Welcome to Gaia! ::

"I can't tell you where I am or where I'm going. Please understand. I can't be in the same room as them... I'm so afraid I'll destroy what I helped create. Listen. If you need any help supporting it, I'll send money. I'll send enough to feed and clothe your entire gang, if you want."

"Who is it?" Manta whispered from the doorway.

" 'Yuki?' Damn it. You told me its name. Don't tell it mine. As it grows up, let it think that its father was a coward and a villain, because that's the truth."

((yeah, that's awesome! Just one more scathing, horrible comment from Faust. xd ))

"I'm going away," Faust said. "I'll mail money to you. If something happens to either of them, I'll be there in an instant. But as long as things are going well, I'd rather they stay that way. Here's the truth, Fang, for your ears alone. I believe that I'm in love with Netsubo. And of course I love her child. But... everything I touch, I destroy. I won't allow that to happen, not this time." the line went dead as Faust hung up the phone.

((actually, now that i've written it, that's a really sweet thing for him to have said.))

"Yeah, what's wrong? Is he coming back?" Manta asked. Yuki was crying now, waving his tiny hands in the air.

((years passed.))

Yuki stared hard at his report card. Straight A's, from private school... and the clothes on his back were designer labels. No one ever told him how his mother could afford the privileges he had, but they were there.

Glancing ahead at the week's assignments, the fifteen-year-old's heart sank. Write about your parents, it said. Well, he could write about his mother...

"Yeah..." Yuki said. He was shy about his grades; they earned him grief at school, along with his pale skin and blond hair. He didn't look very Japanese. There was a little bit of influence, sure, but his eyes were more round than almond-shaped. Heck, he practically answered to "Freak" more than he answered to his own name.

"Mom... I need to ask you a question. It's about Dad," he said quietly, looking up at her with his dark blue eyes the same shade as her own.

"Fang said that he died. Are you going to tell me how that happened?" Yuki asked. "And who he was? What was his name? Where did he come from? How did you meet?" Yuki had always been extremely curious, but he'd never actually worked up the courage to ask his mother about the enigma that was his father.