Okay, I've been hearing a lot of rumors saying I can't respond to my reviews, so I'm not going to until I find out more on this.

On with the story!

"So what went on back there?" Tyson asked as the Bladebreakers also went inside for lunch.

"Nothing. We just talked" Ray said. Max and Tyson looked at each other and grinned. "Uh huh" Max said, "Just talked"

"We did!" Ray said indignantly. "Sure" Tyson said, and Max began to make extremely unnerving kissing noises.

Ray rolled his eyes and gave an exasperated sigh. Suddenly, Ray got a really evil idea.

"Well, I guess there's no fooling you" Ray said, trying very hard to suppress a grin, "Obviously, you know what happened back there. It was pretty sick"

Tyson and Max's eyes lit up and they looked at each other in delight. Their eyes were as wide as humanly possible.

It took all of Ray's self control not to burst out into hysterical laughter right there. They were falling for it hook, line, and sinker!

"What happened? What happened?" Tyson and Max chanted. "Nah, I wouldn't want to poison your minds" Ray said, somehow managing to act calm and cool, as if he were discussing the weather.

Tyson and Max, however, were going mad. "Oh come on!" Tyson cried. "Yeah" Max agreed, "You can tell us!"

"No, you're too young to know" Ray said, beginning to walk up the steps to their floor.

"Oh come on!" Tyson cried, "You're only a year older than us!"

"Exactly" Ray said, "I'll tell you when you're sixteen"

"Isn't fifteen close enough?" Tyson begged.

"Please?" Max pleaded.

"Well maybe…" Tyson and Max's eyes lit up.

"Nope"

Ray then began to run up the stairs, Max and Tyson chasing after him, begging him the whole way.

Mariah was walking into the third floor corridor when Ray zoomed by her, followed by Tyson and Max. Kai and Kenny brought up the rear, Kenny with his nose in his computer, as usual.

"What was that all about?" Mariah asked.

"Don't ask me, I refuse to participate" (three guesses who)

Mariah shrugged it off and headed for her suite, reminding herself to call Ray about it later.

As Ray unlocked the suite door, he nearly collapsed to the floor with laughter. When Tyson and Max busted in, though, he got back up and decided to change the subject.

"How about I order a pizza?" he asked. Tyson's face lit up at the word 'pizza' and started talking at speeds that could dwarf a cheetah.

"Yeah!" he cried with glee, "I want onions and green peppers and pepperoni and anchovies and hamburger and extra cheese and-" At this moment, Ray and Max each slapped a hand over Tyson's mouth.

Five minutes later, Ray was finishing his order to the Pizza Planet nearby. He hung up the phone and walked into the living room.

"What did you order?" Max asked, having forgotten all about the situation that had happened beforehand.

"Two pizzas. One for Tyson and one for the rest of us. I got a plain cheese and a supreme" (guess which one's Tyson's)

"All right, cough it up" Ray said suddenly as Kai and Kenny entered the room, "Each pizza was 444 yen. Tyson has to pay for his own, and the we'll split the other one evenly. Yes, that means you, too, Kai"

Kai gave Ray a "hn" and fished out the money, while the others ran to their rooms to get their share, Tyson grumbling about 'unfair treatment'.

When the pizzas came, Ray gave the man the money and signed the receipt.

Two minutes later, after Tyson had already begun shoveling his ninth piece into his mouth with the force of a bulldozer, a piece of Tyson's pizza accidentally flew off his plate and hit Max in the arm.

"Hey!" Max cried and flung it right back at Tyson, hitting him smack in the face.

"What was that for?" Tyson demanded, his mouth full of pizza.

Ray and Kenny looked at each other in fear.

"Uh oh" they said, looking back at the two boys. Tyson threw another piece at Max, who returned fire.

"FOOD FIGHT!" they screamed. Pizza was suddenly everywhere, and Ray and Kenny instantly jumped under the table.

Kai simply walked away, getting hit in the back by a piece of cheese in the process.

When Mariah walked into her suite, she saw the boys already sitting around the table, waiting for something.

"Hope you don't mind, Mariah, but we ordered Chinese" Lee said.

"Nah, I'm fine" Mariah said, "I don't really feel like cooking anyway" "Okay, good"

When the food arrived, they all dug in. Mariah's favorite food were dumplings, so she took several more than the others.

Unconsciously, Mariah began to spin a dumpling around with her chopsticks.

"These aren't nearly as good as the ones back home" Mariah said, unaware that she was speaking out loud, "None of it is. Our soy sauce was always homemade, cooked by R-"

Mariah suddenly looked up to see everyone staring at her, and her cheeks turned pink.

"Umm, never mind" she muttered, seeming very interested in the floor at the moment. Lee sighed and put his chopsticks down.

"What do you say we invite Ray over for lunch?" Lee asked, and Mariah looked up at him with wide eyes and an even wider mouth.

"Really?" Mariah managed to choke out. Lee nodded and turned to the other two. Gary shrugged and Kevin rolled his eyes, pretending not to care.

Mariah could see right through that act and realized Kevin really wanted Ray to come.

"Oh thank you so much!" Mariah squealed and ran into her room, where her cell phone was.

"Well, she seemed happy" Kevin said, and the other two simply nodded.

Ray was still seated under the table when his cell phone rang. He dug into his pocket and checked the caller ID, just to see that it was Mariah!

"Hi Ray!" Mariah's voice came through loud and clear, and all the chaos around Ray seemed to disappear for a moment.

"Wassup?" Ray asked. Mariah took a deep breath and launched into the fastest summary Ray had ever heard.

"Well, I was wondering if you'd come over for lunch. The whole team agrees, Gary, Kevin, and even Lee. Please, we've got Chinese take-out food and lots of dumplings! I know it's not as good as home, but it's still good. So will you come? Please, please, please come!" Mariah closed her eyes in prayer.

Ray blinked and had to take it all in, then asked,

"Are you sure Lee's okay with it?"

Mariah began to nod so fast her head nearly flopped off, then remembered Ray couldn't see her, so she said,

"Yeah, I'm sure! It was his idea!"

"It was?" Ray was truly surprised.

"Uh huh. So will you come?"

"Sure I'll come! We were gonna have pizza but then Max and Tyson started a food fight and Kenny and I had to hide under the table, which is what we are still doing"

Ray peered out from under the table and saw that Max had clearly gone to the pantry for reinforcements, as he was now hurling croutons at Tyson like a fully-automatic machine gun.

"And Kai?"

"He tried to walk off and ended up getting hit in the back with some cheese"

"Oh"

"So when?"

"Now! We're waiting!"

"All right. It shouldn't be too hard to sneak out in this madness"

"All right, see you in a few minutes then"

"Right. Bye"

"Bye"

The two hung up and Ray found he was right. Kai was nowhere to be seen, Max and Tyson weren't paying any attention to anything but their 'war', as they were now calling it, and Kenny was in his own little world on his laptop, so it wasn't hard to sneak out.

When Mariah hung up her phone, she raced out to the rest of the White Tigers.

"So….Is he coming?" Lee asked, and Mariah nodded so hard her head nearly flopped off.

"How'd ya reach him?" Kevin asked, "I saw Tyson to the front desk yesterday that their phone was broken"

Lee and Gary sighed, but Mariah fumed up.

"Do you have to be so nosy?"

"Yes"

"Oh, you!" Mariah smacked him across the head.

"And for your information, I called his cell phone" she added.

"He has a cell phone?" Kevin's eyes lit up instantly.

"Yes, and I'm not telling you the number"

"Why not?"

"Because you'd prank call him all day" Mariah pretended to put a phone to her ear.

"Hello, Mr. Kon? I am calling from the White Tiger Village Plumbing Service, and I would like you to test your pipes by stuffing your head down the nearest toilet"

"Oh" Kevin said. Then he grinned.

"But thanks for the idea, though"

"If Ray calls me and tells me he got a call like that, I'll stuff your head down the toilet"

"Nah, you wouldn't want to poison the poor thing"

Mariah and Kevin jumped, and saw Ray behind them. They then turned around to see Lee and Gary holding back laughter, and glared at them. But Mariah's anger didn't last long, as it quickly sunk in that Ray was here, and she jerked around and hugged him.

"Mariah?"

"Yes"

"You're…choking…me…"

"Oh!" Mariah cried and jumped off of him. She turned red as Lee, Gary, and Kevin erupted into hysterical laughter.

Then, Lee and Ray's eyes met, and for a split second, their expressions changed, Ray's solemn and Lee's serious. But, almost instantly, they hid it and Lee invited Ray to sit down.

Mariah gasped and the others looked at her.

"What?" Lee asked.

"We only have four chairs!"

"That's okay" Lee said, "Kevin can sit on the floor"

"HEY!"

"You can have my chair, Ray. I'm full" Gary said, getting up.

"That's possible?" Mariah asked, and Gary rolled his eyes. So Ray sat down, Gary headed for his room, and Mariah began to talk.

"Ray" She began, "Why were Max and Tyson chasing you up the stairs today? Kai wouldn't tell me and Kenny's nose was buried in his computer"

Now it was Ray's turn to blush.

"Oh you don't want to know about that" he said, and Mariah raised her eyebrows.

"You do realize that I want to know about it even more, now, don't you?" "Yeah"

So Ray began to tell the story. And by the end of it, everyone at the table was on the floor, howling with laughter. Kevin gasped for air, then went right back into his mad fit of laughter.

And so, as the day continued on, Ray realized how lucky he was. He'd just had a great time with a team he'd left a year ago, who were just getting over hating his guts.

But what Ray didn't know, was that it would be the last carefree moment with them he'd be having in a while.

Author's Notes: (Gasps for breath) It's done! I am SO sorry it took so long to update, this was a really long chapter to type up, and our monitor broke, so I had to wait until we got a new one (that, and I'm lazy). Anyways, as punishment for procrastinating so long, I typed the last part of this chapter with no music in the background, so it was slow and painful. I hope you guys like it, and I'll get back on my normal updating schedule shortly!