Casey stared at the appropriately named Doctor Strange. How did he know who she was? And how had he appeared in the middle of the workroom? Was the cloak alive? And what was with all the drama? She shook her head and pointed her crowbar at him. "I do not have time for this, you psycho. Get lost."
The guy seemed taken aback by her lack of enthusiasm over his epic arrival and declaration. It wasn't like he was Captain America, so she wasn't sure what he was expecting. "I really am here to help. You need me for this since you'll have to admit it's a tad out of your league."
"Was that a baseball pun?" She wasn't going to stand here arguing with this guy. Backing up, she pushed through the swinging door and looked around the half-destroyed shop. The shotgun had done some serious damage by blowing apart a few showcases, scattering memorabilia and bits of old baseball posters.
"Gramps!" she called as she stepped over shards of glass, hoping he would appear from behind one of the support beams, grumpy but just fine. Her heart plummeted, and her hands tightened around the crowbar.
Her grandpa was gone.
That Arpath guy must've kidnapped him or worse. Casey snatched up her cellphone from the clerk's counter and started to dial 911, but the phone was plucked out of her hand by Mr. Weird.
"I know this is hard to understand, but that's not going to work," he said, but if he was going to say anything else, he was abruptly cut off as he had to dodge Casey's wicked crowbar swing. "Casey-"
"Give me that phone right now!" she demanded, taking another swing at him. She needed that phone so she could call back-up to rescue her grandpa, and this jerkwad was in her way with his attitude.
This time the crowbar collided with a sparky bar of light that Cape Guy held between his hands. He wrapped the light around the crowbar and pulled it out of her grip, catching it in his own right hand. Casey skittered back, looking for a new weapon, but a new rope of sparks appeared and wrapped around her legs, holding her fast. Don't panic, don't panic, act as if encountering magically appearing sparkler ropes was an everyday, normal occurrence.
"All right, here's the deal. I'll let you go and give this back, but only if you promise not to try and hit me with it anymore," he said, extending the crowbar to her tentatively. He held up his free hand and pulled the crowbar back a little. "Also, you have to listen to me so you can understand what's happening."
Casey could have screamed she was so frustrated, but she knew she was running out of time. Also, Cape Guy didn't seem interested in hurting her. He was just overly eager to help out or whatever, which probably meant he was a superhero hopeful trying to earn that cape he was wearing. Plus there was the issue of the shiny ropes.
Outstanding.
"Fine, tell me what's going on," she finally said, "Please." There wasn't anything else she could do, and she needed to help her grandpa. He needed her, and she was wasting time with this guy unless he really could help. In any case, he wasn't going to let her go until he said his peace, so the faster she heard him out the quicker she could get away.
"You'll have to walk and listen if we're going to save your grandfather," he said, retracting the sparkler ropes from around her legs. He held the crowbar out to her. "Remember, use that against me and you lose it. Understand, Casey?"
"How do you know my name?" she asked as she took the crowbar from him, "Who are you?"
"I told you, I'm Doctor Stephen Strange," he said, "Come along." He pushed the door open and headed down the street, his clothes seeming to morph around him into jeans, a t-shirt, and a coat, something less ostentatious than the cloak outfit from earlier.
"Did you bring the melting guy with you?" Casey asked, having to jog to keep up with his ridiculously long stride. "What kind of doctor?"
He snorted. "Medical. And no, I didn't bring him, and in any case, he's not just a guy. More like an extra-dimensional monster from another universe masquerading as a person."
Whoa, wait. Trying to keep up with all this nonsense was going to give her a migraine. She just wanted to get her grandpa and go back to her boring existence where her biggest worries were crushes and working after school. She didn't want to hear about monsters from a doctor/magician.
"I need a little more explanation," she said, "Why wouldn't you let me call the cops? How did you know any of this was going on? And where's my grandpa?" That was the only truly important question right now.
"The cops don't deal with mystical dimension-breaking events of a deadly nature."
"And you do."
"Yes. It's part of my job."
"Tell me exactly what's going on. Now."
"It'll take too long to explain everything, and you probably won't believe it anyway."
Casey grabbed his arm and tugged, forcing him to look at her for a moment as they walked. "Then give me the short, semi-believable version."
There was a moment where she thought he wasn't going to tell her everything, but he eventually nodded and then plucked her glasses off her face.
Automatically pausing, Casey wondered if she should start swinging at random with the crowbar. However, she didn't want to smash her glasses in the process. Everything was blurry, but she could make out Strange as well as a swirl of yellow blossoming around his hand. "Give them back."
"One moment, I need to focus," he said, "Try to remember not to hit me with the crowbar."
Oh, but she really wanted to smack him with it now. "You're making that hard to keep in mind." She was seriously considering it when he gently put the glasses back on her nose, tucking the arms back behind her ears. He was back in his swirling cape and blue get-up, but around the edges of her glasses, she still saw the other normal outfit. "What'd you do to my glasses?"
"It's a temporary truth spell that will allow you to see past illusions," he said as if that was a totally normal thing to say to someone. "It might train your eyes to see them without the glasses as well or perhaps it'll stick to the glasses, but I doubt it."
"A spell? Like a real spell?" That sounded stupid when she said it out loud, but that's honestly what it sounded like he was saying. "Like Harry Potter."
"No. Sort of. Well, yes and no. We call them spells, but that's not exactly what they are." He waved a hand through the air and a small yellow circle with a pale arrow in the middle appeared before him. "This way." He took off down an alley, leaving Casey to chase after him. "How would you feel if I told you that we're one universe out of thousands, and those thousands are referred to as the multiverse? And that if you can harness the power of the multiverse, you can perform spells that affect our own universe in ways that seem magical?"
"I'd ask you what you were smoking," she grumbled. "Look, how does any of that craziness apply to what's going on right now?" She had to rescue her grandpa, not deal with some magic-wielding Warcraft nutcase, even if he did seem to be making a little sense. A teeny tiny bit.
"Because the monster that your grandfather is currently fighting is a sinister creature from the multiverse who hates your family," Strange said, glancing over at her, "Your parents were the ones who sealed him away before you were born, and now he's back for revenge."
"My parents were real estate agents," Casey said shortly. Her mother had died when she was three from cancer, and her father had died in a driving accident when she was six. After that, she had been raised by her grandfather. Her early childhood hadn't exactly been filled with magic. "So they weren't performing any spells."
"Eh, that's only partially true," Strange said, "They were a sorcerer and sorceress before they were real estate agents."
"Stop," she said, shooting him a glare, "Just stop. You don't know anything about my parents."
"I do too," he said, halting in the middle of the sidewalk. People pushed around them, heads down, ignoring any weirdness. He hesitated before putting his hand on her shoulder. "I know this is hard, but you have to trust me, Casey. I know about you and your family, to an extent, and I'll explain all of that later, but you have to believe me right now when I say we have to act fast. I think your grandfather only knows a couple spells. Arpath is most likely using him to lure you out after he realized I was at the shop."
"So, this is your fault?"
"No."
Casey shrugged his hand off her shoulder and looked up at the dark grey sky. If any of this was true, she couldn't rescue her grandpa on her own. There were so many things she didn't understand, like the part her parents played in all of this and what the multiverse was and how magic worked. She needed help. "Ugh…" She put hands over her glasses, closing her eyes as she made a snap decision. "Is this the part where you say, 'you're a wizard, Casey?'"
"Oh, hardly," Strange said, "For one, we're sorcerers, not wizards, and two, we don't need wands."
Casey took a deep breath and crossed her arms tightly, as if to brace herself for what she was about to do. "Okay. What's the plan then?"
