And hello people. Sorry for the long wait between chapters. I became a bit obsessed with another of my stories, one that's still going annoyingly. But I will attempt to finish this story before school starts again since I will probably have no time with year 12... anywho. Please give me some idea on how you feel about the chapter? Reveiws? :)

Hope you like it...


Cain ignored the uncomfortable pain in his shoulder and continued to hold DG as she looked upon the wreckage of her old home. Under the wood that still remained in this side were ruined artworks that she told him used to be in the attic that acted as her room. He assumed that it was the destruction of these that upset her most- in one of the conversations to Azkadellia she was saying that they were the only connections she had to the Outer Zone. The images that slipped through her blocked memories onto canvas.

'I know that no one wants to go through this right now, but since we can't stay here where can we stay?' Azkadellia asked, shrugging her donated denim jacket a little bit closer. Cain looked at their 'guard' for an answer, still trying to find a reason why the Queen thought that this man might be useful. So far all he had managed to do was note what a dump this place was and make the eldest princess trip. Twice.

'Sir?' The sergeant asked at Cain's continued glare.

'Any ideas Thompson?' He asked, in a voice that reminded the soldier he wasn't exactly welcome.

'The shed's still standing!' DG suddenly exclaimed and ran from his arms towards the frame of the old house. The three followed her and found the door of a corrugated iron structure open and with a nervous glance between Cain and Az went in. A small bulb above them burst into light and flickered- powered by a generator, Cain guessed by the dull, continues growl in the background. The flickering light shone on the ruffled hair of a girl leaning over a two wheeled vehicle.

'No way.' Cain hissed through his teeth, wondering what who in the heavens hated him. DG's favourite death-trap was still standing.

'My bike!' She squealed, her voice flooding with happiness. Cain and Az gave each other a glance, thinking the same thing; is this such a good thing? 'It's fate.' She announced, grinning at the two. They simply smiled nervously at her, both grateful that she was too excited to notice.

After several minutes of inspecting the shed and listening to DG's commentary about the state of her motorbike they heard a noise, muffled by distance and the iron shed.

'Oi!' they finally heard it properly as it was a few meters from the shed. Both Cain and Thompson reached for their pistols (neither had given up their holsters despite DG and Glitch's protests), and carefully peered around the edge. 'Get out of there. Trespassers!'

Cain could not stop DG as she rushed past and attacked the person who was now coming in the door.

'D, wait.' He said half-heartedly, enjoying the yells to come from this newcomer. No one would accuse her of trespassing on her own land. He felt his jaw drop when he recognised the man's screams as laughter.

'DG! What the hell?'

'What do you mean what the hell? What are you doing here Carter?'

A fresh wave of jealousy washed over Cain and before he could stop himself he watched himself call out to DG as he went to go see the newcomer.

'Sweetheart, who's this?' He asked, in a voice he had hoped sounded loving and threatening at the same time. Instead it sounded like his throat was blocked. Mentally kicking himself harder at DG's confused look she introduced the man before him as her old boss, Jimmy Carter.

'After the president?' Thompson asked from behind them. The old Tin Man was surprised- Thompson wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, only just passing the I.Q. test to become a royal guard and here he was, asking questions that seemed half-way intelligent. To Cain anyway, Jimmy Carter sounded like any man's name.

'That's the guy.' He replied, not bothering to look away from DG. 'And you were going to introduce me to this guy? You picked him up in the land of Oz I spose?'

DG gave Cain a sharp slap between the shoulder blades as he choked on nothing.

'Yeah. In Australia.' She replied, giving Cain another odd look. 'We came back to see Mom and Pop. Getting married you see.' She went on, over the sound of coughing and added a few more hits to Cain's back before he straightened up, his face slightly red and his eyes running. Carter shone the torch in his eyes, making him squint and step back.

'He's a keeper.' Carter muttered. She was confused at his reaction- Carter would normally make the best out of a potential joke like this and his face had turned down into a sad smile. 'I'm really sorry you missed the funeral.' He whispered, almost too soft for her to hear.

Funeral? She jumped at Azkadellia's voice suddenly popping into her thoughts.

Don't do that! She replied, trying to retain a calm composure.

'Funeral?' She asked for the sake of Azkadellia's suddenly burning curiosity.

Carter's expression turned from sad to pitying. 'Lilly couldn't get into contact with you?' He asked, referring to the receptionist at the police station and her old high school friend.

'Carter, what happened?'

'DG, your mom and dad are dead.'


Half an hour later.

She knew exactly when she made the mistake. When someone told you that your parents were dead (whether they were robots or non) you were not meant to give out a lung full of relieved laughter. You were not meant to put a hand on the shoulder of the person delivering the news and say: 'You almost had me worried for a second there Carter. For a minute I thought someone really did die.' You were not meant to turn back at your sister when she was pointing out the mistakes in your head and tell her to get out of there. And you were especially not meant to let your emotions get you carried away with you and unravel the necklace your apparent 'fiancée' had around his wrist without touching it just to make sure she still knew which parents Carter was talking about.

All in all, not such a smart moment.

'I'm sorry about your necklace.' Cain muttered again, sitting on the small plastic chair of the waiting room. DG rolled her eyes again, wanting nothing more than to shove the fact that he was an idiot into his understandings. The stupid man had thought that she took it off him because she was mad he took it without asking her. On more than one occasion he had used the word 'stolen'.

'For the last time I am not mad at you. ' She replied, adding a soft punch to his knee on the word 'not'. Cain rolled his eyes and looked to his left to read a poster of driving safely. DG just sat there opening and closing her jaw on the Tin Man's knee she was leaning on.

'DG!' Both turned to see a man in a brown uniform jog over to them. Standing up and turning her back to the man still cramped in the little plastic chair DG laughed.

'Elmer Gulch?' Cain heard DG say in disbelief. She continued laughing until the man scooped her up in a hug. He drifted around, turning her so that she was once again facing Cain. He gave her a questioning look.

I have no idea. She mouthed at him, before uncomfortably patting his back three slow times.

'Who is this?' He asked when she finally detangled herself from the man.

'You'll like him. He's a cop too. He helped me out of a pretty tight situations and stuck by my side ever since.' DG grinned at the blonde on the chair.

'Name's Wyatt Cain. Sheriff of the Middeldon County' He said, finally deciding that anything was better than sitting on the little plastic chair. He stuck out a hand that was attacked by the other man's. He grinned when he realised the other man was trying to be rough.

'Elmer Gulch.' The other man replied, suspicion poisoning his tone. 'I didn't think they had counties in Australia.'

'We just met in Australia. Neither of us lived there.' Cain quickly explained, pleased that only one statement was a lie, and a half lie at that. He felt DG grab his hand as they faced Gulch.

Like Zero, it would be a name easy to hate along with the man behind it.

'Right. Well DG, as long as you are here I expect you to stick to the speed limits. Now that you've got yourself another cop there's nowhere to hide.'

DG just smirked and replied; 'How do you think he got me out of the tight situations?' And with that she pulled Cain's hand to take him to the now free receptionist.

Lilly Strong had been DG's best friend from fourth grade right up till junior year. Then she started to go out with a senior, Chris Hazard and several fights broke their friendship up. Once they were graduated and Chris had been caught cheating DG had managed to patch up the friendship to a manageable state.

'Dora!' Lilly called when she saw DG walk up to the desk. The girl ran out through the side door to ten metres to the left of the couple before sprinting up and attacking her to the ground. 'You're alive!' The girl called out in a shrill voice, cut off by a trail of laughter.

'Yeah I'm alive Lils. What did you expect happened to me?' DG managed to disentangle herself from the girl and help her back up before stepping back to Cain's chest.

'Well I think you've gone a bit insane Dora…' Lily trailed off sadly, her eyes drifting to the floor. When Cain snorted she looked up at him through her white lashes. 'Whose this?' She asked, her voice dropping an octave and going into a slightly hoarse, sexy voice. It didn't suit the orange-pink lips it was coming out of.

'Dora's fiancée.' Cain replied, a smirk playing on his lips as he said the name.

'You're getting married?' The girl swung her head to look at DG who just shrugged. 'What happened to all the feminist marches and the "keep the miss" banners?' She lifted a white eyebrow and continued. 'The girls only group at school? The punching of Martin King?'

'Whose Martin King?' Cain butted in.

'He tried to feel me up.' DG replied, noticing his hand flinch towards the gun in the holster. 'He lives in Canada now. Hey, where's Thompson?'

'There's another one?' There was no mistaking the thrill in the Lilly's voice.

'He's with Az finding somewhere we can stay.' Cain replied.

'Whose Az?' Lilly asked, pulling DG back to the little plastic chairs and sat her down. She felt like she was in high school again.

'My cousin.' Behind her Cain coughed. 'She was living in Australia with this idiot and we caught up. They wanted to see Mom and pop.' She successfully managed to make her voice go scratchy with emotion at the end. Cain coughed again. After a quick, obvious glare from his 'fiancée' Cain sat down and tried not to smirk at the string of lies DG gave her friend to avoid any dangerous questions. Such as the one she asked then.

'So how come you haven't gone to see your parent's grave's yet?'

'They have graves?' Was not such a brilliant reply. And yet it was the one the younger princess gave.

'Yeah they have graves Dora.' She raised an eyebrow at the stupid question and the snort from the newly come Azkadellia at the name 'Dora'. 'I mean they are people.'

DG raised her hand to her mouth and bit on her finger to stop herself laughing. A muffled one-laugh that looked like she was choking on a sob escaped the girl and she was instantly in the arms of her friend.

'Awww.' The girl crowed. 'Poor Dora.' DG began convulsing slightly as she tried to block the laughs at her throat and decided that if she ever wanted to be an actress all she needed was Az to be doing that face at the scenes she needed to cry.

'Um. We better be going now.' Azkadellia cut in, unravelling DG from the pale girl and pulled them apart softly. It helped when DG was also trying to pull away from Lilly.

'Call me if you need any help.' She grabbed Thompson's shoulder as he passed them both, forcing him to turn around. 'I guess you're the leader of the group.' Both Azkadellia and Cain's eyes widened. 'Dora has this funny way of not knowing when she's in trouble. You can call me if you want.' Lilly pulled the pen lid off with her teeth, her eyes making all the suggestive comments she needed. 'Here's my number.' She said as the digits were scratched into his skin with the crappy pen.

'Uh, thank you Ma'am.' Her eyelids fluttered at the name she took as a compliment and he stepped back.

'Your world is weird.' He whispered to DG as he half ran out of the room.

'Yeah, well you have flying monkeys!' She yelled at him, causing alarm from the staff on their early morning shift. Also, Carter was still looking a little wary of her, his eyes constantly moving to her hands- presumably to see if she were to grab something without touching it again.

'Did you get somewhere to stay?' Cain asked Azkadellia, deciding to turn the conversation to a more other side friendly topic.

'No, I got one better.' She pulled out a polariod and DG stood on her toes to see it as it was passed to Cain. There was Zero, getting into a car, looking around. It was like a photo of a mobster from a Spiderman movie or something she decided. Thinking it was better to keep the idea to herself to avoid any other confusing conversations DG asked another obvious question.

'You didn't go after him?'

'Are you kidding? I'm not suicidal. Cain would kill me.' Someone on her left nudged DG's ribs.

'She's got the right idea.' He hissed. Letting herself smile and lean on his shoulder as they walked, DG knew he might be a little more relieved if she had 'the right idea'. But where was the fun in that?

'Where's he going?'

'A motel. He took out the last room apparently.' Az replied simply. 'I think he took our room.'

'Lets go pay a little visit.' Cain replied, curling his fingers around DG's knuckles as they held hands.

'I've got transportation.' DG suddenly spoke up, running towards the motorbike she drove to the station.

'Only one person can fit on that.' Cain replied, still finding it strange though reassuring he was scared of the machinery.

'Two people Cain. And I didn't just have one. Thompson is getting my fixer-upper.'

And then a bright red shiny bike swerved in front of them, bringing up smoke on the asphalt as it made marks on the road. Azkadellia waved the air, coughing on the smell of burnt rubber. She ignored the hand on her shoulder, to pissed to pay attention to anything other than breathing.

'Say hello to my second child.'