A/N: Ahh, sorry once again for the long absence! I've been caught up writing another fic of mine. Oh, but remember when I said I might discontinue this? Yeah… I've changed my mind. I like this story too much to let it go. [Muffled "Let It Go" playing in the distance] Sorry. Anyway, I was looking through the last two chapters I posted, and was appalled by the sheer number of weird typos and mistakes in them. I was much more careful with this chapter—ideally, there are no typos at all, though I still might have missed a couple. If I have, I apologize, and someday I will probably go through all these chapters and fix their mistakes.

Anyway, since you came here to read a chapter and not an author's note, on with the story!


The room was dark and silent. Anti-Cosmo curled his fists under the blanket, listening intently for any disturbances—usually he could see in the dark very well, but now he couldn't see much of anything. Still, it didn't concern him much.

Crunch.

The terrible sound came from above and was like a tree being snapped in half. Anti-Cosmo whipped his head up, squinting at the ceiling, and his heart flew into his throat for a few seconds. An enormous hand was descending toward him. He threw the covers off his bed and scrambled to get away but one of his wings was caught between a thumb and forefinger and he was held fast. The hand began to pull him up—and up—by the wing—there was a crack as one of the bones in the bat-like wing fractured and Anti-Cosmo yelped in pain.

He was hauled up through the ceiling and passed through a thick layer of some substance that was denser than air, though not quite a type of li quid, and he found himself struggling to breathe even though he had no real need to.

At last the giant hand pulled him up through the very ground of Fairy World and closed in a fist around him, trapping him and sending sharp twinges of pain down his injured wing.

"ANTI-COSMO!" someone bellowed, causing the dark fairy to cringe at the ringing in his ears.

"Jorgen," Anti-Cosmo said flatly, locking eyes on his captor and narrowing them in a scowl. "I knew Wanda was going to rat me out, but I must admit I expected something a little more… subtle."

Jorgen von Strangle leered at the tiny Anti-Fairy clenched in his hand. Even at normal size he towered over the other fairies, but right now he was as large as a building, and as he brought Anti-Cosmo up closer his face filled almost the entirety of the dark fairy's vision.

"Subtle!" the oversized fairy guffawed. "Subtle! HAHAHA! SUBTLE!"

Anti-Cosmo sighed. The brute probably didn't even know what "subtle" meant.

"You are too funny," Jorgen said. He opened his hand and Anti-Cosmo dropped like a stone, his broken wing useless, hitting the ground with a jarring thump. It only took one glance to see that he had fallen into a cell deep in Abracatraz prison. Anti-Cosmo stood up, striding to the glass front of the cell. Outside, Jorgen was back to his normal size and looked all too happy at having the leader of the Anti-Fairies behind bars once again. Well, behind glass, to be more precise.

"You know, Jorgen, you can't keep me here forever," Anti-Cosmo said. "I'd have thought you would have learned that by now."

"I don't have to learn anything!" Jorgen said, stepping closer to the cell. "You are staying here forever! I'm making sure of it!"

"He's right, ya know?" a familiar voice said behind him. Anti-Cosmo whirled around to see his wife standing there, grinning toothily as usual.

"Anti-Wanda?" he said, aghast. "They caught you, as well?"

"Well duh, of course they caught her. They caught all the Anti-Fairies," another Anti-Fairy, standing off to the left, said with his arms crossed. "The fairies flew over in jets and captured every single one of us." He spat on the floor. Anti-Cosmo wrinkled his nose in distaste. When he looked back around, Anti-Wanda had vanished to be replaced instead by Wanda, the bright pink of her hair and eyes, along with her yellow shirt, the only splashes of color in the cell besides Anti-Cosmo's green eyes.

"And if it were up to me, that would only be the beginning!" she squawked. "If you go anywhere near my baby, I'll—well, I'll—DO SOMETHING! To you!"

Cosmo poof!ed next to her, laughing. "Yeah! Yeah! You showed him!" He looked at Anti-Cosmo. "Oh! And remember that time I totally beat you at the Olympics thing we did? I bet you never heard the end of that! WATERMELONS!"

There was a series of echoing booms that caused Anti-Cosmo to turn around yet again—it was just Jorgen rapping on the front of the cell. "Cosmo! Wanda! Get out of there! Anti-Fairy bites are probably poisonous!"

"I'm not biting anyone," Anti-Cosmo sniffed.

"Don't tap on the glass, it freaks him out!" Wanda said to Jorgen, her hands on her hips.

"I like corn!" Cosmo shouted.

"Man, I don't understand anything that's going on," Timothy Turner, standing next to Cosmo and Wanda, said.

"All right, enough!" Anti-Cosmo fluttered into the air, throwing his arms out. "If I'm going to be here for a while, I'll need some peace and quiet!"

"AHAHAHAHAHA!" Maniacal laughter erupted from somewhere outside the cell as a square-shaped Anti-Fairy baby appeared, the twisted features of his face lit by a sudden bolt of lightning coupled with the wave of fire that flared up behind him. "Did someone say DOOM?"

Anti-Cosmo dropped his arms. "No, Foop. The word 'doom' hasn't come up once in this entire conversation, convoluted as it is."

Foop frowned, looking more than slightly put out. "Well, you know, I was floating around aimlessly outside for twenty minutes before I just decided to come on in. One can only wait so long for their cue!"

"We haven't even been here for twenty minutes," Jorgen pointed out.

Foop ignored him, flitting over to the cell and giving a coolly smug look to Anti-Cosmo. "You see, Father, I've joined up with the fairies to take down Anti-Fairy World! And then I'll double-cross Jorgen and enslave all the fairies, of course." He said that last part quickly.

Anti-Wanda flew over to Anti-Cosmo from behind, taking his shoulders in a vice-like grip. Her voice warbled with sorrow. "Look at mah li'l baby, plotting his first betrayal! Why's he gotta grow up so fast?"

"Mother, please, you're embarrassing me," Foop said. He faced Anti-Cosmo once more, grinning. "Anyhow, do you know what the most fun of all this is going to be? Watching you rot in prison! Forever!"

"Ugh, Foop's right, he really is rotting," Jorgen said. "Look at him."

There was a tingling feeling in Anti-Cosmo's wings. He gasped, twisting to look over his shoulder at them, and his stomach lurched. Starting at their tips and traveling toward his back, the membranous wings were flaking away.

"What are you doing?" he shrieked, reaching behind his back to feel his decrepit wings. "What have you done to me?!"

"Ewww, look!" Cosmo pointed at his disintegrating wings. "Anybody got a camera?"

Everyone was laughing. Anti-Cosmo took a step back, eyes wide, on the verge of panicking. His wings ached but he spread their tattered remains, beating them as fast as he could and rising high into the air before anyone knew what he was doing. They pointed up at him, yelling, but he ignored them and poured all of his concentration into flying as high as he could, away from the myriad of fairies and Anti-Fairies on the ground.

His wing twinged and sent him into a tailspin for several feet—he'd forgotten it was broken. Letting out a quick breath, he strove to regain control and beat it even harder.

However, though he had been gaining altitude seconds earlier, he could now feel the wind rushing through his fingers the wrong way. He let out a tiny gasp as he free floated for a moment, then tumbled head over heels and plummeted back toward the Earth at speeds faster than even the pull of gravity.


Wake up

Anti-Cosmo's eyes snapped open.

He blinked once, twice, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings and wondering for an instant why he wasn't in his own bedchamber. The memories came back quickly enough and he went rigid, listening closely to try to detect any intruders in the room. It was dark, but his night vision was only slightly less acute than a cat's, and though his lack of monocle rendered him nearly half-blind he could still make out the objects around the room with little difficulty.

The thought brought a few details from the beginning of his fast-fading dream back to him and he shuddered. The subconscious was truly a strange thing.

He caught a flash of movement in the corner of the room and squinted his eyes to hide the shine in them. He'd been correct. There was an intruder flying around his bed, searching for something along the floor, bookshelves, and tables with the air of someone who didn't want to be caught. It looked like Wanda. No, it was Wanda. Anti-Cosmo clenched his fists and, when he saw that her back was turned, slowly reached to the nightstand and gripped the wooden handle of his wand. One flick of the wrist and he could summon a cloud of vampire bats to chase her out. However, just as his wand began to glow blue, shrill cries from down the hall split the air and Wanda straightened up, looking toward the door. That round, purple fairy baby was crying in another room.

Wanda raised her wand and an instant later poof!ed away in a cloud of pink smoke. Anti-Cosmo coughed and waved at the air until it dissipated, setting his wand back on the table. He wasn't entirely sure what Wanda had been looking for, but he had a hunch and silently congratulated himself for casting an invisibility spell over the place he had hidden his book. At least now he knew his magic alarm system worked, as well.

The baby had stopped crying and the castle was left with an eerie silence. Several minutes passed and Wanda did not reappear in the room.

Anti-Cosmo lay back down, trying to relax, though it was a long time before he fell back asleep.


The incessant, soulless beeping of the alarm clock, rather than Cosmo, Wanda, and Poof's cheerful "Good morning, Timmy!" was what woke Timmy the next morning. His eyes slid open and he glanced around. The fishbowl next to his bed was devoid of fish and there were no fairies in sight. Where were—

Oh. Right. Cosmo was still missing.

Timmy jumped out of bed and threw on his clothes, then ran over and pressed his face to the cold glass side of the fishbowl. "Wanda? Poof?"

No answer.

Timmy's hands flew to his mouth. "Wait! I was supposed to be watching Poof! Oh man if something's happened to him I'm in such deep—"

"Poof-poof!" a little voice said.

Timmy stared. His pillow smiled and blinked large purple eyes at him. "Poof!"

…Poof was his pillow. Ooookay.

He ran over and picked the pillow up. Poof changed back to his normal, cute baby form, and Timmy gave him a hug. "Yeah. No need to tell Wanda about that, huh?"

As if he had summoned her, a disheveled Wanda wearing dark clothes and a ski mask materialized and dropped to the ground like her wings could no longer hold her up. However, she immediately jumped to her feet, spun around in a tight circle with her wand pointed out, yelled, "CLEAR!" and leaped forward, crashing into Timmy and Poof and sending all three of them under the bed. She grabbed baby Poof and kissed him on the cheek. "I'm so glad to see you're both okay!"

"Wanda, what happened?" Timmy gasped. His fairy godmother looked as though she had lost a fight with a rabid dog.

Tucking Poof under her arm, Wanda poof!ed up a pair of binoculars and focused them on the empty fishbowl on the nightstand. "I tried to get into Anti-Fairy World the same way we went when they kidnapped Poof!"

Timmy choked. "Wait, what?"

"It was no good. I didn't even make it five feet in. Unless we have Jorgen with us, we don't have clearance, and we're not getting into Anti-Fairy World. And Anti-Cosmo's not getting out of here!"

"Weren't you going to call Jorgen about him?" Timmy asked, though he wasn't sure he liked the idea of just turning the Anti-Fairy over to Jorgen after he'd come here for help. Anti-Cosmo hadn't even done anything to them!

Yet. This time.

Wanda bit her lip. "I want to, sport, but the trouble is I don't know what Jorgen will do to us for hiding him here. Or what'll happen to Cosmo! But we have to get him out of here soon, with Friday the 13th in a week. I do not want him anywhere around us next Friday." Wanda put away the binoculars. "It looks like it's safe. Timmy! You need to get ready for school!"

"That's what I was doing before you shoved me under the bed," Timmy grumbled. He crawled back out into his room and stood up. "Is Anti-Cosmo coming to school with us?"

Wanda pulled herself out from under the bed as well with Poof in her arms, her expression dark. She poof!ed back into her normal clothes. "He has to, Timmy. He's your—fairy godparent—now." She spat out the words, the very thought of the dark fairy carrying the same title as her clearly leaving a bad taste in her mouth. "He has to stay with you or have a really good excuse for why he's not there."

Timmy raised an eyebrow. "Why didn't that ever stop you and Cosmo from going off and acting goofy while I was being pummeled by bullies?"

Wanda flared up, her eyes literally burning. "Hey, we've always done our best! And I would appreciate it if you didn't… didn't…" Her voice broke and her eyes welled up with tears. "I—I'm worried about Cosmo!"

"Whoa! Hey, I'm sorry!" Timmy said hurriedly. "I'm sure Cosmo's fine. What could possibly have happened to him?"

"Oh, I don't know—he's only been trapped in Anti-Fairy World, in Anti-Cosmo's castle, all night, with no way to come back!" Wanda yelled. "I've been trying to call him for hours but he won't pick up his wand! I—I—" She took in a shuddering breath, visibly attempting to calm herself down. "But you're right. You're right. There isn't much you can do to Cosmo!" She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and slowly lifted into the air once more.

With a sudden little pop, Anti-Cosmo appeared in the room. He was clutching a steaming cup of tea and wearing a blue linen bathrobe. Where had he even gotten it?

"Good day, fairies, Timothy," he said. He took a sip of tea.

"Oh, there you are!" Wanda snapped, whirling around. "A fine fairy godparent you're turning out to be. Timmy's been up for—" She broke off, gawking at his ensemble. "…Did you use my bathroom?!"

Anti-Cosmo lowered his teacup. "Did you expect me to wash up in the fishbowl?"

"Yes—no—I don't know—" Wanda spluttered. She frowned. "Just stay out of my bathroom!"

"Wanda, what's your problem?" Timmy demanded. "You're already letting him stay in your house! Doesn't the bathroom come with the deal?"

Wanda gestured to the dark fairy. "Don't you remember who he is?" she replied. "He's staying in my house but I reserve the right to restrict exactly where he can go! He's not just an Anti-Fairy, he's tried to destroy Earth and Fairy World more times than I can count!"

"That's not saying much," Anti-Cosmo muttered, arms crossed over his chest with the teacup balanced carefully in the fingers of one hand. "I'm not going to poison your shampoo, if that's what you're thinking, though the idea is extremely tempting."

Timmy sighed and jerked his thumb to the hallway. "Look, if Wanda's being a stickler, you can use my bathroom when my parents aren't around."

"Thank you, Timothy." The Anti-Fairy gave him a brief nod, anti-poof!ing himself into his regular outfit and sending the cup of tea away. "Shouldn't you be catching the bus?"

Timmy jumped. He was going to be late!

He flung open his door, dashed across the hall, and ran down the stairs.

"Hey, slow down!" his dad said from the kitchen table.

"You don't want to break your ankle, do you?" his mom added.

Timmy sat down and his mom handed him a plate of… stuff. He assumed it was his breakfast.

"Eat up!" Mrs. Turner cooed.

"…Yeah…" Timmy poked at it with his fork. "I sure wish this was actually appetizing!"

"Well I wish you would stop complaining and eat your breakfast!" Mrs. Turner sniffed.

Timmy sagged with a groan. So much for fairies always having to be around unless they had a good reason not to. He glanced at the clock and sat bolt upright. "AAHH! I'm going to miss the bus!" He leaped down from his seat, grabbed his backpack and coat, and hurried outside. He'd have to wish for something to eat when he got to school. Provided his fairies ever showed up, of course.

As usual when the fairies weren't around to poof! him to school, the bus drove by while he was heading down the sidewalk, spraying him with snow. "Hey!" Timmy shouted, wiping the snow out of his eyes and breaking into a run. "Wait! Come back!" He stepped on a patch of ice and his foot flew out from under him, sending him crashing to the ground.

Ugh. He hated school days. Hated, hated, hated, hated…

A pair of dogs and a little puppy materialized next to him.

"Timmy!" the pink dog cried when she saw her godson on the ground and covered with snow. She raised her wand and Timmy found himself on his feet again, clothes and hair totally dry.

"Thanks, Wanda."

Wanda glared at the other dog, a dark blue one that was sitting a little ways away from her. "We would've been here sooner, but he didn't know how to figure out where you were with magic and we had to explain it to him!"

"Don't blame me. I've never had a godchild before, remember?" Anti-Cosmo snapped.

"Guys! Don't fight!" Timmy said exasperatedly. All three of the dogs turned their attention to him. "Look, we've gotta act totally normal, right? Otherwise Jorgen'll come down here, see Anti-Cosmo, and then we're all dead."

"Fine, you're right," Wanda sighed. Then she rounded on Anti-Cosmo once again. "But I'll be the one granting any wishes, all right? And I'll be watching you very closely!"

"Yes, so you've told me," Anti-Cosmo said wearily.

Timmy groaned. At this rate, they were never going to get out of this mess. "I wish I was at school," he said.

The three dogs raised their wands but Wanda glared at Anti-Cosmo and he lowered his with a frown. Less than a second later Timmy was standing on school grounds and Wanda, Poof, and Anti-Cosmo appeared as pens in his pocket. Timmy entered the school, slipped into Mr. Crocker's classroom, and dropped into his seat. "Okay, now you have to stay hidden," he said to the dark blue pen in his pocket.

"I know that, you dithering dolt," Anti-Cosmo replied. Wanda furrowed her brow and nudged Poof away from him.

"Ah, Turner, decided to join us at last!" Mr. Crocker said from the front of the room. Timmy glanced at the clock on the wall.

"What? School hasn't even started yet!" he protested.

The bell rang.

"And now it has!" Crocker said joyfully. "And so begins another day of your horrible failure! Who wants a pop quiz?!"

A.J. slowly put his hand up. He yanked it down again, sweating, when the looks of the other kids shot daggers at him.

"Pop quiz it is, then!" Crocker ran through the class and dropped a pre-printed quiz on every child's desk. He was pretty spry for an old guy. He ended up back at the front of the room, a few stray quizzes falling from the stack in his hands and oscillating to the ground. "You have five minutes to answer these questions. Now GO!"

Timmy stared at the first question. "'State the Pythagorean Theorem in your own words.' What the heck is the Pythagorean Theorem?"

"Turner! No talking!" Crocker shouted.

Timmy drooped. The Pythagorean Theorem had never even been mentioned in class. How was he supposed to—?

"The sum of the squares of two legs of a right triangle equal the square of the hypotenuse," a quiet voice said. Timmy jumped.

"What?" he said.

"The Pythagorean Theorem, Timothy," Anti-Cosmo replied. "The sum of the squares of—"

Wanda elbowed him. "Quiet! Crocker'll hear you! And besides, that's cheating!"

"Hey, cheating's fine with me!" Timmy said, scribbling down something about squares and hypotenuses, which he wasn't sure how to spell. "Next question! 'Write the value of pi to one thousand digits.' Anti-Cosmo?"

"Three point one-four-one-five-nine-two-six-five-three-five—"

"Enough!" Wanda shouted. "Timmy, don't write that down! Cheating's not right!" She paused and glanced at Anti-Cosmo. "…Do you really know pi to a thousand places? What purpose could that possibly serve?"

Timmy was already finished writing out the numbers Anti-Cosmo had listed, and he smiled. "That's not a thousand places but hey, it's already way more than I knew. I could get used to this."

Crocker marched up to his desk. "No talking to your writing utensils! Unless you want me to confiscate them!"

"Then how would I take the quiz?" Timmy retorted, gesturing to the paper on his desk.

Crocker looked uninterested. "That's your problem."

When he went away again Anti-Cosmo looked back down at Timmy's quiz. "The capital of Kansas is Topeka, and Australia is both a country and a continent, as well as an island. No, platypi don't do much, and the fastest animal on Earth is the peregrine falcon, which can reach speeds of over three hundred twenty-two kilometers per hour in its hunting stoop. And everyone knows that eventually the custom of giving out cards and candy on Valentine's Day will be replaced by giving out heart-shaped meat instead. What kind of quiz is this? The questions are mundane and do not in any way pertain to a specific topic!"

Timmy was writing down the dark fairy's answers when Crocker darted back over to him and yanked his pen from his hands. "Aha! I heard your pen talking! It's not an ordinary pen, it's a FAIRY!" He bounced up in the air when he said the word.

The class, including Timmy and the three disguised fairies in his pocket, just stared blankly at him as he triumphantly waved the perfectly normal pen in their faces.

"Mr. Crocker, I'm pretty sure that's just a pen," A.J. ventured.

"That's where you're wrong!" Crocker leaped over his desk and sank into his chair. He held the pen close to his eye to examine it. "If this pen isn't a FAIRY, then I'm not a third-rate elementary school teacher!"

No one had a response for that.

"Oh! The quiz!" Crocker realized, looking up from the pen. He pulled out a little box from his desk, dropped the pen into it, and snapped it closed again. "TIME'S UP! Pass your papers forward!"

Ignoring Wanda's disapproving silence, Timmy passed in his paper and sighed with relief. For once he had answered every question on a quiz! And probably right, too! If only Anti-Cosmo could take all of his tests for him.


"How could you give him those answers?" Wanda demanded once Timmy had found a seat by himself in the cafeteria and sat down for lunch. Usually he would sit with Chester and A.J. but they were off working on a project Crocker had assigned the other day. A.J. liked to get everything done early.

Wanda and Poof had disguised themselves as milk cartons on Timmy's plate. Anti-Cosmo was some sort of pastry.

"I was simply helping young Timothy," Anti-Cosmo said smugly. "That is the most important job of a fairy godparent, I understand."

"You're not supposed to help by cheating!" Wanda exploded.

Anti-Cosmo rolled his eyes. "What does it matter? It's not as if that little quiz was important. That crackpot teacher probably writes them in about ten seconds."

Wanda deflated. "Well, I still don't like it," she said.

"Yes, well, cheating is like bread and butter to an Anti-Fairy!" Cosmo's blue counterpart said. "But all that aside. We need to figure out a way to get me back to Anti-Fairy World and get Cosmo back here. I don't want him in my realm any longer!"

Wanda raised an eyebrow. "Your 'realm'?"

Anti-Cosmo sighed wearily. "Yes, Anti-Fairy World is my realm. My domain. What do you expect me to say?"

"I dunno, it's just hard to take you seriously when you look like a cupcake," Timmy said.

"I am a frosted scone!" Anti-Cosmo snapped. "You people still have no class."

Wanda, Poof, and Timmy all shared a laugh, while the Anti-Cosmo cupcake sat there looking miffed.


Cosmo, meanwhile, huddled shivering in the corner of his cell, teeth chattering so loudly that he couldn't hear anything else. If there was anything else to hear. Was there? Probably not. He was alone here. So alone! He had hardly ever been alone in the ten thousand years or so he'd been alive. His mother had always been there, and then there'd been Wanda. She had been with him through everything.

It was dark down here, and cold, and smelly, and dark—oh, wait, he'd said "smelly" twice. No wait. Dark. He'd said dark twice. Why did it have to be so dark? And quiet? And devoid of Wanda?

The darkness swam in front of his eyes but his hands were too cold to rub them. Maybe he shouldn't be sitting on the chilled, muddy ground. But what else was he supposed to do? Oh, also, he was hungry. He wished he had a hoagie. He wished he had his wand so he could poof! himself up a hoagie. He wished Foop was down here so he could get his wand back and poof! up a hoagie. But what was the point of making wishes when you didn't have fairy godparents to grant them?!

…Wait…

"HI!" a loud voice said, and a face suddenly loomed into his. Cosmo shrieked and shot several feet into the air.

From somewhere near the grimy ceiling he looked closer at the person who had broken into his internal ramblings. She was smiling up at him.

"Wanda!" Cosmo cried. He zipped down, pulling her into a tight hug. "You're back! I missed yooouuu!"

But it was strange. This Wanda smell liked chili dogs and she had blue hair. Cosmo let go of her instantly, backing up. "You're not Wanda!"

"Of course not!" the imposter laughed. "Ah'm the Anti-Wanda, doncha remember?"

"Oh yeah?" Cosmo said. "Well I'm Cosmo!" He jabbed his thumb at himself. "And I eat hoagies!"

"Hey, that's dandy! I'm ter bring you somethin' to eat." Anti-Wanda held up her ebony wand and a hoagie popped into existence. Cosmo's mouth watered and he leaped at the sub, stuffing half of it in his mouth. "Anythin' else you need?"

Cosmo swallowed the half of hoagie he had bitten off. "A clean floor? And… a toilet! And a blanket. And a kitten!"

Anti-Wanda's wand sparked and Cosmo's wishes sprang into being. Well, except for the kitten, unfortunately.

Cosmo laughed in delight and landed on the now-pristine floor. "And I need a lifetime supply of hoagies!" He lifted his arms.

"Sorry, don't think I should do that," Anti-Wanda said. "Foop didn't say nothin' about a lifetime supply of anything, the l'il darling. Oh! I need to go check on him!" She disappeared.

Alone again. Cosmo wrapped the blanket around himself and munched on the remaining half of his hoagie. He wished she had given him that kitten. More than anything, he hated to be alone.


The clanging sound of the brass doorknockers echoed through the castle. Anti-Wanda hurried to the front doors and swung them wide open. "Hey, y'all!" she said.

The lone Anti-Fairy floating above the unwelcome mat looked in confusion both to his left and right, then shrugged. "I need to speak with Anti-Cosmo," he said.

Anti-Wanda subconsciously narrowed the gap that the open door left. "'bout what?" she asked.

The Anti-Fairy looked at her doubtfully. "We found a fairy trying to get into Anti-Fairy World without any sort of clearance. We attacked but they got away, and they were wearing a hood so no one was able to recognize them. Don't you think Anti-Cosmo should know about this?"

Anti-Wanda edged the door even further closed. "Er, he ain't here right now," she said. "I mean, he can't come to th' door. Busy and stuff."

The visitor crossed his arms. "What does he do in there all day, come up with plans for world domination? Who even cares anymore? Some of us have lives to live! Ugh, never mind. Just tell him what I told you. All right? Good day." The Anti-Fairy vanished in a puff of blue smoke. Anti-Wanda slammed the castle door closed. Her Anti-Cozzie probably would want to hear about the intruder. So where was he?


"Yes, Father, where are you?" Floating near the locked bookshelves in his parents' room, Foop stroked the odd mustache that grew under his nose even at such a young age. Perhaps his father really had ended up on Earth and Cosmo had appeared here in his place. But if that were the case, wouldn't he have tried to contact them by now? Maybe he'd been captured and thrown into Abracatraz prison to rot.

No, that didn't make sense. Jorgen von Strangle had too large of an ego. If he had finally captured Anti-Cosmo again, it would be all over the fairy news.

Foop folded his arms and pouted. His father was smart. Not as smart as himself, of course, but still smart. It was good to know where he was at all times.

He wondered whether the rest of Anti-Fairy World knew of his father's disappearance. Hopefully not—that would not bode well. But how would they keep it a secret? Especially when his mother was known to happily volunteer information to anyone who asked…

"There ya are!" a familiar, chipper voice said. Anti-Wanda flew into the room and pulled Foop into a tight hug around his middle. "It's time for your nap!"

"Mother! I do not take naps!" Foop pulled away from her. "There are more important things to do!"

"But yer still just a baby—you need rest!" Anti-Wanda wailed.

"Okay, maybe I'll sleep later," Foop sighed, brushing himself off. "Any word from Father?"

"No!" Losing the cheerful attitude at once, Anti-Wanda broke down into sobs. "I don't know where he is! And I have to tell him somethin'!"

Foop had been heading out of the room but at that he turned and looked back. "Tell him what?"

Anti-Wanda wiped one of her eyes and sniffled. "A fairy tried to get into Anti-Fairy World but then escaped, and no one knows who it was!"

I'll bet I do, Foop thought immediately. His mother's pink counterpart, perhaps? "Mother, will you do me a favor?"

The female Anti-Fairy brightened immediately and clapped her hands in excitement. "Ooh, yes! Yes! Mah baby still needs me! What do you need?"

"Don't tell anyone we have Cosmo as our prisoner," Foop said. He expected his mother to look confused, and ask why, or perhaps even ask who Cosmo was.

To his surprise, she smiled as if she had known all along not to talk about Cosmo. "Aw, of course not, sweetie!" she said, fondly ruffling the two hairs on top of Foop's head. "He's in the dungeon! We never talk about anyone in the dungeon. Been that way for thousands of years!"


"These are grave tidings. More consequences of your many, many failures, von Strangle."

Jorgen looked up in surprise at the four cloaked figures sitting above him in high-backed chairs. "Failures? What are you talking about?"

"Exactly what it sounds like! Failures!" The pink-cloaked figure pounded on the table with his fist, the yellow eyes glowing beneath his hood blazing with rage. When Jorgen still looked clueless, the figure in the blue cloak leaned forward.

"Daggone it, Jorgen, the Anti-Fairies!" the figure said. "You managed to keep them all contained for centuries, true, but then a ten-year-old human child came along and released all of them right from under your nose!"

"He wished them free! What am I supposed to do about a wish?" Jorgen protested.

The blue figure held up a hand to stop him, then gripped the edge of the table tightly. "You managed to recapture them all, sure, but then sometime later the same child came in and set Anti-Cosmo free. Again—right. From. Under. Your. NOSE! Since then Anti-Cosmo has released the rest of the Anti-Fairies, plotted again and again for universal domination and obtaining a godchild, and now this!"

"Well, it wasn't my fault this time!" Jorgen said, his tone suggesting that he failed to believe that the rest of Anti-Cosmo's escapes were his fault either. "I came to you as soon as possible!"

"Oh, it's never your fault, Jorgen von Strangle," the purple-cloaked figure sneered. "You mean well. You're just incompetent, is all."

"I'm sure you didn't come to us as soon as you could," the pink figure drawled. "These matters should be turned over to the Fairy Council directly but you tried to solve this mess on your own, isn't that right? You always do."

"Um," Jorgen said.

"It hardly matters," the turquoise-cloaked fairy, and the only remaining member of the Council, said. "Did you at least get the book?"

"…Book?" Jorgen said, struggling to figure out what they were talking about. He vaguely remembered Anti-Cosmo carrying a book when he had rudely anti-poof!ed into his bathroom. "No. Should I have?"

The four cloaked fairies drew a collective intake of breath and fell to muttering amongst themselves.

The blue-cloaked fairy leaned forward. "Let me get this straight, Jorgen. Anti-Cosmo has a book of unpredictable dark magic that was banned millennia ago, he's somehow managing to appear in Fairy World as he pleases, and you have no idea where he is?"

"Well, surely he'll be in Anti-Fairy World?" the turquoise-cloaked fairy asked his comrade.

The fairy he was addressing rested his head on his fist. "As long as he is in possession of that book, he could be anywhere. He could be hiding out in Pixie World for all we know."

The purple fairy crossed his arms over his chest and gripped his shoulders. "You know, I thought all of those books were destroyed."

"Obviously the Anti-Fairies managed to hold onto a few copies!" the pink fairy said.

The turquoise fairy spoke up again. "Well, we're not in much danger if he doesn't cast any of the spells—"

"He's already cast a spell!" the blue fairy growled. "I felt it, didn't you?! The idiot cast one of the spells. Don't you know what that means? And now time is running short!"

"Anti-Cosmo's not really an idiot—" Jorgen pointed out, but no one paid him any heed and he scowled.

"We need that book!" The blue fairy pounded his fist on the table with enough force to rattle it. "Things cannot return to how they were in the olden times. With the resurface of the book and dark magic we could all return to how we were before, mischievous vain little creatures that cared nothing for mortal life, hiding out in the forests and leading travelers astray, stealing human children and replacing them with our own for the sick enjoyment of it—"

"Good times," the turquoise fairy muttered.

"Silence!" the blue fairy said. "As I said, we cannot be brought back to that. We've come too far, and Anti-Cosmo must pay for tampering with the balance we've worked for thousands of years to achieve." His head snapped up. "Von Strangle!"

"Yes?" Jorgen said irritably. He had almost thought he'd been forgotten.

"Find the book and Anti-Cosmo and bring them both here. By any means necessary! We will personally declare Anti-Cosmo's sentence to him."

"Yes, Fairy Council," Jorgen said.

"Oh, and Jorgen, how is that special case going?" the purple-cloaked fairy asked.

"What special case?"

"The godchild Timmy Turner," the purple fairy replied.

Jorgen scoffed. "Special case? How is Turner a special case?"

"Because when there is rule-breaking or something big goes wrong, you can bet it somehow involves Timothy Tiberius Turner!" the pink fairy snapped.

"Turner's got nothing to do with this," Jorgen said. "I checked his house straightaway."

"Yesss, before coming to us, in fact. I knew you were lying before." The purple fairy rested his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers. "Just keep an eye on him. He is the godchild of Anti-Cosmo's counterpart, after all. If any human is involved with this, it'll be him."

"Now go, and speak of this to no one!" the blue fairy said, brandishing dramatically to the large door leading out of the chamber. "And remember, bring the book and Anti-Cosmo. Do not mess up this time. This meeting of the Council is now dismissed."

He pulled out a gavel and pounded it once on the table, and with that Jorgen was banished from the room in a puff of smoke.


A/N: The Fairy Council has appeared in one episode only so far. I referenced that episode for their appearances and the sounds of their voices, though it didn't have much bearing on the personalities I gave them, so I hope they're all right.

Also, in case anyone was wondering, these scenarios I've set up are not going to lead to romance.