Isabella Marie Swan

There's more evac work to do, but it's slower going - no more easily drained population centers with functioning phones and internet, and fewer places to put the people. Eventually the last places that were willing to take evacuees fill up and close and they have nothing else to do.

A little while after that, things at the Junebug offices calm down enough that they're willing to make calls that say things like:

"Are you willing to give an interview for the Associated Press on your contribution to the evacuation efforts?"

Bella says she will if they want, if it won't take too long, and if they'll give her lunch. Alli agrees under similar conditions.

They're minors, so they're supposed to go by code names for limited identity protection. (Adults sometimes have these too, but it's required for anyone still in school.) Apparently somebody in the Junebug offices has suggested "Flicker" for Bella, which she accepts. Alli thinks on it with Bella's help and two of her own brains for an hour before settling on "Verge".

Their interviews, Alli followed by Bella - Verge followed by Flicker - are only a few minutes long each. Alli smiles at the interviewer and says that mostly she was just helping her sister and that she's really glad she had a chance to do something about Yellowstone and that she's really impressed with all the scientists who gave them warning and that she's glad she had the chance to move in with her dad since her home was within the danger zone.

Bella's is a little different.

"Flicker," says the interviewer, "you're thirty-second out of all the Junebug evacuators in estimated lives saved. You're going to get a medal when school starts up again in the spring term. Are you proud of yourself?"

"I suppose abstractly I could be," says - Flicker. "But I'm really not. It's not about my place in the ranking, per se - I don't think I could have cleared Sweep's number even if I'd been perfect. But I don't think very much about how good I was, I think about the moments I was distracted or tired or hungry and I slowed down just that little bit. When I was perfect and everything was lined up by the National Guard or other Junebugs, I could do four people a second. I don't know exactly how many I lost the chance to teleport to safety from stopping to catch my breath, or roll over after I woke up from an enforced sleep break, but - it was more than a few."

"Still, you did more than a million other participating twins."

"I didn't do it by being clever or brave, I did it by having a good bonus and concentrating, and I didn't do as well as I would have liked at the concentrating."

The interviewer changes the subject. "What are you and Verge doing now?"

"I think she mentioned we're living in our dad's house, outside the tuff area. It's ashy but livable, sort of - I've been doing the grocery shopping in other countries."

The reporter nods sympathetically. "How did you feel when you were teleporting people?"

"I avoided doing too much of that, really, it would have slowed me down - I had to focus on places and targets and not having emotional reactions. When I had any it just made me concentrate on being faster, because for every person I happened to get a good look at, there were millions who just weren't standing in the right place and didn't deserve help any less." She swallows. "Now that there's nowhere else to put anyone and nothing else for me to do I mostly think about the school bus that got swallowed up in the quake when it first hit. I didn't get everybody out."

"Do you think," says the interviewer, "that it was wrong to put a child of your age in that position?"

"Absolutely not," snaps Flicker. "Even if I couldn't deal, even if I were going to spend the rest of my life crying in a corner - and I'm not, I'm holding up - but even if that were going to happen, I saved one and a half million people. Sparing me would've been literally throwing every one of those people into the fire. One and a half million isn't my algebra homework, it's lives. Even if I were going to spend the rest of mine crying in a corner, one and a half million people get to have lives at all because the Junebugs didn't have qualms about child labor laws when Yellowstone rumbled. I wouldn't hesitate to make the same call if it were up to me."

"Do you have anything you'd like to say to the people you saved, Flicker?"

"I'd rather they didn't think of me at all. I wish they hadn't needed me, and now that they're done needing me they should go back to living like they appeared in Japan or wherever I put them by autonomous magic. They don't owe me anything, even listening to whether I think they do or not."

The interview ends there.

It is the first day of the Swan twins's second year at the Phoenix Gemini School, Apollo High, and this time around Alli isn't soliciting reassurance from her sister about conspiracy theories that the schools are designed to brainwash, de-power, or otherwise mishandle their charges. It's basically just high school, with unconventional gym requirements and an above-average proportion of superpowered faculty. And way more money than most public schools, and excellent diversity because the entry requirement cuts neatly across all demographics.

Well, in most conventional demographic respects.

There are no only children here.

Alli and Bella have all their classes together, which is nice - that wasn't always possible in elementary and middle school; here it's a matter of course.

This year they're signed up for gym but they can skip until two weeks into term, at which point they'll have their basics and Bella will be just as competent as anyone else. More so, relative to the general population. She has no idea what bonus she'll get and she's excited anyway. She's going to be able to actually go to dances, and dance at them, if she wants. Not the homecoming dance because that's not for underclassmen, but there will be others.

"Uuuugh," says Alli, "math first thing in the morning."

"Wouldn't it be funny if you said that and you got a math boost of some kind for your bonus?"

"No, that would just be horrible. And sad. Be sad for me if that happens, Bella."

"All right. What do you want to get?"

"I don't even know, is there a point? I'll just get something and so will you and that'll be that."

"Suit yourself."

The bus pulls in and out they get, uniform skirts swishing around their knees, swan emblems matching on their sleeves so everyone can tell who is whose twin.