"Commander, there's a ship approaching."

Jose's dark lips twisted, his hands still clasped behind his back as he hissed, "One of ours?"

"No, sir," his subordinate answered, his fingers sliding and taping across his console in the corner of the bridge. "I'm unable to access its identification code. It could be from the Council."

"A single ship?" Jose quirked a brow in amusement.

Back on that planet in The Rim, Sol had taken too long to return, but with those three Council scum bound in Inhibitor's Chord, there was little they could have done to escape their fate. Regardless, if they had somehow managed to call the Council for aid, this was a pathetic attempt. There wasn't much a single ship could do against a Balam battlecruiser.

"It doesn't seem to be slowing down, sir. It's headed right for us at light speed."

"Then let them come," his lips twitched into a grin, anticipation racing through him at the thought of a distraction from his frustration. They may have been stuck stagnant in space until the matter of the FTL drive could be resolved, the ship's engineers running around frantically trying to repair what had been caused by an apparent failure in the cooling systems. The entire matter riled him extensively, but at least there would be a show in the meantime, their force field activated and waiting to smash that ship to pieces up impact.

Natsu's fingers were wrapped tightly around the FTL thruster of the Shadow Gear, his jaw clenching as he awaited the perfect moment to drop from light speed.

There was only one place on that cruiser where they could penetrate the force field. If he dropped out of FTL too soon, he'd increase the amount of time it took to navigate to their infiltration point and he'd give the cruiser plenty of opportunities to blow them to bits. If he stopped too late, or rather, if he didn't stop at all, they'd wind up charging right into the cruiser's force field at light speed, which would also result in their ship getting smashed to bits. If that happened, not only would they all die, obviously, but Lucy and Levy would be left in the hands of the Alliance, too.

Natsu wasn't going to let that happen.

There was a narrow sweet spot in between stopping too early and not stopping at all, and that was exactly where the pilot was aiming. If he timed it right, they'd drop out of light speed just outside the hanger where Levy was waiting for them and they'd be able to charge right in before the Alliance could react.

That was the only place where the force field could be penetrated without having to shut it down completely. During battle, smaller ships almost always had to be deployed to fight off the enemy, and while those ships normally had a link with the cruiser's systems that allowed them to pass through the force field unharmed, ships could also be allowed through manually by temporarily shutting down the portion of the force field that spanned the entrance to the hanger.

Levy had somehow made her way there after blowing the FTL drive, using her knowledge and intuition to work the console at the door of the hanger to figure out how to let them through.

They were incredibly lucky that their entire operation depended on areas like the hanger and engine room where crew members typically weren't needed during normal travel. And now that Levy had blown up the FTL drive, attention was further drawn away from the hanger, which was a fairly safe distance from the engine room.

If their luck could stretch any further, maybe the hanger would stay as deserted as it was. The cruiser may not have realized that they were under attack yet and instead characterized what had happened to the FTL drive as a malfunction. And still, if they did figure out that they were under attack, then they'd likely have labeled the threat as internal and they'd have little need to station crew members in the hanger.

The Alliance probably already knew that they were coming, too, due to radar and signals and the like. But it was unlikely that they'd raise alarm and take up arms because of a single ship, or at least that was what Natsu and his crewmates, plus Jet and Levy, were hoping for.

Erza's eyes had been anxiously jumping between the navigation screen and the pilot for the past few minutes, the increasingly short distance between their ship and the cruiser's coordinates beginning to worry her. In the seat to her left, she could tell that Jet was just as nervous from the way his fingers gripped the arms of his chair, and she was sure that in the seat behind her, Gray was feeling similarly unsettled despite his normally cool demeanor.

Although she usually trusted Natsu to pilot them with the expertise that he was known for, her nerves got the better of her, "Natsu! We're approaching too fast! We need to drop out of light speed now!"

Despite what Gray believed, the pilot actually did know better than to talk back to Erza. But his knowledge of the consequences was of little concern to him in this moment and he hissed, "I'm the damn pilot, so let me do my damn job!"

He kept his grip tight on the FTL thruster, his eyes on his navigation screen as he waited for the right moment to pull the thruster back. His other hand was on the control wheel, ready to steer the ship straight into the hanger the second they were out of light speed.

Normally, a drop out of light speed meant coming to a complete stop so that the ship's systems could switch from the FTL drive to the regular thrusters. But Natsu wanted to waste as little time as possible, though he'd be pushing the limits of the Shadow Gear by doing so.

If he'd been piloting their own ship and not the Shadow Gear, he knew that they'd be able to complete the switch from FTL to manual piloting almost instantaneously, but their own ship was still sitting back on a planet in the Rim with its FTL drive busted and a massive hole torn in its aft.

The damage done to their ship served as another reason for Natsu to punch Gajeel into the next star system over when he finally saw him again. The other reason was that that metal-faced bastard had hurt Lucy, so maybe Natsu would have to raise the bar and drop-kick him into the next galaxy instead.

And his chance to do so was quickly approaching, his hand yanking backwards on the FTL thruster before shooting to wrap around the controls for the manual thrusters as he shouted through his com, "Levy! Now!"

They dropped out of light speed and Natsu thrust the ship forward the second he was able to. He found himself right where he'd been aiming for, only a short distance away from the bottom of the cruiser's aft. It didn't seem like there was anything blocking their way into the hanger, but it wasn't unusual for force fields to be invisible to the eye until they were met with an opposing force.

That meant that the force field may still have been active, but Natsu drove the ship forward, despite Erza's panicked call of his name.

A shimmer passed through the space right before them a split second before the front of the ship reached it; the visualization of the force field's deactivation.

With that problem solved, Natsu focused on the other issue he'd created for himself: he was going much too fast to land the ship.

As they charged into the hanger, he pulled back on the thrusters to aim them in the opposite direction and slow their forward momentum, the cruiser's artificial gravity taking hold of them once they'd entered the hanger and leaving them subject to all of the jolts and jostles the change in acceleration caused.

Everyone slammed forward as far as their restraints would allow, their upper bodies getting jostled around as Natsu landed the ship the main walkway that split the ship's in the hanger in half. Normally, his landings were much smoother, but his forced deceleration in addition to his need to get going with the rescue operation had him acting a bit sloppily.

As Natsu shut down the ship's systems, the passengers finally had a moment to vent the frustrations and anxieties of the last few minutes.

"Don't you think that was cutting it a bit close?!" Gray hissed, furiously unbuckling his shoulder and waist restraints.

Natsu was similarly unfastening himself with equitable amounts of frustration, "If I'd dropped out of FTL any sooner, they would've blown us to bits!"

"Shut it!" Erza cut them off, leading the charge towards the back of the ship so they could disembark. "We need to hurry and get the hell out of the hanger. The Alliance knows that we're here, and they won't waste a second."

Jet nodded as the ramp began to lower, "So what's the plan?"

That seemed to halt Erza for a moment, a brief silence passing before she admitted, "I really didn't think we'd make it this far…getting on board was a lot easier than I thought it would be."

"They're too confident. That's why," Gray supplied.

"Levy!"

The blue haired girl was waiting at the bottom of the ramp for them and Jet ran to her, her head bobbing in a nod when Erza said, "I'm glad you're safe."

The two Shadow Gear crew members whispered a few quick sentences to each other and fell into step behind the other three on their hurried, but cautious jog out of the hanger, the red-head obviously questioning her about her well-being, to which the girl responded with a series of nods.

"Besides," Gray continued with what he'd been saying earlier, "getting off is going to be a hell of a lot harder than getting on was. We had the element of surprise coming here, but now that they know we're onboard, getting off ain't gonna be easy."

"Do we have a plan for how we're gonna do that yet?" Levy pitched in from behind.

"Doesn't matter," Natsu hissed, hurrying to press his back against the wall just inside of the blast doors that lead out into the corridor. He peeked his head past the doorway and drew his blaster as the rest followed suit and pressed themselves against either side of the blast doors, Erza, Jet, and Levy on one side and Natsu and Gray on the other.

There were alarms going off in the corridor, but the way was clear, so Natsu tucked his head back inside, "Saving Lucy is our top priority now. We worry about getting off the ship after we've found her."

Levy accepted the extra blaster Jet had brought along, slowly shaking her head, "I…this ship is huge. I didn't see any indication of where the cells might be. How are we going to find her?"

Erza bit her lip for a moment, her grip on the hilt of her sword tightening, "If we split up, we could cover more ground."

Natsu immediately protested, "The last time we split up, I got a fucking sword through my shoulder."

The pilot saw Levy's eyes widen as Jet's brows furrowed in surprise, but he knew he didn't have the time for storytelling, no matter how much he wanted to talk about how kick-ass Lucy had been in that moment.

Erza let out a heavy sigh as if she was still bothered by the fact that her crew mate had been hurt by one of her own weapons, "Then we won't go alone this time. We split into two groups so no one's on their own."

"I'm sticking with Levy," Jet demanded instantly.

Levy seemed a tiny bit annoyed by in his insistence, but Erza acquiesced with a nod, "I'll accompany you." She nodded her head in the direction of her two crew mates, "Natsu and Gray will go the other way."

"Why do I have to get stuck with this idiot?!" Gray hissed.

Natsu would have complained, too, if the circumstances were different. But this way, he could keep an eye on Gray and make sure that he did Lucy no harm. The mechanic seemed to have calmed down a bit since whatever had happened during their run in with Jose earlier, but Natsu still didn't trust him not to shoot the blonde again the second he saw her or abandon the mission if things got too dangerous.

Erza paid no mind to Gray's protest, continuing on with her plan, "Once Lucy's found, everyone heads back to the ship immediately. We don't leave until everyone's back on board the Shadow Gear." She suddenly looked a lot more grim, silence overcoming her for a few moments as she looked around at her four companions before solemnly continuing, "...But...if it comes down to it, the most important thing is getting Lucy off of this cruiser. She's too intertwined with the fate of the galaxy. We can't let the Alliance take her."

Natsu heard Gray's heavy, sharp sigh from behind him, but he ignored it, instead taking a moment to appreciate how Levy and Jet still seemed just as dedicated to the mission as ever. They had no idea who Lucy was or what was at stake, but yet they were still willing to help their friends out even though the situation was so dire.

Friendship really was an incredible thing.

Erza leaned past the doorway once more to make sure the way was still clear, Levy and Jet following her at her nod. They quickly but cautiously took off down the corridor to the right, each with their weapon of choice held at the ready.

Natsu made to go left, feeling Gray trail behind him.

"Wait," the mechanic suddenly whipped back around as another thought occurred to him, his long strides hurriedly carrying him to the console beside the entrance to the hanger.

With a few taps of his fingers, Gray closed the blast doors, and Natsu was expecting the mechanic to work some crazy hacking business to keep them shut. But instead, Gray simply aimed his blaster and shot the console dead on, the screen shattering to bits in time with the popping of sparks as the wiring behind the console was exposed. It seemed he wasn't afraid of getting electrocuted as he reached into the mess he'd created and tugged some of the wires out to further expose them, blasting them a second time to fry the connection even more. He shoved the frayed wires back down the hole for good measure, making sure gravity carried them down far enough that blasting a hole in the wall would be required to get them back out.

"There," he nodded in approval, turning back around to head in the direction he and Natsu had been assigned. "They'll probably try to deploy some ships once the Thunderbird gets here, so that'll slow 'em down a bit."

The pilot lingered in place in shock for a second before he charged to catch up with his crewmate, holding his blaster at the ready and keeping a watch for enemies as he hissed, "Uh, did you forget that our ship is in there, too?! How the fuck are we supposed to get back in?!"

"I don't know! You're good at miraculously blowing shit up!"

Blasts sounded from the direction the others had gone before Natsu could spit back another insult and the pair of boys paused in their steps. The pilot could see that Gray wanted to go their friends' aid in the way he turned back around, his whole body tense and his grip on his blaster tightening as he stared in their direction. The mechanic broke his stare for only a moment to cast a glance Natsu's way, and the pilot understood that Gray was waiting to see what he would do since he was normally the impulsive one.

And hell, Natsu wanted to help them, too, but he always followed his gut, and his gut was telling him that he needed to trust in his friends. So he let out a heavy sigh, sharing one last glance with his crew mate before clenching his hand tighter on his blaster and continuing down the corridor, away from his friends.

His main goal now was finding and saving Lucy.

Lucy flinched as the door to her cell slid open just as she had feared- no…just as she had known that it would. She knew that all of that noise from before and the ensuing alarms couldn't have meant anything good, yet she refused to let herself dwell on the many possibilities of what those sounds could have been. She didn't want to get her hopes up, nor did she want to think about the consequences that were to come if they really were here.

The dark haired, metal-pierced man wasn't alone this time. Jose Porla stood behind him, an involuntary chill ricocheting up her spine as she looked at her primary tormentor for the first time in over a month.

Always, he'd been the one to stand watch for those five years she'd spent in the Alliance's clutches. He'd never taken part in the experimentation and the trials directly, but he'd always been there, manipulating from over people's shoulders and observing her 'progress' with a cold, but satisfied stare.

She'd thought that the day she'd escaped would be the last time she'd ever have to see him. She'd imagined that if she ever were to be recaptured by the Alliance, it'd be this 'Spriggan' guy who she'd be taken to, not Porla.

And yet here he was, standing at the door of her cell, his expression making his intentions clear.

There would be no injections this time. Whatever was coming wouldn't be pleasant for her, but at least she could find some semblance of comfort in her belief that they wouldn't hurt her…at least not too bad. She was too valuable to be physically roughed up, and although she found that thought disgusting, it was the only positive thing she could come up with. Despite herself, she couldn't help but to yearn for something to be optimistic over, and since she wasn't going to let herself consider the danger a certain crew of three would put themselves in if it really was them that had caused such a ruckus, she chose to think that maybe, just maybe she would make it through the next few hours without losing any blood.

The black haired man stepped through the door in the same manner he had the previous times: completely silent and staring emotionlessly down at her through his purple-rimmed, bloodshot eyes as he approached. Lucy didn't flinch or shrink away as he got right in front of her and bent forward to roughly grip her elbow, instead using the little strength she had left in her legs to help push herself to her feet to lessen the strain on her arm as she was tugged upwards.

Maybe she didn't fight back because she knew it was pointless, but then maybe it was because she felt like she could trust this metal-studded man not to hurt her, or at least she could trust him a hell of a lot more than she could ever see herself trusting Jose. Yes, he had been the one to attack her back on the ship that'd become her safe haven, and yes, he had also been the one to inject her with the serum that'd forced her to live through her worst fears.

But now she was almost positive that he was under some sort of mind manipulation, and if their last interaction was anything to go by, then the Alliance's hold on him was beginning to slip, at least a fraction. His will must have been incredibly strong if he was breaking free of their control and withstanding the side effects of having his mind toyed with, and his resistance against their commands would only get stronger with time if he didn't receive another treatment soon.

And from the urgency of their pace as this man followed Jose's charge out of the cellblock with her in tow, she guessed that the Alliance wouldn't have the time to issue him another dose of their invasive drug for a while.

Her legs struggled to match his pace and keep herself upright as she was tugged along, stumbling over her own feet more than a few times. It didn't help that the guy gripping her elbow was around a good foot and a half taller than her, leaving her little legs floundering to keep up with his wide strides.

Her gaze shot across their surroundings, their urgency issuing a panic within the blonde as she asked, "Where are you taking me?"

Silence. Not like she expected an answer, but it was still worth trying, was it not?

Though, as she continued to be carted off down the corridor by her elbow, she discovered that an answer came to her anyways.

She recognized the layout of the ship, which she now realized was a typical Alliance cruiser. It was similar to one she'd been on previously, before she, Jellal, and a few other Balam members had departed on a smaller ship, the one Jellal later hijacked, that would take her to Spriggan. During her time on the cruiser, she'd been taken all across the ship to find the best place from which to feed, the change in their surroundings leading to an inconsistency in the best source of natural light.

She knew that the corridor they were in now would lead to the escape pods. She couldn't fathom how the cruisers had been designed with the cells and escape pods on the same level, but, then again, she'd never heard of anyone who'd been able to break free of one of the cells she'd just been in. Like always, the Alliance's strength was in their continuously advancing technology, and she doubted that there was anyone who could get out of their own volition once they'd been thrown in.

Such ponderings were for a later time though.

It seemed that Jose was trying to get her off the ship before they'd reached any clear location, and Lucy knew that they were nowhere in particular because she hadn't ever felt the ship enter any atmosphere or dock.

Their hurry to get her off of the ship meant that they would somehow risk losing her if they kept her onboard, or at least that was the only reasonable deduction Lucy could come up with.

If she was right, then that meant that maybe there was still a fighting chance at her escaping the Alliance's clutches. Staying on the ship seemed to mean increasing the chances of Balam losing her, and she knew her best bet at fighting to stay aboard was tugging her along by her right elbow.

This guy was being controlled and toyed with, not all that different from how she'd been manipulated, though it was mentally for him and physically for her. There was nothing that could be done to undo how she'd been changed, but she could tell that Balam's hold over this guy was weak and his will was strong.

Earlier, he'd given her the comfort of knowing that Natsu, Gray, and Erza were still alive. That had to have been of his own volition, she had no doubt. The Alliance would have wanted to withhold information of that kind from her for the sake of breaking her into submission. They would never have commanded him to tell her anything that would incite the spark of hope that was beating in her chest, and now that spark of hoping was waxing fuller, not for her own sake, but for his, too. If she could help him break their control, then maybe they'd both be able to make it free.

She would have whispered her next to words to him if she hadn't known that it was fruitless. Jose was only a short distance ahead of them, and despite their heavy steps and the alarms setting off commotion across the rest of the ship, she knew he'd hear her no matter how quiet she tried to be. And her breathing had picked up again in her exhaustive attempts to keep herself on her feet, making whispering all the more implausible.

So she decided to just risk it, and maybe she'd succeed before Jose could intervene. She fought to get closer to the man's side, scrambling along on the balls of her feet as she tried to get as close to his ear as possible and hurriedly pressed, "You can fight it. Lots of people are going to die if you let them take me!"

"It won't work," Jose immediately hissed over his shoulder, knowing what she was planning without even having to look over his shoulder. His hands were still clasped behind his back, and his pace didn't slow even a fraction as he ground out, "He's already let you get away once. He won't fail again unless he wants to lose his life."

Lucy's brows furrowed.

He'd already let her get away once? She was pretty sure she'd never seen this man before he'd attacked her on the other ship because she would've remembered someone with a face pierced as excessively as his was.

And she'd only been six different places since she'd last been in the Alliance's hands: the ship Jellal had hijacked; the other ship they'd used and the planet he'd stashed it on; the Helios station; Natsu, Gray, and Erza's ship; and Ameri.

It clicked all at once, a sharp inhale sliding through her lips as she exclaimed, "You're the one Juvia was talking about!"

The name seemed to break through to him. His steps faltered and he slowed to a stop, his grip on her arm tightening as his brows furrowed as if he was confused as to why he was feeling the way he was.

"She's waiting for you, Gajeel!" Seeing that she was getting to him, Lucy continued down the path she'd started on, hoping that using his name would further her chances of success, "She doesn't care about everything that's happened! She still thinks of you as a friend!"

In her desperation to make Gajeel return to himself, she missed Jose's hand reach for the weapon in the holster at his hip.

Lucy pressed on, "She wants you to come home-"

Pain erupted across her thigh, a scream spilling from her lips as her legs caved beneath her. Her elbow slipped from Gajeel's grasp as she crumpled, though it was still impossible for her to catch herself with her hands secured together like they were.

A resounding thud followed the smacking of her head against the metal paneling of the floor, the tip of Jose's blaster, which was still aimed in her direction, flashing into her line of sight as her head shot back up on the rebound.

This had happened to Gray back on Ameri, hadn't it? She hadn't been conscious when he'd taken a blast to the thigh, but she'd gotten a few tired glances of him when they'd all been in the medical wing afterwards.

During the short few days she'd known him, she'd characterized Gray as being rather stoic and almost untouchable. But after he'd been shot, she'd gotten more than few glances of him completely out of his usual character. She supposed she should've known how bad getting blasted in the leg would hurt from the way he'd clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

But nothing could have prepared her for it, even if she hadn't been caught off guard.

This wasn't anything like the pain she'd endured for the past few hours, where her mind had tormented her with fearful hallucinations and phantom traces of suffering.

This was real. And hell, it hurt.

She couldn't tell exactly where she'd been hit. The whole of her right thigh pulsed with pain, the burning contrasted by the feel of her blood acclimating to the colder air as it escaped her skin…Wasn't there an artery somewhere in the upper leg? Her home had never been particularly advanced in the fields of medicine or biology, but Jellal had done his best to educate her on everything he could during the time he had served as her caretaker.

If she did remember correctly, then she hoped that the blast hadn't punctured it. She didn't want to die.

She'd thought about the grim prospect that was her fate more often than she cared to count. If it ever came down to her own life or the fate of the world, then she like to think her resolve was strong enough and that she would be able to lay down her own life for the sake of the galaxy. But if there was any other option that allowed her to live and preserve the galaxy's peace, then she would choose it.

If there was anything she'd learned during her month on that ship with Natsu, Gray, and Erza, it was that there was a whole lot more to this galaxy than just the conflict between the Council and the Alliance. There'd been dozens plants she'd never seen before in their ship's greenhouse, and from that glass sphere she'd been able to pay witness to a sight she couldn't tolerate never seeing again. There were hundreds of stars out there, some surrounded by their own systems with planets that potentially housed countless lifeforms, landscapes, and spectacles. To someone who had been kept in captivity for a great portion of her youth, the galaxy seemed endless, and she wanted to see all of it.

But for now, she couldn't move. Not to see the extent of her wound nor to make any attempt at escaping to fulfill her wish to live and to do so free of the Alliance's hands. Her mind and body were so overwhelmed with the pain that all she could do was writhe where she'd collapsed, the agony keeping her from doing anything other than squirming but also unsettling her out of remaining still. Her thoughts were growing fuzzier the longer she lay there, too, the pain slowly moving from consuming her body to picking away at her mind, too.

"Grab her before she composes herself."

A voice reached her senses, her ears jumbling and blurring the words as if she was underwater. The beating of her own heart was one of the few things she could hear clearly, her breathing hammering heavily to keep pace with its rapid pulsing.

She couldn't do much other than stare and heave for breath, her half-lidded gaze blearily drifting between the two men standing over her as they both remained still despite the order that was just accorded.

Gajeel was just staring back down at her, or more accurately her wound, his expression unreadable.

"I said grab her!"

There was another moment of stillness before whatever holding Gajeel back was overcome by his need to comply with the man controlling him, albeit a bit reluctantly, it seemed. His gaze shot elsewhere, and as he fisted his hand in the numbered collar of her shirt, he still refused to look down at her, almost as if looking at her would make it harder to comply with the commands his mind was being forced to fulfill.

A shallow gasp escaped her as her torso was yanked upwards, but she didn't scream until he started pulling her forward, the friction of her leg dragging against the floor tearing at her wound further.

Her elevated position gave her a new perspective, one where she didn't have to fight as hard to finally get a glance at her leg. Her head lolled, but she fought against the dizziness and shock to lift her head and direct her gaze to where it needed to be, the new bought of pain from being dragged snapping her back to her senses a fraction.

Her eyes widened when she finally caught sight of it.

Blood poured from where a chunk of her flesh had been blasted away from the front of her thigh, the now loose edges of her flesh folding out into the air. The fabric of her leggings had been singed away, allowing her to see that the veins around the wound were dark, almost purple in color as they snaked beyond the hole that'd been burned in the fabric.

Had Gray's wound looked this gruesome? She remembered seeing that his skin was burned and raw, but it hadn't seemed like an entire chunk of his flesh was missing, nor had any of his veins seemed as discolored as hers were.

Maybe he'd just been skimmed by the blast rather being struck dead on by it like she had been, but Lucy wouldn't put it past an Alliance commander to have a blaster who's capabilities went beyond that of a standard model.

It was like little traces of that hot, scalding sensation were still worming their way through her system in the aftershock of the blast, and she had no doubt that the purple color of her veins was a visualization of that sensation.

Though Lucy was positive that she'd managed to get through to Gajeel, he continued to drag her forward towards the escape pods in Jose's wake, seemingly back under the call of the Alliance's manipulation, at least for the moment.

Lucy hoped that he would break free again, but for now, her only hope rested in the crashes and blasts of ten minutes prior.

AN

I know, it's not much, but it's something...

If you haven't read the reason for my hiatus on my profile, here's an abridged version: a tree hit my house and smashed my laptop to bits, so I lost everything I had saved up for this story and my other stories. I literally had pages and pages of stuff written out that had all of my plans for this story and I even had several chapters written out ahead of time, but that's all gone now. Then, add in a lawsuit against the city, moving, going back to college, and increasing my work hours on top of all of that frustration.

So yeah...I'm mad, upset, and completely lacking motivation all at the same time...I'm slowly starting to recover motivation and piece my plans for this story back together from memory and I don't anticipate being gone for three months again, but just please be patient and encouraging with me if it takes me longer than it used to to release new chapters.

Regardless, thanks to everyone whose stuck with me and read this. And a special thank you to all those who left reviews and pms while I was gone. You guys are the reason I pushed myself to start writing again. You don't know how much your feedback and encouragement means :)