Chris was half the size he had been, and his proportions were returning to normal. As he shrank, he rearranged the voluminous shorts he’d been wearing, ensuring his modesty was protected. His old outfit was contained within a pocket on the inside of the shorts, and he gathered it together, folded up, the clothes piled on his lap, along with what looked like a pencil case.

Even though he was returning to the person he’d been, physically, his smile lingered.

“Rainnn!” Kenzie called out, while Rain was still making his way to us. “Did you bring tinker stuff!?”

“Yeah!” Rain responded.

“Yusss,” Kenzie said. “This is the best day.”

“You could have waited twenty seconds for Rain to show up and asked him in a normal volume,” Chris said.

“I wanted to know now.”

Chris groaned at her, putting his face closer to hers.

Kenzie groaned louder, exaggerated, putting her face closer to his.

Chris groaned even louder, guttural, using some of the residual transformation to play up the sound. His forehead pressed against hers, hard enough she had to push back to avoid being pushed over.

Rather than try to top it, Kenzie sat back down. “I like you when you’re like this.”

“Naked?” Chris asked.

“No!” Kenzie said. “Geez.”

“Why does it feel like every time I enter a conversation, it’s a weird topic?” Rain asked, joining us where we sat on Tristan-created seats and benches.

“I like you when you’re happy,” Kenzie said. She fussed with her hair, looking down. “I like you a lot like this.”

I was put in mind of her comments about Chris before she’d gotten in Erin’s car, after leaving the group meeting. Like she didn’t have the worldly experience to know people didn’t say stuff like that in such an unguarded, dead obvious way.

“I still think you’re annoying as shit,” Chris said.

Sveta kicked him.

Kenzie snorted, smiling as she looked up at him. “I know.”

“Nah. I’m joking. You’re fine. I think we did pretty good.”

“I think we did too. It would have worked except Tristan and Byron are strong and Victoria is oof and Sveta was the best counter to what we were doing. We should fill Rain in.”

“That would be nice,” Rain said. “It was you two and…”

He turned to look around the group, saw Ashley, and didn’t finish the sentence.

“And me,” Ashley said.

“Here, I can show you the replay,” Kenzie said. “But I want to see your tinker arms too, before we run out of time.”

“There’s plenty of time,” Tristan said.

“Wait, here, you take the remote, and Rain, you can hand me the arm, I won’t break anything, I promise.”

Rain rummaged in his backpack, “I wouldn’t blame you if you did, it’s fragile and shitty. You think it would help your eyehook?”