Greetings everyone and welcome to my last update for November, and quite possibly for the next month. I'll be rolling out tomorrow and hoping my company sends me West

To the meet and guts here...this chapter was a little hard to write. One, it exposes more history of Aleutian and the pivatol battle where Emi-La was killed. But only to what Darien knows about it. It is not the full story and I do make a mark in here about where the truth really does hide. It will be told...it needs to be told.

Disclaimer: I observe the rights of the original artist to their characters and arc, and am not seeking profit from them.

Enjoy.

Again: Sara, thank you for the kind words and motivation!

The Wayward Guardian

By: Mauser

Aleutian marveled at the strength he still possessed in his fingers. His veins and capillaries were on the verge of rupturing in his head and around his face, his dreads were itching from the loose sand gathering around the fur and skin. But he shoved all these irritations away and marveled at the strength he still had in his fingers. The impressive part was that all five digits of his right hand was all he was using to hold himself vertically, his eyes attentively focused on the fossilized sand of the rock foundation he was balancing upon. Consequently it was his mother's gifts that were giving him the hard time. Steadily swaying, hanging outward over his tail were his bolt-laced shoes, causing Aleutian to multitask his one handed balancing act.

He squirmed. He grunted. His center of gravity shifting amongst the trying resistence. The roll was coming, sensing the notion of his feet losing the needed counter-balance made it evident, and his fingers, spread apart like he were a pianist, slipping from their grip. But he was ready for the fall, moving his chin towards his chest to roll over his back through it, reminding himself to do the same with his tail.

To his surprise a pair of supporting hands rushed to his aid balance and renewed his fight with gravity and himself. Only the pressure to continue on wasn't lightened.

"I got'cha!" Locke fronted, his benevolent mood reflective in his tone. "You're doing good!"

Aleutian grunted once more, contemplating wether he should let his left hand do the holding while is right helped to maintain his balance. "I thought...this was done with my eyes closed?" he mustered to say.

Locke was still holding Aleutian's legs, of which his son's calf muscles were firm in muscle tone unlike the rest of him, when he twisted his head over to him. "Do you want to try?"

Aleutian's answer came quick. "Second thought, better not."

"Don't let your fears keep you from trying. In fact don't let anything stop you from at least trying."

"Will I have support?" Aleutian struggled to ask, straightening his head and seeing Archy looking at him with an upside down, urging gaze.

"Always, Aleutian," affirmed the fire ant.

The Fire Ant's pushing stare could've summoned the last drop of morale from the most defeated army history had ever known. And Archy knew deep down within his stare that Aleutian had been a part of that army. "But you're not defeated here. There is no defeat with us. Just lessons and the vibrant notion to carry on. It was what she wanted."

Life seemed to slip away from Archimedes when Aleutian closed his eyes. His grip to the boy, he remembered from his first meeting with him and Emi-La, seemingly became lost in the moment Aleutian's eyelids slammed on his caring blue eyes. Driving compassion he could still feel with his. The change was overwhelming for Archy.

It was suffocating for Locke. The joy he felt charging his soul equaling that of falling in love with Aleutian's mother in a time since gone. He thought long ago he could start over with Lara-Le. Her courtship to Wyn, however, was the judgement that things couldn't return for them. But not his son. Not with Aleutian. Yesterday saw the courage for both sides to forgive. Today was showing the reward for that courage. Tomorrow, Locke dreamed, would bring the privilege to be with his son. To love him with the love he had robbed Aleutian, Knuckles, his mother, and himself of. "...Second place to Dad's love..." Aleutian's hand written letter seemed to slam back into Locke's mind as he began to release his son's legs and let him balance himself on his own. Would he have been right? Would he have become bitter more so at his own family than the dead foes he had killed out of retribution and with his soul being lost? Of how enlightened Aleutian is here, nowm and how enlightened he was at six seasons, the letter had that very truth written all over it.

And even now, the pain they all have endured on the journey to bring his soul back to the scruples of his foundation, Locke was absolute in his happiness that the future a six year old had foretold had never come true. For he knew it would have.

On the tenth second of his eyes still closed and on his own, Aleutian kept his balance, only flipping perfectly back on his feet just out of tiredness. The honored looks from Locke and Archimedes were deafening to his soul, but outwardly, he stood rigid, waiting for a new trial. "Again?"

"If you want," Locke urged.

Twirling his fingers, Aleutian placed his hands on the flat rock again, forced his back into an arch and resumed his weight on his fingers, lifting his right hand this time for balance. His strength didn't hold his center of gravity very long this round. Again, Locke raced up and caught Aleutian by the feet.

"Concentrate further, lad," Archy instructed, his voice pushy.

"I'mtrying to maintain my balance!" came the young Guardian's strained reply.

Locke shook his head slightly. "You're thinking too much about the current trial and getting past it. Look around it. Look to what may come of beating it. Don't see it as an obstacle to overcome."

Aleutian held his breath, releasing it easily. "I remember."

"Then concentrate, Guardian," reenforced the Fire Ant. "Let your balance become second nature."

Breathing out through his mouth, Aleutian closed his eyes once more and began journeying to someplace where he could take his mind off the burning pressure in his fingers.

A warm smile shown on Locke's face, stepping back from Aleutian as his son began putting teachings into practice. The same teachings the same fire ant told him when he was nine...when his father left for Haven and he took on the duties as Guardian of the Floating Island. Archy was being firm, as he, but fair to Aleutian. He had done the same with Knuckles, and with him in the past, but Locke was smiling reflectively just for being there to see it in person for his son's sake. The current lesson afforded it; multitasking in the mind and in the soul. It was taught as a stepping stone from the material world to the elemental. That of the chaos powers.

Locke felt the cool movement of air around his fur and across his dreads. But the wind was still. Looking to Aleutian, he witnessed the boy lost in his feelings, finding his balancing pose with his eyes shut resembled the one thing he was sure Aleutian enjoyed the most as his gifts in life. And on the notion of air hitting his own face, Locke closed his eyes and felt for Aleutian's feelings. He smiled when he saw the ground was well below his son's feet. He smiled wider at the dancing waters to the east. He felt humbled at seeing Aleutian. His son was six again, perhaps older, his arms straight out as wings and his locks floating on the winds and thermals.

The clouds were lowering to meet him, Locke urging through his inner voice for Aleutian to go higher...higher.

"Higher!"

Tails whipped his means of lift and propulsion faster in a blur of yellow and white fury. His eyes were pensive, his smile bright with effort. Amber's vibrant voice was all he needed for motivation to go higher. "You sure?" he asked a bit too late.

She squeezed Tails' wrist harder, watching her feet dangle at the low treetops as he smirked her at excitement. "Do it!"

And the young fox delivered, whirling his twin tails faster and tilting his body forward to pick up speed. Over the passing wind he heard the tips of his tails bite the air as he powered and synchronized the counter rotation for their means of lift. The world became smaller, the trees became like thick mossy grass, the hills took on the appearance of green sand erosion. Amber took in every second of it with her childish eyes gleaming with excitment as maturity viewed the world so high up.

"Do you have this feeling all the time?" she shouted to Tails.

He banked gently to the right, changing from a northerly heading and turning south. "Most of the time!" he replied emphatically. "I really enjoy it in my plane just for the speed."

"I've never been outside of something and flying! This is so cool!"

Tails beamed his grin down to her. "My pal, Sonic, says the same thing!"

"They're all here."

Amadeus looked on at the bed of flowers before him. Darien's voice floated with the wavyness of the lilies and roses. Heather's eyes reflected like the yellow tulips with her honored stare. Merlin seemed like the clustered colors of the hole patch, not defining his emotions through expression except that he was humbled just by the presence of the beauty before them. The bed was equally long as it was wide, stretching north for it seemed possibly twenty feet from Amadeus' boots to the pasture it neatly bordered. But Amadeus couldn't grasp by what Darien meant by they were "all here."

"I think your missing a few species, my friend," he said as a come-on question for the correction he assumed would come.

A slight shake of his head, Heather wrapped inside his arms. She, too, looked to Amadeus with a glimmer of sadness. "No, General," Darien stated, "your heros and heroines are all here...your answers are all here, buried in the only garden I can grow. They helped me to grow life with theirs. They sacrificed theirs for your son's and for Knothole's.

"They saved the world entire."

Amadeus felt a crushing pride beat at his chest wall that coursed throughout his veins as the answer kept him silent, shifting his eye to Merlin and seeing his brother looking on with the same humbled expression as he.

"Was it hard putting them to rest?" Merlin asked for Amadeus.

Darien hissed at first from the pain of his diligent and anguishing self-appointed task, but he found the courage he needed to answer Merlin with an even tone in his voice. "Me and Heather came here four weeks after the liberation. Most of their bodies were already decomposing, besides being blown apart, and a few were...scavenged by the crows and the ungrateful. But yes, it was the most difficult thing I have ever accomplished."

Heather squeezed into his chest. "It was for all of us, Amadeus. Twenty-three we buried here. Twenty-three we watch over through our lives."

"We started out as forty," Darien iterated, " I think more, but from other operations we did to get our feet wet, those who I think got too close, and the initial trap to capture us and robotisize us–which almost succeeded–what was left from what I found at the ridge was all that stood in the way of Robotnick's march to Knothole."

"How do you know this since you weren't here?" Amadeus questioned evenly.

"I was told, and later what I saw after coming here rang true. It wasn't until much later that I found out it was Snively's doings and not all of Robotnick's. The feelings were there; a certain rabbit confirmed them for me."

"Does he still visit, by chance?" Merlin inquired briskly.

A shake of his head under a bitter face. "That guy comes and goes as he pleases with the wind. I sure would like to know where he comes from...so I can stay the hell away from him. But no, I haven't seen him in over two years."

Amadeus kept his head leveled at the garden, piecing everything in his burdened mind and trying to digest it and formulate how he was going to tell everything to Elias when he returned. That his friend deserves honors that all the Kingdom, in his militaristic eye, could never give with all the wealth they possessed. He let the notions pass for the moment, seeing his son and Amber appearing over the crest of the hill, giving him a reason to smile.

"Can it be fixed?" Aleutian asked dryly.

Locke sat down beside him on the hard surface, tucking his large boots under him. "Your ear?" Aleutian nodded passively. "I don't know. Depends on the damage. Depends on how you've healed."

Sighing, Aleutian opened his lips and closed his eyes. "My hearing is alright," he seemed to confess. Locke could see it in his longing eyes he was willing to confess more. "It hurts every now and then–"

"High pitch ringing?"

Another passive nod. "And the occasional headache that follows. Depends on the weather..." –the thought to add to this observation in his mind occurred to him but also the conclusion his father was going to hear it no matter what– "I really thought, though, it was me crying so much, dad. It was all I could tell myself at the time."

"You were depressed, Aleutian," Locke pointed out, however expressing a detrimental thought that he shouldn't have.

"I'm not out of the woods yet, either, father," Aleutian said under a whisper. "I feel it still burning inside me."

"Well, tell me, son. Help me put it out for you. Tell me what's hurting my son so I can comfort you."

Aleutian saw his father's pleading expression in the corner of his sight, but he never glanced over to feel the comfort from it. He kept his blue eyes forward, training them on the standing trees and the gaps they made going down the mountain side.

Their screams and war cries lashed at him in the suddenness of the afternoon wind. He couldn't put them down. Something in him told him he wouldn't; couldn't.

"Aleutian," his father begged fondly, "please, tell me. At least the things that worry you, that really haunt you--"

"It all does, dad." Tears, for once, were holding their place in his eyes. His face, however, was firm. "I want to walk, dad," he seemed to announce only to himself. "Is it alright–"

"Whatever it takes," Locke smiled, hoping to ease the pressure for his son. "I can walk with you."

Tightening his fist, the bow of his head signaled his intentions and Aleutian rose from the ground, helping his father up soon after...but without the same smile.

"He wanted to kill me, Amadeus. He thought I was one of them and he wanted to kill me."

"And that's what you meant by 'being pardoned by a king?'" Amadeus put forth, petting Tails' head as he stood in front of his father.

"And why I wondered if Mathias had chained him up," Darien added coldly. He stole a glance at his daughter, huddled beside Heather; both of them kneeling down at the garden and plucking a flower. "He came in the dead of night during the Day of Fury," he continued, shifting his heavy eyes to Amadeus again. "Him and that rain coat and hat. He was totally changed, Prower. He wasn't the same echidna I knew, and his gun and searing face at mine sealed the deal."

Stepping forward from his dad, Tails looked up to Darien with accusing eyes. "Amber said she made him stop. Is it true?"

"Tails, son, let us talk," Amadeus interjected.

"No, it's okay, Amadeus," Darien kneeled down over his knees, clasping his hands between them. The look he gave Tails was the same he had given to Amber when he explained something to her that mattered in life. Caring, thoughtfulness. "She did, along with Pal...stopped him from pulling the trigger, Miles."

"I don't believe you," Tails said almost with a snap, but he digressed his voice almost in the same quickness. "I know he's in pain, but I didn't see a murderer in him."

"Tails, son, please."

Darien eyed Amadeus once more. "It's okay, Prower. Let him speak."

"Well, he did kill Blackjack," Amadeus revealed.

Darien brushed it off but still took note of it. "He's not a murderer, Tails. I'm still alive, and what he said to me afterwards showed promise in him. But you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"What?" Tails asked, pressing.

His brows revealed his pardon. "That I to hug Amber like I never had before in her life...and I did."

Clasping his arm, Darien leaned into Tails under a inquiring smile. "What have you seen in him, young man? I feared if I had met him again, he wouldn't have given me the same compassion as that night. Please tell me I'm wrong?"

Amadeus waited for his son to speak. Merlin as well.

Tails blinked towards the ground and rose his head to a wanting Overlander. "He's no murderer, Darien. He saved a lot of his people...and I helped him."

Under past circumstances he would have wanted to walk alone. Under current circumstances he needed the company. Locke was the right mix; to bad for the pack strapped across his shoulders. Turning to him, Aleutian released his tight face to him.

"I never went back to bury them, dad," Aleutian said after a quarter mile of silence. "Is it injustice that I didn't?"

Locke thought hard for a moment, teetering on wether to be honest or sugar-coat his response. His conclusion was of his son's wants. Truthfulness. "For friends, and I guess for you, comrades, yes. A cast off of some kind needed to be done in their honor."

"Is that why they haunt me, then?" Aleutian asked, stepping over a tree limb and caring not of the strain it took to climb northward up the hill.

"That, I wish I could explain for you, but I can't." Locke watched Aleutian's face drop. "What happened to you? What honors do I have to give to you that are deserving?"

A disgusted shake of his head sunk Locke's heart to his stepping boots. "None."

His anger seemed to get the best of him. Locke, for reasons he couldn't explain, stopped his son's walk with a slap at his chest. "None? Don't give me that!" Aleutian's face was trembling with surprise and punishment. "We talked about this yesterday."

Anger twisted across his face. "Yes...and you can stop wasting your breath!"

Locke pushed him forward along with his bearing face. "I'm not taking that anymore, ALEUTIAN! Not with those scars across your face!–"

"A GRENADE, ALRIGHT!"

A moment passed between the two deep breathing Guardians, Locke shaken to his very core.

"No, it's not alright!" Locke barked out at last. "Do I need to keep asking over and over again?"

"No, dad," Aleutian trembled out.

"Then tell me what happened two years ago! So far your brother has been through a lot more than what you are letting on, but your appearance is telling me something different. You know he was robotosized to stop Sonic?"

"Yes!"

"Then why didn't you come home for that?"

"I was out on an operation. I didn't know until I got back."

"So you figured he could handle himself?" Locke suggested.

Aleutian's response came after a long breath. "No..."

"Then why did you stay away from us?" Locke pushed.

The slow shake of his head told Locke his questions were wrong. "I was going to come home after my last cruise..." His sigh leaped from his whimpering mouth as a pant. "She made me promise on our way in."

"Then?" his father stammered.

"Mathias!..." spoke Archimedes with an intake of air through his psyche. "It was Drake, Locke...He was worried."

"Sir Drake had his suspicions," Darien said, still holding onto Tails' arm. "Told them to Aleutian along with his reluctancy to send the better part of his crew. Your old friend, Amadeus, General Berdan, happened to be good acquaintances with Mathias."

"You mean adversary, don't you?" Amadeus interjected. Berdan's square, pudgy face resonated in his mind. Coming from a background almost as academic and prosperous as his, the commander of the Overlander's tank and supporting infantry brigade was more than a stitch in his side–more like a pulled muscle that kept ripping open after every call of defeat... after every long casualty list that followed. It was now, and the only other few times Amadeus actually gave credit to Julian Kintobor–before the take over. Julian swung victory in their favor. "Acquaintance to Mathias?" he said, baffled.

Darien's smile was cast to Miles. "He admired your boy and Knothole. So much so that when Richfield gave what I considered to be baited-intelligents–and Mathias the wiser out of the both of us–Berdan took it at face value and I did too, just because we really wanted to do our part and end Robotnick's reign.

"Berdan wanted peace at the very end, Amadeus. Not more war."

"He wasn't a traitor?" Amadeus questioned, still baffled.

"Hardly...he was the one who was betrayed. I don't know how they killed him but they blamed it on one of Robotnick's SWAT bots entering in the compound and killing him and Jeremiah. Soon after, everything went down hill. I saw training go by the wayside, and Aleutian and his Grenadiers getting some really shoddy orders." Darian held a brief pause. "You know that boy can lead?"

"So I've heard," Amadeus said grandly.

"And I've seen it. With Mathias' help I might add," Tails explained.

Darien looked to Tails once more. "Do you know if they are born that way? The Guardians?"

Tails smiled with pride on behalf of Knuckles and now Aleutian. "I think they're bred for it!"

"...She said what?"

Locke saw Aleutian's eyes widen from Julie-Su's observation. "She said she'd go to battle with you anytime."

"Just with a better head," Archy concluded, smiling with his arms crossed.

Aleutian wanted to brace against a tree, but he couldn't find one nearby him, surprisingly. "I didn't do much, except yell at them a little harshly and did my best to get things going."

"Apparently it left an impression on her, Aleutian. And she is very hard to please at times," Archimedes elaborated.

"How did Mathias treat you?" Locke asked next, wondering if the Dingo rode him hard.

"Like Chester, but also like his crew when I came aboard," Aleutian answered right off. "I did about everything on the boat and I had to just to be a part of it. I saw the Plunger as a means to keeping my word to Knuckles."

"And helped Knothole," reminded Archy.

"They were still invaded," Aleutian whispered.

Locke would have none of it. "They weren't defeated, son. You apparently gave your all and they got to have a chance to take Robotnick down in the very end."

Aleutian rubbed his face, feeling his scar through his thick glove. He wanted to change the subject but he knew Locke wasn't going to let up. One part of him couldn't fault him for knowing, however, the wounds he still felt, and when he looked at himself in the mirror, the ones that kept visibly reminding him, he couldn't bear to reflect the horrors he lived through just out of fear he would live through them again. And many times he did in his sleep.

He couldn't tell...he'd come this far to defeat his depression, and he didn't want to lose again and in the course, lose his family he needed so desperately.

"That book I pulled from my shelf the other day?"

Locke's nod was somber. "Yes, the one with no title and no author."

"I've never read it, dad. I only told of what I did once, and that was under hypnosis from Lopper. He filled in the gaps for me, but deep down I still felt the pain and anguish, I fear it may open it up to it again. So if you don't mind...I'd rather not tell it."

"Can we read it?" Locke asked understandingly

"Give me time, dad. Just give me time. I was really wanting to give it back to him. Just knowing it is with me, haunts me."

A tear ceased to lap at his face, wiping it away while it was premature to the sun. What came of it though was still guilt. "Mother..." he whispered. "I said somethings to her, dad, I really want to take back."

"Like what?" Locke asked, feeling he already knew the answer.

Aleutian continued his walk, feeling the urge to do it to help ease his mind further. "That I wanted to keep my scars...that I had my reason to let them stay."

"Well, do you?"

Shaking his head, he felt his heart beat a little stronger with his conviction he was finding what he wanted to really say. His shoes and gloves were his guiding light to pursue them. His crest the reason. "No...and if she wants them cleaned up–if she says they can, then I want it."

Locke stopped, causing Aleutian to do the same. Looking on at him, sizing him up for what seemed a second chance to do so in a new light, he gave an affirming nod and stepped closer to him. "If it's what you want..."

"For mom, I do, dad. If she believed in me for all this time, then what am I doing is hurting her with my hollow reasons. King Max was correct dad, and I too after looking back on it." Locke and Archimedes watched as Aleutian shook his head, but keeping a fortitude stare at him. "These are not my medals."

"And not your shame either, lad," Archy said, proudly.

Aleutian's bow was charged like his face. "I want my lock whole again, too."

Locke's voice grew eery. Aleutian's request beckoned it. "Your asking for the Dark Legion on that end. I don't know."

"Okay," his son said, "we'll see, how's that?"

Locke smiled. "We'll see."

"...You tell him that I'm sorry, Tails," Darien said, his request echoing through his firm squeeze on Tails' arm. "You tell him it was my fault..."

"Darien?..."

Heather's calling voice seemed to only add to his grief. His face sunk, cowered to the ground but he still managed to hold onto Tails.

Crying...a grown man's cry was something Amadeus saw as cruelty from the world that caused it. He, himself, had succumbed to the aching despair once he was returned to flesh and blood but on another world and without his new born son. The hostility of war which separated Mobian from Overlander, in Amadeus' mind, were forever tied now with grief of a false promise of total uniting. Lost was his indifference; gained was his sympathy.

"Please ask for his forgiveness on my behalf," the Overlander harshly cried at the ground, Heather's arms clasping around him. "Please..."

It stopped as suddenly as it began, his crying. He worked his head up, tugged from his wife, and now his daughter, and fumbled at his pocket, shaking his fingers up as he picked something brilliantly silver from it and offered it to Tails.

It was a platinum ring.

"Give this to him, Miles," Darien shunted under his quivering lungs. "Give this to him as my token to live on...to never have to worry...to come back. Tell him I accept my pardon to live with my suffering comrades and to tend to their peace. And tell him I loved her just as much as him."

And with his request that seemed more as a promise to Tails, Darien placed the ring into his hand and rolled Miles' fingers over it.

"Please, Tails...for my friend."

Tails didn't feel it until now, but his own lungs were heaving under his emotions. A soft whisper was all he could manage. "I will, sir. I will take it to him."

Under the afternoon sun, his domain was splintered in the shadows from the supports of his atrium window. To lounge and gaze out it wasn't in his interest this time. Typing faster was. Watching the screen in front of him, it's white simulated paper program becoming dotted with letters, while the second screen's cursor to his right moved at a quicker speed than he was hammering, Snively twitched his lips after another thought leaped from his fingers, to the key board and to the cipher program in front of him.

The status report came late and was the main reason he was working harder than he should to send off the next line of orders. Assuming what he thought was going to be an easy covert plan and operation to execute did come with its problems. One subject was barely dead while the other was trying to produce more blood...and not on her own. The girl was strong, he noted but not commendably. It came as a surprise after watching the male rip off an Eggbot's arm and use its sword against itself.

But that was enough of the praising; more with the problem.

"Two!..." he snapped at himself. Only two were operational while the others were on stand-by for more of her blood! He didn't want this. He wanted a precise strike at key areas and at key times. Not TWO operational units at his disposal! Flicking at his nose, he simmered himself down and used his weapon of knowledge over the weapons he did have, literally, at his fingertips. He still wanted them to hunt in pairs. He still wanted them to brandish his power and gain more approval and if so be it, full cooperation from his uncle. "LACY!...Ha...I can do more than just be a stool for you to eat your lunch on while I do all the work!"

But he sighed for patience, thinking harder now on what to do. Could he wait? Possibly, but Eggman's other plans had accelerated recently: the Eggfleet was getting close to full strength, an old but newly designed Delta-bot was rolling off the assembly lines and getting the last of the upgrades before their deployment, and lastly, Eggman was becoming impatient.

"Such as I."

And so what to do? Wait...or send off?

The blinking cursor was calling to him, hitting his eyes like a bad addiction to a vice. Should he act on it? Will his wanting approval be rewarded if he does.

The temptation was suffocating, and he had to breathe. His fingers were as if they were his lungs, punching the letters on the keyboard in a ballet of plastic rhyme. They flashed in his mind, his conceived orders, his digits pounding them out faster than he could organize them. But he did, and in the two minutes, he completed the message, then he sat back intently, scanning the page on the screen directly in front of him while shifting to the one at his right. The cipher was brilliant, the message four whole paragraphs longer in a language and phonetic characters not even the highest of Mobian intelligence could speak if they even had the will to try.

Snively checked the satellite frequencies, chose one that seemed to be available, punched in the destination, and pressed a simple looking green button that had SEND written on top of it.

Now all he could do was lean back in his chair...and wait for a house to crumble.

Okay...I do hope that you will all remember the ring. Now off of that subject...whew!...talk about a lot of split scenes and shortly spaced. But, to me, I couldn't tell one part of the story without the source being a part of it. What I really wanted to do, and possibly will do when I get to revising this after it is done: I wanted to have a little more conflict with Aleutian and Locke and what the father wasn't going to accept from his son here on out. No more difiance, no more silence. But I guess we established that.

Please, I hoped you all enjoyed, and I sincerely am glad you are all my audience.

Mauser out.

Hey, Sara...PM me!