89 SE, a bar on Omega Colony
Niki had to wonder how it was that the people she was with at the time, particularly her Master, got anything done. Not because they weren't effective, because they were... but because they didn't seem to be a cohesive enough group to actually get anything done. Not if one of them was off sleeping with the enemy, another was ready to kill half of them, and pretty much everyone else was busy trying to calm the upset one down, so that she, who up until the day before they hadn't even trusted enough to let out of her room (more like a cell), was the one they called on to chaperone their last member as he went out and got drunk.
Of course, her opinions of the group weren't helped by the fact that she did not want to be doing this. She didn't want to be setting foot inside a bar anytime soon, not to drink, not to look for guys (as Jay always used to do), and certainly not to keep Rai out of trouble. But, her Master had asked her to do it... and she couldn't really refuse him, so there she was, sitting in the far corner of the dimly lit room, watching the drunk people and trying not to draw any attention whatsoever, since almost all of it would be of the unwanted sort.
And there Rai was, in the middle of the crowd, drink in hand. He'd already downed more than Niki would think was even possible (without blacking out immediately afterward, that is), and he showed no signs of stopping. For that matter, he didn't even seem all that drunk, just a little happy, and a little more affectionate to every single male around him. (He wasn't ignoring the women... instead he was talking just as animatedly to all of them, but there was still the definite feeling that he had absolutely no interest in anything more than what was already going on when it came to them, a feeling that was definitely not present with the guys.) And the crowd around him was huge.
The most interesting part of it was that he seemed to know everyone around him. It could have just been the alcohol in him talking, but he was acting like each and every one of the people surrounding him was his best friend. If any of them were strangers, which was a definite possibility in Niki's mind, he certainly didn't care, and the others didn't seem to mind either. In fact, the entire room seemed to be in a good mood, and the only reason Niki could see for it was Rai's presence, as they were all too busy paying attention to him to bother with the things they had been doing before. And it was more than a little creepy.
But the bartender seemed happy. He had recognized Rai the moment he stepped through the door, waving to the boy and obviously not caring that Rai couldn't possibly be old enough to make the drinking age on the colony (which Niki had discovered, after some searching, was eighteen, same as the driving age and the age of legal adulthood). The beer and liquor were still flowing freely, particularly as people offered Rai free drinks, and even sometimes rounds on them, just because they felt like it. As far as Niki could tell, Rai hadn't had to buy more than one or two of his own drinks so far, and he seemed to be enjoying that particular bit more than everything else.
And everything continued in that happy, pleasant (though drunk) way for a while... until it just suddenly fell apart. Later on Niki realized that she should have been able to feel the tension underlying the happiness long before it broke out like it did, but she had been too busy trying to avoid notice that she had stopped paying attention to anything but the outward appearance of the scene, and that was happy. It happened very suddenly, though it seemed after the fact that the bartender had been expecting it the whole time, just that he didn't know when it would happen, and until it did, the pleasant atmosphere had been too good of a thing to give up.
It started out innocently enough. Two of the women in the crowd, both of them stunningly gorgeous, the kind of women that most girls would kill to look like, both decided that Rai was watching them more than anyone else in the crowd, despite the fact that he was quite clearly not paying attention to the women in the way that they imagined he was watching them. And both women decided to act on that feeling of theirs, by trying to get closer. This didn't bother Rai... mostly because neither one ever got close enough for him to notice compared to the rest of the people crowded around him.
They tried, but before they could, both of the women noticed each other at the same time, and each one figured out immediately that the other was trying to do the same thing that she was, get closer to Rai. This didn't sit well with either one, and before anyone really realized what was going on, both women had launched themselves at each other and were having a rather splendid looking catfight. This was enough to catch Rai's attention, as well as the rest of the crowd, and he turned to stare at the two women who were doing their best trying to rip each other's throats out as he watched. Of course, neither noticed, as both were too busy paying attention to each other to care, even if it meant that the object of their desire, Rai, was staring at them in oddly comprehending, for how drunk he was that is, shock.
The bartender wasted no time in sending a pair of bouncers into the crowd to try and separate the two women. This seemed to be exactly what he had been expecting, and he moved like he had done this before, many, many times. But still, even before the two insanely huge men could move from their spots by the door, Niki realized that this would probably be a good time to use her magic. That way the bouncers wouldn't have to fight their way through the crowd and restrain the women, which would just end up in the women, and possibly other people, getting more hurt. Instead, Niki could simply wrap a bit of her magic around each woman and pull, just like she had before when it was Rai, Adan, and Markus trying to kill each other rather than a couple of strangers.
So she did so, staying put in her little corner and still trying to look as unassuming and boring as she possibly could. She pretty much expected the reaction from the crowd, one of shock and surprise as the two women went flying up and backwards, without hitting anyone else, seemingly for no reason. Rai looked over at Niki for a moment, a thoughtful look on his face, but he almost immediately turned back to the crowd when she raised a single finger to her lips and made a "shhhh!" sound that he couldn't have heard, but at least should have been able to figure out that she was doing.
The women, understandably, struggled against their invisible bonds. And that put a strain on Niki's magic, forcing her to continue to concentrate on the two of them as the crowd gawked up at them. Finally, she got tired of holding them, especially seeing as they continued to spit and hiss obscenities at each other even as they hung there in the middle of the air, so she carefully moved each one over to a bouncer and held them there in front of the large men. When the two bouncers realized exactly what was going on, they took hold of the women, and Niki released the magic around them with a soft sigh of relief.
Now that the women were back on the ground, they continued to struggle just as hard, but both of the bouncers were well suited for their jobs and had no trouble keeping the smaller women in check. The hush that had fallen over the crowd as they stared up at the floating women quickly disappeared to be replaced by the murmur of conversation, which quickly escalated until it had regained the level of noise from before the fight as if nothing had happened. Rai, particularly, acted as if nothing had happened, and went back to flirting with the young man standing just to his right.
But, one thing had changed. The bartender had a worried look on his face, and now that Niki was paying attention to the crowd again, she could feel the tension. It was an almost living thing, so strong that it almost felt like it couldn't be natural. And it both centered around and originated from Rai, with such strength that Niki would have sworn that it was something akin to her own magic, if she didn't know better.
Niki was just considering trying to push her way through the crowd to get to Rai and suggest that they leave when the bartender pulled one of his employees from off of the floor, stuck him behind the bar, and then made his way out from behind the bar and across the room to Niki's corner. She watched the man, wondering if perhaps he had realized that she was responsible for the breakup of the fight just moments earlier. She considered bolting, not watching to be confronted about something as unnatural (to most people) as her magic, but before she could move, the man reached her, paused in front of her, and cleared his throat rather noisily. Niki looked at him with a questioning thought, trying to hide her fright, and he took that as leave to speak.
"You came in with Rai tonight, right?" he asked. She nodded, but didn't quite trust her voice to speak for her at the moment. "You his keeper for the night?"
"Keeper?" she asked, and the man swore under his breath.
"Aw, shit, don't tell me you aren't!" he groaned. Then, under his breath, he added, "I told him, he doesn't come in without a keeper! Damned brat!"
"Well, I was sent with him tonight to keep him out of trouble," she said. "Is that what you mean by keeper?"
He sighed in relief, and then wiped a towel across his forehead. "Yeah, that's what Rai's keeper does," he said. "I figured you were new, but I thought someone would have at least explained things to you."
"They didn't really have time," she said, forcing a smile onto her face.
"Ah, well..." the bartender said. "Seeing as you're his keeper tonight, could you maybe try to get him to leave? It may seem like things are going well again now that those women've been taken care of, but it'll happen again. I've seen it before. And if the wrong person actually gets to him there'll be bigger problems."
"Oh?" Niki asked.
"Well, he doesn't really seem to mind the attention and all," the man said. "Most of the time. But sometimes there's someone who just rubs him the wrong way or something, and then I end up having to send people away from the bar in ambulances, which is not good for business. So, if you could get him out of here before it gets any worse, it'd be much appreciated."
"I'll try," Niki said, though she wasn't quite sure if she would actually be able to get to Rai, let alone convince him to leave the bar.
"Thanks much," the bartender said, and with that, he headed back to relieve his fill in, who couldn't have been too much older than Rai was, though Niki figured he was at least of legal age.
And that left Niki to go try and force her way through the crowd. Luckily for her, her small size came in handy, for once, and she was able to squeeze through the gaps between people. It only took her about a minute to get through the people to the center where Rai was, though by the time she was there next to him, at least three other people, one of whom was male, were eyeing her suspiciously, probably with thoughts of envy and anger in mind.
"Hey, it's Niki!" Rai called out happily when she placed a hand lightly on his arm to get his attention. "How's it going? You have enough to drink?"
"I don't need any," she said simply, which earned her a frown from the smiling pretty boy.
"Aw, c'mon!" he exclaimed. "You can't come here without having something to drink! It's against the rules! Here, have some of mine..." He pushed a beer in her face, which she quickly pushed back, and then summoned a bit of magic to keep the almost full drink from sloshing over the sides of the mug it was in.
"Rai, I think it's about time for us to leave here," she said.
"But, the night's just started!" he protested.
"Please, Rai?" she asked, not quite sure how she would get him to leave if he didn't agree with her. She could always just wrap a bit of magic around him and drag him out of the building, and she could even make it look like she was just dragging him with her strength, which at least wouldn't let the crowd around them know that she was using any sort of magic, just that she was much stronger than she looked. But she didn't want to have to do that if she didn't have to.
Surprisingly enough, instead of protesting again, Rai just pouted, and then hung his head. "Fine... if you say so," he muttered. He handed his beer to the same guy he had been flirting with just a few moments earlier, and then gave a cheerful wave to the crowd.
"Well, Niki here says it's time to go!" he announced brightly. "So I guess that's it for tonight! Bai bai everyone, it's been a blast!" And then he took Niki's hand and started making his way toward the door. Oddly enough, no one tried to stop the two of them from leaving, and as they went through the doorway, Niki looked back to get a grateful wave from the bartender.
"Hmmmmm..." Rai said once they were out on the street. "Where to next?"
Niki choked. "Next?" she squeaked. "But... the bartender just asked me to get you out? Don't you think you've had enough for one night?"
"No way!" Rai exclaimed, grinning at Niki. "The night's still young, and I've got a long way to go before I've had too much. I figured Jii asked you to get me out. He does all the time. So that means it's time for the next place!"
Niki looked at Rai with a look of despair on her face. He seemed to ignore this and just stood there on the sidewalk, a thoughtful look on his face. Finally, after a moment, he sighed, and then turned to Niki with a radiant smile on his face.
"Well, since this is your first time along with me, I'll go easy on you!" he said, still beaming. "Flanner almost never throws me out, so we'll go there next. That way you probably won't have to do anything else for the rest of the night. That good with you?"
"I'd rather just go back..." Niki said.
"Not an option!" Rai chirped.
"Then I guess so..." she said, hanging her head as Rai whooped, grabbed her hand, and started dragging her down the street toward another bar.
89 SE, inside The Pot
Niki was not prepared for the next place Rai took her too. As they arrived in front of the building, Rai announced that they were at "The Pot," which Niki realized was short for "The Pot of Gold" after looking at the sign on the door. Neither one seemed like a very appealing name for a bar to her. The full name seemed a little... odd, even though she had a feeling it was referring to the leprechaun's pot of gold that lay at the end of the rainbow, and leprechauns were Irish... and known for a tendency to drink. At least, Niki thought they were. But just "The Pot" seemed... well... dumpy.
"We're going here?" Niki asked, and Rai turned to beam at her again.
"Yeah, this place is great!" he exclaimed. "The guy who runs the place is called Flanner. He's really cool, and he's only thrown me out a couple times. The people here don't go all crazy like they do at other bars. It is a bit expensive, though." He frowned at the last one, but still shrugged, and reached for the door.
Inside it was surprisingly well lit, especially compared to the image of bars that Niki had had all her life. Every face in the room turned to face them as they walked through the door, and Niki watched as smiles broke out on the faces of the majority of the people there. Pretty much everyone seemed to recognize Rai, just as they had before, but Niki had the feeling that, unlike in the last bar, everyone there did know Rai quite well. And then, as Rai was pulling her through the entryway, a small, seemingly ageless red headed, and red bearded man approached them.
He practically oozed magic, something that Niki noticed right away, even though she wasn't really trying to feel anything from anyone around her. Not only that, but he was old, something that she realized almost immediately after feeling his magic. And as she realized that, she sent out a slight feeler into the room, and found that almost every single person in the room had magic of some sort, and that the majority of them felt distinctly inhuman.
"Hey, Rai," the small man, who wasn't too much larger than Rai was, said as he approached them. "You brought someone new today."
"Yeah," he said. "Jhade sent her. "The others are a little busy trying to keep Elie from killing everyone." The small man grinned at these words, but he seemed to believe every one of them. Which, Niki thought, was probably true, as he seemed to know Rai quite well, and just from what Niki had seen, he probably knew all of the others just as well. "So I have Niki here tonight. We gotta be nice to her 'cause she's new, ne?"
"Of course," the small man said, again grinning.
And then, before Niki could react, Rai ran off, away from her and the small man, who she had since assumed was the Flanner Rai had mentioned. He joined the people at the bar, and very quickly had a drink in hand. Niki moved to slink off to a corner where she could just watch the room, particularly Rai. But before she could move, Flanner spoke.
"So... what're you?" he asked in a casual tone. Niki stared at him in confusion.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"What species are you?" he asked. "Since I can tell you're not human."
Niki froze, and then tried to stammer out something along the lives of "but of course I'm human..." But before she could even finish, he placed one weathered finger against her lips and smiled. Then he shook his head.
"Yeah, yeah... you don't want to admit it," he said. "None of us do, even now that times are getting more accepting of our kinds. But you're safe here. I run a safe place for all kinds here. So, what's your leaning?"
"...I'm a genie," she said softly, which caused Flanner to break into a sheepish smile.
"Shoulda realized that," he said. "You got way too much power for anything else, except maybe a god. And we don't get gods here." Niki wasn't sure how to respond to this. She wasn't really sure if she was comfortable with telling Flanner what she was. And then, after a bit of tense silence, he spoke up again.
"You don't need to worry about Rai here," he said. "His chaos only really affects my custom when he's so far gone it's dangerous for him, and I won't let him get that bad here. If you like, you can join some of your own kind. They have the inner room tonight, so you're in luck."
"I..." Niki said. She wasn't sure whether she liked the idea of being around other genies or not. She hadn't had very much to do with her own kind, except for Jay and Aunt Kira, and she wasn't sure how to act. Especially after being out of it for so long.
But Flanner would have none of that. "Go on!" he said encouragingly. "Even if you don't know 'em and you're maybe even fresh from Earth, it's always nice to touch base with your own, don't you think?"
"I, uh... guess so..." Niki said.
"Besides, they'll kill me... or as good as... when they find out I had one of them in and didn't introduce her," he said, smiling. Then, he started toward a door on the other side of the room. "This way."
She followed him, and he led her to the door, and then into a room. There were five people in the room, two female and three male, all of whom turned to the door as one when it opened. They all looked young, even one who looked like he couldn't have been too much older than twelve, but Niki knew, from experience, that age was not something one could judge by appearance for her kind. And they were her kind; even if she hadn't felt the magic coming from them, so far she hadn't met any other peoples who had as much of a tendency toward odd shades of hair and eyes as her own, as evidenced by her own hair.
It was the youngest looking one, the boy who didn't look a day over twelve, who caught her eye first, even though he had wedged himself into the far corner of the room and was almost scowling at the two newcomers. He was small, probably not too much bigger than Niki herself, with bright, flame red hair in a loose tail that went at least partway down his back. His eyes, when they met Niki's briefly, were bright orange to go with the hair, and even more than the hair, they reminded her of flames.
"What's this?" one of the guys, who looked maybe twenty years old, asked. He had hair and eyes both in a flat, non-reflective black, and the palest skin that Niki had ever seen, not to mention more pieces of metal through various parts of his face than Niki thought could ever be comfortable. But, despite that, which would have made any other person look vaguely creepy, he was smiling, and actually looked rather nice.
"New blood," the older looking of the girls, around twenty as well, said. She was beautiful, with short golden blonde hair and eyes a deep blue-violet color that Niki was pretty sure wasn't actually possible without magic. "Isn't she?" she asked as she turned to Flanner.
Flanner nodded. "Rai's latest keeper. Figured I should bring her in here with her own."
"Cool," the oldest looking of the guys, around twenty-five, said. He had long white hair, which made him look older than his face suggested, and warm brown eyes, covered by a pair of glasses that almost made him look scholarly. "Leave her here, will ya?"
"What if I don't want to stay?" Niki asked softly.
"But it's boring out there," the other girl said. She was dressed flashily, but looked almost more like a boy than a girl. Her hair was shoulder length and almost curly, in a shade of bright, electric blue that clashed horridly with her outfit, not that she seemed to care. And her eyes... were white. The irises almost blended into the whites, until Niki looked closer, and it was more than a little disconcerting to look at. "You can be yourself in here. Not really supposed to out there, even if most everyone else is something weird as well."
"And if you're worried 'bout Rai-rai," the first guy added, "he'll be fine. Flanner'll make sure he doesn't drive the room crazy. And if he starts getting in too far he'll tell you right away, no doubt. No one wants Rai-rai's chaos rampant today, 'specially not Flanner, since he has to clean up after."
"Come on in, sit down," the blonde girl said. "We only bite when asked."
"Zessa!" the first guy protested, as Niki turned bright red. The problem was, Jay had said something much the same once while flirting jokingly (though also half seriously) with a rather straight-laced classmate once, and he had meant it literally... in a sexual way. That was what came to mind when the girl said that. And from the guy's tone of voice, that was also what came to his mind.
The older looking girl smirked. "Well, it's true, isn't it?" she asked. All she received from the others was silence, and after a pause she smiled at Niki. "Aw, just come on in..."
Niki nodded and stepped into the room. As she stepped forward, Flanner took his leave. The door closed behind Niki, and the moment it was mostly shut, so that no one outside of the room could see in, both the younger looking girl and the first guy rose into the air, sitting on "nothing" using their magic. This caused the youngest guy to stare at them and shake his head with a slightly disappointed expression on his face, but no one really seemed to pay attention to him when he did this.
"Introductions first!" the second guy said. "It's much easier when everyone knows everyone else's names. I'll even start. I'm Wal. There's more to it, but it's not important."
"Zessa Trenten," the blonde girl said. "It's a variation on Jessica, but my mom was a little loopy."
"And you're not?" the first guy asked.
"I don't have a daughter named Zessa, now do I?" she retorted.
"No, you just named you son after your favorite activity," he said, grinning. "Drop the s sound and you get Seck, though the spelling's a little funky." He turned to Niki. "Which is me. She's my mom, but we stopped thinking about that kind of stuff long ago."
"I'm Charity," the younger looking girl said. "It's a name given to me by my first Master... unfortunately it stuck. I'm not sure how he got that to work, but I can't even find a single paper that still lists me with my original name. I'm still getting used to it." She smiled, but it was a forced, very strained, smile. "Call me Char, please."
"And he's Drake," Seck said, pointing over at the guy who looked like he was twelve at most. He turned to stare at Niki, still silent, but she could sense a sort of regard from him, and finally he bowed his head slightly and smiled. "He doesn't say much," Seck continued.
"So, what's your name, now that you know ours?" Zessa asked. "And are you native to the area, or here on business?"
"Or both?" Wal added.
"Business?" Niki asked.
"You know, wish granting," Seck said. "You in this area because your Master is? Or are you one of the lucky free ones?"
"Oh..." Niki said. "No, I mean, yes... I mean... I'm on "business." My Master lives here on the colony."
"You an Earther then?" Charity asked, but then immediately grimaced and shook her head. "Not any of us have anything against Earthers! I'm just curious. Or, are you maybe from a different colony? Anything other than Omega is cool... I've been living here all my life." She grimaced again, but this time the expression also held the hint of smile.
"I'm from Earth," Niki said.
"That makes two of us," Wal said, holding up his glass in a semi-toast, until he realized that Niki had not been given a drink. A guilty smile on his face, he made a second glass appear in his hand and held it out to Niki, still empty. "You want anything?" he asked.
Niki shook her head. "I don't drink," she said softly.
"Why?" Charity asked. "It's not like it's bad for us! And it feels good."
"And if you don't wanna deal with the bad parts, you don't have to," Seck chimed in.
"...I just don't want to," Niki said, her voice firm, but still soft. Charity's expression said that she didn't understand Niki's decision, and Seck seemed to agree, but after that no one asked again if she wanted a drink, and Wal waved the glass back into nothingness as suddenly as he had summoned it.
"So..." Seck said, a curious, but almost sneaky looking smile on his face. "How old are you?"
Niki stayed silent, not quite sure how she should answer. She still didn't feel as old as she should be, but she didn't exactly want to tell the others that she had been trapped in her bottle for the past two hundred plus years. Besides, they might have heard of her already, and then if she told them, they would know who she was. She wasn't sure she wanted that. So instead, she sat there and fidgeted, trying to come up with a way to refuse the question without seeming like she didn't want to get along.
And, yet again, she wished that Jay was there. He would know how to avoid the situation without making trouble. He always knew how to get along better than she did, and he was usually the one who did the talking. When she wasn't quite comfortable with a situation, he was the one who realized it, and then changed the situation with a smile before anyone else could quite figure out what was going on. But this time she was there, and not Jay, and she was the one who had to do everything, even if she didn't want to.
"Seck!" Zessa exclaimed. "You never ask that of a woman, particularly not one you just met. I'd think you would have learned that by now!"
Seck pouted, even though it didn't quite look the way Niki was sure he intended it. With his face, and the amount of metal that he had stuck through it, a pout just looked out of place... and weird. And Niki, it seemed, wasn't the only one who thought that way, since right after he started pouting, he gained laughs and chuckles from both Wal and Charity, which only caused him to pout more.
"I was just curious..." he said. "For all I know, she could be centuries older than I am. Or, she could be young enough to be my daughter. It doesn't matter either way, I just am a little curious."
"But it's still none of your business," a quiet voice said, from the corner of the room where Drake was sitting. It was the first time that he had said anything since Niki entered the room, and Niki was surprised as the softness of his voice. Well, actually his voice matched his young appearance, though she could hear a bit of hardness buried deep inside of that voice, like silk-covered steel.
Everyone in the room turned to stare at Drake. It seemed that his previous silence hadn't been very out of character for him, even if Niki wasn't quite used to being around people that quiet. Of course, she usually didn't talk much, but that was more because she just felt too uncomfortable or out of place to say anything. Drake had stayed silent the entire time, but the aura around him seemed to indicate that he chose to stay silent just because he felt no need to talk, not because he felt too awkward to say anything without making himself look bad.
"Drake?" Wal asked, a single eyebrow raised in a questioning look.
"You decided to join in on a conversation for once?" Seck asked. He sounded more than a little surprised, but also quite pleased, and almost proud.
"...Please remember than some of us have lived longer than we care to remember most of the time..." Drake said, his voice so low that the others all had to lean forward and stay absolutely silent just to hear his words. "If she doesn't care to tell us her age, that is her own choice, and we have no right to push her."
"Oh fine!" Seck exclaimed. Drake hadn't said all that much, but still Seck sounded like he had just been given a rather lengthy lecture. The tone of his voice said that he had given up, thought it didn't sound like he had put up all that much of a fight. Still, Niki felt relieved that she hadn't been forced to answer the question or come up with a way to avoid it herself.
After that, the others more or less avoided actually asking questions of Niki, except when she had already offered a bit of information on the topic already. She tried to simply avoid the things she didn't want to talk about, like her age, or how much experience she had at being a genie. Neither of the two subjects would actually seem strange to the others, when taken separately. It was when they were seen together that things would start to be odd. After all, Niki was fairly sure that there weren't many genies over two hundred years old who were only on their third Master ever... The fact that she was was probably just as odd as being over two hundred years old, but only having lived a little over sixteen of those years.
But, while Niki herself avoided talking about those two subjects, it seemed that they were the preferred subject of conversation, aside from gossip, both inside and outside of the genie community, in the group. It seemed to be more talking about Masters and less than pleasant wish granting experiences than age... but it was still a little too close to what Niki wanted to talk about, so the entire time she stayed silent and just listened to the others gripe about their Masters. Well, Drake stayed silent as well, and to Niki it seemed that it wasn't just because he didn't want to talk, but more because he didn't have anything to talk about, which made Niki start to wonder if the youngest looking one among them might be free.
The hottest topic at the moment seemed to be Charity's current Master. It turned out that she was young, barely even old enough to be granting wishes on her own despite how she looked, and that she was only on her second Master ever. She was from the colony, and had never been off of it, and she was more than a little worried that sometime in the near future she might find herself with an Earthbound Master rather than a colonial one, and that she might have to go somewhere where she would be completely lost. But, for the moment she was a little too busy worrying about the fiasco her first Master had been to worry about the future.
At one point during the conversation, Niki learned that Charity was about to finish up with her current Master, who she claimed was the most evil man in the universe, though Niki was pretty sure that nothing he had done (just from what she had heard) could compare to her first Master. The others were worried about her, since it had been a slip up of some sort (what sort Niki couldn't quite figure out) that had saddled her with a name that wasn't her own during her first wish granting experience. So, they were warning her about what she should and shouldn't do with her next Master. Luckily, she had been too busy thinking about doing it right to actually screw up the second time.
Here, Niki had a bit of advice to give. She didn't want to seem completely inexperienced, since technically she was a little farther along than Charity was, and so she felt that she had to at least contribute something to the conversation. So, when all of the others were coming up with a list of "do's" and "don'ts" for the rather flustered looking young genie, Niki decided it was her turn to chime in.
"Don't forget to tell him, or her, the rules..." Niki said quietly, which earned her looks from the entire room. They had grown accustomed to her silence, almost the same way that they seemed to expect it of Drake, since she had been quiet so long. But, more than the others, Niki noticed that Drake was watching her a little more than the others, and he almost seemed to have a thoughtful look on his face.
"I know that!" Charity exclaimed, with the sort of annoyed tone that reminded Niki of Jay whenever their parents or teachers would remind him of something that he had been told over and over again. "There's no way I would ever forget that one! Everyone knows what can happen when you slip up on the rules and cost your Master a wish, don't they?" She shot a look at the rest of the room, and the others all nodded in agreement. This confused Niki, but she wasn't about to ask what they were talking about, since that would reveal her woeful lack of knowledge about the current state of affairs. She was fairly sure about that.
"Yeah, don't wanna end up like that poor girl who got stuck in her object couple of centuries back," Wal commented. "Man, that would have to suck."
Niki could feel eyes on her, and when she looked up, she noticed that Drake was staring at her again. And not only that, but she had the sinking feeling that the "poor girl" that Wal had mentioned was her. Which would mean that she had become famous... or rather, infamous, in her own society as someone who had screwed up, and had been punished for it. And, if the other genies around her were any indication of the rest of genies in general, she was pitied for it. That just made her more determined not to mention how old she was or how much experience she had.
"It doesn't hurt to be reminded sometimes, though," Niki said, trying to force a genuine looking smile on her face. "It's when you stop remembering about that that you slip up and get in the same situation."
"True, that," Charity commented.
And then the conversation went on. Niki paid attention to it all, but in the end she didn't really remember much of it. They were just talking about Masters, and who was where, and who was close to maybe being freed, and who was dating who. And Niki understood very little of it, because she didn't know who anyone they were talking about was. The only genies she had known before getting trapped were Jay and Aunt Kira. Aunt Kira would be the only one who might still be around, and she didn't want to ask about her, since that might link her to the same "poor girl" that Wal had mentioned before. Which left her more or less clueless during the entire conversation, all the way up until the others started to wander away, some called back to Masters, and some just ready to call it a night.
Finally, at the end, it was just Niki and Drake. Niki decided, when she looked over at the younger looking genie, that it was about time for her to check up on Rai, who she hadn't heard anything from or about the whole time she was in that room with the others. Especially since Drake was still watching her, and still had a thoughtful, almost curious, look on his face. And even more so because just as she decided this, he decided to stand up and walk across the room to stand right in front of her.
She stood up quickly and tried to start moving for the door before it could look like she was only leaving because he was coming over toward her. She was just a little too late, though, and before she could get far, he was there in front of her, that same thoughtful and curious look shining in eyes far too old for as young a face as his.
"I've heard of another genie by the name of Niki..." he said, his voice just as quiet as before, but sounding a thousand times louder now that he was standing right near her. "My boyfriend used to talk about her all the time... not that I would mention that in front of the others." He smiled slightly. "Seck would never forgive me for that."
"W-why not?" Niki asked, hoping that maybe if she kept him busy answering questions, he would never get around to telling her about the other Niki he had heard of.
"Well, he gets jealous, even though that is very, very much in the past and will never happen again..." Drake said. "And even if he would forgive me for talking about someone that that person told me about, I doubt you would have appreciated it."
"...Why do you say that?" Niki asked, trying not to let him see how much she really didn't want to hear the answer.
"Probably for much the same reason that you didn't want to tell us how old you are," he said. "Though I think I can guess. Two hundred and forty-one, isn't it? I could tell you right to the day with a bit of time... but I doubt you need me to do that, right?"
"How did you know?"
"I remember when his birthday was," he said, his voice going a shade quieter and gaining a slightly wistful tone. "And you look just like him, except that you're a girl. He said that his sister's name was Niki, and pretty much everyone knows that his sister was the one who got trapped."
There was no doubt in Niki's mind who he was. She didn't look like Zack... not even slightly, and she didn't have any other brothers. "You knew Jay?" she asked, wishing that the room would stop spinning around her. One other question came to mind, and almost rolled right off her tongue before she could stop it. But, she caught it before it could come out, mostly because she was afraid that she already knew the answer, and she couldn't bear to hear it if it was the answer she thought it was.
"Yes, I did," he said, still softer. "Quite well."
"I never thought he would go for someone who looks like..." She trailed off, not wanting to offend the other by accident.
"Like a child?" Drake asked, and Niki nodded. "There was a time when I looked a little closer to my age... I spent most of that time with him. But times change, and I find that life is easier for me if I look young."
"Oh..." Niki said, and silence fell between them. Unlike earlier, this silence, particularly on Drake's side, was not an easy one. Until, finally Niki decided that it really was time for her to leave, and that she had one last question.
"Was he happy? When you were together?"
Drake looked at her with a slight smile on his face. "As happy as he could be without you, I guess. But then, he's a very good actor, so I'm not quite sure."
"Oh..." Niki said, not quite sure what to think of that. The Jay she had known wasn't a good actor. Or rather, he hadn't bothered to try. He pretty much always let people know how he felt, whether it would hurt them or not, because he just wasn't the kind of person who hid his feelings like that. But the Jay she had known was a Jay who had never been without her, and she could figure out about what he was feeling just by looking at how she felt without him.
But Drake, she was pretty sure, hadn't known Jay before she was gone. So he wouldn't be able to tell her how much he had changed since then. All he could tell her was how Jay was when he knew him, and possibly the answer to the question she didn't want to ask. So rather than stay and ask him more questions that would reveal a Jay different from the one she knew, she decided it was time to find Rai and leave. If the other genies had decided that it was time to call it a night, then it was probably a good idea to make Rai leave, even if she had no real authority to do so.
She just wasn't sure how to take her leave. Fortunately, Drake saved her the trouble. She was just about to say something vague and dissembling along the lines of "I probably should be leaving now..." when he cleared his throat quietly and spoke up one last time.
"You probably should go make your charge stop drinking right about now," he said. "He's starting to get dangerously far out into the deep end." She didn't have to ask how he knew that, since a quick mental scan of the room outer room showed that, though people were slowly starting to filter out as the night grew late, it was still mostly full of people, all of whom glowed at least a little with some sort of inner magic. And right in the middle was a fiercely bright, but wildly flickering presence that Niki just barely recognized as Rai. He didn't feel the same as he normally did, almost as if he were radiating magic, but it was still Rai underneath. Still, Niki had the feeling that much of the intense burst of magic coming from him was due to the amount of alcohol he had taken in, thus Drake's comment that she should probably stop him.
"I guess so..." she said, heading for the door with a slight wave of parting to the smaller genie.
She was barely even out the door when she ran into Flanner, almost literally. He seemed to be looking for her, as evidenced by the relieved smile that spread across his face when he looked up to see who he had nearly avoided colliding with. But then he didn't give Niki any time to react before he grabbed her and started pulling her toward the center of the room, where her less than mundane senses told her Rai was, even though she couldn't actually see through the press of people surrounding the boy.
"It's a good thing I ran into you," he commented as he pulled her through the people. "It's starting to get late, and Rai's about at his limit. I need to get people to start leaving, but most of those who are left are already under his influence and won't leave until he's gone."
"I was coming to get him anyway," Niki said, almost so quietly that she couldn't be heard above the voices and general noise of the people surrounding them. She then let the still relieved Flanner help her push through the throng of people surrounding Rai, until they were at the center of the room, facing the very drunk young man in the middle of the press of people.
The people around them started to look more than a little angry as Niki approached Rai, which reminded her of the incident in the first bar and made her slightly nervous. But, these people didn't look quite as angry as those in the first bar had been, and the feelings coming from them weren't quite as hostile, which calmed her a little. Still, she didn't like the thought of staying in the middle of the crowd with Rai, who seemed to be somehow the source of the tensions that had started when she reached him. Besides, being at that particular spot with Rai at that time involved being surrounded by people, and that had never been one of Niki's preferred ways to spend time, since it made her nervous just being around lots of people in the first place.
All of that spurred her to do something that she never thought she would do in any situation. Without saying a single word to Rai, she grabbed his hand and started to pull him toward the side of the crowd where she thought the exit to the building was. He protested, not surprisingly, but she ignored it, and when he tried to pull away, she just sent a small amount of her magic into her body and magnified her strength until she could continue and drag the larger (but not by too much) body of Rai along with her. It was a subtle magic move, but Niki had the feeling that many of the people in the room knew at least part of what she was doing, if not everything. They didn't stop her, though, so she didn't worry about it.
She didn't stop moving until she was outside, standing on the sidewalk with a less than pleased Rai staring at her with a sour expression on his face. An old man passing by whistled at the two of them and told them to get a room, which caused Niki to drop Rai's hand as fast as she possibly could and elicited a mutter about idiotic old men from Rai. But then, no longer restrained by the magically strong genie, Rai turned and tried to head back into the bar. This caused Niki to throw a quick bit of magic at the boy and hold him frozen in his tracks until she could get between him and the door to the Pot, except that she never managed to get there and instead stopped when he started talking.
"Aw, come on!" he exclaimed, pouting. "It was just getting good in there!"
"No," Niki said, putting her hands on her hips and staring Rai with a hopefully serious look on her face, even though he couldn't see her at the moment. "Mr. Flanner asked me to take you out, since he wants to start closing up. It would just cause problems for him if I let you back in there. Besides, you've had enough already, and Master Jhade asked me to make sure you didn't get in trouble."
"I've got plenty of room left for more!" Rai protested.
"No you don't," Niki said flatly. "You may not believe me, but I can feel that you don't. Even Drake could tell that you've had too much already!"
Rai, who had been facing toward the doorway with his back to Niki, trying to get away from her magic and to the building, froze in place, going completely still instead of just the magically enforced immobility. Then, slowly, he turned his head to face Niki, a surprised and slightly suspicious look on his face. "Drake?" he asked.
"I... uh..." Niki said, suddenly feeling uncomfortable at the attention Rai was directing at her. "He's... he's just one of the people I spent the evening talking to."
"Is this the same Drake that I'm thinking of?" Rai asked. "Looks about twelve, though I'm sure he's older than that, since I don't think Flanner's lenient enough to let someone that young into his bar? Not too much taller than you are, with bright orange hair? That Drake?"
Niki nodded, and the expression on Rai's face intensified. His mouth fell open in shock, and then he shook his head suddenly, as if in disbelief. "He talked to you?"
"Yes... he did," Niki said.
"He doesn't talk to anyone! I've known him and Seck for almost a year and a half now, and I haven't known him to talk to anyone but Seck, and sometimes the one who claims to be Seck's mom! Why would he talk to you?"
"I..." Niki said, feeling more than a little uncomfortable with the excitement and shock that Rai was displaying. She had realized that Drake didn't talk much, just by being in the room with him for some amount of time, but she hadn't quite realized that it was that strange for him to talk. Which made her special, and different, and in this case that wasn't a good thing.
"He's one of my kind," she said after a few moments of uncomfortable silence, making a silent apology to Drake in the event that he hadn't wanted his race known to others. Though with his appearance, Niki wasn't quite sure that it would have been possible for him to hide the fact that he at least wasn't a normal human.
"Really?"
Niki nodded, but didn't offer any more information. There was more she could tell him, probably quite a bit that would make him understand a little better why Drake had chosen to talk to her, but she just didn't want to share those things with him. Not something personal, like Jay, and his past with Drake, at least the amount of that that she had found out about. Maybe if she had known him for years... Maybe then, but even then probably not.
He looked like he wanted to know more, though. He looked curious, a look that Niki recognized almost instantly from seeing it so many time on Jay's face. And she could guess just how annoyed he would be when he realized that she wasn't going to offer any more information, just the fact that he was a genie, like her. She knew just how frustrated Jay could get when she refused to tell him something (though he had other ways of finding out what he wanted from Niki that Rai wouldn't have access to), and she knew that she was going to have a rather annoyed and still drunk Rai on her hands in a few moments. At least, that's what she assumed, not that she could be sure that he would react like Jay did when his curiosity wasn't satisfied. Still, she stayed silent.
And eventually he seemed to give up. He sighed, and then turned away, looking more than a little disappointed. But he didn't say anything about her silence. He just turned his head to look back at her, seeming quite a bit more sober (not that he looked even slightly sober in the first place) than he had just moments earlier, and then spoke a short question before launching into motion.
"Well, you ready to head back, then?" he asked. Niki stared at him, surprised that he hadn't even tried a little bit to get the rest of the story out of her. She was fairly sure that he realized that it wasn't just because she and Drake were both genies that he had been willing to talk to her... but he didn't even come close to showing that to her when he turned back to her. He just smiled, which caused Niki to realize that he was just that much cuter when he smiled than he had been the first time she saw him.
Silently, Niki nodded and followed after him, hard pressed to catch up to him without using magic now that he had started moving.
89 SE, rebel base, "war room"
One thing Niki had noticed almost her first day out of her bottle was that the room called the "war room" by the people around her, the same room where she had watched the declaration of the war and proved that she actually could do something useful for the group, was not just what they called it. The best tv was there, the 3D holographic one that they had watched the declaration on, and pretty much everyone seemed to use it as a sort of hang out when they didn't have anything to do. So Niki wasn't very surprised to find everyone but Markus and Elie in there when she and Rai returned.
They were gathered on the couches in the room, watching the television intently, even though the only thing that was displaying at the time when she entered the room was yet another overly gorgeous news anchor, this one wearing slightly less professional looking clothing than the rest, almost as if she had been working undercover. Also, rather than holding the traditional microphone to catch the sounds she was making, she was holding her wrist up to her mouth, and Niki could almost see the nearly invisible audio pick up that was embedded there. Similarly, Niki could see a cameraman from a different station standing just behind her holding out his palm to expose the camera embedded there rather than what most of the others were doing. And that made Niki slightly curious as to what they were watching, since from what she had seen of the media on the colony so far, the crews with implants instead of normal equipment were only used for the juiciest of stories, and they tended to follow the military from both sides of the war with an obsession bordering on frightening, much in the same way that the paparazzi followed celebrities in the time she was used to.
"What's up?" Rai asked as the two of them entered the room. "Did something happen?"
"Earth Army is proposing a sort of cease fire, as well as forgiveness for the Colonials, provided they call off the war," Adan said. That information surprised Niki, who had a hard time believing it, given what she had been told and had seen so far. But, that, it seemed, was not the reason that the others were gathered around the display, which she noted when Karin and Sherra both shot him near identical looks of disbelief.
"More than that, it doesn't look like things are going well inside of the Earth Army," Jhade commented. "Elie was telling me about how she was getting reports of tension among the officers, particularly between General Crowe and Commander Almesy, recently, but from what managed to leak out to the media, it got quite a bit worse tonight."
"Oh?" Rai asked, sounding excited, and reminding Niki more of a middle aged woman exchanging gossip with a neighbor than anything else.
"Well, it's fairly common knowledge that the two of them were lovers for quite a while," Jhade said, and Rai nodded in agreement. "And then less than a year ago she broke up with him, supposedly to get together with a younger man." More nods. "And, according to the rumors, Commander Almesy then took up with a young man... though no one from the media has been able to prove that so far."
"Yeah, yeah... everyone knows that..." Rai said. "So what happened?"
"Commander Almesy showed up at this latest meeting, which was also a sort of press conference, with a young man who can't be too much older than any of us," Karin said. "The commander refused to admit it, though, and claimed that he was just a member of the SCHOMA project there for information. And they both stated that he was a friend, one who is apparently quite a bit older than he looks, as they said he was older than both the general and the commander."
"And I missed it?" Rai asked. "Damn! Oh well, I'll pick up the repeat of the story sometime tomorrow. They'll probably be plastering the poor guy's face over every surface they can find for the next couple of weeks."
"Actually, no, they won't," Adan said. "It looks like the army put some sort of freeze on the media when it comes to this story."
"Yeah, they were putting his picture up on every channel until just a few minutes ago," Karin added. "But now you can't find it anywhere, though the damage is probably already done. I'd hate to be him tomorrow. He's not going to get any peace."
"Kinda makes you glad you're part of an underground resistance, ne?" Rai asked. The others nodded, only to be interrupted by a rather loud yawn from Niki, who immediately turned bright red with embarrassment.
"...I think it's time for me to go sleep," Niki said, staring at the floor rather than looking at the others, who had all turned their attention from the television to her. "Ummm, good night?" This earned her a few replies of "good night," and no complaints, which she took as a sign that it was okay for her to just leave the room and head back to "her" room, which felt a little less like a prison cell now that she had a bit of freedom for herself.