Chapter 25.

SUNNYDALE, CALIFORNIA

SEPT. 27, 1999 (7:42 P.M./PST)

The procedure had been relatively simple. Sil, still encased in ice from head to foot, had been placed on an examination table. Then, so as not to get their hands frostbitten, the foot of vacant ice above the top of Sil's head been withdrawn using a saber saw to cut a circle within the ice. Then, with Amy holding her right hand at the wrist, Tara had used her left to establish a psychometric bond with the frozen humanoid's subconscious. That way, they could both mentally receive all the requisite images. And, when they were done, the circular patch of ice was put back within the gap. The tell-tale circle being filled in with another quick burst of the freeze ray, before Sil was returned to one of the sliding metal drawers in the Initiative's morgue.

Not so simple, however, was describing everything they had envisioned to Maggie Walsh and Rupert Giles.

"Let me get this straight," declared the former. "A semi-vampirized were-rat was eaten by a giant alienized rat. Just so he could eat a junkie hooker-turned-bag lady?!"

"Not just any hooker," replied Amy. "The ex-girlfriend of Esteban Reyes! The Shadow Seer needed her blood memories of the night club's lay-out, so he could figure out the best way into Reyes' fortified office."

"But, of course, those memories were a little out of date," added Tara. "Hence, his joining Duncan Shane as a magician's assistant. So, he could see what changes had been made to the club since Rosita's day!"

"That much, I understand," said Giles. "I even understand _why_ Reyes was killed! What better way to financially undermine a rival crime syndicate than to kill the manager of their chief money-laundering front? It's _how_ the Shadow Seer was able to do it that concerns and vexes me. After all, if he truly was blood-bonded..."

"Exactly!" exclaimed Tara. "_He_ was bonded! Sil wasn't. It's _her_ consciousness, sharing the same body, that empowered him just enough to break that bond with Verdugo."

"At least, long enough to start playing both ends against the middle," Amy added.

"In other words," replied Walsh, in self-clarification, "the Shadow Seer's consciousness and Sil's consciousness are jointly using her Ratkin body to exacerbate the tension between the Camarilla and Verdugo's Sabbat backers. No doubt, in the hope that Verdugo will suffer Final Death in the process and, thereby, free the Shadow Seer from the blood bond, permanently."

Tara nodded, adding. "While Sil has been promised a chance to mate with an old acquaintance of hers. Someone now working part-time for the Initiative."

"Preston Lennox," she and Amy chorused in conclusion.

When Project: D.A.R.T. had completed his training and indoctrination, to their satisfaction, they had returned Duncan Shane to Quarantine. From there, he was sent to the famous Magic Castle night club for employment as a backstage prop man. During that interim, he became enamored of a female Newcomer called "Violet Greenswallow", so-named by a BNA official from San Juan Capistrano, who served as the lovely assistant of an opening act magician named Lee DeMarco.

The highlight of their particular magic act involved a combination of "Ashirah" and "The Origami Box". Wherein, Violet assumed a fetal position inside a steel-ribbed box lined with rice paper. This box was then perforated with swords, from all angles, before the paper literally went up in flames. Thereby revealing, of course, that nothing now occupied the box except intermingled sword blades. DeMarco then spread his cape on the floor, stage-right of the box, before apparently levitating it to eye-level. All of this culminating with him grabbing the cape back towards him and, thereby, revealing Violet "floating" in mid-air. Reposing, on her right arm, a la Cleopatra!

But, all that came to a screeching halt, one night, when DeMarco, in a fit of drunken rage over having been told by management that his ambitions far exceeded his talent, tried to physically vent his frustration on Violet. Shane reacted instinctively. Quickly running up behind DeMarco and breaking his neck just like he had been taught- -as Dart Two- - back in martial arts class! He immediately followed that up with a forensic countermeasure. Manipulating DeMarco's right arm, like a marionette puppeteer, in order to forge a suicide note, in DeMarco's own handwriting, prior to posthumously hanging DeMarco from a noose fashioned out of the same "invisible" wires used in the levitation.

On the surface, it seemed like the LAPD bought the story of "suicide" resulting from depression over a denied request for a pay raise. But, in reality, that request had been a desperate attempt to pay off an overdue monthly installment to a certain Las Vegas bookmaker! And that bookie subsequently sold the rest of the outstanding debt to Ventrue plutocrat Russell Winters. The latter then blackmailed Shane into permanently going to work for the Camarilla as a part-time hit man. Not knowing what else to do, Shane told all of this to his BNA case worker... who was actually his Project: D.A.R.T. handler.

Through Wolfram and Hart, the latter paid off the right people in the LAPD to bury the truth. Shortly after which, Shane's Dart Two persona was post-hypnotically activated. He could then be implanted with Talamour the Burrower; and, then, smuggled to Houston for the Halton contract. The successful completion of which now encouraged Special Agent Jeffries to activate Dart Two for his second assignment. The termination, with extreme prejudice, of "Razor Danny" Verdugo.

For as Jeffries so succinctly put it to Shane's handler. "We stake his vampiric ass? And this gang war ends before it even starts."

As for Violet Greenswallow? She was waylaid by Initiative agents, the night after DeMarco's "suicide", and sprayed with jabrokah gas. Thereby making her vulnerable to hypnotic reprogramming of her memories. In her case, she was led to believe that she was a recent convert to Ionianism from the Eeno caste; and, therefore, subject to relocation to the outskirts of Sunnydale for the benefit of Alison Wonderland.

All that changed, however, shortly after "The Graduation Day Massacre".

While helping the Sunnydale Police locate and excavate the bodies of unidentified human by-standers, from the ruins of the high school, she suddenly found herself all alone. That is; till she even more suddenly found herself knocked flat on her back by a Black Spiral Dancer named Veruca! And, even with her Tenctonese strength, she found it increasingly difficult to keep that renegade Garou's jaws away from her throat. Fortunately, help arrived from a most unexpected quarter.

A horizontal stream of fire suddenly engulfed Veruca without so much as giving Violet even a first-degree burn!

Consequently, Veruca howled in pain and writhed in agony. Vainly trying to extinguish the flames by ducking and rolling! In the meantime, an understandably confused Violet sat bolt upright and stared at her most unexpected, but naturally quite appreciated, rescuer. A woman who looked to be Chinese-American. Yet, she wore her hair in a bun; had tattoos on the middle of her face; and wore a low-cut black leather outfit that resembled nothing less than a unitard cut in half at the midriff.

"Greetings!" the latter subsequently exclaimed. "I am Jhiera. Crown Princess of Oden-tal in exile... and honorary Daughter of the Phoenix."

Violet politely returned the favor by providing her own name as well as her Earthling name. Thus began three years of mentoring in the martial arts of two worlds. Three years that culminated with Violet wearing a near-unitard similar to Jhiera's. An ensemble offset by a compound bow; a quiver full of silver-headed arrows; and two silver daggers! All wielded by the female Newcomer who now preferred to be called...

...Ultra-Violet.

tbc