AN: Yes! I am so excited to finally be posting this. Thank you for your patience with my writer's block. I'm planning to post the sequel "The Little Things Add Up" sometime next week.

"Hey, Jupe. Can I borrow your boots?" Mikka asked.

She looked up. "Which ones?"

Mikka held up a pair of black boots with unusual designs on them. "These ones."

Jupiter panicked. Those were her gravity surfing boots! She thought she'd hidden them away in a box pushed far under her bed. "No. Not those ones. Where did you find them?"

"In a box under your bed."

"What were you doing looking under my bed?" Jupiter asked, trying to keep her tone even.

"Looking for these boots. I really want to borrow them."

"You do?" Jupiter couldn't figure out why. To her eye, they were clunky and biker-ish. Not her or Mikka's usual style at all. But since they could "fly," she wasn't about to quibble with their styling.

"When you were wearing them the other day, I noticed the cool designs on the side. I really like this one." Her cousin pointed.

Jupiter walked over to look. She saw two lines connecting at a point, not unlike a letter 'v.'

"This is neat too." Mikka rotated the boot to show her another spot and the control glove fell out. When it hit the floor, the holographic buttons appeared.

Jupiter dove for the glove and scooped it up before her cousin noticed. In her haste, she didn't pay attention to where she grabbed it and the boots started to glow in Mikka's hands.

She grinned in delight. "They glow too? Hey, they feel lighter."

Jupiter discretely powered them off and Mikka's hands sagged with the added weight. "Um… yeah. The boots are really cool, but I'm gonna have to say 'no' to the borrowing them."

She could just imagine Mikka accidentally tripping, knocking the boots together in just the right (or wrong) way, triggering the manual start, and her sailing off into the sky with no idea of how to control them.

Mikka begged, but Jupiter held firm. "I need them back now. I was planning to wear them today."

When her cousin handed them over, she immediately put them on and tucked the control glove into her pocket.

A few days later, Jupiter waltzed through the door to her house in the mid afternoon. Their last client of the day had canceled, and she had several hours of free time. She intended to spend every minute of it with Caine.

Humming happily, she tripped lightly up the steps to her room. She stuffed a change of clothes into a duffle bag and dug under the bed for the box containing her gravity boots. The minute she touched the box, she knew something was wrong. It was too light.

Her fears were confirmed a moment later when all she found in the box was the control glove. She frantically searched the room and came up empty.

She took several deep breaths to calm herself down, stuffed the glove in her pocket and went looking for her family.

"Hey, Moltka. Have you seen my black boots? I can't find them anywhere." Her effort to sound casual came out strained even to her own ears, but he didn't seem to notice.

"I think Mikka wore them to school today," he said. "She's not back yet. She's hanging out with friends this afternoon and Mom's supposed to pick her up later."

"Thanks, Moltka. You're a lifesaver." She smiled broadly trying to cover her panic.

"I'm headed out. I won't be back until late." Jupiter called out to whoever could hear as she walked out the front door, snagging a pair of Mikka's shoes and stuffing them into her duffle.

The minute the door closed behind her, she phoned her cousin. "Hi Mikka. Listen, I really need those boots for my date this evening. Where are you? I'll drop by and get them."

When she finished the call, she tapped the communicator in her watch. "I need a team of Keepers to meet me at the Woodfield Mall. Mikka took my gravity surfing boots. Tell them to locate her and await my arrival."

Jupiter hoofed it to the bus stop. If she could get the next express bus, it would be almost as fast as taxi and she could save a few dollars. The bus was pulling up to the stop as she rounded the corner so she broke into a run to make it.

She flashed her bus pass at the driver, took a few steps forward and grabbed one of the rails. The bus started with a small jerk and she swayed, almost bumping the passenger next to her.

Even after all these months, old habits were hard to break. She didn't really need to worry about saving a few dollars anymore. Sometimes the only thing to do was to laugh at the absurdity of her life.

Her bodyguard (she wasn't sure who was on duty this afternoon) hadn't made it in time to get on the bus. But that was his problem not hers. She wondered idly if he'd powered his gravity boots long enough to make it to the bus and was laying flat on top of it. The image made her smile.

The smile drooped into a frown when she thought about the lecture she'd be in for later from either Caine or Stinger, or worse both.

Shifting from foot to foot with impatience, she stared out the window as the bus passed familiar buildings desperately hoping she arrived before something truly awful happened and Mikka ended up in the hospital.

Jupiter jostled the small distance to the front of the bus as it turned onto Perimeter Drive. She hopped off at the first stop and punched the button on her watch. Before she spoke, gravity boots appeared in her field of vision and she looked up into Caine's disapproving face.

"She's in the Macy's parking lot. The Keepers have her under surveillance. This way, your Majesty."

Normally, she loved it when he called her "your Majesty," but the distinct chill in his tone made her wince as she moved silently in the direction he indicated. Oh, she would be in for it later.

They walked at a rapid pace. Just when she was beginning to feel winded, they turned a corner and she saw Mikka moving erratically twenty feet in the air. With a sudden swoop, she lost her balance and started falling.

Jupiter panicked. "Caine! What…" The words died on her tongue. He was already flying across the parking lot, his own boots making a second set of blue streaks.

She ran toward them as Caine snatched Mikka out of air just before she fell head first into the back of a battered blue pickup truck. Pulling the control glove out of her pocket, she deactivated the boots and Caine set Mikka down on the pavement.

Ignoring the gawkers, Jupiter rushed to her cousin and started looking her over. "Are you all right? Did you hurt anything?"

For a moment, Mikka stared up at Caine with hero worship in her eyes and then she collapsed onto Jupiter, sucking in great gouts of air. Several other teens crowded around her, patting her on the back and whispering calming phrases.

A few minutes and tears later, Mikka regained her composure enough to say shakily, "Now I understand why you didn't want me borrow these boots. I was so afraid I was going to slam into the ground and go splat all over the parking lot. I just wanted to show my friends how cool they were, I didn't mean to go flying."

Mikka turned to thank Caine. When she saw him, her mouth opened but nothing came out. Her lower jaw moved a couple of times, but no words emerged.

"I think she's trying to say 'thank you,'" Jupiter commented dryly. "But she appears to be dumbstruck by your good looks."

Caine frowned. So much for flattery getting her back into his good graces, not that it wasn't entirely true.

Jupiter glanced around to see that the crowd of onlookers had grown. She sighed. She really hated doing this, but it was necessary. "The excitement is over. Let the blanking begin."

Small blue flashes of light flickered all around the area and people started wandering off. By this time Mikka had recovered enough to watch in fascination.

When the smear of the keepers came close to her friends, Mikka finally noticed the telltale signs of the invisibility cloak. "What is that? What are the blue lights about?"

"These people are having their memory modified to remove the memory of your flight," Jupiter answered gently. "It's your turn now. All you'll remember is being in the parking lot to exchange shoes with me."

"Jupiter, what's going…" But before Mikka could finish her question, a blue light flashed in her face and Caine ducked quickly behind a car.

Jupiter smiled at her cousin. "Hey Mikka, I brought you some shoes." She pulled the shoes out of her duffle bag and handed them to her cousin. "Can I have my boots back now?"

Mikka bent down and started tugging the left boot off.