It was very possible to stick twenty-one candles on a single cupcake, Jelani found out. You just had to have a bit of patience, be very stubborn, and then be prepared to blow all the candles out very quickly once they had all been lit.

Twenty-one years old as of this day.

But it was just another number, wasn't it? Nexus didn't really have an age-limit about anything. Oh sure, she could legally drink if she went to the US on Earth, but it wasn't like her ID was a real one anyway.

But she still felt a bit... Yeah. She knew that if she just went home to her mothers house there would be food and cake and love. And if she went home to her own place, Wylie would be there, and Wylie did tend to mean a good time. But it was homely enough there these days, even though Jelani was starting to find that she didn't mind that. That scared her, and so she decided that she didn't want to add to it by trying to celebrate her birthday with him.

And so she was sitting at a bar, with her third fancy cocktail in front of her, picking the extinguished little candles from her cupcake one by one.

Jelani's home somehow managed to combine an urban, run-down atmosphere with a swanky and decadent style. Red brick walls, chrome, black iron, leather, large and comfortable furniture. And yes, there were rather large liquor cabinet right there in the living room.

Jelani shed her jacket as she stepped through the door, followed by the gun-holster she wore underneath it. Following that, her boots got kicked off into a corner.

"So again, just how th' frag did ya end up here?"

It wasn't at all uncommon for Jelani to get bored and restless. She'd gotten back to working as a bounty hunter again, and that was something that damned well should keep her busy and entertained. But... it just seemed like the same old life. Like nothing had changed, when in fact so much had changed these past couple of years.

And so she found herself wandering again. Roadtripping, just her and her Harley. Earth was a good place for that, and with the little holographic device strapped around her wrist - masquerading as a perfectly normal and quite dainty silver bracelet - she could easily pass as a normal human. Her ghostly pale skin had a healthy tan, the black markings around her eyes were hidden, and her normally red eyes were a deep, dark blue.

She'd started her roadtrip on the countryside in the south of the great ol' US of A, and then made her way north. Eventually she had ended up in New York. Peaceful nature sceneries were all well and good, but a girl like Jelani did sometimes need the noise and bustle of a big city. And what place on Earth was better for that than New York City?

As night fell, Jelani found herself in a bar. Not the nicest joint, but it didn't bother her. She'd been to far worse. And hey, the grub they served might be greasy as hell, but it wasn't half bad. And with her trusty fake ID, she had the bartender keeping the beers coming. Hell, it was only a few months until she was of legal drinking age for this country anyway, she refused to feel guilty about it. Not when she'd been hanging at bars and getting drunk at sixteen.

"Oh fer fuck's sake! Ya complete fraggin' imbecile! Read th' fraggin' deal, ya no-good, cross-eyed bastich!"

Moving was hell, Jelani concluded while standing out on the street by the building that was going to be her new home, screaming into her phone. "Ya can't just fraggin' leave th' fraggin couch out here on' the fraggin' street! Th' fraggin' deal said ya were fraggin' gonna carry it up ta th' fraggin' apartment!"

She could technically lift the couch herself. But it was a cumbersome thing, and she held no hope in being able to haul it all the way up to the fifth floor by herself without damaging it. And besides, a deal was a deal, and if she were paying for a service that service should damn well be given.

The sad thing was that she wasn't getting anywhere at all with the moron on the other end of the line. No matter how many threats she screamed at him - those were pretty creative threats, too! - he was neither going to send someone over, or pay her back any of what she had paid. Oh, that company was sure to get theirs some day. Most definitely! It was with thoughts of blowing a rather large store up - possibly with a nuke - that she eventually hung up and let out a scream of sheer frustration.

"Happy birthday ta me... Happy birthday ta me..." Having slept in this morning, it was already about noon when Jelani came back from her morning run. She was humming and singing quietly as she came up the path to her house. "Happy birthday dear 'Lani. Happy birthday ta me..."

She was still undecided on what to do with this day. A few ideas, nothing fancy. And one invitation. She decided to take a shower while trying to make up her mind.

With an actual invitation, it would be a shame to say no, wouldn't it? Even if she didn't know the woman in question. But... Kairos hadn't said what she invited Jelani for. Dinner? Lunch had been mentioned. A night on the town?

"Oh fer fuck's sake!" Jelani sneered at herself when she realized she had been standing buck naked in front of her wardrobe for over five minutes, dripping water on the hardwood floor wondering just what the hell she should wear. She snatched up the phone from the bed where she had previously tossed it, and dialed a number. "Hey, Kairos! What am I dressin' fer?"

All roads have to lead somewhere, and Jelani's had finally lead her home to familiar areas of the vast and probably infinite Nexus. She was calmer now than she had been in a long time, more at peace with herself.

She had taken a seat at a bar, but were for the moment sticking to coffee. If she was doing anything she was busy doing nothing. Just sitting there, listening to the people milling around asking their questions. She herself had no questions this day; she rarely had. She had no answers either, not at the moment. She had her coffee, and was content with that.

Time heals all wounds, they say. But wounds leaves scars.

Jelani was scarred. Not on the outside, oh no. There was not a single mark on her pale skin, nothing. But she was nevertheless scarred. It had gone from an open, raw, bleeding would to a scab, which she had insistently picked on for a long time. But eventually that scab had gotten smaller and smaller, with thin and tender skin taking its place. And in the end, that skin grew thicker and no longer hurt.

But she was not quite the same Jelani that she had been. More guarded now, and more grown up.

She had kept silent about the cause of it all. Whenever her parents had wanted to know, her father demanding and her mother more carefully trying to fish it out, she had kept the one responsible a secret. Even now, a year later, they still didn't know.

Jelani still stayed in her old home, in the separate house on her mother's lands. She hadn't done much at all, and even though she knew that her parents worried, they never demanded anything. They let her be. Gave her the time she needed.

A year.

She did not feel like her old self, but she was coming to terms with the woman she had become. There were still things she was figuring out, but at least she had become calm. She wasn't happy, but at least somewhat content. And moving on.


She had left Leela's lands for a short time this spring. A short vacation, she had informed her parents. Just her, her Harley and the road. Three days she had been gone by now, not really caring where she was going. The place where she had spent the previous night was empty of people, and the halfbreed had had to make her bed on the hard ground, but the sights of two suns rising up over the tips of a vast and not too faraway mountain range made up for it. Jelani was in no hurry to leave, and was thus drinking her morning coffee in front of a small fire, watching the light creep back over the rocky landscape around her.

Since Sweeney was hanging around some of the major hubs in the Nexus, that was of course the places to start looking. This was the reason for the meetingplace Jelani had instructed Luci to meet her at.

It was a sort of outdoors bar in the Nexus, one that was very recognizable due to its location: under an ridiculously oversized pine tree.

The halfbreed was perched by the bar, sans disguise this time. All ghostly pale skin, markings and red eyes. She also had quite the number of blades stached on her person, along with a length of piano wire for garotting purposes.

Waiting, waiting.

Jelani had been drawing and discarding plans just about straight through the night, trying to come up with the perfect idea of when and where. While she could come up with a lot of different hunting grounds, they all seemed a bit... dull.

Well, maybe she was going about this the wrong way. After all, she hadn't even tried to get in touch with any of her partners in crime yet.


She was in the kichen when she called Luci, having her phone pressed to her ear by her shoulder since her hands were busy chopping onions.

Ring ring, Luci, you evil bitch.