A/N: Wow, this took a long time, sorry. Hope you like, this is another chapter I had fun writing.

CHAPTER TEN

Even though I should be taking it easy with the exercise at this point, I spend most of the next week at the gym, on the track...generally out of the house. Wood and Amelia aren't fighting anymore and I'm happy about that, but they are just disgustingly cute. Emphasis on disgusting. It's hard to be around them without rolling my eyes constantly. So as soon as Rock gets home, I jog over to the shelter, not caring how much work they'll give me when I get there. Wood and Amelia don't even notice when I leave.

Sure enough, we're on dog walking duty again. This time though, instead of three different dogs, I get one - the aggressive one that I had talked to before. We take them down into the woods again and let them sniff around.

"Be nice…" I yank on the dog...on the Nonextant's collar as it starts to growl at one of the other dogs. It looks up at me and wags its stubby tail apologetically. "Have you had any luck finding him a home?"

"What?" Rock blinks, as if coming out of a stupor. "Oh. No, not yet. We did move him to a regular pen though and he gets along okay with the other dogs. Besides, you said he's a Nonextant, right? So he should be released into the wild, not adopted out as a pet."

"You're right," I concede. Even if I do have kind of a knack for understanding Nonextants, Rock will always be the animal expert.

Now he's silent again, staring off into space. He's got that kind of wistful, vague expression on his face and I can tell he's thinking about a girl. Honestly, the way he acts, you'd think he wants to become a professional brooder. But I am his friend… "You okay?"

He sighs melodramatically and drums his fingers on his collarbone. "Eh."

I lift an eyebrow. "What happened?"

"Nothing. C'mon, we gotta get back."

"Uh uh," I step in front of him, blocking his path. "Come on, man, we haven't talked in a while now. What's wrong?"

He sighs again, wrapping one of the leashes around his wrist. For the first time, I notice how tan he's gotten. I think his hair's different too...it's really spiky. "It's kind of complicated..."

"Go ahead."

He takes a deep breath. "Okay, so you know how Claire was volunteering here? She and I were talking a lot and hanging out and...stuff happened, but before we could really talk about it, she went to camp. Then I went on that cruise and I met Priss - that's short for Priscilla - and she seemed like such an ice queen, but she really wasn't, she was gorgeous and um...powerful? She had kind of a mean streak, but I've never met anyone like her and she gave me her number and she doesn't live that far away! So now Claire's coming back and I've been texting Priss and I don't know what to do!"

I pretend to look concerned. "Um...talk to Claire about the stuff that happened? Things will work out."

He looks down. "I hope so."

"Hey, you brought this upon yourself," I start walking back towards the shelter. "With great animal magnetism comes great responsibility."

He smiles a little bit. "It's hard to understand when you've only got one girl, huh?"

I stiffen. I'm not sure why...I feel like there's either a jab at me or Melissa coming and I hate when he does that. "Yeah, well, you've had plenty of practice juggling two girls."

That shuts him up. For a while at least. When we do start talking again, it's about safer topics like baseball and the marathon.

I stick around the shelter for a few more hours, helping where I can and watching where I can't. Rock walks me home, talking a little bit more about his girl problems. Two girls and it all ends tragically…

Melissa owes me ten bucks.

(-o-)

Only one week left.

Seven days.

I. Am. Freaking. Out.

I'm trying to relax as much as I can, but it doesn't help that much...I'm just glad Wood and Amelia aren't fighting anymore, I don't think I could take that stress on top of everything else. Even hanging out with Melissa doesn't really help me unwind - she makes my heart beat twice as fast as it usually does anyway. Mostly I read and snack on vegetables. I'm so stressed, I'm done with three books in two days and I've eaten so many carrots, I'm surprised my skin isn't orange.

Freaking out.

"You're gonna be fine." Melissa soothes, running her hand across my neck. She's trying to give me a shoulder rub, but to be honest, she's pretty bad at it. She keeps rubbing the places that don't hurt and completely ignoring my knotted muscles. But I'd never tell her that.

I sigh. "I know. I just...maybe it's the waiting? Like the anticipation or something. I don't know...I'm just not good with pressure."

She kisses the top of my head. "You're gonna be fine."

So three days pass like that - hanging out with Melissa, reading and snacking convulsively and generally going to pieces.

"Carbs," Wood reminds me for the hundredth time, snatching my celery stick and replacing it with a piece of bread.

"Yeah, yeah," I take a bite out of the crust absentmindedly, surprised for a second that it doesn't taste like celery. I finish it just as I finish the chapter I'm reading and then lay back on the floor and just stare at the ceiling.

Wood throws a pillow at me. "Go for a walk!"

I shrug.

"He's right, go out somewhere," Amelia pipes up from the couch.

I wave my arm lazily.

"Dash," Wood stands over me with his hands on his hips. "Get out of here and do something so I can be alone with my wife or so help me, we'll do it on the couch right now."

"Eww..." I shudder and scramble to my feet, patting my thigh to call Tanya. She raises her head sleepily and stands up, stretching, before coming to join me at the doorway. I shake my fist at Wood; "You win this round, but I'll be back!" and slam the door dramatically.

Tanya yawns.

I start walking aimlessly down the street, hands in my pockets. It's super muggy and a little hard to breathe, even at a slow pace, so no way am I going to run. Tanya's no better - she usually likes the heat, but now she's panting pretty heavily and her tails are dragging behind her.

"Hey," I glance at her. "Wanna go to the gym again?"

She shoots me a dark look, ruined slightly by the fact that her tongue is hanging out of her mouth.

"I promise I won't let you get creamed again. Besides, Jared won't be there, last time was just a coincidence. I just think it'd be fun to explore the place a little bit more."

She looks suspicious, but moves her shoulders in a kind of a shrug and keeps walking.

What I'm actually wondering about the gym is if there are any Nonextants still there, trapped in those balls with no one to let them out or take care of them. If nothing else, I'd like to rescue them, maybe learn a little bit more about them...but it would be awesome if I could find a new one, something that wouldn't get get flattened under some water. Not a replacement for Red or Tanya, just an...addition.

As I push open the doors, it occurs to me how weird it is that they aren't locked. Used to be that the only way you could get in was if someone on the inside opened the door for you. Maybe the lock broke or something.

It's not as stuffy as I thought it would be - in fact, it's nice and cool and not humid at all. Tanya stops panting and starts sniffing around as I walk down the corridor, taking in things I never really did before. When I came here for the fights, I kept my head down and tried not to look at anythings and last time I was here, I was otherwise engaged, so I notice a lot of things for the first time. There are a lot of doors on either side of the passage leading away from the arena and every time I come to one, I open it and take a look inside. Most are just abandoned storage closets, now filled with trash and rubble, but the third or fourth one in makes me stop in the doorway and stare.

The room is completely filled with red and white spheres. They're littered on the floor, filling up shelves, spilling out of open cabinets...though they're not all red and white. Most are, but several have a bluish top with red stripes and a couple have a black top with a yellow design. The only part of the room that's not completely covered with them is a mat in the far corner, where a black shape is curled up.

Tanya comes up from behind me and squeezes past my legs in order to sniff the spheres. The movement jars me out of my trance and I shake my head to clear it.

The black shape on the bed lifts its head and I recognize its red eyes and yellow-ringed ears...it's one of Jared's Nonextants. Tanya's fur stands up and she starts to growl, but the black creature just blinks and yawns, apparently not threatened at all. I move a little closer, trying not to step on any of the balls and look at it. "If you're here, does that mean...Is Jared...sleeping here?"

"Living here."

I whirl around, though I already know who it is. Jared's leaning against the doorway, smirking and acting very chill for a person finding a rival and their pet in his bedroom. Not that I'm complaining.

"Don't you have a race to train for, Daniel?" He crouches down and picks up a few of the spheres, loading his arms with about five or six of them.

I ignore the question. "You're living here?"

"Yeah, my grandpa died while I was in juvie, so they sent me to a home." He straightens up and walks out of the room, down the hallway, not even seeming to care about leaving me alone with a room full of things to steal.

I catch up to him, Tanya trailing nervously behind. "So why aren't you at the home?"

"Because it sucked," He keeps walking and then turns into the arena, which is slightly hotter than the rest of the building because of the giant hole in the wall. Then he sets down all of the balls on the floor carefully except one, which he presses and opens.

There's a flash of light and what looks like a small, blue sheep with black and gold stripes on its tail and ears appears in front of us. Like Tanya and Jared's big Nonextant, it's obvious it's been used for fighting from the scars and missing pieces of fur.

"Whoa…" I kneel down and reach a hand out to it, but it startles and skitters away behind the stands, peeking nervously out at me.

"She doesn't really like people," Jared doesn't look at me and opens another ball. This one produces a smallish giraffe, with an odd looking face pattern on its tail. He keeps opening the balls one by one like that until there are five animals in front of him and one still cowering behind the seats. A couple I've seen before, but most of them are brand new to me. There's a purple snake which I've seen before and a pink kind of rodent with a vacant expression on its face, but also a rabbity thing with a big ring on its stomach and a tiny blue elephant with red on its ears and trunk.

Once they're all out, Jared turns to me for the first time. "I train with them."

This guy has a knack for giving the least amount of information possible in a sentence. "That's cool," I watch Tanya out of the corner of my eye as she sniffs the snake, jumping back as it hisses. "Where did they all come from?"

"They were left here after the gym shut down," He makes a clicking noise and the sheep cautiously inches back towards us. "They were hidden so the cops couldn't find them and no one bothered to come back and get them."

"Except you."

"Yeah."

We don't talk for a minute, watching the Nonextants canter and scamper and slither, enjoying their freedom of movement out of the balls. There are a million questions I could ask, but I know he wouldn't answer. Still - how does he get food? Does he steal it? Is he still in school? Is the home looking for him? I wonder, but I stay quiet.

"Is it hard to take care of them all?" I ask finally, after watching the elephant stumble over the slow moving pink thing.

"Yeah, but it's not like I've got much else to do, you know?" He puts his hands behind his head and stretches. "Besides, they help me back, you know, by training with me."

I nod. "You know, I was originally coming here to see if there were any that needed help," Something compels me to be honest and I add, "And because it would be cool to have one that wasn't all fiery and stuff, since one blast of water can take them down so easily."

He gives me an appraising look, arms still stretched above his head. Then he lowers them, stretching them across his chest instead. "You're a good trainer and I'd let you have one, but you should know about types first."

"Oh...okay." I feel like I should thank him for the compliment, but he goes on before I can say anything else.

"Water is good against fire, that's pretty obvious. Rock and ground types are also good against fire. Electric is good against water, but weak against rock and ground...grass is good against both, though. A grass type could take down pretty much anything fire wasn't good with and vice versa, though if you were fighting another fire type, you wouldn't be able to take them down that easily."

It sounds like he's reciting from a textbook and my head is spinning from trying to remember it all. "So...I should get a grass type?"

"Maybe," He switches arms. "Or electric. Some people don't rely on type advantage, you could just train up the ones you have. It's not good to have too many."

I snort.

He grins. "Yeah, I know. I try not to take out more than six at a time, though. More than that and it gets pretty chaotic."

The giraffe butts my hand with its head and I pat its neck, reaching down to scratch Tanya's ears so she doesn't get jealous. "What kind of grass types do you have?"

"Listen, think about it for a while, okay?" He pushes his hair out of his eyes. "The marathon's in a few days, you shouldn't change up your routine or anything right now."

It is so weird to see Jared acting like this, all friendly and supportive. I guess he's not actually that bad a guy, just really really competitive. Besides, he's probably pretty lonely, not having many friends that aren't dangerous animals. "Yeah, I'll sleep on it." I give the giraffe one last pet and then start walking backwards towards the exit, Tanya trotting after me. "Thanks a lot!"

He smirks and shouts after me, his voice echoing off the walls. "Smell ya in four days!"

Four days...