Alyssa, Tara and Rachel all reacted in the same way, at the same time, as if they were one person. And only two of them were in a sense.  "Can you bring us home?" they all asked eagerly.

"Oh, right, you probably don't have a way—wait, how did you say you got here?" Stacy asked.

"Somehow I was able to open a portal for all of us," said Kat. "Thought getting back would be easy."

Lily's cat-like ears perked up and twitched a little.

"Interesting..." Stacy pondered. "Well the bad news is I'm not real confident in my ability to bring you back."

"Can you at least try?" pleaded Alyssa.

"Please?" Tara chimed in.

"I could, but what if I send you somewhere else by accident? Like to a world that's similar, based on what I've been imagining, but not quite the same? Or somewhere completely different altogether?"

Everyone was silent.

"Yeah, I didn't think so," Stacy agreed. "Then I wouldn't be able to help you at all. Besides, even if it worked, how would you get back here? I'm sure you don't want to say goodbye to this world, or any of us, forever."

"There's another me here somewhere; we're linked, like mentally," Alyssa remembered. "Maybe you could send one of us back and...could we switch places over the link?

"Could you help Lyss get her powers back?" asked Kat. "She's been there, so she could open a portal like I did, and then she could also use it to get—"

"How did you open a portal?" asked Lily.

"Well that's the good news. I might be able to remove whatever is blocking you," Stacy began.

Everyone's face glowed with hopeful excitement, except for Lily who didn't know what she was missing.

"But...again, I'm not confident. Modifying other people is something I don't have much experience with, and especially something like this could be tricky."

"Modifying other people?" asked Lily, confused.

"Mm-hmm!" Stacy nodded. "Like this." She pointed a finger at Lily, who quickly shrank to half her size.

"Whoa!" squeaked Lily. "I'm...what the hell? How did you do that?"

Stacy just giggled and softly pointed at Lily again, who shrank once more, now only a quarter of her original size.

"Wow!" cheered Rachel. "That's amazing!" Rachel flickered like a hologram for a second, and found herself no longer wearing the outfit she created for herself in the game. Odd, she thought to herself, wondering if anyone else noticed.

(Meanwhile, as the other Alyssa continued enjoying herself, still in the video game, a strange thought entered her mind: "Player Rachel <Demo_759481> lost connection.")

"I'm dreaming, right?" Lily squeaked as she ran around, fascinated by her new perspective on the room.

Stacy clicked her fingers and Lily reappeared leaning against the wall, where she was a moment ago.

"Weird," said Lily, looking around.

"Anyway," continued Stacy. "What's good is that in this case anything I mess up I'll be able to fix, so there's nothing to worry about. But first, Alyssa, I'll need your help."

"Me?" Alyssa stepped forward.

"Well, really any of you who remember what it felt like when...whatever it was changed you to give you the trouble you're having. But you're the only one I really feel comfortable sharing a body with...sorry Kat."

"Sharing a body? You want me to..."

"Well, it's the best way to get a really clear picture of your memory. And we're connected in a special way already."

Alyssa nodded and held Stacy's hand. "Ready?" she asked.

"Whenever you are," said Stacy.

"I'm jealous," said Kat.

And so Alyssa and Stacy became one person, to a further extent than they already were. While there wasn't much to change on either of them due to their natural similarity, they managed to form a combination with Stacy's current hairstyle and outfit, and Alyssa's color scheme, including sky blue hair with white streaks.

"Wow!" chirped Alysstasia. "I feel so...powerful!" she giggled. "Sort of like before but not as much...hey, let me try..." Alysstasia grabbed the air in front of her and attempted to open a portal, much like Kat. She got excited for a second, believing it worked, only to find it was just an illusion, a holographic image projected from her imagination.

"Believe me, I would have suggested that first," said Alysstasia, this time from Stacy's side. "Oh, I see what I need to remove now, just step out of me when you're ready."

Alyssa did as instructed, and was immediately approached by Kat, who hugged her tightly. "I, am, so, jealous!!!"

"Okay, so everyone sit on the floor, and...we'll give this a try," instructed Stacy.

Everyone did so.

Stacy took a deep breath and closed her eyes. A golden glow surrounded her, and then spread to everyone else in the room. They all felt a sensation much like the one that, for all but Lily, marked the start of their problem,

A minute later, Stacy opened her eyes, and the glow stopped.

"Okay, so I wasn't able to get rid of the blockage exactly—whatever that is, something in myself is making it real difficult for me to remove it...ughhh," Stacy groaned.

Looks of disappointment were had throughout the room.

"But I managed to do something to it at least, and you'll probably have some fun new abilities to play around with now."

"Really?" Lily sounded interested.

"Awesome!" cheered Rachel.

"Waaaaaahhhh!!!!" Tara shrieked as she suddenly found herself falling to the floor, after the chair she was sitting in inexplicably vanished from under her. "Oof!" Everyone turned in her direction to see she had landed on her bottom.

"Are you okay?" asked Stacy. "...and what happened to my chair?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Real soft landing, somehow," said Tara. "I feel...different, though, don't know how to explain it...what did happen to that chair?" Tara and Stacy both looked around, but it was nowhere to be seen.

"Maybe that's your new power!" joked Kat. "Everything you touch disappears! Ha ha."

"Oh God, I hope not..." Tara looked around and found a cheap-looking pen sitting on a table next to some paper. "Stacy, you mind if I try?" she asked, gesturing to the pen.

"I've got tons of those lying around; you can have it." Stacy smiled. "I mean, it's not like it's a chair or anything."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I'd offer to pay for it, but all my money's back in—"

"No worries."

Tara picked up the pen, which thankfully did not vanish. "Phew." Tara moved the pen around in her hand for a minute to make sure it didn't disappear. "Well, let's see, what if I..." Tara focused a bit on how she felt when the chair vanished, and willed it to happen again. As she looked, she saw that not only did the pen vanish, but it vanished into her skin, as if it were imprinting on her, and took on a sort of ethereal, sparkly quality as it did so.

"I...absorbed it?" Tara said quizzically. "I like the sparkles! Pretty!"

"That's kinda weird," said Kat. "Wonder what good that does."

"Yeah, doesn't seem real useful," Alyssa agreed. "I'd really just be worried about doing it by accident."

"No, I think I've got the hang of it," said Tara. She was holding a salt shaker, shaking salt into her hand. "I'll try keeping this in my hand for a minute though to make sure."

"Huh, I can do it too!" said Rachel. She pointed to a notepad sitting on the table where Tara had taken the pen. "I took a sheet of paper from here, and sucked it right into my hand."

"Weird, let me try!" said Kat, running over to the same notepad. She tried, and...

"...Nope," she said. "Whoa!" she yelled as she looked down and saw her hand. It was surrounded by a glowing violet-black aura similar to a blacklight, through which the silhouette of Kat's hand could be seen glowing bright pink. "...This is cool!" Kat waved her hand around in the air, creating glowing trails that quickly faded. She turned the glow on her hand off and on a few times, then moved the glow to just her index finger.

"What is, Kat?" Lily looked over and watched, excited for her sister. "Okay, that looks totally badass."

"Hey look, I can draw things sort of!" Kat moved her index finger in the air in the shape of a star and wrote her name in the air, making the glowing trail stay behind for a bit longer, which she found was not difficult to do.

"Hmm, can I?" Kat made her whole hand glow again, then thrust it out toward a wall. With a bang, a blast of energy shot out, making a hole in the wall. "...oops! Sorry," she apologized, then went right back to staring at her glowing hand, wondering what else she could do with it.

"No way!" exclaimed Lily. "Sis, that's awesome!" She was more excited than ever to discover what she could do.

"Yeah, I'm not having any trouble holding onto this salt," Tara reported. "Gonna get rid of it now." With a delibrate thought, Tara willed the salt inside of herself. As she saw it start to enter, she panicked for a second, remembering what normally happens when salt gets under one's skin. Her worries were very short-lived, however; it didn't sting in the slightest.

"Umm, Tara?" said Rachel. "Just saying, you should probably suck up some water just in case; all that salt might be bad for you."

"Good call," said Tara. "Could be fun too; I just wish I got something as cool as what Kat has." She turned on the faucet and held her hand under. She played with it a bit, watching the sparkles, turning on and off the absorption, and watching as the water pooled in her hand like normal, then started vanishing into the void beneath her skin, then pooling in her hand, vanishing into it, pooling, vanishing, pooling—Tara thought about the water diluting all the salt in her body—wait, now it's going through her hand?

"AAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!"

"Tara?" shrieked Rachel.

"What's wrong?" asked Stacy and Alyssa together.

Tara continued screaming bloody murder. "MY HAND!!!" She held up her hand to show a decent-sized chunk of her palm was missing. "THERE'S A HOLE IN—wait, there's no blood? No pain? Why doesn't it hurt?"

Everyone else gasped when they saw Tara's apparent injury.

"Wait, wait, I think I'm okay!" Tara held up her hand and focused a bit, and before everyone's eyes the hole in her hand closed itself up. "Let's see..." Tara held her hand under the water again for a while, and nothing interesting happened. "So I thought about it dissolving the salt..." With a deliberate thought, Tara brought the salt inside her into the front of her mind and focused on letting her body dissolve away in the water like she was the salt. Immediately, it happened: Tara's hand was no more. Where she once felt it she now felt ions floating in solution, falling through Stacy's plumbing in the rushing water.

"Coo-oool!!!" beamed Tara as she restored her hand once more. So I can sort of take on the properties of the things I absorb...wait, so since I absorbed water..." Tara tried, and found that she could now easily become a liquid at will. In a flurry of sparkles, Tara spread across the floor and flooded the room, moving with the consistency of water and taking on a transparent appearance.

Stacy laughed. "Let's go somewhere else before we do any more damage." She blinked with a bit of force, and in that second everyone found themselves whisked away to a new location, though they couldn't see where they were as it was pitch black. They still recognized it as one of the places Stacy had sent them before when she was demonstrating her ability to do so. "Whoops, let me get some light in here." With that, the area was lit up by a shining golden orb that Stacy held in her hand, which she placed down in mid-air. Tara was back in solid form as well.

Lily could do nothing but smile and shake her head after seeing Stacy yet again defy what she thought was possible.

They all looked around and saw that they were in a subterranean chamber made of solid rock, about the size of a school gymnasium, with no entrance or exit to be seen. Some surfaces had splotches of different colors or even materials, and rocks were scattered throughout, altered in shape and color to roughly approximate various objects and animals.

"This is where I like to practice," explained Stacy. "Out of sight of who knows who might be out there. Lots of space to mess around in," Stacy looked at Kat and smiled. "And you don't need to worry about damaging anything."

Kat smiled back at Stacy, mainly just from excitement at getting to see her idol's secret practice area.

"Why don't you give it a try, Rachel?" suggested Tara. "You absorbed some paper, right? See what you can do with that."

"Ooh, okay!" Rachel was excited. "But first we should come up with a fun name for our new power."

"Let's see, when I absorb something, I...in-Tara-grate it into myself," Tara suggested, her tongue firmly in her cheek. "Oh, and I guess you integ-Rachel it," she snickered.

Rachel giggled with her. "Any serious ideas?"

"Well it's sort of like imprinting but the other way, so...in-printing, maybe? No, that's too similar..."

"Imprinting would work great to describe it if it wasn't already taken," said Rachel.

"Agreed. How about..." Tara thought for a moment, with Rachel joining in on the thought process.

"Sparklify!" they said in unison. It didn't describe the practical effects of absorbing objects, but they both loved the sparkles things turned into when they did it, and it worked great as a cute, cool way to refer to it.

Rachel recalled when she made the piece of paper a part of herself; at that point she hadn't done it with anything else. "Hmm...what can paper do...ah!" Giving her body a little shake, Rachel instantly flattened into a glittery paper cutout of herself, which collapsed and glided to the ground shortly after. "Give me a throw," came Rachel's muted, distant-sounding voice, as she folded herself into a paper airplane.

Tara picked up Rachel and gently tossed her across the cavern. "Mmmmmmm," sighed Rachel, finding the sensation of gliding very relaxing. "Again!" she begged upon landing on the ground next to Alyssa, who happily obliged.

"You sound like a kid," laughed Tara after this happened a few more times.

"Hey, it's fun!" Rachel countered. "You should try!" Rachel flattened and folded herself once more, and mentally invited her double to imprint on her.

"Throw me again!" Tara was giggling not long after.

Meanwhile, eager to experiment with her own powers some more, Kat made her hands glow with their blackish-violet power and let loose a few blasts at the ground, each one more powerful than the last. From the effects she observed on solid rock, Kat guessed that her energy blasts were several times more powerful than a jackhammer.

"Stacy, is the noise bothering you?" asked Kat. "I'll stop if you want."

Stacy was meditating, sitting cross-legged in mid-air and glowing bright pink. Her non-response answered Kat's question. Alyssa was sitting on the cavern floor beneath Stacy with her legs out in front of her, leaning against a cushion she didn't even notice was embedded in the wall until she sat down and felt it. For now, she was happy just relaxing and watching everyone enjoy themselves.

"Hmm..." Kat thought for a moment. When she put out energy blasts, it almost felt like something was extending from her for a split second. What if she were to do that more slowly?

Kat looked at her hand and did exactly that, slowly projecting her energy out so it pooled into a blob inside her hand. "Ooh, kinda pretty actually," she grinned as she stared into the blob of floating, glowing goop. Inside its odd glow was a distinct black surface, beneath which were swirling clouds of purple and pink light, with twinkling sparkles that Tara and Rachel would no doubt love. With a bit of focus, Kat reached out with it, and watched as it elongated per her mental cue. To Kat's delight, imagining it as an extension of her arm also had the unintended effect of giving her projection the shape of her hand at the end. "Hey, check this out!" Kat waved to everyone with her projected hand. "Hi!"

"That is so cool!" exclaimed Lily. "How far can you reach with it?"

"Let's see!" Kat reached out further and was able to touch the opposite end of the room with relative ease. After pulling her energy hand back, she stretched her fingers out and elongated them to form a cage around Tara and Rachel, who were sitting on the ground and experimenting with turning parts of their body into rock after having "sparklified" some into them.

"Hey!" laughed Rachel, who reached out and felt the bars. "No way, it's solid! Though I could probably squeeze between these bars if I really wanted."

With a smirk, Kat adjusted her fingers on her outstretched hand, which caused her projected fingers to merge together into a solid wall. After keeping the wall in place for several seconds, she elevated her hand slightly, lifted the wall, and dissipated it into pink mist. "This is so awesome!"

Making both of them glow, Kat tossed her hands out in front of her and projected hands out of energy again. But this time, she spread her fingers, and made her energy hands split in two, so she then had four arms projected, two from each hand. After waving her supernumerary projected limbs around a bit, she clapped her two flesh hands together and merged all four of her energy ones into a giant mallet, which she brought slamming down on the cavern floor, leaving a noticeable dent.

"This is amazing! I can do anything with this!" Dissolving her mallet into the air, Kat stretched an arm toward the opposing wall and shot out a rope of energy, which wrapped snugly around a stalactite at the opposite end of the cavern. "Woooooo!" Kat shouted as she retracted the rope and grappled to the other side at high speed. "These powers are so much fun!"

"All right, I can't wait any more," said Lily. "I've got to see what I can do now."

Lily tried to emulate Kat's power first, as just like how Tara and Rachel had the same power, she figured maybe she'd have the same power as her sister. It was a good guess, but not the correct one, as she discovered. Damn, she thought to herself.

Turning to the best source of inspiration she could think of, Lily retrieved her phone and attempted to search for "list of superpowers" but, being surrounded on all sides by several meters at the very least of solid rock, she was hard-pressed to find a signal. In a vain attempt at finding one, Lily held out her phone in various directions watching for even just one bar. "Can you please just get a connection?" she hissed at her phone, really wanting to discover her new power but at a loss for ideas.

At that moment, Lily noticed her phone glowing bright green, which startled her into dropping it, worried it had somehow become radioactive. As it hit the ground, the glow went away: both the mysterious green glow and the not-so-mysterious glow of the screen.

"Wait...was that me?" Lily gasped. "...I...don't know what I did though..."

"What happened?" Kat asked as she walked over.

"Hold on." Lily knelt down and inspected her phone.  The battery was missing, clearly the cause of the phone shutting off, but the damage was minimal. There was still a problem, however, as Lily didn't see the battery anywhere. "Come on battery, where did you go?" groaned Lily as she searched the cavern floor.

"Lily, look!" Kat was pointing to the battery, which floated in mid-air above the stalagmite it was previously hiding behind, now in plain view. And it glowed green just like her phone did a moment ago.

"Wait, did I..." Lily perked up. "Battery, go in here," she said as she pointed into her phone's battery compartment, taking the risk of looking stupid in case she guessed wrong. Right on command, to Lily's elation, the battery floated over to Lily's phone and set itself securely in the compartment, where it remained, its glow faded. Smiling with ever-increasing delight, Lily nodded at the phone's back cover, and watched as it too floated over and snapped on.

Lily stood up and held out her hand. Her phone glowed and lifted into the air. "Turn on," Lily said as her phone softly landed inside her hand, and the screen promptly lit up.

"Okay, so it looks like I can control things now," Lily announced proudly.

"I see! That's amazing!" cheered Kat.

Tara and Rachel walked over. "Can we see?"

Lily smiled, placed her hand on her hip, and pointed at some scattered rocks on the ground. "Pile up," she instructed. The rocks glowed bright green, and arranged themselves in a neat pyramid-shaped pile.

"Cool!" Rachel marveled.

Lily twirled her finger in the direction of the rocks, which glowed again and spun in a ring formation in mid-air. "Hmm..." Lily smirked and closed her fist hard, causing the rocks to crumble into dust. "Now this? Very cool."

"Bet I can do that too," Kat boasted. Making a show of it, Kat held out her index finger and lit it up, projecting a tendril of energy toward some larger scattered boulders. Giving her finger a little twirl, Kat swung the end of her tendril around the rocks, encasing them in a hollow pyramid of energy and lifting them in the air. After spinning it around a bit, holding her index finger like she was spinning a basketball, Kat simply pointed downwards, gently lowering her construct to the ground and vanishing it into mist, leaving a similar pyramid-shaped pile of rocks even bigger than Lily's. Finally, with her closed fingers on her outstretched hand facing the pile, Kat flashed her eyebrows at Lily for a second, and quickly opened her hand. A miniature explosion of purplish-pink energy blasted the pile apart, throwing rocks haphazardly around the cavern and just missing Stacy's head with one. "Oh...whoops..." Kat said sheepishly.

"My turn!" Lily smiled. "Come here for a sec," she beckoned to one of the boulders, which floated over to her in its green glow. "Can you form...let's say 30 smaller rocks?" Obediently, the rock cracked and broke into exactly 30 smaller segments, by Kat's count. Lily swept her finger in a line in front of her and made the rocks spread out into a row, still in mid-air.

Lily rested both her hands on her hips. "Actually, gonna need a bit more than that," she said, prompting each rock to split itself in half. "Now, who has the coolest powers around?" Dutifully, the rocks rearranged themselves in mid-air to spell "LILY!".

"Mm-hmm!" Lily smirked and crossed her arms in front of her. Turning slightly to the side, she swung out her tail and pointed it at the wall, sending all the rocks flying toward it. Still arranged to spell out Lily's name, they hit the soft clay making up that part of the wall and embedded themselves inside.

"Wait, that's clay, isn't it?" Rachel observed. "Let me try something."

Rachel stood up and walked over to the wall, and Tara followed, knowing what Rachel was doing and wanting to try for herself as well. They reached into the clay deposit without any effort, cutting through the clay with their sparkles rather than displacing or compressing it.

Tara found she was able to stretch her arm much farther if she willed it so, though her arm became thinner and flimsier the farther it went until it fell off entirely. "Oops!" She laughed, having learned from before that this was no big deal.

"Hey Kat, watch this," said Rachel, as Tara went to pick up her arm.

When Kat turned to look, Rachel tucked her head and arms inside her chest until they merged with her torso. Her clothing shifted around, and out popped a new head. When she finished, Rachel looked almost exactly like Kat, only with brown hair, darker skin, and sparkly blue clothing.

"Yeah?" Kat snickered. "So what?"

Rachel looked confused for a second. Closing her eyes, Kat fluidly altered her form to match Rachel's normal look even closer, duplicating her colors as well.

"What? But how did you...oh." Rachel facepalmed. "I sparklified some clay, but I totally forgot about that." Just for fun, Rachel did a twirl, and Kat's colors washed over her.

"I say we just be ourselves for now," Kat smiled. "Less confusing." Both of them shifted back to their regular forms. "That's still pretty awesome though, now you can turn into any shape you want without having to carry around all that clay."

"Huh? ...Oh, right!" Rachel ran back to the clay deposit and put her hand on it again, this time letting herself be absorbed into it instead of the other way around. With its glitter and blue color, it looked like clay from a craft store, not the natural type of clay that would normally be found embedded in a cavern wall.

Rachel's face appeared on the exposed side of the deposit. "Wow, there's a lot more clay here than I thought!" The clay deposit started to wobble as it took on the shape of Rachel's body and stepped out of the wall, easily two or three times her normal size.

Suddenly a loud rumble reverberated throughout the cavern. "Uhh...what's going on???" Tara squealed.

Alyssa stood up and turned toward the area Rachel unearthed, which without the clay to support it, was now collapsing.

When the rocks continued tumbling into the cavern everyone was in, everyone briefly forgot their new powers and acted out of pure instinct to save themselves. Kat and Lily each imprinted on a wall to avoid being crushed. Rachel, still made of clay, ran for the opposite corner and compressed herself inside it as much as she could, eventually moving her being to a smaller part as well. Tara and Alyssa also ran for the corner, remembering at the last second to imprint on something after seeing Rachel there.

Stacy was not so lucky. In her deep meditation, she didn't notice the cave-in until it was too late, and while Stacy's body had long been impervious to just about any injury under the sun (or, in this case, deep underground where there was no sun), there was still one thing from which she hadn't thought to protect herself. So when her head got struck by one of the falling rocks, it jostled her brain and knocked her out cold. While she was thankfully still alive, there was no way to know when—or if—she'd be waking up, especially if they didn't get her to a hospital fast.

But without Stacy's teleportation powers to help them reach one, it was up to Kat, Alyssa, Tara, and Rachel to put their new powers to the test and find their own way out.