He sighed and stretched, trying to find a comfortable spot on a chair that was not designed for comfort. This whole situation was about as strange as it could get, but he might as well try and feel at ease since it didn't look like that was going to change any time soon.

The transition from the flower shop to the dark, cold cell was . . . inexplicable, as far as Yohji could see. One minute he was niggling Omi about a particularly persistent girl from his school, the next Aya was shaking him and telling him to get up, alarms blaring in his ears and a man yelling at them to hurry up. Followed by a near-panicked run through a maze of cold grey walls splattered liberally with streaks of red from the flashing alarms, and then what had to be the most interesting plane ride of his life. And the most terrifying. And definitely confusing. And . . . aw, hell, it couldn't get any weirder.

And Duo's certainly the epitome of all those adjectives, Yohji thought. What's up with the hair?

From the hair alone, he would have said their mysterious saviour was a girl. However, his voice was deep and masculine, his body was definitely male, his body language was male (and cocky), and even the way he spoke was quite determinedly male.

So what was up with the hair?

Yohji groaned internally and felt like whacking his head against the wall to see if he could knock some sense into it. It'd never worked before, but you never knew.

Here I am, in the middle of a goddamn space station and all I can do is wonder why the guy who saved my life has really long hair. Kudou, you're an idiot.

Not to mention that it's apparently about five hundred years later than it was when I woke up this morning. At least, if that guy was telling the truth and I'm not just having a really weird dream caused by eating too much of Ken's attempt at pasta. I swear, he's the only guy in the world who could get pasta wrong.

"Just fucking great," he muttered.

"What was all that about, then?" Omi wondered out loud, still staring bemusedly at the door.

Yohji grunted, shifting again. These chairs were going to leave his ass permanently numb. "Sounded like he realised someone he cares about didn't report in," he said. "Of course, I could be wrong," he reflected, leaning his head back to stare at the ceiling. Yep, it was as uninteresting as the rest of the room. "I mean, it wasn't like he was just on the verge of saying 'curling up with my lover' before he trailed off and ran out of the room."

Ken kicked him. "Stop it, Yotan," he said. Yohji could hear the grin in his voice.

"Oh?" He lowered his head and twisted it to the right to give Ken one of his most ingenuous looks. "And what are you going to do about it, Kenken?"

Ken grinned at him. Evilly.

Yohji suddenly remembered the incident a couple of weeks before, where Ken had managed to find his one and only ticklish spot. The former football player had blackmailed him with it ever since then, actually managing to get Yohji to his morning shift on time once with the threat that otherwise he'd wait until the rush of girls came in and tickle him to death. Either that or he'd tell Omi.

"You're absolutely right, Kenken," Yohji said quickly. "I really should stop being so sarcastic . Omi, I'm very sorry, now would you mind swapping seats with me?"

Omi, who sat at the far end of the row - the furthest away from Ken - blinked at him. "Why would I want to do that, Yohji-kun?" he asked in a too-sweet tone of voice.

Yohji groaned theatrically. "Traitor," he accused Ken. "You told him."

Ken kept grinning.

Aya was the only one who didn't join in - but then, there was nothing new there. He had his arms folded, and was staring at the floor with one of the blackest scowls Yohji had seen on his face. And he'd been the target of most of them.

Yohji poked him in the arm. "Oi, what's up?"

Aya shook his arm, dislodging Yohji's finger, and kept staring at the floor.

The blond man rolled his eyes. Oh, great, he's in one of those moods. "Talk to me, man," he demanded.

"Aya-kun?" Omi asked hesitantly from the other side. "What's wrong?"

"Yeah, Aya," Ken joined in.

So now they were all bugging him. Yohji was firmly of the opinion that Aya only did things like this for attention, like a spoiled toddler.

Of course, he'd never tell him that. He did value his life, after all.

Aya said nothing, but raised his head slightly and pointed to a line of engraved writing on the metal table.

Made in Space Colony L2-V88327 AC199. [1]

Yohji blinked at it. "Weird," he said. "Now what's up?"

Aya turned to him and scowled. "Don't you get it?" he ground out. "If this was a hallucination induced by Schwarz or Estet, do you really think they would bother to include details like that? Or people with a bad sense of humour and too much hair as their supposed enemies?"

Yohji scowled right back. "So, you think this thing is real. That we have suddenly be magically transported five hundred-"

"-and forty-eight-" Omi inserted.

"-years into the future, to be rescued by a weird guy with a bad sense of humour and too much hair who is apparently fighting Estet, and if I'm right in who the 'orange-haired bastard' was then probably Schuldig's here too, which would mean most likely the rest of them are hanging around, and all because a table has writing on it declaring it to have been made in a space colony." Yohji blinked at him. "Are you really buying this shit? It's like a bad sci-fi novel."

Aya glared at him. Nothing new there. "Any other explanations?"

"No, come to think of it," Yohji said in exactly the same tone of voice as before. "So, can anyone think of just how we might have come to be here?"

"Yohji, we fight against psychos, telekinetics, people who can read your mind and people who can see the future. It could be anything," Ken said, rolling his eyes.

Yohji nodded. It was what he'd figured, but it never hurt to have confirmation. Although it did hurt to have his ego bruised the way Ken was fond of doing.

"So, what now?" he asked the air in general.

"Someone is bound to come here again soon," Omi said, frowning as he worked his way through a course of action. "Duo mentioned something about an empath 'checking us out', so if we can convince a psychic that we're telling the truth, then maybe we can figure out what the heck is going on."

Yohji nodded. "Good plan, Omittchi," he said, leaning back and linking his hands behind his head. "Except how much do we tell them? They're fighting Estet, from what Duo said, so do we tell them who we are and what we do-did-or what?"

Omi opened his mouth to answer, frowning, but didn't get far enough to speak as the metal door clanged open again.

The man who walked in was small, Chinese, and grumpy-looking. He wore the same uniform as Duo, but was much shorter than the loud-mouthed American who had found them. On the surface he looked distinctly displeased to be there, but Yohji thought he detected a slight glimmer in the man's eyes that suggested otherwise.

"My name is Chang Wufei," he introduced himself. "Since I dragged Duo to the med bay for the check up he was supposed to go for as soon as he arrived on the ship, he managed to con me into finishing off your interview."

"Well, fire away, Wufei," Yohji said, slouching and gesturing magnanimously with one hand, nearly whacking Ken in the head.

"Oi! Watch where you're waving that thing, Yotan," Ken groused, smacking at the offending limb.

Yohji thumbed his nose at him, and turned back to Wufei, who was watching with an amused expression on his face. "You have no idea how much you remind me of a couple of my acquaintances right now," the Chinese man said. He cut Yohji off as the man was about to reply, moving on swiftly as he flipped the 'recording' button on the desk. "Now. Duo tells me you believe today to be in 2001."

It was a leading statement, one that required no answer but encourage the other person to give one anyway. "Well, it was when I woke up this morning," Yohji told him glibly, flicking his sunglasses up his nose with one finger.

Wufei looked at him, then at Ken, then at Aya, then at Omi, and slammed the folder shut, switching off the recorder. He stood up, saying, "I think that's all I need to know."

"Hey!" Ken yelled. "I thought you were supposed to be interviewing us!"

Wufei paused at the door, and looked at him. It was a look that was frightening familiar - because Crawford usually had an approximation of it smeared all over his face. One that was arrogant in a way that said 'I know something you don't know.'

"Yes," Wufei said patiently, "I was. The interview is finished, because I cannot do anything more here. Quatre will be here shortly - that's the empath assigned to check you out, by the way. I cannot do anything an empath can't, and an empath can do more than I. Which is why this interview is finished."

With that, he walked out of the door, shutting it firmly behind him.

"Well," Yohji said to nothing in particular, "that was interesting."

"I wonder who this empath is," Omi said. "And what he - or she - is like."

"She?" Yohji perked up. "Hey, it'd be nice to see a woman around this place."

Ken groaned and whacked him on the back of the head, blushing. "Can't you think of anything other than sex for five minutes?"

Yohji rubbed his head and pouted at him. "Yes," he said, "I just don't choose to."

Ken rolled his eyes, still blushing.

Before anyone could say anything more, the metal door slammed open again, this time letting something small and blond and almost covered with the files it was holding breeze in, dropping pieces of paper everywhere. "Sorry I'm late!" a cheerful and debatably male voice emerged from somewhere in the middle of it.

The stack of paper with legs trotted over the table and dumped the files on it, scattering little pieces of paper everywhere. The source of the legs made its way out from behind the mountain of paperwork and resolved itself into a small blond boy with a sunny grin on his face.

"I'm Quatre, the empath," he introduced himself.

Yohji, meanwhile, was looking from Omi to Quatre and glaring. "Permanently happy people make my teeth ache," he declared, slouching further.

Quatre's ridiculously huge blue eyes fixed on him. "Would you rather I was foaming at the mouth and trying to disembowel you?" he asked, still utterly cheerful.

Yohji blinked at him. "Well, if you put it like that. . . ."

"Um, what exactly does an empath do?" Omi asked hesitantly.

Quatre frowned. "It's a little hard to explain," he said. "Basically, what I do is tell whether or not you're lying. I'm one of the few strong enough to tell whether or not you've been made to believe something you know isn't true, as well."

Omi frowned. "How do you do that?"

"It's like . . . a resonance . . . that's the only way I can explain it. A resonance in your emotions."

"Well, get on with it then," Aya growled at him.

Quatre blinked. "Uh . . . I kinda need to ask you a few questions first."

"Why?" Aya asked flatly.

Yohji barely resisted rolling his eyes-again. "Even I can work that one out, Aya," he said. "If he's gonna get a really good idea of what's going on in our heads, we have to be focusing on it, right? So if he asks questions about it, it forces us to think about it."

"That's it exactly," Quatre said, nodding. "It's the same with most telepaths. They can't read it if you're not thinking about it." He scowled suddenly. "And then you get the irritating few who can."

Ken opened his mouth, undoubtedly to say something about Schuldig, and Yohji stamped down hard on his foot. He smiled sweetly when the brunet turned to glare at him. They couldn't afford to have anyone mentioning Schuldig or any of Schwarz - at least not until they knew what was going on.

Quatre just looked at them, and Yohji could see something of Omi when he was plotting in his eyes. This boy was far from being some dumb blond.

Instead of commenting, however, Quatre merely asked, "What day is it today?"

Aya glared at him. "Twenty-second of July 2001," he said flatly.

Quatre blinked, then frowned. His hand came up to rest gently over his heart. "Are you absolutely sure. . . ?" he said.

Aya's glare intensified. Like with Duo, it seemed to have little to no effect on Quatre. "Yes," he growled out. "Now can you get on with it?"

Quatre was blinking rapidly, staring at the far wall with his hand clenched over his heart. "That's impossible," he murmured to himself. "Impossible. . . ."

"What is?" Ken asked.

Quatre shook himself and grabbed the top folder on the pile he had brought in with him, opening it and scanning the contents of each page briefly and roughly. Yohji watched, bemused, as he finished with the folder and shut it with a little noise of frustration.

"Something wrong?" he asked lazily.

Quatre's hand dropped. "You're not lying, and you're not brainwashed," he said. "That's impossible."

"If it's impossible, then why are you saying it's true?" Ken wanted to know.

Quatre sighed and slumped, raising his hand to rub at his forehead. "Because every sense I have is telling me it's true," he said. "It's just my brain is arguing back."

Omi shrugged. "If you're convinced it's true, then we have to figure out how we got here."

Quatre just looked at him. "Uh huh, and tell me, how are we supposed to do that? I've never heard of something like this happening, but. . . ." he trailed off. "Hold on a moment," he said, and ran out of the door.

Yohji tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling. "I'm getting the strongest feeling of déjà vu," he announced. "That's the third time in an hour someone's run out with little warning."

"What do we do now?" Ken wanted to know.

"We work with them," Aya said flatly.

Omi nodded. "If they can figure out how we got here, maybe we can figure out a way to get back," he said.

Yohji said nothing. He knew exactly why Aya wanted to get back as soon as possible - if he was here, what was going to happen to - what had happened to - Aya-chan?

[End Part 3]