Michael sat on one of the sofas with an arm around Emerald. They’d been swapping stories about where they’d been. More accurately he was recounting some of the more amusing tales from his charity work. “So that’s how Antony and I ended up standing on those rocks while more than twenty kids pelted us with water balloons,” he said with a grin, “We both managed to hold on for over a minute, bobbing and weaving as best we could without falling off. Finally Antony took a balloon to the face and tumbled. Didn’t get much time to gloat however as suddenly I am the sole focus of all the kids. Needless to say I joined Antony on the ground soon enough.”

He chuckled at the memory. Afterwards he had gloated a little. That just earned him a water balloon in the face from Antony. It soon deteriorated into a free for all as the kids joined in. While he had still been dealing with the issues raised from his time in the camps the experiences themselves were pretty much all positive. Somehow he wasn’t so sure about Emerald’s experience. That girl seemed to have a habit of attracting bad luck. He was also fairly certain that some of those scars she was now sporting were less than two years old.

As usual he wasn’t pressing the matter. Instead he was simply telling her about his experiences and giving her the opportunity to share if she chose to. The simple fact that they were sitting there with his arm around her was a good sign. He knew that asides from her father Emerald’s relationships with men had been extremely poor. She more than most had reason to be distrusting of them. He hoped to offer her a much better relationship than her past experiences.

The stories the two teens swapped showed the differences between the two of them, while Michael spoke of his charity work, none of which involved violence. Emerald spoke of her own travels, most of which involved some form of fighting. It appeared that Emerald had a habit of finding the areas that were in need of aid, but it usually involved beating up X number of thugs to save someone. This was something the wolf girl enjoyed though, helping others out in the way she knew how. It made her feel better to know that someone in the world was looking out for the underdogs.

“Gotta love kids, it’s like those shape shifter kids I met in Nevada who accidentally paintballed this mutant haters house and ran into me while I was walking. They were all little scamps but they didn’t mean any harm, right after I taught the guy some manners about equality, the adorable little scamps paintballed my bike on the way out.” Emerald laughed a little at the memory clearly being a happy one.

Surprisingly, Emerald seemed content underneath Michaels arm, looking as if she was happy, something she hadn’t been in a long time. It was a certain feeling she was unsure about, a feeling of safeness, completeness when she was near Michael, like everything that was wrong just slowly disappeared until there was nothing to worry about. Emerald had some bad realtionships in the past, too easily trusting others, while she wasn’t completely loosing herself in the feeling of strange bliss, she was glad she was at least allowing herself to feel some.

The wolf girl looked down at her arms for a second, noticing the scars that showed up clearly on her tanned arm. She was wearing a tank top with a pair of jeans, her jacket draped over her waist for when she got cold. Though, she wasn’t getting very cold under the safety of Michaels arm, that was for sure. Emerald looked up at Michael, tail thumping a little dully against the couch.

“So besides that story, all you did while you were gone was charity work?” Emerald asked him with an amused tone in her voice. “Did you ever just go out to have fun?”