The ambulance was barely pulling away when the two women got there, hurriedly shutting their doors and scanning the watching crowd for the familiar face.

“Look for black not brown, remember?” Elisia swallowed and started making her way through the bodies, not sure if she even wanted to find him.

“Excuse me, excuse me, please.” She got glimpses of policemen, taking statements from the drunken patrons of the bar, very quickly sobered by the night’s events, and one flashy, loose-looking woman who was nervously looking all around her, as if she might be attacked at any moment. “Excuse me, I-!” A hand clamped around her mouth, and an arm snaked around her waist as a low voice murmured straight into her ear.

“Looking for me?” Indignantly, she elbowed his stomach with her elbow, and he laughed as he released her, hands casually resting in his jacket pockets. A jacket, she noticed, that was black leather, and had the words “Skull Riders” emblazoned across the front.

“Where did you get that?” she gaped.

“I liked it.”

“So you just took it off some guy?”

“Why not?” he smiled charmingly. “He won’t be needing it anymore.”

“Rou!” Hannah fought her way through the now-dispersing watchers, and immediately gave him a hearty slap across the face, taking him completely by surprise. “How dare you!”

“Ah.” he said icily, once he had composed himself. “Darling Hannah.” Turning to Elisia, he gave her a look of utter disappointment. “You HAD to call HER?”

“Leave.” Hannah said firmly. “Go back to wherever, and leave.”

“But I just got here,” he purred, and pulled Elisia close again. “I have things I plan to do.” Nuzzling her ear, he gave a soft laugh. “And people.” Elisia shoved him off.

“Get real, Rou. I don’t think you are charming, I never have.”

“Cheris does,” he chuckled. “Shall I go visit her?”

“Rou…Sivin is crippled because of you.” He burst out into laughter, which made a lot of leftover people turn and stare at him quizzically.

“Sivin! In a wheelchair! The lord of the universe must be livid!”

“He came looking for you today.” Hannah snapped. “So go back to wherever it is you came from, and let Roudais handle this.”

“Roudais,” he scoffed. “He isn’t half the person I am. I’m a genius, he can barely tie his shoes. I’m handsome, children throw rocks at him in the street. And back there,” he swept an arm vaguely at the bar. “He would have gotten his ass handed to him by the most mentally retarded brute in there, while I-”

“-continue to keep talking, even though none of us care.” interrupted Hannah. “Leave, Rou. You’ll find no welcome party, no hookers wanting to live it up, and definitely no fun anywhere tonight, so just leave.” He narrowed his eyes.

“I’ve always despised you Hannah.” he said coldly.

“Only because I’m the only one as smart as you, and you can’t have me. And you know it. Even worse, everyone else does too.” Rou almost growled a reply, then thought better of it.

“Fine. But I leave my way.” Wandering to the bar patrons, he looked back at the women, and sneered. “Excuse me, oaf? Swine? I just wanted to let you know that your wife was incredible last night.” The man went from neutral to snarling, in approximately two heartbeats.

“Oh crap.” Hannah said simply.

Roudais blinked once, seconds before a gigantic meaty fist sent him into darkness once more.

“Rou.” Sivin smiled and turned in the computer chair, stretching casually in front of dozens of screens, all running several programs, all designed for one thing only. “You’re killing me here.” Rou laughed, and leaned casually on the desk, glancing at each of them in turn.

“Oh please. You don’t expect to break my code with all those pathetic programs do you?”

“Not really, but wouldn’t it be ironic if one did?”

“More like impossible. When you asked me for the securest code ever written, I wrote one. Don’t you trust me?”

“Not really,” Sivin chuckled, giving the man an amused smirk. “But I trust that once you are challenged, you never back down until you deliver.”

“Truer words never spoken.” Rou glanced at the screens again, and frowned. “I’m starting to get bored. When do I get my money?” Sivin pushed the chair over to the main desk, where the statistics showed how many times the code withstood breaking.

“When that marker reaches ten thousand, then I will know that not even the top cryptologists will be able to stop me.”

“Oh yes, the whole ‘rule-the-world’ spiel. Spare me.”

“From my rule?”

“From the speech.” Rou snorted, and straightened suddenly as a blonde walked into the room. “Ah, Cheris.” Looking like she had just stepped from a Vogue magazine, the engineer smiled as Rou took two steps closer to her without even noticing.

“Good morning Rou.”

“Now, now, love.” Sivin rolled his eyes when the ingenious young man pulled her to him and attacked her mouth with single-minded savagery. After a long moment, he cleared his throat, and Cheris was allowed to pull away, breathless and blushing hotly.

“Rou!”

“That’s my name, love. Best not forget it.”

“Are you quite done mauling my engineer?”

“Not quite, but you’d have to leave the room, chap.” This made Cheris blush even deeper and focus intently on the screens as if they were her lifeline.

“Anything yet?”

“No, seems Rou really is a genius. Pity he won’t help me further.” Rou tapped a screen boredly, and slouched as he joined their little circle at the desk.

“All you asked for was a code that could not be broken. I provided. I neither care nor am intrigued by your little plot to extinguish opposition.”

“You see Cheris,” Sivin got up, smirking a little at other man. “Unlike me, Rou has no ambition to rule anyone or anything, although he could easily.”

“It’s boring,” Rou said simply, “Meant purely for those with nothing better to do with thier life, or something like.” A small muscle jumped in Sivin’s jaw, but he brushed off the comment with a chuckle.

“Someday you’ll get in trouble for your wit, my friend.” Rou’s eyes glittered as he lifted his gaze to peirce Sivin like a frozen sword.

“I wasn’t aware of that fact.” Sivin looked surprised.

“That you’d get in trouble?”

“That we were friends.”

“Roudais?” He opened his eyes, and only halfway succeeded, groaning when he felt the pounding of pain, and the swelling of his face.

“Why do I always wake up this way?” he moaned, and focused on the two women sitting on either side of him. Heather gave him a half-smile, reaching up to brush the hair from his head lightly, but it was still enough pressure to make him wince.

“At least he went back.” she said quietly, and he had to agree. There had been times, Elisia had recalled, that Rou had fought and fought well to remain in control, one of those times being the incident in which the papers kept reporting about. She winced and sighed, pushing him to lay back further into the pillows. “Sleep Roudais. We’ll figure things out in the morning.” Troubled, the girls watched him close his eyes and fall back into unconciousness.

“We will tell him about the ambulance later.”