Novels2Search
Saved By Waifu (A world hopping adventure)
Chapter 38: ??? - Finally Something We Can Do

Chapter 38: ??? - Finally Something We Can Do

AN: I apologize for my attempts at verbose Victorian English.

CW: Discussion of a child trafficking ring and some vague statements on the kids’ conditions.

I woke up in my bed some time later to the smell of food.

The food smelled good, but I just sat there for a few minutes trying to figure out what had happened. Despite just waking up I found I was about as tired as I could ever remember being. My mind felt sluggish and it took multiple minutes to remember what was going on..

Jumping without popping a soul as fuel had been exhausting, but as strange as the source was, I was completely sure that what I had seen in that Force vision had been true. My soul wouldn’t have handled that power surge well at all. I might have survived, but it was a foolish idea to risk crippling myself, especially so soon after barely recovering the first time.

Finally getting up and throwing my legs over the side of the bed I looked around to confirm that none of my girls were in the room or bathroom before I got up to get dressed. I would have liked to ask them what had happened before needing to get up, but I realized I probably needed to eat.

Finally, looking down at my boxers and tank top I used for sleeping, I momentarily wondered if I had actually managed to undress myself for bed or if my girls had had to do it for me. My memories got a little hazy after I had peaked outside and declared we had arrived.

Standing up I walked outside to find Sabah cooking what appeared to be some sort of french toast while Amy was setting out the dishes. It was actually pretty cool to see Sabah cook as she floated the ingredients around her until she needed them using her telekinesis power. Even after trying to improve her limits, she was still only able to lift things about a pound or less, but that was virtually everything in the kitchen. Yeah I knew there was magic that could accomplish the same thing, but we had focused our efforts on martial magics first so none of us knew any of that kind of cooking spell.

I noticed that Taylor was sitting next to Hermione, Dinah, and Luna, all of which were studying some of the rune work books. Xeno was behind them writing something, perhaps a new article about new creatures. He had seen quite a few new ones after all.

On the other side Ahsoka was relaxing next to Ahri. Their friendship seemed to be growing which shouldn’t have surprised me as they were the two non-humans in the group.

Sarah was studying some of the equipment that we had gotten from Tatooine along with Thea’s new drone that she had obviously been developing. Looking more carefully I recognized it was a simplified version of the floating probe drones that the imperials used to search planets. She had removed a lot of the slightly creepy manipulators hanging from the droid and gave it two cameras at the front to look like eyes and two little robotic arms on a simplistic white chassis. Honestly it wasn’t there yet, but I suspected Thea was aiming for something similar to the floating white robot Eve from the pixar movie Wall*E.

Finally I realized that Aisha was there. Or more specifically she let her stranger power drop the moment that Sabah turned around to start putting plates down for people to eat. It was clear that she had kept herself hidden up until now as I wasn’t the only one who twitched when we finally recognized her leaning back in a kitchen chair, feet up on the edge of the table.

Sabah, who wasn’t thrilled with the feet near her food, snapped a towel off of her shoulder with her power and smacked Aisha over the head with it. That got Aisha to drop her feet, but not her grin.

I sighed and gave a little facepalm with a muttered ”Damn it Aisha.” before I looked up and asked, “I assume you just made sure we forgot you because you didn’t want to be put to sleep.”

Aisha screwed up her face, “Yep, and Fuck No!”

I sighed again, “Language please, and you could have just asked.”

Aisha’s face turned down in confusion. “Why the hell would you care about my damn cursing… and would you really have let me stay?”

I shrugged. “We all know that you could avoid us if you wanted to. And while I obviously don’t mind some damn cursing, as you put it, a constant stream of them does get a bit tiresome.”

Aisha just rolled her eyes before she smirked and began shoveling her breakfast into her face.

Deciding to ignore the little chaos magnet I turned to Dinah. “Anything we should know before we look around outside?”

Dinah must have been expecting the question as she simply shook her head and smiled as she carefully ate another mouthful.

Nodding, I turned to look at the group in general. “I know we should talk about what we saw in the cave…” there was a long uncomfortable silence as everyone suddenly found either the ceiling or the floor interesting. I would have been amused that that crossed so many cultures and even species, but I was fighting down my own unease. “But it is a bit too raw right now for me.”

There were some relieved silent sighs and nods. I didn’t think they were eager to talk about their experiences but I suspected that they were mostly worried about it for my sake. It had been pretty clear I had been the most shaken up by what I had seen.

“However, there are a couple things I think you should know for now.” That got them to look at me again so I continued. “I found out where I came from. It seems like my soul fragments are from the Marvel Universe. More specifically some of the heroes and villains from that world.” I pushed past the surprise I could see on their faces… well except for Ahsoka who hadn’t been able to participate in any of our movie nights. Even Hermione who had only been with us for a few months had at least seen Iron Man 1 and so knew what the MCU was.

I shrugged tiredly. “The second is something that I think most of you realized by now, even if I never spelled it out. Namely that I am still hurt. I am going to need to make some small jumps to limp our way back instead of one large one. That and I am going to be having to rest pretty often between jumps. They are exhausting without popping a soul. Unfortunately I suspect we have another 5 jumps or so before we get back.”

There were some nods in both confirmation and sudden realization as the various girls heard the news, based on how much they had figured out on why we weren’t home yet.

I sighed long and low. “The last is on top of getting more powerful, I need to figure out how to create a core to my soul. It is the only thing I can think of to make it fully stable, limit the fragment’s influences, and permanently bond everything together.” I paused as I considered for a second before I continued. “There is also a good chance that it will allow my soul to better reinforce all of yours and strengthen you like you are doing for me. I mean, right now my soul is mostly just barely holding itself together.”

There were some surprised faces before Taylor spoke up. “I know we considered this before, but do you still think that that is why the ROB gave you the compulsion to find us?”

I smiled at her. “I suspect so. Giving all of my fragments a goal they could all somewhat agree with probably reduced the conflict between them. Without that I could envision a scenario where they all tore themselves apart. That and your souls really are the only thing that have let me survive this long. However, I personally couldn’t be happier with all of you if I tried. I wouldn’t have changed any of my personal past even if I really wished the ROB would have just fixed me in the first place.”

It was Dinah who asked the question I had been considering for a while. “What do you mean, influencing you?”

I sighed trying to think. “One of the people was Mystique, a shapeshifter. I suspect her soul has been allowing me to deal with the body swaps particularly well as well as incorporating new powers. I have a feeling without that fragment copying powers wouldn’t have worked as well as it did. The thing is, she has an incredibly dim view of deadbeat and absentee parents. It would explain why I have so much trouble with Lupin in the original story.”

I took a deep breath. I was expecting someone else to interrupt me, and ask more questions, but maybe they saw how confused and conflicted I looked at all of this.

Another moment passed before Taylor asked the question. “How long until we can jump again. And if it is going to be a while, can we go out and explore a bit if we are stuck here anyway?” Taylor paused and blushed a bit as everyone looked at her before she continued, “I mean, wouldn’t it be interesting to see a past version of London?”

I hummed and reached out. Feeling my own soul and trying to guess how much I had recovered I looked around and asked. “How long have I been asleep? I assume I have been out for a while…”

Thea spoke up from the corner with the answer to my question. “10 hours, 35 minutes, 51 seconds.”

I blinked as I chewed on my french toast and considered that. After swallowing I smiled at her computer rack. “Thanks Thea… In that case I would say that we have maybe another 30-40 hours since I feel almost a quarter rested, I guess.”

Hermione looked particularly disappointed and sighed. “So at nearly 2 and a half days between jumps we are looking at two more weeks to get home.”

I swallowed my mouthful before I just nodded. I knew she was worried about Holly so her eagerness to get back to Hogwarts made sense.

I could tell the rest of the girls were worried too as the mood was a little downcast. Yet after a moment I noticed a few of them looking in the direction of the shuttle’s ramp. That made sense as London or not, it probably still had some interesting differences to see. I mean what if we could see Big Ben being built? Luna and Dinah had confirmed it wasn’t a death world so we might as well have a look around.

Turning to Taylor who had asked about exploring I smiled. “So, yeah, we can probably explore a bit before we need to pop away. Actually, I wonder when and where exactly we are. I mean, even if it is from a fictional story I know, there are a lot of stories that touch London.” That made me wonder, was I subconsciously choosing stories I knew?

Realizing that there wasn’t a way of checking right now, I opened another peephole and moved it around until I found a space behind a small clothing factory that we could exit unobserved.

Stepping out I immediately noticed how dull and drab everything was and realized we needed to tone down our colors to better blend in. The girls weren’t thrilled, but a few moments later and color changing charms we looked inconspicuous enough.

By the time we got to them Ahri had already thrown an illusion over Ahsoka and her to make them blend in and I considered the two of them for a moment. We would need to make a more permanent solution for them but especially Ahsoka. That way she wouldn’t be tied to Ahri every time we went anywhere or needed us to cast notice-me-not spells on her skin and lekku.

My mind went to the special watch that Charles Xavier gave to Nightcrawler to hide his blue skin. I had no idea how to make something like that with technology, but we could probably figure something out with magic for now even if we would want both options eventually to fly under the radar wherever we went.

That brought up the question of how well her force powers worked here. Deciding I should just ask directly, I turned to her. “Hey Ahsoka, I apologize, but with all of the excitement of just getting here, I forgot to check up on you. How are you feeling and do you still have access to the force?”

Ahsoka grimaced slightly. “Yes, well mostly yes. The force here is… static or maybe stale. I am not really getting any feedback, I guess. It is a bit unpleasant, but not much more than any of the force dead worlds in the galaxy… or my home galaxy, I guess.”

I nodded to acknowledge her and turned to Luna. “That is good to hear, what about you, Luna?”

Luna hummed for a moment then shrugged. “Not a ton of magic here, but there is some and what is actually here seems potent.”

I nodded. “Interesting. However, we really are going to need to figure out how to get a source of magic we can take with us, but I doubt it will be easy. The only myth I can think of off the top of my head that creates magic in stories is Dragons and… well… they’re dragons. Even your world’s dragons can be a bit much, Luna.”

I paused for a moment before I hummed. “I wonder if we can set up some sort of magic concentrating runes. It seems pretty rare that we will end up with a world with absolutely no magic so maybe that could be a stopgap. I mean, even Earth Bet had a little, albeit not enough for all of you.” I said while gesturing to Luna, Xeno, and Ahri.

It was Amy that brought up another interesting Idea. “Could we set up some sort of workshop or project area for each of us?”

I blinked before I thought about it and nodded. “That sounds like a good idea.”

However, thinking about what our group needed made me pause and slap my forehead. “Ah, damn it. We need to see if we can save Bonesaw. Or well, we should probably call her Riley if we want to try to reform her.”

I could see the confusion on those not from Earth Bet so I sighed and started to explain. “She was a girl who got powers to be the world’s best surgeon and an incredible biotinker when she was like 6. The problem was she got those powers while being attacked by some literal murder hobos. She was then brainwashed by an insane sociopath… psychopath? Hell, I don’t know how to describe how much of a piece of shit Jack Slash was. Regardless she spent nearly a decade under his thumb before we broke his hold on her. The problem is that world’s superpowered government agency, the PRT, apparently didn’t do anything to help her recover since then. Not if they let perhaps the world’s best surgeon die when so many people in Brockton Bay alone were hurt or crippled..”

Amy grimaced and sighed. “Our attempts at wiping her memories were also pretty crude and heavily rushed as well.”

I nodded. “Yeah… yeah they were. This really isn’t going to be easy.” I sighed and leaned back. “I still want to try though… she really didn’t deserve her fate.”

Amy got up and cracked her back. “Well, if we are going to make her a new body it is going to be a lot easier if I can get some neural tissue and complex proteins to work with.”

I nodded. “Well, let's go out and try to find a butcher's shop I guess. We can grab some supplies and fresh food for the kitchen either way.”

There was a general round of agreements so we all got up and I moved the portal to the back of one of the alleys.

Walking out into the dreary London streets, I immediately noticed the smog in the air. I sighed. I had forgotten that coal being burnt everywhere had made the air in this period truly horrendous. No wonder everyone seemed to have a small, or not so small cough.

As we arrived we immediately noticed how poor the food handling was and I realized that if germ theory was known here, it hadn’t actually spread to the lower classes quite yet. The meat was hanging on hooks with no refrigeration while flies were buzzing around everywhere.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

My opinion seemed to be shared as after grabbing an entire freshly butchered pig, we left as quickly as we could and dropped off the pork directly into our preservation box on board the shuttle. Then, instead of finding another butcher we all looked around for some fruit and bread instead. Yet as we reached the bread maker Amy reached out to test it and recoiled. Looking at us she shook her head. “It has traces of Alum and plaster of paris in it.” We all blinked and she rolled her eyes. “Alum is an aluminum based deodorant.”

I winced as I remembered that this period had been using preservatives and pesticides that modern people would find horrifying. All of a sudden I was very glad I didn’t grow up in the lower class around the 1800 to early 1900s.

Grabbing the somewhat squashed and over ripe fruit we retreated back towards the area we had come from when Taylor asked a question. “If things are this bad, can we just expand another room on the ship and start growing things ourselves?”

I paused and thought about it for a bit. “Huh, I had kinda forgotten about trying to do that. I mean one of the laws of Harry Potter magic was you couldn’t just conjure food, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be able to set up something. Amy, I know you were playing around with custom trees in our pocket home, how far did you get with that?”

Amy hummed smiling while staring out into the distance. “I managed to make the apples that when cut open looked, felt, and tasted like steak but without any of the cholesterol or other issues of typical red meat, but the maturation process was too slow taking months to grow a few apples.”

I blinked, stunned. “Wow…” behind me I saw the rest of the girls nodding in agreement

Blushing slightly Amy just shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind more time to tinker.”

I pointed to the apples. “Would the seeds be enough or did you want a tree?”

Amy smiled and shook her head. “Seeds are probably better to start with so I can play with their entire growth cycles.”

I smiled at her excitement to experiment before we turned down a blind alley and casually smacked aside a drunk who started yelling about ‘standing on his property’. Now in a place quiet enough to not draw any attention, I opened a portal and stepped through into the shuttle.

With all of that taken care of I realized it was time to get to work. Walking over to the message tube I had used to store Bonesaw’s soul, I looked it over and then frowned before wincing. I could see the stress and trauma the soul had gone through. The very soul itself looked haggard and weak in my soul sight and I sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy. Yet at least some of this damage was my fault and that gave me the kick in the pants to try.

Trying to reach out and soothe the edges of the soul seemed to help some but after an hour or two it felt like I had stopped making progress. Frustrated, I called Luna over who brought me the last of our first batch of purifying hot springs water and carefully set the entire gem inside..

In the meantime Amy had apparently finished up Riley’s new body as when I turned I was greeted with a fully formed body that was fairly similar to what I remembered of Bonesaw, no I corrected myself again, Riley’s previous form.

Her body had been chosen to be about 15 or so, which was a bit younger than I think she should have been, but would line up with our younger girls, Luna, Dinah, Aisha, and even Missy.

Amy had apparently chosen to distance Riley from her Alice in Wonderland motif, and instead had put her in a simple light purple sundress. She still had her blonde hair but it was tied back in a ponytail. A part of me was a little confused as to why they had made all the small changes until I remembered that Amy, Sabah, and Taylor would have been a little wary about the former Bonesaw and trying to distance Riley in small ways like this were probably helping them deal with it.

Swallowing, realizing we were waking up a former mass murderer in our home. Yet she had apparently helped save the world after that and we were prepared for her. I mean, she was basically a super powered surgeon without tools or equipment and there were a dozen ways for us to restrain her.

Turning I gave Amy a nod as the green light to wake her up slowly. Seeing my OK, Amy put her hand on Riley’s neck while we all braced ourselves for a potentially confused and panicked Bonesaw.

Yet… nothing happened.

Looking over at Amy I raised my eyebrow, but Amy looked just as confused as I did. Amy’s frustration seemed to grow as she struggled while the rest of us looked on.

Finally I sighed. “Amy, it seems something is wrong. Why don’t we come back to this later.”

Amy sighed and slumped before she nodded. “Yeah, just give me a second… there… she won’t wake up without me relaxing her hypothalamus.”

Xeno arrived and somehow I wasn’t surprised to see him holding some potions which he proceeded to pour down Riley’s throat.

Not knowing what else to do I made a note to make more of the purifying hot springs water, enough that her new body could soak.

Leaning back I bit my lip as I looked around. “Well… I don’t really know what else to do.”

The girls all looked a little conflicted but nodded while Xeno looked sad.

Turning to Dinah and Luna I asked. “Anything more we can do?”

Dinah hesitated before she shook her head.

Luna simply stared into the distance before she shrugged. “We don’t have everyone we need yet. The first should be here soon though.”

I blinked and crossed my arms as I considered that before I simply shook my head and shrugged. Luna would tell me if I needed to know. “...Well, is there anything we need to do right now?”

Everyone looked around for a moment before I got a chorus of shaking heads. “Well… what do you all want to do for the next day or two?”

Everyone looked pensive except for Taylor who had her eyes fly open and she looked so intently at me that I momentarily wondered what I had done before she spoke up. “Can we go see a play? Maybe one of Shakespeare's…” Her eyes got wider. “Or The Count of Monte Cristo… that came out in the mid 1800s, we could see it in its original form!”

I blinked then smiled. “I had forgotten that you had your mother’s love of literature. Daughter of an English professor indeed.”

Taylor blushed but nodded and I noticed that Hermione looked nearly as interested now that Taylor had explained why this was so special.

Adding Thea’s small drone under an illusion that already hid Ahsoka and Ahri so we could walk down the street without causing a panic, we all casually strolled through the city until we found the theater that a few locals told us about. Just as Taylor had hoped, it appeared that the Count of Monte Cristo had been out for a few years as it turns out the current year was 1875, but we needed to wait for a few hours until the next showing. Taylor had been nearly over the roof, a play from an authentic Victorian era London theater troupe was something she knew her mother would have killed to see.

Now just waiting around I looked at the large number of people passing by and was a little amused at the lack of color. I hadn’t remembered that as part of history, but I guess these were the poorer ends of society and color dye could get expensive. Yet out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of blue before it was gone around the corner…

Well, I guess not everything could be black, white, or shades of gray.

Turning around I heard the call of my girls as they warned me the doors were opening and the show would start soon.

Shrugging I followed them in before putting the blue dress out of my mind.

Sitting down for the beginning of the play I was almost immediately surprised at how energetic the actors were. The theater tradition really was strong here in London. It made me want to see a modern rendition of the play to compare them.

A few hours later we came back out, listening amusedly to Taylor and Hermione discussing the symbolism and themes of the story.

Not really having anywhere else to go we all started walking back when again I caught a hint of blue in the corner of my eye. This time I turned more sharply as I spotted a slightly older girl. Maybe 17 or 18 following an older gentleman into a train station. Yet even as I looked, trying to place her with her black shoulder length hair, striped top, a black skirt, and gray apron, it happened again. Just for a second her clothes transformed to be a blue dress, striked stockings and a blood covered apron.

I breathed in sharply as I realized who I was looking at.

Funny we had been thinking about Riley as Alice when we had the literal bloody Alice in front of us… and I wasn’t exaggerating about the ‘bloody’ part.Yet I fully supported her on her crusade.

Her story was horrifically tragic. Her sister had been raped by a therapist who had snuck into their home and then burned it down with them all inside to hide his crimes. Alice had repressed it all to deal with it being put in a mental asylum to deal with her trauma. However when she gets out she is put in the care of that same therapist who slowly manipulates her into forgetting everything… all with the intention of selling her off as a mindless sex doll… literally mindless as he manipulated the children as young as 3 and 4 to forget and accept what was happening to them.Hell, some people called him the dollmaker for what he did.

In fact, I was sure that there wasn’t anyone with a shred of decency who didn’t believe that Dr Angus Bumby deserved a lot worse than just being pushed in front of a train like Alice was planning. It was way too quick a death.

The problem was, no matter how it was done, killing him would do nothing to help the children he sold off and wouldn’t expose the monsters that were buying from him.

My eyes lit up at that.

We hadn’t been able to do anything about Tatooine and in the slums here he might have been able to get away with it. Yet, this world wasn’t so terrible that we couldn’t get justice by exposing the buyers.

I smiled and it wasn’t a nice smile.

Seeing as Alice was closing in on Dr Bumby, I realized I needed to act. Feeling around in space for a moment, I opened a portal in the space between Alice and Dr. Bumby before I gave my instructions.. “Stop the girl and the older man, but don't hurt either. We want to help Alice and he deserves a lot worse than an easy death.”

My tone must have clued in Taylor, Ahri, and Ahsoka as they jumped forward through the portal trying to make sure we got there in time.

Stepping through the portal after them, I spotted Alice, now solidly in her blue wonderland dress staring down Taylor and Ahsoka while Ahri had grabbed Dr. Bumby and, not wasting any time, dumped him on his ass before knocking him out and started tying him up, harshly.

Alice looked incredibly confused, I suspected that she had feared we were there to protect the child abusing, sex enslaving monster, but our actions seemed to be contradicting that.

At this point Alice turned towards the rest of us and held out her Vorpal Knife somewhere between a warning and a defense. “Why have you come? Wait, are you from Wonderland?” Shaking her head she pointed her knife more firmly at me before moving it to point at Ahri again. “No, it matters not. I can not let you take my revenge away from me! This man must pay for all that he has done!”

I nodded, while moving my hands downward in a calming gesture. “Oh, we are absolutely on your side here. We are just passing through this town, but we know of your story and we want to help. But just think about it, he deserves a lot more than just a quick and somewhat painless death for everything he has done, doesn’t he? Plus if we want to help the kids, we need to know where he has sold the kids off to.”

That made Alice pause and look at us again while lowering her knife. “Your point is interesting, ignominy might be a better solution. People often eschew the things they don’t wish to believe.”

Blinking momentarily at her formal Victorian manner of speech and wondering if she was partially talking about herself there as she had her history of repressing her memories, I shook my head to clear it before I agreed. “Yes, but for now, I think we should find a more private place to speak. We don’t want to be interrupted as we plan, do we?”

Alice looked around for a moment before she nodded. “Yes, please do, ere someone comes to search for this filth.”

Opening another portal to a rooftop, I waited momentarily before Ahri put up some more illusions and Luna shot off a silencing spell around us. After that the rest of our group slowly filed through the portal while Taylor and Amy simply grabbed Dr. Bumby by the arms and hoisted him into the air between them.

Once we were all on the roof and I could finally close the portal, I smiled at Alice before my smile turned into a sneer at Dr. Bumby’s slowly awakening form. The piece of scum that would brainwash and sell kindergartners to predators really didn’t deserve the least amount of decency.

“Ok, first things first. Let's talk about what is happening here and what we are going to do about it.”

Alice nodded, still a bit warily but looking more and more pleased in the way this was going.

Knowing that my girls didn’t know exactly what Dr Bumby had done, I started at the beginning. “So, the ‘good’ doctor here” making sure to use as much sarcasm and scorn in my voice as I could, “was apparently the mastermind and the primary brainwasher for a massive underground child sex trafficking ring.”

That got all of my girls who had been a little confused as to why we had acted so quickly to turn and glare murderously at Dr. Bumby.

I smiled and it still wasn’t a nice smile. ”We need to know where the children are and who helped him. That needs to be our primary focus and what we need to plan out.”

I saw everyone was a bit confused and I continued while noting Dr. Bumby had fully woken up, probably after being manhandled through the portal. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, we are going to kill the bastard here, and make sure it is slow and agonizing.” Dr. Bumby tried to speak and I realized Amy must have removed his ability to speak. Realizing how helpless he was Dr. Bumby actually gave a little whimper at that and I realized like most bullies, he stayed away from people that could actually fight back.

Now thinking about the logistics I realized this was going to be annoying. “Now we need to figure out how to find out the information and inform the authorities.”

Everyone looked a bit confused, probably remembering my issues with authority figures so I clarified. “Oh, we could theoretically kill them all, but they have been doing this for a while and unless we are going to personally take care of dozens… maybe hundreds of their victims, most still being kids, we are going to have to get the authorities involved. The good news is I suspect it will be fairly straightforward if we can make sure the reveal is big enough that those that are guilty can’t just sweep this under the rug.”

Dinah spoke up. “98.1% chance that at least 5 members of the local police are involved”

I sighed and nodded, it was what I expected considering children disappearing would eventually raise some eyebrows otherwise. Turning I decided to ask. “Anyone got any ideas on how best to blow this wide open?”

Hermione frowned, still obviously angry, but now trying to think about the options. “Could we go right to the top? Find the most senior person in the area and let him know?”

I nodded. “Not a bad idea and we should do it, but we should do more. They might not believe the evidence or the guilty parties may find out and have the man in question get caught up in an ‘accident’.”

Luna spoke up with a small smile. “What about the power of the press?“

I blinked in surprise before I smiled. “I like it. People in the slums down here might not care much, but I doubt everyone feels that way and an implication they are kidnapping children will get people up in arms.”

Taylor spoke up, “What about the kids? What if they try to hide or hurt the kids to cover their tracks?”

I grimaced. “Yeah, we are going to need our seers to try to find those kids and a few of us may need to form strike teams to head in and stop them.”

There was a moment of silence before Amy spoke up, a little concerned. “Should I be ready to heal them then?”

I winced and then sighed. “Maybe the worst cases, but if there isn’t any evidence then some of the monsters might get away with it.”

Amy scowled but nodded.

Alice frowned but then asked. “What is it that I can assist with in this endeavor?”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, I figure you could soften him up and get a little payback for your sister while making him more willing to answer our questions.” I paused realizing I needed to give some more background information. “You see, there is a spell we know to read minds, but…” I scowled and actually kicked the Doctor in the ribs before I continued, “I really don’t want to read his mind knowing what he has done.”

Looking at Alice I smiled. “Good news is compulsions will work as long as he doesn’t have the willpower to resist them… so basically I need him somewhat broken and you can do whatever you want to get there. We even have Amy here who can heal, so as long as you don’t kill him instantly we can still get the information out of him afterwards.”

Alice blinked and tilted her head. “That does seem a reasonable course of action.” before she smiled darkly at Dr. Bumby.

Seeing how much Alice hated him, I bit my lip momentarily before I turned around and pulled enough of Dr. Bumby’s soul into a beer bottle sitting next to him on the roof. “There… I just made sure you won’t kill him accidentally.” I thought about explaining a bit better, but now wasn’t the time. “Ahri can make sure you aren’t interrupted, the rest of us need to ransack his office. Could you point us in the right direction before you get started?”

Alice nodded and pointed down the street. “Two blocks that way, you will see the sign for the orphanage and his therapy office was the second floor” before she turned around and manifested her Vorpal knife and twirled it around before slamming it into his leg just above the knee.

I nodded. His scream was brutal, but I still remembered playing that game. Looking over at Luna and Dinah who were looking happily vindictive at his suffering I felt reassured that the memories of the story were true here. That meant this reality was more or less just like the game… and the game truly was horrifying once you realized what was going on. I mean the implications of brainwashing and selling toddlers that may still have been in diapers was one of the worst things I had come across in modern media… and thus made his death by Alice’s hand one of the most satisfying.

Turning I portaled us down to an alley a little further down the street before we started walking towards the orphanage. Even if the kids were unattentive, I didn’t want to just appear through a portal in front of them. The vague directions didn’t end up being a problem either as we found it soon enough with a half dozen kids hanging around the outside.

Walking up and through the open front door, I was a little glad Dr. Bumby wasn’t here with us at the moment. I mean, as important as it was to not kill him yet before getting his secrets, seeing another dozen traumatized and partially brainwashed kids talking about how their heads hurt or just staring blankly into space… like the dolls he was making them into… Well, if he had been here I might have abandoned the plan and just tore his soul apart then and there. Seeing a girl about four just gently hitting her head against the wall every few seconds was particularly traumatizing.

Climbing up the stairs we followed Luna and Dinah into the office before the two of them split and started searching through cabinets and drawers for documents. However before they could finish Taylor also got involved, probably following her bugs to hidden caches of papers and documents as well.

Collecting the papers, I spent my time laying out the documents on the desk one by one to let Thea’s drone start scanning them after she finished with a map of London on the wall.

While we were working on the scanning, I noticed that Sabah, Xeno, and Ahsoka apparently couldn’t wait any longer and were going around trying to help the children currently in the orphanage. I smiled a little as Xeno pulled a seemingly unending number of strange plushies and dolls from his pockets. Ahsoka seemed to be trying some sort of mind soothing or mind healing as she would kneel down and put her hands on the kids’ heads, then smile sadly down at them for a few seconds before moving to the next. Sabah simply picked up the two youngest and rocked them back and forth while humming a happy tune. Once they had found everything Luna and Dinah followed them out to try to cheer up the orphans as well.

Making a note to praise them for how well they had handled that I focused back on our work. As I flipped the last paper over in front of Thea’s camera I was expecting to need to wait for Thea to process the documents, however apparently the AI was more than up to the task because a few moments later Thea spoke up. “The second and fourth hidden ledgers didn’t have any names, but the dates of correspondence line up with some of his other letters and visits. I believe I have all 62 conspirators. However, there are hints that this trafficking ring has ties to what look like other rings in other countries.”

I sighed, wiping a hand down my face. “That is something we will probably have to get from our seers and our interrogation of Dr. Bumby.”

Turning to Xeno, Luna, and Hermione. “If we broke you into a printing press office for a newspaper do you think you could enchant it and get enough papers to cover this half of London by tomorrow morning? Maybe even with a small compulsion to believe the story on top?”

Xeno hummed and looked at the setting sun. “Yes, that should be doable, even if we are going to have to work through the humdingers’ hours.”

‘Humdingers’ hours?’ I blinked before I shook away the question and gave him my nod. Turning to face Luna directly I asked. “Luna, if you can pick the best press nearby, I will get you inside and a few notice-me-nots should get you some room to work.”

Luna nodded and I turned to Taylor, Ahsoka and Sabbah who had come back after putting the kids down for bed, Aisha, “We are going to be the ones hitting some of the places that are housing the vulnerable kids once we have Ahri, Alice, and Amy back.” I frowned before I looked at Dinah. “Dinah, if Luna is helping her father and Hermione with enchanting everything for the paper, I am going to need your help with directly organizing everything.”

Dinah smiled and gave a little salute.

Smiling back, I turned and gestured for everyone to follow me. “Let's get this operation started.”

Interlude Alice:

Alice twisted her knife. She felt the sickening pop before Dr. Bumby’s pinky fell off.

When the strangers had arrived she had been worried that she would be denied her revenge… denied justice.

But this was turning out to be much better. I mean, while being hit by a train, as delightfully poetic as it would be after creating a train that was destroying her wonderland… her mind, this would do so much more.

Pulling out her knife she considered where to go next before she noticed the monster had soiled himself.

That gave her an idea, why not remove the maypole that took her sister from her? And wouldn’t it be the proper form of justice to have the man choke on it? She ignored the slight wince that Ahri gave as she leaned down to start.

It was then that she noticed Max coming back and she frowned. Max was surrounded by women as well… maybe she would need to keep an eye on him too. As happy as his girls seemed, Alice knew what monsters could hide behind fake smiles.

Interlude Lara Croft:

Lara could admit she was starting to panic.

Even Sam didn’t seem to be answering her phone calls and she had been starting to look… a bit sick… or off even before that.

People that had been praising her for her time on Yamatai were now sure she had faked all the biggest discoveries. Even knowing that magic existed she couldn’t believe that memory charms had been cast on all of them.

What the hell was going on?

Why was her father’s ex-girlfriend Ana snooping around her father’s old apartment? He had been dead for years, why come back now?

And seriously, why wasn’t anyone answering their phones?