Meeting everyone was brief.

"Everyone," Kim said as he led the three to the living room, "this is… everyone else."

"Good one, babe," Katherine said, giving him a small thumbs up. It was part mocking, mostly affectionate.

"Hello, sir. It's nice to meet you," Tammy said as she shook hands with Kim's dad after putting down her plastic grocery bags on the coffee table. A lone bottle of soda, a bowl of ice, a box of tissues and a small stack of plates were all that was left after mom had probably hidden away all the snacks once she'd seen his visitors had brought their own. Next to it went the yellow boxes from the bakery. "Thank you for having us over. I'm Tammy."

Every was waiting for them in the living room, and despite Kim's best efforts, his mom and his grandmother were clearly overdressed. Tammy was just as clearly uncomfortable for a moment before she doubled down on the smile.

Kim's dad nodded genially. "I'm Milo, Kim's father, and this is my wife, Marie. This is Kim's grandfather and grandmother, Benito and Nene, and our other son Ryan. And this is Katherine, Kim's girlfriend and a friend of the family." Tammy moved to shake hands with everyone. "We're heard from Kim how the three of you dealt with that monster that killed all those people in UP." Kim was surprised when both Tammy and Sanny straightened at that. For the latter it was subtle, such that one would think she was merely shifting her weight. For the former, however, it was an obvious, almost comical shift in posture that probably added maybe a half inch to her height. Only Willy didn't react, but then she looked like she wasn't paying attention. Or at least, her attention was on the block of ice still in her hands.

"Ah, we were just trying to help, sir," Tammy said, visibly trying to keep herself from preening and stay humble as she shook hands with Kim's grandmother. "Really, Sanny did all the work. It was her plan and her trap, and she was the one who finished off the Blood Bug in the end." Kim tried to keep himself from shuffling as he remembered how close he'd come to killing the tall woman back when he'd thought she was just another monster trying to score a meal. In hindsight, the way she'd fought the… Blood Bug? Is that what they were calling it? The way she'd fought the Blood Bug in the air should have been a clue she was human.

"Which one of you is Sanny?" his dad asked.

"That would be me, sir," Sanny said, stepping forward and shaking his dad's hand. "How do you do. I'm sorry for spying on your family, but I didn't think asking you what kind of person your son was would make sense." She didn't even look like the admission of guilt bothered her.

"Don't do it again," his dad said firmly. It wasn't a request.

"Of course, sir," Sanny said. She didn't look intimidated at all. Was it because she was taller than his dad?

They parted, and Sanny exchanged handshakes with everyone else as well. Katherine just smiled and didn't offer her hand, but Sanny didn't seem to notice.

Kim's dad turned to Willy. "Hello," he said, but did not offer his hand, since hers were occupied. "I'm afraid I didn't get your name?"

"This is my cousin Willy," Tammy said. She nudged the taller girl gently. "Say hi Willy."

Willy glanced at her cousin. "Hi," she said quietly.

"She's very quiet, isn't she?" Kim's mom said.

"Um, do you have a bucket or something?" Tammy said. "The ice will start melting when she lets go of it, and I wouldn't want the floor to get wet. It's a very nice floor. "

"She's keeping it from melting?" Ryan asked excitedly. "Are you superheroes like kuya too?"

"Yup!" Tammy said.

"No," Sanny said.

The two exchanged looks, one exasperated, the other mildly amused. You could practically see the exchange of 'Really?' and 'Yes, really'.

"Well, we just wanted to meet you and say hi," Kim's dad said. "I hope we'll have time to talk before you leave."

"Of course, sir," Tammy said. "I'm sure you have plenty of questions you'd like us to answer. Thank you for inviting us into your home. It's very nice."

"I hope you get along with my son," Kim's dad said, exactly the same way he had whenever Kim had brought people home. "If you need us, we'll be upstairs watching TV."

Kim's parents and grandparents left, his grandmother needing to be dissuaded from staying and getting snacks for everyone. Kim half expected his mom to come back down and start putting ice in all the glasses and pouring everyone drinks. Ryan had to be pulled along, and he kept looking over his shoulder at the three girls—well, two girls and one woman—as if he wanted to pester them with questions.

"Well, they seemed nice," Tammy said. Then she blinked and looked around.

Katherine waved at her.

"Huh?" Tammy said.

"So, what did you want to talk to my boyfriend about?" Katherine said brightly.

––––––––––––––––––

First things first: getting rid of all the throw pillows so they'd actually have somewhere to sit,

"You really have a lot of throw pillows," Tammy commented, staring at the one armchair that had been sacrificed to the cause. It had been piled high with pillows, and a few were in danger of falling off.

"My mom likes to put them everywhere," Kim said semi-apologetically. He sat next to Katherine, between her and… his new gang he supposed.

"Right!" Tammy said. "First things first, let's put the drink in a bucket so we can finally get the bottles out before they freeze solid!"

She made to put her hands together, then paused, glancing at Katherine.

"What?" Katherine said, smiling pointedly.

"Um… well, you know about Kuya Kim's powers?" Tammy said hesitantly.

"Please don't call me that, I'm not a weather man," Kim said.

"Yes, I do," Katherine said. "So anything you say to him, you can say in front of me."

Tammy glanced at Sanny, who was opening the boxes from the bakery. The tall woman shrugged.

"O-kay then…" Tammy said. "It's nice to meet you then, ate. Please don't bust us to the government."

"Take care of my Kim and I won't," Katherine said.

Tammy nodded, glanced at Kim for some reason, then brought her hands together.

Katherine had already seen him use his powers, and he'd already told her that Tammy, or Green, could grow and control plants. Still, she stared in fascination as Tammy hands became wood and seemed to fuse together. Her fused hands began to grow, turning pale and strangely striated. It was also clearly getting heavier as it touched the floor with a 'thunk' of wood on carpet. Growing from her hands was… well, a bucket. Or at least, a piece of wood that had grown and coincidentally become shaped like a bucket.

There was a crack as Tammy's arms disconnected from the bucket, then another as they disconnected from each other. Her wrists ended in pale wooden stubs, but she seemed unperturbed as they swelled, eventually lengthening into fingers. "There we go," she said cheerfully, flexing her newly regrown fingers as they changed from wood back into flesh.

"Did you remember to not make the sap corrosive or poisonous?" Sanny said, not looking up from where she was… was using a claw at the end of her finger to slit open the shrink wrap plastic around one of the trays of brownies. She at least seemed to be careful to not actually touch the brownies as she did it.

"Crap, I knew I forgot something," Tammy said, bending down to touch the bucket-like wooden thing.

"Why do you have corrosive and-or poisonous sap?" Kim had to ask.

"It's my default in case I get bitten by monsters," Tammy said. "Though admittedly, it wasn't all that useful the one time I was up against something that bit me. There, done! And it won't get sap on the carpet, either. Willy, put the drinks in here, please."

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Wordlessly, Willy carried the large block of ice, the plastic soda bottles visible through the frozen liquid, to the bucket and bent down— "No, don't bend your back, bend your knees," Tammy chided her cousin, who complied—and placed the block in the bucket. It was just barely big enough to fit it, though the block jammed onto the side of the wood.

"Huh," Tammy said, staring down at it. "Willy, can you move the ice around so we can get at the bottles?"

Wordlessly, Willy stared at the ice. The ice started to shift, seeming to flow down around the bottles while remaining… well, ice, forming a chunk of ice on the bottom of the wooden bucket thing but leaving the plastic bottles exposed.

"Yes!" Tammy cheered, bending down to touch one of the bottles, still half-embedded in ice. "Cold! Mission accomplished!" She pulled, and the bottle came away from the ice. She let it go to rest on the piled ice and began wrenching the other bottles out.

"Here, let me help you with that," Kim said, reaching for a bottle and pulling.

It was stuck. He could feel it moving just the slightest bit, felt some give in the ice, but he wasn't strong enough to pull it…

"Um, I'm kind of cheating, kuya," Tammy said sheepishly. She lifted the hem of her t-shirt just enough to show a little skin. Only it wasn't skin, it was wood. "You want a little BS-power to pull them out." She pulled and another bottle popped out. Her hand, he finally noticed, was made of pale wood too.

He looked down at the other bottle still stuck in the ice, then hesitantly made himself change. Color began to rise from his arm from his fingertips, a wave of brilliant pink was went up past his elbow to his shoulder. He could feel his body unbalance slightly as one side became denser and heavier than the other.

His sense of touch in his altered limb became… strange. He could still feel pressure and temperature, but it came as resistance against the outermost layer of the molecular structure of his arm. Temperature took a while to register, and he couldn't feel the movement of air at all. Their molecules were too fine to affect the structures of the minerals that part of his body was made of.

Gingerly, carefully, Kim pulled.

One of the bottles came off.

"Yay! You did it babe," Katherine cheered, clapping her hands. Tammy joined in as well, before reaching down and pulling out another bottle. Between the two of them, they managed to pry them out, leaving them stacked on the ice to keep cool.

While they'd been occupied, Sanny had apparently been preparing the snacks. The large bakery box had been put next to the tray of brownies and flipped open, revealed individually packaged cinnamon rolls. Ice had been put in the cups, and she'd given one to Willy, who'd stepped aside to let her cousin do her thing but otherwise hadn't moved.

"Ah, sit down Willy," Tammy said when she saw her cousin was still standing. "Here, sit over here. What do you want to drink?"

Willy seemed to stare at nothing for a moment. "That one," she said, pointing at one of the bottles.

Tammy grabbed the indicated bottle, twisting off the red cap and pouring some into her cousin's glass. Sanny handed her a glass with ice in it, and she poured some into that too. "You want some?" she offered to Kim and Katherine.

"Please," Katherine said with a smile.

Wordlessly, Sanny got two more glasses with ice and handed it to them, and Kim accepted them with a nod, his arm turning back into flesh.

Once they all had full glasses, Tammy coughed. "Ahem!" she said. "A toast! To Kim, our newest member! I hope we can be friends! Cheers!" She raised her glass high, and Kim self-consciously did the same. He saw Sanny, sitting in grandfather's favorite living room chair, lazily raise her glass in his direction and drink almost daintily. Kim looked away self-consciously.

There was an awkward silence.

"So!" Tammy said, chasing the awkwardness away with an angry mob of happy puppies, "your entire family knows about… you?"

"Like I said, it was hard to miss," Kim said, relieved to have something to say. "Mom wanted to take me to a doctor to find out what was wrong with me, but then we saw the news about the people from Baseco and we were afraid it might be contagious… and I sort of had to learn to unshrink everything first, since we ran out of gas going from the garage to the gate."

"Wow, that's rough," Tammy said. "We had to get rid of all the wood Willy cut off when I started growing into a tree in my sleep. We're lucky none of the neighbors saw and Manang Zenny was visiting her family."

Tammy turned and looked at Sanny expectantly.

"Oh, I live alone," the older woman said easily, reaching over and tearing off a corner square from the tray of brownies. "No witnesses. I just had a panic attack and trashed my room with my tentacles. Lucky I didn't have a throat or I'd have been screaming, and the neighbors would have heard."

Kim looked at the messy edges now on the brownies. "I'll get a knife," he said, standing up.

"Please," Sanny said. "I'd make us one, but people probably won't think it was properly sanitary."

Kim, Katherine and Tammy looked at her. "Wait, you can make a knife?" Tammy said.

"Sure," Sanny said. "Just make a claw and rip it off. Knife."

She took a bite of the brownie.

Kim hurried to get a knife.

In the kitchen, Manang Beth, Manang Belle and Manang Levi were conspicuous by their absence. Kim supposed his dad had told them to wait in their room in case… in case. He rummaged through the cutlery until he found a little blunt butter knife. He turned to go back, paused, then grabbed a second just in case.

When he got back, Tammy was sitting next to her cousin, and a bag of chips was lying open on the coffee table, the vertical back seem pulled open to that the entire foil-backed sheet of the back could be spread out, with the chips on a pile in the middle. Katherine looked relaxed, but Kim had known her for years.

"I have the knife," he said, putting them down next to the brownies.

"Thank you kuya!" Tammy said brightly.

Kim sat back down next to Katherine as Sanny began using the knife it cut the brownies. It was all very domestic, even mundane.

Kim reminded himself he'd tried very hard to kill these three, and had been (ironically) stonewalled. That they were dangerous and that one had already invaded his privacy. That they didn't die even when killed, and seemed to have a lot more experience with their abilities than he did with his.

Admittedly, it was a bit hard to do that while watching Tammy pile brownies and chips onto a plate and give it to her cousin so that Willy would eat it.

"Is… something the matter with her?" Kim asked, looking at Willy.

"Nothing is the matter with her," Tammy said, her voice containing just a little bit of edge. "Willy's just special, that's all, and special girls get special treatment."

"Are you going out?" Katherine said.

"We're cousins," Tammy said tiredly.

"But you're going out?"

"No, we're not going out," Tammy said with weary patience. "We're cousins, and we just happen to be close."

"O-oh… Uh, sorry."

"It happens. A lot," Tammy sighed.

Kim jumped where he was sitting as a tentacle that ended in three finger-like digits rose up holding a small plate.

"Brownie?" Sanny said.

Tammy plucked the plate from the tentacle's grasp. "Yes, please and thank you."

Sanny nodded and then sighed. "So… I can't believe I'm saying this, but how about a little ice breaker? Everyone has already introduced themselves, so how about explaining your power as you currently understand it, your hopes, your dreams, and your favorite flavor of ice-cream."

Kim blinked. "Why favorite flavor of ice cream?" he had to ask.

"So that we know what ice-cream to get next time," Sanny said as if it was obvious.

"I'll go first!" Tammy said. "Hi, I'm Tammy and I'm a cute plant girl! I can control plants, become a plant, turn parts or all of my body into wood, leaves, vines and other plant materials, and I can photosynthesize in sunlight. My hopes… I hope we can all be friends and work together to protect people from monsters. My dreams… " She paused thoughtfully. "I dream of someday finding someone who will be understanding of my circumstances. And of course, my favorite flavor is the best flavor, avocado."

"Avocado? Seriously?" Sanny said, sounding surprised. "You're not just leaning into the plant girl and green color palette thing, are you?"

"Nope!" Tammy chirped. "Always liked avocado ice-cream, even before my big power-up."

"Hontou ni?" Sanny said nonsensically.

"Hontou ni," Tammy replied with a nod.

"Hontou ni hontou ni?"

"Hontou ni hontou ni."

"Hontou ni hontou ni hontou ni?"

"Hontou ni hontou ni hontou ni, now stop asking, or no kinako bread for you, princess!"

Despite her words, Tammy was laughing as she said it, and Sanny was snickering right back.

"Um, what are you talking about?" Kim asked, feeling left out.

"Sorry, we just watch the same shows," Tammy said. She pointed dramatically towards Sanny. "Okay, your turn, ate."

"What did I tell you about calling me that?"

"Tita?"

"That's even worse."

"Sissy?"

"Bad translator! Away with you," Sanny declared, then cleared her throat. She looked at Kim as she spoke. "So, my power is basically shapeshifting by controlling the cells, shapes, arrangements, organs, and structures of my body. I can also control and modify any animal and non-plant metabolizing mobile life form. Any rat, cat, mammal, bird, fish, insect—"

"Bug control?" Tammy said, a big smile on her face. "Eh, I can take you."

"Please don't raise death flags like that, I don't want people on my team to die," Sanny said, chuckling.

"Wait," Kim interrupted. "You say you can control any animal. Does that include people?"

"Of course," Sanny said easily. "Theoretically, anyway. Homo sapiens is still part of the animal kingdom, even if they like to think they're better than the rest. Never tried it though."

"Then how do we know you're not controlling us right now?" Katherine demanded.

"I can control your bodies, not minds," Sanny said. "You're confusing my power for mind control. It's not. If I was controlling you, you'd basically have locked-in syndrome, unable to move or control your body as I used it as a puppet." She shrugged. "If you can move, I'm not controlling you."

"Huh," Tammy said, staring at Sanny. "That's… kind scary, now that I think about it."

"I'm pretty sure I can't control you when you're a plant," Sanny said., then turned to Kim. "Or pink and rocky, in your case. I'm strictly limited to living things made of meat. I can also violate conservation of mass and energy, and the square-cube law, but only in certain body configurations." She frowned. "It's actually easier for me to violate conservation than the square cube law, which is kinda messed up. We all violate conservation though, so it's not all that special."

"Violating conservation of mass isn't special," Katherine said blandly.

"Not for the four of us," Sanny said. "My hopes… I hope to someday be able to violate the square-cube law at will."

"That sounds more like a dream," Tammy said.

"I can fly by flapping four wings on my back that are smaller than my body," Sanny said. "It's within my grasp, so it's a hope. My dreams…" She tilted her head. "Being able to control my urges completely?"

"Shouldn't that be a hope?"

"It doesn't seem like something I can do any time soon, so it's a dream," Sanny said, one hand rubbing the back of her head.

"What urges?" Kim had to ask. She didn't mean… did she?

"We all have urges that occasionally have us subconsciously try to eat each other," Sanny said, staring straight at him, her eyes intense. "Like how you tried to eat Tammy when you shook hands. They sometimes slip through, and it gets worse when we use a drone, or are in a high stress situation."

Kim frowned. "I thought you said you controlled living things made from meat. How do drones fit into this?"

"Ooh, he can't use drones," Tammy said, sounding glad for some reason. "Don't worry kuya, we'll teach you all about how to use drones. It'll be fun!"

That didn't sound worrying at all.