AN~ This is the beginning of what I refer to as the 'merger' arc, which I was really dubious about putting in. Please don't hate on me for An, I'm sorry.
kgirl: Thanks! I don't think I'll be updating much more, three updates every two weeks or so is pretty good, IMO.
Purpleflower23: Thanks! I felt there needed to be a banter-type line.
ANannyMouse: Thanks! I don't really know what religion Granny is, my guess is she found a way to configure one with the other. And since Friar Tuck still believes, it probably works for her. I get the prank thing now. And... about Bella. :( Don't be too hard on her. She just wants to be normal! Or a doctor. You're welcome, and thank you!
squrriel: Thanks! I know, when there's no plot and not much playful banter, what's there to review about, unless someone starts making out with somebody else? I love candlelight services, so I really wanted to put one in.
"Get up, get up!" Daphne demanded, shaking Sabrina roughly.
Sabrina rolled over, too tired to notice the oddness of Daphne trying to wake her up. "Wha...?" She asked
"Uncle Jake and Mom want to try something to do with finding the baby!" Daphne said. "Come on, come on!"
Sabrina tumbled out of bed, scratching her hair wearily. "Why now?" She asked.
"Because the baby's been missing for months!" Daphne exclaimed. "Duh!"
"Not like that." Sabrina explained. "I mean it's..." She looked at the clock, but stopped turning her head once she reached the window, which was pitch black. "It's still dark out, Daphne! Why are we doing this so early?"
"Uncle Jake says we have to do it at dawn." Daphne explained. "Now come on, we have to get outside!"
Sabrina followed slowly, rubbing her eyes and yawning, still in her pajamas. She stumbled down the stairs and was met by Uncle Jake, Veronica, and an equally exhausted looking Henry, who held out a plate full of toaster waffles.
"Have a waffle." He told Sabrina. "Jake hasn't told me what you'll be doing, but you might need food."
Sabrina grabbed a lukewarm waffle off the stack and shoved it into her mouth, saying, "Fanks, Dah."
"You're welcome." Henry said. "What will they be doing, exactly, Jake?"
"Just standing there." Uncle Jake said, helping himself to a waffle. "The rest of us will be doing all the real work."
"Which means what?" Veronica asked.
"All in good time, Veronica, all in good time." Uncle Jake said breezily.
Daphne, meanwhile, had finished off the stack of waffles and was looking at Uncle Jake expectantly. "So what do we do?" She asked.
"You go outside." Uncle Jake said, pointing to the door.
Sabrina and Daphne went outside obediently, Sabrina looking longingly at the empty plate.
"I'll go make more." Henry assured her, and Sabrina smiled at him, eyes full of gratitude.
Once they were outside, Daphne bouncing to keep the cold away, Veronica with her arms wrapped around herself, shivering, Sabrina in a little bubble of warmth, Henry using the heat of waffles to keep himself from freezing, and Uncle Jake seeming impervious to the heat, Uncle Jake positioned Sabrina and Daphne so that they were standing next to each other, facing east, inside a white circle on the lawn.
"So what's this about, Jake?" Veronica asked. "And why did it have to be this early in the morning?"
"Well, you know I've been doing research on the Janus, right?" Uncle Jake asked. "And how they got convoluted into choices instead of prophecies, which appears to be what they did, and how Apollo got the title of god of prophesy?"
"I could probably have helped with that a bit." Sabrina said sheepishly.
"Yes, well, that's besides the point." Uncle Jake said. "I found out some stuff, and I think I know why Apollo was the main guy, and it has a lot to do with why I think Sabrina and Daphne haven't given us an actual prophesy yet. See, what I found indicates that you need three elements to form a prophesy: past, future, and present. Past and future we have, but not present."
"But we're all in the present, aren't we?" Henry asked, brow wrinkling.
"Yeah." Uncle Jake said. "But not the way Apollo was. We're here. Apollo could see everywhere at once, from what I'm getting. Peanut and 'Brina can see the pasts and futures of what they're looking at at that moment, but Apollo could see everywhere. And when you combine those three, you get true prophesies- the kind that aren't affected by choices people make."
"Great." Sabrina said. "But Apollo, like, died, didn't he?"
"Yes, but his power was passed on somehow." Uncle Jake said. "So we need to harness it."
"How?" Daphne asked. "If it was lost?"
"Well, I found this spell that I think, while it may not be exactly the same, should work similarly enough that it would be helpful." Uncle Jake said. "It's a spell for combining two people's powers. I think that if we took the past and the future powers and combined them together, and did it at dawn- that's Apollo's time, when the sun is rising- then we might get a sort of weak copy of the true prophesying ability."
"And you didn't tell us before because...?" Henry asked. "It would have been nice to prepare for waking up that early, Jake. And maybe to have some time to look the spell over ourselves before we agreed to it."
"Hey, there are reasonably low probabilities of side effects." Uncle Jake defended himself. "And it kind of slipped my mind..."
"Henry, if it'll help the baby, maybe we should give it a try." Veronica said, putting a hand on her husband's arm. "If there's even a little chance..."
"Don't we get a say?" Sabrina asked, raising her eyebrows.
"I'm all for it." Daphne said. "I want to find our baby sister!"
"It could be a boy." Sabrina pointed out. "And I'm in, too, I just want to be asked."
"All right, then!" Uncle Jake said. "You two stand just like that, and look at the sun. Daphne, do you know when it's going to rise?"
Daphne's eyes went white for a minute, then, when they returned to their normal shade of brown, she said, "Three minutes, twelve seconds."
"Thank you." Uncle Jake grinned. "That means I have time for a waffle, then as soon as the sun rises, I'll start the incantation."
"Grab me one, too!" Sabrina said, pointing to the waffle plate. When Uncle Jake blinked at her, she said, "What? You told me to stay put!"
Henry smiled a little and walked over, holding the plate out to the two girls. Sabrina took another waffle, Daphne took three. Uncle Jake took one. They stood there munching in the cold for two minutes, then Uncle Jake swallowed and pulled out a glowing yellow amulet.
"Girls, finish your food. It's almost time." He said, grabbing a sheet of paper from one of his pockets.
"What's that?" Daphne asked, pointing, then swallowed the last of her waffle.
"Cheat sheet." Uncle Jake said nonchalantly. "So I don't forget any words."
"Smart." Sabrina said, stuffing her waffle into her mouth. "I don't want to end up with Daphne's magic powers or her feet or something."
"Right." Uncle Jake said. "Listen, I should warn you, the magic will need some sort of vessel, and it'll make itself one. It might look a bit like you two, but it'll just be a container for the combined two abilities."
"So what happens if something goes wrong?" Sabrina asked. "Not that I think it will, but, just so I can be prepared."
"One of three things." Uncle Jake said. "Either we get nothing, or we could combine too much stuff, in which case we could either fuse your bodies together or create an entirely new person."
When he said that, Daphne's eyes flashed white again, and she said nervously, "I don't think this is a good idea..."
"Why?" Sabrina asked. "Did you see something?"
Daphne was about to answer, but at that moment, the sun crested the horizon, and Uncle Jake spun around, grabbed the amulet, and began reading off his cheat sheet. Sabrina and Daphne stopped talking, feeling a very odd sensation come over them. They weren't moving, but they were drawing closer and closer together, until they were simply one girl: the right side Sabrina and the left side Daphne. They stood there, arms outstretched, eyes shut, and they were in each other's minds, both terrified but calm at the same moment.
At that moment, Puck came running out of the house, calling, "I smell pancakes!" He bumped into Uncle Jake and almost plowed over Henry in his hurry to get to the food, scarfing down the last four on the stack of waffles.
When Puck bumped into Uncle Jake, he lost his place. But because this was the type of spell that one couldn't just stop reading in the middle of- it would be dangerous in ways he hadn't told the girls- he kept going. Nobody could hear the difference, but he skipped the part of the spell that specified which of the girl's features he wanted to be doubled and combined.
No one noticed, though, and as Uncle Jake's amulet began to glow, Sabrina and Daphne's merged body began to float, also glowing gold. At that moment, their eyes- one blue and one brown- snapped open, and they returned to their original spots as if nothing had happened.
The only difference was that there was another girl standing between them.
She had striped hair, half blonde and half brown, that was of a length in between Sabrina's and Daphne's, with sidebangs. She wore overalls like Daphne, but they were cut like Sabrina's jeans. Over the overalls she wore a green hoodie, and under them she apparently wore nothing. She looked to be about eleven years old, but it was an odd eleven: her upper body was slender, like Sabrina's, but her legs and hips were enormous and curvier than any eleven-year-old had right to be. One of her eyes was blue, and the other was brown, and they were shaped differently. Her nose was normal, as the sisters had the same shaped nose, but both her lips were full, unlike Sabrina, whose upper lip was just a bit too big, and Daphne, who had a baby-faced pout naturally.
Sabrina and Daphne blinked at the girl between them, and Daphne asked, "So did it work?"
"It more than worked!" The girl answered them.
Uncle Jake blinked. "Oh no." He said. He looked down at his paper, running his fingers over the stuff he'd read, and when he got to the specifications, he stopped. "I goofed. Oh no. Oh no. I'm sorry, girls, I'm sorry."
"Don't be." The new girl grinned at him, with Daphne's smile. "It made me, didn't it?"
"Who are you?" Puck asked, noticing what was going on, finally. "And why is there a circle on the ground?"
"Uncle Jake was trying something to see if we could find the baby." Daphne said. "And... you did what you said you might, didn't you?" She asked him. "You combined too much stuff?"
Uncle Jake nodded, staring at the new girl.
"You didn't." Sabrina snapped. "After Daphne said she had a bad feeling about it, too! We could have waited 'til tomorrow, but no! And it was 'cause Puck bumped you, I bet!" She glared at everyone for a minute, then turned to the girl. "So you're, like, half me and half Daphne, right?"
The girl nodded. "I have half of your memories and half of Daphne's. Half of each of your superpowers, too. But I don't have a name yet. Can I have a name?"
"Daphbrina?" Uncle Jake suggested.
"Saphne?" Henry asked.
"Dabrine?" Daphne crossed her arms and looked thoughtfully at the girl.
"Saphna?" Veronica snickered.
"How about just An?" Sabrina asked. "It sounds less like a crazy combination of both our names, and it's got the letters we both share in it."
The girl smiled again, and Sabrina did a double take. It was almost like being back in Moth's body, seeing her mannerisms on someone else. But they were Daphne's mannerisms, too. "I like it." The newly named An said.
"Come inside, An, and we'll get you some breakfast." Henry said.
An followed her... well, sort of her dad... into the house, and so did Veronica. Sabrina, Uncle Jake, Daphne, and Puck stayed outside.
"This is wrong." Puck shook his head. "Can't you undo this?"
"Not without a spell." Uncle Jake said. "And that might take a while to find. And even if I did, I'm not sure I should. We'll have to test it to see."
"What do you mean, you're not sure if you should?" Sabrina asked. "Why should you? She's a real person, right? I mean, this is creepy, but..."
"That's the thing." Uncle Jake said. "I'm not sure if she's actually a person or just has your personalities. Theoretically, she's just a vessel for the things we combined about you two: in this case, everything. But I'm not sure if her soul was replicated. If it was, then we can't really destroy her, because that would be murder. I mean, it shouldn't be possible, but stuff happens, and with you two being so strange, I don't know. If she's just a vessel, I should be able to find a spell to undo her. But I have to watch and see, first."
"So we're observing to tell if she has a soul?" Daphne asked. "I don't think I like her..."
"You've seen her for five seconds, how can you tell?" Sabrina asked. "Except, I don't, either."
Puck shook his head. "It's just wrong. Sabrina and Daphne are separate. Seeing them together..." He shook his head. "It's like someone merged my little sister and my worst enemy."
"Thanks." Sabrina said dryly. "Love you, too."
"I know." Puck grinned at her. "How could you not?"
Sabrina rolled her eyes and walked inside. "Whatever, Puck. Think what you want."
The day was spent getting to know An. Most of the family didn't quite seem to know what to do with this girl who knew so much about them, and a few were openly hostile.
"Puck!" The Sabrina/Daphne voice called as he walked down the hall. "Wait up!"
Puck stopped with a sigh, waiting for An. Eight hours and already he was sick of her. He hoped she didn't have a soul, so Uncle Jake could get rid of her.
"Hi, hi Puck." She grinned, channeling Daphne.
"Hi." He said. "What do you want?"
"You." She said simply.
Puck blinked. His brain didn't work for a minute, before he processed that one of the Grimm sisters must like him. Then he shuddered, realizing that that meant that this... thing... had a crush on him. "Thank, but not interested." He said.
"What?" She asked. "You want the original? Sabrina. I knew it. Daphne saw it."
"Whatever." Puck said, turning to walk away.
"She doesn't love you, you know." An called after him.
Puck stopped.
"She said it." An continued. "And I remember. She wasn't lying."
Puck turned to her slowly and said, "Well, then, you don't, either." Then he walked off.
He bumped into Sabrina and Bella around the corner of the hallway.
"What was that about?" She asked.
"Nothing." Puck said. She just told me how you really feel about me. "She just..." He shook his head, then exploded, and said, "Sabrina, I think your sister has a crush on me!"
Sabrina blinked at him for a while, then asked, "Come again?"
"Wait, what makes you think Daphne likes you?" Bella asked.
"She was all like, 'I want you,'" Puck started, waving his arms around, "And then she was like, 'fine, go back to Sabrina! But she told me she doesn't love you!' So if An is inside Sabrina's head, then it's obviously not her, and since she's half Sabrina and half Daphne..."
"Sure." Bella said. "That totally makes sense..." Not.
Sabrina shrugged, fighting down a blush of relief. "Daphne might like you, Puck, but don't get freaked out over it? She'll probably grow out of it. And if she doesn't... Well, she hasn't told you yet, so..."
Puck smiled at her a bit. "Thanks. Hey, at least she didn't say you like me. Imagine how awkward that would be!"
"Yeah." Sabrina said. "Real awkward. Good thing, huh?" She wasn't sure if she was glad An had taken her words out of context or just upset at his reaction.