Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed. -sighs- No strange jokes...I am most seriously late for swim team now and I'm not even in my suit yet...

Ten Minutes

After Wyatt Pushed Chris off the Bridge and Talked to Him (lol sorry again…this story's a little off the wall :D)

"So the Alliance is…underground?"

"Yeah," said Chris. "I know, that sounds pretty stupid. But it's concealed by some form of magic—demonic or not, I'm not sure now. The Elders obviously can't sense us. I was talking to that man on the bridge, Leo, and he said that—oh wait, he's your dad. Or, our…whatever—he said that he'd never sensed me before. The Elders have no idea what's going on down there. I don't have any idea."

"Dad's at the manor now," said Wyatt.

"Why? I thought—well, by the way he talked to me, he sounded like he never went down to the manor. He was asking me lots of questions about everyone."

"Really?" Wyatt looked surprised. "He's here because of you, actually. The elders weren't sure whether to view you as a threat or not."

Chris almost laughed. "Threat. I'm sure."

Wyatt sighed. "We'd better get home," he said eventually. "It's raining pretty hard now."

Chris looked up, remembering the rain again. "It's so weird. It's like being in a shower, only it's all over the place, you know? I wonder what makes the sky do that."

Wyatt shuddered. "Once you start learning the rain cycle and all that crud in fifth grade, you won't wonder so much about it anymore."

Chris' eyes widened. "You don't think they're going to make me go all the way back to fifth grade, do you?"

"Well, did you ever learn anything down there?"

"Sure," said Chris defensively. "Only…it was basically all magic."

"Then you can go to Magic School with me instead. I quit normal school after junior high—waste of time, if you ask me—and went to Magic School instead. But let's get home, seriously. You may find the rain fascinating, but I find it downright annoying."

Wyatt took Chris's arm and they orbed to the manor.

"Wyatt! Chris! You're drenched," Phoebe laughed.

Chris gave her a dazed smile. So, this was his aunt? He had aunts—cousins, actually—and an uncle? How weird was this?

His eyes fell on Cole, who was staring at him expectantly.

"You remember now?" he asked.

Chris nodded. "Most of it."

Leo was staring at him. "So…you're Chris," said Leo, looking a bit shocked. "I can't believe it—we thought you were dead for so many years…" He drew Chris into a hug. "I'm so sorry we never thought to look for you."

"It's all right," said Chris, "how could you have known? The Alliance…the people down there—they're evil," Chris explained hurriedly. "They were planning to attack you all, then pretty much take over the world as 'revenge' for the massacre. It's sick. All my life, I thought I was living with good people that were merely hiding from the world because witches were so badly prosecuted, but what they were really doing was planning other peoples' demise. Half of them were demons."

"You could be among them," said Piper sharply, not meeting his eyes.

Her words scalded him. "Yeah, I guess I could be," he said softly.

"You're no demon," Paige assured him. "Piper's being a bitch. She'll come back to reality eventually, I promise you. Just ignore her."

Piper's eyes turned violently to her sister. "You're the ones that need a reality check. That—thing is not my son. I don't know what's wrong with you. That kid is evil."

Paige was going to open her mouth to protest, but Chris interrupted her. His gaze was so fierce that it forced Piper to meet his startling green eyes. "I respect your decision, then. But I'll let you know something—you know back at the club, when I said I thought I saw your two boys at the massacre?"

Piper didn't say anything, so Chris went on.

"You said to me that you hoped Chris died fast and painlessly. You wanna know what happened instead? He got smacked by a bunch of rubble in the head, knocked out and forced to live underground in fear of the rest of the world. People there didn't respect him because he wasn't powerful enough. He was just a little kid that got in the way."

Piper was still silent.

"Nobody would have even noticed down there if I had died. I had one friend—Owen—but now I don't even know if he's evil or not. Whether you want to call that fast and painless or not, you be the judge."

Chris, knowing he wouldn't get a response, turned to the rest of the group. "We need to prepare," he informed them. "I have no idea when they're going to strike, but we're going to need to fight them."

Cole was the first to snap back into action. "I'll start making potions, then," he said, climbing the stairs up to the attic.

"Do you have any idea what kind of demons we're up against?" asked Paige.

Chris shook his head. "There weren't any demons near me, and if there were, they all looked pretty normal and human."

Paige nodded. "There are plenty of human-looking demons…I'll start looking in the book."

"I'll tell the elders," said Leo.

Piper rolled her eyes and Leo hesitated. "Just go," she snapped coldly. "It's all you're good for, anyways."

Leo orbed out.

"Chris, you said something about an Owen kid…?" asked Wyatt.

"Yeah." Chris nodded. "He's about two or three years older than I am; your age, I guess." Wyatt winced. "Why? I don't think there's a way to get to him."

"I think there is. I mean, if you're almost sure that he's not evil, we'd better get him out of there before something happens, right? Give me his description and I'll orb down to him."

"No," said Chris, "I'd better do it. I think I can control orbing well enough to get down there."

"Are you sure?" asked Wyatt. "Because if you take more than five minutes down there, Paige and I are following you down there."

"Ten minutes," Chris bargained. "It may take a while to explain."

Wyatt hesitated. "Okay, ten minutes, then. But any longer than that and we're orbing down."

"Be careful," Phoebe warned him before he left.

Piper gave out what seemed like a sickly twist between a sob and a snort. Chris, not sure what to make of it, focused in on his old Alliance friend…and orbed.

Owen was sitting on one of the cots in the room they used to share with some Alliance members. Thankfully, he was alone.

"Chris?" Owen nearly choked in surprise. "What are you doing here? I thought…"

"I was on a mission? Yeah, and I found some things out about the Alliance—you have to come with me. You have to get out of here."

Owen's eyes widened in fear. "No, Chris, you have to get out of here. They think you're dead. They want you to be dead! They're—they're evil, Chris. Pete and all the rest of them. Demons! Not witches, but demons!"

"Owen, it's okay. We'll get out of here. We made a mistake; we didn't know."

"It's okay for you to have been fooled," said Owen bitterly. "You were just a cute little four-year-old without any memory. You had an excuse. Me? I came here because I was sick of my mom always trying to train me into being a super-witch. I was seven years old at the massacre, which was old enough to understand perfectly well what I was doing. I took the hand of a demon willingly just to spite my parents."

"Owen…you didn't know they were evil."

"That's not the point. You need to get out of here, Chris, right now. If they find you in here…"

"Oh, but they already have," said a sinister voice from the hallway.

Chris turned to see Pete—and desperately wished that he'd agreed to five minutes.

Sorry the chappie was so short. I'm trying to wrap up this story pretty fast--read the A/N at the end of the story "True Power" for an explanation. I'll finish this, though, I promise. Probably before August 6...I'm going away for two weeks after that.