Hannah said, "I'm sorry if anything me or Steph said made it sound like I was looking for a fight with you miss Yuriko. My problems were with Lynne being nasty to Darren, not you. You've been nothing but nice."
"Thank you."
"And this next bit ISN'T looking for a fight, so PLEASE don't take it that way: my Sunday teacher once told me it's in service to others that we reach our full potential."
"Well, if you're firm on being a robot monkey-girl, I think there's a place I'd like us to visit just for fun."
Yuriko teleported the kids to a theme park. Except it was completely empty, and looked like it had for decades.
"This place used to have humans modified to have an animal form in exchange for their loyalty to Circe. Yes that Circe... she's, matured since the days of the Odyssey. It also had demons who served under the reformed Lilith. It even had animatronics who served as vessels for people's souls who had been murdered in Circe and Lilith's power struggles... In one timeline they were almost used as sacrificial lambs for the then barren kitsune, always desperate to increase their numbers. Until a friend of my mother's offered herself, an accomplished magic user, and thus of particular use to the kitsune, to become of their kind instead.
"But when the magical realms were pushed out of their reality, they were made to take a much lower profile. Then a 'pure' human supremacy group calling itself at the time 'One Humanity' decided to cleanse such 'abominations' from the world, along with anything else remotely magical they could find. And once they'd finished with those, hunting down anyone who'd made contract with the gods and dared openly display any miracles granted to them. Including Circe's folloowers. After a string of murders, and the organization scattering like insects every time we tried to clamp down on them only to swarm again the moment we let our guard down... And I'm pretty sure they worship Villar as some sort of visionary martyr telling themselves the fiction everything he did was to protect humans from the supernatural. Even though by the time he began his rampage, his human appearance was a farce and he'd became become a nine-tailed-fox of flames and shadows.
"We finally just had Circe's loyalists and her park transferred to the timeline where magic had become an open secret. This wasn't an easy decision. Since it meant them either leaving their family behind or having their families leave their lives behind.
Though this also meant Circe no longer had the monopoly on magical transformation she once had and people no longer needed to swear loyalty to her to become half-beast hybrids."
Yuriko used her magic again, and the kids were in the same park, except everything was lively, kept, and the place contained nudist human-beast hybrids who maned the park... and creatures of myth they'd only seen in story books who were the guests.
"Welcome to Circe's park in the timeline of magic. Since Darren is a Catalyst, and Hannah is already a animal hybrid of a sort, neither of you have to worry about the transformation tricks that Circe purposely litters the park with. It's why visiting this place is insanely cheap and the games aren't rigged. The chance of being transformed is part the entry fee for this sort of fun and games."
"Did this world build a spa around the fountain of youth too?" Darren asked.
"Yes, but it functions most of the time as a daycare for obvious reasons, the fountains waters can prove addictive and you can end up with immortal toddlers from over exposure. Ironically non-organic beings like golems are usually operate it since they can't be affected by the fountain since even the mists around it can affect people. Oh, and for the record, Ponce de León never actually searched for the fountain, his family and the Columbus' were rivals, and that story was invented by a scribe of theirs to make him appear foolish. And Columbus thought the world was smaller than it actually was, but he never thought the Earth was shaped like a pear and he most certainly never thought it had a 'nipple.' "
The catalyst and robot monkey girl servant nodded at the history lesson.
Meanwhile, an old man simply sat on the park bench. Tired of everything. All the fighting and troubles in the world. And just wanted to rest and he laid down and closed his eyes. He had many dreams he wanted to dream. Not just the one he was living right now. And those dreams required his attention too.