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"What do you want?" four-year-old Chikako demanded.
The older boy at her doorstep frowned. "I'm supposed to baby-sit you during the party," he said reluctantly.
Chikako's reaction was exactly what he thought it would be. "I don't need a BABYSITTER!"
"You're only four!"
"You're only nine!"
He crossed his arms. "Look, this is what my dad said your dad said. So do what I tell you."
"No way!" Chikako said, trying to close the door before he could come in. "You think just 'cause you're dad's the King of Myrkr, you can boss me around."
"That's 'cause I can!" he answered, holding the door steadily open while she tried to push it closed. Finally, the four-year-old jumped back and let the young Prince walk in.
They stared at each other for a moment. "1000 flowers!" Chikako suddenly yelled. A ring of pink and purple flowers appeared around her and she waved her arm to gather them together and shoot them at the unwanted babysitter. "SPIRAL!"
The Prince knew what Chikako was going to do almost before she did and held out his hand, halting the attack just before it hit him. When he removed his hand, the barrage of flower petals fell to the floor. The little sailor-suited soldier put her hands on her hips. This was exactly why she didn't like him.
Just then, Nyssa came in, dressed for the King's party. The young Prince bowed quickly before her, and she bowed before him. And then she saw the mess on the floor. "Chikako!" she cried, swinging her daughter up in her arms to look her in the eye. "How often do I have to tell you?!" she scolded. "Don't use your attacks on the other children - especially not in the house. And especially not on the Prince!" She set her back down, touching the ring on the child's finger. If only she knew what that meant! "Now be good tonight!"
Chikako's father came in next. "What is this?" he exclaimed, also noticing the flowery mess at the boy's feet. Chikako was pouting and didn't answer him.
"Come on, Justen," Nyssa said. "We'll be late."
Justen looked at his daughter. "We'll talk about this later," he said. She continued pouting while her parents said good-bye.
When the door closed, the Prince looked at the floor. "Maybe you should clean this up," he said gently.
Gentleness, however, was lost on the Small Soldier. "NO!" she shouted, shaking her pigtailed head furiously. "I'm gonna go play outside and you can't stop me!"
He could've, but he didn't try. She stomped out of the room and slammed the back door, looking back to make sure he was watching. After she left, the Prince waved a hand over the heap of flower petals at his feet, and they disappeared.
Chikako woke up in her room at the Jedi Temple, more disoriented than she'd been in some time. "I'm nineteen," she said aloud. "I'm on Coruscant. I don't need a baby-sitter."
She tried to go back to sleep but couldn't, and it was about an hour before sunrise. "I guess I'll go for a walk," she said to herself. She wandered through the Room Behind the Waterfall and eventually into the gardens. By sunrise, she found herself in a public courtyard outside the Jedi Temple. "Now what?" she muttered. "Breakfast?"
She turned to go back inside and almost walked right into what would soon be a pretty ugly confrontation between two boys with blasters. Her hand went automatically to her communicator to call the other Senshi, but something stopped her. Instead, she reached for the flower petal on her necklace.
"Myrkr Power Make-Up!" she said, knowing very well that an empty spot in the Force wouldn't do much in a situation like this. But she decided to listen to what was almost a voice and seemed to be saying, "Try!"
One of the boys reached for his blaster. "Hey!" Sailor Myrkr yelled, nothing else coming to mind. "Put that down!"
The shock of seeing a real live Sailor Senshi was almost enough to make him listen. But not quite, and Sailor Myrkr soon realized that his blaster was now pointed at her. "Here we go," she thought. "1000 flowers..."
At this, the other boy took off running, common sense overriding whatever curiosity he might have had about Sailor Myrkr. "SPIRAL!" she yelled, and with a swirl of pink and purple, the remaining boy was shot into the shrubbery about forty feet away. Chikako used the Force to call his blaster to her hand and to find out that the boy, though certainly humbled and a little scratched up, was not injured.
And then she went inside. She put the blaster in her room (telling RE-4b that it was hers) and found some breakfast. After she ate, she decided to read for a while in the Senshi's garden till her friends woke up. "I love this garden," she mused as she sat down. She laid her head right in patch of sweet alyssum, breathing in the soft scent. She never even opened her book.
"You're not so bratty when you're tired," the Prince said quietly, scanning little Chikako's bookshelf. The Small Sailor stuck her tongue out at his back just before he turned around. He held up a storybook called Marresei's Dragonfly. "How's this one?"
"It's okay."
He knew better. "It's your favorite."
"No it's not."
"Fine, I won't read it."
"No!" Chikako cried. "Read it to me anyway!"
"Well if it's not your favorite -"
"It IS my favorite!" she announced as if she'd never denied it at all.
"Okay," he said and sat down. "On a distant planet, there lived a little girl named Marresei..."
"Chikako?" somebody whispered.
"Marresei?"
"Chakra," the voice corrected.
Chikako opened her eyes and found herself still in the garden. "I was dreaming," she yawned. The Dathomirian girl smiled.
"Who's Marresei?"
"I think a fairy tale princess."
Chakra smiled again, rather pleased to be mistaken for a fairy tale princess. Then she produced a big bouquet of flowers she'd picked before stumbling upon Chikako. "Let's put half of these in your room," she suggested. "Oh, and your droid is looking for you."
"Of course," she said, remembering the blaster she'd brought home earlier. He was likely a bit curious about that. Then she said something rather out of the blue. "Chakra, I'm technically several thousand years old!"
"Wow," the younger girl said. "I technically haven't been born yet!"
Chikako thought about that. "Cool!" she finally said and followed her out of the garden and into the company of her friends, where her vague memories of life in the ancient Kingdom of Myrkr faded and became, once more, like faraway dreams.
