Emma's Six- New Adventures

It's A New Day

I get back home just before lunch, and I think seeing the sisters has done me a lot of good. I talk with my friends quite happily. When I finish, I go back to the attic to see what else Mr Smith can do. 'Do you know why Laura's doing this?'
'She tried to kill you when you're older.' Mr Smith already knows what I'm talking about. 
'What? How many times?'
'As far as I can tell, just the once. You were in the Tower.'
'But why would she kill me? What has she got against me?'

I look over to the other end of the attic to see Laura standing there. 'Get away from me,' I growl.
'Emma, please, listen to me. I need you to listen now in case I can't tell you later.'
'Mr Smith, containment vortex!' I call. A containment vortex falls over Laura, trapping her. 'Now we can talk.' Laura wipes tears away from her eyes.
'I don't want to kill you; I never wanted that.'
'And you're telling me this why?'
'Henry, your future ex-husband Henry, he put me up to this. He kept threatening me, threatening Ruby. I never wanted to hurt my family, and—I'm so sorry, Emma. It was meant to be for your older self, not for you.'
'Then why did you give in to him?'
'You'll know what Henry is like. He threatens, manipulates, leaves you doubting yourself. I kept trying to defy him, but—'
'If you never wanted to kill me, then why would you listen to Henry? Why?'

Mum runs into the room and stares in horror at the scene before her. 'Give Emma her soul back,' she growls.
'Vortex compromised,' Mr Smith warns. 'Vortex compromised.'
'I would if I knew how.' Laura is smirking. She must know how to reverse it. The containment vortex fails, and a red blob appears in the attic—her stomach.

Mum pulls out a white oval object from her coat pocket and pushes me away from Laura. The object has a blue oval screen and two blue buttons on either side.
'Mr White, meteorite hologram, now!'

Laura starts crying out in pain and clutches her head. 'What happened?' I ask Mum. 'What did you do?'
'You wanted thrills, Qetesh? Well, Mr White's sending out my meteor hologram to everyone on Earth. He's giving it everything he's got!'
'But you're giving her what she wants!'
'Too much of it. A surge of six billion people in one go. It would be overwhelming for anyone. No Qetesh has ever reached the point where they could kill everyone on a planet in one go.' Blue lights start shooting at Laura's head, and she collapses to the floor. I bury my head in Mum's body, and she hugs me tightly. 'I'll never let anyone hurt you, Emma,' she promises.

The screaming stops when I dare to look at Laura. Laura is lying on the floor, and her stomach bloated so much that it almost touches the ceiling. 'It's going to be okay,' Mum assures me, and the stomach shrinks with a raspberry-sounding noise and sends my life essence back to me. I gasp in shock as white light ripples around my body. 'You'll be fine now,' Mum assures me before turning back to Laura. 'As for you, how could you do this to your niece?'
'I never wanted to hurt her—'
'So it was just an accident?' Mum growls.
'Henry said I was meant to kill her older self, not— Ruby, I didn't want to hurt her.'
'But you set out to do it anyway.' Mum glances down at Laura's bracelet. It looks a lot like mine, but instead of a blue button, it's red. 'That teleportation bracelet, it's a link up to your prison, isn't it?' Laura nods. 'Where are people judged you should be? After today, who am I to question their judgement? Mr Smith. Teleport her back to her prison and disable the gravity lock.' Mr Smith teleports Laura out.

'That better be the last time we hear from her,' Mum says.
'Something tells me it won't be,' I sigh. 'I've still got some work to do, so I'll want to finish that off before I do anything else.'
'You sure you're up for it?'
'I might need a little help. It's my history homework, and we all agreed to give ourselves a happy ending. I talked to my older self, and she said she doesn't want to be alone. I thought part of her happy ending could be her gathering the queens together to form the girl band Six, but then I can't include all the other stuff she's done since her marriage.'
'How much do you have to do?'
'Only one verse. Maybe I should hear what the others came up with before I decide on anything. Anna's is about moving back to Germany and going on tour. I don't know what anyone else is doing yet.'
'Then it could be worthwhile asking them,' Mum says.

Catalina, Anne, Jane, Anna and Kitty walk into the attic. Mum leaves so we can get on with our work. 'I'm struggling on what to put for my verse,' I admit. 'My older version's happy ending is being with her friends and family, but she also likes being at sea. I don't know what to do.'
'What we write now doesn't have to be the final version,' Anne assures me. 'I already screwed up my verse several times as I don't want to include Henry, but I want to include Elizabeth.'
'And I want to include Mary but not Henry,' Catalina says. 'Trust me; it's difficult trying to write a happy ending without him. Especially as he never goes away. We had a couple of hundred years without him, but then he started making a lot of trouble.'
'I don't know what to put for my happy ending either,' Jane says. 'Maybe we shouldn't do what our happy ending was years later, but what our happy ending was when Henry died. That would make things a little easier.' We agree, and I find that now I know what I'm doing, it feels a little easier to come up with ideas.