Everything either belongs to Joss or it should, no infringement is intended and no profit is to be made. When you get right down to it I'm not really worth suing anyway unless you want a share of an underpaid civil servants wages and it just wouldn't be worth the hassle trust me.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Great Northern Forest – Pylea – April 2004

'Your martial skills are abysmal' Illyria noted, effortlessly avoiding Glory's punch and countering with a sharp crack on the Hellgod's nose with the flat of her hand, not hard enough to cause injury but it would certainly sting.

Glory stepped back and blinked a few times. The Old One's blow would have likely flattened a slayer or killed a human outright but Glory was built considerably tougher than that, she did reach up to check her nose wasn't bleeding though. 'I didn't hear any complaining earlier' she retorted, 'just lots of screaming.'

Illyria snorted and beckoned Glory forward to resume sparring once again. 'The ability to slaughter enemies who possess less than a tenth your strength is no indication of skill' she declared. 'To defeat an enemy that is actually stronger than yourself through superior technique is a feat far more worthy of a warrior.'

'Save me the Combat Zen speech' Glory responded and launched into a series of punches and kicks which Illyria blocked and dodged successfully, moving in a economical, fluid, almost mechanistic style that was her trademark. Eventually the God-King saw an opening as Glory unbalanced herself and with a combination one-two punch put the Hellgod on the ground hard.

As the slayers watching the sparring session showed their appreciation with a ragged round of applause Illyria reached down to help Glory back to her feet. 'You are physically stronger than I, but always keep in mind which one of us is wearing the slave collar and why' she pointed out smugly.

Glory reluctantly took the offered hand and rose back to her feet, dusting off her scruffy combat fatigues before self-consciously running he finger around the inside of the metal studded leather collar the blue-haired bitch made her wear as a symbol of her subjection, it was designed to be humiliating and it was. 'I could rip this off whenever I wanted' she stated.

'And you would dislike the manner in which I forced you to put on the replacement' Illyria replied evenly. 'You remain my slave until you earn your freedom, only then will I release you from servitude and then fulfil my part of the bargain to assist the re-conquest of your home dimension' the God-King noted. 'If it helps live with the humiliation my Wesley admitted that he finds the collar around your neck extremely attractive.'

'Oh yeah because if I wanted to attract men I'd need a kinky gimmick' Glory replied shaking her head so her long blond tresses fell properly back into place. 'If zoophilia was my thing I could choose any human I wanted, but indulging in sex with a lower life-form is your nauseatingly repellent hobby not mine.'

Illyria turned away and started heading back towards the camp. 'Don't knock it until you've tried it' she replied, 'and do not denigrate my Consort again or you will provoke my wrath' she added sternly. 'In belittling him you belittle me also.'

'I've heard you call him a lower life-form to his face' Glory called after her.

'The mistress is allowed the luxury of hypocrisy, the slave does what she is told' Illyria replied, continuing on her way. 'And help gather wood for a campfire tonight' she added.

Glory considered giving the departing Illyria the finger but she was still being watched by a few of the slayers who would rat her out, watching the two gods spar was quite the spectator sport and besides which Vi made sure that Glory was kept under surveillance.

Looking for an appropriate tree she could push over and then break up for the fire Glory frowned, hadn't she already earned a bit more respect and consideration? Only that morning she and Illyria had jointly devastated a full cohort of Sebassis Troops, along with an equal number of Narweks native forces, in a large occupation-friendly settlement a hundred miles to the South-East. They simply walked into the town, when most of the inhabitants and the garrison were still having breakfast, killed anything that put up a fight, stacked the bodies in the town square and then ran back to the forest camp after informing the horrified civilian populace that anyone that collaborated with the invader risked being dealt with harshly. Glory had to admit Illyria really knew how to make a speech, although to be honest it probably helped boost the gravitas of her words that she was using the pile of bodies as a speaking platform, it's the showmanship that counts sometimes.

They were coming to the end of their excursion to Pylea and Glory would not be missing the place. Cleaning the dirt out from under her fingernails every couple of hours, endlessly having to wash herself and her hair clean of blood when the only available bathing facility was a stream, wearing ugly military style clothes which didn't fit properly and eating terrible food was really starting to lose its appeal, not that it ever had any. The Hellgod could not remotely understand why Illyria thought the world was conceivably worth all the effort and resources both sides were pouring into the struggle to control this primitive dump.

'The greatest of the Triumvirate reduced to a lackey' Glory muttered to herself as she pushed over a tree and began to dismantle it by brute force, breaking branches six inches in diameter over her knee like kindling. 'I should have listened to that prophetess instead of having her walled up in that cave' she added with a sigh.

'Need a hand with that?' a man asked.

'If I needed a hand from you I'd tear it off your wrist but I guess it would be cruel to ruin your love life like that' Glory replied scornfully. 'Can't you take a hint, I'm not interested.'

Ashton rested the hand-axe he was carrying against his shoulder. 'Yeah that became pretty clear when you told me not if I was the last sentient being in the multiverse and all the batteries had run out' he replied. 'I might just be a grunt but I can understand subtle hints like that.'

'Smarter than you look' Glory told the mercenary. 'Get lost' she continued. 'I don't associate with the hired help.'

'You've got delusions of grandeur' Ashton told the Hellgod, 'at least I get paid for my work, that puts me higher up the social scale than you sweetheart' he told her. 'I'm not the one that can be auctioned off' he noted. 'Has Illyria got you branded?' he asked, then grinned. 'You can show me where if you like.'

Glory wondered what kind of beating she would get for ripping the annoying little insects head off and decided it wasn't worth it. 'Why don't you just have some fun with one of those slayer sluts?' she asked. 'They haven't got my standards.'

Ashton hefted the axe. 'They're too young for my tastes and if I'm only going to get to look, the view's better over here' he replied honestly. Many of the girls were pretty enough, some to the point of downright gorgeous in fact, but Glory was something else, the whole package was close to the mercenaries physical ideal and although on other criteria she was far from the perfect woman, Ashton was comfortable enough with his shallowness.

'Well duh' Glory responded sarcastically, she knew she was beautiful and perfect. Her standards must be slipping too because if this was the only adoration in town she'd decided she'd take it. 'You can strip those branches there' she told him.

The mercenary nodded and got to work. He had only just returned from a mission with one of the new Pylean volunteer units and he was pretty tired but Glory really was worth looking at, even if it was intimidating as hell to watch her in action, strength wise she made the slayers look… well human by comparison he decided. 'So do you come here often?' he asked tongue-in-cheek.

'Keep trying to hit on me and I'll hit on you monkey-boy' Glory told him, raising a fist.

'If I thought it would work it'd be worth it' Ashton replied.

Glory rolled her eyes. 'Another revelation from Captain Obvious' she observed.

'Corporal Obvious' Ashton responded deadpan. 'Not an officer, I work for a living.

'Not enough brains to be promoted?' Glory queried. 'Guess you wouldn't even make a decent snack if I got hungry' she continued sarcastically.

'You could be right there' Ashton agreed. 'So I suppose I'm only good for looking at too then' he added wryly.

Glory sighed, they'd better win the damn war soon because she couldn't live like this for very long, the company was so far beneath her it was demeaning to even converse with it. 'Unless you're going to be telling me how good I look don't talk to me alright.'

Ashton considered the demand. 'Deal' he agreed. 'That collar makes you look really hot' he told her.

Got to be a guy thing, Glory decided.

Hyperion Hotel – Los Angeles – April 2004

'Blood magic' Willow began, holding up a vial of familiar red liquid. 'It's older and more powerful than our word magic, more primal' she continued. Looking around the conference room.

'Blood is life' Spike interjected. 'It's the essence' he stated seriously.

'Skip lunch did we?' Dawn asked with a grin, Spike gave her a look of rebuke which caused her to blush, blood once again she realised as her cheeks flushed red.

The witch ignored them and continued her presentation. 'Ever since we got hold of the portal key which could transport you to Jasmine's world we've been experimenting with it' she said. 'With Fred's understanding of Portal physics and my, slightly more arcane knowledge, we've been trying to get to grips with the basic principles and then build upon them in an attempt to create a techno-mystical hybrid device that will give us access to other dimensions at will' she explained then indicated for Fred to take over.

The physicist smiled and looked down at her notes. 'The basic problem with portal travel is that unless you're self powered like Illyria for instance you need a psychic hotspot to open one of any useful size or destination, and by doing so you temporarily drain that energy until it recharges' she told the audience. 'The orb, or key, that Angel and Connor took from the big bug might be thought of as an engine that can open a portal at any time between two specific dimensions, and to a specific point in that dimension.'

'Illyria told us that in the original timeline Angel was able to transport himself directly to where Jasmine was rather than to his original point of departure' Willow interjected.

'Right' Fred agreed. 'Now the problem we had was that at first the orb only gave us access to Jasmines old world and it's not somewhere you'd like to visit because the air would corrode your lungs' she continued. 'However the fact that the orb was a device, albeit mystical in original, meant we could play with it and use some of both my own research, and that we obtained from the Wolfram and Hart files, to alter its function' she told them. 'In short we added area codes' she joked.

'It wouldn't have worked at all but as well as a boosted engine we also had much better fuel available to run it on' Willow noted. 'The orb opens a pathway between dimensions powered by blood magic, and we've got the highest octane blood for portalling that may have ever existed, blood which was specifically made to do the job.'

'What can I say?' Dawn spoke up. 'I run on rocket fuel' she joked.

Fred bent down and lifted something onto the table from the floor with a small sheet hung over it. 'Want to do the honours?' she asked Willow.

Willow grinned and whisked off the sheet revealing the orb mounted on a metal plinth with an array of crystals and electronic components connected to it including what looked like an LCD display. 'Ladies, Gentlemen and those of a Demonic Nature I give you the universal Portal Picklock' she declared.

Buffy looked at it. 'It works?' she asked. 'You've tested it?'

'Only small scale' Fred admitted. 'We sent something to Pylea, an apple from the kitchen, and Illyria opened a portal at her end and sent it back, with a bite taken out of it and a note to send a Taco next time' she explained with a grin. 'The biggest problem we have at the moment is that unless you take it with you, or there's a friendly God-King already on site, it's a one way trip.'

'We can't copy the crystal' Willow explained apologetically. 'We think it's a mineral native to the demon bugs planet.'

Angel got off his chair and examined the thing closely. 'So how does it work?' he asked. 'I mean in using the thing I don't need to know the physics.'

Fred pointed to a small numerical keypad. 'Every dimension has its own coordinates which we usually open by saying the words that correspond to them' she told him. 'What we've done is convert those into numerical values for all the dimensions we know of from our books so you simply punch in the corresponding number, there's already a few pre-programmed you can select like a cellphone, the electronics converts those into something the orb can understand, and you smear Dawns blood on the crystal to power it up.'

'Not too much of Dawn's blood' Willow warned, 'we think it would overload with much more than a few CC's.'

'Wanna see something cool?' Dawn asked and moved her hand towards the device, leaning across the table. As she did so the crystal started to glow brighter and brighter. 'If I put my hand on it the things starts to vibrate and makes this humming sound' she told everyone.

'Makes me wonder how much fun she's been having with it behind my back' Connor wisecracked then instantly regretted saying it when both Buffy and his father gave him a look that would have stopped Illyria in her tracks. For his part Spike fought back laughter while Faith made no such effort to her own detriment as she nearly drowned in the glass of water she was drinking at the time.

Giles coughed. 'Moving swiftly on I assume we will be using the device for supply runs to Pylea?' he asked, trying to diffuse the situation.

Willow nodded. 'We really don't want to have Illyria offworld when Berith turns up' she opined, 'in fact we'd probably be best off that once she's back she didn't use her powers at all until June, so she's as stable as possible.'

'Not much that can stand up against the Blue Meanie if she can really get stuck in without going up like Chernobyl' Spike observed.

'We're hoping so' Buffy responded. 'I don't want to meet anything she can't beat because I wouldn't want to have to fight it scythe or not.'

Giles folded his arms. 'You began by talking about blood magic' he reminded Willow. 'Might I enquire if you made any progress with that generally?' he asked.

The witch smiled. 'I was hoping someone would ask and I was willing to bet it was going to be you' she continued. 'The orb did give me a new insight into it, to give an analogy, before I was trying to study magnetism when all I had was a few lodestones and a compass as research tools but now I've got a thousand gauss electromagnet to play with and I'm really starting to get somewhere.'

'You might say I'm monitoring her progress keenly' Dawn interjected. 'I've got a vested interest in the research' she added with a knowing smile.

Buffy looked at her sister. 'You're hinting at something' she declared. 'Spill it.'

'Funny you should say it that way that because spilling it is part of the process' Dawn responded. 'In blood magic I mean.'

'You're not dabbling in the Dark Arts are you Dawn?' Giles asked with concern.

'I don't have to' Dawn replied. 'Other people have to channel energy, light or dark' she noted, 'I'm not like them, I am energy I just never had any idea how to use it before.'

'Word magic, my kind of magic wasn't ever going to harness Dawn's potential but as we find out more about portals and their relationship to blood magic we're also finding out more about the very essence of what Dawn really is.'

'I'm being back-engineered' Dawn joked. 'Willow thinks she might be able to find out what makes me tick.'

'Energy and matter are just two sides of the same coin' Fred noted. 'In Dawn's case they're apparently both sides simultaneously somehow, but more than that Dawn herself is self-aware which means that even though she was never intended to do so she might be able to utilise that power herself, if not by conscious choice like Illyria but by a mix of technology and magic.'

'Key and lock as one' Dawn told her sister. 'I think I might visit the world Illyria mentions with all the shrimp, start a seafood import business' she joked. 'Maybe ship to that other dimension that's got none at all Anya's been to, I could charge a premium for new and exciting foodstuffs.'

'You're serious' Buffy asked ignoring Dawn's business plan. 'You think Dawn might be able to do the portal thing on her own like Illyria?' she queried.

'No' Willow replied. 'In terms of dimension jumping Dawn would be at least an order of magnitude more powerful, she could tear through the barriers between realities like tissue paper fuelled by nothing but herself.'

'I'm the original perpetual motion machine' Dawn noted. 'No batteries required' she said with a grin.

'Control will be the biggest obstacle' Fred noted. 'If anything Dawn is too powerful, Knox has called her "over-engineered" and that's a fair comment if dehumanising even if Dawn calls herself a device.'

'We're all machines, you're electrochemical, I'm just more… esoteric' Dawn responded. 'I'm as real as any of you, I'm just different and that doesn't bother me like it used to' she said with a smile. Connor had helped out with that a great deal, he was just created for the benefit of a higher power too and he was still a person, so was Illyria for that matter and underneath the surface the way her body worked was truly alien.

'So we're not really talking Super-Dawn, just Slider-Dawn' Faith asked. 'Hey I thought Jerry O'Connell was kinda cute when I was a kid okay?' she declared defensively when Buffy gave her a look. Faith used to watch the show with her watcher sometimes, although she preferred the fat English guy, something about putting university professors in a better light.

'I missed the later seasons because I ended up in Pylea but from what I hear I didn't miss much' Fred interjected. 'Sorry' she apologised sheepishly when Buffy redirected her gaze in the physicists direction.

'Well if nothing else Illyria will be pleased I'm sure at us increasing our dimension jumping potential' Giles opined. 'She does seem to be a rather reluctant taxi service to Pylea sometimes.'

'She'd rather be out busting heads' Spike noted, 'Woman after my own heart she is.'

'The only women after your heart are carrying wooden stakes' Angel declared with a smirk.

'Did you hear that?' Spike objected. 'I did nothing to provoke that' he said. 'The next time he claims I'm the one that always starts it I hope you'll all remember he's no angel himself, name be damned.'

Connor grinned. 'Don't worry I'll use it the next time he calls me childish' he told Spike.

'There you see' Spike told Angel, 'what kind of example are you setting for the boy?' he asked smugly.

'Don't make me break you two up' Buffy told the vampires, 'and I don't mean separate you' she added threateningly.

Dawn turned to Connor. 'You see that?' she asked rhetorically. 'They all resort to violence in the end.'

'It's disheartening' Connor replied, playing along. 'What about make love not war?'

'And that had better not be happening either' Buffy responded quickly, looking from one to the other.

'So I shouldn't mention the possibility of you being Aunty Buffy then?' Dawn asked deadpan, eyes twinkling.

'Not if you want him to be able to walk' Buffy replied, indicating Connor.

Angel crossed his arms. 'He's my son and you don't get to beat him up' he stated seriously. 'Not until he recovers from what I'd do to him anyway' he added, only partially in jest.

Connor grimaced and turned to his girlfriend. 'So if we ever need an escape plan in a hurry when do you reckon you're going to get this portal thing to work?' he asked.

Note from the Author:

In the absence of dimensional key based fuels this fanfic continues to run on reviews.