Chapter ten is less filling than the last one.

Kinda.

Hellcat is in Seattle. Let's just roll with it.

So, before we begin, I'd like to thank the various readers and reviewers who, for some reason, like to come back to this story. :P

gg180000: Probably not...

RissA15: This actually made me get a bluetooth keyboard that I don't regret. Wondering how I survived without it now.

ChaseyLover: Where are you finding all these quotes?

Mia-Teresa-Davenport: *facepalm*

AllAmericanSlurp: They would have. That's why he stole the jewelry and pawned it off instead of opening a pawn shop.

So, let's do this! Yahn?

"Zara doesn't own Lab Rats or anything you recognize. If you don't recognize it, it's probably hers."

"...The key thing about good and evil: Each man has to choose. Heaven and Hell is a hell of a gamble to lose..."

Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical, "Good N' Evil"

"And just when I though things were starting to get better, everything had gone wrong again."

Rachel Ward, Numbers (Numbers, #1)

Chase

I made a bit of a miscalculation.

Seattle was an all right city, I supposed.

If it wasn't cloudy all the damn time!

The weather situation was just sad. Even though it wasn't raining most of the time, it was still dark and depressing. It gave the whole city a gray appearance.

It was so dreary. I couldn't begin to imagine what made people want to live there. It was upsetting. It was dark and horrible. I wasn't particularly fond of it. It brought me down. I think that I had only seen the sun a few times since arriving. It was supposedly very nice in the summer, but right now was just downright depressing.

Aside from the weather situation, though, Seattle had a bit of a consolation prize: More targets.

I hated how I had started to refer to everything and everyone as a target. It made me feel like a common pick-pocket. Actually, I kinda was a criminal now, I guessed. It was justified, though! I had to eat, right? Surely I couldn't be judged too harshly for that.

However, I knew that I would still be punished if I was caught. Police department everywhere had a job to do, and that included arresting thieves like me. It didn't matter that I was trying to survive. The law was the law, right? So it made me feel like a dirty criminal to even consider doing what I was about to do.

I was about to shoplift.

Honestly, I was more nervous than when I stole from unsuspecting people's possessions. This place had employees and security guards, but I was still determined to make this work. I needed some clean clothing. Mine had dirt stains and a few tears in them. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't smell.

And don't you comment on it, either! I could wash in a sink in the homeless shelters, but I didn't have any way to wash the clothes on my back, so shut up. I couldn't help it.

The whole problem with this, though, was that everyone was now keeping an eye on the homeless drifter that was wandering around the store. See, to them, there was no way that I could afford a chocolate bar by the register, much less some clothing. I was having to duck and weave around the store, avoiding various tails that were on my...well, tail. Not that they could see my tail, but whatever. I was having enough trouble without worrying about them figuring out that I was a demon.

Not that they could see me. I looked like a human until the third or fourth plane.

I ducked around another turn as a manager decided to follow me, escaping him for a few moments. He would follow me at a distance to avoid arousing my suspicion - not that he hadn't already - which gave me some time to move freely. It was an incredibly tense situation, and I hated it. I wiped my palms on my pants - they were sweating like crazy - and quickly ducked behind a shelf to change my shirt for one that looked almost identical. It wouldn't do to make it obvious that I was stealing, right? I glanced around and stuffed my old shirt under a pile of clothing before I tore the tag off of the shirt, wincing.

God, this was hard.

Who cares? This place has enough money, anyways.

I rolled my eyes at the statement. That still doesn't make it right.

You're too great to debate right or wrong, my voice snorted. You're main focus should be yourself. Do what makes you happy. Do whatever you want. If you want to break a window, break a window. If you want to light something on fire, burn it up. If you want to create an army of human minions, go for it. Screw this right and wrong bullshit. It doesn't apply to you. You don't exist in this society anymore.

Obeying the law makes me happy, I huffed back cheekily, smiling innocently at another employee before ducking around a corner and changed my pants rapidly. It's what keeps order, and I enjoy things having order.

Adhering to order is for the weak and cowardly. Creating order is for the strong and the great who are forced to deal with weakness. Make your own order. Others might think it's chaos, but who cares? If it makes sense to you, they don't have to understand it.

This was quickly becoming an irritating conversation. I ground my teeth while putting on new socks and wiggling my toes happily. Are you suggesting that I take over the world?

Destroy the world and make a new one.

How about no? I smiled at yet another employee before casually looking around. I meandered towards the exit, ready to get the hell out of there. The hard part was over, right? All I had to do was escape.

That was where it all went wrong.

At the door, a security guard held up his hand, standing in front of me to block my exit. I stopped, backing away slightly. "Can I help you?"

"Just show me your receipt," the man requested, holding his hand out.

I frowned and shrugged. "I didn't buy anything. Nothing I wanted to buy."

"So you don't have anything that doesn't belong to you," the guard said, raising his eyebrow as a couple of actual officers entered, walking up to us.

I swallowed hard and shook my head. "Nothing that isn't mine."

"That's why there's a price tag on your jeans, right?"

...Oops.

"...Their heart grew cold; they let their wings down..."

Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

"A void in my chest was beginning to fill with anger. Quiet, defeated anger that guaranteed me the right to my hurt, that believed no one could possibly understand that hurt."

Rachel Sontag, House Rules

Bree

The search parties were over.

It had been too long. And while others may note that three weeks wasn't long at all, Bree reasoned that it was very likely that she would never see Chase again. If he was going to come back, he would have by now. Not to mention the fruitless searching around town that just made her more frustrated and depressed each time it failed.

It was like Chase had dropped off the face of the earth.

Hopefully, he was at least somewhere safe. If he had run away, she wanted him to be as comfortable as possible until he decided that it was okay to return.

If he ever returned.

Bree sat on the couch beside Adam, both of them silent. They had reluctantly agreed that searching endlessly for Chase wasn't doing anybody any favors. It wore down resolve and created pessimism that just grew each time they returned home without their little brother.

It wasn't fair.

Leo and Mr. Davenport had started working together on the broken signal from Chase's GPS, both growing increasingly more hopeless as the days wore on. It wasn't fair to them that their hard work was producing nothing.

It wasn't fair.

And, possibly worse than the other scenarios was Tasha's, who could literally do nothing. She could only stand by and watch as the family ran itself into the ground to become whole again.

It wasn't fair!

After everything they had been through together, he couldn't just leave. What was wrong with him? Didn't they matter at all? How could he walk away from his family like that?

Because of this thought process, an undercurrent of anger had festered up under her depression. The idea that Chase thought so little of them that he would easily just leave and stay away made her grind her teeth. It made her blood boil a bit at night when she thought about it. Chase had abandoned them. They were nothing to him. It was infuriating.

Bree wanted to punch a wall and imagine it was Chase. Stupid runt. If he didn't want to come home - if he didn't care at all - then did they even want him back.

After several enraged moments in which she denied ever wanting to see him again, she finally calmed enough to know that she was lying to herself.

She wanted her little brother back, no matter how much he hated them.

"Arrogance is in everything I do. It is in my gestures, the harshness of my voice, in the glow of my gaze, in my sinewy, tormented face."

Coco Chanel

"Why had his mother gone to the trouble of bringing him into the world if the most exciting moment in his life was having been made lame by a bayonet?"

Félix J. Palma, The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana, #1)

Douglas

"Oly, for Christ's sake, get the hell out of the cabinets!"

Douglas glared at the little gargoyle as she flinched and hopped out of the cabinet, knocking a few cans of vegetables over with her gray wings and muttering about how much of a buzzkill Douglas was. He picked up a pen and threw it at her, hitting her beak. There, he thought. Let her whine about that.

While Oly rubbed her beak - more for show than out of pain - Yahn tapped the screen of Douglas' laptop, tilting his grey head. "Why are we watching this, again?"

Douglas rubbed Yahn's head. It had taken him a few weeks to tell Oly and Yahn apart by sight - they were basically twins - but he was glad their personalities were different. It made it easier to keep track of who did what. If someone cleaned something, it was Yahn. If something was broken, it was Oly. Douglas gestured at the computer. "Because I like seeing what my kids are up to," he answered. Eddy was still easy to hack, so Douglas had taken the liberty of watching the footage from the security system. He had been watching two weeks' worth of video so far - sped up a bit, of course - and was just now starting on a third week. He'd missed nearly two months while trying to find a place to stay after Krane kicked him out. It was time to catch up.

Even if it was a bit boring to watch Chase mess with an old invention Douglas had made with Donnie back in college. The kid was in for a disappointing day - the machine had never worked, and Douglas was undoubtedly a better inventor than Chase - but whatever made him happy made him happy, Douglas supposed. Let him tinker with-

The thing flicked to life.

Douglas sat up straight, his eyes wide as he watched Chase's arm disappear into the portal instead of sticking out the other side. How in the hell did he do that? Douglas and Donald had spent months on that thing! What gives?

Douglas watched the rest of the scene unfold, pausing it when Chase landed a good five feet from the device, obviously unconscious. What just happened?

Oly's weight on his shoulder snagged his attention as she pointed at the screen. "Who's that half-breed?"

"Half-Breed?" Douglas echoed, frowning.

"Yeah," Oly huffed, rolling her eyes at having to explain herself. "He's not a full demon. Just half of one. It's gross."

"So...he could be summoned?" Douglas asked, playing the video again and watching as Chase woke up and fled.

On the table, Yahn shrugged. "If you figured out his name, sure."

Douglas grinned. Finally, he could use summoning to get at least one of his kids back.

Enter Dougie!

What's gonna happen now that Hellcat's going to jail?

Guess we'll have to wait to find out.

So, until then, feel free to review. Or don't. Whatever.

And, of course, enjoy.

*Bows and exits*