I've now gone through five different versions of this "intro" to this chapter, but none of them have seemed right yet. Therefore I'm throwing the contexts together right now, because I give up on making it nice and fluent.

This week, I have had to spend a lot of my breaks at school alone (my best friend is in another group), so I'm filling up the time by being productive and writing!

Now I'm gonna respond to reviews.

Ryan Harper - Quick as always! Keep it up, Ryan! It turned out short, because I really wanted to upload, but couldn't come up with anything more to write in that chapter. Glad it's good though! You'll have to wait and see what happens to the remaining quads...

VeronicaWeasley - Very fun indeed... I've certainly felt like running three laps around my school to avoid tests. I've never done it, but I sure have felt like it.

Dylan Quagmire - Sometimes they do end up a bit short. But don't you worry! This one will be normal JustVilda Potter length! That's a good guess! I won't tell you if it's true or not, so you'll just have to read!
P.S.: I read your profile, because I was bored, and I just have to say that I love that you called me JVP at one point in it!

The next morning, both Dicky and Dawn were feeling better. Dawn's eyes were firmly placed inside her eye sockets, and Dicky managed to hoist himself out of bed withouth collapsing to the floor. The main difference from their normal routine was that it was eerily quiet on this particular morning. None of them could really place why, but they just didn't talk to each other. Dawn didn't feel like it was because of her craziness the day before. Ricky and Dicky knew it wasn't because of their second failed switch in a row, and Nicky had a feeling it had nothing to do with his running away. It was just a quiet morning.

Dawn was in constant concentration on not going crazy again, which in turn was making her feel a bit out of her mind. She knew she had scared the others the previous evening, and she had even scared herself. After Nicky and Ricky ran, that had become clear.

She could feel her heart racing when she ran up the stairs and into her room. Everything seemed brighter than before, and it was seriously hurting her eyes. She closed them, only to feel the hurting move from her eyes to the back of her head. It felt like it was about to implode. Having a power that wasn't sure could not be good at all. It had affected them physically all along, but now it had officially reached her mind. The mind effect was way worse than anything she had ever experienced. For a few moments, getting rid of it was the only reason she wanted her teleportation back.

Now she knew that she once again had to be part of the switching back process. She had to rip apart something, and for that she had to practice. There was no way she was going to attempt that now. She already felt light-headed, and the floor was swaying under her feet. Any more pressure and she would surely faint. She collapsed onto her bed, listening and waiting for the intense pounding to fade. It was living hell.

After the searing headache had disappeared, Dawn had managed to get in some ripping practice. So far the papers she practiced on had only gotten one big rip through the middle, and she doubted that would work to switch them back. For Ricky and Dicky it had taken a couple of weeks to get their new powers to work correctly. The second time they switched, they adapted to their new ones quickly, mostly because the powers were so similar. But Dawn couldn't make it work so easily. She could barely remember how to teleport things anymore, so let alone she would know how to use a whole new power.

If it would take two weeks for her to learn telekinesis too, she didn't know if they would ever switch back. Could she withstand the mind effect for that long, or would the insanity come back without any plans on leaving again?

Dawn wasn't the only one worried about the upcoming switch. Her counterpart had just as much anxiety about it as her. Even though Nicky had managed to do one acceptable teleport the day before, he couldn't seem to recreate it for the life of him. He couldn't teleport himself anywhere, and he couldn't teleport objects. It wasn't looking good for the upcoming switch back.

Not only that was worrying him. Dawn's craziness and Dicky's exhaustion were bothering him possibly even more than the switch. He knew that sooner or later, something would happen to him. He had no idea what, but the worst possible examples had crossed his mind more than once. Sickness, loss of intelligence, anxiety, hallucinations, brain death?

Slowly throughout the day, he became increasingly paranoid over any possible sign of one of his examples, and even more. His head snapped to look behind him at the smallest movement; he was constantly in motion by either tapping his foot or drumming his fingers, and any tiny thing could send his heart racing inside his chest. He was on the constant lookout for anything abnormal that indicated he was losing his mind.

For the first time since he was seven, he had burned their grilled cheese sandwiches. While they were sizzling in the frying pan, he could have sworn he saw someone looking in through the window. He had then spent five minutes staring at said window, desperately trying to figure out if he was hallucinating.

He was not going to let this mind effect get to him.

Dicky had felt multiple times throughout the day that he was too tired to move properly. Each time, the feeling had gone away quickly. But it was scary losing the ability to move. It felt like a sleep paralysis, except that he was never asleep. He simply couldn't move. A few times he had even nearly fallen asleep.

Of course, he was fairly used to falling asleep at unfitting times of the day, but now that he knew that it was because of some mind effect, it was a whole different deal. He would do anything to stay awake. During the first five hours of the day, he drunk seven glasses of soda to give himself a kick of energy. The energy from the soda seemed to float right out of him though. When the glass was empty he felt like he hadn't drunk anything containing sugar.

He remembered how he had felt the day before, right when he fainted. He physically couldn't do anything but fall. His legs gave up holding him up, and then everything was black. That switch had tired him out more than anything ever had in his entire life.

So far, he hadn't felt that same feeling. His legs stood partially strong at all times, and no darkness consumed his vision. He felt okay. He certainly could feel better though. In five hours he had done nothing but lie on the couch. Granted, that was what he usually did on summer break Saturdays, but all those other Saturdays, he was at least able to get up whenever he felt like it.

It felt like some weight was pulling him down onto the nearest surface to lie on, and judging from what the other quads constantly talked about, it was the mind effect.

Ricky was the one who kept his cool the best out of them. This surprised them all, especially Ricky himself. In any other similar situation, Ricky would have been pacing back and forth, rambling on and on about whatever. Now, he barely acted differently than usual. He was the most himself he had been since the first switch, and that freaked him out even more than the mind effect. Could calmness be his mind effect?

Summer break was usually the time when he would be ill the most. He had mastered the art of acting well when he was sick so well that he had almost reached the point where his own body thought he was immune to sickness during the school year. He wondered if this mind effect sickness didn't seem frightening to him because he was used to being sick during the summer.

He tried to imagine what his reaction would have been to this whole thing if it had happened during a school year. The imaginary Ricky was certainly not as calm as the real Ricky. If he had gone crazy, or lost all of his energy, his perfect attendance record would have gone down the drain.

He was the only quad who went through the morning like normal. He made his own breakfast (cereal) after Nicky burnt his grilled cheese because he was staring out the window. He had to watch TV on the computer in the boys' room, because Dicky was hogging the couch and downstairs TV. Each time Ricky tried to get him to change the channel, he got a mumble back. From his room, he could hear Dawn was in constant motion. There wasn't a quiet moment coming from her room. He wondered if the craziness had gotten to her again.

Not until lunch did all the quads end up in the same place, talking again. Dawn looked like she was having a hard time blinking regularly, Dicky leaned heavily on the table, and the sound of Nicky's foot tapping was constant. Otherwise they all seemed pretty okay.

After several failed attempts at starting a normal conversation, Ricky managed to get them talking. The conversation was casual, and kept as far away from powers and the mind effect as they could have it.

"So when's Angie coming over again?" Ricky brought up a new topic, after they seemingly had nothing more to say about starting eigth grade in a month. "It's been a while."

"I broke up with her," mumbled Dicky absent-mindedly.

"Oh," Ricky found nothing else in his quite large vocabulary to say. "When?"

"A week ago," Dicky said. He gave a very long yawn to follow his answer.

Ricky nodded awkwardly. Once again, he was at a loss for appropriate words. He turned to Nicky instead.

"How are you and Malou?" he asked, solely for the purpose of having something to ask.

"Good," Nicky answered quickly, without meeting Ricky's eye. He didn't even make an effort to look at him. He tried hard to think back on the previous day, when Malou had told him she loved him, but his mind shifted direction. Instead he scanned through his memories for signs of any mind effect.

"She hasn't been here in a while," Ricky commented easily.

"That doesn't mean anything!" Nicky snapped, talking to the fridge more than to Ricky.

Ricky was a bit taken aback, but quickly put himself back in the mindset of, "we're going to have a normal conversation whether you like it or not."

"Malou's been his escape," Dawn said. She was the only one actually looking at Ricky when talking to him. "I'm not surprised they're always at her house."

Nicky nodded, a bit quicker than normal.

"I'm gonna go lie down," Dicky announced tiredly. He stood up and dragged his feet out of the kitchen.

"Is it back?" Nicky asked half a second after Dicky left the room.

"For Dicky," Dawn answered, and immediately the other two boys understood something wasn't right. She almost sounded happy that Dicky wasn't feeling well. They looked up at her, and indeed were they right. The gleam from yesterday was back in her eye, and her mouth was twitching back and forth into a smile.

"Run." Ricky mouthed to Nicky. They bounced off their chairs like fireworks being set off. By the time the firework would have exploded into colors, the boys had ran to their room.

"Okay," Ricky said, making it clear that he was about to say a bunch of smart things. Nicky kept quiet. "A lot of mental illnesses come and go at specific times of the day. Judging from that, this is one of those illnesses. Why else would their symptoms come back at the exact same time? We can probably expect them to be affected this evening too."

Nicky nodded once Ricky was done. He felt an intense itch on his left thigh. As he bent down to scratch it, a flurry of worries and fears hit him. Why was his leg itching all of a sudden? Did he have some kind of infection? Or was this the mind effect playing with him? Did it give him hypchondria? It quickly became too much for him to handle, and he felt tears welling out of his eyes. This did not go unnoticed by Ricky.

"Nicky?" Ricky asked carefully. "What's happening?"

"I don't know," Nicky asked scaredly. His hand flew up to scratch his neck instead, while his head turned hastily to look at the window, as if he had just seen something outside of it. He mumbled something inaudibly.

Ricky knew that this was bad. He had to say something, but he was without a doubt the quad who was worst at communicating about feelings.

"Are... are you okay?" he asked awkwardly.

Nicky shook his head violently. "No."

"What's happening?" said Ricky slowly, figuring out what tone of voice he should use as he went.

"The mind effect." Nicky said shortly. "I don't want it. But it's everywhere, but I don't know what it is." More tears ran down his face. "I think I'm hallucinating. Or it's hypochondira." He scratched his thigh even more, and his head snapped unnaturally fast to the left. "Everything's just wrong!"

At once, Ricky understood more about Nicky's condition than Nicky did. He almost smiled when the awkward feeling of not knowing what to do disappeared.

"Nicky, this is your mind effect," he said smartly. "Paranoia."

Nicky stopped moving. It did make sense.

"The scratching, the vigilence, the defensive attitude earlier, you can't relax! It all adds up!" Ricky finished his statement.

"Yeah."

"So there's nothing to worry about."

"Easy for you to say..."

There was a pause. Then Nicky asked, "So, do you feel anything?"

And still, Ricky couldn't say yes to that question.