While Belle and Alice took care of dinner, Rumple took his siblings and guests down to his basement lab. Henry, Alina and Emma insisted on going to watch the more experienced mages work their wonders. Once they were in the lab, Rumple conjured a mirror that Rum Strogoff and Jiminy could use to communicate with their Juno friends if needed, all of the Storybrooke crew in for quite a shock when Regina's counterpart appeared on the mirror.
"Jiminy, I can channel DG's magic for her," Regina Mills-Hood suggested. "Pallux can only channel so much of it. What you need for this spell is a full blown mage and we can cut the time to make the stones down even further." She smiled at Rumple. "And it's always a pleasure to meet another version of the man who was a second father to me."
"Not in this world, dearie."
"Oh? Then why does Mini Me call you 'Unca Rumple'?" she asked with a laugh.
He shrugged.
"Like I said...second father."
"She has you there, grandson," Loki chuckled. "Half of my nieces and nephews treat me more like a father than an uncle because I'm the one who basically raised them since I was the one who was with them when they were small. Half the time their parents are off wandering the other realms and saving other people. But I tend to stay home more often than not with my children, so guess who was there for them when they were hurt or got in trouble? Me. So now they come to me with problems or for advice."
"Rumple...I have an idea..." Rhea murmured.
"What are you Seeing, Rhea?" Rumple demanded, knowing that when his younger sister spoke in 'that' kind of voice, she'd just emerged from a Seer's trance and had some sort of warning to give them or a solution to a difficult problem.
"Cora's ultimate goal is to attempt to reverse Regina's deaging and try to force her to join her..."
"Ah-hah!" Rum Strogoff exclaimed. "You've had the same Vision I have dearie. Follow the Lady!"
"I don't think you understand what..."
"Oh but I do...Regina, do you understand?"
"Yes...and count me in."
"Alright, can someone please explain to me?"
"It's simple Rumple. You swap your Regina out for me."
"Shape change, darling?" Loki queried. "That's my stock in trade."
"Oooh and WHO might you be gorgeous," the former Evil Queen crooned.
Henry slapped his forehead. "Oh my God now THAT version of Regina is fangirling! Where's my mini me when I need him!"
Loki smiled, showing his perfect white teeth, his mouth crinkling into an irresistible grin. "Name's Loki Laufeyson of Asgard, honey."
"Regina Mills-Hood, former Evil Queen, damn glad to mee'cha!"
Emma and Bae snickered. "Holy crap she did an Animal House reference!" Bae laughed.
"I always liked that movie," Loki laughed. "So is that what you have in mind, darling?"
"Yes. I can change into little Regina and come over there while she is safe here. I know the risks but enough mages have my back that I won't be too worried."
She smiled. "And don't be surprised if a few of us come over to help you deal with your pirate problem for the townspeople. We Enchanted Forest clans have to stick together."
"Family helps family," Loki agreed. "And when it comes down to it, we're all family in one way or another."
The queen stepped through the mirror and into the room. "I've already given the green light and the troops are ready to roll. But first..." She took off her jacket and rolled up her sleeves. "I'm ready to make some talismans."
Rum Strogoff took the ruby and emerald pendants out of their boxes and set them on the table. "Rumple, because these new ones will be tied to your bloodline, you have the option of changing what stones go in them."
Lilly opened the Book of Ancients and began to read. "Once you choose the stones we of the Strogoff and Ozopov bloodlines have to extract some of the magic from ours to transfer to yours."
"Magic from all five elements...earth, air, fire, water and spirit," Jiminy added.
"Now all we need are the stones and those have to come from you, Rumple," Rum Strogoff said.
Rumple went to a chest made of teakwood. "Here I have an emerald of fine quality. And an amber stone." He takes out an emerald the size of a robin's egg and a chunk of polished amber the size of a fist.
"Perfect dearie. Now you just need to decide which one will be the talisman and which will be the counter." Were it his decision he would make them the complete opposites of his own set to further confuse the madwoman that was his aunt.
"I would like the amber to be the talisman and the emerald its counter."
"All right. Now use your magic and give them their shape," Lilly instructed. "You can make them the same as ours or choose your own."
The Nonestican mages formed a circle and placed their own emerald and talisman on the floor inside it.
"I, Jiminy Ozopov Hopper, Heart of the North Guardian give the power of Earth!" Jiminy chanted. The ruby and emerald floated off the floor and hovered in the circle, their stones glowing.
"I Regina Mills-Hood, Representative of the South and East Guardians give the powers of Air and Water!"
"I Rumplestiltskin Strogoff-Gold, Guardian of the West, give the power of fire!"
"I Lilliana Strogoff Hopper, give the power of Spirit!"
A beam of white light emitted from the glowing stones.
"We're ready when you are," Rum said to his couterpart.
Rumple, with Loki and Rhea's assistance began to transform the amber stone into an oval shape and the emerald into a diamond. He then summoned two bezels from his shop that he'd been given as part of a deal back when he was the Dark One. The stones for each had fallen out years ago and he'd never bothered to look for them.
"Hold the stones under our light and all of you will need to recite the incantations to give them their power."
Lilly handed Rumple the book with the incantation translated from Old Russian and Nonestican Ozian to English.
"Earth, air, fire, water and spirit combine...give them your power to defend our bloodline!" they chanted.
They held the stones in the light for several minutes until it vanished, their Strogoff counterparts returning to their protective box.
"Now these can only be used by those of your bloodline or those you give permission to," Rum Strogoff informed them.
Loki took the stones and used his own magic to set them in the bezels and conjured two suede chains to hang them from.
"So we can make protective devices like that anytime?" Emma asked.
"You can but it's rough on the system after you do it," Jiminy yawned.
Rum Strogoff leaned against the table. "Mama...my cane..."
Lilly summoned it and handed it to her son. "You need to lie down darling. Loki's magic is wearing off and I am not going to have my daughter-in-law beating me with a book for not letting you rest."
"Sorry, borrowed magic only lasts so long," the god apologized.
"S'okay...I drain anyway after I use a lot of magic...price I paid for breaking the Dark One curse...along with this." He unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a scar on his chest, over his heart. "And...my limp came back...to remind me of what I was before I became the Dark One..."
"Magic extracts its own price," Loki murmured.
Rum smiled wanly at his counterpart. "You were fortunate dearie that you had a powerful cursebreaker in your sister. I was not so lucky."
Rumple smiled. "It knocked her on her back for a week. And I still had my limp until Alina healed me in New York when I fought the T-Rex."
"I died," Rum said sadly. "And could only be brought back by those I loved gifting me with a piece of their own life force."
"Occasionally, a life price is what's required." Loki said wisely. "I died and was reborn also. After I sacrificed my life to save my brother and my home. And when I was reborn I came back stronger than before."
"So did my cousin DG and her husband Wyatt. They had to turn their Dark One daggers on each other to neutralize them."
Lilly draped her son's arm over her shoulders to support him. "Come...Archie and I will take you back to our house to sleep and I'll set the wards."
"And it's time for me to change," Regina Hood said. "Loki, gorgeous, would you be willing to do the honors?"
Jiminy laughed. "Robin is gonna go nuts."
"He'll get over it."
"Regina is gonna flip out when she sees you."
"She's me. She'll be fine. We would've swapped Zelena out with ours but since she's monkey chow that's out of the question."
Bae spit out his drink laughing.
"Bealfire! Look what you did to my wall!" Rumple exclaimed, pointing to the blue mess. "Now you march yourself up to the kitchen and get a bucket and a scrub brush!"
"Papa, I'm not ten years old anymore!" Bae protested.
"Git! Or I'll make you scrub the whole basement!"
"Y'know you could make him clean the toilets with a toothbrush," Robert said with a smirk. "That's how my CO used to punish the lazy asses in my unit...and your bed had to be made neat enough that you could bounce a quarter off it."
Rumple gave his son the Look. "I'm waiting Baelfire."
"Okay, okay I'm goin!"
"Damn kids," Rumple muttered.
"Try having a wife that goes full Godfather on you if she sees dust bunnies," Rum muttered. "Now I've always been a wee bit OCD but I also have a bit of a...errr...hoarding issue and when Belle came to my castle she was always grousing when she found dust bunnies in the places I asked her to clean."
He giggled. "So I put her in a dust bunny trap that she had to sweep herself out of and got a swat on my backside with the broom for it."
Bae returned with the bucket and a brush a few minutes later, his father standing over him while he scrubbed the wall with Henry recording the event on his phone and even Jimmy had taken a few photographs as blackmail material against his older brother.
"No, no no. You're smearing it! Dump the bucket out, clean the brush and get fresh water!"
Bae groaned. "Pain in the ass.."
"What was that you just said Baelfire Gold?"
"Nothing..."
"Better have been nothing or ye'll be tasting soap and cleaning the whole house."
Loki was quietly laughing in the corner. 'Oh, but you sound like me when I get on my kids asses for something. I once made Fen and Jorgy muck out the entire stables and kennels because they were smart asses to their stepmom and grandmother. And I made Miri wash all the clothes for the maids one day after she put bluing in the wash water and dyed everyone's underwear blue."
"My Ambrosia bleached all our clothes when she was learning to do laundry," Jiminy said.
"I wouldn't have minded if it was an accident, only it wasn't. It was deliberate." Loki said. "My children are allowed to play harmless pranks, but not things which cost people time and effort to redo or that hurt them. Thor's son Modi once made my daughter cry teasing her over her hair. Miri has white silvery hair and he was always saying she looked like an old woman. So I told him to stop, and he said "Make me, Uncle Loki. I'm not seven anymore."
"What did you do?" Henry asked curiously.
"I took him by the ear, yes I am still big enough to do that, and marched him over to the corner and I stuck him there with magic for an hour. He was around three hundred when I did that. And I made him wear a sign that said I will not tease my cousin."
Bae returned with fresh water and started scrubbing again. "You want me to scrub so you can see your face in it?"
"Very funny. No. Just get that crap off my wall!"
"The Merry Men moved into my house after Nonestica was destroyed and made pigs of themselves so I let the Evil Queen out to play. I made them scrub my house from top to bottom, muck out my horse stalls and anything else I felt like doing." Gina laughed evilly.
"Ye wanna tell them what you did to MY house at Bae's wedding dearie?" Rum Strogoff demanded.
"I wasn't there...but I heard about it!" Jiminy chuckled.
"I would show them but I'm too tired."
"I wanna hear this story!" Henry exclaimed.
"You have to see it." Jiminy waved his hand and the mirror on the wall showed an image of a living room mansion where a large group of people dressed in formal clothes lay on the floor in various places passed out drunk or asleep. Food was splattered all over the walls and furniture and some undergarments were hanging on the lamps.
"Belle and Rumple were at the hospital where she gave birth to their son Nathan and THIS is what they came home to."
Emma couldn't help laughing seeing her counterpart passed out drunk on the living floor in her wedding dress, Bae asleep beside her. Regina and Robin Hood lay a few feet away.
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU PEOPLE DO TO MY HOUSE?!" Rumple roared at the group of people passed out in various places in his living room and the living room itself in disarray. Robin was the first to awaken and lowered his head sheepishly as he addressed the sorcerer who'd once tried to wipe the floor with him for stealing a wand.
"Ummm..we made a bit of a mess none of us were...ahhh...in any condition to clean up."
"My living room looks like a goddam frat house during rush week! I want all you sons of bitches up off your asses and putting this room back the way it was or so help me God I'll turn you into the pigs you've made of yourselves!"
"Oh I was livid," Rum muttered. "More with my son than anyone else."
"So who did the underwear and bras belong to?" Robert inquired.
"Me...and Emma..." Gina admitted, blushing.
"What the heck?"
"Oh be quiet Miss Swan...I'm sure you've done a strip tease or two in your life!"
Rumple couldn't help laughing when he saw two elderly women working their way through the guests smacking them with a wooden paddle.
"Those are my cousins Cattie and Fiona and the Bruiser. They walloped the daylights out of everyone to get them to clean my house while I took a nice long nap."
And at that moment a nap was what he desperately needed.
"We'll come by in the morning," Lilly said and teleported out with her exhausted son.
"And now darling, it's time to make you young again," Loki said to Regina Hood.
Seconds later a little girl stood in the room wearing the same clothing as her counterpart, grinning mischievously. "Okay Baby Regal ready or not here comes Evil Regal!" she sang
"Oh dear God...two Reginas!" Emma moaned. "I don't even wanna think about what they could get up to!"
"Ya better call me Gina, kay? Cause we don't wanna confuse the real one."
"Oh I am gonna need a vacation after this!" Rumple sighed and followed the little girl upstairs.
To say that Regina was shocked to see that SHE now had a double was an understatement.
"So, you're gonna be me so the bad lady can't get me?" she asked Gina.
"Uh-huh an you're gonna go to the beach where I live with Merri an your mommy an daddy. It's really cool there."
"You're not scared of the bad lady?"
"A little," Gina confessed.
"Cora will see through her," Jimmy warned.
"Nuh-uh cause I'm gonna have all Regina's memories an I'm gonna act just like her. I had to pull out the bad ones too Rumple so's I knew what I was gonna be facing."
"You should get going Snow," Rumple advised. "We're going to put the story out that Regina is staying with me for a week or two while you two go off on some second honeymoon trip."
"Gina, thank you for doing this for us. I know it's as dangerous for you as it is for my daughter."
"Yeah but I've been through worse. Cora's kinda easy compared to Neverhell."
Regina shook her counterpart's hand. "Kick her butt an be naughty! Oh..an try not to get on Unca Rumple's nerves a lot, kay?"
"Aww c'mon! I gotta do it just a little!"
"Maybe a little but not too much or you'll have a sore butt!"
Gina laughed. "Ah, m'too old to get my butt smacked."
"Don't count on it dearie," Rumple cautioned. "I don't care how old you are. I can still turn you over my knee."
"Bring it," Gina challenged.
Just then they heard a knock on the door. Belle opened it to find a group of hysterical dwarves on the other side.
"We've got pirates comin!" Leroy shouted.
"I have to get back to the Pearl. Jack and the children need me," Rhea said to her brothers and grandfather.
"Be careful sister," Robert pleaded.
"I will. We've fought some of these bottom feeders before and kicked their backsides. They just need a few reminders of whom they're dealing with." Rhea teleported out.
"Some of 'em are headed into town. We've been roundin up everyone we can."
"Em, we need to go back to the dojo," Bae said to his wife.
"For what?" Jiminy asked.
"A few things, my bo staff for one and my sword."
JIminy stood up and waved his hand over the umbrella he carried, transforming it into a katana sword then summoned two more that he handed to Emma and Bae along with a bo staff. "Along with being a guardian, I'm also part of an ancient Ozian order known as the Talons of the Dragon. Our training is similar to that of a samurai."
"Thanks."
"Rumple, what do you need me to do?" Belle asked him.
He thought for a moment. Part of him wanted her to stay in Storybrooke but the other part wanted to send her somewhere far away from Cora and the cutthroat band of pirates that wouldn't think twice about harming her and their children.
"You should go with Snow and David," Rumple finally said.
"Papa, I want to stay and help!" Alina cried.
"So do I!" Henry spoke up.
"Out of the question," Rumple said firmly to his daughter and grandson. '"This is demigoddess and a ruthless band of pirates we're dealing with and I am not risking your safety. You're going to Florida and you're staying there until it's safe."
Alice armed herself with some of her sharpest knives from the kitchen and the meat cleaver and Jeff went back to his house for swords for him and Jimmy and they would also carry daggers. As word of the pirate invasion spread across the town, all of the residents armed themselves with anything they could find and emerged from their homes ready for battle.
"Mom! Dad!" Henry pleaded.
"You heard your grandfather. You're going to Florida." Emma said, leaving no room for argument.
"Okay," he sighed.
"You came back from every other battle you've faced and you WILL come back from this one," Belle said softly and kissed her husband. "And then my darling husband we are taking another vacation!"
He chuckled. "I'll be ready for one after this."
Daria and Dylan began to wail when he picked them up and held them, the babies sensing that their father was about to go off on a dnagerous mission. Ilyssa was also crying in Emma's arms. It was agonizing for the parents to be parted from their children but they had no choice when their enemies preyed on innocents.
Seaview Estates
Juno Beach, Florida
A large group of women were gathered on Azkadellia and Archie Ozopov Hopper's back patio.
"Seaview is now a sanctuary," Az informed them. "Storybrooke Five is under attack and they are sending some of their residents here, mostly children. They'll be terrified and missing their loved ones but our duty is to make them as comfortable as possible until it's safe to go home."
"When should we expect them?" inquired her sister-in-law. "This...this is like when Nonestica was destroyed!"
"Yes, I'm afraid it is. The portal is opening in a few minutes and it will stay open until everyone comes through. Then Henry will close it. It stays closed until we get word it's safe. Everyone, go back to your houses and get ready."
The Spinning Wheel Bar and Grille
Juno Beach, Florida
"Everybody listen up!" Belle Strogoff-Gold and snapped her fingers, turning off all the television sets in the barroom and the game rooms. "Storybrooke Five is under attack and they might need our help!"
"Under attack from what?" asked their bartender Will Scarlet.
"Zorinda and pirates of the Captain Hook variety. We're going to the mattresses, gentlemen. I want everyone back here in one hour ready to move."
"Okay Belle Corleone," Will joked.
The bar was deserted five minutes later, no one daring to refuse an order from the Rumfather's wife.
Storybrooke
"Leroy, I want you and your brothers to go back into town and let everyone know that a portal is being opened to a sanctuary made available by the residents of a parallel Storybrooke and those who cannot fight and don't wish to must go there," Rumple instructed. "The portal is only going to be open for a short time so we need to move fast."
"We're on it Mr. Gold! Come on boys!"
"Rumple, our Henry is opening the portal in front of Granny's Diner," Jiminy informed him.
"All right. Bae, let's go," he said to his son and they teleported over to the diner where a large crowd was already gathered, the cries of those being seperated and those staying behind to fight angering the sorcerer. Damn Cora!
Moments later a large door appeared on the street and opened. Belle went through first with the twins followed by Alina, Henry and Ilyssa. Soon others began to follow them, terrified yet staying behind offered a much more frightening alternative. Once everyone had gone through the door closed and vanished.
"Now let's go find that witch...Unca Rumple!"
Rumple smiled down at the toddler by his side.
"You want your daughter, Cora? Come and get her!" Rumple shouted.
The gauntlet had been thrown down.
We ask for your patience and prayers at this time while Kat cares for her father. We will post the remaining chapters as we finish them. Thank you dearies! ~ CJ