Fire woke up in a cold sweat. It was those stupid dreams again. They always revolved around the same concepts. It was like a story, but it refused to be told in order. She kept getting it in clips and pieces. Something about games. Games and shadows. And eyes, oh the eyes, the horrific awful eyes, eyes of malice and horror and... and hunger. She hated those eyes. This clip had been in some sort of twisted amusement park. Horrific displays, filled with gory images. It was an amusement park from back at the beginning of the century. It had been nearly a hundred years since those were popular. They didn't even run anymore, but she'd felt the familiarity in her dream. Had she watched a historical movie recently? She didn't think so...

Fire shook her head as she tried to recall the fleeting images. There was a fun house, hysterical laughter, and the wax figures. The figures of people in the midst of unimaginable torture. She remembered some vaguely from her history class, The Rack, The Iron Maiden, The Stocks... In the dream she was not herself. She was another girl, she knew in the dream but she could not remember here. There were other people going through this horrific room as well. They were looking for things. Fire thought in this exact moment they were looking for a person. The torture scenes were making them all sick. They needed to feel better. I am my own master. For some reason this phrase stood out to fire. It was important. They felt better. They kept walking. One of the people there, a boy with a teddy bear body and sarcastic spaniel eyes. He said something that made her look on a table. A blue dress. Summer! Although Fire wasn't sure why the season was so significant all of the sudden. And then fear, so much fear. Fear for the blue dress, fear of what was inside the blue dress. The body in the blue dress. "Look out!" came a cry from a beautiful voice. Fire, or whoever fire was, saved the body just as something huge came and nearly knocked them out... and that was it.

Fire immediately brought her helmet up. She connected the wire to her temple and projected the images and words she could remember into the log in device. The diary helmet only responded to her brainwaves. It was her most prized possession.

There had been things missing in this clip that were in most. There hadn't been the tall handsome boy. Fire thought his name was Tom. Names were the last thing she remembered with most people. In her dreams she was crazy about Tom. But as she went over the remembered images it wasn't Tom she was fascinated by, it was Julian. Julian had been the other thing missing from her dream. She couldn't decide if she liked that or not. In her dreams she was terrified of him. He was dangerous and complicated and completely and totally in love with her in the most repulsive and adrenaline rushing way possible. It was the obvious difference between her now and the her from her dreams. The her now was fascinated by the danger when the dream her was scared. It could have been because Fire knew it was only a dream when she was awake, but it could also be because she had no real Tom. Either way it was Julians impossibly perfect face that made the dreams interesting.

Fire looked at the clock. 3:45. Well there was no chance of her going to sleep now. Fire walked over to the treadmill. She turned it on and suddenly she was walking through a calm light forest. The air was calming and relaxing as the treadmill's sensors took in her steady mood. Virtual reality, you had to love it. She let the breeze wash all thoughts of torture devices and bodies in blue dresses.

Before she knew it, it was time to get ready for school.

Fire looked at herself in the mirror and studied herself. She was overcome by a sense of deja vu. Blonde honey hair, straight brushstroke eyebrows, forest green eyes, mousy nose, full bottom lip. It was her from the dreams. She didn't look like that in real life. Her hair was a dark ebony color. It wasn't straight like in her dreams, it was a wild mess of waves that no matter how much you brushed it managed to tangle again in a matter of minutes. Fire's eyebrows were not straight brushstrokes, but two no-nonsense arches that were the most expressive part of her face. Her nose was small, wide and buttony and not mousy at all. Her lips were a full round pout, soft in severe contrast to her cat-like eyes. The one physical characteristic that was the same in real life as it was in her dream was her dark forest green eyes. She stared at them curiously for a second longer before splashing cold water into her face.

"I'm coming Marty, hold onto your steering wheel!" Fire shouted in the general direction of the front door. She'd left her board around here somewhere.

"Fire we are going to be late! You know the boxes close at eight sharp! I've been locked out three times already, I can't stay at night anymore I have things to do!"

Found it! The pressed the on button and the board began to hum as it began to power up. She stepped on it and hovered over the ground. She sailed around front. Fire chuckled as she saw Marty on his board only straddling it one leg on each side floating so that his head was level with hers even though she was standing. Marty and his odd eccentric ways... "Finally, Jesus Fire I think you want us to get shut out." Marty was on one of his rampages. The guy was so moody, some part of Fire thought he may have only been such good friends with her because she seemed to be the only person who could keep up. "I mean seriously do you want me to fail this course, the neurology of man isn't the easiest course, especially with all the recent discoveries in the cerebral cortex. I'm having to do three independent studies on the recent developments and even with a big dose of headache medicine I can't seem to get rid of the throbbing underneath my temples, and I can't figure out how to get rid of it which is probably not good since I'm taking a whole class on it!" He finished breathlessly. Fire could only chuckle. Then two minutes later, "So what'd you bring for lunch?"

Fire cocked a brow at his sudden change in topic. He ignored it. "Peanut butter, and some crackers."

"I brought lasagna," he said, as if this were some sort of monumentally important statement.

"Nice choice," Fire commented. She hated that she couldn't really concentrate on what her friend was saying, but she was still thinking about her dream. She thought she knew the blue dress from one of her other dreams, dreams from the house the strange strange house. She got a flash of memory of a room swamped in horrible things. People shouting, come on! It's coming down! Come back!...

"Jenny."

"What?" Fire swung her head around fast enough to give her whiplash. Jenny... Jenny, Jenny, Jenny. That sounded so familiar. It was going to kill her now, she knew that name from somewhere.

"Haven't you been listening?" said Marty, looking thoroughly offended. "I said the name Marty is so plain. It's not my fault my mother was named Jenny and had to take it out on me. I mean the name Fire is so cool. It's exotic and fierce and powerful and it captures attention. People name their hamsters Marty." Fire was thoroughly confused as to how this topic came about, but decided to go along with it.

"I don't know I always thought the name fire was weird, I mean my mother's name is Rain, am I going to have to name my kid Wind? That's stupid. I always liked the Zena or Flace," Fire admitted.

"Zena is pretty common though. I only know one Flace, so yea it's cool. And you don't have to carry on some sort of elemental family legacy you know, although it would be kind of cool. Like Lightening or something, or Moon."

"I am not naming my child Moon. What kind of name is that? I mean what if it's a boy?" Fire questioned.

"I guess that would be a little awkward... almost as awkward as Marty!" His shoulders drooped. Marty and his complexes... Fire watched his pout. She couldn't help but chuckle. Even though Marty was only a few months younger then her, Fire couldn't help but think of him as an amusing little brother. He was her best friend, too though. Marty never bugged her like a little brother, but for some reason she always felt older than, even protective of him.

"I think Marty is a classically genius name. It's so vintage it's unique. I'd give my kid a classically great name. I'd name my kid Julian," Fire rambled, then stopped short. She'd never even said his name aloud before. It was funny how she had said his name so casually, like it was just the natural order of things. It wasn't though, she'd never even thought of the name Julian before the dreams. It was a name that hadn't been popular in centuries. It was a name that did not belong to her hypothetical children, but to a beautiful boy with white blonde hair and electric blue eyes. Eyes that in her dreams looked at her with a sort of sick want. Eyes that stuck out to fire more then any other part of her dreams.

"Jesus, Fire look out!" Marty shouted! Fire jumped back into reality and saw a brown blur up ahead of her. She fell back on her board. She was only a few feet about the ground so she didn't anticipating it hurting quite so bad. She let out an agonized gasp. Her leg felt as if it were throbbing. She felt in the pockets of her cargo shorts. Damn, she'd managed to land right on her swiss army knife. They didn't even make these things anymore. They had much more advanced weapons for people to ward off muggers. Consequently people just didn't do that all that much anymore. The police had developed much more accurate lie detection tests as well as brain wave multipliers to turn thoughts into images. You had to be extremely talented to get away with impulsive crimes. It made Fire feel good to know that the world was a much better place then it was say a hundred years ago when people were running amuck and hardly controlled. Wars sprang up over nothing. People were dying every few seconds. Fire was glad she lived now, and not then.

Seventy-five years ago world wide rebellions erupted. Thousands upon thousands of women had opted for permanent infertility to show that they were equal to men and refused to be subjected to opression. Civilians banded against and torched oppressive government buildings. It was like gasoline and matches a few sparks went up and it seemed like the entire world was erupting in chaos. Riots, protests, destruction. All of it turned out for better somehow. After that the population had gone down significantly. Over the next plenty of years scientists made amazing discoveries, inventors were coming up with a flood of inventions, people as a whole were better.

And yet Fire just couldn't seem to leave behind her swiss army knife. She'd found it one day, when she was ten, the same day the dreams had started. She didn't know if there was a connection or not, but Fire always had it. It had just been lying there, in good condition. Fire had instinctively, almost involuntarily, picked it up and shoved it into her pocket. And now it had come back to kick her... hard in the leg. She rolled onto her stomach with a groan. She vaguely heard Marty getting off his hoverboard and coming over to see if she was ok. She looked up into the eyes of a mangy, angry aggressive looking cat.

She let out another grunt. "Marty, I'm okay. Just stay over there. There's an angry cat over here."

"Wait, no I'm coming it'll get you!" The ever heroic Marty... Fire smiled.

"You know animals hate you, and by the time you walked over here it would have gotten me in the eye anyway. It won't hurt me, I'll be okay." Marty had discovered his adversity to cats when Fire had brought home a scruffy one. She'd taken a picture of it before, then given it a bath and cleaned it up. She'd wanted to show Marty how stunning the car was and as soon as he'd stepped into the room the cat had attacked. She didn't show Marty her fixed up strays anymore. She gave them all to the animal shelters. Animals never bit Fire.

"Hey kitty," she cooed reaching a hand up to pet it's head. It tensed up, narrowed it's eyes, and started to move back, but it didn't make a sound or move away any more than that. Fire reached out and pet it. "Good kitty, you're not so tough." You're not so tough. Not so tough. But the cat was tough. If it was Marty the cat would demonstrate just how tough it was. But it was Fire, and the cat was still tough. For some reason it didn't need to show Fire how tough it was, it could just be. Fire never understood her relationship with animals, but she didn't question it. SHe was always taking them in. "Good kitty," she said again, lifting herself up. She tried to get up and her leg nearly gave out. "I'm going to have to get this checked out at the nurse."

Fire limped over to her board. This time she straddled her board like Marty. "Jesus, are you okay? You always stand."

"If you say Jesus one more time today, Marty, He's going to come down from the heavens and slap you. And I'm fine, I landed on a stick. I'll probably have the nurse put some pain medication on it. It'll heal right up." Fire couldn't imagine a world without modern medicine.

"Jesus coming down from the heavens to slap me, wonderful scenario there Fire let me tell you. Why would Jesus come all the way down here just to slap a man? I'm sure He has more important things to do. I mean I'm sure He's a busy guy you know. Worldly affairs and such," Marty rambled.

"Hey once you've been slapped personally by Jesus I'm sure you'd never sin again."

Marty shot her an offended look.

The school was just up ahead. Fire made her way up to the nurse's office. "Hola Dendria," she said smiling despite the huge limp in her step. The nurse looked up from where she had been shuffling through some drawers and smiled.

"Hello there fire, looking as golden as ever." Fire had never understood what she meant by that. Nothing about her was golden, not really. "What can I- well I suppose it has something to do with your limp, did you take a bad fall?"

"Yea I fell off my board on the way here. Landed on a stick actually, almost landed on a cat."

Dendria pulled up Fire's pant leg. On it was a big ugly welt the size of her swiss army knife. "Must have been some stick," Dendria said with a cocked eyebrow. She walked over to the big green cabinet resting on the back wall and took out a white tube labeled PAIN. She slathered a quarter size amount of the clear goop onto the welt. 1... 2... 3... 4... 5... gone. That never ceased to amaze Fire. Like how years ago you'd take possibly ineffective medicine that took forever to work and still only got rid of symptoms.

"Thanks." Fire started to walk out. "Wait, I need a scan pass." Dendria gave her the small credit-card sized square of plastic.

Fire ran down the empty halls to her room. Inside the rood were four boxes, already closed. She walked up to the large dark blue mechanical box and slipped her scan pass under the scanner. The door opened. Inside were three occupied seats, and one empty one waiting for her. Marty, Kenice, and Strayd were sitting there all looking slightly dazed. When they were oriented Marty waved, Strayd put his head down on the table in the center of the seats, and Kenice gave her signature peeved stare. Fire just smiled good naturedly and slid into her seat.

Creeeeaaaak, Snap!

The sound of the door closing never really sat well with Fire. It was like the lobby before going into surgery. Or saying yes to playing another game and waiting for it. You just applied your dreams to real life situations, get ahold of yourself it's nothing new. Only recently for some reason recently the dreams had been coming more often and in some semblance of an order. It was giving Fire a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She decided to ignore it.

And with a new attitude of denial in mind Fire let herself be transported to ancient Rome for her history lesson.