A/N: Hey guy, sorry it took so long. I promise I'll write more next time :). Enjoy. Please Review! 333

Chapter 9: Testing the Water

They were all waiting for him in the living room when he got home. He felt a cloying sense of guilt, knowing exactly what the bane of his lover's well-being was and yet feeling reluctant to elaborate. Edward would find out anyway, so he might as well be truthful. That was the thing about living with a mind reader- one couldn't lie as often as was convenient. If ever.

Indeed, Edward was the first to turn his topaz eyes to his adopted brother as he walked into the brightly lit room, sitting on the edge of the piano bench in a rigidly relaxed pose, as if he wanted to convey nonchalance. Emmett and Rosalie were draped over the couch, Esme and Carlisle standing by the stairs, Esme with her husband's arm around her shoulder. They were all deathly still. Alice was curled up in the recliner, smiling at her husband expectantly.

Jasper shifted his weight to one foot and tried to keep his face blank. "I have found the reason for Alice's blindness… it seems Carlisle's theory was correct. Sasha has a rather… unique power."

Alice's tinkling laugh filled the room, causing the rest to seem to loosen up a little bit. She gently swayed up from the chair and put her delicate hands around Jasper's waist, nuzzling his chest. "Unique power, huh? That seems pretty normal for the vampires in this area, Jazz. Although some powers are working less efficiently lately…"

"You make it seem like it's not important," Jasper said, frowning slightly at his bubbly wife. "Aren't you even a little concerned somewhere in that devious little brain of yours?" But then he smiled and chucked her under the chin. Of course… if you were, I'd be able to feel it. But then again, you seem much calmer than you have been. What has changed?

"Well, Jasper," intoned Carlisle, "what is our new 'friend' hiding?"

Jasper sighed. "Well, it's unconventional… nothing cliché as say, being able to read minds or see the future…"

"Har har, Jazz," Alice rolled her golden eyes, and Edward snorted, smirking a little. "You've had your yucks. Now get on with it."

Half sticking his tongue out his siblings, he continued. "Well, as far as I saw, Sasha has a more directly destructive power than any of us does. She can… well… for lack of a better expression, make anything spontaneously combust."

The reactions varied. Jasper watched as Edward adopted a horrified expression, Alice and Emmett looked impressed, and Rosalie kept her features straight. Esme frowned. Carlisle raised a blonde eyebrow. "Well, that's certainly fascinating."

"Jasper…" Edward seemed to struggle with his words. "You do understand that this makes it infinitely more dangerous for Bella to stay here. I already have a problem with her being here, except for the fact that if we went anywhere else the danger she seems to attract would be just as determined to follow us. Here at least she has the protection of an entire werewolf pack and coven of vampires. But this changes that situation. We used to be able to see what was coming, with Alice. But now, there's no way to tell what's coming after Bella because this… interloper… is messing with her head. I'm not going to pretend I like it."

"But what if she's not a 'bad guy'?" Alice said sharply to Edward. "She may not like our lifestyle, concerning food at least, but that doesn't mean she wants to kill Bella. You need to relax, Edward; she has a bad attitude, yes, but she isn't necessarily evil."

"I know that," snarled Edward, "I have read her thoughts, after all. What I don't like is how she prevents you from being able to foresee possible danger coming our way! What would have happened if we hadn't been able to see what James was doing? Victoria? Bella would have been killed!"

Carlisle stepped forward with his hands raised, as if to beg a truce. "Please. Edward, Alice. Each of you has a valid point. Let's try to talk about this in a more constructive light." He then turned to Jasper again. "Now, explain to me in detail exactly what you saw, and we may gain more information through inference, which is always useful."

"I think I should take Bella and leave," Edward muttered. "This is ridiculous."

And with that, he scowled and disappeared up the stairs, causing Rosalie to roll her eyes and Carlisle to sigh exasperatedly. Jasper frowned. Edward has every right to be concerned, but that was childish.

If Edward heard this particular thought, he didn't acknowledge it.

"Sasha seems to be able to conjure and dissipate fire at will, and lots of it; you are the doctor here, you would know more about that process than I do. Or at least you would be able to deduce its inner workings more easily."

Carlisle closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, as his son so often did. "Is it just random conjuration, or can she only catch certain objects on fire?"

"She summoned flames in midair, though confining them to the space of incense burners. I would assume this to be to keep her apartment safe from damage."

"Well that's it then, she must be controlling the matter of any given substance, including air. It's no small wonder you can't see her, Alice- the very definition of spontaneous combustion is that it IS spontaneous; like the werewolves, something subject to so much random change would confuse the fabric of the sequence of normal events, which is what you see." Carlisle looked relieved. "Now that we know more or less what's going on, I think we can relax a little bit more. And it's as you said, Alice; I don't believe Sasha is evil… just closed off."

Alice cocked her head to the side and smiled at the doctor. "I'll make such good friends with her. That will give Eddie's head a good spin!" Jasper chuckled.

"Honey, I love your enthusiasm, but I doubt skipping up to our non-vegetarian friend and threatening her with a weekend of shopping will exactly sway her to your side. You may want a more… sober approach."

"But who wants to be sober?" Alice pouted. "Being smashed is so much more fun!"

"We can't get drunk, love," Jasper jokingly reminded his wife as he followed her up the stairs and down the hall to their joint room. "I'm so sorry to remind you of this fact; you've only been unable to imbibe alcohol for how many years?"

Alice backed into the room and flopped down on the deep red-carpeted floor, beckoning to him with a small white finger and batting her impossibly long eyelashes for good measure. "Would you get over here, shut up, and kiss me?" she purred, rubbing one slim leg against the other, causing the little blue dress she was wearing to slide up on her thighs a little. Jasper felt that if he had vampire fangs like the ones in most of the typical human legends, they would be sliding out now in hunger, though not for blood.

"In that order?" he hissed, pinning Alice to the floor in a flash, grinning maniacally as she giggled. "Or should talk while I kiss you, and stay across the room while doing so?" His golden hair swung into his eyes and whispered around his neck as he leaned in to brush his perfect lips against hers, silencing her laughter. She looked at him hungrily, wrapping her small arms around his white neck and twining her fingers into his shoulder-length curls.

"Forget the get over here, you've already filled that request," she whispered against his lips. "Now you can shut up and kiss me…in that order."

And Jasper was only too happy to comply.

The knock on the door came at an outrageous hour. Well, not outrageous for a vampire, since sleep wasn't necessary, but really. Four in the morning? Sasha rose from her meditation position and walked to the front of her apartment, thankful she'd been too crabby to strip down today for training. She was in fact wearing a simple pair of black sweats and a form fitting white t-shirt, not to mention a pair of fuzzy blue bunny slippers. She made an ironic expression at the slippers as she wiggled her toes in them, causing the bunnies to alternately bounce up and down in a way disturbingly reminiscent of bobble-head dolls. So, the tough old warrior gives in to the ways of material life. Hey, a girl is allowed a few pleasures, right? The knock came again, this time more insistent. All right, all right, no need to get your panties in a bunch.

The smell emanating from the other side of the door made Sasha roll her eyes. Not again. The Cullens had been trying to make nice with her for the past few months, sending her little presents and notes, inviting her out to hunt (which she always refused) or play baseball. They'd even sent their little human girl- what was her name- Bella?- to say hello, which she found particularly manipulative, since Edward was always waiting just beyond the cover of the trees to make sure everything went safely. It was if they either wanted to force her to be friends with them, or prove to themselves that she was in fact harmless. It really was, above all else, exasperating.

She was indeed on a first name basis with the Cullens by now, having had to interact with them multiple times at school and otherwise. The professors at the high school constantly forced her and Jasper, and sometimes Edward, the best students in their United States history class, to conduct lengthy debates about the Civil War, Prohibition, and the Vietnam War, among other things. An involuntary growl started to rumble behind her molars before she could stop herself. Jasper. That little Confederate. Who did he think he was?

"Alright! Keep your hair on!" Sasha barked, yanking the door open to reveal a slightly cowed Alice, standing with her hand half-raised, as if to knock once again. Sasha raised a raven eyebrow. Well, this is different. The little one rarely comes here. And this time she doesn't look half as uncomfortable as she used to… what's going on? "Hey Alice. What do you need?"

To Sasha's surprise, Alice suddenly underwent a transformation from looking sheepish to completely conspiratorial. Her rosebud mouth curved into a wicked little grin, and her own black eyebrows rose. "Want to have some fun?"

Sasha frowned. This couldn't be good. "Look, I already told you I didn't want to go Yeti-hunting, or whatever it was that you people wanted me to go do. Why can't you all just leave me alone?"

Alice's face didn't fall one bit. "Oh, quit being such a party pooper. You need to get out of this apartment more often- you're pale as a ghost, all joking aside. And I'm not even asking you to go hunting this time! You know, you could be a little more accepting of our attempts to be friendly. It's not like we ever tied you up and forced you to drink animal blood. Not that we could if we tried, of course." She smiled. "Come on. You need to get out."

"I'm not letting my guard down," Sasha warned, beckoning Alice to come in so she could change out of her bunny slippers. "Any funny business, and I'm gone. Especially from that… rat you so willingly seem to have married." Alice pouted.

"Don't be so judgmental of poor Jazz! I know he can be a stuffy old lump at times, but he's not so bad. He even lets me dress him up sometimes-" She was stopped short by one of Sasha's long, slim fingers on her mouth, not to mention an exasperated expression.

"Please. I'm barely agreeing to this at all. I don't need those images in my head." What kind of images of Jasper do you need in your head? chortled her mind, causing her to grimace inwardly. Dammit.

Sasha followed Alice through the forest at the usual ease of the vampires' breakneck pace. This would have been impossible for her to imagine a few months back- she hadn't trusted the Cullens at all, and had been convinced they wanted to be rid of her as soon as possible. Avoiding their amber stares and pale smiles (or glares, in the cases of Edward or Jasper) had been like avoiding the proverbial plague. She couldn't stand their constant kindliness, their polite invitations to "dinner", or their offers of new cars. The offer that especially unnerved her had been the invitation to adopt her. Ugh. She shuddered just thinking of it- she'd always been a solitary soul, having operated on her own most of her life, and even when she hadn't, she had been a double agent- and a successful one at that.

However, the most frustrating fly in the ointment had always been one person. Sasha really couldn't think of a nasty enough name for him- Confederate, blonde bastard, rat, ass. He was all and none, because he was worse than all combined. Arrogant and filled with a sense of his own superiority, he always seemed to have the upper hand in their debates at school, though she would usually beat him in the end (history does favor the victor, after all). And the more arrogant and cold she acted towards him as a result of her disgust, the more angry and vengeful he seemed to become. He never assaulted her again the way he had that one night at the construction site, but she could always see the antagonistic fires burning behind the entrancing gold of his irises when he looked at her. In fact, whenever they crossed vision, her ire seemed to swell, for no apparent reason other than that he was in the immediate vicinity. It was incredibly frustrating; being perpetually cold and calm, which was what she felt was a comforting part of her own personality, was impossible around Jasper. She really couldn't understand why such a persistently nice person as Alice- she almost gagged a little at her own thought here- was anchored to such a vindictive ass.

"Shhhh," whispered the persistently nice person, stopping momentarily in the thick branches of a pine. "We're almost there."

Sasha attempted to scrape some of the sap off of her combat boots against the trunk of the tree she was currently balancing in. Her already ripped blue leggings were a little worse for the wear from the journey, but at this point she was couldn't care less.

"What is going on, Alice?" she hissed, giving the pixie-like vampire a scarlet glare. "We've been running for forty-five minutes!"

"Shhhh!"

Suddenly a deep and resonating rumble reverberated throughout the area, causing trees to seem to move up and down and every bird known to man to start shrieking and flying out of the canopy. Alice blinked her golden eyes quickly and frowned. "Well done, you went and woke it up."

Quite peeved by now, Sasha came out of her crouch and started to speak at a relatively normal volume. "Woke what up-"

She was immediately cut off by another jolt that nearly sent her flying, causing her to grab quickly for another handhold. "Alice, what the HELL have you gotten us into?"

"Oh, relax," laughed Alice, crouching and then springing off the branch she'd been occupying, sending green needles flying in every direction before they drifted slowly down into the murky darkness below. "It's only slightly more difficult to deal with when it's woken up."

Sasha decided to save her questions, and curiously followed Alice farther into the gloom of the darkening forest. About three minutes later, Alice stopped dead at the edge of a clearing. Here the dark of the tall forest contrasted sharply with the buttery yellow light of early morning drifting down to illuminate the soft, moss-covered ground. The shimmering beams of rare sunlight jutting from between the soft, grey clouds were benevolent seeming, and but for a single factor, this place would have probably been quite peaceful.

At the moment, that missing factor was the furious rumbling and shaking, not to mention loud cracking and crunching noises, emanating from the other side of the clearing. Not bothering to pester Alice again, Sasha waited patiently for the noisy mystery to come into the sunlight.

"This had better be good," she hissed at Alice from behind the upturned collar of her peacoat. "If you brought me out here to see a massive moose with indigestion or something, I'm never accepting another fruit basket from your family!"

Alice gave her an odd look. "Since when did we give you fruit baskets?"

Before Sasha could give her a properly disgruntled answer, the source of the entire hullabaloo crashed out into the clearing… and from what Sasha could see, though she could barely believe her eyes, it was most definitely not a gargantuan herbivore with gastrointestinal distress.

"Oh my God."

A/N: Please review! I loves you all! Remember, if you read more, I write more!