Yo!
So finally after three weeks, "Road to Power" was one of the winners in my pat-reon polls. To be honest, I was a bit surprised considering the growth this fiction went through in the past year. Welp, I was wrong.
Anyway, if you would like to change the result of the voting, gets some exclusive content, or just support me, then you know where to find me. Links to my discord, original story, and patr-eon are below.
Voting: (standard pat-reon link as you can't type it on FFN)/chaos65 | All links in one: linktr .ee/Chaos65 | Or just Discord invite: b7JaQcpuc7
Enjoy the chapter. This is the last one before we again get into more important events.
Chapter 24. Long Way Home
the 16th of March, 2008, Location: Niagara Falls, Canada
Traveling as a pair of children was both harder and easier than I initially thought. Maybe it didn't make much sense, but that was the truth. Especially when I was used to traveling alone, wherever I wanted and however I wanted in the past... Well not really, as it was always my boss who decided where I had to go in my last life.
The point was that even though I and Laura were both pre-teen kids, with the use of my magic, we had no problems getting someone to drive us where we needed. Yes, it took some patience as we had to find people who were going in the correct direction, but once such a person was found, I just had to lightly suggest that they took us with them. Hell, even crossing the US and Canadian border wasn't a problem.
A simple disillusion charm on the both of us and no one even had an idea that we were hiding in the back of the car. Sometimes I really had to wonder if the wizarding community in North America had any ways to deal with wizards and witches that used magic on mundanes. Either they didn't or after my Terrigenesis, I just couldn't be found by normal means. Whatever the case, I wasn't complaining. I didn't need a bunch of wizards hunting me for breaking the Statute of Secrecy.
And so we traveled for almost two weeks... Two fucking weeks when the trip could have taken a few hours if I just could walk into an airport and book a flight to our destination. But no, we had to sit for almost eighty hours inside different cars as we drove through the entire Canada to reach Niagara Falls. And the less said about the time in between the better.
Oh, it gave us the opportunity to recover from Hydra's treatment, get some new clothes, and practice our new abilities. But the next time I had to waste three days on stalking dozens of drivers to find someone who was planning to travel further than one hundred miles, I would kill someone. I understood that it was winter and no one had the desire to journey thousands of miles away from their home, but three days? Really?
One day, when I had enough of this bullshit, I almost rushed to the nearest car with plans to steal it and drive to New York myself. Thankfully Laura stopped me in time, reasoning that we weren't in a hurry. I didn't really agree, but I could see that the little girl wanted to see more of the world and so in the end, I agreed and even decided to change the path of our trip a bit.
And that was how we found ourselves in the Canadian part of Niagara Falls. It was one of the very few beautiful places I had the chance to visit in my previous life. I didn't have the time to enjoy it back then, but now? Why not. Besides, I heard the waterfall had much fewer visitors during winter and so, I navigated us to this wonderful place. That Niagara Falls was on the way towards New York only made this decision easier.
"How much further?" Laura's voice came from my left.
I sighed, dropping my train of thought. Reaching within my heavy winter jacket, I glanced at the magical smartphone in my hand. "Two minutes?" I arched an eyebrow. "Really, Laura?"
The girl scowled. "I just want to see it, okay? I only saw it mentioned in one of my textbooks. And it's your fault that we are even here. We were supposed to cross the border a long time ago according to your initial plan."
"Would you rather we turn around and go to the border?" I asked and grinned when she huffed and turned away. "That's what I thought. And we should be close. The last time I was here, it was on the US' side so let's hope the directions we received are right."
The day when Google Maps with navigation on smartphones came out in this world couldn't come any sooner. Really, with people like Stark in this universe, I was pretty disappointed that nobody created an application like that already.
"How long are we going to stay here anyway?" Laura asked, her earlier annoyance forgotten.
I frowned. "No longer than a day, that's for sure. I hate staying in larger cities in our situation and I don't want people to start asking questions. If it was the tourist season then nobody would blink twice at a pair of kids weaving through the crowds, but now? I would rather not try our luck. It had been good for now and I don't want to change it."
Laura gulped, her gaze darting around. "Then maybe we should just leave?" she whispered. "We can visit someday in the future if it is really too risky now."
A chuckle left my lips. "Don't worry. I promised to show you the waterfall and that's what I plan to do. We just can't stay there for too long." As we turned right around the corner, I grinned and nodded forward. "And would you look at that, the old lady gave us the correct directions."
Laura followed my gaze and gasped as behind the rows of partially snow-covered trees, water came into view. Despite the cool temperature and snow lying almost all around, the Niagara river didn't suffer from freezing. Its crystal clear water flowed freely, glinting in the light of the morning sun.
Ruffling Laura's hair through her winter hat, I smiled. "Come on. We still have to reach the viewing area."
Even with the girl grumbling as she tried to swat my hand away, the smile that bloomed on her face was telling.
"It's beautiful," Laura murmured and I couldn't agree more as we gazed upon one of the most famous waterfalls in the world.
The steady burble of the falling water filled our ears and the raising mist created by the waterfall threatened to consume everything around us. I took a deep breath before slowly releasing it, a smile forming on my face. It truly was a wonderful place and the remnants of the snow only added to the beauty of the scenery. Coming here was definitely one of my better ideas.
"You were right you know," at the sound of my voice, Laura turned to me and tilted her head. Seeing the question in her eyes, I elaborated. "About slowing down and not rushing towards New York. I'm just worried, you know. Hydra is much more dangerous than you think and while I doubt they are searching for us at this exact moment, they can still be a problem in the future... And then we have the wizarding world, a disaster in the making." I finished with a mutter, my gaze going back to the waterfall.
"Why is that?" she asked after a moment.
"If any magical government realizes what happened to us, you especially, they won't leave us alone. Hell, even surviving Hydra's hospitality will get us on some sort of a watchlist. Kids had been going missing for over a decade and now we somehow managed to escape just like that?" I shook my head. "Yeah, no one is going to believe that."
"Is being an Obscurial really so bad in their eyes?" she frowned, gazing at her open palms. "I didn't ask for it. Not my fault those bastards kidnapped me."
"I can't tell you for sure, but it definitely won't win you any brownie points with wizards. Especially not after what happened a few decades back," I hummed as I tried to recall every single bit of information I could about that curious event. "I don't know exactly why, but an Obscurus was released upon New York, destroying everything in its path. Not sure how the entire thing ended, but it couldn't have been pretty."
Laura's shoulder slumped. "The Obscurus kept me alive for so long and now it became the source of every problem..."
Why couldn't I keep my mouth shut for at least an hour? I scowled, the wonders of the waterfall forgotten. Maybe it was the two weeks of nonstop running away that finally brought it all on. Or maybe the single moment of relaxation finally made me realize how fucked we were if anybody ever realized what Hydra did to us.
Shaking my head, I approached the girl and hugged her to my side. "Everything will be fine, I'm just ranting like a paranoid idiot... And even if they do come for us, we will be ready this time and survive, just like we did before. Of that, I will make sure... I have enough of being too weak and running from every problem."
Never again. I promised as Laura returned the hug and kept watching the waterfall. Getting stronger and being truly free was always my goal, but I never really had any true motivation to push me towards it. Now though, I glanced at the girl in my arms. Now, I have to keep us both safe and the rest of the world can go fuck themselves if they think I will fail.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Yes, the moment we came back to Britain and solved the problem with Laura's Obscurus, it was time to get to work. No messing around now.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Laura said, shuddering as another blast of the chilly wind hit our bodies. Not even the warming charms could protect us fully from the cool weather of the night.
"I'm. Passing through a flimsy border point in the middle of nowhere is one thing, but this," I nodded to the Rainbow Bridge. "This is something else and I would rather not risk detection when we have a different option available to us."
Laura groaned but didn't say anything else. Chuckling, I weaved between the trees and snowy bushes as a small ball of light floated above my hand. I could understand Laura's frustration, after all, we had been walking for almost two hours already. Finding a good place to descend from the street level to the shore of Niagara took the majority of this time and now we still had to find the right place to cross the river. Not by swimming, of course. I wasn't that mad.
No, the plan was to use my new Inhuman powers to get us to the US part of Niagara Falls.
After my breakthrough in Glennallen, I kept on practicing, trying to understand more of my weird power. At first, I just attempted to replicate the instant teleportation again, hoping to become consistent with it. I succeeded, somewhat... Oh it still tired me after a few uses and I couldn't really teleport too far, but at least now my power had some use.
Not being one to rest on laurels, I tried to achieve more by manipulating the energy with different purposes than teleportation. And to be honest, after some of the things I saw, I had an inkling as to what my power truly was. The teleportation, the fissures in the reality, and the blue-green color, all of it reminded me of a certain power, or rather a combination of two powers.
Space-time manipulation or at least something similar.
An ability way beyond anything I could ever expect. The power to control one of those aspects was already something special, but the combination of the two? Yeah, I still didn't really believe it. And that was without mentioning the potential ability to manipulate space and time separately if I wanted. It can either give me an advantage like no other or lead to complete disaster. The potential for both is here.
Sighing, I shook my head, dismissing those thoughts. Whether it was space-time manipulation or not, didn't matter now. I had a more important problem at hand.
"There," I called out, pointing to the little harbor at the other side of the river. "From there we can either go into the woods again, in case they have cameras, or just follow the path to the road. And then, well, back to stalking some drivers."
Laura frowned as she gazed at the river. "Are you sure you can get us across? I know that we practiced, but isn't this a bit different?"
I placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a soft squeeze. "Don't worry. I can do this," smiling, I extended my other hand. "Ready?"
The girl nodded and took the offered limb. At once I closed my eyes and reached within the growing pool of my new energy. Pushing it outwards, I let it flow through my entire body and the hand that was intertwined with mine. Laura's soft gasp did nothing to stop me as I summoned the perfect picture of the harbor in my mind. Let's do this. I thought and gave the energy a sharp tug.
"Fuck!" I groaned, falling to my knees as I fought for air. My hands landed on the cool, wet ground and my eyes finally opened. Snow and concrete. Thank god.
"Logan! Are you fine?" Laura cried out.
"Yeah, yeah," I coughed out. "Just more drained than I expected. Probably attempting teleportation across such distance two times during one day is still beyond me. A small mistake on my part," I chuckled.
Growling, Laura hoisted me up and threw my arm over her shoulder. "Of course it was," she muttered as we trudged towards the exit from the harbor.
I chuckled. "Don't be so gloom Laura, we did it. Welcome to the United States once again..."
Same day, 2008, Location: Near Glennallen, Alaska
"Albus," Alastor's usual voice greeted him as the Headmaster appeared with a soft pop.
"Alastor," Dumbledore nodded, taking a quick look around the area. A simple muggle road with forests covered in snow surrounding it from each side. Certainly not a place Albus expected to meet his friend. "Any reason you gave me these coordinates?"
Alastor nodded. "Aye. We are still in Alaska, not that far from Hydra's base. The magic signature we tracked, led us here."
Dumbledore raised an eyebrow, his wand jumping into his hand. With a spell on his lips, he called the magic of the world, the tool in his hand instinctively creating a symbol after symbol. Stopping, Albus inspected his creation and frowned. "Indeed, some messy magic was performed here, quite long ago."
"That's what we found, though it took us a few hours instead of seconds," Alastor grunted.
Albus chuckled and moved to the side of the road where Moody sat on a fallen branch. "It's a useful spell I learned a few decades back. It managed to save me some time on a few occasions," he explained. "Now Alastor, how did your partnership with MACUSA go? Found anything apart from this signature?"
"Could be worse," Moody growled. "They might not be too friendly, but the yanks know what they are doing. They found this place after following the only active magical signature outside Hydra's base. It took them three days to reach this street and when I arrived we decided to extend our search area to the nearest cities. It was a jackpot, Albus."
"Oh, do tell."
"We talked with the locals, asking if anything unnatural happened in the town. Weird people passing by, their friends or family acting suspiciously, things like that," he explained. "For a few days, we got nothing except from some weird looks. Only when a random woman in Glennallen stopped me, did we learn of two short people walking through the city wearing black cloaks."
Albus' head snapped to look at his friend, "Two?"
"Aye," Alastor nodded. "Two kids, a boy, and a girl. We were lucky that for a town so small, they had some of these muggle recording things. Here," He removed two large files from his coat and handed them to Albus. "I'm sure you can recognize them well."
Dumbledore took the offered files, his eyes widening slightly at the pictures they contained. A small girl with long black hair and brown eyes, the Obscurial they were searching for. And with her a tall, young boy. Short hair as dark as night, and a face with vermilion eyes that Dumbledore could never forget.
"He's fine," Albus sighed. "But how?"
"I don't know Albus, but there's something fishy going on with those two. It is not normal to survive a complete wipeout of a base and a rampage of an Obscurus, only to travel with the said Obscurial after that," Alastor shook his head, his fake eye spinning. "No, things like that just don't happen."
Albus sighed. For the most part, it was Moody's paranoia speaking, but Dumbledore couldn't discard everything his friend said. There could indeed be more to the duo of runaways. Merlin knew what the two went through during their stay with Hydra and Dumbledore couldn't let another Voldemort raise because muggles decided to mess with a world that should have been left alone.
Shaking his head lightly, Albus stood up. "Whatever the case is, we need to find them. There is too much that can go wrong if we don't."
And that's it.
In the next chapter, a lot more excitement is waiting for us as we arrive in NY. Also if you would like to have this story updated next week, gets some exclusive content, or just support me, then you know where to find me. Links to my discord, original story, and patr-eon are below.
Voting: (standard pat-reon link as you can't type it on FFN)/chaos65 | All links in one: linktr .ee/Chaos65 | Or just Discord invite: b7JaQcpuc7
Have a good day/night.