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Work in Progress. If you like this story, check out my other stories on the Fanfiction Net, Twisting the Hellmouth, and Fonts of Wisdom websites. Other sites please ask before using.
by Marcus L. Rowland
XIII
"She's still in a trance," said Tara, "I've got to kiss her to her to wake her. It's like she's sleepwalking."
"Yeah," said Buffy, "sleepwalking in mid-air and throwing out lightning bolts."
"That isn't lightning," shouted Jay, looking at his scanner, "looks like it, but it isn't normal electricity."
"Try the setting I showed you for magic," said Kay
"Tried it already. The screen's gone black."
"Holy..."
"She's burning out, going to hurt herself if I don't get to her," said Tara, and began to pick her way over the debris towards the door.
"There's something big jammed against the door," said Kay, "Can you climb over the consoles and through the window without cutting yourself?"
"No need," said Buffy, picking her up, "Hold tight..."
Buffy held Tara like a baby, took a short run, and jumped over the control consoles and through the gap in the glass, landing softly a few feet from Willow.
"I have to kiss her," said Tara.
Buffy lifted her to sit on her shoulder and walked towards Willow. Bolts of black lightning zapped into the floor around them, scattering the debris and starting small fires, but somehow neither of them was hit.
"Can you reach," asked Buffy.
"Just a little closer." Tara reached out and hugged Willow, and began to kiss her. They both rose into the air, until Tara's heels were level with Buffy's shoulder. Then the lightning began to die down, Willow's hair gradually faded to red, and her eyes began to clear as she started to sob. Suddenly the spell broke and both witches fell, landing on top of Buffy and knocking her to the floor.
"Guys!" said Buffy faintly, and began to wriggle out from under. Tara pulled herself together and began to help Willow up, and soon she was back in the chair, still sobbing.
"Willow," whispered Buffy, "can you tell us anything? What happened?"
"I did. I changed things. I... I did it..." Suddenly she was starting to smile through her tears. "This time I got it right. I beat the bastard. I beat him! This time Warren doesn't kill Tara!"
"Over-ride code wombat?"
"No."
"Over-ride code xylophone?"
"No."
"Over-ride code yeti?"
"Nope."
"Over-ride code zebra."
"Nope. That makes three times you've been through the alphabet," said April. "I'm bored now, so I'm going to call the police. I think that there may be a reward for you, and Buffy needs the money." She moved to grasp both of Warren's wrists in one hand; somehow he managed to get a hand free, draw his gun, and shoot her in the abdomen at point-blank range. Shards of soft plastic showered onto the floor, revealing the harder plastic and metal beneath, and flames began to flicker over one of her fuel cells. She stumbled and staggered back, landing on her side on the kitchen floor.
"Burn you bitch!" shouted Warren. The flames became brighter, and clouds of black smoke appeared. Smoke alarms began to beep. Warren suddenly realised that the fuel cells could explode and beat a hasty retreat from the house, hoping that it would burn to the ground. He'd have another try later, when the women were off-guard.
In the kitchen the heat burst a 5-gallon bottle of mineral water, which gushed down onto April's body. The fire slowly went out, leaving her hideously damaged.
"This is difficult to explain," said Willow, sipping from a bottle of water Buffy had found in her bag. "It all begins with the invisibility machine. The first time around Warren shot Tara, not you."
"But the machine wasn't that dangerous," said Buffy, "okay, so things slowly fell apart... oh. Oh!"
"They used it on Tara, and she wasn't as strong as you," she began to sob, "and we had no idea who had done it. I wouldn't leave her, didn't think of looking for clues. We were still trying to work out why someone would make her invisible when she began to... come apart. You died in my arms, Tara, and there wasn't even anything to bury, just sort of... invisible goo."
"I'm here," said Tara, patting her back. "Breathe."
"So I think I kinda went mad, and started looking for a way to change things. I tried to summon Osiris but he said it was a murder committed by men, not by magic, and wouldn't help. Then I thought of D'Hoffryn. I couldn't find his talisman, but I worked out a way to summon him anyway, and said I wanted revenge on your murderer. What I really wanted to do was make a wish, something that would get you back. Instead he offered to make me a vengeance demon, and like an idiot I jumped at it."
"Why an idiot?" asked Jay.
"Vengeance demons can't grant their own wishes. I had no way to make a wish that would get me what I wanted. So I thought about the powers I had and tried to find a loophole. In the end I did."
"How?" asked Buffy.
"I realised that I had to cast a vengeance spell that would change the past in such a way that I had never been a vengeance demon, another change would have to be that Tara wasn't in the line of fire that day. It had to change the past, but leave things close enough to the way they were that we were still lovers, still together. The trouble was that the spell had to include an element of retribution and bring grief to the person that made the wish, that's all part of the package. So I began to grant wishes, feeling for anything I could use. About a day in I felt someone about to make a wish, and teleported to this tiny little creature that I thought was some sort of demon. She made a wish, and I could feel that if I granted it the right way things would start to come out right. So I did."
"So what happened to your mother? The Baltian?"
"Don't you get it? To help me the spell had to affect the past. She wanted to be human, I made her human, but considering the size she had to be an embryo. So I slammed her back into the past. My past."
"You're...?" Buffy struggled, but couldn't quite finish the sentence.
"Yes, but It's more complicated than that."
Jay groaned. Tara stood by the chair, holding Willow's hands so tightly that her fingers were turning white.
"Mom became me, and things went a little differently. I must have been about eighteen months old when I began to speak Baltian, my memories - no, mom's memories - were starting to come back. She - I - thought that I'd somehow heard her dictating her reports, and wiped my memory so that the experiment wasn't contaminated. That time Warren ran Tara down as he was getting away after they shot you with the invisibility ray. After you both died I went looking for vengeance. Time after that Warren was using some sort of mind control magic, turned Tara into his slave, she fell down some stairs and broke her neck when she tried to get away from him. There were others, just as bad or worse."
She was crying as she remembered.
"Every time I did the same thing, summoned D'Hoffryn and tried to put things right, because I didn't know any better. It feels like it went round at least a dozen times, and I know that there must be hundreds of time lines where the same things happened without me thinking of using the amulet, or where they happened to other people, or where I found a different answer, or where I was the one that was killed. The last time it went back to the beginning, with the invisibility ray, and I somehow changed things just a little differently, so that Jay and Kay got the job of investigating mom instead of the guys who dealt with it in other time-lines. Every other time they just wrote her... me... off as missing, presumed dead, I never even knew what was going on. This time you guys wouldn't let it rest, and you let me use the machine. This thing I created is a horrible tangled mess of blood, death, and vengeance, but this time I remember what happened before it's too late, thanks to this machine. I remember too much... ten or twelve repeats of my life, plus fifty-odd years as a Baltian before that. But I think it finally started to come out okay."
"We're all alive," said Buffy, "I guess that's a good start."
"And Warren is getting what he deserves," said Willow.
"Willow..." said Tara.
"I can't stop it. Don't have the powers or knowledge to change things any more, wouldn't if I could. This is the world where things have changed, where everything that Warren has turns to dust and ashes. The more he fights it, the worse things get for him. The trouble with vengeance spells, there has to be a victim. I can't think of anyone better."
16.32.03/05 - Circuit breakers reset
16.33.05/10 - Reboot
16.34.09/40 - Damage control check complete:
16.34.10/16 - No current fire hazard
16.34.10/19 - Fuel cell 01 destroyed
16.34.10/22 - Fuel cell 02 inoperative
16.34.10/25 - Fuel cell 03 90% charged and operational
16.34.10/28 - Fuel cell 04 80% charged and operational
16.34.10/32 - Left leg 85% operational
16.34.10/35 - Right leg 100% operational
16.34.10/38 - Gyrostabilisers 75% operational
16.34.10/41 - Waist 55% operational
16.34.10/44 - Upper torso 100% operational
16.34.10/47 - Computer system 100% operational
16.34.11/01 - AI operational : Accessing personality : Accessing memories
April opened her eyes and tried to sit up. She realised that once-molten plastic was gluing her to the floor and began to peel off the burnt remnants of her dress and the damaged sections of skin, using her sharp nails to slice through the soft plastic. Eventually she was clear, and pulled herself to her feet with difficulty. Most of her left side from her waist downwards was bare metal, plastic, motors and wiring, with fragments of the outer skin remaining here and there. She lurched as she walked, and found it difficult to keep her balance, so practiced walking on the kitchen floor before heading upstairs to Willow's room to look for clothes. Eventually she found some jeans and a sweat-shirt that more or less fitted and covered the worst of the damage, and added a pair of sneakers, with the left foot padded out with socks to fit over the bare metal. A few strips of packing tape helped to hold it in place under the jeans.
She hobbled down to the kitchen and examined the answering machine, eventually working out how to make it record a message.
"This is April. Warren was here at 15.35 hours, he had a gun and has shot me. He has caused some damage, but I am sufficiently functional to pursue him. Please be careful; I think that he planned to harm someone. I'm sorry about the mess in the kitchen, the plastic should come off the floor if you use an industrial cleanser. I'll discuss repairs with Willow when I return. I must go now and find Warren and deal with him. When I have done so I'll be back."
To Be Continued
