Muffin was staring at him, and John stared right back. Their rivalry went back years - John still had a scar from when she'd first jumped on his goddamn head, if you looked close enough - and though John could ignore her most of the time and Muffin was happy to return the favor, every once in a while she got a little ornery. More than usual, anyway ( Read more... )

Kara affixed the sign to the bulletin board carefully. The urge to pull her hands away from it was strong, but the time for pretending had passed. Kara had attached her name to the sign, had attached the label of addict to herself, and there she was damned tired of moving backwards. This was a step forward, even if it made her want to puke all ( Read more... )

The first clue that something was wrong was that Lee had slept more soundly than he had in months. Martha was always up at random intervals during the night, so Lee usually ended up waking up when she did most of the time, if only for a minute or two. Sometime before dawn, he'd woken up and noticed that she wasn't there, and figured she'd gone for ( Read more... )

Lee would never call the island predictable, but when it came to people getting presents after the snow had gone away, this was the third year in a row that they'd turned up. If Yuffie's second giant bird hadn't been enough to convince him, he thought he was pretty sure he'd heard a few people talking about presents at ITF training that morning ( Read more... )

It'd been one of those nights where she'd kept herself up, running and jumping and flipping, training until she couldn't even stand. The last thing Yuffie remembered was letting herself flop down in the sand with a water bottle not far off, feeling the warm pressure of Cloud the chocobo settling himself down next to her for the night. They didn't ( Read more... )

Dated December 31, 2008:
SPOTTED: A troop of teens seen ambushing three very handsome gentlemen of a certain age in the lower level recreation room. Leading the charge? Our very own Prince N, sword in hand. It's the youngest Stark that shows off her weaponry skills, distracting two ITF leaders long enough for little J and S to put aside their ( Read more... )

If you had been upstairs in the Compound or in the Hub at six in the evening of December 31, you might have thought your eyes were playing tricks on you, or that you'd once again been whisked off to some strange, new place. Within the blink of an eye, the rooms had changed, sparkling instantly with festive decorations, and it was all so ( Read more... )

He never forgot the day. Omar always acted like he did, but John never forgot it. He never would. In four hundred years, there'd been a lot of women, but there'd only ever been one like Lily Rae Brown, and the way she'd danced and laughed, and the way she'd made him wait to marry him. Only ever one girl like that for John York, and never mind ( Read more... )

As much as Priestly started out looking at the Beach City Grill as just a means to an end, the place turned into his family and so these days he feels more at home behind a grill than not. Or if not a grill then, well, as close to it as he can get on the island. The Grill was always more of a lunch place, but Priestly cooks up a mean omelet when ( Read more... )

"You are definitely not an artist," Martha muttered from her place at one of the long tables in the rec room. A cardboard box had appeared a few days prior, and she currently had some of its contents spread across the tabletop: Coloured papers, glitter, glue, sequins and other crafty bits. Creating Christmas cards had seemed like an ace idea at ( Read more... )