Disclaimer: I don't own Kit,
(Drat!) Nita, Dairine, Spot, Harry, Betty, Ponch, or anything/one else you
recognize. (Or will after you read
TWD.)
Very much thanks to Dani
for being my beta reader. :-) What would happen to us FF.N-ers if we didn't
have beta readers…
Nita looked up, startled, as Dairine dashed into her
room. Without knocking, of course. "Da-ri…" she began, but her sister
cut her off. "Neets, they've violated
the status quo. They weren't supposed
to come, but they did…" she paused, breathing deeply and sinking into a
chair.
"Dairine, you are making zero sense. Who?"
Nita demanded impatiently, angry at being interrupted.
She stood and turned toward her sister, catching sight as
she did so of eerie green light seeping under the curtain. She had seen that color light but once
before; it had been radiating from a certain type of alien life. A certain type of very dangerous alien
life. "Modgens." Nita breathed, and gave Dairine a stricken
look. "What the heck are we sitting
here for? Don't Tom and Carl need all
the wizards in the area?" Nita jumped
toward the door. Dairine put a
restraining hand on her sister's arm.
"Nita."
"What, Dari?"
Nita said, fidgeting and biting her lip. She knew from personal experience just how much damage Modgens
could cause, the havoc they could create.
"Nita, the Modgens have already been spotted." Dairine shook the hair out of her eyes, in a
helpless gesture. Just like when her
mother had just been diagnosed with cancer, she was feeling useless.
"Oh no—but just by one or two people, right?" Nita held her breath, willing her sister to
give an affirmative response. A
negative one, she knew, would mean months, perhaps years of work for the
wizards in the area. Who could tell, it
might become top priority of the wizards in China. The entire world could be ruined.
"Nita, there are about a hundred people out there listening
to an extraterrestrial speak their language, and that includes several TV
men." Dairine clutched Spot to her
chest, a very different version of a security blanket.
"Speak their language?"
Nita ignored the TV men part, just for the moment. She had a sinking feeling she wouldn't be
able to do that for long.
"Uh-huh." Dairine
put her head in her hands.
"We have to go Dairine. You know and I know that if humans stay too close
to… them too long…"
She shook at the thought.
Having come so close to losing her mother, she was aware of
exactly what you went through when someone close to you was in critical
condition. Nita was unwavering in her
duty to keep that from happening to anyone else, as much as she could. Like you kept it from happening to
Pralaya's family? an ironic voice mocked her from the very back of her
mind. Shut. Up.,
she told it fiercely.
Dairine gave her a look that said, Get a life. "So," she asked pleasantly, "What, exactly,
do you plan to do?"
Nita stopped. "Er."
"My point precisely."
Dairine declared triumphantly.
"But we have to go, at least. So we can grab a person away if..." And there she stopped, not wanting to say or think what could
happen if the wizards couldn't get rid of the Modgens.
"Where's Kit?" Dairine asked absently, promptly
launching into a long string of
instructions to Spot, in a tongue that even Nita didn't understand.
Quicklife Language was near to impossible for ordinary
people to learn, and very difficult for wizards. Of course, Dairine wasn't any ordinary wizard. She knew the Quicklife Language at least as
well as English.
Nita called her partner, mind-to-mind. "He's off in one of those fantasy universes
he keeps creating with Ponch," she reported sadly, having learned to recognize
when this was the case.
Since the battle against her mother's cancer, she had been
reluctant to do much of anything wizardly without the aid of her best
friend. She was still afraid she'd slip
up again. The last time had been far too
close…
"Oh, well… We can
survive without his help, for a few hours."
Dairine took a deep breath; she wasn't half as reckless or confident as
she had been just a few months before.
Nita's words had come very true. Dairine had started with more power than usual, and was having a
harder-than-usual decline; and though Nita and Kit had long ago gotten used to
the fact that they couldn't throw away much power without possible dangerous
consequences, Dairine was still adjusting.
From the
living room, where Nita's folks were watching television, there came a loud,
"Holy crap!" from her dad. Nita and
Dairine looked at each other, and took off in that direction. Skidding to a stop in front of the TV, their
looks were now horrified.
"Uh, we have to go! 'Bye!" Dairine shot out the door. Nita followed, feeling guilty at the
expression of worry on her mother's face.
"I'll explain later!" she called, trying to make amends.
"I trust you two, sweetie," her mom yelled back, "but be
careful!"
"Yeah," Nita replied. She had more
important things to do than get annoyed at her mother, whom she found a lot
less annoying than she had before, anyway.
Knowing you're going to lose someone, she thought, I mean,
lose them really soon, makes so much difference.
And she hurt all over just making her mother worry more than
she should have to.
"What do we do about the TV peoples?" Nita wanted to know.
"Neets," Dairine
said in the tone of voice a frustrated teacher spoke to a slow child, "They haven't had this big a story since…
um…"
"Our Ordeal?" Nita
suggested.
"Something like that.
I'd still say that aliens on a thus far isolated planet is bigger news
than the Sun going out, though. The
point being, we can do nothing."
"At least apparently isolated," Nita corrected with a
grin. "And they did get a hold of other
landings. It's just that the creatures
have never come up to us and shaken hands… or whatever they happen to
have. And that reminds me, what if
someone touches a Modgen?"
Dairine slowed for a second, then doubled her original
speed. "Then we make excuses to their
family, and pay their funeral expenses?" she offered. Her smile was very grim, and even a non-wizardly stranger would
have been able to tell she was serious.
Nita, Dairine, I hope you have a lot of money; these
ordinary humans are sort of clueless about being cautious around aliens. I just have this strong urge to call them
Muggles and get it over with…
Okay, if you people liked this (I am not a mind reader. If you don't TELL me if you liked it, I
won't get the message.) then I'll add more chapters. But I'm not going to waste effort writing if it's all for naught.
Also: if I can possibly do it, I'm going to get Nita+Kit
romance in here somewhere. I'm so very
obsessed with those two. Especially
since Ronan was mentioned a grand total of (drum roll) two times in the
four-hundred-and-three-page The Wizard's Dilemma. I think Nita got over him.
YES! Time to CELEBRATE, people! Whatever Nita+Ronan shippers there are out
there, go find yourselves another party.
:p
Wonder Jenny
