Didn't you know this is the form I use to get all the girls? I teased and tried to smile but it felt awkward with vulpine lips.

That's mean. Trying to hurt my feelings?

Maybe.

You're so cruel when you're cute.

There was no way I was winning this one.

Luckily I turned a glance over my shoulder when I picked up the unusual sound of something screaming through the air. It had to be the s.h.i.+p coming in.

I ducked my head back into the pocket when the s.h.i.+p crashed into the sand and water with a rather large wave. Ashe stepped closer when I heard my voice calling in the distance. She started moving and I bounced around a bit. I guess she didn't have a perfect pace like I had thought.

I listened to the initial awkward conversation we had on the sh.o.r.e about her hair and how I was being inconsiderate. It made me realize just how much Ashe had been teasing me without me even aware of it. She had to have made a big huff about her hair this time since she knew I was the one who fixed it up for her.

Time travel screws everything up.

All I want to do is hug you again; it would be weird right now wouldn't it? Ashe's voice rose in my mind.

You will in a second. I explained right as I heard Ettie's voice mention hugging *baby Ella' and then felt squashed between two stiff bodies.

That was a terrible hug. And I'm not a baby! Ashe sighed and I felt her annoyance rip through me.

You sure are complaining like one.

I am not! It was the truth. At least you hug better later...or earlier. She exclaimed while I heard my other self then felt the push of Ashe being drawn aside. I knew this was my cue and popped my head up from the pocket.

I looked around to see myself, mere inches away, surprised. I could only imagine how more surprised I would have been if another Gnidori had been here instead of a fox.

This is really weird. I said as Ashe scooped me out of the pocket.

How do you think I feel? She commented while lifting me up to her face; my heart jumped. I had completely forgotten *Reynard' had licked Ashe last time. Did that mean I had to do it? I guess I could...

I slipped my tongue out and licked over Ashe's skin right up against my face. She giggled like before and I felt like my heart was going to give out with how fast it was beating. I was almost sure she could feel it.

That's it. I'm keeping you like this.

Nooooo way. You can't make me.

She felt amused while she bothered herself with spinning some lie about why there were two foxes. She did well with that one. The other Gnidori wouldn't suspect a thing if she was anything like me; which I knew she was.

After a brief explanation which I coached Ashe through when the other me had grabbed her tightly wanting to know about the faerie. I concluded, Just say you aren't sure. Mention the sleeping spell. That'll sell it.

Once Ashe wasn't feeling quite so nervous about lying to the other me she seemed to dig a bit better into it, even lying a few more times about how we found them and how we tracked The Blue Faerie.

The group gathered back around us, and Ashe pushed me up to her shoulder. I looped around my roommate's neck to see Reynard brightened up and sniffing in my direction. He nearly fell from Ettie's shoulder if she hadn't scooped him up in to her arms to hold him.

Reynard says he missed you and thinks you look funny. Ashe explained with trying to hide a giggle, while Goldie took over much of the conversation about heading to Bluebeard's tower.

Thanks, I guess.

He also says he was fine if you were worried. He just woke up in the wrong place and that he picked up a pa.s.senger. Ashe continued to relay messages between Kit or Reynard and me while we all headed toward the tower.

Kit mentioned something about time magic not being even remotely simple and actually took very specific rituals that could take months of planning. It was more likely I had been hit with a *Time Touch'.

He wouldn't explain what that was though. Just that certain people could do it if they were descendants of Rip Van Winkle and that it was similar to Midas' Gold Touch.

By the time the other Gnidori was pounding on the door to the tower, we had officially mostly run out of things to talk about. Even with having told them we would have to fight Bluebeard. I realized afterwards that was a bad idea since I could then feel Ashe worrying about that.

I plopped back inside Ashe's pocket when the other me busted through the door. I could already feel the magic so strongly emanating from the place that it was clear now that I hadn't been the one to finally break the door open. It had been opened with a magical pull.

Once Ashe and Ettie had helped the other me up, my head was just poking back out, following the trace of magic to Bluebeard as he descended the steps. Reynard started growling and something deep inside told me to follow along with him, so I did.

It wasn't long before everyone discovered Goldie was related to Bluebeard and Reynard started barking which only made me want to bark with him.

Things were quickly spinning in to chaos, which really shouldn't have been a surprise to me, since I knew all that was going to happen. Just as Han keeled over from the mere spell of the Sleeping Curse so thickly permeating the room everything stepped into motion.

The ground ripped up around us and grabbed everyone. I instantly jumped on to the piece of the floor wrapped around Ashe and ripped and tore at it with my paws and teeth, Reynard had jumped down to it as well, helping me.

It wasn't until Ashe had pulled the hatchet I had given her through the earthen grasp that she finally broke free from it. Both Reynard and I jumped on to her. Reynard took my pocket while I sat on her shoulders.

I wanted to say so desperately right in that moment that Ashe shouldn't mention what she knew about Bluebeard's secret, but I knew even if I did she still would have done it. She's just that kind of girl. So instead I said, You have to buy me time. To unlock my magic.

She registered everything so quickly and chose the best route was to be *caught' by Bluebeard. So she screamed out his secret to the other me, holding her hatchet tightly and I wrapped my tail around her neck. I'm with you. I'm always right beside you.

She nodded right before a hand yanked around her waist and she was dragged behind the wall of fire the blue-bearded wizard made.

Maybe my comment had somehow helped her to be so content, thinking about the image of her face when I had seen her dragged behind the fire while in my normal form. As soon as the fire was surrounding us, I jumped out and bit down on the arm that had been wrapped around Ashe to let her get free.

The price of doing that was obvious. I went hurling through the fire wall and slammed into a normal wall with my tiny fox body. It felt like a combination of when I had been thoroughly burned by the Salamanders and then tossed through the wall by Nera.

I couldn't even move until a wet nose came sniffing over my body and nudged me. I smiled. Of course with Han's nose he would have recognized my magic immediately. At least he was smart enough to have not given me away.

I pushed my tiny body up, with the support of Han nudging me against the wall I had slammed in to. But I couldn't change yet, for some reason the other me still hadn't even decided to go through with getting my magic back.

Why?

Then I remembered it...

Of course. This was the moment I had been contemplating the risk of releasing my magic. My voice had pressed through me and I had accepted it as simply my thoughts.

Technically it was my thoughts, simply coming from a future me!

I stumbled forward as Han barked something at me that I couldn't understand. I shook my head and scratched my paw in the ground summoning up a wisp of energy as I thought what I wanted to be carried to the other me.

Your magic is always worth it. Don't forget that... Hue didn't.

It must have reached the other Gnidori's ears because she was looking around at everyone she knew before finally telling Ettie what they had to do.

Watching the scene unfold between Ettie and the other me was... strange at the very least. It was one thing to see yourself walking about, it was a completely different thing to see yourself be embraced by a woman you cared about and then see that kiss from an outsider's point of view.

Was that how it had looked if I had seen from a distance when Ashe and I had kissed the first time? It was tender and emotional but I had been wrong. Seeing from this angle, Ettie hadn't kissed me pa.s.sionately. She kissed me because she had loved me so much that she wanted to give me something I had wanted for so long just in case I was going to die.

I have the most amazing friends possible.

I watched intently as they said their magic words and then the other me shattered into millions of tiny wisps of light that gathered and swirled around Ettie before fading away, leaving only my clothes and weapons behind.

The face she made nearly broke my heart as she stood up and gripped her guns tightly. How much pain had I just put her through, even for that single moment?

I couldn't let her live with that any longer. I took two fox strides before the magic swirled around me and my paws slowly formed hands and feet. I started to stand as the rest of my body grew and s.h.i.+fted. I didn't care about the pain I just ran straight to Ettie and seized her in to a hug.

"I'm sorry to make you worry too. Everyone is always worrying about me." I whispered near her ear as she stood completely stunned to the point that her pistols nearly slipped from her hands.

"It's because we love you, Gnidori." She managed to finally say as her hands wrapped around me to return the hug.

I pulled free from it and she stepped to my side as I leaned down and scooped the long-handled axe up.

"I told you I would be fine." I smiled back to her before stepping forward and slamming the double head of the axe into the ground. I pushed a burst of energy out which traveled down the stone ground and ripped a hole in the fire wall by erected stone walls to block it.

Ashe was in clear sight of me.

I stepped in front of the fire wall door, throwing the axe over my shoulder as I smiled toward the wide-eyed Fioravante.

"Now, where were we?"

Thirty.

Dual Magic Duel "H-how?" Fioravante nervously asked while Ashe backed up toward me.

"How did you put it..." I looked to the corners of my eyes in thought before continuing, "That part wouldn't interest you, what would interest you is that in the past five minutes a week has pa.s.sed by for me. A week of time I've had to plot how to kill you."

He laughed awkwardly while I could feel the energy building in his hand, it was oozing with malice. "You can't kill me. There was a reason I was hired. You can't beat me."

My grin grew and Ashe nodded to me. I pulled my axe down from my shoulder and stepped next to her. Fioravante hissed at me and thrust his hand forward while muttering under his breath. A ma.s.sive ball of fire gushed forth from his fingers, growing as it traveled.

In that moment, at least thirty gnomes popped out of the ground and stone doorway in the fire, producing a wall, which I tapped with my axe and poured energy in to. They grew even harder than most metals just as the fireball collided with them.

The fire died out as all the gnomes guffawed and I drew the energy back out of them so they could move again without all the weight. They poured like a wave around me and left me to glance over the dumbfounded Bluebeard.

I shrugged and his face grew white. "Actually you are simple to figure out. You use basic elemental knowledge that is taught in the faerie academy, yet you definitely have never been there. Which means you didn't have magic before the sleeping curse rested in you. And you were taught by a faerie based on what you know, but for what purpose?"

"That is none of your business!" He bellowed while gathering and muttering another fireball spell. That was when I gave up on walking forward, instead I darted and slid right under his ball of fire before dropping some energy in my legs to push in to the ground and leap over him.

He dodged the slice of my axe as I cleared and landed behind him to find his body twisting around as he incanted. A sword of hard stone rose out of the ground just in time for Fioravante to s.n.a.t.c.h it up and halt the wide arcing slash I made with my dual-head axe.

"So you fight like you've been in a lot of them." I raised my eyebrows. "Military? Thief like the rest of your family?"

He pushed me back and I poured strength in my arms as he started slas.h.i.+ng wildly yet in perfect strikes. I barely managed to block them all with my weapon.

"My family is not thieves!" He growled while he pushed me up near the fire wall with his continued a.s.sault.

"I see you avoided the question." I laughed and he glared at me as he pulled his sword to the side and held up his other hand charged with just pure energy.

"The Lockes are not thieves!" He roared.

This was going to hurt...

Then the energy suddenly died away from his hand and blood trickled from his mouth which he licked at. I smiled as I looked at Goldie crouched behind him with a dagger thrust into the side of Bluebeard.

"Then how do you explain the dagger in your side." I laughed before reaching out to grab the half-baked wizard by the collar of his expensive s.h.i.+rt and yank him to spin around so he was nearly pressed in to his wall of fire. His side wound bleeding terribly with the forceful removal of his body from the dagger.

I stared in to his eyes and pulled my axe head to press in his neck. "Nera hired you, didn't she? It had nothing to do with Goldie. Actually I bet you even used Charming to turn in your own niece with telling him how perfect it would be here. Then selling her to the Blue Faerie for what? A bounty price?"

He stared back at me with wide eyes. "It isn't what you think."

I pressed the axe in to him tighter as Goldie slipped next to me, giving him a hurt expression. "What do I think, Fioravante?"

"She'd free me of my beard. And bring them back." He tried explaining. My smile faded.

"Them?"

"Every soul dead in that chamber of filth. And every soul I killed without mercy as the Pirate King." He continued as his eyes drifted away from looking at me. I glanced over my shoulder at Bonny. Did Bonny kill without mercy as well?

I pulled my axe and hand from him and stepped away with a sigh. "You poor idiot. No one has enough magical power to bring back that many people and even if they did, yanking that many souls back and giving them a body after death. You wouldn't know what condition they would be in. No one has ever come back from death the same as before."

I shook my head as Goldie tried to interrupt me. "And knowing Nera, even if she could do it, they would come back as zombies or monsters under her control. But you don't care about that..."

His head fell in shame, but at the same time his wall of fire also dropped. His head lifted again but a smile was on his face. He pulled his arms up to shrug while saying, "I guess you caught me."

I lunged forward and grabbed Goldie as a surge of energy rushed over Fioravante's body. The entire room lit with brilliance and was drenched in raw energy as I ran Goldie back to everyone else, while averting my eyes.

The energy still tingled around us as the light died out and left two Bluebeards standing in the room.

"Your mind games won't work, Miss Red." Both of the Fioravantes began in unison. "I never said I cared about what state the souls would be in. I gave them to the Blue Faerie to use in return for all the magical power I have."

It was hard to hide my disgust as I gripped my axe tighter. "You're a sick and perverted man, Fioravante."

"Because I love killing? How many have you killed? How many *perverted' things have you done?"

"That's not the point! Killing should never be fun or something you look forward to! Even if it is, to get your enjoyment out of other people's suffering, that's despicable." I explained while swiping my axe through the air.

"And there lies the problem. I do like it, even if you don't. Is it so wrong for me to do something I like?"