One of the last things Vera Rossi expected as she walked home from the university that day before Halloween was for an Asian boy dressed fashionably and wearing sunglasses to suddenly jog up to her and ask, “Hey, pretty lady, do you believe in reincarnation?”

Vera blinked and turned to look at him.  She wondered for a moment if she should do what her older sister always did to people whom she did not know or did not like and give him a snappish reply.  However, she lacked Sienna’s fire, and so she answered honestly, “No.”

“Aw, I guess I’m not so lucky today,” the boy said with a goofy grin as he rubbed the back of his head, continuing to follow her.

“Are you lost?” Vera asked him.  The boy spoke with an accent, so there was a chance that he was a visitor rather than the son of a first generation immigrant family.

“Showing so much concern for others, as always,” the boy said cheerily.  “Well, I think I’ve creeped you out enough.  I’ll be going now.  Bye bye, pretty lady!”  And he strolled away, turning at the next crosswalk.

Vera frowned and reached for her phone.  She had picked up on the boy’s “as always.”  Was she being stalked?  She hurried to her apartment and locked the door behind her.  Nervous, she started coughing, something that she had been prone to ever since she was a little girl.  When she was younger, Sienna had often asked their parents to take her to the doctor to see what was wrong, but her parents had always simply checked her for a fever, found none, and said that she would be alright.  Now Vera was twenty-two, a senior in college, and she still had a chronic cough and fainted on occasion, but nothing else that she found too serious.

As she pulled the blinds down over the windows, she wondered if she should call Sienna or her grandparents.  However, Sienna, who was a few years older than her, was off with their parents on a business trip to make connections, and her grandparents, aged as they were, had plenty of vitality between the two of them to get overly stressed about what might only be a one-time thing.  “If I get any mysterious notes or if he shows up again, I’ll call Grandpa,” Vera resolved.

It was quiet in the apartment, and so Vera the radio.  It was late afternoon, too early for dinner but too late to really go out and do anything (not that Vera had anyone to do anything with – she was not a social butterfly like Sienna, and she much preferred to keep to her studies).  However, she was a bit anxious about going back out, so she settled on doing the reading for her senior biology seminar ahead of time.  Vera made herself comfortable on the couch, opened her textbook, and clicked her tongue, calling for Revan.  The black cat, named by Sienna after a Star Wars video game character to whom she had been introduced by a friend, trotted into the room and bounced up onto the couch, curling up on her feet.  As Vera pushed away her worries in exchange for a view of the world of biology in a pre-med context on a microscopic level, she felt her brain growing slow and her eyes growing heavy.

~*\_/*~

She was in a city, but the world seemed blurred except for the boy in front of her.  She was shouting something at the boy out of worry, and the boy gave her a cheeky grin, saying, “Don’t worry!  VI is a lucky guy!”

Another boy sauntered up to her, also smiling.  “Don’t you make our pretty flower upset, Seungri.  We have to protect her over everyone else in this city.”

“Please tell me you’re not about to try to make another ‘D-Lite’ joke,” the first boy, VI or Seungri, groaned.  “See, VI is slick and cool.  D-Lite?  Not quite so much!”

“Well, it’s my delight to see you so jealous of me and my name that you attempt to dis it in front of our beautiful flower,” the second boy (D-Lite?) said.

“Don’t use your stupid empath powers on me,” complained VI.

“Where are the others?” asked Vera (was she Vera?).  “Please, don’t be trying to distract me while they get hurt.  Seungri (was that his real name?), you should be using your luck to help them!”

“Worrying about us, princess?”  A boy with scaly, bat-like wings descended from the sky.  “The bad guys are gone and we’re all okay.  T.O.P and Taeyang are on their way.”

Vera felt herself let out a sigh of relief.  “Don’t drop out of the sky like that, GD!” complained D-Lite.  “You’ll scare her and make her start coughing again!”

GD, the boy with wings, slung his arm over her shoulder.  “Nah, my princess wouldn’t ever be scared of me.”

“Of course not, Jiyong,” Vera said with a smile.  “How far behind did you leave the others?”

“Not too far, not too far,” Jiyong (GD?  Why did he have two names too?) answered.  “Bet that T.O.P gets here first.”

“But what if Taeyang blinds him to get a lead?” asked Seungri.

“Dude, not even all the luck in the world will win you that bet!” D-Lite exclaimed with a grin.  “You know that he’d never use his powers against one of us.”

“Gee, Daesung, just speculating,” complained Seungri.  “I know the rules.”

“I should hope so, because if you don’t, as the leader, I have to teach you, and we know how that goes,” Jiyong said in a singsong voice.  Then he turned to look at Vera, who was wobbling slightly under his arm.  Vera started to realize that she must be dreaming, because now she was watching herself from afar stumbling in Jiyong’s grip.  She could see that the three boys were becoming worried, as Jiyong and Seungri held her up and D-Lite (Daesung?) waved his arms frantically to two figures approaching in the distance.  The city blurred, and went dark.

~*\_/*~

Vera woke to Revan her face like an overly-affectionate lap dog instead of a six-year-old cat.  “Hm?” she asked groggily.  “Hungry, Rev?”  She dog-eared the page of the textbook which was open, put the heavy book aside, and stood.  Feeling lightheaded, she stumbled back and sat back down again.  Revan paced in front of her, and she stood up, this time for real, and went to feed him.  Glancing at the clock, she realized that it was now six in the evening, and that she did not feel like cooking anything for her own dinner.  Taking her pocketbook and her phone, she headed out for a quick dinner.

She decided on a small bar and grill nearby.  Entering, she found that there were only bar seats open, so she sat down at the end of the counter away from the window.  When the bartender came for her drink order, she asked for carbonated water with a lemon slice before glancing at the menu.  The bartender returned with her drink and asked for her order.  Vera asked for a BLT before turning her eyes to the TV, which was showing the current college football game.  As she idly sipped her drink, she barely comprehended the subtitles on the screen, reporting with a two minute delay the action on the field.  She was brought out of her stupor when someone sat down next to her.  She sat up, not wanting to be in the other customer’s space.

“Ah, you don’t have to move!” an accented male’s voice said.  “You just seemed so lonely over here in this corner by yourself.”

“I’m not looking for company, if that’s what you want,” Vera said quietly, though not in an unfriendly manner.

“Hm?”  There was a pause, which Vera guessed meant that the man was translating her words into his native language, understanding them, and then formulating a response.  “Oh.  Oh!  No, I don’t mean like that, of course!” he exclaimed.  Out of the corner of her eye, Vera saw him waving his hands in front of him, emphasizing his words.

“Okay,” she said, not looking at him.  There was a reason that she had very few, if any, friends.  She was shy, not to mention nervous, around strangers, and could hardly get up the courage to respond to someone attempting to befriend her, even if they initiated the conversation instead of her.

“Er, are you alright?  You seem down, miss,” said the man.  “My name’s, uh, Lee.  I’m visiting for a few days.  It’s nice to meet you.”

Vera saw him hold out his hand for her to shake.  Deciding that she should probably adhere to social norms and be polite, she carefully took his hand and shook it gently.  She took note of his Asian features, overly-friendly smile, and youthful face, which was contrasted by his somewhat grey-brown hair as she did.  “I’m Vera.  It’s – it’s nice to meet you too, Lee,” she murmured.

“Ah, you’re shy,” Lee realized.  “I’m sorry for imposing myself on you like this.  If you’d like, I’ll move.”

Vera, feeling more at ease than she had ever felt before with a stranger, shook her head slightly.  “It’s okay,” she said.  “Thank you.”

“Are you sure?  I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Lee said.

“I’m fine,” she assured him.

The bartender came over to take Lee’s drink.  He ordered a soda.  Vera noticed that when the bartender left, Lee was looking at her.  Suddenly feeling anxious, she turned her head away slightly, letting her hair fall to hide her face.

Realizing that he had been caught, Lee turned away sheepishly.  “Sorry,” he said.  “It’s just, you’re very pretty.  Vera.”  He paused, and she looked at him.  “It’s not a name I’m familiar with,” he remarked.  “What are its origins?”

Vera wondered how to respond to such a strange question.  She knew that Sienna would advise her to answer with some snappy comeback, but she knew that she could not.  “I’m not really sure,” she answered.  “My father is Italian and my mother is a mix of Eastern and Northern European.”

“But you have a beautiful Asian face,” Lee said, confused.

“I was adopted from China,” Vera answered.  Immediately after the words left , she froze.  She had never revealed that to anyone before, not even to the few friends with whom she had lost contact after graduating high school.  What had allowed her to give out that information to a total stranger?  She frowned.  Something was not right about him.  She felt far too comfortable around him.

The bartender returned with her food.  “I’m sorry, something came up,” she told him.  “Could you wrap it up to go, please?”

“Of course, miss,” he said as he left.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –“ Lee began, but Vera stood.

“It was nice to meet you, Mr. Lee,” she said stiffly.  “I hope you enjoy your time here.”  Then she walked to the cashier, took her food, paid, and left.

More nervous than she had been in a long time, Vera started coughing before she was halfway home.  By the time she reached her apartment building and entered the elevator, she was quite out of breath.  She entered her home, closed the door firmly behind her, and locked the door.  Revan, who had been sleeping on her open textbook, probably just to annoy her, perked up, jumped off, and ran to meet her.  Setting her food down, she picked him up and his silky back, attempting to calm herself down.  It felt to her as if all of the anxiety she should have been feeling with that stranger, Lee, next to her was piling down on her now.  Shaken, Vera set Revan down, washed her hands and prepared to eat.  When she had finished and cleaned up, she went into her bedroom, changed into her pajamas, made sure that the front door was locked and that all the blinds were completely down, took her textbook, and settled into bed.  She finished her reading for the night, clicked her tongue for Revan, and turned off her lamp.  Just before she fell into a restless sleep, she began to remember her dream from that afternoon, with the three strange boys who all had two names.  She also half-realized that two of the boys (specifically which ones she could not remember) had been the two strangers who had approached her that day.  But before that could register in her drowsy mind, she fell asleep, and the next morning, she remembered nothing.

~*\_/*~

“I think we scared her more than we helped remember anything,” Daesung said mournfully as he returned from the small bar and grill to which he and his friends had trailed the girl, Vera.

“Well, at least we know why she’s got a European name and isn’t on the Asian continent when she’s clearly the same little princess that we remember,” Jiyong, better known as G-Dragon, said optimistically.

“Adopted,” mused Youngbae, better known as Taeyang or SOL.  “Well, I guess we can’t say that the world-universe-multiverse isn’t an interesting place.”

“This time she’s adopted and is on a different continent, another time she’s dying before we can even get to her,” the older Seunghyun, better known as T.O.P, said.  “This definitely isn’t the worst it could be.”

“And it won’t be because I’m lucky,” the younger Seunghyun, better known as Seungri, said cheerfully.  “We’re not gonna lose her, not this time.”

“It’s funny, you know?” Youngbae remarked.  “In the first cycles that I can remember, before we went through that superhero cycle and we got our powers, and before Jeonghye learned from that witch woman and gained her magic, she was always the one finding us, helping us remember, and bringing us together.  Now we’re the ones always finding her.”

“Maybe it’s because of the way our relationship with her has developed over the life cycles?” suggested Daesung.  “I can see that they’ve definitely changed from the first cycle that I can remember.  We’re so much closer now, so much so that this time we’re a famous band whose members were able to find each other, instead of being born together as just a bunch of school kids in a setting comparatively futuristic to this one, or a bunch of farm boys in ancient Korea.”

“Whatever it is, this time we’re going to save her,” Jiyong vowed.  “No more getting caught in a crossfire, being separated by prison bars, or dying prematurely in a hospital.  We’ll help her remember in time and hopefully end this stupid cycle of tragic circumstances and death.”

“To a peaceful end,” said Seunghyun.

“To a peaceful end,” the others echoed.

Hello, and welcome to my first story!  Please enjoy it!  If you have any comments, constructive criticism, or words of encouragement for me, please leave them for me.  I am open to almost everything except pointless flames.

Just as a note, I’m going to distinguish between T.O.P and Seungri (because they both have the same Romanized name and I’m probably going to refer more to BIG BANG by their birth names than by the stage names) by calling T.O.P Seunghyun and Seungri Seungri.

Highlight the empty space if you're dying to know ahead of time by whom you were approached, or if you want to check your guess.

The first boy you were approached by was Seungri, and the second was Daesung.

Highlight the empty space if you're dying to know ahead of time what powers you and BIG BANG have so that you can decide if you want to stick with this story or not.

BIG BANG's powers are somewhat derived from their stage names.  G-Dragon has fire, and in some reincarnation cycles has ended up with dragon wings, though not in this cycle.  T.O.P is strong, fast, and durable.  Taeyang/SOL has light and energy.  Daesung/D-Lite can read emotions and control them to an extent.  Seungri/VI is lucky and can affect luck, because VI stands for victory.  You are a spell-user.  In a previous cycle, you were taught by a witch how to use spells, mix potions, and do other external magic (as opposed to internal magic like BIG BANG).  Of course, your power relies completely on you being able to remember the spells and rituals.

Also, I apologize in advance – I’m a pretty busy person, with school and such (sometimes I wonder why I can’t just be an academic slacker and have more fun), so updates to this story will probably be few and far between.