Happily Ever After All

A Mystic Prequel

By: A J

(Standard Disclaimer Applies)

Author's Warning!: This work of fanfiction is a long-term look at the relationship of two adults, and as such, I'm not gonna pull any punches. This means Language, Nudity, Violence, and Sex! If any of those are not for you, turn back now, and read some of the gentler fictions by others and myself. For those with some fortitude, let's get on to the story.

Chapter 4: Camping and Conniving

Dinner got paid for, leftovers got packed up, and the teens all separated to their individual rides long enough to go home and collect their sleepover gear. Hay insisted that Eric drop her off at home as fast as possible, so he could get back to the Observatory and return to her with his camping supplies.

W

Susan, who'd been expecting something with the girls to pop up before the weekend was over, just laughed upon hearing about the sleepover and waved her daughter past to grab her backpack full of 'sleepover survival gear', which Will usually kept packed in the corner just inside her bedroom door. Plucking it up, she handed her mother her mostly-uneaten order of Shish kabobs and rice pilaf, and told her "See ya tomorrow night!" with a goodnight kiss.

I

"Hey, mom, we're spending the night at the Silver Dragon for Will's birthday party," Irma said as she hurried up the stairs at her house.

"Irma, I thought you five were getting together tonight so you could watch Chris for me tomorrow. I've got that morning service to attend, remember?" Anna had recently gotten a job at the nearby Saint Marcellus Reformed Lutheran Church as a substitute organist, while their regular player was out; first with the flu, then a pregnancy with complications.

"Shoot!" Irma sat on the top step, trying to cudgel her brain into a solution-making shape. "Aaaarrgghh! Alright, just, give me twenty minutes to tell the girls I won't be staying, and I'll be right back. But I promised to loan Hay-hay my spare sleeping bag, since hers burst on us last time."

"I thought Hay was a super-seamstress. Why didn't she just repair hers?"

"Ah, well, it kinda got stained with soda at the same time. Both our faults, really, but since I had the spare, I told her not to worry about it." No way was she going to tell her stepmom the actual circumstances, but a promise was a promise, and she was determined to keep this one.

"Alright, just tell her to be careful with this one, and get home safe dear," Anna replied. Irma nodded, grabbed the two sleeping bags from her room and headed back to the Chinese restaurant.

T

Taranee breezed into her room, looking for necessities as she circled her bed. Grabbing up her backpack, she started by throwing her school stuff on the end of her bed, then nabbed two durable outfits and a third pair of underclothes. Adding her bathing suit and a beach towel, she debated over her extra toiletries, then just shrugged and nabbed a box of tissues. Worse come to worse, she wouldn't be reduced to using leaves for necessities. Thinking of necessities made her reach into the back of her top vanity drawer for her small box of emergency supplies, and she dropped it in the front of her pack.

On her way back out, Taranee spotted her brother, but not her parents. "Hey, Peter. Where are Mom an' Dad?"

"Hey, T'ree," her older sibling replied, looking up from his sport show. This week was apparently random extreme sports, including street luge. "Their concert ran late, I guess. Did you forget they were going out tonight?" He looked at her worriedly. Taranee never forgot anything.

"Huh? No, just didn't know when it was at. Hey, I'm spending the night with the girls at the Dragon. Tell 'em I said goodnight, okay?"

"Sure, T'ree. 'night."

C

Lillian jumped Cornelia as she came in the door, a hyperactive ninja-ette in a sky blue pajama outfit. "AY-HAH!" she yelled, leaping onto Cornelia's back from behind the rubber plant next to the coat rack. To the eight-year-old's disappointment, her older sister turned at the last second, and snatched her out of the air, only to fall from the weight of her anyway. They landed tickling each other, and soon Lillian was crying "Uncle! Uncle!"

"You're getting too big for that, brat," Cornelia said, smiling down at her little sister. "You can't hide behind that tree much longer. Soon you'll be taller than it is." She didn't have the heart to tell Lillian the tree had ratted her out to the Earth Guardian, just as she had the sneaking suspicion Napoleon, her sister's cat, had alerted Lillian when Cornelia herself was at the door.

"Hey, Muppet Baby, where're the 'rents?" she asked, and Lillian sat up, still giggling.

"Dad went to pick up dinner, and Mom's downstairs taking care of the laundry," Lillian beamed, smiling her currently crooked grin. Half her teeth had already upgraded. "I'm watching myself!" she continued proudly, while Napoleon 'mrow'd behind her and gave Cornelia a conspiratorial wink.

"Is that so?" Cornelia inquired, smiling back at her sister's familiar. "Well, think I can trust you to continue then, while I get ready for a sleepover at Hay Lin's?"

"Awwww, why don't you guys have sleepovers over here anymore?" Lillian pouted. She missed hanging out with Hay Lin, and Irma was the only girl she'd rather watch fight with her sister besides herself; the brunette was better at it.

"Because you don't give us a moment's peace, brat," Cornelia teased. "See ya in a few." But she didn't. By the time Cornelia was done gathering her sleepover/camping supplies, her mother had come back up from the basement laundry center, and sent the overly rambunctious Lillian to her room to unwind in private before eating. Making her excuses, Cornelia ducked out of more dinner with her parents, and headed back to meet the girls.

H

"Here're the sleeping bags, Hay-hay. I won't be joining the expedition into the uncharted wilds of Meridian, unfortunately. Mom's got a gig tomorrow morning, and I'm stuck watching the Red Menace." Irma had started calling her brother Chris that last November when he'd developed a streak of red in his hair at the same time the teens were studying about communism in history class.

Hay pouted cutely, as only she could. "Awwww, but what'll I tell Aldarn?" She'd been determined to see her two friends hook up this weekend, knowing the green-skinned smith had been crushing on her Water-powered friend for forever, and Irma was despairing that she was doomed to dating fellow A/V geeks like Martin and (to a much less geeky extent) Joel.

"Hay Lin!" Irma eyed her perpetually horny best friend, and blushed. "That is not why I was going! Even if the rest of you are thinking with your lower brains as badly as the boys now, it wasn't on my agenda." Irma fumed at Hay for almost a minute before she got a response, and it was definitely not the one she expected.

"You know, I can hear it when you lie. Besides, if you really don't like Aldarn that well, I was gonna tell you you could stay with Eric and me." Hay flushed herself saying this. "I'm not the kind of girl who'd leave her best friend out in the cold on an outing like this." Her blush spread across her forehead and shoulders as she added, "Besides, I kinda feel like I owe it to you … and Eric."

"Whoa, Hay-hay ... are you pimping us out?" Irma hoarsed.

"NO!" Hay Lin was so glad they were having this conversation out behind the restaurant. She didn't think she could live with her grandma overhearing that last exchange. "I just … I just meant, well … I've already gotten to experience a … a threesome," she broke into a whisper with the last word, then giggled nervously. "And I wanted to … wellll … share the experience with my two best friends."

"Oh, boy …" Irma managed to say, then the two preoccupied girls became aware of the first of the other arrivals. "Look, if I didn't have to be home - and conscious - first thing in the morning, I'd love to stand here all night debating about that. Let's just … save that discussion for later, okay?" 'MUCH later,' Irma thought to herself, setting the pair of sleeping bags down by the back door of the Silver Dragon, and doing her level best not to run screaming from the scene. She couldn't believe it! Her best friend had just propositioned her, and invited her to join Hay and her boyfriend for … Irma shook her head, trying to banish the images that just the suggestion had wrought in her brain.

Passing Taranee and Will on her way back out of the alley, Irma gave them the short, short version of why she had to stay home, silently reciting 'The Jabberwocky' poem in her head to keep from letting slip to Taranee all the billowing confusion in her mind.

Cornelia was just arriving when Irma got back to her car in the public lot down the street. Looking at Irma's 'classic' Yugo (it only qualified because it was over twenty years old) over the handlebars of her electric scooter, the Earth Guardian gave her departing teammate a wave.

Looking for an excuse to end her night on an up-note, Irma slowed as she pulled past and called out, "'night, Corny!"

"Don't call me Corny!" the blonde teen cried after Irma as she puttered away, then shook her head, laughing. The two of them would be doing that act well into their nineties, Alzheimer's willing, and maybe by then, it wouldn't be funny. But she doubted it.

Cornelia rode on to the back door of the Silver Dragon, where Hay held the door open for her. Using her telekinesis, she 'carried' her scooter inside and down to the basement, where she plugged it back in to stay charged while they were gone to Meridian. The other three girls were already pretending to set up for a sleepover in the basement, setting bags of chips and sleeping bags in the corners, while Hay used a gust of wind to spread a blanket across the center floorspace before the small TV/DVD player they'd put down there two years ago for Caleb. It had ostensibly been for him to learn more about Earth culture, so he could fit in better while working in the restaurant. As far as Cornelia could tell, he'd never even turned it on to check the weather.

"Where'd Irma go?"

"Has to watch Chris tomorrow morning," Taranee replied, toeing her backpack of clothes into the space for her pillow.

"Checklist, ladies?" Will called.

"Food, check!" Taranee started, holding up a pair of bags of beef jerky, and pointing out the many bags of chips each girl had brought along.

"Drinks, check!" Hay sang with a hand on a 24-pack of bottled water, having taken over Irma's job since the Water Guardian was out. Her usual contribution, 'entertainment', was hopefully handled already.

"Bedding, check!" Cornelia said, noting most of the girls had two bags, instead of one.

"Heart, check!" Will finished, their own team joke, since invariably something would call them away from one of their personal nights.

"Tents, check!" Hay Lin added mentally, pointing out a pair of wrapped bundles under Caleb's cot in the corner. She did not want her grandma figuring out what they were up to.

"Elyon check," Cornelia said, pulling a padded rectangle out of her duffel bag. Unwrapping it carefully, she opened the wooden case she'd brought from her house. Nestled inside was her most prized possession, a mirror that acted as a communication line with her childhood friend, Queen Elyon of Meridian.

Breathing softly on the glass to fog it up, Cornelia tapped it three times, intoning three words in a whisper. "Weira, Elyon, Miriya." It was a code Elyon had wrought into the mirror when she conjured it, using the past, present, and (hopeful) future Queens' names as a trigger to talk to the Meridianite. Elyon had a similar mirror in her suite keyed to her best friend on Earth, with 'Elizabeth, Cornelia, Isabol'. (Cornelia was a HUGE fan of the movie 'Ladyhawke'.)

The ornate oval mirror misted completely over, including its lilies-and-leaves frame, and Cornelia shivered as her fingers felt the chill of the dimension-linking magic. It wasn't the same thing as a fold, which they usually just got a pleasant static tingle from using. (Though Cornelia supposed that was simply because Will was using her Quintessence to conjure those, and maybe that was the difference.) The chill remained, but the glass cleared, and the other three girls uttered "Wow!"s of wonder. Elyon's room in the palace was plainly visible through the frost-ringed portal.

"Elyon? Elly, are you there?" Cornelia called, slowly turning her head right before the mirror. Taranee used her telepathy and 'peeked' through Cornelia's view. Amazingly, it was just like a window, and she found she could see further into the sides of the suite the closer Corny drew 'their' gaze in that direction along the mirror.

Shaking to clear the double exposure out of her sight, Taranee turned to the other girls. "That girl's getting good with her mojo," she said, indicating the mirror.

"Hmmmm, let me try, Cornelia," Hay said after the Earth Guardian got no response from her repeated calling. She grabbed a small electronic device from her backpack, and pressed down on a button on one side. It emitted a strange ring, like a tuning fork, and Hay touched it to the mirror's surface. Clearing her throat, Hay grinned at the other Guardians present, and sing-songed, "Ring, ring, ring, phone call, phone call." The others all looked at her in amazement at the echo effect plainly audible from the other side of the glass. She repeated the funny phrase twice before a young girl from the palace staff appeared across the room. She looked a lot like Irma, the girls noted.

"'allo?" The brown-haired maiden's Northwest district accent was pronounced, reminding the Guardians of a brutal English cockney from a movie weeks ago.

"Alanna? It's Cornelia. Is Elyon back from the southern continent, yet?" The confused maid stepped further into the room, and they all could see when she discovered their visages in the mirror; she practically fainted.

"Th' G'ardians? Oh, blessed Loight, Oi t'ought Oi were hearin' things, Misses. No, Misses, th' Queen's still out, loike as not tryin' t' find somewhere t' dump them blue dumplin's dat nasty Lemmy-chap dropped on us. Th' Lurd'ns don't loike 'em much, Misses." She curtsied, and the girls became aware that she was about their age, which meant she was about Elyon's age, as well.

Grinning at a legitimate reason for their unplanned visit to Metamoor, the Guardians took their leave of Alanna, and circled around to deal with packing up their gear after all, while Cornelia dispelled the mirror's connection with a quiet inversion of the spell, and carefully rewrapped it. Propping it in an out-of-harm's-way corner carefully, she turned to check on the others.

"Progress report?" she asked Will, who was texting on her phone.

"Matt and the others have met up again, and Eric's driving," she responded, with a grin in Hay Lin's direction. The Guardians and their beaus had already come up with a signal so the girls would know when Matt, Nigel and Eric had arrived without alerting Yan Lin.

Just as Hay and Cornelia were pulling the last tent out from under the cot, Yan opened up the door to the basement. "You girls need anything tonight, you'll have to get it yourself. My favorite show just spawned a sister series, and the two-hour premier is starting in two minutes."

"That's okay, Yan, we're going to Meridian in a few minutes," Taranee told her. "Apparently Lemagrag left some of his blue passlings behind, and Elyon doesn't know which dimension Learza is, yet. So we're off to help her with that."

"And since Her Holiness couldn't make it to my dinner party, short as it was between the fight earlier and this, we were gonna spend the night there, partying with royalty." Will's one-sided grin was infectious, and Hay Lin gave a giggle, winding her twin waist-length tails of hair up in buns to imitate Princess Leia. Cornelia and Taranee both laughed. The girls had watched a marathon of all six 'Star Wars' movies just before Hay Lin got the computer-animated 'Clone Wars' for Christmas.

Noticing the tents and sleeping bags, Yan grunted. "If you're expecting to party in the palace, what's all that for?"

"Oh, Elly's out in the southern continent still, where Lemagrag invaded. You know, where all the good beaches are?" Cornelia's Cheshire-cat grin had even Yan chuckling. "So we'll probably camp out with her for the night, and help her get her troops home tomorrow. Then we're gonna talk with the Oracle and the Council, find some possible solutions for grounding that stinking (literally, I don't think his world has discovered soap, yet,) trans-dimensional trouble-maker."

"Well, don't forget your swimsuits, girls. The time-difference between Meridian city and most of the southern continent should give you plenty of tanning-time. Now excuse me, my new favorite show is about to start." With that, the elderly Chinese woman sashayed back upstairs to her room.

"Wow," Taranee sighed. "A guaranteed alibi that actually happens to be true." Over the years, the Guardians had been tested to the limits of their imagination – and their patience – to come up with believable and non-repetitive excuses. But like tonight with Irma, there were always occasions one of them just couldn't get away. Lately, Matt and Elyon had been exploring their various elemental abilities, to help out when one of the others couldn't, with wildly varied results.

Elyon was better with her telekinetic control of stuff, like Water and Earth, and had almost as good a handle on her telepathy as Taranee did. Matt was more a raw firepower and fighting specialist, and could fly nearly as well as Hay Lin, if a bit less gracefully. They also had found that, by concentrating on a specific element, either Heart could transform one Guardian in an emergency, though they learned the hard way that the girl's use of her individual abilities were hampered slightly without the direct involvement of the Heart of Candracar.

One other thing Matt was becoming an expert at, partially through prolonged proximity with Will, was using the boost of Quintessence to talk with electrical items, including cell phones. He used that trick now to contact Will through her phone in the basement of the Silver Dragon.

"Miss Will, your paramour has requested us to tell you …" her phone began in a tinny voice only she and Hay Lin could make out.

"Thanks, Marianna," Will said hurriedly. "Just tell them we'll be right up, please." Her newest phone (she'd lost the last one in the midst of one of their battles with Phobos during Hay's Week of Hell,) was a worse chatterbox than the Air Guardian given any leeway, so she made a point of heading it off before the fact now.

"And with that, we cue the music," Taranee deadpanned, borrowing one of Irma's favorite lines. Hay giggled and started whistling "Takin' Care of Business" while the four girls finished hefting their camping gear and headed back up the stairs to rendezvous with their waiting boyfriends.