This is going to be one of those really silly stories. Don't expect much serious stuff this chapter. Thanks to Jesse for volunteering to be my editor, that saves me from reading my own story... hehehe. Thanks to Lucas, my unexpected and unlikely spell-checker and error-corrector. He isn't supposed to, but he does anyway since he gets everything in advance... haha. Jordi, Aeoros and Rune for being the coolest friends on the net! Thanks for being there guys! And never forgetting Mikey... hugs! "I'll be there for you 'cause you're there for me too!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Disclaimer: This story is fictional, and says nothing about the orientations of any member of the boyband Nsync, or any other character, celebrity or otherwise. If you are under 18 or 21, or live in a country where it's illegal to read something like this, leave, though I seriously doubt you will. If you don't like the idea of two guys in a relationship with each other, or having sex with each other, what are you doing here in the first place? Though maybe none of the characters will be appearing, ideas taken from these places will show up: Buffy, Copyright 20th Century Fox, Created by Joss Whedon X-Men, Copyright Marvel Comics, Created by Stan Lee Charmed, Copyright WB, Created by Aaron Spelling ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 10 - Oh My Oh Me, It's Miami!
The bus began to slow, and peering out the window revealed the cause of obstruction. What seemed like thousands of girls were outside the bus, screaming their heads off. Many of them had swarmed around the bus in hopes of catching an early glimpse of Nsync. Camera flashes were going off at an alarmingly rapid rate, giving me the feeling of being in the centre of a fireworks display sans the colours. There were a few guys in the crowd who stood out from the girls, especially since they were a lot less hysterical, screamy and enthusiastic in general. Most were probably brothers or boyfriends, dragged along by their female counterparts. There were two guys that were an exception, however. They were screaming names at the top of their lungs, but I could not make them out through the din. Both of them looked strangely familiar to me, though I simply could not place where I had seen them before. The bus inched closer to them and they began pointing excitedly towards the window I was at.
"Dylan!" I heard faintly. I turned to see if anyone in the bus had called me, but none of them were around then. Most of them had gone to take a nap.
"DYLAN!" I heard again, distinctly coming from outside the bus. I looked over at the two guys who were gesturing madely and waving. Both had jet black hair streaked with reddish brown dye. One of them, the shorter of the two, had a wide grin on his round face that reminded me of a monkey. The taller of the two had a more angular face, but his features were similar to the first guy, who was obviously his brother. He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed my name out in a deep bass voice. A voice I recognised, mostly because many people had said that we sounded alike. I smiled as recognition struck me, and I threw the window open, ignoring the slightly disappointed, but still madly screaming girls.
"JD? Josh?" I shouted. He grinned and I grinned back at the unexpected surprise. So the other guy must be his non-identical twin brother... "Jeremy!" I shouted, waving crazily. I heard soft footsteps behind me, feeling the slight and subtle vibrations on the floor. Justin's arm wrapped around my waist, and for a moment, I panicked at how the fan would react, but I noticed that the window's opening was hardly wide enough for them to see our position. All they saw was Justin's angelic face, and their screams increased in a way I could barely comprehend.
JD rolled his eyes and gestured that he would call me, then he took out his mobile phone and pointed at it. I nodded, and JD and Jeremy elbowed their way out of the crowd. Justin gave a small wave to the screaming girls, then drew the curtain, blocking us from sight. I jumped a little as he grabbed my butt suddenly.
"Rough crowd," I remarked. Justin winked. "Now you know."
He smiled at me for a while, then said, "You know, holding your ass is strangely relaxing."
"I don't think you've ever held my ass, as she's back home in Ireland," I grinned cheekily. Justin growled and rolled his eyes. "That was a bad pun."
"You just don't like being the butt of jokes," I snickered, on a roll. "It probably cracks your fragile ego."
Justin laughed and gave me a small push. "Ugh, funny man."
I had no intention of letting up. "I know. That was just a-maize-ingly corny."
Justin clutched his temples and let out a shriek. "Stop with the bad puns already!"
"So you want some good ones?" I asked. Justin narrowed his eyes at me. I burst out laughing. "Okay, I'll stop."
"That's too bad," I heard Melvin say. I glanced at him standing at the doorway to the "living room" of the bus and leaning on the frame, a cheeky grin on his face. "You've got some great fishing puns."
"Fishing?" Justin asked, raising his eyebrows at me, then at Melvin.
"Yeah," Melvin said. I could see an evil smirk forming on his face. "They're reel-y good."
The look on Justin's face could have killed us both in an instant. With no intention of letting a good pun session go to waste, I quickly spoke before Justin did. "Yours are better. I'm sure we're waiting with baited breath, so don't try to worm your way out of it."
"Now don't get hooked," Melvin said. Justin shrieked again, his hands twitching dangerously between pulling out all his hair (which was hardly long enough to be pulled anyway) and strangling Melvin and I. His face was turning a strange purple colour. He screamed, "No more fish puns!"
"Oh, don't worry," Melvin laughed. "We're fin-ished."
Justin ran screaming out of the room and I gave Melvin a high-five just as Joey and Joy stepped into the room.
"We heard screaming," Joey said, concerned.
"What's his problem?" Joy asked, jabbing her thumb at a hysterical Justin's retreating back.
"He doesn't like fish," I winked at Melvin.
JD called me on my mobile phone and we spoke for a while, catching up on each other. We were to stay in Miami for the next two nights, so I gave him the hotel name and suite number, and told him to meet us there with his twin.
"Dinner time, huh?" JD said. "Knowing you, that can be anywhere between four and eleven."
"Shut up," I laughed, glancing at a slightly rejected-looking Justin. "Be here at six-thirty."
We hung up and I turned to Justin. "Old friend."
"I figured," Justin smiled. "I'll tell the hotel staff to let them in. Just have to give them names."
"Just tell them to ask for their names and the password," I said. "It's a code thing we used way back."
"Okay," Justin nodded. "And what should the answers be?"
"The names should be Jade and Gem," I said as Justin made his way to the phone. "The password is 'tea with coffee'."
"Okay, now that's mighty weird," Justin laughed as he dialed the front desk. The doorbell rang and Melvin answered it. The guys in the other bus had come to visit us in our suite.
"Hey you guys!" I smiled as they poured in. Chris and Reuben were arguing on about who had cheated on the Playstation. JC and Brian were chatting about music in general, with Edwin adding comments about drums every now and then. Lance gave me a small smile in return, then plopped onto the couch. I assumed he was missing his boyfriend. His mobile phone rang, and he answered it and began chatting softly with a lovesick look on his face. I glanced at the time and wondered if two hours was enough time to prepare a meal for fourteen people. Plus extras for Joey and myself, of course. Then I realised that we had no ingredients at all, so I scrapped the idea of a home cooked meal and figured we could always spend a lot more on room service and it would barely hurt our pockets. I sat next to Joey and listened to the various conversations. Melvin, Joy and Diane were chatting about proper buffing techniques for nails, and colour coordination for clothes. Justin had joined Chris and Reuben chatting about various Playstation games.
"So I heard you invited some friends over?" Joey asked after a moment.
"Yeah, Josh and Jeremy," I said. "The bunch of us go way back. Even Joy doesn't know them. It used to be the five of us guys. Jade, Gem, Ruby, Kitten and Puppy."
"Cute nicknames," Joey grinned. "Who were you?"
"I'm puppy," I said, blushing slightly. "They called me that because at one point in time, I used to say the word 'rough' very often. And after a while, they said I sounded like a puppy barking 'ruff'."
"Cute," Joey teased. "And I guess Kitten was Melvin?"
"Yeah," I said. "What made you think that?"
"I heard Joy call him Mel-mel," Joey grinned. "When you said kitten, Mel-mel sounded like Mew-mew suddenly."
"Spot on," I grinned. "Wanna guess the others?"
"Hmm, Reuben is Ruby," Joey paused to think. "And since Jem is usually a short form name for Jeremy, he's Gem. So Josh would be Jade, though that doesn't make much sense."
"Josh is named after his father," I said. "And his middle name is also his cousin's name, both named after their grandfather, so we didn't call him Daniel. So everyone called him by his initials, JD. Say it fast and you get Jade."
"Cool," Joey smiled. "What time are they supposed to be here?"
"Six-thirty," I said. "Knowing JD however, they'll be here at about five."
"Eager much?" Joey laughed.
"Hey, I resent that," JD said, fading into view with Jeremy, shocking everyone except me.
"I know you'd resent it, that's why I said it," I grinned at JD.
"How'd you know I was here?" he asked, his familiar, irrestible impish grin on his face.
"Heard your footsteps," I smiled. "You were staring at JC's ass."
JC and JD immediately blushed a deep red.
"You were staring at my ass?" JC asked.
"How did you know?" JD asked.
"I heard your footsteps when you came through the door," I grinned. "They stopped behind JC for a while, then moved again to behind me. And knowing you, you couldn't resist taking a look."
"Damn," JD growled. "You're too good."
"That's why Melvin's grandpa loves me so much," I said to Joey. He grinned.
"So which one's yours?" JD asked. I pointed at Justin and smiled. JD grinned. "The cute one, eh? Think you can hook me up with the other blondie?"
"Lance?" I asked as JD nodded. "He's taken. Has a boyfriend called Eric."
"Damn," JD punched a fist downwards in fake disappointment. "When do you think room service is coming?"
The doorbell rang before I could answer that. "Room service!"
"At last!" Joey sprang to his feet. "I'm starving."
"Knowing you and Dylan, that is a really bad thing," JC laughed, opening the door. He tipped the guy and pushed the tray of food in, then went out to get the second one. After we each got our orders, we split into small groups for conversation. Lance, Joey, Melvin, JD and I sat together near the couches and started on the food. I took a forkful of my order and nearly spat it out immediately.
"You call this baked trout?" I exclaimed, making a face. "You'd think that a five-star hotel would at least serve good, properly cooked food."
"I take it you can make better," Joey grinned. I nodded in agreement, unable to speak as my mouth was full of the tasteless excuse for a baked trout.
"That's why you started a restaurant, isn't it," JD smiled.
Joey choked on his food for a moment. "You guys started the restaurant?"
"Yeah," I nodded. "Melvin and I started it, but since his mom quit her job as a nurse, she's been working there instead. And she's a much better cook than us. Besides, we have other things to work on."
"Other things?" Joey asked.
"Yeah," Melvin said. "We do have the bands, for one. Then we have various other soures of income."
"You guys sell drugs?" Lance joked. I laughed, shaking my head.
"No drugs, but we still get allowances from our mothers, even at our age," Melvin said. "Even though we're richer than they are."
"Speaking of businesses," I said, turning to JD. "I was glossing the accounts and I noticed eight million dollars added in by you and Jeremy. What's that about?"
"My dad passed away," JD said. "He got a divorce from my mom, and so she got about six million dollars from that. He sold his company, you see. He was leaving the house to go and marry his mistress and a drunk driver smashed into him. Very messy, but I can't miss him too much, seeing as I've probably seen him for only five hours throughout my nineteen years of life. So all the rest of his money was given to us in accordance to his will, and Jeremy and I thought we could just put it into the company account since the profits are shared by the five of us."
"Sharing wealth with your friends, I see," Lance smiled.
"Not really," JD laughed. "Eight million split by five is only one point six million. That's almost pocket change."
"For you maybe," I pouted. "Our moms won't let us keep the cash, we have to leave it in the bank for 'a rainy day'. We only get about three thousand a month."
"One point six million is pocket change?" Lance asked, shocked. "What in the world do you work as that gives you so much money a month?"
"Web page designing," I said. "Professionally done, it can cost maybe a thousand a page, most of the time, much more. Reuben and I design the page, Jeremy does the actual programming and work and stuff that I can't understand. Melvin's the businessman, and JD handles the accounts."
"And you make a lot of cash just from doing something that can be done simply?" Joey asked. "That isn't fair."
"Fair?" I laughed. "You make millions by singing and looking cute and attractive to the girls. That's not hard to do at all. And you don't have to even write your own songs."
"Touche," Lance said.
"So how long will you guys be in Miami," JD asked, changing the subject.
"Two nights," Lance replied. "Our concert is on the second night, and we're leaving early the morning after. I think it's management's way of letting us in slowly, rather than putting intensive schedules at the very beginning of the tour."
"Cool," JD said, leaning his head onto my shoulder. "Maybe you could help us."
"With what?" I asked, pushing JD off gently noticing Justin's frown from across the room as he glanced my direction.
"Well, we're having trouble with some organisation," JD said. "Ever heard of the Friends of Humanity?"
I groaned, Melvin sighed, Lance winced and Joey just shook his head slowly.
"I don't think I can take any more of this FOH thing," Lance said. "Having special equipment in my house to hide Eric's mutant signature, Joey getting shot. Getting hounded by them and fighting giant robots. This is getting sickening."
"Oh, you've come across them, I see," JD said. "Well, they've been harrassing my mom for being a mutant. So she can create force shields to protect people, what's the big deal? They found out about her after she used her shield to protect a kid from being hit by a car. And what does the kid's dad say? 'I would rather my kid have died than let some filthy mutant use her perverted powers on him'. Can you believe that?"
"And what can we do to help?" I asked.
"I hacked their computers," JD said. "They're planning to attack the house tomorrow afternoon to make an example of her. Mom's been sick lately, and her powers will be weak. Jeremy's powers are the same as Reuben's, but even he isn't strong enough to take on a giant robot. And you know how useful your type of powers are against robots. What good is it to turn intangible if an energy blast can still hurt you? I figured that if there are five of us, maybe we could beat it."
"Six," I said. "Joy's one of us too. But it won't help us much, we've already fought a sentinel before."
"And how did you defeat it?" JD asked.
"Gremlins," Melvin said. "Not fun to work with. And we were protected with a magic shield formed by my brother and Dylan's brother and sister."
"Well, then we can use magic combined with our powers," JD said. "We're prepared for it, we can plan."
"I can't," I said, suddenly remembering the question. "My powers are gone, remember?"
Lance, Joey and JD looked shocked, their mouths wide open. "Gone?!"
"Well, until I solve a question that I was asked," I sighed. "And I have no idea what the answer is."
"I do, but I can't tell," Melvin said. "But I can give clues, and the clue is that you are the one that taught me the answer to the question."
It suddenly felt like everyone's eyes were focused on me, and it made me feel worse. I got up, pushing my food away. "Excuse me."
I walked to the room that Justin and I had picked, and closed the door behind me, locking it so I could be alone. I felt lost without my powers. Helpless because I was unable to help my friends. I almost felt like I should give up trying to answer the question, but I knew that there was some lesson meant for me to learn. I fell onto the bed and grabbed a pillow, burying my face in it, trying to hold my tears back.
"Why can't I get my powers back?" I shouted into the pillow. "I'm a protector, dammit. I was meant to help people. I can't do it without my powers, they're a part of me."
I sobbed softly in the silence of the room, waiting as though for a reply. There was only silence.
"Who am I?" I asked myself aloud. "How can I answer that? How can I know? Others see part of me, but not the whole of me. They can only give me a partial answer. I can't give a whole answer because how I see myself may be different from how other see me, and may be different from how I really am."
There was still nothing but silence in the room. I felt something stir in me, a rebellious streak that had shown itself many times in the past. I stared at the ceiling and shouted, "I am who I am, and I am me!"
"That is the answer," a melodic voice said from beside me. I lowered my head and looked in the direction of the voice. My eyes fell upon a man, beautiful and handsome beyond words. He seemed to glow with an internal light, and he had a kind smile on his face. I knew him as I looked at him: Angus MacOg, one of the Tuatha De Danaan. Love and music were part of his sphere of influence, and he had been my patron since my first explorations into music, before I was even a teenager.
"That is the answer," he said again, bending next to me.
"That's it?" I asked. "That's the answer? But it's too simple."
"Simple enough that you couldn't figure it out?" he winked, smiling at me. "Simple but powerful enough to cause you grief?"
"But what's the difference between this answer and saying my name?" I asked. "It's still me."
"Your name is how you are called," Angus replied. "But it is not who you are. Does your name reveal that you have powers, that you are attracted to the same gender? Does your name change as you grow? Does it become something else when you change your attitude from scared to brave?"
"No," I answered. "But the answer isn't much of an answer."
"Is it really?" Angus asked. "Whether you are selfish or generous, happy or sad, you still are who you are. Saying that you are yourself isn't an excuse for you to go off and be lazy saying that's who you are, it's a tool for looking at yourself. 'I am who I am, but do I like who I am?' That is the question you must ask. And if you find something you don't like, you change it, and it becomes you. You are still you, but you are better than you used to be. Do you understand?"
"I... I think I do," I said, sniffing. "I'll have to think hard on that."
"Good," Angus replied. "Now I have another question. No don't give me that look, it's nothing as important as Solus' question. And it's a simple question at that."
"Okay," I said, preparing myself for the question.
"What is a faerie's weakness?" Angus asked. I smiled, knowing the answer.
"Iron," I said. "Faerie magic does not work against iron, and touching it burns us."
"Yes," Angus replied, a small grin forming on his mischievious face. "And the next question is, what is your strongest magic point?"
Everyone is good at something, even in magic. Some are able to direct the flow of magic through dance, like Melvin's sister Eileen. Sylvia, my sister, channelled her powers through runes and symbols. Aingeal, Melvin's older sister, was able to see into the past, present and future, and Melvin himself was great at extracting the subtle powers of herbs to make potions and brews.
"I can draw the physical attributes of an object to my usage," I said. I could draw on the power of a feather to float or control the winds, or draw on the power of a specific feather, hawk for example, and give myself great eyesight. Melvin and I had tried experiments where I drew the essence of fire from chillies, and he captured those essences and bottled them, making a great, fiery, grenade-like potion.
"Now if a faerie's greatest weakness is iron, what magic can we use from a natural object that turns our greatest weakness into our greatest advantage?" Angus asked, the grin dancing on his lips.
"Something that will hurt iron, which can't normally touch," I replied, slightly confused. "But what has that sort of ability?"
Angus smiled and placed a large blackish rock the size of a baseball into my hands. "With this, you will be able to touch iron and draw its essence, but that is not this stone's most useful function, nor is it the only one. But it will be useful for your fight tomorrow afternoon. You can explore its other qualities after that, but for now you must know some of its powers. This stone is a magnetite, more commonly known as a lodestone."
My eyes widened as I looked over the stone again. It had been touched by faerie magic, and was smooth and solid. I had not seen any other lodestones before, so I did not know if they normally looked like this. But I understood its function well enough.
"I can use it to draw metal weapons from the hands of my enemies," I said, turning the stone over, examining it carefully. I felt the ring on my finger in my right hand being drawn to the lodestone. Then a thought struck me. I could draw on my ring to call the lodestone back to me. I shared this thought with Angus who smiled.
"What would happen, I wonder," he mused, "if you were to draw on the power of the lodestone to attract something, and then release it?"
The image of this baseball-sized rock smashing into a robot with more force than a bullet. Then using my ring to summon the stone back. I looked up at Angus, but he was gone. I smiled as I looked at this stone, a pretty stone with magnetic qualities in anyone else's hands, a deadly weapon in mine. But then for me, even an onion could be deadly if I wanted it to be.
I snapped out of my thoughts when I realised someone was knocking on the door. I walked over and opened it, looking a concerned Melvin in the eyes.
"Are you oka...?"
"I got the answer," I smiled, cutting him off. I raised the lodestone for him to see. "And I got this." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To be continued... comments, questions? Email dylan@celticwarrior.com