AN~ 190
QotD: There's an app for that. At least, there should be. Design a cell phone/tablet app that doesn't exist yet, but that we NEED.
Previous QotD winner: Anger. Issues, because she did RESEARCH.
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Guest: Ch 2: When you get here, hi! It gets better as you go on, trust me. Ch. 27: You're not even a quarter of the way through the story. Why are you already asking me to write more? That doesn't make sense. Ch 28: Yes. Yes she is. Ch. 40: Thanks. Ch. 1 again: WHEN I FINISH THE CHAPTER. That's always when they are. I try to put one out a week, but I can't always do that.
Athena: I'm assuming you're the same Athena who I was having a discussion with over Apology Oneshots. Hi!
PenguinLoverGurl: Annie and Marcus assumedly got married. We didn't see them though because I didn't want to drag this out. What's too short?
catnissmeows27: Cock Robin has nothing to do with Facebook. It's a poem. A strangely depressing kid's poem.
puckabrinaluva: Thanks for the review!
They were back in their own time again, with nothing to show for it other than a lack of injuries, and Sabrina was pretty sure that the Hand would come back for them again, now that they had that way of tracking them.
"Well, we're no better off than we were before," Mustardseed moped, dropping to the ground next to her. "Think we should have a council of war?"
"Yeah, definitely," Sabrina said, nodding vigorously, then holding her head as an ache formed. She still wasn't recovered from her most recent time-manipulation-whatever. "You want to get everyone together, or should I?"
"I'll do it," Mustardseed said, "You just keep everyone away from here for now, all right?"
"I'm not that tired," Sabrina grumbled, but she didn't argue further, because maybe she was that tired.
She sat down on a large rock in the woods nearby which was mostly flat, big enough to seat ten or so people in a loose circle, and about five feet off the ground. Their temporary camp had been using it as a kitchen, but it was ten in the morning, now, and nobody was eating anything. The fire had died down to embers in the center of the rock. She amused herself for a bit by finding pictures in the pattern of shadows and light on the rock, and in the lichen that grew on its sides. She could almost imagine that they weren't in the middle of a war, looking at that.
Mustardseed came back fifteen minutes later with Mr. Canis, Peaseblossom, Daphne, Puck, Annie, Jane, and a few others that he'd picked out (Sabrina had let him choose the people who'd be best for the 'council'; for making decisions when he and Sabrina needed help). They all arranged themselves in a vague circle around the fire pit where Sabrina had found herself in charge of cooking again. It was amazing how many of these several-hundred-year-old people didn't know how to cook.
"So," she said, "I call this meeting to order and all that formal stuff. Now I'll be frank with you people: We're stuck. Unless you have some great idea, the same thing is going to happen again, until we can get rid of however they're tracking us."
"They have the advantage," Mustardseed put in, "And what we need is a way to get the upper hand back."
"Any ideas?" Sabrina asked. "'Cause I'm stumped."
There was a general murmur around the table, and Puck suggested, "We could kick Cricket out, since it's him they're tracking."
Sabrina gave him a look.
"Fine," Puck muttered, glaring at the ground.
"Do we have any legitimate suggestions?" Mustardseed asked, looking around. "Any suggestions that don't involve sacrificing anyone we're supposed to be protecting?"
"Can Sabrina put up a barrier that will keep them from getting to us?" Jane suggested. "Then one or two of us can go out and find out what they've got that's letting them find us, and we can destroy it."
Sabrina shook her head wearily and said, "Not for another two days, at least. I'm beat, Jane. It takes time to build that much energy up again."
"Could we loan you some?" Annie suggested. "Is there a spell that will let us do that?" She looked to Daphne for an answer.
Daphne shook her head and said, "I have two fairy godmother wands which are good for disguises and that's about it, a bottle of stuff that makes things bigger on the inside than the outside, three protection amulets, a bottle of sleeping potion, and Merlin's wand. None of those will give Sabrina any extra energy that we might have."
"Besides," Mr. Canis said, "we all need to keep whatever energy we have. We'll need it."
"Go back a bit," Peaseblossom said to Daphne. "You've got disguises, right? Could that throw them off our trail?"
"We can try," Daphne said doubtfully, "but it wears off at midnight."
"Wait a second!" Sabrina said, scrambling at her neck, "You can make things bigger inside than out, right?"
"Yeah, but what-" Daphne was cut off as Sabrina let out and ear-piercing whistle, and she saw that her sister was holding a big iron key.
It was a few minutes before the house showed up, stomping its way through the woods on its chicken feet, shaking what leaves were left on the trees. Sabrina stood with a grin as it stopped in front of her and settled itself.
The door opened, and Goldilocks appeared through it, looking very confused as she said, "Sabrina, what-"
Sabrina and Daphne ran past her, though, leaving the others to explain why they were even here, let alone why they'd called the house. Thankfully, nobody else was using the house at the moment, so when Sabrina shut the door, Daphne was free to sprinkle her stuff all over the house, making each room the size of a ballroom. A large ballroom.
Unfortunately, the furniture hadn't grown with the rooms, so they were left with a couch at the far end of a huge hall, a kitchen at their end, and a huge empty space in between, with only a throw rug that took up maybe a tenth of the floor in between. Sabrina assumed the other rooms would look about the same.
"Nice," Puck said, coming up next to her. "You do good work, Marshmallow."
"I hope you closed that door," Sabrina told him without turning around. "Do you know how this stuff works?"
"Well enough," Puck responded, "Of course I closed the door."
"Good," Sabrina said, glancing at the long distance between her and the couch. "I really don't want to walk over there."
But Puck was gone. She turned around and saw him closing the door behind him, and she rolled her eyes.
"Your fee for lying to me is that you get to carry me to that couch," she told him, mock-stern.
Puck made a face, but obligingly carried her over to the couch and dumped her unceremoniously on it.
"What exactly is the point of this?" Puck asked. "Mustardseed and Mr. Canis are totally swamped by Goldilocks. She's not happy."
Sabrina shrugged and said, "They can handle it. If we have the house, we can run. And the house can go faster than they can. Also it gives us the high ground."
"All right, I'll give you that that's pretty useful," Puck conceded.
"Is Daphne going to use the fairy godmother wands on Cricket anyway, then?" Sabrina asked.
"Probably," Puck said, shrugging.
"Good," Sabrina said, closing her eyes, "It's hard to sleep when this place is running."
Puck was going to say something else, but she didn't hear it, because she'd fallen asleep.
When she woke up, the interior of the house had changed dramatically. The big empty space had been filled with rows of stretchers (Sabrina didn't know where they'd come from) on one side, and tables (a little more explainable, as they were folding, and she remembered seeing a few of them before) on the other. Somehow she'd ended up on the stretcher side, and as she sat up, she found herself surrounded by her injured friends.
"Oh hey, you're awake!" a voice said.
Sabrina looked over and saw a tall chubby stranger with straight brown hair tied back from her forehead and a smattering of freckles smiling down at her, tugging at her long pointy nose.
"Umm..." Sabrina said, brow furrowing as she tugged the filthy red fleece blanket someone had placed on her closer to her nose. "Do I know you?"
"Oh, yeah, sorry," the strange girl said, giving her a lopsided smile. "It's Peaseblossom. Your sister put a disguise on me and Cricket."
"How's it working?" Sabrina asked, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
"All right so far, I guess," Peaseblossom shrugged, "We haven't seen any sign of the Scarlet Hand."
"So which one's Cricket?" Sabrina asked.
Peaseblossom pointed to a tiny boy with enormous hands an a mop of hair the color of old paper, his eyes wide-spaced around a button of a nose.
"Poor guy," Sabrina said with a small smile.
"Yeah, well," Peaseblossom shrugged, giving him a fond look.
A bell rang- another thing that had appeared in the chicken house without Sabrina's knowledge- and suddenly people came pouring out from the next room and down from the loft, heading for the tables on the far side of the enormous room.
"It's so... organized," Sabrina marveled. "How long was I asleep?"
"Just a couple hours," Peaseblossom said. "But you know how Goldi is. Everything has to be just so."
"Yeah," Sabrina said with a half-smile. "Sort of makes me wonder what my dad saw in her."
"Love is blind, I guess," Peaseblossom shrugged. "Come on, it's time for dinner."
Sabrina got up and wound her way through the orderly rows of stretchchers and tables with various ephemera on them, and thought that Goldi would do well in a real army hospital. Then she crossed a ten-yard barrier of empty space, her feet clacking against the wood floor, and reached the crowded, messy dining area and began hunting for a seat.
She found one next to Daphne. It was at the same table as Art, unfortunately, but she decided that if Daphne could put up with it, she could. Watching their interactions, though, as she waited for the food Daphne told her would be served by a few people chosen by Goldi, she thought that maybe Daphne had forgiven Art. And she thought that, if Daphne could forgive Art, when Tim had been her friend, then maybe it was time for her to start thinking about forgiving him. Or at least speaking to him again.
Dinner was goulash. Sabrina recognized most of the components as leftovers from the camper's previous meals. It was tasty enough, though some of the flavors mixed a little oddly- rosemary potatoes and noodles didn't go to well together, in her opinion. Dessert was some sort of pudding. Sabrina didn't eat it.
After dinner, Daphne offered to show Sabrina around. She took her sister up on the offer, and Daphne led her into the next room.
Sabrina gaped for several seconds, just taking it in. Uncle Jake and Briar's bedroom had been turned into a stable. Sabrina didn't know where their furniture had gotten to, but it was all gone, and there was a layer of leaves (presumably from outside) on the floor, and all the horses and horse-like creatures they'd been riding had been moved in and were eating out of large bowls of grain spread across the floor.
"Wow," she said eventually, "You guys have been busy."
"Yeah," Daphne said with a grin, "They're kind of upset to be cooped up again, but we've been riding them hard. They deserve a break."
"Well, we can't take them home," Sabrina said. "Otherwise I'd say we should, and clean this place up before we totally destroy Uncle Jake and Aunt Briar's bedroom."
"Yeah, well," Daphne shrugged. "We'll probably need them again. And they like it with us."
"Can't imagine why," Sabrina said, "We've almost gotten them killed more than once."
"I dunno," Daphne said, shrugging again. "They just do."
"Huh." Sabrina said, watching the horses cavort in the leaf-strewn room.
"So wanna see the loft, now?" Daphne suggested. "I set up your sleeping bag."
"Sure," Sabrina said.
This time Daphne led Sabrina up the ladder to the loft, which was the size of the main room downstairs as far as the floor was concerned, but had a sloped roof, meaning that the edges were harder to make use of. There was a wall of supplies (bags and weapons and such) on each of the corners, and Sabrina, peeking around one, saw the contents of Uncle Jake and Briar's room, with Goldi's things on it. Sabrina assumed that the other 'wall' hiud Red's bed and Wendy's things, since neither had packed bedding. The space in between the two edges was a village made of tents, also set up in orderly rows, though not quite so army-regulation as the cots downstairs.
"Where's my bed?" Sabrina asked, looking at the groups of people playing cards, or talking, or mock-fighting, between the tents.
"Over here," Daphne said, leading the way to the third tent over and the seventh one in, a nondescript tent against the wall, with its window looking straight out the house's window. "I got us a spot by the window 'cause I thought you'd want to be able to watch."
"Thanks," Sabrina told Daphne, smiling fondly at her.
"No problem," Daphne grinned back. "It's just you and me, too."
"Just like old times," Sabrina said.
"Not unless we sneak out," Daphne disagreed.
"Want to?" Sabrina asked mischievously.
Daphne stared at her, and, after blinking six times, asked, "You mean it?"
"Why not?" Sabrina asked, shrugging. "Someone needs to find out what they've got that can track Cricket. Might as well be us."
"But not tonight," Daphne cautioned. "Tomorrow. After you're a bit more rested."
"Yes, mother," Sabrina sighed, but she grinned at her sister and ruffled her hair.
The day passed slowly, but well. Sabrina went to bed half an hour after Daphne had shown her around, and she slept late, almost missing breakfast. Goldi recruited her for cleanup duty, which wasn't that difficult, and she found out that they were running a little low on food, but still had a tablecloth Daphne had found that produced endless food- it was just almost entirely meat. She practiced sparring with Puck until lunch, and then after eating, she discussed tactics with Mustardseed. They decided that their next step should be to hijack some vegetables and bread and stuff from the Scarlet Hand. She didn't mention her plan to sneak out with Daphne to him.
They waited until after dinner, playing endless rounds of Spit in the dining area, until they were certain they were the only ones left awake. Then they put their cards away and slid out the door silently, dropping to the ground safely, thanks to Sabrina's still-present ability to control gravity, as the house trundled forward without them.
"Which way?" Sabrina asked quietly.
Daphne, who had her magic eight ball, held it out as she spun in a slow circle. When she'd gone about three quarters of the way back to the direction she'd started, her hands began to vibrate, and, after double checking, she nodded in that direction- southwest.
"Let's move," Sabrina said, and they set off through the forest silently.
They walked half an hour before they reached the source of the magic, Daphne vibrating stronger the further they went, trying their hardest not to crunch the leaves that littered the forest floor. At least they didn't have to worry about plants, as they simply moved out of the way when Daphne approached them.
The source of the magic was located in the middle of a sleeping Scarlet Hand camp. Sabrina stared at it, marveling. Hundreds of mutant things just lying on the ground or in piles like you'd see in "Where the Wild things Are", all surrounding a small collection of tents with a reddish glow peeking out from between them.
"They didn't even bother to post sentries," Daphne whispered, pulling the vibrating magic eight ball back out, so that her next word, "sloppy," came out like she was speaking through a fan.
"Well, would you want to walk through those things to get to them?" Sabrina asked pointedly. "They probably wake up easy."
"Good point," Daphne said, still sounding like she was talking through an electric fan. "Carry me over?"
In response, Sabrina unfurled her wings and grabbed her sister by the back of her sweatshirt, trying to get a good grip on her, even though she was vibrating like an electric back massager with new batteries. Once she had a solid grip and was convinced she wouldn't drop her sister, she took off and asked, "Where to?"
Daphne simply pointed to the largest tent, and Sabrina flew them over the monstrosities to its back flap.
Sabrina let her sister go when they'd touched down, and, pulling up the flap, stopped for a second. Heart was sleeping in that tent, snoring softly, a mirror propped up directly to Sabrina's left. There was a table on the far side of the room with a collection of things on it, and below it, a trunk, presumably also full of stuff.
Sabrina pointed the mirror out to Daphne, who nodded and pointed to a wand hanging from her belt.
Sabrina shook her head desperately and pointed at Daphne.
Daphne gestured to the vibrating black sphere in her hand, making a face that clearly said, 'I can't do that and this!'
Sabrina let out a silent yet dramatic sigh and grabbed the wand with her fingertips, then whispered, "Gimme some curtains!"
A set of curtains appeared around the mirror, and Sabrina gave the wand back to Daphne as fast as she could, convincing herself it would be a horrible idea to keep it. Daphne smiled at her, and the two walked into the tent. Daphne headed straight to the table and pointed out a small gold locket hanging off a jewelry stand on the table.
Sabrina picked it up and held it towards Daphne questioningly. Daphne nodded, and they headed out of the tent the way they'd come in.
The two sisters were just giving themselves high fives when Daphne, still vibrating strongly, stepped on a twig. It snapped with a loud 'crack!'
Both girls froze, suddenly finding themselves surrounded by a hundred oddly colored eyes.
Sabrina muttered, "Uh-oh," and the stillness was broken. The mutants, very much awake now, converged.