THE OLD AND THE NEW (1.02.04)
They all look up at her, Pike nods at her, "Who's that chick?"
"Unless I'm mistaken, that's who we're meeting about." Dawn tells him. She always liked Pike... even if he was almost always out of it.
"Oh, nice to meet you. Name's Pike."
"Autum."
"Huh! No shit. Hey, Buffy, it's Autum!"
Connor looks at Autum, "I thought we were meeting about a vampire."
Autum shrugs, "They seem to think I'm a vampire, don't they?"
"You've been around for over 200 years. My experience tells me that you're not exactly human." Buffy tells her.
"Oh, but contraire to popular belief. Don't you remember you're dreams? You're dealing with something much worse then a vampire, ducks." Autum walks out the doors, but pauses when Dawn speaks.
"Buffy... you can't just let her walk out of here."
"But she can, little key. She can and she will."
"She's not a vampire!" Connor yells at them for the thousandth time. He'd gotten her to come back into the meeting until they sorted this out.
"You gonna prove it?" Pike asks him, serious for the first time that night.
"Sure." She strips off her shirt and grabs the Slayer's hand… putting it over her breast. Confusing almost everyone there.
"Oh." Pike gets it, "Heartbeat… does she have one Buff?"
Buffy pulls her hand off of the other woman, "Yeah… but then how did she survive that long? She just can't be human."
"If anything, I'm all too human, love."
'This girl is kinda creepy in a sexy sorta way.' Pike thinks. "How's that?"
"Perfection of the human race is far off… over the millennia, they have changed from the species they once were."
"You saying you've been around forever?"
"Mayhaps aye, mayhaps nay." She winks at him, "Not really in the plan to tell you, ducks."
"You're her." Buffy says. Autum nods in conformation. She lounges back in the seat she's in.
"That it would seem, Slayer. But if you don't mind… keep it between us." Just then Illyria walks in. "Oh, bollix!"
"Grandmother… you came."
"Of course I did. Couldn't miss a meeting like this, now could I?"
"They asked me to tell of you."
"So willing to offer information? Do you not remember the situations of which we were last left?"
"You killed me." Everyone gasps… at least the people who know how old Illyria is.
"You were quite a disappointment. That and you wished to kill my race."
"So you banished mine."
"How else was I to keep control over my dimension… my world?"
"Oh Goddess!!" Willow gasps, "Buffy, she's the Essence, isn't she?!"
"So what if I am?" The group immediately picks up their weapons and points them at her… except Angel, Spike, Connor, and Buffy. "Oh, balls!"