Natalie rushed around like a headless chicken clearing the party wreckage and (needlessly) making sure her children were organized for this afternoon's graduation ceremony. The offspring had aged up gracefully a few days ago, and a wild party full of guests had raged all night long last night, while Elba didn't have a standing teen curfew law, many of the party goers went home long after their parent imposed curfews. A Jettstar birthday / end of school party was not a thing to skip out on early!
Natalie had a slow, trickling vision of her cleaning and fussing being interrupted by a group of Black Fae. It felt as if someone was tampering with it, or trying to mask their presence. A lesser seer would not have seen them coming, but Natalie had become one of the most powerful psychics to have ever existed. 'I wonder why the four Horsechicks of the Simpocalypse are dropping by?', Natalie asked herself, immediately recognizing Carnegia, Dahlia, Poppy, and Zinnia, from their previous visits. Natalie more than sensed that the riders were here to visit her, not Lil or Angel.
Natalie cleaned out a stash of empty alchopop bottles from behind the stereo near the spa, dropped them in the recycling bin near the garden, and strolled across the back lawn toward the adjoining park just as the Black Fae rode around the corner. Natalie made sure to get the first words in, suggesting that Carnegia forgo any flowery speech, and get to the chase, as she other things to do.
Carnegia explained that King Jasper's efforts to get Lil to return to the palace as an advisor had failed, and finally it was revealed as to why the King was so desperate to have Lil return. The enemy had managed to infiltrate agents into the kingdom, whose aim had been to slowly incite rebellion, and eventually revolution.
"The popular choices for the King's replacement among the activists are Lilliana, or her cousin Adeline, who is rather unstable, although she hides it well.", Carnegia explained, "Pureblood Fae have very long memories, and they all have fond memories of Lilliana, if she were to accept King Jasper's offer, and show a strong united front, much damage could be avoided."
Poppy removed a leather wrapped parcel from one of her many pouches and presented it to Natalie. "It has come to the attention of the Kings 'Circle of Seers', that the power of your gift now exceeds theirs combined, and they have asked me to request a reading from 'The Mistress Of Mysticism', in the hopes that you can divine an alternate future for the Kingdom, that doesn't include it's destruction by the Vampire Counts."
It took a few moments for Natalie to see the ring without being blinded by it, Nat drew in a deep breath, closed her eyes and scanned its myriad possible futures. In her minds eye, Natalie saw day turn to night, night to day, in an ever repeating cycle than accelerated in speed. Around her trees withered, and were replaced, buildings crumbled into dust, mountains eroded from mighty peaks to sand hills, and after a thousand years of viewing the possible outcomes, more possibilities still flooded Natalie's mind.
Natalie mind bombarded the ring with 'What If's', and 'What Else's' until the end of eternity until she was finally satisfied that she had seen some paths with the required outcome.
Natalie 'crosschecked' her mental list of possible outcomes with Lil, searching for a path that Lil would accept as her fate. Eventually Nat came up up with a possibility that met all of the criteria. It would prevent a civil war within the Fae Kingdom, it would eliminate the Vampire Count's threat, and Lil, Angel, Genevieve, Eric, the children and herself,would lead long and happy lives. No future was set in stone, Fate, Destiny, and the future had always been flexible things, subject to a balance of chaos and order, and had always been subject to manipulation.
Natalie decided honesty was the best policy with Lil, and divulged some of her new found knowledge.
"I am not overly happy with my brother trying to bribe me with Dragons to return to the Kingdom", complained Lil, who although accepting that she must return to the Palace for the good of the universe, still wasn't enthusiastic about it. "Not know Lil, but eventually you will settle in, the hardest part will be convincing Jasper to allow Angel and Genevieve to accompany you."
Angel was completely unimpressed with the concept of returning to Fae Lands and had initially refused to go. After her extended exile with the Jettstars, whom she considered family, she had ideas of vanishing to France with Genevieve rather than return to the Palace. "You promised, on your immortal soul, that you would accept the Fae King's exile conditions, just as you promised on your immortal soul that we would spend the rest of our lives together!", Genevieve stated sharply, "If you break even one immortal promise, what value does that give the others?"
"Besides that, I have only ever seen the Palace architecture in text books, I would love to see it for reals!", Genevieve gushed, slowly chipping away at Angel's resistance.
Natalie decided to wait until after the Graduation Ceremony to tell her children that there was no future in Elba for this branch of the Jettstar family, although her two brothers would carry the family legacy in Elba for many generations to come.
Natalie scrounged around her cupboard looking for her old Violin, she played her favorite tune to cheer herself up. Her visions had given her all of the answers she needed to guide her families fate to a positive one, except how to conceal the truth from her children. She lay the violin gently on her bed, and rounded everyone up for a family meeting.
Natalie carefully thought about the information she was going to impart to her children, while they were vaguely aware of Lil's royal ties, and the war between the Vampire's and Fae Kingdoms from the media, they were unaware of how exactly, Lil, Genevieve,Angel, and to some extent Nat were tied in to it.
She elucidated that Lilliana, Angel, and Genevieve would be moving to the Fae Kingdom to be royal advisors for the King. She explained that, despite Eric being a fully qualified astronaut, staying in Elba would delay his first true flight by over a decade, and that they needed to move to Bridgeport.
This meant that the house would be empty while they were at university, so it would be put up for sale.
Lil and Natalie had decided that the scrapyard and junkyard would be signed over to Dom and Dylan, and their families. The remaining business interests in Elba would be sold and the proceeds would more that cover the kids tuition, even if they all decided to do multiple degrees.
The difficult part was explaining to her children, who where no longer children, that they would need to find their own places to live after university, although she did explain, that that to would be cared for by the Jettstar Estate. She made a mental note to contact Sim, Sim, Sim, Wolfman and Worthington Financial Consultants to make arrangements.
Nat decided to wind down the family meeting by asking her offspring what they intended to study at university. Nat already knew from her many visions, but didn't want to end the conversation feeling like she was abandoning her children.
Ceci announced that she was going to study science and medicine and become a medical specialist. She proclaimed "I am going to discover and invent many things and save the world one sim at a time.", she said with a serious face. "Maybe she will discover a sense of a humor and surgically implant it in herself.", Nathan whispered to Nick.
Chris stated that he intended to do a business degree, and would like some day to be a CEO of a chain of companies that were beneficial to Simkind. This drew approving nods from his siblings.
"Definately performing arts for me!", Jen gushed, "Maybe not as famous as Granma V, but I want to sing on a grand stage and travel the world!", she curtseyed to her siblings who had all agreed that her choice suited her.
Nathan told his siblings "I am probably going to join the military, or maybe the police force, because I know what you all did last summer!, he joked. "Mostly likely the police force though, so I can help people and beat up bad guys.", he added a little more seriously.
"I'm, uh, thinking about opening a music shop after uni, maybe making hand crafted instruments as well?", Nick more asked than told his family. "Yeah, except you are a shypuss that you would dive under the counter everytime a new customer came in", Nathan called out playfully to his brother. "Yeah, there is that though!", Nick grinned.
"I am going to be a gardener, or a farmer, or maybe a chef, I haven't decided, in any case I am going to eat so much foods that eventually I explode and flatten a dozen city blocks.", Lilly-Rose quipped. Although she had an affinity for gardening, and farming also had an appeal, Lilly-Rose knew she had a talent for cooking, and was contemplating the idea of being a chef in her own restaurant, serving food that she had grown and cooked, but business management, yuck!
Sophia pointed out that when she was a world famous photographer, she would only rarely be able to take time out from her busy schedule of doing photo shoots and drinking 'tropic twisters' on the beach to come visit them all in their dreary work lives. So they had all better soak up as much of her pleasurable company at uni while they still could.
Johnathan, who was the last to speak up, was in a hurry to finish up the family meeting as he was expecting his girlfriend over any moment now. "Yeah, I'm not going with you guys, I'm going to study food at Simtech I.T."
"What?" Sophia gasped, "You are going to S.I.T on the other side of Simnation, just because plain jane superbrain is pre-accepted?". "Yeah, and don't call her that Fish-Face, or I will squirt you with undiluted bubble bath liquid!", John growled. Sophia had once tried pouring bubble bath liquid into her bath as a child, and the fluid had caused a nasty luminescent fungus on her scales that had lasted a week.
Lilly-Rose quickly intervened and stepped between her siblings, "She wont be so 'Plain Jane' when she arrives later, my girlfriend Nadia took her out for makeover after the ceremony today!,"Lilly-Rose beamed.
Johnathan pictured his 'Nerd girl' in his head, he knew his sisters and her girlfriends idea of 'fashion' and was more than a little worried that they would dress her up like a goth zombie doll.
Natalie officially closed the family meeting, relieved that they had taken the news so well, and that her children for the most part knew what they wanted to do with their lives. Although Nathan was eventually going to be a secret agent, not a policeman, and Nick wasn't going to open a shop, instead he was going to be a one man band, working from a home studio with Janet, and providing recorded music to several different sources, including the radio, film and gaming industries. Johnathan's future on the other hand, wavered a lot, it seemed to be mostly a happy future, regardless of the path, but was much more flexible than her other children's.
There was a quiet knock at the door, and John rushed to answer it, hoping to find Nerd Girl standing there.
Instead of his old fashioned Nerd-Girl standing in the doorway, there was a smoking hot modern version of his girlfriend, wearing her glasses, but with shorter, more colorful hair, make up, and in a cute black and flame outfit. She filled his vision, and the rest of the world faded to gray.
The gears in his mind slowly rotated and put two and two together. '10! Definately. Undeniably. Absolutely a 10!' his male hormones encouraged his brain to announce.
"The dress is a bit short for my liking, but it was one of the only things that Nadia showed me that didn't leave my boobs on display, and it matches the color I chose for my hair, do you like it?", Tamara asked nervously. Johnathan began mentally creating a list of synonyms for 'Gorgeous'.
Authors Note:
The lag in my game, mostly caused by min spec laptop and my own body weight in CC meant that when the eight kids aged up, I spent around 15 or 16 hours redressing them in character appropriate clothes, and that was just 1 lot of 'everyday clothes'. I haven't even looked at what the game gave them for swimwear, formal wear, etc. Also, Natalie aged up on the same day, so that's 9 birthdays in one day without a glitch, my spidey senses are still tingling...
I waited until the next game day to age up Tamara, as I decided not to push my luck. The game gave her a horrible haircut, and rather than track down her original style, I decide Tamara needed to drop her classic geek look and find something that matched John's style, which I attribute to her insecurity. While Johnathan doesn't have Nicks irresistible trait, he received just as much girl attention during his teen stage. Nerd Girl is aware of this. Not only was John more popular in school than the story explains, he was also also voted most popular at the graduation, and most popular by far, by my readers!
If there is any relationship or lore questions that need clearing up, or anything else you need to know before Johnathan is officially handed the Jettstar baton, please comment :) I think some of my comments may appear a little rough and obnoxious at times, but honestly, I'm friendly,
