Piper let go of Leo's hand as they landed in the club, Leo placing them well out of sight so Brett wouldn't see the orbs. The first thing she noticed was that the interior was shrouded in darkness.

"Brett?" she called. "Brett?"

There was no answer. The lights flickered to life as she turned on the switch. Looking around she saw that not a thing was out of place. Peering into the back room she saw that everything was still as it had been the last time she had been in there with Chris.

"I don't get this. Where is he?" she asked Leo, walking back to him. Leo shrugged, looking around but not moving.

"I'll try sensing for him," Leo offered. He closed his eyes, concentrating as he tried to pick up a signal of Brett or any danger that could be lurking in the shadows. Finally he shook his head. "Nothing. There isn't a problem here, Piper. Are you sure he said here?"

"I'm positive." She walked behind the bar, looking around for some kind of clue. Spotting a crumpled piece of yellow paper sticking out from underneath the register she inched closer, leaning down and plucking it out. Unravelling the paper she saw that it was a leaflet for the band that had played at their club the other night – Picasso View. Something clattered against the bar, but Piper's attention was fully fixed on the leaflet for the moment. She smoothed it out with her hand. "Leo, look at this."

Leo walked around the bar, standing beside her and lifting the paper into his sight, scrutinizing over what was scribbled across it. Red ink, ancient text. The only thing readable in plain English was Melaina's name.

"Looks like some kind of incantation," he said. "Maybe I should get the Elders to check it out."

"No need," Piper said, lifting up what had tumbled out of the paper. It was a fragmented piece of a green object, shiny like glass and smooth as polished stone. "I know who's behind this."

"From a chipped piece of stone?" Leo questioned.

"I've seen this before. Chris showed it to me. This belongs to Melaina."

"So he wasn't paranoid for nothing." He directed his eyes away from the stone and towards Piper's face. "You're… not suggesting Chris is behind this?"

"No. Not him. Someone else we trusted."

"Teenagers." Wyatt sighed, seeing the flames closing in on him. Artfully he orbed out, the ball smashing against the front door as he reappeared at the top of the staircase, just within view of them.

Paris looked up quickly, seeing him closing his hands into fists again. She took a step towards the staircase and then saw him throw his arms out to the side.

'He really has lost it!' she thought.

Chris dropped to the floor, supporting himself with one hand as he rubbed his neck with the other. Paris looked at him briefly as he hit the ground then followed his gaze back to the staircase. There was a man folded into the corner, his invisibility cloak having peeled away thanks to Wyatt's roughness.

"Brett?" Chris asked hoarsely, coughing as he tried to clear his throat a little.

"No, the blue fairy. Who else do you think it is?" Brett asked.

"But…" Chris coughed again. "You're supposed to be at the club."

Brett pushed himself up off the floor, making a show of brushing his arms as he glared at Chris.

"You really are thick. That was a rouse, to get to you." Brett turned his attention from Chris to Wyatt. "Only I wasn't expecting him to be here."

Wyatt lifted his head defiantly, waiting for Brett to make a move against him.

"Nor her," Brett continued, indicating towards Paris. "I thought you'd be dog food by now."

Angered, Paris moved her hand in preparation of making a second flame ball. Catching Wyatt's eye she saw him hold his hand up, indicating she should hold off.

"First lesson, analyse the situation before you start attacking. You don't want to hurt a compatriot," she heard Wyatt say. Looking around she saw that no-one else had heard him. In fact, he didn't even move his lips.

'Um, are you in my head?' she thought.

'Put your hand down,' he replied. Obediently she did so. 'What do you see?'

'I don't know. You, Chris, a guy who doesn't really seem to like any of us.'

'Right. Your adversary.'

"Your little blonde friend was very helpful," Brett said to Chris. "I thought for a minute everything would be ruined, but you of course put yourself before anyone else. You actually helped me out. Perhaps I should be thanking you?"

"Wait, you knew who she was? The whole time you knew?" Chris questioned.

"Oh, grand gatekeeper, bow down to thee," Brett said mockingly, waving his hands in the air. "Of course, I knew, do you think I'm stupid? She held the key to unimaginable power, and I was able to get it from her and destroy her in the process. Now the underworld has reopened to do my bidding."

"That's too much power for one man," Wyatt spoke up.

"Maybe. Especially if the forces of good keep getting in the way," Brett explained. "But being as Chris was the only one that knew, I thought it would be easy to get rid of him. I see my first attempts didn't work." He looked at both Chris and Paris. "But this, this plan was simple. Get rid of the parents, destroy the one person who was even aware of the situation whilst he was alone and defenceless, and then by doing so bring down the new Power of Three."

Paris exchanged glances with Wyatt and Chris. All she knew of the Power of Three was something her mother had mentioned in her journals a long time ago, something involving her mother, her aunt Piper, and her aunt Prue who she had never known.

"I didn't know about this," Chris said, looking up at Wyatt through the railings.

"Neither did I. Someone should have filled us in on that little tidbit of information," Wyatt said.

"Alright, enough of this idle chit-chat. I'm not going to achieve anything if I have to stand here and talk to you all day," Brett said.

"No, of course not, unless you care to divulge more information," Wyatt said casually.

"You already know too much. I guess that just means I have to get rid of all three of you now," he responded.

Paris felt herself suddenly being lifted in the air. She kicked her feet but the only thing that achieved was to make her body swing about more wildly. She realised her head, or more accurately her neck, was rather motionless itself. The further she floated up, the more she felt like she was being thrust about eighteen feet in the air, beyond any level where there was a capacity to breathe.

"Paris," Wyatt said steadily.

She took it as an indication to do what she liked. Flicking her hand out, she generated a flame ball and threw it down towards Brett. He moved forward towards Wyatt, the ball crashing onto the carpeted landing, leaving a nice scorch mark behind as it dissipated.

"Piper's not going to like that," Brett said, shaking his head with disparagement as he looked at the damage.

Turning his attention back to Wyatt he saw that he had taken a step back, his hand lowered and slightly angled further back from his body. He cocked his head, looking Piper's eldest son up and down as he tried to asses what he was up to.

"Scared, are we?" Brett surmised.

"Excalibur!" Wyatt called.

"Uh uh," Brett said, seeing the sword orbing its way into Wyatt's hand. He waved his own and watched as the orbs made a steady trail away from Wyatt's hand and out of the room.

Wyatt glanced down at his empty hand. "Definitely non demon," he grumbled.

"Guiding lights in this ancient hour, take away this mortal's power," Brett intoned.

Realising Brett was approaching him almost too late; Wyatt had barely enough time to raise his deflection shield to counter the spell. Chris, on the other hand, was the only one not currently under attack and faced a radical decision of whether or not to help his brother. Instinct taking over, he lifted his hand and began to wave it to throw Brett back into the wall, but this time it didn't work. Brett didn't move – literally.

"Nice going, little bro," Wyatt said, looking down at his brother with a smirk on his face.

Chris pulled his hands back, looking them over as he now realised what his brother had worked out so quickly – he'd gained a new power, or rather inherited one from his mother. Now his only problem was that if his temporal stasis power worked so similarly to his telekinetic one, his powers were now too volatile to be used adequately in this situation.

The spell rebounding off Wyatt, it returned back to the caster. Brett, now frozen, had no opportunity to avoid the attack. A pale yellowish light began to glow around him and lift away up through his body then through the roof. Paris crashed to the ground.

"Ow!" she cried, feeling the edge of her kneecap hit the floorboards as the rest of her body crumpled over the top. She looked up towards Wyatt and Brett on the staircase. "Now what?"

"Well we should really vanquish him, although I haven't quite determined what he is," Wyatt said.

"Should we get the book?" Paris asked, remembering the large tome Chris had been flicking through earlier – the one he always was flicking through.

"No, there's not enough time," Chris said. "I've never done this before." He went to indicate towards Brett but stopped his hands short, realising he might just do the wrong thing. "I don't think it's going to hold for long."

"What about the power of three spell?" Paris asked. "He did say we were the new power of three."

Wyatt and Chris both looked at her curiously. Shyly she drew back at their stare, wondering if they had any idea what she was talking about. She only knew because it had been in her mother's early journals – her mother, her Aunt Piper and her Aunt Prue who had died long ago used the power of three spell all the time after they'd first banded together.

"Well, what do you know? Little miss uneducated finally comes up with the goods," Wyatt said with an uneasy laugh. "You mind filling us in?"

"I don't remember it," Paris replied, and truthfully she didn't. It was one of the first journals she had read, and it was an awful long time ago. Another time even, before she'd chased after Chris. Too many things were hazy from that alternate future, and she couldn't quite place her finger on all of them. The memories were starting to fade in favour of new ones – the ones that had been developed by the changes she had made in the past when she had gone back to save him. She looked over to Chris. "But it should be in the book."

Chris stared at her for the longest time. She could see behind his eyes that his own memory was stirring as he tried to think back through the pages, trying to place the spell inside the book. Finally he remembered it, short and simple, etched onto one of the first few pages in the Book of Shadows.

"The power of three will set us free," he finally recited. He looked up to Wyatt, repeating it again. This time surprised to find that Wyatt and Paris had both joined him in saying it.

Completing it for the third time, they watched as Brett blew up. Unlike the Kegrah, he left no remnants of himself behind. Paris, now standing, looked back down at her knee, lifting her leg a little to rub it.

"Didn't think that would work," Wyatt said with surprise, his eyebrows raised as he stared at the vacant spot in front of him.

He turned his head at the sound of orbs, Leo and Piper orbing in behind Chris. Seeing Chris lift his hand again, this time to rub his neck, Piper immediately dashed to him.

"Oh, honey, are you okay?" she asked, hesitantly reaching out towards him.

"Fine," he said shortly, not looking at her.

Leo stopped beside them, looking up to Wyatt on the staircase. Wyatt blinked his eyes and nodded slowly, his father understanding that this was a signal he was okay.

"Where is he?" Leo asked.

"Who?" Chris replied tiredly.

"Brett," Piper answered.

"The warlock," Leo followed.

"He's gone, dad. Dead. Kaput," Wyatt explained. He looked back to the empty spot in front of him. "Warlock, huh? No wonder that spell was such a hit."

Chris finally looked up at his mother and she smiled back at him. It was a smile of joy, relief and satisfaction that instantly instilled him with a feeling of serenity.

"How did you…?" he started to ask.

"I found this at the club," she said, holding up the piece of stone for him to see. "You would think I would have worked out the difference between a warlock and a normal human being by now, wouldn't you?" she joked. Seeing Leo smile and about to say something, she held a finger up to him. "Shush, you."

Wyatt's heavy feet pounded down the stairs as he came back down to them, adjusting his jacket as he brushed past.

"I really ought to be going now," he said.

"Wyatt," Leo called. Wyatt turned back at the front doorway. Leo forced a smile onto his face. Anything he had to say to his son, he knew he would have to leave it until later. "Okay."

Wyatt nodded, closing the front door behind him. Piper looked over to Paris, seeing her standing uncomfortably at the bottom of the stairs.

"We should be getting you home. It's late," Piper said.

"Okay," Paris agreed. She took a step towards Piper; limping a little as she did so. Piper immediately turned towards her husband.

"Leo," she said calmly.

Leo moved towards Paris, placing a hand on her shoulder and lowering himself to cover her knee with the other. It glowed for a short time as he healed her.

"No major damage," he said, straightening. He looked at Paris. "Ready to go?"

Paris looked past him to Chris. She wasn't so sure she should be leaving him now. He took the stone from his mother, turning it over in his hand. Feeling her stare, he looked up at her.

"It's alright?" she asked.

"Another day," he said, smiling forlornly.

"Let's go," Paris said to her uncle.

They orbed back to her house. Her mother was sitting on the couch, leafing through a magazine but not really reading it. She looked up as she heard them.

"Leo!" she hissed, jumping off the couch as soon as she spotted them, throwing the magazine behind her. Glancing quickly at the doorway, she took hold of Paris and pulled her away from him as if she expected him to orb her away again.

"It's okay, I'm not staying," Leo said, holding his hands up.

Phoebe lowered herself so that she was face to face with her daughter, her hand still on her arm, the other now reaching up to her cheek to check she was actually physically there and one hundred percent okay.

"You okay, honey?" she questioned. Paris glanced over to Leo and he nodded encouragingly,

"Mom," Paris began. She pulled her hand down off her cheek and led her over to the couch. "Mom I have to tell you something."

"What is it?" Phoebe queried. Seeing that everything was okay, Leo orbed out.

"I have my powers now. I've been hiding them from you because I didn't want you to worry."

"Is that what Chris wanted you for?" she questioned. Paris nodded. "I thought as much. He told me he's your whitelighter now."

"He's good, mom. Don't get him into any more trouble."

"I won't," Phoebe said, sitting back against the couch. "So tell me, what did you learn?"

"Chris and Uncle Leo taught me how to use my powers. And I learnt that I shouldn't base people on their past, or their alternate futures or whatever. Wyatt showed me that I should analyse a situation before I start attacking people."

"And Chris? What did he learn?"

"I think he learnt to trust his brother again."

At the same time as Paris was saying this, Chris was sitting alone in the living room, a picture of him and his brother in his hand. He wiped his fingers across the glass, clearing the dust away. The one in this picture, the one that had left only moments ago, wasn't the same Wyatt he had known. This Wyatt had saved him and, when given the opportunity, had fought for the greater good and not banded together with the evil foe. It would have been simpler if he had joined forces with Brett and taken him and Paris down, but instead he had stood by his brother and cousin and defended them. There was no reason to feel scared or threatened by him now. They all needed to join together in a united force, the new Power of Three, and fight against that which was unleashed from one Warlock's greed for power.

And in that moment of contemplation Chris realised that he had forgiven his brother for what he had done, of which he'd never do again. He was finally able to fulfil his father's request – from now on he was going to treat Wyatt with the respect he deserved, with the kindness that fellow brothers should have for one another, and he was no longer going to live with the impression that Wyatt would turn evil at any moment. Facing temptation, he would turn it down. He was fighting for the greater good now, and he had proved so tonight.

Smiling, Chris stood, placing the frame back on the shelf where he had retrieved it from, and went in search of his parents.

THE END