Author's note: Wow, it's been over a month since I've updated! Sorry for the wait!
Thanks to ...
Kitty-Kat12, Nookyfiction, Si.Crazy, Silvi-hc, Marcus Lazarus, PassionateDarkness, Eve565, Wesfan1234, AbiSnocom, dannysmith, Moony's Chewtoy, MisFaith1026, and Mysticwolf1
... For reviewing the previous chapter.
Little Illy: Thanks for reviewing, and thanks for pointing out "uncomfort". I'm always making up words and then thinking they're real. lol. Like in "RTVSS" I used the word "reluction" and then got told it didn't exist.
Five year old Cordelia turned around angrily as she heard footsteps behind her. She'd planned on going exploring alone, alone meaning with no yucky boys. Cordy glared at the small boy who was smiling at her with such admiration.
"Why are you following me?" She demanded.
Charlie looked down at the floor, his thumb still in his mouth. "I just wanted to play Princesses," he lisped shyly.
"Princesses isn't something you play," she told him firmly, despite it being her favourite game. "Princesses is something you are." The little girl smiled suddenly, and flicked her long dark hair over her shoulders. "Like me."
He nodded with a disappointed look on his face, but continued following her anyway. She sighed loudly and deliberately, but her annoyance was soon forgotten as the pair reached a door with muffled words coming from behind it. Cordelia pushed it open gently, and stuck her head inside.
An elder Cordelia sat on the bed, with Angel beside her. "I remember all of it," she said quietly, avoiding eye contact, as Lorne's memory spell continued to send images flying around her mind. "All of it."
The five year old girl watched in silence. "That lady has the same name as me," she whispered to Charlie, remembering her from earlier. Unable to see into the room, the little boy dropped onto his hands and knees, and crawled slightly under Mini-Cordelia's legs to get a better view.
"Hey!" she cried loudly, desperately trying to get away from him, causing them both to fall through the door and land in an uncomfortable heap. "Daddy says that's not a nice place for boys to have their heads!"
Despite the seriousness of his conversation, Angel couldn't help but laugh at that comment and the fact that there were two eavesdropping children in a pile on his floor, neither of which he had expected.
"This is so not good," Fred whispered, wrapping her arms around her body in a bid to keep warm.
"Right there with you, Pumpkin," Lorne agreed, as Wesley shone a torch around the grounds of the Hyperion, in a desperate attempt to find Liam. The four were already panicking, with good reason too, not only did they have six children on their hands, completely unresearched, but they'd already lost one.
"This is so not good," Fred repeated.
"It's past 'not good'" Gunn exclaimed, keeping his eyes peeled for traces of the boy. "It's verging on bad. Really bad."
"How much do we even know about the Munchkins?" Lorne asked, calling "Liam," loudly in between talking to Wesley. "They arrived after my mystic-mess-up, they look like us, sound like us, act like us, but are they?"
"It wouldn't be the first time a spell had gone wrong," Wes admitted, "But are they clones of our younger selves, or ..."
"So you're saying that somewhere in the seventeen-whatever's, right now, Angel's family might be missing a five year old boy?" Gunn interrupted.
Wes nodded. "It is a possibility." Seeing Fred's immediate concern that her own parents might too be missing a child, he quickly added, "Although not a likely one." Pausing to shine the torch into a bush, he continued. "While it is possible for people to be ripped out of their time dimension, it takes strong magic. A simple spell like Lorne's, is unlikely to have been able to cause that to happen in this case."
"So they're only clones of our younger selves?" Fred asked, still calling Liam's name along with Lorne.
"I'd have to research it, but yes, that seems the most likely explanation."
"Talking of the Kiddo's," Lorne began, "Shouldn't one of us be watching them?"
They all stopped automatically, and looked back at where they'd come from.
"Damn!"
Wesley sat on the floor, still reading, still cross legged. The disappearance of the other children had confused him, but yet he kept reading. Father had said he'd amount to nothing if he didn't study to become a watcher, nothing but a worthless son who couldn't pay his own way in the world.
Glancing up from his book, the little boy took a good look at his surroundings for the first time, he'd been too scared to do so before. Almost immediately his eyes fell onto the weapons cabinet, and he felt himself automatically become drawn to the shiny inviting contents. Surely it wouldn't hurt just to get up and look at them?
"Focus," he told himself sharply, the one word causing him to sound older than his five years. Forcing his eyes back into the book, he pushed the temptation to the back of his mind, and tried to keep reading. It took only a few seconds, and then he was on his feet and at the cabinet, the desire to play with weapons too much for him to fight, after all, if he was going to become a watcher, then he'd need experience.
Standing on the tips of his toes, Little Wes reached for the handle, his small fingers barely reaching it, just as Gunn burst through the door. The watcher-to-be sighed and sat back at his book, the weapons would just have to wait for a while.
"S'only English Junior," Gunn called back, to the three people behind him, who were getting even more panicked after discovering they'd lost five of the kids, not just one.
Wesley's predictable sigh was interrupted by Liam hurtling through the doors at an impossibly high speed. "Demons," he cried fearfully, pointing outside to the road. "Shiny demons!"
"I don't like your hair," Little Cordelia said cheerfully, perching herself on the bed.
The older Cordelia patted her short blonde locks self consciously, surprised at the small girl's bluntness. "Oh?"
"You need to have long hair, like mine," She explained, shaking her head vigorously to prove her point, dark wavy hair flying around her face.
Charlie shook his head too, twice as hard, "Mine doesn't do that," he said softly.
Angel smiled at him. "No, it doesn't," he agreed.
"Mine used to," Cordelia admitted, her hand still on her head.
"Well, why did you cut it?" The little girl demanded, with her hands on her hips. "Did your mommy make you?" She asked sympathetically, suddenly realising that perhaps it hadn't been her choice. "My mommy says I never have to cut mine, if I don't want to."
Angel looked up at the mention of parents, unsure of what to say to the small Cordy, but luckily Wesley entering the room meant neither of them needed to reply.
The flustered watcher breathed a sigh of relief. "That's four of them then," he muttered to himself, as he left the room to find the only two children unaccounted for: Little Fred, and Krev.
"There will be no dissecting, there will be no dissecting, there will ..." Krev repeated over and over, as he was pulled roughly along by Fred. The little Texan was only small, but she was surprisingly strong.
Fred put a finger to her lips. "It's not gonna hurt," she whispered, dragging him down some steps into some sort of basement, which coincidently happened to be full of sharp looking blades. "It'll be fun," she insisted, her eyes lighting up at the room. It was better than all her dreams put together, even the one about the flying taco, which had been her favourite.
Krev gulped loudly and considered running away, but Fred still had her hand in his, and he was frightened of the girl's strength, even if that was a disgraceful thing to admit. His mother would make him sit on the maggot pile if she ever heard him admit to such a terrible thing. Cows were for slaves, they were not to be feared.
Mini-Fred reached up and grabbed a blade off of the wall. This was to be her first dissection, her first real one anyway. One time, she tried to dissect her toy bunny Feigenbaum, but the stuffing had all fallen out, making Fred cry. She was sure that wouldn't happen this time, aliens didn't have stuffing as far as she knew.
Angel entered the lobby slightly down. Cordelia had left to join Connor, both her memory returning and the thought of six children, proved too much for her to handle, so she'd gone back to Angel's son, despite his pleadings.
Four children and four adults greeted him, little Cordy and Charlie having joined the others shortly after Wesley found them. Angel didn't even think to ask about the other two kids, but Wes assured him that they would be straight on it.
"Angel," the sarcastically pleasant voice he had learnt to recognise as Lilah's, echoed behind him.
"Lilah" he said dryly, as Fred ushered the children gently, but quickly, behind the couch.
"I see you've got the place looking ..." she began, scanning the room quickly, her eyes falling on Wesley for a second, and then snapping right back to the vampire in question.
"Cut the crap," Angel said impatiently. "Why are you here?"
TBC: Sorry about the long wait, I'm full of ideas at the moment though, so I'm hoping to update again soon! Next chapter: Lilah has a proposition for Angel.
Please review!