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Gosh I hate it when Mum leaves me in charge. I swear, the moment she leaves, something explodes. I'm not kidding. This time it was only the toaster, thank goodness. You should've seen the smoke.

"I'm leaving. Make sure no one tears down the house," Mum called as she opened the door. I just nodded absently, though I knew she wasn't joking. Not with our family. No sooner had Mum stepped out the door and into a portal did a huge explosion rock the house, knocking me off the arm of the chair.

"The heck?!" I scrambled to my feet, scowling. Just once, I'd like to get through the day without any major disasters. Hasn't happened yet. Someone somewhere started wailing. Suki, Ren's three-year-old sister, probably.

I stalked off towards the kitchen door, tucked underneath one of the huge staircases. "Spring! Off the ceiling!" I shouted as I passed underneath her. With a sigh, Spring twisted and dropped down from the two-story ceiling, landing on her feet. Show off. Of course, you can't just deal with one thing in this house. Oh no, you'd be lucky if you only had to deal with three of four things. "Firin! Leave Chami alone!" Firin had poor Chamomile cornered, teasing her with a fireball. He didn't listen, of course. He hardly ever does. Just as I was about to force him to leave her alone, he and his fireball got doused by a wave of water. Scowling, dripping, he turned to face Brooke.

"Don't do that," He growled. I wasn't worried, he couldn't very well win a fight against Brooke, for all that he was nearly twice her size and wiry-muscled. Fire can't beat water, you know. Luckily, Aria stepped in before it got ugly, setting a calming hand on Firin's arm. He glanced at her, then at Brooke, and back at Aria. Finally, he just stalked off. He's such a poor loser.

Ducking around Saliel- who was precariously balanced on one hand on her boyfriend Carel's shoulder- I grabbed Flower from the air before Myst, who was eyeing her hungrily, could get to her. I handed her to Destry and Lia, who were trying to get away from Myst before their allergies combined with their magic caused anything disastrous. Goodness I love those girls, they're some of the few who are hardly ever causing trouble.

I caught Sorano's shoulder. "Where do you think you're going?" I asked.

"Um.... elsewhere?" She guessed, clutching a bundle that could only contain trouble to her chest.

I sighed. "Don't make a mess," I ordered, shooing her away. Takara was probably in for a not-so-pleasant wake-up call, but I'd deal with that later. I was almost to the kitchen door to find out what had happened when I spotted one last piece of trouble. "Lynn! That's not how you hold a baby!" I swooped in to rescue poor little Mingmei, who Lynn had been about to drop on the floor.

"But I wanna play with her!" Lynn pouted, crossing her arms over her chest.

"You can play with her on the living room rug, with Carrie or Meg or Tacita or someone watching you," I informed her, catching one of the afore-mentioned girls as she tried to escape and plopped Mingmei into her arms. "Carrie, take Lynn and Ming to the living room and keep an eye on them," I ordered. This wasn't taken well.

"I don't want 'em!" Carrie protested, trying to hand her baby sister back to me. "I've got to be somewhere!"

"Where?" I wanted to know. She didn't have an answer for that, so I knew exactly where she was going: To see her secret not-boyfriend Jusit. Jusit was a thief, and Carrie's mom and dad didn't approve of thieves. Officially, Carrie and Jusit didn't even know each other. Unofficially, a select few people knew how close they were. Of course, to avoid getting murdered by Jusit, those select few didn't tell anyone. "Well, if you don't have anywhere to go, then you can go play with Lynn and Ming!" I told her with false excitement, shooing her towards the living room.

With a sigh, unwilling to openly admit to her relationship with a criminal, Carrie hefted Ming onto one hip, and lead Lynn to the living room.

Shaking my head, I pushed open the door to the kitchen, only be greeted by a blast of hot air and smoke.

"Gadget you moron!" I could hear Ren screech. "What the hell did you do?!"

"I didn't do anything!" A male voice- Gadget- shouted back. "It was going fine and then you did- you did- something to it!"

Coughing, I waved my hand in front of my face, trying to clear the smoke enough to see. It didn't help.

"Me?!" Ren gasped, indignant. "I didn't do anything! You made it explode!"

I groped around on the wall until I found a switch and flicked it, turning on the fan. It whirred to life, helping to clear out the smoke. I squinted through the smoke, trying to see Ren and Gadget. They were standing nearly nose-to-nose, both covered in ash and bearing a few scorch marks on their clothes. Of course, Gadget's quite tall, and Ren is not, so for her to stand nose-to-nose to him, she had to stand on tip-toe. It was kinda funny to see.

"I did not!" Gadget yelled in her face.

"Well it certainly wasn't me!" Ren countered. Both their faces were contorted into glares, and their hands were balled into fists at their sides.

I sighed. Of course. It just can't explode. No no no, they have to get into a fight about who made it explode.

Pretty soon their argument had escalated to the point where they were just trying to shout over each other. I marched to them, grabbed the back of their heads, and smashed their foreheads together-my preferred form of attention-getting. Both went down with a groan and I surveyed the damage. The island table- where they must've been worked, was little more then a pile of ash, burnt wood, and twisted metal now. Lodged into one wall was the poor toaster, barely recognizable.

"What'd you do that for?" Ren groaned, rubbing her head.

I ignored her question. "I don't care which one of you made it explode, you're both going to clean up this mess, fix the wall, and find or make a new island." I informed them.

"I thought I was done taking orders when I left my parents' house," Gadget grumbled, rolling to his feet. That wasn't a good idea, as he still didn't quite have his balance back and ended up tripping over Ren's foot, landing sprawled out on the ground with a 'fwump'.

"Well, then this is a pleasant surprise, isn't it?" I chirped cheerfully. "Get to work, and neither of you are going anywhere until it's done!" This was greeted with more groans and mutterings. Smiling, I turned and left.