Ed pointed to the driver's seat. “Mrs. Torres? You know? Kim’s mom? She’s like, uh, stuck to the wheel?”

Mr. Garry finally seemed to catch on. “Oh that.” He waved a hand and Kim froze too. “Pretty annoying huh.”

“What!”

“Err, I guess you’d want the reins?”

Ed felt another sort of shoulder tap and he whipped his head around. Only to quickly realize there wasn’t actually anyone in reach to do that and that the sort of shoulder tap he’d felt hadn’t even been on his shoulder. It was more like some weird err, third shoulder. He could sort of wiggle it too now that he thought about it. In fact, it was a lot like wiggling his little toe. Until some kid in gym class pointed out that that was an actual thing he could do he’d never really given it much thought.

Though, rather than a toe, or a shoulder, or anything even remotely close to a part of his body; if he had to put it into words, maybe tiny spherical jelly blob would be a better descriptor. And it was directly adjacent to his… uh. Ok that was really weird. It was as if the thing was directly adjacent to his current, err, everywhere.

“Alright.” Mr. Garry said, interrupting his thoughts. “Now just sort of spike it at them.” He gestured his head as if to encourage him, pointing at the frozen Torres’s. When Ed simply looked at him incredulously Mr. Garry gave him a weird look before elaborating. “It won’t hurt. And, err, hurt them. Look there’s like tons of laws for this sort of thing.”

“Wait, so this is illegal!?” Ed just knew there was something wrong here.

“Back up back up.” Mr. Garry waved his hands. “I’m like super split right now. This is a plasmic clone and I’m like trying to keep my head from being blown off at the mall at the moment. Just, uh. Give 'em a poke with that and they’ll unfreeze.” He gave Mrs. Torres’s seat a pat and the car started to move again.

Ed fell back into his seat as he watched Mr. Garry wave at them as he sort of melted into a pool of what Ed could only really describe as more of that black sticky shadow stuff from before.

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There were just so many things wrong with this Ed thought to himself as he tentatively reached out with his magical blob thing to, as gently as he could possibly manage, poke at Kim’s general direction.

It felt a bit like popping a balloon to be honest.

And then she was flailing into the driver’s seat, with a broken “-om!”

Mrs. Torres was still frozen to the wheel, she had a blank look on her face as they merged onto the highway. Ed almost breathed a sigh of relief at the sight, unlike the abandoned suburbs they’d left, the highway was full of cars. Not that he dared to poke her or anything. He wasn’t quite too sure what that would do while they were in traffic.

“Where’d he go? Mom? Hello? Ed?” Kim collapsed back into her seat and Ed closed his eyes.

“She’s fine. I think.” Ed said. “We’re headed back to the school, I think it’s supposed to be like a safezone or something.”

“But your leg—”

“There’s a guy who can fix it.” Probably. “Magic stuff.”

“Wait. You think.” He felt a hand on his shoulder, as if to shake him but before he could crack open an eye it wasn’t there anymore.

Kim was unusually quiet now.

“They’re going to mind wipe us, huh.”

“Yeah.” Ed was too tired to lie. “Probably.”

There was a sigh. “Well, I guess it was kinda fun while it lasted.”

Ed tried to look at it from her perspective. Besides the whole bullet in a leg part, he had to admit, the day had definitely felt like something out of an action movie.

“I…” She paused again. “Is she going to be ok?”

She was probably talking about her mom, wasn't she. “It’ll be gone when we get to school.”

He cursed himself internally, he ended up having to lie again but if he told her he could undo it she’d probably insist on it and then they’d be bound for the hospital and, well, Ed had mixed feelings about that. There was another pause.

“No, sorry, look I can undo it. Mr. Garry showed me how. Just, I want to wait till we get to school. I don’t want to end up at a hospital right now.”

There was a soft thump. Ed didn’t really know from what.

“Alright."