Once Upon A Nightmare

- THIRTY EIGHT -

- Hadies -

Where was that girl? What was taking her so long? She went into the damn store thirty minutes ago. How long did it take to steal a stupid computer pen? Did they not have it? Was she stealing everything in the store? Was she taking a big dump? Like, come on! I swear, it was like she was trying to buy the whole company.

After getting a little worried that this kid got lost or something, I went inside to look for her. How hard could it be to find her? She wasn't short. There weren't many places for her to hide, she wasn't small in size. Asking around didn't even ease my nerves; something told me this wasn't right. Something felt wrong, off. Everyone stood around, still shopping as if nothing was really going on. Didn't she just steal from them? Did she get caught by security? As I kept asking around, someone finally noticed something. Another girl was with her. Some blonde with blue eyes, wearing a pink...

I bolted out the store; running around the parking lot in search of her. Nothing. She could have been gone for who knows how long! We just sat in the truck thinking it was okay for her to go on her own. One of us should have gone with her, why didn't we go? Damn a soul to the underworld! We lost our only weapon while she was on our watch! I slammed the door of the truck shut.

"They have her," I mumbled at first. "They freaking have her. That stupid rat of a Tremaine must have snitched. We lost our only weapon to get out of this stupid world and we just let them take her. Someone should have gone in there with her, no matter what. How could we be so stupid?" I turned to everyone. "This is why we don't win. We never think ahead; never think of all the possible outcomes. What are we going to do?"

Something clapped against my cheek. "Women up. I know you liked the girl but don't you think you can go all sappy on me. We're going to get her back, just like we did with Maleficent. They don't have what we do."

I bore my eyes into her. "What's that?"

"Emmet." Looking to the Fates, they smiled. "Emmet is her laptop. They couldn't destroy him because he is somehow connected to her through her laptop."

"And you decided to not tell us?" They shrugged innocently. Well that was great. So we have half of our weapon. What were we going to do with this? "So, what the plan, if we have any?"

"We are going to find her. Fates, where is she?" She listened to what they said and started the engine.

"Do we have an actual plan?" No answer. "Great, I'm back to the silent treatment. Wait, when did you three get in here? You're on team one."

"We lost Amoura. Then Ana went missing. Knew it would happen, saw it all coming."

"And you couldn't see that they were going to kidnap her?"

"We saw it, but we can―"

Turning around I finished their sentence. "―Can't change the future or else there will be dire consequences. Yeah, yeah, I heard all of this before."

I watched as the road passed under the truck. I didn't care where we were going, I just wanted to go home. I wanted my dead gardens back, I wanted my hounds back, I wanted my bed and toga back. But what I really wanted was my happily ever after. It could have been written in for a little longer, just one day where Gothel and I are doing some stupid couple stuff like feed each other chocolate covered strawberries, take long romantic walks, and go to movies. I just wanted a day like that. But I don't think we'll ever have that now. We're going to have short romantic runs and just hope the other doesn't die, we don't get to watch movies because that means staying in one place, and not being able to feed each other chocolate covered strawberries because then we'll be dead. It just sucks.

"We're here."

We stopped in front of this ugly, little shop. It looked like a hurricane had hit it or something. The sign out front was all scratched up and the paint was all faded. The paint of the wood exterior was chipping off and the windows looked like they hadn't been cleaned in years. I really didn't want to go inside, but I had to. The inside wasn't any better than the outside. The place was torn up and tossed. The odd but cool, elongated masks were scattered all along the floor, papers were everywhere. A table was broken and tossed off into a pile along one wall.

"That looks kinda iffy." Pushing everything off to the side, we revealed a larger mask just floating there. As we drew closer to it, the mouth of the mask fell open, showing us an image of Facilier.

"Oh, no. Not him again. He barely does anything! Why do we need him?"

Everyone sighed at my displeasure. "Because he's a good distraction."

"I don't trust a man who has the word 'lie' in his name."

Rolling their eyes, Gothel answered, "You have the word 'die' in your name, get over yourself."

H-a-d-i-e-s. Hm, I guess I do. Odd.

Out of nowhere, Facilier came tumbling out of the mouth, falling to the ground. His words came out in pants as he tried to catch his breath. Gathering himself quickly, he ran out the door and signaled for us to follow. When we followed him into the truck, something else came out of the mask's mouth. A large, scary creature came charging towards the truck but we were long gone before it could reach us.

After a few moments of yelling at Facilier, we filled him in on our plan. Luckily he remembered our little writer friend and was completely on board. Discussing everyone's parts, we reviewed the plan we barely had. It went a little like this.

Step one: Get in.

Step two: Grab the girl.

Step three: Get out.

Following the Fates direction, we arrived at Tremaine's house. They were holding her in the cellar just below the house, and lucky for us, there was a back entrance. Cindy may or may not have known about it so we decided to check it out. And score! No one happened to be around the freaking cellar. We hopped in and jumped head first into trouble.

"Just like we predicted. Welcome, please, take a seat," Amoura gestured to the row of chairs next to us. Before anyone could move, Hercules threw me against them, signaling everyone else to take their seats.

"Since you all kindly broken into my home earlier and sole something from me, I am willing to cooperate if you are. I want Maleficent and you want this little girl here. So, what do you say?"

We discussed this for a while. Writing girl was very important to all of us; if we didn't get her, then we were stuck here for good. Maleficent couldn't do much for us but tell us what we needed to do and write. RIght now, the trade seemed like the best option.

"I'll go." At the entrance to the cellar door stood Maleficent. She was still weak and injured but even she knew what had to be done. "I'll go with you. Just hand her over to them and let all of them go free without any injuries or deaths. This is between you and me."

Amoura smile at her, letting us go. "Okay. But on one condition, you answer a small, little question of mine. What is this girl's value? Why is she just so important to you?"

Writing girl decided she'd speak up before any of us could. "I can destroy this world. But either way, it is going to die. Not by your hands. I can stop the world from ending so quickly so you all get to live out your revenge plans. None of you seem to want to go home, but if you do, then let me go."

Amoura thought about this for a moment. "Get out of my sight before I do kill you."

We stayed there for a moment, shocked by what she had just said. Slowly gathering ourselves, we rushed out of there. Suddenly, the writer stopped and ran back inside. Not knowing what to do, we waited there till she emerged with the pen in hand.

"This was the last one, couldn't leave it. Do you guys still have him?"

We nodded.

"Then why are we just standing here? Let's go! We got a worlds to save and get back to!"

Home, here I come...