Fanfics. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the comfy couch, Denial. Its continuing mission…to explore strange new plot twists…to seek out eternal optimism and happy endings…to boldly write what no one has written before…

(Ya' know, considering the main title of this fic, I am so surprised I didn't come up with that one sooner!)

(…) means twin's telepathy and ((…)) means Cosmo and Wanda telepathy.\

No, I don't own FOP or any reference to its varied characters mentioned herein, and unless the new episodes that follow 'School's Out' begin showing the love again, I wouldn't want to. So, for now, Butch Hartman can keep his name tacked on…even if it is for nothing more than the royalties at this point.

Oh…and I don't own The Big Comfy Couch either. That belongs to some broadcasting company in Tennessee I think. : )

Fairly OddParents : The Next Generation

Chapter 14. A Little Bit of Help

The house on the top of the hill was massive. White stone walls, huge columns of white marble and tall French windows adorned it in an ostentatious flaunting of wealth and power.

Wanda shuddered.

She'd been to more than a few parties at homes like this in Fairy World as a young fairy because of her own father's love of power and she hadn't enjoyed them one bit. The only reason she'd gone to them was because Big Daddy had given her no choice. It was his thought that she should find someone at these functions he approved of. Someone he could find useful in his world of control and influence. Yes, he would have settled for Wandissimo. He was, after all, underhanded enough. But he'd still hoped for a slightly better connected son-in-law. "Good looks," he said, "only got you so far."

Her sister Blonda had once told her that through rumor, she had heard that going to one such party was how Big Daddy came to be with their mother. Her added opinion was that their mother had fallen for the "bad boy" look what with Daddy's scar and all.

Wanda couldn't be sure if that was a fact or not as Blonda was known to be a little less than truthful on occasion. But still, Wanda couldn't see their mother actually just letting herself be told what she had to do. Or maybe…

The fairy paused at the thought with a grim purse of her lips.

Maybe she had been. After all, if Wanda herself at that age had been under the belief that it was all that there was to her life, who was to say her mother hadn't been like that too?

Thank goodness Cosmo had come along when he had. Otherwise… Heaven only knew where she'd be or what she'd become by this point.

The thoughts were quickly pushed aside. Thinking about how she might have ended up without Cosmo in her life at all led her of course to consider what life might become like for her without Cosmo now, and that was something she didn't even want to acknowledge.

Getting back to the task at hand, Wanda quickly double checked the address on the front gate to the list. It was a match. Now all she had to do was verify whether or not a godparent had been here. It was another job that could only be done by eyesight for without her magic, there was no way to feel even the largest concentration of energy let alone the littlest smattering of a magical essence.

Slipping through the bars of the gate easily, Wanda made her way up to the house and after walking around to the backside, she found one window on the second story open with a very soft light emanating from it. Thinking it could be a bathroom with a night light on, it only stood to reason that a child's room would be very close by.

Wanda studied the wall carefully, quickly taking notice of a small edge of stone work that ran around the entire house just beneath the windows. It was barely seven inches wide, but that was enough. It was a way to get to the window. Now all she needed, was a way to get to the ledge.

By the opposite side of the house there stood a small oak tree with several limbs that extended out to almost touch the house. One branch in particular brushed up against the ledge.

'I guess that's all I'm getting,' she thought to herself with a sigh as she moved over to the tree and looked it over. It was not an old oak tree and as such, the lowest limbs were not all that high. But they were still well out of reach of even Wanda's best jumps so, she settled herself to dragging over a heavy wrought iron patio chair. Pulling the metal chair off of it's decorative canopied brick patio was excruciatingly slow work as she did not want to make any loud scraping sounds. She'd thought that would have been the hardest part.

But she was wrong.

She quickly discovered that dragging something so heavy through the thick grass was something else all together. The chair was constantly getting snagged in the little ruts it dug out of the earth as she pulled it along and it took almost ten minutes just to get the chair where she needed it.

Once beneath the lowest limb of the tree, Wanda climbed onto the back of the chair and balanced carefully as she stood slowly. Even with her arms extended, she still needed to jump a good foot up to reach the branch and the chair barely remained straight as it was with her weight on the back of it. To jump from it was going to take a calculated risk that she could not afford to flub. She would have to push off only hard enough to reach the branch, but not so hard that it toppled the chair while she was still on it. If she didn't reach the branch or the chair fell out from under her there was every possibility of her getting hurt, even more so now that she was bereft of any magic whatsoever, and in the interest of finding Cosmo, it would most definitely not be a help.

Wanda carefully crouched herself down as far as she dared, then with a quick breath she jumped up, her fingers reaching desperately for the tree limb. Her hands made contact with the branch and clutching it madly she gripped it for all she was worth as the sound of the chair thudding to the ground reached her ears. First making sure she had a solid hold, Wanda chanced a look down to see the chair toppled over onto the grass.

'Great,' she thought. 'Now I'm going to have drop from the branch on the way down. Not good.'

Wanda sighed. That could wait to be thought of she decided. First things first, she had to get up to the house and check for signs of a fairy.

She pulled herself up onto the branch and from there carefully made her way up through the tree. After nearly falling three times, breaking two nails and being scratched and slapped by some of the inner branches for about five minutes, Wanda promised she would never take being able to turn into a squirrel for granted again.

The thought was quickly amended.

She was never going to take magic for granted again, period.

Wanda gingerly stepped onto the ledge of the house and inched her way along until she was by the lighted window. She leaned forward to peek in…and suddenly yanked her head back in alarm.

It was not a bathroom she had been trying to get too all this time. It was a bedroom. A girl's bedroom. And the girl was still awake.

Wanda's heart thumped in her chest. Had she seen her?

"Fleur?" came a girl's hopeful voice.

Wanda groaned silently.

Well, that answered that question.

"Oh." came a sad voice from beside Wanda. "You're not her."

Wanda turned to see the girl gazing at her from the open window with a crestfallen look. Wanda couldn't help but feel sorry for the girl. She'd obviously been crying.

"I'm sorry," was all Wanda could manage.

"Its okay."

There was a moment of silence as Wanda mulled over how exactly she should handle this. Asking if she was Fleur had answered Wanda's main question on whether there was a fairy from this home. Especially since Wanda knew who Fleur was. They'd met once at a party some time back before she and Cosmo had been able to get their long break.

The problem was, that one always had to watch how they talked with a child under fairy godparent care. If the girl made full mention that Fleur was her fairy godparent, then technically, she would lose her. But there were a few other things that Wanda wanted to ask. It had to be done just right though.

The girl however seemed quite aware of her rules and was surprisingly, the one who spoke next.

"You can come in if you want to."

The fairy looked at her.

"You know what I am?"

The girl gave her criticizing gaze.

"Duh. A fairy. What else would you be?"

"How about a thief?"

The girl managed a wry grin.

"Yeah right. With that hair? As if."

Wanda gave her a grim smile before accepting the invitation to climb in. Once inside the girl's room, Wanda took a quick look around and homed in on an empty bird cage as the girl spoke quietly.

"I've been leaving the window open and the light on hoping Fleur would come back."

Wanda crossed over to the flashy gilded cage.

Fleur was a young thing barely a few thousand years old and still relatively new to god parenting. With powder blue hair and eyes, she was a smart, sweet little fairy with a strong sense of the dramatic. Her one failing, if one could call it that, was that she still retained a certain naiveté about life in general. In some ways it actually acted more like charm and she had once told Wanda she never could understand why guys followed her around every time she returned to Fairy World. Wanda could only smirk at the girl's innocent wondering. At least the fairy was being smart and waiting until the right one came along.

"How long has she been gone?" Wanda asked as she touched the bars.

"Almost two weeks."

Wanda turned to the girl in surprise.

Two weeks? How had her godmother vanished and been gone two weeks without Fairy World knowing?

"She just disappeared and I haven't heard anything since."

Wanda nodded.

"Unfortunately, that's the story with a lot of fairies lately."

The girl's eyes went wide.

"So something is happening?"

"Yes. But we don't know what yet. I'm trying to find out."

"So, you're not a replacement?"

Wanda gave the girl a gentle look.

"No. I'm sorry."

The girl looked down sadly.

"I really miss her."

"I know sweetie. But don't worry. You'll have her back soon."

"Do you have any clues yet? What happened to them all and where they are?"

"That's why I'm here actually. I think I may have a lead and I was just trying to confirm it. It might help me find them all."

"Okay. So what do you need to know?"

"Well, just in coming here and talking to you, I've already answered my main question."

"That being?"

"That a fairy was here. Now I just have to check to see if all the other homes I have on my list had a fairy and a Vic-Bot at the same time."

The girl shivered.

"That robot was creepy. It was always following me around watching everything I did. I had to lock the door so Fleur could come out once in a while."

"So you two did try to keep the robot from seeing her?"

"Of course. She didn't want to take a chance that it had some recording device or something inside."

Wanda nodded. Naive, but smart, Fleur was sure to turn out to be one of the greats in fairy god parenting.

"Can you tell me a little about the day she disappeared?"

"I guess. I mean, my parents went to a dinner party and half way along, Fleur wasn't answering any more. Then that Vic-Bot took off and left me alone. My folks were furious when they got home and it wasn't here."

"So Fleur went missing and then the Vic-Bot left soon after."

"Yeah."

There was silence a moment as Wanda took it in.

"So does that help in any way?" asked the girl.

Wanda smiled gently again.

"Oh yes. Very much so. And I thank you so much."

The girl shook her head.

"I should be thanking you. You're the one looking for the missing fairies after all."

She then gave a sly smile.

"Did Jorgen order you to do this?"

"In a manner of speaking," replied Wanda. "But he didn't need too really. I was going to do this regardless."

The girl gave her a long look before she asked, "Who are you looking for?"

Wanda looked away briefly before she answered softly.

"My husband."

"Oh. I…I hope you find him soon. And Fleur…well, all of them really. I mean, there's a lot of kids out there that are feeling just as bad as I am. But…I guess no one feels as bad as you do though."

Wanda pushed back a threatening tremble of unhappiness.

"Maybe. Look, I'm going to have to go. When I see Fleur, who can I say was worried sick about her?"

"I'm Lily."

Wanda nodded.

"Well, it was nice meeting you Lily. And thank you so much again for your help."

"If I can do anymore, just tell me."

The fairy looked at the window quickly.

"Well, it would really be helpful if there was another way out besides the window. I really don't want to risk breaking a leg by jumping out of a tree."

"A tree? Why would you have you jump out of a tree? Can't you just poof yourself out of here?"

Wanda shook her head.

"Jorgen decided to cut the magic to all the fairies on earth."

"Just to be safe?"

"Yes."

Lily nodded understandingly.

"Figures. Come on. You can go out the front door."

Wanda smiled gratefully.

"Thank you Lily."

Lily led Wanda through the darkened house and out the front door, but before Wanda could leave the top steps, Lily kneeled down and pulled Wanda into a hug.

Wanda was at first surprised by the show, but she quickly understood that the girl had been waiting for some sign of her own godmother for almost two weeks. Wanda's appearance was the first ray of hope the girl had had in all that time and with no one else to share the situation with, the poor girl had been holding her worry in. Lily was just trying to convey how grateful she was for this hope and had to let her know.

Wanda patted the girl's back gently before Lily finally let her go and pulled back with an embarrassed smile.

"Sorry. I just had to say thank you for trying."

"I understand Lily. You don't need to explain."

Lily smiled.

"Good luck finding everyone. Especially your husband…and Fleur of course."

Wanda smiled gently in return with an encouraging wink.

"Especially those two."

Wanda felt Lily's eyes watch her as she walked away.

Not that she hadn't known how big a deal this was right from the start, but Wanda was suddenly much more aware of what was going on. What her search really meant.

This girl Lily was depending on her to find one of the only sources of happiness in her life.

And so were over a thousand other children in the world.

Even if they didn't know it.

Suddenly, it was no longer as much about power, magic and personal loss, as it was about happiness and hope.

xxxxxxxxx

"Green hair and green eyes? You're positive?"

"Sir, yes. There's no question. I saw him and the damage he caused myself. The others may have been angry, but none of them comes close to showing any of the initiative this one has. He must be one of the ones you're looking for."

There was a loud snort of contempt.

"You couldn't even begin to know."

"Uh, sir?"

"I believe I'll be the authority on whether this is one or not. Get the car. I want to see it. Now."

"Yes, sir."

The minion quickly left and the room was silent as a lone figure contemplated.

'Pathetic imbecile. As if he would understand. No one could know what I've suffered because of them. Hmmm. Green hair and eyes… If it is one of them, then I'm only one away from finally succeeding. Even better, I'll not only have those two, but I'll have every other fairy in the world as well.'

There was a soft laugh.

"Pink or green…I wonder which one I'll take care of first…"

Hey all! Sorry this chapter is a day late getting up, but I just got Season 4 of Smallville and I couldn't help but have a marathon of the first four DVDs to get a massive fix of Clark, Lex, Lana, Lois and the rest. And the best part is that I still have three more DVDs to get through today! Whee!

Thank you as usual to the following wonderful reviewers who have kindly up'ed the review count to its all new high of 8 for one chapter! You all positively make me glow with joy at the lavish reviews you give, though I may have to start making my replies much smaller… But seriously, I've got a Cosmo wide grin on even as I write this! And man, does my face ever hurt! How does he keep his smile so wide without hurting himself?

Band Geek 727 - I'm glad you liked the bit about the eyesight. I really liked that part a lot myself. It just sort of came to me and I ran with it. Worked for me since in the show, most of the humans rarely even have pupils drawn in unless they're going 'puppy dog eyes' on us. We shall see what Timmy actually remembers about his childhood a little later. But that's all I'm saying on it at this point. J I give away too many hints as it is!

Aerinsoul - Another Trixie21induced heart attack? I guess I need to start carrying a portable Defibrillator machine with me if this going to keep happening. Not that I would mind…I've always wanted to yell "Clear!" before jump starting someone's heart. Lol.;) You could hear the Mission Impossible music in the background too when Wanda was sneaking through the house and "ahem" borrowing that list couldn't you? A guide to Fairy Godparents? That is a neat idea! I've actually got a few ideas that I've been dieing to use in another FOP story. The real reason we never see baby fairies floating about Fairy World being one of them. It would be neat to come up with the whole social structure of their world though. I haven't seen all the episodes yet so I'm still not sure what has been mentioned about fairies 'officially' in the show and what hasn't. Example…The King's throne room as shown in the Fairyversary Muffin incident…has a king ever actually been shown? And if so, what's he like? I don't get the feeling that Jorgen would be it. He just runs FW as far as I've seen. In the 'real world' lure of fairies of the air, (which our little guys would certainly be) a king is made up in difficult times when many chosen fairies come together to form him. It's a collective in that instance so to speak (Shudders as I think of the Borg.) and I've been dieing to use that in a fic at some point as well. Geez I have too many ideas! And you guys keep giving me more! I'll never get them all down! Oh, and yes. Sugar flavored, sugar coated, heart stopping C&W sugary fluffiness to come. Have no fear of that!

See? I can ramble too. ;)

The-3-Amigos - Things that make you go hmmm…Lol. (Do any of you remember that song, or am I just dating myself again?) Its funny, since you wrote "It's really weird how the twin's birthday is the date when he got his fairy godparents... I wonder…" I've been starting to wonder about that myself. I mean sure, it just happened to work out in my time line all rather neatly and most coincidentally, but I now find myself wondering how coincidental that really was. Me thinks I shall have to ponder that a while and see if I can't come up with something for a later fic regarding that (unless someone beats me to that first). Could prove most interesting…;) And just for reference…'Things That Make You Go Hmmm' was released by C&C Music Factory in late 1990 and was a massive hit by early 1991. Good heavens I did date myself! Lol. Ah well.

Wanda Wish - "Superlative!" Wow! That's the first time I think I've seen that word used in a review for this fic. That's so cool and I'm so glad you're hooked. Glad you liked the coincidental date. It was really amazing how it worked out. Well, I thought it was anyway. ;)

Invder Lava - Oh…My…Gosh! I can't believe you just compared my story to Elera's "A Night on the Town". I am so blown away on the high I'm feeling right now, I can't even being to describe it! I absolutely loved "A Night on the Town" myself as well. To me, it is among the very best pieces of FOP fan fiction on here. There are some truly great FOP pieces on the site, but that in my opinion is very near the top. I would never have even dared think of setting my story near hers! I am absolutely stunned and flabbergasted. Maybe its me, but when I'm writing about something I really enjoy, I tend to try to put myself in the character's heads as much as possible. Its literally to the point where I'm using their voices in my mind. I'll get so into it in fact, that I get ribbed by my family when they catch me reading it and my lips are moving silently for each word! I am so very pleased that you are happy with the emotion presented in this. I tend to be a relatively detached personality Virgo with a very Virgo-ish logical view of the world around me, so I often wonder after I've written a chapter if I've gotten it all down well enough to convey the emotion I was imagining at the time. Sometimes, there just doesn't seem to be enough words. What I find most people forget about with emotion is that most times when you are feeling one, you are feeling others at the same time. Guilt may easily accompany anger or sadness, though because we settle on the injustices of the one, we can often times easily overlook the subtleties of the other. I really tried to capture everything as thoroughly as possible (perfectionism being another very Virgo-ish trait I'm afraid) and it is reviews like yours that tell me I must be doing at least a little something right. Have no fears about me rushing a chapter. A Virgo like me just cannot do that. It would just feel so…wrong! Lol. I really appreciate that you took the time to let me know you've been reading and for taking the time to review this. It was an absolutely wonderful review. It truly helped to make my night. Thank you my new friend.

Commander - Fluffy goodness all the way! Cool! Now I'm playing with people's minds! I hope I don't break any of them! I don't know how important the date will really be by the time this story is all said and done, but I thought it would make an awesome little attention grabber. Boy, all this mention of Timmy remembering…you guys all make it so hard not to slip and tell you everything right now! I do think you're on the track to some degree though. There was something very important in his childhood years and he does bring it up later, but darn it! I just can't say anymore! Gosh, I hope its not a let down when you finally read it. Eek. Now I've gone and made myself nervous. Time to go finish off that bag of Hershey kisses I had stashed. Yummmm…chocolate.

Kraven the Hunter - I love those kinds of reversals! The bad guy getting bitten by their own devious plan and/or creature (as the case may be) in the end! I only saw a couple of the Aladdin episodes when it first came out (it just didn't hold my attention to well…not that it's the show's fault in any way ;) I was just more of a Gargoyles fan at that time) but I do remember Iago calling Mozenrath Jafar jr. once or twice. Don't you just love a good coincidence? I suppose I could have made what Wanda is doing turn out to be a bad thing. But I figured I'd put her through enough as it is. Geez! Its practically to the point where I'd have to kill Cosmo off to make her feel any worse! Which of course I would never do because I do not have a death wish! Lol.

Amras Felagund - Welcome! Thank you so much for taking the time to review and share your thoughts. I really do appreciate it! When I originally started this, I had intended to let the maternal side of Tommy and Tammy go unmentioned just for the fun of it and let the readers decide in their minds who it was. I could have very easily written the whole thing without ever clearly mentioning who Mom was, but I thought, nah, let the readers have the joy of deciding. I'm sorry it didn't work out your way though. Honestly I could see it going either way. I hope you're right and that your "Happily Ever After" fic will help break the popularized theory that it must be Tootie. I look forward to reading it when it hits the site. And yes, feel free to use the 'twin's telepathy' in your story. I'm very happy to share plot points!

Thank you all for sticking with me!

Trixie21