I'm on a roll here people. Sorry for those people hoping I'll update DI sometime soon, but that one's going to be on the back burner for a bit while I get this one out of my system. Now. a very very very very (you get the picture) important issue. The plot bunnies have been hitting dear old (young?) me pretty hard, and I've been having a minor meltdown about this. Once ES is finished, should i do a sequel? (As this one is a rewrite of T, Overshadowed will be a rewrite of NM with major deviations. And after that is another three. Is it just me, or is that excessive?)Anyway. Enough of my rambling. Read on.

I dressed to kill the next day. Not that I didn't usually, but more so today. Today's outfit consisted of a blouse unbuttoned as far as I could manage without risking arrest and/or guys attempting to feel me up even more, a pair of white leggings under a miniskirt and six inch heels.

I was dressed to kill, and it would be a most painful, horrible, and humiliating experience for those involved. Namely, the perpetually underestimating Edward Cullen.

It's always the cute ones, isn't it?

I drove to school and parked my car next to the Cullens, smirking as I did so. I idly wondered what my prize for winning the bet would be.

He-Who-Irritates-Frequently was leaning against his Volvo nonchalantly, swinging his keys around his finger. I looked closer; those keys didn't belong to the Volvo, but an Aston Martin. I smirked wider.

"So…" I said, pasting an innocent expression on. "What's my prize?"

His jaw dropped, and from the expressions on his siblings' faces, I guessed that didn't happen often.

"But- but how? T-t-that's n-not possible!"

"Are you always this articulate?" I drawled, thinking of my medieval court days; the last time I had used this particular inflection.

"You had a huge thumping lump yesterday and now it's gone and you're asking my about my articulacy?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right. What did I win?"

Edward didn't reply, but continued to stand there, mouth opening and closing and random intervals until Alice, seemingly fed up, grabbed the keys out of his hand and threw them at me. I caught them easily. Turns out I was right about the make of car. "Ooh, an Aston Martin! What kind?"

"Vanquish." That was Alice, too. Edward was still doing his goldfish impersonation.

"Ooh! Colour?"

"Black."

"Score." I looked down at the keys in my hand. "Wait 'till Ash hears." And with that, I began to walk into the school, trying to ignore the feeling of… was it guilt in my stomach?

I sighed heavily. It wasn't in me to steal someone's car out from under their noses. Or from under their backsides, as the case may be.

Turning, I tossed the keys back. He caught them with a startled expression. In response, I called back, "It's like stealing candy from a baby. Luckily for you, I've always liked kids too much to intentionally make them cry."

And with that, I strode off to my first class, grinning slightly at the sight and sound of Emmett and Jasper standing at attention, saluting me with a call of "God bless you, ma'am!"

"It's miss! Stop making me feel old!" I yelled back.

____

The next month and a half went past smoothly. Edward ignored me, acting as if I wasn't there, and after a few attempts of trying to figure out what the hell he was, I ignored him too.

People continued to come up to me for a while, asking about the van skooshing incident. I answered the same each time. Tyler had lost control of the van, I was in the way, I went under, and Edward pulled me out. Simple as that. When they pressed me for more details, I replied irritably that if they needed to know, they could ask Edward. Eventually, they gave up.

I was sitting in my car after school. The parking lot was deserted except for me. Good. There was something caught in my teeth, right between one of the front teeth, and my ridiculously long left canine. It felt cliché to call them fangs. If I was a normal exiled-goddess-sans-powers (ha) I wouldn't have fangs, but I was half Charonte (long story). Ash was too.

I tilted the rear-view mirror down to fully inspect my teeth. Spotting the offending object, I used one nail to pull it out. "Yes! I crowed. "And Lady Destruction does it again! Buffy Revamped, 1, Irritating Foodstuff, nil!" As I moved the mirror back in place, I saw Bella staring at me in shock, gaze firmly fixed on my mouth.

"Ah, shit," I whispered. Damage control!

"Hi, Bella!" I said, twisting in my seat, careful to speak around my fangs. It was a skill almost all supernatural creatures learned, although those who preferred to avoid humans didn't bother.

"Hi, Rya," she said, gaze still narrowed on me suspiciously. "What are you still doing here?"

"Checking I had my Trig homework and checking my makeup," I invented quickly. "I could ask the same of you."

"I sprained my wrist after gym. I just finished getting it patched up now."

Silence reigned for a few minutes; both of us in the car park, watching the other uncomfortably. In the end. Bella blurted out, "Are you wearing plastic vampire teeth?"

I sighed. Here it came. I knew could trust her though, I had seen it many times already. She sat in the passenger seat of my car, reluctantly impressed with the plushy interior. "Bella… what do you know about Atlantis?"

She frowned. "I asked about your teeth." At my droll look, she hastened to answer me. "Plato said it was an island within an island, separated by a channel of water. They were dedicated to the gods, and were, in turn blessed, until, one day, Atlantis sank under the waves… never to be seen again…"

I resisted the urge to snort. Plato had had no idea what he was talking about. "And did he mention a time frame?"

"9000 years before he wrote it… so, about… 11500 years ago?"

I nodded. "Now. I want you to forget everything you thought you knew about Atlantis. Before I get into anything though, when are you expected home?"

She bit her lip. "Not for a while, but I should let Charlie know in case he comes home early…"

"Use my cell."

I waited as she let him know she would be going to a friend's for a while, and would be back in a few hours. I drove to her house behind her elderly truck, and then pushed her into my cushy Porsche.

"Okay. Atlantis. Before we begin, I ask that for the convenience of all those concerned that the audience members remain seated, and quiet with all hands and feet remaining in the allocated space with no interruptions. Also for the convenience of those concerned could all mobile phones be promptly switched off?

"Twin isles, divided by a channel of water. Numerous shrines and temples everywhere. Shining marble pavement, golden sun in an azure sky. Sound nice?"

She nodded slowly.

"I only went there once, when I was seventeen. It wasn't a place I was particularly fond of, due to the circumstances-"

"Yeah, because you were on crack," she said. I glared.

"And fuck up my body more surely than cafeteria food would? I think not. Now. Moving on. I, myself was born in Greece. More specifically, to the royal couple in Didymos, with my twin, Acheron. We had another brother, Styxx, but even though he looked like us, we weren't actually related. Let me start at the (very) beginning.

"A prophecy was made by the fates. You know who the Fates are in Greek mythology, yes? Good. They made a prophecy that the child Apollymi had just conceived would be a killer, the cause of the end of the world, and the death of all the Atlantean Gods. With me so far?

"Now, Apollymi had waited decades to conceive a child, and she wasn't going to allow her husband to kill her precious baby because his bastard daughters said so. In revenge, he had her confined to the Atlantean hell realm, Kalosis. A place of endless night, a place of darkness. A perfect setting for the goddess of destruction, really. Knowing her husband would come for the babe, she birthed him in secret. What she didn't expect was twins. Those twins are my brother and I."

I paused as we reached the garage. Grabbing her by the wrist, I dragged her into the lounge room and forced her to sit as I flopped down on one of the couches.

"I'm going to cut a really long story short, and tell you that eventually, the Atlantean queen had me killed, in revenge for an imagined slight. Ash died trying to avenge me. Mother brought us back to life. Ash is now a god. Me, I'm the direct beginning of a new race. The Daimons."

Seeing Bella's confused look, I hastened to explain. "I would call them vampires, but they've been around a lot longer than the word vampire."

"And you're one of them," she stated.

"Sort of." At least she wasn't outright dismissing my claim.

The drive back to her house was a quiet one, until she felt the need to speak up again with questions.

"Do you drink blood?" Well, you didn't get more direct than that.

"Nope. You've seen me eat. Plus, some of the people around here, not even a blind, deaf, and starving Daimon would consider chowing down on. And Daimons are just after souls, not blood."

"Vampires don't drink blood?"

"Not these ones. It's not necessary, but a lot of them still do. It's a Hollywood myth that they need blood to survive."

"Huh."

I pulled up in front of her house and gave her a quick hug. "See you tomorrow."

_____

I didn't see her again until lunch time, where I spotted her sitting at our table, clutching a cross, and wearing a ring of garlic around her neck. I burst out laughing hysterically, having to hold on to a chair to support myself. I managed to make it to my usual seat without landing on my ass, or paying too much attention to any of the odd looks Bella and I were receiving. Angela was away today, so I didn't have to worry about explaining this all away to her.

"Stay back!" Bella said dramatically, brandishing the cross in my general direction. Obviously, what I had said the day before had sunk in.

I took the cross out of her hands, and held it close, pretending to writhe in pain. "Ow, ow!" I tossed it to one side and gave her a 'look'. "Don't you think someone's tried that before?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? What about the garlic, huh?"

"Well, it stinks, and it stinks real bad, but if you can deal with it, it isn't going to bother me."

"Would you still say that if I touched you with it?"

I rolled my eyes, and decided to ignore that.

"What about beheading? Will that kill you?"

I leant over the table as if imparting something confidential. "Babe, beheading will kill just about anything. And if it doesn't, run."

"Ain't that the truth."

I whirled around only to see Fury, possibly one of my favourite guys on the planet. I squealed and jumped up to give him a huge hug. Quite an accomplishment considering he had about sixty pounds on me, as well as considerable height.

He was a Katagaria, animals who held the ability to turn into humans, and live as either, although their base form would always be whichever animal they were descended from. There were many different packs. This one came from the wolves.

It didn't mean they were savage or mental or anything. They were often more human than the humans the Arcadians claimed to be, humans with animal hearts, who shifted into animals.

"Oh my God! I've missed you! Where have you been?" My tone turned forbidding. "And why haven't you called?"

His expression turned sheepish.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Hey, not that it's a bad thing, but why are you here?"

"Ash sent me to spring you from the hell hole for an 'appointment'. I thought he was joking about the hell hole part. Turns out, this is worse than mating season in the wolf pack," he said, sweeping a look over the students currently gathered. I winced. Mating season with the wolves was not pretty. I'd seen Fury's scars. Again, not pretty.

"Ah, God bless you, Fury."

Bella finally snapped out of her little daze. "Fury? What kind of name is that?"

He looked upwards, as if beseeching a higher power. "Oh, how the uninitiated irritate me." He moved his gaze directly at her, and she moved back, just a little under the power of it. "It's not just my name, it's my temperament."

"Okay, enough with the dramatics. Stop scaring the newbie. Until yesterday afternoon, she was another one of the mass of ords."

"She was?" By this time, I had stood up and started leading him out of the cafeteria.

"Yeah. She caught me."

"Doing what?"

I just grinned widely at him in my most dazzling, vampiric smile.

"Ah."

Tada! And there, ladies and gentlemen, is chapter eight. It gets better, let me assure you. And we will be seeing Fury many many times after this; he is an integral part of the to be decided sequels. If the majority of people decide it is excessive to do five in this little series, people can give me email addresses and once i get them typed, they'll be emailed out. Fear not. If you want to read them (when the appropriate time comes) you will be able to read them. Promise.