Welcome to Gaia! ::

Eldon enjoyed the irony of the coffee cup in his left hand and the way his eyelids drooped so low that he could barely make out the sign for Primatech Paper. He shuffled up to the unfamiliar building and yanked the door open, shoving himself inside to escape the cold. Unfortunately, due to his hasty manner and his messenger bag weighed down with the forms he had to return to Primatech, his coffee cup flew out of his hands and was knocked straight inside the building.

The triple sixteen-ounce white mocha with extra foam splattered all over the tiled foyer of the Primatech Office and yet miraculously, none of it managed to hit Eldon's navy blue blazer or khaki pants. He stared at the spilt coffee in disbelief and squealed, "s**t!"

Glancing up with a look of pure irritation, as if this man had some how caused his precious beverage to spill, Eldon muttered, "Yes, that's me." He stared back down at the mess with a frown. Stepping inside the door and out of the cold at last, he suddenly realised why this man was asking for his name. He glanced up at him with a half-smile and asked, "You're Mr Komarov, then?"

"Well," Eldon forced a grin as he shook the man's hand. "It's nice to meet you." He raised his eyebrows, wondering desperately if his new partner would allow him to call him by his first name. Eldon wasn't sure if he had the ability to pay respect to Mr Komarov every time he addressed him by speaking with the proper title. He wanted the two of them to be equals--after all they were partners.

After giving the idea too much thought, he glanced back down at the coffee spill, but said nothing.

Elton had planned to make an expression of disgust after he heard his partner call him "Mr Morris", but instead, grunted in pain. His forehead squished together in horror and he pulled his hand violently away from Viktor's and stared at him in gaping shock. "You--didn't you just feel--that?" he stuttered, grabbing his wrist with his other hand.

Still quite baffled, Eldon watched Viktor curiously for a moment before looking at the file. He felt violated. He'd read up on Viktor before coming for his first day--what kind of fool wouldn't? He knew about his partner's power. And he scowled as he realised that Viktor was probably laughing at him somewhere behind that neutral face of his. "What's the assignment?" he grumbled without looking at much of the paper at all.

"Leventhal?" Eldon snarled as if he had some past connection with the surname. (He didn't.) Uncomfortably, he shifted his weight and asked, "Where exactly is he, then?" He didn't dare ask the real question on his mind--what the hell were they supposed to do once they found him? Abduct him? It seemed like the only logical way they would be able to get their hands on some random, teenage boy.

Physics. The last class of the day.

The second hand on the clock couldn't possibly move any slower.

As Bruno Leventhal squinted at the clock over the chalkboard, he wondered if it was at all possible to speed up time. After all, he concluded logically, if there are people out there as strange as me, there has to be someone with control over time. How he wished that person were sitting beside him right now listening to his teacher lecture about how velocity is a vector, not a scalar quantity--something Bruno felt like he had known all his life. Science just came naturally to him. He couldn't explain it.

At last. The bell rang. Bruno whisked his messenger bag off of the floor and darted out of the school doors, heading for the local coffee shop.

+ + +

Eldon raised his eyebrows and followed Viktor. Just to assure his partner that he had in fact followed him, he shouted, "Oi, where are you going?"