Disclaimer: I own little within. Stupid, meaningless phrase not available. Please try again later.

I'm sorry for slow updates. I do weird things like send in chapters and then forget I have them. School is a huge amount of work right now, since my school seems to think I can handle a college course AND other high level classes when I'm a high school freshman (for some demented reason).

"Uhhh…" Pete looked at his fingernails, then at the little red droplets that had begun to decorate the ground. "…Oops?"

"'Oops'? 'Oops'? That's all you gotta… 'oops'?" Joe tossed him a towel. "Wipe your face. Wipe all of the 'oops' off of it. I'll oops your ass one of these days."

Andrew started to laugh.

"What… is so funny?" Joe demanded of him, clearly pissed.

"You… you just… and he… with the… you were all 'oops'… I mean you were just freaking with the 'oops' there…" Andrew gasped between laughs. "It's just… it's just… it's just funny, that's all."

Joe looked angry. Pete looked confused. And Patrick looked like he had been without sleep for days on end.

Pete laughed a bit as well. "I guess that was kinda… funny." Patrick gave a small laugh and Joe crossed his arms and made a deeper scowl. Pete continued to laugh until a drip sound interrupted them. "Uhhh..." Pete wiped his chin, where the blood was falling. "This time I say… oh, fudgie-wudgie?"

"WHAT THE-" Andrew erupted into hysterical laughter.

Joe continued in vain to fight his smile as Patrick laughed out loud. "Dude, where'd you even GET that expression?"

"I don't know," Pete giggled.

Instead of a dripping sound, this time their rare happy moment was interrupted by a knock at their door. After everybody caught their breath and Pete began wiping his face, Patrick looked out the window. He turned to Pete and whispered to him, "There's a car out there, but I can't see anybody from this angle-"

"Just answer it!" Pete tossed him a crossbow gun for 'just in case'.

With a hesitant hand, Patrick opened the door, expecting to find Sorel's sneering face or The Baron's scary sister. Instead, what he found was better and worse at the same time.

"Hey, mister, I need to borrow some gas. It's all night-ish outside, and we're all OUT!" Claire smiled at him and put her hands on her hips, flipping her blonde hair back. "You look familiar. Have I taken advantage of you before?"

"So now you're going off on your own?" Sorel's leather jacket-clad arms were crossed as scowled at his hired help.

"We know what we're doing," Jared insisted. His crew was already waiting for him, no bags packed. Their swords were the only visible belongings.

"Damn straight, you BETTER be!" Sorel growled. "If I don't find you three on the outskirts of the town named 'Purity' in a month and a half and it turns out you're still undead, then so help me I will-"

"Rip our heads off, shove them brutally back on, then rip them back off, shove them back on, then stake us?" Jared finished.

"You ought to be thinking that burning will play a part in that!" Sorel warned.

"Fine. If I do not come back to you with four dazed, possibly injured, uh, no… PROBABLY injured but alive men whose names are Pete, Patrick, Andrew, and, uh… uhhh… J… Jacob-"

"They call him Joe… so that's probably his name…"

"Yeah, that one, then you can reduce my pay for the delay. And even then, I will not stop."

"I would think not."

Meanwhile, Gerard and Mikey sat side by side, both leaning on Gerard's motorcycle. Mikey's was off to the side.

They were silent watching Sorel argue with Jared, until Mikey finally spoke up. "Do you think Sorel's a bad leader? Do you think this is a bad group?"

"Mikey, shut up!" Gerard snarled, fearing that Sorel would hear. But Mikey did of course just voice what Gerard asks himself fifty times a day.

"All he does is boss us around. Just because we're scared of him."

"What's wrong with you? Are you trying to get us killed?!" Gerard said, simultaneously confirming what his brother said. "If Sorel hears us talking mutiny like this, there will be no questions asked!"

"We can't do this forever!" Mikey hissed back, his voice rising from the whisper Gerard was insisting on. "Is Sorel going to start up a new gang or what?! He keeps saying he's looking for new recruits, but… he's a friggin' alcoholic! All he does is sit around and drink and eat colorful candy!"

Gerard angled his head to one side. "I thought you loved happy hour!"

"I do…" Mikey looked to the side longingly. "I… like it with those bounty hunters. They're fun. And there's more of us! But now they're gone and it's back to just the three of us!" Then, Mikey put on a pleading, slightly saddened look. "Come ON, Gerard! I don't want to stick around here if it's just the three of us forever! I'm not happy like this! Neither are you! Even HE probably isn't!" Mikey nodded towards Sorel on the last note. "You can't honestly tell me you like happy hour now better than you did with Elisa and Gabe and Brandon and… those other people!"

Before Gerard could answer, Sorel shouted after them. "It's midnight! Happy hour!" He was already one beer away from being drunk (ALREADY) and the bounty hunters were gone.

Gerard forced a smile to Mikey. "You heard the man. Happy hour!"

"Fine," Mikey followed Gerard over to where Sorel and comfort in a bottle were.