As A Consequence Of Your Action (Jumpchain)

[Zerak]

Several years ago I dropped this Jumpchain on SB, as an experiment with writing an entirely different style of Jumpchain than I usually do. I have decided now to mirror it on QQ, so that people who don't go to SB can at least see a bit of what this 'Jumpchain' thing is about. Even if I'm not writing the usual Jumpchain. (It's only two jumps long, for one thing, and both jumps will be full-length stories.) Still, hopefully this will expose people to at least one Jumpchain fanfic that hopefully avoids the usual pitfalls of such.

Click to shrink...

Will this be continued? Or just cross posted?

 

[cliffc999]

It's already completed on SB, so, cross-posted.

 

[ezfijezdizezoedk]

It's already completed on SB, so, cross-posted.

Click to shrink...

did you cross post this to precede you making another chain?
or did you just do it because you felt like it(or any other reason)?

 

[cliffc999]

I felt like it, also I recently realized that unlike when I was starting out, currently QQ has a nontrivial amount of readers who don't also follow SB, so I cannot rest assured that all of my work there is known here. And sure, I have a lot of old crap that doesn't need mirroring but this particular one is one of my greatest hits, so it comes over.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

And so, having finalized our plans and with only a few miscellaneous preparations to complete and a few days to wait before we set out on our death-defying mission to save the world, life cooperated by giving us absolutely no new complications, distractions, or diversions while we waited.

Sure! Und hy vaz de Princess Hasenpfeffer ov Spaetzle, as Jorgi would have said.

They called me from the Imperial garrison to the Red Cathedral the day after Tarvek had first informed us of its importance. Agatha was still in the recovery process from one of our preparations last night and Gil and Tarvek were helping monitor her through it, so between her unavailability and the Red Cathedral's traditional semi-hemi-autonomy Vanamonde had decided to kick the problem over to us 'Imperial interlopers' as soon as the Cathedral's own guards and the Mechanicsburg Town Watch had hit it and bounced. Without a direct order from Agatha he didn't want to be responsible for sending Jagers into the Red Cathedral and upsetting the unwritten agreement, after all. But the Empire wasn't part of those mutual understandings, so our "high-handed autocratic ways" that had rubbed some people in Mechanicsburg the wrong way now made us the perfect scapegoats to blame the 'interference' on.

The "It" in question was apparently a single intruder who had been discovered in the Cathedral's basement in the crypt containing the mirror, who had attacked and soundly thrashed the pair of the Bloodstone Paladins who'd discovered her when they'd attempted to remove her. As the town's automated defenses didn't operate inside the Cathedral, the second attempt had been a mixed force of Paladins and militia that had made a second attempt in force and with C-gas grenades.

I stood looking at the rows of unconscious and gassed bodies being ministered to by the first-aid team, that had been found politely dumped outside the door of the crypt with the Abbess prominently perched on top of the pile.

"So our intruder isn't killing anyone, but they really don't want to be interrupted while they're in there." I stated the obvious. "Any signs there's more than one?"

"No," Vanamonde replied. "The people peeking in the door weren't able to see clearly due to the lighting but from all appearances it was a mob scene vs. a single highly-mobile target, not a mass melee. And the Abbess had been shouting 'Get her!', not 'Get them!'."

I grumbled to myself. I had no idea who the hell was in there and screwing around with a key component of both our and the Other's schemes, but they had picked the exact wrong time to be doing it. If they broke that damned thing then our plan would be delayed for weeks while the Other's conspirators tried to brainstorm a new way to smuggle Agatha out of Mechanicsburg and we pretended to believe it, and the timing of the Baron's attack on the sub-orbital cannon had placed us on a not-very-flexible schedule. But whoever they were they clearly weren't from any of the major players already in the game - if the Baron had somehow found out what everything we were up to and wanted to shortstop it then our intruder would have simply destroyed the mirror and already left, and none of the possible competitors from the Order of Jove would have been either this unstealthy or this reluctant to kill anyone. So I had literally no idea what I was walking into here.

Well, I did have one idea. Whoever this was they were already worn down from having had to fight all these people... and I was entirely fresh, and was among the Best of the Best.

"Right," I nodded. "All right. Sergeant, I'm going in there alone to try and talk to them."

The sergeant of the detail of troopers who'd accompanied me down gave me a look that wordlessly communicated precisely how idiotic he thought I was being.

"That's why your people are stacked up outside the door. Don't enter after me. I'm certain the Abbess and her people lost partly because they were getting in each other's way in there. Just contain the problem."

"And if you go down, sir?"

"Then keep throwing the C-Gas in there until you've hit the bottom of the bag. I'm fairly certain the prior team failed because they only used one grenade," I replied, and then turned to Vanamonde. "And if that doesn't work, then you'll have to interrupt them up at the Castle."

"Good luck," he nodded to me.

"You in there!" I called. "Parley!"

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" a young woman's voice called, sounding as if she were at the ragged edge of desperation. "I DON'T WANT TO STEAL ANYTHING! I JUST WANT TO GO HOME!"

"The door is this way, Miss." I called back.

"NO IT'S NOT!" she shrieked. "IT'S RIGHT HERE! IF I CAN JUST OPEN IT-" she sobbed.

'The door is right here?' I wondered. Who the hell else would possibly know what one of those mirrors even was, let alone think it would be their only way back-

And then I heard the rhetorical landmine go click. Again.

You have got to be fucking kidding me, narrative causality! Even for you, this is reaching!

I unclipped my holster, pistol still inside, from my sword belt and handed it to the sergeant for safekeeping. And then, with my sword solidly in its sheath, I stepped forward into the crypt. As I crossed the room the kneeling figure that was dimly silouhetted against the inactive mirror in the light of the torches became more and more visible.

The intruder was a young woman, almost certainly as tall as I was, dressed in skintight leathers. She was heavily muscled but still with the build of an acrobat, and her twin swords were clearly visible in sheaths on her back. And as I drew closer, the color of her green hair became visible in the torchlight. I sighed inwardly. Of course it was her.

"Miss?" I called to her, coming to a halt about fifteen away from her as she knelt at the base of the mirror closely examining some of the machinery around and hooked into it, and she immediately spun to face me and leapt to her feet like a cat.

"I told you to stay away!" she shrieked, and in a blurring eyeblink she drew both her swords and leapt forward. Her crossed swords remained in high-guard position as threats-in-being and distractions as her actual attack, a flying jump-kick, went just past my ear when I stepped to the side just at the exact right instant.

"Can we just talk?" I pleaded as she converted her landing into a graceful pirouhette and recovered and pivoted in a flash to whirl her primary blade at the level of my neck. Apparently I was presenting enough of a threat that she felt desperate enough to escalate to live steel-

I bent my knees just enough that her slash went a centimeter above the crown of my hat, then used the springing motion of rising to my feet to hop to the side and lift one arm just in time to let her off-hand thrust pass underneath my armpit instead of through my heart.

"You're the sacred guardians of it, you'd never let me use it, you wouldn't let me in here, but I need to use it, it's my only way back, just a little more time-" she panted heavily as she struck at me again and again. She was pressing hard enough that I was reaching the limits of what footwork and timing and terrain could do to keep me from being skewered, and she was clearly too hysterical to be reasoned with.

Very well then. If we're going to have to do this Wulfenbach style, then let's do it.

I let her left-hand slash clang against a stone pillar that I'd been retreating towards, then took the momentum back with a wrist-parry to her other hand that then went straight for an arm-lock as I stepped inside the arc of her swing. Expertly trained at in-fighting, she whipped her free hand back in to club me in the temple with the hilt-

-to be taken entirely off-guard by my stepping in from close to contact and giving her a 'Pirate's Kiss'. Even the best-trained people sometimes didn't adapt well to sudden changes of style mid-fight, and my going straight from elite fencing to the uglier side of freestyle caught her off-guard just long enough for my head-butt to ring her bell hard and leave her seeing stars and with a bloody nose. She was far too tough for a single hit like that to take her down, or even slow her down for more than a fraction of a second, but at this level a fraction was often all you needed.

I knew even as I laid in the uppercut to her solar plexus that I was going to take a hit in return, because this woman was really almost as good as I was. She even was almost as good as she thought she was. But I'd been hit before- in fact, being the regular workout partner of people such as Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and Bangladesh DuPree got you really really used to taking a beating. Hell, I sparred with Jagers. I was pretty much Ol' Man Death in his prime when I really got going, and right now I felt like going pretty damn hard.

But in order to break my wrist-lock and free up her other hand to elbow me over the skull she'd had to drop one of her swords, and that was my real goal here. Allowing her to go for the clinch got her to drop the other sword, and she grinned as she got both arms around me in a bear-hug and began to squeeze the wind out of me-

Just as planned.

Because I'd already seen from how I'd been able to trap her one blade against the pillar that she wasn't paying sufficient attention to her surroundings. So, since we were still adjacent to the pillar then even with my arms pinned against my sides all I needed to do was plant a foot, push-off and pivot hard, and turn us both and push her staggering sideways into the stone. That impact loosened her grip on me a fraction, and I feinted another headbutt just long enough to leave her guarding the wrong thing and give me a clear shot to heel stomp her instep. Her counter to that was an elbow strike to my forehead, but her momentarily being off-balance on one leg and my anticipation of her next move gave me a free opportunity to twist loose of the grip her remaining arm still had on me, and so her strike did nothing except push me back and out of reach.

I feigned a moment of fear and started backpedaling to bait her into rushing out after me instead of stopping to pick up her dropped weapons, and since she was highly distraught and more than a little hot-tempered ordinarily she fell for it. Good. Ever since she'd gone for that first sword slash my greatest fear had been that she'd go so far out of her head that I'd need to kill or seriously injure her to stop her. But without her swords, this was merely a brawl.

A really, really, really crazy brawl. The sort of brawl that even Jagers would go "Ho yez!" at and remember fondly for a long time afterwards. But... like I said, I'd been hit before. And she was at least slightly winded from all the fighting she'd done earlier and half out of her head besides, while I matched her in speed, size, and reach, outmatched her in weight and strength, and was maintaining perfect mental focus while she was at least half hysterical and so even further off her edge than she already was. So the outcome wasn't ever in doubt.

Since I actually was trying to take it easy on her- I wanted her subdued, not beaten half to death- it went several minutes longer than it could have, but at the end of it we'd beaten each other up enough like mostly civilized people that she was no longer able to continue. I'd done well enough that I was not only still standing but still at least three-quarters combat-capable, but I'd definitely be feeling it in the morning.

"Will you please just tell me who you are and why you're doing this?" I asked, leaning back against a stone pillar. Not that I didn't already know who she was, but you never revealed that you had true meta-knowledge when you were in my situation.

"Zeetha," she gasped from where she sat on the floor, leaning back against another pillar and silently weeping. "And- it doesn't matter now." she said despairingly. "I trespassed in a temple and tried to tamper with one of the most sacred artifacts. They execute people for that."

"Not in the Empire," I said. "Not unless you kill people in the process, which you didn't."

"But I tried to kill you," she moaned. "And you hadn't even drawn your blade- oh Ashtara." she finished in a despairing wail. "I tried to murder an unarmed opponent. When I was the one who'd originally- oh Mother, I'm so sorry-" she trailed off, sighing and closing her eyes. She then painfully rolled forward into a kneeling position and lowered her head. "I, Princess Zeetha of Skifander, confess my dishonor for all the world to hear. I submit freely to my captor's justice, and I offer my life in return for the life I so unworthily tried to steal."

Holy shit, this was not what I'd been expecting when I'd won! At all!

"I, Captain Jonathan Fairchild of the Imperial Air Corps, spare Princess Zeetha's life out of mercy at her visibly not being in full possession of her faculties at the time she transgressed, and decide that justice would be served by my first finding out what the hell is going on before I pass any other sentence on anyone." I replied with equal formality, knowing damn well that she was taking this that seriously and wouldn't respond to anything less.

"I..." she gulped. "Dishonor is not so easily waved away, Captain." she said, still kneeling with head bowed.

"I don't have honor," I replied matter-of-factly, and her head snapped up to look at me in shock. "I have duty. And duty requires that I make my best-faith effort to know the truth before I pass judgement."

"Oh," she replied softly, settling back down from her initial shock. "I... of course, Captain. Ask your questions." she continued with a regal dignity.

"Why did you believe that mirror could take you home?" I asked her.

"They're sacred artifacts back home," she replied immediately. "Our legends have it that we originally reached Skifander through one. Did you know that they can transport people from one mirror to another, instantly?"

"I knew that," I nodded to her. "Extremely few people in Europa do, however. Why were you so desperate to use this mirror?"

"Because I don't know the way back!" she wailed. "I... there was an expedition to Skifander from England. It arrived there over two years ago. My mother is War-Queen Zantabraxus of Skifander, so when the expedition asked for a volunteer to return with them I was chosen as Skifander's representative to Queen Albia's court. But- on the return trip I fell sick. I was delirious with fever for over a week, and before I recovered the expedition was attacked by pirates." She paused as if to give me an opportunity to ask questions, and I nodded to her to continue. "By the time I regained consciousness I was in a slaver's cell. They'd spared me because of my 'exotic nature', but they'd killed everyone else..." she trailed off.

"I'm sorry about your friends," I said to her softly.

"Thank you," she replied with equal softness. "Well, to cut a long story short I broke out and killed everyone, then burned their whole little pirate fortress down. But..." she broke off to laugh with vicious mockery at herself. "You know, in hindsight, I really do have a 'fly off the handle and try to stab people when I really shouldn't' problem. Because while I hadn't dishonored myself then-"

"Pirates and murderers." I agreed.

"Pirates and murderers," she acknowledged matter-of-factly. "Still, it wasn't until after I'd finished my rampage that I realized that I had no idea of where I was or how I'd gotten there. I'd been so sick on the expedition out that I had no idea of the route. Everyone else in the expedition was dead, and the pirates hadn't bothered to take any of the maps or logs with them before burning the airship to cover their tracks. And like an idiot I'd just killed all the other people who could have possibly known the route. So there I was, stuck in Europa, with nowhere to go and no idea how to get back."

"You didn't try finishing the journey to England?" I said.

"How?" she replied. "One girl with a pair of swords and a tall tale and nothing else? Without any of the expedition available or any of the credentials or proofs that had been sent with them, I couldn't even get past the British Embassy's door guard, let alone get them to agree to send a message to their Queen. The expedition hadn't been able to communicate back from Skifander, after all, so they had no idea they'd be expecting anyone."

"What did you do then?" I asked.

"I wandered around guarding caravans," Zeetha shrugged. "Most of the other fighting for money done around here isn't remotely honorable, and I don't exactly know a lot of other trades. Eventually I ended up with a traveling circus doing an 'exotic barbarian princess' routine."

"How did you end up here, today?" I probed.

"We rolled into town a little over three weeks ago, and the war flaring up had made the roads unsafe enough that Master Payne decided it would be best if we layed over here. I'm surprised you missed our show. You obviously don't recognize me, and I'm one of the headline acts."

"Three weeks ago?" I nodded. "I was really distracted by some other things then. And if you're a traveling circus then normally you don't stay in any one place this long."

"Except when wintering over, no," she agreed. "So after we'd finished our round of shows... well, if we did the full routine every week after week, people would stop showing up and we'd be wasting money on the sets. So we've been living off of savings and odd jobs down in the 'stranded tourists' encampment mostly. I came in here today because I was so bored I'd been doing the tourist routine everywhere, and I'd wandered away from the tour and into the basement mostly at random. Just to see what kind of trouble I could get into-"

"And you happened right into the mirror."

"Yes!" she agreed. "And... okay, I admit it. I completely lost my head. You know that most people in Europa don't even know that Skifander exists, and the few who do think that it's a fictional place only from the Heterodyne Boys stories, right? I'd spent years here with no evidence at all, no physical proofs of where I'd really come from except a headband and a pair of fancy swords and my memories. I was beginning to doubt even those. I'd honestly been wondering if my whole life prior to the airship was something I'd simply made up while I was delirious, and..." she sniffled. "Seeing the mirror, just like the one I remembered back home- it was finding out that my home, my family, were actually real again. That I wasn't just a crazy person. And knowing that they were all just on the other side of that portal-" she stopped. "So I tried to open it. I did everything I could think of, every ritual I'd ever heard of in all the ancient lore back home- but nothing was working." She sighed. "Then the temple guards showed up and interrupted me, and it all happened from there." She stopped and paused. "Wait, do you actually believe Skifander is real, or are you just humoring the crazy person too?"

"I believe it," I said, and then in full knowledge of exactly what drama bomb I'd be detonating I continued on as if I had no idea of the significance of what I was about to say. "I know a man who said he'd visited there once."

"WHAT?" Zeetha screeched, so forgetting herself that she shot right up off her knees to grab me by the shoulders. "Who?!? Please please please, even if you're going to execute me in the next five minutes just tell me who!"

"Baron Wulfenbach," I replied to her matter-of-factly, and both her arms and her jaw went as slack as overcooked noodles.

"The Baron?" she squeaked. "The conqueror of Europa? The mightiest warrior on the continent?" she finished in awe. "Holy shit, Dad!"

"That's the- wait, Dad?!?" I finished with the appropriate degree of astonishment.

"Um, yeah," she blushed. "My father was an adventurer from Europa who'd arrived there through the mirrors over twenty years ago. He and my mother met, got married... you know. That's how I knew the language- he'd taught her, and she'd taught me growing up. So since I doubt anybody else from Europa was wandering around Skifander being a solo mighty warrior then... damn." she trailed off. "And I thought I had powerful relatives on Mom's side."

"The Baron did return to Europa from a mysterious years-long absence overseas at about that time," I agreed. "But given your age, you'd have been a very small child when he left. I doubt you'd remember him to recognize him. You obviously didn't recognize his name, as everybody in Europa would have been speaking it when you first got here."

"My father called himself 'Chump' while he was in Skifander, and yes I know what it means in your language. But of course I'd recognize him," she said matter-of-factly. "There's a portrait of him hanging in my mother's palace! All the while I grew up I kept staring at it, wondering where my father was, what kind of adventures he was having now... why he'd left." she finished sadly.

"Don't ask me," I shrugged. "He's my boss, not my best friend. But I am one of his closest advisors, which is how I'd heard him talking about Skifander before." I paused. "If it's any consolation, he obviously didn't want to leave. I've only heard him mention it maybe once or twice, and briefly... and like a man who didn't want to talk about it. Like how men talk about a long-lost love."

"That... that means a lot." she said, breathing heavily. "Thank you. And of course you're one of the Baron's closest advisors. The way you fight?" she said affectionately. "He'd be an idiot not to have you as one of his own war-party. Did he train you?"

"Some of it," I agreed. "And I had several other good teachers. All the rest I picked up the hard way."

"That's how you learn," she nodded, before realizing. "Oh, crap. I'm still under sentencing. So, ummm...?" she trailed off embarassedly.

"... I'm just going to file this under the legal category called "no real harm, no real foul"." I said. "And no, it's not because you're probably my boss' daughter. The story you just told me... you had every reason to be completely out of it. I'd need a heart of stone to punish you harshly for that."

"And the damages?" she said, waving her hand to metaphorically encompass the pile of people she'd beaten up earlier today.

"You said you were working for a circus that had been stranded in town for weeks," I said matter-of-factly. "I'm pretty sure you don't have any money to actually pay for damages. And even the Imperial tax collectors can't actually squeeze blood from stones."

"... pretty much." she agreed ruefully. "So what happens now?"

"Well, I can understand how you'd not recognize the Baron's face as your father's even if you knew what to look for," I said. "The caricatures they use for him in all the Heterodyne plays aren't remotely decent likenesses, and he's not a man whose picture shows up in the newspaper very much. But there's also a portrait of a younger Klaus Wulfenbach available up in Castle Heterodyne, because he was best friends with the Heterodyne Boys. So let's go up there and have a look at it."

"Thank you," Zeetha sniffled, reaching into her pocket for a rag to blow her nose with. "I've been luckier than I deserve- even if we can't ever make that portal work, this is still the best day of my life." she said, grabbing my arm and putting it in the 'escort the lady' position as we turned to leave.

"Princess, I regret to inform you that I already have a girlfriend," I said politely.

"Damn!" she swore and let go. "Well, you can't blame a girl for trying, can you?"

"Not at all," I agreed. "Just... please don't try the same on the even more impressive-looking young warrior you're going to meet up at the Castle, all right? Because he's very likely your brother."

"I have a brother?!?" she squawked in renewed astonishment as we exited the room, and I did my best not to grin.

Okay, I had no idea why the hell this happened or how the hell this was going to fit in, but... well, at least they'd have a chance to know each other before it all went to hell.

And hey, at least she wasn't one of the people trying to kill us.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Remember how I said I had no room for Zeetha in this story? Well, she disagreed. Loudly and at length. And eventually, she won.

And then it occurred to me that if Zeetha ever actually saw the mirror in the Red Cathedral first - that is, before she'd met Agatha and gotten the reassurance from her that Skifander was actually real - she would flip the fuck out. And at that point I knew how I could introduce her to the cast.

The rest of it is just our poor beleaguered SI having to make honest feelings do dishonest work again so as to avoid getting into the whole 'I am actually from a world where you're all fictional characters' thing.

And really, Queen Zantabraxus didn't have ONE damn portrait of her husband commissioned? Yeah, eff that noise.

 

[cliffc999]

Gilgamesh POV:

Agatha was still unconscious, so I'd left Tarvek to take a turn watching over her to come and meet Jonathan. The message he'd sent had said that he had something really important to tell me, that it couldn't wait, and that I'd definitely want to be sitting down when I heard it.

So I arrived at one of the many sitting rooms in Castle Heterodyne and saw Jonathan standing there looking like he'd just been through the nightly barroom brawl at Mamma Gkika's. Along with him was a strange young woman who looked even worse than he did, with long green hair, bronzed skin, and who was dressed in tight fighting leathers and with an exotic pair of twin swords leaning against her armchair- wait, one of those swords looked like one I'd seen hanging in Father's bedroom-

"Is this him?" the strange woman asked Jonathan nervously.

"He is," Jonathan said, and she gulped and smiled at me nervously, running a hand through her hair. "Gil?" he turned to me. "I wasn't kidding about the 'You want to sit down' part."

"All right," I said, taking a seat. "So what's gone wrong? Because you both look like you're about to tell me the world is ending."

"The world as you know it kinda is about to end." Jonathan said. "Zeetha, this is Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, son of Baron Klaus Wulfenbach. Gil, this is Princess Zeetha of Skifander, daughter of Chump and yes she knows what it means in our language-"

"Skifander?" I cut him off, remembering that name as a place my father had mentioned enigmatically several times in very unguarded moments. He'd never really been more forthcoming whenever I'd pressed him on it, except to admit once that I'd actually been born there-

Oh. My. God.

"'Chump' was the name assumed by a great warrior from Europa who came to Skifander and married my mother-" the Princess began tentatively.

"-circa twenty years ago," I finished dazedly, and she nodded slowly along with me.

"I showed her the picture of your father as a young man that's hanging in the portrait gallery here," Jonathan said. "She identified him as the same 'Chump' whose portrait hangs in her mother's palace-"

"I have a sister." I stammered out, overwhelmed.

"I have a brother-" she began, and then suddenly we were both out of our chairs and hugging each other as hard as we could. Oof! I inwardly gasped as I felt my ribs creak. I guess she'd inherited the same kind of strength I had! We drew back a little, grinning at each other like idiots, and then we started another hug. This time I put some real muscle into it and eventually she squeaked and tapped out with a thump on my back. Hah!

"Damn!" she said admiringly as we stepped apart. "Seems like our father hasn't been neglecting your training, has he?"

"Oh you have no idea," I said, taking a more careful look at her exceptional musculature. "I'm guessing our mother is also a great fighter and raised you the same way?"

"War-Queen Zantabraxus, the toughest woman in Skifander!" she agreed with me proudly. "And we've got to spar sometime and see which parent did the better job, huh?"

An involuntary chuckle from an adjacent chair made us both turn to Jonathan. "Yeah, you're related all right."

I burst out in helpless laughter. Even with everything that had gone wrong and everything facing us, this was just so right-

"Zeetha, this is Captain Jonathan Fairchild," I began introducing them.

"One of your father's closest advisors and a member of his personal war-party," she acknowledged.

"Still underselling yourself, Jonathan?" I said with good-natured exasperation at certain longstanding personal quirks. "Everything he said is true but he's also one of my oldest and closest friends... and in every way except officially, my-our father's foster son." I explained to Zeetha. "As much as he's a brother to me, he's also one to you."

"Oh!" she said wonderingly. "He hadn't said anything-"

"He never does." I agreed with her. "It gets kind of annoying sometimes."

"It's complicated," Jonathan said plaintively. "Okay... the simple version is that the Baron took me under his protection when I was about twelve after he defeated my father, who'd been a very, very hated enemy of his. He was too honorable to hold the sins of the father against the son, so he saw to my upbringing but he also concealed my identity because the list of people who'd probably want to kill me just for who I was related to stretches at least halfway across Europa. Officially I'm just a war orphan who was taken into the Baron's school for gifted Sparks as a precocious young talent who then met and befriended the Baron's own son there, and between that and merit was eventually raised up to become an unofficial part of the household. So that's all I, or anybody else, ever tells anyone."

"That actually sounds like stuff that happens occasionally back home," Zeetha nodded. "Is Dad going to let you claim your inheritance one day?"

"There isn't any inheritance," Jonathan said. "My father was basically a bandit king, not any kind of legitimate ruler." he shrugged. "Can't say I miss him, honestly. He wasn't exactly what you'd call a good parent."

"Ouch," Zeetha commiserated. "Well... however you got here, I'm still glad to meet you too, unofficial brother," she said warmly, and Jonathan gave a rare beaming smile back.

"So, would either of you care to explain why my siblings old and new look like they got ran over by a barfight piloting a hoomhoffer?" I probed.

"Well..." Zeetha began embarassedly.

* * * * *​

"Wait, you're the same age I am?" Zeetha said. "Exactly? But that would mean-" she turned pale.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"... I think I just figured out why neither of us ever knew about the other. Or about why our father left our mother." she said pensively. "Did Dad ever say anything about how Skifander views twins born to the royal line?"

"No," I said, and Jonathan shook his head. "It was like pulling teeth to get Dad to even mention Skifander at all, let alone expound on it."

"There's a prophecy," she began, hanging her head shamefacedly. "Okay, I'd call it a superstition but a lot of people wouldn't- anyway, it's the common belief that if twins are ever born to a Queen of Skifander and both are allowed to live to adulthood, disaster will plague the kingdom as a result. Which is why, whenever it happens, one of the two infants is..." she swallowed heavily. "Put to death."

"What?" I said. "Are you saying that our mother-"

"Of course not," Jonathan snorted derisively before Zeetha could even say anything, and her head snapped towards him in shock. "Gil, think. Your mother was still alive when Zeetha left Skifander for Europa. If somebody had tried to kill you when you were a baby, what would your father's reaction have been?"

"Either the attempted murderer would have died on the spot or he would have," I agreed. "And since both of our parents are still alive..."

"Mom's the same way," Zeetha agreed. "Nesting fafflenargs looked like kittens compared to how she got about anything possibly threatening me when I was little- no, there's no way she could have agreed with anyone trying to kill you or else we wouldn't have two living parents right now. But there are a lot of hardliners in Skifander who'd believe that prophecy even if she wouldn't have, and-" she shook her head. "It's virtually certain that at least one of them tried."

"Zeetha, I hate to say it but you are really not selling me on Skifander right now," I admitted frankly.

"I can't really blame you," she said. "Anyway... mom never mentioned that you existed, do you understand? No one had ever mentioned that you existed. There were no records, no paintings, not even any hints. Right up until Jonathan told me in the Red Cathedral that I had a brother, I'd thought I was an only child!"

"Up until I walked into this room, I'd thought I'd been an only child," I told her.

"Okay, your father obviously never expected that he'd see either your mother or your sister ever again, or else he'd have at least told you they existed. Likewise with your mother thinking she'd never see Gil or your father ever again." Jonathan analyzed. "Wait. Zeetha, did your mother ever mention how old you were when 'Chump' left for Europa? Or did she ever mention why he left?"

"I- going by the dates, me and Gil were only several months old when it happened." Zeetha answered. "And mother never told me why whenever I asked her why my father had left or if he was ever coming back, except to emphasize that he'd hadn't abandoned us. That he'd done nothing dishonorable but had left because honor had required him to, and that he couldn't come back. And then she'd make it very plain that she didn't want to talk about it anymore."

"Jonathan, what are you thinking?" I asked him.

"That your father returned with you at the earliest practical age to be transporting an infant across rough country," Jonathan said. "And from what Zeetha just said, that your mother agreed with his leaving and why he couldn't come back." he finished. "Obviously we won't know for sure until we ask him, but I'd bet anything you care to name that your parents spent the first couple of months politically stalling and/or beating off the assassins to give you enough time to grow to where it would be safe to carry you home, and then faked your death."

"That makes perfect sense," Zeetha agreed. "If you'd vanished one day then it would have been assumed that Mother had finally bowed to what the other queens would have been demanding and finally had you put to death. And if our father then 'stormed away in grief and rage'... well, what else could you expect from an outlander who didn't understand how important it was to kill your own baby over a superstition-" she trailed off angrily.

"And all it would take is some very elementary stage-managing and everybody would look at the timeline and believe the version of events you just outlined, instead of a simple 'Father left and took me with him'." I finished. "And of course nobody in Skifander would ever talk about it afterwards, especially if our mother made it plain she never wanted to be 'reminded of her grief'. So you never learned about my existence-"

"They'd almost have had to do it that way," Zeetha said, paling in realization. "I mean... Gil, you do realize that your being alive in a faraway land no Skifandrian could hope to reach at that time wouldn't change the fact that you'd still be alive, right? Meaning that to avoid the prophecy of doom, the hardliners would have to kill the twin they could still reach..." she gulped.

"Our parents split up forever and faked my death to Skifander and concealed your existence from Europa to save both of our lives." I concluded. "I owe Father so many apologies." I sighed, thinking about how I'd raged at his inability to open up to me when I was younger. But if my very existence constantly reminded him of the wife and daughter he'd had to leave behind forever to save my life, of course he'd be as stoic as possible around me. He wouldn't want to actually show a child his grief and regrets and let that child believe it was their fault, would he?

"Now I really wish Mother could have gotten on the airship with me," Zeetha said. "But... at least most of us are together now."

"Oh hell," I suddenly realized. "Jonathan, given everything that's going on right now, how the hell do we even tell him? I send him a direct message that my long-lost sister has shown up, and he'll put the entire war on hold while he rushes over here as fast as possible!"

"Everything that's going on right now?" Zeetha said, and I looked to our relevant master of concise explanations for an answer.

"In less than a week we, and a couple of our closest friends that you'll soon be meeting, are heading out on a vital mission that if it succeeds will turn the entire tide of the war against the Other," Jonathan said. "Without the Baron's permission. And part of its success depends on getting far enough ahead of him that he can't haul us back like misbehaving children before we reach where we're going."

"And I should cooperate in lying to our father why?" Zeetha demanded.

"Because you've never snuck out and done something dangerous before our mother thought you were ready," I said to her disbelievingly. "Not even once."

"... you're sure you've never been to Skifander?" Zeetha groused.

"Well, twins separated at birth clearly isn't just a figure of speech anymore," Jonathan teased us.

"The thing is that for all his brilliance, the one place Father's rationality fails him is the safety of his child. Children," I corrected myself. "It was hard enough to convince him to let me leave Castle Wulfenbach just to go to university, and that was in the most heavily-defended city in Europa!" I sighed. "So no, it doesn't matter that we're ideally suited for the task and in the proper position to execute it when nobody else is, and that the fate of the war almost certainly relies upon it. If we told him what we were up to ahead of time, he'd still do his best to stop us."

"Well, yeah, but the army here isn't his army," Zeetha pointed out practically. "It's the Lady Heterodyne's. So could Dad stop you even if he knew?"

"Not in Mechanicsburg," Jonathan agreed. "But there's a difference between 'doing something we know he wouldn't like' and 'directly disobeying his express command', and while we'd do that latter one if the fate of Europa relied on it, we don't want to. Because..."

"I have the best brothers," Zeetha gushed approvingly. "Yeah, I get it. Frustrating your parents is just part of growing up, but directly disobeying a royal command is a matter of honor." She chewed her lip in thought. "But fear not, for I have a brilliant plan!" she said brightly.

"She said, immediately before the airship burst into flames," Jonathan teased her.

"Ha-ha," Zeetha glared mock-outrage at him. "Do you remember the question you asked me in the cathedral about why I hadn't reported the loss of the expedition to Queen Albia's court? So, now that I have access to people who actually have access to diplomatic mail, how's about I write up that report and send it in so they finally know that Professor Consalmagno's expedition was lost and how? And mention in that report that 'Princess Zeetha of Skifander, Daughter of Chump' was the sole survivor? That's a name only one person in Europa outside this room would recognize."

"And the delay in having an 'information' copy of the message sent to Father at the same time we heliographed it to the British Embassy in Paris would give us enough time to finish what we need doing, while at the same time letting him know that you're in Europa and that we found you. But in a manner that gives us plausible deniability for not telling him right away, because its just possible that we're oblivious idiots who didn't figure everything out." I agreed.

"Emphasize that you've been graciously enjoying the hospitality of the Empire as per Lord Gilgamesh Wulfenbach's instructions when you send the report, so your dad knows the twins are getting along fine," Jonathan recommended.

"Works for me!" I said, before finishing "And Jonathan, you know I hate that title."

"You hate being addressed as 'the Wulfenbach heir', no first name, even worse, and what else can we put in official diplomatic mail? 'Gil' doesn't quite cut it there." Jonathan remonstrated with me.

"Okay, glad that's settled." Zeetha said. "Now," she began far more seriously, "how's about you brief me all about this vital mission to save Europa that we'll be going on."

"We?" I said, to be pinned to my seat by a withering glare.

"You are my brother. The ruler of these lands is my father. If you're at war, if this mission is so important, then damn right I'm going to be out there fighting with you! I am a warrior princess of Skifander and I do not stay home where "it's safe" when my kin are facing battle!" she angrily demanded.

"Gil?" Jonathan cut me off. "Don't even try. I know you're enjoying your first chance to be a protective older brother-"

"How do we even know he's the older one?" Zeetha complained.

"Okay, okay!" I yielded. "And I wasn't trying to-" I took a deep breath. "I didn't want to demand that you come," I tried to explain. "You're my sister, yes, but this isn't your home or your army. You're not required to fight our wars, and I don't like to conscript people."

"That's fair," Zeetha settled down. "But I just officially volunteered, so tell me everything."

* * * * *​

Tarvek POV:

"Agatha?" I asked gently, as she slowly stirred in her hospital bed.

"Did anyone get the color of that mule?" she moaned. "Oh God- this is a worse headache than even the damned locket ever gave me..."

I checked the readouts again. Everything was nominal.

"Do you want a painkiller?" I asked her.

"Half a dose," she said. "Don't wanna be too thick to check the readouts..."

"All right," I said, setting up and delivering the injection. "Let me know if that takes the edge off."

"Thanks," she said, looking up and around. "Huh. Where's Gil?"

"Jonathan came in and said there was something that needed his immediate attention," I told her. "They're still dealing with it. But it's not that kind of emergency, whatever it is." I said, giving her arm a reassuring pat. "Mechanicsburg is fine, and nothing's on fire or under attack."

"I'll ask 'em about it at dinner, then." she agreed, closing her eyes and laying back. "Wait. Did I miss dinner?"

"It's one-thirty in the afternoon," I said with a quirk of my lip.

"Guess not," she joked with me, still slightly loopy from the half-dose of morphia. "So, the readouts?"

"Right here," I said, heading over to the nearby workbench to grab the relevant printouts and bring them over to here. "Let me know if you need any of them read to you," I said, sitting down.

"Should be fine," she said, settling her glasses on the bridge of her nose and slowly going through the sheets. "These look good." she eventually finished, handing me the readings and leaning back against her pillow. "Glad this headache isn't for nothin'." she mumbled.

"Do you need anything else?" I asked her. "Water? For me to adjust the bed?"

"You don' have to be such a nurse," she joshed at me.

"Agatha, do you know what a precious gift it is to me to have someone allow themselves to be helpless in my presence?" I said, the words suddenly tumbling out of me before I could stop them. "I can count the family members who'd do that on the thumbs of one hand. And I don't have too many more friends who would either. It's an honor and a privilege to have one more of them."

"Your family's horrible," she replied softly.

"You've definitely been talking to Violetta too much," I chuckled at her. "But she's certainly not wrong."

"She's nice," Agatha agreed with me drunkenly. "And her and Jonathan are so good for each other too."

"Wait, that hand-holding I glimpsed last night wasn't an aberration?" I said surprisedly. "Are you telling me they finally-"

"Not gonna gossip," Agatha mumbled back at me with a sly grin. "So I can't tell you that yeah, they pretty much did."

"Well," I said, settling back in my bedside chair. "Good for them." I continued with far more cheer than I actually felt, feeling strangely disturbed for some reason. Why would I possibly feel this way? Jonathan was one of the finest men I knew, and I'd seen him and Violetta hopelessly pine for each other for years. I'd certainly trust him to love and cherish my cousin like she deserved-

I looked at Agatha lying there, innocent and vulnerable and less than an arms' length away from me, and suddenly realized why I might possibly be so alarmed at the thought of love having unexpectedly bloomed in my absence.

"And Gil?" I said, cursing myself at taking advantage of a woman who was still under sedation but unable to stop the words from bursting out again.

"I dunno," Agatha said in drunken honesty, before drifting off to sleep. I reached out and gently pulled the blanket up under her chin so she'd be warm.

She didn't know, I sighed. Well, that certainly made two of us.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Yeah, the plot decided to go run and hide under the bed for a bit while all these feelings started nosing around the plot bunny hutch. But hey, I worked out a headcanon that makes both Klaus and Zantabraxus be tragically yet nobly separated rather than angry misunderstandings and got two chapters out of one day, so I'm happy!

I mean, really, we already know that Klaus can stoically torture himself for the rest of his life to do what he thinks is best for his children, so why should the woman he married be unlike him?

And yes, Tarvek can't help being a weasel in any universe. Poor boy.

As to what's up with Agatha... I'm trying this new thing called "mysterious foreshadowing". I hear it's catching on in some places.

Oh, and this is a hoomhoffer.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

We spent the last week before our departure date training harder than ever. Even with Spark-augmented medicine Agatha still needed a couple days to recover, but after that she needed to cram in as much survival, evasion, resistance, and escape as we could give her in addition to putting on a final combat polish. Zeetha hardly needed any individual training, but still needed as many sessions as we could fit in to get acclimated to working with us and learn to anticipate our moves. Tarvek and Violetta gave us some tips on how to deal with Smoke Knights. And Agatha received some last-minute specialized coaching that Zeetha had been able to obtain for her at Master Payne's circus, who were confused but gratified at how their 'castaway barbarian princess' had turned out to be a real castaway princess and was now being diplomatically received up at Castle Heterodyne and able to arrange some very well-paying consulting work for them with the Lady Heterodyne.

One key piece of intel that Tarvek had brought us spurred a last-minute change in our plans. As it turned out, the Smoke Knights had a large-scale concealment field that was capable of hiding an entire airship. Tarvek knew the basic design principle, and he and I were able to reproduce one with the resources of Castle Heterodyne's workshops and a feverish all-nighter. There would have been serious pushback from the Order of Jove if he'd been caught giving this technology to the Empire - and that would be just from the faction that was allied to us - but as a one-off for this vital a mission, we felt it was worth the risk. The "All Shadows Must Come Into The Light" protocol as put forth by Dowager Princess Sturmvoraus meant that essentially anything went for the Smoke Knights, even the normally unthinkable, if it was necessary to defeat the Other. And as Violetta was still technically a Smoke Knight if not currently a Mondarev, we could get away with one cloaking device as long as she was its operator.

Which meant that our original plan of hoping to follow our 'captive' selves via prepositioned ground teams along the probable exit routes when we were transshipped from the Fortress of Storms was now our backup plan, not the primary. With a cloaked long-range airship at our disposal we could put an entire airborne strike team on the task of following us to wherever Lucrezia's people had their last Summoning Engine cached. The Jovian renegades would of course know about the concealment field and very likely be using one of their own on their own airship or airships, but the vibrational resonance trackers we'd created and attuned to Agatha would allow us to do a 'long tail', staying just over the horizon from our quarry and yet still following them all the way home.

Tarvek finally finished finessing the arrangements with the contacts he was 'betraying' us to. This afternoon he, Gilgamesh, and Agatha would 'innocently' walk into the trap laid for them at the Red Cathedral and be abducted to the Fortress of Storms. Once we had a confirmed timeframe, we sent our messages out for the Baron to receive... early enough that he could conceivably rush the fleet to wherever we were going, late enough that there would be nothing he could to do interfere with the mission.

Right now Zeetha, Violetta, Higgs, Dimo and Agatha's honor guard, and a crack crew assembled from the best available Imperial soldiers and Jagers in Mechanicsburg were boarding the L-79, a brand-new long-range Flotsam class assault transport I'd had placed under my command. Our job would be to fly up and take station near the Fortress of Storms the night before, and wait to follow the homing trackers in Agatha away from there to where the Summoning Engine was. As soon as we had a location, we'd send a general call out for the reinforcements and then attempt a covert insertion of the strike team to extract Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek along with the intel on the Other's research we so desperately needed, or at least one living brain that contained it.

But until we could do that, Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek would have to survive in the heart of the enemy by themselves. They would admittedly be doing it as Trojan prisoners, but that part of the plan was still the riskiest of them all. Stripped down to bare necessity they didn't really need anyone alive save Agatha the instant they got to the other side of the mirror. Tarvek would probably be kept alive as one of 'theirs', but the risk of betrayal was a definite possibility. And Gilgamesh... well, he'd just refused to let anyone else do it. The only four other candidates with either the sheer combat power, stealth, or both for the job of keeping themselves and Agatha alive in the heart of the enemy base would have been either myself, Violetta, Zeetha, or Higgs.

The problem was, Violetta simultaneously didn't have quite enough value as a prisoner and definitely had too much potential threat rating as a Smoke Knight for them to do anything but cut her throat as soon as she was taken. Zeetha was one of our most powerful fighters but had the least covert ops experience, and as a complete nonentity to the Other's renegades would almost certainly be disposed of on the spot as merely another guard. And me? I might have had enough value as a hostage against the Baron to be worth keeping alive, but I wasn't remotely as certain a bet as Gilgamesh was in that regard. Besides, he and I were the only two really qualified airship captains available in the party, and someone had to conn the L-79. And as for Higgs...

"Still wish I could have gone with 'em." Higgs said to me quietly as we stood at the top of the boarding ramp. It was the dead of night in Mechanicsburg, and we were loading up as silently as possible. In a little under twelve hours Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek would be in enemy hands at the Fortress of Storms. By that point we'd already have stealthily sailed up from Mechanicsburg and be in position.

"I wish you could go with them," I agreed. "But the same logic that nixed Zeetha also applies to you; to them you'd just be an anonymous trooper that they'd have no reason to bother dragging all the way to their real destination."

"Didn't say I didn't know it. Just said I didn't like it." he fumed.

"Remember what I said about your not being able to stop a real Heterodyne from doing whatever she damn well wanted to?" I said.

"I remember," he nodded, chuckling softly. "And my head entirely agrees with Milady; somebody has to do it or else we probably lose the whole damn war, and she's really the only one who can do it. Doesn't mean my heart agrees."

"You really do care for her, don't you?" Zeetha said to him gently as she stepped up alongside us.

"Of course I care," Higgs said to her. "She's our Lady Heterodyne. The last Heterodyne. If she falls, one thousand years of tradition and service ends with her."

"Ees verra difficult," Dimo said, as he stepped aboard behind her. "Ve vants to chust wrap her up like a little keed, und keep her safe. But at de same time ve vants her to lead us, because she's de Heterodyne. And ve can't hef both at once."

"She's not just your war queen, she's your High Queen," Zeetha nodded understandingly. "And your enemy's already hurt your ruling house so badly that she's all you have left. At her age she should still be in her princess lessons with a whole family to support her, not-"

"Carrying everything by herself," Higgs agreed.

"Well, she's not carrying it alone," I said. "Her friends will be with her, and her other friends will be right on her heels."

"You'd better believe we'll be!" Violetta said, approaching us, and then she turned to me. "Cloaking device is hot. Everything checks out."

"All de veapons und ammo ees loaded," Dimo reported.

"All Jagers present and accounted for," Higgs said.

"Vibrational trackers set up and locked on," Zeetha said. "Primary and backups both."

"Good," I said. "All right, everybody get to your berths and rest up. We'll be on station in a little under eight hours, and then it'll be watch-on-watch-off until we get a signal from the Fortress of Storms. After that... we'll see what happens."

"Let's go," Higgs nodded to me, and Dimo punched the button to close the loading ramp as I turned and headed to the bridge to get my airship ready to lift.

"You are the one with whom it all changed. Now we can see nothing ahead but the end." the voice of the Dreen echoed yet again in my memory.

Well, I sighed to myself. If nothing else, I'll finally get to see what they meant.

* * * * *​

Klaus POV:

We met in the conference room of Castle Wulfenbach immediately after the reduction of the sub-orbital cannon and Lucrezia's main base. As I'd expected from the moment she'd made the diversionary nature of her gambit clear, we'd been unable to capture any key minds with the knowledge we'd needed. The entire effort here, although effective at furthering destruction of several strategic strongpoints across Europa, had ultimately been nothing but a gambit to draw my attention and the bulk of our forces to this part of the Low Contries at this specific time. And while there were several disquieting possibilities as to why Lucrezia would have ordered that done, the worst of them - that we were being grouped together for a devastating area attack by some inconceivable Black-level item or devastating force - had failed to materialize. Even so, the instant the sub-orbital cannon had been successfully destroyed I had ordered the dispersal of our forces into several sub-fleets separated by over a dozen miles each, so as to preserve at least the bulk of our troops in the event such a trap was sprung while still allowing us to come together and reduce any concerted attack by conventional forces.

The special envoy that had just arrived from London with Albia's reply to the dispatches I had sent to her with Commander Wooster finished her initial presentation, and I attempted to digest the enormity of what we had heard.

"And you are certain of this- foolish question." I interrupted myself. "Of course you are."

"Both Professor Zardeliv in Paris and the Royal Society's own temporal mathematics research have confirmed it," Trelawney Thorpe confirmed. "Your own observations of the 'temporal ghost' that Lucrezia Mongfish manifested to you as were the final pieces necessary to solve the paradox equations that the Incorruptible Library had initially hypothesized regarding the 'Muse of Time' phenomenon."

"And in conjunction with the observations that Her Undying Majesty had personally made?" I asked her.

"Her Majesty sends her regrets and apologies that she waited perhaps too long to search the Well of Memory," Thorpe replied. "But she can testify with certainty that the 'Gray Witch' who attacked the ancient queens over five millenia ago was indeed Lucrezia Mongfish."

"Time," I said. "It is confirmed then - the Other is manipulating time." I said.

"Then how do you fight something like that?" Prince Martellus asked worriedly. "If she's going to go back to the past from our future- if this is already destined to happen- then we're going to lose."

"Not necessarily," she replied to him. "That's where the paradox phenomenon comes into play."

"At some point in the... 'middle' is a scientifically imprecise term but will suffice for current purposes... of the closed temporal loop formed by Lucrezia Mongfish's travels through the timestream, some force or phenomenon independent of linear time intervened." I explained to him. "At this point the 'Muse of Time's' existence became impossible, because the events that led to its- her- creation didn't happen. But at the same point she already existed at some discrete point or points in the past, as with her ancient attack upon the God-Queens of the past, so she could not simply cease to exist either. Hence her current state of being as a paradox - both real and unreal at the same time."

"With the degree of that reality - the extent to which she can actually manifest and affect things - fluctuating up and down as the circumstantial factors that led to the existence of her particular time track come closer to or further away from fruition, from moment to moment," he nodded understandingly, and I reminded myself yet again not to underestimate this young man. "Do we know what any of those causal factors actually are?"

"Only one of them is obvious, and that much only by inference." I stated. "As the probability of Agatha Heterodyne being forcibly imbued with Lucrezia's mind rises or falls, so does the probability of future-Lucrezia's existence in the flesh and therefore so does the existence of the 'Muse of Time'. Which is precisely why she is remaining as safe as possible in the heart of Castle Heterodyne, with my son and one of my very best officers and an entire detachment of my forces aiding her Jager home guards in keeping her as safe as possible-" I broke off as I noted with alarm that Miss Thorpe had been going paler and paler with my words, until she'd become positively gray-faced with shock. "What?"

"Herr Baron-" she began, almost stammering. "I- let me emphasize that Her Undying Majesty had already told me to bring this up with you as soon as was practical. I had intended to do so after this phase of the meeting was over, but now I'm afraid my information has become far more immediately relevant than either I or Her Majesty's government had ever surmised."

"What information," I requested flatly, grinding out my patience as if with a millstone.

"Slightly over two weeks ago, a diplomatic courier from the Lady Heterodyne arrived at our embassy in Paris-" she hurriedly began. In only a few sentences more, she completed her explanation of exactly what 'far more immediately relevant' information she thought had bearing upon the discussion.

"WHAT ON EARTH DO THOSE IDIOT CHILDREN THINK THEY'RE DOING?!?"

* * * * *​

I immediately ordered the entire fleet, save the slower units that we'd be leaving behind, to proceed at flank speed towards the Fortress of Storms. The directional bearing on the 'vibrational tracker' that Agatha Heterodyne's courier had delivered to the British Embassy along with her dispatches still pointed directly at Mechanicsburg, but from the information we'd received I expected that to change at any time. I only hoped that Lucrezia's gambit with the sub-orbital cannon had not decoyed us sufficiently far enough out of the way that we could not reach them in time.

Castle Wulfenbach didn't remotely have the speed for this kind of long-range dash so I left it behind with a suitable escort detachment and shifted my flag to one of the fast dreadnaughts. Prince Martellus likewise ordered his own fleet flagship and the Fifty Families' fleet units to close in and to keep station with ours. I'd also ordered several of the scientific exploration vessels detached to the fleet, after hurriedly loading certain specialized equipment from the Castle onboard them. After several hours of our frantically recalculating and revising our designs in light of these new events, we met up again in the largest laboratory to discuss our results.

"I must reluctantly admit that my cousin's plan was not only most audacious but actually well-reasoned. Were it not for the other factor in play, their scheme would almost certainly have worked." Prince Martellus mused.

"The problem is that they have no knowledge of that factor," Trelawney Thorpe replied to him. "If it was just a matter of letting them 'trap' Agatha and then extracting her once the key bit with the Summoning Engine was done, they probably wouldn't need our help. But what they don't know is that bringing Agatha there will make the Muse of Time-"

"-able to manifest in our reality. Fully." I stated. "It wouldn't even require the memory implantation to be successfully completed. By these tentative calculations, simply having it be an imminent event would be sufficient to close the loop enough for Lucrezia to regain a 98+% synchronization with current space-time."

"And at that point we're talking about fighting against an entity with sufficient power to destroy several people on the level of Queen Albia," Thorpe said pensively. "Simultaneously."

"Not necessarily," I stated with conviction. "The attacks of the 'Gray Witch' were against entirely unalerted foes and with five millenia worth of technological advantage on her part, and we suffer neither disadvantage. And as fragmentary as our knowledge of the temporal mechanics in play are, we at least have some knowledge. And we have almost two days to finish constructing weapons and devices that can at least to a limited extent interfere with the temporal resonance in play and hopefully decohere her again, limiting her power."

"But she'd still be incredibly powerful. And we have no idea of what resonant frequencies to even use to produce such an interference," Prince Martellus stated.

"Lucrezia Mongfish and I have a longstanding personal vendetta," I said. "And regardless of the nature of her existence or her new powers, her mind remains her mind."

"That's why you have these proposed new fittings to your personal combat mech," Miss Thorpe stated. "You'll hang yourself out as live bait, let her attack you, while the onboard sensors gather the data necessary on her nature to allow for last-minute adjustments."

"While you use that data to calibrate the array of resonance projectors we will have set up, and Prince Martellus coordinates the conventional forces against the rest of the battlefield. I bait her into position, you present the genuine threat of destruction, and he grants us the freedom to operate." I stated.

"Herr Baron..." she said softly. "It's too risky. We have nothing to confirm that the resonance projector array could possibly be calibrated in time, or even that it has sufficient power to disrupt her existence in the first place. Unless we're impossibly lucky with one of the first several attempts, you almost certainly won't survive."

"I will last long enough," I said confidently. "And this is necessary. We must present a viable enough threat, an irresistible enough temptation, that she must honor it on this battlefield. We already know that preventing Agatha's possession will not destroy the Muse of Time, and Lucrezia explained to me precisely how an unkillable time ghost can and will continue to plague Europa by inspiring madmen on down the ages with secret knowledge. This will be our one opportunity to destroy Lucrezia's temporal ghost once and for all - in the moment where she is finally real again."

"But what of the Empire, Herr Baron?" Boris asked me plaintively. "Forgive me, but Gilgamesh is himself at the heart of the danger as well. It is horribly possible that we might lose you both on the same day."

"In that unfortunate event then the Empire will be Jonathan's," I unhesitatingly proclaimed. "I will draw up the relevant papers immediately after this meeting. The order of precedence shall be Gilgamesh first, and then my... my adopted son. Milady, Your Highness, you have both borne witness to my statements of intent here and now."

"The Dreen also exist outside of time, or sideways to it," Prince Martellus said. "Could they assist you in this effort, Herr Baron? Either with their knowledge, or their own prowess?"

"I have already asked them," I said. "They answered that they cannot help, because they did not help."

"Damned acausal phenomena," he muttered.

Miss Thorpe closed her eyes and inhaled and exhaled deeply, then opened them again. "Herr Baron," she began detreminedly. "There is a great secret of the British Empire that you are unaware of, but which I will on my own authority reveal at this hour of necessity. I can offer you an alternative to-"

"But I already know of the true potential of a Sacred Guardian, Miss Thorpe," I replied to her great consternation. "And while your offer does you great credit, it will not be necessary."

"Unnecessary?" she exclaimed, shocked to her core.

"Yes," I said. "Because what I need you to do is-"

"Another message from the British Embassy, Miss Thorpe," a messenger interrupted us, entering the room and laying it before her.

"Odd," she said, wrinkling her brow at it. "This is just an 'information' copy of a routine diplomatic dispatch and its addressed to you, Herr Baron. Your messenger of the watch simply assumed it was for me because of the source."

"What would possibly-?" I began as I took the message from her and glanced at it, and when my eyes hit a certain word I swore I felt my heart stop.

Zeetha?!?

* * * * *​

Author's Note: And so the endgame approaches! And as our heroes sail into the heart of danger, a separate danger they were entirely unaware of looms! Will the Baron get there in time? What was the mysterious offer of the dauntless Trelawney Thorpe, Spark of the Realm, and why did the Baron turn it down? Will Martellus break his winning streak and find a way to Tweedle out at the last second? Tune in on the next thrilling episode of Girl Genius!

We thank poster 'Spindler' for his idea in the SB thread of giving Lucrezia a fork so that our heroes get to have their climactic battle at the same time Klaus and a Lucrezia can get their climactic showdown. For those who have played the Continuum time-travel RPG, think of the Muse of Time as having been heavily fragged, but as the paradox grows closer to being repaired she grows more and more able to affect the material world again. And this isn't the Anevka-clank, but the full-on 'quantum-molecular forged' uber-death robot that Lucrezia went on a trans-temporal extravaganza with.

Oh, and the Smoke Knight airship cloaking device is totally canon. And Violetta is indeed pulling the 'we have a single Romulan officer on board, therefore using the Romulan cloaking device on a Federation ship is totally legal!' trick.

Now I just have to figure out how to write an upcoming multi-part epic battle sequence on multiple levels without fucking it up or anticlimaxing. This is gonna be one of the more complex things I've ever done, so... might take a bit.

 

[cliffc999]

Tarvek POV:

I hadn't expected this phase of the op to go very well, but it could certainly have gone better.

Gil and I had been stage-fighting, with him 'pursuing' me as I had 'dragged' an 'unwilling' Agatha through the mirror - she was a talented actress for a novice, and Gil and I had pulled this misdirection routine more than enough times in Paris to have it down to a polished science by now. So by all appearances I'd simply been doing my job as the Order's inside man in Mechanicsburg to deliver Agatha to them, with Gil presenting as someone who'd inconveniently been too hot on our heels to be left on the other side of the portal before it could be closed but also someone whose capture would present an unexpected bonus.

Only for all our efforts to be wasted, as Uncle Julius had proven to be even less subtle than his usual unsubtle worst. The instant we came through the portal, Agatha was snatched away from me before I could even begin to react and I was left clutching a cardboard decoy. My blood froze with terror as I was confronted with the grinning visage of Madwa Korel, the renegade Night Mistress who was one of the Other's most longtime and deadly servants and who had consistently survived a death mark out on her by the entire Order of Smoke Knights for almost fifteen years. Gilgamesh piled through barely a second behind me, and was almost made a pincushion by a dozen thrown darts before Madwa held up her hand.

"Don't bother," she dismissively ordered her subordinate Smoke Knights. "Your father gave you an immunization program almost as good as ours, didn't he boy?" she addressed Gil as we both froze under the threat of enough levelled hand crossbows and death rays to make resistance outright suicidal.

"He did," Gil said, frowning as thunderously as he'd be expected to at this moment. Agatha was spared having to improv any dramatic lines of her own by having been immediately gagged as well as bound... ah. Of course, many of the people in this room would be revenants. Long-repressed memories from my youth finally resurfaced when prompted, specifically the ones about my father's obsession at trying to find Lucrezia's daughter by her voiceprint. If her voice really was so similar to her mother's, then they wouldn't want to take any chances of Agatha being able to order the revenants around. If I'd thought of that earlier then we might have been able to use that-

"I did my job," I answered her with the appropriate amount of disappointed cynicism. "Just as you asked me to. And is the Order really going to be so short-sighted as to ignore all the jobs I can do for them in the future as well?"

"Sturmvoraus, you miserable loathesome SNAKE-" Gil began in a truly splendid example of a full Sparky rant.

"Quiet!" Madwa snapped, cutting him off cold. "And the Mistress will decide whether you're to be rewarded or punished," she continued, turning to me and smirking venomously. "She will be able to tell your true loyalties when she returns, Your Highness. I'm not going to even bother trying to when we can all simply play it safe for the duration of the voyage."

I bared my teeth at her in disgust. "Then I look forward to seeing Her," I replied with equally silken venom. "And after she sees the truth of my loyalty, then I also look forward to thanking you all for your... diligence."

"And this is what you betrayed us for?" Gil mocked me. "It might not have been as glorious as whatever Storm King fantasy you're chasing, but at least we meant it!"

Agatha was still fuming into her gag and wrestling ineffectually with the Smoke Knights holding her, and one looked wordlessly at Madwa.

"No drugs," she ordered. "I don't know what effect any residual traces in the bloodstream might have in the upcoming ceremony. She's not combat trained, so manacles and non-revenant guards should be enough."

"Yes, Night Mistress," the one of them replied, and my stomach clenched in fear as the men holding Agatha by the arms dragged her off. She did all the plaintive wailing and attempting to reach out to her protector that a damsel in distress could be expected to do - and even remembered to reach out towards and gaze desperately only at Gilgamesh and not towards me - and Uncle Julius and Madwa Korel both shared a light round of mocking laughter as she left.

"I'd been expecting more than that from a Heterodyne," Uncle Julius said, his head turning to follow Agatha as they dragged her away.

"Don't be a fool, Julius. The Baron would keep her as naive and dependent on him as possible," Madwa replied. "Didn't he?" she asked me as Madwa's Smoke Knights handled the problem of searching us with ruthless efficiency by simply cutting us both out of our clothes and down to our underwear. As well as the manacles, and in my case thumb-cuffs as well.

"I was only there for a week, remember?" I replied non-committally, dragging it out just long enough to be appropriately spiteful at my current treatment before I cooperated with the people who I was supposed to be working for. "But yes, what I saw certainly fit the pattern you're describing. Our young heir here even managed to engineer a split between her and her local Mechanicsburg advisors regarding their 'excessive anti-Imperial suspicions' by playing off of her sympathy for the refugees and their mistreatment at the hands of the locals. It wasn't badly done... for an amateur." I finished, smirking at Gil.

"Well, only a professional would ever be trusted deeply enough to be in a position to really screw up," Gil sneered back at me, with a shake of his head encompassing all the betrayal and infighting that I had just suffered in the past few minutes while I glared back at him in frustration.

Uncle Julius burst out laughing. "It's like having our own private Heterodyne show!" he said, looking back and forth between our bickering.

"Along with our own private Heterodyne, hmmm?" Madwa replied to him with a slight smile. "All right, both of you gentlemen are certainly old enough to know the rules. If either of you acts up or acts out, we'll just cut your throat and over the side you go. The young lady's the only indispensable one. You're just potentially useful, either of you."

"I understand," I said calmly.

"I'm going to look forward to the expression on all your faces when you regret not having thrown me over the side right now," Gil orated, channelling more than a bit of Othar Tryggvasen as he postured.

"Oh, of course you will," Madwa replied tolerantly, like an old grandmother humoring an idiot grandson. "Now come along."

"Get my racing aero-yacht ready for immediate departure," Uncle Julius pompously ordered one of the nearby lackeys. "I don't want to stay here a second longer than necessary." he finished, and they took off running.

So. The lady we were trying to keep safe was at present being kept bound, gagged, and separated from us while Gil and I had both been stripped down to our underwear, had all the devices we'd brought along for the occasion confiscated, and then shackled to separate walls while kept under constant observation by homicidal semi-lunatics. Very inconvenient.

At least Zola was still on Castle Wulfenbach. If she'd been here too, then it would have been like Paris all over again.

* * * * *​

Agatha POV:

As bad as the current situation was in absolute terms, things were actually going better than I'd dared to hope for. First and most importantly, both Gilgamesh and Tarvek were still alive. We'd all of us known that it was a horrible possibility that they'd simply be killed as soon as I was in the hands of the Other's servants as excess to needs, even though they'd both volunteered to assume the risk anyway. That's why Jonathan had driven my training so impossibly hard, I'd come to realize - because I might very well have had to do this part alone.

The acting lessons that Master Payne and his performers had helped cram into my final few days of preparation were proving as useful as we'd planned. And in a strange way, all the painful years I'd spent as a girl while wearing Uncle Barry's locket were proving equally as useful. When your concentration was being continually interfered with - when your own thoughts were forced to be so damnably vague all the time - then you had to continually exert at least some conscious effort just to be able to walk and act and remember what you were doing and at what step in the process you were. I had, in an odd way, always been "on stage" to at least a limited extent for over twelve years of my life even if I had only been acting in one role throughout, that of 'Agatha Clay'.

As they put me in my cell I mused on the irony of it all - that the most hated, agonizing period of my life to date was now a large part of what was saving my life. Even though I'd left it behind, as I concentrated on bringing those days to mind I could still almost hear the hated, subliminal shrieking of the locket that I'd worn for so long, the noise I'd never been conscious of until it stopped and its removal freed my mind to act at its full potential. A potential that I wanted to make absolutely certain no one onboard this airship save Gil and Tarvek caught the slightest inkling of, until after it was too late.

And as I sat and waited and thought through the hours of the voyage, I finally found it in me to forgive my foster parents for what they'd done. And even to forgive Uncle Barry- well, mostly. What they had inflicted on me had indeed hurt me terribly. I wasn't certain even now if I would ever fully shake the scars of it.

But they had never been cruel about it. They had only been desperate. And in my current position, I couldn't truthfully say that I didn't understand how terror and desperation could drive people to do ill-advised things, either to themselves or the people they loved. After all, I'd just volunteered to get myself captured by the worst people in Europa and be dragged to where they'd try to summon evil incarnate, in the form of my own mother, to permanently possess my body - and deliberately lied to and deceived the entire Imperial chain of command up to the Baron himself and risked the entire future of Mechanicsburg and Europa in the process, to boot!

Once you'd done something like that, locking a child into a device to suppress premature Breakthrough that had had more painful side effects than anticipated didn't loom quite as large on the scale of "We Knew They Were Bad Ideas But We Felt We Had To Do Them Anyway", really.

And Adam and Lilith had been revenants as well... and before then, they'd still been Heterodyne constructs. I had no idea of how obligated or even compelled they might have been to obey orders from my father or Uncle Barry. I had learned very early on to never ask any one of my Jagers to do something without first being at least reasonably certain that it wouldn't hurt them unnecessarily, because their loyalty was to the point where they wouldn't refuse me anything even if it was something that would have been colossally unwise or unfair to ask of them. General Gkika had reluctantly told me of some of the ways my mother had amused herself tormenting and humiliating the Jagers, and that had merely been off of my father's command to them to 'Do what she asks you to'. I had the authority of the ruling Heterodyne and I had to be even more careful.

So if Uncle Barry had given them an unwise order, or had simply forgotten to tell them that they were allowed to take the locket off when I was old enough? Was it fair of me to blame them? I might still feel tempted to shout things at my uncle a bit if he turned up alive, but he'd actually built the damnable thing and put it on me. Adam and Lilith had merely been the people who'd been told it was absolutely necessary, by someone they entirely trusted and felt obligated to obey. And that wasn't even getting into what they might have also been ordered to do to me by the Geisterdamen after they'd been wasped. Besides, in a very strange and ironic way, those years of hell were quite likely saving my life and all of Europa right now.

Because without all the experience of them to draw upon, I doubt I'd have been so able to so perfectly fake meekness as to fool people even like that wicked old Smoke Knight leading the rest. She'd given off such an impression of hyperawareness as to make Violetta look blind and deaf as a post by comparision, and I knew how hard Violetta was to fool.

So I smiled only on the inside as I let my acting lessons combine with a deliberate effort to recall instead of forget all those years of learned helplessness, to once again move and speak like the earnest-to-please and forever-trying-but-forever-incapable 'Agatha Clay'. Such a poor girl, Miss Clay, always in over her head and never even understanding why. Intelligent, perhaps- hard-working, certainly- but nothing remotely resembling either the heroic Heterodyne Boys or an Old Heterodyne from the days when my family had been the most feared warlords in Europa. No, poor Agatha was just an earnest and clumsy girl who could barely even use her Spark. She could certainly never hope to actually fight anyone.

Oh please, please keep underestimating me, all of you! I exulted to myself in the privacy of my thoughts while never letting an inkling of it touch my face or my body language.

The loose bead I'd deliberately taken out of my pocket and left on the floor began to roll towards the forward bulkhead. I grabbed it and put it back in the center of the floor, and it immediately began to roll again. And yet again. So, not merely a course correction this time. We were in a sustained dive, and that meant we were finally drawing near to our destination.

All right. If they did the ritual immediately, then- no. I needed to buy several hours of time. Well, that old witch had said that they didn't want to risk doing the ritual on me unless I was in perfect physical condition, so...

Ouch! My guards had grown complacent enough that I'd had enough of a window of opportunity to finish unscrewing one of the deckplates and try crawling to safety out beneath the floor. A stupid, amateur plan that only worked in the penny-sparklies and often not even then. Just the sort of thing that could be expected from that pitiful pawn of a Heterodyne Girl, who'd even been so careless as to bump her head in the process. Really, on a scale of one to headache this was barely a three. When you'd spent twelve years having screaming migraines on a daily basis, a simple lump on your noggin was nothing.

So, I made my pitiful effort and took my lumps and endured the mockery and cursing from my captors as they dragged me out from under the deckplates. Sure enough, they eventually concluded that they'd have to wait for enough hours of observation to make sure I didn't have a concussion before hooking me up to the Summoning Engine. Excellent! That should hopefully make up for all the time we lost by underestimating how fast Lord Julius' ship would be and give Jonathan and the rest an opportunity to catch up.

And then hopefully Gil and Tarvek would have an opportunity to link up with me again and execute the next step of the plan. And if not, then at least I'd have a clear shot at doing it myself. We'd run this string out right up to the moment they confronted me with the Summoning Engine, and then we'd spring the trap. And if that trap failed... well, there was always the backup plan.

But one way or another, whether it was win or die, at the end we'd show these miserable bastards what we were made of.

Oh, we'd show them all.

* * * * *​

Jonathan POV:

The L-79 streaked across the sky at her maximum sustainable cruise velocity. The resonance tracker only indicated direction and not distance, but even with our altitude advantage we'd lost even long-range visual contact with Lord Julius' airship hours ago. We were in a fast long-range assault transport but the renegade Jovians had used a racing aero-yacht to transport Agatha from the Fortress of Storms, so they were pulling further and further ahead of us with every hour. And unlike us, they could do a sustained full power run instead of max cruise, because they were able to set up fuel stops along the way while we had to conserve bunkerage.

At least we knew that Gil and Tarvek had been kept alive to take to their ultimate destination alongside Agatha. That much we'd been able to see for ourselves via long-range telescopic surveillance of the airship dock at the fortress as they were all being loaded aboard. However, Lord Julius clearly hadn't wasted any time with his sudden yet inevitable betrayal of Tarvek given how all three of them had been in manacles, and he'd called in the big guns to help him do it. And Violetta had turned paler than a bedsheet when she'd recognized Madwa Korel herself leading the capture team.

Well, it's not as if we hadn't expected the witch to show up sometime. Zola had already told her interrogators - after they'd finally started getting useful intel from her, that is - that Korel was heading up the "black" operations compartment for the Jovian renegades. She had indeed been Zola's chief instructor and handler, and had personally planned and coordinated the attempt to destroy Castle Wulfenbach. She'd possibly have done it herself if she hadn't quite had the flexibility in her aged joints for an extended air duct crawl through such narrow confines anymore.

And now we had to go through her and her Smoke Knights to reach Agatha and the guys. Well, we had prepared as much as we could. Of us remaining only Violetta and the Jagers had the inherent or acquired toxin resistance necessary, but there were other antidote regimens you could dose up on ahead of time for a temporary immunity. Violetta had made sure all of us susceptible types in the ground party had been given the appropriate regimen, with a particular focus on the ghost spider venom series that was Korel's particular specialty. The formulary for those antidotes were pretty much universal among Smoke Knights ever since Madwa Korel had first earned her global death-mark.

The one hundred Jagers we had in the troop compartments had been handpicked by Higgs and Gkika from the absolute best available in Mechanicsburg, the ones with the most relevant experience at things like this. Backing them up were a crack Vespiary Squad detachment in case of Hive Warriors and some heavy yet fast-moving combat clanks that I'd specially customized for the occasion. The L-79 herself had a veteran crew and as an assault transport was already configured for both drop-line deployment and close air support.

We'd been in the air for slightly over a day, and had barely managed to get in one uneasy sleep shift each, before we had our first indicator.

"The needle's starting to drift," Zeetha said from where she'd been focused on the directional tracker for the last several hours. "Agatha's stopped moving. They've already reached wherever they're going."

I did a hasty calculation in my head as to how much estimated speed advantage Lord Julius' aero-yacht had on the L-79 versus time. "Then we're two to three hours behind them at current speed." I went over and checked the readings myself. "We'd rigged the tracker to slightly change vibrational frequency if Agatha had been placed in the summoning engine, so, they're delaying at their end for some reason."

"Thank God," Violetta said. "Then we might still get there in time."

"Get where?" Higgs said while on the bridge in his assumed role as a Mechanicsburg 'military advisor'. "What the hell is even in this direction?"

"Well, along this bearing-" I began to trace the directional reading we had out across the map table to see what was in line with it from our current position, and I came to an incredulous halt as my finger reached a certain place. "I don't fucking believe it." I swore incredulously.

"What?" Violetta asked me, and I held up a hand to request a moment of time while I hurried over to the helm station.

"Shit," I said, instantly correlating the navigational readings off the instruments with the unaffected directional bearing we were getting from the tracker on Agatha. "We're drifting off course."

"Captain?" Lieutenant Heinrich, my current XO, said to me. "According to the compass-"

"The compass is worthless," I said. "We're entering the outer limits of the distortion zone."

"Distortion zone?" Higgs asked.

"Rabennest," I said, and everyone on the bridge crew sucked in an incredulous breath. "Those bastards somehow found- they've reactivated Rabennest."

"It's here?" Higgs said, also recognizing the name.

"We're over the Carpathians and coming right up on the German border, aren't we?" I asked him rhetorically. "It's here all right."

"Somebody care to recap for the new girl?" Zeetha asked.

"Rabennest. Raven's Nest. The unconquerable redoubt of perhaps the most legendary sky pirate in history." I exposited. "Unconquerable because you couldn't hope to even find the damn place without an invitation. They'd spent years installing a network of precisely calibrated distortion beacons over this area that could subtly interfere with magnetic compasses. It's only barely noticeable now, but it will increase geometrically the closer we get to the center. And between that and the relevant portions of the fortress itself being subterranean and/or highly camouflaged... well, how can you possibly run a tight enough search grid over mountains like these if you're never able to get an exact position fix? Use celestial navigation for something so small-scale? Even the Baron wasn't able to get through those defenses- there's a reason he had to deliberately create an entire phony town and bait the man into attacking it and trap him there to defeat him!"

"Damn it!" Higgs swore. "Even with the directional tracker- between the winds, the terrain, and the damned mountains, that's not enough to get us in close quickly enough! Not into that place, and not with every other form of navigation useless!"

"Not every form," I said resolutely, and Violetta started upright as she realized what I meant.

"Sir?" the officer of the deck gaped at me incredulously.

"Petrus Teufel put as much effort into selecting Rabennest's location as he did in setting up the distortion grid projectors. The terrain was selected to be pretty much impassable on land." I started drawing lines and circles on the map. "There's several main routes in and out, and one much harder-to-find route he'd reserved as an emergency escape. That one runs here," I said, tracing along and through a set of narrow switchbacks and cuts that had nothing to distinguish them from any others on the chart.

"All right. First off, junk the compass. We'll go entirely off dead reckoning and solar bearings. Nowhere near as precise, but close enough if you already know the layout. And we've got enough fuel left for six hours of sustained full power, so we go to flank speed now. At a little over ninety minutes at that pace, we'll be here." I made an X at one end of the cut. "And then I take the helm personally, and we go in on the deck and under visual flight rules. That entire route was hand-picked for its obscurity and concealment, so we'll be right up their asses before they even know we're there."

"Captain?" the navigator said. "Are you sure of your data? You're- none of us are old enough to have been in on even the mop-up of the Teufel campaign, after the Baron captured his maps. Have you really studied the archives that much? Enough to risk all our lives trying to run this treacherous a mountain route at low altitude?"

"Wouldn't be the first time I've run it," I said unhesitatingly. "Old Teufel had made me memorize all the secret nav markers and waypoints around Rabennest before I was twelve. The charts the Baron has in his archives that gave him the route? I helped compile them, during the first year I was under his protection." In the background I saw Zeetha giving a wordless Ohhhh, as she clued in on exactly which old enemy of the Baron had been my father.

"Sir, this is suicide." my XO said. "You can't possibly know what we need to know in sufficient detail to keep us from being smeared all over those peaks! I'm afraid I must relieve you-"

"Oh for fuck's sake! Petrus Teufel was my father!" I shouted back, to a resounding chorus of gasps. "I grew up in Rabennest! Hell, it's been common knowledge around the fleet for years that I'm an orphan the Baron took in whose mother was an English adventuress and whose father had died during the Teufel campaign! Did nobody ever wonder which side of that war he'd died on?"

"... well I'll be damned," Higgs said, actually raising an eyebrow. "Not gonna argue with it, though!"

"Oh trust me, you're not the only person thinking this crap is just too much of a coincidence," I agreed with him. "The audience wouldn't believe something this absurd if you'd put it in a Heterodyne play!"

"And yet it's still happening," Violetta said, stepping forward to give me a comforting hug in full view of everyone on the bridge. The Back the fuck off, I don't care who his father is and neither should any of you! message was entirely unspoken, yet still heard clearly by every man present. "And it's saving all our butts, too!"

"Damn right! Without this kind of edge, we'd be totally screwed right now!" Zeetha said, backslapping me.

"Hoy, anybody dot sez a leedle history of raiding schtuff means you kent ride on dis airship is telling all de Jagers dey got to get off too," Dimo put in sagaciously. "Und den vere vuld hyu all be?"

The L-79's crew visibly started shaking off their shock, weighing the revelation of my infamous father versus the years of loyal service that I'd given the Baron and all my well-known accomplishments for the Empire. And the love and trust that was visibly flowing towards me from Violetta, Zeetha, Higgs, Dimo and his boys... from everybody here who actually knew me as a person, and not just a distant authority figure.

And then the delicate balance of the moment collapsed as the lieutenant came to attention and threw me a crisp salute. "At your orders, captain."

I returned his salute with equal crispness. "All hands to action stations. We're going in."

* * * * *​

Author's Note: I had been planning for several chapters to have the climactic battle be a 'And it ends where it began' for Teufel's son, yes. Because its just the Other's horrible luck that the one airship officer in the Empire who could navigate all the hidden routes in and out of Raven's Nest from memory is the guy bringing in the cavalry. Even the Baron's going to have to use the archived maps that he got from having defeated Teufel (and recruited his son) in the first place.

And yup, he finally admitted his dark secret in public! He's totally expecting this to boomerang on him horribly! It's not as if he's actually the Baron's adopted son now and thus basically untouchable by anyone who doesn't want to die horribly! (As far as he knows, hee hee hee.)

And I also had fun laying out how Agatha Heterodyne can weaponize basically anything, even the horrible memories of over a dozen years of being sabotaged and disabled in her own brain. She's come full circle with the locket and her period of time under it - she'll never forget how horrible it was or want to go back there, but now she's owning that shit on her own terms instead of being owned by it. And it just let her put on an act that fooled an entire airship full of Smoke Knights, from Madwa Korel on down.

Man, I am gonna need the most epic fight scene ever to be worthy of all the prep I've managed to pull together...

 

[cliffc999]

Gilgamesh POV:

By the time they came to collect us from our cell on Lord Julius' airship, Tarvek and I had almost run out of vitriol and snark.

We both knew that the reason they'd left us together was as yet another test of Tarvek's bona fides. They were practically begging us to try and escape. Or at the very least to drop the facade of us loathing each other as betrayed-and-betrayer to try and collaborate. 'Whenever you wish to believe that an enemy is foolishly ignoring you, assume that you are being watched the most closely.' was a lesson my father had taught me before I was fourteen. And, of course, the instant we were foolish enough to actually do that they'd just gas us both and then drop us out of the airship. After having first spiked us both through the brain just to make absolutely sure.

So we insulted each other, sulked at each other, ignored each other, taunted each other for having made very poor life choices, and waited. And waited, and waited, and waited. Given that the trip had taken almost a day we'd also each taken a chance to get some rest. They'd given us coveralls after having strip-searched us so at least we weren't too cold, but I certainly hadn't enjoyed the manacles.

When Madwa Korel came to unchain us and have us led off the airship, my heart sank. First off, they'd obviously managed to pull ahead of the L-79 because plan A had been for Jonathan to close in and drop on us as soon as we'd landed at our final destination. Clearly we'd underestimated the speed at which they'd been prepared to transship Agatha from the Fortress of Storms. But as soon as the ramp dropped and we got a view of the outside, I realized that wasn't the only thing we'd underestimated.

As we were prodded down the ramp and into the crisp mountain air, I looked around at the airship landing field that had been carved out of the side of a mountaintop and goggled at the sheer scale of it all. This wasn't the random madboy's castle that we'd been expecting, the home of some as-yet-undiscovered member of the Other's conspiracy. This wasn't even some concealed blacktech research outpost like the ones that Jonathan had spent the past two years searching out and destroying.

No, this was a full-scale military base, and one that had somehow been secretly built in the heart of what judging from our travel time had to be somewhere in the Carpathian range. What kind of resources had the Other's conspiracy actually had? Had we actually been made the part of some complex betrayal by the Fifty Families after all? Because the Dowager Princess had never hinted that the Storm Lords had this kind of off-the-books facility... would Jonathan even be able to get the L-79 through whatever defensive grid surrounded this impassable place, even with the cloaking field?

"Where are we?" I heard Tarvek asking with the appropriate amount of incredulity.

"Raven's Nest," Lord Julius said smugly. "Why the Baron was fool enough to leave this place to go fallow instead of claiming for it himself, I'll never know. As is, the main caverns were knocked down and filled in and the physical plant had been removed, but enough was left for us to rebuild what we needed on it. And with Teufel's old distortion grid reactivated, we'll be hidden here beyond anyone's power to find us!" he gleefully exulted. "We'll have all the time we need to build and prepare the engines for our true conquest of Europa once our Lady has returned to lead us!"

As I listened to his voice began to rant and reverberate, I noted that Lord Julius apparently didn't have as tight a grip on his Madness Place as any of the Sparks with Father's training did. I focused as hard as I could on brainstorming ways I could potentially use that... instead of on laughing out loud.

Rabennest. They were trying to hide from our pursuers in Rabennest. A place that Jonathan knew the entire layout of from memory. That he knew every single route in and out of, even the ones that required purely visual navigation. The place he'd obsessively mapped out the layout of, finding and charting every weakness and gap in the defenses that he possibly could, back when he was a child dreaming of one day escaping from this place. The place that had once been his home.

"The Baron did find this place once before," Tarvek reminded his uncle. I blinked before realizing that of course Tarvek would want them focusing on the main route in and out, the one the Baron had used for the expedition to decommission this place after having lured out and trapped Petrus Teufel's raiding fleet to obtain the necessary charts and navigators to get here. A man like Teufel would have at least one hidden escape route reserved only for himself and his innermost circle, and that would be the one Jonathan would use.

"Which is why we've concentrated the static defenses the heaviest on that approach," Lord Julius bragged. "Even if he brought an entire fleet with him, it would still take him hours to slog his way through. And by then we'd be safely buttoned up underground. Old Teufel had ambitions, you know. There were several sites plotted and intended for future expansion into a capital city as he conquered more and more territory; we're using one of those. The main base the Baron sacked before? He's welcome to waste his time on it!"

That... wasn't a bad plan, actually. Against an enemy who didn't have home field knowledge, at least.

My attention was distracted by the arrival of a small party of Geisterdamen. I'd never seen any up-close before, and they were, let's not mince words, creepy. They appeared to be beautiful pale women long-haired women, but the way they moved, the subtle cast of their faces... everything screamed wrongness. They weren't just horrible people, they weren't even constructs... everything about them subliminally screamed alien. Outsider. Didn't belong here.

"Where is the Holy Child?" their leader demanded angrily.

"Here she comes now," Madwa replied calmly. We turned to see two Smoke Knights escorting Agatha out of the vessel, with- why did she have a bandage wrapped around her head?

"Smagga du bokk!" the chief Geisterdamen shouted in rage. "What did you fools do to her?"

"She did it to herself," Lord Julius sneered. "The idiot girl tried to escape from her cell by crawling to 'safety' between the deckplates, and only ended up with a lump on the head for her troubles."

"Idiots!" she screamed. "A head injury? Now we cannot risk the Summoning!"

"The girl should be fine," Madwa said reassuringly. "I examined her myself. It's just a nasty-looking bruise; there's no skull fracture, and virtually no chance of a concussion."

The several Geisterdamen broke into a frantic conversation amongst themselves in their own language, with one of them rushing forwards to remove Agatha's bandage and peer critically at the lump on her head and shine a light in her eyes to check her pupil dilation. Then they conferred among themselves for a bit longer.

"Six hours," the lead Geisterdamen said. "If there are no further symptoms in that time, then we shall proceed."

"As you wish, Lady Vrin," Korel replied efficiently. "I'm certain your servants have suitable quarters prepared for her." Two of the Geisterdamen stepped forward at Vrin's nod to start leading Agatha away into the base.

"And what are these two?" Vrin said, gesturing at us.

"The red-headed one is my foolish nephew," Julius said smugly. "The larger oafish-looking one is Baron Wulfenbach's son, who unexpectedly but conveniently delivered himself as our hostage."

"Kill them both," Vrin snapped, and two of her flankers immediately drew their swords and took a step forward- to come to an immediate halt when Korel's squad of Smoke Knights drew their own blades and stepped between us and them.

"No," Madwa said commandingly. "Prince Sturmvoraus served our Lady in this by bringing us the Holy Child. And young Wulfenbach is our key to seizing an Empire far more quickly and easily then we had hoped for."

"If they are so useful, then why are they in chains?" Lady Vrin sneered.

"I didn't say that I was certain the Prince loyally served our Lady," Madwa replied reasonably. "The young man always did like to play his little games. But our Lady, when she returns, will of course be able to determine with certainty what needs to be done. Until then both of them are opportunities of great potential value. Ones that should be preserved for her to deal with as She sees fit, not casually discarded by reckless servants."

"... you speak wisely," Vrin conceded reluctantly, and gestured for her guards to step back and sheathe their blades. The Smoke Knights did the same as Vrin continued "But you will be responsible for keeping them secure, Madwa Korel. Any trouble that they may cause, you will share the consequences of."

"Of course," Madwa agreed calmly with a slight bow, and the Geisterdamen turned away without another word to follow Agatha and her guards back inside.

"Aren't allies wonderful?" Tarvek drawled aristocratically as Lord Julius took several of his personal guards and headed off into the subterranean depths of the base, and Madwa and her Smoke Knights began to lead us off to wherever they were going to put us for the duration.

"You work with what you have, Your Highness," Madwa reproved him mildly as we headed down a steel-lined corridor. "Which isn't always what you'd like."

* * * * *​

Tarvek POV:

This time they put me and Gilgamesh in separate cells. That I'd expected. What I hadn't expected was that Korel would stay behind when everyone else left. If she was going to put personal effort into interrogating me-

Oh, this did not look good.

"We can talk freely here," she said reassuringly. Really? The 'We're not actually opponents?' gambit? Did she have no shame at all?

"Night Mistress," I replied formally. "I know that I did my best to be underestimated by the family, but this is insulting."

"Insulting?" she hissed at me angrily. "Don't talk to me about being insulted, you whelp! Try living for years with a bunch of pale-skinned freaks who think all us 'denizens of the Shadow World' are barely above the level of talking cows!'

I gave her a noncommittal tilt of the head and an inquiring eyebrow lift, and nothing else.

"Don't you try to fool me, boy. Your surgeon did a truly excellent job of covering them up, but do you really think that I would have missed the surgical scars on that young lady's head?" she continued, and I couldn't avoid my involuntary flinch of panic. If they'd spotted that- "Ahhhh. Let me guess what that implant does. If a consciousness transfer is detected then the detonation immediately kills her, yes?"

Damn it! We'd had a plan! And backup plans! They were such intricate, gemlike things of beauty too, and now they were all ruined and gone and I'd have to desperately dance between knives again-

"... yes." I admitted reluctantly. "That's precisely what it does. It was the Baron's idea."

"Of course it was," she nodded. "Old Klaus certainly didn't get as far as he did by being a sentimentalist. But the scars are less than a week old-?" she inquired.

"It took that long for young Wulfenbach and Fairchild to persuade her that it was her 'duty' to submit to such a precaution," I explained. "After all, they could hardly do it to her against her will; Castle Heterodyne would have detected any memory alterations or unwanted surgical modifications during her testing and claiming so doing it before her arrival in Mechanicsburg was impossible."

"And they could hardly do it to her against her will afterwards, living in the heart of her power as she was, yes." she completed my thought. "But we already knew that they were keeping her naive and easily manipulated as the Baron's pawn, so this particular ruthlessness is merely an extension of that."

I waited for a long wordless minute. Madwa motionlessly waited along with me. Smoke was patient.

"So," I said, deciding to make the first move. "The Jovian heretics have their own heretics, of which you are one. You want access to the Other's technology to control Europa with, but you don't actually want The Other. That much is obvious from the fact you're not rushing to Vrin right now with a warning to not put Agatha in the Summoning Engine."

"Oh, I'll warn her if no viable alternative presents itself first," Madwa said. "I certainly don't want Lucrezia to return, but I don't want that Heterodyne girl dead either."

"The revenants," I realized. "You need a voice that can command them for you. The Geisterdamen are fanatic Lucrezia worshippers, so you haven't been able to get any of them to throw in with you-"

"We had a few," Madwa corrected me. "There was one called Milvistle who actually saned up and realized how Lucrezia had played them. She brought a couple others with her-" and then she swore. "But then they tried to hold out on us as well, and we couldn't keep them alive long enough to finish learning all that we needed to know."

"The Geisterdamen don't seem to be very skilled at intrigue," I probed obliquely.

"They're religious fanatics who might as well be from another world entirely for all their ignorance of the real one," she acknowledged with a nod. "They're not stupid- Lucrezia created or found her little constructs with a noteworthy amount of intelligence. But they're very... incompletely trained."

"So you and your allies were able to keep them from noticing that you were playing them, even after you suborned and then lost several of their number." I analyzed. "But that left you trapped and pretending loyalty to a liege lady you actually hated. I'm presuming there's a reason you never tried to simply betray them back to Grandmother?"

"If we had done that, what would be in it for us?" she replied matter-of-factly. "Even if I could convince that scheming old witch-"

"Look who's talking." I interrupted, as if I simply couldn't resist the temptation. I then winced as her boot heel slammed down on top of my foot.

"Don't be rude," she snapped. "As I was saying, even if I served them all up on a silver platter it's anyone's guess whether your grandmother would even let me live, let alone actually reward me. I've spent an entire lifetime being just a hired knife for you and your family. I deserve more."

"And yet here you are, trying to bargain with me instead of claim the prize for yourself." I replied to her with one of my smuggest grins. "Advantage of position is still advantage. So... what are you offering me?"

"The Lightning Crown and the girl." she replied matter-of-factly.

"On what conditions?" I said. "No king rules without advisors, true, but-"

"You're going to outlive me by decades anyway," she pointed out reasonably. "So my trying to puppet you like Wulfenbach was puppeting that girl would be pointless. I won't need more from you than a very respected position. Not just as a weapon to threaten your enemies with, but as a personage of actual respect."

"I will grant that you have the ruthlessness and deviousness to make an excellent grand vizier," I acknowledged non-committally. "And I have other relatives for the connections and the politics."

"Princess Xersephnia?" Madwa probed.

"Well, it's not as if I have a sister to marry off any longer," I pointed out bitterly. "Father certainly saw to that. And Seffie's beautifully clever, but not combative enough to try and struggle against a suitable fait accompli."

"That was a foolishness I would have stopped if I had been there," Madwa said with a surprising amount of genuine sincerity. "Anevka had so much more potential value than that besotted bootlicker who sired you ever allowed himself to notice. She'd have made a wonderful Smoke Knight if I'd just had the chance to train her."

"She did have a definite edge to her," I conceded. "Uncle Julius?"

"Not ours, and almost as useless as your father," she said. "The damned fool thinks she'll give him the Lightning Crown."

"Oh, I'm sure Lucrezia would," I nodded. "And then puppet him so hard that Agatha would look like an icon of independence by comparision."

"'Agatha', is it?" Madwa probed. "You actually like that girl, don't you?"

"As soft as she is, she's still very likeable," I said. "I... Night Mistress, she actually trusted me," I said, my face collapsing into grief. "She looked at me and saw someone... someone she thought had no malice in them whatsoever." I whispered, my throat closing up. "Someone she thought contained no lies, no hidden pain. Someone it was nice..." I trailed off despondently. "... to pretend to be."

"Smoke doesn't feel. Smoke lies only to others." Madwa coldly quoted the Yellow Codex to me. "Snap out of it! You're no use to me like this, you damned fool! And she certainly won't look at you that way now, will she?. The way you're carrying on, I'm surprised you even cooperated long enough to drag her here."

"Well, there was a rather pointed reminder from Uncle Selnikov as to how slowly and painfully you'd be killing me if I hadn't." I reminded her with a flash of anger.

"And a good thing, too." she agreed. "Now back to business."

"How many people in this base will back you if it comes to open violence?" I asked professionally.

"Not enough," she replied. "I have all of the Smoke Knights, but Vrin isn't foolish enough to let enough of us into her sanctum to give us the advantage. The bulk of the troops here are Julius' soldiers, and they're all loyal to him. Then there's the layout of the base itself. Even just for a secondary site, Teufel was still damn thorough at paranoia engineering."

"The troops aren't revenants?" I inquired.

"The Geisterdamen don't always have as firm a control over revenants as Lucrezia herself did," Madwa pointed out. "The sufficiently strong-willed can creatively misunderstand or reinterpret their orders. So no, they prefer actual allies for the most sensitive positions. Revenants are used for disposable tasks."

"Like Smoke Knights sometimes are. How many of yours did they wasp?" I asked.

"Not nearly as many as Vrin thinks she has." she smirked evilly.

"Milvistle gave you a vaccine!" I said wonderingly.

"She did." Madwa nodded. "Otherwise I'd have turned myself in to your grandmother before risking them shoving one of those damned things down my throat. But it's no use if you're already wasped before you take it, so we can't use it to cure any revenants."

"Do they have a wasp that will work on Sparks? Do you have a dose available?" I asked her.

"They don't have any Spark-wasps or else I'd already be feeding you a dose." she conceded. "But if Lucrezia ever returned that would almost certainly be one of the first things she invents."

"Well, she's certainly not returning today." I said agreeably. "But after they put Agatha in that machine and her head explodes, then what are any of us left to work with?"

"Not much at all." Madwa agreed. "Now, this is the most important question. Is there any tracking capacity in that implant as well? Are you expecting a rescue?"

"There is no tracker in Agatha's implant." I said truthfully. "And if this is truly Raven's Nest then no conceivable rescue party could hope to follow us here, could they? But simply helping Agatha escape here leaves us with very little either. We need Lucrezia's knowledge, but without Lucrezia as well."

"We once had a plan for gaining that as well, but-" she waved her hand angrily. "Lost and beyond recovery, so we'll make do with what we have now. Do you think you can regain that girl's trust and affection if you 'heroically' rescue her from here?"

"We'll say that they - they, not you - threatened to murder both Violetta and Seffie horribly if I didn't do what they demanded," I said. "That story plus my actual rescuing of her should let me sway her back. Particularly after Agatha actually meets Seffie and understands why I couldn't possibly have wanted to risk any harm to come to my other cousin, she's such a nice girl. And Agatha and Violetta are already close friends."

"The Princess is very good at being nice." Madwa agreed with a conspiratorial grin. "And if you can talk Violetta down then I certainly have no objections to inviting her into this. She checkmated my own protege, after all. I'm entirely willing to admit that I greatly understimated her potential."

"Thank you." I replied graciously. "As much as the role annoys you, I believe the best way to present you to Agatha would be as an old family retainer who ended up tragically caught on the wrong side and is grateful to, at the very end, have a final chance to redeem herself. But one who then fortunately lives to actually receive her just rewards, of course."

"What sort of fool would believe such penny-sparkly nonsense for a moment?" Madwa snorted with derision.

"Agatha loves penny-sparklies," I said with a wicked grin. "She'll eat it up with a spoon."

"Unbelievable," she replied, shaking her head. "And how does young Wulfenbach fit in?"

"He, sadly, is entirely superfluous to the proposed script for our little romance novel." I stated coolly. "Obviously the exact details of his death during our escape will have to be very carefully stage-managed, but that shouldn't be an insurmountable difficulty for people of our talents. And without an heir we can simply hope to outlive the Baron's Empire even if we can't actually kill the Baron."

"Europa is on the verge of chaos anyway," Madwa pointed out. "Wulfenbach is starting to be seen as losing his grip. Your own family has been able to force multiple concessions from him already. With you as the Storm King and the Heterodyne Girl in our power, we won't need Hive Engines to gain enough influence over hearts and minds to make our play. And we'll still at least have the vaccine to trade with. We'll publicly present it as your 'heroic discovery', of course."

"I might perhaps even be able to upgrade the vaccine into a true revenant cure with sufficient opportunity to study it," I said. "At which point all of Europa would beg for the true Storm King to take them under his benevolent rule. But what about Grandmother? She'll definitely be trouble."

"She's only mostly untouchable in Paris." Madwa said. "You'll be entirely untouchable in Mechanicsburg. And she's even older than I am. She'll either come to terms with us or lose on attrition."

"That's... not a bad outline for a plan, especially given how short-notice we all are." I agreed with her. "And it certainly beats either of us just waiting in this box for the Geisterdamen to kill us once their little holy summoning fails to come off as planned. So, as the person with the greater professional experience at such matters and the knowledge of the layout here, what exactly you were proposing regarding our dramatic escape and princess rescue?"

"As to that..." Madwa began.

Oh, this did not look good at all.

* * * * *​

Agatha POV:

I sat in the ridiculously luxurious suite they'd led me to, as I'd been sitting and waiting for the past several hours, and tried to keep my skin from crawling. Yet again I looked around and inventoried and noted the furnishings, and yet again I mused at how all this was even more elaborately overdone than my master bedroom in Castle Heterodyne. My mother's taste in interior decorating clearly didn't run to the Spartan.

Everything was clean and spotless, with even little details like framed portraits propped up on the bedside table. I was shocked to my core when I realized that the man in the one picture with my mother wasn't my father, but instead a young Baron Wulfenbach. Everyone knew that him and Lucrezia had had a relationship before she'd married my father instead, but- I shook my head and decided that I really didn't want to know exactly what twisted feelings had been conceivably going through my mother's twisted and evil mind when she'd last been among people in the flesh.

Castle Heterodyne had told me that several of her Geisterdamen had been her servants even when she'd been living there, posing as constructs of her own design, so it wasn't surprising that they had sufficient knowledge to create as exact a replica of her old quarters as possible here at Rabennest to welcome her home with.

"Do not worry, Holy Child." Velix, the Geisterdamen who'd been left to watch me, stated. "Your ascension will be a glorious experience. There will be no more pain, no more fear."

"There will be no more me." I replied to her insistently. "Only my mother."

"You would have understood had you been left with us to be raised, as it should have been." Velix told me. "But your false-family stole you away from your rightful place and back to the Shadow World, and so we have despaired all these long weary years. But at long last-"

"Were you one of the ones that raised me?" I asked, driven by a curiosity I couldn't explain. "Did I know you as a little girl?"

"I did not have that honor, Holy Child." she said to me humbly. "Our Lady Vrin did know you, however."

"I'll have to remember to thank her appropriately," I said archly. "How long do I have?"

"Slightly over two and a half hours." she stated. "And then..."

"And then you kill me." I said.

"The Summoning-"

"It won't be me, do you understand?" I shouted at this unfeeling creature. "Even if your ceremony works, even if your Summoning Engine does exactly what it's supposed to, I'll be gone! My mind, my memories, my everything that makes me Agatha Clay Heterodyne- erased! Only Lucrezia Mongfish will remain, wearing a body that isn't hers!"

"It is a desperate necessity," Velix conceded. "But again, your false-family is the true author of your pain. Had they not treacherously slain your mother and opposed her plans to bring enlightenment and peace to all, she would not need to struggle so valiantly against Time itself to give the world another chance. We... I pray that after she has done so, she will then be able to use her powers to return you to life to make amends for the life she must borrow."

I began to realize that these Geisterdamen were as much victims of my mother as I was. More so, in fact. I was at least allowed the option of fighting against my mother, of knowing that she was evil and being able to hate her and all her works, even if I was currently in the power of her servants and slated to horribly die soon. But the Geisterdamen- that the false religion she'd had to contact for them would need a proviso in it to give them hope that I would be allowed to live again one day, as opposed to simply making them exult in how their Goddess had the power to take what she wanted-

She couldn't even allow them the option to choose to do horrible things, I thought sadly. She couldn't even design them with the desire to do horrible things. No, she created an illusion of beauty and justice and truth to snare their minds in from the moment they were born, and used that to make them into things of horror and pain- it was a sick, twisted work of art well beyond the merely utilarian sort of evil. It was the creation of a brilliant mind that exulted in horror solely for horror's sake. That saw no difference between beauty and ugliness, and would create an entire world full of mindless slaves to mirror that inner vision outwardly on all creation-

Oh yes, there was entirely a reason that I'd willingly had an implant put in my head that would kill me if necessary to prevent me from ever becoming Lucrezia Mongfish in truth. My mother was perhaps the most horrible person to ever exist. In fact, I honestly wondered if the term 'person' even applied. Whatever intangible quality made a human being human, she had clearly lost it long ago.

Adam and Lilith had raised me to believe that humanity wasn't a thing of genetics; constructs, sentient clanks, or natural children born of men and women, we were all the same. We all had souls. Even the Geisters apparently had some faint, tragically stifled glimmerings of them. They could still love, and care, and feel- in the very few ways that their horribly stunted creation and indoctrination left them able to, at least. But no power on this Earth would ever compel or convince me to believe that Lucrezia Mongfish had a soul any longer. Not after I'd had this chance to see her creations, to learn how she'd treated them and what beliefs she'd chosen to teach them.

And even more tragically, the fact that they were victims did not mean that they were also innocents. They could choose to disobey - I'd overheard Vrin boasting about how the Summoning would finally prove the truth of their belief to 'the heretics' - so the ones that were here were, in the final analysis, here because they'd chosen to be. Even if it was a terribly misinformed choice it was still a choice, and one that made them a deadly danger to others. Their fanaticism was such that negotiation or surrender didn't seem remotely likely to ever be happening even if we brought them to the brink of defeat, and so we'd still almost certainly have to kill them all.

But those deaths, while entirely justified on our account, would also be yet more sins to hold against my mother's. To either find or create an entire construct race to murder and die just for your glory, and to do so with such blindness... that was an evil worse than even the worst of my Heterodyne ancestors had done. Even Vlad the Blasphemous had let the Jagers choose to become what they were.

"The key fact here is that the Jagers used to be men. Sometimes even they forget that." I remembered General Higgs telling me. But Lucrezia hadn't ever let her Geisterdamen really be women. She'd only wanted slaves and worshippers, and that's precisely what she'd gotten.

"Velix?" I said. "Could you do something for me?"

"If it is permitted, Holy Child." she said, bowing.

"I am the Lady Agatha Clay Heterodyne, rightful Protector of Mechanicsburg. Bear witness to my final proclamation. No child of my body shall be considered a Heterodyne if it is borne to term while Lucrezia Mongfish possesses this body. The House of Heterodyne dissolves any marriage-claim she possesses via my father William as just retribution for her murder of him and his son, my older brother, Klaus Barry Heterodyne. We cast her out forever, and we would rather our legacy fall into darkness eternal than ever become hers to toy with." I reached up and pulled the trilobite locket hanging around my neck off with a dramatic *snap*. "See that this is thrown into whatever bin this base has for scrap metal." I said, handing it to her. "Let it be melted down than have her ever touch it again."

"I-" Velix bowed. "I am sorry you feel that way, Holy Child, but I respect your right to guard the legacy of your father's house. I shall have your words recorded, and your badge of office disposed as of you have ordered."

"Thank you, Velix." I said. "Now please go. I wish to be alone with my thoughts in my final hours."

"As you wish, Holy Child," she said, bowing respectfully and leaving me alone in my mother's bedroom.

And as soon as the door closed, my heart leapt into my mouth as Tarvek's voice whispered from behind me. "How did you even know I was here? I was waiting for a clear shot when you figured out how to get her to leave- come on, let's go!" he said, pulling my hand and yanking me along into a secret passage I hadn't even known was there.

"What on Earth are we doing?" I said as the secret door closed behind us.

"There's been a slight change of plan!" he gasped as we ran along and he brought me up to speed on recent developments. I didn't interrupt until he'd finished.

"Agggh! She's ruining everything!" I cried. "I grant that her behavior makes sense in light of what she knows, but-"

"They do have a slaver wasp vaccine," Tarvek said. "Which I can hopefully upgrade into a cure. So that's minimum mission accomplished even if we do have to stick with Korel's plan all the way instead of the one we came here to pull off."

"Except for the part where Gil dies." I said, glaring heatedly at him.

"I'm still working on that!" Tarvek cried plaintively. "I haven't exactly had a lot of time to brainstorm here!"

"Well, I have to go back to pretending to be that brainless ingenue as soon as you link up with your 'friends', so we'd better work fast!" I said, thinking things over frantically and deciding that ultimately, I still trusted the Tarvek who'd made me that dress rather than the scheming Sturmvoraus he'd had to pretend to be. "And there's something you need to know. I had a backup plan of my own-"

"Wait, what?" Tarvek said, as we came to a halt.

"My new locket that I was wearing?" I said, tapping my now-bare neck. "That was actually one of my self-replicating clanks. And you just heard me tell Velix to go throw it in this base's metal reclamation bin." I grinned wickedly at him.

"... how long until this entire facility is full of those things?" Tarvek said, looking at me pensively.

"Two or three hours, depending on how much they have to work with." I said. "And then they'll be spread out all over, and just waiting for the trigger signal. To explode."

"Why didn't you tell us about this?" he asked.

"Because..." I said before I ground to an embarassed halt and gently took his hand in mine. "Please believe me when I say that I do trust you. I trust you, I trust Gil, I trust Jonathan, I trust you all. I'd trust you with my life- I have trusted you with my life. But with the fate of all Europa potentially in the balance?" I continued pensively. "That was more important even than trust. So just in case I actually was being played false..." I gulped and choked the rest of it out. "One last-ditch hole card, to take this entire place down and all of us with it if need be." I finished.

Tarvek gaped at me, astonished beyond words, and I winced inwardly against his upcoming rejection. I couldn't blame him. How horrible must it be to hear that one of your closest friends still took precautions against-

"Agatha, you're brilliant!" Tarvek said, staring at me in sheer exhilarated awe. "That is the best-" he trailed off to an incoherent halt, actually beaming at me in sheer unadulterated approval. I felt the world wobble and turn upside down. How could someone be so happy that I hadn't trusted him entirely? "I understand your position entirely," he said more formally, making a visible effort to regain his composure, "and I'm not offended in the slightest. And when we tell the others about this I'm entirely certain they'll say the same." He paused for a wordless beat, and then continued on more lightly. "Unless they're too busy laughing to talk."

I giggled, actually giggled, like a little girl as I felt the tension entirely leak out of me. I caught myself before I could step any closer, and took a deep breath and tried to refocus. "So. Escaping?"

"Escaping." Tarvek agreed, and we turned and kept going.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: And now we begin a fun round-robin of almost everybody betraying almost everybody else as competing agendas fly across the map like confetti! That's how you know it's a Valois party!

Madwa Korel's situation in canon is ambiguous, so between that and the butterly of doom having had seven years to work in I just felt free to keep making shit up.

Gil and Jonathan and Klaus will get their turns to be awesome soon enough. It's just, I had Tarvek completely offstage for like half the story so he has to get his turn in the spotlight. And so he does, weaselling as only our beloved Weasel King can! And Jonathan's not the only man who can make honest feelings do dishonest work, oh no.

And kudos to poster 'Samarkand' on SB for accurately predicting that the point would arrive when Tarvek would have to throw all his beautiful elaborate plans in the dumpster and just start winging shit. Which is admittedly not that arcane a prediction, given that this is Girl Genius, but still, kudos.

 

[cliffc999]

Gilgamesh POV:

Something had gone wrong. All right, a lot of things had gone wrong today, but something had just gone really wrong.

Tarvek's cell had been down the hall from mine but still within earshot. I'd seen Madwa Korel accompany him into his cell they'd been leading me to mine, so I knew that they'd started interrogating him immediately after they'd put us into them. And after that had gone on for a while they'd apparently led him off to another part of the base. I hadn't been able to see anything from inside my cell - these cells were apparently converted from some kind of storerooms, not purpose-built, so they didn't have windows in the doors - but we had a prisoner's tap code that we'd used in similar situations and despite my thumping out the apparently-random sequence of knocks on the wall that meant 'Attention', Tarvek never answered any of my hails.

Which left me with a dilemna. Did I stick with the original plan, or did I break out and try to improvise? Without any information to work from, it was a difficult-

Oh, who was I kidding? No matter how much we'd planned, beyond a certain point it always came down to scrambling around and using the heroic freestyle in the end. So, time to continue a proud tradition!

"How did he always make this look so easy?" I cursed what felt like half an hour later as I continued trying to unlock my shackles with a fork I'd smuggled off of Lord Julius' airship. They'd searched us getting on, but not getting off - even professionals got anxious, apparently. The problem was that while Tarvek had always somehow managed to effortlessly pick locks this way, I'd been going at it for quite a while without any progress and my friends were in danger and Europa was burning and they wanted to destroy Agatha's mind and replace it with-

The lock clicked open.

Wait, so that's how he'd done it? Huh. The new mental focusing exercises had been very useful for avoiding unintentional Spark fugue, but Tarvek had apparently already had his own techniques for gradually slipping into one without looking like you were in one. So, he'd been cheating the entire time he'd been doing that damn "so much more versatile than a knife!" routine. Darn sneaky weasel!

I undid the other set of leg irons, then stood up. Right, now all I needed to do was- and just as I had that thought, the door suddenly swung open to reveal a pair of Smoke Knights. Oh come on!

"Enchanté!" one of them said urgently as they crossed the threshold. Wait, Tarvek had sent them? I relaxed from my fighting stance and gave "Merci" as a countersign.

"What's the situation?" I said commandingly.

They looked at each other before one of them shrugged and replied. "Some of us got into this over our heads before we knew the full scope of what these lunatics were up to, and now we just want out. Prince Tarvek's made a deal with us, and we're here to help you all escape."

"Good! Take me to my friends," I agreed, and then wobbled as I started across the cell. "I don't feel- I think they gave me something..."

"Damn it," one of them swore, reaching into his pocket. "We need him! Keep him from falling over while I take a look. If one of Lord Julius' morons thought they were being clever-" he muttered angrily as the taller one grabbed me by one elbow to steady me and the other one took my other arm and leaned over with a probe to take a small blood sample-

Smoke Knights were not built to take punches, they were built to evade them. Fighting Smoke Knights was usually a massive exercise in frustration given that between their speed, misdirection, and stealth you were lucky to even see one before they stabbed you. Even if you somehow had them caught in an actual, open brawl then given the slightest opportunity they'd still run circles around you. But they were a bit overspecialized for speed and stealth, and so if you already had a solid grip on one... well, then you could do this.

My father was one of the strongest men in Europa, and I was certain he'd done things to augment that strength even further. Some of those things he'd also done to me when I was a small child - even for a man my size it wasn't remotely normal to actually be able to punch out a Jager by main force, but I'd entirely done that in full-contact sparring. So once both of my Smoke Knight 'rescuers' were within arms' reach I was able to grab and clamp down both on the one holding my arm and the one who'd just reached out to examine my other arm, and then push off with the full power of my legs to launch them right off their feet and run them into the wall of the cell. Even as I was taking the first step I felt them both frantically trying to twist free - my memory momentarily flashed back to one sparring session where Violetta had managed to switch herself out with a nearby coatrack before I'd actually finished clenching down - but I'd taken them off-guard enough that my grip had set before they'd been able to get moving, and once it became a pure contest of strength then it was no contest at all. My bull rush slammed them both into the wall hard enough to crack bone, which stunned them long enough for me to ram their heads together and leave them barely conscious. One quick neck-snap, then another, and it was done.

I hurriedly searched both of the bodies. I didn't know how to use most of their poisons or boobytraps, but a knife was a knife and a gun was a gun. I took both their pistols, the few bits of their miscellaneous kit that I knew how to use, their keys, and the largest dagger they had, and swapped my coveralls for the larger one's cloak, hood, and pants - I couldn't quite fit my shoulders into their shirt - so I'd hopefully be mistaken at a distance for one of them. I hurriedly dragged the bodies down to Tarvek's old cell, unlocked it and chucked them in there, then closed the cell door behind me, picked a direction, and started running down it as fast as I could.

It had been ruthlessly done, yes. But "Enchanté" was our code-word for 'These people are going to kill you'. So Tarvek had somehow been caught up in yet another whirl of betrayal among our enemies and was desperately spinning yet another triple agent scam from the middle of it, and it wasn't even one of the ones we'd planned for.

So, it looked like it was up to me to save everyone else's butts all by myself. Again.

* * * * *​

Jonathan POV:

"Off superheat," I said softly. "Open topboard vents."

"Off superheat. Open topboard vents." the phone talker repeated back.

"Very well." I acknowledged, and the soft whump of the valves in operation vibrated through the hull. As we stopped heating the lifting gas and began to vent, the L-79 started easing downwards.

I raised the spyglass and took another look. Right. There was that marker, so...

"Close topboard vents. Helm fifteen degrees starboard." I called.

"Close topboard vents, helm fifteen degrees starboard."

"Very well."

I waited until we'd swung into line, then levelled us off and gave the conn back to Lieutenant Heinrich. "Just keep it straight and level until we hit the next turn." I told him, and went over to where Violetta and Higgs were busy with the gadget I'd improvised.

"New reading?" I asked them, and Violetta read off the numbers. I wrote them down and mentally slipped the leash on my Spark a little, just enough to do all the complex field density calculations in my head instead of via longhand.

The distortion grid that my father had set up around Rabennest had been designed to be as ruggedized as possible, with minimal maintenance requirements. In that respect my own Spark design philosophy echoed the senior Teufel's. The antennas that had been laboriously seeded on the surrounding mountaintops covered the surrounding several hundred square miles in a varying electromagnetic field that not only magnified magnetic deviation, but did so on a variable pattern.

It was little-known to anyone except professional navigators that the Earth's magnetic north pole wasn't actually located directly at the geographic north pole. There was always an angular difference between magnetic north and true north, even if it wasn't sufficient to show up on the average hand compass. It did make a difference when you were trying to do something as precise dead-reckoning navigation... which was the only kind you could use in the absence of long-range navigational beacons or useable landmarks. Both of which conditions applied to this portion of the Caucasus, unless you'd been painstakingly drilled on where the Black Mist Raiders had hidden all the camouflaged route markers.

Since magnetic declination was known, chartable, and varied only with location and the passage of centuries, a simple book of tables was sufficient to allow navigators to compensate for it when taking readings. But in addition to magnetic declination you also had to worry about magnetic deviation, the effect of local magnetic fields upon a compass. The simplest example was what happened to your pocket compass when you waved a magnet over it. For airship navigators, magnetic deviation was generally caused by things like large ferrous ore deposits.

Or, in the case of Rabennest, the distortion field network. With multiple cavity-resonance antennas scattered all over the nearby region, camouflaged and with no moving parts to require maintenance, simply setting up the right broadcaster at the center of the antennas and then tuning the frequency let you play with compasses basically at will anywhere within a twenty-mile radius. And with line-of-sight as problematic as it was with all the peaks and valleys around here, and suitable camouflaging, you could hide a lot of outlaw military base in that large a radius of search. And without any ability to chart your position more closely than a very large circular probability of error, you could make it nigh-impossible to ever find you without spending months of time and an entire fleet on the project - an effort that even the Empire would have found it impractical to sustain.

But, the Baron had lured out and destroyed my father and his fleet with a clever deception of his own, and so here we all were.

"They've set up inside the old heavy repair dock," I said, having used the detector I'd kit-bashed together and my own insider's knowledge of exactly how the distortion grid worked to take multiple signal-strength readings on our route in and use that plus a modified time-and-distance distribution to plot the current center of emissions. I'd known the Baron had left the main base in no condition to be used after he'd finished looting the place and leaving, but that still left several of the satellite facilities and planned expansion areas they could have started from. "And they've probably expanded it some by cutting their own tunnels deeper into the mountain. Still, now we know where they are... and I know the original floor plan." I said, as my hands blurred over the chart table using fresh paper and drafting ink and the superhuman speed and precision of a borderline Spark fugue to finish drawing- there!

"Vell, hit culd be vorse," Dimo said philosophically.

"Only one main route in, through the hangar. Defenses?" Higgs said. "I hate bottlenecks."

I shook my head. "It was an auxiliary site. Any close-in air defenses there will be things they brought in themselves. So, almost certainly nothing worse than airship-class shock cannons. The L-79 is an assault transport; it's designed to hit that kind of defended site."

"But our odds will still be improved if somebody marks the anti-aircraft guns so our stand-off weapons can more easily take them out before we get into range from the ground." Violetta said. "And that means me."

"You can't go in overland," I said. "It's not just the time factor, but the terrain is such that there's nowhere to walk into that site from. And we have to be within two hundred meters of the ground to use the drop-reels, and that's more than close enough for their cannons."

"So I'll use the glider-wing." she said. "And then I overfly and come in a little ways above them, on that slope." she said, pointing at the map. "We've got the sun in the right place and a clear blue sky. If I use a glider that's the right color then even if they're looking up, all they'll see against the glare is a dot that might be a bird."

"All right," I acknowledged. "I'll put together some miniaturized sparkwork lightning rods you can use to tag all the targets and guide in the beams. Just get them in place and our first salvo of shock cannon fire will take out all their air-defense artillery before they can even react."

"We got any back door into this place?" Higgs said. "I don't want all our eggs in one basket."

"Hmmm," I mused. "If we assume they don't have the smelter online, then we can use the exhaust vents here to rappel down into the foundry level. If they are using it-" I blinked. "Too much soldier, not enough Spark. There's enough firefighting gear on this ship to let me whip up an extinguisher bomb that'll freeze even a roaring smelter solid. We drop it down the shaft ahead of us."

"Works. And the foundry level gives us direct access to the guts of the base. Where they'd be keeping the high-value prisoners." Higgs said.

"If we're going that deep inside then I have to be on that squad. Even with a sketch map for you to go from, there's no substitute for a veteran navigator." I pointed out.

"You and me, then." Higgs said. "And two more of my best. Not you, Dimo. If I'm on the inside team-"

"Den hy haff to herd de rest of dese guyz in de main assault. Hy gots it." Dimo said resignedly. "But hy recommends that hyu takes Maxim and Oggie vit you. Dey iz more used to goink it alone den de rest."

Zeetha cut in. "So, I'm with the main assault force?" she asked.

I shook my head. "You don't know how to use a drop-reel, and that's how the main force is inserting. So that means you come with the infiltration team, both because you're one of the most powerful solo fighters we have and because we're inserting by air-skiff. Dimo, you can try and push into the base on your own initiative if you can but remember that the main force's job isn't to conquer this entire place. Your primary mission is to hold the extraction route. We can't lose the airship landing platform and we can't lose the L-79 or else nothing else we do matters."

"Hy gots it," Dimo nodded. "Still vish de General culd be up vit us, tho."

"You'll do fine." Higgs reassured him.

"So Violetta's pathfinding marks the air-defense artillery, we clear it away with long-range fire, then you set up hard on the surface and keep them from coming out and doing any more damage. The infiltration team's job will be to get in deep, link up with Gil, Tarvek, and Agatha, and then get the objective and get out." I reviewed.

"That is a horrible plan," Violetta objected. "You're going to go fight Smoke Knights without me? No way! Where is this vent, anyway?"

"There," I pointed on our map.

"Right, then I'll be back up the slope and meet you there as soon as I've finished laying the markers." Violetta said, and I agreed with a sigh and a nod.

"Six people on the infiltration team?" Higgs said. "A little unwieldy."

"They could have up to half a battalion in that place. Plus Madwa Korel. Plus the Smoke Knights. We'll need as many as we can fit and still have any hope of stealthing at all." I pointed out.

"Ten people," Ruxala, the commander of our Vespiary Squad contingent, suddenly cut in. "You'll take at least one fire team of mine to back you up. There's no way these people won't have Hive Warriors stashed away down in the guts of that place too, and that's what we're here for."

"One Vespiary fire team with the infiltration squad." I agreed. "The rest of your squads help hold the dock. But your inside team will draw battle rifles to augment your normal gear. You go this far behind enemy lines with us and you'll almost certainly end up fighting people as well and that's not what you're specialized for. So in the event of that contingency your team hangs back and provide a base of fire while we go close-in."

"Yes sir," she said.

"Right. Lieutenant, we'll need about fifteen extra minutes for last-minute preparations." I called to him.

"All engines half," Lt. Heinrich called out from the conn, and his order was acknowledged and executed.

"Come up a thousand feet. We're sending in a pathfinder via glider insertion, so we'll need the altitude."

"On superheat." he responded, and the crew leapt into motion.

"Right. As soon as we drop the cloaking device and start the main assault, activate the pulse transmitter I jury-rigged. We'll use distortion antenna network ourselves to repeat a message in flash code that'll show up on the compasses of any reinforcements. I don't know exactly when the main body of the fleet will be arriving, but from the timing of our original message it should be sometime today, and I'll want them to know which of the auxiliary sites they should head for first."

"And the heliograph, sir?" my XO asked.

"Leave it manned and waiting, but don't send until you get a line-of-sight signal." I said. "If the Baron follows SOP then he'll have a relay drone rocketed as high as possible above the main fleet, but even that will need them to get fairly close before they can see us given the type of terrain we're flying over."

"Understood, sir."

"All right, everyone" I said. "We've got half an hour to drop. Any last-minute necessities?"

A round of demurring comments and shaking heads all-around met my question.

"Right. Places, everyone. Vi, come with me and I'll help you set up that glider." I finished, and we dispersed.

Glider-wings were an experimental technology that I'd been working with off and on (mostly off, given the press of my other duties) for the past several years for long-range vertical insertion from airships. I'd considered introducing parachutes to this world but had ultimately decided against it - Sparktech drop-reels and rappelling gear let airships insert troops to the ground via long-line deployment from heights that Earth would have considered insanely impractical, and given the maneuvering capabilities of airships, the limitations of air-defense artillery in this world, and the fact that it was notably easier to shoot down than up there really wasn't much of a need for mass troop deployment from higher altitudes. But there was still a use for high-altitude stealth insertions that could be more subtle than air-skiffs, and so one of the varied Fairchild contributions to the technological art of war around here had been a sort of tactical wing-suit concept that would let someone exit an airship at any altitude it could reach and then glide silently to the ground miles away. Violetta's small size and extreme athleticism had made her an ideal test pilot candidate for the early trials (and a couple of the most recent trials we'd made in Mechanicsburg in our 'copious free time'), so I'd brought a set along just in case it turned out we might have a use for them. Which we had.

I finished adjusting the vari-paint feature on the glider to the right shade of sky blue to be optimal camouflage against the skydome under current conditions, finished helping Violetta check her harness, and began to strap her into the glider wing. We'd been talking readily through the process, but the closer and closer the moment came the less and less we'd said, and the slower and slower my fingers got, until we finally ended up just staring at each other as my hands stopped fumbling with one of the buckles. Her eyes met mine, we gazed deeply into each other, and then we both - at the exact same instant - eyerolled with the sheer corniness of it all, and gently laughed in stereo at what idiots we were being.

Oh, I was so done for.

"Not goodbye," I said, and leaned in.

"But good luck," she agreed, and our lips met for the first time. And then our lips opened, and then there were tongues, and hugging, and I was lifting her up into my arms as she did a two-foot pop straight off the ground, and then oxygen started to become an issue-

"Wow," she grinned wildly at me as I looked back down at her like a total goof. "Why did we wait so long?"

"A convoy moves at the speed of the slowest airship," I apologized.

"But it still gets there when it should," she reassured me, and we kissed again. This time with a little more self-restraint.

Her feet lightly touched the deck as I let her go, and we went back to swiftly and efficiently hooking her up into her gear. She turned around and hoisted the bundle of artillery-guidance lightning rods, each one the size of a small javelin, to hang on her hip via a shoulder-strapped quiver.. I hit the lever to open the rear hatch, and she turned back and gave me a thumbs-up as she hoisted the wing-grips and strode towards the opening.

"See you on the ground, airman!" she cheerfully called back over her shoulder as I threw her a thumbs-up in reply, and then she leapt out into the sky.

* * * * *​

Tarvek POV:

"We have a problem," Madwa Korel told me suspiciously. "The people I sent to fetch young Wulfenbach haven't reported back."

"Oh no! Gil!" Agatha said panickedly, and even managing a blush. A part of me inwardly delighted at such artistry.

"Don't tell me he already escaped before they got there." I groaned. "Why couldn't he just do what he was supposed to do for once in his li-"

"Well I think he's being very brave," Agatha broke in. "And we need to go help him. We can't leave without him!" she gushed disengenously. I could hear Madwa groaning internally from here. Hah! Your fault for committing to a plan that required consistently playing up to Agatha's alleged romantic delusions, Night Mistress!

"I have as many of my people as possible out looking for him as quietly as they can," Madwa reassured Agatha. I wondered if she actually did, or was simply taking advantage of the fact that Gil was apparently set up to get himself heroically and tragically killed and not need Madwa's prepared script to help that along. "But it's more important to get you to safety before the Geisterdamen realize that you're gone."

"Agatha, please." I told her placatingly. "You know that Gil would rather suffer a thousand torments then see you get hurt. Just like me and-" I trailed off guiltily. "And my cousins."

"I understand," Agatha answered on her cue. "All right. We'll have to trust that Miss Korel's men can find him in time." I swore I heard another internal groan from her at being referred to as 'Miss Korel'. Despite the danger of being horribly killed at any instant, this was really getting to be far too much fun. "But now we have to get to the communcations room."

"I'm sorry?" Madwa asked, her eyes starting to glaze over with the sheer amount of curve balls her scheme had taken in the past three minutes.

"To stop them from getting the message out, of course!" Agatha said innocently. "Tarvek told me about how they threatened his cousins to force him to do what he did!" she continued with a flutter. "And while Violetta's safe in Mechanicsburg, poor Princess Xersephnia is all alone in Paris. We have to warn her to get to safety and then stop the people here from transmitting the order to their assassins, don't we?"

This time I did hear Madwa mutter curses and maledictions under her breath. Still, the hasty con routine that Agatha and I had worked out seemed to be doing its job. Madwa had gone all-in at my being the Storm King and wedding the Heterodyne Girl, as her last-ditch chance to salvage anything from this pile of failing schemes and fanatic madness for herself. She was committed now, and part of that commitment was keeping our 'naive pawn' from rebelling or resenting until after we had enough breathing room for Madwa to - she thought - work out some kind of coercion scheme.

And if that meant diverting in the middle of our stealthy escape to cater to her 'romantic delusions', then that's precisely what we'd have to do.

"All right," Madwa finally said reassuringly, exerting most of her considerable talents to avoid swearing and cursing. "The heliograph station is this way. They've got a dedicated relay on the highest peak around here that has line-of-sight down into one of the Imperial network stations on the nearby plain, so we've got real-time communications to anywhere in Europa that we need so long as we can keep the traffic looking innocuous."

"Seffie and I have a private variant on the family codes we worked out as children," I said. "It looks enough like the proper cipher that we can simply slip the message into the stack intended for immediate transmission and the operators won't notice." I leaned over to whisper reassuringly in Korel's ear. "Then you just, I don't know, pretend to sabotage the silly thing and we tell her job's done. It's not like she could tell from a real sabotage job."

"I don't envy you your upcoming marriage if she's going to be this much of a spoiled princess," Korel muttered back to me. "Still, at least we can handle her for now. Just keep her from screwing anything else up and we'll be out of here soon enough."

"No argument from me," I whispered back, and we continued stealthily maneuvering through the base until we finally reached our destination. A bit of impressive dumb-show and playing up, and soon enough I had the message composed and Madwa easily used a Smoke Knight trick to swap it into the stack of message slips intended for priority traffic. Then I did some meaningless fiddling in a nearby breaker panel that Agatha pretended to be very impressed by and we started heading out.

Of course, the message wasn't actually going to Seffie. No, while the Parisian address header was genuine it was actually intended as an immediate priority transmission to Grandmother. As much as I could fit a complete status report of the situation into the relatively few amount of words that would make a believable 'warning message', it told her what she needed to know about the current situation, the games that Madwa Korel and several of her co-conspirators were playing, and most importantly, our exact location for immediate relay to the Baron's flagship.

There. I'd done what I could to make sure we had a chance of getting out of this. Because if we were truly stuck in Raven's Nest, we couldn't remotely hope for Jonathan to get here in time. Not without having been forewarned of our destination so as to be able to request archive copies of the route the Baron had plotted into here once, a task he obviously couldn't perform while running cloaked and under emissions control.

"All right," Madwa said. "The simplest way out is just to take your Uncle's yacht. I had one of my people disguised as one of his lackeys go order the crew to get it prepped, so it'll be ready and waiting for us to steal. All we need to do is-"

"FIRE FIRE FIRE!" the speakers suddenly started blaring. "CLASS BRAVO FIRE IN BUNKER ALPHA-TWO! ALL FIREFIGHTING CREWS MUSTER IMMEDIATELY! FIRE FIRE FIRE!" and then the announcement kept repeating.

"Alpha-Two? That's in the primary ammunition storage!" Madwa hissed in panic. "We've got to go, and now!"

"I think we've just found Gilgamesh," I told her as we all started running. "But this will be only step one of whatever heroic plan he has going. What's the step two?"

"Did you have to remind her about him?" she hissed at me sotto voce, one hand reaching to her belt.

"What are you two talking about?" Agatha said, attempting to distract her.

"Oh to hell with it!" Madwa swore, pushed beyond endurance, and suddenly I was on the ground with her foot on my neck while Agatha was up against the wall with a dart poised to inject into her jugular vein. "We'll just drag her along and work out a proper compliance regime later-"

And then the entire base rocked with the sound of explosions. My heart stopped as I realized that Gil couldn't possibly have gotten out of the blast radius of the ammo bunkers in time-

-wait, that blast wasn't from inside the mountain. Those were on the surface!

"GENERAL QUARTERS! GENERAL QUARTERS! THE BASE IS UNDER ATTACK! THE BASE IS UNDER ATTACK!" the speaker started blaring at maximum volume, as every alert siren in the base began whooping.

"Night Mistress!" an arriving Smoke Knight cried. "We're trapped! A Wulfenbach assault transport just decloaked right above the docking platform and took out all the anti-air defenses before dropping troops! There's an entire company of Jagermonsters out there between us and the escape ship!"

"What the bloody hell is going on?!?" Korel cried. "How did they even find us here? What happened to the distortion grid?"

"Excuse me, Night Mistress," Agatha's voice broke in icily, and everybody's head present except mine snapped towards her in shock as the vague, ditzy, helpless ingenue we'd been 'dragging along' suddenly pinned Madwa Korel to the opposing wall with a commanding glare despite being the one she was holding by the neck. "But I do believe that our relative bargaining positions have just changed."

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Yay, First Kiss! I'd been debating with myself for a long time how it should happen, most of them being various flavors of 'at the victory party', but then I was coming up on the scene where Violetta becomes Europa's first tactical wingsuit combat drop and then my muse popped up in my ear and went 'Surprise! We're doing it now!'

Drop-reels are from the third novelisation. They're apparently a Sparky variant of the long-line helicopter troop deployment system that works from up to 200 meters of altitude (explicitly called out in text). Yes, I know, that's bullshit. Sparks, what can you do?

And yes, Tarvek has no clue that Jonathan can get in through the defenses after all. Gilgamesh has no clue what Tarvek's caught up in now. Madwa has no clue that Agatha's actually the most dangerous woman in the room. And so... the gambit pileups just keep piling!

Ruxala, aka 'Badass Weasel Girl', is a minor canon character.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

"Extinguisher in the hole!" I called away, as the usual call of 'Fire in the hole' before detonating a charge seemed vastly inappropriate somehow, and let the cryo-bomb fall square down the exhaust shaft of the foundry. Higgs, Maxim, and Oggie had already torn ripped loose the grating covering the smokestack by main strength and it was a straight shot the over 150 feet down into the guts of the facility, so we just waited a few seconds to hear the comforting *CHUFF* of the device going off and quenching anything in the smelter that might smelt us.

"Hey, I miss anything?" Violetta called out cheerfully as she came up over the edge of the small platform up the slope that helped camouflage the stacks. The main landing platform was a bit of a ways below us, but the Smoke Knight standard-issue sparktech grappling gun made one heck of a mountain-climbing tool provided that you had a place to plant your feet in-between shots.

"It's just getting to the good part!" Zeetha replied eagerly "So, we doing this today or what?"

"Everybody hook up!" I called. "First wave, Higgs and me. Second wave, Zeetha and Violetta. Next up, our Jagers. Vespiary team goes last. And three... two... one... drop!"

As per the order I'd called out, we all rappelled down the chimney, some of us more easily than others. Ruxala had left the main body of her forces with Dimo and had chosen to lead the hand-picked Vespiary fire team herself, on the entirely reasonable grounds that if she was going to send her four most experienced people on the trickiest part of the job then that included her. However, unlike the remainder of our team who all had extensive commando experience of one type or another the Wasp-Hunters didn't have more than the most basic rappelling training as part of their minimum drop-reel qualification, so they had to go last no matter what as they were the slowest climbers.

A fact that I really, really came to regret less than twenty seconds later.

"All right," I said as we landed inside the smelter and I'd finished using a one-shot arc cutter I'd made sure to bring along to cut out the interior latch, "let's see what we're..."

The door swung open to reveal a large, echoing chamber with all sorts of heavy foundry machinery and another open-pit smelter at the other end as a counterpart to the one we'd dropped in. With a horribly sinking feeling I realized exactly what the half-visible remnants of various organic things embedded in the cryogenic fluid and instant ice dam that we'd landed on were.

In hindsight, it was obvious. The foundry level was perhaps the single largest open continuous room in the base short of the airship repair docks themselves, comfortably buried well within the mountain, and with two extremely large 'space heaters' available to provide continual warmth. So why did I not see this coming?

"RUXALA!" I yelled as loudly as I could. "SCRAMBLE! We just dropped straight into the goddamn Hive!"

"WHAT?" I heard her shout from where they were still at least 80 feet above us. "Shiiiiit! Go go go go gooooo!"

And then we all piled out of the smelter door as fast we could to clear the drop zone for our wasp-fighting specialists, as what at first glance looked to be as many as a hundred Hive Warriors - enough to devastate a small city - all turned to face us as one before they charged straight at us.

Hive Warriors were unintelligent constructs built to do only one thing, but they did it very well. They didn't have much if any ability to adapt - the entire reason the Vespiary Squad's training revolved so heavily around building a specific set of conditioned reflexes for CQB vs. Hive Warriors was because the warriors only had one playbook ever - but it was a good playbook, and they were a totally expendable organic weapons system intended to overwhelm places via shock and numbers so their lack of adaptability wasn't the point. They were still large enough, strong enough, and fast enough to rip even most trained unaugmented humans to shreds, pretty much shrugged off most normal projectile weapons, were even more impossible to poison than a Smoke Knight unless you used specialized insecticides, and needed heavy armor-piercing blades to cut or cutting torches to burn. Heavy death rays worked, and my own Fairchild semi-auto battle rifle design had had "must be able to put a hole in a Hive Warrior if armor-piercing hardpoints are loaded" as one of the design criteria, but on most battlefields of Europa they were ungodly effective anti-infantry platforms. In sufficient numbers they were even able to overwhelm most combat vehicles. They'd been one of the Other's chief weapons in her original war for a reason. The Baron had spent so much time and effort creating an entire specific armed force specialized solely for the job of destroying them for another reason. An armed force that we'd be lucky if even a small detachment of them could join our battle within the next minute. And even then, they hadn't quite been intended to take on odds these lopsided.

The Hive Warriors' programming wasn't nearly stupid enough to let them all rush in at once and get in each other's way, but by the same token that meant that they could only come at each of us one or two at a time. Since one Hive Warrior could chew its way through the average infantry squad while barely breaking stride, this was not seen as a great design weakness. But although we weren't dedicated Vespiary troops, we were not remotely the average infantrymen.

Higgs, by far our most powerful combat asset, was an unstoppable blur of motion as he tore his way through Hive Warrior after Hive Warrior with his bare hands. Oggie and Maxim, who'd been partners in the same squad for several centuries and accordingly had more synergy from their partnership than any other duo on the team, immediately moved to be our two solid anchors of the immediate defensive position around the smelter door that needed to be held if Ruxala's team wasn't to get slaughtered before they could even get feet set on the ground. As the Warriors instinctively flowed around those of us that had advanced off the point and tried for our rear, I could already hear those two laying into them with fist, polearm, and saber. Zeetha and I, who had at least approximately similar combat styles as swordsmen and had had at least one memorable opportunity to get acquainted with the other's fighting rhythm, fell into a loose partnership. And Violetta-

"UP!" I yelled at her as I frantically tore my sidearm out of my holster and tossed it to her. Violetta was a Smoke Knight, optimized for stealth, misdirection, speed, poison, and CQB... versus human targets. Virtually nothing she carried could even affect Hive Warriors. I'd chosen a heavy energy pistol instead of my usual Gauss coilgun for this run, and that at least could let her snipe from the catwalk above as well as be a set of eyes up high that could call patterns and strays for us-

"Damn it!" I heard her wail despairingly as she plucked my thrown pistol out of the air, drew and fired her grapple gun with her other hand, and had her feet off the floor and away before the first Warrior even reached us. She and I both knew perfectly well that I was ordering her out of immediate danger because it was a legitimate tactical call - if I'd even tried ordering her for any other reason she'd have simply refused to leave - but that didn't change the fact that I was being left behind at suicidal odds while she was being put in the best position of any of us to actually have an exit strategy. Well, at least we'd had our first kiss first- if I ended up here again then I'd have to be damn sure to drop a bug bomb down the-

A Hive Warrior reared up in front of me and my saber was up and through its brain before it could even begin to twitch its claws. I went into a slide down low under its collapsing body to block two of its compatriots, then came out the other end and backstabbed a second before it could give Oggie a hard time. Zeetha stepped in on the beat and cleaved one coming up behind me in twain, then pivoted to deal with another while a third was about to split us both-

A brilliant bolt of blue energy came down from above and turned its upper torso into a grease spot. "If you get yourself killed I swear I will empty the rest of this powerpack into your stupid corpse!" I heard my lady-love shouting from above as several more blue bolts kept coming down from above, beat-beat-beat, to keep sniping more Warriors and create openings for us as best as she could in the scrambling melee.

"Whoo-hoo! Lots ov monster for evryvun!" Oggie called out ecstatically as him and his battle buddy kept stacking the corpses.

"De only vay dis could get bedder is if dey had hats!" Maxim agreed.

We'd already piled up almost two dozen dead Warriors while the dozens more to come were still pressing us, and the bodies and ichor on the floor were starting to interfere with our footing more than theirs when suddenly from behind us-

"Let's kill some bugs!" Ruxala and her squad all screamed the Vespiary Squad's traditional battle-cry as one and her team came piling out of the smelter and ran right through our defensive lines. Their training had included fighting on slippery surfaces precisely because of the way these damn things leaked when you killed enough of them in a confined space, as well as special nonskid hazmat boots. So what was slowing us down with unfamiliar footing was a walk in the park to them as they effortlessly danced around the all-too-familiar Hive combat maneuvers and started shredding the Hive Warriors to pieces with their swords and hand-held plasma torches.

Their wasp weasels all leapt down off their handlers' shoulders and scampered out to do what they did best in the absence of the smaller infection wasps to hunt; distract and nip at the bigger bugs with all sorts of stimuli and threatening scents that Lucrezia had never designed them to handle and start confusing their programming and slowing down their reflexes. It was hardly enough to incapacitate them, but the legendarily low human-to-bug casualty ratio of the Vespiary bug-hunter squads relied not just on how their training was not only precision-optimized by Sparky designers for shredding bugs but because the bio-engineered distraction of the weasels meant that the bugs themselves would fight at a notably lower effectiveness. So despite being four to our six and with several of our six being far more powerful fighters available on our hand, Ruxala's squad was soon killing almost two bugs for for our every one. Thank God she'd insisted on coming along.

Part of my brain noticed that the death ray fire from above had paused. I frantically looked up at the catwalk- oh shit!

"Zeetha!" I shouted. "Violetta needs help!"

"On it!" she acknowledged, and immediately broke off from us to start parkouring her way up the exterior of the smelter - Skifanderian warrior training tended to the extremely acrobatic, which is why I'd picked her for the assist - to get up to where she could reach the upper catwalks. Hive Warriors could climb, after all, and while Violetta could have a lot more room to move around up there than she would have down here even swinging from catwalk to catwalk would only keep her alive so long once enough Warriors got up there to cover all the catwalks.

"That's at least seventy warriors so far!" Ruxala said worriedly. "You know what that means!"

"Do not fucking say it!" Higgs shouted.

But less than a minute later, as we'd finished thinning the herd down to the last twenty or so Hive Warriors, the survivors suddenly began to disengage. Fuck. Hive Warriors never stopped attacking a threat unless-

Although it was barely perceptible, the deckplates beneath our feet trembled. Once. Twice. Then faster, and faster, as if something large enough to shake the floor was accelerating-

"HO YEZ!" Maxim shouted. "Here comes de big vun!"

"Captain! Get your team moving and finish the mission! We'll hold her as long as we can!" Ruxala shouted. The logical move. The tactically optimum move. The move that salvaged something from the wreck.

Yeah, well fuck wrecks and fuck salvaging scraps from them. Once you were already in the shit up to your armpits, then there was no reason not to go all in up to your neck.

"Permission for a heroic death denied!" I yelled back. "We all go home or nobody goes home!"

"Captain? After very careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that your assault plan sucks." Higgs said mildly to me as we all reoriented from facing the Warriors- there was no way they'd try to attack during what was coming next, they were programmed not to- to face the new threat axis and get ready.

"Why, I expected something better from you, General." I replied with suitably black humor. "A man of your wide experience."

We each shared an entirely understanding laugh at that. A tad cynically, perhaps, but still entirely understandable given the circumstances.

The thudding impacts echoing up the large hallway leading off to the machine shops were almost at the one entrance to the foundry now-

"She's clear!" I heard Zeetha call from above. "What's happening down there?"

"Do you remember back when these things used to be sessile?" I whined to Ruxala, to receive her entirely commiserating nod.

-and that's when the Hive Queen burst into the room, unfolded itself from how it had compressed to fit down the relatively low and narrow passage way, and reared up into a fifteen-foot tall and notably longer monstrosity whose roar literally shook the entire steel-reinforced concrete underground echo chamber of a room.

"FIRE!" Ruxala called, and her team unslung the rifles I'd given them and began to hose the Queen down with long-range fire - you didn't go CQB vs. a Hive Queen unless you were completely insane-

"Go for the legs!" Higgs roared, and Maxim and Oggie fell in on him as centuries of combat experience and superhuman unkillability went straight for the threat and did their best to try crippling its tendons. Well, I suppose being a Jager was different-

As the sole person in this dance left without a dance partner, I started to look around for anything I could start Sparking together into a Queen-killing weapon, only to have the nearby Warriors hiss and chitter at me threateningly as soon as I started to move too far away. I could have tried hotwiring my death-ray into a one-shot bomb, except I'd given it to Violetta-

A sprawling tail sweep knocked Higgs and his two partners askew, leaving nothing between me and the Queen. Ruxala's team was out of position to intercept and were only doing chip damage to it anyway.

Well, if I had to die...

"Hey, she-bitch! Let's go!" I said, and armed only with one cavalry saber and a rifle that wouldn't do me any more good than it would do the support squad over there I charged straight at one of the largest, most unkillable, most deadly bio-engineered beasts on the continent.

With perfect timing I flip-rolled to the side as a giant foreclaw came crashing down, then sprang up and went horizontal in mid-air to just skim over the whipping tail. If I could somehow get past several more of those, then climb up her without being impossibly shaken off, then find someplace I could ram almost three feet of steel into that would do more than tickle her-

"Left!" I heard Violetta call. "Lead her left!"

I had absolutely no idea what her plan was, but it was certainly more than I had at the moment, so I flourished my blade at the thing and then ran-

"Your OTHER left you idiot!" she screamed.

I cursed at the gods of inverse geometric perspective and just redoubled my speed in the direction I was going, then leapt off the ground into a flying sidekick at one of the catwalk support pillars. I hit, bounced, twisted up, rolled in mid-air over the tail whip again, and used my spring momentum to start sprinting the other way-

"Keep going!" I heard her say, as there were running feet directly above me on the catwalk- Higgs and the boys were back up by now, but they were well out of position to help me so-

"I really hope you've got a-" I started to yell as the damn Hive Queen finished turning around and started to accelerate- that thing can move much faster than me on the straightaway I'll need to turn-

"WAAAAAAA-HOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I heard Zeetha yell joyously as my crazy new foster-sister came flying off the catwalk from over twenty feet up to land directly on the small of the Hive Queen's back. Shit! I inwardly cursed in despair. She was the one person here who'd never even seen one of these things before! She had no idea of how much compact muscle power was in one, how rapidly it could shift and jerk with how much impossible momentum. She'd be thrown off in an instant, and then she'd be kill-

As she landed I incredulously noted that the Hive Queen's instinctive jerk-and-roll motion to get an enemy off its back had been severely disrupted when its hind legs went limp as Zeetha's right-hand sword blade slammed directly in-between two spinal vertebrae as she did a superhero three-point landing, sword first, right between the roots of its upper-legs. The anchor point kept her attached to the Queen as the front half its body still twisted and thrashed, and with impossible timing Zeetha pulled her blade free just as the thing's swinging reached the peak of an arc so as to send her flying lightly back up into the air while still maintaining position over the Queen, to land again with her other sword impaling the Queen directly between two additional spinal vertebrae and immobilizing even more of it. And again, and again, as she worked her way more and more easily up the increasingly-paralyzed Hive Queen's body, until by the time she'd reached the top it was a helpless inert lump of flesh just waiting for the coup-de-grace as she stood on top of its skull, did a flourish, and rammed both swords deep into its eye sockets and pureed its brain.

Princess Zeetha of Skifander, Daughter of Chump, the first person in Europan history to single-handedly kill a Hive Queen in melee combat, posed dramatically on top of its head like a big-game hunter standing on a trophy and triumphantly flung the gore free of her blades with a Skifanderian kata before sheathing them on her back. "Oh yeah!" she cried gleefully as she double fist-pumped. "Just like hunting fafflenarg beasts back home!"

I noted with great amusement that Higgs was standing there slackjawed, staring at her like a man in a rapture.

"She's definitely got a lot of spirit." I teased him. "So, do you think it's possible that a princess and a guy like you-?"

"I will tear loose your spine and knot it around your brain." he hissed at me.

"Hey, he introduced you two in the first place and you owe him!" Violetta said to Higgs as she touched down next to me on her grappling line. "So, you guys going actually going to clean up the rest of that mess over there or what?"

And I would swear to my dying day that as we helped our monster-slaying champion down with suitable congratulations all around and then turned to look at the surviving Hive Warriors, they actually backed away.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Good fight scenes are hard. Making sure everybody gets their suitable moment of awesome without making it look tacked on is hard.

Now things like War Games references, Star Wars references, and humor? That's easier.

And yes, I found it hilarious that in canon it was Zeetha who went hopelessly gone on Higgs after seeing him do something impossibly badass, and here its Higgs literally swooning on Zeetha after seeing her do something impossibly badass.

BTW, given that Zeetha's mom canonically hunts hostile megafauna with swords (see panel 2), 'Zeetha vs. mutant Hive Queen' ain't remotely as implausible as you think it is. I obviously made up the fine details myself but apparently Skifander really does have an entire combat technique based around jumping on top of giant monsters and stabbing them to death. It must be one crazy place.

 

[cliffc999]

Gilgamesh POV:

I stepped out of my hiding place, quietly shut the heavy armored hatch behind the damage control parties that had just ran through it, and then spun the locking wheel shut as hard as I could. I then really put some muscle into it, straining both hands to crush the wheel and bend the axle over as far as I could. There. The only way anybody was getting that hatch open again any time soon was to either use a cutting torch or else explosives.

Admittedly there were a lot of explosives available on the other side of that hatch, because what I'd just done is lock as many men as possible into the ammunition bunkers. Nobody with the slightest amount of sense stored large quantities of ammunition anywhere within several hundred meters of their living quarters if they had any choice about doing so, which is why this facility - like most underground facilities - kept the bulk of the explosives off down a side tunnel in a separate cavern. The only two ways in and out were the tunnel I'd just used and the freight elevators intended to take the ammo up to the airship dock, as the main purpose of that bunker was to offload the heavy ordnance for Teufel's airship fleet into when he had ships in drydock. And the Other's servants had been using it as primary storage for their own airship cannons and other artillery, as part of repurposing this part of Rabennest into one of their main military bases.

Which is why I'd come here first. Even with the compartmentalization and blast barriers, nobody wanted an uncontrolled fire in the middle of the main ammo bunker. There'd been sentries to get past, of course, but they hadn't remotely been expecting me. So it was simplicity itself to just come here first, sabotage the elevators so nobody could hope to get in or out that way, then hotwire the alarm sensors to give a false indicator of a rampaging fire. A couple of simple pyrotechnics charges to create some impressive-looking smoke down at the far end of the storage area and by the time all the firefighting parties realized they'd responded to a false alarm, I'd just locked them in.

So, at least fifty down. Now, how many more did I have to to go...?

Single-handedly trying to take down a military base was tricky. You couldn't get yourself get pinned down anywhere, but likewise you couldn't just creep around silently and avoid all contact. That was good for trying to escape from somewhere, but when you trying to actually cripple the base? Then you needed to somehow, without yourself being isolated and trapped at any point, create as many genuine lasting problems that would absorb all kinds of manpower trying to deal with as you possibly could.

So my next stop after the main ammo bunker was the research level. If it was any kind of secret base with Sparks, you always had a research level and it was always full of "interesting" things. Even if they didn't have any strategic relevance to the actual master plan at hand, keeping Sparks from indulging their own pet projects and obsessions was... well, my father could sometimes manage, but very few other people even tried.

"GENERAL QUARTERS! GENERAL QUARTERS! THE BASE IS UNDER ATTACK! THE BASE IS UNDER ATTACK!"

As the announcement blared and repeated ,I looked up at the nearest speaker with a wild grin. Jonathan! The L-79 had arrived and the plan was at least a little back on track.

Right. Well, since I was on the research level already I might as well just start letting loose the various monsters as distractions like I'd originally planned. 'Turn loose all the experiments' was a classic staple of running loose in an enemy Spark's base for a reason, after all. With all the minions and tenders already having been drawn away by the various emergencies in progress it was simplicity's sake to just go from room to room, opening cages and turning off containment systems. I even helpfully punched several of the alarm buttons myself, just to properly set the mood. And I gratefully snagged myself a nice heavy death ray that someone had helpfully left hanging on a wall in a case labeled Break Glass In Case Of Monster Rampage.

As I was busy doubling back through one of the biological research labs to duck the attentions of a particularly large and nasty slime monster I'd set loose a couple minutes ago, my attention was suddenly caught by a low voice urgently whispering "You must warn your brother; beware the renegade." I spun around frantically trying to see who was there, but all I saw was a silly-looking but strangely cute lizard creature, about 70 centimeters long, standing upright in a sealed jar barely large enough to contain it. A sign on the wall behind it said Unknown Specimen: Cannot Die.

"I'm sorry, did you say something?" I asked it confusedly, not sure of what I'd heard.

"Hi!" it chirped back at me mindlessly, and said nothing more.

I shrugged and smashed the jar open with a punch, angered that they would test the unkillability of an innocent construct by sealing it up like Dr. Beetle dealing with a pickpocket, and then heard the roar of the slime coming closer and decided I didn't have any more time to ponder any mysteries. I snagged the lizard-thing and ran for the nearest ladderway off the research level, and as soon as we were safely away I put it down and slammed the hatch shut behind us. By the time I looked up again the little creature was gone, so I wished it well and got back to what I was doing.

Right. If Jonathan was here then they'd be trying to fight their way in from the surface entrance. So what I needed to do was get back to the upper levels and try to hit the enemy lines from-

The distant and muffled roar of what could only be an enraged Hive Queen broke into my thoughts. Okay, I guess Jonathan wasn't trying to fight his way in from the surface the hard way after all. I had no idea how he could have gotten this deeply into the guts of the base this quickly, but then again I wasn't the one who'd grown up here. Nesting Hive Queens didn't wake up and rampage like that from little provocations, so some kind of significant force had gotten this far down inside and woken up the nest.

I sighed as I ran towards the sounds of the disturbance as quickly as I could. Foundry Level I noted one of the guide signs as I got closer and closer. Well, if there was one of those down here then that would make sense as a large open space to keep the Hive. I really hope Jonathan had brought enough force to handle it, but if he hadn't then at least I could contribute something useful with this heavy beamer-

I came to a halt at the main foundry entrance to be confronted with the incredible sight of over ninety dead Hive Warriors lying in chunks all over the room and the Queen's corpse in the center of the floor having visibly been stabbed to death all up along its spinal cord and with both of its eyes impaled. Jonathan, Violetta, Zeetha, Higgs, two of Agatha's personal Jager honor guard, and a Vespiary four-man team all stood there looking weary but triumphant. Higgs and the other Jagers had taken the bulk of the hits and were fairly battered and rent, but Jager healing meant that they'd easily walk it off. Everybody else merely had nicks and a few bruises. They'd killed Hive Warriors in an enclosed space at over nine-to-one odds and a Queen. The former was considered an extremely good but still not implausible kill ratio for the Wasp Hunters, but doing all that and a Hive Queen? And she'd apparently died in melee combat?

Wow.

"Hey Gil!" Zeetha called to me cheerfully. "You just missed the good part! Nice, huh?" she bragged, waving over at the dead Queen with one of her swords. Zeetha had done that?

"You're here!" Jonathan said relievedly. "Where's the others?"

"They took them away maybe an hour ago!" I said. "I've been doing the heroic freestyle ever since, and Tarvek's apparently having to triple agent scam again!"

"Oh wonderful." Jonathan groused. "So literally no one except us is even remotely where they're supposed to be for the rest of this plan to work. Seen any Geisterdamen yet?"

"No." I said worriedly. "They must have their own section of the base, and they're apparently turtling in it."

We rapidly brought each other up to speed on our various statuses, plans, and recent activities, and then spent a frantic moment figuring out what to do next.

"Well, wherever Korel took the others it was either up or down. Up would be worse for us, so-" Jonathan snapped his fingers in realization. "Yes!"

"Exactly," I nodded to him. "What sort of static defenses are Dimo and his people looking at topside?"

"Anything that the Other's people could have retrofitted in here at any time over the past seven years." Jonathan pointed out reasonably. "But the basic architecture of this base is intended to allow a small number of defenders to bottleneck a large number of attackers at the surface for a damn long time. That's part of why I ordered Dimo not to try pushing in so hard."

"And why they'll crack like an egg if they're hit from behind." I mused. "Ruxala? How fast can your people get back up that shaft?"

"Maybe five minutes?" she replied. "But why do you want us to evacuate? There might still be stragglers-"

"Just stragglers we can handle," I said. "But no, what I want is your team to run a message to Dimo. Tell him to peel off twenty of his best and get them up the slope to the foundry stack, then rappel down into the base via the stack and head up from here to pincer the defenders holding the main base entrance."

"Not her," Higgs said. "Me. I can get back up there and all of them back down here a lot faster than she could, and with Dimo on the surface the inside Jager team will need a commander. Ruxala's people stay down here and sweep for stray bugs, and also scout some of the layout for the troops I'll be bringing down so they can help guide us up when we arrive."

"So, call it fifteen minutes until both your and Dimo's teams have shredded the topside bottleneck and we've got all one hundred of our Jagers down into the base." Jonathan agreed. "Which means we, the six of us left here, go down right now. Because once Korel knows what's on the surface she'll turn right around and be dragging Agatha and Tarvek straight to the deepest guts of this base. Her only play left is to try to use one of the old connecting tunnels to any other part of the extended complex."

"Exactly. Follow Jonathan!" I called, because I certainly didn't know exactly where we were going down here, and Ruxala and her team split off to sweep the Foundry level, Higgs headed back up the smelter stack as fast as he possibly could, and Jonathan and the rest came along in my wake. I absently noted Violetta giving Jonathan his energy pistol back right before we headed out.

"Oh, Jonathan?" I said to him as we ran. "Something very strange happened. There was this silly-looking lizard construct down in the research level when I was busy setting loose all the experiments, and when I let it out of its cage it had a message for you."

"For me?" he asked confusedly.

"Yes," I said. "You must warn your brother; beware the renegade." I quoted it.

"Did it say anything else?" he asked.

"Just 'Hi!'" I replied, imitating its silly chirp as best I could.

"Viva la weird, I guess." he shrugged it off, and we kept running.

* * * * *​

Agatha POV:

"You have nothing to bargain with!" the vicious old harridan holding a poisoned dart to my throat spat me.

I grinned with a confidence I didn't entirely feel and replied. "If they had the knowledge and the craft to bring one airship through the defenses unnoticed, then how many more will follow? What assaults you now is only the vanguard and it alone still brings enough force to severely try your defenses. When the remainder of the fleet joins it-"

"We won't be here when the reinforcements get here!" Korel said desperately. "Knights! Prepare to move out!"

"Move where?" Tarvek said incredulously from where Korel still stood on the back of his neck. "I think you'd just better take us to them now, Madwa." he insisted. "Let us cut our losses and accept the turncoat's wages, as opposed to the traitor's. Because as things stand now we'll never get a better deal than this."

"Smoke always rises!" she replied to him frantically. "Smoke does not quit!"

"If you are smoke then we are fire." I insisted, causing Madwa Korel's head to snap back to me in shock. "You ultimately define your existence only in relation to us. Without a family to serve, or an enemy to guard against, then what does a Smoke Knight do? But you discarded your family long ago, Madwa Korel." I said softly. "And now your enemies are about to discard you. You traded your heart to try and steal your heart's desire and now you will never have either. For all your greater skills and experience Violetta is a far greater Smoke Knight, a far greater person, than you will ever be."

"You-" Korel snarled at me thickly, enraged beyond words. "You don't get to peacefully sleep through this." she hissed, putting her dart away. "I want you awake at every minute through this, to see precisely what your 'bargaining' position really is!"

"What an astonishing coincidence," I said to her evenly. "So do I."

"Very well, be it resolved that we all mutually despise each other." Tarvek said sarcastically. "Now can somebody get her foot off of me so that we can get to the escaping alive part?"

"How on Earth did you miss how strong this girl really is?" Madwa screamed down at him.

"I didn't." Tarvek said smugly. "As you told Lady Vrin, I always did like to play my little games. But Agatha is a wonderfully pragmatic young woman, and so when I outlined to her how we could get away clear and with a shiny new kingdom of our own to boot by simply using the opening you were giving us-"

I shrugged. "As is, it appears that rather than a kingdom of our own we shall have to settle for taking the Baron's shilling after all, Tarvek." I said calmly. "Still, there are far worse second options that we could be reduced to."

Korel gritted her teeth. "We have another escape route," she pointed out to us as she let up on Tarvek. "Our original plan for a Storm King can still work." she said, glaring at me. "If not quite on the same terms as originally envised."

"And this escape route leads...?" Tarvek said, dusting himself off.

"To another auxiliary facility in the extended complex via a deep subsurface tunnel." Korel explained. "Old Teufel wanted to be able to reach any part of his little underground town here from any other without having to be seen topside. None of the other conspirators were using it, and we have a backup airship with a cloak waiting there where it's been waiting for the past several years. Just in case."

I nodded coldly at Tarvek, who nodded back with equal coldness.

"Very well." Korel agreed. "Now let's go!" and we all headed off. Tarvek and I traded small matching grins behind her back. Honestly, you'd think someone with her experience would be harder to fool, especially given how we were only improv'ing instead of working from a prepared script. Still, Madame Olga and Master Payne were very experienced at con games, and even only the few basics they'd had the chance to teach me in the final week before our departure still worked quite well if you could keep a straight enough face, had an experienced enough partner to play off of, and your enemy was desperate enough to actually want to believe it.

Assuming we were actually being believed, of course. After all, we weren't the only people here who could pretend to fall for something only just long enough to finish luring an enemy into sticking out their neck.

As we headed down into the lower levels of the base, I started softly whistling to myself. If my Heterodyning annoyed that vicious old witch a little, that would be a nice bonus right now.

* * * * *​

Jonathan POV:

We were now several levels below the research level and still hadn't seen any Geisterdamen. And we had to find them. The Summoning Engine would be wherever they were clustered the thickest.

"All right, at this point we're only one level from the bottom." I said. "And they look like they aren't even using these, except for the physical plant. So-"

"They dug their own tunnels even deeper in." Violetta said. "Great. You won't have any more knowledge of the layout than we do."

"And fighting giant spiders not just underground, but in a dedicated spider lair." I said.

"But dot's de fun part!" Oggie chimed in.

"Pipple comink!" Maxim hissed much more quietly, and we tried our best to fade back and into a nearby side compartment.

Smoke Knights! Violetta frantically hand-signaled us, right before they hit us.

The simplest way to not get backstabbed by invisible ninjas was to put your back against something solid, so those of us who didn't have a wall or a cabinet to use had simply used each other. Violetta of course hadn't bothered as she could smoke any of these idiots on even terms and they knew she could so she wouldn't even pretend to do otherwise. I hadn't bothered to put my back against anything either as I had Best of the Best to let me shred them as easily as DuPree could have, so the one that had come in behind me baited into expecting an easy kill got stabbed straight through the heart as I ran my saber up and under my armpit exactly on cue. Gil took a minor cut from the one that had tried him on but they'd had to approach from the front due to his back being into a corner, so once they'd revealed themselves by attacking Gil simply pounded his straight into the floor. Maxim and Oggie had both taken solid hits from theirs because veteran Smoke Knight stealth could fool even Jager senses, but it would have taken substantially more damage than they'd taken to even slow them down much and their superhumanly fast counterattacks had had both their opponents torn wide open before they could disengage.

Which left Zeetha as our weak link because she'd completely ignored our cautions to immediately put her back to something and fight as defensively as possible if we engaged Smoke Knights, and was about to get herself stabbed square in the base of the neck and instantly killed when both Gil and I reached the one who'd come in behind her. My sword took her attacker's hand off at the wrist as Gil's hammer-fist simultaneously crushed his skull. Because to be honest we'd already kinda expected her to get a little reckless, so we'd already been moving even before our own opponents had hit the floor.

"Never do that again!" we both yelled at her in stereo.

Zeetha looked down at the corpse of the Smoke Knight behind her and paled at the realization of just how close she'd come to dying. "Um...?"

"You thought whatever blind-fighting training they gave you in Skifander would automatically work even on a totally unfamiliar type of enemy, didn't you?" Gil cried. "Zeetha, just because your homeland is great doesn't mean it automatically beats everyone else in the world at everything! Some people in Europa actually know what they're doing!"

"I'm sorry, okay?!?" she ranted at him. "I..." she took a deep breath before continuing in a more subdued tone of voice. "I really am."

"Getting distracted!" I yelled at them both, and waved my sword at the door. "These were almost certainly a bodyguard team clearing a route for a principal! Any guesses for who?"

We all tore frantically out into the corridor and Violetta pointed at the very tail end of another group of Smoke Knights down the hallway heading from one cross-corridor into another. Their one team had moved to engage us while the rest of them concentrated on getting someone to safety.

"That's them!" she cried, and we all started sprinting. Gil and I both snapped off death ray shots at their stragglers, burning them down on the spot. The rest of them didn't turn to engage but instead stepped up their pace, and at the very edge of visibility in the middle of their group I spotted a brief flash of red-gold hair alongside another flash of deeper read-

"Agatha! Tarvek!" I pointed. "That's them! Let's goooo!"

Madwa Korel's team were veteran Smoke Knights to a man and could sprint faster than almost anyone, and keep that pace up for an astonishingly long time. But perhaps the least athletic person in our team was Violetta, who in any other world would have been at 'street-level superhero' levels physically and was herself the equal of virtually anyone on Madwa's team. Best of the Best and years of obsessive training put me at peak human or slightly beyond in all physical characteristics, and Zeetha's Skifanderian training likewise. And Gil was carrying a set of personal augmentations second only to the Baron himself, and Maxim and Oggie were Jagers. So we were not only keeping even with our foes in a stern chase, we were starting to overhaul them.

However, when we left the bottom level behind and instead started down into a recently-dug tunnel through the rock, we all knew that shit was about to get real. The webbing traces on the walls shouted it out as clearly as a sign; this was the inner sanctum of the Geisterdamen. Madwa and her people were running straight into their reinforcements, while ours would still be perhaps ten or fifteen minutes behind us if all went well.

"The timing on this is gonna be tricky." I hissed to Gil. "So, push or fold?"

"Push." he said. "We've got to look like-"

We broke off as the first wave of Geisterdamen leapt at us from ambush. They were superhumanly strong, and extremely fast, and very well trained. One of them even had somehow learned Skifanderian battle-arts, and between that and her superhuman physical stats would have probably sent Zeetha to the hospital if they'd tried dueling it out in a fair fight.

Which is why we didn't even remotely bother fighting fair. We had two energy weapons in the hands of expert marksmen - in fact, I was a perfect marksman - and a Smoke Knight, so all Zeetha and the boys needed to do was form a line and tank while us ranged attackers did the DPS. The one waving Skifanderian swords caught an energy bolt from both me and Gil first thing and was burnt to ash, and then we started killing the rest. Geisters weren't affected by most regular venoms but the Empire had killed and dissected enough of them over the past few years' worth of shadow warfare to analyze their biochemistry, and so Violetta had a formula for her darts that dropped 'em in their tracks.

But, there were only six of us, we were fighting in an unfamiliar underground trap-warren that they knew intimately, and there were a lot of them. So even as we cut our way deeper and deeper into the heart of their lair, we got slower and slower. And towards the very end, Korel and her team also joined the fight. And if they've got enough reserves and you don't, eventually you lose.

"Despair now and fight to your deaths, or live and hope to fight again another day - however vainly." Lady Vrin - the Geisterdamen's High Priestess, as she'd introduced herself - said to us regally as we stood in one of the lower caverns surrounded by a small army.

"Why not just door number one?" Violetta snarked.

"Oh, as soon as their Goddess returns they're going to wasp you," Madwa Korel sneered. "Even you Sparks, once Lucrezia finishes tweaking the slavers. But if you think that's still better than dying, then don't let me stop you."

"Agatha?" Gil called up to where she and Tarvek were still helplessly restrained by the Geisterdamen flanking Vrin. "Are you all right?"

"Don't let them kill you!" she called down desperately. "I know it looks horrible, but we can still figure out something!"

"You hope in vain, Holy Child." Lady Vrin told her respectfully. "But your heart is strong and pure even if your youth means that your wisdom is still incomplete, as could only be expected of our Goddess' child. Their obedience must be compelled if they are to be allowed to live in the glorious new world to come, but even chains can be lightly and mercifully laid."

"Somebody care to translate that from Geister-priestess?" I said frustratedly.

"Be a good boy and swallow your medicine and for Agatha's sake they promise they won't order you to do anything too horrible." Madwa said amusingly.

I looked at Gil, and slumped my shoulders in defeat. If literally everything else failed then I could at least still take action despite being wasped, even if nobody else here knew that-

"Weapons down, everyone." Gil agreed with me, and we all dropped 'em and put up our hands. "No tricks." The Geisterdamen moved into contain us.

"Of course your hearts intend trickery, even if your words are otherwise." Vrin said amusedly. "Your surrender is as false as any Shadow Worlder's word always is. But it suits us to let you play into our hands for now, for we will be one step ahead of you. And soon, very soon, you will be forever ours." She smiled cruelly. "And with that in mind, Madwa Korel, we must now discuss the appropriate reward for your loyalty."

"But I need no reward to serve the Goddess," Korel replied unctuously.

"But you simply must be given one," Vrin implored her. "I positively insist. Now KNEEL!" she suddenly roared, and Madwa and all her Smoke Knights involuntarily hit the floor.

"What-?" Madwa Korel shrieked in panic, an instant before the Geisters nearest her and her people leapt in, spiders and all, to take advantage of their moment of helpless paralysis and rend them where they lay.

"You did not bring the Holy Child and your Storm King to our tunnels as proof of your loyalty, Madwa Korel." Vrin monologued smugly over their dying, whimpering forms. "You were traitors, who fled in here a step ahead of enemies you could not overcome, abandoning all your plans merely to throw yourselves at my feet and pretend to have never betrayed at all as you begged for another day of life." Vrin shrugged. "We may not be trained in all the fine details of your Shadow World intrigues and arts, Madwa Korel, but neither are we fools."

"But... Milvistle's vaccine..." Korel gurgled with her last breaths.

"Although a heretic, Milvistle was still Geisterdamen." Vrin sneered. "Do you truly think that one such as you could betray and torture her without her working a revenge from beyond the grave? Her 'gift' to you never truly worked, Madwa Korel." Vrin finished smugly. "We merely let you believe it did.", and Madwa Korel and all her renegades died with those horrible last words ringing in their ears.

"Okay," Tarvek said simply. "I might utterly loathe everything that you and your 'Divine Lady' stand for as well as you yourselves, both individually and collectively, but I am also legitimately impressed."

"Your distaste for us is irrelevant, Shadow Worlder." Vrin said to him icily. "But your regard is appropriate. Velix, arrange for the tunnel entrance to be collapsed. Everyone else, bring the prisoners along. The Summoning awaits."

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Yes, I like to write the Geisterdamen as Lovecraftian level creepy. It works for them.

Agatha really gets off a nice The Reason You Suck speech, doesn't she?

And yes, "The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart." is perhaps the single greatest line of dialogue Lois Bujold has ever written. When I rip people off, I take the good loot drops.

And yes, the gambit pileup just turned into a fifteen-car wreck on the freeway here, and now its just down to the last-ditch final moments. I particularly loved writing Agatha and Tarvek trying to play Madwa trying to play them while the Geisters were ultimately holding trumps.

At least, trumps over Madwa. Whether they've actually got a winning hand vs. our heroes? Well... tune in on the next thrilling episode of Girl Genius!

 

[cliffc999]

Lady Vrin POV:

My heart exulted, and the hearts of all my sisters likewise. After such a long time, after so much heartbreak and loss, this was finally the day of our triumph! This was the day of our redemption! We would finally bring the Holy Child to the Summoning Engine and recall our Goddess from the void, and her Lovely Aspect would at last return to forgive us and allow us to go home!

The Holy Child herself walked at my side, escorted and guarded by several of my most elite. She held her head high and walked with a steady gait, betraying no signs of trepidation or hesitation at all. Velix had told me of the Holy Child's doubts and fears earlier, testifying as to how horribly the Holy Child had been misled by those of the Shadow World who had stolen her away from us and how little faith she had possessed in the truth of our Goddess. But even with all that working against her the blood still ran true in her veins, and however misguided her convictions may have been her courage and caring were still plainly visible to us all. I could respect this about her, and even admire her for it, even as I simultaneously used force of arms to compel the Holy Child to take her place upon the throne and sacrifice her mortal existence to return the life that had been so blasphemously stolen from her mother. For of course our Goddess would exert her benevolent will to return that gift of life to her daughter as soon as she possibly could, and raise her up even further. What mother could possibly fail to love and cherish her child, especially when that child was so strong and brave and beautiful?

Behind her, the remainder of my guards brought her companions. The Jagermonsters were immune to the wasps but were also kept chained by their own unbreakable leashes to the blood of Heterodyne, which our Goddess would soon share in, and so they would soon be useful assets to us. The remainder were all strong Sparks, great warriors, or both, and thus also of high potential use. That is why I had not immediately ordered them put down upon their surrender; the Smoke Knight and the Skifanderian were already vulnerable to the wasps, and the other three soon would be. And as the early stages of our Goddess' plan would involve sustaining the illusion that she was still the Holy Child- was still Agatha Heterodyne to the remainder of the Shadow World, that illusion would only be enhanced further by having Agatha's companions visibly alive and at her side.

But the true prize was the Baron's son. With the treachery of many of our Shadow World allies finally made manifest and the impending military defeat of the remainder, we were about to lose the Shadow Worlder armies we had intended as a useful part of the upcoming consolidation of our Goddess' rule. But there was very seldom a loss that did not come accompanied by a fresh opportunity, and in this case the opportunity to steal the Baron's armies was essentially being handed to us as a gift. As soon as Gilgamesh Wulfenbach's mind was ours then only his father's heartbeat would stand between our Goddess and full control over the mightiest military machine in Europa. And with the Goddess herself positioned as 'Agatha Heterodyne' to the view of the world, we had any number of plays possible from there. We even had a potential Storm King of our own as well, should our Goddess decide it would be easier to feign a loss of the Wulfenbach Empire to us rather than steal their victory.

And Madwa Korel had thought that we knew nothing of Shadow Worlder intrigues! Foolish, vain old woman. Like far too many great warriors she had confused possessing vast skill at arms for possessing mastery of thought. When Milvistle's heretics had so suddenly vanished with such peculiar tracelessness there were really only two credible suspects for who had performed such a feat, as only they would have had both the relevant skills and the knowledge of our existence. Barring the bizarrely unforeseeable it had been either the Smoke Knights who had opposed us or the ones who were ostensibly allied to us. When the Dowager Princess' forces did not substantially change their operational tempo following the event, as if they had received no substantial new information sources, then obviously it was not her Smoke Knights who had spirited away Milvistle's heretics. And that of course made it equally obvious who had done so.

And of course the obvious first thing that Korel would have asked Milvistle for would be an immunity versus the wasps, so taking one of her cohorts quietly aside and testing his alleged immunity was simplicity itself. When I discovered that my voice still worked upon him it was equally as easy to command him to speak to me about everything he knew of Korel's intrigues and planned betrayals, then to never speak of his ongoing slavery to me or his new status within her ranks as my double agent. And so I had easily outmaneuvered Madwa Korel for so many years, via that suborned slave and several others, knowing everything that she planned against me even as she had thought I knew nothing. Right up until the day finally came when her usefulness was at an end.

A faint snatch of music caught my ear. The Holy Child was humming to herself as she walked, a hauntingly complex and unfamiliar yet strangely beautiful tune. It seemed to whisper of mysteries, of endless possibilities, of something beyond the conventional experience of the Shadow World. I nodded to myself in approval. Even our Goddess had never made such music. Truly was our Lady's daughter showing the proof of her own blood as a demigoddess, and in the paradise that would be the future clearly she would rise up to claim a worthy role in the pantheon of her own. I hoped to hear such music from her for many ages to come.

A distant explosion echoed through the tunnels. Good. Velix's team had collapsed the cavern entrance. Rabennest was useless to us now that the Baron had found it, but with our Goddess' return we would no longer need it. Soon we would have Mechanicsburg as our new seat of rule via our Goddess in her daughter's body, along with Castle Wulfenbach via the Baron's heir. Then the rest of Europa. And we were not trapped in these caverns, oh no. We had dug deep and had been digging for years. We had more than enough escape routes, and not just to the network of tunnels that connected the scattered parts of the Rabennest complex to each other but also to isolated places of our own hidden in mountain valleys and caves miles away from here. And we had never let our Shadow World allies know about any of them, and what they had never known they could not possibly have betrayed. Once our Goddess had returned we could easily spirit ourselves away from here and surface anywhere else in Europa that we needed to.

The Lady of Sharp Crystal, our Goddess' own Terrible Aspect, greeted us as we entered the bottommost cavern where the Summoning Engine lay. The unstoppable will of our Goddess had preserved her wrathful form as a ghost outside of time even as the treachery of the Shadow World and the unforeseeable doom that lay beyond the Time of Prophecy had declared that her time in the world must end. In the very heart of the Void she had endured by will alone, struggling to show us a vision of her from time to time to guide us as we needed, to lead to the day where the Holy Child would allow her Lovely Aspect to be born in flesh again and thus free her Terrible Aspect from the curse of nonbeing. The Lady of Sharp Crystal could never appear to us for long, and only as a ghost, and never predictably, but it was expected that today of all days would be the day she escaped the clutches of the Void.

"At last, you have brought Her!" she greeted us, her voice clashing in our ears with far less of the distortion that it usually held. How wondrous! She had almost fully manifested already!

"Hello, mother." the Holy Child greeted her progenitor with fearless anger. "This is quite the welcome home that you've planned for me!"

"Oh, Agatha." the Lady of Sharp Crystal said pityingly, lightly gliding across the floor to confront her daughter face-to-face while all her companions gaped in shock and terror. "If you had been raised as were supposed to have been, then you would have understood."

"You had over a year to raise my brother," the Holy Child immediately retorted to my shock. "And what did you do instead? You murdered him!" she spat at our Lady. "Do your priestesses even know you ever had another child?"

No, we hadn't known! The prophecies had never spoken of this-!

"You are impertinent and ignorant." the Lady replied icily. "I suppose that your uncle deserves the blame for that. But mere words are unnecessary to enlighten you when all the Truth you will ever need awaits you there." she finished, with an expansive wave at the elaborate throne we had prepared.

"You can't drop the 'all-knowing Goddess' act even now?" the Holy Child spat at her mother. "You- you are the absolute worst!" she screamed. "Was anything about you ever real, at any point in your life?" she continued icily. "Or were you always just playing to the expectations of others like a character in a Heterodyne Show, because you never had a soul of your own to tell you who you were?"

What was the Holy Child even talking about-?

"Prepare the Summoning at once!" our Lady's Terrible Aspect shrieked. The imperious command shocked us out of my hesitation and we all leapt to do as we were bid. The Holy Child had just reached the foot of the throne when-

"My Lady!" Velix shouted as she ran into the room and our Lady rounded on her with a snarl. "The surface sentries have reported- Baron Wulfenbach is approaching!"

"What do you mean, Baron Wulfenbach is approaching?!?" our Lady cried in alarm.

"With his entire rapid deployment fleet!" Velix continued. "They are almost at the base of the main approach even now!"

"KLAUS!" our Lady screamed in utter fury. "Oh, I should have killed you the last time we parted! But that is an error that I will gladly rectify! VRIN!" she turned to me. "I will meet the Baron at the main passage defensive line and finish him off myself! Then I will return here to supervise the transfer! Keep them secure until my return or all your lives will be forfeit!"

"My Lady," I stammered as I kneeled before her, forcing myself to speak in contradiction to her will despite the danger that at any moment her wrath would cleanse me with the burning light. "You are still only mostly manifest! Until the Summoning is complete you may yet be drawn back into the Void to wait for another period! How long should we wait for your return before we- we dare the Summoning without you...?"

"One-quarter of an hour." she answered me after a long, hateful pause, and then immediately departed the room to head towards one of the surface exits, and we all redoubled our guard.

We could not falter now. Destiny was at hand.

* * * * *​

Klaus POV:

The emplacements that Petrus Teufel had set here to delay any armed force attempting to use the only route that was large and obvious enough to have even a faint hope of being charted through the limitations of the distortion zone by outsiders would have been sufficient to stop any force that almost any individual Spark ruler could have raised during the latter days of the Long War. They would have been enough to delay and make ruinously expensive the victory of any foreseeable coalition among such scattered and anarchic conditions, to the point that such a coalition would have almost inevitably fallen apart before actually taking Rabennest.

They were not remotely sufficient to stop a force as large and unified as my Empire, not even when we were restricted to only having brought our fastest and longest-range rapid deployment vessels. Not even by ourselves, let alone with the allies that I had brought. The best-fitted vessels for this long-range dash to the heart of the enemy's power that the Fifty Families could contribute were also here. Even a detachment of the Royal Navy's own rapid-deployment airships had come in answer to my urgent request, using the superior engine technology that had made Albia's long-range exploration fleets the most advanced in the world to cross the distance from Dover Base to Rabennest as quickly as we had made the passage from the Low Countries.

"Sir, Archimedes reports all ships ready!" one of my signalmen called away. That would be Prince Martellus' flagship.

"Royal Victrix reports all in readiness!" another signalman reported. Our British allies were also in position.

"All Wulfenbach ships report ready!" my flag captain told me.

"General signal to the fleet! All ships... fire!" I ordered, and the main guns of our entire task force began blazing away as rapidly as they could. Since height was distance when dealing with artillery fire, we could of course outrange any ground-based defenses save the largest energy weapons. But at such a range accuracy normally suffered, to the point that unless you were attacking something that was conveniently far away from any possible collateral damage you had to draw closer to the ground.

However, these were the the Carpathian mountains. There were no farms near here, no towns, no noncombatants. We could bombard freely from extreme range, and we were cheerfully doing so. The defenses bottlenecking the main valley approach to Rabennest would be cleared away within-

Ah, in addition to the static defenses all of their remaining airships were now advancing to meet us. A last act of bravery, or the compulsions of revenants? It did not matter either way- they were combatants, they bore arms against us, and unless they surrendered, we would have to destroy them-

"Sir!" one of the signalmen reported. "The relay drone has a clear signal path! We've raised the L-79!"

"Tell Jonathan to get clear if it all possible!" I ordered at once. "And to report his status!"

"Herr Baron," my flag captain told me tightly, having gone over to check the display himself at first report. "The L-79 is at present being conned by Lt. Heinrich. Captain Fairchild personally led a raid team into the heart of the main airship repair dock, which is where the enemy resistance is apparently concentrated, via a secret route to try and recover your son- your other son, Lady Heterodyne, and Prince Sturmvoraus. There has-" he swallowed. "There has been no further contact with any of them for over twenty minutes. The remainder of the troops are only now beginning to make it past the surface defenses and penetrate the facility."

"Is there-" I forced myself to keep speaking levelly. "Is there also a location on the Princess of Skifander?"

"She was also on the raid team." Captain Patel answered me.

No! my heart screamed. Both my sons, and now my daughter as well?!?

"Herr Baron!" Trelawney Thorpe suddenly called from the console of instruments that had been hastily set up for her on the flag bridge. "The temporal flux readings are rising! The Other is taking the field!"

"GET ME A CENTER!" I shouted at her. "WHERE IS SHE?!?"

"The radiation plot suggests that she will reach the surface at the center battery of the outer defensive line, Herr Baron." Miss Thorpe responded to me professionally, her eyes reflecting only compassion at my loss.

"Signalman, inform Prince von Blitzengaard that Archimedes now has the flag," I said icily, and then I turned and left the flag bridge without another word.

My personal drop-armor, with all the improvements I and Gilgamesh and Jonathan had made on the original design in years past and the most recent additions that I and Thorpe had hastily fitted to it during our voyage here, finished falling through the several-thousand-foot drop to hit the ground directly on top of the main set of gun emplacements. I tore through all the soldiers who came piling out of the hatches to engage me as if they were wet paper, then began to vent my remaining anger on the siege guns themselves. They had dared to take the lives of my-

"Hello, Klaus." Lucrezia's oddly harmonic voice came to my ears, as arrogant and mocking as ever. I idly noted that her crystal-metal body was far more solid-appearing than it had been the last time she'd confronted me in my quarters, and that her voice was far less distorted. The readings displayed inside my helmet confirmed my subjective impression- she was almost entirely synchronized with the timestream now. Almost fully solid and material. Agatha must already be at the Summoning Engine-

I had no words left for my former lover, or anyone else. I had only wrath. And I began to share it with her.

My augmented drop-armor carried the heaviest energy beams capable of being mounted on a mobile platform this size without compromising other design factors, as well as sonics, corrosives, gas, and a magnetic vari-cannon intended for launching anything from armor-piercing cannon rounds to flechette grenades. For long as the onboard power and ammunition held out I could single-handedly engage an army in this suit. And the recent retrofits we'd made-

Whatever Lucrezia's mechanized body was made out of now, it shed conventional attacks like armor-plate shed raindrops. The corrosives and projectiles were useless. I hadn't even tried the gas. The sonics only drew laughter, and then a sonic shriek of her own in reply that would have vibrated my skeleton into dust had I not been in a hermetically-sealed powered exoskeleton. Only the energy beams were making any headway and even that much only as I applied the full power of my Spark to frantically recalibrate them even as I fired them.

And she was fast, and she was strong. Her body contained fewer implanted weapons than my armor, mostly just a few particularly nasty death rays and her voice, but apparently only because she had felt no need for any more of them. Whatever exotic substance her clank-form was made out of it was far stronger than steel and was being driven by actuators with a higher power-to-volume ratio than even the most advanced sparkwork hydraulics could deliver. My suit was intended to withstand heavy clank cannons without harm and her bare fists were already beginning to slowly dent and batter my systems.

I kept a constant eye on the temporal synchronization meter as it steadily drew higher and higher- there! It had reached the agreed-upon percent, and now it was time for to spring the trap-

"Oh Klaus," Lucrezia kept mocking me. "You're as magnificent a fighter as ever, but even wrapped in as many little toys as you are you're still only-"

"NOW!" I called, and the several clank-piloted air-skiffs that had snuck up on us while I'd held Lucrezia's attention on me, the ones carrying the resonance cannons we'd built, all began a crossfire on Lucrezia and began to tear at the very roots of her only partially stable connection to normal space-time. And even as she plucked one out of the air with a flailing death ray blast while she jerked and twitched in the heart of the beams, another one smoothly moved to take its place. We had lots of air-skiffs, and I had lots of clanks.

"Flesh and blood?" I spat back at her with a bloody smile. "It seems to be working well so far!" I shouted at her. "Perhaps that's why you're so eager to get it back?!?"

"There is far more to ruling an empire than simply brutalizing it with metal and might, after all." Lucrezia said back to me as she fought herself free of the first round of resonance distortion and the network shut down to reset and recalibrate. "But of course you wouldn't know that."

"Says the woman who has no one and nothing that she can trust in this world without gelding its mind first!" I retorted as we fell to another round of combat, as I yet again played decoy to gain as much new data for Thorpe and the others as I could. I felt a brief touch of something upon my mind, and concentrated briefly on dispelling it-

"Blaming me for all the shortcomings of human nature is a bit unfair, don't you think?" she said simply.

"That is your excuse for the slaver wasps? For the bombardments? For the butchery? For the son you callously disposed of, and the daughter you intend to consume?" I screamed. "To blame the sins of others?"

"You of all people should know about justifying ruthless actions as necessary to restrain the inherent chaos of life." Lucrezia replied matter-of-factly. "And really, one musn't get too sentimental about children."

"YOU ARE GOING TO DIE, AND I AM GOING TO REVEL IN IT!" I spat at her. Because after all, what else could possibly be said?

"One of us certainly is." Lucrezia agreed with me. "And one of us certainly will."

The second round of distortion began, and Lucrezia began to scream and desychronize as I yet again felt that politely insistent pressure of something-

-and then suddenly I was on the ground, bleeding and with the torn and strewn remnants of my armor around me. Finally freed to use the full power of her body, Lucrezia had moved faster than the eye could possibly see to tear my already battered armor loose at every joint and seam without harming me further inside. So as to save me to play with, and to savor the kill.

"Fool!" she screamed joyously and with no more distortion effects in her voice save those of the Madness Place and simple joy itself, as she stood over my prone and battered form. "As you were studying and manipulating my temporal synchronization with your little toys, I was likewise studying yours! Your own resonance cannons, your own technology, gave me the final impetus I needed to finally tear myself loose from the clutch of paradox and fully resynchronize! You gave me the keys to my full return in this form, just as my daughter is even now giving me the keys to my return in hers!"

"And so Lucrezia Mongfish yet again scavenges the work of a superior mind and twists it to her own last-ditch escape, and then asks the world to applaud her for her brilliance." I sneered, defiant to the last. "So far your new life seems to be no different from your old one."

"I always did love how amusingly cruel you could be when properly motivated, Klaus." Lucrezia said to me. "That crack would have actually hurt, if it hadn't come from such a beaten man. But take heart. At least you get to die a magnificent death after a magnificent battle, at the hands of the most dangerous woman you ever loved."

"Oh Lucrezia," I said as I laughed, bitterly but genuinely laughed at her. "The most dangerous woman I ever loved? You were barely third."

"Third-?" she said confusedly as that light mental contact that had been intermittently touching my mind finally received my affirmative thought in reply, and-

Out of nowhere a wreath of power snapped into existence around Lucrezia's body, several orders of magnitude more powerful than anything even the full power of our resonance cannon network could have delivered at its height. With her now fully and 100% synchronized to this space and time, Lucrezia Mongfish's current iteration would not have the slightest hope of escape back into the depths of paradoxical unbeing. When destroyed here and now, she would remain destroyed for all time, with the 'Muse of Time' finally removed from the playing board forever and only the instance of Lucrezia in Agatha's mind remaining.

And she would be destroyed, for the entire purpose of this charade of resistance had been to lure the "Muse of Time" out, using myself as the only bait she could not possibly resist, and tricking her into thinking that she was stealing our own tools to complete her escape from the Void when that was precisely what we had wanted her to do all along. So that she would be here, and fully present, and caught out in the open on the battlefield and facing the one opponent in Europa she could not defeat - and an opponent who'd already had ample opportunity to study Lucrezia's every strength and weakness both from her own direct observations of our combat and all the remote telemetry being broadcast from my armor's onboard sensors.

As a shadow fell across us both and blocked out the very sun, Lucrezia looked up helplessly from where she was irresistibly pinned to see, dressed in resplendent bronze armor and helmet with the flag of her nation prominent upon her breast, the fifty-foot-tall form of Her Undying Majesty herself, Queen Albia of Britannia, towering over us all. She had travelled here in the flesh onboard Royal Victrix in answer to her Sacred Guardian's desperate summons and had withheld her power and her presence from the entire battlefield until the opportune moment, and that moment-

"LUCREZIA MONGFISH, IN THE NAME OF MY MURDERED SISTER QUEENS AND THE FREE PEOPLES OF ALL EUROPA-"

-was now.

"-JUSTICE IS OURS!"

And as Albia's voice echoed back from all the surrounding mountains around us, her sword blade came down wreathed in the terrible fires of creation itself and smote Lucrezia Mongfish's twisted form from the Earth forever.

"Is she gone?" I asked quietly, as Albia shrunk down to equal my height and reached down to help me up from where I lay. She had of course shielded me from her blast so I had taken no harm there, but I was already more than a bit battered from Lucrezia's own efforts.

"All trace of this iteration of her, and for all time." she replied to me matter-of-factly, and then closed her eyes and breathed deeply. "After five thousand years..." her voice husked out, overcome with rare emotion, before steadying back down. "May my sisters be at peace now."

"And may we all," I agreed sadly, and then spoke the words that vain hope compelled me to try even though I knew how futile the odds were. "Albia... is it possible..." I forced myself to keep speaking. "That any of my children are still alive?"

She turned away from me to gaze up at the peak of Rabennest, and nodded her head once. "They all are."

"Then please!" I begged her desperately, overwhelmed with both relief that it wasn't too late and terror at the thought that it might still be. "Go to them! I will humble myself before you in any way that you wish, just save them!"

"Queen Zantabraxus is a very fortunate woman, Klaus." Albia said affectionately as she turned back to me, as I despaired and fumed at how insufferably she toyed with my emotions instead of going to them right now- "And I would love to meet her as a friend one day. So please trust me when I say that she will not be bereaved here and now, and neither will you."

"What?!?" I asked her. "But then why aren't you-?"

"Oh, you'll see." she said mischievously.

* * * * *​

Jonathan POV:

All emotion had drained from me to be replaced by emptiness the instant I saw the 'Muse of Time' standing there waiting for us by the Summoning Engine.

Of course. This is why the Dreen had said we would lose. That was a nigh-unstoppable quantum-molecular-forged killing machine made with the benefit of who knew how many centuries' worth of stolen technology from all across time, and driven by a fully-capable instance of Lucrezia Mongfish's brain. In 20/20 hindsight the entire thing laid itself out before me; my entrance into the timestream as a Jumper, the original closed temporal loop of the Muse of Time that I had utterly disrupted by derailing canon as hard as I did, paradoxical time ghosts, all of it. I'd used Grandma's Scheming to set up a grand play on multiple levels across several entire nations, even to the point of the Baron's arrival being within two hours' of the precalculated time despite all the disruptions and improvisations so far, but it all meant nothing because we had a damn demigoddess on the field that nobody had planned for. Even our play with Agatha's implant would fail; the other-Lucrezia here would be more than capable of neutralizing it-

I barely paid attention when ClankCrezia had left to go fight the Baron. Barring a miracle, she'd be back soon enough after finishing that chore. Our only faintest hope was that the fight would last long enough they'd put Agatha in the Summoning Engine without her-

-a hope that, after the longest wait we'd all ever had in our lives, actually came true. After the allotted fifteen minutes came and went, Vrin and her technicians began to set up the Summoning Engine themselves. We hadn't tried fighting our way out before for several reasons, one of them being the number of fingers that were already on triggers for weapons already aimed at our heads, but this would be the obvious moment for any last-ditch gestures of defiance so they were doubly on alert.

Agatha expressionlessly sat down in the machine and they threw the switches. A corona of energy flared, her screams rang out-

And no explosion. Of course there wouldn't be-

After a long, terrible moment where she looked positively dead, she shook her head and then angrily shook off an attempt by Vrin to help her to her feet. Slowly and slightly unsteadily she rose to look around-

"My Lady?" Vrin asked, her voice quavering. "Is- is it you?"

"Of course it's me!" she angrily snapped back, the impossibly arrogant tones and diction of Lucrezia Mongfish rolling forth as clear and unmistakable as any Heterodyne show ever could. "What, do you wish proof? Then HAIL YOUR GODDESS!" she belted forth in a full-throated Sparky rant.

"All hail the Divine Lady!" every single Geisterdamen chanted in unison, compelled by both their obedience programming and their sincere fanaticism. "All hail her Joyous Aspect, returned to us at last!"

"That's better!" she said impishly. "Oh look!" she said, turning to face us. "Why Prince Aaronev, is that you?" she said cheerfully to Tarvek. "But why are you under guard? And who are your friends?"

"That is Aaronev's son, My Lady." Lady Vrin corrected her gently. "It has been eighteen years since your Joyous Aspect walked the surface of Europa. These are people of uncertain loyalty yet great potential usefulness to our current situation, and we have prepared Slaver Wasps for them. But the three Sparks among them-" she trailed off.

"Ah yes, a simple enough adjustment." she nodded. "So thoughtful of you all. Very well, brief me on the current situation. In two minutes or less."

After Vrin had done so, she nodded again. "That is a nice plan. A very nice one. For servants." she said, turning to face Vrin with sudden anger. "Do you think yourself wiser than me?"

"Of course not, My Lady!" Vrin said, kneeling in placation. "A thousand apologies if I upset you!"

"You have not upset me," she said. "You have done things of which I have not approved, and will almost certainly do them again in the future. But I forgive you your ignorance, so even as I must punish you for what you have done-" she stopped, and then continued. "I can at least promise that it will not be done in wrath, Vrin. Only in necessity."

"I await your judgement, My Lady." Lady Vrin said.

"Very well!" she said commandingly. "First off, release the prisoners and have them stand over there! Up against that wall!" she pointed imperiously.

Puzzled yet entirely unwilling to question their Divine Lady, they did so. Perhaps they thought she was lining us up for a firing squad.

"Second, let it be known that an enemy creeps among us that none of you have seen and which is ready to sow chaos and death!" she said dramatically. "All my most loyal, be prepared to fight with everything at your command on the signal!"

The Geisterdamen all tensed and began looking around, settling into back-to-back combat formations as well-trained fire teams. Once they were distracted Tarvek began whispering under his breath to us about possible options-

"And third-" she said, whistling to herself briefly before turning to us as we stood lined up safely out of the way and winked at us as she snagged a death ray from where our weapons had been piled on a table nearby the Summoning Engine. Because we might all be doomed when the Muse of Time finishes killing our rescue party and gets back here, but at least we can leave her feeling really really disappointed when she gets back-

"SHOWTIME!" Agatha shouted, and suddenly explosions began to erupt in the middle of the various clumps of Geisterdamen as we all moved at once.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: *"Rule Britannia" plays loudly*

And that is when you don't need Trelawney to channel the power of Albia. When Her Majesty shows up to do the stomping in person. As well she would, because there's 5000+ years of payback waiting there.

As to the cliffhanger? Obviously you'll find out next episode but you already have all the clues to figure it out now.

PS: I promised you another Flash Gordon reference, and you got it. *eg*

 

[cliffc999]

Agatha POV:

"SHOWTIME!"

And on my signal the dingbots seeded all across this room, the ones that had been self-replicating for the past couple of hours after I'd tricked Velix into tossing the prime unit disguised as my trilobite medallion into the scrap metal bin and which had followed us down into these caverns on my signal, began detonating. I'd designed them to be able to accept programming updates via my Heterodyning, so all I'd had to do on our way down here and for the final attack orders in this cavern was whistle.

The bit with my ordering the Geisterdamen to assume formations against an unseen enemy was a last-minute improvisation. Jonathan, who'd fought them before, had once mentioned that they had a particular tactic of standing back-to-back in a formation of threes whenever surrounded on open ground. I'd seen how that would make them clumped and vulnerable to my exploding dingbots, so having had effective tactical command of both sides of the fight I'd ordered the one side to arrange themselves to be most vulnerable to my hidden clank minions and then ordered the minions to take optimum advantage of that vulnerability.

Screams of agony filled and overfilled and echoed throughout the canon as dozens of the Geisterdamen were taken entirely out of action in the very first wave. Even the ones who weren't killed or knocked unconscious by the blasts were still rendered hors de combat by the simple fact that you couldn't fight or run without working legs, and the floor-level detonations were shredding feet and ankles all across the room. I'd essentially filled almost the entire room with self-deploying mobile land mines. However, I'd had to order the dingbots to almost completely ignore the area closest to my friends and myself so that we wouldn't get caught in the explosions, and that meant some of the Geisterdamen were still active.

A flash of pain rippled through my head, giving me a horrible flashback to that locket, as I raised my death ray to burn down a sword-wielding Geisterdamen who'd apparently been the first to make the mental leap that I was not their Goddess incarnate after all. The two nearest her snapped out of their own shock as their squadmate began to fall and dashed towards toward me at blurring speed, and as I frantically tried to shift my aim Gilgamesh came leaping into my field of view and fractured the one's skull with a single blow while Tarvek took the other square in the throat with a flying kick. They landed side-by-side, nodded once at each other, and each grabbed a sword from the two Geisterdamen that they'd felled and began to fight.

Strong arms grabbed me and gently but irresistibly pushed me down behind the nearby altar. "HOY!" I heard Oggie's voice yell. "Hyu is carrying all de important schtuff right now! So hyu please keeps hyu head down so ve don't lose it!" My two Jager bodyguards took up stations on either side of me and formed a protective bubble around me while I stayed in cover, and I nodded and began to grit my teeth against the sensations welling up in my brain now that the adrenalin was starting to ebb. You didn't trap the anima of the worst person to ever live inside your head without having to make a substantial project out of it, so I welcomed the temporary shelter from the combat as I closed my eyes and concentrated as hard as I could.

Lucrezia's presence in my mind was shrieking and raving and ranting with a mad fury the likes of which I hadn't even conceived of. Utterly mad, and yet still impotent. The neural-trap implant in my head, the one that had been painstakingly reverse-engineered from Zola's own implant, was working exactly as designed. The Baron and Prince von Blitzengaard had taken extensive notes as they'd painstakingly defused all the biochemical and implanted anti-interrogation measures Zola had had in her, and Jonathan had memorized all their notes as well as supplementing the data with his own examinations of her when he'd returned to Castle Wulfenbach.

Which was a very good thing, as the secondary function of the implant would have left my skull smeared all over the walls of this cave if the primary function hadn't worked as intended and Lucrezia had ended up the dominant personality in my head. I hadn't disagreed with that part, but neither had I or anyone else been looking forward to needing that particular contingency.

But we hadn't needed it. Despite all the unexpected twists and turns and betrayals, despite never having anticipated that we'd end up in Rabennest of all places instead of the far easier-to-infiltrate simple madboy's castle or hidden outpost that we'd thought the Other's supporters would be using, we'd finally made it here and successfully baited them into using the Summoning Engine on me and getting Lucrezia's mind caught in the neural trap we'd had waiting for her all along. Even the last-minute revelation of that terrible thing hadn't stopped us, not with the Baron's timely arrival to distract it. And here I'd thought Jonathan had been being ludicrously over-prepared in taking such care to arrange for such massive and what I had thought to be unnecessary overkill. Note to self: career specialists in complicated fields that yourself aren't an expert in are to have their advice taken more seriously in the future.

We'd accomplished the mission. From our very first strategy conference we'd known that without a cure for revenant infection, Europa was essentially doomed in the long term. And we'd also known that hoping to reverse-engineer the Other's technology and produce such a cure ourselves was a pipe dream; Sparks all across Europa had been attempting to crack the arcane bio-engineering that lay behind the Hive Engines and had gotten nowhere. Only the Other, or someone she'd personally trained, would know the secrets we needed. And so our goal had been simple; to capture one of those minds for interrogation.

And the earlier interrogations of Zola had outlined a wonderful possibility. The renegade Jovians that she'd worked for had not all been happy to be Lucrezia's little lapdogs. They'd already been working on a scheme to capture Lucrezia's mind in a helpless state and drain it of all its secrets, a scheme that relied on her niece Zola's genetic correspondence to Lucrezia being second only to my own and an implant based on Lucrezia's own consciousness-transfer technology that would render her a helpless passenger in the brain of a would-be host, not the dominant or the only personality. So when Jonathan's observations had confirmed that this story of hers was true and not another of her lies, we'd adapted our strategy from 'Use me as bait to lure out a key scientific mind' to 'Use me as bait to lure out the key scientific mind, and trap her forever'.

And it had worked. Lucrezia Mongfish - she was not my mother, I would never call her my mother ever again even in the privacy of my thoughts - was now our helpless prisoner. And any knowledge that she possessed was accessible to me simply by thinking about it. And while I was barely able to keep from reeling as such terrible knowledge filled my mind, the full litany of her crimes and horrors, the sickening sense of how it had felt to do such things, the twisted joy she took in being such an atrocity against existence-

Our lands. Our people. Our responsibility.

I repeated my internal mantra and felt Lucrezia's presence retreat as my feelings and my values, equally as incomprehensible to her as hers were to me, clashed against her values and left her reeling. Fidelity. Compassion. Empathy. Friendship. Love. All of them were things that she'd had every opportunity to learn about, to receive, to be part of. From my father, from my uncle, from the young Baron, from all of the people whose lives the Heterodyne Boys had ever touched for the greater good and who'd done their best to aid them in return. From an entire world that they'd all worked so hard to try and make a little better. A better world that they'd eagerly welcomed Lucrezia among, had outright begged her to join. A world she'd never even tried to appreciate, had never even perceived, even as she'd smiled and pretended to them that she did.

The lives of the family that I'd never known unreeled before me in Lucrezia's memories. For all their own tragic mistakes, all of their human flaws and foibles, I could see that even though the mythology and hagiography that Europa had built up around them was laughably inaccurate at so many points the essence of their legend was still true. That they'd genuinely been some of the finest people that Europa had ever known. That they'd been heroes.

And Lucrezia herself had been a welcomed peer among them, a woman they'd thought had wanted to be a hero along with them, and yet at every step of the way she'd never even tried to be. She'd simply stood among them with placid face and friendly mien while her eyes secretly marked down every one of them for massacre. I had told that terrible thing that had spoken with my mother's voice that it- that Lucrezia- had never truly possessed a human soul even back when it had worn human flesh. And I'd had no idea at the time of just how correct I'd been.

Lucrezia's ghost in my mind whispered to me, whispered where it could not hope to compel, and showed me things that she considered beautiful. The slaver wasps and exactly how they worked upon the brain. The sheer depth and subtlety of the control it could wreak on others, and all the ways that control could be used to twist and break and play. The tempting vision of a world where no one could ever disobey me, no one could ever disappoint me, no one could even dream of hurting me. And I had to exert more willpower than I'd ever needed before in my life-

-to avoid vomiting on the floor. What sort of person could ever look upon such a thing and react with anything but horror? What sort of psychology could ever think that was good? I had full access to this woman's memories and even I couldn't begin to contemplate!

I was not Lucrezia Mongfish. I would never be Lucrezia Mongfish. I would never be such a small, twisted, pathetic thing that the only way I could hope to feel like a giant would be to crush all others beneath me until they were lower than ants. Even the Old Heterodynes, themselves monsters one and all, would have thought she was revolting. Let alone the New Heterodynes that the world had begun to know, the tradition I swore that I would continue. Like my father and uncle before me, I would be a hero.

No. I was a hero.

And for as long as I never let myself forget what was truly important, I'd continue to be one.

* * * * *​

Jonathan POV:

"For a little space you may triumph on the field, for a day. But against the Power that now arises there is no victory."

Denethor's quote from 'The Return of the King' echoed through my mind as we fought our way through the remnants of the Geisterdamen. Barring the few sentries that had still needed to remain at their posts essentially every one that had been present in this facility had been here to witness the 'glorious return' of their Goddess, and most of them had been killed or crippled in the initial wave of detonations. When Tarvek had whispered to us at the last minute of the trick Agatha had played with the self-replicating clanks my jaw had almost dropped. If I'd ever seen myself as the protagonist of this story, then right then is when I'd have known that the torch had just passed.

But I hadn't come here to be a story-book hero. I hadn't come here to make it all about me. I hadn't chosen to come here at all. But I had come here, and I'd gotten to know these people, and to bond with them, and to love them.

And I was so terrified that I was going to lose them all, to have things rewind and see familiar faces on different people. People who wouldn't remember me, wouldn't know me, wouldn't have shared all that we'd shared. Memories, experiences, those were what formed identity. And shared memories and experiences were what formed bonds. And to rewind and have to do it all over again- what a catch-22! To choose to do it different and know that the people you had lost were forever lost, or to try and reproduce everything and be as creepy as a guy trying to force his new girlfriend to dress and act like his old dead one as if it were some demented anime-

So yeah, the moment in Lord of the Rings when Denethor's only reaction to the heroic battle of the Pelennor Fields was that it would only buy a brief respite, and then the overwhelming power of Sauron would resurge to crush the weakened remnants of the West as if they had never been? What with the Muse of Time being ready to come back any time now and wipe us all out like insects, because we had nothing in this room that could hope to dent that thing? Well, that mental image of Tolkien's was kinda on my mind right now. Seriously, we might as well be ordinary police with ordinary firearms trying to stop Ultron in a Marvel comic. That wasn't despair talking, that was straight-up tactical evaluation. We were trapped in the bottom of a hole that it was at the top of, and it was armored against any firepower we had available or that we could even hope to kit-bash together.

Still, it did seem to be taking an incredibly long time to get back down here so maybe we could at least finish killing our way out of this place and then outrun it back up to the airship. At least it couldn't fly-

Huh. We appeared to be out of Geisterdamen. I'd been fighting on autopilot all the while I'd been trying to mentally get a grip on the bigger picture, of course, and between the exploding dingbots and the sheer surprise advantage we'd had- well, shit. Earlier this afternoon we'd helped kill ninety-plus Hive Warriors and a gorram Queen in a room not that much larger than this, so a couple dozen shell-shocked Geisterdamen who were the only ones still combat-effective after the initial bombardment? Not that hard. We hadn't even needed Agatha to use her voice to paralyze them and make them sitting ducks- not that any of us would have even thought about asking her to do that.

Right, now maybe we could get out of here-

As soon as the job was done Violetta leapt into my arms and gave me an enthusiastic hug, and I reflexively hugged her back and smiled at her like a dope. God, I hoped we'd actually make it out of here-

"Lady Vrin?" I heard Agatha's voice saying, and we turned to see her confronting the Geisterdamen High Priestess. Vrin had started out the fight kneeling at what she'd believed to be her Goddess' feet, and I noted with shock that she apparently hadn't moved an inch throughout the entire battle.

"Holy Chil- Agatha." I heard Vrin reply, her voice sad and empty.

"I carry your Lady's memories, but I am not her." Agatha told her. "It was a strategy we employed."

"And an obvious one- in hindsight." Lady Vrin said ruefully. "We already knew that you had captured the false Heterodyne girl, the one that Madwa Korel's traitors had so painstakingly prepared. We should have anticipated that you would duplicate her trick."

"Yes." Agatha said. "We did."

"You will have to slay me," Lady Vrin said calmly. "Even though I-" she broke, then continued. "Even though I know now that Milvistle told the truth, that Lucrezia Mongfish had only and forever been a lie-" A single tear, the first I'd ever seen or imagined a Geisterdamen could cry, rolled down her cheek. "Whether she created us or molded us, either way it was still in her image. The softer emotions, the ones that you humans use to bond with each other and create such societies- our brains are engineered to be incapable of them. Even if some of us can choose different goals to pursue, we still cannot choose to be other than what we are."

"Your society, your inner nature, was designed to hold together only by a shared worship of her." Agatha agreed. "Your capacity to feel any empathy for others was extirpated as much as possible. Except as conscienceless criminals or ravening monsters, the Geisterdamen cannot exist for long without the symbol of their Goddess held before all their minds. And that was one of Lucrezia's very greatest sins, among a truly staggering litany of them. Creating you as she did, limiting you as she did. Even the worst of my ancestors allowed their own monsters the choice of not being one." Maxim and Oggie both nodded emphatically from where they stood flanking her.

"Agatha," Vrin begged. "Tell me- the City of Silver Light? Was it real? Do our sisters still wait there for our return?"

"No," Agatha said, also starting to silently weep. "It was only an illusion. False memories to give you an impossible hope, and bind you yet again to vainly trying to fulfill her whims. Even the time you actually lived through in the flesh, the years you spent raising the infant me, are still distorted in your recollection by the memory overlays." She sighed. "You were constructs of the Mongfishes, nothing more. And the 'Shadow World' is the only world you have ever truly existed in."

"Good." Vrin said surprisingly. "Then that means that those of us who suffered through Lucrezia's cruelty here are the only ones."

"I'm sorry, Vrin." Agatha said. "You tried so hard. You deserved better than to be used like this."

"Tell that to our many, many victims," Vrin sighed. "But you can't, unless you can speak to the dead. What you have done to us already, what you will do to me and my few remaining sisters- that will be justice and naught more."

"It will." Agatha agreed. "But I'm still sorry. Because you were victims too." And then Agatha raised her death ray-

"Agatha, no." Gil said, placing a hand on her arm.

"I have to-" she began.

"Agatha," Tarvek said gently, as the rest of us gathered around. "It is entirely to your credit that you are willing to. And yes, someone must. But you don't have to add to your regrets." He turned to Lady Vrin. "Lady Vrin, would you do one last service for the girl you helped raise?"

"I would." Vrin agreed proudly, and Tarvek handed her a dagger.

"May you find a real City of Silver Light in whatever life may come next," Agatha said to her, and without a moment's hesitation Vrin drove the dagger home.

I crossed myself and murmured a prayer over her fallen body, over all of the fallen.

"When it finally comes time to delete that ghost in your head, I hope you guys figure out a way to make it hurt." Zeetha snarled.

"Speaking of copies, let's get the hell out of here before the other one gets back." I said, clapping my hands to get everyone's attention. "Because I don't think we have much-"

"-time, Mister Andrews? Yes. That... is precisely what has been... frozen. Time." my "Benefactor's" voice rang out, as everything froze again.

"It's Fairchild!" I spat at him. "And you're repeating yourself!"

"Repetition." he smirked at me. "A... concept that you... should already be familiar... with."

"Oh no!" I said. "I want to stay here, do you get that? I choose to stay! It's only been seven years! You shouldn't even be pulling me out yet, and even if it was time I don't want to go!"

"But I told you." the "G-Man" grinned evilly at me. "That I would sometimes take the liberty of choosing for you."

"DIE!" I screamed in utterly futile rage as I punched him in the throat with the hardest and most precise blow I could muster. Of course, the only thing I did was shatter the bones in several of my fingers, but right now I was so pissed and panicked and scared I wasn't even feeling it- "You can't take them away from me! You can't take me away from them! I LOVE THEM!"

"We'll see... about that." he said icily. "But if you are so... desperate to cling... to your love-" he continued. "Then you may keep it. Normally, the process of... extraction... also helps abstract the emotions that... cling to the jump-identity. But in this case... since you asked so nicely... you will keep them all."

And I helplessly froze in stasis as the world slowly faded into white around me, just as it had once before. Sadistically, the last thing I saw before it all went away was Violetta's face-

And then nothing but those pitiless, pitiless words in front of me as, overwhelmed beyond all endurance, I blacked out.

SUBJECT: Jonathan Andrews Fairchild
STATUS: Assignments Completed - 1
AWAITING INSERTION

* * * * *​

Author's Note: And so the Girl Genius jump comes to an end, in the way we all kinda knew it would end.

The nature of the Geisterdamen has yet to be determined in canon so I went with 'Mongfish constructs with Potemkin villages in their minds' and 'Brains deliberately engineered for as little empathy as possible so that without their artificial religion, they can't form any large-scale effort on their own and thus substantially threaten Lucrezia's rule. Like Buffyvamps without souls.' And remember, Agatha is the girl who Adam and Lilith raised to see constructs as being entirely equal to people. Of course she's going to feel sorry for them once she knows how they were built and treated, even if she still fights them.

In larger Jumpchain concerns... eee-yup, the "Benefactor" is a fucking asshole. And Jonathan's going to be not in a good place for a while.

Standard Jumpchain practice is "All personality changes from identities [you imported into] can be revoked if you wish." That's not intended to remove the actual emotional bonds you made from your actual ten (or in this case seven) years spent in-jump, but to help 'abstract' the ones caused by the prior life memories of the in-jump person you isekai-inserted into if you didn't go Drop-In. Except in this case, as our "Benefactor" just said, he didn't do that for Jonathan in this jump because- well, let's just say he had reasons. If not necessarily nice ones.

Future jumps are anticipated to be nowhere near as long and complicated as this one, and unless my creative squirrel chitters out a new idea later will focus notably on internal drama and character development as Jonathan tries to struggle against ROB and Fate to get back to the home he's adopted and that's adopted him.

And no, the GG cast will not be showing up in later jumps. I said earlier that we'd be following standard Jumpchain practice of duration only continuing in the jump that the Jumper is actually in for the duration of the chain, and while that might not be universally accepted around here it's what I'm going to write and I'm being totally upfront about that. So quit brainstorming ways to try and hack it unless you want to do so solely for your own amusement, because I won't be using any of them.

Anyhoo, I hope you enjoyed the ride so far and I'll do my best to keep it enjoyable, even if there's certainly going to be a bit of a genre shift or two along the way. This is Jumpchain, you get those a lot.

 

[cliffc999]

I woke up lying face-first on a concrete floor, my broken fingers throbbing painfully. Being careful to use only my good hand to push off of, I rolled over onto my back.

I didn't even bother to open my eyes. I was exhausted - physically, mentally, and above all emotionally. It had been a long, long seven years. I'd been living in what was essentially an undercover role the entire time, and like pretty much anyone in that situation I hadn't been able to avoid psychological identification with the role. "Becoming The Mask", it was called.

Hell, after the first few years I hadn't even wanted to. As fucked up as many aspects of Europa were by 21st-century standards it still wasn't fucking Westeros or anything. The part where a lot of the ruling class was afflicted by Spark madness had certainly done society no favors but it was still a post-Enlightenment culture. They were already heading down the same road that ended at what people from modern-day Earth would call 'modern civilization', they just weren't as far along yet. And as precarious as my starting point had been, after a while I'd been able to leverage it into a position of significant influence and one where I could have a good long-term prospect of being able to help change things. And even if I couldn't substantially change things even after trying my best, at least I would have been largely safe and secure from the vicissitudes of common life. Which is all that anyone could really hope to ask for regarding the birthright lottery and far more than most people got. As Cordelia Vorkosigan had said, "Egalitarians adjust to aristocracies just fine, as long as they get to be the aristocrats."

And then there'd been Violetta-

I winced as if I'd been shot.

Yes. There had been. Her, and Gil, and Tarvek, and Agatha, and all the rest. And they were all gone-

I'd gone past rage and tears to numb. I barely even felt my hand anymore. The logical part of my mind absently noted shock and depression.

I sighed and wept, and after only long minutes - or hours, I was a bit vague at the moment - finally mustered enough willpower to open my eyes and struggle painfully to sit up. After all, even lying here until I died of dehydration wouldn't actually solve anything. My "Benefactor" wouldn't let me die, anymore than he'd have let me stay.

When I looked around I realized that I was sitting on the floor in the middle of what looked like an empty commercial warehouse. A large empty commercial warehouse. Hell, forget warehouse, this was a depot. The ceiling was at least fifty feet high, and the walls were so far away that they were barely visible. This place had at least a square mile of floor space.

As I finished doing a 360 look-around my eye caught one lone storage shelf sitting modestly nearby. Neatly arranged on its shelf was the death ray pistol I'd been carrying on the last mission and my set of traveling tools. The only two items that I'd actually paid for with CP had followed me here. As I thought about 'items' and what I'd paid for and what hadn't, a brief shiver of cold finally clued me in of something I'd been too in shock and numb to be aware of; notably, that I was naked. My "Benefactor" hadn't even let me import what I'd been wearing at the moment of my extraction. No uniform, no boots, no sword belt. And as I walked over to examine the items on the shelf, I realized that these weren't the death ray and tools I'd used to own, but instead were new-issue items of the exact same make and model. Even the little personal significance that I could have gotten from owning souvenirs of my time in Girl Genius was being denied me.

A single sheet of computer printout, as commonplace as anything from a Kinko's back in my birth timeline, appeared on the shelf in-between one eyeblink and the next. I picked it up and read it. It was a brief description of the features and usage restrictions of my new "Storage Facility", as it was called. I memorized them and then looked around for somewhere to throw the sheet away. Not finding any, I emotionlessly put it back on the shelf.

I dully noted that apparently I'd skipped all the way to "Depression" on the five stages of grief. Well, "Denial" was impossible given the circumstances, and I'd already done "Anger", and-

Okay, I apparently wasn't entirely done with anger as the fog over my mind and emotions began to slowly burn away and with a surge of adrenaline I consciously realized why my subconscious had skipped straight over "Bargaining". It was because I'd on some level been able to note all the signs that there was nothing I could really bargain with.

Logically speaking, I had to assume the starting postulate that my "Benefactor's" mentality was at least remotely analyzable with game theory or else I could never hope to figure out what his game was at all. Since the only possible way to test for that condition would be to consistently try to figure him out with zero success, which obviously presupposed me trying, then obviously I had to ignore that possibility and proceed ahead as if success were possible.

So, having decided to discard all 'he's inherently unknowable and both able and willing to surround you in an infinite cage where everything is a perfect simulation' type logical dead ends, what were we left with as possibilities?

One, he could just be randomly insane. Again, if he was then there was nothing I could do with that for now that I wasn't already doing, so just put a pin in it and come back to it later if future data suggests.

Two, he could be so unfamiliar with human psychology that he's entirely unaware that what he's doing is hurtful. But I could already ditch that theory. Once was happenstance, twice was coincidence, and three times or more was enemy action. Far too often his actions had had that tiny extra touch, that little sting, that took it from painful to spiteful. Such as Violetta's face just happening to be the very last thing I saw on the fade-out. Such as him allowing me to spend hours lying naked on a cold stone floor lost in my own misery instead of just throwing the Storage Facility briefing sheet at me right away so I'd at least have something to distract myself with.

And such as the exact timing of my extraction from Girl Genius. Now that we'd established as a fact that he'd arbitrarily ignore his own "rules" about when a jump would end at his own convenience, I had to work from the presumption that any endpoint I reached was of his choosing - or at the very least, on his sufferance. Meaning that I could blame all the timing on him.

And his pull-out had been precisely timed so that I would have neither the certainty of despair or the comfort of victory. I would spend the rest of my chain - the rest of eternity, apparently - in doubt as to whether or not the people I loved would be able to escape those caverns alive. Oh, for the duration of this Jumpchain they'd all be frozen like bugs in amber, neither alive nor dead, beyond all possible harm or taking any possible action, but at the end of the chain? Then duration would resume there, and I would have no idea what I'd be releasing them to face. Life, or death? And that can't have been a coincidence. That sonofabitch was basically holding them hostage, to force me to keep jumping and jumping for as long as I possibly could, to keep them not-dead for as long as I could. Until I finally gave up hope, until I finally ran out of endurance and could go no further.

It was like that old Charles Bronson movie "Once Upon A Time In The West", where the bad guy hadn't just lynched Bronson's character's older brother but had done so by making the young boy stand there with his brother's feet on his shoulders and the rope around his neck. So that only when he finally collapsed from exhaustion would his brother actually die. Despite having been helpless to change any part of the situation for himself and under threat of immediate death throughout, despite the blame for his brother's death attaching solely to the bad guy, the situation was deliberately set up so that the character Bronson had played could not possibly escape feeling the guilt for his brother's death himself. Solely for the sadistic amusement of his tormentor.

And that, as near as I could tell from available data, was the motive of my "Benefactor". He was enjoying watching me squirm and suffer. He was like a little kid torturing a kitten, a bully who got off on abusing something innocent and helpless to resist him. I mean, I could in theory find out later that I'd been wrong, and I certainly hoped I was- but naaaah. That was pipe-dreaming. I wasn't, and I knew I wasn't.

So as things looked right now I was hopelessly in thrall to a nigh-omnipotent sadist, and I'd be forced to keep jumping through his hoops until I broke or quit. And at this moment I had no idea what the hell I could possibly do with that. Or against that.

But I knew at least one thing I wasn't going to do, and that was actually make it easy for this miserable son-of-a-bitch.

"Hey, ace." I called out to the empty air. "So, are we doing this next jump or what?"

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Astute observers will notice that Jonathan isn't getting a Body Mod, just what the Gauntlet and Power-Loss Guidelines says he retains from fiat-backed purchases even in jumps with power-loss Drawbacks or Gauntlets.

Because I'd missed earlier that even the Basic Bodymod includes a trauma and PTSD resolver, and of course a Sadist-Chan type benefactor wouldn't actually give their Jumpers any.

Fortunately, Benefactors don't actually get to edit the actual text of jump-docs even if they get to play games with picking jumps or setting up their own Jumpchain houserules. And neither does 'basically omnipotent' mean 'free from error'.

So yeah. If shit doesn't make sense now, rest assured that it makes sense to me and will eventually do so to the audience. It's just, y'know, in order to have an eventual denouement I have to save shit to reveal.

 

[cliffc999]

Jump-Document: Buffyverse SB

Spoiler: Buffyverse (SB) Build

1200cp

Drawbacks:

Teenage Angst (+100cp) (1300) - Your mindset and mentality have been changed so that you think like a real teenager, with all the problems and issues that implies. Don't worry, you will grow up in time.

Origin:

Shadows (Drop-In) - Maybe you are a Watcher, or a witch, or maybe you just stumbled into a bar and saw some guy with horns singing karaoke. Regardless of the specifics, you are aware of the true nature of this world, to at least some extent, and are either neutral or are on humanity's side. Many neutral demons would fall into this category as well.

As a Drop-In option you have no memories or a history in this world, for good or bad. Drop-Ins do get the minimum paperwork to exist legally.

Age: 16
Race: Human

Perks:

No Weapons, No Friends, No Hope (200cp, discount Human) (1100) - Take all that away, and what's left? Just you.

And that is enough. Even when faced with impossible odds, or when everything you count on has been stripped away, you have the strength and determination to fight back. Your willpower is endless and unbreakable, and you have the inner strength to do the right thing, even if it breaks your heart.

When facing an enemy that outmatches you your sheer determination will let you surpass your limits to some extent and help tilt the odds back in your favor. Furthermore, taking this perk is essentially declaring your status as a Champion to the universe and you will be treated accordingly; you can still potentially be defeated or fail in any confrontation but you won't actually die unless facing a significant opponent. No more meaningless deaths in accidents or vs. mooks for you.

Scooby Doo, Where Are You? (200cp) (900) - You are lucky, in one specific way. When trying to solve a mystery, identify a demon, track down a prophecy or unravel a diabolical plan, you will never hit a permanent dead end. You will always find a clue or a scrap of information, or maybe a minion to beat a confession from. Of course, you are going to have to figure out what that clue means for yourself, but you will always have a chance.

Head Boy (free Shadows) - You are well-educated on the supernatural side of the world. You can identify demons, including their strengths and weaknesses, know the history behind various stories and legends, and know who the major players are. The source of this knowledge is up to you, you could have trained at the Watcher's Academy or be from a family of mages or just have stumbled onto the truth and been really thorough with your research.

You Are Extraordinary (600cp) (300) - You may not be a Slayer or a witch, but underestimating 'just a person' is never a wise idea. You have the knack of being in the right place at the right time when the chips are down, and your performance is always the very best that you are capable of doing. Furthermore, you are a wrench in the gears of fate; if you're involved then it doesn't matter what some ancient prophecy might say or what sort of 'plot armor' the Big Bad might have. Lastly, you can learn and improve yourself at five times the rate that you would otherwise be able to. You don't gain any special powers from this perk alone, but that will not limit your achievements.

Items:

Mr. Pointy (free) - For a limited time only, all Jumpchain visitors to the Hellmouth get a free complimentary wooden stake! Easy to carry and conceal too, even if you'd think your outfit wouldn't have enough room. And don't worry too much if you lose it or break it. You'll get a warranty replacement in the morning.

Wardrobe (free) - You have such a massive wardrobe that you never need to wear the same clothes twice, and always have something appropriate for any occasion.

Weapons (100cp) (200) - You have a full personal arsenal of well-made weapons of some sort that will stand up to far more heavy usage than most. This is limited to real-world weapons. You also you have fairly substantial ammunition supplies that will replenish daily.

Bare Necessities (100cp) (100) - You have a trust fund that pays in whatever the local currency is; equivalent to two hundred thousand dollars ($200,000.00) per year. Your home, vehicle, and other possessions are upgraded to be appropriate for this level of income. This money is legal, with all taxes paid and all documentation needed. No one will question where it comes from, and the local economy will adjust (somehow) to not be harmed by the influx of currency.

Library (free) - You have an extensive library of books focused on demonology and the occult, as well as records of prophecies and some on magic and spellcasting. This library will update in later Jumps to include knowledge from that setting. The library as a whole is superbly organized, you will have no trouble finding what you need in it.

Necessary Supplies (100cp) (0) - You have a ready supply of blood, salt or anything else that you need to survive. This is the basics, not anything fancy or special, but it will keep you alive and very healthy.

Jonathan POV:

The floating touch-screen that I'd already seen once before at the start of my prior jump materialized in front of me, and I saw the title.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer - SpaceBattles Edition". Wait, that old show? The one I'd been too young to care about when it first came out, that I'd only heard about because of the pop cultural osmosis that clung to it even over a decade later when I started getting into genre fiction? The one where my attempt to Netflix it had stopped dead early in the first season after the episode with the substitute teacher that turned out to be some kind of man-eating bug because that was a shark-jumping moment right there if I'd ever heard one? The one that I'd even avoided the fanfic for? The 'cheerleader hunts vampires' show?

And what the heck was a 'SpaceBattles'? Okay, ROB just had to be throwing chaff out there to fuck with my head now. Ignore it and focus on the actual content in the jump-doc-

My heart almost stopped as soon as my eye fell on one of the early perk entries in the General section, but with strict self-discipline I forced myself to carefully read through the entire document before making any decisions.

What the hell? This asshole wants to psychologically break me and he chooses a place with an 'infinite willpower' perk available for my second jump? Okay, is this proof that ROB here lacks omniscience and omnicompetence and is actually capable of negligence or error? Or is this a trap?

Fuck it. The prize for not springing the trap is going on ahead through all the shit to come anyway but with even less capacity to carry it. And yes, it's entirely possible that the trap is 'Ha-ha! Now that you'll always keep getting back up, I can keep knocking you down forever!'. I'm not that stupid. But we're still going to go for it anyway because we'd already decided to make it as hard on this fucker as possible, and taking No Weapons, No Friends, No Hope certainly isn't choosing to do it the easy way.

Besides, the sheer appropriateness of that name for my current situation is huge.

Now, as to the rest of this sheet. Oh joy, he's mandated both the origin that removes any chance of my ducking the supernatural and mandated a Drawback that will substantially fuck with my ability to maturely process and try to start resolving the literal mountain range of shit I've got going on right now. Not subtle, ROB. Not subtle at all. I suppose I can at least take some minimal comfort you didn't just stuck me with the 'you are a sociopath now' Drawback or even the 'you are a toggleable sociopath now' "perk", but apparently you're of the 'It's no fun if they don't ultimately do it to themselves.' school of torment. Look, asshole, I actually stayed awake in community college, I know the basics of Greek tragedy. Still might not be able to avoid them sometimes, but at least I know them.

And he chose the Drop-In option as well, so that I wouldn't have any new life-memories to try and integrate into the still largely shell-shocked and brittle mess that I was carrying upstairs right now. Given the current circumstances I'm not sure whether that was a blessing or a curse.

The rest was up to me. I picked 'Human' because like I needed more problematic adjustments right now, and I didn't know enough about the setting to really judge all the merits and flaws of the other choices. My age was already locked in so I'd have to hope that the promise in Teenaged Angst that I'd eventually grow out of it only meant I had to put up with a couple years of thinking like a dumb teenager. I hadn't even done that when I'd been a teenager again in Girl Genius, because I'd first been a student in the Baron's spark school and then a military cadet and junior officer and in Europa you had to grow up fast sometimes.

But now? Now I'm going back to a late 20th-century high school. In Southern California. With at least a partial measure of drawback-enforced shallowness and immaturity. Oh, joy.

Now seeing as how I'm already an incredible fighter and a superhuman scientific genius, and have multiple years' of experience as a military officer even if I don't have a perk for that, and even have a perk already for being a superhumanly good trainer, I don't actually need most of the Shadows perk line. The connections might be useful, objectively speaking, but- no. No, I'd really like to at least give myself some more time to start to get over what I need to start getting over before I begin with the whole 'leaving people behind' thing again. So I'm hardly going to pay for a fresh group of them in each new jump.

Likewise, the only thing I'd really want from the Darkness line I already have via Grandma's Scheming. And that means looking in the Light line, and the capstone is the first thing I'm going to buy there even if I'm paying undiscounted price because if I'm to have even the slightest, tiniest, smallest hope of even remotely defying my "Benefactor's" will some day, then buying an immunity to being fatebound is a good starting point. And yes, I know that it almost certainly won't even work given that he's the ultimate source of my getting access to these perks in the first place. But what else can I do right now?

Likewise, if we're going off the assumption that his allowing me access to No Weapons... was an oversight then maybe, just maybe, Scooby Doo, Where Are You? is another oversight. And maybe, just maybe I can use it to eventually find a thread to pull on as I traverse down this God-only-knows-how-long chain via which I can start to unravel ROB's shit. And if not, hey, at least I won't have to worry about a 'we need the intel to get the intel just to know where to start looking' situation that had kept us all so stymied for months during the second phase of the Other War.

After getting that down I had only a couple hundred CP left so I chose to invest that in supplies. First up, grabbing the basic subsistence package that promises it will adapt to new and exotic requirements even if my "Benefactor" thinks it might be fun later on to mutate my ass into something unrecognizable. I hadn't missed the significance of nonhuman race options existing on jump-docs, and at any point in the indefinite future the damned red-text might pop there. Next, a basic guaranteed income because not every new jump-identity would guarantee me a position and a livelihood to import into, witness the mandatory Drop-In option I was being stuck with right now. Last, rounding out my arsenal. All things of maximum utility given that right now I had to treat every new jump not just as a set of potential hazards on its own merits but as a 'This might be my last chance to buy something useful for later before later smacks me in the junk'. Seeing as how I was being given no choice over my future destinations or any advance warning of what they were, and all.

So just like last time I finished making my selections, double-checked them, and clicked on "Confirm Build" and waited to be inserted into a new life again.

* * * * *​

I woke up on a ratty, stained motel bed that I swore only had the mattress staying intact because the bedbugs were holding hands. There was no clock anywhere on the battered furniture but I had a cheap wristwatch that said it was 8am in the morning. A few sheets of paper were lying on the bedside table next to me alongside an opened envelope, and my few pieces of luggage were in the corner.

The drivers' license in my wallet said that I was Jonathan Fairchild - not that I disapproved of that in particular, but I made a mental note as to watch what I yelled at ROB in the future that he might interpret as permission to do things to me - and had my identity's current age but an address that said I lived somewhere in San Diego. The documentation on the bedside table turned out to be a letter and pamphlet from Sunnydale High School welcoming me as a new transfer student and that I was expected at school tomorrow morning. A quick search of my luggage revealed some clothes, effects, and other miscellany that would be expected from Bare Necessities and a set of financial documents and a bank book that revealed that in this setting my income was from a trust fund set up via some anonymous bunch of lawyers - and no, not that 'Wolfram & Hart' bunch mentioned in the jump-doc, thank God.

I threw myself into the job of creating a cover story to tell my new classmates tomorrow. Well, I had two worlds' worth to draw from. In my original life I'd been a foster kid from the time I was twelve after what had happened there, and while I'd certainly gotten off a lot better than quite a few other kids in the system had, it still wasn't what you'd call a close family experience. Agatha had been far closer to Adam and Lilith then I'd been to the people who raised me, and the day I'd turned eighteen I'd basically been handed my suitcases and a bus ticket. And so like many orphans I'd been at the recruiter's the next day, even if I'd gone weekend warrior instead of full-time, and then busted my hump in-between training and the occasional flood control and hurricane duty working at various menial jobs until I'd finally been able to land a solid office job. I hadn't really had what you'd call a massive footprint in my original life - even my girlfriend and I had only been 'fifth date' material when my "Benefactor" showed up - which was almost certainly a large part of why I'd so immersed in my second life. Of course, that's back when I'd thought I'd be allowed to keep it-

I shook my head. Right, I can see the angst and wallowing is already starting to kick in. Christ, I'm going to be a terrible person to be around for weeks what with having had no fucking time to grieve before I have to start being someone else again-

All right, stick to the basics. I'm somebody's illegitimate kid and I just lost my mom and stepdad doesn't want to be embarassed admitting that he has a bastard, hence my now being alone. Dad is rich and gave me a 'go away and don't bother me' trust fund as a settlement, hence my being able to be emancipated - the only requirements for that in this state are being at least sixteen and able to support yourself. And, hrm, I'll still have to explain that I'm giving off a distinct whiff of 'military'. Hmm, we'll say stepdad was in the Navy so I grew up on military bases. That explains San Diego as my last address, and as to my alleged parents being lost in this timeline I can always recycle the actual plane crash story that's why I didn't have them in my original life-

Focus, dammit!

Drawing upon No Weapons, No Friends, No Hope got me up and moving. Even if I was going to be carrying around all this mess inside I could at least stay functional while I processed instead of wallowing while I did. And I had a lot to do today, chief among them being to find a place to live that wasn't here. So I dressed, packed, went outside to find the little hatchback that was apparently my wheels, and loaded up. Good-bye, Sunnydale Motor Inn. Zero stars, and may I never sleep in your rat trap again.

I hit the bank and withdrew five thousand dollars worth of cash, then hit the hardware store for a few purchases and then found a discreet place I could duck back into my Storage Facility. Until I could set up somewhere else, this would do for a temporary workshop, so I hauled my tools down from the shelf and got to work. Between my new infinite willpower perk, my 'peak performance' perks both old and new, and all the practice I'd had my control over my Spark was now basically total and nigh-effortless. I'd still have to actually start touching the madness to go really deep into the potential of the Madness Place, but there was now a lot more I could do now without suffering any symptoms of spark fugue at all. Which was damned useful, because I was no longer in a world where people would accept that kind of thing. Even if they weren't necessarily spooked they'd still realize something supernatural was in play, and in this place? Yeah, let's not draw that kind of notice if we don't have to.

It was less than ten minutes before I finished rewiring the four-cell Mag-Lite I'd picked up at the hardware store, and not much longer until I'd come up with a chemical mixture from various odds and ends to repolarize my new set of Ray-Bans into something that would block a lot more than sunlight. I rewarded myself with an early lunch, then started flipping through the real estate listings. Head Boy, among all the various other pieces of knowledge it granted me, had let me know that "neighbors keep odd hours" was one of the common recurring codewords for "vampire infested" in listings in communities that were particularly vampire plagued. It took me the rest of the morning and several drive-bys on likely prospects to finally find something I thought would be a nice pied-a-terre. It had a good location, it wasn't too big for one person to take care of, and thanks to "neighbors keep odd hours" it was being offered for well below even the already depressed Sunnydale average market value. And that's how I found myself a nice, small, two-bedroom ranch house that would take me only slightly less than half of my initial $200,000 allotment to pick up free and clear, at the low low surcharge of having to kill however many vampires were already in it.

It said something about the ethics level of the real estate broker that she let me sign for the place right away in return for a generous cashier's check as a down payment. She didn't even try to give me the slightest hint or warning of what I was going to be walking into. Neither did she show any curiosity about my age and unusual affluence, even if I was taking care to dress and acting more college-age than high-school age. She just tossed me the keys and wished me the best of luck. It was pretty clear that nobody expected me to live longer than a few minutes after opening the front door, witness nobody from the office wanting to come with me. From their point of view they'd just made $35,000 for less than an hour's work with no come-backs, and could just pull this off again next week for another fast buck. I started to wonder if the vampires who lived here had broken in or had been let in.

After I'd stopped for a quick bite to eat I walked in the front door of my new home with my new flashlight held high, closed it behind me, and started to walk around shining the beam around inspecting my new property like I was an ignorant civilian. Of course I was actually strapped with a short sword slung over my back and hidden by my windbreaker, my death ray pistol on one hip, and Mr. Pointy on another. Not that I wanted to actually fire the death ray in here - the damn thing would draw far too much notice and also set my new house on fire - but in case I got too far in over my head here then both my new house and my continued low profile would become optional to my not dying.

But as it turned out I didn't need to. Only two vampires lived here - boyfriend and girlfriend, apparently, and young enough that they were probably recently-turned fledglings from the UC Sunnydale campus - and so all I had to do was click my Spark-enhanced flashlight at them and they caught a six-million-lumen burst of light straight in the face. That would do permanent vision damage to a human at this range - there was a reason I'd had to also turn my new sunglasses into sparkwork-enhanced super-polarized lenses before I'd dare to use this thing - and so it not only permanently blinded the supernatural predators with highly augmented low-light vision but also left them immobile and whimpering in agony on the floor from the sheer stunning effect of such sensory overload. I easily rolled them both for their cash and any useful possessions, then dusted them.

Aaand, done. As soon as the last demonic inhabitant of this house was extirpated, that plus the fact that I was now the legal owner of it would re-establish the threshold protections. I had my sanctuary, and as soon as I finished cleaning and fixing this place up and throwing out all the crap of the prior occupants from the basement I'd have my permanent workshop. Fortunately they hadn't done more than mildly trash the place already- either they'd only recently gotten here or they didn't want to live in filth. I could finish the process of turning this house into a home later, for my immediate needs I'd just need something clean to flop on.

Right. That's a productive afternoon mostly done so okay, it's been over seven years since I've actually tasted a real goddamn pizza and we are going to indulge tonight. I flipped through the phone book until I saw a listing for a place that looked like a neighborhood joint and not a chain, then drove there - the phone wasn't hooked up yet - and bought myself an extra-large pepperoni thick crust and a two-liter of Coke. We could eat healthy later but for right now, I was going to chew and swallow and wallow in it and try to start getting used to living on modern-day Earth again-

Fuck. I thought about it again. Now this doesn't even taste good anymore.

I finished my slice and put the rest in the fridge to microwave later, then . Sundown would be coming fairly soon and the vampires would be out. And I had a date tonight.

* * * * *​

"I-I-I-I don't wanna go up there." the nervous-looking blonde cheerleader said as the rough-looking delinquent led her down the darkened hallway in Sunnydale High School. The stench of formaldehyde from a spilled jar earlier today in the science lab they'd just cut through as they'd broken into the school building still wafted slightly behind them.

The boy turned back to her with a predatory grin and smiled down at her. "Aw, you can't wait, huh?"

"We're gonna get in trouble." she said meekly.

"Yeah, you can count on it." he said arrogantly, and leaned down to kiss her. At the last second she pulled away from him and hurriedly turned back to look down the hallway-

"What was that?" she said.

"What was what-" he began to say, and then screamed in horror when the girl shrieked and then collapsed into a pile of dust right before his eyes. "OH MY GOD!" he gasped, almost fainting, before he turned and frantically ran the other way as fast as he possibly could.

I'd only watched the first four episodes of this show but I had watched the first four episodes, and the eidetic memory that my Spark of Genius gave me meant that I could recall them in detail even this many years later. So I'd known exactly what the pre-credits teaser of the pilot episode was going to be - the ironic plot twist of the vulnerable-looking girl turning out to be the vampire who ate the mean-looking boy who'd 'lured' her into the school after hours instead of vice versa - and since the shot had been conveniently framed so that I'd know exactly where the attack would take place as well, just down the hall from the library entrance, I knew exactly where to stake out.

I just hadn't known when, and I'd had to wait until after midnight before they'd finally showed up, but they finally had and so I was able to take her out with a crossbow from down the hallway. I'd deliberately spilled the formaldehyde in the science lab when I'd broken in - with far more subtlety than they had, because I knew at least the basics of how to pick locks - earlier to cover my scent and Buffyvamps had to concentrate to use their superhuman hearing, and she'd been concentrating only on her anticipation of the upcoming kill.

I knew that even as I stood here somewhere else in this town another vampire was eating another person, but I'd had a purpose beyond a simple 'I knew about this one' to come here. That vampire girl had been the same one who, later on in this episode, would lure one of the main cast members out of the Bronze to his death. And while I obviously would be continuing to take action in the future it was far simpler to intervene in that particular sequence here than there. When you had a prime chance for an ambush delivered to you gift-wrapped, you took it. And so I had, and now 'Darla' - who'd apparently been intended to do a lot of things later on the show if she'd been a named character this early - was out of the picture for good.

Look, it's not as if I had compulsive hero syndrome like I was Othar Tryggvasen or something. It was just that as long as I was here I might as well do something. Any kind of action to take, any kind of strategic or tactical goal to plan for, still beat sitting around and staring at the walls all day. And this one was at least constructive and let me work out a little bit of my anger on acceptable targets. I hadn't gone all-in on the Fighter origin in Girl Genius because I hadn't wanted to be a soldier and a warrior, after all.

Right. Might as well get back home and snatch at least a few hours of sleep while I still can. Tomorrow's a school day, after all.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: If he doesn't seem as incoherent and raging as you'd expect, that's because he's using his new infinite willpower perk to duct tape over the cracks. He's not - and he's even self-aware he's not - a healthy person right now, he's just a functional suffering one.

As to whether or not our "Benefactor" allowing him access to a perk like that so early in the chain is a mistake on his part or a scheme? Spoilers!

And yes, my knowledge of Buffy canon is basically complete. I've seen both shows pretty much front to back, except for parts of seasons 6 and 7 BtvS that I skipped watching and only caught the summaries of, and am a total Buffyverse lore nerd.

Jonathan, however, was not a fan of the franchise at all. So he only saw the first few bits of season one Buffy, is barely even aware that Angel had a show at all, and has scanty knowledge of the overall setup even by 'what you just pick up via cultural osmosis' standards. And you can have a lot of fun when your meta-knowledge exceeds your MC's by over an order of magnitude. *eg*

 

[cliffc999]

Buffy POV:

The new kid was weird.

I know, I know. Hypocritical much, Buffy? Seeing as how I was 'new kid' too, and despite my best efforts I'd also shown up on the local weird radar a lot sooner than I'd have wished to. Stupid Slayer reflexes and stupid snooty head cheerleaders who grabbed people from behind without announcing themselves first!

But yeah, the other transfer student who'd been processed in at the same time I was? Weird. First off, Principal Flutie was all judge-y about my transcript - look, don't blame me for 'mice chewing through the electrical wires', that's what the fire marshal had written down about why the gym had burned! - but Jonathan's had sailed through without a second glance. He was the straight-A student with the perfect disciplinary record while I was-

Any-hoo, something had to be fake about that guy.

First off, he was cut. And I mean cut cut. Not football player cut, not even basketball or soccer player cut. I'd been a cheerleader, so I knew what high school athletes were built like. Jonathan wasn't built like them. Now, he was still a little lanky in places but his muscle definition looked like somebody had stretched human skin over a bunch of coiled steel cables. I'd never quite seen anybody built like that before, and it certainly wasn't from any kind of workout program I'd ever heard of. Not even mine.

Second off was the way he walked. That wasn't unfamiliar at all. In fact, I was really familiar with that walk because I was the only other student in the school I knew had it. That was the 'ready to fight at any minute' walk, the one that guaranteed you could get into a good fighting stance at a moment's notice even if you were totally blitzed from behind. The "I've totally been in combat before." walk. I had it from being the Slayer and from Merrick's training and my several months' of fighting vampires already in LA, so where did he get it from? That wasn't even 'I've been in a gang' level combat readiness. Pike had been in a gang - mostly - and he hadn't had it.

Third off was his name. "Jonathan". Not John, but Jonathan. He wasn't remotely English - I definitely know what that accent sounds like - so why did he always insist on the English pronunciation? It wasn't hardly as huge a thing of the weird as some of the other things on the list, but whenever you made a mental list you always put all the things on the list so here's this one.

Fourth off was his lack of pigeonhole. He was far too athletic to be a nerd or a geek, but he wasn't remotely rah-rah enough to be a jock. His grades were waaaay too high for a burnout - if he really had straight-As in everything all the way back on his transcript to the start then only Willow could match that kind of performance - but see above re: not being a nerd or a geek. And the absolute last thing he was was average, so forget faceless masses. He did not fit any of the cliques at all, and he wasn't even trying to. What sort of sixteen-year-old boy didn't want to fit in at least a little? Even Xander's own nonconformism was actually pretty conforming as far as towards acting out against certain stereotypes he hated!

And last was Jonathan's social interaction. He was broody. Like, mega-broody. He was the king of brood, and I couldn't imagine meeting anyone else even half as broody as him. He wasn't rude, he was actually kinda nice and formal, but he did not want to get close to anybody. Not even us new kids and fellow weirdos. I mean, even though he was really handsome and all, brushing off anyone who tries to be friendly when you're new kid? Still not a survival strategy.

"So, what do you think's up with him?" I asked the gang as me and Xander and Jesse and Willow were all at our usual lunchroom table. It was a week or so after that whole eugggggh with the Harvest had happened. There'd been fewer vampires there than we'd been expecting, at least, so that was of the good, but even so anything to do with vampires was always of the bad. Still, being caught in the middle of the Bronze by a vampire attack had shocked Xander and Willow into realizing just how nasty the things that went bump in the night were, even if Jesse was still trying to stay in Sunnydale Syndrome.

"He's a stuck-up jerk?" Jesse said dismissively. "Guy thinks he's better than everyone."

"I don't know," Willow said plaintively. "I mean, stuck-up people are usually angry at other people who invade their personal space, but he's not. He's just... sad."

"Not angry? Tell that to Percy!" Jesse replied while I kept sitting back and watching the byplay. Sometimes my new friends were better than television.

"Oh, are you actually upset that Percy West got his butt kicked?" Xander said sarcastically. "Really? How many lockers did he use to try and stuff us in?"

"I don't think we can fairly call it a 'butt kicking'." I chimed in, being something of a resident authority on violence. "Jonathan gave him a verbal warning even after Percy had grabbed him by the collar, then put him in that funky one-handed wrist-lock after Percy started to shake him even after getting his warning. And he didn't hit Percy once after that but just kept holding him in place until a teacher got there. That's what they call a 'proportionate and restrained response' in the violence department, and that's not something an angry amateur does."

"Y'know, Buff, I think you're on to something." Xander said thoughtfully, pointing over at Jonathan. "Because can anybody tell me what's wrong with that picture?"

"He's... getting up to leave?" Willow asked confusedly.

"He finished his lunch in five minutes." Xander pointed out. "Like he does every day. The only other place I've ever seen people eat like that is in a boot camp movie."

"So, you think he went to military school or something?" Jesse asked.

"If he wasn't the same age we were I'd almost think it was actual military." I agreed. "Because, yeah, you're right. That is the vibe I've been trying to catch off of him and missed so far."

"Buffy, don't you have cheerleading tryouts this afternoon?" Willow suddenly remembered.

"Ahh! You're right!" I said frantically. "Why didn't you guys remind me earlier?!?"

* * * * *​

Jonathan POV:

I'd been trying to keep away from the Scooby Gang as much as I could, but that was impossible when you were in their homeroom. Buffy and I had transferred in on the same day and to the same class year, after all. I imagine that's one of the reasons why my "Benefactor" had locked my age to where it had been.

Still, just because we had social contact didn't mean we had to socialize, so I stuck with formal and broody - neither one being at all a stretch - to keep everything at a distance. I didn't quite have it in me to actually be an asshole to anyone undeserving, neither was I tactically stupid enough to deliberately burn any bridges this early, but I really wanted to take some "me" time.

However, that was now tactically impossible. The plot of the third episode, 'Witch', was coming to a head. The show hadn't given exact dates so I hadn't known when Catherine Madison would actually do the body-switch with her daughter Amy to try and relive her youth again, or else this problem could have been solved with a discreet "random barbecue fork attack". As is, I didn't want to take the chance that I'd kill the wrong one. And that meant I wasn't going to be killing anyone.

But neither could I just allow the events of the episode to happen without me because while they had solved it without me, it had occurred via unknowingly trapping Catherine Madison in a 'I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream' situation forever. And sure, she was a horrible and evil woman who wanted to steal the body of her own daughter, just like fucking Lucrezia had tried to-

But even that wasn't enough to justify an eternity of sensory deprivation torture. I could kill a woman like that without a moment's hesitation- even if I wasn't going to because I didn't want the Scooby Gang chasing me out of town as the monster of the week, stupid comic book morality code- but I had my limits.

And there was also the simple fact that even that particular victory of the Scooby Gang's had relied a whole lot on split second timing and luck. And given that I'd already been butterflying things, what with my own discreet thinning of the vampire herd outside the Bronze on the night of the Harvest, I could not just sit back and rely on even the tiniest things happening the same way. Because the prize for guessing wrong on this one would be Catherine Madison killing most or all of the gang as soon as she got forced back into her original body.

Which is why, as soon as the near-miss accident in Driver's Ed with Cordelia Chase told me that the third episode had started, I knew that the day afterwards would be the final confrontation between the Scooby Gang and the witch in the science lab. So I made sure to 'just happen' on the scene in time, just as Catherine-in-Amy's-body was entering the scene with an axe, and of course I was able to easily put her on the floor. The gang was entirely shocked at my intervention there, and even more shocked when I was able to drop Catherine herself like a bad habit as soon as she was back in her rightful body. To be fair, once the spell keeping Buffy helpless had been dispelled at the same time the body-switch had been she could have done the same, but she was too busy covering her friends against the magical attack Catherine had been about to launch to get a shot in while I'd maneuvered for the flank attack. This is why it always helps to have two fighters rather than one.

"Ummm..." Buffy began to stammer, apparently at a total loss for a reasonable explanation for this one.

"Magic is real, she's a witch, you were fighting her." I said matter-of-factly. "But she's only out, not dealt with." I looked at Giles. "You're the ritualist, right?"

"Among other things," he replied to me coolly, not surprisingly being the first person here to recover his equilibrium.

"Then are you prepared to lay down a Savignon's Binding on this woman? Like, right now?" I said. "Because she needs to be wrapped up before she wakes up or else she'll toast us all. It's not like I can keep hitting her in the head repeatedly."

"We were expecting to restrain a hostile witch today, if not quite that hostile." Giles agreed. "If you're familiar with the binding, do you practice the arts yourself?"

"Only in the academic sense." I replied. "No potential for it at all."

"What the what is going on here?" Buffy burst out beyond all endurance, while Amy still looked to be trying to reboot her brain and Xander and Willow were just silently staying in the background. Jesse had apparently begged off on the weird today or else was busy doing something else, I had no idea.

"Mister Fairchild clearly has knowledge of the existence of the supernatural on his own." Giles said as he began to efficiently lay out the preparations for the upcoming ritual to bind away Catherine Madison's powers at least temporarily. "But it's not as if there aren't independent practitioners, as we just learned."

"It's still really convenient you showing up just in the nick of time," Buffy glared at me.

"Buffy, if I know enough about magic to know about binding spells then do you think I don't also know enough to have spotted yesterday in science class when you 'accidentally' spilled that eye of newt solution on Amy? The witch-finding solution?" I asked her. "And can somebody explain to me why she was trying to kill you with an axe a couple minutes ago, but as soon as you finish whatever ritual you're doing then she's the crazy one?" I pointed at Catherine. "Who is she, anyway?"

"My mother," Amy said softly. "And she'd-" she shuddered. "She'd tried to steal my body, swap her mind with mine-"

"Christ." I said meaningfully, and as sympathetically as I could. "I'm sorry. That's just-" I shook my head. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Amy said, in that tone of voice that meant 'No, I'm not, but thanks for asking.'

"So." I said, sitting on a corner of the nearby desk and watching Giles finish the binding. "Are you good witches, or bad witches?" I deliberately invoked the Wizard of Oz to try and lighten the moment.

"Can't you tell?" Xander said hammily. "Clearly we are all of us good witches." he finished, deliberately posing like a fairy-tale princess. That drew a laugh from all the girls present, even if Amy's was a little quavery.

"You're gonna be fine, Amy." Buffy said to her compassionately as she went over to help her sit down. "It's over. We won."

"Mr. Giles," I asked. "Is there a place that you can send temporarily or not-so-temporarily insane magical practitioners? Because the ordinary criminal justice system-"

"After we'd determined that we'd almost certainly end up with a captive and evil witch at the end of this adventure, I'd already contacted some acquaintances of mine in Devon." Giles answered. "They're very powerful and experienced light witches. If anybody can help your mother overcome her corruption by dark magics, Miss Madison, then they can. And if they can't, at least they can make sure that she doesn't hurt anyone else."

"But what are we going to tell people?" Amy asked. "What are we going to tell my dad?"

"The truth, just not all of it." I said simply. "Your mom was on the edge for a long while without anyone noticing, and she finally flipped out and started attacking people. She attacked you about some crazy thing about trying to get her youth back, she attacked the girl who'd almost beaten you out on the cheerleading squad because she'd almost beaten you, she attacked everyone nearby because they were nearby. So she had to be restrained on the spot and Mr. Giles - the nearest teacher to the scene - arranged for her to be taken away and helped by some psychiatric specialists he happened to be personal friends with and thought would do a better job for her than the lousy state mental hospital would. But it was all done very very quietly, because the school didn't want any scandal or anything and neither did you."

"You're good." Xander said appreciatively. "There isn't a single word of that that isn't true, and it still totally misleads everyone."

"I can go summon the conventional authorities right now as soon as we all agree on a basic story to tell the police." Giles said to Amy. "The bindings on your mother will hold long enough that she can be safely restrained and certified by the local emergency room, and in my persona as a teacher I can recommend my 'highly talented specialists' acquaintances back in England to your father."

"Okay, it's official." Buffy said to me crisply. "From now on you are composing all of my alibis."

"In the immortal words of Sgt. Hulka, ma'am, there ain't no draft no more." I felt an impulse to snark back.

"So you do have a sense of humor!" Willow said cheerfully. "You just don't show it to most people, but you did to us- and right after helping us fight, too! Well, clearly that makes us best friends now."

"I-" I began to say before being cut off.

"Nope, sorry, you have been officially friendship adopted by the Willow." Buffy said firmly. "You're not allowed to object. It is in the sacred by-laws!" she finished with a grin.

Sonofa- how did this even happen?

"Guys?" I said firmly. "You do not want me as a friend. Except for when it's time to be professional, I'm pretty much a terrible person to be around most of the time."

"Because jokes from Bill Murray movies are the very epitome of professional." Xander said amusedly. Dammit, why the hell did I have to reference 'Stripes'?

"Speaking as the number one favorite target for every mean girl in the zip code," Willow said insistently, "I know what terrible people look like. You don't."

"... I'll think about it." I said after a long pause, committing to absolutely nothing.

"Regardless of what you young people decide or don't decide about your personal lives... Mister Fairchild, I would very much appreciate a chance to speak to you later." Giles said. "Sunnydale is full of dangers both obvious and otherwise, and even if you are already aware of some of them-"

"You don't want us at cross purposes by accident and you don't want me to get killed thinking I know something when I actually don't." I nodded. "That I can agree with. All right, tomorrow after school in the library?"

"We'll all be there!" Buffy agreed.

Greaaaaaaaaaat.

* * * * *​

Angel POV:

"Looking for someone?" I said, coming silently up behind the young vampire hunter who'd been staking out an alley intersection half a block away from the Bronze. He was a tall, highly athletic teenaged boy armed with a broadsword in a back sheath, several wooden stakes and a large fighting-knife in a chest harness, and what might have been holy water vials in other loops in the bandolier. His equipment was too shiny and new to have been in this business for very long, and was entirely out of line with his age and his clothes, so I'd pegged him as some kind of preppy wannabe who'd just found out about the supernatural side of Sunnydale and thought that some workouts and tae-whatever classes made him Batman. And so I'd decided to go over and scare him straight.

An intention that died the instant I spoke, because even if his stealth wasn't quite up to the best hunter standards and his situational awareness wasn't quite up to dealing with someone who'd been in the game as long as I had there was still absolutely nothing wrong with his reflexes. He'd pivoted and reoriented on me faster than some vampires I'd known could have, let alone virtually any normal human I'd ever met before. But he clearly wasn't a vampire and almost certainly wasn't any kind of demon I was remotely familiar with - his heartbeat, his scent, all of it spoke to warm, living human.

And now those exceptional reflexes had a crossbow aimed directly at my chest. And now that he was facing me and I was seeing him in an alert posture, his stance and wariness suggested a lot more combat experience and mental focus than a boy his age should have or that I'd have remotely given him credit for. And his eyes- his eyes were old. Far older than his body. I had very much underestimated him. I tensed and got ready to do an arrow-catch, or at the very least to let it impale my forearm rather than my chest, and switched to trying diplomacy.

"I'm not what you think I am." I tried. "And-"

"I can see the 'no reflection' in that puddle." he said calmly.

"If you know that, then why aren't we already fighting?" I asked him simply.

"I'm not entirely sure of your name, but your face is familiar. And the local word on the street is that you're a 'vampire with a soul'." the boy replied. "But what does that mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like." I said, dropping the attempt to sound charming and just being matter-of-fact. "You clearly know about Sunnydale's night life-"

"I'm not dressed like this because it's Halloween, no." the boy replied sardonically.

"-so you know we don't usually have them. But I was cursed with one."

"Fuck." he said, his eyes opening wide with realization as he tensed even further for immediate fight-or-flight. "You're Angelus."

"Angel." I corrected him firmly, and then slumped down in shame. "But... yeah. I was." I shook my head. "You're far too young to have been touched directly by anything I did, but- grandparents? Great-grandparents? Family tradition?"

"Call it part of the grieving process." he replied, clearly understanding that I'd ultimately been asking about why he'd become a hunter in the first place. And- damn it! Yes, as tightly controlled as his expression was, it was certainly something I'd seen before. That iron control stretched as tightly as a mask over the screaming, gaping void inside caused by having lost everything you'd ever loved. The face that I'd loved creating on victim after victim, until I finally ran into-

I felt every minute of my two-hundred-plus years crash down upon me as I finally pinned down my growing sense of deja vu. Standing before me was not a boy but a young man. A young man whose intense drive, whose nigh-superhuman mental focus and whose exceptional reflexes and intellect, I'd seen only once before in a human being. A young man who despite his relative lack of years and experience had still somehow undergone the same torment and loss at someone else's hand that Daniel Holtz had undergone at mine. A young man who was walking down the same road that Holtz gone down.

And I already knew where that road ended.

"I'm sorry." I said as honestly as I could.

"So am I." he replied flatly, the crossbow still aimed.

"How long ago?" I asked him.

"... less than a year." he answered. "But I'd already been training for something else before then. I adapted." he replied, and I felt the complete honesty in his words.

"You can't fill a hole in your soul by piling bodies into it." I told him earnestly. "Trust me, I know."

"I know too." he said, surprising me. "But it still beats just sitting and being alone with my- being alone." he trailed off. "Even if I'm not really helping myself any with the hunting, I'm still helping." he finished tightly.

"That's true." I said to him respectfully, impressed that even in the middle of his own pain he could still spare any thought at all to trying to spare others from it. That was certainly something Holtz had never managed.

"Fuck," he swore, and lowered and uncocked his crossbow. "If I'm not going to use this, then I shouldn't be aiming it."

I thought over possible responses. I really was not any good at this. I finally decided on a simple "1750 Crawford Street."

"... your address?" the young hunter asked me.

"You're not ready to talk yet." I said matter-of-factly, the sheer deja vu of this encounter and one of the most regretful pieces of my old, old history having been brought to mind again by this night having made me think a little about the larger picture instead of focusing on my immediate Sunnydale concerns. "But you still need to talk to someone. Maybe that someone could be me." I shrugged. "I certainly bring a different point of view than your classmates, at least."

"Ain't that the truth." he snorted, and then scratched his chin in thought. "Did you know about the attempt at the Harvest the other week?"

"I'm the one who warned the Slayer about it." I told him. "Did you know she's in town?"

"I was there, even if I wasn't with her." he asked. "Why weren't you?"

"Having a soul..." I chose my words carefully. "It gives me a choice. But it doesn't necessarily make those choices easy. I still hear the demon every day. It still tempts me. I can walk around normally, interact with people normally, but during a fight-?"

"You don't 100% trust your instincts to be safe around civilians if you're already in beast mode." he nodded. "So you stick to solo hunting and being an informant."

"That's it." I agreed.

He stood and paused in thought for a while. "You not only spotted me but you got the drop on me, and I didn't have a clue about either until it was too late. Would you mind telling me what I did wrong?"

"I'd love to." I replied.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: If any of you called 'Angel as mentor figure' before this installment, y'all are filthy filthy liars. *g*

But really, look at Jonathan through Angel's own experiences and mental lens. Who would he look like? Damn straight Angel would want to try and work off a little of his own guilt there. And Angel really is damn good at what he does. Do not forget that his early Buffy performance was him being massively emotionally compromised. If shocked out of that by something, then he'd be more like he was on his own show. Which was, y'know, pretty goddamn badass. You don't get to be one of the most feared vampires in all history by collecting bottlecaps.

As for who Daniel Holtz is, he was the arc villain on Angel season 3 (time travel plot) and he was by far, hands down, the single deadliest and most implacable mortal vampire hunter to ever live in the Buffyverse. You wished Dr. Van Helsing was on your ass instead of this guy. He ran Angelus and Darla straight out of Europe for decades.

The binding ritual is OC fanon stuff.

 

[cliffc999]

Giles POV:

Young Mister Fairchild showed up as agreed the next day, right on the dot. Buffy and all of her friends save Mr. McNally, whose initial reaction to discovering the supernatural had been to withdraw from its ugliness rather than embrace the fight against it, were with me and waiting for him. Miss Madison had chosen to attend as well.

Given that I was merely the librarian my position on the faculty should not have granted me access to student transcripts. But with the notoriously lax administration of Sunnydale High School as the only obstacle in my path I'd found it a simple enough task to access them anyway. However, Jonathan Fairchild's documentation was more than a bit scanty and unhelpful. Outside of his status as an emancipated minor, his apparent ability to cover his living expenses entirely out of his own financial resources, and a prior address and an incomplete transcript from a secondary school in San Diego, there was virtually nothing. And a quick phone call to that school had produced the knowledge that while he was documented in their records there was no memory of him in the staff member's mind at all, which was rather an odd thing considering that his grades should have made him first in his year.

It was clearly a false background, of course. Not necessarily a cause for alarm given how common such things were amongst demon hunters, but still a curious possession for a person his age to have. Even as incomplete as it was it was still quite the professional job, and the average high school student didn't remotely have the knowledge or the connections to set up such a thing. After my initial investigations last afternoon had turned up this data I'd had a quiet phone call with one of my contacts on the Council to see if our records contained any mention of him as a person of interest or if there was anything on the grapevine about increased freelance hunter interest in the Sunnydale Hellmouth, but I wasn't expecting any immediate results there.

And so, this interview.

"Good afternoon," I said to him as he came and took his seat at the end of the study table that was our usual conference site. I pursed my lips and tried to think of the most diplomatic way to phrase this-

"So, what's up with you?" Buffy crashed into the conversation. I sighed and polished my glasses.

Jonathan's lip quirked, but he confined himself to a simple "What's up with you?" in reply.

I cleared my throat for attention and held up an empty manila file folder I'd had laid out in front of me as a prop. "You almost certainly won't be surprised to hear that what part of last afternoon and evening I hadn't required to make the arrangements for Mrs. Madison's care, I spent trying to investigate your background. My findings were... incomplete." I adjusted my glasses and gave him my best 'level yet not hostile' stare that I'd already been practicing on Buffy. "Is 'Jonathan Fairchild' the name on your original birth certificate?"

"No," he said unhesitatingly and forthrightly, to the surprise of everyone at the table except me. I gave him a mental point for honesty.

"May I ask what is?" I politely continued.

"You may ask." he emphasized in the way that clearly meant 'But I'm not going to answer.' A part of my mind idly noted in passing that he was perhaps the only student in this high school who understood the correct grammatical distinction between 'You may' and 'You can'. Apparently the grades were not false even if the transcript was.

"Well, such things are relatively common in the rogue demon hunter community." I readily acknowledged him, both to let him know that this wasn't a hostile interview but more importantly to cut off any of the young people before they leapt to the assumption that anyone who didn't share their true name was automatically an enemy.

"What's a rogue demon?" Xander asked, almost inevitably on cue.

"'Rogue' as in 'unaffiliated with larger and more established groups like the Watcher's Council'." Jonathan replied.

"How did you know I was the Slayer?" Buffy asked him suspiciously. "Because we didn't tell you that!"

"He spent last night in the school records and on the phone." Jonathan said, nodding his head towards me. "I spent it networking with an older hunter I'm acquainted with and then on the computer."

"And what did you find out?" Willow asked him warily.

Jonathan took a deep breath. "Buffy's been the Slayer for only a few months. Mr. Giles is her second Watcher, only assigned after you came to Sunnydale. Your first Watcher..." he gave her a sympathetic nod. "... died in the line of duty in Los Angeles. I'm sorry."

"Yeah." Buffy said neutrally. "What else?"

"That's mostly it." he shrugged. "Everybody else here besides you and Mr. Giles are friends you made after coming here, and are largely a support team. When you go patrolling you patrol alone."

"You've been stalking me?" Buffy asked, one hand slipping underneath the table-

"Buffy!" I firmly remonstrated her. I turned to Jonathan and nodded at him to keep talking.

"No, I don't. But we're both out hunting vampires at night - I'm pretty sure that's obvious by this point - so occasionally we hunt the same places. I've seen you out on patrol a couple of times, and so has my new... associate." he replied to her.

"And I've never seen either of you why?" Buffy said archly.

"Because I don't have superpowers that help me overpower vamps straight-up, so I hunt them from ambush." he said matter-of-factly. "And how keen are vampire senses again, especially at night? If I'm successfully hiding from them then I'm certainly going to be hiding from you. As for the other guy, he's the one teaching me how to sneak better."

"... okay, makes sense." Buffy said professionally, relaxing from her suspicion.

"As you just mentioned," I said to him, "both yourself and Buffy are hunters. And you lack Slayer abilities or a regular hunting partner. Yesterday you mentioned the possibility of 'coordinating operations'...?" I left it subtly on the table.

"He means 'Do you want to join?'" Xander asked him eagerly. I sighed again.

Jonathan sat and visibly struggled with his thoughts before answering "... no thank you."

"Huh?" Buffy said confusedly. "You think you might be being just a little cocky there, Lone Ranger?"

Jonathan visibly cut himself off from an angry remark, and after a deep breath or two turned to me. "I'm not looking for new friends, and my personal life is my own to choose and so are my reasons. If we can't agree on that much respect for each other's boundaries, we couldn't be friends anyway."

"... not even a little friendship?" Willow asked him with- Good Lord, he actually resisted the 'puppy dog eyes'. I didn't think that was possible.

Jonathan reached into his school backpack and tore a sheet of paper out of his notebook, then tore it into two pieces. He wrote briefly on one of them and slid both pieces across the table to me. "That's my phone number. I'll get an answering machine for it. I don't live with anyone else so you don't have to worry about what you say. If there's an emergency where you need all hands on deck, if there's something business-related that you think I need to know about, use it. Or you can just talk to me in school, of course. Mr. Giles, could I have your phone number please?"

"Of course," I agreed, and wrote it down on the blank sheet he'd given me and handed it back. "Do you have a similar contact information for your associate?"

"That reminds me," he said, snapping his fingers. "He said I was allowed to tell you this, so here goes. My new... associate... isn't human, he's a demon. Who hunts other demons." he said, cutting off Buffy hurriedly.

"That's not entirely unknown," I agreed, interrupting Buffy myself. "Do you happen to know what particular variety of demon he is?"

"Cursed-to-have-a-soul vampire." he replied to the shock of everyone at the table.

"Are you certain he's not lying?" I asked him after a long moment.

"About the soul? I'm mostly sure he's not." he replied sensibly. "Like I told you yesterday, I can't do magic myself even if I know about it. So even if there was a 'soul detector' spell..." he trailed off in obvious invitation.

"In point of fact there is one, and if you'll stop by the library tomorrow I'll have it enchanted on a small glass orb for you." I told him. "All you'll need to do is get him to hold it, and if he is truly ensouled it will glow. If not, then it won't."

"You sure you won't want me along with you for that big confrontation?" Buffy asked him. "Y'know, just in case he flips out on you like a soulless monster after you find out he actually is one."

"You've actually met him before, if briefly." Jonathan said. "Angel, the guy who tipped you off about the Harvest that one time. So, yeah, feel free to come." he nodded. "He asked me to help make actual introductions for him with you guys anyway. He was a little skittish about walking up to you himself before because-"

"Slayer see vamp, Slayer slay vamp." Buffy nodded matter-of-factly.

"So, everybody's being totally professional, but you still don't wanna hang out at all." Xander said. "Seriously, you think you aren't being just a bit of a "This is my city!" drama queen there Bruce?"

"No I don't." he said flatly, grabbing his bag and getting up to leave. "Aaaaaand I think we're done here. See you guys around." he said, and spun and walked briskly out the door before anybody could say anything. Buffy pouted and Xander and Willow sat there in shock, but Amy got up and ran after him. I could just barely overhear what she said to him as she caught up to him at the library doors.

"Jonathan!" she said, tugging on his arm. He turned to look at her with annoyance.

"Look, I told you-" he began.

"I just-" she broke off and collected herself before she could continue. "I came here to- you helped save my life yesterday. Thank you." she finished weakly.

"Oh," he said, blushing with embarassment. "Um- sorry." he apologized to her. "And, you're welcome."

"I don't know why you're hurting so much, but if you ever need a friendly ear-" she tried.

"Amy, you're a very nice girl." he said as gently as he could. "But I am not a very nice guy. I spend pretty much my whole life now either training to kill things or actually killing things. You don't want to get into that."

"But you don't want to get out of that?" she asked him intelligently. "Not even just for a little while?"

"What I want..." he involuntarily began, before catching himself. "Isn't important any more." he finished tightly, and then he was gone.

I sighed. I knew full well what the most common origin was for a freelance demon hunter, even if none of these children did. And from the visible symptoms, 'Jonathan Fairchild' was as classic a case of it as any I'd ever heard of. This was part of what the Council had devoted its existence to preventing.

And I hated every fresh reminder of how we weren't always successful at that.

* * * * *​

Buffy POV:

And so life began making with the frustrating.

Oh, not the Slaying part. With Jonathan and Angel out there patrolling along with me, even if not with me, the Slaying got pretty easy. Turned out that Angel had been one of the scariest vampires of all time before some gypsies shoved a soul into him to make him stop and he still brought that scary to the fighting. I was glad I wouldn't have to be fighting him, because I hadn't even known vamps could fight with that much skill. Honestly, that guy was a little scary even with a soul.

And Jonathan- wow. The only reason I could even keep up with him was because I had Slayer superpowers. On pure skill alone I think he was beating out even Angel, who had more than two centuries' of experience on him and could only pull ahead on vampire superpowers. When I was a little girl I'd wanted to be an Olympic figure skater like Dorothy Hamill, and I had spent hours and hours and hours on the skating rink and taking all the skating lessons that Dad could afford to buy, which was all of them. But by the time I was twelve I'd basically hung up the skates because the reality had set in- I could put all the effort in the world into my skating and I could even get pretty good at it, even 'local kids' champion' good... but I was never, ever going to the Olympics or anywhere near them. As athletic as I was I just didn't have it in me to make Senior Nationals grade, any more than a million other athletic little girls did. You had to be a natural to do that. You had to be born with the magic touch on top of training your heart out. And when it came to figure skating, I just wasn't.

After becoming the Slayer, I had started having that kind of magic touch for fighting. But apparently I wasn't the only one and it didn't even take magic in his case, because Jonathan had apparently been born the greatest natural at fighting that I or Giles had ever seen. Even if he'd been training in martial arts as far back as I'd started figure skating, he shouldn't have remotely been as good as he is - but he was. The genetic lottery had apparently given him a grand prize ticket because he wasn't just as smart as Willow but also was a ridiculous instinctive prodigy at athletics and most especially at combat.

And then there was his whole 'obsessed' thing on top of that. Xander's joke about him being Batman was kinda on point - as near as I could tell he only came to school because he was expected to and so he made with the role-playing as a high school student for eight hours every day. Outside of that his whole life was apparently either demon hunting or prepping for same. I didn't even know where he lived yet. Giles wasn't being share-y with that info and the one time I'd tried to follow him home from school myself he'd ended up ditching me with a detour through the shopping mall.

So, yeah. I spent hours and hours and hours working out and to get as far as I did, and then someone comes along who hasn't even been stuck with the whole 'Chosen One' gig and works out hours and hours to get further ahead. I'd managed to pull him into at least some associating with the gang outside of demon-killing hours by getting him to agree to train with us, but even then he'd been so- oooooh! It wasn't fair what he did with those little joint locks or those pressure points or that leverage thing! I had superstrength! I wasn't supposed to be the one getting pinned! Ever!

No, not even if he did have a point that if a suitably trained human could do anything like this to me then I was in serious trouble if I ever ran into a vampire who'd been a black belt before being turned, so better I learn now. Ugh. Is there a spell to just make him the Slayer so I can get back to a normal life? You know, since he actually seems to live for this stuff? I sure don't!

And I couldn't even get a date! That Owen boy ditched me after I wouldn't take him along on the Slaying, and I didn't do that because Jonathan had been all 'Never unnecessarily bring someone into a combat situation if they aren't ready!'. Eugh, he'd even been making Willow train in basic hand-to-hand instead of just being the audience during our workouts. I'd almost uninvited him for that until Xander pointed out to me that if he was going to get trained up, which he really wanted to do, then it would be impolite not to share with the other girls. Okay, fine.

And the way Jonathan kept doing annoying things like saying 'If we're wondering which ones of these corpses in the morgue are actually vampires waiting to rise and we don't want to stake them all as a precaution, why not just drip a little holy water on each one and see what happens?' That's how we'd found out that there were two vampires hidden out in that whole mess from where they'd killed all the people on the bus - the big crazy street preacher guy and that poor little kid they'd turned. So we'd loaded them both into the crematorium and done. Prophecy of the rise of the Anointed One or whoever totally averted.

Stupid angsty mopey jerk! Who does he think he is with all those muscles and all that 'ooo, look at me, I'm a rogue demon hunter' training and always thinking one step ahead of everyone and always trying to look out for everybody even if he doesn't like anybody and- euggggh! The only other time I'd ever met a boy this frustrating was-

-oh. Yeah. That time.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh snap.

I am soooo not looking forward to this upcoming conversation.

"So..." I said to Amy outside on the quad the next day. She'd been mostly a Scooby ever since she'd gotten caught up in things with us, but Jesse and Amy didn't get along well - something about a disastrous attempt to date each other in freshman year - so since Jesse hung with Xander and Willow, that meant that outside of Scooby business I either ate lunch with her or with them, not both at once. Although given the way Jesse was sort of drifting further and further away the deeper we all got into the weird and the less he wanted to, that problem might be self-correcting soon. "Jonathan." I finished meaningfully.

"What about him?" she asked me warily.

Oh the hell with it! I groaned inwardly. Who just up and cut the what knot again? Let's try that, because I'm too frustrated not to!

"Do you like him?" I asked her forthrightly, knowing that the girl code required a straight answer to this straight a question.

"... I do." Amy said shyly, and my heart sank. "But I don't think he likes me." she continued, to my genuinely mixed response.

"Amy, you are like the one person he is never rude to." I pointed out. "Even Willow got verbally cut by him once."

"Jonathan's never rude to anyone who doesn't push him first," Amy pointed out. "Willow did. I don't try to." she sighed again.

"I just-" I waved my hands incoherently. "Friends! Who doesn't want any of those?" I gushed. "The whole Slayer gig says I'm not even supposed to have any, but that's the part I disagree with the most! Even more than the part where the demons kept bleeding on my good shoes!"

"At least you wear work boots now." Amy pointed out.

"Yes, because Captain Good Suggestions pointed out I was being dumb to keep wearing my fancy shoes to a dirty job." I sighed. "How can somebody be so smart and be so gifted and be so not using any of it to actually help themselves live a life?!?" I vented frustratedly.

"Did you ask Mr. Giles?" Amy said. "Maybe the grown-up point of view can see something we can't."

"Once." I nodded. "And he just gave me this kinda sad look and said that he hoped I'd never have to find out for myself, and then never wanted to talk about it again. Look, you actually seem to spend time with Jonathan-"

"I'm just borrowing some of the books about magic he has in his collection." Amy said. "After Mr. Giles found out that I was trying to learn from my mom's books, he pointed out-"

"-the stuff in there drove your mom crazy and evil, so why do you want to read it?" I agreed. "Wait, Jonathan has books on magic? I know Giles wouldn't let you into any of his when you asked."

"Jonathan's got a lot of books on everything," she said. "Including white magic. When I asked him he said you find a lot of weird stuff when you clean out demon lairs, and even after you burn all the unsafe stuff there's a lot left."

"I should be doing that," I snapped my fingers. "I might find something I can thrift shop to help my allowance. And so, you and Jonathan talk about books together a lot? Alone together-?" I said teasingly.

"We're not alone. He lives with Angel." Amy pointed out matter-of-factly. "I go over there when I want to look through their collection."

"You knew where he lives and didn't tell us?" I burst out.

"He asked me not to!" she said insistently.

"-ugh." I slumped despondently. "Okay, you win." I sighed. "I'm not the poachy kind of girl. Good luck."

"What?" Amy said confusedly before she realized exactly what I'd meant. "Oh no, it's not like that! We're just-" she shook her head sadly. "I don't even think we're friends, really. He just wanted to help me not get accidentally lost in black magic while I was looking for the other kind, so after he knew I was trying to find stuff he left me an open offer that I could come over and borrow books. We barely talk about anything not related to supernatural stuff." She shrugged. "Just like how he talks to anyone else."

"Then as God is my witness, I will crack that boy's shell!" I dramatically swore all 'Gone With The Wind' style. "Because he's just far too prime a hottie to let go to waste like that!"

"You're certainly not wrong." Amy agreed with me. "But... good luck." she finished ruefully.

* * * * *​

Angel POV:

So now I had a protege again. Now, I'd had several of those before. James. Penn. And most especially Spike. But of course those had all been vampires. Soulless demons, just like I'd been. I'd never had a human protege before, or tried to train one after I'd gotten my soul back.

Not that Jonathan needed much if any training on the combat side. He clearly had a greater natural talent for it than virtually anyone I'd ever heard of, much less met, but in a world of six billion people somebody had to be born at the top of the natural ladder. Like Jack Nicklaus had been an inherent savant with golf, Jonathan was an inherent combat savant. Show him any weapon, any school of martial arts, and he'd master it almost immediately. And he'd clearly had access to truly excellent teachers before.

Not that I could draw him out on his background beyond the very few bits that he'd willingly shared. Out of either respect for me as an acknowledged sensei or else as a simple acknowledgement that I was much harder to fool than even the Watcher - let alone any of his classmates - he didn't try his usual evasions or half-truths on me. Oh yes, I could hear those pretty clearly. My greatest talent as Angelus was my ability to play with the minds of others, after all, and you didn't learn how to be that good at deception without learning at least something of how to see through it. No, if Jonathan didn't want me to know anything about his background he'd simply politely not answer. I respected this degree of politeness by not pushing.

I'd considered some of the obvious possible scenarios regarding his mysterious antecedents and presence here, of course. That he was actually someone else's trained agent provocateur, a stalking horse sent in to get close to one of us or draw us out. That he was actually a junior Watcher that Giles had sent in to evaluate me as a possible threat or asset to his Slayer and the whole 'independent' pose was a pose. Even that he wasn't any kind of hunter at all but actually an infiltrator for one of the local Big Bads. Or that he was simply evil on his own merits. After all, nothing stopped humans from being black hats even with souls. Not even all genuine demon hunters were white hats.

But after the first several weeks I'd discarded those theories. As I'd already seen on the night I'd met him, his training as a demon hunter was incomplete. His knowledge of combat was comprehensive and thorough, both from his natural instincts and wherever he'd received his initial training, but he didn't know anything about the supernatural side of things that couldn't have come from reading through his own eclectic mishmash of a book collection and picking things up in the field. There were certain little tactics and techniques, certain things you did differently when fighting or sneaking against vampires rather than humans, that he hadn't known until after I'd shown him. And while you could pretend ignorance on academic or learned things, it was a lot harder - pretty much impossible, in fact - to make your reflexes act ignorant on demand and I'd deliberately tested for that.

So by all appearances he really was the rootless independent in the supernatural world that he'd affected to be. Whether as Watcher, spy, double agent, or anything else, he'd have known things and reacted to things that he didn't know or react to. So somebody out there had chosen to train a teenaged boy as a professional killer of some kind for reasons not related to the supernatural, and then he'd violently crashed into our world and chosen a new mission for himself. Well it's not as if child soldiers of various varieties weren't a thing all too common in human history, as depressing as that thought was to contemplate. So I just made a mental note to keep an eye out for anyone who might look like they'd come here pursuing a lost 'asset' and to give them a very unpleasant welcome to Sunnydale if they did, and then diplomatically didn't bring it up with him.

After our first week or so of lessons he'd brought up the idea of him just moving into the Crawford Street mansion with me rather than have to maintain his own household. I agreed, and not just because having a living human resident at the address would mean that the threshold protections would be re-established and no other vampires could enter the premises without an invitation. Even if neither of us were remotely talkers, it was still reassuring to just know that someone else was there, relatively nearby and available. Call it a quirk of the mind, but being alone in a large house together was still an improvement over being alone in a large house alone.

And when that Amy girl had started dropping by from time to time to help go through the book collection, that had been okay too. I'd originally been happy that Jonathan was actually starting to date again until I realized it wasn't anything of the kind and he was just trying to keep a young and untrained witch from going down the same dark path that her mother had. But that was still an entirely worthy goal in and of itself, so on the few occasions she'd been willing to talk to me about it I'd been all right with sharing a few of my own experiences with and cautions about dark magic and recommending some good starting titles from both Jonathan's and my own lore libraries. I'd have recommended a decent local practitioner to her to apprentice under except that I didn't know of any except Buffy's Watcher, who'd already turned her down apparently because he was too busy training his own Slayer. As is, we could at least get her set up with the basic meditation and self-cleansing rituals to help keep the Hellmouth from getting at her while she slowly began to learn the basic cantrips on her own.

Still, I knew perfectly well that Jonathan wasn't healing on his own. He was maintaining, but I knew the difference between getting by and actually getting over something more than anyone did. I'd spent decades failing to do the latter myself, after all. And unlike me, he didn't have decades and decades to try and slowly let things piece themselves back together. He was a mortal human with a mortal lifespan and he'd only get one chance at this. And after all the people that I'd helped break and ruin over the course of my life I wanted, really wanted, to be able to help put just one person back together.

I just didn't have the slightest clue as to how.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Remember back when Amy wasn't a psychopath and Buffy was polite enough to ask a friend if they were interested in a guy before trying to make a move on him themselves? Yeah, about that long ago.

You can hopefully can see how Teenaged Angst is interfering with Jonathan's ability to manage a situation, because with Grandma's Scheming he should be much more able to manipulate people into a desired holding pattern than he is. As is, while he can still deflect and spin like a champion he's just not being very subtle, because teenagers suck at that.

And yes, I write Angel as a very intelligent and introspective guy when his hormones aren't making him into a moron. The way I see it, Angel's massive character development on his own series later is like 75% of him recovering from a regression, not him growing into a more effective person than he ever was. So, having been given a reason to pull his head out of his ass - responsibility towards a student as well as a desire to help someone who, like him, is kinda broken as a person - as well as being deflected away from crushing on Buffy himself, he's much more like AtS Angel here.

Buffy's childhood love of figure skating and James and Penn being older vampires that Angelus had mentored before Spike are all canon. I told you I was a Buffyverse lore nerd.

I also have way too much fun writing Jonathan derailing shit left and right even when he doesn't know that he is. Given that her mother's takedown was much less relatively horrifying in this timeline, Amy didn't separate as far as she did from the Scooby Gang. And so her development as a witch wasn't entirely self-taught and with her mother's black grimoires as her only teaching tools. Which is my headcanon for how the fuck she went from 'Nice girl' in season 1 to 'amoral witch' in season 2 and then on an exponential downhill slide from there. Sure, the period trapped as a rat didn't help any but holy crap, that can't have been all of it.

Poor Jonathan. He's just lucky that Willow is still totally stuck on Xander in this sequence or else he'd have three girls crushing on him.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

Apparently setting yourself up with a cover story of a guy who has suffered an epically tragic loss and doesn't want to talk about it only encourages people to try and get you to talk about it. Of course it would. You don't go into fighting to save the world for no pay and less thanks unless you're at least partly compassionate at heart. What was I expecting?

Stupid Teenaged Angst Drawback. I'm a supergenius who was a senior field-grade officer in the spec-ops department for a continental Empire and has a perk for super-Machiavellian planning and now I can't even get the basics correct anymore. It's like an invisible damn filter on my brain that is so subtle at redacting the good ideas and encouraging the bad ones that even when I'm concentrating on noticing, I don't always notice.

This is the level of influence my "Benefactor" potentially has over me when he chooses to exercise it? How the fuck I am not just totally, irretrievably fucked here?

At any rate, despite my having drawn epically firm boundaries in the sand regarding how I didn't want to be part of anybody's personal life or vice versa, that didn't stop the Scooby Gang. It only took one session of "cross-training" for me to figure out what Giles was up to when he invited me to do it in the first place - to get me into forced regular social interaction with a peer group my age and count on good old-fashioned human nature to do the rest. But I couldn't not show up because the alternative was letting three - hell, technically four - people my age go into deadly combat wthout sufficient preparation. Buffy could at least hope to survive on her superpowers and the training she got from Giles but he was much more of an academic than a soldier, even if he was a competent fencer and crossbowman. And Giles didn't have any time or inclination to train any of the rest. So, it was up to me to get down to business.

At least I was able to start getting the rust knocked off of them. Willow wasn't at all interested in anything above the most basics of unarmed self-defense because, well, she didn't want to be. She saw herself as small and weak and thought I was only being cruelly teasing in insisting that she could hope to be more even despite her small frame and slight build. But it's not as if I hadn't seen a young woman about her size be death on two legs befo-

Anyway.

Amy actually took to the training with surprising enthusiasm. Then I remembered that this was a girl whose mother had spent years trying to push her into cheerleading even before she'd finally gone totally insane and tried the bodyswap, so she already wasn't any stranger to willpowering her way through an intensive physical conditioning program. And at least mine had a goal that she wanted to reach as opposed to just her mom wanting her to reach it. Given the training multiplier that Grindstone granted and the fact that I legitimately knew what I was doing, even with her having to split a lot of her training time and focus into magic as well as combat she was basically ready to test out as a black belt in any mundane karate dojo already. Before the end of the year she'd be ready for patrols, and that was before adding in the witch factor although we were still making zero headway on finding her a legitimate practitioner to teach her there. Giles had mentioned that it might be possible to send her away to his Devon coven acquaintances this summer, but the summer was still a good ways off.

Xander? I had to give him credit, Xander just threw himself straight into it. I'm pretty sure that part of that was wanting to impress Buffy and compete with me for alpha male (18-and-under group) around here, but the rest of it was him legitimately wanting to get out there and start doing his part to put demons in the dirt. He'd already started out in fairly good physical condition and had a lot of natural athleticism to draw upon, so it didn't take me long to get him to where he was already good enough to back up Buffy on patrols and stand alongside any of us heavy hitters in the front line, even if he shouldn't be trying to solo any cemeteries any time soon.

And he hadn't been set too far back by that thing where he'd somehow gotten temporarily possessed by an animal spirit. I'd entirely missed out on that one because I'd ditched on that particular field trip, but it had been wrapped up relatively quickly and quietly when Amy's detection spell had revealed that him and our school's new bully infestation were in fact under magical mental influence before they'd done anything worse than eat that pig. Between her power - Amy was turning out to have a strong talent for witchcraft, it's why 'find her an actual magical mentor' was turning into a priority - and Giles' knowledge of rituals they'd just been able to break the spell on Xander, who'd then told them it was the zookeeper behind it all. That had let them get their hands on what was necessary to break the rest of 'the Pack' loose of their deal.

And Xander being able to be a backup to Buffy in the field was good, because I certainly didn't want to back her up there unless it was an emergency. Because while I will admit that in neither of my prior lives did I ever qualify as a master of romance, I can spot obvious signals when they are being flung at me with a trebuchet. The tight clothes, the coy glances, the 'look at me!' posing, the coquettish voice - it took me putting up with only two patrols' worth of that before I just straight up kept switching out with Angel on those nights. After forewarning him what she was trying to pull with me and how much I just didn't want to deal with it. He sympathized, and fortunately for him she had more dignity than to hit on a guy who was older than the country she was born in. Or was just still locked in on me and too stubborn to switch targets. Didn't know, didn't care.

Not that Amy wasn't crushing on me as well but at least she was being nice about it. I'd let her down as gently as I could - as gently as I'd tried to brush Buffy off the first couple of times before I'd just started stone-facing and avoiding - but unlike Buffy Amy had accepted that and had stopped pushing. She still made sure to drop into the conversation very occasionally that if I wanted to talk or hang out as friends then her door was always open, but that kind of thing wasn't unacceptable. It certainly wasn't the 'No man can resist me! Now let's make out already!' assault of someone else. I even felt a little sad about turning Amy down consistently because I knew that pining is no fun. But we were sixteen and she was a nice, intelligent, and pretty girl. Well above average for Sunnydale High in all those categories, in fact. So somebody else would pick her up soon, I was sure. I'd even tried a little bit of nudging her and Xander together before it was explained to me that Amy was Jesse's ex from freshman year (and that those two had kinda crashed and burned) and thus the bro code forbade Xander from ever going there. Besides, he was locked in on Buffy. Which, all right, ultimately I wished he'd succeed there because I certainly didn't want to.

Still, you can only train with people so many times, help them do demon research, see them very occasionally showing up at your house to supplement their research with your library, and do the regular joint op with them before they start being comrades-in-arms if not actual friends, and that was certainly what Giles was going for with an eye towards more. And intellectually I could get that he was just trying to be a decent human being even if emotionally I was fucking just about done with it.

There's also that Team Slayer and Team Angel were now also tied together by a fiduciary relationship of sorts, seeing as how I was renting my old house to Giles. That was both so that he'd have somewhere better and larger than his apartment to live at and so that the Scooby Gang would have a dedicated, privately owned, threshold-protected operational safehouse of their very own. Because originally the Scooby Gang had been using the library, which - um, guys, all your research materials, weapons, plans, and everything are being kept in a publicly accessible space? And one that the authorities can warrantless search? Yeah, I can get using that as a plan if you have no other alternative but hey, now you do!

And I'd moved into Angel's mansion full time so nothing stopped me from leasing my old property, especially seeing as how the real estate brokers I'd originally bought this house through had died in a tragic random attack by wild dogs wielding barbecue forks. Apparently killing our way down their client list had left certain business associates of theirs feeling like they'd been betrayed. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of vampire-feeding kapos.

So, the Scooby Gang kept trying to draw me in as a full member via taking advantage of the fact that I was simply too professional not to do what would work most efficiently for demon-hunting purposes, even if I didn't like it personally. And thus I was in a slowly boiling lobster pot of unwanted social interactions.

Angel, on the other hand, wasn't trying to boil the pot at all but was simply waiting me out. I knew perfectly well that the main reason he'd taken me on as his protege was not to train me in demon hunting - I already knew enough there that simply trading tips and occasional lessons would complete my education - but so that since I'd accepted our relationship as actual master and student, he would therefore have a legitimate reason to pry into my life and help tell me how to live it. And I was even aware on some level that I'd wanted that, or else I'd never have let myself go for it in the first place. I just didn't want it right now.

Which, to be fair, he'd obviously picked up on as well. Hence his not pushing but just calmly waiting for me to crack on my own while simply being patient and being there. I guess when you were immortal you learned how to wait a lot. I guess I'd eventually be learning that too.

Still, at least the hunting was going well. Buffy and Giles had learned that the Watcher's Council didn't know everything about vampire hunting when Angel and I clued them in as to how to spot 'vampire infested' by reading between the lines in the real estate listings, and while Angel couldn't come with us on daylight raids he was entirely available for us catching them on the way out of the house in the early evening. Being able to get several vampires down in the first hour or so of an evening instead of having to spend half the night crossing cemeteries and allies before finding that many effectively doubled our kill rate per week. And it was relatively profitable, because we could toss the lairs.

Admittedly we couldn't do that constantly because Angel made the valid point that while cutting into the vampire population curve as efficiently as we could was certainly a plus, if we did too many easy nest raids like this then we'd just be selecting for surviving vampires that either forted up in entire packs in places like abandoned warehouses or instead went and sought shelter with the town's resident master vampire, imaginatively named "The Master". Although I shouldn't scoff, because apparently Heinrich Nest was in fact the oldest surviving vampire on Earth, being over a millenium old. He was so old that he couldn't even retain human form anymore, being permanently in 'game face'. And, most importantly, he was Angel's grandsire. So we knew a lot about our enemy.

Except, of course, where to find him. Hence our current strategy meeting at Scooby HQ.

"So, what other heavy hitters does the Master have to throw at us?" I asked.

"Of the lieutenants of his that I knew?" Angel said. "I haven't spoken to any of them since I was ensouled at the turn of the century, so that's ninety years and more that he's had to recruit new faces."

"Entirely true, but the Order of Aurelius values seniority." Giles said. "So barring exceptional need or circumstances, any senior lieutenants he retains should be ones of long service and thus ones you'd have known."

"Well, Buffy killed Luke at the Harvest." Angel said. "So while I can think of a few more old and experienced fighters he'd have, as far as real thinkers go there'd just be Darla."

Why did I know that name-?

"You got a picture of her?" Buffy said.

"I have a sketch," he said, and put a very excellently drawn rendition on the table-

Wait a minute, I knew that face.

"Her? I've seen her." I said.

"When and where?" Buffy asked intently.

"The night before I first showed up for class, I was scouting out the high school beforehand. She was there with a guy she'd lured in, a senior or a college kid, probably to eat him. As soon as I made her as a vamp, I nailed her with my crossbow."

"You what?" Angel said, shocked.

"She was pretty distracted." I said matter-of-factly, before realizing what the expression on his face meant. Aw shit-

"I-" Angel said, absolutely shocked and momentarily wicked pissed off. "I- okay, you were hunting, but-" he tried to force himself to say, and then his control slipped entirely and he turned and punched a huge hole in the plaster of the nearby wall.

"If I'd known, I'd have-" I began to say.

"Don't-!" Angel said thickly, rounding on me in a visible rage while everybody else watched the byplay in shock. He caught himself before he said anything further, and visibly throttled down on his own shock and anger before saying "I- I need to go clear my head." and storming out of the house.

"Fuck!" I said, kicking a nearby armchair pretty hard myself. "I'm not going to apologize for dusting a vampire but if I'd thought ahead-" I shook my head. "Of course he knew her for centuries, that's why we were asking him for intel on her! I should've at least broken that news tactfully!"

"Oh, and now we're crying for vampires?" Willow sniped at me.

"For the one who has a soul, yes!" I flung back at her heatedly. "He might be feeling grief over an absolutely horrible person who had to die, but that doesn't mean it's still not real grief to him! Am I the only person here who ever respects the goddamn grieving process?!?"

"Oh will you get over it!" Buffy blew up at me in frustration. "I get that he's your super secret vampire kung fu master, but-"

"Buffy," Giles tried to cut in warningly.

"-what would you know about grieving Mister I Never Let Anyone Get Close?!?" she screamed.

And that's when I completely lost my shit.

Fortunately the "the inner strength to do the right thing" proviso of No Weapons, No Friends meant that I didn't do something as unethical as resorting to physical violence over hurtful words alone, but that didn't stop me from just unleashing as hard as I could.

"Are you dense?" I hissed at her. "Are you retarded? Do you seriously not put any pieces together ever without someone to draw you a goddamn flowchart, Blondie?"

"Hey, you can't talk to her like-" Willow began before I stared her down like a hawk on a rabbit. Xander was on his feet and ready to throw himself in the line of fire if it looked like I was going to be throwing punches but was apparently alert enough to the vibe to understand now was not a great time to be talking, and Amy was just looking at me with worry - for me, I noted absently, not for the rest of the room.

"OKAY, FINE, LET'S TALK ABOUT OUR FEELINGS!" I roared, the cork having finally left the bottle for the first time since I'd entered this dimension. "So who wants to hear about my ex-girlfriend?" I kept going.

"Oh dear," Giles said despairingly.

"I'd love to!" Buffy shot back sarcastically. "It's about time I heard about whoever the heck I'm competing with!"

"COMPETING!" I shouted hysterically. "Competing!" I began to laugh painfully. "All right, if this is gonna be a competition then hey, let's read the form card!"

By this point I was outright crying, and I broke off from yelling to start just reciting in a monotone because I was so overloaded that if I actually tried to yell as loud as I felt I'd start spraining something.

"Her name was Violetta," I said, facing away from everyone. "She was short, like you. She was an athlete, like you. She loved acrobatics and martial arts, like you. I met her for the first time when- we were young, okay? Like, how long Xander and Willow have known each other? That's about how long we knew each other."

"Was?" I heard Xander murmur in realization. Amy likewise was starting to pick up. Three guesses who wasn't.

"For years we were both in school together. For years we were both interested in each other. And for years neither of us picked up. There was this whole huge ugly drama between her extended family and my foster family, and if we'd actually hooked up then one of us would have had to pick sides. Or change sides. And she was super loyal to her family. She was super loyal, period. That's one of the biggest things that I loved about her, how loyal she was. How hard she'd work, how much she always wanted to do what was right- how much she believed in sacrifice, in honor, in not being selfish- she was a very old-fashioned type of girl. The kind you hardly find in the 20th century anymore. And she'd liked mostly the same things about me..."

I wiped my eyes, swallowed what felt like a whole lungful of snot, and continued.

"But hey, sometimes God actually shuts off the drama valve. Sometimes true love wins out in the end. It damn sure wasn't easy, and a whole lot of it wasn't even expected, but eventually the shittier people in her family got bounced like they deserved and the ones who were halfway decent human beings got put in charge and everything that had been in our way wasn't any more. And so all of that tension we'd had for years, all that star-crossed stuff, no longer crossed at all. And after years of only being allowed to be 'just friends', we could finally fucking admit it. We could acknowledge it. We could hold each other, kiss each other-" I started weeping again. "If I live for fucking eternity, I will never, ever forget our first kiss."

I whipped around just in time to catch Buffy opening her mouth to say I had no idea what, and I cut her off as the rant valve exploded wide open again. "And do you want to know why I never will forget it? Because not less than three hours after that, not even THREE FUCKING HOURS- BAM!" I smacked my one fist into my palm. "SHE WAS GONE!"

Giles was just nodding his head sadly. Amy was outright weeping, and Xander and Willow had teary eyes. Buffy's jaw was on the floor.

"And so was everyone else." I finished icily, barely able to force out the words.

"I-" Amy began, and I held up a hand to shush her.

"Don't. Please, just don't." I choked out. "I- I'm just going to go and be a terrible person to be around for the rest of the entire fucking weekend, okay? And I'm going to do it away from other people. Don't follow me, don't call, and I'll see you idiots in class." I snorted. "Assuming Angel doesn't toss me right out of the fucking house because I just dissed his grieving process equally as hard, let alone fucking causing it in the first place!" I finished, before storming on out.

* * * * *​

Xander POV:

Okay, I didn't even begin to know how to unpack all that. It's like Jonathan had been a minefield and Buffy had just gone clog-dancing in it, and now we were all covered in emotion guts from where he'd been exploded all over us.

Buffy shook off her shock and started to get angry. "What the hell? Okay, sensitive topic, but did he have to overreact-"

"Giles, do you have that detector orb you made for Angel?" I burst out angrily, more disappointed in her than I'd ever been before in my life. "Because maybe you should toss it to Buffy to see if she still has hers!" She turned around and tried to stare me down, and I just stared back.

"Seriously, Buff? You're going to call him the drama queen when- did you not hear the part where he just said his entire family got killed?" I asked her incredulously. "Try to imagine how you'd be feeling if vampires ate Mrs. S, multiply that by like ten, and you're probably just getting in the neighborhood of his bad day!"

"But how was I supposed to know-" Buffy started to whine, when Amy cut in with a harder voice than I'd ever heard her use.

"Well maybe you could have listened when he'd hinted that he wanted some time to process stuff before trying to get close to anyone again, like I know he'd already basically did to everyone in this room at least three times over!" Amy ranted back at Buffy.

"You were crushing on him too!" Buffy said defensively.

"But I still respected his space!" Amy yelled back. "You were the one who kept draping yourself all over him, pushing him, pressing him- even after he'd made it plain he was nothing but uncomfortable being treated like that! If a guy had treated any of us girls like that, you'd have been the first one in line to report him for harassment!"

"Buffy, I think Amy has a point there," Willow said diffidently. "Swap the genders around, and what you were doing kinda was. And you know that I thought he was being mean the whole time, but-" she wiped away some of the tears from her own face. "If he was sitting on all of that all along and we were the ones who'd kept poking the sore spot, then he was actually being kinda nice in how much he was trying not to react before."

"I feel at least partly responsible," Giles surprised us all by saying. "I'd thought I was respecting his privacy by not bringing this issue up earlier, but clearly I should have at least tried to make certain you all understood."

"What, he talked to you about it and not us?" Buffy asked.

"To the best of my knowledge he has talked to no one about it prior to tonight, save possibly Angel," Giles said. "But I already knew that the single commonest reason that someone previously unfamiliar with the supernatural takes up hunting it as a full-time career, if they were not recruited for it by some pre-existing organization like the Watcher's Council, is traumatic loss. And I clearly saw that he was displaying all the classic markers of having experienced such."

"So it's official, I'm a complete idiot." I said disgustedly. "I mean, I'm the guy who made the joke about him being so much like Batman Jr. in the first place. How did I not put together that Batman's origin story was all his loved ones getting killed?"

"How did none of us?" Willow said.

"Well..." Buffy pouted, beginning to look as ashamed as we all felt but still not wanting to admit she'd been the first and worst to screw up. "He could still have let us help."

"So, what do we do now?" I asked the room.

"He said he'd see us in class on Monday," Amy said. "Given how Jonathan is about signaling, I'm pretty sure that means that's the earliest any of us should even try to talk to him. And I think you should be the first one to, Xander."

"Me?" I asked Amy. "Why?"

"Well, he's really mad at Buffy right now." Willow said analytically. "Amy and him might be complicated because of feelings. And you're a lot better than I am at talking. Plus, you're a guy. He's a guy. You can guy talk."

"... okay." I nodded. "That makes perfect sense."

"Meeting adjourned." Giles finally sighed after nobody else filled the moment for a while.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Well, it had to blow sometime. And of course it happens on the same night him and Angel get emotionally complicated over shit as well. Because this is BtvS and that's how their drama valve rolls.

Note also that the way Jonathan phrased everything, it's literally true even if carefully selected to not give away the real context. (Jonathan can basically do that on mental autopilot by now.) Which means Clear Understandings has everyone in the room 100% certain that he was not lying.

And no, it's not that Jonathan's falling for Amy... yet. It's just that somehow she ended up as the nice one in this narrative and Jonathan's just too honorable a guy to ever throw shit at anyone who isn't giving him any. She is the closest thing he has to a real friend on the Scooby Gang right now.

Even season 1 Willow could get pretty passive-aggressive... which is of course not going to even remotely get past a man who has Grandma's Scheming, and who even if he didn't have Teenaged Angst would still be of a personality type that just didn't like that kind of thing. That's why her and Jonathan don't get along. But it's still s1 Willow, not s6 Willow, so once the true feelings are made plain she's going to go '... um, we were the bad guys here.'

As to where Cordelia is, the answer is that since Jonathan doesn't intersect with the Scooby Gang much outside of work, while season 1 Cordelia didn't intersect with them much inside of work, they are ships passing in the night. However, she will show up soon enough.

 

[cliffc999]

Buffy POV:

Okay, I admit it! I screwed up!

Jonathan spent the next couple of weeks in school sleepwalking through stuff like a zombie. Even his grades started to slip, and he was a study-meister like Willow was! He had a photographic memory and everything! Xander talked to him the Monday after and barely got an acknowledgement - nothing rude, nothing angry, but nothing back either. Jonathan didn't have any of the coiled-spring tension he walked around with before, and none of that 'ready for combat' attitude either. He was just... empty.

Amy gave up trying to talk to him after her second attempt, because it made her cry a little just to look at him. The worst part is that he actually tried to be nice to her - I was pretty sure that it wasn't just me competing with a ghost as to why I'd been losing the romance race - but he was so horribly fake about it that it actually hurt her more than just being ignored did. Willow didn't even try talking to him, although she did make an extra copy of her class notes for him so that he could catch up later once he got over his shock.

Assuming he ever did. Because Jonathan basically hung up the swords at that point and didn't even patrol anymore. Angel still did, and when I asked him how Jonathan was doing... um, yeah. Not good.

At least Angel wasn't mad at him anymore about Darla dying- he hadn't even really been mad, he'd just gotten hit with a big shock with no warning and needed a little time to walk it off- but he'd already had ninety years and more to come to grips with how he wasn't an evil demon anymore and his ex-girlfriend still was and what that would mean. Plus, he was a grown-up. And Jonathan, for all that he tried to make himself be a grown-up... kinda wasn't.

So of course he was eventually gonna blow if I kept pushing, and boy, did I ever!

I'd just wanted myself a cute boyfriend who was okay with all the weird, and I'd seen one, and I'd gone for one as best I knew how. I'd been well on track to be the Cordelia of Hemery High - Freshman Princess and everything - so that's exactly how I'd tried to pick him up. The clothes, the flirting, the going after the hormones- look, I was sixteen, Romeo and Juliet was just a book they made me read for English class, not a lifestyle guide. So all I really knew about how to pick up a boy was the shallow way, and I'd shallowed like a champion. But I hadn't paid any attention at all to what he wanted or what he was feeling like, and after I'd moped around for a little while hoping that things would fix themselves and they didn't then that led me directly into what was, bar none, the absolute worst conversation I'd ever had in my life.

"Mom?" I approached her nervously. "I... made a huge mistake."

"Is anyone hurt?" Mom asked me, having slipped into major concern mode as soon as she saw whatever expression was on my face.

"Not physically," I said sadly, slumping down into one of the chairs by the kitchen table. "But I really, really crushed someone's feelings when I did something dumb, and now they're so miserable I can't even apologize for it because they can't even hear me."

"Oh Buffy." Mom sighed, sitting down across from me. "Tell me what happened."

Ugh. Um, how exactly do I explain this without getting into the supernatural-?

"You met my study buddy Jonathan, right?"

"Xander's friend?" she asked me.

"No, the other one. Tall guy, muscles." I corrected her.

"Once or twice," Mom remembered. "Buffy, you weren't mean when you were turned him down, were you?" she guessed.

"Hah!" I laughed bitterly. "No, he shot me down. In flames. And then-" I shook my head as my voice choked up. "Okay, you probably picked up that I was in boy-chasing mode again the past few weeks-"

"There were certain symptoms." Mom replied knowingly.

"But he wasn't having any. So of course I was all 'Who could possibly resist such perfection of me?' and kept pushing."

Mom tilted her head and gave me the disappointed look.

"I know," I moaned, slumping over and putting my face in my heads. "So, anyway, I kept going and going even when he kept shooting back signals of 'Warning! Do not trespass outside the friend zone!' because what was wrong with him that he didn't even want to date a little? Was he gay or something?"

"Buffy!" Mom said disapprovingly.

"I know." I whined. "I was so stupid. But anyway, last study group the topic of- um, let's just say one of the tutors had had a recent loss in the family and had to ditch. And then I said something sarcastic about it, and Jonathan went off on me about what the hell did I think was doing not respecting the grieving process, and I yelled back something about what the heck would he know about losing anyone when he never wanted to have anyone in the first place-" I sniffled. "Why did I even say something so horrible?"

"This sounds a lot more serious than just 'You said something very insensitive'." Mom said cautiously. "What went wrong?"

"Did you know," I began tonelessly, "that the reason Jonathan's basically in the foster system now is because his whole family died?" I finished to my mom's rising horror. "And his girlfriend? Who he'd known at least as long as Xander had known Willow? And that was just like last year?"

"Oh my God." Mom gasped.

"And I didn't respect the grieving process at all but stepped right on that land mine!" I drama queened. "And now he's walking around school like a depressed zombie and barely talking to anyone and won't even come to study group anymore-" I slumped again. "I am such a horrible person!"

"No, you did a horrible thing." Mom corrected me. Ouch. "That doesn't make you horrible forever, especially not since you've already taken the first important step. You've admitted that what you did was wrong."

"Yeah." I slumped. "Very wrong. And I don't know how to fix it."

Mom sat and thought for a while, and I just sat and sulked for a while, and eventually she started talking again. "Were you in love with him?"

"I thought I was, but-" I shook my head. "Love isn't like this, is it? Painful?"

"No." she agreed, nodding. "Love is never supposed to be like that." Mom reached over and took my hand in hers comfortingly. "Buffy, you're sixteen. When I was your age I thought the exact same way you did, and I didn't learn better until I was older. I never had the bad luck to run into as awful a situation as you did, but that's all it was. Luck." She sighed. "Would you like to hear what I think love is?"

"Of course." I said.

"Love isn't about how they make you feel." Mom said to me wisely. "Love is about how you want them to feel. It's when you want the other person to be safe, to be happy, to be emotionally healthy, and you're willing to sacrifice your own time and effort to make that happen. And that's all kinds of love - boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife, friends and family..." She smiled at me. "Parents and children."

"That sounds kinda... one-way." I replied, trying to puzzle it out. "If you keep pouring it out and nothing comes back, then don't you end up empty?"

"You definitely learned that faster than I did." Mom agreed with me proudly. "When you love them but they don't love you back, then it is going to empty yourself out emotionally. This is why unrequited love hurts so much; you're not in balance. But when you do that for someone else and they do it for you at the same time, then you're not just coming out even. You both come out ahead." She sighed. "That's what a healthy relationship is supposed to be. And that's why most high schoolers make up and break up as fast as they change their clothes, because it takes the average person stubbing their toe a lot to finally figure this out for themselves. And Lord knows you can't teach it to anyone else just by talking, or else every parent would."

I blinked as I was suddenly overcome by a massive realization. "Wait, is this why you and dad are-?"

Mom's face tightened for a moment before she nodded. "Yes. I don't know exactly when he stopped and I didn't, but-" She sighed. "Eventually there came the point where I had to stop too, or else I'd have hurt myself trying not to. When push comes to shove you can't control other peoples' feelings, Buffy. You can't even really control your own feelings. You can only control how you act."

"Oh." I said weakly. "I'd thought the divorce was because of the-" I stopped myself before I said 'vampires' again. "The gym thing, and the psychiatric evaluation the court ordered-"

"What?" Mom said, looking at me concernedly. "No, it wasn't! Were you blaming yourself for us the whole time?!?"

"Kinda a little?" I said weakly.

"Oh Buffy." Mom said, leaning over to hug me. "I wish I'd seen that earlier. I'd have reassured you that it was not, not even the tiniest bit, your fault." She sighed. "No, that was on your father. Maybe on me as well, partly, but it wasn't you. It had already been building up between us all through your freshman year, well before that other trouble even started. We just-"

"Didn't want me to know anything was wrong." I figured out. Hey, I was sixteen, not six!

"Sometimes even the grown-ups make mistakes." Mom agreed. "Very sometimes."

"Speaking of," I said, depressed again. "What do I do?"

"You tried to apologize?" Mom asked me. "In an entirely non-romantic context?"

"I'm pretty sure that ship has not only sailed but sunk." I agreed with her. "And I'm the one who fired the torpedoes. Amy might still have an outside chance someday, but I sure don't. And yeah, I tried."

"Does Jonathan have anyone looking after him?" Mom asked me.

"He's got a guardian." I nodded. "Older guy-" Great, now how did I describe Angel without getting supernatural? "Friend of the family."

"Do you think he's experienced with counseling people with emotional problems? Is Jonathan seeing the school counselor?" Mom asked me.

"I'm thinking no and no." I said after a moment.

"Then I suppose I'd better go over there and see if they need any help." Mom decided.

"You don't have to do that for me!" I told her. "I messed this up!"

"And whose daughter are you again?" Mom shot back. "I'm- Buffy, I am very disappointed in what you did. But I'm not going to yell at you because you'd already figured out on your own that what you did was very wrong. And we just finished talking you through understanding why it was very wrong. And this isn't really the sort of thing I can punish with grounding or chores. Your punishment is going be having to live with the memory of what you did, knowing that you hurt someone badly, and knowing that you weren't able to fix it easily."

"Or at all." I slumped. "And here you are, busy cleaning up my mess again."

"You sign up for that sort of thing when you have children," she reassured me. "And when you eventually have them yourself, you'll be happy to do it for them too."

"Assuming I live that long," I said sadly.

* * * * *​

Angel POV:

Mourning Darla wasn't easy, but it's not as if I'd been truly devastated. I'd just been knocked hard off balance. If I'd had any time to brace myself then it wouldn't even have hit me that hard, but to know that someone who'd been such a huge part of your life for centuries - even if it was a horrible part you'd spent decades and decades regretting - was gone like she hadn't even been there, and that she hadn't died in some huge dramatic confrontation but had gotten taken out in passing by a freshman hunter who'd barely even known who she was- even Holtz had never managed to get the drop on Darla like that, even if he'd ambushed me twice that way. In a way, the most shocking part of it was how it made me suddenly feel my mortality again after a long, long time of not feeling it. That had been as hard to process as Darla being dust.

So I'd gone off alone for the weekend to try and meditate and reflect a little, and also get some work therapy in on the local vampire population, and I'd overnighted in a lair I cleaned out because I'd wanted a night alone. And by the end of the weekend I'd gotten myself leveled out again, mostly. So when I got back to the mansion Sunday night I had not expected to find Jonathan visibly sunk into one of the worst depressions I'd ever seen anyone lose themselves in. And I'd once had a hobby of driving people into that state.

Giles had given me an accounting of what had happened at the meeting after I'd left, and he and I shared a mutual commiseration at what the commonest origin story for new hunters was. And Jonathan had apparently had the worst-case scenario imaginable for it. Even Angelus would have considered it a high-water mark to take out two entire families and the star-crossed love of someone's life all on the same day. I was mildly surprised I hadn't heard of something this noteworthy on the vampire grapevine already. I needed to start paying more attention again, it would seem.

And I nodded at the mental confirmation that Jonathan's initial training had been for purposes of non-supernatural combat until the supernatural had violently crashed into his life. The tale of 'feuding families' would suggest organized crime, except people who were in organized crime didn't remotely act like Jonathan did. You didn't get into something like the Camorra unless you were indifferent to the little rules of civilized society in the first place, seeing as how you were making a career out of busting the big ones, but Jonathan didn't even double-park. As near as I could intuit the 'family' reference had actually been a metaphor for 'politics' and Jonathan had been a part of something clandestine and government. I made another mental note to keep an eye out for that sort of thing showing up in Sunnydale and got back to pondering the main problem - what could I do for my student? Because as much of a master of psychological destruction as I was, that didn't make an expert at healing. And while I tried a couple things I knew from self-help books, they- well, you can imagine.

Joyce Summers' own visit to the house was more of a help, as she at least was able to walk me through the basics of dealing with depression and how while forced activity wasn't a cure, it could at least keep things from spiraling any further down. So since I figured that helping channel himself into rage even further was a bad idea - as Jonathan himself had clearly realized on some unconscious level, seeing as how he hadn't thrown himself into combat practice or hunting but had instead stood himself down - well, there were a lot of home improvements around the mansion we could do instead. He turned out to be a very good mechanic when he turned his hand to things, and I'm not sure if it helped much but anything beat laying around near-catatonic all day.

I patrolled some with Buffy, who I'd originally been very upset with until I'd seen that she'd legitimately realized where she'd screwed up and was trying to make sincere amends - and more importantly, that she'd finally ditched her romantic delusions of 'thawing and healing with love' or whatever else people that age came up with. Mrs. Summers had obviously straightened her out too, even if she visibly had no clue about Sunnydale's night life. Did Buffy not realize that her mother's ignorance wasn't any protection but only left her in danger of inviting the wrong person into the house after dark? I'd have to have a word with Giles about that sometime.

And the Scooby Gang was able to handle a couple of major cases without us - something about a demon robot in an old factory, and then something about an old demon hunter who'd gotten trapped in a puppet. I couldn't really assist on either of those because they were daytime cases, and Jonathan was still on medical leave as it were. At least the housework was helping him keep his physical conditioning, and it was actually pretty useful learning how to wire a place for electricity or fix the pipes myself. It's not like Sunnydale was overrun with home repair contractors who worked nights.

But things were still not going well at all regarding Jonathan's mental health. And then the Hellmouth decided it wanted to play too.

* * * * *​

Jonathan POV:

Wherever my "Benefactor" was, I'm sure he was laughing his ass off.

Despite all its 'infinite' willpower No Weapons, No Friends, No Hope hadn't let me get six months into this jump before I finally rolled over and went limp. It didn't work if you didn't want to use it, after all, and I didn't. I was just done with using a willpower perk and Well-Seasoned/You Are Extraordinary to paper over the cracks and soldier on. Sure, I could do a perfect imitation of a functioning person. I could probably have done a perfect imitation of a happy person if I'd wanted to put on that act. But your outside face didn't change your inside one at all, and mine was-

Angel had been right. You couldn't even begin to fill a hole in your soul just by piling bodies into it. The hunting was still of value as an act of service to others, I knew that intellectually, but emotionally I just didn't give a shit anymore. Buffy - the entire Scooby Gang - had cracked the seal I'd put over my grief and now I was just wallowing in it again, and I knew it was stupid and I knew it wasn't helping and I knew it was immature but I just didn't fucking care.

So I had the decreased energy levels and the lack of self-care and the persistent down periods that all added up to depression and I dully continued to eat, get up, and go to school because I didn't care enough not to move when pushed. Xander had tried to patch things up between me and the Scoobs and I'd given him as polite an acknowledgement as I could manage, Buffy had tried to apologize and I'd managed to at least avoid getting any more mad, and-

Amy had been the worst. Buffy had been all about getting herself a boyfriend to make herself feel less lonely, which was objectively speaking not a mortal sin in a sixteen-year-old girl even if it was damned annoying when you were the target. Amy was also a sixteen-year-old girl but she at least was partly aware that a relationship wasn't just about you, and it was legitimately hurting her that someone she liked was dealing with crap and that she was powerless to even begin to change that for them. Because, yeah, that was the worst place to be. Been there, done that, got the airship captain's uniform. I wasn't falling in love with her or anything - I wasn't even sure if I had those emotional circuits anymore or if they were as shorted out and cross-wired as most of the rest of me - but I did legitimately like her. She was the closest thing in this dimension that I had to a friend my own age - apparent age - with Xander maybe the closest behind her.

My Spark also started to come a little - very little - out of hibernation now that I was regularly handling tools again, what with all the home repairs that Angel had added to the schedule to replace the combat lessons I'd been skipping because we were all Mr. Miyagi now apparently. Hey, as therapy notions went it certainly beat encounter groups or talking or some such crap. Being alone with a set of tools and shit being needed to be kit-bashed back together was at least something besides staring at the walls.

But overall life was still horrible, and I still had nothing to look forward to and no confidence that anything I might come to bond with would not be arbitrarily ripped away again, and if I had any wishes or desires left in me at all then I just wanted to go home-

"As you wish."

And I was shocked to realize that suddenly I was lying on the floor - no, those were deckplates, and there was the hum of airship engines, and- I was back?

My first inhale almost choked me with the smell of smoke. As the shock wore off and I became more aware of my surroundings I heard people screaming in pain and others screaming in triumph. The sound of death ray fire, the clash of swords- we were being boarded!

I tried to leap to my feet and then the pain hit. Okay, I'd apparently had the crap beaten out of me. I staggered upright and looked around- the wreckage and the nearby fire made it hard to tell, but as near as I could tell this was the family quarters section on the command deck of Castle Wulfenbach. I coughed, and idly noted that I'd horked up wasn't phlegm so much as blood. Yeah, that was at least one broken rib and a punctured lung. Shit, what the hell had I dropped into?

I looked around for casualties and-

GIl!

I ran over to his huddled body on the floor, frantically feeling for a pulse. None. He'd been stabbed and slashed and pierced in multiple places. The pattern of his wounds suggested that he'd gone toe-to-toe with Bangladesh DuPree or a swordsman of equal skill in a full-on lethal fight. His opponent had avoided closing in to where Gil's strength would have ended the match decisively in his favor and bypassed his resilience by going for limb cuts, opening vein after vein until he'd he'd eventually been bled out and worn down to where he couldn't move before being finished off with a sword thrust straight through the forehead as he lay prone on the deck. To destroy the brain and prevent revivication.

I screamed in agony on the inside but I didn't have time to stop- there had to be other survivors- maybe the Baron himself-

Down the hallway a red-headed woman in a fancy dress lay facedown on the deck, dead from a death ray bolt directly between her shoulder blades. I rolled her over to be confronted by the waxen face of Princess Xersephnia von Blitzengaard, who'd apparently been heading for the adjacent escape pod while Gil had stayed behind to hold off pursuers. What was Seffie even doing here-?

I blinked at the wedding ring prominent upon her fourth finger, and my immediate memory supplied an image of a matching ring on Gil's finger. Wait, what? And-

A faint, erratic whimpering caught my attention. Seffie had apparently died while holding a baby, and he or she had fallen hard to the deck nearby when Sefie had been hit. I examined the child - six months old, maybe a little more - and realized to my horror that they'd fractured their skull when they'd hit the deckplates. This infant, Gil's and Seffie's baby from all appearances, was dying as I held them in my hands and there was nothing I could do to change that-

"Captain!" A joyous shout came to my ears. "Captain Teufel!" the shout came again, and I looked up to see a pair of scruffy pirates standing in the corridor behind the way I'd came-

And then it all came together for me at once. The death ray pistol in my holster was still warm, from having been very recently fired. The bruises and broken ribs I had were from having just been in close-combat with someone of great skill and superhuman strength. The dropped and bloody cutlass nearby whose size and shape exactly matched the entrance wound in Gil's forehead and the empty sheath on my sword belt that matched the sword. Even the pirate-trained fighting style and superhuman precision it would have required to take Gilgamesh down like that- even the Baronial signet ring on Gilgamesh's hand adjacent to his wedding ring, signifying that in this timeline Klaus had already died-

In this timeline Teufel Sr. and the Baron had apparently mutually annihilated in their final battle, leaving me to be raised in Rabennest by regents and stewards as Teufel's young heir just as Gilgamesh had been so raised as an underaged heir, each of us to eventually inherit whatever was left of our respective fiefdoms when we came of age. Only Boris had clearly been unable to maintain the entire Empire for the underage Baron, leaving him some kind of rump state that had had to ally with the Fifty Families for what stability they could maintain, while the resurgent Black Mist Raiders joined with who knew what other horrors to fatten on the chaos of Europa and bring back the Long War and eventually lead to this final confrontation between a Teufel and a Wulfenbach yet again-

A confrontation that I'd just won.

A terrible calm settled over me as I ignored "my" men and turned and kicked the escape pod's switch panel so hard that it broke open. Shorting together the correct leads blew the pod out into the empty air without shutting the pod bay hatch first, leaving the door open and overlooking a direct drop of who knew how many thousands of feet of altitude.

And then I jumped.

* * * * *​

"You got away!" Tarvek said in desperate relief as we both met in the burnt-out ruins of Passholdt.

"Yeah," I agreed with a quirky grin. "Lucrezia got sloppy."

"Gilgamesh?" he asked me.

"But not that sloppy, I'm afraid." I said calmly.

"Damn her!" he cursed viciously. "All right. Ruxala?" Tarvek called, and the once and former Vespiary Squad officer came forward with one of the very few surviving wasp weasels on her shoulder to give me and the hand-picked squad I'd brought with me the sniff test. No reactions.

"Good," he said, and the squad of resistance fighters Tarvek had had covering us with their death rays lowered their weapons. "All right, all of you come with me. We'll need to get you to the labs and vaccinated as soon as possible."

"We definitely want that vaccine as soon as possible," I agreed with him, and he led me and my hand-picked team directly into the heart of the lair. Once we'd made sure the target was in sight, we acted. It didn't really take us very long.

"How-?" Tarvek gasped out as he lay paralyzed on the floor from where I'd tased him. Lucrezia didn't want him dead, of course. Once he was suitably processed, he'd tell us everything we needed to know to finish crushing the last gasps of the resistance.

"Lucrezia updated the wasps." I said to him, still feeling that terrible, terrible calm. "The old scent signatures that the weasels recognize don't apply any more." I finished. "And now we finally have the vaccine lab."

"No you don't." Tarvek grinned as I suddenly wobbled on my feet. "We now have new-model revenants to update our detection methods with and interrogate. Because that wasn't the vaccine that you just drank."

As I and all my men finished falling unconscious, a small buried part of me was at grateful that at least Tarvek was a fucking bastard weasel in any timeline- or maybe it was just that Lucrezia was a less competent commander than I had been-

* * * * *​

"-and that concludes my report, Herr Baron." I finished, standing rigidly at attention before his desk.

"Unsatisfactory." Klaus said coldly. "You should not have let the situation get so out of control."

"Sir, I could not control Dr. Beetle's reaction-" I began.

"No excuses!" Klaus shut me down. "Clearly his lack of cooperation was because of your heavy-handed bungling! DuPree would have been more subtle than this!"

I bit my lip on any number of remarks or justifications that I could have pointed out regarding the Beetleburg situation. As to how I'd had nothing to do with Beetle's decision to collaborate iwth the Other's conspiracy, which had clearly been made well before I'd even gotten there. As to how I'd taken the town with as few casualties as possible considering how Beetle had panicked and ordered the Clockwork Army to indiscriminate full-auto fire with no concern for collateral damages. As to how it had been Mr. Tock's stray shot and none of ours that had destroyed an obscure smithy that had turned out to contain two of the Baron's oldest friends-

A stray shot that had not only enraged the Baron beyond all measure when he was already the worst critic of my performance and had been all along, but had so utterly alienated the girl who'd turned out to be the lost Heterodyne heir that the first thing she'd done after I'd put her in guest quarters onboard the airship was wait until enough backs were turned to suborn the nearest Jagers, then escape immediately. Now she was running loose somewhere in Europa with a mad-on against the Baron and all his works and that was my fault too.

Everything was my fault, apparently. And I was going to be stuck here doing the Baron's dirty jobs and getting blamed for everything that went wrong and unthanked for everything that went right for the rest of my life, because it was the only choice I was allowed.

Eventually Baron Wulfenbach finished tearing today's ration of strips out of my hide, and I quietly saluted and left. I hadn't had the slightest opportunity to defend myself. I'd long since hoped to ever get any.

Just another day, the same as any other day.

* * * * *​

And so it went, over and over and over. Each new timeline was some kind of twisted horror, from the small to the large. Ones where I'd never left the pirate life behind. Ones where the Baron hadn't taken me under his wing but just sentenced me to life in the mines like the rest, and where I eventually died trying to escape. Ones where I'd married Agatha but she was some kind of horrible person, and not even in the 'possessed by her mother' way. There was even one timeline where I'd somehow been Zola's partner in the conspiracy. All of them blurred by as if I wasn't even living them in truth but just experiencing them in outline. And every single time it restarted I heard my "Benefactor's" mocking laughter.

So, this was what I had to look forward to. Being a helpless toy of a cosmic sadist who had total power over me. Everything I loved was in one way or another mocked and desecrated. Everything I'd believed in was held up and torn apart. Everything I wanted to hang onto was taken away from me.

Every thing but one. And I prayed more desperately than I'd ever prayed before that she would never show up.

So of course she did.

"Hey loser." Violetta sneered down at me.

"Vi," I choked out. "It's... good to see you." Because it was. Even though I was a horrible, beaten, sobbing mess on the floor, even though I was entirely pathetic and she was standing over me with her face twisted with nothing but contempt, it was... still seeing her.

"Did those idiots mix up your dose again?" she eye-rolled. "I'm not your friend, you asshole. This is an interrogation."

"Remind me... how I ended up here again?" I asked her weakly. Because I couldn't remember... I was so tired...

"Wulfenbach lost. We won." she said proudly. "You need any more scorecard than that? Now get your ass moving. It's your turn in the hot seat again." She cracked her knuckles. "Or you could try running away like you did last time. That would be fun." she said with a razor-edged grin more appropriate to Bangladesh DuPree.

So. The timeline where she was nothing but a loyal soldier of the Fifty Families on the opposite side of the war and nothing mor-

"Almost as much fun as the expression on your face when you idiots finally figured out me and Tarvek had never been on your side!" she laughed mockingly.

I had to ask...

"All right," I said, not even bothering to disguise my emptiness. So I was going to be stuck in some hell timeline where a vicious little sociopath wearing the face of the woman I loved was going to help torture me. I suppose I had my very own Darla now-

"Wow, you sure broke fast." Violetta said disappointedly. "Six years and more you waited without even trying to kiss me all super romantic styles," she faux-swooned, "but here we didn't even need three months in the dungeon before you cracked like an egg!" She shook her head. "Well, you always were the best at giving up before you'd even really tried. No guts."

"Even Gil or Tarvek gets distracted sometimes but you've always had that... that supreme focus thing you do. I really envied you for that, did you know?"

Wait... when had she said that...?

"But hey, you failed your real dad. You failed your fake dad. You failed Gilgamesh, you failed your little students in your little school-" she kept sneering.

"You've never fallen flat on your butt in front of God and everyone over and over, never been not one of the first in your class..."

Something was wrong. Beyond the obvious, that is-

"And above all else, you failed to spot that I'd never loved you. You stupid sap. We played you like a violin and you gave us everything we needed to burn your stupid airship castle out of the sky. So I guess it makes sense that once you finally figured out how we'd played you, you'd just quit. You're used to that."

"So of course you got lost inside your own head for weeks the first time you thought that you'd really crashed and burned. You've never gotten any practice at having to deal with epic failure! I should have figured this out earlier!"

Violetta had said that. When I'd been despairing in Mechanicsburg- that night I'd consoled her about being disowned from her family-

"Well, if you're going to be no fun anymore then I guess it's just time to put you out of our misery. But you deserve it, really. All the people you've failed, all the threats you didn't notice in time, all the secrets you unknowingly betrayed- you know as well as I do that this is all. your. fault."

"And even if you were right, just because some of these things were your decisions doesn't mean its still all your fault. YOU didn't set up and build this whole nightmare situation that the whole world's caught in! You just got it dropped on top of you without asking and had to deal with it the best you knew how!"

-and the night she'd consoled me too.

"Good-bye, airman." Violetta sneered contemptuously, and suddenly a knife was in her hand and she was thrusting it-

"Not good-bye," I said, as all my despair and nausea fell away to be replaced by an icy-calm focus for the first time in ages. "Never good-bye!" I shouted defiantly.

And I slapped her hand aside like she was moving in slow motion and I disarmed her, then caught her by the throat and slammed her up against the wall before she could even react. The knife I'd knocked loose came falling back down to be caught neatly in my other hand, and I held it to her throat and screamed.

"You are not her! You are not real! None of this is real! WHO ARE YOU?!? WHAT ARE YOU?!?"

'Violetta' dematerialized in my hands along with the knife, my clothes, and everything else, to be replaced by the white void again.

"Pain." the 'Benefactor' sneered at me. "Pain is my gift, that you foolishly chose to accept-"

And then my jaw dropped as a sword blade came bursting out of the 'Benefactor's' chest and he gurgled and died, and the white void fell away from around us to be replaced by my bedroom in Angel's mansion.

"Man, I thought that guy would never shut up." Angel said. "We really need to talk later about some of the stuff that you're keeping inside your head, Jonathan!"

"What the fuck just happened?" I said dazedly. "How did you even do that?!?"

"I just got the call from Giles." Angel said. "Something went wrong over at the school, and now people's nightmares are coming to life all over Sunnydale. And as soon as I heard that I got down to your room as fast as I could-"

"I can imagine." I said, still trying to shake off the mental fog. "So... nightmares literally coming to life, you said?"

"Home sweet Hellmouth," Angel shrugged.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Was nobody even anticipating the nightmare episode? Because of course I was building up to the nightmare episode! Who the hell in Sunnydale has more buried nightmares than Jonathan? *eg*

Yes, somehow Buffy got fast-forwarded through much more mature advice about relationships than she ever got before in her life, simply because the topic came up far differently and thus so did the responses. I admit it, I keep failing Will saves vs. temptation whenever I chaos butterfly. I really hate butterflying things to be worse, so, you get better.

And yes, Joyce Summers is Best Mom. Not that this remotely surprises any Buffy fans.

As to how Angel stabbed the 'Benefactor', the answer is of course that was part of the dream. Jonathan knows the 'Benefactor' is invulnerable, so if he'd tried to hurt the dream nothing would have happened. But Angel has no clue who that guy is so his subconscious goes 'Some kind of demon, dies like any other demon' and the dream responds accordingly.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

The nightmare demon case didn't actually take that much effort to wrap up, especially given that I'd spent so much time lost in my own nightmares that it was largely over before I'd gotten there. Still, the fact that I'd responded to the call at all and was back fighting alongside the team, as well as visibly looking better than I had been for the past several weeks, was a definite milestone towards getting the band back together again.

And so we had the reunion conversations and everything. Two in particular.

"Buffy." I called to her as we were breaking up in the library, and waved her over to the stacks for a private talk.

"Jonathan." she said nervously. "Look, I'm-"

I held up my hand to cut her off. "It's my turn to apologize this time."

"For what?" she said confusedly. "You had every reason to say what you did!"

"I did." I agreed with her. "But there's what you're saying, even if it needs to be said, and then there's how you're saying it. And in hindsight I feel like I kinda crushed a walnut with a sledgehammer there."

"Hey, I'm just glad you're feeling stuff at all again." Buffy said honestly. "You were-" she sighed. "I hope to God that I am never, ever any part of making anyone feel that miserable ever again."

"You are not the person who set me up for misery." I told her emphatically. "You just-" I shook my head. "Okay, yeah, I got lost for a while, I admit it. I'd probably still be there if the nightmares hadn't-"

"Oh I do not even want to know!" Buffy said hurriedly. "I had my own and they were hideous! Being turned into a vampire, being buried alive- yeeesh!" she shivered.

"Yeah, mine were at least that bad." I agreed. "But hey, silver lining. At least the shock treatment kicked my butt enough to get me out of being stuck inside my own head." I chuckled ruefully. "Violetta always used to do that for me."

"Verbally or the other way?" Buffy snarked.

"Yes." I snarked back. "Like I said, she was really into martial arts."

"She sounds like someone who was really awesome." Buffy said compassionately. "I'm sorry about- well, everything."

"Thanks." I nodded to her. "But... and I know I sound like a total hypocrite when I say this-"

"Don't beat yourself up about it forever?" Buffy chuckled along with me.

"Yeah." I said shamefacedly, knowing full well I was the last person who could tell anyone to put down their baggage.

"And I'm sorry about the sexual harassment, too." Buffy said, blushing like a stop sign. "Willow actually gave me one of the brochures with everything I came on to you with annotated next to the relevant item on the checklist in marker. Ugh. I feel like such a skank now."

"That's society's double standard, not yours." I reassured her. "Not that I'm-" I caught myself. "Speaking of, is there a non-offensive way for the guy to say 'It's not you, it's me'?" I tried to make a joke out of it.

"You just did." Buffy let me off the hook. "And look, if I'm going to be doing any penance for this then here's where I've got to start. Friends?" she stuck out her hand.

"Friends." I agreed after a long, long moment, and we shook on it.

"So, about the Spring Fling-" she began as soon as she'd let go.

"Wow, three whole seconds!" I jibed at her.

"You." she mock-glared at me. "My point was, I think Amy's going to ask you to go with her. And I get if you're not ready to go with anyone yet, and I'm sure she does too, but-"

"I should still know about it so I can think about my answer ahead of time." I agreed with her.

"Yeah." Buffy agreed. "I admit I was pretty much thinking only with my hormones, but I think she really likes you. So-"

"Yeah." I agreed. This was going to be the tricky one.

* * * * *​

"Hi." Amy said cutely. I was sitting out alone in the quad during a break period, and she'd found me there.

"Hi Amy." I said back. "How've you been?"

"I found an actual magic teacher, would you believe it?" she said excitedly as she sat down alongside me on the bench. "Ms. Calendar turned out to be a witch too!"

"Wait, the computer science teacher?" I asked her back. "She does the ritual magic thing?"

"Would you believe there's an actual magical tradition called 'techno-pagan'?" Amy asked me back. "It's about blending symbology with logical syntax-" and she was off to the races for almost two whole minutes. Some of this stuff was legitimately scientifically fascinating, so I paid rapt attention.

"Please at least tell me Ms. Calendar's got a solid grip on the white side of magic and isn't a mad science type." I finally asked her at the first available interruption. "Trust me, mad science types are not-" I shivered dramatically.

"Oh no, she is all about the Threefold Law and knowing your intentions behind your spells and everything." Amy nodded vigorously. "You should've seen the expression on her face when I brought up some of the stuff from my mother's old grimoires and asked her if it was as dangerous as it looked. Turns out my mom's tradition was all completely left-hand path, even at the foundations."

"How's Willow dealing with her favorite teacher turning out to also be as much magic as science?" I asked curiously. "She isn't getting weirded out, I hope."

"Oh no, she's fascinated by how computer programming logic can be applied to spell design." Amy said. "She's actually starting to cast alongside me now!"

"Two witches on the team?" I raised an eyebrow. "I guess mana levels really are higher on the Hellmouth. I hope she's staying as centered and cleansed as you are-"

"She got a later start than I did but everything's going fine so far." Amy reassured me.

"Good. I hate to sound like a worrywart, but-"

"You really care a lot about us all." Amy said warmly. "And you want the people around you to be as safe as you can make them." She sighed sadly and continued on in a lower tone of voice. "I think I can understand why."

"I still miss them." I agreed soberly. "I'll always miss them."

"I'm sorry about your loss." she said, equally as soberly. "And I-" she stopped, and chewed her lip. "I'll... see you in class?" she finished weakly and started to get up. And I was really tempted to just take the easy way out and let her nerve fail her, but that wouldn't be fair to her.

"Amy." I said resignedly, patting the bench next to me, and she hesitantly sat down again. "You were going to ask me to the Spring Fling, right?"

"Who told you that?" she denied.

I just gave her the side-eye in reply to that, because I certainly wasn't going to hang Buffy out to dry.

"... I was. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pushed-" she continued.

"Amy." I insisted. "You like me, and you were being perfectly nice about it, and we're legitimately friends. You have every right to ask." I said, and before I could let her spiral too far up into false hope, I continued. "Which is why I really hate what I'm going to say next."

"... you don't want to go with me." she slumped down sadly.

"Eugh!" I threw up my hands in frustration. "Stupid English language!". That actually got a brief bark of laughter out of her.

"Amy, more than anything I want you to leave this conversation not feeling down." I reassured her. "You are the best friend I have in this school. You are by far the nicest girl I've met here, and the one who's been the most respectful of my everything. It's not fair to you that I'm still too wrapped up in-" I shook my head. "Like I mentioned that night, I did the pining thing myself for years. And right up until the end of it I had no expectation that anything could change. That I had even as short a time of enjoying an actual happy ending as I did was a gift out of nowhere." I looked at her as reassuringly as I could. "So I know how much your position sucks right now, and I really wish I could give you the answer you want to hear without being totally unfair to you in the process. But I can't do it without lying to you, and I won't do that."

"But are you sure you can't?" Amy asked me as gently as she could. "I know that you're grieving..." she trailed off nervously before finally screwing her courage to the sticking place. "But would she want you to be miserable forever?"

Every instinct I had told me to answer that question truthfully. To explain that the root of the problem was that Violetta, that all my friends and family, were more 'lost in dimensional limbo' than 'dead'. That it wasn't that I was afraid to hope again but that I'd have to actually give up my last microscopic fraction of hope, however vain, in order to move on. And, of course, to explain how even if I did then I wouldn't ever be allowed to keep it anyway.

Of course, every instinct I had right now was Drawback-enforced to be a dumb teenager's, so I resolved to ignore them completely.

"She wouldn't." I agreed with her. "But I still can't. I just can't, I'm sorry. It is literally nothing you have done wrong, or aren't doing right, or anything. It's-" I ground to a halt.

"Then I will wait until you can." Amy said with quiet resolve. "You waited for years. So can I."

"I was dumb and I got lucky." I emphasized. "Once. I got lucky once. I do not recommend trying to repeat my strategy. Even I don't want to repeat my strategy."

"For as long as you can't let go, you can't tell me to let go either." Amy insisted. "You're not a hypocrite. You can ask me to please respect your boundaries, you can ask me to be as patient as I need to be, and I will. But I won't try to pretend that my heart doesn't want what it wants. And what it wants is the most honest, most decent, and most impressive guy that I've ever met in my life." she laid it all out. "Not because you're hot, or even because you're awesome, but because you're a good person. The kind of person every girl should be lucky enough to find, and the kind of person who doesn't deserve to be lonely and sad."

And I had to admit that if this had been my first jump instead of Girl Genius, if I even just had an assurance that this would be my last jump, then Amy would probably have won right then and there. But it wasn't, and I didn't. And so I couldn't.

"Amy, do you remember what they said in literature class was the roots of tragedy?" I asked her plaintively. "Particularly the classic Greek kind?"

"That the protagonist's downfall isn't because they're driven by their flaws but instead by the strength of their conviction, only in the wrong direction." Amy replied.

"And that's the path I'm on right now." I told her. "So please, whatever you choose to do with your life, do not try to follow me down it."

"You really don't know anything about girls, do you?" she smiled sadly at me.

"Fuck." I swore frustratedly. Yeah, I should have seen that one coming.

* * * * *​

Angel POV:

"I need an adult!" Jonathan cried as soon as he came in the door from school.

"Don't tell me Buffy-" I began disappointedly.

"No, no, her and I are fine." he assured me. "She apologized, I apologized, she stopped trying to hit on me, everything's fine." He slumped depressedly into an armchair. "No, Amy is where I'm really not good right now."

"I'm not really what you would call an expert in romance." I began, sitting down in my own living room chair. "But I can listen."

After Jonathan finished running me through the entire conversation him and Amy had had, I shook my head. "I'm gonna be blunt. If you wanted to actually put her off then you should tried sounding even ten percent less like a romance novel."

"I know." he moaned. "I saw that as soon as she answered me! I just wish I'd seen it before I'd answered her!"

"I think the most relevant part of the conversation is where you had a perfect opening to just let her not ask you out, but invited her to keep talking anyway." I analyzed.

"Because on some level I'm tempted to just say 'Yes'." he agreed. "I'm not that teenaged oblivious. That still doesn't mean it was a smart impulse."

"You're that sure that it's not your subconscious trying to tell you that you might be ready to start bonding again?" I said. Hey, I had been reading those self-help books trying to figure out something to aid him with. "You did just have a catharsis recently."

"That's-" Jonathan sighed, and suddenly looked ten years older than he was. "When you saw my nightmares, how many of them did you see?"

"The inside of your head was a maze." I acknowledged. "There were several I had to fight through, and you kept slipping ahead of me into new ones just before I could catch up. That's why it took me so long to finally reach you and pull you out. But that creepy guy in the suit was always watching you from a distance through all of them. That's why I figured killing him would break the cycle."

"You're carefully not asking about what you saw." Jonathan said intelligently.

"Dreams have to make real-world sense?" I shrugged. "I'm not sure why all of them were in the same fictional world, and I never knew you were that much into steampunk, but-"

Jonathan held up a hand for silence, and looked to be mustering as much of his considerable willpower as he possibly could. "Okay, if that asshole in the suit shows up to interrupt this conversation do not swing on him. The real one is nowhere near as easy to take, and he's a goddamned sadist."

My already dead blood chilled even further at that one. If that figure was a real enemy from his past, if the reason Jonathan's nightmares had been so many and varied is because he at one time had genuinely been caught up in some kind of reality-warping maze, then Jonathan's loved ones had been destroyed not by vampires, but by some type of demon lord.

"He's the one who took them away from you." I said. "And he's still- fuck!" I swore as I realized exactly what was going on. It's not like I hadn't done this myself before! "And as soon as you dare to love anyone again, he'll let it go on just long enough to be suspenseful, and then come back."

"Yeah." Jonathan agreed stolidly.

"He give you a name? Even a false one?" I asked. Because if we were going to kill a demon lord, we'd need a starting point.

Jonathan sat and thought for a long, long while. I let him.

"All right." he finally said. "You at least I can share all this with..."

And that's when he began what was, in all my centuries of life and unlife, bar none the weirdest damn story I'd ever heard.

We talked long into the night as he told me about the 'Jumpchain', and about his "Benefactor" - yeah, I was never going to say that thing's name without the sarcastic quotes either - and how this was the third reincarnation Jonathan was living through and how his first one had been a mundane world without the supernatural and where he'd had no real ties left to the world, and how he'd believed that his second one in that 'Europa' dimension was a new life that he'd be allowed to keep and how thoroughly he'd thrown himself into finding new families and loved ones there. How he'd actually been a young adult there, not a teenager, and a soldier and a ship captain during a war. How Violetta, the girl he'd loved, had been a 'Smoke Knight', an actual honest-to-god ninja, serving what had originally been uneasy allies and possible enemies who by the end of the war had become solid ones. I was actually amused at how close most of my deductions had been and yet how far off they actually were simultaneously.

"... so, what the hell do I do?" he finished. "The damned thing is not only functionally omnipotent, it can - and has - fucked with everything from my mental integrity to my body at will! Just sitting and taking it is obviously deprecated as a strategy, and-" he swore and punched the air. "For all I know the damned bastard is reading every thought I think. He can certainly hear every word I say. The power disparity is such that if I have the slightest hope at all of getting out of his net it will be by guile, but I just got through outlining how impossible he is to sneak up on-" he slumped.

And I had to admit, I felt his despair. I'd never even imagined being in pawn to such a horribly powerful entity that you couldn't even die to escape it. And Jonathan hadn't even really been given a choice about accepting the 'Jumpchain' at all, just the most threadbare illusion of one as he'd been intimidated into it. I felt sick. I felt helpless. I felt fully as bad as Jonathan did, as bad as any of the victims I'd ever-

And then I realized that there was actually something I could do. That all the horrible things I'd done might actually have a point. It was certainly a very grim satisfaction, given the context, but if even one soul could actually be genuinely, legitimately helped by Angelus' having existed then the mere knowledge of that fact would torture my inner demon forever. And given how much it had tortured me-

"If your 'Benefactor' feels obligated to stick to even the letter of the rules, much less the spirit, then that's an actual framework you can try to leverage." I said. "And even if it's an absolutely conscienceless, unscrupulous bastard then it still might have a reason to. It would not have bothered creating even an illusion of rules if it wasn't playing some kind of game, and even that game is just solitaire-"

"You can't cheat at solitaire forever without boring yourself to death." Jonathan began to realize.

"And with each new jump you complete, you'll slowly grow more and more powerful." I agreed. "So unless we assume that it's truly omnipotent - at which point there's no point in planning anyway- then eventually it has to either let you stop jumping, or else accept that you'll be as or more powerful than it and really pissed off."

"Or it can just kill me." Jonathan shrugged.

"So keep your karma clean enough that you end up in the good place." I said, "and at least hope to see the people you love there again." I shrugged. "Not even the mightiest demon lord is powerful enough to take away the entire afterlife. And unlike me you're still alive and have your soul- you're not locked out of going."

"Also a point." Jonathan agreed. "If that sonofabitch is going to drag this out for an eternity, then at least I can plan for eternity."

"But most important of all," I grinned wickedly, "we just learned that your 'Benefactor' might be vastly powerful, and even vastly able to keep surveillance on you, but he's still mentally limited enough to be capable of mistakes. Because he made a huge one when he sent you to Sunnydale."

"No Weapons, No Hope?" Jonathan asked.

"No," I surprised him. "That could have been just what you thought it was - him letting you have the tools necessary to let him drag this out. No, whatever else your 'Benefactor' is, whatever's behind its actions or whatever peers it might have, there's obviously an element of sadism in there for it as well. It's enjoying making you suffer, arbitrarily, for no better reason than it can."

"And this is a good thing how?"

"Because if that's even part of his game, then he should never have allowed you to talk to me." I declared. "I can't help you plan how to beat it. Even if we assume it's not doing full-time monitoring of your every thought, because there's nothing we could do about that if it was, we still have to assume that it's able to hear every word we say. So if I helped you work out a strategy, it would just see it coming. You've got to plan it out for yourself, and in the hopeful privacy of your own thoughts. But-" I cut Jonathan off as he tried to reply. "You gave me your life story tonight. And in return, I'll trade you mine. I'll tell you the entire story of the demon Angelus, the demon I used to be." I shook my head. "And it's going to be centuries of some of the sickest, most depraved, most monstrous stuff you've ever heard. Because when I was Angelus, I wasn't just a sadist. I was the sadist."

Jonathan blinked as he began to realize where I was going, and for the first time in a long, long while a faint hope began to flicker back into his eyes.

"I don't care how powerful this thing is or how long it's been cosmically torturing people. When it comes to sheer psychological cruelty then if I'm not at least a peer of the worst in the multiverse, nobody wants to know who is. And so by the time you've finished learning all about me you'll have finished learning more about how a sadistic, psychotic bastard thinks than virtually anyone else ever has. You'll know all our tricks, all our moves, all the illusions and mazes we try to build around our victim's minds-" I finished with an emphatic nod. "And all about how our obsession with pain and evil limits us. And once you've got all that down-" I snapped my fingers. "Then you'll have something to start making a plan of your own with."

"Know thy enemy." Jonathan agreed with me.

"At least that one little aspect of him." I agreed. "I don't know where your journey will take you or how long it will be, but I think we can agree on the goal."

"To eventually find a way to fuck my 'Benefactor' over as hard as possible." Jonathan snarled.

"One jump at a time." I agreed, matching his carnivore grin with my own.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Romantically speaking, we can all see exactly where Jonathan fucked up, yes. *g*

I didn't even plan to romantically torture Amy when I started this jump, but we all know that a lot of my writing is done by letting the flow take me places. But hey, if there wasn't tragic star-crossed love around here would we even be on BtvS? Jonathan totally cock-blocked Buffy and Angel out of having such a relationship, so three guesses who gets drafted to fill in.

Since there's no real way to have it said IC in the story short of a Benefactor POV segment which ahahahaha, fuck no, I will confirm OOC here that a lot of what the "Benefactor's" motive is here is that he is being a sadist. Whatever other purposes he may have, he's also legitimately letting needless suffering be done because he enjoys it.

Angel, of course, is going to pick up on that because he is legitimately one of the multiverse's greatest authorities on that topic. Angelus was not hailed as the cruelest creature the Master had ever known because he was an amateur at this shit. And part of that sadism is, of course, giving Jonathan opportunities to bond to new people that the Benefactor then takes away again.

And no, Angel isn't about to lose his soul because having to confess the full litany of his sins damn sure ain't a moment of perfect happiness for him, even if he can find ironic satisfaction in torturing Angelus with the knowledge that for once, just once, Angelus' list of sins will be put to a constructive purpose.

 

[Gindjurra]

As I was busy doubling back through one of the biological research labs to duck the attentions of a particularly large and nasty slime monster I'd set loose a couple minutes ago, my attention was suddenly caught by a low voice urgently whispering "You must warn your brother; beware the renegade." I spun around frantically trying to see who was there, but all I saw was a silly-looking but strangely cute lizard creature, about 70 centimeters long, standing upright in a sealed jar barely large enough to contain it. A sign on the wall behind it said Unknown Specimen: Cannot Die.

"I'm sorry, did you say something?" I asked it confusedly, not sure of what I'd heard.

"Hi!" it chirped back at me mindlessly, and said nothing more.

Click to shrink...

Viva la weird, I guess." he shrugged it off, and we kept running.

Click to shrink...

Does he only know Girl Genius and not any other Foglio works? Because in his shoes, I know I'd be a lot more rattled at encountering The Winslow!

Fortunately, Benefactors don't actually get to edit the actual text of jump-docs even if they get to play games with picking jumps or setting up their own Jumpchain houserules. And neither does 'basically omnipotent' mean 'free from error'.

Click to shrink...

"If your 'Benefactor' feels obligated to stick to even the letter of the rules, much less the spirit, then that's an actual framework you can try to leverage." I said. "And even if it's an absolutely conscienceless, unscrupulous bastard then it still might have a reason to. It would not have bothered creating even an illusion of rules if it wasn't playing some kind of game, and even that game is just solitaire-"

Click to shrink...

This. And an interesting point I feel I should raise, is that even if the 'Benefactor' is making some decisions for Johnathan, there are other decisions he's not making, and one of the ones he didn't make is a core element of Jumpchain documents: Companion import!

Even if Johnathan is stuck in Gantlet mode, he's still in rest mode between jumps, and Companions would be available in the Warehouse!

 

[ALIAS FAKENAME]

This. And an interesting point I feel I should raise, is that even if the 'Benefactor' is making some decisions for Johnathan, there are other decisions he's not making, and one of the ones he didn't make is a core element of Jumpchain documents: Companion import!

Even if Johnathan is stuck in Gantlet mode, he's still in rest mode between jumps, and Companions would be available in the Warehouse!

Click to shrink...

Well they did also make that decision too though when he made him take the Chain Drawback 'All By Yourself' making it so he couldn't tale companions.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

"'If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?' OK, so talk to me, people. How does what Shylock says here, about being a Jew, relate to our discussion about the anger of the outcast at society?" Ms. Miller, our English teacher, lectured the class. "Mister Fairchild?" she continued, pointing at me. My penalty for actually being the person who can translate Shakespeare to teenager and vice versa.

"He's saying that the people condemning him are hypocrites, which they are." I replied. "But Shylock himself has also become one. Shylock had a chance to get twice his money back but passed it up for a chance to - he thought - legally torture someone because he wanted to vent his grievances on a handy target. Then Portia turns around and doesn't stop with her clever legal argument to just stop Shylock from hurting someone unnecessarily and take the money instead, but goes on to twist the knife further and further and grind him into the dirt. It's a cycle of revenge where everybody starts from a legitimate place of grievance but doesn't stop themselves from going too far when it's their turn to have the upper hand, and so they keep racing each other to the bottom. And that's why by the end of the play it's no longer about who's right, just about who's left. The whole thing is a big parable on how injustice only keeps creating more injustice unless people can stop themselves."

"So what, Shylock's just supposed to keep turning the other cheek?" Cordelia Chase, still annoyed at not being called upon despite having had her hand up, rounded on me sarcastically. Ms. Miller looked tempted to cut her off but then visibly decided that turning the end of the class into an impromptu discussion might actually help the rest of the students to pay attention to Shakespeare for once, if only out of morbid curiosity.

"That's what Shakespeare wrote as his 'happy ending' for the play, but I'm sure nobody in the 20th century agrees with him." I conceded to Cordelia. "Like I said, the people against Shylock aren't any better than him by the end of that whole courtroom debacle. But for as long as we're on the 'cycle of revenge' metaphor then I'll point out that where Shylock should have broken the cycle was just not giving Antonio that last loan at all. If he didn't want Antonio's loan business undercutting his own then Shylock should have just let let him bury himself instead trying to deliberately booby-trap him and have it backfire. Losing your entire investment without insurance because ships get lost at sea was a normal business risk in that century; Shylock should have known that Antonio was almost guaranteed to go bust sooner or later if he kept overextending himself beyond his available cash flow like that. All Shylock had to do to win was nothing, or to just be a better person, and instead he does what he did and it ended how it ended."

"Wow, somebody finally said something that makes sense out of this stuff!" Cordelia surprisingly agreed with me. "You're right, that was a completely irresponsible fiscal decision! If you don't want business competition, then don't subsidize it!"

"That's a very interesting take-away." Ms. Miller said. "I've never had a class approach The Merchant of Venice before from a financial angle."

"I know, right?" Cordelia said. "It really brought the conflict into focus for me! I'm going to have to re-do my whole paper now!"

And then the bell rang and we all headed out. Cordelia stayed behind to talk to the teacher.

"I've never seen anyone get Cordelia to change their mind in a classroom discussion before." Willow said to me as we headed out.

"I just wanted to head off whatever she was originally going to say so I distracted her with money." I shrugged. "It's her second favorite topic, after all."

"And we all know what her first favorite is." Willow eye-rolled.

"Cordelia almost looked like she was going to ask you out to the Spring Fling there for a moment instead of Mitch." Xander cut in amusedly.

"Oh hell no!" I burst out. "There's no way I'm turning down Amy and then hurting her feelings by going with anyone else."

"And speaking of totally unrelated things, have I thanked you for my actual 'B' on the last English test yet?" Xander deliberately changed the subject. "Because that's definitely a new look for me."

"If we're going to sell our meetings at Giles' house to parents and staff as a weekend study group then we have to actually study a little, right?" I gladly rolled with the subject change. "I'm naturally good at explaining stuff, it's not a thing I can take credit for anymore than Cordelia can take credit for being born with rich parents."

"Don't you guys have gym next?" Willow reminded us. "You'd better go get changed."

"Thanks!" Xander said, and we headed off to the locker room. Gym class was softball today, so after it was over we hit the showers.

"Hey John." Mitch came up to me angrily as I was toweling myself off. "We need to talk."

"If it's about Cordelia-" I began.

"What is your deal, dude?" he said, staring at me. "You are the smartest guy in class and the most athletic, but you don't compete. Like, at all. What, you think you're so much better than us you that don't even have to try?"

"Mitch." I said firmly, really not wanting to get into some stupid teenaged brawl. "Take your girlfriend to the dance," I reassured him, slightly emphasizing 'your', "and have a great time. I'm almost certainly not even going."

"That's what I don't get!" he retorted. "What are you even here for?"

"I'm legally required to be?" I said sarcastically.

"That's not what I meant-"

"Boy's locker room!" I called out to the plain-looking girl who I'd just spotted coming up the row of lockers behind Mitch. "Wait outside, please!"

Mitch spun around as the girl looked at me in utter shock and then took off running. "Dude, who are you talking to?"

"You didn't see her? She was right there." I pointed and then shrugged. "She took off like a shot when I called her out, but I don't think she'd made the corner yet when you turned around."

"Didn't see her." he shrugged. "Who was it?"

I consulted my photographic memory and came up with barely zilch. "I've seen her around here and there but never gotten her name. Mousy-looking, brown hair... you know, average." I finished futilely.

"Whatever." he shrugged. "Maybe being a Peeping Tom is as close as she can get to a date." He laughed. "Do they still call it being a 'Peeping Tom' when it's a girl?"

"Ask Ms. Miller?" I deflected, and my having successfully defused the tension we both finished dressing and left.

* * * * *​

Amy and I didn't sit alone together at lunch anymore, but things had shifted enough that Jesse was no longer an interference factor to her sitting with the group. Not that Willow and Xander had fallen out with him at all - their inseparable trio was still pretty much inseparable. But his first and only near-death experience at the hands of vampires at the Bronze had spooked him enough that he clung as strictly to the daylight world as he possibly could, so he was only their friend and not any of ours.

Not that I had any objection to anybody else on the Scooby Gang actually having a social life outside of Slaying, even if I didn't. I had reasons for being wrapped up in what I was wrapped up in, but they were entirely welcome to maintain as many anchors outside the demon hunting lifestyle as they wanted to. So Amy and I had a suitably safe social space of contact to stay in touch in without... further stuff. And that meant I could pick her brains about certain sides of Sunnydale High.

"Amy, you're still on the squad for cheerleading, right?" I asked her.

"Until the end of this year." she agreed. "What with everything else I'm probably going to drop it, but Cordelia would never get off my case if I left a mid-season hole in her line-up. Replacing girls every school year is normal, though, so..." she shrugged.

"That's the school's fault for not having any reserves." I said. "But the reason I asked is, if you're cheerleading then you're the group's resident authority on who's who in the sports teams, coaches, personalities, all that."

"You are going to sign up for a non-mandatory school activity?" Buffy asked me in total shock. "You?"

"It recently got brought to my awareness that my refusal to let myself be pigeonholed at all is drawing more attention to me than anything else I could do." I shrugged. "So it's time to roll with the punch. 'Antisocial jock' is a category people understand, and as long as I'm contributing enough wins nobody will care about anything else I do except the 'jock' part." I shrugged. "Which certainly beats being the sideshow exhibit I am right now."

"That actually makes sense." Xander conceded. "What with my being in better shape now and all I was thinking about doing it myself next year to get the jocks and the Snyder off my back. Especially since they let you skip regular gym class if you're on a team. What sport were you thinking of going out for?"

"Unless it's got a psycho coach or steroid freaks, the wrestling team." I said. "That's why I wanted Amy to tell me if there was any creep factor I didn't know about in there."

"No," Amy reassured me. "They're high school wrestlers, with all that implies, but the coach doesn't believe in anything except old-fashioned weightlifting and practice. And they're nowhere near as bad as Percy's thugs on the basketball team. They're muscle guys but not bullies."

"Then I know what I'm doing junior year." I nodded.

"You think that might not be a little unfair, with all your training?" Willow asked tentatively.

"That's another reason I was thinking wrestling." I acknowledged her. "Sure, if you're on the junior pro circuit then you don't join your high school's golf team- if it has a golf team. Or if you're like that kid with the World Series ring in that baseball movie then you shouldn't go back into Little League after doing that. There's an expectation of fairness there, that people only play in their league."

"But?" Amy asked me, fascinated to hear my reasoning.

"But wrestling is a combat sport," I said, "and there's no real leagues, just weight classes. There's a lot less expectation of fairness in combat." I held up my hand to pre-empt the obvious reaction. "Don't get me wrong. The wrestling team will still have rules and I'll still follow them there, because it's still a sport and not an actual war. But what I meant was that the essence of the sport is still an old-fashioned 'two man enter, one man leave' experience. You don't fight foul and you don't fight for blood, but you still fight. And if you go out looking for a fight then you've already accepted that your opponent can potentially be anyone or anything with any kind of experience, and that they're not going to go easy on you and it's all on you to be good enough to win. Or not." I shrugged. "As long as I obey the rules and stick to my weight class, it's as fair as any other match-up in varsity wrestling ever gets even with all my prior experience. Because if talented people weren't allowed to play sports then Michael Jordan should never have picked up a basketball. Speaking of, what sport were you thinking of going out for?" I asked Xander.

He shrugged. "Track and field, maybe? I don't want contact sports or team sports, and you're doing wrestling, so I'll just see whatever else has an opening next year."

"Well, I'll cheer both you guys on." Amy assured us. "Although not with pom-poms because between Slaying and my apprenticeship I really don't need any more extracurriculars."

"I wish I could just do a sport and get over my own weirdness label here." Buffy sighed. "But it's kinda hard to do anything physical without revealing my superpowers and I already busted out of cheerleading tryouts."

"Hey, maybe you can poach my spot back next year." Amy reassured her. "My mom had to cheat to get me into it instead of you anyway."

"Assuming life doesn't throw me any more of the weird as interference first." Buffy sighed.

"Wait, is that an ambulance?" I said, having spotted the flashing lights outside the cafeteria window.

"What did I just say?!?" Buffy whined, as we all hurried to get up and go see what the latest emergency was.

* * * * *​

"I'm not certain this is even a supernatural occurrence." Giles said immediately afterwards in our hasty library meeting.

"He got his skull fractured out in broad daylight on the quad." Xander said. "How does that happen without twenty people seeing it happen unless Hellmouthy weirdness is involved?"

"He's going to be all right, isn't he?" Willow asked nervously.

"Head injuries are always uncertain," I said, "and from what I overheard the EMTs say he definitely had a concussion. On the other hand, he was also still conscious when they loaded him in so while he might or might not have gotten his skull actually cracked he's nowhere near as bad off as he could be." I finished, rubbing my chin in thought. "Which is one of the odd things about this."

"In what manner?" Giles said, nodding to me.

"First off, why did his attacker stop with just one hit?" I analyzed. "It can't be that they were afraid of being seen, because Mitch was so out in the open that even their first shot should have been in direct line-of-sight of several people. It was in line-of-sight of the cafeteria windows even, if not from our row! So if you have a way of attacking someone without being seen, then why run before you're finished?"

"Maybe they didn't want to hurt him too badly?" Amy asked.

"You don't club someone with a brick upside the head if you're not willing to at least risk doing them serious bodily harm." I pointed out. "But by the same token, if his assailant was trying to kill him then all they had to do was hit him in a different place." I tapped one finger to my temple meaningfully. "Or just hit him again and again while he was down. Instead they lash out once, then take off like a spooked cat." I chewed my lip.

"So, a crazy amateur." Buffy nodded analytically. "Amateur because they didn't know where to hit, and crazy because purposeful doesn't stop until after the job is done and normal doesn't go around trying to give people skull fractures for no reason."

"There we return to the question of if something supernatural is in play." Giles said. "Because if not, this is a matter for a police investigation."

"Our police?" Willow said indignantly. "They're horrible!"

"Hrm." I said, prompted by the thought of an actual police investigation. "Giles, where's the stacks with prior yearbooks?"

"Right there," he pointed. "Why?"

"Because earlier today something weird happened in the locker room with Mitch." I said. "He stayed behind to talk to me, and there was this girl-"

"In the boys' locker room?" Willow asked, aghast.

"As soon as I spotted her I told her to get out and wait." I agreed as I walked over to the relevant shelf. "The weird thing is, in hindsight I think she was trying to sneak up behind Mitch. And when I saw her she was acting surprised that I'd seen her despite her being out in the middle of the floor and in plain sight. And when Mitch turned around to see who I was talking to he didn't see her, and even though she'd taken off running she hadn't quite left the room yet."

"Somebody who's hard to see, who's all surprised whenever she is seen, and who was already stalking Mitch." Buffy said as I finished finding the yearbook I'd been looking for. "We have a suspect!"

"We do," I agreed. "Okay, so..." I brought the book back to the table as I was already hurriedly flipping through the class photos for last year, page after page after page, until-

"That's her." I said, putting the yearbook down and pointing at the face I'd seen earlier today.

"Marcie Ross?" Amy said. "Wait- Willow, didn't we have biology class with her last year?"

"I think so..." Willow said, chewing her lip thoughtfully.

"Maybe she was in homeroom?" Xander said doubtfully.

"I believe a trip to the records room is in order." Giles said, getting up to leave. We kept ourselves busy brainstorming futilely until he returned with Marcie's transcript.

"Wait, we each had four classes with her last year!" Willow said aghast. "How do we not remember her at all?"

"Some kind of power of suggestion." I suddenly realized. "Okay, did I ever mention that one of the weird bits from my past that I don't like to talk about is that I'm basically impossible to mind control?"

"No." Giles said to me flatly.

"Like I ask you for all of your youthful secrets." I chided him, and noted in passing that that drew far more of a flinch - however subtle - than I'd expected. Huh, hidden depths. "But my point is, if what she's doing is a 'Forget I'm here!' spell of some kind then I wouldn't even notice it. Because that's a subset of trying to control my mind, which is nope."

"But why would anybody want to make themselves invisible all the time?" Amy asked confusedly. "If your theory is correct then it's like she's gone beyond social outcast to outright missing person!"

"Maybe she can't control her powers." Xander said. "Maybe this is some weird cry for help?"

"A cry for help would be 'Help me!' written on a blackboard, not trying to break a random guy's head open." Buffy said firmly. "If this whole 'girl with superpowers who isn't me' theory has anything to it, then somebody's not using her powers for good."

"Willow, can you get into the police computer again?" I said. "I want to know if Marcie Ross is being listed as a missing person."

"No problem," she said, going over to her terminal and booting it up. "Those listings I already have my backdoor into, and-" Willow sighed. "Yeah, she is. Lost and invisible in the middle of all the other missing people statistics in Sunnydale. If I hadn't already had a name to look for it would have taken me a huge time to narrow it down to her." She kept typing for several minutes more. "Her parents even moved out earlier this year after having 'lost' their daughter."

I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on every detail I'd seen on her. "If her parents moved out then she can't be haunting her own house. And from what I glimpsed her hair was a mess, but that's what happens you can't go to barbers and cut it yourself. But her clothes were clean and relatively neat, and so was she, so she's squatting somewhere she still has access to laundry and showers. Plus food and shelter, obviously."

"The YMCA?" Willow guessed.

"A hotel?" Buffy brainstormed. "A friend's house?"

"The nearest such building would actually be the school itself." Giles pointed out.

"The gym showers and the laundry machine they use for the athletic equipment." I snapped my fingers. "And raiding the cafeteria for food. She could even swipe new clothes from lockers. With all the sloppiness around here and so many hundreds of kids, her petty thefts would never be noticed. But places like hotels and the YMCA actually count the towels."

"So, we have to search the school for a squatter's nest." Buffy said. "Great. That's a lot of potential places."

"Almost certainly not the basement." I pointed out. "You live down that close to the sewer entrance for several months without a support system and-"

"Vampires." Buffy agreed. "Invisible doesn't necessarily mean untouchable, or unhearable, or unsmellable- eugh." she shuddered. "So, we start from the top floor down?"

"Not we. Me." I said. "Tonight, after hours. I'm the only person we know can see her."

"And what'll you do when you find her?" Willow asked me.

"That depends on her." I said after a long pause.

* * * * *​

Seeing as how I knew exactly what I was doing, it didn't really take me very long. I ghosted back into the campus as soon as the late-leaving staff and after-hours extracurriculars were done, after the dinner hour, and let myself in with the spare key I'd long since cut myself for the exterior doors. Marcie's nest was in a ceiling space above the band room, complete with sleeping bag and bedside table.

But since she wasn't there when I got there, I decided to get out the old rubber surgical gloves and pass the time by searching through her stuff. Clothes, books, some failed attempts at solitary hobbies, a rather disturbing improvised weapons collection - and not-so-improvised, as I recognized a pair of Brazilian fighting daggers that had gone missing from Giles' in-library supplies a couple of months ago - and a journal.

By the end of the journal I was rather thoroughly depressed. Our theory had been correct - Marcie had developed some kind of involuntary invisibility power, and she'd been unable to shut it off. Her parents believing her gone and moving away was the start of a downward psychological spiral that she'd apparently been on for quite some time already. She'd possibly had avoidant personality disorder even before the Hellmouthy weirdness started, or perhaps the one had led to the other. At any rate, the months of isolation and the feelings of detachment and unreality showed up clearly as her writings got more and more deranged, reaching a positively serial-killer quality by the end. Apparently the only reason she hadn't done more damage already was rooted in the same fear and anxiety that had rendered her incapable of doing even the most basic reaching out and trying to connect with other people, but that restraining bolt of relative cowardice was visibly starting to fray entirely.

And then I hit the last page and I hit the ground running in panic.

​

He can see me. Finally, somebody who can actually see me, but it's too late! He's just one of Them, like Cordelia, like Mitch. The only thing he did when he looked at me was tell me to get out! I thought my new powers at least made me safe but no, the world won't even let me keep that! The group of weirdos in the library that he hangs out with, the ones with the weapons. The people who hunt things. Now they know about me. Now they'll be hunting me.​

​

But I'll have the last laugh on them. If I can't get them all then I'll at least get her. The Queen Bitch. The worst one of them all. She thinks her fancy house and its fancy walls and alarms will keep her safe from me? As if! Maybe one boy can see me, but she never could!​

​

Tonight. I'll do it tonight. And then I'll leave Sunnydale and they'll never, ever find me. Not even that boy who sees will find me, not with an entire world to hide in.​

​

Because there really is a whole world out there, full of so many wonderful things. And if none of the people in it will want me, then that's fine. I'll just take whatever I want. ​

​

And they'll never see me coming.​

I dropped back down into the music room, shut the panel again, and hit the nearest phone extension. I'd brought Angel up to date on the current case when I'd gone home after school today, so I didn't need to waste words.

"Angel, it's me! I found Marcie's serial killer shrine but she's already left to hit her next target. She's going after Cordelia off-campus!"

"Do you know where Cordelia is right now?" he asked.

"Either at home or the Bronze." I said. "Private house is a no-go for you, so cover the Bronze. I'll get her house."

"I'm on it." he said, and hung up. And then I got moving.

Cordelia's own sports car pulling out of her driveway and heading down the nearest side street with no lights on and Marcie in the driver's seat was a pretty obvious hint, so I killed my own lights and did a discreet tail. Marcie didn't bother driving much further than was necessary to find the nearest parking lot for the forest preserve, so I just stopped far enough up the road that she wouldn't see my car and hit the ground running. By the time I got there Marcie had dragged Cordelia's bound and gagged form out of her own car and left her lying propped up against the side door underneath one of the parking lot's streetlights. Places like this were for obvious reasons left entirely unattended after dark, so she didn't have much fear of interruption. And she was already heading towards Cordelia with a knife out and would reach her well before I could sneak within grabbing distance-

"Marcie!" I called to get her attention while I was still approximately twenty feet away, both of my hands behind my back. "Stop!"

"You!" she said, turning away from Cordelia to round on me angrily. Six feet away from the hostage, maybe a little less... still way too close...

"Marcie," I said as soothingly as I could. "If I can see you, then the spell can potentially be broken. We have people who know about supernatural things, who can actually do spells like the one on you. If you let us help you, you can rejoin the world."

"Where were you when I needed you?" she shrieked angrily. "You're only pretending to care to try and save her life! She's the only one you care about, not me! People like you never thought people like me mattered!"

"I'm not pretending to see you." I said. "And I'm not pretending that I want to help you."

"Bullshit!" she sneered. "I've got her, and I've got the knife! You've got noth-"

I brought my hands out from behind my back to clasp them again in front of me. Both Marcie's and Cordelia's eyes went wide at the automatic pistol clearly visible in my hand, the one I hadn't yet raised to firing position.

"Marcie." I told her. "You can't fill the empty place inside you with other peoples' bodies. Put down the knife."

"You're bluffing." she said hesitantly after a long pause. "You won't kill me. You're not like me. You're not angry. You're not justified."

"Defending someone against an imminent threat to human life is justifiable homicide." I corrected her firmly. "And if I have to watch someone die tonight, it will not be the unarmed one." I continued. "I want to take you alive and help you, Marcie Ross. I will stop you by any means necessary."

"But she deserves this!" Marcie ranted. "You don't know her! You didn't go to school with her for years! She's petty, and selfish, and cruel, and stupid-"

"And as true all of those accusations are, the cops still wouldn't shoot her for any of them." I cut her off. "But they would shoot you for what you're trying right now." I paused for one merciless beat before I continued "And so will I, even if I don't want to."

"No." Marcie said thickly. "This is all I've got left! I'll die before I let you take it from me!" she shrieked, and turned around to lunge at Cordelia with the knife-

And I fired, and Marcie Ross died on the spot before she could take another step.

I sighed, safed and holstered my weapon, and walked over to help the still-bound and gagged Cordelia to her feet. I mercifully carried her around to the other side of the car, where she didn't have to look at the headshot corpse any more, before removing her gag.

"OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod-" she hyperventilated. I untied her hands and scrounged a plastic bag from inside her car to let her breathe into until she recovered her oxygen.

"Are you hurt?" I asked her.

"How did you do that?" she gasped.

"I was not a normal kid, or living a normal kid life, before I came here." I answered her.

"Then what kind of crazy child soldier bullshit makes someone like you?" Cordelia asked me perceptively.

"Can we please not talk about it right now?" I asked her, as I finished cutting the rest of her bonds. "We're kind of on the clock here."

"I just-" she gabbled. "Cannot process this!" she frazzled.

"Marcie went crazy from prolonged social isolation and pre-existing mental conditions, and obsessed on hating popular kids." I began.

"No duh!" Cordelia cut me off. "That part I got! But what the hell was up with all the invisible?"

"The supernatural exists." I said to her flatly, knowing that Clear Understandings would help me short-circuit Sunnydale Syndrome. "Magic exists. Demons exist. And people who secretly fight all that weird stuff exist. Marcie got a taste of power somewhere and couldn't control it. And-" I said grimly. "She decided she'd commit suicide by cop rather than surrender."

"Are you a cop?" she asked me quizzically. "Like, is your whole deal really some 21 Jump Street thing?"

"No." I admitted. "I'm a rogue demon hunter."

"What's a rogue demon?" she asked me confusedly.

"Why does everybody make that joke?" I deflected. "And-" I got serious again. "Okay, first off, you just watched me straight up homicide someone. So if you want to dial 911, I'll hand you the phone." I shrugged. "I mean, I really don't want to go to jail but I am not going to go all 'no witnesses' on you. I don't hurt innocent bystanders."

"You saved my life." Cordelia told me earnestly. "I mean, a crazy serial killer was about to cut my face off and you still gave her like multiple chances to put down the knife! You might not be a cop but you acted just like one, and they wouldn't go to jail for rescuing me like you did." She shook her head. "I admit I'm not Mother Teresa but I am not that ungrateful a witch. Oh, and speaking of the police-?" she trailed off.

"One gunshot out in the woods at night is a car backfiring." I pointed out. "Or else I'd have already thrown you in the car and we'd be peeling rubber. But you're right that we don't want to stay here too long." I looked inside her car. "She left your keys in the ignition. The angle of my shot didn't leave any blood spatter on you or your car but when you drive out of here, make sure to go through a car wash before you get home just in case. I have to stay here and vanish the body."

"Okay," Cordelia said, breathing deeply and fighting to get possession of herself again. "Make like a tree and leave, check. But you are so explaining all this to me tomorrow!"

"The library, after last period." I told her. "We'll all be there."

"Got it." she said, still ashen-faced from shock, and then she got in her car and drove away.

I sighed and went back to my car to move it closer to the body and start getting the trash bags out of the trunk. I could in theory just leave Marcie's corpse here for Sunnydale's nocturnal scavengers but there was still a risk that the forest rangers would find it first, as relatively isolated as this site was. Much better to pack her along and leave her in the sewers for the local nightlife to sniff out, because that was a guaranteed corpse vanishing service and you didn't even have to pay anyone. Clearing out her room full of crazy tomorrow night should be equally as easy- I was the only person who knew where it was, and nobody else outside the gang would be looking for her.

But now I was officially the first Scooby to have taken a human life. Not that I was particularly feeling twinges of conscience about it myself given how clear-cut the situation had been and after having been one of Baron Wulfenbach's top enforcers for years, but they certainly would be freaking.

And I had no idea how I was going to handle this.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Well, it looks like not everything butterflies for the better. And the Scoobies' unrealistically comic-book code vs. killing humans had to clash with Jonathan sometime.

"21 Jump Street" was a TV show in the 80s about young-looking undercover police detectives in a high school. "Rookie of the Year" was a 1993 kid's movie about a kid who pitched for a Major League baseball team before losing the magic arm trick that let him throw 90+ mph fastballs and going back to a normal life.

Oh, and as to how Cordelia knew what was going on - she can't see Marcie, but she can see the knife she was holding. That was also from the original episode.

 

[cliffc999]

Cordelia POV:

Okay, that was a shocker.

Now, the whole being kidnapped by some crazy serial killer and then a last-minute hostage rescue by private security people? That one was entirely inside the mental universe for rich people in Southern California even if you never thought it would actually happen to you, so I still had a framework there. And I am so glad that she was still invisible when he shot her so I didn't have to actually see the bullet hit and the blood spray and everything because I'm sure that one would really have stuck. I sort of kept my eyes closed and looked away from the corpse afterwards too, because who wants those mental images later. So I'll probably stop hearing the gunshot in my dreams any month now. Honestly, why couldn't he have used a silencer?

But mentally dealing with Marcie's takedown was the easy part. The whole suddenly finding out that the school weirdos and their weird little study group were actually some kind of teenaged superhero team fighting a secret war against the supernatural? Where did you find a manual for this?

I showed up at the library after school like I'd been invited, but it probably wasn't a good omen that I got to the party just as it was sort of breaking up. He'd already made the explanations to them before I'd gotten there - so I took a couple minutes to nerve myself up, sue me - and the rest of their team was really freaked that he'd used a gun. Oh, not totally 'Get out of here!' freaked, but 'We are so gonna need a while to wrap our heads around this' freaked. Apparently there's a huge difference between killing non-human creatures because it's the only way to stop them from trying to murder people and killing humans because it's the only way to stop them from trying to murder people. Like how does that even work? I get that it's all normal society to disapprove of secret vigilantes running around but when you yourselves are secret vigilantes running round? Hypocritical much, guys?

Anyway, I stood up for the boy who saved my life and so did the grown-ups in the room, and so did Harris of all people - who'd have ever thought he'd be part of anything important - but the other girls were still kinda weirded out. So after the official meeting broke up and Jonathan left, I dragged them all aside for some girl talk.

"Okay, losers. Explain to me why you are ditching on somebody who according to you works harder at saving your lives than just about anyone." I glared at them.

"We're not ditching!" Buffy began. "We're just-" She shook her head. "Kinda wigged?"

Rosenberg was all nodding along mindlessly with her alpha, but Amy actually tried to glare back at me. "Cordelia, I need to-"

"Stay here and listen." I cut her off imperiously. "I admit that I'm new to this party but trust me, I am the reigning expert at socially cutting people out. And there was some serious non-verbal pulling-away going on right before he left and since I kinda owe him one, I'm going to-"

"Cordelia-" Amy tried to say again.

"Shut it!" I snapped. "Now what you're all going to do is-"

"I need to go talk to him!" Amy screamed at me. And oh, I felt my temper flare like a bonfire as I turned on her and got ready to tear her down to her component atoms... before what she'd just said sank in.

"'We're breaking up' talk to him, or 'I feel your pain' talk to him?" I asked her with, I admit it, just a tiny bit of embarassment.

"Door number two!" she hissed at me. Genuinely hissed! I actually felt a little proud!

"Go, go, go!" I waved her out the door and she took off running like a shot.

"Well, that's one of you with her head on straight at least." I stared at them, only to meet Buffy's stare coming the other way. We matched for a while - give her credit, she didn't back down at all - until I broke the tie by waving us to some nearby seats at the study table.

"So. Start telling me all about this secret world of yours and why the rules are supposedly so different here." I told them as we sat down.

Buffy nodded to me all 'Okay, if you say so.' styles and began her lecture.

"The world is older than you know..."

* * * * *​

Jonathan POV:

Well, at least I didn't get kicked out. But I was definitely back to being the scary outsider to at least most of them instead of the guy who sits at the lunch table and talks about sports.

Only to be expected, really. They're from 20th-century America and... so was I, once upon a time. And part of me still is. But my second childhood was in Europa, and they did things very differently in Europa. Even subtracting the entire Teufel experience and the shit that my psychotic sire there did for "training", I'd made my first kill in the service of the Baron at age fifteen. Which was a bit early even for the Wulfenbach Empire, but stuff happens. And I'd made many, many, many kills since.

So putting down a psychotic hostage-taker and aspiring serial killer? I'm going to be honest, after you burned your first or second village full of revenants you didn't have any tears left for someone who still had their free will and chose to be a murderous monster anyway. Not a single one. Putting down people who'd been compelled to try and kill you by an irresistible force was heartbreaking. There were a lot of troops who couldn't make themselves go back out and do it the second time, and had to be pensioned off or put on garrison duty somewhere. Hell, the existence of that kind of shit was the main reason DuPree had originally been given a job rather than the end of a rope, but even her and her hand-picked crew of cutthroats couldn't do all of that ugly business themselves. No, we'd all had to share in the ugly in the Empire. Even though the Second Other War had had the team all safely in Mechanicsburg or fighting against willing servants of the Other in Rabennest at the end- even before that I'd still done enough of those missions myself to know what it was like.

So I could feel no pity for Marcie Ross or anyone else who chose to be a monster. I couldn't even pretend to, and I wouldn't if I could. My regrets were an abstract sense of the waste involved whenever someone willingly chose to walk down the wrong path and refused to walk back. Along with a not-so-abstract sense of loss of the close friendship I'd started to have with them, that I was only realizing now that I'd started missing it-

"Hey." Xander's voice cut into my moping. "Are you all right?"

"No." I said honestly, after a brief pause for consideration.

"Yeah." he nodded. "Look, if it helps, they're not actually hating on you. They're just a little off balance right now."

"They're having a perfectly normal human reaction." I agreed with him. "Which only underlines that I don't have all of those anymore."

Xander absorbed that with a thoughtful pause. "You know, way back when Willow and me had just met Buffy and we were trying to figure out Other New Kid - that's you - I made the joke that you acted like you'd grown up in military school before transferring here." He shook his head. "But it was actual military, wasn't it?"

I nodded once, slowly.

"And not just training." he probed.

"Missions. Lots of missions." I said quietly.

"Okay, how does that even happen at your age?" he asked me confusedly. "Isn't that illegal?"

"Not in that part of Eastern Europe." I eventually conceded.

"Damn." he shook his head. "That sounds like a- okay, forget action movie, that's full-on Ludlum novel. How'd you get out?"

"Xander." I heard Amy's voice call from behind us. "Can I talk to him alone, please?"

"Absolutely." he said, and before I could blink twice he was gone.

I turned around and before I could say anything her arms were around me.

"Amy-" I began, as my arms came up to hold her loosely. We weren't romantic hugging, we were comfort hugging, but even so I had a live, warm, and pretty girl in my arms. And I was biologically and at least partially emotionally sixteen years old so I needed a lot of willpower right now to avoid doing anything inappropriate.

"If I'm pushing then I apologize." she said softly as our cheeks pressed together. "But I've never seen anyone who needed a hug more than you did right now."

"The tragedy is that you're not wrong." I conceded.

I let her linger for a bit before we separated. Some returning sense of professionalism had me check the zone for possible eavesdroppers and find a quieter corner to talk in than the hallway before we resumed our conversation.

"How much of what I told Xander did you overhear?" I asked her.

"Everything from 'actual military' onwards." she said. "I-" she gulped. "In freshman year, my world cultures term paper was on child soldiers. I-" she began to cry. "I'm so sorry!" she sniffled.

"Amy." I squeezed her hand. "I'm-" I shook my head. 'Okay' would be a blatant lie right now. "They were not remotely as cruel as they could have been." I reassured her. "They didn't do it to be cruel at all, and neither were their methods. They were decent people who just wanted to protect their-our country. It was just-" I shook my head. "Desperate times all around. Very desperate. America is so lucky that they never had history like theirs."

"You're not American?" she asked me.

"My very early life was here. Then I ended up there. Then that phase of my life ended - catastrophically." I nodded as a callback to the tragic ending of the last phase of my life that the gang already knew about. "So... here I am." I finished, having summarized the entire Jumpchain nonsense to date in four sentences.

"But it still hurt you." she said.

"If I got formally diagnosed by a psychiatrist I think they'd score me crazier than Marcie on some levels. I'm just a lot more functional. Functioning through damage-" I shrugged. "This is a huge part of why I wish you'd fallen for someone else. You can't fix a broken person with love, and you'll turn yourself into a tragic ending in a horror story if you try to."

"You don't abandon suffering people either." Amy insisted. "Not and claim to be any kind of a decent person yourself."

"If you believe that, then what does that say about me?" I said, as I horribly mimed cocking a pistol and shooting an imaginary Marcie.

"Marcie abandoned you, not vice versa." Amy surprised me. "She abandoned humanity when she went off like she did. You gave her every chance you could." Amy screwed up her face bravely and continued. "If-" she gulped. "If I ever had a spell backlash on me like that, if I ever went so crazy that I was just gone and it was only a monster left wearing my face-"

"Amy, don't talk like that!" I winced.

"Sorry." she said and squeezed my hand back. "But what I'm saying is, if you think that you're the monster-" she stared compassionately at me. "You're not. Maybe some of the others are wigged out by having realized that one of their classmates knows how to shoot people, but not me. I know that you'd never hurt me, or any of the gang, or any innocent person at all. I don't even dream that you could do that. I know the difference between 'you could' and 'you would'. Jonathan, even if you think that parts of you are broken that still doesn't mean you're bad." she insisted.

"You're too good for this sinful earth." I chuffed sarcastically.

"Oh no, I was a such brat when I was younger." she said affectionately. "But then I met this great guy. Who set a great example."

"I am not a role model!" I denied.

"Maybe not for some things." she agreed wisely. "But for the important things? Did you know that the other Jonathan nicknamed you 'Captain America' for how you kept getting in the bullies' way around the school? Everybody thinks that people who have superpowers and use them only to help other people exist only in comic books, but-" Amy chuckled.

"Shouldn't this be the speech you give Buffy, not me?" I asked her.

"Oh, she's amazing too." Amy agreed. "Even with how much she complains sometimes about having to do the Slaying, she never stops going back out night after night. Even superheroes need need to vent sometimes." She stopped, and continued more soberly. "Which is why I'm worried that you don't."

"You saw me vent once." I reminded her. "And it wasn't pretty for anyone."

"Which is why you need to do it more often and in healthier ways." she said. "So-" she stopped and swore. "Eugh!"

"I'm sorry?" I asked her.

"I was about to say something stupid." she replied mysteriously. "So, not doing that."

We sat for a brief, companionable silence.

"Amy." I said finally. "I am- okay, you're right, I'm not crazy, and I have a perfectly functioning conscience. But I am still emotionally compromised. Deeply, fundamentally, and on levels that would almost certainly require rearranging space and time to really fix. I can be your friend. I can fight for you. I can support you. I can even admire and respect the hell out of you." I shook my head. "But I can't love you. And for as long as-"

"That's the first lie you've ever told me." Amy cut me off flatly. Wait, what-?

"What lie?" I asked confusedly, to receive a penetrating stare in my eyes.

"That you couldn't love me." she said. What the hell-?

Oh. Crap.

Of course. Clear Understandings and my habit of never telling direct lies meant that anybody who was a close friend would learn from repeated experience what my 'totally sincere' voice sounded like and how it subtly differed from normal social interaction. Which would mean that, if they were suitably empathetic or intuitive, they'd also know on some level whenever I wasn't using it. And- yeah, strictly speaking, my last statement was a lie. I could possibly love Amy Madison, if I ever allowed myself to.

Which I couldn't.

"I can't let myself love you." I said. And that was the truth.

"Why?" she burst out, and then cut herself off. "No, I promised I'd wait. I shouldn't have asked." she self-remonstrated.

I called upon No Weapons, No Friends to give me the inner strength to walk away from this conversation before I did the wrong thing, and it failed me utterly. Stupid Teenaged Angst-

... or maybe it isn't teenaged angst, I realized. That perk only gave me the inner strength to do the right thing. What if I had no clue what the right thing was? Or... what if I was doing the wrong thing?

"Did you ever read 'The Odyssey'?" I asked Amy. "Not just for class, but actually read it."

"Junior high had a teacher who was really into Greek mythology." Amy said. "So yeah, we got the full annotated version."

"Did you ever consider the story from Circe's point of view?" I asked her.

"The evil witch who turned men into pigs?" Amy asked me puzzledly. "What about her point of view?"

"The witch who turned her back on being evil because she eventually fell in love with the most impressive man she'd ever met." I said. "But who knew even as she did that his heart was already committed elsewhere, and that he'd never stay. So they had their year together and then parted forever, and the story moved on to follow Odysseus and we never knew how Circe dealt afterwards with having loved hopelessly and lost." I shook my head. "Do you think it was good that she got a brief time with Odysseus before having to give him up to Penelope forever, or would it have been better for her overall if they'd never done that to each other?"

"But your Penelope isn't alive-" and then her hands flew to her mouth in shocked realization. "Oh my God! You said 'gone', not 'dead'! But how- if your Violetta's out there somewhere then why are you even still here?!?"

"My life in that other place - which was, legitimately, in Eastern Europe - was not really supernatural. But the event that took me away from there was." I shook my head. "Think of it like an alternate timeline. I was born on Earth, and in America, but not this Earth. Not this USA." I sighed. "Violetta's still alive out there, Amy. All of the people I'm grieving for having lost still are. I just can't-" I shook my head. "I am randomly lost with an entire infinite multiverse I'd have to cross to even begin looking for where they are, and there's not even any magic that exists in this world that's powerful enough to get me back home! Trust me, I know that as a fact!"

"But if you can't ever get back-" she said after a long incredulous moment. "Then wouldn't the castaway rule apply to you?"

"It doesn't matter how impossible my hope of returning is." I said after a long, long pause. "If I abandon it, then I abandon me." I shook my head. "And hell, I don't even know how long I'll be staying in this world. The force that bounced me-" I sighed. "It's theoretically possible that it might go 'Okay, we're done now!' and this is where my odyssey stops... but the overwhelming odds are that it won't."

"How long do you have?" Amy asked me, shocked.

"From all available data, a maximum of eight years." I shrugged. "Last time it cut out at seven."

"... then why did you let yourself settle down there at all, then?" Amy whispered, visibly afraid I'd take the question the wrong way.

"Because that was my first time getting bounced." I told her. "I didn't know it would end like that, not that time."

She shook her head angrily. "Life is so not fair!" she spat out.

"It entirely isn't. And least of all to you." I agreed sadly.

"Well." she said after a while. "I suppose that even the worst cursed cloud has a silver lining."

"What would that possibly be?" I asked her confusedly.

"If your time in this world is inevitably limited, then you can't tell me not to waste my life waiting 'forever' because I won't be." she smiled sadly at me. "Jonathan Fairchild, I love you. Even if you can't allow yourself to love me back, I still do. And for as long as you're allowed to endure in this world, I'll help you do that however I can."

"And when the time comes that I have to leave your island and sail onward alone, will all your happiness go with me?" I asked her.

"It's already there." she said simply.

"I'm so sorry I've done this to you." I apologized.

"You didn't do anything." she said softly, as we hugged again. "And even if you did, I forgive you."

* * * * *​

Buffy POV:

After the Marcie thing, the group kinda fell apart into sub-cliques for a little while. There was the 'me, Xander and Willow' clique, there was the 'Amy and Jonathan' clique, there was the grown-ups clique, and then there was our annoying new kibitzer.

Not that Cordelia was wrong about some of the stuff she said. I could hardly argue with her about what Jonathan had really done on that night - she'd been there as an eyewitness, I hadn't. Or that it would have been totally of the non-freaking if he'd just been a random off-duty cop walking by, or a private bodyguard her family had hired, or anything like that. It's just- okay, knowing you sat and ate lunch every day with someone who could in theory pull out a gun at any time and start headshotting people with it was freaky! Normal people didn't do stuff like that, did they?

I asked Giles about it and he pointed out that while the rule was that Slayers shouldn't take human life that was ultimately for the protection of the Slayers, not the people. Dead vampires and dead people-like-you hit the human mind different psychologically even if logically stopping a psychotic murderer from ripping a victim open right then and there was on the same moral level whether the psychotic murderer had fangs or not. But there was the morality and then there was the wiggins, and those two weren't always the same thing. So yeah, under normal circumstances taking a teenaged girl and telling her to put people - people, not vampires - in the ground would really, really mess her up. I asked Giles about how if that wouldn't mess someone else up too, and he pointed out that Jonathan was visibly kinda mentally distressed in some ways and we'd always known this about him. Apparently the part where all the people he loved got taken away from him was only part of his anguish. However, clearly he wasn't messed up in the ways that made him unable to know right from wrong, so...

Poor Amy. I had no idea how I'd have coped if the guy I fell in love with turned out to actually be carrying around mental scars the size of Europe and I had no ability to fix them. I'm sure that if that ever happened to me it would end in a total train wreck. So God, please let my friend get an actual happy ending, okay? Turns out that romantic tragedy is a lot less fun to live than to read about!

Now I'm going to be fair to Jonathan, he was totally cool with the fact that we most of us were wigging out on him a little. Now that was a man who didn't ever kid himself with false expectations. He basically acted like that if we were expected to wait him out while he got over his psychic distress that one time, he should be calm and wait us out. And Xander was actually in his corner even if he was mostly sticking with Willow and me, probably because something had shifted between him and Amy even if none of us had any idea what. And none of us wanted to pop that bubble just yet.

And regardless of our personal dramas, and the fact that the Spring Fling was almost upon us and I still didn't have a date, the Slaying still went on. We'd never really worked out a method of locating the Master, and while we could kill minion vamps all day he could always get more and more. Not even just turning fledglings in town but having older vamps arrive from out-of-town, as the word apparently went out that something big was going to happen soon and did they want to be in on it. And with our luck, it wouldn't be anything as innocent as a rock concert.

Giles had found some new volume of prophecy - the Perga-whatever Codex - in Angel's collection that he thought would contain vital new clues. Him and Angel and Jonathan had spent the past few days off in the research zone running down something that was apparently mega-urgent from all the effort they'd been putting into it. I was always happy to ditch on research party when I could so I didn't know what, and uncharacteristically they weren't even trying to make me do my homework, so I patrolled, and ducked the Cordettes' attempts to come around and figure out my bag now that their Queen was actually talking to me, and tried to imagine what boy around here I could actually go and dance with that wouldn't end up like, well, any of my prior attempts to date since I'd first become the Slayer.

And that's why I was totally unprepared when I walked into Giles and Angel talking in his house, because I'd forgotten my math homework there and had to go nip out and get it at the last minute.

"There has to be some way around it." Angel said urgently.

"Listen," Giles remonstrated. "Some prophecies are, are a bit dodgy. They're, they're mutable. Buffy herself has, has thwarted them time and time again, but this is the Pergamum Codex. There is nothing in it that does not come to pass."

Whoa, this sounds heavy. I crept closer and used my Slayer hearing to eavesdrop as best I could-

"Every other book of prophecy that went wrong had to have a first time they were wrong!" Angel said. "Who says that this won't be one of those cases?!?"

"I wish to God I could believe that!" Giles said desperately. "But this is the plainest text that I have ever read! Tomorrow night the Slayer will face the Master. And she will die."

* * * * *​

Author's Note: Season finale time! Prophecy Girl is a go!

When I started out writing this I did not intend for Amy to be more than a one-sided crush, as would be nigh-inevitable for a girl in her situation. And then these characters started writing themselves as I went along, in directions I entirely didn't plan on, to the point that they ended up as perhaps the most intense and satisfying romance arc in any of my stories. Only Hawke/Shadowheart from my BG3 fic compares... and that one at least had the canon Shadowheart romance path as a big inspiration to build off of! This was done entirely out of whole cloth - on both sides, as my Amy Madison has diverged so heavily from the canon one so soon that she's practically an OC!

And neither did I actually have the Odyssey in mind when I started writing this. I certainly didn't realize that Amy's role in the myth cycle going on here is so correspondent to Circe's that it's goddamn eerie. But I had read the annotated Odyssey in junior high and so I'd had this data stored deep in the back of my mind.

So yeah. My regular readers know that my subconscious and my muse collaborate to ambush me as I write all the time, but this is an ambush that waited literally decades to snipe me. Man, ain't this some shit.

And unrelated, have you ever considered how possibly useful Grindstone might be in setting positive examples for other people, if those others are at all willing to learn from example? After all, leading and inspiring by example is, by one school of thought at least, a method of instruction. No wonder people improve around Jonathan like they do.

PS: Yes, I am utterly aware of how ironic Buffy's musings re: tragic romance are given her canon situation. That's the point. I am ironically mocking the hell out of that shit. *eg*

 

[cliffc999]

Buffy POV:

I gasped.

"Buffy?" I heard Angel say as they both got up from the table and started walking towards the door I was lurking behind. Damn vampire hearing!

"Buffy," Giles called desperately, "Wait!"

Nope. Not waiting. Not waiting at all! I am totally getting out of here!

I tore out of the house and sprinted across the lawn. Sun wasn't entirely down yet so Angel couldn't follow me, and Giles couldn't hope to keep up. So I got a block and a half away, and then I realized I didn't know where I was running to. Where was I going to go? What did you do when you were told that this was going to be your last 24 hours on Earth?

Part of me - ok, most of me - was screaming desperately in my ear to just get on a bus out of town right now. Clean out the piggy bank, grab the suitcase, and head for the big city as fast as I could. Nobody had ever asked me if I wanted to be the Slayer! It wasn't fair that I was going to die before I even got a steady boyfriend that wasn't a creeper, got to go to the prom, got to see what college looked like- before I got to live! Sure, I did the Slaying because someone had to but when push really came to shove I didn't really owe anyone anything! I hadn't volunteered for anybody's army, I'd gotten drafted!

And with that thought, I was reminded of someone else I knew who'd gotten drafted once.

Well, let's hope that out of all the places Giles and Angel are going to go looking for me, Angel's own house isn't one of them.

"Buffy?" Jonathan asked me as soon as he saw the expression on my face. He did the whole looking-around-and-checking-the-skyline thing as he talked to me to try and spot anything might be following me. "What's wrong?" he asked me as stepped aside to let me enter the house.

"The Perga-whatever Codex." I said. "You were helping Giles and Angel research it."

"Until they took me off the translation team yesterday." he agreed. "It hit the section written in languages I didn't know."

"So you don't know about the part that says I die tomorrow night." I told him weakly.

"What?" he spit-taked.

"Tomorrow night the Slayer will face the Master. And she will die." I quoted. "According to Giles, it's the 'plainest text he ever read'."

"When did they tell you this?" he asked me. "And are they really certain?"

"I overheard them talking when I went to the Scooby house to pick up the math homework I'd left there." I said. "And I bailed before I could ask them."

Jonathan sat and thought for a long minute.

"What do you want to do?" he asked me.

"I don't know!" I wailed. "I want to run! I want to get as far away from Sunnydale as I possibly can! I want-" I sniffled. "I want to-" I couldn't find the words.

"All right." Jonathan said. "The bank closes in less than an hour, so we need to hurry."

"The what are closing why?" I gobbled.

"If you're running away, you need cash." he pointed out sensibly. "I have some."

"Wait, you're-?" my brain totally crashed and burned. "You are telling me to run away? To, to-" I waved my hands all wibbley. "Abandon the mission?"

"The what just became a suicide mission, you mean?" he asked me. "You volunteer for those. You don't make other people do those. And you don't want to, so you're not going to."

"And that's it?" I screeched at him. "No 'I expected better of you?' No 'Come on, get in there and fight?' What, you expected me to be a coward? Are your expectations of me so low that I literally can't disappoint you even by doing this?!?" I shouted. "I know exactly what you'd be doing if you were in my shoes!"

"Buffy," he said sadly. "Of the two people in this room, which one is sane?"

And with that, all the anger and most of the scared drained out of me as I realized that Jonathan didn't think I was being pathetic, or that ditching like a coward was the most that could be expected of me. That he'd actually understand, actually not disapprove, if I just dropped the ball and ran.

"You're not crazy." I said compassionately, and then paused. "Okay, you're not that crazy."

"Look, just because your first instinct doesn't look glorious doesn't automatically mean it's wrong." Jonathan pointed out reasonably. "The Master's trapped underneath the Hellmouth. If you're not here in Sunnydale then you can't die facing him, and then the prophecy becomes impossible to fulfill. I can help you do that." he said earnestly.

"Thanks." I said weakly, and wiped the tears away. I took a deep breath, then another. Now that my head was clearer, I could see what I'd been missing.

"Look after them for me, will you?" I asked him.

Jonathan's relieved expression fell away like it was cut off with a knife as he understood exactly what I meant. "Buffy-"

"I can't outrun this. I mean, maybe I can, but-" I shook my head. "We know the Master can't leave his hole until after he opens the Hellmouth, but his vampire army can leave anytime. So what will he tell them to do as soon as word gets around that there's no Slayer here anymore? We all know he doesn't really figure mortals into his calculations."

"Buffy-" he began again.

"So I take off, and he tells them to start rampaging after I leave. Or he finds a way to open the Hellmouth at his leisure now that he thinks he doesn't have to take me out first. And then-" I choked. "And then I'm the one who's left standing after all her family and friends are gone." I started crying. "You already know what that's like, and you didn't even choose to leave! So how can I do the same thing to me? I'm so scared of dying, but-" I sniffled. "I'm still more scared of being alive but wishing I was dead."

"Shit." he swore. Yeah. Not much else you could say about that.

"All right." he eventually continued grimly. "Looks like we're both missing the Spring Fling tomorrow night. Well, I wasn't going anyway-"

"No." I glared at him. "If I go down there, then you can't." I held up a hand. "Yes, one Slayer dies, the next one is Called, but is there any guarantee the Watchers will send her here? Or that she'll even be willing to work with the gang?" I shook my head. "After-" I stopped, and started again. "After I die, the gang will still need a fighter, a champion, who's at least as good as me. And I don't mean Angel, even if he is. You've always looked out for everyone-" I nodded at him. "And I'll need you to keep doing that for me."

"If I'm not going then you're taking Angel, and-" he began.

"No." I said again. "I'm the Slayer. I do this alone."

"Buffy, have you considered that going without backup might be how you're supposed to lose?" he pointed out reasonably.

"... but it still won't work." I said after a long pause. "We can't find the Master, remember?"

"Oh, I remember." Jonathan said disgustedly. "I should have been working on some kind of tracking network, but I kept putting it off because of my own drama, and now you're-"

"Water under the bridge now." I said despondently. "But my point is, the Master's going to have to have someone take me to him for his big prophesied confrontation. I'm sure he knows the books as well as Giles does. And whoever that someone is, they won't take me there unless they see that I'm alone."

"But the real reason you're doing it is because you think that anybody who goes with you will die too." he retorted.

"Kinda yeah." I agreed. "I can't duck this- I won't duck this. But I can at least still hope to take the Master with me. And he's the only one I want to take with me."

"So what do you need me to do?" Jonathan asked.

"... I'm gonna be a big chicken at least one way." I admitted. "I can't face any of the others before this goes down. I can't even face my mom. I'm more afraid of the good-byes than the why."

"You can't stick Giles with saying good-bye to her for you." Jonathan said. "He'll already be torn up enough if you're gone. Rub salt in the wound much?"

"She doesn't even know about the Slaying yet, and yes I should have told her earlier!" I said. "But how can I fit all the explanations into the last 24 hours? How can I-" I shook my head. "If my mom knows about this then for the rest of her life one of two things will be true- either she gave me permission to go and get killed and guilts herself for it forever after, or the last thing I did to her was disobey a direct parental order and she guilts herself for it forever after. The only way she's not on the hook for this is if she never had a chance to know about it until after I already left!"

"Christ, does that one ever hit home." Jonathan said mysteriously. "Can you at least write a letter or something for me to give to her?"

"I can do that." I agreed. "And do you have a place we can hole up for a day that isn't where any of the others can find us? Somewhere I can rest up and you can help me last-minute train for the title fight?"

"The abandoned factory that you guys took Moloch down in." he said after a moment's thought. "If there's any new squatters in there then cleaning them out will be a warm-up act."

"Good." I said. "I'm sorry to dump the survivor's guilt on you, but I want to be as ready for this as I can. And you're really good at helping other people get focused."

"It's a gift." Jonathan said bleakly, and then nodded his head once. "Get started on writing that letter, and I'll leave a note for Angel and grab some gear."

"Thanks."

"If you really want me to feel thanked, say that again the day after tomorrow."

* * * * *​

Xander POV:

Neither Jonathan or Buffy showed up for school the next day. We all wondered what had come up - they were both too healthy to be out sick and they never ditched - but when I found out the truth from Mr. Giles during morning study hall, I made sure all the rest of us knew as soon as possible. And then the rest of the day was just horrible. Finding the dead kids in the A/V club room was just the perfect capstone to a perfectly horrible day. If the vamps were already feeling bold enough to raid on-campus, then yeah, the big night was going to be tonight. So all day I couldn't pay attention to anything in class, couldn't eat anything, couldn't do anything but obsess. I hadn't even had a chance to ask-

School finally ended and those of us kids who actually had parents who paid attention had to go home for dinner, so I went and helped Giles break out and start polishing the weapons. Just as the sun was going down everybody else got back to the library for an emergency Scooby meeting. Ms. Calendar was also here for some reason.

"Has anyone spoken to either of them?" Giles asked first thing.

"Nobody's seen either of them all day." Amy said worriedly.

"Buffy's mom called my house during dinner asking if we'd seen her." Willow sighed. "So she didn't go home either. Mrs. Summers sounded only one step short of calling the police."

"Jonathan never came home after last night." Angel brooded. Didn't blame him.

"So Buffy gets a prophecy that she's going to die fighting the Master," Willow analyzed. "And- and what? She takes off running? Why would she do that? Why would Jonathan help her do that?"

"Because even I have limits." Jonathan snarled, and we all turned in shock to see him heading in the door holding an athletic tote bag stuffed with gear. "Look, I tried to get her to run. I outright offered to fund her running." He swore and kicked an empty chair. "And let's just say I've never been more upset at the example I ever set anyone." Out of the corner of my eye I saw Amy wince briefly at that.

"Then why aren't you with her?" Giles accused him.

"Practically, because the Master wouldn't have her escorted to him if she wasn't alone." Jonathan replied matter-of-factly. "And emotionally, because she didn't want me to." He sighed. "I got a very brave speech from her about her wanting me to take care of everybody else if she couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't tell her 'no'."

"You said if." I cut in, focusing on the only important thing. "So this certain death thing isn't certain?"

"Not if you guys can help it." Jonathan said grimly. "I said Buffy didn't want anyone to come with or follow her. I didn't say I actually agreed with her." He reached into the gear bag and came out with some kind of hotwired electrical multi-meter. "Which is why the gear I loaned her had tracking tags in it."

"Way to go, Bond Jr." I complimented him. "Now that's more like it!"

"And I went suspenders-and-belt." he said, reaching into the bag again and coming out with a small ladies' hairbrush that he handed to Amy. "Can you use that for a tracking spell? Something that you can give to Angel to use?"

"We certainly can." Ms. Calendar agreed for her.

"Good. Then as soon as it's ready, I've got everything I need to follow her down." Angel said, standing up.

"That we need to follow her down," I said to him, getting up and grabbing my axe off the table.

"We." Angel nodded to me.

"Not without me, you won't!" Giles insisted.

"Giles," Ms. Calendar said firmly. "Remember the other thing we were discussing?"

"The Master's vampire army is going to want a lot of fresh blood." Willow reminded them. "So he'll be sending them to the Bronze tonight-"

"Why send them to the Bronze when virtually the entire student body will be here?" Jonathan pointed out. "Looks like Buffy's instincts on wanting me to stay behind and help cover the school were more on point than I gave them credit for."

"... please do the very best you can for her." Giles asked us both weakly, as Amy and Ms. Calendar finished getting some magic supplies out of Giles' office and started a hasty ritual over one of the hairs from the hairbrush.

"We all come home or nobody comes home, G-Man." I said to him resolutely.

"And everybody else, saddle up." Jonathan said. "We'll have an entire small army of vampires coming straight at the school, and we have very little idea when they'll get here."

"Maybe we should just pull the fire alarm." Willow said. "Or actually make a fire."

"Not after sundown." Jonathan said. "They'd all be even worse sitting ducks if they scattered outside the campus."

"Xander," Amy called to me. "It's ready." She handed me some kind of magic glowstick and explained that the closer I pointed it in the right direction, the more brightly it would glow. I traded it to Angel for the high-tech gizmo that I'd actually understand, and with a hasty goodbye to everyone we both headed out.

* * * * *​

Willow POV:

I hated this.

My new and bestest girl friend was going to die fighting the evilest vampire on Earth. My old and bestest boy friend was going to die trying to save her and the only person who'd be with him when he died would be a souled vampire. My other girl friend was busy doing spells when I could barely lift a pencil, and my only real talent was being on the computer and that was totally useless right now! Even the computer science teacher could do more than I could, both magic-wise and probably computer-wise! And Mr. Giles and Jonathan were both professional demon hunters and-

And I was the useless tagalong. The sidekick girl. Even Xander wasn't sidekick guy any longer, not with all his new hero muscles and his combat training and his everything- now I really wished I hadn't begged off on the Jonathan's lessons after the first couple. Not that it would have helped me much, shrimp that I was.

So now all of us who weren't going off to die at the bottom of some vampire-infested cave were going to be fighting a small army of vampires out in the school parking lot. I couldn't cast, I couldn't punch, I couldn't use a sword or an axe, so all I could do was carry the crossbows and reload them for other people, and hope to get a few good shots in myself. We all set up as best we could, and Jonathan was busy giving last-minute advice, when it actually got even worse.

"What are you guys doing?" Cordelia said aghast, having noticed us off in the corner of the parking lot. "Seriously? It's the night of the Spring-" and then she came around the corner of Ms. Calendar's car and actually saw the arsenal. "-ohhhhh, crap."

"Don't you have a dance to go preen at?" I sniped at her.

"Will one of the actually helpful people please tell me what's happening?" Cordelia asked the open air.

"A large force of vampires, we don't know how many, will be attacking sometime soon tonight." Giles said. "We're going to hold them off as best we can."

"Where's Buffy and Angel?" Cordelia asked. "Aren't they two of your big three fighters?"

"Both of them and Xander went after the head vampire in his lair." Jonathan said tightly. "We're really hoping that part of the plan works."

"Hey," I cut in while I was loading crossbows. "It's nice that you want to help, but you have no training for this-"

"Do you guys know what direction they'll be coming from?" Cordelia asked.

"Not really, but we didn't have anyone to spare for lookouts-" Jonathan began before cutting himself off in realization.

"Exactly!" Cordelia said brightly. "Since my date for this is still in the hospital I was only coming to show the flag anyway. And in the interests of not being devoured alive by hell-beasts from another dimension, I can be fashionably late to the ball. You know, while I wait up on top of the gym and yell and point for you guys."

"And if a vampire climbs the building behind you?" I snarked.

"I climb down the other way and run over here?" she shrugged. "Look, as risky as it is it still beats waiting inside to be possibly eaten while not even knowing if you're winning or losing."

"Good plan." Jonathan agreed with her. "And good luck."

"You too." Cordelia said without any- okay, without most of her usual snootiness, and she took off running. Great. Now even she's being more useful around here than me.

And about ten really nervous minutes later she yelled and pointed that she saw a bunch of vampires coming from the east side across the athletic field, and we all ran over there.

Jonathan hit the front line like something out of a comic book, tearing through vampire after vampire like he was a Slayer himself. He cut their heads off with his sword, he used judo to trip them or pull them off balance and then dust them on the ground, he even had some kind of wooden shank glued into the groove at the tip of his sword blade so he could stab them through the heart and they'd still go poof. I hadn't gone on patrol except a little so I'd never really seen him fight before, but the vampires soon focused in on him as the biggest threat on the field.

Which meant that Mr. Giles, who was also pretty good with a sword and a stake for an old guy, had clear shots at their backs whenever they tried to surround Jonathan. Ms. Calendar didn't know much about fighting at all but was bravely running out front with a big ol' cruficix to distract and slow the vampires up to set them up to get pincered between Jonathan and Giles.

And me? I managed to get a couple with the crossbows, which nobody else was even using because the original plan had gone all squirrelly what with there being dozens of vampires and them trying to split us up and surround us all, meaning that we couldn't just put me and Amy with our backs to one of the cars and anchor the whole group on us but were instead getting kinda pressed all-around. It was really hard to hit the heart, though, so mostly I was just hitting them elsewhere and distracting them. And I couldn't even distract them too much because I couldn't fire close to any of my friends-

But Amy? Amy was like a superhero.

"Incendere! Incendere! Incendere!" she kept casting, over and over again. It was only the basic fire spell, that just conjured a brief gout of flame up out of the ground, but that was enough to set a vampire on fire. And vampires really didn't like being on fire. Any vampire she hit with the spell went up like a torch and dusted on the spot, even if it wouldn't have made a human need to do more than the ol' stop-drop-and-roll. And she didn't just keep throwing the spell on whoever was closest but kept an eye out and burned any vampire getting too close to sneak attacking any of our frontline fighters, especially not Jonathan or Ms. Calendar. Man, I wish I had a cool vampire-hunting boyfriend. Well, I'd tried to but I hadn't even made him notice I was a girl yet-

"Amy, be careful you don't overextend yourself!" I heard Ms. Calendar yell.

"I won't!" she yelled back, her voice sounding really strained. I guess casting spells wasn't as easy as it looked-

"BEHIND YOU!" I yelled at Amy, because she'd gotten exhausted enough to miss seeing one flank her.

"Incend-" she turned and tried to cast, but it had gotten too close and it punched her across the jaw hard. She rolled with it like she'd been trained and hit the parking lot like she was judo-falling on an exercise mat, so she wasn't unconscious or anything, but it had still really knocked the wind out of her.

"Ow!" the vampire said as my crossbow bolt took it in the shoulder. "Wait your turn!" he mocked me, and then turned back and kicked Amy in the stomach as she was trying to get up. I looked around for anybody to help but Jonathan was busy surrounded by almost half a dozen of them, Giles and Ms. Calendar were busy trying to keep him from getting overwhelmed, and I didn't have a crossbow left-

"Incendere!" I yelled desperately, putting as much oomph into the spell as I possibly could. Maybe I hadn't ever done more than the basic meditating whichevers and lifting pencils up until now but I was still a witch, and right now I really really needed to help Amy-!

And it worked! The vampire's pants caught fire, and he screamed, and he went up like a torch! I could do this!

I ran over and helped Amy up. I felt a little dizzy after my first big spell, so it took me a little while. And she'd really taken a nasty kick from that vampire.

"Thanks!" she gasped. "We need to go help-"

"Hey, where'd they all go?" I asked, noticing that nobody had jumped us yet despite us being kinda temporarily defenseless right now.

"Are you all right?" Jonathan said desperately, coming over to where I was kneeling over Amy.

"We're okay!" I said. "Amy got a little banged up-"

Jonathan knelt down beside me and okay, he really should have let Ms. Calendar do the first aid if he was going to touch her anywhere near there. "Ow!" Amy said, wincing as he gently laid his hand a little above and to the side of her bellybutton.

"Yeah, that's probably a cracked rib." Jonathan said grimly. "We'll have to tell the emergency room you fell or something, because we'll need an X-ray here to be sure."

"I can sign off on a school accident." Ms. Calendar suggested.

"Where'd all the vampires go?" I asked again, looking around.

"They all just took off running a couple minutes ago." Cordelia said, coming up to where we were gathered. "Even their reinforcements on the other side of the building."

"Weren't you supposed to be looking out, Miss Lookout?" I accused her.

"Well, by the time they showed up you were all kinda overwhelmed!" Cordelia said. "What was I supposed to do, distract you even more when you were already mostly surrounded and fighting for your lives?"

"Oh dear Lord." Giles sighed resignedly. "How many got into the building? What sort of casualties are we looking at?"

"Zero." Cordelia grinned smugly. "They were going for the fire escape doors on the gym, so when I saw them coming I went back down and bicycle chained 'em shut from the inside."

"Well done!" Giles congratulated her relievedly. "Exemplary thinking under pressure!"

"So is that it?" I asked. "It's over?"

"It is here." Jonathan agreed. "Now we wait to find out what happened down there-"

* * * * *​

Buffy POV:

Sure enough, all I had to do was stand around outside waiting and the Master's vampire goons came up to invite me to the party. I guess somebody realllly wanted to do this himself. Or maybe he was just adding up how many minions of his I'd already poofed. I was all dressed up in my steel-toed boots and army-surplus fatigues and loaded for bear. If this was going to be my last fight, then I wanted him to remember it.

"Let's go." I told them flatly, not even waiting to hear the speech. I'd had the panic, I'd had the crying, I'd had the last-minute Rocky training montage all day today. I'd even managed to tire myself out enough to catch a nap. Now? Now I just wanted this over with.

So we went down through caves, and caves, and more caves, and not a single bit of valid interior decor to be found, until we finally came to the Big Bad's lair. Apparently his dimensional whoopsie had left him penned inside an entire church that had fallen into a sinkhole in the Earth more than 60 years ago.

A master vampire living in a fallen church. Complete with menacing shadows and flooded ceremonial pool and nothing but dim, flickering candlelight. Tell me my life isn't a series of horror novels.

Anyhoo, the big bad's flunkies waved me in and then pulled the quick fade. Good. Let's just stick to one certain death at a time.

"Welcome." the Master's voice echoed around the room. "It's good to finally meet you."

"Well, it's not like I could ditch." I snarked. "I had an appointment."

"Ah yes, the prophecy." the Master gloated.

"Y'know, for a guy who's been building up to a huge dramatic confrontation for months you're really not doing any confronting right now." I mocked him.

"Oh good." the Master replied sarcastically. "The feeble banter portion of the fight. Why don't we just-"

"But maybe you're not fighting me yet because it's so dim in here you can't even find me." I interrupted him. "That's okay." I smiled grimly as I slipped on my borrowed pair of Ray-Bans. "I brought a flashlight."

Jonathan's super flash gun lit the darkened room up like all the stadium spotlights at a Dodgers game put together, and I heard the Master screaming in agony- over there! I turned and threw one of the stakes from my bandolier to catch him in the heart, and swore as it impaled his hand instead because somebody had either been lucky or good enough to cover his chest first thing. I dropped the flashlight to free my hands for my shortsword and an off-hand stake and ditched the dark glasses and went straight in, stutter-stepping at just the last minute to duck the counter-attack-

And a good thing to, because the Master was fast! I'd never even seen him move, I'd just ducked on pure instinct and luck! Even with his eyes half-squinted closed and him still seeing spots from the flash he was giving me the hardest fight I'd ever had. Even Luke hadn't been this tough on the night of the Harvest, and that guy had been the Master's chief killer.

The problem with being fun-sized is that when you fought somebody as tall as the Master, you had to get in close. Even with weapons vs. his bare claws, he had a minor reach advantage. Add in that he had a speed advantage and even a little strength advantage as well-

The only thing keeping me in the fight so far was that I'd practiced harder over the past six months than I'd ever practiced before, and learned not just from my Watcher but from one of the most brilliant combat naturals in the world and from an elder vampire who'd known the Master and his chief flunkies for like a century. I didn't overextend, I didn't fall for his bait, I didn't fail to keep an eye on my surroundings (always a concern when fighting a vamp in it's lair, because they knew everywhere not to trip over stuff and you didn't), and I didn't try to just trade punch for punch. Or stab for claw. I played hit-and-run, I threw holy water vials to distract and impair him, I even cheated and used the part of the room he couldn't run into because of Hellmouthy trap barrier to get a chance to catch my breath. I had to ditch that when he started some kind of funky hypnosis attack on me when he had a chance to catch his... lack of breath... and I had to rush in close and start pressing him hard again before he had a chance to finish his spell and paralyze me.

Jonathan had been right. If I'd brought reinforcements, I'd be winning right now. I had him almost on the ropes as is. But I'd also been right- if I'd had reinforcements, the Master wouldn't have let me get close. Or else he'd have sent in all the minions he had lurking around elsewhere in the caves to peel my reinforcements off me and wear me down, then bait me down here. So woulda coulda shoulda maybe.

But the simple fact was that even though the Slayer was stronger and faster than vampires - most vampires - my endurance still had a limit, while the undead could generally go all night. The Master knew as well as I did when the tempo of the fight started shifting his favor, which given that I'd been losing the fifteen-round split decision as is...

Even though I'd thought I was out of tears, I still cried a little inside. I'd known I was doomed, but I'd still hoped just a little-

All right, Buffy. If you're not going to be allowed to beat the odds tonight then fruit punch mouth here definitely isn't going to. I might have had to ditch on the Spring Fling but I'd still made it to the big dance anyway, and it would be really really rude of me to not take my date home with me.

I let the knowledge of my impending doom show on my face - that really didn't take any acting at all - and turned to run for the exit. I deliberately slipped on some loose gravel before I'd made it across the magic barrier that had him trapped. I turned around with my last stake raised for a futile stab, with my other hand flailing wildly high, and sure enough he went for the wrist grab on my stake hand and pulled me close-

And with my off hand I gouged my thumb right into that ugly sucker's eye. Total barroom brawling move, nothing the Watcher's Council would even dream of teaching a lady. But Jonathan had learned how to fight from commandos and assassins, and he'd taught me that anywhere outside a sporting arena, the term 'fair fight' was an oxymoron. If you were fighting for blood then it was never fair to begin with.

And with the Master distracted by the agony for just that one critical fraction of a second, my gouging hand caught the stake that I'd dropped from my other hand and rammed it straight into and through the Master's breastbone. I'd won-!

And then everything went blurry as the Master's fist caught me so hard across the skull that I was seeing stars. He was shrieking and dusting, but he'd still lasted long enough to get a final hit in and I hadn't seen it coming because I was used to them dusting a lot faster than he had. I tried to stop myself from falling over but everything was like I was wrapped in a thick wool blanket and I couldn't move my arms or legs. I landed facedown in the pool and, already stunned and out of breath, began to drown right away. So, this was the prophecy. I'd kill the Big Bad and then get taken out by a wading pool.

My last thought as it all went black was Here lies Buffy Summers. She beat the bad guy, but forgot to duck.

-and then my eyes opened as a pair of warm lips were pressed against mine, and a strong pair of hands was firmly tilting my head back as I looked up at the ceiling, and his breath flowed into me-

Look, I did not intend to give him the tongue, okay? That was a purely involuntary reflex!

The person giving me mouth-to-mouth pulled back in surprise as soon as- well, almost as soon as- the tongue action started, and my eyes finally focused on who it was-

"Buffy!" Xander said desperately, kneeling over me. "Hey, you with us?"

"Xander!" I said, crying and smiling as I weakly reached up to hug him. "You're alive!"

"I'm alive?" he asked in shock. "What about you?"

"I'm-" I stopped and let it all sink in. "I am so very much alive right now." I hugged him harder. "You saved my life, Xander. Thank you."

"I- uh- um-" the poor boy blushed. Okay, maybe I over-gushed a bit.

"You're all right?" Angel said, coming into view as he learned over Xander. As I started to become more aware of details, I noticed that Angel's clothes were all kinda torn and ripped and cut, like-

"Oh, we had to discuss right-of-way with a few of the neighbors on our way down here." Xander said as he helped me to my feet, noticing that I'd caught on to their condition. And yeah, he looked he'd been to the races too.

"There was at least twenty of them." Angel said matter-of-factly. "Even if the Master hadn't dropped you with his last shot, you still wouldn't have made it back up to the surface on your own."

"Then I am so glad you two came and found me." I said emphatically. "Wait. How did you come and find me?" I asked.

"Amy's tracking spell." Angel said quickly.

"Jonathan put a homing beacon in your flashlight." Xander said simultaneously.

I laughed. Okay, that hurt a little because bruises, but I still laughed. "Of course they did."

"So this was the prophecy?" Xander asked me. "You'd fight the Master and die, but then CPR?"

"Seems as if." I agreed. I shook my head and took a deep breath, feeling the strength starting to come back into my limbs. "Okay, I think I'm good to go." I said. "What's the route out of here look like?"

"Clear." Angel grinned wickedly.

As I turned to leave, I looked down at the remains of the Master on the floor. "Wait, aren't they supposed to all turn to dust when you stake them in the heart?" I said, pointing at the still-impaled vampire skeleton lying there.

"I guess it's because the Master's really old?" Angel shrugged.

I thought about that for a second, and then decided I might as well yield to temptation because it might never pass my way again. I turned to Xander with a grin and deliberately fed him the straight line. "It's a trick. Get an axe."

Xander grinned wildly back at me and hefted his favorite battleaxe in reply. "Hail to the King, baby." he said in pure Bruce Campbell style before he turned and with a few quick blows smashed the Master's skeleton into bone chips. Oh God, he was such a goof when he did that, but-

Oh, what the hell.

As we headed back up to the surface I asked Angel "Do either of you guys have the time?"

"About half-past nine." Angel replied after looking at his pocket watch. "I guess the Master wanted to start the show early."

"Good." I nodded. "Then that means we have enough time to wash our faces and change and still make the last hour of the dance."

"Ah, the dancing. Well that leaves me out, well-known social maven that I am-" Xander began, and then he stopped in shock as I reached out and took his hand and smiled at him.

"Xander." I said to him affectionately. "If you don't already have a date, would you go to the Spring Fling with me?"

* * * * *​

Author's Note: And thus season 1 draws to a close.

You already knew of Chekov's Gun. Now behold Chekov's Flashlight! *eg*

And really, outside of some of Buffy's individual fights the s1 fight choreography is really kinda awful. Battles make no sense and everybody who wasn't a trained fighter should be dead. So yeah, since this is a fanfic I tightened that up a little with people actually deploying minions with at least some basic intelligence. Likewise with Buffy having her fight go against the Master entirely differently because training and preparation instead of 'Let's wing this with a stake, a crossbow, and a ball gown'.

And yes, Jonathan just had a huge-ass vampire fight that had survivors live to retreat. His Halfwit Child protection has hit the point where it's going to start lapsing some.

See you all in season 2!

 

[MadGreenSon]

Is this just a straight import or are you changing anything?

 

[cliffc999]

Is this just a straight import or are you changing anything?

Click to shrink...

Straight import over from SB.

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

This summer had been confusing as hell.

Right after the battle at the Spring Fling I'd helped Ms. Calendar take Amy to the emergency room to get X-rayed. As it turned out she'd merely had badly bruised ribs, not broken ones, which was all to the well and good. And the ER doctors readily accepted the explanation of a gang attack in the parking lot outside the dance.

But that isn't to say that everyone did. Meeting Amy's nervous, overprotective, and divorced dad - they'd apparently split when she was twelve - at the hospital was not how I'd wanted to finally meet the parental unit at all. He knew my name apparently from Amy's having mentioned me before but wasn't at all sure how to approach me. Fair enough, even I didn't know how to approach Amy and me sometimes.

Amy's story - following my example of 'tell the truth but just leave out the weirder details' - of how I'd helped fight off the gang members attacking her hadn't put him much at ease until after having a female teacher vouch for the truth of the story at last managed to break Mr. Madison out of whatever panic scenario he was imagining at Amy having fallen into an abusive relationship or something. Apparently he had a lot of guilt from having let his wife have custody when they'd divorced and thus leaving her with her longtime emotional abuser unknowingly, even if a California divorce court would have been vanishingly unlikely to give the husband sole custody of a daughter under the circumstances anyway.

And that guilt manifested in a lot of anxiety about whatever his little girl might be getting into without him to keep an eye on her, so he hovered as much as being a single father with extensive work hours allowed him to. In hindsight it was amazing she'd gotten as much time free for Scoobying as she had, although our cover story of the extracurricular study group that the school librarian ran with apparent suitable chaperonage from another female teacher had been just the thing to let her dad give her permission to hang with us because it left him free to do all the overtime that paid their bills. Even if we didn't even remotely know how we were going to begin explaining the witchcraft thing to him later, because we certainly couldn't bring it up at this point.

To be honest, I felt more than a little guilty that I hadn't even stopped to think about where Amy was coming from during all the time she'd had to endure her mother before we'd finally taken her down, or that she might be carrying her own scars from her past at the same time she'd volunteered herself to help me carry mine. I'd blame the Teenaged Angst but to be honest, I had never remotely had a normal nuclear family situation in any of my various lives since my original birth parents had died when I was twelve. Lord knows the Wulfenbach family drama had never remotely been 20th-century normal at any point, let alone that Europa's 19th century barely even recognized the concept of 'adolescence' to begin with. So when it came to family weirdness, I began to realize that sometimes I was the fish trying and failing to notice water.

But Ms. Calendar's having my back as firmly as she did plus Amy's own earnestness in talking me up - plus Clear Understandings - finally put me in the 'good guy' column with her dad at last. Which immediately got me a rather embarassing shovel speech as Mr. Madison joined the list of people who automatically assumed that Amy and I were boyfriend and girlfriend instead of the weird in-between thing that we actually were.

It really says something about how awkward that meeting went that the meeting Angel and Giles went and had with Buffy's mother was, by all accounts, less awkward than ours. Buffy had never made it to the dance with Xander - another development I'd missed entirely while I was elsewhere tonight - because she'd forgotten at the time she'd asked him out that in order to get her party dress she had to go back home, which of course ran her straight into a panicking Joyce Summers who hadn't seen her daughter in over twenty-four hours and was on the verge of filing a missing persons report with the police. So as soon as Xander had seen Buffy's mother start to flip out at hearing the word 'vampires' and start saying things about calling a psychiatrist, he'd excused himself as quickly as he possibly could to go fetch our resident walking proof of the existence of vampires and the other responsible adult on the team.

Apparently Buffy's final climactic battle vs. the master vampire Lothos in LA had required her to burn down the school gym in order to defeat a large-scale vampire attack, and when she'd attempted to explain that to her parents later that night her attempt to tell them about vampires and her duty as the Slayer had led them to believe she was having some kind of mental episode and have her committed for inpatient psychiatric evaluation. Buffy had only gotten out of there after spending several weeks convincing the doctors that she'd made the whole 'vampires' story up to try and get more attention from her parents because she was stressing about their possible divorce, thus leading them to write her off as 'not crazy, just an idiot teenager telling tall tales' and certifying her sane. Still, that near-miss with the mental health system had meant she'd never attempted to explain the existence of the supernatural to either of her parents ever again, either before or after their divorce. Not even when showing objective proof of the supernatural would have been as simple as her demonstrating her Slayer abilities - or, after she'd met Angel, as simple as inviting him over.

Which was the solution Xander had immediately hit on himself when the crisis came to a head. Fortunately, Buffy had already given me and thus by extension the rest of the group permission to tell her mother the Slayer secret when she'd made her 'last will and testament' type preparations before heading down to confront the Master, even if she hadn't expected to be alive at the time. So she didn't hold it against Xander for doing so, especially given that he'd done it to head off what was looking like yet another quick trip to an asylum. So everything was out in the open now at last, and Joyce Summers at least didn't look to be prepping to move immediately out of town in a panic.

Not having to attend school left me with a lot of time on my hands that I didn't quite know what to do with. Now admittedly there was all the debriefing of Angel about the life and times of Angelus - a project that was taking us a long ass time to finish because there was a whooooole lot of atrocity to go through and we had to do it in small chunks at a time both for my sake and his own. Still, I was slowly learning a lot more about the psychology of inhuman monsters and human cruelty both, which I certainly hoped would eventually be useful.

And since we'd also received a recent lesson in how we were a bit under-gunned for larger-scale battles than normal hunting and patrolling, I needed to begin working on that. Now that I was starting to at least begin to decompress a tiny bit, I could dare to tap my Spark a little more. Becuase Sparking when in the grips of a strong negative emotion, let alone a consistent underlying mental health issue, was a bad idea.

But I was still very strongly limited as to how much of my Spark I could reveal to people; in addition to maintaining what part of my cover story I'd managed to retain so far there was also that if I revealed anything remotely resembling death rays, war clanks, or other stuff that Europa considered commonplace I would rapidly end up on all kinds of government watch lists. It was honestly amazing that the government didn't seem to be aware of the supernatural already, given how absurdly out of statistical proportion the death rate of this town was. Europa had been restricted to relays of heliograph mirrors and fast airship couriers for long-distance communications and yet a town like Sunnydale could not have existed there without not-so-eventually coming to the notice of everybody's intelligence network from the Baron to the Corbetites. The death rate from 'death by barbecue fork' alone was ludicrously out of proportion, and yes, I'd checked. I'd even taken the precaution of driving to LA to check because I like hell wanted to trip any hypothetical Internet keyword-search monitors in the town I actually lived in.

And those searches cross-correlated with the local stats that Willow's hacking had pulled for us out of the Sunnydale PD computer systems revealed that Sunnydale had a homicide rate over five times that of the next-worst city in the United States, let alone the national average. And that was with every possible statistical reporting trick in the book by the Sunnydale PD to not report wrongful deaths as homicides. The missing persons rate was even more ludicrously out of proportion. The high school newspaper had an obituary section. Our sleepy and peaceful little town, if statistically analyzed, was proportionately more lethal to live in than Sarajevo during the height of the Bosnian war! How was there not already high-level federal interest here from every alphabet agency on the books? Sunnydale didn't even have a normal local FBI branch office, and this despite the town being large enough to have a University of California satellite campus, an international airport, and an international maritime freight terminal!

And yet my own computer hacking - it had taken a while to teach myself computer hacking, but I'd had Willow's example to follow and my own Spark-augmented intelligence and learning capacities - aided by my own custom-built computers, couldn't find any signs of so much as a national intelligence surveillance network here. No taps on the local phone company exchange, no fluctuations in Internet traffic as if the local trunk line were being run through the NSA's Echelon sniffers, nothing. As near as the outside world was concerned this place was as unremarkable as hell despite being infested by hellspawn from top to bottom. And that was goddamn eerie. I just couldn't shake the sense that I'd actually seen this pattern somewhere before, but hashing it out with Angel and Giles didn't turn up any ideas as to what the pattern meant.

So for the foreseeable future I'd have to avoid hauling out the ol' death ray for anything short of a 'the apocalypse happens if I don't'. Something was wrong with this place, and while I was already on the local demonic underworld radar as a freelance demon hunter and ally of the Slayer that was still a mental category they knew and understood. Just like my plans to join the wrestling team in junior year so I could be safely pigeonholed as something understandable, I would have to keep the same thing going re: not appearing too far out of the ordinary for a demon hunter until I knew exactly what hairy eyeball I was trying to hide from. Likewise, anything I built for the group would have to conform very closely to actual 20th-century technology because even if I could trust them with some of my secrets, I damn sure couldn't trust anybody else who might see them using the gear.

On the softer side of things, Amy and Buffy both spent a goodly part of the summer out of town. Amy was away at a summer camp that her dad had signed her up for earlier this year as a 'sorry for all that happened' present after he regained custody of her and Buffy was spending time with her dad in LA. So me and Xander got to hang out together and commiserate over our girlless state. His state moreso than mine because he'd been pining after Buffy pretty much from the day she'd showed up in Sunnydale and they were officially dating, while me and Amy were-

"You look like a man with heavy thoughts." Xander brought the topic up one night while we were doing cemetery patrol. Without Buffy in town we had to take more shifts, and Angel was busy covering the one route by himself while Xander backed me up on mine as opposed to his usual position backing Buffy up on hers.

"I really should just tell the entire group the full situation of my weird backstory and not just the abridged version, because you have to know the context to know the why of the heavy thoughts." I answered him.

"And yet you don't." he replied lightly.

"I still can't entirely shake the fear that if I talk about it too much, it'll come visiting again." I sighed. "Even if it hasn't yet, and I've already spoken to two people about it without the sky falling."

"I can guess which two you've told," he nodded, "which pre-empts my next question."

"If you're thinking I'm being unfair to her, you're not the only person in this cemetery who does." I fessed up.

"Look, you have to know deep-down that you really do like her as much as she likes you. She wouldn't get to you this much if you didn't. I mean, you bounced Buffy like she wasn't even there." Xander said. "To my eventual great profit and my eternal thanks, but still."

"When Buffy asked you to the dance, what would you have done if you'd felt like you were being massively unfair to her if you said 'Yes' but also massively unfair in another way if you said 'No'?" I asked.

"Brood." Xander immediately joked back. "There would also perhaps be angst. And definitely lots of listening to country music."

"Makes sense, but what would you have said to her when put on the spot?" I pressed.

"'I'm sorry, I wish I could but I can't, and this is why.'" Xander conceded. "Which is exactly what you did say to Amy." He shrugged as we both found a tombstone to sit on. "Is there anything you can tell me about it? Help you clear your head, man to man?"

"On top of all the other complicating factors, of which there are many, there's also that part of my training was on how to manipulate people." I said eventually. "Seriously, you guys have to have noticed how really good I am at phrasing things without actually lying. Even when I'm completely losing my spaghetti and in the middle of a rant I can still stick to a cover story by reflex. I'm lucky I have an honest voice that actually sounds honest, because-" I shrugged. "Psychological warfare is an actual field of study, and I deeply immersed in it. And Violetta had similar training to mine, or at least enough to be able to recognize when it was being pulled on her even if by a skilled oprerator. So she could defend herself against me if I'd ever tried to play her." I shook my head. "But Amy can't. As tough as she is, living through the stuff her mom did to her still leaves openings for a psy-ops specialist to play on. And even without any of that she's still a perfectly nice girl our age who's never had any spooky stuff in Eastern Europe training or secret wars crap."

"Hey, I'm with a girl who could crush my skeleton like a Dixie cup!" Xander challenged me. "You don't get to pull the 'I'm so much stronger, I'm afraid I'll hurt them!' card on me."

"Buffy could potentially do damage to you in ways that you'd have no realistic hope of defending yourself against, but that's physically." I corrected him. "I'm talking about having the potential capability to do the same thing to Amy emotionally. You know, emotions, the thing a relationship is actually built on? You and Buffy are on an even playing field there." I sighed. "Me and Amy... in some ways we are, and in some other ways we totally aren't, and so even if I was one hundred percent free of mental baggage on my own our situation would still be an open invitation to..." I trailed off guiltily.

Xander shook his head. "I still don't get it. You or Buffy never ever would, so it doesn't matter that you could. And yeah, both your and Amy's situations are way more complex than high school average but you're both smart people and you've both got good hearts and you both legitimately feel for each other. So you should be able to figure something out."

"We are trying." I sighed.

"Don't worry, kids." an arrogant voice said to us. "Your relationship problems are now entirely over! All your problems will be over!" it continued smugly as several vampires each came into our field of view surrounding us.

"Well, somebody's certainly will be." Xander said agreeably as we both came to our feet and got to work.

So yeah. The vampire hunting was going as well as it ever did, but trying to solve the larger mystery of this town? Or even just the mystery of my own feelings? Still a work in progress.

* * * * *​

Willow POV:

This summer was the best and the worst.

Best in that with Amy at summer camp I finally got a chance for full-time magic lessons with Ms. Calendar instead of having to compete for time with the prodigy girl. I remember when Amy hid out at my house because she couldn't stand to be at home and I was the strong one, and now she's got superpowers and I float pencils.

Still, at least I was actually learning real spells now. Nowhere near as many as I thought I would - wasn't Ms. Calendar supposed to be an expert on this stuff, even more than Giles? - but it was still something. And I was concentrating on building up my magical muscle a little too, so I wouldn't get all dizzy and faint after a single fire spell anymore. But then she took the last half of the summer off to go to some festival somewhere and it was back to me being alone with the magic books and my computer. And the books didn't even really have anything interesting except the same old basic stuff I mostly knew backwards and forward by now.

Then there was the worst part. Now, even if he was all coy about being her boyfriend, Amy still got herself a super-cute boyfriend. Like, I swear I saw Cordelia be a little interested in him before she actually backed off because girls didn't poach boyfriends from other girls on the cheerleading squad. Not that I was interested in Jonathan myself what with him being all scary and intense all the time, but I still had to admit he looked good. And he was definitely all Amy's, just like she was all his.

But I wasn't anybody's. There was only one boy I'd ever wanted and I'd totally lost out on getting Xander, and I'd known him our whole lives! Just when I think he's maybe going to finally ask me out to somewhere, Buffy goes off all tragic heroine style and then Xander goes and saves her life and now they're inseparables. Phooey! Buffy and I had had an agreement that I got first crack at him! We'd settled that just before the hyena thing happened - okay, that's when Buffy had still been sniffing after Jonathan before she totally stepped on her own foot there, but still! We'd had an agreement! I'd get first chance to pursue Xander! And even if I hadn't actually pursued yet, I'd totally have asked him out to the Spring Fling if Buffy's own drama hadn't interrupted us!

But at least Buffy went and took the whole summer off before her and Xander really had a chance to go anywhere except the Bronze a couple times - some girlfriend she was - so I figured that this was my chance. And so whenever I wasn't doing my things I hung out with Xander as much as I could and rekindled our friendship as much as I possibly could. Darn it, what could Buffy give him that I couldn't? She didn't even really know him, except as a hot boy who went demon hunting with her! I'd already seen how she was with the other hot boy that went demon hunting with her and Xander sure didn't deserve that!

So, by the end of the summer I thought I was finally getting Xander to remember how it used to be between us...

"I am so restless!" Xander said as we were walking back from the ice cream shop. "I can't believe I'm actually looking forward to school starting up again!"

"I thought you had summer patrols, action guy?" I flattered him.

"The undead scene has been totally dead the past few weeks." Xander said. "G-Man said it's something about 'seasonal activity patterns', which as near as I can figure is a fancy way of saying 'The sunlight challenged walking corpses who are immune to being cold prefer to go out more in the winter'."

"That makes sense." I agreed. "So... 'In the few hours we had together, we loved a lifetime's worth.'" I quoted.

"Terminator." Xander said. "Let me see..." he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, but didn't come up with anything.

"One more minute to think of a movie quote, or it's a forfeit." I teased him.

"But I already used all my good ones!" he whined, and I laughed.

"How's about 'It's a trick. Get an axe?'" a certain someone's voice came from behind us.

"Buffy!" Xander said, his face lighting up like somebody's just told him his long-lost father was really Bruce Wayne, who was actually a real person. We both spun around to face her, him a lot faster than me.

"I missed you." I heard her say, as she stepped forward and gave him a great big hug. Urrrggggh! I almost had him and then-

"You too, Buff." he said all romance movie styles. And then they kissed, and kept kissing, and kissing, and kissing-

"Um, look out for the vampire?" I said disgustedly and pointed behind them.

"Seriously?!?" Buffy ranted as she pulled away from Xander and turned around to stomp on the incoming vampire's foot so hard it broke and left it hopping around on it's other foot and screaming. "I don't get to see my boyfriend like all summer, and just as it's getting to the good part you show up?" she kept ranting as she broke the vampire's standing leg by kicking it in the knee, then started stomping her high heels repeatedly into the vampire's head while it was down. "I get that you're soulless demons that exist only to plague the living but do you not have a limit?"

"You probably want one of these." Xander said, handing her a stake.

"Thank you." she said all cutesy as she took the stake and bent over to poof the vampire before handing it back it to him. "Honestly, why did I miss this town again?" she eye-rolled.

"Because all your friends live here?" Xander said with a grin.

"A valid point!" she smiled back at him, and then they leaned in towards each other again-

Oh to heck with this. I might as well go home.

* * * * *​

Buffy POV:

This summer had been like an out-of-body experience.

Right after the whole big reveal to my mom, which had... okay, I'd been so scared for a little while there that I'd almost peed my pants. I'd so not been thinking when I went home to pick up my party dress. Way too much of the 'Glad to not be dead!' vibe to have my common sense catch up to me until it was too late. So she'd confronted me about where I'd been for the past day, and I decided to follow through with what I'd decided back when I'd thought I'd be too dead to actually have this conversation in person and fessed up, and sure enough, as soon as I said the word 'vampire' she'd freaked and for a short while there I'd been terrified it would be back to the asylum and the doctors.

Not that I was afraid of my mom, I could get that she was only trying to help me and that she loved me - I hadn't forgotten the conversation we'd had earlier this year on the topic. But I was terrified of going back to the head doctors. But even though I'd tried to stay as calm and reasonable as possible, and even bent one of the fireplace pokers to prove my Slayer strength, Mom was all panicking. And it's not like she'd go to the garage to fetch the she-thought-was-crazy girl a tire iron or anything, and even she could bend a fireplace poker if she really tried.

But then Xander, who she'd run off as soon as the private family conversation started, came back and started pounding on the door. And as soon as I heard the voice of who he'd brought with him I couldn't yell out "Come in!" fast enough. Xander had seen what rock I'd fetched the emergency house key from under when we'd come in the first time and so he was able to unlock the door - Mom hadn't shot the dead-bolt - and before you could say 'Vampire Slayer' we had a real unlive vampire in our kitchen demonstrating to Mom that yes, he could make his face go all fangy and growly on cue and no it wasn't makeup and did you want to not-see his reflection in the mirror either?

Mom kinda broke down at that when she realized that they'd sent me to the shrinks for nothing but look, I was not holding any grudges by this point. Not at all. I just didn't want to go back there, and I didn't want to keep lying to my Mom either. I'd spent that last day before fighting the Master kicking myself for having put myself in such a stupid trap by never bringing this up before, and-

To cut a long drama short, we'd finally cleared the air. We'd had to call in Giles to explain to her just what Slayers were, and for a moment there I thought she was going to swing on him before we made her understand that the Watchers didn't make girls into Slayers but just came in after they became Slayers and nobody knew what mysterious magic kept picking girls like me.

So, yeah. Mom now knew that I was going into deadly danger on a regular basis because if I didn't, other people would die. I still think she's trying to figure out a way to get me out of this Slaying gig, but at least she's available now for-

Let's just say I'm really happy I had a shoulder to cry on when I started having nightmares about drowning. I can't imagine how bad it would be if I'd had all those nightmares while having to keep pretending to everyone that nothing was wrong. As is, Jonathan had already shown me that not all my friends would dump me if I actually admitted that I was scared of something, and Mom kept hugging me whenever I started being doubty about that.

And then came the big trip back to LA to be with Dad. Which we'd arranged months in advance and I was still dated up for. Never mind that I'd had like a week to get settled with Mom, start trying to get over the nightmares about almost dying, and most important of all, to start actually dating my new boyfriend! Nope, it was off for two months and change to the big city to be with the other parent! Who I did have to pretend everything was normal for because I really doubted he'd be as open-minded as mom about the whole 'oh yeah, I'm talking about the same thing that had you committing me last time!' thing.

So yeah, weird. When we moved down here months ago I'd have sworn that being able to go back to LA again even temporarily would be heaven, and when I finally got back there I just spent all that time wishing I was still in Sunnydale. Sure, LA had super fancy shopping malls and dad's platinum card and theatres and Dodgers games and new shoes, and I'd made sure to stock up for the next school year on all the essentials, but-

Well, as crazy and lethal as vampire infested as this town was, Xander was right. All my friends did live here.

* * * * *​

Giles POV:

And so began the new school year in Sunnydale.

Amy left the cheerleading squad to devote more time to her studies, and Buffy took her place there to the noticeable, if tolerable, detriment to her training schedule. Miss Chase, who had spent the summer vacationing in Europe, essentially invited herself into our group without an actual invitation but then began to show a commendable dedication to her physical training even as she simultaneously graced us with her unique approach to social interaction. Jenny and I started having regular discussions on occult lore, her idiosyncratic approach to study and odd yet extensive network of sources via that 'Internet' phenomenon meshing interestingly with my comprehensive if somewhat didactic Council-sponsored education and extensive library. Jonathan continued onwards much as he always had, but seemed to at least be somewhat more relaxed and less hag-ridden.

Mopping up the last die-hard followers of the Order of Aurelius was as easy as allowing word of Buffy's return to spread around town. They showed up to avenge the death of their master, we fought them with all the resources at our command, and it was done. Then there was a curious case of two obsessed young men trying some necromantic experiment to create a female companion for the one young man's reanimated brother. The grave-robbing they'd committed in the process was distasteful and technically illegal but not necessarily a cause for condemnation by occultist standards, but when they'd targeted Miss Chase to harvest the last component from then it most definitely became a matter for our concern. The monster was taken apart and burned, their laboratory destroyed, and the malefactors in question handed over to the authorities with sufficient information linking them to the grave-robbing to make them spend the next several years as guests of the state. They should have been prosecuted as attempted murderers but the legal system was too often woefully inadequate to deal with crimes related to the supernatural and unlike the sad case of Miss Ross, the situation had not justified a more immediate solution.

But then a far more significant threat arose.

"Spike?" Jonathan said worriedly. "You're sure that's what the other vampire called him?"

"Plain as day." Buffy said. "In hindsight it's pretty obvious that he set that mook up to get staked by me behind the Bronze, just so he could have a chance to watch some of my moves. So he's not just your average grrrr, but he's got minions and a plan. Well, I guess the vampire leadership vacuum in Sunnydale had to get filled sometime."

"Okay, you know that Angel did a lot of bad stuff before he got his soul back." Jonathan pointed out. "I've been talking with him about it and no, you don't want to know about most of it. Hell, I barely want to know about most of it. But the relevant part here is that Angel knew this guy very well."

"Angelus and this 'Spike' used to be associates?" I inquired.

"Spike's his grandchilde." Jonathan said flatly. "He was the fourth member of the Scourge of Europe. Angelus sired Drusilla, who sired-"

"William the Bloody," I realized in horror, knowing full well who the four members of the infamous Scourge had been before Angel's ensouling had broken up their pack.

"Aka 'Spike'." Jonathan agreed.

"Your facial expressions are not those of the reassuring." Xander said worriedly.

"William the Bloody is a name well known to every Watcher because of his particular infamy." I said to Buffy worriedly. "He's fought two Slayers in the past century. And-" I polished my glasses. "He killed them both."

"Oh boy." Willow said meekly.

"This time you invite us all along." Jonathan told Buffy firmly.

"Oh believe you me, I will!" she nodded vigorously. "But even if we don't have a prophecy problem this time, there is still the other problem. If he's all with the stalking me and with the baiting me, he won't attack if he doesn't like the odds."

"And let me guess." Amy said worriedly. "If he's this experienced, he won't be easy to bait."

"No he won't." Angel said, having made one of his usual stealthy entrances. "Not that Spike doesn't have a problem with being cocky sometimes. He's a risk-taker. He likes the rush. But like any gambler who's lasted this long without going bust-"

"-he knows when to hold 'em and he knows when to fold 'em. Got it." Buffy nodded worriedly.

"Would a tracking spell work?" Willow asked.

"I didn't get even a tiny piece of him." Buffy said. "So what do we track with?"

"Not Angel's blood, unfortunately." I said. "If he were directly Angel's childe the correspondence would be sufficient even after this many decades of separation. As is-"

"You'd need Drusilla, not me." Angel agreed. "Or a vampire Spike had sired, but I haven't run into him for decades and would have no idea who he's turned recently."

"Knows when to fold 'em." Jonathan echoed.

"So he's skilled, he's experienced, he's cagey, he's good enough to take the average Slayer one-on-one, and he's just a little crazy." Buffy sighed. "Okay, this still doesn't sound as bad as the Master but it does not sound good."

Angel shook his head. "And I'm worse than useless for this mission. After all my patrolling last year there aren't too many vampires in town that don't know what side I'm on, and Spike won't come near me for as long as he knows I still have my soul. I can help cover the group but that's about it."

"If Spike was watching Buffy at the Bronze then he knows her and I are dating-" Xander began.

"No." Buffy cut him off. "I just started breaking you in! I'm not going to lose all my hard work now!"

"You'd be right there sneaking along behind me." Xander reassured her. "And anybody else who can sneak."

"Spike's not like I was." Angel said. "He likes the fight, not the terror. He doesn't usually go for friends and families. He didn't for either of the other Slayers he fought."

"Well, we don't usually have those." Buffy pointed out.

Jonathan rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then spoke to Angel. "You and him used to be partners in crime, then you changed. How betrayed would he be feeling about that?"

"Probably quite a bit." Angel conceded.

"He won't go out of his way to torment a Slayer's friends or family." Jonathan said. "But would he do that for anyone he perceived as your new family?"

"So we bait him with you?" Angel said. "That... might actually work. Assuming that he even knows you're connected to me."

"Well, if you and I went to shake down Willy for information about Spike then we could kill two birds with one stone." Jonathan said.

* * * * *​

Jonathan POV:

Giving out the free information of my status as Angel's protege to the vampire underworld in town did not produce the desired results. Either Drusilla's psychic powers were busy feeding Spike info on what traps to avoid, or else he'd learned a little more about subtlety since the fists-and-fangs days that Angel had described to me. Buffy caught a couple more glimpses of him around town as she patrolled with Xander, but even though me and Angel had shifted patrol routes so that neither team was never more than a couple blocks apart and we stayed in walkie-talkie contact Spike was always gone before we could converge on his location. He was clearly trying to bait Buffy away from the rest of the group, but the Scooby Gang had been doing this for long enough that we could avoid most of the obvious mistakes by now.

So matters persisted until just before the Feast of St. Vigeous came around. That was the day when vampires got a little extra astrological boost of some kind, and also tended to be feeling extra motivated. But Spike's self-control had to be fraying at the edges by now, so we were ready for trouble at any large gathering of people during the immediate run-up to the Feast. I'd even sabotaged the switchbox at the Bronze so that it would be closed the night of the Parent-Teacher Night scheduled at the high school when we wouldn't be available to help cover there, because all of us who were students at the high school had to be at the school. Likewise with Giles and Ms. Calendar as faculty and Angel in his role as my 'guardian'.

Which turned out to be exactly what Spike was waiting for, as he and all the vampires he could round up hit the school. So, that was his play. Threaten a bunch of civilians with a bunch of minions and get us all split up and all over the campus. And it worked - to a point - seeing as how we did have to cover everybody. But it's not as if we hadn't gone through 'massive vamp attack on the school' before, and some of us had spent the intervening time with floor plans working out a strategy and a set of positions.

Sure enough, Spike went for Buffy. Xander had wanted to be the one partnered with her, but in the interests of putting two of our three best fighters on the hardest target he'd swapped with me and partnered with Angel. They were busy holding the front doors while Giles, Ms. Calendar, and our two witches were busy as the last line of defense in front of all the civilians that Buffy's mom had helped Principal Flutie herd into the library.

"Thought you were datin' the other one." Spike said arrogantly as he strode out towards us, dramatically spinning a long steel pipe around like a quarterstaff.

"Thought you were supposed to be all fists and fangs." Buffy quipped back.

"Oh, I like a good weapon. Makes me feel all manly." Spike smirked. "That's a really nice-lookin' sword you've got there." he said to me. "You can rest assured, I'll take very good care of it."

"He's talking too much and not waiting too little." Buffy said to me. "They're totally sneaking up on us while he poses."

"Aw, you spoiled it." a girl's voice sneered from behind us. I turned to see one of our former classmates, Sheila, leading a group of several other grungy-looking young vampires.

"Seriously?" I asked Spike over my shoulder as Buffy and I stood back-to-back. "What, did you turn them yesterday? Pick of all the unemployed veteran vamps in town and you send us fledglings?"

"Well, I don't like to share the good stuff." I heard Spike say. "All right, Slayer, they'll keep your tag team partner busy while I go for the hat trick. But don't you worry. As a personal favor, from me to you, I'll make it quick. It won't hurt a bit."

"No Spike," Buffy replied. "It's gonna hurt a lot."

While normally I wouldn't have any problem with three fledglings, we were in a narrow hallway and Spike had cautioned them not to rush me too hard but instead just keep distracting me and wait for me to turn my back if I was foolish enough to concentrate on Spike while they were still upright. Furthermore, I had to split my attention a lot to make sure I didn't get back attacked by Spike because he was deliberately keeping his fight with Buffy close enough that he could switch targets if need be. Likewise, Buffy had to split her attention and allow Spike to at least partially dictate her timing because if he did come at me from behind then she had to close in and press him whether she wanted to or not. It was actually a good, solid plan and a brilliant use of limited resources while still allowing Spike his glory moment of one-on-one vs. a Slayer as much as possible.

But when push came to shove, I was one of the Best of the Best and Buffy was the Slayer who'd fought Heinrich Nest himself to a draw. And Spike was good, but he wasn't that good. In the ninety seconds or so it took me to handle Sheila and her two friends, and then the few other vampires that came running from where they'd been searching the hallways nearby and were attracted by the noise, Buffy had taken a few scuffs and lumps from Spike but had given him notably more than she'd gotten.

And so as soon as he realized that I was freed up again, he broke away from Buffy and started to retreat-

-and I took his leg right off at the knee with a sword throw.

"You bloody wankers!" he screamed as he fell over like a toppled tree. He frantically scrabbled along the floor trying to reach my sword where it had slid to a stop, presumably so he could throw it back, but that ended when Buffy landed on the small of his back with both knees and slammed his head into the floor hard enough to crack it.

"Where's Drusilla, Spike?" Buffy said as she used Slayer strength and superior leverage to put him in a full nelson and start dislocating both his shoulders.

"Go to hell!" he shouted.

"Tell us what we want to know and we'll let you live long enough to limp out of Sunnydale." I said to him. Of course, we'd still hunt him down outside of Sunnydale and he wouldn't get very far in his condition before we or Angel could catch up, but that was just basic.

"You can go shove that fancy sword of yours where you'd enjoy it." Spike spat at me. "I'm not givin' her up!"

"News flash, Spike, you're a soulless demon!" Buffy said. "When push comes to shove, you're supposed to save yourself!"

"Is that what you know?" Spike sneered at us. "I don't need a soul to love Dru." he continued, his voice passionate and full of conviction. "And all the demons in Hell put together couldn't torture me enough to betray her."

"Does she feel the same way about you?" I asked. "You don't even feel the tiniest bit of suspicion that she might just be using you?"

"Wouldn't matter a bit if she was." Spike said calmly. "I might be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."

Buffy looked up at me, and I looked back at her. Yeah, this was definitely not what either of us had expected to ever hear from a vampire. I shrugged, and she nodded.

"On your feet, Spike!" she said, getting off him and hauling him upright. "You're gonna be dust bunnies, but at least you get to go out standing."

"Well if I had to finally lose to one of you," Spike said to her with a lopsided grin, "at least you weren't one of the bitchy ones. Mind if I have a last cigarette and all?"

"Sure." I agreed, and since his arms weren't really working Buffy got one out of the pack in his jacket pocket and put it between his lips, and I lit it for him. We let him have a few puffs before Buffy quickly stepped aside and my sword slash took his head clean off his shoulders before he could fall.

"Wow." Buffy said. "He actually sacrificed himself for his one true love and everything, despite being a vampire. That'll be one for the record books."

"Let's just hope she isn't." I agreed with her as we headed back to the library.

* * * * *​

Author's Note: And so begins season 2, right on up to episode three, "School Hard". And yeah, you guys kinda figured they weren't taking Spike alive or letting him get away this time. Still, I hope you agree he at least got a fair showing before going down.

Yes, I totally nuked 'When She Was Bad'. Buffy had already admitted to Jonathan that she wanted to run away from the fight and got nothing but his support, so between that and her mom knowing about the supernatural she actually can tell someone about her near-death experience and get support in time. Plus, I hated that episode. And yes, the re-animators got skipped over; the part where 'Oh, now you're murdering live people for parts' would have got Jonathan to just do them up Klaus style if it wasn't for the rest of the Scooby Gang also rolling on that one. They're lucky he wasn't alone.

And yes, I recycle lines from the show. They're good lines! *g*

 

[cliffc999]

Jonathan POV:

I was exhausted. Between training, classes, more training, and frustrating my brains out on my several weapons research projects I was burning the candle at so many ends that it was like I was just getting up to go to bed. Embarassingly Familiar meant that I had to stay very much on the lookout against outliving my usefulness to the Baron, so I was pushing as hard as I could. And I welcomed the distraction from any reminders of how my plans to keep Gil and Tarvek from being separated had fallen through when Tarvek's family had yoinked him back home anyway after the whole Sturmhalten incident, which I'd touched off with my tip to the Baron-

Yet again, I mentally pulled away from thinking more deeply about that particular pile of grimdark whenever it came up. The 'Sturmhalten Rebellion', as it was being called, had been considered the most brutal act of the Baron's entire reign. Never mind that the truth was that virtually the entire town had been revenants and the reason for the full Imperial military occupation and travel restrictions and trade embargo was to keep them from spreading out as sleeper agents all over the Empire, or that Prince Aaronev had been discovered to be not only one of the key figures of the Storm King Conspiracy against the Empire but also a fanatic servant of the Other who'd been sheltering a small army of Geisterdamen in the caves beneath the town. None of this could be admitted to the general public, and so to all appearances the Baron was clamping down on a prominent vassal city much harder than even their Prince's publicly known acts of rebellion would justify. The forbearance of the Fifty Families against pressing that particular bit of political leverage against him was a large part of how 'Grandmother' had twisted the Baron's arm into allowing Tarvek back into her custody for a 'mourning year' after Aaronev's death in the first place.

At any rate, Tarvek had finally returned to Castle Wulfenbach from Paris a couple months ago... only he'd brought someone with him. In the webcomic Violetta Mondarev had been perhaps the only person alive that was even more cynical about Tarvek's family than he was, and she certainly hadn't felt the slightest bit of loyalty to them after she'd been released from her oath of fealty. But the comic was about a future that I'd already derailed, and had been entirely silent on what she'd been like when as a younger person. She'd be thirteen right now, the same age as Tarvek, just as I was fourteen going on fifteen. The events of canon wouldn't even be starting for circa seven years. So it was far too possible that the reason she'd accompanied Tarvek back wasn't just because of her lifelong assignment as his personal Smoke Knight but because 'Grandmother' trusted her to surveil him. Especially given as how Violetta hadn't accompanied Tarvek during his original student tenure here, because the Baron didn't want to admit more Smoke Knights - even only partially-trained teenaged ones - to his Castle than the minimum necessary, meaning that at least some arm-twisting had been applied by 'Grandmother' to get her onboard this time. And so I'd been keeping a beady eye on her from the day she'd stepped on board, and had found out largely that she was antisocial, wary, and snarky. Clearly she was not one of the Smoke Knights' social assassins.

But despite how carefully I'd been keeping an eye out, I was still surprised when I came upon her in that unused storage room one day...

She'd been sitting on a stool and playing what I'd later learned was a gamba, not a cello. And she'd been playing it with total absorption, completely lost in the moment. Violetta had been a scrawny, wiry kid at that age - only the roundness of her face kept you from mistaking her for a teenaged boy - and her distinctive mop of dark-red hair had been the only eye-catching thing about her, but seeing her face actually relaxed and happy for the first time instead of tensed up in a mask of caution meant she looked like an entirely different girl.

And after having spent twenty-something years living on a modern-day Earth where a nigh-infinite variety of digital music was available at any hour of the day or night with just a button push or two and then coming here to Castle Wulfenbach where there weren't even any concerts or recitals and almost nobody actually played an instrument- just to be able to walk in on a rendition of Mozart being played at all, let alone with as much skill as she had been-

I stood and waited, listening, hardly breathing, until she was finished. She sat cradling the gamba in her arms, eyes still closed, and just breathed in the moment for a little while afterwards. So did I.

"Enjoy the show?" she finally asked me, her eyes still closed.

"It was beautiful." I said sincerely.

"Thanks." she said after a pause, then turned around on her chair to face me. "Hey, I know how surveillance detail sucks." she continued. "But at least you sometimes get moments like these, right?"

"I'm not actually assigned to any detail." I corrected her.

"So you just snoop freelance?" she threw back. "Did you seriously think I didn't know you were there?"

"I should have known." I admitted embarassedly. "Teach me to overrate myself, I guess."

"Hey, misdirection and sleight of hand is my specialty." she bragged. "Don't feel embarrassed."

I parked my hip on the corner of a nearby crate. "I didn't even see you bring that thing on board." I admitted, nodding at her gamba. "And it's not exactly small."

"Like I told ya." she smirked. "So, if the Baron didn't tell you to keep tabs on me, who did?"

"I did." I nodded at her. "Gil and Tarvek are the two closest - at one time, the two only - friends I had on this ship. And then his grandmother puts you on him for his second trip here, when you weren't on his first trip here. So part of my head went 'What changed between then and now? What new factors entered the political situation that prompted both her request and the Baron's actually feeling obligated to grant it?' Some of the possible answers..." I shrugged. "I tried to look out for them on my own."

"Are we related?" Violetta asked me seriously.

"War orphan from the Teufel campaign." I shrugged, giving my technically-true-but-vastly-incomplete cover story. "Mom was a British privateer and dad was... mostly absent. So unless the Fifty Families branched into there too-"

"No, that whole thing was actually one of the few messes in Europa we're not at least partly guilty for." Violetta said with some embarassment. "So, what do you do when you're not working?" she changed the subject.

"... I'm pretty much always working on something." I said after I came up blank.

"Bad idea." she shook her head. "My training was intense as hell, but right from the getgo we were encouraged to find at least one thing that had nothing to do with what we were doing. You had to have at least one thing that would let you put it down for a while. Because if you never put it down, it'd eventually be too heavy to pick up."

"We aren't always the people who decide if we get any chances in this life." I felt moved to reply.

"Ain't that the truth." she agreed wholeheartedly. "But that doesn't mean-."

And then the alarm clock brought me wide awake. I rolled out of bed and sighed. Violetta hadn't shown up in my dreams at all since I'd left Europa except for that day the nightmares had become real. Although this dream at least had been a recollection of something that had legitimately happened, not some psychotic fiction brought to life. It hadn't been a replay of our first meeting or anything, but it had been one of the first moments we'd started connecting privately.

So clearly my subconscious had been trying to send me a message. Now if I could only figure out what, because given the context I was operating in right now inspiring me to recall that conversation was, to put it charitably, a case of mixed signals.

Bah. Might as well get to class.

"So, I'm not saying I'm jealous." Xander said worriedly to Buffy as we were heading to second period. I'm pretty sure they'd both forgotten that Amy and I were walking right behind them - Willow had already gone on ahead - and while we should in theory have politely excused ourselves from the floor show, both of us had already failed our saving throws versus temptation and wild horses couldn't have dragged us away.

"I'm just saying that this whole exchange student program is going to be making you share a house with a guy who has guy parts? For two whole weeks?" Xander continued.

"It's not like my mom is moving out." Buffy chided him. "We will be totally chaperoned."

"You're right." Xander conceded. "I am being a total jerk in even hinting that you'd be that kind of-"

"Xander." Buffy insisted, lightly taking him by the arm. "I get it. Our thing is all shiny and new and had summerus interruptus and keeps getting interrupted by the weirdness. How many times do I have to reassure you that you're my guy?"

"Well, a few million more occasions wouldn't hurt." he joked weakly. He shook his head. "I'm really not being at all mature about this, am I." he continued seriously.

"Like you haven't seen me be immature about a boy." Buffy cracked on herself. "My mom had to give me such a talking-to after that one. And do you know what she said?"

"Don't ever do it again?" Xander guessed.

"That too." Buffy chuckled. "But no, the important part was where she said is that a good relationship isn't about using someone else to make you happy, but about you being willing to put time and effort into making someone else happy. And about how when two people both do that for each other, they both come out ahead."

"Oh." Xander said wonderingly.

And at that point Amy and I did decide to quietly nope the heck out and leave them to their moment. After a long silent walk, right outside our next classroom I finally nerved up enough to ask her. "Are you happy?"

"Are you?" she asked me back after a short pause.

... yeah. Neither of us really had an answer for that one.

* * * * *​

Cordelia POV:

Ugh. Life such was such a trial sometimes.

First the squad lost Amy, who despite not being one of our squad's more skilled members was at least a hard worker and with no real negative reputation around the school. Plus, she'd been a squad legacy what with her mom having been 'Catherine the Great', the most famous cheer captain in the history of Sunnydale High, even if she'd actually turned out to be a psycho witch. And in return for her we got Buffy. Okay, I admit it, Buffy really knew her cheerleading. In fact, she'd probably be replacing Amber as our high flyer soon because she was a smaller weight to toss and her superpowers made her super athletic on the landings. But oh God, I'd spent a goodly chunk of last year helping tear the crazy new weirdo down socially and now I've got to rehab her? Why couldn't she have just done the whole secret identity reveal early enough to spare me from all this wasted effort? Joy was officially the cheer captain but we all already knew who'd be replacing her as soon as she graduated and she was not the social titan around the high school, I was, so it was my job to make sure nobody on the squad was unpopular. Because allowing the existence of an unpopular varsity cheerleader would destroy the whole point.

And on top of that it would have been so much more convenient now if Jonathan and Buffy had remained a thing instead of crashing and burning and he rebounded on Amy instead. Even if their whole not-dating-but-totally-together thing was a mystery for the ages. Silver lining of Amy not being on the squad anymore meant that it was at least not my problem anymore. Even if I'd still try to throw her a word of advice if it started going bad because why not.

Anyhow, the problem with rehabbing Buffy is that instead of her getting with the hot classy semi-European guy - trust me, I don't care how good his accent is, nobody raised in the USA has their everyday shirts tailored that way- who it would have been easy to leverage into one of the prime hotties in the school and thus drag Buffy up by association, she was instead dating Xander. Alexander Lavelle Harris. Yes, I knew the middle name he'd done his best to conceal from all the world, I'd gone to kindergarten with the guy for cryin' out loud. And for reasons that even God probably couldn't puzzle out Supergirl had decided to go out with the single biggest dork in the entire school district. Well, except for the roleplaying club guys. Don't even begin to ask me what went on in there, I did not want to know.

But despite his absurd dress sense and his horrible sense of humor and his abysmal taste in everything, Buffy - who if she'd bothered to clean herself up and act un-weird could have hooked almost any guy in the school almost as well as I could have - and Xander were going so steady that you couldn't have split them up with dynamite. Okay, I get that he saved her life, but he's not the only one!

Really, it said something about how out of balance the natural social order around here was sliding that the part where I was kidnapped by crazy would-be Dr. Frankensteins for ten minutes before the gang caught up was one of the less stressful parts of the month. But being the Queen meant that it was your job to keep everything spinning, so I soldiered on.

"Can you please at least get him to dress in something a human being would be caught dead in?" I begged Buffy, because getting her to take anybody other than Xander to the upcoming cultural exchange dance was futility incarnate. Still, at least she had a steady, darn her. Mitch had ditched on me after getting out of the hospital, Kevin had been killed by those vampires in the A/V room, and since then I'd sort of been just not finding any guy that was really interesting. So while I could get a date to anywhere, second dates were sorta not happening anymore.

"We all have to wear clothes celebrating a foreign culture, remember?" she reminded me. "Xander's settled on French."

"French teenagers just dress like we do, only with actual decent fabrics and tailoring." I groused.

"Exactly!" Buffy said cheerfully. "All part of my clever plan to get him to buy at least one set of clothes he can wear to school later that isn't Hawaiian shirts."

"I thought you liked his everything." I said, turning to her in puzzlement.

"I like enjoying seeing how much he enjoys his everything." Buffy replied. "That doesn't mean I share his dress sense."

"Oh thank God, you're still at least partly sane." I gushed.

"Gee, thanks." Buffy came back in a voice that would strip paint.

"You know what I mean." I replied. "And speaking of dressing for the dance, what are Jonathan and Amy wearing?"

"Yeah, about that..." Buffy began tentatively.

"Is he still not taking her any actual places outside the friend zone?" I burst out. "How does she put up with this?!?"

"Jonathan... sometimes I think he's the sort of guy who wants to take his high school sweetie to the altar after they both graduate college together." Buffy mused. "He's kinda 19th century in a couple ways. But between that and the tragic lost love he's still not entirely over-" she sighed. "Like he's already told Amy and anybody else who's asked he's not going to officially make Amy his girlfriend until he can do it without any mental reservations, and he can't do that yet."

"Well, if he still considers her to officially be a free agent then maybe I should try setting her up." I thought out loud. "Either she gets over him and is happy somewhere else, or he gets off his ass and finally commits. Win-win!"

"I'm not going to say that I agree with that plan, but I'm not going to say that I don't agree with that plan." Buffy temporized. "But if you do decide to go that route and somehow get Amy to agree with it then you make absolutely sure it's a no-creeper zone, okay? Or else the guy's probably going to get hospitalized- and I don't mean Jonathan, I mean me."

"I promise that anything I might enable will be done with the absolute maximum of class." I reassured her.

* * * * *​

Willow POV:

The world cultures dance had fatally sucked even before I'd almost gotten fatally sucked. I wasn't even a tagalong, I was a wallflower. The only reason I'd showed up at all is because I was pathetic enough to have accepted a 'go as friends' invitation from Ampata, that new exchange student girl who was staying at Buffy's. Because Buffy was so busy with all her new social life that she couldn't show anyone else around to anywhere.

And there was also the whole Scooby Gang mystery going on with the mysterious mummy attacks. As usual I'd done most of the researching and turned up the clue about the mummy dating from 500 years ago in the Sebancaya region of eastern Peru, which meant it was linked to the museum exhibit that one of the kids on the field trip had broken open the seal on. Giles was still busy trying to figure out how to put the seal back together while everybody else was busy at the dance, and Jonathan and Amy were busy helping him because any excuse for them to not have to admit that they were too chicken to actually date.

So, after I got bored with helping prop up the wall in my Eskimo costume that nobody was noticing, and carefully not looking at Buffy and Xander dancing all over the place, my life got even worse.

"Well, don't you just look like a ray of sunshine." Cordelia greeted me.

"Go away." I groused at her. "Don't you have a foreign exchange student of your very own to go make miserable?"

"I was actually going to ask if you wanted to have a dance with him because your wallflower was growing so tall it was starting to gloom the room." Cordelia shrugged. "But fine, feel free to turn down a gesture of kindness. I'm sure that you get so many that you're positively overwhelmed with choosing among them."

"Hey-!" I began to retort, and realized I was talking to her back as she walked away. Great. Now I wasn't even worth Cordelia's time to really insult anymore.

"And she calls herself a queen?" Ampata said, coming back up to me from where she'd been going to get punch. "Back home she wouldn't even have been considered a princess." Funny thing how the transfer paperwork had said 'guy' but Ampata turned out to be a girl but hey, paperwork screwups are international I guess.

"Thanks." I said to her. "And yeah, she's a real legend in her own mind."

"Still, she is correct about one thing. You do not seem happy to be here." Ampata said kindly.

"I only wanted to dance with one boy ever, and he's right over there in the arms of my 'best friend'." I sarcastically air-quoted. "Same place he's been ever since last spring."

"It is always sad to look at something you want so much but know you can never really have." Ampata agreed with me. "Come."

"Come where?" I asked her.

"For some fresh air?" she asked. "If you are nothing but sad here, then why not be somewhere else?"

"Makes as much logical sense as anything." I agreed, and I let her lead me backstage. Maybe some girl talk away from all the crush of everything could-

And then as soon as we were alone Ampata was suddenly kissing me and my head started to go all dizzy and I wondered if this was some sudden weird girl's romance thing until I realized she was starting to drain my life force and oh my God, she was the mummy we'd been hunting all along-

"I am sorry, Willow!" she said to me after our lips broke apart. "But I do not want to die! And you have so much power that your life, it will spare the lives of many of your other classmates-" And then before I could catch my breath or do more than whimper for help and wave my arms she was draining me again-

"HEY!" I heard a boy yell, and then Ampata was being pulled off of me. "I'm pretty sure that's assault-!"

"GET OFF ME!" Ampata yelled and turned around and punched the boy who'd rescued me square in the gut, and he went down and stayed down. She turned back towards me with her lips drawn back in a snarl-

"Buffy! Help!" I managed to yell, and Ampata took off running right before Buffy and Xander could pile backstage. I hurriedly gasped out what had happened, and after they made sure I or the other boy wasn't dying they took off after her.

"What happened?" he gasped as I helped him back up to his feet.

"It's a long story." I said, still a little dizzy from the soul-sucking myself. "Thanks for the assist."

"Glad to help." he said. "You okay?"

"Should be." I agreed.

And then we awkwarded a bit until he broke the silence. "Oz."

I momentarily wondered what the heck L. Frank Baum had to do with this before I realized that he'd given me his name. "Willow." I replied.

"Nice to meet you, Willow." he smiled at me. Oh, hey, a cute boy's actually looking at me! A boy who's actually in a band, no less!

"Do you wanna dance?" I asked him shyly, and after a moment he nodded yes. Finally, things might be looking up for me!

... and hey, what did Ampata mean about me having 'so much power'?

* * * * *​

Amy POV:

A little while after we'd dealt with the mummy girl who'd impersonated Ampata the exchange student after killing him and stealing his paperwork at the bus station, things between me and Jonathan had reached new levels of stalemate when Hurricane Cordelia decided to stage an intervention.

"Look, he already told you not to wait for him but to consider yourself open, right?" Cordelia pled with me.

"Yes, but..." I temporized.

"You are miserable." she talked right over me. "He is miserable. You are both making each other miserable because you won't move forward and you won't step back. Be the brave one for once and break the deadlock, girl!"

"I just feel like it would be wrong." I said.

"Honestly." Cordelia eye-rolled. "Look, if he tries to give you the slightest bit of static for going on a date, even just one little date, after he refused to go steady with you for months? I will destroy him. Outright burn his reputation down and salt the Earth with it. The tabletop roleplaying club will collectively be elected Homecoming King before he ever gets a single bit of status again, varsity wrestler or not." she vowed.

"It's not that." I said. "What kind of girl would I be if I went on a date with a boy when I wanted to be with another boy?"

"Adolescent." Cordelia flatly returned. "You really don't know what the average is like around here, do you?"

I sat and thought about it for a long while. Cordelia was correct that I wouldn't be cheating at all. That Jonathan had repeatedly said I was free to make any choices I wanted, because he hadn't committed and he wasn't unfair. And I tried to imagine the expression on Jonathan's face if he heard I'd gone out with another boy. That I might possibly have enjoyed going out with another boy.

Yeah. That's what I figured it would be.

"... okay, one date." I finally decided. "Just as a trial. And only if he understands I'm having sort of a relationship drama right now and he's not guaranteed anything."

"Yes!" Cordelia celebrated. "We are totally going to turn that frown upside down!"

"And just what kind of guys are we talking about here?" I pressed. "Because I already know most of the boys in this school and-" I shrugged meaningfully.

"Oh no, not from this school." Cordelia insisted. "These are college guys that I found us. Very rich, very classy, and they were both at Kent Prep before they went Crestwood College. So I'm sure they'll be perfect gentlemen, and I'll be double-dating right there alongside you so absolutely nothing will go wrong."

And so I got dressed up in my best and told my dad I'd be studying at a friend's house and they picked us up in Richard's BMW, and took us to the Delta Zeta Kappa fraternity house, and Tom and Richard were all very handsome and very polite and very charming right up until the moment the drugs in the drinks knocked us out.

* * * * *​

I struggled back to consciousness. I was still wearing my clothes and my underwear, thank God, and nobody'd done anything while I was out, so this couldn't be that-

"Where the hell are we?" Cordelia yelled, and my head cleared up enough for me to realize that I was chained to a wall. I opened my eyes, and we were in a basement. But one with stone walls like a cave instead of normal paneling, and a dark well in the center-

I gulped as I realized exactly what my mystic senses were telling me about what was at the bottom of that well.

"We're prisoners," a third girl, who looked like she'd been here a day or so longer than we had, said to us from where she was shackled on the other side of Cordelia. "These guys are some kind of psychos!"

"Shit!" Cordelia swore. "Another kidnapping by crazy people? When did I become Penelope Pitstop? And-" she gulped fearfully as she thought she realized what 'high school girls drugged and chained up by college guys' meant.

"The good news is, they're probably not doing to do that to us." I said tightly. "And the bad news is, that's because it would ruin their virgin sacrifices."

"You're very clever for a girl." Tom sneered, while coming down the stairs carrying a sword and wearing a set of ritual robes. "How'd you figure it out?"

"Well," I grinned savagely at him. "It's probably because I can do this-", and I reached out with my best telekinesis spell to yank his foot just as it was about to touch down on a step and send him toppling down the stairs, but then something crashed into my head and instead of knocking him down I felt like I'd been dropped down a flight of stairs and everything went all blurry-

"You're a witch!" Tom said to me gleefully while I tried to recover. "That's how you knew! And that might even have worked on me, were we not in my Master's holy place! If I were not his favorite priest, the bringer of gifts to him, if I did not enjoy his protection!" He smirked at me cruelly, patronizingly. "Don't worry. It was a very nice try. I'll make sure you go last, just as a special prize."

"Oh, you're demon cultists." Cordelia tried to sneer through her fear. "Well, you probably want to let us go then. The vampire hunters in this town? The people who kill bad guys like you? I know them. If I turn up missing and they follow the trail to here, you guys are toast."

"That was the most pathetic lie I've ever heard." Tom sneered at her. "Richard!" he yelled out. "Assemble the host!"

As the remainder of the cultists started coming down the stairs I closed my eyes and tried to not be so scared. I'd fought vampires, I'd learned how to meditate and purge my negative emotions, I'd somehow earned the respect of the bravest young man I'd ever met- I couldn't just panic like some stupid damsel, like what that misogynist creep Tom was expecting! I had to do something!

All right. None of these guys remotely sensed like they had any magical potential like I did, so they'd need a full ritual to do even the most basic of summonings. That meant I had ten, maybe fifteen minutes to finish doing something-

Directly attacking them with magic was out. The sanctum protections here would backlash it onto me and I wasn't powerful enough to knock these many guys out anyway. Trying to escape was out- even if I could unlock these manacles there were too many frat boys between us and the only stairs out. Fighting our way out was futile- even if all three of us were black belts instead of one and a half of us there were enough frat boy cultists here to just overpower us all. No, we needed the rest of the Scooby Gang for this. I had to call for help somehow.

I dimly heard Cordelia unleashing her best verbal venom and snark in an effort to distract these creeps from anything I might be doing. Good for her. Now if I could just figure out how to send a message halfway across town when I didn't know any message spells-

My tracking spell, I realized. It worked by the Law of Contagion, the principle that once two people or objects had been in close contact then on a certain mystical level they would remain in contact even if physically separated, until a banishing or exorcism or other repudiation symbolically severed the bond or until they'd been abandoned for so long that the bond had faded beyond my power to mystically rekindle. That was how I could enchant a focus to track someone by using a fresh hair taken from their hairbrush, or other similar things. It could even have found Drusilla using the sire link between her and Angel, if she hadn't beat the range of the spell by scampering out of Sunnydale.

And while I'd never had my mind directly contact anyone else's so I couldn't send a message that way, there had been one person who'd touched my heart on a level nobody else ever had.

So I closed my eyes and I used the meditations that Ms. Calendar had taught me to do my best to rise above my fear and my doubt and my anger, and focused as hard as I could, and with a prayer to the Three-Faced Goddess and the certain knowledge that two innocent lives in addition to my own relied on this, I pushed as much of my power as I could into a sympathetic bond-spell. And I also prayed that my having chosen to go on this date tonight would not count as my having rejected our connection.

Jonathan! I thought as hard as I could, over and over. I'm here! Please come!

And after a long timeless moment of nothing, I could feel him nearby, feel his emotions in tune with my own, and then mental images began to transfer-

A ringing slap across my face broke me out of my spell. Tom was standing in front of me, his face almost purple with rage.

"Whatever you did, I don't think it-!" Cordelia began panickedly, as I returned my awareness to Earth and saw that a giant snake-demon with the head and arms of a reptile man was now rising up out of the wall. Apparently the summoning had been completed while I'd been busy casting this entire time-

"Fool! You should have raised me earlier! Or you should at least have bound her magic before the witch called out to her would-be lover!" the demon roared at Tom. "The demon hunters are coming! Prepare the sanctum for assault!"

"Master Machida!" Tom plead. "We didn't know-"

"Do as I command!" the demon - Machida, his priest had named him - roared, and the frat boys nervously started to pick up swords and clubs just as the sound of someone smashing open the front door upstairs echoed through the house.

"What's going on?" the third girl shouted. "What is that?"

"That is the cavalry." Cordelia said smugly as the cellar door came flying in off its hinges and an enraged Buffy hit the frat boys like a tidal wave, with Jonathan and Angel and Xander and Giles right on their heels. "And it's right on time!"

"You at least are mine, witch!" Machida roared, and turned to lunge and rip my throat out, and I gave him my best 'I'm not afraid of you!' glare as it charged- to be stopped just a couple feet short of me when Jonathan leapt off the top of the stairs to literally land on top of its head, sword first, and bring it crashing to the ground and nail it to the floor.

Jonathan looked up at me as he crouched over the dead demon, then rose to his feet. He started to talk, then stopped, as if he couldn't find any words. Yeah, I was a little stuck for any of those either right now. Even when Richard rushed him from behind and Jonathan backfisted him to the floor without even looking, his attention wasn't really on anyone but me.

Buffy and the rest of the gang finished pounding the rest of the frat boys unconscious, and Giles found the keys to our shackles in the unconscious Tom's pockets and let us all out. With the third girl - Callie, her name was - to help testify about how she'd been kidnapped and shackled by psychos and what turned out to be identifiable human skeletons in the bottom of the well that Machida had been summoned out of, we could call the cops on all the frat boy psycho demon cultists and get them arrested with very good odds of them being sentenced to life.

And after everybody made sure everybody else was all right, and Jonathan drove me home just in time to make it in before my dad's curfew, we finally managed to find some words to say to each other for the first time this evening.

"I'm not mad." he finally said guiltily. "Except at myself. I'd told you you were free to find happiness anywhere you could, and then that just means I'm busy and oblivious elsewhere when you almost get killed by demon cultists-"

"Jonathan." I said simply, cutting him off with a single word. "I'm not mad either. You were still there when I really needed you, and that's all that matters."

The spell I'd cast earlier tonight had almost entirely faded away by now, so only the vaguest, most ephemeral resonance still existed between us both and it would be entirely gone before we woke up tomorrow. But I didn't need it to know that the uneasy stalemate between us had been shattered, even if I still didn't know yet exactly which way it would break.

"When the spell went wibbley towards the end," Jonathan eventually said as we stood together on my front porch, "I saw some mental images from your own life. Random, without much context, but still privacy invading."

"If you saw them, then my subconscious wanted to share them." I reassured him. "That was an almost purely intent-based spell I'd had to improvise on the spot, and one based on white magic and empathy. It wouldn't have done anything that either of us would have thought was hurtful or wrong."

"Did you see a similar amount about me?" he asked.

"Yes." I acknowledged. "Just a few scattered things, like you saw with me, but-" I smiled sweetly at him. "I saw Violetta in your mind. You know, it's a little weird. I'd thought that maybe part of your reluctance was that I reminded you too much of her, but we didn't remotely look alike or act alike."

"No, a whole lot of things were different." Jonathan agreed. "Except this." he tapped his own heart. "Devoted, and strong, and ultimately kind. Just like yours."

"Well, they say everybody has a type." I smiled at him. And I nodded. "I also saw the dream you had about her and the memory it was based on. That was kinda really at the front of your mind."

"It's been stuck there off and on, but I didn't want to admit it to myself." Jonathan agreed. "You know, I really feel like a heel right now. All the while I said to myself that I was holding back because I thought it would be ultimately best for you-"

"That wasn't a lie." I told him. "I know what your lying voice sounds like, remember?"

"Yes, but you also know that I'm really good at not telling the whole truth." Jonathan sighed. "And the truth I was keeping back-"

"Even from yourself." I defended him.

"Even from myself, was that I was also holding back because I was kinda in love with my own self-image as the most loyal one." he admitted. "And I was terrified that if ever made it back to Violetta and told her that my first anything with a girl hadn't been with her- because we never got past first kisses, remember- then she'd think I was a slug."

I reached up and, very very gently, tapped the palm of my hand against his cheek in a parody of a slap. "I'm pretty sure I can speak on her behalf there." I joked with him.

"You could." he agreed. "Because after our talking without words earlier tonight-" he nodded. "Now I know why my subconscious sent that dream to me earlier, even if I woke up before the ending."

And I knew he did. And so did I, because that had been one of the clearest mental images in Jonathan's mind at the moment my spell had reconnected our hearts and through them our minds. Because while he'd woken up before the dream had finished, his photographic memory had still faultlessly preserved their original conversation:

"We aren't always the people who decide if we get any chances in this life." Jonathan felt moved to reply.

"Ain't that the truth." Violetta agreed wholeheartedly. "But that doesn't mean we should stop looking."

There were no words that could fully express what we felt, or itemize all the things that we already knew we were letting ourselves in for. Or if there were such words, neither of us was poet enough to find them at this moment. But in this moment we didn't need them. I loved him, and he loved me, and we'd each known the truth of the other's feelings as if they'd been our own.

And so as we kissed for the very first time, as we each finally let ourselves express our yearning and our care- for tonight, that was enough.

* * * * *​

Author's Notes: Okay, those two crazy kids finally pulled the trigger. Of course, since I'm paralleling a certain canon romance with their path...

Thanks to poster 'Matrix Dragon' on SB for suggesting that flashbacks were useful for getting more Jonathan/Violetta relationship moments into the narrative as needed, even though the jump was already over.

Oh, amusing Buffy lore note - while Willow and Oz in canon do not speak to each other until "What's My Line" (2x11-12), the very first episode in which Oz notes Willow and is attracted to her is "Inca Mummy Girl" (2x04), because he was indeed playing in the band for the cultural exchange dance in that episode.