Paradise is always where love dwells.

Name: Ritsu Momoiro
Age: 19
Gender: Female
Race: Faerie/Dragoon
Eye Color: Pink
Hair Color: Dark pink with lighter pink highlights
Skin Color: White
Height: 4'5.5"
Weight: 110#
Personality: Bubbly, silly, cute, but secretly much more serious than she lets on

Name: Oakley
Age: 152
Gender: Male
Race: Yowie
Hair Color: dirty blonde
Eye Color: Brown
Skin Color: Tan
Height: 6'8"
Weight: 250#
Personality: easy going, likes to inimidate other vampires, manly

The tall man shifted his back pack on his shoulder and checked the map again. Sure enough this was the place he'd been directed to. He stepped up the front stairs and rang the bell.

Ajax immediately looked up from his newspaper when he heard the doorbell. It was either a delivery or a newcomer, because no one else ever rang the bell, they just let themselves in. Not wanting to leave whoever it was waiting, and not wanting to give Ronnie the opportunity to answer the door for him again, he stopped in the middle of his article and went to the door.

He tugged on the handle of the large wooden door and it opened a lot more easily than one would think that it would. He looked up at the tall man standing on his doorstep and noted the pack that he was carrying. Definitely not a deliveryman, so he must be a newcomer, Ajax thought to himself. He got a strange vibe from this one. He could almost always tell when someone wasn't human, and this man most definitely wasn't. He couldn't, however, tell just what he was. He felt almost like a vampire, but not quite.

"Hello," Ajax said, greeting the stranger. "Are you, perhaps, looking far a place to stay?"

"Hello mate. I was just wondering if I was in the right place. A bloke told me that Ajax's cathedral is a place for abnormals to stay, is this the place?" he asked, with a very thick Australian accent.

Ajax smiled warmly and held his hand out for the stranger to shake. "You've got a reliable source, whoever they are. I am Ajax and yes, this is, indeed, the place."

"Great! M' Oakley. Nice to meet you sheila." He grinned. "I hail from the land down unda."

Ajax rolled his eyes, not bothering to correct the man. He'd figure it out eventually. "Well, come on in and make yourself at home. You have your choice of rooms on any of the higher floors. The occupied ones will be marked. The rest of our residents are around here somewhere. Dinner will be served promptly at eight." He paused a moment and grinned, showing his fangs. "Try not to get lost."

"Yowie don't get lost sheila." Oakley countered "but thanks for the invite. I'll be sure to be on time." He stepped inside.

Ajax headed back to the kitchen to finish reading the paper, trusting that Oakley could find his way around easily enough. And if he were to get lost, Ajax knew that he could find the man easily. He always knew where people were in his cathedral. After several hundred years of living in the place, he was very much in tune with the building and it's residents.

Oakley wandered around the upstairs for a little while until he picked out a room. He left his stuff by the bed and set out to explore some more.

A short girl with pink hair barreled down the hallway towards him, giggling madly, with a huge blonde dog running after her, and plowed into him with a cute little "oof!"

"Ouch! Sorry, mister!" She said, grinning cutely up at him.

The dog slid to a hasty stop in front of them wagging its tail, then suddenly turned into a tall blonde boy. "Oh, hey there, bra! You new here or sumthin'? 'S always gnarly ta have new guys! I'm Ronnie, by the by, and this little chickie 'ere is Ritsu." Ritsu bounced happily at the mention of her name and waved enthusiastically at the tall new guy.

"Hiiiii!"

"Its quite all right. I'm sturdy. I'm more worried about the lil' shiela, Ritsu, is it? Are you alright?" Oakly asked politely, ignoring the fact that Ronnie called him Bra, which was the female equivalent of bro. "You didn't hurt yourself running into me did you?"

Ritsu giggled and shook her head. "I'm fine, Mister! Are you gonna be staying here now?"

"What's ya name, dude?" Ronnie asked, cocking his head to the side and grinning like an idiot.

"Yeah. I'm Oakley. I come form Aussie. So what kind of abnormals are the two of you mates?" He asked

"Abnorma-?" Ronnie began, then grinned as he got it. "Oh! You mean non-humans. I'm a werewolf! And this one here, she's a-"

"I'm a dragon-faerie! And an alien!" She made 'alien noises' at him, then collapsed on the floor in a fit of giggles.

"... Did she hit her head when she ran into me?" Oakley asked Ronnie.

"Nope! That's how she is, Bra," Ronnie said with a grin.

Between bursts of giggles, Ritsu managed to squeak out, "But I really am an alien!"

Oakely chuckled. "Alright. I believe you." He smiled. "I'm a Yowie."

Ritsu looked up at him with wide, attentive eyes, as if expecting to hear a story. "A Yowie? Whassat?" she asked eagerly, stopping mid-giggle to attach herself to his pant leg. She really did go out of her way to be as utterly adorable as she could manage.

"A yowie is a kind of vampire found only in Australia." Oakley looked thoughtful. "Here, I'll show you"

He tugged his loose brown shirt up over his head and as they watched his skin changed to a camouflage of red browns, grays, and rusts. His muscles intensified, his brown eyes turned to red, and his canine teeth grew long and curved down past his chin with a lethal looking needle sharp point. This was nicely accented by the fact he was almost 7 feet tall.

"This is a yowie."

Rather than being intimidated, or even frightened, as any normal people would, the duo looked up at Oakley in awe and wonder. They were most certainly not normal people.

Ronnie was the first to break the stunned silence. "Woah, Bro! That is fucking awesome!" He stared blatantly at the (now seven feet tall) man, amazed, impressed, and more than a little bit jealous. He couldn't even imagine being as strong as Oakley looked. How would that kind of strength and power effect his skateboarding, or his surfing? Not to mention all the other sports he took part in, like basketball and volleyball. He was willing to bet that Oakley killed in those sports, maybe even literally.

Ritsu, on the other hand, wasn't impressed or jealous, but she was most certainly amazed. She'd never seen anyone transform like that. Sure, Ronnie changed from a boy to a wolf, but that was no big deal compared to what she'd just watched Oakley do. She decided, then and there, that she had to be in love with someone that awesome. That was just how her mind worked. "Wow!" she exclaimed, "That's so cooool~!"

Oakley bared his fangs in a grin. "I'm glad you think so. Its a refreshing change from the usual bowel evacuations and screams" He chuckled. He slowly transformed back, tugging the shirt back over his head.

"So what do the two of you do?"

Ronnie ran a hand back through his hair (a nervous tic of his) and grinned sheepishly. "Nothin' as cool as that, bro. I do sports, mostly. If it involves a ball or a puck, I can play it; if it's got wheels or floats in the water, I can ride it."

Ritsu fluttered in circles around him, grinning widely as she chattered. "I like to play! I play videogames, and I play sports with Ronnie sometimes. Oooh, and I like to color! I like to cook, too, but I'm not allowed."

"And why aren't you allowed to cook?" Oakley asked "You blow up stuff or something?"