***ALEX***

"Is this your, uh..." After I've said hi to everyone else - including Russell's dark-blade buddy, a sort of Mossad type named Ariel - I find myself confronted by the dude with the arched eyebrows. He circles around me, watching me intently like a dog trying to decide if I'm friendly. I remember at one point, Gabe and I shared a dream, and we were playing Halo against each other, talking on headphones and everything. At one point, we'd gotten to talking about our lives, as we do, and he casually mentioned having found a new boyfriend. This guy, this love child of Gideon Cabrera and Tom Holland, I think he's it.

"'This guy,'" Gabe says with a split-second sneer, "is Harris McCallum. Harris, Alex Snow."

I shake Harris' hand, but then he hugs me. Jesus, the dude really is a dog. "Let me guess," I laugh, gently peeling him off of me. It's harder than it looks, because he's surprisingly solid for his lithe build. A lean, mean fighting machine. "Gabe told you I was the coolest angel in Heaven?"

"Hell yeah, he did. Uh, sorry about the hug, though-"

"Nah, it's okay. I don't mind." I exchange grins with him. "I may not be the coolest angel, but I'm one of the more open-minded ones."

"But we already knew that," Ty laughs, nudging Kelly gently in her side.

She grabs his arm, and tendrils of moss snake off the nearest tree trunk. "Don't make me throw down," she says. "You know you're gonna lose."

"You're the only one in our family with plant powers," Ty complains. "No fair, sister."

I catch Kensi's eye. She glances over at the tree from which Kelly summoned the moss (she's given up control over it by now), then slinks off behind it, looking shyly at the ground. On a whim, I decide to follow her, away from the rest of the group. "I'll be right back, guys," I say with a wave.

"Cool," says Gabe.

"Just don't take too long," says Fionna. "Now you guys are here, you should see what we're up to. Space-time shenanigans out the wazoo."

"Can't wait." I follow Kensi until we find a place to stop and talk, the both of us leaning against trees. "So..."

"So what?" Kensi laughs. "So I got a tail, and so do you. Tail-ception." I peer around my tree and see Harris coming this way. Kensi chuckles at the same sight. "Aww, he likes you. Don't let him lift his leg, though." Naturally, she says that right as Harris lifts his leg to step over a short but thick fallen log on the ground. He directs a middle-finger salute at her from crotch level, and she says, "Take your Scottish sausage somewhere else, boy. Like up Gabe's-"

"Whoa, whoa, stop!" I cover my ears as fast as I can. "I can't know that!"

"Hey, don't worry." Harris leans against a third tree, within easy visual range of both mine and Kensi's. "Gabe hasn't exactly, uh, Biblically known my sausage. Not that I can get the girls to believe otherwise."

"I mean, come on," Kensi says. "Why else would you call him Sweaty Elf Boy all the time?"

I'm struggling not to laugh. "Well, at least I know those I love are in good hands with you two."

"Fionna told you?" Kensi asks me.

"No, but I guessed." I uncross my arms and stick my hands in my pockets instead. "Just...be good to her. Same goes for you with Gabe, Harris." I give them my best serious face, which isn't really all that good because I'm not much of a serious kind of guy. It's good enough to get them to nod silently, at least. "If they've told you anything about me, you know how much damage I'll dish out for those I love."

"Yeah, I'm not gonna give you any reason to fuck me up," Kensi says. "But we both know this one might."

Harris flashes a shy smile that I'm sure works wonders on Gabe. "I can't help having an attitude."

I scratch my ear. "Don't test me, dude."

"But I'm just gonna let you know right now," Harris says. "The real reason I won't hurt Gabe and piss you off is 'cause I know I'm gonna destroy you in a fight." Unlike me (and on that subject, I'm still wearing the heaviest layers of anyone in this neck of the woods), he's dressed lightly, in short sleeves, the better to show off his tensing biceps. I'm taller and heavier than he is, and I'm still intimidated by this display, not to mention his eyes hardening into chips of grayish-green stone.

"After we're done doing whatever it is Fionna wants to get done," I say, "I promise I'll let you have at me. Get it out of your system."

He looks only too happy to jump at this offer, and jump he does. Figuratively and literally.

"Do boys have to bond so violently?" Kensi asks.

It's a rhetorical question, I know, but Harris answers anyway. "My definition of love is trusting someone who makes you bleed."

"That's good," I say, offering him a fist-bump. This, he doesn't turn into a hug. Guess he only does that to say hello. "That's really good," I say with more feeling. "I bet you know how true it is too, huh?"

"Why would I say something I don't believe in?"

I come up between Kensi and Harris and lay my arms over their shoulders, walking away from these three trees with them. "Best of friends, huh?" I kiss them both on the cheek, one after the other. Yes, even Harris, who blushes so much more than Kensi does in response.

"Usually," he says, "I'm the one who initiates the kissing."

"Is that so?"

"Except with Gabe." He blushes again, even more deeply. "I guess I just have a natural weakness for you guys. Even your humans. Hell, I think those two were how I figured out I was bi."

"You knew our humans?" I ask.

"Sort of. We, uh, went to the same school. I think Gabe was my first guy-crush too."

"Guess it's fate you found his demon, then." Now I turn to Kensi. "What about you? Or were you...you're a former human too, right?"

"Yeah, but I didn't know any of your humans. Sorry."

"Why? Nothing wrong with not knowing our humans."

Kensi's eyes rove over to Fionna, who stands at the mouth of the cave, waving us over. "I just feel like I've been missing out."

"Believe me," I tell her, "you're the lucky one."

Inside the cave, Kelly and Ty are crouched in front of what looks like an old-fashioned TV, the kind my grandparents used to have before all the analog airwaves shut down. I'm surprised it doesn't have rabbit-ear antennae to go with it. What I notice first, though, is the set of cracks in the screen, and also an arrowhead-shaped outline almost dead center.

"How'd you guys reattach it?" Ty gently feels that outline with his fingertips. "Krazy Glue?"

"Actually..." Kensi and Harris slide off my arms and show me their respective elementals of light and fire. Then they hold those elementals up to the arrowhead mark, making the outline fade a little. "Believe it or not," Kensi says, "that lady was right. Our powers make some serious heat."

Harris casts his eyes in Gabe's direction, then mine. It's hard to say which of us he's looking at more shyly. "We could start a glassblowing business. Starkallum Vitriwares."

"'Vitriwares?'" Ariel repeats. "Oh, from the Latin for 'glass.' I get it."

"We could do with a less clunky name," says Harris.

Kensi side-eyes him. "What do you mean, 'we?'"

He doesn't back down, because he's ballsy like that. "The royal 'we,' friend."

Fionna runs her hands over the sides of the box, then fiddles with the knobs to the side of the screen. "Okay, looks good. But we're kinda missing a power source."

"What, you mean like a plug?" I ask.

Gabe scratches his head. "Uh, did it even have a plug?"

The rest of the Second 'Verse party shake their heads and give a chorus of negative responses.

"So what even is this thing?" asks Ty.

"All I can see is an old TV." Kelly kneels in front of it, then adds, "Though I've never heard of this brand name before. 'Peppermint?'"

"They specialize in telecommunications," says Ariel. "They've tried to get a foothold in Prime for years, but so far they've always failed."

"But that's not so important." Russell turns to Ty and Kelly. "Do you guys, uh, have any idea where we could go to-"

Ty doesn't hesitate. "Our place."

"What?" Kelly stares at him in shock. "What are you, crazy?"

He checks the time on his phone. (Sometimes, I think Gabe and I are the last guys who ever learned to use wristwatches - oh wait, Harris wears one too, I just noticed.) "Look, Mom and Dad won't be home. Not for another hour at least. We got time. Let's do this." He folds his arms, then looks at Fionna and Gabe. "And maybe on the way, you guys could actually explain what the hell it is this damn thing does?"

"It's, uh, a kind of crystal ball..." Fionna takes Ty and Kelly aside to tell them exactly how the Black Mirror works. Me, I examine the box closely, trying to locate any kind of plug or outlet or whatever. I finally find an outlet, one that looks like it'll take some specialized extension cord, but no plug.

"Kensi?" I gesture at the outlet with my head. "Think you can send a bit of your elemental in here?"

She sticks her finger into the outlet and shoots in two tiny white bolts of light. Loud static erupts for a brief moment, and I peer around the box to see screen snow until it all fades away. "It powers the box for, like, three seconds per pulse."

"So you're gonna save your energy for when Fionna needs it?"

"Yeah."

"Good idea. I mean, Fionna's great, but don't kill yourself for her. That's a surefire way to make her the very opposite of happy."

She punches my arm - yeah, now I know what Fionna sees in her. "Duly noted," she says.

Fionna joins us, having finished talking to Ty and Kelly, who look suitably mind-blown. "Talking shit about me behind my back. Literally. Nice to know I'm still loved."

Kensi and I blow her simultaneous kisses. Then we look at each other and yell in unison, "JINX!"

Gabe covers his mouth so we can't hear him laughing. Harris doesn't even try to hide it.

"You ready to start? Don't let me get in your way." I back away, standing between Gabe and Kelly.

Kensi gets back behind the Mirror, powering it up and letting it break out into static all over again. Fionna kneels in front of the screen, staring intently into its depths.

"Is it too late to ask your superiors for a user manual?" Russell asks Ariel out of the corner of his mouth.

"They'd direct you to a web link for the online version," Ariel says. "Good luck accessing that way out here."

Gabe and I both laugh, knowing from experience that we're actually very good at getting service in the woods on both sides of Coldfire Creek.

Fionna shushes us, then adjusts one of the knobs. "Just gotta find the right channel, I guess. Probably three. It's always-" She stops short as the static vanishes, replaced with a hazy black-and-white image of what looks like an empty road under a streetlight.

Except it's not empty. Someone's standing on the side of the road, looking down over some kind of cliff.

"Oh my God..." Fionna practically presses her nose to the screen. "Oh my God. That's me. Or...or it's my human. Or..."

"It's you," Kensi says. "Just not you you."

"Yeah, that's not confusing at all." Fionna swallows, and I see a tear trickle from her eye. "Oh my God," she says again. "This thing is for real.

"What do I do?"