With a great deal of grunting, little fanfare, and absolutely no blood spilt, Tara finally made her way to the top of the roof and stood slightly tall, arms akimbo, head held high and grinning.

"Ha ha! She made it!" she announced to no one in particular and thrust her tongue out but it wasn't as much fun as when she actually had someone to do that to.

In the interim, until such a person could be found, she looked out over the landscape with an eagerness she had not felt since Talomar Longden had asked her to be his wife and she had to wait for the ink to dry on their respective divorce papers before they could do so.

Word on the street was that her family was returning for real this time and she was thrilled. Onyx House had been so deathly quiet ever since the Family had gone off to do what the Family did whenever she wasn't invited. She couldn't wait for them to get back home!

Lenika Marshall, Panther's woman, had told her that very evening over at the Dragon Red that she had seen Lucius and Fiona and that Lucius had mentioned he was looking forward to seeing his little Tara again. This news nearly send Tara into a tizzy. While she had the benefit of seeing her Aunt Bel and even her Mommy Theo, she had yet to set her eyes upon her precious Daddy Loo-shus. Now she loved each of The Bloods in her own special way but Lucius DeAuster was very dear to her heart because their paths had crossed many moons ago when she was a certain maniac slaver's secretary and he had always been kind to her when it was popular not to be.

Now Luc didn't get hisself a medal for agreeing to care for her but what he did get was a very vibrant, loving, attentive, devoted and absolutely head-over-heels-in-love-with-her-Daddy-in-a-non-in cestuous-way, daughter in the form of Da Cockroach Killa.

He spoiled her rotten. She ate up the attention.

He called her affectionate petnames so that she knew she was loved. She bragged about him constantly in an effort to frighten people into thinking he would chop their heads off if they so much as looked at her the wrong way. And he would, but that's neither here nor there.

He told her ghoulish bedtime stories so she could sleep. She made up stories so as to shock him even though the both of them knew that he had pretty much seen everything under the sun.

He gave her his first house in Rhy'Din. She nailed the door shut, tore a hole in the roof, and knocked down all the walls so it would be a proper "clubhouse" for her guild members.

He was calm in the face of adversity. She was like a typhoon hellbent on destruction.

So there you have it. They were perfectly suited for a Father-Daughter relationship and although Luc had two very healthy, bright and loving children (Danny and Cie), and not once did he contribute in her creation, Tara believed that she was destined to be cared for by him and his wife.

Time could stand still...

The oceans could dry up...

The very mountains we revere could topple....

Men could stop growing beards...

Women could go barefoot without being pregnant...

And Tara Rynieyn would not accept any other man as her father other than the Lord of Gharnholme himself.

He was a good man but he could be scary if you crossed him. He provided for his family and served The Bloods with a noble purpose. He was the kind of guy you'd give the shirt off your back to if he asked for it and you would never think twice about doing so.

So there she stood, at the top of Onyx House, a very petite spitfire of a girl, waiting to hear the sound of approaching hooves, or the glimpse of his trusty sword, anything to let her know he had finally arrived after so very long of a time waiting.

She knew she would have to go back home to Longden Castle before the sun rose but for now she was content to wait. She did not want to miss this for the world but truth be told, an idle Tara was never very well behaved and soon she began to grow bored and stiff in her joints.

She tried sitting down and then changing positions every so often when the position was no longer comfortable but that only lasted for so long before she stood up again.

She did jumping jacks and squat-thrusts thinking that if she broke a sweat and Lucius were to suddenly materialize he would think she had actually been making herself useful, perhaps cleaning up around the House, even if the place was as dusty as she was insane. However, her exercise regimen didn't quite make it over five minutes because she suddenly remembered she no longer had functioning sweat glands and stopped herself before she fell off the roof.

Aside from all that, there was not much else for a Cockroach Killa to do up there on the roof 'cept sit and wait and what fun was there in that"

She began to get sleepy and she yawned without bothering to cover her mouth. Lucius was taking his sweet-ass time getting there wasn't he"

The nerve.

She looked down to the ground below and reconsidered jumping because who knew if Cyclops's dogs were around down there and was left with only one viable alternative to getting inside the house.

The chimney.

Walking over to it and peering down into the abyss that was the path down to the fireplace, she raised her arms over her head and dove, headlong, into the blackness.

She might have won a record for being the only human in the world to survive a nosedive down a chimney had it not been for the blockage.

If you ever sat with your family around the Christmas tree and listened to Christmasy music, you would be quite familiar with the song sung by the little girl who speculates how long a "something" was stuck in her chimney and how frustrating it was not to know what it was.

Tara Rynieyn had not a clue such a song existed but if she did she would gladly offer up her own hypothesis which was that the something in the chimney was none other than St. Nick, who, in trying to save time opted to travel this way into the house rather than using the front door like everyone else — and now, as a result of his ineptitude and failure to kick the donut habit, got himself jammed up so good in that chimney you could almost liken it to constipation.

After she finished rubbing her nose that was smarting real bad, she smacked good old Santa upside his head and watched in muted fascination as his head disintegrated before her very eyes, turning into a blackish-grey ash much like what was in the belly of the fireplace although the majority of that was the charred remains of wood, not a person.

"This is jus' wonderful!" she cried and coughed as some pieces of ash found their way into her nasal passage.

"Now you done blocked up the chimney an' Tara is gonna be stuck here forever!"

It was no use yelling at a dead Santa but somehow it made her feel better to be airing her grievances rather than bottling them up inside.

Her only option left was to scream at the top of her lungs and pray someone heard her or she would be forced to brave the night alone in this here chimney crammed on top of a corpse.

"Help! Tara is stuck! Is nuh kiddin! Be serious as Cancer!"

The, uhh, "nut", as it were, stopped howling the second she detected movement beyond the chimney in Lankyn's study and she gasped.

"Oooh, she be tinkin dere be a robber afoot!" she cried and quickly shoved her fist in her mouth so as not to alert the intruder to her presence. She then nudged Santie Claus and whispered hotly, "You hushup! If someone be thievin from Plankton an' Tara dun catch him, she's gonna be in biiiiiiiiiiiiiiig trouble so dun screw this up for her, Fat Ass!"

Santa stayed quiet probably because he was dead but as we learned with the Norbert Experiment, Tara wasn't always good at telling whether or not someone was alive or dead. Even trying to define herself was a problem because when Rapture turned her and she realized she was very different from the mortals she would soon be feasting upon, she couldn't quite grasp the fact that she wasn't alive nor was she dead...so she just came up with the term Unlifed and that seemed an appropriate enough definition to satisfy any inquiry.

With a pointy ear (though certainly not Elven in nature by any means) pressed to the brick, Tara listened closely to what was going on behind it. She heard footsteps and because they were not heavy-sounding she immediately came to the conclusion that the intruder was not male as she first thought but a female.

"Aha!" she said to the headless dead fat dude she was laying upon, "it be a girlie thief, jus' like Miss Gem but Tara an' her is friends an' she dun tink tha Miss Gem would wanna be takin nuffin from Plankton so it must be someone else..which means once Tara nabs the criminal, she hasta run real fast an' tell Miss Gem she's got competition!"

Of course this conclusion was absurd. Had the little fruitloop just stopped and concentrated she would have been able to see that it was her sister Cie beyond the wall and not some female burglar come to rob Corwyn blind. Had she seen her sister she probably would have screamed s'more and harassed her until she either got her free or got someone else to come do it so it was probably a good thing Tara was in the dark about this. Cie certainly didn't deserve to be treated the way Tara treated her all the time. Such a sweet girl she was. It was a shame DCK couldn't get over the sibling jealousy thing and just accept the fact that she was adopted and Cie was not.

Santa, who hadn't heard a word she said, now began to fall down the chimney a ways because she was moving around so much and then got stopped up again. Falling along with him Tara began to curse up a storm because now the intruder would see the dust and soot falling down the chimney and would likely escape!

"How is it tha a stupid fat boy like you's got the job of deliverin presents to da kiddies on Nailed-Man-to-Cross Day, anyways! You is incontinent!" she cried and began to pound her little fists into his shoulder which caused Santa to fall down again, taking her with him.

Now whether or not Santa actually had a bladder problem during his life was up for debate but what Tara had meant to say was incompetent and..yeah so...no one ever said she had a good command of any language much less Common.

At this point she realized her constant shuffling around was creating the stir in the chimney and she thought it best to stay very still. She could no longer hear the intruder in Lankyn's study and that made her all the more crazed but she showed incredible restraint and breathed through her nose to remain calm.

It was four hours to sun up.

She was stuck in a chimney with a badly smelling former champion of Christmas.

Someone had likely gotten away with all the family heirlooms, jewels and trinkets and she'd have to answer for that which sucked bigtime.

There was nothing much else to do but curl up on the dead guy and go to sleep. She had faith that eventually someone would come to the rescue even if that person was Talomar who was moody on a good day, just imagine how he would respond to seeing his wife stuck down a chimney on top of a corpse!

She fell asleep, forgetting all about her troubles, and dreamed of the moment she would set her violet eyes upon her precious Daddy Loo-shus once more.

She had been dreaming of Lucius pushing her on a tire swing when Lucius, in the flesh, began calling out to her.

She blinked and rubbed her eyes with her tiny hands.

"Daddy?! Oooooh Daddy! Is really you! Tara can nuh breathe! Help her! Help her quick 'fore she fall over an' die! Is gonna suffocate like da fishies when they's outta water an' she is gonna turn bluuueee like Luse do sometime!"

That seemed like the right thing to say as such a critical juncture in her rescue until the bricks started getting bashed to hell with the greataxe and there was all that dust.

Coughing, spitting, hands flying all around, Tara updated Luc and Cie on her situation.

"AGHHHHH! Big ogre come to eat Tara up! Oh yeeeess, he is poundin on da chimney, wantin to make soup outta her cuz she is a tasty lil girlie she be, an' now there's a cave-in, oooh nuuuuh! Is the end! A terrible end for a Tara! She loves you Daddy! Give Momma Theo kisses! An' Danny too but no more than one for Sista cuz we dun like her," she said that last very quietly and between gritted teeth.

Good thing Luc was using the greataxe to get this job done or this drama would likely go on forever with Tara lying about her predicament every two and half seconds with whatever came to mind.

Now...about that haircut...

She was sitting there on top of Fat Ass when Luc's axestroke hit home the hardest and went through the chimney all the way to the other side. She ducked at just the right moment but her pigtails, which were separate entities unto themselves most days, wasn't as fast and wound up getting chopped off.

Pigtail in lap, cowering down low under the axe, Tara looked to her sister Cie and their father with wide, terrified eyes.

"You done killed her pigtail Daddy! Say you is sorry!"

It was hard to remain angry with Lucius very long and so after a few minutes of pouting and huffing, she smiled.

"Okies, Daddy, you is forgiven but dun do tha ever 'gain!" she said and looked down at herself all covered in soot. "Ewww...does this mean Tara need a bath?"

The thought of taking a bath sent chills down her spine. She looked between her sister and father to see which one of them would break the bad news to her first.