Ah yes, the final chapter of Round Three. Once this is over, it's time for my posting break and more work on Eagle's Cross.

nervously starts nomming away on sugar while watching Assassination Classroom, my new favourite anime

Ehehehe...

Anyway, I think I'm nearly complete with chapter 18 in round four. But there's a change of plans: I've got 18's epilogue to write up, and I don't mean the finale.

Song list for this chapter:

Fight Song - Rachel Platten (reprise)

They Don't Care About Us- 2Cellos Version (It sounds like a FOB I know but rest assured, it's MJ.)

Awake and Alive - Skillet

The Kids Aren't Alright - Fall Out Boy (reprise)

Explanations for the songs below will be at the end of the chapter to avoid early spoilers.

I only own Cora, Emily, Laurie, Lauren, Jaxx, Ed and Ell (the last five are only mentioned but hey why not) and the plotline. Everything else belongs to the respective creators.

Hoo boy. This will be fun.

The Next Day…

I check the time on my phone, arms crossed, sighing in annoyance. Typical British behaviour, of course they're 10 minutes late. It's in their nature.

Glancing to the right, I take in the little relief of my mum and siblings enjoying the distraction that Em and I agreed on: a tour of her home. If it were awaiting for what's about to come, it would be more than no distraction.

I know my crew are waiting for the signal in the attic, fiddling around with Matt's junk before they'll have to start running down to my call…if I need it for what's about to happen.

I've noticed that for the past 20 minutes, my chest has been aching, but I'm guessing that's just due to the fear that's pounding in my heart and not going to my head. Still, my nerves are on edge.

However, the warmth from my face hasn't drained and my slow, deep breaths are in an even pattern.

My expression is calm and straight.

It's something other than fear that's stirring inside.

Something very, very warm.

My attention from the heated feeling is diverted when I spot the police hovervan landing in the street, but the way it skids and slides down the landroad makes me grateful I parked the other cars in the abandoned garages earlier.

"Finally." I mutter.

Well, at least uncles Matthew and Thomas are still proven to be horrible drivers.

The false smile that I used to crack at my law-abiding, distant relatives isn't there when they fall facefirst out the doors and onto the tarmac, my position unwavering and face straight as they wave at me before opening the back doors of their vehicle.

Well, Thomas opens them. Matthew walks straight towards me and pulls me in an awkward hug as I give him a deadpan look.

"Been a while hasn't it? What's with that face though?"

"You know why, y'old geezer."

"Hey! You should be talking to Uncle Thomas about that!"

"Anyway," Thomas butts in, striding over to the both of us, hand on one hip, "Your instructions last night were to arrest your dad on charges of Assault and Battery that he did to you and your siblings, then bring him over to here. Thanks for providing the evidence, including the direct stuff from you. Man, he was a tough one to catch. One question though, why did you want him here of all places? Apart from this place being your home now?"

I suck in a deep breath for five seconds before answering.

"I'm done with living under his terror and the lies he fed to me, mum and my siblings. I need to see if I can snap him back to his senses before he receives his sentence. He's the reason why I had that streak for so long. Now that it's gone, it's my chance to really break free. Maybe the sight of the house may remind him what he forgot to put first: family."

Thomas and Matthew nod gravely before they lead me to the open back doors of the hovervan.

My eyes take in all the police equipment around the back; laser guns, tasers, flash grenades and boxes of bottles labelled 'truth serum,' to name a few.

There's also a sole prisoner on board.

I recognise that look he has all too well.

I've seen it on my own face one too many times.

I'm suddenly hit with a wave of déjà vu as I stare at the man with the tattered black coat, hands behind him in handcuffs and dishevelled chocolate brown hair. A striking difference however is the one-way mirror blindfold that's over his wild dark brown eyes, looking blindly to try and find out what's going on.

"Should we take him inside?"

I nod.

As my uncles drag dad out and into the house, I notice that the pounding in my chest is…different. It's mixing in with that strange feeling inside me too.

It's burning.

It's blazing through my entire body.

The flame on the fuse is bright and brilliant.

Then, it hits me.

Dad has my fear.

I have his anger.

Oh, how the tables have turned.

Dad's jaw drops when the blindfold is pulled off and his eyes hit mine. I cross my arms as casually as possible before keeping my unblinking gaze right into his pupils.

2% fear, 2% unbridled fury and 96% ready to kill a man with bare hands and not breaking into a sweat.

"Your…your streak," he finally manages out, "Th-this was on purpose, right?"

He's trying to take control, assert dominance. If we weren't in this situation, he would've been able take it, charges and all.

Not this time.

I force my slowly rising fear down and hold my stance.

"Yes. It was on purpose. And I'm not dying it back in."

"What?"

"I'm not redoing it. I'm not gonna have that streak in my hair."

"Coraline Gould, you better dye that streak back in right now or-"

"I'm sorry, are you deaf? I said I'm not doing it. No means no. I'm quitting. For good."

The shock on his face slowly turns to deadly seriousness.

"Cora," His voice is soft, eyes are dark, "Is this some sort of joke? Do you think this is a joke?"

"No to both. I quit."

4% Fear, 4% unbridled fury and 92% ready to kill a man with bare hands and not breaking into a sweat.

"Coraline, I'm giving you one last chance to take back what you said-"

"I. Said. No. No. Means. No." My words are firm, my temper rising. "I'm never going back into the business. I'm taking my own chances now and actually growing up into the adult world, not staying in this hellhole like some recluse hermit that I was forced to be!" My voice suddenly rises in tone and audacity at the end and all three men stare at me, gobsmacked.

"I know what you're going to say next: 'oh, but you've been such a huge help!' If you think sitting in your bedroom all day sorting code, staying up past 3 AM in the morning to finish school assignments and barely managing to escape with your life while actually delivering is a huge help to this business, you're wrong!"

"It was a-"

"It was no sacrifice whatsoever! It was emotional and mental abuse from the damn start! Not only to me, but this entire family!

"When was the last time you told your wife you loved her and held her close? Or told your eldest son that you were proud of what he's doing in school or uni?!"

He stands up and tries to lunge at me, but my uncles are faster and pull him back onto the couch and hold him there before I'm knocked down.

"That's enough, Coraline-"

"No! Do you even remember telling your eldest daughter on how she could make a great mum? Give any advice on guys and girls?!

"How about the son who has the grand namesake? The fifth generation of Edwards that was nearly forced into this hell if it hadn't been for that scholarship that he had to beg for to escape from you?!"

My eyesight grows blurry with tears as the ugly pain I've been trying to hide for so long is pouring out to everyone in the house, seen and unseen.

0% fear, 8% unbridled fury and 92% ready to kill a man with bare hands and not breaking into a sweat.

"What about your youngest daughter, huh?! The one who was so close to breaking free through her own will? She had all the right connections to get me and herself out, but you came in like a madman on wrecking ball and ruined her chance of flying out the cage!

"And what about me?! The one who had her wings clipped and forced to be socially and mentally starved in that cage for seven years?! Seven years I suffered under you and your threats, from the very second I was forced to join!

"Seven years of damaging the chance to have friends. Seven years of damaging the chance to have support. Seven years of damaging my mental health for your stupid business! You never were a father Edward, you are nothing but a monster of a man that only lives off the promise of money and soft drink with no care for the family that you worked so hard to make in the first place!"

The fire is ablaze with blue flames. The empty tears stream down my face before I wipe them off.

All three of the men in front of me have jaws dropped. Edward's head is down in shame, guilt, fear and many more emotions that he had made me feel. But I don't know what to feel though.

Proud that I've finally stood up to him?

Scared that I've shattered whatever relationship we had?

Shocked at what I've done to him?

I turn to anger once more when I see the faint relief in Thomas and Matthew's eyes.

"As for you two," My voice is low and cold, "Don't you dare start to think that I have nothing against you. Your looming presence over that business is a major reason why I've had panic and anxiety attacks for the past seven years, adding on to what Edward has done."

Their relief fades into jittering panic as I glare burning daggers of fury at them.

"Every time at family meetings, I thought that you'd arrest the lot of us on the spot," my voice is loud, clear and ice-bitingly cold, "Every time we'd have to hide on deliveries, I heard the insults about me being the slick sneaker from behind those fake walls. Every time, I saw you in my nightmares, shooting us all to dust. If you think you had no impact on my personal, anxiety-ridden, mentally-and-emotionally-abused life, I'm giving it to you loud and clear: you are wrong!

"I heard the stories on how the Ridgewells and Hargraves were great friends to the Goulds, but how are these stories true to this day if you two have been hunting us time after time?! The original Edward, Thomas, Matthew and Thorfrid went through hell and back, legitimately and figuratively, and yet they had the strongest bond there was through their friendship! WHEREAS YOU THREE HAVE NO BONDS WHATSOEVER EXCEPT THROUGH BLOOD!"

All three men in front of me are absolutely frozen in fear as they try to avoid eye contact with me, their minds probably rushing through a million things, maybe even putting themselves in my shoes.

I let the silence sit a little more, standing up straight and tall as I possibly can in front of them. My hoodie pocket suddenly feels heavier than it was earlier when I first hid my ultimate confession this morning.

"Do you wanna know," My voice turns as quiet and deadly as Edward's, "Why I know all those stories? All down to the most accurate detail?"

I pull out an old A5-sized diary from my pocket and raise it high for the three of them to see. The diary is older than it should be, the leather flaking off in some places, an entire section of torn-out pages that were hidden in photo frames, now freshly restored in the proper place just two hours ago. The title of the diary is embossed in a flaking faux-gold print:

EG IV

DIARY

20 OCTOBER 2088

—

Edward's pupils are pinpricks. An exclamation mark is in place of Thomas' eyes. Matthew drops his taser and his jaw.

"Isn't this what you were looking for?"

"Where did you get that?!"

"From someone you'd least expect, Edward."

My eyes catch onto the four figures standing far enough from the couch, armed and ready to strike.

Slowly repositioning my feet, I take aim.

"You really shouldn't have left this AND the folder back in 2030 so that Paul ter Voorde could take them!"

I lunge the diary through the air and see Edd catch it just before Edward leaps from the couch and knocks me to the ground, blocking my line of vision from anywhere else.

It hurts.

100% fear.

But I'm smiling defiantly.

Whack!

Whack!

"Coraline, you're a disgrace to the Goulds, you worthless little-"

"Nei she isn't! YOU ARE!"

Edward's weight is suddenly lifted off me as a blur of red knocks him down.

Whack!

Edward falls next to me, fresh black eye swelling fast, a look of defeat on his unconscious face.

"Cora, are you okay?"

I grab the green sleeve that's being held out to me before I'm pulled into a tight hug.

"I-It felt so good to let it out…" I puff, "But I…"

"What? What is it? Please don't tell me you believe him-"

"No, no, I don't. I just…feel kinda…out of place in some weird way…"

"Like?"

"I…I don't know yet…"

Rap-tap-tap.

"Can I come in?"

"Is there anyone else, Em?"

"No, nobody else."

She's puffing a little as she strides through, trying to look completely uninterested at the three unconscious bodies on the floor. "I saw everything through that hidden cam," she holds up her phone, open on the custom map Tom, the twins and I have managed to create, "I'll be honest with you. I feel kinda out of place too."

"We can talk about that later," Tom suggests, dusting himself off, "But what now?"

My mind flashes back to inside the hovervan and I smirk.

"There's a hovervan outside. Help yourself to looting everything inside it and disable any listening or recording devices in there. But what we're really gonna need from there is some rope and those boxes that hold bottles of liquid that's gonna be useful."

"Uh, is there a point to that?" Tom raises an eyebrow.

"There's some things that our research, the diary and the folder can't give us for Eagle's Cross."

I notice that I'm standing straight, giving orders and all eyes are on me.

Past Cora would've hated the role of the leader, taking the baton.

I'm loving it, no baton needed.

"If interrogation is our only alternative now, then let's get to it."

Why a reprise of 'Fight Song' of Rachel Platten?

Remember how I said it's a song of Cora's rising anger against her father, uncles and the cola-smuggling business and the effects it had on her family? Yeah, that again. But the booming and thundering drumbeats following the first notes of the final chorus are Cora finally exploding out to the world, it's her way of saying that she's had enough, and that it's time to take her life in her own hands and finally be free. There's still issues that need to be solved though, and next chapter will definitely deal with that.

Why 'TDCAU' by Michael Jackson, Covered by 2Cellos?

Apart from me being Michael Jackson trash, this also represents Cora's anger, but I just couldn't see fit to throw in the original into the playlist. But if you understand the lyrics of the original, it's about a discrimination on human rights being finally stood up to, a form of oppression being fought back. Cora's not taking the safety bait of staying in the shadows of emotional and mental abuse any longer. She's proven that her father and uncles really did not care about her or her family in the past, and she's making them regret that decision heavily.

Why 'Awake and Alive' by Skillet?

Need I even say why? Have a listen to it yourself and find Cora's words and voice in the lyrics. Also, THAT INSTRUMENTAL IS PERFECT FOR A FIGHT SONG. OH MY GOD.

Why a reprise of 'The Kids Aren't Alright' by Fall Out Boy?

Have you heard the final chorus in that song? It's like Cora's anger - soft at first, but when provoked, she'll blow and absolutely wreck everything in the way. Also, last chapter she was finally accepting who her uncles and father really were in the true light, now she's finally letting them know how they're really like in her eyes - nothing but fakers who were in for business and only a ploy to win money. 'And with the black banners raised/and the crooked smiles fade/former heroes who quit too late/who just want to fill up the trophy case again.'