~word~ indicates telepathic communication.

A/N: Still don't own anything.  Another disclaimer is that the Slayer prophecy was copied from UPN's website.  Don't ask me what this chapter is about because I have the feeling it's not going to turn out like I want it to.

Daeth: Hold your horses! For me, a chapter everyday to every other day is very good.  Ask Catlimere or Rosie if you don't believe me!  All other TTH reviewers: thank you for reviewing.

For my reviewers over on FF.net, thank you for reviewing even though I've noticed that most of you are readers who have read other fics by me.  For those of you, this will probably be the fic I continue updating until it's finished.  After that, I will update only when I have time.  That means that most of my fics won't be updated until Christmas break.

Sorry, but it's called being a high school student; being national bound in baton twirling; going on a cruise in January which means I have to take swimming lessons to get my swimming skills up to par; I do a paper route on the weekends, which requires getting up at 1:30 a.m.,  and somewhere in there I have to sleep.  The only thing I can thank God above for is that during the summer I get that precious commodity.

Chapter 3

Walking back to the locker room with his sister's friends, Zach couldn't help but reflect on what had just happened.  A spirit had just possessed Willow and the two girls had called it 'the same old, same old.'  For him, the experience had been downright freaky.  And he had a feeling that things were about to get even freakier.

"We're here," Willow stated softly.

"Oh," Zach muttered.  He hadn't even noticed that they'd stopped.  Damn and his life had been so much easier before all this happened!  His thoughts had stopped drifting to Lizzie years ago unless it was a holiday or their birthday.  But now they were constantly on his blonde…former blonde…sister.

And if all this possession stuff was normal for Faith and Willow, then was it normal for Lizzie?

"Yes," Buffy said with a sigh, "although we haven't had a lot of possessions since Xander kept getting possessed in high school.  And please recall that I'm not Lizzie anymore!"

Zach blinked.  He hadn't meant to say that out loud. "Sorry.  I didn't mean to say that out loud."

Willow took in the sight of the blushing wrestler and took pity on him.  "It's alright," she assured him.  "You'll notice I babble the majority of the time and Faith swears a lot. So, you see, we've all got our quirks."

"What's Buffy's?" Zach inquired, starting to feel at ease around Willow and the others.

Faith smirked.  "Getting vampires interested in her for sexual reasons. It's odd because she is the original Vampire Slayer for our generation."

"A what?!" Zach could have sworn that Faith had just said Vampire Slayer but… "Vampires don't exist."

~So we can communicate telepathically but vampires can't exist?~ Buffy sent.  Males were so thick headed.

~We've always been able to do that,~ he replied.

~Just like vampires have always existed.~

~How do you know that? And what exactly is this Vampire Slayer?~  Zach couldn't believe that vampires could exist but Buffy raised an interesting point. 

"Demons are said to have been the first beings to have roamed this planet. But God managed to put a stop to that and the side of good took control of the planet. The evil beings were forced to take a back seat to their counterparts. Ever since the side of good claimed the Earth, there has been a Slayer. A Chosen one to fight the forces of evil, whether it be vampires, demons or anything else Hell has the chance to spit out," Buffy stated somberly.  "And before you even ask, vampires are corpses that are inhabited by demons."

"And once again, what the hell is a Vampire Slayer exactly?" Zach queried.  

"Into each generation a Slayer is born. One girl in the entire world, a Chosen One. One born with the strength and skill to fight the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their numbers," Faith intoned.  "Basically, our job is to slay the vamps.  Exactly like our title would imply."

"Giles always said that prophecy so much better," Willow commented idly.  Suddenly her eyes narrowed.  "Zach said, 'once again.' But he hadn't been speaking.  Do you two have something you would like to share?"

Buffy and Zach exchanged glances. ~Well, should we share?~

His sister replied emphatically, ~I don't want to, but I can't see another option.~

~So, do we want to get into all of it, or just go for the regular, twin mind link thingy?~

Buffy laughed out loud on that one. ~And I'm the Californian blonde.  Why is it I want to capture this moment again?~

~Shut up!~

~Don't worry. I'll settle for simply blackmailing you.~

~Wonderful.~  Zach rolled his eyes. ~ Back to original question, what exactly do we tell them?~

~All of it,~ was the decisive reply.

Zach looked over at the two girls.  "We're not telling you what went on until you finish explaining why possessions are an everyday occurrence."

"Actually," Willow said, "it's like Buffy said, not a lot on the possession front since high school."

Faith sighed. "But to make a long story short, B and I are Slayers.  I was Called after Kendra died. Kendra was Called after Buffy was drowned by the master—who was a vamp, by the way—when she was sixteen."

~And Willow is?~ Zach questioned his sister.

"Willow is a witch," Buffy sighed.  It had been a long time since she'd used telepathy so constantly.  Sure, there was that whole deal with the telepathic demon infecting her when she was a senior, but it didn't really count.  Right now it was giving her a headache and she knew Zach would end up with a migraine.   Until they'd readjusted to using telepathy that would be the way things would be.

Willow glared at her best friend.  "Willow is one hell of a pissed off witch, right now," she corrected.  "Wanna explain what's going on?"

"Not before we tell him about Boca del Infernio," Buffy chirped.

"What does the Mouth of Hell have to do with anything?" Zach asked nervously.  He was starting to understand Buffy a little better, but there were just some things that one didn't ever want to find out about.  Unfortunately, he was finding them out.  Honestly, who wanted to find out about demons and vampires existing?

"You speak Spanish?" Buffy asked with a raised eyebrow.  She'd gone for Latin in high school and college, herself.

"Yeah," he said quietly.  "It was the language I studied in high school."

"That's cool," Faith said.  "My high school French class was a wonderful period…for sleeping."

All of them cracked up over that. Buffy was the first to speak.  "A Hellmouth is literally a Mouth of Hell.  It is a weak spot in the dimensional barrier separating Earth and Hell.  Ironically, the first settlers to come anywhere near our former hometown actually called it Boca del Infernio. We all spent considerable amounts of time in Sunnydale, California. Willow, Jesse, and Xander were actually born there."

Willow continued. "Xander and Jesse died there.  I'm just glad that I won't be continuing that tradition.  I mean, the three of us were best friends, but I really wouldn't want to even go near that crater."

"That's what Sunnydale is now, since the Hellmouth was closed for good," Faith explained. "According to the scientists, it was an earthquake that came out of nowhere."

"For us," his sister sighed, "it was the culmination of all our efforts.  We were so pumped going into that final battle.  Hell, this vamp we knew, even called us up before the final battle.  Said he'd be glad to help in the End of Days."

"We turned him down, though.  It wasn't that we couldn't have used the extra help but…" Faith trailed off.

"But what?" Zach prompted.

"But he'd been a bad guy even when he was trying to be good."  Willow grimaced.  There were a lot of memories there, and none of them were ones she particularly liked. "We couldn't be sure he wouldn't try to kill us. Spike had tried to do it before, you see."

"When all was said and done, though," Faith concluded, "we won.  We fought the End of Days battle, just us Scoobies. Former members came back to help out but unless you'd been an actual Scooby, you weren't allowed to help.  We were damn lucky that except for those of us on both sides that were fighting the final battle, the town no longer had residents.  It was literally a ghost town. Well, technically, it wasn't even that anymore.  Even the ghosts had fled."

"Wow," Zach finally breathed.  "I just have one question."

"What?" Willow asked.

"Where was the actual Hellmouth located?"

Buffy laughed.  "Underneath the high school library if you can believe it.  How's that for justifying all those teenage thoughts that high school is hell?"

"It has to be God's idea of a really bad joke," her brother agreed.

Willow tapped her foot impatiently.  "Now can we please get to the reason behind Zach not speaking but Buffy knowing what he was talking about?"

Buffy took a deep breath.  "This conversation can go no further than these walls."

The other two girls nodded in agreement.

"My earliest memories involve talking to my twin brother.  We were about two or three and we'd gotten in trouble again.  This time was due to water all over the bathroom.  The thing was, was that we didn't open our mouths once.  We'd talked telepathically the entire time."

Zach picked up from where his sister had left off.  "Over the years we realized that mind talking was not normal.  We never told anyone that we could communicate to each other as long as we were fifteen or less miles apart."

Faith's jaw dropped.  "Hold it! You and B are twins?  How the hell did that happen?"

 Zach smirked.  "I would hope that you would already know about the birds and the bees. I mean, first our parents met and then they married and then they had sex…"

Willow turned scarlet.  "I think Faith meant why didn't we know."

This time it was Buffy who answered.  "Our parents died when we were seven and we were split up.  I went with our maternal aunt and Zach went with our paternal one."

"Until someone decided to come to the company without telling me, we hadn't seen each other in fifteen years.  We exchanged meaningless letters about three times a year, making a lot of small talk, but we told each other almost nothing."  Zach's eyes told the story of pain and loss.

His sister stuck out her tongue. ~Bite me, jerk.~

~I'd rather not. One never knows whether or not they have rabies. If I didn't know any better, I'd definitely say you do.~

When the two siblings looked back over at Faith and Willow, Faith was drumming out a rhythm on Willow's head.  For her part, the redhead was humming a tune in unison with the tapping.  "Suppose we should explain more of the bond, shouldn't we?"

"Yes, Buffy, you should," Willow snapped. She was getting impatient.   The fact that Buffy was her best friend and she didn't even know that Buffy was adopted really rankled.

The petite Slayer sighed.  "When we were about five or six, we finally got up the nerve to tell our father.  He told us that we had to keep it a secret.  If we didn't, he told us, bad things would happen."

The only male in the room continued the story.  "It wasn't until long after we'd been separated that we found out the truth.  On our sixteenth birthday, a letter arrived for each of us.  In mine, it told of why he felt like he had to kill himself; he didn't have anything to live for anymore."

"Besides that, my letter and his also told of how Dad's family had been strong in telepathic communication for generations.  It also spoke of how if we wanted to develop our gifts, we would be able to communicate with virtually anyone, anywhere in the world."  Buffy took a deep breath, readying herself for the next part.  "But I didn't want to.  I'd already found out that I was the Slayer; I didn't want to deal with training myself to do something that could, quite possibly, drive me into madness."

"Madness?" Faith echoed.

"Madness," Zach confirmed. "Imagine being able to hear the all the people of the world's thoughts.  If your shields slip for even a moment, then all these voices will fill your head, each clamoring for attention.  With our mother there to anchor him, our father's shields never faltered.  Once she died though…"

"Once she died, his shields slipped and he committed suicide," Buffy sighed again. It really seemed like that was all she'd been doing lately.  "Now do you understand why neither of us ever tried to develop our telepathic powers?"

Faith nodded while Willow said, "It's just that I feel like I don't know you anymore."

"I'm the same person I was the day I told you that I'd lost my virginity, Wills."  Buffy shot a smile at the redhead.  "You know that, right?"

"I guess."

Faith grinned.  "You know, I think I know exactly what we should do."

Buffy groaned. "Oh no.  No, no, no!  We are not going to go to a bar."

The other three shot her wicked grins. "Come on.  I've never been drinking with you.  Think of it as a bonding experience."

"Zach's right," Willow said, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Think of it as a bonding experience."

"Fine," Buffy said, throwing up her hands.  "Let's go."  As they walked out, the only thought running through her mind was, 'What the hell have I done?'

 A/N: Well, it might be another couple days before the next update. I really don't know.  But my muse and I are going to our stepmother's on Thursday, so that will be spent seeing what we can order from pay-per-view and all around annoying the hell out of Larry, our step-grandfather.

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