Dun dun dun! The Big Face off! Or the first part of it anyway. Not sure how much sense it makes, but if you give me lots of reviews I'll update it real fast…

Chapter 9 - Face to Face

The sisters stood a foot or so in front of the kids, Leo, Henry and Coop already sent off to magic school, where they were safe.

"OK, kids. What's the plan?" Piper said, trying to sound confident, but with an unmistakable tremor in her voice.

"Strip their powers." They recited.

"And we want to...?" Phoebe added.

"Get aunt Prue back."

"Are we ready?" Paige asked, smiling in spite of the whole situation, as nine heads nodded vigorously. This was big, but the kids were acting like it was a military operation.

"OK..." Phoebe held the summoning spell up so she and her sisters could read it...

--

"If you feel you have to leave, just leave." Prue said to her boys.

"Don't leave." Ricker snapped. "We kill the witches -"

"Or die trying?" Prue frowned.

"Yes." Ricker said. Prue glared at him before turning back to Preston, Parker, and Perry.

"Don't listen to him. You need to get out, get out. Come back here, and if we're not back in a few hours, you find Louian."

"Louian?" Ricker said sharply. Ignoring him, Prue continued talking to her boys.

"I told him we were planning on a big fight, and that we might not all make it. He agreed to take you in and train you up if he needs to."

"Prue -" Ricker interrupted. She spun round to face him, glared at him coldly.

"I'm not talking to you right now." She told him. "We can argue if we survive this."

"If?"

"Don't." She warned him, then turned back to the boys. "We'll go in together." She said, then reached out for Perry's arm.

"I can shimmer in alone." Preston said, his eyebrows raised. "I'm a big boy now, mum."

"Demon. You're a demon." Ricker snapped.

"Preston." Prue snapped. Parker had already gripped Perry's arm, so she took hold of Preston's. "We go in together, or not at all." He didn't pull away, just looked up at Ricker. Prue purposely avoided his eyes. "One... Two... Three..." She blinked and as the boys shimmered, and the next thing she knew, she was in an all too familiar room...

A loud piercing scream rang out - Phoenix had seen them. Piper, Phoebe and Paige spun around, and for a moment they just stared at each other. Then Preston threw a fireball into the small crowd, and a flurry of movement followed.

"Wyatt!" Piper yelled, and Wyatt grabbed Chris and Linnie, and orbed them behind Prue, Ricker and her boys, while Lydia and Sydney grabbed Henry and orbed over to Paige. Phoebe's girls teleported together and ended up near the window. Preston hurled another fireball over to Prudence, Paris and Phoenix. Just in time Prudence pulled her sisters to the floor and the fireball sailed past them and hit the wall.

"Leave them alone!" Paige cried out as Parker sent a fireball towards her and her kids. Henry sent up a transparent green force-field just in time, and the fireball bounded backwards.

"Your fight is with us, not them." Phoebe said.

"Our fight is with all of you." Ricker snarled. Prue had been watching in silence, taking in the faces of her sisters, and he nephews and nieces...

"Prue, please..." Phoebe said. For a moment, Prue forgot what she had become, the demon she now was, and remembered who she used to be... but the demon in her picked up the weakness in Phoebe's voice, and she smirked.

"Don't beg, witch. It's not the dignified way to die." While Ricker let out a relieved breath, Phoebe stumbled back in horror.

Piper looked at Prue, at the woman she had once admired, loved, and realised that her big sister wasn't perfect, like she always thought. Prue wasn't the strongest, not really.

No one was perfect. Not even her.

Paige was the first one to react - raising her arm and throwing the power stripping potion at Prue. It smashed at Prue's feet, and a wispy cloud of purple smoke rose into the air and into Prue's mouth.

Instantly, everyone else snapped into action, and the air was filled with flying bottles, the sound of smashing glass, and multicoloured smoke. While Wyatt, Henry and Phoenix threw the purple power-stripping, taking away the powers of Ricker, Preston, Parker and Perry, Chris, Linnie, Lydia, Sydney and Prudence threw the blue ones, and individual transparent blue bubbles sprang up around Prue, Ricker, and the boys.

"What have they done?" Ricker snapped, looking over at Prue. "How do we get out of here?"

"I... I don't know." Prue murmured. She could barely think straight, her head filled with memories that were tormenting her. Childhood memories, adult memories, all jumbled up and running into each other.

"Prue! Think!" He yelled at her.

"You, Shh." Piper snapped at Ricker. "Kids..." Obediently, the nine of them orbed or teleported over, and stood around the sisters.

"OK, we can do this one way or the other." Piper said, still talking to Ricker. She lifted up a small red bottle. "I have enough of these to vanquish the lot of you." She threw a glance in Prue's direction. "But I don't want to, for obvious reasons. However, if I need to, I will."

"At your own sister?" Ricker sneered.

Piper looked at Prue, right in her light blue eyes. How had she never noticed before how cold her sisters eyes were? How the icy blue seemed so empty, how emotionless she was. Had it always been that way?

"You know I will." She said flatly. Slowly, Prue nodded. She did, she knew.

"So, you. Mister demon." Piper said. "First of all, I want to know exactly how you stole our sister away, and what you did to her."

"I don't make small talk with witches." Ricker snarled. Prue glanced over at him, reluctantly desperate to know, too.

"Then I may as well just throw this now." Piper shrugged, and raised her hand.

"No!" Ricker cried, and Piper stopped, her hand still in the air. "No." He looked pointedly at Prue, and she knew he wanted her to try and think of a way out of this. She gave a small nod, but as soon as he started talking, she couldn't focus on anything other than what he was saying.

"I - It was easy, really." He said, a note of pride in his voice. "All I had to do was wait until the sources assassin had knocked you both out. Then I just took her." He grinned.

"How did you turn her?" Paige asked.

"An old dark-magic ritual." Ricker replied. "Not a lot of demons know about it, but I found the instructions years ago."

"So you decided to turn Prue?"

"Any of the Charmed Ones really." Ricker shrugged. "I'd been waiting for over a year, watching you, waiting. But I knew that Phoebe had a demon boyfdriend, who'd be able to find her, and you had the whitelighter, so she was my first choice."

"Who, though?" Phoebe interrupted. "Why one of us?"

"The most powerful witches to exist." Ricker said simply, and Prue glared at him. All these years he had told her how weak she'd been, how alone, and now... now it turned out she was one of the most powerfull witches to exist... not to mention she had family.

"You took our sister away." Phoebe said, and when Prue looked at her, she saw tears in her eyes. "You took her away and we thought she was dead..."

It hit Prue with the force of a thunderbolt. They did love her, they did need her...

But she couldn't go back. For fifteen years she'd been a demon, and she could barely remember before that. She didn't know what she used to be, only what she was now. And she was too scared to start again, as good, as human.

Because just from the brief little memories, she knew that humanity hurt.