"So, how have you been, kid?" Zeema asked conversationally, looking down at her athame in annoyance and then grabbing a handful of the front of Ben's shirt and using it to clean the blade with.

Ben pulled a face at the smeared crimson stain, rolling his eyes. "Oh, you know, good. Having fun, keeping busy, flossing regularly. The usual."

"So you're in a predicament, huh?" the demon asked, lightly tracing the point of her athame along Ben's jawbone. The cold steel hissed across his flesh but didn't bite deep enough to draw blood. The witch stiffened as she lightly grazed the blade down to his Adam's apple and let it rest there. "There isn't a chance that Wyatt Halliwell will be orbing in any second to rescue you and his kid brother, is there? Because, let me tell you, my bosses? Not happy when I failed to kill him."

"Hm. Yeah. I don't think he's timetabled for the rescue mission today. He won't be coming. So you can really just—"

Orbing lights glistened at the other end of the room, coalescing into three forms. On the floor, Ken shifted, his movements causing the blood-stained carpet to squelch. He moaned into the pile. Zeema turned and threw her athame at the new arrivals.. It spun, tearing at the air, towards Wyatt, Bridget and Nixa.

"Watch it!" Ben yelled, his breath hitching in his throat and his eyes widening with panic. He leant forward in the chair, straining against the tape pinning him to it. His nails were digging into his palms subconsciously with the tension.

Nixa darted forward and clapped her hands together, trapping the blade between her hands. The hilt of the knife protruded from her palms, quivering malignantly at being stopped before its target. She swallowed, letting out the breath she'd been holding. Slowly, she let the dagger fall to her side.

"Not cool!" Wyatt yelped, his eyes bugging as he saw how near the dagger had got to his chest before Nixa had caught it. "Totally not cool! What the hell is going on here? Who's trying to turn me into a kebob when I'm barely formed? NOT a level playing field."

"Zeema," Bridget answered for him shortly, narrowing her eyes at the assassin before her. "Let me guess, you're the one possessing everyone? We should have known."

"Me? Possessing people? No, no, no. I'm the innocent victim here… for once," Zeema replied, sneering. "And it sucks. How do you all manage it so much of the time?"

Bridget snorted. "Oh, yeah. And we're supposed to believe—"

"It's true," Ben said, cutting Bridget off heavily. "It's true. It isn't her. It's Ken. He's got down with some twisted black arts and stole her power."

"Oh. Well… You can't blame me for thinking that," Bridget admitted reluctantly. "I mean, she is evil and an assassin and everything."

"You're too kind," Zeema said, looking at both Nixa and Bridget in disappointment and especially eyeing the athame in Nixa's hand. "And, you know, you're so good and you save the puny little innocents and… make me want to vomit. Are we finished with the pleasantries?"

"Hell yes," Bridget said, stepping forwards. "Bring it on, bitch." She beckoned to Zeema, shrugging out of her jacket. It slithered to the carpet.

Zeema cocked her head and quirked her eyebrow. "Fine. One thing, just let me—" Another athame appeared in her hand and she whipped it up to shoulder height and tossed it at Bridget. The Hunter dropped to the carpet and rolled, finishing in a battle crouch. The dagger continued down the corridor behind her, clattering into the wall without sticking and falling to the floor.

"Huh. Losing your touch?" Bridget asked mockingly, pretending to consider the athame's destination. "Because that, to me, looks like you're not quite as good as you were. Sorry."

Wyatt stepped forward, holding out his hands. "Hey, can we just—"

Nixa shoved his shoulder and, as the Halliwell staggered sideways, threw Zeema's own athame back at the demon, who shimmered out and shimmered back in again on the spot. Nixa growled in the back of her throat and swore as the athame sunk into the wooden door and spilt the wood.

"You see that throw, right there?" Bridget asked, gesturing to the knife behind the demon. "That was a throw. Do you want to be taking notes, or—"

Snarling, Zeema flipped backwards, wrenched the dagger from the door and threw it back at Bridget. Wyatt yelped again and formed an energy ball, throwing it at the advancing blade. It incinerated the handle with a small explosion, raining a light ash onto the floor. When the explosion faded, the blade clattered to the carpet, blackened and bent.

"Can we stop, STOP hurling pointy objects at each other? PLEASE? I, for one, have no desire to get impaled! Control yourselves!"

"Wyatt? Shut up," Nixa demanded, shoving the Twice Blessed witch again so that he was behind her and Bridget.

"Yeah, butt out. This is personal," both Bridget and Zeema sneered at the same time, whipping their heads back around to glare at each other in shock.

"Are you imitating me, kid? Because, let me tell you, this," she said, gesturing to herself, "is way, way out of your league. Trust me."

Wyatt heaved a sigh and threw his hands up into the air, letting them slap down again on his thighs. "I quit. I quit. I'm going to go and find something to do and come back later when the posturing is over. Is that okay with everyone?"

"Uh, yeah, hey, remember me?" Ben asked. "I vote no. No, that's NOT OKAY. Do I look like I want to be impaled either?"

"Well, if you ask me, you look like you need to be impaled," Wyatt muttered.

"So not the question I asked," Ben snapped back irritably. "Are you going to help me or not?"

"No, he's not," Zeema told him. "He's going to leave you there because we're not finished. Don't think I've forgotten you and your ice power."

"You're not the boss of me," Wyatt informed her indignantly. "If I want to save my little brother's twerp of a friend, I will!" He orbed out and reappeared behind Ben, wrinkling his nose as the carpet oozed blood onto the sole of his shoe. "What the— Ew! You could have told me that there was a freshman missing a chunk of himself right next to you!"

"Oh, right, yeah. That's the kind of thing that you just drop into conversation," Ben replied sarcastically. "Now, are you going to gawp or heal? Because I think he's just about dead. And I think I'm getting his blood in my shoe. Kinda gross."

"No, don't you dare heal him!" Zeema snapped, spinning angrily to face Wyatt. A pair of throwing stars materialised, one in each hand. As she readied them to throw, Bridget kicked her in the face and then, dropping to the floor, swung and swept the demon's legs out from underneath her.

"We weren't done talking," the Hunter reminded the demon. "You stole a catchphrase of mine. I take plagiarism very, very seriously."

"Unless she's doing her homework," Nixa said. "In that case, she doesn't care who or what she copies as long as it's done."

"Ruining my moment, here," Bridget informed Nixa angrily, springing up and taking up a fighting stance. "That was a good quip, right there. Now it's ruined. It's like you, you… shot me down. You shot me down, wreathed in flames! Yes! That's what you did!"

"Bridget…" Nixa tried.

"No!" Bridget shouted. "I'm kinda angry now. I don't get many quips, you know, and—"

"Bridget!" Nixa called out again, this time with heavier warning in her voice.

"I'm ranting over here! I was saying, just saying, that—"

"Oh, for God's sake. Duck!"

"Wha—?" Nixa took a run-up, just as Bridget dropped into a crouch. Using her friend's shoulders as a springboard she vaulted over Bridget and kicked Zeema in the chest with both feet, sending the demon crashing backwards into the wall.

"Quit bitching about your quips!" Nixa said in frustration. "You nearly got a knife in the neck!"

"I knew she was there," Bridget duhed, but looked uncertain. "It was fine. I was all over the situation."

"Uh-huh."

Ken came round with a gasp, just as the golden glow from Wyatt's hands faded. He rolled onto his back, still breathing heavily, his fingers sliding around his abdomen to probe at his wounded side. "What… what happened?" the freshman gasped, pulling his t-shirt so that he could see that it was undamaged and unmarred by blood.

"Good magic," Ben said shortly. "That, right there, was a perfect example of good, rightfully used, not stolen and most definitely not black magic. Remember that. And now lay some on me."

"Huh?" Ken asked.

"Not you. The egomaniac blond with the vacant expression."

"Do you want to be healed?" Wyatt asked, folding his arms across his chest. "Because I could so just walk away if you're fine with the mess — and what a mess, may I just add — you're in."

"Just heal me. I didn't ask for your opinion, did I?"

"You don't have to. Everyone wants to know my opinion," Wyatt told him with a smirk, holding his hands over the witch's chest. They lit up and Ben felt the warm rush of the healing power coursing through his veins, knitting together his broken ribcage and fixing any other injuries he had sustained.

Zeema kicked Nixa in the stomach, sending the blonde flying backwards over the breakfast bar into the kitchen beyond. She slid across the floor and into a cupboard door. Bridget ducked under a right hook from Zeema, sprung up and blocked the assassin's left hook and threw a punch of her own. Zeema grabbed her wrist and bent her arm sideways. Bridget gasped in pain and was about to respond with her other fist when Zeema used her new leverage to flip the Hunter to the floor. Bridget grunted, the wind having been driven from her. Another athame appeared in the assassin's hand and she plunged it down towards the Hunter. Bridget rolled to the left and the blade sank through the carpet and into the floorboards beneath. As Zeema struggled to wrench it free, Bridget jumped back to her feet and kicked the assassin into the dining room table, splintering the three chairs pulled up on the side facing them. Broken stakes of wood fell around her.

"We've got to get to Chris," Ben told Wyatt. "The possession mojo did something to him. I don't know if he's okay."

"Bridget!" Nixa called from the kitchen. She tossed a frying pan at her fellow Hunter, who looked at it in confusion until she realised that Zeema had more throwing stars in her hand, ready to aim. The first one flew at her and she backhanded it like a tennis player. The metal-on-metal made a dull, flat noise and the throwing star ricocheted across the room. Wyatt ducked and it skimmed his head, coming to rest in the dead centre of a framed picture, spider-webbing the glass and tearing into the canvas underneath.

"Yeah. Now you mention it, getting out of here would be a really, really good idea," the Twice Blessed witch gulped, grabbing a handful of Ben's jeans and Ken's arm. They disappeared in a swirl of blue lights, the duct tape that had bound Ben dropping uselessly to the floor.

Quiet Please, I'm Stalking

"Prue, I don't think that that's going to do much good," Xander informed his cousin dully, wrinkling his face in concern as Prue slapped Chris again, trying to wake him up. "I mean, I'm no first aider but I don't think that that's how you wake an unconscious person up."

"I'd throw water on him, but do you see any?" Prue duhed. "It was between water and slapping. Both work equally well, but slapping is the only thing available to me. Now, if you have a better idea…"

Xander rolled his eyes and his body slumped in defeat. He sat on the end of the bed and leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees and wincing every time Prue dealt Chris another slap. He could tell Chris, when his cousin woke up with his face battered to an inch of recognition, that he had tried to get Prue to cut it out. Tried. He pulled a grim face, knowing that all he'd been able to do is try because no one ever bothered to listen to him anyway.

Prue raised her hand but then shrieked and fell backwards as orbing lights filled the air in front of her. She jumped to her feet and turned, grabbing Ken's desk lamp and holding it above her head like a club. As the lights began to take on a full shape she swung it.

"HEY!" Wyatt yelled, throwing out his arm. The lamp was wrenched from his cousin's grasp and flew across the room. It shattered the window with a loud crash and, after a slight delay, the shards tinkled to the sidewalk several stories below followed by the considerably louder sound of the lamp colliding with the paving stones. "Am I wearing a sign? Is it 'Attempt to Kill Wyatt When He's Only Half Here Day' or something? Jesus, Prue. What's wrong with you?"

"How did I know you weren't a demon?" the witch snapped, then narrowed her eyes. "In fact, how do I know that you're not a demon. Like, right now." She tilted her head upwards and raised her eyebrows. "Huh? How do I know that you're not evil, hm?"

Wyatt looked at her in disbelief, mouth slightly open. Eventually he huffed a sigh and rolled his eyes. "Prue, you have the IQ of a pencil sharpener," he said tiredly, turning around to get an idea of the layout of the room.

Prue's body slumped. "Oh." She wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, that's definitely you. And you're mean."

"I'm mean with a ride," Wyatt reminded her, crouching down next to Chris and holding his hands over his prone brother, beginning to heal him.

Prue paused. "I love you?" she tried hopefully, biting her lip.

Wyatt only rolled his eyes in response, letting his healing power fade as Chris gasped and tried to sit up. "Whoa, easy," the blond said, resting his hands on his brother's shoulders. "Easy. No need to panic. You're fine."

"Ken—" Chris began, then saw the freshman in question. Anger blazed in his eyes and his arm shot out, sending Ken flying across the room into the wall. "He's the one. He's evil. He's—"

"Misguided," Ben finished for Chris. "And mentally unstable. But not evil. He's been doing magic, stealing demonic powers and I think they've sent him all the way to Crazy Town."

"Well, yeah. Powers — demonic powers at that — in a body not built for them are gonna mess a person up. I mean, I'm surprised he's managed to survive this long." The witch-whitelighter looked over at Ken and glared darkly, remembering that the entire reason that he was here was because of Ken. "Kind of a shame, actually," he added callously, accepting Ben's hand up.

"I'm gonna die?" Ken asked weakly, his eyes darting from Chris to Ben to Wyatt and then back to Chris again. "Like… die?"

"You'll burn up. The powers will consume you and there'll be nothing left of you. So yeah. You're going to die," Chris told him with a nonchalant shrug. "This is what you get when you mess with the black arts, kid."

"T-there's nothing you c-can do?" Ken asked, his old stutter returning as his eyes brimmed with tears of terror. "Come on. There's g-got to be something you can do. You're w-witches, right? Help me. Please. I didn't want any of this. I just wanted Bridget to like me. I wanted— I don't even remember what I wanted. I don't know. I didn't want to hurt anyone, I didn't, I just…" He sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "I just… wanted to be liked. By Bridget. By you. By people. I mean, there's not a hugely fascinating hook to me for people to form attachment to, is there? And look at you. You're so cool, so confident, so controlled… I mean you've got powers, you're popular, you—"

"'Popular'?" Chris echoed in disbelief, snorting. "You think I'm popular? Have you seen how the football-playing, single-digit-IQ jerks treat me? Have you not noticed the lack of cheerleaders lining up to date me? It's not just you that has problems. It's not just you that isn't popular. I'm not either. Ben's not, and—"

"Hey! I resent that!" Ben told Chris, looking hurt. "I'm plenty popular. I'm Mr Popular, I'm—" He caught Chris's look and conceded to his friend's cocked eyebrow with a sigh. "Yeah. I'm in the socially challenged category," he admitted with a shrug. "Despite having powers. It isn't our powers that define who we are. It's the people we are. I mean, to be honest, popularity? Why would you want to be constantly walking around worrying about how you look, what you're wearing, the music you're listening to, the people you're talking to? Is it worth the effort?"

Prue snorted. "Like, duh Ben. That would be what High School is for."

Ben turned to her. "What the hell are you doing here anyway?"

Wyatt's eyes lit up with recognition. "Yeah! What the hell are you doing here? I told you to stay back at the Manor! What if Mom comes home? Huh?"

Prue held her hands up. "Uh, hey. Like, hello? Do I look like the cosmic taxi of the pair of us? I levitate, Wyatt. Why are you yelling at me for being here? I didn't bring us here."

"Xander may have orbed you but you totally brought the both of you here," Wyatt said wryly. His head whipped around as he heard a loud crash from the next room. "Crap! Right. The bitch fight. I forgot. You are all way too hard to keep track of, you know that, right?" he called over his shoulder, already half-running from the bedroom and back out into the other room.

The rest of them followed him out just in time to see him cast an energy ball at Zeema, slamming her into the wall. She shattered a picture and fell onto a sideboard, sweeping family photos and a potted plant onto the floor.

"Get lost, Zeema. You know you can't win," Wyatt threatened, forming another energy ball and glaring intently as he let it revolve menacingly in his hand.

"I will have my power back," she snarled, getting to her feet and conjuring another athame. "And I could take every one of you in this room out to get it if I have to. And it looks like I will have to. So let's do this, shall we?"

"You're going to get it," Chris said, stepping forwards and yanking down Wyatt's arm. The energy ball dissolved. "I don't have the energy or the patience or the desire to clean up after a grudge match to the death between us all, okay? You're going to get it back. Ken can't keep it. We'll take it out of him and you'll get it back. Good for you?"

Zeema relented slightly, bringing the athame down to her waist. She gave a nonchalant half-shrug, looking bored. "I'd prefer a match to the death. But I guess what you're offering me is adequate. Providing I get time to—" She spun around suddenly so fast that her form dissolved into a blur. Bridget, who had been creeping up on the assassin as quietly as she knew how, didn't have time to react and squealed in surprise when Zeema grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her forwards, pressing the Hunter's back to her chest. She placed the point of her athame on Bridget's jugular.

"Get OFF me!" Bridget shrieked indignantly, moving to throw the assassin behind her but freezing as the cold steel nipped at her throat. Slowly, she straightened back up and swallowed. Her eyes crossed slightly as she struggled to get a look at what Zeema was holding to her throat.

Chris's eyes immediately hardened. A steel veneer flashed across them. "Let her go," he said icily. "If you want to A live and B get your powers back let her go. Now."

"What are you gonna do?" Zeema asked, her face splitting into a mocking grin. She shifted the blade, raising her eyebrows tauntingly. "Have your brother toss an energy ball at this annoying human shield here? Because I see a couple of flaws with that plan. That is, assuming you want her to live. Which, you know, if you don't…"

Bridget winced at a sudden stinging pain at the underside of her jaw. Slowly, she felt a bead of blood worm its way to the surface and bulge out, eventually becoming overgrown enough to trickle down her throat and onto her chest. She swallowed again, forcing herself to remember to breathe. Concentrating hard, she was just about managing to keep her heartbeat in check. The adrenaline surging through her was jerking her fingers but she was mainly managing to stay calm. Zeema would be able to tell if she panicked.

"You're not going to get out of here alive if you hurt her," Ben warned, narrowing his eyes and setting his jaw. The creaking of ice filled the room as it spread from his fingertips to cover his whole fists.

"The smart-ass freak has a point," Wyatt added, forming an energy ball in his hand. "Do you really want to chance it?"

"What are you going to do? She's standing in the way of all attacks. How are you gonna hit me?"

"Oh, we'll manage it," Chris assured her through gritted teeth. Eyes blazing, he flung his arm so that his right hand was over his left shoulder and was about to swing it forward and unleash a telekinetic blast when Nixa grabbed his wrist.

"Chris, think," she hissed at the witch-whitelighter. "Even if you do send her flying only she's still holding Bridget. Bridget will go with her. And what's going to happen with that athame mid-flight, huh?"

Chris sighed angrily, seeing sense and slowly lowered his arm to his side, clenching his hand into a fist. "Just go. We promised you your powers back. Get out."

"Oh, so you're going to give the demonic assassin her powers back, are you? So she can come back and kill you another day? Why don't I quite believe that? I quite like having my insurance here."

"They can't stay in him," Chris spat back angrily, gesturing at Ken. "They're killing him. So we're going to have to take them out of him. And they need somewhere to go, and they'll go back to their owner. We can't create or destroy powers, energy, we can only transfer them. That's the way it works."

"Well, technically, Emc², where the E is energy, m is mass and c is the speed of light in a vacuum—" Nixa stopped, closing her mouth with a snap. "Sorry. Not the time for Relativity, huh?"

"No."

"We need to get home," Xander reminded them, checking his watch. "In like… now. Firstly, it's curfew. Secondly, they're gonna be back soon. We'll be in serious trouble."

"Oh, right, yeah. Because it's a viable option to just leave right now, isn't it?" Wyatt snapped sarcastically, not taking his eyes of Zeema and Bridget.

"Hey, you were the one worried about being grounded until you were sixty, remember?" Xander sniped back, folding his arms. "I'm simply reminding you."

"Well, thank you but unless you can come up with a way to solve this crisis within the next three seconds, then I'm going to have to just deal with my mother's wrath. So be useful, or be qui—"

Xander huffed a sigh and rolled his eyes heavily, stepping forwards and flicking his wrists. Instantly, Bridget and Zeema both froze. "Does that count as being useful?"

Wyatt sniffed, letting his energy ball evaporate. "Well, you know, I wouldn't exactly say that, because, um—"

"You owe me," Xander said, cutting Wyatt of stonily and he walked forward and yanked the athame from Zeema's inanimate hand, looking at it blankly for a couple of seconds and then tossing it over the dining room table. "Big time." He stepped sideways and twisted his mouth in thought for a second before unfreezing the pair. He then stuck a nail from the hand he had used into his mouth.

Zeema's hand closed around thin air and in the moment of confusion that followed Bridget realised that there was no longer an athame threatening to cut her neck and a loosened grip on her and she flipped the assassin forwards.

"Bitch!" Zeema seethed, sitting up slightly and glaring at the gathered group of people at the end of the room. "Get me my powers back. You have an hour. If they're not back to me in that time, I'm coming. And it won't be pretty. Want to see a preview?" Before the athame had even finished materialising, Zeema had sprung up and planted it firmly in Bridget's stomach.

Bridget gasped, doubling over, shaking hands fumbling for the weapon's hilt and slickly sliding it from her body and letting it drop to the floor. Blood cascaded and foamed from the wound in a new wave as the blade came out and the Hunter fell to her knees.

"An hour," Zeema said coldly, shimmering out.