For those of you who followed this story with the assumption that this story has a reasonable update schedule and is about canonical, established gems — I am truly sorry and you have my full permission to leave now.

It is currently midnight.


Max's first class the next day was at nine in the morning — a general English comp course on the entire opposite site of campus from his apartment. After yesterday's cold front it had started to rain instead of snow and the weather that greeted him when he stepped outside that morning was a chilly pea soup fog, unstirrable even by what tiny wisps of wind were left over from last night's tempest. Illinois weather was so weird.

There was nothing in his fridge except expired milk, which he poured down the sink drain. Max grumbled to himself as he picked up coffee and a couple hash browns from MacMillan's, cursing whoever was desperate enough to steal a broke guy's discount ramen and oatmeal.

He ducked inside class just as the professor walked through the door, and slipped into a seat of the back row. As he slipped his laptop out of his backpack the stones in his front pocket clacked together but being mostly sophomores and juniors in a morning class, nobody seemed to either notice nor care.

Until about fifteen minutes into the lecture, when they clacked again and began glowing.

Max didn't really even notice at first but when it began tugging at the top of the backpack pocket, and when its force was enough to actually lift his backpack off the ground, it definitely began attracting some stares. The girl to his right tapped his shoulder with her pen and whispered, "Uh, dude, something in your backpack's tryin' to go somewhere."

What? His heart skipped a beat when he looked down at the backpack and saw, very clearly, a single outline of one of the stones. And…it was glowing? "Uh," he stammered, and thinking fast he closed his laptop, grabbed his backpack and began to vacate the premises, "uh, I think…uh…take notes for me!"

And he was out.

"I don't even know your name," the girl said, staring after the slamming door. Then she shrugged, went back to her own notes and forgot about him, because this was college and not the Hunger Games. There is no room for trippy love triangles here.

Max was making his beeline to the bathrooms, trying not to drop his laptop or get carried into the air by a flying glowing rock. Was it a bomb? Some sort of magical amulet? Who knew. For one he didn't really care, because he was missing out on an English lecture and Professor Gallagher was harsh when it came to testing stuff that was in lectures. If he bombed English, which he was already well on his way to doing, then the scholarship would be for nothing — they'd let him in for his English and chemistry grades; would they take it away because of them too?

It was just as he slammed and locked the bathroom door behind him that the backpack literally yanked itself out of his hands, skittering across the beige tile floor. He could clearly see the stone inside whizzing around the pocket, glowing brighter and moving faster and pulling tighter against the fabric until he thought it would surely break. In a split second he bounded forward, pinned the backpack to the floor and just managed to unzip the pocket before the round jade stone zinged up into the open and knocked him on the jaw. He flew backwards in an explosion of pain, stars and darkness.

When he was able to look up again, he definitely thought that he was knocked out. The gemstone hung in the air near the ceiling, surrounded in a bright, shifting silhouette that as he watched seemed to be adjusting to the shape of…a person. Amid the spears of brilliant green light there were two little hands lifted above her head; her figure was that of a chubby young girl's. The glowing light began to clear and she touched to the ground.

She was almost completely green. That was the first thing Max noticed.

Her short hair, curled at the tips and falling in waves over one eye, was a thick mint green that matched her sari skirt and top. Her skin was darker, like pine needles. And the jade stone was attached to her skin, just over where her bellybutton should have been; the same color as the one eye that he could see. It was a disinterested eye. Tired even though it seemed as if she had just woken up.

"I am going to leave now," was all she said, in a small voice that sounded very much tired with life indeed — and of course he'd know what tired with life sounded like — before walking right past him and reaching for the door.

That was the kicker. Max freaked. "No no no! You — you can't go out there!" he blubbered, taking the gem-girl by the shoulder and spinning her around to face him. She looked no less exhausted by this, but didn't touch the door lock again.

Now Max was stuck with explaining this ordeal without going into gory detail. "Um…" he stammered, and knelt to meet her eyes. "So, okay, I don't know if you're aware with this, but if you go out there it could be very bad. For me. Like…it's not a good thing normally when a college dude walks out of a bathroom with a little girl like you and — trust me, even though I don't want to hurt you, not everyone would believe that. So, uh…don't, don't touch anything for now. We'll figure out what to do."

"There is no 'we'," she replied shortly. "There is me and there is someone who does not know me, nor what to do. I can handle myself."

She turned around again. Not good not good not good. Desperate, Max picked her up by the shoulders, carried her over to the other side of the bathroom near the window and set her down. "No no no, please don't go out there, not now," he tried awkwardly, looking around desperately for other solutions. His eyes landed on his backpack and the other four gemstones — currently inactive and with no strange alien girls to their names, but who knew — winked mischievously at him from their pocket. "Are, uh," he scooped the backpack up and pointed at the gems. "Are they gonna turn into magical anime girls too?"

The girl looked at the other gems in the pocket and then reached in. She picked out the two in the plastic bag, then put them back and turned to the window. "Yes. Later. May I leave through this portal?"

Max's mind was racing. He had to get back to class otherwise he'd miss out on the chapter 15 discussion which he sorely needed, but he also needed to make sure this girl was safe. School though this technically was, you couldn't just let a twelve-year-old walk around a college campus on her own. He could possibly slip out with her and just keep her in class with him so long as she kept quiet, which she seemed pretty good at doing, but even still people would ask questions and she might start to get bored. Oh yes, he could believe her and let her go on her own way. But she needed to be safe, and he really wanted to know what was up with these gems. Why they turned into people. She could help him.

"You are debating your self-acclaimed position as my escort," her high crystalline voice cut through his thoughts. He stared back at her.

"How…did you know…"

"Human expressions are the easiest to interpret. Easier than gems, if that is possible," she added with a hint of dry humor.

Hmm. Well, that didn't answer any more questions than it made. He glanced out the window. Fortunately they were on the south side of the building which meant that the only thing directly outside this bathroom was a bike path and a strip of trees. Perfect. "Okay," he looked the girl in the eye to make sure she was listening, and told her his plan. "I want you to go outside and wait in the trees. I can give you my coat because it's cold — "

"For three hundred years of my existence I lived near the southern pole of my planet, where summer temperatures often reach a blazing negative two hundred degrees Celsius — nearly seventy-three degrees above absolute zero," she put in helpfully and let him keep his coat. After a second of silence he recomposed himself and continued.

"Uh…anyway. I have an…important class that I need to be at right now so I'm going to have to let you wait for about an hour. I can give you something to read if you want — here." He didn't carry all his books with him all the time, but he did just so happen to have a spare molecular biology textbook in his backpack. It was probably ten pounds but she didn't seem to have any trouble holding it. "Just…uh…wait in the woods for me and I'll come back for you when I'm done. Try not to be seen, okay?"

The girl nodded. She glanced down at the other gems in Max's backpack, then very simply reached forward and zipped them shut inside again. "They will not reform. Too badly injured. Your worries are nothing."

Almost without thinking, he glanced down at the gem on her stomach. Jade. "You're," he scrambled to piece the sentence together so as not to sound like he was making assumptions — however, that was an impossibility no matter what his English grade. "The gem is actually a part of you. A physical property that you grow from, and which you keep on your body."

She tilted her head a small bit to the left. "The gem, human boy," she replied, "Isn't just a part of me. It is me."

"Jade," Max nodded. "That's what it is, right? Your gem — you?"

She inclined her chin in response, with only a very little smile that told him he was right. "Max Albus," she had cracked open his textbook, where the same two names were penciled gingerly in the top-left corner of the inside cover. "Your name?"

He smiled back.

He opened the high window and offered to let her climb on his shoulders to get out, but she simply crouched, leapt in to the air and effortlessly hurdled through the window. When Max looked down to see if she'd landed safely, she was standing at the base of the building with her back towards him. The only thing of her that was moving was her silky green hair, waving in the misty morning breeze.

"Uh, okay," he called, trying not to be too loud. "See you later, I guess!"

And Max split, again.

He came back into class breathless, one hand cupped underneath the pocket with the rocks and the other nearly strangling the backpack strap. The girl who'd noticed before gave him a strange look but for the most part ignored him as he pulled out his laptop and began taking notes again — a little jittery and definitely tense; his fingers shook every time he tried to hold them still.

So an alien girl who came from an explosion of green light, and a pocketful of rocks who could do the same thing. He wasn't doing great as for money and suddenly thought that aliens probably needed sleep too; she'd want a place to stay in for the night and the only thing he had was a couch. Maybe Chelle could hook her up with a room or something. Maybe…maybe Chelle could take them off his hands entirely, and leave him to suffer with his money problems by himself like he'd gotten used to.

Max sat back in his seat and sighed. This was certainly a problem. Bigger than his apartment being broken into. A problem that probably involved Social Services except for the fact that they'd probably arrest him too just for the kicks, and finals were coming up real soon.

A problem that excited him. He sat forward again, and smirked at the backpack full of magical anime girl rocks.