Sorry for the delay. Here, at last, is the final chapter of Emmett's exciting odyssey into the realm of self-knowledge.
Bessie, a beautiful brunette with curly hair and liquid topaz eyes, was very nervous for her first day of school. It was not just any school she was attending. Bessie was starting at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which is located in Scotland.
Bessie had always known she was different. But she had never known that she was a witch. Bessie had a secret, one show hoped no one at her new school would figure out. Bessie was a dhampir, which means her mother was a human and her father was a vampire. Bessie knew that if the other students at Hogwarts knew she was a dhampir, they might not like her anymore.
Bessie was riding the Hogwarts Express from London to Hogwarts when she met another first year girl named Elizabeth. "Oh, hi, my name is Bessie, I am from America!" said Bessie to Elizabeth.
"Oh, hi, my name is Lizzie and I am from England," said the other girl, and she and Bessie decided to be best friends.
Bessie was so happy to finally have a friend. Bessie lived at home with her mother and father, who were both vampires now, and who were obsessed with each other. All they wanted to do all the time was kiss and do horrible, horrible things that made Bessie want to vomit. She had never had a friend her own age before. She had a fiancé, though, but he was really old and was more like her uncle and the whole thing was really, really creepy.
Bessie and Lizzie finally arrived at Hogwarts. They got off of the train together and saw a giant man waving all the first years over to him. "That's Hagrid!" whispered Lizzie. As Bessie and Lizzie were walking toward Hagrid, a group of third years walked by. One of them had beautiful white-blond hair and cold eyes. Lizzie noticed that Bessie was staring.
"That's Draco Malfoy," whispered Lizzie to her new friend, "his dad is very powerful in the Ministry and they have lots and lots of money."
Bessie could not stop staring at him. Draco seemed to notice that someone was looking at him, so he turned back and glared at where the girls were standing. Then he walked off with his friends.
"Is he always like that?" asked Bessie.
"Yes. And he hates muggle-borns!"
Bessie frowned. She had not told Lizzie that she was a dhampir, but she had told her that her parents were not magical because that was the easiest thing. If the beautiful boy with ice blond hair hated muggle-borns, he'd definitely hate a dhampir like her! But she was already in love with him.
"Nessie!" called Bella from the door outside Nessie's room. "It's time to go up to the main house for the family meeting!"
Nessie jumped in her seat at the sound of her mother's voice. She slammed the lid on her laptop shut to keep her mother from reading the fanfiction she was writing.
"Coming, Mom!" she called as she hurried out of her room.
The detective leaned back in his expensive leather armchair and looked at the beautiful blond woman standing in his office. She was a real knockout, long legs, perfect, round breasts, the whole thing. Her red dress was tight in all the places it should be tight, and all Detective McCarty wanted to do was get her out of it.
"Do you think you can help me?" the woman asked, her red lips full and sensual.
"Oh, yes, I think I can help you," Dale McCarty said in his low, masculine voice. He had been a detective for eight years and he knew he could help her with her investigation with no effort. But he didn't want to let the woman know that.
"Detective, how can I ever thank you?" she asked, purring now, and walking toward him. Her heels were so high he didn't know how she could walk in them, and as she moved toward his desk her hips swayed in a way that made him want her even more.
"I think we can work something out…" said Dale, letting his eyes run across her body. She was at his desk now, and then, just as he had been hoping she would do, she was leaning across it and kissing him. He kissed her back, and hard. He knew that at last he would have her. With one arm, Dale emptied his desk of all that annoying paperwork, and then he was on top of her, her dress riding up around her hips.
She pressed her hands against his chest, clearly admiring his well-defined muscles. "Oh, detective, you are so strong! You are the most masculine man I have ever seen. I have a twin brother, but he is really effeminate and also really gay and nowhere near as much of a man as you are."
"Emmett!" shouted Jasper from the hallway outside Emmett and Rosalie's room. Emmett startled—he had been so busy writing that he had not heard his brother walk up to the door—and hit minimize on the story he had been writing. Just in time, too, because Jasper didn't wait for a response before he walked in.
"The family meeting is about to start," Jasper said, leaning against the doorframe. "What were you just doing?"
"Nothing."
"Were you writing something?"
"No. None of your damn business!" growled Emmett as he squeezed past Jasper and out into the hallway.
The convertible sped down a desert road. Neither passenger was wearing a seatbelt. What utter badasses!! (The author of this fanfiction does not condone driving or riding in an automobile without a seatbelt). Their hair was blowing wildly in the proverbial wind. Leah was sitting up, turned around in her seat, watching the road behind them. "No sign of pursuit," she told the older woman, who smiled, predatorily.
Leah and Esme were on an interstate crime spree, and life was good.
"Your mother and that female-werewolf girl are on some kind of ill-advised interstate crime spree," Dr. Cullen said to his gathered family. "We need to get them back."
"What?" said Jasper. He seemed to be the only person in the room who was paying any attention to Carlisle. Bella and Edward were making out disgustingly, but it was okay, because they were married, and it's not wrong to make out constantly if you're married. Seriously. Nessie was pouting that her fanfiction writing had been interrupted. Finally, she had gotten her dad to let her have internet access again, and all she wanted to do was write angsty teenage self-insertion fics about how no one understood her. Rosalie and Alice were gossiping and talking about all the slutty underwear they wanted to buy….for Bella. Nothing weird about that.
Emmett was torn between wanting to have sex with Rosalie and wanting to write about having sex with Rosalie.
"I'm sorry, Jasper, I don't know anything other than that," Carlisle said to Jasper, the only attentive Cullen. The sound of Bella and Edward making out was getting annoying.
Dr. Cullen sighed. It was just like his useless children to go around being utterly useless. "PAY ATTENTION!" he shouted at them. "Do you even care? Your mother has gone missing!"
But they were all too busy doing the one thing that they'd been created to do to care. Jasper hit Emmett. "Pay attention."
Emmett blinked. Esme was missing. Right. This was important. In some deep part of him, he realized that this was somehow related to finding out who he really was.
"Maybe she's…" he started, coming out of his sex-daze, "maybe' she's finding herself?" He seemed to remember her saying something weeks ago about something like that, when he'd run into her buying slutty clothes.
There was a few minutes silence, and then, finally, Carlisle said, "that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
Esme held the lighter up to light the tip of Leah's cigar. Damn it feels good to be a gangster.
"Are we done now?" Nessie was asking. She was in that awkard pre-teen phase that all little half-breeds go through where they start hating their parents (totally reasonably, in Nessie's case. Her parents were still sucking face in the corner.)
"No! We are not finished here!" snapped Carlise, who was losing patience with his family. Hmm, maybe he should have thought of that before he adopted so many "children." "Esme is missing! We have to get her back!" If Bella had gone missing, Edward would be all over that. Why was no one rallying to his call?
"Won't she come home on her own, eventually?" suggested Jasper, who was, incidentally, reading the Seattle Times. Jasper had silently agreed with Emmett's suggestion that Esme was merely "finding herself" and so had tuned out of the conversation.
Before anyone starts thinking that Edward, Bella, Alice, and Rosalie are horrible "people" (undead people), it's not that they didn't care about Esme. First of all, Bella and Edward can't help constantly playing tonsil hockey. They are soulmates. And the truth is that no one knows Esme well enough to know whether or not she'll be okay. None of them knew her well enough to know that she was going to go postal and run off to commit crimes. They were all a bit in shock.
"Carlisle," Emmett began again, "um, have you had any luck—"
"Dammit, Emmett, no! I haven't had any luck analyzing your stupid blood to find your stupid super power! I have had other things on my mind!" shouted the doctor.
"…calling her cell phone?" finished Emmett.
Silence. Then, "Um, no."
Jasper sighed, put down the Seattle Times, and picked up his cell phone.
Leah had finished smoking her cigar. She and Esme had parked the convertible near the edge of a cliff. They were staring at the canyon beyond them in compatible silence.
"Fuck the patriarchy," said Leah after awhile.
Esme nodded. "I had a baby once," she said, eventually, "he died." Her voice was flat, well, especially flat. I guess dead people's voices start out kind of flat anyway.
"Jesus," said Leah, "I'm sorry. I had no idea. Kinda makes my shitty Sam problems seem like nothing."
"My first husband was a jackass. Worse, I think, than this Sam you've told me about. But that was a long time ago."
"My father died a while ago," Leah shocked herself, saying this. "After Sam dumped me."
Silence again.
"We're going back, eventually, right?" Leah asked.
"My family, the one I have with Carlisle, they could just as easily be three couples. And Nessie of course. But I made them a family." The sun was setting gently. It would have been chilly, but Esme couldn't feel temperature and Leah was always warm. "I would never leave them, not really. I just want one of them, just one, to call and ask if I'm okay."
Her phone rang. It was Jasper.
"They're coming home," said Jasper, to the gathered family. Bella and Edward made a sound like a suction cup being pulled off a car window as they separated.
"That's great!" said Bella, and then reattached herself to her husband. Rosalie and Alice were one their third issue of Vogue. They were now looking at things to buy on their upcoming Paris shopping trip.
Emmett felt discouraged. No one took him seriously. He pouted.
"So then I'm like 'she totally, you know, finding herself,' and then Carlisle is just like 'blah blah I've got a pointy face and I don't care what you say,'" Emmett was telling Jacob. They were on a man-date.
"Uh huh," muttered Jacob. He still didn't know why he'd started hanging out with Emmett.
"What the hell? And then Jasper's all 'oh, look at me, I'm blond, blah blah.'"
"Uh huh."
The two were driving toward Seattle, a long drive unless you are a Cullen, and, as everyone knows, Cullens drive quickly and this in no way has negative consequences for anyone on the freeway.
"So Leah is coming home?" Jake asked, trying not to sound too interested.
"Yeah. Are you going to do her?"
Jacob chocked. "What? No. Um."
"Dude, I heard she wanted you."
"Where did you hear that?"
"I just made it up! Ha! You totally want her!" Teasing Jacob took Emmett's mind off of his crappy family. He had conveniently forgotten that he was a large part of the reason that Jacob had messed things up with Leah, with the whole sexy-underpants debacle.
"Jasper," Carlisle said, walking through the room where Jasper was reading yet another article about the killings in Seattle. "Would you run to the store and get me some milk?"
Jasper raised an eyebrow. Normally he was all for helping Carlsile. But this was getting ridiculous. He never seemed to stop sending the kids out on errands these days. Ever. "Um, do we drink milk?" he asked.
"For Nessie. For her girl scout group."
"Oh. Okay." Jasper went back to reading the article. A lot of people had been drained of blood in the last few months.
"Now?" suggested Carlisle.
"Her meeting isn't until tomorrow." Jasper could sense that something else was bothering Carlisle. For one thing, they have plenty of milk. What with Carlisle constantly sending them out to buy it and them not actually ever drinking it because vampires don't drink milk. "What's this really about?"
"What is this about? Fine. I will tell you. All you people do is sit around my house, spending my money, and doing NOTHING. Oh, that's great, you've all matriculated and graduated 89 times. SO WHAT? Why don't you grow up and get a job already? How long am I going to have to support your worthless glittery asses? Yeah, it's great having 150 cars and buying all that gasoline in today's market, but seriously. Couldn't one of you get a freaking paper route?"
"…"
"For months I've been sending you all, ALL OF YOU, on pointless errands, hoping that one of you, ONE OF YOU, would be smart enough to realize that if you just got a damn job, I'd get off your backs. Just find one little bit of gainful employment and I'd stop asking you to do stuff, because I would know you are busy! All you people do is sit around!"
"…" Jasper folded his paper. He could have used his gift to calm Carlise down, but it was probably better to let him get this off his chest.
"It was fine in the '50s! We weren't in the middle of a massive recession in the 1950s! You all didn't each have 23 cars in the 1950s. You weren't BREEDING in the 1950s! And you've all been out of high school for a while now! You can damn well GO BACK or you can find a damn JOB!!"
"…"
"GET!" He shouted, "JOBS!" Carlisle sat down heavily, panting. Jasper ever so gently pushed him toward calm. His breathing slowed.
"Sorry," Carlisle said, eventually.
"It's a fair criticism," said Jasper. "But we don't just sit around. Emmett's trying to find himself."
"The whole superpower thing?"
"Yeah. It's good for him. And I'm trying to figure out what vamp is chomping in my, I mean, our, territory." He gestured toward the newspaper. The doctor's eyes widened with shock. No one had noticed the news stories apart from Jasper. "I think your main focus should really be on Edward. I mean, he is pretty useless," Jasper told Carlisle. At this very moment, Edward was off having horrible, icky, lovey, married sex.
Carlisle nodded. "Edward should definitely get a job. I'd support him being a stay-at-home dad, but it seems to be Emmett and Rosalie who do most of the child care."
"Yeah. But then again, Edward has sex with Bella a lot. And they are soul mates."
"Esme is my soul mate, but we still manage to function without talking about heroin."
Jasper nodded sagely. He and Alice were actually incredibly sexual people, but they liked to keep their intimate, kinky details private. Jasper and Alice made Emmett and Rosalie look downright vanilla, and if Emmett and Rosalie are vanilla, then Bella and Edward are like meringue or something. Powdered sugar. Utterly flavorless. Soppy isn't a flavor, people.
Jasper's calming influence was working. Carlisle no longer seemed about ready to kick all of his children off of the property. "Everything will be alright when Esme gets home," he muttered to himself. Then, slowly, he remembered what Jasper had been trying to tell him. "Incidentally, do we know who is responsible for the killings in Seattle?"
"No, but I've sent Emmett on a mission to Seattle to do some reconnaissance."
"You sent Emmett?"
"Yeah, I convinced him that maybe his secret super power was being incredibly sneaky."
Emmett finally found a place to park the car. Parking in Seattle is a bit of a challenge. Jacob tumbled out of the car, gasping in great lungfuls of air that didn't reek of the undead.
"So, right, we're looking for a vampire or something. Someone who could be killing all of those people. Jasper told me to keep my eyes open for anything suspicious." Emmett was wearing massive dark sunglasses in an effort to be sneaky. These looked rather odd, considering that they were in Seattle and not L.A., so the city was under an impressive raincloud.
Jake rolled his eyes. He had only agreed to come along because he thought it might help get his mind off Leah. Usually he spent his days babysitting Nessie, but lately, every time he'd come near the Cullen house, Nessie had screamed "GO AWAY, YOU'RE CRAMPING MY STYLE." She'd even blocked him on facebook.
Which was alright, considering she's really way too young to have facebook.
"Do you think I'm omni-linguistic?" said Emmett, an hour later.
"Wha?" They were walking down Pike street. They hadn't seen anyone draining anyone else of blood yet. Then again, it was about 3 in the afternoon. Most vampires are actually, um, nocturnal, and so don't tend to drain young ladies of their blood during the day.
"It's like a super power where you can speak all languages, or like, understand them and stuff. Maybe that's what I am."
Jacob rolled his eyes. "I thought you were super sneaky?"
"I mean, maybe. I don't know." Emmett sighed hugely. He kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk. The two continued in melancholy silence.
The drive home was less exhilarating than the drive away had been, fast though it was (who do you think taught the Cullen children to drive? Carlisle?). Yes, they were going home. No, they were not going to return the money.
"Should I drop you by the Reservation?"
"I guess."
Silence, again. Esme was wondering if anything would change. She loved her children more than her freedom, but it was hard, now that her last son was married. She had always been the one to hold the family together, but this didn't mean she didn't want to have her own life. Maybe she and Carlisle could go live on their own for a few years…they could stay on their island, let Bella and Edward raise their own half-breed…
Leah was thinking about Sam, and what an utter doucherocket he was. She was also thinking about how she didn't really care. Also, she was imagining Jacob Black's stomach. She felt slightly creepy about this. He was so young! Well, not really. Several years had passed since Nessie's birth. So Jake was definitely of age. Still, she felt like…hmm, the best analogy is this: she felt like a film had been released, a film with a young male actor in it, who definitely looked like he was about 19 but was actually 17 because he was born in 1992. Let's imagine this 17 year old was playing a very attractive character, and the combination between his hotness and the hotness of his character and his approx. 30 additional pounds of rippling muscle were enough to make her want a massive poster of him on her wall, but she was nonetheless too old to like him. That's how creepy she felt.
No, wait, that's me, as in the author of this fanfic.
Leah felt much less creepy than this.
Emmett and Jacob were pretty horribly bored. It was like a really awkward date where neither of the couple knew what to do next. Except with mythological creatures instead of a romantic pair.
They walked passed the Seattle Aquarium. They looked at each other. They nodded.
The aquarium was relatively empty. They walked slowly through it, furthering the comparison to a date. As they stood and admired the luminescent jelly fish, they noticed a small girl in the corner watching them. She looked exactly like Dakota Fanning.
Emmett did a double take. "JANE?!" he hissed. So that's the girl who'd been munching people!
Jacob looked from Emmett to the girl. She had red eyes. He growled.
"Shhh!" Jane hissed at them. "I'm tracking the rogue vampire."
"You can't be tracking the rogue vampire," whispered Emmett. "I'm tracking the rouge vampire. Jasper said so."
"Jasper is a tool."
"I'm telling him you said that."
"Bite me!"
"What are you going to do, use your stupid pain power on me?"
"Maybe I'll use my pain power…ON YOUR MOM!" shouted Jane.
"Guys!" Jacob was standing between them. Exactly where a werewolf wants to be. The smell was atrocious.
"She insulted Esme!"
Jane was making faces at Emmett from behind Jacob. Of all the things Jane really wanted to be doing right now, tracking down a vampire in Seattle wasn't one of them. The damn Cullens were supposed to handle their own territory. But no. All they did was make out with each other. Emmett was just the last thing to happen in a long day. And Jane couldn't use her power on him—Caius had told her that if she did encounter any of the vegetarians, she should avoid torturing them.
Vegetarians. Ha. Jane thought of herself as a humanitarian.
"You bloody useless excuse for a vampire!" Jane shouted, "If you and your precious Jasper had handled this back when it started to be in an issue in chapter one, the Volturi would never have had to send me!"
"No one insults Jasper but me! YOU'RE LIKE FIVE!"
"I'm like five times better than you!"
"You're like five times SHORTER than me!"
That was it. No one insulted Jane's height. Screw Caius. She unleashed the cruciatis, I mean, she used her mad vampire skills on Emmett.
Emmett fell backwards, crying out in pain. As he went down, he grabbed Jacob, who had been minding his own business and thinking that Quil and Embry were seeming very mature by comparison. The two men fell into the jellyfish tank.
The pain was nigh unbearable. Werewolf and jellyfish pressed in on top of him as he screamed in agony. And then, blackness.
Vampires don't sleep. Apparently, though, they can black out.
When Emmett opened his eyes, he was staring up at Jasper's face.
"I've got some good news, and I've got some bad news," the blond said dryly.
Emmett looked to his side. Rosalie was staring at him with a look of utter devotion. But not in the pathetic Bella way. Next to Rosie was Jane. Emmett glared at her.
"Shortass," he croaked.
The room was coming into focus. They were all there, even Esme, who was looking very windswept.
"Em, honey, we found your super power," Rosalie whispered.
Emmett grimaced. What, was he super vulnerable to Jane?
"It's a rare gift," Carlisle was saying, "Jane tells us that the Volturi know of none other with it. Emmett, you have the ability to take on the powers of those whose blood you drink."
Emmett blinked his amber (but not in an Edward way) eyes. "Wha?"
"When you fell, you, um, bit Jacob," Bella was saying. It had been a long time since she had spoken. Usually Edward's tongue was jammed down her throat.
That sunk in slowly. "…so….I'm a werewolf now?"
"No, thank god!" said Rosalie.
"You managed to bite a jellyfish at the same time," Carlise continued, "so you're actually a werejellyfish."
Emmett closed his eyes. This must be a dream. Then he remembered vampires can't dream. He opened his eyes again. "Seriously?"
FOUR MONTHS LATER:
Emmett and Rosalie were cuddled up on one of the lovely big white leather couches that the Cullens owned. Emmett was stroking his wife's hair. He hadn't accidentally transformed into a jellyfish in nearly 8 hours.
Jasper was in his customary chair. Life had gone back to normal since Jane and the Cullens had finally tracked down the rogue vampire. It was a man named Lestat. Jasper knew of Lestat, being that he, like Bill Compton, was another Southern vampire.
They hadn't tracked him down. No, Lestat had come to them. One night Edward had walked into his bedroom and found Lestat standing there.
"You useless pretty boy!" Lestat has screamed. "I've been trying to call you out for months!" The two had had a pretty terrible confrontation. Apparently Lestat had come to the Pacific Northwest from New Orleans for the soul purpose of explaining to Edward how to be a real vampire. "Sleep during the day!" Lestat had shouted. Everything about Edward offended him. His lack of nocturnalness. His sparkly skin. His ability to father children.
At this point in Lestat's rant he had started screaming about weak vampires who didn't feed on humans. He kept mentioning the name of one of his boyfriends, Louis. Edward had just stood there, hearing everything Lestat said out loud, and everything that he thought. In his thoughts Edward saw the torture of a man who had once been the world's vampire sex symbol. A man who in the 1980s had emerged from his grave in the earth to become part of a rock band, who had risked everything to break vampire law, time and again. And now, the once might Lestat was reduced to…what? Young girls did not pine after him as they once had. No, all the vampirelust was directed toward this…sparkly, stupidly-haired pretty boy.
"Did you come here to kill me, old man?" asked Edward, when at last Lestat had finished yelling.
"Old man? You're just a child. The same as Armand."
Edward didn't know what Lestat was talking about. In fact, he didn't even know who Lestat was. Edward did not know anything about vampire mythology.
Lestat and Edward stared at each other. And then, at last, Lestat moved toward the door. "You know what? You aren't even worth it. Have your stupid Seattle and your stupid fame and your stupid hair gel. I'm going back to New Orleans."
Since the Lestat and Edward face-off, life had pretty much gone back to normal. Nessie was still in Girl Scouts and was still writing Harry Potter fanfiction. Jasper, who had secretly kept up with Lestat, routinely chatted with him and Bill Compton online. About blood, and the South, and how much of a useless glitter bag was Edward.
Esme and Carlisle had left the house for a 3 month vacation to Esme's island. Interpret that as a euphemism if you want.
Jacob was back to babysitting Nessie occasionally, but she still wanted her own life. And Jacob was less clingy and obsessive, now that he had finally managed to get Leah to go on a date with him. She had spent the entire time criticizing him. They had made out passionately in her car afterward.
"So, it's lucky you never bit anyone with super powers," Rosalie was saying to her husband. "Or you'd have even more weird combinations of powers."
"Yeah, seriously, don't go drinking from any other vampires," drawled Jasper from behind the Seattle Times.
"Wait," said Emmett, straightening, "I drunk from Carlisle. When I was transformed. Do you think he has a secret super power?"
Author's Note: Reviews are love!
Thank you for sticking with this. Sorry for the 3 month delay in getting this chapter out. School started up, and senior year of college is waaaay busier than it has a right to be.
Happy New Moon!
Suggestions for a comedy fanfic? Do tell.
