Jaina watches from the doorway as Tahiri and Anakin play in one of the building's pool, the young girl, never going to far into the water as she still has an innate distrust of large bodies of water.
She steps out into the pool area, her footfalls echoing loudly on the tiles surrounding the pool, attracting the attention of the two younger teens. She smiles at them as they call out a greeting, and kneels by the poolside.
The two swim over to her, and hang onto the side as she begins speaking. "Hey, Zekk and I were planning on having dinner out at Ive's over in the merchant's district, but some other plans came up at the last second, and we were wondering if you two wanted to take our reservations for us."
Tahiri's eyes light up at the thought of dinner alone with Anakin, at the same time that Anakin's eyes narrow slightly. "What came up? Is there a problem?"
Jaina shakes her head at her brother's obstinacy. "Does it matter? You two go have fun, alone, together." She stresses the last word, hoping at least one of them would get the point.
As Anakin opens his mouth to say something else, Tahiri shoves him quickly under the water, her eyes dancing. Anakin surfaces, sputtering water out of his mouth, to hear Tahiri begin her assault of words directed towards Jaina.
"Oh we'd love to go there Jaina, thanks so much. We'll have a lot of fun I'm sure." Before Anakin can speak up again, Tahiri suddenly deflates. "Oh wait, I only brought the one dress and I wore it yesterday."
"That's okay; you can borrow one of mine." She looks the younger girl over, judging Tahiri's size in comparison to herself. "I'm sure I have something that can fit you though they might be a bit short, and if not, well, we'll just have to go shopping."
Tahiri jumps out of the pool, a laugh of utter delight erupting from her. Anakin watches as the two girls walk away, his head cocked to the side as he tries to figure out how he went to goofing off in the pool with Tahiri, to having dinner at a place that requires reservations with her. As the girls near the women's dressing room, Jaina calls out over her shoulder. "The reservations are for seven o'clock Anakin, you and Tahiri will need to leave the apartment for the restaurant by six-thirty, so be sure you're dressed, and I don't mean in a flight suit."
Then they leave him alone, staring after them with a confused look on his face, and Anakin trying his best to figure out just what his sister is up to.
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Danni watches as Jacen and Tenel Ka leave the room. She purses her lips slightly as she thinks about him, and wonders if she has a chance at getting him away from the Hapan princess. Shaking her head slightly, she pushes such thoughts from her head, knowing that with the Hapan's support she'll once more get out to beyond the outer rim, as part of the Extragalactic Society, away from the crowds of the Core, away from the politics, and back out to the peace and quiet of Belkadan.
She turns back to the Mogwai and picks him up, walking to the next room. She tickles the small animal for a second, and then lays it down on the slab, and pulls a sensor array over it, and starts doing a detailed scan of the animal.
She frowns as the results start to appear, as the animal has a very odd internal structure. It appears to be mainly stomach, and does not have lungs. She directs the sensors to look at the brain, and is amazed at the sheer amount of higher and lower brain functions, delving closer, she pulls up a holographic matrix of the alpha waves of the Mogwai's brain, and is mesmerized slightly by the hypnotic fluctuations of colors and shapes as the system tries its best to translate the brain activity into a three-dimensional representation.
Shaking her head slightly, she begins typing at the console, her thoughts and concentration flashing as she tries to fit what she is seeing about this small creature into the already expansive field of exobiology.
She looks at the chrono and realizes that she has a class soon turns away and grabs a small cage and quickly slides the small animal inside. Then she locks the room and goes to teach her class.
About twelve hours later she finds herself once more in her laboratory. She sits there watching the small animal for a few moments, and then feels the first pangs of hunger. Getting up, she leaves and locks the room, then walks down the street to get some food to bring back to the lab. Once at the store, she grabs a couple sandwiches and a bag of fried tuber slices, and quickly returns to the lab.
As she eats one of the sandwiches and begins snacking on the fried tuber slices, the Mogwai in the catch starts whining for food, bouncing around in his cage, doing various antics all in the hope of something to eat.
Danni laughs, and slips a couple of the fried tubers into the cage, which the Mogwai quickly devours. Danni smiles at the antics, and walks over to a cabinet and pulls out a syringe for drawing blood. She returns to the Mogwai, and coaxes it to put one of its arms out of the cage. As she makes soothing, calming noises, she grasps the Mogwai's arms and deftly pokes the syringe into the arm.
The Mogwai lets out a shriek of outrage and pain, and tries to squirm its way away from the Danni's grasp. Danni's grip is hard, and she refuses to let go until she draws a full syringe of blood.
Once it's full, she pulls out the needle and lets the arm go. The Mogwai continues to squawk and howl in Mogwai-speak, and Danni kneels down in front of it. "See now, that wasn't so bad, was it."
She turns around to start running some tests on the blood, and misses the look of pure hate and anger that flashes in the Mogwai's eyes.
She begins the process of mapping the creature's DNA, and various protein sequences. She frowns as she notes that there are no white blood cells within the blood sample at all. A beeping from one of the machines draws her attention and she slides her chair over to it, and presses a button to pull up a map of the Mogwai's DNA. Her eyes widen as she notes the densely packed strings that sit one atop of another, hundreds upon hundreds of base pairs, many more than a human or even a gand. Then even more interesting is the fifth and sixth type of nucleotide. She labels them M and J and continues her research into the fascinating creature.
Hours later, she rubs her eyes and glances at the chrono. "Shavit, it's almost midnight already."
She smiles at the Mogwai who is still glowering at her. "I'll see you in the morning little one." Then she walks out of the door, locking the lab behind her.
She is so caught up in her research that she does not think about Jacen's warnings.
She is so caught up in her thoughts that she does not see the hate that still is in the Mogwai's eyes.
She is so caught up that she does not realize that she left her other sandwich right next to the Mogwai's cage.
As the chrono hits midnight, a small hand reaches out of the cage, dragging the sandwich closer, lifting it up and into the cage. The sound of ravenous eating is preceded by a sinister sounding "Yum, yum."