The girl smiled, and said "Ceramic trees are small enough to set up, out of the way.  Fir trees are not native here, so we get the ceramic kind.  They also cannot set your olive orchards or sheep pasturages on fire."

Iris nodded to herself. The bit about fir trees not being native seemed as good a reason as any, although the tree they had in the Facility had been the plastic variety. Iris wasn't so sure about the second reason, but didn't push it. "Do you do this every Christmas? Get together and party? That sounds like fun. And for all the other holidays? I don't think I've ever seen a holiday celebration this big, and that's including Dr. Vernon's retirement party, which was considered a blow-out. Not of the tire kind, mind you."

  She giggled, and said "We get together for Christmas, and for Easter.  Not all of the American holidays are celebrated here.  And we have our own festivals too.  When we have holidays, we all come to Grandma and Grandpa's house here to celebrate as a family."

"Hmm." Iris agreed, sipping eggnog, "We used to celebrate... well, alot really. Because the Facility was an equal opportunity location and a lot of people stayed there a lot of the time. So we celebrated birthdays, retirements, and holidays from half a dozen countries. Not always big celebrations, mind. Sometimes, it was just something weird left in the break room to snack on." Iris tilted her head to one side, "I am curious about something; how come more people aren't like Meg here? I mean, you've got a huge bunch of people; it seems odd genetically that only one would end up like Meg."

Chuck, meanwhile, had resorted to charades with the boys. He left his eggnog on the table and was trying to ask what it was painted in a painting on the walls using only hand-signals. It was becoming apparent that Chuck was not particularly good at charades.

  One of the girls summed it up in a single, somehow sad sentence.  "Meg's the family weird.  Every family has one, we're just lucky hers is a nice weird.  She's a loveable person, but most of us younger ones are glad she's usually not here for the Holidays.  She sort of spoils a lot of the fun for some things."

  Another one said "It's because she's got a foreign woman for a mom.  If Demetrious had married a good Greek Woman like Grandma had wanted, she'd have been normal."

Iris nodded slowly. The family weird. She supposed she knew what that meant, having lived in many 'families' that would be considered all-weird, "Well, I like her. She's teaching me to cook." Iris told them, grinning, "And I don't think she's so weird. An anomoly, certainly, but not weird I think it'd be nifty to have a Meg in the family because then you can get a really, really, really big Christmas tree... And you don't have to worry about ladders or any of that sort of stuff."

  Meg came up behind Iris, and said quietly "I'm the 'clan weird', as they've probably told you.  But I'm very good at getting the olives off of the highest branches, and I can get up any peak to rescue stuck sheep."

  Her cousin snorted, and said "Yes you are, Megaira.  Not to mention being named after one of the Furies!  What was your Dad thinking?"

  "Probably had a little inspiration from Zeus, Ligietta.  After all, magnetics are close to the provice of Zeus.  And that IS Dad's middle name."

Iris nodded, "Sheep on mountains, see? Same as an angel on a tree. A very, very big tree. Potentially a 2,917 meter tall tree, since we're in Greece. That's not as impressive as North America's 6,194 meter tall tree - er, mountain that is... Mount McKinley in Alaska, but it's pretty impressive." Iris backed Meg up, grinning, then explained, "I haven't met many people who wouldn't be considered their family 'weird.' I'm serious; there's a whole slew of them out there. Think about it. The average person meets two people a day. That means 60 a month. If you're as old as I am, you should have met 8,640 people, total. Of that total, I'd estimate that maybe 1,000 weren't their 'family weird'." As she began talking math, it was becoming obvious where Iris had learned Greek from; she was speaking a dialect that the great Greek mathematicians had written in... It really was a very old dialect.

Chuck, meanwhile, had given up on his charade-questions and had wandered over to whereever there was food sitting out. He began sampling things. Having given up on being understood, he kept up a running commentary in English to anyone nearby.

  One of the boys approached Chuck, and asked him in slow English "We are going down to the beach.  Do do night swim.  Look for mussels.  Come with us?"

  Ligietta shook her head, and said "Megaira is very unusual.  She looks just like her mother, and she is an only child!  She should be one of a dozen children by now!"

Iris glanced at Meg. Being an only child wasn't unusual and looking like ones parents wasn't unusual. Where did these people get off? "Here, perhaps. But in America and many other countries, both of these occurances are hardly rare. In fact, I would go as far as to say that looking like ones parents is genetically highly probable." She told them gently, "As for me, I couldn't say. The bits about my family in my research file were supressed. I don't even know who my parents were. Except that they turned me over when I was five years old."
This message was last edited by the player at 00:08, Sat 13 Nov 2010.

  Meg looked unfazed by this.  "I have no control over either of those things, Ligietta.  Dad says he couldn't have handled a dozen kids like me.  And Mom says, odds are, more kids would have been just like me, or similar.  My 'genetic mutations' are primarily dominant.  Plus, Mom and Dad do a lot of traveling, so a horde of kids would not be much help."

"Sure," Chuck told the boy, "It's warm enough to swim here, right? 'Cause where I just came from, we had snow."

  They grinned, and their spokesman said "A little cold, only sixty degrees farenheit?"

Roughly three minutes after their mindworm conversation, the Mages Gysbourne appeared in front of the Kattakara clan home. Mr. Gysbourne knocked on the door, while Ozzy was holding his arm, a bit of paint-armor still wrapped tightly around the wound to stop the bleeding, plus the bandage around his head from last night's encounter.

  Meg answered the door, and waved them in.  "Come on in, you'll get fed.  Grandma and Grandpa do not let guests go hungry."  She took a gentle hold of Ozzy's elbow, healing him as she did, and grinned at his Grandpa as she added "If you need Greek translations, let me know.  Iris and Chuck wanted to see what a christmas get together was like.  So I brought them here."

"Oh! Thank you for your invitation, Megaira. We would not want to intrude, but if you are sure, then we would not want to be rude and refuse. I will have to admit, however, that my Greek is a bit rusty." replied Oswald the Elder as he bowed slightly and entered the house.

"Still, I feel so ashamed coming here empty-handed. I should have conjured up something before coming, at the least. Oh, and Megaira, if you would be so kind, please call me before taking my daughter outside the country? I trust you, so I am not angry, but it would be nice to not have to scry my daughter to find out why she is not coming home when she is supposed to."

Ozzy, meanwhile, clearly felt better as the re-growing flesh forced the bullet out, the smashed-up metal falling into his hand.

"Thanks, Megs. I owe ya. Sorry to interrupt, I just was kinda worried about going back to the hospital again, you know? Heh, I hope I don't look too shabby. Even if the armor stopped most of the bullets, I've still got a few bullet-holes in my clothes," he said with a smile.

  Meg nodded, and said quietly to Oswald "She was upset when things sort of broke up at the HQ, and looked ready to cry.  Besides, I don't have your phone number.  Some of my cousins want to take Chuck mussel hunting, I'll escort them, do you want to come too?"   She paused, then answered something in fluent Greek that her grandfather asked, and asked Oswald "You're invited to eat anything you like, Grandma is spreading the word to please use as much English as possible.  I'm afraid I usually switch between Greek, English, and Chinese as fluidly as it gets.  Iris is discussing probabilities with my cousin Ligietta, who has mentioned many times I should have a dozen siblings, and that it is just wrong that I look almost identical to my mother.  I'm going to catch hell from Dad for visiting without bringing him along!"

Chuck nodded, "Okay, that sounds fun! I like to go swimming, but I'm not very good." He put his food and drink aside carefully so as not to spill them and followed the boys.

Iris was nearby and had obtained a large plate of food, which she was munching through while she attempted to explain genetics in a dazling mixture of modern and ancient Greek, "You see, all children look at least a little like both parents, but it is not unheard of for a child to look almost exactly like a parent - especially if the parent has mostly dominant traits. Those are the ones that win, you see. Eye color is the easiest to explain because brown is dominant. So if your dad and Mom both have brown eyes, statistically speaking you will have brown eyes. If both parents have a recessive - that is a hidden - gene for blue eyes, then there is a 25% chance of having blue eyes. But the chance of your parents having that hidden gene are... well, probably about 50-50. At any rate, while you get the genes of both parents, you don't always display half of each. Do you see? And why isn't anybody dancing?"

"You may not, but Iris and Chuck do. No matter, what's done is done. Thank you for being so kind to my family, Megaira. Your mother has certainly done a good job of raising you." said Oswald, smiling.


Ozzy nodded, and replied, "Awesome. I'm starved. I should tell you about what happened later. One of the girls at school had gone missing a bit before vacation started, and it turned out that her parents went to Masks, Inc. to try and find her."

He then looked back at his Grandfather, before turning to Meg with a sly smile on his face.

"Hey, Megs, you want us to go get him? That's what we can bring, your Dad."

  Meg grinned, and said "That would be awesome.  My Dad sort of travels a lot, so he's hard to catch.  I could get Mom here in short order.  If you can catch Dad for me, that would be wonderful."  She waved a hand at all the food on the table, and told Ozzy "Help youself.  You're a guest.  If you leave hungry, Grandma might kick your butt.  It would reflect poorly on her hospitality."

"Of course. Give me a moment, and I will bring him here."

With that, Oswald once again looked into the onyx sphere on top of his cane, looking to find Meg's father. Once he was found, Oswald would 'port to him as soon as there was an opportune time for such an occurance. He did not want to horribly disrupt the man's life, after all.

Ozzy, meanwhile, took Meg's invitation and joined the party. He was definitely hungry, and not shy about trying new things either. He made sure to thank his hosts as best he could, hoping that the language barrier was not too great.

"Thanks, Megs. It looks great. Man, your family is huge. I guess there's a lot of them over here, right? Last time we had a get-together anywhere near this big that I remember, it was when Michaela was three. We all flew over to England for Christmas, to see Mom's extended family."

  Meg chuckled, and said "This is my Dad's side.  Mom's, umm, well, they're all long dead. But yes, Dad's family is a proliferous pack of people, and they think I need a dozen siblings."

  Oswald found her father in Egypt, inspecting things in the bazaars for purchasing.  He DID deal in antiques!  He was inspecting a Greek statue of some sort, and somehow seemed to know.  He spoke to the dealer, and bought it cheaply, then had it loaded into a small donkey cart.

  The food was varied and very plentiful.  It was also very flavorful.

Oswald found a subtle place to appear, not wanting to cause a stir in a crowded bazaar. He put up an Someone Else's Problem field around himself, and then found his way to Mr. Kattakara's side, smiling as he said, "Mr. Kattakara, I presume? Your daughter has asked that I find you and bring you to her. She said you would be angry with her if she went to your family's Christmas gathering without you. As she provided her services to my grandson, so shall I provide mine for her. When you are ready, we shall depart."

Fortunately, as Mr. Gysbourne had acted directly towards Mr. Kattakara, the effect of the S.E.P. field would be broken for him.

Ozzy, meanwhile, was clearly enjoying himself. Now that he had a plate, he was mingling with Megaira's relatives as best he could, trying to avoid the language barrier as much as possible.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:46, Sat 13 Nov 2010.