Chapter 7:
Slayer and Princess
Marise stared unbelievingly at the two blondes. "I don't believe you," she said with complete conviction and seriousness.
Buffy grimaced and nodded. "I didn't expect you to. Personally, I have no idea why I brought you here. All I know is, I'm chasin' down some vamps, see one about to get Serena here, then I take it out and introduce myself like any good superhero should do. The second that we touch, there's a flash of light and I'm back in a dream that I've been having for the past few weeks and Serena's in a white silk dress with a yellow moon painted on her forehead, and I'm in a toga beside her, and according to her I also have a moon painted on my forehead. So you will excuse me if I'm a bit tired from just about everything that's been happening recently, okay?"
Nobody spoke after Buffy's words, but Serena placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. Buffy didn't push her away, but she didn't say anything else either. Finally Rini, who had been silent up until this moment, walked up to Buffy and looked into the girl's hazel eyes with her pink/red ones. "My name's Rini. I'm Serena's cousin. And…for what it's worth…I believe you.
Buffy smiled and gently caressed Rini's cheek. "Thank you Rini. You know you remind me a lot of my sister. Her name's Dawn. I think you two might get along pretty good."
"Yeah, well the brat here," Serena spoke up, "could use a good babysitter. Though I'd tell your sister to be careful, Rini can be more than a handful at times. I'm speaking from personal experience I'll have you know."
At Rini's scowl, Buffy couldn't help herself and giggled some. "Well, no offense Rini, but I think my sister could probably give you a run for your money. Sometimes I think that she's been running for the 'Delinquent of the Year' award."
"She can't be nearly as bad as the brat, can she?" Serena asked, a tinge of worry working its way into her voice.
Buffy smiled and lifted an eyebrow at the concept. "I don't know. Right now, Rini I think that you are an adorable and polite young lady and it might do Dawn some good to spend some time with you. Maybe not with you," Buffy directed the comment at Marise, "But for right now, we're here to research something called 'Prophecy of Nine' and something about a tale of Soldiers, Warriors, and Guardians.' At least I think that's how it goes."
"Prophecy of Nine?" Darien repeated.
Buffy nodded as she stood up. "Hopefully, its in one of Giles' books that he left here. Come on, it's a research party!"
Not knowing what else to do, the foreigners quickly followed Buffy out to the main room.
Thunder, Warrior, Lover:
Xander was just pulling up to the Magic Box and putting the car in park when he saw two things that immediately disturbed him. First, was Detective Stein staked out across the street, passed out in the front seat. The second was Rei jumping out of the car and then just staring at the store like it was both a nightmare made real and the most beautiful sight in the world.
"What the…!" Xander cursed as he quickly parked the car. As soon as it was safe, he jumped out of the car himself and ran up to the raven-haired girl and started yelling at her in Japanese to the best of his ability. "What in the world do you think you were doing you fool!? I almost had a freakin' coronary when you pulled that stunt! Don't you ever do something like that again! Do you hear me in there?"
Rei wasn't paying any attention whatsoever, too busy staring in awe at the sign above the magic store. It was almost as though Rei had been wondering if her vision was real, constantly second-guessing herself, and seeing the store in person…proved that she wasn't crazy. Xander sighed and stopped trying to reprimand the girl and turned to Lita and Anya, getting out of the car much slower than Rei and Xander had.
"That's strange," Anya muttered before Xander could say anything more.
His face falling, and his gut following the same path, as he turned to her and asked with dread, "What? What's strange? Besides Rei jumping out of the car nearly giving me a heart attack in the process and then staring at our place of business in a catatonic state, that is."
"No, the lights are on," Anya said matter-of-factly.
"Oh," Xander replied with a frown.
The group moved forward, Anya taking out the store keys, then Xander caught a glimpse of movement in the back of the store through the front window. "Hold on, I think someone's in there," he told the women.
"I see them too Xan," Lita responded.
Anya's eyes widened in fear. "They better not be robbers! If they're robbers, then they've come to take my money! Xander you can't let them take my money! You go stop them. Beat them up and stuff!" Anya opened the door and shoved Xander through.
'Gee, thanks An,' Xander thought to himself as he grabbed a somewhat handy long piece of wood under a sign labeled 'Wizard's Staffs' and stalked forward. He almost yelped, but managed to stop himself when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Fortunately it was only Lita.
"Don't worry Xan, I've got experience in 'beating people up and stuff'," she smirked at him and crept forward with him.
When they both saw who it was, and what they were doing, they stopped dead and dropped their mouths open in shock.
"BUFFY!"
"SERENA!"
"Hi Xander," Buffy said casually from where she sat at the "research table" with a book in front of her.
"Hi Lita, what are you doing here?" Serena said in the same manner from opposite Buffy in the same position.
"What am I doing here? What are you doing here?" Lita shot back.
"Researching," was the simple reply from all at the table; Serena, Marise, Rini, Buffy, and even Darien.
"Researching," both Lita and Xander replied dully. They received nods as confirmation.
Xander sighed a chuckle and asked, "What's the matter Buffy? We lose our resident Watcher so now you're holding interviews for other foreigner researchers? You aren't are you?"
"No Xan. I've been having some dreams recently, you know prophecy type dreams, and it turns out that Serena here has been having the same dreams. We found each other about an hour ago after they were attacked by a vamp and I slayed said vamp, and then this really weird vision thing happened and I found out that I'm actually a reincarnated Slayer from four thousand years ago and that Serena is the Princess that I'm supposed to protect from demonic forces and there's this whole new evil coming up and the only way for me to defeat it is to die again and then come back, again, and get something called the 'true power' of the Slayers and then I brought Serena and her family here to research the Prophecy of Nine and some story involving warriors, soldiers, and guardians. Oh, and this is Darien, Rini, and Marise, Darien's sister." Buffy answered him.
Lita and Xander just stared at the group, in particular the short blonde that had just turned back to the book in her hands. Then they slowly turned to look at each other.
"Okay. I'll go and see if the pizza place is here. I'm sure Anya's got some snack stuff around here anyway, but you can ask her. Lita, you want to come with and be snack gal or wanna stay here and get an early bead on being research gal?" Xander asked.
Lita looked back and forth between the group at the table and Xander. Then she turned and followed him back toward the door. They stopped when Rei and Mina both shouted, "SERENA! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"
Just before Xander and Lita were about to exit the store, none other than Willow Rosenberg stepped into the threshold.
"Hi Xander, what's going on? Dawn got worried when Buffy didn't come back on time from patrol, so we thought that there might be a big bad afoot and came here," Willow informed him as the younger Summers behind her stepped forward.
TBC…