"What do you mean by that?" Shaggy asked.

"Exactly what I said. Don't ask, 'why did he do this to us' ask 'what motivated him to do it,'" Winter said.

Daphne seemed to be thinking of something else. "Is there a way that you can show us what happened in that final battle?"

Winter made a non-committal noise. "I suppose so. Though you should just ask Vincent."

"We've tried that, sir. He won't tell us anything," Shaggy protested.

Winter stood up and walked to the basin in the center of the room, taking a seat on the snow-brick railing that ran around it. "Ice can be dangerous," he said as he touched the air over the bottom of the basin. As soon as he did, water rippled into it instantly, and froze so clearly that it looked like the basin was still empty. He glanced up at the humans. "What do you want to see?"

The three of them glanced at each other. "The last time we battled Asmodeus, what happened after that," Daphne finally said. No one else was willing to speak up.

Winter nodded. "Touch the ice."

All three of them drew closer. Winter remained seated where he was. Daphne reached down, and hesitantly touched the ice. It was solid under her hand. The center of the ice began to glow, and they all watched as the scene unfolded before them.

(-)

The Himalayas

Two Years Earlier

They were falling. Through the snow, through the Earth.

And then the mountains were below them. Asmodeus had teleported them, and they were plummeting back to Earth.

Vincent managed to pull out the crystal ball. It started to glow green. Asmodeus' wings were clamped to his body, allowing him to free-fall. He ignored the Gang, instead aiming for Vincent, and knocking the crystal ball out of the warlock's hand.

"Diaga!" Vincent snarled, and the blast of light magic, sent the monster flying back. He turned his attention to the crystal. "Levitate!" It floated back up towards him. He caught it.

Asmodeus was back, and grabbed the crystal. This time he couldn't get it out of Vincent's hand. Instead he forced his own magic into it, a dark red competing with green.

The dueling energy caused a crack in the crystal. The noise of the crack was like thunder around them.

"You think you can save them?" Asmodeus mocked.

"I will save them!" Vincent snapped.

Neither of them was willing to relinquish their hold on the crystal. Asmodeus opened his other hand, and another orb of dark red energy expanded from it, this time encompassing all the Gang. Scenes began to appear against the red background, of the Spector Reflector's lair, the town where they had met Flim-Flam and Daphne had been turned into a werewolf, the world of Frankenscoob, more and more scenes from even earlier, the Gang with Fred and Velma, Flim-Flam at the orphanage he'd grown up, almost too fast to be seen. As the memories drifted out, the Gang went limp and then unconscious, still free-falling in the air.

"I will leave you to bury them like you buried Mortifer!" Asmodeus told Vincent. "I will know their memories and minds and there will be nowhere on this planet that they will be able to go to escape me. One stray thought of the Chest or of you or any of my fellow prisoners in that box will lead me to them no matter where they hide!" The memories that he had taken from them were starting to coalesce into the orb of red magic Asmodeus held in his hand.

Vincent reached out in a movement of desperation, grabbed the monster's hand, and slapped it against the emerald pendant hanging around his neck. Instantly, his face contorted into an expression of pain, as Asmodeus shrieked, "No!" Then he tightened his grip on the emerald. "You want to thwart me?! Fool enough to show my your powers, now I curse you! I hide them from you, as you hide them from me!" The red orb that he had been holding was now absorbing into the emerald.

Vincent looked like he was in agony at that, though from what Asmodeus was saying or the new red glow that now surrounded his emerald was impossible to tell. He broke the connection, managing the knock Asmodeus' hand off of his emerald. The last evidence of what had happened was a red glow in the center of the stone, that slowly disappeared as Asmodeus' magic was dispersed within the stone. He held the crystal ball up again, but Asmodeus grabbed it. When Vincent tried to free the crystal ball again, Asmodeus knocked his blast of light magic aside.

The crystal, now under pressure from two opposing magics, shattered into two pieces. "Holy light!" Vincent's spell of light magic sent Asmodeus flying back. The ground was growing closer. "Teleport!" Vincent, shouted, but there was a sound of laughter from the monster, and in the midst of it they all disappeared.

x-x-x

Scrappy woke up, stretched, and yawned. "Wow. I must have been sleeping really hard." He hopped out of bed, and immediately slipped on half a crystal ball lying on the floor by the bed. It caused him to face-plant, and he sat up, rubbing his nose. "Ow." Then he saw what he had tripped on. "Huh? What's this?" He turned it over, but there was nothing on it that showed where it could have come from. "I wonder what it is." He lifted it over his head, and marched out of the room.

Shaggy and Scooby were downstairs at the kitchen table. "It's good to be back," Shaggy was saying while perusing a newspaper when Scrappy marched into the room. "I'm glad we got Uncle Beauregard's estate sorted out."

Scooby was devouring a huge bowl of cereal. "Ruh-huh."

"Here's an ad that looks interesting. It's a posting for a gym teacher's job at a girl's school. I'll have to call them and see what documents they want," Shaggy said. He lowered the newspaper as Scrappy hopped up on the table, and dropped the half a crystal ball on it. "Like, morning Scrappy. Whatcha got there?"

"Morning Shaggy, Uncle Scooby. I don't know. I found this when I got up this morning. But it feels important. I want to find out why!" He hopped down off the table, leaving the ball behind, and went to the pantry.

Shaggy and Scooby exchanged glances. "Well, Gang, looks like we've got a mystery on our hands," Shaggy said. Scooby laughed as the beatnik opened his paper again and kept reading.

x-x-x

When her alarm went off, Daphne slapped the button on top of it and curled up under her blanket again. For a few minutes longer she was allowed to sleep in peace. Then there was a knock on the door, and she heard Velma on the other side. "Daphne, are you up? I thought that we were leaving this morning."

Daphne sat bolt upright in the bed. "I forgot!" She gasped. She hopped out of bed and immediately stubbed her toe on the Chest of Demons next to the bed. "Ow ow ow!" she hopped back and sat down on the bed, rubbing her sore toe. "Where did that thing come from? And what is it?"

There was a knock on the door again, and this time Velma opened the door and peeked in. "You didn't forget we were leaving this morning, did you?"

"No, no, just overslept," Daphne assured her, getting up and picking up the Chest.

"What is that thing?" Velma asked. "A Halloween decoration?"

"Umm," Daphne stopped and realized that she didn't know. "Yes. Don't open it!" She cautioned as she snatched her clothes from a chair where she had set them out the day before and ran into the bathroom to change, only to poke her head back out as soon as she had closed the door. "Don't open that!" Then she closed the door again.

Velma looked at the box she was holding. "I don't know who would want to open this ugly thing," she sighed. She set the chest down on the bed and headed back out to load the bags into the car. She was looking forward to getting down to Florida, back to her job, and stopping anywhere they felt like along the way in their girls-only road trip.

They were just ready to set out. The bags were packed, the house was closed up, and they were ready to leave. Just as Daphne put the key into the van's ignition, she stopped. "Wait! There's something I forgot." She darted back into the house. Velma watched as she came back out with the chest and put it into the back of the van.
"Bringing the ugly Halloween decoration?" Velma asked as Daphne got back into the van.

"I need to keep it with me," Daphne said.

"Whatever," Velma sighed. Daphne started the van, and they set off.

x-x-x

When Flim-Flam opened his eyes, he was lying in a field, looking up a blue sky. He couldn't remember how he had come to be here, though he did remember that he had left the orphanage to try his luck elsewhere.

A village was down below. He decided to try his luck there. As he stood up, a glint nearby caught his eye. When he parted the grass, he saw a half a crystal ball lying there.

"Huh. Weird." He picked it up, and wondered where the feeling of nostalgia was coming from when he held it. "I'll hang on to it for now." He tucked it away in his sweatshirt and set off for the village below.

x-x-x

When Vincent opened his eyes, he was lying in the snow outside the front step of his castle. He slowly got to his feet. There was something behind him, and he turned to see Asmodeus standing there. The threshold of the castle with it's protection spells was behind him.

Asmodeus looked furious. "When I find those foolish children, and after I have killed them, would you like me to leave their bodies where they fall, or bring them here to you?" Vincent's eyes widened, but before he could retort, Asmodeus flung a fireball at him and he raised his cape to block the blast. It dissipated against the fabric. Asmodeus leaped over to were the warlock was standing and yanked the cape away.

There was nothing behind it. Vincent had teleported away.

Inside his castle Vincent summoned a new cape and went to his study to retrieve the crystal sitting in the hand of glory stand on his desk. Then he teleported again.

But when he arrived in the foyer of Daphne's house, it was dark and quiet. There was no one there.

[A/N:] Once more, with clarity! Going all the way back to that prologue in Chapter 1! And now, finally, the Gang knows what happened, and why they forgot everything. There was supposed to be a scene at the end where Vincent visits the Doos to ask about Scooby, for some reason the Doos can't reach Scooby, and Vincent asks them to have him come visit the Himalayas, but the time gap between Scooby's return and the time Vincent visited was so long that the Doos had already forgotten about Vincent, but I couldn't find a way to put that in here.

The title for this chapter comes from Icon for Hire's song "Off With Her Head" which I listened too while writing the flashback fight with Asmodeus. I don't generally name chapters after anything in particular (with the obvious exception a couple chapters ago). I picked the song for the music and tone, and the chapter title was going to be "The Penalty of All My Deeds" before I realized that a line used sporadically in the chorus, "save your own," would actually fit the chapter better.