Upon hearing that Muffy had spent time in the hospital, her friends descended on the Crosswire condominium to wish her well and ask nosy questions. (Binky was noticeable by his absence.) To their disappointment, the girl appeared perfectly healthy and well-adjusted.

"So C.V. really is a superhero," mused Buster.

"He's super-creepy, that's what he is," Muffy responded.

"It does seem rather odd," remarked Beat, "that C.V.'s father has spent years recovering from his attack, yet you seem to have suffered no lasting damage."

"Yes, that is weird," Muffy agreed.

"Show me exactly what happened," Beat requested.

"Okay." Muffy sat down in an easy chair and raised her cell phone to her ear. "I was sitting right here, talking to Angela on the cell phone. Then C.V. came in and started yelling at me. I put the phone down"--she rested the phone on the armrest and rose from the chair--"and stood up. We argued a little, then my mom came between us, and C.V. started staring at me. I freaked out and started screaming, and the next thing I knew, I was in the ambulance."

As Beat carefully pondered Muffy's description, the other kids murmured to each other about the revelation of C.V.'s mysterious abilities.

"I'll bet his powers would have no effect on you," Arthur said to Sue Ellen. "You're not afraid of anything."

"I'm afraid of being alone," Sue Ellen replied glumly.

"Augusta has powers," George mentioned to Fern. "Maybe she could be part of a superhero team called the Ex-Men. Get it? Ex-Men?"

"It would be cool to have special powers," Buster remarked to Francine.

In his imagination, he and the other kids were gathered on a hilltop, watching as a glowing round disc descended rapidly from the evening sky. He separated himself from his friends and stood in the spot where the object appeared ready to strike, waving his arms and calling out, "Hey, alien! Land here!"

"Buster, get away from there!" Alan warned him.

But it was too late--the space rock plowed into the ground exactly where Buster stood, throwing up a cloud of smoke and dirt.

"Hey, you squished Buster!" Francine complained.

Everyone stood solemnly, thinking their young rabbit friend had been flattened, as the giant meteor let off an eerie pale green light.

Then an incredible thing happened. The rock began to rise into the air. To the kids' amazement, Buster was effortlessly holding the enormous space object over his head!

"Check it out!" he exclaimed, grinning proudly. "I have super strength!" With that, he bent his knees and elbows, and hurled the shining meteor half a mile away.

"Amazing," Alan commented. "The radiation from the meteor must have altered our genetic structure, giving us mutant powers." He narrowed his eyes, and a burst of laser energy suddenly shot from his pupils, frying a nearby tree.

"I knew you were going to say that," said Prunella. "Hey, I have the power to read minds!"

Buster rubbed his eyes in disbelief. "Hey, why are there two Sue Ellens?"

One of the Sue Ellens looked down at her body and gasped. "What the..." she exclaimed, lifting her hands to touch her curly hair and cat ears. Then, as everyone watched in awe, she transformed into the image of Fern.

"Hey, I can change shape," she said, smiling. Snapping her fingers, she morphed into Binky. "Look at me! I'm a stupid boy! Duuuuh!"

"Stop doing that," groused the real Binky, who suddenly vanished and reappeared two yards from where he had stood. "Whoa, I just teleported!"

Francine stuck out her hand, and Buster started to float into the air. "I can move stuff around with my brain!" she boasted.

Arthur pressed his hand against a boulder, and it passed through transparently to the other side. "I can ghost through things!" he realized.

Sue Ellen waved her hand at the sky, and a lightning storm immediately commenced. "I can control the weather!" she announced.

Muffy touched Sue Ellen, then raised her arm and mentally ordered the storm to cease. "I don't want my good dress to get wet," she whined.

George glumly pointed at the top of his head. "I have a third antler," he moaned.

Alan, meanwhile, was having a fantasy sequence of his own. It was similar to Buster's, except that the kids all died of radiation poisoning as a result of being exposed to the meteor.

----

It was Saturday evening, and Mrs. Cooper had just arrived at her home with Odette, where the two were recounting the disappearance of Augusta Winslow to Maria Harris and her daughter, Nadine.

"She was talking on her cell phone, then I felt this weird shock, there was a flash of light, and she wasn't there anymore," was Odette's description.

"We looked all through the airport for her," added Mrs. Cooper.

"I hope nothing's happened to her," said the visibly worried Maria.

Nadine, idly listening in on the exchange, was distracted by the arrival of her classmate Dallin. "Hey, Nadine, what's going on?"

"Auntie Augusta disappeared," replied the squirrel girl. "They don't know where she is. Maybe she's lost in the desert."

"That's too bad," said the little duck boy. "Wanna see the new race track Dad bought for me and Van?"

"Sure." Nadine followed Dallin into the room he shared with Van, and they whiled away the minutes spinning race cars around the electrified track.

It wasn't long before they heard a strange man's voice from the living room. Wondering who had just arrived, the two first-graders hurried out of the bedroom. A well-dressed bulldog man was speaking with Mrs. Cooper and Maria, and judging from the somber expression on his face, he had bad news to deliver. Dallin didn't recognize the man, but Nadine knew him as Augusta's paramour, Dr. Rick Portinari.

"I'm afraid we may not see Augusta again for a long time," the psychiatrist told Maria and Mrs. Cooper. His eyes were lowered, as if he felt too ashamed to face his audience directly.

"Why not?" asked the startled Maria.

"It's complicated," answered Portinari. "First of all, you may have heard rumors that I'm really a space alien in disguise. The rumors are true."

"I believe you," said Maria. "Now tell me what happened to Augusta."

"Very well." Portinari cleared his throat. "Earlier this year, I broke the laws of my people while under Augusta's magical influence, and as punishment was exiled permanently from my home planet."

"Go on." Maria seemed to grow more flustered with every word.

"My crime was an act of illegal time travel," Portinari continued, "which resulted in duplicates of myself and Augusta being created. The duplicates, who were innocent, decided to spend some time on my homeworld. My people studied the Augusta duplicate's powers while she was there, and came to the conclusion that I had, indeed, been manipulated."

Maria's face darkened as the strands of Portinari's tale grew denser.

"The Time Council offered to commute my sentence," the bulldog man went on, "but on one condition." The pain in his heart manifested itself in his darting eyes. "I was to help them bring Augusta to justice."

Maria gasped with alarm. The hairs on her tail bristled.

"I agreed to do so." Portinari clasped his hands and stared at the floor. "I made a call to her cell phone, allowing the Time Council to pinpoint her location and take her into custody."

"You son of a..."

Out of one eye, Portinari saw Maria Harris' outraged face. Out of the other he could see nothing, as the squirrel woman's fist was hurtling toward it.

The impact of Maria's fist with Portinari's left eye reverberated throughout the house. Nadine, Dallin, Odette, and Mrs. Cooper were left breathless and wide-eyed. The bulldog man lost his footing and plummeted onto his back. Maria towered over him, her fists still clenched, her expression a mask of indignation.

"You scumbag!" she snarled. "How could you do that to someone you claim to love? And after all she's been through! You were her last chance for happiness!" It was all she could do to restrain herself from kicking Portinari while he was down.

Mrs. Cooper stepped forward and put her hands on Maria's shoulders, while Nadine and Dallin maintained a safe distance. The fallen bulldog man gently caressed the broken flesh around his eye. "That really hurt," he admitted. "It's a good thing I'm incapable of aggression."

As he struggled to his feet, Maria could feel nothing but an urge to knock him on his back again.

"Please try to understand," the man said softly. "I was only doing my duty, and they would have taken her with or without my help."

"Oh, I do understand," grumbled Maria, barely suppressing her anger. "Come on, Nadine." Taking her daughter by the hand, she marched out of the Cooper home without another word.

She remained sullen and downcast throughout the drive to her house. Nadine, buckled into the passenger seat of their old Chevy, struggled to comprehend what had transpired.

"Let that be a lesson to you," Maria grumbled. "Men are pigs. Lying, selfish pigs. They tell you they love you, then they stab you in the back."

"But, Mom," Nadine nervously pointed out, "Mr. Winslow was a nice man."

"Yes, and look what happened to him," Maria complained. "I guess that's what happens to all good men. They turn into women, or get beamed up by aliens, or both. It's like a karmic reward."

Nadine held her peace. She hadn't heard her mother speak so bitterly since the days following the divorce. Could this mean they were about to move again?

"Poor Angus," Maria lamented. "If only he hadn't changed. Then he never would have experienced what we women have to go through."