Race Through Time:
Finding A Way Back To Storybrooke
Tears blinded Rosetta as she ran under the rain that showered the stoned roads.
A silly human girl, the words hammered Rosetta's head as her feet ran into puddles of water that soaked her shoes and under raindrops that threatened to give her a cold.
"I don't believe in anything anymore!" Rosetta reached the catwalk where the pilgrims had placed their boat. Unfortunately, it's not safe to run on wet plank, especially when you're near a big mass of water and you aren't a good swimmer, because that's what ended up happening to Rosetta as her foot slipped on a wooden plank and dragged her body into the river. She tried her best at attempting to swim, but the volume of water was so high that her small limbs grew tired and led her to falling unconscious. Her body began to drown in the depth until something dove its head down and grabbed her in its swan-like arms.
"I got her!" Eglantine put Rosetta on her back and swam back to the catwalk, where the other pilgrims and the Bartok family were now gathered. Eglantine, against all rules of religious modesty, had removed her cape and dress and swum in her full swan body in order to bring Rosetta back to the pilgrims.
"She's ice cold!" Maurice exclaimed after Eglantine handed Rosetta to him so that she could get back in her clothes. His hands touched the child's cheeks and collarbone. "Her breathing's weakening! If she doesn't recover soon, she'll die!"
"This is all my fault," Isaac said guiltily. "If I weren't so biased..."
"You admitted your faults, which is enough for forgiving." Aaron rested his hand on the Reeve's shoulder as they watched Periwinkle and Hermia attempt to wake up Rosetta with their magic.
"It doesn't work!" Hermia said. "A demigod born from a death god can only be saved from death by his or her godly parent's blood and the magic of an ancient monotheist god follower... Only her father Anubis can use his blood!"
"And as much as I hate to admit it, Fidget is the only living Batrishan I know who's born from the Batrishan priests." Bartok grimaced. "I need to take her back to Storybrooke. Tristan, judging by the events turning ahead of us, I'll need you to come with me."
Tristan nodded in understanding. Bartok turned to the pilgrims. "I'm sorry you had your pilgrimage ruined." He picked up Rosetta and carried her in his arms. "Periwinkle, Hermia, I can't leave you alone when there are the odds of me never returning. You need to come with me."
"Of course." Periwinkle held on to her husband.
"But what about the farm?" Hermia asked sadly.
"We'll take care of it," Anaïs said while she and the other six pilgrims held hands together.
"We went this far to pursue our dreams," Isaac said. "But, thanks to Rosie, we'll all be creating a new dream together."
"I'll send a message to Camberley to explain to your father why you can't return home just yet, Tristan," Dwight said.
"Thank you." Tristan gave his old friend a tearful good-bye hug.
"I just have a question," Hermia said. "How are we..." Her question got cut off when the rain stopped pouring and the water formed a vortex. They looked down at it and saw a faint image of a strange coastal town. One of its buildings had a word...
"Storybrooke," Tristan said. "Somebody must have known we needed to go there."
A groan came out of the unconscious Rosetta, who still didn't wake up. "Forget how it came, she's on fever level and that can lead to death. We have to go now!"
"FAREWELL! GOOD LUCK TO ALL OF YOU!" the seven other pilgrims said before Bartok, his family, and Tristan flew down into the vortex as it led them to the other side.
Storybrooke.
How the vortex came in the first place minutes ago in Storybrooke
Fidget was sitting on one of the benches at the docks, waiting patiently for Midnight Sparkle to come for their 'rendezvous', which was none other than a set up planned by Marion. He'd be luring the alicorn towards the docks and distracting her while Marion, Anubis, the codfish, Emma, David, and Mr. Gold would get out of their hiding places and attack Midnight Sparkle with either poppy dust or a recording of the lullaby Fidget had sung to put Amanda back to sleep. In anyway, it would put Midnight Sparkle in a state where she couldn't defend herself when the heroes finally sealed her back in Pandora's Box.
But the dark Batrishan being himself, he did have some other plans.
"You wanted to see me?"
Fidget turned his head once he heard the voice of the alicorn and found her sitting right next to him. Once again, her attire was revealing, clearly indicating her intentions to make with him, and fashioned in her motif: purple strapless top resembling a bra, black mini shorts that looked more like underwear and therefore exposed too much of her hips, and over-the-knee high heeled boots. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail...ironically.
"She's here, get ready," Marion said as se communicated with the others through her phone.
"I may have...a proposition to make," Fidget said, remaining stiff as Midnight Sparkle let her right hand's fingers crawl up his torso. As soon as she heard the word 'proposition', she squealed with excitement and tackled him down until he was pinned down on the bench and she was straddling on him.
"Definetly yes!" She said excitedly before going straight ahead to send a series of forceful kisses on the Batrishan. "So when does the ceremony take place? Right now or in a few days? Have you already decided the kind of cake and the guests? Or the amount of babies we'll be having at our honeymoon?"
"This is not something you see in women everyday," Mr. Gold remarked to David as they hid in a boat and watched through binoculars as Midnight Sparkle kept kissing Fidget, nearly putting him in a state where he could be running out of air.
"Well, then again, I was nearly suffocated by a siren's kissing." David shrugged.
"Not that kind of proposition!" Fidget had had enough of Midnight Sparkle's lustful kisses sucking the breath out of his lungs, but her starting to unbutton his shirt with her magic was the last straw for him and he managed to push her off him. "But, we can arrange for it to happen...in the future."
His words interested Midnight Sparkle. "You're saying that you'd actually stay with me? That you won't put me back in the box?"
"I'm saying that I might if you'd do something for me," Fidget said.
"Anything!" Midnight Sparkle got up from the bench in excitement. She snapped her fingers and soon a series of valuable items came and went in a flash of magic. "Gold, a kingdom, slaves, or a portal to an unexplored land...I could give them all to you if you just asked!"
"Can she really do that?" Emma asked through her phone.
"Alicorns are supernatural beings," Mr. Gold said. "They can bend and twist magic as much as any Dark One can."
"I appreciate your offerings, Midnight. Really, I do." Fidget gently lowered her hands in order to keep her from doing further magic. "But even if you gave me what I wanted and I went with you, you wouldn't be happy. I've been living for centuries now with a dark, broken heart that has been avoiding death with the Elixir of Nine Lives..."
Hearing the name made Midnight Sparkle pull her hands away from him. "The Elixir...You mean, that potion that grants eternal immortality to the drinker?" Her voice sounded like it was breaking. "Fitzgerald, do you even know the price of it?"
"Living a long life at the cost of watching your loved ones die," the Batrishan answered. "I took it after believing that I could spend eternity hunting for revenge without having to pay the price since I lost all those I loved. But now I just discovered that my revenge was pointless and now all I can do is live off the rest of my life as a recluse. So ask yourself, Midnight: am I really worth your time? Am I really worth getting cursed by the Lustful Curse, a spell that you still haven't finished yet?"
Midnight Sparkle stared at him, her eyes showing a broken soul as she pulled out a green vial with an oil-colored liquid in it. The humanoid alicorn sobbed as she threw the vial onto the nearest dock, smashing the vial and spilling the content. As the liquid burned the wooden platform like acid, Midnight Sparkle continued to sob and lose balance of her legs, making her fall. Fidget grabbed her and helped her lie down on the bench while the others rushed out of their hiding places to join the two beasts.
"What's happening?" Marion asked.
"She got a severe heartbreak and it's killing her," Anubis said as he put a hand on Midnight's head. "She'll turn into dust just like all alicorns do."
"You're killing her?" David growled at Fidget. "We were supposed to put her back in Pandora's Box, not kill her!"
"Because putting her back in there would make it any better," Fidget muttered quietly.
"Th...Thank you," Midnight Sparkle coughed dust out of her mouth. "I...Cough!...I hated being there. Cough!" She held out a withering, begging to Fidget. "Please...Your condition from earlier...Ask for it...Whatever you wanted from me...Ask for it. Please! Use my last amount of magic to grant your desire!" She coughed even more.
"You're going to be alright," Emma tried to reassure the alicorn. It was pointless, because the latter was now getting her skin cracked.
"Can you return Anubis' daughter Rosetta back to Storybrooke?" Fidget asked Midnight. His question made Anubis and Marion stare at him all baffled.
"You'd return our daughter for us?" Anubis asked nearly gratefully.
"Over my dead body," Fidget snapped. "You are by far the lousiest parents I've ever seen in my entire life. I'm only getting Rosie back because she's my friend and nothing else!"
"One friend...coming...right...now..." With all the remaining strength she had left, Midnight Sparkle snapped her fingers. A vortex suddenly came into the waters of the harbor while the alicorn finally gave in and turned into a pile of dust that got blown away into the blue sky from the blowing winds created by the vortex. Four figurines flew out of the vortex that closed after them and kept flying above the port. Two of them looked like fairies while the two others...
"BATRISHANS?" Killian exclaimed.
"You mean there's more than one?" David asked.
The fairies and the Batrishans landed on the solid ground. One of the Batrishans, an albino one, was carrying a rather sick looking child in his arms.
"ROSETTA!" Anubis and Marion rushed to the Batrishan, who instantly gave Rosetta to Anubis. The god cradled his poor child in his arms. "What happened to my daughter?" he demanded.
"She nearly drowned after she ran away from an argument, milord," the other Batrishan, a tanned young fellow, said with a bow. "Only your blood and the magic of..." He got cut off when some loud inhuman hissing was heard and everyone realized that they didn't notice Fidget and the albino bat lashing at one another like wild animals.
"You!" the albino bat hissed.
"Long time no see, Bartok!" Fidget replied back as he got his sharp nailed hands ready.
"Hang on, you two know each other?" Killian said as he and David kept the two Batrishans from lashing at one another.
"This is the Batrishan who survived the genocide?" the tanned Batrishan frowned. "Wow. Rosetta wasn't kidding when she said he did evil deeds. He looks like he came out of Hell!"
"And you shouldn't be existing!" Fidget snapped.
"Will somebody explain what's going on?" Emma demanded.
"I can," Mr. Gold said, surprising everyone. "Fidget knew the Dark One before me, Zoso, and helped him motivate a Duke to draft children into the Ogres War, which led me to becoming the next Dark One in order to protect Baelfire. In exchange for helping my predecessor, Fidget the Bat left for the Valley Of A Thousand Whispers with a poison."
"The Valley Of A Thousand Whispers?" The youngest fairy among the newcomers asked the oldest.
"It's where your father used to live in exile after he left his people eras ago," the oldest said.
"I exiled myself there after living so many years from the Elixir Of Nine Lives and regretting the things I've seen," the albino Batrishan snarled. "My life was peaceful there and it was getting better when I was engaged to a woman I loved back then and we were going to celebrate with her father's visiting caravan." He then pointed at Fidget. "But then he came along disguised as a blind beggar and blackmailed me into giving him the formula that would enable him to have the last four sips he needed to get all the eternal immortality provided by the Elixir of Nine Lives in exchange for the antidote for the poison he seemingly had used on my love's family.
"But it was a trick. They were never poisoned but affected by an herb that upset their stomachs and the real poison, the one that the Dark One Zoso gave him, was actually in the vial he claimed to contain the antidote. He ended up getting the sips he desired while my love and I unintentionally poisoned my love's family. And to coronate everything, he impaled her with his sword as a 'way of making me not pay for the elixir's price' and saying how it wasn't fair for me to have happiness with the one I loved while he lost everything!"
Everyone stared at Fidget in disbelief while the latter didn't do as much than checking to see if he hadn't broken any nail. "Would it help if I told you he was the one responsible for ruining my life?" he asked while pointing at Killian, who looked shocked at Fidget's accusation.
"NO!" Bartok said indignantly.
"Thank you for wondering if whether or not my daughter's dying here!" Anubis shouted angrily. He bit his hand and put it on Rosetta's lips, making sure that at least five drops of his blood went down her throat.
"Rosie..." Fidget ignored his argument with Bartok and rushed to Anubis' side. He touched one of Rosetta's cheeks and felt her cold skin barely getting warmer. "What happened to her?"
"Oh, like you actually cared!" Bartok snorted until he found himself being strangled and lifted of the ground by Fidget using his dark magic on him.
"BARTOK!" the oldest fairy exclaimed.
"I said WHAT HAPPENED? ANSWER ME!" the dark Batrishan demanded as he tightened the magic choking Bartok.
"Please, Lord Fidget!" the other Batrishan begged on his knees. "Rosie slipped and accidently fell into a river after she been accidently insulted by one of my pilgrim comrades. We barely managed to get her out, and if you don't use your magic along with her father's blood to save her, she will die!"
The adults gasped at the mention of Rosetta dying. Without hesitating, Fidget went back to Rosetta and used his magic to shield her body with a purple aura. "Et vivifica spiritum. Et vivifica spiritum..." He suddenly clutched his head and his eyes began to glow in a mix of red and gold like his eyes. "Ozivjeti i disati."
"What's happening?" the tanned Batrishan asked Bartok. "It's like he switched into another language to cast his spell."
"Zivjeti i branti," Fidget continued.
"I...He's speaking in Ancient Batrishan dialect!" Bartok realized. "But only a trained Batrishan priest can recite a spell so perfectly and fluently. Where did he learn?"
"Pobunjenik," Fidget finished the spell. His eyes stopped glowing and he went back to his normal senses. "What just happened?"
A small moan came out of Rosetta's mouth. The child got her colors back and opened her eyes. "Mommy...Daddy..."
"Oh, my baby!" Marion sighed as she and Anubis hugged her tightly before putting her back on the ground and letting her rush to the first person she wanted to hug after not seeing him for almost a month.
"I'm sorry I missed Tea Thursday," Rosetta apologized to Fidget as she hugged the dark Batrishan tightly more than her parents did to her.
"You being alive is more important than three cups of cold tea," he slightly joked, making Rosetta giggle a bit. Some of the others, especially Bartok, blinked at the sight of such a weird friendship.
"How are you feeling, Rosie?" the tanned Batrishan asked Rosetta after her little reunion with Fidget was over.
"Like Anaïs just sat on me." Rosetta rubbed her head until a realization hit her and she looked around. "Wait. Tristan, where are the others?"
"They stayed back in South Porthaven to live in Bartok's farm while we came back to Storybrooke with you. Your life was the priority," he said.
"But...but what about your home in Camberley?" Rosetta said. "What about your father and Dwight and all those dreams you and the other pilgrims had that I accidently ruined because it turned out that the Canterbury shrine wasn't a real thing?"
"They'll be living a new dream," Tristan shrugged. "Besides, thanks to you, there are now three pureblooded Batrishans and one halfblooded Batrishan from our civilization's past, present, and future generations who can work together to find what I've been searching for: the Evil One's child, so that we can finally avenge our people from that cursed god."
"Great. Have fun without me!" Fidget declared as he prepared to stomp away on his good peg leg.
"Why won't you help?" Bartok's daughter said. "It's your people were talking about!"
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" Fidget snapped. "If my people wanted me to help them, then why have none of them dared to step up and tell me they existed? How come none of them were there for me when my parents abandoned me and left me in front of a human church under the rain? How come I never heard of a single Batrishan survivor during my entire life? I don't care about the Batrishans because they never cared about me! I had a fine life until I had the bomb that turned me into this!" He waved at the rest of his body, specifically his handicapped parts. "And now I'm trying to readjust to a life where I have to live with the fact that I was told that everything I worked so hard for was useless, and now you dare to drop another bomb by asking me to help you avenge those who didn't give a shit about me right after I had to deal with three weeks of a friend missing and an obsessive alicorn! You can do your avenging on your own for all I care, because I won't take any part of it!" He then turned to Marion and Anubis. "And what kind of parents are you, leaving your child home alone without assuming that she could be dragged into another world where she had to learn to be independent without you nagging her?"
"Do you need a timeout?" Rosetta asked calmly.
"I need months of staying alone away from all of you. No visits, no calls, and no demands. All of you, leave me alone!" He changed tones to Rosetta and told her nicely. "I'm afraid we won't be having Tea Thursdays for a while, Rosie."
He then flew off, leaving everyone behind at the docks.