Revelation

I know exactly when and where… so a few preparations and a few spells later… I'm in the snow, watching hundreds of people kidnapped at my order shivering in the **** cold. But I'm at full power now, and they're all clustered together.

One invocation of the Portal function of the Warp sphere, and they're all falling through to the current date in a warm demiplane, full of fruit-bearing plants and streams of fresh water. A little bruised and battered, I quickly add the minor positive dominant trait to the plane (Create Greater Demiplane is a swift action cast for me now), which washes away their bruises in seconds.

As everyone is gathering their wits, from their perspective having gone from wherever they were in their lives to suddenly in a sub-zero snowy wasteland to a semi-tropical forest, I address them all (Logos is handy for that): “Hello everyone, I am Dan. I apologize for the rough ride; that wasn't my intention. As for what happened,” I take a breath before getting into the exposition in earnest, “Every one of you had a close relative - a parent, sibling, child, or spouse - who was mid management or higher in the Bureau of Magical Management, an organization tasked with keeping magic under wraps, who went about the job in possibly the most disgusting, evil, and abusive manner possible. When you're released, you're free to look up the videos taken from their own security cameras about what kinds of things the organization actually did. About a month ago, my agents kidnapped you all as insurance against them using their ace to kill me. Didn't work out as well as I would have liked. That situation is…” I pause, considering “...resolved, so I'm going to repatriate you all shortly, returning you to your homes with a small stipend for your missed time.”

I take a moment to review the looks on folks faces… I mostly see shock and confusion, but also astonishment, anger, and fear. Not much in the way of disbelief, I imagine because of what they've just experienced… “The relative in question is going to be missing when you get back, a casualty in a war for freedom: They were on the wrong side. If you don't trust me on that, your call… but do look up the published security footage.”

I take a breath and keep my monologue going, “As to the actual repatriation: I'll issue each of you a bag of Martian currency, five hundred crowns, a ten pound bag. If you're careful, I think you'll find the exchange rate satisfactory.” They're pure gold, and each bag is worth around three quarters of a million US at current market prices on weight alone. “If you're not careful, you'll get ripped off. I'll also be providing each of you a Martian Smart Phone,” A Starfinder Personal Com Unit, specifically, “with a charged battery good for a little over three days. It's yours to keep, but good luck finding the adapters to recharge it. It will let you contact a concierge, who has instructions to help you with housing in the event you were thrown out of your apartment or some such while you were in storage. After you have your repatriation package, I will send you to the international airport of your choosing. Anyone who does not cooperate will be promptly delivered to an international airport of my choosing with no repatriation package. Minors with a parent who is at liberty will be returned to that parent's current location with a repatriation package. No, I will not be answering questions. Please form an orderly line.”

As most people start to do exactly that, one white blonde guy in the high side of six feet tall and built like a side of beef, steps up and starts growling out, “I don't know who you think you are, but," he doesn't get any farther than that, simply winking out of existence as I promptly send him to Houston International Airport.

“I repeat,” I begin, “I will not be answering questions. Further, I will not tolerate non-cooperation. Please form an orderly line.”

The rest of the operation goes quite smoothly: Each person steps up, I create their cash bag (Spheres of Power, the Creation Sphere with Create Materials, Costly Creation, Fabricate, and Divided Creation) and com unit (Fabricate Tech, a poached class ability from Starfinder), hand them over, and ask where they want to go. They answer, and I send them there.

There are six kids where their parents are both in storage (or they only had one to begin with, which I took). I set them aside for follow up last as they come up. After short interviews with each, five of them I deliver to another blood relative with a double sized repatriation kit (three to their respective grandparents, one to an aunt, one to an uncle).

The last is a five year old girl with nobody left that she can name…

...because I took them away. Her mother was on a state board for the BMM. Her father, one of the field agents. Her grandmother? A cleaner at one of their offices. Her grandfather? He piloted a John at a holding facility. No aunts or uncles.

Thinking about it, she's hardly unique: I took 786,362 people from that organization. There's going to be thousands… maybe tens or even hundreds of thousands…of kids like her, suddenly orphaned with no explanation… and the kidnappings took a long time… ugh. Well… hopefully they ended up with neighbors, their school staff, the police, or some such. I could, theoretically, go back and fix it, but… how? Undoing the kidnappings would be bad, the BMM needed to die, that's why I plucked them up root and vine in the first place. Which… means they're going to not have parents.

War sucks.

For the immediate issue, though, I still have a little girl staring at the woman who took away her family. I kneel down to her level, “So… do you want to be a princess?”

“I want my mommy,” she starts crying.

Tempting… I could pull her out… but her family absolutely knew what was happening… and then someone would have details on HOW I ended the BMM. Can't have that, “Not an option, honey.” I give her a big hug, “Can I take care of you?” Is this what cops feel like when they take away a child's parents for their crimes?

“I want my mommy!” She insists, crying.

“She's not coming back…” I quietly drop a few buffs on her: Status, Delay ****, Air Bubble… and that's it. Sure, I could add Sustain so she'll never know hunger, Delay Disease so she'll never get sick, Delay Pain so she'll never feel a booboo, and such… but no. I'll know if she's sick or hurt, she won't drown, and simple injuries won't kill her… but if she never gets sick, she won't be able to empathize with folks who do. If she never scrapes her knees, she won't be able to cringe when she sees someone else get hurt. If she doesn't get hungry, she won't act when she sees someone starving. I don't want to raise a monster I'll need to put down later:

The one in the mirror is enough.

I hold the little girl as she cries. She never gives me a yes… but I do take her home. No, I don't assign a caretaker: I can time travel, so I can be in two places at once, and don't need to leave her alone for even a minute. I spend the day with her getting her used to our new house (in a demiplane on Mars, using Earth gravity settings) and when I'm done, I zip back to when I started… so I can set her up for preschool: She's going to need to interact with children her own age regularly.

That takes months.

I don't need my illusion over me to look anything like myself, so I pick a simple ‘soccer mom’ vibe. A few minions with the Computers skill solve the ID issue, and I pick up my basically bulletproof fake at the DMV. When I then stop at a bank to open an account and deposit my currency (a copy of the repatriation package….) a couple hours after I let all the innocent adults go (and in the city where the greatest number of them were let loose), basically claiming to be my own **** victim, everyone else has done the hard work for me. The bank manager has already dealt with a couple people coming in with ten pounds of gold in coin form, and already figured out his markup… so I just deposit half a million into an S&P 500 Mutual Fund (not really associated with S&P, they just… invest evenly in all the S&P 500 companies, keeping their overhead down), a hundred fifty grand into a savings account, and fifty grand into checking. I don't worry that the banker takes the other fifty grand: It's all free for me. Then I buy a plot of land with a small house in a small town out in the boonies (my commute is instantaneous) so I have an address. I actually do take out an FHA loan and set up scheduled payments… because it’ll look weird if I don’t… and my interest rate on my savings is higher than that on my loan. I do, however, automate the whole kit & kaboodle with automatic payouts from my mutual fund to my checking account, and from my checking account to my loan: I’m not going to need to think about it again for thirty years, at which point I’ll need to deal with my own insurance and taxes... but probably won't need the house anymore. Address, ID, and bank card in hand, I sign my adoptive daughter up for preschool.

It’s hard letting her go.

Of course: Time shenanigans. Just because I focus on my new little girl for a few months of real time doesn’t mean I’m not dealing perfectly well with everything else. Like foreign governments….