52AN: Okay... that took far to long, and somehow, as always I'm not happy with how it turned out, but ow well, you have to move on some day...
So, here is ch14, finally.
The agreement
The room quietened down the moment Death entered.
"So you finally decided to act?" One of the beings in front of him stated.
"Yes, I have spoken with my master." Death stated simply.
"And what did he say?" one of the others said.
"I said that if war is what you want over one girl, that you can have that war, I would love to see who will last longer." Harry stated as his cloak slid from his head and settled itself on his shoulders, keeping the whip and his other weapons hidden from view. "An army who grows with every soldier they kill, which spans from the beginning of time to this very moment, or one that has a finite amount of resources and manpower assigned to itself."
"What are you insinuating?" A man in a watery robe asked stepping forward.
"That if we rage a war, it would last eternally, ending with the end of the world." Harry answered, looking the larger man in the eye as he moved into the center of the room.
The other inhabitants of the room looked at the teenaged looking man, scrutinizing his every move.
"The storm will come, if you can withstand it, the girl can stay for as long as she wants." A lady in brown spoke up.
"Thank you gaia, but I won't take your word for it." Death spoke up before Harry could even open his mouth to answer.
"I second the agreement." The lady with a timepiece hanging from her neck spoke up.
"Very well, if this means minimal casualties, I will agree to these arrangements, and will support lord Death and his master in the case that anyone in this room breaks this agreement." A woman spoke, purple lightning flashing around her as she spoke.
"Very well… from this moment till this evening we will not intervene in any actions partaken within the borders of Arcadia Bay-"
Harry interrupted the ancient being.
"Well, I'm going to change these arrangements just a bit." He spoke, his tone changing to the commanding tone he despised using.
"Any one of you is from this moment forth, forbidden from interfering in any matter allocated to anyone other than yourself. You all have your own matters, stick to it, do not interfere in matters not allocated to you." Harry spoke, holding his hand up as The lady previously called Gaia wanted to interrupt him. "The only person who has the right to confront anyone about their choices within their own matters is the Lady Gaia, as the person all your power is ultimately linked to, she can not however force you to change the thing you did, unless it aligns with a matter connected to another being. That person will have a say in the matter." Harry finished.
"Interesting choice of words there…" An old man spoke from the other side of the room.
"It would limit our power, but keep our freedom." A female said beside the man.
"Of course, I wouldn't want people so close to being gods upset now would I?" Harry spoke from his place, He noticed how Death had decided to stand to his left, whilst the lady with the timepiece had decided to position herself to his right.
He also did not miss the distrustful gaze of the lightning lady.
"How would you force our acceptance?" A man in blue robes asked a smug smile on his face.
"I won't." Harry spoke. "I won't expect you to accept this, I just expect you to think before you act."
As he finished this sentence he made his way out of the room, followed by Death and the lady with the timepiece.
"So, what is the plan?" The lady asked.
"We're working on it." Harry spoke as he turned towards the lady. "So you were the one to gift the power to influence time to a teenage girl?" Harry asked, not showing any emotion on his face.
"Why do you ask?" The woman asked.
"You made the right decision, next time, give a bit more information then pure luck for finding out what to do."
"There is no trick to it, she just has to want to do it, no certain movement is necessary."
Harry looked at the lady, "So she taught herself how to not accidentally influence time then?" Harry asked.
"Indeed, she limited herself by choosing to use a certain motion in combination with will to alter the time-stream, instead of just will."
"You had no safety net in place then." Harry asked as he made his way to the portal he and Death came through.
"She has a fail-safe." The woman spoke. "The last second before disaster time slows down, so she can reverse time, or get out of the way of danger in time."
"Good, that explains a few things." Harry said, a smile growing back onto his face. "Thank you for explaining." With those words he stepped through the portal.
Harry sat up straight, he was on a bench in a restaurant of sorts, it looked very familiar to him for some reason. The only thing he felt should not be there were a trio of witches, a waitress, a man sitting behind a PC, and a huge hologram of Arcadia Bay in the middle of the room, a dozen dots moving all over the place and cracks seemingly appearing and disappearing all over.
"Harry, next time you decide to leave our realm, could you please warn us?" Luna asked, looking at him with those all seeing eyes of hers.
"Sorry Luna, I didn't know I would be leaving anytime soon." Harry spoke up, his voice sounding hoarse.
"Here." Hermione said, handing him a glass filled to the brim with water.
"Hello madam Pomfrey, what brought you here?" Harry asked, recognizing the older witch.
"Well, my presence was requested by your friends." She stated.
"Luna was the one to call for you… I just followed up on her order." Hermione spoke, a questioning gaze on her face as she stared at the younger woman.
"I'll explain later." Harry said as explanation. "Now the important part is that we prepare the town for a battle." He spoke up, moving towards the hologram of the town.
"So to start with, we have put people on the rifts." Hermione started. "As you can clearly see, we seem to be running behind, the stabilizers work, but they don't work as fast as new rifts appear..." She spoke.
"We have mapped the locations and the intermittent time-frame, but have not yet been able to find a pattern for it." Luna continued after her.
This was interrupted by Max walking into the diner.
"There is going to be a giant storm coming from the sea." Max spoke up, "Have we got a way to stop that?"
"We haven't found a way to counter a storm." Hermione looked over at her.
"I have a theory, but it is extremely risky, and does not have a scientific basis." Luna spoke up.
"What is your plan?" Harry wondered, curiously.
"There is this theory that enough force can stop or weaken a storm..." She said.
"You mean the theory that enough nuclear bombs may be able to stop a hurricane from happening?" Hermione asked.
"Heat up the cold air, and interrupt the wind pattern." Luna corrected.
"Or make it worse." Hermione deadpanned. "We could end with a nuclear hurricane…."
"How much energy would you say it would cost to stop a hurricane?" Harry asked them wondering if they could manage something along those lines.
"about 50 with 10 zeros of watts." Hermione said after a minute of thought.
"Checks out." Neville spoke up from the computer.
"How do you know?" Harry wondered out loud.
"I searched for the research article." He answered, showing them the page.
"Can we match that?" Harry wondered.
"We should be able to manage it." Luna said thoughtfully.
"We would need every single person in the DA to manage it though." Hermione said thoughtfully.
"And we are going to need protection from possible attacks." Harry spoke.
"So we have a shortage of manpower to manage anything close to that..." Luna said a bit disappointed.
"Seems like it, yes." Hermione nodded.
"Could we manage to evacuate the entire town to one place, and ward the hell out of that place?" Harry asked them.
"That could work, we keep everyone protected, and we have a single point of defense..." Luna spoke looking at the others.
"Max, Do you know of a place in town where we can get everyone to safety?" Harry asked her.
"The only place large enough would be Blackwell..." She said looking at the door as it opened.
Chloe walked inside, looking more down then she had done before Harry had gone out.
"Chloe." He said. "Are you dealing a bit?" He asked her gently.
She just looked at him before taking a seat in one of the seats.
"She isn't." Max whispered.
"How long has she been unresponsive?" He asked them.
"Since she got Max here." Luna spoke up looking over at her.
"The two have been hugging for most of the time they have been back, and Max had returned to the land of the conscious with the help of madam Pomfrey." Hermione said.
"Madam Pomfrey has put a tracking and monitoring charm on her." Luna said, "She said she was in a dangerous place right now."
"We didn't want another Kate incident in town..." Max said looking at Chloe with concern.
"Thank you for protecting the girls." The waitress said moving closer. "As I understand it, I owe their life to you and your friends."
"No worries madam, As I said before, I was here for a reason, and they strengthened that reason." Harry said with a small smile. "I'm sorry that everything that has happened had to happen..." He answered gently, before turning to his friends.
"How much is she told?" Harry asked.
"We have told everything that was of immediate interest." Madam Pomfrey offered.
"So you told her we are wizards, Max somehow got the power to rewind time and change the past, Chloe is supposed to be dead, but isn't and for that titbit we are on the brink of war with immortal ancients." Harry said looking over at her.
"We brought it a bit more gentle." Hermione spoke up looking towards Harry. "Why did you have to put it like that, if you say it that way, you're implying this is all their fault." She spoke a bit heatedly.
"It isn't, lady time created this mess." Harry answered with a small smile. "We just need to account for the facts and prepare for the worst."
"Are they in danger?" Joyce asked him.
"Yes." He just answered. "They are the main target of the upcoming storm, everything else is just collateral."
"Oh, how could this have happened…?" Joyce said, her eyes starting to water.
"We are working on making things better." Hermione spoke carefully as she walked closer to lead her away from the group.
"What about Jefferson and Madson?" Harry asked Luna.
"Jefferson has been hospitalized, and has just entered theatre." Luna said with a small smile, "We called David to ask how things were progressing." She continued. "Jefferson is under constant police supervision."
"We promised to give you a message, he told us, that stealing his way out of a location, is just not done, and next time you teleport him somewhere, you should give him a way back to his car." Neville spoke, his smile was a bit too wide.
"Yeah… Nev… You really should have given him a way back to his car." Harry laughed quietly.
So, thoughts? I'll see you guys next time, and I'd like to wish you good holidays, and may 2021 be a bit less chaotic and eccidentprone... I wanted to use a different wording, but I believe that would go against site regulations...