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 FIFTY-THREE

OPERATION CROSSROADS

One moment Hook was making his way through the woods, taking the shortcut he had often utilized to spy for Cora or watch Emma take lunch breaks on patrol which occasionally meant her peeing behind some bushes after too much coffee or one of those giant cups of pop from the Dark Star - and, yes, even at the time he had realized that it was rather perverted to spy on Emma dropping her tight-ass jeans and panties to relieve herself - though at least he wasn't perverted enough to be into the second part of that!

Anyway, back to the point. One moment Hook was taking his spy-slash-stalker shortcut and the next he was being mowed down by a prematurely graying psycho in one of this world's four wheeled death traps, all of which seemed to have it out for him.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, darling," cooed Cruella as she helped him out of the ditch he'd landed in, "these old roads are so slippery this time of year. Let me take you back to the hospital!"

Only she didn't, of course. As he was getting into the car she jabbed him with a needle and the next thing Hook awoke being hauled out of her death trap by Cruella and a very angry coconspirator.

"Ursula," Hook croaked out. "Fancy seeing you h-"

She kicked him in the groin and Hook crumbled to his knees. "Oye, not fair!"

"Neither was what you did to me, Pirate Scum!" hissed Ursula. "Now summon my father!"

"He's your father."

"That I couldn't summon even if he hadn't exiled me because you took my inter-dimensional mer-magic, Pirate Scum!"

Cruella smirked and shoved a conch shell at him, telling Hook, "Baelfire seems to think this should do the trick, even in this world. So pucker up and blow, me hearty."

Hook sneered at the pun, but snatched the shell and did as he was told. It wasn't long then before the sea boiled as it had in The Enchanted Forest and Poseidon appeared, in this instance taking on human form and stepping on the dock where Cruella's car was parked.

"Ah, Pirate Scum, have you fulfilled your end of our bargain?"

Hook let out a sigh and held out his box of personnel effects which included Ursula's shell. She snatched it out, gave him a sour look, and then bitch-slapped her father.

"That's for abandoning me because of something a piece of human filth did!" Ursula growled.

"But, my little sea cucu-"

"Don't you 'little sea cucumber me', Daddy!" snapped Ursula. "I was a young girl. You sent me away to bring pirates to their doom and when I got scammed by one you took his side."

"Well, that's not entirely-"

"It is entirely that you were looking for any excuse to get me out of the line of succession while saving the family a scandal, and apparently being voice-rapped by a pirate-"

"Oye, there was nor raping!" Hook exclaimed. "I might have had a few a questionably consensual shags, but they were all adults and human!"

"Including your mother," scoffed Cruella.

"Do you want me to cut you?" Hook threatened with his hook.

In response, Cruella spewed out her animal-controlling stink breath and a flock of sea gulls descended, not to peck Hook to death, but to all relieve themselves at the same time.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

"What? You lived at sea, darling, surely you've been shit on by more than a few birds," the woman cackled.

"It's a good look for you," sniggered Ursula.

"Indeed. We can at least agree on that," nodded Poseidon. "And I am sorry, Star Fish. You have to understand that I was beholding to that crazy religious cult in Atlantis that had brainwashed so many of our people. I would have been forced to testify to your activities and they could have thrown us both in a tench and taken over. Drowning pirates with our magical hair nets is one thing, but those people are crazy."

"Sounds like the nutters at Zelena's old farm," mused Hook.

"So... you don't think I'm a vile and disgusting disappointment?" asked Ursula.

"Of course not, Star Fish. But you can certainly do better than that ginger idiot with coral for brains. I'm quite sure she thinks a human vagina is just a place to stash stolen spoons. And her prince is rather dimwitted too."

"Yes, they're in for a real Blue Lagoon moment on their little island, I'm sure," drawled Cruella and she shuddered. "God help your people from what they spawn."

"How do you know about Eric and Ariel?" asked Hook, unnerved and the bling-wearing woman rolled her eyes.

"Oh, Emma was yammering on about your various lies while drinking with Regina to make her feel better after her ex-lover's demise. It was so gay."

"We really should be going," Poseidon interjected.

Ursula laid a hand on his arm. "I need a moment with Cruella, Daddy," she told him, then turned to the other Queen of Darkness.

"You're sure you don't want to come back with me?"

"To what?" sighed Cruella. "That's not my world, darling..."

Ursula dragged Cruella out of ear shot then and it was just Hook and Poseidon standing awkwardly.

"So..." said Hook, still covered in sea gull poop.

Poseidon crossed his arms and remarked, "So, you know about your whore mother."

"What do you know about it?" huffed Hook.

"I know her hair net has drown many a pirate. And that it would have drown your sorry backside too if your brother hadn't gotten that jewel which warded it off," complained the Mer King. "You have been a menace to my family for generations, Pirate Scum. We never should have made this accursed net!"

That said, Poseidon threw at Hook a net made of glowing multi-colored hair.

"My family should have known better than to make this," sighed Poseidon. "They made a horrible deal."

"A deal? What deal?"

"Your whore mother," he explained, "came to my great great great great grandfather with a child she did not want. It seemed she had learned a terrible secret discovered by her sister whores and after it was confirmed by her eldest son who had just gotten his own ship in the Royal Navy for mass murdering his crew to get my people's most precious gem - a theft which led to the rise of that aforementioned cult of crazies - and in exchange for doing away with the child, she would give her magical hair to my family for the most powerful of sailor-snaring nets. An agreement was reached. My great great great great grandfather took her hair and the child and then, of course, she drown herself as she could not deal with the horrors to which she had been a part."

It was several long moments before Hook put together what Poseidon was trying to say, and then he paled as he stammered out, "Y-you're not saying that I... that... fa-fathered a child with m-my own m-um?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

Hook staggered back. "Oh, gods! And you... your ancestor killed-"

"Of course not," scoffed Poseidon. "We kill adult humans not babies. It wasn't the brat's fault it was born of an incestuous union as part of some psychopath's prank. Using the magical hair net she was taken through a portal to another land and given to a childless couple."

"You mean... I could have great great great great grandchildren running about along with the not as great ones I unintentionally fathered on account of shagging Queen Eva's mum?"

Poseidon sighed. "You humans are thick, aren't you? What I'm trying to tell you, Pirate Scum, is that 'Queen Eva' is the child you fathered with your mother who was taken through a portal. Because of the use of the magical hair net at a King Tide during a magical hurricane that channeled the powers of our Heart of the Storm gem-"

"But I thought you said she found out after Liam stole the gem?"

"You think that stupid king kept that gem for long?" scoffed Poseidon. "We sent assassins at the King Tide to retrieve it. Of course, they failed to kill him on account of the dreamshade and died upon returning with the gem. There are statues made in their honor... or there were until those cultists smashed them."

"But we didn't bring dreamshade back from Neverland-"

"Of course you did. Your brother hide it from you. He was a lying, manipulative, jerk."

"I meant until several years later."

"Don't try your chronological bullshit on me, Pirate Scum. Have I not explained that our portal use is subject to temporal anomalies? You should be focusing on the disgusting fact that you fathered a child with your mother who was given to some second rate royals with a faked Dark One birth certificate because that was a preferable provenance to the truth. No one would want an incest baby born at a brothel and pawned off by some mermaids."

The truth finally did set in then and Hook fell to his knees, vomited into the sea, and then burst into tears, which was becoming a rather sad repeat occurrence. In his misery, he completely missed Poseidon and Ursula leaving and Cruella getting into her car and driving off.

When finally a pair of boots appeared in his vision it came with an insult, "You're looking a little thin on top and round about the middle, Captain."

Hook sniffled and glared upwards. "Fuck off, Smee."

"Aye aye, Douchebag!" Smee cheerfully declared, striding toward his repaired lobster boat and his crew.

"Let's go deadliest catch some crustaceans, bitches!" the former first mate exclaimed, earning cheers from the men who once served the fearsome Captain Hook.

Never having felt more rotten in his whole life - and he'd lived 300 plus years, though he'd been trying to round that down progressively lately to seem less creepy than The Crocodile - Hook picked himself and his mother's skanky net up and endured a centuries late walk of shame of incestuous proportions back to his ship.

At least The Jolly Roger had never betrayed him. And it had rum in its hold. Lots and lots of rum.

AN: That's right, Eva is also Hook's half-sister! At least one of you readers saw that coming. Babies and portals on this show, am I right? And yes, the chronology of it makes no sense, but that's the point (obviously). And did something totally gay happen with Ursula and Cruella? Did they part on good terms or not? Meh, it's just a possible but really said out-loud token lesbian side story with off-screen resolution that's not important when Hook is man-paining, duh! As for the title of the chapter, "Operation Crossroads" was the project name of nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll between 1946 and 1958 at seven test sites on the reef itself, on the sea, in the air and underwater. The final test of the so-called "Baker Bomb" was declared by the Atomic Energy Commission "the world's first nuclear disaster" and due to a miscalculation of the yield of the isotopes used in the bomb was about 1,000 times more powerful than each of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

Next up: If you thought Hook was having a bad day, Emma's isn't going so well either. FYI: Never take advice from Pirate Scum!