It was just Aadi's luck, really. A terrible cold had sprung on her like a naggy relative, and her roommate decided to lock herself and her boyfriend in their room with a note on the door not to come back before curfew. A fritzy power, and no safe area to hide and sulk the day out.

At least she had no class or work today, but that was a small comfort as she walked along the New York streets, sniffling and focusing more on keeping her feet on the ground than her surroundings. Today would be a perfect day to explore, she decided. Explore unpopulated spots, that is. Which really sucked, because someone in her school had recommended a fantastic shopping center on the other side of the city. She couldn't go shopping in this condition though, it was just asking for trouble.

That and Aadi was a grouch when sick. She'd just end up biting off someone's head, or swearing at them in French.

A couple metro (subway, she corrected herself for the nth time) rides later, and a good ten minute wander, she was stepping into Central Park. A quick look around proved the park was much larger than even the one on top of Mount Royal back home. There had to be some free space here. Armed with a bag full of kleenex and a coffee she'd bought along the way, Aadi began her search.

Finally coming up to a nice cleared space devoid of people, Aadi gave a sigh of relief and slumped down next to a tree. The many surrounding trees provided a nice canopy from the sun, birds whistled all around, and the hum of traffic was just a distant itch. She'd probably get bored before long and move on, but at least here she wouldn't have to focus on keeping both feet firmly planted on the ground.

Kara had been having a wonderful day thus far.

She was still on edge from the whole music store thing (Was that really only yesterday?), and had been set even more on edge by a really nasty dream she'd had last night. Then after breakfast, her mother had called, furiously insisting to know every tiny detail about her new home. And last but not least, her computer was glitching out. So after she took it to Staples, she came over to Central Park for a little R&R, without the intrusion of annoying not-strangers every ten seconds.

That was a couple hours ago. And here she was, in the exact same spot, still half-sleeping, half-staring-at-birds.

She heard a faint scraping against the same tree, the sound of clothes rubbing against oak-tree bark. Kara's eyes blinked open as she peered around the area.

No one in sight.

She made a quick glance around the side of the tree, but saw no one.

She shrugged and leaned back against the tree.

'Must have been my brain playing tricks on me,' she thought to herself, as she resumed watching a sparrow get dive-bombed by a bluejay.

Aadi stretched out her arms above her head before settling down with her back against the wide tree trunk, resting her head back against it and closing her eyes. This was better. The city was fantastic, but sometimes a person just needed to get away from all the noise.

Maybe today wasn't a complete loss of time. She could use the time to recoup from the stress of school and work, just relax. God knew she needed a vacation.

Exhaling slowly through her nose, she relaxed further against the tree, fully intending to fall asleep right there. It wasn't as if anyone was around to disturb her, and sleep in a noisy dormitory wasn't the best sleep ever.

Zonking out, Aadi didn't even notice several small rocks begin to rise slowly beside her, shortly followed by her backpack.

Carragail heard another noise behind her. It sounded like a soft breath, though it could easily have been just the wind. She ignored it, and continued watching a cluster of birds fight over a child's abandoned lunchbox.

After all, now that there were crows getting involved, it was getting pretty hilarious.

She began to lapse in and out of awareness. Not necessarily falling asleep, but simply failing to notice every single second, instead only seeing every tenth second, or maybe every fifteenth second.

It was probably because of this that she failed to truly notice the most incredibly bizarre sensation wrap around her body. It felt as if gravity had seemed to abandon her, as if she were floating effortlessly above the world, steadily soaring upwards as she defied gravity and abandoned the ground beneath her bum.

Then she decided to crack open her eyes a smidgen (when had she closed her eyes?). Instantly after, her eyes shot wide open in shock.

She actually had been floating.

She was, in fact, already well above the ground.

And the low-lying branches were getting alarmingly close...

Immediately, Kara began to panic. She curled into her little defensive ball, her breaths coming hard and fast, her heart pounding with the force of a sledgehammer into somewhere in her neck. She couldn't think, could barely breathe. But bumping into the lowest of the branches above her shocked her into action.

She wrapped her arms around the branch, and let out a loud, ear-piercing shriek.

"YYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

>> "YYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

Aadi's eyes snapped open with a jolt, the various floating objects around her instantly dropping back to the ground. Snatching her hand back when a small rock landed on it, she looked around with wide eyes. What the hell had that been? Screaming in a park was one thing, but that hadn't come from a distance, that had been practically right in her ear.

Standing, Aadi looked around, not seeing anyone. "Hello?" she called, sniffling. Was she blind? She could have sworn...

Stepping around the tree trunk to look on the other side, Aadi was nearly kicked in the face by a foot. Staggering backwards, she looked up at the asian girl dangling from the tree in shock. Where had she come from? "Are you...uh, okay?"

Suddenly, and accompanied by loud sobbing from Kara, the sensation of weightlessness abandoned her completely. She clung to the branch with arms and feet, her eyes ground shut and her face contorted into a mixture of pain and despair.

"Hello?"

The strange voice startled Kara so much that she lost her grip with one of her legs. As it swung down and barely missed a stranger that she hadn't even noticed before. With a frightened little, "Eeeep!", she pulled her leg back up and clung to the branch as tightly as she could.

"Are you...uh, okay?"

"Do...I...look...okay...to you!?!" she screeched between terrified sobs. Probably not the best thing to say to a potential savior, but Kara wasn't exactly thinking straight. It was all she could do to keep herself from hyperventilating, and even that wasn't quite enough at the moment. She could feel her breaths getting shorter and faster with each passing second, her heart pounding more and more heavily.

'Oh, dear God, please let me survive this!' she silently prayed.

Aadi could barely understand what was being screeched at her past the sobbing, but she'd already determined for herself that no, this person hanging from the tree was definitely not okay. Wondering how she'd gotten up there in the first place (the branches were high up enough that climbing wasn't exactly possible), Aadi was reminded of the floating rocks and backpack when she'd opened her eyes.

Had she stuck this girl up there?

"Mon dieu...uh...hold on, I will help!" Aadi looked up at the girl helplessly. Help how, exactly? Floating her down would reveal who she was...but did Aadi have a choice anymore? If she'd floated the girl up there, that was already a give away. And all the screaming was going to bring people running sooner or later.

Taking deep breaths, Aadi lifted her chin and tried to focus. Her feet tried to lift off the ground, but she centered her attention on the terrified girl above her only. The sobbing was distracting.

When she felt the girl would be lowered slowly to the ground, and not dropped like a stone, Aadi spoke again. "Listen, stop crying. Let go from the tree."

"Mon dieu...uh...hold on, I will help!

Needless to say, Kara wasn't exactly reassured.

Quite the opposite, actually. She could feel herself starting to get slightly dizzy. All this heart-pounding and heavy-breathing-ness was starting to get to her head.

"Listen, stop crying. Let go of the tree."

Kara had about thirty responses to that demand that came to mind. Most of them fell somewhere in the territory of swear words accompanied with the word no. But all her heavy breathing and general panic wouldn't let her so much as take a deep breath.

All she managed to breathe out was a quick, "Not...hap--happening."

This was counter-productive. Aadi knew a panic attack when she saw one, having had many herself, and little was going to reach the girl in this state. Reasoning out that she was going to fall eventually anyways wasn't the smartest thing to do either.

Aadi would have rather left the asian up there than give herself away, but...she'd put the poor girl up there in the first place. Guess it was her duty to get her back down, no matter the result.

Sniffling and trying to work past the troublesome cold, Aadi lifted her arms midway. Slowly she started to lift off the ground, carefully since her control was shaky while sick. Dropping the both of them wasn't going to earn her any favors right now.

By the time she'd raised herself to the same level as the girl in the tree, Aadi was feeling the creeping panic as well. Still, she'd been stuck in worse situations before.

"Look!" Aadi held out her hands to the girl in the tree, trying to cajole her into letting go. "See? It is okay, I can help you down." She spoke slowly and clearly to work her way past her horrendous accent.

Kara could feel herself slowly relaxing as the anti-hyperventilation reflex kicked in. The trouble was, that's exactly what she didn't want to happen. The more she relaxed, the more she ran the risk of falling. And yet, she felt her heart start to slow down, her breaths become more separate, and she closed her eyes, almost ready to faint, before her adrenaline caught up with her again.

"Look! See? It is okay, I can help you down."

The teenager cracked her eyes open, glancing towards where she'd heard the voice. Had she actually passed out and fallen? No, she was still clutching the branch. But then, why was...

Her eyes shot open, and she jumped right back into panic mode.

Partly because she was up high still, supported only by a branch that bobbed lightly with each breath of hers.

Partly because there was a total stranger who was well inside the Danger Zone.

But mostly because she was face to face with a someone who was floating unsupported in mid-air a good four feet off the ground.

Now, a logical person who's thinking rationally would follow the train of thought, 'She's floating...oh, she must be a mutant with the ability to fly.'

Kara's current train of thought instead invited her to scream, "Oh, GOD WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?!?!" as she flailed wildly and attempted to scramble away from the strange floating girl, realizing only a second or two exactly where she was...

Her leg managed to catch onto the branch at the knee, as the rest of her swung unceremoniously downward towards the ground (which was only a few feet away). The whole time, she continued to squeal, "OHGODOHGODOHGAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

Oh, for the love of...

Aadi shrieked as she was nearly clipped off the nose and simultaneously deafened. She dropped a few feet before she could regain control, heart in her throat. "Tais-toi!" The french woman yelled back, frustrated.

Being nice wasn't going to cut it. Either she got this screaming girl out of the tree now, or someone was going to show up and see Aadi floating in the air. And Aadi wasn't having any of that.

Grabbing both of the girl's arms, she pulled to yank the asian out of the tree. There was no way to float this kid down if she was hanging there like a monkey, and maybe if she saw she could float herself she would just shut up already.

Kara could feel herself hyperventilating all over again, and the fact that she was completely up-side down was not helping. Her vision was getting fuzzy again, her heart was frantically slamming into her head like a troupe of invisible wrestlers were using her as a pinata.

She could vaguely make out the strange floating girl seem to stumble, swearing in a language that she could barely hear, let alone understand. Finally, she appeared to have simply had enough of Kara's antics.

The instant she saw the stranger reach for her arms, she panicked and tried to pull them back. Unfortunately for her, she didn't have enough strength to look at her feet above her, let alone avoid the strong grasp of the strange woman beneath her.

She vaguely made out the woman gearing up to pull her down, to which she made a weak protest of, "Oh, please...no...". At least, that's what she thought she said. She couldn't exactly hear well right now.

Just as the woman pulled hard on her arms, she felt herself go completely limp and pass out from sheer panic, simultaneously slipping out of the tree and falling directly into the woman.

Aadi had half a second to be relieved when the girl finally let go of the tree branch, only to realize that she hadn't let go voluntarily.

Startled and losing her grip on gravity, Aadi shrieked as they both dropped towards the ground. A quick save slowed their descent so they hit the ground more gently than they could have...or, than Aadi could have. The asian girl had a softer landing, right on top of Aadi.

Swearing, Aadi groaned and rolled the girl off of her, sitting up. Her head felt like someone had been hitting it with a sledgehammer. She came all the way out here to rest, not to deal with screaming people or gravity or any of those things she was actively trying to avoid.

"Hello?" She nudged the girl's shoulder, to see she was really out cold. Well, not Aadi's problem anymore, she was out of that tree. Making the girl more comfortable and less eagle-spread across the grass, she stood to leave.

Only to be hit with a wave of dizziness. Wincing, Aadi staggered back to lean against the tree trunk, sinking back to the ground. Okay, a few minutes of rest, then she'd scram.

--A few minutes later...--

Carragail groaned loudly, clutching her head and rolling onto her side into the fetal position. She felt like her head had been used as a surrogate ball by Manchester United in their practice of scoring long-distance goals, and all that screaming made it hurt to try and talk. Her leg was extremely sore, probably even bleeding a bit, but at the very least, black and blue. Her hands were cramped her diaphragm felt like it had gone through a woodchipper, and she was downright covered in scrapes and bruises.

But beneath her, she felt the cool, smooth dirt and the wet tickle of grass.

Safe on land.

Kara breathed a soft sigh of relief as she cracked her eyes open a bit, taking in the slightly odd view of Central Park that she was getting at this angle. She smiled slightly, letting herself relax with pure relief, even beginning to glow slightly as she ran her hand through the grass.

Then the pain caught up with her again.

"Owwwwww........" she groaned, making her best attempt to sit up. In the end, she wound up in a very crumpled, distorted, but technically upright position.

The Oak Tree of Doom wasn't very far away, and leaning against the trunk was the same girl from earlier. She looked like she was asleep, but in Kara's current state, it was pretty hard to tell.

"Um...h--hello?" she croaked softly towards the girl.

Aadi's eyes snapped open at the croaked voice. Someone else? No, looking up she saw it was that screaming asian girl, although she was finally not screaming. She was already awake? Aadi had hoped she'd stay unconscious at least until she could clear the area, but the french girl's head still hurt.

"You are awake," Aadi sniffled, the observation a little redundant. "Are you okay now?" Hopefully she wouldn't remember anything too incriminating. Or run screaming in the other direction so Aadi could just leave.