AN: Thanks for the reviews...hope you're finding this at least mildly interesting.
Everyone else in the bar fled. The sisters watched, frozen, as Cole used his demonic powers to fling the robbers into opposite walls, finally killing each of them with a fireball. Then Cole let out an unearthly wail. Phoebe didn't notice she was shaking until she felt her sisters steady her.
Without warning, Alpha smeared into the bar. With him was another man, presumably another Avatar, one the sisters had never seen before. "We've been waiting for this moment," one of them said to Cole.
The vision changed, and Phoebe recognized Cole's apartment overlooking the city. The sisters had no time to wonder at the change in their surroundings, as the Avatars smeared in again to talk to Cole. They explained that they were "the Avatars of Force and Power," and they asked Cole to join them. Cole's immediate response was, "I'll never turn evil again."
Phoebe wondered if it were possible to faint in a postmonition, inside a collective consciousness, and what the heck that would mean.
The Avatars explained, "We don't have to choose between good and evil. We can drive them both."
The sisters glanced at each other, thoughts overlapping. "But they said they were beyond good and evil. 'Drive them both'? What does that mean?"
Cole tried to vanquish the Avatars, but the fireballs he threw at them simply faded out, having no effect and leaving no trace.
The vision changed again. They were still in Cole's apartment, but it was clearly a different day. Cole announced to Alpha, "I'm willing to become one of your kind."
Alpha explained, "We have the power to elevate powers such as yours, to raise them above the restraints of good and evil." He cautioned Cole that these unlimited powers were to be used with the other Avatars' powers, to shape the future which would be entirely controlled by the Avatars themselves.
Cole asked if, with those powers, he could affect time and even reality. Alpha assured him that he could. Cole knelt on the floor as Alpha chanted some sort of spell, extending a beam of light from his hand into Cole's head. When the initiation was finished, Cole stood up, looking energized. Alpha attempted to escort Cole out of his apartment, but Cole announced, "First, I get my wife back, once and for all."
The sisters found themselves back in the attic. Leo quickly attended to them, trying to make sense of their mutterings.
"So that's how he reset time and everything," Paige murmurred.
Piper commented, "I know you've explained what happened, and how we vanquished him in some sort of alternate timeline or reality or something, but it never quite made sense. But I guess if he was an Avatar, changing reality wouldn't have been a problem."
Phoebe whimpered.
Her sisters immediately turned to her, concerned. "Pheebs? Honey, it's gonna be OK."
"We vanquished him. Paige told us we vanquished him. Why did we see this? What does this have to do with Utopia?"
A voice from behind them said softly, but loudly enough to be heard, "Everything."
