Chris and his little cousin Lydia, now stuck in each other’s bodies, struggle to deal with the change. And Chris soon learns that the super-powered dangers of Faraday City look a lot more menacing from the perspective of a defenseless young girl!

Identity Crisis: Adventures in Babysitting

By Jenny North

Echelon sat on a large rock, his hulking metallic body slumped forward as he turned his ankle this way and that.

"Vee, me boot's bothering me again," he complained.

Vagabond leaned against a nearby tree as he picked some dirt from beneath his fingernails. "Lolo, that there's not your boot, it's your foot. I am legiterally baffled that all o' them surgeries to install those cyborg implants didn't make more of an impression."

"Yeah," Echelon said absently. "Me foot's bothering me again," he complained.

They sat there quietly for a moment.

"Vee, what's the score, again?"

Vagabond sighed heavily. "Lolo, it is an ongoin' source of fascination to me how you phrase these interrogatives. Now, on account of I'm a gentleman, I will refrain from mentionin' my own takedown count, except to say that it is not an insignificant number. However, in answer to your unspoken question, I will propound that the score with which you should be concerned is your own. Which remains steady at zero."

"I took down that one hero just the other day."

"That was last week. We restarted."

Echelon kicked the dirt. "Hardly seems fair. I soften 'em up and then you knock 'em out. I'd take down more heroes if I could move faster. But I can't, on account of this busted boot."

"Well, it's a poor craftsman what blames his tools, innit?"

The two of them fell quiet again.

Then, out of nowhere, a girl's high-pitched shriek came from above them, followed by a cacophony of broken branches as a blue-and-purple brunette missile slammed through the limbs of the tree and impacted on the ground immediately in front of Echelon. On top of the dazed heroine was a little girl in a pink costume with pigtails who was clinging on to her for dear life.

"That's two!" Echelon declared.

I don't have a clear recollection of our landing, so I can't say this definitively, but there's a fair chance that I was saved by Prodigious Girl's boobs. I do recall thinking that they helped cushion what was otherwise an extremely rough impact.

I did know for a fact that Lydia's little body was not built to take this kind of punishment. For the second time in only a few minutes, I found myself getting shakily to my feet. Lydia was laid out on the ground barely conscious after having carved out an impressive divot in the pavement, but at least she seemed to be breathing.

That's when it hit me. We'd lost the body swapper. He could be absolutely anywhere by now. And without him, we were stuck.

Permanently.

"Oh, shit," I said to myself as the magnitude of that seeped in.

"Y'all best watch your language there, missy," an extremely familiar voice said behind me.

I turned around slowly and adjusted my little plastic mask that had come askew on my face. Vagabond and Echelon. I hadn't fully registered their presence, but now as my mental faculties started to catch up with me, I realized that they'd been arguing about something. But now, they were both staring directly at me.

"Ohhh, shit," I repeated.

Vagabond wagged a reproving finger at me. "Little lady, you'd best clean up your act," he warned. Then he leaned slightly to peer past me at Lydia on the ground. "What all's the story here? What is this, 'Take Your Daughter to Work Day' or somethin'? Couldn't your momma there find a sitter?"

I put my hands on my hips. "She's not my mom. I'm the babysitter."

Vagabond and Echelon looked at each other.

"Well, that there jus' raises more questions," Echelon said.

"Uggh," I heard Lydia groan as she started to come around.

Vagabond cracked his knuckles. "All righty. Gotta say, she seemed a sensible sort, but we all know where this is headin'. May as well skip on over to the inevitable culmination," he said as dark energy started to ripple down his arms into his hands, and he began to take aim at Lydia.

"Wait!" I yelled. "You can't do that!"

He looked puzzled. "'Course I can."

Lydia was holding her head in her hand, clearly still shaking off her multiple injuries as she struggled to get her bearings.

"She's not...ready," I said weakly. Clearly, I wasn't exactly operating in top mental form yet, myself.

Vagabond seemed slightly taken aback by that. He turned to Echelon.

"Lolo, y'all correct me here if I misspeak, but I didn't believe that temperance or fair play were necessarily qualities to which you or I aspired."

"Is you fixin' to blast her?" Echelon inquired.

"I is, indeed."

Echelon let out a huff of disapproval and held out his hand. "Well, Vee, this here's what I been talkin' about, innit? Firstly, y'tell me that these two takedowns here don't count for me—"

"They rightly don't."

"—and now you're fixin' to lay her out and get the easy takedown fo' you'self."

Vagabond considered that. "Lolo, I must say, you do lay out a most compellin' argument. Your scintillatin' logic has moved me. Tell you what, I'll match you for dibs."

I felt like I needed to interject something, but before I could say anything, the pair had already executed a game of Rock/Paper/Scissors.

"Ha! Scissors cuts Paper!" Echelon declared.

Vagabond clicked his tongue. "Dang. I truly thought I had you there. You always choose Rock."

"Yeah. That's why I chose Scissors this time."

"Lolo, once again, your feats of intellectual acuity today continue to impress."

Echelon clapped his huge metal hands together in a loud metallic clang! "All righty. Time to waste a hero," he said.

He took a step forward, and the ground shuddered from the impact, practically knocking me from my feet. However, I'd been so preoccupied with watching the pair that I hadn't realized that Lydia had managed to clamber woozily to her feet. But now, faced with the mountainous hulking metallic brute in front of her, she snapped to full awareness. He loomed massively over us, and once again, the ground shook from another of his thunderous footsteps.

"Holy FUCK!" Lydia screamed.

"That's where the little one gets it from," Vagabond opined.

I ran up to Lydia and threw my arms around her waist as my fingers fussed at her utility belt. She looked down at me in confusion and I hissed, "Close your eyes and count to three and fly us out of here!"

"But—"

"And not so high!" I admonished her. A second later, I opened one of the containers on her belt, and I threw a pair of small capsules on the ground in front of the two villains. I felt my stomach lurch as Lydia again took to the air, and I squeezed my eyes shut as the two flashbang grenades went off, hopefully blinding them for a few critical seconds while we made our escape.

I clung tightly to Lydia and prayed that our next landing would be less harrowing. I tried to focus my mind on that, because I had no idea what our next move after that was going to be.

Back at his mansion, Xenos poured himself a stiff drink as he focused his mind and tried to slow his breathing. Using the stim pack had been a necessary evil, but the spike in adrenalin was slow to wear off. He was still jittery from the chemicals running their course through his body.

Although in fairness, his jitters weren't entirely because of the stim pack.

What the hell had happened back there?

He looked down at his hand at a faded scar from several years earlier. He'd been in this mount off and on for over twenty years, as long as he'd ever been in a body. He knew it well. He also knew that by rights he shouldn't be in it right now.

His plan had been solid. Taking over the little girl had been a slight deviation, but a useful one. He'd taken her as a mount and then incapacitated his male body with her inside of it before she even realized what was going on. That part went as expected.

Then, when he tried to make the jump from the child into Prodigious Girl...it was all a blur. He'd taken her body, or at least he thought he had. It was almost like...

Like something that wasn't possible.

Whatever had happened had shifted him back into his body, obviously. Back into his original mount. It also seemed like the two girls had been left switched into each other's bodies. Which meant that he'd jumped twice? First into the heroine, and then back into this body. That would explain why he wasn't able to switch back into the heroine's body...the residual energy of taking a new mount always took a few minutes to dissipate, which prevented him from immediately jumping back into a body he'd just vacated.

He had been in her body. Until he jumped again.

Or had she been the one to do it? How?

"Computer, open dossier for Prodigious Girl."

He scrutinized the file. She was a young hero. Tough, strong, she could fly. There was nothing in her dossier to suggest she was also a body swapper. Could another swapper have beaten him to it? Perhaps one of them was already using this "Prodigious Girl" as a mount, themselves? That might explain much.

"Computer, open dossier for Xenos. Known associates. Historical. Deceased."

He skimmed over the records, but his memory didn't need to be refreshed. Not about this, at least. He was the last living swapper, he was certain of it. He'd seen to that.

Except for what he'd just witnessed.

But if she wasn't a swapper, then somehow she'd—

His eyes darted back to her open file. Strength, flight, invulnerability. There was no unifying theme.

Xenos's heart beat faster, and this time it had nothing to do with the stim pack. It could be a coincidence, he told himself. Certainly, metahuman powers always had a unifying theme, he knew that. A fire blaster might use his powers to fly or shoot blasts of energy, but they were always tied back to a single core ability. They didn't also randomly teleport or control animals. But this one...

It was possible that her powers were derived from another source. Or she was somehow augmenting her natural abilities with other means, like magic or technology. Perhaps her ability to fly was through some kind of anti-gravity belt, for instance. Nevertheless, if she was a metahuman like she appeared to be, and these genuinely were her powers...

"Computer, open files on the Kindred," Xenos said.

An instant later, a new set of electronic records opened up on the screen. Several entries, but much less detailed. So little was known about them, but what Xenos did know—or at least what he suspected—was tantalizing.

There weren't many confirmed sightings, and much of it was pure guesswork. Some of the ones on his list likely weren't even true Kindred, but even the handful of possible names were titans. Promethean. Duality. Pantheon. Darkmancer. Halcyon.

Then there was the Mosaic. He knew even less about them, but he knew that they had an interest in the Kindred. Was the Mosaic recruiting them? Hunting them? For what purpose? Xenos had lived his entire existence operating in the shadowy fringes of the world, but even he only skirted the edges of the mystery of these groups. They were small, but they were powerful. Very powerful.

He added Prodigious Girl to the list.

"A Kindred," Xenos murmured to himself as he sat back and sipped his drink. He'd taken down big game before. His current host body was silent testimony to that. Still, this was something new. It might be tricky, but Prodigious Girl wasn't immune to his power, he'd demonstrated that. And right now, her extremely valuable body was also extremely vulnerable, being operated by a frightened little girl.

Her resources were limited. Her mentor Prodigy was gone for at least two more days, so she'd seek out allies. However, allies could be dealt with. Now that he had her off-balance, it was the perfect time to strike.

"Oh, I must have you," he said quietly as he stared at her image on the screen.

Lydia and I managed to crash land on the roof of a broad building not too far away that I soon realized was a local shopping mall. Miraculously, I somehow managed to escape from our ordeals with only minor scratches. Lydia, meanwhile, was nursing wounds from both crash landings and a handful of burns from the body swapper's energy rifle, but her pain and shock were more psychological than physical.

I could empathize.

"What's going on? Why am I...you?" she cried.

"Why didn't you do what I told you to do?" I yelled at her in my shrill little voice. "We were right there! He was just a guy with a gun! All we had to do was knock him out, and we maybe could have..." My voice trailed off. "Why didn't you listen?!"

"I don't know!" she wept. She sat on the ground and hugged herself as she withdrew further. "It hurt! It really hurt! And you were yelling, and I didn't know what was going on. Then suddenly we were flying..." She broke down and started sobbing inconsolably.

"God dammit!" I swore in frustration, the profanity sounding strange coming out in the voice of a seven-year-old girl. I didn't know what to do. But I didn't know anybody capable of switching us back to our proper bodies. The only person capable of doing that was the guy who did it to us in the first place, and as I looked out over the sweeping skyline of Faraday City that was visible from the roof we were on, I realized he could be absolutely anywhere by now.

No, it was worse than that. He could be absolutely anyone. Any small edge we might have had vanished the moment that Lydia crashed us through that window, leaving him hopelessly far behind.

Slowly, it started to enter my consciousness that we might not be able to reverse this. I'd be stuck as a seven-year-old girl, forced to repeat elementary school. Forget about ever being a superhero again. And Lydia...I didn't even know what to do about her. There was no way she could pass herself off as me. I'd have no choice but to come clean to my parents and tell them everything...about my secret superheroing, about what had been done to us.

"Shiiiit," I muttered to myself.

I could feel a sob of hopelessness and frustration working up in my throat, but I managed to choke it back. Pretty soon both Lydia and I would be sitting and crying together, and that wasn't going to solve anything.

C'mon, Chris, pull yourself together!

I breathed a heavy sigh and moved over to Lydia. I still couldn't get over how much bigger than me she was, I felt like I was comforting an NFL linebacker. I reached out and touched her gently and she whimpered and flinched away.

"Okay, I deserve that," I sighed.

I nestled up against her and stroked her hair, feeling uncomfortably like a little girl playing with a life-size Barbie.

"Lydia, I'm sorry. I'm just...I'm kind of freaking out right now."

"Wow, really?" she sniped back in a hoarse voice.

Yeah, we definitely mastered sarcasm early in my family.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you. I'm sorry for a lot of things. I should never have brought you to that stupid rally in the first place."

She didn't seem particularly consoled by that.

"But...y'know, you made a pretty good superhero back there."

She snorted. "No, I didn't. I got beat up, and I ran away."

"It's not always about who wins the fight. You saved my life back there. Twice. I wouldn't even be here right now if it weren't for you."

She sniffled and wiped her nose and looked at me, her eyes red with tears. "That's kind of funny, since that one time when you were the hero, you used me as bait."

"That's not exactly the same—"

"Twice."

"I thought we agreed not to talk about that," I said, although I noticed she had the beginnings of a smile.

She sniffled again and swallowed hard as she looked at me. "We're in a lotta trouble, aren't we?"

"Yeah," I agreed quietly.

"What are we gonna do?"

I leaned over and took her left hand and pulled it closer. "Well, the first thing we're going to do is call my fr—oh, fuck." As she flipped her arm over, I could see the iComm communicator on her wrist. It was broken, and the control plate was shattered.

"You swear a lot," Lydia said.

I let out a little laugh, given the ridiculousness of the situation. "I must have picked it up from Prodigy," I said. Then I turned to look at her. "Oh, and by the way, don't think I didn't notice you letting out a pretty epic f-bomb when you squared off with that big guy back there."

She made an embarrassed elfin smile. It was funny seeing such a uniquely Lydia expression on Prodigious Girl's features.

"He was scary. You're not mad, are you?"

"We'll talk about it later. Although given the circumstances, I'd have to admit that it was the correct use of the word in that context."

Lydia watched as I poked at the broken iComm. "Can you fix it?"

I shook my head. "I don't know how. But it's got some self-repair features built in, just like your costume," I said, pointing to how the nanomesh fabric was already fixing some of the scorch marks from the body swapper's energy rifle. "Hopefully, it can repair itself if we give it some time, but I don't think we can wait that long."

I motioned for her to stand up, and she winced in pain from her various injuries.

All right, we had to try this sooner or later, so no time like the present.

"Okay," I said to her. "Lydia, I know your body probably feels pretty weird right now—"

"Uh, yeah."

"—but I need you to concentrate. Like think really hard and focus on how your body feels. Then think about all the places that it hurts, and try and make it go away."

She scrunched up her face. "For real?"

"Lydia!"

"Okay, okay," she said. She closed her eyes, and for a long moment I didn't think it was going to work. However, over the span of the next minute, I watched as her cuts and bruises disappeared.

"You did it!" I said in relief. "I wasn't sure you'd be able to do that."

She lit up at the compliment, though as she took a deep breath, she winced again. "Oh! Ow, that one still hurts." Then she looked down at herself again. "What'd I just do?"

"Yeah, the bigger wounds take longer to heal. You'll feel better soon," I explained. Then I said, "You remember how I was able to switch between myself as Chris and PG?"

She nodded.

"Y'see, I kind of...created...this body. It's like a pattern. I can swap back and forth, but if I concentrate on this body, it tries to return to the original pattern. So, cuts and bruises go away."

"I don't think I get it," she said as she looked down at her unfamiliar hand. "Can I turn into other stuff?"

"It's not easy. And it takes a really long time," I told her. "Although that brings me to the next thing..."

I'll freely admit that not all problems can be solved with chicken nuggets. But they can brighten one's mood a little.

Lydia and I were musing on that philosophical koan as we sat in the food court having lunch. We needed a place to regroup, and as had been recently pointed out to me, I'd been negligent in seeing to lunch before our calamity began.

I found myself in a strange quandary. I desperately wanted to track down that body swapper so we could put things to rights, but I also didn't want to risk him somehow tracking us down and catching us unawares. My solution was for us to hide in plain sight by switching into our respective secret identities. For me, that amounted to covering up the pink "costume" I was wearing with the outerwear that Lydia had tucked into the backpack I was still wearing. As I'd warned her earlier, that made for a hot and uncomfortable combination, and it was making me grumpy. Though in hindsight, I had to give Lydia credit—when she'd worn all these layers during the bus ride out here, she'd never complained once.

Lydia's transformation was more dramatic. Fortunately, my CosFit was undamaged from the scuffle, so it was able to transform Prodigious Girl's costume into the outfit I'd been wearing that morning. Since it was warm, Lydia quickly ditched the jacket, and as she shapeshifted into my crossdressed male body, I winced a bit at the size of my falsies. It was bad enough as Prodigious Girl running around with those, but at least then it was... I'm going to go with 'thematic.' But absent the jacket to distract a little, her fulsome breasts gathered attention I'd just as soon have avoided.

Of course, it probably didn't help my perspective that they were like the size of my head right now.

When we went into the mall, I found myself walking in a land of giants. I'd gripped Lydia's hand tightly so that I could guide her, but I also found myself becoming anxious surrounded by all of the towering adults. By the time we'd made it to the food court, I was a nervous wreck. As a teenager I was used to adults blowing me off, but as a seven-year-old girl, I was practically invisible. When I'd ordered us lunch and put it on my card, the woman behind the counter smirked and in a cloyingly condescending tone told me what a very grown-up little lady I was. Lydia thought that was pretty hilarious.

As we ate our food, my eyes darted around at people as they passed by. I started to realize that maybe it wasn't such a good idea hiding out in a crowd, where presumably absolutely anybody could be the body swapper in disguise. We were committed now, but at least we were inconspicuous.

Mostly.

"Quit playing with those!" I hissed as Lydia gave her falsies another obvious nudge.

"They're itchy! And they're so dumb! They're not even real. How come they're so big, anyway?"

I...could actually empathize with all of that. Not that I wanted to get into that particular argument surrounded by people. "They just are, okay?"

Then she started scratching at the edge of her wig.

"Lydia!"

"It's itchy, too! And stop being so bossy! I'm the grown-up, now," she said in a lilting 'so-there' tone that was decidedly not very grown-up.

I dug around in the little pink backpack that was on the bench next to me and pulled out her hand-held electronic game that had miraculously managed to survive our various crashes and misadventures.

"Here, play with this," I told her.

She had an exaggeratedly sour look on her face as she accepted the device. I tried to remind myself that I was dealing with a seven-year-old, and frankly one who was dealing with all of this a heck of a lot better than a lot of people would in her situation, me included. Although seeing myself from this perspective was really raising my hackles. As Christie, my feminine impersonation had gotten pretty good, so it wasn't obvious that she was a guy dressed as a girl, but Lydia's conspicuously surly attitude was making me look very foolish. I glanced around to see if people were staring at us, but so far we seemed to be blending in.

I wasn't sure what bothered me more, that Lydia might draw attention to herself and everyone would realize that Chris Patterson was a guy who dressed as a girl, or that I was getting so good at it that they might not notice. All of my classmates already knew, and I worried that one of them might see us like this. It was one thing for people to know that I dressed like a girl, but it was something else to actually have to deal with people that way. I felt queasy.

Lydia made a frustrated little noise. "Ugh, stupid fingernails!" she complained. They were rounded and I didn't wear them super-long, but they were obviously giving her trouble with her game controls. Once again, I could empathize...it had taken me a bit of practice to get used to those.

She sniffed indignantly as she lifted a hand to flash her sport-length nails, in their glossy apple red color. "These are so dumb!"

"I dunno, I kind of like them," a girl's voice came from right next to us.

I was already operating on high alert, so my adrenaline spiked from the sudden appearance of this new visitor. But the voice had been strangely familiar, with a teasing lilt to it.

I turned to look up into the face of Leah Paredes. The girl from my disastrous texting the day before.

Leah had an easy smile, but she always had sort of a sideways look about her, like she was constantly sizing you up. It was a look that was emphasized by her short shaggy brown hair, a style that forever seemed messy, but I could never decide if it was meant to look that way, or if this was just a side effect of her personality. Her pale olive skin was a sharp contrast to her incredibly dark and perceptive brown eyes. When she looked at you, you felt like you'd been seen.

Which is when I suddenly realized that I'd been staring at her.

But...she wasn't even looking at me, which was weird. She was looking directly at Lydia for some reas—ohh, crap, I realized as the final neuron in my brain sparked and I made the connection.

Without being invited, Leah smoothly slid onto the bench next to Lydia, giving her a good-natured bump with her rump to make room and slide over. It was a playful gesture, and Lydia scooched over to maintain some semblance of personal space, but the over-the-top aghast look on Lydia's face from the brash intrusion would have been comical if my brain hadn't gone into total meltdown. Fortunately, Leah hadn't noticed.

"Hey," Lydia sniped sarcastically, still offended by getting shoved over.

"Hey!" Leah chirped back.

Lydia gawked at her incredulously. "Who are you?"

Leah looked like she was about to take offense herself, so I jumped in.

"We're playing a game!" I blurted out. "I'm uh...a princess."

Leah seemed charmed by my answer. However, from Lydia's look of distaste, I gathered that she'd evidently moved past her princess phase, and she didn't take kindly to me besmirching her reputation.

She leaned in and without a hint of irony said, "Well, if you're a princess, I guess that makes me a queen."

"Little on the nose, Chris," Leah muttered.

"Lydia!" I hissed at her angrily. Then when faced with Leah's odd look, I hastily added, "—is my name. I'm Lydia."

"Hello, Lydia!" Leah said to me in a patronizing sing-song tone. "My name is Leah. Wow, our names are kind of similar, aren't they? I hope things don't get confusing!"

"Too late," I said to myself.

Lydia had clearly gotten bored of all this and returned her attention to her game, ignoring Leah. Meanwhile, I was still trying to piece together what Leah was even doing here. At first I bitterly thought that she'd lied to me about having to work, and instead blew me off to go hang out with friends. It was then that I realized that she was dressed in dark slacks and a solid blue blouse...definitely not her usual style. I finally made the connection.

"Do you work here?" I asked her.

She smiled. "Well, not here at the food court, sweetie. But yeah, I work at one of the clothing stores." She turned to Lydia, who remained engrossed in her game. "Two people are out sick, and we have to do inventory this weekend, so I'm sorry I couldn't hang. Rain check, though, right?"

Aaaand now I felt like a complete idiot. I was so sure that she'd blown me off that—

I suddenly became aware that Lydia wasn't paying attention, and she'd ignored Leah's question. I gave her a swift kick under the table.

She was invulnerable, she could take it.

"Hey!" she said to me, then she saw my eyes cutting meaningfully over to Leah. "Um, yeah, sure."

"Cool," Leah said, kind of tilting her head to look at the game in which Lydia was so engrossed. "So, uh, what are you two doing here?"

"We're cousins," I said, jumping in. "Chris is my cousin. She's babysitting me this weekend. Right, Chris?"

No response, of course. I gave her another kick.

She lowered the game in a pouty huff and glared at me.

I pressed on. "Um, it's because my parents are out of town, and—"

"Quiet, Lydia, adults are talking," Lydia said to me with a smirk.

I was so stunned by her using my own words against me that I could only stare at her open-mouthed.

She turned to Leah. "Can I ask you a question?"

Leah shrugged with a little smile, playing along. "Sure."

Lydia arched her back slightly, a move that put her bosom even more on display. It wasn't a sexual move, but the overt artlessness of it made it all the more cheeky.

"Lydia said she thinks these are weird. Do you think these are weird?"

Leah coughed out a laugh and then looked at me in amused disbelief. "Lydia! You said that?"

I had no idea what to say. My mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.

"Well, I don't think they're weird," Leah said with a sly smile as she reached an arm around Lydia and pulled her into a sideways hug. "I think that—"

She stopped short as something grabbed her attention. She reached down and took Lydia by the hand. At first I thought it was a romantic gesture coming out of nowhere, but then I realized she was examining Lydia's fingernails.

Her short fingernails with the sparkly pink nail polish. Absolutely not the longer sport-length apple red nails that she'd had when Leah first sat down.

Leah blinked in confusion. "I could have sworn these were—?"

"The color changes in the light," I interjected quickly as I glared at Lydia, who suddenly looked a lot less cocky now that she'd been caught. I was upset with her for using her shapeshifting ability to change the style and color of her nails right in front of Leah, but even I had to admit I was impressed how quickly she'd done it. Small changes were relatively quick, but she did that like a natural.

"Oh. Wow, that's really cool," Leah said, equally impressed.

Then she sat back and looked Lydia straight in the eyes. "Hey, I gotta get back to work, but you want to maybe grab dinner somewhere during the week? I get off at seven."

Lydia was staring at her like a deer caught in the headlights, and her eyes flitted briefly in my direction where I was nodding my head emphatically.

"Yeah. Yes. I mean, sure."

Leah gave her a big smile and as she pulled away, her hand brushed against Lydia's in a quick but deliberate gesture.

I stared as she walked away, and in my peripheral vision I saw Lydia fussing at her fingernails as she looked at me uncertainly.

"I shouldn't have done that, should I?"

My eyes followed Leah's retreating form as she blended in with the crowd. "No. But somehow, you got me a date, so we'll call it even."

Then, as my eyes settled on the remains of our lunch, I sighed heavily. I only hoped that by the time I had my date with Leah, I wouldn't still be ordering a Happy Meal.

Less than a minute later, another figure appeared next to our table. This time it was Caleb. He looked tired and haggard, probably a combination of working the deep fryer at work and also by how rapidly he'd gotten here. My iComm was still on the blink, but my phone was working just fine. He was the first call I made before we came down here.

He had a worried expression. "Chris?" he said hopefully, looking at Lydia.

I raised my hand. "Over here."

Even the famously unflappable Caleb Shapiro needed to take a moment for that one.

"Dude, what have you gotten yourself into this time?"

The lunchtime crowd came and went, so the number of people in the food court had thinned out somewhat. As a result, we were starting to become a bit more conspicuous. A teenage guy and girl sitting with a little girl wasn't all that unusual, and arguably Lydia looked the most credible as she ignored us and fooled around on her game. However, the sight of her apparent boyfriend being deeply engaged in an intense and occasionally heated argument with the seven-year-old girl across the table from him did draw a few odd looks.

We decided to get up and wander around the mall as we talked. Caleb talking to a little girl while Lydia trailed behind playing her game was only slightly less conspicuous, but I was getting antsy just sitting around. I felt like I had a lot of pent-up energy.

"Caleb, you know this superhero stuff even better than I do! You're telling me you can't think of a single body-swapping metahuman out there?" I challenged him.

"Chris, I'm telling you, that's not how it works."

I raised my eyebrows and shot him an incredulous look and pointed between Lydia and myself sarcastically.

He sighed. "I'm not saying I don't believe you. Obviously. Sure, I've heard stories. But they're Freaky Friday stuff. I wouldn't take it seriously. I'm just saying it's not how metahuman powers work." He waggled his fingers in circles as he tried to sort out his thoughts. "Listen. When the Turning Point hit, everyone's metahuman potential got unlocked with the metagene, right? Which then got passed down as an inherited trait. Hell, even I'm metagene-positive. But only a tiny fraction of people with that gene become ascended metas. Like you."

I nodded. I was never entirely clear how that had happened. The day I got my powers, I saw a whirling pink energy vortex, and I took off running and slammed into a tree. When I woke up, I had my powers. Somehow I didn't think that a kinetic impact with bark was what did it, but that was a mystery for another time.

Caleb continued. "My point is, it's physical. It's tied to your body. Lydia has your powers now because she's in your body. A metahuman body swapper would only be able to make one jump. Then, the new person in their old body would inherit that power."

I didn't like where this was going. "What are you telling me?"

"Chris, this city is gonzo bonkers. Maybe there's some mad scientist out there swapping peoples' brains, but I'm just saying it's not a metahuman. I think it's something else."

"Magic," I realized.

He shrugged. "Maybe? I've read about a bunch of supers who claim to be magic users—like that Vagabond guy you ran into—but I'm not an expert. I think you need to call in Trixie for this one."

"My iComm is still busted. I think it's repairing itself, but I can't call her. I know where she lives, though. You'll have to go."

Caleb made a dry smile. "I'm not sure she's forgiven me for that time I almost accidentally blasted her in the head," he said, recalling the time in Prodigy's garage when he'd been fooling around with one of the more unusual trinkets my mentor had collected. "Besides, you and Lydia should go."

I shook my head emphatically, causing my pigtails to jounce around. "We don't have time. Look, I've been thinking about it. We don't need to find the swapper, because he's already looking for us. I don't know why, but that trap he set was for me, specifically. I figure that as long as we have what he wants, he'll find us eventually."

Caleb glanced over his shoulder. "You mean he's looking for Lydia." Then he lowered his voice and gave me a warning look. "Chris..."

Lydia hadn't really been paying attention, but she looked up from her game at the mention of her name. "You're gonna use me as bait again?" she asked.

I gave her a shrug and turned back to Caleb. "I don't know why he's gunning for me, but it could be days or weeks before he tries again, and we don't have that long. If we don't get this sorted out before my aunt and uncle get home tomorrow..." I let the sentence hang.

"You're headed back to elementary school, learning your times tables. Then, Chris's parents start asking uncomfortable questions about why she's acting so weird. Yeah, I get it. So, then where are you and Lydia off to?"

"I need to get back to Prodigy's garage, or at least to his database. That energy rifle the swapper used on us looked familiar. Maybe we can trace it back to him that way. There's just one thing I still don't underst..."

My voice trailed off as I looked in the display window of one of the stores. It was the Build-A-Bear Workshop, and there in the window was an elaborate display with a motorized carousel in the middle. Some stuffed animals were riding it, while others were standing around the outside watching.

But as I stared at all of the bears and other animals they had on display, something tickled at the back of my mind.

"Chris...?" Caleb prompted.

I wandered inside the store, leaving a very perplexed Caleb standing there with Lydia. Meanwhile, she finally looked up from her game and made a pleasant "oh" sound and went in as well, perusing the contents of the store.

Caleb followed us cautiously inside. As he did so, his body language signaled an impressive level of discomfort, like he was afraid of catching cooties.

I delved deeper into the store, pretty much the only place that a seven-year-old girl walking around unescorted wouldn't raise attention. Not that anybody was paying attention to me. Not the other kids, and not even the adults. There were exhausted and exasperated moms and dads standing around while their kids ran rampant all over the store, and the people who worked there looked like even their patience was strained by the pandemonium. As for me, it was like walking around unnoticed among giants as I made my way to a quiet corner of the store.

I picked out three pairs of stuffed animals. Two were of a pink bear in a tutu, two were of a small blue mouse in a mask and cape, and two of an orange T-Rex. I then sat down and arranged them in a circle. I started moving them around and was lost in thought as Caleb warily approached me.

"Hey, buddy..." he said in a tone of voice signaling that he thought I had clearly lost my mind. Then he looked at the ring of stuffed animals I'd been playing with, looking for all the world like they were sitting down for a tea party.

"Uhh, Chris, are you feeling okay...?" he asked, eyeing me strangely.

"I'm not playing," I said, my little voice dripping with an arch sarcasm that was no doubt completely adorable. "Here, look. This has been bothering me."

Caleb examined the blue mouse, pink bear, and orange T-Rex animals.

"Those are you," he realized. "You, and Lydia, and the swapper."

"Ooh," Lydia said as she picked up the pink bear in the tutu and clutched it tightly. I tried to avoid noticing how ridiculous she looked like that in my body, but at least she was staying out of trouble. She then proceeded to wander over to a display of little outfits. It occurred to me that she'd been acting so maturely that dressing up a teddy bear might even be a bit juvenile for her, but I smiled as I saw her chatting with a little girl as they picked out clothes for their stuffed animals.

Oh, what the hell. She'd had a rough day, too.

I grabbed another bear to replace the one she'd taken, and I turned to Caleb. "Here. This outside ring represents our bodies. This inside ring is our minds or spirits, or whatever," I explained as I arranged them. "See, this doesn't make sense. Look."

I exchanged the spirits of Lydia and the swapper. "He took over Lydia first." Then I exchanged the spirits of the swapper and myself. "Then things got confusing, but I'm pretty sure he jumped into my body. Lydia was in his original body, I was in Lydia, and he had my body."

Caleb nodded. "Makes sense. He knew you had superpowers. He wanted your body. I guess he jumped into Lydia first to get close to you."

"What I don't get is why would he swap again with Lydia back into his original body? He had my body, my powers. Why mess it up and go back?"

Caleb shook his head. "I dunno. Maybe he forgot his car keys or something? Or maybe there was something wrong with your body that he couldn't stay in there?"

"Something wrong with my body..." I said as I looked at the stuffed animals. Then the penny dropped, and I gasped. "Oh, God."

"What is it?"

I moved the stuffed animals back to before his swap with me. "Caleb, it wasn't him, it was me. I must have copied his powers with my power mimicry ability. When he tried to take over my body, I must have swapped with him, which forced him to do a double swap." I moved the mouse and the T-Rex, and then the T-Rex and the bear. "He tried to jump into my body, but I beat him to it. When he swapped, he couldn't go back into Lydia's, since he was already there. He was forced to jump back into his original body, which displaced Lydia into my body."

I looked up at him in shock. "This is all my fault."

"Chris, you can't blame yourself," Caleb said. "But if it was instinct, it was a good one. Otherwise, right now he'd be in your body. Both you and Lydia would still be in the wrong bodies, and we'd have an evil Prodigious Girl on our hands."

As usual, he had a point, but given the current situation, it didn't make me feel a whole lot better.

He looked at the stuffed animals. "Say you're right. How do we swap you back?"

"I don't know. I mean, if we could get close to him again, Lydia could maybe use my mimicry power to copy his power and swap with me."

"Basically, you'd need a seven-year-old girl to do something with your powers intentionally that you've been unable to do yourself despite weeks of practice. And then only by accident."

"...Yeah."

"I don't love that. What's the other alternative?"

"Well, let's assume that the swapper still wants my superpowered body, so we use that as bait. Then, when he tries to swap with Lydia in my body, she might instinctively do what I did, and force him to do a double swap." I moved the plush animals around to show the two swaps. "Wait, that's not good, either. That reverses things and gets me back home in my body, but then Lydia and the swapper would still be in each other's bodies."

"Then what? You ask him politely if he'd swap with her?"

"He probably wouldn't want to be a seven-year-old girl, so he might swap voluntarily. Assuming there's nobody else around for him to grab. We'd have to make it really tempting for him to change with Lydia."

At my mention of there being "nobody else to grab," a shadow of concern crossed Caleb's features. He clearly didn't relish the possibility of being stuck in the body of a seven-year-old girl, either.

My brow furrowed in concentration as I thought about it. I had an idea, but it was a really terrible idea.

Caleb wrinkled his nose as he looked at me and tried to read my expression. "Chris, are you thinking real hard, or are you taking a dump?"

"I'm potty trained!" I exclaimed, to the obvious amusement of a couple nearby mothers.

"Good, I wasn't looking forward to having to find a baby changing station," he teased. "I assume then that you have a crazy and ridiculously risky plan?"

He knew me too well.

I shook my head and felt my pigtails swing back and forth. "No, we need to be safe for once," I lied. "Okay, we need to get moving. Give me a shout once you meet up with Trixie, and hopefully she's got some good news for us."

Caleb gave me a concerned look. "Only if your luck changes," he said.

Lydia and I took an Uber over to Prodigy's garage, or at least the rough proximity. I thought I was being clever since that way we weren't being dropped off immediately in front of my mentor's hidden base of operations, but the split second the car door slammed behind us and the driver peeled away, I realized my mistake.

The garage was hidden on the south side of the city, in a run-down area on the outskirts of town. Walking the last block or two hadn't seemed like a big deal, but now that we were here, I realized that I had been thinking from the perspective of a teenager who was super-strong and invulnerable, not from the perspective of a helpless seven-year-old girl. One quick look at Lydia's panicked expression told me she wasn't likely to be of much help, either.

"I don't like this place," Lydia said quietly.

She held out her hand, and I took it, realizing it was more to calm her own nerves than my own. Although my own nerves were in need of some calming, too.

As we walked down the street, I flashed back to the first time I'd visited Prodigy in his old garage. Prodigy had chewed me out for choosing to show up as I did, in a blonde wig and wearing a short, flowered dress, saying how conspicuous I was.

That was nothing compared to the same blonde and curvy teenager walking down the street holding hands with a little girl. And that other location was positively ritzy compared to this part of town. I suddenly realized how much genuine danger we were in.

"Hey, honey! C'mere a sec!" a guy called out.

Lydia's head swung to look in the guy's direction, and I squeezed her hand and gave it an urgent tug. "Don't look! Just keep walking," I said.

We were close now, only half a block away from the hidden entrance to the garage. Unfortunately, in my rush to get there, I wasn't paying as much attention as I should, and we rounded a corner a little too close to the edge of a building. We practically ran right into a couple guys who happened to be loitering there.

"Hey, hey, whass' this?" one of them said as they blocked our path. I wasn't sure if they were gang members or not, but they looked like trouble. Young, muscular, and with attitude that was coming off of them in waves. One was wearing a bright red jacket with a bit of bling visible underneath, and the other had some fancy high-top sneakers. That meant they had money, and in this part of town, that wasn't good news.

"'Scuse us," I said, trying to move past them. However, as I pulled on Lydia's hand I realized that she was frozen in place. I gave her another more urgent tug, but she was petrified as she stared wide-eyed at the two guys. From my perspective, the two guys were giants, but even to her, they were a good deal taller and plenty intimidating.

As they moved closer, Lydia stepped back, and pulled me along with her. Worse, they'd positioned themselves in such a way that we soon found ourselves backed up against the wall of the building. They laughed as they penned us in, obviously enjoying the fear in Lydia's eyes. (And if I'm being honest, mine, too.)

I forced myself to get my anxiety under control and assess the situation with a clear head, as Prodigy had trained me to do. Luckily for us, it didn't look like these two belonged to any of the super-powered gangs that sometimes operated in this part of the city. I didn't see any of the tattoos favored by the Hemlocks or the high-tech equipment or cybernetics that the Techrats used, for instance. It looked as though these were just two regular garden variety thugs. Not that we were in any condition to deal with that, either.

"We don't want any trouble," I said. I instantly regretted it as the guys burst out laughing, clearly amused for a little girl to pipe up in such a way.

"Don't worry, baby, we don' wanna hurt ya, we wanna be friends," the guy in the jacket said as he leaned close to Lydia. "Don'cha wanna be friends, baby?" he said as he put his hand up against the wall right next to her head.

Lydia was close to tears, and she looked down and shook her head.

"But we're such frien'ly guys," he cackled as he leaned close, close enough to smell her perfume. Lydia was still looking down and afraid to make eye contact, and as he leaned closer, he leered at her sizable falsies that were tenting out the front of her shirt. I realized belatedly that I should have made her wear the jacket, or even just taken the falsies out entirely. As it was, she was drawing a lot of attention.

I can't say I was all that thrilled with the look his friend was giving me, either.

"You wanna go party, baby?" the first guy said, practically whispering in Lydia's ear. "Yeah. Yeah, you look like a party girl."

In a sudden move, he yanked Lydia's purse away and took a step back. She let out a squeak of protest and reached to grab it back, but he pulled it away before she could.

This...was actually a good thing, I realized.

Lydia was surprisingly mature and responsible for her age, but given our current situation I knew that I couldn't trust that she wouldn't leave her purse laying around somewhere. So, back at the food court, I'd transferred all of our valuables into my little backpack. My wallet, phone, keys, and significantly, also my iComm and CosFit devices. I'd even managed to squeeze Lydia's handheld game back in there. As a result, basically all the guy was getting was a hairbrush, some cosmetics, and a few other easily-replaceable sundries. As long as he didn't check the contents, this was the best-case scenario.

I needed to move this along. Which meant that I needed to make us more hassle than we were worth. My mind raced as I tried to think about what I could say to convince these guys to send us on her way. Then I realized that they probably weren't good with kids.

I burst out crying, trying to use my fear to stage an award-winning performance. "Chris, I'm scared!" I wailed as I clung onto her hand. "I wanna go home!"

Lydia, who was genuinely terrified, stared at me in utter bewilderment. Meanwhile, the two guys seemed less certain what to do, so I really hammed it up.

"These guys are scary! I w-w-w-wanna gooo hooo—whoof!"

I may have overacted a bit. The guy next to Lydia apparently had enough of my wailing and grabbed me with one hand and shoved me hard over into his friend's waiting arms. Before I knew what was going on, the guy had my arms pinned in an iron grip. Meanwhile, the other guy turned his full attention to Lydia, and had one of his hands on her breast. I was glad for her that it was just a prosthetic, but this was getting serious. Her reaction was to withdraw more and become more passive, which only served to encourage the guy even more, as though he needed it.

However, I had other problems to worry about as the guy holding me lifted me completely off the ground! At first I wasn't even sure what was going on when I realized that he was slipping my backpack off my shoulders, obviously keen to see what was packed away in the bulging little sack.

"Wait, no! I need that! We need that! Lydia!" I yelled, hoping to spur her into action. We couldn't afford to lose that backpack! But if she could land even one or two good punches—

"What th' fuck?!" the guy next to her blurted out. I looked up to realize that he had Lydia's blonde wig in his hand, exposing her short black hair...and her true gender.

"Ha, you got a tranny!" my guy chortled, enraging his friend.

Shit, this was about to get out of hand. I didn't think these guys could physically hurt Lydia, but we weren't simply going to walk away from this.

My eyes darted down to the derelict-looking building halfway down the block that hid the garage. God, it was so close. If we could get in there, we'd be safe. Not that there was any way these guys were going to let us—

Just then, a small electronic chirp came from my backpack. I recognized it immediately.

While my guy was distracted, I squirmed out of his grasp and spun and executed a perfectly aimed snap kick straight to his crotch. As he doubled over, I snatched away the backpack and opened it, rifling frantically through the contents. The thug took a swipe at me which I barely managed to duck, but he was clearly not in a laughing mood anymore. Then, as my fingers touched metal, I grabbed the device inside.

I'd recognized the electronic beep as having come from my iComm device, so apparently its self-repair systems had done their work. I pulled out the now-functional device as my fingers fiddled with it. The guy grabbed me by the arm and yanked me close, hard. But luckily for me, this code was designed to be easy to enter.

I didn't think these guys would recognize an iComm, but the high-tech display and blinking red emergency signal appeared to give them pause. I'd just activated the broad band "hero in distress" signal, the same kind that Euphoria had used to get my attention the other day.

"I just called in every cop and hero for miles, assholes," I said with a confident smirk. "You're gonna get your butts kicked now."

They clearly didn't seem to trust the word of a little girl on that, but my suddenly confident attitude appeared to throw a bit of uncertainty into the mix. However, the wailing sound of a nearby police siren seemed to put any lingering questions over the top. It might have been coincidence, but they obviously weren't inclined to take any chances.

As the guys bolted, I rushed to turn off the alert, fumbling with the device in my tiny hands. I managed to do so, but the sirens were growing closer.

The sound of the approaching police that only a moment ago had filled my heart with joy now scared the living hell out of me. For one thing, Prodigious Girl was still officially an unsanctioned vigilante. The cops might just as well be coming to arrest her as rescue her. But even if I ditched the iComm and told the cops that Prodigious Girl had flown off before they got there, they'd still be wondering what Lydia and I were doing walking around by ourselves down here. Best case, they'd want to talk to our parents. Worst case, they'd jump to some very uncomfortable conclusions about what a curvaceous teenage crossdresser might have been doing down here, and they would likely have extremely pointed questions about why she'd felt the need to bring along a little girl. And Lydia would not have good answers for any of that.

"We gotta run! Now!" I yelled as I gathered up the backpack and the blonde wig and grabbed Lydia by the hand. She was frightened and bewildered and wasn't sure what was going on, but she was all for getting out of there.

We got to the building and ducked into a secluded alcove just as a cop car drove past us, sirens wailing loudly. Lydia covered her ears from the noise, but I was already busy punching a code into a hidden panel. The weathered door slid open to reveal a reinforced steel door that belied its outside appearance, and the two of us hurried inside.

As the heavy door clicked shut, I finally breathed a heavy sigh of relief. I turned to look at Lydia, who had scrunched up her face and was pinching her nose.

"Ugh, it stinks in here," she said.

I paused to sniff the air, a generally unpleasant aroma that was a mix of dirty motor oil and gasoline along with some pungent chemical smells. I'd been begging Prodigy for months to fix the air filtration system, but he'd maintained that it was a low priority. Instead, he hung an air freshener by the computer.

I smiled. "I've never been so happy to smell that stench in all my life. C'mon, I need to look for some stuff."

I booted up the computer in Prodigy's garage. The place was more of a mess than usual since we'd been busy with missions and hadn't had a chance to tidy up. Prodigy's sporty dark blue car (which he simply referred to as "the car" despite my repeated efforts to give it a name) was uncharacteristically not up on the lift and was parked in ready position to leave through a concealed exit.

"Sorry the place is a mess, I didn't know we were having company," I said with a grin as I turned to Lydia, who was seated on a bench next to me. But the second I saw her, my smile faded. She looked like she was on the verge of tears.

"Hey," I said consolingly. "It's okay. We're safe here."

She was hunched over slightly and hugging herself again as she shook her head. I'd retrieved the blonde wig that the thug had taken off her when we bolted, but I hadn't thought to give it back to her, so she had my usual short haircut as Chris. Had she been in more forgiving light and maybe with a better makeup job she might have looked like a girl with a boyish haircut, but as it was, it kind of shattered the illusion of "Christie." It made me uncomfortable to see myself that way, especially with Lydia in such a despondent state.

I swiveled out of the chair and sat down next to her on the bench. "Hey, what's wrong?"

"I can't be a superhero," she said in a small, choked-up voice.

I blinked. I mean, I could empathize, especially in our current state, but on the list of problems we were facing, this didn't seem like one of our bigger ones.

"Lydia, you're only seven. You've got plenty of time to—"

"It's not that," she protested. "I'm so scared all the time! Those guys on the street, they didn't have powers or guns or anything! But now I have powers, and I was so scared I didn't do anything!"

"I'm scared, too. I'm scared all the time."

"No, you're not! Plus, you're seven years old, and you did something! You kicked that guy and called for help. I just stood there."

She started to cry, and I tried to reach my arm around her consolingly, but I was too little. Instead, I wrapped my arms around her bicep and gave it a squeeze as I snuggled up against her.

As she calmed down a bit, I looked her in the eyes and wiped away her tears, smiling a little at how my male face looked under the smeared makeup.

"Lydia, I know all of this superhero stuff seems like it's a lot of fun, but it's really scary," I said to her. Unfortunately, she didn't seem very satisfied with that, so I took a breath. I wasn't especially proud of this story, but she needed to hear it.

"I never told you about my very first time out as a hero," I said. "I'd just gotten my costume, and I was flying around the city, and it was amazing. I thought I could take on the world. I even made a friend, and she was a new superhero, too. Sounds pretty good, huh?"

She smiled a little and nodded.

"I thought so, too. Then we saw a family being mugged by some gang members, kind of like what happened to you and me, but there were a lot more of them. And they had powers."

"What'd you do?" she asked breathlessly.

"We jumped in there to save the family. But then, I froze up."

"Nuh-uh."

"It's true. I almost got my friend killed because of it. I was just standing there in my miniskirt and costume, and I felt ridiculous. Those guys were big! They were adults, and they were really scary. I mean, you saw for yourself what they can be like."

She got a pensive look on her face and her brow furrowed. "What happened?"

"Things got out of control, and they were going to hurt my friend. That's what snapped me out of it. We managed to fight those guys off together, and we saved that family. But afterwards...afterwards, I wanted to quit. I was so ashamed of freezing up and endangering us like that, that I was ready to quit being a hero my first day out. Fortunately, my friend talked me out of it."

She pursed her lips uncertainly. Then she looked down at herself, and then over at me. "You can fix all this, right?"

I took a breath, not sure how to respond. "I hope so. My friends will help," I told her. Then I took her by the hand. "Lydia, just in case they can't fix us, I need you to know something. You've got powers, but that doesn't mean you have to be a superhero. Lots of people choose not to do that, and that's okay," I said, thinking about Fidget Spinner on the roof with Marty. "But if you wanted to, I know that you could."

She looked at me in confusion. "Why?"

"I—" I stopped short. I hadn't actually expected that question. I tried to think of all the qualities of a hero, and I finally gave up. I shrugged and said, "You got heart."

Lydia shot me an epic look at was equal parts dubiousness and sarcasm.

"Okay, yeah, I know," I said hurriedly, trying to recover. "Though...think of it this way. You're in a different body! So far today, you've been in superhero fights—real superhero fights!—and you're not only still here to talk about it, but your big reaction to the whole thing was to have some chicken nuggets and get me a date with a girl I like. Most people would be hiding under their bed from all that. You're smart and you care about other people, and you want to do the right thing. Being a hero doesn't mean you never mess up, it's about sticking with it and persisting, no matter what."

"Even when it's scary?"

"Especially when it's scary," I said. "That's what being a hero is all about, even if you don't wear a cape. Does any of that make sense?"

"I think so."

"Good." I glanced over at the computer. "Okay, I think I know where that thing is that I'm looking for. Come with me. And don't touch anything."

It bothered me that I was starting to sound more like Prodigy all the time.