"Okay," Shay said coolly. " Now that you've all been sufficiently scarred for life, I'm thinking maybe we should let Tally go check out where we are."

All she got back was nine blank stares and one death glare.

"Shay," Tally said through gritted teeth. "I thought we agreed the Uglies would have to find their own way out."

"Yeah, but listen!" Shay pointed at her stomach. There was the soft sound of shrieks from inside her. We shuddered. "My stomach's nanos are gonna eat my stomach if we don't get outta here right now."

"Fine," Tally said. She crouched down, then jumped. Just before she started to come down, she pushed off of a tree branch, angling herself up and towards another branch. She kept going up like this until we couldn't see her. I stared after her.

"Wow," I said softly.

"No kidding," Kaede murmured.

"We had to train for like, forever before Dr. C would let us go out and do that. God, that woman was such power-hungry bitch."

"Dr. C?" I asked.

"Dr. Cable. Last doctor who knew the surgery to make people Special." Shay smiled softly, as though recalling some distant memory. "But then Tally-wa got all rebellious and stuck her with the Special cure. Made her all gross and normal." Shay wrinkled her nose.

"And…" I looked up at her, feeling like there might be more.

"And then I learned how, and made Aya-la an honorary Cutter," a voice whispered in my ear.

I whirled around, eyes wide. But it was only Tally, laughing and picking a leaf out of her dark hair. "OMG, Tally-wa! You scared the crap outta me!"

"I always hated that saying," Tally said dryly. "The visual is just not PC."

"PC?" I asked.

"Politically correct." Shay snorted. "As if we have to worry about being PC if we're stuck in the forest."

"The trees are veeeeeeeery sensitive to what we say, you know." Tally smirked.

"Right. Now tell us where we are, so we can get out of the 'sensitive' trees' hearing range." Shay rolled her eyes, but smiled a little.

"Civilization is that way!" Tally pointed to the left.

Three steps later, we were back in the city.

"Okay, why did nobody point this out?" I demanded.

"Because you were supposed to be leading us out of the forest."

"Right, Aya-la," Shay said firmly. "You were."

"But that wasn't working," Tally added. She pulled out another leaf. "Ugh. These leaves are almost as annoying as Ari-wa's lack of leadership skills."

"Hey!" I cried. "Leading is Yuki's thing, not mine!"

"Sure," Shay said. "Ooh! Food!" She dashed off in another direction in an uncharacteristic spurt of bubbleheaded energy.

We laughed, but didn't chase after her. We could hear her saying, "Okay, I need a muffin. And an omelet, and…"

Shay came back in a matter of moments with her food: strips of bacon, muffins, and a lobster omelet. "Sorry, guys, but if I don't eat my stomach nanos will eat me."

Tally nodded and reached out to steal a bit of the omelet. "Mmm. I haven't had this since the Prettytime."

"Years ago," Shay added as she chomped into her muffin. "Chocolate. Yum."

"Shay," Tally said suddenly. "Is that meat?"

"Um. Yeah," Shay said, looking down at the bacon on her white plate.

"Ew! That was a live animal!" Tally ran a hand through her dark hair and shook away the leaves that were raked out by her hand. "A live, cute, defenseless little animal, Shay-la!"

"I know, but back home all we've got is that nasty soymeat. I wanted to try real meat!"

"Fine," Tally said crossly. "But I'm not touching it."

"More for me," Shay said, and crunched into the bacon strips.

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"Okay," Tally said. "Now that Shay's turned Rusty, you guys have been officially scarred for life, and I've been leaf-covered for life"-Tally pulled yet another leaf out of her hair-"what do you guys want to go do?"

"I think I can try that portal thing," Kaede whispered. All eyes flew to her. "I'm not sure, but I think I got it."

"How do you know?" Shay asked.

"Well, Cloud-kun gave me this book"-she paused as she struggled to get a heavy book out of her purse-"and it tells you how to do spells. BTW, portals are fifth-level magic. I'm only fourth. So I have an excuse to have messed up."

"Yup." I nodded quickly.

"Now, open the portal before Shay goes totally Rusty and orders another hunk of dead animal carcass," Tally said, shuddering. Ten years of living in the wild had not been enough to suck all of the Pretty-esque behavior out of Tally, much less make her eat real meat. The thought of SpagBol made with real meat instead of soymeat was just too gross to even think of. (Mostly because Tally hated SpagBol, but also because real meat was just disgusting.)

Kaede giggled and opened the book, read something one last time, then began whispering to herself. Something that resembled a black hole sprouted ahead of them. She opened her eyes, which she'd subconsciously squeezed shut, and beamed. "YES!" she cheered, and grabbed our hands. The group formed a chain, and Kaede jumped in.

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We opened our eyes and beamed. "Kaede!" I screamed. "This is it! Modern civilization!"

But Kaede wasn't cheering. She looked blank and almost confused. Her eyes were scanning our surroundings, so I did too.

At first, all I saw were the Japanese pagodas, the signs in kanji, the barcodes painted on the street. Then I realized that the "barcodes" were crosswalks and the people here were not speaking Japanese. They were speaking English. Also, the signs had English subtitles.

"Oh, crap," Yuki said crossly.

"Um…this is modern, but I don't think we're in Japan anymore." Akako looked around, her eyes wide.

"No," Tally said softly. "I've been here before. This is San Francisco."

"Oh, come on," Kaede moaned. "This spell is officially theeeee suckiest of all."

"Why?" Shay looked at her. "It works doesn't it?"

"Not really. It only half works." Kaede rolled her eyes. "Well, let's go. We might as well get to a hotel and get some sleep…apparently I can only do this spell once every seventy-two hours."

We all groaned, and started up the hill towards the nearest hotel.

"Mikado Inn, here we come!"

A/N: the peoples are in Japantown, SF. Well, future-y Japantown SF. Whatevs. And BTW their bags were already packed. I didn't feel like dedicating a chappy to them packing their bags...how boring would THAT be???