"Yeah, but remember—" Kat smirked, and made herself look like the nurse who was caring for Stacy. "That's Sandra to you!" she playfully chided.
Rachel giggled and put her arm around Tara, who was still a little amazed. Alyssa smiled endearingly, and Lily simply didn't react, it being nothing more to her than Kat's usual silliness. Kat shifted back, lit up her hand, and started idly playing with swirls and wisps of energy that danced around her fingers.
"Yeah exactly!" said Alyssa.
"She just said the same thing she did last night though. They noticed something in Stacy's brain, but then it went away."
Alyssa gaped.
"Good to know she's alive; I really hope she makes it," Kat sighed.
"No way, that means..." Alyssa was thinking. "Her name...and then what happened on the TV...Stacy!"
Kat mimicked Stacy's appearance now. "Yes?" she replied, giggling.
"Kat, do you realize what's likely happening?" Alyssa implored.
"Kat? Who's Kat? It's me, Anistasia!"
"Oh wow 'Stacy', glad to see you're awake!" Lily teased. "This is Kat." She changed her own appearance to look like her sister. "I'll let Sandra know you're having memory issues." Lily nodded to the phone, causing the screen to light up.
"Upper South Facet Hospital, this is Sandra," came a voice from the phone.
Tara and Rachel looked at each other confused, as did Kat and Alyssa.
"Uhh...Lily?" said Kat.
"Yes, I have Stacy here, and she—"
"Okay fine!" Kat shifted back to normal.
"—thinks she's my sister!" Lily continued, smirking.
"Lily, are you crazy?" asked Alyssa. "Sandra, don't listen to her."
"Oops, gotta go!" Lily snapped her fingers, hanging up the call.
Everyone stared at Lily.
"Eh, I guess I shouldn't joke about her health," Lily conceded. "Sorry."
"....So, are you gonna call the hospital back now or....?" Tara asked, thinking it the obvious thing to do.
Lily smirked, pointed her finger at the phone and moved her lips without talking. "Hi, this is Sandra. We're celebrating National Lily Appreciation Day at the hospital! Care to join us?" came Sandra's voice from the phone. "Heheh," Lily snickered.
"...Oh." Alyssa sighed and shook her head, with a bit of a laugh.
"So..." Rachel began.
"We're gonna look around Facet a bit," Tara continued. "Anyone wanna go with us?"
"Actually I was hoping to see if we could find out more about...that company," Alyssa suggested.
"Which one?" asked Lily.
"I think she means...what were they—the company that makes the barriers," Kat explained. "These things." Kat held out her hand and created in mid-air an image of a nondescript box surrounded by laser beams.
"Yes, them," confirmed Alyssa.
"Yeah..." Rachel agreed. "They probably know what's going on here; remember this?" Rachel placed her hand in front of Tara's face, and Tara froze up, unable to do anything. Rachel giggled and lowered her hand.
"Please don't do that again," said Tara.
"Sorry."
"Oh my God," said Kat. "I forgot about that!"
"Rach, you got anything else out of that thing?" asked Lily.
"Hmmm..." Rachel closed her eyes and reached deep into the collection of characteristics and abilities she had picked up.
Rachel opened her eyes. "Here, let me do this," she said. Rachel shrank down to a tiny size, and split into eight separate parts, each of which attached itself to a corner of the bed. Glittering blue laser beams appeared connecting them.
"Haha, the bed's safe now!" Kat joked.
"Eh, only as safe as anything that depends on your own body cooperating against your will," Lily cautioned. "Case in point," Lily said boastfully, falling backwards inside of the bed, giving it a cool green and black color scheme with a pillow shaped like a stylized skull. "Tada," said Lily's face.
"Whoa, what—" came Rachel's voice. "That was weird, why did I—"
"Couldn't stop me, huh?" Lily winked, reappearing on top of the bed as its colors returned to normal.
"Hmm, I wonder what this does?" Rachel wondered. Her laser beams shut off for a second, before turning back on in a brighter shade of blue.
"Whoa whoa whoa!" Tara, Alyssa, and Lily felt the surface of the bed give way, before suddenly falling inside, each of them making sure to keep themselves in a separate part of the bed.
Kat, who was sitting in a chair reading something on her phone, turned around. "What's going on? Are you all—" As Kat's hand touched the bed, she suddenly found herself being pulled inside, naturally gravitating to a spot right near Alyssa, the line between them blurring somewhat. "That was weird, I—what the hell, I can't get out!"
"You can't?" said Rachel's voice. "Sorry, that was me, one sec..." Rachel returned to human form, sitting on the bed on top of Tara's spot. Everyone else came back out as well.
"Phew, glad we're not trapped," said Alyssa. "What was that?"
"I'm not too sure myself; felt like it was some other mode I could switch to or something."
Lily got out her phone and started idly browsing the Internet.
"But why?" asked Alyssa. "Kat, you've never seen it?"
Kat shook her head. "Never."
"Hold on, let me see what else I can do," said Rachel.
Everyone else instinctively backed away.
"Haha, don't worry, I'll be careful!" Rachel promised.
Rachel transformed again, this time only changing the tip of her index finger. A soft blue beam of light came out, which Rachel tentatively touched with her other hand.
"Oh wow, this feels really nice!" Rachel smiled. "Feel this!" She pointed the beam at Tara.
"Ooh, I love that!" Tara exclaimed. "Real invigorating!"
Kat looked up. "Wait, did you—" Kat felt the beam. "Yeah, you did, didn't you..." Kat sighed, with a bit of a smile. "I hope those things aren't expensive."
"You know they're not," said Lily, without looking up from her phone.
"No, not the barrier. At the hospital," Kat clarified. "She absorbed one of the healing rays..."
Rachel and Tara looked at each other in confusion.
"Ha! No kidding?" Lily laughed. "That'll come in handy!"
"No I didn't," Rachel objected. "I was just experimenting with the other thing, from before."
"You sure?" asked Kat. "That's exactly what that felt like."
"Maybe it uses the same kind of technology," Tara suggested. "If so then that would explain why she could do it."
"Does it?" asked Alyssa. "Maybe they have some information about—"
Lily sighed. "Nope. Just looked it up."
"That was fast," said Tara.
"I know," Lily winked.
"Let me guess..." said Kat.
"Yep," said Lily. "Only one company. Guess who."
"So I guess Tara was probably right then," said Rachel. "Hey, where's this company's factory?"
"Maybe we could sneak in and take a peek," Tara winked.
"I doubt they're listed anywhere," said Lily. "I can hardly find anything on them."
Rachel transformed her entire body again, the same way as before. "This is really weird," she opined. "Usually I can tell how something I absorbed works, at least at some level. But with this...I got nothing."
"Whoa," Kat exclaimed. "You mean they actually took measures against powers like yours?"
"I don't think so," said Tara. "Then she probably wouldn't be able to use its functions like she did."
"My thoughts exactly," said Rachel, sharing a knowing smile with Tara. "Also, it feels less like something is preventing me, and more like there's nothing to learn from it. It's like....how do I put this..."
"You don't feel anything making it do what it does because there's nothing to feel," Tara explained. "What it does, it just does."
"Thanks!" Rachel smiled cutely.
"I agree with what Lily said though," she added. "It definitely doesn't feel like I did anything to you. More like..." Rachel contemplated how to put her feeling into words.
"Like you were sending out some kind of...instruction of some kind, right Rach?"
"Yep," Rachel replied as she put her arm around Tara.
"What's this company called?" asked Alyssa. "Maybe I can find something."
"It's weird," said Lily. "I hadn't really thought about it before but I don't know. I don't even know if it's a company."
"You mean like some secretive branch of the government or something?" asked Tara.
Lily looked confused by Tara's question. "The more I research this, the more I feel like...like there isn't a manufacturer," Lily explained. "But there has to be."
"Let me see something," said Kat. "Be back in a sec." Kat did a pirouette towards the window, turning into a swirling mist of stars shaped vaguely like her silhouette,
The four others watched as Kat darted through the window, zipping through Facet and across the ocean as a bolt of violet light. Stars briefly twinkled in the air as Kat spread her search all throughout the planet. Then, a minute later, Kat reformed, in her human body, sitting on the bed.
"Okay wow, that...felt incredible," Kat said breathlessly. "Just...wow. I never thought I could spread myself so thin...so far."
"You looked awesome," Rachel smiled.
"Oh, definitely!" Alyssa said as she took Kat in a tight embrace.
"What did you see?" asked Tara.
"Everything...but nothing," Kat said, in disbelief herself.
"Huh?" said Alyssa.
"If this company exists, I would have seen them," Kat went on. "The companies that sell this stuff...it's like they're all buying from each other, like an endless loop. There's no factory where it's produced. No source, unless...if there is, it's not in this world."
Alyssa, Tara, and Rachel all gasped. "It's from our world??"
"Ooh, maybe!" said Kat. "Like the weird stuff we saw earlier—except..." Kat frowned. "Wait a minute, no," she said. "Unless Stacy's like, 'forever' years old or something. Actually, wouldn't put it past her."
"She's not," laughed Alyssa. "I would've noticed when I was in her body. Would it have to be her though?"
Kat once again turned pink with envy, still jealous of her girlfriend having had that experience. "I mean, probably. Unless it's a different world."
"If our world is part of Stacy's mind..." Tara joked. "...Maybe this world is part of Alyssa's," Rachel finished, laughing.
"Ha, that would be weird," said Lily. "Another endless loop!"
"Actually that would explain all of the weird stuff Alyssa can do, even here..." Tara realized.
"I don't...think so," said Alyssa. "I've never really done much of imagining myself in another world like she did. She might have just been tapping into our world somehow anyway; doesn't mean she created it."
Alyssa, Tara, and Rachel looked to Kat.
"Not that I've seen," she said.
The phone rang again. "Call from Nitanni, Alyssa." Everyone's eyes immediately fell on Lily.
"That's not me," Lily insisted. "It's not you either?" she asked Alyssa.
"No," Alyssa said incredulously. "Why would I be calling...wait a minute, that's my phone ringing!" She got it out and answered it.
"Hello?"