That pretty much sets the mood for the rest of the story. warning: more major characters will die! anyway, like i said before, utter crap. this is still merely an intro, really..

Chapter 2

Gene's funeral was a small one in an old wooden chapel nearby. They had cleaned the blood from his body and rested him in a golden coffin with a small window at the top, so you could see his face. His eyelids had been pulled down and his mouth had been closed. Melfina and Jim couldn't bear to look. Even some of the grown men (including, of course, Fred Luo) attending broke down. Jim felt two drops on his shirt and looked up. Through bleary eyes, he saw Suzuka on a rafter, head down, wearing a black kimono.

On the way back Aisha had to drive, Jim was so hysterical. He cried "Aniki!" over and over. Melfina was in the same shape.

Neither of them ate that night. The next morning Jim refused to leave the room he and Gene shared.

They kept Clara tied to a chair in the kitchen. She was silent until a week later…

"I'm a little hungry. Could you spare your prisoner some food?"

Jim looked up in shock. He looked around and realized she was talking to him. He remembered that they hadn't fed her ever since she had walked in the door that fateful day… Jim refused the thought and went to the refrigerator. "What do you want?"

"I'd like Fettuccini Alfredo, if you don't mind."

Jim laughed a bit and answered, "How about some of my famous pancakes?"

"I've never heard of them" she replied.

"I was just…" he suddenly fully remembered the pain she had caused him. He stepped back a bit, as the events flashed before him again, like they had so many times before. His features hardened. "Why should I feed a murderer?"

"You're the murderers. You killed my brother. You've killed many other people. Would you not have done the same thing to my brother had he killed Gene?"

"You don't understand, Clara, Harry was…" it suddenly came to him that she didn't know what her brother was really like or how he really died. "Do you know how Har- I mean your brother- was killed?"

"No. Just that it was at Gene Starwind's hands."

Jim was shocked again. He felt sorry for her, however, and went to make the pancakes. He stiffly gave her the plate and sat down again. He was fiddling with a little dating game on a "Game Guy" handheld electronics system, when, for what seemed to be the 267,550th time, the computer dumped him. He threw his hands up in agitation. Clara watched him and asked, "Could you please untie me?"

He stared at her.

"I can't eat my food without using my hands."

Jim's mouth formed a small 'O' and he untied the ropes that kept her arms bound to the chair. She grabbed a fork and ate the pancake ravenously. When she finished, she cleaned her mouth with a napkin and stared again at Jim with interest as he tried in vain to get a date. "May I try?" she asked.

Startled, Jim jumped and looked at her again. He suddenly noticed that she had reddish brown eyes that seemed to peer through his skin. Aqua green hair had come undone from a pair of purple ribbons and red bands of beads, and flowed freely down her shoulders. She was gorgeous. He flickered back to the present and said, "Uh, sure, but I've had it for years and could never figure it out..."

She took it from him abruptly and started pushing the buttons, figuring out what did what. Hardly 15 minutes later, there was a happy beeping noise from the Game Guy. She gave it back to him and shook her head in mock disgust. "You have to be more sentimental. Girls like that."

Jim gazed from the game, which had a victory animation, to Clara, the game to her, game, her. He tossed it in the trashcan. "Whatever you say!"

They smiled at each other and quickly looked down.

"How old are you?" Clara asked Jim one day as they were having breakfast together. It had been 1 and a half months since Gene's death. Jim had untied Clara totally and she slept on a couch in the downstairs room. He had fixed her arm as well, but without the addition of blades or other weapons.

"16," Jim, Aisha, and Melfina answered in unison. "How old are you?" Jim asked politely.

"16."

They resumed eating. The phone rang and Jim excused himself and went to answer it. "Starwind & Hawking Enterprises, we fix everything from tractors to relationships. How can I help you?" Jim wrote some notes on a piece of paper and replied, "Yes! Yes of course! Uh huh!…yup! Only the finest!… All my life!… Where did you say you were?…As soon as possible!" He put the phone down and turned to them, smiling brightly, "We may have gotten the break we needed!"

"Well," Aisha said, after finishing her food, "I better get going. It seems like you don't need me around anymore." She pretended to pout but Jim and Melfina laughed, albeit in a restrained, odd way, and Melfina noticeably sadly. Aisha cracked and laughed too. Walking out the door, she said, "If you do need me, please don't hesitate to call!"

Jim and Melfina nodded and Aisha left, the door closing silently behind her. Jim had taken the bell down and hung it in his room instead: he claimed that it was Gene's last wish.

"What are you going to do today, Jim?" Melfina asked.

"Some repair job. The guy's willing to pay pretty well if we get good parts."

"That's great!" Clara said, a genuine happiness in her eyes, "can I come?"

Jim had been trying hard to accept Gene's absence, and harder to accept that this Clara McDougall was as much of a victim as Gene. Reluctantly, he answered, "Sure."

Jim drove them to a small farm where a giant robot loomed over a small barn. "Harvester machine," he remarked, "and it looks like an old model. It's in horrible shape, too. Ah well, I guess this is our stop."

Clara nodded and got out when he parked the car. They both carried boxes of tools, equipment, and supplies with them.

"It's about time you got here!" a smiling old man shouted from a doorway, "I was getting a little worried!"