Author's note: Hey, Bonnie! Thanks for the review. Like I said, this is just a getting-to-know-you story; later on things get very interesting…
Power of Four chapter 3
The club was dark; Piper leaned over the counter to put on the lights.
"Anyone see anything?" Leo asked, looking around.
"There." Kaia was standing just inside the door.
"What're you doing here?" Piper asked.
"How'd you get out of the wards?" Paige added. Kaia looked up at her, faintly confused.
"You made them to keep things out, not in. He's rising there." She pointed at a spot no different from any other spot.
"You sure?" Phoebe asked.
"Unless he changes direction on me, yes."
"You're not here." Leo said suddenly, and she threw an irritated glare at him.
"Not the issue."
"Where are you if you're not here?" Paige asked.
"I'm sitting in your garden. You know that. This isn't the time for this."
"How did you know?" Phoebe asked Leo. He flinched slightly, taking a step back.
"What do you mean?"
"Guys, demon rising…" Kaia reminded them. "Talk about it later, OK? You have your potion?"
"Yeah yeah, we've got it." Piper said irritably.
"He won't be very responsive when he rises." Leo said quickly. "As long as he doesn't…"
"Call up lots of creepy little minions to try and kill us all?" Paige said urgently, backing towards the others.
"Damnit!" Kaia hissed, vanishing. Phoebe blinked in surprise.
"Kaia's gone." she reported.
"She wasn't staying anyway." Leo said. "Not with Pyralis this close to rising."
"Piper, behind you!" Phoebe yelled suddenly, and the scene degenerated into relative chaos as the minions attacked and the Charmed Ones fought back.
Kaia reappeared beside Leo suddenly, gesturing urgently. Leo couldn't hear her over the wind that had sprung up, but he didn't need to; it was fairly obvious what she was saying.
Pyralis was rising.
The minions broke away from the sisters and formed circles around the area of floor, gazing adoringly at it; Piper shuddered as they regrouped.
"Now that's just creepy."
"Minions." Kaia snorted in disgust. "My followers never do that for me."
"Do you want them to?" Paige asked.
"That's not the point." Kaia sniffed.
"Can we please focus here, people?" Phoebe asked.
"Really no. Sorry." Kaia said.
The floor was starting to erupt, humping upwards; tiny tremors moved through the room, knocking tables and chairs. Glasses fell behind the bar, and in the kitchen plates and pans went flying. The sisters stood in a sort of null zone within the destruction; the tremors didn't touch them.
"You doing that?" Piper asked Kaia.
"Ye—eah. I am. Why?"
"Just checking. Can you do it more?"
"Not for the whole club, if that's what you mean. See, what I'm doing in here? I'm also doing on a global scale, trying to stop Pyralis killing people."
Paige was fidgeting with her bottle, getting ready to throw it. "Can we stop him rising? If we do the spell now?"
"No." Piper caught her hand, stopping her. "Just wait, Paige."
Kaia turned suddenly, attention caught by something else. "I have to go."
"What? Why?"
"Just…I have to go. I'll be at the Manor when you get back."
"Kaia…" Piper started.
"Please, Piper. I have to go." Piper blinked, realizing suddenly that Kaia wouldn't go without her say-so, for all her protestations.
"Go…don't worry about us…"
"Throw the potion, say the spell…could do it in your sleep, huh?" She vanished before they could answer, and at the same time there was a roar as Pyralis appeared.
"This is unreal." Piper muttered.
Pyralis looked human. Blond, blue eyed, a little taller than Leo, he stood casually in the middle of his minions, smiling benignly at them.
"He's using a glamour." Leo said quickly. "Don't trust what you see. He's trying to fool you."
"We needn't fight." Pyralis said calmly. His voice was soothing, and the girls each felt the urge to give in. "You are protected. I will not come against you if you do not come against me."
"No deal." Piper muttered, nudging her sisters in the ribs. Phoebe gasped as if woken too fast. "Ready?" Piper demanded.
"It won't work." Pyralis said, voice losing a little smoothness now. "Better witches than you have tried."
"You won't mind if we try anyway then." Paige said brightly, hurling her bottle at him. It shattered against his chest, joined quickly by two more.
"Demon of smoke and fire and pain,
Banished now, never seen again!"
Pyralis stared at them. "Hmm. Didn't work, did it?"
"Phoebe…" Piper said warningly.
"Not your fault." Kaia was back, standing between them and Pyralis; he shied away from her, hissing. "Power of Two doesn't work. Paige didn't say the spell."
"What? I did so!" Paige protested.
"Thought you did. Pyralis uses glamour. You didn't say anything." She glanced back, smiling. "I'm an Elf. Say the spell again."
"The potion's gone." Piper pointed out.
"Still on him. Say it again."
The girls chorused the spell again; Kaia stepped back and was beside Leo when they finished.
Pyralis stared at her. "You…"
"You set yourself against me." Kaia said softly.
"You can't…" He was starting to smoke as the potion kicked in.
Kaia lifted her hand, as though blowing something away. "Take your minions with you." she said coldly. Pyralis laughed as the spell hit him full force and he began to disappear.
"They're not mine yet…" echoed through the room.
"Crap." Kaia muttered, fanning a hand in front of her face to clear the smoke. "Piper, the minions didn't vanish. They're about to…"
"Oof!" Phoebe yelled as someone tackled her, unseen through the smoke.
"Phoebe?" Paige called.
"Paige…ack!" Piper was likewise knocked off her feet.
"Leo?" Kaia's voice was high.
"Stop yelling, they'll know…" Phoebe cut off abruptly. Kaia dropped to a crouch, ignoring the screams around her, and concentrated on calling a breeze to clear the room.
"Great, now we can see who's kicking our ass!" Piper complained.
"Piper, some of them are human." Leo said quickly, catching her hands as she prepared to blow them up.
"You can't kill them." Kaia agreed.
"Great, so what are we supposed to do?" Piper demanded.
"Can you do that thing like you did to that demon earlier?" Paige asked.
"Not inside. And not to humans, they wouldn't survive it." Kaia said impatiently.
"They're under a spell." Leo said.
"So we need an anti-spell spell?" Paige said. "Phoebe?"
"What?"
"You're the spell guru. Come on."
Bizarrely, the minions kept attacking as they spoke. Paige and Leo orbed around the room, managing to avoid anyone touching them; Phoebe and Piper were holding their own; and no one went near Kaia, who was still couched near the stairs.
"Nothing like pressure to make you…" Phoebe cut off again, blocking an attack.
"Feel under pressure?" Kaia suggested, rising to her feet again. One of the minions, shrieking, rebounded off Piper and landed in front of her, staring at her dazedly before surging to his feet and preparing to attack. "Don't be an idiot." she said sharply to him.
When that didn't faze him, she unslung the bow, pulling it into position, nocking an arrow and aiming at his chest in one swift move. He froze, staring at her in disbelief. "Yeah. Try me."
"Kaia." Leo said from somewhere behind her. "He's human."
"I know that, Leo." Her aim didn't waver. "I don't have to kill him. I could just…" She shifted aim so fast none of them caught it. "…take his arm off. Or a leg, maybe."
Leo's hand caught her arm and forced it down, ruining her aim, and the minion scampered away.
"You're lucky I let you do that, Leo." She relaxed her arm, letting the tension in the bow fade away. "There aren't many I would."
Phoebe's voice rang out suddenly, her hastily-written spell catching the minions in their tracks; seconds later, Paige and Piper joined in, repeating the spell. Kaia watched in something approaching disbelief as, across the whole club, all the minions stopped what they were doing, dropped whatever make-shift weapons they'd been using, and simply wandered out.
"Nice timing, Phoebe." Leo said, carefully letting go of Kaia's arm and moving away.
"Yeah, you think you could have waited until I was bruised all over?" Paige asked. "Oh wait…"
"Very funny, Paige." Phobe said, staring around in dismay. "Aw, the club…."
"I can fix your floor." Kaia offered. "But that's about as much as I can do."
"Can you?" Piper asked in surprise.
"Yeah. You'll have to get the flooring re-laid, but I can fix the underneath part." She dropped to sit cross-legged on the floor, then she shook her head and stood up abruptly. "Only I can't do it split like this. I'll be back in a while." Before anyone could say anything she vanished again.
"I wish she'd stop doing that." Phoebe muttered, picking up a fallen table.
"Should I go get her?" Paige asked, directing the question to the room at large.
"There's no point." Leo said. "She won't be aware yet. She'll get here when she gets here."
"Yeah, stop trying to sneak off without helping." Piper put in, holding out a rubbish sack to her youngest sister.
"I am not!" Paige took the bag with as much dignity as she could muster and stalked away, starting to pick up the remains of Piper's glassware.
They worked in silence for a while, cleaning up as much as they could. Leo fixed several chairs and tables, Piper stacked unbroken crockery behind the bar, and Phoebe and Paige cleared away what couldn't be fixed. Kaia arrived a little over an hour later, pale and unresponsive, and fixed the floor before helping with the rest of the jobs."Kaia." She startled at a hand on her arm and looked up at Paige. "We're going. Are you coming?"
"Yeah." Kaia glanced around once. "Yeah. Let's go."