Joe's Note: This was actually one of the more difficult ones for me to get started on but once I did, the entire story came falling out of me. I wanted to go with someone interesting for Cordelia, but also something that would reflect a 'I'm doing this to placate my girlfriend but I'm gonna do it right and look like a badass bitch' dynamic. Which meant no , no Tracer, and with Kat a definite for Mercy? Obviously no Mercy. I can't see Cordelia being Zarya given that she's hardly the brawny sort, nor could I picture her as Mei. Given that she's on the tanned side due to her parentage, I could easily see her making a passable Pharah… and she definitely has the finances to commission the armor. Took me a bit longer to settle on a skin - I mistakenly thought she had Native heritage and was eyeing those two skins - but once I had all the details settled? I banged the entire thing out in about an hour, twenty minutes of which involved flitting back and forth through 'Chosen' to get the dialogue right.
Dedications & Thanks: To Nicholas, Alexander, Howard, Alonsis2, Connor, MJ, Daniel, Christopher, Sarsif, Fablesrogue, Morgan, Janne, Eric, DireSquirrel, Joseph, Jason, mpop, RileyWestfall, bloodylord, Luke, Zachary, Marc, Ziryo, Elliot, Crusifikz70, Timothy, Leigh, Chris, George, Koby, Ken, Dimitria, William, Invernos, Paul, Pat, Joel, Kentucky Fried Dragon, Warren, Mitch, and Jess for sponsoring me on , and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.

"So where do the rockets come from?"

"…the rocket launcher?" Raising her arm, Cordelia Chase pointed it off toward the ocean before firing off a rocket to demonstrate, sending it whistling out over the ocean until it struck the surface of the water and detonated. She did her best to avoid reacting to the sight of bloody chunks of something flying up out of the water; with her luck as of late, she'd probably hit an endangered shark or something. Pasting a smile on her face, she turned to her visibly skeptical girlfriend. "See? Point, shoot, boom."

Kat McKee rolled her eyes before gesturing out at the ocean. Cordelia glanced in the direction that the brunette was indicating before looking back at Kat curiously, making her girlfriend sigh. "Count the gross bloody water spots. There's seven of them already. Seven rockets. Pharah's got a magazine of six. So… where are the rockets coming from?"

Furrowing her brow in thought, Cordelia stared down at her right arm as she pondered the problem. Almost absently, she found herself pulling a new pod of rockets out of… somewhere… and slapping it into place on her right arm. She raised her arm, fired another rocket off into the nearby ocean, and then repeated the process. This time, she made a point of following her left hand with her eyes, only to find them sliding off to the side when she tried to see where the fresh ammunition was coming from. "I… don't… know. The same place as in the game, I guess. Also known as thin air."

"You know, I should probably be weirded out by that but considering that our costumes got brought to life by some sort of magic spell? It's not, you know, that weird." Kat paused to think about her statement for a moment, raising a finger to forestall the comment that was already forming on Cordelia's lips. "Relatively speaking, I mean."

Cordelia grinned as she reached out with her left hand, poking Kat's nose. Given that it made her girlfriend scrunch up her nose cutely rather than start cursing that it was broken or something, the brunette was fairly certain that she was starting to get the hang of the enhanced strength that came with the Raptora Mark IV combat suit. "Yeah. I feel like you going all Swiss Miss is weirder, but that's just me."

Snorting softly, Kat retaliated by leaning forward and poking Cordelia's nose in return. "Says the girl who not only has an accent but can actually speak Egyptian Arabic now."

"Says the girl who not only has an accent but can actually speak German, French, and Italian now." Cordelia thought about that before frowning as she realized something. "Which is weird, because Mercy is Swiss. Why don't you speak Swiss?"

That earned Cordelia a look that was almost alien on Kat's face but she was used to seeing in the mirror; it was the same look Harmony received from her when the blonde said something spectacularly stupid. Cordelia's own 'how have you not drowned on your own saliva yet?' expression. Which she really should trademark one of these days so that she could collect royalties from others. Not Kat, though. That would land her on her own couch. "Because there's no such thing as Swiss?" Sure there was. It was- "I mean, there's no such thing as a Swiss language. The country is split into three major areas: one that speaks French, one that speaks German, and one that speaks Italian."

Oh. Well that explained that, then. Not for the first time, Cordelia found herself wishing that she'd gone as Mercy for Halloween and Kat had been… anyone else. She'd always been uncomfortably aware of the fact that her girlfriend was significantly smarter than her, and not just by dint of the decade age gap. Kat was just plain smarter than her. Halloween had only widened that gulf, and Cordelia could only think that if she'd been the one to merge with Angela Ziegler for a night? Maybe she wouldn't be standing here pestering Kat about her fluency in a non-existent language.

Hell, dressing as Mercy hadn't even been Kat's idea. They'd only ended up doing Pharah and Mercy for Halloween because neither of them had been able to think of what to dress as for the parties that Cordelia would inevitably be forced to attend for the sake of her social status, and Kat had been stupid enough to mention her plight to that weird guy Joe who did most of her cosplay photos. Cordelia had been noncommittal at first and even more so after seeing what Pharah looked like, but as the days ticked away and Halloween inexorably drew closer, she finally caved.

Why couldn't Mercy and Widowmaker be a more popular 'ship? She wouldn't have minded the unfair advantage in French class, and inheriting the assassin's remarkable athleticism and flexibility would have been hella useful for cheerleading.

Sighing, Cordelia forced her melancholy thoughts down as she looked back out over the ocean. She was alive. She had an amazing girlfriend. She was Iron Man's sister from an Egyptian mother. Given that the former was more than some of the kids she'd grown up with could say these days… her present situation really wasn't that bad. Hell, having any sort of girlfriend - much less an amazing one - wasn't something that even half the people she knew could claim. So even if she felt dumb around Kat more often than she had in the past, things could have been a lot worse. And hey, her girlfriend might have gotten smarter thanks to Halloween… but Kat still couldn't drive for shit.

Kat could fly, though. And so could Cordelia. That was not only awesome as hell, but opened up all sorts of unique romantic moment potential for the two of them. "I found this little island off of Coal Oil Point that I'm pretty sure nobody else can reach. Well, calling it an island is generous. It's a big rock with two trees on it. Wanna fly over with me and watch the sunset? Although before you answer me, you should probably be aware that I flew over to drop off a blanket and a picnic basket earlier. And the basket has a really big red velvet cupcake in it that literally has your name on it. Seriously. I paid them to write 'Kat' in frosting on the top for me."

"Du bist lächerlich, aber Ich liebe dich."

"…that sounded angry. Although to be fair, all German sounds angry to me."

"I said that you're ridiculous, but I love you." There was a faint whine of servos as the wings on Kat's Valkyrie swift-response suit spread themselves into their flight configuration, and then the brunette floated out over the edge of the cliff to hover over the rolling ocean waves. Twirling gracefully in midair, she stretched her hand out in Cordelia's direction. "That said, you know me: I'd never say no to cupcakes. Especially red velvet ones. And this one evidently literally has my name on it. So… shall we?"

It took a bit more effort to kick in her own jump jets without rocketing past - or potentially colliding with - Kat but Cordelia somehow managed it, floating up to take her girlfriend by the hand. "We shall. And maybe on the way, you can explain to me your wings only glow some of the time. Because if Fareeha knew, she's not telling and it's starting to bug me."

Kat chuckled softly as she took Cordelia's hand, turning to fly alongside her girlfriend as Cordelia guided her toward their destination. "Obviously I don't know every little thing that Angela did, but I don't think Fareeha ever bothered to ask how the Valkyrie worked. In essence, the luminescent parts of my wings are when you see me overclocking the suit to provide more support than the Caduceus Staff's healing stream can provide. In other words, when she raises the dead. I've actually found a bit of programming that she never elevated past beta status that would conceivably let me heal people en masse before they died, but I'm not sure how I could safely test something like that to work out any remaining kinks…"

"Speaking of kinks, is it true that Mercy's staff has a setting that creates biotic chains?"

"What? No! Why would you even think that?"

"Saw it in a bunch of different places on Tumblr. Do you think there's enough Angela left in you to reprogram it to do that? You know, because… reasons?"

"…maybe."

"Keep the line together! Drive them to the edge! We can't let them-"

Buffy Summers was caught completely off-guard by the sharp spike of pain in her gut, her attempt at a motivational speech coming to an abrupt end as she stared down at the sword protruding from her stomach in disbelief. She had the Scythe. Willow had activated all the Potentials. Everything was going according to plan. Except… this wasn't the plan. Taking a halting step forward, she dropped to her knees before collapsing onto her stomach, the Scythe slipping from her slack fingers as her face hit the dirty ground.

"Buffy!"

Lifting her head, Buffy watched as Faith Lehane raced over to her, the brunette dropping to her knees as she stared down at her sister Slayer in disbelief. Grimacing, Buffy groped around blindly until her fingers curled around the Scythe once more, slowly pulling it around in front of her before pushing it toward Faith. "Hold the line."

Faith nodded before climbing to her feet, her eyes hardening as she whirled around and decapitated an approaching Turok-Han. After cutting down several more of the übervamps, Faith called out to one of the other Slayers before hurling the Scythe in her direction, only to find herself swarmed by Turok-Han and tackled to the ground. Around Buffy, the battle raged, her sisters-in-arms racking up kill after kill but slowly losing the fight due to attrition. Amanda, victim of a snapped neck. Another went down with a Turok-Han's teeth buried in her throat; Buffy was ashamed to admit that she couldn't even remember the girl's name.

It should have worked. She was sure that it would work. How could it have gone wrong?

"Oh no. Ow." Craning her neck, Buffy bit back a groan at the sight of 'herself' standing there, the First doing its best to affect a concerned expression as it stared down at her. "Mommy, this mortal wound is all… itchy." Making its way over, the First dropped into a crouch and patted her on the head condescendingly. "You pulled a nice trick. You came pretty close to smacking me down. But it wasn't enough. Your Slayers are dying. Your friends are dying. You… are dying. But since I know how much you love your witty comebacks… any last words?"

Opening her mouth to respond, Buffy was brought up short as she spotted something incredibly strange over her doppelgänger's shoulder: either the blood loss was really getting to her, or there was a woman with golden wings walking through the cavern toward her, creating trails of glowing yellow light as she spun a staff around her body. "What… the hell..?"

"What?"

"Heroes never die!" Slamming the end of her staff down against the ground, the woman emitted a bright pulse of yellow light that radiated through the cave. The battle came to a screeching halt as one by one, the fallen Slayers' bodies began to glow and rise into the air, rotating so they were standing upright as tendrils of yellow energy danced around their forms. One by one, the glow around each Slayer dissipated to reveal a girl who was whole, hale, and most importantly… alive. The woman ducked her head for a moment as the light around her faded, taking a deep breath before whipping her staff around her body in a tight arc, unleashing a wave of purple light that cut through a half-dozen Turok-Han. "Sorry I'm late. Your friends evidently share your fondness for running into pointy objects; I had to keep two of them from bleeding to death."

The First shot a look of pure loathing back over her shoulder at the newcomer before fading from sight, leaving Buffy with one less problem but still plenty of questions. "What… the hell..? Are you an angel? Did Heaven get bought out by a tech startup after I left?"

Snorting, the woman tore through several more übervamps as she made her way over to Buffy, giving her staff one last spin before pointing the head down at the Slayer. "I'm going to chalk that question up to the blood loss." Tendrils of yellow energy poured from the end, burrowing deep into Buffy's body and taking away the pain. Taking away the stab wound, too, she discovered as she slid a hand under herself and poked at her stomach curiously. "And if my biotics didn't manage to fix whatever's wrong with your memory, maybe this will jar something loose. Now, Cordelia!"

While Buffy still didn't recognize her savior, that was a name that she was all too familiar with… but when Cordelia had turned into Iron Woman, the blonde had no idea. Bounding through the fight in a sleek suit of black and gold armor, the former cheerleader leapt over the edge with a war cry before floating back up into sight with a pair of blue jets burning brightly on her back. "Justice rains from above!"

'Justice' was evidently a synonym for 'a lot of rockets' in Cordelia's book these days, because that's what went raining down on the assembled mass of übervamps below them. Dozens of them, probably over a hundred, howling through the air in twisting patterns until they reached their targets and detonated violently. Buffy couldn't see the results but between the cacophony of exploding rockets and the howls of the damned, she could imagine them: Turok-Han dying by the score as a tidal wave of fire washed over them. When her ammo was finally expended, Cordelia jetted backward and came in for a landing on the edge of the cliff, shooting a smirk back over her shoulder at Buffy. "So. Summers. You've looked better. Seriously, who let you out of the house wearing that top?"

Buffy found herself laughing despite herself as she slowly rose to her feet, one hand resting on her stomach as she poked and prodded at her suddenly unmarked stomach in bewilderment. Raising the dead, she could easily explain away because she was living - or maybe undead? - proof that Willow could do it. But for all the spells Willow knew, healing someone so quickly and cleanly was outside the scope of her abilities. But there would be time for questions later. For now? The requisite witty banter followed by saving the world once again. "Well, I would have gone with my shiny, rocket-filled suit of armor but you of all people should know that showing up for a party in the same outfit as someone else is a huge faux pas."

"I wouldn't have minded, since we both know that I wear anything better than you." Turning to face Buffy, Cordelia nodded in the mystery brunette's direction. "Oh, and seriously? How do you forget the girl who kicked you in the face for letting me get kidnapped by Absalom at the start of junior year?"

Well, considering that taking a high-heeled boot to the face had knocked her out cold? It had been an understandably forgettable experience for Buffy. And to be fair, the woman had changed quite a bit since their last encounter. Halo, glowing wings, the ability to heal people and raise the dead…