((Finally! The not-epilogue. Heh. Though it reads kind of like it. I could switch this and the last, but I think I'll keep to my original plan. I like beginning and ending with the boys. I don't think Duo's as good a writer as Heero, so we shall see if I can pull it off, eh?

Warning: Yaoi. Don't know what it is, don't read it, kay? Just better for everyone concerned.

Disclaimers: Only one. I don't have them. I didn't hide them. And if they're missing, someone else has stolen them. I just borrow the idea once in a while and twist it to my satisfaction.

On to the show then!

For the record, like Howe, I own SxyKtn's story. No stealie stealie by me. If for some reason it seems like another, it is completely accidental and I had no intention of taking anyone's idea.))


Submission by SxyKtn 03:12 EMT 12/26
::Howling, Howle, and Gardner:: [ AU - 02/01]

- Hiro's name is not a misprint, kay? Callin' him "Heero" and it's cause I want to, so nyah! No flames allowed for that, unless you wanna get flamed back.
- Dedicated to Howe, the real Howe, for Christmas and all the many more which are to come. I love you. And since you love me, life is good!

Duo's bag rattled the door when he dropped it. And heaven knew, the door couldn't stand up to much rattling before it started to consider falling off of it's hinges, sick of the whole hanging on thing. It rattled, mainly because the bag was full to the brim of shit that no one needed, least of all him, but that he felt he had to carry around. Just one of those things that pack rats from L2 have to do. Computer bits, pieces of tinfoil, wires, a broken concrete block. Sucked, really. Having to pick up stuff just because yer mind tells you to.

L2. Shit hole of the universe. Ever been there? No? Don't put it on any vacation lists. It's a hell hole and a half. Something to put the real thing to shame. Of course, if you're the type looking to be corrupted, it's the finest draught in the universe. You can get drunk on it's fucking air in a matter of minutes from stepping off the shuttle, bombarded by winos and hookers, street kids, pick pockets, pushers, exhibitionists, junkies of every kind but mostly Stringies hopped up on Jazz, and all hemmed in by a nice fence of barbed wire that is supposed to keep you in and them out, but has, in the end, come to keep everyone in the same place.

They tried for fifteen years to keep that fence up. They tried to keep it together and the captain of the guard regularly lost control of his temper because of a new breach until his heart finally gave out and his doctor informed him that he'd have to get a less stressful job or die. Since the only other jobs available are layworker (pays shit), or one of those that he abhorred, he chose to simply lay off the screaming and the holes weren't such a big deal anymore.

Now Duo wasn't any of those. He didn't do work. He didn't do Jazz so he wasn't junked up. He didn't sell his body and he didn't drink himself into oblivion. No, he was what they'd call, some of the more random faces on L2 that most people wouldn't forget, a Mystic. Though his doctor called him paranoid schizophrenic with a comorbidity of Manic phases. Not that manic didn't go with paranoid schizophrenic. Duo had looked them all up in an old psychological reference book once when he was allowed to go into the library and he read about the voices and how they didn't have anything to do with reality and he laughed and left.

And so he's a mystic. And he wanders L2 with his hair a bright copper rope at his back and his eyes kinda lost, kinda off kilter, about fifteen degrees off center. And because everyone knew him, no one touched him. Just can't do nuthin to mystic men. Cause they might hex you or some shit and that's never good. But Duo hadn't ever hexed anyone and he couldn't. It didn't bother him that they thought he could. It left him unmolested and all. And you can't complain about anything like that.

He'd begun to find things when he was fourteen. He had a run in with the psych, a doc with a letter for a name because his name wasn't important enough to remember and now, years later, Duo was hard pressed to say it aloud or even think it. And after the run-in, he'd walked out into the streets and stopped because an old wine bottle was taking on this ruddy hue. It scared him, sorta flamed out, misted fingers of light to his ankles and touched his skin and begged for him to pick it up.

So he did. And he'd kept on picking up shit like that ever since. Sometimes it was a coin in a gutter, flaring blue water ripples around it. Sometimes it was a green hazed tin can. A hub cap with whorls of gold rising in a plume over it. And sometimes, though rarely, it was something someone was wearing. This had only happened a few times before. He'd met a few friends that way, telling them they were wearing what he needed. Kitty, this blond kid from uptown, his father some rich bigwig owning half the fucking manufacturing plants that didn't pay people diddly squat but sold his stuff for two hundred percent rise on the .38 creds it took to make it. Kitty had had a key ring. Not the keys, just the ring. And then Nananshi. He was a street kid like Duo. They'd known one another for forever but never been friends. Until the day Nananshi walked out of a store with a load of Jazz that Duo needed the bag wrapped around. It was strange how when he saw something on someone, they always gave it to him. And then they followed him to see where their things went and after they saw, they always came back.

The Dragon leader was the biggest surprise. No one bothered the Dragons. They ran a touch protection racket for hookers, making sure they kept their corners and knocking off the pimps if the whore had enough money to pay them for it. But Chang had a shoelace and Chang knew that Duo was a mystic so he bent down and undid it.

Today though, he hadn't asked for the necklace. It scared him. It floated in a sea of colors, each one wrapping around the other in an endless twine of growing siren call. He could still hear it, miles from the shuttle dock, beckoning him with a radiant light on the horizon. And he feared that it was the last piece and he wasn't sure he wanted to ask for the last piece.

It wasn't so much that the last piece was ugly. It was beautiful actually. It wasn't junk either. It wasn't an odd or an end. It was a simple, expensive, gold cross on the end of a chain and he knew that it was his, just like the tin cans and the wires and the broken concrete walkways were his. It was supposed to come home with him.

He had been leaning on the wire fence, arms crossed over his chest because Nananshi was doing some pick pocketing. You always thought of the pick pockets as the skinny as a rail kids. No one thought of Nananshi as someone who'd lift from you. He had a serious look about him and he was almost twenty. He was too old for that kinda shit. But he took care of a lot of kids and he fed Duo when Kitty and Chang didn't feed him and care for him. So he felt obligated.

The wire rattled in a sibilant whisper down it's length when Nananshi came up and dropped his shoulders back against it.

"Slim t'day."

"Mmmm.." Duo watched the shuttle moved by the small ant like tug attaching a lead to it's front wheel gear and pulling it this way and that to make room for the next one.

"See anything?" Nananshi wasn't much of a talker, but he could make Duo talk because mystics always had things to say and it filled in the silence that the street kid didn't like.

"Yeah.." Duo's voice intoned flat and listless for once. "There's that paper there, in the gutter. But its light keeps dying. It all seems like it's wrong. The lights are dying. I should get it, because I got all of the others but I watched them and..." he opened up the pack along his calf and stared down into the conglomeration of colors that burst into life then sputtered. "Feels like something is dying. Dunno what. Just feels like something is dying and I should know what to do to make it all stop."

"Something's dying?" Nananshi looked sharply at Duo. Mystics didn't say awful things like that unless something awful was going to happen.

"Or someone. I think that I saw it coming but I didn't want to believe it. A few years back, they started to dim. I haven't paid much attention but it's really happening fast now." Duo stopped, shooting a glance at his friend. "Dunno if that's a good thing or not. If they die, I don't have to pick them up anymore. And maybe I'll be normal. I won't have to ghost around like some lost puppy, trying to find the pieces to it all."

They watched the new shuttle arrive. It landed with a roar that forced most people to cover their ears. Duo didn't because he never cared enough. But along his side, Nananshi's fingers stuck deep in his ear canals. The backwash hit them, knocking Duo's braid around his body like a whip, smacking his neck and leaving a mark of red across his adam's apple. Then the great engines powered down and Duo shook his head to clear the ringing.

Crew ran out onto the landing pad, the one place that the security kept clear. Everyone knew that you didn't walk out on the pad if you weren't tagged to do so. They shot on sight. Fuck it if you're running after your true love or have some life and death question to ask a passenger. You're better off trying to get it to them some other way. Most of them had heard at least one story about how the wrong person had run out and with a cry or with terrible silence, jerked in a strange new and final dance on the tarmac. Often the bodies were still moving when they were moved and thrown off the side into the river that ran alongside the pad. They didn't have time and the shuttles were far more important than any stupid ass git who wanted to risk his life by running out on a landing pad with a huge sign that indicated his worth if he were ever caught alive out there.

Like thickly armored beetles, the crew in their fire retardant suits of singed black, swarmed over the shuttle, setting it's landing gear into brake locks, chaining them to the landing top with titanium one fifty gauge chains. Then the arduous process of fixing up the outside, cleaning off the space debris and letting it wash into the river. It was sludge, really. But no one said much about that because no one had time to care if the water they drank was tainted. They were all too busy dying off. Or killing one another.

"New lot.." Nananshi murmured and shoved off the fence. It rattled under Duo's shoulder and he watched his friend as Nananshi strolled out to the meeting platform, standing with the hordes of carrion crows and the few who were actually there to meet someone.

Once the shuttle was run down with the chemical mix of acids and detergents, the outer door lock was undone by a man on a hydraulic lift. It came open with a loud hiss and a show of cold air steaming out into the hot L2 world. The only moment when clean air entered the fucking place. And it was breathed in by a guy in a singed burn suit. Then the man entered into the cavernous air lock. From there, the rest was out of sight and Duo didn't know what happened. Nor did he care much. He'd seen it too many times, he took the lack of knowledge for granted, like one didn't know how a hyplane engine worked or what made the colony stay in just about the same place while the rest of the universe whirled around in cosmic time.

After this, the passengers would exit. There was always about two hundred. They waited to have a full shuttle before they took off to some place as crazy to go to as L2. Business men and tourists with an air of delight about them. This was Sin's Playground and many of them, older men with wives and children at home, would find delights here that they couldn't afford anywhere else. Here, where anyone would do anything for the right to just put food in their mouth.

Duo hadn't been watching when the glow first came. He was intent on Nananshi, trying to discover what made his friend so able. Yet he noticed the light dance of color out of the side of his focus. It bathed the area with a warm light, and it did not reach for Duo but was content without him. That in itself was strange. Because the objects always wanted him to come and get them.

When he turned to look it was like seeing the Hydro Planians for the first time, when the atmospheric machines went wrong and started pouring out the wrong types of ions into the air and the covering dome went into a dancing blaze of red and gold and purple and green, long lines of it. Someone called it worth the trip. And Duo wondered if the techs didn't finagle the machines to keep the mistake on a schedule. He wouldn't have been surprised if they touted it as something that was naturally occurring and that it often happened at oh five and sixteen hundred hours. Please feel free to step out on your balcony and watch them.

The colors! It was the colors first. They came rushing out of the shuttle door, preceding the object. Never had he seen such colors. Each one pulsing, alive, following a heart beat rhythm. His lungs caught and his arms fell to his side as he began to step forward, walking through the crowd, drawn by the colors that drew him on, drew him on with a song all their own.

The man was ignored, only what hung about his neck could be considered and so Duo did not look up until he was almost upon the owner of the thing that was really Duo's. Or at least he thought it must be. All the colored things were his, weren't they? So that meant this as well. But when a woman's back cut before him and covered the thing, it's light radiating through her and around the couple, Duo stopped.

The woman had golden honey hair and she was cooing but Duo couldn't hear anything over the heart beat filling his hearing. Her fingers traced the mussed up hair of the man who wore the necklace and she kissed him on the mouth. The man accepted the kiss without much reaction before he looked past her and found the violet eyes of the mystic. His eyes were dark blue, almost black, so intense was the color. And it was alive like the colors that poured from his necklace. Only this color reached for Duo and Duo pulled back from the long spider fine netting of blue which reached out to snare him.

He took objects. He did not take eyes out of heads. Feeling shaky, he drew away, a confused look on his face as he rushed from the local port and left behind the necklace.

Nananshi found him later, settled next to him as they looked down into the river sliding past, slower from the foul smelling sludge that filled it.

"You forgot your pack.." and the pick pocket let the heavy bag drop alongside Duo on the chair, the comfortable weight of objects pressing against Duo's thigh. "And you forgot me.."

"No.." Duo shook his head. "I didn't forget.. I just saw so many colors and I couldn't take them because then they'd die. Living things can't hold a color when they're inanimate. I know this. I don't know how I know it. I just know it. And I know that I can't ask for them because he'd never give them. And besides, she wouldn't let him." He knew he was making no sense, but it didn't matter. He was a mystic and there was no rule about having to make sense all of the time.

Later that evening, letting the bag drop onto the counter and staring at the objects which dimmed and then shone brightly, dying and rallying for another burst of color, he wondered about the steady pulse of the necklace and the way those eyes had reached for him in long broken webs of prussian blue.

Nananshi leaned back and groaned softly, rubbing his eyes. "Well.." and with a groan, he heaved himself forward and dug into his pockets, pulling out the day's loot and dropping it on the table. "Hmm... junk, junk, shit.. junk, junk.." fingers going through what his eyes had found, discovering now, when it's too late, what was worthwhile and what was not. The wallets proved okay. Though only a few of the tourists carried cash. Still, swiping the cred cards he could see if they had a balance and if so, how much, as well as if they would be culled or not. A culled card was no good, once too far from its owner, it just didn't work anymore. Of course, there were enough of the stupid married kind that had never done anything this adventurous and they carried the normal kind, not seeing any reason to use the added insurance a cull gave to their electronic accounts. Besides, how would their wives buy groceries to pay the milk man for all of his visits?

Not that they didn't find that somewhat amusing, Duo and his friend.

"Damn.." Nananshi pulled a wallet and whistled low, staring at the paper creds wafting sound out as his thumb riffled the top.

"Shit, Nanan.." Duo sat down, reaching for the wallet and because he was a mystic and because they'd known one another long enough for Nananshi to know that Duo wasn't interested in money so much as the odd things that glowed, he was allowed to take it. "You do realize that only cops and bosses carry this much dough around with them." Duo's frown grew and he stood, moving to the other side of the kitchen where he dug into the untensil drawer, pulling a sniffer.

"Yeah." Nananshi thought back. Which one had this been? "The guy with the cross. I was gonna take the necklace, but he just looked too good."

"Hmm.. cross... like a priest?" Duo's eyes lifted from watching the output on the sniffer's screen while he held the device over the wallet, running it slowly down the length of it.

"Maybe. But he didn't look like no priest." The other young man laughed. "He had a gorgeous piece of ass hanging off of him that didn't look like she was goin' to confess anytime soon."

That was a lot from Nananshi and Duo watched his friend, realizing that yeah, his friend was nervous. And with reason too, as a soft beeping rolls out of his hand. "Shit.." he looked at the screen. "Tapped and traced." He let the wallet drop and looked around at his home. It glowed lightly with a sweet influx of color. He didn't want to leave it behind to be pawed by anyone, anyone, really.

Nananshi winced. "My name." his face white.

Duo nodded, mouth pinched. With a calmness he didn't feel, he stooped, plucked the wallet from the ground and walked to the door, opening it. "Probably taping it. Get. They can't get me for more than accessory." His violet eyes dull, he watched his buddy head out then turned and leaned back against the door, hefting the wallet sightlessly in his hand.

Wasn't more than ten minutes before the knock came. Duo didn't answer it though. He'd left the wallet on the table near the door and he was laying down on his couch, holding a few of his pieces close, trying to get as much of the color off of them as he could.

The blast wasn't a surprise but he couldn't help it. "You coulda just kicked it in, stupid fucks!" his voice raw even though he'd just begun to scream. "Not like it was gonna hold up worth shit."

The stumbling of legs and feet, the shouts and the pushing, the way the wall hit his cheek and the way he held to a piece of wire that tried in vain to cover him in red, the colors flashing around, covering him with their fingers, wanting to not be left, not be forgotten, not be...

He could almost feel their hold snap, little tiny fingers breaking as he was hauled out of there in between all of the sounds of radio and engines and calls and questions that he couldn't answer because he couldn't really feel them. He was staring at a wisp of paper that had been blown out of the door from his place and was waiting, listlessly, next to the stoop, a feeble orange glow flickering over it like a dying candle flame. He didn't feel like losing the colors was going to make him real. He felt less real now. As if he'd forgotten some huge part of himself and gotten up without it, left the park, went home, and forgot that his life was back behind him, left sitting on the bench.

"So where did this Nanan character go, Mysty?" the voice jerked him around as the hand slapped his face. He stared up, watching the coldness of a job covering what might have been handsome once. "Where'd he go, hmm?"

They were, of course, being rough because he'd gotten in between them and some big wig. They had to prove their worth, show that they weren't as afraid of the L2 brood as they really were, as if they weren't just a finger in a huge fucking big hole in the dike, long past their usefulness.

"Dunno... slips in.. slips out... "Duo cracked a grin. "No idea where the hell he'd go, where he'd be. Got no name, ya know. But he'll have one before the night it through." He yawned and the yawn provoked another smack across his face, another, another.. he could taste blood in his cheek and he couldn't raise his hand to wipe it away because his arms were chained to either side of the bench. So yeah, even the cops are afraid of hexes.

Another hit and a curse and then a loud smack, of flesh against flesh, only too far away to be his head. He looked up, down, trying to find where that had come from and found two men standing before him.

They were bristling. The cop and the man holding his hand. The cop's face red with fury and embarrassment. He'd been caught roughing up an accessory, not even the real culprit. And the other man, slender like a cat, dressed in black gear, his hair a tousled mess over his head, falling against an eye, covering the tops of his ears, held with an ease, the hand which had been intended for Duo's face. While the cop was straining, the other man hadn't broken a sweat.

But it wasn't the grace in which the man moved, nor the intent blue eyes which stared down the cop until the other man had to concede, shoving away and taking a step back. It wasn't the mussed version of perfection that was his hair, wasn't the rounded forearms or the tense hand, wasn't the perfect slope of the jaw. Nothing about the man who'd saved him (but for how long?) caught Duo's eye. No, nothing could. Because between the pair of interlocked men was a strong beacon of warmth, of light, of color, bursting like a sun through two black trees, filling the room, Duo's eyes, his body. It radiated from the small golden necklace about the man's neck and it did not reach for Duo, still did not want him. Yet it didn't mind him being there and he found his soul reaching for it. It felt almost as if this was where everything originated, where it all began, in that small two barred pendant.

"Your.. necklace.." Duo grunted, staring at it, lost to the words that were around him. They made no sense. He needed the necklace. Or rather, he needed to not be too far from it. He needed it close. His arm moved and he blinked, staring down at where his hand was captured, shocked at how he couldn't make it there. "Ah... damn.." and with a sigh, disappointment filling him in waves, he leaned back against the wall and relaxed. Even if for this one moment, he was whole, he was real.

The dark haired man knelt before him and touched his face, Duo's eyes remained closed.

"He doesn't know? Not surprising... considering how little we do know about this hell hole." A key sounded and Duo's wrist was free. The man continued to speak, low, quiet, easily unheard but never forgotten, "Well, you know as well as I that we'll never find him. And I got the wallet back. Besides," he chuckled low, "Now we know the bug works, so it should be just fine for the ops. Lets get this guy back home.""

Duo, beyond those sliding words, nestled into the warmth of that pendant, able to see it when it was this close, even though his eyes were closed.

"Get up.." the command slides too, and Duo can't exactly follow it. A sigh follows and his other hand is freed, then another, "Get up." No, no.. he wouldn't get up. Not when the color, not when the light was there. Not when it all fit.

"Listen scum bag, the captain said to get the fuck up, means you get the fuck up, hear?" and a pain broke shadows into the light. Duo cried out, pulling away from the darkness against his leg and moved closer to the light, eyes opening blindly, seeing only the necklace.

"Leave him." A terse set of words, the man was accustomed to being obeyed. "Go get a car ready."

Duo's eyes wandered in the light, and he smiled beatifically upwards, staring at the blue that reached out for him, wanted to net itself over him. This light didn't pulse though, didn't dim. Probably because it was living light. Or something like that. Duo giggled and the captain frowned in confusion.

"Yer eyes... s'not like the necklace, but I wonder what you'd say if I told you I needed to take your eyes. Not gonna though. They don't brighten up the world when they're dead so I'd have to take you all.." his giggle rose a bit and he wondered if he was going to be hysterical. "You gonna come home with me?"

"Captain?"

"What." The captain's voice was terse but those blue eyes never left off trying to reach for Duo, Duo, bathed in light.

"Car's ready, sir."

The captain merely grunted, lifting the slender mystic into his arms and stalked out, his face set but his eyes flowing blue over Duo's face. "Good.." the mystic laughed. "They always do. And then they always come back. Because they can't see the color but they know it's there. They believe me. You believe me don't you? You have this.. you have to.." and his fingers slipped around the necklace.

It was the first time he'd touched it. And the reaction was instantaneous. Both of them staggered, the captain's arms slipping, almost dropping Duo, the pair of them hitting the wall. Duo couldn't let go of the necklace, he knew it belonged to him, it was his. It was what he'd left at the park, on that bench... what he'd forgotten when he was a kid, or maybe even before. It was his realness.

The hall was afloat with voices. Duo couldn't make sense of them.

"... here! Bring the stretcher... I forgot, I just forgot... think they.... Wotinhell is th- ... mystic, sir... you don't think he... they never have.... before he...."

Then the voices were gone and he was in the light, the colors dancing over his skin, his naked skin. He laughed, floating in the darkness with the light all around him.

'You think this is funny, Duo?' the dark voice asked.

'Hmm? Of course! They probably think I hexed him. I only wanted my necklace.'

'What makes it yours? I thought it was mine.' And the voice had eyes that radiated blue fire. Fire which was not the type to burn but which might just remake a soul at some deep forge, too deep to be dug up from the ground, secret and perfect.

'It might be yours, but the light is mine. Oh, no. It's not. It's everyone's. Or it is its own. I just need it and you don't,' Duo wasn't afraid of those eyes. 'Are you going to give me your eyes?'

The eyes laughed but the face did not. Because that face wasn't the most expressive in the world but the eyes more than made up for the lack. And Duo knew a name to go with them then. 'Heero.' Saying that name felt as if he was waking from a dream, where he'd forgotten himself, only to remember it all with the first touch of sunlight on his cheek.

A brow arched and the man, walking on air, came closer. He too was nude and he too was bathed in the light, though the necklace was nowhere to be seen. 'So it would seem to be.' His voice had the same feeling of the colors, but it was its own color, like an auburn evening color of purple and russet and black.

'I don't think I need the necklace any more,' Duo whispered, staring at the perfect blue eyes wanting to grasp him. "I think I've found the colors." He smiled.

'Have you?' Heero whispered, coming closer, his finger tracing Duo's chin. 'Have you really?' That blue wiped all else from Duo but for the wash of color which came from between their bodies, from a pendant which burned into being, hanging in the air between their naked chests.

Duo's sigh had a sense of the final to it. 'As long as those eyes never leave,' and his smile graced the darkness and they came together, the pair of them, arms about one another, bodies pressed tightly. It was strangely not sexual at all, but was the way the light was declaring it to be. They felt the warmth of skin and the warmth of the light and the two were the same. So they pulled even closer, closer... until the light was hidden by their breast bones so close that not a single beam of color could last. And Duo felt it burst inside of him and he knew that he'd come home.

- Owari -

Duo grinned, leaned back and traced the edge of his computer screen. Then he felt up where the necklace used to hang, touching his bare chest, and found that he didn't miss its weight. The love that had made it important was still very much alive. As was the love that made him give it away.

Stretching where he sat, he worked at the download before putting the computer through the power down paces. As the last light went out in the dark dorm room, he felt, more than heard, the sudden motion in the bed across from him.

"Still awake?" Heero's voice grazed his skin like a caress.

"Yeah..." Duo blushed. "Had to do one last fic, ya know?"

"Only one?" Heero sounded amused.

"Well, the last one for that time." Duo stood, walking in the darkness until his leg bumped the iron side of the bed. "Ow!"

"Okay?" a hand reached out, found him and guided him to sit down. "Here, the lights from that screen will make you blind."

"So says the computer addict," Duo laughed. He leaned over and found the finely chiseled face with his fingertips, traced it's confines, the properties of something which was without form, the truth of Heero Yuy.

"Mmm... yeah..." Heero muttered but they both knew that they weren't going to be talking again for a while. And what words Duo might have been about to say, were taken away and sealed up behind his lips by the many moments passing that one.

And Duo felt as if he were bathed in light.

- :: The End :: -


((Finally The End, but there's an epilogue and all... just cause I didn't want to lose them just yet and I love them and well.. I'm all sentimental. So you needn't read the last if you don't want. I just wanted to do it and so I'm gonna. Wow.. can't believe I actually DID a full fic. I'm blown away.

Silent One: [hee hee] I love the idea of asexuality as a reason for someone to be uninterested. It always struck me that Heero was somewhat that, with the exception of whomever he had decided to enjoy. (Think I should write a chronicle of Earthworm Heero? Hee hee!)
Hikaru: Yes. Dear Hee-chan has known the whole time. I'll have to keep that in mind next time, to make sure I'm more clear in my writing. (puts it on her task list) Glad it came off okay for you!
Tonie: Yis, veddy OOC. Never been so good at following rules. I shall try m'best to put out more like it!
Hellsqueen: Glad you liked it! And feel free to ask questions, eh? They give me an idea of what needs to be done differenly next time.
Akenna: I shall! I shall!
Anissa: To the Noble Revieweress! Thank you so much. I love it when they get flustered too. Only one more chapter left! [sob] It'll be strange to have finished a fiction and all. But it was made more than worth it with all the encouragement. I can't tell you how much your positive feedback helped focus this.

Request: I'se got a list o'stuff I'd like to work on and pull off over the next year or so. And I'd love to have the aid of a beta and their Red Pen. If you are interested, please email me? These fun lil' fics are cute and fun, but I've got a lot of learning to do on how to keep it clean and a bit of a shove in a good direction would be most appreciated.))