AN~ How about that. Your scheduled Friday update is on time.
The Winner of Last Question of the Day: Psychobrunette for an airplane running off sewing machine parts. Because that's just cool.
New Question of the Day: Make up a crazy Sisters Grimm pairing. Anyone to anyone else, but it can't be a canon pairing. I'd also rather it wasn't in a preestablished fic, unless it's one you wrote yourself.
Hunni pie: Thank you, I appreciate it.
Agd: So you have an account? This is news. I must find you. Can I have a hint? Thanks! I was worried it'd be confusing, I'm glad it wasn't. QotD: Seems like they'd wear out kind of fast, though... Bananas are slippery 'cause the stuff on the inside of the peel.
silverwombat: Thanks for the review! It's a fun idea, isn't it? Does that mean we're mean? That we enjoy shoving a character's worst fears on them?
Ninjabunny: It's not real. It's an illusion. The title of the chapter was 'Nightmare' for a reason.
PenguinLoverGurl: Guess what? You actually didn't say anything about the chapter in your long review, so it's, while detailed and cool, not eligible to win the QotD.
Velika Silvertonge: Daphne isn't dead, but that's Sabrina's nightmare. I'm not sure I can let you slide with 'belonging to you' when the request was 'in the room'...
Puck found himself in a classroom. All the others sat down, as if this was completely normal, in the desks. Oddly enough, most of the other kids in town were either already there or coming in behind him, despite the fact that this was supposed to be a mission to get weapons back, and they all looked completely at ease.
"What's going on?" He asked.
"We're having class, didn't you know?" Peaseblossom said. "An emergency one. I though you'd gotten the message."
"Honestly." Annie rolled her eyes. "You'd think you'd figure it out. All the rest of us knew."
Puck suddenly found himself to be the only one standing, surrounded by seated people waiting for him expectantly.
"Well?" Mustardseed said, giving him an impatient look, one he'd seen often enough when he was little, and given back plenty of times, too. "Aren't you going to sit down?"
"Right." Puck muttered, slipping into an empty seat in the front row, because there were none left in the back.
The teacher walked through the door, and Puck shuddered: it was his old tutor, from back when Titania and Oberon had held court in Greece. He'd hated the man, who always made him feel like an idiot. He'd been ecstatic when he'd been fired and Puck had been left to do his own thing.
The man began speaking, and Puck realized after a few seconds that he had no idea what the man was saying. It might as well have been Swahili, for all he understood. But everyone else was nodding and listening like it made perfect sense. Some of them were even taking notes. But Puck had no paper, no pencil, and no idea what was supposed to be happening, so he just sat there feeling stupider and stupider, looking around at everyone else, trying to figure out what was going on.
"Puck." The man's voice broke through, and Puck realized his name had been being called for some time.
"Huh?" Puck looked up with a 'deer in the headlights' expression.
The teacher repeated his question, and Puck didn't understand a word of it. What was going on?
And then the laughter began.
It grew louder and louder, ringing in his ears, people laughing at him instead of with him, and he felt his face flush, for the first time in decades.
Then the crushing blow: Sabrina, two seats over, saying "What an idiot," while that Marcus boy nodded and grabbed her hand.
The laughter, which sounded more like shrieks by now, died down, and the teacher repeated the question. It made no more sense than before, but he understood words. They didn't fit, though. They sounded like other people's voices. People in the room. The teacher was sobbing with Sabrina's voice, then screaming in Red's. It didn't make sense.
None of it made sense.
And suddenly, he got it. This was an illusion. He probably hadn't moved since the door shut; the room was bringing his fears to life.
And if shutting the door was what had turned it on...
Puck ran back to the entrance to the room, concentrating very hard on running, and yanked the door open.
There was a sound kind of like an old T.V. shutting off, and suddenly everyone was back where they'd been before, blinking and coughing and crying, respectively.
Sabrina, who had been wandering the room, watching the ghosts of the others: Red was crying, surrounded by a circle of monsters, and Jonas was stabbing Puck, suddenly found herself standing surrounded by her friends and family, as if nothing had changed. The bodies disappeared, and the blood melted away as if it had never existed.
"Wha-"? She said, staring around. "But- you were all- everyone- how are you all alive?"
"It's a fear room." Puck's voice came by the entrance to the doorway. "When the door is closed, our worst fears come to life in here."
"How do you know?" Daphne asked.
Puck shrugged. "I think we overloaded it a bit, 'cause I was hearing you guys screaming a bit. Plus my fear didn't really fit the situation too well."
Nobody asked what his fear was. They might have, at another time, but after being met with their own most horrible nightmares, they all felt that that was a private thing, not something to be shared.
"So I guess we leave the door open, then?" Annie suggested.
Marcus shook his head. "Bad idea. I say we open the other door, then close this one. That way we don't let anyone know we're here."
"Sounds smart to me." Peaseblossom said, shuddering. "But we're leaving one door open all the time, OK?"
Sabrina nodded, sprinting to the other door and opening it. Puck shut his door, and they all filed through. This time, the door shut itself on them, and Sabrina was plunged into darkness.
"What's going on?" She asked. "What happened to the lights?"
"Umm... they're still on." Puck said. "I don't know what your problem is."
"Speak up!" Daphne half-shouted. "I can't hear you!"
"I think I've figured it out." Peaseblossom said. "This room is another trial. We've each lost a sense."
"What did you lose, then?" Sabrina asked.
"Touch." Peaseblossom said.
"All right, raise your hand if you're blind!" Mustardseed called.
Sabrina raised her hand, and she assumed several other people did, too, because there was a flurry of motion, and she suddenly found a hand in hers.
"I'm taking you across, Grimm, since I lucked out." Puck said, and she heard the smile in his voice. "I just can't smell."
"So nothing's changed, then?" Sabrina asked, stepping forward when Puck tugged her hand.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Puck asked.
Sabrina opened her mouth, then thought better of it. It was probably a really bad idea to insult the person who was keeping her from running into walls. "I'll tell you once we're in the next room." She said.
"That was remarkably easy." Mustardseed said, and the door opened. Sabrina knew because she could see again.
"Maybe we should take our time with the next one?" Art suggested. "Just in case. Since we have no idea what's back there, and I'm betting it's something bad."
Daphne nodded. "I didn't like that last one."
Renee shrugged. "Well, it's not like we can really prepare anyway, you know?" She stepped through the door.
Sabrina and Puck looked at each other, shrugged, and also walked through, and the others followed. This door, too, slammed behind them. Then they all stared, because the room was a huge obstacle course. Most of the floor was a pit strung across with ropes, swaying bridges that reached to nowhere, far-spread posts that stuck up from the floor, and spikes. The ceiling was covered in spinning blades that hung six feet above the crossways, and in a few spaces there were giant maces swinging back and forth irregularly. Sabrina sniffed, and realized that the bubbling noise she heard in the background was acid- hot acid, the air in the room was thick and heavy. The pit wasn't empty, it was almost full of the boiling liquid death, and the lowest of the swaying bridges had holes in the boards with thin, pockmarked edges, which meant that the easiest ways to cross was also the most dangerous.
"Well, at least we can trust ourselves this time." Daphne said brightly. "At least, if you're seeing a huge pit full of acid and a whole lot of not-smart ways to get over it."
"Yeah, pretty much." Sabrina said. "And I don't know about you fairies, but I can't fly that. The floor and ceiling are too close together."
"I could try." Jonas said doubtfully. "But it's probably not smart, since that stuff keep popping, and I don't really want to try to keep one eye on the ground and one eye on the ceiling the whole way across."
"I think we ought to try our best with the ropes and bridges." Wendell said. "It's just the safest way."
Daphne shook her head and said, "I can fly." She morphed into a small black bird and fluttered across the space, going mostly in a straight line.
"Show-off." Sabrina called as Daphne landed on the other side and turned back into a human.
Daphne just grinned at her sister.
"That's actually a really good idea." Jonas grinned. "I'm doing that, too!" He, followed by Peaseblossom and Art, flew across. Puck stayed behind.
"You're not going with them?" Sabrina asked, nodding at the people on the other side of the room.
"Nah." Puck shrugged. "I'll do it the fun way. I need a challenge."
"I changed my mind." Sabrina said. "You're the show-off."
"You just figured this out?" Bella said sarcastically.
"Hey!" Puck said, drawing himself up. "I resemble that remark! ...I mean, I resent that."
Sabrina snorted, and several other people laughed, muttering 'resemble that...'
Puck drew himself up loftily and said "Well, we should be going, shouldn't we?"
It was hard going, getting across, even for Sabrina, who was one of the most athletic among them: the bridges threatened to crack under their weight, and when more than one person walked across them, they wobbled dangerously. The ropes with no bridges were even harder, and they tried to avoid those whenever possible, because sometimes the acid had eaten through those, too, making them threaten to snap. In some places, they had to jump from pillar to pillar, and most of the pillars were made of slippery acid-resistant glass, which was not good for balancing on. Wendell and Red almost fell off a few times. But they all made it safely across, with no more than a few burns, and stood staring at the next door and panting.
"Don't suppose it would be OK to wait here for a few minutes and catch our breath?" Marcus asked hopefully, sitting down.
Bella shook her head, tugging at his hand to pull him up. "There could be more people following us. We have to keep going."
Wendell and Annie both glared at Bella and Marcus as Daphne pushed open the next door and said, "Whoa."
"What is it?" Sabrina asked, peering around her sister's shoulder. Her eyes widened.
"It's a huge chess game." Daphne whispered. "This is amazing! It's straight out of Harry Potter!"
"This whole thing has seemed like something out of that series." Art muttered. "The series of rooms that are tests? They're just different tests."
They stepped through to the other side, but Annie stayed behind, pulling Marcus with her. "Can you excuse us for a minute?" She asked, looking pointedly at Bella.
"Sure." Bella raised her hands and backed up. "Go right ahead and talk."
Marcus and Annie emerged a few minutes later, Annie with a large smile on her face, their pinkies hooked. Peaseblossom smiled knowingly, and Sabrina snickered. Puck rolled his eyes, and Bella made a face.
"You're late." Jonas said. "You two are going to have to be pawns."
Everyone else had already taken the place of a chess piece. Marcus and Annie, blushing a little, stepped in as white pawns.
"So you know how this is like Harry Potter?" Daphne asked from a bishop's spot.
"Yeah..." Red said, from the place of the pawn directly in front of Daphne.
"I hope it's not like Harry Potter in the way that means if we get taken, we get knocked out..."
"Bit late for that." Sabrina said. She was playing a rook.
"Right." Puck said, rubbing his hands together. He was hovering overhead, to instruct everyone else, instead of being a piece. "Time to play." He took a deep breath and said, "Red. Go forward one space."
Red complied. The knight across from Art jumped forward in its L-shape.
"Marcus. Forward two." Puck said, and Marcus moved forward from his space in front of Art, the knight on the left.
Puck continued to issue orders, trying to save as many of their pieces as possible, and thankfully, when they were taken, they were simply transported to a cage off to the side of the room that nobody had noticed beforehand. Puck also managed to get several pawns across the board, trading the ones who weren't people back for lost pieces. At the end of the game, nine of them had made it through, and the cage door opened. But when those who hadn't been on the board at the end tried to leave, they found that they couldn't.
"I guess you have to make it all the way." Puck scratched his head. "I betcha I can't get through, either." He pushed a hand towards the wall. "Nope."
"So you five will have to stay, then." Peaseblossom said. "Should we wait for you?"
Daphne shook her head. "We'll catch up in the next room, you guys go on."
Sabrina complied, looking back at the others worriedly as she did. It grated against her, leaving her sister and Puck back in there by themselves. But then she was in the next room, and it was too late to think about anything else.
"There's nothing here." Bella said. "What's going on?"
Jonas shrugged. "Dunno, but I betcha by the time we figure it out they'll be here already."
"Or we could go read that plaque over there." Red said, pointing.
Sabrina trotted over and read: "Forever here you must stay/Until your treasure/Here you lay."
"That's an awful poem." Annie said.
Sabrina shrugged. "I didn't write it."
"So we have to leave something important here." Renee mused. "Like what, though?"
"I haven't got anything valuable." Jonas said. "Not on me, anyway."
"It might not be something physical, per se." Peaseblossom suggested. "Mab's the type that would accept stuff that's really important, you know? Like a feeling or a person or a skill."
"What if it's not?" Sabrina asked. "What if we actually have to give a legitimate treasure? 'Cause the only valuable things I have are my necklace and this ring. We came here for my valuable stuff."
"I don't know." Peaseblossom said, putting her hand on the plaque. "If we're lucky, we can just-" When she touched it, the plaque glowed, and she suddenly looked a bit thinner.
"Oh." She said. "Yeah. It works. Touch it, and you give up your treasure."
"Do we get it back?" Renee asked warily.
"I hope so." Peaseblossom said. "But if not..." She shuddered. "I think I could maybe live with it. Maybe."
Sabrina shrugged and pulled off her necklace, throwing it at the plaque. When they met, there was a flash of light, and the necklace disappeared.
"What if it doesn't like our treasure?" Jonas asked. "How will we know?"
"Try giving something up and see." Sabrina suggested.
Jonas shrugged and kicked his right leg forward. His shoe came flying off, laces trailing, and it hit the plaque with a thud. There was a crash, and it bounced back, hitting Jonas in the face.
"Ow." He muttered, rubbing his face as he sat down to put his shoe back on.
"I don't even want to see what happens if we try to do that with something like what Peaseblossom did." Annie muttered.
"You and me both." Marcus said, and Annie smiled at him.
"That's what you two are giving up, then." Bella said promptly.
They both looked at her, confused.
"They way you feel about each other." Bella said. "Or knowing it, anyway."
"What?" Annie backed off, incredulous. "No way!"
"It makes sense, actually." Peaseblossom mused. "Giving up knowing. That way if you get it back, everything's good. But if you don't get it back, you just have to confess again."
Marcus looked at Annie, shrugged, and put his hand on the plaque. It lit up, and he blinked at the group. "Did you say something?"
"Guess it erased everything to do with it." Peaseblossom said. "Interesting. Your turn, Annie."
Annie sighed but muttered, "Fine." She, too, stuck her hand on the plaque and gave everyone blank looks once the light disappeared.
"My turn." Bella said, sticking her hand on the plaque. Once the light disappeared, her skin looked far less smooth, and she began scratching furiously.
The others, one by one, gave up their treasures, and by the time they'd each decided on what to give up and given it, Puck, Daphne, and the others had emerged from the chess room, and they, too, sacrificed something precious to them. Nobody asked what anyone else had given up if the information wasn't offered. That was too personal.
Then they went to the next room, which, unbeknownst to them, was the worst of them all.