Riley sprinted up towards the house; she'd already changed into magical-girl form at the foot of the hill, and she was moving with relative ease. Not that the hill was all that steep, but the sheer scale of it had both of her parents a little winded. The bizarre surroundings aside, everything about the house seemed perfectly ordinary, though more on the "older and nicer" end of things. She stopped outside the door and looked around, but there seemed to be nobody outside, nothing that looked like it could be a threat. She stopped and waited for her mom and dad.
As they made their way up to her, she looked out across the landscape. She couldn't actually see a whole lot through the city-ish clusters of rock formations, but she could make out a pattern she hadn't seen from down in the grassland. The boulders they'd passed...they were bits of the foothills of mountains, mountains which somehow had not been dropped into reality as well. As far as she could see, they extended in all directions, gradually fading back to normal landscape the further out from the town - from the hill on which she now stood.
She turned back to the house, looking up at the simple-yet-elegant front door, at the unlit windows. What awaited her in there?
Adam smiled. So far, so good, right? And it was night here, so anybody changed back by the other world's sun wouldn't have to worry about getting dropped back into iridescent daylight. So now...
"I wish," he said, "that the town, its inhabitants, and its surrounding area would be returned to their original positions in this world."
...
Nothing.
He felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach. Was...was there a limit on the number of wishes? Or was it drained or something? Had he...had he just doomed his whole town to being trapped in another world because he played it too safe trying to rescue them?
"I...I wish to know why that didn't work..."
Hawkins and Cecilia looked around. Even though the power was out, the streets were alive in the bright moonlight, full of people who had exposed themselves to the yellow sun and regained their old forms, joyously celebrating. The ones who hadn't changed back were a mixed bunch; some were jealous, wishing they'd had the guts to step out into the sun, but they were still hopeful; come tomorrow, when the sun rose, they'd be there.
There were others, though, who were visibly dreading its return - they didn't want to change back! Cecilia sighed; she didn't quite feel that strong about it, but she knew the feeling - she liked this body, for its capabilities, for its elegant engineering, for its strange but pleasing aesthetics. She didn't want to go back, to stop being a robot. But if this state of affairs persisted, she'd have to hide from the sun in much the same way as everyone else did...
Hawkins frowned. He wondered if this event really did have anything to do with Jenny's Numbers' mysterious "Enemy." Abducting a whole town would certainly be a better first step to invasion, but if it were a military action, what was the goal? Where were the forces with which to carry it out? He didn't know...he hoped he was wrong, that nothing like another attack would come of this, but he wasn't so sure...
And in the meantime...what? The town had some agricultural infrastructure, but not enough to live on, and for them to be off the grid, disconnected from everything...if it went on long enough, would they just have to adopt subsistence farming or something?
