Sorry this update was taking forever. I've just felt horrible lately (being sick really sucks ass) and I was at a loss for starting this chapter.

Only about eight or less chapters left. Not counting the epilouge. Final say about that to be annouced in the next chapter. Then I will disappear from this series for about a month, then we'll be kicking off the final book in this series called Begin Again.

Begin Again will probably be out in September or late, late August. Just saying.

And again, I'm sorry for making them fight so much, but if it was all mushy romance, there would hardly be any drama. And drama really makes for a good story.

I know self-advertising is really weird on co-written stories, but I've seen it done before, and have done it myself... Please check out Different Summers, a recent LR story I've started about a month ago. For those of you who read, an update will be coming soon, I swear.

November 18th 2013

No One's Pov

It's been five days since Chase last seen his girlfriend, but he couldn't remember much of it. Except there was a lot of crying from Christine (and curses, not that he found himself able to repeat them) and disapproved looks from his sister.

But because of an insane training schedule and two missions involving armed goons on a druggie high (all of which Christine did not attend), Chase was left in the dark of exactly what he did until a rainy Monday lunch at school, where only his siblings and Leo were generous enough to sit with him. But Leo didn't really look like he wanted to, instead flinching under Janelle's heated gaze across the cafeteria where she sat with the girls clustered around Christine.

"Basically, she thinks you're the ass instead of Spike," Bree said nonchalantly, dipping her french fries into a pool ketchup.

"Which, personally is her fault," Leo added, noisily slurping his juice box, "because it's not like she hasn't met him before."

With a glare from Bree, he retreated, muttering, "I'm just saying! She should know how to tell them apart by now."

"It's not like she's actually seen a Spike transformation," Bree argued.

"Yeah, and the voice difference is totally not noticeable at all!" Leo sarcastically fired back.

Chase whistled loudly, effectively cutting off his siblings loud bickering. (And grabbing the attention of several annoyed students sitting nearby, but the group has learned to brush off such annoyed, and rather rude, looks.)

"What did he even do?" he asked desperately, at a loss for answers to accompany this question. "Spike only rears his head when something effectively makes me have an override in negative emotions."

"Maybe it's because Hunter and Chris told you about how they did the nasty," Adam bluntly offered, obliviously peeling his banana.

Bree whacked him on the back of the head. "Way to be gentle about it," she snapped at him. "And how did you even know that anyway?"

Leo snorted, setting down his juice box, finally accepting the fact it was drained. "You weren't the only one listening at the top of the stairs, you know."

Chase looked at the three of them. "My girlfriend," he said slowly, "had sex with her best friend?"

Bree tried to soften the blow of this information. "Only when they were dating. And it's not like they kept it a secret from you."

"Not forever at least," Leo once again helpfully added.

Bree rolled her eyes at him, beyond annoyed. "Dude, you really need to stop talking."

"I'm just saying what you leave out!"

"Because the last thing we need is another Spike out-break."

"Guys!" Chase shouted, cutting off their rising arguement. Sheepishly, his siblings turned away from each other. "I'm not mad."

This brought a shocked silence out of them.

"Uh, why not?" Leo asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow. "Because I'm perfectly willing to offer up my meatloaf if you have the need to chuck something." He scooted his tray forward for emphasis.

"I don't want to throw anything," Chase declined gruffily. "What I want is how to get my girlfriend back without her chewing my head off."

"Oh, don't worry baby brother." Bree waved a fry at him. "If anything, the other girls would do that before she would get the chance to."

He glared at her as she stuck her fry in her mouth. "Gee, thanks for that."

She smiled, chewing.

"Girls, so overly emotional," Leo muttered, mostly to himself this time. He looked folornly at his juice box, as if doing so would magically re-fill it.

"Like I said, they don't know it wasn't you being an ass," Bree reminded her brother. "They may have seen Spike in action, but they don't know what you would do if insanely jealous and, you know, not Spike." She paused, tilting her head in thought. "And it's not like he really talked anyway, mostly just hit and growled."

Adam tossed his banana peel on his tray. "Yeah, like the Hulk." Then he began laughing. "The Hulk in a doll's body!"

Chase tuned out his older brother's comment, keeping his attention on Leo and Bree, who were in the middle of a rather deadly looking glaring contest. Because Bree having much more practice (and confidence), she was winning mercilessly.

"What do I do? It's not like I can actually walk up to her here," Chase sighed, feeling desperate - a feeling he had not accustomed himself to.

"True," Bree agreed, "I mean, just because they like you a little more than Callan doesn't mean the girls won't hesitate with kicking your scrawny butt to next Christmas."

"And that they can actually do it," Leo chortled. Then let out an extremely feminine sounding yelp as Bree's heel connected swiftly with his shin underneath the table.

She ignored his cries of pain, looking sadly at her finished portion of fries. "Try making a gesture," she suggested. "You two were going out on a date before Spike went all Terminator on Hunter. Do something romantic."

"Like what?" Chase whined. "Just brazenly walk up to her and begin making out with her, granted she doesn't slap me first."

Bree perked up, snapping her fingers with a wide smirk on her face. "That's exactly what you're going to do."

Christine's Pov

I spent the entire Monday PMSing, just like the last five days since I saw Chase. Hunter was released from the hospital with a sprained ankle and two broken fingers, not to mention a huge shiner taking up his left eyes and most of his cheek.

In a way, I want to defend Chase, but I really can't.

My agreement with my dad about the whole bionic secret was to only tell Hunter about mine, unless the others wanted to tell him themselves. So we had a big sit-down and explained it, but Chase left out a very cruical power of his - he had a freaky spilt personality that went all ape shit if he gets too made or anxious or nervous.

I'm a person to not blab other people's secrets, so I kept quiet and just told him that Chase probably hated his guts.

God, I hate lying to people unless they deserve it.

Which, I was aware made me a bit of a hypocrite, considering that I held back the information of me not being a virgin from my boyfriend for the entire year and a half we were together.

I spent all of Monday avoiding him, half pissed at him for his lack of self-control, and half pissed at Spike for, like I said earlier, going all ape shit. I avoided Chase and his siblings, stuck with Rachel and the rest of my girls, letting them glower and bitch from a distance. I was too tired to join in. Instead I tried to tune them out and just nap.

I had give them credit, though. The heated glares had to be obvious even from across the room as they practically burnt holes into their backs. But not once did they look back at us. Then again, they were used to weird, annoyed, hateful looks for being the weird rich kids with the billionaire scientist that lived in a mansion. It would be safe to say they had a lot of practice.

(Not that I have never recieved similar looks in my lifetime, but still.)

For the most part, the girls kept their death threats against my boyfriend to a minimum. Although I was a bit concerned that Rachel wasn't tied down to her chair; for her being the most loud-mouthed and moody, I had no doubt she would do it more than the others. But she managed to make it through lunch pretty decently. Props to her.

When I got home after play practice, I was exhausted and just wanted to mope more. Alyssa made Callan and I be extra star-crossed today, although I think we had both made it clear we weren't as fond as our parts as we first had been when the play first began.

Today marked the slim two-week deadline we had until our final dress rehearsal. Only, not really, because our opening night wouldn't be until Friday night. Why she insisted on having the final pratice be four days apart from the real thing, I had no idea, and wasn't quite ballsy enough to risk asking her why.

(Alyssa had been acting enraged and crazy eyed all afternoon and no one was fearless enough to get close to her, not even kiss-up, kiss-ass Tina.)

Imagine my disappointment when I had to answer the door instead of digging out a big spoon and drowning myself in Rocky Road ice cream.

And I bet you can guess who was on the other side.

I sighed, mentally worn as he nervously stood in front of me, running a hand through his hair that anxious way he had of doing.

"What do you want Chase?" I asked, feeling well enough to be a bit snappish. "If it's to pay for Hunter's hospital bill, tell Davenport to mail the check to me later."

He jumped as if startled. Chase's eyes darted around, never landing on me.

"Well?" I prompted impatiently.

"Just tell her you love her, you idiot!" a voice said said suddenly, coming from seemingly nowhere. "I shouldn't have to write a script for you, God!"

I shook my head, stunned as Chase, sheepish now, glanced down to his jeans pocket. Where I now noticed the bulge of his phone in it.

"Is that Bree's voice? Stuffed in your pocket?" I asked. Now I felt more amused than moody, watching as he fished a hand in and pulled out his iPhone, Bree's face cracked into a wide grin displayed as her supposed "call" went on.

"She knows," he told her, defeated.

Bree made a sound that sounded like a snort. "Well, of course she does. I'm practically the one begging for her to take you back."

"She's not wrong!" came a muffled shout in the background that sounded like Leo.

"Stay out of this!"

"Make me!"

"Do you really wanna risk that? I'm trained to be a black belt of the first degree!"

"Is your entire family listening on the other line?" I asked, hearing Leo and Bree go at each other like wolves over prey.

"God, I hope not," Chase muttered, disconnecting the call and stuffing his phone back into his pocket.

I shifted my weight, my arms crossed as I sighed. At least we could get through this in a less awkwardly way - without his entire family overhearing as an unwanted audience. "Tell Bree her attempts were cute, but I'm still mad."

"Who are you mad at?" Chase asked, crossing his arms. Personally, I hated when he gained confidence like this in a middle of a fight, like his super-brain had solved the equation for him. It always made my arguments that much harder to preach for.

I snorted at this; because even to someone with the intelligence of Adam, the reason seemed obvious. "You're kidding right?"

"No, now answer the question."

"I'm mad at you, moron!" I went to punch his shoulder, but he dodged and moved right just in time to avoid my fist, letting my hand mke contact with air. I groaned. I hated when he did that.

Chase stood, shuffling so that if I were to try again anyway, he was too far to reach. "Why?"

"Because you landed my best friend in the hospital? Ring a bell?"

"Actually, no."

I rolled my eyes. "Have you been paying attention to anything around you for the past five days, idiot? Because everyone else can catch you up to speed if that's what you're here for."

"I came here to tell you that I don't remember a thing about that afternoon," Chase insisted, annoyed like I should know this already. "Because when Spike activates I am no longer concious."

"You were concious enough to make Hunter's eye swell shut."

"For the last time, Spike and I are two different things - in the same body! While I am a person, Spike in a defense mechanism that comes out when I shut myself down."

"Whatev - wait, shut yourself down?" I repeated slowly. "As in, shutting yourself down?"

Chase nodded. "Yeah, as in shutting down to process - or, in my case, download - a major piece of information. My mind - and Adam and Bree's, slightly - work like computers because of the chips we have, Christine. You don't. You're given your powers through default programs put in your systems later during puberty. We've had them since we were created.

"Because of that, I was taught to shut myself down - like a comeputer - when a part of me is compromised. When I do that, Spike comes out. I'm not in control of what he does, because he's all testoserone and rage, an app made to take down whatever made me shut down. And that happened to be Hunter. Whoopsies."

"Part of you compromised as in...?" I asked, not fully getting it. But the parts I could make out made sense. Unfortunately.

"As in experiencing a total mental breakdown and causing my brain to go haywire," he elabroated. "Understand now?"

I sighed, kicking at my porch with a slippered foot. "Yes," I said grumpily.

"So, again I ask, who are you mad at?" Chase stepped closer, no longer afraid of my punches. (Not that I was gonna throw one without receiving something back, anyway.) "Who are you mad at?"

I looked at him, frustrated. I stomped my foot. "Why do you always have to be right? Can't for once you just -"

I never get to finish my sentence, because at that moment he chose to slam me against the doorway and smash our lips together. I wanted to push away, to still be mad and throw a fit, but instead I found my hands circling his neck and grabbing a fistful of his hair. I feel his fingers slip under my shirt, softly kneading my slight stomach muscles developed from so much training during the summer.

Suffice to say that fight didn't last very long after that.

November 21st 2013

With all the fighting over with, my only reason for my moodiness was that I felt responsible for Hunter's fingers in casts and that I was still extremely pissed that my dad had finally up, but stupid "Dr. Lexington" wasn't allowing anybody to see him - not even family was allowed.

Even though it was perfectly fine for me to storm in to his hospital room and see him in a coma, it wasn't all right for his daughter to converse with him when he was actually awake?

What medical degree did you have to have to make that descision, freaking Dr. Lexington?

Suffice to say, the rest of my week was spent with me ticking like time bomb.

This news was given to Rem on Wednesday, while she was making a huge batch of cinnamon peanut butter cookies, by the way, right when I was taking my last forkful of sausage and egg scramble. ("Something new this morning," Rem had cheerfully decided when I saw it sitting on my plate, hot and steaming still.)

She wasn't too thrilled about this either, and I could tell by the way her gears made a distinct whistling sound from her core. But God be damned if Rem was going to show any other emotion besides fake cheeriness around me nowadays.

Even Tina and her little Devil crew had backed off a little bit, now mocking from a distance I suppose. Or their puppetmaster was commanding them to heel until some big finale on play night, not that they know about our plans.

Now, Janelle, Chase, and I were sitting in our last class of the day - English.

It wasn't a horrible class. The teacher, a peppy blonde named Ms. Sue, reminded me a lot of Tasha and wrote on the white board in squiggly cursive that screamed cheeriness.

Currently in class we were talking about the effects Shakespearan writing had on the readers of this generation. Or, more accurately put, we were broke up into groups that pretended to talk about what it was like to read Shakespeare writing. Poor Ms. Sue sat in her chair, grading papers, completely unaware of this.

I felt kind of bad for her as Janelle, Chase, and I (convenitly grouped together) sat on a horse-shoe shaped table in the back of the class, not talking about the assignment ourselves.

"Okay, how many times do you think Rachel's gonna make us practice this?" Janelle asked, swinging her legs.

I snorted. "Between now and opening night? Probably as many times as Chase wears high tops."

Chase, not even looking up from where he was untying and retying the laces of my Converse, flicked my ankle. "I heard that."

I reached up and ran my hand over his hair, feeling its slightly spiked top underneath the palm of my hand. "I know you did, babe."

After another two minutes of complaining about Rachel's overbearing bossiness, Ms. Sue had us regroup and settle back into our usual seats.

"Now, who would like to share what their group discussed?" she asked cheerfully.

You could practically hear the crickets. No one was exactly mimicking her enthusiasm as she had hoped.

"Ah let's see here...Christine! Ah, yes, Miss Grant; why don't you share with the class what your group talked about when dealing with the topic of Shakespeare and the emotions he draws with his works?"

Reluctantly, I lifted my head up and stood, stuffing my hands in the pockets of my hoodie.

"Uhm, my group discussed..." I looked to Janelle, who was sitting the closest to me, for help. But she did was snort and turn away, completely throwing me under the bus. Gee, thanks for that.

"Yes, go on," Ms. Sue prompted brightly.

"We discussed...the tragedy!" I said a little to quickly, a little too loudly, "yes, we talked about how the tragic era of how Shakespeare wrote his stories influenced the reader's way of dealing with the events of the books. Like, for example, in Romeo and Juliet he had an element of sadness mixed in with the star-crossed love nature of the two characters, more than one emotion from the reader instead of just a common feeling."

Ms. Sue smiled, looking satisfied. "And were you able to list a few of these emotions?"

"Uhm, you know...things like frustration and hope, loss, a connecting with the character's way of mind."

"How wonderful! It's nice to see that some students actually follow instructions in this school!" With that she turned to the board, writing down half of what I said in her squiggly handwriting while I sunk back down in my seat.

I think I avoided that disaster quite nicely, if I do say so myself.

Okay, so the ending's pretty bogus. But I'm actually pretty happy, because this chapter came out longer than expected.

Next chapter's a big one. That's all I'm gonna say about that.

Review and share with us what you thought about this chapter. Still feeling crappy, so this chapter came out as pretty much a filler. But some major stuff did happen, make-out scene, Allan's awake, Tina's less-bitchy.

Until the next chapter.