The Gal Behind Dunn’aelc

My eyes flickered open and it took me a moment to remember.  When I did, my hand shot straight to my stomach.  They were gone, no trace except for the stretch marks and the dressing covering the still tender incision that I knew was a flesh wound compared to the one they had needed to make deeper inside me.   My heart rate rocketed for a second… I couldn’t breathe, and then I heard a noise similar to the revving of a small chainsaw. I blinked up at the ceiling and then glanced around the room, only to discover my mother in the hospital chair next to the bed out like a light.

A wave of calm culled me immediately. My mother has a plethora of talents, sleeping through crisis is not one of them, and neither was causing enough fuss for Ami to resort to drugging her.  I stretched and took another look around the room. It was a private room, and there were already plenty of flowers, balloons and congratulatory cards around the room to make my stomach churn a little. I couldn’t read them from where I was, but there were way more of them then people I had told about the pregnancy.  I could only hope that most of them were from people my mother and father knew.  A glance out the window told me I was at Talos Island Medical Center. I could see Platinum Lake from whatever multi-digit floor we were on. It didn’t really surprise me much that I was there; Priam was walking distance from the hospital, Ami probably hacked the grid that allowed me to teleport between Priam and my lab in the condo to get me to the hospital. I smiled thinking about it… and then I began to wonder about what had happened. I had felt fine… my whole pregnancy had been smooth and normal besides the whole conception part, and then boom… medical emergency and cesarean section.  I started to sit up and then realized it was a bad idea, I was sore from both the incision and the strain I had put on my muscles. I let out a small moan and then let myself fall back onto the bed.

I woke back up sometime later when Ami came in and was talking with my mother. Preeclampsia. That’s what had happened. My blood pressure had skyrocketed, putting myself and the babies in distress.  They stopped talking about it when they saw when I was awake, and both smiled… I didn’t  understand at first… and then they were in my arms… two perfect babies, and everything but them melted away. The world didn’t matter because they were in it, and they were with me… my Eve and Seth.

I’m not sure how I should start this. I could be clever and start from the middle and do one of those tricky out of order six months earlier dealies. Nah. The beginning is fine. Not the good old “I was born twenty two years ago, the youngest of four children” beginning though, no , you know as well as I do that life was fine and normal until the day when mom and dad’s plane went down. That’s as good of a place as any to start.

It was the twelfth of December, 1997; it was one of those cold days that left a person’s breath hovering in the air as a cloud and a fresh coat of snow blanketed the neighborhood with the crisp but faint scent of juniper. You had just gotten home a few days before, back home after yet another semester of college. The nurse had called the house to have someone get me for the day. My period had come, and the only class I had left was gym, so she hadn’t seen a point of making me stay for it. Shiella had needed to stay at work, she’d just gotten a promotion at the web design firm she worked at and had a bunch of things she needed to get done before the weekend, so you had come to get me. I remember because you got all flustered when I didn’t want to talk to you, even though you hadn’t really wanted to talk about it anyway. So in the end we just drove home in silence, and once we got back I locked myself in the bathroom for a while, knowing why I was bleeding, but not quite coming to accept it during the hour I spent crying in the shower, truth be told I might have stayed in there longer if the hot water hadn’t run out… well that and Tyler had started yelling at me by that point.

When I was sure he wasn’t at the door I retreated to my room, I really didn’t want to talk to any one that day, except mom. I hid under my covers in some sort of effort to hide from the world, and I must have fallen asleep thinking about her, because the next thing I knew, I felt an uncomfortable panic fall over me, and then the same three pronged pain that came after. I knew what had happened as it happened to them, not an hours later after the fact when we saw about it on the news and got the phone call. First there was the pressure, it was what woke me up, it made my ears pop uncomfortably, and I could feel it wrapping around my skin like a full body tourniquet, I couldn’t move. Soon, I couldn’t breathe either, the body tourniquet had become saran wrap and covered my face, my lungs burned, and when I thought I could take no more, I felt the inferno that whipped around them, eating my skin cell by cell, molecule by molecule until it reached the point if I had really been burning with them, my nerve ends would have been gone. I vaguely remember screaming, and I woke everyone up, and then, as I thought the pain wouldn’t end I felt the brunt of it, the shock of the electricity of the living connection between us and them being disconnected like the small hot blue and purple spark a plug makes when you pull it out too fast. With the jolt the feelings left, and there was nothing left but the dark, and the sharp but gentle coldness of death.

You and Shiella told me it had to be a nightmare. I wanted to believe you, that it was just a bad dream, that the plane was fine, there hadn’t been a crash, but somehow, in the back of my twelve year old brain, I knew what I had felt. I knew that I’d never hear dad’s low rich chocolate voice read to me, and never sit doing homework and have the sweet smell of mom’s vanilla and rose perfume lingering after a hug letting me know that even if I didn’t get it all right, it was that I finished it that counted. None of us could have known at that point that I had inherited some genetic long lost ability to see and manipulate electrical pathways, even those of the brain, and none of us could have known that me not learning how to control it would cause me so much distress later on. Actually, I think you and Shiella forgot about the whole thing, not that I can’t blame you, most everything after that nightmare feels like a blurry mess that got rained on and never washed off.

The images I do remember are like a set of grotesque paintings in a fire lit gallery accompanied by some cruel person’s idea of a soundtrack, it’s a nightmare that’s etched in my brain, the back of my eyelids and my inner ears so I can never forget. Even now the smell of burning plastic brings them back like the real nightmare they are. The news footage of the big grey airliner with its red and blue stripes and company logo barely visible on its shattered, burning remains with the ever echoing announcement that there were no survivors, the torn gruesome looks on you, Shiella, and Tyler’s faces when the phone gave its shrill dooming ring and we all realized it wasn’t a nightmare after all. Things after that are the most blurred, my only duty to try not to blow the last week of school. It was you guys that had the bigger burdens, funeral arrangements, getting the wills figured out. There was no real Christmas that year. Sure, there were stray presents, but nothing memorable.

When I think about it now, it makes my mind reel; you guys had to become extremely more responsible then you had been in a few days time. It was especially true for Shiella, she went from being the big sister that I hardly knew to a motherly authority figure. You had college and your football scholarship you were worrying about, and then grad school. It was the same thing for Tyler, except he was around yet for a few years before he went off and did his archeology thing. I still remember picturing him running around the temple of doom. I blame that on you, I think you were my only babysitter that ever insisted on watching movies the whole time. I, on the other hand had a completely different set of problems.

School had never been easy for me socially. Other kids, the other girls especially made making friends and talking with boys look so easy. What I didn’t realize is they thought the same way about me and school work. With the awakening of whatever powers it was that I got, I unconsciously found myself picking up on their strongest emotions. I had read about things like auras and stuff in books, but I had never taken them to be any sort of real until then. Every person’s strongest emotions were wrapped around them, like the outer layer of the sun, bubbling and always moving, always changing. The thing I noticed the most about them is that not only could I see the auras, but I could feel faint reflections of them as well. It was ok most of the time, especially in middle school; the emotions weren’t quite as complex as they later became, and at first my talent wasn’t nearly as strong as it would eventually become in high school. The emotions didn’t affect me much at first, I could read them and feel the water downed pastel versions of them as if they were colors for me to take in and taste.

It helped me more than hindered me and I found myself getting along with people I never imagined I would. They still weren’t exactly what I considered to be my friends, but it was a step closer to having more than one or two close friends that experience told me would eventually abandon or hurt me intentionally or unintentionally. It was a hard lesson I had learned in elementary school, friends weren’t always friends. If the clique didn’t think you fit, you were out. For me it happened suddenly, thale girls who had supposed to be my best friends “forever”, ditched me for the sixth graders who were apparently “cooler” then me. I remember crying a lot when I was eleven because of this, but then again I had mom there to comfort me then. I didn’t have that any more, and while Shiella tried, she was no replacement for mom, and while Tyler was the sibling I was closest to, he also wasn’t a replacement for what was lost. It became easier to play the social game, not letting anyone really get to know me. I became ok at it, I was more like a social moth then a butterfly, but it did for what I needed it for, distract myself from some of the things I was feeling inside, and even more importantly, what I wasn’t feeling inside.

We were seeing a family councilor to help deal with the grief of losing mom and dad; Dr. Haley or something like that. All I can really remember is the man had a PhD in Psychology, and I spent many a session staring at his degrees and the plethora of other wall decorations. We always went in together, Shiella, Tyler and me, and occasionally you were along during your breaks. We were all encouraged to share how we felt and work through the grieving process. The talking as a family helped I suppose, just not as much as what I possibly needed. Shiella tried her best, being a “mom” trying to catch the things that were wrong, but on the outside, I was pretty good at hiding the fact that there was nothing wrong. My grades and social activities didn’t show it anyway, I was a straight-A, honor roll student, in the select choir, and on the science quiz bowl team. I was for all purposes to the world outside my head a pretty red head, freckled Irish descended girl; slightly shy, and athletic enough for being decent at gym class and the afterschool intramural sports; volleyball and softball mostly. It turned out that middle school was easy even though it was always getting harder to tell myself I was happy and everything was ok. As my apparent sensitivity increased so did my difficulty with pretending everything was ok.

Sometimes I wonder if Dr. Haley had insisted on more one on one sessions with me if I would have ended up in the same place. It’s really hard to say, I’m guessing they might have institutionalized me in some matter, after all; ten years ago they really didn’t have the resources to train us so called “meta-humans” as well as they can now. Even when I did finally get help, I could never really talk about how I could see electrical clouds around people that lapped at me with jolts of power, pouring their emotions onto me. It still sounds crazy to me, even after all my training and everything I’ve done with it. Anyway, that was after the climax of the issues, I’m babbling out of order like I said I wouldn’t.

High School was a whole different experience then Middle school, mix in the fact that my sensitivity was greater with the emotions my peers were feeling had grown like dandelions left untended in a flowerbed. It hurt when they felt things, and adding hormones hadn’t helped at all. My grades finally started to slip a little sophomore year, math hadn’t been as easy, and eventually I had a horrible time concentrating on anything. It just continued to get worse… until the day of the Rikti invasion. I had felt uneasy that whole day, and even though the Rikti attack hadn’t affected Northcrest as much as Paragon City Proper, the pain was very real for everyone.

I had been having the thoughts for a while before that though. Things kept on hurting, and they weren’t stopping. I wanted it to stop, so I went that home that day filled with a sorrow multiplied by the millions that felt it. I still hadn’t been sure I wanted to, I think that’s why I’d picked the knife rather then something more certain. I knew I could look up lethal doses of so many different over the counter drugs we had, or household items. Shiella’s knife seemed kinder though. I wouldn’t have to swallow anything horrid, I would just have to make a little slit vertically down my wrists. I even knew that it would be harder to fix that way. I had the blade in my hand, I had been ready to do it, sitting facing the sink in the kitchen, so it’d be easy to clean up. I was going to cut my right wrist first, thinking that as my stronger, it would be easier than cutting left the left then the right. So I had the blade unsteady in my left hand, hovering over the vein… and Tyler had come in like the nerdy mouse he is, startling me to the point that the edge sunk into my skin.

It’s a bit of a blur after that. He realized right away what had happened, and grabbed a washcloth to hold over my wrist, somehow we got to the hospital.

He told the emergency room doctors it had been an accident. Then told me he wouldn’t tell Sheilla or you what had happened as long as I saw a psychiatrist. So… I did. They put me on some meds, it helped, and balanced whatever other chemicals my brain made enough that it numbed my empathy.

I guess I’ve been wanting to tell you ever since Sheilla got sick and had to leave the planet. The Kheldians knew, they helped a lot when they trained me and showed me how to expel the electricity as well instead of just absorb all of it as painful emotions. Then there was Citla too she’s

Sean walked in after fiddling with his keys in the door for a while. Leah had given him the keys to her apartment in Faultline in case he wanted to make a visit to Rachielle… she’d been gone for a few months now, but she hadn’t requested the key back, it was sort of good to know that he could cme over when he wanted. On reflex she snapped her laptop shut. She wanted to tell him everything, but she wasn’t ready. Not now, it was too soon since they had realized their mother was quite possibly still alive… and a warshade at that. It wasn’t time for these words… maybe she’d let him read it eventually, but for now, the letter that would never be sent was good enough, even if the words were left unsaid.

It was the seventh of February… for most of the population of the United States, it was a normal Thursday. For Jinlan, it was the Chinese New Year, and her mother had RSVPed to the party Sun Kai was holding at his house in celebration.  Her mother pretty much insisted on this point; it was a requirement of life to go to THIS party and she wouldn’t hear anything else about it.

Jin didn’t have any maternity dress clothes through. She hadn’t been expecting she’d need them. So her mother had forced her out shopping until they had found something she deemed suitable; which ended up being a four hour production of going from store to store on the grand mall near and in the Golden Giza. Yu had pretty much insisted her daughter try on anything that was red, it was fortunate that  most people in the St. Martial business district didn’t know Jinlan by face. That was her only relief and assurance that kept her believing it was safe enough, a condition that kept Jin from siccing Fu’Miga on her mother.  The mad morning of shopping ended well anyway, and Jin had put a call into Jeannette ahead of time and took her mother to Lunch at the Jade Gate. Being the wonder woman she was, she had managed to keep the place to appear to be nothing but a nightclub and set of fine restaurants.  Jeanette had even come and shook her mother’s hand to assure her that her friend was doing quite well for herself.  Jin didn’t really know how she pulled it off, but she would have to be sure to thank her thoroughly later on.

After that, the day had gone easier, they had headed to the condo in Cap au Diable and Yu had insisted on neatening up the place up while Jin relaxed for a bit and then get ready, the plan was to head to Sun Kai’s home in Paragon before dinner at five pm.  After a nap, a shower and some primping, Jin almost felt  as if she could look into the faces of so many heroes she knew and didn’t know and let them see she was pregnant carrying Daniella’s children. Not that they’d quite understand that part, Ami had explained what had happened biologically when the couple had gotten creative with Dani’s vines, and Jinlan still didn’t quite know how to explain the twins other then they were a miracle.  She couldn’t help but smile about that, at least if Dani’s coma went on for years, she had her children to keep their love alive. Shaking away the sadness that came with thoughts of Daniella she found herself standing in the doorway of the nursery. Wei had done a wonderful job with the room, it was a cheerful yellow color, lemon custard or something like that. Jin couldn’t remember and she didn’t really care much, it was just  yellow to her, though Wei’s light sensors could tell the exact nanometers of absorption, content of the paint, come up with a near infinite amount of names for the color in every language including the coding ones and he preferred to call it lemon custard.  All the robots had similar quirks like that… Jin wished she knew how she did it to reproduce actual AI personali…

She stopped midthought as  she felt the first contraction hit her. She had done reading,  it didn’t justify what was happening, all she knew is it wasn’t a false start as a second contraction hit her before she even recovered from the first, overwhelmed by the tightening of her muscles. She just barely made it to the intercom a few steps away. She felt so weak all of a sudden, her babies were coming and it was weeks too early. Things were blurry, she remembered her mom yelling as she came up the stairs only to find Jin in the new red dress leaning against the wall in a puddle of her amniotic fluid on the wood floor of the nursery. She knew her mother had called Ami and then had called for emergency teleport to Talos General where Ami would meet them.  It was too early… but her mother seemed to know exactly what to do.  The dragon woman had a heart… but he had known it, she just hadn’t seen it in years. Yu had stayed with her the whole time. The last thing she remembered was her mother holding her hand and Ami looking over her with a reassuring smile before she gave her the anesthetic and they went into surgery for the emergency cesarean section, and everything went dark.

Eric Mainard had a hard time looking at himself in the mirror; this was nothing new. He’d been afraid of the draconic part of himself and had hidden deep within instead of controlling it. This had ultimately progressed until he denied his heritage and pretended he was fully human and the dragon half was nothing but a dream. He was full into the delusion when he married Lani Akana.  She had seen it as a rescue, a way out from the life ruled by the Marcones that her father had carved out for her.  They’d been married a year when Willhelm was born in 1979; things were happy enough for them; until Lani’s father had died in early 1985.  There was a lot of debt that he had left to his daughter, and no matter how happy the couple had been, it had melted into the constant arguing by that summer.  It seemed odd to him now, how things worked out like they did. He would always wonder about the what if’s; “What if he had never denied what he was?”, “What if they had managed to work it out”, “What if after three years of separation we hadn’t met at a party and had that fling?”. He really tried not to think the last one. Ashley wouldn’t have been born if they hadn’t had that fling, but at the same time the worst “what if” hung over his head; “What if the dragon part of himself had emerged because of Ashley?” She was the first girl and first second child to be born as far as he could trace their line back. When his inner flames, utterly uncontrollable had come, he got scared and ran. He stopped fighting for his children, let his wife had whatever it was she wanted. So things had fallen apart. He had gone and watched them sometimes, from where no one else would see him; but eventually he sank into depression and took to his own bottle…

He might have even self destructed all the way if Willhelm hadn’t come looking for him when his dragon began to surface. They had argued, and Eric had lost what very little control he had. The fact that he had almost killed his own son hit him at his innermost core. That had been the day he put the bottle down. He’d worked almost constantly on controlling the golden fire drake that lived inside him for the last six years.  He was ready to try to make it up to his children and his wife and that’s what had brought him where he was, staring at his gold, scaly bald head in a bathroom mirror of Pocket D; working hard to convince himself that what he had to say needed to be said to Ashley; even if he had never met her before.
_________________________________________________________________________________________

She had smelled him coming, and though he cloaked himself in a tattered trenchcoat and fedora, she knew who he was. He had found her reading in a secluded corner of the dance floor, wearing something she would have preferred no parental figure of hers ever see her in, and yet; there he was.   She had tried her hardest to be pissed at him, for abandoning her and Will, for letting their mother fall into her addictions, for letting them grow-up on the street.

Then he told her his reasons, and she wanted to hate him for being afraid, for allowing he and Will to almost kill each other, and for every fear she had ever had. If she had had the heart for it, she could have yelled at him all day, and he would have let her; but he was her father and she had never gotten to know him in any part of her life she could remember. There were the faintest impressions of happiness though, a sensation of her heart longing to know him. So in the she could only feel waves of pity for the man, and the immense conflict between her heart and head; he wanted to be a part of her and Will’s lives, and he had left her there in her confusion, his phone number in hand with no answers to the riddle of her dream.

((The first part of this was written by a friend of mine who went a little crazy on my laptop and created the tool that let me execute my arc. If you’re reading this Judy… thanks! Please also note that this occurs the same night that Vic had his dream in this post.))

Ashley couldn’t ever remember being as happy as she was now. She had fleeting memories of the time before her dad had lost joint custody and those seemed to be happy; but she didn’t really remember them lucidly.  Thus, for all intents and purposes; the now was the best time of her life; which didn’t bother her at all.

This was the only time in her life that she felt that she could control her destiny; her actions now would decipher where her life would be twenty years from now.  She was happy about this.  She no longer had to rely on others, but relied solely on her own intentions, gut feelings, and actions.  She felt as if she could go anywhere and do anything, and she felt liberated.

She never acted on whims.  This was unheard of.  She never had the money, nor did she have the time, but now that her mother was out of sight and soon to be out of mind, she could act on her feelings.  She decided to call up Judy’s Travel Agency and ask what kind of deal she could get.  She didn’t care where she went, as long as she was a minimum of 5000 miles away from this joint.

“Hello, this is Judy.  How may I assist your travels today?”
“Ummm… yeah, Ummm.”
“Would you like to tell me where you want to go, ma’am?”
“That might be a problem.”
“What is your name, dear?”
“Ashley Mainard.”
“It seems you don’t care where you want to go.”
This Judy person seemed to know so much about her situation, just by listening to her tone of voice.  Maybe she has been in a similar situation.
“How about Malaysia?”
“I don’t want to get bit by anything…  foreign.”
Judy chuckled a deep gutted laugh and replied, “What is your heritage?”
“German.”
“Great! I have a trip here to Bavaria that would please you.”
“Okay, let’s do that. When can I leave?”
“Tomorrow at 5 am.”

Ashley had to hurry.  She had to gather things she may need for the next three months.  All of her clothes were dirty, but she didn’t mind taking it to Europe that way. She figured the people there smelled anyway.  She could not believe this.  This opportunity is beyond her wildest dreams and there is no way that she could not be visibly ecstatic.

Clothes? Check.

Shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste and stuff of the like. Check and Check.

Passport, cash, ID’s? Double Check.

She had stayed up all night getting things ready and packed. She had called the few friends she had, left a message for her brother Willhelm and caught a cab to the Paragon City airport.  She was tired and physically exhausted, so check in felt like a dream, and it seemed as if the security had felt for her anyway; they didn’t hassle her. She was asleep almost as soon as the plane was in the air. Hell, she didn’t see a reason to not, I’d be afternoon when she got to Heathrow and after that, she was scheduled to take some sort of train from London to Continental Europe… she hadn’t actually taken in the details all that well in the rush of getting ready. Ash knew the details and tickets were somewhere in her stuff, and that was all that mattered in her brain at the time, so she fell asleep for what seemed like an instant for the transatlantic flight, and then again for the train ride. In fact, even the cab ride to her hotel, checking in and then the bus trip to get to her first tour destination was all a blur, even  checking out her luxury suite felt like an insignificant detail.

The castle was the first thing that was clear to her.  King Ludwig II had had several fairy tale castles built during his reign as king, most weren’t finished. Neuschwanstein was one of these, though one could hardly tell the way it towered above his father’s Hohenschwangau castle. Ludwig had been called mad, but as Ashley took in the area and the beauty of the mountains around it, she fell instantly in love. It was his retreat, and an everlasting shrine to Richard Wagner, the composer to whom Ludwig was the patron of.  It felt strangely familiar to her as well, she could almost felt as if she could look into the past and see the king as a child playing in the woods of Hohenschwangau, and then hiking in the mountains with friends to the spot the castle stood later as a young man.

As the tour bus climbed the mountain her sense of déjà vu only increased, especially as the tour guide spoke of the castle being built, the words were said, and perfect pictures like memories popped into her head. The inside of the castle was a complete dream; Ashley didn’t know anything about the operas the décor was illustrating, but she almost thought she heard each song being played in her head.  Then as the tour came to its end , Ashley found herself being quietly called away from the group… and she wandered through unfinished parts of the castle until she found herself at a dead end. For a moment she thought to turn around, and then she realized with a start, that invisible symbols were forming on the bricks and when she reached out and touched them, a wave of something ancient rolled over her and she found herself staring at herself in dragon form, and yet, it was not a reflection as it had in been in the mirrors of Jeanette’s apartment.  Confusion hit her. Dragon? What? That was a dream; she had dreamt that she had gotten into PCU and then manifested fire powers, and then run off to the Rogue Islands in search of her brother… hadn’t she?

Her head swam and a strange set of emotions began to bubble up inside, she should be afraid; and yet she was not.  She felt a tear well up and begin to drip down her cheek and watched a diamond fall down her cheek.  The name rushed through her very being and then out of her lips as a silver clawed hand and a hand of caramel colored flesh touched and the tears met each other on the stone ground…

Labaredas…

Her eyes shot open and the whole of her dream melted.  Wandering into the Castle been the same dream she had every night since she could remember. But the dragon hadn’t shown up until a month earlier when she had come to realize Labaredas wasn’t just an alias she took up… it was the dragon that resided in her. But a flight to Bavaria? This was new… and didn’t make sense… what was so special about Bavaria? Ashley sat up and stretched, immediately noticing Vic was decidedly absent. She could hear him bumbling about with his gear in the next room. She sighed and flopped backwards then rolled over to her side, staring at red glow of the clock that read 4:10 AM and counting and falling back into drowsiness slowly until he came back in and settled back underneath the covers, stroking her cheek before laying back, and with his touch she fell back into the realm of Mab.

The two children were accustomed to running around on their own.  To tell the truth, it wasn’t really all that of an uncommon thing in the neighborhood that they lived in (if you could call it a “neighborhood”). Most kids in the rundown part of their dying small Rhode Island town were used to not having adults around, and they preferred it that way.  Most of their parents worked in the city and didn’t have the money to spend on gas and a babysitter, or they didn’t have the money to afford the gas in the first place. In the case of the two kids in question, their mother didn’t give a crap to begin with. If it wasn’t the week the child support came in, she was generally busy with the “clients” she serviced as a member of the so called “oldest profession” and funding her addictions.

It was middle of August, school was in session, but it was hot out to the point that since the schools had no air conditioning and neither the patience nor sanity to deal with what most of the administration deemed to be “little monsters” in the heat, so they had been dismissed early.  The boy had promptly run off from his daily dungeon, more prominently known as Drake Middle School, home of the Dragons.   It wasn’t that he hated school, he liked learning after all, but rather he had two specific purposes for running off like he did. Firstly, he was fourteen and a runt; he barely cleared four and a half feet tall compared to the five feet or taller of his peers, even the girls. This had landed him the “high” honorary position as the prince of all bully bait. He knew better then to try to fight back; it’d just lead to problems in the long term, and it was a waste of time, time he didn’t have due to reason number two for taking off as fast as possible. So he had learned how to run, even in the dry heat of the summer. Truth be told, he was good at it, with a personal record on the mile of five minutes, he figured he’d go out for track once he hit high school.  He figured that in the two years it would take him to get there, his sister would be six.  The boy remembered being six, his life had been happier then, before….before.  He shook his head, he didn’t want to think about it right then. He had to focus on taking care of his sister, since no one else was going to.  He wasn’t bitter about it like some kids would be; he just had accepted it, like he accepted everything else.  It wasn’t that he let himself be the world’s doormat; it was that he knew, like in the comic books he regularly sneaked off with from when the kids they belonged to and the teachers weren’t looking that he just needed to be patient. His time would come. It had to.

He made it to the elementary school in good time, not his personal best, but he had taken the time to enjoy the feel of the powerful dry gusts of air pushing against him at the same time the sun made idle threats to burn his uncovered face and hands.   Despite the heat he was wearing a long sleeve fleece shirt, and dark heavy jeans. Both were almost nearly too small, but they fit better than most of the things he had, and if he didn’t wear longer clothes the teachers would be able to see the bruises that were the occasional gifts of his mother’s clients that made it to the house. It was him or his sister, and he wasn’t about to let them touch his sister. Besides that, he was old enough to know that if anyone saw them, they’d try to take a closer look, and if they did that; odds were they’d be split up. Above anything and all else, the boy knew he couldn’t let that happen, no matter how bad it got with their mother.

Unlike Drake, Phoenix Elementary was more like a cave system then a dungeon. Each classroom had doors connecting it to the huge inside commons room that also found its use as the cafeteria, and then another door to the outside. Procedure was that the kids went into the common area before school commenced, they were supposed to sit in lines on the ground of the commons and wait for their teachers, unless of course they needed to eat breakfast.  The  boy knew from experience that his sister was less likely to get in trouble if she did school breakfast every morning, and since they qualified for low income reduced cost meals;  he had gotten them signed up for them. It had only been a week that his sister had been in school so far, but she seemed to understand his need for her to be good there, she’d not let him down.
After school, the students were let out each of the classroom doors, and the boy had told his sister to wait for him there.   He exhaled when he saw his sister searching for him and let a rare smile creep over his normally stern distinctly Germanic face. He pulled off his beat up baseball cap, and simultaneously waved it at her and ran a hand through his sweat drenched red hair. There was no mistaking that they were related. The red hair was an oddity, it was almost too red; but the boy knew it was something from their dad. He didn’t know much about genetics, but someone, a teacher or a doctor had told him once it was odd for them to have inherited the darker caramel skin pigmentation from their mother and still have the dark red hair and light, silvery grey eyes.  It had something about dominant genes. The boy actually didn’t care about it really, but sometimes he liked to think about it. He thought he might like to study about genetics someday, but he didn’t make any promises to himself.

“Wiley!” The cry of glee interrupted his train of thought again and he looked up to see her charging towards him in a manner that reminded him of a kitten.  Her own long curly red hair was still pulled up in the haphazard ponytail he had helped her with that morning and it bounced wildly as she ran towards him.  She was dressed only a little better then he was, only because there were no girl clothes at home, the light pink sweater was too big for her, and so was the white skirt they had found. But things had to last for them, and the boy had figured that by the time that winter hit, they’d fit better. They couldn’t worry about hot weather clothes when they barely had enough money to afford the second hand cold weather ones.  At least the shoes and socks were newish.  The boy had found them sitting by a department store dumpster, apparently someone had left them at the store, and the employee’s ended up dumping them.

“Wiley, Wiley Wiley!” The boy blinked again, and suddenly she had gone from being several meters away to leaping at him in a hug.  On impact she dropped her mostly empty battered pink backpack and “Wiley” lost his balance, the both of them finding themselves on the rough asphalt in front of the school’s flagpole.

“Ugh… Ashley… what did I tell you about jumping on people?”  He tugged on his sister’s pony tail gently and started to get up.

“Aww. Sorry Wiles… I was just excited!” He looked down at her sternly for a moment, but he couldn’t be mad at her, not really. She was four, but he had lied about her age to get her into kindergarten the previous year when she was just barely three.  It had worked somehow or another, the administration at the middle school knew that Wilhelm was small for his age, so they didn’t question a slight change in year of birth. Will hadn’t really seen a choice whether they had believed him or not. The neighbor lady that had been watching Ash while he was at school had died of heat stroke the summer before last. But if he hadn’t gotten her in with a slight lie on the age, it would have been something else.

Will’s nickname was Wiley for a reason.  He was sneaky and clever, always had been; and for Ashley’s sake he was glad for it. He wouldn’t have gotten away with half the stuff he did if he wasn’t. Stealing money from their mom’s room, money that was supposed to be for taking care of the two of them anyway, was only part of it.  He practically had to control the entirety of their lives and what people knew and didn’t know about them. He did it for Ashley. Their father had left them, hadn’t even fought for them when it came up in the divorce proceedings. It still hurt. He didn’t like thinking about it. He wouldn’t think about it, because thinking about it made him angry, and if he got angry, he’d say something he knew he didn’t really want to say, especially in front of Ashley. He wiped the thought from his head and bent down to pick up the contents of Ash’s spilled backpack, sighing heavily when he noticed that her crayons broke when he had fallen on it. Another thing to take care of, he supposed. It was hard being responsible like this, but it was the only way he knew how to be.

“So what’cha so excited about Ash?” He asked as he handed her bag back and they began walking away from the school.

“I got an A!” She cheerily reported to him.

“Oh? And what did you get an A in?” He asked, glad to change the topic.

“A math thingy we did.” She started rummaging through her bag as they crossed the street and then pulled it out. It was sort of a color by numbers thing, where you found out the numbers by doing the addition problems in each area. He slightly remembered that sort of doing that sort of thing, he wasn’t good at it.

“That’s great Ash!” He meant it, but he was still distracted. He wasn’t quite sure what was with him today. He just felt sort of grumpy, like he knew something he didn’t like was going to happen, or come up.

Ashley continued to chatter as they wound their way around to the more empty parts of the city. They needed to go somewhere to cool down, luckily, they’d found a place a while ago, an abandoned lot behind a few rundown apartment buildings. Apparently they were going to build either a parking garage or another apartment building there, but they’d not done either, just managed to clear the grass that had once grown there and replace it with mud, and busted water pipe that would spray a nice spread of water when cranked open by a large valve that looked a bit more like a steering wheel then a faucet. Actually, the discovery that it was water bearing was an accident. Ash had taken to the way the valve lined up perfectly with the filled in pothole that apparently used to be part of someone’s well, and had pretending to be a pirate queen if Will remembered correctly. It had been a bit like hitting a gold mine. Between the shade offered by the buildings and water, it was common for the kids to head to the place after school almost every day. It was far enough away from the school that most of the other kids didn’t know about it, so they weren’t bothered.

They stashed their bags under a huge pine tree that had branches to the ground thanks to the fact that it had never been trimmed. It was a good place to hide to for that matter, but there was no wind that got under the branches of the tree, so instead of being cool, the long branches filled with needles actually made it hotter then it needed to be. Ash had this grand idea to make it into their hidden fort and live there, but Will tried not to encourage that thought process. So it’d become custom for him to bring along a few apples in his bag, and distract her with them after they deposited their bags. It worked, for now, but Will had the feeling that Ash was counting on the apple now, pretty soon he’d have to find another way to distract her from the construction of the Rhode Island “Neuschwanstein” Tree Castle. He wasn’t quite sure where she had gotten the idea that the Bavarian castle should be theirs anyway. He had needed to look it up to even understand what she was talking about. Something she had seen on TV maybe, though when she had seen any television around the time she started talking about it, he had no idea.

It turned out that he hadn’t needed to worry about the tree castle that day. Ash apparently was feeling the heat as much as he was, and had went right for the valve, somehow cranking it on to a higher than usual, but not undesirable pressure.  The water gurgled for a moment and then came exploding out of the broken pipe. Will had to laugh as Ashley let out a squeal and ran through the stream, thoroughly getting herself soaked. He was about to make a run through himself when he noticed the thing on the ground.  He actually wasn’t quite sure what it was, it looked like some sort of flat scale like rock, but it was a silvery blue color. He turned it over in his hand and almost didn’t notice Ashley trying to pull the water valve closed. He pocketed the claw thing and then the air seemed to get heavy, Ashley had said something, but he hadn’t quite caught it.

“Huh? What was that?”

“I said, Why come Daddy isn’t around?”

“Uhm…” Shit. Will had been afraid she was going to ask that today. It was the thing he was trying to avoid thinking about, because while he knew that it wasn’t Ash’s fault, in the back of his head, he sort of blamed her.

“Wiley?” She’d come closer.

“Ash… I don’t…” He didn’t want to say, but one look at her face told him she picked up on something.

“It’s because of me isn’t it.” Will blinked, where the hell had she gotten that idea?

“Nnoo… of course not Ash…” She frowned.

“Don’t lie Wiley… that’s what you think isn’t it?” His brain raced. Since when was Ash that observant?

“I wasn’t… I wasn’t supposed to be born was I?” He started to get mad thinking about it. He was mad that she had brought it up, mad that he had made her think about what he’d been trying not to think about all day.

“Yeah. It’s your fault Ashley. All your fault. Everything was good before you.” He yelled. He hadn’t really meant to, and hadn’t meant to yell like that, but it was enough to send Ash running away in a storm of tears. The truth was that their parents had been separated for three and a half years before they had one last fling a month or so after his ninth birthday. It had seemed to him at the time that the divorce had finally gone through when Ash was born. Heck, that’d been the way that his mom had managed to get sole custody, if there hadn’t been child support money involved then it may have not even been an issue. But the system seemed broken to Will, and he knew it was a fault of the system, not his sister.  It had been even ok for a while when his dad had visiting rights. Then mom had gotten those taken away too, and the man stopped fighting. He didn’t even write.  He sighed and sat down with his head between his legs letting out a long exhale. It didn’t take him long to decide he was really just made at their Dad, not at Ash. It wasn’t Ashley’s fault she was born, it had been their parents, and it was their dad’s fault for not fighting, and their mom’s fault for being useless.

After ten minutes Will felt like he gathered his temper enough to go see if he could find Ash.  He felt bad, for yelling at her, she’d surprised him though. He’d never believe that they would have had to have that conversation this soon. He would have preferred to never have it. He wasn’t sure if she’d understand half of what he had to say, but the important thing was trying. Yeah. If Ash was smart enough to figure out that much, then at least he could tell her the truth. It’d hurt, but not anymore then what he’d already said. He pulled himself off the ground and then turned off the water, just in time for him to hear the footsteps behind him.

“Hey, Nardhead!” Great. Just what Will needed, more trouble.

“What do you want Jack?” Jack Hastings, resident bully, one of the many that Will had learned to run from.  He couldn’t run now though, Ash was still hiding, and he needed to find her.

“I want you to laugh at my joke Nardhead… you know… Mainard… Nardhead?  Get it?” Wilhelm wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. He’d heard it a million times before.

“Er… yeah, I get it Jack.”

“Good. So you won’t mind if I pound you after your name sake then eh?” There was nothing to do but wait for it now.  It didn’t matter what he did, he wasn’t going to let Will get away. He just… need to not struggle, the beating would be worse then. Jack got closer and Will closed his eyes.

“Leave him alone!” Will had never heard Ashley sound so… commanding, with that little voice of hers.  Jack ignored her, much to his own chagrin.

“You should have listened to me!” Then she was on him, she had taken a running jump from wherever it had been she was hiding and managed to knock him down, and then sat on him.

“Ashley Mainard! What did I tell you about jumping on people?” She shrugged at him and gave him a look that he couldn’t bring up heart to yell at. She was sitting on the back of one of his long time antagonists.  He was having a hard time not laughing, let alone chastising her.

“The man in the coat in the tree said it was ok, just this once.” That derailed Will’s train of thought. Man in the coat… in their tree? Wait… what? What was Ash talking about? A growl came from where Ash was sitting and then he remembered about Jack.

“Psha. Letting your little sister fight for you Mainard? Pathetic.” That was enough, Will had though he was done being mad about things, but Jack laying there with his little sister on top of him, still trying to insult him was the last straw.

“You know what the really pathetic thing is Jack? That my little four year old sister actually was able to knock you down, and that she’s still sitting on you. Think about that before you and your friends try me again. I might not run.” He had let his voice cool down while he said it, almost whispering the last words. He looked to his sister. “Come on Ash, let’s get home before mom tries to cook dinner.”  He took her hand, and she slowly rose from the back of the downed bully. After they retrieved their bags, it was as if nothing had happened, Ash was babbling on about what ever it was she was babbling about, something about unicorns he thought. Eventually, Jack Hastings pulled himself off the ground and walked the other way.

It seemed quiet then, and from a fourth floor apartment in one of the condemned buildings, a man covering himself in a long tan trench coat and fedora looks down on the vacant lot. He runs his fingers though his thinning too red hair under his hat, and then a rare smile passes over his distinctly Germanic face and silver grey eyes.

The guesthouse at the Swan Mansion in Sharkhead looked a heck of a lot better once the new furniture got put in; Aysel had pretty much let Ashley pick out everything; decorate the place herself. The guesthouse was now the kind of place Ash felt safe in, felt she could be herself in… felt that maybe she could bring friends to if she made some new ones.

Speaking of… Ays had mentioned a gathering at Pocket D; and apparently had left a VIP pass for her on the table. She felt sneaky taking it and using it, but hey… Aysel and Wiley hadn’t really laid down any rules other then “don’t get caught”. So she considered it something of an invitation to go have some fun. After activating the pass she took some time to look around the club. It was a cool place; definitely worth coming to. She wandered around some until she found herself watching the various people that were gathering. She hung back at first; listening to what they were talking about. Then she noticed the guy hanging out on the left side of the bar. He was cute… and appeared to be insisting on sitting in some sort of fire proof blue and black armor. Could it be the guy from the communicator the other night? There was only one way to find out; and it involved going up to him. OK. This is do able Ash… it’s a cute boy… you’ve faced worse things.

It took her a bit; but eventually she ended up next to him and watched as he melted the remainder of the ice from his drink. Heh. Her first reaction was why just melt the ice… she reached out and touched the glass and made the water evaporate in a puff of steam. “See… that’s how you do it.” He turned to her and blinked then looked at his glass.

“Ugh… Hreb… could I get another soda?”

Ashley rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him then jumped in. “Make it two please…” His name was Vic… she remembered from the comm; he went by ThermoBaric… she thought she remembered hearing something about him… maybe. Didn’t matter really… he was cute, and Ash was thinking she liked him sooo she flirted; which mostly climaxed with Ashley grabbing the hose attached to the water line and spraying Vic with it after he tried to get back at her for the icecube she stuck down the back of his suit. Of course… then she had to clean up the water and apparently scared the heck out Hreb when she did… she’d remember to leave the sword out of it next time. The easiest way to clean up water was to make it evaporate; it wasn’t her fault the quickest way for her to do that was to pull up her fire shield and dance around in the puddle. So after that, things seemed to get pretty boring at the Club; and then Vic asked if she wanted to go do something. A bit of mischief later and the two of them had ransacked Steel Canyon bank and found themselves back at the bar in need of carbonated; non alcoholic refreshment.

Taking a cue from Jinlan, Aysel had gotten an old, comfortable couch for her basement lab. Aysel’s couch most definitely got more use and abuse then its counterpart though. Right now, it was a time of use; Pyr was lounging on it while Aysel was starting up on some recently scanned samples. After a few minutes she slides on his lap, leaning back while he begins messaging her tensed up neck and shoulder muscles.

“So ‘ow close is Dom tae finishin’ work on that ‘ouse he found on tha beech?”

“Dunno, has he popped the “move in” question on Rin yet?”

“Nat yet, and considering she’s made me ‘er new ear since ‘er fight wit’ Jin… I would probably know if ‘e ‘ad.”

“Then not close enough apparently.”

“It’s good tae see him working on it at least, I’m guessin’ ‘e was kindae feelin’ like a bum stayin’ in tha guesthouse.”

“Speakin’ of, how’s Ash doing in there? I’ve been tryin’ not to go into psycho guardian protection mode on her.”

“Pretty well, we went shoppin’ for the new furniture todae, should arrive tomorrow. She’s a good kid yae know… I always wanted tae ‘ave a sister.”

“Well. We’ll share mine then.” Pyr grinned at her boyishly and moved his hands down her sides, careful to massage around her ribs gently. “How’s Jin doing?”

“Nat surprisin’ly, mooch better, meeting Daniella has been good fer her, though she’s never struck me as the type tae be monogamous, so hopefully she don’t hurt Dani.”

“Mhm.”

“Gonnae ‘ave tae ‘ave ‘er break intae Dr. Rigby’s labs though… ain’t no way fer me tae analyze Dani’s dna wit’out somethin’ tae compare it tae, alls I can tell righ’ now is she played god… a lot.”

“Sounds kinda like somethin’ Lady Darkswan would take on… hubris and whateva.”

“True, bu’ Dr. Rigby will get ‘er dues when tha time is righ’… which is nat now. ‘Sides, Lady Darkswan is elsewise disposed until Lady Swan’s da stops tryin’ tae break up ‘er relationship.”

“Thus why you’re havin’ me come to the board meeting… and being a presence in the office.”

“Aye, mayhap iffin’ me da sees tha’ yer good fer the company, ‘e’ll decide yer good enough fer me.” Aysel thought for a moment. The last few weeks with Pyr had been great. She’d gotten some relax time in that she’d been deprived of for ages, got do a bit of analysis work on their respective mutations, and most importantly got some quality time with Pyr. It had made her realize how much she did love him, and needed him. She thought she could tell him now, she wasn’t afraid of it suddenly not being true any more. “Which ya are…” She looked up at him and grinned then took her left hand and guided his chin down to kiss him. “I love ya Pyr.”

Before he could respond the computer beeped. The analysis was done. Ays ran her hand down his arm and then got up to take a gander. A few minutes of squinting at the screen later and she blinked at what it was telling her. “Interesting.”

“What?”

“OK. So, ya know ‘ow I ‘ad ya get a sample of Ash’s blood from before she started tae change?”

“Mhm.”

“It’s an exact match tae tha dna now. All tha dragon codin’ is already thar.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Its like bein’ male or female…. The codin’ XY or XX is already thar, puberty comes when tha body is mature enough ta make tha hormones fer reproduction.”

“Right… so what… Ash’s having a…. dragon puberty thing?”

“Pretty much… yea.”

“Ugh… the first puberty was hard enough to get through.”

Aysel snickered quietly. “Well… tha good news is tha’ thar will be no question o’ tha stability o’ ‘er dna.”

“What exactly does that mean compared to me?”

“The dragon stuff in ya was hidden an’ dormant ‘til it got activated by tha charcoal… which by tha way, I’m findin’ ‘ad traces o’ dragon dna in it ta begin with so when et came in contact wit’ yer sleepin’ genes… well… tha dragon woke up… which was why it got worse when ya met tha’ dragon guy a’ tha D.”

“Uh huh.”

“Ashley, on tha other ‘and… she’s got all o’ it there, its jus’ a matter o’ time before she can do tha full transformation… bu’… its probably gonnae be harder fer ‘er… same as puberty is ‘arder fer a girl.”

“Greaaaat.”

Aysel sighed and looked down on her watch. “Ah shit. We need ta get goin’ babe… won’t look good tae tha board or me da if we’re late.”

AP STEEL CANYON- PCU and the Steel Canyon Arts Council, in conjunction with the newly opened Pavlova Institution of Dance present “The Ugly Clockwork”, a new ballet that is based on the beloved Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, but doesn’t desecrate it in any sense of the word. Rather, it opens with a new 18 minute solo ballet piece choreographed to Sergei Prokofiev’s choral and orchestral interpretation of the story, and then bounds directly into the heart wrenching story of a young, confused member of the Freakshow who finds herself amongst the court of the Clockwork King, chastised for her ugliness. The “Ugly Clockwork” then goes on to explore her world, looking for her place in it, before finding her true place among the Freakshow, and upon seeing the violence wrought by them, goes on to correct their ways.

The Ugly Clockwork finds herself chided by the real Clockwork

The Ballet signals the return of acclaimed dancer Anna Pavlova, Prima Ballerina Absoluta of Kirov Ballet after a century long absence from the scene due to her supposed death in 1907. Pavlova is both the choreographer, director, writer and title character of the Ballet, with all but the beginning piece composed by the talents of Doll House, the creative force behind the group Luna’s Ceiling, and played by PCU’s orchestra. Supporting characters hail from both PCU’s Performing Arts department, the Pavlova Dance Company, and Anna Pavlova’s Convicts to Dancers Rehibilitation Program.

Anna Pavlova, recently returned from the grave dressed in the title role’s costume

“Et es just being great to be dancing again.” Said Pavlova when asked about her mysterious return from the grave. She further went on to say: “Et es also being good to help so many of zhe lumpenproletariate be becoming successful dancers and members of zhe proletariate.” In response to her criminal outreach program.

Tickets for the event may be purchased online through PCU or the SC arts council, or at the ticket office at the University, $10 for general public, and free for students, heroes and ex-convicts with identification through a grant from the Pavlova Institute.

The small envelope sat on the red marble counter of the kitchen. It was a deep red color and just barely stood out against the Rouge de Rance stone that had been imported from Belgium. Jinlan didn’t notice it until after she almost knocked over the half gallon of organic orange juice on the floor because of the loss of friction between the matte paper and the polished surface. She gave it an initial glare, poured herself a small glass of the orange juice and then picked both up and sat down at the mahogany kitchen table and then after taking a sip of the juice put the envelope down and stared at it.

There was no mistaking the fact it was for her, formally addressed to Wu Jin-lan, but with no actual address. Apparently it had been hand delivered, which made a small chill run up her spine. No one was supposed to know that she was staying with her parents right now, she had only told a few people; and none of them would have written her name in Chinese tradition like this was, and she most definitely did not recognize the handwriting. She supposed she should open in, but she was anxious about what she might find inside; she could only think of two possible sources, one a friend of a sort, the other the Tsoo. It was easier to stare blankly at it then actually open it, and there was a feeling in her gut was both sinking and fluttering. It was as if the tangy golden liquid she had just swallowed was some sort of magical potion that both was made of lead cocoons that had quickly metamorphosed up a row in the periodic table into tin butterflies that danced near her esophagus.

Her mom walked in mid stare down. The woman had been uncharacteristically bubbly since the day Jinny had showed up on the porch with several suitcases and news that was as obvious as a glance at her abdomen. Ami had insisted she not be on her own with the due date fast approaching; and the only other person in the world she really had was Daniella… and Daniella was in a coma; or rather a winter hibernation. Only time would tell if the end result of what Crey and her mother did to her made her an annual or a perennial. There was only a sparkle of hope in that, it was overwhelming for Jin to think about Dani in her current state. Somehow, with the help of the thorn tree, Dani was the “father” of the twins in Jinlan’s womb. Jin had tried and failed to explain this to her mother; in the end Ami had just covered it with a blanket statement of “science does some very interesting things these days” and the subject was dropped. It didn’t seem to matter to Yu Chen; she was getting grandchildren and that was what mattered to her, to the point that her daughter’s sexual orientation had ceased to matter as well.

Jin had hid the fact she was pregnant from the world and for the past seven months she had sent out a robot duplicate in her place. It was funny, no one had really noticed the difference. There had been a few remarks about the “power armor” that was the robots shell, and there had been a few run-ins with psychics and others who could tell the difference, but largely, no one but whom she had told knew. Jin had wanted it this way, less people knowing Jin was a mother meant less people who would be plotting to try to kidnap or hurt them.

Jin’s attention got pulled from her thoughts when the other woman sighed and grabbed the envelope from her.

“The cleaning service I sent to your apartment brought this over a-Lan. So if you are going to be rude and not open it, I will.” Yu Chen was an imposing woman, as soon as she figured out her daughter was of genius level intelligence she had begun homeschooling her. It had been strict, Yu had wanted Jin to be a lawyer like herself, or a doctor like her husband. Neither of the two fields had ever really interested Jin, and in the end, all the pressure had led to a falling out between mother and daughter. She started opening the thing before Jin could protest and she really hoped that it was from Sun Kai and not the Tsoo.

Relief filled her head as her mother read the mandarin out loud, and then started building again as her mother got a look on her face. “Of course we shall go!”

“Mother…” It wasn’t any use, once Yu had gotten something in her head, it stayed… and this was staying. It didn’t matter how many good reasons Jinlan cited for not going; the twins, Dani, the late rsvp, they were going to this party no matter what now it seemed. Frick. So much for secrecy, the woman was already breaking out her calligraphy set to send in the rsvp.
________________________________________________________________________
Sir,
On behalf of my stubborn daughter, we humbly accept your invitation for New Years.
Chen Yu
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