From the Pink Diary of Blue Skelly

3/17

Sith, I feel like such a girl.

A twelve-year-old girl, to be exact. One who has Bespin Boys posters all over her bedroom and writes I heart Marky 4-eva on everything, unless it already says I heart Rik 4-eva or I heart Tonny 4-eva or Ben + Me = Tru Luv. I mean, who the sith else writes in a frickin' pink diary?

I mean, besides me.

I better explain this in case I die or something and my mom or future wife or somebody reads this: It was on sale, okay? I'm trying to put myself through flight school – I can't be blowing ten credits every few months on journals. And if they're on sale for under two credits, you take what can get, baby.

Pink actually wasn't the only color they had, though... They also had Sailor Jedi-themed journals on clearance. With cute little locks. Yeah. Tough choice.

The best part was paying for it. This snotty university-type kid who was behind the counter looked me up and down, then examined the diary thoroughly, pretending to look for the price. He was really just reveling in the whole pinkness of it all. Then he looked me up and down again before telling me the total. You'd think he'd never seen a tall, rugged twenty-five-year-old man in a flight suit buy a pink diary.

A cure upon you, Saree Trilobi! I rue the day I told my friend Tobe to tell your friend Selley that I wanted to "go out with you." What a foolish boy I was! If only I had known at the tender age of thirteen, that you, cursed woman, would persuade me to start keeping a silly journal. If I had only known it would lead to THIS!

Just kidding. I don't want to curse Saree. Actually, I heard she got married last year. Good for her. I bet she still keeps a diary. I bet her husband does too.

But I bet it's not pink and I bet he doesn't have an entire shelf full of old diaries. Sith. This is my seventeenth one. Sith!

Damn, I bet that dude at the bookstore would get a kick out of that. I sure am.

3/18

Mama got drunk tonight. Sith. As soon as I heard Arold ran off with some other chick, I knew this was coming.

First of all, the loss of that jerk is not worth pouring a drink over. Second, why the sith can't she find some other way to deal with things? I'm so disgusted. I almost left, but she actually begged me not to. Like I want to listen to her drunken babbling about that sithspawn idiot Arold and his new bimbo girlfriend.

But, I'm kinda glad I did. It turned out to be damned interesting.

"You've probably got some brothers or sisters somewhere, Blue," she slurs, trying to remember how to be coordinated enough to put her butt on the chair and talk.

I'm totally stunned and don't even make a move to help her when she misses the chair. What is up with suddenly telling me I "probably" have siblings? Not once in my twenty-five years has she ever suggested anything remotely like that. Sith, Mom! Where the sith did that come from?

"Oh yeah," she continues when she finally struggles into the chair and gets comfy. "When I was with your father –"

(I'm all ears now, because she never ever talks about my father. I'm under the impression they were together for like a week.)

"– he told me something. And I remember it clear as day, even though I was drinking that night. He was too – a Yellow Plague something or other. We were in some cantina, I'm not even sure which planet right now. But I remember clear as day the expression on his face, he was all proud. 'You better watch yourself, Meade,' he said. 'I knocked up my last two broads. You better watch yourself or you might get knocked up too!'"

I say that my father sounds like a real winner.

Mom conveniently passes out.

So I guess I might have a sibling or two somewhere. It's a big galaxy, though... then again, nothing is impossible. I think I'll try pressing Mom for some more info tomorrow – after she gets over her hangover, of course.

3/19

Mom wouldn't talk and frankly, I'm pissed. Don't I have a right to know who my sithspawn father was? Even if he was a loser, I still want to know. It's not like I'm following in his loser-ly footsteps. Except for maybe the pink diary thing, but everybody's got their quirks.

Another Mom thing that pissed me off: I'm taking a load of textile crap to Dantooine tomorrow in this butt-ugly, huge cargo freighter. But sith, like I care what I'm flying as long as I am flying. But as soon as I tell Mom I'm leaving tomorrow, she starts getting on my case about how she wishes I'd find some job with "more opportunities for advancement," some kind of experience to fall back on. And she doesn't want her son always out there alone in space. What if something happened to me? I could least find a job that was based on one planet. And – AND – what if I find a girl I want to marry? Is she going to be happy with me flitting all around the galaxy at every chance? "Certainly no worthy woman is going to want to live like you do, where your only home is some chunk of metal floating through the vacuum of space, looking at starlines all day."

And she went on and on and on and on and sith! I love her, but when will that woman ever get it through her skull that I am not living if I'm not flying. I was born to fly, and I'll be happy to die doing it. She knows it's all I've ever wanted: why does have to screw things up by telling me it's not enough? Mom, I am a frickin' pilot. Yup, I am Blue Skelly and I FLY. Change that, and it's just not me anymore.

5/15

I'm back on Ralltiir. Mom should be home from work soon to interrogate me about my scandalous trip to Dantooine. I'm sure her buddies at the office are dying for the whole scoop.

This time, though, I've got some questions of my own. And if she doesn't tell me everything she knows about my father, I'm gonna... I'm gonna be so pissed!

I'm gonna be so pissed I'll probably come back here and write about how sithspawn pissed I am!

5/16

Dude, I am enlightened! But also damn tired so I'll enlighten my pink diary tomorrow.

5/17

Okay, so Mom meets Dad (his name was Guy Fowler, ooh, I've got chills) on some crazy planet like Bakura or something. She's not even sure; isn't that beautiful? They hook up after pining for one another for about ten minutes.

But here's a twist: Dad is there with his girlfriend. Her name is Shanleigh. She's fourteen. Sith! Dad was twenty!

So he and Mama snuck around for a while and had all these "great talks," the only of which interests me is the one where he was bragging about all the "broads" he "knocked up." One of those broads turns out to have been poor little Shanleigh.

"They put the baby up for adoption on their home-world," Mom says, giving me this warning look. "I can see what's going through your head, Blue. You'll never find that baby."

"I know that," I say, rolling my eyes. "Uhh, where was their home-world again?"

She says he told her he was from Earth. Never heard of it. Anyway, the story gets better.

Turns out Shanleigh was a jealous little thing. Turns out she wasn't a bad shot with a blaster, either. And that is how my daddy bit the dust.

Mama says she probably would've killed her, too, if this "red-haired woman" hadn't "appeared out of nowhere" and disintegrated Shanleigh. I suppose there was probably a reason for it, but Mama doesn't know it and I sure as Hoth have no clue.

Ooh, now how scandalous is that? I never imagined I had such an intriguing "family history," if you could call it that.

For the record, I fully intend on going against Mama's wishes and researching the sithspit out of this mysterious little series of events that brought me and my long lost brother into existence.

(See, I've got this weird psychic feeling that Shanleigh's baby was a boy.)

(Just kidding. I have no idea.)

5/20

According to my research so far, there is no record of anyone named Guy Fowler ever being born, going to school, getting arrested, opening a bank account, or being shot in the head by a jealous fourteen-year-old anywhere within the Republic or on any record-keeping worlds outside of it. I can't even find the origin of the name Fowler. And no one named Shanleigh was born within five years of the time Shanleigh should've been born to make her fourteen when she was killed. And those born close to the five-year mark have records of doing things like graduating university and going on welfare long after my Shanleigh's death.

So basically it would've been nice if Mom had caught the jealous ex-girlfriend's last name at some point in her passionate love affair with Guy Fowler. Sith, that probably wasn't even his real name.

Oh, and my other little clue – Guy saying he was from Earth – is also totally useless. There is not one mention on the holonet or any other resource I could find of a place called Earth. True, I don't know if I'm looking for a planet, a moon, a city, or a sithspawn apartment building. But I guess it doesn't matter, since if it does exist, nobody seems to think it's worth mentioning. Anywhere. Ever.

I'm gonna go to bed now and continue "torturing" myself, as Mama says, tomorrow.

5/22

I had the Library of Bakura send me a record of all the unnatural deaths that occurred about nine months before I was born. Here's my favorite part:

I guess they interviewed some witnesses, but Meade Skelly was not among them. Too bad. She could've provided them with a name or two at least, though I doubt it would've done them any more good than it's doing me. She probably ducked out as soon as red-headed women started disintegrating people. Can you blame her?

5/24

Finally! Finally finally finally, I found something!

Well, sort of.

Guy Fowler? Still nothing. Shanleigh? Nope.

But Earth... There is an Earth! In the whole damn galaxy, there is one sithspawn little mention of a place called Earth.

And where is this mention? Oh, this is classic. It's a beautiful thing. It's...

It's in Bantha-frickin'-Beat Magazine.

SITH! Not only is there only one mention of Earth, it's in a source as reliable and trusted as Bantha Beat!

Did I mention how lucky I am?

Oh baby, it gets better. Believe me. So the one mention of Earth is in Bantha Beat Magazine. Can you guess which article my precious reference appears in?

Yup, it is in the ninth paragraph of a four page article about the sithspawn Sailor Jedi. What next? Is Guy Fowler going to show up in a collection of Dathomirian fairy tales?

Imagine my reaction when I saw that article. (Well, once I got over my surprise that the readers of Bantha Beat were expected to read such a long article. I mean, four pages? About the same thing?) Seriously, I was getting funny looks from the librarians, including the cute one. But hopefully she finds it endearing when guys flip out over teeny-bopper magazines.

Sith, I don't think I've ever mentioned the cute librarian! She's... she's darn cute, that's what she is!

I probably shouldn't bother mentioning her, though. I suspect Mom's right. No girl like that would ever want a man who's not alive unless he can find a way around gravity.

To tell the truth, I'm not sure I'd want a girl who spends all her time in a library, anyway.

Oh, sith, can we say hypocrite? Ha! Ok, back to Bantha Beat. Here's what it says:

There you have it. Five days of intensive research and that is what I got. Sith. So now I have two concrete accounts of my "family history": a homicide report about an "unidentified human male," and an alleged conversation between some ditzy alleged superheroes. (I mean, wouldn't you think they'd use their superpowers to get themselves some more practical shoes? I sure as Hoth would.)

5/25

I have become obsessed with finding my lost sibling(s).

Mama's going crazy; she thinks I've totally lost it. Probably partly because I write in a pink diary and read Bantha Beat, but mostly because I'm going to Coruscant tomorrow to find out more about the Sailor Jedi. Really, I just want someone to tell me what the sith Earth is.

6/5

I've never had any desire to visit the Jedi Temple, so... I never have. But if I had known how many women hung around here, I would've been here ten years ago! Why didn't they mention this in that boring-as-sith holovid we watched about it in school?

So finally I got to talk to this Jedi historian type dude. He didn't help me at all, but sith, he sure was interested. Here's the groovy thing: he'd actually heard of Earth! Wouldn't tell me a thing about it, though. He said he had to "research" a bit, and told me to come back tomorrow.

I'm thinking about it. I mean, I guess as long as nothing more important comes up.

Ha!

6/6

So I'm in a room with Mr. Jedi Historian Dude, this chick with more red hair than I've seen in my life, a girl with black hair and bright blue eyes who didn't say a word the whole time, a girl with light blue hair in a bun, and two little girls – one with the same light blue hair and the other with purple hair. It was like rainbow day at the Jedi Temple or something.

So Mr. Jedi Historian Dude makes me tell the whole story over again: everything my mom said and everything I found on my own. It took about forty-five seconds. Then Mr. JHD looks over at Silent Babe. She, being the Silent Babe, says nothing, but suddenly everyone in the room nods. And I say...

"Sith, are you like a mind reader or something?"

Silent Babe stares at me. And then... she nods, like "Yep I sho' am and don't you forget it, fly boy."

Freaky.

I like it.

So yeah, I hope she doesn't mind me referring to her as Silent Babe because I guess she knows about it, doesn't she?

Hi, Silent Babe! Can you hear me? Hello?

Okay, so then Mr. JHD looks at the older blue-haired girl and nods to the two little kids. The older girl then asks the kids if Guy Fowler or Shanleigh sound familiar. I'm just a little confused since they both frickin' died before these two little ones were even born, but who am I to question the Jedi way?

The blue-haired kid says, "Nope, Shanleigh and Guy Fowler don't sound familiar but Blue does 'cause when I was on Earth (hey, she's been there!) I used to watch Blue's Clues on TV sometimes, but not as much as I watched –"

"Aisu, that's okay. I just need to know about Shanleigh and Guy Fowler. Hisako, do you remember those names?"

Hisako, the purple one, squeezes her eyes shut and thinks for a while. The older girl tries to help. "Do you remember them from the future?"

Okay, now I'm like what the SITH?! The sithspawn future? Who the sith are these people? Did some prankster switch the signs in front of the Jedi Temple and the local loony bin?

I look at Silent Babe. She's laughing at me, I can tell.

At the psycho "remember the future" comment, Hisako's face lights up. "Zyta's baby!" she says.

"Yeah!" Aisu jumps in, I guess suddenly remembering the future also. "Shanleigh is Zyta's baby but I've never seen her 'cause she got sent to Earth just like I did only before me and Hisako were born but Zyta always told us about her and showed us pictures and said when Shanleigh grew up she was gonna be a Sailor Jedi like me and her and Mom but not like Hisako because Hisako's not gonna be a Sailor Jedi –"

"Just a Jedi," Hisako adds.

"Yeah, and not like Dad either because he's a knight, which is a little different because –"

"Aisu," the older girl interrupts. "You said Shanleigh is Zyta's baby, born in the future and sent to Earth before you guys were born?"

"Yeah," Hisako says, hopping a little, "to keep her safe until she's old enough to be a Sailor Jedi."

The redhead speaks for the first time. "Could that be the same Shanleigh who showed up on Bakura twenty-five years ago, killed that Guy Fowler guy, and then got disintegrated by a 'red-haired woman' who suddenly appeared and then suddenly disappeared?" She rolled her eyes at the last part as if she knew who the red-haired woman was.

Redhead suddenly turns to Silent Babe as if she'd said something. "Well, Guy was her boyfriend, so she probably brought him with her from earth, however she got here." Silent Babe nods.

I think by this point my eyes have turned into little swirling disks and I'm pretty sure this is a dream?

Redhead confers with Blue-hair and Silent Babe. "Yeah, I think this is worth going to Earth to try and figure out. Shanleigh might not have any real records, since she was born in this galaxy, but if Guy Fowler is one hundred percent Earth-born, we'll find out who he was. Hopefully that will help us figure out what Shanleigh was doing on Bakura and why the Sailor Sith killed her." She looked at Mr. JHD. "I'll let you know what I find."

"I'll go with you, Coru," Blue-hair says.

"Good, I can use the extra hands. I promised to bring back manga for Mika and Chouko, Pepsi for Yoshiko, and the new Harry Potter book."

Sith. Sith sith sith.

Yeah, I passed out.

6/7

So I'm back at the Jedi Temple early in the morning and Ippin (the Redhead that sometimes seems to be Coru) and Yukiko (Blue-hair) are there. Like, I guess Earth is really close? 'Cause they've already been there.

I'm about to demand an explanation of this Earth thing when Jedi dude asks Ippin and Yukiko what they found.

Ippin sets this big stack of paper on the table. "Guy Patrick Fowler, born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1966. In 1982, his name appears on a birth certificate as the father of Mark Patrick Fowler, born to Amy Elizabeth Clayton in Windsor, Ontario. Guy was sixteen. In 1985, when Guy was 19, he is listed on another birth ceritifcate as the father of a baby girl, Shanly Kristine Fowler, born to Shanleigh Smith in Jackson, Michigan.

"Shanleigh 'Smith' and Guy Fowler were reported missing on June 14, 1986. They were last seen in San Francisco, California, where they had been living with Guy's Aunt Sara."

Yukiko looks down at her own stack of paper. "There is a birth certificate on record for Shanleigh Smith in Lexington, Kentucky, but Ippin and I are positive it is not authentic. However, it does say that she was born in 1973, which is probably a correct record of her age. This makes her only thirteen when Shanly Kristine was born, and fourteen when she disappeared, which corresponds with Blue's mother's story.

"As a child, Shanleigh lived with a woman named Karyn Risotti in Pensacola, Florida. Karyn Risotti is related to the Sunaarashi family."

"Zyta's family," Ippin adds.

"It makes sense that Zyta would send her daughter to a relative on Earth to be kept safe," Yukiko says. "It also makes sense – for us, anyway – that Shanleigh would return to this galaxy at about age fourteen. What doesn't make sense is how and why Guy came with her."

"It could've been an accident," Ippin says. "I didn't mean to bring Peetie here, remember? He accidentally ran right into the porthole when I transported Yoshiko."

"That's true," Yukiko says. "But something about this doesn't seem right."

(Jedi Historian Dude is frantically recording stuff on his datapad. And I feel a lot like I'm watching a foreign film.)

"Yeah," Ippin agrees. "And you'd think I would have had something to do with Shanleigh and Guy coming to this Galaxy... but as far as I know, I didn't."

"And why did the Sailor Sith – if that's who the 'red-haired woman' was – kill her?"

"Well, Shanleigh was a Sailor Jedi, right? Isn't that just the way of things?"

"She was supposed to be a Sailor Jedi. We don't know if she ever transformed even. And doesn't it seem odd that, when coming to this galaxy, she would arrive twenty years before the rest of the Sailor Jedi from Earth?"

"Excuse me," I finally butt in. "This is all very interesting, but could you tell me if my brother and sister are still alive?"

"Well... if they are, they're in another galaxy," Ippin says.

"They're still my brother and sister."

Yukiko smiles and hands me a stack of paper. "It looks like both kids were adopted, but we haven't had time to even glance through the stuff about them. You're welcome to look through it here in the Temple Library."

I say thanks and retreat to a corner with the stack of papers and my sithspawn diary. And that's where I am now, writing down all this crap before I suffer from serious brain overload. Yukiko and Ippin are still discussing Sailor Sith over there, and the Jedi dude is still playing with his datapad. And I'm about to dive into these papers.

Here we go!

Blue's Notes About Long Lost Siblings

January 1, 1982 (whatever that means) – My older brother was born! Haha. Okay, he was born Mark Patrick Fowler, in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Earth, Some-Other-Galaxy-I-Guess, to the infamous Guy Patrick Fowler, age sixteen, and some lady named Amy Elizabeth Clayton, age eighteen.

May 16, 1985 – Amy Elizabeth Clayton marries Daniel Jason Walker at age twenty-one. Daniel James Walker adopts Mark and changes his last name to Walker. Mark Patrick Walker.

November 19, 1985 – Shanly Kristine Fowler born to Shanleigh Smith and Guy Fowler in Jackson, Michigan, United States of America, Earth, Some-Other-Galaxy-I-Guess.

November 20, 1985 – Shanly is taken to the Jackson County Orphanage.

December 24, 1985 – Jun and Ami Uno of Napolean, Michigan, United States of America, Earth, Some-Other-Galaxy-I-Guess sign adoption papers and become the proud parents of Shanly Kristine.

February 15, 1986 – Jun and Ami take the time to legally change Shanly's name to Yoshiko Uno.

September, 1987 – The Walker family moves to Livonia, Michigan, United States of America, Earth, Some-Other-Galaxy-I-Guess. Mark starts kindergarten.

September 1990 – Yoshiko starts school at Ackerson Lake Elementary in Napolean, Michigan, United States of America, Earth, Some-Other-Galaxy-I-Guess.

August 1994 – Amy and Daniel Walker divorce. Mark is enrolled in Northville Junior High School, where he lives with his mother. Daniel has "joint custody."

(Yukiko just came over and asked me if I "found anything interesting." I showed her my notes. She said "Coru! Get over here!" Coru/Ippin/Redhead came, and read through what I have so far. She gave Yukiko this shocked kinda look, and suddenly the two took off running.

I looked at Jedi Historian Dude. He shrugged and went back to his datapad.

I hope they didn't notice my notes are written in a pink diary.

Sith, now I'm really glad I didn't get the Sailor Jedi diary – as if I even thought about it! But that would've been really embarrassing.)

Okay, back to this:

June 1999 – Jun and Ami Uno move to Northville, Michigan, United States of America, Earth, Some-Other-Galaxy-I-Guess. Yoshiko is enrolled at Northville High School.

May 23, 2000 – Yoshiko Uno reported missing, last seen in her first hour ninth grade history class at Northville High School.

Sith... does that mean she's dead?

Damn.

May 23, 2000 – Mark Walker reported missing, last seen in his first hour Spanish class at Northville High School.

Well. Sith again.

SITH, wait a minute! What the frick happened there?! What the sithspawn FRICK –

Oh, the girls are back!

6/8

Okay so I had just finished going through all those records about Shanly Kristine and Mark Patrick when Ippin and Yukiko burst back into the library dragging a teenage girl with a holovid camera in her hand.

I'm like, nice, are they going to make an independent film out of this?

Also Starring BLUE SKELLY as Francesco Giovanini, The Man With The Pink Diary

How's that sound? Good? Good. I'm a moron.

Eventually, I realized she just happened to have the camera in her hand when Yukiko and Ippin suddenly whisked her off to the library.

The three girls pulled up chairs in a little circle with me. No introductions were made, but the new girl, who was wearing jeans much too big for her and a shirt that says "Welcome to Flamingo World," looked me up and down real quick and her eyes rested on...

"Nice journal," she says, grinning. Sith.

Ippin reached over and snatched said journal out of my hand and went to the beginning of me Notes About Lost Siblings. She looked at Miss Flamingo World. "When and where were you born, Yo'?"

"November 19, 1985, in Jackson, Michigan, yo."

"Were you... adopted?"

The girl pursed her lips to suppress a slight smile. "Let's see... my parents were Japanese-American... I have pink hair and blue eyes... hmm. I guess I never thought to ask."

Ippin rolled her eyes but smiled – barely. "There names were Jun and Ami?"

"Yeah," she said, giving me a paranoid look.

"I haven't been stalking you," I assured her.

"Good to know."

I reconsidered, when it suddenly hit me that I was talking to Yoshiko Uno – my sister! "Actually, I guess I kinda have been. But I didn't know who you were."

"Sh," Ippin cut me off. "Yo', do you have any idea who your biological parents were?"

"No," she said softly, almost serious for the first time. "I... always dreamed of meeting them," she said hesitantly. Yukiko and Ippin smiled sympathetically until Yoshiko shook her head in an apparent effort to snap out of it. "Dang, how cheesy is that?"

"Your mother's name was Shanleigh," Yukiko said. "She was thirteen when you were born."

"Dude!" Yoshiko exclaimed. "That sucks!"

Yukiko nodded and leaned over Ippin to read my diary. "Do you want to know your birth name?"

Yoshiko nodded.

"You were born Shanly Kristine Fowler."

My sister mouthed the name silently, and then smiled. "Pretty."

Yukiko grinned and looked back down at the book. "Your father – who was nineteen when you were born – was a man named Guy Patrick Fowler, from Montreal, Quebec."

"Dude, I'm Canadian?!"

"Something like that. But there's more," Yukiko looked at me and nodded. I snatched my book back from Ippin.

Yoshiko looked at me expectantly. "Guy Fowler was also my father."

"You're Canadian too!" she announced, then gasped upon actually comprehending what I'd just said. "Dude! You're my brother!"

Oh, the sheer beauty of the reunion of long lost siblings! I think I almost cried. Not only had I found my dear older sister (who I guess is younger than me), but I found out that I am Canadian! Whatever the sith that means. I hope it has something to do with royalty or large inheritances.

Yoshiko suddenly swung back to gravely serious. "Are my parents still alive?" she asked.

Ippin shook her head. "They were ki- er, they died on Bakura about a year after you were born."

"Bakura?! How'd they get there?"

"We're working on that," Yukiko sighed.

I suddenly remembered Mark and flip to the end of my Notes About Long Lost Siblings. "Yoshiko! Do you know a Mark Walker?"

She blinked a few times, then laughed. "Yup," she nodded, flipping her holovid camera on. "I know Mark Walker."

She turned the camera's view-screen toward me and the other girls, and hit play. A boy with spiky green hair flashed onto the screen. "Dude, is it on?"

"Yeah," Yoshiko's voice answered from behind the camera.

"Okay, watch this." With that, the kid began dancing around in front of the camera making the weirdest damn noises I've ever heard. When he finished, he lumbered back up close to the camera, all out of breath. "Was that not the best gorilla ever? I've been working on that for months."

"You have not," Yoshiko's voice argued.

"Dude, Yo', I so have!"

"Whatever. I'm gonna go tape something more interesting. Like Kairi-chan reading her chemistry book."

"Dude, ouch."

Yoshiko giggled, and the scene blurred. "Though actually," we hear the boy say, though we can't see him anymore, "I'd watch a movie of Kairi-chan just sitting there." With that, the holovid ended.

The real live Yoshiko echoed her own giggle and turned off the camera. "The one, the only, Mark Patrick Walker! Also known as..."

"Peetie!" Ippin filled in with a groan. She and Yukiko exchanged amazed looks.

"Yeah, I've got about six hundred more holovids of him in my room, and he's got like twelve hundred more in his, if that, um, wasn't enough for you."

Ippin bit her lip. "Yo', I think there's something you need to know."

They allowed me to do the honors.

"This Peetie guy?" I said. "Well, he seems to be my brother."

"Brother, eh? Wha- Oh my GOSH!" Understanding came a little bit quicker this time. "That does NOT mean what I think it means!"

"Well... Guy Fowler is my father. Guy Fowler is Peetie's father. Guy Fowler is your father."

Yoshiko turned an interesting shade. "SITH!" she screamed.

By the way, I think I've already noticed some family resemblance.

6/9

Now, just because my brother and sister live in this Jedi Temple place, it doesn't make these people seem any more sane.

Sith, I am so serious!

This nice, talkative girl named Mika is leading me through the Sailor Jedi's lair or whatever. She's talking to me about how she's really good friends with Yo' and Peetie, and this guy she's crushing on, Link, and this and that and oh, her room's right there on the right and POOF the chick turns into a sithspawn CAT and trots away!

What, in the name of the sithspawn Republic...??!

Anyway, once I get over that I realize I can hear Yo' and Peetie talking in her room, since the door is open. She's all excited about being Canadian.

"Dude, not only that, but we are FRENCH Canadian!" Peetie adds.

(I've really got to find out what this damn Canada thing is all about.)

"Wow!" Yo' squeals. "I wonder if we're good at hockey?"

By this time I've reached the doorway and have realized that Yoshiko's room is

Very

Very

Pink.

"And maybe we'll end up really liking beer," Peetie suggests.

And I believe that's a Bespin Boys poster on her wall?

"Maybe! Do you think we'll start buying milk in a bag?"

And yet, a classic Hearing-Impaired Cheetah song is playing – "Pour Some Low-Calorie-Artificial-Sweetener On Me." Who the sith is this sister of mine?

"We just might," Peetie says. "But we should probably quit with the stereotypical generalizations, eh?"

I venture a step into the room ad nearly break my neck slipping on – what else? Bantha Beat Magazine.

This gets their attention at least. They stand up and Yoshiko says, "This is our brother: Blue!"

(Tears were in my eyes, man.)

"You must be Peetie," I say, offering him my hand.

"Brothers don't shake hands," he gushes. "Brothers gotta hug!"

Yoshiko slaps her forehead in exasperation as I am suddenly squeezed, tight. "Give me a frickin' break, Peetie!" she says.

He relents, pouting a bit, and shoots Yo' a dirty look. "Shut up, Richard," he mutters.

Richard?

Sith, after spending the day with those two, I've discovered that I simply don't understand what they're saying sometimes.

Or most of the time, rather.

But I think I like them.

Yoshiko Shanly Kristine Fowler Uno Chibi Tatooine Richard Whatever is a typical boy-crazy fifteen-year-old superhero, with the additional prop of an ever-present holovid camera. She likes pop music, reads Bantha Beat, is always ready for a hug, and buys everything in obnoxious shades of pink – or glitter. Pink glitter, of course, is the ideal.

But I can't get past the fact that she also has a taste for the bad heavy metal bands I listened to when I was her age, like Blasters and Daisies, and Eh-see/Dee-see. Or her inability to stay serious for very long, or her sarcasm, her sense of humor... Well sith, I swear there's a part of her that is basically me with heart-shaped odango.

(And with the way things have been turning out lately, I wouldn't put heart-shaped odango too far beyond me.)

And then, there's Peetie Mark Pat—no, he's just Peetie. I have no idea why they call him that and I guess he doesn't either, but it's perfect. Peetie is so... Peetie is... I mean, who doesn't love Peetie? Sith, I'll beat 'em up if they don't! Or Sailor Yo' can; she'd probably do better.

Yeah anyway, as I was leaving tonight I asked Peetie if he wanted to come with me. I'd teach him how to fly and we could hang out and visit planets and crap. At first he thought it was the hothest idea ever... and then he paused, and took a look around the Room Behind the Waterfall, where like twenty girls were just kinda loitering and doing their thing. And he said, "Dude, I think they need me here."

That's my little brother.

Little teardrops are in my eyes again. I'm just so emotional, you know?

Sith, whatever.

But I guess I am pretty damn happy.