Freaks and Geeks and Other Surprises

"What's all the fuss now?" Spike asked lazily as he strolled into Angel's office. Then, he took in the sights. "And what are my kids doing here?" He approached his offspring and passed out some cautious kisses. Evidently someone had conveniently forgotten Rose's rules on nutrition and indulged the twins with pizza. Both of them were liberally smeared with sauce and various other ingredients. Not to mention how much of it they were wearing. "Your mum's gonna have a fit," he muttered, wiping a stray smear of pizza sauce off his own face. He hadn't been quite careful enough when kissing them.

The twins had been distracted from concerns about Lindsey with the arrival of their food, which was what Oz had had in mind when he'd ordered it. They could worry later. And he could explain to Rose later, too.

By the time everyone had trailed in, the children were finished with their repast and were reasonably sanitary. Enough so that Angel didn't think twice about taking Ariel on his lap, as he usually did.

"Are we finally going to get down to business?" Wesley asked a little peevishly. "Some of us have a lot of work waiting."

"Lindsey McDonald." Angel said nothing more. It would mean nothing to the newer contingent, unless they'd heard a few stories, but the group he originally moved in here should need little more.

"Is he mixed up with Richard McDaniels?" Gunn asked. "Or is he just a side issue by being his usual charming self?"

"We don't know yet," Angel admitted. "But he just 'bumped into' the kids while Oz had them out skating, and the thought of Lindsey palling around with my godchildren.., Well, let's say that I can't think of a way that makes that sound completely innocent."

"That man hasn't been innocent since the day he was born," Fred stated with a little sniff.

"Probably not even then," Lorne put in. "He has a great set of pipes on him, but the man can't be trusted. And I really don't like the idea of him being around..,"

"My kids," Spike finished. "So, you going to fill us in on this or not?"

"In a minute," Angel stalled. He gave Ariel a kiss and a squeeze before he asked what he considered to be the sixty-four thousand dollar question. "Honey, why didn't you read his mind?"

"I was going to," Alaric volunteered. "But she wouldn't let me."

Looks were exchanged. Because Alaric was a bit more forward (not that either twin was shy), and a little more boisterous, most of them had assumed that he was the dominant twin. Now, they weren't so sure.

"Why didn't you want to read his mind, lambie-pie?" Lorne asked gently.

"I ran into him and knocked him down," Ariel started to explain. "And he was so nice about it." Her voice dropped, and her eyes lowered. "Sometimes it's just too easy to forget the difference between what you heard someone say and what you read in their mind. I didn't want to make a mistake and let him know that I was a freak."

Alaric was the only one present who didn't looked shocked to the soles of his shoes.

"Who called you a freak?" Angel's voice was quiet, gentle, even. But there was something in his eyes that said that someone was going to pay for that particular insult.

Ariel shook her head and slid out of his lap so quickly he almost missed it. The kids were coming into their own as vampires. Lorne was the next closest person to him, and Ariel scrambled into his lap and buried her face in his shoulder while Spike glared daggers at Angel.

"You did, Uncle Angel," Alaric informed him quietly. "Last year, when you didn't have your soul. We saw it in daddy's mind."

Since first receiving a soul, Angel had had many moments in which he felt lower than low. This one set new records.

"Baby girl, that was Angelus," Lorne crooned soothingly. "Your Uncle Angel would never say anything like that about you. He loves you."

"I know," Ariel mumbled, face still burrowed into him. Then, she lifted her head, tell-tale streaks on her delicate little face. "But now Uncle Angel's upset with me because I didn't read Lindsey and find out he's a bad man." She looked around at various 'aunts' and 'uncles'. Even without telepathy she could tell they thought Lindsey was a bad man.

"Sweetheart, I'm not upset with you," Angel disagreed. Having his goddaughter cry really was making him feel like the scum of the earth.

Spike was suddenly there, gently pulling his daughter out of Lorne's embrace. "No one's mad at you, precious," he remarked gently. "But I want you to promise daddy that from now on you'll read the mind of any male that so much as says hello to you."

Surprisingly, Rose was the first to catch the implications. "Oh for heaven's sake, Spike," she interjected. "She's just a little girl."

"It's not all that bad an idea, Rose," Gunn put in. Privately, he was on Spike's side on this one. "You never know what kind of people they're going to run across."

"In which case they should both do an initial reading on everyone at first meeting," Fred pointed out.

"I've been trying to get them not to do it at all," Rose protested. "They have plenty of adults around them to protect them, they don't need to be snooping around in people's minds. It's rude."

"Really, Rose, I think you're going overboard here," Wes exclaimed. "The Powers, you included, must have had their reasons for endowing the children with telepathy. It's their first line of defense."

Rose was building up a fine head of steam and was about to demand angrily if anyone else felt a need to tell her how to raise her children, when she stopped herself. These were her friends, and if they were a little excessive in their advice or criticism concerning the twins, it was because they loved her and her children. Put that way, she could hardly be angry with them.

So, more mildly than she'd intended, Rose said, "Perhaps we can discuss the comparative ethics of telepathy another time and you could tell Spike and me who Lindsey is and why he shouldn't be near our children."

&&&&&&&&&

Harmony eyed the newcomer appraisingly and not altogether approvingly. But, she was ready for a vacation, so she'd have to train someone to fill in for her while she was gone. And this was what personnel had sent her.

She was only about an inch or so shorter than Angel, and her glossy, honey-brown hair hung in an untidy, albeit attractive mass of curls. Her eyes were hard to gauge, hidden behind tinted glasses. She didn't smell quite human, though she looked it. Although that wasn't what had Harmony's hackles raised at the moment, if she were some sort of human looking demon, well, she'd still had to be thoroughly screened. No, it was someone new coming into what Harmony still felt was 'her' territory and not even having the decency to have any obvious flaws.

"Okay," Harmony finally said. Might as well get it over and done with. "First thing in the morning, you get the boss a cup of blood. If you don't, he's cranky all day. Sometimes he is anyway." She started shuffling through some papers. She had a list somewhere that she'd made.

Corinna watched with interest. What was being asked of her didn't seem difficult, merely incomprehensible. But, she was intelligent and adaptable. She was sure that she could cope. And maybe, just maybe escape what had been her own personal prison for many years.

&&&&&&&&

The subject of Lindsey had been dealt with, for the moment. Oz and the kids had returned to the senior partner's suite, and everyone else had returned to their respective departments. Except for Fred, who had some lab results to report on.

"Analysis of the dress Rose was wearing revealed almost nothing," Fred announced. "Except that something can be well made and expensive and still be ugly."

"Is that all you could come up with?" Angel asked.

"No, not really," Fred replied. "But if you ever go shopping for a girlfriend, I can give you some real good advice where not to shop."

Angel rolled his eyes. "How about getting to the important stuff, Fred?" he suggested. "I take it you did find something on the clothes Spike and I were wearing?"

"Not yours." Fred confirmed his suspicions. "But that yellow mark on Spike's jeans..,"

"What was it?" Angel sighed, closing his eyes and envisioning the worst.

"Well..," Fred hesitated to comment. "It looks like someone turned a Bromian slug-puppy loose in there. I'll leave it to your imagination just what the yellow stuff was. But tests show that not only is it a female, but she's pregnant. She's most likely been living on what scraps she could glean, but she's probably getting very hungry. I'm surprised she didn't try to attack you guys."

"Since the incinerator was lit almost as soon as we were out of there," Angel mused. "Then it's probably dead now, anyway."

Fred shook her head. "It has a very high tolerance to heat, although she wouldn't be able to stand the flames directly. She probably felt it start to get warm and just crawled up the wall and stayed there out of harm's way until things cooled down again."

"Lovely." Angel shook his head in disgust. Why couldn't it ever be easy? "How dangerous is it? What does it take to kill one? And how did it get in there in the first place?"

"They're not too hard to kill," Fred replied. "But you don't want to do it with your bare hands. When it feels threatened, it exudes a very acid sweat. And the acid is about double, maybe triple strength in the pregnant ones."

"Pregnant." Now the word was really filtering into his consciousness. "Do you have any idea how long it takes? Or when it will deliver?"

"I know the gestation period," Fred answered. "But just from the specimen on Spike's jeans, I can't tell how far along she is. But I think you're going to want to get her before she gives birth, if you can."

Angel rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily. "How many?" he asked. Not that he was really sure that he wanted to know.

"Usually upwards of twenty or so," Fred informed him. "But if she isn't getting enough to eat, some of them might not survive."

Angel rolled his eyes. "And just for the sake of information, what will these slug-puppies do if we don't wipe them out?"

&&&&&&&&

"Find another poor, unsuspecting sod to do your dirty work," Spike advised. "Because I am not wading through that muck again." He gave an experimental sniff. "Swear I can still smell it on me."

"A human wouldn't be fast enough," Angel sighed. "Fred said they're pretty fast, even if they are gastropods. And if she's already given birth, we could have a whole bunch of them to deal with."

Spike wasn't ready to cave in just yet.

"From what you've said so far," he pointed out. "If we just leave them where they are, they'll mind their own business as long as we mind ours. So what do you want to go slogging in there for?"

"Because once the female has mated," Angel explained, a little less than patiently "She never has to again. And Fred described these things as being the equivalent of cockroaches in their own dimension. If we don't clean them out, we'll be ass-deep in them in no time."

"Didn't sign on as a bloody exterminator," Spike grumbled, making for the exit.

"Where are you going?" Angel demanded.

Spike glared at him. "To change into my Sunday best," he snapped sarcastically. "I only throw out the very finest, you know."

"The company will reimburse you for your clothes," Angel promised, feeling and sounding, tired. But the idea of changing into the worst he had in his closet made sense.

"Why don't you just go sod yourself?" Spike suggested, before the door slammed behind him.

&&&&&&&&

Corinna looked around cautiously. No one in sight. Even her task mistress, Harmony, had popped out for just a minute. She looked down at where ten human fingers were slowly clicking away at the keyboard. She blinked, and the ten bare, human fingers became eight hirsute, arachnid legs, which then began to dance over the keys at a truly phenomenal speed.

&&&&&&&

"Do you think that anyone who really cares about you is going to believe that you're a freak?" Alaric was sitting near by, but Ariel was curled up on Oz' lap like an overgrown cat. She seemed to feel a need for the comfort, of late.

Oz was answered by a dead silence, which hung heavy on the air.

"Well?" he prompted, after several uncomfortable minutes had ticked past.

"Dunno," Alaric mumbled. The twins had always been so surrounded by love that it seldom if ever occurred to them that there was anything radically different about them.

Until last year, when Angel had become Angelus.

And it wasn't just Angelus' remark that they'd pulled out of their father's head either. Their trip to England had been quite and eye opener. It had been the first time in their lives that they hadn't felt universally loved. And there'd been a few of the young Slayers who'd had some unflattering thoughts about them as well.

They'd cut way back on just how deeply they'd read strangers after that trip. Mostly, they just confined themselves to their nearest and dearest, which were, after all, the people they had the most contact with anyway.

Oz was used to them, though, having known them most of their young lives, and well attuned to their moods. "This isn't as recent a development as we thought, is it?" he guessed. He racked his brain for a time when they'd had more contact than usual with outsiders. "When we went to England?"

"Mr. Giles yelled at us," Ariel reminisced. "But he and Willow were the only people who didn't treat us differently."

"Angelus just said what most of them were thinking," Alaric commented. "Even that silly prat, Andrew, was a little afraid of us."

"I know it's hard, being different," Oz said. "That's one of the reasons I'm tutoring you right now. Because you'd probably have a hard time dealing with ordinary people in a regular school. We've been giving you time to learn to deal with it, and part of it is accepting yourselves no matter what anyone else thinks." He paused. "If you think that maybe you need some attitude to help you out, talk to your dad. He's got plenty to spare."

"You're just saying all this 'cause you're a werewolf," Ariel mumbled, even missing the Spike joke, which she'd normally never have done. Proof of how unsettled she was feeling. "Real people.., I mean regular people would think we're freaks."

"We're not going to get into the 'real people' business again, are we?" Oz had gotten a headache from that one the last time around.

"We know we're real," Alaric put in a bit scornfully. "We don't even feel like freaks most of the time. She's just being that way 'cause she liked Lindsey." He rolled his eyes to indicate his opinion of his sister's taste in men. Or perhaps just at the thought that she had a taste in men at all.

Ariel started blushing furiously, and Oz was somewhat taken aback. Rose blushed at the drop of a hat. So readily, in fact, that it was no challenge to bring the color to her cheeks. But her offspring were far more self-confident and forward. So why was Ariel blushing? Unless his seven-year old charge was displaying her precocity again.

By having her very first crush.

Oz decided that he'd better let Spike and Rose field this one.