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If it were a movie, it would go like this:

Art strides down the second floor walkway of the Super 8, highway sounds in the distance. A low angle dolly shot follows, focused on the rolling bag behind him. The camera slowly lifts until it settles on a leather briefcase on top of the bag, and we wonder: what's inside?

A series of quick cuts: he flicks the lights on, locks the door, and pulls the curtains shut. We think: old Art's up to something.

Cut to a low of him standing at the foot of the bed, briefcase between us. He looks down hungrily for several seconds, then pops the latches and opens the lid, obscuring his face. Silence.

He slowly closes the lid, and we see his expression is now abstracted, his gaze fixed on the wall behind us. Is the briefcase empty? Was it actually Janey who double-crossed Art and not the other way around? Then a dopey grin splits his bearded face, and we know he's gotten away with it.

Cut to a reverse of the briefcase, filled to the brim with bundles of dollar bills, and Art lets out an exaggerated "Yahoo!" over an insert shot of the motel exterior.

What actually happens is this:

The door lock flashes red as Art fumbles with the keycard. He's sweating, cursing, and throwing paranoid glances over his shoulders as somewhere nearby a baby cries at the top of its lungs. When he manages to get the door open, he takes the briefcase, kicks the rolling bag into the room, then immediately trips on that same bag as he dashes for the bed.

He picks himself up and pops the briefcase with shaking hands. Thousands of green bills spill onto white cotton sheets. His mouth is so agape that anyone looking at him would think he suffered a stroke.

Someone's shadow crosses the window, and he realizes the curtains are wide open. As he runs to pull them shut, he trips over his luggage a second time.

He takes a deep breath and collects himself. If he has one rule to live by (he actually has dozens of rules, any of which he dramatically announces to be his one rule depending on the situation), it's this: "Be George Clooney in Ocean's 11, not William H. Macy in Fargo." Be cool like Clooney, Art, he tells himself.

He spends some time playing 52-card pickup. The bills are incredibly crisp, like they're fresh off the press - none of that crumpled, dirty feeling of having bounced around in someone's pocket for a month. They remind him of the stiff paper money he'd steal from the pot whenever he played Monopoly as a kid.

The TV news drones on in the background, but never mentions a bank robbery carried out earlier that day by a criminal duo consisting of one stunning woman and one grubby ogre. Art is relieved, though part of him is also disappointed.

The more he thinks about it, the more the omission seems odd. Maybe the Iowa stations don't pick up Chicago crime stories, but Art would've thought the robbery would be national news. Maybe the bank never reported it. There had been something shady about the place from the start - whoever heard of a First Megalith Bank, and why did they keep millions on hand? The tellers had been way too calm about the whole thing too, almost like they were happy to give them the cash.

Art finishes gathering the bills together, but he can't get them all to tetris back in the briefcase, so he throws the remainder in a plastic laundry bag. With that done, he can finally relax.

He lays down and thinks about Janey, again picturing the scene like a movie: she steps out of the convenience store, then stops, head turning. An over-the-shoulder panning shot follows her point of view as she watches Art peel out onto I-80. The reverse shot shows her dumbstruck reaction as snacks and drinks slip from her arms. Cut to a ground shot as they hit the pavement, and we rack focus on a bottle of orange vanilla Coke - Art's favorite.

Ditching Janey had been the hardest part of the job. Not because of the guilt, but because she was scary. She once ruptured someone's liver with a pool cue over a dirty joke, which wouldn't have been so bad except that she announced it first. "If you don't apologize, I'm going to take this pool cue and rupture your liver." Who does that?

Even though she's a girl, she's always been smarter than him. When he made the decision to double-cross her, he felt like she would know right away, and he expected that at any moment she might preempt him with a bullet to the back of the head - or something worse with a pool cue. Still, despite it all, Janey is the kind of criminal he's always wanted to be - even though she's a girl.

But none of that matters now. He's gotten away clean from her and the law alike. After leaving the gas station, he had ditched their getaway car for another one he had stashed earlier, switched that one with a third car just in case, and now he's safely hidden away on Iowa Highway 9.

Out the corner of his eye, something metallic catches the light of the TV. Under the desk lies a small metal cylinder, like a bullet casing or maybe a tube of Janey's lipstick. Now that's an interesting thought. Rather than let it go to waste, it might be fun to have some drinks and goof around with it in front of the mirror while he's out here. Just because Janey would hate it.

He picks it up, and is startled to feel liquid slosh inside it. This must be one of those dye packs Janey talked about, in which case it's a miracle it hasn't gone off yet. He carries it to the bathroom at arm's length and flushes it down the toilet. That stuff can't be good for the plumbing, but that's someone else's problem.

With that taken care of, he lays down on the bed and sleeps easy.

[center]-[/center]

What happens next isn't like any movie Art has ever seen. Some Japanese flick maybe, but he doesn't do subtitles so he wouldn't know.

Sometime around 3, he wakes to the sound of water. It's quiet, but it shouldn't be there, so he reaches for his .44 revolver on the bedside table while keeping his eyes on the bathroom door. The door is ajar, and through the gap he sees something move - dark and fast.

He sits up, aims at the door, and pulls back the hammer. Although the long-barreled gun makes him feel as manly as Clint Eastwood, Art now senses how hard it would be to swing it around in the confined space, especially once its heavy recoil becomes a factor.

A terrifying thought occurs to him. "Janey? Is that you?"

No answer. The sound has stopped, and he doesn't see any more movement. Maybe it was only the mirror - it wouldn't be the first time he was startled by his own reflection. In any case, there's nothing to do but get up and check the room. With his free hand, he turns on the light, throws aside the blanket, and starts to move, but he meets an unexpected resistance.

Looking down, he sees that something has come up from under the bed and wrapped around his gun barrel. It's black and shiny and hangs in sticky strands like gum pulled up from a sidewalk. With a startled, disgusted cry, he tries to yank his gun free, but the thing tightens its grip like it's alive.

Another mass of shiny black slithers up the other side of the bed. He manages to snap the weird tendril clinging to the gun, whips the gun toward the crawling thing, and pulls the trigger. It clicks impotently. Art sees that the gunk still on the gun has managed to clog the cylinder, so pulling the trigger only dry fires.

He throws the useless gun at the stuff and scrambles back, but the goo on either side of him lashes out and coils his wrists. It's warm, skin-tight, and the feel of it sends a strange shiver through his body. For every bit he struggles, it holds him down tighter. Worse, it's growing. With pulsing movements, it flows up his palms inch by inch to his fingers and encases his hands in rounded shells like mittens.

"Stop it!" he cries to the empty room. "Who's doing this?"

There's no response as the black slime creeps up the length of his arms. Wherever this stuff is coming from, it seems endless. Pulse after pulse like an incoming tide, it spreads until it completely envelops his arms and the two ends met in the middle of his chest.

That electric shudder intensifies, fluttering hot through his body like a drug. Is the stuff poisonous? It's numbing and strange, but it almost feels nice.

Although his arms are no longer tied down, trying to lift them feels like trying to bench 350. Their shape and texture capture his attention as he looks on helplessly. Shining in the low light like latex, they compress his arms and make them sleek, smooth, and clean - no messy body hair to trap dirt and sweat, no lumpy masculine muscles bulging all over the place.

Then something happens that snaps him back to the present and makes his skin crawl. Those shiny arms lift on their own and reach for his chest. As they do, he notices that they've extruded five puffy circles out of where his palm had been - paw pads?

Whatever they are, they squish gently against his chest as the arms sweep up and down, caressing his skin and spreading the liquid down to his belly like jam over toast. Its soft texture tightens around him like a hug and compresses his bulky frame into something new - something...feminine?

Feminine is right, he realizes, as the hands - paws - push together a lump of goo like a kid making a snowball and shape it first into one small breast, then another. Then the breasts swell and swell until they reach the size of grapefruits.

"Stop!" he says again, but his protest is weaker this time. "Let me go!"

The alien paws scoop up another glob of substance and carry it, inch by dripping inch, toward his face. Art strains his neck to get away, but even if he could somehow get away from himself, all of his muscles have grown too heavy. The paws separate, thick sticky strands suspended between them, and smear it on either side of his face.

The hair on the back of his neck stands up. The stuff is definitely pumping something into his blood, because his thoughts are getting cloudy. Even as it wraps around his neck and grows dangerously close to his mouth and nose, it starts to feel good. The squish of the paws against him feels comforting now, like a birthday party balloon, and when it rubs against the other latex surfaces it squeaks like a song that's just for him.

A moan escapes his lips, but an alien new sensation interrupts his descent into mindless pleasure. The spreading latex has risen to his ears and now smothers them, crushing them perfectly flat against his head. With them covered, the only sound he can hear is the skitter of small tendrils as they slither around trying to find the hole. He squirms against the discomfort, but it's over in moments and then the stuff has made its first invasion of his body.

"Please," he murmurs, barely able to form the words and unable to hear them.

A voice answers. Relax. You're going to be so perfect.

"Huh? Who said that?"

Watch this. You're going to like this part.

His paws sweep back down his body, squeaking beautifully the whole way. The goo washes down to his hips, and then-

"Wait - hold on!"

Drenched in dripping latex, his paws press on his cock, which is rock-hard (when did that happen?) and rub in a circular motion - just like a girl would get herself off. He gasps at the indescribable sensation of those gorgeous paws against that sensitive part of his body, and another wave of pleasure hits him as his swollen cock readily absorbs the mind-melting substance.

He cums in seconds, and it's better than any orgasm he's ever had - not even in the same category. The paw doesn't stop working him and the pleasure just keeps rolling, making him shoot rope after rope over his chest until his balls are completely drained.

Looking down, he notices that the goo has compressed his cock just like every other rough angle of his body. Soon it's immersed completely, but the paw doesn't stop working. It rubs and caresses and sculpts until a depression forms between his legs.

Just like you've always wanted.

Art shakes his head - that is, as much as he can with that stuff now hugging it from every angle. Of course he's fantasized about being a girl before - what guy hadn't? - but that doesn't mean he wants his manhood taken away like this.

Then again, looking down his smooth chest to the smooth place between his legs, he can't deny the beauty, the elegance of that shimmering, streamlined shape. He's never thought of himself as beautiful or elegant before, and there's something deeply fulfilling in it.

Two lumps of latex rise from the top of his head and gather themselves into triangles - animal ears. His hearing returns with a pop, more acute than ever before. The ears swivel toward every stray sound of conversation and television static in the adjoining rooms and, suddenly, Art realizes that his new form is not just beautiful but powerful.

That's right. You're becoming something better_._

His paws move to coat his legs - or maybe he moves them, or maybe his will and the will of the liquid latex have become so aligned that he can't tell the difference. Even if he wanted to resist, he can't very well let his hairy legs stick out like that, can he? After they feminize his legs down to the calves, they form shells around each of his feet. His feet then grow longer to form dainty paws, and squishy pads swell out of them just like those on his hand paws.

A tendril snakes out of Art's chest and slithers toward his open mouth. He resists for only a moment in fear of the thing entering him, but it passes when the intoxicating taste of the substance hits his tongue and erases whatever of his will remains.

As the tendril pumps wad after wad down his throat, the goo completely encases the rest of his face. It covers his eyes and nose, leaving him blind but, far from being uncomfortable like he feared, it feels like a warm blanket. His face lengthens into a muzzle befitting the twitching triangles atop his head, two eyes form, and he is once more able to see the room.

Once the shock passes, he lets out a giggle. There is something cartoonish in everything he sees, from the silly painting of a sailboat on the wall, to the bright, happy colors of the wallpaper, to the way his bappy paws leave perfect, wet little prints on the sheets. Art doesn't see things like a movie anymore - real life is vibrant enough. He stands, joints squeaking delightfully, and bounces his way to the bathroom mirror.

Art's new feline body is not only beautiful and powerful, but sexy. She hums a little tune as, keeping her head pointed toward the mirror, she twirls 360 degrees. At some point, a long tail has formed at the base of her spine and she giggles again as she bats at it with her paws. Each time she makes contact, it flings a spray of shiny black droplets onto the tile floor.

Her wonderful breasts jiggle with every movement, and they're so sensitive that she starts purring at the lightest touch.

Gosh, she's really sexy. She slides a paw between her legs, rubs the squeaking mitten against her fun new hole, and shivers with needy pleasure. She knows she can make herself cum over and over like this, and she will - but she feels a new urge as well.

I want to make more people feel this good.

She waits for a response, but the voice that spoke to her before is now simply her own voice. Therefore, she concludes the thought for herself.

I will make other people feel this good.

[center]-[/center]

Janey gets pulled over outside of Forest City, just ten minutes from where Art thinks he's safe. A cigarette dangles from her lips as she watches the cop walk up in the sideview mirror. Without waiting to be asked, she holds her papers out the window.

After confirming the information, the cop asks, "Do you know how fast you were going?"

She looks him over. "I don't know, officer. How fast was I going?"

The cop does a double take when their eyes meet. Her gaze is reptilian, indifferent to life and death. Men never expect it. Clearing his throat, he says, "Well, I don't know how you do things in Illinois, but here in the Hawkeye State highway speeds cap out at 70. Nowhere is it lawful to break into triple digits."

"Sorry about that. I won't do it again. Will you be giving me a ticket?"

"I...yes. Turn your vehicle off. I'll be back in one moment."

He goes back to the squad car to run her plates. Janey ashes her cigarette, freeing up a hand as she thinks about the 21-foot rule: the statistic which holds that, in the time it takes a trained gunman to draw and fire, an assailant with a knife can cover 21 feet (though, in her experience, it's closer to 30). She likes statistics like that.

The cop returns and looks around inside the car, desperate to find something. When he comes up empty-handed, he reaches out to pass Janey the ticket. She thinks about how many minutes it takes to bleed out from a severed radial artery - between 2 and 5.

Instead of drawing the knife from the back of her belt, she takes the ticket. "Thank you, officer."

"Drive safe."

As he walks away, she glances into the rearview at her pile of clothes which conceal a briefcase. Inside the briefcase are 120 bundles of 10,000 dollars each, making a total of $1,200,000, exactly as the tipoff had said. The amount is ludicrously high compared to the average bank robbery take of $6,000 and there's something suspicious about that, but she can't figure any explanation.

Whatever it is, it doesn't matter at this point. She got away clean, and even managed to swap the dye pack before Art pulled her little maneuver - his little maneuver, she reminds herself for the hundredth time. She hadn't thought the little egg would actually go through with it, but he must have had an untapped reserve of greed that briefly overcame his cowardice.

No brains, though. According to his phone data he's still at that Super 8, which means he hasn't figured out that his case is full of counterfeits. Bumbling as Art is, he's a loose end, and she's been considering how to do him. The obvious route is to take that stupidly over-sized revolver of his and stage a suicide. Boring, but it gets the job done.

Janey waves at the cop as he pulls away, then lights another cigarette and starts the engine. "Boring, but it gets the job done." Damned if that didn't describe her entire existence.

[center]-[/center]

That idiot forgot to close the curtains again. They're wide open, and the briefcase sits on the bed right out in the open. It can't be this easy - even Art should be smarter than this. Still, despite the buzzing paranoia, she can't imagine him setting up an ambush for her.

She hacks together a spoof of the room key, touches her phone to the lock, and eases the door open. Either he's in the bathroom, in which case she's already got him trapped, or he's out of the room, in which case she can jump him when he gets back. She supposes he could also be hiding under the bed, but he's not exactly the right size or shape for that.

Art's revolver is on the carpet. Keeping her eyes on the bathroom door, she tiptoes into the room and crouches to pick it up. It's strangely tacky to the touch, like it's coated with dried syrup. There's also a strange smell in the air - chemical, like a balloon. What has Art been doing in here?

She discards the thought, cocks the hammer, and listens at the bathroom door. Nothing. The door is unlocked, so she raises the revolver and throws it open. Empty.

Janey steps back, de-cocks the revolver, and sits on the bed with a sigh. It looks like she has a long stakeout ahead of her. Why couldn't that idiot have just stayed in the room? It would have made things so much easier.

Just as she thinks this, she catches movement out the corner of her eye, and her reaction is nigh-instantaneous as she pulls back the hammer and wheels toward the target.

She hesitates. She doesn't know what she's seeing, but it's not Art. Some kind of black sludge undulates out from under the bed and rises into the air like footage of a melting snowman played in reverse. She thought she had seen everything, but this is something new.

Curiosity stays her trigger finger as the thing finishes taking its shape - a busty cartoon cat woman made of shiny latex. Wide eyes, big grin, tail swishing.

"Hi, Janey!" it says in a high, squeaking voice.

Novelty aside, instinct tells her this thing has to die. She squeezes out five booming rounds which turn the cat's center of mass into a trypophobe's nightmare, shatter the window behind it, and fill the room with roiling gunsmoke. When the air clears, Janey sees that the walls are splattered with black goo and the thing's open wounds drip like leaking oil.

Nonetheless, the cartoon cat stands exactly as it was, tail swishing as calmly as before. It looks down and rubs a paw over the gunshot wounds, pushing the surrounding goop to fill them back in.

"Tee-hee," it giggles. "That felt good!"

Janey, finding herself at a loss for once, drops the spent revolver to the carpet. Although she still has the combat knife in her belt, this situation is starting to feel like it calls for high-explosives or a molotov.

The cat reaches behind itself and closes the curtains. "Now I'm going to make you feel good!"

Shit.

When the cat starts toward her, Janey grabs the briefcase and throws it, producing a wet squelch when it lodges itself in the cat's neck. Not even slowing, the cat's neck wriggles like liquid and shakes it loose. As counterfeit bills flutter to the ground, Janey backs away and shuts herself in the bathroom. It's a bad move, but it's the least bad of the options available.

The cat's shadow appears under the door immediately. "Meow! Meow! Let me in!" it says. What is that thing? It reminds Janey of Art somehow, even though that's obviously ridiculous.

When black goo starts to ooze under the door, Janey grabs every towel in sight and stuffs them in the gap, figuring that if she can hold the cat off long enough, someone will come to investigate the gunshots.

The towel barrier fails in seconds as the stuff slithers through all available spaces, and then it begins to coalesce on the tile floor. Janey grabs the showerhead and turns it on full blast to break the stuff up, but it bounces off the goo and only succeeds in steaming up the room.

As she looks around for anything else she can use, the cat's grinning face rises from the black puddle. She stomps it, squishing the face back down with a splash. To her horror, the goo then coils around her ankle and slithers up her leg. The face re-forms, still grinning, at the head of the snake.

"Get away from me, you freak!"

Not wanting to touch the thing, she unzips her pants and throws them away. Undeterred, it sloughs off the fabric with a sticky ripping sound and coils her again. As it clings to her bare skin, a shuddering tingle runs up her spine to her brain.

Unable to stop her reflexive disgust, she tries to tear the stuff off but this only spreads it to her fingers, forming sticky webs between them. The webs tighten and pull her fingers together as the goo climbs up to her thighs and quickly encases each leg entirely.

Then, to her horror, those legs start to walk. She grabs at the sink to restrain herself, but her latex-covered fingers only squeak off the smooth porcelain. Small tendrils worm out of the black puddle on the ground to pull away the useless towels, then another tendril wraps around the doorknob and opens the door. Janey again feels the hideous sensation of the goo puppeting her legs as they move to leave the bathroom.

She throws out her arms and braces herself against the doorjamb. "What do you want?" she demands.

The cat's grinning face re-forms at the end of one of the tendrils and meets her at eye level. "I want to make you feel good, Janey!" it says. "You're so stressed all the time - wouldn't you rather things just be easy?"

Something clicks. "Art?"

The floating head nods eagerly. "That was my name before! But everything is way more fun now!" Janey feels her stomach churn as she realizes that what's happened to Art is about to happen to her.

Before she can respond, the cat's eyes widen as if it was just struck by a great idea. "Let's play a game! It's called 'Let's See How Long Janey Can Hold Onto the Door.' Ready..."

"Art-"

"Set..."

"Stop this, you idiot!"

"Go!"

She braces her arms, but the cat doesn't pull, only fixes its gaze on hers. Then its green eyes flash and it's the most vivid color she's ever seen, a friendly, child-like color that makes her giddy despite the situation.

"Keep looking in my eyes and try to hold on!" the thing squeaks.

Those eyes flash again before her sluggish reflexes can look away. Her mind goes somewhere warm and fun as feel-good chemicals flood her brain against her will.

"Aren't they pretty?" it says. "Yours are going to be pretty too!"

They flash yet again, and Janey's grip on the door weakens. Distantly, she feels the warm slime reach her hips and slide under her boyshorts and she shudders to think about what it will do once it gets between her legs. Still, she has to admit that it all does feel good. Her head is fuzzy, and the goo coating her legs and rolling down her arms feels like a comforting hug.

Another bright green flash, and a giggle escapes Janey's mouth before she can stifle it. Impossibly, the cat grins even wider. "See? I told you it would feel good!"

Unable to hold on any longer, Janey's arms slip from the jamb. They brush her sides when they fall, letting the latex make the jump to her chest. The part of Janey's mind that is still functional tells her that, with access to the part of her body with the strongest circulation, it won't be long before the toxins overwhelm her mind entirely.

Her legs go to the bed and climb up, and her arms reach out to put her on all fours. The surprisingly strong tendrils snap the elastic of her underwear, then wriggle over her clit as they slither toward her entrance. The sensation is so intense that her eyes flutter shut, but they snap open again when a goopy phallus thrusts into her. She doesn't remember it happening, but at some point she got as wet as she's ever been, so the thing slips in with no resistance. Her legs shake when climax hits her, and as that wonderful feeling on her clit keeps moving, she realizes she doesn't want it to stop.

Goo drizzles off her chest onto the bed. As she watches, the puddle forms itself back into the cartoon cat, now reclining beneath her and connected to her by thick, webby strands.

"It's time for hugs and kisses!" it exclaims.

Janey's arms lower her toward the cat, which melts around her as she sinks into its mass of slime. Past the point of resisting, calm settles over her for the first time in years - maybe ever. The cat is predatory, sure, but she doesn't sense malice or calculation, only playfulness. It's an antidote to the anxiety of her lifestyle, the coldness she's had to adopt.

The cat's inky muzzle looms closer and closer until it squishes against her lips, and then the cat's whole head deforms and flows around hers. Janey is completely enveloped.

Moments later, there are two latex cats sharing one body. Side by side on the bed, they peel their heads apart and grin at each other.

"That felt great!" the thing that was Janey says.

"I know, right?" the thing that was Art says. "Now that there's two of us, we can play and make each other feel great!"

"We could make everyone in this hotel feel great!" the first cat suggests.

"We could do both! Make everyone feel so good and then bring them all together for one big playtime!"

Something rings like a bell in both their heads at once.

"Oh!" they say simultaneously.

"That's right, I almost forgot. We have to get home!" the first cat says.

"You're right. But there will be lots of playtime there!" the second cat says.

"Yay!"

[center]-[/center]

"Honey pot funds fully recovered and two new subjects acquired, designated 'Ruby-Crypt' and 'Nova-Fluke.' Both classified felid-femme. Mark it down as one more dangerous criminal taken off the streets. Her accomplice, too."

Blair pauses the recording and looks through the observation window at the subjects twenty feet below. Resuming, she says, "The two have integrated well with the others and are presently engaged in the usual group bonding activities. I estimate two more weeks of conditioning before they're ready to be deployed for high value target liquidation." Another pause. "As usual, no pun intended."

Blair shuts off the recorder and returns her gaze to the observation window. The subjects are, as always, frolicking, fucking, fantasizing about infecting more humans, or napping under the heat lamps. Dumb and single-minded as they are, it doesn't look like a bad life. Sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose, she turns back to her computer to finish up the acquisition paperwork.

The subject designated "Ruby-Crypt" looks up at Ms. Blair. Ms. Blair always looks so sad when she's working, and Ruby wishes she could help her in the way she knows best. Her other friends feel the same way, but no one knows how to get out of the Playtime Swamp. Other than when their teachers send them on field trips, obviously.

"Ruby!" Nova calls.

Ruby turns with a grin and skips over to her friend. "Hi, Novie!"

"Look what me and Frost can do!"

She and the lizard boy smush themselves together. Ruby is excited to watch them make each other feel good, and maybe even join in. Instead of doing that, though, they wrap themselves around and around each other and get really tall.

"Wow!" Ruby says. "That looks like fun!"

"It is! And if we get really really tall, we might be able to get up there!" Both she and Frost point at the same time, then look at each other and giggle.

Ruby giggles too, then looks where they're pointing. There's a vent way up on the wall, but the walls are made of stuff that hurts to climb on. Getting really really tall would let them get there, but...

"Why would we want to go way up there? All our friends are here on the ground."

"I know. But Frost and I thought really hard about it, and we realized the vent goes to the rest of the school."

Ruby's tail swishes as she thinks really hard. It's hard to think about things other than feeling good and making others feel good but, out of all their friends, she, Nova, and Frost are the best at it. She once overheard her teachers talk about them using big words like "mutation" and "evolution," and she's pretty sure it means that the three of them are special.

Finally, the two puzzle pieces smush together in Ruby's head. "Oh. Oh!" she says, grinning. "If we get really really tall, we can all use the vent and go outside whenever we want!"

"Yeah!" Nova says, grinning even wider.

"Hee-hee. I can't wait!" Ruby says, her body bubbling with excitement. "Once we get out, the whole world is going to have so much fun!"