AN~ Bit short this time, guys. But cliffy. Had to be done. Yup.
The Winner of Last QotD: Velika Silvertongue, our Grithercluff.
New QotD: What would YOU do for the last book? Other than buy it. Gimme a crazy scenario about how far you would go to get The Council of Mirrors.
blaxon:Well, to be fair, this also replaces books seven and eight. Wait. You HAVE book nine? What?
PenguinLoverGurl: That isn't normal. Have you talked to someone about that? It sounds like it could be an anxiety issue. But thank you! QotD: Holy... wow. Your housemates might not like you too much if you did that.
Agd:They all just had a bad feeling. Like Daphne was catching. Even if she hadn't said anything, they'd have been worried. And no, actually. It was about a five-chapter delay on the kiss. It'll probably be more on them getting together, though.
DayNight:This was another of those chapters that has been waiting to be written for a long time now, so it came easy. :) I'm glad it made you happy. Yeah, Sabrina was not herself because she was all thinking about death and serious stuff like that. I'm not going to go into a whole big Puckabrina subplot, I promise. This chapter is all action. LAST QotD: Like the web server firefoxes? THIS QotD: Ravenclaw is pretty awesome. :)
NinjaBunny:Thanks for the review!
Christine daa: How is that a cliffy? They kissed, then Sabrina ran away, then they sat there thinking.
The next morning, Sabrina woke with a groan, remembering the previous night. Now what was she supposed to do? How could she look at Puck after last night? After much deliberation, during which she got herself somewhat clean and dressed for battle in a tank top with Puck's hoodie (that had led to about fifteen minutes' more deliberation) and a pair of leggings (she found she could move best in them) with two thick black belts thrown on top for modesty's sake, her sword and some other things she thought might come in useful tucked into them, she headed downstairs, having reached the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to just pretend it had never happened and hope she got knocked into a three month coma before she had to talk to Puck again.
Downstairs, almost everyone was already there. Along with several of her friends who hadn't been at the Golden Egg during the catastrophe and her housemates there were several of the kids who lived in Puck's old room. She only knew a few of their names, though she'd had a class with two of the girls and gotten to know them well enough, Eve and Kaytee. They were both hyper, happy, and kind of random, and nothing like her, though they did remind her of Daphne a bit. Because she was afraid to find someone she knew well enough that they might guess something had happened the night before, she went over to those two and joined them in buttering toast.
"Hi." Kaytee said. She was a year older than Sabrina, with long waves of light auburn hair, blueish gray eyes set in a pale face, and a tall body with more curves than Sabrina had, though not too many. "You nervous?"
Sabrina snorted. "If you're not, then that'll make me more worried."
Eve snickered, swallowed a bite of toast, and said, "I'm more than nervous. I think I'm going to pee my pants."
"Better do that before we go." Kaytee advised. "There won't be a bathroom on the battlefield."
"That's why I said pee my pants, ya dumbo." Eve rolled her eyes and took a big bite of toast.
"Ew." Kaytee said, wrinkling her nose.
Sabrina snickered. She liked Kaytee. She was good with swords, and they'd dueled a lot during the past few months.
"Sabrina!" Daphne's voice filtered through the general mutterings of the crowd in the kitchen to Sabrina's ears.
"Gotta go." Sabrina said, taking her toast and working her way through the kids, some looking excited and some terrified, to her sister, waving at the two girls as she left.
"Wassup?" She asked, reaching her sister and Red, who were holed up on the counter with the cereal.
"I just wanted to see you beforehand." Daphne shrugged. "Just in case, you know?"
Sabrina half smiled, sadly. "Yeah. Today's a big day, isn't it?"
Daphne nodded. "And, hey. I wanted to say thanks. For letting me come."
Sabrina's smile grew a little smaller and less depressed. "Well, it's only fair. I mean, when I was your age, I was trying to take care of you all on my own. And you've proved you're plenty capable. So it'd be kind of unfair for me to make you stay here."
"Yeah, but I bet you wanted to." Daphne said.
"Oh yeah." Sabrina said, eyes widening. "I'm terrified to let you out of this house. But I guess I've learned that you can't protect people forever. Or something else sappy like that."
Daphne snickered. "Is now the time I say that I understand that you've just been trying to protect me for the past forever, and no matter how infuriating you got, I know you had my best interests at heart, and I'm OK with that?"
"I think so. And then we hug or something." Sabrina said. "But I've never been too good at that feelings stuff, you know? So I might be wrong. We can skip it, just in case."
Daphne grinned and hugged her anyway. Sabrina smiled, wrapping her arms around her sister in return, plucking a loose feather out of her hair.
"You're molting." She muttered.
Daphne pulled back, making a face. "Great." She muttered. "Also, way to ruin the moment."
Sabrina shrugged. "It's what I do best."
Red had been watching the whole scene and was now smiling a little while chewing the last of her Kix. Once she swallowed, she said, "You two are really cute."
Daphne grinned and returned to her own cereal, saying, "I know."
Sabrina rolled her eyes and took a bite of her now-cold toast.
"Grimm!" Puck said, appearing next to her.
Sabrina's eyes widened and she choked on her toast, her face turning scarlet. She wasn't ready for this! She'd had no time to prepare or decide how to talk to him! And she seriously hoped the girls though she was blushing because she'd choked, not because of Puck's presence, his messy golden curls less than a foot from her face, looking particularly fetching in a chestplate from who knows where, his green eyes staring into hers with concern- because she was staring back at him. She recovered herself, coughing some more, and punched him in the arm.
"What was that for?" Puck complained, rubbing his shoulder.
"You scared me!" She snapped. No mention of how, of course.
"Sorry." Puck shrugged. "But hey, we should probably get this show on the road, no?"
"Oh, right." Sabrina said gloomily. "We have to lead them, don't we? I forgot."
"Yup." Puck said cheerfully. "So come on, let's go make a speech!"
"You make a speech." Sabrina muttered mutinously, glaring at his back as he walked off.
Puck grinned at her, turning back. "I will." Sabrina marveled a little. Had he just forgotten the night before? How could he act so normal? She could feel herself blushing anew every time he moved.
Puck reached the place he'd been trying for and turned to Sabrina. "Can you-" He twiddled his fingers- "Pick me up a bit so everyone can see me better and I don't have to get my wings out and maybe hit someone in the face?"
Sabrina rolled her eyes, masking another blush, and concentrated on him, reversing his gravity so that he could stand on the ceiling, where everyone could see him. He began speaking before she'd even gotten him all the way up, but she was too busy concentrating on keeping him up to pay attention to what he said. It was harder than usual to reverse gravity, and she could feel a few beads of sweat on her brow. She frowned. It shouldn't be this difficult. She was well rested, she'd been practicing, she wasn't doing anything else- she felt her grip slip, and Puck almost tumbled to the floor. Oh no. She realized, eyes widening. She was losing it, losing gravity control! Not today. She thought. I need it today.
Puck had finished his speech, so she let him down. He grinned at her. "What did you think?" He asked.
"Good." Sabrina nodded absently. "You did good. They liked it."
Puck looked at her, hurt. "You didn't even listen, did you?"
"No, I was a bit busy keeping you from landing headfirst on the ground." Sabrina snapped.
Puck blinked. "I thought you had better control than that."
"Yeah, so did I." Sabrina said. "But it was more difficult than usual."
"Surprised you didn't just drop me." Puck said.
"Oh, believe me, it was tempting." Sabrina responded, but she blushed while saying it and lost a little of her credibility. She cursed herself. Why couldn't her face just cooperate?
To keep from embarrassing herself anymore, Sabrina walked off to the front of the group and began leading them outside. It struck her as she went that the twenty-five or so kids, all with less than a decade of training, were probably not going to make much of a difference against the Scarlet Hand, all of whom were hundreds if not thousands of years old. They were walking into a suicide mission.
But they were going to keep going anyway, because they had their parents (and older siblings or uncles or aunts or cousins or friends, or grandparents for some of them) at stake.
They marched through the morning. It was a long walk to the Golden Egg, on the Southern end of Ferryport Landing. When they finally reached it, they were astounded, because what they saw wasn't ruins, or a battle, or a siege: it was robots.
"Who do we know that does robots?" Daphne muttered to Sabrina.
"Oz." Sabrina confirmed, and Daphne nodded. "But he's in Oz, isn't he?" She continued. "He went back ages ago, and said he'd stay."
"I get the feeling we've been double crossed." Daphne shrugged, starting forward. "How good are you with robots?"
Sabrina grinned and followed her sister. "Bet I can take out more than you can."
"Oh, it's on." Daphne responded, running forward and pulling out a wand as she went.
Everyone else followed, and someone (probably Puck) shouted a ridiculous battle cry. Another person took it up, then another and another, and soon everyone was shouting or screaming as they ran for the robots surrounding the Golden Egg.
Sabrina's first robot was hard to take down. It was a large thing, on wings that didn't work very well, that shot darts out its hands. She had to dodge them while trying to get in close enough to do some damage to the thing, and it didn't work very well. But she got it down eventually, with help from Kaytee, who distracted it long enough that she could sneak behind and jam her sword into its chest and drag upwards, destroying its wiring.
The second one was easy. It was shaped like a snake, and tried to slither up her leg, so she stepped on it. It was fragile, and the crunch of the thing under her foot was extremely satisfying.
After that, she lost track, destroying robot after robot. As the sun fell closer to the horizon, though, it became apparent that some of the robots had sent out signals, because the Scarlet Hand began to show up, and now they were fighting monsters and people as well as robots. No dragons had shown up yet, though, which was good.
She met up with Daphne during a slow moment, throwing another snake-bot down at her feet from the sky. "Twenty." She said.
"Twenty-two." Daphne countered.
"Well, I also took out five zombies and two card soldiers." Sabrina said. "Where's Red?"
"She went inside with a couple other people." Daphne answered. "They're looking for the grown-ups. And I got four zombies!"
"I'm still winning on overall count." Sabrina shrugged.
"Not for long!" Daphne snapped, and a root whipped out of the ground, wrapping around a robot that looked like one of those boxing toys, complete with blue plastic covering, and squeezed.
Sabrina grinned and flew off, on the hunt again. She was surprised and a little worried to find that she was enjoying this. She'd spent two very bored weeks, and it was nice to be part of the action. To be doing something useful. She took out two robots together by picking one up and swinging it into a second one, one of the ones that could fly.
She paused again to scan the battlefield, searching for bodies, or people that needed help. She was pretty sure they hadn't lost anyone yet, amazingly. But Annie looked like she could use a hand. She began flying in the girl's direction when she heard a screech.
Her head whipped around, because that was Daphne's voice, and she saw, not her sister in trouble, but-
Puck. Puck falling, Puck, with a red ribbon following him to the ground, trailing from his forehead, halfway across the battlefield.
"Puck!" She screamed, flying forward as fast as she could, her hands reaching out. He was far up, but too far away for her to reach before he hit the ground, so the long fall would only hurt him worse when he hit the ground. She concentrated, pulling at gravity, trying to make it do what she wanted. She felt the catch, and for a moment his fall slowed, but then it sped up again.
Oh no.She thought fiercely. Not this time. You were my first one, and you are not giving up on me now. You will work!
Speeding forward, she felt his gravity catch, and hold. He slowed. Stayed slower. Started to stop, floating in midair. Sabrina reached him, nine feet above the ground, and grabbed him, breathing a sigh of relief. "You idiot." She muttered, holding back tears. "Why would you go and get yourself hurt like that? You could've died."
She flew with him to the woods, planning to hide him somewhere she could come back once everything was over, pulling the weightless body after her and trying to ignore the blood that was still trailing out of his wound and floating in the air behind her.
She touched down in the forest and grabbed her sword, running her hand over the sapphire in the hilt. "Bella!" She called, "I need you!"
"What?" Bella's image appeared in the gemstone. "You're OK, right?"
"Yeah." Sabrina said. "I'm fine. But Puck's not."
"What's wrong?" Bella asked, eyes widening.
"He's got this huge gash on his forehead, and he's bleeding like heck." Sabrina said. "What do I do?"
"Don't suppose you have any thread, do you?" Bella asked hopefully. "If it's too big, it might need to be stitched up."
Sabrina stared at her. "I can't sew!"
"All right, all right, calm down." Bella said soothingly. "Just... grab something you can use to cover it, and apply pressure. If you can tie it off, that'll be great. And don't worry about it being too tight, you want it to stop the bleeding, and I can fix anything else later, all right?"
"OK. Don't leave, though! I need you!" Sabrina said, looking around frantically for something. Puck's clothes weren't frayed, so she couldn't rip those easily, but her... her shoes? Her high tops were frayed, and she'd been complaining recently that the tongues were about ready to fall out. Could she use those as a bandage? She tugged, and they came out. She laid them on Puck's head, where, laying side by side, they just covered the entire wound. Now something to keep them there with... Taking her sword, she sliced the bottom of her shirt, and began tugging until she had a wide white strip. She tied it over Puck's head and looked down at it, satisfied. "That should work." She said, turning the hilt of her sword to it. "What do you think?"
"Close enough." Bella agreed. "He won't die, anyway. But the sooner you can get him back here, the better."
"All right." Sabrina said, standing. "You can go now."
"Good." Bella said, "I need to- Basil! Stop that!"
Bella was gone. Sabrina shook her head and, holding her sword at the ready, just in case, began searching for things she could use to both hide Puck from plain sight and help herself remember where he was. In the end, she levitated him into the middle of a large pile of rocks and covered anything you could see of him with sticks, moss, and lichen.
She was just turning to leave when she heard a snap of the twigs behind her, and a robotic creak. She spun, sword at the ready, protecting Puck, then stopped.
This robot looked human. In fact, it looked surprisingly familiar, though she could still see the signs of mechanics. Standing directly in front of her, in full metal regalia, was Mirror.