Pet Peeve
by
Nin Tendo
Chapter 3 - Trail of Blood
Disclaimer: I wish I owned Gundam Wing...then I could tax fanfiction authors for the right to write about my characters...cool....
=======================
The space shuttle had arrived on Earth at approximately 5:30 AM that morning.
Half an hour later, a taxi pulled up to a hospital and two people exited, thanking the cab driver for his service.
The man with long platinum blond hair did not exactly know why his need to enter the building was so strong. He did not care much for the younger man he intended to visit, a sentiment that only burned harsher at the thought of how that young man could have prevented the death of Relena Darlian, had he been more alert. He did not know how he would react when he stepped inside the room, but then, that was one of the reasons he'd asked his partner to accompany him.
The woman with short dark hair similarily did not know how the sight of Heero Yuy in a catatonic state would affect her. But she did know, as the most even-tempered of the two, she would have to remain strong enough to restrain her partner if he reacted violently.
Zechs Merquise and Lucretia Noin would never know how they would have reacted to Heero Yuy in a catatonic state. When they went to ask a nurse which room he was in, they certainly did not expect her to ask them if they knew where he was.
=======================
Quatre Raberba Winner was roused awake by the phone ringing at 6:30 AM.
Sitting up with irritation born of half-an-hours loss of sleep, he had to will the weary anger from his voice when he picked up the phone.
"Yes?"
But his efforts were unnecessary, as the person on the line was simply too furious to recognize the 'subtle' difference between patience and anger.
"Quatre Raberba Winner, I demand to know where Heero Yuy is!" roared an all too familiar voice.
"Zechs Merquise?!" Quatre exclaimed, but his surprise was soon replaced by sadness. "I didn't think the news would travel to Mars so fast--but Heero really didn't have anything to do with--"
"I know the details, Winner! Why do you think I came here to see for myself?!" Zechs interrupted.
For the first time during the conversation, Quatre looked at the caller-ID. Zechs was calling from the hospital! Remembering the other man's opening words, a horrible idea suddenly struck Quatre. "Wait. You're asking me where he is? He's not there?"
"Didn't I already say that?!" Zechs exploded.
"I'll be there in ten minutes," Quatre replied, urgently. He hung up and dressed quickly. Rushing out of his room, he saw that his secretary was just arriving.
"Please cancel all my morning meetings!" he called over to her. "Wait--better change that to all of todays meetings! Something very important has come up!"
As Quatre rushed out the door and sped away in his car, the secretary sighed and wondered if she should suggest to her employer to take a weeks--no, a months leave. The loss of one of his best friends and the hospitalization of another had taken its toll on him. What he needed to do now was rest, even though a vacation would do little to slow him down anyway.
========================
Quatre rushed thought the hospital corriders, breathing heavily. Already, Heero's room was in view, and the place was literally crawling with reporters and police officers. The doctor he'd spoken to the day before spotted him coming down the hall, and was there to shield him from the onslaught of reporters who recognized the young colony delegate.
"The police received a phone call last night about someone on the streets looking like he'd just walked out of a hospital," the doctor shouted over the roar of reporters with a cause. "We were the last hospital to be informed, and considering the size of the building, the fact that we're understaffed, and how many people we're currently treating--well, it took hours to realize that Heero Yuy wasn't in his room, and another few to confirm that he was no longer in the building."
Finally entering the room itself, Quatre noted that, indeed, the bed was empty, although very neatly made, and the picture formerly beside the bed was now missing.
Zechs Merquise and Lucretia Noin stood by the window, staring down at the ground. Quatre couldn't see with the angle they were to him, but their posture suggested that they were holding hands.
"He took the picture and escaped out the window?" Quatre asked the doctor.
"Actually, yes and no," the doctor replied. "He did take the picture, but he couldn't have possibly escaped out the window--this is the top floor!"
Quatre remembered Duo telling him a story about how Heero had jumped out of a military hospital the day he'd arrived on Earth and survived. If Duo hadn't been exaggerating, that building had been taller than this one, and it had been built atop a high cliff to boot. Heero had escaped with a broken leg and a few bad scrapes, but it was the parachute he'd deployed at the last second that had saved his life. But could he have survived a fall from a slightly smaller building, without the cliff and sans parachute? At the very least, he would have been bleeding and injured--coming across someone in that state at night would have earned a 911 call, not a concerned inquiry to the local police station. He couldn't have jumped.
Quatre looked again to where the picture had been, and was surprised to hear a crunch when he walked over. Leaning over to investigate, he found a few small pieces of glass.
"The picture fell on the floor?" Quatre inquired.
"Yes, right after you left. You missed quite the event, actually. I guess the nurse missed a few shards."
Quatre was too absorbed in his investigation to recognize the underlying meaning of the doctor's words. Only hearing the affirmative, he had rose up again to inspect the table. There, near the front rightmost corner, was a small smear of blood.
"He cut himself on the frame!" Quatre exclaimed.
"The police have already checked that," the doctor said. "The DNA matched with one of the women that were here yesterday."
Quatre felt a sigh slowly work its way out his body. The blood wasn't Heero's...but maybe he had cut himself after all, just not deep enough to initiate an immediate blood flow...
"Have the police checked for blood in the hallways?" Quatre asked, hopefully.
"Yes, but they didn't find a thing," the doctor answered. "Not very surprising, though, considering just how many people bleed on these floors. And, unlike the nurse who attempted to clean this room," the doctor added with a frown, "our janitors are extremely efficient."
A trail of blood would have been a godsend, Quatre thought, feeling as if his head were about to implode. But of course, finding Heero Yuy wouldn't be so easy.
Giving up on his search for clues that the police had already collected and catalogued, Quatre crossed the room to stand next to Zechs by the window. Yes, he was holding tightly onto Noin's hand, but the squeeze seemed anything but romantic, with Zechs leaning far out the open window, pale, looking almost ready to vomit.
"It was Heero, wasn't it?" Zechs asked, in a voice virtually deviod of emotion. "Heero killed my sister."
For a moment, Quatre, for the life of him, could not come up with an arguement for Heero's innocence. But, soon enough, he found the last shred of hope. "No. He took the picture. He...took the picture."
Zechs only continued to stare down, out the window, his gaze locked. He didn't even seem to hear the younger man.
Lucretia, who had been initially concerned with the thought that his sister's death would bring about self-destructive urges in her partner, suddenly found something deeply disturbing in the way Zechs had spoken, and the way he leaned out the window no longer struck her as suicidal, but...transfixed.
Quatre caught the sudden horror in Noin's eyes, and instantly recognized its meaning. As one, they leaned far out the window. As one, they located the point of Zechs' attention.
A bloody handprint.
On the windowsill below.
And another beneath.
And another.
And another...
====================
Sally hadn't shown up for her shift at Preventors HQ that morning--a fact that was very disturbing to Wufei.
He wasn't concerned for her job--no, Une was very sympathetic. She had also been somewhat close to Relena Darlian (a shocking friendship considering past events), and to a lesser sort, Heero Yuy.
In fact, Wufei wasn't quite sure why he was worrying himself over the absense of his partner--the woman had shown many times over that she could take care of herself. So why exactly was he checking up on her?
He shook his head at his own thoughts and actions before knocking on the door.
A few minutes later, the door opened to reveal a bedraggled Sally Po. "Oh, Wufei," she greeted, "it's you. What's the occassion?"
"You missed your shift," he stated simply.
Her head shot to the side to stare at the clock. Indeed, she had missed her shift. Placing her head in her hands, she groaned, "Oh, Une is going to kill me."
"You've already been excused," Wufei answered. "What I want to know is what caused your momentary lapse of responsibility."
"Oh, you don't...know?" she whispered.
"What happened?" Wufei demanded.
"After you left yesterday. Duo...well, he just lost it."
"'Lost it'?" Wufei repeated. "Duo Maxwell never had it in the first place." It was rare for him to be in a joking mood, and even now the pun tasted bitter on his lips.
"No," Sally contradicted, pulling him inside her apartment and closing the door. "I mean, he really lost it. He was sent to a mental institution yesterday afternoon."
"Are you serious?" Wufei inquired, disbelieving. "What in God's name happened back there?"
"Well, um..." Sally's eyes rested on the floor. "He accused Heero of killing Relena, then attempted to strangle him."
"No wonder they sent him to the loony bin," Wufei replied. "That's completely insane. Heero would never kill Relena."
But his eyes had been open when she'd left... "How can you be so sure of that? Insane or not, Duo must have had some reason to believe that Heero...did it."
"How can you doubt Heero?" Wufei retorted. "You saw as well as I did, the expression on his face whenever he looked at her--he tried to hide it, but he was deeply, deeply in love with that woman. Unless he's been afflicted with a mental illness as severe as the one Une suffered through so long--I couldn't even consider the possibility."
Sally bit her lip and nodded. Yes, Heero had been prone to suicidal behaviour when they'd first met, but he had overcome that and had shown no signs of any other mental illness since.
But the facts still nagged at her. She had noticed nothing odd about Duo's behaviour prior to yesterday afternoon. Could she not even trust her own perception now?
The door to Sally's room creaked open and a weary Hilde stepped outside, gingerly touching her discolored eye. It was nearly swollen shut. "Sally," she asked, quietly, "can you please show me where the bathroom is?" She looked over to the front door, noticing the new arrival. "Oh, hello, Wufei." She attempted to smile, but it came out sickly and tears gathered in her uninjured eye.
Wufei nodded to her, too shocked at her appearance to greet her verbally, then grabbed Sally by the upper arm and pulled her down to his height before she could show Hilde the way. "Who did that to her eye?" he whispered fiercely into her ear.
"Duo," she mouthed in reply, unable to voice her answer, even if she had been planning to.
Wufei felt a sudden, unexpected urge to comfort the young woman who seemed to be carrying a nearly unbearable burden. Perhaps it was because he'd released his own burden so soon ago.
"I'll avenge you..." he said, hesitantly, "...when they release him from the institution."
Unwilling to sacrifice himself to the awkwardness of the situation, Wufei released Sally's arm and swiftly exited the room.
Sally's apartment was silent for a few moments. But soon after, the tips of Hilde's lips quirked up in nearly uncontainable mirth. It was the thought of Duo sulking with a newly formed black eye--an image she could nearly taste and touch, it was so real.
But it was an image that she could only associate with the old Duo, the one who hadn't suffered a mental breakdown.
As quickly as the laughter came, it retreated, replaced with a deep anguish that formed sobs in her throat and spilled tears from her eyes.
Sally rushed over and embraced the young woman, leading her to the bathroom. But she could not comfort her any furthur, because there was an urgent knocking on her front door. She removed her razors from the bathroom and dropped them on the coffee table on her way to the door.
"Wufei?" she asked, surprised, when she saw that it was him again, standing in her doorway.
But this time, he was very, very pale, and he held a newspaper in his hand.
He swallowed, then announced, "Your paper is here."
Sally slowly removed the newspaper from Wufei's quaking hand, turning it so she could read the headline.
Her face joined in Wufei's lack of hue.
Heero was...missing...
=========================
Lady Une slowly and deliberately placed the phone back into its holder, and pushed the daily newspaper out of her immediate viewing range. The news was almost too much for her to bear.
But she could not surrender to despair, not while Mariemaia remained in her custody. The poor girl had been nearly unconsolable after she'd learned of Relena's death. If Une broke down now, it would completely destroy her adopted daughter.
After being released from the hospital, Mariemaia's fondness of Relena had grown into near worship. There was nothing that could put her down from someday becoming a politician as great as Relena had been, not even her less than savory past as a figurehead in a shortlived dictatorship.
And it wasn't only Relena's death that had caused her grief, but Heero's admission into the hospital as well. To tell the truth, she had something of a crush on him, a sentiment born when he had pointed his unloaded gun at her dying body and said he'd end her pain.
Lady Une was concerned. How would this news affect her?
She sighed, and called her secretary into her office.
"Yes, Ma'am?"
Une took a deep breath. "Please inform our agents of our temporary alliance with the regular police force. We have a warrent to arrest Heero Yuy for the assassination of Relena Darlian."
Author's Notes.
1. Mwahaha....hahahaha.....HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! (I think I'll be going to bed now...food poisoning makes me morbid...mmmmmmm)
2. Okay, seriously now. I didn't have writer's block. I think it would be impossible to get writer's block with this story. It practically wrote itself in my head. Nay, it was the fact that I was barely able to find time to sit down with my notebook and write the darned thing. And then to get enough time to type it up on the computer...gaaaaaaah. I actually almost finished the rough copy for the next chapter before I finally typed up this one. It's 1:30 now....
@,@ *hoot*
3. Hehe. The handprint scene disturbed my sister...(guffaw)
by
Nin Tendo
Chapter 3 - Trail of Blood
Disclaimer: I wish I owned Gundam Wing...then I could tax fanfiction authors for the right to write about my characters...cool....
=======================
The space shuttle had arrived on Earth at approximately 5:30 AM that morning.
Half an hour later, a taxi pulled up to a hospital and two people exited, thanking the cab driver for his service.
The man with long platinum blond hair did not exactly know why his need to enter the building was so strong. He did not care much for the younger man he intended to visit, a sentiment that only burned harsher at the thought of how that young man could have prevented the death of Relena Darlian, had he been more alert. He did not know how he would react when he stepped inside the room, but then, that was one of the reasons he'd asked his partner to accompany him.
The woman with short dark hair similarily did not know how the sight of Heero Yuy in a catatonic state would affect her. But she did know, as the most even-tempered of the two, she would have to remain strong enough to restrain her partner if he reacted violently.
Zechs Merquise and Lucretia Noin would never know how they would have reacted to Heero Yuy in a catatonic state. When they went to ask a nurse which room he was in, they certainly did not expect her to ask them if they knew where he was.
=======================
Quatre Raberba Winner was roused awake by the phone ringing at 6:30 AM.
Sitting up with irritation born of half-an-hours loss of sleep, he had to will the weary anger from his voice when he picked up the phone.
"Yes?"
But his efforts were unnecessary, as the person on the line was simply too furious to recognize the 'subtle' difference between patience and anger.
"Quatre Raberba Winner, I demand to know where Heero Yuy is!" roared an all too familiar voice.
"Zechs Merquise?!" Quatre exclaimed, but his surprise was soon replaced by sadness. "I didn't think the news would travel to Mars so fast--but Heero really didn't have anything to do with--"
"I know the details, Winner! Why do you think I came here to see for myself?!" Zechs interrupted.
For the first time during the conversation, Quatre looked at the caller-ID. Zechs was calling from the hospital! Remembering the other man's opening words, a horrible idea suddenly struck Quatre. "Wait. You're asking me where he is? He's not there?"
"Didn't I already say that?!" Zechs exploded.
"I'll be there in ten minutes," Quatre replied, urgently. He hung up and dressed quickly. Rushing out of his room, he saw that his secretary was just arriving.
"Please cancel all my morning meetings!" he called over to her. "Wait--better change that to all of todays meetings! Something very important has come up!"
As Quatre rushed out the door and sped away in his car, the secretary sighed and wondered if she should suggest to her employer to take a weeks--no, a months leave. The loss of one of his best friends and the hospitalization of another had taken its toll on him. What he needed to do now was rest, even though a vacation would do little to slow him down anyway.
========================
Quatre rushed thought the hospital corriders, breathing heavily. Already, Heero's room was in view, and the place was literally crawling with reporters and police officers. The doctor he'd spoken to the day before spotted him coming down the hall, and was there to shield him from the onslaught of reporters who recognized the young colony delegate.
"The police received a phone call last night about someone on the streets looking like he'd just walked out of a hospital," the doctor shouted over the roar of reporters with a cause. "We were the last hospital to be informed, and considering the size of the building, the fact that we're understaffed, and how many people we're currently treating--well, it took hours to realize that Heero Yuy wasn't in his room, and another few to confirm that he was no longer in the building."
Finally entering the room itself, Quatre noted that, indeed, the bed was empty, although very neatly made, and the picture formerly beside the bed was now missing.
Zechs Merquise and Lucretia Noin stood by the window, staring down at the ground. Quatre couldn't see with the angle they were to him, but their posture suggested that they were holding hands.
"He took the picture and escaped out the window?" Quatre asked the doctor.
"Actually, yes and no," the doctor replied. "He did take the picture, but he couldn't have possibly escaped out the window--this is the top floor!"
Quatre remembered Duo telling him a story about how Heero had jumped out of a military hospital the day he'd arrived on Earth and survived. If Duo hadn't been exaggerating, that building had been taller than this one, and it had been built atop a high cliff to boot. Heero had escaped with a broken leg and a few bad scrapes, but it was the parachute he'd deployed at the last second that had saved his life. But could he have survived a fall from a slightly smaller building, without the cliff and sans parachute? At the very least, he would have been bleeding and injured--coming across someone in that state at night would have earned a 911 call, not a concerned inquiry to the local police station. He couldn't have jumped.
Quatre looked again to where the picture had been, and was surprised to hear a crunch when he walked over. Leaning over to investigate, he found a few small pieces of glass.
"The picture fell on the floor?" Quatre inquired.
"Yes, right after you left. You missed quite the event, actually. I guess the nurse missed a few shards."
Quatre was too absorbed in his investigation to recognize the underlying meaning of the doctor's words. Only hearing the affirmative, he had rose up again to inspect the table. There, near the front rightmost corner, was a small smear of blood.
"He cut himself on the frame!" Quatre exclaimed.
"The police have already checked that," the doctor said. "The DNA matched with one of the women that were here yesterday."
Quatre felt a sigh slowly work its way out his body. The blood wasn't Heero's...but maybe he had cut himself after all, just not deep enough to initiate an immediate blood flow...
"Have the police checked for blood in the hallways?" Quatre asked, hopefully.
"Yes, but they didn't find a thing," the doctor answered. "Not very surprising, though, considering just how many people bleed on these floors. And, unlike the nurse who attempted to clean this room," the doctor added with a frown, "our janitors are extremely efficient."
A trail of blood would have been a godsend, Quatre thought, feeling as if his head were about to implode. But of course, finding Heero Yuy wouldn't be so easy.
Giving up on his search for clues that the police had already collected and catalogued, Quatre crossed the room to stand next to Zechs by the window. Yes, he was holding tightly onto Noin's hand, but the squeeze seemed anything but romantic, with Zechs leaning far out the open window, pale, looking almost ready to vomit.
"It was Heero, wasn't it?" Zechs asked, in a voice virtually deviod of emotion. "Heero killed my sister."
For a moment, Quatre, for the life of him, could not come up with an arguement for Heero's innocence. But, soon enough, he found the last shred of hope. "No. He took the picture. He...took the picture."
Zechs only continued to stare down, out the window, his gaze locked. He didn't even seem to hear the younger man.
Lucretia, who had been initially concerned with the thought that his sister's death would bring about self-destructive urges in her partner, suddenly found something deeply disturbing in the way Zechs had spoken, and the way he leaned out the window no longer struck her as suicidal, but...transfixed.
Quatre caught the sudden horror in Noin's eyes, and instantly recognized its meaning. As one, they leaned far out the window. As one, they located the point of Zechs' attention.
A bloody handprint.
On the windowsill below.
And another beneath.
And another.
And another...
====================
Sally hadn't shown up for her shift at Preventors HQ that morning--a fact that was very disturbing to Wufei.
He wasn't concerned for her job--no, Une was very sympathetic. She had also been somewhat close to Relena Darlian (a shocking friendship considering past events), and to a lesser sort, Heero Yuy.
In fact, Wufei wasn't quite sure why he was worrying himself over the absense of his partner--the woman had shown many times over that she could take care of herself. So why exactly was he checking up on her?
He shook his head at his own thoughts and actions before knocking on the door.
A few minutes later, the door opened to reveal a bedraggled Sally Po. "Oh, Wufei," she greeted, "it's you. What's the occassion?"
"You missed your shift," he stated simply.
Her head shot to the side to stare at the clock. Indeed, she had missed her shift. Placing her head in her hands, she groaned, "Oh, Une is going to kill me."
"You've already been excused," Wufei answered. "What I want to know is what caused your momentary lapse of responsibility."
"Oh, you don't...know?" she whispered.
"What happened?" Wufei demanded.
"After you left yesterday. Duo...well, he just lost it."
"'Lost it'?" Wufei repeated. "Duo Maxwell never had it in the first place." It was rare for him to be in a joking mood, and even now the pun tasted bitter on his lips.
"No," Sally contradicted, pulling him inside her apartment and closing the door. "I mean, he really lost it. He was sent to a mental institution yesterday afternoon."
"Are you serious?" Wufei inquired, disbelieving. "What in God's name happened back there?"
"Well, um..." Sally's eyes rested on the floor. "He accused Heero of killing Relena, then attempted to strangle him."
"No wonder they sent him to the loony bin," Wufei replied. "That's completely insane. Heero would never kill Relena."
But his eyes had been open when she'd left... "How can you be so sure of that? Insane or not, Duo must have had some reason to believe that Heero...did it."
"How can you doubt Heero?" Wufei retorted. "You saw as well as I did, the expression on his face whenever he looked at her--he tried to hide it, but he was deeply, deeply in love with that woman. Unless he's been afflicted with a mental illness as severe as the one Une suffered through so long--I couldn't even consider the possibility."
Sally bit her lip and nodded. Yes, Heero had been prone to suicidal behaviour when they'd first met, but he had overcome that and had shown no signs of any other mental illness since.
But the facts still nagged at her. She had noticed nothing odd about Duo's behaviour prior to yesterday afternoon. Could she not even trust her own perception now?
The door to Sally's room creaked open and a weary Hilde stepped outside, gingerly touching her discolored eye. It was nearly swollen shut. "Sally," she asked, quietly, "can you please show me where the bathroom is?" She looked over to the front door, noticing the new arrival. "Oh, hello, Wufei." She attempted to smile, but it came out sickly and tears gathered in her uninjured eye.
Wufei nodded to her, too shocked at her appearance to greet her verbally, then grabbed Sally by the upper arm and pulled her down to his height before she could show Hilde the way. "Who did that to her eye?" he whispered fiercely into her ear.
"Duo," she mouthed in reply, unable to voice her answer, even if she had been planning to.
Wufei felt a sudden, unexpected urge to comfort the young woman who seemed to be carrying a nearly unbearable burden. Perhaps it was because he'd released his own burden so soon ago.
"I'll avenge you..." he said, hesitantly, "...when they release him from the institution."
Unwilling to sacrifice himself to the awkwardness of the situation, Wufei released Sally's arm and swiftly exited the room.
Sally's apartment was silent for a few moments. But soon after, the tips of Hilde's lips quirked up in nearly uncontainable mirth. It was the thought of Duo sulking with a newly formed black eye--an image she could nearly taste and touch, it was so real.
But it was an image that she could only associate with the old Duo, the one who hadn't suffered a mental breakdown.
As quickly as the laughter came, it retreated, replaced with a deep anguish that formed sobs in her throat and spilled tears from her eyes.
Sally rushed over and embraced the young woman, leading her to the bathroom. But she could not comfort her any furthur, because there was an urgent knocking on her front door. She removed her razors from the bathroom and dropped them on the coffee table on her way to the door.
"Wufei?" she asked, surprised, when she saw that it was him again, standing in her doorway.
But this time, he was very, very pale, and he held a newspaper in his hand.
He swallowed, then announced, "Your paper is here."
Sally slowly removed the newspaper from Wufei's quaking hand, turning it so she could read the headline.
Her face joined in Wufei's lack of hue.
Heero was...missing...
=========================
Lady Une slowly and deliberately placed the phone back into its holder, and pushed the daily newspaper out of her immediate viewing range. The news was almost too much for her to bear.
But she could not surrender to despair, not while Mariemaia remained in her custody. The poor girl had been nearly unconsolable after she'd learned of Relena's death. If Une broke down now, it would completely destroy her adopted daughter.
After being released from the hospital, Mariemaia's fondness of Relena had grown into near worship. There was nothing that could put her down from someday becoming a politician as great as Relena had been, not even her less than savory past as a figurehead in a shortlived dictatorship.
And it wasn't only Relena's death that had caused her grief, but Heero's admission into the hospital as well. To tell the truth, she had something of a crush on him, a sentiment born when he had pointed his unloaded gun at her dying body and said he'd end her pain.
Lady Une was concerned. How would this news affect her?
She sighed, and called her secretary into her office.
"Yes, Ma'am?"
Une took a deep breath. "Please inform our agents of our temporary alliance with the regular police force. We have a warrent to arrest Heero Yuy for the assassination of Relena Darlian."
Author's Notes.
1. Mwahaha....hahahaha.....HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! (I think I'll be going to bed now...food poisoning makes me morbid...mmmmmmm)
2. Okay, seriously now. I didn't have writer's block. I think it would be impossible to get writer's block with this story. It practically wrote itself in my head. Nay, it was the fact that I was barely able to find time to sit down with my notebook and write the darned thing. And then to get enough time to type it up on the computer...gaaaaaaah. I actually almost finished the rough copy for the next chapter before I finally typed up this one. It's 1:30 now....
@,@ *hoot*
3. Hehe. The handprint scene disturbed my sister...(guffaw)