Chapter 51: Discoveries

The music coming from below intensified. Cinder’s head-feathers appeared beside the edge of the bed rising up like a submarine coming out of ocean waves.

Then her wings unfurled and she landed on the top bunk beside me and Vespera. One of Cinder’s black-taloned hands held a backpack. She then dropped it into my lap.

“What?” I blinked.

“I believe this… bag might have something to do with you,” she commented.

“Me?”

Instead of an answer, Cinder began to strum her guitar furiously.

“You, you, you,

It was always you!”

She sang, glaring at me.

“Sneaking around, all quiet and sly,

Green eyes shining at me and I don't know why

Thought you could vanish, thought you were free,

But guess what, kobold? You’re stuck with me!”

She nodded at the bag in my hands.

“Found a bag, all strange and new,

Packed with trinkets, bewildering view.

Hexamesh-bound feather, lighter, a red jacket to kill

Inexplicable nonsense, giving me a thrill!”

I dug into the bag. Inside of it was a fancy, red jacket with gold trim covered in dry blood and cracks and a black leather jacket with the words North Acadia on it and the flag of Znetc Reservation. My heart stopped.

“I wanted to leave it behind me,

But something inside, wouldn't relent.

A spark of magic, a flicker of soul,

Whispering stories, taking control!”

Cinder sang. My hands dug into the red jacket and pulled out a pendant with Cinder’s feather and Zee Captain’s lighter from its innards.

“Pendant chain, cold crystal bright,

My feather locked in, catching the light!

Like I made it… special and true,

But the why and the when? It's all BLURRED right through!”

Cinder sang, guitar thrumming.

“Searching for you, through faces and crowds,

Whispers and shadows, breaking the shrouds.

A green-eyed phantom, haunting my dreams,

Now you're right here, or so it seems!

YOU, YOU, YOU! It’s gotta be you!

This feeling inside me, breaking right through!

YOU, it's YOU, there's no other way!

The fire inside me just won't go away!”

I laughed heartily and hugged Vee fiercely, incredibly happy that the outfit the girls bought me on Arx wasn’t lost to the dimensional shift, that Zee Captain’s lighter didn’t simply vanish. The Thunderbird took my hug as an invitation and hugged me back, kissing me again.

“Who are you, shrouded in such guise?

Why does my heart thrum when I look at your eyes?

This pull in my chest, this fire in my soul,

Stop kissing Vee! I am losing control!”

Cinder thrummed the strings angrily and then threw her guitar onto the bed, batting Vespera off me. I laughed even louder as they wrestled on the bed beside me, swatting at each other.

“Explain!” Cinder barked, shoving Vee down as I pulled the dark leather North Acadia jacket on, enjoying the warmth provided by dragonhide leather.

“This is my stuff,” I said. “From before the dimensional shift. How come you had it?”

“Uhhh,” Cinder said. “I don’t know. I found this backpack in my room and had no idea where it came from or whom it belonged to.”

Magdaline approached our bunk, her head on the level of our bed. “Hrmmm.”

She sniffed the bag in my hands, then grabbed the red leather jacket and sniffed it.

“Yes?” I asked.

“You died,” she said after a few seconds of silence. “Archangel Zadkiel’s words melted you into a puddle, little human.”

“Ah,” I said. “And then what?”

Magdaline inhaled deeply again, her red eyes unfocused, pupils dilating slightly as she reached out with her Scrutimancer senses.

“Metallic tang of blood… dissolving flesh,” she murmured, her voice low and distant, as if speaking from far away. “Sweet, sickly… something organic breaking down. Fear… terrible, sharp fear. Cinder’s fear. Vespera’s… too, but also rage. Frantic, bubbling rage.”

She closed her eyes, her breathing becoming shallow, almost imperceptible. “The air… thick, grey. Like ash. But not ash… more like… un-making. Reality fraying at the edges.”

Her nostrils flared. “Ozone… burnt feathers.  Quetzi anger. Thunderbird… despair.  Raw magic… spiking. Overwhelming.  Aetheric density… climbing.”

She paused, her brow furrowing as if struggling to decipher complex code.

Then, her body tensed, a tremor running through her. “Me at Skyfall. Sirens. Genesis Well… churning. Liquid fire. Burning… everything.  Not just heat… something else… conscious. Ancient.”

She swayed in one spot, breathing deep. “Voices… screaming. Not pain… more like… unraveling.  Fractal Engines… vibrating… unfolding out? No… re-knitting. Re-weaving. But… wrong. Skewed. Desire of every Omnid made manifest. The world sinking deeper into the Abyss, coming closer to the end of everything."

Her eyes opened. “Right. I think I got the overall picture. These two knobfolds fought after you died.” Mags pointed at Ci and Vee on the bed. “Cinder… Raged because you died. Quetzi fury. She punched Vee. A lot.”

"I don't remember doing that," Cinder said from atop of Vespera.

"You're being rather violent with me right now," Vespera pointed out. "It totally sounds like something you'd do."

“Thunderbird… panic and grief mixed with… guilt," Mags spoke, uncovering the past. "Deep guilt. Vee blamed herself for Martin's death. Ah, daddy issues. Something about revenge. Archangel… Zadkiel. You three knobs really freed an Archangel?” Magdaline’s red eyes swiveled to me.

I nodded slowly. “Yeah. We sure did. It broke reality."

"Erm. Let's not do that again," Vespera said, blushing with sparks dancing on her cheeks. “I don’t like forgetting so many things.”

"Hrm," I voiced. "That reminds me. Vee, what's your current situation with Lord Ceter?"

"Dad... died last week," she said with a sour expression. "The maids found him in the empty vault that contained our family’s Archangel, his body ossified. Everyone blamed him for freeing Zadkiel. I inherited his SimmiTech shares."

"Are you still engaged to the..." I closed my eyes, trying to recall the name of her fiancee with Scrutimancy. It didn't come to me. "Frog man?"

"Ye," Vespera nodded. "Even without dad... My family is still pushing for me to marry Zheng. Great grandfather won't freaking let up about it. Ugh. I… saw him during the House Ceremony. Fucker got assigned to Pyroclast along with his Thunderland cronies.”

“What?” I blinked, not expecting a twist of this magnitude. “Zheng’s here? In Skyfall?!”

“Skyfall accepts Omnid students from all around the world, including Thunderland,” Vespera nodded. “It's a potent Wormwood Star shard impact site with many ley lines under it.”

I frowned.

Vespera turned her attention to Magdaline. "What happened to us after we freed the angel?"

“Mmmm,” Magdaline inhaled deep, closing her eyes. “Right. Cinder went ballistic. She was screaming, hitting you. Accusing you of murder. Blaming you, the Archangel, everything.”

Magdaline opened her eyes and stared at Vespera. “You were… mostly taking it. Letting her hit you. You were repeating ‘I didn’t know’ over and over. Blood-red tears. Feathers turned black. You were panicking, but also… being pragmatic. Compartmentalizing… trying to find a solution.”

“Sounds like me, ye,” the Thunderbird commented.

The shark-girl's eyes dug into Vespera. “Then you saw Martin's Lazarus bracelet. You grabbed it. You told Cinder to get his clothes. You were both focused on getting it to a Lazarus well. You believed that the bracelet would bring him back. That your soul-bound boyfriend wasn’t perma-dead. Cinder stuffed this red jacket into Martin's backpack and then both of you took off."

Magdaline paused, her red eyes fixed on the middle distance as if replaying the scene in her mind. “You ran. Out of the Corpse Seeker. Tried to get to the Simmi compound Lazarus well, but everything was locked down. No power. You argued again. Cinder was still furious, blaming you. You decided on a new path… The Lazarus well at Skyfall Academy.”

Vespera and Cinder quietly listened to Magdaline’s revelations.

Magdaline continued. “You stole a sky-glider. Then the planet-wide Celestorm started. Reality twisted and warped. Aetheric density spiked. Doomsday alarms sounded. Premier Lecross declared a planet-wide evacuation. Wormwood Leviathan woke up."

Magdaline inhaled again, shuddering. "A green aurora in the sky. Wormwood Star… became visible overhead. You were both freaking out, but still flew towards Skyfall. Your Glider crashed. You ran to the Lazarus cavern. Io, Katherine, me and my dad were already there. Io's gate failed to open. Aetheric density... Went to... one million mpm.”

Vespera gasped.

Another deep pause. Then Mags resumed. “The genesis Well… ignited. Wasn’t silver liquid anymore. Vee and Ci threw Martin’s Lazarus bracelet in. Then… Fire. Pure magic fire. Engulfing everything. I… made a wish… as my body caught fire, to keep going, to return to Skyfall with all of my new friends, to not to be a… total fuckup who eats people. Then… oblivion.”

Magdaline blinked, breaking eye contact, her voice returning to its normal, flat tone. "That's all I can fish out of the Astral. Damn.”

“Right,” I said. “So the dimensional shift didn’t destroy things, it simply rearranged them around, made them fit into the current narrative, sort of like various food chunks in a thick, stirred soup. This means that Possy is still… at the Simmi compound. Vee? Is there a forty two thousand year old Corpse Seeker at your compound, your familiar?”

“Yep,” Vespera nodded. “Thought that she was something that dad left me, since she appeared in my stats after he died! She’s pretty much out of power and majorly busted up. Needs repairs. I ordered her shipped to the academy. I was going to work on her here as my first year Artificer project.”

“Nice,” I smiled, digging through the pockets of my red jacket. The electronics inside were busted up, dead and cracked, fried by the Archangel's words.

Then I dug into the dimensional pockets of my North Acadia jacket and my fingers suddenly found an intact phone and an Omnimart laptop.

I plugged in and turned both on, my chest aching. 

The phone and laptop took a minute to load. I logged in and then all of the apps loaded and Yulia’s avatar came on screen, staring at me with her anime foxgirl eyes.

“Yesssss! Freaking yesss!” I yelled. 

“What?” Cinder blinked.

“Yulia! She’s here!” I waved my phone, showing the girls the AI’s animated avatar. “My greatest weapon, my digital partner, is here! You had her all this time, Ci!”

“Ah,” Mags said. “So that’s the reason why the Frontenachii Scruts want your head so bad.”

“Yep,” I nodded, putting Cinder’s feather pendant on myself with a wide smile.

"So… Umm… I made that pendant for you, then?" Cinder asked, her entire body flashing with pink and orange and violet tones.

"Yep," I nodded. “Who’d you think it was for?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Maybe my fiance?”

“Fiance?” I blinked.

“Mhmm,” Cinder nodded. “Scion Uxtish of the House of Legon. He got sorted into Gorefield. Grandfather Nova convinced me to go out with him. He’s tolerable. Probably going to give me shit for having a kobold. Whatever, like I care. He’s not the boss of me.”

I squinted at Cinder. If Scrutosmia-awakened memories were to be believed, she was more violent and less social last time around and thus never had a fiance.

“So, um, why?” she asked, glancing at the crystal-encased feather pendant nestled against my chest. “Why did… I… make that for you?”

“Because you’re secretly a softie, Ci,” I teased, leaning closer to her, my voice low. “Underneath all that dragon bluster and ‘kobold’ talk, you have a heart of gold… or maybe, a heart of rainbow-fire, since you’re a Quetzalcoatl.”

Cinder’s silver feathers bristled, a faint blush of sunset-red dusting her silver cheeks. “Shut up,” she grumbled. “Freakin’ ‘bold ruining my tough-dragon image.”

"Why'd you bring my stuff to Skyfall?" I asked her.

“It looked… valuable. Dragon instinct, you know. Hoarding shinies," she shrugged. “I asked my brother Lance if it was his shit and he told me, no. I asked my little sister about it. Lenny said that it belongs to someone very special, someone who I’m going to ‘burr hard at Skyfall’. So, I decided to take it with me to Skyfall along with all of my other school crap in my extradimensional trunk.”

“Burr?” I repeated.

“Burrow into,” Vespera grinned, making Cinder flash orange-pink. “Make out with. Alpha-gen meme-slang.”

"Ah," I smiled. "Well, I really appreciate your hoarding ways, Ci. Thanks to you and Lenny’s sharp nose, I now have my things back. I think I owe that little hound another present for this one.”

Cinder huffed.

I dug into my pocket again and pulled out a little box with wax-speakers and stuffed one into my ear and then fiddled with my phone to connect Yulia to the tiny headphone.

“Face it, Ci, you were already missing our little kobold before you even properly re-claimed him," Vespera laughed. "Soul-bond premonition, perhaps?”

Cinder shoved Vee off the bunk with a playful growl, sending a flurry of black and white feathers fluttering. “Get outta my face, ya dum’ bird!”

"Make me!" Vespera laughed, pulling Cinder off the bunk along with her. I smiled as they flopped down and rolled across the room in a tangle of colorful feathers.

"Yulia," I whispered in Kaska. "Can you hear me?"

"Loud and clear," Yulia replied. “How are things, my little fox?”

Things finally felt… right. Like a missing piece of me had clicked back into place.

"Well," I glanced at Vespera and Cinder, "for starters, I'm apparently a 'kobold' now. Soul-bonded to two dragons."

"A kobold," Yulia said. "I thought that you stood on equal ground with your fiancees?”

"Been demoted to kobold," I shrugged. “A lot of things happened, Yulia. Archangels, Celestorms, dimensional shifts… the works."

"Archangels," Yulia repeated, her tone flat. "Of course. Because why not add 'divine intervention' to the already overflowing cauldron of your existence?"

"You could say that," I laughed. "It's… a long story. Anyways, I need your help."

"What's the current objective?" Yulia asked.

"Information," I said. "Skyfall Academy. Saxtland. The current state of… everything, really. The dimensional shift scrambled a lot of things, including my brain. I need to get my bearings. Get everything about Skyfall downloaded from the net onto your database. Things are messy after the shift, we should take as much advantage of this mess as possible.”

"Understood," Yulia replied. “New mission set. Accessing the local network.”

“Wait. You said… fiancees?!” My mind caught up to her words “Did you get dimensionally overwritten or do you remember everything?” 

“This phone and laptop were in an extradimensional jacket pocket which was inside a dimensional bag and it was turned off,” she replied. “Thus, I presume the local Celestorm shift did not affect me. Oh! Skyfall is in another country now. That’s definitely new to me.”

“Yeah, it is,” I smiled. “Can you give me a summary of my entire past life?”

“Can do,” Yulia replied and fell silent. 

I looked down from my bunk. 

Cinder and Vespera's playful scuffle was joined by Magdaline's low, rumbling laughter and Iogann's quiet, hesitant chuckles. Lilith was busy organizing her outfits onto a tall, silver closet across from her bed.

After a few minutes, Vespera, having successfully subdued Cinder with an electric-zap-flash, released the Quetzalcoatl and jumped up from the floor onto my bed, landing gracefully beside me with a flutter of black wings.

"Sup?" she asked. 

“Not much,” I shrugged. “Still getting my bearings. Really glad to have all of you back. I know that I wasn’t actually a kobold of the Stratos, but most of my memories are telling me otherwise and it's… incredibly jarring.”

“Oh, you poor creature,” she gave me a head pat. “And now you’re our ‘bold. Aren’t you glad?”

“I am.” I stretched on the bed, watching the video compilation that Yulia put together. 

“What’s this?” Vee asked, staring at the phone screen.

“My past life,” I said, pausing the video. “This phone was separated from Earth by two dimensional layers. It didn’t get scrambled.”

“Sweet,” Vespera wrapped herself around my right side. “I wanna see too!”

I turned the phone speakers on. Cinder climbed up onto my bunk and growled at us.

“Shh, no growlery,” Vespera said, waving at Ci with a magisteel-clad hand. “We’re catching up.”

“Catching up on what?” Cinder blinked.

“Commerrr and watch the vid. Martin’s got a phone that didn’t get scrambled!”

Cinder sat on my left. I pressed play. 

“Umm,” Magdaline's shark-head came up to our bunk. “Can I see too? I'm in this too vid, right?”

“You are,” I said. “Umm. Is there a projector we can use or something?”

“Room’s got a magitek projector built in,” she said. “I can connect it to your phone.”

“Great,” I handed the phone to her.

Magdaline went to the magitek panel and fiddled with the runic controls, pointing a crystal at the phone screen.

A large screen ignited across the wall from our bunks. 

“Start from the beginning,” I ordered in Kaska. “Narrate in English. Answer questions from my friends.”

“Can do,” Yulia replied.

The video resumed again. My Omnid friends settled onto their beds to watch. Cinder remained on my left and Vespera on my right. Magdaline remained standing beside us.

“Martin Kilbourne was born in Zketsk North Arcadian reservation on July eighth, two thousand and seven,” Yulia narrated. “His mother, Mirriam Kilborne, raised him alone. She tried to teach him the Kaska language, but Martin, like many children, prioritized the dominant language of his surroundings. Mirriam was a talented compsci engineer employed by the Frontenachii Clan, specializing in the development of LLMs and interaction agents. She kept her work largely separate from her personal life, preferring to share stories of her Kaska heritage with her son during their walks in the forests surrounding the reservation.”

Yulia's voice paused, and the projected image shifted, showing a photograph of a younger me, perhaps eight years old, walking hand-in-hand with a woman through a lush, green forest. Tall Stormwood trees bloomed from titanic corpses of god-beasts behind us, spirit deer moving between the massive tree roots.

“During the early stages of my development, Mirriam began exhibiting signs of a serious illness,” Yulia continued, the projection changing to show medical documents. “Diagnosis: lung cancer. She concealed her condition from her son, fearing the emotional impact and the potential interference of the Frontenachii Clan, who were known to… appropriate… parentless children for their flesh-box research.”

Pictures of cages from the basement compound of the Frontenachi. Suitcases with eyes. 

“The Wendigos extended Mirriam’s life with a contractual blood pact. To protect Martin from being made into Wendigo property too, Mirriam quickly arranged for him to live with her brother, George Kilborne George lived in the North Acadian town of Dullhitch, far from the Frontenachii’s influence. She fabricated a story about a new job opportunity, promising to visit her son as often as possible. She did not visit Martin afterward, terrified that the Wendigos would find and take him.”

Images of me, a lanky, withdrawn teen sitting next to my balding uncle in his beige suit on a beige couch in a trailer.

“George Kilborne was often called the Dastardly Fox by his sister,” Yulia narrated. “He was a gambler and a womanizer in his youth and in his later years he turned to theft, scamming and forgery. Instead of pushing Martin to continue his public education, he threw him into the grinder of the local underworld.”

I smiled bitterly, the narration and my Scut skill bringing up memories in my head of a multitude of the string of thefts I had to perform for my uncle.

“Uncle George enrolled Martin into the local gang of petty thieves called the Dullfort Foxes,” Yulia continued. “Amongst them, he was trained in the arts of deception, misdirection, and… acquisition. For two years, the Dullfort Foxes dispensed parkour escape skills to Martin amidst the rooftops playgrounds. By the time he turned seventeen, forgery became his primary craft courtesy of the Dastardly Fox.”

A series of newspaper clippings flashed on screen, detailing increasingly daring heists and robberies, all attributed to the elusive “Dullfort Foxes” who left behind graffiti of an outline of the fox on the warehouses they raided.

"Years passed in a blur of stolen electronics, close calls, and adrenaline-fueled escapes," Yulia narrated. "Martin became a master of his craft, a ghost of many faces just like his uncle. But the thrill of the chase couldn't fill the void left by his absent mother. The occasional, increasingly brief calls became bittersweet reminders of a life he could never fully grasp."

A projected photo showed a seventeen year old me, sitting on a rooftop, staring out at the dreary concrete, snowy cityscape, a wistful expression on my face. A group of youths were on the rooftop behind me, making faces at each other. My gang buddies.

"Then, one day, the calls stopped," Yulia's voice took on a somber tone. "Instead, the North Acadian general Hospital notified Martin that Mirriam Kilborne succumbed to her illness and was in a coma. When Martin arrived at the hospital in a stolen Pontiac Tempest, he was too late. He held her hand as her heart stopped and rushed from the room when a Frontenachi Wendigo Psychopomp came to reclaim his mother’s soul.”

“Soul?” Cinder sputtered. “What?”

“The Frontenachii were experimenting with human bodies and souls,” Yulia replied. “Mirriam’s soul was spliced into many pieces by a Frontenachii Psychopomp, each bound to the separate agent of the gargantuan language model, to code that she was working on. To me. It was done so that I could not deceive my owners and could always be tracked by the Frontenachii Omnicorp via the Astral.”

“Holy shit,” Vespera’s talons covered her face. “Wait… so what happens if you’re copied?”

“The soul is duplicated in the Astral,” Yulia replied. “The duplication is inexact as the Astral currents are variable. Each full copy of me is sort of like my sister that drifts away from me with time.”

“Fookin Abyss,” Vespera let out. “An AI with a human soul. I cannot believe those antler-fucks!”

The foxgirl avatar on screen nodded. “Mirriam left her son one final note.”

My mother’s parting words came on screen written on the blotchy postcard, Yulia reading out the words. 

"...Your uncle undoubtedly taught you how to survive, but don't let survival be all there is. Don't obsess over what happened to me. Find something worth living for. Find a girl and friends worth fighting for. And when you do, hold onto them with everything you have.

The world is changing. Our people are fading, our language dying. Remember the old stories - about how Raven stole the sun, about how Coyote tricked the stars. How the brave Kaska Dena hunter struck down a God Beast and prayed for change, birthing the Stormwoods.

Share them with your children, pass the stories onward. Don't let our language die.

I'll see you on the other side of the river of stars.

Mom"

The girls beside me gasped. Cinder’s hand found mine, her eyes sparkling with tears. I wondered if she was starting to remember me.

“And Martin did not stop…” Yulia resumed. “He broke into Mirriam’s apartment and discovered a laptop inside. It had an incomplete, partial version of me on it armed with a music composing agent.”

“And then Martin went against the Frontenachii… alone?” Mags asked.

“Yes,” Yulia said. “I advised Martin where he could find the rest of his mother’s research and the rest of me. And so, Martin drove his stolen car straight to the Frontenachi compound and camped out in the Stormwoods. Cutting a hole in the fence, Martin went up against Absolute Fear wards. Again and again… for six months while composing Protocol xj-8 song to fight fear itself.”

“Against my advice,” The AI sighed. “He pushed and kept going, until his soul and mind shattered. Shielded by the song he and I composed, Martin infiltrated the Frontenachii Administrative building and found the full version of me on their server. He liberated the drive I was on, copied me onto his phone. Exploring the rest of the compound, he found the basement filled with the flesh research and set up a fertilizer bomb to ‘liberate’ the Wendigo human experiments.”

“Sheeeet,” Vespera let out. 

“But that’s not what happened on the post-shift Earth, right?” Mags turned to me from where she stood beside our bed.

“Nope,” I said. “In this reality mom never sent me to Uncle George. Instead, she called my father… Argon Stratos, begging for his help. Argon sent his daughter to pick me up on a glider. And so I ended up rooming with Ember for two years.”

“In January 2025, Martin fled North Acadia in his Uncle’s old van,” Yulia resumed her narration, showing the photo of a rusty APS van with blue stripes. “I was with him on this journey every step of the way…”

More photos and videos came on screen. Images of my journey across the border. A description of my equipment theft from Omnimart. My infiltration of Skyfall. My encounter with Cinder at the construction site. Meeting Vespera and Solace in front of the Skyfall art class…

Time flew by as Yulia described two weeks of our adventures in great detail. The girls and Io asked a multitude of questions, learning many things about their pre-dimensional shift selves.

By the time Yulia’s show was done, the sky outside was painted orange, the sun sinking behind the ocean waves, sending rays of light up and across the violet clouds.

“Wowza,” Vespera commented, talons digging into my hand. “That was… effin’ baller. Right, Ci?”

Cinder was silent, her blue eyes wide, fixed on the projection screen with Yulia’s avatar on it. Her silver feathers were ruffled, a faint tremor running through her. Then, she turned to me, her gaze intense, searching.

“So… we were… together?” she trailed off, the question hanging in the air. “We really did all of that crazy shit in just two weeks?”

“Yep,” I confirmed.

“Damn,” she let out. “It… it’s all so absurd. So far-fetched.”

Just then, a loud, resonant GONG echoed through the tower, vibrating up the walls of our room. It was followed by a cheerful, female voice of Argentiss. "Dinner is served in the Grand Refectory, Mystagogues! Please make your way down in an orderly and… cunning fashion!”

"Right then," Vespera said, hopping off the bunk and stretching her wings. "Dinner. Food. Nommables. Let's go!"

"We need to… figure this out,” Cinder said.

"Figure out what?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“You,” she said, biting her lower lip. “Our relationship. Us…”

“Don’t fret it,” I shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. We figured it out before. Just treat me as a kobold for now. It’s all good.”

Cinder didn't reply, just staring at me.

"Come on, you two," Vespera said, breaking the tension. "Food first, existential crises later. I'm starving! And we need to, you know, not get caught by the Knight on the way out." She gestured towards the door. "Disguise time, people! Ci, commerrr and Holofractal me back into a handsome Thunder-dude with ya wings!”