Xandificer. Xander as an Artificer.

Yes and no. A three-foot slayer against a five-foot vamp wouldn't be that dissimilar to a five-foot slayer vs an eight-foot demon. Gotta love the Slayer essence for filling in the gaps, you know? Besides, with the enlarge person bit most of it is negated when she needs it to be anyway.
Still a different body than she is used to, and way more flexible while weaker. Then again, Slayer template do have a ton of body types that it has worked with, so the inheritance probably would work quite well.

So yeah, Kendra might need some retraining, but the Slayer kendra needs much less
 
Just a Side Trip to Boston.
Chapter 23
Just a Side Trip to Boston.

>>>>

"Giles, I remember telling you like less than two weeks ago that I didn't want to be dealing with the rest of your precious fucking council again, now explain to me why in the name of all that is good and holy in the god damned universe I am in fucking Boston on a payphone racking up a bill on Jenny's credit card when we should be getting back on our fucking plane. And so help me, make it good."

There is a sigh on the other end of the line. "You are aware, of course, that Kendra has died. You didn't explicitly make that clear when last we spoke, but it was implied."

Alex nods absently. "Yes, I was there. About two feet away. Had to throw away those panties."

There is a slight pause and Giles continues. "Yes. Well, when she passed on another slayer was called. This slayer is in Boston and is working with a watcher named Diana Dormer. Faith was discovered at the age of fifteen, and if the missive I received last week from her watcher and guardian of six months is to be believed, the now sixteen-year-old came from circumstances the likes of which the term 'broken home' cannot do justice."

Alex is getting irritated at this point, even more so than she was. "What does any of this have to do with me!"

There is silence again for a few moments. "Alex, The council's standard under such circumstances is to offer minimal assistance. Dormer isn't even a trained field watcher, she is a research specialist. Frankly, my superiors are setting the child up to fail and Diana to die. She knows this but thought there might be a fighting chance until she determined that there was a master vampire in the area gunning for them. She requested assistance from the only person that she thought might care, the one who sent an unbelievably powerful magical weapon to the last Slayer for no reason anybody can determine. She just didn't know that it wasn't me. Frankly, I think she is desperate enough to be trusted. But even if she wasn't, I somehow doubt you are the type that could abandon someone in such need."

Alex leans against the wall and slowly slides to the floor. Kendra's face darkens in hate as she is able to overhear both sides of the conversation easily. Jenny just looks confused and a bit strung out. Between the travel and what has happened to her former clan, she has been mentally battered quite thoroughly.

"Can we just move her to Sunnydale? Instead of flying, we could load them up and carpool them over for a couple of days? I don't really have any desire to try to take on a master vampire outside of our home turf."

"Alex, I did a bit of research into this particular master myself. If you leave him there, he will follow. And he will cut a swath of blood and pain across the land when he does, slowly building a horde to take Sunnydale with when he arrives. His name is Kakistos. Which translates roughly to 'worst of the worst.' He is not a creature of subtlety."

Alex glares into the phone. "I hate you, Giles. I hate you so much right now I need a new word for the amount I hate you. It's like, super extra special hyper hate or something. Give me the address and phone number. Tell them we're coming."

Alex doesn't bother hanging up the phone, instead throwing the headset which causes the thing to careen wildly at the end of its metal-plated cord, then come back and knock her on the head.

"Ow. Damn it. Jenny, can we rent a car for a few days, please? I think we are staying for a bit."

>>>>

An hour later they are slowly making their way through the city as the afternoon light gives way to evening. Jenny, having finally exhausted all of the factual questions she has about the earlier phone call, is now moving on to the more personal ones. "Alex, are you going to be okay with this? Giles seems to be making some big assumptions here."

There is silence for a few moments. "Probably. I mean, assuming he isn't telling me any lies and I don't think he is. My biggest problem with him is that he continues to work for these assholes, but honestly, at this point? I think he does it more or less because it is the best way he can think of to protect Buffy. So it's hard to come down too hard on him for that. Not that I won't anyway. He owes me big time for this crap. Just saying."

Kendra and Jenny offer smiles, though in both cases it is fairly strained. To say that it has been a tough couple of weeks would be putting it lightly. Jenny finally pulls up to the curb in front of a narrow, two-story brick townhouse that looks as though the basement is a separate apartment from the ground and second floors.

Kendra looks at it from the backseat. "This is it?"

Jenny nods. "Yeah. The above-ground floors. Shall we go knock?"

Alex thinks about it. "I don't think so. We know where they are, there's a hotel like three blocks from here. We'll get a room and then we can send Skite out to take a peek at things. But real quick, Kendra? I know I gave it to you, but if you don't mind passing it along, think you could hit their front door with your old sword? You can't really make good use of it anyway. Awkward as hell with your actual size and stuff."

Kendra smirks and nods, rolls the window down, and then as though she was somehow launching a shot-putt somehow the sword is sunk halfway to the hilt in their front door, wobbling slightly back and forth with a belt and scabbard hanging haphazardly off the handle, having been looped through the guard. There is a loud cry of surprise at the sound, and Jenny chuckles as the three pull away.

An hour later they are settling into their hotel room.

"So, Kendra. I know you said you had done your time, and if you meant it and want to be done slaying I will totally respect that. But..." Alex waffles a bit as she kicks the roll of cloth that opens the portable workshop. "If you just meant that you are done working for the Watcher's council directly then I have some toys you are going to need tonight when you go out to give Faith a hand."

When the Red and Green Wrights fly out carrying a suit of leather armor for her in halfling size, she giggles. "Of course, I will help this new Slayer. You cannot imagine how much I would have liked to have received such help when I was first starting out."

Alex nods. "Okay then. The armor isn't anything fancy yet, just a real basic protection enhancement, so don't expect miracles. I did manage to put together a pair of basic 'True death' weapon crystals for your swords, so they should hit pretty hard. But don't get cocky, you'll still probably need a beheading or a heart shot to take them out and that won't be easy with weapons the size of an average stake, as I am sure you know. It'll be better when you're human-sized, but... Honestly, being halfling sized is your best chance at obscurity. The Council isn't looking for anybody three feet tall, and neither are the Tarakans, you know?"

Kendra nods, smiling brilliantly from her place down by the floor as she has reduced herself to her smaller stature to put on her armor.

"Also, Gimme your choker for a few minutes. I built an upgrade for it that should be pretty plug-and-play now that it is done. Won't be able to remove it from the item again, but, meh. Can't have everything."

Kendra looks a little disconcerted at that, but does so.

Alex takes the choker and pulls a new clasp out of a small velvet box that was handed to him by Red. With some caution, she lines it up perfectly with the original clasp, then squeezes the two together, causing a bright green light and a shock of static electricity to go through the room. Then she hands it back. From down in the pit, Jenny and Kendra can hear something ratcheting quickly. Sounding as if something is being switched out.

"A bit of an upgrade. Fortunately, like effects on the same item are cheaper." She offers a wide grin, then continues as Ravage leaps up out of the pit, now wearing not only his customary armor set but also a saddle of sorts. It sits on one side rather than astride his back and is offset, like saddlebags, by another small parcel. This one carries a pair of wooden stakes and a small jug of holy water, all of which are strapped in tight.

"Your choker now does 'enlarge' or 'reduce.' Now, seriously, reducing from there will have you about the size of a cat. A small cat. Good for stealth, hitching a ride on Ravage. Maybe flying in on something if I ever get around to making a good candidate for that. But I wouldn't try to fight in it. But since you might need to be sneaking around I put a rush on it. Thought you might need it. One other thing? The Homunculi like you, and they'll fight for you as best they can. But they're not stupid and they don't want to die. If the odds get really bad, you might want to consider retreat options because they will be. They'll listen, but, just... Do you get me? Don't die."

Kendra nods. "That is fair. I will wear my earpiece, and you can tell me when they have decided, enough is enough, yes?"

At Alex's nod, Kendra activates her choker.

The voice of an astounded eight-inch tall pixie floats up from the tiny form on the floor. "Oh my gosh, everything is huge! I need a bowl of ice cream!"

Alex laughs. "When you get back. Skite is on site. He can let us know when anything happens and you can be there in about three minutes. Unless you really need him, I'll probably keep Drop Waddle here as a personal bodyguard. Is that okay? The problem with a hotel room. They don't need an invite to get in. Knowing there's a master here? Yeah. Not thrilled."

Jenny glances over. "Why didn't we just see if we could stay with Faith and Diana then?"

The two look at Alex expectantly. She looks at the ceiling. "Because if they can conclusively make a connection between Jenny, Giles girlfriend, myself, and this new pint-sized amazon Kirsten, how long do you really think it's gonna take for the Watcher's council to figure out their Slayer cheated death and try to put the yoke back on her? Personally, I think we are already taking far too many risks, no matter what Giles says about how desperate these people are. I am all about giving them a hand, but let's not shoot ourselves in the foot here, alright?"

Neither seems to have an adequate response to that, so a few minutes later when Skite reports that Faith and Diana have headed out for patrol, Kendra Hops into the saddlebag seat, buckles in, and her excited giggles are heard by the keen of ear for the five blocks it takes the two to catch up.

Faith is laughing as she steps along, flipping a stake in one hand and fingering absently the pommel of her shiny new sword with the other. Kendra can see Skite has taken up position in the trees and is mostly still though when he does move he makes it a point to scamper in a way that seems very squirrel-like unless you happen to see the black wings against something.

After a few minutes, Diana directs a scowling faith into a cemetery, one that even from here Kendra can see is still seeing some use. Creeping along behind them, it is obvious both from the way they are moving about and the snippets of conversation that Kendra hears that Diana is doing her level best to prepare Faith for what will be an encounter with a fledgling vampire from the grave they are circling. Faith is obviously bored and wants to be getting on with things. Kendra smiles a little. She remembers this point in her own training, though it occurred long before she was called as she was only seven at the time. But the attitude was very similar.

"Q to K, come in K."

Keying up her microphone, Kendra's eyes widen as a giggle escapes her minuscule lips. "K? Okay for now, but I need a better call sign than this. I expect better from my friend than regurgitating the first letter of my name."

There is a short laugh. "Everyone's a critic, I tell you what. Look, I assume they are waiting on a fledge, but you should know that Skite has eyes on a half dozen vamps incoming to your area from a mausoleum on the far side of the cemetery. Probably coming to welcome the new leech to the fold. You may wanna get combat-ready, just in case they haven't cleared out in time."

"Do you think I should introduce myself to them?" Kendra asks pointedly.

There is silence for a moment. "Really, K, that's your call. If it was up to me I would say stay out of sight, when they show up keep Dormer safe, probably do it while three feet tall if you can, they aren't gonna mistake you for a Slayer like that, and I'll have Ravage back up Faith. Once they're clear, get tiny, mount up, get hidden, go back into stalker mode and we can give them a call tomorrow."

Hopping out of her pouch and adjusting to her actual height, Kendra responds. "Okay Q. We'll try it your way."

Within a couple of minutes, there is a call from further in the cemetery and both Faith and Diana turn to face it.

"Hey Chickies! Did you two dolls come to play?"

This is spat out by a slightly overweight yet seemingly disgustingly cheerful vampire whose demeanor and clothing can be suitably reduced to 'Disco Good.' It may be the most horrifying thing Alex has seen all month. The more muscled and slightly more serious one next to him grunts slaps him once on the shoulder. "This looks like the Slayer. Like the Watcher, we have orders. To bring them before Kakistos.

As soon as that one says the name, the other five all chant, as though it is some kind of demented mantra: "For Kakistos we live! For Kakistos, we die!" Then they charge.

Faith is strong, but not experienced. At four to one odds things go south for her quickly, putting her entirely on the defensive and with her back to a tree, helpless as she sees the last two sneer as they close in on Diana. Who after narrowly missing the heart on her first shot is desperately trying to reload her crossbow.

And then there is laughter. The vampires are laughing. Looking up momentarily from her exertions she can see that a child wielding what almost has to be toy swords has stepped out from behind a tombstone to defend her. Tripping over her own tongue in her horror, Diana redoubles her efforts to load her crossbow and pleads to the child. "Run, get out of here, run as fast as you can!"

The child glances back once, smirks, and says: "Mr. Giles says hello, Miss Dormer."

Then she flings herself, screaming a battle cry at the unsuspecting vampires. A child-like creature that moves with the grace of a ballerina and the power of a runaway truck, wherever her blades meet vampiric flesh leaves long furrows of smoking, rotted, ruin. At the same time, she can look over at the once one-sided fight that Faith has gotten into and see that things have taken a turn for the better. There is some kind of... Of a mechanical dog. A robot dog, for lack of a better term. While it is not as effective as this tiny warrior maybe, it is at least as fleet of foot and when it hits, the wounds it leaves behind are just as crippling.

Within a minute, the once horribly one-sided fight against them has been handled, and thanks to the speed of the, and she cannot believe she is even thinking this, robot dog... None will even get away to tell their master what happened.

Diana Dormer isn't a field watcher, (though she did manage to get her crossbow reloaded thank you very much.) but she is a researcher. She is a very good researcher, in fact. She was working with a potential Slayer because she was trying to get a new classification of field personnel approved, the field researcher.

Simply because she was tired of only getting to see samples that were so old they were practically freeze-dried. As she is a very good researcher, she is also a fairly good scientist and has a grounding in all the basic knowledge that is taught at places like MIT. She won't be teaching classes anytime soon, but with some study, she could pass many, or even most of the introductory courses taught there and within a few very specific fields, many of the more advanced ones.

And that is why she knows that this robot dog is not a robot. She isn't certain what it is. Only what it is not, and it is not a robot.

As she stares at the robot dog and the small girl that is cleaning bits of gunk out of its joints with a stiff wire brush, Faith calls out from where she was leaning against a tree. A call that is part warning, part terror, part resignation. Then from directly behind Dormer, there is the unforgettable sound of a vampire collapsing into ash, and when she turns around, she can see that the one they were originally here for had risen and was somehow killed. She sees the child look into the sky and say, "I thought you were keeping him at the hotel?" There is a beat missed, and then. "Thanks."

Faith walks up to Diana, who is making her way to the small girl. Diana puts her hand out to shake. "Diana Dormer. This is my ward, Faith. Thank you for your help. You said Giles sent you?"

Kendra looks up at them. Looks at Faith, who seems confused, and maybe a little hurt.

"Kirsten." She says, shaking the older woman's hand gently. She pats the side of the dog affectionately.

"This is Ravage, and the eye in the sky that just nailed your fledgie is DW. Honestly, we just stopped by to drop off the sword, glad to see you're using it. Sorry about your door. All we knew about the area at the time was that we had twenty minutes to get under cover before the sun went down and a master vampire was wandering around. We figured you'd get over it. But since we were here for a few days, I figured we'd follow you on a patrol or three, help if you needed it. Really, all we ask is that you keep us out of your reports to the Watchers Council."

Diana doesn't like that stipulation much. "Why would you prefer that?"

Kendra shrugs as she decides how to answer this. She doesn't really want to lie to a Watcher, but... She can kind of see where Alexis is coming from. "Because we don't mind helping good people doing good things when it's our idea, but the council likes to tell other people what to do a lot. We've dealt with them before, and don't want to again. Giles says you need help and are good people, so here we are. It was kinda on our way anyway. But if we smell more watchers, we'll just assume you'd rather have them around and we'll leave."

And then so would the watchers, Diana realizes with the clarity that comes with knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are being screwed by your boss in ways that are never even kinda fun.

Kendra looks back at the two of them. "So, do you want us to give you a call tomorrow afternoon? Maybe we can try to figure out how to deal with this Kakistos?

Diana gives her a grateful nod and says they will be available anytime after two.

Faith isn't even sure what to make of all of this. She is grateful, of course. To be alive, to still have Diana. But she was supposed to be this one girl in the world, but instead, there are two? And now there's two and a shorty with a mechanical dog? And crossbow bolts from heaven? And some kind of extra backup at a hotel nearby?

What. The. Fuck? And how does she sign up? Because six to two odds where her back-up is Diana, though she loves her watcher and everything the woman has done for her... That isn't good, and while this was probably the worst it seems to be that odds like it are happening more and more.

And it's only been like a week to get this bad.

>>>>

Author's note:
If you haven't caught on yet, I tend to be a lot more interested in character development than I am in long, drawn-out descriptions of fight sequences. In the material that I am editing, the already finished stuff? There are maybe three or four fights, all told, that are more fleshed out than this one. In something like three hundred thousand more words. So... Hoping that works for you.
:p
Thanks for reading!
 
Secrets? Who Needs Those?
Chapter 24
Secrets? Who Needs Those?

>>>>

The next morning, Kendra is the last to get up. Their room only had a single bed in it, and they had planned to sleep in shifts. Partly because they were concerned about maintaining a watch, but also because they were concerned about trying to fit all three of them on the one bed.

As it happens, eight-inch tall people with Slayer constitutions can be disgustingly comfortable sleeping on a cushioned chair and using a spare hoodie as both blanket and pillow.

When Kendra does finally stir in the morning, it is to the sound of paper wrapping being crinkled and a horribly fattening American fast-food breakfast being waved in her direction. Alex's somewhat mocking tone is easily heard over the sound of her stomach growling, but only due to the diminutive size of it currently. "Time to wake up, we have about three hours to get our act together before we go down to their place."

Alex drops the sausage, egg, cheese, and biscuit-based monstrosity on the small table by the chair, still mostly in its wrapper. Kendra peers over the edge of the table with wide eyes and can't stop herself from salivating at the thought of all that food, were she to try to eat it at her current size.

Alex laughs a bit at her antics and steps back to the kitchenette counter, where Jenny is alternating between eating and going through the reams of paper that her family left her in the folders that were on the table at the hotel in Rome.

"So what is all that anyway?" Alex asks while dipping a deep-fried excuse for a hashed brown wedge into some ketchup.

Jenny doesn't respond for a few seconds, then she looks up, her eyes almost struggling to get clear of the pages. She shakes her head, seemingly at a bit of a loss, opens her mouth to speak, closes it, tries again. Finally, she puts down the breakfast sandwich she had been nibbling on, closes the folder altogether, and faces Alex directly. "There is a lot of stuff here. Deeds to landholdings. Safety deposit boxes and vaults that are entrusted or willed to me. Lists of things that are getting mailed to me. But there's a price. A price they were apparently afraid to tell me about for fear I'd tell them to shove it up their ass, and a price that now that there's nobody else to pay, I don't really have a choice."

She purses her lips in irritation and blows out a sigh. "The three black folders contain the Vengeance lists. Files on who, and why, what they did, what our response was, where we think they are. There are like two hundred of them currently active. Most of them are small fry. Little stuff. Left me at the altar, five years of irritable bowel and premature ejaculation. That kind of thing. But the spells didn't end just because the clan did. So somebody has to be responsible for them. Either keep an eye on these people somehow or find them and find a way to end the curses on them. And some of these people, damn it, Alex, they needed to be cursed. Honestly, they needed to be stuck in the electric chair."

She opens a file and flips it around to show a picture of a barely dressed man with matted, filthy, and unkempt hair. An untrimmed beard that was out of control, and naked aside from some shredded remains of pants. His half-smile is at odds with a snarl that seems to somehow be coming from the same picture.

"This son of a bitch is a werewolf. Infected with lycanthropy. I know. Sad, right? Well, when somebody told him he should lock himself up at night on the full moon he apparently missed the memo about doing that when he was alone. The whole supernatural community in the area knew he was infected, but they knew he locked himself up, could hear him in the early mornings thrashing around in the basement of his home. They left him to it, he was a good guy, did what he was supposed to do. When they found mutilated bodies after a full moon, it couldn't be him, they knew he was locked up on nights these women had died. These children had died. By the time he was caught, he'd killed over sixty girls and young women. Four of them Kalderash. The clan was harsh with him, but not harsh enough if you ask me. They should have just killed him."

Alex is looking a bit green, but can't help herself. "What did they do?"

Jenny still looks unbelievably upset at the whole problem that has been dumped in her lap, but she can't help but quirk a slight grin.

"The Elders decided that if he was so fond of eating the flesh of things that walk on two legs it would be a travesty to take such pleasure from him. They cursed him with an unbearably powerful need to cannibalize his own flesh. He can fight it, most of the time. It says here that he'll eat his own finger and toenail clippings as well as scabs as a matter of course. But on the full moon, he devours himself until he can't function. Heals. Does it again. Three or four times a night, and by the time the full moon is over, he can spend the rest of the month recovering from what he does to himself. He'd be better off dead. We'd be better off with him dead, and if we aren't going to kill him, removing the curse is just letting loose a murderer. There are like fifty cases like this. Some are a little better, some worse. But all would be imprisoned for life or dead by any normal system of justice."

She hangs her head. "I don't even have any idea what I want to do with this, much less what I should do."

Alex reaches out and holds her hand. "We'll figure it out. We can run it by Giles when we get home. Maybe he'll have some ideas. But if you want my vote on that one? We find him and put a nice silver bullet to him. Maybe not even so much for him, but for the sake of any poor schmuck who has this disease that is doing the right thing. Why leave something like that out where people can see it to get the wrong impression?"

The two hear Kendra grunt an assent from around her sandwich, behind Alex. Then Alex speaks up again. "In the meantime, can we put these files away for now? We need to make a couple of decisions here. We are kinda in a bad spot."

Jenny starts putting paperwork away and looks at Alex quizzically. "How so?"

Alex jerks a thumb back at Kendra. "Kendra here let slip that she wasn't alone last night, remember? In a big way. We also had to show a Watcher that wasn't G-man a homunculus. We never really discussed what her story was going to be, which I am going to call all of our bad, but it doesn't change the fact that now that we're here we kinda need to come up with a direction to go. Basically, if she decides to go running off to the Watcher's Council with what she knows already, between what they know and what she knows they can make some guesswork that'll make our lives unbelievably shitty. But the only way to stop the evil that I can see is to come clean and pray she'll see reason if we offer to help her with her taquitos problem."

Jenny looks up, smirking. "That's Kakistos."

Alex nods. "Yeah. What she said."

Kendra laughs a little. "So we are offering assistance for silence? We are the cheapest soldiers of fortune ever."

Alex rolls her eyes. "Unless somebody else can see a better way to get through this than that? I considered just sending Kendra to their house and the two of us working through phones or something, but honestly, I think working behind the scenes like that would make Dormer more likely to go to the council and I'd rather not have Faith or even Diana, have to pay a blood price to a master vampire for an attempt at security that I don't think is going to work anyway."

Jenny looks at her. "So basically you are saying that we should all head on over and hope that if we are really nice and really helpful, maybe Dormer won't thank us by sicking the damn council on us by way of a thank you?"

Alex looks disgruntled to a degree that is beyond belief. "That's half of it. The other half is that if she goes to the council with what she already knows we are probably screwed anyway. Giles knows me. Giles knows you. The council knows this, we just made a damn delivery for him. You and I were the last to see Kendra alive. Kirsten gave Kendra's sword to them. Admittedly even if I had seen the pitfall I still would have given it to her, but I might have come up with a more clever way to do it and we sure as hell wouldn't have been taking credit for it. But as things stand, we are already hosed. At this point, it's just damage control. If we don't want the Watchers Council crawling up our collective bums with magnifying glasses and big holier-than-thou speeches full of bullshit with nine-millimeter responses probably if we turn them down, we really need Dormer to play ball."

Kendra looks up from her sandwich. "What if she won't? What if we get there and the place is wall-to-wall Watchers?"

Alex sighs. Looks at Jenny. "I know you're the adult here, but if it was up to me and she sells us out? We drop off the grid, do our level best to take out Kissy-toes, or whatever his dumb name is, and then get the hell out of town before things can get any more stupid. I'm already starting to hate this place and I've barely been here a day. The Hellmouth is less annoying to me, and that's saying something."

Kendra reaches into the bag for a second sandwich as Jenny is putting the last of the folders away. "It sounds like the plan is to try to team up then. Are we letting them in all the way? Or are we going to try to keep secrets still?"

Alex shrugs. "Honestly I'm not sure what secrets are left to keep, other than Kendra's and my real identities. They know I make magic items, they know about the homunculus, and they know that we have a sword-wielding halfling maniac that can butcher vamps traveling with us. I mean, what else is there really? At this point, I think the best-case scenario is that she is grateful enough to just keep her mouth shut, and the most we can really hope for is that we can get back home before one of her reports, whether she means to or not, causes the idiots to start poking around. Long term? I hate to say it but I think that thanks to Giles leaning on me one time too many my options are going to get narrowed down to either leaving the Hellmouth and disappearing somehow or seeing to it that the Watchers Council decides that I am really not worth the effort."

There is a moment of silence for that as the three process what has been said. Then Jenny looks at Alex. "I had a thought about Kakistos. Well, about any vampire, really, but I spent some time on the phone with Giles last night while you were assisting with the patrol and got some further information. Apparently, he is so old that his hands and feet have become cloven, and his skin has hardened to the point that it is more or less impossible to get a stake into it."

Kendra draws her swords and raises an eyebrow. Jenny nods and continues. "That is one thought, absolutely. But I was also thinking, we don't generally use normal hunting tips on our crossbow bolts, much less use crossbow bolts with an unsecured tip. But what would happen if something like Kakistos got hit with a few broadheads that ended up left in his body and then you hit him with that wand you were using that made Ted fry? Wouldn't he pretty much burn up from the inside out? So even if the tip can't reach the heart, he'd still be taking serious hurt from it? We could do the same thing with buckshot too, for that matter."

Kendra looks curious as Alex considers the possibilities. "Well, there's no reason why it wouldn't work except that I would have to be within like forty feet of a master vampire to make it happen. The range on 'Heat Metal' is kinda garbage. Can't tell you how not thrilled about that idea I am. Maybe we plan for it but keep it in reserve. Honestly, if we can find out for sure where the thing is, I am pretty sure we can take him. I have a few tricks I can pull that will go a long way toward seeing this done, but the problem is that I need to know ahead of time. I'll need like five minutes of prep before we kick in the door. If I can get that, we'll go through whatever he's got there like it was nothing I'm betting."

Kendra smiles but looks confused. "How so?"

Alex leans back in her chair, shrugs. "A lot of the stuff I can enchant items with permanently I can also do temporarily. Takes about a minute, lasts about ten minutes to ten hours depending on the spell. So take your swords for example. Right now they do effectively about double damage against vamps and allow you to actually go for heart shots. With a minute to cast, I can have them doing double that, or a bit more than four times standard damage, with a better chance to hit, for just under two hours. A few hits, and heart shot or not you'll likely overwhelm the regeneration of most lower-tier vamps and cause them to dust at that point. After that, I can add some fire or whatever else. If I have time, I have options. Armor and weapons. I can also upgrade the homunculus the same way. Actually, there is even more I can do for them."

She leans back in her chair and rubs her eyes. "But the thing is if we get jumped instead of the other way around? Then things don't look so skippy. I haven't spent a lot of time making toys for myself. Been mostly trying to keep Slayers alive. So... If I get jumped I am probably going to be worm food. I'll need a pretty serious escort if I am gonna be going in, especially since it doesn't make a lick of sense for me to use a bunch of spells to upgrade my combat capabilities when the best I could do for myself is maybe be adequate. But I guess we can go over this more once we talk to Diana and Faith. Hopefully, they have a better idea of what is going on. Are we agreed, at least, that we are mostly going to come clean with them? Proper names and former Slayerness not included?"

As the other two women nod, the three look around the room to see that Red, Green, and Yellow are already packing things away in a whirlwind of movement.

>>>>

A couple of hours later after showers and a light lunch, the three approach the home of the most recent slayer called. Alex can't help but smirk at the square of duct tape over the hole they put in the door.

She'll need to fix that while she's here. It had seemed like a good idea at the time but... Yeah. Kinda rude.

Kendra... ('No, damn it, Kirsten. She's Kirsten right now, get used to it.' Alex thinks to herself.) Kirsten at three feet tall is the one to knock and the door opens almost instantly. Faith is standing there, with Diana slightly behind her. The two step back a few paces, Diana smiling and Faith mumbling under her breath.

"Didn't really think you'd show."

After the three ladies step in and are led to a cozy living room, introductions are made by Kirsten.

"Faith, Diana, these are my friends. Alexandra, who crafted the sword you now wield, and Jenny, who takes care of us and tries to keep us out of trouble."

"Unsuccessfully." Is Jenny's laughing commentary.

Alex just nods and keeps her eyes on Diana.

Diana looks at the three and after offering some refreshments, which is turned down, she speaks about more current events.

"First, I would like to thank you again for your assistance last night. My faith in my Slayer is absolute, but even still your assistance was most timely and appreciated." She stops for a moment as if gathering her thoughts. "In the interest of full disclosure, I feel that I should tell you a couple of things. First, I contacted Rupert Giles this morning. You asked me not to contact the Watcher's Council, so I did not. But I dislike going into a situation blind. So I spoke with him at length."

She fidgets in her seat a moment, then continues, her dark blonde hair waving a bit as she nods to herself, as though she has made a decision. "Frankly, what I learned concerned me greatly."

She turns to Kirsten. "He does not know you. I described a tiny warrior of great skill, no more than three feet tall and he asked if I was inebriated at the time. Oddly though, he not only knew of your robot dog but knew both its name and the name of the unseen thing that was flinging crossbow bolts to save me last night. He also gave me the names of both of you." She points to Alex and Jenny. Her eyes are alight with curiosity and perhaps lacking as much humility as Alex might have been hoping for.

"The two of you were in a bulletin I received from the council not long ago. Within a day or two of Faith being activated by Kendra's death. A death that neatly destroyed the corpse utterly and only the two of you were there to witness. Delivering a demon capable of causing hell on earth to the council using powerful magical means to expedite customs issues. Possible involvement in the takedown of the Judge and at least half of the Scourge of Europe. The banishment of possessing entities to another plane of existence, and let us not forget, supplying weapons to hunters of the supernatural. Then handing to us Kendra's old weapon."

She nods, seemingly to herself. As though she is getting herself ready. "So I have an exceptionally powerful magic user and magic item creator plus what Giles describes as a supremely talented techno-pagan that would be more than capable of whistling up an iron clad new identity for somebody. Then a third member that your friends from home don't know and you seem to have met on your travels. A third member that can fight like a Slayer, with the strength and speed of a slayer, yet you are treating like a sister and if the looks I am getting right now are any indication, you'd die for. Or at least kill for."

She sighs in the face of the looks of suspicion she is getting from across the room. "I don't pretend to understand everything that is going on, though I would love to find out if you ever felt I was worth the risk. I can promise I have no intention of telling the Watcher's Council anything. To say that they have lost their place of prominence in my heart as a place from which to judge my morality would be putting it very lightly. But, can I ask?"

She turns to Kirsten. "Are you Kendra?"

>>>>

Author's Note.
Yeah. Super secret spies they are not. Anybody that really thought they were going to be able to keep Kendra active without her getting found out by people that witnessed it really needs to rethink the levels of paranoia that dealing with the supernatural day in and day out would instill in a person. Between that and not giving Giles the 411 so he could back their play? This was doomed. But, Diana is smart. So it was probably doomed anyway, this just made it a cakewalk.

In any case, take care all!
 
Last edited:
So the question is if they're going to flip about it or react reasonable. They do have serious reason to be paranoid about watchers
 
So the question is if they're going to flip about it or react reasonable. They do have serious reason to be paranoid about watchers
serious reason to be paranoid or not, they had already gone in with a plan of mostly being honest, since anything else was doomed to failure. So i would say unlikely to flip out, if unhappy about everything? With a sideorder of "But seriusly, fuck the watchers council, they set us all up to die"

but big thing is reincarnation getting revealed, since that is abit of a gamechanger. especially as for as long as it's a secret, every dead slayer is potentially one more slayer running around if they can get a part of the body, and if the bad guy know, well... body disposal suddenly gets way trougher

bit concerned about how easy it was to get kendra aboard about not telling her dad/watcher she isn't tortured by demon though... in canon it took quite alot for her to stop drinking coolaid...
 
Urban Renewal.
Chapter 25
Urban Renewal.

>>>>

The near-silence in the room stretches for a good ten seconds as Alex facepalms, Jenny goes as white as a sheet, and the halfling looks up at both of them while shrugging one shoulder and biting her lip.

"I guess our response probably told you. But, um. Yes. I am."

Diana smiles unreservedly for the first time that day. "I knew you were powerful, Alexandra. I could tell by what the Watchers council has sent me that the two of you were both impressive. But to pull the wool over the eyes of the Tarakans? I don't know that it has ever been done. As far as they and the Council are concerned, Kendra died. Case closed. They even had one of their tame seers double check to make sure."

She turns back to Kendra. "If you don't mind telling me, I mean if it isn't some kind of trade secret, how did you do it? In case I ever need to use the technique for Faith."

Alex throws her head back and groans. "Oh my god, no, please, can we please not? Kendra, please. The last thing I need is more pressure from the damn Watcher's Council, you know what they'd do with that." Then turns to Diana. "Is it really not enough that we came to help you with your Master Vampire problem? Can that please be enough for now?"

Kendra looks at the crestfallen Diana and the downcast eyes of Faith, who is now hearing that whatever this miracle get out of jail free card is, she isn't worthy of it. She nudges Alex, then nods at Faith, who is scowling at the floor as if trying to decide whether to rage or cry.

Alexis hangs her head. "Fine. I'm gonna go make some tea. In a month, when her reports have tipped the fuckers off and they're fitting me for a ball and chain to go with my explosive collar, I want you to know that I hold you entirely responsible." She gets up and heads to where she saw the kitchen was coming in, starts rummaging around through cupboards.

Jenny turns to Faith and Diana, her voice barely above a whisper. "It wasn't a big secret to keep her alive. We, well... We didn't manage that. The Tarakans weren't wrong. They just weren't able to keep her dead. Alexandra has some..." She thinks for a few seconds. "Highly unusual talents. One of them involves bringing back the recently deceased into a new body. The problem is the soul has to be willing, and the body they get is random and not always even close to human. I've since seen the list and read the descriptions of the options. At three feet tall, Kendra still got lucky."

Diane whispers. "She can force the dead back to life?" She turns to Kendra. "You were cheated from your rest?"

Kendra raises an eyebrow. "Did the council say how the Tarakans had me slain?"

Diana shakes her head. "Just that it was an assassination, and very quick. Frankly, I was assuming a sniper's bullet followed by some kind of effort to get rid of your corpse."

Kendra purses her lips in disgust. "I was plagued for six days by an assassin mage who was summoning a Stygian Soul Shredder, and I had an unlucky moment. There was to be no eternal reward for me. When Alex heard this, she fixed it. Because that is what she does if people let her. She fixes things. Makes them better. But the Council doesn't seem to want to do that and has been generally getting in her way for a while now. Between sending my old watcher to harass her, and then sending her out with me when they knew I was dodging an assassin. Both occasions when she had done nothing but help their own cause."

Jenny looks towards the door to the kitchen where she can hear the water running and lowers her voice to a whisper. "I'll be honest, Miss Dormer. Prove to her that you can be trusted. Prove to her that you are able to set aside blind loyalty to a backstabbing Council in favor of friends that can help you and keep you alive, and Faith may well be the first Slayer in history to live to thirty without dying. Something Buffy and Kendra have both already failed at. If you can't prove this? I don't see you getting a second chance. She is pretty gun shy, at this point, and for good reason."

The cry from the kitchen is so incongruous it causes them all, even Faith, a strained chuckle when it happens. "What is it with you Watcher types?! What is wrong with normal freaking tea that comes in little bags, why do I have to deal with all this loose leaf crap?! Giles is the same way, makes me crazy!"

Faith motions to herself and then to the door to the kitchen. At Diana's nod, she gets up and walks over to lend their new friend a hand.

"The tea balls are in the drainboard. We used them last night."

Alex nods, poking around the ceramic jars on the counter looking for the one that contains the sugar. "Yeah, I saw them. Just annoying. It's like adding fifteen extra steps to a cup of tea. Even makes the cleanup more of a pain."

Faith shrugs. She doesn't really disagree, but backing Alex up here would be highly disloyal to Diana, and as Diana is probably the one human being on the face of the planet that actually gives a shit about her that isn't going to happen.

"Why'd you come to help, if you hate the council so much?" Faith asks. The question isn't loud. It isn't even particularly strained or said as if there is a real emphasis on it. But when Alex looks up, she can see it in her eyes.

She wants to know what I expect to get out of this. She wants to know my angle. She expects this to be a scam, even now.

Alex turns to Faith directly, closing the last jar as she does so. "I've been privileged so far in my life to fight next to two slayers, as well as read the Watcher's journals about the exploits of dozens more. I realize that isn't a huge sampling from a scientific perspective, but let me tell you what I've learned so far."

Alex places the jar back on the counter and organizes her thoughts for a moment while Faith backs up a step. This is sounding like it was gonna get way deeper than she was ready for.

"Slayers are generally called between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. On average, they are dead within six months. Now, if you parse through the data available, the lifespan of the slayer is actually shorter if the council is involved. By an average of five weeks. They kill a lot more before they fall, true. Or at least, it is recorded that they do. But they are used up like a drill bit and then tossed aside when the Council decides to replace it."

Alex gives a dry chuckle and leans against the counter. Holding her head in her hand and rubbing her eyes she continues.

"You know before last Halloween I tried really hard to see the good the Council was doing. I really did. But, my circumstances changed. My research needed to be a lot more targeted in the what-if and the examples of what they'd done in the past. I can't find the hard evidence yet to convince Giles, but I think the reason that they only supply a single Watcher instead of a team is that the Watchers that are chosen to pair with Slayers are the ones that basically had too much of a conscience to work in other areas of the organization."

She drops her hand down to her side and looks Faith in the eye as she continues. "If you read through the journals for the last hundred years it's always the same thing. Optimistic and dedicated people that want their Slayer to be the first one to be able to die of old age, then the council spends however long their Slayer lasts essentially grinding away at their hope until when they finally lose this precious burden that they would have given their lives for, and many do, they are a shell that'll do what they're told for the next thirty years."

She turns and pokes around at the varieties of tea they have available before she continues.

"You see their names crop up in journals later doing things like stealing new potentials from their parents to tell a new fresh-faced Watcher some lie about how they got their ugly mitts on the child. Frankly, sometimes I wonder if along with everything else Slayers have some ability to sense duplicity if they spend enough time around a person, and this is the Council's way to get past that. See to it that you only ever deal directly with people that don't know the whole score and are dedicated enough not to ask too many questions until it's too late."

She looks up sharply. "That's just a theory, by the way. I wouldn't count on it being true even if all Slayers were created equal, and I'm not sure they are."

Faith nods. While this is undeniably interesting, she can't help but be a little annoyed that the long-winded bitch has yet to answer the fucking question. The kettle begins to whistle and after setting up a few of the tea balls into cups, she pours the boiling water while Alex continues talking after a quick nod of thanks.

"Here's the thing. If you read those journals. Really read them. Word for word. Between the lines. I think by the end, at least seventy percent or more of those Council Slayers knew what was coming and they did their job anyway. They did it and they saved people by the hundreds, maybe thousands. Maybe sometimes the whole planet. Apocalypses are a thing. But they knew they were gonna die, and they knew they were getting played by assholes and they did it anyway."

Alex takes her cup. "Honestly, I don't know if I have what it would take to do that, Faith. I don't know if many do. I don't know that you do, though I suspect that whatever it is that makes you a Slayer also makes that damn likely. But I do know that anything I can do to make that job easier, to keep you alive longer, and to make your life happier, I'm prepared to do."

She gets a sour look on her face. "Assuming the fucking council doesn't shoot me first."

Faith looks a little confused. "That simple?"

Alex nods. "That simple."

The slow smile that breaks out across Faith's face is like seeing the sun peering from behind a stormy sky. "All right then."

>>>>

Taking the tea into the living room, the cups are passed around. Diana is the first to speak. "I would like to apologize. I saw what I thought could be a way out of this mess and went for the brass ring without considering that it might hurt the one holding it were I to pull."

Alex shakes her head. "Look, can we just get down to business? What do we know about Kaki-whoey aside from him being old and hard to hurt?"

Diana reaches to the coffee table for a notebook and moistens her fingertip, flipping idly through a few pages. "He lives, for lack of a better word, in an old brick and mortar warehouse not far from the docks that has been semi-abandoned since the ending of the second world war."

Jenny quirks an eyebrow. "Semi abandoned?"

Diana nods, flips two pages, and continues. "Yes. It seems that it was used by the Navy extensively at that time as well as during the first world war and the civil war, and there was talk of making it a historical site. Unfortunately, when the paperwork got stalled indefinitely nobody else picked up the project so it has been left to rot for the last fifty years or so."

She flips back a couple of pages and the slightest of groans is heard escaping her lips as her expression goes to one of disgust.

"To be honest, as bad as Kakistos is, and yes, he is bad, he isn't the real problem. The problem is his right-hand man, er, vampire. Mr. Trick. Before you say anything, I didn't name him."

Kendra quirks a delicate-looking eyebrow. "Why is this Mr. Trick such a problem?"

Diana scowls into her notes. "Kakistos is old school. In fact, he redefines old school. Spears were probably a new innovation when he was turned. He is difficult to hurt and will be very dangerous, but is a known quantity. Trick is a different breed altogether. Black male. Slightly above average height. Slender. He likes guns. He likes traps. He is a fan of hostages, of turning friends and family, of getting legitimate authorities involved, and then claiming to be the offended party right up until he can get away. He is known to stalk and turn people for specific skill sets, so expect to deal with more than your average frat boys."

She flips a page as she checks her notes again. "He'll have cops, mafia goons, soldiers, any combination of the above. He runs Kakistos' illegal but still mundane rackets that turn a profit in the city, so he'll have normal people on his payroll as well in the form of lawyers, pimps, enforcers. I shudder to think what the creature will be capable of if he survives long enough to attain master status. A frontal assault would be madness, there is no doubt in my mind that we would simply be gunned down."

Alex considers for a minute. "How much of an impact are they really making in the city? I mean, not to be an ass, but if I could come up with ways to greatly increase our odds if we hunkered down for a week or two and just maintained normal patrols to whittle down their numbers, what would be the damage? How many do they kill?"

She stops and hangs her head. "Sorry to put it so bluntly, but you are giving me really ugly information here. If I can double our chances in a week and all they are gonna do is nibble on a couple of jack-offs that were cheating on their wives at a brothel anyway, I say we take the week. If they're murdering school kids by the busload, obviously that assessment changes."

Diana nods. "No, that is fair. Unless they are recruiting, which they may be after last night, they average just over one kill per day. Though the local blood banks and butcher shops do a brisk trade, I've noted. In a city the size of Boston, frankly, the statistic is practically invisible. I suspect that the one per day is for Kakistos himself. A vampire as old as he would be unlikely to be willing to stoop to animal or donated sustenance."

Jenny looks at Alex and Kendra. "I think we should get a look at this warehouse. Think we should pull out Skite tonight? I'll ask the questions and you can have him check it out for me?"

Diana looks at Jenny confused while Alex nods, then can't help it and smirks. "I know that smile, you have something in mind, don't you?"

Jenny manages a smile. "Maybe. I won't know for sure until I get a look at it. But if the Navy used it in the second world war, it would have been wired up for at least lighting and possibly heat. The wiring they used then was, well it was bad. Cloth around metal, basically. A lot of the structure of these old warehouses, even the brick and mortar ones, is wood. So if they are still on the grid, and somebody that knew what they were doing were to turn the power on full bore at noon? Well. It would be a really bad time to be a vampire I am guessing."

Kendra turns to Diane. "Mr. Zabuto always told me that a master vampire will have a back way out. Do we know Kakistos'?

Faith is the one that answers. "Storm drains. They always duck into the storm drains whenever I am anywhere near there and it starts getting close to dawn. I bet they have a way in through the floor."

Alex nods. "So we either plug the hole or have something waiting for them, kick on the power, the whole place burns down and whatever is left gets fried by the sun as the rescue workers try to save them. Not perfect, but viable. Now, let's get the map overlays for the city and storm drains if you would Jenny?"

She nods and slides her laptop out of her bag. Pricking her thumb once with a safety pin, and wiping the blood on the casing while saying a few words causes the machine to glow. Diana jerks at the sight. "What did you do?"

Jenny distractedly looks halfway up. "What? Oh, that. I needed access to the internet so I piggybacked on the inactive second phone line coming into your home. It shouldn't cause you any problems. If it does let me know."

While she is doing this Alex is standing up, and as soon as there is a break in the conversation she gets Diana's attention. "Hey, look. I guess you already know the biggest secret." She jerks her head toward Kendra. "But for the record, this is another thing that is definitely on the no-telling-the-council list, OK? I need to take over your living room here for the duration of our stay. Need the space. Like, a fourteen by eight patch. Gimme a hand somebody moving some furniture?"

A raised eyebrow and a bit of exertion later, the two portable holes are laid out a couple of feet apart. As soon as the workspace is open, the homunculi emerge in all their glory, Ravage leaping gracefully out and sitting next to Kendra stoically, as she is the one he is currently defending. Drop Waddle flies out and perches somewhat oddly to the back of a stuffed chair. Skite as usual flits about like he's lost his mind and starts randomly exploring his environment. The three wrights fly over to Alex and hug various portions of her anatomy, then back off and look at her expectantly. She nods towards Faith and the three grin, zipping back into the work area for the measuring tapes.

"Faith, we are going to be putting together some basic armor for you. May not have time to enchant it, but it'll be better than not having it, anyway. Just cooperate with 'em and they'll be quick. Do you have any preference as to color? We've found that mobility is more important than most anything else with slayers, so the style is pretty minimal. It kinda resembles motocross safety gear, if you're familiar. Kendra was wearing it last night, but if you didn't get a good look I wouldn't blame you. Busy night."

Faith looks confused. "Black I guess. Maybe camo? Tombstone gray? Is there a color better than others?"

Alex looks at her for a second and laughs. "Wow. Next, you'll tell me you even want a helmet."

Faith again looks confused. "Yeah I want a helmet, I like my face like it is."

Kendra looks up at this "Ooh, yeah! Helm, can I get one as well?"

The slow smile slipping across her face belies the look of astonishment. "Yes. Yes, you most certainly can, and Kendra, I'm sorry I didn't ask before. I offered one to Buffy and she turned me down because she was afraid of getting helmet hair."

Both girls look at her in absolute disbelief.

>>>>

>> That night.
Jenny sits and looks at her young friend as she lays on the bed with her eyes shut. Diana is on the far side of the room with a notebook open and pen poised and ready. Ravage has stayed behind to keep an eye on the downstairs for them and DW is discretely following the two, now helm wearing, and both armored slayers as they conduct a quick patrol of the surrounding area. But Skite and his scouting mission is the current focus in the room.

Alex clears her throat. "Okay. I think I found it. Yeah, they have black paint on all the windows. Old glass though. When we try this, might be worth it to have Skite bust a bunch of them as part of it. The smoke won't kill the vamps anyway but the sunlight will and the airflow will help the fire. There is... Huh. There is an emergency fire water tower thingy on the roof. Guessing it is one of the old 'yank a chain' types. God, the water in it must be nasty if there is any. But we'll need to either disable the system or drain the tank first."

Jenny speaks up. "Is there power to the building?"

Alex responds. "Following the wires now. It looks like they must have thought about doing something at some point because the meter outside isn't fifty years old, it's a modern one. But it's freestanding, and then it feeds into the old one that is on the building. There's a lock on the modern one and a faded red tag on it. Looks like it's been there for years."

Jenny purses her lips. "The city must have recognized the fact it was a firetrap ages ago but couldn't get it torn down for historical reasons or fixed up for budgetary ones."

Diana Breaks in. "Highly likely, the local municipality has been cutting corners where they can for over a decade since they started that highway bypass ridiculousness. The 'Big Dig' I think the locals call it. Something like this would be well within their scope to pull at the moment."

Jenny nods. "This would have been their bandage to stop what we are planning from happening accidentally. We'll need to get down there, pop that lock, and push the breakers over before I put that box back on the grid to get this to work."

Diana speaks from behind Jenny. "Plus we need to stop them getting out through the storm drain. The maps we looked at earlier were pretty conclusive, I believe Faith was right."

Alex smiles, shaking her head even though her eyes stay shut. "That isn't really a problem. It hasn't rained in a week and the ten-day forecast looks clear. I checked."

Diana looks confused. Jenny smirks. "She means there won't be any water down there. Let me guess, we are going to preempt the electrical firestorm with a few drums of gasoline or something similar spread around below them?"

Alex makes a decidedly unladylike snort. "Probably use gasoline and soap mix or something. Call up the Frog brothers and get a good recipe for poor man's napalm, they'd know." There is a slight pause. "Huh. Well, that was easy."

Jenny shifts slightly. "What was easy?"

"Oh, I had Skite fiddle around with the maintenance release valve on the water tank. It's now draining off the side of the building, at a pretty quick trickle. Given the size of the tank it may take a while but since I am doubting they have the water turned on it won't be an issue after that. No other buildings are close to it. There are garage doors, so we'll need to throw out some spike strips or park something big in front of the doors in case they try to drive out, but I think we have a workable plan. We'll sort the details out tomorrow and plan on enacting this travesty say mid-morning the day after?"

>>>>

>> Ten Forty-Five in the morning, the day after next.
The crew watches as Kakistos, ancient grandmaster vampire, tries to get out of a limousine that has burst through garage doors and then plowed into a moving van that has been left parked there. While the warehouse burns behind him and as he screams in horror, a crossbow bolt full of alchemist's fire enters his right eye from somewhere across the street and the sun's bright and shining rays purify his body.

The last thing this powerful and evil creature hears as he desperately tries to fight the inexorable crumbling of his body is an excited and breathy young female voice saying:

"Hey guys, I think I leveled!"

>>>>

Authors note:
I know some people would rather I just wrote the result rather than the planning. I do that sometimes too, but at times I truly believe it is the planning stages that are the more interesting. Writing about the execution is only interesting at that point if the plan didn't work. And this time it did.
Cause I said so.
 
So the question is if they're going to flip about it or react reasonable. They do have serious reason to be paranoid about watchers

Answered, next chapter is up. :)

bit concerned about how easy it was to get kendra aboard about not telling her dad/watcher she isn't tortured by demon though... in canon it took quite alot for her to stop drinking coolaid...

In canon, she died and didn't get back up after a massive life-changing event. The other part of it is that the person being brought back has to be willing. The way I interpret that in my games, (and I recognize this is probably house rules, which is why I am explaining it) is that the person being brought back knows whether or not they have a compatible alignment with the one casting the spell. That was the bit about a 'pure guide' that I sprinkled into the chapter 'Rebirth.' So she knows that following the council got her killed and that this person brought her back and, generally, feels the same about life.
 
I am assuming you meant character level? if so, she was tenth until quite recently.
no, the crystals level/rank. They come in different power ranks, least, lesser and greater, with a few differences in effects, like say the difference in your Truedeath crystals being: least Weapon deals +1d6 damage to undead. and lesser being Weapon deals +1d6 damage to undead, functions as ghost touch weapon, with greater also allowing you to crit and sneak attack undead.

I assume it's either least (most common, only needs masterwork to slot, and the one you stated as what you find if you find an unspecified in treasures) or lesser (needs magical weapon), since the requirements for what you slot the crystals on increase with rank, and he hasn't really had the money to fulfil the requirements for slotting a greater (needs +3. not even effective +3 either, but a +3 enchantment. I never got any of these in any game i ever played. Crystals are supposed to be fairly cheap situational effects (slot on a demolition, bane or truedeath crystal for a specific annoying enemy.)
Answered, next chapter is up. :)
In canon, she died and didn't get back up after a massive life-changing event. The other part of it is that the person being brought back has to be willing. The way I interpret that in my games, (and I recognize this is probably house rules, which is why I am explaining it) is that the person being brought back knows whether or not they have a compatible alignment with the one casting the spell. That was the bit about a 'pure guide' that I sprinkled into the chapter 'Rebirth.' So she knows that following the council got her killed and that this person brought her back and, generally, feels the same about life.
it does state willing, so some information ought to be sent to the soul. And even then... she was a soul getting devoured in essentially hell, getting a "Do you want to get out of here" call. She was going to jump on that as soon as possible.
 
Last edited:
no, the crystals level/rank. They come in different power ranks, least, lesser and greater, with a few differences in effects, like say the difference in your Truedeath crystals being: least Weapon deals +1d6 damage to undead. and lesser being Weapon deals +1d6 damage to undead, functions as ghost touch weapon, with greater also allowing you to crit and sneak attack undead.

I assume it's either least (most common, only needs masterwork to slot, and the one you stated as what you find if you find an unspecified in treasures) or lesser (needs magical weapon), since the requirements for what you slot the crystals on increase with rank, and he hasn't really had the money to fulfil the requirements for slotting a greater (needs +3. not even effective +3 either, but a +3 enchantment. I never got any of these in any game i ever played. Crystals are supposed to be fairly cheap situational effects (slot on a demolition, bane or truedeath crystal for a specific annoying enemy.)
Oh, hell. Yeah. You could have saved yourself a lot of typing by just telling me what you meant by crystal. But she hasn't used anything that requires more than a +1 weapon as yet.
 
Huh, I remeber this from TTH.

I still maintain that a rota of three "Flaming" weapons can't actually provide enough heat to run a forge, but otherwise, nice jury-rgging.
 
Huh, I remeber this from TTH.

I still maintain that a rota of three "Flaming" weapons can't actually provide enough heat to run a forge, but otherwise, nice jury-rgging.
Double check the source material. I claimed in it that the forge would still need to be stoked. As in, fuel would need to be added. The flaming weapons were included as a way to heat the place, primarily, and as a firestarter, secondarily. I never claimed they could melt steel on their own. I vaguely recall rolling my eyes at your complaint then, though I'll admit I don't remember if I responded to it at the time.
:p
Thanks for the review and kind words though!
 
I just wanted to say that I was expecting the 'no weapon forged by man' cheat for the Judge to be that none of Xander's weapons are forged by ' man'. Not like medieval guys are going to think that a woman could forge something. But tearing him with cars works just as well. Glad to see more parts of this.
 
I just wanted to say that I was expecting the 'no weapon forged by man' cheat for the Judge to be that none of Xander's weapons are forged by ' man'. Not like medieval guys are going to think that a woman could forge something. But tearing him with cars works just as well. Glad to see more parts of this.
He explained that he meant human, not male, yeah something about a demonic weapon could hurt the judge
 
While the judge is dead, I would wounder if the magical part of a magic weapon would have worked. That isn't forged, that is enchanted... And we already know that a demonic weapon probably would have worked.

So yeah. Did the judge "only" have death gaze aoe effect at will and something like Dr 20/magic? (no mundane weapons can harm him, but take a weapon from a demonic entity and he is toast)
 
Given that CmptrWz's For Want of an Outfit was just removed, Xander's relationship with Willow may be too racy for this site. Maybe QQ would be safer?
That fic was struck because to the mods eyes it included preteens with diaper fetishes and slave kinks so I'm not sure they're at all comparable. For one thing, the teens in a relationship here are highschoolers and not, like, twelve.

I'm really excited to see this fic come back from the past. I was a big fan when it came out the first time around and I'm glad to see it still has its charms.
 
Home Sweet Hell.
Chapter 26
Home Sweet Hell.

>>>>

That night at a dinner of delivered pizza and soda, Diana smiles at her three guests as she regards them once again lounging around her dining room. "So, were you planning to stay for a bit to help with the clean-up of some of Kakistos' operations? Or do you three need to be getting back home now?"

Jenny and Alex look at each other as if considering, with Kendra appearing to be more or less along for the ride. When nobody says anything for a three count, Alex is the one to turn back to her.

"Well, if they're okay with it I'd like to stay for a bit. I'll be honest, this trip has been ridiculously expensive and I need to get home and start making money again soon. But there are a few things I can put together for you on the cheap that should help a lot and that I can get done in say two to three weeks at the outside?"

Diana looks confused. "Two to three weeks is soon?"

Alex shrugs. "Enchanting stuff takes time. Our trip to Italy was a lot shorter than we thought it was going to be so overall we would only run over on our trip time a few days, maybe a week. But that would give me time to build a few tools we use on the Hellmouth that you might like to have here. Things like the earpieces, the belt Buffy uses that can store twenty stakes in it, and some vials of holy water and stuff for no weight or excessive mass. The shirt that lets her teleport once a day. Basic enchantments on the armor."

She offers an apologetic glance over to them. "I'm not going to have the time or money to get everything done right now, but I can get you hooked up as much as I can and then, later on, say September or October? Once I have a chance to make some money again, anyway, I can finish getting you kitted out. Also, since I am here anyway if you have any requests for custom-tailored clothing? That is something I am pretty good at and I'll have a lot of time to kill. I can only make one magic item at a time and I can delegate that to Red here."

She nods to the red hardhat wearing Dedicated Wright who is sitting on her lap and cuddling her much as a child would. The other two are also draped around her in various ways. Alex still finds it a little disturbing how much emotion they seem to show, but since that emotion seems to be composed entirely of love and devotion it isn't something she feels she can, or even wants to complain about or try to 'fix.'

Faith looks a little interested. "Clothes? Like leather and stuff? Not bargain bin?"

Alex smiles. "Yeah. I even have some silk that is to die for. Might put together one of my clothing cleaning and repair doodads for you as well. With Buffy on the Hellmouth and Kendra in hiding it seems likely that if there is stuff to deal with randomly in other parts of the world, you'll get tapped for it. A couple of endless water jugs, endless ration bags, and such. I can make some pretty spiffy magic sleeping bags that'll keep you warm, dry, and help you heal up. All this stuff is way cheap too, and it'd make your life if you end up on the road a lot more convenient."

Diana looks at her in astonishment. "Endless? Endless water and food for cheap? How?"

Alex sighs. "Magic? Look, the water jug is a basic doodad I put together for Buffy based on a magical mug that can fill itself with water three times a day. I just changed the container enchanted to a thermos that was the right shape to fit in her belt pouch. She puts some ice in it before patrol, puts it in the belt which puts it in stasis, and whenever she gets thirsty on patrol she pulls it out and three times a day it fills the rest of the way with twelve ounces of water. I have a version that'll make holy water too, but that one is stupid expensive and would take a week on its own. It'll have to wait."

She pats Green on the small construct's shoulder with a fingertip, and the little construct wraps her arms as far as she can around Alex's body in as close to a hug as she can manage.

"The rations bag isn't really anything to write home about. It'll fill once a day with enough food to feed a normal person for a day, so a Slayer might need two of them. But it is pretty uninspired fare. Think dried fruit and nuts with a few strips of jerky to gnaw on. You wouldn't want to live on it long term, but as a way to deal with getting sent to demon-infested places where you can't trust the food or water, I figured it would be a good idea. Frankly though, if you think you are gonna be living on it for more than a couple of weeks I'd bring along a fairly stout multi-vitamin. Just saying."

Jenny sees the look of disbelieving awe on Dormer's face and giggles. "The funny part is that she really doesn't get why this is so unbelievable. To her, this is all basic, entry-level stuff."

Alex rolls her eyes. "So, yeah. I work under some restrictions. No matter what, I can only make one item a day, so even though some of these might only take a couple of hours, once they're done I can't enchant anything else. I can still make normal, non-magical stuff though. Weapon enhancements take the longest, generally. So, Faith? I can upgrade your sword. But if I do, a lot of this other stuff isn't going to happen. I'll let you and Diana stew over that once I am done explaining all the options available to you and the general time frames. Next, I am going to mention a budget, but don't worry about paying me back. Seriously, I can make money. You just caught me at the tail end of a bunch of crap that sucked me dry financially. I am only gonna mention a budget so you know what I can and can't do for you right now. Lastly, before I leave I am going to put together a pendant for each of you and then I am going to spell the crap out of it. The spell is called "Refuge." What it does is if you smash it while saying a code phrase given to you by the caster, it'll take you to their home. Direct to my living room, from anywhere on the planet, instantly. It's a get out of jail free card that I can put together for you. It isn't cheap and frankly, it's a tad intrusive. So unless it's an emergency I'd rather you didn't use it or at least called first. But if bad things happen and you need out, it'll be there."

Faith looks at Alex, her mouth quirking into a smile. "Intrusive?"

Alex shrugs. "I have a girlfriend. Sometimes there is kissing that happens on the couch. A call would be appreciated, but don't get yourselves killed trying to get to a phone."

Faith's smile broadens. "Just kissing?"

Alex offers a smirk. "Sorry Faith. Unless you can get it cleared with your guardian that you need access to my enhanced line of bedroom accessories, I really can't be delving any further into this."

She then looks at Jenny before she continues to speak. "Let us know when she has had a chance to 'Judge' whether or not you are ready." With the extra emphasis on the word 'Judge' Jenny immediately dissolves into giggles and Alex joins her.

The rest of the room looks at them as though they have lost their minds.

>>>>

Three weeks and a small fortune later, Faith and Diana are saying goodbye to their new friends at the airport. After a round of hugs, Alex speaks once more to Diana. "Remember, if you are going to be coming through Sunnydale and can let me know ahead of time, give me a head's up. I can have some new toys ready for you. And no matter what, try to make it out for at least a weekend every year or something so I can get new measurements for Faith in case she isn't done growing yet."

Diana runs a hand over the large cross-shaped charm she is wearing around her neck on a beautifully braided silk and leather wrap, the whole thing essentially acting as a choker that is covered in stylized crosses.

"The passcode you assigned is "Alex Rocks" and we pluck the cross off the front?"

Alex nods. "Yeah. The thing is designed to be pretty tough, but enough pressure pulling it away from you will snap the supports holding it to the choker which will cause the thing to crumble apart. As long as you say the words at the same time, then hello Hellmouth." Her lips quirk into a smirk. "But you have to really mean it, from the heart. 'Alex Rocks.'"

Faith laughs. "Really?"

Shaking her head while giggling, Alex merrily replies. "Sadly no. But I can hope that you do anyway."

Checking her watch, Jenny motions towards the line that is disappearing into the plane. "I think we need to go. Take care you two, and remember, if those bastards from the council try to send you after something that you think is too much, give us a ring and we'll see what we can do."

With that, the three get on the plane. Alex finds herself deeply envying Kendra, who is now discovering that at just under three feet tall and slender, airline seating is absolutely luxurious.

>>>>

>>Sunnydale airport, 1 AM, August 2nd.
As they walk off the plane the three smiling faces that greet them immediately begin to look confused. Buffy because she wasn't expecting Alex and Jenny to be glaring at her Watcher or to have a child with them. Willow because she expected her girlfriend to be happier to see her, and why did they bring back a child? Giles because he had hoped against all hope that maybe by the time they had returned they might have forgotten about some of the stupidity his employers had engaged in and that he had involved them with, or failing that at least understood the importance enough for there to be some small measure of forgiveness. It would appear that this hope was entirely a waste of time.

Willow steps forward with her hands out to hold Alex, who does embrace her, but says nothing and continues to glare at Giles.

Jenny stops about ten feet from Giles. Looks him up and down, and when he clears his throat as though to begin speaking, she turns to Buffy quickly. "Any problems while we were gone?"

Buffy looks between the two and rolls her eyes a little. "Nothing serious. Glad to have you back though. Should I be hating Giles too right now? Did he do something to deserve all the hate forever?"

Jenny pauses as though considering, though that is entirely fictitious. Their plan was determined before they even got on the plane. "If you could get us home, we really could use some rest. Tomorrow being Friday the three of you as well as your family, Buffy, would be more than welcome to come by tomorrow evening for an evening of stories and explanations of what we have experienced for the last month and change. We will supply pizza and drinks."

Buffy nods, still looking confused as Giles is shaking his head. "I am uncertain that discussing everything you have been through would be in everyone's best interest. It is one of the things I was hoping to discuss with you this evening, Jenny. At my place, after we drop off Alex and your new friend."

Jenny looks confused for a second. "What wouldn't you want to tell Buffy?" Then her eyes narrow. She reaches out and slaps Giles across the face hard enough to knock his glasses off, leaving him blinking, holding his hand over his cheek, and staring at her in the same shock that everyone else there is. Thankfully the rest of the terminal had already cleared out, leaving them relatively alone as Giles tries to blink the red spots from his vision.

"You didn't tell her. Was it your idea or the fucking Council's to keep her in the dark that Kendra died to save us? That the Tarakans got her? Why? Just tell me why they would want to dishonor a sacrifice like that."

Unseen by most, but noticed by Buffy, tears are streaming down the face of the child, whose face is twisted into a mask of sorrow.

Walking the three steps and bending to replace his glasses on his face before he responds, Giles does finally turn back to Jenny.

"The council at this point could not possibly care less. They seem to consider both currently active slayers as something just this side of outright rebels and they are getting unbelievably difficult to deal with even under the best of circumstances when I request information or assistance. My hope in this was to spare Joyce the worry and heartache that she can do nothing about. But as the cat is now sufficiently out of the bag, you may all do as you wish. If you will follow me to my car, I can see about getting you home. Anything else I suppose can be covered tomorrow." He glances at the child curiously, remembering his talk with Dormer. But doesn't say anything at this time.

>>>>

By noon the next morning, the three are all finally awake. Kendra is exploring the house some when she hears a call from the kitchen and bounces in at halfling size to see that Alex and Jenny are there. Frowning slightly, Kendra turns to Alex. "Where is Willow? I thought she stayed the night last night."

Alex nods. "She's in the shower. Look, I, we." She motions between herself and Jenny. "We need to know, absolutely and for sure, last chance, that you are okay with our friends here knowing who you are. After tonight, we lose the chance to scrub you off the board completely if you decide you wanna just retire and spend your days hanging out in the bounce house at the theme park or something."

Kendra nods. "Absolutely. Even if I did not owe you so much more than my life, what you do is good. It needs to be supported. You support slayers, and Jenny will ease you through the modern world while you do it. I will see to it that pointy things never find either of you in the process." She offers them a brilliant smile. "It is a perfect plan."

Alex nods. "Okay then. We'll do it. Just, be advised that once they all know, once Giles knows, the chances the council will figure something out do go up. Not that I think he would betray you on purpose. But the council have been decoding what watchers do and don't say in their reports for thousands of years, and they may even have other agents in town keeping an eye on things."

Jenny looks a little irritated. "You really think so?"

Alex nods. "Between me, you and the situation with the Kalderash as well as the connection with Giles, Buffy's supposed rebellion, and the fact that it is all happening on a Hellmouth? Honestly, I'd be shocked if they didn't have a couple of agents in town and a wet works team within whistling distance on standby. In LA maybe. I think I would almost lose respect for them if they didn't."

"Lose respect for who?" Comes the call from the hallway, as Willow pads down on bare feet in a pair of shorts and a tank top.

Alex gets up and instead of answering wraps her arms around her and covers her mouth with a searing kiss that lasts until the redhead's eyes slowly close and her arms reach around as well.

Jenny giggles. "Hey now, child in the room!"

The two release their kiss and there is a sigh of contentment from Willow. "I am so glad you're back."

Alex grins. "You said that last night."

Willow nods. "You haven't ruined it yet. I give it another couple of hours."

There is laughter around the table at that. "Well, I'll see if I can meet the expectation then. But first. I need to introduce you to someone very special." She turns to the halfling. Willow is already bending at the waist to be less intimidating to the supposed child. Alex continues. "Willow, this is Kendra. Kendra, this is Willow."

Willow freezes. Literally does not move, as though she is made of stone. Then very slowly she turns her head toward Alex and whispers. "Reincarnation?"

Alex nods. "Best I could do. The thing that killed her didn't leave much behind. Did the spell, got a halfling. Gave her the choice and she decided not to go back to the council, go figure. We are going to tell everybody tonight, but since you'll be spending the day with us we figured you might want to know now."

Kendra, who has been smiling hugely this entire time, wraps her arms around Willow's neck and jumps to wrap her legs around her body when Willow straightens up in surprise.

"I had a dad, but he got me killed. Right now I have a mom and a grandmother, but I would accept a second mom if you want the job." Then she gives Willow a kiss on the end of her nose and drops to the floor giggling like an insane person. Willow collapses into gales of laughter at the absurdity of it all.

Alex sighs. "It doesn't actually say in the spell description that if your new race closely resembles the juvenile form of your original one and you were denied much of a childhood the first time around the results can be ridiculous. Maybe I should update my copy."

Kendra responds with a stern look that lasts about three seconds before she once again dissolves into laughter.

Jenny looks around the room. "So when exactly are people supposed to be getting here?"

Alex looks at the clock on the wall, though she couldn't tell you why. Knowing what time it is now doesn't actually help answer the question at all. "Arrival anytime after seven, storytime at seven-thirty. We should probably get to the store."

>>>>

That night at nine O'clock, Giles once again finds himself picking his glasses up off the floor while trying to rub the stinging sensation out of his face and avoid the follow-up slap from Joyce.

"If you ever keep anything from me that could involve the death of any of these children again you won't live long enough for a vampire to kill you, do you hear me!? Do you, you piece of crap!?"

>>>>

Author's note.
Awwww... Poor Giles. Don't worry, I won't stretch out his penance too long. In reality, he had decent to good reasons for most of what he did. But he tried to hide sending Alex into a life or death situation that killed another slayer. Doing it could maybe be forgiven. But hiding it? Joyce wasn't gonna have any of that shit.
 
I'm really excited to see this fic come back from the past. I was a big fan when it came out the first time around and I'm glad to see it still has its charms.
I've been kind of surprised how many fans of this have come out of the woodwork since I started my edit/repost. I guess I knew it did well on TtH, but it didn't occur to me how much fanfiction readers moved between sites. :)
Thanks for the review!
 
Warped.
Chapter 27
Warped.

>>>>

It takes almost two weeks and the new school year is looming perilously close before Giles has managed to apologize his way back out of the doghouse, and even now he still gets some dirty looks. The crew eventually find themselves back in their old haunt the school library. Though, perhaps this time not doing what they normally would be.

"Giles, are you sure I'm not just going to get expelled if Snyder walks in here?" Alex asks, somewhat perturbed as they work at installing the locking cabinets that will hold the bulk of Giles' occult collection from here on out.

The librarian speaks up absently from where he is reading through a newspaper and comparing events to tomes he has laid out on the table. "If he tries to he'll fail. He signed the appropriate forms at the end of the last school year and they do not detail who I was required to contract the services out to." The older gentleman shrugs. "You have your business license and your bid for the job was acceptable."

Alex looks over at him in confusion. "I never bid for this job!"

Giles takes a moment to clean his glasses, which for once may actually even need it as there is a bit of sawdust in the air yet. "I'll not have ham-handed and ignorant in the ways of the world carpenters, however pleasant or skilled they may be, trusted around tomes that in the wrong hands could assure we have some manner of apocalyptic event. Your non-bid was the best I received on that basis alone."

Alex rolls her eyes while Buffy and Willow laugh. "But you'll trust the student population?" Jenny giggles at this from where she is plucking away at her computer.

Giles looks over at her. The emotional wounds of the recent past are still raw. Raw enough that she hasn't stayed the night with him since she has gotten back. "No, it was more that I didn't believe they would be capable of causing more problems than I could deal with. I have since reassessed."

Jenny calls out over the general din. "Hey, Alex! You asked me to take the 'Sorry, on vacation' tag off the website a couple of days ago and we already have a few hits. Want to hear about them now?"

Alex nods absently while she is lining up the level to make sure the cabinet is straight. "Sure, gimme the highlights."

Jenny clears her throat and makes room at the desk for halfling Kendra, who has gotten curious and crawled up into her lap to read along. The relationship between Alex, Kendra, and Jenny is quickly skewing into an oddity. It is easy for them to think of her as a child because she is usually the size of one and often behaves like one, seemingly just to relish the fact that she can for once, her actual childhood having been cut dramatically short when the Watcher's council found her at a young age. Yet for all of that, when things become serious she can shed that demeanor in an instant and become the consummate Slayer once more.

"Well, the Winchester's dropped us a line to tell us the gun is working out great and they can find buyers for at least three more. Apparently, it won't actually kill incorporeal things here. But it has an even more debilitating effect on them than a shotgun full of rock salt, knocks them for a loop for a few days to a week or so, depending on the spirit. Gives you lots of time to find the remains. According to them, it chews through demons like crazy. Most of the demon types they deal with are possessing entities, kinda like Eyghon. So depending somewhat on who got possessed and how good their aim is with the pistol it can make a difference. But so far they have had good luck. They heard you do defense stuff and are wondering if you can put together anything that'll stop bullets. It sounds like sometimes their bad guys aren't quite as ignorant about modern technology as ours usually are."

Alex clicks her tongue twice. "Possibly. All the spells I have to work with were originally intended to work against stuff like arrows and sling bullets. I'd need to do some testing before I trusted the life of anyone to them. Send back that unless it's an emergency I'll get back to them in a week or so. Next?"

Jenny laughs. "Oh, the Frog brothers with their standard list of dream gear. Pretty much assume they want it to blow up while on fire, spitting acid, and probably playing death metal. You can read the list later. It doesn't look like anything is particularly pressing, though they did put in a request to get fitted for some armor. Since that's a quick fix should I make an appointment?"

Alex giggles. "Yeah, go ahead. We can get that out of the way before school starts. I need to sit down with them and start trying to define what they actually want anyway. Their wish lists are just bizarre."

Jenny laughs. "Yes. Yes, they are. Well now. Here's a name I don't know. Anybody know a 'Jack Burton?"

Midst a sea of heads shaking no, Giles pulls off his glasses. "Oh, dear. What does Mr. Burton want?"

Jenny glances up from her computer. "You know who this guy is, English?"

Giles winces slightly at the use of his nationality rather than his name, but answers anyway. "Do you remember the ancient and immortal Chinese black magic practitioner Lo-Pan that lived in San Francisco's Chinatown until 1986?"

Jenny nods hesitantly. "Vaguely. The Kalderash made it a point to avoid the area. The impression I got was that while powerful, he isn't godlike or anything. But since you can't kill him or curse him more than he already is, and he can walk through walls, all you can really do is stay out of his way."

Giles nods. "The Watchers Council came to much the same conclusion. We don't know precisely what happened in 1986, but when it was all over, Lo-Pan's henchmen were dead. His demons, dead. The three storms, his supernaturally augmented warriors, defeated and slain. Finally, in the remains of his fortress, they dug out the body of Lo-Pan, with Burton's knife sticking out of his forehead. Nobody is taking credit for anything, but the fact that Jack Burton was involved in it up to his eyebrows, whatever it was, can't be denied. He has been on the Watcher's list to be kept an eye on ever since."

Jenny looks back at the computer screen. "Huh. Interesting. Well, he says he thinks he might have a problem with some kinda whatchamacallit." Jenny looks up. "I am actually reading what is on the screen here Giles, stop glaring at me, I didn't write it." Turning back to the computer she continues. "He says here that he can't get a hold of Egg Shen, whoever that is, and was hoping maybe we could come up with a, and I am quoting here 'Six Demon Bag' to give him an edge when he has to deal with it. He describes the bag as being, according to Egg, "Wind, fire, all that kind of thing." Jenny reads ahead a bit. "He's talking about a potion, Alex. Something that helps strength, stamina, agility, confidence, and supposedly hearing and sight. For at least a couple of hours, apparently. It's kind of a mess, I think he's actually talking about more than one thing here. But the potion itself is pretty clear."

Alex considers for a minute. "That's a tall order, honestly. With about four or five potions I can get that effect no problem, though he may need to take a second dose to get that duration. But he'll have to take each one separately when the time comes, one after another. It'll take about thirty seconds. It'll also take me about a week to brew the batch. I can give him a price once we get home and I figure out for sure what I need, but make sure he understands that the minimum we'd be looking at is probably fifteen hundred, and it'll go up from there. So if he is feeling cheap he can save me some time letting me know."

Jenny nods. "Should I try to find out what the Whatchamacallit is?"

Giles and Alex both nod at the same time, then Alex finds herself blushing and looking down. Giles speaks up. "Absolutely. As I said, we still don't know what happened. But it is fair to say the world owes the man a debt. If we can help, we should."

>>>>

An hour later as the last few screws are being drilled and the cleanup is happening, drop cloths pulled up and such, Giles calls everyone over to the table. "We have an unusual problem and a short window of opportunity in which to do anything about it, I suspect." He lays out a few newspaper clippings that detail corpses that have been located in out-of-the-way areas.

Willow looks at the clippings in horror. "Does this have anything to do with those morgue photos you had me look up?"

Giles nods, looking grim. "Indeed it does. Shattered bones, mutilated flesh, horrific internal injuries, and no evidence on the surface of any kind of assault. Always women, always once beautiful. They have been cropping up seemingly at random all over the southwest for years, but I finally made the connection when one was recently found in Los Angeles."

With that, he pulls out another piece of paper. This one is a leaflet for a traveling carnival that is going to be at the Sunnydale fairgrounds that weekend.

"Every time such a corpse has been found, this carnival would have been in town during the estimated time of death. I'd like you to check it out, Buffy, and see if you can determine what is happening."

Buffy looks around at the rest of the crew. "So, Carnival on Saturday?"

Everybody nods, and Alex responds. "I'll send out Skite on Friday night to check it out. Maybe we can learn something interesting before they start selling tickets on Saturday and the place goes nuts. Giles, do we have any idea what could even cause injuries like that?"

The librarian shakes his head. "I, unfortunately, have no good answer for you. I suspect some manner of sorcery. I wouldn't sign anything given to you there, no matter how clear-cut it seems. I would also caution against being anywhere that could allow you to become easily separated. I wouldn't drink or eat a lot before going, nor would I plan on eating or drinking anything you purchased while there. I cannot stress enough how deadly whatever this must be to cause the kind of damage it does to the human body."

>>>>

>> Friday night. Midnight.
Alex is laying on her bed, with Willow sitting at the desk nearby. Ravage and DW are both with the Slayers this evening, as they are nosing around the sewers and storm drains near the fairgrounds and it was felt that the backup might be warranted.

Jenny and Giles are at Ted's place, where Jenny is accessing the old machine using her own laptop and some kind of partial code and partial spell that allows them to talk to each other over a crossover cable. Alex really doesn't know what all that means, but smiles and nods at the right times when Jenny is talking about it.

Giles is using the scry system or rather is set up so that he can if anything interesting shows up.

Alex gives a sigh into the headset and begins her commentary as soon as Jenny lets everyone know that Ted is nearby the sewer entrance the Slayers are using. He is their driver and currently sitting in the minivan that the robot had purchased for his computer business before the Scoobies co-opted him.

"Okay, guys. I have a lot of activity. People bustling about. All the lights are facing down, so I don't think I'll have a lot of trouble getting around, but investigating anything close might be problematic. It's like an ant colony down there."

Giles closes his eyes and tries to get a mental picture. "How many trailers, how many people, what kind of rides. Details please."

Alex has Skite give the whole place a once over. "They have probably twenty-five trailers and trucks in total. Looks like at least ten of those are the big rides, then there is the office, a few the carnies live in, a fun-house, a house of horrors, and it looks like the last two they are pulling out a bunch of concession stands and stuff. This is kind of a dinky carnival, Giles."

Giles sighs. "Can you tell me anything else?"

Alex looks around. "Well, there are a few trailers opened. I could sneak in and have a look. We could start with the House of Horrors, I mean, this is the Hellmouth right? It might be that easy. Maybe."

Skite flitting his way into the trailer is easy enough, but since it hasn't been set up yet nor has the trailer been expanded into a full-sized attraction yet, getting around in it isn't the easiest thing even at the small size that Skite is. After bounding around for a few minutes among the jumbled strings of black lights and low-grade animatronic gimmicks, Alex gives the irrepressible homunculus the go-ahead to check the next trailer.

Slowly edging around the confines of a trailer full of bunk beds with two small bathrooms and a kitchenette is annoying for the boisterous creature, but with four people asleep in the trailer at the time there is little choice. After fifteen minutes of nosing around all that Alex discovers is that Carnies, or at least these carnies, don't have either a maid or a laundry service and there don't appear to be any friendly workplace environment protocols here. Or at least none that would stop people from putting porn on the bottom of the bunk above them.

As much as she would like to be able to check the office, there are just too many people going in and out of that one to make it viable. So the next trailer she has Skite check is the Fun-House. Immediately upon entering, she can tell there is a problem. Skite can hear somebody whimpering in the dark.

Skite, like all constructs built by Alex, can see using something called 'darkvision.' It merely means that even in a completely dark environment, they can still see out to sixty feet. Not details of color, but of shape. In this completely blackened environment, Skite starts wandering around what seems to be a bit of a maze looking for the source of the whimpering. After more than a few minutes of scurrying about, the small creature does finally find the source. There is a person, female, chained with her hands held high above her, hanging. She is against a wall, with her back to it. At the sound of the small creature, she speaks.

"Is somebody there?"

Alex sits bolt upright in bed. "Oh, hell, Giles I think it is scheduled for damn soon. I got a girl chained up in the fun-house maze and I even know who it is, it's Aphrodisia. One of Cordy's little butt sniffers. I recognize the voice. Gonna see if Skite can get her loose, but if they have a lock on it he probably can't. He isn't much of a thief, not really."

Skite scampers up a now screaming young woman, looking for some way to disengage the chains. As he does so, the lights in the trailer come on.

Alex yells. "Giles, Scrye!"

When the lights flicker on, it becomes obvious that the maze is one of mirrors. Most of the mirrors are the same. But the one opposite Aphrodisia is not. It has an elaborate golden border around it, and when her eyes try to make sense of the warped reflection it offers, she begins to scream as her body starts to bubble and twist violently out of its original shape. A scream that is cut off suddenly to the sound of a loud crack when the skull can no longer take the pressures being put on it and she goes limp in her restraints, one eye still helplessly staring at the mirror.

Skite jumps to the ground, in as much shock as Alex is seeing all this, and paws ineffectually at her foot. It is Giles that tries to send out the warning, as he sees through the scry the odd mirror opening up like a door, silently, behind the homunculus. The naked woman that steps out and quick as a flash stomps on the small construct is an exact copy of what Aphrodisia looked like just ten minutes ago. Skite attempts to flee but is unable to get free before the girl-looking thing is holding him in front of her.

"What a curious thing you are. Sadly, you cannot know these things. It is a shame. I'd have liked a chance to examine you further." With a twist, Alex loses her connection.

>>>>

Willow screams, causing everyone on the line to panic except Alex, who is mumbling in pain and trying to calm her down while blood trickles from her eyes, ears, nose, and the corners of her mouth when she forgets to swallow.

"Calm. Calm down, Willow. Be okay. Need ta get potion." She starts stumbling towards the chest on the far side of the room. "Jus' damage. It's okay."

Jenny and Giles are at this point both demanding answers as to what has happened, with Kendra and Buffy on their way to Alex and Jenny's house already. Alex blinks blood out of her eyes for a moment and undoes the lock on the chest, pulling out and quaffing a red-tinged potion when she does so, giving it a few moments to work. She swallows twice and wipes then her face with a bandage that was sitting in the same chest, which functions as her home medical kit.

"It's okay guys, I'll be fine. Well, it's not okay, I guess. Whatever that mirror thing is it just killed Aphrodisia and then either made an evil replacement or changed something else to look like her. Then the damn thing wrecked Skite, so I took the feedback damage. But I'll be fine. Nothing permanent."

Buffy comes in over the line, obviously sprinting by the way she is breathing. "You weren't kidding when you said it would hurt you when they died, were you? Holy crap Alex. I'm so sorry."

"Guys, it really isn't that big of a deal. I'd need to lose like four at once and get really unlucky to be in any real danger. This was just a feedback slap to my brain basically when the connection got severed. It sucks, and I'll miss him. But he did his job, he scouted it out. We know what the problem is and before she leaves town, whatever that thing is? It's going the fuck down."

>>>>

Author's Note:
I thought I might try some new and interesting stuff for a minute before I skirt the edge of canon again.

Thanks again for reading!

Disclaimer:
I do not own any rights to "Big Trouble in Little China." That would be 20th Century FOX, I am assuming since they produced the thing.

The weird mirror thingy is an original creation. :p
 
Last edited:
A Smashing Good Time.
Chapter 28
A Smashing Good Time.

>>>>

By two in the morning, everybody has made it back to Jenny and Alex's house. The last to walk in are Giles and Jenny herself, and both find themselves listening in on an unusual phone conversation when they arrive.

"Damn it, I know she's not your BFF or anything, all those twits you hang out with are basically there to form a buffer between you and undesirables. As a former undesirable, I totally get that. But Cordy, You need to listen. She's dead, so if you see her coming around its trouble."

A slight pause as Alex closes her eyes and grips the phone tighter. "No, not a vampire. Something different. We're not sure exactly what, we're working on it."

Another pause. "We're at my house, of course. What, you too cheap for caller ID these days?"

Alex facepalms. "Look, if you really want to come down, I won't say you can't, but I'm not sure what you can bring to this."

Alex turns a vibrant shade of purple and practically screeches into the phone. "If you'll recall the foul-up that night wasn't me it was some damn chaos mage backed by you screwing with my freaking costume. I take no responsibility for that bull crap, try again."

There is another short silence as Alex's face crinkles up in irritation. "That's not fair. I was possessed, and it wasn't Wilbur it was Herbert."

If possible she gets even redder. "No, the fact that I knew its name does not make it worse, you bitch!"

There is dead silence for at least a minute. "Fine. We'll see you in a half-hour."

The phone is then slammed down hard enough to make Jenny wince a little. "Um. Sorry. Cordelia can be a little..."

"Infuriating?" Offers Willow.

Alex nods. "Yeah, Wills, that would about sum it up. So... Did you record the scry, Giles? What are we looking at here?"

Giles sits down on the couch, and the rest take their cue to sit as well. "I did, though once I had seen it in action I hardly needed the recording. It is a Mirror of Audience, though it has obviously been severely damaged either purposefully or over time. I was under the impression only three had ever been made and that they were accounted for. Extraordinary."

He shakes his head as he cleans his glasses. "The original intention for such a device was to create a temporary copy of the person looking into the mirror, who would then come out of the cabinet and the one who was looking in could trade places in their lives for a time. They last about two to three days, and then the copy will slip away back into the ether. By entering the cabinet directly, the original of the copy was said to be able to enter a meditative state and manipulate it like a puppet, though there is no more than rumor backing that and it wouldn't seem to be possible with this one in any case. The original intended purpose was for royalty to use during negotiations that were perhaps not expected to go perfectly. The story of how it ended up as part of a carnival attraction must be a long one indeed."

Buffy looks around. "Well, somebody chained her up there. So we wreck the funhouse and see who cries the loudest? But then what? If he's straight-up human, he's kinda out of my jurors diction, isn't he?"

Jenny smiles tiredly. "First, I think you mean jurisdiction." At Buffy's rolled eyes, she continues. "Second, keep an open mind. Could be a girl. Who would be more likely to be interested in magic involving a mirror? Boy or girl?"

There is a short silence at that. Then Alex takes over. "Well, if you think the first step is to smash the mirror I can help with that part as long as our Slayers can get in and out in ten minutes or less and don't have to get in any fights en route. Invisibility has some restrictions on it, but it's a pretty useful tool for situations like this."

Kendra smiles gleefully. "Invisibility?"

Alex gives a goofy half-smile. "Yeah, I don't have any items at the moment to do it easy, so I'll need to use infusions..."

At the blank looks of everybody but Jenny, Alex backs up a step in her explanation. "Remember when I made a temporary item to banish Eyghon? That was an infusion. Same thing as a spell, just they are what I do. They changed the name of them so I didn't get to sit with the cool kids or something. Whatever. I can make two temporary items that will allow me to put a ten-minute invisibility charm on a person. It'll break if you attack anybody though, and the spells definition of what constitutes an attack can be really twitchy, so unless you wanna get caught just avoid people and wreck stuff. I'd probably recommend one of you as a distraction and one on mirror smash duty, but you are the slayers. You figure it out. Unless somebody has a better idea."

Willow tentatively raises a hand.

Giles shakes his head. "This isn't class, Willow. If you have something to say, by all means."

She nods. "Well, not an idea for the mirrors but you might want to hear this before we finalize plans. I did a little bit of digging after the library this afternoon. I didn't get a chance to tell anybody anything before the goings-on tonight got, you know, going on and stuff. But you should know that the bank deposits this carnival makes don't match up always with the towns they're in."

Jenny looks somewhat baffled at her young apprentice in the computing world. "How so?"

Willow begins to look flustered, but gamely soldiers on anyway. "Well, the carnival itself is set up on a shares type system, only with a minimal salary paid to each worker and the enterprise as a whole to keep things functional before shares are determined. But if you look at the direct deposit numbers for the bank they use, the numbers are all over the place. Somehow they made more money in Oxnard last year than they did in San Diego, just as an example. But something that Giles missed earlier is that not only are the targets pretty, most of the time they are rich, and even when they're not they are found wearing designer clothing, and were last seen flashing money. If you check the police reports in the towns where the mutilated victims are, wealthy targets are often hit by thieves and sometimes hit hard. You know, families that would be in the same social circles as the mutilation victims, like Aphrodisia. The Chases, Cordelia's parents, for example. I mean, it could be circumstance, but that seems like a lot of circumstances."

She pauses and looks sourly at her notes. "To muddy the water even more though, the money isn't going to one person. It's getting spread throughout the company as shares. So either everybody is in on it, or one really clever person is in on it, or a few people are in on it and are hiding their evil among the innocent. All I know for sure is that the owner and accountant are the same guy, Gerald Krogstadt, and if he isn't in on it, he has either got to be suspicious of something weird going on or he's the worst accountant of all time."

Alex's face darkens with fury. "Stealing? They're murdering people for money?"

Giles sighs as he turns to the group as a whole, sighing in annoyance as he does. "Greed is the most common reason for most such things, Alexis. Just because killing for food or its own sake is commonplace here doesn't mean that away from the Hellmouth things are not wildly different. I recommend that we destroy the mirror and make our findings clear to the authorities anonymously, allowing them the opportunity to look into things. They may not be able to prove guilt, but the suspicion alone will no doubt destroy their little enterprise. Once they are separated from their mirror and scattered by the authorities, the Watchers Council can step in an investigate them more easily. One thing that they are known for that I will agree with is that they take a dim view of those who would so misuse magical artifacts or talents."

Jenny looks at him aghast. "But we are going to let them go? All those kids? Dead, mutilated like that, and we're just going to take away their toys and let them slip away?"

Giles puts his glasses back on. "It isn't as simple as you would like to make it seem."

Kendra, who has as hard a look to her as is possible for a woman of her stature to possibly have, bites out in her unusually high voice: "Then explain it to us."

Giles closes his eyes for a moment, and when his eyes open, there are the ravages of many a sleepless night that seem to haunt the depths of them. "If we take away their means to do this, and set others to deal with their eventual incarceration, then we." He motions the group as a whole. "Are not doing it. You seem to forget that we have no special dispensation to seek justice by the government. If our Slayer, our only real tool..."

At the immediate dark looks around the room, he lowers his eyes and backs up. "Apologies. Our only hope, shall we say, against a random apocalyptic event is sitting in a cell awaiting trial when she is needed, then the planet is doomed, and whether they faced judgment tonight or next month was all fairly academic, now wasn't it?"

He looks back up at them all, swiping his hand through his hair as he focuses on Buffy and Kendra directly. "The two of you should also know that it is a strongly held belief among the senior council members that the Slayer, once she has slain a human, a normal, no-frills human, has begun a slippery slope that will lead to madness and death. Frankly, I don't know if there is any truth to the story or not. But given the extremely patriarchal society that would have come up with the bindings that originally started the slayer line, it wouldn't particularly surprise me if they put in a fail-safe of sorts such as this. So if the group as a whole does decide to go after these carnival workers I can only hope that you will proceed with caution."

He takes the time to look at Willow's notes on the carnival owner for a few seconds, shaking his head in disgust. "For these and many other reasons, one of the main purposes of the Watcher assigned to a given Slayer has always been attempting to keep their slayer out of situations that could cause too much exposure or possess the danger to force a deadly confrontation with unaltered human stock, whenever possible. This situation screams both, and at the risk of being disrespectful to the dead, with the bad people's toys taken away," He glances at Jenny. "Time is no longer quite as tight and we can afford to allow the rest to go through semi-normal channels."

The rest of the group looks at each other and it is Alex who speaks, after blowing her nose as she is still trying to clean blood out of it. "I hate it when he makes sense."

She thinks for a minute. "How do we know that this is the only magical thing they have, or that they don't have other magical abilities?"

Giles raises his eyebrows. "If you had access to magical powers or items aside from a single broken cloning cabinet, would you sleep in a trailer with fifteen other snoring individuals forty or more weeks of the year?" After that, nobody had anything to say.

As it turned out, smashing the funhouse was almost disturbingly easy. Buffy walked around to the back and spiked the door shut, then walked around to the front, went inside, and spiked it shut while Kendra kept an eye out from the roof of the building. The building itself had reasonable soundproofing, but even still by the six-minute mark there were a few carnies at the front trying to force the door. At the eight-minute mark she pulled her spike, and when they all rushed in to see the shattered remains of hundreds of mirrors, she walked out behind them and quickly collected her spike from the back before they both left the premises at a giggling gallop.

>>>>

>>Monday, Sunnydale High Library. 1:04pm
Giles looks out from his office with a fair degree of contentment. They listened to him, the three bright young minds in the main library. Granted, he was right. But trying to convince the youth that sometimes allowing a lesser evil a moment's reprieve for the sake of the long view isn't an argument he had seen himself winning here if he was honest. Not with these three. Not right now, at least.

But he had. He laid out the truth, they understood what he meant, and they didn't even require bribery. Amazing.

Willow sits at the computer, and frankly, he does not even wish to know what she is doing. With the obsession she has developed regarding what the police are doing with the evidence that she drummed up, the chances that whatever she is doing is legal aren't really worth considering.

Alex is taking measurements and pictures of the cap over the Hellmouth in the center of the library, with the table and carpet moved out of the way. She said something about attempting to make the area less palatable to evil creatures by trying to make it 'Hallowed Ground' somehow, and then do something she called a "Dimensional Anchor" which would, theoretically, stop the Hellmouth from opening for a year. Understanding that fouling up something like the Hellmouth could be, well, bad. She has chosen to do some rather exhaustive research first.

Buffy is reading an English translation of the story behind the mirrors that the council knows about and seem to be functioning, because, in her words: "If I can patrol and be in bed at the same time, I would be a much happier Buffy."

He doesn't quite have the heart to tell her that there is almost no possibility that the slayer essence would transfer to a clone, and is so privately thrilled that she is excited enough about something that she is reading about it herself he almost dropped his teacup in shock when she asked.

With school only a week away, the time they have to each do their own research for their own reasons will soon come to an end. But for now, times are good.

When the doors to the library open all four of its occupants look up at the pair walking in, both laughing as they go.

Cordelia and Aphrodisia.

Before anybody else can say anything, Cordelia immediately speaks up. "Alexis, hello, I was told I would find you here. Listen, whatever you are doing here can it wait? I know you are kind of closed for the summer, but I was speaking with my second here about that silk shirt you made with the neckline just so and the goofy little weights in the hemline and the buttons you made that were shaped like little kitten heads and she was wondering if you might be willing to produce one for her? Well, something similar, anyway. I like being the only one that has the version I own. I was thinking perhaps you could bring your girlfriend and Buffy. I could compensate with pizza later if you can handle this today? Plus the standard payment, of course. Not asking for a handout."

The four stare in shock, and it is Buffy that recovers first. "I am getting hungry. We could do it in the garage at your place, Alex? Pizza does sound good."

Alex blinks. The last time he saw this face, it was twisting him in half, albeit by proxy. "Sure. I have all the stuff, as long as you don't mind teddy bear head buttons. If you want anything else I'll have to get it to you later in the week after I make some new molds."

Aphrodisia nods, looking a little skeptical, but writing it off to Cordelia acting oddly, more so than the loser trio. Alexis was her tailor, and Willow her girlfriend. But since when did Cordelia chase go out of her way to invite Buffy Summers to anything? "Sure, that sounds great. Meet us there? I don't think Cordelia's car will fit all of us."

Cordelia shakes her head. "No, no, it will. It'll be a little tight but we can do it. Let's go!"

The ride is less than pleasant, though Cordelia keeps an upbeat conversation going the entire time in the front seat there is little said in the back. When they arrive and lead her into the garage, the red-haired creature pretending to be Aphrodisia sees the homunculus in the workshop and turns several shades of pale. Backing up a pace toward the now closing door, she is shoved forward by Buffy and falls to her knees where she sits, head down, and the tears start to glisten as she cries. "God damn. I was almost free too. After so long."

Cordelia looks confused, a look that is mirrored by her three friends. "What do you mean? I thought you killed my friend. Took her body."

The being nods. "In a way, I suppose I did, but it wasn't my idea." She lets out a long sigh. "I got sold by my parents to some wizard when I was nine. They thought I was going to be an apprentice. I got sacrificed into the mirror, and anytime anybody used it I got overwritten until they were done. Lost my body, lost my mind. Kicked out and reformed kind of insubstantial back in a box with memories that weren't mine when it was done. Was like that for two hundred years. Then somebody used my mirror to assassinate."

Her sniffle is audible to all and if possible she slumps even further. "The royalty that owned the mirror at the time was obsessed with the security of his family but was maybe not as clever with his possessions. Somebody came in and really messed with my mirror. Made it what it was until a couple of nights ago. Tied it to a leather book that allows people to give the me that wakes up orders I couldn't disobey. I don't even know how I ended up with these idiots. Do you know the only security they ever put in front of my cabinet was sliding another mirror in front of it? It's amazing I never killed a four-year-old in there peeking around behind it."

Alex drops to a knee in front of her and looks into her eyes. "Not saying that I am buying this whole hog, but if all this is true, why didn't you bail? When the mirror broke and you didn't vanish, why didn't you leave?"

"I tried!" She cries at Alex. "As soon as I realized I wasn't under anyone's thumb anymore I got out of Cordelia's jewelry box where I was digging around that night and went to do a better job hiding the body than I normally bother with. Then I tried to hitchhike out of town. I made it like four miles before I started to get sick and fade. I've been trying to leave for two days and every time I try I feel worse. There is something about this miserable little piece of crap town that keeps me from coming apart, and I don't know what it is. I finally decided today that if I have to stay, maybe I can just be this girl. I have all her memories with none of her baggage, and a lot of other skills besides. Maybe I can make her parents happy. Maybe I can be happy."

She sniffles.

"Maybe life doesn't have to suck for once."

Alex looks at the other two people in the room, and motions toward the door to the house where she can see Kendra and Jenny are peering in Curiously with Giles standing behind them.

Alex looks at her, not unkindly, but with as much sternness as she can manage. "Desia, I'm gonna cast a spell. After I do, I want you to tell all of us that same basic story again. Tell it like you mean it. Tell it like your life depends on it. Understand?"

She gets a sobbing, shuddering, nod.

One cast of "Zone of Truth" and one story later, the group finds themselves looking at each other, not quite sure how to proceed. In the end, it's Cordelia that takes a stand.

"Have you ever, willfully, because you wanted to and not for reasons of being magically compelled: hurt, killed, or stolen from anybody ever in your existence?"

Shaking her head emphatically she stammers out "N-no, never!"

After a glance at Alex and her nod to verify the spell is still working, Cordy turns back to the girl.

She puts out her hand. "Hello. My name is Cordelia Chase. When we find out exactly everybody that was using you we are going to see to it that they are ground into hamburger and fed to rats or something equally horrifying. As long as you don't have a problem with that, I'd like to be your friend."

Putting a shaking hand in Cordy's, she lets the dark-haired girl help her up. She turns to Alex for a moment, then back to Cordelia. "I think I will be having my friends call me Desia. I'd be honored if you did."

>>>>

Authors note:
OK, if this is your first time reading this? Raise your hand if that didn't end in any way shape, or form how you thought it was gonna.
Because, if so? I did what I set out to do here.
 
Last edited:
Nope. Didn't see that coming. It was a good twist. And Cordy helping out was cool too.

I was also thinking that Alex making a clothes line with Cordelia as her agent/seller/ whatever that job is called in fashion would be a good way for her to be independent when her parents get the call from the Taxman. Just taking a commission on sales would do for a start in income. Basing herself out of LA would probably work better too, if you intend to branch out that way.
 
Didn't see mirror girl being an innocent. Did see her stay after the mirror being smashed.

Do like how you are gradually making Cordys mask slip and have her being a decent being earlier by being more involved with the scoobies
 
Politics.
Chapter 29
Politics.

>>>>

"Hey, get up! You need to get ready for school, both of you!" The call comes echoing through the house from Jenny, causing both Alex and Kendra's eyes to snap open. Ten minutes later, the two are stumbling into the kitchen for a breakfast of pancakes and eggs. Jenny motions towards the home phone as they sit down.

"There was a message on the machine when I got up. Somebody on the Watcher's Council is still trying to get Faith and Diana killed, Faith called practically in tears wanting to know if there is anything you could do to help. I guess Diana is still a little too prideful."

Alex's heart drops and she feels her bile rise at the hated mention of the Watcher's Council. "What are those freaking assholes doing this time?"

Jenny turns back to her pan to flip some eggs. "You can listen to the message if you feel the need, but the highlights are that they are being sent to Tibet to deal with some kind of Yeti or Wendigo problem, nobody seems to know for sure but it is terrorizing the local villages something harsh. They are supposed to be leaving the states in a couple of weeks after they wrap up a few things and they will be starting their hunt, starting, mind you, in the highlands of Tibet, sometime in early to mid November."

Alex's eyes widen, and Kendra curses under her breath.

Jenny offers a sad and somewhat strangled laugh. "Yeah, they aren't even trying to be clever about it anymore. They really want another council-raised Slayer and they are not even bothering to pretend to be nice about it. Can we do anything for them?"

Alex nods, and grimaces. "Probably? The armor crystals they already have will keep them okay down to fifty below zero Fahrenheit and don't care about wind chill. Even below that, they still mitigate a lot, so they'll have time to start a fire or make camp if they realize it is dipping below what the crystal can deal with. I am more concerned about the oxygen issue if they have to go high enough, the climbing, falling, and crevasse problems, and of course the Yeti itself. I'll need to do a bit of research, but I'll start an elemental fire weapon crystal before we head for school. I can't imagine that being a bad call no matter what the research finds out. Even if all they use it for is starting a campfire."

Kendra looks at Alex and pushes her plate away. "How do we get them clear of the Watchers once and for all? This is ridiculous! If they want merely to kill her, why torment her first? Why pretend? It makes no sense!"

Jenny loads her own plate and sits down, then answers around a mouthful of eggs while she has an eye on the kitchen clock. "Giles tells me it is all politics just now. The group in power at the Watcher's Council is very conservative and has the vote locked, basically, but if they started wavering down a path that was too obviously evil they would lose power and a more modern, revisionist party within the council would likely take control. This would be marginally better from a slayer's perspective, but not by much. The Slayer herself is more or less just an interchangeable pawn that the two groups have been using to try to prove their theories for the last two hundred years."

She sighs. "He was practically in tears when he told me that. He really does care for her, you know. For all of you. He's just so damned pigheaded sometimes. For all their faults, he really feels that without access to their research we may as well all slit our wrists and get it over with. Hell, he may even be right."

Alex pushes her half-eaten breakfast away and sighs. "I'll call them before I leave for school. We'll work something out where I can get them outfitted as best I can before they have to go. Did Mr. Burton's friend Wang show up to get the potions yesterday?"

Jenny nods. "Yes, he did. Very polite Asian man. A bit on the smaller side. He was riding in this goofy old refurbished bus with a couple of dozen rather hard-looking individuals, also Asian. When I asked what they needed the potions for he just said they were making a delivery for Jack. Apparently, a niece of his had a boyfriend disappear in LA and he found something untoward going on when he looked into it, so he got a hold of the old gang, as it were. Wang either couldn't or wouldn't tell me any more than that. But if Jack holds true to form, I am betting we hear something within the next couple of days."

>>>>

>> In the Sunnydale library, 3:45 pm.
Alex walks in to see that Kirsten (who is normal human-sized for school), Willow, and Buffy are crowded around Giles in his office, and apparently on speakerphone with somebody that she can't quite make out. Cordelia and Desia are at the table and discussing basic survival strategies both in the vampire-infested city and in the social ridiculousness that is Sunnydale High. Behind her, she can hear the clicking sound of Jenny's high heels coming down the corridor behind her. She walks over towards the office until she can hear the phone call, only to miss it as it ends during her approach.

Giles glances up and graces her with a sad smile. "Alex. I was just recently told you would be seeking me out this evening. Information about Yeti's, I think it was?"

Alex nods absently, but rather than follow Giles to the locked cabinets, she sits in his office and gives the other girls there a look that has them finding somewhere else to be for a while. When he returns carrying a few tomes, she nudges the door shut with her foot. With a blank look on her face and an emotionless tone, she speaks. "Why?"

Giles sits. Places the books down. Though there is no doubt that he is aware of the enormity of the question, he still feels he must ask. "Why what?"

Alex allows the merest hint of the irritation she is feeling to peek through the blandness of her expression and even that is enough to make Giles quail a bit in response.

"Why is the council trying to kill Faith? She isn't denying her calling. She is doing everything they ask of her. They killed Kakistos, for crying out loud, a vampire the council has apparently been trying to get rid of for like two thousand years! So why? God help me, Giles, if I don't like the answer, I am gonna have to redefine the boundaries of what I am willing to do to support Slayers and if I do, the council is not gonna be a fan I promise you that."

Giles hangs his head. Takes off his glasses. Begins slowly cleaning them as he orders his mind for his response. After nearly a minute, he replaces his glasses.

"Alex, the first thing you need to understand is that they are not trying to kill Faith. Not really. They don't care about Faith one way or the other. To say that they are trying to kill Faith is the same as saying a bombardier is trying to kill his payload."

Seeing her look, he shakes his head. "I don't agree with such callous stupidity, obviously. But my agreement one way or the other does not make it any less true."

He shifts in his chair, attempting to become somewhat more comfortable. "The reason for their current actions really boils down to two things. First, the man currently in charge of the council, one Quentin Travers, is possibly the most ultra-conservative pillock that the Watcher's Council has ever known. As such, he doesn't want Slayers that are not council-raised and trained. Fortunately for Buffy, she managed to kill Lothos almost immediately, and Nest a year later. Two master vampires defeated gave her a degree of immunity, never mind the oddity of a new slayer that was council raised being thrown into the mix. But with Kendra supposedly gone, and Faith being another wildcard in their eyes, the conservatives on the council are desperate to find a way to discredit 'naturally found' Slayers so they can justify their depredations on potential Slayers to the council at large."

Giles goes silent for a moment, taking a sip of lukewarm tea from the cup on his desk. "The second reason goes a bit deeper and has less to do with Faith than it does with Diana. Unfortunately, there is little I can do to help Diana at this point. I've explained to her where she went wrong but unfortunately, tarred with that brush as she is, they will never let it go."

Alex makes a circular "get on with it" motion with her hand, and Giles sighs once before he continues. "You need to understand that the Council operates at different levels. Has done so for millennium, more for security than anything else though I am sure there are other reasons as well. What she desires to do would take two distinct branches of the organization and have them run concurrently. This is something that nobody in the Senior Council wants and is apparently something that she was unwilling to shut up about for a little too long. They gave her a potential that was deemed a low possibility in an effort to shut her up, and then once Faith activated, were left with few options. Again, I don't agree with it. But these are rich, powerful men who control the lion's share of the occult knowledge on the planet that isn't in the hands of demons. We need their help. So, I am somewhat at an impasse."

Alex nods, her hatred for the council only growing. "If they keep everything separate, how do you know all this?"

Giles gives off a wry if somewhat self-depreciating smirk. "Do you perhaps remember that bit with Eyghon?" At her nod, he continues.

"My family has been involved in the Watcher's Council for a thousand years. Imagine my surprise when, at the age of fourteen, I was nosing about in my father's study where I ought not to have been and found that my life, even down to my occupation, political leanings, and likely expected death were already accounted for? A father's Watcher journal can make fascinating reading for a child. Long story short, I read what I could, learned more than I probably should have about the council by skimming through the notes and journals my father had in his office, and finally had my little rebellion in my late teens and early twenties. As part of that rebellion, I got in touch with many others of the younger generation of the Watcher's children, and we keep each other informed when we can. Less a spy network than just old friends that look out for each other when possible. Sam Zabuto is such a one if that means anything to you."

Alex scowls at this. "Yeah, it means your taste in friends leaves a lot to be desired."

Giles has to stifle his rebuttal. Pointing out that Zabuto was in possession of, and therefore responsible for a potential apocalypse isn't likely to gain him any traction with the teen anyway, for all that it bloody well should. Given what was at stake and the resources the council had given him, he'd have done the same thing Sam did. Bring the slayer for support. Escape with the payload. Use the slayer as a distraction when he left. For the sake of the world, he would have had to. A look at Alex tells him though, that she is in no way ready to hear that.

"Yes, well. His shortcomings notwithstanding, he has ensured the world continues to spin on. As for the senior council, if you can come up with a way to curb their excess while maintaining their support, I am more than willing to hear it. But I haven't had any luck, myself."

Alex looks at him for a minute. A full minute. Long enough that by the end of it he is getting highly uncomfortable. Then she stands. "There will come a point when I believe they have gone too far, Giles. If they keep going down this road, they will reach that point fairly soon. I want to make sure you understand that if that happens, I will declare open season on anybody still claiming a direct connection of any kind with these bastards. You mean a lot to me. I respect you more than pretty much any other adult male on the planet. But these guys?"

She shakes her head and opens the door. "These guys are about to stomp on my last nerve, and when that happens we'll find out if they're any tougher than the crap they claim to fight."

She steps out into the room after grabbing the Yeti books off the shelf and loads them in her bag. Looking out into the room, Giles sees the rest of the room's occupants look between him in the office and Alex, then they all follow Alex out of the library.

>>>>

>> That evening, Calendar and Harrison residence.
The gaggle of girls from the library watches in mute wonder as the small winged ferret-looking creature suddenly begins to move about, bouncing around boisterously in a frenzy of excitement and rubbing against everybody. Desia, particularly, seems moved and is staring at it with tears streaming down her face. Turning to Alex, she whispers. "I am so sorry."

Alex shrugs. "Not your fault. I get it. Believe me. Been through a possession or two of my own. But yeah, this is what I do. I make things."

Alex gives Red the mental go-ahead to start the actual enchantment on the fire elemental weapon crystal in the morning, as the item itself is created.

"Actually, if you don't mind sitting up on my workbench, I'd like to take a look at you."

Desia hops up on the bench, though the look in her eye is one of heavy suspicion.

Alex backs up, puts her hands in the air. "Completely non-invasive. We can stop any time you want. I was just hoping I could solve your problem with being trapped in Sunnydale before your new parents wanted to trot you off on vacation or to see grandma or something. We don't have to."

She nods, though she still looks a bit uncomfortable as Alex pulls out an odd headpiece that includes what appears to be multiple jeweler's style eyepieces on either eye, puts it on, and starts clicking through them while examining her from quite closer than she is really comfortable with.

After a few minutes, Alex finally flips up all the eyepieces. "Well. That's interesting. And bad."

Cordelia and Jenny both being in the room, they look up in time to see the flash of panic across the girl's face. "Bad? Bad how? What's going on?"

Alex flips back down the eyepieces, as though hoping that getting another look will offer a better result, but finally she shrugs. "You're leaking. You're basically a spell that was kept together by a magical item, without that item you're just a spell without an anchor. The body is human enough, and theoretically, as bits of it get replaced by the body doing things the body does, you will eventually be real enough that even I couldn't tell the difference. But right now you are leaking like a sieve. Magic is pouring in and out of you constantly because the spell that was built to maintain you has failed and all that is holding you together now is your soul, I expect." With a sigh, Alex looks around to see who has caught the problem here. Jenny looks horrified, and Willow who came in during the explanation looks like she wants to cry.

Desia is crying at this point. "What does this mean?"

Alex sees the tears and puts a hand on her arm. "It means you have a pretty unique medical condition. I'll have to think on it a bit, there are a few options on how to fix this for you, theoretically. It's possible a simple "Regenerate" will solve this, but honestly, I doubt it. While it is definitely an issue with the cell structure not being natural, I don't think any kind of healing is going to fix it. Really, we have some time. As long as you stay in town, the ambient magic here is enough to sustain you, if just barely. I'll try and see if I can come up with something non-invasive that you can carry around or wear that will solve the problem. The only other option I have would be to fundamentally change you into something else. While it would likely work, it could be messy."

The girls are looking pretty grim at this point, but Jenny can't help herself. "Into something else you mean like, with a spell?"

Alex makes a wavy motion with her hand. "Maybe? Temporary spells probably wouldn't do it. It would need to be something that actually permanently and irrevocably changed her creature type. Personally, I'd rather just come up with a bracelet or something that would do the job. But, as an example, if I were to take her arm off and sculpt one made of iron to replace it, make her a half golem, then that would do it. A permanent physical change that makes her immune to magic and also traps the current magic in her where it is so it can do its job forever. Makes you crazy strong, hard to hurt, I'm talking bounce bullets levels hard to hurt here, endurance for days. It's a good gig as long as you can deal with the downsides."

Desia almost looks scared to ask but does anyway. "And those are?"

Alex nods. "Well, you take a hit to your effective IQ and charm. Not so much that you are dumber or uglier, more that you are distracted by different sensations and not quite on the same page as the cool kids anymore socially. It'd be like trying to be Albert Einstein or Marilyn Monroe while also training for triathlons three hundred and sixty-five days a year. You can try, but it isn't gonna happen. Something's gotta give. You also lose a lot of your sensation of taste, smell, and touch or so I am told. Not all of it, but they tend to season food like smokers, for what that's worth. The big issue though is the part that when the limb is first activated, it's gonna make a play for control just that one time. Kinda like a vampire's demon will. If it wins, your soul's gone off to heaven and we have to wreck whatever is left of you. There are ways to tilt that so far in your favor it isn't even funny, but it is a risk."

Her face goes ashen. "That's... That is a lot of downsides."

Alex nods. "Yeah. But for what it's worth, I've seen those guys take apart things I wouldn't have wanted to send entire platoons of marines after. It's all about trade-offs, in magic. Hopefully, yours won't be anything like that. For now, though, I think I am going to go ahead and make the house here hallowed ground by next weekend, and I am going to recommend that you spend some time here when you can. If you are going to be soaking up random energies, they may as well be good ones."

>>>>

>>The next day, at Sunnydale high. 8:12 AM In the Library.
Alex and Jenny make their daily run with Kirsten by the library to see to it that Giles is all right only to see him cursing in surprise while pacing and waving around a newspaper.

"Giles?" Is Jenny's attempt at getting his attention.

When the obviously emotionally charged man turns it is to gaze upon them with a grin that stretches from ear to ear. "Look, look and see what you have done and tell me that it wasn't worth it. I knew we owed the man a debt. I wouldn't have believed lightning would strike twice, but it obviously has."

The newspaper article is at best muddled. It details largely supposed eyewitness accounts of some kind of portal to hell that was located in the "Family Home" a shelter for runaway teenagers. According to these eyewitness accounts that the paper assures everyone must be due to drug use, demons would abduct teens and then work them as slaves for their whole lives, before letting them out to die of old age. Indeed, the building that the "Family Home" shelter was in happened to be destroyed in an inferno of biblical proportions, but not before nearly four thousand refugees came back out of it, though no one has any idea how this happened, and apparently, nobody is telling.

Giles points to a background shot on the second page of the story, showing a funky old yellow bus with a bunch of Asian men in martial arts getup, one white male with a boot knife, and a young woman with a satisfied smile to go with her tears. As Buffy has walked in by this point, she sees the picture and becomes startled. "Hey, I know her."

The rest look at her, expecting her to elaborate. She rolls her eyes. "I don't remember her name, she was one of those vampire wannabes from when Ford was in town. I wonder how she got involved in that?"

Jenny looks at the picture again, and her face makes a somewhat grim smile. "He's family. Uncle. And this was the revenge he just got for her. I know that face."

>>>>

Author's note.
No worries if you are not familiar with the episode the end of this chapter handled. I just thought I'd throw it in as a way to tie "Big Trouble in Little China" to BtVS in my story here.
Thanks for reading!
 
Back
Top