FIC: CC: X-Slayerettes: "Whose Line is IT" By: Joshua

["jab21kill" <the.evil.guy@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: CC: The Uncanny X-Slayerettes
Author: Joshua
Disclaimer: X-Men were created by Stan Lee, who's a really great guy
since he's allowed so many parodies and Fanfics to be made of his
characters, and then here he is making MOVIES too! Great guy, really
he is. BtVS was created by Joss Whedon, who's kind of a megalomaniac
ever since the fourth season ended and while he makes GREAT characters
and comes up with decent enough stories, which is the only reason why
I would bother writing BtVS fanfic. Anyway, only thing I could
possibly own in this is the time spent writing it and the convoluted
twisting and bordering on slightly insane plot. Furthermore, I have no
money so don't bother suing me. You'll just embarrass yourself.
Summary: The continuation of 'Chaotic Circumstances'. Dealing
primarily with the original team of Slayerettes that were transformed
by Halloween into the X-Men and now have mutant powers.
Issue 1: "Whose Line is IT" In the wake of Halloween, things are
changing, from the people to the entire world. As Buffy and her
friends try to deal with the changes in their lives, they still have
to deal with everything else the Hellmouth throws at them.

Story:

It was the middle of November, and Christmas Vacation was looming like
a carrot on a stick, but that was what the few remaining 'normal'
students of Sunnydale High were worried about and spending their
energy on. Everybody else was focusing on and worrying over the
Holiday that was already past. Halloween.

A day that would be forever remembered for what happened to the
citizens of one small suburban town called Sunnydale on the southwest
coast of California on that night. Thanks to the workings of a chaos
mage named Ethan Rayne, and the bizarre Englishman's mistakes of
drawing directly on the Force of Chaos and handing out Halloween
costumes that would change whoever wore them /into/ the costume.

Supposedly, the mage's plan was just to turn loose the havoc and chaos
of costumed entities running free in the real world for a single
night, but something far worse happened. And while for a single night,
everyone was transformed into their costume and possessed by the
spirit, the minds and souls of whatever or whoever they dressed as,
when morning came, it didn't end. The spirits that had been called for
a single night returned to whence they came, but their changes remained.

Due to not just one set of circumstances, everyone that wore a costume
enchanted by Ethan Rayne and was thusly affected by his spell of
costume chaos, found themselves with the same powers, abilities,
and/or bodies of their costume. Though they were still themselves,
more than half of the citizens, adult and child, of Sunnydale still
were whatever it was they had dressed as.

Yet none had quite the grasp of understanding that four teenagers at
the local high school did of what had happened. It helped that these
teens further understood a great deal more about the world than just
the existence of magic and chaos mages. And that one of them was a
mystically empowered champion for good even before she dressed in a
costume was just another reason why these four found themselves at the
center of a growing league of those changed by the chaos of Halloween,
or Chaotix as the term would come to be called.

Further coincidence is that each of these four dressed as one of the
fabled X-Men of Marvel Comics, the misfit band of mutants hated by
those they protect. After contacting a large number of other Chaotix
throughout Sunnydale, the teens, who had previously dubbed themselves
the Slayerettes, formed the core of the new league and began to spread
the word and help the other citizens of Sunnydale understand what had
happened to them.

Yet while their aid in the new league is very important, they still
have to deal with the problems and issues they were dealing with
before Halloween, problems such as demons, vampires, and the forces of
darkness. All converging in their small little town because of the
Hellmouth, a mystical convergence located beneath Sunnydale that can
open a portal that can unleash the forces of Hell.

These teenagers are Buffy Summers, once chosen as the Slayer, gifted
with enhanced strength, healing, and the power to defeat vampires and
the forces of darkness. After dressing up as the X-man /Cyclops/, she
can shoot optic beams from her eyes at will, and thanks to the mixture
of Chaos, her mystical Slayer powers, and her mutant genes, Buffy's
powers are growing and mutating day by day, making her more powerful
than ever.

Willow Rosenberg, an introverted "geek" once, and with one of the most
brilliant minds in the country as she can crack almost any computer
database and has the highest IQ of her class. After dressing up as
Jean Grey, codenamed /Phoenix/, she's now quite literally one of the
most powerful minds on the planet.

Xander Harris, Willow's best friend since Kindergarten, he was the
proverbial flipside of Willow's coin as he never considered himself
smart and very extroverted and in the top running for class clown.
After dressing as /Iceman/, he's inherited Bobby Drake's sense of
style and way with the ladies, and is discovering that while he has
the powers and the humor, he may end up being more than Drake ever
was. In more ways than one.

Cordelia Chase was the richest, snobbiest girl in Sunnydale, but after
being saved from vampires by Buffy, she opened her eyes and joined a
group where she learned who her real friends were. After a night as
the X-man /Rogue/, Cordy's view on life was permanently changed,
giving her Rogue's powers, all of them, as well as putting a mirror
under her nose to show her how she had been before then.

They're led by the High School Librarian, Rupert Giles, who is also
Buffy's Watcher, the one that helps her directly with her destiny of
protecting the world, and who happened to be the one that helped stop
Ethan Rayne once and for all.

These teens, brought together by the circumstances of the Hellmouth,
forged through the chaos of their new powers and status, they are the
Uncanny /X-Slayerettes/!

/Sunnydale High/

Buffy Summers was toying with her red-tinted shades, trying to
concentrate on the test in front of her. It wasn't much of a "test"
really, more an "Aptitude Test" for the upcoming Career week. Normally
she'd be outside in the courtyard, enjoying the outdoors and
'out-of-school-time' as much as she could, but of late,
'out-of-school-time' was more stressful and more dangerous than
running the chance of getting an extra training session with Giles or
running across the goblin-transformed "Troll", Principal Snyder.

Truth be told, she wasn't paying nearly half the attention she should
have been on it, only focusing enough to be sure she was writing on
the correct part of the test instead of doodling all over it. The
questions just kind of blurred before her and felt like they went in
and if not out then just outright disappeared. A couple like, "Do you
enjoy physical labor?" and "If you saw a crime taking place, would you
stop it?" stood out and she answered them accordingly, but mostly she
just let her mind drift, playing with her red shades, watching how the
light played through the crimson lenses.

"Are you a people person, or do you prefer keeping your own company?"
Xander read from his test. He, Willow, and (Heaven only knows)
Cordelia were seated around a table in the lounge, where the aptitude
test had been set up to be taken by the students, each doing their own
test and seemed to be giving it all a great deal more concentration
than she was.

"Are you asking me?" she returned, "And do you want me to answer on
pre-Halloween status, or after?" She gave him a teasing grin when he
glared at her with his ice-blue eyes.

"I dunno," he finally shrugged. "Hey Wills," he turned to the telepath
that was right beside Buffy, "am I a people person? Do I enjoy the
company of people?"

"Before or after Halloween?" the redhead questioned without looking up
from her own test.

"There's a difference?" he asked, confused by getting the same
response from two different people.

"Uh, gonna have to go with 'Yeah' on that Xan," Buffy answered,
turning her page automatically when she finally noticed she'd finished
the one she was on. She blinked in surprise when the entire test was
flipped over. There were no more pages, she was done.

"Duh!" Cordy added to the conversation while Willow just nodded
emphatically to her longest and bestest friend.

"Fine, before!" he exclaimed.

"Well, we're people," Willow pointed out, actually looking up.

An evil grin crossed the mutant's face as he then turned back to his
test and said aloud, "So that would be a 'No' then."

"You really want to get a grade off this test based on who you were
/before/ Xan?" Buffy questioned as she pulled out her homework and
started leafing through, trying to find an assignment that she hadn't
already finished. One really great thing about dressing up as Cyclops
for Halloween, he'd been an A+ student during school and then was a
school teacher whenever he hadn't been saving the world, thus her GPA
had taken a serious upswing.

That made the mutant freeze, and not in the literal way he so often
could do. "So I am a people person?" he asked, confused.

"How many dates with how many girls have you had this week /alone/?"
Willow icily queried. It was Monday.

Xander's eyebrows shot up, but he kept his mouth shut and silently
went back to the test.

A few minutes later he exclaimed with an exasperated sigh, "It's just
. . . these people can't tell from one multiple choice test what we're
supposed to do for the rest of our lives! I mean it's . . . it's
ridiculous!"

"Just shut up and finish the test!" Cordelia shouted at him, getting
tired of hearing his constant whining from right next to her.

"Taking a break Buffy?" Willow asked after seeing that her friend had
pulled out some of her homework and was steadily working on that, even
while continuing to toy with the shades Willow had gotten for her the
week before.

"Huh?" the blonde looked up, her expression a mixture of confusion and
boredom.

"Taking a break from the test?" she asked again.

"Oh, that. No, I finished it," she answered, turning back to the
homework, but frowned when she saw that she'd continued to write while
answering Willow and was now completely done with all of her homework.
Now what was she supposed to do?

That was about the time she felt the heat of the others gaze and
looked up to see them all, staring at her in absolute disbelief. Out
of the corner of her eye, she noticed a couple other nearby students
also staring at her.

Seeing they weren't saying anything, and truly bored, she just
shrugged it off and started putting her homework away and pulling out
a book Giles had given her a couple days ago to read. It was,
according to him, a book on Slayers and their fighting skills. Reading
through it though, she'd discovered it was more a Watcher Diary on
tactics commonly used by a couple of Slayers that had lived back
during the Renaissance. Which translated to the same thing, she
supposed, but it was slightly more interesting than just sitting here
worrying over a test she didn't care about. She'd already read about a
couple of things that intrigued her and she felt she might try some of
them out on patrol sometime.

"All right, who are you and what have you done with Buffy Summers?"
Xander questioned.

Buffy, internally, turned her attention to the psychic link that she
had with Willow, something they'd discovered only very recently and
communicated in emotions and feelings rather than words and thoughts
her current frame of mind and mood.

Willow rolled her eyes at the wave of pure boredom flowing down the
link from the Slayer. "Marco promised to have the Danger Room up and
running by the weekend Buffy. He and the others have to go to school
too y'know. And you shouldn't abuse Cyclops' knowledge like that. It
might get you in trouble someday."

"Wills, I've got his powers, his experience, and /some/ of his
memories, not his knowledge. Part of his experience is how to use the
knowledge I already have. Besides, you helped me study, I can't help
it if my subconscious is smarter than me these days," the mutant
Slayer excused.

"That is so unfair," Cordelia remarked, finally turning back to her
own test, until she looked down surprised that she'd already finished too.

"If you want to rag on someone for using knowledge not their own, put
the blame on Rogue over there," Buffy said with a grin as she put on
her shades.

The white-striped brunette glared at the blonde, sticking her tongue
out before just putting her test away and looked about to pull out her
own homework, until she recalled that she had already finished all her
homework.

"So just Willow and I still have to go through this brain-sucking
torture?" Xander exclaimed.

Willow, exactly forty-five minutes after she'd started, which just so
happened to coincide with the moment after he'd said that, flipped the
test back over and put it away.

"Whu...!" Xander stared, stunned. "That is SO unfair!"

"Tough!" the girls all shouted at him, struggling to contain their
giggles.

"C'mon girls," Buffy said, getting up, "Let's leave the Unfunny Iceman
to his torture. I feel in the mood for a shopping trip."

"Will! Buff! Come on! Cordy!" Xander protested as one after one the
girls left the lounge. Grumbling, he remarked one final time, "This is
so unfair!"

/Abandoned Factory/
/Spike's Hideout/

Drusilla was laying out her cards with trembling care while Spike was
pacing around the room, the other vamps, the few that remained after
Halloween and the following weeks, were huddled around watching the
master vampire warily. At the table, opposite Drusilla, and at the
center of the circuit that Spike was making in his paces, was the one
vampire that was born before this century and knew how to read before
he was turned. The vampire's name was Dalton and he actually used to
be a Watcher, not a Watcher to a Slayer, but one of the Watcher's
nevertheless.

At the moment, Dalton was pouring over several tomes, all magical
directories or manuscripts on magic and seemed to become more and more
frantic with everything he read. Aloud he said to Spike, "This is the
spell that can change a person into the costume they're wearing, but
it's temporary, it calls upon the Roman god Janus. It's the only thing
that could actually . . . uh, actually do what's happened."

"Yes, yes, yes, I know that," Spike growled, his pacing becoming more
agitated. "That doesn't bloody well tell me why the hell the Slayer
and every bollocks'd /thing/ out there STILL has their bloody powers!
Although I really gotta thank that demon eyed boy for getting rid of
Grunide," he muttered.

"It . . . it just doesn't make any sense. That's the only spell that
could actually affect a whole town, even one on the Hellmouth. There's
nothing else that could" Dalton stopped suddenly, his vampiric eyes
wide with shock.

"Wot?" Spike demanded.

"Chaos," the ex-Watcher muttered. "It-it-it's the only way. He, the
wizard, whoever it was, he . . . he tapped into Chaos to power the
spell. That's the only way, and for it to be permanent, oh /fuck/!!"

Spike stepped back, a little shocked, but even more impressed at the
unexpected reaction from the bookish demon.

"Spike," Dalton hurriedly spoke to the master vampire, "You, we can't
do this! We can't, there's no way, it can't..."

Spike casually backhanded the vampire with enough strength that he
flew out of his chair at the table onto the floor. "Now," Spike
drawled, "care to try that again, this time without the blubbering?"

Scrambling to his feet, Dalton tried to make Spike understand, "Chaos
is one of the fundamental forces of the universe. If this wizard,
whoever he was, tapped into that for this spell . . . It's permanent.
There's no way to change anyone that was changed back to normal, no
matter what. And we can't risk trying the same spell to change
ourselves! There's no telling what may happen!"

"Hence calling it chaos I'm assuming," Spike's face was no longer amused.

"You could kill Drusilla," Dalton provided as example, "Or turn into a
good guy, or even be changed so drastically you aren't even yourself,
you'd be some other more powerful demon, like the Master or somebody
worse!"

"Or more boring," Spike scrunched his face up in annoyance as Dalton
convinced him.

"Spike, come dance with me," Drusilla hummed, holding out her arms to
her childe.

"Not now pet, can't you see we're busy!" the vampire snapped.

Whimpering, Dru withdrew her arms and seemed to fold in on herself.
Instantly regretful, Spike was at his sire's side in a flash, holding
her and whispering sweet nothings in her ear and calming her down.
Once she was back to her cards, Spike returned to Dalton, his anger
evident from every pore of his body as he lashed out at the minion and
ordered, "Fine, forget the bloody Slayer and every bloody thing else
out there. Focus on Dru's cure."

"Actually, on that, I do have a lead," Dalton excitedly reported
grabbing one of the magical directories. "A necromancer."

Spike smashed the vampire's head in before another word could be
uttered. "Are you bloody mad! Not even I'm stupid enough to go
anywhere /near/ a bloody fuckin /Necromancer/!! They can control the
dead in case you forgot and guess what a vampire is!"

"Not a real one!" Dalton quickly assured the master vamp. "One of the
Changed, a Chaotic," referring to a citizen of Sunnydale, "with all
the powers but none of the experience or bound by the laws that a true
necromancer would be bound by. I got this from a contact at
Wolfram&Hart, it shows the name and location of every magician of
every type in the country, or North America in our case. There's a
necromancer in Sunnydale, one that hadn't been there before. All we
need is to get him, control him, and get him to use his powers to heal
Drusilla."

Spike waited, listening to the other vampire until he was finished.
Finally he asked, "Don't suppose you've got a way in that big brain of
yours to actually do that, do you?"

Dalton froze at that, panic entering his eyes, but before Spike could
punish him further, Drusilla interrupted, raising on trembling finger
and whispering out in that sing-song voice of hers, "There is a way."

"How ducks?" Spike asked, by his sire's side in an instant.

She pointed at the cards before her, and Spike's evil grin quickly
became quite infectious.

/Sunnydale High Courtyard/

Xander and Cordelia were looking over the list of names and careers
posted on the bulletin board, looking for both their own names as well
as their friends. The Cordettes were just behind them waiting for
their own chance. Charlotte, Erin and Cindy in particular looked
nervous about their results.

Finally, Cordy found her own name and read aloud, "Motivational
Speaker or . . . Professional businesswoman!"

At the same time Xander read, "Prison guard!!"

Cordelia looked at him annoyed and then looked down at his name and
added, "Or construction worker."

"I'm trying to have a venting moment, if you don't mind Miss High and
Fly," Xander griped to his fellow mutant. He looked over the rest of
the list and made note of Buffy's and Willow's listed roles, and then
double-checked the entire list quickly before turning to the complete
(minus Harmony) Cordettes and asked, "D'you think that this might be
the fake list, y'know like April Fools or something like that?"

"No, why?" Brittany snapped as she shoved him out of the way.

"Cause Willow's name isn't up there," was all he said with a frown on
his face. In the events since Halloween, Xander had gotten much closer
to his friends and he knew when something would trouble them. And ever
since the revelation that there actually were people, namely Bobby
Drake, out there that were even more immature and comedic than he
tried to be, he'd learned when /not/ to be funny.

Everybody else that knew Willow Rosenberg however, also knew that the
nerd wouldn't take being left off the list that has to do with their
futures at all well. They also knew that she was telepathic now and
each struggled not to let the fact that her name was not on the list
be the forefront of their minds.

Suddenly, they all heard Buffy Summers shout from across the yard,
"HEADS UP!"

Xander and Cordelia looked around sharply, then their eyes widened in
fear at the same moment and they grabbed as many of the ones still in
front of the board and dragged them away as fast as they could, Cordy
taking extra care not to touch anyone with her bare skin.

Half an instant later, Willow flew down right in front of the board,
her eyes wide in panic, taking in the list at a glance and then she
began going over it in detail, going all over the list once she'd
confirmed that her name was under neither 'R' nor 'W'.

Buffy jogged up to join Xander and Cordy and helped a few of the
people that'd been knocked down stand up. "Tried to warn you," she
told them. "By the way Brittany, that wasn't funny."

"How did you know . . . ?" the Kheran Empath demanded.

"Brittany!" Cordy snapped, "You almost got us killed there!"

"Hey, I figured she'd want to know," the brunette shrugged.

A growl drew their attention back to Willow as she turned from the
list, apparently having confirmed that her name was not on the list. A
dangerous hot-pink aura surrounded the redhead as she growled out,
"Snyder," and then took to the air, hunting down the troll. Though
most had taken to calling him a goblin of late.

Everyone glared at Brittany as the girl shrugged sheepishly. "Oops,"
was all she said.

"I'll stay on her tail," Cordy took to the air after her friend while
Buffy instead just started running into the building, trying to calm
Willow down through their link.

"Oh c'mon, it's funny!" Brittany protested to everyone looking at her
like she was the bad guy.

"Do you realize what she may do to Principal Snyder because of this
perceived slight?" Aura questioned.

Struggling to keep her grin from actually splitting her head open,
Brittany nodded.

"Snyder replaced Flutie, who the heck do you think they're going to
replace /Snyder/ with?" Cindy asked their 'Second-In-Command' since
Harmony had gone psycho.

That sobered the Coda-trained teenager right up. "Oh. Well, she won't
kill him. She's an X-man, not to mention Rosenberg doesn't have the
balls to kill."

"Three words Brit-Brit," Xander coldly retorted, "Dark. Phoenix. Saga.
Look it up." Then he stalked off after his friends.

"She's also a telepath, she could turn him into a vegetable," Erin
remarked.

"I think that would be an improvement," Charlotte commented with a
Russian-lilt.

"You gotta admit though, it was a little funny," Brittany tried to
defend herself one last time. Suddenly she froze, a frown marring her
face. "Hey, wait a second! How the hell did /Summers/ know it was me
that broadcast to Willow? She's not a telepath and it happened to
quick for Willow to tell her!"

The Cordettes all looked around at each other, confused and wondering
about this latest development. Things were so much simpler before
Halloween.

/Sunnydale High/
/Principal's Office/

"SNYDER!!" Willow's voice was both telepathically and telekinetically
(added echoes) enhanced as she tore the roof off the school to get
into the room. Evidence that the roof had been torn off before was
ignored as the raging redhead just put it back, telekinetically fusing
what needed to be fused to ensure that it wouldn't fall down on them,
any time soon.

The green-skinned, actually a putrid puke-green, orange-haired
creature squeaked and huddled down under the desk until the desk was
lifted off of him with but a gesture from the mutant now in his
office. The dark, pupil-less beady little eyes stared out from a heavy
brow and an ugly pugged-nose and finally recognized Willow Rosenberg.

Snyder immediately got to his feet and straightened his suit, which
was extremely out of place on the goblin-like creature and just made
him look even stranger than he normally would, trying to make himself
look and feel important again and maybe even intimidate the normally
shy student.

That was effectively stopped when Willow dropped the desk right back
where it had been, startling another squeak out of the
goblin-Principal and almost crushing him if he hadn't jumped back in
time. "What's the meaning of this Snyder?!" Willow's voice boomed in
the small room and his head equally.

"M-m-meaning of what?" the Troll stuttered, thrown completely off-balance.

"My name has been left off of the printed career list!" Willow
informed him, seeming, to his simple mind, to grow over ten feet tall
with burning pink eyes.

Snyder's beady little eyes blinked once, twice, and on the third time
he grunted as he recalled the information he needed. He opened his
mouth to respond, but Willow beat him to it, her eyes going wide with
surprise as she blurted out, "An international software corporation
singled me out? They want to offer me a job? Oh. Uh, sorry for the
mess. I'll clean it right up," the telepath was suddenly the sweet,
shy redhead everyone knew Willow Rosenberg to be.

On her way out, she waved her hand across the room and everything that
had fallen out of place was instantly put back to where it belonged
and another surge of telekinetic energy reinforced the repair job on
the ceiling even as she walked out.

Half an instant after the door had shut though, the ceiling crashed in
again, or rather a much smaller hole in the ceiling, as Cordelia
smashed through and hovered there for a second. Seeing the now
thoroughly terrified Troll standing there she asked, "Did Willow come
through here?"

He just silently nodded, his arm trembling, pointed out the door and
gave a soft grunt. Confused, Cordy landed and opened the door and
seeing Willow standing there calmly waiting as Buffy and Xander ran up
to her. "Oh, thanks," Cordy said to Snyder as she stepped out and shut
the door behind her with a small slam, which caused a little bit more
of the ceiling to crash down. Snyder just whimpered and went back to
hiding under his desk.

"Hey," Cordy said as she, Buffy, and Xander a beat later, joined up
with Willow. "Snyder's still alive, so I'm assuming you've calmed down?"

"Oh yeah, that, just a mild misunderstanding," the redhead reported
with a wide grin. The sheer giddiness she said this with, opposed to
the irrational rage she'd been seen with before caused the rest of
them to break out into shared laughter as they all walked on to the
Library.

"So, computer software company, huh?" Buffy asked with a grin, her
crimson shades flashing.

"Yep," Willow bounced with giddiness.

"Come again?" Xander blurted, thoroughly confused.

"The reason I'm not on the career list," Willow explained as they
rounded a corner and started towards the hall where all their lockers
were at. "A computer software company, an /International/ computer
software company signaled me out and they want to offer me a job. They
had to get special permission to set up their closed off booth from
Snyder, that's how he knew about it."

"Yeah, but how did . . . oh, hang on for a sec, be right back . . ."
he trailed off as they reached his locker and he quickly went to
switch his books and then hurried over to rejoin the girls as they,
except for Cordelia, changed out their own books, their lockers right
next to each other. As soon as he did, he quickly picked up where he
left off, "So how did /Buffy/ know about the computer thing? Did you
like, tell her, y'know," he glanced around the hallway warily,
"privately? Not that I have a problem with that, but maybe Cordy and
I, particularly me, want to be included in such, uh . . . private
conversations to, y'know?"

Smiling, Willow shook her head and answered, "It's not like that Xander."

Cordelia rejoined them herself and took only a glance at everyone's
faces before blurting, "Oh, you haven't told him yet?"

"What? What, what, what, what, what, what!?" Xander stuttered looking
between the three gorgeous ladies that were his closest friends in the
world. He began to feel the panic that maybe they weren't as close as
he'd believed before now.

"Yeah Cordy," Buffy dangerously questioned, narrowing her eyes beneath
her crimson shades, "what didn't we tell him?"

There's more than one secret! Xander thought to himself in a complete
panic.

Willow winced and looked empathetically towards the mutant and
immediately hugged him close. "Xander, it's not like that," she
repeated, the stress of his panic in her voice. "We aren't keeping
secrets, we aren't excluding you, we just don't give you a complete
CIA-report listing of everything that's happened to us since we last
saw you the moment we see you again. Now stop your panicking, it hurts
and you're starting to give me a headache."

"Panicking? Who's panicking? I'm not panicking, there's nothing to
panic over!" Xander squeaked.

Buffy shrugged and sighed. "Face it Xan, our best friend is a
telepath. I've just learned not to think of what I don't want to think
about. And that sounded so much better in my head," she muttered,
scratching the back of her neck with a frown.

"Hello?!" Cordelia exclaimed, "Did you tell him or not?"

"Tell me what?" now that he was sure they weren't intentionally
keeping him out, Xander's curiosity was piqued.

"About Giles and Miss Calendar," she said, partly to help remind the
other girls.

"What, them kissing? I'm trying to repress on that actually," the
Slayer admitted.

"Uh, not exactly Buffy," Willow hesitated, only after a look from the
blonde did she share the memory of what had happened and what she,
Cordelia, and the Cordettes had witnessed the evening before when
they'd all gone on a patrol sweep of the town. Buffy'd stayed home,
partly because her mother wanted to spend some "quality time" with her
daughter and partly because they'd all agreed the Slayer should get at
least /one/ night off a week.

Buffy's eyes went wide, as Xander asked again, "What?!"

"Uh, Giles asked Miss Calendar to marry him. And she agreed," Willow
told him. "We were going to tell you both, honest, it just, well, we
were waiting for the right time."

"Damn I wish I had my camera," Cordelia grinned widely at the looks on
both Buffy's and Xander's faces.

"I need air," Buffy pronounced, turning and leaving, though class was
starting a few minutes and they all knew that.

"Damn, and I wanted to ask her out," Xander blurted out. At the sudden
heat he felt directed at him, he noticed the remaining redhead and
white-striped brunette glaring dangerously at him. "Did I say that out
loud?" he squeaked.

/Random Cemetery/
/Night/

It was Buffy's night to patrol, and as they'd all agreed, she wasn't
doing it alone. Xander 'Iceman' Harris was right by her side the whole
way. It was even somewhat enjoyable given their friendship, and since
Buffy didn't have to worry too much about Xander getting hurt anymore,
a lot less stressful than their first few times patrolling together.
Plus, during the whole Battle Royale they'd discovered that they could
work well together.

"Can you believe Willow's reaction today?" Xander asked with a
laughing grin on his face.

Buffy struggled to keep her own face, straight, not entirely
succeeding, answering, "Don't laugh, it's not . . . that funny!
Besides, you know better than anybody else how seriously Willow takes
academics! She was really looking forward to the test results, so she
could know what she would do for the rest of her life."

"Yeah, but c'mon Buff, since Halloween, do you really think that
anybody in this town is going to be doing anything that a standardized
test has to say?" he countered.

Buffy shrugged, uncomfortable, "Even before Halloween I couldn't be
what that test said I could be."

"Yeah, how about that? School teacher, huh?" Xander's tone shifted to
something Buffy didn't quite recognize. It almost sounded . . . smug.

"Or Law enforcement, don't forget law enforcement!" Buffy reminded him.

"You're actually seriously considering that?" Xander was surprised.

"I . . . might be. And if I make detective I don't have to wear the
ugly polyester uniforms," she pointed out. "Better than school
teacher, getting ragged on all the time by snot-nosed brats and
teenagers. Thank you but no!"

"Either way, don't make much money," he added.

"Yeah," she agreed.

"Construction worker though, there's money in that. Help build
high-rises and get government contracts and other stuff," the Slayer
turned it around.

"Better than Prison guard," he agreed. "But seriously, do you look at
me and see construction worker? You need all kinds of education for
that too, math and physics and geology and I think there's even a
special school they make you go to for reading plans and other
construction-type stuff!"

"Then there's the automatic membership to the YMCA," Buffy innocently
remarked as they walked along the cemetery.

"Yeah, then there's . . ." he trailed off and gave the mutant Slayer
the evil-eye, "Don't go there. Just . . . don't. Go. There." he warned
her.

Struggling to maintain a straight face, she held up her hand in a
solemn vow and managed, "Not going there, check. You'd look good in a
hardhat though," she almost burst out laughing.

"Buffy!" Xander growled holding up his left hand, a Freeze ball
forming in an instant.

She screeched with a wide smile and took off running, even as Iceman
immediately gave chase. "Get back here Slayer!" he crowed, shooting
out ice beams to create patches of ice in hope that she might trip up.
Of course it never happened.

Before they could make too much noise however, they slid to a stop as
they passed one mausoleum and discovered a couple of vampires inside
making even more noise than they had been. Buffy, using the few
stealth skills Giles had managed to train her with, but mostly relying
on the experience of sneaking cookies out of the cookie jar when she
was little, snuck up to the entrance and looked inside before sneaking
back to Xander, who had put on his ice-armor so he looked much more
capable than normal 'Xander Harris'.

"It's just one vamp, looks kind of like a Giles-wannabe if you ask me.
He's digging in one of the wall-spaces. Looks like he's looking for
something," she told him.

"Just one vamp, you wanna take it yourself and I'll watch your back or
. . ." Iceman offered.

"Tell you what, you take him and I'll watch your back, you deserve it,
and it is just one vamp," she suggested. She smiled at his suddenly
prideful look of accomplishment. "Go get 'em Tiger," she clapped him
on the back and then slipped back into the shadows, while Iceman
leaned back against the outside of the mausoleum, arms folded and
waited for the vampire to come out. They didn't have long to wait.

The vampire, which was exactly how Buffy described him, dressed like a
librarian, balding, and had spectacles on its nose in front of its
yellow demonic eyes, exited carrying a bundle in its arms, wrapped in
cloth so he couldn't actually tell what it immediately was. Before it
got too far, Xander stopped it, coughing softly to get its attention,
freezing it in fear.

"Y'know, I get the whole demon being evil thing, but don't you people
have any respect for the dead? I mean, you're dead yourselves so you
should at least let the non living-impaired dead keep the few
possessions they've still got. How evil can you get, really?" Iceman
taunted.

Buffy, from the shadows, watched as another vampire came at a run
straight for Xander's back, and outwardly the mutant showed no sign of
even detecting it. She hesitated for half a second, unsure whether to
interfere or not, but the choice was taken out of her hands because of
her hesitation. The vampire that had run up was already on Iceman, or
was about to be if it hadn't turned into a frozen vamp-cicle just
inside three feet of the mutant.

"And that's another thing," Iceman continued with not even a pause in
his speech, the vampire in front of him effectively terrorized,
"attacking from behind is another not-nice thing to do. Of course
since I've on occasion done it too, I can't exactly call it evil, but
it's still a not nice thing to do. But I'm not a nice person, except
to my friends. And you creeps," Xander paused as he shot his right
fist behind him and shattered the vamp-cicle turning it into a clump
of dusty ice, "are /not/ anything even remotely close to my friends.
Greatest enemies comes to mind honestly," he mused even as the vampire
before him took off as fast as it could.

Iceman gave an evil grin and brought forth both hands and ice beams
shot out and turned the ground beneath the vampire into a solid sheet
of ice, also covering and freezing over the manhole that the vampire
had been running for in hopes of disappearing into the sewers. It's
escape effectively cut off, the vampire scrambled around for a bit,
dropping its bundle and crawling away from the mutants as fast as it
could.

Enjoying himself, Iceman casually formed the Freeze Ball between both
hands, just watching the vampire struggle from a distance and taking
his time in ending it. Finally, he figured enough was enough and
launched the Freeze Ball after careful aiming and watched to see
another vamp-cicle be made. To his and Buffy's shock, who was watching
from behind her friend, the vampire took one look at the oncoming
attack and then jumped up as high as it could. The mutant attack went
on to completely freeze an innocent headstone behind the vampire, but
neither mutant took notice at the moment.

The vampire, either through sheer dumb luck or an incredibly
well-executed plan, landed precisely on top of the frozen-over
manhole, and with the combination of its weight and the force of its
jump, it actually cracked and broke through the ice and fell down
through the hole into the sewers below. For several long seconds after
the fact, Buffy and Xander just stared in stunned disbelief. Then they
quickly raced forward to see exactly what had happened and discovered
the manhole.

"Did that really just happen?" Xander asked as he lowered the
ice-armor, reverting to his normal self.

"Damn, I hate it when they pull shit like this," Buffy cursed, looking
down the manhole.

"Should we follow?" he asked.

"Hell no!" Buffy protested, "Remember the /last/ time we went in the
sewers?"

Xander winced, remembering the failed rescue attempt on Jesse and how
he and Buffy had nearly been killed because of their shortsightedness.
"Well, at least he didn't get away with whatever it was he was
stealing," he commented as he went over to the bundle and picked it
up. He frowned when he realized that it was actually a book. A very
old and powerful looking book.

"What is that?" Buffy asked.

"The /Necros Arcana Codex/," Xander replied automatically.

"Wow Xan," Buffy said, very impressed, "I'm impressed. All those
research parties are starting to pay off. You recognized this book
immediately. Probably from the mausoleum, and the cemetery and some
other really impressive random facts that you just put together in an
instant."

"Yeah," Xander grinned with overwhelming pride at her compliments,
then did the dumb thing and turned the book over and told her, "also
it says right here on the front, 'Necros Arcana Codex'. See, right
there . . . Hey! Where ya going?"

/The Library/
/The Next Morning/

"So you say this vampire was raiding a mausoleum in order to obtain
this?" Giles asked while anxiously looking over the book Buffy and
Xander had come across the night before.

"Yeah, it was suspicious and kinda creepy when you think about it, but
I went back to check out the place, just to be sure, and other than
tools and a broken wall, uh, what did you call it Xan?" the Slayer
turned to her patrolling partner.

"A reliquary," Xander answered. "Believe it or not, my hi-jinx in
church as a youth has finally paid off for something."

"A reliquary?" Giles was surprised, "What would a book on Necromancy
be doing in a reliquary of all places? Have you, uh, have you tried to
open it? The book I mean?" he asked.

"Yes, and I got a nasty shock because of it too!" Buffy pouted.

Now Giles' curiosity was really piqued. "That would indicate that this
book is more than just what it seems, its is magical, possibly even a
Grimmoire for a practicing Necromancer, meaning that only the
Necromancer itself can open it, and the dead or undead can safely
handle it."

"Hey, we managed to carry it just fine, it was only when I tried to
open it that it went all blue-flamey," Buffy pointed out.

Giles blinked. "Then this hasn't a necromancer of its own just yet.
Which, unfortunately, means only one thing," he sat down heavily with
a long suffering sigh.

"Oh, oh, oh! I know, I know!" Xander started waving his hand around
like a little kid in class. "Somebody dressed as a necromancer for
Halloween and now the powers of necromancy of this world are reaching
out to this new necromancer."

"I'm afraid Xander's actually right, for once," Giles let out another
suffering sigh.

"Hey!" the mutant exclaimed.

"So what does . . . ?" Buffy trailed off suddenly, startling the
others into looking at her, and then at what she was staring at. At
the entrance of the Library stood a young woman, dark red hair, so
dark it was almost black but still red. Buffy and Xander immediately
recognized her as Laura Hamilton, a Senior in school. She herself,
though, wasn't looking at any of them. Her eyes were only for the book
on the table in front of them, which had begun to glow a soft
twilight-blue.

"That's mine," she whispered, almost like she hadn't consciously said it.

Seeing that the girl/necromancer wasn't taking any steps forward and
the book wasn't looking like it was going to fly through the air to
get to her, Buffy just shrugged and casually picked it up and carried
it over to her. "Here. If it's yours, it's yours," she said, holding
it out.

Laura, pale skin flushing slightly, looked up at Buffy with pale green
eyes and then back down at the now practically shining book. Finally
she just took it, which immediately cut the light, only for it to
seemingly go into her. "Thank you," she whispered shyly to the Slayer.

"No prob. Hey, you know why a bunch of vamps were digging it out of a
mausoleum?" the blonde immediately asked the new girl.

Laura's eyes went wide with terror. "V-v-vampires!? Vampires aren't real!"

"You dressed as a necromancer for Halloween, didn't you?" Buffy
questioned.

The senior blinked, stunned, but carefully nodded. "I, uh, I went as
Anita Blake," she quietly answered.

Buffy rolled her eyes beneath her crimson shades and nodded her head
in understanding, while Xander behind her said aloud, "Oh, that
explains it!" While Giles just snorted and tried to maintain his stoic
Watcher face.

"Don't worry . . . Laura right?" receiving a confirming nod, Buffy
continued, "Real vampires aren't /anything/ like that. For one thing,
the only ones with mind control powers are more than 1,000 years old,
and compared to a telepath on the rampage, it's nothing to get worked
up over. And personally, I haven't encountered any werewolves yet, but
I'm pretty sure they don't run in packs. Don't worry. Vamps are a lot
easier killed than in books. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about."

"Oh, good," the young woman squeaked. Apparently she was even more shy
and quiet than Willow had /ever/ been. Though thankfully she wasn't
dressed like a wallflower, so Buffy figured she was just shy.

Suddenly Buffy looked up, /'Think of the devil,'/ she mused with a
smile as Willow contacted her directly through their psychic rapport.
"Look, Laura, you know Xander right? And Mr. Giles the Librarian?
They'll fill you in, but I've got to go and jump through Snyder's hoop
of the week and attend the whole career fair thing. Don't worry," she
winked at the senior, lifting her shades and letting a crimson spark
of optic energy leak out with the wink, "you're not alone."

As she left, she heard Xander say to Laura, "Oh, Buffy? She dressed as
Cyclops. It was kind of a bet, y'see . . ."

Smirking, Buffy raced through the halls until she reached the fair and
stepped up right behind the goblin/Troll principal. As she stood there
she heard him shout to Willow, "Don't give me that, that story that
you just saw her and she's around here somewhere!"

"But I /did/ just see her, and she is /around/ here somewhere," Willow
'innocently' responded.

"Where. Is. Summers?" Snyder's beady little eyes narrowed even further.

"You wanted to see me Principal Snyder?" Buffy asked in a normal tone
of voice from right behind the Troll.

A high-pitched screech filled the hall and an instant later Buffy and
Willow were both looking up at the ceiling as the green orange-haired
blob hung from an overhang.

"Go to class," the terror-stricken Troll hissed at the mutant Slayer,
quite obviously not coming down any time soon.

Buffy grinned and replied, "Okay! Have a nice day Principal Snyder!"

The girls left giggling, heading to class.

/Spike's Lair/

Spike was pacing steadily across the floor of the derelict warehouse,
all the minions in the room were wisely staying out of his way or
quickly finding useful things to do. Drusilla was rocking herself, not
an uncommon event, at the table in the middle of the room, her tarot
cards arrayed in a surprisingly complex, almost chaotic, pattern
before her. Her eyes, while she rocked and hummed to herself, were
jumping all over the place, from one specific card at the center, to a
minion in the corner, to Spike, to a spot on the wall, to another card
and all over. Until suddenly they stopped on one spot in particular
and became more alert than the insane Mistress Vampire had any right
to be.

Spike stopped at almost the same time as he could hear Dalton
returning. Alone.

Scowling at what that meant, Spike rushed forward to meet the brainy
vampire halfway.

"Where is it?" the Master Vampire demanded without preamble. Only
after he said this did he finally notice that Dalton was empty-handed.

"The Slayer . . ." Dalton began, but Spike had already turned from him
in a fit of rage.

"The Slayer!" he roared. "Always, always the /bloody/ Slayer! She's
the /bloody/ thorn /bloody/ well in my /bloody/ side! And worse, since
/BLOODY HALLOWEEN/ she and her /bloody/ super friends with their
/bloody/ powers have gotten even more /bloody/ stronger!! What's a
bloke to do, eh?" he asked as though begging the universe itself, "All
I want to do is go on my /bloody/ way eating people, occasionally
having a good row or two, kill myself a few more Slayers, and live
happily /bloody/ after with my Dru. /IS THAT TOO MUCH TO *BLOODY* ASK
FOR?!/ IS IT!!"

"Bloody hell," he cursed as he resumed pacing after his rant. A few
more steps and he roared out again, this time overturning some
furniture and throwing stuff around until nothing else was within
reach to throw.

"Where is it?" Spike asked Dalton in a deceptively calm voice.

"The Slayer has it," he finally answered. "It's probably in the hands
of the Necromancer now, but its not too late!" he quickly assured the
master vampire.

Spike began to slowly stalk closer to Dalton, the tweed-wearing
vampire backing away with each fearful step and blubbering in some way
to keep himself alive for another second longer. "There's still a way
that we can get her and bind her to us, to YOU! There's a ritual that
every necromancer has to do daily! If we can get to her before she
does this for the first time, then URK!" Dalton's speech was suddenly
cut off as Spike grabbed him around the throat and lifted him off the
floor.

"Wait," came a quiet whisper that froze the master vampire.

"Any particular reason I should be waiting to rip this useless waste
of brine apart piece by /bloody/ piece, eh Dru?" Spike asked after a
bit of standing there holding a 200+ lbs vampire up by his throat with
a single hand.

"'E can still help us," she replied, staring intently down at the
tarot cards she was laying out before her. "'E can bind her to us."

Unnoticed, Dalton's eyes went wide with terror at Drusilla's words,
but he then shifted his fear back to Spike, even as his mind began to
overwork on a new plan.

Spike looked up at the terror-stricken Dalton for half a second before
snorting and tossing him away, the minion flying back into the
shadows, a crash coming seconds later, which everyone else ignored,
too fearful of Spike's wrath. "Hows that Ducks?" he tenderly asked the
master vampiress.

"It's a secret," she whispered with that sly-seer-face of hers that
always used to get him hot. Now that she was so weak, it just got him
even more frustrated.

Getting back to his pacing he started to think out loud, "But even if
we can still make this work, there's the /bloody/ Slayer and her super
friends to deal with." He paced for a couple more circuits, until he
suddenly paused and an evil grin that made every other vampire in the
place even more nervous. "I think it's time I brought in the big guns.
The Order of Teraka."

"The assassins guild?!" a random vampire suddenly blurted.

"Isn't that a bit overkill?" Dalton asked from the shadows, even more
nervous of pissing Spike off again.

"Four of them are coming to my party," Drusilla suddenly announced,
turning over some of the strange cards before her; the Cyclops, the
Centipede, the Jaguar, and the Skeleton.

Spike's evil smirk became infectious as he answered, "I think it's
just the right amount of kill."

/Various places around Sunnydale/

One by one they descended upon the unsuspecting Hellmouth. Each with
more than 100 human deaths on their hands (or whatever else it was
that they had), each a killer in their own right and each the
deadliest in their profession; assassination.

A six foot plus man, dressed in casual black leather clothes, the only
thing significant about him over other 'Hell's Angels' or bikers was
the ugly scarring over one of his eyes, effectively making him a
cyclops, a being with only one eye. He stepped off the bus with an
annoyed look on his face, before he stepped down and the look of a
hunter catching the scent of its prey took over and he began to walk
off in a specific direction.

A geeky, harmless looking man in a polyester suit and thick glasses
carrying a rather large case with him was walking down the street. He
paused and glanced up at the Summers house and grinned to himself
before moving on.

At the beach, a small family was enjoying the beautiful day and just
having fun when suddenly the youngest started kicking up a fuss and
trying to get the parents' attention. When they finally gave it, they
stared in open mouth disbelief, unable to even begin to comprehend
what they were seeing. Until the older child, a boy, suddenly cried
out, "COOL! A zombie!" The walking skeleton, bare scraps of flesh and
cloth still attached to it, looked over at the family with empty
sockets, until an unearthly glow filled them as it paused to stare at
them.

Officer Betty Jordan smiled to herself as she combed her bright red
hair in the mirror and turned to finish putting on her uniform. Today
she was volunteering at the career fair at the High School, and she
was really looking forward to it. She never saw the creature slipping
in through the shadows of her own house, she never saw the spotted
demon stealthily sneak up right behind her. What she did see, at a
tiny little prick that made her turn around, was herself standing
there, naked, and staring at her with an evil look on her face. It was
the last thing one of the few still-human officers on Sunnydale's
police force saw before she died, screaming for help, which ended in a
sudden-cut-off gurgle.

In a completely different part of Sunnydale, namely the airport, a
black couple disembarked from the commercial plane and made their way
to the customs desk. The younger, a female in a provocative tight
outfit that was made of dark and rich colors to emphasize her mocha
skin, looked around nervously and sneered at a couple of people,
visibly ready at any moment to attack anything or everything if it
proved necessary.

The elder, a well-dressed gentleman in a business suit with a tweed
jacket, was dark skinned and a shaved head. He wore a pair of
spectacles that somehow seemed to fit him and made him seem
intelligent as well as respectable. He took one look around the
airport and muttered a single phrase before frowning with confusion.
Then he turned to his younger companion and snapped in accented
French, "Kendra, stand down. There are no active threats here.
Potential threats, yes, but nothing active, and I do not wish to draw
too much attention to ourselves. Now /relax/. Consider it an order if
you must."

"Yes Wat"

"Ah!" the man held up a warning finger.

"Yes sir," Kendra blushed and lowered her head, nodding.

"Anything to declare?" the young Customs Agent asked in English.

"Not at this time," the man answered.

After a bit more paperwork, the Agent finally stamped the passports
and handed them back to the Jamaican visitors saying with a smile,
"Thank you, and welcome to America. I hope you and your daughter enjoy
your stay Mr. Zabuto."

/A few seconds later/

Joyce Summers looked out the window and frowned as she saw something
that she 'knew' about but hadn't ever really considered seeing before.
An evolved hive of sentient bugs disguised as a human salesman,
walking in front of her house, staring rather intently at what she
judged to be her daughter's bedroom. Frowning, she cast a telepathy
spell and listened for no more than a few seconds before waving her
hands and casting out her magic. She'd been practicing and it was a
good thing she was still at home so she could eat and replenish her
energy. Still, she hoped nobody noticed the smoking scorch mark on the
sidewalk where a traveling salesman/Terakan assassin had been standing
just seconds before. She really couldn't help that part, must have
something to do with the feedback of sending something to just above
the surface of the sun. She'd have to ask Giles about it later, after
she'd eaten.

Drusilla looked up suddenly and whimpered as she turned over the card
with the Centipede on it, a frown of confusion marring her porcelain face.

The skeleton had stopped in it's land-ward pace and turned to stare
with red-glowing eyeless eyes at the family that had witnessed it
emerge from the ocean. It took one step towards them, knowing that
there could be no witnesses, that there could be nothing to warn the
target until it was too late. So imagine its surprise when the
youngest suddenly squeaked in fear and then disappeared in a flash of
fairy-dust and transformed into a fluttering pink light that the
skeleton /knew/ was a real fairy, which then flew around to hide
behind the mother.

The oldest child, still grinning at seeing a real zombie, began to
change as well, his skin turning to a black/green shade and he grew
talons and fangs to rival the fiercest beast in the animal kingdom,
but still it only grinned at the skeleton. The mother meanwhile began
to grow in size until she was a bear! No, not a bear, a Sasquatch! The
skeleton didn't take another step after that.

It didn't matter though as the father, a look of protectiveness for
his family on his face, took his own step forward and began to throw
lightning at the skeleton! When it didn't move fast enough for his
taste, he decided to not take any chances and threw a couple huge
bolts at the assassin vaporizing it instantly, only the ring and a
small pile of charred dust remained in the end.

Drusilla was no longer confused, but frightened as she turned over the
Skeleton card immediately after turning over the Centipede card.
Spike, a few minutes later, got the same word, that two of the
assassins had been killed mere minutes after setting foot in
Sunnydale. He considered contacting Teraka to request more, but he was
out of money, and the Order was really strict about paying upfront.

/The Library/

Giles let out a long-suffering sigh as he took in the chaos that his
life, such as it had ever been, had become. Seated in his library, his
sanctum satori so to speak, were a group of teenagers, worse
/American/ teenagers, and worse still, each and every one of them had
supernatural powers and abilities that might make the average Watcher
scream in terror before fainting dead away. Instead, he just sat there
listening as they discussed the fundamentals of Magical Support in the
"Community" like it was something they'd seen on the telly!

It was all he could do just to keep from screaming out loud.

"So you have no idea what a real necromancer does?" Xander asked the
girl that Buffy had so carelessly given the Necro-tome to several
minutes ago.

"Well . . . kinda," the girl, Laura admitted, her expression confused,
but every so often her gaze would linger on the tome, proving, to
Giles at least, that she truly was connected to it in some way. "I
mean, I know how to raise the dead. I think I can almost do it by
instinct too, and I made sure to dress as the Anita from after "Blue
Moon". But all I got from the costume shop, which you're telling me is
the real reason behind what happened on Halloween, was the cross and
the wig! I swear!"

"We believe you Ms. Hamilton," Giles interceded before Xander could
try anything, "but it would appear that that was enough," he added
with a glare at the 'innocent'-looking Iceman. Despite Xander's "luck"
with the ladies before his transformation, a teenage boy was still a
teenage boy, and Giles, quite frankly didn't trust Xander "Iceman"
Harris as far as he could throw him.

"And there was /never/ anything like this in the Anita Blake books!"
she held up the tome in example.

"Yes, well, I'm afraid that has more to do with real necromancers than
what you'll find in any piece of fiction," Giles uncomfortably explained.

"In fiction, animators were apprenticed after they found out what they
could do, and even then they had to either do the research or find
their teachers themselves," Laura argued.

"Well, uh, as I'm sure you can imagine, um, true necromancers are a
bit more powerful in real life, and as such, and more to do with, uh,
certain persecutions they received a few centuries back, they've had
to become a bit more organized. At the same time, steps were taken to
ensure they were limited in their power. Specifically, um, by the gods
themselves. Or, as I've heard some refer to the beings governing magic
and the like throughout the universe, the Powers That Be. Once you
open that tome, and perform the rites of the Necromancer, you'll be
entering into a, uh, a contract of sorts. Until such time you are
either released from it or break it, which is not advisable under any
circumstances, your powers as an animator of the dead will be limited
in scope and power, and at the same time, perhaps more focused as
well. Instead of dead things awakening around you on their own or
flocking to you on the slightest whim, only those that you, you, uh,
that you resurrect will be, uh, resurrected, such as it is."

"Oh, well that clears it up," Laura huffed in frustration.

"And if she doesn't accept this contract?" Cordelia asked, with near
unprecedented focus.

"Then undoubtedly her powers will continue to grow, but at an
unmeasured pace," Giles shrugged. "I, uh, I once knew a Necromancer,
back in my school days. He was . . . needless to say, a disturbing
individual. I learned most of this from my association with him. If
indeed, Ms. Hamilton, you choose not to perform the rites of
necromancy, and it is well within your rights to do or not do so, then
you will be, essentially, on your own. It will be exactly as you
described from the novel point of view. Learning as you go, but in
your specific case, there will be no one to teach you how to control
your growing powers and abilities. Because I can guarantee you, every
necromancer in the world, that has not gone insane or been possessed
by evil and certain demonic elements, /has/ accepted these rites and
this unnamed contract."

"Sure, no pressure," the young lady murmured to herself.

"There isn't," Xander spoke up. "After all, we've all got memories and
instincts left over from Halloween. Can't you go on that? What Anita
knew?"

Laura shook her head even as Giles himself answered. "As detailed as
the memories Ms. Hamilton may, or may not still have are, they'll be
of the level of power that the spirit, this Anita Blake, was at, at
the time of the possession. Laura's powers will continue to grow,
either beyond, or in correlation to what is in the books, there's no
way to tell, but her experiences will be limited. And again, it is as
you said Xander, the magic of necromancy of /this/ world is reaching
out to her. There's no way to accurately judge, without that tome, how
that may affect her."

"I am sitting right here y'know," she sarcastically retorted.

"My apologies," Giles apologized.

"Hey all, what's up?" Buffy greeted as she and Willow walked in.

"We're just sittin' and talkin'," Xander easily replied.

"Hey Laura, how are you doing?" Willow asked, empathetic as she sat
down next to the other redhead, Buffy taking the other side.

"Actually . . . it's going better than it has in a long time," she
answered. "It's good to just finally be getting some information about
all of this. I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me or what.
Did you know I can see ghosts? Dead people? I felt like I was the kid
in the Sixth Sense! Then I heard on the news that there's been an
outbreak in Europe and other places across the globe where people
claim to have seen ghosts of some kind, and there's still no proof
that what they saw was any kind of hoax!"

"Any dead people in here right now?" Buffy asked, not really serious,
but curious about her new friend.

Laura didn't 'look around' as everyone expected her to, instead her
gaze going instantly to one spot, just behind Xander and Cordelia.
"Yeah, a couple," the necromancer answered.

The room was still for several moments as they all digested that, but
Willow quickly moved them all on from it. "I trust Giles has answered
all of your questions?" she asked.

Laura nodded, now hugging the Big Book of Necromancy to herself, "Just
about, yeah. I'm still a bit curious and way confused about this whole
necromancer-contract thing, like what happens after? Do I meet other
necromancers? What happens when I do?"

"Well, in regards to other necromancers," Giles answered, "I have a
phone number somewhere that my old friend gave me. I'll have to find
it again, but, think of it like joining the Masons. It's little more
than joining up with any other International Club, except with the
benefit of supernatural abilities of course, but, of course you
would've had those already. And there aren't any membership dues . . .
that I'm aware of . . ." he trailed off after that, and went into his
office to find the phone number.

"In the more immediate, however," Buffy interrupted, "what would you
say to joining a more local club?"

"That HSL thing?" Laura asked. "I've seen the posters popping up all
over town, but it sounds like some kind of Community Watch thing."

"Well, as you can imagine," Willow pointed out to the other redhead,
in the background Xander turned into Iceman, Cordelia flew off of the
ground and around the Library once, and Buffy lifted the long table
completely off of the floor with a single pinky finger curled around
its edge, "it's a bit more than that."

/That Night/
/Summer's Home/

Buffy stretched with a yawn as she entered her room. It had been a
long day. After the mess of sorting out the tome that she and Xander
had found the night before and Laura popping up, after school, they'd
all given Laura the complete introduction and tour of the HSL, to
most, /Halloween Safety League/, but in truth, the /Hellmouth Security
League/. She had to hand it to Xander, having two names, a public one
and the real name was a stroke of rare genius. Once they'd cleared a
real "Halloween" victim from the still normal and self-blinded
citizens of Sunnydale, they introduced the truth, step by step, or
just got them to join a more modified form of what Laura had called a
community watch program. Which was to say, they gave the normal people
a card with a phone number and told them to call it if they ever came
across anything "weird".

It was a work in progress, but it was progressing. At least she got a
night off once in a while without having to worry about the world
ending. Between the 'teams' that had been set up and other more
powerful individuals, her own mother included, Sunnydale was going to
get a whole lot safer.

Speaking of her mother, who'd been planning to go on an art-buying
spree for her gallery earlier in the week, had canceled when she
realized that it would be a whole lot easier just conjuring them out
of thin air, or 'magically' buying them and hanging them in the
gallery. So instead, she went out to enjoy a night on the town with
some friends, while Buffy, after the day she'd just had, felt like
spending a quiet night at home.

So imagine her surprise, when she saw Angel standing over her bed
holding her stuffed pig, looking distractedly at the window.

Grinning to herself, she smirked and cleared her throat right behind
the vampire after stealthily sneaking up on him. It was worth it to
see the startled look in his eyes as he turned around. At least he
didn't let out a little girl shriek, she thought to herself.

"Buffy!" he breathed, carefully schooling his features.

"Angel," she greeted with a grin, more for her trick than actually
seeing him again. Honestly, she hadn't thought much of Angel since
shortly after Halloween, and even then only in passing. "Here for some
quality time with Mr. Gordo?"

"Huh?" he was confused.

"The pig," she pointed with a pert little grin.

"Oh, uh," he quickly tossed the stuffed animal onto the bed and put
his hands into his pockets, turning back to her he asked, "So, uh,
what's up?"

"Not much," she shrugged, going around him to her bed and sitting
down. "Got back from patrol a while ago, but of course I hung with
Willow and Xander some afterwards. Oh, and we gave the new girl the
tour of the . . ."

"New girl?" he questioned.

She winced as she realized the goof. "Uh, never mind," she muttered,
tucking her hair behind her ear.

"What's with the shades?" he asked next.

She quirked her head at him, confused by his question. He knew, didn't
he? How could he not, it'd been almost half a month since Halloween.

"Angel, are you OK? I mean, did like something happen?" she asked.

He seemed to pale further, though she couldn't say how, and stammered,
"Uh, no! Nothing happened! I mean, nothings wrong . . . I mean . . .
I'm fine."

Arching an eyebrow, she slowly took her shades off and glared at him,
and was surprised when he hissed in fear and took a step back. "Angel?
What's wrong?"

"Your eyes!" he exclaimed.

Now she was really confused. "Yeah, they've been like that for a
coupla weeks now. Ever since Halloween. What's the matter with you! I
remember talking to you about this! Oh wait . . . that was during
Halloween, when Cyclops talked to you."

"Halloween?" he repeated, sitting heavily across from her on a nearby
chair.

"Angel, what happened? Everyone in Sunnydale was affected by
Halloween! And, yeah, OK, we've kind of been super busy and I haven't
seen you for a while, but how could you miss out on kids turning into
demons, people having super powers, and if you've been outside at all
in the past couple weeks you would have seen several patrols going
around town, each with a superhero among them!"

"I've been busy," he admitted, not quite meeting her eyes.

"Angel," she whispered, trying to reach for him, but he quickly stood up.

"Look, maybe this was a mistake . . ." he trailed off and she grabbed
him before he could break for either door or window.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry," she blurted, pulling him around to beside
the bed. "I'm glad to see you," she looked up into his eyes, her
pupils bright crimson red, glowing slightly. "I always am. Now why
don't you just tell me exactly what it is that you've been up to since
Halloween. And I've been meaning to ask you, what happened to that kid
and his pet that you helped out? Did you manage to find their friend
and save any other kids while you were at it?"

Swallowing hard, entirely for the nervousness he felt as a vampire
never needs to swallow anything but blood, he stepped back and let out
a heavy sigh of useless air. "Buffy . . ." he wandered away, next to
the window before turning back to face her, "I don't remember
Halloween. I had heard from a source that you got roped into
volunteering at the school, and I was going to surprise you. Maybe
escort you to the Halloween Party at the Bronze. I snuck into the
costume shop and grabbed a mask from the back. I . . . uh, I
remembered Xander once saying how they freaked him out and I figured
two for the price of one . . ."

"Angel," Buffy had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, "What
happened?"

"I put the mask on, and right when I was going to leave . . . I
blacked out. I don't remember anything that happened on Halloween
night. The next thing I do remember, is waking up in my apartment the
next morning . . ."

Frowning, the Slayer protested, "That can't be! Angel I remember,
clearly, you were there! At my house! You helped us save some little
kid! Well, OK, it was more the X-Men than us, but . . ."

"Wait, what?" he interrupted.

Buffy sighed, holding her head. "I didn't think I'd have to go through
this conversation twice in one day!" she mumbled to herself before
continuing to tell Angel the whole story from the moment she and the
others had woken in the Library the morning after, to meeting Kevin
and the Star Fleet Kids and the battle with the Gamesmaster and
everything else, not leaving anything out. Well, maybe the parts about
her having a psychic rapport with Willow. And the dreams she'd been
having since that first night when she'd helped Willow build her
mental defenses. Not that there was anything wrong or weird about the
dreams, she just . . . Never mind.

A while later, after he'd had a brief chance to absorb it all, she
asked him, "It's a lot to take in, are you gonna be OK?"

"Me? I'm fine, it's the rest of Sunnydale, although this does suddenly
make a lot of other things make a whole lot more sense," he admitted.

"So . . ." she lead, "what was it you came here for in the first place?"

Smiling shyly now, he pointed over to a picture he'd seen earlier and
then went to pick it up. "This you?"

"Omigawd," she blushed furiously. "That was my Dorothy Hamil phase. My
room was a shrine to skating."

"You liked her?"

"I wanted to /be/ her!"

"Y'know," the vampire said introspectively, "there's a skating rink
just outside of town, past the highway. They're closed tomorrow."

Smiling, despite the obvious proposal, and keeping well in mind that
Marco was going on and on about how the Danger Room still needed work
earlier, she grinned and stood to meet the souled vampire. "Sounds
like fun, I'll bring my skates," then she leaned up and kissed him.
And he kissed back.

/<Wow, Angel really is a good kisser,>/ came the sudden thought, which
was not her own.

Buffy's eyes went wide and she sharply pulled back from the man she'd
been falling in love with a month ago, /<WILLOW! A little privacy if
you please!>/ she beamed back to the telepath.

/<Oh please, like he even knows. Now go back to kissing him, it was a
nice kiss,>/ she cheekily replied.

"Buffy? Is everything OK?" Angel asked, worried.

"Everything's fine, it's just Willow . . ." she stopped and let out a
deep breath. "I'll see you tomorrow. Right now, I've got to call
Willow . . . about something at school."

"The Career Fair?" he guessed.

She turned an accusing eye on him, "How'd you know about the career fair?"

He shrugged, sheepish, "I lurk."

Grinning, despite herself, she gently pushed him towards the window.
"Tomorrow. And bring your own skates. Oh, and watch out for a guy with
big muscles flying around. He gets a bit overeager sometimes."

Stunned, Angel just allowed himself to be pushed out of the window,
and before he knew it he was effectively kicked out. "Guy with big
muscles flying around?" he repeated, then paused when he looked up and
saw exactly that, and another huge guy right beside him, this one in a
red and gold outfit with a lightning bolt on his chest.

Deciding to play it safe, Angel just immediately dove for the nearest
sewer entrance and quickly ran all the way back to his apartment.

/The Next Day/
/SoCal Skating Rink/

Buffy entered easily, Angel having unlocked the doors from the inside
apparently, and quickly made her way into the rink proper. As
promised, the building seemed abandoned and empty.

Having dressed for the occasion in form-fitting tights, a pleated pink
skirt, and a tight blue sweater, she made her way to the entrance onto
the ice and sat herself down on a nearby bench to put her ice skates on.

Trusting Angel to show up, or rather make himself known, soon enough,
she burst out onto the ice with a broad grin and a bit of Slayer speed
to boot. She practically flew around the ice rink, enjoying the
feeling of free-form, something she hadn't done in years, since before
she became the Slayer. Smiling in child-like ecstasy, she indulged in
a bit of Slayer power abuse and flawlessly performed Olympic feats
most gold medalists would turn green with envy over. Then she took it
a step further and began to perform tricks and stunts that could only
be done by the supernatural.

For example, most athletes were lucky and extremely skilled to be able
to do a triple, or what's known as a double triple, performing
spinning jumps back to back with three rotations each. Buffy,
performed the first ever quadruple, quintile, triplex, and a
double-tenspin. Which is, in order, 4 rotations, 5 rotations, 6
rotations, and a back-to-back ten rotation.

It certainly didn't hurt that since the Battle Royale, her mutation
and her slayer powers had been in a continuous loop of boosting her
even farther than any Slayer had ever been capable of before.

It was when she tried to shoot for twenty that she finally fell for
the first time, skidding along the ice for a ways until she bumped
into the wall. With a sigh of frustration she started to get back up,
but was surprisingly helped, by an inhumanly strong hand grabbing her
throat and pulling her off the ice.

As powerful as Buffy, being the Slayer, was and had become since
Halloween, somethings just can't be helped, such as lacking the
necessary leverage and footing to flip the person trying to strangle
her, across the room. Instead, it was all the mutant Slayer could do
just to continue breathing through the steel-grip.

"O . . . K," she grated out at her unknown attacker, "Enough. Is. Enough!"

Then, quite easily, she reached up and grabbing his wrist with her
right hand and his fingers with her left hand, she squeezed both until
they let her go. Once she was free, she sprung forward and around,
taking in her attacker at a glance before throwing him across the
rink, slamming him into the opposite wall quite hard, which was over
fifty feet away.

He was about six foot to six and a half, dressed like a biker, with
greasy hair, and a scar over, and blinding his left eye. He got up
easier than she expected from the toss and began to stalk forward, his
heavy boots crunching into the ice, but not quite breaking through.
With a grimace at her day being ruined, she skated forward with a grim
determination.

Just before she reached him though, she smiled as she remembered that
she could call Xander out here in just a few minutes and have him
repair the ice.

To her surprise, however, the man caught her and then threw her the
distance back to the wall where she'd started from. Scowling, she
realized that he was pretty strong. Definitely stronger than the
average vampire. But compared to Prime or the Hulk, he was next to
nothing.

Before she could go back out on the attack, Angel shot out of the
shadows and dive bombed the man from his blind side. /'Now why didn't
I think of that?'/ she thought to herself as she used the distraction
to skate around and tackled the guy, who'd gotten Angel off of him, to
the ice, turning in a tight circle to drive a punter's kick to his
abdomen, lifting him clear off the ice and into the air. Amazingly he
still landed within the rink, on the hard ice, and the mutant Slayer
was keen to note that he got up a bit slower than the first time.

"Buffy!" Angel cried out belatedly as she was already meeting the
guy's charge, landing a solid blow to his chin, even as he threw a
sloppy haymaker at her.

It was tight for a moment or two, as he recovered quicker than she
expected him to. Even Robert, the kid with Superman's powers, felt her
blows enough to react to them. This guy seemed to not even feel it,
but was still affected, she could see. So maybe he really couldn't
feel it, she theorized, ducking under another of his punches and
landing a low one of hers. Maybe this guy lost more than his eye in
whatever he does, maybe he can't feel pain?

Buffy grinned as she skated backwards from him, making him give chase.
It was time to see how much pain he /couldn't/ feel. "Angel! Get off
the ice!" she shouted once, and then in a pure display of Slayer
powers, she leaped backwards in an arch, keeping her eyes trained on
the man that had attacked her, and tore her shades from her eyes in
the next instant. The optic blast slammed so powerfully into him that
a shock wave actually blasted through the rink, shattering most of the
glass within the building, knocking the assassin down and then
/through/ the ice!

Thankfully, Buffy had performed the jump flawlessly and landed just
outside the rink, on the cement platform. Watching as the ice cracked
all the way across and the man was now drowning in water and crushed
ice and mini-icebergs, she grinned and carelessly put her shades back
on, glaring down at him from over the tops, her crimson pupils focused
on his flailing form.

"So," she called out over the noise of the breaking ice and water,
"why did you attack me?"

He didn't answer, instead trying to swim through the crushed ice and
freezing water.

"See, I don't like that," she tisked, "I don't like repeating myself
when I know you heard me perfectly well the first time." She shot
another optic blast, over the top of her shades, less than a foot to
his right, stopping his movements for a moment.

"Why did you attack me?" she repeated.

He resumed swimming.

Buffy briefly weighed the pros and cons in her mind before
pragmatically coming to a difficult decision. She waited for him to
get close, then, the moment before he would have either climbed out of
the ice or tried to grab her and pull her in, she reached out, grabbed
him solidly around his thick neck, and effortlessly pulled him from
the ice, not quite pulling him onto land, so to speak, leaving his
feet to dangle in the icy water.

He reached for her own throat to start his own choking, but she
exerted even more pressure with her hand and his eyes went wide and
his hands instead went to his own throat, trying desperately to pry
her fingers from him. She snapped her shades off with her free hand,
her temper rising, and her eyes beginning to spark with crimson energy
as a sign.

"Last chance," she growled, "WHO SENT YOU?"

He tried to ineffectually punch her or otherwise hit her, trying to
make her let him go, she shot an optic blast across his ear, tearing
or burning off half his hair and then she shook him a little until he
stopped struggling. She shouted again, but still he refused to answer,
or even try.

"Buffy," Angel was behind her, she hadn't heard him approach.

"Care for a turn Angel?" she asked wearily, her eyes still sparking.

"His hand, the ring," the souled vampire pointed out.

"Take it," she ordered, keeping her grip, and her gaze on the assassin.

Angel reached over and removed the ring, despite the assassin's
protests, which Buffy just rattled him some more for, and then the
souled vampire let out an Irish curse.

"He's a Terakan, one of the Order of Teraka, the assassin's guild," he
informed her.

"So he's an assassin," she surmised, immediately getting a flash
memory of all of Cyclops' dealings with assassins of every sort, some
good, most bad.

"This is bad Buffy, this is very bad," Angel cursed again.

"About how many people would you say this guy right here has killed?"
she asked after a lengthy silence.

"You need at least 100 kills before you're even offered a place among
the guild, another thousand before they give the ring," he explained.

"Good, now I don't feel so bad about doing this," and with the ease of
the supernaturally strong, she broke the assassin's neck with one hand
and dumped him back in the watery ice.

"Let's go, date's over," she snapped, grabbing her shoes and putting
her shades back on.

/Abandoned Lot/
/HSL Headquarters/

"What's wrong Buffy?" Jake Berenson questioned as they all piled into
the still-being-constructed Control Room, "What's the emergency call for?"

In reply the mutant Slayer slammed the Terakan ring down on the
meeting table, a silver and black piece of technology that could both
act as a computer keyboard and a holographic display.

"I love you too, but isn't marriage a bit premature?" Marco Sanchez
sarcastically remarked.

"Oh dear Lord," Giles gulped as he looked at and then picked up the
ring, going very pale very quickly. Everyone else in the room stopped
what they were doing and looked surprised, and a bit worried, at the
Watcher.

"Yeah, Angel explained about the ring," Buffy commented. Willow was at
her side in an instant, feeling the mounting turmoil in her friend,
but was glad to see she wasn't exactly beating herself up with guilt
over killing the assassin before he'd killed her. He might have looked
human, but the things she'd seen him do had proved beyond all doubt in
her mind that he was some kind of demon, or something just as worse.

"This," Giles turned to explain to everyone else, which was most of
the group, a couple still out or not in that day, "this ring is worn
only by members of the Order of Teraka. It's a society of deadly
assassins dating back to King Solomon."

"Hey, didn't they beat the Elks this year in the Sunnydale adult
bowling league championships?" Xander asked with a joking air.

"Nah, I heard they got disqualified for questionable steroid use,"
Marco returned with a joking grin.

Giles took a suffering breath and continued, "Their credo is to sow
discord and kill the unwary."

"Bowling is a vicious game," Xander tisked.

"Amen to that brother," Marco raised his hands in mock-prayer.

"That's enough! This is quite serious, I assure you both!" Giles
shouted at them.

The two jesters shared a look before grinning at each other and said
in tandem, "We're vewy sowee Giles!"

That cracked the rest of the room up, but they quickly sobered and
resumed listening to Giles' explanation. "These . . . these assassins,
they, they're a breed apart. Unlike vampires, or anything you've faced
thus far, they have no earthly desires, no basic weaknesses to exploit
. . . Except to collect their bounty. They find a target, and, uh . .
. they eliminate it. You can kill as many of them as you wish, but I'm
afraid it won't make any difference. Where there's one, there will be
another, and another, and then another. They won't stop coming until
the job is done."

"Damn, wish my wife was like that," someone in the background
commented, causing another round of laughter, but this time Giles
mostly ignored it until they'd quieted again.

"Each one of them works alone, his own way. Some are human, some . . .
a-are not. Y-you won't find out who, or w-what they are until they
strike. And if the Order has truly targeted you Buffy, I'm afraid the
only recourse is to get you as far away and as quickly as possible."

"Uh-huh," she vaguely nodded.

Most everyone sharply turned to stare at the Slayer, a bit surprised
at her unconcerned response. She was sitting at a computer terminal
and seemed to be paying a great deal of attention to her task. Willow
came up behind her and looked over her shoulder.

"What does Laura have to do with anything?" she blurted out.

"No offense Giles," Buffy ignored her friend's question, "but I think
I, or much rather Cyclops, had a /bit/ more experience with assassins
than you have. Not to speak of those of us here that dressed /as/
assassins," a couple of the Cordettes blushed, "and as tough as that
guy was, it really wasn't that big a deal. Oh, and Mom told me
earlier, when I picked her up, she'd already teleported another
assassin into the sun. Or close enough to it. Also, found a report
here of the Henderson family, the dad blasted away a skeleton that
walked straight out of the ocean and all that was left behind was a
ring. And all of this started happening . . . the day after Xander and
I stopped one of Spike's vampires from running off with the
Necromancer book that we gave to Laura."

"You're thinking Spike hired the Order of Teraka to . . . to get you
out of the way, so he might . . ." Giles trailed off. "But Buffy, that
doesn't make any sense! No vampire would ever willingly go anywhere
near a necromancer! Vampires are undead and a necromancer can control
them just as easily as the already dead!"

"I'm sure that's true of a fully trained necromancer," Buffy said as
she stood back up, "but Laura doesn't even know how to begin using her
powers yet."

Giles was about to protest when his mouth dropped open in shock at the
revelation.

"And for the record," the mutant-Slayer continued, "I don't think
Spike hired the Order of Teraka, I think he bought a couple of
assassins from them in order to take me out. Or rather, keep me
distracted."

"Why hasn't he done it before then?" Kevin, Prime, asked, "I mean, if
these Terakans are so bad-assed, how come he hasn't hired them from
the get-go?"

"Two reasons," Erin, the Black Widow, answered, "Pride, he wanted to
kill Buffy himself, and Money. As high-classed as Giles makes this
Assassin's Guild sound, they must cost a lot of money, am I right?"

Stuttering almost uncontrollably now, the Watcher answered, "Uh, well,
I, uh, I b-believe that starting price, uh, well, s-so I-I-I've
h-heard is around uh, one million dollars. B-b-but . . ."

"So that would be three million right there, three assassins, one
target," the red-haired Cordette deduced. "Or, the whole bundle for
whichever of them gets you first."

"It's never that easy with Spike, trust me," Buffy cracked her fists.
"OK, keep everybody on alert, but don't do anything. Chances are slim,
but there may be more assassins out there, so we need to keep our eyes
open. At least until Spike and I can have a little . . . chat and get
him to either cancel the contract, or . . ."

"Kill him so that there is no more contract," the Black Widow finished
for the Slayer.

"Exactly," she nodded and then turned to leave.

"All right everybody, back to work!" Jake announced, plopping himself
down at a computer terminal of his own, "Let's find these assassins
and get them before they get even one of ours!"

A shout of agreement went out and everyone got to work.

/Sunnydale High School Career Fair/
/The Next Day/

"Hey Buffy," Willow chirped as she settled in next to her friend as
they walked among all the career booths. "How ya doin'?"

"Fine Wills," the mutant Slayer tiredly answered as she almost
casually, by her nature, scoped out every single person and structure
inside the building behind her red-tinted shades.

"Is something going on with you?" the redhead asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you've been kind of . . . not you lately," she answered.

"How do you mean?"

Squinting in anger, the telepath just stalked off and shot down the
link /<Fine! I've got to go and meet the computer software company
people.>/

Buffy frowned at the hot-anger she felt coming off of Willow, but then
shrugged it off as her Cyclops-memories reminded her of the threat and
set her back on looking for the assassin, while maintaining an air of
boredom and being in control. As it was, Xander sidled up to her next.

"Hey Buff, something wrong between you and Wills?" he asked.

"I don't know," she shrugged, "Must be a wo... uh, a redhead thing."

She'd almost said "a woman thing". What /was/ wrong with her?

"Yeah, must be," Xander looked around distractedly. "Sorry, I just
can't help but wonder . . . where's he going to come from, is he going
to get one of us, what's going to happen . . . ?"

"Xander," she snapped in a quiet voice of absolute command, "I'm
trying to see if I can find him, and you're making it more difficult
talking about it. Just . . . try not to think about it. I need to lull
him into a false sense of security, surprise him, and take him out
before he can strike."

"Oh, right, I knew that," he flustered.

Buffy just smiled at him and resumed looking around herself.

"Hey, uh, aren't you going to your booth?" he suddenly asked.

"Law Enforcement?" she thought, and then the synapses started firing
and she realized that if the assassin would be absolutely anywhere
here in the school, it would be in one of the few places the assassin
could /know/ where /she/ was. "Yeah, uh, wanna come with, unless
you've got to get to your own?"

"Prison Guard or Construction Worker?" he seemed to be asking himself.
The he grinned broadly at her and quoted, "Lead on MacBuff!"

She rolled her eyes and lead the way to the Law Enforcement career
booth, making sure to sign in and then join the group in front and
waited for the young female police officer to begin the presentation.
Looking over the officer in question, she froze when she felt her gut
suddenly clench tight at just the sight of the creature. A creature
she knew instinctively had no soul and was /anything/ but human.

"Xander!" she hissed a warning, grabbing his arm just tight enough to
warn him without hurting. He looked down at her, confused and
concerned, until he saw her glancing at the police officer and he
quickly caught on, nodding carefully down at her.

"Buffy Summers?" the officer read off the sign-in list.

Buffy smiled as she took off her shades and said, almost right in
front of the false young woman, "Here!" Then, even as the assassin was
drawing her service pistol, Buffy was already firing, the optic blast
throwing the officer back through the Law Enforcement display and into
the far wall.

"What the... !" somebody shouted, while most everyone else just
screamed or cursed.

"Buffy! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Erin demanded as the
Cordette came up to the Slayer.

"Found the next assassin," the blonde pointed even as the woman got up
out of the debris without even so much as a bruise, point her gun
right at her. Before she even started firing, Xander had already
formed a foot-thick wall of ice between them and the gun-totting
assassin, so even if she had a full-automatic it would take her a bit
of time to shoot through it.

"Oh," the Black Widow commented and then turned and flipped away even
as Buffy and Xander dove for better cover.

All around them, teenagers, and a couple teachers, were displaying
their powers, some defensive in hiding themselves, and others just
running away, or making them invulnerable to the assassin's guns and
bullets. And some with offensive abilities and powers to either
distract or try and take the assassin out before anyone got seriously
hurt.

The Terakan was, quite frankly, not prepared for this. She'd been told
the target was a simple Slayer. Admittedly one with above-average
skills and a growing support system, but nothing like /this/! And the
vampire had never mentioned her shooting magic beams of red light out
of her eyes!

Yet some of the things she'd seen already . . . it was absolutely insane!

There were teenagers crawling and quite literally /bouncing/ on and
off the walls and ceilings! Others were glowing like magic, or
shooting lightning, or other elemental-types like wind and fire. And
then there was the Target, and the boy that was staying by her side
and acting as some kind of bodyguard, if it weren't for the fact that
he was a walking ice-statue, she might just believe that.

She fired until the gun ran out of ammunition, reloading once and
emptying the gun once more, missing on every shot as the Slayer either
successfully dodged the bullet, or the . . . /ice man/ created a
shield of very solid and very thick ice. All of her other wild shots,
however, were either blocked by the other teenagers with powers in the
school, or just hit and embedded into the wall.

One teen that drew her attention the most was a girl or young woman in
a ridiculous mostly white, with black and gold trim outfit, blue hair
and red eyes. Whenever she one of her bullets hit the blue-haired
girl, there was a sound like armor ricochet and a spark across the
girls skin, but she didn't even flinch. She also seemed to be
protecting a younger boy hiding just behind her, and she seemed very
reluctant to leave him unguarded. Something which the assassin was
grateful for, as she didn't want to test what other powers the blue
haired bullet proof chick might have.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed another teen couple just
walking into the area. The girl was tall, red haired, pale and thin,
while the boy was short, wild animal-like hair dyed a color to match
the red head next to him, and stocky, like most soldiers after years
of training and field experience. Determining another threat, she
swung her gun around and fired indiscriminately.

"Look out!" the boy cried and shoved the red head to the ground,
taking no less than 5 slugs to the chest if she judged correctly. He
was knocked back and on top of the girl by the force of the blows and
she turned to find the Target once more.

Unfortunately for her, the Slayer had used the distraction provided to
sneak up directly behind the assassin and once the psuedo-officer
turned around, grabbed the taller creature by the neck and lifted her
clear off the ground. The living ice statue then came in and quickly
disarmed her and then did something that felt really cold and trapped
her arms behind her back.

"Xander, check on Willow," the Slayer commanded, not taking her oddly
glowing eyes off of the assassin.

"On it Buff," Xander replied and then quickly raced over, confident
the mutant Slayer could handle herself now that the assassin was well
in hand.

He quickly ran over to where he'd seen another student shove Willow to
the floor before getting shot at himself, but was pleasantly surprised
to find the red haired telepath already up and helping the other
student to his feet. He was wearing a black ensemble and had dyed
hair, but it was the combination with earring and nail polish that
made Xander recognize the lead guitarist for the /Bronze/ band,
"Dingoes Ate My Baby".

"Wills, you OK?" he asked, walking up, not bothering with 'powering
down', given that most everybody in town now knew about Halloween and
that he and the others were in the HSL.

"Yeah, I'm OK," she answered. "I better go see what Buffy wants. Oh,
Xander, this is Oz. He kinda saved my life and the software company is
looking at him too."

"Oh, nice to meet you," Xander greeted as Willow walked off towards
where Buffy was still holding up the assassin. "Hey, have you heard
about the HSL?"

"Yeah," the goth just nodded, took one longing look after Willow and
then turned and walked off himself before Xander could say any more.

"I handle girls so much better," he muttered to himself, turning
around to join in on the powwow in the middle of the hall around the
assassin.

"Who hired you?" he caught Buffy saying in a rather cold tone of
voice. He also noticed Willow staring unblinkingly at the assassin
even as Buffy held the woman up by the throat like she was a piece of
paper.

"Go to hell bitch!" the assassin attempted to struggle, but another of
the kids around made a threatening gesture while another briefly
covered the assassin in a forcefield of some kind, proving the point
that no matter what the Terakan could or would do, they could handle
it and more.

"Where is the one that hired you?" Buffy asked, again in that
carefully controlled, almost dead tone of voice.

The Terakan just glared at her, unanswering.

Buffy and Willow didn't seem to be too distraught over this as Buffy
just kept asking questions, never repeating them and never letting on
anything other than wanting to get information out of the assassin.

Of course Xander, and a few others in the crowd, knew better and did
their best to keep as straight a face as possible in the course of the
interrogation. However, the one time Buffy repeated a question, the
young Iceman got real worried real quick.

"What did you do to the woman you're disguised as?" Buffy repeated a
third time, her grip around the assassin's throat getting tighter.

In response, the assassin jerked a couple of times, although in
correlation to Willow's furrowing brow than the mutant Slayer's grip.
"Nice try," the Terakan grated out through the Slayer's steel grip,
"but your pet telepath isn't . . . isn't that . . . *grunt* . . .
kck-AAAHHHHHHH!"

Willow sneered in pure disgust as the Terakan thrashed in Buffy's
grip, spots appearing on the Terakan in conjunction with bright
glowing blood dripping from her eyes and ears, only serving to confirm
the demonic nature of the assassin to everyone bearing witness. It was
when a hot-pink motif of a fire bird appeared around Willow in an
intimidating aura and her eyes turned solid black that things got
scary and the redhead spoke with a terrifying echo accompaniment,
"That is getting extremely annoying. Wanna do me a lil' favor?" she
spoke in a mock-imitation of a 'little girl's' voice.

"Tell me a little secret and I'll make you scream so good," Willow
teased, accompanied by the Terakan letting out a wail of terror that
made everyone unconsciously back up a bit. The telepath frowned in
concentration for several moments as Buffy, seemingly almost bored by
the whole event, held the assassin, now reverted to its true
leopard-like demonic form. Finally the redhead sneered once more, the
assassin dropping dead in Buffy's grip and spoke aloud, "Bored now."

"So?" Buffy as as she carelessly dropped the decomposing demon to the
ground, paying full attention to the now calm and composed redhead.

"It ate her," was all Willow said, now quiet and subdued after the
display of terrifying power.

Everyone, at first had backed away like the Red Sea parting for Moses,
but at the simple statement of what the interrogation had revealed,
everyone came closer and a few even offered Willow their sympathies.
She smiled dully, accepting, but most of her attention was focused inward.

"It's just like we suspected," Willow confirmed once she'd regained
her composure, "Spike hired them, with you as the sole target.
Originally, Spike could only have afforded three assassins, but when
he mentioned that you had developed powers that could be only magical
in nature, they threw in the skeleton guy for free. All in a
distraction to get ahold of Laura before she becomes a Full Necromancer."

"Shit," Xander cursed, and started looking around. Laura wasn't there.

"Everybody!" he shouted over the upheaval of everyone trying to get
'normal life' back up and running, "Everybody! We need to find Laura
Hamilton! NOW! The vampires, the /real/ vampires are looking for her,
we need to find her and get to her before they do!"

"What about the job fair?" somebody in back shouted.

"Spike wants to use her power to heal Drusilla," Willow announced loud
enough for everyone to hear. "I think everybody remembers Giles'
report on her? Well, afterwards, Spike also mentioned, to the
assassins, that he might keep Laura around as a slave. Both for her
power and for . . . other reasons."

There was a cry of outrage from everyone in hearing range as the women
were affronted by it and most of the boys and men were driven by anger
at the mere thought of that happening to someone they knew.

"Hard to believe less than half these people are part of HSL," Xander
commented to his two friends as the mob quickly divided itself up in
order to look for the wayward necromancer.

"That's the least of our worries for the moment Xand," Buffy said as
she quickly herded them towards the Library, silently ordering Willow
to get in touch with any other telepaths in the school and ask them to
meet them there as quickly as possible. They had a lot of ground to
cover and more than likely not a lot of time to do it in.

/Spike's Lair/

Spike was pacing. He'd been doing that a lot since Halloween, but for
once he wasn't pacing out of frustration, fear, or anger. He was
wearing a groove into the stone floor for the simple yet unique reason
that he was anxious. Anxiousness that turned to happy excitement when
he detected the return of the minions he'd sent out a little while ago.

"Let go of me!" a high-pitched feminine voice cried out with the
lovely mix of fear and anger.

The pack of 5 vampires, which had been 8 originally when he'd sent
them out, were holding the struggling form of a teenage girl, who was
actually giving them quite a fight, but they'd gotten her here and
that was the important part. The girl had a sackcloth bag over her
head, and Spike knew that was entirely for their and his own
protection. After all, with this girl, the term 'kill with a look' was
no exaggeration.

"Put her down there," he ordered the minions, pointed at a chair that
he'd had prepared, meaning equipped with chains and restraints.

"What do you want with me!!" she screamed at him, controlling her fear
better than he'd expected of her.

Spike just chuckled, exactly as Angelus had taught him, the echoes
filtering around the empty warehouse, raising the girl's fear that
much more. "Well," he whispered beside her ear suddenly, moving faster
than she could detect even with the blindfold, "that's for me to know,
and you to find out, WHEN I BLOODY TELL YOU!!" he screamed the last
part right into her ear, making her cringe back in fear and pain.

The girl shrunk back in fear, trying to control herself and her fear
in the face of the vampire master. Thankfully, these aren't the
vampires of the Anita Blake books. Not to say that Laura wasn't in
danger, but she had the memories and experiences of a woman who'd
lived through worse and came out on top even.

Unfortunately experiences lived vicariously through a
spirit-possession only got you so far.

"Now listen here pet," Spike's cool breath, exhalation from speaking,
tickled Laura's neck, sending chills throughout her body, "you're
going to do exactly what we tell you to do, you got that pet? You're
going to do your voodoo on my Dru, with no funny business, and you're
gonna make her all better, or your family is gonna be fishing your
entrails out of the nearest shit-box in the sewers, got me?"

Laura didn't have to think long or hard about Spike's proposal. In
hindsight, she didn't have to think at all, and it didn't really
matter that she wasn't much of a "thinker" to begin with. Even before
Halloween, she'd always been more of an action girl, though far from
an exhibitionist or action-junkie, she just did things and only
worried about the consequences after the fact. So it probably didn't
help her in that she dressed as Anita Blake, but in this case . . . it
did.

Either from the combination of forces that engaged that night, or just
another quirk of chaos, a bit more than just powers, abilities, and
vague memories and experiences were left over in many of the Chaotix.

In the minds of everyone that dressed as someone or something
different that had a mind and soul of their own, a . . . a shadow was
left behind. Not really a mind, or even alternative personality, yet
more than just a collection of memories and experiences. Neither could
they be called a soul, though there was definite mystical and beyond
qualities that could be applied. More like a shade, or an echo of the
mind and soul that had possessed the body for a night. An existential
memory, one might argue. Not really /real/, yet more than what it
appears to be.

At that moment, in Laura's mind, out of sheer necessity and
desperation, she . . . got a little closer to that shadow, or brought
it closer to the surface. Not merged, but able to more easily access
Anita Blake's memories, experiences, and even personality.

"Tell you what, pet," she whispered back to Spike, a smirk forming on
her face as she focused her energies, "why don't you go dust all your
minions and bring the princess to me and I'll see what I can do."

Spike then stood straight, vamped out, turned around and started
slaughtering his minions before anybody knew what was what, and most
of them were dust before even the first reacted as Spike went straight
for the kill as he followed the orders of the most powerful
necromancer on the planet.

Half an hour later, Dalton screeched as Spike casually ripped his head
off, dusting immediately afterwards, and Spike, still vamped out and
glassy-eyed, went over to Drusilla and calmly, but firmly escorted her
over to the still bound and blind-folded Laura.

"The blindfold pet," Laura reminded the master vampire.

The sackcloth came off, another reminder to free her hands, and the
young necromancer looked over her newest vampire servants. Anita's
memories rebelled at the idea, saying it was impossible for a /human/
to have /vampire/ servants, but at the same time she somehow knew it
was entirely possible, and Anita's power in her seemed just enough to
affect these . . . /real/ vampires.

In truth it was a bit more than that. Not that anyone knew beforehand,
nor even did Laura suspect after the fact, but Laura was a
natural-born necromancer to begin with, before she dressed as Anita
Blake. Perhaps it was her latent powers communicating with her that
made her dress as such a powerful necromancer for Halloween in the
first place, or maybe it might even explain why she liked the Anita
Blake books so much. Either way, the fact remained that Laura, already
a natural-born, now had the potential of becoming the most powerful
necromancer in the history of magic, let alone the world.

"Now," the youth stood over her kneeling pet-vampires, "there's going
to be some changes in policy of course. First, no more turning, no
more feeding on live humans. You'll buy blood from the butchers, and
you, pet," she rubbed Spike's head like he was a dog, "will get a
night job. Preferably where you can help people and get paid well for
it. I'll think up something for you later my dear," she told Drusilla.

"Also," she added to the insane seer vampiress, "don't ever try the
mind-whammy on me. You won't like the consequences." Drusilla
whimpered, while Spike growled at the back of his throat, yet neither
moved from their positions of supplication.

"In the meantime, I imagine the others are looking for me, so I'd
better go home. You two stay here and clean the place up a bit. Sweep
up all the dust. And just maybe I won't give you two back your souls.
I've heard about Angel, and it's much simpler for a necromancer to put
a soul in a vamp than a gypsy, so be sure to keep that in mind for
future reference. Oh yes, I'll heal her tomorrow some time. But only
after I've bound the two of you to me. I'm going to have to look up
the ritual, see if there's any difference between this world and the
one in my memories," she spoke to herself.

"Get to work, I'll be back tomorrow," she ordered, then turned and
walked out the door, not surprised to find herself in the warehouse
district.

It wasn't until that night in her bed that she actually thought of the
consequences of having a pair of vampire servants to take care of.

/Library/
/Next Day/

"So . . . that's it?" Xander was perplexed, and from the looks of it,
as all of the X-Slayerettes, and Giles, filed into the Library, he
wasn't the only one.

"Apparently," Giles shrugged, "it would appear to be that way. Unless
of course you have reason to doubt Miss Hamilton's word as to the
events she reported."

"Huh?" the blue-eyed youth turned to Willow.

"He means that he's suspicious that Laura might be lying or at least
hiding something from us about where she was and what she said about
Spike and Drusilla. He was also answering your question, yes, that's
it," the redhead telepath explained to her friend.

"Oh," Xander frowned in confusion for a second before just shrugging
it off. "What's she got to lie about anyway?"

"Maybe she successfully used her necromancer powers and turned Spike
and Dru into her undead slaves, along with all their minions," Buffy
suggested from her seat. No one could tell if she was being sarcastic
or not. "Or maybe she's telling the truth and she went home after
school, decided /not/ to take the Necromancer contract thing, and
didn't see or hear a vampire the entire night."

"Don't suppose you got anything off of her Willow?" Cordy asked.

Willow shook her head, "Nothing. Of course, we have been offering
'blocking telepathy 101' classes and information to everyone along
with the HSL brochure. Besides, even if, on the extreme off chance,
that Buffy's guess is right and Laura turned Spike and Dru into her
slaves, where's the bad in that?"

"Good point," Buffy agreed.

"Yes, well, despite that, I'm more concerned with the fact that she
may be lying than what the truth actually is," Giles complained.

"What would you have us do Giles?" Buffy questioned, "Go hold her down
while Willow peels her mind apart thought by thought?"

Giles scoffed and didn't dignify that with an answer.

"Unfortunately," a strange, accented voice suddenly spoke from the
Library entrance, "wayward necromancers is not the bulk of our problems."

The entire group leapt to the feet and spun around to face the
invaders of the privacy. Buffy carefully kept her glasses on, so that
if anyone would see anything, it would just be her shades glowing for
an instant rather than sparks of optic energy leaking out. Xander and
Willow likewise managed to control themselves, while Cordelia just
clenched her fists, all the preparing she ever needed to do.

There, just inside the double swing doorway was a rather odd couple.
Two black people, an older man and a girl roughly the same age as the
other teenagers. The older man was dressed similarly to Giles, all in
tweed, with glasses to match, and bald. The teenage girl wore loose
trousers the color of dried blood, and a tight brown wrap-around top
that left her abs bare and revealed a generous amount of cleavage. Her
make-up was heavily done, though not over-done Cordelia noted in her
head. Buffy, however noticed something else entirely right away.

The girl was a Slayer and the man her Watcher.

And because Buffy noticed it, so too did Willow, while Giles came to
the same conclusion through his own observations.

Xander casually stepped up just beside Buffy, at the lead of their
group, and cautiously asked, "Can we . . . help you with something?"

"Perhaps," the man spoke with an odd mix of accents. To the teens it
was part stereotypical Jamaican, and part proper-English as they'd
heard Giles speak so often. "Could you tell me, perhaps, if there is a
Rupert Giles in residence nearby? I was given this address in order to
contact him."

"I am Rupert Giles," Giles spoke up, though he remained behind the
mutants in case his assumption of the other man being a Watcher came
up false. There was still no way to know if there were more assassins
out there, nor what their abilities might be.

"I am Samuel Zabuto," the black man introduced himself, "/Watcher/
Samuel Zabuto. And this is Kendra, my Slayer."

"Hi," Buffy flashed her 'Valley Girl' smile at the pair and started
twirling her hair, "I'm Buffy. The Vampire Slayer. This is Willow,
Xander, Cordelia, and Giles you apparently already know."

"Dat is eempossibull!" Kendra drawled, for some reason pushing her
accent for all it was worth, "Aye am dee Vumpyr Slayer!"

"Yeah, I like, died, but just for a second or two," Buffy smirked at
the other Slayer. Then she suddenly straightened, stopped messing with
her hair, and looked the new Watcher squarely in the eye. "So, I
figure the Watcher's Council wouldn't've sent you two willy-nilly
several thousands of miles from an island dedicated to the practice of
Voodoo, just to visit the Mouth of Hell that already has a Slayer
stationed there, so I'm thinking, major apocalypse. Again."

"Very perceptive," Zabuto nodded his head at the mutant slayer.

"I am sure you are all aware, since it originated atop the Primary
Hellmouth, of the recent event of Chaotic Energy that swept the
globe?" he asked them as he stepped forward and set a briefcase that
Kendra had been holding for him on the table before them.
"Unfortunately, I fear that was only a precursor of things to come."

"You have no idea," Xander muttered under his breath, then blushed
when Kendra glared at him.

"What are you saying Samuel?" Giles asked, concerned.

"I have cast the bones, upon what I saw, I consulted with several
legitimate psychics and fortune tellers. Finally I contacted the
Council itself and the agreed upon what must be done. It would seem,"
Zabuto mournfully answered Giles question, "that your Slayer and those
closest to her are the center of things to come. The Final Battle is
being prepared and it is up to you and your Slayer to gather an army
of loyal soldiers to fight in it and win . . . or die trying."

To Be Continued . . . ?






Willow: "It's a good fight, Buffy, and I want in."
Buffy:  "I kinda love you."
                     'Choices'

Community email addresses:
     Post message: buffywantswillow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
     Subscribe:    buffywantswillow-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
     Unsubscribe:  buffywantswillow-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
     List owner:   buffywantswillow-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Shortcut URL to this page:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buffywantswillow

Official archive for the list:
     http://www.ikoly.com/fanfic

Other links to Buffy/Willow fics:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buffywantswillow/links  
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buffywantswillow/

<*> Your email settings:
   Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/buffywantswillow/join
   (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
   mailto:buffywantswillow-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   mailto:buffywantswillow-fullfeatured@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
   buffywantswillow-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
   http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/