"Other than me?" the Italian, Susana D'Arco, whispered, combing her fingers through her lover's frizzy brown hair.

"And me?" Damon Stone teased. Something about his endless optimism drew the thin, wavering moonlight over Shantytown to him, making his strawberry-blond curls glisten silver.

"Yes, other than you lot."

"Deal me in," Undine said, her accent indicative of a higher class of British society than Damon or even Kendra. As usual, she was swathed in the long-sleeved turtleneck and flare jeans that hid most of her physical mutation; only once had the Hogwarts students ever seen her in the turquoise Spandex she wore as one of the many X-Men fictives.

"And me," Demeter added. Her bare feet, though hardened from endless time walking over the unfriendly streets, were bleeding from a dozen fresh cuts. Not for the first time, Undine cursed the Writer who had written her friend with a permanent lack of footwear. She helped Demeter to a broken, battered chair. "Conjured a deck, huh? That's better than stealing it from a Gambit. Lor' knows de man nebber be playin' wit' de full deck, petite." The bad Cajun accent didn't mix well at all with her heavy Bronx accent.

"What are we playing tonight? Draw or stud?" Undine inquired.

"Draw if no one else comes, stud if we get more than one more person," Kendra said, shuffling the cards absently, looking nervously over her shoulder for the gangs of evil fictives that roamed Shantytown in search of mayhem and destruction.

"Stud it is, then," Ebony Hendricks said, taking a crate for herself and Robert Thomas.

"Ah, my fellow genderbender victims!" Zanna Ventura exclaimed. The lanky blonde hugged Rob and Ebony tightly before settling on the ground next to them.

"Genderbender?" Demeter asked shyly.

"We're first drafts who changed sex when the fic came into existence. I'm from her Upsilon Kappa Nu stuff, created before those insipid idiots Lewis and Jessica. It's original work, and she thought it might be more saleable if it didn't involve a lesbian love triangle, so she changed my name from Zanna to Zanne to Zane- that was the genderbend- and now he's Zach and far more of a sleazebag than I ever dreamed of being. Robert Bryan over there got rewritten as Robyn Brielle because of events in Reality. Ebony got split up- her role as a Hendricks went to Jamal, but her concept went to Ebony Andrews. She got stuck here in Shantytown with the rest of us rejects. Good thing our Writer never gets around to creating the villains before she gets rid of an idea." Zanna sounded disgusted, green eyes flashing with fury.

"I thought I heard my name?" a stranger asked lightly. None of them knew him, but they shared the tingle across their skin that indicated their mutual creator.

"Well, stranger, what is your name? We'll tell you if you heard it or not," Kendra said matter-of-factly, ignoring the fact that the stranger had a good fifteen years on her, as well as a substantial advantage in size and reach.

"Brian. Brian Sanderson."

"Bryan's his middle name, and that's what Zanna was talking about. That'll be what you heard. Sit down, tell us where you came from. You're our kin sure enough, and it's been a long while since we've heard from our Writer," Damon said, patting the space next to his jacket.

Brian sat cross-legged in the indicated place. "I was a Bluejay idea that didn't last. She wanted to write me as a foil to Todd, the crazy hero, but her partner wrote her into a corner where I couldn't possibly exist. So I'm here, trapped in Shantytown unless either of them decides to go back in time."

"With our Writer, you never know," Rob muttered darkly. "She's bleeding crazy, she is, scribbling ideas all the time and never finishing anything. If her intent weren't so strong, I reckon half of Shantytown'd be our kin. She changes so much, and abandons so much, I'm surprised we don't see more of her fictives here."

"Room for two more?" Two male fictives, a tall black man and a shorter Latino, stood at the mouth of the alley. Undine regarded them with blatant scorn.

"Sod off, Raven. Bugger off, Berto. You get your ya-yas from slumming with half-baked ideas, do you?" she snarled. "We don't need the likes of you here."

The Latino looked at the black guy. "Flyyboy, you know what she's talking about?" he asked.

"She's trippin', that's all. You know her. Let's blow this joint and beat down that Iceman fictive was disrespecting you, aiite?"

Demeter held up a hand. "Please don't go. 'Lia, it's not the Adept-verse versions'a them, it's their original forms. Don't ya recognize Flyyboy's suit?" She shifted closer to Undine to allow the other two members of their group to sit down. Luz kissed her hand in thanks, while Flyyboy just nodded acknowledgement.

"Right then, that's 11, so we're full up. Who's got money and who will I have to stake for?" Kendra asked, producing a case of poker chips from the depths of her robes. Several of the group slid the legal tender of their universes across to her, while others looked sheepish and waited for her to stake them to a pile of chips. Soon yet another game of Shantytown Stud (at least a ten to open, fives and jokers wild) was underway.

Subreality is still Kielle's sandbox, and she still lets us play in it, may she rest in peace. Shantytown was Seraph's addition. Everyone else who wandered in, however, is mine, and some of them have popped up in other places in other forms.