The Sister
"Caitlin, wait how are you, why are you?" Jacob asked after opening the door in shock.
Even his quick tongue had a little trouble figuring out what had happened.
How had his sister found his dorm room, had she called ahead and alerted the staff by accident, allowing them to arrange it?
Or did she just get lucky and find the place by asking people without encountering anything supernatural?
"How I am here is via plane, why is it to check up on my dumbass little brother and visit this old place." She answered as she let herself in, vaguely greeting Shin as she did so.
She had always been like this.
Moving at her own pace without regard for anyone else.
The problem was she had the skill, looks and general attitude to pull it off.
As she raided their small fridge for snacks Jacob activated overclock at 4x using it to converse with analysis and sort out his thoughts, about five real-world seconds later he said.
"So, you're a dreamer, why am I not surprised" he said, a little defeated.
He'd be lying if he said that he wasn't a little proud of the fact that he had supernatural powers while his prodigal sister had none.
Alas, that wasn't the case.
"Yep, have been for about a few years, remember when I left?" She answered after grabbing a can of cola. A favourite drink that the siblings shared.
"And you checking on me…?" Jacob trailed off, letting her know his question.
"Figured it'd keep Dad happy, plus now that you're a dreamer as well I thought I'd let you know." She answered.
"So this entire time you just decided to keep me in the dark" Jacob responded angrily.
"Well…" Caitlin responded but was cut off by Jacob.
"I mean I know we're not close but I thought you at least cared enough to tell me that there was a literal supernatural world underneath my nose the whole time" Jacob continued in annoyance.
Shin sat there, clearly feeling awkward at being caught in the family feud.
"Yeah, yeah stop with the guilt trip. I know you don't care about that crap" Caitlin responded.
"Oh yeah! why would I care? It's not li-" Jacob continued before being cut off.
"Fine! I'll shout dinner ok, just shut up already." Caitlin relented.
"Cheers, what's your clan by the way?" Jacob snapped out of his righteous indignation with the flip of a switch.
Shin looked at the siblings, baffled by what had taken place.
But for Jacob and Caitlin, this was normal.
Both were intelligent individuals and despite Caitlin's more outgoing and loud style, she was quite similar to Jacob when it came to holding grudges.
Meaning to say that she knew he wouldn't have minded the issue too much since he had done the same thing when prompted about telling his father.
Jacob on the other hand knew that his sister would understand that, and also knew that he had the moral high ground which he could leverage for a free dinner.
A standard compensation that they had used for each other on multiple occasions.
It was an old habit of theirs to treat pretty much every interaction as a negotiation.
Hell, it was probably the inspiration behind her cover Job.
But to an outsider, it just looked like two sociopaths conversing in another language despite using English words.
"Heh, you first if you want dinner" his sister eventually replied.
"I'm an outsider" he responded.
This made her usually casual face twitch a little, for what reason he didn't know. But it was back to its usual casual look almost instantly.
"Huh, go figure. Your ability then?" she asked.
"Nope, I answered already, you next. Then I'll tell you" Jacob responded.
"Alright, guess" she hit him right back.
"Dempster" he shot back.
"Correct, but Jin and Roozlen would have also been right" She answered smugly.
"Ohhhh, Christ you're a triple affinity dreamer too, how many of you are there?" Jacob said shaking his head.
"What do you mean how many?! We're like 1 in 10,000 dreamers!" She responded.
"Tell that to Arthur!" Jacob yelled.
"Who's Arthur?!" she asked ludicrously.
"Tripple affinity student, Vass, Azan and Jin" This time it was Shin who answered.
"Wow talk about luck… anyway what's your ability? Anything cool?" she asked him.
Shin was once again baffled by the lack of follow-up questions, or even curiosity. It was like both of them didn't quite know how to have a normal conversation and instead just exchanged dot points of their primary topics.
"My ability just stores and sorts data, pretty simple" Jacob told her.
If there was one thing, he had learnt by being the little brother of a prodigy it was that downplaying yourself was a good idea against the powerful.
If he turned out stronger than expected then there was a larger impact, and if was as bad as he promised then it wouldn't matter.
"Uh huh, sure and what is it really, without the downplaying." She called his bluff.
The problem with downplaying was that if you did it too many times, people started to expect it.
"Fine. It can also process information and provide answers to queries in real-time, happy?" he asked her back.
"More or less. The less because you're obviously still hiding something, the more because that's good news for the second half of why I'm here." She responded.
"You've probably already figured out that my job's a front to cover up why I travel so much. The long and short of it is that I work for The Agency, and I want to recruit you for data analysis." She continued.
"I refuse" Jacob answered her.
"Yeah, no shit, I meant after your course was finished. You'll need a job, and a data analyst is safe, I can make sure to cover you to a degree and most importantly I can guarantee you an in. That way you won't need to worry about the showcase tournament" She answered.
The showcase tournament was the final event of the course. It was a tournament that showcased a variety of talents for those who took the course.
Representatives from each of the clans and The Order attended to pick out talents and recruit them.
It was one of the most mainstream ways to enter a clan as most people in dreamer society came from a clan or had a parent within The Order.
It was also a way for those who awoke to the wrong mana affinity to appeal to their old clan and the clan of their new affinity.
That was why people like Victoria had entered since she was already a part of the dreamer society, she had simply awoken to the Jin clan realm rather than the Roozlen clan realm.
The tournament was an opportunity for people like her to hopefully appeal their usefulness and help ensure their future.
"Still refusing" he said, with approximately one second of thought.
"Still a dumbass" she said back.
"Still wondering when I'm getting my pizza" He answered.
"Yeah, yeah. Invite your friends over, I need to meet the saints that can actually deal with you on a consistent basis." She answered him, dropping the subject in the process.
"Uhhh, this place is a bit small" he said.
"Wow, look at you mister popular. Fine we'll go to this Italian place I know" she said in mock shock.
Caitlin had agreed to drop the subject for now, much to Jacob's relief.
About 30 minutes later most of his friends were outside a casual Italian restaurant.
To be specific, Stephanie, Erwin, Shin, Ressana, Victoria and Arthur were the only people available on short notice.
"Nice to meet you Miss, I'm Erwin a friend of Jaocb's" Erwin, true to form was polite as can be.
"Good evening Caitline, don't worry about my portion of dinner I can pay for myself" said Victoria upon seeing his sister. Even now she wanted to mark her place as not being beneath anyone.
"Heyo pretty lady, can't believe you and this guy share DNA. If you had to guess, which one of you would you say was adopted." Greeted Ressana, as innapro[irate as ever.
"Hello" Was all Stephanie said.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Arthur." Arthur was the last to get there.
"Ahhh so you're the trinity dreamer Jacob mentioned. He didn't mention you were a pretty boy..." His sister eyed up the young handsome man.
Which of course made him blush immensely.
"Hahah, wait trinity dreamer?" the blushing boy answered.
"Shorthand for triple affinity" Stephanie cut in.
"Which is why you're paying for your own pizza. I wanted to show off my own trinity dreamer status and because of you he barely reacted!" His sister said in a huff.
This caused no small amount of shock in the group.
They had barely gotten their heads around the fact that Arthur was a triple affinity dreamer.
Now one of their friends just causally had one of these supposedly ultra-rare people in his family tree.
Arthur looked crestfallen at losing out on a good meal without even being able to defend himself.
"Please, I stopped being impressed at your blend of bullshit the third time you turned our street into an impromptu concert" Jacob said in response.
"Hey! That took real effort! You know how hard it is for a 13-year-old to get their hands on that much pyrotechnical equipment! Not to mention forging all those permits to block the street." She ranted in response.
"I believe we may be witnessing a confession of guilt" Erwin muttered softly to Victoria at their antics.
After they had settled down and Caitlin had once again agreed to pay for Arthur's pizza they went into the restaurant.
It turned out to be a surprisingly good night.
His sister had never had any problem socialising with others it was almost her speciality.
Right next to everything else she did.
They spent a while at the restaurant and headed to the bar that Sully had taken them to afterwards.
The place had become a semi-regular hangout for them.
Although they hadn't had another night as wild as the first.
At some point, Jacob was cornered by his sister again.
He expected more nagging about working for the order but instead, she said something he didn't expect.
"You've changed you know?" She said while looking at him reproachfully.
"Well, it has been like a year since I last saw you" Jacob replied casually.
"No, I mean… How do I put it…" She said, struggling to find the words.
"It's not like it's one thing, you seem more focused, you have friends. Ones who you actually spend time with. You're training on your own time… It's like you woke up and decided to live for the first time in ages. Kind of reminds me of when you were a kid and we used to play together, back when you could beat me at some stuff." She said, making sure to get some bragging in as usual.
"I don't think I've changed that much. More than anything I guess I just realised that I had too much to do, so I couldn't spend all my time lying around reading like I want to." He spoke.
"Mark my words though, the moment I don't have to worry about any of this dreamer stuff I'm going back to wasting the days away," He assured her, more as a joke than anything.
Even if he could go back to the way he used to live he probably wouldn't, it was just too much fun to use his ability.
He didn't think he could ever give up the thrill that came with filling up the databanks of his ability.
They had some drinks and eventually started leaving the bar as some of their members began passing out.
The tipping point was a little after Stephanie passed out next to him.
Not usually a problem as his lightweight friend often fell asleep near either him or Ressana when they drank because of their known resistance to alcohol.
What made it problematic was the look that his sister was giving him because of it.
He just knew that no matter how much he tried to explain she would refuse to believe that she had simply passed out in the most logical place she could.
So, they decided to leave the bar.
His sister was staying in a hotel nearby and was leaving the next day.
After saying goodbye to everyone else she motioned him to the side.
"I know everything probably seems crazy right now… but we are a family. Promise you'll think about the data analyst thing?" she asked him.
For the first time that night she wasn't kidding around, she looked at him with actual concern instead of her usual joking attitude.
He paused for a few moments, searching her face.
"…Yeah, I'll think about it" he said in seriousness.
She gave him a rare look of genuine gratitude before her face flashed back to her usual cockiness.
'So similar' Stephanie thought to herself in a tipsy haze as she saw both sibling's expressions shift from actual care to their usual guarded joviality at almost exactly the same time.