Earth

"I don't know if I can trust you, this party is pretty exclusive." Charlotte flat out lied, it was the first night of a new semester of course the biggest frat on campus would be hosting quite a welcome back bash. Usually they frowned on crashing but that never stopped anyone, the parties usually got so out of hand there was no stopping them, and as a non-sorority girl Charlotte found herself crashing the small school frat's parties frequently. So getting him in wasn't a problem at all but Charlotte had to be sure he wouldn't be wishy-washy about this, she had plenty of friendships turn sour when she discovered they couldn't handle alcohol or they worried too much about getting caught.

She moved her hair to the side and moved out the door of the sandwich shop heading in the direction of the park.

Alex followed a bit behind as they walked through the park. He was a little confused by Charlotte's comment. Why would she try to convince me to go to this party, and then turn around and say that?, he wondered. Is she playing hard to get or something? I certainly don't know. Alex was never sure about any of this stuff, so he just followed his incredibly good intuition, as usual. He decided to just take the comment literally, and roll with it however he had to.

"Does that mean we're crashing it?" he asked amiably. "If that's what you're worried about, don't be. I haven't done it too often, but I have definitely gotten away with it before." The only time Alex had ever been caught crashing a party, he was already in his dorm by the time they figured it out, and it was only because there were two people there who knew him. As a transfer student, this would be a cakewalk.

"I'm not worried!" Charlotte replied in awe that he would suggest that, smart kid. "I've gotten away with it too so it's not a big deal." She bragged and found a bench for the two of them to sit on while eating.

She unwrapped her first sandwich daintily and took a bite, sweet and gooey peanut butter, honey, and banana, the only sandwich found exclusively on the kids menu, without the crust she had to get two just so she felt full. She loved sweet things too much and this was one of the semi-healthy sweet things she could eat without feeling guilty. After a few bites she put down the sandwich and opened her skim milk to wash away the nuttiness stuck to the roof of her mouth.

"It's a big party, no one will notice two freshman even with my sparkling reputation of party crashing they won't bother kicking me out." Charlotte smiled. "Because they know I'll come back even if they do" she thought to herself deciding not to share that bit.

The end of the class rolled around and the girl disappeared before Britton could even see her walk out the door. He gathered his backpack and scarce note and made his way to the front of the class to talk to the professor. The conversation was brief and full of flattering comments in both directions, Britton being the top of his class at his last school and the professor being well known in water quality studies of both fresh and salt water. The professor finished with Britton's assignments for the day, reminding him to check his email for the detailed work.

Britton whipped out his phone as the professor wrapped up the conversation and left for his office. He looked through his emails to find the first thing on his to do list was to swing by the pool house to first check the chlorine levels in the pool and then pick up some tank filters from the maintenance closet there. They were typical grunt work assignments, it was clear the professor didn't trust him to do real research yet but this would have to do.

After wandering around a little getting used to the new campus he found his car and parked at the pool house. If he was going to the pool anyways he decided he might as well swim. Grabbing his bathing suit from the trunk he took it to the locker room and changed. He grabbed a chlorine test kit from maintenance on his way to the pool and started by testing the water and left the solution to sit on the pool side while he started laps to clear his mind. He felt his hand tingle with a burning sensation as it hit the water but he continued un-phased.

He was here, in the pool, doing laps, just like her. Brook couldn't help but think back to her dream. Pushing the thought away, she continued her arm stroke, but she could tell (and so did her trainer) that she wasn't concentrating at all. In fact, she seemed to have a burning sensation in her hand. Not like a hurting burn, but like a tingly warm feeling. In fact, she finally stopped after a couple more laps to make sure there wasn't anything wrong with her hand.

When Brook got out, she sat on the side of the pool watching the guy swim. Did he even know she was there? Why did she get this weird feeling in her stomach and in her time every time she saw him? She felt like she should go talk to him, but what would she say? 'hey, I don't know who you are, but I've secretly been watching you and possibly having dreams about you. Want to hang out later?' Brook continued her thinking as she got up onto the short diving platform next to the guy. Maybe he would just notice her, and start up a conversation.

Taking a dive, her hand tingled as she hit the water again, and she continued her strokes until her and the guy met halfway in the middle. Normally, she would swim on past him as he swam past her with no difficulty. However, she had never been this close to him and she suddenly became distracted and she accidentally hit her hand with his.

Brook swear that she could feel electricity and warmth spread her arm. Her heart seemed to stop, and weird images even flashed across her eyes. The guy must have felt her hand hit his, because they both just simply froze in the middle of the pool, her in one lane, him in another.

"I guess we have nothing to worry about than." Alex responded. "Which is fine with me. Worrying isn't really my style anyway." This was very true for Alex. Even when he was in his competitive frame of mind, he tended to just take things as they came, living in the moment and changing up his methods as he needed to.

Alex unwrapped his roast beef and swiss cheese sandwich, and took his first bite. Alex wasn't necessarilly a sandwich person, but it certainly tasted good. "Mmm" he said to no one in particular after he swallowed. "Good sandwich." Alex took a few more bites, and washed it down with some Gatorade. His stomach was certainly happy now that it was getting some real food.

"Well," he said to Charlotte. "Back to what I asked before. When and where is this big back to school party you mentioned? I'm interested in seeing how the parties here compare to the ones back in Pennsylvania."

Britton was enjoying the peaceful sensation of rhythmicly going wall to wall without interrupted, or at least until he was interrupted. He must have been swimming too close to the side of his lane but for one reason or another he accidentally high-fived the person in the lane next to him, which was cool in concept but awkward when the tingle in his hand was drastically amplified and he stopped to see that it was the girl from before in the lane beside him.

"You Again?" he whispered to himself almost in awe. This was the third time today. The first time he saw her was weird. The second time was weirder and he didn't even know how to respond to a third chance meeting, and clearly there was no way they were following one another seeing that they had been entering the same areas at entirely different times, he had seen the same girl swimming in her lane before he arrived without realizing it was her so it wasn't like she followed him here.

He massaged his palm, trying to get the feeling to go away but the warm sting of the contact wasn't going away, maybe he was allergic to this girl, it was the only logical answer.

"Sorry, I hope I didn't ruin a timing." He apologized and looked to the trainer at the end of her lane. They timed races in swimming right? Either way he couldn't think of anything else to say, it was better than "Why are you showing up everywhere? And why do you make me feel so strange?"

"It's probably around 10 at the big frat house, I always forget their letters." Charlotte shrugged deciding he had earned the information. She continued eating her sandwich peacefully while looking across the park.

"Do you ever people watch?" She asked to change the topic. People watching was always fun and a productive past time of hers. There were some quick skinny nerds playing Frisbee to their right and a little girl was running after a goose with her mom following close behind at the pond to their left. The most interesting character was a pale foreign guy dressed all in black and carrying a paper bag.

"I like coming up with people's stories. Like I bet that guy's a vampire and that paper bag contains the blood bags he stole from the blood drive going on at the nursing college." She joked gesturing in the direction of the pale foreigner.

"I used to do that a little bit." he answered. "I didn't do it too much though, because none of my old friends were creative about it. They just kept saying everyone was a serial killer." He chuckled to himself at that. "They once even said that an old lady in a wheel chair was one." Alex listened as Charlotte pointed out the creepy pale guy, and kept himself from unconciously shivering at the word vampire. As she said it, his mind immediatly flicked to his dream from the night before. Though he placed no stock in the supernatural, he couldn't help but wonder sometimes why so many coincidences seemed to center around him.

Shaking the feeling off, Alex took another look at the pale guy. He certainly looked like a vampire, that was for sure. "Now there is a serial killer if I ever saw one!" he said, laughing to himself. "The guys back in Pennsylvania would love to see this." Suddenly, a thought spontainiously came into his mind. Normally he would have pursued it, be he didn't think it was a good idea. Going back to his sandwich, he said "Normally, I'd say we should follow him and get a laugh out of it, but I have class after this and it's the only one I actually like." The one class he liked was a creative writing elective. Outside of fencing, Alex enjoyed writing stories. "Well, my turn." he continued. Looking around the park, he noticed a guy sitting on a bench a bit down the path writing something in a notepad. He was wearing oddly large sunglasses, and looked up every once in a while to glance around. "Now that guy," he said, "is an undercover cop on cracking down on the stolen blood bags. So far he has hit nothing but dead ends but... he will probably continue to do so, because if he doesn't suspect Mr. Vampire over there now, he probably never will. "