The Suit War

Queen

It had been less than a month since the four of us starting living at Heart Castle, but I was already in love with the place. It took some convincing to get Roe and Kanon to stay here with us, but once Winder and I were able to make it clear (with the help of the Queen) that it wasn't about winning the war, it was about ending it, just as we'd initially planned, they stuck around. The four of us got our own wing of the castle, and even though that sounded like a miserable living situation considering who I'd have to share it with, we were all given our own quarters: own bedroom, own bathroom, own closet space, own dressing room, own servants and maids, own everything. As Winder put it, it was "perfect." The only thing that we had to share was the kitchen and living room area in our wing, but that wasn't a big deal-I liked that I could hang out with them when I wanted, and shut them out when I wanted too. The four of us were so amazed with the nice housing that the Queen had provided for us, but the lavish gifts didn't stop there.

During a public Hearts ceremony, the Queen gave a speech to the Heartizens about how proud she was of our bravery. "It is with great honor that I present to you all the four heroes of not of just Hearts, but of Drac!" For once, the crowd was actually cheering for me, cheering for us! As the Queen went on about how we managed to escape the evil claws of the Spadians (something that I don't think Roe was too happy about), the newly named King of Hearts (whose inauguration the four of us were lucky enough to witness firsthand) gave each of us the Brave Heart Award in the form of a silver medal with a red ribbon. "Congratulations," he said to each of us as we bent over to allow him to place the medals around our necks.

"And furthermore," the Queen continued from the podium, "I hereby declare that in all of Drac, today shall be known as 'World Ace Day,' for it is the day during which the suit war officially came to an end." There was uproar from the crowd as Winder, Kanon, and I stood on the large, high-up platform and waved to everyone down below while smiling. Roe was up there with us, but he wasn't waving or smiling-I think he was still annoyed at the Queen for calling Spadians evil. There were so many people (it looked like there were thousands) all crowded in the Hearts Center that it looked like a sea of red from where we were standing. But even though I couldn't pick out Ilyx and Lark in the crowd whatsoever, I could feel their presence there.

"Ace! Ace! Ace! Ace!" The crowd soon started chanting. I just looked at the guys and started laughing as I continued to wave. Suddenly a large banner dropped down behind us (which scared the crap out of me) over the projector that had our four faces up on the screen. I turned around to see that it said, "Happy World Ace Day!" on it.

"We actually did it!" I said to Kanon with a huge grin on my face.

"No Lil' Missy, you did it," he responded, smiling just as widely. This was definitely one of the coolest days of my life, and I think of the guys' lives too.

The four of us received money and other riches that we could use however we wanted, but even that wasn't the icing on the cake. After only two weeks of living at Heart Castle, we each had surprises waiting for us on our kitchen table. Roe had a set of motorcycle keys waiting for him; Kanon had a new custom, state of the art phaser rifle; Winder had a pair of royal blue jeans with diamond holes cut into them at the knees, and a brand tag that said "Winder" inside of them; but what I got was definitely the best gift of all, the best gift I could have asked for. It was even better than I'd ever imagined, actually. My gift was a picture. It was a picture of Lark and Ilyx actually. They each had one arm around each other as they waved at the camera. They were standing outside a three-story house that I didn't recognize at all, but it looked huge, it looked new, it looked expensive. I turned the picture over and immediately realized that it was a postcard. At first I thought they had taken some big vacation to some part of Hearts on the Royals' dime, but then I started reading: