Shy held her breath, eyes fixed on the pipette and the half-full test tube it hovered above. If she added too little from the dropper, she wouldn't get the reaction she wanted and the mixture would be ruined. Too much, and the reaction would bubble over, creating an unstable compound that would likely explode, and the mixture would be ruined. If she added the right amount too quickly, the reaction would occur too quickly and use up the mixture, rendering what little remained useless. And if she added it too slowly, the reaction would fizzle out too soon, and not enough of the mixture would be changed.

It was, to say the least, an extremely delicate procedure. And all she had was her own steady hand, her own calm nerves, and her own disgustingly primitive equipment. If she was lucky, at their next stop off at Star City-- Gaaylaa's contrary dragon had a cyborware token he wished to redeem, now that he'd grown up enough to use it-- she could convince her guardian, or her guardian's superior, to pay for something a little better. At least mechanical arms in a clean box to handle dangerous compounds, for one thing, or a cyberbot to handle the delicate procedures for her. Or, if she was extremely lucky, an android to handle the delicate procedures and dangerous compounds for her. Or even the parts to make one, herself. Her so-called father made things all the time, after all; she simply lacked the parts and equipment. It would certainly be fun to experiment....

At least, in the newly outfitted ship she shared with the sythyn, Shy had peace and quiet, without any distractions, to get her work done in. After all, her hands were steady, and her nerves were naturally calm.

She carefully squeezed the bladder at the end of the pipette, just enough for one drop--

--BANG!--

--the entire contents of the dropper splashed into the test tube with a tiny splash, and Shy instantly dropped both onto the counter, shielding her face with her tiny hands, in their enormous sleeves, just in time for another BANG signaling its explosion. There wasn't even time for the glass cylinder to shatter on the counter-top, and bits of glass and scalding chemicals flew every which way. Black smoke filled the laboratory, and Shy fled, coughing, as the alarms she'd insisted on installing went off and the reaction-nullifying chemical rain started to fall to cleanse the workspace. The doors slid shut behind her, and she grimaced at her shredded and smoking sleeves, picking bits of glass out of the fabric angrily.

Who had interrupted her?! At the crucial moment, someone had hit something-- or broken something, or popped something-- and made a loud noise, startling her. Who could possibly have--

The sound of fleeing footsteps, small and shod in wooden sandals, and the ghostly echo of a high, thin laugh told her aaaaaall she needed to know.

"Shy, you bastard!" she howled down the hall, after the other Shy-created minion she was forced to share ship-space with, but he was gone.

He got away now, but the next time she saw him, she was so going to claw out his moustache for ruining her experiment and wasting her day!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shy-- the other Shy aboard the sythyn ship-- gave his counterpart a day to cool off after causing her such grief. Sending that sound through the airwaves just in time to startle her had been the highlight of his week, since the lovely Ymyasorva was avoiding him with an unusual amount of luck the past few days. The Lady Shy was very entertaining to bother, anyway: she got so spectacularly angry, and created the most fantastic explosions with her potions and chemicals, particularly when it was on accident.

Still, the Lady Shy, his counterpart and fellow minion of their "father", the original Shy, could hold onto her anger like a terrier to a rat-- and act on it like a furious cat-- so he wanted to give her plenty of time to let that anger cool before he showed his face around her again. He didn't want to get his eyes scratched out, or his moustache yanked out, or his clothing torn.

However, he did have a proposition for her, which, if he posed it just right, he thought she might actually go for. He would, of course, have to pose it quite carefully, and she would have to be in a halfway receptive mood. Or, he thought, an idea forming, a mood to accept an apology. That might work even better.

The Elder Shy was quite a bit different from Lady Shy, in more than just apparent age. Though both created by the same "father", with genetics derived from him, they were still like opposites. Lady Shy was quiet and withdrawn when in a good mood, and snappish and irritable when in a bad one; she was introverted, serious, and proud, with a decidedly scientific bent and a quietly rebellious nature. Elder Shy, on the other hand, was a trickster and he knew it, just like Coyote out of myth: in a good mood, he bestowed enigmatic smiles and playful pranks; in a bad mood, he was chaos incarnate, and no one escaped his chibi wrath, particularly not those he was angry at. Thankfully, those bad moods were rare, and he didn't like alienating people he actually liked. Those weren't particularly common, either, however, and he gleefully bothered everyone equally. He was still loyal-- after a fashion-- to their creator, and would answer the geneticist Shy whenever he called in, but Lady Shy refused to even speak with him. She wanted to be her own person, not just an extension of her creator, or so she said. Elder Shy just thought she was being contrary.

The biggest difference, though, was in her love of science, and his fascination with magic. He found science boring-- except when it exploded, of course, but he could make the same kinds of explosions with magic, which was far easier and took less time-- and she loved it. It was all she seemed to do. He, however, loved magic-- and used it, whenever possible-- and if she had any magic to use at all, she suppressed it, looking at it as "cheating" and refusing to dirty herself with it.

But in this case, for Shy's current idea, their differences were a good thing. In fact, without those differences between them, there would be no idea, at all.

"Good evening, Shy," the elder chibi said smoothly, sitting himself down next to her in the small dining room the humanoid members of the ship shared. The dragons had their own room, being quite a bit bigger and preferring much less... cooked food. Currently, it was just the two of them, for Ymyasorva refused to be anywhere Shy was at any given point of time and the happy couple were probably making after-dinner sport in their rooms, if the utterly prim and disgusted mood Gaaylaa's bond was in meant what he thought it meant.

"Bastard," the young lady snapped at him, but it was half-hearted. "I told you never to come near my laboratory when I'm working."

"I know, I'm sorry," he said contritely. She looked at him sharply, obviously not expecting an apology. He continued with a patently sheepish smile, "I've treated you horribly, my dear, I know that. I'll try to do better in the future."

Shy eyed him a moment longer, but then went back to her dinner, unsure what to say in return to such an unexpected thing. Probably waiting for the punchline.

The punchline wouldn't come for a while yet! "I'd like to make it up to you!" he persisted.

"No, that's all right, I don't need you to make anything up to me. Really."

"Not make things up to you, by diluting all your chemicals with water, this time," he clarified. "I mean that seriously."

"You don't mean anything seriously," Shy grumbled, but her "elder" waited, idly making sparkles dance over his twiddling thumbs, until she asked, "All right, what do you mean to do?"

"I'm going to take you to a lovely place on Star City and find you a kindred spirit," he answered immediately, smiling beneath his long moustache. "Someone who loves the things you do, as much as you do."

"What's in it for you?"

"Why, Lady Shy, what do you take me for?" he demanded in mock affront.

"You can't fool me, mister," she retorted, and the Elder Shy hung his head.

"This clutch-- for that is what it is, a dragon clutch-- only bonds in pairs."

"And you want to bond one, so you need someone else to come with you, is that it?" the young lady snorted indelicately. "Well, I'll come along, I suppose. I have nothing better to do... and it might be nice to have a lab partner."

Elder Shy smiled. "Then I wish luck to both of us!" He hopped up, taking his dinner with, and traipsed off, leaving her shaking her head behind him.

Chapter Two

The Abstract Destiny

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