Something peculiar...

[limbo]

His feet brushed against the pebbles. The wind was dead in this day of sweltering heat. The sun was burning a hole in the back of his neck and Adam remembered how having pale skin came with a few nasty prices. To give himself relief, he swung back and forth on the swing, creating a smidgen of wind. It helped very little.

He sighed. When was the last time he had come to such a park and used the swing set? Memories of childhood afternoons swirled in his mind in such a way that he found himself, god-forbid, reminiscing. Although a rather quiet child who kept to himself mostly, Adam could remember times when he chased his sister around with a pretend stake and played medieval vampire hunt. There were also the neighborhood kids who knocked on his door and pleaded for him to come out to join the living so he could tell them vampire and werewolf stories. He couldn't help smiling at the thought of old games like Freeze tag and that one game where "It" closes his eyes and searches for people to tag with his four other senses...

His smiled turned grim. Or in his case, five other senses. Having grown up in a family full of vampires caused Adam to develop a strong sense of space and people. He could feel the presence of people just like most people can, but at a more heightened state.

Adam's thoughts halted when voices were raised across the playground and over by the fountain of...weird things. He squinted against the sun to see a surprisingly large group of mothers, children, random runners, and hormonal teenagers crowding together, clearly interested in the same thing. Adam found this to be amazing that a group of people was surprised by something when they lived in a town like Monomonon. It must have been quite a sight indeed to have attracted more than a few onlookers or curious eyes.

He abandoned his swing to investigate the scenario. For the first time in a very long while, he jogged to meet the crowd. They were packed together, and Adam had to shove his way through to see what was going on. He poked his head in between a woman and a young girl.

He frowned.

Yes, he would admit, this was definitely something peculiar.

Above the trees, a few clouds began to roll in.

[i n k]

Save some face.

[m.a.t.i.l.d.a]

Damn it all. Damn it all to hell.

Matilda had twisted and turned and fallen into the park out of the sky, so it seemed. She lay like a broken doll, spread-eagle on the ground in the midst of the circle. The bandages on her face were coming off, coming apart, and her arms didn't want to react or even twitch enough to help her fix them. Her entire existance was stuck on her glamour, holding the illusion of perfect skin over her contorted body. Where the clean, linen gauze was askew, there were chunks of charred flesh showing, teeth visible between gaps in her once-perfect skin, where Matilda's will would just not hold a lie. The smile drawn onto her cloth covering was choppy and broken.

"Get back, I'm fine, I'm fine." Her voice was calm and melodic, but her eyes cold and challenging. "Please back away, nothing to see, just a slight spill." Her teeth ground together behind the tattered drapes of skin. Just get the hell away.

Her eyes drifted angrily from onlooker to onlooker, stopping on a face she'd seen in the halls of Cloud Nine. Unfortunately, this wasn't the face of someone she'd call an alli, but he wasn't quite an enemy either.

Will someone get the sparkly vampy away, please?

"Adam, dear!" Her mouth twitched again, still mostly hidden beneath her bandages. "Could you be a saint and call an ambulence, please? I think I broke a rib or two, never can tell these days. Please, my good people, move along. I'm sick- sick of your worry. Please, go on and enjoy your day."

Her gauze smiled on.

You know you've only got one.

[limbo]

As a child, Adam could remember times when his sister would wake him in the middle of the night to show him photographs in her popular vampire magazines. There was one that particularly stuck in his mind...it was that of a young vampiress who had been stabbed with a stake and was burning and turning into ash from the inside out. Forever he would remember the charred image of her in his mind...

...But it didn't compare to Matilda Denmarc. As a person who had seen quite a few disturbing images, Adam was struck by her. She was literally smoking. The little bit of beauty he recalled ignoring him in the halls had vanished. He dragged his eyes away from her defeated form.

She had asked him for help, and although he had never liked the girl, Adam felt it was his responsibility to help her. He knew he wasn't so good at dispersing crowds, but he would try for her sake.

"She's allergic to all you people! Go away! Give her some space!"

All right, he was awful at it. And now he felt he had lost the aura of danger and gained the sense of foolishness. Thank god, however, someone else in the crowd agreed with him and advised people to back up. Of course, to help matters, a few trees away a flying baby was caught on one of the top branches. Needless to say, the gathering that stuck around became more of a small band of people who cared very little for flying babies.

Adam bent down by her side. He could see her impatience growing with every second that ticked by in which he hadn't yet called an ambulance. Embarrassed, he looked down at her. "This is going to sound a little stupid, but you don't have a phone on you, do you?"

Then he got a little pissed off when it started to rain.

[i n k]

you're hideous...

[m.a.t.i.l.d.a]

THE HELL KIND OF QUESTION WAS THAT?

"Let me get this straight, kid," her voice was a hiss, her eyes narrowing. "You have a rich, vamp family, and you don't have a phone? Who are you, Vincent Valentine?"

The bare places on her face were making her sour mood curdle. "At least put the bandages back on, sir? Please? I might have the will to move, then." She sighed, looking to the sky. "S.... sorry," Matilda spit the word. "That I'm being so rude, it's just.. Sir, I fell over. Not from the sky. Just tipped, crumpled, tripped over my own god-given two feet and ended up a circus act."

The sun was hiding, and the rain pattered angrily over her fake mop of hair. She hated water. Water hadn't saved her in time when she was young, and it just pissed her off, now. "And maybe find an umbrella."

...and sexy.

[limbo]

Oh yes, it was that nasty Matilda. He'd heard rumors about her that she was half human - half harpy. Adam didn't usually fall prey to gossip because he himself was a popular gossipy topic, but he couldn't help his interjections of how this Matilda was a real piece of work...without any solid evidence, of course. Yet he couldn't imagine she would insult him when she was trying to get him to help her. He was not so inclined to do so.

"I don't carry a phone," Adam snarled, "Because I...no. I don't have to explain this to you. You need my help."

Thunder reverberated across the top of the trees. He cursed and prayed it would only continue to sprinkle and not turn into torrential rain. Adam didn't like to be told what sort of family he belonged to - he didn't care who her family was or anyone else's.

As much as the dislike for the girl grew inside him, he knew the best thing to do would be to do what she asked. It might be nice to have someone like her owe him a favor. It provided a bit of security when favors were due to him, like he could always rely on someone when things went awry.

With a bit of a grimace and meticulous hands, Adam reached down to her face to pull the bandages back over the hideous flesh. He didn't consider himself squeamish but this...this was just not good. He wasn't even sure he was doing it right. If this had been Anna, she would have coaxed him through it in that frightening and lulling way of hers. But Matilda...he was afraid she'd eat his face off if he pulled the wrong way. And there was the difference between them - while he considered Anna to be eccentrically and calmly scary, Matilda radiated with danger...and not his sort of danger.

He looked down at his handiwork and pulled his jacket up over his shoulders like a pair of wings to shield her face from the rain.

"Well, princess? Is your strength back or have you decided to kill me with your mind powers?"

Maybe he shouldn't have called her princess.