Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.

PART II

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

PARTY AT YOUR OWN RISK

Saturday brought a party at Granny's. After Snow's release from the hospital, they sent Elsa, Anna, Kristoff, Ingrid, one of those magic-resisting cuffs, and one Belle's books about using memory stones to treat mental illness back to Arendelle with The Apprentice's dick wand.

Then they all gathered at the diner to finally celebrate the town not being destroyed - and the new mayor not dying. Well, not 'all'. Hook had a mental breakdown and was now in Ingrid's padded cell. And, technically, "Mary Margaret" wasn't mayor any longer as she'd stepped down, thus reinstating Regina as Mayor, though Belle had spent the better part of the evening arguing that they needed a free and fair election.

Avoiding that conversation, Emma and Neal were hunched over a map at the back booth.

"... figure we get Ursula and Cruella first if my sources are right," Emma was saying, pointing to red circles on the map where a former bountyhunter colleague who'd owned her favor had staked out Ursula's apartment and place of work.

It wasn't exactly true what Emma had told Poseidon that only Rumplestiltskin knew where she was. Neal had his dead guy intell, what with watching and fuming over how Robin Hood kicked his father out of his apartment.

And Ursula would know how to get to Cruella's upstate foreclosed-upon mansion.

Then, on the way back to Maine, she and Neal would swing through Vermont - Emma had called Lily's apartment manager in Boston and she was no longer there - and pick up her frenemy.

Emma was just glad they'd gotten one last awkward 'us is probably never gonna happen' chat out of the way before the eight hour drive to New York City that was sure to be uncomfortable anyway.

Not just because they were taking Tamara's (much more comfortable and with GPS and new plates and VIN put on by Michael Tillman) SUV, which was maybe slightly weird, using the dead skank's car. But it was less weird than an eight hour roadtrip in the Bug with battling memories of love and betrayal between them.

Although not as awkward as it would be if they had a teenager in the backseat...

"You're not coming," Emma said without looking up as Henry's shadow fell over the map.

"But Moooooooooooom," Henry wined. "You owe me! You called me a terrible son!"

"You called me a terrible mother, sheriff, and savior first. I win," Emma retorted. "You are not sitting in the back with a homicidal mer-princess, a woman who wants to murder my entire family, or riding shotgun with a sharpie-eyebrowed serial killer who tried to murder you in another life."

"But maybe they're not so bad now," Henry argued. "Maybe unchanging history changed them... or unchanged them back to what they're supposed to be, which isn't so psychotic."

"Have you learned nothing about this family, Henry?" interjected Regina. "All new relatives and acquaintness of relatives are psychotic. It's probably due to the apparently disturbingly high amount of inbreeding in the Enchanted Forest that makes those polygamist sibling-marrying compound people look sane."

"Speaking of," interjected Robin, who'd finally emerged from his breakup manpain cave in the woods, "we really need to do something about the polygamist sibling-marrying compound over by the wildlife refuge. They keep sending out 'recruiters' to try and brainwash girls into marrying their creepy old men. I've hardly been able to come into town, everyone is so worried about them raiding the forest camps."

"Freaks," grumbled Regina. "I should have mass-murdered them back in the Enchanted Forest. It was on my to-do list before Maleficent got all up in my business about the Dark Curse."

"Well, you can't mass murder them now," Snow argued, smoothing down the blue dress she was excited to have fit back into after a diet of crappy hospital food.

If only David wasn't still on penicillin for the syphilis she'd given him, the evening might have ended in a far more fun fashion that it probably would.

"Who says I can't?" Regina shot back. "Next time there's a crazy magical catastrophe - in a week or two - I'll just casually direct it in their direction and problem solved!"

"Great, you do that," Emma said, folding up the map. "We're gonna head out."

"Well, take some food to go!" Granny insisted. "And lots of coffee. I don't want you hitting any wolves - or pirates."

Everyone sniggered a bit, though it was kind of sad and if Emma didn't have to get to New York to find Ursula so Poseidon didn't kill them all, she would have investigated that shaman.

Emma hugged Henry after Neal, telling him, "No burning down the school. Belle can help you if you need more challenging work. And don't forget to help with dusting your grandfather's shop until he wakes up. And remember-"

"No kissing any girls until I know who I'm related to," Henry groaned, rolling his eyes.

"We'll be back in a week," Neal concluded. "Try to keep the town from self-destructing."

They all headed outside to wave off Neal and Emma pulling Tamara's repainted U-Haul, then checked the time.

"I need to get to the office and get a few things settled," sighed Regina and her gaze followed Robin and Roland, "and then find out what's really going on between those camps. I don't know what he blew all that money on that was supposed to be for a room at the Inn, but I'm sure there's more going on than some daughter-snatching cultists. He's been very evasive since that ice bitch's spell."

"Well, maybe some hurtful truths were said between Robin and his men that he's trying to work through," Snow pointed out. "I can't imagine they were all supportive of him dating his late wife's murderer. Also, I'm sorry I encouraged that, including after the whole finding out you murdered Marian because of me thing. That was being neither a good hero nor a good friend."

"Well, between the baby brain and the brain damage, I suppose I'll let it slide - this time," said Regina, and Snow looked relieved in that annoying way she couldn't stand.

"We should head home," David came over, taking Snow by the arm. "Dr. Whale said not to overdo it."

"Like you weren't over doing it going to that Shaman just days after getting out of the hospital?"

"Hey, I'm pixie dust free now, and my heart's fine."

"Well, something about you is fine," giggled Snow, swatting his butt.

Regina rolled her eyes in disgust as the pair continued to flirt on their way across the street. She so hated sappy romance.

How had she let herself get sucked in by that black hole of nauseating happiness?

Shaking her head, she turned in the direction of City Hall for what would probably another late night, just like old times.

The ringing of her desk phone startled Regina awake and she groaned to discover she'd fallen asleep at her desk on a pile of paperwork that Mary Margaret had never done, most of which was complaints filed by citizens about her terrible leadership.

"No way they won't elect me," she huffed and grabbed the phone with a grumpy, "What?"

The 'what' was David, who'd been demoted to deputy but was now acting Sheriff again, calling her to the forest, specifically the polygamist sibling-marrying compound over by the wildlife refuge.

"Oh God," Regina exclaimed, covering her nose and mouth when she got out of the car.

There were bodies everywhere. People in fairy tale clothes were laying in heaps, all of them with horrible slashing wounds and what looked like their chests cut open and hearts ripped out.

"I was on my way to Anton's to get some produce and I smelled the blood," explained Ruby, who seemed far less put off by the site than a waitress should.

"There's no way one person did this," David stated the obvious. "It had to be another one of the Second Curse factions. I know these people didn't exactly make friends with them when they all arrived here."

"Trying to steal little girls so old men can impregnate them tends to make enemies quickly," said Regina.

"Zelena's farm is the closest," said Ruby. "I heard some of these compound people had moved in there and the adjacent forest-dwellers weren't happy about it. Arguments over using the well."

"Then I'll start there."

"Maybe we should call Emma," Ruby suggested.

"We're not calling Emma," David insisted. "I can handle this. I can prove that I'm good at this job. And if this is a dispute between groups that don't acknowledge the laws of this world, then it may require my authority in the Enchanted Forest to find the culprits and hold them accountable."

"What authority? You're an impostor who gained a kingdom through a coupe. At the most you're a peasant consort to a queen who's legitimacy is questionable, particularly since she required a brain transplant," scoffed Regina.

"Kinda true," said Ruby. "And, honestly, whoever did this did the town a service. I mean, look at them. They're hideously deformed without the glamour spells they used. You should see the matriarch they kept under the bed in the house. Here I thought that was just a creepy rumor. I'm all for finding these killers and throwing them a parade."

"We're supposed to be the heroes here!" David complained.

"But you aren't," Regina reminded. "I'll talk to Robin. You... clean up this mess. I'm sure Dr. Whale will be thrilled with all the 'specimens'."

"Whatever you say, Madam Mayor," sighed David.

What a day, Regina thought as she headed back to her car - and stepped in entrails.

"Oh, farts," she snapped, then looked around to make sure no one had heard her.

AN: Storybrooke has a mass murder mystery on their hands! Is it the new residents of Zelena's farm? Are the Merry Men above cult slaughter? (Points if you know the TV show and episode referenced in this chapter!)

Next up: Ursula has quite a story to tell.