Author's Note:
Disclaimer: Fairly Odd Parents and characters are copyrighted to Butch Hartman (I own nothing)
Rules are Rules
As soon as they heard the voice looks of panic flitted across Wanda, Cosmo, and Timmy's faces alike, fearing that the final insult to injury to the day would being found by some wandering human being. Wanda was already in the process of trying to figure some kind of lame explanation.
"You can settled down, ya know," the voice from earlier said, "I've been looking for you guys for a while now! You have no idea how hard it's been!"
"Who are you," Wanda called out, brandishing her wand menacingly, "show yourself!"
"Yeesh, I'm right up here, ya know!" the voice called down.
Three heads instantly looked up. Several feet above there sat a human sized fairy atop of the railing of a fire escape that clung to the wall of a particularly grungy looking building. In the gloom of the alley it was at first difficult to discern the speaker's features, but as their eyes came accustomed to the dim lighting the speaker's face materialized.
The speaker was female, which was difficult to tell at first because her silver hair was cropped short with a thin, long braid draped casually over one shoulder. She was incredibly well built with bulging muscles corded on her entire body; her well defined arms shown off by her clingy black tank top and her well defined legs hidden by the black baggy pants she wore. Black combat boots were laced up to her knees, and a massive wand larger than she was strapped to her back. She was exceedingly similar to someone else they knew.
Smiling widely, and pointed to herself, "Me? I'm Cassandra, and you would be Timmy, Wanda and Cosmo I would presume?"
"Yeah? What of it? You want to explain why our wands don't work?" Wanda answered gruffly.
"Yeah, and can someone explain why Jorgen got a sex change?" Cosmo offered, his question obviously directed at a certain Jorgen look alike.
To Timmy and Wanda it suddenly got quiet, too quiet. They looked at Cassandra, trying to discern just exactly when they were going to die. Certainly the thought had crossed their minds, but they would never have said anything.
Cassandra, after the look of confusion on her face passed, just laughed loudly, almost falling off her precarious perch.
"Oh, you've got it wrong. I'm his niece! Jorgen's my uncle! Yeesh, you people from the past sure are funny."
Laughing nervously, Wanda gave her husband an evil glare before trying to steer the conversation to its original course, "So, uh, about those wands …"
"Oh, yeah," Cassandra remembered, "It's fairly simple. You can't unwish the wish because it's breaking one of the rules. I think it's in sector 5F under the Time Clause of the Da Rules."
Wanda could not remember such a clause, or even such a sector. Da Rules were pretty sparse with restrictions, and time wishes had never been affected before in such a way. And what was the Time Clause about anyways?
"Um, could you give a better explanation?" Wanda asked not too politely.
"Well the whole Time Clause is pretty lengthy, I'd advise that you reread Da Rules when you get a chance. A lot of adjustments have been made over the past few years, actually I'm surprised that you don't know this, already. We've sent messengers into the past warning that all fairies are ill advised about granting wishes to this current time period."
Wanda suddenly remembered why she had been so reluctant to grant Timmy's wish the other night. Dangit Wanda cursed herself internally.
"Why? Is this time period dangerous or something?" Timmy asked, his curiosity uplifting his mood.
"Hmm? Oh, god no, it's not dangerous, no more dangerous than your past. It's just, well, we are having a bit of a ... uhh … problem, let's say, with granting wishes," Cassandra answered.
Suspicious, Timmy asked, "What do you mean by 'problem with granting wishes'? You guys are fairies after all! What kind of problem can you have?"
"You'd be surprised, Timmy! Even though we're fairies we still can't lick our elbows! It's so sad, I'm so disappointed with my life," Cosmo whined, not offering anything useful.
Wanda sighed, "Well, aside from that, in the near future there's apparently going to a magic shortage, and we fairies will have to be conservative with our magic. Granting limited amount of wishes per day, am I right?"
"Yeah, you're right," Cassandra agreed, "We are, I am sad to say, suffering from a magic deficiency. As such, there have been modifications with the way wishes are operated and how wishes are unwished. In fact, when we use the term 'unwish' we are actually just making a more magically expensive wish that removes the wish, and all of it's affects. As you imagine, a lot sometimes needs to be done when removing affects – memories need to be occasionally wiped clear and new memories implanted, any damage needs to be fixed, and occasionally some time needs to be rewinded. A lot of work goes into unwishing a wish than the actual original wish.
"On top of that, our fairies are spread out thinner because the line between child and adult is slowly becoming culturally blurred. Decades ago, it was obvious when a child turned into an adult, now, though, people with godparents that were a decade before classed as adults still are unhappy children. Also, there are a lot more unhappy children in the world, so fairy god parents are staying with their god children longer and there are less god parents to spare. As a result more wishes are occurring, as well more unwishes, but we don't have the resources like we used to, hence the shortage.
"To save us problems like magic brown outs, which are absolutely catastrophic in fairy world and on the ability to make wishes, we've passed restrictions especially with unwishing. Mostly, if an object is unwished we just remove the object instead of erasing its existence, but that also has to deal with sector 5F under the 'Rights of Sentient Life' clause, and doing cheap memory edits, and sometimes forgoing repairs and just letting humans do it. With time wishes, however, they are another matter entirely. Time wishes are horrendously expensive with magic, it's better to avoid them when we can, but we still have those god children hell bent on time traveling. So we've enabled a waiting list for time wishes."
"I hate waiting," Cosmo pouted.
"Wait, a waiting list? Just how long do I have to wait?" Timmy asked, panic edging into his voice.
"Hmm, lemme, see," Cassandra said, snapping her fingers to make a piece of paper appear, "Well according to the regulations, you'll have to wait at least a year. But you can try to make an appeal to the Seelie Court, the fairies who are responsible for Da Rules and making sure it's followed. Doing that might shave a few months off the wait, but there's no guarantee."
Timmy, when the information finally settled, did some justified freaking out, "A whole year?! A whole damn year?!? You're kidding right!? This is just some sick practical joke right?!"
"I'll take it that you'll want to make an appeal then, ya?" Cassandra asked, but poofed away before any answer was given – wisps of purple smoke the only indication Cassandra had existed.
A sudden horror filled realization came upon Cosmo. "Wait, do you mean to tell me that we're stuck here?! But, but … who will feed Timmy's goldfish? I don't want them to die! Nooooooo, not the fishies!!"
"Cosmo, we're the fishes," Wanda blatantly pointed out.
"Wait, you mean to tell me your part fish! You've lied to me all this time!? Our entire marriage is a sham, oh the horror!" Cosmo shouted.
"Hey, can we focus here! Somebody can't go home and save his mom from cancer. Oh did I mention that we're stuck in a future where everyone is emo! Can we figure out a solution here?" Timmy shouted, venting his frustration.
"Sorry, honey," Wanda apologized, giving Cosmo one of her patented glares.
In the alleyway silence reigned as each thought up a solution. Well, Timmy and Wanda were trying to think, Cosmo was just digging out earwax from his ear. Minutes passed, and they were no where closer to a solution than they had been minutes before. It also just started to rain, drenching Timmy and his god parents in chilly September drizzle.
"Great, just great. Can my life get any worse?!" Timmy mumbled.
"Hey, Timothy! I've been looking for you everywhere!" a soaked Veronica Star called out.
"Yep, my life just got worse," Timmy grumbled as Wanda and Cosmo poofed themselves into a pink and green garbage cans respectively, "God really hates me doesn't he?"
Author's Note:
Hehehe, I'm so evil. There's not a lot going on in this chapter, but with WiB (World is Black) I prefer to keep the chapters short and sweet. So, thoughts? Did I explain it well enough; is it too short or too long, too technical etc (but if you don't like the long explanation I'm sad to say they will come back, I've been watching Noein lately and it has tonnes of stuff on time crap, so much so that its inspirational).