Notes: Set during season two, at the start of the preliminaries of the WRGP. Just a little drabble from musing what Misty might be doing right now. If she does turn up again I might end up being completely wrong, but that's fine.

There was something happening back in the city. Though she didn't know exactly what it was she'd heard about it, in bits and pieces. It wasn't as if she was completely ignoring what was going on in Neo Domino, it was just…

…Just that she wasn't ready to go back there yet.

Regardless of her personal wants in the matter, Misty Lola was still a busy model, so it would have been quite normal for her to disappear elsewhere for months at a time and no one to think anything of it. Fortunately this was exactly what she wanted right now too.

As one of the assistants left the room, having given her a newspaper about the daily goings on back home, she considered that without the Signers she probably wouldn't still be in this job to begin with. Misty had died once, and her mind had clouded with the desire for revenge against those who had taken her brother away from her.

Most of all there had been a burning image of hatred towards Aki in her mind. Everything she had learned about Tobi had led her to believe that Aki was the one who had caused his death. When she was offered a chance to make that girl suffer nothing could have stopped her from taking it.

But it turned out that everything she had learned was wrong. By the time she'd found this out it was almost too late. She'd almost taken her revenge on someone who it turned out didn't deserve it. And laughably, even after everything Misty had put her through, Aki was one of the people who had helped save her.

In the end she had carried on her duel against Aki as a Dark Signer, and in the privacy of her mind she knew that even if she went back to that moment now she wouldn't change that. Aki had defeated her, her mind was put to rest, and somehow after it was all said and done Misty had lived.

She owed every kind of thanks possible to them, especially to her, and it wasn't as if she had trouble admitting she had been wrong, but somehow facing them was too difficult right now.

The thought of Aki's face full of forgiveness, when Misty had been too blind herself to see that beauty for what it truly was, it was just too much to deal with. She wasn't deserving of that forgiveness. Or maybe she was, Aki probably wouldn't demand it of her, but she didn't feel ready in herself.

As she skimmed through the newspaper something caught her eye. They were entering that grand prix everyone had been talking about under the alias of Team 5Ds. There had been a last minute change to the line up due to injury and one of the racers was… Aki.

She could ride a D-Wheel now?

Smiling, Misty set the newspaper to a side and returned to preparing for her next photo shoot. Perhaps by the time she got back Aki would have matured even further. For once she didn't want to know what the future held in that regard; there were some things it just didn't feel right to read.

Misty knew she wasn't ready to face Aki yet, but each day she was coming closer to maturing enough herself to meet her again with a clear conscience.