"Ready or not! Here I come!" Zac announced.
Probably not that many besides the Hansons.
Zac was having a game of hide and seek with Isaac. As usual, Isaac was doing all the hiding.
Recently, Zac had a dream. It had been a bit of a nightmare and Jess (who kept her dreams-block open at night for such things) had pulled him out of it.
Still, the nightmare had alerted him to a particular detail he had forgotten, and confused what he knew of his Restoration power.
When Zac had triggered Isaac for the first time, Isaac had turned into his liquid form. Acting mainly on fear at seeing his brother as a puddle on the floor, Zac had used his Restoration power on him to try and, well, restore him to his former glory.
But Zac had forgotten that slight detail, mainly because it had been in the second cycle of a time loop. And now that he remembered it, it confused things, for as far as he knew, he could not restore anything living.
"Yoo hoo! Ikey poos! Where is ya?"
Perhaps his power accepted the restoration of Shape Shifters to their true form. That had been the theory presented when Zac mentioned it to his brothers. After some experimentation it appeared that the theory was correct.
As a result, their version of hide and seek had changed again slightly: in this version, Zac would use his Restoration on whatever it was that he thought would be Isaac.
"Oh fine. Don't tell me. See if I care."
Isaac smirked. Well, in a manner of speaking. It's kind of hard for a small pot plant to smirk. You know, one of those ones that sits in a little pot with about a five or six centimetre diameter… they had a couple of those on the bus. And Zac wasn't exactly known for his observation skills, so Isaac figured it would take him a while to realise there was an extra one.
Unfortunately, it appeared Zac wasn't the only one…
"Mommy!" Zoe cried.
And horror upon horrors, the first thing Diana saw when she turned to see what it was that upset her daughter so, was a dismembered arm. The little pot plant next to it was turning into Isaac who clutched at the stump on his left shoulder where his arm had been.
"Ahh, oh, man, oh man…" he whimpered with a groan.
Diana wrapped a rather upset Zoe up in her arms.
"Jess! Jess!" she called. "Isaac what happened?"
Isaac just shook his head, tears streaming down his cheeks. Jess appeared from her bunk and her eyes widened in shock as the rest of the family turned to look in, in, in well, something anyway.
Almost immediately, Jess put her hand, softly, onto Isaac's shoulder - after all that was pretty much all there was left. She concentrated.
"I, I can't." she said at last.