“Is that Amy Lee from Evanescence?”

“That’s straight up Amy Lee from Evanescence, playing the guitar and singing about cartoons! What? Who? Where? What portal did we walk through this time?”

“It’s a LadyStar Video Alert! I got Talitha-chan to find us a fun video to put up so we could have a video alert like Acey-san!”

“Cartoon Network is my favorite! I like Dexter’s Lab and the Powerpuff Girls!”

“Yeah, it’s a LadyStar video alert. You savvy?”

“Ha! We’ve gone officially out of our own tree!”

“Heheheeee… see? We can do videos just like SupaGamepowa ’cause we got Talitha-chan and she’s super-smart and has computers just like Acey-san’s spaceship!”

“That is just too cool for words. Rock on, Amy! Rock on, Professor! Rock on, LadyStar readers! We are OUT!”

“Talitha-chan! I got another question for you from my super-neat Jessie’s Letters page that you helped make for me and stuff and you’ll never guess what the question is about!”

“Oh, my goodness. I hope its about something I know.”

“You know about all sorts of stuff! Let’s see…. there’s sea lions and rainclouds and farms and those little metal thingies that go on car wheels and volcanoes and other planets and…”

“…and butterflies and spaceships and building houses and I love it when you talk about electro zingers around atoms and all those boxes on the chart in our science class too. Oh! But you gotta know about this too, because it’s about your birthday!

“Alright! Happy Birthday there, Professor!”

“Let’s have a big party at Doubler’s!”

“Happy Birthday, Hayashi.”

“Okay, the e-mail says ‘Talitha-chan!’ Well, not really, but I added Talitha-chan. Okay, it says ‘Talitha-chan, did you know your birthday is the same day as Earth Day?’”

“Yes I do, Jessica. I’m very happy for that too. I learned a lot about Earth Day during some of my nature hikes and during science classes. I did an Earth Day science project on water desalination and geothermal minerals in one of my classes.”

“Forest girl over here is totally dialed in to the nature channel, especially when she’s got her shield. She’s got inter-magical two-way radio with the plants.”

“And you know what’s double-super-neat about it? You’re the Warrior of the Forest and so you’ve got all kinds of powers. You can even heal us when we’re fighting! See? You know everything about everything!”

“Well, I…”

“Even though you gotta tell me what water de-somethingizing is, okay?”

“Okay, Jessica.”

“Yay! I knew my best friend Talitha-chan could help! If you have a question or a comment or just wanna say ‘Hi Jessie!’ be sure to send an e-mail to my Jessie’s Letters page and I’ll read it super-fast and then I’ll get someone to help me answer it super-fast too! Happy Earth Day, minna-san!”

“Yay! It’s a saxophone choir and they got all the different kinds too!”

“What is that monstrosity in the middle of the group?”

“It’s the radiator that ate Cleveland.”

“It’s a saxophone that sounds like a tuba!”

“That, ladies, is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the band: the double E-flat contrabass saxophone. I saw one of those at a symphony performance at the Arts Center once. It’s almost seven feet tall.”

“It’s pitched an octave below the baritone sax.”

“Okay, Goofy, you’ve got to help us out here, because you’re the expert. What have we got in this group?”

“Okay, if you start from the left side of the choir, there’s a soprano, sopranino, tenor and bass. Then the contra-bass. Then there’s a baritone, soprillo and alto.”

“What’s a soprillo?”

“It’s kind of like a piccolo saxophone. It’s a B-flat horn pitched an octave above a soprano. I’ve never played one but I played a sopranino once. It was fun and I could play notes as high as my flute!”

“Bet most people didn’t know there were eight different kinds of saxophones.”

“There’s more than eight.”

“What’s next? The Double-Contra-Bass that’s ten feet tall?”

“There’s a double B-flat subcontrabass called a Tubax. It’s the lowest-pitched saxophone ever made.”

“You feed it cheeseburgers.”

“And french fries!”

“There’s also a contra-alto which is a concert-pitch soprano, a slide soprano, concert tenor, saxellos, which are straight versions of sopranos and tenors, and there’s even one called a Xaphoon they play in Hawaii and Indonesia and Jamaica that’s made of bamboo, but it doesn’t have keys.”

“My goodness, Jessica. Where did you learn all that?”

“She’s the professor of musicness. Just smile and slowly back away.”

“I like playing saxophone. It’s lots of fun! I can’t wait to have my own saxophone choir someday.”

“That would be neat!”

“Me and Talitha-chan found this really great game on the web where you can be a vampire and win the game by doing vampire stuff.”

“Funky.”

“You two spend way too much time looking up silly web sites.”

“It’s a browser-based video game.”

“I wanna play! Can I be a vampire too? I’ll get all the best weapons like the rocket launchers and extra damage power and zap all the monsters.”

“Little Bit will be the first spaceship vampire with laser blasters.”

“Ooh, Shannon-sama! Let’s be vampires!”

“Great. A vampire that says ‘yay’ all the time.”

“Yeah! It will be fun! We can stay out all night and turn into a bat and stuff.”

“Err.. news flash, goofball. You’re the Warrior of the Sunrise. That’s a tough gig when you’re also a vampire.”

“Oh that’s okay. I can just turn into a bat at night.”

“You can’t go out in the sunlight when you’re a vampire.”

“Hi Alanna-sama!”

“Yeah, if the sunlight touches you, you’ll burn up.”

“Well that’s no fun. I like the sunshine. Can I be the kind of vampire that can go outside during the day? “

“A daywalker?”

“The what now?”

“Hoshi, you can’t be a vampire. You’re an Ajan Warrior. We need you to help us fight nasty creatures and those evil Cryptics. Some of those monsters are going to be pretty strong and you’ve got the most powerful battle magic of all of us.”

“Oh well, I guess I’ll stay the Warrior of the Sunrise then. I bet I would have been a good vampire, though.”

“Well, at least it would have been entertaining.”