Amy made her way noisily across the tabletop, carrying seeds and shreds of meat, squeaking all the way.
"Her joints hurt," Faith said helplessly. "I think we're runnin' out of time. She's runnin' out of time."
"How do you know?" Harmony asked.
Faith shrugged. "You can't hear it?" The vampire shrugged back. "Well, trust me. I just know, ok?"
"I'm sorry," Kate said from across the table. "I've got all my contacts hunting for magical artifacts, but apparently reversing a transformation is about a hundred times as hard when you're not the caster."
"An' our caster hasn't got the brains to do it herself," Faith concluded gloomily, "because she's a rat."
"I'm sure you'll think of something," B-bot said brightly as Amy began constructing something out of chewed-up wood.
Faith put a hand to her forehead. "Look,I'm glad you believe in me an' all, but let's face it: I'm stupid. B, she had the potential but not the time to study. I'm not like her. Sad but true."
"Don't put yourself down that way," Shoat began. "You can do things. Maybe there's-"
"Yeah," Faith muttered. "I can fly. Like that solves anything. It's cool an' all, don't get me wrong, but it ain't gonna help Amy." She reached out and shifted the slats in the maze. Faith had been worried it'd be insulting, but Amy enjoyed the challenge. Faith could tell.
Amy began to squeak noisily. "It's not over till it's over," Harmony insisted.
Faith groaned. "Harm, you of all people ought to know. We ain't got much else in common, but you an' me...huh? What's that?" She leaned forward to listen to the furiously-squeaking rat. "Leave? Who's leavin'? I don't get-"
The tabletop erupted in a flash of light, and something struck Faith on the chin hard enough to knock her down.
She looked up at a head full of white hair straggling around a wrinkled face, one with dark eyes full of shocked awareness. Faith and Amy pushed themselves up simultaneously.
"Fuck," Amy said, staring at her flabby, wrinkly arms. "Fuck fuck fuck." And she burst into tears.
Chapter 28 - Beauty Without Brains (Three Times)
"She wins," Amy mumbled. "My mother wins again."
"Huh?" Faith couldn't remember anything about Amy's mother. Probably they'd never met.
"My mother stole my body a few years ago. She was going to be young again, and I guess I was gonna be old and die. Buffy killed her after switching us back, but she got the last laugh anyway." Amy wasn't crying any more; she seemed to be all cried out.
"We'll get you back to normal," Faith began.
"How are you this stupid?" Amy shouted. "This is normal! It's not some aging curse. I lived my life, I just lived it as a rat, a hundred times too fast! Do you have any idea the kind of mag-?" Abruptly she cut off, swaying back and forth, and Faith caught her with the hand she'd been about to use for slapping. Gentle slapping, but there was only so much she could put up with.
"I'm sorry," Faith said sharply. "You wanna last long enough to find the kind of magic it takes? Keep your damn cool."
Amy let out a soft whimper, but then she seemed to pull herself together. "I wish I knew how you did what you did."
"Me? You changed yourself back." Faith tried not to outright scowl; she was confused, not angry.
"I couldn't do it before. It's like...over the last month or so my head started clearing and I could think again. I could understand you talking, even though I couldn't understand anyone else, and you could understand me. I didn't know Slayers could have familiars." Amy stumbled, and Faith had to catch her.
"We c-" Faith began, then started over. "I didn't either. But then I only found out a few weeks ago that we can fly, too."
Amy's head whipped up. "Buffy never told me she could fly."
"Hell, I figure she didn't know either. It's just cool that I can do something she can't." Faith grinned and glanced at Amy. They'd barely met, back when she and Buffy were the Chosen Two, but Amy was cool and...hrm...about eighty years old right now. Even if Faith tried she'd probably just give Amy a heart attack. Damn it.
Amy shrugged weakly. "If you ask me, I always thought the level of mystic energy Buffy gave off was kinda wasted on just super strength and speed. I couldn't guess at what else Slayers could do, though. Anyway...thanks. This sucks ass, but I probably have a few years left. Better than the couple of weeks I'm pretty sure I was looking at. Sorry if I still sound bitter."
"Ya got reason to," Faith acknowledged. "Maybe we can still fix the rest. Who knows what else a Slayer can do?"
Maybe it was time she started figuring that out.
*****
"Kate, left! B-bot, right!" It was a guess. Supposedly the Slayer had always been a loner till B, but Buffy's friends had fought just fine by the time she met them, and they hadn't had superpowers yet. Maybe Red, a little. "Shoat, bring the zees up the back way!"
The Slayer was supposed to be a combat monster. What if she had some kind of natural tactical sense to go with the physical stuff? Faith tossed Harmony the sword. "Up the stairs, goofball. You're with me."
Their raid on Wolfram and Hart had been too little too late. By the time they found a scandal Kate could leak-something that wasn't just demons for the Weekly World News-Lilah had already made hash of her connections. She had some sort of intuitive feel for social kung fu, seemed like, and Faith knew she couldn't match that.
So it was back to street level, busting up some kind of vampire cult-there was always another one of those to go around-that was turning homeless people and using them as suicide bombers. Faith had the nagging feeling that she was missing something-that she wasn't playing the game on Lilah's level-but how could she?
The vamps started to fall back, flanked and struggling to retreat. Suddenly zombies began boiling out of the elevators. Okay, something was going right. Maybe she had something when it came to tactics. "Amy, now!"
Fireball. Amy's magic had to be used carefully or she'd have a heart attack or something, but she wasn't really weak.
Only, it didn't work. Some of the vamps must've been older, cause the fireball didn't just ash them. And the heat forced her and Harm to retreat while the survivors made for the water coolers. The zombies didn't cope well with being on fire either, plus they cut off the easy escape route through the elevator.
Long story short, it was a clusterfuck. At least half the older vamps escaped into the sewers while the rest were fighting. The cult'd probably be back by next week.
Yeah, she'd been stupid to even think she could be smart. Faith was a dumb Southie, as much white trash as any hick from Bugfuck, Georgia, and she was never going to get any better. She just didn't have it in her.
*****
"Gotta admit, you came a long way to find me, Captain Cornfed." Faith hoped she was doing a good job of covering. Her one encounter with Riley Finn hadn't exactly inspired positive memories.
"Longer than you think," he said bluntly. "My unit's been in South America. I heard the bad news. We can't let someone like Lilah Morgan steal the election."
"So you came to find the Slayer. Well, good judgement. I'm already on the case." She struck a dramatic pose. Faith really didn't want a second go with him, but he was at least easy on the eyes.
"Actually I was trying to find Kate Lockley. Her agency's worked with supernatural threats before, and honestly we need all the help we can get." He hesitated. "Er, not saying a Slayer won't come in handy too."
"Tell her the rest," said an unfamiliar woman's voice from behind the big slab o' beefcake.
"I was getting to that. Faith, this is my wife Samantha Finn. About three days after we heard the news, every woman in the unit, even the support personnel, plus a few of the locals, went full-on Charlie McGee."
"Charlie What?" That wasn't any military slang Faith was familiar with.
"Firestarter."
"Oh. Right, still looking to see th-whoa!" Sam had stepped forward and to the right a bit where Faith could actually see her. Her hair was flame-red and shifting around on its own; her eyes were glowing orange; and her skin was so red it looked sunburnt. Faith reached out and poked her shoulder; Sam just sighed and added, "Yeah, touch the hair too. All ninety-nine of us are on medical leave till they figure out what it is."
"Glad I'm not military. What it is, you're hot chicks with superpowers, and the sooner they put you back on the job the better."
Sam glanced at Riley. "Might be one genuine issue with that. How many times did I jump your bones on the trip bsck?"
"Five. You tried another seven but I was worn out." Riley grinned, but the grin waa tired.
"Yeah," Sam said. "Thus the problem. Ninety-nine of us, all horny as hell and everyone who's not a hundred percent straight can't keep their hands off each other."
Faith grunted. "And the problem is?"
*****
Sam unfolded the newspaper. "So now you and the vamps you were fighting are competing terrorist cells. Shit, this is bad. Lilah's riding higher and higher in the polls."
"Goddamnit!" Faith slammed her head down on the table. "How am I so stupid?"
Kate grabbed her by the shoulders. "Only got the one desk. Faith, none of us saw it. It's not your fault."
"I had a feeling," Faith muttered. "Something wasn't right. I knew I was missing something."
"Then you saw more than I did," Amy quavered. "And at least I'm not senile."
"The way I heard," Riley said, "Amy was pretty smart. Maybe you should trust your instincts, Faith."
"Yeah, maybe. But I didn't, see?" Faith pounded the desk with her fist this time. "If I were smart..."
Shoat grabbed Faith's hand, and Faith felt a surge of fear/anger/revulsion. She tried to rip free, and after only a moment she did. "I saw it too," Shoat said, almost inaudibly. "I didn't say anything either. I'm supposed to be smart, too, so what's that make me?"
*****
Faith lay awake listening to Sam and Riley bang. It wasn't really that loud, but she could hear them anyway. Hell...she could smell them. Sam smelled like incense, aside from the usual. They weren't even on the same floor. Daredevil never had this problem.
"They're pretty loud, aren't they?" Faith jumped out of bed, smacking her head on the chest of drawers. "Sorry! I didn't mean to scare you."
"Damnit, Harm. Here I am thinking how much my supersenses suck, and I get snuck up on by the clumsiest vamp in existence."
"I'm getting better," Harmony whispered. It was self-pitying, but not quite a whine. "They're keeping me awake. I miss Spike."
Faith did her best not to laugh. "You and Spike? Really?" She would say Harm wasn't his type, but the dude was shallow. Harmony had tits; she was his type. In fairness...
"He's cute," Harm murmured. "He was my Blondie Bear."
"You want to forget him?" Faith gave the vamp her best come-hither grin.
"Um, yeah, but not with you. Er...no offense?"
Faith sighed, lay back down, and put a pillow over her head.
"Sorry?"
Faith lay there waiting. Eventually Harm would go back to bed.
"Hell," Harmony said, "I'm bored. Got any plastic?"
The pillow came down. Faith's eyebrows went up. "You serious? Of course. More'n one. Wanna share?"
"Let's be louder than them."
*****
"I've been reading about being smart," Harmony said two hours later. "It's something you can practice and get better at."
"Huh," Faith said. She wasn't trying to be rude; she was just kinda not wanting to talk. Or move, just yet. She let one hand flop down onto Harm's thigh. That was more than they'd touched so far, but the vampire didn't complain.
"If you can think of what a smarter person would do, and be right, then you have to be at least as smart as they are," Harm mused. "Or else you'd be wrong. Right?"
"Guess so," Faith mumbled.
"I try to think of what you'd do," Harm said. "It's worked so far."
"Stop it," Faith said lazily. "You're gonna make me teary-eyed."
"Sorry," the vampire said. "Know you're tired. I should get some sleep too." She rolled over and soon began to snore.
In the darkness, Faith sighed and wiped her eyes.