Sorry to completely re-do this chapter on you guys (again). But the way I've set up my outline, the one I had simply wouldn't work. Not to mention I was mortified when I went through and re-read it, only to discover that I spelled the character's names wrong. What kind of an author am I? So, everything's fixed, and hopefully better. I want to upload a new chapter tonight, but just getting this one up gave me a headache. I can promise I will have it written tonight, and uploaded probably Thursday, Saturday at the latest, if my uncle's computer keeps giving me problems (I'm house-sitting right now).

Crashing and tumbling and spilling out of her, came an unbidden sense of terror. Utter disbelief at the situation she found herself in- she couldn't understand how he could be asking her about foodwhen she was in such obvious distress.

But at least she knew where she was now.

Hell.

"Breakfast? No I don't want breakfast! My sister's with those goddamned monsters!" Her arms flung out into the air in a very dramatic display, which caused Griffin's lips to twitch just slightly up. Shilloh didn't seem to notice.

Her green dress swayed around her legs, and with a petulant look that clearly stated 'I am not amused,' she glanced down at her legs and mumbled "you have been nothing but trouble since I bought you." Griffin would have actually laughed at her, if she hadn't chosen that exact moment to spin on the heel of her boot and face him.

He shook a box of noodles at her before she could open her mouth. It looked as if she was working herself into hysterics, and really, he hadn't even wanted her in his space, let alone crying all over it.

She blinked dumbly at the noodles for a second, before looking at him again. He smiled at her around a mouthful of his food, and her shoulders slumped.

"You're not going to help me, are you?" Pushing a few papers off of one of the chairs at the table, she sat down and took the noodles from him.

Griffin glanced sullenly at the mess of papers on the floor before tossing her a set of chopsticks. It was possibly one of the most peaceful moments he had spent with someone in quite a while, and he resolutely felt no emotion over how pitiable that was.

They ate in silence for all of ten minutes before Shilloh couldn't take it anymore. Looking sharply up at Griffin, she let out a soft sigh, before placing her chopsticks in her mostly-untouched noodles, and opened her mouth to say something. She wasn't entirely certain what it was going to be, yet, but she was sure it would be brilliant and would, no doubt, convince Griffin that he absolutely had to help her find her sister. Or, at the very least, that he had to do something more for her than let her sleep on his couch and give her some food.

"No. Absolutely not. I will not risk my own neck to clean up your mess. I've already let you sleep on my couch, and spent good money to feed you. All of this after you punched me," he said, without even looking at her.

Shilloh winced slightly as she looked at his lip, which still looked painfully swollen, and she could see that the bruise had begun to turn a sickly yellow around the deep purple that surrounded his lip. She must have punched him harder than she had thought.

Still, he deserved that punch. She pushed her food towards him and placed her hand on the table in front of his face, practically kneeling on her chair to reach that far across the table.

"I want my sister. You want to kill Paladins. I don't see why this is such a problem, it's quite obvious we can help each other," she said, fingers now strumming on the table in an attempt to get him to look at her. This man was the most infuriatingly stubborn person she had ever met. Really, was it so hard to just look at someone when they were speaking to you? Apparently she had to jump through hoops just to achieve a minor flicker of his attention.

Griffin tried not to snort at her, he really did. He was an ass, sure, but it wasn't as if he had any real need to piss this girl off. No reason to push her away, either. But honestly, we can help each other? She looked like she couldn't take down a kitten on her fiercest day, let alone a Paladin, well-trained or not.

"By 'help each other' you mean I'll be doing all the research, I'll be doing all the fighting, and, oh, since you can't Jump, I'll be getting every one's sorry asses out of wherever it is we happen to be," he was actually looking at her now, and she didn't like the way he was doing it, either. She almost preffered it when he was staring into his food as if it was the smartest thing in the room.

She scrunched her eyebrows together and scowled at him. "You have a very high opinion of yourself, sir. By 'help each other' I really meant 'I need you for transportation.' I was being kind, because I know Jumpers don't like being thought of as some sort of bus system," her eyes looked directly into his as she said this, and if he hadn't heard the contempt in her voice, there was no way he would've missed it in her eyes.

"You know do you?" He wanted to continue down this track, because now that he was actually thinking about her, really, truly thinking about her- and not just in that 'well great now she's asleep on my couch what the hell do I do?' sort of way- he was starting to see some odd connections in her story so far.

Why would the Paladins be after her to begin with? She clearly couldn't Jump. She seemed to know Jumpers, so that could be it- maybe she was related to one? That would explain the whole sister thing. But then it wouldn't explain why she seemed to familiar with Paladins in general. He narrowed his eyes at her slightly in thought. And the sister bit was definitely odd.

He wanted to ask her about what was really going on, but instead what came out of his mouth was something that, upon further reflection, he decided was probably more callous than he should have gone about things.

"Paladins don't leave survivors. What makes you think, even if we're able to find where they are, they will have taken her alive?"

She flung herself off of the table at his words, her eyes wide, and she stood at the end of the table for a brief moment. It looked, for all the world, as if she were a hurricane waiting to happen.

"Because I didn't see them kill her," she said, and looked over her shoulder towards his wall of drawings.

"That doesn't mean-" he began, trying to sound soft. He couldn't handle crying, he really couldn't. She cut him off before he could finish his pathetic attempt, though.

"They want me dead. I mean, they want most people dead- clearly they want you dead. But, well, I'm a bit higher up on the threat scale," she sighed when he gave her a skeptical look. "No, really. I mean, yeah, I can fight, but, well. Look at me. I know you're thinking it, Griffin, I look like I can't hurt anything- though, you should know better, I did split your lip. Really, though, I can fight, just, not well enough to be as high up on the threat radar as most. No, I'm there because I have information that they don't want others to know about." She sighed again and went to sit down on the couch.

He was still skeptical, about the whole thing, really. Sure, she hit him, but that didn't mean she could hold her own in a fight, it just meant that if she got really, really lucky, she could pack a punch. And information? What? Were the Paladins worried that she'd let slip what their favorite tailor was?

"So, they want me dead. And since I can't Jump, their Sensitives can't track me. They know I'm not stupid enough to leave a paper trail. It's a waiting game, now. Of course they'll take my sister- they want me to come to them, instead of spending who knows how long trying to find me. Especially since, before they can get to me, who knows what I'll divulge, and to whom? Well, they know where my allegiance lays, so they'd have to be really really thick not to know that I'll find the first Jumper I can, but still."

He was listening, now, and he wasn't liking what he was hearing. "So, how, exactly, do you know this information? And what kind of information is it?"

She looked up at him, and it seemed to him that she shrunk into the couch, trying to hide from him. "Oh, I know all kinds of things. For instance, they've got different bases for different things- one for weapons development, one for Jumper research, one for Paladin recruitment and another for training. I know there's more, but that's all I learned about before I scarpered off." She looked at him with eyes that pleaded with him not to continue, giant pools of self-loathing and pain.

"And how is it that you know even that much?" He asked anyway, and watched as she hid her face into his couch, making it so just her eyes looked over the top of it at him.

"They recruited me."