This may or not be a short chapter. I thought it be nice for Charlie and James to have a bit more onscreen bonding time, so that's what this chapter is. Enjoy!
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It was just yesterday when James and Vaggie had their date, and while some may call it a disaster, James and Vaggie and even the rest of the Hazbins would say it went swimmingly. James did give his friends a piece of his mind after finding out that he was somewhat tricked by them. But even if he hates getting tricked, he has to say that it was a great one. If it wasn't for Charlie's plan, James and Vaggie would've never gotten together. So in the end it all worked out.

James is currently seen sleeping right next to his new girlfriend, Vaggie, both snuggling close to each other with smiles on their faces. At least, Vaggie does. She's happy. Happy she's finally found a man that won't betray her or hurt her in any way, shape, or form. James on the other hand didn't seem so happy. He seemed distressed... scared even.

He's seen squirming in bed, muttering inaudible words as he's sweating.

-Inside James' Dream-

Inside James' dream, the view is seen in first person as the one looking, James, is crawling on the ground as he nears a large, flaming figure.

"N-no..." James says weakly. "Please... don't... don't do this..."

He crawls even closer to the flaming figure, his vision focusing on his looks.

He himself had a flaming skull with fangs as teeth and what seemed to be a mohawk of sorts on his skull. He was a quite bulky skeleton who wore a biker jacket with long spikes coming from his shoulders and bones crossing his upper body. He wore spikes gloves on his hands with bones around his wrists and a belt made of bones, a skull as his belt buckle. His ribcage was large and open, lying outside the jacket. He wore red pants with boots with spikes on it. Man, this guy really likes his spikes.

"Please... kill me.... not her," James says, trying to protect whoever the skeleton was going to hurt.

The beast turned his skull to peer at James and smirks evilly. He raises his foot to the air and, making James widen his eyes in shock and fear, slams it down on ths head of the skeleton's target. The sickening crunch could be heard and made James' stomach turn, knowing he failed to protect that person.

"Bastard..." James curses at the skeleton. "I'll... I'll KILL YOU!!!..."

The monster only chuckles darkly and turns to make his way to the crawling human, a satisfied and evil grin on his skull. He walked right up to James and raised his foot to stomp the man's head in.

"Vengeance has been served," he said and slammed his foot down on James head. "MY VENGEANCE."

-Back In Reality-

James, still very much alive, snaps his eyes open and launched himself out of his bed, smoke lying in his wake as he seemingly passed through Vaggie's arms. He lands on his feet and in front of his bed, breathing heavily as he looks around for any danger. He finds none and calms down, breathing in and out in hopes of calming his nerves. His heart eventually slows down back to normal and he sighs.

"Just a dream," he tells himself. "It was just a dream."

James looks back over to Vaggie, smiling at her sleeping peacefully. He was happy to finally have someone to say that he fell in love with.

Then his smile faded. His mind went back to the dream he witnessed, knowing good and well that the person he was trying to protect in his dream was Vaggie. But who was that skeleton guy? He looked a lot like a Ghost Rider, but he didn't seem like one at the same time.

Deciding to get something to drink from the kitchen, James leaves his room and makes his way to the lobby. He walks into the kitchen and goes to get a cup and the going to the sink. He pours water into the cup and turns the sink off. He leaves the kitchen and goes to one of the lobby couches, sitting down on it. He takes a long drink of his water and then sets it down on the table in front of him, looking at his hand right after. It was still smoking, but not like how it does when he turns into the Ghost Rider. His arm actually seemed like it was made of smoke, hot cinders floating about in the black, gassy substance. Getting an idea, he flexes his arm and his arm slowly goes back to being solid.

"Strange..." James mutters, still gazing at his hand as he lays back on the couch.

He then hears footsteps nearing him and immediately thinks its Vaggie coming to talk his ear off about leaving her to sleep all alone, so he turns his head to expect a very angry Moth Demon only to see Charlie in her pajamas.

"Charlie? What are you doing up so late?" James asks the princess.

"Couldn't exactly sleep," Charlie says and yawns as she nears the Rider. "You?"

"Had a nightmare," the human states.

"Nightmare?" Charlie questions as she sits next to James. "What was it about?"

"It was nothing too big," James lies. "Nightmares are normal for me, so I'm used to them."

"Stop fucking lying and tell her you saw another Ghost Rider."

Shut up, Zarathos, James orders Zarathos mentally.

Charlie then sets her head on James shoulder and he looks at her, seeing how tired the demoness is.

"Charlie, you should head to bed," James tells the girl. "As should I."

"But I can't sleeeeeep!" Charlie declares. "Can you tell me a story at least?"

"That is literally the most little sister thing I've ever heard from you!" James says, laughing a bit.

"Pllleeeeeeaaaasse?" Charlie asks James, begging Hell's Bounty Hunter with wide puppy eyes.

"NOOOOOOO! NOT THE PUPPY EYES! JAMES! YOU MUST RESIST! WE ARE THE GHOST RIDER! HELL'S BOUNTY HUNTER! WE DO NOT TELL BEDTIME STORIES AND WE SURE AS HELL DON'T GIVE IN TO-"

"Fine," James says, cutting off Zarathos' rant. "I'll tell you a story. But just ONE."

"Yay!" Charlie says, hugging her big brother figure and snuggling closer to him.

"You have absolutely no will."

"Shut it, Zar," James orders the Spirit in his head and turns to Charlie. "What kind of story do you want to hear?"

"A fairy tale!" Charlie exclaims.

"Okay, fairy tale it is," James says and thinks. "Hmmm... okay, I got one."

Charlie seemed very excited to hear James' story and said man smiles.

"Once upon a time, in a far away kingdom, there lived a family. This family ruled a kingdom, but they weren't exactly the strongest. But what they made up for in strength was their kindness that they brought to their subjects and had many allies that helped them in any time of trouble," James starts. "This family also consisted of two children. Twins to be exact. A boy and a girl. The boy, who was older than the girl, would one day take his father's place as king and rule over the kingdom. Until then, he would train himself as a knight to help protect his home."

Charlie looked transfixed in the story, probably trying her best to imagine the scenes in her head. James continued.

"One day, the queen found out she was pregnant with another child. But as the day neared for the baby to be born, the queen became very sick and it was unknown if the baby will even survive. The king brought every magician and wise man he could get to try and figure out what was wrong with his wife, but no one could find out what was wrong."

"What? This doesn't sound very happy," Charlie states.

"Not all fairy tales start out happy, but don't worry. The story will end happily," James says. "Now, can I continue?"

Charlie nods and James speaks again.

"One day, when the young prince was taking care of his mother, a stranger had somehow made his way into the castle and started to talk to the prince. He told him that he can heal his mother and save his soon-to-be-born sister as long as he makes a deal with the stranger. Seeing that no other person has been able to heal his mother, he doubted the man but still made the deal in hopes that he was doing the right thing."

"Was the queen healed?" Charlie asks.

"Yes, but at a price," James says. "Months later, the man came back in the dark of night and took the prince away from his family."

"What?! Why?" Charlie asked.

"Because that was the price of saving a life: he had to give away his life to save his mother. Now he has to work for the stranger, doing his dirty work like a huntsman of sorts," James informed Charlie. "He spent years working for the stranger, not really caring about his job. At that mattered to him was that his mother and sister were alive and well. At least, that's what he thought."

"What does that mean?" Charlie asked, her eyelids drooping a bit. The story was working.

"His home has been taken over by an enemy kingdom and the king was absolutely cruel, not caring about the lives of his new subjects at all," James said. "When the prince learned of this, he had to free his home. So, completely disobeying his boss, he took his horse and rode all they way back to his kingdom. The one HE should be ruling, not that unjust king. Once their, he killed some evil soldiers to gain the new kings attention. After that, he allowed himself to be captured so that he could be brought straight to the evil king. Once in the throne room, he saw something that made his gut wrench. His twin was being used as a slave or servant of sorts along with another younger girl with long blonde hair. It was his youngest sister, and seeing them work like slaves and not seeing his mother anywhere made him burn with anger. He quickly incapacitated the soldiers that were holding him down with ease and revealed himself as the lost prince of the kingdom, calling himself the rightful ruler of his home. He then challenged the king to a duel, winner getting the throne. The both fought valiantly, but in the end the prince won and was about to kill the fallen king. But something stopped him. It was his new sister that stopped him, telling that killing this man wasn't right, even if he did all those evil things. The prince wanted to kill the man for hurting his family, but one look at his youngest sister softened his heart. So, instead of killing the fallen king, he imprisoned him and put him in a cell for the rest of his life. After the fight, the prince was able to be with his family again and was crowned king. And, after years, he was able to hug his sister again. And for the first time ever, he was able to hug his youngest sister. As the years passed, the new king grew to become a great ruler and even married a beautiful foreign girl, and they all lived happily ever after. The... end?"

Jams looks over to see Charlie sleeping peacefully, her head resting on the man's shoulder and clinging to him for warmth. James tries to get her off him and even tried to pick up the demoness, wanting to put her in her bed so James could go back to Vaggie, but the girl wasn't budging and James was too tired to do anything. So, with a playful shake of the head and a yawn, James lays back on the couch and cuddles close to his sister figure, his eyes growing heavy and slowly closing, putting him into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Back with Vaggie, she woke up to find James gone and grew somewhat irritated that he left her by herself. She left the room and made her way downstairs, having a "girlfriend's instinct" and feeling like James is in the lobby somewhere. Once she made it there, she started to look for her partner and hears his breathing.

"There you are, estúpido," Vaggie says and walks over in that direction. "You have some explaining to do if you're just gonna up and leave me like tha-- what the?"

Vaggie quiets down, seeing the sleeping duo of James and Charlie. If it was anyone else, Vaggie would be having a raging fit and try to kill the person James was sleeping with and quite possibly even tried to hurt James too. But this was Charlie. She would never try to steal James away from Vaggie, plus the the demoness and human see each other as siblings so nothing weird would be going on between the two.

Vaggie smiled at how cute the two looked sleeping together, just how siblings would look. As she stared at the two, she took notice of how much the two resembled each other. They both had blonde hair, with James having it at a darker color, and similar smiles whenever the two smiled. They also shared similar noses and they shape of their heads were similar, with James' head being smaller than Charlie's. They actually looked like siblings.

Wait... no, that can't be possible, Vaggie thinks to herself. Unless... NO! That's stupid. They can't be related at all. Charlie's a demon with DEMON parents and James is a human with HUMAN parents. It's not possible.

Vaggie shook the thoughts away and sighed, walking over to the duo and setting the blanket she brought with her on top of them.

"Buenas noches, mi amor," Vaggie whispers to James in his ear and kissing his cheek right after.

She then leaves the two, letting them sleep in peace. But as she walked back to her room, she can't stop thinking about how similar Charlie and James were, new physical features as well as mental ones coming up and showing themselves as being similar. It's just a coincidence.

Right?
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Hey guys, sorry that I haven't been present for the past few days. I was grounded, but I have my phone back so YAY!

Like I said, this is more of a bonding chapter between Charlie and James, showing how close they truly are. The story James told Charlie was aslo a reference to James' life and how he sold his soul to Mephisto, or "the stranger", to save his sister.

I also referenced an enemy of Ghost Rider called Vengeance: The Spirit of Pollution and made a hint at how the two may possibly have a fight in the future of this book.

I have no idea why I wrote this stuff after finishing the chapter, but I guess I wanted to explain some stuff. I hope y'all enjoyed, and as usual...