"Gilda?" Roxanne called as she stepped through the door to the room she shared with her minion.
"I'm here, Mistress!" Gilda called out, before erupting in a huge sneeze. Roxanne's face creased in worry.
"I told you you shouldn't be spending time with Gishnar!" Roxanne told her, sitting down on her bed next to Gilda's sleeping tank. She was sick today, having contracted the 24-hour minion-flu from Gishnar, the minion of Roxanne's adoptive brother, Reptung.
"I know!" Gilda moaned. "I'm a terrible minion! I should have listened to you, and I should have been their with you at school today!"
"You're sick," Roxanne reminded her. "You need to rest, which is exactly why our Mothers moved your suit into the kitchen for the day!"
"I suppose that's true," Gilda said. The minion looked every bit as sick as she professed to be. Her usually shiny green flesh was dull and grayish, and her golden-brown eyes were reddish with exhaustion and sickness. She'd be better by morning, but it was unusual for anyone to go to school without their minion-another thing to make Roxanne different. She didn't like going out without Gilda, but at times she had to, like today, since she had had a test in Cerulean history and didn't want to miss it. She had been studying for it for weeks, and was fairly certain that she had aced it. At the very least it would be a solid B plus.
"How was school?" Gilda asked, swimming to the edge of her tank and resting on the floor of it as Quicksilver darted into the room and curled her furry body around Roxanne's leg. These two were Roxanne's only friends in the whole world, her minion and her kitten, Quicksilver, named for liquid mercury. Quicksilver was a bright orange, full-grown kitten with white paws and yellow eyes, the only living thing Roxanne had brought with her from Earth.
"I'm not sure," Roxanne admitted, stroking Quicksilver's fur as the kitten leaped into her lap and began to purr. "It was the same as always. I got attacked in the halls before first period, I got called names throughout the day, I got laughed out of Math class again, Professor Jeckdal sent me to The Overlord for provoking my classmates after I tried to tell Deldja to leave me alone."
"It sounds like it can be classified as a bad day, Mistress," Gilda said. Roxanne looked up.
"Well, it wasn't all bad," she admitted shyly. "Someone actually helped me today."
"Really?" Gilda ask, tilting her body slightly in surprise. She was the only one who helped her Mistress (besides her parents, but that didn't really count)! Not even Reptung would so much as talk to Roxanne outside of the house, and he denied any and all connections to her, going so far as to claim that his parents were completely different people with the same name as her parents. "Who?"
"Mace Mind," Roxanne said, blushing and looking back to Quicksilver, and Gilda's eyes widened. "He told everyone to leave me alone and helped me up. He even walked me to class."
"He did?" Gilda asked, unable to come up with any real response. This was big! No-not just big, huge! No one had ever been so much as kind to her Mistress, and to hear that the most intelligent, well-liked, and aesthetically pleasing male in her age group (not to mention the only male Roxanne had ever expressed attraction for) had stood up for her... "Mistress," Gilda said, "I don't mean to be rude, but are you sure you weren't having a lapse of reality?"
"I'm certain," Roxanne said, eyes flashing upward, her voice suddenly hard and curt. She had a tendency to do that. Inside the shy, down-trodden freak, Roxanne Cerebellum was a sharp, quick-witted young woman who was notoriously intrepid. The Inspector had said as much when he had come to asses her for her future occupation, and had informed her and her family that if she chose to work, her best options would be as a writer or journalist of some sort. She could choose whatever path she wanted, but because The Inspector had decided on that path for her, she had the greatest chance of getting a well-paying job in those or affiliated fields.
"If you say so, Mistress," Gilda said, lowering her body slightly. "Maybe we should get started on your homework?"
"I'll get started on my homework," Roxanne told her firmly. "You need to rest." With that Roxanne slid the backpack from her shoulders, Quicksilver leaping to the floor as her owner dumped the contents out onto her bed. She spread the materials out. Today she had assignments in History, Biology, and Math, and she'd need-wait a moment. A flash of silver caught her eye.
"What's this?" she thought aloud, reaching out and picking the item up as Gilda floated up to get a better view. It looked like an ordinary watch. It had the digital time in a box in the center, right down to the millisecond, black, lightning-shaped hands pointed to the same time in the background, a section at the top of the watch face proclaimed the date, weather, and phase of both the planet's moons, and it had knobs and dials on the sides for changing the settings and using the stop-watch feature. It was nothing special, really. But there seemed to be two extra buttons to either side of the watch face, and touching the watch, the face started to turn. It could rotate.
"It looks like a watch, Mistress," Gilda said, looking to her master. "Where did it come from?"
"It was in my Biology papers," Roxanne said. "It must have fallen off of Mace's wrist when he picked up my books..."
"You should give it back to him, Mistress," Gilda advised.
"I will," Roxanne said, rolling her eyes. "I'm not going to steal it. I'll give it back tomorrow, if I see him in the halls."
"Good," Gilda said, sinking back to the bottom of her tank. "I think I'll get some sleep now, if that's alright, Mistress."
"That's fine, Gilda," Roxanne answered. "In fact, I order you to get some sleep. I have-"
"Roxanne!" Roxanne flinched. "Could come down here darling?"
"I'll be back," Roxanne promised, then stood and headed downstairs to see what her mother wanted. Why couldn't she call her by her normal name?