(A/N: I HAVE RETURNED~

Truth be told, I've been working on my own non-fanfic projects, as of late. They're on my DeviantArt profile (Geli-K). My main one, Kat's Tale, goes way back and is going through another makeover, and Madhouse Funhouse is getting edited and put into comic form.

Not much of an excuse for not updating for, like, a year. I just forgot how awesome was.

I'm also moving to Japan for six months in March, so whether or not I'll update in the near future is up in the air.

In case you don't remember, Thing had just been torn in half! The horror! D:

Scribbles kicked aside an innocent rock, sending it sailing into a nearby gulley with a clack. In her arms were the two halves of what once was her stuffed animal. Thing. He'd stuck it through with her for the last two years. He'd been burned, gnawed on by mice, crushed under a car, thrown at a mutant and had cuddled with her for almost seven hundred and thirty days... Not that Scribbles could count anywhere near that high. She did know, however, that Thing was her dearest and closest friend... And now he was hurt. She didn't like it. Not one bit.

"I hate those guys!" she yelled. Her voice echoed off of the old buildings, making her feel even more alone.

Scribbles firmly ignored the tears welling up in her eyes. She shook her head to rid herself of them. Big girls don't cry.

She touched her shoulder and realized that the familiar weight of her backpack was absent. She had left it with the others.

She let out a sigh. I guess I'll have to go back and get it.

Trying to be as silent as possible, she snuck through the rubble and wound her way back to the group, staying in the shadows and clutching Thing's tattered body to her chest.

She saw Snippy and Aderyn walking slowly along behind the others, limping slightly. Captain was ranting on about the fabulousness of killer whales to Engie, who wasn't even looking at him. Pilot was nowhere to be seen.

Good, she thought bitterly.

Snippy was wearing her backpack and talking quietly with Aderyn. Scribbles thought that was weird, and it was. Whenever they spent time together, they spent it arguing. She turned around and headed back to the base.

It was a tall apartment building, most of the rooms collapsed. However, the bottom floor and the upper levels were still in more or less good condition. She tiptoed up the steps to the top level and parked herself in the corner, trying to fit Thing back together. Naturally, without a needle and thread, she failed. She was still sitting in the corner trying not to cry when the rest of the army arrived, save for Pilot.

xxx

"How're we going to get that stuffed animal away from her?" asked Snippy as he and Aderyn watched Scribbles pace about the decrepit apartment building. "It's attached to her hip."

It was growing dark outside. They had very little light, except for one small fire in the middle of the room that was started up in an old pot. Snippy greatly missed the barrel that they had the fire in before.

"We could wait until she's asleep," suggested Aderyn mildly. "But I should warn you that she might punch you if she so much as feels you twitch."

"Reassuring," he said in a nonplussed tone. "How do you know about that?"

"I don't. Just guessing. She seems the type, doesn't she?"

"Yeah…" He sighed. "We'll just have to try. And we'll need to put it back before she wakes up, otherwise she'll…" She'll what? Cry? Throw a fit? Run away and try to find her stuffed animal? Either way, it wouldn't end well.

Scribbles paused in her pacing for a moment, just long enough to stare really hard at Snippy and Aderyn, squinting at them through her thick goggles, before plopping down in the corner and burying her face in her arms.

"That's sad," said Aderyn. "It's just… It's just depressing."

Snippy nodded.

"We'll have to wait until she's asleep and very, very carefully take it from her." She paused, bending the blade of her epee. "How're we going to fix it?"

Snippy hadn't thought of that. Obviously, they were going to need a needle and thread to sew it back together. However, he hadn't so much as found a sewing kit in the last few months, so the chances of just going outside and finding one were slim. People didn't need to sew things after the robotics department perfected weaving tear-free clothing.

The evening wore on. Pilot still hadn't returned from whatever oddball mission he had been sent on. Snippy supposed that he might be back the next morning (but hoped he wouldn't come back at all). Captain was nowhere to be found as usual, and Engie was asleep on a pile of towels. Slowly, Scribbles drifted off to sleep in her corner after taking off her mask, clinging onto her tattered stuffed animal.

Snippy and Aderyn looked at each other, sighed, and tiptoed across the room, silent as mice. Aderyn gently took hold of one half of Thing and tugged it out of her grasp. Scribbles didn't react aside from furrowing her brow in her sleep.

She nodded to Snippy. Your turn.

Looking around for something to substitute for her stuffed animal in her arms, Snippy found a book and gently slid it in place of Thing. Scribbles' hand shot out and made a grab for Snippy's hood, but he took her fingers and firmly fitted them around the book. She curled up to it in her sleep.

Trying to contain her laughter, Aderyn limped over to the opposite corner, where they could talk without waking her. Snippy trotted silently behind her and sat down on the debris.

"Now what?" asked Aderyn in a hushed undertone.

Snippy looked down at his half of the stuffed animal. "I don't know." The plastic blue eyes gazed up at him, stuffing spilling from the gaping hole in the back. It was a little creepy. He had no idea why she liked it so much.

He felt a nudge on his bad shoulder, sending pain up his arm. Before he could shoot an angry glare at Aderyn, he saw that she was pointing to Engie.

"Isn't he the staff doctor?" she asked. "Maybe he has some surgical thread to fix it with? Or even just some safety pins and twine?"

Snippy tilted his head, looking at the sleeping doctor. "Hmm. Maybe."

"Let's go wake up the lazy cretin." Aderyn was on her feet in a jiff and limping across the room, having forgotten her crutch again. Snippy sighed and picked it up, jogging over and handing it to her. She thanked him with a wordless grunt, then turned and kicked Engie in the side. "Up you get."

"Huh?" he lifted his head. He swore quietly in Russian and sat up, massaging his eyes beneath his goggles. "What do you want?"

"Quieter, please," muttered Snippy, gesturing to Scribbles. "Do you have a needle and thread?"

"Oh, shoot, I forgot my embroidery supplies back at our last base. Sorry."

Aderyn whacked him in the back of the head with her crutch. Engie reduced his yell to hiss of pain.

"I think I might have something," he said, dragging his backpack—which he had been using as a pillow—over to him. "Why?"

Snippy and Aderyn held out the stuffed animal halves.

He raised an eyebrow behind his goggles. "Uh… Why?"

"Because it was kind of our fault," said Snippy.

"Mostly his," said Aderyn. "Oh, and Pilot. Not me. I was just trying to help."

"Shut it. Anyway, she was a lot happier when she had it, and now she's miserable. Isn't that reason enough?"

Engie sighed and dug around in the bag. "Okay. I'll sew it up for you guys. Just leave my name out of it. You owe me one."

"We're not keeping score," said Snippy.

"I owe you nothing," said Aderyn. "But if you refuse to do it, I might stab you."

After eyeing up both of their weapons for a minute and realizing that even though they were both incapacitated, he would come out of the scuffle in worse shape than they currently were. To his dismay, he saw that he didn't have any thread left in his kit.

"Bad news, guys," he said softly. "I've got needles, but no string. Sorry."

Snippy sighed, stood up and stretched. "Looks like we're going for a late night scavenging session, huh?"

xxx

Pilot zoomed around the wasteland, his arms held far out to the sides. Clouds skimmed under his feet, nothing but bright blue sky overhead. He dipped lower, breaking under the cloud cover, and looked down at all the tiny villages that dotted the land. So pretty!

He was brought roughly back to the present when he tripped over a smashed traffic light post and fell gracelessly into a pile of snow.

"Stupid soggy blanket!" he said, shaking the snow off of him. "Traffic lights are evil!" He kicked it viciously, then took off again.

"Hmm. There's a paper-thing shop around here somewhere…" He whooshed over to the main street and rocketed down it, the wind's hands tugging at the tube on his mask and the leather on his jacket. He shot into a shop and leapt up a flight of stairs before coming to stop in front of a tiny bookshop. Most bookstores had gone out of business thanks to the introduction of G-Read, the book app inside your mind. According to the Directorate, it "Contains over one hundred thousand G-Cube approved reading materials for your entertainment and delight. Remember: material books cost time and money to read, so why waste that when you can just know the story with a single click? Download the G-Read app today!"

Scribbles had loathed the G-Read app.

Pilot buzzed around inside the bookstore, his breath whistling through his mask. Most of the books he encountered were missing a great deal of their pages, and he got an odd feeling that Scribbles wouldn't like that.

Stupid small shoe! He stomped through the shop, crushing the books underfoot. It's her fault anyway that her stupid toy broke!

The books towards the back weren't torn apart, but most of them suffered water damage. Pilot began pulling the less damaged books off the shelf and looking at the titles.

Oxford English Dictionary?

He didn't understand those words. Boring. He tossed it over his shoulder.

World War Z?

Pilot didn't really want to think about war, and he was sure Scribbles wouldn't want to, either. Dull. He tossed it onto the other one carelessly.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix?

She already had that. He threw it away.

Artemis Fowl? No. The Raven and Other Stories? Forget it. The Tale of Despereau, Coke or Pepsi, Global Music, Howl's Moving Castle, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime? No, no, no, no, NO!

He threw his hands up in the air, huffing. "Stupid shoe! I'll never find a good one! Why can't these books be any good?"

He plopped down onto a chair and huffed, crossing his arms. His eyes fell upon a bag that was a few steps away from him. He grabbed it and dumped out the contents.

Treasure Island, The Four-Story Mistake, and The Book Thief.

Huh. Interesting. The cover of the first one was adorned with a pirate. He'd always loved pirates. Ninjas were still better, but pirates were always awesome. The second one had a picture of an old fashioned house with children riding bicycles. That was happy. He liked that, and he was sure Scribbles would, too. The last one he thought was fitting. After all, wasn't he being a book thief?

He stared at them for a few minutes, trying to decide. Which one?

After quite some deliberation, he decided to take the three of them. It wouldn't do any harm. He tucked them into the bag and sailed off into the night.

He got lost. It was quite some time before he found the base again. The first light of morning was starting to crack the sky.