Gary gestured and a sudden wind blew from nowhere at "Jack", first a mild breeze, then strengthening to hurricane force. Loose objects began to fly around but "Jack" warded them off with telekinesis. The swirling air shook him and he could barely keep himself flying. Then one object, a pencil, suddenly shot out as "Jack" concentrated most of his force on it, flying at Gary at the speed of an arrow. It missed Gary, barely grazing his hair and then plunging into the wall, where it made a hole substantial enough to keep it embedded there. Then Gary changed his tactics and the water in a glass of water collected into a sphere, which flew towards "Jack"'s face in an attempt to insinuate itself into his lungs.
Meanwhile, "Nora", with Liam on top of her, spoke to her. "Linda, quickly. Have you ever had powers like that?"
"Uh, no," replied the daughter-turned-son.
"I gave myself powers over the past fifty years. You're forty years old. I already had the big ones when I became your father. And the powers were in my DNA. There's a chance...."
"Dad, I'm not Linda. Not any more." Another bolt of fire barely missed the two.
"That's why you need to try to use them. You may have got them as my son--I would imagine at puberty. I don't know if you got them at all. Or you might have inherited them and because of some environmental factor can't use them. But try it. Please. It's a longshot, but you must try."
"A-- all right, Dad."
A clock, its plug torn from the wall, slammed into Liam's back. He instinctively reacted to it... and got up and turned around to face empty air, a fierce battle, and several objects including the clock strewn over the floor. Nothing else happened. He didn't start flying or moving objects with his mind, let alone projecting astrally or reading objects, neither of which would have done him much good anyway at the moment. "I can't..." he said.
"It was too good an idea to be true, replied "Nora"". "Maybe..."
As the pregnant woman began to sit up in her wheelchair, one of the nurses warned her. "You shouldn't move! You were unconscious just now."
"I wasn't unconscious," replied Jonni. "I was there. Outside my body. In the same room that Nora flew into. The same room that all your staff don't dare enter because it's turned into a scene from a video game without the extra lives. I saw it. I heard it. I'm helping my family."
"That's impossible. There's no such thing as astral projection."
"Grandpa was kind enough to explain it to Mom. Now that I changed my body into my old one, mostly, I have my old DNA. Maybe Mom didn't get these powers because of those environmental factors, but I got them through her. At some point between when I got the stone and now I became old enough to develop my other inheritance from Grandpa. Please, get aside. You can't do anything. I can." She hesitated as a contraction went through her lower body. The pain was evident on her face.
"You're in no condition to..."
The stone lifted up telekinetically from Jonni's possessions and flew into her hand. The wheelchair drove itself off, shoving aside the nurse. The door opened and Jonni went racing down three rooms. Then Jonni halted. "This isn't a videogame. I don't need to fight. I can just wish them asleep."
Jonni shoved on the door using mental force. It didn't open. Embarrassed, she reached for the knob but it still didn't open, until she got the bright idea of turning the knob from the opposite side. Telekinesis made it happen and the chair drove into a room where the two combatants were going at it with telekinetic force and magical powers. "Jack" noticed her and as Jonni prepared to wish them asleep, the stone was invisibly grabbed out of her hand. Jonni responded with a telekinetic shove at "Jack" that distracted him for long enough for the stone to fall to the ground. "Jack" suddenly choked as Gary's elemental powers overcame his telekinesis in the distraction and forced all the air to stay six inches away from his face.
"You're killing him, Dad!" said Jonni. "Jack" was clutching his throat with one hand, but managed to push Gary's hands invisibly so they pointed away from him. The air rushed back. Meanwhile, Jonni was telekinetically going for the stone again. It rose up, then stopped as "Jack" pulled it towards himself, giving Gary a chance to throw a stream of sand at his face out of nowhere. The stone settled into Jonni's grasp and "Jack" finally fell to the floor, choking again.
"It's over," said Jonni as she lifted up a sheet with her mind and tied up "Jack". "But I'm not letting you do anything to Grandpa, my real one in the bed over there."
"I'm your father," he said. "Let me do what's best."
"You're trying to take revenge. I know you don't like the situation we're in, but you're making it worse. I'm going to make it better. First of all..." Jonni stopped and seemed to be waiting for something.
She suddenly had a contraction. Not willing to risk a contraction interrupting a wish, she had decided to wait for it. When it was over, she continued. "I wish the damage from this fight is all fixed and nobody except us remembers it. Next, Grandpa, I'm fixing your biggest mistake. Her." Jonni pointed to Nora in Jack's body.
"How could you possibly figure out..."
"One of the powers I got from you was intelligence."
"But over decades, I couldn't..."
"You're not me. Just because two people are smart doesn't mean they'll come up with the same ideas. Now, I wish I knew if this idea will work like I want it to."
Jonni smiled as the stone told her it would. "We're getting somewhere. I wish that me and Nora are in another hospital far out of the wish range."
They disappeared. Jonni and "Jack", who was still tied up in the sheet but no longer choking, were suddenly in a different hospital, in what seemed to be a waiting room. Cyrillic writing was on every written surface, with an English translation under several of them, and a clock showed the wrong time of day.
"I wish that when Nora became evil, it was because of a biological problem causing psychosis."
Jonni didn't know the term "Cartesian dualism", but she had found the answer. The brain is a physical object. If it is damaged, a person can lose intelligence. If it has a chemical imbalance, someone can become psychotic or lose empathy or have other mental problems. Even if the soul exists, it's obviously very connected to the physical structure of the brain. At least as much as telekinesis and psychometry would be.
So now that Nora became evil because of a physical process, reality was changed so that when she swapped into Jack's body, she had lost the effect. Only, Jack was outside of the wish range and reality didn't change for him, so he didn't gain it.
"I wish that we're back in the first hospital." Nothing happened.
Jonni remembered something her grandfather had said about the stone not being a teleporter. Jonni in her chair and "Jack" suddenly began moving by themselves again, propelled by Jonni's telekinesis towards the exit. Once they were outside the hospital, so the wish to be in another hospital had already been reversed, Jonni repeated the wish. "I wish that we're back in the first hospital."
"What...?" said "Jack" as they reappeared in front of the others.
"What have you done?" asked Jonni. "That's what you wanted to ask?"
"That and 'what did you do?'," replied "Jack" sheepishly.
"It doesn't matter now," said Jonni. "This isn't over. I have to talk to Dad, get him to not hurt Grandpa, then fix Mom and myself. Oh, and have a baby in the middle of that."
