A/N: Thanks for all the reviews people! And yes, I do plan on putting my own twisted plot in this—retelling Yahtzee's story in definitely not my intention.
Chapter 3
"Adjust your grip. No, not closer—farther. Your hands are supposed to be shoulder width apart girl. Good. Now your feet—shoulder width! Good heavens, child, shoulder width!"
Willow let out an exasperated noise as she tried, once again, to fix her stance. "Is this right?"
Damon eyed her critically and nodded. "Well enough. Now, bring your staff in front of you, parallel to the ground and we will begin with position three."
Willow complied, her forehead knitted in concentration as Damon called the positions that she had learned.
It had been a week since Willow and the Slayers had awakened. A week that the Slayers had used—and continued to use—to train, loosening long unused muscles and heightening reflexes that had not been used in centuries. Willow had been using that time to learn to fight with the traditional weapons of the Slayer. Damon was currently teaching her the quarterstaff, a weapon he informed her that she had to master before he would let her anywhere near a sword. She grumbled some—she had used a sword before without using a staff—but, as Damon had informed her, that had not taught her how to properly use her weapon. It had merely taught her that, in a life threatening instance, she could use a sword to hack at vampires. Now she was to actually learn to use the weapons properly, if she didn't get incredibly annoyed with his nitpickiness.
"Now, bring the staff down as in position two and then turn to your right. This is handy in knocking an attacker on his bum."
Willow grinned. At least he explained what the specific moves could be used for, unlike some of the other Watchers she overheard teaching their Slayers. She sometimes heard the instructions in different types of fighting that the older Slayers had not had at their disposal, and the Watchers did not explain what the moves were for. Probably because, as Slayers, they could figure it out, but it was nice that Damon explained.
"Excellent," Damon commented when she went through the new move. "When your grip and your stance are correct, you seem to have a natural affinity for weapons."
"I watched Buffy a lot," Willow explained. "It's kinda hard not to pick some things up. And we did learn how to handle weapons."
Damon nodded agreement. "That does help. Right then—position seven."
After the morning weapons lesson, the six girls had lunch together. They had all settled into a routine of the morning weapons lessons, lunch, and then in the afternoon they were given history lessons to catch them up, not only on the demon world, but on what had happened in the rest of the world since they had died. So far, they had yet to reach the 21st century, so Willow and Keladree were not required to attend, as Willow had obviously lived through the 20th century and Keladree was from the beginning of the 22nd. They had much more in common with each other in that regard than with the others, as the rate of development for technology had shot up during the late 19th and 20th centuries, and then slowed slightly in the middle of the 21st. Willow, ever the computer genius, liked to talk about what the human race had come up with after her death, and surprised Keladree by understanding quite a bit of it.
Today's lunch conversation was about computers, a personal favorite of Willow's, while the others listened in bemusement.
"So they didn't get a whole lot smaller?" she asked. Keladree shook her head. "Nope. Laptops got a little smaller, and lighter, and obviously there were the descendents of the old Palm Pilot, but desktop computers—well, the CPU got a whole lot smaller, but people liked the larger monitor sizes."
"Right, view ability," Willow agreed. "That makes sense."
"Most of them were flat-screen by my time," Keladree said. "Like a laptop."
"What about the internet?"
Keladree shrugged. "It was still there. Connection speeds got a bit faster, but it's kind of hard to get a whole lot faster than an Ethernet connection. Wireless internet was pretty popular too."
"Did you have the sliding doors?" Willow asked. Keladree grinned. "Yeah. They can be voice activated too, if your voice is the one the receiver recognizes. I've watched the old Star Trek movies. I guess the saying's true."
"Which one is that?" Nora asked, listening in fascination.
"If you can dream it, you can build it," Willow said. Keladree nodded. "That's the one. As soon as electricity was discovered, technology took off."
"It's a good thing, isn't it?" Nora asked. "Things happen faster."
"And it's cleaner than fire," Willow agreed.
"Safer too," Keladree added.
Someone cleared their throat. Six heads turned to look at Ashton. He gave them a smile. "Ladies. It's time for lessons."
The four addressed rose and headed for the door. Willow asked, "Mr. Ashton?"
"Yes Miss Rosenberg?" Ashton looked at her.
"Do you have an internet connection here?"
He blinked for a minute then nodded. "Of course. Would you like to use it?"
"If you don't mind."
"Of course not." Ashton gestured to Damon, who was lounging by the door. "I'm sure Mr. Kentworth can show you where the computers are."
Willow grinned. Keladree asked eagerly, "Can I go too?"
"I don't see why not."
Damon smiled at the two young women. "This way then."
He led them up a floor to a room with a screen in it. Willow stared at the consul. So did Keladree.
Computers had obviously changed a bit in the last 400 years. There was no mouse, and the 'keyboard' was flat, without the letters she was familiar with. Willow frowned at it as she took a seat. "Okay—this is weird."
Damon pulled up a chair for Keladree before finding one for himself. "Would you like some help?"
Willow shook her head, studying the machine in front of her. "Give me a minute—"
She tapped a few squares on the flat consul and the screen came to life. Willow grinned. "Hacker girl strikes again."
Damon tensed slightly. "Pardon?"
Willow turned to look. "I was the computer girl for our group."
"Did you say hacker?" Damon asked, ignoring her statement. Willow nodded, frowning. "Not, like, the hackers that go and destroy stuff. Just the kind that finds information to stop apocalypses. Why?"
"Hacking is a serious crime nowadays," Damon said grimly. "I would not suggest attempting it."
Willow nodded, a little worried by his worry. "I wasn't planning on it."
Keladree eyed her suspiciously. "You did a lot of hacking?"
Willow shrugged. "Not so much hacking…more finding necessary information…why are you asking?"
Keladree shook her head. "I just remember learning about an excellent hacker in my computer science class that was around in your time. The late 20th century right?"
"Late 20th, early 21st," Willow agreed, a little wary. "Why?"
"Well, it was just that they were never caught," Keladree said, shrugging. "And one of the best of the era."
"Imagine that. Let's see what the internet is like nowadays," Willow said, turning back to the consul.
Damon, watching her, grinned. "I don't think Ashton expected you to figure out how to use the computer this quickly."
"Yeah, well," Willow said, tapping a few more squares. "He doesn't really know who he's dealing with, does he?"
Damon eyed her thoughtfully as she let out a triumphant, "Ah ha! We're online," and Keladree said, "Cool. Let's see if any of the old sites are still online."
No, he did not think Ashton had any idea who he was dealing with when he dealt with this young woman. Damon had watched her closely since he had been made her Watcher and had come to the conclusion that she was a very powerful woman, even if just in character. He knew that Sarah, the British Slayer, only sixteen, was still having a hard time dealing with being dragged into this new time with no familiar faces around, as was Nora and, apparently, Suri. He wasn't so sure about Suri—he hadn't heard her say a word all week. Keladree, he noticed, was doing all right, but he had never heard her speak of her Watcher. Micaela—he was a little wary of the 18 year old. She seemed to have quite a bit of anger in her. She had said once that she had died right after her eighteenth birthday. To the other girls besides Keladree, this had seemed important. He was not sure exactly what was so important about a Slayers eighteenth birthday. Perhaps he should ask Willow if she knew.
Willow, on the other hand, he had watched closely, and it was obvious she was upset about being brought into this time, still in a state of shock about the amount of time that had elapsed—but she tended to put that aside during lessons and workouts to learn about the new threat. The times that he knew she was thinking of her life were after dinner, mostly, and before breakfast, and then he could see the feelings she tended to not let him see during the day—pain over the loss of her friends and family, anger at the Watcher's Council—although that seemed to come from something more than just the fact that they resurrected her—and some fear. Fear from being alone in this strange time and fear of the new 'big bad' as she called whatever it was that caused this increase in the demon population. But there was something else about her, something he could not put his finger on. He almost sensed an amount of power coming from her—not a lot, but enough that it was possible that knew of it. She may have helped Buffy Summers in different ways than research, he mused, watching her surf the sites. Then he zoned in to exactly what sort of sites she was looking at.
"Demon sites?"
Willow looked at him, nodding. "A lot of these were around in my time, which is actually kind of strange. But they've all been updated—majorly. I mean, this one?"
She gestured to the site she was looking at.
"This is one I checked out just last year—or—um—" She frowned. "You know what I mean. It helped with our fight with the big bad of that year. This m question mark thingie? I remember that—mainly 'cause he started going all lecture-ey when I mentioned it—but it was the thing that made us realize exactly what it was we were looking at."
She stopped talking, frowning at the screen, oblivious of Damon and Keladree's confused expressions. What had it been that they were looking at when that symbol explained things? Everything from the last six or eight months were hazy, piecemeal. It was driving her crazy, especially the knowledge that this upsurge of demons should not have happened—but why? One Slayer could not handle them all, so if they had suddenly grown brains…Well, that in itself was hard to believe, but even if they had, there was a reason why the demon population most emphatically should not have grown—it should have shrunk. But what was the reason? Faith—yeah, she remembered the dark haired Slayer all right. She had gotten out of jail—that much she did remember. She had helped them in the final battle. What was the battle against? She couldn't remember. Okay, don't push it. It will come. Temporary amnesia was common after a coma—death was probably a lot like the same thing. Potentials—yes, she remembered them. Something had been special about them…potential whats? Okay, so maybe it wasn't just the last six or eight months that were hazy. Maybe it was bits and pieces of the last few years of her life that were piecemeal. Like that she was a witch, but then she remembered hating the magic and could not remember why. And something about Xander kept eluding her—not something important, but everything about her best friend was important. Both of her best friends. Buffy had said something to her—about her magic…
Willow let out a huff of frustration as she stared at the screen, and she went to the next result of the search she had put in for demon texts. She would remember eventually—because of all the things she had forgotten, there was one extremely important thing that she knew she should know, that affected this problem the world was having. And she had to remember this—something told her that it was important.
A/N: 'Nother chapter down, undecided number of chapters to go ^_^ And as always, review people!
