A/n: As I said, I've never written a romance before, nor do I have any experience, so hopefully this chapter works. Also credit for the ice cream paragraph last chapter goes to my little sis. And sorry everyone for all the minor cliff-hangers. Seriously, I did not do that on purpose!

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Sparx shut her eyes, waiting for the blow to fall. When it didn't come she looked up. Random was still standing there, his claw in the air. They just stared at each other for a couple of seconds.

"What did you call me?" Random asked, finally dropping his claw to his side.

"Um…" said Sparx, "…wheelbutt." She slowly stood up, the situation was altogether confusing.

"Why?"

"Well, you do have a wheel on your butt."

Random stared at her again, then a smile appeared on his face. "That's just… stupid," he laughed.

"What else did you expect me to say?" said Sparx indignantly. "You were trying to kill me!"

Random stopped laughing. "I was… but, my evil's gone now."

"Well, that's a relief."

"No," said Random, looking confused, "it doesn't normally leave like that. If it had that much control I should've destroyed you. But it just left. I didn't even feel it go."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"Yes, it's gone, at least for now. I guess you…" here Random looked up at Sparx, and was cut short as his eyes locked with hers.

"…distracted me," he finally finished.

Sparx broke the gaze. There was something in there she'd never seen before. Suddenly she couldn't seem to think of anything to say.

"No problem," she finally managed to get out. "I should probably go now…"

"No, wait," said Random. "What just happened?"

"I'm not sure."

"Me neither, but you stopped my evil in its tracks. That's got to mean something."

"Like what?"

Random smiled. "Now we're going 'round in circles. Believe me, I don't need that."

"Sorry," Sparx smiled back.

"Just don't leave, alright."

Sparx blinked at him, confused. Usually Random was yelling at everyone to go, even when his good side was in control.

"I…" Random started to explain. He had been about to say he wasn't letting her go that easily. But was there anything to let go? Having spent he last year in the junkyard, while he didn't exactly understand what was going on, he was not going to let a single chance slip, whether he was grasping at air or not. "I just don't want to be alone."

"Fair enough," Sparx shrugged. Some of her usual fire seemed to leak back in as she added: "I'm sure there's something we can find to do under this mountain of junk."

Random grinned at her; for once he didn't feel worried about what he might do within the next half hour. "I can think of a few things…"

While the junkyard didn't have so much in the way of entertainment, Sparx and Random soon found some imaginative things to do. This included trying to fix one of the many car hulks lying around, that is, until the engine blew up. The car, now useless, had been subjected to having tic-tac-toe boards and also one battleship grid scratched into its paintwork. After they'd run out of space on the car, Sparx had found a piece of metal that she said looked like a head and they had ended up building a 'snowman' out of junk. Finally they had found an old Nintendo 64 console, a controller and a slightly damaged TV.

"Cool! It's working!" exclaimed Sparx excitedly.

"One of the only things here that does," grumbled Random, who'd had his face almost in the car's engine when it'd decided to blow up, but he was smiling as he said it. He flicked the console on and loaded a racing car game. "But it's got two player mode. You up for a challenge?"

"Um, problem, hello? One controller."

"Who needs a controller?"

"Huh? Oh… it's a machine, right. In that case you're on!"

Halfway through the first race Random swiped Sparx's car.

"Hey! You scratched my paint!"

"Just 'cause you're losing…" laughed Random, staring at the screen in concentration.

Sparx growled, catching up to Random's car. When she got up alongside him he swiped her again.

"Now you're just flirting!" said Sparx and then blushed when she realised what she'd just said.

Random Virus, too engrossed in the game, didn't notice and just pulled his car ahead.

Sparx lost control suddenly and crashed into a wall. "No! I didn't do that! Random, you fiddled with my controls!"

"What?!"

"Yeah!"

"Sorry, Sparx," replied Random with a smile. "That's just your bad driving."

Sparx growled. "If they were lightning flash's I would've kicked your butt!"

Random just laughed at her so Sparx threw the controller at him. It hit him in the head, bouncing off with a loud clank.

"Ow!"

"Um… Sorry!"

"I'm starting to think this is more hazardous for me than you," Random grumbled, rubbing his head.

"Yeah, well you know me, always taking risks."

The 64 was now useless due to the broken controller and Sparx turned her gaze to the sky. "You know it's gotten dark and we didn't even notice. The stars are really clear from here, too bad we couldn't find an old telescope."

"Sparx, you have a massive one back at the Thunder Tower."

"We do too. Hey, why don't you come over there and we can take a look. I'm not sure how to move it around but I bet you could get it going."

Random thought that would be fun, but then felt doubt flood his mind. "I don't think that's such a good idea."

"What? Why not? Come on, you've been fine all day."

"That doesn't count for anything. I'm so unpredictable it's probably just a fluke. This whole day was a stupid idea. Who knows what I could've done to you." Random rolled slowly backwards, away from Sparx, until he bumped into a car hulk. He hung his head and looked at he ground. "I'm sorry, you should go."

"I'm not going anywhere," said Sparx defiantly. "I don't know how you expect to ever sort yourself out if you just tell everyone to go when you're like this. It's the worst thing you could do!"

"I don't want to hurt anyone. The risk's not worth taking."

"Well, like I said, I'm always ready to take a risk." Sparx came and stood beside him. She placed her hand on Random's metal arm, where it joined his flesh.

"Sparx, I know you want to help…" As he said that last word, Random felt his evil side flash across his mind like a shadow, leaving him with glimpses of thoughts that he would never before believed he could posses. He tried to look for something, anything in that glimpse that meant he could save himself. But the only thing he saw was darkness.

"Random…?" asked Sparx, concerned by his silence.

Random looked up at her, his eyes misty. "I can't live like this anymore," he said, suddenly realising how far gone he was. "I can't even remember how long I've been like this…"

"I know it must've been sometime after that explosion you got caught in," prompted Sparx, trying to help. "I suppose you can't remember what happened after…"

"I remember…"

Sparx felt him go tense, his claw scraping the side of the car.

"You remember what happened?"

Random stared ahead, trying to ignore the memories, images and feeling rushing back to the front of his mind. "Most of it."

"Why haven't you told Ace before?"

"I don't know. Because then I'd have to think about it."

"Maybe if you told someone they could think about it for you."

"Maybe." Random paused. Strangely, that made a lot of sense. "Sparx… if you'll listen to me. I don't think I can say this more than once."

"I'm listening."

Random took a deep breath, shut his eyes, felt the darkness that slowly began to fill with images…