"Anyone wishing to help in the clean-up effort, please come to City Hall this Saturday morning, for 9 o'clock," the news reporter said. The earthquake, as strong as it had been, had only destroyed the library. Some books had actually been salvaged, but the clean-up would take a while. Everyone in the Takeshi and Marcellin households wanted to go on Saturday.

When they arrived, an announcement was being repeated to sign up in groups of fifteen. The group would then be assigned something to do based on their ability. The parents went to find a group, and the eight teens started one of their own. As they waited for more people, they watched everyone. A boy was staring at Ariana, but no one noticed. He eventually signed up as the ninth person for their group.

"Hi, I'm Max Kanagawa," he said, coming over to them. The girls exchanged looks, and Max laughed. "Yes, my father is your history teacher." Everyone joined in Max's laughter now.

"Nice to meet you, Max," they said. Just then, a tall brunette walked up to the registration table.

"Guys, here's a group with only nine people! The six of us can finish that one," she said. Four other girls and a guy joined her at the table and signed their names, then made their way over to Max and the rest of them.

"Is this the right group? Kerensa Nile, Ariana Cosmos...," a girl with long blond hair asked. Everyone nodded and welcomed the six.

"I'm Ren, this here's Ariana, Kariana, she's Tess, and that's Anemone," Ren started. "Over there's Akira, Ryo, Paul, and Max. Who are all of you?"

"Well, I'm Lita," began the brunette. At this, the girls, Akira, Ryo, and Paul exchanged glances. They said nothing, and let the girl continue the introductions. "That's Mina." Lita gestured at the blond.

"I'm Ami," a girl with short blue hair said warmly, as a girl with long black hair gave her name, Rei. "And those two are Serena and Darien." Ami pointed to the blond with her hair in two buns on top of her head, and the tall black-haired boy who were approaching the group. Kariana had to step on her twin's foot to keep her from gasping, or saying something. Ren recovered first, and hoped the girls hadn't noticed their reactions.

"It's nice to meet you. It's a shame about the quake. We were in the library at the time, that's why we want to help," Ren said. Rei raised an eyebrow and looked at the pile of rubble that had been the library. (It was across from city hall, and down two blocks.)

"You were in THAT?"

"Well, we had just gone into the street."

"Oh."
The fifteen got to work. They had been assigned to book retrieval- searching the rubble for anything salvagable, books and the like. After a few hours, the fire department sponsored a hot dog picnic for everyone at the clean-up, and Serena and friends went by themselves to eat. They weren't being rude, they just wanted some privacy. Max, however; sat down next to Ariana once they all had their food. As the morning had progressed, the group found him to be a great guy- humorous, fun-loving, but not usually serious.

"We really made progress, eh?" Max said, glancing at the rubble and then at their bags containing what they'd found. Tess shrugged.

"Every little bit, you know?" Max had nodded, and continued eating. The group reassembled after lunch, and went back to work. In actually, the fifteen of them were quite efficient, having filled at least 8 garbage bags with books and other such things. At 4:30, everyone was allowed to leave, and Serena and compandy departed after promising to stay in touch with their new friends. The remaining nine worked for another forty-five minutes or so before Ryo found his parents and asked if Max could come over for dinner. The Takeshis planned on staying longer, but said that would be fine. Max left to shower and change, and everyone else went to their respective houses to do the same. Tess and Ryo got to shower first because they were cooking dinner and wanted to get started.

"Ren, bathroom's free!" Shouted Kari as she finished toweling her long, red hair. Tess was in the kitchen, and Ariana had just finished dressing. Max, Paul, Akira, and Anemone had just arrived and were seated in the living room.

"My God, you people are so slow! Everybody's here already and I haven't even showered!" Ren said as she made a mad dash for the shower. Everyone laughed and went back to what they were doing. Just as Ren was rinsing her shampoo, someone knocked.

"Ren, could you hurry up? I have to use the bathroom!" Akira said through the door.

"Maybe for that, I'll be extra slow!" She shouted back. And she did. When she finally emerged from the bathroom, Akira was almost on the floor. He glowered at her as she smiled sweetly and brushed past him.

"Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long," she said to her friends as she went into her room. She stopped dead in her doorway and stared. In the middle of the room, the mirror was levitating, and glowing brighter than ever. Just then, there was a shout from the living room. Anemone had just stood up to help Tess, and sank to her knees in pain.

"My head! Ooohhh," she wailed. "Ren, do you have any aspirin?" Quickly forgetting the mirror, she went to help her friend. Akira whispered something to her, and Nem nodded. Akira followed Ren into the bathroom.

"She had another vision," he said, making Ren almost drop the pills she had just gotten.

"Did she get to tell you about it or not? No, I suppose not..." Ren said. Then, "Akira! The mirror! It's floating! You don't think there's a connection... Do you?" Akira shook his head.

"We don't know. And since the cats are out for a little 'nature walk,' and Max is here, there's nothing we can do," he said, frustrated. Ren nodded, and went to give Nem the aspirin. She did ask him to help spread word about the mirror. It could be important.

Soon, Ryo and Tess called everyone to the table for dinner. Tess had proven herself yet again to be a fantastic chef.

"Wow, you made this? Are you sure?" Teased Kariana. Ryo scowled.

"Very funny," he said. Everyone quickly agreed that the two of them had done a splendid job. Ren nonchalantly brought up Serena.

"So, do you think we'll hear from those girls?" she asked.

"I don't know, Ren, maybe," Tess said thoughtfully, around a mouthful of food.

"I definitely think so," muttered Kari. Max looked at her from his seat two places down.

"My dad told me we got some American girls, I wonder why I haven't seen you around?" He said, to the four.

"That's odd, we're always out and about!" Ariana said, giggling. "Anyways, what do you guys want to do after dinner? I'm getting sick of watching movies, and it's too cold to go to the pier anymore," she pouted.

"Once it gets really cold, we can go ice-skating there," Anemone said.

"Well, that's great, but what can we do now?" Ren asked, bored. She had been doodling on the table with her finger. To occupy herself, she set about doing the dishes. Akira got up to help her.
He followed her into the kitchen, his arms laden with plates. After securing the left overs, they collected the dinner plates and silverware.

"Ren?"

"Hmm?" She was distracted.

"What are you thinking about?" Ren dumped the load of forks into the soapy water.

"Nothing. I'm just trying to think of any sort of connection between the mirror and us. There has to be one," she sighed. Akira wiped soap bubbles on her nose.

"Relax, we'll figure it out," he said. Ren wiped her nose off and smiled.

"Yeah, I suppose so," she said, and lunged at him with a handful of bubbles, starting an allout foam war. It ended with them and the floor covered in soap, laughing. Ren slipped on the tile and fell into Akira's arms.

"Careful!" he said, without letting go. She smiled up at him.

"You're a mess," she whispered. He raised an eyebrow at her sopping wet clothes.

"So're you." Ren glanced down at herself and blushed.

"I... should go... change..." She stammered, slipping from his grasp. She started to leave the kitchen, and faltered. "We should clean up first!" And they did. It took them surprisingly less time than they thought it would. None of their friends had even come in to see what had happened to them. This, of course, could be on purpose. Once they had finishing drying the floor, Ren looked at Akira.

"We can't just go out there looking like this," she said.

"I say we make a mad dash for the bedrooms... Ryo won't mind if I borrow some clothes," Akira suggested. Considering you couldn't actually see them leaving the kitchen from the den, where the group now was, Ren found it amusing as they high-tailed it down the hall.

"I wonder what they're doing," she said, as she opened her bedroom door and looked in. She gasped. The mirror was laying on the floor, glowing as usual. Akira came over to her from Ryo's room.

"What is it?"

"Just that the mirror... It's back to normal now," she responded. Akira stepped into the room Ren and Kari shared and picked the mirror up, studying it.

"Depends on what you consider normal," he grinned. Ren poked him and took the mirror, putting it away. How it had gotten out of its hiding spot was a mystery to her, but she didn't want to dwell. Akira came up behind her and kissed her cheek.

"Do you think they miss us?" Ren almost snorted.

"Are you kidding? Most likely not," she grinned, turning to face him. For a few moments, they just stared at each other before Akira finally looked away, stuttering he had better change his clothes, he was getting the carpet wet. Closing the door behing him, Ren sighed and grabbed a change of clothes and stripped off her wet ones. Just as she finished, there was a knock at the door.

"Come in!" She yelled. The door opened, and Kari stuck her head in.

"There you are! Where's Akira?" As she asked, she walked over to the closet and flung open the doors. Ren just laughed.

"He's in Ryo's room. He needed to borrow a change of clothes... Didn't you guys notice the bubble war we had in the kitchen? I mean, it's all cleaned up now but..." Ren trailed off as Kari's eyebrows shot up. She apparently didn't believe her best friend.

"Well, whatever. You guys won't believe who just called," she said, excited.

"Who?"

"Serena. And she invited us all for a picnic next weekend!"