Chapter 15 - Trixie's Secret

15


Timmy found himself doing more fast-talking than he liked when it came to convincing Caleb that Tootie and Romi would be helping him bring down the barrier. The argument was strange in itself; sometimes he wasn't exactly sure what the android was thinking when he talked.

"She's got her own fairy and she can wish for stuff, too! She could back me up once the nullifiers are destroyed!" Timmy had pointed out.

"I agree. She'd make an excellent alternate target for the destroyer units. Have you decided which lawyers to hire when you get sued for her death?" Caleb replied casually. Tootie sat at the table, watching them both with a catty smile on her face. It wasn't helping his mindset in the least.

"She's not gonna get killed!" Timmy protested, "Just teach me that Revive spell you said could prevent death and we'll be fine!"

"So now you're a high-level cleric? When did this happen? I would have recorded it for posterity."

"Caleb! Quit mocking me! I do better at healing spells anyway! We both know that! Or how about making me another Reverse Doll for her, like you did for Cosmo?"

"It's a fifty-fifty chance it'll actually work when she gets struck down. Did you want to place your bets before you take her into the target zones? You can't cash in afterwards if you don't, you know."

Timmy wanted to yank on the android's ponytail hard enough to pop his head off, the sheer frustration of trying to reason with the man was getting to him and fast. What the heck was he trying to do, drive him insane enough to tell Tootie that she couldn't help? Fat load of good that was gonna do him now; she called in the favor, made a 'wish' so to speak, and Timmy was dead-set on granting that wish. If only to get her to keep quiet about his continued life.

"I made a promise to her. I told her I'd do her a favor if she didn't get involved the night we found the tower. She called it in. I have to do this for her." he explained, slowly, through clenched teeth.

"Oh, I see! Now you're a fairy!" Caleb remarked brightly with a clap of his hands and smiled at Cosmo and Wanda, "Your godchild has evolved from immortal to fairy! What a delightful turn of events!" Wanda gave a vague smile and shrug, Cosmo only glared at him, absently twisting the head off of a small doll he'd conjured up to busy himself with.

"Will you take me seriously on this?!" Timmy shrieked, "She wants to help! I say let her help!"

"Why?"

"Because I need help!"

"Why?"

"Because I can't do this by myself! I told you that already! I'm too weak to do anything!" He blinked and shut his mouth, face turning red as he felt the stares of his godparents, Tootie and her fairy all focus on him. Caleb frowned and shook his head.

"Not the response I was hoping for, but fine. She'll be made a part of the team. Do you want her to have some magical ability to back her up on her own or is she going to be relying on Andromeda completely?" he sighed.

"I wanna do what Timmy does!" Tootie declared and Timmy just flopped down into a chair, too tired to continue the argument. "How did Timmy learn magic anyway?"

"I let him train with a pair of aionis bracelets so he could get the hang of tapping into the stream of mana. You're going to be using similar bracelets." the android told her and tilted his head, "I think, for the sake of safety on everyone's part, you will only be taught to access mana for the purpose of healing. In case Mr. Immortality here is unable to do it himself, you will cover for him in the curative department." He nodded. "Yes, that will work very nicely. In the meantime, there are other matters I wish to address. Primarily, the black tower we couldn't face that night."

Tootie blinked and leaned forward, listening as Timmy, Cosmo and Wanda all went on alert. The android leaned back against the computer console, a grim expression on his face as he slowly shook his head. Just from that, the brunet knew he wasn't going to be getting good news.

"The scans couldn't penetrate the tower. There's too much electrical interference surrounding it, and the anti-magic field is too powerful to let magic break through for another search." Caleb reported, "I have no idea how to destroy it."

A defeated sigh escaped him before he could hold it back and Timmy slumped back in his chair. Well, that was it then. The verdict was in; he would spend eternity picking at a tumor whose cancer was already spreading out from the city. That sick feeling in his stomach returned and he kicked the backpack containing the nullifier away from him.

"I guess that means the little present I got you was for nothing." he sighed and grunted as Tootie gave him a small punch to the gut. He sat up, rubbing his stomach irritably as he shot her a glare, then watched the doll open the backpack and pull out the nullifier, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise. Wanda jumped up with an alarmed cry as Cosmo dropped his doll in shock.

"You were carrying this around the whole time?" Caleb asked him, a strange look on his face. Timmy gave a vague gesture, still depressed over the lack of good news. The android looked at the fairies. "Did you know he had this with him?" he asked.

"Timmy! Why didn't you tell us you were carrying around a nullifier device?!" Wanda scolded her godchild, "Don't you know how dangerous that is for us all?! We could have gotten sick from the barrier!"

"Hey, I snapped off the dishes! It shouldn't even know there were magic-users around!" he argued weakly and gave Tootie a warning glare as she lifted her fist again, "Don't start with me...."

"But you didn't turn it off. It's still emitting a low-level pulse. I can feel it." Caleb remarked, holding the device in his hands, "It's fairly weak, and its range doesn't extend very far, but close proximity to it would be detrimental to a fairy's health."

"See? You could have gotten us sick!" Wanda pressed, "Warn us the next time you decide to bring home a trap to play with! Or don't do it at all!" Timmy stuck out his tongue, watching the doll set the trap aside.

"All the same, thank you for the device. I'll reverse engineer it later and see how it can help us. In the meantime, even though I haven't been able to analyze the tower, you may have a way of finding out about it yourself." Caleb pointed out, "Wanda, you said that Timmy had gone to the high school to locate Remy and gain some information from him, correct?"

"That was a bust. I got taken in as an A-List student, which means I'm going to need a bigger bank account to keep my cover, plus the teachers think I'm a regular student, so I'm going to need to have enrollment data set up so they don't think otherwise." the brunet counted off on his fingers, "Also, I think Remy's been doing some major usurping of power now that he's got a safe-zone that covers the whole upper-class district and lets him use Juandissimo's magic all he wants. The Populars are completely freaked out." He frowned. "Somehow, I think I'm forgetting something important." he muttered and shrugged, "I guess it'll come back to me later." The doll sighed and shook his head.

"This is getting complicated. All right; I'll wire additional funds to your account in Dimmsdale, hack the school server to add your name to their student list, get to work on improving your hunting equipment and prepare a training session for both you and Tootie to take over the weekend." he declared and gave the brunet a frustrated look, "Timothy! You're giving me way too much to do! I'm just one man!"

"Angel."

"Whatever! I'm going to have to call in a staff to do all this so soon!"

"Do it by tomorrow morning. I'm going back to school." Timmy remarked and smiled as the group collectively protested that decision. Even if he was doomed to fight a losing battle, at least he was going to have some fun annoying Remy while he was at it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

His first true day at Oberon High School was met with some resistance, primarily from Wanda and, to some extent, Cosmo. Wanda kept coming up with reasons and excuses for him to not go and her husband spilled everything he could get his hands on all over himself in efforts to keep Timmy at home to clean him up. In the end, he grabbed both fairies by the collars of their shirts, threw them into their room and ran out the door before they could reorient themselves enough to try again.

Ultimately, Cosmo and Wanda won the 'argument' and Timmy found himself still able to go to school, but followed by the pink and green squirrels he came to depend on as a source of comfort in any public yard. In this case, they were still a comfort, just knowing the squirrel pair was darting from tree to tree, bush to bush, chattering like animals while keeping an eye on him, helped him relax and forget for a moment that he didn't really belong in Dimmsdale anymore. This was a normal day of school. On the other hand, most of the chatter was about how sick he had been the previous day.

"Cosmo, for the last time, it's not a fad. I threw up in the bathroom. It wasn't fun, it wasn't cool, it was actually very gross." the brunet sighed in exasperation, "Now quiet! We're here." Timmy looked up at the brick building that dominated the campus, then down at the radar in his hand. One new fairy-hunting device; unfortunately, the detector was not updated, so it was still a game of hit and miss in tracking and identifying the devices. He'd called Caleb about it earlier that morning and was met with a yell of frustration and a demand to be left alone for at least the rest of the week.

Considering it was Tuesday, that was going to be a long week.

"Are we ready? Do we know the plan?" Wanda asked softly, hiding the movements of her mouth behind an acorn.

"Just go through it normally, try to find Remy and take that stupid trap from him, and maybe see if he drops any clues as to what he's doing with the other Populars, or what his deal with Crocker is." Timmy replied and adjusted the shoulder straps of his backpack. As comfortable and confidence-boosting as his normal clothes were, he was still better off in the Neogene wardrobe while in public. Never mind Tootie said he looked like a rich Goth punk....

He looked down at himself, eyebrow raised as he held his arms away for a self-examination. Let's see, dark blue jeans that were partially ripped because he wore them on his first fairy-trap hunting mission, rust-colored turtleneck with long sleeves, black hightops meant to let him run on rough terrain, and the same blue-black gloves he wore the previous day to prevent leaving fingerprints on anything....

"I do not look like a Goth punk!" Timmy finally declared and marched for the school doors, "Stupid Tootie and her stupid ideas...."


Classes wouldn't have been so bad if Timmy didn't know that at least two of them were scheduled in as punishment from Caleb. He hated algebra -why the heck would letters even be involved in math to begin with?- and he could just feel Wanda's large eyes boring into the back of his skull all throughout chemistry. He knew exactly what she was thinking too. 'Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! But don't get hurt, Sweetie!'

And there was the matter of Trixie Tang, who sat by him in at least three classes, watching him, studying him, those slanted Asian eyes recording every movement he made. Why was she doing that? It was creeping him out! The fairies sat on the windowsill of the classroom and he was sitting right by them. All he had to do was mouth out his wish, with the barest hint of his voice to satisfy Da Rules' regulations, and Trixie would have something else to look at.

But this was the first time her attention was riveted on him and no one else. How could he pass that up? So he tried to keep calm, raised a slight mana shield to promote a semi-meditative state, and made sure he didn't look as if he was absolutely loving every moment, which he was. Just that it also felt weird.

The armband Wanda and Cosmo had given him was hidden under the sleeve of his shirt, updating itself almost constantly. He checked earlier to see if it would let him access a record of his new account, and nearly passed out at the amount that Caleb dumped into it. Why didn't anyone tell him that many zeros could be shoved behind a number?! Was the android insane?! That couldn't be right! He called his cousin's private number to question him about it all, and got his answering machine instead.


"I'm sorry. Danny Phantom is currently saving the city from another ghost attack. Please leave your name and number, and he'll get back to you if he survives. Thank you, and have a pleasant day!"


Just how personalized did those things get?!

"Mr. Neogene, are you listening?" the professor questioned irritably. Timmy returned his focus to the current class, scanned the blackboard's contents, then turned a puzzled look on the teacher.

"What? You want me to actually answer that?" he asked incredulously, "Can't I just hire some nerd to do it for me?" He grinned, careful not to reveal his teeth, the darn things were still recognizable. "Better yet, how about I pay you to finish it for me?" Tad and Chad laughed at that, gave him thumb's-ups and whooped it up as the teacher turned red and moved on to another student. Trixie just kept watching him.

"That squirrel wants to talk to you." she finally whispered to him, leaning out of her seat a little to appear as though she searched for a book beneath her desk. Timmy shot her a wary look, but glanced towards the window anyway. Sure enough, Wanda was frowning at him, wagging one finger in disapproval as Cosmo shoved acorn after acorn into his mouth, then spat them out to start again.

"Squirrels don't talk. They just sit there and look stupid." Timmy snapped back at the girl. An acorn hit the glass and he made mental note to buy Wanda a chocolate bar and get Cosmo a cookie. Otherwise, he was going to get it back home for that remark.


He was thankful for the lunch bell. It meant escape, relief, a chance to get to what he was there to do. Slipping by the majority of the Populars as they headed outside, Timmy made it into the secluded halls of the rich teens' personal travel network and pulled the detector free again, plugging the Fenton Phone into one ear.

"Cosmo, Wanda, I'm in the halls. I'll start looking for...." he began and jumped as he felt a hand press against his shoulder.

"Those must be the names of your fairies, huh?" Trixie asked softly as he spun to stare at her, "I didn't think you'd have two of them. You must be really miserable if it takes two fairy godparents to cheer you up."

"What are you talking about? I don't know anything about any fairies." Timmy managed to reply evenly, "That's stupid. Wake up and smell the C-notes; this is the 21st century. There are no such things as fairies." Thank heavens Wanda wasn't screaming in his ear in outrage; he'd left the microphone on so she could at least hear what was going on.

"I know you have fairies. How else could you have vanished like that from school yesterday?" Trixie pressed on, stepping closer to him. He backed away hurriedly, face paling as his mind raced to that moment in time. Hadn't he checked to be sure the coast was clear before he made that wish? No, he hadn't; he'd been too busy wallowing in his own misery to check for witnesses. He'd been clumsy, neglected a duty that he'd been so careful to maintain for years, and now he was paying for it.

More proof that he was a failure.

"You must have been seeing things. Are you sure you're not on drugs or something? They say kids in counseling get put on drugs that make them see things that aren't real." he tried another approach. Maybe there was still a way out of this. If he could just make her doubt herself, her memory....

"No. I saw you disappear with magic smoke." Trixie murmured and shook her head, "You don't have to worry about anyone from Fairy World taking your fairies away. It's okay for me to know." She gave him a shy smile as he blinked at her in confusion. "You see, I have a fairy godparent, too." she confessed, "And I need your help."

"You?! Why would you need a fairy...?!" Timmy blurted out in shock.

"It's because of what happened here." Trixie interrupted, putting a hand out to cover his mouth, "You're new here, so you don't know how this city works. We had a little boy who lived here long ago. His name was Timmy Turner and for the longest time, before anyone really knew it, he was the source of our town's fun and joy and hopes. He was also a really sweet kid who kinda had a crush on me." She smiled helplessly, "I didn't mean to, but sometimes I strung him along. Deep down, though, I thought of him as a really good friend. He surprised me sometimes, with how honest and sweet and nice he could be to me. Out of all my popular friends, he was the only one who looked past all the surface stuff and liked me for me, for liking Skull Squisher and Kissy Kissy Goo-Goo. He was the truest friend I had and he never even knew it."

"He didn't have a chance at your heart, then." the brunet muttered in a low voice, pushing her hand away and folding his arms over his chest, "You only saw him as a friend, nothing more?"

"Well, it might have been more, but he died when he was young. Just four years ago. I saw him fall and...." she stopped abruptly, tears rising in her eyes. She shook her head and wiped them away. "Anyway, when he died, Dimmsdale lost all of its hopes in having a bright future. The city just seemed to turn stale and drab, as though its pulse was gone. That's why we call Timmy the Heart of Dimmsdale. He was the one who made our town seem so alive."

"Such a pretty sob story. Wah, wah." Timmy mocked, "My heart's breaking here. You haven't told me what this has to do with me or you needing help." He snapped his fingers a few times. "I'm on a schedule; I ain't got time to cry you a river! Give me the info fast, or just leave me alone!"

"All right! You don't have to be so cold-hearted!" Trixie cried and hugged herself, "I got my fairy godfather, Apollo, sometime after Timmy's funeral. He helped me get through the tough days, brought back some hope that, maybe one day, things will get better." She shifted on her feet, scuffing the tips of her white boots against the plush carpet. "But one day, here in school, I made a wish with Apollo. He couldn't grant it, but it set something off. The next thing I knew, Remy was in the hall with some strange machine that just reached out and snatched Apollo in a butterfly net and sealed him away." Timmy stared at her, dumbfounded, as she raised a fist and shook it in restrained anger. "He stole my fairy from me! I told him to let Apollo go, that it was against Da Rules for him to just take Apollo, but he started bragging about how he had all the power. Da Rules didn't apply to him anymore because no one from Fairy World could enter Dimmsdale to stop him!" She dropped her fist and sighed. "He threatened to give Apollo to Mr. Crocker if I didn't do what he said, so I had no choice but to give in. As long as I behave like Remy's girlfriend, Apollo would be safe and he won't be taken from me by Fairy World for being exposed to someone other than another godchild."

Timmy watched her wilt with hopelessness, then turned his attention to the Fenton Phone. Wanda was pressuring quietly to just help her with whatever problem she had. It was the right thing to do, it was okay because she was also a godchild, they were still protected by Fairy World's ruling of banishment. He'd already decided to help her, long before he saw her just deflate from lack of hope. This was Trixie, she was in pain, she hurt when he died as Timmy Turner; how could he turn away someone he'd cared about and knew now cared for him too?

"You want me to rescue Apollo." he finally stated and she looked up at him with such shining hope and relief that he had to look away or he'd end up making a confession of his own.

"If you would, I'd be so grateful! I'll do anything to have Apollo brought back to me!" she exclaimed in a rush, "Just name whatever you want; I'll do anything!" This time he did look at her, but just to give her a glare of warning. That was a vague promise, and there were few things he hated in the world more than vague remarks. They invited trouble and disaster.

"To tell you the truth, I was the one who broke into his house several days ago. I was trying to get some information, but I wasn't fully prepared for what he had in his arsenal." Timmy told her slowly, "But you're close to Remy, right? Can you get your hands on the data I need?" Trixie blinked at him, looked slightly disappointed, then shrugged.

"He tells me things now and then, kind of to show off and brag about his power. What are you looking for?" she asked and gasped as Timmy brought up the armband and tapped at the keys, showing her the map of Dimmsdale.

"I'm here on a special assignment." he reported, "This city is under the influence of an anti-magic field designed to prevent the use of any kind of magic, as well as being filled with devices built to capture fairies or destroy them if they prove too strong for capture." Trixie's face paled further, hands clasping together in prayer as her eyes remained glued to the patches of gold, gray and black. "My fairies and I have been passing through anti-magic zones and destroying the traps to free sections of the city for magic, but these black zones here are where we discovered a new threat. Tall black towers are making hundreds more traps, more than we can destroy to free Dimmsdale. I want to destroy the towers, but I don't know how." Timmy explained, "I think Remy has something to do with them, but I can't prove it and I can't do anything until I have an idea of what makes those towers so strong. If you can get something from Remy that will help me...."

"The Dark Spires." Trixie whispered and caught the boy's gaze, "He told me about them. Those are the Dark Spires. He said someone had designed them to create a giant blanket of darkness to stop magic, and only he would be immune to its effects." She touched her fingertips delicately to her lips, brow furrowing lightly in thought. "I think I saw something about it somewhere. If I got that for you, would you rescue Apollo?" she whispered, searching his face for a response. Timmy smiled at her.

"Trixie, if you get that info for me, I'll do more than save your fairy. I'll destroy the towers and save Dimmsdale. I can't bring back the Heart of the city, but I can at least give you back your hopes and dreams." he told the raven-haired girl. She cheered and threw her arms around him in a hug.

"Thank you, Timothy! Thank you!" she exclaimed, "But you really should have gone bigger with your request. If you had just asked me to be your girlfriend instead, I would totally have dated you!" Timmy only sighed and hoped his face really wasn't as red as it felt as he hugged her back. Well, this was great. He finally had the girl of his dreams falling all over him and it was for the wrong Timothy.

Didn't Cousin Danny have this problem once?

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