Disclaimer: Godzilla: The Series belongs to Touhou and Sony-Tristar. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: The Series belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin is the property of Konami, who should really treat their IPs better. "Lizards, Wizards, and Demons, Oh My!" belongs to me, God help us all. This fanfic is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for violence, language, and copious quantities of Jungian psychology.

Terrible As The Dawn

Nick

I've been doing research these past six months; apparently the lack of acrophobia isn't a Dragon's Tooth thing, it's just me. That said, it's pretty handy, given just how much of my daily life these days involves high elevations. Godzilla enjoys having me perch on his head sometimes, for one thing; I think he considers it safer than me being on the ground most of the time. Add in cliff climbing, New York skyscrapers, and of course, the helicopters everyone keeps teasing me about… yeah, it's just as well I've got no fear of heights and seem to be immune to vertigo to boot.

I would like to point out, by the way, that I was remaining firmly secured inside the helicopter this time, by a well-anchored harness. Okay, so I was leaning out one of the open side doors taking pot shots at the giant dragonfly that was currently chasing us all over the skies of LA. But like I said, I was wearing a harness, which is more than I could say for either of the other passengers.

In the pilot's seat, I heard Monique swear before the helicopter suddenly jinked left. "Easy!" I yelled, grabbing the support bar. "We don't want to lose it, just keep it from eating us!" Dragonflies tended to subdue prey– usually other insects– by biting them in the head, then carrying them off to a perch. I guess at this size, the cockpit of the helicopter made an acceptable target.

Behind me, I could hear Angel letting out a stream of Irish that I was pretty sure was not suitable for broadcasting as he braced himself and took another couple of shots with his dart gun. Vampire vision made accurate shooting a little easier despite the darkness and the moving target, but easier wasn't easy. He and Faith were trading places every time one of them had to reload.

When I'd called Buffy to tell her we were heading to LA, she'd given me the number of her ex-boyfriend's detective agency and told me to look him up if we needed any help. I'd done so pretty much as soon as we'd landed, since chasing mutations usually went better with someone who knew the area. Our two groups had worked surprisingly well together, though I was a bit worried about Mendel and Dr. Burkle adopting each other as siblings. But our darts were filled with a modified sleeping potion that Wesley had made up, Angel's friend Doyle had managed to scam– er, acquire a fairly high-performance helicopter to draw the dragonfly's predatory instincts, and Faith and Angel's experience and innate abilities meant that we were wearing the dragonfly down a lot faster than I would have on my own.

Steadying myself, I… pulsed, I guess you could say. It was a little like echolocation, only it was magic instead of sound. Or maybe psychic energy– apparently the two were very closely related, like electricity and magnetism. Regardless, after five months of magic lessons, I'd finally learned how to consciously use the bond.

… Well. Use it again, since I'd known how just fine under Drake's control. Which had been part of the problem, as my instructor had pointed out. Dr. Charlotte Aulin Morris was a woman in her seventies with a doctorate in quantum mechanics and a good fifty years as a combat spellcaster under her belt. Ray Stantz had thought her mix of scientific and supernatural training would make her a good fit for me, and I had to admit, he seemed to have been right.

"What you're doing isn't actually psychic or magical," she'd told me, over tea in her study. "In many Asian traditions, it would be referred to as 'spiritual energy,' or possibly chi, or ki. It's something humans can do, but also found in many types of magical being as well. Think of it being a part of the psychomagical spectrum the way heat and light and radio are all part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Your spiritual energy is drawn to people you have a strong emotional bond to, and it can be used to… synchronize your spiritual energy vibrations, so to speak. Keep you all marching to the same beat. The problem is, you strongly associate it with compulsion, given that was your first experience with it."

I hadn't really thought that my therapy and my magic lessons would be overlapping so much, but Dr. Maboroshi and Dr. Morris were apparently familiar with each other, and once I'd given permission, they'd been consulting quite a lot. Unpicking my mental blocks against my abilities had required a lot of fairly uncomfortable examination of exactly what Drake had done to me. With the best of intentions, of course.

That was the worst of it– it wouldn't have worked if he hadn't really, honestly cared about me. Standard brainwashing relies on removing a subject's emotional supports and then replacing them with a support system of the brainwasher's choosing. Drake had done that by kidnapping me and shutting off my bond with Godzilla, then flooding me with his energy. If he'd been faking any of that emotion, I'd have felt it. I'd have known. But he hadn't been, and so all I'd sensed, with all my external references missing or muted, was a flood of warm, genuine caring, the sort of thing I'd only just found again after ten years without.

It had taken a lot of work for me to really accept that the energy pulse didn't have to be like that, an overwhelming wave of emotion pushed out to swamp its targets in the undertow. That it could be an outstretched hand, something my friends could take or leave as they chose. It was instinct for me to reach out in times of danger, but I'd kept stopping myself, not wanting to hurt them the way I almost had, that first time. But I was finally– not over it, but healed enough that I could use it.

Almost instantly, I felt four answering pulses, warm and strong, though Monique's shadow-touched one was a little exasperated, given that she was still trying to dodge a hungry dragonfly as we flew over the city.

"How's our bug jar coming?" I asked over the radio.

"In position here," Elsie replied. "You sure this is going to work?"

"Absolutely," Wesley replied. "To avoid going into a lecture we don't have time for, some magic requires a talented caster, but other skills and rituals require only knowledge and care. Watchers learn quite a lot of the latter."

"In position here, jefe," Randy replied. "And I can see the Terror Twins set up on their respective roofs from here."

"I am going to take a magnet to your audio sample collection, punk."

I could hear Fred Burkle giggling even as she replied. "I'm set up here, Nick. Power's ready and everything."

"And I'm here too," Doyle replied. "Can we hurry it up, though? I'm not sure the security boys are gonna be too happy to find me up here with somethin' that beeps and flashes, if you get my drift."

Monique's voice came over the radio, dry as dust. "Oui, I can imagine. Heading for the drop zone now."

The "drop zone" was a wide swath of open grassy lawn, ringed by several buildings. A few squads of the California National Guard were standing by with a containment truck, having padded the area with the kind of air bags used by stunt coordinators. Our six ground-based members were set up on various roofs around the perimeter of the complex, a few stories up at most.

"Coming in hot, people!" I called, looking forward as Faith and Angel took a few last shots at the dragonfly, mostly to keep it pissed enough to follow us. Monique swooped down through the target zone, pulling up just as quickly.

"NOW!"

Five spotlights snapped on, trapping the dragonfly in their glare. Not just spotlights, though— Fred and Mendel had made some sort of technomagical stasis projectors, and the effect was obvious. The helicopter swung back around for a better view as we saw the dragonfly slow and stop, hovering in the air as it struggled to break free, as though it was caught in tree sap or jelly. One of the beams was missing, though, and I quickly realized which one.

"Elsie! What's going on down there? Elsie?"

No answer from the radio, and I swore. Monique didn't even need to ask, she was already steering the helicopter to hover over the roof where Elsie had been stationed. Below us, I could see the projector, set up and in position… but no sign of Elsie.

"Shit," Faith growled. "Here, Captain Hairgel, hold this for me, will you?"

"You've been talking to Spike again," Angel complained, but he took the dart gun that she passed him anyway.

Faith threw him a grin, then leaped out of the helicopter, landing easily on the roof some twenty feet below. I could feel the pulses of amusement from Monique, and I shot the back of her head a glare that I know she picked up anyway.

"Don't say it."

"I would not dream of it, mon ami."

Below us, Faith hit the button on the machine, bringing the sixth spotlight to life and freezing the dragonfly in midair. Carefully, the spotlights tilted downward, bringing the giant insect to rest on the grassy sward below.

Monique brought the helicopter down in an empty space, pulling off her earphones as soon as the engine cut out. "Go," she told me, dark eyes concerned. "I will handle the details from here."

I gave her a nod and then pretty much ran flat-out for the building Elsie had been set up on, dashing up the stairs faster than I probably should have shown off. By the time I reached the roof, Faith was waiting for me, a walkie-talkie held in one hand and an unusually somber expression on her face.

"Found this behind that potted plant in the corner," she reported, handing me the handset. "Footprints of somebody bigger than E by that fire escape, but there's no trail after that."

I growled and deliberately did not squeeze the handset. In the mood I was in, I could probably break it.

"Nick?" Mendel's voice came over the radio now, tone concerned. "I'm picking up something weird on the thaumometer. It looks like some sort of spatial warping, like what was left behind when you and Buffy were… displaced that one time."

… Oh, look at that. I broke it after all.

Elsie

Augh. My head felt like somebody was playing a war movie in it. And my muscles were spasming, which means I got electrocuted. Again. Y'know, when you can say that with a straight face about your job, it might be time to look into a career change. Or at least a really good worker's comp suit.

Ah, who am I kidding, like I'd ever quit HEAT. What would I do, go into teaching? Well, that would be my mother's preference. My parents have been better since I stopped the giant manta ray from freezing over Catherine's wedding, but I know Mom still wishes I was doing something less dangerous. And also something easier to explain to her friends. "Elsie chases giant rats through the Bronx" is more exciting than "Elsie digs up bones and tries to figure out what they liked to do on Saturday nights," but it's still not exactly the kind of thing that's easy to break down for the bridge club, you know?

And I should probably work on opening my eyes now, but the way I feel like I'm floating, I'm a bit worried about concussion. Adding light to that might give me a killer migraine, or make me puke. But I can't put it off forever, so… here goes.

… Oh. Oh-kay, maybe the floating feeling was because I actually was floating. In fact, I was hovering about three feet off the ground, in a column of light that was coming up from some sort of emitter set into the floor. I'd seen this before, though that one was a lot bigger, on the Leviathan. The "knowledge extraction machine," the one Mendel blew the fuck out of with NIGEL. Have I mentioned how much I love that man? Well, no, probably not, because I haven't even wanted to admit it to myself. I may be the slightest bit gun-shy these days.

Focus, Elsie. Amperage across my nervous system always makes me a little scatterbrained, it seems. I was floating in what seemed like a Hivemind brain-ripper, in the middle of a small room lined with consoles of suspiciously familiar organic design. This entire place looked like the various control rooms I'd been working in when the Hivemind had been controlling me. But the aliens were pretty much gone– none of them could survive on Earth without downloading themselves into hosts, and Sopler and Hoffman had been the only two of those. Probably.

Wait a minute, there was still one person from that freaking disaster unaccounted for–

"Ah, you're awake."

Yep, I remembered that voice, including the slightly condescending tone that made me want to hit the speaker with a rock. And that was before he'd sold the entire planet out and tried to turn Mendel against us.

Dr. Alexander Preloran stepped into my field of view from somewhere off to the side. I had to blink– he'd definitely changed over the last… almost two years. Hell, where does the time go?

"Dr. Preloran. You look like crap," I replied, then almost slapped myself. I mentioned the whole "scatterbrained" thing, right? That also means that my filter's pretty much completely disengaged, which is not a pretty sight.

He did, though. He'd been easily six feet tall and built like a truck, the kind of solid you got mostly through years of working outdoors. Now, though, he was almost gaunt, which with his height looked even worse. His cheekbones were showing, there were dark circles under his eyes, and said eyes seemed to glow with an almost feverish light.

"A pleasure to see you again, too, Dr… Chapman, wasn't it? Please forgive me, it's rather been a while since our last meeting."

Oooh, good sarcasm. Monique'd give it a nine. "I really can't say I'm sorry about that. Where exactly have you been? You weren't on the ship when we salvaged it, but you missed all the excitement when your friends decided to visit en masse."

He snorted. "The ship had an… emergency exit, of sorts, via fractal dimensional technology– not something I'd expect you to understand."

"You're talking about n-dimensional concepts, basically three-dimensional spaces adjacent to each other along a fourth dimensional line. Colloquially called 'pocket dimensions,' right?"

He gaped at me for a second, and I rolled my eyes. Sure, I couldn't pick the math equations necessary to describe that crap out of a lineup, but the basic concepts weren't that difficult, and after Nick's little trip into that other world, we were all a lot more motivated to start understanding the basics of dimensional theory.

Then he started to laugh. It was a rusty, gasping sound– he definitely wasn't doing so well.

"Forgive me, Doctor, it seems I've underestimated you. My deepest apologies. Yes, the gate brought me here, to– call it an outpost, I suppose. In existing outside our standard Euclidean space, it has the ability to access almost anywhere within a local energy gradient. It can't reach outside the gravity well of the planet, so the builders couldn't use it to return home, but that still gave it an impressive range. I waited out the invasion in here, remaining in reserve in case it failed, as it did. At that point, it fell to me to initiate the next… backup plan, shall we say."

"Why? I mean, why on Earth, or off of it, are you throwing in with a bunch of alien locusts who are planning to use humanity as slave labor and hazmat suits? And why the hell have you grabbed me?"

His smile was almost ghoulish. Seriously, I think it was scarier than that time Spike and Dru had showed us their "game faces" before we'd headed out to fight Drake. At least their faces weren't still pretending to be human.

"Ah, yes, we should definitely get to that. As you're aware, the Hivemind spent most of the past sixty-five million years in stasis, but not all. They awoke several times to check on their situation, make sure their ship was in no danger, etc. And of course, they were able to breed their 'guard dogs' from Deinonychus, and make sentinels out of the Cryptoclidus. But those were hardly the only species they meddled in. Have you wondered why it was even possible for Sopler and Hoffman's bodies to be transformed into members of the Hivemind?"

I grimaced. "Biokinesis, rewriting the cellular structure to fit the new template. You're saying we've got genetic compatibility with them?"

"Very good, Dr. Chapman. But then, that is within your area of expertise, isn't it?"

Swallowing hard, I followed that line of thought to its logical conclusion. "They spliced some of their genes into the hominid population, didn't they?"

He nodded, smile widening. "And of course, after roughly five million years, those genes are spread widely among the human race. Some have more than others, of course. Oddly enough, it seems your entire team has unusually high amounts of the appropriate sequences– enough to give them protection from the control signal the Hivemind broadcast."

"All of them except me, that is."

"About that– you're aware of the paradox of sickle-cell anemia?"

"One copy of the allele makes you more resistant to malaria, two copies gives you a nasty blood disorder. So? … Oh shit."

Hearing him laugh made me really, really wish I could smack him right in that smug face. My fists clenched as I fought back my anger and tried to ignore the thrumming that seemed to be building up in my head.

"Yes, Dr. Chapman, you're the highest concentration among your team. The highest I've found in two years of searching the globe, in fact. I'm surprised your abilities are still latent– unless, of course, they're not latent. They're being suppressed."

No. No, I wasn't hearing this, I wasn't listening to this, he wasn't saying this. Sure, I'd maybe gotten better at figuring out what people were thinking in the past year or so, but that was training with Monique. And things shaking when I got angry– that was just my imagination. Right?

Preloran sighed. "As enjoyable as this conversation has been, Dr. Chapman, I'm afraid it's time for us to end it. You've been closing your eyes to who and what you are for too long– it's time to do what you were made for. To pave the way for those who made you. You've slept long enough… now it's time to awaken."

He reached out and hit a button on one of the consoles, and a low rumbling hum started up somewhere beneath me. The column of light around me slowly changed to a brilliant green, too bright to see anything through. Then a pulse of energy ran up the column to engulf me and the world–

Shattered.
Shattered.

Elsie

It was like that scene in the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy steps out of the black and white cabin into the full color of Munchkinland. It was like being a butterfly, breaking out of the cocoon it had been sealed in for ages. It was like breathing again for the first time after a month of head colds.

It was like being born, I think.

I could feel the flow of energy in the computers around me, the ebb and flow of gravity as I landed lightly on my feet outside the column of energy that had been holding me until now. Behind me, I could hear a quiet grunt as the shell I'd cast off landed far less gracefully, but I couldn't spare her any attention just yet. Instead, my gaze was fixed solely on Preloran, who was staring at me in complete surprise.

"Not what you expected, Doctor?" I asked, taking a step towards him. "But then, you don't honestly understand how any of this works, do you? You're running off of a manual that the original set of castaways shoved into your head two years ago, in a format you're barely set up to comprehend. What did you expect it to do, brainwash me into a compliant little follower to help you bring your 'benefactors' back to Earth?"

I saw his hand twitch towards the weapon at his waist, probably the stunner he'd used to get me here in the first place, but he wasn't nearly fast enough. I threw out a hand, hitting him with a wave of force that sent the stunner skittering away across the floor and him reeling back into the wall behind him.

"I am sick and tired of being seen as a pawn, as a secondary consideration," I told him, still advancing steadily. All those years of bottled up rage had turned to icy power in my veins, and I was riding that high– but still very focused and coldly in control.

"I am tired," I continued, "of getting no respect from anyone except my fucking team. You thought you were going to bend me to your will, Preloran? You stuck me in a machine you barely knew how to use and thought you could make me your puppet?" Reaching out, I floated him into the air, being careful not to squeeze too hard.

"You're pathetic, you know," I told him, almost conversationally. "Though it isn't all your fault." I could see what they'd done to him, now. He'd had a qualm or two about selling out his entire species, so they'd just… jacked up his desire for knowledge, made it into an obsession. And then they'd all died, leaving him alone, letting it fester and burn, until he was nothing more than what I saw before me.

I tilted my head a little, looking him over with my new senses. "I don't think I can fix you," I told him, almost regretfully. "You're like a wildfire, burning yourself out. And even if I could, you'd still be the guy who let his friends be fed into the brain drain machine to keep himself out of it. That wasn't because of what they did to you, was it? No, you were just scared… and you really, really wanted what they said they could teach you. So. Was it worth it?"

He choked a little, and I released some of the pressure on his windpipe, making sure not to let anything else slip.

"What… are you?" he managed, staring at me with wide eyes.

"Y'know, I'm not actually sure," I told him. "Except, of course, strong. That's the important thing right now, wouldn't you say?"

And "strong" was practically underselling it. I could feel power pulsing through the outpost, pulsing through me. And not just power, knowledge. Understanding. So much to learn, to know, all at my fingertips. Once I took care of this problem.

Preloran had maybe another month in his current state, tops. The Hivemind had given him knowledge and understanding too, expanded his brain activity to be able to handle the higher-order functions that allowed him to make full use of the various technology they'd given him access to. The problem was, he didn't have any of the relevant genes, or the magical durability that let Nick or Buffy or Willow pull off their various work-arounds for the laws of physics. All that energy was coming from his own metabolism, and he simply couldn't take in enough to compensate for it. Even if he could, his brain was basically overclocked– and like cheap computer hardware, it just couldn't take the strain.

Besides, the son of a bitch had tried to make four of us into Hivemind hosts, kidnapped me, and tried to turn me into a traitor to my entire species. I wasn't feeling particularly charitable to him anyway. But nobody deserved to burn out the way he was heading for, and he could do a lot of damage on his way down, so…

I'm a biologist and a paleontologist. I know a lot about bodies. Add in that I've spent the last two years and change hauling people out of disaster zones, and I've learned a lot about how those bodies can break. Lowering Preloran to the ground, I released him from my mental grip, then reached out and telekinetically separated the third and fourth cervical vertebrae in one sharp movement. Death was instantaneous, and I don't think he had time to feel a thing.

Letting the body slump to the floor, I turned around to see what my shell had been up to while I was busy, only to find the transport gate sputtering fitfully. Hmm. Looks like I wasn't the only one who'd gotten an understanding of the way things work. Ah, whatever. She was weak and pretty much helpless without me– I could deal with her later. For now, I had more important things to deal with.

Like, oh, the fact that the Hivemind would almost certainly be back. With my mind finally clear after so long, I was remembering more and more of what I'd been able to access of the communal knowledge well. The Collective survived by assimilating new species and converting them into more of the same. Those bodies weren't created by any kind of evolutionary process; they were designed by the Core Collective eons ago as the most efficient physical vehicles to be ridden by the intelligences that made up the Hive. Which is why even after sixty-five million years, there was no alteration in the physical appearance of the species, and they hadn't even changed their communications protocols. The Collective were scavengers, hermit crabs, sucking up the best parts of any species they came across and leaving behind nothing but empty husks.

Until they'd hit Earth. Crazy as it sounded, HEAT and Earth's mutations had done something no other species had managed before– driven these fuckers back and off the planet. For them, it was kind of like being driven out of your new house by a swarm of ants. They'd left, but they were going to be back with the exterminators, and then it'd all be over but the shouting.

Or that's what they thought, anyway. I had other plans, and now, with all the knowledge in these computers at my fingertips, I had some ideas on how to pull them off. I was going to need help, of course, lots of it… but I knew some very smart people, and it shouldn't be too hard to convince them to help me out.

First things first, though; knowledge is power. And I needed a lot more of it. The outpost only had so much stored into it– to have a better idea of what all the Hivemind had found out during the course of their time on Earth, I was going to need a better source of information. Fortunately, I knew exactly where to get that.

But first, I was going to go home. I wanted a shower and then something better to wear than the same shapeless green sweatshirt I had like, ten of. After all, a girl wants to look her best to take over the world, right?

Elsie

I was cold, that was my main thought. Cold and empty, so empty I could almost hear echoes coming from inside me, as I stumbled back through the transport gate into a grimy LA alley. Luckily for me, there was nobody in it apart from a couple really startled rats; I wasn't in any condition to handle a mugger, let alone a predatory demon or vampire.

A few more steps sent me stumbling into one of the brick walls, where I sank to the ground, unable to move any further. Behind me, I could hear the rats squeaking angry imprecations, probably cursing me and my ancestors, but like everything else, it seemed very faint and far away.

Hurried footsteps sounded on the pavement nearby, and I tried to force my eyes open– when had they slipped closed? – but only managed a flutter or two. At least I was still sitting up… mostly.

"... Christ, E, you look like shit." Faith's voice sounded a lot more concerned than her words, and I got my eyes open enough to see her going to her knees in front of me. Callused fingers checked my pulse, then my forehead, and I heard her swear again.

"Elsie!" Nick, of course. Fastest runner on the team, except for Monique, who probably had other priorities right now. Right… priorities…

"D'd we get the bug?" I forced out, my words slurring slightly.

Faith snorted. "You're as bad as B. Yeah, we got it. Nick, she's cold as shit, her pupils are dilated, but her pulse's depressed, so it ain't shock. No wounds, no slime, capillary refill's normal, she's just cold and out of it."

My hands were grabbed by a larger, warmer pair, as I heard Nick chuckle. "EMT training?"

"Yeah, Giles and Jenny suggested it might help with… stuff, if I could fix people instead of just killing the things that hurt 'em."

"They're smart people. Come on, Elsie, wake up. What happened to you?" Nick chafed my hands gently, trying to help get some warmth back into them.

It took me a second to get my brain in order. "Preloran," I said finally, pushing through the fog. "Zapped me… taser, stunner, something. Woke up in a machine, like the brain-drain machine… he did something and suddenly there were… two of me."

"Here, give 'er this," an Irish-accented voice broke in. Somebody pushed a styrofoam cup into my hands, and I caught the scent of coffee. Carefully, I raised it to my lips and sipped. It was probably like, fifty percent sugar by volume, but it wasn't that bad. Another sip gave me energy to force my eyes open the rest of the way. Wesley and Doyle were standing behind Nick, who was still crouching in front of me, and even as I watched, Randy caught up with the others, breathing hard.

"You need to work on your wind sprints," Nick said, not looking up.

"Very funny, jefe," he panted. "Yo, Elsie, you okay?"

I nodded. "I… yeah. I… that other version of me, she was telepathic and telekinetic, like, like the aliens were. From what she said, Preloran was trying to brainwash us, but it didn't work, she broke out, and I… I managed to make the gate work and escaped."

"And Preloran?" Nick's eyes held mine. I took another swig of coffee.

"Dead. She… uh, I think she broke his neck, he fell over pretty fast."

Wesley winced. "Well, that's a bit concerning."

"Preloran was a waste of space," Nick growled, and I saw the tiniest flash of amber in his eyes before he got a hold of himself. "But yes, you're right. Whatever that machine did, we've got a copy of Elsie running around with high-level psychic powers and a willingness to kill. That's a problem."

That got a snort from Doyle. "Man's got a gift for understatement, hasn't he?"

Randy huffed. "You have no idea, compadre."

"Look, whatever else is goin' on, I'm thinking we should get E here somewhere warm and safe and get some protein and carbs into her before she hits her sugar crash," Faith declared. "You guys got a place to bunk?"

"The city's comping us for a motel, but we haven't checked in yet," Randy replied.

"And you needn't," Wesley replied firmly. "I can, I suspect, speak for Angel when I say that we can put all of you up at the Hyperion without issue. And as it is a residence for all of us, there won't be the threshold issues found in a commercial hotel."

Nick nodded. "Can you guys take her back there, get her settled? I'll go rescue the rest of the team from the bureaucrats– and maybe rescue the bureaucrats from Monique. I'll send them your way and follow along when we've got the dragonfly dealt with and all the paperwork handled."

"No problem," Doyle assured us, as Nick and Faith helped me to my feet. I was feeling a little better, but I still needed to lean on her to keep my balance. "But, uh, if you catch Angel doing paperwork, film it for us? Pretty sure that's up there with pigs flyin', after all."

Faith snickered. "He's right, the boss is not a man for the little stuff of runnin' a business. Then again, he doesn't legally exist, so…"

"Hey, better than trying to get Nick to do paperwork," I told her, as she escorted me out of the alley. "Not that he means to avoid it, it's just whenever we sit down, we get another call, or get attacked by mercenaries or something."

"That happen a lot?"

"Only once, but it's always something. Giant lobster attacking Manila, circus idiot putting a bounty on Godzilla, ninja delivering a security test with a side of katsudon, stuff like that. So how the hell did you guys end up owning a whole-ass hotel?"

"Oh, man, that is a hell of a story. See, back in the thirties, when the place was built, it got claimed by a Thesulac demon, really gnarly bastards that feed off making people paranoid."

Somewhere behind me, I'm pretty sure I heard Nick sigh.

Mendel

Given that the Hyperion had been a luxury hotel back in the day, there were more than enough empty lounges here and there for me to set up a temporary lab in one. Right now, I was finishing up assembly of my PKE visual scanner. I'd made a few improvements to it since I'd invented the thing in Sunnydale, and when Nick had mentioned that Buffy had friends in the area, I'd brought it along to see if maybe I could get some more interesting data. Now, though, I had a more pressing use for it.

From a nearby armchair, Elsie watched me with interest. After a hot meal and a good night's sleep, she looked a lot better than she had last night, but still a little pale and… fragile, was the best word for it, really. Like some of her usual energy just wasn't there. Which was why I'd gotten the scanner out. I had a hunch.

"Okay, that should do it," I announced. Most of the team had trickled in over the course of the day as I'd worked on the thing. We'd all been up pretty late last night, so I hadn't even started until almost noon, but Nick and Monique had been even later than that. Even Angel had drifted in around three in the afternoon, though he was staying well away from the sunlight drifting in through the windows of the lounge.

"What exactly is this thing?" Doyle asked, giving it a wide berth.

"To put it simply, I kind of crossed a camera with a Ghostbusters International PKE meter," I explained. "It measures and analyzes a wider variety of energy frequencies than a standard meter, but it's nowhere near as portable. It's got some actual medical applications, but we're still working on those." Turning the camera toward Elsie, I moved around the table and booted the laptop up.

One red eyebrow arched. "Should I say 'cheese?'"

"It's a video camera, Elsie. I mean, I can print out stills like I did for Drusilla, but–"

Angel's eyebrows shot up. "Wait, you scanned Dru with that thing?"

"Her and Spike, it was part of the calibration process," I replied. "Which, I was going to ask if you'd be willing to let me scan you too, see how a third souled vampire compared to the other two."

"The readouts on those were seriously weird," Randy threw in, from the couch he was sprawled on.

A shrug from Angel. "Sure, I don't mind. But weird how?"

Before I could answer him, the machine beeped and various graphs started appearing on the laptop screen. Sitting down, I looked closer at them and winced.

"Uh… guys? I think we may have an issue here."

Practically instantly, I had Nick, Wesley, and Fred behind my chair, vying for viewing space.

"Those are the standard human biorhythms, right? Heartbeat, breathing, bioelectric pulse, stuff like that." Nick leaned forward to tap one finger on my laptop screen.

"Yeah. They're fine, she's completely healthy. But this-" I highlighted another graph, "is the psycho-electric signature."

Wesley adjusted his glasses. "I'm no paranormalist, but I do keep up with the literature– most Watchers do. And that looks… sparse."

"It is. Comparing it to the recordings I took of Elsie back in Sunnydale, and over the last six months for calibration purposes? It's missing like, half the frequencies it would usually be outputting."

"Saying I'm half-witted, Mendel?" the subject of our discussion interjected. I rolled my eyes, but I was a little concerned– her jokes were usually better than that.

"No, this is psychic, not mental. Your intellect is functioning perfectly– it's warped, but it's functioning perfectly." She grinned at me and I heard Monique snort. "But you're just… look, even people without psychic abilities have psychic… function, I guess you'd say. Telepaths are just the ones who can hop onto other people's channels at will. Your psychic function's been halved. And no, I don't have any idea what that means."

Fred tapped a different graph. "What's that one?"

"That's the baseline signature, or what we're tentatively calling the soul signal. That's actually the bit that looks so weird on Spike and Dru, since they've got multiple competing "souls" to make things complicated. That one is… hmm. That's a little erratic, the period's fluctuating."

"Y'wanna translate that for the dumbasses in the room? Meanin' me and Doyle," Faith clarified. The man in question obviously considered taking offense, then shrugged and just nodded in assent.

Nick frowned. "The signal's unstable. And weaker than it should be… half-power?"

Pulling his glasses off and rubbing them with his shirt-tail, Wesley nodded.

"... Oh damn, I seem to have picked up Giles's habits," he sighed. "Yes, and that suggests that what we're dealing with isn't a copy, but a split soul. There are magical items that can do that, such as a Ferula Gemina, so it's not unthinkable that high-level technology might do so as well."

"Clarke's Law– Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," Angel agreed, drawing gazes from everyone in the room. He shrugged. "Hey, I spent a lot of time reading during my… isolated period."

Fred nodded. "It's all energy manipulation down at the bottom, isn't it? Just a question of methods and costs."

"Okay, so what should have been a brainwashing machine split me into me and psychic killer me," Elsie summarized. "How bad is that?"

"Well, with the erratic soul signature… uh, it's not good," I replied. "You're not really stable like this. I'm not sure what all could happen, but… pretty sure at the very least, we'll eventually be looking at failure to thrive."

"Failure to what?" Randy asked, sitting up.

"Thrive," Monique responded, before I could. "An old term covering any unexplained child death."

Elsie winced. "Okay, so no pressure."

"Since you've got that thing up and running, you want to get some scans of me and Doyle?" Angel said, into the sudden silence. "Maybe Faith too– more data couldn't hurt, right?"

"It could hurt me," Doyle pointed out. "I still remember that little toy of Fred's that was supposed to- what was it- sonic scan for unusual anatomy?"

Fred huffed. "Your eyebrows grew back, I don't know what you're complain' about."

I swallowed a snicker, but as distractions went, it was a pretty good one, even if it was about as subtle as Godzilla trying to line-dance.

"Yeah, okay. Why don't we start with Faith, I'll be interested to see how her scans compare with Buffy's."

The two signatures were very similar, unsurprisingly, but what was weird was when I stripped it down to the basic "soul" signature and ran the separation program for another pass. It split into a pair of sine curves, and I pulled up Buffy's to run a comparison. Then I frowned.

"Uh. That's weird. These two signatures are pretty similar, which makes sense, they're in the right frequency and amplitude ranges to be standard human souls. But this pair… they're identical."

"Gotta be the Slayer," Faith said, leaning in over my shoulder. "The Slayer's not a category, like human or vampire or Brachen demon. There's only one, it gets passed from one to the next. We get each other's memories."

Monique raised an eyebrow. "And yet there are two of you right now."

"Yeah, but that's, like, two phones on the same line, or some shit. B and I sometimes get the Reader's Digest version of each other's days when we sleep. Not always, just the Slayer-y, important shit."

Okay, that made a weird kind of sense, I had to admit.

After that was Doyle, whose scans didn't have any surprises, unless you count the fact that the demonic component of his soul signature was distinctly more regular than most. Still spiky and erratic, but less so.

"Might explain why Brachens are generally so chill," Faith commented, which had Doyle making a bit of a grimace.

Then it was Angel's turn. At which point I almost rebooted the machine, because what I was seeing couldn't be right.