Hello again, my friends! OXYCODONEFROG is back, and much sooner than anticipated! Hooray!

*Crickets*

… No cheering? Not even one measly little clap?

I'm wounded…

Moving on, I would like to applaud all of you who stuck with me during my ultra-long hiatus. This chapter is probably going to be pretty short, as writing the last chapter drained a lot of my creativity. By short, I mean somewhere between 1500 and 2000 words. We'll just see where my demented mind meanders.

So, what will we have in this chapter? It is now Thursday, and how's Crona doing? Curious? Want me to tell you?

Just one little thing: Crona is on drugs!

Want to know more?

No.

Read, cattle, read!

/ / /

Nine hours. Nine hours since Crona was discharged from Death City Memorial Hospital. Nine hours since he last moved. Most importantly, it had been nine hours since Crona was last awake. As soon as he had come to his temporary home, he had slowly shuffled his way up to his bedroom, crawled under the comforter of the bed, and promptly fell asleep.

Crona found himself staring at the bedroom ceiling exactly nine hours later. He blinked, too tired to make any other motion. He blinked yet again, looking to his right periphery.

Patty was curled up next to him, playing with her Nintendo DSi. Even through his narcotic haze, Crona saw that her eyes were red and puffy. "Is it a lack of sleep? Crying? Both?" He frowned slightly, not liking the somber aura hanging around her.

Possibly due to the OxyContin he was given earlier that day, or perhaps due to the trauma he had sustained, Crona did something courageous that was hardly in character for him.

Patty gasped as she felt Crona's arm snake around her shoulders. Her head snapped around to see Crona looking at her with an unreadable expression on his face. She didn't speak, as this was completely new to the both of them.

"Are you okay?"

The both of them blinked confusedly at each other when they mirrored the other's question. Crona twitched slightly, slightly irritated by Patty asking him the same question. "I'm just fine," he said. "Why do you ask?"

"You know why I asked," she said. "You got the shit beaten out of you! Of course I'm worried!"

Crona nodded. "Okay… But you didn't answer my original question…"

Patty looked away, blinking guiltily at the floor. "I-I'm just fine!"

He huffed, pouting slightly. "Seriously Patty, cut the shit. I can see through your façade."

Patty donned a look similar to a deer in a bright pair of headlights. She was really surprised. Never mind that gullible Crona had seen past her lie, but he had bluntly pointed it out. He had also sworn, which was something that Patty had never heard him do before.

"Well, no use trying to evade it now…" she glumly thought.

"Alright Crona, listen carefully. I'm not fine because, well… you aren't." His eyes widened a couple millimeters at this. Patty continued. "How am I supposed to be okay if you were injured because of me…"

"But you didn't have anything to do with it!" Crona blurted out.

Patty sighed. "No, you were injured because of me. Well, you were indirectly injured because of me… If I didn't insist on you going outside for some fresh air, you wouldn't have gotten injured. Hell, you wouldn't have even been depressed enough to let them beat you up if I didn't drag you along! I mean that this would never have happened fi you weren't around me! I just…"

She was cut off as Crona reached over and gently put a finger over her lips. Patty stared at him, shock evident in her sapphire-blue eyes. He looked at her, moving his finger to wipe away some of the tears on her face. "Patty. Listen to me. There was nothing you could've done to prevent this. Honestly, I suppose it would've happened eventually…" He let out a bitter chuckle. "I'm not all that popular around here, obviously… Anyway, this was fate-bound to happen. As such, this was completely out of your control. I could've prevented it, but…" He sighed here, looking down for a few seconds before refocusing his eyes on Patty's own. "I still need to deal with my past… So, it's my fault, not yours. Okay?" Crona smiled gently at her. "No more tears."

She blinked, shock running through her system. "He just... How could he forgive me for something like so horrible… How could he point the blame at himself?" Patty felt tears forming, despite what Crona just said. She threw herself at him, weeping into his shoulder.

Crona just sat there, letting Patty dampen his shoulder. Even with his narcotic-induced courage, Crona was at a bit of a loss. "Um… Heh… Wow… What should I do?" he pondered. "Nothing like this has ever happened to me before… How should I deal with this? How CAN I deal with this? I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH THIS! I'm not Maka! I just can't magically make her sorrow evaporate… Wait..." He mentally smacked himself. "Damn. It's so obvious that I must've missed it! I KNOW how to deal with this!"

Slowly, exercising great care, Crona wrapped his arms around Patty, pulling her into a hug. He patted her back, bringing her closer to him. This simple gesture undid her completely, and the floodgates opened. Every hour of worry, every hour spent in misery was let loose in Patty's tears. Eventually, as with all things, Patty slowly stopped crying, breathing gently on Crona's shoulder. He continued to pat her back, not caring about the slight mess she made.

Crona then started to hum gently, knowing that it would help lull her to sleep. "Well…" he thought, somewhat shocked at his own audacity. "This is… unexpected… But she looks positively exhausted, so if this helps her sleep… well, what's the harm?"

Patty actually didn't fall asleep. Rather, she started to hum in tandem with Crona, finally relaxing after days of unrelenting tension. And so they hummed, both content in the other's company.

But slowly, Crona's humming descended into heavy breathing. This heavy breathing then led to earth-shaking snoring. This caused Patty to gently lower Crona's head onto the pillows. She then giggled. "Wow, this is going to sound really stupid, but you are super-duper awesome right now, Crona…" Patty sighed. "No, you were always awesome, Crona…" She then bent down closer to him. Slowly but surely, she inched closer to Crona's face.

Pause. "He looks so… peaceful…" she mused. "Come to think of it, he always looks tense…" Patty felt a smile stretch across her face, gently lifting a lock of his hair behind his left ear. Said smile suddenly turned devious as an idea hit her. "Well… He's locked in a deep slumber, so I guess this is my one chance to finally pull this stunt."

Patty quietly got out of bed to go to the bathroom, returning with a menacing pink bag. She looked down at Crona's sleeping form, a manic glint in her eyes. "Let's do a make over."

(Following Make-Over Omitted to preserve the dignity of the involved parties. Nobody was harmed in the make over.)

/ / /

It was eleven at night when Crona woke up again. This wasn't an unusual occurrence. What was unusual, however, was the situation in which he found himself. That is, he was naked, sitting in a tub full of bubbly water. He blinked a couple of times, attempting to process what was going on. He then noticed an odd sensation in his scalp, almost as if fingers were massaging his head.

"But wait… My hands are underwater, so how can I be touching my head?" He gulped, slowly swiveling around to see that the hands belonged to none other than Patty, whose eyes were closed as she hummed a slight tune. Crona froze, eyes widening to nonsensical extremes. Pause.

The gentle lapping of water against Crona's skin was the only noise heard for a while. This peace lasted for five, four, three, two, one, and…

"!"

Patty's peaceful trance was broken as Crona scream rent the air. She jerked back and accidentally knocked her head against the linoleum-tiled wall, emitting a hiss of pain. "Damn!" she swore, rubbing the back of her skull. "That really hurt!"

This was mostly unnoticed by Crona, who had huddled as far away from Patty as he could, curled in the fetal position. Alas, his shivering only hindered him; the vibrations coming off of his body scattered the bubbles concealing his, ah, birthday suit. Crona noted this occurrence this time around, causing him to weep violently due to shame and terror.

"Crona! A-are you okay?" Patty asked.

He didn't respond. Rather, Crona grabbed a nearby bottle of bubble bath and dumped the entire contents in the water closest to him. This created a massive amount of foam that eventually made the bathwater impenetrable to human eyes. He sunk down lower into the water until all that was visible of him were his eyes and hair.

Patty stared at him, worry etched into every fiber of her being. "Crona… Please say something…"

Crona raised his head a bit, enabaling him to audibly speak. "Patty… What…? Why? Explain what happened here."

At this, Patty blushed a bit, nervously running her hand through her hair. "Ha, well, its kind of a funny story… See, you were sleeping, and I was rather bored, so… I gave you a bit of a make over-"

"A WHAT?" Crona shrieked. He then proceeded to frantically pat down every part of his body to make sure that nothing was missing. A sigh of relief escaped from the teen when he found everything to be intact. "Alright… So, do I dare tread any further with this convoluted tale?"

She giggled at the odd phrase Crona just emitted. "Well, I went sort of overboard with the eyeliner... And your bandages looked like they were getting dirty, so I decided to bathe you, as odd as that sounds."

Crona groaned. "Did you see anything? You know, anything?"

Patty blanched, paused for a few seconds, and then flushed violently. "Gah! N-no, nothing of the sort! I closed me eyes the entire time!" She saw the somewhat-skeptical look in his grey eyes. "Scout's honor," she swore, placing her hand over her heart.

"… I wasn't aware that you were a scout…"

Patty stared at Crona. Crona stared at Patty. For a few moments, all was silent in the little bathroom. Then they both spontaneously burst into raucous laughter. Patty howled with mirth, falling off the edge of the tub and rolling on the bathroom floor. Crona, meanwhile, was snickering with glee and knocked his fist against his knees.

However, the duo's laughter was interrupted when Ragnarok exploded out of Crona's spine, already shrieking like the banshee he was. "Fuckdamnit!" he swore, flagellating his fists wildly. "Crona, you dumbass! She was going to bath rape your skinny, cut-up ass! Do you know how fucking hilarious that would've been! I could've made millions selling that shit! But no, you had to be a bitch and ran away from a perfect opportunity! We almost, almost, got laid! Well, fuck you, you narcotic whore! FUCK. YOU."

Crona flushed, looking up at his partner. "R-Ragnarok! Cut it out!" The black demon just cackled, flipping the bird to the two teens.

This did not go down well with Patty, obviously. "PATTY PUNCH!" she roared, almost tearing Ragnarok out of her friend's spine. Unfortunately, the effect of Crona's OxyContin also applied to Ragnarok. Ergo, the punch was not nearly as painful as if usually would be. This gave Ragnarok the clarity to concoct a devious, perverted revenge plan. Using the momentum from the punch, he whipped forward and grabbed Patty by the sides. He then used his considerable strength to yank her into the bathtub. Both Crona and Patty screamed, the latter having landed on top of the former (who was, in case it wasn't made clear enough before, naked).

"Holy shit!" Patty panicked. "What the fuck! Dear Death, this is awkward… I suppose it can't get any worse…"

Alas, that bastard Murphy always imposes his law at the worse possible time. For Patty still had momentum going from her fall, ergo her head smacked into Crona's own. More specifically, the duo had lip-on-lip contact. To put it simply, they unintentionally kissed.

The duo froze, paralyzed by what just happened. Wide-open blue eyes gazed into wide-open grey eyes. After a few, torturously-long minutes of the paralysis, Crona's eyes rolled back into his skull and his head shot up, propelled by a jettison of black blood. Patty stared, blinking slowly at what just happened. Slowly, her head rotated around to face Ragnarok, an expression of upmost malevolence on her face. "You…"

Ragnarok gulped, suddenly feeling terrified. "Um… Hey… No hard feelings, right?" Patty ignored this, slowly reaching toward the black demon. "Now, now, let's not do anything hasty… We don't want to do anything that we'll regret later, now do we?" Her hand shot forward and grabbed Ragnarok by the neck. "I regret nothing!" he shrieked, before Patty cut off his airway and…

/ / /

We're done! Huzzah!

*heart cut out by a rusty spoon*

I know that this chapter is different from the rest, as no definitive ending was written down. This was, in my opinion, a rather audacious move on my part, as I think it'll either elicit a very positive response or cause quite a few of my longtime readers to quit.

I will not go over what actually happened to Ragnarok, but I have a good reason for it. I want you to make up your own ending! Whatever punishment you conjure up for him will be canonical.

Beat him up? Makeover? Force him to listen to Justin Bieber on loop? It's canonical. If you want, you can even post your punishment ideas in a review or PM.

Also… With regards to Beta-Readers… I have something figured out. I won't need you quite yet, but this story will need you eventually. I'll tell you more in the next chapter's author's notes.

Stay safe, wear sunscreen, stay hydrated, and eat well! Next chapter should hopefully be cranked out sometime soon!

Patty: (Smiles Innocently) Please review, everybody!

Ragnarok: NO! NOT THE SPOON AGAIN!

Crona: (passed out)