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"You shouldn't do that, you know?" Annika said to the upside down girl leaning against a wall.
"Why?" Sai, the upside down one, asked.
"Because," Annika calmly explained, "all the blood will rush to your head and you'll explode. Besides, you look silly!"
Sai's bare toes wriggled as she struggled not to fall. "I happen to think that standing on one's head is a very good way to pass time! And yoooooou only say it looks silly because yoooooou can't do it!"
Annika's hand flew to her hip; she cocked an eyebrow and drew in one corner of her mouth. "And just what makes you think I can't?"
"HA! Because," Sai said toppling her legs over until they touched the floor, allowing her to stand upright, "you're clumsy! Just like your sister, Mika!" She winked, did a little twirl, and then wandered off. Annika followed after her.
"Hey, look! How do you know all this stuff about us, anyway?"
Sai stopped and turned around. "I'm the senshi's number one fan, silly!"
Annika shook her head and went back to whatever unimportant thing she was doing. Sai was a bit of a pest, but the senshi had taken a shine to the freckle-faced twelve year old. Especially after they figured out that she literally had every senshi fact tucked into her brain. Of course, no new addition to the "friend of the Sailor Jedi" list was complete without a bit of controversy.
She had been trouble ever since she first appeared, or rather disappeared, and then reappeared again. Sai had managed to smuggle herself onto the Silver Swan when Annika and Obi-Wan left planet Serenity, and no one noticed her until they were already safely in the hangar on Coruscant. Annika naturally wanted to keep her. The exact wording was, "I'll feed her and buy her clothes and fix her hair and stuff!" Obi-Wan reminded her that one kitten and one bunny was enough.
"My quarters are only so big, Annika! You've already covered the walls with pop music posters and taken over the closet! It's really difficult to find my clothes in the morning... I was so embarrassed a few days ago when Master Windu asked me why I was wearing a pink robe instead of my cloak."
So, Sai was given Annika's old room inside the Room Behind the Waterfall, much to Annika's chagrin.
"Don't worry! I won't change a thing!" Sai had reassured Annika. Two weeks later, the room Annika stayed in when Obi-Wan was away on Jedi business (which was quite often) or whenever she and Obi-Wan had a fight (which was quite often) had been transformed. Annika's mouth fell open when she saw the way the room gleamed with cleanliness; one could almost hear the sparkle. It was the cleanest Annika's room had been in four years.
In the short time she had been there, Sai became a sort of mascot for the senshi. She was the ultimate fan girl, fawning over every thing they did. One of her favourite pastimes was bugging Annika, Mika, and Obi-Wan, and often she would recruit other little'uns to torture the older'uns.
One such day involved Yoshiko.
Yoshiko had been walking across the courtyard of the Jedi Temple with her nose situated between the pages of Bantha Beat magazine when the little'uns decided to 'get her, but good'. They had followed the pink-haired senshi all day, watching while she flirted with cute boys, and ate not one, but TWO ice cream sandwiches.
"When are we gonna splatter her with this green goo?" Chakra asked. The four girls, Chakra, Aiko, Sai and Aisu, were crouched behind a big, green, prickly bush, peeking ominously over the top branches to see Yoshiko scratching her head.
Sai flopped her hand in the air, "Soon, soon! But guess what? Oh it's gonna be like, so cool! 'Cuz that green goo doesn't wash off for forty-eight standard hours!!"
"She's moving!" Aisu squealed and pointed.
"Shhh!!" Sai said, covering the little blue-haired girl's mouth. "Okay! Let's go team!"
Following Yoshiko around the streets of Coruscant proved to be boring for the four easily distracted girls, especially Aisu, who panicked every time she saw something cute. But, luckily, Yoshiko decided to go back to the Temple for lunch, and was eating some sort of sandwich wrap when the girls crept up behind a nearby bench.
"Now's our chance!" Sai ordered. The girls giggled, jumped up, and started tossing the green goo. Splotches of it landed on the walls, and one big splat landed in the lap of an innocent Padawan. Oddly enough, none of the goo had even gotten close to Yoshiko, who was still busy eating her sandwich.
"Drats!!" Sai snapped her fingers.
Of course, Yoshiko wasn't the only person targeted for Sai's shenanigans.
"Hellooooo cats!" Sai announced jubilantly as she came upon a sleeping Solai, Schylar, Starr, and UsaNeko. The feline family just rolled their backs to face her and went back to sleep. This was no fun. "You know what you need? Ribbons!" With a twirl of her wand and a few magic words, the cats now all had shiny blue ribbons around their necks, pretty matching bonnets over their ears, and jingle bells tied to their tails. Feeling that her work was done, Sai skipped off.
In a word, Sai was 'weird.' It is said that some people march to the beat of their own drummer, Sai marched to her own orchestra. She marched all over the Jedi Temple to find one of her favourite people.
"Hi, Obi-Wan!"
"Hello, Sai."
"What 'cha doin'?"
"Calibrating this piece for my star ship."
"Oh. That sounds nice and boring."
"Well," he laughed, "it is, now that you mention it."
"Star ships are boring in general. Hey!" Sai interjected, pulling a small frog from her pocket. "This is Kentucky, my frog."
"You have a frog named Kentucky?" he asked while attaching the final screws to the engine piece.
"Yup! Kentucky is named after a place on Earth! I've been there, you know!"
Obi-Wan put down his project and folded his fingers together. "You have?"
Sai nodded. "Yeah, with my daddy! We went to see all these pretty animals called 'horses'! And guess what else? From a distance, the grass looks blue, but when you get close, it's really green! Isn't that the coolest? Okay, I'm gonna go now. Bai bai!"
No one was ever really mad at Sai, more like intrigued. No one knew where she was from, why she showed up suddenly, or just how she knew everything about the senshi. She knew ages, birthdays, henshin phrases, forms, chibis, boyfriends, attacks... everything. And she apparently knew a lot more than she was willing to tell. Some people speculated Sai was from the future, and Chuoko and Mika thought she was like an episode of the Z-Files.
Suffice to say, there was a lot more to learn about Mahou Saikoro than anyone knew, and she sure wasn't telling... not at the moment.
