"Is the chicken ready?"

"I think it might need another couple minutes."

"Are you sure? That looks black!"

Pause. "I'm pretty sure that's just the seasoning, Dad."

"We are not ordering pizza again because you cooked."

Jalil sat at the kitchen table in their simply furnished apartment, a pair of books spread out in front of him, listening to Alix and their father argue in the kitchen while they finished cooking dinner, the voices fading into the apartment's ambient noise as he concentrated on the work in front of him. He had tried his hand in the kitchen a few times over the years, particularly back in lycée whenever his father had had a meeting run late – those nights, if Jalil didn't get something together, they might not have eaten until midnight. Although as it was, they had still had to wait until midnight to eat as often as not. While Alix struggled in the kitchen… Jalil was abysmal. The first time he had tried to make stir-fry vegetables, they had called the fire department. One time while boiling water for pasta, he had somehow melted through the bottom of the pan.

Something sizzled, and Alix let out a hiss. "Shit! Maybe that was too high…"

Their father let out an exasperated groan. "Stop! Just leave it as is. Scrape of the burnt parts and we'll make do. Now make sure the rice isn't sticking."

"I thought it wasn't supposed to stick in the rice cooker," Alix retorted. A moment later, she muttered, "But still it somehow does…"

Jalil stifled a chuckle. There were benefits to being banned from the kitchen.

Blocking out the voices around him, he refocused his attention on the Atlantean tome spread on the table in front of him, a sixteenth-century copy of the much older original which was still housed in the Egyptian Miraculous Temple's hermetically-sealed archives. As it was, this copy threatened to crumble into dust every time he turned a page, the vellum yellowed with age and nearly worn through in places from use. The sheer history and legacy contained within this book, knowledge that would make a historian's head spin, and this only represented a fraction of the lost material buried in the Egypt temple! When he had first gained access to the hidden library beneath the Great Sphinx, he had never dreamed of the things he could learn. And so much of it was thanks to the care that the Guardians had put into preserving these volumes, despite their inability to read them. The knowledge of the Atlantean language – a precursor even to the proto-Indo-European language from which so many European and Asian languages derived – had been lost for millennia, since only a couple generations after the fall of Atlantis itself. But despite their inability to decipher more than a third of these books, the Guardians had taken such great care to maintain them and copy them when necessary – and Jalil had only found a handful of scribal errors in his study.

"Interesting…" mused Amun, his voice soft and silky in Jalil's mind as they continued to pore over a diagram depicting the Asian Miraculous Set. "So Epomenides posits that the Kwamis are a manifestation of the concept, rather than its origin. A fascinating theory"

"What difference does that make?" Jalil asked.

"Silly child," Amun chided him. "If the Kwamis precede and originate their concept, then there is the possibility that the concept necessitates their existence if it is to continue; if the concept comes first and births the Kwami, then the Kwami can perish while the concept remains inviolate."

"Would that even be possible?" Jalil wondered. "To destroy a concept or a Kwami?"

"There is always a possibility…" Amun informed him. "Although I suspect that Kataphonos is correct when he suggests that the Kwamis' functional immortality is such that only a being of equal or greater power could truly harm them."

"You seem to have given this a lot of thought." Jalil cocked his head. "Do you want to destroy the Kwamis?"

Amun scoffed. "That would be such a waste." He hummed. "Not unlike remaining trapped in this puny mind…"

Jalil frowned, letting Amun sense his annoyance. "Play nice," he told him. "If you're a good little mind-gremlin, maybe we can convince Alix to play Risk with you after dinner!"

"Bah!" Amun spat. "Were it not for you and her, I would have had the world at my feet in reality! And you offer the illusion of conquest?"

Jalil shrugged. "There's always Go Fish."

"I could drown kingdoms in fish with a thought!"

Something smacked the side of Jalil's head and he blinked, returning to an awareness of his surroundings. The sizzling in the kitchen had stopped, and a pair of steaming dishes holding rice and vegetables sat on the table, centimeters away from his books. Jalil glared up at the offender, but he started, seeing Alix staring down at him with a mix of concern and amusement. "What was that for?" he grumbled, suppressing the urge to touch his cheek.

She smirked. "Having a conversation with yourself, loser?"

He shrugged. "With you around, that's the only way I can converse with an equal!"

"I am so far above you, I–"

"Yeah, alright, oh mighty sorcerer," Alix replied, rolling her eyes. "Would you condescend to deign to move your stupid old books off the table so we can eat?"

"Stupid!?" Jalil stared at her, scandalized. "I'll have you know, these tomes outline the origins of the miraculous – of the Kwamis themselves! They could hold secrets to the universe which have been lost for millennia, and you just stand there and call them stupid?"

She arched an eyebrow. "When they're sitting on the table I'm trying to eat off of, yeah."

"No respect from this puny insect," Amun grumbled, his annoyance emanating out to Jalil. "If she felt even a fraction of the power we could unleash with the knowledge contained within this tome, she would bow before me!"

Pushing back the foreign annoyance, Jalil folded a piece of paper in half and slipped it between the pages of his book before closing it. With a sigh, he stacked up the books and stood up to carry them into the living room. Turning to Alix, he raised an eyebrow. "You may pretend to be 'too cool for school', brat," he informed her. "But you and I both know it's just an act."

Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned in closer. "Say anything to anyone and I will murder you – megalomaniacal demigod copilot or not!"

He grinned triumphantly.

"Kids! Dinner is ready!" Their father placed the platter of blackened chicken on the table and snapped his fingers, groaning in frustration. "Oh! I can't believe we forgot silverware. I'll get–"

CRASH!

Jalil spun around in shock as the glass balcony door shattered, sending shards of broken glass flying across the room toward himself and Alix. Without thinking, he grabbed Alix's shoulder and turned his back toward the glass, which tinkled off of his tweed jacket to the floor. Alix's jaw dropped in shock and she tensed, ducking to look under Jalil's arm. A long, lithe man swung through the shattered door, spun into a tight flip, and landed in the middle of the apartment, his elongated arm shrinking back to normal size as he dropped into a predatory crouch, one arm raised to strike. At that same moment, there was a tremendous BOOM against the front door, followed by a second one as the door burst inward and another five men barreled inside.

"Surrender now, and maybe you won't get hurt!" growled the first man through the door. His fingernails extended into sharpened claws, and he bared razor-sharp teeth. "If not…"

"What the hell!" yelped Alix, pushing away from Jalil and grabbing a baseball bat she had left leaning against the wall near the kitchen table. Jalil stumbled backward, bracing his hand against the wall, and Alix palmed the table to swing over it, pushing off and twisting around as Claws dug his claws into the table. Alix waved her bat wildly, just barely missing Claws, before dropping to the ground between Elongated Arms and the next man. "Get away from my family!"

Elongated Arms threw one hand out toward Alix, and she ducked, smacking his hand away with her bat and dropping to sweep the legs of the man behind her out from under him. The man braced himself and reached down to grab her, only for her to unbalance him, jabbing him in the crotch with her bat. The man yelped, covering himself with both hands, and went down with a whimper. Springing to her feet, Alix brought her bat down hard on the man's head, only to drop down into a crouch once more, narrowly escaping Elongated Arms' grasp. Poking her head cautiously over the couch, her eyes narrowed, eyeing Elongated Arms.

On the other side of the apartment, still near the table, Jalil crouched down, placing the table between himself and the thugs. His father huddled in the kitchen, just barely visible from Jalil's angle. Claws peered over the table at Jalil, his teeth bared in a triumphant grin.

"There's no escape now, wizard!" Claws crowed, sweeping the rice off the table. "Give up, and your family might just survive!"

"Let me out!" Amun screamed in Jalil's head. Foreign fear and anger coursed through him. Grabbing the platter of chicken, Jalil hurled it at Claws' head. With a scoff, Claws batted it away, just as Jalil threw himself at the table, pushing it over into him. Claws stumbled backward, surprised, and Jalil picked up the closest chair, swinging wildly at Claws.

A pistol whined near the front door, and Alix lunged forward, stabbing her bat into the man's gut just as he fired at her. His pistol barrel bumped up slightly, and the energy pulse struck Claws in the back of the leg, sending him crashing to the ground. Alix tackled the gunman to the ground and drove her knee into his chin, and he went limp. The next man, however, gave her a predatory look.

"Don't make this any harder for yourself than it needs to be!" he sneered at Alix. "You're only hurting yourself!"

Alix scoffed. "Leave my home, and leave my family the hell alone!" she retorted, swinging her bat at his head.

"I think not!" the man shot back, ducking the bat easily. With a ripping sound, something tore through his shirt at the shoulder and darted out to stab her in the chest. Alix's eyes widened as she spotted the danger too late and couldn't evade it in time. There was a sharp intake of breath, and her eyes glazed over and the bat fell from her limp hands. The man dragged her toward him across the carpet with the large scorpion tail stinger still buried in her chest and grinned in triumph. "One down… one to go." Looking past her at Jalil, his eyes flashed. "Someone is offering a lot of money for you," he hissed. "Come willingly, or I will bring you in like this." As Alix's unmoving body slid off of the stinger, Scorpion Tail caught her arm and tossed her to the man behind him, who grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder. Groaning and reaching down to feel for his leg, Claws stumbled to his feet, bracing himself against the wall. Scorpion Tail folded his arms, staring intently at Jalil. "The choice is yours."

Jalil's fists clenched in anger. Elongated Arms eyed him warily from his spot near the balcony door. Claws snarled at Jalil, flashing his claws at him. Still Alix did not move. He could feel the power coursing through his veins, just below the surface

Amun screamed in rage. "Release me! I will unleash such vengeance on them that it will be spoken of in whispers for centuries! Free me!"

Eyes narrowed, Jalil ran around the table and threw himself at Scorpion Tail. "Let her go!" Elongated Arms swung a fist at him that grew to the side of Jalil's face, but Jalil didn't pause as the fist smacked him in the shoulder, knocking him to the side into the wall, right next to Claws. Claws swiped at him. Scorpion Tail laughed derisively, his tail lashing out at Jalil. Moving to avoid Claws, Jalil couldn't react fast enough to the tail, which struck him in the shoulder. Fire coursed through his body. Amun shouted in his mind. Jalil's vision turned cloudy and faded out. He didn't feel his body hit the floor.