It's mine! It's all mine! (laughs maniacally as Brad Kern calls security)
Chapter Three
Phoebe and Paige swung instantly into action, calling out orders and hurrying towards the attic stairs.
"Where are you guys going?" Chris asked, surprised.
"Did any of those guys look familiar to you?" Phoebe asked sarcastically.
"The brute squad from the bodyguard service just left its calling card," Paige responded. "We have to be ready to take on the real thing. Sorry, Alexis, but it looks like you're stuck here until we can take care of these guys. Chris, go check on Piper." Chris nodded and orbed to the hallway outside of his parents' room. He pressed his ear against the door and could hear nothing but the peaceful sounds of his father murmuring comforting words to his mother, so he smiled and walked back downstairs, hoping to talk to Alexis. The living room was now empty, and after a couple seconds of glancing around, he noticed that the front door was slightly open. Chris worried for a moment that she had run off, but he found her, in her own form, sitting glumly on the front porch with her chin resting on her fist. She looked up when he sat down next to her, and he offered her a smile.
"Hey," he began. "What you did in there, with the potions? That was pretty impressive."
"Six years of Little League," she responded with a small smile. "I made varsity my freshman year." Chris frowned and opened his mouth to speak, but he caught the expression on her face and forgot what he was going to say. The shapeshifter's head had fallen into her hands and she looked utterly miserable.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Chris asked, confused.
"I feel so awful about what happened to Piper," Alexis responded. "Y'all had nothing to do with any of my problems, and now she's all messed up, because of the selfish things I did. I just wish there were something I could do to fix all this."
"There is," Chris replied with a small smile. "Help us beat these guys so she has a chance to get better. It's that simple."
"Yea?" Alexis asked, looking slightly consoled.
"Yea," Chris answered, his smile widening. "Mom's a tough old bird. Give her a few days. She'll be up and kicking in no time."
"Thanks," Alexis said, her face brightening for a moment, and then twisting slightly in confusion. "I don't even know what your name is."
"It's Chris," Chris replied. "Chris Halliwell."
"Well, Chris," Alexis said, smiling and extending her right hand towards him. "It's nice to finally meet you."
"Likewise," Chris replied with uncharacteristic levity, reaching out to shake her outstretched hand. Their fingers had barely touched when they heard and felt a large explosion behind them. Alexis and Chris whipped around, their light moment forgotten, as the unmistakable sounds of a muffled battle rang out within the walls of the Manor. They glanced at one another briefly and ran head on into the chaos.
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Half an hour later, a disheveled Phoebe headed upstairs to assure Piper that all was well and to send Leo down to heal the various cuts and scrapes that the group had acquired. Alexis in particular was covered with them, as she had no fighting power or training and was forced to rely on potions and intuition. She collapsed onto the sofa in the living room, closing her eyes and breathing heavily. Paige was shuffling around, cleaning up the broken furniture and overturned items around the manor, and Alexis was considering offering to help when Chris fell into a seat across from her.
"Are you okay?" he asked, nodding towards a particularly nasty scrape across the left side of her forehead.
"Yea, I think so," she replied, gingerly prodding the bruising area around the cut. She shrugged. "I'll survive."
"Good," interjected Paige, as she and Phoebe sat down on either side of Chris with slight frowns marring their features. "Because this is nowhere near over."
"What?" Chris cried. "We blew all those guys to pieces!"
"That wasn't all of them," Alexis said quietly. "If you want to take out the whole service, you've got your work cut out for you because there are lots more."
"And now's the time when they're at their weakest. Now's the time to take them all out," Paige said gently. "We're going to have to ask for your help for a little while longer, Alexis." Alexis took a deep breath, and slowly nodded her head in agreement.
"What do y'all plan to do?" she asked.
"Well," Phoebe began, gathering up the weapons that the fallen demons had left behind. "We-" She broke off as her hand touched a frighteningly sharp athame and she was thrown into a premonition. When it was over, she looked around nervously, and met Paige's eyes. "Bad news."
"What'd you see?" Paige and Chris asked at the same time.
"It looks like our friendly demon bodyguard service isn't all that's going on in that tomb. They're doing something, I'm not sure what, but something with test tubes and jars and science, you know?"
"Well that can't be good," Paige said. "Demons and science? Together? I do not foresee a happy ending to that particular melodrama."
"We have to go back!" Chris interrupted forcefully. "We have to go down there and figure out what they're mixing up! Maybe it'll give us some clue on how to help Mom if we can figure out what exactly they gave her."
"Agreed," Phoebe said decisively. "We need a plan, and it needs to be one we can pull off quickly so we can help Piper. Alexis, what powers exactly do you have?" Alexis glanced nervously towards Chris before beginning.
"Well, shapeshifting, obviously. And the ability to combine and channel power," she said hesitantly. "Which is totally useless to me, seeing how I have no powers to channel." She added as an afterthought, oblivious to the delighted looks breaking out across the other three faces in the room.
"That's it!" Chris exclaimed. "We'll combine our powers and channel them through you!"
"Okay, what now?" Alexis asked, confused. "Y'all don't have any powers that fall under the category of 'ass-kicking'. Blowing stuff up is Piper's thing, and she's out of commission for the time being."
"But we don't have to blow anything up," Paige said excitedly. "Chris and I have the power to orb and Phoebe has the power of levitation! Combined and focused, our powers will be more than enough to move that whole tomb to somewhere totally unthreatening, say, for example, purgatory. We just have to get down there, find out what they're up to, and whoosh it off forever."
"Shapeshift! Orb!" Phoebe cried to Alexis and Chris. Alexis barely had time to change into Piper and arrange her face to hide the terrified look she'd been hiding before Chris took her hand and orbed her into a room full of surprised looking demons wearing lab coats. The moment was frozen as both parties stared at the other in horror, until Paige's voice broke the silence.
"Lab coats, guys?" A demon whose laminated nametag identified him as 'Krog, Supervisor' responded, looked terribly offended.
"Lab safety is very important, witch!" For a split second, everyone but Krog struggled to contain their hysterical laughter at the sheer bizarreness of their current situation, and then Phoebe spoke.
"So what are you guys up to down here, all alone?" she asked innocently, pretending not to notice the hordes of demons who were trying unsuccessfully to surround them without attracting attention.
"You came all the way down here expecting us to just tell you what we're doing?" a demon at Krog's left snarled. He conjured a fireball in his right palm and motioned for the other demons to do the same. "Let's blast them!" Fireballs lit the tomb, but Krog threw his leathery arm into the air and hollered,
"Stop!" The fireballs went out, as demons growled at him in confusion. Krog seemed eager to redeem himself, and explained, "Let's tell them what we're doing, boys!"
"What?" snarled a particularly large, scaly demon at the back of the crowd.
"Yea! Let's tell them. In fact, let's show them what we're doing!" A murmur of understanding seemed to ripple through the crowd, and the Halliwells glanced at each other apprehensively as Krog stepped forward, a large vial of ominously bubbling orange solution in his claws.
"You see, witches, this solution, if injected into a human being, will irreparably alter their genetic makeup. In short, it will turn them and their powers evil. Purely demonic. Forever. And, since you've been so kind as to ask, we'd like to test the first batch out on you."