After eluding his unknown assailant, there came a time of walking alone, along the dark and empty suburban streets, wherein Jackson felt as if he were being watched.

He stopped still and his ears detected faint footfalls some distance behind him, until they abruptly halted, too. Jackson continued on with his trek through the streets, now able to pick up the strong and determined strides of his pursuer. He had no doubt that it was the same man. A knot of fear tied itself around his gut.

Jackson carefully slipped the envelope, the most precious thing in his life right then, down the front of his shirt, which was safely tucked into his jeans so the envelope would fall straight through. He knew he could not risk losing it - it was the key to his existence and to his obtaining his revenge.

His mind raced with questions; basically, what should he do? He took several deep breaths and, for the second time that night, Jackson Crane ran for his life.

His pursuer was quick to take up the chase, once again. They resumed the on-foot pursuit that they had only finished a little over an hour before. Jackson knew he was weakened and no match for his hunter. He needed to find a place to hide, and preferably one with a lot of people about, to act as both witnesses and protectors.

Jackson couldn't believe his good fortune when he saw the small, old pub situated on a street corner ahead of him. He raced directly for it, with Kurt only a few meters behind him.

Jackson bolted for the main door, his muscles aching, his breath short, and charged on into the bar, slamming into one of the patrons. He was instantly jostled about in a beer-swilling crowd of boisterous people, crammed into the tiny pub.

They were a young crowd of men and women, reasonably well dressed, listening to a band that was playing music at one end of the pub, although their tunes could be scarcely heard above all the chatter, yelling and laughter that filled the room. Everyone present had obviously indulged themselves in plenty of alcohol and were subsequently in good spirits.

The bar reeked of smoke and beer, but this was the very least of Jackson's concerns. Kurt, too, was in the bar, and trapped, as the youth was, within the throng of noisy patrons. He was just out of reach of his quarry.

Jackson regarded him, then pushed ahead, squeezing through the crowd in an attempt to escape the man, occasionally looking back at the coldly determined features of his pursuer. Neither of them seem to be making a great deal of progress in either escaping, or capturing, the other.

The deafening cries of the rowdy patrons filled Jackson's mind with more craziness than he thought he could handle. He was constantly being banged into and subsequently being drenched by people carelessly spilling drinks. But he kept forcing his way through the pack, towards a side door, with Kurt falling behind him.

As Jackson made it to the door, he opened it and slipped out into the deserted hallway beyond it. He found that it led to the male and female toilets. He reflected on this for a moment before boldly stepping into the women's toilets.

Kurt had seen the boy slip out the door. If he didn't move fast, Kurt would lose him again. He pulled out his butterfly knife and flicked it open in an elaborate display of mastery over the weapon, and waved it discretely, but threateningly, at those people who foolishly blocked his path. When they eyed the shimmering blade their faces quickly fell, losing their good humor, and they stepped back, clearing the way for the stone faced young man.

Kurt stepped out into the hallway, just as Jackson had done. It was quiet, compared to the bedlam in the public bar. But there was no sign of the youth.

It was then that he noted the toilets, and he wondered to himself if the boy was so stupid as to think that Kurt would not search for him there Kurt went into the female toilets, brandishing the knife.

Inside, there was no one to be seen nor sound to indicate any activity or the presence of another human being. Kurt walked along the length of the cubicles. There came the rustle of clothing, of movement, quickly followed by the flush of toilet water from behind one of the closed cubicle doors.

When it opened, a young girl stumbled out, appearing extremely drunk, only to find herself confronted by the vision of a man with a knife standing a few feet before her – a sight that quickly sobered her. Her eyes opened wide, and the young girl scurried from the room.

He regarded her departure with little interest. He continued his walk down the length of the toilets, passing each cubicle. All appeared vacant. Sometimes Kurt had to push a door open, wide, just to ensure that the boy wasn't hiding with his feet tucked up on the toilet seat.

Kurt had come to the very last stall. The door, he saw, was closed and locked. He considered this for a moment, and stepped back and got down on one knee, leaning to one side, so as to look under the door, through the gap. He saw two well-shaped legs in black stockings and red high heels were placed in front of the base of the toilet bowl. Clearly, they were not the feet of a young man.

Jackson Crane wasn't there. He'd gone, having alluded Kurt once more. He left the facilities, displeased with his lack of success.

Hearing his assailant’s footfalls move towards the exit door, then disappear into the night, Jackson released a low sigh with heartfelt relief.

He was standing, somewhat precariously with his head bobbed down, on the toilet seat, while a flabbergasted looking woman stared up at him, between his legs, her skirt pulled down to her knees. She was a dark haired woman in her late thirties, her eyes dim and red from the evening's festive air.

Jackson got down from the toilet and opened the cubicle door. "Thanks a lot," he said to her, offering a smile.

"No problem!" she waved to him. "Anytime," she said, and smiled foolishly at him.

He had fought hard for it that night, so he prayed it would be a fruitful future. He was safe now, but would feel safer still when in Switzerland.

He closed his eyes and felt the tension leaving his worn out body. His lids felt heavy and his mind light and erratic. He found sleep within minutes,

Bubba’s expression showed that he was disgruntled with the news that he'd just received.

"He escaped you - twice," he said, exhaling heavily.

Kurt did not need to respond to an observation that was obvious.

"I must have him," Bubba insisted, his voice rang with rising, mad passion. He rose from his seat, placing the glass of port down on a nearby table. He faced his young apprentice. "I feel the need," he told Kurt gravely

Kurt had no trouble understanding what this meant. He responded appropriately.

"I will have the rented car brought round," he informed Bubba, and crossed to the telephone.

Bubba nodded absently at him, and then cupped one hand around his aching penis, as his mind tormented him with dark fantasies of his insane desire for one particular youth. He became lost in his vile, black thoughts, but remained haunted by the knowledge that he was no longer able to fulfil them.

Although Bubba had been found not long after Jackson Crane had severed his penis, the damage done to the organ was such that while it had been stitched back on, the nerves were destroyed and achieving erection was now an impossibility for the old crime warlord.

It was an affliction that tortured him. He had, when his escaped from Pentoville Prison, gone to doctors and specialists in Asia and Europe, hoping that one of them could correct the damage. But each and everyone had told him that it was impossible.

Kurt spoke, breaking Bubba from his thoughts. "Shall we go?"

Bubba mumbled a reply, and the two men left the hotel suite-

Bubba’s eyes swept the streets of St. Kilda, looking for the 'one'... the ‘one' he needed so desperately to fulfil his need. His frustration and desire had to be quenched, for they were trying to strangle him with their mocking laughter.

Their journeying took them past a park, shrouded in darkness. As the car crept by, they saw a lone youth heading towards the public toilets there, which were nestled amongst the cover of some trees.

"That one," Bubba decided.

Kurt pulled the car over to the park's side of the road. The area appeared to be deserted. He got out, looked around, scanning the area for possible witnesses. Satisfied with what he found, he followed the boy's tracks into the public toilets.

Kurt possessed the stealth of a vicious, cunning cat. He moved quietly and gracefully. He discovered the youth standing at the urinal, his back to the cold blooded young man. Kurt crept closer as the young boy continued to urinate. He finished this chore, zipped up his jeans and turned around. He looked surprised to see the man behind him and his face betrayed a flash of fear.

Something that flashed and span in Kurt's hand caught the young boy's eye: a butterfly knife.

Kurt lashed out with his other fist and punched the youth in the face. As the boy tumbled down, Kurt grabbed him.

The youth, about seventeen years old with dark hair, a lean body and pleasant face, hung limply in his embrace. He dragged the unconscious boy back to the car. Bubba opened the back door and Kurt tossed in his deadweight load.

Bubba examined his prize from the front seat with a critical eye. He was not Jackson Crane, but he would do.

The two men were back in their seats and so resumed their travels.

He removed all his clothes, undoing the binding around his chest and thus freed the rising peaks of his chemically manufactured breasts. He cupped them in each hand, staring at them, and himself, in the mirror. More and more, Jaselle was taking over his life and changing him into her.

’Which one am I…?’ Jackson found himself wondering, gazing into the mirrors, seeing his face, but also her face, and those were definitely her breasts….

He climbed under the shower and found real enjoyment in the refreshing, warm jets which stimulated his body back into alertness.

Today was the day! He had a plane to catch in the early afternoon, which would eventually deliver him to Zurich, Switzerland, and far from Bubba’s evil grasp. It would be there that Jackson Crane would be laid to rest forever, and it was there that Jaselle La Fleur would come into her own. No one would be able to stop it now.

He knocked on her door and waited. A voice called out from behind it.

"Who is it?" Pearly cried with an air of annoyance.

Kurt paused for but a moment before replying. "I am a friend of Raquel's. I must speak with you. It is important;” he said evenly.

She opened the door, her eyes assessing what they found. She nodded, letting the handsome young man into the flat.

"What can I do for you?" she asked. "What's your name?"

"I am looking for Jackson Crane. You must tell me where he is. It is vitally important."

Pearly studied him more carefully. He had failed to answer her question, so she repeated it, but he ignored her, pretending he hadn't heard.

"He is in danger. I must get to him before they do -" he told her.

Pearly didn't believe a word of what he was telling her and it showed on her face, as well as in the way she stood, with her arms crossed over her chest.

"I don't know where he is. Don't care, either. Haven't seen him and hope I don't," she said shortly. "So, you can go and be on you way, now," Pearly suggested, moving for the door.

But he seized her, slapped her face and then threw her to the floor. Her head struck the corner of a coffee table as she fell, and she cried out from the blow. She sat herself up, sobbing and whimpering, pressing her hand against the gash above her left eye.

Kurt brought out the knife. “Tell me where he is, old woman, or I will slit you open and feed you your own entrails," he warned her.

Pearly stared into those arctic, cold blue eyes: she did not doubt for one moment that he meant what he said.

"I- I don't know, I swear!" she exclaimed, almost screeching, any shred of her proud, biting and detached manner wiped away by the terror that filled her.

Kurt didn't believe her. He kicked her between the legs as hard as he could. She screamed, but silently, such was the ferocity of the pain.

"Where is he?"

"I - I - I don't know!" she insisted, tears falling from her eyes..

He went ahead and kicked her twice more in the ribs, and then the kidneys. He then leant down beside her, turner her onto her back, heaved her up before him and held his knife under one breast.

"Change your mind, hag, before I cut one of your shriveled up, old tits off," he told her calmly, his blue eyes glimmering. To show he meant it, he pressed the blade into her just enough to pierce flesh and bring forth a small rivulet of blood.

Pearly was reduced to a blubbering, pleading and pathetic wreck. She begged him not to hurt her any further.

"Answer my question truthfully and I will let you go," he said.

Between sobs, Pearly conceded and so told him all that she knew; of the letter that her former employer had given her to pass onto the youth, and how Jackson had been by the previous night to collect it. It was on telling Kurt this that she remembered a previously forgotten detail.

"He said - he said something about going away," she told Kurt. 'To Europe," she went on, stumbling over her panic-stricken blubbering.

"Where?" he cried.

"I'm - I'm not sure," she wailed, so he twisted the blade a little deeper into the wound below her breast, as a for of encouragement, as well as reminding her what would happen to her if she failed to tell him everything that he wanted to know.

"Remember or I'll kill you," he hissed at her.

"Zurich, Zurich!" she screamed.

He looked at Pearly with contempt, relinquishing his hold on her, letting the old woman fall roughly to the floor. He stood up to his full height.

"Call the police about any of this, and I will come back for you," he said threateningly. He didn't wait for a response. He stepped over her shuddering, sobbing form, and left the flat.

He was very politely informed that one such flight would be leaving Melbourne for Sydney, in the afternoon. It would go onto Hong Kong, then London, and eventually onto the Continent.

Armed with that information, Kurt hung up, quickly relaying it to Bubba.

"Get the car," Bubba commanded him. "We're going to the airport. Once we get there, you'll find out what gate it leaves from and stake it out. When you find the boy, you'll collect him and bring him to me," Bubba explained, a faint grin on his wide, fat lips-

The driver got in the car and it pulled out from the motel's car park, making it's way to Tullamarine Airport.

During the course of the drive there, Jaselle could not help but think over the past several months. In particular, from the time of his mother's death, right up to the present. To admit that a lot had happened in that time was an understatement. To say that he had changed a great deal was almost as ludicrous an observation.

He had made - and lost - some wonderful friends. But he didn't want to think too much about that, for it only filled him with pain.

He had to look to the future and to finally attaining his revenge against his much-despised father. He had overcome so many obstacles to get as far as he had, some of which Jackson had thought insurmountable at the time.

Yet he had done it, although not on his own. His friends, who he loved, had helped him; they had showed him so much in himself he'd never thought existed. They had shown him his strength and an endless supply of determination. They had shown him that he could succeed. And he would! But there remained one last obstacle in his path: Bubba.

At the airport, when Jaselle's luggage was being transferred through customs, he saw the young man who had been chasing him the night before. To see him at the airport sent chills through his spine; Bubba seemed to be always one step behind him.

He was careful to avert his eyes from those of the man's. Jaselle took a seat in lounge area, and hid behind a magazine that had been left behind on the seat, carefully watching the movements of his hunter.

"Damn," Jaselle whispered to himself. How had Bubba’s minion found him here? There was only one way in which the young man could possibly have known where to find Jackson, and that was through Pearly! Pearly must have heard him when Jackson had mentioned aloud about going to Zurich!

How had the young man extracted the information from the defenseless old woman? Maybe she had given it to him willingly. Yet somehow, Jaselle thought that unlikely. He hoped that the old woman was not harmed. He didn't like her, but he didn't wish her dead, either.

He reminded himself, as the butterflies in his stomach multiplied and mutated into stampeding elephants, that the young man with those absorbing, probing blue eyes was searching for Jackson, not Jaselle. All the same, he didn't want to attract the attention of those eyes, so he remained seated in the lounge while Kurt paced around by the boarding gate, waiting expectantly for Jackson Crane to turn up.

"If you only knew how close...” Jaselle whispered, smiling slightly as he peered over the top of the magazine towards the young man.

A boarding call rang out over the public address system for the flight to Sydney. The waiting passengers rose from their seats, Jaselle amongst them, and moved, like a herd of sheep, towards the gate.

Kurt appeared more anxious in manner. Maybe even a bit confused. Where was Jackson Crane? Why wasn't he there? Maybe he was taking a later flight, Kurt thought to himself. But no, it had to be this one! The boy wanted to get out of the city, and the country, just as soon as he could for he knew that Bubba and Kurt were getting close to him. Knowing this, and assuming that the boy had some sense, he would be taking the first available flight. It was this flight! Kurt was positive, so he could not understand why the boy was absent.

Jaselle, along with the other passengers, was walking towards where Kurt was standing. Jaselle had a handbag slung over one shoulder and his ticket in his hand.

He eyed Kurt with trepidation, as the man continued to scan the faces of those attempting to board. Jaselle walked passed him, so close that Kurt could smell his Chanel No. 5 perfume, and could have reached out and grabbed him. It was so close! Jaselle had held his breath, and kept his eyes staring unfalteringly ahead, for fear of coming under his scrutiny.

But he went by Kurt without incident. He totally ignored the beautiful, raven-haired young woman, whose fine scent tinted the air around her. Kurt walked passed her, not guessing that he had been so close to the object of his hunt: Jackson Crane.

Jaselle, having alluded Kurt, took a deep, relaxed breath, when on the other side of the gate, and smiled.