Temporal Abnormality, Arete is in the HOUSE.

There was nothing. She was spinning through space, endless, eyes open and sightless. Then noise. Oh, god, what a noise. It echoed off the marble and ivory, shredding a few hedges from the sheer force of volume. Light. Light. Fire.

She was shaking. Something was not right. This wasn't the Wealther's home. This was outside...an artifical environment of some sort. There were plants, obviously fake. There haven't been plants on Earth for years. And she could have sworn she heard a liquid trickling.

These observations flashed through Arete's mind lightening quick, categorized and stored as quickly as they were considered. The sweet 'ship wasn't with her anymore. Damn. The air smelled wrong.

She bit her lip, feeling her conciousness waver. She was bleeding a tad, but she'd seen worse. Way worse. She frantically clutched her pillowcase close to her and simply faded into the blackness, limbs slack, head cushioned by the chunk of concrete that had been unfortunately blasted from a bench.

Ero wasn't usually the "rescue" type. He left that to the more powerful members of the school. But this time, he figured the loud crash would attract enough people that his help could be minimal. Not to mention he was almost positive he'd heard a woman scream.

He ran towards the center of the courtyard, eyes peeled for any dangerous looking objects or people. Since he'd shown up that summer at the school it had become obvious that nobody at this school was completely normal. There was always something. So he wouldn't have been surprised if there were two people having an all-out super hero battle going on in the middle of a boarding school nobody had ever heard of.

Rounding a corner at full speed, his shin collided with an overturned bench and he collapsed in a painful heap on the ground. Right next to a beautiful girl lying unconcious against a piece of concrete. She was wearing oversized clothes that looked (and smelled) like they hadn't been cleaned in years. She must have been freezing. He army-crawled over to her, still not entirely sure whether she had been attacked or not, and checked her pulse.

At least she was alive, but he didn't know what else to check for. Blushing softly, he ran his hand down her spine to make sure it didn't seem broken. He wasn't sure, but it seemed alright. He turned her over carefully and propped her up, attempting to lift her, ears tuned into the sounds about him in an effort to avoid any conflict.

Unfortunately he wasn't very strong so he ended up simply throwing her arm over his shoulder and dragging her for a few feet before deciding he couldn't do it that way either. Maybe he could just wait for her to wake up first?

Arete made a small noise of contentment. She smelled something lovely, a beautiful ginger scent. An arm was wrapped around her. She sighed, then came awake in a flurry of movement and panic. She backed away from the most beautiful girl she had ever seen in a state of panic, knees scrabbling in the ruins of a sidewalk.

She fumbled in her bag, words catching behind her throat. What the hell. Everything was wrong, everything looked wrong, smelled wrong, felt wrong. The grav wasn't artifically heavier, she felt lighter. The sky was...blue? Unheard of. Only in history texts.

She finally managed to find her slender gun in the pillowcase and pulled it out, hands suddenly rock-steady, and stood in a perfect markswoman pose, several feet away from the stunning stranger. "I'm going to ask some things now, and you're going to tell me straight truth, or I will shoot your gorgeous face up, comrade." She stopped. Gorgeous? Oh, well. Tell the truth and shame the devil.

"Where am I? This is not Old France. Why did you bring me here? What have you done to the air?" Her voice was husky and a tad raspy, slow and accented with the slightest dip of olde-irish.

Ero put up his hands, eyes wide, "This is Abunai School. I don't know how you got here..." She was frantic, he knew, but this talk was worrying him, "The air is always....what do you mean?" He took a step forward, slowly.

"I don't want to hurt you. You were unconcious, I was going to bring you to the hospital." He frowned, "I'm Ero Smyth. Who are you?"

Hopefully acting friendly would work, or else she was most definitely going to kill him.

"A-abunai School?" she whispered. "Impossible. That was destroyed in the..." she locked eyes with him and swallowed hard.

"You're lying." she said hoarsely, feeling her knees shaking. "You're lying." she began slowly backing away, face cold. "Are you a Wealther? Is that what you are, pretty one? Only a Wealther could afford something like your face."

Her body tensed. "Is this a holo, then?" She bit her lip so hard a thin trickle of blood began an agonizing descent down her chin. The gun's barrel lowered, faltered, and then snapped back on target. "Talk fast, beautiful."

Yeah, this wasn't working. She was still panicked, "I'm not a Wealther." He muttered calmly, eyes on the gun that now seemed even more threatening, "I know it's hard for you to think straight right now, but if I were your enemy, why wouldn't I have detained or killed you when you were unconcious?"

The fact that she was calling him beautiful finally hit home. He blinked and his face flushed bright pink. Wait, people always called him that. Why was this different? He didn't like her. Maybe it was the way she said it though. The offhand, flippant way it came up...Somehow that seemed more sincere.

"I'm sure you're in a lot of pain. Whatever happened here must have been violent. We need to get you to the hospital."

God. She hated people like this. She saw in the girl's eyes no falsehood, but her instincts were sometimes wrong.

Yes. No.

Power. It was all about power. This girl had power over Arete because she was flawless, Arete had power over the girl because of a gun. Natural abilities versus technology.

The girl's perfect face won.

Arete lowered the gun and felt tears flood her face. "I don't know what's happening." she said calmly, then crumpled gradually to the ground, shaking.

Ero felt his femenine side instinctively push him forward to kneel beside her, but he resisted the need to hold her while she cried. He didn't want to frighten her further, so he simply laid a comforting hand on her shoulder, eyes squinting in sympathy. He didn't know what was going on either, so the least he could do was offer a shoulder to cry on.

"I...I'm sorry. I didn't meant to scare you." He looked away, feeling a bit ashamed that he was so bad at this, "But, ah, maybe I can help you figure this out. You think you're supposed to be in France? I'm afraid I don't know where this school actually is, but we are somewhere in Europe..." He frowned, "Hang on- I never got your name."

Start with the basics, he thought, Get all the information you need without making her upset.

"I'm Arete." she said, painfully quiet. She felt something darker start inside her, a spasming of her lungs. Oh, god. She needed some juice. She shrugged off the bewildered girl's hand and rummaged in her bag momentarily, dumping daggers and explosives to the ground without care.

She finally found the box and a syringe. She effeciently bit the tip off and quickly filled the surgical instrument with a sickly yellow fluid, then shoved the box back in her back. She abruptly stabbed the needle into her leg, then let out a choked sob in relief.

She felt the shakes stop. This was like poetry. Then something registered.

"Europe? Europe was unified in...it's not even..." her mouth hung open, then snapped shut. "W-what year is this?" she asked, a sense of disconnected chaos growing.

Ero watched in horror as the girl- Arete- readied a questionable needle and stabbed it efficiently into her leg.

"Ja-fa-buh- what are you doing?!" She ignored him, her body stiff with concentration. What kind of person was he dealing with? Maybe it was a trick, something horrible plotted by one of the various wannabe-villains at the school. But why? What had he done? But maybe...his panic dissipated as relief fill her features. A choking sound broke the confused, worried silence between them, and he relaxed a bit.

Only to watch her begin to wig out again, W-what year is this? He cocked his head at the question. She really was very strange...

"You don't know? Have you been imprisoned or something?" He'd heard about a pair of twins who had been confined their entire lives and didn't seem to know anything about the outside world, but were amazingly intelligent because of their closed lives, "It's December 2006." He bit his lip, watching her worriedly.

"No...I haven't...I've just been...2006?" she said calmly. "Two thousand six. I'm...I don't think this is. Errr."

She tilted her head to one side and smiled openly. "I get it. Someone spiked my absinthe. What a fergin' trip, yeah? All right, sweetheart, what's it going to be? If you're my hallucination, you're the nicest one I've ever seen."

Arete grinned and popped up from the ground and closed the distance between them, and then firmly slapped the gorgeous girl on the ass. "Yee-haw!" she said, then fainted.

Ero watched in morbid fascination as the girl convinced herself that she was on a drug trip. He wondered, distantly, if this perhaps had less to do with the absinthe and more to do with the needle she'd just injected, but was quickly knocked from his musings when she slapped him on the rump and collapsed against him. He caught her, only prolonging their mutual descent to the cobblestones.

He sighed, knowing there was no way he was transporting her to the hospital if she was going to be like this. He pulled his jacket off and threw it over her, turning her over onto her stomach, just in case. She was frozen, the icy air permeating her flimsy clothes with ease.

She didn't know what year this was. She said that Europe was "unified" and believed Abunai had been destroyed. This wasn't fantasy, it was science fiction!

"You're from the future...or some alternate universe...or something..." He closed his eyes, fighting the urge to hyperventilate and lose his mind right there. This was insane. This was insane.

"Your clothes smell nice." said Arete faintly, her face pressed to her arm. "I think I need some meds now. Dunno where the hell this is, but everything smells wrong 'cept your overcoat, girl."

She convulsed once and fell still. "Please." she said. "I need some asp-aren and a fag. Please."

She realized with a horrible shock that she couldn't feel her legs, or her arms. She almost started crying. "I can't move. Don't leave, man! Don't leave!"

"I don't have any aspirin..." He managed, weakly. This girl was really exhausting, physically and emotionally. Why had he come in here? What had possessed him to do this all of a sud....

....

....

....

Goddamnit, Ma, can't I do anything of my own free will?! You and your destiny propaganda...

He sighed, massaging his forehead lightly. That aspirin was sounding like a good idea. Especially when out of nowhere Arete began screeching at the top of her lungs about being unable to move.

"You're just....that drug...ah, ah..." He felt her arms and legs, noticing they were noticably warmer than his hands, "You're probably just having a bad trip or something." He never thought he'd have to say those words, "Uh, here, I'll get you up against something so you can sit up."

He heaved her up as high as he could on his own strength, her bottom hovering just above the ground as he dragged her feet to one of the few in tact benches remaining. He sat her up against it, relieved to have her out of his lap. That truly wasn't the place for someone who didn't know him that well.

He looked around, peering through the destroyed hedges. He didn't spot any movement and decided he better go looking for some help in moving her.

"I'm gonna go look for help, I'll be right back. Don't move." And with that, he was off, using his Goddess(mother)-given thick thighs to propel him towards the building.

Mattias had been hiding out in the courtyard lately, mostly because Hoshi didn't seem to know about it so it was an easy place to get away from the freak. Jesus, maybe he as better as a horny self-centered bitch compared to the whiny obsessive asshole he was now...

Maybe he should talk Dina into having sex with him again. Or maybe convince her to do Hoshi ever fucking day so he wasn't such a bitch. He was jostled out of these thoughts when a beautiful, radiant girl came dashing around the corner and nearly tackled him.

Catching her shoulders, he looked down at her, watching as she caught her breath and tried to speak all at once. He shook his head, smiling a bit, "No, calm down first. I can't understand people when they talk normally sometimes, I can't have you be gasping and wheezing as well."

She nodded, bending over and moving her body out of his reach. Was she doing that because it helped her breathe, or because she didn't want him touching her?

"You have to help!" The redhead cried, eyes wild with insistence, "There's a girl, she, she can't move. I can't lift her, she needs help, please, you're strong-"

"Well I can't resist a girl complimenting my muscles!" He started running, grabbing her arm and spinning her around to drag behind him, "This way, right?"

The carrot top tore her arm out of his grasp, glaring angrily, "Yeah, this way." She sped past him easily, accelerating past him until she was at least ten feet ahead at all times. Mattias shook his head, sighing inwardly. He didn't have the best luck with chicks, despite there being so many who idolized him.

"Over here!" The girl had stopped at a corner and Mattias ran around it to look down at the blonde girl leaning up against a bench...

And fell in love.

Or he thought it was love. He thought she was beautiful and attractive and gorgeous, and he wanted so very much to hold her close and kiss her deeply. He completely forgot about the redhead until she walked past him to the sick girl, a triumphant smirk on her face.

"Are you still alright?" The redhead asked, biting her lip uncertainly.