MORE THAN A HUNDRED REVIEWS! Whee! You people rock! Of course, the sucky thing is that I really, really, REALLY wanted to do individual replies this time around, but now we're not allowed to anymore! How mean is that?

Ah, well. (sniffs) Maybe it's best that way. (insert depressing soundtrack here) This chapter is already the longest so far. I don't know how it happened. IT'S NOT THE END, though this whole thing will be drawing to a close pretty soon. I kind of wanted to have nine chapters to correspond with the title, but we'll see. I mightdo ten – I'm not sure yet.

Warnings: The usual stuff. No major shonen-ai for this chapter, though - just a mega-glomp courtesy of Tyson.

Disclaimer: You know the drill: it ain't mine. Have a nice day.

Chapter Eight:

Sanctuary

When I'd left Japan a week ago, it had barely been autumn, but here in Moscow, the nights were already seeing the formation of frost. I wasn't sure where I was; I had left the confines of the city almost an hour ago, and was wandering aimlessly across open land under the dark skies. It was a still night; there was no wind at all. My eyes stung and watered from the cold, and my lips were dry. Away from the golden glow of the streetlights, the stars were very bright, shining with a strong, shimmering light that wound around me, making the grey cloud of mist that formed from my breath glitter slightly.

A week…

A week in which for the first time in a long time I had began to remember what it was like to be afraid.

In such a small space of time, everything had been destroyed. I'd compromised on control because of feelings I wasn't even supposed to have. Everything was in disarray, was meaningless and confused.

Walking on slowly through the clear, quiet night, the icy air clawing at my throat and lungs, I found a rock, and sank down onto it, curling up into myself, drawing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around my legs, leaning my head tiredly against the thin trunk of the spindly tree twisting up out of the hard ground next to it. A week, alone and cold, without Tyson, without Dranzer, without anyone or anything. I was beginning to realise how frightening being alone could be.

Tyson, I knew, would spend a couple of days punching things, sulk for a few more, and then forget all about me. I had been without him before. I had survived. He had his own life, a life that didn't involve me anymore. He would be alright by himself.

I hoped.

It was the loss of Dranzer that hurt me the most. Over that past week, there had been countless times when my hand had strayed to pocket, searching idly for my blade, only to find that it wasn't there. The same frozen, wide-eyed panic had gripped me each time, before I remembered.

You don't own Dranzer.

You're not a blader anymore.

You don't have anything.

I had lost everything because I hadn't deserved to keep it.

I left Dranzer behind because if I took it with me, I would be a blader. I would be a member of the Blitzkrieg Boyz, and a part-time member of the BBA Exhibition Team Mr Dickinson had recently set up. I could no longer trust myself. If I bladed, I would want to blade against Tyson. If I saw Tyson again…

It wasn't fair to him. He deserved to live the life he chose, not the life he was forced to live because of any sympathy he might feel for me and my stupid lack of control over my emotions. I couldn't blade against him – I wasn't strong enough to deserve to blade against anyone, let alone him. Not after what I'd done. Not after what had happened.

Alone in the cold, I bit my lip as hard as I could, clenching my fists up tightly. How many times was I going to have go through this? I was pathetic. I couldn't even control my own thoughts anymore. I hadn't even been able to control myself when I kissed him.

Usually, I blame Tyson for everything; usually, everything is his fault.

This time, though, I had been the one who'd made a mess of things.

That night on the rocks had been like something imagined, like something that had taken shape in the shadowy indecision between wakefulness and dreaming.

In the pale moonlight, shivering slightly in the damp, fresh breeze from the ocean, I had looked down at him, feeling his cold skin stippled with goosebumps under my hands, hearing his breaths deepening and quickening, watching his eyes close while his lips parted in a small, incredulous smile. Kneeling on the hard, rough rock, feeling my heartbeat echo the tumbling, roaring rhythm of the waves, feeling him shudder with the cold, I had kissed him, greedily, relentlessly, selfishly.

I had promised myself that I wouldn't – that I would be strong for both of us. I had made up my mind long ago never to say anything to him, and when I make a decision, I keep it. I don't screw things up, except in personal relationships, and those don't count. If I tell myself I'm going to do something, I'll do it, and I'll do it right – and if I fail, I won't fail without having fought to the last.

It wouldn't be fair to him to tell him.

Even so, I had found myself there, with him pressed against the hard, cold rock beneath me, his warm, smiling mouth dabbing at my skin, planting sticky, clumsy kisses everywhere, his hands clutching at my clothes, his hair pulling itself loose and tumbling untidily into my palms.

It was the stupidest thing I'd ever done.

From the very beginning, I'd known what was simple, and obvious: if you let yourself love, you immediately make yourself vulnerable to envy, persuasion, blackmail, weakness, and, ultimately, defeat. It's not something melodramatic or clichéd: it's a fact. If I chose to be alone, I would have only myself to think of – and I could trust myself. I knew exactly what I could do and what I couldn't do. I knew myself. Anyone else would have been a complication that I couldn't have afforded – and anyway, from as early as I can remember, there had never been anyone else. Everyone I'd ever known was like me: focused, disciplined, uncaring. That was how we lived. It was the only way we knew how to live.

That's what it was like at the Abbey.

Even when they told me that I had done well, it wasn't me they were proud of; it was my progress. I was a hollow, faceless, nameless thing, a passage to victory, empty and otherwise useless. I didn't realise that this was a bad thing. That was what life was.

Friendship did not exist. How could it, when everyone was competition, when every person you met would ultimately have to be defeated so that you could survive? There were no such things as trust, as caring. They weren't discounted as though they didn't matter; they had never been there. They weren't a part of my life. The only definition of love was the desire for perfection; the only idea of happiness was the satisfaction that came with victory; the only sign of weakness permitted was the hunger for power.

Power was the only thing that mattered.

My whole life, I'd been taught that perfection was the only option. Nothing less would be accepted. Beybattle was my life, and I mean that literally. I was born to it; it was all I knew; it was all I had. No one can understand. It's a simple impossibility, because everyone else is human, and I wasn't for the first years of my life. I was something that others had created. You can't know what it's like unless you've felt it, unless you've lived your life confined, being sculpted from the very beginning into someone else's dream.

In a way, I think that although I don't actually like him very much, that's why I'm still so close to Tala. I care much more about the Bladebreakers, but the Blitzkrieg Boyz are all I have for family – a weary, bitter, suspicious family, but a family nevertheless.

If I was ever afraid, or lonely, it was in a time when I was too young to have retained any memories of it. The only thing I can remember feeling is the lust for power, for strength, for total and complete control – and frustration when I fell short of the mark, when I failed. All I wanted, with all my heart, was to succeed, was to be stronger than everyone else, to show them that I was the best, that I was perfect.

I think that's why I wanted Black Dranzer so much.

I still can't remember too much of what happened after I launched it. Trembling with excitement, I felt one moment of weightless exhilaration, knowing that I held in my hands the strongest, deadliest Beyblade ever created – and after that, the world was just an explosion of noise and crushing, suffocating blackness. For the longest time, I couldn't move, or speak, or see, or even think clearly. Pain and confusion ate at me from the inside, searing me with dark, hurtful fire until I was numb and empty, drained of everything.

When I woke up, I was outside in the world for the first time: outside in a world of people who felt strange, pointless, idiotic things, a world full of people who weresloppy and undisciplined, a world full of people who cared only about themselves and about their friends, and not about what they could achieve, not about how strong they could be. None of it made any sense.

I despised them. I looked down on them, because I was stronger than them.

It's almost ironic that the one person I despised the most was the one person who could beat me.

To be honest, if I look back, I can't even remember what Tyson looked like on that day beside the river. That was a time when I didn't see people as individuals – their faces blurred into a mass of mistrust and anger; they became one composite enemy that must be held back and defeated at all costs. When I saw him standing there, I saw another rookie who thought he could beat me, and nothing more. He didn't matter to me; no one mattered to me, then. I had myself, and I had Dranzer, and I neither had nor wanted anything else. He was nothing. I can't even remember the things I said to him as we looked at each other in deep, fiery radiance of the setting sun, trying to stare each other down, acting as we would to any other opponent. I can't even remember the sound of his voice.

I can remember my defeat at the Regional Championships, though. For the first time in what little memory I had left, I had been beaten. He was no longer just some kid shooting his mouth off. He may have been a sloppy, immature disaster waiting to happen, but he had beaten me. I hated him so much that I couldn't think clearly. Being defeated was like walking into a void, like missing a step going downstairs – one breathless, eternal second of jarring, sickening panic. The one thing I had always had was power, the ability to win against anyone - and suddenly it wasn't there anymore.

There was nothing left.

I think it was the hatred, and the raw, mind-numbing jealousy, that drove me to such lengths. I wanted to take him down. I wanted to show the world that he was nothing more than a lot of talk and a seriously over-inflated ego. He was stronger than I liked to admit, though, and was growing more and more powerful everyday despite his disrespect and irresponsibility. I tried to tell myself that beating him would be easy, but I knew that it wouldn't.

I hated him.

I knew I had to defeat him.

I knew that doing it would be the hardest challenge of my life.

Now that I think about it, that challenge was never met. We never did manage to decide who was the stronger of us. Even my official defeat at his hands in the last World Championships Tournament hadn't finalised anything. It had just been another step we'd taken side-by-side, another stop on our joint way to victory.

We would make Beyblading history, and we'd do it together.

It had been a promise we'd never bothered to speak out loud. He just came to understand after a while that the only person I truly needed with me, that the only person I even considered worth blading against anymore, was him – and he, I had realised with a quivering, apprehensive happiness, had decided that he cared about me.

Then, just a week ago, I'd ruined it.

A gust of searingly cold wind wrenched me back from the past, and I shivered. It seemed as though a breeze were picking up after all, which was not good. I'd lived in Russia long enough to know that the temperature of the wind can be several degrees lower than the temperature of any surrounding air. It would be warm at the small, cheap, efficient hotel in the outskirts of Moscow where I was staying, but I didn't want to go back there.

I hadn't yet contacted the Blitzkrieg Boyz, although I knew where they were living. This was because my plan didn't involve contacting to them at all. My plan involved hiding as far away from anyone else as I could until I was sure that Tyson hadn't taken it into his head to do something stupid like come look for me, then applying to university and staying there for as long as it took for the world to forget me.

I had enough money saved to see me through for a while, although I had spent more than I should have in trying to secure the earliest possible flight out of Japan. I would, I told myself firmly, tilting my head up towards the black, endless skies, be alright. I had never needed Tyson in the first place; he had just made my life a little nicer. Dranzer I could learn to live without. I'd survived worse than this.

I knew, though, that I was lying to myself, and I've never seen the point in doing that.

As I looked out at the cold, darkly crystalline world, I knew, even if I didn't want to admit it to myself, that it wasn't the inability to go on without Tyson that frightened me. I was my own person; I didn't need him, or anyone else, with me. I could live by myself; I could take care of myself; I could fight by myself.

I just didn't want to.

It was the idea of spending the rest of my life in this icy, cold emptiness, the idea of waking up every day for the next sixty years and knowing that Tyson wouldn't be there, that frightened me.

Tyson.

It's only a name, only two syllables, just a random assortment of sounds. How can one small, ordinary name describe fully someone like him? How can anything describe him at all? He isn't a collection of hollow, indifferent words. He's a person, a strong, caring, loudmouthed, annoying person, someone real and beautiful and loyal, someone who manages to make friends with almost every person he meets. He really just loves the world. He's the sort of person who'd put his life on the line to save anyone. He'd complain like crazy while he was doing it, and afterwards he'd brag about it so much that no one would ever be able to forget it, but he'd do it.

What I've never been able to understand is how he can care so much.

I'm not afraid of trusting people - I just think that other people are too weak to be trusted. Tyson doesn't seem to care about that at all. If he thinks someone's in trouble, he'll try to get them out of it, at no thought of personal danger or loss. All he cares about is his friends.

I don't understand how he can do it.

What I especially don't understand is how he can trust me.

The fact that I would never betray him - simply because there's no one I love more than him, which means that there's no one I could ever justify betraying him to - is irrelevant. What I'm trying to emphasise is that I don't think I've ever actually shown him that he can trust me. For all he knows, I could still be out to steal Dragoon. I could still be working for Boris. The thought would never even cross his mind, but that's because he thinks I'm his friend. He doesn't understand that the world can be far harsher than anything he's ever known.

I'm glad of that.

I'm glad that he's the one who will have a happy, strong, real life. I'm glad that he's the one who will be able to go on. I'm not trying to be some self-sacrificing weakling. Honestly? Then and there, shivering underneath the cold stars, all I wanted was for him, and for everyone else who was special to him, to be alright. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but that's what I was thinking.

I think it was then, as I realised that, that I heard footsteps behind me.

He was walking slowly across the hard ground, his hands shoved into his pockets. He could have been anyone, bundled up in a warm, heavy coat, but I knew it was him. I knew it was Tyson. No one else walked in that way. No one else moved like him. No one else had that spark inside them, that brightness, a warmth that I could almost see.

I began to get very angry very quickly.

I got up off the rock, my pulse rate accelerating sharply. I was going to kill him for this. He was supposed to stay behind with the others, get annoyed, moan for a few days, and then get over it. He wasn't supposed to follow me. I considered walking away, but realised that that probably wouldn't work. He just run after me, and catch hold of my arm, and if he touched me, I would lose it entirely. So I stood still, leaning against the tree, folding my arms over my chest, watching him get closer and closer, knowing that this was not going to be good.

He stopped a few metres away from me, and raised his face to mine. The thin, shimmering layer of frost that covered the world reflected the moonlight, so that I could see him easily. He just looked at me, his chin trembling, tears glinting in his eyes, betrayal, along with determination in spite of it, staring out from his face. I knew that look. The last time I'd seen it had been before he defeated Brooklyn.

The silence lasted a very long time. The only sound to be heard was the whistling of the wind as it whipped around me. I hugged myself tighter, seeking warmth, and finding none, my eyes never leaving his. His tears had spilled out now, sliding down his cheeks in long, metallic streaks. The pain in his face was almost too much to bear. I knew what he was trying to ask me: Why?

The only answer I had for him was one I would never give him. I couldn't let him know how much I loved him. I couldn't.

At last, wiping the tears away silently, he said, quietly, trying his hardest not to sound angry, "You weren't planning on coming home any time soon, were you?"

"No," I said, trying tostart thinking inJapanese again after a week ofspeaking Russian.

"We were worried about you, dude," he said, frowning. "Tala won't admit it, but he's freaking out. Even Bryan looked pretty upset when I saw him. Actually, he could just have been mad at me for knocking that glass of water all over him, I'm not sure…"

"You didn't have to involve them," I told him, crossly, gritting my teeth in annoyance.

"Well, how else were we going to find you?" he shot back. "Maxie called Tala first thing the morning after you left, 'cause we figured you'd be staying with him, but he hadn't seen you, so we got scared. I called Mr Dickinson, asked him if the BBA could get me plane tickets to Russia so that I could prevent the world's top Beyblader from doing something insanely stupid, and here I am. It took us ages to track you down."

"You shouldn't have bothered, Tyson!" I shouted, so loudly that my voice cracked. "You just don't know when to stop! Can't you just leave me alone for once in my life?"

"No," he said, clenching a fist and taking a step forward. "No, I can't leave you alone, Kai, because I'd never make you face anything by yourself. Don't you see, Kai? It's always been us, together, you and me and Maxie and Kenny and Rei and Hilary and Daichi and everyone. We can't…I can't…leave you like this."

"Like what?" I snapped.

"Alone," he said, helplessly. I opened my mouth to say something, but he interrupted, angry again, "Don't you dare tell me to go! Don't you dare tell me to leave you! I'm not going to, Kai! Not now." He sniffed. "You always do this! I've just found you, and you go away again. Just when I think it's going to be alright, you pull a fast one on us and no one hears from you for months. You can't just mess with people's heads like that, Kai! Why do you keep running? What are you so afraid of?"

"I'm not afraid!" I snarled. How could he be so stupid? "You're the one who's frightened, Tyson! You're so dependant on your friends that you can't do anything without them. How would you manage on your own? You can't do anything for yourself. How do you think you'll survive if you have to go running to the others all the time?"

"At least I don't act like I'm perfect!" he shouted, both his hands now balled into fists, shaking with anger. "At least I admit that I have faults. You just act like you can do it all by yourself, and you can't!"

"I can," I said, glaring at him, my teeth chattering in the cold. "I can, and you know it, Tyson."

For one moment, he looked like he wanted to hit me, but then he sniffed again, and his hands unclenched themselves in defeat. He stuck his chin out, gazing upwards determinedly, and I knew he was trying not to cry. "Maybe I can't handle it by myself," he said, quietly, to the sky. "Maybe I do need you with me, Kai. Is that against some law you just invented?"

I had nothing to say to that.

I would have done anything for him, given him anything he asked, but that. As much as I wanted to, if I stayed with him then there would always be the risk that I would forget myself again. I turned my face away from him, resting my chin on my chest. Eventually, all I could say was, "You don't need me around anymore, Tyson."

"'Course I do!" he protested. "I'm…I…you're…blah. Look, stuff this, we're not getting anywhere. Are you coming with me or not?"

Without thinking, I said, softly, dangerously, "You're avoiding the question."

Then I considered announcing live on television that I was in love with him. It would be about as obvious.

What was wrong with me? What exactly was I trying to prove, anyway? I should have known better than to hope that he was interested me, seeing as I knew for a fact that he was straight. I knew he'd had at least one girlfriend before, and that he'd only broken it off because she had to leave the country. I knew that he was just trying to make me feel better, because he couldn't bear the thought of hurting anyone. That's what he did. He stuck by his friends.

Even when his friends fell in love with him.

"You stole my line," he said, smiling weakly.

"Why?" I demanded fiercely. "Why do you care?" When he looked away uncomfortably, I burst out, "I'm not an idiot, Tyson! You just feel sorry for me, don't you? Stop wasting your time, because I don't care about you or any of your fake sympathy!"

"I don't feel sorry for you," he said, sulkily. "You're not that special, Kai."

"Then what's the deal?" I asked. Years of habit were complaining about how pointless this was. I could have been doing so many other things, I could have been blading…

…no, I couldn't have.

"The deal, dude, is that I liked…you. It. What happened. What you… did. I…liked it," he was saying, fidgeting slightly.

"I'm afraid you're not proving yourself to be very articulate," I said, irritably. "Either say something or don't, Tyson. Don't just stand there stammering. I've wasted enough time here as it is."

"Fine!" he shouted. "Fine! You want to know something? You…kissing me and…and whatever…look, it wasn't that bad, OK?" There was a slight pause, and then he muttered, darkly, "And if you've got a problem with that then you've got a serious multiple personality thing going on."

Once again, I didn't know what to say. Was he just lying to make me feel better? I wasn't sure, which annoyed me all the more. I hate the idea of 'maybe', of uncertainty, of approximation. I like being in control – but I just couldn't figure this out. Tyson wouldn't lie about something as serious as this – but what he was saying made absolutely no sense.

I looked up to see him watching me, sadly. I suppose he'd taken my silence to be a denial, to be admittance that kissing him had simply made a mistake. Sighing, he said, softly, "OK. I get it. We're not talking about it. Fine. It's just that…I don't know anymore, dude. I mean, it was kind of like…" He smiled slightly, a little, wistful smile, and shrugged. "It was like we were the only people in the world - like when we used to sneak off to blade together, just you and me – or like that first time you took me training – or like…like…then."

I knew what then meant; in the darkness, I saw in his eyes the same bright, impossibly enthusiastic happiness that I had last seen in that strange, quiet place we had created for ourselves so long ago. It had been a place where the skies were powdered with an explosion of starlight that glittered on the dark sea, a place where we didn't have to use words to talk, a place where all that mattered was that we were together.

I tried not to think about that. It hurt too much to remember.

I took a moment to make sure I was in fully control of myself before saying, as clearly and tonelessly as I could, "Tyson, it can't ever be like it used to. Face it. Our days as friends have always been numbered. Whatever we had, or may have had, is in the past."

"So there was something?" he asked. "Come on, Kai, don't do this to me! There was something! We were…friends, right?"

"Yes," I said, stiffly. "We were friends."

"Then why can't we carry on being friends?" he asked, desperately. "Why did you…why did you have to go?"

I couldn't run from it anymore; for him, I had to be brave, and face it. "Because of what I did," I said, firmly. "Because I showed weakness, Tyson, an inexcusable weakness. What I did was stupid."

"What you did was normal, Kai!" he yelled. "What do you mean, weak? It wasn't weak! You were…"

"I was allowing myself to be controlled by what I felt."

"So what?" he shouted, balling his fists up tightly again. "Geez, I thought we got past all that stuff ages ago! Don't you get it? You're not alive unless you love, Kai, unless you can allow yourself to – to like things and enjoy things and be sad about things and…and cry and get over it and…and keep on going afterwards. You're not for real if you say you don't care. Everyone cares, Kai, and you're no exception. What is so wrong with showing that you care once in a while? What's so wrong about it, huh? Tell me that, Kai!"

How thick can you get? He still didn't understand. He understood everything else – why couldn't he see this, too? Why did I have to explain it to him? I couldn't. I didn't know how. Angry, choking frustration pushed against the inside of my throat, and I choked out, my voice shaking, "It's not like that, Tyson!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked. "What's the excuse this time, Kai?"

I said, the words coming out slowly and brokenly, sounding jagged and half-swallowed from the effort I was making to hold back tears, "The one thing that is more important to me than – than anything else, Tyson, is you. I – I promised myself that I wouldn't let you see, because it would only hurt you – I promised myself that I wouldn't let you know…and I broke that promise." He had to understand, he had to realise how selfish, how uncaring I'd been. I'd never been worried about being cruel before I met him – he had shown me that kindness works, too, sometimes…he had to understand, for his own sake…"I did what I wanted, instead of what was best for you…that was why I had to go. It wasn't…" I swallowed, hard, and breathed in deeply, and completed the sentence, holding my voice perfectly steady, "…fair to you."

He looked at me for a short while, stunned and angry, and then said, in a small, sulky voice that held a quiet hint of what sounded almost like hope, "What wouldn't you let me know?"

This I could not tell him. Over all the painful, precarious years, I had come to realise that I did have friends, that there were people in the world who cared about me, and about whom I cared, and whom I had to protect form everything – even from myself. I had made too many mistakes. I wouldn't make any more.

I was in control again. I had mastered myself. I was going to give him an empty, impersonal answer, and watch his eyes darken as the hope died and the resent grew, and then turn my back on him as he walked back across the snowy fields. I readied myself for it, braced myself to withstand the crushing hurt I was about to see in his eyes, and said, "Nothing," I said, expressionlessly. "It's none of your business."

His face tightened, and he squeezed his eyes shut tightly, his fists shaking in anger. "Argh!" he shouted in frustration. "That's what you always do, Kai, and I'm sick of it! I'm not buying it this time! I want a straight answer!"

"I just gave you one," I said, sourly. "Weren't you listening to me? It's none of your business."

"Yeah, Kai, it is my business!" he corrected me. "When someone I care about as much as you just walks out on me and spends half his time freezing to death in the middle of nowhere, it is my business! You're…you're…you're everything to me, Kai. I can't lose you. I can't lose everything." He stopped, as though hesitating, and then said, in a small, aching voice, he said, "And more importantly, I can't let you lose everything. So…here."

As he fished in his pocket, I felt my stomach tighten. He began walking slowly over to me, cupping something in his hands, not looking at me, closing the distance between us very slowly. At last, when he was directly in front of me, he held out his hand to me.

On the green cloth of his glove lay two Beyblades, glinting in the hard, bright moonlight. I felt my breath catch in my throat, and, unable to stop myself, reached out a trembling hand, catching up Dranzer. The familiar metal was slightly warm from Tyson's hand, and as I held it, I felt complete for the first time in a week.

But I didn't feel safe.

I tried to say thank you, but my throat was burning with what felt like liquid fire. My vision was swimming, and, before I knew it, tears were seeping down my face. I hated myself then. I was weaker than I'd known. It was frightening how much I depended on Beyblading, frightening how much I needed Tyson with me. I hated to have him see me like this. I hated him seeing me as anything but strong. I'd always forced myself to be strong for him, and now…

"Kai?" he asked. I couldn't look at his face. I just kept staring at the blurred image of his hand as he curled his fingers protectively around Dragoon. "You OK, buddy?"

I still couldn't talk, so I just nodded.

I heard him give a small, tearful sigh of ghostlike laughter, and before I knew what was happening, he had pulled me into him in a tight, crushing hug, wrapping his arms around me, suffusing me with warmth, pressing his cheek to my bowed head. All I could do was clutch at him and cry into his chest, feeling his hot breath wash over me, feeling his shoulder beginning to shake with his own suppressed tears. I completely broke down then. He was crying, too, but he was the one holding me. He was the one being strong for me. I felt so bad at that, but I couldn't stop crying. With my eyes closed, and my face pressed up against him, and Dranzer in my hand again, I stood there in the cold night and cried.

Just like all the other times, he held me up. He didn't try to protect me or pity me; he just lent me strength until I could find my own again. "It's OK, dude," he kept whispering, over and over again. "Just relax. It's going to be fine." He didn't have to say that; I knew it already. Safe in the warm darkness, it was like nothing bad could touch me; it was like I'd found a sanctuary.

Reshki: W00t! All reviewers get…um…(looks around for anything vaguely appealing)…one of these cookies I just baked?

Kai: Are you insane? You'll kill them! Your cooking is a crime against humanity.

Reshki: (looks dubiously at cookies) You know, that's probably true…well, you could always pass them off as rare examples of…alien fungi…or…something…

Kai: Give up. Now.

Reshki: Maybe I should. (pokes cookie nervously)

Cookie: FEAR ME! I WILL DEVOUR YOUR SOULS! DIE, MORTALS!

Tyson: Hey, look, Kai, the cookie wants to be your friend.

Kai: (ducks under table) I think it's safer down here…unless you people manage to talk a psychotic dust bunny into doing a cute little cameo act.

Reshki: (grins merrily) Why not? This is fanfiction, after all. Strange and terrible things have been known to happen to entirely innocent anime characters for no good reason whatsoever other than that the writer in question was hormonal, sociopathic, and occasionally just plain bored.

Tyson: Well, you've got all three points covered, so it looks we have…PSYCHOTIC DUST BUNNIES SEEKING LOVING HOMES! Every reviewer gets one! They're actually kind of sweet, really. (pets psychotic dust bunny, which is conveniently taking a nap nearby, and almost loses a finger)

Psychotic Dust Bunny: (growls menacingly) Review - or face the consequences!

Reshki: Now would you look at that? Cute, yet evil. Joy unending doth reign.

Psychotic Dust Bunny: I MEAN IT!

Kai: How much are you paying that thing?

Reshki: Not…much…(laughs sheepishly)

Psychotic Dust Bunny: REVIEW!