A/N: Ah, I'm so glad so many of you are excited for this sequel. I'm sort of excited too!

Thank you for the reviews, you guys, you all rock.

Beta'd by: Greg, whose invaluable input gave you all about 1500 more words of Jimmy/Ben, so give him thanks.

Read.

II.

It was a little after noon and most of the 2nd Mass had gathered inside the community center for lunch. Jimmy crossed camp towards the bench where Ben sat, his back to his approaching friend, and eyes scanning intently their perimeter. He almost seemed the picture of a loyal watchdog, all he needed was a collar.

Ben didn't stir when Jimmy took a seat on the bench next to him, casually resting their shoulders against one another. It was getting noticeably colder outside, and while Jimmy wore layers to stave off the chill, Ben was dressed in only a t-shirt, despite that, Ben's warmth was still overbearing through the fabric of Jimmy's shirt.

Jimmy held out a small, unopened package of trail-mix. Ben accepted it, glancing at the crinkling plastic front. He made a face.

"Raisins?" he complained.

"It's all they had," Jimmy returned. Ben darted him a skeptical look and Jimmy folded his arms over his chest, remarking huffily, "You know, you could go in there and get yourself food. You're more than capable."

"Yeah, sure, walk right through the crowd of people that would rather chop off their own hand than eat near me," Ben muttered, opening the package and dumping some of its contents in his open palm, then picking through to toss away the raisins, "Waiting in line with them all glaring at me, don't think I'd have an appetite by the time I got to the food."

Jimmy watched Ben a moment, and then shook his head.

"You're the reason there's so many fucking pigeons around here," he noted, then said, "The way people look at you isn't going to change anytime soon, Ben, so one of these days you're going to have just grow some balls and deal with it."

Ben grinned and opened his mouth to comment, a smart, possibly crude comeback clearly prepped on his tongue.

"Shut up," Jimmy snapped.

Ben closed his mouth soundlessly, smirking at the other boy. He popped a peanut in his mouth, chewing it thoughtfully. Jimmy leaned back and rubbed a hand over his face.

"I don't see why I'd ever need to, when I've got you to do it for me," Ben quipped and Jimmy shot him a dangerous look.

"And what happens when I get so annoyed that I stop doing it for you?"

"Well, then I starve," Ben easily replied, "Which, of course, you'll see me crippled with hunger pangs, take pity on me, and bring me food, and thus, ultimately, I win."

"What makes you so sure I won't just tell you you're a dumbass and let you rot?" Jimmy grumbled.

"Pure faith," Ben answered, biting a dried pineapple in twain and grinning at Jimmy.

Jimmy rolled his eyes. They sat in amiable silence a moment, Ben carefully selecting his favorite morsels from the trail-mix in his hand as Jimmy took up Ben's watch of the horizon, always keeping Ben in the corner of his vision.

"See any more strange lights?" Jimmy questioned quietly and Ben visibly grimaced.

They hadn't spoken about it the night before, Ben hadn't exactly wanted to carry on a conversation about the white light blazing across the horizon that he'd witnessed in the distance, cutting through the vast darkness as though a rising sun; an anomaly that no one back at camp had noticed. Jimmy had prodded Ben for details as they'd trekked back to camp through the twilight, he was concerned of course, but he wasn't sure if it should be for the general safety of the group or for Ben's own sanity. Regardless, Ben hadn't offered up much information, and not wanting to irritate the other boy with his persistence, Jimmy let the subject drop, even as it nibbled away in the back of his mind.

"Nope," Ben unconcernedly replied, flicking away another raisin.

"Seriously, if you're not going to eat those, just give them to me," Jimmy griped, holding out a hand for the preserved fruit Ben seemed to abhor so much. Ben dropped a couple in the outstretched palm and Jimmy popped them in his mouth, grumbling, "You're so wasteful."

"I'm wasteful?" Ben replied teasingly, "You're the one that's wasteful. You should have said something sooner, instead you just watch me toss them away and bitch about pigeons."

Another silence, as Jimmy chewed the raisins and Ben munched on a banana chip.

"What do you think it was? That light?" Jimmy murmured, taking a few raisins from the last of the trail-mix in Ben's hand.

"We need to talk about this again? I told you last night it was probably nothing," Ben muttered, a sharp edge to his tone.

Jimmy dropped his eyes, swallowing down the raisins and biting his inner cheek, a small squeeze on his jackhammering heart. He knew he shouldn't have asked, Ben had said the night before that it was 'nothing', so Jimmy should have just left it at that. Instead, he needed to push. He'd always been like that, even as a child, pushing and picking at things right passed their limits; it had bothered his parents, and they had hated him for it, amongst his other little terrible traits.

Now, he was trying desperately to curtail those quirks of his that had made him so unbearable in the past, because he didn't want Ben to hate him, but it was so difficult when Ben made him feel so at ease. He felt in a constant war with himself to not drive the other boy away.

"You don't need to worry about it so much," Ben said, startling Jimmy from his personal musings.

"What?"

Jimmy wasn't entirely sure of Ben's meaning and while rationally there was no way Ben could know what Jimmy had been thinking in those silent seconds he'd unwittingly let pass, sometimes Jimmy wasn't entirely sure that amongst the various other superhuman abilities the harness had left Ben with, there wasn't a form of mind-reading thrown in as well.

"The light," Ben clarified, "Forget about it."

"Oh," Jimmy whispered, wiping the salt from the raisins off on his trouser legs then leaning forward on his knees. The request was far easier said than done, when it so obviously still weighed heavy on Ben's mind, "I'm not worrying. I was just wondering, is all..."

They fell quiet again, but this time it was a more awkward, drawn out silence. Ben finished the trail-mix, knocking his hands together to brush away the salt.

"So…Hal is probably going to be preoccupied for the next hour or two," he stated casually.

Jimmy quirked a brow, he'd been wondering where the eldest Mason brother was and why he hadn't appeared to 'check' on Ben in the past five minutes. It seemed in the absence of proper parental supervision, Hal had taken it upon himself to play chaperone for the two younger boys whenever opportunity presented itself. Jimmy didn't mind it so much, Hal wasn't cruel about his intrusions, more or less just wanting to make sure the two younger boys weren't constant victims of their own hormones, not to mention, it wasn't as though he had much time to devote to his over-protective brother cause, what with his duties as a fighter, but for Ben, Hal's constant hovering was paramount to a declaration of war. Their arguments got uncomfortably heated at times and Jimmy wasn't entirely sure if it was normal brotherly behavior, never having had a brother himself, or if they might need a professionally trained mediator.

"Why is that?" Jimmy wondered, trying to imagine what could be holding Hal up.

"He's been in talking with Weaver," Ben explained, "And it doesn't look like he'll be getting out anytime soon. Is it wrong that I kind of hope he's in trouble and Weaver is tearing him apart?"

"That's weird," Jimmy said, taken aback, "Dai's been in with Weaver all morning too. Same with Anthony."

Ben hummed wistfully under his breath then jokingly remarked, "I wonder why we weren't invited."

"I'm sure they sent us an invite, but it just got lost in the mail," Jimmy droned sarcastically, "I wonder what's going on. Seems like it might be big, if Weaver's got Dai, Anthony, Hal…there are other fighters I haven't seen around camp all morning either. I thought they were out on scout before, but now…I'm not so sure…"

"You know, that is fascinating and all, but could we get back to the part where Hal is busy elsewhere?" Ben pressed.

Jimmy sighed, shaking his head exasperatedly at the other boy. He lifted himself up off the bench and stretched languidly, then started trudging towards the 2nd Mass's makeshift parking lot, pausing only briefly to glance back to Ben expectantly over his shoulder. Ben grinned, on his feet in an instant and falling in step beside Jimmy.

...

The 2nd Mass hadn't spent very long at their current location, a community center dug into a small suburban setting somewhere on the southeastern corner of Massachusetts's state. It had only been a couple weeks, but they had been long, arduous weeks that saw the small militia unit in constant struggle with the enemy. For the most part, the civilians were safe, but the surrounding areas, those commercial plazas and industrial complexes where there were more likely to be supplies for looting, were completely overrun with the enemy.

People had grown accustomed to this strange, war-torn life, however, managing to form bonds, rituals, and a new cultural identity within the 2nd Mass community. In the face of extreme adversity, they found reasons to laugh, to smile, found love amongst one another. A couple weeks back, the group welcomed its first true baby of the Skitter-infested world, conceived and born to a mother and father; each of them fighters that had only just met after the invasion. They had named their child 'Perseverance'.

It impressed Hal, how easily mankind could adapt to new, uncertain situations. His father, a former university professor of war history, Tom Mason, used to talk about the resilience of the human spirit. It was his belief that there was nothing that could crush a person entirely, that they would always find a way to continue on. Hope, it couldn't be taken, it couldn't be destroyed, no matter the seeming futility of any situation, hope would always remain.

Of course, three months back Tom Mason had willingly climbed on-board one of the enemy alien space crafts at the bequest of one such alien and hadn't been seen since, so Hal wasn't sure how much stock to put in his father's words anymore.

Captain Weaver, the gruff leader of the 2nd Mass, took full advantage of their location within the battlefield. He devised complex guerilla attacks on the enemy, something to keep the Skitters at bay and on their six-legged toes. Clever strikes that did menial amounts of damage to the overall enemy force, but afforded the civilians of the 2nd Mass their comfortable existence, allowing the fighters windows of opportunity to search out resources and bring back much needed supplies.

Though, at times, those resources came at a high price. Fighters had been lost in those past weeks. Hal had seen good friends and amiable acquaintances killed, murdered by the clawed hands of the Skitters or their mechanical bipedal beasts that were near impossible to take head on, they had been dubbed 'mechs' by the fighters.

The newborn babe, Perseverance, had unknowingly lost his father a week after his birth in a raid on a canning factory in a downtown area twenty miles north of their location. Several days before, Captain Weaver had lost his interim second-in-command, a reasonable man by the name of Samson, who had been filling in the role, which was another responsibility aside from his three young children that Tom Mason had abandoned months prior.

Currently, a strong, silent fighter by the name of Dai was acting as second-in-command. Dai was a good friend of Hal's, and while he was a capable fighter, and had good leadership qualities, he wasn't suited for high-command. It meant a lot of times he was forced to sit out from the battlefield, which was where he really belonged and truly wanted to be.

Dai was the one who had determined that if the 2nd Mass didn't make a significant strike on the enemy soon that they would be discovered by the alien forces which were slowly, yet unintentionally, surrounding them. They needed to push the enemy back a bit, give them something they needed to recover from, and give the 2nd Mass time to find a new relocation point.

There were specific buildings, structures that the aliens had built upon, that seemed to garner a certain extreme guardianship. They were important to the enemy, and while the 2nd Mass had yet to learn the purpose of those buildings, they did learn that attacking one usually sent the enemy into a retreat. A couple days ago, a scouting group brought back news of one such building.

Hal had spent the morning in meeting with Captain Weaver, Dai, and some of the other fighters whose opinions seemed to carry the greatest esteem with the high-ups. Hal wasn't entirely sure when and why his opinion had come to be so valued, part of him felt it had something to do with his father's previous rank in the community, and another part of him was suspicious that it had to do with his younger brother, Ben's status as having been formerly-harnessed, and therefore having a unique, intimate bond with the enemy, as well as, the weird 'abilities' the harness seemed to have imbued Ben with, both of which Weaver, in recent times, had become interested in exploiting.

After a long debate on attack strategy, Weaver had declared that there was to be a meeting of fighters to further hash out details. The attack would happen; but when, where, and how was the question. Weaver and Dai had ideas, but they needed to bounce them off the unit. They only had so many fighters, after all, and asking the men to constantly risk their lives on half-cocked plans took a certain finesse that Weaver had perfected over the course of his short career as the 2nd Mass's captain.

Hal volunteered to muster the troops, eager to get out of the stuffy room Weaver had taken over as his center-of-operations and out into the open air to clear his head. He passed the message of meeting on to several fighters he met along his trek, instructed them to pay it forward. 2nd Mass was small, less than two hundred people last count; he only needed to whisper in a few ears before the news would travel to everyone in camp.

The only fighter that might not receive word was Hal's own younger brother, Ben, and it was another part of the reason Hal had volunteered to gather everyone, so as to ensure that 'everyone' was gathered. A quick round of the camp and it seemed Hal's fears were justified. Ben was nowhere to be found. Nor was Jimmy, the youngest fighter of the group and the only one that Ben could truly call 'friend'.

Hal could take a few guesses as to what exactly the two younger boys were doing, the question was, where were they doing it and did Hal really want to find them doing it. He came across Maggie in his wanderings around camp.

"You seen Ben?" he asked, after proper greetings were exchanged. Maggie glanced around, as though expecting Ben to appear out of nowhere, and shrugged.

"Nope," she answered, "I think I saw him and Jimmy together earlier," Hal nodded, of course, "They were talking with a couple of the girls over near the artillery cart."

Hal furrowed his brow and folded his arms over his chest, suddenly skeptical of the information.

"A couple girls?" he pressed.

"Yeah," Maggie confirmed, smirking knowingly, and rolling her eyes, "I'll take you to them."

Maggie led the way towards the artillery cart, a trailer bed that housed the majority of the 2nd Mass's weapon and ammo supplies, and they found two young teenage girls sitting and chatting nearby. Valerie and Mary were their names, if Hal remembered correctly. They were both fighters that typically handled late night patrols, but both were excellent shooters, and sometimes played the part of sniper in battle, though it was rare. They weren't equipped or trained well enough to handle any kind of fighting that was up-close and personal.

When Maggie and Hal approached, the girls instantly fell silent, appearing as if caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar, probably gossiping from their expressions, dually guarded and curious all at once. They stared expectantly up at the older, more veteran fighters.

"You two were talking to Ben and Jimmy earlier?" Hal questioned. The girls exchanged looks.

"Yeah," Valerie provided, "But they left like ten minutes ago."

"Right. Well, where did they go?" Hal asked.

"Somewhere to do boy stuff, probably," Mary unhelpfully supplied.

"Those two are always like that, you know? It's so annoying. Like they have their own little boys club, but no one else is allowed to join," Valerie rattled off, "We were just trying to have a nice conversation with them but like two minutes in they were like, okay we have to go. Honestly, I think it's all because of Jimmy. He's so immature about that kind of thing, you know? Selfish, is what it is. Like, no one else is allowed to talk to Ben. And I don't think it's fair at all to Ben. He should be able to make more friends and not have to close everyone out just because Jimmy is so-"

"Why are you putting all the blame on Jimmy? Ben didn't really act like he wanted to stick around either. Did you ever think that maybe it's because you were boring them so much with all that talk about your favorite vegetable?" Mary cut in vapidly.

Maggie perked a brow at Hal and he rolled his eyes, shaking his head at the two motor-mouthed girls.

"Um…excuse you; Jimmy was the one that told Ben they had to go, he's always bossing Ben around like that, if you hadn't noticed. Ben was perfectly fine listening to my story, and he always listens to everything I have to say, because he is a really good listener, unlike some people I know," Valerie snapped.

"Uh…that is so not true. And you just want to believe that Ben listens to everything you say because you have such a huge crush on him," Mary shot back. Valerie's eyes went wide, darting frantically to Hal.

"I do not," she hissed, then bit out accusation, "You have a crush on Jimmy."

"Shut up, you bitch," Mary spat.

"Hey, ladies," Hal barked and the girls fell into an embarrassed silence, "I don't care who has a crush on who; I just want to know where they went."

"Off that direction," Valerie answered sheepishly, pointing over her shoulder towards the cluster of vehicles the 2nd Mass had accumulated over the months.

Hal frowned. The oblivious girls may not have picked up on it, which was to be expected given that they weren't entirely clued in on the full details of Ben and Jimmy's relationship, but Hal knew just from one glance at the parked vehicles exactly where the boys were at. One of the vehicles in the 2nd Mass roster was a large black bus with limo-tinted windows, and while its use prior to the war wasn't exactly clear, it had been nicknamed by some of the younger, more hormonally charged members of the 2nd Mass the 'First Night'. A lot of 2nd Mass teens had lost their virginity in the back of that bus.

Hal sighed, falling in step beside Maggie for a moment as they muttered their 'thanks' to the girls, and hiked knowingly towards the makeshift 'parking lot'.

"I almost feel sorry for those girls," Maggie commented softly, though her voice sounded more light and amused than sympathetic, "They are so clueless right now."

Hal glanced over his shoulder to the giggling gale-storms and wondered earnestly, "Should we tell them?"

"Oh no," Maggie laughed, rationalizing, "They're fifteen. In another week or so they'll be crushing on some entirely different boys, probably some older guys that stopped and said 'hi' one day. Speaking of which, you might want to be careful who you talk to casually, Hal, you know you could be next."

"That is not funny," Hal muttered, shuddering at the thought of a couple hyped-up teeny boppers stalking him around camp, but Maggie just chuckled a cruel response, before waving and parting company.

...

The boys had left their rifles at the front of the bus, leaned against the driver's seat. Out of the way, but easy to grab in a pinch should the enemy choose that less-than-fortuitous moment to attack. Jimmy had left his field vest slung over the high back of the third seat from the front, his compass – a borrowed item from Captain Weaver – lay carefully on the seat beneath it. Sheathed knives, holstered guns, made for odd breadcrumbs, a violent trail leading towards the back of the bus.

Jimmy lay on his back, the floor of the bus not exactly the most comfortable of places, but with Ben rest heavy and warm atop him, he didn't really have the strength of mind to notice. His heart beat erratic in his chest, his breath came in sharp and left flighty and hot across his lips. His hands ghosted daintily along bare flesh, they had slipped beneath Ben's shirt, the hem of which was curled up a length, and his fingers traced along those rigid, metallic rods that jutted horrifically out of Ben's spine, and then dropped every now and then to ripple across sinewy stretches of taut muscle.

Ben had his mouth firmly planted on Jimmy's neck, just above the collarbone, suckling and massaging the area raw, his tongue dragging tenderly across the skin. He'd dedicated much of his attentions to that one spot over the past few minutes, and Jimmy didn't want to think about the excuses he would need to invent to explain away the tell-tale mark that would undoubtedly be left behind.

Finally, Ben shifted his focus, lifting slightly to stare intent into Jimmy's half-lidded blue eyes a moment, a faint, endeared smile lingering on those dampened lips, before he crashed his mouth against Jimmy's, his tongue diving in and roughly forcing a throaty moan of excitement from the other boy.

Jimmy responded involuntarily, tightening his grip on Ben a moment, attempting to pull the other boy closer by his hips, as if there were any more space to squeeze out between the two, the way their bodies were so firmly pressed together. He slipped his arms up to hold Ben by the shoulders, as Ben deepened their already severely profound kiss, balancing part of his weight on his forearms, which rest on either side of Jimmy's head.

Then Ben repositioned his body slightly and slid one hand down to fumble with the buttons of Jimmy's trousers, both boys incredibly hot and hard. It took him a few attempts, too distracted by a sudden swap of tongues, as Jimmy gently dove into Ben's mouth, and tentatively searched Ben's gum walls, tickling the soft pink flesh and rigid wrinkles of his top palate.

Eventually, Ben did manage to get the buttons undone, slowly dragging the zipper down and…

BAM, BAM, BAM!

Ben and Jimmy startled apart at the sound of someone's fist pounding against the back door of the bus, flushed and somewhat groggy, staring out at their surroundings with heat blurred eyes.

"Yo, Ben," Hal's voice boomed from outside, "Get decent. I'm coming in."

"Shit," Ben muttered, resting his fevered forehead against Jimmy's collar a moment. Jimmy squeezed his eyes shut, running a hand over his own sweat-slick face, mussing his already disastrous hair. They could hear the crunch of footsteps outside, slowly making their way towards the front door of the bus.

The boys attempted to reluctantly untangle themselves, Ben crawling back and upwards, pinching or pressing down too hard on something and causing Jimmy to grimace and grunt complaint.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Ben chanted wearily, pushing the other boy's shirt up briefly to expose a pale belly, one side twisted with a gnarled burn scar still in the process of healing, and pressing an apologetic kiss there.

"Just get off," Jimmy groaned, swatting Ben away, just as the front door opened and Hal bounded up the stairs into the bus.

Ben fell back on his haunches, seated on his knees glaring heatedly up at his brother, and Jimmy rolled up to sitting, pulling his knees towards himself and resting his arms across them, trying to avoid looking to the older Mason, his cheeks blistering with remaining lust-induced fever. Hal took in the scene before him and made a face.

"Don't you two have patrol tonight?" he bit out.

"Yeah, so?" Ben challenged as Jimmy murmured, "What's your point?"

"Patrol is kind of why we're here," Ben reasoned haughtily, to Jimmy's chagrin, "Get it out of our systems now, you know…"

As Ben spoke, Hal narrowed his eyes angrily on Jimmy, particularly focused on Jimmy's neck and the younger boy self-consciously pulled his shirt collar over the marks he just knew were there, leaning farther over his knees and dipping his chin into his folded arms in attempt to hide his increasingly reddening face.

"My point is, should you really be wearing yourselves out like this when the 2nd Mass will be depending on you tonight to be alert and on-guard," Hal growled.

"We'll be fine," Ben argued.

"Maybe you will," Hal replied, "But Jimmy isn't amped up on Skitter-juice like you. He isn't going to have the energy to entertain your hormones and then wander around for hours on end all night."

"Jimmy will be fine" Ben spat out angrily, "He already gets the job done better on less hours of sleep than most of the other fighters on rounds, a short make-out session is not going to make that great a difference in his performance."

"Jimmy is in the room," Jimmy mumbled quietly, but didn't quite have the motivation to press the issue, still feeling mortified by the older boy's presence in his current state.

"Key phrase in that, Ben, is less hours of sleep," Hal retorted, "Jimmy is lucky he can function right now, you really want to find out how far that luck can stretch?"

"He functions just fine," Ben muttered.

"And you know, Ben, if it's such a concern that you'll be distracted on patrols, then maybe you ought to request a new partner," Hal finally declared. Jimmy's heart dropped at the suggestion, he couldn't stand the idea of someone else, someone he didn't fully trust, out there with Ben, but Ben merely bristled angrily at his brother's words.

"Did you actually have a reason for being here? Because if all you came to do was boss me around, well, then you're wasting both our times. So if you'll excuse me, I was in the middle of something," Ben snarled, before turning back towards Jimmy, eyes burning with intent, and advancing on the other boy.

"Ben…" Hal groaned, turning away and smacking a hand over his face, as Jimmy's eyes widened at Ben's action, blood draining completely from his head. He fell away, putting up his arms defensively to hold Ben back.

"Get off, man, I'm not making out in front of your brother," Jimmy protested, then winced and muttered, "…again."

"I came to tell you that Weaver is calling a meeting," Hal announced loudly, and Ben sat up once more, looking curiously to his older brother. Jimmy straightened a bit as well, darting disgruntled looks at Ben and considering an appropriate punishment for the brash boy's antics. Seriously, did Ben have to mortify him every time Hal was around?

"When?" Ben wondered.

"Ten minutes. In the community center, room 14A, the large one with all the art supplies," Hal clarified, then shaking his head and sighing wearily, muttered, "I have to go finish passing the message on…I expect you two to be there on time," he started down the bus stairs then paused and hissed, "And don't be in here! What if someone saw you two or what if I was someone else?"

"Well…then we would have to kill them, of course," Ben responded easily. Jimmy rolled his eyes. Hal bounded back up the steps and jabbed a finger meaningfully at his younger brother.

"Do not say shit like that," he roared, "You got enough people watching you, suspicious of you, without you running off at the mouth saying stupid things like that."

Ben lowered his face, folding his arms over his chest and glaring at a far corner of the bus. Jimmy furrowed his brow, eying the other boy concernedly, the emotion there could easily be mistaken as anger at Hal's words, but Jimmy knew better, the hurt that swirled there, the self-doubts, and when Hal disappeared down the steps again, he crawled the distance between himself and Ben, grabbing Ben by the shirt collar and dragging him forward into a short, sweet kiss, just a reminder that not everyone watching him was doing it out of suspicion.

Ben grinned, starting forward, arm wrapping around Jimmy's waist, tugging the boy towards himself and wondering suggestively, "So…where were we?"

"Yeah," Jimmy drawled disinterestedly, Ben's behavior in front of Hal still at the forefront of his mind, he pulled back and gently patted Ben's cheek, "I got a meeting to get to," he lifted himself up and, glancing pointedly at Ben's returning arousal, jeered, "You're gonna have to take care of that yourself."

Without another word, Jimmy strode towards the front of the bus, grabbing his field vest and rifle on the way out, not once looking back to the gaping Ben left behind.

.

.

A/N: Whoosh, let me know what you guys think. I know, I know, the one-a-week updates are hard after weeks of daily updates, but at least those of you with school and overbooked social lives have time to read and review before the next post goes up...silver lining. :) And I feel less stressed too, which makes me less cranky...I think...nope, total lie, I'm still cranky.

Oh well. Let me know what you thought of this chapter!

Reviewers: Haley, glad to have you as the first review! WhisperMaw, didn't think of more to say? I'm a little disappointed...kidding, glad you liked the first chapter. ScarlettLynn, lol, snazzy is a good word. Glad to hear I got a good laugh from you, and yes, I'm kind of hoping to make this story a lot darker than First Patrol. I don't think I beat the boys up enough, I hope to make up for it in this story. FacePalmer123, lol, them's the brakes, kid. I'm glad you liked it! Greg, yeah, Ben's a pretty hard-core nerd, I have to admit, it's only because I have a huge soft-spot for nerds. And...you do realize that I will now be reading your zombie fics, right? Cookie97, yes, I love writing from his perspective, he just dumps love for the poor emotionally-crippled Jimmy. Its funny, because Ben thinks he doesn't understand Jimmy, but he does, and Jimmy thinks he understands Ben, but he really doesn't. Glad to hear you'll be with me to the end, I'm holding you to that! CallMePox, ah, ever in defense of my shameless OCs, I dig it, you are too awesome Pox. Glad you found the start so good, I'll try my best to maintain the quality. Heracratzarism, where the heck have you been? Anyhow, glad to hear from you and that you like the sequel already. Yeah, Jimmy...he never really changes.

Okay, everybody, I'll see you all Sunday! Off to study for mid-terms...can you all hear me whimpering pathetically?