"Hey sis!" yelled Kat in excitement as she arrived through the hole. "Guess who found her way back!"
As Tara and Rachel walked in, they immediately ran to the window and looked in awe at the futuristic environment before them. When Alyssa followed, Kat glanced at the portal, closing it with her gaze.
Alyssa was excited too—excited for Kat that she had finally found her way home, excited to meet Kat's friends and family, and excited to be free of the worry that she'd never be able to see Kat again once the latter returned to her home dimension. Not to mention her recent discovery that she had the ability to reshape reality any way she wanted on a whim. That was exciting too. She idly played around with it a bit as she got settled in, creating glowing designs in the air from her mind that danced around her fingers, solidifying them into still-floating glass with a thought, before dissolving them back into the air with a wave of her hand. She'd be having fun with this for quite some time, she was sure.
And while Alyssa had already seen Kat's dimension—a simulation of it, to be fair, but a strikingly accurate one—she was still excited to see more of it. In fact, after seeing the real place, Alyssa was amazed how accurately Kat had duplicated the environment for her from her memory, and was interested to see how similar other places would be to Kat's memories, in which Alyssa had been immersed the night before. She joined Tara and Rachel at the window, and noticed that it too was incredibly accurate—or at least as accurate as she could tell from her own memory, which made sense. The only difference she could tell was that it was daytime now.
"Kat? Is that you?" said a voice that was unfamiliar to everyone except for Kat. The other three turned around to see a woman a little older than Kat, dressed in somewhat of a similar style, only with a green and black color scheme instead of pink. "Kat!!!" The woman ran up to Kat and gave her a high five. "It's so great to see you again!" She walked toward the other three, her cape trailing behind her. "Hey, so you're Kat's friends she told me about?"
They nodded.
"Name's Lily. Nice to meet you." They all shook hands. "You're Alyssa, aren't you?"
"Mhm." Alyssa smiled.
"Cool outfit," said Tara.
"Thanks," said Lily. "Tara, was it? Kat didn't mention you had a twin sister."
"Not exactly," Rachel smiled. "It's a long story. I'm actually—"
"Oh, Kat told me about the clones. I was just kidding...and actually, this outfit is pretty normal here. It's easy to be extravagant when you can instantly be wearing anything you imagine." Lily twirled around and demonstrated, her outfit changing itself into a long, black dress that sparkled with green glitter, complete with matching high heels and a shiny necklace that formed around her neck. A long, translucent green scarf, at least as long as she was tall, flowed behind her weightlessly in the air. "See? Really though, to me it's nothing special." She laughed and morphed her outfit back how it was before. "Must be hard having to buy clothes, I can't imagine...anyway how about Kat and I show you all around? Seeing what it's like in a whole other world has got to be pretty cool."
Everyone agreed.
As soon as they walked out of the apartment and entered the hallway, a smile appeared on Lily's face. "Hey, watch this." After a brief pause to give everyone time to look, Lily slipped right through the floor. A black starburst shape with a striped green outline appeared on the floor where she passed through, then immediately shrunk back down to nothing.
"Where'd she go?" asked Tara.
"Oh, she likes to do that a lot," explained Kat. "She just goes through each floor as she lands on it to get downstairs." She laughed. "It's slower, but she thinks it's fun. You can go up that way too if you jump high enough. Like this, watch." Kat reached up for the ceiling and jumped a couple times, but couldn't quite reach. "Well you get the idea."
"That sounds pretty cool...wait, how's it slower? That sounds much faster than taking the elevator. Even the stairs."
"Well yeah, duh," laughed Kat. "But why would you do that if you aren't carrying anything big? And what are stairs?"
Tara and Rachel couldn't help but burst out laughing.
"I'm sorry?" said Alyssa, stifling a laugh of her own. "You've never heard of stairs before?"
"Okay, now I'm curious," said Kat. "No, I haven't. What are they?"
"They're like the things you walk up and down, like one step after another"—Rachel motioned with her fingers—"to get to another floor. Like you take a bunch of small steps up and down...(giggle) sorry, I just think it's so funny that you've never seen them before."
"Actually I think I have! Is that what that weird zigzag-shaped thing in your house was, Lyss? Like a whole bunch of steps that you walked up?"
"Exactly," said Alyssa, still laughing a little.
"So what do you do then? If you don't have stairs and you only use the elevator for moving heavy things..."
"It involves imprinting, doesn't it?" guessed Alyssa, a reasonable guess considering it seemed to be one of the main differences between their dimensions, responsible for most of the differences she'd seen in how things were accomplished.
"You got it, how'd you know? Just imprint on a pole, sometimes you can use a wall, and get out somewhere higher or lower."
"Ooh, let me try!" Tara ran over to a wall across the hallway, which had a window on it leading outside. She reached out her hand and touched it.
"Wait, Tara, you can't do that there, they have the barrier thing there to prevent—"
When Kat looked back at the wall, Tara's face was on the wall staring back at her, and the wall had taken on a different pattern.
"Huh. Guess it's broken or something," said Kat. "Hope no one sneaks in tonight." When the wall turned back to its normal shiny black texture, Kat placed her hand on it and tried to imprint, unsuccessfully. "Wait, but then how did...that's weird. Here, follow me, they have this pole we can do it on."
"Hey, anyone else notice it feels kinda strange being in another dimension?" asked Rachel as Kat led them across the hallway.
"What are you talking about?" joked Kat. "When I showed up in your world everything was perfectly normal, nothing weird about that!"
"No, I mean it feels weird," clarified Rachel. "Sort of like when Alyssa was melting me and I was sort of holding on before I let her do it." They approached a corner with a small sign showing a pictorial representation of a vertical bar connecting the floor and ceiling, with up and down arrows next to it. "But I didn't actually feel any change coming. I just let it pass a moment ago and it's gone now, but other than that I don't feel anything different. Sort of like I had to get used to the environment or something? I don't know." They turned the corner.
"Yeah, exactly!" said Alyssa. "I felt that too! Did you feel anything weird like that when you first came to my world, Kat?"
"No I didn't, but it's funny, I noticed that when I came back here! Yeah though, I just ignored it and it went away."
Rachel changed the topic. "Hey, this looks like what they have in my world at the fire department. They grab it and slide down to get down real quickly...but I don't think theirs has this thing in the way." Rachel gestured to the safety rail put up to prevent accidental falls down the hole in the floor.
"Can they go up the pole too?" asked Kat, pretty sure she already knew the answer was no.
"Well, maybe now they can," said Alyssa. "Oh, that reminds me, let me check the news back home real quick." Remembering she left the TV on, Alyssa tried to duplicate what Kat did when she opened the hole to her dimension, but found herself just grabbing empty air without managing to do anything to it. "Hey Kat, I can't figure out how to open the portal. Mind giving me a hand?"
"Oh yeah, that's right, we've got to show Lily the awesome stuff we can do now!" said Kat. "But sure, let me get that for you." Kat poked the air just as she did before, but she couldn't get the portal to open either. "That's weird, I could do it before just fine." Kat tried to remember how she opened the portal before—it really didn't take anything more than the desire to bend the fabric of space, and her intention to make that happen with the motion of her hand. But that wasn't working now. "One sec."
"If it's hard to get it open we should probably leave one open somewhere once you do get it," suggested Rachel. "Just to make sure we can get back."
"Good idea," said Alyssa. "Shame the one in the apartment is gone...Rachel can you try?"
"Sure." Rachel tried herself, but she had no luck either. "Nope, sorry."
"Yeah I can't get it to work," said Kat.
"I hope we'll be able to get back," said Rachel with wide eyes, a little concerned.
"Relax! I figured it out once, I can figure it out again...but come on, Tara and Lily are probably waiting for us!" Kat reached out and touched the pole, and was pulled inside of it over the rail. The pole took on a candy cane-like pattern with pink and black stripes, with glowing neon pink outlines between the stripes. Not a second after, it went back to normal.
"So you imprint on it and slide your...essence down? Cool!" Rachel was excited to see what else they had in this world to take advantage of the abilities that were normal here.
"I think she became the whole pole. Then she just got off somewhere else," suggested Alyssa. "Let me try." Alyssa touched the pole and willed herself into it as well, but didn't leave it immediately. Instead, as the entire pole became white and puffy like a cloud, her face appeared on it for a second. "Oh wow, I'm so tall! I feel like I'm as tall as the building...actually I think I am!" Alyssa giggled, and her face faded away before the pole's appearance returned to normal.
After seeing how the pole changed with Kat and Alyssa inside it, Rachel had half a mind just to sit there for a few minutes, watching it change in various ways as other people used it to go up and down. But then, realizing her friends were waiting for her, and the building didn't seem particularly busy at the moment anyway, Rachel followed after them, imprinting herself on the pole. While she was inside of it, it became a transparent blue tube with bright white and cyan sparkles endlessly falling through it.
Rachel exited the building with Alyssa, catching up with her in the entrance area. Kat was already standing outside with her sister and Tara, talking with them like something was seriously wrong.
"Uhhh...we got a problem here," said Tara as the group became whole again, sounding very worried. "Kat, can you tell them?"
"Yeah...remember when I was having trouble opening the portal?"
Alyssa and Rachel nodded, worried what was to come.
"We can't get any of our new powers to work anymore."