AN: Um…hi! Remember me? I know I haven't updated this story in like forever and I'm really sorry. I have no intentions of abandoning this story but I couldn't bring myself to write or edit anything for it. I had the worst case of induced writer's block ever. Hopefully, I'll be able to get a few more updates in now that the writer's block is mostly gone. If anyone is still reading this story, I thank you for sticking with it. Remember…reviews, good bad, or indifferent, are always appreciated!

Disclaimer: I own nothing except the characters I made up and their Real World alter egos. I don't own The Matrix, The Animatrix, or any of that cool stuff. I'm broke and I just finished graduate school for my Master's Degree. All I own are my Pointe shoes.

"…who we are
Has brought us here
And I'm not running from tonight
And I'm not running from tonight
And where we are standing
Is the beginning
And I'm not running from tonight
I'm not running from tonight…" (From "The World Awaits" by Corey Crowder)

"How are you liking Zion so far, Neo?" one of Pixie's friends, Aisling he thought, asked, as she leaned back in one of the mismatched chairs around Pixie's table.

After bantering back and forth with each other for a short time, sharing recent gossip and avoiding whatever Wheeler had done to bring them all to Pixie's home, attention had turned to Neo. Pixie had paused, worried about what they were going to ask him but their questions seemed to be steering clear of what he'd done in the Matrix. Not that what Neo had accomplished, destroying an Agent, hadn't gotten around and into the general population. Everyone knew the story, of course. Pixie was just concerned that her friends would want to hear the story firsthand from Neo, himself.

"It's big," Neo started, before Ngaio cut him off.

"Yeah, we all had that same thought when we first saw this place. It's really huge," she put in. "When I first got here, looking over the railing made me nervous. I use to worry I was going to fall over and down to the bottom level."

"So, other than big, what do you think of our fair city?" Adoh inquired, half looking at Neo and half watching Pixie and Wheeler who were busy across the room.

It was more Wheeler who was busy than Pixie. He was pulling things out of a high cabinet while she stood by, trying to help out as best she could. Pixie, once she was sure her friends weren't going to do something stupid--- Though she was keeping her ears opened, just in case. ---had wandered off to one side of the room. Wheeler had quickly followed her, though he seemed glad about the distraction. Though Neo didn't know the group of teens all that well and had never been great at reading people when he was in the Matrix, he was pretty sure Wheeler wasn't exactly on the best of terms with Conall. The way the two of them were acting didn't exactly give the newly freed man the idea that they were in any way, shape, or form friends.

"Food!" Adoh exclaimed, before Neo could start speaking again. "Please tell me that you didn't make this yourself, Pix."

Pixie tired to look offended but all she managed to do was blush and duck her head as she and Wheeler put plates of food on the table. Neo wasn't sure what any of the food was but it seemed appeared to be edible. Probably tasty too, considering the way the honey haired boy dove into it.

"No, I didn't make this," Pixie, sheepishly answered. "Rain packed it up for me when she came here with Eli last night. She made dinner for Wheeler and I and gave me the leftovers along with some other stuff she made."

"Our Pixie," Aisling pointed out, matter of factly. "Is pretty much the smartest person in all of Zion, in case you haven't noticed. She probably hasn't told you but she has a genius level I.Q. which is why she was able to get a job on major ship straight out of the Academy."

"But," Ngaio added. "Pix can't cook to save her life which is kind of funny. That way, until Wheeler came along, she only used her kitchen as her lab. She use to go running to Rain when she had to eat."

Noticing Neo's slightly baffled expression, Pixie sighed and explained, "Rain's my foster mom and I don't go running to Rain when I have to eat, Ngaio! She says it's alright for me to come up and visit her as often as I want."

"But the food thing has to be a bonus," Adoh put in. "Aisling and I may not agree on a lot of things but we do agree that Rain is a better cook than our mom. Just don't let our mom hear you say that."

"We'd never hear the end of it," Aisling finished.

"But if Rain is always cooking for her, how'd she figure out she can't cook?" Conall wanted to know.

Pixie blushed a very bright shade of red and, suddenly, found her attention drawn to one of her experiments. Conall hadn't been part of the group--- He and Aisling had been on an "off" in their very "on-again, off-again" relationship. ---when Pixie had discovered her inability to cook. She had nothing against Conall but didn't exactly feel like sharing that particular story with him. Mostly because it was one her more embarrassing Real World stories and she wasn't exactly comfortable with him knowing it.

Though she knew she could, in theory anyway, trust her friends, there were still things Pixie didn't like sharing with them. Within her group of friends, only Wheeler knew about her past…issues…in the Matrix. She hadn't--- Still didn't, truth be told ---felt ready to tell everyone else that part of her story. Maybe she would someday but that day wasn't now and didn't seem to be coming up anytime soon.

Where Conall was concerned, because he was new to their little group and was only part of the group when he was going out with Aisling, Pixie was still wary about trusting him. She was sure Aisling had told him things about her, since he seemed to know her pretty well yet she knew next to nothing about him, but exactly what Conall knew about her remained a mystery to Pixie. An embarrassing story about herself, she wasn't going to willingly share with him.

"Pix, aren't you going to answer Conall's question?" Aisling wanted to know.

Sighing, and knowing that Aisling wasn't going to leave her alone until she said something, Pixie answered, "Recipes and I don't get along, that's how I figured out I couldn't cook. No matter how much I tell myself it's like chemistry, I still can't follow a recipe."

Shaking her head in the general direction of her dark haired friend, Aisling explained, "What Pixie really meant to say is that she invited all of us over once when we were all on leave together and she wound up making something--- I don't even remember what it was. ---that tasted so bad we all had to go down to the Officer's Mess to eat."

"Wasn't that the time she made herself sick?" Ngaio put in. "And Wheeler had to take her back to Rain's."

"Leave Pix alone, guys," Wheeler stated, trying to change the course of the conversation and get it away from Pixie and her misadventure in her kitchen. "Everyone makes mistakes. It's what makes us human, right?"

"At least Pix learned from that mistake and never decided to cook for us again," Aisling laughed. "In case you didn't know, Neo, our Pixie is very thick headed and hates making mistakes."

"That's because she's not use to making them," Adoh stated. "No joke, this girl is smarter than like all of us put together…but you probably knew that already since you've worked with her."

Pixie was almost sure that Adoh was going to say "because you're the One" and she was infinitely glad that he hadn't decided to say that. Actually, to tell the whole truth, she was very surprised the twins were managing to keep themselves in check, especially Aisling. Never one to hold her tongue--- She'd always said what she wanted when she wanted to. ---Aisling was being surprisingly well mannered around Neo. Maybe it had something to do with the fact Aisling firmly believed Neo was the one or because Conall was with her at the moment, Pixie wasn't entirely sure. She wasn't going to question the situation either since, as of late, her fortunes hadn't been all that great. A little thing like Aisling holding her tongue was a huge thing.

"He probably doesn't know, Adoh," Ngaio countered. "Pix doesn't like to bring up that little fact…she never has even from back in our days at the Academy."

"Remember how hard it was to get her to help us with our work back then?" Aisling wanted to know. "Not because she didn't want to help but because she was afraid we'd get mad if she helped us and gave us, like, the wrong information."

Unless they were asking him questions or he was asking them questions, Neo found himself content to sit in the middle of Pixie's "kitchen" and try to figure out how in the world these kids---young adults really, since they were all nineteen years old ---were able to act so normal, given their situations. He'd learned, almost right away, that each of Pixie's friends were members of the Resistance. They all held different positions and worked on different ships but they were all soldiers.

Yet, they were all sitting around Pixie's table swapping stories about their families in Zion or trying to embarrass each other with stories of their shared pasts. It was as if whatever they did outside of Zion didn't really matter at the moment. They all seemed to be busy just enjoying each other's company. Neo figured that there was probably some kind of reason why they were acting like normal teenagers--- Something like this was how the dealt with their adult jobs and everything that went along with them. ---but he wasn't a psychologist so he couldn't be sure.

There was actually something comforting and strangely normal about the group of nineteen year olds acting sort of like nineteen year olds from the Matrix. Pixie might have been the only exception since she was still the same quiet Pixie he remembered from the ship. Pixie and her friends hadn't been as culture shocking as the rest of Zion had been for Neo.

"So, what really brings all of you here?" Pixie asked, scraping out a huge, flat bottomed funnel of its blood red contents. "And why were guys holding Wheeler like that? What happened?"

The funnel's contents, something Pixie had called "para-red" or "flag red," looked like dried up clay and was in the process of being placed into its own flat bottomed flask. One of her friends had asked her for some of the dried out clay, sounding very glad that Pixie was making it in her little at-home lab. Pixie wound up explaining that "flag red" was a dye that, if used correctly, could leave fabrics a very bright red. She usually made it, along with other dyes, to bring to Rain since she worked with textiles but she shared with her friends since it wasn't hard to make.

"Wheeler was fighting in the officer's mess and we needed to get him out of there so he could cool off," Conall, matter of factly, stated. "We figured he wouldn't go ballistic if we brought him back home to you."

Nearly dropping the plastic funnel she'd been holding, Pixie gave Wheeler a questioning stare. He gave her a half hearted grin, scratching the back of his neck with his left hand in a nervous sort of way. Pixie had never known Wheeler to fight--- The whole thing with Hawk was an exception. ---with anyone since he wasn't the kind of person who randomly started fights. It took a lot to goad Wheeler into fighting and she figured it was safe to assume he wasn't fighting with anyone from the Shatterpoint's crew. He got along well with everyone he worked it, or so it seemed to Pixie anyway.

"Conall is grossly exaggerating," Wheeler, quickly, countered. "I wasn't fighting with anyone. He just happened to catch me talking, loudly, with one of the officers from another ship, that's all."

"I thought you didn't lie to Pix," Adoh commented. "Why aren't you telling her what really happened?"

"How about because nothing happened and it was all in your imagination?" Wheeler suggested.

"Then we all must have really overactive imaginations, Wheeler, because we all saw what happened today," Conall pointed out. "It would be easier on you if you just owned up to it instead of lying to your poor Pixie since she probably thinks you were down there for just your crew meeting."

With an exasperated sigh, Wheeler explained, "After the meeting was over, Elan asked me to stick around for a while. He said he needed to talk to me about something important. Turned out he needed another person to get in on this card game he was having. I wound up playing cards with him, Conall, Adoh and a couple of other people."

"It was Tigris from my ship, The Crystal Star, Renward from the Shadow Hunter, Castor and Pollux from The Paradise Snare," Conall filled in, smirking.

"Either way," Wheeler continued. "Elan decided to start talking about who he thought was the hottest girl, our age in the fleet, and, of course, everyone else had to get their two cents in. Thing was, Elan said I wasn't allowed to throw in my opinion because of…well…he said something I'm not going to repeat in mixed company because I was taught it was rude."

Shaking his head, Conall interjected, "Because Wheeler's here and I don't want him after me, I won't put it like Elan did but Elan, basically, implied that Wheeler is under the influence of your feminine whiles. That's how you get him to do whatever it is you want him to do."

The other teens in the room started to laugh, except for Pixie. Her face turned a very bright shade of red; almost as red as the dried out clayish substance she was no focusing all her attention on. Her blushing made her friends laugh harder still. Neo had learned, in the few months he'd known Pixie, that she embarrassed easily and that her face being bright red was almost normal for her.

"Be that as it may," Wheeler continued, trying to speak over the sounds of his friends laughing. "Everyone laughed and ignored me for a while. Then Castor decided that he really needed to know my opinion on who the hottest girl our age in the fleet was. I said you, Pix, and things sort of went downhill from there."

With a laugh, Adoh finished, "Because of Wheeler's answer, Castor and his brother, Pollux, decided that what Elan had said was right and really started to get on his back, especially Castor. This big argument broke out and might have turned ugly if not for my sister and Ngaio."

Adoh pointed across the table to where his twin and Ngaio, his generally steady girlfriend, were sitting laughing like a pair of mad hyenas. Pixie opened her mouth to ask why they'd been in the Officer's Mess and why they'd bothered to get involved in the situation Wheeler had found himself in but, at the last minute, decided against it. That was a can of worms she didn't want to touch with a ten foot pole. Sure the pair were among her closest friends but, sometimes, she didn't want to know why they did the things they did. It would probably just make her blush redder and make the pair laugh harder.

"So there wasn't really a fight?" Pixie, instead, asked "It seems like it was more a verbal altercation than anything else. Why would say there was a fight if there wasn't?"

"Well, technically speaking, it was just an argument but you should have seen how mad Wheeler got at Castor. I thought he was going to kill him right there," Conall admitted. "Besides, is there really a difference between a fight and an argument? Aisling's right, Pix, sometimes you get too hung up on the little things. Not everything has to be exact, you know."

"I was not going to kill Castor," Wheeler cut in, before Pixie could answer Conall's question. "I was merely explaining to him the right way to talk about ladies."

"And by explaining you actually mean you were going to beat the stuffing out of him," Conall interjected. "Seriously, I don't think I've ever seen you get that mad and you knew he was only joking around with you."

Wheeler, who was known for his even temper and placid disposition, threw a glare towards the utterly relaxed looking Conall. Pixie, who'd put the red stained funnel into a sink to be cleaned later, could not figure out how Wheeler and Conall managed to get along civilly. Her current theory, one of many, was that they got along because their respective "female friends," she and Aisling, were about as close as sisters without actually being related. Her other theory was that they just like to annoy each other---one of those guy things Pixie had never been able to understand.

Whatever the case was, Wheeler and Conall were never going to be the best of friends. Conall like to push Wheeler's buttons far too much and, though Wheeler did his best not to show it, Pixie was sure it bothered him. Not in the way Hawk's teasing use to bother Wheeler. This was just bothering for the sake of bothering instead of bothering for the sake of getting Wheeler to go away or something like that. Pixie, in actuality, didn't really understand why Hawk liked to make Wheeler miserable either.

At the moment, that didn't matter. Instead, as the laughing died down, she let the conversation drift to whatever topic it was heading for next. Pixie only hoped that the next topic wasn't as detrimental as the previous one.