AN: I will just put this in the chapter as people are MAD with how badly Max prepared for Earth Bet. They are also mad about some relapses in his confidence, WHILE ignoring that Alexandria is a thinker who could and absolutely WOULD have poked all those insecurities to get him unbalanced.
While dumb, Max made a mistake in not being in his Hogwarts body (so no magic) as he didn’t want to look young to what are basically his in-laws. Also, it has been repeatedly stated that Max’s soul powers are not instant. It can take upwards of a minute just to pop a soul. Not even his Portals are instant. They can take multiple seconds to open. Alexandria would have ABSOLUTELY noticed him deciding to attack them before he could do it. He can’t shunt his emotions to bugs like Taylor for a surprise attack. While if he had a heavily enchanted weapon it might have done something, he didn’t and anything less wouldn’t have worked against Alexandria.
Still, for those who still don’t believe this is enough. This is the end of the second arc where Max is confused and unsure of himself. They are going to be significantly more aggressive in gaining power and dealing with threats moving forward.
That said, not being too much of a Mary Sue requires the Family to fail occasionally…
Also, be aware that this is the start of a long return arc. This won’t be easy and will involve a lot more worlds.
---
Clawing my way out of unconsciousness felt like I was trying to push my way up from the bottom of an ocean. I couldn’t remember what had happened to me nor could I figure out what was going on, yet something was blaring warning bells throughout my skull.
As I came back to consciousness, I was hit by a sense of vertigo, an unknown sensation, and intense pain momentarily overwhelmed me, but soon enough I started to remember.
We had been on a trip to Earth Bet, primarily to pick up Amy’s family. Getting more people joining us than I could have possibly predicted. Finally being ambushed, killed, then attacked again as we tried to leave.
At that the pain in my body and soul came to the front of my mind as I realized just how hurt I was.
It was agony, a burning, tearing feeling and after a moment I tried to actively lose consciousness to avoid the pain. Yet it was so all encompassing that I couldn’t.
In that moment of weakness I felt something start to whisper into my mind. That I should make her pay. May them ALL pay.
They hurt what was mine and they deserved to suffer and die for…
That was when I felt my face slapped to the side, hard. Someone had literally just bitch-slapped me across the face. However, before I could get my eyes to focus I felt my body shut down. I might have normally been able to resist and keep my mind awake within my soul even if my body was asleep, but either due to trauma or shock, this time it mercifully followed my body into unconsciousness.
The next time I woke up, I was in less pain even if it had only gone down from an 11/10 to a 8/10. AKA from an unbearable agony to ONLY a deep and constant agonizing pulsing pain across my entire body.
Trying to breathe in deep breaths and ignore the tears in my eyes, I looked up and around only to see I had been placed on the sofa in the living room even if something was immediately wrong.
I didn’t have time to figure out what had changed as I was immediately hugged by what turned out to be Amy, Dinah, and Luna.
Before I could ask questions Luna spoke up quickly. “Do not let yourself get mad. Not yet, the humdingers here loop it back on itself and it seems to make everyone go crazy.”
I blinked even as I felt the anger as the memory of my girls nearly being lost in the…
Luna reached out and slapped me again, making me realize who had hit me the last time. This time I could see the tears in her eyes. “Please, you need to focus. We can get back at them later.”
Taking a shuddering breath I tried to sit up only to find my body struggling to follow my commands. Amy seemed to have seen my confusion as she looked at me. It was then that I noticed the bags under her eyes. “Luna says the remaining damage is soul damage. I can’t do anything about that.” Seeing her worry made it feel like I was slowly starting to pull myself out of the haze I had been in and I reached out and put my hand carefully on top of hers.
Swallowing, I tried to speak for the first time only to notice my vocal cords feel like they hadn’t been used in days. Suddenly nervous, I cleared my throat and tried again. “Is everyone OK, what is happening, and how long have I been out?”
Seeing that I wasn’t going to lose myself to my rage, Luna sat back while Dinah actually leaned forward to explain. “Yes, everyone survived with only minor injuries that Amy was able to heal. Mostly due to Luna and her father’s efforts at making sure no one was around the areas that were collapsing…”
Amy huffed. “You were working really hard as well.”
I could see the face Dinah was making and made a note that I would need to console Dinah after this was done. She was obviously blaming herself way more than she should have. Yeah she should have told me we would be attacked, but despite her improvement she didn’t have unlimited questions and I knew that arriving in a new reality messed with her predictions.
Putting that to the side for now I took a deep breath and asked. “Thank you, I don’t think we would have made it out of there with everyone if it hadn’t been for all of you. Especially you, Dinah. However, I really do want to know what is happening and how long I have been out”
Dinah nodded. “You have been out for three Days. And well, we are in some sort of forest world. Something has been blocking Luna’s sight. So I have been focusing pretty heavily on asking all the questions I could.”
Noticing Dinah’s exhausted features I tried to smile as she continued. “The thing is while some of the answers are vague there are some pretty big issues.” Dinah took a shaky breath and after a moment of considering how to phrase it ended up just blurting everything out in a rush. “The most important things are that the pocket dimension has collapsed, we are stuck in some sort of forest, and… well this world will end in four days.”
I paled and Amy was forced to push me back down. “Calm down, you are still recovering from whatever happened to your soul. We have time, nothing will happen until then.”
I took a shaky breath and slowly nodded. Looking around I tried to take stock when I actually realized what was wrong. The soft white walls I had made as the boundary for our pocket home were no longer present and I could hear the sounds of the wild through the still broken wall.
Our home wasn’t isolated anymore, the house was literally half collapsed sitting in a small forest clearing. We were vulnerable and I was in no shape to fix it.
However, looking around I realized things should have been a lot worse. There was no way the house should have remained standing after hitting the ground from any height. I vaguely remember hitting the ground here at nearly highway speed. Realizing that I could deal with the world ending in a bit after I figured out what was going on I turned to Dinah and asked. “I thought I remembered a crash landing?” while painfully gesturing at the mostly intact living room.
Amy sighed and was the one to answer. “Our home partially collapsed but Hermione and Mr Lovegood, with a little help from everyone else, were able to repair what was left. They were also the ones that were casting cushioning charms on everything before we hit. The problem is there are large sections missing including the master bedroom, most of the basement, the kitchen, some of the library, and the entire yard around the house.”
Amy paused considering what else to add before continuing. “Thea made it out fine and we do have the water heater and microwave, even if the plumbing in the attic is obviously gone. That said we don’t have a lot of food and, well… after the second day there was a lot of arguing and I may have put everyone outside the family down for a nap.”
She looked embarrassed and I had to ask. “Really?”
Now a somewhat defensive Amy muttered, “They needed it…” before she sighed and explained. “Everyone was complaining, panicking, or trying to boss each other around… it also meant I didn’t need to spend as much time creating food for everyone since no one wanted to eat the tiny cute panda bears in the forest.”
Nodding, now amused at Amy’s sheepish face I finally pulled myself into a sitting position. While my body ached enough that I had moments where I felt like I needed to retch, it was slowly decreasing and as long as I didn’t focus on my anger, whatever was in the air didn’t seem to be affecting us.
Trying to focus I looked at the forest through the window and gap in the wall. It looked somewhat normal, but even from here I could tell it was a tree I had never seen before. Now, I wasn’t exactly a tree expert, but a tree with an oval blue green leaf was kinda unique and I am sure I would have remembered seeing something like that.
Looking at Dinah I tried to focus past the pain enough to determine what was going on, however before I did, I noticed Xeno Lovegood rounding the corner holding a potion. I blinked in confusion but before I could ask, he answered my silent question.
“This is a nerve damage potion used to treat people who have been hit with the Cruciatus Curse. The potion can’t heal you directly, but it supports the body, heals nerves, and evidence suggests it supports the frayed souls, somewhat.”
Smelling the potion, I wish I hadn’t as it smelt like peppermint had been dumped across boiled eggs with a hint of vomit underneath, but holding my nose I forced it down my throat. After letting it work for a minute or so I tried again to sit up and move.
My body was definitely more responsive, but I wasn’t sure I was going to be walking any time soon.
Luna seemed to read my mind and nodded. “No, you need to stay here and get better. We can figure things out ourselves.”
Nodding slowly I paused as my eyelids started to feel heavy. “What did you put…”, a yawn felt like it cracked my jaw, “... in … this…”
Now my eyelids were heavy as Mr Lovegood smiled down at me. “Dreamless sleep potion is part of the treatment. You need to rest and recover.”
The next time I awoke I actually felt significantly better. If I had been maybe a 6 or7 on the pain scale after the potion started working before falling asleep I was a solid 4 or 5 now. That meant I felt like I had been treated as a punching bag, now focused mostly on my head and chest.
Not wanting anyone to tell me I couldn’t get up, after what must have been at least another 8-10 hours based on what I knew of those types of potions, I pulled myself off of the sofa and up to the window.
Outside I could see some strange birds flying through the trees around our clearing and in the distance I could see Taylor standing under a tree, maybe scouting, maybe training.
I tried to open a portal to her and nearly collapsed at the pain that shot through my heart and head. Muttering to myself I shook my head in agitation. “Yeah, that was a bad idea while I am this hurt.”
I thought about just stepping outside and calling her in, but she probably already knew I was awake and if she didn’t think it was necessary to update me on what was going on then I wouldn’t call her away from whatever she was doing. Feeling my stomach growl I turned to focus on finding some food.
That turned out to be a little more trouble than I had hoped for. Inside the remains of the kitchen I found the kitchen table gone along with most of that wall. It was clear some sort of magic had been used to keep the house upright as it was apparently missing parts of 3 of the 4 exterior walls. The refrigerator had apparently been damaged as the door was hanging open. It looked like Sarah might have decided to try to fix it, but seeing as it wasn’t running, she probably hadn’t finished… or the power was completely out, which now that I thought about it was quite likely with how many power cords had been ripped out of the walls. Plus, even if she could have fixed it, it was likely that refrigerant lines had sprung a leak and we didn’t exactly have those gasses lying around.
Instead I walked over to find a wooden box with what must have been a conjured ice block inside. I almost chuckled at us going back to basics like this. It was almost enough to make me ignore the anger I was feeling in the back of my mind for the attack.
Pulling out what looked like sliced ham and cheese, probably synthesized from Amy’s power, I considered what I could make. Looking around the destroyed kitchen, I found some bread and a bottle with a small amount of mustard left. Now finished making perhaps one of the saddest ham sandwiches that I had ever made, I sat down to eat on one of the remaining chairs in the ruins of our home while trying to ignore the anger of what had happened.
It was then that I noticed a cat leaning up to my legs and purring as it circled me. I blinked in surprise. I had completely forgotten about the cat. Hell, we hadn’t even named the cat.
As I slowly scratched the cat I felt myself calm a little. If nothing else it was a good distraction as I fed a little bit of the ham to the affectionate little furball.
By the time I finished eating and was walking back into the living room, I was in time to greet everyone as they returned. The girls seemed to have had some sort of meeting without me as they walked into the house together.
Clearing my throat I gestured for everyone to gather around the sofa.
As they did I considered the room. It was a bit cramped in the room now that one wall was lined with three moderately large tents. The tents were about 7 feet tall and about 6 feet wide and the same deep. It had required the sofa be pushed back to the other side of the room with one side nearly falling out of the hole in the wall. Glancing outside saw that the ground floor of our home was now about three or four feet above the forest floor.
A single glance at the basement stairs showed why as it was clear that the basement was nearly completely destroyed now. That was going to be a mess as we still had Taylor, Sabah, and Amy’s Hogwarts bodies down there. In fact It made me queasy just thinking about those crushed bodies of my girls below us, but it did explain why those three weren’t mentioned when we were talking about casting spells to help fix the house. Their souls still had the modifications I had made to use magic so Amy must have just been waiting for me to wake up to make sure we did it correctly or something. I wanted them at full strength so we would need to do that soon.
Thinking about the basement made me momentarily worried about the Lockbox that had our Family Necklace and Sarah’s gem along with the secondary one with Lung’s and Yumiko’s soul jars . However I was reassured as I saw them sitting in the corner of the room next to the Library room door. They looked completely unharmed but that made sense as the lockboxes had been charmed unbreakable with runic engravings to reinforce the enchantment and they had been inside their own pocket dimensions at the time of the crash. Even though the pockets had obviously popped when we arrived, the girls knew how important they were and had obviously found them in the ruins of the basement.
Yet, despite my best efforts, a chill of fear still raced through my heart at the thought of what would have happened if the pocket dimension would have unraveled in the void between realities. That would have killed everyone not directly soul bonded to me including Hermione, Sarah, and all of the families now traveling with us. Hell, even if my girls hadn’t died, they still might have been crippled by the experience, my instincts were clear on that much at least.
While staring at the ajar basement door and ruined steps downward I heard a hesitant “Max?” from Ahri and I realized everyone was waiting for me to snap out of it.
I cleared my throat, a little uncomfortable and nodded at each of them. “I wanted to thank you all for all that you did…” a moment of anger flared up and I squashed it back down. “With the issues we had before and after landing.‘
I looked across the group. Taylor was clearly still focusing on her bugs, probably monitoring the area. Amy and Sabah looked tired, probably taking care of logistics. Luna and Dinah were sitting next to each other, but looked tired, probably from their gifts and recovering from the sudden and violent entrance to a new reality. We hadn’t had time to put them under after all. Ahri looked worried. Hermione looked determined. Sarah looked like she was trying to hide how worried she was.
Swallowing, I took a deep breath. “How long do we have, Dinah?”
Dinah knew what I was talking about and immediately answered. “Two and a half days until this world is destroyed.”
“And is there anything we can do to stop it?”
The answer was quick and firm. “No…” Dinah didn’t even hesitate and this time Luna also shook her head and I paled.
It was Sabah who asked the question I had been dreading. “Can you not pop us away?”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
I grimaced and decided to try again to open a simple portal. Yet just like the first time I felt a stab of pain in my head and heart. I knew it wasn’t actually part of my heart, but that is where my mind was placing the pain I was feeling from my soul.
Finally giving up I sighed. “No, I can’t pull open anything. Not for portals for transportation and definitely not for the pocket home. That was hard to do even when I was feeling moderately well and rested the first time around. Worse, I am pretty sure my instincts are screaming at me not to try to pop a soul for power while mine is so damaged.”
Everyone’s face paled at that. The world ending wasn’t a huge deal if we could just leave, but now we were stuck. It might not be the worst case scenario, but it was close.
I could also tell everyone was saddened by the thought of losing our home. Even if we hadn’t always stayed in this house, it had still been home for about two years now. This was still the home we retreated to when we wanted time to ourselves, our safety net.
Yet even after the repairs, it was still basically a wreck and I couldn’t think of a single way of keeping it with us. It was only being held up with magic and we had no way of moving such a large structure, especially in such a short timeframe.
After several moments of silence where we considered what we should do I tried to find a silver lining. “Do we have any idea of where we are?”
Ahri spoke up. “We saw a lot of very fancy aircraft flying around to the west, but didn’t want to get any closer, not until we knew what we were dealing with. Only Ahri scouted the edges of their actual base. It is built on a lot of water and consists of quite a few random structures around a giant tower.”
I hummed, “What did their ships look like?”
Ahri pulled up an illusion of what the apparent aircraft looked like as it landed. It… well, it looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. The top half was shaped like a rounded bullet with three massive engines strapped to the back in a triangle arrangement. There was a small ridge around the edge of the top half with the bottom being mostly flat. I wasn’t sure if it was important or not, but the aircraft was also painted mostly white and red. Again, I felt like I should know what it was, but I couldn’t quite identify what we were dealing with here.
Still, despite my inability to recognize it on sight, what was probably the most important part was what the aircraft didn’t have, namely the wings. Plus, the windows it did have were tiny.
I blinked and then sighed. “Well… we are clearly not in Kansas anymore.” Several of the girls snorted at my flippant response but there were several nods. Biting my lip for a second I considered before I started explaining my thoughts. “It is clear that this world is pretty advanced. If it can fly like that then there is clearly some sort of antigravity or some sort of fancy vertical takeoff system.” I frowned but nodded to myself as I thought it through. “We… we might be in a space setting. Those engines seem way too big to me for anything else. That means those craft are probably shuttles.” I blinked “That might be the best way out of this situation, getting on one of those shuttles and just leaving.”
I turned to ask Dinah. “Any chance the locals might be friendly enough for us to purchase supplies or passage off of this world?”
The immediate “No” was not good news either.
I felt my jaw drop, but a moment later my face hardened. “Can we sneak in and steal what we need? Maybe just stealing an entire Shuttle? Would a notice-me-not on the exterior, or multiple across the entire hull let us hide it?”
Dinah slowly worked over the questions for a moment before nodding. “As long as it is hidden in the trees, the notice-me-not spell should cover the rest as long as we can grab it.”
There were some uncomfortable looks but it was Ahri who slowly nodded. “No one came even close to finding me as I snuck around. I could probably take just about anything as long as they weren’t actively using it at the time. The thing is we don’t know how to fly any of those things.”
I sighed, sitting back and thinking. “We could always kidnap someone…” There was a moment before I sat bolt upright in my chair with a smirk. “Or we make Tattletale earn her keep. Lisa should be able to figure out enough to understand the basics just by looking at it.”
Amy and Sabah grimaced, probably already annoyed with the girl, but Taylor nodded in agreement.
Looking between Taylor and Ahri I gestured towards Hermione. “That is good, Ahri and Taylor will be in charge of getting a shuttle. Ahri can mask your approach, Taylor can watch your surroundings, and Hermione is probably the one who can cast a notice-me-not charm the best among us. You just have to bring Lisa with you to learn how it operates and maybe Xeno Lovegood as well for more notice-me-not, just in case. Then fly it over here while we clear an area and we move what we can from our home inside before we get the hell out of here.”
There were some firm nods before Amy straightened up and looked at me. “Max, we have been talking and we want to discuss something else.”
Suddenly feeling like there was a pit opening up beneath me, I nodded. Amy swallowed but slowly started explaining. “First, we want you to know that we don’t blame you… per se.”
It felt like I was punched in the gut as Amy laid out the qualifier and all I could do was nod.
“We had a talk and we all agreed that we aren’t heroes and we don’t want to be self-sacrificing like that.” I slowly nodded so Amy continued. “You remember we said we would put the family first… well, the girls and I feel we have been… too nice. We want to make sure none of us or the people we care about are endangered again like that. Not only here but back in Hogwarts. Even Hermione doesn’t want to wait around for the Death Eaters to attack us. Dinah and Luna have agreed to be a little more proactive as well even if they say predicting everything like that is difficult.”
There was a pause where there was silence before I chuckled a few times. The girls looked a little worried at first but relaxed when I broke out into a snort. My smile after that was not particularly nice and even if I was worried about the influence of this world, I didn’t care.
Narrowing my eyes I finally replied in a lower voice. “Those are my exact thoughts as well. We got lucky so far in that our Dumbledore was good, or at least mostly good. However, we are not going to simply trust that in the future, insight from Dinah and Luna or not.”
Everyone looked a little happier at that and there were some small angry smiles. Again, I wasn’t sure if we were somehow being manipulated by this world, but at the moment I didn’t care.
Amy then brought up another item that surprised me. “There is another thing, Max. I haven’t added the magic control organs for Taylor, Sabah, and I. I was going to, but we held off because we noticed that our abilities are stronger now. Stronger than when we first got magic and before we lost it.”
I paused, eyes narrowed as I thought about it. “Huh, I guess that does make sense. Your souls are the thing powering your abilities now. If your abilities were split between magic and your parahuman abilities it makes sense that both would be weaker.” I bit my lip for a moment. “I still don’t think it is worth giving up magic or your parahuman abilities to strengthen the other, though.”
It was Luna who shook her head to answer my question. “That is not what we were suggesting. We came to the same conclusion when we were talking about it. However, it made us come up with another theory.” She paused, tilting her head. “We think that our soul being mostly inside the gem means that we struggle to bring out lots of power in a short amount of time.”
That was surprising enough that I actually rocked back and thought about it. Our souls were mostly inside our gems. That separation protected our minds from control and probably mind reading, but it also made sense that it would limit what power we could pull out of our souls. I never had a good comparison as to why we seemed weaker than most wizards and these two theories would more than explain the difference. It would even explain how Luna was struggling to cast the big spells just like the rest of us even if she was stronger overall without a parahuman ability splitting her focus. I assumed her soul was already used to her seer gift so that didn’t really count.
Nodding, I agreed. “Yeah, yeah that makes a lot of sense…” I thought about it for a moment before I nodded again. “It will make us more vulnerable to mind control and the like, but we have been practicing Occlumency for just this reason and I think it is worth the risk. We are just going to have to wait until I have recovered a little more to make the changes.”
Having reached that conclusion I paused and looked around our home. Now that we knew we were going to have to leave it behind, I sighed, a little melancholy in my voice. “As much as I want to go with you to grab that shuttle, I would only slow you down right now. So, I think the rest of us should start packing up everything we want to bring with us.”
I paused and turned towards Hermione. “I won’t force you, and it is tearing me up that I can’t do it right now, but I would like to request that you let me tie your soul to a gem. I can’t bring you back if you die without it.” I sighed letting my worry show. “Honestly I should have done it back before Yamatai. I just didn’t want to scare you all off or force you into it. That and with how much healing we had ready it didn’t seem as important. I mean anything less than instant death could have been healed between Amy and I.”
Seeing Hermione’s unease I continued. “Your soul won’t be torn or anything. This is not a Horcrux like the dark wanker, it is just a way of making sure you don’t pass on unless you want to. Just… just think about it please.”
Hermione frowned for a few moments before she nodded her agreement to consider the offer and turned away.
As we watched Ahri, Taylor, Amy, and Hermione headed into the tents to wake up Lisa and then to get Xeno from wherever he had wandered off to, I had to hide how angry I was getting again at this whole thing. Not only were we up against the ropes, but I couldn’t even help get us out of it.
Turning away I headed upstairs to start packing. Looking up, I let out another annoyed huff as I saw what was left of our second floor. The walls were mostly still standing, but the ceiling was gone. In its place was basically plywood that Amy had made to cover what remained of the house, probably with a waterproofing charm.
I passed my master bedroom without even bothering to look inside. I knew it was basically gone already along with all of my personal belongings. I didn’t have much, but I would miss Sabah’s clothes.
Since Taylor was out getting the shuttle, I decided to start packing her room first and since I had magic, albeit weaker than normal due to my injuries. I could just cast a packing spell once I knew what I was working with. As I opened up Taylor’s room, I considered how best to move all the small things she had collected. Her hunter license in a frame on the wall perhaps being the most important along with her clothes and magic supplies. Spotting her Hogwarts chest with the expandable interior I realized I could at least get started by piling everything inside that.
It also made me glad that most of the Alcott, Hebert, Dallon, and Pelham stuff was inside the wizarding tents. Since that stuff stayed intact, even after the tents were taken down, it would make moving everything a little more reasonable. I mean the rest of the house would still be an issue without having to move all our little group of refugees’ crap as well.
Having packed Taylor’s stuff and pulled said trunk with a featherweight charm into the living room, I headed towards Ahri’s room to repeat the task.
Yet even as we packed, the following hours were tense. I didn’t have any way of contacting our shuttle team or helping them, but they were some of our best fighters and I had to trust that Ahri’s illusions would keep them safe.
However, that thought still wasn’t enough to stop me from checking the forest canopy for a shuttle or the edge of the clearing in case they failed and needed to retreat into the forest every few minutes.
In the end, it was as I was helping Luna and Dinah pull their stuff down from their room that I heard the humming. Running outside, I spotted a massive shuttle move across the tree cover before slowly starting to lower towards us.
There were a few trees in the way, but Amy quickly ran over to the largest two and touched them. I was confused at what Amy was doing before the first tree simply fell over. I was a little shocked until, watching as she touched the second tree, I saw she was heavily weakening it on one side until it started collapsing.
That seemed to be what the shuttle was waiting for as the shuttle resumed its descent. This time a little more slowly and with a controlled twist to get under most of the remaining smaller trees and branches, only breaking a few. Still, I looked up at the gap in the canopy and realized it was still extremely large and obvious, but before I could point it out, Amy was once again running around the clearing touching trees and shifting branches to better cover the ship.
Now with my paranoia somewhat satisfied, I surrendered to my desire to just stare at the ship in awe. The first thing that I realized was I hadn’t really understood how big the shuttle was. It was nearly 80 meters long and about 15 meters wide. However with how big the three massive engines at the back were, only about the first 50 meters was a pressurized cabin. Now that was about 1200 sq meters or a little over 12,000 sq feet. Making it about 4 times bigger than our previous pocket home.
However as I walked inside after the infiltration team lowered the ramp I realized it wasn’t going to be as big as I had hoped. The interior consisted of multiple rooms with large structural bulkheads between them. The largest being that of the Cargo Hold at a third of the entire interior, a fourth was the Reactor room, an additional fourth and life support systems and medical facility, and almost a fourth was the cockpit. That meant we were actually taking a downsize in terms of living space since our previous pocket home had been about 400 sq meters, 3,000 sq feet, and had five bedrooms, a study, and a dining room turned library.
Now we had a captain’s quarters, three bunk beds in separate rooms for the crew, and four small passenger cabins along with a kitchen.
However, even as I ignored Lisa’s self-congratulations and explanations on how she learned how to operate a spaceship in only about an hour, I had to admit that it made sense. This ship seemed made to take a dozen or so people for a week or two through space, not live inside permanently so the limited interior with the exception of the cargo hold made sense.
Yet, after a moment of letting it sink in I couldn’t help but smirk to myself. I had my very own spaceship.
Hell, Yeah!
I don’t care who you are, deep down everyone wants to visit space at least once, just to see what it is like. Most of us just don't have the means, ability, or opportunity to actually make it happen. Now I had all three… or I would once I got Lisa to actually teach us how it worked.
Getting back to work moving our possessions, I let myself roll my eyes as I carried another box up the ramp. That might actually be the hardest part of this all, getting Lisa to teach us without anyone punching her in the face with how self-satisfied she was at the moment.
It turned out that the rest of the day and most of the second was spent loading our supplies. This was sped up slightly as by the end of the second day I could make small 1 foot wide portals. My range was still only around 100 meters, but that was well within the distance from the house to the shuttle. However, it didn’t help us with the annoying large things like the sofa. Or at least it wouldn’t have , until Hermione and Xeno started showing us how to perform the shrinking charm. I was a little embarrassed to realize I had skipped it in our third year texts as I had been focused more on defense spells.
So, it was with that revelation that we realized that we could shrink most of our medium sized furniture items. However, there was not room for the house itself even if we tried to shrink it as the cargo hold was more than half filled with energy conduits, uniforms, and ration packs. Again, as much as I would miss the home, the items could be used or sold making them a lot more useful than a broken house.
As curious as I was, I didn’t have time to inspect all of the items in the cargo hold quite yet, but a quick glance showed the uniform in question was a fairly generic gray military uniform I didn’t recognize.
The shuttle had some personal effects in the crew quarters that we also took a look through. However they certainly looked official as this was probably some sort of government craft, but what caught my attention were a number of small sticks with numbers written on the side of them.
Again, I felt like I should have known what we were looking at, but it just wasn’t coming to me. Probably because I was starting to worry about some of the more unpleasant options. My head kept worrying about Warhammer even if the setting didn’t seem to fit.
The final thing we had to do was move everyone in the wizarding tents to the shuttle. Yet, none of us were particularly eager to wake them up, especially not me after hearing about the near panic they had been in before Amy’s enforced ‘Nap time’.
However, the tents couldn’t be moved while set up and they were enchanted to not fold up if people were inside, we were told that would end quite… unpleasantly for said people.
Amy was the first to voice her objection. “Can’t we just levitate or carry them inside?”
I sighed. “Look, we have some time, we might as well deal with their issues now. They are only going to get more annoyed if they find out we have been holding them asleep without their consent for weeks.”
I paused as I considered it. “Then again, if we are stuck on this shuttle for weeks as I recover, then that will be pretty bad as well, especially if they don’t want to be put back under while we wait. On that note, we have some food from the supplies in the cargo hold, but we should probably stock up on more. Maybe we should send Ahri and Taylor out to look for more before we leave…”
There was some more discussion on who was going to do what as Taylor and I moved Thea’s server rack and her battery onto the shuttle. She was awake, but had apparently been interested in studying what she could see of the environment and stars after Taylor had brought her secondary camera outside.
Ultimately it was Hermione, Xeno Lovegood, and Luna who levitated our passengers into the cargo hold while we packed up the tents and moved them. Placing them back inside the tents allowed us to look at our previously empty home in silence.
Lisa tried to break the somber mood with what would have been some derisive quip, but snapped her mouth shut when Amy turned around and asked if she wanted to go back down for another nap.
It was finally as we crowded around the large round table in the center of the ship, probably to both eat on and have meetings around, that we started to plan.
I started us off. “Tomorrow we are going to try to escape well before anything happens, but I was thinking we might as well try to stack the deck as hard as we can.”
There were a lot of nods so I continued. “Notice-me-not charms wear off so tonight Amy and I will make sure Taylor and Amy's bodies are properly connected to use magic. Tomorrow everyone will cast as many unbreakable and notice-me-not charms on the hull as we can. I think I will be able to open a person sized hole by tomorrow so we might also grab a few extra supplies. Then we will leave. We can figure out where we are going after that.”
Everyone seemed to agree with my suggestions. Probably because everyone here was well aware that magic did not cause electricity and other technology to stop working. Honestly the very idea was ludicrous considering Diagon Alley was in central London. Hell platform 9 ¾ was within feet of one of the busiest train stations in London. As long as the magic wasn’t disrupting the actual physical processes of the item in question it kept working fine.
Personally I was convinced that it was because “pure-bloods” would break some part of technology and try to cast a repair charm, but since they had no idea how it worked even at the most fundamental level, the charm would fail and they would assume magic broke it.
Luna frowned. “There are places we definitely shouldn’t head towards in this reality.”
I bit my lip. “Can you figure out where we should head then?”
Luna glanced at Dinah and shrugged. “No, but we can warn you if we are about to make a mistake, I guess.”
Realizing that was probably as good as it was going to get I nodded.
Taylor spoke up. “When do you think we can leave this reality?”
I leaned back and thought for a few seconds before I grimaced. “I don’t know, but I suspect we might have a week or two.”
Everyone fell silent at that. We were already nearly a week into the three week Hogwarts winter holiday break. I didn’t think Dumbledore would kick us out, but no one liked the idea of leaving Holly and Ginny alone longer than necessary. Next year would be incredibly dangerous for Holly and we wanted to prepare.
Sighing, I looked around. “Does anyone have any suggestions?”
Amy spoke up. “I think we should get some dirt in large pots along with some extra water. Worst case scenario I can make us some food.” I nodded in agreement.
Taylor frowned and looked out towards the ramp. “I don’t think we should try to sell our stuff from Earth Bet or Hogwarts. So maybe we should try to grab some more things while we are preparing to leave tomorrow morning. I know we got the stuff in the cargo hold, but we could always use more supplies.”
Thinking about it I nodded. “Yeah, you have a point. I don’t think the uniforms would sell and I don’t really want to try, the ration packs don’t look like they are worth much, which leaves the energy conduits. So, more items like that could probably only help.”
I looked around and Sabah bit her lip. “I could modify the uniforms to fit us, it would make sneaking around tomorrow morning easier.”
I thought about it before turning to Dinah for her input.
Dinah bit her lip and shook her head. “I am not sure why, but there is a big chance that it will cause problems… maybe because you won’t know the proper protocols or something.”
I shrugged, followed by most of the rest before we decided to turn in for the night. We had noticed fairly early that this planet seemed to spin slower than we were used to so each day seemed to take closer to 30 or so hours. It was probably a good thing as it would mean that, despite how tired we were right now, we would be feeling better by tomorrow.
Turning I watched as Sarah, Xeno Lovegood, a still smirking Lisa, and Hermione each took one of the passenger rooms.
Dinah seemed to frown for a moment before she followed Luna towards one of the bunk beds in the crew quarters.
That left Taylor, Amy, Sabah, and Ahri as we headed towards the captain’s cabin. Apparently Amy had already hit the bed with an enlarging charm so the five of us fit on the bed fairly comfortably.
Looking at my four girls, the anger I had been feeling for days now finally dimmed and sputtered out. I leaned back and sighed. “I am sorry…”
Amy reached out and hugged me while Sabah patted me from the other side of Amy.
It was Taylor who put her hand on my chest and shook her head. “We should have been more prepared, but we only came back to Earth Bet because we asked you to. Yeah we could have been more prepared. Especially not swapping back into our magic-less bodies. We understand that Alexandria was a pretty direct counter to you as she could read your body language and all of your soul and portal abilities take time to perform. We just don’t want it to be something we could have easily prepared for that gets us like that again. Next time we don’t stop at half measures and if we get jumped like that we want you to grab everyone and we will counter attack them immediately.”
Reaching out to put my arms around both Amy and Taylor who were closer to me I squeezed them for a moment before reaching out to hold hands with Sabah and Ahri laying on the bed on the other side of them.
Smiling now that we were together I sighed. “Let's get to sleep. We have a big day tomorrow.” I smirked and continued. “We can break this bed in after we have gotten away.”
I could feel the tension release, but not completely as the girls were obviously able to hear the remaining concern in my voice.
It was then that we suddenly noticed a young black girl standing at the foot of our bed staring at us while munching on some popcorn. “Damn, I thought I was going to get a show.”
It took a moment for me to realize what had happened and by that time I had already cast a full body bind at the girl while Taylor, who was even faster, had summoned ropes to tie her up. I was also pretty sure that Ahri had also cast some sort of illusion before…
I blinked…. What had we just been doing?
I looked back and forth between my girls as I tried to figure out why my heart was beating so quickly before a sheepish Aisha Laborn reappeared.
No, no that wasn’t right. She had been here the entire time. She had just been using her parahuman stranger powers to make everyone ignore her.
Then I realized what she had just said and I blushed. I obviously wasn’t overly shy about my affections, but having a 16-year-old girl tell me that she wanted to watch me sleep with my wives was exceptionally weird, even for me.
Sabah threw a pillow at the young girl hissing. “Get out! And don’t sneak in here again!”
Waving my wand I watched as Aisha unfroze and was untied before pouting at all of us before turning around and walking out of the room muttering a low “Spoil sports.”
Shaking my head, while wondering where she had even gotten the popcorn, I cast a locking charm on the door and lay back down between the girls. The girls were also a little agitated so I leaned over to kiss all four again and simply listened to them breathe.
I wasn’t sure how long it had been but slowly I could feel myself finally start to relax and my body begin to calm down. Made all the easier as my pain had decreased to only be a steady small ache instead of a constant throbbing.
I would try soaking in the purifying hotsprings water tomorrow morning. We had lost some of those barrels that had been stored in the basement, but others had been in the back of the living room. Yeah, it was supposed to primarily cleanse impurities, but I would do just about anything if it made me heal faster. The sooner we made it back, the better.
Closing my eyes I let myself drop away and actually started dreaming, dreaming of a swamp with a cave.
Interlude Thea:
Thea hummed as her processors analyzed the data from her cameras and what information she could get from the manuals that Sabah had flipped through in front of her cameras. It was clearly not English. Taylor had mentioned that there was something Max could do that would let her read this text immediately, but he had been too busy to ask.
Still the reading that Sabah had done outloud of what she could make out of the writing was letting her make up a translation suite for the somewhat runic-looking alphabet.
It might have been nice if it had been a history or political text on the planet they had found themselves on so they could figure out what was going on, but a manual on this shuttle was nearly as good.
She just wished she knew what a ‘Corellian’ Shuttle was as it seemed like a name she should know. Maybe Max or one of the girls would know when they woke up.
A small subroutine of her emotional matrix wanted the group to converse with her and give her updates more often, but even she recognized that these were some extremely delicate situations and it was not the time to be distracting them.
Instead she would start up her small 3D printer/fabricator and try to design an interfacing protocol for interacting with this alien ship. Then maybe she could be useful instead of just sitting here while idling her CPU.
There might even be one of those robots the manual talked about so she could move around on her own.