Song: Santana - Oye Como Va; Simon & Garfunkel - The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine

"This place is definitely the best place I've been so far." I said, moving a little closer to Mordecai and resting my head on his chest.

"Mh-hm." he mumbled sleepily and kissed my forehead. I looked over at my backpack that had fallen over. My meager belongings had spilled out of it onto the floor and I painfully realized something.

"I think I'm gonna have to buy some clothes while we're here." I announced. Mordecai gave me a confused look.

"Why? You've got clothes. You're nicer without them anyway."

"I literally have two sets of clothes and both of them are barely even acceptable on Pandora." I replied. And it was true. I had two pairs of cargo pants, both basically falling apart and stitched up several times already, three tops and only two of them in an acceptable state (I used the third one to wrap around my burnt foot half the time) and that was that.

"So? That's enough, isn't it? I mean, you can wear one and wash the other and when the other is dry, you can swap, no?" Mordecai commented. I looked at him in disbelief and sighed.

"No, Mordecai. No. That might work on Pandora, but anywhere else? I mean I'm basically walking around in rags, Mordecai. And it's not like we're poor and can't afford to buy some new clothes. We're literally loaded and we're gonna make some extra cash while we're here."

"Okay. So you wanna go and buy new clothes? Is that it?" he asked.

"Yeah. I just wouldn't know where. You'd know better." I answered and sat up in bed. If I didn't want to spend the rest of the day in bed, I had to get up right now or I just wouldn't have the self control to get up and do stuff anymore.

"I only know where to get cheap second hand clothes. Never had any money for anything else while I was here." Mordecai answered.

"Yeah, cheap and second hand should do."

"Good. There should be a market almost every day close to where I used to live. They usually sell some clothes there. Really, they sell anything there, until it gets dark." Mordecai said, as I picked up some of my clothes from the floor. They really didn't smell good anymore. None of them did. But I had to wear something after all, so I put on my cargo pants and my top quickly.

"Sounds good. Should we head there now? Can we get there with the Fast Travel? Or can we maybe even drive? Will we need guns?" I asked.

"If you want, yes, no, and yes. If we go by car people will definitely try to murder us or kidnap us. Anyone can use Fast Travel, but only people with money have cars. And they don't usually turn up in those neighbourhoods." he replied.

"Okay. I think I got somewhat used to Fast Travel by now. Let's do it." I said as I fixed my dreadlocks, tying them up into a ponytail.

"Yeah, just give me... five more minutes?" Mordecai answered. I gave him a smile and nodded. It was then when we heard a knock on the door.

"I'll answer it." I said and went over to the stairs.

"Take a gun with you, okay? Just to be safe."

I walked down the stairs quickly and grabbed my pistol from the kitchen table. I had no idea who could be knocking at our door, but I hoped it was just one of our neighbours being nice and introducing themselves.

"Would you like me to turn on the camera at the door?" the robotic voice asked out of nowhere. I jumped a little, not expecting this. Was that AI reading my thoughts or...? It was weird. But she did have a point.

"Uh... yeah, sure." I answered, a little weirded out. A screen beside the door turned on and showed the outside of the door. This was wild. I walked up to the screen and too a closer look. There were two girls standing there and they looked vaguely familiar, but I didn't think too long about it, before opening the door.

"Hey, what's up?" I said to them as I opened the door. They turned around to me and that is when I saw their faces. And when I remembered why they looked familiar. A blonde girl and a girl with very curly black hair. They looked extremely similar to Anouk and her friend Nadia. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Maybe it wasn't them. Maybe they just looked like them. I tried to calm myself down mentally.

"Hey, uh... sorry to disturb you." the dark-haired girl said and smiled shyly. The blond girl came a little closer to the door with a wide smile.

"We're the girls living downstairs... I guess. If you wanna call it that. And we ran into a bit of a problem and your profile said one of you guys was good at fixing things, so...", the blonde girl took over.

"Profiles? What profiles?" I asked, a little confused.

"Oh, when you went and filled out the stuff, they wrote up some little profiles about everyone from that."

"They did?"

"¿Quién es, querida?" I heard Mordecai ask behind me.

"Oh, sorry, we never introduced ourselves.I'm Anouk and that's my friend Nadia." the dark-haired girl said. No. Oh no. No, no, no. Maybe it was a coincidence? I hoped it was a coincidence.

"Cool, I'm Nova. I'm good at fixing stuff... somewhat. What do you need fixed?" I replied and smiled, trying not to look too taken aback. I was sure I had just turned extremely pale. I felt like I had.

"You okay?" Mordecai asked and came up to the door. Oh God. I had a feeling this could get messy.

"Yeah, I'm good, the two girls from downstairs asked if I can help them fix something. I'm gonna see what this is about and then we can go and head to the market." I told him, hoping he'd get the hint.

"Right. Send me an ECHO when you're done. I'm gonna see how Gaige and Axton are doing." he said. I gave him a thumbs up.

"Sorry, girls, that was Mordecai, he's-" I started, but Nadia interrupted me with a big smile, which somehow put me weirdly at ease.

"We know. Profiles, remember? You're Nova, he's Mordecai and you're both from Pandora. The only people that actually signed up for Pandora."

"Shit, girl, how much did they say about everyone?" I replied. Why had no one told us about this? Okay, they probably had in some small print, but I didn't read that. I put my gun on the countertop next to the door.

"Well, I mean you can read them, whenever you have some time." Anouk said with a shrug.

"Yeah, I probably should. I've never done any of this before, so I have no clue what is going on half the time." I told them.

"It's not that bad, except for some really pretentious people that turn up at these competitions. They can be a real pain. Apart from that they're usually real fun and you meet a lot of people." Nadia replied.

"I see. Well. What do you guys need fixed? I usually fix cars, so I don't know how much help I can be..." I said. I had no idea how I kept my cool so well. I was scared to actually asked where they were from or learn more about them, because I was still in denial that this was probably my daughter with her friend. I just wanted to believe that this was a coincidence.

"Okay, so we went to some small town earlier and they had some sort of second-hand market thing and they sold everything. Like everything. And we found an old Atlas Espresso machine and you literally get the best lattes out of them. Now we still needed to fix it, but we haven't been too successful. Anouk has taken it apart, but we're still trying to work out what is actually wrong with it..." Nadia started telling me. I motioned for her to stop.

"Atlas espresso machine, you say?"

"Yes?"

"Let me handle this, they can be fickle little bitches, but I fixed the one I had so many times, I know them inside out by now. And they make the best lattes ever, so I'll have to have a look around at the market if we can find another one." I replied and stepped outside the door.

"Cool, follow us, we're literally just downstairs. We can come with you to the market, if you want." Anouk said and walked ahead down the stairs.

"Yeah, I was gonna go and get some new clothes anyways. I only have these ones here and a version of this that's a bit more ripped up. Pandora isn't great when it comes to clothes shopping." I replied.

"Oh, you'll definitely find stuff at the market. They had a lot of stuff when we were there." Nadia said. I heard a beep from my ECHO device. It was a message from Mordecai. I read it quickly.

"What the fuck is going on? Who are these people?"

I quickly typed an answer while the two girls were unlocking their tree house. Honestly, I had no real idea how I was roped into this or what was going on and how any of this happened.

"They're the girls from downstairs, I'll help them fix their coffee machine. We can go right after I'm done there, so if you wanna get ready and just wait for me, we can leave straight away."

"I know, I know. But who ARE they?"

"Welcome home, Anouk." the robotic voice from the door said. Mordecai must have heard that.

"You sure about this, Nova?" he asked.

"I don't even know. No time to talk now, see you soon." I replied and turned off the ECHO before he could accidentally give away anything about my daughter. Especially, when there was a slim possibility that this was a different Anouk. Who knew. Anything was possible, right? Right?

"So, you're from Aquator originally, right?" Anouk asked, a shy, but hopeful smile on her face. It almost made me cry to see her like this, because no matter how much I tried to tell myself this could all be coincidence, I knew it. I just knew that this was my daughter. There was no way she wasn't.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm from Aquator. Lived there until I was 18." I said.

"Why'd you leave? It's a pretty awesome place." Anouk replied. I just shrugged, trying to look unfazed by this. What was I supposed to tell her? I ran away from home because I couldn't cope with giving her away and was partying non-stop? Because I was constantly fighting with my family about my going out, my drinking, drugs and hooking up? I couldn't tell her that.

"Had some family issues and ran off to the next best planet I could afford. Didn't have any sort of plan, so I was stuck on Pandora for the last 15 years. Actually almost 16 by now. So yeah. If you have to run away from home, have a plan and enough cash for a ticket to some other place." I answered and forced myself to smile.

"Good to know. Not that I'm planning to run off or anything. But in case and all." she replied with a smile. This was it. This was the perfect opportunity to change the topic before this conversation could get dangerous.

"So. Where is that espresso machine?"