Disclaimer: The title came from Disney's 'The Hunchback of Notre-Dame', so I don't own it, 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Angel' came from Joss Whedon, so I don't own them, and 'Charmed' came from Constance M. Burge, so that's not mine either. Anyway, enjoy.

Feedback: It's here to be read; let me know that it has been

What Makes a Monster?

Riley weakly opened and closed his mouth as he stared at Angelus in shock, trying to come up with some kind of counter to the vampire's statement. However, this was rendered practically impossible due to the fact that Riley was unable to even articulate a question as to what the vampire was doing here so soon after getting out of the Initiative, as well as trying to figure out why nobody seemed to mind this… this thing… being here after what he had done to Buffy, to say nothing of why they were so accepting of his freakish associates…

"Wait a minute; you know Riley?" Willow asked, looking over at Angelus in surprise. "How'd that happen?"

The man in the dark outfit, confusingly enough, answered that question; Riley had no idea how he could know the answer over anyone else in the room. "Simple enough, Miss Rosenberg; he was a member of the team that kidnapped us," he said, his gaze turning to look critically at Riley as he spoke. "By the way, Mr Finn, I really hope you're in worse shape than you look; I'd hate to think that we went to all that effort to break out and didn't manage to do anything more than annoy you a little."

"But… but…" Riley said, looking from the man in dark clothes to Angelus, trying to figure out exactly why everybody in the room seemed to suddenly be looking at him as though he was the villain, rather than the hero he truly was. After all, here he was, risking his life to try and warn Buffy that Angelus was back, regardless of the beating he'd just taken from Angelus and his associates only a few hours ago, and now here she was, talking with the vampire as though he hadn't violated her in the most intimate, terrible way imaginable…

"Yes?" the Brachen asked, looking casually at Riley. "You have something ye want ter ask us about, or are ye just going to stammer there like a sick wombat until the cows come home?"

"Actually, he's not," Buffy said, as she got up and walked towards him. Riley allowed himself a small smile of relief; she was obviously going to ask him to take her away from all this, away from the creature that had hurt her so much in the past, away from this nightmare, away from these people who didn't even seem to care about what Angelus had done to her…

Then she suddenly hit him in the face with such force that he was sent flying back into the nearby wall; he could have sworn he felt the plaster crack behind him, he hit it so hard.

"That was for messing with Angel and his friends!" Buffy yelled at him as he looked up at her in confusion, his nose bleeding profusely as he tried to understand what had just happened, simultaneously gasping for breath so that he could ask the question that he now needed to know the answer to more than anything, the question that would put an end to his wonderings about what the hell was going on around here…

"But… but he raped you!" Riley cried at last, deciding he might as well get the facts out in the open; maybe a part of Buffy was lying to him out of some psychological fear of rejection (Not that he would do something like that; he knew that the rape couldn't have been her fault). "How can you defend him after that!"

"Raped?" Buffy said, looking over at Angelus in confusion, leaving Riley suddenly feeling rather nervous; had something happened to Buffy's mind because of the trauma of what had happened, or was he totally wrong about what had taken place here? "What is going on with this guy?"

"OK," Angelus sighed, looking apologetically at Buffy, as though he actually had the ability to feel something instead of being a ruthless monster, "while we were captured, trying to provoke these guys into making a mistake that might allow us to get out of our cell, I did tell him that I thought you were… what did I say again?"

"He said you were 'a good kisser, great in bed'; we needed something to get these guys angry enough to want a confrontation," Belthazor chipped in, looking at Riley with a smirk on his face that seemed more like a man enjoying a good joke than a known murderer. "Sorry, but we needed to provoke this guy. Anyway, sounds like farm-boy here must've assumed that Angel here came by that knowledge in a more… violent manner, shall we say?… than he actually did."

"Ah," Buffy said, as she turned back to glare at Riley, a renewed expression of growing anger and rage on her face as she confronted the man who had once just been her psychology teaching assistant. "So, let me see if I get this right; you heard that I'd done it with a vampire, and you just assumed that Angel raped me? You assumed that he was like every other vampire you've ever abducted and treated like some frog in the dissection lab? You just assumed that he's evil for the sole reason that he isn't exactly human?"

Reaching over, she grabbed Riley by the shirt and hauled him nearly a foot off the ground, leaving Riley staring at her in shock and confusion as Buffy glared up at him.

"You need to learn that things aren't always as black and white as that, you idiot!" she yelled at him, angrier than many of her friends had ever seen her, before she threw Riley a few feet back along the room, hitting the wall near the door.

As he staggered to his feet, staring at Buffy in shock and confusion as the rest of the group stared critically at him, Riley opened his mouth to say something in reply. However, making a snap decision, Piper raised her hands and flicked them, causing Riley to freeze just as his mouth opened in a feeble attempt to protest. Not only did the freeze stop Riley saying anything in his defence (Not that anyone would have paid attention to him anyway), but it had the added rather humorous bonus of leaving the young psychology teaching assistant looking very like the fish that merited his nickname, given the fact that his mouth was wide open.

"Thanks," Buffy said, nodding in approval at the witch before turning to look at the others; now that Riley was out of their hair, they just had to decide what to do with him and then they could get back to the more important business of storming the Initiative. "Any ideas where we should stick him before he wakes up?"

"Maybe we could put him in the closet instead of Spike?" Willow suggested casually. "After all, we might as well start giving that guy a chance if he's going to be helping us out at the moment, right? Besides, when you get down to it, we can't exactly let Riley go back to the military guys now, and if we keep him around, once the freeze wears off, he might be able to give us more information than we've been able to get from Spike so far, huh?"

Phoebe shrugged nonchalantly. "Works for me," she said, as she turned to look at the closet in question and then glanced back at Riley. "I mean, hey; this guy stuck my boyfriend in a prison cell just for being a bit different from everyone else. I think that entitles me to want him to be a bit uncomfortable, right?"

"Ah well," Buffy sighed, as she and Doyle grabbed Riley's immobile form, lifted him up, and headed for the cupboard, "I guess we might as well see if the other concerned party is interested in a trade, huh?"

Opening the cupboard, she glared critically at Spike, who blinked slightly as the light from the apartment struck his eyes.

"What?" he said, glaring at Buffy as she stuck Riley's immobilized form off to one side and glared at him. "Did something happen that I should know about, or do you just feel like calling me scum to my face this time?"

"Nope; something happened we felt ye should know," Doyle said, staring at the vampire harshly as he spoke. "We're prepared ta let you out, and maybe see about getting your chip out, if you help us deal with the Initiative thing."

Spike rolled his eyes sarcastically.

"Oh yeah, I'm really going to believe that," he said, groaning as he looked up at Doyle. "In case you'd forgotten, I can't hurt anybody with this sodding chip in my head! Do you really think I'm dumb enough to believe that you'll take the chip out on my word that I won't kill you all?"

Buffy shook her head.

"No, we're not; we're simply assuming that you'll be willing to provide back-up if we encounter something down there that isn't human," she explained, glaring critically at Spike. "We've got information that suggests these guys have some demons working in there in secret- why those guys are helping to dissect their own kind we're not entirely sure; we'll worry about the specifics of it later- but the net result is, we're going to need some extra muscle, and you meet the requirements. We don't think you won't try to kill us once you're normal, but we're not going to let anyone accuse us of breaking our word; just so long as you understand we'll try and kill you if you try and kill us, I'm sure everything will be fine."

She tilted her head to one side in an enquiring manner as she looked critically at the man once known as 'William the Bloody', bound in a closet as he glared back at her in annoyance.

"So, what'll it be?" she asked him casually.

Spike stared back at her for a moment, then groaned and nodded.

"All right, I'll help out," he said, sounding like he felt like having a good sulk at the moment, but prepared to put it aside for the moment if it meant his freedom from his enforced confinement. "Just don't expect me to be nice and let you off the hook for all this when I get the bloody chip out, OK?"

"We expected nothing less," Doyle said, nodding as he began to untie the bonds that surrounded Spike's arms and legs. As soon as the vampire was able to move, Doyle took his arm and hauled him out of the chair, while Buffy grabbed Riley's still-immobile body and hauled it out from behind the door.

"What the…?" Spike said, staring at the immobilised Iowan in surprise as he emerged from behind the door. "What the hell is he doing here?"

"He captured me and Cole, Spike," Angel put in, prompting a slight groan from Spike as he turned to look at his grandsire with an annoyed expression.

"What, and you just had to drag him along as well?" Spike asked, glaring sarcastically at the vampire, as well as a man in a dark blue shirt and black trousers who he assumed was this 'Cole' they had been discussing earlier. "Couldn't you have just left him back where he was?"

"Actually, he came here; we were perfectly content to leave him where he was and get back on our own terms," 'Cole' added, glaring slightly at Spike as the rest of the room looked critically at the vampire. "Anyway, enough of that; we've got a decent attack strategy worked out, but we want to go over it with you."

Spike nearly told them where they could stick it, but controlled his reaction, tried to shrug nonchalantly, and sat down on the sofa beside the others. After all, whatever they wanted him to do, at least he was out of the cupboard; he'd be prepared to take whatever came next as it came.

"So, what's the plan?" he asked, ignoring the slight looks of uncertainty and hatred the rest of the group were giving him, and just wishing that they didn't already most likely know about Angel's past; he might have found it easier to cope if he could ruin his grandsire's rep among these losers…

"So, is everyone clear on the plan?" Buffy said a couple of hours later, as the Scooby Gang/Fang Gang/Charmed Ones gathering sat around Giles' coffee table, studying the sketch Angel had made of the plans he'd seen for the Initiative on the floor plan that he, Cole and Doyle had used.

"Yep; sounds good to me," Piper said. Glancing over at Angel, the witch and the Slayer exchanged nods; as the respective 'leaders' of their three groups, Buffy, Piper and Angel had taken charge of the meeting and developing the fine print of the plan.

"Let's recap," Buffy said, as she studied the map. "The Charmed Ones come up with a spell to temporarily negate the Initiative's power supply, allowing us to enter without worrying about the defence systems…"

"Cole shimmers into the lower levels with Doyle, Spike and me, and we see what we can do about finding that thing I sensed…" Angel put in.

"Willow, Buffy, Paige, Phoebe and I enter via the 'front door' and cause as much damage as we can while trying to track down the Source…" Piper added.

"Xander, Anya, Cordelia, Leo and Giles get in afterwards, take up some of the Initiative's weapons, and generally try to take out anyone still standing," Buffy finished, as she looked over at the respective group. "Think you can manage your role in that, Leo?"

The former medic nodded. "Yeah, orbing isn't too draining, so long as I allow myself a few minutes' rest between orbs where I'm carrying a lot of people," he explained. "I'll probably have to keep on the move if we want everyone to get out of there in one piece, but I'll do what I can."

"Still say it'd be easier to just kill the bastards…" Spike grumbled.

"We've been over this, Spike; they're human," Phoebe put in, glaring over at the vampire. "They may not be pleasant people, but I think the destruction of their lives' work will be punishment enough; besides, Paige, Piper and I should be able to wipe their memories of everything easily enough if they don't get the message."

"Right," Buffy said, standing up and looking around the room at their makeshift army, "Now that that's sorted out, let's go; we've only got a few hours of darkness left, and we'd best make the most of it."