"By staying indoors. And having good luck. I spent nine minutes out in the open, and I was fine. It doesn't get rid of buildings. People, animals, cars...nothing bigger than that, yet. We're an hour into this. I can't really promise you this is a good idea."

"It does sound pretty scary. Maybe the quest will send us places to get things we need? Oh! We could bring umbrellas?"

"...sure, that sounds great."

Hopefully, the quest involves hopping around to find more resources than an adorable eleven year old.

"Why don't we find some umbrellas?"

Jane offers Palisade her hand.

"Sam can I have twenty dollars for umbrellas," says Palisade.

Sam locates twenty dollars in fives and singles and a Sacagawea dollar and hands them over and Palisdae trots across the street to a CVS, which does have umbrellas. She doesn't take Jane's hand.

Smart kid. Jane retracts the hand smoothly. Hammerhead is already getting pre-emptively mad on The Girl's behalf, but she thinks the rest of them should can it if they don't want to take a turn.

"It works on clothes, so coats won't help, but I haven't seen it delete anyone with a hat yet. It might not even work on everyone in here. Some of us have superpowers."

"What kind of superpowers? When I'm not looking like Emmy I can fly and Clair can breathe underwater and Zix has some weird senses he's still figuring out."

"Most of them have one- at least the ones who front. Don't know about the ones who stay further down. Flying, throwing fireballs, telekinesis...there are 64 of us in here. You?"

"Wow, we only have five." Umbrellas. Four of them. Sam is waiting outside the store.

"Hammerhead, Penny, and Baby Doll are the ones that front most, besides me, but you should watch out for Karen and Dr. Harrison. Karen is the only blonde, and Dr. Harrison has a white streak in her hair and blue eyes. They're bad news."

"Wow, okay. We're very easy to tell apart when we're not pretending to be Emmy, I'm a griffin and Clair's a mermaid and Zix is a space alien. Dawn doesn't front but she's an angel."

"They look different inside, but up here, everyone just changes how the body looks. We got the superpowers after we already existed, so everyone was used to making it work with Kay. I don't even look different- I was always the primary, since the last one retired. Hey, Sam," she adds as an afterthought.

"Hey," says Sam.

"Kay?" says Palisade.

"-sorry. Kay, the original, the body. She doesn't front, so we usually call her and the body that. Is Emmy yours?"

"Sorta."

Shrug.

"Sorry. We're the only people like us we've met. The doctors weren't exactly friendly about all this."

She gestures at herself with both hands, tiredly.

"Ready to save the world?"

"Think so."

Sam scans the quest description again, sighs, and offers the book. Palisade peels the trowel off the page; it glints in the light.

She trots around to the side of the building, where there is an empty lot full of enthusiastic volunteer plants to hide behind, and she plunges the tip of the trowel into the ground. It opens up a hole, quick and easy as if she's digging into soap bubbles, and when the hole is big enough for them, she jumps in.

Whee!!!

Rather than further dirt, the hole Palisade dug leads straight down into a subway car. For a moment, it would seem they might crash to the floor-

-and then Palisade and Baby Doll are both caught by her telekinesis, depositing them somewhat clumsily on the subway floor.

"Wow...that was scary..."

Palisade lands like a cat. "Do you know where this is?" she says.

"This is a scary place...you're not scary, though. You're pretty."

"Thanks, but, uh, where is it? It looks like a train station?"

"We're in...the Underground."

They switch. This one has antennae. "What's the Underground?"

They switch, as well, with the customary shimmer.

"The Underground, oh, well, it's the place we all live, aren't it? It's only, well, you see...we're not meant to be down here. This is the body, and we're all in here, but we're all down here, too. It's awfully confusing."