Castle stood at the base of the steps of the TKTS building, watching the dragon fly up Broadway. He nearly drove himself crazy as he tried, in those few desperate minutes, to go over every legend he had ever heard about dragons and how to kill them. In the few precious stories his mind could come up with, there were only a couple of times where the dragon actually died, and in each one a sword or some other pointy object was used to bring the beast down. Castle had no such pointy object, and knew he wouldn't be any good with one if he had use of it.

"Think, Rick, *think*," Castle told himself. "Fire's not going to work, it's a freaking fire-*breathing* dragon. So what can you use to go after this thing?"

All analysis stopped as the dragon made his first pass. Castle dove out of the way of the fire raining down upon him, just barely getting his shield up in enough time to avoid getting singed. He threw an energy ball at the beast as it flew up Seventh Avenue to turn around...and it was at that moment that Castle realized what he needed to do.

Right when his energy ball hit the tail of the great flying beast...and it twitched.

Castle doubled up on his shielding, willing himself to gather up as much power as he could from the air, the water, the earth beneath his feet...anything that could be taken for his cause. The few remaining working LED screens in Times Square blinked out and died as Castle pulled their energy into the reserves he was already building up.

His one chance came all too quickly as the dragon completed its turn and bore down on Castle with the speed of an out-of-control freight train. But this time, the wizard was ready. Castle gathered up all of his reserves and fired, pouring as much power as he could into two beams of white-hot energy.

The dragon reared up immediately, twitching and convulsing under the overwhelming electrical overload to its nervous system. The speed the beast had built up in its descent, though, sent its limp, useless body barreling down to Earth with the power of a comet. It crashed into the street on the eastern side of the square, sending debris flying for blocks around.

Beckett stood at 49th and Broadway, watching the dragon finally come to a stop just outside of the TV studios. She scanned Times Square for any sign of her partner, finding him just a couple of blocks away...collapsed on the ground, inches away from the debris trail left in the dragon's wake. Beckett sprinted the distance in a matter of seconds, her concern for Castle evident. "Castle!"

Castle groaned as his partner helped him back up to a standing position. The exhaustion was clear in his voice as he strained to get out a simple question. "Did I get him?"

Beckett took another look at the dragon's resting place...and the trail of damage left in its wake. "Yeah, Castle. You got him."

"Score one for the all-powerful wizard," Castle joked weakly. His attention focused quickly on his desire to keep himself standing, though, when his knees started to give way underneath him. "Whoa..." he exclaimed, "guess I used more juice in that blast than I thought."

"I'm just glad you're okay," said Beckett. "What happened?"

"Dragons are fire-breathers," Castle replied, "so since I couldn't hurl fire at it, the next most powerful thing I could come up with was lightning. Takes a lot of energy to replicate a lighting bolt...1.21 gigawatts, to be exact..."

While Beckett finally let herself relax and laugh a little in response to Castle's good humor, Ryan and Esposito jogged over to join their friends after their own victory on the Park Avenue. Esposito let out a low whistle as he examined the body of the dragon that lay next to them. "Not bad, Beckett. Not bad at all..."

"Well," she joked, tilting a teasing nod to her partner, "I did the best I could with what I had available to me."

Castle did his best to look insulted. "Hey! I thought *I* did pretty good back there..."

The dragon roared in response, a pain-filled cry that begged for someone to put the beast out of its misery. Ryan responded immediately, running right up the spine of the beast and sending his sword through the top of the dragon's head in the same manner as he had done at the MetLife building. The dragon let out one more strangled groan and finally breathed his last.

Castle was dumbfounded. "How could that thing have possibly survived a crash like that?"

"You already forgot what Alexis told you, didn't you?" Ryan countered. "According to the legend, the wizard has *no* power over life and death."

"So no matter what I throw at something, I can't kill it on my own?" asked Castle. When Ryan nodded, Castle's response was blunt. "And you left me *alone* with that thing?"

Ryan could only blush. "Oops?"

Esposito quickly put two and two together. "Hold up here, guys. If the dragon did...all of this and *survived*, then it had to be *Castle* who brought down the big guy, not..."

A booming call cut off any chance Beckett would have had to answer. "Sìfāng!"

The group looked up to find the source of the voice. "It's him," stated Beckett matter-of-factly. "He's still up there."

"Is he any better?" asked Esposito. Beckett shook her head.

"Sìfāng!" Lóng zhǔ called out to the group again. His voice was badly strained, sounding weak even as it was still violently loud and angrily defiant. "You may think...to have bested me...but I swear...by the gods...I will destroy you...yet this day."

Esposito looked around, briefly surprised by the instant change in his location and in the location and behavior of his friends. Castle must have blinked us up here...His friends were surrounding the body of Lóng zhǔ, which was convulsing in some sort of violent seizure. Esposito crossed the distance quickly, wanting to join his friends and confirm that their evil adversary was, finally, history. Only when Esposito saw he was already *with* the group, though, did he realize that this couldn't be his current reality. It was a glimpse into their near future.

Soon it was as if everything started happening in slow motion. The body of Lóng zhǔ gave one last convulsion, rising up from the ground as it was torn open by an explosion of pure blue-white energy. His friends all tried to run, but the energy moved with a speed that not even Castle could outwit. Castle shoved Beckett to the ground, instinctively trying to protect his partner by covering her body with his own. Esposito tried to do the same for his own partner.

Their efforts were futile. A split second later Esposito was watching from above, helplessly horrified, as his family, his friends, his city...everything he had ever loved or known, perished in the massive fireball that consumed the entire island of Manhattan all at once...

Ryan watched his partner with great concern. After everything that's happened today, he thought, *now* Javi's screaming?

Esposito shook his head, blinking his eyes repeatedly to separate reality from what he had just seen. Finally he realized where he was, *when* he was, and what he needed to do. Esposito first turned his attention to his wizard, pushing Castle with life-or-death urgency. "Castle, we gotta get up there...and we gotta do it *now*!"

In less than the span of a heartbeat, the group found themselves on the roof of One Times Square. When Esposito saw the dead wizard's body sparking with light and convulsing with the need for release, the warrior knew there was no time to waste. "Castle! Shield the body!"

Castle projected a sphere of shield energy around the body of Lóng zhǔ. The bubble lifted the twitching, sparking corpse up over the city, like watching the New Year's Eve ball drop in reverse...until finally it imploded in a blinding, but fully contained ball of light.

Everyone seemed to want to look to Esposito for an explanation. After a few tense moments, the detective finally admitted, "Just before I started pushing Castle around down there, I had a vision of that corpse taking out all of Manhattan in the explosion. If Castle hadn't gotten that shield off in time, we'd all be dead."

Ryan gazed in awe at the smoking mess of devastation around them. "My God," he whistled, "how the hell are we going to explain *this*? It kinda looks like the bomb went off anyway..."

"I think I might have an idea," replied Castle. His voice started to rumble with a depth of power that Ryan and Esposito had never heard from their friend. "Repair that we have damaged, return the world to its balance and shield us from those who might wish us to be harmed."

The group felt the ripple of energy flow out of Castle as he collapsed once again on the roof. While Ryan and Beckett focused their attention on their friend, Esposito looked out at the scene below him.

It was...normal. Unscarred. Exactly as it had been that morning. Esposito turned back to his friend in amazement. Castle, for his part, simply shrugged it off. "It's a lot harder to think that the world is ending if you can look around you and all you see is that the world hasn't *actually* ended."

When a ripple of energy seemed to answer Castle's from downtown, though, Esposito's face grew pale. "Lanie! No, God no..." He turned back to Castle, the desperation evident in his voice. "Castle, we need to get to Lanie *now*." Trusting implicitly in the urgent tone in his friend's voice, Castle took a deep breath, and with great effort, gathered his will to track down their absent friend.

The group landed in the lobby of medical examiner's office. Esposito ran into the morgue in a panic, only to see his worst fears realized. He picked Lanie up from the spot where she had collapsed, cradling her head in his lap. Caressing her cheek with his hand, Esposito relaxed slightly when he realized that Lanie was still breathing. Still, he also knew that she was just not *there*. Esposito looked up to his partner, hoping that in all of this craziness he could get just one more miracle...

Ryan bent down to get on his friends' level, entering Lanie's mind as soon as he saw her. He kept up a steady stream of thought projections, hoping that it would give her something to latch on to. Lanie, we're here. It's over. You can come back now...Javi's so worried about you...

K-Kevin?

Lanie's voice echoed back into Ryan's mind through the link between them. Lanie! Ryan exclaimed, Are you okay?

What happened? Lanie's voice sounded weak and disoriented.

Ryan replied, I was kind of hoping you could tell us. We felt this wave of energy come from downtown, and Esposito panicked. He dragged us down here on the last drops of Castle's magic...

Last drops? Lanie's mind voice started to grow in strength even as it grew in worry. Is he ok? What about Kate-

Listen, replied Ryan, cutting her off, I'd love to answer all your questions, but can we do that *outside* of your head?

You mean...?

Yep.

Oh.

Lanie came back to consciousness slowly to find she was being cradled gently in the lap of her very worried boyfriend. "Hey babe," she greeted Esposito with a warm smile, finding her voice weaker than she thought it would be. "Is everybody ok?"

Esposito nodded, too grateful to have the woman he loved back to find the words to actually speak.

Ryan stood up to find that Castle and Beckett had made their way into the morgue and were leaning on each other for strength. He gently closed his connection to Lanie's mind before answering her question out loud. "We're fine, Lanie. We're *all* here."

Lanie tried to get up from where she collapsed, only to find the position too awkward to move from without assistance. "Javi, babe, help me up, please?" Esposito helped Lanie to a standing position, which allowed her mind to finally rest as she saw that all of her friends were indeed healthy and whole. "So everyone's okay?" The group nodded. "What happened?"

"We got the bad guys," Esposito replied nonchalantly. "Well, us and an army..."

It was then that Ryan realized what he had almost forgotten. Turning to his partner, he exclaimed, "Our army! The legend said we had to release them from our service..."

As if on cue, a white tiger appeared on Lanie's empty autopsy table, his eyes solely fixed on Ryan. My lords, how may I serve you?

"Release the army from service," Ryan told the tiger. "Quickly!"

As you wish, my Lord, the tiger replied, exploding into a thousand balls of white light that flew out of the morgue.

Ryan turned to find Lanie staring at him and Esposito like the tiger was their brand new third head. "Was that a *tiger*?" she exclaimed.

Castle started to consider their fairly public location in light of their current conversation, which was growing stranger by the minute. "Maybe we should take this discussion someplace more private...like my loft?"

The second everyone agreed, they vanished, and Dr. Sidney Perlmutter walked into a morgue devoid of any trace of the living. I could have sworn I heard Dr. Parrish and her band of misfits from the 12th in here just a second ago, thought Perlmutter. Perhaps I've been working down here just a little too long...nah...

The group recovered from their instant change in orientation quickly, their unconventional mode of transportation starting to feel more and more normal. Castle invited everyone to take a seat before Lanie picked up where they had left off in the morgue. "Okay, guys, y'all definitely looked at the tiger like that wasn't the first time one had just popped up in front of you. So what was all that about?"

Ryan and Esposito looked to each other as if to try to figure out who was going to explain *this* one. "You remember those guys in the bathrooms at that attack on the diner?" asked Ryan. When Lanie nodded, Ryan simply added, "They were zombies."

Lanie's eyes widened. "Zombies?" When Ryan nodded, Lanie asked, "How many of them were there?"

"No idea," replied Esposito casually. "a thousand, at least."

"Wow," exclaimed Lanie. "So how'd you get away from them?"

Esposito replied casually, "Oh, we didn't get away from them." Then, finally allowing himself a wickedly pride-filled grin, he high-fived Ryan as he declared, "we kicked their asses." Ryan and Esposito went on to describe the encounter with the tiger and the formation of the Macy's army.

"They were incredible," commented Ryan at the end. "Every one of them had our fighting abilities. Sure, the two of us couldn't take those guys on by ourselves, but a hundred of us? It actually didn't take all that long."

"And the white tiger in the morgue?" asked Lanie. "What was that about?"

"I remembered that passage from the legend," replied Ryan, "about the warrior priest being the only one who can release the army from their service. Castle restored order and got us to you so quickly that I hadn't had time..."

Lanie interrupted Ryan, "Hold up, what's he talking about? Why did Castle need to restore order?"

Everyone filled in the details, sharing their own stories of their battles with Lóng zhǔ and his dragons. Esposito picked up on the story at the point where the wizard died. "When it was over, Times Square was literally toast. It looked like the wreckage of a plane crash. Castle got us out of there before anyone could think to ask if we had anything to do with it..."

"...and?" Lanie, asked, knowing there was more to the story.

"And then he brought it all back to normal."

Lanie tried to backtrack the timing of what she had been hearing from Ryan and Esposito. She gasped as a realization hit her. Turning to Castle, she asked him, "Exactly what did you say to put everything back to normal?"

Confused, Castle replied, "Repair that we have damaged, return the world to its balance and shield us from those who might wish us to be harmed."

Lanie put two and two together, sinking back into the couch with an expression of contemplative surprise on her face. "Huh." Turning to Castle, Lanie then declared, "I think you owe me a beer, Castle."

"Really?" asked Castle, caught off guard by Lanie's comment. "Why do you say that?"

"Right around the same time you were saying that spell, Castle, I felt like someone had punched me in the gut...just before I collapsed. I woke up when Ryan pulled me out of it. I think your spell knocked some sort of healing blast out of me."

Curious, Esposito grabbed his girlfriend's hand, trying to see what she had gone through. When his eyes opened, Esposito was trying and failing to give Castle the benefit of the doubt. "Bro, if you don't choose your words a little more carefully next time..."

"What did you see?" asked Beckett.

"That energy wave that we felt from downtown? That was Lanie healing everyone injured in the battle *in one shot*." Turning to Castle, Esposito added, "And it was caused by *your spell*."

Every ounce of color drained from Castle's face as shame and guilt filled his soul. "God, Lanie, I'm so sorry, I had no idea..."

Lanie, for her part, stopped Esposito's angry thought process with a hard punch in the arm. Turning to Castle, Lanie's tone quickly turned gentle. "Baby, it's totally okay. I only ended up knocked unconscious..." Ryan wordlessly nodded his confirmation..."so I probably would have woken up eventually. We're all still trying to get the hang of this stuff, so my boyfriend here needs to *cut* *you* some *slack*."

Ryan, for his part, was starting to get a headache from the waves of tension he was feeling from his partner...which motivated him to quickly change the subject. "I've been wondering about a couple of things, Castle."

"What's on your mind, Ryan?"

"Well...the first thing was when Lóng zhǔ died in Times Square. The legend said the wizard has no power over life and death...but you were the only one who fought him. So how'd you kill him?"

"That had me stumped for a while, too," replied Castle, "until I remembered something. Lóng zhǔ, in Chinese, means Dragon Master."

Ryan nodded. "The dragons were his 'children', or so he told us."

"Yes," agreed Castle, "but I think it was more than that. I think the dragons were parts of his soul. So when you guys killed the dragons..."

"We killed *him*," Ryan completed the thought, catching on quickly. "Okay, I get that now. But there's still one other thing that's bugging me. You can't change anyone's memories of what they saw, right?"

Castle nodded. "That would influence free will."

"Then how can we be *sure* we're safe?" asked Ryan. "That people didn't *see* something...or God forbid, recognize you throwing around lightning bolts in the middle of Times Square?"

Castle considered the question carefully, weighing the possibility of someone putting two and two together against the results of his previous spells. "There's an easy way for us to find out. The early newscast is just starting, so why don't we turn the TV on and see what they're saying about it?"

The group agreed, and Castle turned on the TV to find...nothing. There was not a single mention of Times Square, Park Avenue, the MetLife building, the diner attack, the apartment building, or the deaths of the Chos. There wasn't even a mention of Macy's that wasn't during a commercial break. When Castle finally turned off the news, Ryan was dumbstruck. "Wow," Ryan exclaimed, "so things are just going to go back to normal?"

"For the rest of the world, anyway," commented Lanie. "You'd be surprised at the mechanisms the mind can come up with to rationalize away something it doesn't understand. And with Castle's spell thankfully providing them no evidence that anything out of the ordinary happened, people probably just figured it was a movie shoot."

"Or a hallucination," Ryan added, catching the concept.

"I'll bet some people decided to quit drinking," commented Beckett.

"Or start drinking..." Esposito continued with a small chuckle.

Esposito's comment inspired Castle. "That gives me an idea..." Jumping up from the couch, he ran to the kitchen, getting a bottle of champagne and five champagne flutes. "I have been saving this bottle for a special occasion." Handing out the flutes, he opened the champagne with a loud *pop* and poured five glasses. "Personally, I think stopping the zombie apocalypse qualifies as a special occasion...?"

"I'd say so, bro," replied Esposito. "And sorry about earlier, man..."

Castle waived off the apology, "I totally understand. If we had been talking about Kate I would have been just as bad..."

"Or worse," added Beckett with a laugh.

Castle pulled everyone together in a toast. "To the fantastic five, who have just saved the world from turning into mindless zombies...oh, wait..." As everyone allowed themselves a small chuckle at Castle's even smaller joke, his tone turned more genuine and sincere. "May life never give us more that we can handle...even with superpowers."

The group clinked their glasses and drank. Ryan noticed how the two couples were starting to comfort each other after their long day, and his heart ached for the woman he wanted at his side at that moment. "Guys," he announced, "I should probably get home. After everything that's happened today, I really want to see my wife."

Castle gave a tiny nod of understanding, then remembered a conversation he had with Ryan in the Hamptons. "So, out of curiosity, what did you end up telling her about...all this?"

"I, uh...I haven't told her anything. And after today, I have *no* idea what I'm going to tell her..."

"You know you have to tell her *everything*, right?" asked Beckett. When Ryan hesitated, Beckett continued, "Ryan, what are you going to say the first time you blurt out an answer to something she's thinking? If I've learned anything over this past year, it's that keeping secrets is the most toxic thing you can do in a relationship. And we all know how much you love your wife. This is part of who you are now...who we all are. You *need* to tell her."

While Ryan's head was trying to come up with any possible excuse to not have this conversation, in his heart, he knew that Beckett was right. "Okay," he agreed with a loud sigh of surrender, "I'll tell her."

"Uh, bro?" Ryan had turned to leave, but was stopped by Esposito, who was also grabbing his coat. He tried stop his partner, but to no avail. "Ryan, you're my partner," insisted Esposito. "And if I've learned anything from that crazy legend, it's that these powers or whatever you want to call them have now pretty much made us brothers for life. Which means I can't lie to Jenny either."

If Ryan was moved by Esposito's show of support, then he was outright floored to find that the rest of the group were gathering their coats as well. Lanie spoke for Castle and Beckett. "Hey, it's all for one and one for all, right? Besides, the way you two ladies talk, if she knows about you then she'll find out about the rest of us eventually. Might as well get this over with..."

Longer than normal chapter, but there's only one more left. :-) And that one should be finished tonight or tomorrow (Jenny seems to have an awful lot of questions for her hubby ;-), and she refuses to let me finish the story until she gets all of them answered.) Don't forget to feed (send comments to) the writer!