Prologue 5 (Part 3) Annoying Questions and Jinja Kaliope Making Things Awkward.

Kazu Nini woke up with pains all over her body that only stopped their throbbing at the end of the day. She had had to eat the food that her aunt prepared, and if not, she would not have been left alone.

She had always hoped Mako Nini would show up and she blamed her that she didn't but even though that was not fair, it did not stop her from feeling it.

When the older Pixie had stepped into the room, she sat down beside her bed and held liquid food to her mouth. "Eat."

"No."

"I just told you to eat."

"I just said no."

Mako Nini had half the mind to shove it down the girl's throat but she decided to not pass the frustrations from the whole situation violently at her niece. So, she steadied her breathing. "What do you mean?"

Kazu Nini did not know when her eyes got red. "Where were you?"

Mako Nini looked at the younger Pixie as she felt as though a bag of cement had been thrown at her chest. "I did ask around if that is what you meant."

"Oh, are you sure you were not angry because I lost them damn lunchbox?" Here

"Yes, I am still mad about that." Mako Nini wanted to shout at the girl but she did not feel the anger, instead it was disappointment at her ignorance. "It was owned by your parents."

"What do I care about them?" Another one rolled down her eyes. "What have they done for me?"

Mako Nini saw the recklessness that Kazu Nini had in her soul from the question she just asked, the older Pixie did not get angry, instead she stood up and left the room.

Kazu Nini screamed, erupting every piece of glass about her and she stomped downstairs. When she saw her aunty keeping to herself in the corner with her peripheral vision, she ignored it and moved out of the house. Slamming her hands down her pockets, she made sure her bus pass was there and met the transportation that would take her to school.

She drew eyes, not only when she was on the ride but when she reached school and barged open her class. The students drew in a breath as they noticed her haggard clothes with lacerations, bruises, and some caked blood on her body but she ignored their gasps and looks of horror as she scanned the room for her Admin Manager. "Come," she ordered and Devon quickly caught himself to comment.

"Ahh, she already has the upper hand in the relationship."

"You just shut up and wait," Her tone held him and choked out any laughter the class would have made. "Better keep that lunchbox for me."

The teacher had not even said anything but she had already left Grade 12 Jasper. When they reached grade 12 Onyx, she called more of her admin as two of them where here – the pretty Shapha Rinmon and the breathtaking Zlai Dfon. Grade 12 Silver was the last she went to, having Elric Yjop in it.

Like Jinja Kaliope, they all threw questions at her which she was silent to, until they reached the playground and she sat on the slide, the others leaning on the see-saw, the swing or the tires.

They waited until she spoke. "I was captured."

"What?"

"How?"

"Where?"

"Why?"

She closed her eyes and they waited. "Early last semester, I stopped a robbery and I think they wanted payback."

The Administrators all look at each other. "So like, you vexed a gang and they wanted payback?"

"Not the gang itself, just a petty one of them but yes, I encountered them."

"Does that mean you are in more danger?"

"I neutralized them all." There was silence. "At least, the ones at that base."

"I wish you had a Telewatch, you could have recorded it and used it against the Sprite Twins, this would infuse fear in them and make them wary of you." Kazu Nini smiled at the mesmerizing Zlai Dfon – her Public Relations Manager – as she had similar thoughts immediately after she woke up. In fact, she had thought of it before her torture began, before she had met Slixk.

"Fix this for me," Kazu Nini held out the Telewatch that she had nabbed from the shoulder of the Orc. "Whoever fixes it will become our Technician and Engineer. Find someone who has cultivated and has the qualifications."

Jinja Kaliope grabbed it, then made sure it was switched off in the case of it being tracked and then began speaking into the group chat on Skynet as she turned to her Public Relations Manager. "You find dilapidated houses in a foreboding neighborhood and the person can be our real estate agent."

"I called you here today because for the first few days in there I felt helpless."

"Sorry to interrupt, who did you get it from?" Jinja Kaliope did not want to anger her exactly, so he looked unsure.

"Why does that matter?"

He shrugged and looked back at his gadget. "They are curious, but never mind."

"An Orc," she continued what she had been saying, ignoring their gaping mouths. "I never want to feel helpless again, it was trash. We need to expand; I need to have roots. The people that had me, they had roots and influence is power, at least one of its forms. They felt that they could take me without repercussion and did so. Why? Power." She clenched her fists.

Elric Yjop was trembling and she thought it was from fear. "I am so excited; we can be like some superhero squad."

Shapha Rinmon laughed accentuating her beauty, "yeah right." She then turned to the Pixie, "what was the name of this gang?"

"I can't let you know for our own safety."

"That is unfair, w-"

"Shut up, I said no." he looked at him until he sat on a swing. "I cannot endanger you, not until I am sure. Not now, so wait." She jumped down from the slide and walked towards her bus stop. "I will see you guys tomorrow."

When she reached the ground bus, she met eyes with her aunt who, instead of stopping off, turned and walk towards her, laughing as if they had already made up. "If you want me to protect you, then you have to make sure that I can. You just left the house and if I did not see you take the route for the school bus, I would not have been sure."

Kazu Nini wanted to push her hand off, how dare she dismiss it just like that? but instead of a shove, she was caught by the arm and pulled into an embrace that made her cry.

***

Mako Nini woke her up the next morning, and she was feeling a lot better. Her injuries were gone but her Ko-jin stores were not yet refilled.

"Come down, let's practice."

She met her guardian again who was already dressed in matching linen robes that allowed free movement.

"Anything in particular you want to learn before getting to general practice?"

"The week I was there, I learnt something out of helplessness." She brought glass from her spectacles and unfolded it like it was a piece of paper before her. "I could not use my Ko-jin and therefore I started improvising." The glass thinned out until it became a dome over her head, "but it was not complete till I was free of my shackles." She injected Ko-jin into it and it took a watery form as if the glass had now become malleable like soft clay, currently resembling a flat square ribbon. "By making the particles roam around my Ko-jin which was now melded to my mental energy, it took on liquid properties." It twirled like a snake or an eel and danced around her body with grace. "Of course, the prerequisite was that instead of keeping the mental energy and Ko-jin outside to wield it like a glove, it was now more like affecting it in the inside like I held its body's systems."

Mako Nini clapped. "Impressive, I knew you were made for this." She let glass unfurl from her wrist bands. I learnt my laws first, so I figured out my glass thing later on."

"Try it."

She shook her head. "The particles you work with, the solid ones, are currently thrice reinforced glass, so when you want to merged them together, you are basically matching particles into spaces so that it resembles a sort of puzzle on a molecular level." Her glass took on the form of a deer and pranced about her hand as she furled and unfurled it. "However, the glass I wield is over a hundred times reinforced, plus I have at least 1,000 pieces. So, when I want to view it on a molecular level, I have not yet mastered it and thus doing it during a battle will be a detriment to me, but I can learn it."

Kazu Nini's eyes widened in shock as she herself had not yet reached 6 times reinforced glass and she had already stacked 65 pieces of glass to her own personal collection. The ribbon glass about her body gained back its solid form but with her Ko-jin still in it, it was stronger than normal. "I want to try gas state next."

"Okay."

They went through their morning drills next, then the young did combat training before leaving to shower, and her guardian began making food.

Mako Nini had walked the to the bus and she sat down at the very back, only Jinja Kaliope, out of her admin who would usually ignore her, came to sit beside her and she ignored him.

"Hey babe," Kazu Nini looked at him in question and he mouthed to play along. "How are you this morning." She did not reply and only listened as he wrote something down. "Me and my friends are going to meet later today, we got some extra help for our project and we wanted to know if you would join us."

'They think we are dating, it was the only way I could explain my weird reaction to you being missing.'

She read it and giggled, feeling awkward but she did not show it. "Why not? I mean I only have assignments and classwork to do, not to mention the teachers I have to speak to so that I could get back my grades."

He looked stumped, not sure if she understood. "Th-then we could meet after school."

"After school," she pinched her chin and looked as if she were annoyed. Confirming that Devon and Kivon were observing her with the periphery of her vision. "Better make it worth my time."

"Sure, anything for you."

When the bus stopped and they were coming down, Elric Yjob discreetly passed on a paper into her hands which she collected surreptitiously. Pretty Shapha Rinmon and mesmerizing Zlai Dfon tagged with Jinja Kaliope when they had begun walking towards their building. The breathtaking Zlai Dfon then pulled in Elric Yjob to their talking circle and they began chatting away as Kazu Nini kept to herself. When she reached her locker, she kept the paper she had received from the Shapeshifter and placed it within the pages of one of her textbooks.

'We got a Technical Manager and a Real Estate one too. The Slime, Naro Meena, is a genius with unmatched skill according to some of the videos he has sent and the Gnome – Lowe Hagp – found dilapidated houses we could get and we could even get an estate if we manage to pay for it within the year.

The houses are 50,000 Bronze Hyur Each but the estate is 500,000. We could only get these prices because of the state of things there, so you can only imagine.'

She smiled and folded the paper before chewing it and spitting it out unto the trash can she found just before class. But right as she almost entered, the alarm rung and a voice from the speaker flared to life.

"Meet in the assembly hall for an announcement." The students and staff left their posts in accordance.

The young Pixie sat at the top seats of the seating area and could see almost everything from here. Her staff gathered together so that it would not seem suspicious of their company to any who was looking in too deep like the Sprite twins that were currently focused on them.

Kazu Nini began suspecting that maybe they intended to do something nasty to them and they would not notice, but she saw Jinja Kaliope stare at them before staring away. Sighing at what she wanted to do and what she still had to do, she clutched her dolls and began converting the Ko-jin tendrils attached to her muscles from a state that resembled air into something that was more liquid by pulling all her Ko-jin into her core and using her mental energy to slap it around and finally send it back to each of her muscles. The difficulty in the sheer numbers she had to reach out and also the amount she had to pull in was the least of her problems.