AN~ It's very hard to type with cold fingers. That is the cause of any misprints here. Because I'm frigid.
QotD:Who killed Cock Robin? Why? None of the original song or anything if you know them. I want originality. You're the P.I. How do you solve the case? Whodunit? The world needs to know!
Previous QotD winner: N/A because of the nature of the previous QotD.
Review Replies:
guest: Chapter 124: You happen to be incorrect. I updated last Thursday. That's a week exactly as of your review. Just saying. Chapter 1: I'm glad you like it! :D
catnissmeows27: Your username seems like one that should belong to someone with an account. Tom skedaddled because he's technically a member of the Scarlet Hand. He can teleport. I'm not sure what you understand about me and battle scenes, but I'm glad you do. The QotD was forgotten in a rush to upload.
Choco-Bilby: Thank you for telling me this. I looked, and you're definitely right. This displeases me, because (s)he's claiming I gave permission, and I don't remember telling anyone they could take my work and put it someplace else. I COULD have, I guess, but I think I'd remember. And credit needs to be given.
PenguinLoverGurl: Tom was never going to win Sabrina. Even before she said she loved Puck. He had no chance. I actually just thought that Puck wouldn't be able to stay that serious for that long. And Puck's pranks are the reason Sabrina has trouble liking him. And Sabrina is bad-donkey. :)
Sabrina was still hacking and slashing the endless number of monsters when Daphne showed up, her own sword in hand, and, beginning to chop up more monsters, asked, "What do you want me to do?"
"Take the horses someplace," Sabrina said, panting as she stabbed something gray and scaly. "Calm them down and get them to safety."
"Can do," Daphne said, backing up, "And Wendell was in the middle of something, so he can't help."
"That's fine," Sabrina grunted, pulling her sword free, "You can do it."
Sabrina was too busy fighting to notice the look on Daphne's face, but it was one so full of pride that the younger Grimm sister felt she would burst, because Sabrina trusted her to do this on her own!
Daphne spoke to all the horse-type creatures in their language, calming them- difficult to do with monsters from who knows where coming out of the woodwork, and then led them to her safe zone, the thick bubble of trees. When she tried to leave, she had to calm them again, because they didn't think they would be safe without her, in this place that was too much like a cave to be home for creatures of the plains.
She finally calmed them down enough to get back to the fighting, to find that they were being overrun, and that the fight had moved almost to her safe zone. Bella found here there and enlisted her help moving the wounded into the trees with the horses, and she suddenly found herself not doing any fighting at all, and being a nursemaid instead.
More and more people showed up in the clearing in the trees, and things started to get a little crowded. Daphne was getting worried. This wasn't going too well. What had happened? They'd been winning!
Mustardseed showed up through the winding gap in the trees and Daphne left the wounded kid she'd been treating to run to him, jumping over several other hurt kids, and asked, "What's going on? Why are we retreating?"
"There are just too many of them," Mustardseed told her, wiping his brow. "No matter how many we kill, they just keep coming. So I'm bringing people in here one at a time, so the Hand doesn't notice. Sabrina's out there with the people who stay, helping it look like we're not disappearing."
"And what do we do when we're all in here?" Daphne asked.
Mustardseed shrugged and said, "You close off the entrance and we try to figure out something to do.
"All right," Daphne agreed, heading back to her bandages and trying not to tell him that that didn't sound like a very good plan.
She lost herself in the bandaging for a while, until Sabrina was suddenly next to her, pressing down against the bandage on her fourth kid since talking to Mustardseed, and Mustardseed himself was there, too, talking with Sabrina.
"That everyone?" he asked.
Sabrina nodded, not lifting her pressure on the wound, and said, "I did a flyby, and nobody's left. The Hand is really confused, but I have a feeling they're going to figure it out soon.
"So," Mustardseed asked, "What do we do?"
Sabrina gave him an incredulous look and said, "We're supposed to be co-leaders, here! You're being remarkably unhelpful today."
"I know, and I'm sorry, but I just have no idea what to do here!" Mustardseed protested.
"Sh!" Sabrina hissed, glaring at him. "Don't let anyone else know that! Do you want to terrify them?"
"Sorry," Mustardseed said quietly.
"Go get Mr. Canis," Sabrina said, "He might have an idea."
Mustardseed ran off, and Daphne grinned at Sabrina. She had no idea why she was grinning. Nothing was going right.
"Don't suppose you have any ideas?" Sabrina asked glumly.
Daphne stared at her. "You never ask me for ideas."
"I do sometimes!" Sabrina protested. "Just... not very often."
"Yeah, well, it's pretty rare," Daphne said with a shrug.
Sabrina gave her a shrug back and said, "Well, I guess I'm feeling the pressure. It's weird, having everyone look at me for an answer."
"I thought you wanted that," Daphne not-quite-asked, not-quite-stated.
"I wanted them to listen to me, to pay attention to my ideas," Sabrina said, "But I don't think I wanted them all to count on me. I do better when the only one counting on me is me."
"Too late now," Daphne said.
"Thanks for the pep talk," Sabrina said, removing her hands from the boy as Daphne tied off the bandage. "Knew I could count on you."
"Of course," Daphne said, then placed a hand on her sister's arm and said, "You're a good leader, Sabrina. You can do this."
Sabrina gave her half of a smile, without humor. "I just wish I knew how."
"You'll think of something," Daphne said confidently.
"Sure," Sabrina said, "Hey, can you go close off that path you left open? I don't want the Scarlet Hand to find it."
Daphne nodded and ran off to her her winding space in the trees to coax them to grow a little bit more, for her. It wasn't that hard to convince plants to grow, but they didn't like crowding each other the way she was asking them to. Crowding meant starvation for plants.
She was heading back for Sabrina when she felt the first axe hit the outer trees. She screamed.
A series of faces appeared around her, all asking "What's wrong?"
"They're cutting down the trees," she whimpered, wrapping her arms around her waist as another axe hit a second tree.
"Can you stop them?" Mustardseed was asking, but Daphne couldn't focus on his face.
"I can try," she said wearily, "But I'll only be able to slow them down."
"Do that, then, Daphne," Sabrina's voice this time, "Don't worry about anything else."
Daphne curled up in a ball, concentrating on the trees, but voices still broke through the pain to her ears.
"We're going to die, aren't we?" someone asked.
"No, of course not."
"We might get captured, though. I hear the Scarlet Hand has this really creepy dungeon they store people in, ask Puck."
"We'll be fine. They'll think of something."
"What if they don't?"
"They will. They always do."
A new voice, and a different conversation: "How will we get out of this?"
"I've got a last-ditch plan, but it's-"
"We need last-ditch. You'll have to do it."
She was distracted from this conversation by a pair of arms wrapping around her. It didn't help with the pain, but somehow, she felt a little better.
"It hurts," she whimpered.
"I know," the person who was hugging her said, and she could feel their voice rumble around her through the agony of trees losing their lives for her.
The second conversation wormed its way back into her brain with a shout of "Do it now, Sabrina!"
"All right!" Sabrina screeched, and suddenly Daphne didn't hurt anymore.
She looked around and found that Art was the one holding her, and that they were all in one of Sabrina's iridescent bubbles in a wasteland of stumps, still on the island, possibly. An island, at least.
"Where are we?" someone asked.
"A better question would be when are we," Mustardseed answered, brushing himself off.
The bubble disappeared, and Sabrina, leaning on Puck, explained to everyone, "I brought us to the future by about ten years. We should be safe-ish for now, but I don't really know, and I can't take us back until I've rested."
"Why didn't you just take us like, an hour or a couple days into the future?" Kaytee asked.
"I was going to," Sabrina said, giving Mustardseed a pointed glare, "But someone rushed me, and I panicked. It's not really an exact science."
"It's okay," Puck said, putting a hand on her shoulder, and then taking it off very fast, "We're all here and everything, and you can fix it."
"But how did you get us all here?" Wendell asked. "I thought you had to be touching someone to bring them with you."
"That's what the friggin' bubble was for, all right?" Sabrina snapped. "Isn't it enough that we're safe? Can you people just leave me alone?"
Several people backed up, eyes widening. Sabrina hadn't exploded in public for a long time.
"Perhaps we should see about setting up camp," Mustardseed suggested tactfully. "It's probably best to stay here for now, and-"
He was interrupted by a voice proclaiming, "See? I told you I felt something over here!"
"All right, all right, you were right," a very familiar yet unfamiliar voice said, and Daphne experienced the strangest sense of deja vu. She'd heard those voices before.
"Always trust the girl with the magic eight ball," the first voice said.
Daphne turned, already knowing who she'd see, and grinned a little. This future self of hers was much happier looking than the other one, tossing a small vibrating black object up and down in her left hand as she floated on the magic carpet, which looked cleaner than Daphne had ever seen it. Next to her sat Sabrina, ten years older and ten years prettier, though still kind of short and narrow.
"Hi, future me!" she called to herself.
"Hey, little me," the older Daphne grinned at her. "What are you doing now?"
"We're hiding from the Scarlet Hand," Daphne said. "Sabrina overshot."
"I can't believe I can still do that," the older Sabrina said, sounding surprised. "I mean, that me must be- what? Fourteen? Fifteen?"
"Yeah, about," Sabrina agreed with her older self. "I lose it soon, then?"
"I think we should shut up now and just take them somplace they won't find out too much," the older Daphne suggested to her sister. "I like the way things turn out, and if they know, they might mess it up."
"Good point," the older Sabrina said. "Guys, we'll take you home, all right? And you can rest up there before you're ready to go back to when you belong."
"That sounds marvelous," Mustardseed said wearily. "Could you perhaps look at our wounded while you're at it?"
"We'll have Bella take a look at them," the older Sabrina said. "Just give us a minute or two to be back with a ride."
They flew off, and Puck said, "That was weird."
"I have a feeling the next couple days are going to be very confusing," Bella said. She hadn't stopped bandaging and splinting and putting salves on kids since she'd started, and she looked very tired. "But oddly enough, I don't really give a crap."
"I couldn't care less if they left us here," Sabrina said wearily, "I just want to sleep."
"Sleep sounds great to me," Daphne agreed.
"So say we all," Cricket muttered.
The older Sabrina and Daphne appeared a few minutes later in the chicken house, and everyone piled inside it, heading for safety. Daphne fell asleep sometime before they arrived at the house.
Sabrina woke the next morning in a bed she didn't remember getting into, and rolled out of it to look out the window.
She was in Puck's room; she could see the roller coaster in the distance. She must be in one of the houses that had been built there. Did that mean people still lived in them?
"Hello?" she called, padding out into the next room. It was empty. Actually, most of the house was, other than the bedrooms. She didn't think people still lived here after all. They must have just left the houses up.
Which begged the question, Where had they moved to?
She went outside, ready to wander in search of people, but she was met by herself, who led her to a bench nearby.
"Don't-" her older self started, "Don't leave, all right?"
"Huh?" Sabrina asked, still a little hung up on the bench. Since when were there benches in Puck's room?
"Stay in here," her older self said, gesturing to the space around them. "We think we've got it figured out so that you guys won't find out anything vital about the future, but if you go outside, or even into the rest of the house, you might mess it up. So you can hang out here for a day or two, and then we'll take you to someplace out of the way, and you can take yourselves back to when you belong."
"All right," Sabrina agreed. It made sense to her, and besides, she was more intent on getting a good look at her older self's left hand than the rest of the world, and that left hand was right in front of her and had a beautiful gold ring on it. Well, it wasn't actually a particularly beautiful ring. But it was a gold ring. On the left ring finger. And that, to Sabrina, made it one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen.
Her older self noticed her expression, then looked at her own hand and smiled. "Yeah."
"If I asked for any details, you'd say stuff it, wouldn't you?" Sabrina asked.
Her older self nodded. "Just have a rest today, okay? You've got to be beat. I'm surprised you're up this early."
"Yeah, me too," Sabrina said. "You going to tell everyone else to hang out here?"
"I actually just came to bring you guys some breakfast," Sabrina's older self said, pointing off to another cabin. "If you want me to, though, I can tell them."
Sabrina shook her head. "It's fine," she told her. "I'll tell everyone, don't worry about it."
"Thanks," her older self said. "I brought waffles, if you're hungry."
"Thanks," Sabrina said gratefully. "I think I'll go take advantage of that.
"Figured you would," her older self said, grinning. "I hope you don't mind if I don't stick around, it's a bit too weird hanging around with my younger self."
"Don't mind a bit," Sabrina said, waving her off, already heading for the promise of waffles. She was starved.
She was halfway through her third enormous homemade waffle before other people joined her. She gave them all the message, and they agreed, and ate their own food. She had two more waffles, and then went back to sleep. Her nap lasted until lunchtime, when the smell of food woke her, and she headed for it, feeling like Daphne.
"So you've rejoined the living," Jonas teased her as she stumbled out, rubbing bleary eyes and smacking her lips at the odd taste of too much sleep without enough brushing of teeth.
Sabrina nodded, grabbed a grilled cheese sandwich, and sat down almost on top of Puck, because all the chairs were full. She figured nobody would think too much of that as long as she complained later, or he did, because they'd shared chairs before.
"You look different than I remember," a new voice said, and Sabrina really looked around for the first time since she'd woken.
The woman who'd spoken bore a resemblance to Bella, but her hair was longer, and tied back from her face in an elaborate braid, and she didn't wear any makeup. She was holding hands with a man who was soft-looking, though not fat, with blue eyes that made Sabrina understand the definition of 'limpid'. They were two of several adults that peppered the crowded eating area (they'd set up tables outside, instead of trying to force everyone into one house, or dividing them up.
"How's that?" she asked, taking a large bite of her sandwich as soon as she had.
"You're shorter," the woman who Sabrina guessed was an older Bella said, "And you're less confident. More worn."
Sabrina shrugged and said, "I guess it's 'cause you're more confident now. And I'm a kid."
"Probably," the older Bella said, laughing a bit, "I remember thinking my best friend was superhuman through most of the war. It's nice to know I was wrong."
"That's kind of worrying," Sabrina mumbled around more sandwich, "'Cause I let more of my human-ness out around you than almost anybody. Weren't you guys supposed to stay away?"
The grown-up Bella shrugged and said, "I had to be here to help with the people who were hurt. And then somebody started complaining about how that wasn't fair, and then another person picked it up, and eventually they had to give in."
"Weird," Sabrina said. "I'd think it'd be kind of creepy to meet my younger self. And annoying."
"Yeah, well, everyone's different," the grown-up who must have been Wendell put in. "I don't think my younger self is too annoying."
"Yeah, well, you weren't there when you were going through your 'Private Investigator' phase," Puck muttered. Sabrina elbowed him, and he added, "Watch it, or you're sitting on the floor."
"That's another thing," the older Wendell added, "I don't remember you two being a couple until you were sixteen or so."
Sabrina and Puck both blushed, and Sabrina choked on a mouthful of sandwich while Puck muttered, "Um... well..."
The older Bella saved them by saying, "It's complicated, sweetie."
Sabrina and Puck nodded, relieved, and Sabrina went back to eating her sandwich in peace, letting the others carry the conversation. She was feeling much less tired now, and she was almost sure she could take them back, if everyone was ready to leave themselves alone. She didn't want to try to make them do that, though. She had a feeling it wouldn't go over too well.
She was saved by the older Daphne calling over the crowd, "All right, everyone, this has been a very pleasant party, but it's time to get back to what we're supposed to be doing! These kids have got to go home!"
There was a collection of groans, but everyone loaded themselves back up into the expanded chicken-house, and Sabrina grabbed another two sandwiches in preparation for the journey home.
They reached a secluded area of forest behind the Grimm house without anyone really seeing the inside, or even the outside, of the house, and then Sabrina took them back to when they belonged. She thought, approvingly, that her grown-up self was really very efficient at getting things done fast.