Summary -- After stabbing his father rather messily to death, Faegyn Ross is in danger of being shuffled off the mortal coil himself by one of his father's creepy "business associates", corrupt men running a black market traffic in slaves, among other things. Fae's placed under the protection of Reno of the Turks, who is the first to discover him with his father's body. Friendship blossoms and soon threatens to turn into something more, but with Fae trapped in a glass cage of guilt and Reno absolutely emphatic that He. Is. Not. Gay. it looks like their relationship isn't even going to get off the ground. Add near constant attempts on Fae's life, Elena trying to play the matchmaker, a part time job at Seventh Heaven and lots of dot-dot-dotting from Rude and it'll be a wonder if anybody escapes with their sanity.

Disclaimer Part One -- I begged and begged and offered them pocky and Pop-Tarts but Squaresoft were evil and only allowed me to borrow a few of their totally awesome characters for a bitty bit. Isn't that sad? AND they said I had to return them more or less unscratched or be forced to watch the Powerpuff Girls at EMR-point for the remainder of eternity. Bastards.

Disclaimer Part Two -- I don't own the lyrics of 37mm. They belong to the oh-so-very awesome guys of AFI. And just on the off chance that any of those aforesaid awesome guys read fanfiction: I LOVE YOU ALL!!

Warnings -- Violence, insanity on the part of the authoress, run-on sentences, seriously long-ass sentences with more commas embedded in them than should be legal, guy on guy action and possible sex scenes depending on whether I chicken out or not. Oh, and a fairly substantial smattering of cuss-words. Reno is in this fic after all. And… overdramatic summaries?

Notes -- Thanks to everybody who reviewed. I love you all and offer you cyber hugs and strawberry pocky (which is the greatest thing EVAR) as a token of my affection. Especially xDollix. You rule, man. Moar gushing at the bottom. Now read.

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Chapter Two

Bring your secrets to me

Just give me your hands

And I'll let you feel the wounds

They put in me

-- 37mm, AFI --

He was running, legs screaming with the pain of too many steps. His eyes streamed and stung as they filled with salt tears and his heart felt that it would tear from his chest with the force of its pounding.

Behind him, the voices shrieked at him to come back, to face his own handiwork, but the blood clinging to his hands and head was enough guilt, thank you so very much. He couldn't handle the rest -- the weight of the little he had chosen to carry dragged at him like leaden chains. The thought of how bad the entirety would feel filled him with horror.

He darted down another side road in the silent city streets, searching desperately for a safe haven, somewhere the pain couldn't follow him to. As he came up against the solid brick of the dead end and the shuffling steps of the corpse haunting him rang behind he couldn't suppress a bitter smile. This is what you deserve. Murderer.

Faegyn Ross turned around and faced his nightmare.

(Oh, look, it's a page break!)

The sweat had dried on his body, sticking his clothes to the skin. Fae made a disgusted face as he pulled his turtleneck away from his chest, revulsion nearly choking him at the smell of rancid fear that wafted over him as he did so. He pushed the blanket back and rose unsteadily to his feet, glancing around the cluttered room he'd woken in.

It was a hell of a mess. The carpet was barely visible beneath the layer of clothes and towels and magazines thrown all over it and from one of the bent TV antennas dangled a hot-pink lacy G-string. A table sitting against the wall was smothered in porn and weapons magazines. The glass topped coffee table in front of the couch was covered in overflowing ashtrays, empty beer bottles and take-out containers. A sleek brown cockroach clambered out of a ramen cup.

Fae watched with sick fascination as the loathsome insect scuttled across the table to the relative safety of another half empty container. Not wanting to, but really unable to stop himself, Fae glanced inside that particular box. The food within had so much strangely coloured fuzz growing on it that he couldn't actually tell what it had once been and he swore it kind of… moved at one point.

He hurriedly backed away from the coffee table and its disturbing cargo (he'd slept next to that -- what if the cockroaches had climbed all over him while he was unconscious?!) and stumbled off to explore the rest of the apartment.

It was surprisingly small -- apparently hired killers didn't get paid as much as Fae had always assumed -- and was pretty much all in the same state as the living room.

Reno's bedroom looked like a trailer park after a 200mph tornado had ripped through it. Clothes were strewn absolutely everywhere, heaped in piles in the corners, carpeting the floor. Fae was frankly amazed that Reno even owned so many clothes. And then he noticed that mixed in with the crumpled suits and battered jeans and offensive t-shirts were dresses and skirts and a truly disturbing amount of lingerie. The bed -- the site of a thousand conquests judging from the sheer quantity of women's clothing scattered about -- was actually a Wutain-style futon on a wicker frame.

For some reason that caught Fae off-guard, as did the scroll of Wutain proverbs haphazardly pinned to the wall next to the bed with a dagger. Somehow, Reno just didn't strike Fae as a fount of cultural marvels. The futon was unmade -- the heavy comforter had been thrown back randomly and hung to the floor, partially hiding from sight the box of rainbow condoms that sat unrepentantly next to the bed.

Fae picked his way over shirts and dresses and jeans and glanced through the door to the tiny bathroom leading off of Reno's bedroom. He winced at the sight inside.

The tiled floor was a mess of puddles and wet towels. Empty shampoo bottles lay on their sides in the corners, making homes for yet more cockroaches and a few enterprising spiders. The toilet was crammed in the corner opposite the door. In the small space on either side of it was a shower and a small washstand set beneath a medicine cabinet. The mirror affixed to the front of the cabinet had a large crack running though it from top to bottom. The cheap, scungy shower curtain had been jammed to one side in obvious haste and the shower head still dripped. Fae reached in automatically to tighten the valve and came face to clicking mandible with the biggest, ugliest, hairiest, blackest bastard of a spider he had ever encountered in his life. He slammed backwards, nearly tripping over his feet as he fled the bathroom.

Back in the living room, Fae took a few long, deep breaths to help himself calm down before he made himself go inspect the final frontier of Reno's apartment -- the kitchen.

Never, ever would Faegyn Ross ever eat food prepared in this hellhole. That was the first, and only, thing that ran through Fae's mind as he stared in abject horror at the cockroaches scuttling over the grimy counters and the stacks of dishes in the sink. A cheap microwave sat on the bench next to the food splattered stove. The microwave door hung open enough that Fae could see reddish brown stains from where something had exploded inside it. The fridge hummed and clunked and groaned like an old man with six heavy grocery bags staggering up a flight of stairs after a back operation. And there were more spiders, obviously related to the Black Bastard in the bathroom, sitting smugly on webs in high corners of the ceiling.

There was something about those spiders that just pissed him off. Maybe it was the aura of smug complacency about the bastards as they sat upon their filmy webs, clicking at him. These were spiders that had been allowed to go about their business since time immemorial and they held with in them the self-satisfaction of the spider who just knows he will never be attacked with bug spray and bucket of soapy water… or a well placed shoe.

The stupid disgusting things reminded him of his father's "friends", sitting smoking cigars in the garden, their wide smiles and hearty laughter broadcasting their utter contentment with the world and their place in it. No matter how many people they killed, how many lives they destroyed, they'd be safe. They had money and, if through some disaster that failed them, then they had lawyers.

They were all so sure of themselves. Fae wondered if their hands had ever shook after they killed. He doubted it.

Sidling further into the kitchen he carefully cracked open the cupboard beneath the sink. It was as disgusting as he'd expected in there but there was a large aerosol can of bug spray and an unopened bottle of detergent. He grinned.

The next half an hour was spent spraying down the spiders from their webs and then jumping on them with both booted feet, imagining that the surprisingly squishy black bodies were the miniaturized heads of his father's friends. According to ShinRa those men would be after him soon enough so squishing their make believe heads did a lot to alleviate his stress regarding that little bit of information.

When all the spiders were little more than black smears on the grubby linoleum floor he started on the cockroaches. Do you have any idea how therapeutic it is to pretend a cockroach is the man you've been calling Uncle Harley since you were six years old, the man who you know beat his wife to death with a steel pipe, and spray the damn little thing with industrial strength bug spray and watch it squirm around dying? Very therapeutic, that is the answer. By the sixth or seventh cockroach was dead Fae had run out of his dad's drug lord buddies and had started on the general staff. When the last cockroach had squirmed its last there was not a single person Fae hated who had not been cockroachized and killed.

He swept all the little bodies into a heap on the floor, sprayed the twitching pile a couple more times for good measure and then loaded them all into a plastic bag and dropped the bag out the window. There was no way those were ever returning to this apartment.

(Oh, look it's a page break!)

After the incident with all the bugs, Fae had a bit of trouble stopping cleaning… He'd just finished wiping down the last of the benches in the kitchen when he heard a key turn in the lock and the door slammed open. Loud voices, those of Reno and some other highly irritated and disturbingly squeaky women invaded the silence of the apartment and rang in Fae's ears.

"I swear to Bahumat, Reno, you are the most useless, inconsiderate bastard EVER. How dare you suggest that I should walk up those stairs in my condition!"

"Well, you're ' heavy! Hell, you gotta stop bingeing on passionfruit topping, 'Laney. Cravings or not, that just ain't normal, yo."

There was a scream of absolute rage followed much banging, crashing and swearing. Fae slowly walked around the small wall blocking his view of the lounge and stared with some confusion at the two people lying on the still-totally-messy living room floor. One of them was Reno and the other a petite blonde woman so far into the later stages of pregnancy Fae was mildly concerned that she might just go into labour right then and there.

He tilted his head to one side, perhaps hoping that the scene before him would make more sense if he viewed it from an angle. Nope, Reno was still lying gasping on the ground next to an unfamiliar pregnant woman, rubbing a red mark on the side of his face and glaring.

", 'Laney, what the hell was that for?" he grumbled, sitting up. His ponytail was seriously wonky after his fall.

Laney favoured him with a look that would not only peal paint but would probably scorch the wall behind it as well. "I just can't believe you, Reno. You dropped me!" She struggled to sit up, realized that it was currently impossible and lolled back down instead. "Do you have any idea how much damage that could have done to my babies?"

Babies. So she was having twins and therefore was probably less likely to be as pregnant as she seemed and so (thank the gods) probably would be going into labour any time soon. Ever since his mother had miscarried and died Fae had been slightly afraid of pregnant women. There… had been so much blood then and he never wanted to have to witness such a thing ever again… (his mother bleeding, screaming at the foot of the stairs and then lying so, so still, the blood pooling and the mangled thing that had come out of her just…)

Fae shook his head sharply and cleared his throat in a bid to get their attention. No such luck. Reno was on his feet now and Laney was screaming at him to help her up. The word "respect" was thrown around a great deal, mostly in the context that Reno had absolutely none of it whilst Reno snarled that there was absolutely no reason for him to have any respect, especially not for "' annoyin' squeaky rookies who shacked up with their boss and forced their superiors to carry 'em up six ' flights of stairs, yo". This, of course, did not help things and soon after Laney told Reno he was a sour, -up womanizer without even the slightest trace of compassion in his scrawny body she burst into noisy tears.

Fae winced. He hated crying women even more than he hated pregnant women. His mother had always cried, right up until the end. So he stalked over and helped the blonde sit upright. She was only a couple of years older than Fae was and very pretty, even when she was spouting tears and snot like that and wailing. "I… I know everyone's saying that Tseng and I won't work out and that I'm just screwing him to get ahead in the Turks but I'm not, really, we really love each other and…"

Fae patted her shoulder awkwardly, crouched down next to her. "Yeah, I know, ignore Reno, he's just a bastard."

Who was Tseng? The name was familiar… holy shit, she was married to that tough Wutain guy from last night? Seriously? He stared in shock at her sobbing blonde head, now buried in his turtleneck, and then glanced up at Reno who was looking more than amused. "Tseng?" he mouthed. "And her?"

Reno nodded, smirk widening. "Not exactly a match made in heaven, huh?" he said, not even bothering to lower his voice. Laney stiffened and lifted her head to glare furiously at the red haired Turk. "What the would you know, Reno?" she demanded shrilly. Cuss words sounded strange in her voice and Fae decided that she must not swear that much. "You've never been in love ever. If you had been you'd know that we're gonna make it and you'd stop being such a bastard about the whole thing."

Reno rolled his eyes while Fae slowly tried to shrink away from the strange woman holding onto his shirt. Why did she cling so?

"Elena," Reno said in a surprisingly serious voice. "Tseng is fifteen years older than you at least. And he's your boss, so if it all up then you're out of a job as well. And now you're pregnant with twins who might very well end up growing up without a father, yo, which sucks. And just to make everything nice and complicated, you're a ' assassin as well so there's also a really high chance that you'll get your sorry ass shot all to pieces too. And then the kids won't have either parent. Which sucks balls, yo."

"Thank you for that image, Reno," Fae muttered, succumbing to his natural urge to wise crack and thereby alleviate tension. It worked -- Reno relaxed and grinned and Elena slowly let go of Fae's shirt and wiped her eyes.

"I know there're a lot of problems we gotta get through," she mumbled, blowing her nose on a dirty t-shirt she picked up from the floor. "But seriously, I think we'll manage, Reno. We do love each other, and I'm resigning from the Turks anyway. Gonna get a nice, safe desk job. So even if it does break up then my babies will still have a momma." She grinned weakly. "I have thought about this you know."

Reno grinned. "Good."

Looking from one to the other, Fae picked up easily on the affection between the two. He got the impression that Reno treated Elena like a little sister and privately thought that if Tseng and Elena's marriage did end in the divorce courts then Tseng was probably going to find himself gifted with a broken nose courtesy of everyone favourite hot-headed Turk.

Working together Fae and Reno managed to haul Elena to her feet and get her seated on the battered kitchen chair that sat next to the table. As she sorted through the magazines scattered over the table, making faces at the porn mags and looking for a weapons magazine she wanted, Reno finally noticed the surprisingly cleanliness of his kitchen. "What the happened here?" he demanded in a startled voice, poking warily at a grime-and-cockroach-free bench top.

"I cleaned it up," Fae said in an I'm-stating-the-obvious-you-spoon tone of voice. "I don't know how long I'll be staying here, but if it's longer than three days then I'll probably have to eat at some point. And since that little display on the coffee table has put me off junk food for life, that means I'll have to cook something. And dying from food poisoning is pretty low on my To Do list."

Reno just grinned at him.

"It's kind of amazing that the kitchen even got that messy, Reno," Elena chipped in. "Since about the only cooking you do is making baked beans on toast. And I don't actually think that counts as cooking. Good job, Fae. Ooh, lookit that!" she said suddenly, pointing at something in the magazine. Fae glanced over. It was a gun. He lost interest at that point and didn't pay much attention to Elena babbling to Reno about it. Instead he went into the kitchen and retrieved a half empty jar of peanut butter from the cupboard, pulled a newly cleaned spoon from the dish rack and perched on the bench to consume his highly nutritious breakfast of super-crunchy peanut butter.

(Oh, look it's a page break!)

Elena left about an hour later. Apparently the real reason she'd dropped by had been to hand over a duffle bag full of things for Fae, clothes and toothbrushes and the like. Armed with bug spray, he ventured into the bathroom to do war upon the spiders and cockroaches therein. When he was finally contented that all crawling things had been vanquished, he had the fastest shower in the history of indoor plumbing, dressed with a speed that even Reno, the king of hasty early morning exits, would have been proud of, and shot out of the bathroom.

Reno was lying on his bed in a comfortable looking nest of pillows and screwed up comforter, flipping through the weapons mag Elena had been looking at before. "The bathroom next on your To Clean list, yo?" he smirked.

Fae shot him a look. "Go to hell," he mumbled irritably. His words were almost drowned out by a sudden rumbling in his tummy region. He glared and Reno sat up, laughing. "Just gimme a minute to get changed then we'll go get something to eat, arright?" the red head told him, rolling out of bed. He grabbed a shirt from the floor, sniffed at it then shrugged, dropping it on his bed as he pulled of his jacket and toyed with the buttons of his shirt, grinning at Fae. "You just gonna stand there and watch, man? Not that I'm not flattered and all, but…"

Fae told him to perform a physical impossibility and stalked out, but not before Reno pulled the shirt open and he caught a glimpse of the Turk's flat, hard stomach. An angry red scar wormed its way across his side from his left hip to just above and to the left of his navel. It looked painful and very new.

(Oh, look it's a page break!)

The restaurant Reno led Fae through winding streets to reach was very small and very Wutain. The entire menu was written in graceful Wutain characters and the grumpy old woman behind the counter spoke no English whatsoever. She shot Fae a look of acute dislike as he ducked through the door and snapped out something he couldn't understand. Her scowling face brightened, however, when she caught sight of Reno entering the shop behind Fae. She babbled a welcome in clucking Wutain, which Reno returned in the same language, and then they were off, chatting happily in strange syllables that meant absolutely nothing to Fae. He stood there silently, waiting with a truly surprising amount of patience considering his current state of partial starvation until the two had eventually exhausted all conversation topics and Reno and Fae were installed in a corner table out of sight of all the windows but with the front and kitchen doors both in full view.

"You come here a lot, don't you?" Fae murmured, amused, as he realised that the stroppy old woman had put them in the safest table in the room with no line of sight for sniper fire and clear escape routes. Reno grinned and shrugged. "Auntie Cheng's sweet," he said simply. "I got shot on assignment this one time in an alley pretty close to here, yo. Nothing serious but enough to be bloody annoying. She heard me swearing, mostly in Wutain, and she let me lay low here while the guys after me went past. And she makes fantastic dragon noodles. You want some of those?"

"Whatever you decide," Fae replied, leaning back in his chair and running a cursory eye over the watercolour above their table. It was the usual scene of a mountain with lots of strangely shaped trees. He rather liked it. "I don't eat Wutain much."

Reno ordered for both of them, and the time spent waiting for the food to arrive was filled with pointless conversation, trivial stuff. Fae asked how long Elena and Tseng had been married, Reno asked if he was planning on cleaning the entire apartment. That kind of thing.

The conversation took a more serious turn after Auntie Cheng had deposited their meal and tactfully withdrawn. "Right," Reno said, shovelling noodles into his mouth. "You're gonna be staying with me until we can track down every single one of your dad's crime buddies and arrest them. Right now you're pretty important, because you can testify against them. And that means that these people want you dead, yo. A lot. So you have to be careful. But that don't mean you get to stay holed up in my apartment all day, since I won't be there anyway and it's gonna look damn strange for me to suddenly get myself a new flatmate after three years of living there alone. So you're gonna have to start hanging round the ShinRa building. The boss man will probably find you some kind of work, yo. Filing or some shit. You beg, he might even pay you for it."

Fae considered this as he fiddled with his chopsticks, trying to figure out how to use them. He hated filing. Like really, truly, desperately hated it. Once when he was about fourteen, his father had decided that he needed to contribute to the family business. So he'd been forced to rearrange the filing system in his father's office. The sheer monotony of assembling hundreds of bits of paper into the correct sections of a steel cabinet had bored him to the point where he had begun to seriously consider lining his head up with a corner of the cabinet and slamming it into the sharp point until his head split open and his brains gushed out. Just for the amusement value of it.

"If I find a job of my own where I can be assured of a moderate degree of safety," he began, frowning at a burn scar on the wooden tabletop, "could I apply for that instead?"

"Ah, there ya go again," Reno sighed, reaching over and rearranging his fingers on the slim wooden chopsticks. His fingers were very warm and their heat lingered a fair while after he let go of Fae's hands. Something resonated against the wall in Fae's mind and he shivered. He'd almost forgotten that the thing was there. Today had seemed so very normal up until that moment. Well, sort of. The whole scene between Elena and Reno had been a bit weird and waking up next to a coffee table smothered in cockroaches didn't really fit in with his definition of a normal day, but there had been no sudden spikes of guilt, no self-loathing. Apart from the nightmare, he hadn't even thought about killing his father even once until then. Kind of strange since he'd done it just yesterday.

"There I go again what?" he mumbled, realising that he'd been staring into space for slightly too long. But Reno didn't seem to mind.

"Acting like… I dunno, Tseng, maybe. Tseng with a bit of ShinRa thrown in. 'Assured.' 'Moderate degree of safety.' Who talks like that? You were almost acting like a normal kid today. Called me a bastard and everything, yo."

Fae just looked at him. "I'm not a kid," he pointed out coolly.

Reno raised an eyebrow, grinning at him as he lifted another mouthful of noodles to his lips. Reminded of his own food, Fae tried to pick some noodles up with the chopsticks and failed miserably. "Oh really?" Reno said through a mouthful of noodles. "How old are ya meant to be then? Sixteen?"

He shot the Turk an incredulous glance. "What are you on? I'm nearly twenty-two."

Reno just about choked to death on his food. "Ya shittin' me, right?" he snapped once he'd finally managed to catch his breath. "No way in hell are you that old!"

Fae could quite hold back a startled little chuckle. He knew he should be offended that Reno had thought he was still just a kid but the sheer stupidity of the situation was enough to counteract that. Besides the dumbstruck look on Reno's face was absolutely priceless. "Uh, yeah," he replied. "Why would I lie? How old did you think I was anyway?"

Reno was slowly calming down. "I don't really know. Like seventeen? Nineteen at the most. Shit, you're only two years younger than 'Laney. You're only five years younger than me."

The redhead was now looking at him like he was some kind of creature from another planet, bluey-green eyes squinched up as he cocked his head to the side like a bird and peered at the younger man. "I can kinda see it now, though," he admitted finally. "But you sure as hell don't look as old as yer meant to be…"

Fae rolled his eyes subtly, trying once again to pick up some of his noodles with the chopsticks. They were going to be stone cold by the time he got any of them in his mouth at this rate. Reno watched his pathetic attempts with wicked amusement and cackled quite openly when he fumbled and dropped the few strands he'd managed to lift. Fae tried hard not to let his irritation show on his face but the attempt was doomed from the outset.

"Will you please stop being such a asshole?" he snarled, slamming the chopsticks down. "Or I swear to whatever gods are listening that I will stab you in the eye with one of these things!" He picked up one of the little bits of wood and waved it about threateningly.

Reno grinned and shoved his chair back, standing and making his way around to Fae's side of the table. He leaned over the startled man's shoulder, grabbed his hand and quite calmly positioned both chopsticks properly in it. Then, with his hand still wrapped around Fae's, he picked up a huge amount of noodles with the wooden implements and, grinning evilly, he stuffed them straight into the unsuspecting man's mouth. Fae gasped and choked, chewed desperately while trying to elbow that bastard Reno in the groin. Reno caught Fae's arm with his free hand before the elbow made contact and leaned down, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, until his mouth was level with Fae's ear.

His hot breath wafted over the delicate shell of the dark haired man's ear and Fae felt his stomach lurch unsettlingly. The glass wall popped and pinged, almost humming in his brain with the reverberation of a thousand tiny impacts.

Reno grin widened at the slightly panicky look on Fae's face. His lips brushed against the younger man's ear as he spoke.

"Watch your mouth, brat."

(Oh, look it's a page break!)

It was entirely the wrong kind of place to hold such a conversation. The rich, lustrous emerald of the surrounding vegetation seemed almost to glow in the golden light of late afternoon. Birds trilled in the trees, chuckled and clucked to one another as below them corrupt men spoke of terrible things.

"So Ross is definitely dead? What was the cause? That fire was not regular."

"ShinRa." The voice of the second man was a dead rasp, cold and chilling, especially as opposed to the warm tones of the woman who had spoken before it. "He must have uncovered something of our operations. The question is, what happened to his son?"

"The brat?" The woman was surprised and more than a little scornful. "My dear, you must be losing your mind. He is hardly a concern."

"Ah, but he is," said a third voice, another man, the syllables thick and rough with a Slum accent. Despite the accent, the man spoke clearly enough and his words were educated. "He is hardly a child anymore and he was present throughout most of our meetings. His father seemed to think of him as an unpaid servant of sorts. If there's anyone outside of the business who knows enough to have us all put away, it's him."

"He died in the fire," a fourth voice objected, oily and drenched in the distinctive tones of a resident of Costa Del Sol. "He is no longer our problem."

"There's no evidence to suggest that he really did die," the educated man pointed out. "Nothing."

"There is no evidence of anything, dear," the woman laughed. "And no evidence to be uncovered, at least not at the house. The place resembles a crater."

"Say what you like about their tiresome morals," the dead sounding man murmured, "ShinRa does have access to the best explosives I've ever seen."

"Irrelevant," the educated man snapped. "The boy could still be alive."

The woman sighed, and boredom is evident in her next words. "Do what ever you feel you must, Harley. Get your pet Turk on the case. You must keep him around for something other than all the kinky sex."

Laughter rings out in the garden and, perhaps finally understanding what has been going on below them, the birds all fly away.

(BRING ON TEH AUTHOR'S NOTES!!!)

First of all...

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

And here's Chapter Two! And it's nearly as long as One was. Which is strange cos it's really just a filler… But I finished it! Aren't you all proud of me?

1) Actually it's a wonder that it even got posted since would not let me upload the document possibly due to all the swearing in it. But since when has that well mattered? Can anyone shed some light on this? Cos if it isn't cleared up I'm just gonna start posting on Livejournal.

2) Special thankies to xDollix for his or quite possibly her review. You really think Fae's a good OC? Really? Believe me you have my undying gratitude for that. This chapter is sadly lacking in gore for you, but the next one might be a little better. Still, the swearing was probably up to standard. XD

3) Ooh, ooh, I smell hints of plot. First time I've ever managed to write a story with an actual established plot, not just the usual flailing about trying desperately to work out where I'm going some time around the fifth chapter. I know where this is going and I even have a vague idea of how I'm gonna get there. Which for me is STRANGE, man!

4) Elena is married to Tseng (after the whole thing with the Remnants and nearly dying and Rufus nearly dying and getting tortured and shit Tseng stopped being such a spoon over the subject of Aerith -- who, may I point out, is DEAD -- and started taking a little more notice of everyone's favourite ditzy blonde rookie) and is going to be having twins sometime within the duration of the story. She's about five or six months pregnant at the moment. And she's getting a lot of shit over her and Tseng's marriage (even though they've been together for over a year people still feel a need to ) and combined with stress and waddling and cravings for passionfruit topping she's having a bit of trouble coping. Thus her little breakdown. But she'll be getting a lot better from now on as she will soon have a certain little project of hers to keep her occupied: matchmaking…

5) Squashing bugs is awesome stress relief. And cockroaches make me feel sick. So they must DIE.

6) I had a hideous amount of trouble getting the lyrics for at the beginning. GOD! The first chapter was easy so I thought it would be the next time and it wasn't and my brain just about exploded and so they have no real relevance to anything I'm afraid. The only reason they're there is because 37mm is my favourite song at the moment and I was listening to it continuously as I stomped about swearing and promising to do horrible things to the Spirit of Writer's Block if I ever met it and when I couldn't think of anything for the lyrics I was just like " IT!!!" and put them in. But seriously it's a great song so go listen to it.

Love to all reviewers. Seriously. Although not in a smoochy way as that makes me think of internet stalkers and I don't even really know any of you in the first place and…

Please excuse typos.

Anyway please bestir yerselves to just click on that little(ish) green button down below and tap out a few words. Or maybe more than just a few words. I mean I laboured over this thing. When you include the days of writer's block and swearing at the screen which stubbornly refused to just magically create a perfect chapter on its own with no input whatsoever from me and then when my comma key sort of died and I had to fight the urge to stab the damn thing with a fork and stuff. Especially given my love of commas. Don't I get even a couple of sentences? PWEASE?

NEXT CHAPTER -- Seventh Heaven, the Turks, shit loads of drinking, Tifa and maybe just a little bit of gratuitous violence. Cos Reno probably will be having to do some work at some point. And writing from his point of view could be fun.