I am really cold and it is killing me! Thank you to all of my reviewers and especially to Tallulah who is my beta reader! Yes! Thanks to her this chapter now actually makes sense! Now to chat with my reviewers!

Tigercatcher- heh, sorry about the whole mutilation of Kanny's corpse...what can I say...spur of the moment

Kendra- what does blotto mean? I'm not sure if Akira will have the same name, if he doesn't it will be similar so I don't get confused ! He has yet to appear...that's all I'll say on that...thanks ofr thinking my grammer is good, most people (mainly my bud Nikki (name and gender has been chaged))

Standard disclaimers apply!

Chapter 2

(Masago)

Lying in my bed, which was really just a mattress on the floor, I watched the early rays of morning light paint the ceiling a shimmering haze of oranges, reds and yellows. It was Monday, which meant that I had school today, not only did I have school today but I had to wake up my brother from an alcohol-induced sleep; not fun. Sighing loudly, I dragged myself out of bed, and ambled over to my pile of clothes and pulled out a pair of well-worn, ripped and stained jeans and a t-shirt. Slipping out of the large T-shirt and shorts I wore to bed I yanked on my jeans, a bra and the t-shirt, which as soon as I put on I realized was my brother's- I recognized the slogan. It read, "It's all fun and games until someone dies…then it's hilarious." Shaking my head, I approached Yuki, who was sprawled out on the futon across the room from my mattress, his silver hair covering his face.

"Yuki, time to get up." I prodded him with my foot, watching him curl up and moan, "Yuki…GET UP!" I yelled that right in his ear causing him to bolt straight up and then grab his head in agony trying to hold it together and cover his eyes at the same time.

"The hell was that for?" His voice was thick with sleep and his hair was a rat's nest.

"You have to go to work," I sweetly informed him. "Someone has to make money to pay for your drinking habits."

"God, just go away!" He lay back down and buried his head under his pillow.

"This is your last warning Yuki, get up now or I'll go outside and start dismantling your bike and chucking the pieces," I threatened, picking a wrench up off the floor beginning to tap it against my thigh.

"You wouldn't." Yuki tried to sound confident but he wasn't fooling anyone, especially himself.

"Wanna bet?" I turned on my heel, padded over to the door, grabbed my shoes and jacket, put them on and exited the room making sure to close the door loudly. Pausing I touched his mind and listened to him think and spit out curses from across the apartment as he stumbled to his feet and over to the door. Plastering a smile on my face I waited for him to open the door, which he did a moment later, his amber eyes tired but annoyed.

"Have a nice day!" I handed him the wrench and raced down the stairs, just barely missing being hit with the flying tool aimed at my head. Bursting out into the street I drew in a deep breath of fresh air that was tainted by smog and sewer stench; I made my way over to my bike. With a wave of my hand I undid the lock on it and got on booting the kickstand out of the way and starting her up. I had to go pick up Uta before school. Speeding through the twists and turns of the city streets I allowed my mind to wander to the question of how I was going to get through the day with Uta noticing my new bumps and bruises. She would flip if she discovered them; she hated me getting beat up and always complained to Raiden when it happened.

"You ready Uta?" I asked, pulling up next to her and handing her my helmet as I fished out my goggles and put them on.

"Yeah." She got on behind me and bunched her hands in my shirt so she wouldn't fall off. Uta was very pretty; she had the same golden blond hair as her brother but her eyes were a bright deep green color like that of a newly opened leaf. She was one of the sweetest people you would ever meet; she took care of Raiden making sure he ate and got up for work, but she was also a champion nagger. She could get anyone to do anything.

"Let's go." I pulled back into traffic and headed toward the school making sure to follow every law from the speed limit to turn signals and letting pedestrians cross first. Uta was the only one who didn't like me riding with the gang; it wasn't that she thought I was too weak; it was just the fact that she hated the gang period. She hated how dangerous it was and how we beat on each other; she was innocent like that believing that there was a way to make it in this world without getting hurt or hurting others.

When we reached the school I parked and we both got off; Uta smoothed down her skirt and straightened her hair while I merely pulled my goggles down to hang around my neck. The two of us were so different in many ways; I had black hair, she had blond hair; I liked jeans she liked skirts; I wanted independence she liked being dependent; I got in fights she stopped them. In other respects we were very similar; we were both smart; both wanted to protect our family; both didn't complain about little things and we both were two girls stuck in the middle of a whole bunch of guys.

"Rai told me you saved the day last night," Uta said to me softly as we headed to the rundown school. "I wish you wouldn't put yourself in danger like that, what if you hadn't noticed them? You could have died!"

"But I didn't." I opened the door for her and she stopped halfway through it to give me a motherly scowl of disapproval. "Uta, are we going to have to go through this again?"

"Yes." She continued into the school and I followed, unbuttoning my jacket. "We're going to go through this until you pull out of the gang and convince my brother, Yuki and Takeo to do the same thing. I don't want to have to bury you guys, you are my family." She stopped in front of her room and turned to me tears filling her eyes, "You know that I love you all so much."

"Uta, it's our way of survival, if we're not in a gang how are we going to protect ourselves?" I'd said this so many times before.

"If you weren't in a gang you wouldn't have to worry about it!" The tears were gone to be replaced with a burning flame of determination. "If you didn't put yourself out there proclaiming, 'I'm a big bad member of the Blood Wolf gang, come and get me' you wouldn't have to worry." With that she went into the room leaving me to escort myself to my classroom and think about what she had said.

"Sago, how's it hanging?" Haruki slung an arm around me as I sat down next to him.

"It was going just fine until you opened your mouth," I informed him, shoving his arm off my shoulder.

"Oooh, someone's at that time of the month," he said in a singsong tone of voice before I clobbered him with his own book, causing him to splutter in indignation. "What was that for?"

"You were bothering me." I stated this fact as I tipped back my chair and watched the teacher walk in, the usual permanent scowl plastered on her face.

"Look! I think Mrs. Aizawa's in a good mood! The muscle in her jaw is popping out and her eye's twitching," Haruki sarcastically pointed out.

"Which one of you little schmucks trashed my car!" she bellowed, covering the first row in spit and deafening the first two. Keeping my face expressionless I glanced over at Haruki out of the corner of my eye to find him doing the same thing, we quickly glanced back to the front of the class at the same time. "It was you, wasn't it!" She towered over a petrified boy and I could see steam shooting out of her ears as she commenced screaming herself a dangerous shade of red. Her use of curses was quite impressive, and I found myself filing away a few of the threats she spat out at the wide-eyed innocent, who had slipped into shock a while ago.

It took a good twenty minutes for her begin to finally start repeating herself and bring her rant to a close. Her chest was heaving as she backed off to go stand in front of the whole class, her brown eyes still glinting with the light of battle as she scanned us to see if she could spot any accomplices. She lingered a moment over me and Haruki before moving on, eventually deciding there were no other culprits and heading over to her desk where she grabbed a stack of papers. Then she stormed around the room passing out the papers, slamming them down hard so what was on them was hidden.

"Pop quiz, you may begin," she crowed as we all flipped them over and groaned before starting it. Since she was in a bad mood, she prowled the room to make sure no one cheated or talked, for if they did she'd shred their test and hit them upside the head.

When we had finished our test we were given a thick packet of long answer questions that was due tomorrow, and before she let us leave she went off on a long loud lecture about how we should act. Once out of the class Haruki turned to me and said,

"Who woulda thought the bat would get so bent out of shape over a few adjustments?"

Shaking my head I laughed with him as we headed off for our next class.

I updated now you have to review...gotta go and finish making my tomato soup...don't want it to burn...AHHH!