Hi, everyone. I'm Emiko, Kairi's sister...While she's taking her 'sabbatical' i'm supposed to write for her. Just for the record she helped me write part of this chapter! yay! on the road to recovery! anyway, it was more a mutual decision really- we decided to give you 16 pages for this chapter because there was such a big gap between updates. Also, I wanted to thank you ALL on Kairi's behalf for all your beautiful and inspiring responses to her journel. :-) That was so kind of all of you to be so nice and uplifting. I know that reading them made her feel better- she was a little better today, and you'd be happy to know that I crammed a whole bunch of comfort-ice cream down her throat while she was watching Ninjago today. :-) Watching that always makes Kairi cheer up, so I have my fingers crossed that our ninja saved her today as well as the good people of Ninjago city. :-) I know this is not even half as good as Kairi's chapters, but I really tried to make it my best. I'm a little rusty. I haven't written for a while ! ! She did have a huge input to what I wrote, though so at least she's motivated. ;-D

Chapter 37:
Pretty Boys

Nya thought Cole was really, really, really pretty.

Not the kind of pretty like the flowers Misako gave her, or the kind of pretty when she watched the sunset every afternoon with Zane. He was the kind of pretty like Lloyd pretty. The pretty that made Nya's little heart run faster and her cheeks warm up and her insides feel all fuzzy. She felt bad for thinking that Cole was pretty when the only pretty boy she should've been thinking about was Lloyd—her baby daddy—but at the same time, she didn't think Lloyd would mind, would he? She was only commenting on Cole's utter prettiness, and the fact that Nya couldn't stop herself from relentlessly staring into his face, hoping to see something there. She loved the way his eyebrows moved when he talked, and the way he tilted his head before flipping his black hair out of his face. She really liked how he pursed his lips when he was thinking hard. They looked, in her girlish perspective, plush and feather-light to the touch. She wanted to draw her fingers across his cupid's bow, trace the outline of his cheekbones across his fine face, the visual stimulant of his perfect nose. There seemed to be a deep, deep story in Cole's eyes, and Nya was determined to figure it out. She wanted to, even though she couldn't say the words her lips wanted to form. Her voice box did not work in tune with her brain, a scenario that made her extremely irritated. Nya tucked in her legs underneath the seat she sat in, neatly in the middle seat of the car, beside the redheaded boy named Jay. With Cole turned around in the front passenger seat so he could talk to Jay and Zane about motivational billboards, she was able to look at him all she wanted without making it seem weird.

Nya watched Cole's eyebrows move when he spoke, twirling between his fingers a slip of empty post-it paper. "Motivational billboards can be interesting. I like the ones that advertise irony water. You know, the ones with the chicks with orange hair because of the iron-water coming out of showers?

"Yeah, but, you never see any other good ones," Jay said, rubbing his hand over his wrist. Nya broke her stare off Cole's face to glance over at Jay's, catching a glimpse of the sunlight pouring through the window and starring across the bridge of his nose. The sun shone over his brown eyelashes, sparkled in his green irises, and illuminated his skin into a decadent creamy shade. With a tiny gasp, Nya realized that Jay was pretty, too. Maybe not Cole-pretty or Lloyd-pretty, but pretty. She found herself staring at him instead. "They overdo the car company ones. I think they should add more humor into it, you know what I mean? So people actually want to get into whatever's being advertised."

Nya looked down at Jay's hands. They were calloused, rough-skinned as though he spent his time doing things that didn't involve total delicacy. His fingernails were chipped. Bitten away by his row of white teeth. Jay's red hair hung in his eyes, high enough to reveal the mysterious slit in his right eyebrow. Nya wanted to reach up and feel the sliver of empty skin, but didn't. Instead, looking back at his hands, Nya was fascinated by the thought of how they would feel, and tentatively reached forward to grab one out of his lap.

Jay jerked his hand out of hers the second he felt her fingertips moving over his skin. His whole body flinching, Jay leaned away and looked towards her, his eyes wide in startled Bambi-impersonations. Nya withdrew her hand. "Ha-and-z." She pointed. Jay looked down at his.

"What's wrong with them?" He asked, looking back up at her.

Pretty, Nya wanted to say, but instead, reached open her palm and made a claw motion across it, trying to portray their roughness. Jay's eyebrows furrowed. "I scratched them?" He asked. He glanced into the face of his palm.

"No." Nya rapidly scrubbed her hands together. How could she say they were rough? It was hard for her to voice that word, because it was difficult for Nya to do her f's. She didn't know how to make the sound; it was as difficult as whistling. Zane had tried to teach her, once, how to whistle, but sorely she'd failed, accidentally spitting on him instead of making the chiming-noise he could from between his puckered lips.

"They're warm?" Jay asked. He looked doubly confused. Nya giggled, tentatively stretching forward her hands to open them, allowing Jay a moment to consider "handing" them over. After a second, he placed his own into hers. She rubbed her hands across the calloused heels of his palms, towards the hard skin over his fingertips. They were hard measures of his hands, rocky, sandpaper-y. Everything that Nya had suspected them to be, even perhaps better than what she had hoped. Her own skin moving across Jay's made little flutters of electricity jolt through her body and into her heart, making the hair of her arms stand up, her eyes widen rations more than before. Jay watched her small, white fingertips move elegantly over his flesh.

"Har-dd." Nya poked the calloused portions.

"OH! Okay." Jay nodded once. His view was obstructed by holding his hands in front of his face. "I see. Yeah. They started doing that more after Dad started teaching me how to tinker with stuff."

"WAIT," Cole interrupted, making Nya raise her face to his, blown away by a blast of his beauty once more. "Did you say 'Dad'?"

"No," Jay said sweetly, "I said Donkey Kong."

Cole gave him a look, but Nya sufficed giggles, holding her hands over her mouth as not to seem rude to Cole. However, it appeared he wasn't fazed, and kept his shocked expression pointed towards Jay. The redhead's eyes narrowed. "WHY? What's wrong with calling him 'Dad'?"

Cole, blown away by whatever made him stare in shock, "You know who your dad is?!"

"Do you know who your dad is?" countered Jay.

Cole gave him that extra special you-dork look, but Nya saw there was a sparkle in his eyes, lighting up his face completely. It made him look even prettier! Nya smiled to herself when Cole reached through the space between the front seats to poke Jay's knee. The action made Jay flinch back. "Well, I'll be damned," he grinned, returning to facing forward. It broke the beauty of light that kept coming into Nya's view. She pouted over the supple loss. "You know something."

"AHEM! I happen to know plenty of—"

"I meant, from your past," Cole intercepted. Nya giggled again, and this time, it was Jay who glanced down at her, trying to envision what was so amusing but missing the punchline completely. Nya was not giggling because they were being funny. She was giggling because they were so pretty.

…
Rikku

The long, empty road stretched before Rikku's silly white van. The old model chugged along across the thousands of miniature cracks and lacerations to the pavement without feeling a single one. Though no one was present on the road but him, he obeyed the speed limit, naturally tuning out the chit-chat of his passengers. It wasn't like they were speaking to him, anyway; Rikku was the chauffeur, and the four of them were friends, excluding himself. He was nothing to them. The privilege of joining their conversation was righted only to those who were not messengers, but heroes, all of which Rikku was not.

Rikku made the left turn deeper across the desert. Of course he would not be included. His brother couldn't remember his own name half the time, a bad sign already, but to be expecting of his brother's friends to remember Rikku was a bit of a stretch. If his friends couldn't remember each other, Rikku would not even be the minor of all blips on their memory radar.

Zane's friends didn't pay attention to him. Zane's friends. Not Rikku's. Zane was able to bring people swarming him by the dozens that may happen to float by, whether it be birthed by his charming innocence or guiltless kindness. People just liked Zane. He did not repel them, even as a humanoid mechanism, but rather kept them all within arm's reach. You would think that Zane's arms would one day be full of people he needed to keep track of, deeming him unorganized and useless, but he did a marvelous job at keeping that a controlled environment. He did what he wanted to do, was brave enough to sacrifice himself in a battle for the people he loved. It didn't matter if he was a robot or a human…Zane would've done it either way. To make sure all was safe for those he cared most about, he would've bent over backwards and taken the slit throat to protect him. He was a noble, honorable young warrior that had been beat quite a few times since his fall. Rikku flexed his fingers while wandering deep into the forest of his mind, chopping down trees as he went without bothering to see how beautiful the leaves were. The steering wheel was the handle, and this car was his axe.

Energy level: 18%.

The red light blinking in the corner of his vision was quickly dismissed. Rikku's equipment was considered the lesser of the built brothers. To provide himself with energy, Rikku had to physically plug himself into a generator that Danielle wheeled around for him to the courtesy of her own liking. Last night, he'd been hooked up for a very long time, but hadn't gotten many bars of vitality out of it. Julien had created Zane to take human food and break down the contents into energy, a user-friendly option to keeping him from dying in the middle of the fight. Sleep also stored Zane some backup bars if he ever had to use the extra batteries. Julien had known that Zane would be one to move around for the comfort of moving rather than as a necessity, an activity burning up of energy, which was a further gap between the two dissimilar brothers. Rikku would never move around just to move. He'd much rather stand still and observe grass growing.

Yet another person who liked Zane more than Rikku.

Rikku didn't understand. He did everything in his power and ability to be liked, performing everything that everyone asked correctly, offering himself in ways that he figured suitable to the dynamic of the situation, but he was never comparable to Zane in the end. It was always Zane. After all, Zane was the robot created with free will; when Rikku was built, it was significantly written into his database that he had to obey any order given. He was a soldier they could not afford to lose, and out of fear of misplacing him, Julien created him to obey as told—no matter what told. It was miserable.

Energy level: 13%.

His means of existing were depreciating, and fast; Rikku's hands tightened reflexively along the fine leather of the van's cool steering wheel, a feat that was enabled in plenty other locations within the vehicle. Zane. It's always him. There was no lie beneath the harsh truth he breathed from the adequate space of his lips. Even though Rikku was automated as a mechanical semi-genuine humanoid, he was not equipped with the blessing of human emotions, yet somehow he found himself slithering to which humans only ever could fall into: a pool of one central emotion, a bitter socket he dove face-first towards. In the end, when every crusade that would soon come to the future was over, Rikku could never be to blame. Some pointed the finger at his machinery, his blueprint chip resting in the nest of his fashioned body, a generator with legs. Others figured it was Rikku himself that was so decreed a villain after everything. But it was always a faulty wire they said followed actions of its own.

Rikku never really knew himself what became of him. The central emotion that his body honed in on was not anything of a positivity. If anything, it was destructive. Rikku's prone jealousy burned brighter than anything he had ever experienced likewise before. Never was he enabled with emotion, just the figurative memory of having them and perhaps what if felt like to wield love or passion or happiness or joy. Somehow, though, he knew it was within his oil arteries and the gear tracts that defined his true form underneath the placard of human-ness that onlookers saw. The jealousy was there. The anger. The thought of betrayal. The cold, sick determination. Yes, he had these emotions now. For what, he was ashamed for.

He was such an inhumane bastard. He really was.

Instinctively, his ears tuned into audio perception when the utter of his brother's wretched name was soothed from someone's lips. The speaker was, from the harbor of the passenger seat beside him, Cole, who innocently turned in his seat to look at Zane. The discussion Rikku joined through audibility was only half-understood. He'd missed the first of it. "Zane," Cole said, rubbing his brow, "what are you talking about?"

"I sensed something, in the bathroom," Zane said innocently. From reaching the rearview mirror with his eyes, Rikku perceived he was sitting ramrod straight, legs pressed together, and hands innocently tucked onto his knees as he listened to the sounds of the sterile car around him. At his side, Jay turned his head to give him a queer look, but surprisingly offered no interruption. "I sensed a deep, deep sorrow."

Ah. The girl, then. Seiko. The one that They wanted.

"I found a couple of things wrong with that statement. A: How did you 'sense' anything?" Jay made air quotations, looking dubiously irritated. "And B: What do you mean, a 'sorrow'?" He asked, bending forward to pluck at the various laces of his shoes.

Rikku moved his eyes back to the road of No Man's Land, listening once more without the assistance of imagery. "I don't know," Zane said after a moment. "I just sensed it. I have been experiencing this a lot lately, where I can feel other people's emotions, and I—If they are in pain, I am able to…remove…some of it, and absorb it into myself. I know," he added when Jay was about to protest, "it sounds rather strange, but it has worked multiple times. I know what you are feeling. I can sense it. Right now, I can feel you are all staring at me, and you are all startled. Jay is quite disbelieving. Cole, you are awestruck. Nya, you are…fuzzy." At this, from the mirror, Rikku watched Jay's nose pinch. Zane caught the expression. "She is not understanding anything I am saying. To her it is a foreign language. It is—I can feel very deep emotion within each of you. But, when I was up in the bathroom with Miss Seiko…it was different. Darker. Like I was swallowed in darkness. I somehow knew that it was what she was feeling, because—well, because I could feel it myself. It was rather strange, but I…" He cleared his throat. "I could feel as though I was just in great, great sorrow. As though I could not be pulled from the darkness I was swimming in. My chest"—Rikku glanced up to the mirror, finding Zane laying a wide hand across his chest, looking at his lap—"felt rather empty. Burning, almost, and my stomach twisted. My lungs felt heavy. It was hard to breathe." The road stretched, ever-unending, before Rikku. "I could not escape the feeling. It was awful."

"Uh," Jay rubbed the back of his neck nervously. At his side, Nya leaned forward, silently peering around the man beside her to look at the prophetic dreamer. "Are you sure that wasn't heartburn or something?"

Rikku glanced at Cole. The older brother to the girl of topic was staring in consternation towards Zane as though there was a hidden crypt behind his eyes. The ice-eyed boy stared back, lacking distress of a natural human being. Rikku would have frowned if the coordinates for the motion were included somewhere in his database. Zane was being ridiculously unnatural. The 'sensing' clairvoyance of his experience left his older brother to wonder what exactly had been gifted to him when he returned from the ungrateful dead.

Cole blinked slowly. "Why would she be sad?" he asked quietly. It seemed like a question aimed more towards himself, but eavesdroppers sucked onto the comment and answered their own ways.

"You're her husband," Jay responded, crossing his arms over his chest. Rikku looked back at the road to change onto another. "You tell us."

Cole's face deepened in color. "I'm not her husband," he grumbled. "I'm her brother."

"Since when?" Snidely, Jay leaned forward. Rikku shuffled with a few dials on the back of the steering wheel, hidden to everyone but him. The sound of Cole's voice was drowned out when Zane responded instead.

"He has remembered," he said softly. Silence pulled into the car. Rikku pulled down his visor to deflect the awesome burn of the sun's excruciating rays, digging into his body like the shovel of an undertaker. He had already been aware that the vampire regained previously missing memories, much to his interest overcoming the bullet Caroline—or Kaos—injected within his head. His supernatural healing must work differently than others expected it to.

Jay's eyes slowly widened in the dim reflection of Rikku's rearview mirror. He watched the abashed expression slowly torment the young boy's face before the outburst of disbelief escaped the jail of his throat. "WHAT?!" Jay squealed, leaning forward, closer to Cole than was comfortable. The vampire leaned back in bewilderment. "HOW?!"

Cole rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. Rikku looked at the sun, dangling far into the distance, and wondered if it were possible that it could beam towards him and suck him completely away, like an alien spacecraft. If he were human, nerves of the future would eventually wrack his fingers into shaking uncontrollably. He'd be, in his anxious state, fidgeting constantly. He would be drumming his fingers, bouncing his leg, hoping the others didn't notice his shifty eyes. But Rikku was blessed—and cursed—with the inability to do such human things. No one knew anything was out of the ordinary. A fatal mistake.

They were pulling onto a long stretch of road that was disappearing from sand and into grassland. Rikku admired the formidable change in scenery; far beyond where his car was now, on the opposite end of the road, was Kuna Bridge. It extended over Samurai River, which barreled through the middle of the land. Kuna Bridge had been there forever. Since before Rikku was a baby. He remembered fishing off that bridge before it became a highway transportation device.

"I guess…" Cole pondered aloud, tapping his finger on his lips, "that I was…reliving something I'd already done. When I was doing it, I felt really weird. Like déjà vu was completely overtaking me. And it was. And I must've thought a trigger word or something, because then it all came back to me at once." He sighed and dragged his hand over his nose.

Jay listened like he was being told a bedtime story. "That's IT? We just…REDO it? Are you KIDDING ME? That's so easy!" He leaned back and huffed, crossing his arms over his jacket-clad chest, and made a face. "I could get back my memories, and finally everyone could stop treading eggshells. What were you even doing?"

"Lifting weights," Cole provided. "But, Jay—"

"Typical. But why that? It's not very, um, significant…you know, like, you've done it a million times. It's not that unique. Why would that, a common action, be your trigger?"

Cole sighed. "I was repeating the same actions that I did the day that this all started. Er, by 'this,' I mean all of this weird supernatural, end-of-the-world stuff that's been going on. With the demons and the evil and whatnot—"

"Perhaps," interjected Zane, "that is what our trigger is. The day that everything changed is as far as our memories were erased, correct?"

"No," Cole answered. "Our memories were erased back to when we were babies, and replaced with fake memories."

"Alright." Zane thought about it a moment. "Do you think that if we recreated something that initially was a trigger to something else in our past—like maybe the spark to something really big that happened—that would help jog our memories?"

Rikku was surprised at how quickly Zane caught on, but not at all flattered. He flexed his fingers irritably. Cole opened his mouth, but Rikku couldn't refrain from responding. "To erase a memory—well, for starters, you are not erasing it. That's impossible, no matter what Danielle or Kaos may say." He drove at a slow, steady pace. He memory-dreaded coming to the next bend, far in the road ahead of them. To distract himself, Rikku busied himself informing his brother, who seemed to be a quick learner. "To erase a memory, you are dividing up the 'triggers' that make you remember of another memory so they are no longer connected, per se, and therefore it is 'lost.' You must think about chain reactions. For example, when you are merely sitting and thinking: One thought leads you to another thought and to another, correct? It becomes a spiraling sequence of thoughts, always triggering each other. It is the same concept with memories. If you remember one thing—something rather large that impacted your memories previously—it will jog another, and another, and another, until you are lighting up the whole city of your memories. Right now, you are sunk deep into the dark. Your city has no light. But if you remember one thing, it will become a chain of memories that will continue to multiply. The lights will come on. You will remember."

WARNING: Energy Level: 7%.

Rikku sighed. Why couldn't life be easy? He switched a button on the dashboard and sighed heavily again. If they were going to make it to their destination in proper time, he would have to disobey a few traffic laws—although they were the only residents using this road—to reach it. He pressed a little harder on the gas pedal, using the expellant to propel them forwards towards rickety Kuna Bridge.

…

Zane found himself sinking into the inevitable. He enjoyed talking to Jay and Cole, accompanied by the helpful cooing of Nya, but eventually the conversation about memory-regaining dashed away. It transformed into a miniature discussion between Jay and Cole exclusively. It wasn't that Zane was being excluded; he did not find this particular topic interesting anymore. He peered out the window at the sandy earth beneath Rikku's van. He watched the land roll by, the same land he had seen for a while now, and thought about Rikku. He was a peculiar man. Come to think of it, Zane still did not understand the extent of how – and why – Rikku was his brother. Everyone told him so. But from the little picture books that Misako and Edna had given to him to read, siblings were supposed to look familiar. Quite alike. At least, the drawings in the books did, and that was where the majority of Zane's perspective came from. Yet there was nothing he found particularly akin about Rikku that reminded him of himself. The older boy was dark, tanned, and seemingly lethal, but Zane was none of those things. After all, he'd found, after Misako had shown him how to paint with watercolors, that his favorite color was not what he was able to transfer onto the blank paper, but the paper itself. He liked white more than any color he could think of. Why? Because it was a clean color. A charmingly, splendidly, pure color. It wasn't rotted, or ruined, or destroyed by all these other explosive and attention-grabbing hues. Then, in complete distinction, Rikku was not. No pale skin, no light hair, no fluid movements. He made jerky motions, including abrupt stops and sharply unannounced turns. Luckily, his hazardous personality outside of the vehicle wasn't carried into his driving. Zane may have had a traumatizing issue with cars after that.

His personality was different, too. Rikku seemed to lack just that. He seemed like an empty person, someone who was deprived on true living. Zane couldn't find himself able to 'probe' Rikku with his strange, sixth-sense ability to understand the emotions and correct them of those around him. When he tried to reach out to Rikku, all he hit was a road block. What was wrong? Did Rikku not have any emotion? But that was impossible. Every creature on earth had to have emotion. Nothing provoked it out of him. Specifically, the factor of parents. Everyone else had them, but Zane did not. Rikku seemed to have no problems with being an orphaned child. If Rikku really was Zane's brother, that meant he had no parents, either, for the fact that Zane had none. Did Rikku like being orphaned? Did it make him sad? Did he like Zane? They had not spent quality time together, getting to know each other. Rikku was more focused on transporting Nya back and forth between the prison and Misako's house, then whispering with the adults as though Zane, Cole, Jay, and Nya couldn't hear them.

He sighed. Zane didn't understand a lot of things when it came to who he was, let alone the brother issues. The injustice of being told every day about something you had done, yet held no memory to doing, grew deeper and deeper. He did not understand why he suffered such eloquent memory loss. He did not understand why his friends did, either, or why he acquired the ability to understand the emotions and thoughts of those around him. This was not to mention the capacity to remove pain from others. It was strange, but Zane soaked it in like Misako's yellow sponge. (Not the kind that talked.) Every ounce he saturated did not seem to alter his naturally cheerful attitude. Was it a gift? Or was it a curse?

He thought about the girl he'd last taken pain from. Miss Seiko seemed to be someone who reveled in darkness, an act he did not encourage. Dancing in darkness was as negative as self-destructive thoughts, something Zane did not approve well of. He figured that somehow, using his ability, whether it be good or bad, he could manipulate Miss Seiko's emotions out of the darkness. After all, it would be dire if she found herself exploding inside of the black helplessness.

Zane yawned. He was quite worn out. Perhaps if he rested his head on his hand, he could enjoy this ride more…

…
Bokuyo POV

"GAH! Whazzat?!" The little boy raised his hand and pointed towards a spec on the long road Mr. Kai had pulled onto. It was a nice spot to move into, Bokuyo thought; he was getting reaaaalllyyy tired of looking at all that SAND and stuff. It wasn't pretty. Not pretty like Mommy. The blob dancing slowly not that far ahead of them was moving slowly. Mister Kai squinted into the distance.

"Looks like a car," he said. "Weird, 'cause this freeway has been deserted for a while."

"Almost kind of like Rikku's car," Mister Lloyd said. He picked at one a 'dem loose stringy-thingys on his pants. Bokuyo had watched him do it for a while. He'd pull off the string and then wrap it around his finger, then pull off 'nother one and tie 'dem together. It seemed kinda like a nerbus hobbit or whatever Mommy used to call 'dem back home. Bokuyo kicked his little feet from his seat.

"What'f it IZZZZZ Mister Rikku?" asked Bokuyo.

Mister Kai chuckled at him. Bokuyo didn't know why he was laughin'. He didn't say nothin' funny. Just askin' a question. "Maybe it is. He's driving pretty slow, though, so I don't know. It doesn't seem like Rikku would be inconsistent with the speed limit."

"But what'f he had ta tie his SHOES?" Bokuyo asked. He swung his feet again. "'DEN WHAT!"

"He'd pull over," Mister Lloyd answered. He turned in his seat to flash his blue eyes at Bokuyo, and the little boy froze. The look was friendly, but every time Mister Lloyd looked at him, Bokuyo felt funny inside. Like he was bein' tickled-ed by Shaun Ling back at home, who used to pick on him when he was at the playground with Grampa. (which hurt!) Grampa never did nothin', and neither did Gramma, but Bokuyo kicked Shaun in the shin once and Shaun went home cryin'. Bokuyo felt really good 'cause he'd beated (beated-ed?) a bully but 'den Mommy got mad when Shaun's mom called Mommy on the thingamajig. He swung his feet again and looked at Mister Kai, breaking contact with Mister Lloyd. He didn't like feelin' like he was bein' tickled-ed by Shaun Ling.

"But what'f he's runnin' outta GAS?"

"Then…he's slowing down," answered Mister Lloyd. Mister Kai chuckled from the front seat. This time, Mister Lloyd didn't turn around. Bokuyo felt better when he didn't.

"Maybe he's runnin' outta gas."

"We'll find out eventually."

Mister Kai pulled closer to the ever-slowing vehicle; not close enough to fit a car between them, but a good thirty feet away. Mister Lloyd squinted at the plate with numbers and letters on the back of the car. "Hey! It is Rikku!" He exclaimed.

"I guess Danielle thought we should take the same way, just in case one of us gets in danger or something," Mister Kai said.

Bokuyo turned and poked Mommy. "Mommy! Look! Issss Mister Rikku! An' Mister Jay and Mister Zane an' Uncle Cole and Miss Nya!" he pointed. Mommy leaned her head off the window and looked at the silver car in front of them, nodded, and put her head back. Bokuyo felt really ugly after that. Somethin' was wrong with Mommy. He tugged on her sleeve. "Momma! Whazzamatter?"

"Nothing," responded Mommy. Bokuyo didn't like the sound of her voice. It sounded weak. Almost like she was gonna cry, but he'd heard-ed Mommy talk before she cry an' it didn't sound like that, but more like she had somethin' stuck in her neck. The end of the word was high-pitcheded and sounded like a lie. Like it almost gotted cut off. 'Clipped.'

It was kinda funny 'cause Mister Lloyd turned around to look at her. He had this look on his face that Grampa always gave to Mommy when she started crying 'cause of Daddy. It looks concerned and stuffs, but it doesn't look like he's gonna cry. He looks like he cares about Mommy a lot. Gramma one time took Bokuyo out of the room when Mommy started to tear up on Daddy's birthday, and Grampa was givin' Mommy that look, and when he asked Gramma what was wrong with Grampa's face, she said that Grampa had compassion under his hard skin. He didn't get it then an' he still didn't get it, but Gramma knows what she's talkin' about an' he guessed that's all that matters.

Mommy doesn't talk about Daddy a lot.

So Mister Lloyd gave Mommy that look, an' it made Bokuyo watch 'cause it was interesting to see the looks on their faces. Mister Lloyd looked really concerned and compassion-ed, and Bokuyo looked at Mommy. Her face seemed to change when Bokuyo sawed her. She looked a little less shaky an' a little more not shaky. Mister Lloyd's face softened a little. Bokuyo had heard that phrase a bajillion-trillion-zajillion times before but never understood-ed what it meant 'till now. It didn't look like somebody had hit him in the face with a pillow, 'cause that's what Bokuyo thought a 'softened face' looked like. He couldn't explain it. It just softened an' he knew it. He watched idly.

"Everything okay?" Mister Lloyd asked.

"Pitch perfect, Snickerdoodles," Mommy said like a joke. But Mister Lloyd didn't smile. He made his face all pinchy and frowned.

"Seiko, please don't push me awa—"

"I'm sorry. It's what I do." Mommy huffed. Bokuyo looked at her. She was rubbing her wrists. He stared hard enough and he could see faint, puckering pink scars on her pale white wrists. They were really hard to see, but he had seen 'dem hundredses of times at home. She normally tried to cover them up. "But I'm fine, Snickers. I'm just feeling ill. No issues. You can put away that whole Rottweiler thing you got going on." She waved her hand in Mister Lloyd's direction. He looked protective.

"Do you get car sick?" asked Mister Lloyd.

Mommy rolled her eyes. She thought he was being funny. "HA! The whole time I've known you, I've endured some pretty crazy shit, like hurling shadows at my will and riding freaking dragons, not to mention jumping off those dragons. But c'mon, Snickers, gimme credit! If I got carsick, do you know how STUPID that would be? How IRONIC? I would be the BIGGEST FAIL EVER. And I'm a Mitsuhide. Ain't nobody got time for that."

Mister Lloyd looked relieved. He smiled and relaxed a little. Bokuyo saw his shoulders lower. "At least you're still Seiko. As long as you're you, I'm happy," he murmured. It sounded almost like she wasn't supposed to hear it, but Bokuyo saw his mother's face fall a little. Not in a sad way, but like one of those shocked ways. Mommy couldn't believe he had said it. She looked 'dazzled-ed.'

Bokuyo didn't like how dazzled-ed she looked, because she was looking at him the way Mommy had looked at Daddy in a picture Bokuyo saw one time, and that look was just for Daddy. Not Mister Lloyd. It made him sad. It was s'posed to be DADDY's special look! So he opened his mouth and didn't think, which Mommy gets really mad at him when he does that, and he said because he was upset, "I see some crazy shit going on here."

Mommy's hand clapped over his mouth immediately. Bokuyo was stunned that she did that—had he said something bad? "NO!" She said. "DON'T SAY THAT!"

Mister Lloyd looked back at him with wide eyes, but he was laughing. Mister Kai looked in the mirror at Bokuyo and was also laughing. Their laughter FILLED the car, and Bokuyo didn't know what he'd said so bad, but he felt bad 'cause he got in trouble. Mommy kept her hand over his mouth, but when he looked at her, she was laughing, too. She bent down her head and put it on his tiny shoulder. Her shoulders shook 'cause she was laughing so hard. Bokuyo didn't understand. It wasn't MEANT to be bad. Mommy let go of his mouth but 'cause she was laughing so hard she collapsed in his lap. "Don't—" she cried, trying not to laugh, but not very good. "Don't—copy me when I say those words. Those are bad, and—oh, glob." She giggled. Bokuyo twisted his ankles around each other and looked down at Mommy. She still giggled like Suzie Warren did when she looked at Yoyo Tailor, the singer guy. "Oh, glob. I'm such a bad parent."

"No, Mommy," Bokuyo protested, and put his tiny hands on her cheeks. She looked stunned out of laughter. "Mommy's not a bad parent."

"No?"

"No. Mommy didn't get mad at me one time when I said her favorite word and Mommy didn't punish me, not like Shaun Ling got punished by his mommy when he said it. So you can't be a bad parent or nothin' 'cause you're good and didn't get mad at me when I said it."

"Oh?" Mommy looked at him out the corner of her eye after she sat up. "What did you say?"

"I said fuck and you laughed at me."

Mister Lloyd and Mister Kai started laughing again. Mister Lloyd looked back at me, his eyeballs smiley, and said, "Oh, man. You are officially my favorite little kid."

Bokuyo stared at him. What was he supposed to say to the guy who stole Daddy's special look? He looked at Mommy, and then she was looking at Mister Lloyd like that again, and Bokuyo was getting sad again. Then Mommy pulled him closer, and she tucked Bokuyo's head under her chin. He was upset. When mister Lloyd turned back around, he looked up at Mommy and asked, "Why do you look at him like that?" real quiet so Mister Lloyd wouldn't hear.

"Like what?" she asked.

"You gave him Daddy's look. That's not fair."

"Daddy's look?"

"Yeah. Where your eyes are all sparkly and your face is all happy."

"I…" Mommy's voice stopped, and she blinked. She stared at Bokuyo for a long second, but he insisted.

"Mommy always told me you're s'posed to love one person. Jus' one, an' give 'dem that look. So it's not fair if you give somebody else 'dat look. I love Daddy. I love you too."

She looked away. She never answered him.

…

Yin

'Daddy's look.' What the hell.

I was not giving Lloyd a fricking 'Daddy's look.' Ha! 'Daddy' gets his own look my ass. Whatever. Whoever this 'Daddy' guy is, I'm certainly not giving him his own look. My eyeballs belong to me, dude, not a random father I don't know the name to. And my eyes, being all sparkly and happy-fied? Really? Bitch, please. I am not Barbie. My eyes do NOT get all fluffy and sparkly and bedazzled. No way. That's a load of bull crap.

I stared out the window for a minute. I don't give people Barbie looks. Especially not Snickerdoodles, who, of all people, didn't need a Barbie look with the fandom trailing behind him worse than the train of his pretty little wedding gown. I do not indulge in such pointless engagements. That's not the kind of girl I am. Jeez. What, did this little kid know his 'Mommy' at all?

I snorted. Wow. What a whacko.

…
Yang

Huh. A 'Daddy's Look'? Actually, I wasn't aware that dads got their own looks, but…wow. Listening with my hyperactive hearing, I'd heard Bokuyo's little whispers, and now pondered about it using my own surprise as my judgment. I didn't even know Seiko was giving me a look unless it was involving shooting invisible daggers at my face, but even then I hardly noticed them. I thought back, mentally, to how she'd looked at me, but saw nothing. Did Bokuyo's dad get a blank stare or… what?

I leaned back. If anything, why would I be getting a stare? I thought back to the way her eyes looked. Had I seen anything there? Nothing but her usual Seiko-look, lacking the 'daddy' portion that apparently Bokuyo recognized. I scratched my chin. That's definitely…weird.

I stretched out my arms and felt my face warm unintentionally when I thought of her again. But it was hard not to. She was kind of toxic to me. Tainting my thoughts…enthralling me…and definitely surprising me, that was for sure. I thought about the way her hand felt in mine, and my heart thrummed a little faster. The way it felt to hold her close. I closed my eyes to picture her face better.

Yeah that is a bad ending, but it'll make sense in the next chapter, which I am also posting right now. So thank you for reading, thank you for being so supportive and loving and beautifully wonderful to Kairi- she appreciates everything you guys say. Leave her a hello in the reviews. thanks for reading, and on Kairi's behalf, go have an awesome day or night!

Emi