This story is dedicate to the wonderful and almighty ramen-is-my-goddess, who not only let me bounce ideas off of her, but also
This story is dedicated to the wonderful and almighty ramen-is-my-goddess, who not only let me bounce ideas off of her, but also dressed up in a cheerleader outfit to "encourage" (read: threaten) me to begin writing. Thanks so much! Here's to you! :3
Kingdom Hearts and its characters are the property of Disney and Square Enix.
It all started as a joke; a prank, more like it.
They all participated for different reasons, though. Some were bored. Others wanted some form of revenge for past (imagined or not) offenses. All of the rest thought that he needed to be knocked down a peg or two, and realize his true place in the Organization. Of course, the results were far more than they had bargained for, and months later they still couldn't decide if it had been worth the effort.
Demyx had thought of the original idea, but Zexion had had the motivation to even begin scheming (his title was most certainly not for show). Larxene, Marluxia, and Xigbar had seen a way to spend their boring downtime when not on missions; Luxord had seen an opportunity to make some money through bets. The more serious members—Xemnas, Xaldin, Vexen, Lexaeus, and Saïx, to name them—had the lack of participation in all other pranks, the credibility, and the poker faces to make it all really seem true. And Roxas? Roxas, of course, had the inside knowledge on all of the victim's mental workings.
Poor Axel never saw this coming.
--
"Heeeeeeyy there, short-stuff!" Axel gave his absolute best shit-eating grin to the only-barely-awake blond sitting at the dining hall's table as he plopped down into the chair next to him. "How's my favorite person doing?"
Roxas mentally gathered up all of the hatred he could possibly feel at eight in the morning and sent it all radiating towards the only person who could possibly be that chipper, that early (despite common belief, Demyx was the member furthest from being a morning person). In his partially delirious mind, he played out the exchange like it was an intergalactic star battle.
'Captain! It appears our glare has no effect on the opponent! Their grinning is too happy; we can't wear them down!'
'What?! That's impossible! Increase strength by 20!'
"Hello? Roxas, you in there?" Axel poked his friend on the nose, jerking him back into reality. Blinking, Roxas didn't even bother to nod and just turned to stare at his now-soggy bowl of Cheerios, beginning to wonder where the hell his sanity had gone momentarily.
The redhead beside him just returned to talking incessantly. "Anyways, as I was saying before you spaced out, I've got something really cool I want to show to you!"
Roxas blanched. Even in his mostly-dead-but-quickly-becoming-more-and-more-awake state, he had the brain-processing necessary to remember that whenever Axel is excited and "wants to show him something really cool", the day will almost certainly contain at least one explosion and/or fire that needs to be put out. "Thanks, but no thanks, Axel. I have stuff I need to do." Not the most creative excuse ever, but it gave him room to work with.
Axel, in turn, finally stopped his inane smiling and frowned—more like pouted, but as anyone knew and could attest to, Roxas had the market on that one cornered. "Like what?"
Opening and closing his mouth several times (Axel had to mentally beat himself over the head to keep from making any comments about fish), Roxas searched for some plausible excuse. Knowing Axel, if he said he had to do something for any senior member, he'd probably go check out of a lack of anything better to do. Unable to come up with anything suitable that Axel wouldn't be able to disprove, Roxas sighed in defeat.
"Okay, I guess I don't really have anything to do."
'You could do me!' some small corner of Axel's mind screamed, but it was promptly beaten with a stick until it died (he was rather prone to self-harm in his mind, oddly enough only when it concerned Roxas).
"Sweet!" Axel pumped a fist in the air as he linked his other arm through Roxas' and dragged the other Nobody out into the hallway and away, somewhere towards the direction of the library—or so Roxas guessed. Stupid friggin' huge castle.
Behind them, Vexen entered the kitchen and saw the bowl of Cheerios sitting there. "Why do I have to be the one to clean up after everyone?!"
--
Roxas had guessed correctly that they were, indeed, heading towards the library, even though they ended up in a storage room next to it instead of the library itself. When "storage room" is said, however, what actually is meant is "room full of boxes that no one is sure where they came from or what's inside". "Is there even a purpose to this?!"
"Of course!" Axel said, digging around in one of many boxes all stacked together in a fairly large pile. "Okay, it's not in that one…" he muttered, setting aside the cardboard box he'd currently been searching and opening another one.
Getting bored with this process rather quickly, Roxas decided to poke around. The room was juuuuust a little bit larger than it seemed at first with all of the boxes inside, though, and soon he found himself lost. Yeah, lost, and he started to freak internally when the piles of boxes got higher than his head and he couldn't find the exit, let alone Axel. Deciding that eventually the pyro would come find him, Roxas stopped wandering in circles.
Noticing a large box—large was a severe understatement; the thing was fucking HUGE!—Roxas moved over to it, and after listening with his ear to the side of the thing and deciding that no, there wasn't anything vicious inside that would like to eat a small blond for breakfast (not that he was small, 'cause he wasn't! He was just concerned for… uh… Naminé's sake!) he managed to open it.
The box, as stated before, was fucking huge; so much so that Roxas, standing on the tips of his toes, was at about neck-level with the top of the box and thus couldn't see what was inside very well at all. Grabbing the edges he lifted himself up, only intending to be able to get a good, quick look at what was inside… and somehow flipped right over the side into the box.
It was filled halfway with items that he couldn't exactly identify (what with the face-plant he did right into them), but that wasn't Roxas' main concern as he found that his legs were still caught over the edge of the box and, embarrassingly enough, he was stuck, with only one option for escape. "AXEL!" he yelled, hoped the redhead would hear and come help him.
"Roxas?" Yeah, that was Axel alright, but he sounded rather far-off, and the lack of hysterical laughter clued him in to the fact that he obviously hadn't spotted Roxas yet. "Roxas, where are you?"
"OVER HERE!" Roxas yelled back as loudly as possible.
"Oh, yeah, like that really helps…" Roxas heard Axel grumble, and he sounded close.
"Dude, I'm right here."
"What, where—Roxy?!" Wait, why wasn't Axel laughing his ass off yet? "Are you okay? What's wrong? Why can't you get out?"
Roxas could feel his face flush and heat up. "…I'm stuck," he mumbled.
"Huh? What was that?"
Groaning, Roxas repeated himself. "I'm stuck, you asshole! Pull me out!" There was a moment of pure silence in which he could just sense Axel's expression, and then… ah. There's the hysterical laughter.
"You… Y-you're stuck?!" Axel managed to get out before breaking out into laughter again. "I can't believe you! What the hell?! I wish I had a camera—this moment needs to be captured for posterity's sake!"
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, but could you at least pull me out first?! This position is more than a little uncomfortable," Roxas ground out, and soon felt Axel's hands on his hips—nobadthoughts, nobadthoughts, nobadthoughts!—next thing he knew, he was finally out of that death trap and back on his feet, and Axel was still shaking with silent laughter.
"Stop laughing," the blond said, elbowing him, and Axel respectfully tried to stifle the few giggles still escaping with a hand held over his mouth. When he finally had his near-epileptic-laugh-attack under control, he glanced over Roxas' shoulder into the box that he'd fallen in.
"Heeeeyyy, you found what I was looking for!" Axel exclaimed with joy.
Roxas, looking around, found another box to climb on to peer inside (now why the hell hadn't he done that in the first place?!) and saw…
"Oh hell no, Axel. No. No, nonononono. I refuse to be a part of this, so you can just forget about me helping you!" Roxas exclaimed as he finally learned what the contents were and looked over at Axel's manic grin.
"Really, now?" the pyro said, the grin not changing or fading.
"Yes, really," Roxas repeated firmly, though inwardly he was starting to feel slightly nervous.
The feeling only increased as Axel started moving towards him, even though he took a step backwards for every one the redhead took forwards. "I think I know a way to convince you otherwise…"
"O-oh? And that is…?" Roxas swallowed as his back ran into the box, blocking his escape. Holy shit, Axel was still coming towards him, and with that predatorial look on his face, too. He didn't like being reminded that, yes, he happened to be friends with Axel, who was really, really hot. A guy, sure, but still hot.
A twitch started to develop in his left eye as Axel leaned forward, maybe a bit too close for comfort, and said…
"If you don't help me I'll tell everyone else that you got stuck in that box. And you know that Xigbar, at least, will give you hell." Axel grinned.
Roxas blinked. What… the hell had all of that been? Not to mention that was the lamest and most un-threatening threat he'd ever heard from Axel. Oh well, he'd dwell on that later. At the moment, though, he shook off the daze he'd been in and focused on what Axel was saying.
Help Axel with his crazy scheme, whatever it was, exactly… or be taunted by the rest of the Organization for the next few years? Sighing, Roxas knew what he was going to do. "Ugh. Fine, whatever. You play dirty, though—and I want to be able to completely blame you for anything that happens because of this, too!"
Axel waved his hand dismissively. "Sure, sure, whatever. Now help me move this box over there…"
--
"Axel, are you sure this is safe? No, wait, that's a dumb question…" Roxas answered his own question.
Axel himself 'tch'ed indignantly. "Of course that's a dumb question! I never do anything if I'm not one-hundred-percent positive that it's safe!"
Roxas just gave him a look. "Do you even remember that time that you swore you knew how to bake chocolate chip cookies?"
"Eheheheheh… Maybe?" Axel laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his head with one hand.
"You not only managed to set Zexion's cloak on fire, but somehow also put one of Vexen's experimental revival potions in the cookies and created a new race of sentient beings, and you don't remember?"
"Ooohh, that cookie incident!" Roxas just shook his head in despair at his friend, before turning to examine what they'd done in the past hour.
Of all of the things to fill a gigantic box with, why someone would pick fireworks was completely beyond Roxas. Axel, of course, seemed to have some sort of pyro-sense that granted him the ability to find any and all highly flammable and fire-inducing substances and items within a mile and had stumbled upon this treasure trove. According to him, they were also "the best type you could ever find" and came with some sort of "we guarantee that something will catch on fire or your money back!" policy or whatever. Roxas hadn't paid that much attention to Axel's continuous rambling, except so he could be told where to set down what.
Now what they had created was several long rows of fireworks, each and every single one aimed at the windows they had opened in the storage room (because of some half-drunken decree or another of Xemnas', there had to be windows in every single room exempting the basement, so that at all times they "could be filled with and inspired by the light of Kingdom Hearts").
Surprisingly to Roxas, this particular plan of Axel's involved a lot less mayhem and a lot more pure fun than normal—besides the goal of creating a completely wicked fireworks display that could be seen all over The World That Never Was (and several other nearby worlds), there wasn't any sort of ulterior motivation like revenge, or even just a prank. This, as the blond had pointed out, was quite probably a first.
"Okay, well, is it all set up or whatever?" Axel asked as he triple-checked the angles of all of the rockets.
Roxas stood nearby with his arms folded, watching all of this. "Don't ask me; you're the pyro! I don't even know how fireworks get their colours."
"It's because of the chemical color-producing component!" Axel explained happily. "Green is usually barium compounds, silver is burning aluminum, titanium, or magnesium, purple is a mix of the red and blue compounds strontium and copper, but you also have to balance—"
"Yeah, uh, I wasn't asking for an explanation," Roxas decided to cut him off there, and rolled his eyes. Even though he really didn't mind Axel's pyromaniac rants or tendencies (and actually found them somewhat endearing somewhere deep, deep inside of him), the redhead could still go a little overboard.
Standing up, Axel rubbed his nose a little, leaving behind a black streak of some sort of substance from when he had, ah, "tweaked" a few of the rockets a little to give them a lot more pizzazz. "Well, I think that's probably everything right there. And the best part is, with the way I connected the wiring and fuses, I'll only have to light a single fuse for the entire thing!"
Roxas just shook his head with a small smile. 'Well, I suppose if you're going to be seriously obsessed with something, you might as well do it with class and style.' "Well then, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and light it already!"
"Why Roxy, is that eagerness that I detect in your voice? I'm so proud!" Axel stopped to brush away an imaginary tear. "I always knew you'd follow in my footsteps and pyromaniac ways!" He draped an arm around Roxas' shoulders.
Shoving Axel away with his elbow playfully, Roxas grinned. "Whatever, pyro. Think what you want. Now do you want to start setting off fireworks or not?"
Axel returned the gesture. "Fine, fine. On with the show and all that jazz!" He lifted a gloved finger, and in an instant there was a small flame at the tip like with a lighter. Leaning over, he touched the tip of the fuse that he had extended earlier to give them plenty of time to move a small distance away, and hurriedly straightened and started backing up when he saw that it'd caught.
They both decided to stand about twenty feet away, ready to dive behind the closest of the many box stacks at the first sign of any problem. "Initiate the countdown!" Axel said. "Five!"
"Four!" Axel nudged Roxas excitedly at that number, obviously cajoling him to join in. 'What the hell,' he thought. 'Why not? I mean, we're setting off fireworks in the first place, and that's random and pointless enough!'
"Three!" they both chanted, Roxas finding Axel's enthusiasm contagious.
"Two!"
"One!"
Somewhere in the castle, a certain Luna Diviner cringed. 'Something bad is about to happen,' he grumbled. '… and I bet it'll all be Axel's fault.'
--
Zexion massaged his forehead with a hand. Fifteen minutes ago Demyx had entered the library—why it couldn't just be declared Zexion's library and get it over with, he didn't know—with the blue monstrosity he called a sitar in tow. He had plopped down in one of the exceedingly comfy armchairs that were all grouped together, another of which Zexion was already occupying, and had started playing.
Number VI had refrained from saying anything up until then in order to avoid disturbing the peace, but when he read the same sentence for the fifth time he decided that the peace had been disturbed enough. "Number IX, please, can't you play that awful, stringed thing somewhere else? There's an entire castle full of rooms for you to choose from; is there any particular need for you to play in here?"
The sitar-playing ended abruptly and Demyx looked up and met Zexion's eyes slightly fearfully. "Uh… I'm sorry… I was playing in here because I thought that maybe you'd enjoy some music while you read, but, uhm, I probably should have asked first… Sorry…" He let the sitar vanish into thin air until he next summoned it, but didn't get up. Zexion nodded at him, acknowledging and accepting the apology, and returned to his reading.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Demyx fidgeting, crossing and un-crossing his legs, and generally being unable to sit still. Sighing to himself, Zexion mentally marked his spot in the book, closed it, and set it aside for the moment. "Was there something else you wanted to say, Number IX?"
"Well, I just now thought that if I wasn't going to play the sitar, maybe I should read a book, but I know you have some really valuable ones here and stuff so I didn't want to pick up one of those and accidentally damage it or something, so I was going to ask you to show me what books aren't very expensive but you were reading and I thought you might not want to be interrupted—"
Zexion held up a hand to end Demyx's rambling attempt to explain himself, and suppressed a small snort of amusement at the other's actions. Almost immediately the blond stopped talking. "It's okay, I can tell you which volumes not to touch, and you probably would have been able to figure it out by yourself. The only books that you aren't allowed to touch are along that wall," he gestured to the right, "and are in locked glass cases, so you wouldn't have been able to ruin them anyway."
"Oh!" Demyx brightened. "Okay then! Thanks Zexion!"
Just as he turned to go find something interesting (preferably fiction) to read, a loud BOOM coming from outside of the windows startled him. Zexion, too, jumped slightly at the sound, and after briefly glancing at the other, stood to go see what had happened, just as the same noise echoed throughout the room.
"What do you suppose that was?" Demyx asked, trailing behind him, and Zexion merely shook his head. The muffled explosion-like sounds were coming more and more often now, taking away the startling effect they'd had before.
Once they reached the windows, however, it became crystal clear exactly what was going on. "…Fireworks?!" Demyx gaped out the window. "Who's setting them off?"
"Axel," Zexion answered, not having to think even a few seconds before knowing the answer. "And probably Roxas as well." Those two were always the trouble-makers of Organization XIII, even though he knew that Roxas was often dragged into everything unwillingly by his companion.
"Wait… Zexion!" The Nobody turned to Demyx when he said his name. "They're launching them from inside the castle! Look!"
The water-wielder had one of the windows open and was leaning out, looking sideways, and Zexion quickly joined him. Demyx was right; he could see the faint trails of smoke leading out of the windows of a room next to the library, and as they were watching they saw another two rockets launch, exploding in the sky and sending purple- and gold-coloured stars shooting out.
Growling slightly, Zexion retreated from the window and left the library, Demyx still trailing after him looking a mixture of intimidated and highly interested. He slammed open the door to the room where the fireworks were being launched, knocking over several small box-piles when it swung inwards. Not even fifty feet away were the two responsible for the fireworks, and Zexion preened inwardly that he was right in saying it was Axel and Roxas (not that there had ever really been any doubt, of course). They were facing away from the door, looking out over another stack of boxes. Looking around, Zexion was actually amazed at how many there were in that room, but he didn't let himself get distracted.
Roxas, being the one with hearing that hadn't been damaged from years of setting off firecrackers too close for comfort, may not have heard the door swinging open, but he could hear the sounds of the boxes falling over and Demyx saying, "Whoa, there's enough cardboard in box form in this room to satisfy 500 kindergarteners, at least!" and turned around, elbowing Axel at the same time.
"Oh, good, so someone did notice the show!" Axel exclaimed, a tad bit less upset than Roxas would have expected him to be at being discovered, but he suspected it had a lot to do with all of the fireworks still going off. "I was worried, because since we were here and not in the middle of the crowd like we usually are I couldn't tell if anyone was even paying attention!"
"…What's the purpose of all of this?" Zexion looked at the both of them piercingly. He was familiar enough with Axel and Roxas' antics to know that there was almost always some greater objective to be achieved behind it all (even though usually the objective was all Axel's).
"There isn't one, for once," Roxas explained calmly. "We found a huge box of fireworks, and decided to just set them off and enjoy."
Zexion continued to regard them suspiciously, but Demyx whooped in delight before running forward to join the other two in watching. "Man, I love fireworks!"
Axel, noticing Zexion still lingering by the doorway, grinned and waved at him to come on over. "Come on, Zexy!" he called, ignoring the fact that Zexion hated being called that and had told him so before. "I promise it's safe! I was super careful and spent forever making sure those fireworks were aimed just right—just ask Roxas!" Zexion raised an eyebrow at the blond, who shrugged and nodded.
"Okay then, if you're absolutely sure…"
"Of course I'm sure! Those rockets aren't going anywhere but out the window!"
It was that exact moment that Irony, Eris, and all other Gods in charge of chaos and making Axel look like a complete ass had been waiting for. If only one of any of these deities had been operating by themselves, the situation might've turned out quite different, such as the firework just exploding without going anywhere; however, in a spectacular show of contradicting exactly what Axel had just said, the final (and largest) firework lit, screeched as it took off, somehow hit the window frame, changed in trajectory, and landed in a pile of boxes… then exploded.
"Shit!" Roxas yelled, covering his face with his arms and turning away, as he had been the one closest to the firework when it went off. Luckily enough, no one was set on fire, hit with shrapnel, or otherwise hurt, but beyond them, however, it was a different story. Something had caught on fire—one of those God-damned boxes, probably—and Roxas swore he could hear a familiar hissing sort of noise coming from somewhere, but didn't have time to place it or figure out what it was before Axel had grabbed his arm and was quickly dragging him away.
"RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" he yelled at Demyx and Zexion, trusting them to get out without help, unlike Roxas, whom he decided wasn't doing an adequate job at running for his life and just picked him up and slung him over his shoulder.
"What the hell, Axel?!" Roxas shouted. "Why the hell are we run… ning…" he slowly trailed off and his eyes widened as he finally realized what that hissing sound he'd heard was…
Just in time for the room they had vacated to explode into lots and lots of fiery pieces in a series of successive blasts.
--
"Ow…" Roxas muttered, rubbing the back of his head where it had hit the hard floor. Groaning, he tried to sit up, but found that he couldn't because Axel was currently sprawled on top of him, also groaning in pain. "G'toff…" he mumbled, and shoved the Axel off of him, causing the redhead to yelp in pain.
"Roxy… You didn't have to be that forceful… You could've just asked me to move…"
"Shut up…" Roxas said without any real force, examining the wreckage—okay, well, "wreckage" was a bit exaggerating, but one could definitely tell that a lot of something highly dangerous exploded. Looking around a bit, he was immediately relieved to see Demyx and Zexion both on the ground a little closer to the site of the blast, still unconscious (which made sense after one thought about it, actually). "Okay, so what was that?" he asked, turning to look at Axel with narrowed eyes.
"Uhm, a hell of a lot of fireworks going off at the same time?" the pyro suggested sheepishly.
Roxas' eyes changed from merely "narrowed" to full on "glaring". "Axel, I have two things wrong with that. First, are you saying that every single one of those boxes contained fireworks? And second, there's not a chance in hell that that," he gestured vaguely to the remains of the explosion that had actually knocked them unconscious, no matter how short it was for, "was caused only by fireworks, evenif all of the boxes were full of them, so what else was there?"
Demyx and Zexion were starting to sit up, now, Roxas noticed, and they too were looking in Axel's direction.
"Well, they were mostly fireworks…" Axel cringed at the look on Roxas' face. "But, uh, there might've been several… ah… crates of explosives in there, too…?"
If Roxas had been irritated at first, angry second, then he was downright livid now. "What. Did. You. Say?" he ground out from between clenched teeth.
Axel could do nothing more than 'meep' and stutter incoherently in the face of a truly angered Roxas. If he remembered correctly—and he'd better; what with all of the memorizing he's made everyone else do, for him not to remember something would be downright hypocritical—the only other time Roxas had gotten this mad was when Larxene had hazed him when he was new to the Organization (Axel didn't know the details, but heard it'd involved raw human hearts and a horde of hungry Neo-Shadows). After Roxas had "talked" to her, Larxene, the sadistic bitch who thought reading Marquis de Sade was light and pleasant, was jumpy the whole week. Ever since, Axel had joked about "not pissing off angsty teenagers".
Zexion, meanwhile, had gone very, very pale when Axel had mentioned the use of high-explosive charges, and at this point leapt to his feet and ran back to where they'd came from.
"Wait! Zexion! Where're you going?" Demyx called as he chased after him; he didn't just not want to be anywhere near an angry Roxas, but was more than slightly worried about what had Zexion so freaked. He found out quickly when he followed him into the library and skidded to a stop next to the devastated Nobody.
His library was, essentially, gone. There were some books scattered here and there with minimal or no damage, and there was an entire bookshelf that had survived on the opposite side of the library from the blast, but unfortunately… The wall that had been demolished just so happened to be the one that Zexion had pointed out to Demyx earlier… the one that five clean glass cases filled with books more valuable than most people's houses used to line.
Now, of course, glass was scattered all over the floor, pieces of ripped and torched paper mingling with it, and to add insult to injury some of the books were still on fire… but none of them had survived.
"I am going to kill Axel!" Zexion was pissed, to say the least.
AUTHORESS CORNER
You walk along a fairly well lit hallway until you reach the door at the very end. Opening it, you enter a room that, contrasting the hallway, isn't lit even by a window—they all have drapes.
"Welcome!" You turn around at the voice and come face-to-face with the authoress, Phe.
She starts babbling almost immediately. "Oh my God. You wouldn't BELIEVE the time I had writing this first chapter! So I actually got the idea ages ago, right? And I played around with it in my mind, and I perfected it a little, and I wrote some of it… but I wasn't that into it, y'know? Y'know. But suddenly, today I totally had this VISION, right?! Well, it wasn't really a vision, more of a strike of inspiration, but whatever—one man's coffee is another man's tea, huh?"
You give her a weird look, and Phe frowns. "Lighten up and get a sense of humor. So anyways, I get this strike of inspiration, and I'm all like, 'OH. MY GOD. I have to write this! Nownownow!' So I totally locked myself in my room ALL DAY—okay well not all day, but from 11 AM when I got out of bed to around dinnertime, which is pretty much all day for me—and only allowed myself to do this. I even put a sticky note on my door, see?"
Phe pulls a folded-up piece of paper out of her pocket and hands it to you. You unfold it, and read: 'PLEASE DON'T ENTER! I can't afford loss of inspiration… (Please don't talk to me, either.)' You try to hand it back to Phe, but she waves it off.
"Keep it, whatever. Anyways, this was really fun to write, which is surprising because I haven't had fun while writing in years! Inspiration and pride, maybe, but never fun. So, I'm thinking that this will be a multi-chapter 'fic, but definitely a shorter one. My guesstimation is ten chapters! And since I ALMOST missed AkuRoku Day AGAIN this year—I know, I know, oh-em-eff-gee-doule-yew-tee-eff-bar-be-que—I needed to write something and get it up, this'll be my AkuRoku Day story in a way! Along with that other one-shot I'm working on… I hope I can finish it by 8-13-08!"
You decide it's time to get the hell out of there, and head for the door. "Bye!" Phe shouts after you. "Watch out for the sentient cookies living under the carpet! Oh, and I'm trying to find a Beta for this story, so I'd be happy to work with any takers! As long as they're literate, of course…"