Mike, Lu, Og, Anastasia, and Pooka made it to the train station to get to their rightful destination of St. Petersburg.
"Four tickets to Paris, please." Anya asked as she carried Pooka while Mike, Lu, and Og were beside her.
"Exit visa?" the ticket man asked.
"Exit visa?" Anya wasn't sure what that meant.
Lu and Og looked to Mike who only shrugged her shoulders as she didn't seem to know either.
"No exit visa, no tickets." the man informed them. He shut the window and just shut the four of them out.
Lu snorted. "How rude!"
Anya looked very disappointed and lost now. If she couldn't get to Paris, she couldn't find out who gave her the necklace and why. Mike was trying to think of a way to help her ancestor without revealing anything to her. There was an elderly woman who caught their attention and they all looked to her in curiosity.
"See Dmitri," the woman whispered. "He can help."
Mike's eyes lit up at the name Dmitri. That was the man they had to get with Anastasia. "It sounds like a great idea, right, guys?"
"Huh?" Og asked.
"Oh, yeah!" Lu beamed, then smiled and nudged Og. "Remember, Og? This Dmitri guy can help us!"
"Oh, yeah, right!" Og then understood and nodded.
"Where can we find him?" Anya asked.
"At the old palace," the old woman replied. "But... You didn't hear that from me..."
"Then who did we hear it from?" Lu raised an eyebrow.
"Never mind that," Anya said to the brown-haired girl. "Come on."
The woman urged them to go and they did. They had to meet this one known as Dmitri. Whoever he was. Mike felt like he was a major importance in their mission though. She had a gut feeling and the way the woman warned them about him.
Anya, Mike, Lu, and Og weren't exactly sure where to go. They asked along some people about the man called Dmitri. Luckily for them, more people knew who he was and helped them along the way to their journey in finding him. They came up to the old palace like the first old woman told them where he was and wondered why they had to go there. It looked a little battered.
"This place is a dump." Lu scoffed.
"Well, it has a good reason for that..." Og nearly narrowed his eyes at her.
"How can we get in here?" Mike came up as it looked like it was forbidden to even enter, though they were assigned to come through there.
Pooka found his own way. He stuck his head in through the boards and was able to get inside the palace. Anya and her new friends saw this, then they realized they had to go after the dog now. Pooka had climbed in, but the humans were left out.
"Stand back." Anya told her friends, then had the strength to pull the boards away and help them in.
The three kids blinked, then followed her as they were now able to get inside. However, once they got in, they couldn't find Pooka and he seemed to be lost now.
"Ugh, where is that dog?" Mike asked as they kept looking around.
They all then saw a set of stairs and decided to maybe go up them and continue to explore. Anya took her scarf off as this place was a lot more warm than it was outside.
"Hello?" Anya called, her voice echoing. "Anybody home?"
"Gotcha." Lu found Pooka and picked him up and held him tight in her arms to keep him from going further as she looked around. "Wow, this place looks fancy... I wish my room were like this..."
Anya went in with her friends as they saw a very dusty and unclean part of the palace. There was a long table with dishes on the table. Anya picked up one of the plates, blowing the dust off and getting a better and closer look at it. Mike and Og were looking around themselves. Maybe there was something in here to jog Anya's memory back into place for their sake.
"This place!" Anya cried out after a long break of silence and examining. "It's like a memory from a dream..." She continued to look in the plate and stepped down from the stairs.
The kids watched Anya leaving, so they decided to follow her so she wouldn't get hurt. She came into a room that looked wonderful and magical. It happened to be the old ballroom of the palace. Anya took off her hat and gloves as she was singing to herself about her placement in the world. Mike, Lu, Og, and Pooka watched her from the staircase and smiled, little did they know was that they had some company.
Anya found herself in a fantasy. She actually felt like an aristocrat like she once was, but didn't even know or realize it. She felt like she actually belonged and was just expressing herself. Lu even refrained from jealousy that she wasn't a true princess like she told everyone she was back on her home island.
"Once upon a December~..." Anya softly sang to herself.
"Hey!" a sharp voice called. "What are you doing in here!?"
The kids woke up instantly and looked all around them. Anya was surprised too as she was pulled from her thoughts. There were two men, one portly one and a rather thin one. Anya then quickly found Mike, Lu, and Og and decided to run with them. Neither of them knew who those two were, but they were probably in a lot of trouble for trespassing. Pooka jumped from Lu's arms and ran off with them. Anya didn't have anywhere else for them to run, but they all stopped in front of the portrait of Anastasia.
"Now, how did you get in-" the skinnier man glared at them, then saw them against the portrait and noticed something. The urchin girl looked a lot like the royal Anastasia. "Here...?"
Pooka sniffed the two men, wondering whether to trust them or not.
"Excuse me, children-" the portly man was about to scold the four, then was pulled by the shorter man as they had a small, quiet conversation with each other.
"Excuse me," Og spoke up. "Is one of you Dmitri?"
"Perhaps," the shorter, skinnier man chuckled. "That depends on who's looking for him."
"My name is Anya," the oldest one said. "These are my new friends, Mike, Lu, and Og. We need travel papers. They say you're the man to see... Even though we can't tell you who said that."
"Yeah..." Lu agreed, even if that was really confusing for her native mind to ponder, it must have been a big city thing, she decided to say nothing more to avoid overwhelming her brain.
Dmitri kept observing, mostly Anya. He was circling around her and seemed attached to her.
This aggravated Mike. "What do you think you are doing!?"
"What were you?" Anya got aggravated too as Dmitri seemed to be studying her and hovering around her in a predator-like manner. "A vulture in another life?"
"I'm s-sorry, Anneya, Mitch, Lana, and Ork." Dmitri said finally, which broke him of his craziness temporarily.
"It's Anya, Mike, Lu, and Og," the woman corrected, still a little peeved with this man they didn't know until right now.
"Anya, Mike, Lu, and Og," Dmitri corrected, but still focused on the woman. "It's just... It's just you look an awful lot like... Never mind. Now, um, you said something about travel papers?"
"Who does she look like?" Lu demanded. "Tell her!"
"Just forget it," Dmitri put his hand up to the island girl.
Anya decided to tell this odd man about the journey she's been making with her new friends. "We'd like to go to Paris."
"You'd like to go to Paris?" Dmitri nearly echoed.
"Yes," Og replied, speaking up for himself since he rarely spoke to anyone, especially to anyone he didn't know. "We need to go there, it's very important for Anya here... We're going with her as her friends, colleagues if you will..." He explained, trying not to expose how they actually knew Anya with Dexter and Otto's orders.
"Who is this here?" Dmitri noticed Pooka.
The dog smiled at him and licked his face. Mike, Lu, and Og hoped this meant they could trust Dmitri for now. They were destined to, but he seemed shady based on how they knew him so far.
"Oh, he likes me." Dmitri smiled. "Nice dog... Now, let me ask you something... Anya, was it, is there a last name with that?"
"What's a last name?" Lu asked Mike.
"Well, you know," Mike shrugged. "The second part of your name, or if you have a middle name, the third and last part. Like mine's Mavinsky. I always call you guys the Albonquetines because you're from the Albonquetine Islands."
"Just like Hermione, Haggis, and Baggis are known as the Cuzzlewitz." Og understood with a nod.
"Oh, okay then, that's cool, I guess." Lu shrugged, crossing her arms, but had a smile.
"Well, actually, this is gonna sound crazy," Anya answered to Dmitri's question while the kids talked amongst themselves. "I don't know my last name, but I was found wandering around when I was eight-years-old."
"Before that," Dmitri added. "Before you were eight?"
Anya sighed, feeling slightly frustrated with his endless questions. "Look, I know it's strange, but I don't remember! I have very few memories from my past."
Dmitri looked as though he had an idea in his seemingly cunning mind. "Hm... T-That's perfect!"
"Well, I do have one clue, however," Anya went to her new younger friends. "And that is Paris."
"Paris..." Dmitri whispered once he caught a glimpse of Anya's necklace.
"Right." Anya nodded.
"Can you two help us or not?" Lu demanded. "We've been here forever!"
"Vlad," Dmitri looked to the portly man who was with him. "Vlad, tickets?"
The man, Vlad, nodded and took out tickets for all of them once he and Dmitri went to observe them with him.
Dmitri turned to the four with a grin. "Sure would like to, in fact, oddly enough, we're going to Paris ourselves. I got three tickets here with some extra, but the third main one is for her..." he pointed to the painted portrait behind them. "Anastasia."
Anya looked curious. She looked to Mike, Lu, and Og, but they only shrugged. They still couldn't reveal they knew who she really was, Anya had to find out for herself and they had to make sure she would do it.
"We are going to reunite the Grand Duchess Anastasia with her grandmother." Vlad explained.
Dmitri took the new people along. "You do kind of resemble her."
"The same blue eyes, the Romonov eyes, Nicholas's smile, Alexandra's chin... Oh, look," Vlad then took Anya's hands. "She even has the grandmother's hands."
"Wow..." Mike whispered, not only Anya was apart of this clan, but she was herself, even if she would be born hundreds of years later.
After Vlad and Dmitri tried to convince Anya, the woman had enough and refused to believe it. "Are you trying to tell me that you think I'm Anastasia?"
Dmitri turned to her. "All that I'm trying to tell you is that I've seen thousands of girls all over the country, and not one of them looks as much like the Grand Duchess as you. I mean, look at the portrait!" He made the woman look to it, it was the truth, even if the woman didn't realize it.
"I knew you were crazy from the beginning," Anya rolled her eyes. "But, now I think you're both mad! Come on, guys." She told her younger friends.
"Why?" Dmitri wanted to know why she wouldn't believe herself. "You don't remember what happened to YOU!"
"No one knows what happened to her." Vlad added.
"They might be on to something." Mike said to Anya, knowing what these men said was true.
"Yeah, you're looking for your family in Paris and Anastasia's only family is in Paris!" Lu added.
"Why won't you believe them, Anya?" Og finished.
"Have you ever thought about the possibility?" Dmitri put in, he felt strongly confident that the kids believed him even if he didn't know who they were.
Anya looked to her young friends and to the two men. "That I could be royalty?" She still refused to listen to them. She looked down and saw that even Pooka believed in the extremely true possibility. "Well, it's kind of hard to think of yourself as a duchess when you sleep on a damp floor."
"Anya, listen to me," Lu walked up to the woman, gently squeezing her hand and looking into her eyes. "Every lonely girl would hope to be a princess. And somewhere, one little girl is. I often wished I could be a princess, my parents say I'm their little princess, but sometimes I wish I could be the real princess."
Mike and Og were shocked and touched about what Lu just said. They would never expect her to say anything like that. Not in a million years.
"After all," Vlad added with a smile. "The name Anastasia means 'she will rise again'."
Dmitri took a look at his watch. He seemed very impatient about Anya's hesitence and all this talking with them not going to Paris right away like he had planned. "Really wish we could help," he said with a sneaky grin, though he wasn't a bad guy. "But the ticket is for the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Good luck."
Anya blinked, then looked to her friends who encouraged her to go along with Dmitri and Vlad with them. She looked to them with a smile, then looked to the portrait of Anastasia as Dmitri and Vlad left.
"So, what are you going to do, Anya?" Og asked.
Anya sighed. "Well, I guess I have to go then..."
"We'll go with you." Mike said with a smile.
"Right, you guys are coming too," Anya smiled, then looked as the two men were leaving. "Dmitri!"
"Hey, Dmitri, wait up!" Lu called out.
The man came to them right then. "Did you call me?"
"If I don't remember who I am, then who's to say I'm not a princess, or a duchess, right?" Anya questioned to symbolize she was going go with him and Vlad with her new friends.
Dmitri nodded, gesturing for her to continue.
"If I'm not Anastasia, the Empress will know right away," Anya continued. "And it's all just an honest mistake."
"Sounds pleasurable." Dmitri approved as Anya came downstairs with Pooka, Mike, Lu, and Og.
Vlad wrapped his arm around Anya, looking most delighted. "But, if you are the princess, then you'll finally know who you are and you'll have your family back!"
Mike, Lu, and Og cheered about that. That was really great news.
"Either way, it gets you to Paris." Dmitri replied.
"Right!" Anya shook his hand happily.
"May I present the Grand Duchess Anastasia!" Dmitri proclaimed, making everyone very happy.
"Let's hit the road then!" Mike added in delight.