In the year 2020, Vampires took control of society and ordered all humans placed in vampire custody. The people who were not captured formed a Resistance movement, headed by the Human Council, who began to plan the Insurgence.

I am, of course, indebted to Stephenie Meyer for this world we all play in, and these characters we all adore. Additionally, I am indebted to hitntr01, who has graciously allowed me to use certain concepts from her wonderful story "In Need of Rescue", which constitute much of the background of my own story. These include: the language Vampiri, the Rules, the machines used to draw blood from humans, Manners Training, and the plot theme of Edward working as a guard at a facility holding humans. Thank you, hitntr01.

Chapter 31 – the Cake is Saved and Served

Emily and I are working in the kitchen, trying to repair the damage done to Jasper's birthday cake. Crazy is distracting Carlisle and Jasper from bothering us by telling them how she became my guardian in the human world.

"You are 99's guardian?" Jasper repeated incredulously.

"Yep. After she was freed," Crazy said, "I went to the humans and told them I wanted to be her guardian. In any world, she was too young to be on her own. I had papers made so that I was her 'owner' under vampire law, but I knew that she would eventually try to escape any situation involving ownership. So I wanted to become her family in the eyes of the humans in diaspora."

"How did you accomplish that?" asked Carlisle. He leaned against the kitchen doorway, placing himself between Crazy and me, making himself the vampire closest to the kitchen. I could see she wanted to out- maneuver him, but she decided to continue her story instead.

"I went to the authorities during the Human Diaspora," Crazy continued, "which is the church."

"I thought the Human Council was in charge," said Esme.

"The council runs the war and sets general guidelines for the colonies. The church is the glue that holds society together. They perform the rites such as wedding, baptisms and funerals, and they are the true guardians of the social structures. So I told the church elders I wanted to be 99's guardian, since her mother had been killed by a vampire. The elders were initially suspicious. Sometimes vampires will go to extreme lengths to gain a human's trust, because they want to play with their food. Their goal is to make the eventual meal more 'fun', by spicing it with a betrayal. I had to prove I was truly interested in her human life and welfare. So I set out the things we had done together since we met."

Now the conversation had my full attention. I wasn't sure how much she should reveal.

"Baby, can I tell them about this?" she asked gently, sensing my nervousness.

"Go ahead," I replied. "I'll chime in where necessary. It was a difficult time for me, so I would rather you describe the process."

"First," Crazy began, "I had helped free her from vampire custody. I killed the guard who had allowed her to escape only because he planned to sell her to a brothel." Jasper and Carlisle both growled at this statement. "We spent several weeks together after that, just discussing her life in the living death camp and letting her grieve over her mother. We went back to her mother's house, found her doll, and found the family plot in the town cemetery. We performed a private Memorial Service for her mother at her mother's house, and then we put a marker for her in the family plot."

Esme and Rosalie were sitting in the dining room at the table, listening. For once, Rosalie didn't look bored or disgusted. She looked interested, and it even appeared she might ask a question.

"I had her house put in my name for safe keeping," Crazy continued. "We found someone who would maintain her mother's garden while I was gone, since I travel so much. We worked out what she wanted to do with her freedom. She decided she wanted to live with free humans and join the human resistance."

"In the eyes of the elders, I had already been acting as a guardian, as I helped her with both her personal family history as well as human history. I had always made sure to point out human accomplishments wherever we went. We started at Disneyland" …at this point Jasper and Carlisle rolled their eyes.. "and I always looked up points of historic interest wherever we went. The church elders said that of all the vampire-human guardianship petitions they had received, the merit in mine was the clearest."

"I had always acted with the intent of making Baby independent and aware of her human past during the time we had spent together. The elders did make us spend six months apart before they would finalize the transaction. They wanted to give her time living with humans to ensure a vampire guardian was what she wanted. And after six months, of course it was still what she wanted."

"After that, it was history," Crazy continued, gaining momentum. "Baby found the colonies, and we discovered just how alike we were. I couldn't conform to society when I was growing up, and Baby found the colonies stifling. She set out on her own and joined the resistance. She was the top, best, absolute most-est fighter! She's.."

At this point I had to interject. "Well, you may be a little biased..."

"No, baby, you're the…"

"Like I said, you're biased. Right?" I urged, looking at Crazy in a meaningful way.

"Oh, right. She doesn't run the war, and she's been out of it for months now, here with you, in her windowless room…"Crazy began to backpedal.

Emily sensing the tension, chimed in, bringing our attention back to Jasper's birthday cake. "What do you think? Is this a cowboy hat, or what?"

I went back to the center island of the kitchen. The cake now had a brown/yellow top, but the center was mostly yellow, with a little flattened oval in the center. "Yep, I declare that a cowboy hat," I said. "Now, if we just had candles, we can eat this thing!"

My cousins had put candles in the bag with the balloons, so we put candles around the edge of the cake and brought it to the living room. We lit the candles with one of the long fireplace matches and then stood back.

Crazy started "Happy Birthday," and she and I sang to Jasper. Crazy did a little soft shoe dance routine as well, ending with a broad gesture towards the cake. I cut a few pieces of the cake for Emily and me. Crazy handed my piece to Jasper and then cut a larger one for me.

Surprisingly, Jasper put a bite of cake in his mouth. Crazy giggled.

"What's going to happen?" I asked. "You don't eat people food, you eat people."

"Darlin'," he answered, "no one has given me a birthday cake in almost two hundred years. I'm going to eat a piece."

The cake really was good, despite its appearance. It turned out that the damage done to the cake when Alice smashed it and put it in her trash can only meant that the icing had been cut down between the layers, making it even moister. I had never had fresh chocolate cake before. It was amazing.

Emily particularly enjoyed her piece. "I've heard about chocolate cake all my life, but I've never had it before. It's wonderful. What's in it besides the chocolate? Butter, flour, sugar, right?" she asked. "All the kinds of things I can't get in large quantities, when I can get them at all."

We sat for a moment, and then Emily leaned forward. "Baby wants another piece of cake," she declared.

"Allow me," said Jasper, surprising us all. He deftly cut a piece and managed to get it out onto a plate in remarkably good shape, considering the number of toothpicks that were holding the cake together.

Emily sat back and stroked her stomach. Esme moved closer to her.

"May I?" Esme asked, holding her hand out.

Emily nodded, and Esme cautiously touched Emily's stomach. When Emily smiled, Esme relaxed and stroked it.

"So, have you picked out a name yet?" Esme asked.

"I'm thinking of Sue," Emily said. "Sue Clearwater has been a mother to me, so I can't think of a better name for my daughter. I'm sure she's going to be a girl."

Rosalie continued to look interested but didn't say anything. I knew from the Resistance that one of Rosalie's male blood slaves had been used to impregnate Alice and Jasper's blood slave Ardella. Jasper and Alice had no interest in raising a child, so when the newborn's crying bothered Alice, they had sold the infant to one of the living death camps to be raised.

The baby had been taken from Ardella a three days after her birth while Ardella was sleeping, and Ardella had scarcely left her bedroom in Jasper's house since that time. About the only time she left her room was when Alice or Jasper ordered her to go to the spare bedroom where the exsanguination machine was kept. They carried her unconscious body back to her bedroom when the machine had finished removing her blood, and she woke back up in the room.

However, in the world of human captivity, Ardella would be considered one of the lucky women. All humans were required by the Rules to be bred at the age of 16. Ardella lived in the comforts of an individual house. She only had a single partner, and the sex acts had taken place in the relative privacy and comfort of a bedroom in a house. A doctor came to visit her during her pregnancy, and she didn't have any life threatening injuries, such as a broken pelvis or broken back. But looking at Emily, the difference was appalling.

Suddenly all of the vampires stiffened, and the males went into protective stances, just as I heard a noise outside. So I looked out the patio doors. A man appeared at the edge of the woods, just beyond the fence. He was looking at the house with a worried expression. There were three shadowy figures in the woods behind him, and the mind-reader told me that there were six more shape shifters covering the front and other two sides of the house.

"Sam," Emily sighed as she followed my glance outside. "I didn't exactly tell him where I was going when I set out on my bicycle ride this afternoon."

I nodded and said "It was great to meet you."

Esme packed up half the cake and brought a bag of oranges and a bouquet of roses from the front yard as well.

"Is there anything else you need, dear?" Esme asked.

"No", said Emily. "And thank you for your hospitality and inviting me into your lovely home."

Oh, no. She said "lovely home." Crazy and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Emily's dark eyes were dancing with unspoken laughter; clearly she knew the story of her distant cousin's unsuccessful courtships as well.

"Good-bye, I hope to return soon," she said.

"Please come back soon, and let us know when the baby is born," I added.

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