Cordelia almost laughed at Angel's question. It just sounded almost out of place. She wanted to demand to know how they'd found her, how she'd been brought to this ship. The term 'digital transportation' didn't quite explain it to her. Wasn't digital used in sound systems? She wanted to know how this man knew the evil guy in the suit, and where the bad guys had come from. She felt all shaken inside, not just from the transportation and the confrontation with the man from her vision, but the certainty that the whole ground shaking had been caused by the rock-monster. She had to remain calm, or else she'd break into hysterics.
Instead of asking those questions, Angel was trying to chat up Gwen. It was almost funny… and maybe someone should have a talk with him about his soul. Angelus would be very bad company here… well, anywhere, actually, but if they were the only humans, that would be worse. Something about the commanding officer just… if he was human, she'd dye her hair. With a small sigh, she gestured towards Angel. "This is Angel, who is a Chosen Warrior. My Handmaiden is Willow. Since you already know who I am, why don't you introduce yourself?"
"Of course." The man made a sort of half bow, the gesture seeming both oddly formal and entirely fitting for him. "I am Commander Malthesar, and I have been given authority over the starship Protector with orders to search this sector of space for a group of escaped criminals."
"Malthesar, how likely is it that these criminals are on Earth?" Jason's question sounded caught between his Taggert-voice and utter uncertainty.
"Of that, I am not certain. There are other worlds that would be capable of…"
Malthesar's answer tapered off as another figure hurried into the room. This person looked sort of young, maybe Laliari's age, and he had the same sort of overly smooth and pale skin tone as Malthesar. His facial expression looked almost like an exaggerated state of worry. He seemed to move in the same way as Droopy, a flurry of feet with legs that didn't quite seem to be moving. "Commander! Goriknak is manifest on the planet's surface!"
"Goriknak!" Jason sounded shocked. "That giant pile of rocks? How… didn't he get sent of with the high overlord of insects and explosions?"
"Rock monster?" Angel looked from Malthesar to Jason. "I thought… wasn't Goriknak the pig-thing?"
Malthesar looked at the frightened young crewman. "Can you transfer the Goriknak to the surface of the moon?"
"Try for the back if you can, please." Jason looked like he wanted to wince at the idea.
Cordelia looked at the cast of Galaxy Quest, and then at Malthesar. The uniforms looked entirely too similar, and they didn't seem at all surprised by this. Unhappy, but not surprised. "I think we need a quick conference among ourselves… Perhaps Commander Taggert can explain a bit more about the Goriknak for us?"
"Of course, your Highness. We will escort you to a conference room immediately." Malthesar looked… well, it really looked as if he had a lot of other things to be doing.
Cordelia paused in the doorway, looking at Malthesar for a moment. "He has another pig statue. And a lot of equipment."
With that little bit of warning, she continued down the hallway to the conference room. Jason had a lot of explaining to do. She looked around at everyone, seeing that Angel was trying to hide his confusion by talking to Gwen, and Willow looked sort of nervous, her hand clasped in Alex's. "Now, who wants to start the explanations?"
End part 11.
Alex felt the urge to both smile at Jason's startled expression when Cordelia demanded an explanation and to stand up and demand to know why she wasn't more surprised. Glancing over at Willow, he could see the questions in her eyes, could tell that while she wasn't in the same state of near panicked confusion he'd been left in after the first time he'd been brought here, she wasn't certain what was happening.
He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, just enough to get her attention. "This is… sort of complicated. Malthesar is a Thermian. He's… they're the ones who saw the broadcasts of the original series and they thought…"
"He called it a historical broadcast. The… Fangor beast thing." She spoke softly, as if she wasn't quite certain she wanted the words to come out. "They think… they think it's all real? They're the ones who thought that you… that all of you were really the heroes they saw, didn't they? That's what you meant when you said something happened, and you… managed to avert the crisis, but it cost. How's that overlord of insects and explosions that Ja… umm… Commander Taggert mentioned come into this?"
"That was the problem that we needed to save them from. An evil alien warlord, intent on destroying the Thermians. He looked rather like a large insect man in armor." Alex sighed, hoping to avoid all of the complications of that story. "I believe the last Goriknak was left wrecking destruction on his flagship."
"So, the Goriknak is the rock monster, not the piggy thing with teeth." Willow looked as if she as turning over that in her mind. "Oh! The rock monster is in Los Angeles. And if it's the result of that ritual… wait, another pig statue? Ohhhh…."
Alex held her as Willow almost seemed to shrink into herself. "It's going to be alright, love. You aren't facing this alone."
"They brought us because of the Mirabanna episode, didn't they? They think…. They want us to help." She was practically whispering into his chest, her hands clutching at his uniform. "They're going to want me to use the magic."
"Well, it did look very impressive." He smiled, and reached down, trying to have her look at him. "What I thought the most puzzling though… it was almost as if you were expecting the beast to attack."
"That rock monster shouldn't even be here! Thos nasty little blue guys are… well, they're a very long way from here. How did it even get here anyhow?" Jason sounded like he was pacing, working himself up into quite the snit.
"A bunch of stupid vampires did a ritual with this statue that sort of looked like a pig with only two legs. Then… well, I'm not sure. The ritual was supposed to conjure or invoke the Goriknak. We figured… well…" Cordelia sighed, running her hand through her hair in a clear sign of frustration. "Angel, care to help out here?"
"The pig thing that hatched from the idol was an alien?" Angel's voice was full of confusion. "Wesley and I went, we killed the vampires, killed the pig, and went home. We figured that was it."
"Vampires?!?" Jason sounded as if he wasn't quite certain if Angel was serious or if Angel was insane.
"Nobody mentioned anything about vampires. What's going on?" Gwen sounded worried, and she was looking around the room.
Laliari leaned over, and in an almost whisper asked Fred the question. "Fred… what is a vampire?"
"Vampire… undead… an animated corpse that drinks blood. Lots of stories about them, some of them disagree on what a vampire can do. They're supposed to be pretty dangerous." He sounded almost too calm.
"There's no such thing as vampires!" Jason practically shouted, his face sort of red.
For some reason, Cordelia, Willow and Angel all started to laugh at that. It was especially jarring from Angel, who really hadn't shown much of a sense of humor before.
Alex got a slight sinking feeling, and leaned towards Willow. "Sunnydale had vampires, didn't it? That's how you got into the magic. That's why you prefer not to talk about it."
Willow nodded, her eyes heavy with unpleasant memories. "Sunnydale had all sorts of nasty troubles. It was like… well, you could make dozens of horror movies just from my senior year of high school. Lots of things, and a lot of them were bad. Vampires are real, magic is real, demons are real. Especially vampires."
Jason glared across the table at her. "Magic and vampires are for fairy tales. I don't know how you and the Princess got to be this age and still believing in that sort of thing, but I'm not going to believe it until I see it."
That's when Angel growled. Not the sort of frustrated noise than a person might make, but a real and very menacing growl. Like something from a wolf or a panther. With a growing sense of dread, Alex turned his head, glancing at him. Angel's entire face had changed, his eyes now a menacing yellow, his features… well, sort of twisted and frightening. And there were the teeth… sharp looking fangs. "oh my God…"
Jason turned pale, making this noise that was half gasp and half frightened gurgle, and had somehow tried to leap backwards, smacking into the wall with a thud. He was groping wildly for a door, his eyes almost bulging as he stared at Angel in horrified shock. His mouth was moving, but only broken sounds were emerging.
Gwen had sat down with a soft squeak, her hand over her mouth. After a few seconds of near silence, she spoke in a soft whisper. "Computer, please scan the life signs of every person in this room, and report."
Cordelia turned, and glared at Angel. "Oh, stop it! This is not the time, so just… enough with the grrr. I'm still trying to get an explanation."
For a moment, Angel just looked at Cordelia, his features harder to read now that they were so… menacing. Yes, menacing was the word for it. After a few moments, he sort of sighed, and sat down again, one hand coming to rest at his temple. His features changed back, returning to the handsome face that they'd seen before. "If we're going to be fighting against terrible bad guys, couldn't I at least have brought a sword?"
Alex looked at Willow, feeling more confused than before. "Some of this makes sense to you?"
"Well…. Part of it. Angel's a vampire, and I've known him – and that fact about him, for several years. Almost six of them now. He's one of the good guys. Cordy… well…" Willow looked as if she was trying to find the right words.
"We're not going to confuse everybody with one of your babble explanations!" Cordelia snapped. "Let's do the short version. Angel's a vampire, but he's one of the good guys. I get horribly painful visions of the future, generally on the lines of things to prevent. Willow's a witch – most of what I've seen falls under telekinetics. And this… we're on a spaceship, built by a bunch of aliens who watched way too much of an old television series?"
"That… sums up the Protector." Gwen sounded shaken, and she glanced at Angel. "I'll take your word for the other part though."
"Bio-scan completed. Conference room holds one adult female Thermian, three adult male humans, three adult female humans, and one human body, lacking heartbeat or respiration, and room temperature. Probable diagnosis: the body is deceased." The voice emerged from the speakers.
"We knew that already, thanks." Cordelia's sarcasm went unanswered, but he thought several people smiled.
End part 12.
Willow giggled as she leaned against Alex. Cordelia's comment was just so… so Cordelia. Jason was freaking out, Gwen was just sort of sitting down and staring at Angel as if she'd just found that two plus two equaled five for him, and Alex… Well, he was holding her close. That was the good part, but she thought that he seemed rather stunned by this latest unexpected revelation. Sort of like how he'd reacted when she'd first told him there was magic. This was the sort of messy scene that she'd been hoping to avoid.
"Demons, huh? I guess that explains that club." The deceptively calm voice of Fred Kwan seemed almost loud in the room. "He was right, this is probably going to be another adventure."
"But… they have horrible coffee. Wonderful deserts, but the coffee is… terrible." Gwen sounded as if she was coming out of the mini-shock.
"The green guy mentioned that. So, I bought some along this time. All we need is a coffee pot." Fred sounded so calm, but Laliari was giggling now.
"He looked into the future." There was a slight pause. "Was he green? I'm remembering him as green, with little horns."
"You went to Caritas?" Angel sounded interested now. "That's Lorne's place… He can read auras and get a glimpse into a person's future if they sing. Probably why he runs a karaoke club…"
"A demon with a karaoke club?" Jason sounded baffled.
Willow glanced over, seeing that while he was still standing right against the wall, he had stopped looking for a doorknob, and looked a bit less panicky. "Yeah, he's got a karaoke club. With really good bartenders, might I add."
"Do you go there often?" Gwen looked at Willow, her hand once again resting on the table, sort of close to where Angel was sitting.
"Sort of, but I don't sing. Angel and Cordy do occasionally." Willow sighed, thinking about Caritas. "I wonder just how much of this did he see? Oh, wait, focus on the problem. What are we supposed to be doing here?"
For a moment, there was silence. Then, Alex spoke. "The last time, they wanted the heroes that they had watched to come and save everything, just like on the 'historical broadcasts'. But Malthesar was here then, and he learned the truth about us… Either he's been unable to convince anyone else about that, or they feel that we might have another perspective that would be useful to them. As for you and Cordelia, the broadcast defeat of the Fangor Beast was… very impressive. They probably just took Angel because he was in proximity to you two."
"Wonderful. I'm grabbed because of who I'm standing around, and brought here… This could become a problem." Angel sounded like he was brooding again.
For a moment, Willow was tempted to tell Angel to stop brooding. A trip on a real spaceship was hardly the worst thing that could happen to them… and then it hit her exactly what he was worried about now. This was a spaceship, there would be no convenient butcher shop in the neighborhood. The crew wasn't human, so any spare blood in their medical facilities wouldn't be the right sort for Angel to drink, or at least, it was really unlikely. Angel was stranded on a spaceship with no food supplies, with a group of people that would eventually start looking like potential meals to him. That could definitely be a problem.
She looked over at Alex, feeling uncertainty and worry churning in her stomach. "Alex? How good are the medical facilities? I mean… oh, is there replication technology? Something to accelerate healing? Tissue cloning?"
For a moment, Alex had a look of blank confusion. Then, his eyes sort of slid towards Angel before jerking back to look at Willow. He looked worried, his breathing a bit harder, and his eyes a bit wider than normal. "There are methods for treating injuries, and accelerating healing, although I think those are only for extreme injuries. As for tissue cloning… Possibly. I shall have to check. It would be a very good thing if there were."
"Yeah." She reached out, gripping his fingers in her hand, feeling the way his fingers had gone nearly limp. "Maybe we should go try to learn what Malthesar knows about these criminals?"
"We might as well. Lack of proper information nearly got us killed the last time, if we can avoid making the same mistakes again then we should." Alex sounded as if he was suddenly tired. "Any mistakes that we can avoid would be… good."
"That's always part of any good plan." She wanted to help reassure him, to help him feel less overwhelmed by the whole mess. "You aren't alone in this. We've helped fight a lot of bad things, and we'll help this time."
"Look, we have good coffee." Fred's voice emerged from the back corner, preceded by the soft gurgling noise and rich smell of brewing coffee. "Or we will in a few more minutes."
She tried to fight the giggles, but the just slipped out. "We have coffee… all we need are doughnuts and then everything will be perfect for planning our strategy."
"Well, you might not be the computer girl this time, Willow. It seems to only answer to 'Tawny Madison', and that's definitely not you." Cordelia sounded like she was remembering Sunnydale as well.
"How did you know what was going on anyhow?" Gwen's voice was curious, and somehow, her hand had moved to rest underneath Angel's. "You didn't seem entirely surprised by Malthesar's picture of doom."
"I get visions. Sort of random precognitive bursts, complete with Technicolor surround sound and instant migranes." Cordelia sounded unhappy. "And I didn't have any of my pain killers with me…"
"Who wants to call Malthesar in to share the news on the bad guys?" Willow asked, hoping that someone would volunteer.
"I will. We might as well have something to work with." Jason seemed quite willing to leave the room, and Willow had to wonder if it was from fear or the eagerness to just get this over with.
End part 13.
Instead of asking those questions, Angel was trying to chat up Gwen. It was almost funny… and maybe someone should have a talk with him about his soul. Angelus would be very bad company here… well, anywhere, actually, but if they were the only humans, that would be worse. Something about the commanding officer just… if he was human, she'd dye her hair. With a small sigh, she gestured towards Angel. "This is Angel, who is a Chosen Warrior. My Handmaiden is Willow. Since you already know who I am, why don't you introduce yourself?"
"Of course." The man made a sort of half bow, the gesture seeming both oddly formal and entirely fitting for him. "I am Commander Malthesar, and I have been given authority over the starship Protector with orders to search this sector of space for a group of escaped criminals."
"Malthesar, how likely is it that these criminals are on Earth?" Jason's question sounded caught between his Taggert-voice and utter uncertainty.
"Of that, I am not certain. There are other worlds that would be capable of…"
Malthesar's answer tapered off as another figure hurried into the room. This person looked sort of young, maybe Laliari's age, and he had the same sort of overly smooth and pale skin tone as Malthesar. His facial expression looked almost like an exaggerated state of worry. He seemed to move in the same way as Droopy, a flurry of feet with legs that didn't quite seem to be moving. "Commander! Goriknak is manifest on the planet's surface!"
"Goriknak!" Jason sounded shocked. "That giant pile of rocks? How… didn't he get sent of with the high overlord of insects and explosions?"
"Rock monster?" Angel looked from Malthesar to Jason. "I thought… wasn't Goriknak the pig-thing?"
Malthesar looked at the frightened young crewman. "Can you transfer the Goriknak to the surface of the moon?"
"Try for the back if you can, please." Jason looked like he wanted to wince at the idea.
Cordelia looked at the cast of Galaxy Quest, and then at Malthesar. The uniforms looked entirely too similar, and they didn't seem at all surprised by this. Unhappy, but not surprised. "I think we need a quick conference among ourselves… Perhaps Commander Taggert can explain a bit more about the Goriknak for us?"
"Of course, your Highness. We will escort you to a conference room immediately." Malthesar looked… well, it really looked as if he had a lot of other things to be doing.
Cordelia paused in the doorway, looking at Malthesar for a moment. "He has another pig statue. And a lot of equipment."
With that little bit of warning, she continued down the hallway to the conference room. Jason had a lot of explaining to do. She looked around at everyone, seeing that Angel was trying to hide his confusion by talking to Gwen, and Willow looked sort of nervous, her hand clasped in Alex's. "Now, who wants to start the explanations?"
End part 11.
Alex felt the urge to both smile at Jason's startled expression when Cordelia demanded an explanation and to stand up and demand to know why she wasn't more surprised. Glancing over at Willow, he could see the questions in her eyes, could tell that while she wasn't in the same state of near panicked confusion he'd been left in after the first time he'd been brought here, she wasn't certain what was happening.
He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, just enough to get her attention. "This is… sort of complicated. Malthesar is a Thermian. He's… they're the ones who saw the broadcasts of the original series and they thought…"
"He called it a historical broadcast. The… Fangor beast thing." She spoke softly, as if she wasn't quite certain she wanted the words to come out. "They think… they think it's all real? They're the ones who thought that you… that all of you were really the heroes they saw, didn't they? That's what you meant when you said something happened, and you… managed to avert the crisis, but it cost. How's that overlord of insects and explosions that Ja… umm… Commander Taggert mentioned come into this?"
"That was the problem that we needed to save them from. An evil alien warlord, intent on destroying the Thermians. He looked rather like a large insect man in armor." Alex sighed, hoping to avoid all of the complications of that story. "I believe the last Goriknak was left wrecking destruction on his flagship."
"So, the Goriknak is the rock monster, not the piggy thing with teeth." Willow looked as if she as turning over that in her mind. "Oh! The rock monster is in Los Angeles. And if it's the result of that ritual… wait, another pig statue? Ohhhh…."
Alex held her as Willow almost seemed to shrink into herself. "It's going to be alright, love. You aren't facing this alone."
"They brought us because of the Mirabanna episode, didn't they? They think…. They want us to help." She was practically whispering into his chest, her hands clutching at his uniform. "They're going to want me to use the magic."
"Well, it did look very impressive." He smiled, and reached down, trying to have her look at him. "What I thought the most puzzling though… it was almost as if you were expecting the beast to attack."
"That rock monster shouldn't even be here! Thos nasty little blue guys are… well, they're a very long way from here. How did it even get here anyhow?" Jason sounded like he was pacing, working himself up into quite the snit.
"A bunch of stupid vampires did a ritual with this statue that sort of looked like a pig with only two legs. Then… well, I'm not sure. The ritual was supposed to conjure or invoke the Goriknak. We figured… well…" Cordelia sighed, running her hand through her hair in a clear sign of frustration. "Angel, care to help out here?"
"The pig thing that hatched from the idol was an alien?" Angel's voice was full of confusion. "Wesley and I went, we killed the vampires, killed the pig, and went home. We figured that was it."
"Vampires?!?" Jason sounded as if he wasn't quite certain if Angel was serious or if Angel was insane.
"Nobody mentioned anything about vampires. What's going on?" Gwen sounded worried, and she was looking around the room.
Laliari leaned over, and in an almost whisper asked Fred the question. "Fred… what is a vampire?"
"Vampire… undead… an animated corpse that drinks blood. Lots of stories about them, some of them disagree on what a vampire can do. They're supposed to be pretty dangerous." He sounded almost too calm.
"There's no such thing as vampires!" Jason practically shouted, his face sort of red.
For some reason, Cordelia, Willow and Angel all started to laugh at that. It was especially jarring from Angel, who really hadn't shown much of a sense of humor before.
Alex got a slight sinking feeling, and leaned towards Willow. "Sunnydale had vampires, didn't it? That's how you got into the magic. That's why you prefer not to talk about it."
Willow nodded, her eyes heavy with unpleasant memories. "Sunnydale had all sorts of nasty troubles. It was like… well, you could make dozens of horror movies just from my senior year of high school. Lots of things, and a lot of them were bad. Vampires are real, magic is real, demons are real. Especially vampires."
Jason glared across the table at her. "Magic and vampires are for fairy tales. I don't know how you and the Princess got to be this age and still believing in that sort of thing, but I'm not going to believe it until I see it."
That's when Angel growled. Not the sort of frustrated noise than a person might make, but a real and very menacing growl. Like something from a wolf or a panther. With a growing sense of dread, Alex turned his head, glancing at him. Angel's entire face had changed, his eyes now a menacing yellow, his features… well, sort of twisted and frightening. And there were the teeth… sharp looking fangs. "oh my God…"
Jason turned pale, making this noise that was half gasp and half frightened gurgle, and had somehow tried to leap backwards, smacking into the wall with a thud. He was groping wildly for a door, his eyes almost bulging as he stared at Angel in horrified shock. His mouth was moving, but only broken sounds were emerging.
Gwen had sat down with a soft squeak, her hand over her mouth. After a few seconds of near silence, she spoke in a soft whisper. "Computer, please scan the life signs of every person in this room, and report."
Cordelia turned, and glared at Angel. "Oh, stop it! This is not the time, so just… enough with the grrr. I'm still trying to get an explanation."
For a moment, Angel just looked at Cordelia, his features harder to read now that they were so… menacing. Yes, menacing was the word for it. After a few moments, he sort of sighed, and sat down again, one hand coming to rest at his temple. His features changed back, returning to the handsome face that they'd seen before. "If we're going to be fighting against terrible bad guys, couldn't I at least have brought a sword?"
Alex looked at Willow, feeling more confused than before. "Some of this makes sense to you?"
"Well…. Part of it. Angel's a vampire, and I've known him – and that fact about him, for several years. Almost six of them now. He's one of the good guys. Cordy… well…" Willow looked as if she was trying to find the right words.
"We're not going to confuse everybody with one of your babble explanations!" Cordelia snapped. "Let's do the short version. Angel's a vampire, but he's one of the good guys. I get horribly painful visions of the future, generally on the lines of things to prevent. Willow's a witch – most of what I've seen falls under telekinetics. And this… we're on a spaceship, built by a bunch of aliens who watched way too much of an old television series?"
"That… sums up the Protector." Gwen sounded shaken, and she glanced at Angel. "I'll take your word for the other part though."
"Bio-scan completed. Conference room holds one adult female Thermian, three adult male humans, three adult female humans, and one human body, lacking heartbeat or respiration, and room temperature. Probable diagnosis: the body is deceased." The voice emerged from the speakers.
"We knew that already, thanks." Cordelia's sarcasm went unanswered, but he thought several people smiled.
End part 12.
Willow giggled as she leaned against Alex. Cordelia's comment was just so… so Cordelia. Jason was freaking out, Gwen was just sort of sitting down and staring at Angel as if she'd just found that two plus two equaled five for him, and Alex… Well, he was holding her close. That was the good part, but she thought that he seemed rather stunned by this latest unexpected revelation. Sort of like how he'd reacted when she'd first told him there was magic. This was the sort of messy scene that she'd been hoping to avoid.
"Demons, huh? I guess that explains that club." The deceptively calm voice of Fred Kwan seemed almost loud in the room. "He was right, this is probably going to be another adventure."
"But… they have horrible coffee. Wonderful deserts, but the coffee is… terrible." Gwen sounded as if she was coming out of the mini-shock.
"The green guy mentioned that. So, I bought some along this time. All we need is a coffee pot." Fred sounded so calm, but Laliari was giggling now.
"He looked into the future." There was a slight pause. "Was he green? I'm remembering him as green, with little horns."
"You went to Caritas?" Angel sounded interested now. "That's Lorne's place… He can read auras and get a glimpse into a person's future if they sing. Probably why he runs a karaoke club…"
"A demon with a karaoke club?" Jason sounded baffled.
Willow glanced over, seeing that while he was still standing right against the wall, he had stopped looking for a doorknob, and looked a bit less panicky. "Yeah, he's got a karaoke club. With really good bartenders, might I add."
"Do you go there often?" Gwen looked at Willow, her hand once again resting on the table, sort of close to where Angel was sitting.
"Sort of, but I don't sing. Angel and Cordy do occasionally." Willow sighed, thinking about Caritas. "I wonder just how much of this did he see? Oh, wait, focus on the problem. What are we supposed to be doing here?"
For a moment, there was silence. Then, Alex spoke. "The last time, they wanted the heroes that they had watched to come and save everything, just like on the 'historical broadcasts'. But Malthesar was here then, and he learned the truth about us… Either he's been unable to convince anyone else about that, or they feel that we might have another perspective that would be useful to them. As for you and Cordelia, the broadcast defeat of the Fangor Beast was… very impressive. They probably just took Angel because he was in proximity to you two."
"Wonderful. I'm grabbed because of who I'm standing around, and brought here… This could become a problem." Angel sounded like he was brooding again.
For a moment, Willow was tempted to tell Angel to stop brooding. A trip on a real spaceship was hardly the worst thing that could happen to them… and then it hit her exactly what he was worried about now. This was a spaceship, there would be no convenient butcher shop in the neighborhood. The crew wasn't human, so any spare blood in their medical facilities wouldn't be the right sort for Angel to drink, or at least, it was really unlikely. Angel was stranded on a spaceship with no food supplies, with a group of people that would eventually start looking like potential meals to him. That could definitely be a problem.
She looked over at Alex, feeling uncertainty and worry churning in her stomach. "Alex? How good are the medical facilities? I mean… oh, is there replication technology? Something to accelerate healing? Tissue cloning?"
For a moment, Alex had a look of blank confusion. Then, his eyes sort of slid towards Angel before jerking back to look at Willow. He looked worried, his breathing a bit harder, and his eyes a bit wider than normal. "There are methods for treating injuries, and accelerating healing, although I think those are only for extreme injuries. As for tissue cloning… Possibly. I shall have to check. It would be a very good thing if there were."
"Yeah." She reached out, gripping his fingers in her hand, feeling the way his fingers had gone nearly limp. "Maybe we should go try to learn what Malthesar knows about these criminals?"
"We might as well. Lack of proper information nearly got us killed the last time, if we can avoid making the same mistakes again then we should." Alex sounded as if he was suddenly tired. "Any mistakes that we can avoid would be… good."
"That's always part of any good plan." She wanted to help reassure him, to help him feel less overwhelmed by the whole mess. "You aren't alone in this. We've helped fight a lot of bad things, and we'll help this time."
"Look, we have good coffee." Fred's voice emerged from the back corner, preceded by the soft gurgling noise and rich smell of brewing coffee. "Or we will in a few more minutes."
She tried to fight the giggles, but the just slipped out. "We have coffee… all we need are doughnuts and then everything will be perfect for planning our strategy."
"Well, you might not be the computer girl this time, Willow. It seems to only answer to 'Tawny Madison', and that's definitely not you." Cordelia sounded like she was remembering Sunnydale as well.
"How did you know what was going on anyhow?" Gwen's voice was curious, and somehow, her hand had moved to rest underneath Angel's. "You didn't seem entirely surprised by Malthesar's picture of doom."
"I get visions. Sort of random precognitive bursts, complete with Technicolor surround sound and instant migranes." Cordelia sounded unhappy. "And I didn't have any of my pain killers with me…"
"Who wants to call Malthesar in to share the news on the bad guys?" Willow asked, hoping that someone would volunteer.
"I will. We might as well have something to work with." Jason seemed quite willing to leave the room, and Willow had to wonder if it was from fear or the eagerness to just get this over with.
End part 13.