Hayley sat in an armchair in Ratigan's apartment, nursing a cup of hot cocoa. A book lay open on her lap. She occasionally looked up at the space the time machine normally occupied. When Ratigan and Basil returned, it would be to that exact spot.
"Another cheese crumpet dear?" Mrs. Judson appeared at her elbow with a tray, steam still rising off the pastries.
"Thank you, please," Hayley smiled gratefully. She held out her small plate as Mrs. Judson piled three more crumpets on it.
There was a sudden whirring sound, and the time machine faded into existence, Ratigan and Basil standing within.
Hayley jumped to her feet. "You're back! Did you get the temporal locator?"
"Indeed we did," Ratigan said, holding it out for her to see. It looked like a large handheld radar, or an over-sized Gameboy.
"At rather a steep cost," Basil muttered, glaring at the wallpaper.
"Thank you for going to so much trouble," Hayley said, hugging them both.
"Not at all," Ratigan said. "Now we just need to turn the device on, and soon we'll be able to rescue Kiara."
"And Kyrin."
"And Kyrin, yes, who's probably in the same place as Kiara." He turned the temporal locator on, and the screen lit up, the antenna on the end vibrating with a soft buzzing sound. It displayed much like a radar, pinging softly. On one side of the screen text began to move from bottom to top. Ratigan pursed his lips.
"Well, what does it say?"
"Hang on, the Professor left us some instructions." He took a small slip of paper out of his inner coat pocket, along with a pair of reading spectacles. "It says here that for temporal locale information to be displayed, proper parameters must be inserted into the device first, or else it will simply default to reading its current time and place. The device must be calibrated with this information, which will take a minimum of one hour, depending on how much base information is given for making the parameters."
"…Meaning?"
"Quite obviously we need a sample of Kiara's DNA."
"I could go back to my house and pull some hair from Kiara's brush?"
"No need, I've got some in a locket." Ratigan produced said locket from another pocket. Everyone in the room stared at him. "What?"
"I thought you were over my sister…" Hayley's eyes narrowed behind her glasses.
"I am! I made this memento before I had, well, come to grips with reality."
"And yet you didn't throw it away?" Basil said.
"It's come in handy, hasn't it?" Glowering at everyone, he opened the locket and pinched out a few strands to feed the temporal locator. "And now we wait." They had enough time for afternoon tea and to catch up on various personal affairs before the temporal-locator alerted that it had finished its calibration process. It made a drawn-out beep before returning to its pinging rhythm.
"Right, let's see what it says." Ratigan picked it up again, using the buttons on the side to navigate the information scroll. "Uh-oh."
"What's 'uh-oh?'" Basic asked sharply.
"The device is… a little broad?" He turned it so they could all see the display, and the rapidly increasing scrawl of information. "Right now it's picking out every instance of Kiara's existence throughout time." He studied the readings again, rubbing at his chin. "We'll have to re-calibrate it to narrow down the results, which will probably take some hours, and even longer for us to parse those results to determine which ones are relevant to our needs."
Basil groaned, pressing a hand against his brow. "That's almost as bad as if we were traveling to likely times to search for her."
"Almost, but not quite." Ratigan looked to Hayley apologetically. "I'm afraid it'll still take a good while before we're able to find your sister and your friend."
Hayley took a deep breath. "Anything I can do to help, just let me know, alright? We're all in this together."
Ratigan and Basil exchanged glances. "Yes, of course."