Physically Impossible
By Saliaven Chronotis
Chapter1:
Perpendicular Orbits

 
    Ash was juggling exploding fireballs as Saliaven strode in, shouting, "now see here!"  This prompted him to drop his cargo, giving him thirty seconds to dive behind a table before a crater was blown in the gym floor.  "What the heck are you trying to do!?"
Saliaven waved a hand, fixing the floor, "come outside and see this."
Ash shrugged and followed him.  When they got outside, Saliaven took out a compass, pointed it at the sun and said, "look!"
Ash looked down at the compass and said, "I don't see any problem."
Saliaven sighed theatrically and said, "the sun is setting in the south."
"Your point?"
He slapped his head, "get Misty, get Misty."
When Misty had, rather confusedly, been brought out, Saliaven didn't waste time.  "Why is the sun setting in the south?"
Misty shrugged, "it's always done that."  
"Also, your maps are messed up." Saliaven continued without seeming to notice, "Lavender Town is the site of magnetic and magical North, where all the lines converge, it and the Crystal Tower across the sea are the poles for both, what puzzles me is that the implication of this planet spinning with the sun rising in the North is that the rotation of the crust and core are perpendicular.”
Misty cocked her head to one side, "Is that unusual?"
"I've been a lot of places, and I've never seen it happen, although having the equator pass right through the center of your continent would certainly explain the climate."
“I’ve been thinking, except for a couple of strange effects, I’ve never seen any actual proof that the other universes exist.  You’ve come here and done some wild stuff, but all of it seems to conform to a pretty close approximation of what we could do with superior knowledge.”
“You want to see something that proves that I’m what I say I am.”  Saliaven said “Fair enough, I have something I carry around that I think would do the trick.  I once visited a place where the basic laws of physics weren’t the same as they are here, and I brought something back.  It’s a two-sided polygon, just don’t look at it too long, it might burn out your left brain.”  He pulled a sheet from his pocket and gave it to Misty, who looked at it, turned it a couple of times and put her hand to her head. “Ouch.”
She gave it to Ash, who went cross-eyed and handed it back to Saliaven.
“Proof enough?”
“Enough for now, though I assume you haven’t come just to alert us to a planetary effect we’d all been taking for granted.”
Saliaven started, “oh yes.  I’ve been researching the chronoton problem, and I’ve gotten something.”
Misty’s eyes widened, “you can restore our aging?” she asked hopefully.
Saliaven put his hand behind his head, “ummm, not quite.”
Misty’s gaze and tone hardened, “what do you mean, not quite?”
“Oh, I can give your age back, but the problem is that I can’t make the chronotons stick for very long.  They just get rejected too quickly.  You’ll be properly aged for as long as you can concentrate on the spell, though it usually becomes too difficult by the fifth hour.”
“Better than nothing, I suppose.”
“And you have to calibrate the particles yourself.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“You people need some training in the little fiddly-bits sometime, and now’s as good as ever.”
    They met him later that day in the experimental magic room of the library, along with Gary, Duplica and a few other trainee magi that had come to the City to study.  Others trickled in afterwards, and when the areas around the central summoning circle had been filled, the doors closed and Saliaven strode to the center of the ring.  “I’m sure you’ll all be happy to know that you can take your proper bodies now, and not so happy to find that said bodies are temporally unstable and revert withing moments of the spell ending.  For that purpose, the spell can only end if you stop concentrating, although it becomes geometrically harder as time elapses.  Since this is a spell that needs to be calibrated separately, I will be taking only one person at a time to teach.  Luckily, it only takes a few simple words to cast, so none of you will have trouble learning it.  It will only be in the calibration, which requires you to have yourself age at approximately one half year per second and stop the growth at the point of approximately now with a simple command phrase.  With all the warnings out of the way, lets get started.”
    Many of the people in attendance, including Ash and Misty wanted to charge into the project and learn the spell immediately, but Saliaven insisted on it being in order of least amounts of age difference.  That meant that those closest to age ten would only have to accelerate a small distance, while those further off would need to go further.  Saliaven explained that those who had the entire six years to go might overshoot out of carelessness when they didn’t immediately reach their destination.  It was after a long time and much boredom after the first couple of times they saw it happen that Ash finally stepped up.  After hearing it done so many times, he quickly cast the evocation and saw in the mirror that had been conjured for convenience that his clothes were shifting almost as fast as his body, though most of the outfits he saw were close to his original, and the hat was constant.  He was mesmerized, right up to the point that his body shifted totally, and his clothes turned into something just as unexpected.  He was so surprised he blurted out the command word and froze there.  Duplica had been floored laughing immediately, followed by Gary, Misty was having trouble keeping a straight face and Saliaven muttered, “told you not to overshoot.  And louder, “now we have a paradox, you see what you will be, and it must now be so.”
The cute girl with long black hair, purple bellbottoms and a purple midriff that resembled Ash turned and said “so this is what I will look like?” luckily managing to keep his male voice.
“Yes indeedy, and by the looks of it, pretty soon.  By my count you went over by less than three months.”
Ash broke his concentration and returned to normal.  “Can I try that again?”
“Knock yourself out.”
    Ash hit the right spot the next time, and left the circle to let Misty in.  She got to the proper age and Ash had to admit that watching her change was the only way he could have been convinced that the truly beautiful young woman she’d become was what she should have been naturally.  Looking in the mirror and making a relieved noise, she exited without changing back.  “This is way too good to allow myself to stop so soon.”  She said aside to Ash.
    Duplica had luck that was close to Ash’s.  When she used the spell, nothing happened.  She broke her concentration and tried again, still with no effect.  She gave Saliaven a questioning look and he said, “amorphous DNA, you can’t age unless you shapeshift for it.”
“So this spell is useless to me?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not especially, though it would have been nice to see how I would look naturally.”  She shrugged.
“I could teach you that.”
Duplica cocked her head, “how?”
Saliaven reached out and pulled a hair out.
“Ow!  What was that?”
“You’re DNA may be fused with Ditto’s, but you could separate and analyze the human part.  I’ll even do this much for you.”  He closed his eyes and a purple ooze flowed off the hair.  “There, just run this through a reconstruction process and simulate aging.”
Duplica took the hair and put it in her pocket. “I’m not sure I have that equipment, but I think I can do something similar.”
“I’m sure you can.”
With an extra spring in her step, Duplica walked out of the room, followed by Ash, Misty and Gary, curious as to what she’d look like as well.
Vapor came up behind Saliaven and said, “how’d you managed to change their clothes, too?”
Without turning, Saliaven barked a laugh and said, “because I really am from another dimension, and I can see what would and could be, proof enough for you?”
Author’s note: A quick thing, but I wanted to do one where I introduce the idea that their world revolves weird, and set up for the next one.  Unfortunately for me, come to think of it, this hasn't really finished so I'll have to carry on even though I wrote the preceding chapter after finishing the next fic, and I just wanted there to be a smooth transition.  Oh well, I can only hope this won't drag on to a full-sizer.