(AN: Dude, let's just say I wish I had the focus, will, drive, soul, heart and everything in
between that you have. )
Martha knew her best, only chance of finding a mate was to use the Transform or Dare on
someone before the game was destroyed forever by the combined effort of the catholic
priests and Madam Serenity. However Martha was no longer a sociopath to non-wolves
like she had been when she was first transformed. Which meant she couldn't bring herself
to grab a random man off the street and use the game on him to transform him, or even
use her dance on a random person even if it was during a moon phase she could use it
because her sense of right and wrong just wouldn't allow it!
She could think of a hundred plans to gain herself a partner and/or mate to watch over
the pups... but they all involved the game, and the game in of itself required a level of
sociopathery that none of the pack had anymore.
Martha, "Why did a random mix of opposing magics have to have the unpredictable side
effect of reproducing the Transform or Dare produced by Miss Harty BEFORE I would think
to find myself a male to help work alongside the pups?" Then again, she -was- Omega,
sex was about the last thing on her priority list. While the pups were at the top of her list.
At least she had Ameythst who was the pups' tutor and the governess of the gem twins.
Ameythst was a lot smarter than she ever let on, and Zack and Lawrence had both often
questioned if such a 'bubble head' was really the best wolf to teach the next generation.
but Martha had work along side her often enough, though Jensen's pups and Zackery's
didn't interact as often with the gems as often as each other. None treated the two
headed, three eyed, four breasted, four armed, two tailed shiva like she-wolf as anything
other than beautiful (which artistically Martha knew she was), but Martha had wondered if
Ameythst was simply under equipped for the job. Or maybe Martha felt what anyone felt
at being one of a kind.
And still the temptation bubbled up inside Martha, to ask Amethyst to accept a Transform
or Dare to become a mutant like Martha was... She didn't want to FORCE it on, heavens
no, she just prepared not to ask. But she knew once the game was gone, the door would
close forever on that.
+++++++++
"Dear...." Kaylee asked sounding scared as the married couple laid down in the bed,
feeling empty without Fran, Darla and Julie to share it with, "Does this mean we've had
maybe ten years, twenty years of our lives stolen?"
Jensen reached out, gently touched her muzzle, then pulled her closer to him until her
bodies were against each other, "Be happy you accomplishments, education, experiences,
a legacy, -children- to go along with those years honey... "
Jensen felt it, and was sure Kaylee felt it too. Jensen felt his memories of being a self
centered cheerleader dissolving into the ether, while Kaylee felt her own memories of
being a social failure also breaking apart into nothing. Kaylee reached out and gently
touched a scar her husband had gotten in high school over a decade ago when a football
player not looking where he was going crashed into him in the bleachers remembering
the incident clear as crystal.
"Dear I'm scared, will we still be us?"
"We're always 'us' honey," Jensen stroked her back as Kaylee stroked him. "We haven't
been those -versions- of us since we misused the game on each other... "
"Does that mean we committed murder?"
"NO! Absolutely not!"
"But... if I looked back at what I did as Kyle as someone else, and I forget having even
doing things as Kyle..."
"You'll still be you. And would you want to go back to that life?"
"Not in a thousand years, I couldn't bear not having you, not having Jenny, Bart, Marcy,
and Kevin... "
Jensen hugged her, "Then be happy and content my love, that existence is just a shadow
now fading with the morning light."
The two drifted back to sleep in each other's arms.
++++++++
Zelipe saw a woman middle aged, a loving wife, in love with the occult, but loving her
husband more, of having a son who Zelipe knew was now his father, of having a mother
who was not Mommy-Pearl. A woman who had been happy, a woman with a life all her
own.
A Zelipe remembered this had been his life... Her life. A life with a different mother and
father who had given birth to her and loved her, of an elder sister who was now less than
a stranger to him... If she even still existed at all.
Zelipe was scared, knowing how much he'd forget, all those experiences, all those
wonderful memories of being with her husband Randy... all just, gone? Never were?
Zelipe cried. Not caring that was something only girls were supposed to do or what Bart
would think of him for it.
"It isn't fair."
"No it isn't."
Zelipe blinked at tears, "Alice?"
"No... " Said the blond wolf girl wearing a black and red dress with funny shapes on it. "My
name is Marie... I'm... I guess you could say I'm the Game Master now... "
"Then fix it!" Zelipe snapped.
Marie shook her head. Just yesterday she'd have responded in exactly the same tone, a
little boy angry at the world for stealing things it had no right taking.
"I'm sorry, it has to be this way. If reality doesn't heal itself, the chaos left in the world
when Kurse tore the opening to the infinite chaos will eventually existence to fall apart on
itself... Reality is fixing itself."
The pale pink Zelipe blinked in confusion, "It's making sure it can't have kittens?"
Marie blinked back and said, "No I mean it's working to compensate for the changes made
due to chaos being introduced to the universe via the curse. Right now it's feeling the
waters, patching up the obvious changes like the switches in parenthood between you and
your father."
"But I had a father!"
"I'm sorry, now he's Zack's father... your sister is even worse off, she doesn't even have
her parents in the previous reality as grandparents... "
Zelipe started, he hadn't even thought about Amy. His sister had become so strange since
their transformation into the pack... or had she always been a little bit off in her own
world like Miss Amethyst?
"Reality changes, as a rule, take the path of least resistance. This isn't some 'delusion' or
'lie' where reality 'thinks' you're Zelipe of the Big Bad wolf pack. Reality knows you are
Zelipe, and is doing it's best to compensate."
"Then... then LET ME HAVE A TURN AT DA GAME! Let me be Zelda again.."
"And could you leave your mother Pearl? You father Zack? Your sister Amy? The rest of
the pack? Could you?"
"Let's.. let's... LET'S CHANGE'EM ALL BACK!"
".... That's not possible anymore, maybe before Kurse died, maybe, but at this point trying
to reverse the healing reality is doing would only make things worse... it could cause the
wounds to tear open again and let the chaos back in... I'm sorry Zelipe... Any more major
changes to reality with the game could be dangerous since reality is in flux... reality might
just throw up it's hands and forsake us all. We'd be dead."
Zelipe shivered. Still sniffing, "But, it's just so wrong."
"My Other Mother wanted to make sure we'd lament for defeat when she fell.... If it's any
consolation, you'll always be with your sister. Your father -does- love you. And if it
means anything, this'll be the last misery in it's three hundred and ten years of life that
the curse will cause."
"... You're pretty..."
"Thank you."
She hugged Zelipe and stroked his head, "Dream of Harry Potter, dream of Wizard of Oz,
dream of Dungeons and Dragons... let a past that no longer exists fade, let memories of
things that never happened be gone..."
Fall asleep in the dreamscape, Marie gently put the little boy down and kissed him on the
forehead. "You're cute too."
With that Marie left Zelipe's dreamscape, making way to Bart's, Kevin's, and Jenny's.
+++++++++
Gary and Brian laid on the make-shift beds, the medical wing stuffed to capacity. The two
male lions talking about the loss of their mates, and their daughters being short two
mothers.
Tano asked Moja, no one hearing them, "Why did you tell them that? We have pasts of our
own now. We don't have to pretend we used to be our own mothers."
"Because that's how our mothers died." Moja said simply.
"It doesn't have to be!"
"Our mothers had their souls cut into four pieces and died. ... " Moja said sagely, "By
tomorrow we'll... we'll be crying out hearts out like any kids would over the loss of their
parents... Everything in our transform or dare I think will still come to pass but... I don't
think we'll remember it..."
Tano started, "But, but how did we even get to be on the island then! Our mothers would
have never put us in that kind of danger!"
"They didn't, remember Tano? We only arrived there after the dust settled and saw all the
passengers needed a way home..."
Tano nodded, feeling the memory taking place of their time, taking place of her memory
of being a stuffed lioness doll with a stitched on bikini, though she had one in her
bedroom along with her sister Sita. The memory of Tatuli and Neili being a stone and
glass fountain replaced by both of them having an early passion for sculpture that had
overjoyed their mother Elise and their father Brian.
"So by the time they curse is gone, it'll be as if we always were?" Tano asked.
"No, not always? We had been conceived and born some time remember?"
Both girls giggled. Remembering the story of how they had gotten their names from their
parents. Having been born at nearly the name time, their numbers had been counted off
in swahili as a joke, but one of the work-hands there as went the classic story had
mistaken it for their names, and they had stuck.
"Hey kids!" Said Sunny passing between them, "I ... I know you've.. oh I know what
happened but please... your dads need rest so please, give us some room."
Tano and Moja nodded simply and gathered the rest of their sisters leaving the crowded
medical wing (Nane having proven enough trouble to be removed on her own).
Mbili and Saba were both thunder struck and had to be held by their sisters as they left,
as the memory flash in their minds of earlier that 'day' of seeing their mothers perfectly
unharmed but empty, lifeless soulless shells after Kurse had torn their mothers spirits
apart. It had been an accident they had seen them at all, though Bobbi wondered if it was
for the better, so the eight girls wouldn't live in a fantasy world thinking their mothers
were okay, though Sasha Rhymm the lioness had wondered if living such a fantasy until
they were old enough to appreciate their loss might have been better.
+++++++++++
Amy had been underfoot at the police station all day, doing her best to stay out of the
way. June had torn away from the pack desperately wanting to go get her daughter, and
when she had failed, Zack had tried, but like all the pack and pride who had set foot on
the island, they were in too a mangled and broken state to leave the estate safely (On the
pack's side mostly from the vast collection of broken bones from the crystalized twins and
the gruesome stabbings from the possessed deer herd).
"How does this sound? The gem wolves had been cast away Marie had found on 'her'
island. Apparently it had belonged to her dearly departed father." Amy herd the voice
behind her.
"The twins were already part of the pack, otherwise the pack wouldn't have risked itself so
utterly to rescue them all." Amy didn't even look at the mirror, "And you've never been to
Glendale, and we've never met."
"It's the chaos trickling through as reality heals itself. The alternative of course is deciding
who fathered and mothered which twins."
"There are four sets of gem twins. Jasper. Topaz. Goldie. And Lazuli. The pack is divided
mostly into four females to one male."
"What about Carnelian? Remember, Coral and Tourmaline were the two pink wolves, not
Carnelian."
Amy started, leading up against the mirror behind her, which Marie looked onward.
"CURSE THIS CHAOS! ... "
"Chaos was the curse, just directed towards causing human misery..."
"I know I know but... ugh... It feels that every healing it make another wound opens up."
"Don't worry."
"I'm not worried. I know it'll work out in the end. Paul and Father Mike are by now working
around the clock to create enough of the cure to be used on Glendale as a whole... but...
all these fragments of randomness that keep creeping up."
"Scared reality will never fully heal?"
"I can't allow myself to think that, or everything we've done will be for nothing."
"I can help adjust the flow, the white magic that's how a part of Big Bad Island can help
there... I just hope existence -CAN- work it all out in the end."
"It will... it will... "
"Want a free ride home? Japan's nice this time of year."
"Japan was Ami's home. Not mine. Take me to my father, brother and mother."
"Alright... though I'm not sure if we'll know each other once reality fully heals."
"We don't know each other now." Amy said goodbye to the officers explaining one of the
glass wolves had come to take her home (which was true) and let Marie take her into the
mirror verse. Amy looked down at herself, still dressed in a child sized attire of a Shinto
priestess, with the kanji for 'wolf' or 'okami' (which verbally could mean 'great god' if
'written' different) etched in her clothes.
Ami silently slipped in the cub's bedroom with Marie's help, past Samantha still sleeping
soundly. She stepped out and was naked again, and laid on the same bed as her brother,
and laid back looking at the ceiling wondering if she'd ever get enough sleep again.
+++++++
"What was that?" Jacob asked as Trevor came with Serenity holding his hand.
"Sorry, he thought he saw his attacker back from the dead... "
"Was it?" Jacob asked.
"No, like I said, that person is long gone." Serenity said perfectly honestly.
The lioness Marie took hold of her son, patting him on the back saying sweet nothings
while his sister looked on confused and distraught.
"It's okay son, mommy's here... "
Serenity saw the teenager and his girlfriend had already departed for part's unknown, 'All
the better.' She thought simply.