Side Effects Include....

Karma was giggling like mad.

She stood in the middle of the portriat room, her eyes going from one moving picture to the other. The room was deathly silent - they'd learned long ago not to talk to her - but the girl took no notice. Instead, she tossed a dagger up and down in one hand, her eyes flickering from one portriat to the next. A half-filled water bottle was in other hand, her knapsack by the doorway. The portraits around her were eyeing both the water and the backpack.

'I'm going to need a voleenteer." Karma said between giggles. "Any takers? ...No?" She pouted slightly at the portraits around her. "None of you?"

She let out a long suffering sigh and went to her bag, digging inside until she pulled out a large scroll. When she unravelled it, it proved to be scribbled on to the point of uninteligibility, except for a large rectangular blank space.

Everyone knew the magic was in the frame.

"Come on, guys." She said, completely straightfaced. "I was raised by portraits, don't you think I know how to take care-" she erupted into giggles again, swallowing down a swig of potion.

Aragorn felt naked. He hadn't been able to feel any of Karma's emotions all day. It had been weird all through break, their connection had been on and off all through it. It was driving him mad when he had time to think about it. Now that he didn't have classes to go to, he was even more aware of the broken link between them. It scared him, if only a little, to think that something was going wrong with Karma.

He had been sitting in the common room for a few hours debating on what to do when he finally decided it. He jumped out of the comfortable arm chair and hurried out of the commonroom, pushing past mulitple startled kids that came in. He ran through out the school, checking any open doors and anywhere he thought would be a good place for Karma to be. It wasn't storming so she wouldn't be cowering in a corner somewhere, otherwise he-- No he wouldn't. That was a stupid thought.

He raced down to the stairs, almost knocking another boy over as he did, and hit the ground floor hard. He looked around cautiously and wondered where to look first. There were only so many places on the first floor. He jogged over to the trophy room and took a good look around. Nothing, no one. He sighed and turned around, heading down towards the portrait room. Maybe she would be there.

"Karma?" Gorn called as he ran, looking inside the smaller rooms as he passed. He finally made it to the portrait room and almost went on until he saw her. There she was, acting extremely crazy. He stepped into the room, "Karma?"

Karma turned, eyebrows furrowing as she recognized his voice, the water-bottle dropping out of her hand. "Gorn?" But she hadn't smelled... She sniffed the air and frowned, not smelling any change. He could be anyone. She dropped the scroll back into her backpack - earning a collective sigh of relief from the portraits she was back to ignoring - and made her way over to him, frowning up at him.

She sniffed at him again, wrapping her arms around his waist and putting her nose against his neck. There was no desire to bite, no scent of ownership... nothing. With growing distress she checked her bonds, not just to the boy in front of her, but with all of them, Roman-the-German, Pretty boy Julian, her ever-fading ownership of Wolfiebear Tyty... They were all just...

Gone.

"Gorn?" She asked again, her voice starting to fill with panic. "You don't smell mine." Quite unexpectedly, she began to giggle, unable to stop for a full minute.

Aragorn took a glance at the portraits with a tiny fleeting smile before his attention was back on Karma. She was coming closer to him and it was making him just a little bit nervous in this state. He looked down at her with a hard, sort of stern gaze as she stood in front of him. It disappeared though, as it usually would, when she touched him. He put his hands on her gently and curled into her instinctively as his relief washed away the worry bit by bit. Maybe she was really okay and it wasn't going to be so bad. But he still couldn't feel anything.

He pulled away at her hysterical laugh, eyes wide as he watched her, "Karma? What have you been doing? I can't feel you anymore."

Karma frowned up at him again as the giggles subsided, blinking. "I dunno." She said, looking around the room. "I can't feel you either." She reached for him again, wrapping her arms around his waist once more. She felt more secure when she was touching him - like he actually existed, actually belonged to her. She sniffed at him again, a pout adorning her lips. "I can't feel any of you. Where have you gone?"

"It's been like this since break, what are you doing?" Aragorn asked, his arms sort of wrapping about her loosely as he attempted to relax. It was bad enough that she couldn't feel him, but she couldn't feel any of the others either, however many there were, and that was even worse.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes as he tried to think. What was he going to do? That connection kept him sane and without it, he was starting to get a little depressed and, yeah, insane. He opened his eyes and looked at her again, "We're there on regular days, I can feel you. But then days like today you're just gone."

Karma gazed up at the boy incomprehensibly, cocking her head to the side. "I'm only experimenting today." She shook her head, her eyes sweeping the room. The portraits all avoided her gaze, obviously fearful. "Hang on."

She stepped away from Aragorn, reaching into her bag and taking the scroll in her hand once more. She stepped to a strong looking man's portrait, the owner of which was sitting tall, trying to downplay the fear blossoming in her eyes.

"The magic's in the frame, you know." She said, eyes sweeping the entire picture. "How many other frames do you have?" The portrait stayed silent, eyeing her as she flicked her wrist, drawing a thin blade from a pocket of air around her wrist. "No reply? I'll take that as a none." The onyx blade slid between the picture and the frame, and slowly, delicately, Karma de-framed him, the portrait seeming to lose a bit of color as she did so.

"That wasn't so bad, eh?" She asked, hooking her fingers around the edge of the frame and hoisting it up and off the front of the portrait. She caught the paper the portrait was drawn on, sliding it into the perfectly sized place on her scroll. Blowing softly, she attached the two pages by magic, a simple binding spell, before rolling the man away and slipping it back into her backpack.

She pulled out a replacement portrait - one from her vaults, same size and shape, and slid it into the spot the man had been, sliding the frame over it. The women in the picture came to life with a collective gasp of air, color filling the picture behind them.

"You know what to do." Karma intoned. The women in the portrait all nodded separately, sliding in different directions out of the portrait and into the portraits around them, spreading throughout the room in mere seconds, and they'd be throughout the castle in minutes.

Karma smiled and hoisted her bag on her shoulder, scooping up the waterbottle and taking a swig. Another bout of giggles almost took her, but she swallowed them down with more potion.

"Oh. Hey Gorny. You're still here." She said blankly as she came to a stop before him. She furrowed her eyebrows at him, eyeing him warily. "I can't feel you. It's weird. Do something about it." Then she brushed past him and was gone, somewhere he couldn't follow.