Jack looked at the arm. He had gone over it with Doctor Strange and Magik. He

nodded to himself when it was ready. A nerve connection rested in a second package.

He needed to put the connection in first, then hook the arm to that. Then he had to test

it to see if it worked.

He still didn’t feel comfortable with the thought of trying to put it on himself.

Jack made himself a sandwich to refuel, and got another glass of water. He hoped the

ladies were cooking. He could eat anything, but preferred someone else’s cooking to

his own.

Being able to eat something a goat would turn away from was not a good

recommendation of a learned skill.

He heard the door unlock and checked his watch. He still had enough to call Death

for a few seconds if he wanted. Once bodies started dropping, the watch would use

that to expand his time.

“Hello, girls,” said Jack. He waved the part of the sandwich he hadn’t eaten at them.

“How did your day go?”

A chorus of fines and wells answered him with silence from Alicia, and Josie. They

came in at the back of the group. He recognized the look of grimness. He was about

to be told something bad was happening.

He decided to finish his sandwich before he gave them an audience to ruin his meal.

“Guys,” said Josie. “I want to pick your brains. I am going to have to go out of town

for a few days. I am going to need a flying machine. Can you guys get together and

think about what that would look like?”

The girls started asking questions about where she was going and what she was

doing. She held up her hands.

“I have been asked to rescue someone on the other side of the country, and I need to

get there faster than usual,” said Josie. “Think about what I would need. It has to have

room for nine other people.”

“So you found this Emily?,” asked Elaine.

“I sent her a letter,” said Josie. “She says she is in Cairn.”

“I think that is in the papers upstairs,” said Elaine.

“I’ll look at them in a minute,” said Josie. “Jack, Alicia would like a shooting range

to practice in away from the training hall. Can you do that here?”

“I guess so,” said Jack. He considered adding another room to the Hole in the Wall.

He would need to put Mister Fantastic on the planning in his opinion. That persona

had control over a lot of skills that he could use his other personas to bring to life. “I

would have to plan for it so we don’t have the wall come down on top of us.”

“Can you really do it?,” asked Alicia. Her stolid face concentrated on him.

“I’ll have to make a plan,” said Jack. He looked around the apartment he had altered

to be their home. “If I dig out too much, I could cause the wall above us to settle. We

wouldn’t want that.”

He brought his hands together in a crushing motion.

“On the other hand, I can punch a door through the other wall and expand a room

from what we got,” said Jack. “I would have to check to make sure I didn’t impede

the street, or our neighbors.”

“I understand,” said Alicia. “Practical limitations.”

“Essentially,” said Jack. “Just because you think you can get your hand in the cookie

jar, do you really want to cross the gator-filled moat to do it?”

“Maybe,” said Alicia. “Depends on the cookie.”

“Go ahead and think about the flying machine I need, Alicia,” said Josie. “Write

everything down for me.”

“Are you coming back?,” asked Alicia.

“Yes,” said Josie. “I will be out of range of the watches, but I will send you a letter

every day while I am gone so you know what’s happening.”

Alicia nodded before she joined her more boisterous sisters in trying to figure out

what her biggest sister needed.

“So going out of town without me?,” said Jack. He wiped the crumbs off his hands

by wiping his hands together. “With eight other guys?”

Jack smiled at her. She was still his grumpy bear, even if she was trying to do the

right thing. She gave him a look of offense, but put it away.

Friends to the end had been their motto and they had stuck to it for a long time.

“I got a job,” said Josie. “Sometimes I have to do things. That’s how it is. Can you

help me with the flying machine. I keep thinking about the house from UP! for some

reason.”

“Sure,” said Jack. “I’m going to need help with Harp’s arm before you go.”

“Did you already make it?,” asked Josie.

“Yes, I did,” said Jack. He grinned. “I am a bit of a master wizard you know. I don’t

just whip up miracles in my sleep. I whip them up when I am awake also.”

“What do you need my help for if you already have it done?,” asked Josie.

“Putting it on if you don’t mind,” said Jack.

“When?,” asked Josie.

“Whenever you want, but maybe before you head out with your harem,” said Jack.

“You remember when you said the Society could have your watch back after you

exploded,” said Josie.

“I sure do,” said Jack, grinning.

“I can make that happen,” said Josie.

“I doubt that, young lady,” said Jack. “Who would tell your mother about your eight

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boyfriends?”

“They are not my boyfriends, they are customers,” said Josie.

“I don’t see how that makes it better,” said Jack.

“Are you really going to get on my nerves about this?,” said Josie, crossing her arms.

“I’ll lay off if that’s what you want,” said Jack. “But I would like to meet them before

you go off with them.”

“We’re meeting at the Hall in the morning,” said Josie. “I had hoped to be able to

present the base of a working plane before then.”

“We’ll go talk to Harp tonight,” said Jack. “Then I’ll see what I can do about making

you a flying machine.”

“Can you?,” asked Josie.

“I’ll need something we can use to wrap a base around,” said Jack. “I do have Mister

Fantastic, and he does have a wide knowledge base and photographic memory.”

“All right,” said Josie. “Let me tell the kids so we can go.”

“We were going to need a flying machine sooner or later,” said Jack. “We might as

well do that to help with this quest before we have one farther away than we can

reach with the watches.”

“We’ll be able to see more of this world if we want to,” said Josie. “And if we have

to move on to somewhere else. This might have to be a mobile house.”

“I’ll have to think about it,” said Jack.

He walked into the living room and grabbed the arm from where he had left it when

he had finished. He picked up the connector next. He hoped it worked fine for Harp

after the work he had put into it.

There was nothing worse than an arm no one wanted.

“We’re going to visit Sir Harp,” said Josie. “When we get back, we’ll look at the

ideas you came up with to see what we can build before morning. Then I have to fly

east with these adventurers.”

“You will come back?,” said Alicia.

“Yes,” said Josie. “This is just a search and rescue. We’re going to fly out, find this

girl, pick her up, fly back. Jack will be here if there is any problem with people in

the city.”

“We’re going to be back pretty soon,” said Jack. “I’ll whip up some tacos, or

something. Then we’re going over what you guys come up with for a mobile house.

Do you guys need something as an example?”

“What do you mean?,” said Beatrice.

“Back home, we have mobile homes that we can ride around in on the streets,” said

Jack. He looked around and saw a scrap of metal left over from the arm. He turned

into Magik, and picked the piece of metal up. He concentrated and sculpted out a RV.

“They kind of look like this. An engine drives the thing on the road.”

He let the persona go as he put the little statue down on the table for the girls to look

at.

“Now the idea is that people can ride around, and camp at night,” said Jack. “They

act like rolling houses.”

“That’s neat,” said Laura.

“They’re everywhere back home,” said Jack. “And mostly belong to old people who

don’t have to work any more.”

“And you want something like this that flies?,” said Melanie.

“Anything that you can think of would be great,” said Jack. “I know you have the

brain for this.”

“We’ll come up with something,” said Beatrice. She looked at the younger girls. They

all nodded in agreement.

“Thanks, kids,” said Jack. “Josie and her boyfriends will need all the help they can

get.”

“Not boyfriends,” said Josie. “They are possible minions.”

“Servants,” said Elaine, as the girls looked puzzled. They agreed with that.

“All right,” said Jack. “Are you ready to go, Josie?”

“I have been ready,” said Josie. “Are you sure that thing will work?”

“Nope,” said Jack. “That’s why we’re going to test it when we put it on him.”

“I’m sure that will go over well with his wife,” said Josie.

“You can’t get a steak without breaking some rocks,” said Jack. He gestured for her

to lead the way. He didn’t know where the Harps lived and needed her to go first.

“We talked about you mangling old sayings,” said Josie. She checked her watch. She

had enough power to get them across town. “We’ll be back as soon as we can, kids.”

She changed into Zatanna and whisked them across the intervening space in a second.

She let the persona go before leading the way up to the house’s front door.

“I hope you know what you are doing,” she said.

“We’ll see soon enough,” said Jack.

Josie knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer. She stared at the door

as she listened.

Jack juggled the arm and the connector. He had done a good job. The rest would be

up to Harp’s nerves and how much he trusted them.

Jack would do a lot for a new arm if he had lost the old one. He hoped that helping

Harp wasn’t a mistake. They only knew the man through his teaching lessons. That

didn’t mean much, but the Society halfway vouched for him and helping him could

be adding a little bit of good to the world.

And Bosch’s sentiment was something to aspire to even when you didn’t want to.

Jack nodded at the Harps when they came to the door. He noted they seemed nervous

about having guests.

“Jack says he has an arm put together that he wants to put on you before I leave

town,” said Josie. “Is it all right for us to come inside and show you what he’s made?”

“Josie is going to help me out,” said Jack. “I think I can put the arm on myself, but

I don’t want anything to go wrong. This is going to hurt a little when I set everything

up and get started.”

“And Jack’s doctor self is not good for people to look at when he starts using it,” said

Josie.

“I doubt it’s that bad,” said Harp.

Jack called Doctor Strange in all of his many tentacled, squamous glory. He

dismissed the persona a second later.

“All right,” said Harp. “I stand corrected.”

“We’re going to need you to lay down on a table if you have one,” said Jack. “This

is going to be a two step operation, and you will have to take a couple of days to get

used to the weight.”

“Do you think you can give me a metal arm?,” asked Harp.

“That’s not the part I’m concerned about,” said Jack. “I am more afraid that once we

have everything together, the arm craps out and kills you by accident.”

“What?,” said Harp.

“I’m kidding,” said Jack. “Josie will be right there to make sure nothing goes wrong.

I’ll have the thing on you and working in a few minutes. It will just take some getting

used to since you learned to get around not having an arm in the first place. This

should just take a minute, and then you will have a second hand.”

“Have you done something like this before?,” asked Harp.

“Most of the people I have helped have been poisoned,” said Jack. He grinned at the

expression on the knight’s face. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but if you

are poisoned in the future, I can fix that for you fairly easy if you can hold on until

I can show up.”

“I won’t let him hurt you,” said Josie. She gave Jack a light punch to the shoulder.

“He’s just scaring you to see what you will do. Replacing an arm is not something

light like planting a flower, or putting water on to boil.”

“I’m ready,” said Harp. “Just don’t make things worse.”

“It will be fine,” said Josie. She waved Jack to go in. “We’re going to use the kitchen

table. There might be some clean up, but we will handle that while you sleep off

the operation.”

“Madam Harp,” said Jack. “Are you sure you want to watch this? It will be bloody

and messy.”

It would be easier if she left. Putting someone’s arm on would be something that

she wouldn’t forget for all the wrong reasons. She didn’t need to see that if there

was a way to avoid it.

“I worked on the battlefield,” said Madam Harp. “I doubt this will be any worse than

what I have already seen.”

“All right,” said Jack. “Let’s get started.”

“I have Fate and Occult,” said Josie. “I can back you up if something starts going

wrong.”

“Thanks,” said Jack. He walked into the kitchen and put the arm and connector on the

counter close to the table. “All right. I’m going to need you to climb on the table and

lay down so I can look at you before I get started.”

The knight did what he was told, clasping his wife’s hand as he lay down. She stood

away from the nub that used to be his other arm.

“The first thing that’s going to happen is I am going to change and numb you so you

can’t feel anything,” said Jack. “Then we’re going to put in the connector so the arm

will fit in with the shoulder. We might have to adjust it as we go. I will probably ask

you to move the arm at some point. Just wait for that to happen. Ready?”

“Do you need me to change when you do?,” asked Josie.

“No,” said Jack. “If this takes longer than what I can hold Strange, I am going to

need you to hold everything in place and make sure the work doesn’t come undone

because my time ran out.”

“I got it,” said Josie. “Fate should be able to do that.”

“Let’s get started,” said Jack. “I change, you change if I hit the limit, then when I

have a charge, we switch back.”

“Got it,” said Josie. She checked her watch as Jack checked his. It was still climbing

back up to maximum. She could tell his was doing the same thing.

“All right,” said Jack. “It’s show time.”