Raising Cain

Seijoutai Priire yawned and stretched. She could already tell that it was going to be a perfect day. Fuukou Ippin - her twin sister - had offered to take Aisu, Hisako, and Kleppa to the zoo so Priire could do something fun. Like taking apart ships and putting them back together.

The blonde ex-mercenary grinned. Maybe she would... and maybe she'd spend the rest of the day down in the High And Lonesome Cantina winning all the money anyone would put on the table. Her idyllic plans were suddenly shattered by the piercing cry of a baby. Priire wrinkled her nose and slid on a pair of black pants that matched the glittering Sailor Hoth shirt she'd found on sale.

After strapping on her blasters, Priire walked out to the main room of the Room Behind the Waterfall. There she found an awfully panicked Ippin trying to convince a reluctant Kleppa into a jacket. "Kleppa!" the fiery redhead begged. "You're going to wake everyone up!"

"Too late." Priire grinned as Kleppa reached out her little arms.

"Mamma!" the baby proclaimed, grabbing hold of Priire's shirt and glaring at Ippin.

"I guess she wants to stay here, Coru," Priire said with a slight grin.

Aisu tugged on Ippin's shirt. "I wanna go see the animals!!!!"

With a grin, Ippin let herself be dragged out of the room.

Waving at the trio as they left, Priire sighed. No cantina. No fights. No sabacc. She wrinkled her nose. But yes dirty diaper.

A few hours later, Priire was coloring with an older Kleppa. The baby had decided that she wanted to color when she saw how much fun Nijihoshi and Melesse were having. To do that, she needed to be old enough to hold the crayons.

Priire shook her head. "Kleppa, may I have the purple crayon?"

The little girl promptly handed Priire the desired crayon and watched in fascination as Priire filled in the fuku of some earthen senshi.

A thought occurred to Priire and she flipped to the cover of the coloring book. "Can you read this?" she asked Kleppa.

For a moment, Kleppa looked at it blankly. "No."

Priire took a blank piece of paper and wrote a few words in Huttese. "Can you read this?"

"I don't... it's not... no." Kleppa sounded disappointed.

"Okay," Priire said, grinning. The green-eyed pilot drew a simple, lower-case "a". "Can you make that?" She wasn't quite sure how to go about teaching someone to write. Kleppa seemed to know everything else that a nine-year-old should, so Priire decided to teach her to write.

Very carefully, Kleppa tried to copy the letter. It came out very distorted, but Priire still smiled. A few letters down the line, Priire began to realize something wasn't right. Kleppa was having a hard time seeing the letters. Her frustration and inability was leaking over to Priire through the Force. Shrugging, Priire told her to go back to coloring, which the little girl did happily.

Melesse suddenly announced she was hungry, prompting Priire to go get the three a snack. Not wanting to leave them long, Priire grabbed a butcher knife, several apples, a jar of peanut butter, and some honey. She walked back into the room and sat the things down on the coffee table. Priire began cutting the apples with the knife and humming to herself. The humming caught Kleppa's attention, and the dark-haired girl glanced up.

When she saw what Priire was doing, she froze with a look of pure terror on her face. Not a muscle on her body moved, except for her horrified eyes.

"Kleppa?" Priire said, looking up from her work. The older girl held the knife up and looked around. "What's wrong, sweetheart?"

Apparently, Priire's movements were some kind of signal, because the girl started screaming. Priire dropped the knife onto the table and scooped up the girl, who was reverting to her true age.

The dark-haired baby kept whimpering and crying as Priire rocked her and spoke softly. Melesse had run to get Kyoko. Xarae, hearing the commotion, came running into the room.

"What happened?" the senshi of children exclaimed, worried.

No one, however, could match the worry on Priire's face. "I don't know! I was cutting some apples, and she suddenly started crying!"

Kyoko came running in, with Melesse and Magena fast at her heels. "What happened?"

Priire looked slightly annoyed. "You're a few minutes too late," she growled sarcastically.

Offering a slight smile at Priire's sudden gruffness, Xarae explained. "She doesn't know." Then, needlessly, she added, "Priire's worried."

The three older girls gathered around Priire and stared at Kleppa. "Let me hold her," Xarae said very softly. In a worried glance, Priire begged Xarae to find whatever was wrong and fix it. Quickly, though, Priire shut the door on her emotions and handed the child over.

Xarae cooed and tickled Kleppa's chin. The baby's teary eyes sparkled and she reached for a lock of Xarae's hair. "Ouch!"

Kleppa giggled softly.

Gently putting her hand on the baby's forehead, Xarae probed her young mind. It was a strange sensation. Kleppa seemed to be a much older person nestled inside of a baby's body. Kleppa didn't mind, however.

Xarae left the discontinuities that Kleppa's rapid-aging trick formed and probed deeper into the girl's mind. It was darker... scarier... and scarred.

As if some being had forcibly entered Kleppa's mind.

A frown formed on Xarae's face, and she reached deeper into the scarred area. She felt that she had almost reached what she needed to know when she was suddenly stopped by a giant white horse.

As the woman examined the being that blacked her way, she realized he was a pegasus.

I am Zarathustra
Force-bred Guardian
Of this one's mind
No one shall come again.

"Zarathustra?" Xarae asked. "I need to know what's wrong with her so we can help her!"

The pegasus shook his white mane and stomped his sliver hooves.

Access denied and
Forbidden as well.
I can't let you in
Her secrets she can't tell.

Xarae closed her eyes and shook her head. "Listen! Whatever happened to her, we can help fix. All we have to do is know what."

She cannot read
And nor can she write.
Such was the effect
On her that night.

The brown-haired woman sighed. "Stupid horse."

Madame!
A horse I am not!
Do not confuse this,
For I will get upsot.

The pegasus looked upset with his flashing light blue eyes.

"Sorry," Xarae said. "I'm just worried for Kleppa. And Priire."

Worried are we all
And well we should be
But there's little to do
Between you and me.

Priire tickled Kleppa's chin. Xarae hadn't been able to find out much, except that Zarathustra was being a pain in the horse's rear. And that Kleppa had dyslexia so severe that she wouldn't be able to read. Priire sighed.

As if trying to reconcile with Priire, Kleppa reach out her tiny hand. A surge of silvery Force-power gathered in the child's hand and began to form a heart. Instead of forming only one heart, the thing in Kleppa's hand began to split down the middle and mold itself into two hearts. One was deep black and swirled as if something's claws had scratched it, while the other was a pure, crystal blue. They were attached in such a way that separating them would have broken both. As Priire picked the mass of crystal up, she noticed a tiny white heart on the back of the larger two.

Priire frowned at it for a minute. Strange...

Happily feeding Kleppa some green baby food, Annika didn't notice Obi-Wan walking up behind her. The pink-haired Princess did notice, however, that Kleppa was holding something in her hand. "Lemme see!" Annika asked.

In response, the baby opened her hands. Annika could see she was creating a heart. It was a swirl of pink with a ribbon of black running through it. Picking up the crystal heart, Annika examined it. When she turned it this way and that, the black ribbon seemed to disappear. The princesses giggled. "It's pretty Kleppa! It's kind of like... me."

"I don't know."

Annika screamed and jumped. "Obi-Wan!" she shouted. "Don't scare me like that!"

Kleppa seemed amused at Annika, because the dark-haired girl giggled. She held out her hand again and produced another little heart. It was electric blue and had a crack down the middle. Annika picked it up and held it to the light. "I think it's broken. See? Mine has..."

She held the two hearts up to the light together. The princess gasped when they started to glow and come together. They swirled together and connected, the blue heart erasing the dark streak in the pink heart, and the pink heart healing the crack in the blue heart.

"Oh... wow..." Annika thought back to what Chakra had said about her and Obi-Wan's lights becoming one. "It's beautiful!"

Obi-Wan didn't say anything; he only looked at the little child happily rubbing green baby food all over the place. Strange...

Kleppa reached up a hand and giggled at the way the moonlight shone down upon her. She cooed softly as a silvery pegasus rubbed its nose against her hand.

"Da'!" the little baby said happily.

Not seeing the sliver pegasus, Priire scooped up the baby. "Bath time, sweetheart." The pair went back into the Room Behind the Waterfall, leaving the night to itself.