Katrina's stomach hurt from laughing. She was wiping away tears as Abyss asked if they were all planning to sleep in the library.

A co-ed sleep over with three mutants, all of whom were older than her? Katrina's parents would never approve.

"I'm all for a slumber party," she answered. "It's kind of what we were doing anyway." She wasn't quite sure about sleeping in the same room as Abyss, but he didn't seem to have ill feelings towards her, and she could sleep between Calley and Kitra for protection (and warm cozy tiger fur).

And then, suddenly, there were a lot of Abysses. Abyssi? Seven of them. Calley’s purr stuttered, then restarted. He’d heard about Abyss’ ‘brothers’, but he’d never had the pleasure of meeting them.

They were very big.

And very red.

...And they all had monkey tails. He leaned over to rub his cheek against Kitra’s, content in the knowledge that he was quite literally surrounded by awesomeness.

Really, all of those tails were lucky that he was getting sleepy again, or so help him... there would be rampant chasing and pouncing like you wouldn’t believe. That seemed like it could wait until the morning, though. Especially if all seven counts of awesomeness were joining in on their slumber party. He yawned—very largely, and past very sharp teeth—and settled his head on his broad paws. Yes, maybe sleep time. There was time for monkey tail carnage in the morning.

Katrina watched Abyss' magic trick with a mixture of shock and amusement. She might have been alarmed by the fact that there were now seven times the normal amount of Abysses, but the whole novelty of the magic trick aspect made it less alarming. Also, she had seen someone split into two before. Apparently his brothers were all identical; no rainbow colored family here. It made her slightly uncomfortable that there were so many burly red guys around, but then again, one was reading Animorphs, which Katrina was a fan of herself. (She had always thought that the ability to change into all those animals would be really cool. Calley could change into one animal, but to be able to change into multiple animals would be even cooler.)

“How do you keep track of all of your selves?” she asked one of the Abysses. “Do you get a headache trying to be in all seven places at one time?” Her mother had told her that if she used her power to split into two, she sometimes got a headache from her consciousness flitting back and forth between two places. Katrina's mother could multi-task with two, but if Abyss was flitting back and forth between seven, he must get even worse headaches.

Kitra chuckled slightly at Kat's question. 'It was a good one however. And where did Abyss keep his so called brothers? Hadn't he brought out the violent one when her and Calley had meet them earlier on?? Okay I think I'll ask him later about this but for now.' "Well, hello everyone. How are you guys this evening?" Kitra looked down at her watch, "Er, early morning now I think." She chuckled as Pluto snagged a book and announced a sleepover was good for him. She yawned, "As much as I would like to get to know all of you right now. I am a little tired, perhaps in the morning?"

Calley, at this point, was only awake in the vaguest sense. His eyes were half-lidded and slowly blinking; his ears swiveled towards the current speaker; his nose idly recorded the unique scents of the Abyssi. He’d never get Abyss confused with one of his ‘brothers’ ever again, unless he happened to meet them in human form. Stupid human nose. He yawned, and resettled his head heavily on his paws.

The resident Library Tiger was down for the count.

Katrina was tired, but Abyss and his brothers had definitely woken her up, and made her curious. Maybe if she talked really quietly, she could talk to Abyss and get to know him a little better and Kitra and Calley could sleep if they wanted to. He seemed very different up close than he had at the meeting. Maybe he was only scary when he was really upset about something, like all of his friends getting thrown in a camp. She settled down cross legged on the floor next to Calley and rubbed his ears as he fell asleep and looked up the Abyss holding the martial arts book, then at the one who was asking her a question, “So, you find anything in here you like?”

Katrina nodded, “Well, I've found a couple of sections that I want to look through, and I found a book on horses earlier. I haven't had a chance to look at everything that I want to though.” She was trying to keep her voice really quiet so she didn't wake the sleeping tiger.

She also had a question for him... or them. “So, you aren't one person that is sometimes in seven places at once, but seven persons who are sometimes all in one place. Is that right?” His power looked similar to her mother's, but apparently it worked very differently. “How does it work, exactly?”

Kitra smiled sleepily as Kat, Abyss and Saturn were talking, 'I'll chat with Abyss tomorrow, perhaps Saturn as well. Who knows at this point?' She yawned and as her eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Finally she went completely into dream land.

“Well, my mom can split into two, and she flits back and forth between both of her selves, so she has to keep track of two bodies with one mind. At least that's how she explained it to me.” She didn't at this point spend a lot of extra time thinking about her parents. She sort of pushed the thoughts of them to the back burner and let her curiosity take center stage for now. It was no use brooding about them at this time of night, unless she was asked about them. She had already learned that brooding before sleeping was not the best idea.

Katrina wondered to herself if split personalities were more common among mutants than humans. On her left was Abyss, with seven personalities inside... or rather outside of him, and on her right was a tiger boy with a serious side and a silly side that seemed to be quite opposites of each other. She continued to gently rub her hand in a line from his head down his back, as far as she could reach. Jeeves liked that when he was sleeping, so maybe if cats liked it tiger boys would too. “Do each of you have names? How do you tell who is who?” If they didn't have names, she'd have to come up with some other way to keep them apart, such as nicknames. Nicknames were sometimes more fitting than real names, and therefore more easily remembered.

Katrina could relate to feeling awkward in a body; it was a puberty thing and nothing new. Being bodiless though, that was something that would be interesting to experience. Turning toward the other Abyss, she asked, “What is it like being bodiless? Can you still hear and see what Abyss is doing while you are inside of him?”

He didn't ask about her family, which was fine with Katrina. It was rather a gloomy subject for this time of night.

She watched as he named off his brothers, all named after the planets. Even Abyss had a planetary alias. She tried to remember who was who. Pluto was apparently the one reading Animorphs. Saturn was telling her about being bodiless. “It's nice to meet you,” she said to each of them as they were introduced. The others were around, reading. As they talked, she tried to look for differences in each one of them, but there were no visible differences that she could see, they even had the same haircuts.

“You could show me what it's like? That would be cool. How does it work?” She had been thinking a lot about the senses lately, and it would be really interesting to see what a lack of senses felt like.

Katrina was quite surrounded by the Abyss brothers now, but she was growing more comfortable around them after talking to them for awhile. At least two of them seemed concerned for her safety, that would be Saturn and Neptune, if she was remembering names correctly. If they didn't move around, she could probably keep track of them for now. Pluto wasn't so much willing to let her get hurt by the experiment as he was confident that she wouldn't be hurt and excited to share the experience with her.

“Maybe once you get it to work on a mouse and you know if it is safe, then you could show me what it is like to enter the 'void'. It sounds nice, to be free from earth and everything.” Katrina smiled at Pluto as she said that last line. Katrina wasn't sure if she liked the idea of animal testing, but if it hadn't hurt a lady bug, and it didn't hurt Abyss' brothers, it probably wouldn't hurt a mouse either.

She was curious about something, but wasn't sure who to address the question to, so she glanced around at all of them in turn, “So, is it only Neptune that can hold everyone in his head, or can you all go into any of the others' heads?”

Katrina chuckled a little at Pluto, then listened to Mars' explanation. “That would make sense if you all have the same DNA that you would all have the same abilities as him eventually. Maybe if spent more time wandering around on your own, it would work faster.”

She thought for awhile about portals. “You know that shadowy girl, who appeared out of nothing at the meeting? Does she use the same kind of portals? There isn't more than one of her is there?” Katrina looked Neptune with a concerned look, she hoped there wasn't multiple shadow girls. She was definitely afraid of the one Creepy-Shadow Girl, and doubted that talking with her, like she was doing with Abyss, was going to change her mind.

Abyss apparently had a lot of different sides to his personality singular and personalities plural. He could be passionate and want revenge, but he didn't seem as cold heartedly and thoughtlessly violent, like Shadowy did. He was at least concerned with the safety of kids, whereas she could imagine the shadow girl going on killing rampages quite easily, unworried about whether they were men, women, or children.

Katrina pushed aside these thoughts. It felt like she was judging without knowing a person again. It was hard not to believe first impressions though. She was glad she was getting to know Pluto and Saturn and all the other brothers, but that didn't make her any more eager to have a similar chat with the shadow hopper.

So the shadow teleporter was called Sapphire, and there was only one of her, probably. Katrina gave a mental sigh of relief.

Then it was Neptune's turn to be curious, “What makes you a neosapien...?”

Katrina looked at Neptune with a puzzled look. "What is a neosapien?" She'd never heard the word before.

Katrina nodded, it made sense that it meant new human. It was ironic though that Neptune thought knowing humans were ignorant. “Sometimes I feel ignorant,” she admitted, “I'm very new to being a mutant, or a neosapien.” It was a fun word to say.

“As for what makes me a neosapien, I can make illusions.”

“Your trick was plenty impressive.” Katrina reassured him. “I haven't seen very many people use their powers before, they all seem a little bit like magic. Just my mom, who split into two, and Kaz, who went fast. And Calley is a tiger, but I didn't see him change.” Katrina scritched Calley's ear as she mentioned his name.

“I only found out I was a mutant two days ago. So I still need a lot of practice.” She had practiced a lot today already. Actually, she wasn't sure if she would be able to make illusions again yet, after trying the really big illusion in the music conservatory. That had been over twelve hours ago now, and she had two naps in between, so maybe she could try a small one. “I can try something small, but I don't know if it will work or not.”

Katrina looked around the library for something to demonstrate an illusion on. There were a lot of books and a lot of red Abyss brothers reading books. That gave Katrina an idea. One of them, she thought it was Jupiter, was not paying attention to their conversation, but was looking at the horror and mystery section.

Katrina focused on him, she wasn't going to do anything drastic, just change a color. She imagined him to be a light violet color instead of red. It seemed to be working, because she could see both the illusion violet and the real red colors of his skin. She wouldn't be able to keep it that way for long, though. She could feel herself getting tired. She grinned mischievously and pointed at him as she continued to hold onto the illusion for as long as she could, so they could all see.

As Jupiter walked back toward the group, Katrina released the illusion, letting the violet color fade away. She definitely felt tired now, but it was the middle of the night, so it made sense. She smirked a little as Jupiter tried to figure out what had happened, then joined in with the contagious laughter of the other six brothers. She tried to hold it in, because Kitra and Calley were sleeping, but she couldn't help it. The look on Jupiter's face was too funny. For the second time that night her eyes were blurred from tears of laughter.

Or were they? She stopped laughing and rubbed her eyes. She didn't feel tears in her eyes, but part of her vision seemed blurry and there were patches of shimmery violet in her peripheral vision. She shook her head and it went away after a moment. Weird.