The second they were all outside, the door slammed shut behind them and the girl Xander had helped out ran off, leaving the Scoobies, the kids, and-

"When the hell did you get here?" Maya demanded from Spike as he pulled out and lit a cigarette.

"Came with her." He said, carelessly pointing at Anya.

"Good for you." Justin growled, rubbing his jaw where a book managed to clip him.

"We need to get back in there." Xander stated, looking at the door.

"Why?" Anya asked.

"Because Buffy and Riley are in there."

"So?" She asked again, her tone getting startled looks from everyone except Spike who didn't care. "She's the Slayer, he's a big solider boy. What do they need you for?"

"Anya, look around! There's ghosts and shaking, and people are going all Felicity with their hair... We're fresh out of super people, and somebody's gotta go back in there." He took a deep breath. "Now who's with me?"

Tara and Willow hesitated while the siblings shared a look. They wanted to help their friends, but they also knew not to go into an environment you knew to be hostile without preparation or information. Plus, they still had no clue what was actually behind this. They were also ignoring Xander's super people comment just because he was stressed and he was right in a way. They were out of supernatural super people.

"I will." Everyone stared at the last person they expected to volunteer as he crushed his cigarette under his boot. "I know I'm not the first for heroics," Spike said. "And Buffy's tried to kill me more than once. And, I don't fancy a single one of you at all." He looked in particular at Maya who looked like she could care less. "But…" He paused and frowned. "Actually, all of that sounds pretty convincing." Shaking his head, he walked away down the path. "I wonder if Danger Mouse is on."

Maya sighed. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Because he's a self-serving annoying dick." Justin replied.

The pair was ignored by Anya as she looked at her boyfriend. "Xander, let's get out of here."

He shook his head. "If you want to bail, fine." He pointed at the door. "I'm going in there and I'm not coming out without my friends."

Maya and Justin shared a look, crossing their arms as the black haired teen opened the door, peeked inside, and took a few steps over the threshold. "Three, two, one…" They counted down. When it hit zero, Xander was suddenly shoved backwards out the door and hit the path a few yards away hard, the door closing again in the process. After all the effort that whatever was in the house had put into getting them out, it was not going to just let them waltz right back in.

"Or… It could be Watcher time…" Xander said, sounding mildly pained from his short flight. It drew a concerned look from Anya.

"We'll go to Giles place." Willow agreed.

"No, no, wait, he's not there. He was going to the Expresso Pump." Tara reminded her.

"Right, he-he told us not to come. He, he needed some grownup time."

"What the hell can Giles need grownup time for?" Justin asked.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
No one knows what it's like

To be hated…"

The group stood on the Espresso Pump with various stunned expressions on their face. Anya and Willow were the worst, with open mouths. After that was Xander who had a stunned and vaguely terrified look, Maya and Justin who were fairly surprised while Tara was watching with interest. They weren't the only ones watching the Watcher as he played a guitar sitting on a stool. He had quite a few people listening in a semi-circle at the tables, occasionally sipping drinks but otherwise as riveted as they were.

"Wow…" The red head witch of the group said softly.

"Um, could we go back to the haunted house? Cause, this is creeping me out." Xander requested.

"Does he do this a lot?" Tara asked, not looking away.

"Sure. Every day the earth rotates backward and the skies turn orange."

"Oh, how I wish I had a camera and that YouTube existed right now." Maya said, getting an elbow in the side from Justin since the website wasn't created yet, but nobody noticed. (A/N: For those of you curious, YouTube was activated on February 14, 2005 and the first video was uploaded on April 23, 2005. Little history for you. -)) "What? You have to admit, he's fantastic. God, if only he was forty or fifty years younger…"

Justin was sadly able to skip over potentially scarring sentences like that fairly well. "Ignoring that, don't go around mentioning things like YouTube." He whispered back. "Also, he's old enough to be our grandfather."

"And Uncle's Dante, Jack, and Grandpa are old enough to be his ancestors but they're still alive."

The two siblings let the matter drop as Willow said "Now I remember why I had such a crush on him."

"Well, he is pretty good." Tara noted. After a few more seconds of listening, Anya spoke.

"His voice is pleasant." She said, not sounding much like she regretted confessing that.

"What!?" Xander said.

"Oh come on Xander, his singing is great for a man his age." Justin said. "If I didn't know better I'd swear he was a singer for his chosen profession in his prime."

"Plus it is kinda sexy." Willow added.

"I'm fighting total mental breakdown here Will." Xander stressed. "No more fuel on the fire please."

As they watched, Giles looked towards the back and spotted them. His expression froze in shock, while Maya nodded and gave him a thumbs up, Justin smirking as he did the same. The others all gave weak smiles but the Watcher just took it into stride and kept singing his song, looking back at the audience.

"Damn it, this would've been great blackmail material." Maya muttered. "A perfect opportunity is slipping by."

"We can always hold it over his head later." Justin replied.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

After Giles finished singing and the crowd dispersed, the others filled him in, silently agreeing to not speak of what they just saw. Well, the others agreed, Maya and Justin planned to rib him about it later. They all decided to head to the on campus library and look up the history of the house. Maya and Justin took a quick detour to head home and grab their weapons while Maya changed into something more combat appropriate like her normal attire. As for their weapons, they might not be effective against spirits, but it was a comfort thing to have them when fighting anything.

And so they were all seated around one of the long tables in the library, table lights on and piles of books scattered across it while Giles thought about what could be causing the events described.

"When you called to Buffy and Riley, they didn't cry out or, or respond in anyway?" He asked, sitting down on the Right side of Willow. On her left was Tara and Maya while across the table was Xander, Anya on his left and Justin on his right.

"No. But considering what the inside looked like it's possible they couldn't hear us." Maya replied.

"Or they were dead." Anya added in a bored tone.

"Or they were too busy doing it to answer." Xander grumbled, ignoring his girlfriend's idea.

Giles blinked. "Doing what?"

The teen, and everyone else, looked at Giles. You know, for a god of acoustic rock, you're...kinda naive." He said.

The Watcher rolled his eyes. "Well, I didn't think...In the midst of all that, do you really think they were keeping it up?" Maya's head hit the table and her shoulders were shaking as she tried not to burst out laughing while everyone else gave the older man a look. "Oh, for a different phrasing."

"Well, that's the thing." Willow said, looking up from her book. "People all over the party were starting to act weird...sexually." She spoke the last word quietly to the book in front of her.

"In what ways?" Giles asked.

"You know...ways." She said, nobody really looking at him.

"Oh for heaven's sake." Maya rolled her eyes. "There was a few things. I found a section of wall that not only made you feel sexual pleasure, but it also tried to suck my physical energy out through the contact."

"Plus there was a group of college kids playing Spin the Bottle of all things. Seems a little juvenile to be playing that at a college party." Justin added. "And that's just what we noticed."

The Watcher frowned and took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Well, it could be some form of, uh, succubi, or a satyr's prank. It could even be energy coming from the lab underneath the Lowell fraternity."

"No." Maya shook her head. "I don't know what it is, but we," She pointed between herself and Justin. "Didn't feel any energy coming from below. It was in the walls themselves and mostly concentrated around Buffy and Riley's room. If anything is connected to this, it has to be the building itself."

"And I think you might be right." Willow spoke up. "Look, it didn't always used to be a fraternity." Everyone leaned in as she started to read from what looked like a newspaper clipping with a picture of the building beside it. "Between 1949 and 1960, the Lowell Home for Children housed upwards of forty adolescents; runaways, juvenile delinquents, and emotionally disturbed teenagers from the Sunnydale area."

"Children?" Tara asked nervously. "Did any of them, uh, die in there?"

"If there were deaths, then, uh, perhaps we're dealing with a fairly standard haunting." Giles suggested, putting his glasses back on.

"Maybe. Though a home for teens would make sense on why Spin the bottle and the sexual pleasure were there. The psychic energy would've been imbued into everything, down to the foundations." Justin said thoughtfully.

"But that doesn't explain why it was sucking energy out of people at the party and then driving them away. If it's using people as a power source, wouldn't you want to keep as many as possible instead of getting rid of them?" Maya pointed out. "And what started this in the first place?"

"Maybe Buffy and Riley? A kick start to the engine? But that doesn't make sense, why would ghosts want to keep them above all others?" Justin shook his head. "Wait, we're getting ahead of ourselves. We don't even know if they are ghosts. Did anybody die in there?" He asked Willow.

She shook her head, scanning the article again. "It doesn't say. It's mostly about the old house director, Genevieve Holt. 'Sunnydale Children's Aid. 30 years of community service. Giving disadvantaged kids the love and care they deserve'." The redhead quoted.

The kids looked at each other. "Willow, does the paper say when she died?" Justin asked.

She looked up. "According to this...she didn't."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

After twenty minutes of looking online, they found the address of the old woman and saw that she was still living in Sunnydale and retired now. Giles, Justin, and Maya decided to go talk with her while the others did some more research through the library for anything more on the house or looked for ways to dispel the spirits in case that's what they were.

The woman thankfully was up when they knocked on her door and graciously let them in when they mentioned they were interested in talking to her about the Lowell Home for Children. It helped that Maya and Justin pretended to be students doing a paper on the town local history and had picked that as their subject, Giles being a family friend that was helping them.

"We really appreciate you talking to us, miss Holt." Maya said gratefully as the tiny old woman led them into the living room. She looked like she'd just gotten up, wearing a warm robe and slippers. With her glasses and white curly hair, she painted the perfect picture of a kindly old grandmother.

"No, no, I don't mind at all. I was up. Early morning prayer." The woman said kindly, shooing them towards the couch while she took a seat in an arm chair.

"Of course." Justin said, noticing there was Christian memorabilia everywhere, including Jesus on the cross above the fireplace.

"And I like talking about my kids. I still call them that you know, my kids." She added.

"I, I suppose you were like a mother to them." Giles stated, sitting closest to her with Justin in the middle and Maya furthest away.

She nodded with a soft smile. "Oh yes. I fed them, clothed them, educated them in the way of the lord. I was given a medal." She added, swelling with pride.

"Yes, wonderful. Uh, congratulations." Giles said with a smile before moving on. "Um, this'll sound a little strange, but, ah, did you notice any odd... disturbances in the house?" He asked.

She blinked. "I don't understand."

"We-well, um, like uh, furniture moving of its own accord, or, uh, objects appearing out of nowhere, or, or perhaps you saw someone appear one moment, and then they were gone the next, I-inexplicably." Giles stuttered as he talked, trying not to sound like he had just escaped from a mental asylum.

"Why, that sounds like crazy talk."

"You'll have to excuse him ma'am." Justin said reasonably, patting Giles on the shoulder. "Mister Giles here has always been interested in the more unusual aspects of the town. It's a little hobby of his." He cleared his throat. "Um, so you handled thirty children when the home was in your care? Were any of them ever ill, or did anything ever happen to any of them?" He asked, Maya and him pulling off the 'eager to learn' look fairly well.

"Well, some had the flu and such. No one died, if that's what you mean." She said. "The engraving on the medal says how good I was with the children."

"It sounds like you were wonderful to them." Maya noted.

The woman smiled and nodded. "I treated them as I would my own flesh and blood. Gave them hugs and praise when they were good, and," Suddenly her expression turned stern and severe. "... punished them when they were dirty."

Maya and Justin felt a chill shoot down their spine while Giles nodded understandingly. "Well, ah, children will be children. They, you know, they do like to play in the, uh, the muck."

Ms. Holt didn't shift her expression as she stared at the Watcher.

"You didn't mean dirty in the physical sense, did you?" Maya asked, both siblings already knowing the answer.

"My kids didn't think I knew, but I did." She said, looking over her glasses.

"Very, uh, perceptive of you." Giles said, looking and sounding like he was starting to understand.

"Without me they would have been shut out of the kingdom." She leaned in, not looking very kindly despite nothing having changed. "Lost to lust."

"But you...helped them." Giles stated slowly.

The woman was now clearly lost in memories as she looked off to the side, scowling slightly as she spoke. "The girls felt the vanity more than the boys. I'd see them preening like Jezebel. Doting over their pretty hair."

Maya flashed back. That girl Xander helped out of the house, her head almost bald with only patches of hair… "So you hacked it off."

"I'd remove the temptation to admire themselves." She confirmed, making Giles take off his glasses. "They were better for it."

Justin frowned faintly. That ghost that scared Willow upstairs, dripping wet... "What about the bathroom? Did something happen there?"

She thought for a second. "I performed baptisms on the most unclean. Those who were tainted with impure thought and deed."

"You...held them under the water." Maya said slowly. Her and Justin felt anger slowly building in their chests.

Holt must've noticed the disapproval on their faces. "They needed to be reborn." She stood up, looking between the trio with a glare. "You choose to pass judgment on me?"

"Oh yes." Justin growled, standing up. "You said you treated those children like you would you own flesh and blood. You would hack off their hair for admiring themselves, taking pride in how they look? Nearly drown them because their thoughts and actions were, in your eyes, impure?" He demanded.

"You didn't nurture those children." Maya said as she stood, hair moving slightly despite there being no noticeable breeze. Her eyes were chips of ice and her voice was hard as steel. "You traumatized and abused them! Already fragile and unstable teens who no doubt grew up to be incredibly disturbed adults!"

The woman didn't look scolded, but instead angry. "I refuse to stand and listen to this when I can smell the sin on each and every one of you." She pointed at them each in turn.

Giles shot up, but whatever he was going to say would remain unknown as Maya's eyes turned blue. "Then don't." She snarled, snapping her hand out. The chair Holt had gotten out of suddenly shot forward, knocking the woman back into it before jerking backwards to rest a few feet from its previous position. "Instead, sit and listen, and we suggest you listen well Miss Holt."

The woman suddenly looked afraid as she saw that Maya's eyes had changed and Justin's were turning violet. "What are you?" She whispered, fingertips white as she gripped the armrests.

"What are we?" Justin repeated. "We are flesh, and we are blood. We are children, but we have wisdom. We bend the world to our will, and we pass judgement on you." As he talked, shadows creeped out of his sleeves and touched the ground, moving like a serpentine river while Maya was surrounded by a halo of white air that was reaching towards the elderly woman. "You claim to act in accordance with the will and name of God. You claim you understand his words and act as he meant you too."

"Instead, you have twisted his meaning and worn them like a shield against your sins." Maya growled. "We have parents of our own, and they are not religious in the slightest. However, we know love. We know compassion, and care, and hope, and we see none of what you claim to have in your actions."

Giles looked as shocked as miss Holt, though the woman was also looking at them in horror. "Demons! Leave my house lest you be struck down!"

"Demons?" Justin chuckled. "We are not demons. We fight and kill them and they fear us because of that. And we aren't angels, who are likely purer than we are. No," their eyes started to glow slightly as the shadows and air closed in on the trembling woman. "We are mortal. And unlike you, we don't need justification to do what we do to anybody besides ourselves, our friends, and our family. You, on the other hand, are pitiful."

"Alone, old, thinking you've done great good building people up when all you did was tear them down." Maya continued. "You have ruined lives and for that, you will suffer."

The air and shadows stopped inches from the now shaking and gasping woman before reversing their path, the shadows flowing back into Justin's sleeves while the air disappeared.

"But not today. Not by our hands when time will kill you and bring you your judgement soon enough." The girl said. "But if there is any justice in this world, I think instead of the pearly gates you will find yourself in Hell for the crimes you've done." She and Justin smiled simply at her. "And when you do…"

"Tell Satan the Song family says hello." Her brother finished. Their eyes turned back to normal and they frowned before looking at Giles. "Let's go. We're done here."

The pair left the room and, after a second, the Watcher seemed to realize he was being left behind and hurried after them, Holt not moving an inch from the chair she still sat in.

"Was that necessary?" Giles asked when they were outside again, closing the door behind them.

"The show and dance about divine wrath?" Maya asked, putting her hands in her pockets. "No, not really. But she really did piss us off with her holier than thou attitude after what she did to those kids."

"She'll spend the rest of her life in fear at what she's done." Justin said, sighing as he did. "And before you say we could've killed her, you think for a second of how many kids went through that house in 21 years, and how many people were in it tonight when these events happened. How many people have been hurt as a result of her actions? She's going to answer for all of it sooner or later. It just could've been sooner."

The Watcher looked at them both. "I still don't approve." He finally said.

"And we're not asking you to. We're asking you understand why she deserved that." Justin replied. "Now, let's move on. She said none of the kids died in that house, so there aren't any ghosts. But there's still some very powerful, emotional psychic energy imbued in it."

Giles sighed. "We're likely looking at a poltergeist than, a whole cluster of them, in fact, born out of intense adolescent emotion and sexual energy."

"Both of which were completely repressed and pent up by Holt during her time." Maya agreed before thinking. "So… the poltergeists are dormant until Buffy and Riley start having those acts of round the clock nakedness. It set the entire cluster free, like some big burstin' poltergasm."

"Cute, Maya." Justin said flatly. "But yes, likely. And they probably weren't set free earlier because there was never a Slayer in the house doing it, or that huge amount of demonic energies underneath the house. That combo made it possible for the spirits to become active."

"And now the poltergeists are drawing more and more energy out of them. Feeding on them in fact. Buffy and Riley are, are powering this whole thing." Giles added.

"Like batteries in a factory." Justin said. "I have a feeling I know what happens when the batteries run dry. Please tell me I'm wrong."

"I'm afraid not." The man said. "When they run out of energy, Buffy and Riley will both die."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

They went back to the campus in silence, nobody saying a word the entire way. When they got back and filled everyone in on their findings, they quickly developed a plan.

The poltergeists were Buffy and her boyfriend as a battery, so if they snapped the two out of it, the spirits would lose their power. However, because of that they were keeping everyone and anyone out to prevent that course of action. To draw them out, their magic practitioners, Willow, Tara, and Giles, would perform a ritual to draw the spirits away from the house to them in Willow's dorm room. While they kept them distracted, Xander, Anya, and Maya would go into the house to get their friends out. The problem was the ritual wasn't meant to bind so many, so they didn't have a guaranteed amount of time.

"What good are weapons against disembodied spirits, Xander? They have no ass to kick." Anya said as he dug through the weapons chest Buffy kept. Giles, Willow, and Tara were setting up some candles on a table covered with a red table cloth. The siblings were standing off to the side of the room watching and waiting.

"No, but they might have set up obstacles that we'll need to get by. Weapons are good just in case." Maya said, spinning her collapsed staff in one hand.

"Regardless, I agree with Anya. You should stay out of the house until we've drawn the poltergeists away." Giles interjected.

"Noted."

"How much time can you buy us?" Xander asked, pulling out a machete and handing Anya a small axe.

"Could be tricky." Tara explained. "We're calling upon the communal spirit of a certain time and place."

"Basically, get in and out as fast as you can." Justin advised, standing off to the side. He was staying with the magic users while they did their thing.

Maya nodded before leaning in. "If it looks like they're about to break free of the spell…" She whispered.

"I'll try, but we've never had to keep that many under control." He replied softly. "Just hurry."

She nodded as Xander headed towards the door. "Let's go." He said.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

The infiltration group arrived at the house and got comfortable waiting, Xander and Maya leaning against opposite side of the archway while Anya pressed her ear against the door, apparently listening.

"So, what do you feel?" Xander asked after a few minutes of waiting.

"Sad, afraid of being without you, and a little hungry." The blonde replied.

Maya smiled. That was actually pretty sweet for the ex-demon considering they'd had some kind of lover's spat and been cool towards each other most of the night. And she was right, Maya could feel the spirits still lurking in the house. It was like a tingle under her skull that she got due to her Avatar Spirit.

"I meant about the house." Xander clarified.

"Oh. Still haunted."

All of them fell silent, tense and waiting for the spell to take hold.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

The inside of the room was darker now, only lit by the candle and the dim overhead light. Tara was seat with Willow on her left and Giles on her right as she held out her hands. "Give me your hands. Form a circle." They took them while Justin watched closely from the side between the beds, his darker skin and eyes making him look intimidating in the low light. The people seated at the table closed their eyes.

"Children of the past, spirits of Lowell, be guided by our light. Come forth and be known to us." Tara chanted softly.

Justin tensed as he felt the spirits arrive before he saw them. All of them were children, ghostly pale and dressed in the older fashioned clothes, blank faces and dead eyes, standing in a circle around the table. He clenched his hands, holding one of his daggers for comfort.

"H-how will we know if the spell works?" Giles asked before they all opened their eyes and saw the specters they now had.

"We'll know." Tara answered, looking around.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

The trio suddenly stood straight as the door suddenly clicked and slowly swung open. Maya felt the tingle was gone now.

"Spell worked. House is empty." She said. Xander and Anya shared a nervous glance and looked at the door. She sighed. "Want me to go first?" They both nodded. "Wimps." She muttered under her breath as she went in and almost instantly stopped, staring at the staircase.

The walls and stairs were covered in long ropey vines, snaking their way through the wood posts in the hand rails. It almost looked like a rainforest was making its way down from upstairs.

"Whoa." Maya whispered. "They're not just using the energy to sustain themselves, they're making the wood in the house grow in accordance with their will. There's either more power than we thought here or they're incredibly efficient." She shook her head. Now wasn't the time to get sucked into the science and mystics, they had stuff to do. "Come on, we need to move."

"Yeah, who knows how long until the munchkins get homesick." Xander looked at the bladed weapons he and Anya were holding and Maya's collapsed staff. "I don't know how much that's going to do against those vines."

She lifted an eyebrow. "Yeah, good point." She put it in her pocket. "Thankfully, we're really adaptable when it comes to stuff like that." Focusing, the half Sekirei made a long thin blade of air with a plain hilt before grabbing it, approaching the staircase, and swinging. The sharpened condensed air sliced through the first few vines with childish ease. She turned around and smirked at the looks on the other two's faces. "Well? Don't let me do all the work, come help."

They blinked and hurried to do that, hacking their way up the stairs.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"We implore you. Be still." Tara said, but none of the kids even showed signs of hearing her.

"Find it in your hearts to leave our friends passage." Giles continued slowly.

"Transform your pain. Release your past. And... uh…" Willow stumbled with what else to say. "Get over it."

As the Watcher shot the redhead a nervous look, Justin got more tense and was slowly twirling a marble sized ball of darkness around his fingers. 'Damn it you guys. Hurry up already.' There was no way their luck was going to last forever.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"Watch your heads." Maya said as one overhead vine almost got tangled in her hair. Thankfully these things didn't seem to alert the poltergeists that their home base was occupied. Glancing back, it looked like they two were doing ok. In fact, Anya was hacking at a vine that wasn't even in the way with an angry expression, so she was probably working out some aggression. Wisely deciding not to voice that, they got to the second floor and the door to Riley's bedroom without incident, but once there she hesitated for a second. This felt too easy, but at the same time they needed to pull the plug and she could hopefully handle whatever trap this set off. So, steeling herself, she tried to turn the door knob. The second her skin touched it, a howling wind blew outwards from the door, intermingled with a screeching sound.

"Shit!" She growled as she started punching the door in an attempt to break the wood, but it didn't even crack under her enhanced strength.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

At the same time Maya touched the door, the wind and sounds sprung up in the dorm room, making everyone's hair dance, even the spirits as they all looked at the ceiling.

"Fuck!" Justin swore loudly, knowing something had gone wrong at the dorm and now the kids were going to leave. His eyes glowed brightly. "You're not going anywhere you little bastards!" His voice suddenly sounded like multiple people were talking all at once, male and female joining together until it was a voice of power, age, and wisdom.

He swung his hands forward and shadow threads blasted from his sleeves, zipping, twisting, and tangling around the insubstantial bodies before he clenched his fists. The core of the threads started glowing with a deep purple light slightly brighter than the surrounding black and the ghosts all looked at him, faces no longer blank but contorted with rage. It looked like some demented spider web that held back the dead with the living in the center untouched.

"Justin, what are you doing!?" Willow yelled over the wind.

"I'm trying to prevent them from leaving!" He growled.

Spirit Bending. In the universe the Avatar Spirit had resided, the Avatar was more than just a human who could bend the four elements. They were also a bridge between the material and spiritual realms, and that sometimes included battling malevolent spirits that meant harm. What their father and uncle had done in the future was teach them to do this rare and difficult form of bending, but it wasn't meant to handle multiple things at once.

As a result, while Justin was keeping the spirits from escaping, it was also like trying to prevent a pack of rabid dogs from biting him while he held on to all their leashes at once. It was physically and mentally draining and he was going to lose. It was just a matter of time.

That time ran out in less than a minute and resulted in Justin suddenly getting hit in the chest with some kind of telekinetic force at just the right angle his feet left the ground and he crashed through one of the windows, losing the handle on his shadows as he did. The spirits and the wind stopped as the threads dissolved, releasing them and allowing they vanished.

"Justin!" The others ran towards the window, only for something to thud behind them. They turned and saw the teen in question face down on the ground and getting up, a few scratches on his face and glass pieces stuck to his hoodie while the glow died from his eyes. A door of darkness was floating above his head. "How did you…?" Willow started to ask, looking between him and the window.

"Made a portal before I hit the ground, made the other side facing so I shot up and when I started to fall again I made one in here." He explained. He had actually gotten the idea from playing Portal when he was a kid, but it had taken him years to make the concept a reality. On one hand, it was highly useful to prevent him for being injured due to falling at terminal or sufficient enough velocity. On the other, it was a bitch orienting himself when he went in a portal one way and came out going a different way. But more importantly, the spirits were loose and going back to their home.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Maya growled in anger. She had wrapped her hands in hyper condensed air and put considerable amounts of strength behind her blows but nothing we working. No cracks, no scratches, she couldn't even chip the damn paint. She also couldn't shut up that annoying screaming! Xander and Anya were wisely staying away with their ears covered as the girl's anger and strength grew to avoid becoming targets themselves

"OPEN, YOU FU-!" Before she could finish her swear, the howling stopped, followed by three vines wrapping with snake like movements and speed around her throat. They yanked with enough force that a normal person would have a broken neck, but her naturally tougher body resisted that, instead giving her a minor case of whiplash and choking her as she hit the ground. Her hands instantly shot and grabbed the restraints as they quickly dragged her across the ground, trying to get under them to pull off.

"Maya!" Anya and Xander ran after her, but the other vines slowed them down as she was thrown into the bathroom and the door slammed shut behind her. The blonde tried to open the door, but was shoved backwards into her boyfriend by an invisible force so strongly they both broke the balcony railing and fell, landing half on and off the couch one story below.

Maya, in the meantime, hit the wall and her head, stunning her as she fell into the bathtub. The sudden cold feeling made her realize there was roughly a foot and a half of water in it, soaking her clothes and leaching out her body heat. She started to get out only for something to slam into her chest, pushing her upper body and head under the water. Pure, instinctive and reflexive panic made her mind go blank as she thrashed about, trying to pull herself out of the tub while ghostly children started down with dead eyes from over the rim.

Downstairs, Xander and Anya were stirring from their express speed and painful trip downstairs. The former looked at the latter, but looked fine, if a little dazed and pained. He could relate since his side hurt something fierce and his shoulder felt numb from landing in it, which he very much doubted would last. He also noted neither had their weapons any longer, having dropped them upstairs when they were pushed.

"Are you OK?" He asked as they started to get up slowly.

"I'll be happier when that screaming stops." She snapped back. He didn't really blame her. That noise on top of their fall was pissing him off too. At least it was making the pain easier to ignore.

"We need to get back upstairs." Helping her up, the pair went back to the stairs and started back up it, their previous path still cut and helping with their progress.

"Shut up!" Anya yelled as a louder scream filled the air. "Repressed crybaby's!"

That comment cost her. As she put her hand on the railing, a thorn the size of a stake pierced her hand in center. The blonde cried out and yanked her limb back, the wooden addition still in it. Xander was about to take her hand, not sure what he'd say or do, before she pulled it out with a grimace and "ow", somehow looking angrier than before. She held it curled against her chest but kept walking, leaving her boyfriend no choice but to follow.

They got to the bathroom just as the sound of something shattering and ceramic against various materials, along with an impressive amount of swearing as they opened the door. Maya was getting up from what USED to be the bathtub. Only the base was left, with assorted sizes of ceramic scattered across the floor, some embedded in the walls, and, from the cracks in the glass, a few hitting the mirrors. The was also a fair amount of water on the floor while the girl herself was dripping wet, hair clinging to her face while her eyes glowed brightly and filled with the promise of bloody murder.

"THAT IS IT! I am so fed up with this bullshit, two cent knock off of a haunted house!" She ranted as she squeezed as much water as she could from her shirt. "All I wanted was to enjoy a goddamn party and blow off some steam! Instead I wasted my night dealing with some fucking sexually repressed spiritual bastards who tried to kill me in a foot of water after giving me whiplash and dragging me down a hall! THIS IS NOT THE SHIT I SIGNED UP FOR TONIGHT!" Her glowing eyes finally noticed she had an audience. "What!?"

"Nothing." Xander said. He had seen pissed off females before, most recently his girlfriend, but clearly Maya had reached the end of her patience and would happily cause pain to the next person that drew her ire. "Um, door is that way." He said, helpfully pointing in the direction of Riley's room. It was a good thing they had a target for her leftover emotion.

"Which opening will make the ghosts go away, likely making them very angry." Anya added.

"We are getting Buffy and Riley back, then I am going home for a shower and going to bed. I am officially finished with this house." It was a statement that brokered no argument. Not that anyone would since the girl's eyes and still dripping state made her very imposing. "Stay behind me." She told them, leaving the bathroom and looking down the hall. She took a breath, let it out in a sigh, and walked forwards while moving her arms in smooth serpentine motions, Xander and Anya a few steps behind her. The latter actually noticed that the moves Maya was doing looked familiar somehow. Almost like some kind of mix between Tai chi and martial arts that she'd witness when she was a vengeance demon. These observations were subsequently forgotten as tendrils of glowing white air started forming around her and made their way down the hall.

"Uh, Maya? What are you doing?" Xander asked, splitting his attention between the new skill she was showing and the vines that were trying to grab them, but couldn't seem to pass an invisible barrier. Reaching out, he felt a hard surface, like the air had turned solid. He stopped before wanting to hit himself, since that was likely exactly what had happened.

"Spirit… Bending." She grunted, taking deliberate steps. The tendrils of glowing air were spreading across the door and seemingly striping away flecks of something black from inside the wood. "Very… Difficult... Temperamental. Peeling…Barrier… With… Great… Effort. Need… Focus… Shut… Up."

Anya blinked. She had no idea Maya could even do what she was doing. Generally messing with spirits required magic, either in the form of a spell, ritual, item, or being one yourself and high up the food chain. It seemed the girl leading them through the vines that were trying to grab them was option E, none of the above. Then again, she and the rest of her family were from a different universe entirely, so who knew what they were capable of when pushed?

The girl in question was getting a headache from splitting her attention. Keep the shield up so these stupid vines didn't do anything to them, moving slowly forward towards the door, all while going through the Spirit Bending motions as she pulled away the metaphysical barrier that the poltergeists were using to keep the door closed. She couldn't really explain how she was doing it, she was just following her instincts and whatever bits of knowledge that were leaking from her own Avatar Spirit, plus the training her father and uncle had given her. Regardless, she could feel the "wall" was crumbling quicker than the haunted house kids could repair it, larger and larger chunks of black energy being ripped out of the door and dissolving as she got a better "grip" on it. As she did, she noticed the vines were moving sluggishly, and even starting to receded into the walls.

'Ah, I get it now.'

This wasn't just a barrier, what she was ripping away was the connection to the two humans inside, pulling the plug in the most literal sense. Maya grinned viciously as she redoubled her efforts, tearing into the structure that was in the verge of collapsing as the vines were vanishing at an incredible pace. Now it just need one last push...

The second she was within range, she released her power, the glow from her eyes and the air fading, as she drew back her leg and kicked the door in. Unlike before, the wood splintered and exploded inwards. The vines also disappeared entirely, leaving the building looking, while still trashed, now entirely normal. And inside the room, with nothing but a sheet covering the important bits, was Buffy and Riley, both looking a little surprised at the violent entrance.

"Guys! Don't you knock?!" The Slayer asked, sitting up and holding the sheet to his chest. She frowned. "Maya, why are you wet?"

The trio stared at the two before Maya turned to Xander and Anya, pointing inside the room. "You two, and everyone else, can fill them in." She said flatly. "I, in the meantime, am going home. If anybody disturbs me before ten AM, that person will experience my sleep deprived and fed up wrath. Good night." Without another word, she walked around them, down the stairs, and straight out the door. Xander and Anya looked at each other, then the two in bed who looked completely lost, and followed after Maya. She had the right idea. They were not handling this tonight.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

The next day the siblings got up feeling their injuries. Justin got off lightly, a few cuts that just needed cleaning but nothing else, a bruise the size of his pinky tip where the book had nailed him on the jaw and a few larger ones on his back from going through the window that were still barely worth mentioning. However, he did have a killer migraine from keeping those ghost children restrained alone as long as he did.

Maya, though sporting a slightly less painful migraine since she hadn't had as much strain put on her, was worse physically. She had a circle of off colored skin around her throat and her neck was killing her from the vines, plus her throat was hoarse. A smattering of bruises that were scattered across her body that had almost fully healed completed her misery.

Overall, the pair was exhausted and anybody that came knocking would be walking away scared out of their wits since they just wanted some quiet time to recover.

Maya sipped her cup of coffee and sighed in content as the warmth soothed her throat. "You make some excellent coffee." She complimented Justin as she swung gently in an air hammock near one of the windows, sunlight warming her nicely.

"You can thank Ianto for teaching me the tricks he picked up." he sighed, laying on the couch with his eyes closed, his own cup sitting on the table next to him. "They haven't called." Justin noted after a few seconds, meaning the Scoobies in general. "Apparently your threats of pain worked."

"Like you didn't plan to do something if they disturbed us."

"No, I did. I was thinking that portal trick to make something fall at terminal velocity until I got bored of the screaming." He replied simply.

She chuckled. "We had so much fun when you learned to do that. Building stuff up to full speed and launching it to see how far it went."

"Yeah, up until Dad caught us and Uncle Dante with the bowling ball after it almost hit him."

She grimaced. "Yeahhhhh, we probably should've looked where we were aiming even if it was inside a pocket dimension." The airborne ball had nearly hit their future father in the head when he was flying and they were having their fun. The only good thing was they managed to pin most of it on Dante and so avoided the worst of his justified anger. Though they had all been grounded for a month. Their uncle had gone slightly more crazy than normal without anything to tinker or amuse himself with.

"I didn't even know you could do half the stuff Uncle Dante did with cornstarch, olive oil and a paperclip."

"It's really best not to think about the crazy that comes from his head when he's bored."

"Fair enough."

They lapsed into silence again, relaxing and ignoring their throbbing bodies until they heard a few familiar sounds across the hall, and Maya sensed the air reacting in a similarly familiar way.

"Huh, they're back already. And only three days after they left." She noted as they got up to greet their parents again.

"That's a good thing. Who knows what would pop up in the meantime, plus the amount we'd need to catch them up on." Justin yawned.

They went across the hall and, as courtesy dictated, knocked on the door. "You can come in kids." Tobias called, sounding tired. The two raised an eyebrow, unlocked the door and went in.

The trio did not look to be in the best of health. Tobias was sitting in the arm chair holding his face in his right hand, a white medical bandage wrapped around his arm that extended from his wrist to the middle of his forearm that looked fresh. Kazehana and Yahan were leaning against each other on the couch like they wanted to fall asleep, though the latter now had much shorter hair, stopping around her shoulders for some reason. They also all looked like they'd tanned recently.

"So… How did it go?" Justin asked.

"How long have we been gone?" Kazehana asked, looking with tired eyes at them both.

"Four days, give or take." Maya responded. "How long for you?"

"A week." Tobias sighed, leaning back. "It took seventeen bribes, six death threats, twenty favors, and talking with Jack and River but we FINALLY tracked down Dante in the 34th century on Zuarus."

"Isn't that the planet with a lot of active volcanos?"

"Volcanooooo…" The trio hissed, looking angry as they did.

Justin and Maya blinked. "Huh. So this is when that tick started." The former said. They had found anytime anybody said the word volcano around their parents, they'd hiss the word, glaring at Dante if he was in the room at the time while he stood there looking embarrassed. "What exactly happened?"

"All we can say is it involved running, laser fire, near baths/showers with magma, nearly being killed by boulders in a cave in, and another damn corporation playing fast and loose with their experiments." Yahan growled, fingering her hair. "And a lot of screaming at Dante afterwards. He's the reason my hair caught on fire and needed to be cut."

"Don't suppose he was answering his phone and this all could've been avoided?" Maya asked. Tobias lifted his head enough to give her a glare. "I'll take that as a no." She surmised, holding up her hands in surrender. "What about that?" She nodded at his arm.

"Laser burn. The beam grazed me." He said, looking at the bandage. "According to Dante it should be healed in a few weeks with my recovery speed but until then the nerves are entirely fried. Can't feel anything in a three-inch patch of skin." He looked at them again and frowned in concern at the mark on Maya's neck. "What happened to you two?"

Knowing his lack of reaction was really only because he was exhausted, the kids didn't take offense at the casual question. "While you were gone, Buffy and Riley had enough sex to cause poltergeists to take over that fraternity over the initiative case while sucking the sexual energy from the two like a battery. When we tried to free them, I got dragged down the hall by some vines before the ghosts tried to drown me in a bathtub. Justin tried to keep them away and got blown out of Willow and Buffy's dorm room window back first." Maya summed up.

Their parents looked back at them. "Sex powered ghosts?" Yahan finally asked.

"Yeahhhhh, we had a little trouble with that too." Justin nodded. "We were also grateful it wasn't you three or we would've never beaten them."

"And here I thought most unbelievable thing this week would've been when Dante made that volcano with the base in it implode." Kazehana sighed. "With us still in it of course."

"Speaking of unbelievable news," Justin said, the kids sitting down on chairs of their elements as their expressions turned serious. "What did he say?"

Tobias's eyes sharpened considerably as he took a breath. "After we had a day to lick our wounds and recover, he went through a lot of tests when we caught him up to speed. Spiritual and energy emissions and comparisons, power levels, control, memory's in storage, so on and so on." He rolled his hand to get the point across.

"And he confirmed it." Kazehana considered right hand, turning it this way and that like she was looking for something. "Apparently me and Yahan have fragments of an Avatar Spirit growing in both of us."

The kids weren't surprised. They had known ahead of time their mothers had gotten them at some point. "How far along are they?" Maya asked.

"From comparing theirs to mine, he thinks they're roughly seven percent matured." Tobias answered.

Justin frowned. "That's…slow. You'd think they'd be bigger than that by now. How many days did Dante run these tests?"

"Three days. He said the percentage of growth seemed to vary. Sometimes it's fairly low, other times it spiked when he," Yahan lazily lifted a finger to point at Tobias. "went full Avatar state. The theory is that it's growing slowly so our bodies can accumulate to the new power." As she said that, the trio got an uneasy look on their faces.

"What's wrong?" Justin asked. That look was bad. Several bad situations had followed that look, either aliens killing/invading/destroying/enslaving other planets and their inhabitants, or Uncle Dante had a new gadget to show them that backfired.

"Dante said based on the rate of growth, the girls could achieve a full Avatar Spirit and state in about three months, give or take, and that he didn't see any signs of them having memories to flood them with." Tobias replied.

"But…" Maya prompted.

He sighed. "We don't know. He asked us what the most recent event was after learning the time frame and when we did it was the augmentation spell, he got really quite. Muttered something about blonde Hell before he clammed up and refused to say anything about it."

"Blonde Hell?" Maya frowned. "That doesn't sound good."

"No, no it doesn't." Tobias shook his head.

"But since we can't guess what he meant without more information, we're not going to dwell on it." Kazehana finished. "The best we can do is keep moving forward and keep an eye out."

"And kill Adam." Yahan reminded them. "Unless he's already dead. Please tell me he's already dead with no loss to our side." She said hopefully and wide-eyed to the kids.

"Sadly our luck isn't that good." Maya grumbled. "We can rob a casino blind legally by beating them at their own games but we can't have a supervillain off themselves without making a mess first. So, what are we doing now?" She asked, meaning in regards to the Avatar Spirits.

"Dante said we could call him if anything goes wrong. He promised to actually answer the phone when it rings." Tobias snorted.

"Otherwise," Kazehana continued. "He recommended weekly training sessions. Make sure that we get use to the new power levels as they climb, and he suggested we might have an increase in control."

"Which you did." Justin said thoughtfully. "So we have Adam, figuring out what he's up to, killing him, some kind of blonde Hell, getting you two used to the Avatar Spirit as it grows inside both of you, and whatever crap comes up during that time."

Tobias and the girls sighed. "Yeah, that sums it up pretty nicely." They lapsed into heavy silence. It was times like this that life seemed to press down on them, determined to crush their wills to live under a mass of complicated situations and problems.

"So, while you were gone, we found out Giles likes to sing and play acoustic rock." Maya said causally.

And that's when they told life to take a hike.

"You're kidding." Tobias said, lifting his head with a skeptic look on his face.

Maya grinned evilly, the expression mirrored on her brother's face. "We kid you not. It was after we got thrown out of Lowell fraternity…"

And so the kids entertained their parents with the story, pressing away the overwhelming thoughts and issues to simply listen, share, and laugh as a family.

A/N: (slams head against desk) Thank fucking Kami! This was such a pain to write at the end with work and general lack of motivation getting in the way. I'm terribly sorry for the wait, but to make up for it, here's two chapters at once!

Please don't kill or maim me!

OK, getting serious now, this episode was more filler than anything so I decided to use it to develop the kids characters a bit more and show how they can handle situations on their own. I like to think that I did a good job, but reviews and constructive criticism is always appreciated. Any useless flames however will be packaged up and sent to Satan. From what I hear he's not fond of people constantly stealing his fire from Hell.

Anyways, slipped in some more foreshadowing for Glory in this chapter and next one will follow mostly canon, than take a turn for the worse. What evil plan do I have in my head? You'll have to wait and see.

Until then, review, follow, favorite, the whole nine yards.