going to kick some major ass when she found whoever took her. That was for certain. Jo took Sei's offer and resentfully layed back down.

'Just hold on a little longer Meg. Just wait for me.'

Sei hurriedly left Jo's room just in case she changed her mind. So far, she was cooperating. Sei needed to use the time she just bought them wisely. She knew it would be damn near impossible to keep the gunslinger within reason as long as Meg stayed missing. They'd been searching non-stop for days and hadn't found any clues that would point them in the right direction. Not that she'd lied to Jo... she was sure by now Amy had to have found something.

A thunder of clicks and taps was coming from Amy's room, as it had been for days now. The little computer genius had worked almost as diligently as Jo had. She rarely left her computer and barely slowed enough to eat, if she ate anything at all. Sei had to go as far as threatening to shut off the power to get her to even look away from the screen. On a number of occasions they found her sleeping on the keyboard and had to put her in her bed, but she was always back on-line the second she got up.

Sei's presence wasn't noticed as she stood in the door way. There was Amy as expected, hunched so close to the monitor Sei feared for the girl's vision. It wasn't until she saw the girl's shoulders tremble that she made her way to stand by the little computer genius, afraid she was going to faint. That wasn't the case, thankfully, but it made Sei worry all the same. Even though the older woman was right beside her, Amy still seemed unaware she was there. She just continued typing away as if in her own little world. The bandages wrapped around the little girl's fingers were cause for concern, a tribute to how hard she was trying. A drop of moisture dripping onto the keyboard caught Sei attention.

A tear leecked down Amy's cheek. Then a second. A hand on her shoulder brought her back to the real world.

"Oh, Sei, I- uh....I'll have a status report for you in a minute. I have to check this one other lead real quick." The computer wiz said, unaware of her own tears.

She had looked all day and night, checked out trail after trail, even gone as far as ghosting chat rooms to see if there were any rumors or if anyone would be dumb enough to brag out some leads or something, but there were none. No camera footage, no reported disturbances, no sightings, no nothing! Everything came out with nothing! Nothing, Nothing, Nothing! There had to be something she over looked. Something she missed. There had to be. If she just kept looking. If she just kept---.

Sei stilled her hands on the keyboard. Amy looked up at the older woman questionably.

All she said was. "We'll find her Amy. We'll find her."

At that moment Amy became aware of her surroundings. That her belly ached, her fingers hurt....that she was crying. She became aware of it all.

"It's all my fault Sei. She wouldn't have left if I hadn't of said the things I did. It's all my fault," she cried, choking on the tears rising in her throat.

The older woman pulled the sobbing girl into her arms and comforted the child the best she could. Stroking her hair and telling her over and over again. "We'll find her Amy. We'll find her."