"Come on slowpokes! Turtles are faster than you two!" Cerise Hooded Wolf laughed as she and her sister Ramona blurred to and fro around the Grimmbook siblings while they walked across the park.
"Yeah, you can read Cupid's letter later! It's not often that Ginger and auntie Cherrie come all the way up from New Goreleans and we were promised food!" Ramona grinned, dreamily remembering the feast of rich southern food they got to eat everyday for two weeks from the last time Ginger and her mother had come up for their biannual visit with the rest of the refugees.
It was sort of like a weird kinda-sorta-not-really-but-very-close-to-it family gathering type thing that happened every fall and spring for two to three weeks all of the fairytale refugees and their allies would meet up somewhere convenient just to check in on each other and reaffirm that they weren't the only ones in this strange but intriguing new world. Those unable to make it made sure to physically check in with the nearest refugee sometime before or after the gathering just so that everyone could breathe a little easier because they all just felt safer in numbers and always having somebody knowing what you are up to so that the whole group could rally together if somebody from the old homelands tried to drag them back.
That was the main common fear that lurked in all of them; it was so universal that they all understood when somebody either got an odd call late at night or made an odd call late at night just to fend off the lingering darkness of a familiar nightmare.
"Briar's the one with the letter." Raven tattled, wanting to eat some delicious home cooked New Goreleans food too.
"In a second!" Briar batted them all away with her hand irritably. "Cupid sounds concerned for Faybelle. She says that Fay is havin' trouble gainin' the respect that she deserves for all of her hard work at school."
Ramona halted for a moment in front of the group before starting to walk backwards, her eyes narrowed. "Are you sure that's the reason and not because, oh I don't know, the fact that Fay can't go two seconds without baiting people? I mean she's good to us because we encourage her and give her all sorts of ideas-"
"And feed her!" Cerise butted in from the back, her hands resting woefully on her empty stomach. "She's probably already back at the penthouse eating all of the food Ginger puts in front of her while we are taking forever to get back to home base from school!"
"-And we've known her since forever, she part of our pack and all, but she can get pretty snarly towards others you know? Kitty says that she likes to bat the emotions of her fairytale counterparts around like a kitten with a ball of yarn, she is utterly feared by the traditionalists you know." Ramona finished. "I'm not saying that she deserves it but you have to admit that she's not at all good with playing nice, nice with people she sees as idiots… which would be her current fairytale counterparts."
"She really doesn't think much of her current charges." Raven hummed in agreement. "How do you suppose we should go about cheering her up this time? That is if she really is as upset as Chariclo says she is... It wouldn't surprise me if Fay is just yanking Chariclo's chain just so that she can get away with lots of stuff while Chariclo is around…" The witch narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "Just how much batting around does Fay do to those people by perchance?"
"Probably enough that she's not winning any favors with anyone save for the rebellion group." Briar snorted lowly, picking up her pace. "However we should still do whatever we can to completely support her, it's no good to be constantly told that she's not good enough for her efforts just because she's not a witch! She is totally qualified to do her job properly and we are going to be there to cheer her on all the way! Besides, mama-witch and auntie Cherrie will always have something for her to use to combat the nay-sayers and us reminding her that we're proud of her and that we have her back will help her out surely."
"Your accent's slipping little miss lovebird." Cerise pointed out dryly.
Briar grimaced, wiping at her mouth as if she tasted something bad. "'M ain't a lovebird, I just… care ya know? It's 'cause of her that they ain't lookin' for us as hard as they would have if there was no one there to complete those story roles."
"Which is why we love her and will do everything to assure her that none of us are thinking about taking over her hard won roles and that we actually want to see her succeed in all of this." Cerise nodded, giving Raven a side-eyed look.
Raven nodded, thinking frantically, more than a few times when things were particularly rough for Faybelle over the accusations that she wasn't good enough she nearly, but never quite, got to the point to where she resented Raven almost enough to let the ugly feeling manifest as truth in her mind… or so Raven thought if the occasional dark glares directed her way were to be interpreted as such. Aside from Briar, Raven did her very conscious best to periodically show a hundred and ten percent approval for Faybelle's work.
"…I think that old psychology book from last year might help her out a bit." Raven bit her thumb nervously. "I mean Fay would like fresh perspectives on how to manipulate people right? I mean it was a special class design to help us break out of bad habits and learn confidence skills for like, future job interviews so… she can probably reverse engineer some things right?"
"We can run it by mama-witch and Evil-mother as well as Fay while we're at home." Briar proposed, still trying to properly put her words into the right accent. "They'll have some interestin' twists to put on them psych lessons I'm sure, an' Fay hangs offa their every word when they're talkin' fairytale shop 'n stuff anyway so we've got her covered for at least this week."
"I almost feel pity for that Snow White girl, if she keeps messing with Fay as much as she currently is she's going to get the craziest fairytale of her life." Cerise mused scratching her exposed wolf ears as everyone made noises in agreement.
"Do you think that she'd let us watch?" Briar asked sounding morbidly excited at the prospect. "Maybe we'd be able to sneak in some popcorn too!"
That got her a round of giggles as the group began thinking up of ways that they could sneak into Ever After to watch the show when the time came."
XXX
Three seal boxes, three of his first students who went missing that year…
Three copies of the Book of Legends.
Three perfect, incredibly well made, to the point to where not even he could discern the difference between them at the moment, forgeries!
"How can this possibly be?" Milton Grimm murmured in horror, the beam of his torch scouring from cover to cover, page to page, looking at the tomes in disbelief.
The light was low in the hall, it was a new moon and thus too dark for him to see the odd white lines painted on the underside fragments of the now destroyed boxes, so dark that the vaporous creatures slithering out of said boxes and into the night looked just like any other spindly shadows crisscrossing the hall.
XXX
"So this reverse psychology business is the act of tricking the target into saying or doing exactly what you suspect or want them to do or say?" Faybelle asked in interest.
"Mmm, ideally that's what happens but like I said before psychology isn't an exact science." Clawstorm warned while she flicked through the pages in Raven's old textbook. One of the things that Clawstorm never really got the hang of was cooking anything edible past really simple quick meals and dishes so that was why she was banished to sitting at the kitchen counter, being good, and not attempting to help out with preparing dinner like the rest of the house. "Snow White was pretty simple in the head when it came to her desires so your mother and I… well Evy mostly, were usually able to put one up on old Snowball whenever she got too annoying. It all depends on how well you can read your counterparts really, otherwise they'll either catch on or they'll take things to somewhere completely unexpected."
"If memory serves me correctly lil' Miss Cherrie had the most difficulties with her counterparts." The Evil Fairy paused in her task of chopping up all the vegetables (she was able to magically operate several knives at once, and therefore the task was completed in seconds rather than minutes) in order to leer playfully at the dark skinned witch manning the boiling cauldrons and oven.
"Like I've told you and Faybelle before, the Crumb family were always… very special people with very special views on the world." Cherrie Cook (formerly Breadhouse before she got married to her restaurant's second head chef and co-owner, a sweet yet very tall and muscular zombie by the name of Bubba Cook) appeared to be choosing her words politely and carefully.
"It takes very special people to think that inbreeding is a good idea." The Evil Fairy rolled her eyes, sharing an exasperated look with her daughter who mirrored her mother's expression, as she handed the cooking witch a plate of minced onions.
"Mama always said that it was not our place to judge." Cherrie explained pointedly to a grimacing Faybelle while levitating the mutilated plants into a pot. "Though I did try to do my best with my villain duties and do my utmost to dissuade the twin's… well that's just a rumor anyways and I tried at the very least. I'd like to think that they didn't…" She winced.
"Just like your mama tried and her mama before that." Clawstorm intoned tiredly, patting Faybelle on the back while sharing a dry look with Briar, who already had a low opinion of fairytale royalty and did not look surprised in the least to hear this new information!
"I'm sure that it really is just a rumor Auntie." Faybelle assured kindly. "The Crumb cousins aren't… like that with each other. Though they aren't exactly capable, it would seem, of comprehending the difference between reality and story but neither does the traditionalists so they're pretty normal all things considered." Faybelle shrugged, trying to attempt to be as polite as was possible for her.
Cherrie cast a quick glance at Faybelle before returning to her pots with a sigh. "Well nothing has changed on that front, just make sure to have those special earmuffs I gave you last year on hand, I used to get the most debilitating migraines from the Crumbs and everybody screaming so loudly every time I entered a room outside of classes."
"Oh don't worry auntie the rebellious group is rather too fond of me to dare do that when I'm in the room and the Crumbs have gotten to the point to where I smile kindly and they don't scream loudly at all." Because after Faybelle was done with them they were now too scared to make any sudden movements or sounds after the first few times and Faybelle got sick of the constant wailing every time she made her presence known. "What they lack in brains they make up for in instinct and learning proper manners. I don't even have to pull anything on them to keep my image up, I could say good morning to them and for the rest of the day they will go on to everybody and anybody and tell them that I tried to bewitch them into the school ovens."
Which was actually true nowadays, but to get to this point Faybelle did have to do a little bit of passive aggressive terrorizing on the younger boy and girl, they had originally loudly sided with Apple on the fairy being of the wrong bloodline to be their villain, but they had been pretty weak when the blonde princess wasn't around…
So Faybelle being as cool-headed as possible under the circumstances may have silently creeped them out by coming up to Hansel with a tape measure and commented on his scrawny frame, carried around magazines filled with ads for kitchen supplies and industrial ovens, transporting their sweets away and replacing them with vegetables because "fairies prefer the meat of their pray lean", slipping natural history books on her particular species' prehistoric roots talking about fairies back when they were ravenous meat-eating hunters into their school bags, …and after one particularly frustrating week (when Apple had been attempting to rally up all the supporters that she could to "stop Faybelle and the rebellion's reign of terror") both Crumbs woke up to find that someone had spelled black lines onto their bodies with different labeled parts, the same kind used by butchers on livestock to be more precise.
Finally, after a month and a half of Faybelle doing all of this (along with just randomly standing just behind the two Crumbs with her fanged teeth slightly parted and sniffing the younger teens whilst making inhuman noises of deep and concentrated consideration) the Crumb cousins finally caved and told Apple that if their real villain was supposed to be better than Faybelle at being a villain… they'd rather not be unfortunate enough to have to meet her.
Gus Crumb in particular still got a little pale and lightheaded whenever the term "rocky mountain" came up or when there were "oysters" on the school lunch menu, and he'd more often than not just give up the fight to stay conscious if Faybelle casually mentioned a native dish from the mountainous parts of her homeland that were called "rocky mountain oysters" and how they could be made from many different prey animals…
Many males who knew what she was talking about either got really nervous (the traditionalist mostly) or were like Hunter who jovially reminisced about his sheep and cow herding cousins in the far hills and, if Faybelle was having a particularly difficult day with Apple and the others, offered to give her his aunt's recipes.
Bless that boy, she really hoped that he and Ashlynn worked out, they would make excellent additions to the refugee crowd.
"Lack in brains?" Raven asked, she had been standing meekly off to the side just to make sure that she telegraphed to Faybelle that she'd never be a threat to the fairy's roles… just in case it needed to me made silently clear, finally gave up in that pursuit in favor of indulging her curiosity on the topic of conversation. "Do they suffer from a disability or are they something like that Apple girl? All hung up on bloodlines like villains are cattle only to be used for happy endings?"
Faybelle gifted Raven with a tired smile and slung her arm companionably around the witch, because even though it was frustrating at times that people would prefer Raven over her, the witch however was far too nice for all that evil nonsense and she understood Faybelle and the frustration she had with not being recognized properly as a true villain in a way that was very comforting.
The Evil Fairy cast her daughter a conspiring smirk. "Eli and Nibble Crumb, also known as Faybelle's current charge's great-grandfather and great-grandmother… slash great-uncle and great-aunt, slash…
"Grandfather, Hansel-Eli-Crumb was also my counterpart's father and the current Crumb sibling's grandfather." Cherrie tasted the gumbo before adding a little more spices to the pot.
"…Whatever else, anyway, after their story was finished they went through a… what was that term again Clawstorm?"
"A life-crisis Evy, we call it a life-crisis in this dimension." Clawstorm hummed distractedly, still paging through the textbook. "So they joined that cult."
"Which isn't unheard of for fairytale characters who have finished their stories only to come out finding that their roles were utterly useless to them in the post-fairytale world… the crisis part, not the cult although the two being combined together is not always unheard of." The Evil Fairy mused. "But at any rate there was this crazy guy in a diaper-"
"Loin cloth." Cherrie corrected.
"-Who said that genetic purity was the way to go if you wanted to be better than everybody else-"
"We call it eugenics here, nasty business, and it's not even credible science!" Clawstorm hissed in avid disgust, sitting beside her (sneaking bits of food) Ramona and Cerise looked a little nauseated too (especially since the history classes distinctly said that most experiments in the bad old days used to be conducted on those of the canine race).
"-So from right under everybody's noses Eli and Nibble had a child together named Danish Crumb, who was the next Hansel but due to complications Nibble was unable to have anymore children so a year or so later Eli had… "acquired-"…"
"Brainwashed and converted the daft girl." Cherrie stated darkly.
"-A child with his cousin, who had birthed Dish Crumb-"
"And stole the babe away to be raised in that awful place before my gran could properly cook him and the daft mother alive." Cherrie gently motioned for Ginger to trade her places so that she could properly smash the potatoes in her daughter's place. "Tried to go to the Headmaster at the time for help but he didn't believe a word my gran and great-gran said and going public about it would have complicated the lives of the chillun.
"-Fortunately Danish was able to break free from the cult's brainwashing and ran to the Breadhouse's as fast as his legs could carry him while he was in high school-"
"Took great care of great-uncle Dan we did, what with his bad eyesight and thin blood problems. Made him practically apart of the family" Cherrie huffed fondly.
"He was great in the garden." Clawstorm piped up, smiling softly at the memory of the half-blind man who taught her and her friend more about herbs and plants than the classes in school ever did. "He could tell where he was in his garden through smell and touch of his plants as well as the sounds from all of these different wind-chimes, it was amazing!"
"-However Dish wasn't so lucky, by the age of sixteen she was-"
"Forced." Clawstorm growled darkly.
"-To birth Tasty and Yummy Crumb, your aunt Cherrie's counterparts-"
"Finally forced the current Headmaster's pa to believe gran and great-gran and finally do something! The thick headed fool…" There was a snort of agreement from the two other women in the room.
"-And things were much better for a while, course Tasty and Yummy were so genetically insufficient in the brains that they ended up being held back constantly until they finally managed to eek their way into our graduating class." The Evil Fairy finished in favor of accepting a bowl of gumbo from Ginger.
"But Tasty and Yummy had children together?" Briar blinked.
"It's just a rumor." Cherrie insisted. "And besides that, they were taught far better once the correct people found out and rounded the children up, they may have hated me with as much force as their… unique minds would allow, but they knew that if I had suspected anything bad happening to either of them that I'd come and investigate and do everything I could for them."
"Which is why they tried so hard to keep you and your family at a distance." Clawstorm bit into her spoonful of gumbo menacingly. "They were weird and volatile, and I'm not just talking about their wonky genetics making them that way Cherrie. You deserved to be treated far better than how they treated you."
"It wasn't their fault that they couldn't understand that I wasn't really going to eat them." Said witch giggled and hugged her daughter around the shoulders. "Oh how Hansel used to complain that he was going to have to stay in that cardboard box forever because he wasn't fattening up at all! Really dear, I know that you and Simone never liked them but I just can't seem to feel any ill will towards two people who were simply incapable of… well a lot of things really and I do owe them for introducing me to my baby girl's birth father, without whom I would have never met my most favorite daughter!"
"I'm your only daughter mama." Ginger giggled, patting her mother's swollen belly.
Clawstorm leaned forwards with wide eyes. "Does that mean that your gonna have a little voodoo warlock running around in a few months Cher?"
The other witch's grin almost seemed to light up the room. "Bubba and I were thinking about naming him Trapper after that character in his and Ginger's favorite New Goreleans folktale."
"Trapper Cook." The Evil Fairy chuckled. "It's got a ring to it I must say."
"An' Fay, don't you worry your head about that girl Apple White." The pregnant witch turned the conversation back to the topic at hand. "You've more than proven yourself to be a mighty fine villain and you've got the support of lots of people, if the White's give you grief over you being apart of the story then just do what your mom did and do what you're gonna do anyway, with fairytale villains in the middle of a story they do pretty much what they want to do, it's one of the benefits that comes with the job description, you are allowed to go through with crazy stuff and not ask for permission or apology later when it's all said and done."
Clawstorm smirked and ruffled Faybelle's hair, like she always did ever since the fairy was a small child. "They're never going to see it coming as long as you're around to make it interesting for them."
"Well of course." Faybelle sniffed superiorly through her wicked grin. "Can't come back here and tell you lot that I just went out and poisoned some blonde girl with a boring old apple or got pushed into an oven by some little girl now can I? That story is not nearly exiting enough."
"You always tell the best stories Fay." Briar grinned coming up beside Faybelle and her little sister and hugging them both from behind.
"Only because I have such a lovely audience to tell stories to." Faybelle's expression was just barely this side of sappy as she glanced at the blushing and grinning human behind her.
XXX
"Alright men! You ready to face down those giants?" Coach Ginger Bread Man barked to the bookball team.
"Yes we are sir!" Daring Charming cheered even as his teammates all shook their heads in the negative, Tiny the giant wiggled his toes worriedly.
"Well I suppose that's just as good as we're going to expect this year." The coach sighed tiredly. "Hit the showers boys, enjoy the rest of your day."
When the team reached the locker-room Daring halted in his steps, hesitating.
"We are going to feel the pain come tomorrow aren't we?" He asked the air speculatively.
"I keep telling you that we need your sister on the team." Hunter pointed out tensely.
"No." Daring commanded firmly, both he and Dexter shaking their heads.
"She's got more training with dealing with large magical creatures! And she's being trained in that special inter-school program with Wonderlandian knights! Everybody knows that you have to be made out of crazy tough stuff to be accepted into that kind of training and community!" Sparrow was the one to gripe this time. "We need her!"
"But what if she gets hurt?" Daring countered with a worried whimper, his body hunched over in horror with all the imagined possibilities.
"It's not that we don't think that she's good enough." Dexter quickly assured. "But guys, she's our baby sister! You can't ask us to willingly put her into harm's way!"
"It seems almost like yesterday when she first came up to me and dad holding out her very first junior training sword and challenging us to a duel for the right to fighting along side us for the family honor and glory in battle!" Daring hiccupped tearing up. "She was so cute~! A true Charming for sure!"
"But aren't Charming princesses supposed to-…?" Sparrow tried to finish his statement by executing a pretty impressive curtsy and fanning himself with his hand.
"Every family branch has a different interpretation on what is proper." Tiny informed cheerfully.
"And it's not like the Headmaster is going to just stand for letting her or any other girl play on the field." Hunter blew out a breath noisily. "Maybe we should stay in through the whole game-"
"No you can't." Daring shook his head, wiping away tears as he turned to face the group. "My auntie is counting on you and Sparrow to keep an eye on things while they sort out what's wrong with the Book! Faybelle is already super twitchy right now because she's worried that Apple might find out that the Book is a… different edition than what she really wants. I'm just worried that Fay might try something off kilter if she and Apple have another fight."
"And at the very least you two will be spared from the beating of a lifetime, Ashlynn will be happy about that, and I know that Sparrow here is already happy." Dexter pointed out.
"Yep." Sparrow nodded, then paused, thinking. "Does the first edition of the Book really have everything Apple wants outta life?"
"No." Daring sighed, shaking his head. "It doesn't have what anybody wants or expects actually, auntie showed us when we were small and I had asked."
"So it's true? You really aren't Apple's prince just like you keep telling her you aren't?" Hunter asked with wide eyes.
Daring sighed, shifting his stance but nodded. "My kiss can't awaken anybody." He confirmed. "We're thinking that either Darling or Dexter can but if neither of them can do it then either Faybelle or auntie will be forced to step in."
It had been a sore point between Daring and Apple and their two families since they had been very small and it became evident that Daring was becoming the type of prodigy that all future princes would look up to for years to come.
Snow White had come to Daring's family, very insistent that Daring was to become her daughter's future husband, in her mind Apple should have nothing but perfection and Daring was very good at being very close to perfection as far as princes went, and since Apple always wanted what her mother wanted the princess wasted no time practically shouting to the rooftops that Daring was her future prince.
…Except Daring knew for a fact that he wasn't her prince… wasn't anybody's prince really, auntie Clawstorm had taken a risk coming to Ever After all those years ago in order to warn his parents about who… what their son was to become as he got older. Since the witch was an old friend and ally to his parents and Clawstorm was turning herself into a very competent mad scientist they turned to her to aid and prepare their son for what was to come.
Daring became very grateful for his adopted aunt's training and the special medicine that she had developed when he had first transformed the night after he turned nine-years-old.
Daring resigned himself to living a life of bachelorhood until his parents sent him off to some really prestigious university in his auntie's dimension, he didn't want to leave his home kingdom and his aunt was adamant that given enough effort and luck that she and her colleagues might be able to create a special pill for him to take every month to quell the transformations outside of his own will, and that was very kind of her, especially for the times she had to sneak into his kingdom in order to give him a proper checkup and packages of clothing that were not only stylish but spelled to fit him even when he changed shape, but with no princess born with the right kind of magic meant that there was no cure for him and therefore he needed to mentally prepare for moving away to the strange lands where his aunt and adopted cousins resided in the hope that he could find acceptance for what he was there.
"Well good luck." Hunter told the two Charming brothers and Tiny.
"You're going to need it." Sparrow nodded, which earned him a yelp of pain as Hunter loyally stomped onto his foot.
Daring smiled, a fang just barely showing under his lips. "We'll at least give those giants a good long fight." He promised; he could almost feel the beast within him wagging its tale at the prospect of a proper challenge for once.