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“So does this mean I'm off of dish washing duty?” Mike asked with a grin as he watched the last dish put itself away and the door of the cupboard it was in close itself.

“Not likely! We were just experimenting, weren't we Sarah?” Jill replied.

“Sure. Just wanted to see if we could do it.” Sarah agreed.

“Shall we go collect Sarah's old clothes?” Erica asked. They agreed and Sarah opened a portal. “You're going to get out of shape if you portal everywhere!”

“I...don't think I will, actually.” Sarah said thoughtfully.

“What do you mean?” Erica asked.

“Well, don't I look like I'm in good shape?” Sarah asked.

Erica took a good look at Sarah and said, “Yeah, I think you look like you're in very good shape!” with a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows.

Sarah blushed and said, “I haven't gotten much exercise since changing, but I look like I exercise everyday! And I don't have any body hair at all. I think this body is a little different than the norm.”

“You might be right about that. You do look pretty fit for the amount of exercise that you get.” Jill said thoughtfully as they stepped through the portal into Sarah's bedroom. Sarah stepped out to get some garbage bags and handed them to Mike when she got back.

“Would you hold one of those open for me?” she asked. He nodded and she opened the first drawer that held her old clothes. Instead of grabbing them, she opened a portal beneath them and swiftly dropped them all into the bag. She repeated this for the next two drawers and then the bag was full. The others all grabbed bags and held them open so Sarah could portal the rest of her old clothes into them. It only took them a few minutes to have everything bagged up and sitting by the front door to take care of in the morning.

“Well, that was fast!” Mike said as he set down the last bag. “I guess we can go to the tomb now.”

“Not yet.” Sarah said. “I think we should use the storefront for the stuff we're going to sell, to keep it separate from our personal stuff. But we dumped a lot of garbage and old furniture there. So I think we should clean up the storefront first.”

“Good idea.” Jill agreed. They stepped through the portal Sarah opened and walked into the store.

“I think I can take care of all of this pretty quickly if I can find a place to dump it all.” Sarah said. She closed her eyes in thought and then opened them, but they looked odd.

“What did you do to your eyes?!” Erica exclaimed.

“I've opened portals in front of both of my eyes, and I'm moving the other end of the portals around outside to see where we can dump all of this.” Sarah said. The portals reflected what was on the other side of them and that changed rapidly as she moved the other end of the portals about. Before long the image steadied and she said, “I've found another empty storefront to use. Uh, I think we should all step outside for this.”

“Why?” Tiffany asked.

“I'm going to use the same approach I used to wash dishes to clean up the storefront. I'll run portals up and down the floor, walls, and ceiling to get rid of the dust and to move all the stuff. I don't want to accidentally portal anyone while I'm doing that.” Sarah explained. They followed Sarah out of the store and she turned back to start cleaning up the storefront. She used a very large, flat portal to clean the walls and ceiling very quickly, and then opened it up to run it along the floor. In moments the storefront was spotless.

“Wow! You could make a fortune with that trick!” Tiffany exclaimed.

Sarah shrugged, “Only if I could use it without anyone being around, or if I didn't have to hide it to begin with.” Then she opened the portal to the tomb. Mike insisted on going first in wolf form, just in case something had moved into the tomb in their absence. Vash followed invisibly, but there was nothing there and the others soon followed them.

“I guess you could just portal everything back to the storefront?” Jill asked.

“I could, but since we're going to sell it I'd be worried about damaging it. It might be best to move them by hand. Especially since we're going to take pictures while we're at it. We'll need to set up a place to do that. And we'll need a good background for the shots and lighting.” Sarah replied.

“There's a photography place a couple of blocks down from the storefront, we could get stuff from there.” Mike suggested.

“In that case we might not even need Jill's camera.” Erica said as they began hauling everything through the portal.

“That's just as well, mine is a cheap digital camera. It doesn't have very good resolution.” Jill said as she began levitating things through the portal. Although she was unwilling to portal everything out en mass, Sarah was still able to help speed things up by portalling objects one at a time. Between the two of them they soon had everything through the portal.

“I'm starting to feel pretty useless.” Mike said with a laugh.

“Don't, I'm getting really tired from doing all this telekinesis. It takes a lot of concentration.” Jill said.

“In that case, why don't you take a seat?” Sarah said, and portalled one of her old chairs back from the other storefront for Jill.

“Thanks, but aren't you getting tired from all this portalling?” Jill asked after gratefully sitting.

Sarah shrugged, “No, not really. Some of it takes some concentration, but it's not tiring. But then, portals are the first thing I learned to do. It's not something new like telekinesis is for you.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Jill agreed. Without her help things went a little slower, but Sarah was still portalling things around, so it didn't take long to get everything sorted out and organized.

“Tiffany, why don't you and Erica come with me to get that photography equipment and we can let Mike keep Jill company.” Sarah suggested.

“I can come along!” Jill protested and started to get up.

Mike pushed her back down. “No, I know you! You wouldn't have said anything about being tired unless you were totally exhausted! You're staying right here.” Turning to Sarah and the others he said, “Go ahead, I'll make sure she doesn't overdo it.” Sarah nodded and the three of them walked down the street to the photography studio

“I guess portalling this stuff is out of the question, too?” Tiffany asked as she looked around at all the photography equipment.

“I can portal it one at a time without damaging anything, but I can't move it all at once, no.” Sarah agreed. She opened a portal back to the storefront and told Tiffany and Erica what she wanted them to get and began portalling the rest through. She ended up taking just about the entire studio with them.

“Why so much?” Mike asked when he saw the pile of equipment they'd taken from the studio.

“Might as well do it right.” Sarah said as she began setting it up.

“Do you even know what you're doing?” Tiffany asked.

“Sure. I took a few photography classes, both in high school and at the college. I'm not a professional or anything, but I can manage okay.” she replied. By the time they'd gotten everything set up it was getting quite late and the storefront was getting very dark.

“I guess we can't take any pictures at night, huh?” Mike said. “Come to think of it, why did you bother bringing over the lights? It's not like the electricity works here.”

“I was wondering about that, too.” Erica said.

“We can always get a generator.” Sarah said. “Besides, I think I might have an idea for that.”

“What, the generator?” Tiffany asked. “I'm sure we can find one of those in a store like Home Depot or something.”

“No, I mean I might have an alternative energy source.” Sarah replied.

“Like what?” Mike asked. “None of our powers are electrically based, nor any of the magical items we've gotten.”

“Me.” Sarah said, and grabbed the plug for the power cord on one of the lights. Closing her eyes in concentration, she gripped the plug tightly. A moment later her hand began to glow and the light came on!

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 To Be Continued…

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« Toil & Trouble - 13 - Diffused? »