Disclaimer: Just so you know, I really don't own FOP. Yeah…
Chapter Two: Hello, Again!
Timmy Turner glared at his bowl of Crash Nebula cereal and ignored everyone else. Around him, Cosmo ate his enormous roll of Swiss cheese (partly melted to his liking) and Wanda munched, thoughtfully, on a piece of toast. Tootie nudged him, trying to coax him into a conversation and Cal had yet to surface from his bowl of Scrappies. The only thing missing was Vicky, who never voyaged to the first level if she could help it.
Cosmo was too happy with his cheese to comment. Between the two of them, they sensed telepathy passing through between Timmy and Tootie, with Tootie as the sender. Any foreign telepathic pair would register as distant thought, and one would have to exert an effort to push it beyond into a received thought. That way, anyone outside the pair would be excluded, just in case. Telepathy was also a defense mechanism, a genetic development allowing true loves to continue and pass on their genes to the next group. If they could warn each other of danger, no matter how far away the partner might be, it would save them.
That reminded her of something she'd much rather forget, her inability to have children. Thinking about it turned her stomach, and she deposited the toast on the plate. Better to think about other things, and so, she focused her attention on Timmy.
Timmy continued to glare at his cereal box and wasn't speaking to anyone in the room. She knew the transition and grieving would be tough, but she didn't like the way he reacted to things. One moment, he'd be fine and the next a lit fuse. She had a sneaky suspicion The Other was orchestrating this but she couldn't prove it. After all, they knew so little about The Other, considering he was the first human anti faerie in centuries, perhaps millenia.
She glanced and Cosmo and sniffed. As long as he had cheese, he was happy. The world could fall apart around him, but as long as he could have his cheese and eat it too, he wouldn't notice. This was, in all aspects, a rather disturbing thought.
"Dammit!" Vicky screeched from the basement and all looked at the door leading there, startled. Timmy ceased staring at Crash Nebula belligerently and Tootie stopped kicking him to get his attention. Wanda hesitated in mid air and stared at the door. She began to drift near it and then stopped. Cosmo, however, continued to eat. Cheese was cheese, regardless of crazy women.
Loud banging noises commenced, accompanied by angry, battle-like cries. It sounded like she waged a war and lost miserably. Whatever it was, it was probably best to let her work it out by herself, lest one of them be struck in the aftermath. Besides, Wanda shuddered, The Other's mistreatment hadn't improved Vicky's temper any.
From where she floated, she couldn't tell what was going on, but it sounded like a lot of silverware, pots, and pans were being flung in every direction. The cacophony was deafening and the humans had winced. Cosmo didn't seem affected. Wanda suppressed a groan, that was, until he rattled a couple of spoons together to the beat. She scowled, swiped them from him and placed them back in the drawer.
As suddenly as it had started, the noises stopped and all heaved a sigh of relief. Whatever it was, it was over now.
"Get down here!" Vicky howled.
"Oh, great, another wake up call," Cosmo groaned. Wanda groaned too.
"Do you want to go or should I?"
"But...Wanda..." Cosmo protested. "I have cheese! Cheese!"
"That'd be a no," she said and moaned.
"Good luck," Tootie muttered.
"Thanks," Wanda shot back. "I hope I won't need it."
"Dammit!" Throwing yet another pot onto the pile, Vicky was essentially having a temper tantrum of sorts. It seemed during the night she found traces of The Other and was now going about rendering them nonexistent, much to Wanda's chagrin, who kept dodging them in mid-air. Also, just how many pots and pans did the girl have? A small mountain had built up next to the sink.
"I'll kill him!"
Not if he doesn't kill you first. Aloud, Wanda wondered, "How did he get in the house?"
"That isn't my problem! You're the ones who are supposed to protect me!"
What, so Timmy and Tootie are dead now? She sighed. "This won't help."
"Like I give a shit!" Vicky chucked another item, this time a skillet, in Wanda's direction. She dodged it narrowly (it came within five inches of striking her), and floated in front of Vicky.
"Look," Wanda said, nearly at the end of her tether, "stop throwing stuff and listen to me!"
Vicky held up a kettle and was about to add it to her rapidly growing collection when she discovered she couldn't. Her arm was paralyzed, a pink aura surrounding it.
"Better."
Wanda put her wand down and continued. "We (Cosmo and I, but mostly me) will work on a spell preventing The Other from entering the house. However, this won't stop him from going into the basement, since he's already been there. It's better than nothing all, so don't complain."
"What do you mean, he can come back into the basement? What the hell are you good for me?" Vicky shrieked.
"We can't block him from somewhere he's already been," Wanda said. "And this is the best we've got so far."
"Useless faeries," Vicky scoffed.
"We're the only reason The Other hasn't run off with you and made you his concubine," Wanda retorted. If Vicky could sink to new lows, so could she. "The least you can do is be grateful. Now clean up this mess."
"No."
"You fix it, you were the one who made it. I'm Timmy's fairy godmother, not yours."
Vicky growled and glared at the metal clutter. She folded her arms across her chest and stared at it, hoping Wanda would get the hint and do something. She thought wrongly.
Wanda ignored her and scanned the area. A note stuck to the cupboard, now completely empty thanks to Vicky's temper tantrum, bore Lorenzo's handwriting and his magic signature. She flicked it at Vicky and Vicky glared hatefully at her.
"There's your evidence," she snapped. "Clean up the mess, child."
The Other grinned and battled around a red hair. Drifting along the air currents outside (it was a nice, breezy summer day in Boston), the hair floated here and there, not particular about where it roamed, much like him. As long as it got to where it wanted to, it was happy.
"Some people," he drawled, "would have to pay for transcontinental transport. Then again, some people would consider this fair warning."
Fetching an orange lighter from his brown dress pant pocket, he set the hair aflame and observed the burn. The noxious smell didn't bother him one bit, it was the satisfaction of knowing his plan was to be set in motion that sweetened the stench. Nothing could stop him, not when Timmy's own security was so very lax as to allow him to spend nearly an hour with Vicky and escape unscathed. Fools.
Curling, the hair twisted and turned in the flame. Regarding it with satisfaction, he tossed it up the nearest tree where a family of squirrels made their home, and saw them smolder (he lobbed the lighter as well for good measure) and die.
"Burn, baby, burn. The time is nigh. This'll be the day that you die."
Timmy felt a trickling sensation down the base of his spine. As the sun set around him, he sensed there was something wrong in Dimmsdale as his meals gurgled unpleasantly in the pit of his stomach. By the prickling of his thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
Tootie was asleep, trying in vain to reclaim last night's lost slumber. Her chest moved up and down gently; Timmy noticed it had a slightly rhythmic sensation to it, almost as though she were conducting a music video. She was secure and safe, her hero right before her. True, often he didn't act the part, but she infinitely preferred the illusion.
Tucking a stray hair behind her ear, he sank back into the couch and waited for all hell to break loose. He didn't have to wait long.
Lorenzo had learned, leafing through the book, a way to send Mr. and Mrs. Turner around town without his presence. He could not spy on Cosmo and Wanda without their noticing, nor could he enter their club house without Timmy being alerted. Plus, he didn't have a concrete way to kill them yet, and he preferred to act according to design rather than spontaneity. As it was, he thought this would work best until he had a rough draft plotted out.
Raising his hands, he produced blue crackling magical balls and flung them at Mr. and Mrs. Turner. They had fallen asleep as ghosts in mid air (why they required sleep, he'd never know), and they whisked away to their next target.
((Timmy Turner. Timmy Turner)).
Smacking his palms together, he smirked and placed the book away. Now, it was time to see what pleasures awaited him in the Fairy World armory. They weren't paying attention to him anyway, so why not 'be all he could be'?