Slayer Magic
Chapter Two
by Jared Ornstead
aka Skysaber
aka Perfect Lionheart
OoOoO
"So, what should I do now?" Xander looked over his hand of cards. "I am thinking I should summon something."
"Play the library first," Amy advised. "It's got a powerful special ability that lets you draw a new card once you have exactly seven in your hand. Drawing new cards is always helpful, if you can arrange it."
Xander obediently laid down one of his four Libraries of Alexandria, and the teens felt a rush of wind. Glancing out the back door revealed that the entire block behind them had been replaced by an enormous building several stories tall, and as big around as some college campuses, while the building style itself screamed 'classic' in a way that reeked of money.
"Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." Xander whistled.
"What have you got in your hand right now?"
"Ancestral Recall, plus Prodigal Sorcerer, White Knight, Ivory Tower, three more Libraries of Alexandria, and Serra Angel," the boy obediently answered, feeling a bit out of his depth, but willing to joke about it. "How can four copies of the same library help, anyway?"
"More copies, in case some are checked out," Willow volunteered.
"Actually," Amy's cat interrupted. "It's a bit of nearly forgotten history, but there were once five great libraries in the ancient world almost exactly like Alexandria. The other four were at Antioch, Jerusalem, Rome and Constantinople. Alexandria was for a while the biggest and most famous, but they all had impressive collections. In fact, it was a few scholars fleeing the fall of Constantinople in 1453 with the handful of books they could carry who kicked off the Renaissance, because they ran into a guy in Venice who was playing around with this new thing called a printing press, and he thought 'hey, let's try printing some of these', and the knowledge spread and kicked off the Enlightenment. But it was only a fragment of the whole collection that got out before the sack of Constantinople, and due to the difficulty of travel in those days, the five Great Libraries didn't exactly share books, except by accident. Even multiple copies of the same chronicle often had sections added by different authors. So it's entirely probable that you could land several enormous collections of ancient or lost books with very little overlap or duplicated material."
Willow's eyes came alight and sparkled, drooly in a way that most girls looked at boys.
Amy was frowning while Harmony fiddled with the copy machine, printing more cash. "To do this right, we've got to get you at exactly seven cards, so you can use the library to get one more. The game is all about speed. Whoever gets the most stuff out fastest, usually wins."
"Well, then I'll play this one!" Xander announced, holding out a card which flashed into brilliant white light, as though it were the bulb of a spotlight.
"No!" Amy threw up one arm to shield her eyes, sending out the other to grab him.
"Stop!" Willow lunged forward, eyes closed, relying on her Xander-sense to find him, and wrapped herself around his middle.
"What?" Xander, though shielding his eyes from the incandescent white card, appeared genuinely puzzled by the trio of girls lunging at him to stop his rash act.
"We want to keep you alive, and this game is like a puzzle," Amy told him as soberly as she could holding a For Dummies book between her eyes and that card. "Do all of the right things, in the wrong order, and you'll lose to a better player - and since we have no idea who you are playing *against*..." she trailed off and let him fill in her meaning.
"No Dying," Willow insisted seriously, pointing to the cheeks of her face now buried in his chest to spare her eyes. "Resolve face on."
"No playing anything before I copy it," Harmony ordered for her own part, edging forward with her head turned away, plucking the activated and brightly glowing card out of his fingers to run it through her copier, then wincing as the glow only brightened. "Okay," she quickly figured out the problem. "Now we have four cards all bright like they're only an inch from the sun. Why are they all glowing like that?" She handed the four back to Xander. "They're like solid shards of light. I'm actually a little impressed my machine could copy them."
"Your machine?" Xander asked.
"Yes," Harmony repeated with a grin, through you couldn't see it for all of the blinding light. "Mine."
"I have no idea why they are so bright," Amy admitted, still holding Xander in place with one arm and her book face shield in the other. The boy was afraid to move since his last rash act.
Willow was holding a piece of Xander's shirt over her eyes. "I think I see something. Those diamonds are tools that give mana, right?"
"Yeah, that's correct," Amy admitted. "One of any color mana per diamond. That's special because there are five colors of mana in the game, and getting the right types in the right amounts can be hard, especially if other people can destroy your land - which is one of the classic strategies. The mox series of jewels came out early, and were so good they never got reprinted. Other versions got issued that weren't nearly so good."
"Well, two of the diamonds are dark around Xander's neck, and the other two are shining. I am guessing that whatever card he just activated cost two?"
"That's probably true," the blonde witch allowed, "but I'm currently keeping my eyes shut, hoping not to go blind."
"Well, in that case, I'd say he paid for the card before Harmony copied it, and we got four paid-for cards once she duplicated it. That's my best guess anyway," Willow concluded, shoving her face back into the dark refuge of Xander's chest as she did so.
"Well, Xander, there doesn't appear to be any way to back out of whatever, so you might as well play the card and spare our eyesight," Amy instructed.
The light suddenly dropped down to normal levels.
"All of a sudden I feel real good about myself," Xander admitted in wonder.
"I'm suddenly ashamed at what I've been wearing." Harmony grabbed a trenchcoat off the costume racks and covered up.
Willow just stood blinking at her own changes.
It was Amy's cat that finally answered for them all. "I'd say it looks like he played the White Knight card."
"Yeah. I'd say he did," Amy agreed, staring at the white armored gauntlets on her hands, to the metal boots on her feet, and the breastplate on her chest, all of polished white metal. Xander stood in full, head to toe plate armor. Harmony was in an all-white metal bikini. Hers was the skimpiest, but other girls had similar. Armored bikinis appeared to be the in thing for female knights to wear this season. The swords at their hips also seemed suited to their builds, too. Where Xander's was a hefty claymore, theirs were slender and lightweight.
"What are we?" Harmony asked, bordering on shock.
Amy closed her eyes and recited, almost as though to calm herself, "White Knight, a white creature with power two, toughness two, meaning it causes two damage on an attack, and takes two before dying. Usually that's abbreviated to 'two-two', power always comes first."
"Is lower better, or higher?" Willow asked cautiously.
"Always higher," Amy replied, eyes still closed, seeking a chair.
"Our low numbers do not reassure me," Harmony felt on the verge of panic.
"Two-two is actually pretty good," Amy got a handle on herself and looked around. For all they looked like an artist's rendition of an idealized concept of knights, things could actually be far worse. She found a seat and took it. "A Benalish Hero is another white card that is only a one-one. Lots of wizards are, too. And before you say that's bad, whole units of pikemen or archers or infantry are lumped together, and the whole unit only counts for a single one-one creature. So you have twice the power and toughness of a wizard or hero who themselves is equal to a whole unit of conventional troops."
"But there are stronger things out there, right?" Willow was dreading her answer.
"Loads, unfortunately." Amy answered, deliberately taking deep, calming breaths. "But most of them are monsters: vampires or demons or dragons, or the like. For humans, we are near the top of the scale."
"Still not being reassured here," Harmony whispered, looking ready to faint.
"There are two things I think can of to help out," Amy smiled. "As White Knights, we are one of the best creatures white had during the early years of the game, and we come with two special abilities. One is called First Strike, meaning if we get in combat, the enemy takes all of our damage before we take any from him. So in a fight with something of toughness two or less, you'll kill it all of the way dead before it could even put a scratch on you."
Harmony now breathed deeply in relief. "Feeling better now."
"And the other ability?" Willow could not say whether she'd dreaded to ask.
"It's even better," Amy reassured, now standing and helping Willow to her chair. "Called Protection From Black. Basically, anything black can do, can't hurt you. Their creatures can do no damage to you, they can't stop you when you attack, they can't curse you or basically harm you in any way. There are some funky, special-case exemptions, but that's it for the most part. In most situations, there is simply nothing they can do to harm you."
"And who are the 'they' who can't hurt us?" Willow perked up considerably.
Amy shrugged, tossing her hair out of the way. "Black was the color for undead, demons and vampires and stuff like that, mostly. If it came out of a horror movie, it's black."
Harmony had picked up noticeably. "So horror movie stuff can't hurt us? I like that."
"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that card doesn't actually summon anything, seeing as, you know, it just changed us, and all," Xander reported, still blinking out spots.
"It's possible they don't, or that being copied altered something," their resident expert on the game replied, then sighed, "Either way, we'd have to guess, as magic photocopiers are not covered in the official rules."
"So we're cheating?" Willow squeaked, afraid of breaking rules.
"If this was a tournament, yes." Amy admitted.
"Yes, well, I'd never played much, but already I can tell you this is nothing like an official game," Xander shifted from one armored foot to another, testing his weight and balance in his new set of armor, somewhat surprised by the strength in his own limbs. "For one thing, in the game you always know who your opponents are, and for another, you can see everything they've got in play. And while I know I am in this until death or victory, I don't have a clue who the enemy players are, only that they are out there, somewhere."
"What's more," he confessed. "I have the oddest feeling that I am only just joining a game that has been going on for a long, long time."
Amy nodded in understanding. "Joining in the middle is another thing that's impossible in an official game, so, since none of the normal rules seem to apply, we won't worry about them. Our focus will be on you staying alive. Hopefully that ignorance works both ways, and we'll have time to get you established before they realize you are here."
"That would be nice, wouldn't it?" Xander agreed amicably.
"How many cards have you got in your hand now?" Willow pressed eagerly, sight restored and anxious to see to it that she didn't lose her oldest friend and companion.
"Seven. I've still got Ancestral Recall, plus Prodigal Sorcerer, Ivory Tower, three more Libraries of Alexandria, and Serra Angel," the now knightly Xander replied.
"Well, that makes it easy. Use the library you've got out to draw another card," Harmony volunteered, just absently repeating the advice that Amy had given earlier while she loaded more paper into her beloved copy machine.
"What is it?" Willow bounced forward to read over his armored shoulder as he drew.
Xander showed her. "Haven't had time to read it, but it says Fastbond."
Amy shook her head in wonder. "You sure are playing with some high power, high cost cards in that deck. That one is an enchantment that lets you play more than one land a turn, only drawback is you take a little damage doing it."
"Copy first!" Harmony plucked the card from out of his grasp before he could do or say anything that might screw with it.
"But wouldn't it be better to pay for it before she makes copies?" Willow inquired.
Amy shook her head. "Not this one. Lots of enchantments are the same whether you have one copy in play, or several. An enchantment usually changes a rule, like 'you no longer die if reduced to zero life', or something - that card is out there, somewhere, and Xander might even have one in that deck of his. But he's got several cards that work better the more cards he keeps in his hand. Since most of what he's got in there are stuff he'd rather play than hold onto, keeping back three copies of Fastbond actually serves him best."
On receiving this advice, Harmony copied the card, then handed them back to Xander.
Amy rubbed her eyes, surprised at how stressful it was leading them by the hand through something that may cost Xander his life if they screwed up. "Okay, you had seven cards, then drew one, which became four. So you have eleven right now, right?"
"Correct," the lone boy responded, being as exact as possible since, you know, his life was on the line and he'd already stepped out into error once by being too rash.
"Alright, pay to cast a Fastbond, then put the other three Libraries of Alexandria into play," she told him. "You'll take a little damage doing it, but it should be nothing you can't handle."
One brilliant flash of green light later, and soon four amazing edifices filled with ancient, lost knowledge stood before them, each in different but impressive classical building styles, and displacing several more blocks of houses. Xander was also wiping a little blood from his cheek. "You know? That was amazingly painful, like getting beat up by a vamp."
"I'm not surprised," Amy told him, sorrowfully. "Most vampires do about three or four points of damage, and you just took three, one each from playing three more land cards than you usually would be able to. But," here she smiled, "Look on the plus side! As a player, you had twenty life to start with, so could spare a little, and now you're back to having seven cards again, so you can activate those three extra libraries to draw new cards!"
"Ironroot Treefolk, Sol Ring and Mox Pearl," Xander announced before anyone could ask. "Can I play the mox pearl? It costs nothing and provides white mana."
"That's a good idea," his instructor admitted.
"Copy first!" Harmony plucked the card out of his hand, and went and did her duplicating.
Moments later four pearls were in play, as well as an equal number of golden Sol Rings. Only this time something different had occurred, in that each girl got one ring and one pearl. Xander had even been able to hand around his extra diamond necklaces. Experiments soon proved he could still use them as mana sources, even while the actual items were in the girls' possession, and yet they could not.
"I'm guessing, since you played those Knight cards and empowered us, we now count as your minions or something and can handle your important magic stuff," Willow surmised.
"Sounds logical," the other witch admitted, still rubbing her head.
"Hey, either way," Harmony told them cheerfully. "Now we've got prize jewelry! Cordelia would have unprotected sex with a roomful of ugly nerds to own a diamond half this size!"
"How much mana could you get if you tapped everything left?" their expert brought the topic back to the present emergency.
Xander considered that vial question for a moment. "Well, I spent two of the mox diamonds on getting the White Knight card out that transformed us, and one more to get out Fastbond. Then I tapped one pearl to get the first Sol Ring. After that I used the rings themselves to get out more of them. That took three mana, so I tapped two rings, the first got two more, then one of those to get out the last. So I have one colorless mana on hand already from the unused half of that second ring, and could have four more from tapping the other two. Add to that, I could tap the remaining three pearls for three white, and I've still got a diamond unused that could grant me one of any color. So, nine mana total: five colorless, three white, one of any."
"With that much we could easily put Serra Angel into play," Amy whistled, impressed. "And she is a very good card to have. She's got a special ability that almost makes her worth two creatures, as she doesn't tap to attack."
"You've lost me in lingo, here," Harmony declared.
"Sorry," Amy recentered herself. "It's just a bit confusing for me, too, relating all of this to real life. Ok, look, here's the deal, for players the cost they pay to do most everything, like cast spells or whatever, is in mana, and mostly mana comes from land. But for creatures like us, who don't control either mana or land, the cost we pay is 'to tap', it's basically just game jargon that says 'you've gone this turn, your effort is spent, you don't get to do anything until the next turn'. Now attacking normally taps a creature, because it takes a lot of effort to go off and storm the beaches of Normandy or take that hill or whatever. And creatures you send off to do that are not also available to guard the home front or man the walls of your castle to repel goblin hoards trying to boil over them. But that's what so special about Serra Angel, she's got this special ability where, to her, attacking is a trivial effort, so she can both attack and block attacks on you simultaneously."
"Uhm," much blinking and wondering what the deal was.
Amy tossed her head. "Ok, picture her leading an assault on Rommel's panzer columns in Africa, and giving that her full effort, her genuine best shot, then being home and still fresh as a daisy in time to defend England in the Battle of Britain that same day, and fighting there just as strongly as though she hadn't been up to her armpits in panzers trying to kill her right before - even if those panzers had done everything short of killing her, she'd still fight at her full capacity against the Luftwaffe, at full health and ready to do it all over again. That's the scale we are talking about here. Serra can participate in both attack and defensive battles at all times. No matter where the fighting, she can be there. She's great! It's always wonderful to have Serra Angel on your side."
There she stopped herself. "Actually, what we need to do, before we decide on how to spend that mana, is to learn exactly what our options are to spend it on, and you've still got Ancestral Recall, which lets you draw more cards. So why don't you use the last diamond to power that, then let Harmony copy it before you play it. That should net you another dozen cards, and we'll at least know what we're working with."
A dozen more cards were drawn, discussed, and debated over.
After the discussion over priorities Amy summed up. "Ok, Xander got lucky by drawing a Stone Calendar, because between four of that, and four each of the three lands he drew, he can afford to cast literally everything in his hand right now, except for the trio of Fastbond spells we had him holding back anyway. And that means when next turn arrives we can photocopy whatever card he draws so he has four of it, that will give him seven cards, which means he'll be able use the Libraries of Alexandria all over again."
"And he has already had a patently absurd first turn," Harmony quipped. "But that will put him well on the way to having an equally silly second one. I love copy machines!"
"We are getting four mana for every one we draw, and casting four spells for the price of one, thanks to that," Willow admitted. "That does make a big difference."
"When you're playing for fun that's one thing. Playing to survive? Take any advantage you can get," the cat advised.
"Right," Amy agreed. "Xander's survival is the issue. He won't get any life from the ivory towers next turn, but he'll get quite a bit out of the Angelic Chorus he is about to play right now, after he puts his land down."
"That... hurt," Xander groaned moments later, looking severely beat up, injured to the point where Willow was so concerned she was thinking of a hospital stay for him.
"I'm not surprised, according to the math you are three-quarters dead, just from playing the extra land this turn," Amy's cat observed.
"He'll get better soon!" Amy held up both hands to block accusations as she reassured them. "All he has to do now is play the angelic chorus card! That gives him extra life equal to the toughness of all of the extra creatures he summons, and he's got a stack of those ready to play! Most of them with loads of toughness. In a few moments, he ought to be better than ever! The four Ironroot Treefolk alone will give him twenty life between them, which is as much as his whole starting amount! But since he is playing four of those angelic choruses, he'll get Four Times That!"
"Well, then you'd better get busy summoning," Harmony ordered, posing cutely, before spotting something they'd missed earlier in the shop.
Xander charged the card, blinding everyone with green light, and one short copy session later he was animating all of the trees on that section of road. Concrete split as they grew taller and wider, trunks thickening and branches filling out over a much wider section. Faces also appeared on their trunks, and the trees reported to Xander as loyal soldiers.
The boy himself had grown healthier, injuries and bruises vanishing until he looked better than before he'd cast fastbond. In fact, he'd never felt this good. Ever. Not even half. It was as if all of the 'Feel Good' in the universe had been dumped upon him. The man was quite literally glowing with health and vitality in ways that makers of soap commercials would weep in shame and envy over.
"All of a sudden jocks don't look so good anymore," Harmony confirmed to herself, eying him over the tops of her new set of enchanted reading glasses she'd found lying around, already halfway through a For Dummies book on English she'd copied, having been idly reading through it while waiting for the others to get to some good stuff.
She'd been finding that book surprisingly interesting.
"What's next? Willow asked, glad to see her Xander well again and eager to see about him being protected.
"Probably one of the walls, so he has defenders," Amy replied.
Xander pointed himself at some chain link fences put up to divert people around one of the buildings damaged in the chaos of last night. Charging up one card with blinding white light, he again handed it over to Harmony for duplicating, and soon thereafter those fences vanished, morphing into insubstantial walls of light that, while nearly invisible in the daylight, were incredibly hard to look at directly and gave formidable protection.
"What card was that?" Willow bit her lower lip, considering this new phenomena.
"Wall of Glare, it can block any number of attackers," Xander answered with a smile.
"Nice." She returned his smile with an equally bright one of her own. "Also explains why it looks so... like it's barely there. Only magic could make a practical defense out of something well, like glare," she continued in practical tones.
Amy also contributed in her own practical tones. "Ok, experiments one and two a success. It looks like you can choose the things to empower, so long as they bear a resemblance to what the final product should be. So, dolls ought to do fine as proxies. There were plenty back in the shop."
"Actually," Willow interrupted. "If it's not too much trouble, I'd much rather be a sorceress than a knight. Bashing things with a sword is very not-Willow. Spells are much better."
A bunch of looks got exchanged all around.
"Sure, if that's what you want," Amy agreed.
They all adjourned back inside, carefully arranged a set of mannequins that had been dressed up as Raggedy Ann and Andy, along with a detective. Willow stood next to them, and Xander raised up the card.
Only for nothing to happen.
"What's wrong?" Harmony peeked from around her copier when the expected glare of light did not appear. She'd been transferring reams of paper from the huckster's coat in exchange for bills she'd already printed.
"I don't know!" Xander protested, still frozen in position, card held high. "It's like I charged it, but didn't. There's no turning over of the starter motor!"
Amy went up to see what was wrong, then palmed her face. "I can't believe we didn't think of that."
"What?" chorused all the other females.
"Prodigal Sorcerer is a blue card, which needs blue mana to cast," Amy explained. "You need islands for that. But Xander never had any islands in play. We've been using mox diamonds, which can produce mana of any color, to substitute. But we ran out of the last one of those casting ancestral recall. Now Xander is holding a half-charged card. It has all of the colorless mana it needs already spent, but we haven't got any blue to..."
She broke off explaining when Harmony emerged from the back room carrying one of the magic paint cans they'd discovered earlier and shaking it in her hand.
"So, the card has mana in it, the problem is it's colorless, right?" the cheerleader bubbled.
All of a sudden the room was awash in blue light as she'd sprayed paint on the card. After a brief, "fully charged?" directed at Xander, to which he returned a stunned nod, she took it from his hands to run through her copier, and returned with four of it shortly.
"Alright, go ahead."
Another stunned nod from the Xand-man, although you had to be squinting pretty hard to see it through all of that brilliant blue light. Deciding to start with Willow, he directed the first card toward her, then...
STOP!
Xander found his hand full of charged summon cards shoved into a backpack, which then got zipped up to limit the glow, so it was only moderately bright in the room as Amy rushed over from where she performed her emergency brightness limitation and went to attend to his redhaired friend, who was clearly in distress.
The problem was, well, Willow obviously wasn't doing all right. In fact, it was as though there was a clear plastic sack full of Willow parts and two of her all divided up in pieces kept struggling to get out, one in white armor, the other wearing blue robes.
Xander, looking in concern for his friend, found to his surprise that he could see a list of stats she had as a creature sort of superimposed over her, and they were shifting constantly. He barely had time to recognize the horror of the situation before Amy had raised her Halloween wand and pointed, "Two Become One!"
Everything stopped, and as they stared at her in that moment of silence. Amy, blushing, declared, "What? You try thinking of poetry in a time like this."
In the very next moment, before there was time for word or thought to answer her back again, everything Willow seemed to drag itself back into place and assemble itself in its proper order.
Laying there upon the floor was one Willow, but garbed both in her original suit of skimpy white armor, over a new outfit of blue robes cut to be equally revealing in their own way. She sat up, apparently none the worse for wear, and blinking at all of them as if to wonder what all the fuss was about. "Did I miss something?"
The redhaired lass was quickly brought up to speed on recent events concerning her, and as they did so her companions couldn't help but note how effortlessly she teleported a pen and notebook to herself from her home to record events as they'd transpired.
It was when she floated up, quite without thinking, to a more comfortable seat in the air and set her notebook before her upon nothing (to have a more firm surface on which to write than her lap had been), and it stayed there as though supported on a stone slab despite there being nothing between it and the floor but air, that they began to realize the scope of her changes.
"And then what?" Willow asked, coming to the end of their rendition of what transpired.
All they could do in response was point to where she was floating in mid-air. "And then you started doing that."
"Ouch!"
Harmony forced out a giggle. "What?" she demanded, when their gazes turned toward her. "There she was, floating about like nobody's business, and the moment she realized she's doing it, it surprised her so much that she stopped and fell on her butt? I think that's funny. More to the point, that's exactly what I came here for this morning. Since blowing up nasty critters all last night, I've wanted nothing more than for magic to be that easy again. Do me next!" and with that Harmony stood before Xander and posed as though to take something without flinching.
His eyes went to Amy.
She clutched her wand, a trifle nervously. "I'm pretty sure I can fix it if things go a little wonky at first, like with Willow," she half-apologized, then couldn't resist asking, "What are her stats like? Are they as a wizard, or the knight?"
Glancing once again toward Willow to be sure, Xander read off what he saw that, compared that to the others, then told everyone, "I'm pretty sure they are both. Willow has the two-two, first strike, and protection from black of a white knight, instead of being the one-one and neither of those abilities of a prodigal sorcerer. But she has the sorcerer's special ability too: tap to do one damage to any target."
Amy shook her head in amazement. "Wow! Sounds like she got the best of both. That is way better than I imagined!"
Thus reassured, the young lad played the next prodigal sorcerer card upon Harmony, who morphed for a bit, but then was quickly put to rights by Amy. On recovery, the newly empowered Harmony announced, "It doesn't even really feel like anything. One moment you are disoriented, like just waking up, and then you're fine!"
As if to prove her statement, she immediately leaped into the air - and stayed there, turning a few twists and flips like a swimmer in the middle of a pool rather than a young lady who had just learned how to defy gravity. "This is neat! SOO worth it!"
Amy suffered a flicker of jealousy before she impulsively pressed her wand upon Willow and presented herself before Xander, saying sheepishly, "Well? I told you when I came here all I wanted was to get my broom back to working so I could go flying. There's no broom repair kit here, but this looks even better. C'mon, quick, before I change my mind!"
Looking to Willow, who shrugged, Xander once again applied the card in his hand. Willow proved every bit as adept at fixing the transition problem as Amy, and in seconds three flying, telekinetic ladies were zooming about the shop, gleeful in their discovery that they also had other common wizard tricks, like transforming minor objects and shooting bolts of fire and lightning.
"Oh why not?" Xander asked the Heavens above, before saying, "There's no way I am going to miss out on that," and zapping himself with the last prodigal sorcerer card.
Moments later, as he recovered and sparks danced across his fingers while he floated upside down in mid air, he had to agree, "Totally worth it!"
A quick aerial game of chase resulted, which ended almost as soon as the fun had begun as their reserves of magic quickly got exhausted.
"Whew!" Amy came to a rest on the shop counter, panting and fanning herself. "Now I know why this wasn't listed as a flying card! You can do it, but it takes so much energy there is no way you'd be able to keep it up, and you'd never be able to fight or defend yourself at the same time, to say nothing of shooting off blasts, blowing apart targets past the horizon."
"What?" she met disbelieving stares. "That's what this card is famous for! Prodigal Sorcerer is the original 'point and die' creature. He doesn't do that much damage, only one point, but if a creature exists anywhere, he can hit it automatically, without any danger to himself. And though a point doesn't sound like much that is enough to blast whole regiments of infantry to dust from halfway across the globe! Killing things in combat is messy and uncertain, and there is an excellent chance you'll die yourself, especially if you are only a one-one creature. But he skipped past that by never having to attack at all, just 'boom! you're dead'! He was so effective they had to come out with whole new defenses in later editions to prevent him from dominating the game. Despite that, he's still useful, and get two or three together acting in concert and they can take down even reasonably tough monsters like minor demons and young dragons. The prodigal sorcerer is even the first card with a nickname. There's a movie where this wizard spends a good couple of minutes pointing at stuff and blowing it up, so people began to call the card after the name of the wizard in that movie - Tim."
"Tim?" got asked in unbelief.
Amy shrugged. "It was a comedy flick. One of the jokes was this great, dramatic moment where this walking artillery piece of a mage gets asked his name, and tells them in stuffy and pompous tones, 'There are some who call me - Tim'. It was hilarious."
"Well," Willow smiled, "with a name like 'prodigal sorcerer' I'm not surprised it came with a host of comparatively minor magical abilities that don't figure on the scale of 'blast whole regiments of infantry to dust from halfway across the globe'."
Discovering they had nothing more to say on that subject, they set up another dummy so that Xander would have a full set of human-like targets to practice his next summoning on.
"Serra Angel!" he called out, raising the card on high, charging it with the most brilliant white light yet, so that Harmony had to protect herself with her elbow covering both eyes while taking it over to copy. Then Xander tried to bring it down, only to be unable.
"Dummies not doing it for ya, huh?" Harmony asked after a moment where he just stood there.
"They're the closest proxies we've got," Amy apologized.
"Not quite," the cheerleader smirked, walking to stand before Xander and bracing herself. "Come on, do me! I wouldn't mind being able to fly for real, rather than short trips. Besides, how cool would it be to be an angel? Don't worry, I'll be fine."
Not having any other options presented in the next couple of seconds, Xander complied.
It took Amy a solid minute to put her to rights this time. "That was worse than before," the blonde witch admitted, panting with the effort. "I know I could never do that again, if you ever decide to take it up to four. Combining three is obviously my limit."
"Thank you," Harmony told her in the kindest, gentlest possible way, sitting up to gently kiss the other girl on the cheek in thanks.
Amy nodded, awestruck.
Harmony floated up off the floor and twirled in place once, giving herself a once over. Not only had her looks taken a significant step up, proportions all just right in the right places, her robes had now taken on a more elegant cast, no longer slutty but still infinitely alluring, and with significantly less blue and more white than before.
Her hair was perfect, her lips and face were perfect, her skin was perfect, and when she called forth a pair of white feathered wings from out of her back, those were perfect too.
Willow Eeeped, then blushed in envy, only to be startled when Amy shoved her wand into the redhead's hands right before presenting herself before Xander.
"Me too?"
Xander sighed, took his hand from out of the bag where it had been stuck to spare everybody's vision, then raised the card.
Moments later Angel Amy was twirling in space too.
Xander could no longer be surprised when Willow speechlessly tugged on the hem on his shirt longingly.
She got the treatment too, then the young man followed suit with himself.
When he came to everything seemed clear, made sense and was rational. He had been given these powers to serve a higher purpose, to bring about the triumph of Good over the world, to save mankind from enemies that would otherwise surely destroy it.
Harmony and Amy were already using magic spray paint to convert the blue parts of their garments over to white. "There is no inherent advantage to being two-color creatures," she explained. "Most of the time it only makes you more vulnerable. Anything that has protection from either color stops you, anything that can destroy either color gets you."
Nothing more needed to be said. Paint cans got passed around, and shortly thereafter everybody was pure white in their attire, magically altering their nature to eliminate the blue.
"What are our stats now?" Willow inquired, positively radiating serenity.
"Serra Angel is a four-four, and combining with Harmony bumped her up to that level. The same is true of us. We also got the angel's special abilities of flying, and not tapping to attack." Xander calmly explained.
"We are now, all of us, better vampire slayers than Buffy could ever be," Amy declared without preamble. "We are four-four creatures with a very gratifying list of special powers. Since most vampires have power and toughness in the three or four range or lower, our first strike ability alone enables us to destroy them before they could ever endanger us. But more importantly, we also have Protection From Black, and all vampires are black creatures, so there is not any vampire in existence that could hurt us, no matter how they tried. We can destroy them effortlessly, and none of them could ever destroy us in turn."
The others accepted this as only right and proper.
"Add to that, we have considerable magic. Parlor tricks aside, it's enough to destroy army units from continents away. But we are still not without danger. Other threats than vampires exist. We must prepare for them."
OoOoO
Author's Notes:
I have been asked about Willow's costume and Buffy's stay in the hospital, and since I really don't see me covering that in the story, here it is.
Simply, Xander found a cheap 4 sticker, like on the outfits of the Fantastic Four, and saw his perfect costume. With a long sleeve blue T-shirt, the right pants, some white tape and that sticker, he could be one of the Fantastic Four! He chose Johnny Storm over Reed Richards as the realm of science geek was always Willow's department.
Night of, Johnny comes to surrounded by violence, goes 'Flame On!' and flies off almost immediately to deal with the bounteous problems, long before he could be found by the ghost of Willow. He spends a little over three hours or so killing, on average, a vampire every second (often doing large groups with a single fireball, as well as setting off carefully measured explosions into the methane gas that fills most sewers to fry the vamps hiding within), depopulating most of the California undead population and racking up a kill total that is going to be infamous among demons until the end of time.
Left to herself, Willow's ghost finds Buffy, but there is no way the Lady Elizabeth is going to do anything this ghost of a street harlot tells her. Result is, no seeking safety at home, no soldier guardian, no understanding of even basic machines, and predictably getting into LOTS more trouble as the beasts of the night prey upon her, finding her some of the most entertaining and amusing prey out there.
Angel never shows his face to rescue her, as vampires are dying like flies out there. So he keeps his head down lest he be among those burned to cinders, either via Johnny "Death From Above" Storm on one of his frequent passes, or from Naga The White Serpent in her killing spree on the ground.
Yes, Harmony had dressed as Naga, from Slayers. That is my own private joke in the title.
So Buffster spent one miserable night starring as a helpless victim in a monster mash, on occasion being rescued by Naga, who actually has no interest in another snotty aristocrat, just killing the monsters, so Lady Elizabeth invariably gets into more trouble again. Willow's ghost takes much longer seeking out Giles, as there was no 'safety' to leave Buffy in, and despite the fact the noblewoman would not listen to her, could not bear to leave her alone.
Anyway, ends with Larry the Pirate and the almost-rape, but the whole experience was bad enough even Slayer healing is going to take some time to put Buffy back together.
And, anyone who wants to use the above outline to create a story, they are welcome to.