Race Through Time:

Lust-Me Seaweed

The good part for the heroes was that once they arrived to the Storybrooke Harbor thanks to Anubis' teleportation spell, the boat where they had seen Midnight Sparkle from the magic globe was among the boats at the port. The bad part however was that the crazy alicorn wasn't onboard.

"She's nowhere in the boat," Emma grumbled after she and David came out of the boat along with a few of Anubis' hounds after five to ten minutes of inspecting the boat. Anubis knelt in front of Ared and listened to the jackal's growls.

"Ared says that her scent is still fresh, so she must have left the boat recently," he said as he rubbed Ared's back in a caring manner.

"So she can't be far," Emma said.

"Precisely."

A howl was heard coming from the boat and out came a jackal about one quarter shorter than Ared dragging something from his mouth. The closer it got to the group and the more the heroes could see what it was dragging: a small bundle of green seaweed.

"Hey, that's the same seaweed we saw Midnight collecting," David said as Emma used a pair of tweezers to grab a sample of the plant and put it in a plastic bag.

"Nice job, Ketabi," Marion told the jackal. Ketabi let out a happy howl. Meanwhile, Anubis grabbed a strand of the seaweed and took several sniffs of it until a suspicious look appeared on his face.

"What's wrong?" David noticed Anubis' look.

"Before I make wrong assumptions, we need to return to the pawnshop," the god said.

Later

Belle had come to the pawnshop after leaving Amanda under Mary Margaret's care in order to help the heroes figure out what on earth was so particular about the seaweed. They watched as she flipped through a book of mystical botany until she landed on a page with a scientific illustration of the plant in question.

"A concupiscitis mepelagus," Belle said. "That's what it is."

"Meaning 'Lust-Me Seaweed' in Latin," Marion added.

"What else does it say about the seaweed?" Emma asked Belle. The bookworm nodded and turned back to her reading.

"'The concupiscitis mepelagus is a very rare seaweed found only in the oceans of the Northeastern Hemispheres. This algae is essential for the fabrication of the Lustful Curse,'" she read out loud. "Lustful Curse?"

"A not-so distant cousin of the Curse of the Empty-Hearted," Mr. Gold said.

"You mean that spell that's supposed to make its victim believe they love somebody that Regina wanted to use on Henry?" Emma's eyes popped open at the mention of the spell Regina had tried to use on Henry after Mary Margaret had killed Cora.

"Time out!" Marion said. "I thought that forceful love was against the rules of magic!"

"It is," Anubis said. "But nothing in the laws of magic says that you can force someone to lust you. Love isn't the same as lust: the first one is the real, sincere feeling that you develop in your heart for someone's personal characteristics. Lust, on the other hand, is obsessive desire for the someone's physical appearance, luscious scent, and intimacy factor."

"And you know this how?" Anubis' wife gave the god a skeptical look.

"Do I have to remind you of Discordia?"

"Never mind."

"Isn't there a cure for the Lustful Curse?" Belle asked her own husband.

"Well, there's one," he said quietly. "If the victim is currently in love, then the spell won't work."

"Then it won't work," a voice said. The heroes were surprised to see Killian coming from behind the curtain that separated the pawnshop from the back. "Fitzgerald has had only one love in his entire life, and that was Isabella the Princess of Aldorada, and she's unfortunately dead."

"Even so, the cure wouldn't work." Gold's face filled up with a grim expression. "When I mean currently in love, I mean that the love interest must be still alive. For instance, if you were the victim that Midnight sought," Gold referred to Killian, "the Lustful Curse won't work because of your current love for Emma Swan. But suppose you didn't love her but your old, deceased Milah; then the spell would work because Milah is an old flame."

"Translation: the Batrishan is doomed," Marion concluded. "Anyway we can, I don't know, delay the fabrication of the spell?"

"According to the book, if Midnight Sparkle wants to achieve the Lustful Curse, she needs three more ingredients." Belle looked at her book. "Maybe if we can figure out where she can find them in Storybrooke as well as where she's hiding, then maybe we can capture her and send her back in Pandora's Box."

"Sounds like a plan," Anubis agreed. "I'll have my hounds track down the alicorn using the Equestrian Dust. Speaking of tracking, what should we do to figure out where my daughter is?"

"She's in the Eastern Highlands," Killian and Gold said in unison.

"You...you found her?" Marion gasped. She grabbed Killian and began shaking him. "How? Where are the Eastern Highlands? How can we reach her? How will she come back home?" Emma had to pull Marion away in order to prevent her from making the pirate sick. Suddenly, the curtains were pulled and out came Fidget holding a pack of ice on the head.

"Wait, you should be resting!" Belle shut her book closed before she and Killian rushed towards the Batrishan to prevent him from walking away. Unfortunately, a purple force field surrounding him prevented them from even touching him.

"What is it with people driving me nuts today?" Fidget exclaimed. He then began shouting at Anubis: "Why the hell did you teach your daughter to blast people in the head?"

"Excuse me?" Anubis was confused.

"Allow me," Mr. Gold said. "Shortly after you left, the Batrishan used the magic globe to locate your daughter and discovered that she was in the Eastern Highlands back in the Enchanted Forest..."

"She's back in the Enchanted Forest?" Marion gasped before suddenly giving a grateful hug to a baffled Batrishan. "Oh thank you!"

"I'd say you're welcome...if she didn't blast me in the head!" Fidget roughly pushed away Marion, who landed in Anubis' watchful.

"Oh, and there also came a part where Rosetta tried to send Fitzgerald a telepathic message, only he got a blast on the head that gave him quite a migraine," Killian added.

"A side effect for telepathic messaging, really," Mr. Gold added.

"I didn't know Rosie could do such spells," David told Anubis, who was just as surprised as everyone else.

"Don't look at me! I tried to avoid her using magic too often. You know how it goes for people who use magic too often, especially dark one: the more you use it, the more it consumes you until you can't bear to split up with it."

"And you couldn't teach her to use some sort of magical object that works like a phone instead of giving me migraines?" Fidget spat.

"Easy, Fitzgerald," Killian said. "You need rest..."

"Indeed I do! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to lay my head on my pillow back in my cottage, and if I see anybody else bothering me again, I'm putting myself in a sleeping curse!" He made a hand gesture that summoned a cloud of purple smoke to surround him until he disappeared from the pawnshop.

"I don't want to imagine what it's like to be immortal like him," grumbled Marion.