AN~ A day early for y'all, to make up for last time... Yeah. Sorry 'bout that... Did you know that every time I do that it's an improper use of an ellipsis (which means this: ...)? It's only supposed to be used for deleting things. I learned that yesterday, but I don't care. At all.
The Winner of Last Question of the Day: ANannyMouse again, for the sheer DETAIL she put in. You all did great, and if she can't think of a prize, then I may give it to someone else, because it's not quite fair for one person to win twice in a row.
New Question of the Day: What would you do even if you'd end up in jail for it? What would be worth it?
nana jojo: Thanks for the review!
silverwombat: Yeah, but a duel usually implies death. Like guns at thirty paces, or sword on sword. It's dangerous.
Penguin Lover Girl: That's fine. :) I love reading the QotD answers 'cause you guys are really funny, but that one was kind of intensive. So how do you want Puck to die? 'Cause I'm not sure how to figuratively kill someone. If you mean beat his pants off, we'll see.
Kathie: That was NOT the meanest point to end a chapter with. I've had far meaner. (references back to every cliffhanger ever) I had fun with the scars. Is that a bad thing? They were kind of hard to think up, though, 'cause I wanted ones that weren't TOO bad, but would be hard to live with anyway.
Velika Silvertongue: Yeah, Veronica would make a great mom IRL. OMG no fair! You can't have Dr. Seuss do your answers! Not until I meet him!
QN: I actually didn't DO your request yet... I think that'll have to be next chapter. And I like it, 'cause it won't take two chapters to fulfill. Which is good, 'cause this is already huge. I'm really happy about everything you liked but don't want to take up too much space to tell you, so have a smiley face: :D. I would love to come to that tea party, just 'cause beach and chipmunks.
Sabrina took a deep breath and turned to face Puck, deciding that she was as ready as she'd ever be for this duel. They were in the Grimm's front yard, and they had quite a crowd.
"Begin your attacks at my signal!" Snow called. "Three..."
Sabrina breathed in again, deep and calming. It didn't work, she was still nervous as anything.
"Two."
Sabrina tensed, watching Puck for a sign of what he'd do next. Attack? Run? Spit fire at her? Turn into a rhinocerous?
"One..."
Puck was shifting his weight onto one leg. Was that a sign? Or was he faking her out?
"Go!" Snow shouted.
Too late to plan, time for action!
Puck was charging her, a huge, hairy bull now, with steam coming out of his nostrils and everything. He'd spun so fast Sabrina hadn't even seen it.
She jumped up, wings unfurling as she did, and didn't land. She watched as Puck, who had run into Granny's ancient, twisted apple tree, shook his bull-head and ran in a circle, searching for her. She was safe until he figured out where she'd gone, but that wouldn't take long. She needed a plan of attack.
First off, though, she needed to be safe. She formed a barrier around herself, leaving about a foot between it and her wings in all directions.
Puck looked up, and before she knew it, he was himself again, and flying up towards her.
Sabrina grinned at him and sped back toward the ground, stopping short just before running into the grass. Puck turned to follow her, and Sabrina began to mess with gravity.
Puck suddenly found himself having to fight a lot harder to fly down, as if he was fighting through a thick goop. Then Sabrina pulled him towards the tree he'd run into before, dragging him back to it with all her strength.
"Not... fair!" Puck complained, fighting against the pull of gravity, his wings beating so fast they were creating a breeze.
"All's fair in love and war." Sabrina smiled sweetly. "I can do this all day, you know."
"Well, which is this?" Puck sneered.
"War, obviously." Sabrina blinked. "You wish it was love."
From the porch, where a lot of people had gathered to watch, Daphne's voice came, saying, "Hey, I can bend my thumb around backwards!"
That distracted Sabrina enough that she let Puck loose for just a second too long as she stared at her sister, wondering what that had to do with anything.
Puck took advantage of Sabrina's distraction to belch a giant fireball in her direction, and she ducked out of the way just in time, wishing she could have made her barrier impenetrable to everything without passing out from oxygen deprivation. She smelled burning hair.
"Puck, I swear, if you-" Sabrina started, feeling her head for anything singed. Thankfully, all she could find was a bit of curling at the ends, and she focused back on her opponent.
"See, that's why you'll lose!" Puck shouted. "You care too much about how you look! You can't fix your hair in the middle of a fight!"
"I don't need to!" Sabrina snapped, concentrating on gravity in his area and pinning him to the ground as she flew to the tree, searching for a loose stick. "But this isn't a fight, it's me proving I can take perfectly good care of myself!" She found a large dead branch, turned her concentration to its gravity, increasing it until the wood snapped off and fell into her waiting hands. Puck had taken that opportunity to move closer to her, but that was what she'd wanted, and-
No, he hadn't been moving closer. He'd been spinning, and he'd turned into an insect. Sabrina muttered a curse under her breath. She couldn't even see him, and he'd done exactly the right thing to keep her gravity power from working. The lighter he was, the less she could do.
She could keep him from getting close to her, though. She hardened her shield against anything breathing and sat down to wait. He'd have to turn back eventually, otherwise this would be a stalemate.
It was a good fifteen minutes before Puck morphed back, complaining, "Come on, Grimm, that's no fun!"
As soon as he did, Sabrina snapped a heavy amount of gravity back on him, and whacked him with her stick.
"Ow!" Puck complained.
"Do I win yet?" Sabrina asked.
"What?" Puck gave her an incredulous look, despite the fact that he was slowly sinking to the ground. "Of course not! I'm still perfectly capable!"
"Do I have to knock you out, then?" Sabrina asked. "Is that what it's going to take? 'Cause I don't want to, but I definitely can." She whacked her stick against her palm a few times for emphasis.
Puck stuck his tongue out at her, now halfway to the grass. "You wouldn't."
"All right, that's it!" Sabrina snapped, and, winding up, she swung her branch like a baseball bat, hitting Puck square in the head.
When Puck woke up, he was not happy, but he grudgingly admitted that maybe Sabrina could do some stuff. Maybe. But of course he'd gone easy on her. Sabrina had laughed. Of course.
They went back to school for the last three weeks of the year, everything picking up as if they hadn't been gone for a week and a half. Sabrina couldn't believe how easy it seemed, and how much she didn't stress about her finals, which she mostly passed with good grades. Then, finally in possession of enough free time, she went back in time and returned to find herself grounded for a week.
"What for?" She complained, looking at her parents. "I just saved us all!"
"And left your mother and me to clean up the mess." Henry pointed out. "We remember that quite clearly, Sabrina. So you're not to leave the yard until next Thursday."
"Aww, come on!" Sabrina complained.
"No." Veronica said firmly. "Your father and I have had three weeks to talk about this, Sabrina, and we're sure."
"Fine." Sabrina muttered.
"Don't feel too bad, sweetie, it's not like you'll be cleaning the whole time." Veronica said, giving her daughter a one-armed hug. "We can play baseball in the yard, it's supposed to be a nice week."
"Yeah, if there's anyone else around to play with." Sabrina said rebelliously.
"There probably will be." Henry said. "They can't be gone all the time."
"Besides, that'll give us time to catch up." Veronica pointed out. "I bet you're rusty. When was the last time you actually touched a baseball?"
"Umm... we played baseball in gym the first year." Sabrina offered.
"Not good enough!" Veronica said, letting go of Sabrina and walking for the hall.
"What?" Sabrina called. "What do you mean, not good enough?"
"That was almost two years ago." Veronica called from the other room. "You and I have some work to do."
"Work like what?" Sabrina asked suspiciously, following her mother.
"We're getting you back in baseball shape this summer." Veronica said. She was in the basement, digging through Granny's organized side in search of something, throwing things in all directions. Sabrina was almost hit by a clock radio, narrowly dodging it, and caught a tennis racket three inches from her face.
"What are you doing?" Daphne called, sticking her head into the basement doorway.
Sabrina looked for a minute at the ten-year-old's shining dark hair. Daphne had stopped braiding it when the feathers made it plain they weren't going away, because feathers didn't braid easily, and it was too much work to pull them out of the way while braiding her hair, so it now hung down in waves past her shoulders, though Sabrina's was still longer. No one was used to it yet, and Sabrina was staring to try to prevent any more double-takes when she saw her sister out of the corner of her eye. It made her look older.
"Mom's looking for baseball stuff." Sabrina said. "And destroying all Granny's hard work while she's at it."
"I know it's in this area-" Veronica threw a shoe towards Sabrina "-Somewhere, I just have to find it. I swore I saw it here the other day."
"Actually, it's over to your left about ten feet." Daphne said, pointing. "I can see it from here."
Veronica straightened, pushing her hair out of her face. "What?" She turned, trying to find where Daphne was pointing. "I don't see it."
"There." Sabrina said, pointing. "Want me to get it? You can clean this up."
Veronica looked around at the mess and laughed. "Oops. I guess I got a little... overexcited?"
"Maybe a bit." Sabrina said, wading through the sports equipment to the baseball stuff.
"Sorry." Veronica apologized, picking up a bag of tent pegs and putting it back. "It's just been so long since I actually played baseball..."
Sabrina grabbed the bag full of baseball stuff and, shouldering it, wove back out through the various other things, saying, "I had no idea we had so much sports stuff..."
"We had more." Veronica said. "Your grandma sent a ton of it over to the school."
"Why?" Daphne protested. "What did we need it all for?"
Veronica shrugged. "Ask her." She said. "How should I know?"
"All right, I will." Daphne said, turning on her heel and walking off, calling, "Granny!"
"She looks so much older with her hair down." Sabrina marveled.
"I know." Veronica agreed. "You were the same way, you know."
"I never braided my hair!" Sabrina protested.
"No, but you wore it in those cute little Powerpuff Girls pigtails until you were about six." Veronica reminded her. "They were so adorable."
"Yeah, but then someone told me I looked like Bubbles, so I quit." Sabrina said.
"I remember." Veronica sighed. "It was a sad day for me."
"Why?" Sabrina asked. "I looked stupid like that!"
"You looked so sweet, and it was sad because it was the first sign I had that you were growing up. And growing up to be absolutely obstinate and boyish. Remember when you wanted to chop all your hair off?"
Sabrina nodded, snorting ruefully. "So glad you talked me out of that one."
"Me, too." Veronica agreed. "You'd look wrong with short hair. Now, come on, let's get to baseball!"
Sabrina followed her mother up the stairs, jogging as the heavy bag bounced behind her. Once out on the front yard, she dumped the bag and watched as several balls went bouncing away and a few bats rolled sideways.
Veronica grabbed a rather worn-looking baseball that rolled against her feet and tossed it to herself a few times. "This one'll work. Grab a glove."
Sabrina complied, finding one that fit, and tossing her mom a matching glove- their hands were almost the same size. That was surprising. Maybe Daphne wasn't the only one growing up.
Mother and daughter played catch for about an hour, missing less and having less erratic throws the longer they played. Neither were bad to start with, but they were both rusty, and it took most of the afternoon to get them back in shape.
"You're missing dinner, you know." Puck called out to them in a croaking voice from the porch.
"Wait, what?" Sabrina snapped her head around, almost missing the ball heading for her face, catching it just in time.
"Well, maybe not missing," Puck conceded, "But you're about to be late." He grinned. "You should have seen your face."
"No, I mean it was my turn to cook!" Sabrina said. "How can we be almost late for dinner if I didn't make it yet?"
"Daphne took your turn." Puck said. "She said you owe her."
Daphne cooking was a very interesting thing to watch. She always made at least five very large dishes all at once, moving all over the place, and eating as she went. Because of this, and the fact that Elvis 'helped' her, there was barely more than the average amount of food when they sat down to eat, and several dishes would have small, finger-shaped holes in them. Sabrina liked to watch Daphne bustling around the kitchen when she had time. It was very entertaining. Too bad she'd missed it.
Veronica and Sabrina deposited their baseball things in the bag, which Veronica dumped on the porch, before hurrying inside and washing their hands to sit down to dinner. Sure enough, Daphne had made mashed potatoes, green beans, chicken, rice, bacon, and cauliflower with white sauce. The cauliflower head was missing several prominent florets, and the mashed potatoes had a large scoop missing. The only evidence that the bacon had been eaten beforehand was the sheer lack of it.
Dinner was normal (read: loud and messy), and afterwards, Sabrina went up to the porch roof, trying to get used to the fact that she didn't have any homework to do.
"Mind if I join you?" Puck's scratchy voice said, and Sabrina noticed his head poking over the edge of the roof.
She patted the roof next to her without saying anything.
"I didn't know you liked baseball." Puck said after a few minutes of silence.
"I love it." Sabrina said. "It's my favorite sport."
"I always pinned you more as a football kind of person." Puck shrugged.
"Well, I'd have liked to be." Sabrina said. "But the guys where I grew up wouldn't let me play unless they absolutely needed another player, and then I never got to do anything. But baseball was coed, so I got to prove how good I was. Plus my mom likes it, so we used to go to the batting cages every other weekend, and when I couldn't play, she and I would play catch."
"But baseball's kind of... boring." Puck wrinkled his nose.
Sabrina shook her head. "It's not. I mean, yeah, when you're watching, it looks like there's a lot of standing around doing nothing, but when you're on the field... It's the American pastime, you know. And the less players you have, the better."
"Why?" Puck asked. "Don't you need more players so you can catch anything in the outfield?"
"It makes it easier, but the less people there are, the more action each player gets." Sabrina explained. "Like, if you have one person for the whole outfield, they have to be a lot more skilled at judging who's going to hit a ball where."
"I don't believe you." Puck teased, pulling a strand of Sabrina's hair.
"Well, play a game with me and I'll show you." Sabrina grinned. "I've got a week of not leaving the house, so I've got lots of time to play baseball."
"Fine." Puck said. "But I bet it'll be boring."
"Think what you want." Sabrina shrugged.
"Gosh, get worked up!" Puck snapped, sitting up straight. "Why are you so calm?"
"I dunno." Sabrina shrugged. "Tired, I guess. Or just... not letting you get to me." She winked at him.
Puck made a face. "I liked it better when you got all upset about everything. You were more fun."
Sabrina rolled her eyes. "I was stupid. Some things are too little to get upset about."
"Like me wanting to protect you?" Puck reminded her.
"That was entirely worth it." Sabrina said loftily. "If I'd lost, it would be stupid. But I didn't."
"Don't remind me." Puck muttered.
"You brought it up, not me." Sabrina pointed out.
"My pride is at stake." Puck pointed out. "You're not being very sympathetic."
"When are you ever sympathetic to me?" Sabrina asked. "You gotta dish some out if you want some back, buddy."
"Says you." Puck said. "You're never sympathetic, either!"
"I was when your dad died." Sabrina said.
"Only a cruel, heartless monster would not be nice to someone whose dad had just died." Puck pointed out. "So I don't think that counts."
Sabrina shrugged again. "Buzzbrain."
"Beetlesnot." Puck shot back.
"Fartbreath."
"Raisinbutt."
Sabrina opened her mouth to respond to that and stopped. "How do you know what my butt looks like? I mean, a) there's no way it looks like a raisin, and b) why were you looking at it?"
"I don't!" Puck snapped. "You wish."
"Look, let's not actually get into a fight tonight, OK?" Sabrina asked. "We can trade insults 'til midnight if you want, but no real fights please?"
"Fine." Puck said. "We'll... what do we do, then?"
"Barnaclezits." Sabrina responded.
Puck grinned and said, "Spaghetti hair."