…all I have to say is yyyyyyeah.

And that's all the warning I'm giving you guys this fine evening.

And I give some credit to my friend for helping me out with the second scene in this. It'll be extended into a oneshot crackfic because we started laughing so damn hard at some of our ideas.

By the way, in case you guys are interested, Mello and Bea's theme for this fic is called "Hemorrhage" by Fuel. I always have it on repeat when writing these chapters.

I don't own Death Note. But some souls here and there, yeah, I own those.

She's done it.

His skin wasn't supposed to be that soft.

She's done it.

His eyes weren't supposed to be that soft.

Bea's done it.

And I can't stop-

She stares down into the sink, shivering. The vomit has been washed free from the bowl, but she still feels it rising back up in her throat, feels that awful putrid aftertaste, feels his skin beneath her fleeting fingertips.

-thinking about it.

Rising, rising up her throat. Don't fight it. Let it release itself. Rising, rising-

But I'm not supposed to-

Nausea grips Bea. Bea grips porcelain. The memory of his skin grips everything.

-fall for him.

And here it comes.

Mello sits with his legs splayed open on the leather couch when Matt comes in, a cardboard box in his arms and the butt of a cigarette in his lips. "You're down to this last box," he says with a grin. He pulls out a chocolate bar from the box and tosses it to Mello, who barely notices it sailing over to him until it lands between his legs. He looks down at it briefly and nods. "Yeah, thanks," he says quietly.

Even in his distraction, Mello catches on to Matt's surprise. His comrade stares at him for a moment before huffing out a laugh. "'Yeah, thanks'? You alright, man?"

Mello begins unwrapping the chocolate bar. "What, did you want me to get on my knees and suck you off or something? I said thanks."

Matt snorts, taking a seat on the armchair opposite of Mello. "Didn't know you swung that way," he quips, crushing his cigarette in the bowl on the coffee table.

"Then don't look confused when I keep my words to a minimum," Mello says airily. He bites into his chocolate bar and rests his head on the back of the couch, closing his eyes. "And you were the one that seemed to want more than a 'thanks'."

"That's not what I was asking about. Jesus."

"Then what was it?"

Matt swings his body around so that he is lying horizontally in the chair, his long legs hanging over the armrest. "I meant that it's not like you to be so hush hush," he explains. "And you look distracted. Kind of antsy. Like you don't know what to do with your eyes or something."

Mello snaps off another corner of the chocolate with his teeth. "Maybe I just wanted a second where I didn't have to worry if that girl was messing something up, alright?"

There is a tense moment where Matt turns his eyes to Mello again, hand frozen in brushing his hair out of his eyes. Mello looks back down at his fingers wrapped around his chocolate, and Matt speaks. "She has a name, you know," he mumbles spitefully.

"Yeah," Mello says, feigning ignorance. "Something with a B…Bridget, maybe. I can't remember. Whatever the hell it is." He waves off the statement with the back of his hand.

Something with a B. Beatrice. Burning, burning Beatrice.

Matt flicks up his middle finger and sends Mello a glance too hostile to be taken as a joke. Mello furrows his brow, confused by his sudden mood. "What's biting your balls out of nowhere?"

"What's biting my balls," Matt says as-a-matter-of-factly, "is you. You are biting my balls, Mel."

Mello stares at Matt for a good, long second before raising his chocolate bar uncertainly. "If by balls, you mean this-" He takes a brutal bite into the bar. "-then yes, I am biting your balls, Matt."

Matt clucks his tongue and rifles through the pocket of his jeans, pulling out a carton of cigarettes. Upon opening it, both he and Mello see that it is completely empty, and Matt flings the carton away from him with a muttered flurry of curses. Mello regards his tantrum with a bow of his head and a smirk, which slowly grows into a dark string of chuckles as Matt continues to mumble furiously to himself, pacing the room in search of another cigarette. Mello's chuckles suddenly mount into such a hard, heaving laughter that he tosses his head back and clutches his stomach, unable to stop himself even as Matt's demands for him to listen to him are drowned out by his own noise.

"Mel!"

Mello pays him no mind as his ribs begin to burn with laughter, his head begins to grow light, and the heat rises to his cheeks, flushing them as red as the girl's eyes had been when she cried in the church-

"It's not that damn funny, Mel!"

God, he can't stop laughing.The last time he laughed like this, he had been twelve back at Wammy's House instead of nineteen in a mafia warehouse, and that only makes him laugh harder, louder, more desperately. In the midst of doubling over and sucking in mouthfuls of air, Mello's weight gets the best of him and sends him crashing to the floor from the couch. His laughter calms down only for a second for him to mutter "fuck" before he catches sight of Matt smacking his head on the coffee table, having stood up too quickly from his search for a cigarette. The tide of laughter rolls in with such a force that it spreads to Matt, sending them both into a fit of rauceous hilarity on the floor.

I can't stop.

And while Matt is laughing at the sheer comedy of the moment, Mello is laughing at the sheer comedy of it all.

The sound is so striking that Bea feels that nausea return with such a resounding force that she has to lean against the wall before the doorway. Mello laughing. Matt laughing.

But more importantly, Mello laughing.

It's not that awful, stinging chuckle that comes when he challenges her, or that shadowy snigger when she makes a fool out of herself in front of him. No, this is laughter that is supposed to come from a nineteen-year-old; unrepressed, unchained, free and loud and human.

She is completely thrown at that sound. Her back is pressed to the wall, her eyes are closed, and she is thrown.

Rod Ross is sitting in the middle of what Mello can only describe as a spur-of-the-moment brothel when he walks into the meeting area. He does not bat a glance at the broads that encircle him, but they bat him glances and then some as Ross acknowledges his arrival with a nod of his head.

"Got any plans, Mello?" the burly man grunts out, all slitted eyes and large, fearsome hands. Fearsome to anyone but Mello, who has grown sickeningly accustomed to the sight of them, and the redhead that is currently placing one of them on her left breast, her eyes pinned on Mello. He ignores her.

"The Japanese taskforce currently have the killer notebook in their possession," Mello says, his eyes straight ahead at Ross.

Ross's hand gropes the woman's breast before he moves on to the other. "So what do you suppose we do from here?"

Mello grits his teeth. "Anything it takes to get Near out of our way." Anything it takes to get Near out of my way.

"And?" Ross presses.

Mello takes a breath before turning on his heel and heading out of the meeting room. "Kidnap Director Takimura of the Japanese police force," he says brusquely. "And don't mess it up like you did with Magill."

Hours later, Bea awakens to the sight of Matt sitting crosslegged a couple feet away from her. His eyes are not on the game console in his hands. They are on her.

Normally, Bea would have no qualms in seeing the green-eyed boy looking at her, but today…no, today, his eyes are of a different shade; there is something in his eyes that she can't decipher, can't pick up and find a direction in. She stares back, trying to read him, but Matt breaks the stillness when he gives her a little wave and that familiar lazy lifting of lips. "Déjà vu, huh?"

"Yeah," Bea says, her voice hoarse with sleep. She clears it and swipes at the hair obscuring her eyes. Nope, that look is still there. "Are you…?"

"Hmm?" Matt raises his eyebrows. "What?"

Bea sits upright and furrows her brow. Something's not right. "You just…you look nervous."

With a little chuckle and a shrug, Matt looks back down at his console. "Yeah, I get twitchy when I don't sleep for awhile. It's alright."

"When was the last time you-"

"Three days ago," Matt says breezily. He lets out another laugh, higher, forced, nothing like the laughter she heard from the other room earlier. With Mello laughing.

"Three days ago?" Bea repeats in disbelief. She stares at him, slightly dizzy, slightly pitying, before rubbing her temples and sighing. "Well, maybe the twitchiness would go away if you got some rest in today, don't you think?"

Matt's fingers fly along the buttons of his game, blipping and bleeping and barely paying attention to what they are doing. Bea watches them and feels a faint yet horridly distinct nausea beginning to rise back up her throat. He's killing himself. "Matt?"

Matt nearly drops his game at the sound of his name. His hands are shaking, his eyes are wide, his face is washed out like corroded paint, and Bea realizes that for perhaps the first time she has seen him, he is not smoking.

So that's what it is.

"Why don't you just go out and get some more?" she asks, not having the prompt the subject at all, seeing as Matt looks up a little too quickly and nods just the same.

"Yeah, I would do that, but I'm broke as hell and can't leave this place for another three days courtesy of Mello." He begins chewing on his bottom lip roughly, and Bea watches in acute dismay as he sets his game on the cement floor and rests his head back on the wall. His eyes squeeze shut as he clenches his fists atop his knees. "Three fucking days because of this stupid regulation shit-"

"Why do you have to stay here for three days?" Bea asks, careful to keep her voice neutral. I've never seen him like this. "What kind of regulation is that?"

"Mello doesn't want anyone leaving this place within four days of each outing in case anyone spots us," Matt explains stiffly. "And since he found it his top priority to leave here yesterday without telling anyone, not even me, for Christ sake, no one else can leave for another three days. For anything."

Bea opens her mouth to speak, but the nausea stops her short. Matt can't leave because of Mello taking me to the church yesterday. Because of that damn church with that damn stained glass.

"Yet the guy sees no problem with taking his fucking hostage with him out into the city where someone might see you and-"

Matt suddenly freezes and looks straight at her. Bea holds her breath and watches as he looks down at his lap and shakes his head. He weaves his fingers through his messy hair and gives it a faux-casual ruffle. "Nah, don't listen to me, alright, princess?" His voice has dropped to a gentle murmur, but his eyes are still just a notch too wild to suit him properly. Those eyes belong to someone else. Those eyes belong to Mello.

"Matt-"

"Just don't listen to me."

Matt stumbles up to his feet and squeezes out the crack in the door. Bea is still holding her breath.

Director Takimura arrives without flourish and is tied to his chair within five minutes. Mello watches from the dark stairwell as two of his men sink their questions into his flesh.

"So you didn't know anything about a killer notebook being in the Japanese taskforce's possession?" one asks. "I find that kind of hard to believe."

"Yeah," the other man agrees. "You are the police director, right? So how would you have not known anything about it?"

"I'm sorry," Mello hears Takimura say weakly. His head is bowed and his body is slumped over as much as it can be in his restraints. "All I know about the investigation are the people that are currently working on it."

"What are their names?"

"There is…Soichiro Yagami, Touta Matsuda, and Kanzo Mogi. There had been an officer named Hirokazu Ukita, but he was killed by Kira early in the investigation."

"And that's all you can tell us?"

Takimura gives a sullen nod. "Yes. I…I knew nothing of a notebook until you mentioned one."

Mello steps down from the stairwell into the dim light of the interrogation circle. "Soichiro Yagami," he repeats. "Out of those three men you listed, he's the highest ranked, isn't he, Director Takimura?"

Takimura looks up at Mello and immediately lowers his eyes again. "Yes," he asserts. His voice is so weak that Mello wonders if he has spoken at all, but he takes what he has heard and works with it. For all it is worth, it isinformation. Information that Mello has been itching to hear, crazing over for ages, finally right here before him in the form of a man tied to a chair.

"If I'm right," Mello begins, "there are two Death Notes. One in the hands of the Japanese taskforce, and one in the hands of Kira himself."

All eyes are on him, waiting, buzzing. Mello looks up at the ceiling and feels that delicious curl of a plan begin to make its way onto his lips. "And we're going to take both."

And Near will know what it's like to be number two.

Bea regards Mello's sudden avoidance of her with more sleep. The fortune teller returns. It rings of safety. The heat of Mello's touch returns. That catch and release, that shiver, that palpitation of the heart. Can you fight, Beatrice?

When she wakes up in a dizzy, sweaty blur, Matt is asleep in the corner of the room, sprawled out like an abandoned doll. His lips are slightly parted and his brow is furrowed; he is a restless sleeper, which betrays Bea's original assumption that he would be as lazy and careless of a sleeper as he is when he's awake. The rise and fall of his chest is unsteady, and every few seconds Bea catches him shivering, murmuring something beneath his breath, before the rise and fall balances itself out for a fleeting twenty seconds or so.

"Nightmares?" she mumbles to herself. Sighing, she stands up and leaves the room, tense in the presence of a slumbering Matt.

She sees Mello walking down the corridor upon her first step out the door. His hair is wet and loose around his face, hanging over his crushing eyes, and he is dressed alarmingly casual in a black T-shirt and stained black jeans tucked into his boots. The sight of him is a rough slap to the face and another violent lurching of nausea that stems deep within Bea's stomach.

I touched him.

Mello stops walking and meets her eye from six meters away.

And he let me.

Bea begins backing into the room again, anxious to extend their avoidance of the other, but Mello's voice cuts in before she can meet the doorway.

"Wait."

And what's so absurd about it all is that she does. With her eyes on her shoes and her fists clenched behind her back, Bea waits for whatever bizarre and potentially self-compromising thing he wants out of her. Does he want to try the whole "hit me" charade again? Because, quite frankly, she is tired and lightheaded and really just wants to get another shower already, not lie to herself and lie to him any more than she has to-

"Come here."

"Why would I do that?" Bea asks, already done with waiting.

There is no explosion from Mello. There is just a soft exhalation of breath and another few steps forward. "Because," he says, "you're thinking the same thing I am."

"Don't tell me what I'm thinking about," Bea snarls. She is angry at record time, and indifferent just the same. "You have no idea."

"Yes, I do," Mello says bluntly.

Bea snaps her head up and says nothing. Mostly because she can't, what with those eyes and the softness that doesn't belong beneath them. This Mello is back, the one with his hushed words and somber sadness and curiosity that does nothing than plant more demons in Bea's head. Demons that leer at her and tell her that Mello is not as much of a monster as she thinks, demons that sing songs of lust and uncertainty that come from that same stare that he gives her now.

She wants nothing more to do with those demons, yet she holds onto those eyes as he makes his way towards her. "You know, it really is a wonder that your father, of all people, would know more about the Death Note than the director of the Japanese police force."

Death Note…? "What are you talking about?"

"We have the Japanese director in this building as we speak. He says he knows nothing of the killer notebook at all. Didn't even know of its existence."

Bea gapes at Mello with the same bemusement that she has carried with her for ages by now. "Well," she begins slowly, "I guess he and I are in the same boat, because I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking abou-"

"I just found it strange, that's all," Mello says. The tone of his voice gives him away completely. That's all. He's lying and Bea knows it. She finds it insulting off the bat the he believes to have brushed his own words off completely, to have fooled her into believing that they were meaningless. His assumptions infuriate her to no end.

He is standing directly before her now, with his wet hair and his cold eyes and his everything that makes Bea look down at his shirt instead of up at his face. Stop it. Look up at him. Don't let him know anything.

She can't even do that much. That nausea rises higher, demanding her entire attention.

Mello, keeping his eyes steady on her face, leans over and closes the door behind Bea, then inhales sharply through the gap of his lips. "Is there a reason why you can't look at me?" he says in a low, rumbling voice that makes Bea dig her nails into her palms.

"Is there a reason why you care?"

"Yeah, there is, actually," Mello retorts, "because I don't do well with trying to sort out your mood swings, Beatrice."

"My mood swings?" Bea looks up at him now, nearly seeing red but blinded by blue. "Are you kidding me, Mello? I can't even make it through five minutes without you going through every single mood there possibly is."

Mello's eyes don't darken like she expects them to. In fact, all he does is merely stare at her, his lips still barely parted and his hair still golden and dripping onto his shirt. Bea's stomach tightens. He is painfully beautiful, painfully, and all the proof she needs is currently clenching in her body and coiling up into itself.

Here come the demons.

"What are you thinking about?" Mello asks.

Bea narrows her eyes. "I thought you already knew."

Mello doesn't copy her action, throwing her off yet again. "But according to you, I have no idea. So tell me."

Okay, Mello. I'll tell you what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about touching your face, how soft you had been, how you hadn't stepped away, how you had fucking asked for it. And how you're asking for it now without having to say anything. Oh, and I'm also thinking about having to get a shower and have you stay in the bathroom with me. There. That's what I'm thinking about. Now back away and leave me alone.

"I'm thinking," Bea manages, "about getting a shower."

"Alright, then." He turns away from her abruptly to lead her to the bathroom, and Bea finally breathes.

It isn't until after Bea has wrapped the towel around herself that Mello speaks.

"What were you thinking?"

Bea freezes in the midst of reaching for her clothes that lay folded in the sink. Much to her embarrassment, Mello is looking at her over his shoulder, and she holds her towel tighter around herself. "Could you turn around?"

"Answer me first."

"What do you want me to answer, Mello?" she asks, irritated.

"When you…" Mello stops himself, and Bea quickly catches on to why. His voice is too soft. He hardens his eyes upon her and goes on with, "When you tried to hit me. All you did was…"

Touch you. With the very tips of my fingers.

Bea fights off both a blush and a furious glaze to her eyes by turning away from him, showing him only her profile. Her knuckles have gone white from her fierce grip of the towel. "Well, I'm sorry that I didn't punch you in the face like you wanted me to. I don't have anything else to say but that."

"But what made you change your mind?" Mello urges. "When a guy tells a girl to hit him, she doesn't start to do it and then decide to just barely touch him. That makes no sense." Mello grits his teeth. "You make no sense."

"I wouldn't want to make sense to you," Bea mutters.

Mello pauses for a moment before Bea feels him take a step forward. She closes her eyes and stifles another wave of nausea. "You're right," he says, "because then you wouldn't be able to hide anything from me."

Bea whips around to face him, a stinging rejoinder already smoldering on her tongue that is suddenly frosted over at being face-to-face with him, covered only by a towel and whatever resilience she still has remaining in her eyes.

There are demons in his gaze, in the way he has gravitated to be standing in front of her. Demons she wants to reach out and touch-

-with the very tips of my fingers.

He does the job for her and raises his hand in the same fashion that she had, appearing to be on the verge of striking her, and just as Bea begins to dodge, his fingertips graze her cheekbone and rest on her jaw. There is something wild in his eyes now, brought to violent life at his touch, and Bea feels a pang of both exhileration and fear spring up in her chest.

His fingertips are warm and rough, warm and oh god he's touching me no no no yes.

"It's frustrating, isn't it?" he says through his teeth. He breathes in slowly, shakily, his fingertips roaming up to her lips. Bea trembles, stricken in her towel and in his touch, and she tightens her jaw when he tries to open her mouth. Her lips part just barely from the tip of his pointer finger. "You thought I would hit you. You thought I'd beat you to the ground, but then I do this-" He runs the pad of his finger over her lips, dragging out a shiver from Bea's shoulders. "-and suddenly you just don't get it."

Something is pulsing, warm and demanding, between her legs. She wants, she needs, she hates. Mello.

He is leaning into her face, peering at her with narrow, icy eyes, when something turns inexplicably molten beneath the ice, melting it down and surmounting both his gaze and the pounding between Bea's legs. She can't help herself from the soft groan that squeezes through her gritted teeth because she wasn't expecting it to grip her so quickly, to completely override the need to keep her indifference in its place, the need to appear as though she just doesn't care.

His eyes are burning into her lips. It is becoming harder and harder to keep a firm grip on her towel as his fingertips drift down to her neck, his eyes fixated on her mouth, and god I just want to let go go go and-

Mello pushes her away with such ferocity that Bea's back flattens against the shower stall and she nearly loses grip of the towel completely before she scrambles together and glares down at her feet. Let go? Let go? What the fuck is wrong with you? You hate him!

It seems that they had been thinking of the same thing after all, because Mello is backing away from her with such loathing clear on his face, either for her or for himself, that Bea nearly loses it all together, nearly has to run to the sink and retch up these desires, this heat, this thought that I could actually let go for him. I hate him. I HATE HIM!

Mello swings the bathroom door open and barrels out, slamming it shut behind him.

And Bea retches up demons into the sink at the sound of him cursing down the hallway.

The first thing that Mello bellows upon entering Takimura's holding room is, "Make him talk."

The two men in charge of interrogating the director squabble for excuses as to why their methods aren't working on the guy, why he doesn't have a clue about anything they need to know, and Mello listens to about three seconds of it before promptly sending his fist crashing into the first man's jaw. The other interrogator seems to be conflicting between backing away and hitting Mello to floor him, but Mello kicks his heavy boot back against the man's knee and hears the gratifying crash that he makes upon collapsing to the floor.

He is the only one standing in the room now, and yet no surge of power comes out of it. Only an intense, grating rage that he cannot recall having once experienced so blindingly before in his life. He glances frantically at Takimura, who stares up at him with a tired shock, who has nothing to give him, then back down at the two interrogators making their way to their feet with murder in their eyes. They freeze upon hearing Mello's rasping breath and seeing that he is trembling from his head to his toes in raw, tamperedrage.

"I don't care what it takes to do it, just fucking do it!" he roars, throwing his hand in Takimura's direction. "Make him talk!"

He pounds back up the stairwell two steps at a time, knowing that it will be the exact same thing when he comes back.

Matt is still passed out on the floor when Bea returns to her holding room. She takes one look at that sleeping body and immediately turns around in search of an empty room. She walks unevenly down the corridors of the building, her bare feet turning cold above the hard concrete floor, and ultimately comes across a tiny room containing nothing but walls and a floor and a half-opened door that she immediately closes upon walking in.

For a moment, she simply paces back and forth with her eyes closed and her breath out of order (inhale, exhale, exhale again, inhale three times, exhale). Then she opts for kicking the floor with the balls of her feet, muttering to herself, breath still out of order.

Then she just stands for awhile in the center of the room, staring up at the grey ceiling and biting her bottom lip.

Twenty quiet minutes pass. Her breath is still a clumsy inhale exhale inhale inhale exhale.

And then, defying everything she originally thought, Mello opens the door and the awkward rhythm of her breath stops entirely.

His hair is still wet. His hands are shaking.

Fallen, fallen god.

Neither speak. Both stare. His breath seems out of order, too; this whole ordeal seems out of order. Her standing in the middle of some empty, cold room, Mello standing in the doorway, Mello reaching back to close the door, Mello walking towards her with something frantic in his eyes. Something that Bea steps away from, not out of fear, but of understanding.

Hit me.

Oh, it replays over and over in her head as he approaches her, as he holds her gaze just because he can, as he stops right in front of her and tilts his head up with a dull defiance in his eyes, exposing that pretty jaw, exposing everything in one single lift.

With a hoarse cry and a swing of her hand, Bea slaps Mello so hard in the face that it stings and screams on her palm. The sound not only echoes in the empty acoustics of the room, but it echoes in Bea's own heart, in her hand, and most of all, in Mello's eyes as he slowly turns his head to look at her. His mouth is open, his eyes are bright, and he says, "Again."

And she does. Again. And again. Again again again, striking him harder each time across that beautiful god face, catching sight of his flushed red face and hearing his shuddering breath, only to slap him again, more hateful than the time before, and the time before that, and the time before that. The adrenaline is a hot rush that rips the words out of her chest, in perfect tempo with each strike.

"I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"

Again, again, and again, until Bea crumples down before Mello's feet, pounding her fists against his hard, unyielding body, screaming out mottled words that have no beginning or end, screams that tear out of her throat, sobs that wrack every muscle that has weakened and strengthened and weakened before him. She tears at his clothing, beats against his legs, his chest, his boots, anything that her frenzied fists can touch.

And then Mello yanks her up by the shoulders and crushes his lips against hers.

She is not even standing on her own feet, but instead held up by him, held against him, her body weak and tense all at once, sobs still escaping her lips, muttering her hatred and her need against his hot, forceful mouth. There are hands in her hair, hands that go from her scalp to her neck to her shoulders and all the way back up, and there are lips that drive hers open, lips that she has waited for for how long now? How long has she needed this? How long has this been the root of her anguish towards him, this raw, untapped need that is now being drained and refilled all over again?

How long?

She does not know how to do this, but she keeps her mouth open for him, gripping hard at his shirt and twisting the material in her fists, trembling so violently that Mello has to push her against the wall to keep her standing. He is bruising her lips, biting her, digging his nails into her shoulders and breathing heavily in between each painful kiss, and Bea lets him because she wants it, she wants this and she wants him, just like this. The way that she had imagined it; rough and tumbled and desperate, exactly everything that they are.

Mello pulls away from her tear-streaked face only to grip her by the sides of her head, his forehead pressed up against hers, golden hair and chestnut hair intermingling, but Bea is unable to open her eyes and look at him. She is so heavy and drunk off of him, off of this kiss, that she can only slump against him and wait for the next with an impatience that is nearly killing her.

"Do you understand?" he says weakly (weakly) against her lips.

Bea begins to break down again, shivering and crying and moaning and trying to calm her inflamed nerves only to inwardly beg for another bruising kiss to do it for her. "Y-yes…y-yes-"

She hears him suck in shallow air before - yes, there it is again - he cracks her down the heart with lips of fire and hands of a fallen god.

God, I remember passing this idea for the kiss scene by with my friends, and it had been months ago. I really, really hope the wait was worth it for you lovelies.

And, um…it pretty much goes downhill from here. But all for the better. -snicker-