Disclaimer: I own the name of the Coven, but I own none of its members, its villains, or their allies
Feedback: Very much on the 'must-have' list
WayWard Childe: Thank you; hope it goes down well
Samyo: Sorry, the League aren't going to be in this; the Coven is totally separate from the League, and they won't be appearing here no matter what happens
nascar girl: Yeah, that's true enough, but believe me, Cole will want to fight all the more once the full extent of this crisis is revealed…
Sean Malloy-1: No, Hellboy's it as far as the BPRD are concerned, and I'm sorry to say that Batman wouldn't be interested in becoming human again; he feels he's lost the right to be considered a man, and now wants only to do this last task and die
JonnyG: Hope I didn't keep you waiting
AN: For Cole, this can be set pretty much anywhere between 'Charmed Again, Part Two' and 'Black as Cole'; all that matters is that, back when he comes from, he's still Belthazor, Prue's dead, and Paige is around.
The Coven of Reformed Supernaturals
Cole, or Belthazor, or whoever he was, blinked and, right in front of the Coven, changed into a human form before their eyes. Now he was a tall, fairly handsome human with a high forehead, dressed in a long brown leather coat, dark trousers, and a slightly dulled long-sleeved white T-shirt.
He walked over to Leo, looking him in the eyes with a slightly angered expression.
"What the hell is going on here?" he asked the former army medic. "Who are these guys, and what are you doing here?"
Leo shook his head in a slightly melancholy manner as he looked at his old friend. "Where you are is fairly simple, Cole," he said, trying not to let any emotions across as he spoke. "You're in the future. I'm not the Leo you know, but the Leo from this time; it's almost two years away from your present."
Cole blinked in surprise.
"W…what?" he said, looking at Leo in confusion. "What do you mean, I'm two years in the future?"
"What I said, Cole," Leo said, sighing as he looked at his friend. "Believe me, I wish I didn't have to involve you in this; the energy involved in drawing you here was difficult enough to gather on its own. But…" He sighed, and stared Cole directly in the eyes once again. "We need your help."
"In what?" Cole asked, looking more then a little nervous now. "What's wrong? Why can't my present self help you?" Then, as though he'd only just realised something, he grabbed Leo's shirt, yanked him forward until the two were almost nose-to-nose, and yelled at him, "And where's PHOEBE!"
"Phoebe?" Spike said, looking at Cole in confusion. "Who the bloody hell is Phoebe?"
"My sister-in-law and, technically, his wife," Leo said, indicating Cole.
Cole's jaw dropped at that statement. Releasing Leo, he stared at the Whitelighter in blank amazement.
"My… my wife!" he said, sounding more than slightly shaken at that statement.
"Yeah, your wife," Leo said, "Shortly in your future, you'll become human when a witch whose fiancé was killed by Belthazor tries to vanquish you using the wrong potion; your Belthazor aspect and powers are taken from you, and you ended up getting married to Phoebe."
"Ah," Cole said, still sounding a bit uncertain about the whole thing. "So, that's why I'm here rather than my other self? Because I'm human in the present, and you need my help for… something?"
Leo nodded. "Yes," he said. "Believe me, we wouldn't have gotten you involved if we had an alternative, but you're the only 'Reformed Supernatural' with your kind of powers that we could find." He held out a hand towards Cole. "Are you interested?"
Cole took the hand and shook it.
"You know me, Leo; always up for a scrap," he said. "Tell me where the bad guy is, and he's going down."
(AN: I acknowledge that Leo has passed over some very MAJOR aspects of the past year or so for Cole (The Source, the Wasteland, his being indestructible, yadda yadda yadda) but, believe me, there's a reason for all that, besides the obvious factors…)
"On that topic, what is it with this bad guy that these 'Elders' have gathered us together to fight him?" Blade asked, looking over at Leo. "Wouldn't they be more comfortable using 'genuine' good guys rather than a bunch of reformed bad guys?"
"Believe me, Blade, they're not keen on this idea even now, but they have a reason for it," Leo began to explain, turning to look at the dark-skinned hybrid. "You see-"
Just before he could continue, Hellboy pulled out his gun and looked curiously around himself, while Cole suddenly shifted into Belthazor and raised one hand as an energy ball appeared in it.
"What?" Batman asked, looking curiously at the others. "What's wrong?"
"Something's coming," Belthazor replied, looking curiously around himself. "I don't know what, but it…" He sniffed. "… stinks of Hell…"
"Oh, they got him," Leo said, smiling in relief. "That's something; the more the merrier, after all."
"What?" Spike said, looking over at Leo incredulously. "Your bosses summoned a guy who's been to Hell!"
Leo sighed and looked over at Spike. "You've been working with someone who's done that for the last year, Spike; is it really such an unusual thing for you?"
Angel nodded. "He's right, you know, Spike," he said, looking over at his childe. "You've never shown much bother about my brief stint in Hell; is having to work with someone else who's been there that much to ask?"
"Well, it's hardly the same thing, is it, Peaches?" Spike yelled, turning to face the other ensouled vampire. "You got dragged there through a bloody portal; you weren't sent there simply because some higher power decided you deserved it! We don't even know what this guy did to get himself sent there!"
"I killed myself," a voice said from behind them.
Spinning around, the Coven found themselves facing a rather unexpected figure. He was fairly tall, ruggedly handsome in a sense, with dark hair and dressed in what almost looked like a business suit; black trousers, black coat, black tie, and a slightly stained white shirt.
He held a strange-looking gun in one hand that looked like a combination of a crucifix and a machine-gun, and the bulges in his pockets suggested that he had more artefacts in them as well as what they could see.
The man smiled slightly at them all, slung the gun back over his shoulder, and held out his hand to the nearest member of the Coven- Blade.
"John Constantine," he said casually to the hybrid. "Sorry I'm late; the Elders told me that transporting me from such a radically different universe would take a while, but I wasn't expecting it to be that long."
(AN: To all those Constantine fans out there, I wish to apologise for any offence I may cause by using the movie version; I've never read the comics myself, but, after seeing the movie with my father, I decided that the guy was too good a candidate for involvement in the Coven to pass up)
Blade uncertainly took the offered hand and shook it, all the while looking at Constantine with his curiosity evident on his face.
"So… what are you, if you don't mind my asking?" he said bluntly.
Constantine sighed. "That's complicated," he said, looking at Blade finally. "The Elders gave me a bit of a briefing on the rest of you while I was 'in transit'- a vampire/human hybrid, two vampires with souls, a former Old One, a demon, a former assassin, and a Whitelighter, right?"
The Coven nodded, and Constantine continued. "Well, I'm more complicated than any of you; in my world, God and the Devil made a wager for the souls of mankind, centuries in the past. As a result, they, and their followers, cannot travel onto our plane of existence, but 'half-breeds'- demons or angels with some humanity within them- could influence men's actions to a certain degree, driving them towards Heaven or Hell.
"I, along with a few others on my world, can see these half-breeds, but I could barely cope with it. When I was a teenager, I tried to commit suicide and briefly died, but was resuscitated after about two minutes…"
He sighed. "But, for me, that was nearly an eternity."
"You saw Hell, huh?" Belthazor asked, finally lowering his hand and turning back into Cole.
Constantine nodded. "And, knowing I was destined to end up there again, I tried to buy my way out by exorcising demons from this realm. But, no matter how many I took down, I couldn't get in there; everything I'd done had, at heart, been done for myself, not for others."
Sighing, he looked down at his gun briefly, and then continued. "I eventually became involved with helping a police detective, Angela Dodson, who could also see the angels and demons of our world, investigate the apparent suicide of her twin sister. We discovered that it was all part of a plot by the angel Gabriel to bring Hell to Earth by awakening the Antichrist using the Spear of Destiny; Gabriel believed that, in this modern world, we'd become so jaded that we didn't truly believe anymore, and believed that only by truly experiencing Hell would we able to earn the right to enter Heaven."
"That sound more than slightly nuts to me," Hellboy put in.
Constantine shrugged. "I think Gabriel had gone more than slightly mad," he said. "Anyway, Gabriel tried to free the Antichrist from Angela's body- the psychic energy of her and her twin had been required to bring him into this plane- but I managed to summon Satan to Earth to intervene by slitting my wrists."
Illyria blinked. "Pardon?" she said, looking incredulously at Constantine. "How would your death get Lucifer involved in your affairs?"
"Not meaning to sound arrogant, but I'd made myself a bit of a thorn in his side," Constantine said, looking over at Illyria. "I was pretty much the only soul he'd come to Earth personally to collect, which gave me my only chance at saving the world. Lucifer actually rather enjoyed the status quo that existed in my reality, so he sent his 'son' back down to Hell, stripped Gabriel of angelic status, and then asked me what I wanted in exchange."
"And you asked to be reborn?" Batman asked.
"No," Constantine said, shaking his head. "I asked for Angela's sister to be sent where she belonged; to Heaven." He sighed. "Her parents had always thought she was crazy; God was the only person she believed loved her. I couldn't leave her down in Hell for eternity just because she couldn't handle it."
"So, if you weren't resurrected there, how come you're still alive?" Cole asked, looking curiously at Constantine.
"Well, it turned out that me saving Angela's sister was enough of a good deed to merit me a place in Heaven," Constantine said. "However, Satan dragged me back down, saying that I would be restored and given another chance to prove where I belonged; Heaven or Hell." He shrugged. "And, well, here I am, trying to prove I belong in Heaven by helping out in any fight I can, no matter what the odds against me are."
Angel nodded. "Commendable attitude, Mr Constantine," he said, before turning to Leo. "Now, unless there's anyone else who might be showing up that we don't know about, I think it's time you told us what the situation is that merits all of us being gathered together."
Leo nodded. "Of course," he said, indicating some of the chairs scattered around the room. Each member of the Coven took one of the chairs, and Leo began to speak.
"Firstly, I should explain how Cole and I know each other," Leo said, indicating his friend. "About four centuries ago, a prophecy was made that, someday, three sisters would be born with remarkable magical powers, gifted with enough strength to battle any force of evil that had ever existed in this world, collectively known as 'the Charmed Ones', wielding the 'Power of Three'. The prophecy was fulfilled about five years ago, when the three Halliwell sisters- Prue, Piper and Phoebe- unlocked their powers by reading their family's ancient spell book, the Book of Shadows."
Hellboy raised his stone hand. "Question?" he asked casually. "What are their powers?"
"Well, Piper can freeze or destroy objects with a flick of her hands, Phoebe can levitate and see the future, and Prue could astral project herself and move objects with her mind," Leo explained.
"'Could'?" Spike said, looking up in surprise at that comment. "What happened to her; she get her powers changed?"
Leo looked over harshly at Spike. "She died two years ago, Spike," he said. "Don't make fun of it."
Spike swallowed nervously. "Oops," he muttered under his breath.
Hellboy looked curiously over at Leo and Cole. "But, surely, without her, the other two sisters couldn't fulfil their destiny?" he said. "I'm not much of an expert on prophecies, but I'm pretty sure they need to be kept accurate to work."
"They found a half-sister recently, back where I come from," Cole said. "Paige Matthews, the result of an affair their mother had after her divorce from the sisters' father; can call objects to her just by saying their names, among other things."
"OK…" Blade said, looking curiously at the two men. "You know, I'm still not getting who you two are."
"I'm their Whitelighter- their guardian angel, if you will," Leo explained. "I was originally a medic in World War Two, but I died at the battle of Guadalcanal and was reborn as a Whitelighter due to my good deeds in life; I give them any information they need to fight evil, and act as their liaison to the Elders- higher powers, just a few steps down from Gods, if you will. As for Cole, he was a half-human, half-demon sent to kill us, but his human half proved strong enough to let him fall in love with Phoebe, and he rejected his evil nature to join us."
"I see," Constantine said, nodding thoughtfully. "So, no offence, but with three powerful witches at their disposal- according to you, the world's most powerful witches ever- why do the Elders need us?"
"The sisters have been captured," Leo said.
Cole leapt to his feet in horror.
"Phoebe's WHAT!" he yelled, looking over at Leo. "WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU TELL ME EARLIER!"
"Cole, sit down," Leo said, looking over at Cole with a fixed expression on his face. "I didn't mention it earlier because I knew you'd react like this, and I had to be sure I had everyone's attention so you wouldn't go diving in by yourself and get us all in trouble. I'm sorry, but if you go diving it now by yourself, all you'd achieve is getting yourself captured, and Piper, Phoebe and Paige may be in even more trouble."
Cole looked like he was about to continue his exclamation nevertheless, but sighed, nodded, and sat back down.
"So, what happened?" he asked his old friend, trying to contain his anger.
"One of our newer adversaries- after your time, you wouldn't know him- came back after we thought they'd been vanquished," Leo explained. "We're… a bit unclear on how it happened, or even how they're still alive, but they've somehow acquired greater power than they ever had before, and they're trying to set themselves up as the new Source. Their forces managed to take the sisters by surprise and captured them, and they're holding them in this fortress until they've gathered all the world's demons together."
"Then?" Batman asked inquiringly.
"Then the sisters will be killed in front of a vast audience to prove the power that our foe wields," Leo said.
"Ah," Batman said, nodding. "Well, that explains why they're not dead yet, at least."
"But it doesn't explain why we're here," Blade said, looking curiously over at Leo. "Couldn't your lot just blast their way in and hope for the best?"
"Our foe's set up a massive magical field around his base," Leo explained. "Nothing good can get in there, no matter how powerful they are. The Elders are hoping that, since all of you are naturally evil, you'll be able to get through the barrier, save the sisters, and tackle the foe in question."
"I see…" Angel said, nodding slowly. "Well, that makes sense."
Then he stood up, stretched, and looked around at the others. "Well, I guess that's it; our only question is, what's our first move?"
"What else?" Hellboy said, raising his gun. "We get in there, kick some ass, rescue the sisters, and then stop this sucker before he can do any more damage." He looked over at Leo. "Care to give us directions?"
"You won't need any," Leo said, smiling slightly back at Hellboy. "I'm coming with you."
Noticing the incredulous expression on the other's faces, he smiled. "I know I'm not exactly an evil being, but that's taken into account; I'm not going to use my powers near the base until I have to, your capacity for offensive evil should block out my capacity for simply passive good, and I'll be shifting into a darker form to try and lessen my chances of being recognised."
He closed his eyes, focused briefly, and then…
…Changed right in front of them.
Now he was a taller man, with a thinner face and looking slightly fitter than he had before, along with short dark hair.
'Leo' smiled at them. "Meet Jeric," he said casually. "He was a warlock who spent centuries trying to find a witch host for his deceased lover, but was vanquished a short while back when he tried to use Paige as a host. The way I see it, he's big enough in the Underworld to get me in, but small enough so that not many people should know he's dead."
"I see…" Batman said, nodding thoughtfully. Than he shrugged and looked over at Angel and Cole. "Well, you two appear to the resident experts in matters like this; shall we be off now?"
Angel nodded. "The sooner the better," he said. "If we don't get moving, our opponent could kill the sisters before we can do anything about it."