HEY ALL. A REAL CHAPTER THIS TIME. ~ I'm happy. :D

I wrote this whole thing in one go, I'm so proud of myself. I just sat down, with the intent to write a new chapter, and I did it. This is a HUGE confidence booster, considering I haven't been able to finish much of anything lately when it comes to projects...

HUZZAH.

"… Hello, Katsuragi Haruka speaking."

"… H-Hi, mom?"

"Yako? Is that you? It's strange for you to call like this… How are you? Is everything all right?"

"Yeah, mom… yeah. I just have something to tell you. I-I… you know… Neuro?"

"… Of course I know Neuro, Yako. He's your husband."

"Haha, right, of course… Well… um… about him…"

"Yako, honey, are you sure everything's all right? You sound… scared."

"I just… I haven't exactly been honest with you. About… about Neuro. He's not… normal."

"… Okay?"

"He… He, uh…"

"… Is he gay?"

"…"

"I'm just checking!"

"No mom! No he's not gay! That's not it!"

*hysterical laughing in the background*

"Okay, then what is it? Spit it out, Yako!"

"He's a demon."

"A what?"

"A demon. From Hell."

"…"

"Mom?"

"… Hahaha, very funny sweetheart. April Fool's isn't for another three months."

"I'm serious, mom. He's a demon. He came to earth because he was looking for mysteries. He consumes them. That's why I started the Detective Agency in the first place. And now, well… I'm pregnant. But it's not going to be a normal pregnancy. I just wanted to tell you so you would be ready…"

"Okay, honey, this joke is really… well… okay, for lack of a better word, awkward. Did Neuro put you up to this? He's always pulling stuff like this…"

*more laughing in the background*

"Neuro, shut up! You're not helping! It's not a joke, mom! It's true!"

"Listen, Yako, I've got to go. I'm really busy. If you wanted to talk to me so badly… well, you could have just said so instead of… well, this. I love you. Bye."

"Mom, don't hang u-"

*CLICK*

Yako started awake. Her heart was pounding, her thoughts a confused blur. It took her a long minute to realize where she was: in bed, wrapped tightly in Neuro's arms. She looked over at the clock without raising her head from her pillow. 1:54 a.m.. With a sigh of frustration, she turned over, facing Neuro, burying her face in his shirt.

"What's wrong, louse?"

Of course he was awake. Yako sighed again. She'd sooner forget the dream, but now that Neuro had asked her about it, she'd have to tell him. She sat up, and he followed suite.

"I just had a bad dream. I called my mom and told her I was pregnant and she thought I was being stupid… She laughed at me, and I think I might have actually freaked her out…"

Neuro eyed her suspiciously, like she was the mystery-eating demon from Hell as opposed to himself. "You did call her, Yako."

Yako blinked. "I did?" Suddenly the events of the day returned to her sleep-confused brain in a jumble. That's right… She'd called Godai and told him the news, and after his positive(?) reaction, she'd felt inspired and called her mother next. Her dream had been a mirror of reality. Her mother thought she was losing it.

A third sigh escaped her chest and Yako slumped forward, resting her forehead on her clammy palm. "Wonderful…"

"I thought so too," Neuro said cheerfully. "A most amusing conversation."

"Oh shut up, Neuro," Yako growled, flopping back on the bed and rolling over, turning her back to her husband. "This is your own damn fault in the first place, getting me knocked up…" Maybe that was a little mean, but she was in no mood for his jokes.

She felt him lay down beside her, and his arm snaked around her waist, pulling her into his chest. She could hear the mischievous grin in his voice when he hissed in her ear, "The pleasure was all mine."

Yako snorted a laugh in spite of herself, and quickly fell back asleep.

Her good mood had dissolved once more come morning. Yako kicked open the door of the Detective Agency at 9 a.m. with a steaming coffee in one hand and her purse in the other. Neuro followed her inside, a grin of delight plastered on his face. He was thoroughly enjoying his wife's brittle temper.

Godai seemed to be experiencing a similarly dark humor. He arrived at 10, took a step inside the door, threw a murderous glare at Yako (which she unwittingly returned) and an even more murderous glare at Neuro (which he returned with a wolfish grin), then slumped to his desk and sat down behind it, immediately beginning to play with his knife. Akane, without any visible eyes, ears, nose, or mouth, could sense the tension in the room and shrank against the wall, typing away at her computer only when she was sure no one else was looking in her direction, and being careful not to let the keys click too loudly for fear of disturbing the icy silence.

They had no customers that day. Tuesdays were usually slow. It was for the best, anyway. Any customer who might have entered that room would have either been roasted alive by Godai's boiling fury, or frozen to death by Yako's icy aura. All three humanoids departed the Agency at 11 p.m. in silence. Yako's and Godai's tempers had sunk into the red, while Neuro was still happily buzzing about in the green.

Neuro and Yako had hardly entered their apartment, and Neuro had equally hardly closed the door behind them, when Yako picked up the closest inanimate object (which happened, unfortunately, to be a dining room chair) and hurtled it, with all her strength, as far as she could (which, happened, fortunately, to not be very far). It made no difference: the chair splintered against the floor with an enormous crash.

A shocked silence descended on the couple. If he had to be honest, Neuro would have to admit he had not seen that coming. Once he'd collected his scattered thoughts, however, he clapped.

"Throw another one. It'll give me a chance to redecorate again. I'll help you chuck the sofa across the living room if you don't think you can handle it yourself."

Yako whirled on him, meeting his expectant grin with a cold glare. "You… you… you…"

She looked as if she wanted to say something, to call him something, to do… well, something, but human speech and action had escaped her by now. Her teeth ground together, and she turned around, stalking away. The door of their bedroom slammed behind her.

Neuro waited for only a second before he followed, throwing the door open with a resounding crash that almost tore the door off its hinges. Yako had thrown herself face first onto the bed, but the noise made her jerk up. Neuro registered the tears on her face at the same moment that he sprang. Yako shrieked as he pounced on her, landing on the bed on his hands and knees above her. Before she could speak or even move to turn over, he grabbed the back of her shirt and yanked her up, letting her dangle there like a doll in his grip. He met her red-rimmed eyes with his own glowing green ones and held them there for a long, agonizing minute. Yako was sure another second longer and they would pierce right through her soul.

Finally, her husband sighed. He never sighed. It startled Yako so much she suddenly hiccupped. There was a moment of silence, then she spoke.

"Are you… mad at me?"

Neuro was giving her that look, that look that he gave her on very rare occasions when he expected something specific from her, something he knew she could do that she might not know she could do herself. "I'm not mad," he said quietly. "I don't care how much of my furniture you destroy, lousewife. Actually, I rather enjoyed you throwing that chair…" He chuckled, and Yako let out an involuntary giggle, but then Neuro sobered and she clamped her mouth shut. He continued. "But you're not acting like your normal, pathetic, single-cell-brained, mortal self."

Yako lowered her eyes. That was Neuro-speak for 'I'm worried.' Unfortunately, she couldn't exactly help him. She didn't know why she was so angry. Of course the situation with her mother was frustrating, and Neuro's insensitivity only made things worse, but Yako had expected things to turn out the way they did, and God knew she was used to Neuro's behavior. She shouldn't be this riled up. Unless…

"I-I think it's just… hormones," she said sheepishly. Neuro looked confused, so she explained, "Mood swings are normal for pregnant women. I feel better now." And she did. Neuro had cleared her head, the angry fog was lifting. "I can't promise I won't throw any more furniture though. Not until the baby comes…"

Neuro grinned. "That's fine by me."

After that one violent incident led to Neuro compulsively replacing the entire dining room set instead of just replacing the one chair, Yako swore she wouldn't give the situation with her mother another thought. Katsuragi Haruka just needed time to see the truth, time Yako, at this point, felt more than happy to give her. The mood at the Detective Agency improved a great deal too. Godai still avoided Yako like she had the plague, but she merely ignored him. Neuro, for his part, enjoyed Godai's highly irritable mood to no end, and used it against the man every chance he could.

As for Yako's mood swings, she had less angry ones and more sad ones. If it was an unusually slow day at the office, she'd burst into tears at the drop of a hat. Neuro would cheerfully blame Godai, Godai would scream that it hadn't been his fault, and Yako would sob hysterically into Neuro's shirt. If there were no sales on Yako's favorite brands at the grocery store, she'd sink to the floor and cry until she had the whole store's staff in a frenzy trying to cheer her up. Neuro would only come to her rescue when the chaos had reached its peak (he'd been forced to begin accompanying her on her errands now; besides being more emotional, she'd also become excessively clingy, which he didn't mind… to a certain point).

Two weeks of this passed before the day that Yako, getting ready for work, pulled on a pair of dress pants and couldn't button them. She tried for a few minutes, but her efforts were futile. In the end, she went into the bathroom, stared at the mirror for a long moment, then, taking a deep breath, turned sideways, pulled up her shirt, and looked again. Sure enough, the flat line of her stomach had been replaced by an ever-so-subtle curve.

Yako took a few deep breaths to steady herself. For a long moment, she felt overwhelmed, like this was all happening too fast. Had that bump been there the day before? Well, by human definition, it was going too fast. But she'd given up the 'human definition' five years ago when she married Neuro. Now it was time to put her resolve to the test.

Very slowly, and with shaking fingers, she placed her hand on her stomach. It felt abnormally warm, and a rush of fear ran through her, but again, she calmed herself with a few careful breaths. She knew the creature inside. It was her own, and it was Neuro's. She knew Neuro. She didn't have to be afraid.

Yako kept her hand pressed to her stomach for two very long minutes, and then, suddenly, she felt it. Something moved, pressing against her hand, and the warmth increased. It stayed there for a couple seconds, then disappeared. A tear escaped her eye.

"Neuro!" she screamed, running out of the bathroom in nothing but her dress shirt and underwear. He came into the doorway of their bedroom from the living room, and she nearly tackled him, throwing her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and clinging to him, crying freely now. She kissed his surprised lips and his jaw and his neck, and any other part of him within kissing distance. When she finally pulled back, he gave her a look that said, "I-knew-you-would-crack-someday-but-I-didn't-realize-it-would-be-this-soon." Yako didn't care. She kissed his lips again, this time holding him there, and somehow, somehow, with an instinct that only a human could have, he knew. He knew.

He kissed her back, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her closer, minding her stomach. They didn't come up for air for a long, long time, but when they did, Neuro smiled. Really smiled.

"I'm excited," he panted, his eyes glowing. The only other time he'd uttered such a human phrase was the first time he told Yako he loved her. She let out a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

"I'm excited too."

If either of the lovebirds had cared to look up at that moment, they would have seen the corner of a shadow disappear from the window.

"I'm excited, too~"

Ooooh, what's this? A plot is emerging? I know, I'm just as shocked as you are! REVIEW PLEASE.