She was falling.

Satsuki Kiryuin felt herself falling backwards through the blackness, watching the stars and swirling galaxies float by her as she fell through the impossibly large universe. Never had she felt so small.

She was naked, her skin pure and white and glowing against the black backdrop of space. She felt no shame at her nakedness, nor pain. Her brain was telling her that she should be unable to breathe, yet life flowed easily in and out of her lungs. She did not understand.

What happened? Satsuki tried to recall. Memories hovered distantly in her inner eye, just out of her grasp. Splashes of images appeared at random intervals: a uniform here, rainbow light there. There was water, there was a splash of blood. The silhouette of an imposing figure holding a girl impossibly by the chest…

Suddenly breathing echoed deafeningly in her ear, loudly panting as she felt hot breath in her face. Her eyes flew open.

Above her was a large man, red and sweaty with a disgusting leer on his face. Satsuki gaped at him, blinked once to confirm that this was indeed real, and swung a fist as hard as she could with a loud cry. The man flew off her and crashed into the opposite wall.

"No, no!" Ryuuko Matoi ran through the doorway, a look of disbelief and annoyance on her face. "I left for one minute to go pee! You pervert! How could you… get out!" she cried in an exasperated tone. The man slunk out of the room with a sheepish look on his face, one hand stemming the flow of blood coming from his broken nose.

"Matoi, what?" Satsuki yelped, bringing herself to a sitting position and looking around for the first time. She appeared to be in a dilapidated classroom, the windows shattered and debris littering the floor. The desks and chairs were strewn across the room, heavily damaged. She was lying on a thin mat on the concrete floor, covered in a rough blanket. She appeared to still be in her undergarments, while bloodstained bandages secured cheap dressings to the wounds marring her perfect skin.

"Ahhh, I'm sorry." Ryuuko groaned with a palm pressed to her forehead. "It's Mako's dad, he's really quite harmless I swear! I didn't know what to do so I brought us here so he could patch you up, because you were losing too much blood. I was there the whole time, I promise he didn't do anything creepy to you. I just left for a second because I had to go to the washroom and…"

"What happened?" Satsuki cut through her rambling. She closed her eyes and groaned as a massive headache manifested itself. She clutched her head, trying to make sense of what was going on.

With a sigh, Ryuuko plopped herself on the floor in front of her and clutched her knees. Satsuki noticed how tired and battleworn she looked, with a large bandage crisscrossing her chest.

"After Ragyo pushed my heart back inside me, she dropped me on the ground and told those suits to attack everyone but me." she started, her hand absentmindly rising to play with the bandage on her chest. "That girl with the green glasses tied me up in her sleeves and started to drag me along, but Tsumungu managed to cut the ties and I rolled off the platform. I grabbed you right away and told Mako to get her dad and meet us here, at our old classroom. Mako's dad patched you up and we've been here for about two hours. Nudist Beach and the Elite Four have been fighting since." As if to accentuate her point, an explosion rumbled in the distance.

As Matoi spoke, the fragmented memories connected themselves in Satsuki's mind and she remembered the events in the arena. Her mother, destroying her easily and stealing Junketsu from her. And then, the truth about Ryuuko...

"I don't know where your mother went." Ryuuko continued, then paused and gazed at Satsuki with a serious expression. "Is it true? About her being my mother?"

Satsuki shifted her gaze, suddenly unsure. "I don't know." She murmured. "It seems impossible, but it's the only explanation that could make sense. Your heart was made of life fibers, just like the experiment they tried to do with my baby sister." She took a sharp breath as what she just said registered in her mind. Matoi… was her sister? This entire time? Unbidden, Satsuki felt her eyes burn and well up with hot tears.

Ryuuko shifted on the hard floor. "I don't know what to believe." She admitted. "Some things make sense, but then what does it mean? Is Isshin Matoi still my dad? How did this happen?"

She quieted for a moment, staring out the broken window. "My entire life I've wondered who my family was. I had my dad, but he would never talk about my mother. We never had a great relationship, and then he shipped me away for school and he was killed before I was able to ask him anything." The teen's face suddenly contorted, filled with an impossible amount of fury. She stood up quickly and began to pace the room.

"My entire life to this point has been a lie! And not one person had the decency to tell me just what the hell is going on!"

Ryuuko whirled around to face Satsuki, one hand tangled into her hair and with a look of incredible frustration on her face. "I came to this stupid school to find answers, only to find that the woman that I've been fighting against for months is apparently my sister. I hated you, I had cursed you constantly for standing above me and sneering down at me while I scrounge for bits of information in the dirt." She stalked over and put one foot on top of an overturned chair.

"And what did I find? That I had found the sister I had wanted for my entire life, and that her mother killed my dad! And you've had some plot this entire time to kill your mother, that nearly killed you, and yet I'm still stuck here in the dark wondering why and how and what and GOD DAMMIT!" she screamed.

Ryuuko picked up the old chair and hurled it across the room with a cry of frustration. She stood there for a minute, facing away from Satsuki with her shoulders heaving and fists balled at her sides. She turned slowly, tears running a track through the grime and blood that covered her face. "Can't you just tell me what is going on?" she pleaded, dropping to her knees.

AN: I edited this chapter to fix a few errors and to get rid of some of the run on paragraphs. Reviews are loved, and inspire me to keep momentum while writing. Thanks guys!