The remainder of the evacuation progresses. They had some warning. Enough warning to fill up every place that can take some people. Enough warning for people to transfer their bank accounts to national branches and try to take the last pictures of this or that which will ever be taken and loot the hell out of every store in the blast zone.

They don't know exactly when it's going to blow.

As the uncertain time approaches the evacuators concentrate on places farther from Yellowstone itself: less Idaho, more Nebraskans who have been stuck in inescapable traffic trying to drive away. Bella puts an Alli next to car jams and crosses her fingers as hard as she can that "one down" will just be like "converged" for Alli if something happens. Alli makes everybody get out of their cars and line up and Bella puts them all one by one in Japan, because Japan is taking refugees today, apparently, whatever, Bella's job is not logistics on any high level, Bella's job is flicker flicker flicker flicker down the self-assembling line of people Alli commands into existence, she can do four people a second if she's really on and if that turns into three people a second it just means she needs to stop thinking and fucking teleport.

There's an earthquake.

It even shakes the ground as far away as Charlie's house, though only a little that far away, barely enough to knock badly shelved books onto the car. Alli converges in alarm, the one of her standing on someone's car screaming at the lady to get her toddler out of the seat there's no time there's no time disappearing into her other self.

And then the center of the continent heaves itself up like a bursting boil, and Bella is standing in Japan, holding a two-year-old. She puts the kid down and goes back for the mom because she can't leave a baby without his mom in Japan and she can't leave this screaming teenager to be crushed between quaking cars and she can't leave this oh god it's an entire fucking school bus how did she not see the school bus first thing -

When she's halfway through the school bus she tries to teleport back to the highway and she can't.

She can't hit a moving target.

She lands in the sky above where the school bus was and descends flicker by careful flicker and into it and it pitches onto its side and the kids are screaming and the bus driver is screaming and Bella is screaming and she grabs the nearest kid and takes them to Japan and does that six more times and then she lands in the sky again and there isn't any screaming anymore.

Bella goes home.

Alli finds that Bella's bleeding, and fixes her, hissing with sympathetic pain, and Bella flops onto her twin and sobs.

Adana barely sleeps during the evacuation. She eats and drinks when handed food and while keeping portals open, and the bathroom is reserved for when she has nothing better to do. She organizes, she goes where told, and she opens portals. She does a bit of mental math, and then every time she opens a portal she tries just a little bit harder to get it open another inch. By day five, she's stubbornly clawed another foot and a half out of her portals, even though every time she opens one of those she collapses to the ground in a whimper. It doesn't matter, she'll recover, she'll be fine, she can't stand by and let these people die, a foot and a half means more people can get through at one time, you can stuff a hell of a lot of people through a portal if you try really hard. And they are trying really hard.

Savannah is a huge, huge help. She doesn't stay awake at the absurdly skimpy sleep schedule Adana and Bella keep up, and has to eat far more than both of them combined, but when she's awake and moving she moves fast and keeps people going where they need to go and helping her sister put portals in the right spots so that as many people as possible can get through portals.

Adana can only move one end of a portal, if she wants to. This becomes important when she hears her sister screech by twining, "Fuck, it's happening, Adana get me out of here!"

She obliges. Savannah speeds through, ash trailing behind and says, "Okay, close it, close it-"

This one, Adana does not do. Well, not until she's on the other side of it, anyway. Savannah's her anchor, Adana can make portals faster than Savannah can take people to them if she makes them small. If she makes them person sized, or family sized, rather than big enough for several cars. Her sister is screaming at her through twining, but she ignores it, she doesn't have time to listen, she is busy.

The world is shaking, and then there is heat and fire and ash and Adana doesn't care, Adana doesn't give a damn, what she cares about is portal, portal, portal, this person saved, that family through the portal, then close it immediately because there's a car sailing through the air right for it and she does not want to crush the poor souls on the other side of the portal. A chunk of debris, some rubble - heading for a car that's still got people in it, a cute little family of four - she sends it flying the other direction with a set of portals, and then scoops them up into a portal when they're all out of the car -

- And then the ground rumbles again and she's sent flying and she doesn't even bother to scream, all she's thinking about is portals, portals, portals - she catches herself with a portal and sends herself flying at some pour soul whose leg is under a car. She slams into the car, winces in pain, and then goes back to thinking about portals. A portal under him too small for the car to fit through, send him back to Savannah but not squished. Next person, next person, there's still some ground to stand on, she doesn't need to leave yet. She can grab that preschooler over there but she has to pick her up and put her through because she can't just throw a preschooler through.

A hand grabs her arm through the portal when she's depositing the kid. The hand yanks her through. The hand belongs to her sister.

"Wait, no, Savannah, put me back, there's still time, there's still people, let me go -"

"Fuck no. Close the portal, we're out of time."

"No," whimpers Adana, sobbing, but her sister's grip is a vice and she can't scramble back through to put down more portals and then there is another chunk of debris coming and she has to close the portal or the people here will get hurt.

And then, because getting back there in any reasonable amount of time is impossible, she collapses to the ground and finally, finally lets herself cry.

The dispatchers are much too busy to address the sobbing twins right away, but after a while:

"I can call Bella to tell her to come get you and bring you to wherever you're staying," one says to the Sanders girls.

The dispatcher calls Bella.

Bella comes in and transports Adana to Charlie's house.

Adana puts a portal down by Savannah and by where she is, and Savannah comes through.

Then she closes the portals, and is scooped up by her dad in a hug.

Bella goes back to sitting on the couch with Alli.

"Now that we're going to probably... sleep more... we should probably get air mattresses or something," she murmurs. "And decide who's in what room besides based on what beds are unoccupied..."

"Meh. I can sleep on the floor, I don't give a damn."

Because she wants her sister to sleep in a bed right now, and if that means 'Savannah sleeps on the floor' that's okay with her.