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"Now… what\'s this for?"

"Because you keep looking at me like that!" Joanne threw another drunken punch that was immediately caught by Malachi.

"Like what?"

"L-Like you… I don\'t know, I\'m just not ready for you to look at me like that!"

Mal closed his eyes and turned his head away. "Better?"

A drunk Joanne took his genuine attempt to pacify her as a mockery.

So of course, she did what she felt to be the only natural thing.

She headbutted the young man in an attempt to knock him over.

And while she did succeed at that, her unawareness of Mal\'s new hardened physique proved to be her undoing.

The pain she felt from doing so was hardly worth it.

Actually not at all.

"Son of a bitch..!"

"I\'d apologize, but… this kind of feels like the kind of thing that you did to yourself." Mal said honestly.

"S-Shut up!"

Smirking silently, Mal gently rubbed the sore spot on her forehead.

Joanne tried and failed to pull herself off of him a few times, but failed all the same due to a lack of strength in her limbs.

Begrudgingly, she lay on the chest of the young man who she felt she hardly knew and listened to the sound of his heartbeat.

"…I don\'t like you." She finally said.

"Then why did you kiss me?"

"Because you make me think I like you."

"…And how do I do that?"

"I don\'t know, but you do. The fact of the matter is that I don\'t have any reason to like you."

"No one has any reason to like anyone."

"You\'re half my age."

"I\'m legal. You won\'t go to jail for touching me."

Joanne snorted as if she found his remark amusing before immediately dashing away her smile.

"I don\'t know what I have been thinking about all this time but I don\'t want to keep crossing lines with you. I think... I\'m starting to rely on you just a bit too much if I\'m honest, and that\'s something I can\'t do."

"And why is that?"

"I\'m not good at the whole.. Y\'know... the stuff you do with Anna and the other girls."

A myriad of colorful images played in Mal\'s mind and he knew that he and Joanne had to be thinking about two very different things.

"I don\'t do cute things like go on dates and express my feelings and do PDA and stuff like that." Joanne clarified.

"What do you do then?"

"Drink, watch bad tv usually centered around some kind of supernatural force, and eat until I hate myself."

"...So... you\'re like Anna but with tv instead of comics."

Evidently, Joanne did not seem to have realized that she and her daughter were so similar and she showed a noticeable degree of surprise at this revelation.

But then, she also seemed to realize that it spoke to a greater issue.

"That\'s another thing... I am Anna\'s mother, I can\'t just go about taking her fiancé from her."

"Did Anna try to break your jaw while I was gone?"

"No..?"

"Then she must not have been too upset about the whole kiss thing, or the idea of us together. She may even be more okay with you than she was with Nadine."

"And how do you figure that?"

Mal smiled wryly as he recalled the brutal punch to the stomach that his poor Nadine had suffered from Anna in order to get her permission to be with him.

"I just... have a hunch."

Chuckling, he lifted Joanne off of him before he started to exit from her quarters.

"Whenever you\'re ready, you should come and find me when you\'re not so afraid anymore. After that, we can take things as slow or as fast as you want."

As Joanne watched Mal\'s back get farther and farther away, there were a number of things she wanted to say.

After everything she\'d just said, why wasn\'t he willing to give up on her completely?

What part of her was so appealing?

Why did she still want to rely on him, despite already knowing that she should do anything but?

She had no answer to any of these questions, but even without them her body started to move on it\'s own.

Lunging from the couch, she placed a single hand on Mal\'s back and forced him to turn around.

Jut like before, she grabbed his face to kiss him possessively, but was shocked when he grabbed her back with just as much intensity.

He lifted her up and locked her legs around his waist as the two of them became enthralled in a passionate embrace against the walls of her quarters.

Out of breath, Joanne momentarily broke the kiss to provide some much needed clarification.

"I-I\'m still not ready, b-but this is.."

"A goodbye kiss?"

"Right! A goodbye kiss!"

"Noted."

- 20 Minutes Later

Mal left Joanne\'s room much later than he\'d initially planned, with an unusually content smile on his face.

No matter how much he tried, he found it difficult to forget the feeling of Joanne\'s lips on his and he had to confess that he was still rather excited.

However, all of his excitement disappeared in an instant as he ran right smack into a face that he never expected to see within this base.

"Celeste??"

"Oh! Malachi, it\'s good to see you! I heard you came back a few days ago, where have you been all of this time?"

Mal could not help but be slightly shocked to see the mother of his ex walking around in his home base as if she lived here.

"I don\'t really know the answer to that, it\'s like I have amnesia or something... Are you.. staying here?"

"Yes! My quarters are right over there!" In a moment of comical absurdity, Celeste pointed to a door that was literally two down from Joanne\'s and Mal felt a small ulcer forming.

"Oh... And how did you end up-"

"They\'re back!"

"The scouting team is back!"

"Bonfire tonight!"

Mal suddenly paused mid sentence and let his eyes drift towards the opposite side of the corridor where a small group was exiting the elevator.

Leading them was a pink haired girl with a charismatic-yet cocky smile who seemed to be reveling in the attention.

She was walking hand-in-hand with a handsome young man wearing glasses and with dashes of purple coloring in his hair.

Due to Malachi\'s height, the pink haired girl easily picked him out of the crowd and her eyes started to show immediate traces of disbelief.

"M-Mal...?"

Serana gradually started to push through the crowd in an instant, and was ran towards her missing friend in clear distress.

Mal smiled sheepishly as he held out his arms and allowed young Serana to barrel full steam into his chest.

"Y-You\'re back!? W-When?! Where did you go!? You missed Cami\'s birth! You\'re a deadbeat! You made my mom cry!

Don\'t ever leave us again or I will kill you!"

Serana quickly pulled herself away from Mal in rapid succession and struck him as hard as she could in the stomach.

Of course, she practically broke her hand as a result.

"Bastard! Why are you being abusive to me as soon as you get back?! I\'m supposed to be your friend!"

"...But I didn-"

"Shut up!"

"Yes ma\'am."

Serana rubbed her fist in an effort to make the pain go away while tears continued to run down her face.

A moment later, Ryo walked up to them quietly and in his usual robotic demeanor.

"Been a while."

"..."

It was worth noting that Mal was protective by nature long before his DNA was altered.

But ever since it had been changed, he was something like a helicopter parent with super powers.

It didn\'t take much to piece together his relationship with Serana since the two emerged holding hands.

And if he was honest.. it filled him with a sense of ire that he had never known.

He snapped his fingers, and a table and two chairs were created out of shadows.

With overbearing telekinetic power, he easily pushed Ryo into one of the seats and held him firmly in place without allowing him to get up.

Mal took the seat opposite him, and placed both his elbows atop the table as he peered into Ryo\'s violet eyes with his own.

"Tell me... What are your intentions with my best friend?"

"Why are you acting like my dad as soon as you get back?! You\'re going to embarrass me!" Serana yelled.

"...Well if you want to be technical I am-"

"WE AGREED NOT TO ABIDE BY THOSE TITLES!" Serana started to strike Mal on the back repeatedly in the hopes that she would leave her boyfriend alone.

Ignoring her hands that were currently showering him with blows, Mal kept his eyes locked on the man sitting opposite him.

That is, until somebody else caught his eye.

He thought he may have been mistaken, after all his last few minutes spent with Joanne had made sure that all of the blood in his body surely hadn\'t gone to his brain.

But even as he blinked his eyes several times to focus, the image he saw did not change.

"...Melanie...?"