Suddenly she felt a moment of wild panic as she thought they were doing 
the same to her; but after she had been lifted into the air, no 
attack came from front or back, though many girls rushed in from all sides, 
each adding her small strength to the paramount goal of hoisting Nell high into 
the air. Even as the last remnants of the Fists were being hunted down and 
destroyed in the nooks and corners of the lobby, Nell was being borne on the 
shoulders of her little sisters out the front doors of the building and into 
the plaza, where something like a hundred thousand girls—Nell could not 
count all the regiments and brigades—collapsed
to their knees in unison, as though struck down by a divine wind, and presented 
her their bamboo stakes, pole knives, lead pipes, and nunchuks. The provisional 
commanders of her divisions stood foremost, as did her provisional ministers of 
defense, of state, and of research and development, all of them bowing to Nell, 
not with a Chinese bow or a Victorian one but something they'd come up with 
that was in between.