There are things her magic can't do after all.

[mage_see_mage_do]

Temperance wouldn't expect her magic to be capable of transporting people between worlds. But she stood here in this new world as a living proof. She still had no explanation to what that creature was, but she couldn’t argue it was the reason she was here. Temperance tried to figured out a divination to look into the past of other worlds, to understand the creature better, but failed. She tried one to look at her own past, but had only marginal success.

Next she tries to create a spell to travel between worlds while also doing a few side projects. Very small stuff when compared to the great healing ritual, mostly to build a spell library of her own.

Temperance’s side projects are completed and replaced. She starts doing magical favors for the Institute and eventually gets a small room to work as her office (mostly because Sophie didn’t like people knocking on their door). Temperance wrote down everything she knew about the next three decades and a half. She starts a new herb garden for herself. The second wave of side projects is completed.

The interworld travel spell project made no advances of any kind.

It was time to consider other alternatives, maybe there are things her magic can't do after all. Edie suggested science next.

One day Dr. Hank McCoy might hear a knock at the door.

Comments

[abodyinmotion]

"What is the plan?"

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"We get down there," Erika said with the kind of calm you get when you're too angry to yell, "we remove the person who did this. If possible, we make him put your brother back. If that's not possible, we do whatever we can to ensure that he suffers as little as possible from his transformation. And we make sure he can never do it again."

[abodyinmotion]

"Satisfactory" Arya says in the tone of someone that hasn't mastered Erika's form of false tranquility.

If she is considering certain plan revisions that involve dropping the bastard from great heights she isn't telling.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

They land.
There is a particularly nasty person inside who is very surprised to have a jet land on his roof!
And then he is very covered in metal.

[superego_medico]

Ezra extends his mind to reach... 'Meghan? We are here to save you.'

[not_without_scars]

Meghan was already startled by her kidnapper being covered in metal, she yelps when Ezra contacts her mentally, but isn't more scared.

She gets closer to the shape of her brother, unconscious on a bed, Meghan isn't looking at him directly, but her healing tells everything that was done to him.

The little girl curls up in a ball and sobs besides the bed.

[of_all_trades]

Meghan's brother, Franklyn, is mercifully asleep he remains with his four eyes closed despite the sobs. All he does is turn to sleep on his side, positioning his four arms. A tail, long and purple like rest of the body, emerges from under the bed-sheet and hangs lazily from the bed.

[breeds_contempt]

Their father is peacefully asleep too. Not that either father or son had any choice in the matter.

[mage_see_mage_do]

Temperance waits until she is told to leave the aircraft.

[abodyinmotion]

Someone is going to need to physically restrain Arya, or she is going to fly inside the building at earliest opportunity.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

"Don't kill him yet," Erika reminds her. "We need him alive to fix your brother."

[abodyinmotion]

Arya flies inside, her power doesn't make her invulnerable, but one part of her basic training was how to use break doors by slamming throw objects at them. It is not like she cares about this monster furniture. Using telepathic instructions it is hard to reach where her family and their captor are.

Looking at Franklyn gives her rage pause, then she hears Meghan's sobs.

Both children are taken out of the room in a blur, deposited safely inside the blackbird, before Arya returns to the captive's room. Arya kicks the captive midsection, but since he is covered in metal it inflicts more damage to herself than anything. It still feels good.

Next Arya carries her father to the blackbird.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

Erika can move some of the metal out of the way, if Arya wants to hit him without hurting herself. Not enough that he has a snowball's chance in hell of escaping, but some.

[mage_see_mage_do]

Temperance slowly gets closer to Steven Graymalkin. She forces her eyes on him.

It isn't her, in more than one sense of the word. There is something about the presence, even in his sleep, not to mention the stubble that Stevannia hated so much.

"Professor? Ezra?" Temperance asks "can you wake him up? Or should I try?"

[superego_medico]

'Arya stay with me... and our family. I am angry too, but they should be a priority.'

[abodyinmotion]

Arya looks away for a moment, but then floats towards Meghan.

"Meghan? Are you... hurt?"

[not_without_scars]

Meghan is currently curled up in a ball next to Franklyn, holding one of his left hands. She opens and her eyes and glares at Arya and everyone.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

'I think...I'm not sure what, but his captor did something to him. I'm not sure I can force him to wake up without damaging something.'

[mage_see_mage_do]

'Well... I can try to wake him up later, we should collect his wife and the kidnapper. In the meantime.'

Temperance starts casting a basic preservation of health, it is a purely verse spell, meant for emergencies.

[superego_medico]

Ezra takes a look at his father brain himself.

"What..." He starts saying.

'What we are going to do with that monster?' He is talking about the kidnapper 'We can't let him exist.'

[maggie_of_the_owls]

Charles' lips press into a thin line, but he doesn't protest. 'I will try to work on his mind a while longer, to see if I can make him fix your family. After that--we'll see.'

[superego_medico]

Ezra frowns, but doesn't protest. He observes the Professor's mental work.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

The Professor's mental work seems to involve poking at the guy's mind until whatever bit he's poking at makes sense, and then moving on to the next bit. Each part goes a little faster than the last as the overall structure of the mind begins to make sense.
'Don't worry,' Erika sends privately to Ezra. 'He won't really try to stop us, but he doesn't like to think about killing people and he prefers to pretend it's not happening until its over.' After a bit, she adds, more generously: 'Apparently feeling a mind go out is particularly unpleasant for him.'

[superego_medico]

Ezra shudders involuntarily at "a mind go out" part of him feels a need to protest, but it isn't a loud enough. Instead he will go look at his newly acquired family, joining Arya at her side.

"Meghan looks so much like you," Ezra says with a hollow voice "when you are thirteen."

[not_without_scars]

"I am eleven," Meghan says like she is correcting a insult "What... who are you?"

her hand is wrapped tight around Franklyn's, she continues glaring.