[center][i]*~*Collaboration between Ghost Shadow, YoshiSkittlez, Major Ursa, Guardian Angel Haruki, and Tanderbolt*~*[/i][/center]

The citizens of Storybrooke began to gather in small groups on the streets. The air was filled with cries of joy as one by one, they were reunited with the people lost to them; lost with their memories that had so suddenly come back to them. The small groups began to get larger, and soon it was safe to say that every single resident of Storybrooke was outside, either in the middle of a tear-jerking reunion or out looking for a relative or close friend they had yet to be reunited with.

The masses began migrating closer to the Clock Tower where they found their King and Queen and looked to them for leadership. Among all the mixed emotions put on each and every one of their faces, there was one emotion that all of them wore plainly in unison. Fear. Fear of what had brought them here, fear of what had caused them to lose their memories and live under false identities for five years, fear of not being back where they belonged in The Enchanted Forest, and of course fear of what the haze of thick purple smoke had brought [i]after[/i] their memories had been restored.

"So what are we waiting for? Let's get Regina!" Leroy shouted, voicing his opinion above all the other chatter in the growing crowd. His dark eyes happened on Mary Margaret; Snow, his best friend and Queen. He gave her a nod, a simple gesture of understanding; nothing had changed despite what Leroy may have done in Storybrooke, he would forever and always be loyal in the face of his Queen.

"We-we can't! Not without a plan." Archie answered Leroy, surprising himself in the courage he found in his own voice to be heard over the commotion.

Ruby pulled her attention from Snow and Charming to look on Dr. Hopper; Jimminy Cricket. She left her small groups side to bravely face the growing mob and put her hand on Dr. Hopper's shoulder.

"I'm going to need your help. These people are scared and confused, I can offer a sort of help finding lost loved ones if you would open up your office for any counseling these people may need. I can't help but to feel we were the lucky ones when our memories returned."

Dr. Hopper nodded and clutched onto the handle of his umbrella, looking for the courage he had displayed just moments ago. The two shared a soft smile before Ruby left with Archie, arm in arm. In the large thrall of things, Ruby hadn't even been alerted to the pointed scent of the one person she yearned to see; to talk to. Instead, Ruby missed the near seven-foot tall man as she hurried away to make preparations. There was only a moment when Ruby stalled, a portly gentleman brushing against her arm abruptly so quickly, Ruby only caught the backside of the man as he tilted his brown fedora down over his face a bit. Thinking nothing of it as the people of Storybrooke were all granted an instance or two of sheer rudeness, Ruby and Archie continued on.

The man in the fedora grimaced as he pushed past the waitress, his hand holding tight to the thin arm of Sister Charlotte, a nun under the pretenses of Storybrooke, but in actuality a mere child with eyes bursting with curiosity.

"Not so fast mister! I'm just as eager to get to the surprise as you are, but I don't wish to fall onto my face in the process." The dark-haired girl giggled.

"We must hurry miss Alice! We can not be late! Oh, my mistress will be so angry with me if I'm late." A quick look to the pocket watch previously tucked tightly into his breast pocket caused a moment of exclamation. "Oh dear! Oh my! We are late! So so so so late! Hurry miss Alice, we must not keep my mistress waiting!" The man pulled Alice's arm with much urgency as they ducked out of the main streets of the town to head towards the woods. Sausage-like fingers popped the pocket watch back into his breast pocket and then to his trousers where he seemed to be urgently fishing for something.

Just as they were rounding the corner of the last building that would put them out of sight of the growing crowds, Alice's bright eyes happened on a face that made her heart grow light and threaten to fly out of her throat.

"EDRIC! OH EDRIC!" The girl stopped suddenly to wave at her older brother, elated tears threatening to slide down her fair cheeks. The older gentleman she was with, however, growled quietly and grabbed fast onto her arm again, pulling her back onto the course he had set out earlier.

Henry had become nearly overwhelmed with the sheer amount of people that seemed to swell around the clock tower, frantic voices and tearful reunions happening all around him. 

His head darted left and right, as there was merely one other person he was looking for amidst the congregation. 

Starting to mix faces together after seeing so many gathered at once, a bright, loud voice seemed to call out his name, and he knew instantly who it belonged to. 

"Alice?" He called out, swiveling sharply towards the direction the voice came from, just barely managing to catch a glimpse at his sibling on the skirts of the crowd, waving frantically at him. 

A beaming smile began to form on his lips until he noticed the man holding onto her arm...the same man he so carelessly dismissed in the newspapers that Ruby first brought his attention to. 

Without another word, he left Snow and Charming's side; beginning to push his way through the crowds to reach Alice, ducking and sidestepping with agility that even surprised him. He had waited so long for this moment, and [i]nothing[/i] was going to stand in his way. 

Mary Margaret saw the crowd gathered before her, recognizing almost everyone. She never forgot a face, and from the looks of it most of the enchanted forest was here. It had been years since she had seen a crowd this size, but she held her anxiety in check. She followed Henry, wanting to protect one of the few people she knew that she could trust. He was running after that Alice girl she'd heard him talk about, who always sounded like a good person in his tales of the past.

Heather Jekyll noticed that the crowd grew larger, and the noise grew uncomfortably louder. She heard one of the men in the crowd shout about going after Regina, and she looked to the person who had played the part as the therapist when he spoke up. However, Hopper's words seemed to fall on deaf ears after a voice [i]very[/i] familiar to Jekyll shouted above the crowd, "That witch has to pay, NOW! BEFORE she does anything else to us!" 

Jekyll muttered under her breath with an irritated groan (and almost rolling her eyes), "Frankenstein..." As the crowd roared in agreement, she marched up to where Frankenstein's voice came from, unaware of Henry's sudden absense, and she called out to him, determined to prevent a panicked mob from forming, "Frankenstein! Victor Frankenstein!". 

Frankenstein turned to the familiar voice and he sneered "Ah. Jekyll...so [i]you're[/i] here," Jekyll ignored his sneer as she glared at him seriously and she asked him "What the hell do you think you're doing?! Are you out of your mind?!" Frankenstein sneered "We're about to make the witch who did this to us pay! That's what we're doing!" 

Jekyll pointed out angrily, "You're riling everyone into a frenzied panic! You're going to get them killed!"
Frankenstein let out a "Tch!" in annoyance at Jekyll's true point. He retorted, "And I'm supposed to listen to a sham of a scientist like you? You're just a woman, Jekyll! A foolish, sentimental woman who has no place in science!"

Jekyll gritted her teeth at Frankenstein, and stood still as the man led a crowd to get torches and head for Regina's house. Jekyll swore under her breath angrily at Frankenstein "God dammit!" She breathed through her nose, trying to calm herself down, and not give Hyde any reason to take over and cause trouble. 

In his mind, there was a ruined tower in the middle of the forest. However, it wasn't the clock tower of the town's center, and Knox's mind had led his body astray. Stepping through the woods, unconsciously using a light step that didn't crunch leaves or snap twigs underfoot, his ears caugh--stepping back behind a tree, with a row of them aligned just right, a rounder middle aged man came into view.

From down the path, within his line of sight without Knox being in his, the rounder shape of the man came closer. A young, doe-eyed girl was being tugged along, a sad amount of naivety seemed to pour off her very person. Knox remained silent as he removed his sunglasses, though the girl became a certain kind girl of his past in his eyes, his sharp eyes had instead honed on the man's face.

Beady little eyes of--! All the eyes of--beady eyes darting here and there suspicious. Eyes of a thief. In an instant, Knox wasn't in the present. His mind travelled back in time, no less than two thousand years ago...though the memory wasn't no longer full, without details missing here or there, he remembered the hunt.

Letting them pass without so much a word, so a breath, the tall man ducked around a bare tree and weaved through the low branches poking out from his left right and the spaces above. Feet were careful, cautious, and quick...within moments, neither seen nor heard, he stood ahead of them once more, among the tall trees. With the path of bared dirt leading down and around the tree he stood hidden behind, he waited for the man to approach, feet crunched more heavily on the leaves and broke twigs.

Coming up so close his tree he could hear the man's breathing, a thicker leg tried to step up over a protruding root of the nearest tree, and at the same time the round beady eyed man just about let go of the girl's hand. In an instant, Knox stuck a leg out and kicked the standing thick leg of the man out from under him.

The portly man didn't know what hit him. One moment he was huffing and puffing while receeding deeper into the woods, and the next minute he was flat on his back, weezing for breath and staring up to a rather imposing man who had caused him to lose his footing.

Stepping out of his hiding spot, Knox slowly tilted his head at the man, unblinkingly staring him down with a cold grimace, "You have thieves' eyes, I should fix that."

The eyes of the larger man skipped over Knox to land on the girl, Alice, who had remained standing and watching the scene with a rather curious expression held in her deep eyes. With a small twitch of his nose, the man reached his sausage-like fingers back into his pocket where it had previously been before the fall, the object of which he was after now seeming to fall into his open palm rather than having to dig for it.

"Glad to oblidge, really I am, but there is just one small thing keeping you from doing so." He said closing his hand around the tiny object he had procured from his pocket and with a movement quick for such a large gentleman, tossed the very object he had in his hand to his left. "I'm late."

The bean bounced a good foot or so before it embedded itself into the soft soil of the forest. Immediately the winds began to pick up and the surrounding dirt began to swirl, as if the very ground underneath it was giving way. Green light suddenly shot up from the earth, the dirt surrounding it crumbling down into a steadily growing gaping hole of magic. Alice took a couple tentative steps away from the swirling green vortex, raising her arms up to her eyes to shield them from the flying debris that was getting sucked into the hole.

*~*~*

After most of the crowd left (and Faye's failed attempts to convince the crowd not to listen to Frankenstein), Faye looked around and finally noticed that Henry, Mary, and Knox were missing. She asked out loud "Henry...?" 

A voice she knew all too well echoed in her mind in reply, "[i]He's gone hunting for rabbit, Jekyll. You juuuust missed him,[/i]"

Jekyll thought to herself silently "[i]Which way did they go?[/i]" The doctor felt her head jerk to the right, towards the direction where the forest was and she could hear Hyde sneer in response "[i]That way. Better hurry, Jekyll,[/i]" The last statement sounded foreboding, and Jekyll took off running in that direction, leaving some people behind to stare at her in a confused manner. She ignored someone asking rudely as she ran "What's eating at her?"

*~*~*

Henry continued his frantic sprint through the crowds, just managing to break through when he caught glimpse of the back of Alice's head as she was being carried off by the round man. 

Furrowing his eyebrows distrustfully, Henry hurried off into the woods; coming across the scene of the fat man lying on the ground, looking up at a (somewhat-senile) looking Knox whilst Alice stood off in the distance. Before he could say anything or react, something was thrown out of the portly man's hand, Henry unable to catch a glimpse of what it was before it buried itself into the soil. 

Mary Margaret caught up when Henry stopped running, and saw the puzzling scene. The security guard who claimed he was married to her was there, standing over an almost unconscious fat man. She didn't trust him very much to begin with, and this scene didn't reassure her.

The security guard's stare-down was broken, as his hair whipped around his face due to the pick-up of the wind. Eyes slowly moving away from the rotund man on the ground, the man's words rolling and rattling around in his head, and to the source of the bright green light cast upon the forest. His eyes watered from the painful light, but he didn’t avert his gaze for several moments.

The entire environment seemed to shift around the small group, the trees swaying violently as green light erupted around them. Henry was forced to shield his face with his arm, eyes squinted as he struggled to make sense of what was going on, when suddenly, it hit him. 

"A portal..." He said, too quiet to be heard amidst the chaos. Immediately, he struggled to make his way over to his sister, hoping to shield her, to keep her out of the portal's reach. Every step felt like a ton of bricks as it seemed that the forces of nature themselves were trying to pull Henry in. "HOLD ON!" He cried out in Alice's direction, hoping she could hear him. Just as he raised his foot to take another step, a particularly violent gust of wind threw him off balance, sending him falling to the ground. 

Glancing back down at the man, then at the green portal, then the tree Knox had previously been hiding behind…reached an arm out, he grasped onto a particularly sturdy low-hanging branch. For a moment longer, holding onto the branch rather securely with no difficulties, the man remained silent.

“I’m glad we’ve gotten over this impasse.”

With an impossible strength, Knox ripped the thick limb branch from the tree, swinging it down upon the portly man in a wide arch. The portly man, surprisingly was not harmed as he quickly rolled out of the way, unlike the others unafraid of what the blinding green vortex held for them. There was little time, however as the portal was due to close at any moment if no one jumped in. He was still a great lengths way from the portal himself, but Alice, she was teetering on the edge and looking into the flashes of green with wide interest.

Henry clawed for any bit of stability he could find, burying his hands deep within the dirt as he could feel himself slowly succumbing to the portal's infernal grip. He heard nothing but a ringing madness, the tearing gusts and the roaring of the portal filling his mind; leaving him hardly able to think of a solution. 

Blue eyes landing on Alice as she seemed to edge closer to the portal's edge, Henry could do little but watch. "Alice, no!" He cried out, hoping he could grab her attention amidst the noise. 

Scrunching up his nose in a rabbit-like fashion as it twitched, the large man raised his arm and let out a small shout as a pulse of what could be considered either wind, or even possibly magic, came from his right palm, being the quiet force that sent Alice toppling over the edge and into the green light. Looking content for the first time since he had arrived in Storybrooke, the man quickly bent down to retrieve his fallen fedora and placed it back onto his balding head. He quickly shot Henry a glance before making his way towards the portal himself and moved to make the jump.

Henry's head quickly shot between Knox and the round man as he struggled to keep himself hoisted, a slight relaxation of the fingers being enough to pull him towards the portal another good foot. 

Feeling his feet edge closer and closer to the whirlpool, Henry only had a few moments to see Alice fall in; her physical form seeming to dissipate away into the field. 

He didn't say anything, he couldn't - he had failed again. Why was it that every time something good happened, something worse came in to counterbalance it? 

Faye ran as fast as she could through the woods, until she caught sight of a light and when she was close enough, she stopped, and gasped as she saw what appeared to be a hole in the ground, shining with green light, and the wind that was coming from the hole was trying to take Henry, Mary Margaret, and Knox. She looked around quickly, trying to find something she could use to help them, but there was nothing. She tried to call to them over the cacophony, "HENRY! KNOX!"

She wanted to move closer but Hyde stopped her, purring and taunting, "[i]I would stay back if I were you. If you get too close, you'll be falling down the rabbit hole as well,[/i]" Faye swore under her breath, trying to figure out what she could do to help them.

Lifting the branch once again, stumbling a bit with the unknown force of the open portal, Knox looked sidelong at the round man getting up and recovering from his fall. Another much harder fight surfaced in his mind, letting it lead him the large branch was chucked off to the side before the finally outright launching himself at the man.

Putting the guy into a headlock, Knox stepped up with expectations of flat ground…his memory; the one at the very surface had solid dirt. Eyes widening almost comically as he stumbled and fell with the man towards the green lit portal, his mind finally gained the much needed clarity. No prey, no hunt, no justice, no ground...just one big, terrible mistake he’d made.

Henry cocked his head to the side, catching the fat man slowly get up to his feet and put his hat on before Knox pulled him into a headlock, the both of them falling into the portal together. 

He had come too far now, too far to let his plans crumble around him. He abandoned his sister once - one time that he regretted for years afterward, and he wasn't going to make that same mistake twice. 

With a deep, shaky breath, Henry let his eyes shut tightly before letting go of his anchor, feeling himself get sucked into the portal, where darkness surrounded his vision. 

However before Faye could do anything, Henry and Knox fell, causing her eyes to widen and she screamed in fear, "No!" She needed to do something! But...why couldn't she move!? She felt paralyzed! She kept telling her body to move, but it wouldn't heed her. What was she supposed to do?! Why couldn't she do anything?!!

When Henry fell into the portal, Mary Margaret stopped trying to fight against being pulled in. She very well couldn't have allowed Henry to go after the girl on his own, and she wasn't able to offer much resistance anyway. She was further away than he was, but the portal still pulled her in before closing up completely, the ground looking untouched as if they, and the portal, were never there.

Soon enough, Mary Margaret followed down the hole as well, and it closed up after them. Jekyll's body shuddered and her eyes were wide. She spoke up in shock, "No...NOOO!" She then hurried over to the spot and she started to dig at the ground desperately, never caring that she was blemishing her white doctor's coat with the earth, and the dirt was under her nails. She spoke desperately as she dug "No! Nononononono! This can't be happening! GOD DAMN IT! THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!"

She soon gave up on digging, and she remained on her knees, tears pouring down her face, her breath ragged as she tried to keep herself from crying. She not only lost a friend that she made during her time in Storybrooke, but she also lost Henry. Henry was the only person she felt comfortable around in The Enchanted Forest, the only person that she could talk to. 

"[i]This is why you should've let me take over, Jekyll. If I was in control now...dear Henry would still be with us,[/i]" Hyde sneered/taunted. Jekyll said to herself angrily "Shut up! You would've only made things worse...!" She and Hyde spoke no more to each other as Jekyll cried silently.