Bet y'all didn't expect to see my crusty ass again, ayyyy lmao.

Anyway, ya girl is all grown up now, and admittedly hasn't written in quite a few years. But for some reason, last night I was feeling nostalgic. I went back through my old fanfic and while there was a lot of cringe, there was also a lot of wasted potential. I've been writing poems again slowly the last few days, but eventually I want to write a big fuck off heavily world built...something. Not sure yet, but if it ever gets done I'm gonna try to sell it to HBO or something.

But enough about me, that's not what you're here for.

What you're here for is the ending to this story. I know it's been 15 long years, but when I read through this one and got to the end I was genuinely mad at myself for not ending it. I wanted to know how the story ended and I feel like I was robbed.

Then I realized.

o shit das me i robbed myself AYYYY LMAO.

So I'm going to finish it. I know most of you have probably moved on, and I know it seems strange to finish something I started so long ago.

In the words of Genkai: "I'm old, Yusuke."

I know the tone is going to be different from something I wrote when I was 16. It might be jarring and out of place in places. But I still hope that when some of you might still get that email that you'll click on it and give it a read. Maybe even a review.

I know this is also a dead fandom but hey at least Jenny Nimmo isn't a transphobe being driven mad by the mold in her walls! Or if she is she's keeping it to herself at least. (Still mad about Manfred though.)

Oh, speaking of A Skeleton, a Ghost, and a Wanderer and how it relates to this. Obviously this is going to have a happier ending than that and the actual books for Manfred AYYY LMAO so it's firmly an AU ending to Charlie Bone at this point. I choose to believe this is the real ending now, dont me lol.

Anyway, here's a playlist of songs I listened to while writing this. They might alter the tone depending on what I'm listening to at the time, but it's my fanfic. No spoilers lol, you'll have to try and parse out which song I listened to when (I'd love to hear some theories) I'll try to keep the tone as consistent as I can, but I also admit I'm a bit rusty:

the swell season - fitzcarraldo (while writing the intro)

merrie amsterburg - lay of the land (also while writing the intro)

king gizzard and the lizard wizard - automation

deerhoof, xiu xiu - the greg saunier retaliation

tropical fuck storm - braindrops

neon indian - change of coast

glass animals - heat waves

red hot chili peppers - dani california

tash saltana - murder to the mind (album mix)

cocorosie - terrible angels

cocteau twins - persephone

elvis presley - rubberneckin' (paul oakenfold mix)

missing heart - midnight shadow

tegan and sara - closer

sia ft the weeknd - elastic heart

twenty one pilots - the hype

kitten - g#

sabrina carpenter - please please please

sharon von etten - serpents

100 gecs - stupid horse (remix) (ft. GFOTY and count baldor)

cocorosie - gravediggress

king gizzard and the lizard wizard - fishing for fishies

100 gecs - runaway

taylor swift - cruel summer

tropical fuck storm - the future of history

king gizzard and the lizard wizard - trapdoor

tropical fuck storm and king gizzard and the lizard wizard - satanic slumber party part 2 (midnight in sodom)

Now without further ado, after 15 years, here is the finale of Keeper.

Chapter 7

Night Keeper (part 1: an interesting bargain)

Zelda Dobinski had been hypnotized for six months, two weeks, three days, five hours and fifty two minutes. She was nineteen now but wouldn't know it if you asked her, her long, dark hair as taken care of as it could be under the circumstances. Her eyes sunk into her already thin face, her clothes hanging off her languidly. She wasn't improving, just slowly getting worse. No one knew what to do for her; Cook had tried everything. Julia Ingledew had read book after book, snatching anything she could get her hands on that had to do with hypnotism. Katya Kettle even had some input, trying to us an ancient mirror to bring Zelda back, and still none of it was effective.

The decision to move her somewhere safer, where whatever had gotten Fairy Tilpin surely couldn't get her, had to be made approximately 3 weeks after Zelda had been hypnotized. They still didn't know who hypnotized her, and they weren't going to have her stick around in case that person came back to finish the job. At first they didn't know where they were going to place her. Everyone was planning their own safe houses at this point, and any extra person was just a headache, an extra potential liability; this was especially true for Zelda, who was basically an invalid at this point, and needed even more hands to take care of her. At least at this point she was still bathing and going to the bathroom on her own, but needed constant reminding to eat, or even move some days. Most days, she stared blankly at the TV on Maisie's couch. She certaintly couldn't use her telekinesis even if she wanted to, but most days she was perfectly content with the void of her mind, or so it would seem.

Paton Yewbeam especially felt for her, but he had tried everything himself. This was much worse than anything he'd seen with Lyell, anything he had seen period. Bonafide: the worst case of hypnotism any of them, even the older adults in the crew, had ever seen. No one knew why, and it scared them. But Paton Yewbeam at least knew where to place her. If no one would take her on this side of the pond, he'd beter call in a favor to his American friends.

Thus, the decision to contact Aurora Ashcroft was made.

The problem was, no one had seen the elusive witch in about fifteen years. After the death of one Matthew James Meridian, and especially after a nasty fire had burned away most of her once famed beauty, she went into an elaborate game of hide and seek with not just her adoptive daughter Alice Meridian, and adoptive son Leon McAllistair, but her own daughter, Rachel Bailey, didn't even know Aurora was her mother until the early parts of the previous year. There were a lot of intense, emotional feelings and extreme amounts of baggage that came along with all this, but Paton wouldn't have known any of that, having not seen Aurora since the early nineties himself. But now it was 2010, and even if he had known any of this, he wouldn't care. Zelda needed him. The rest of them needed him, too, but he had to admit that looking in her lost, sad eyes broke his heart every single time.

He knew he didn't have much time, so he phoned the headquarters of one MCBHU: the Magical Creature Bounty Hunting Unit. Honestly, he half heartedly wished that he could call on them fot backup in all of this, but he knew they were merely a fractured unit now, a shell of what they were in the late nineties and early aughts. He didn't know that was because Aurora up and left Alice and her teenaged cohorts holding the bag, but he was certainly about to find out when a harsh cigarette voice with slurred speech answered the phone.

"Dyou have any idea wha' time it is?" Alice Meridian answered the phone groggily. She was awake, much too early now, pissed off, and hungover. Alice, at aged 17, was given the Sorcerer's Medal of Accomplishment after she not only solved the string of attacks going on in and around her hometown by a series of werewolves, vampires, and even another evil Count that surely none of the children fighting Harken now had heard of, but took them all down in one fell swoop, aided of course by Leon McAllistair and Grant McClellan, as she always was. Now twenty-six, she was fatter, more tired, and less inclined to help those in need than she was. Her messy, curly red hair fell greasily around her face as she looked at the caller ID and reached for a bottle of some nasty IPA. When she saw there were only empty bottles surrounding her she groaned loudly, startling Paton slightly.

"Um, I'm sorry, but with whom would I have the pleasure of speaking today?"

"I don't know, dipshit, you called me. The fuck are you?"

Paton was taken aback by the rather abusive language, but knew he had to stay the course. Of course, this could have just been a wrong number, and then he would really be screwed, barring getting on a plane to go to America and walk right up to MCBHU's headquarters. A dangerous proposition indeed, given that those who remained on base were quite trigger happy from what he had heard. All of them were quite powerful sorcerers in their own right, too, so he wasn't too keen on trying to go this alone if he had to.

"My name is Paton Yewbeam and I'm afraid we don't have much time for pleasanries right now. To answer your question however, it must be...blimey...4:20 in the morning where you're at..."

He heard bubbling over the phone. He pressed his ear closer, wondering if something was wrong with the connection or if was his phone or on her end, possibly. Whatever the case, even if the situation wasn't so pertinent, he wasn't exactly trying to spend an exorbitant amount of money on a phone call to a Pennsylvania number. He then grimaced when he heard loud coughing on the other end and then a choked out "sorry" before the woman on the other end calmed down.

"Oh, and my name is Paton Yewbeam, and I'm looking for Aurora Ashcroft."

There was silence over the line, then. Paton's heart sank. Of course this had to be a wrong number, there was no way to contact MCBHU properly now, and thus no way to ask for the help that he so desperately needed.

"Paton Yewbeam?" Paton's ears perked up.

"Yes?"

"You mean the Paton Yewbeam? The one that does the explodey thing with the lights?" This piqued Paton's curiousity even further, but at this point he was done playing games.

"Yes, very good, you know who I am. Didn't know I was so American famous, but I really just need to speak with Aurora Ashcroft on very urgent business."

Alice was suspicious as all hell at this point, but she had heard all about Paton Yewbeam from Aurora herself, so she knew she had to fish for more informaton despite having a screaming headache and feeling like she was about to throw up all the liquid she had consumed the previous night.

"So. You knew Auntie. Well..." Her voice trailed off. "But if you knew Auntie, you knew she's not acutally my Aunt. Just a really good friend of my dad's is all." Alice no longer cried over her father. It was twenty years ago almost now, and she had long since moved on and done her work with MCBHU, developed a drinking problem, and now worked freelance as a private investigator of enchanted doings around the Eastern coast of the United States.

"I do know that." Paton said lowly, now realizing who he must be talking to. Another poor child driven mad by the machinations of the adults around them. Hearing her was like hearing Zelda's future, or even poor Emma and Olivia. Their optimism kept them afloat now, but what would happen when they aged like Alice, thrown into adults with temptations like alcohol and drugs, which Endowed folk were, naturally, more susceptive to and sensitive to.

He knew Alice wasn't desdended from the Red King. He knew they all came from the Ashcroft, Meridian, McAllistair, and other magical families in the States. He also knew they had the same generational trauma that the endowed had. It didn't matter. Magic brought all sorts of mischief in their lives, didn't matter where it came from.

"What else do you claim to know?" Alice was sat up in bed and speaking sharply now. She knew if Paton was coming to her of all people, all across the fucking ocean and in her little MCBHU hidey hole she grew up in, gunners surrounding the place, that he might actually need her help with something. She was grinning from ear to ear now. This was perfect. This fit Rachel's premonition exactly. Gotta love secondary abilities. She knew Paton was about to hand her something very valuable. But she had to make sure it was the real deal, first. Too many bad actors out there for her to risk what was left of her little operation.

Paton sat there for a moment. There was a pregnant pause, and then he spoke.

"I don't know, you ask me. I told you I didn't have time for pleasantries, dear girl. I'm in a bit of a rough spot, you see." Alice thought this over for a moment, lighting a cigarette with her bare hands (gotta love Primary Abilities) and sucking on it quizically. What would she even ask Paton? What did she even know about him, besides the fact that he and Aurora were friends back in the day?

Then it clicked.

"Mr. Yewbeam, what did Auntie ever tell you about my dad?" Paton almost clicked off the phone right then and there. He remembered when MCBHU was basically Aurora's operation, but he also remembered Matt Meridian, second in command. He'd never met him, but...well, Paton knew that it wasn't just Matt's myriad of qualifications and accolades that got him his position. Poor Aurora was stuck in a one sided affair with someone whose heart clearly belonged to someone else, or else the woman on the other side of the phone with him wouldn't even exist. He'd caught glimpses of it when he was around her, such as when there was a rogue werewolf who may or may not have had information about a hypnotism that had happened to one of his dear friends. They were hot on the werewolf's trail, but something or someone had gotten to him before Paton had asked about Jeanine, the one hypnotized before Zelda. Even before Lyell.

A tear ran down his cheek and for a brief moment he felt like breaking. Running. Never seeing any of this blasted city again and moving Julia and Emma into some nice bungalow in Majorca. But he knew they wouldn't be safe there, and that wasn't the matter at hand here.

"Hello?" Alice had almost snapped at him, getting his attention back.

"Ah, love, you know she loved him very much." He said sadly. "Some things are just not meant to be." He could almost hear Alice rolling her eyes over the phone.

"Right. Everyone knows that, Mr. Yewbeam. It was all over our papers when she tried to burn down my mother's barn and...you know the saying fuck around and find out, Mr. Yewbeam?" Paton grimaced once again at Alice's language. She was certainly foul mouthed, but she was all he had right this second.

"I do. Paton, by the way." Alice grinned.

"Well, that's what happened to Auntie Rory, okay? No one's seen her since." Paton's heart dropped. He hadn't know she was so reclusive that even Alice and Leon wouldn't know where she was. It felt like his hope was sliding through his hands like sand. He immediately panicked, not knowing what to do or say next.

"Listen, Alice, you know damn well why I called looking for her. I need to call in a favor."

"Yeah, because the last favor you did for Auntie went so well." Alice said bitterly. "That werewolf was found beaten to a bloody pulp next to the Susquehanna River. Daddy found him." There was another pause. "But Mr. Paton, you haven't really done much to convince me that you are who you say you are." It was Paton's turn to roll his eyes. He frankly did not have time for Alice's rampant alcohol fueled paranoia, he just needed somewhere for Zelda to go, and he was getting impatient. Then, to his great surprise, the redhead spoke again.

"Luckily for you I don't fucking care about that right now."

"Beg pardon?" Paton asked, tilting his head to the side in confusion.

"Listen, I know I have something you want. And you have something we want, and it just so happens that those two things intersect perfectly." Another silence.

"Is there something wrong with your phone?" Alice asked impatiently. Paton was just utterly confused at this point. What did Alice mean when she said she knew she had something he wanted, and vice versa? How would she have known why Paton was coming to find her unless...ah.

"A clairvoyant." He said blankly. Alice laughed, almost maniacally in a way.

"Bingo, my guy. I've known you were gonna call me for a while, but I don't know if there are other bad actors around me who also know that and are trying to impersonate you. Luckily for me, and unluckily for whoever you are if that happens to be the case, I'm armed to the teeth at all times." Paton bristled at this. Alice really was paranoid, a side affect of her traumatic past. He would have clicked his tongue if he didn't know it would lead to a vicious chewing out by the fiery vixen.

"I'm well aware of that, Ms. Meridian. I mean you and your friends no harm. What do you want from me exactly, though?" Alice was examining her nails on the other side of the phone, lighting another cigarette and smoking it pensively for a minute before responding.

"I know the Dobinski girl isn't well. She hasn't been for a long time. I'm surprised you haven't come to us sooner, to be honest. I know you all must have tried everything, but there are some things best left to the professionals." She said with a chuckle. "But we simply can't afford to help pro bono. Those days are over, understand?"

Paton nodded, although he knew she couldn't see him. He thought her ominous statement would fill him with a sense of foreboding, but he felt strangely...at ease. In the space of the next silence, he parsed out a few reasons why this was. Firstly, he trusted Aurora implicitly; it was the only reason he was on this strange phone call in the first place. Aurora had raised Alice, and despite her foul language, continuous smoking, and perceived contempt toward him, he knew Aurora had to have raised her with some sort of moral compass. Secondly, he couldn't think of a reason that Alice would hurt Zelda or put her in harm's way. Thirdly, and most importantly, he saw a lot of his young self in the fiery young woman. She needed his help as much as he needed hers.

Simply put, Paton knew Alice wasn't going to fuck him over.

"What do you want, Alice?" He said with slight trepedition, but not enough to be a concern.

"Zelda. After we give her her voice back, after her powers come back to her. We need her. I don't think you knew this, but..." Her voice trailed off. She binked back tears. No time for that now.

"We recently lost our telekinetic. His name was Alex Carrow. He...he meant as much to me as my dad meant to Auntie. I wouldn't ask this of you if it wasn't important. I would be happy to never be reminded of him again, which...would have been easy." She laughed mirthlessly.

"You see, around here...in the Circle, in the Council, pyromaniacs like me are a dime a dozen. I know, like, three other people in my own social circle that can pyro as a Secondary or Tertiary Ability. That's why I'm special, because I'm really fucking good at it, Mr. Paton. But telekinetics..." Alice shook her head and smiled a hollow smile.

"They're a rare beauty, a real sight to see. And they're valuable as hell. Yeah, fire is great. But fire, nine times of ten, is too destructive. It's either control it with every fibre of your being, or decimate everytrhing around you. But telekinesis can be used for so much good. It can be used for so many different things. Just..." Alice could have cried right then and there and gotten her way, but she was too proud. Leo and pyro energy, everyone supposed.

"Listen, I don't know why you're breaking my balls over this, Mr. Paton. Either bring her here or don't." Paton would have been shocked if the rest of the conversation hadn't been utterly insane in the first place.

"Ah, Ms. Meridian, but you forget. You started with the, ah, ball busting."

Paton knew he didn't have time to properly weigh out the pros and cons of Alice's bargain. On one hand, he knew this was possibly the only way Zelda would be not only safe, but now there was a probability she woukl get proper treatment for the hypnotism, if Alice was to believed. Based on what she had said, she would be able to cure Zelda. That's all anyone wanted, and if the price was Zelda helping Alice with whatever she needed, it was a fair price. As long as she got back in time to help her old guard, at least.

On the other hand, Alice really was potentially putting Zelda in a dangerous situaion. Paton had no idea what Alice even needed Zelda for, just that it was something that had possibly gotten their previous telekinetic killed. Paton would never forgive himself if anything happened to her because he let her go stay with Alice. Manfred Bloor wouldn't forgive him either, nor would the twins, nor would the boys.

He looked over to the girl sitting on the couch, distressedly pulling at her hair, her eyes wide and fearful, her fingernails chewed up from constant anxiety, and the thought occured to him for a split second that if this was the life Zelda was leading right now, would death really be worse?

At least with Alice, she had a chance to live. And he trusted that if Zelda could get back to one hundred percent with the proper treatment, she would be the most powerful ally Alice would ever meet.

"So what's it gonna be, Mt. Paton? Are you gonna bring her over or am I gonna kill this bong and go to bed?" Paton sighed.

"What time do you want to meet?"

A strong bewitching tea from Cook and some movies with Maisie and a begrudging Olivia were all it took to put Zelda out long enough to be piled into a car and taken to the airport by Amy Bone. Paton had inisisted on going alone, but no one in the group thought it would be a good idea or look for him to be carrying a passed out teenager through the airport and getting on a plane with her alone. The last thing they needed was police presence alerting the Count, Ezekiel Bloor, the eviler Yewbeam sisters, and whoever was responsible for Fairy Tilpin's murder (a still unsolved crime that left everyone, especially poor Joshua, with a sense of unease they thougtht they'd never be able to shake). They rented a nondescript car, drove to a large airport where they would blend in a little better, and the three of them boarded.

Upon arrival at Philadelphia International Airport, Paton received a text message.

"Oh this blasted thing!" He said frustratedly, handing it to Amy, who laughed slightly and read it, tilting her head slightly.

"Hmm." She said. "Well there goes my American vacation." Paton crossed his arms, in no mood for jokes after such a long flight and with such an important purpose in mind.

"What do you mean?" But by that time, Amy was peering around corners. Zelda hadn't really stirred, and Paton had the thin girl on his back as they traipsed through the airport. They had been instructed to travel light, anyway, so this was no real skin off his nose, but Zelda was starting to get heavy the more they walked around wondering for their next move. He didn't have the patience for hide-and-seek until he heard a soft "oh!" from Amy, who had cornered a small girl between the Chik Fil A and Pizza Hut Express inside the airport. She turned to Paton with a grin.

"I believe we've been tailed." The girl, who was blond and looked a few years younger than Zelda (maybe Beth and Angelina's age), crossed her arms with what looked like frustration. She was quite petite, so Paton hadn't noticed her shuffling around in the crowds, but definitely would have taken notice if he had seen her. Given it was quite brisk outside, being mid fall, she was dressed in a purple sweater dress and black tights. That wasn't unusual, but what was was her perfectly coiffed hair, piled on top of her head by someone who clearly knew what they were doing. The other thing was the giant gold necklace adorning the girl's chest. He was surprised no one had stolen it from her, honestly, but he also knew there was probably more to the girl that met the eye, especially if she had been tailing them.

When she spoke, she had a light Russian accent and sounded bored and tired.

"Listen, lady, I don't know what you're talking about. It's not like you're endowed or any-" She grimaced.

"Damn, that was the one thing Alice told me not to say. She's going to be angry if I miss the payload." Paton bristled slightly at such language coming from someone so young looking, but he smiled nonetheless. So this was someone that, as far as he knew, he could trust. At least at the moment, anyway. He immediately regretted this when he blinked and suddenly the girl and Zelda were gone.

Paton almost never swore, and especially not at children, but he cussed something fierce as Amy spotted them and the two of them broke into a run after them.

They hadn't noticed, but time stopped around them. The airport was more still than it had ever been, baggage claim was unmoving, people were frozen. They were so concerned with getting the girl and Zelda back, they didn't have time to ask why no one was giving them chase. The girl was practically dragging Zelda behind her at this point, and still Zelda didn't stir. Thank the Red King for Treasure's Famous Sleepy Time Tea, because the last thing he needed was Zelda awake and frightened.

"GET BACK HERE, YOU!" Amy shrieked. "WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING WITH HER?" But the girl ran and ran and ran until.

Zelda's eyes snapped open. For a moment Amy and Paton really felt the stopped time around them as Zelda realized she was being dragged on the ground by her left arm and immediately ripped it away, rolling on the ground into the feet of people who were stuck in time, knocking them down and nearly being crushed before rolling away herself. The girl quickly whipped her head around and grabbed at Zelda, but Zelda kicked her away and began running herself.

"Not optimal." Paton said under his breath, unsure of what direction to run in now. Suddenly, the girl lunged at Zelda, but Zelda dodged with surrpising accuracy, given she was still hypnotized as far as Paton knew.

"Oh, so we're doing this the hard way?" The girl said exasperatedly. "I'm already sooooo tired. Just be a good girl and come with me!" A fist flew out and hit Zelda in the face, and the surrpising power of the punch sent her flying across the room. Anger flashed in the older girl's eyes, something Paton hadn't seen in a long time. Did this mean Zelda was back with them and that this whoooooooole stuuuuuuuuupid trip was a waste of time? Well, that was enough for him. All he had to do was break up the fight and...

"BLIMEY!" He shouted as three large pieces of luggage flew past him and almost sent the blond girl flying into a wall, but she dodged effortlessly and kicked the luggage back in Zelda's general direction. This girl wasn't messing around, but at least for now the young women were evenly matched. She had said she was tired, and Paton truly feared this girl's strength if she was at a full one hundred percent. Zelda, however, was now throwing everything short of acutal people at this girl, and it was here, in awe of Zelda's strength in her powers after having not used them in so long, that he snapped back to reality and realized that time had stopped around them.

So there really was more to this girl than met the eye. The fight continued with feet, fists, and objects for a few more minutes until a shot rang out. Well, at least it was good that the TSA agents happened to be frozen, anyway, but where did it come from?

"That's quite enough, Katerina." A familiar voice rang out across the quiet airport. A raspy cigarette voice, and then he saw the smoke, and then he saw her.

Alice Meridian was standing before them. She wasn't heavy, but she wasn't rail thin like Zelda and Katerina, whom he assumed was the blond girl. Her long, wiry red hair framed her heart shaped face, adorned with freckles. She was slightly tan, freckles up and down her bare arms. She had alluring dark brown eyes that seemed to have a wicked grin behind them. She was quite sardonic looking, almost exactly how Paton had pictured her on the phone. She wasn't the bright young thing from the papers that she used to be, but she was quite handsome in her own right even now.

"You know if you drop your Secondary and someone sees this gun in my hand it's gonna be a problem." Katerina scoffed and looked at Zelda, who had gone back to being completely still and frightened once she heard the gunshot. Alice chuckled slightly.

"Or this cigarette. Let's go outside, as far as we can, and then drop your Secondary." She then turned to Paton and pointed the gun directly at him.

"Did you not get my text?" Paton tried not to show his fear, but it wasn't every day that an actual weapon was pointed at him. "Leon waited forever to grab you and the girl, and when you didn't show I got a little suspicious. Especially when people stopped going in and out of the airport." She glared at Katerina, who was still giving Zelda a fierce glare even though the other girl looked like she was on rhe verge of tears.

"What'd you fuck up and then try to cover it up again? Rachel won't be pleased with this." Katerina rolled her eyes, crossing her arms petulantly again.

"Good thing she's just the Oracle of MCBHU and you're, you know, the Commissioner."

"Was. Was the commissioner, you little shit. And that doesn't matter. Obviously, this isn't an official MCBHU mission, no matter how much you hyped it up in your own head to be. Furthermore, you are Rachel's ward, under her care and tutelage. Man, she's gonna be more mad at you than she is at Coop when he ghosts her to do his weird experiments." Katerina looked fearful then, groaning loudly and covering her eyes as the five of them walked out of the airport. Alice turned to Amy Bone, but didn't point her gun at the other woman.

"You. You can't come. Special magical people only. If I let every Tom, Dick, and Jane come to MCBHU we'd all be dead by now. Sorry about that." She said dismissively. "I wouldn't go back to the airport right now, but there's cool stuff to do in Philly, I guess. You can see Ben Franklin's house and the Liberty Bell, I suppose. I'll send you a plane ticket out of JFK and send someone to bring you there tonight." Amy merely smiled weakly, exhausted from the long drive and the events rhat occured when they had landed.

"Of course, love." She said quietly. "Just..." Her eyes glazed over to Zelda, back to being docile and scared, biting her cuticles under they nearly bled.

"Just bring her back, okay? I...I honestly could tell you I didn't have any hope for her until I saw her fight back just now. That's...that's proof she's still in there, right?" Alice smiled widely and took Amy's hands, looking her directly in the eye.

"Honey, that's definitely proof she's in there somewhere, and it honestly makes it easier than I thought it was going to be." She glanced over at Zelda. Not in crazy good condition, but she had witnessed a bit of the fight and not only was she hopeful that both her and Zelda's situations were about to improve, but she was also intrigued at the level of power Zelda showed even in her current condition.

If that was her hypnotized, uncontrolled and motivated by merely survival, Alice could only imagine how powerful Zelda would be at full strength. This was definitely going to be a good thing for both MCBHU and Alice herself.

Amy smiled back. "All right, then. Ta, Paton. Please call me when you're coming home." Paton nodded.

"Roger that, sister." He saluted her and then turned to Alice with a grimace, as she had pointed her gun at him again. Thankfully they seemed to have walked somewhere relatively abandoned, or else he was sure she would be receiving some questions from onlookers.

"Where do we go now?" He asked. "What are you going to do with Zelda?" Alice laughed.

"I ain't doin' jack and shit until she's enough back to normal to do me a favor. No, we're taking her to Rachel Bailey."

OKAY SO.

I realized after 3000 words of this that this is gonna be way bigger and longer than I thought it was going to be, so uh here's part 1 of the finale I guess lmao.

Three important things before I continue:

1) I wrote the beginning of this fic (the first six chapters, rather) before Charlie Bone and the Red King came out. Consequently, this is gonna be a big AU fuckoff where Manfred and Zelda might get a much happier ending than they got in the books. I forgot if I said that before, but I'm saying it now. If you want the true ending, A Skeleton, a Ghost, and a Wanderer is unfortunately the canon compliant ending no matter how mad that makes me. I also haven't read the two spinoff books. I honestly didn't know there were even spinoffs until I looked up the series on Wikipedia, which is filling the gaps in my memory about a series I haven't read in fifteen years.

2) I'm going to be posting this here, Wattpad, and AO3. I want it to get maximum exposure and is the old guard. I want the new guard ro read this too.

3) If you're bothered by the use of OCs in this all of a sudden, these are legit OCs from a universe that I've been planning for 20+ years, and this fandom has a long proud tradition of adding random endowed kids to the story, oftentimes making them Mary Sue as fuck. My OCs are complicated, complex, and not always sympathetic lol (see above where Kata tried to beat the shit out of Zelda for her fuckup lol) and also far removed from the Red King. If you guys do wanna see more of these OCs, stay tuned lol. This story is going to remain Red King kids centric, though, don't worry. We'll be seeing Manfred, Asa, Emma, Dagbert, Tanc, and the twins starting in part 3 of this. I didn't forget them.

Stay tuned for part 2, which god willing will be out in the next few days. I'm starting two jobs this week so I don't know when, but I promise I am going to finish this.

So without futher comment, peace out yall, love yall, and I'm going to take a shower because I have a date tonight.

Love,

belf