(A/N: I've been building up to this revelation since chapter eight of RUNAWAY. So don't review saying I'm grasping at straws- Because I've foreshadowed the straws! And sorry, but for some reason my story editor page won't let me use rulers to seperate the A/N from the story body, I hope you guys dont get confused.

Zelos- "Say Goodbye" by RBF

Matias- "Three Simple Words" by Finch

Fun Fact: Mesha's last name is my name if you spelled it backwards.

VOTES:

Boy: 4

Girl: 3)

"What in the name of Martel…"

The violet-haired stranger winced as their eyes met and glanced away from Pandora, closing his eyes. With one swift motion, Pandora brought out her sword, tapping the flat of the blade against her boot as she looked from Sheena to him and back to Sheena again.

"What is going on here?" she demanded, her lips set in a thin, upset line.

Sheena shook her head slowly. "I don't even know where to start."

Pandora pointed her sword at the boy, "Why don't you start by telling me who he is and why he's tied up?"

Matias.

"His name is Matias," Sheena said, and Matias nodded. "And I think he's Rodyle's son." After a moment, he nodded again. Sheena felt the anger rise in her again as she looked at his familiar beady purple eyes and those ridiculous white gloves, the nose that was at once familiar and alien. His nose, for instance. Not Rodyle's nose, no. The face of that monster was still etched into her brain and she put the mental image up against his spawn, seeing where the similarities ended. Who was his mother? She found herself asking. What woman or half-elf would willingly let her child be experimented on like this?

"He sent some sort of creature out after me," Sheena continued, reaching out to yank his scarlet scarf from around his neck, wanting answers. Pandora took a step to stand in the way, glaring down at the older, but smaller, girl. Sheena stood on the tips of her toes until they were nose to nose, glaring right back at her and not intimidated in the least.

"Sheena," Pandora put out a restraining hand on Sheena's shoulder and taking a step back to a safer distance. "You might be my friend, but I'll always be Pandora Epiphany before I'm anyone else; Right now she sees something that might be against the law. I'll talk to the man myself."

Sheena could see Matias rolling his eyes from over Pandora's shoulder. She smiled as she pointed out, "You never win in our spars."

The faintest color rose in Pandora's cheeks. "It doesn't matter. I have a duty to my father and to people like this man-" she waved to Matias- "Who can't defend themselves."

Matias opened his eyes, looking up. I am not a man, he sent to Sheena.

"I think he's a half-elf," Sheena said. He nodded again, a bit reluctantly. At this point, she was just too upset to really wonder why she was the only one who could hear him.

Pandora turned to look at him, her brow furrowed in concentration. "Yeah… yeah he is. I can feel it all around him." She moved towards him, kneeling next to his chair and beginning to set him free from his bonds.

"Pandora!" Sheena said, taking an angry step forward. "Why are you-?"

"If he does anything we'll kill him together," Pandora said relentlessly, working her fingers over the intricate shinobi knots. She looked up into the soft violet eyes, watching for a reaction. "He isn't stupid. You'll play good, won't you?"

He nodded and stood up, the ropes dropping around his ankles. Quickly folding his wings tightly against his back, he backed away from the two women until he bumped into the wall. Glancing from one to the other and to the open door way, he eventually gave a muffled sigh and slid down against the wall, hunched over on the floor like a marble gargoyle sprung to life.

Pandora slid her sword back into its sheath, letting her eyes trail up and down his scrawny, lithe figure; limp greasy hair and ruffled feathers and patches of leathery dragon scales, dried blood still caked to his head from when Gnome had knocked him out.

"He doesn't look like much," was her final verdict, one hand resting casually on the pommel of her sword.

I'm more than you or your bastard father know, came a sudden, angry thought. Sheena was startled for a moment before realizing the message was meant for Pandora, not her. Now that she really thought about it, if she concentrated hard enough she could hear the overlying thoughts and emotions running through his head. Anger, mainly, most of it for Pandora and an image of an old blond man she found lying in his subconscious, though he had a healthy serving of fear as well. Fear, anger, desperation, confusion and loneliness. Is this what a trapped bird feels like when it flies through the open window?

Bird… Matias thought, confused. He glanced away from Pandora, looking at the closed window of the inn room. A bird?

Can he read my thoughts too?

Matias quickly turned his gaze to Sheena, his violet eyes widening in a sudden epiphany as the knowledge came to them at once, of the link between the minds. There was a sudden clarity to her vision, crystal clear in the semi-darkness of the room. Behind her she could hear her wings rustling, ugly wings with mottled black feathers and big hooks at the end, like the thumbs of a bat.

She was forcefully shoved out like a rowdy drunk in a bar and could almost hear the floodgates swinging shut with a desperate, violent clang as she was completely shut off from his mind. Feeling as though someone had plugged up her ears and blinded her all at once, Sheena took a few steps back from Matias, her head aching from her sudden removal from his psyche. "That hurt!" she said, pointing an accusing finger at him when she had regained her voice. "Whatever the hell you did, don't ever do it again!"

Ignoring curious glances from Pandora, Matias reached into his pocket to pull a stubby pencil and a notepad out. He scribbled down something and crumpled the paper up, tossing it over to Sheena who unfolded it and read the note.

You were trespassing in my mind, it read. Don't you ever do it again.

Sheena clenched the wad of paper in her hand, fuming. "I don't even know what's going on!" she said.

Matias waved his left hand once, pointing at it with his right. Embedded in the pale flesh of his hand was a blood red Ex-sphere.

"Your Ex-sphere?" Sheena said, wishing for the link to return. "Damn, can't we just talk the way we were doing before?"

Matias shook his head, pointing now at her.

"My Ex-sphere!" He nodded vigorously and she put a hand to her Ex-sphere, pulsing softly with its own light. "But it's never done this bef- what?" she asked, noticing him shaking his head again. He pointed, once more, to her, and then back to his Ex-sphere.

Even without the link, she saw the look of frustration in his soft violet eyes as he pulled at his hair, shaking his head. Eyes narrowed, he began to cross the room with one hand outstretched towards Sheena but Pandora stopped him with the flat of her blade pressed against his thin chest.

"Don't go near her," she ordered. Matias let her know just what he thought of her new rule by angrily making a fist and bringing it up before her, shaking it threateningly. She smiled at that, twisting the blade a little to let the edge cut through some of his baggy shirt. He quickly stepped away, one hand pressed against his chest as he glared at her.

Finally relenting and looking away from her dark black gaze, he scribbled another note and tossed it to the Shinobi. Not that one. The other one. The one on your wrist. He pointed again.

Sheena looked down to where he was pointing, at her grandmother's charm that had once been a necklace before Kloitz Sage broke the seal on it. She held the charm in her hands, running a thumb along the smooth glass-like surface of the hemisphere dangling freely from the chain. Slowly unwrapping it from around her wrist, she held it up above her with wonder in her eyes.

"This…?" she said, looking down again at Matias. "But… it's broken."

Matias could only shrug helplessly. For a brief moment the link was opened and a sudden mental image flashed by her eyes of a young woman wrapped in scarves and jewels. She sat in the dark, cross-legged and silent with a crystal ball on her lap, her dark eyes showing out the doorway to eternity. Claire, Matias whispered. You know her.

"I do know her!" Sheena said as Matias gently closed the link again. She turned to Pandora, excitement rising in her voice. "I know her! She's the Fortune-Teller here in Triet!" Sheena clenched the pendant tightly in her hand. She couldn't ever remember not wearing it for so long. "She can tell me what's going on," Sheena continued, remembering the times she had seen the visions of blood pooling. "She can tell me why I'm seeing these things."

Sheena smiled, wondering for moment why her hand was shaking. That was her last coherent thought before her eyes rolled up into the back of her head and she crumpled to the ground in a dead faint.

"Sheena!"

Pandora forgot herself, sheathing her sword and running to catch her before she fell. Matias reached her first, somehow, shoving past the knight's daughter and unfurling his wings, his feet not even touching the ground as he swooped in and wrapped his arms around the ninja. Gently, he rested her down on the bed and moved to take the charm from her hand.

He was knocked to the side by Pandora, her eyes smoldering as she stood in between the man and Sheena in her vulnerable state, one hand on her sword hilt.

Matias took a few steps back, glaring at her. He raised one fist before bringing it down with a sudden snap, a dark object flying from his hand as he turned and strode through the open doorway, his wings pressed tightly against his back. Pandora watched him leave, not trying to stop him. Not even when she saw that it wasn't a knife he had thrown, but a feather, beautifully and tenderly wrought out of sharp steel.

Sheena groaned, bringing Pandora back to reality; she turned and kneeled next to the bed, suppressing fearful emotions. Something was terribly wrong, though- even the light touch of skin against skin caused purple bruises to blossom on the ninja's skin. A closer examination showed that Sheena's back was already covered in the violet blotches from lying against the bed frame. Pandora cursed before running out of the room into the streets of Triet. She went over to the bazaar, looking for the item shop. Ignoring the long line, she cut in front and shoved the blue-haired man currently bargaining with the shop keeper.

"I need apple gels, now," she ordered, spilling out the contents of her gald bag onto the counter, wondering if everyone could hear the way her heart was pounding out of control. If she could use the apple gels to buy her time while she looked for a proper healer… The man she had just shoved turned on her angrily.

"Hey, lady! I waited in line, so can you. Who do you think you are?"

I'm Pandora Epiphany, she thought. That name would get her anywhere in Meltokio, but she wasn't so certain it would have the same effect in the Desert Oasis. "Someone is hurt," she said, her hand unconsciously tightening on the hilt of her sword.

The man was silent for a moment before grabbing her shoulder and forcing her to look at him. "Pandora?" he said, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

Genis. There was a moment of silence between the two half-elves, dark blue and black eyes searching each other. Then Pandora turned back to the shopkeeper, snapping, "Where are my apple gels?"

"Right here miss-" the shopkeeper started, handing her a bag of apple gels but she cut him off and turned around to bolt off in the direction of the inn, not bothering to give Genis a second glance. He stood blinking for a moment before running after her, stumbling up the stairs of the inn to have the room door slammed in his face.

"Pandora!" he said, banging his fist against the wood with one hand pressed to his throbbing forehead. "What's going on? Who's hurt?"

Pandora opened the door again, quickly grabbing at his wrist and dragging him into the room before slamming the door shut behind him and locking it. "I don't want anyone to see her this way…" she said, her fingers drumming anxiously against the pommel of her sword as she glanced over to the bed.

Sheena lay there. She stared out at the ceiling but saw nothing, her dark eyes glazed and unresponsive. Genis sucked in a huge breath at the sight of the normally spunky girl practically comatose before him. "What happened?" he asked.

"If I knew that, I would tell you. Genis, your sister is a healer. Didn't she ever teach you her craft?"

"No, but…" He stepped forward as Pandora pulled an apple gel out of her bag to administer it to the ninja. "Come on, Pip. Something must have happened to trigger this."

"Something…" Pandora spread the gel over the bruises on Sheena's back and rubbing it in to make sure the gel would go down past the skin to fix any internal injuries. She remembered Matias's severe, hawk-like face in the moment before Sheena fainted, expectant. waiting. He knew something was going to happen because….

"Her bracelet?" Pandora looked up as Genis spoke. He took the charm and slid it from one hand to the other, for a brief moment forgetting Sheena was even there. An odd expression dawned on his face as he looked from the charm to Sheena and back again before securely wrapping it back around her wrist.

"Do you know something I don't?" Pandora demanded, not forgetting Matias's fixation with the charm.

"No," Genis said quickly. After a moment Pandora took out another apple gel to give to Sheena, and he continued. "Except… well… maybe. I overheard Sheena and Raine talking a while back, once. Look." He took Pandora's hand and drew it away from Sheena, his blue eyes full of wonder as he watched the blotchy violet colors melt and fade to an ugly yellow-green.

"So even a broken Ex-sphere is powerful," Pandora mused.

"An- what?" Genis looked back down at the charm. By then the bruises had healed so completely you could have never known they were there. Pandora frowned, crossing her arms as she looked down at a sleeping Sheena. "What's going on?" Genis asked again.

Pandora shook her head; Sheena's eyelids twitched as she dreamed. "I think I know someone who will answer that. Come on." She motioned for him to follow her and walked out into the hallway of the inn.

"Shouldn't we look after Sheena until we're sure she's all right?" Genis asked, glancing back over his shoulder with reluctance but following Pandora anyway.

"She'll be fine," Pandora said, marching down the stairs again. "Come on. We're going to the Fortune-Teller's hut. I'll explain what I can on the way there."