Chapter 33
Underestimated
He headed down to Wyatt's room with his father to check that his brother was still asleep and thus safe from being attacked. Their father suggested they use a crystal barrier to keep the slime away but he shot the idea down. As long as Wyatt didn't use magic he'd be fine, if they made the energy barrier it would just make the baby a target. The other man saw the logic in that and the two-headed downstairs to find the sisters and Grams only to pause on the landing as a strange gurgling sound moved through the walls around them and down to the lower levels of the house. Chris looked at his father and he looked back just as worried. Downstairs they overheard the sisters and Grams arguing about two of the sisters moving out and he smirked a little. Maybe the woman who'd raised the two eldest could help them see sense.
"Shh," Leo said quietly as he walked first into the room and Chris followed close behind listening carefully, "Everyone quiet."
"I can hear it," he muttered as he walked over and placed his ear against the wall. It wasn't completely necessary, everyone could hear it shifting in the building around them, but he was trying to determine size not a location "I think it's in the wall."
It must have heard or sensed him because the wall cracked next to his head and he jumped back a few paces making Leo smirked, "Yep, it's in the wall."
"Okay, we're gonna need Paige," Chris said as he leaned against a table and folded his arms. After feeding off the summoning, Piper's power, and his own it was far too strong now for a normal vanquish, "It took the power of three to vanquish this thing when it got going in the future."
"What?" Piper cried and Phoebe also looked floored as well, "If you knew that, why didn't you tell me that in the first place?"
"Because I could barely get two of you together, let alone three," He snapped and both sisters looked away guiltily. "Besides, it hadn't fed off all the power it has now. I thought two could handle it in a weaker form."
"Leo, you take point," Grams said standing and walking over to his father, she looked less than impressed with him and the sisters were giggling. "Chris here is much too green to guide my girls."
"What?" Chris cried, was she actually trying to blame him for this mess when it was the sister who fought him on everything. Time and time again they ignored his advice to their own detriment and yet never seemed to learn but always blamed him. This was not his fault! "You know what? You can just stop that right..."
"Ah-ah! Quiet. It's time to give this floundering ship a rudder," Grams said and he snapped his mouth shut. He'd heard the stories about Grams, had even met her a few times in his younger years. He knew better than to try to argue with her when she was on a mission. All that would do was entrench her more in her opinions of him. They listened to Grams, he didn't need her against him as well. "Now, which boots did Paige put on?"
Piper smirked at him before looking away and he was reminded of how Wyatt used to do that when he'd get him in trouble for something. It sent a shiver down his spine to see the familiar expression on his mother's face, "Red go-go boots."
"We've got a problem," Grams said with a sigh and she looked less than pleased. "Those boots took Paige back to the summer of love, which was one of the most crucial times of my life."
Phoebe looked worried, "what do you mean crucial?"
"Your grandfather, Allen, rest his soul, was a sweet man, but he led me straight down the hippy-dippy trail," Grams explained as she started to pace and Chris had to fight back a smile.
"You were a flower child?" Phoebe cried and Piper chucked at the idea.
"Yeah, well, don't rub it in," Grams snapped, and if he wasn't mistaken there was a slight blush on her cheeks. Then he noticed the way Leo was looking at everything but them and narrowed his eyes, "What's important is that Allen was killed by my best friend. I didn't know it then, but she was evil. And I walked in right after it happened."
"What'd you do?" Piper asked quietly as she glanced over at Leo probably thinking about what she'd have done if a friend killed him.
Grams looked sad and then angry, "well, let's just say that my peacenik days ended fast, along with that bitch Robyn. If she hadn't killed Allen..."
"You'd still be a flower child," Leo said with a nod and the way they looked at each other made Chris suspicious.
"And the Charmed Ones would be dead," Grams finished with a nod of her head. "I know I'm a ball buster. But it kept me alive to protect my girls from all the demons that came after them as kids. I cast my return to owner spell on a lot of clothes that summer, so-"
"So we get to go back there?" Phoebe exclaimed and Piper perked up as well, "We get to meet our grandfather?"
Grams hesitated and looked unsure at the sister who'd never been able to keep a secret, "Don't make too much out of it because whatever you do, you can't change the past or tell anyone you're from the future."
"Well, why does he get to?" Phoebe asked with a pout as she gestured at him.
He tilted his head looking bored, "because I know what I'm doing"
"Not from where I'm standing," Grams snarked and everyone but him chuckled as he bit his tongue. He could probably run proverbial circles around her if given the chance. She was good, but she wasn't to the level he'd had to achieve just to survive. It wasn't his fault he'd misjudged a demon that wasn't in the book and that the sisters had gotten rid of when he was five . "I'll stay here with Leo and the newbie to contain the slime until you can bring Paige back to vanquish it, okay? Okay, go, get dressed. You are going to the summer of love."
0ooo0ooo0ooo0
"Of all the harebrained, insane, and suicidal things you could have done today this is the worst!" Michael yelled at the six of them as they sat around the stone table in Chris's workroom. It was his turn to grandstand this way and they were all getting tired of the speeches, having heard them from Pure and various family members since their return. His Aunt had sent word ahead of their exploits and they'd returned to contend with his friend's very angry parents. "What the hell were you thinking? Wait, never mind, I know! You weren't!"
"Wow, that's the fiftieth time someone's said that," Sean whispered to Brandon just loud enough that they could all hear and Chris couldn't help himself, he snorted and had to swallow thickly when Michael rounded on him. He also noticed Sean shrink slightly under his parent's glares.
"I thought you were smarter than this Halliwell," Michael said solemnly placing the blame solely where it should lie and Chris sighed heavily. It was no secret that he was the ringleader so to speak of his group, but that didn't mean he'd convinced them to do this without letting them make an informed decision. "You yourself said we can't afford to take risks!"
"I am smart Michael," he said, his tone careful, he needed to navigate this right. The world was flipped upside down and he very much doubted anyone present could stop them from doing what they wanted. But that didn't mean they couldn't make life excessively difficult if approval wasn't given, "It's why I knew we needed more groups out getting supplies and why I knew none of you would let us go do it."
"Of course not! You are fifteen Chris!" the whitelighter hissed and the rest of the adults all made similar statements at varying volumes. "You're a child! You're all children! You have no place in a warzone! We can't-"
"Nice sentiment," Brandon interrupted in his friend's defense. They'd planned this method of attack at the store while Chris had been briefly incapacitated and Prue had been busy moving supplies. The fact that the parents disapproved didn't change basic facts about the world they now lived in. "But we, and you, don't have the luxury of letting trained people sitting on the sidelines-"
"Brandon Davis-" His mother tried to reprimand him but he didn't let her finish.
"Because you happened to think we're too young!" Brandon stood leaning both hands on the table as he glared at the adults assembled. "We accomplished our goal and we beat some Hell Hounds doing it! I'd say we're pretty damn capable!"
"Not the Alpha," Michael scoffed, his hard eyes fixed on Chris'."You needed Wyatt to come and take care of that for you, which almost got you all caught. What would have happened to us then?! He'd have found us and we'd be dead or worse!"
"Only because we didn't have the right weapons," Chris snapped back and then checked his temper. As his mother used to say, if you want to be treated like an adult then act like one. Childishly tit for tatting with the head whitelighter wasn't going to get him anywhere. "A problem we ourselves fixed and I've learned from my mistakes, Michael. After today Wyatt's not going to get the chance to use our bond against me. I won't leave here again until that's true. Now we can stay here arguing or we can start bringing in those weapons before it rains."
"Yes, because bringing in weapons isn't going to incite a panic! We've just managed to convince the people out there that they're safe!" Chris stood, rather than continuing to argue with the belligerent adults, and walked out of the room.
The boys looked at each other and the adults before Brandon shrugged and followed his captain, against his father's wishes. With no other option, everyone else followed behind him into a back hallway with six doors off of it. The first four were the living quarters of the surviving Halliwell relatives but the two at the back were a mystery. At the back wall, Chris looked at Michael as he knocked three times on the wall and an archway appeared. Just beyond it, they could see a small clearing filled with weapons and equipment. Then he walked to the door on his right and placed his hand on it, a bluish symbol on what looked like a wooden door glowed then swung back. Inside was a long corridor full of basic stone weapons racks on the walls and flat surfaces to place things that wouldn't fit on the wall hangings.
"This," he said pointing to the door outside, "is one of many bolt holes I've put into the hideout's design. They can only be opened from the inside and you have to knock deliberately three times, in the right stop, for it to work. I'll map those out for everyone later."
"Smart idea," Prue muttered as she walked forward and then outside to look around. "I was worried there was only one door before now."
"Thank you, I had months with nothing to do but plan all this so if you've thought of it I probably have too. Now this one over here," he said walking back to the second door. "This is the armory and it's a secondary dimension sandwiched between the family quarters and the rest of the hall. You'll see that there's a door on the other end? That leads to the main hall and like this one only allows people who are coded into the wards to open it. Oh, and that door," he said pointing to the one on the other side of the hall from him. "Is a storeroom for the surplus of our other supplies. With the back door, we can get things in here without people knowing what and how much we have to avoid people complaining about how much they get. This is where we'll get our water too, there's a small spring two hundred yards that way."
The adults gathered were silent as they watched him, most with wide eyes. Michael looked into the armory and then back at him, "You really did think this through. The weapons I mean, this wasn't just some spur of the moment decision."
"Yes," Chris watched him through carefully blank eyes. It was time Michael, it was a time everyone, stopped thinking about him as a teenager without a thought in his head. "Michael I've known from the moment I found what he was doing that not fighting wouldn't be an option. There's only so long we can last of the supplies we get today and in the coming days even if we use magic to preserve them. At that point, we're either going to have to join Wyatt or take what we need from him. I, personally, have no interest in joining my genocidal maniac of a brother. You?"
"I think your brother's biggest mistake was making you hate him," Michael said after a pause, his voice quiet as he rubbed the back of his neck.
"I don't hate him, Michael, I wish I did," Chris said quietly as he looked away and then back. His eyes determined, "But I will fight him because he's wrong ."
"You don't hate him?" Sean asked, stunned, "That psychotic bastard murdered most of your family!"
"They're brothers," Brandon said softly with a shrug of his shoulders and Chris looked away. It was hard to describe the connection between them. Even Brandon, who'd been his friend most of his life couldn't fully understand his feelings toward his brother, "Hating what he's become and his choices, easy, but hating him, that's harder."
"That and I remember who Wyatt used to be before he fell," Chris said as he turned away to hide the wetness in his eyes and he walked through the doorway outside; ignoring Prue as she squeezed his shoulder when he passed her.
He also ignored the way his brother's presence perked up in his mind, not pounding on their barrier, but watchful, now that there was a gap in the hideout defenses. They had a lot of work to do and it was getting dark, Brandon had been right earlier. They didn't want to be out after dark even this far away from a major city. Who knew what horrors his brother was going to unleash after today's debacle.
0ooo0ooo0ooo0
The two remaining sisters dressed quickly in Gram's old clothing and then disappeared when they put on their respective magical items. That left his father, Grams, and himself to watch Wyatt and make sure the demon didn't go out and destroy the city. He couldn't remember much of the sisters vanquish of this thing, but he did remember it had taken them a while and the Cleaners had gotten involved in the aftermath. Now, as they stood in Wyatt's bedroom he tried to think of something he could do, within reason. Sure, it would be easy to create a seal or a potion that would destroy the damn thing now that he wasn't trapped in its vice grip, but he wasn't desperate enough yet to reveal that he could. He didn't need to destroy it himself, he just needed them to last long enough for the sisters to do it.
"The way I see it, we're all targets for the slime," Grams said, stating the obvious and he bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself quiet. "We need a plan to control it until the girls get back."
"In the future, everyone tried to control the demon with no name," he countered. "But it can't be done."
"That's hardly a winning attitude, young man," she admonished and he rubbed the bridge of his nose. "And why in heaven's name couldn't the people in the future find some name for that thing?"
"Speaking of the future," Leo said offhandedly as he walked over to Wyatt's crib, "what's so awful that happens to Wyatt?"
Chris sighed as Grams looked at him curiously, "You know I can't tell you that."
"Come on," Leo cajoled and Chris looked at Grams instead of answering, "I'm an Elder."
"Excuse me, back on point," Grams said as she caught his look and understood its meaning. If he wasn't mistaken there was a little bit more respect in her gaze as she looked at him. "Uh, the slime? I'm taking suggestions."
Chris noticed his brother standing up in his crib but when he seemed to be doing nothing but wandering around he looked away. Leo considered that "We could orb it to an ice drift."
Chris furrowed his eyebrows at the Elder's suggestion. What in the world made him think using magic on something that ate it was a good idea? Still, he wasn't willing to risk his newfound understanding with Leo by being too sarcastic, "Nah, that's bad."
"It's not bad, it's awful," Grams added, having no such compunction. "You can't orb that thing, it feeds on magic."
Chris sighed and looked at her, "so what's your great idea?"
"Are you giving me lip?" Grams snapped at him and put her hands on her hips.
"No," Chris said defensively as he looked away and noticed his brother reaching for a bottle half a second before he tried to orb it. "No!"
He dove for the infant but his father beat him to it and yanked Wyatt away as the slime shot out of the wall straight for him. Then the three of them ran from the room but Chris glanced back as he left, catching the way the slime reacted when the lamp it had grabbed instead of his brother shocked it. Then they all bolted down the stairs into the foyer as the slime followed them, sending pieces of the ceiling raining down on them.
"Hold on," Leo said as they reached the foyer, "I think it's stopped."
"Get Wyatt out of the house," Chris ordered, his commander instincts kicking in, and the tone made the other two look at him curiously. "If it tries to follow, I'll fire off an orb or two to distract it. You okay with that?"
"Yeah," Grams said watching him carefully, and with more interest than she had before, "it's just what I had in mind."
"Good," he said with a nod and he jogged into the kitchen followed quickly by the older woman. There they found the windows and doors covered over with green sludge. "I was thinking we might be able to make a quick potion of m- Piper's explosive power. It won't stop it but it might be enough to mess with it until the sisters get back to kill it."
"When'd you come up with that," she asked after he orbed out into the conservatory and then ran back into the room, the main mass of the slime following the magic through the windows in the kitchen stayed covered.
"Just now," he said as he ran over to the sink to turn on the tap, "I'm good under pressure. You think quickly in my time or you die, you'd like that part of it I'm sure."
Grams snorted with a little smile and then frowned as the tap started to shake as if something other than water was coming up and he quickly shut it off again. The slime was in the water, they wouldn't be making any potions. "Any other idea's General?"
Chris's head twitched back in surprise at the honorific and she raised an eyebrow at his response. Then Leo came scurrying into the room with the baby destroying their staring contest, "The front door was blocked, same as this one. What'd it do? Split it in half?"
Grams left the room to look at the rest of the house and he shook his head, this situation was spiraling out of control. The time to fight was passed, they needed to getaway. There was something he was missing, something he knew but wasn't putting together fast enough. "How do we get out?"
"I don't know," Leo said holding Wyatt a little tighter, "Orb?"
Chris folded his arms and rolled his eyes, was that the only thing he could think of? "I just tried that to draw it away, it's made an energy barrier around the house."
"What do you think, Penny?" Leo asked yelling into the dining room.
"I think love conquers all," Grams said and they both spun to look at the vague woman in aged sixties tie-dye standing on the other side of the pantry. "I think that we should take the demon into our arms and make it feel safe."
He and Leo looked at one another in shock as a feeling of horror came over them. The sisters must have done something to change the past. It was the only explanation for why the Halliwell's original General had turned into a free hug giver. Chris rubbed his eyes as if they didn't have enough to worry about. Now they had to make sure the slime didn't get them, Wyatt didn't use his magic again, and hippie-dippie grandma didn't get herself absorbed trying to make the slime feel better. He'd been right today was turning out to be a very bad day.
