Hello my fellow readers and judgers. I made a change to my profile if anyone actually has enough free time on their hands to check it out. I seriously doubt anyone is interested either. But it's summer, and that makes me a very happy person. Anyone feel like adding to the happiness? I wrote another story a while ago called Vitality, and it's not nearly as widely read as this one is. So if you enjoy this and want the fun to continue, go over there and check it out. The themes are pretty different, but I'm not so good of a writer that I can completely change my style. Anyway, back to the story you came here for.

Last time:

Not so strangely, the thing I remembered most from Nessie's memory was her fleeting thought of Faustus's mother. What she had gone through all for the sake of Aro's whims, that was a tragedy beyond anything my imagination would be able to think up.

I needed to get out of here.

"What..." I couldn't even put words to that. It all made so much sense now. And even why they made everyone believe we were being used as ransom. It was to delay the rescue party until it could grow and gain in strength. Going up to fight the Volturi to the death wasn't something you generally did on a whim. But now they weren't going to have to fight to the death, because Aro didn't intend to keep us here indefinitely or kill us, or use us to get to the power within the pack and coven.

"I know," said Nessie, not her usually eloquent self. I suppose that made sense though. I wouldn't be at my most talkative if I'd just gone through what she had. I'd gone through enough inside her memories.

"And what kind of a name is Faustus anyhow? What kind of parent calls their kid that?" I said, just to relieve some of the stress going through my mind.

"Well it means 'lucky' in Latin," said Renesmee. Where the heck did she find the time to learn this stuff? When I was her age... I wasn't even going to finish that sentence.

"Of course," I muttered to myself. Aro was just the kind of egotistical maniac to call his child lucky. Poor kid. If he was human, he would so be pushed around on the playground for that name.

"You know, I didn't think Aro would ever deign to... with a human," said Nessie, smiling mischievously. Again. Where the heck did she learn this stuff? I was pretty sure this was not appropriate talk from a girl of her actual or physical age. Mental age, yes. But that was two out of three, so there was no way I was going to answer that.

I giggled instead. Nessie giggled with me, until the two of us had almost recovered from Ness's state of shock.

Seth P.o.V.

This had to be the weirdest group ever to set foot in the Seattle airport. It's not every day you see eight impossibly pale and good-looking people, paired with nine impossibly huge guys and one pissed-off girl (all of which were fully clothed for the time being. Airport rules.). And I couldn't be one of the countless people looking inquisitively. I had to be in that motley group.

Given my current stress level (39 on a scale from 1-10) and the fact that I had pretty much zip control over the entire situation, you could say that the staring put me a little on edge. And I was generally the easy-going one. Someone had to be. But today that was someone else's job.

"Is that freaking plane going to get here anytime soon or what?" It sure as hell wasn't Jake's.

"Yes," said Alice. There are some times when rhetorical questions just don't need to be answered by undersized psychic vampires. This was one of those times.

"And we're meeting everyone tomorrow?" I asked, for the umpteenth time. "We can't just go today?"

"We have to wait for those who are farther away," Carlisle explained once again with infuriating patience. I knew this. He knew I knew this. Everyone knew that he knew that I knew this. So why did I keep asking?

I think I knew. I was kind of helpless for the time being. I ask you, is it really fair to be helpless when you have this many people preparing to fight with you? The only good I could do was... wait, that wasn't actually doing any good. At least going over the plan and trying to hurry it made me feel like there was some contribution going on here.

Leah nudged me. "Would you quit being such a kid? This is like 'are we there yet' or something. It's not going to change."

She was right. We still had to get a ton of weird, human-sucking vampires over here. And those Alaskan ones that were on the forces of good too. Those three from Brazil were coming, Benjamin and Tia from Egypt (Amun couldn't be persuaded for some reason), Siobhan, Liam and Maggie from Ireland, those two creepy Transylvanians who wanted to take over the world, Jasper's two friends from way back, that other hybrid from South America and his aunt, and that pretty much summed it up. We were, with any luck, going to kick ass.

We ended up with first class tickets. I guess when you have forever to accumulate money, you can go with first class whenever you want. Me, I was just glad for the room. I was on the aisle seat, next to Embry and across the aisle from Quil. Things would have gotten seriously crowded over in economy.

Embry and Quil kept calling over me, trying to make conversation. Most likely to distract me. In a word, it was annoying. A plane ride has never seemed so long, but that was probably just because the only other time I was ever on a plane was when I went to Disney Land in California when I was seven.

Quite honestly, I zoned out for most of the time. I was going over battle plans again and again. We were going to try to reason with them first, since we didn't actually have a death wish, and hope to intimidate them with the size of our group. Maybe Carlisle could actually succeed in convincing them that we had no intention of taking over their throne. That would be safe.

I swear, I wasn't always such a pansy. I kind of liked fighting, as long as it was against the bad guys. I was your average guy, aside from the giant wolf part. Safe wasn't an issue, I mean, super healing powers anyone? But Haley was going to be there. Haley meant that it had better be safe. If she got hurt in any way, then some Volturi were going to die, no matter how much older or more experienced they were.

You know, it really wasn't my fault that I was turning into some overprotective type. It was sort of written into my genetic code. And in the world I lived in, who could blame me?

We arrived at the airport in Rome in the middle of the night, at least over there. To me it was the afternoon. I could kind of see why we were doing that. Nothing draws attention better than a big group of people going around sparkling.

It seemed ridiculous that we were actually going to go to a hotel. We were so close to Volterra that it was making me nervous. The entire city smelled faintly of bloodsucker, which I had gotten used to, but it was different when that sickeningly sweet scent came from your enemies. Made me want to gag. But just chilling when there were so much more important things to do?

"Don't say it," Leah warned me. She could read me too easily.

"I wasn't going to!" I protested.

"You were thinking it, so I'm going to answer again. No, we have to wait. Otherwise, the damn bloodsuckers will laugh in our faces and we won't get anywhere." It seriously sucks when your older sister is right.

We actually checked into a ritzy hotel. Why we couldn't have just hung around and waited for everyone else, I didn't get.

"We'd attract too much attention, especially when morning comes," Edward said. Well, that was one question answered. I kept that in mind as I sat down on the couch of one of the rooms the Cullens had booked. There was no way I was sleeping in any case.

The different covens arrived throughout the night. Most of the human drinking ones had dark glasses on to hide their red eyes. With the scarily good looks, they kind of looked like incognito movie stars. The Denali coven arrived first. Garrett had joined them, and he looked a heck of a lot less creepy with gold eyes. The ones from Europe came in next. I bet they hadn't even had to take a plane. Maggie, Siobhan, and Liam, and then the Dracula-esque ones. Vladimir and Stefan looked even more eager to take down the Volturi, if that were even possible. Charlotte and Peter didn't look particularly happy to be here, but were loyal to the cause, or at least to Jasper. Benjamin and Tia came right before dawn.

If you think the pack sat there quietly this whole time, you would be wrong. Paul kept looking like he wanted to shout something. I took it Sam had ordered him not to say anything nasty to the assembled. We also managed to get into an argument over which pack was going to go where at what time and why. Sam and Jake, the alphas, were the only ones who didn't actually partake in the argument. And we were all in fairly interesting moods given the extremely concentrated smell in the room. And Jake and I were rather on edge anyway, as you might imagine.

The three Brazilian vampires, Zafrina, Kachiri, and Senna seemed to have met up with Nahuel and Huilen somewhere. They entered wearing a lot of long clothing and large hats, Nahuel excepted, keeping in mind the sunny day outside. Now, we could finally get a move on already. I was getting anxious. What if the few hours it took to get assembled turned out to be the few hours that truly made a different? What if Haley wasn't okay?

Haley P.o.V.

Okay, I admit it. I fell asleep. It wasn't a good idea, given the circumstances, but we'd been in this room for over a day. I hadn't slept since the car ride from Rome. I caved. I was only human (no pun intended).

Lorenzo came with occasional meals. I went over the plot lines of almost every book I had ever read, including those I hadn't read in years. I did a lot of staring at the ceiling. Nessie was a great person, but there was only so much to talk about. The noise was starting to grate on us, and to be perfectly honest, the silence was peaceful.

I was almost growing used to what had in the beginning, threatened to drive me out of my mind. It was probably that I was too used to loud noises and chaos. I had three very loud younger sisters and brothers. They all liked to turn the television up way too loud, they shouted things across the house. This would have been a very relaxing break from that if it wasn't for the stress level.

I was noticing the quiet so much, that when a stampede seemed to erupt not far from our door, I bounced about a foot in the air. There was a large deafening hodgepodge of voices. They sounded familiar.

"Jake!" shrieked Nessie. "Mom! Dad!"

I bolted to my feet, as did she. We banged on the door, yelling, trying to make ourselves heard, noticed, and saved.

"Seth!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

I almost got slammed into the wall when Lorenzo opened the door.

"I think they heard you," he said with the hint of a smile. "I am to let you out now, but I wouldn't stray too far." I could deal with that.

We followed Lorenzo's fast walk. I worked to resist the impulse to run ahead, lest I be caught and killed.

I figured out what was making all the noise. That was the hugest crowd of vampires I could ever imagine. The first thing I thought was that the Volturi was bigger than I had thought, but then I realized that about half of them were standing with the Cullens and the pack. They had red eyes, but I wasn't judging.

The next thing I saw was Seth. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw him, drawn to him as if by some invisible cord tied around me. Then he did that look thing. I really was a sucker for that. I actually went weak at the knees, as if this was some sad, sappy love story. After several seconds I noticed the person next to him.

It was Leah, and she had a very familiar goldfish-type look on her face. I glanced at what she was looking at. Lorenzo. Seth followed my line of vision and glanced from Leah to Lorenzo in rapid succession. He looked shocked and elbowed Jake.

"OH SHIT!"