Willow hummed quietly along to the piped mall music as she flipped through the store rack of clothing.
Part fifty-seven of the 'Willow's no longer a wicked witch' Twelve-step Program was the buying of a whole new wardrobe to reflect that fact. At least, it was if you listened to Buffy, who only needed an excuse such as 'I must co-ordinate with my manicure' to buy a new wardrobe.
And Willow was doing well! She really was. She hadn't touched magic in one month and twenty-three days. It was a lot easier now than it had been. She no longer wanted to use magic to make her life easier. Although, if she had to admit it, she had often been tempted to use magic to help Buffy and the others. And now that she wasn't using magic, it seemed as though her mutant powers had exploded. For example, just the other day, without intending to, she had accidentally covered Buffy's entire kitchen in ice.
It hadn't been her fault. She had been cooking her lunch and thinking about the fact that she really should consider moving out when the tea towel she had left next to the cooker had accidentally caught on fire. When she'd realised what was going on, she'd immediately tried to remove the heat element of fire with her mutant power, but it had all gone horribly wrong. The fire had died down but somehow she'd gone way too far and the tea towel had acquired a layer of frost all over it. Things hadn't stopped there. Everything else in the kitchen had acquired a layer of frost. Willow had somehow managed to turn the air in the kitchen down to subzero temperatures. It had taken until Dawn came home from school for the kitchen to warm back up to an acceptable temperature, and even then there had still been a noticeable chill in the air.
But it wasn't just stuff like the kitchen that had Willow convinced that her mutant powers were out of control. She was finding that she had to be more and more careful about daydreaming, as whenever she was distracted, things tended to go a little haywire. Like when Dawn's hot chocolate had started boiling in her mug. And the time when she'd been wondering what she'd look like if she cut her hair and suddenly, without realising, she had used her mutant power to literally dissolve a good few inches of her hair into nothing. The new haircut had looked awful and it had taken her four hours to painstakingly add an extra couple of inches onto the end of each hair on her head. Then there was the time Buffy had fallen down into the basement. From the dining room. The others weren't quite certain how the hole in the floor had come to be there but they were blaming the Hellmouth. Something that Willow was extremely glad about, because it kept them from figuring out that she was a mutant who, whilst daydreaming, had accidentally turned the dining room floor into oxygen.
It seemed as though the longer Willow went without using magic, the greater her mutant powers grew. Until she had given up magic, it had always seemed like an incredible effort to use her powers but now it was happening without her even being aware of it. And the kitchen incident still sent shivers down her spine. She could remember with a disturbing clarity how everything she could see had brightened beyond belief as the tiny molecules of water inherent in the atmosphere had huddled closer and closer together, freezing in midair and plunging the temperature in the room way down.
Willow pulled a purple top out of the rack and looked at it critically. Perhaps if the sleeves were a little longer…
She felt the internal pop that signified a change in her surroundings. Willow looked around, wondering what she had changed and if anyone had noticed. She couldn't see anything, but she shoved the top back onto the rack and hurried out of the store and back into the mall, just in case.
Behind her, the sleeves of the top dangled half-an-inch beyond the sleeves of other, formerly identical, tops in the rack.
Willow glanced at her watch as she passed the sunken food court. The sun would have gone down a good hour ago and she had no lift to take her safely back home. But Buffy would be getting off of work and passing the main mall entrance in about half an hour and she could walk home with her. Willow decided to grab some food at the food court whilst she waited.
* * *
Willow was on her way to an empty table, a tray full of food firmly grasped in her hands when it happened. A bright flash temporarily blinded her and a tape recorder was shoved under her nose. When her vision cleared, she saw standing before a her a maudlin looking reporter and his equally depressed photographer. The reporter flashed his card at her.
"Saul Robertson, Sunnydale Press." He muttered. "I wonder if I could ask you a few questions for our 'Focus on Sunnydale' column?"
Willow carefully placed her tray on a nearby table and glanced at her watch. "Uhhh." She said noncommittally.
"Great." Saul monotoned. "Name?"
"Willow Rosenburg." Willow informed him with a resigned sigh and a despairing glance at her surroundings. That same glance cane to rest on the entrance to the Food Court as Around twenty or so vampires stormed in and blocked both the door in and out of the Food Court and the fire exits.
Willow stepped back and assessed the situation. With no way in and no way out, the mall shoppers were trapped in an enclosed area. The Slayer wouldn't be going past for another twenty minutes at least, and probably wouldn't even come into the mall, choosing instead to go home and have a long shower before getting ready for patrol. Everyone in the Food Court was going to be vampire food and they didn't even know. And that damn reporter was still asking her questions.
"Age?" Saul repeated, obviously getting testy.
"Twenty-one." Willow told him absently, her attention still focussed on the vampires. At best she could maybe take out two of them before the rest overwhelmed her. But if she at least tried, then there was a chance that perhaps the other shoppers would get the whole 'pointy piece of wood in heart = no more nasty man' equation. Willow realised that her plan contained a lot of 'what ifs' but it was the best one she could come up with.
Saul's photographer followed her gaze, disturbed by the intensity of her look. Nervously, he looked back and forth between the slight redhead Saul was interviewing and the men with the disturbing features who were blocking the exit. As he watched, one of the men made his way towards a small stage and jumped up onto it.
"Have you lived in Sunnydale long?" Saul asked.
Willow moved a few steps forward, staring at the vampire ringleader as he bounded onto the small stage at one end of the Food Court. Willow could remember occasionally coming here for lunch back in High School, when the Dingoes were playing on that very same stage. "All my life." She replied distractedly.
Saul perked up a little. This was a column that might actually be interesting for a change. It was so rare that he actually got a chance to interview one of Sunnydale's born and bred natives that he was beginning to wonder if they really existed. He frowned as the girl, what had she said her name was?, stepped past him and began to run towards the stage. Beside him, his photographer, he'd forgotten his name too, lifted up his camera and started taking pictures.
In front of Willow, the vampire leader reached down and lifted up a young teenaged girl from among her friends. She couldn't have been more than thirteen at most, certainly younger than Dawn. Around the Food Court, the other vampires took that as their cue to begin eating and each grabbed whoever was closest.
Still unnoticed by the vampires, Willow pushed herself harder, ran faster, praying that she reached the vampire before he had a chance to hurt the girl.
The man on stage lowered his head to the young girls neck as Saul's photographer took another picture.
Willow leapt up onto the stage and used her forward momentum to land a really good right hook on the vampire's forehead. The vampire growled, forced to let go of the girl and stagger back.
Around the Food Court, people's attention was diverted to the proceedings onstage whilst others cried out as the vampires that held them drank deeply from their necks.
Onstage, Willow and the vampire circled one another, each looking for an opening. Suddenly, the vampire lunged at Willow. She attempted to side-step but wasn't quick enough; the vampire caught her shoulder as he passed and knocked her to the ground.
Grinning toothily, the vampire stood over her. Willow's anger reached boiling point and she swept a leg into the vampire's ankles, making him lose his balance and fall to the stage beside her. Willow got to her feet as quickly as she could, eager to press her advantage, but the vampire was on his feet a fraction before her and lunging at her again.
This time, Willow managed to side step successfully and, grateful to Giles for his training, followed the vampire around with a roundhouse kick to the chin.
The vampire staggered back and Willow glanced at her hand, instantly creating a convenient stake with her mutant powers, before lunging forward and staking the vampire.
As he crumbled into dust, the other vampires in the Food Court began to notice what was happening and Willow found herself surrounded and vulnerable onstage as the five nearest vampires rushed at her. Absently, she noticed that Saul and his photographer were unaffected by the melee and that the photographer was currently taking pictures of both her and the vampires. Willow shrugged. After all, it no longer mattered if she was outed as a mutant; she was about to die anyway.
Two different vampires grabbed Willow's arms and a third snatched a handful of her hair, using it to tilt her head to one side, exposing her neck. Willow struggled futiley, her mind working overload.
She was a mutant… She was going to die… She was a mutant… Something seemed wrong… the one statement appeared to contradict the other. Surely if she was a mutant, there was a way out of this? Wait… her power…
Willow concentrated as one of the remaining two vampires onstage leant towards her throat. She had never consciously affected something as large as vampire but it might just work…
She pictured the vampire slowly dissolving into air. An internal popping sensation signalled that she had been successful.
Willow grinned. Amazingly, she felt fine. Changing the vampire into oxygen hadn't affected her adversely at all. If anything, it had upped her adrenaline levels slightly. Turning to the last of the vampires onstage not holding her in place, Willow decided to attempt something more creative. She pictured his shirt on fire and watched it happen. The vampire ran around the stage, trying to put himself out and Willow giggled at the image he made before he finally combusted.
Snarling, the vampire behind her lunged for her throat, but with a sidelong look and the judicious use of her power, one of the vampires holding her arms dissolved into thin air and Willow was able to use her arm to elbow the vampire behind her in the gut.
Capitalising on his shock, Willow glanced at her foot, imagined a stake protruding from her shoe, and swung around to deliver a kick to the chest of the vampire holding her other arm.
The vampire let go of her arm in order to stagger backwards, clutching his chest before turning to dust.
Willow grinned, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet. She felt great! As the one remaining vampire on the stage with her lunged forward, Willow swiftly bent down, grabbed her mutant-power-manufactured stake and smoothly stood back up to bury the stake in the his heart.
Leaving the stake where it was, Willow turned around to face her gaping audience, not bothering to check that the vampire dusted, choosing to rely on her years as a Slayerette to see that he did.
Instead, she glanced around the Food Court, actively seeking out the rest of the vampires and vaporising them with her mutant powers. A glance at her bestaked foot restored it to normality and with the vampires gone, Willow could finally turn her attention to the terrified teenager huddled where the vampire ringleader had dropped her.
She crouched down beside the girl and lifted her head, barely conscious of Saul's photographer taking another picture.
The girl screamed and scooted back. Confused, Willow looked at the girl and registered the fear in her eyes.
She frowned. "I'm not going to hurt you." Willow told the girl gently as her friends clambered up onto the stage.
Wrapping their arms around the girl they glared at Willow defiantly.
"Leave her alone!" One of the boys bravely told Willow as the girl sobbed.
Shocked to the core, Willow backed away before looking around her at the people she had just saved. They stared back at her, a mixture of fear and hostility in their glares. Willow retreated a few more steps, unable to fully comprehende what she was seeing.
"Mutant!" The boy hissed at her.
Willow ran.