Disclaimer: W.I.T.C.H. - Not mine. D.J.I.N.N. - Are mine. Any questions?

Author's Note: I have updated! Rejoice and review!


Chapter Nine: Right Down Memory Lane


After Dee had washed her hands, she liberated all the bathroom appliances from their drawer and returned them to their stations; Gladys hoped to "see you again soon, dear!" as Dee said her goodbyes.

Pulling on the Auramere-themed jacket Hay Lin had lent her, the Keeper went to the back yard where the Collins and Will were gathering up branches that had fallen during the storm. Dee found it cool that they had a pool before she remembered she had never learned to swim; feeling a little sad about that, she felt better when she saw Will and Bee "sword-fighting" with two branches while an exasperated Susan and an amused Dean looked on. "Who's winning?" Dee asked.

Will scoffed. "Me, of course! Big sister always wins, right, Bee?"

"Of course you do," Bee replied. "Because I let you win!" The Collins chuckled while Will mock-glared at them; Bee dropped her "sword" into the brush pile and smiled at Dee. "I bet the other girls were dying to know how things were going," she said, adjusting her glasses after her ferocious duel. "It was nice of Jamila to lend you her phone, but then she's always very helpful."

Will raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Dee. "So you talked to the girls?" She smiled knowingly at Dee when the others couldn't see her, knowing for a fact that Jamila had not given Dee her SAT and guessing just how the Fire Guardian had helped the Keeper keep in touch. "I bet they were going nuts wondering about how things were going."

"Well, Ingrid was the most curious. She wanted to know if it was okay for me to come to her sleep over after dinner."

"At Cornelia's house?" Susan asked. Will and Dee both nodded. "Oh, Cornelia's back, isn't she? How's she doing? She's so close now..."

"Everything's looking good," Will said, "Even Cornelia, of course."

"But should she be handling all those girls by herself? In her condition?"

Will shot a wry glance at Dee. "Mom... none of these girls are what you'd call trouble makers; even Ingrid knows when to cool it. Cornelia's mother will be there, too, so don't worry. God, you're always worrying!"

"I'm sorry," Susan said. "It's just that it's hard to stop once you get started. Let's see how you're going to like it, Miss Free and Easy!" They all laughed. "No point in raking with the grass still wet, let's go back in."

"Hey, I have an idea," Dean said with a grin. "Since Dee's joining the family, why don't we show her some of our old photos? Like our wedding and Will's graduations?"

"And baby pictures!" Beatrice suggested. "Especially the embarrassing ones of Billie running around naked!" Will shot out an arm to whack Bee on the head, but the scholarly teen showed surprising dexterity as she dodged the blow; Dee figured that the two sisters had been play-fighting for years.

"That's a good idea," Susan agreed. "I need to make a call, you guys start without me."

Dee, Will, Dean and Bee returned to the living room where Will's half-sister opened a cabinet and pulled out a thick album. "We have everything backed up on electronic media, of course, but we keep regular photos to show people."

Dee and Will sat on the couch while Dean took a chair. Bee brought the album over to the coffee table and put it down with great effort. "Oof! There is a lot of history in there! It's more or less chronologically ordered, I put it together myself."

"I remember that day," Dean said. "There were photos all over this room. Susan and her daughters seem to be able to organize no matter how big a mess they make."

"Says you!" Will accused her step-father. "Dee hasn't seen your study yet, but it's a total landfill!"

"It's not a landfill, it's... productive consequences."

Will pulled the album forward and opened it so its covers sat on her and Dee's laps. The first page was a big photo of the Collins family from many years ago; Dee was surprised to see a teenaged Will staring into her eyes as she held an infant that had to be Beatrice. Of particular note was the Heart of Candracar hanging around Will's neck and resting on Beatrice's small chest, the infant seemingly fascinated with the amulet.

"Will must really like you," Beatrice observed, "if she gave you her necklace. What did you call that thing, the Heart of Candy?"

"Uh, yeah," Will said. "Mrs. Lin and the girls gave it to me when we moved here." Dee fingered the Heart's frame, noting it did not look as impressive in the photo as it did in real life; the glow of the Heart didn't seem to translate visually. "Kinda makes sense to give it to Dee, right? I don't wear it anymore... oh no!"

Dee froze. All she had done was turn the page and Will had freaked. But then she laughed and pointed to a picture of a red-haired toddler playing in a bathtub with a black-haired boy about the same age. "I can't believe you still have this! I made sure to rip up the original... darn it, Tucker! Remind me to kick his butt at Hay Lin's wedding."

Dean laughed. "I remember that picture caused a lot of commotion that summer."

"This is me and a friend of mine named Danny Fenton," Will explained to a relieved Dee. "This very same picture was used for a greeting card a long time ago. I was so embarrassed when everyone at school had one! I think Irma was behind it..." Dee didn't doubt it for a minute.

There were some more baby pictures, some with a younger Susan with bigger hair and red-haired man that Will pointed out as her father; Dee thought he looked very suave, quite a different man than the ruffled Dean Collins. By the time Susan entered the room they were already up to Will's move to Heatherfield and the other Guardians began appearing. ("It was like I had four other daughters," Susan commented on the closeness of W.I.T.C.H. "At least I didn't have to pay their tuition.")

There was also a boy that was so similar to Ingrid it had to be her father and Jamila's crush, Caleb. Dee had to admit he was pretty cute, though he seemed to have a permanently confused expression in his pictures. It might have been since Meridia, uh, Meridian didn't have cameras.

The Collins were the main focus, however, and the album showed their journey from their first Christmas to their last Thanksgiving... which just happened to have a picture of flaming turkey being doused with gravy by a younger Ingrid. "It still tasted pretty good," Dean recollected while Susan just closed her eyes and sighed.

It was cool to see the younger Guardians and the occasional pic of Ingrid, Nola and Jamila, but most of Dee's focus was on the shots of Will. Maybe if she took in enough of the photos of her new parent it would be like she had been here her whole life instead of elsewhere. It was kind of a stupid thought, but what the hell? It made her feel good.

"You kept your hair the same," Dee noted absently, "except in college. Busy studying?"

"Pretty much," Will groused, looking at a photo of herself with messy hair that ran down her back. "Oy... Irma said I looked like a hippie. I hate it when she's right, she gets all smug. Oh, well. Next time I'll sic you on her and see how smug she looks then!"

Dee smirked. "Let me at her!" The others laughed, even Susan.

"Taranee took some pictures of you at the dinner, we'll put some of those in here later. The girls and I have an album of our own at Cornelia's house that Ingrid can show you. It's the kind of photos you can't show parents or nosy sisters!" Will winked at her family who looked immediately suspicious.

"You make it sound like they're continuing the tradition?" Bee asked, her face speculative.

"They are kinda. We're W.I.T.C.H., well, and today Hay Lin dubbed Dee and the girls D.J.I.N.N. which is..."

"The original Arabic word for genie," Bee finished. "That's... interesting."

Dee remembered that Bee had possibly suspected something when she was younger and W.I.T.C.H. was still active. The new Keeper told herself to be very careful around this girl when it came to Guardian stuff. It was supposed to be a big secret, but Dee had no idea how Will had kept it hidden with this close a family.

Dee worried that Bee might try to question her when Will wasn't around; Bee didn't seem to be putting on an act with her seemingly good nature, but only dumb people used hostility to get information out of others and Bee was definitely not dumb. Dee, however, wasn't sure how her own intelligence stacked up against Beatrice's; most likely it didn't and she was a little concerned that Bee would sweet-talk something out of her.

Will and Dee closed the album together and sat it back on the table. After having the cold leather on her for over an hour, Dee rubbed her chilled knees with her hands to warm them up. Will noticed and said, "Let's go to my old room and get you something warm to wear. Agh, I sound like you already, Mom. 'Wear a sweater over your t-shirt, baby, you can take it off if it gets warm.'"

Susan curled her nose at her daughter, mildly annoyed/amused at Will's comparison. "Well, you're going to have to do more than get her a sweater. Besides enrolling her in school I imagine she'll need a physical, especially after a year on her own."

Dee's back straightened and she looked unusually concerned to the Collins. "A what?"

"Just a check-up," Will assured her. "We can use my doctor, he's very nice. If you were a cat or dog I could do it myself, though you seem okay from what I can tell. Still, better safe than sorry. I'll schedule an appointment for Monday afternoon."

"Um... okay. Are they expensive?"

"Don't worry about it, it's just a few procedures. Heart rate, eyesight, that sort of thing. Oh! And the dentist, you need to see them, too, at least for a check up. Do your teeth hurt anywhere?" Dee shook her head; Bee and Susan smiled wryly at each other as Will fussed over her new daughter. "How about your... you know... womanly things?"

"I think I'll get dinner started," Dean said as he quickly exited the room. Some things were not meant for the ears of men.


It had never occurred to Elyon how big her throne room was. Being concerned about the size of anything seemed like an obsession more suited to her late, not-so-great brother. But as she sat on the lone throne and stared at the rich carpets and stately decorations, the Queen realized it was a big space that was almost completely barren despite the trappings.

Sure, her customary guards were there, diligently scanning the room for any signs of intrusion. The Meridian Royal Army once was the domineering arm of the hated Phobos and treated just as badly as the people they had unwillingly oppressed, clothed in ragged loincloths and minimal armor while wielding rusted weapons left over from less peaceful times in their world's history.

Now they were clad in full-body blue suits of Meridian steel with armaments as beautiful as lethal weapons could be, because Elyon insisted on the best protection for those that put their lives on the line in her name. Never in the history of the royal family was a matriarch as loved as Elyon. She had the whole kingdom with her and yet...

Elyon inspected her nails. Perfect. Nothing to work on. Sigh.

Maybe she could help with the preparations for the banquet? No, they would never let her do any physical labor, she was the "delicate little Queen." Well, what then? What do bored queens do to pass the time?

Inspect stuff. Yeah, that was a good one. Elyon rose and said to Tynar, "I've got to stretch my legs, Ty. I'm about to go stir-crazy sitting on my royal butt."

Tynar, usually serious to a fault, cracked a smile at Elyon's words as he fell in behind her. "Yes, M'Lady."

Within the walls of the castle Elyon could be travel with the company of just one guard, mainly because there was usually another guard at every corner, if not two. Elyon greeted every one of them by name as she passed through the halls to the garden situated in the middle of the grounds. It was Elyon's favorite place in the whole of her lands, beautiful and peaceful as Eden as anywhere could be.

Most days. Currently, the sounds of men yelling, heavy thuds and the clang of steel broke the silence that normally pervaded the sanctum. Elyon recognized the voices and smiled; it seemed that Caleb was giving his replacement a thorough working over before he relinquished his position as Captain of the Guard. Elyon held a finger up to her lips to signal Tynar to remain silent, then crept over to the bushes in a sneaky manner more becoming a thief than a queen. She carefully parted the rose bushes and immediately began to enjoy the show.

Both Caleb and Drake were bare-chested and sweating profusely, Elyon noted with glee; their lean muscles were an impressive sight as they flexed from the exertions of the sword-fight the two were having. The queen was a little disconcerted that they were using real swords instead of wooden mock-ups, but both had been training since they were too young to shave; not using real weapons would belittle their skill at this point.

Not that their skill was why Elyon was interested by them, of course. She could almost see Tynar rolling his eyes at her voyeurism, but Elyon found little harm in just looking, even if both men were married and out of reach.

As she watched Caleb block an over head blow from Drake and pin the other man's sword to the ground, Elyon remembered the first time she'd met him before Will's thirteenth birthday party nearly twenty years ago. She-and Alchemy and pretty much every other girl at the party-had been head over heels for the strange mannered, but more importantly hot, boy who said the weirdest things and jumped out of windows. Elyon had noted Cornelia's subtle interest back then, but had thought she stood a reasonable chance since her friend hadn't yet staked her claim.

Well, the claim was staked now. Elyon mused that in some other life in some alternate universe (or multiverse, she could never get that straight) she and Caleb may have been more than Queen and vassal. He was practically like a father to Nola already, it wasn't that much of a stretch. Maybe they would have had other children and retired to their room each night to recount their day and make love in the dark.

Regret watered down lust as she realized how alone she was now that Nola was taking her first steps toward her new life, while Elyon was still stuck in her old, insanely busy existence. The demands of rebuilding a kingdom, hell, a whole world had taken longer than Phobos had done to muck it up in the first place. Then there was trying to re-establish Meridian's place in the universe; often Candracar had called upon the world for aid, particularly Elyon's, and though one could theoretically say no to the Oracle, Elyon was sure no one asked in the first place would ever say so. It really was annoying when a man knew what you were going to say before you did.

And that wasn't even the biggest obstacle she faced in her love life. She was the frikkin' Queen, the Light of Meridian, a position just shy of a deity in her world's eyes. It wasn't like she could head into town and meet guys at a pub, no; the last time she tried that over a hundred eligible bachelors had bent their knees before she got through the door. Even more annoying, not a one of them had proposed marriage.

So where do royals make love connections? With other royals, or at least nobility that aren't quite as in awe of you as the common man. To that end, Elyon had met with just about every single noble in all the lands; the fact she was still unmarried when the age of consent in Meridian was fifteen said a lot (or rather didn't) about her prospects in those elite social circles.

Most of them were boring at best while some were downright annoying, what Irma called "Prima Donalds" as they preened their self-image in the form of conversation; it was like they were flaunting their DNA to add to the royal gene pool. Some of the braver ones tried innuendo, often badly and as subtle as a concussion. And the really, really stupid ones insinuated that Elyon needed a proper heir instead of her beautiful but still common adopted daughter.

These brave idiots got the cold shoulder from the queen-literally, as they found they drinks frozen and stuck to their hand within seconds by some "quirk" of Elyon's powers that she promptly and insincerely apologized for, a tactic Elyon referred to as being a "diplomatic bitch." Nobody talked about her little angel like that.

And now her angel was flying away. Ingrid's advice to Nola about getting an Earth boy seemed like a good idea for her mother as well, or at least someone from another planet. Maybe the girls knew someone from their many missions to other dimensions; at this point, Elyon was seriously considering lifting her "humanoids only" rule.

As Elyon was lost in her rather disturbing thoughts about the rock-men of Aridia, she barely noticed Caleb as he signaled to Drake to end their duel. "Not bad," Caleb said in his deep voice that reminded many of his father; with his thin beard he now strongly resembled Julian as a younger man, but with the softer features ironically inherited from his mother. "Your defense was a little loose, I could have got your legs a few times, but other than that you did alright."

Drake looked a little more winded and took a moment to catch his breath before answering. "Hmph! I can't believe I used to dip your scrawny ass in the Leech Pond to make you cry like a baby. This is payback, isn't it?"

"I barely remember that," Caleb said with a wide grin. However he had grown over the years, Elyon reflected that he still had a lot to learn about guile. "If you're going to protect the queen, you'd better be at your best. I think Ingrid could have taken you down just now."

Drake wrung the sweat out of his blonde hair and shrugged. "Hey, that girl's got Guardian blood in her veins; I'm not going to whine if she can beat an old man like me."

Elyon chuckled at that statement since Drake was only a few years older than Caleb. This got the attention of the two guardsmen and they stared wide-eyed at the sight of their matriarch hunched over in the rosebushes. "Don't mind me," Elyon said cavalierly even as she blushed slightly. "Just admiring the view."

Both of the hardened warriors looked as sheepish as school boys as they realized Elyon had been spying on them; they tried to cover it up by snapping to attention and bowing to her. "Your Highness!" Caleb said. "How may we serve?"

Many very naughty ideas came to Elyon's mind, but she pushed aside for the sake of the men's wives as she rounded the rose bushes. "Just getting some fresh air before the banquet. Are you ready to see your wife, 'Dad'?"

Caleb smiled as he threw on a shirt and began buttoning it up; one did not walk around half-naked in front of the queen, though Elyon certainly wouldn't have minded. "Of course, but I don't think she'll be happy to see me. I remember how she was last time... not that she isn't entitled, I mean."

Good thing he remembers, Elyon thought. It would save him a lot of trouble. And pain. "Well, whatever Cornelia says she does miss you. And she hates you, but that's mostly the hormones talking." A pause. "Mostly."

Caleb groaned softly as Elyon slapped herself in the forehead, nearly knocking her tiara off. "Oh, god, I totally forgot! Caleb, I want to be the first to congratulate you: the new Guardians have been chosen, and Ingrid is the Earth Guardian."

"Really!" Caleb gave a booming laugh. "She must be thrilled! I'm guessing that Nola is the Water Guardian?" Elyon looked surprised at his deduction. "Even I could figure that one out, what with her powers and all. Congratulations yourself, Your Highness."

"Yes, well, I am proud... I'm just missing her already. Please don't tell her that, okay? She'll feel bad if she thinks I'm distracted because of her."

Caleb nodded. "I promise. Who are the others?"

It was a fairly direct question to ask a royal, but Elyon never stood on ceremony if she could avoid it and Caleb was practically family; but not family enough that he couldn't be eye-candy, like a brother-in-law, perhaps. "Two of them are friends of Ingrid. Jamila, of course, and a new girl that you haven't met yet. The Keeper... oh, I love that I'm the one that gets to tell this..." She told her vassals about Dee and her encounters with the former Guardians, finishing with Will's decision to adopt the runaway. "They're so perfect, it has to be the Heart at work bringing them together."

Tynar and Drake were regaled with the tale but Caleb frowned. "This spider creature worries me. If it was following this Dee, it must know quite a lot about Guardians. I think I need to finish up here and get back to Earth. I'll get started on the rosters and deployments right away." He turned to leave.

"Uh, Caleb?" Elyon prompted. "You, ah, have to appear at the banquet, remember? It's to honor you and your father, remember?"

Caleb stopped and blinked. "Oh... right. I, uh, should clean up a little, maybe?"

Elyon wrinkled her nose as the wind blew from Caleb to her. "If you don't, I'll make it a royal edict. Whew!" Drake laughed heartily, then sniffed under his own arm and made a disgusted face.


Jamila held the sun in her hand.

Figuratively, of course, as she shielded her eyes from Earth's star as it returned with a vengeance after the over-cast morning and lit up the windows of the buildings in the downtown area. For nearly half her life Jamila had lived in Heatherfield and because of that she was very comfortable within the city.

It hadn't been that way at the start, though. Her arrival to the city had been precipitated by the untimely deaths of her parents, two scientists who were working in Japan at a laboratory jointly run by the Japanese, American and European Union governments. Though she had lived elsewhere the small community located outside the base was all she could recall, staying with her grandmother while her parents worked and learning Arabic from Aqeela or Japanese from the tutoring program on her personal computer.

Home-schooled for the most part, Jamila had shown a voracious appetite for learning that no course schedule could satisfy. Labeled as a child prodigy by even her intelligent parents, her father had often joked she was after his job; a horrified Jamila had strongly denied this and was confused at her family's laughter. How was funny that she'd make her daddy get fired? Adults were weird.

There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the day she became an orphan. Jamila thought she should remember things, like what she had for breakfast or what she was wearing. All she remembered was the sky was overcast and her hair was in pigtails instead of her now customary head scarfs and shawls, but her most vivid memory was seeing the soldiers driving by very quickly and the columns of smoke in the air before her grandmother hustled her inside.

To this day Jamila wasn't sure what happened. She had run searches on the internet and tried every source she could think of, such as contacting people who had served at the lab and base surrounding it, but the whole thing had been classified. So much so that most of those who knew what happened had gently (and sometimes not so gently) told her to count her blessings and stop asking questions. Her grandmother had mentioned something about an explosion, but that was it.

There was a mass funeral for all those lost besides the Sahrzads, nearly thirty in all, the commanding officer of the base calling it a "terrible tragedy" and saying nothing beyond that. The bodies had to be cremated for some reason, which Jamila later felt relief that she would never have the image of her parent's corpses in her mind. Each life lost was instead symbolized by a gas-lit torch with a plaque with the person's name and rank or position; her parents were, fittingly, on a single plaque with Drs. Rahim and An Sharzad in raised letters. Jamila couldn't look at the names but stared into the single torch that symbolized her parents' singular existence.

Years later, as Jamila was staring into the black screen of Hay Lin's computer in fact, she would make the connection when the torch inexplicably went from yellow and red to blue-white as she poured her grief into it. She also recalled that she felt better afterward, like the fire had purified her heart with its heat.

Eager to get Jamila away from that place, her grandmother Aqeela had accepted a job with Simultech Software Company as an officer manager that had suddenly arrived in her email account, despite her being retired for several years. The move to Heatherfield was little more than a blur and suddenly her grandmother was dropping Jamila off for her first ever day of school at Weisman Elementary.

The biggest shock was how many kids there were, Jamila often reflected. She had played with the kids in Japan often enough, but there was never more than a few at a time. At Weisman there were dozens of them, of all races and creeds yammering in English like it was soon to be a dead language. Aqeela had escorted her to a first grade classroom and assured her that she would be there to pick her up when school let out, making sure the headscarf that once belonged to Jamila's mother was securely fitted around her granddaughter's head.

Mature for her age (and partially because she was scared out of her mind) Jamila had made no fuss as her grandmother left and the teacher directed everyone to a large rug so they could introduce themselves.

Jamila was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't hear her name called and the teacher nearly marked her absent before she spoke up-in Japanese, no less. She switched quickly to Arabic than English but the damage had already been done: she was the Weird Girl Who Couldn't Talk Right. That, combined with her unusual head wear had marked her as "different," a label almost as bad as a scarlet letter on her chest saying she was an adulterer. Innocent giggles had made her blush and stare at her lap, which led to her missing the obvious interest of the tall girl with the light blue eyes.

The next few hours consisted of re-teaching the class how to write their names (Jamila could do this in the Roman alphabet, Arabic writing and Japanese Kanji, but decided to stick with the English spelling) as well as counting and alphabetic activities that she completed easily. Recess came as they filed off to the cafeteria for their milk cartons and were unleashed on the playground.

Jamila stood by herself as her classmates chugged their milk and played on the jungle gym. The slide looked like fun, but she didn't want to do anything that would make her seem weird. Well, not again.

Even with her excellent memory she could not remember the boy's name, only that he was suddenly in her face and ironically telling her, "You can't talk right!" like it was a mortal sin.

Startled, Jamila tried to leave but the larger boy blocked her and said, "My daddy says t-owl heads like you gonna kill us! Huh! You gonna do that?"

"N-no," Jamila had said, "I do not want to hurt anyone..."

"Liar!" He batted her milk to the ground and grabbed Jamila's arm so hard she cried out in pain. "I'm gonna hurt you first!" Jamila had, in her young mind, honestly thought he was going to kill her. There were no teachers around to see them and she had never met a person so angry in her entire life.

As the boy cocked back his fist to deliver the blow, a voice yelled "JERK!" as the boy was hit by blur that sent him flying and broke his grip on Jamila. The tall girl Jamila had barely noticed in her class was suddenly standing there looking twice as angry as the boy had been. "You don't hit girls!" she screamed at the stunned boy. "We hit back! You want to fight me, you, you... JERK?"

The girl's limited vocabulary did limit to dampen the impact she had on Jamila's persecutor. The boy burst into tears and ran off, fated to become a better person for the experience if only out of fear of Ingrid Hale.

"Yeah, you better run!" Ingrid had called out to the boy, kicking dirt in his general direction just on principle. "When I'm a Guardian you're REALLY gonna be in trouble!" Ingrid then shook a little fist for good measure and turned to Jamila, her rage quickly transforming into concern. "Are you okay, babe? Are you hurt? Man, I sound like Aunt Irma!" The tall girl had giggled at the idea.

Dazed, Jamila shook her head. "No... I'm alright. Thank you. That was very brave."

"What, that?" Ingrid made a dismissive gesture. "Aw, he wasn't nothing. Do you want me to kick him? 'Cause I can do that if you want."

Jamila had smiled shakily. "That's okay. I'm sure he didn't mean it..."

"Hey, don't stick up for him! Oh... your milk's all gone," Ingrid had pointed out. "Here, you can have mine." She had taken a carton out of the hood of her jacket and showed it to Jamila. "My Unka keeps stuff like that in his hood, but it's usually gross stuff."

"Don't you need that?" Jamila had pointed out. "It's got vitamins and minerals that are good for you."

Ingrid had chuckled. "My Aunt Will makes me eat all kinds of stuff that's "good" for me, yuck! I get enough of that." Jamila had accepted the milk carton and was surprised when Ingrid thrown an arm around her and started talking. Non-stop. "That thing on your head is pretty cool, are you bald? My other uncle, he's bald, too, I don't think he can grow hair, though. What do you like to do? I like to play ball and video games, but Aunt Will doesn't let me play them a lot. She's a veter-narian, a doctor for animals like my cat. His name is Napoleon and he was my Aunt Lily's cat but now he's mine. All he does is sleep, though. And eat. Aunt Will keeps saying she'll 'fix' him if he doesn't get more exercise, which makes him really nervous but I don't know why..."

Looking back it all makes sense now, Jamila thought as she helped Cornelia get into her mother's car. The strange terms and the closeness of Ingrid's aunts, whom Jamila had always thought of as a single unit instead of five separate people, now fit together with the new knowledge of what a Guardian was.

It was too early to tell what effect this development would have on her life in the long term, of course, but Jamila had never had concrete plans for the future. She was intelligent, yes, and a graceful dancer-or so Miss Cook had told her at the Jensen Dance Academy-but a definite career had never crossed her mind. A scientist like her parents, a famous dancer or a professor at a university and perhaps even a wife and mother at some point; all were likely paths in her life, but none had been chosen.

Jamila wondered if that factored into her choosing as a Guardian in first place, her open future, and that led her to speculate about the other girls. Ingrid seemed to want to be a Guardian more than anything and from what Jami knew of Nola from their off-and-on friendship over the years the princess was always trying to help others; obviously, they must have been the top choices.

Nestis, with her recent loss and uprooting from the place she'd lived all her life, may actually have needed something like Guardianship to fill the hole left by her father's passing; Jamila had noted the similarity between her exodus to Heatherfield and the new girl's as soon as she'd haltingly told her story that first day at the Silver Dragon.

Dee didn't seem to care about being the Keeper of the Heart as long as she got to stay with Will; perhaps not the purest attitude, but it was honest and Jamila thought that Dee would do her best if she wanted to make Will proud of her. Jamila hoped things were continuing to go well at the Collins but resolved not to contact Dee so as to not distract her from, as Ingrid called it, "buttering up the g.p.'s." Even after all these years Jamila never ceased to be amused at Ingrid's way of looking at the world, while Nola just seemed exasperated by her oldest friend's... eccentricities.

Their argument as they placed Cornelia's luggage in Elizabeth Hale's trunk was a perfect example of this. "No, Ingrid, you may not 'play' with my hair! The last time I allowed that you turned half my head bright orange! I couldn't bear to leave my room for a week!"

"I admit, mistakes were made," Ingrid said solemnly. Mock-solemnly, anyway. "I thought that adding Threbeian beetle extract would increase your's hair's bounce-and you have to admit, it did-but the whole orange-y side-effect was totally unexpected."

"Was it? I would have thought the fact that Threbeian beetle are bright orange in coloration might have given you a clue?"

"Okay, now you're just splitting hairs, Nollie. Ha! Splitting hairs! Oh, that reminds me, I have this new curling technique I've been working on..."

"Then try it out on Napoleon, if you must. I've suffered enough at your hand and I won't submit myself to any more of your tortures until you've been certified by a respectable hair-styling school. That does not include online courses, by the way."

"Oh, but Napoleon's hair isn't long enough! Nollieeeeeeee!"

Nola's eye twitched. "A few inches. That's all you're getting."

"Yes!" Ingrid embraced Nola and swung her around in a circle. "Who's my girl? You're my girl!"

"Sigh... it would appear so," Nola said calmly even as she was spun around. "Does she man-handle you like this, Jamila? Or am I just the lucky one?"

"Oh, how I wish," Jamila said in an exaggerated tone of regret, then quickly took her seat in the car so as not to be grasped by Ingrid.

Elizabeth Hale, Ingrid's grandmother and the driver for the trip to Cornelia's house, smiled at Jamila in the rear view mirror. The two knew each other fairly well from all the years she and Ingrid had been friends. "Thank you for helping me with the dishes this morning, Jamila. My, you were up early; Ingrid didn't roll out of bed until eleven."

"You're welcome, Mrs. Hale. I do it at home all the time, it's just natural to me."

"I wish it would come naturally to Ingrid," Elizabeth said as her granddaughter ducked into the car. "And I thought that her mother was a mess at her age." Ingrid and Cornelia looked at Elizabeth with identical expressions of disbelief, like they were shocked by the implication of imperfection. Jamila wondered if the two realized how much they resembled each other; Ingrid had always maintained she was nothing like her mother, something that had always struck her friend as odd.

Countless girls around the world wanted to be like Cornelia Hale, but apparently not her own daughter. Jamila found that somewhat sad but not unexpected; Cornelia's absences had taken their toll on Ingrid, who had compensated by becoming largely indifferent to her mother.

Even now Ingrid was more focused on their upcoming evening than visiting with her recently returned parent. "Do you think Dee likes pizza? Scratch that, she'll probably eat anything that's put in front of her, poor baby. What about you, Nessie? What are you hungry for?"

Nestis shrugged and smiled wanely, which Jamila had noticed was how she was always smiled. How hard it was to smile at first, Jamila remembered, even with Ingrid as entertainment. "I'm pretty much like Dee, so it doesn't matter."

"Pepperoni, then. Everybody loves pepperoni, it's the international standard of pizza toppings. Or maybe that's cheese. Nola, I still got some of those nasty vegetables that you like, ya health nut. Would it kill you to break this semi-vegan diet you've been on for practically forever?"

"It would eventually," Nola said evenly. "You shouldn't eat so much junk food yourself, it makes you hyperactive."

"Naw, I'm hyperactive because I love life. And soda. So, we're taking Dee to school Monday, how long until we start looking for a boyfriend for her?"

"Boyfriend?" Jamila repeated in confusion. "Isn't that a little sudden?"

"Hey, I asked how long until we started looking, Jami. I'm not going to rush her or anything, it's just that I have the perfect candidate in mind for our boss-for Dee."

The other girls stared at Ingrid waiting for her to elaborate, but all the Earth Guardian did was stare out the window as the car sped to her house. "Ingrid..." Nola prompted. "You were saying?"

"Huh? Oh, right. Sorry, but I'm going to keep that a secret, don't want to jinx it." The other girls groaned. "Hey, I'm not being coy here, I really do have a plan."

"That," Nola said grimly, "has never boded well."

No, Jamila thought with a smile, but it is always interesting.


Author's Note: I took Greki's review that Jamila seemed to be the least developed of the girls as a challenge and made sure to include her in this chapter. I used a lot of my own experience at my first elementary school as reference, though of course I didn't speak and write in three languages and was kind of a brat that picked fights with bigger boys that whupped me, but I was nice to the girls, of course. Ingrid would have so made me her slave on her playground, though, just like she does when I write her dialogue-she takes control of me!

The sweaty Caleb scene goes out to strayphoenix, who would probably hug my neck if we didn't live hundreds of miles apart, and everyone else who's been wanting to see Cornelia's man-toy. Maybe I can fit a mention of Matt in eventually, but all you need to know really is that he and Will are splitsville and never married, and that the other girls and Susan HATE him. I'll leave it to your imagination as to what that means.

Weisman Elementary is named in honor of Greg Weisman, a producer of Season Two and creator of another popular Disney show Gargoyles.

I took the idea of a lab accident in Japan from an X-Box game called Breakdown.

Elyon's old house/Collins' current home does have a swimming pool as seen in "C Is For Changes."

The Jensen Dance Academy is taken from the comics. Literally, I picked up the building and ran off with it. I'm frickin' Superman!

Will's "nudie pic" is a nod to my Never Too Young story, a crossover story with WITCH and other cartoon shows; the boy in the picture is Danny Fenton from Danny Phantom and Tucker Foley is from that show, too. If you're reading that consider this a little spoiler to watch for. I don't want to call DJINN a straight-up crossover fic, but characters from other shows will pop in from time to time like at Hay Lin's wedding and Elyon's banquet.