A/N: Wow! Thanks to everyone for reviewing, you guys are amazing. Hope you enjoy this chapter as much I enjoyed attempting to write it. ^^ The bolded parts took forever to write and undo all of the auto-corrects.

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The page was still loading when Sara got up from her chair to pour herself some coffee, returning a minute later to her original spot in the chair by the computer. Grissom was staring thoughtfully off into the distance.

"What's up, Griss?" Sara asked as casually as she could, trying to keep the rest of the team from suspecting their relationship between them. She was still confused and angry after reading those last two stories, wondering how some insignificant geek with too much free time on their hands had discovered their special thing.

He paused for a moment, then began. "After those last two stories, I'm even more fascinated by human beings. How they spend their free time writing things like this. Look at how literature has changed since the invention of the computer. You'd never find prose like this back when Shakespeare was writing his works - "

"Spare us the speech, Socrates." Catherine interrupted wearily, noticing the page had finished loading. "This should be good."

Grissom frowned before turning his attention to the screen in front of him.

csi playz spin da bottel~!!w92

yb melanie!218~

"Haven't these people ever heard of spellcheck?" Warrick asked incredulously.

Sara shook her head. "No, I think they just . . . miss the keys when they type and don't have enough coordination to attempt using the mouse."

Nick frowned, noticing the next few lines of text. "I'm getting some bad vibes about this, guys."

Catherine smirked. "Vibes, Nicky? You clairvoyant now?" She teased playfully.

okk so i just aet 692 packtes of sugaaaaa!11`! and im reallu really HYPA11!1 AND I LIEK TEH SHIFY KEY hehehehehehehhahe ok tihs is wut u get wehn u eat suga adn then wsah ti down wit SUGRE WATERRR11!

The seconds hand on the clock had gone around the clock a full two times before the CSI's gathered around the computer were able to lean back, satisfied that they were able to decrypt the almost unreadable sentence.

"Two minutes to read one sentence?" Warrick whistled through his teeth.

Catherine furrowed her brow. "I see what you meant about bad vibes, Nick."

"Miss the keyboard?" Nick asked, leaning forward to address Sara. "I think these people are missing certain letters of their keyboard."

Grissom shook his head, puzzled. "Six hundred and ninety-two packets of sugar. That would mean she probably has more sugar running through her veins than blood." He grimaced. "Of course, how she could stand to eat sugar raw for that long is incomprehensible to me."

so nick nad warrikc r in the lab whun grg cums in 9i looooooove grge!1) w/ sum bottels of brr!1 thy drikn ti ber and cath & girss + sars cum ni!q

Catherine shook her head in frustration. "I have this feeling that they're trying to tell us something, but I just can't understand anything they're saying!"

All eyes turned to her. "You were the one who picked this story." Grissom said simply.

"Yeah." She sputtered. "But I didn't know it was going to be this impossible to read!"

Warrick was still laughing after reading the last line. "Cath, Griss, and Sars." He turned to face Sara. "We've got SARS in the lab now?"

Upon overhearing that last statement, several employees walking past the breakroom stopped dead in their tracks and stared at Warrick, their faces pale with fear.

"Uh, just . . . kidding." Warrick added, giving a small, tentative wave to the terrified Crime Lab employees.

'lets play spin teh bottles! Nk daid adn spnu teh botel it landtdd on cath seh said trtuh

"I thought we were playing spin the bottle, not truth or dare." Sara said, confused.

Warrick sighed. "Hey, at least you can read it."

Nick leaned back in his chair and smirked, feeling superior. "That's the last time anyone ignores me when I have a vibe, right?"

"If that's what you want to think, yes, Nick." Grissom replied in a patronizing tone. Nick's grin quickly disappeared, only to be replaced by a pout. The team turned their attention back to the screen as Greg came in, glancing at Nick angrily before grabbing a granola bar from the pantry.

"Look, I'm sorry about the Playstation." Nick said, hopelessly spreading out his hands in front of him. "I didn't blow up the microwave on purpose, you know. Just be thankful it wasn't the lab or anything, like Ca - " He stopped mid-sentence upon receiving a glare from Catherine.

"I was so close to the end, man!" The lab rat responded.

"Greg, shouldn't you be doing work instead of playing Playstation?" Asked Grissom, arching one of his eyebrows.

For a moment Greg was at a loss for words, then he pointed at Gil himself. "Shouldn't you be doing work instead of reading slash fics?"

The group groaned at the mention of the word 'slash', and Sara quickly responded, "We're not reading any more slash for the time being, Greg."

Greg shrugged. "Hey, I've read worse than Grissom and Brass. You know, there was that one fic with Warrick, Eckley and the can opener - " His sentence was abruptly interrupted by the various groans and protests emitted from the group. Satisfied upon getting his revenge, he calmly strolled his way out of the breakroom, munching on his snack.

grssi said ko srar has 2 kisss warriks seh slcoed ehr eyes & kised ihm adn it waz teh most beatufl kissa evea!!23qadf

"Whoo!" Nick pulled at his shirt collar loosely. "Is it just me, or is it getting hot in here?"

"It's just you." Sara answered sharply. Warrick looked like he was in a great deal of pain, but Sara wasn't sure if that was from trying as hard as he could to actually read the fic or if it was from his reaction upon deciphering the story.

tehy ketp kissign aen ffinale griss hed 2 pll hem aparty!1! but thehhy keyp kissign!s thean teh btootle spnu adnt they hadd to ikss OK SRY I GTTA GO ETA MUR SUAGAAAA!121rqws

"No!" Catherine exclaimed. "You don't need more sugar, you psychopathic lunatic! You need to be institutionalized!"

The rest of the group stared at her in surprise after her sudden outburst.

Archie waved hello as he walked in, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "Hey, guys." He said, taking a sip and grimacing. "This stuff's awful. Do we have any sugar?"

"No!" Sara and Nick replied simultaneously as Archie nodded slowly and shuffled out of the room.

gt mur suga nd i m on suhc a suage hiiigh@1 itssoo mucjj fnu!

Suddenly Grissom stood up, breathing heavily and pacing around the unoccupied section of the breakroom.

"What is it, Griss?" Asked Catherine, confused. The fic hadn't been that bad - besides, he had sat through the slash fic without the slightest hint of discomfort, but when he read a humor story with nothing offensive at all he became distressed. He certainly was an enigma, that Gil Grissom.

"Ninety-five." He was muttering, glancing at his watch.

"I beg your pardon?" Catherine asked uncertainly.

Sara sighed, recalling a case they had worked a few years ago. "When his pulse gets up from seventy to ninety-five he realizes how mad he really is . . . "

Their supervisor had calmed down a bit but was still pacing. "It's like a bad crossword puzzle." He said angrily. "It makes no sense, it's impossible to read, and it's not even funny." Sighing, he finally sat back down.

"I think you should take it easy." Nick said concernedly. "You sure you want to keep reading this?"

The glance Grissom shot Nick was enough to make Nick raise his hands in protest. "All right, all right, but don't say I didn't warn you. I told you I was getting bad - "

"Yeah, yeah, we know. Bad vibes." Warrick interrupted. "Can we get on with reading, Mr. Vibe?"

osthne warrkci and sara ketp kssign n eh gme wnt on! thne griss trow thme aprt nad ksdd sara hmisfle!1 thyw ketp nissk nutl he gme waz oer btu ohte ppl ketp plyign2

"Breathe much, Sara?" Catherine kidded her coworker, whose face was beet-red.

Warrick grinned. "Actually, when you get used to it, this story's kind of amusing. I mean, the author's making up her own language. Grissom and Sara, you guys are 'nissking', and we keep 'plyign'."

"Thanks for the attempt at optimism." Nick said, patting his friend on the shoulder. "But, uh, there's no good to try and bring out here."

Refusing to admit defeat, Warrick shook his head. "There has to be one good thing about this story, and I'm determined to find it."

"Too late." Said Sara, pointing to the next line.

teh ebnds

The group surrounding the glowing screen breathed a collective sigh of relief. "Well, at least we didn't have any pesky pairings." Warrick said, again trying to look on the bright side.

"No," Grissom said, "but we did have a plotless, pointless story that looked as though the author wrote it blindfolded."

"Hey, there's more." Catherine said, pointing to a row of text beneath the closing line.

pllz r7r!21 i meeed revuws tehy mke mee hppy adn fi u liekd tis i culd rite moer!1

"Please don't!" Nick exclaimed. "There's enough garbage on the Internet as it is."

"And you said it was free of torture, Cath." Sara muttered.

Warrick shrugged. "Once you got past the bad spelling - OK, the godawful spelling" he quickly revised his sentence upon noticing the looks his coworkers gave him, "it actually wasn't that bad."

"Give it up, Warrick." Nick said, shaking his head. "You can try all you want, but there's nothing you can say to save this story."

Slowly, Warrick nodded his head. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Catherine clicked on the back button, browsing through the page of stories and scrolling a little faster whenever she saw the word 'slash'. Suddenly she felt someone wrench the mouse out of her hand and turned to find Sara grasping it, shrugging. "What can I say, Cath? You picked that last fic."

"Like you're going to pick anything better." Nick said sarcastically.

Offended, Sara exclaimed, "I am a woman and I have a mouse. You piss me off and I'll find a story that'll give you nightmares for the next few weeks."

Startled but amused by Sara's outburst, Grissom smiled to himself as he watched Sara highlight a story title and wait for the reactions of the rest of the team. It looked like a decent fic, categorized as 'drama', and everything was spelled correctly in the summary: "After the loss of one of their own, how can the CSI's cope?"

"Let's go for it!" Nick called out, leaning forward anxiously.

"Hold on." Grissom said, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. "That last story hurt my eyes from straining so hard in order to read it."

"Yeah." Said Catherine. "Can we take a break for a couple of minutes? I'm starved." Getting up, she reached into the pantry and pulled out a jar of peanut butter as well as some bread. "Gil, you want some?" She asked, noticing how stressed her boss looked.

"Sure." He nodded, placing his glasses back on his face.

"Hey!" Nick called. "One for me too."

"And me." Added Warrick, reaching into the fridge and grabbing a can of soda.

Catherine threw up in her hands in exasperation. "What am I, your servant?" She asked, spreading the peanut butter on bread and practically slamming the two pieces together, tossing it onto a plate before beginning on the next sandwich.

"Hey, Cath?" Asked Sara. "Can you make me one, too?"

Noticing the steam that was beginning to pour out from Catherine's ears, Nick called over to Catherine, "Careful, you don't wanna turn into the Lab Nazi again."

Warrick laughed. Grissom sat quietly, munching on the sandwich Catherine had quite literally tossed him thoughtfully and scooping up the peanut butter that had fallen out from in between the slices of bread, licking it off of his finger.

When the team had finished eating their lunch, they turned their attention back to the computer's glowing screen.

"All right." Said Nick. "Here we go."

"Getting any vibes we should know about, Nicky?" Catherine asked sarcastically.

He nodded. "I'm actually picking up some good vibes. My senses are telling me this is going to be good." He said in complete seriousness, as Warrick, Catherine and Sara erupted into laughter. "What?" He added, confusedly, noticing that even Grissom was grinning.

"Nothing." Warrick managed to get out when the laughter died down. "Let's get going."

They've survived Mary-Sues, bad slash, and poorly written humor. But will they be able to stand the angst of a character death fic? Wait for the next chapter, dear reader, for the answers lie within Chapter Four . . .