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Kiyoko heard him and looked to her side, her empty pudding cup in a trash bag along with any other trash that they didn't need. Besdies, the last thing they wanted were roaches or something up here in the middle of the night. That is, assuming that they were staying here the night. It was impossible to tell, although the storm seemed to be getting stronger instead of lightning up a bit.

"Hm? Oh, nothing really. Just figuring out what we're gonna do if quite a few things happen. It is a storm, after all, and it doesn't seem to be lightning up yet." she said. In the inside, she was worried about her mom; she hadn't tried to call Kiyoko again yet. Perhaps she'd try to go ahead and call her soon; it'd stop her from worrying.

"Excuse me for a sec." she said quietly to the group, then took her purse and went into the hall. She sat on the steps and dialed the number on her phone, while the rain hummed loudly outside. Pick up, pick up, pick up....she thought to herself, when she finally heard a voice on the other side of the phone.
"Hello?"
"KIYOKO! Oh, thank goodness!" her mother answered. You could even here the rain on the phone from the house. "I couldn't get the phone to work at all; the signal kept getting lost."
"Same here; the storm is really picking up."
"It is. Is everything ok over there?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Cmon now; be honest."
"Really, I'm fine. Just hanging out with some friends."
"Oh, that's wonderful! I finally got your brother to answer earlier; he's stuck in school as well. Many schools are on this lockdown thing."
"Strange..." a buzzing sound began to be heard on the phone.
"Oh drat, the singal's going out again. I'll try calling you again later, ok?"
"Alright. See you later mom. Love you!"
She hung up the phone, but the signal had already gone out before she shut it. She smiled; so they were both ok. That's good. She wasn't going to tell her mom about the whole boyfriend thing yet, nor what happened earlier with Lucy. She could take care of herself. Plus, what if something happened to either one of these sitations? She'd be telling her dear mother false information. She'd rather wait until the storm ended.

Kiyoko returned to the room and shut the door behind her quietly, making her way back to where Ray was and sitting down next to him.


Shirou also smiled; strange, this would explain why she was so great with kids.
"Well, this area wasn't effected by the war quite as much as the other areas, since it was awhile away from other towns. A bit of a settlement, I guess. There was a bit of American influence, but not alot. Heh, I remember that there was this one small local library. Man, I must have read every book in there! It was my favorite place to go; I'd usually visit at least once a day. The books there were actually in Engilsh, so I ended up getting a head start on English when I was younger. Sometimes if there was a certain book in both English and Japanese, I'd end up getting both and trying to translate.

At the age of 8, my whole family ended up moving here to America, for getting used to a less-isolated world. It was tough at first, getting used to technology and English and whatnot, especially for my parents. My brothers didn't have trouble fitting in with sports groups, but I was the only one actually doing quite well in English classes. It was easy for me to understand what others were saying. Since my sister was pretty young at the time, she almost grew up with it, so it was natural for her as well.

Ah-I'm rambling, aren't I? My apologizes." he said quickly, shoving a bite of burger into his mouth.

The corner of Conall's mouth slightly lifted at the atmosphere of the music. He could tell that he was the damper on the mood. His gut wrenched and twisted at being on such bad terms with Ray. If it was some random person, he would say quite a few nasty things to him. But not only was he on good terms with Celia, but he was her cousin. That made things difficult. As Conall slightly bobbed his head to the music, he felt a vibrating in his pocket. He pulled out his cellphone and looked at the number. It was his mother's cell phone. He quickly turned off his phone and stashed it back in his pocket. He wasn't exactly on good terms with his mother at the moment.

"Just went to call my mom; wanted to make sure she was ok and all." Kiyoko answered, as she leaned her head against his shoulder. It was weird; this whole day has been happening so fast, as if some bizarre dream. But, even if she were to wake up right now and hear the clock screaming 6:00 at her, it would have been nice while it lasted. But something told her it wasn't a dream at all...

She opened her purse, taking out various bits of felt, some string and a needle. Tying some string to the needle, she took out a small doll she had been working on. While it was still in it's beginning stages and still clothesless, she needed to finish sewing the body itself first, before heading to eyes, hair, etc. She silently began to sew as Ray leaned on her; she suddenly didn't mind someone watching her if he desired.

One of Lucy's friends noticed a sound nearby; the Lucy-clone, to be exact. Her red hair bobbed a bit as she turned swiftly behind her, thinking mabye someone had brought a guitar up here not long ago. Confused, she looked all around the hall and it's classrooms, unsure of the source of such nice music. It wasn't until she saw the stairs, all cluttered with stuff, that the lightbulb clicked. She took off her heels and walked quietly up the stairs, careful not to make any noise, being stealthy. As she poked her head around the top of the stairs, she saw a door close behind her. "Aha! So there's someone up here." she whispered to herself. While she would have considered going into the mess right now, she didn't know who was in there, nor how many. Instead, she'd tell Lucy and the others; it'd give them something to do. She went back down, put on her heels again, and ran off, hoping to find the group.

Meanwhile, Lucy was sulking alone in an empty room. She let the brush of her nail polish wave in the air as she leaned back in one of the chairs. Life just wasn't fair, was it? It was too bad that she had seen Conall first, otherwise she would have gone out with Ray. So what if she had gotten hooked up with a football player, without telling the boy? She HAD to keep a reputation up, after all. Conall had been starting to smell more and more of alcohol, too, but that wasn't the point. There had to be some way she could get with Ray as well as get rid of her now dim-witted boyfriend. She had to say, he wasn't the sharpest or brightest crayon in the box, so why not Ray? He had a nice balance of characteristics, as well as a nice body...but out of all people, why Kiyoko?

She sighed; the girls knew where to find her if they wanted to tell her something (though it best be important).

((It's fine, really!
I've been going through the test junk as well; just took a spainsh 3 test today! sweatdrop
We'll proabably all be fine by the weekend (or Friday, depending. I dunno xd ).

((Oh dear.
I felt the same with Spanish 3; never have I had such a pain-in-the-rear class. Turns out I got a 70 on the test, meaning I did pass the class.

I wish I would've gotten a higher grade though; I'm used to A's and B's, like I got in the other grades I've gotten so far.))

Kiyoko felt her heart skip a beat on this question; she hadn't even tried getting to talk to her old friends today, shame on herself! She remembered earlier, it's just......everything went so fast, and she got caught and swept off her feet in the rush. Ah, no matter. As long as the power didn't go out, she could find a computer somewhere.

"I'm from a city a few hours from here. It's Lilian Town (although one could almost call it a village). It's one of those everyone-knows-your-name-places." Kiyoko answered while still sewing, feeling rather relaxed now that the sudden stress bubble had popped.


"W-well, if you insist." he said, after swallowing the burger. His literature-ish face reappeared as he looked like his usual confident self.

"Where was I? Oh yes. Well, stuff was going pretty well for quite awhile; everyone adjusted just fine. My sister and I had the best luck with adjusting, and everything was swell, or so I thought.

It turned out one of my older brothers was having some anger issues, from what I don't have a clue. Perhaps it was the crowd he hung out with; my other two brothers didn't have any trouble, except in English and sports (Well, one of them wasn't very sportsy). Either way, he started bullying people; taking lunch money, beating up kids, stupid stuff like that. I wasn't aware of it, nor was anyone else.

Turns out that on the way home one day, some little girl comes running down the street crying her lungs out. Her nose was bleeding profusely, one of her eyes swollen to a plumb color, tears running down her cheeks. Now naturally, having a younger sister and this girl being like what, 10 years old? Yeah, it was about 10...." he paused, wondering why he was being so honest with her.

"So, I try and help her out, taking her to a local doctor. I couldn't force myself to look away from her; she looked like she came out of a meat grinder or something...the doctor had asked her what had happened (heh, he thought it was my doing, but she immediately told him he was wrong), and it turns out that the description of the boy he gave was exactly matching my brother, from what he was wearing to facial features.

This little girl's mother was furious, and when they found him on his return home, he was arrested. I found out later that he was also into drugs and gambling, and the little girl's older brother had lost a bet and had yet to pay him back. I guess my brother thought of it as a late fee or something......"

He took another bite of the burger, lost in these old horrid images: his brother being cartered off to jail, cursing Shriou out on his way back, the little girl in the small police guest room, looking better but the eye still swollen, a furious mother and scared brother sitting beside them. His family trying to reassure him that what he did was right, and that Mark had lost his place in the family. Mainly why Shriou didn't speak the boy's name much anymore; just merely trying to forget it. But the image that afternoon, he couldn't rid himself of it.

"S-so, point being, I hate bullying. You've probably heard me screaming at some of the bigger students after catching them in the act, and I guess this is why."

Ray listened to Kiyoko talk. She was different than most of the girls around here. A lot of them were from the city or have lived here for awhile. He had been watching her sew until Al's question snapped him out of his trance. He smiled at her. "That sounds nice, why'd you move here?" he asked curiously. He wasn't sure if she had told him that or not already, but he had been in some kind of daze all together.

"I've been around. Mostly around this area though. Here for like what feels forever." he said simply with a shrug. "Where are you from?" he asked.



Celia could see that Conall was uncomfortable with the question. She smiled at him as he said he's not going to let anyone get him down. She pecked his cheek quickly so that Ray didn't see. She looked at Al. "Grew up around the corner from here." she said with a smile. She looked back at Conall. "Want to go for a walk?" she asked, getting up, holding his hand.

Kiyoko looked at Renji as he talked, a bit amazed. He talked about his wealth as if it was nothing, and he had even been to several places in Japan and Paris, actually owning bits of land in a few of them. "Wow, you must get to see alot of the world!" she commented, and she ended up shoving her tiny bit of jealously aside; she would have been more enthuastic about something like that.

As she heard Ray's question, she paused within mid-sew. In truth, she was hoping he wouldn't ask at all, although the question was probably unavoidable. But, how could she answer that? She couldn't say the truth; she'd look pathetic! But there were other reasons besides the one itching in her throat. She also noticed hte quick peck kiss Celia had given Conall, who also looked uncomfortable at the situation.

"Various reasons, you could say. My mom finding a job here was one of the big ones." she answered, trying to keep it a bit vague.

"Oh, that's cool. I always wanted to live somewhere like that." He said, smiling at Kiyoko.

Al let his jaw drop at Renji's list of places. "Your family must be pretty rich." He said. Well, that would explain the attitude. "But this isn't exactly the most... ... er. 'Sophisticated' of places. I think Paris completely.. .... destroys it in terms of sophistication."

He blinked at Ray and scratched the back of his head. "I'm from Boston. Born and bred. My parents worked at the same hospital there, and then for some reason, after middle school they decided to come here." He frowned, and then put his hands up in defense. "Not that I have anything against here! It's just... So much quieter." He played a few notes absentmindedly. "That, and I used to study under Mr. Zander at the Boston Phil. He was cool."

As he finished his sentence he heard Celia ask Conall to leave. Quickly, he said, "Hey, where are you going? The party's just started."

~...~...~...~

Adrienne completely ignored her burger as she sat in awe listening to his story. "Wow.... That's noble of you." Finally noticing that she was outright gaping at him, she looked down at the table and then off to the side nervously. "I-I mean, really, it's a good thing to do. .... Take care of kids." She couldn't think of anything else to say as she was trying to not look like a fool. "I myself just.. ... don't like kids like that."