Prologue

"Does she die at the end?"

"What?"

The pen rolled away from the woman's fingers, tense, pale fingers uncurling to allow the trinket to clatter against the half-full mug of her now cold coffee. It had actually been a few hours since she had actually gotten up from her seat to get coffee, now that she thought about it.

"I want to know, so that I don't get my hopes up too high."

The question had come from her editor, the tanned skin of the stern man standing out stark against the pale lavender of her living room wall. His nose was scrunched up in obvious disgust, his eyes having slid away from the mess of papers on her coffee table, her current desk, to the piles of movies pressed up into a corner of the living room.

The table was also covered in the remains of a plentiful Chinese food delivery, as well as empty bottles of soda- there was no way she would risk an open tabbed can near her work- and what was once an entire box of strawberry snack cakes.

"Why would I tell you if the main character dies at the end?"

Her voice was raspy, unused and definitely out of practice as she slid the mess of papers out of her space, creating the smallest area where she could begin to gather and stack them in a neater way. Eyes the color of a doe's fur, brown and gold, lifted from the work to look over her editor again. He was agitated, unwilling to touch her furniture and steering a good ten feet away from her kitchen doorway, where a large stack of dishes was visible; perched precariously beside the empty sink. It oddly resembled the Tower of Pisa.

"I don't want to get my hopes up," he insisted, his eyes straying with much less disgust back to the papers in her hands. He tilted his head, ink colored bangs falling out of his carefully gelled back position as he leaned closer, as if to get a better look.

She thought it over. Technically she had no obligation to tell this man of what she planned. Although the other side of the coin would be considered common courtesy.

Then there was the fact that he was an asshole on deadline days.

However, there was also the fact that he would come over in an instant if it meant she was having writer's block.

Armed with coffee, usually, and a takeout bag from her favorite burger restaurant.

"I haven't decided," she admit after a few moments.

He sighed in what she assumed was relief.

"The hell you put that woman through is only made up for in the fact that she has fun with it," Akiiki, the surly man, muttered. He seemed to get over his aversion to her untidy apartment quick enough, striding with his polished black _ shoes past the bulk of her coffee table, and where she sat perched on an authentic blue zabuton.

"If I don't make every effort to have her suffer, I fail as an author," the woman chuckled, offering the man the last of her cakes, truly the only step she has ever made in the right direction for hosting and socializing, period. He declined it, but she only tossed it back into the cake box, her elbow casually sliding the forgotten wrappers into the small trash can on her left, placed there for this specific purpose. "I make a character, and then I give them a goal. To fill the hundred thousand or so pages of adventure they need to go through, I have to stop, and think; how can I, in the most efficient and brutal manner, deter this woman from peace and happiness?"

"You are a savage writer and I question every day why teens and young adults love you," the man muttered balefully, plucking the now neatly organized mess of papers out of her hand to look through it. There was no overlying pen marks, yet, so she likely would need another week. Because of course she would need another week. What author didn't second guess themselves before each and every deadline and try to rewrite every single line?

"What can I say," the woman smiled, all teeth and no humor, "Tragedy sells."

"I will not forgive you for killing her dog," Akiiki protested under his breath.

"No one will ever forgive me for killing her dog," Pipperly scoffed, rolling her eyes in an amused manner, already reaching for the cold coffee and stopping herself just in time from drinking it. Getting to her feet was a bit of a chore; her legs were numb with pins and needles and her feet had long since lost blood circulation to her toes.

She left to put the mug in the sink, while her surly editor worked through the pages she had finished typing.

It took her twelve and a half minutes to grind and make her own coffee, tossing the thoroughly engrossed man a haughty smirk when he dared to glare over the pages at her.

"...A kidnapping ring-?!"

"Too much?" Pipperly shrugged, "I needed a way for her to make friends with the Fire people without probably causing a war. Rescuing their second youngest son from the clutches of a cult seemed like a decent ice-breaker."

"I loathe you," the man hissed, clicking his official, elegant looking and also damning silver engraved pen with the harsh red ink and scribbling into the margins as he worked.

"Eh, I never much cared for your opinion," the woman chuckled, slumping back down to her pillow after a few seconds and running her fingers through her messy, dark chocolate hair. It was nearly black in it's darkness.

"Should I brace myself for more of your heartless ideas or will I get a small amount of decency in a sweet team bonding scene?"

"Read and find out," Pipperly smiled innocently.

Akiiki narrowed his eyes, but said nothing, turning back to the pages in his hands with severe focus while the girl in the hoodie and the panda slippers leaned back in her seat to savor her coffee.

Just another deadline gone by..