To avoid confusion, I'm listing how the characters will speak:

((Venus Djinni))

{Mars Djinni}

[Mercury Djinni]

Jupiter Djinni

Human to Djinni through mind link

thought

And of course "speech"

Now for the Disclaimer!

Rallalon does not own Golden Sun or any of the characters, soccer balls, park benches, Djinni, the phrase "Get off! Get off!!!", Invisible Ian, Blue-hair, Mariner, Pops, and Math as nicknames, thick wooden tables, buckets of fish guts, or blue hair.

.........

A boy plopped down onto a park bench, a teen, or at least that's what he appeared to be. The teenagers kicking their ball around might give him a second glance because of his hair, blue and cut close to his head. Besides that there was nothing to mark him out, nothing to hint at the mysteries behind his golden eyes.

Eyes that watched another boy, limping away from his game.

Is that him?

((Let me see))

His eyes glowed and a speck of blue came into them. His body tensed with a great eagerness that could be sensed yards away. With a sigh, he leaned back against the bench as his eyes became a pure golden again.

((A limp doesn't stay with a spirit. I don't even sense anything from him. What about you?))

He knew the question wasn't directed at him and waited for another's answer.

Only a spark. It could be Venus or Mars, no telling which. Either way, she added as they watched the boy hobble off from a rough soccer game, there wouldn't be enough Psynergy to use Move.

[Might be from having the Fires out.]

{It's always the Lighthouses to blame with you isn't it?}

He gave an inward sigh at the beginning of a familiar argument. Sometimes it was like having everyone still around. Of course then seven out of the nine guests in his head had been different then. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore it.

[If they were still lighted –]

{If they're lighted again, it could destroy the world this time! You want that to happen?!}

And Shade would join in . . . [Stop picking on her!]

{You wanna make somethin' of it, Lemurian?}

No, now shut up in there! He was met with a chorus of protest.

{I wasn't talking to you!}

Then Echo . . . ((Torch, we've got three Lemurians here . . .))

Followed by Breath. . . . you'll have to be more precise.

((Will you two stop finishing each other's sentences? It's too lovey-dovey))

[I think it's kinda' cute, Flint.]

{Then why don't you do it with Shade?}

Everybody shut up! People are starting to give me weird looks. We don't want to attract attention!

{Can't we go on Stand by? I need to stretch!}

Not now, Cannon. Later. he groaned.

.........

"I'm open! Open, Gary!" As always, he was ignored. Invisible Ian, once again. At least he was playing, not being beat up. Though it was a little much to expect his childhood bully to pass to him. Didn't matter; Ian dashed down to the goal anyway.

As always, they let him slip past their defenses; Ian never got the ball. Never? Well, today was an exception. "Ian!" Gary bellowed, trying to alert him to the white and black blur propelling towards him. At the last moment he thought to do something. He side-stepped, letting the ball zoom past . . .

SLAM!!!

. . . right into some guy's head.

"Ian, you idiot!" someone yelled at him, most likely his entire team. But he didn't hear.

"Man, I'm sorry!" he apologized even as he dashed over to the blue-haired guy he had just nailed. "You ok?"

Blue-hair had his hand on his cheek, rubbing it gently. Then he did the last thing Ian could have expected: he grinned. "I've had worse." Ian blinked. Had he glowed for a second? No, 'course not.

He raised his gaze to Ian's. His eyes were strange. Ian had seen yellow and even bronze a few times for eye colors, but this was a downright gold, a hue of sunrise. And there, dancing around the pupils were little flecks of blue. Not stationery, but moving independently. Watching him. Freaky . . . But then again it somehow seemed . . . familiar. A second ago, Blue-hair had looked only nineteen or twenty. But now . . . there was wisdom behind his eyes that Ian had never seen before. Knowledge that no one could get in a lifetime.

"Isaac?"

"Wh-what? I'm Ian."

The other didn't respond, but appeared to be thinking deeply. His pupils were aimed away from him, so why did it feel as if he was still being stared at? Finally Blue-hair nodded, as if agreeing with someone. That should've creeped him out, but it reminded him of . . . something. "Name's Picard."

"As in Captain?" Ian gave a jerk at Gary's voice. He'd forgotten they weren't alone.

"Well, I do have a ship, but I assure you, it's never left the atmosphere," Picard said in a joking tone before another speck appeared in each eye. He gave another nod before starting up. "Do you know where the library is?"

.........

Shade rode behind his vessel's eyes, his usual spot. He didn't know how he saw what Picard saw there, nor where exactly in the body he was. The head? he pondered for the thousandth time. I don't think I would feel this if it were the head. What he felt was his vessel's loneliness, of being surrounded for millennia but with friends for only a heartbeat of that time. His heart? No, it's quiet here. He gazed out, studying people's faces even if Picard was looking the other way. His soul, Shade concluded, his soul.

{Go back, Picard! That was Garet, I know it was!}

And how would we explain that, Torch? "Oh, hello. You might not remember me, but I was one of your closest friends before you died thousands of years ago. And this here is a Djinni, but not just any Djinn, your partner. Oh yeah, you can control the power of fire, too, or Mars as we like to call it."

{Well, uh, Flint agrees with me! You want to go see Isaac, right, Flint?}

((Look, if only the basic characteristics of a person are preserved, neither Isaac or Garet would remember us.))

Neither of them did.

((Exactly! But they can! We hold their memories, that's the only reason Picard's carrying us around.)) Actually, he likes the company, Shade thought to himself. ((All we have to do is Set ourselves to them and they have their identities back.))

((Easier said then done. You know how freaked out Felix was when he first met me? He started screaming his head off when I spoke with him though mind link. And that was in an age where this kind of stuff was common place.))

((Echo, I don't think Isaac's that excitable.))

((He would be too if a monster like the ones that had killed his friends popped up in his head.))

For once, it was completely silent.

.........

"Hey, Doc," Matthew greeted the old librarian double-checking the books on the A-D side of the first bookcase.

"Hey, Matthew," he was greeted back as the man needlessly inspected the many rows of Anonymous authors. Neither Doc nor Matthew would speak again until Math left.

Peace and quiet. That was just how Matthew liked it here. No one ever came to this library except him and Doc who ran it. After all, there were bedrooms bigger than this place and with more useful books. Doodle, write or rest today? Write then doodle, doodle then rest? Rest. With that he plunked his head down on the thick wooden table atop his notebook.

"We're looking to see if anyone around here knows about Psynery or anything." His head popped up from the unexpected voice coming from the last row of selves. That wasn't Doc talking; he was in the washroom now. Si-energy? "You of all people show know why; to show Isaac and Garet. And the others when we find them."

Letting his curiosity get then better of him, he slowly pushed back his folding chair, holding on just so in order to keep it from folding under him. He grabbed his book and flipped it open. Once he was confident he appeared to be looking for something for a summer school report, he walked down to the four bookcases, three horizontal to the back wall and the other built into it.

Anonymous on one side, A-D on the other. E-I on one side, J-M on the other. N-R on one side, S-X on the other. On the selves built into the back wall, it was Y,Z and random magazines. His plan was to stop between J-M and N-R and listen through to avoid any notice to his eavesdropping. Only the first half worked.

The speaker was there. Danggit! He turned what had been an instinctual retreat into a reach for one of the heavy volumes. The last thing he wanted to do was run away. In his haste, his didn't notice how the other's hand shot up beside his ear. "Call you back, bye." Matthew also didn't notice how his hand was empty even before he tucked it into his pocket.

What he did notice was the man's blue hair and the golden eyes that gazed steadily at him and the fifty-pound book he was holding with one hand. "Not many people are into Alchemy," blue boy said conversationally.

"Uh, what?" Matthew darted a glance to the words printed across the old (and heavy) pages. "Just a project." The gaze didn't drop. "For school, you know?"

The other relaxed. Slightly. What kind of issues does he have? "Summer homework's a bucket of fish guts, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Fish guts? Where the heck is this guy from? "Hey, uh, are you a mariner or something?"

He grinned as if his best friend had just come back to life, a trace of blue darting behind that gold. Matthew watched as that joy was marred abruptly by something, a fierce headache or a spasm. "Set, set, set, set, set, stay set, set, set, set," he muttered, clutching his skull, "not now, set, wait, set."

There was a flash of light that made it impossible to look at Mariner and illuminated nothing else. Matthew didn't even know it had happened or not; if he had blinked, he would've missed it. But one thing he couldn't have missed was the fist-size creature Mariner was grabbing at. And how it started to grow.

"Stop! Set!" The creature paid him no heed as it swelled to size of a cat. The giant azure orbs that were its huge eyes stared at Matthew from under its eyebrow-resembling ears, forked and brown like its tail. It excitedly hopped from little tan foot to little tan foot, now the size of an average dog. Its cream-colored belly was bulged out, like the gullet of some monstrous frog. It leaped towards him.

There was only one thing Matthew could do: "DOC!!!" he bellowed (not screamed, mind you) and ran.

At least he tried to run. The thing had somehow gotten between his legs, the spines running down its back sticking into his pant-legs along with his legs themselves. The result was both of them tumbling to the ground, Matthew still yelling (not screaming) at the top of his lungs for Doc. He had no idea what the old man could do, but there was always 911.

The thing was still caught, still thrashing, but now Matthew had a plan. Even while falling to the floor, even throughout that freaky transformation, he hadn't dropped the book. That was good for two reasons: One, it would've crushed his foot. Two, and more importantly, he had a weapon.

"Get off! Get off!!!" he screamed (yes, he was screaming now), whacking the beast as hard as he could, hitting his legs just as often. That did it. It ripped free of his jeans, jumped back, and turned to Mariner. "Look out!"

He simply stood there with an "Uh-oh, I messed up really bad this time" look on his face.

He scrambled back until he hit the cinder-block wall. "Matthew, what in the blazes is going on?!" Doc yelled, finally coming to his rescue. Matthew didn't respond, too afraid of provoking the thing to make a sound. "What happened to you?!" he inquired, taking notice of Math's ripped pants. And the monster. "A Djinni . . ."

The thing- the Djinni waddled closer. Then it cocked its head to the side and spoke. "Hello."

It was one voice made of a thousand, a thousand people saying hello at once, a hundred words that meant that one thing. It was repeating and mimicking every person, every time they had said that. It had no voice of it's own, just an "Echo . . . "

"You're back." Before, Mariner had looked as if his best friend had returned to life. With that one statement, it was clear he had.