Author's Note: Yes, I snuck in a cameo last part. I'm sneaking in a couple more this part. Ain't none of the cameos mine.
For that matter, neither is Daria, who belongs to Glenn Eichler, nor Buffy, Faith, and Lilah Morgan, who belong to Joss Whedon, but the warden, Mrs. Krueger, and Cameron Kim are mine.
X X X X X
Later in the morning of April 11, Daria Morgendorffer found herself back in a familiar room. "It's the best we can do for the moment," the warden said as she had the guard lock her into the meeting room where she'd first been reawakened, two weeks ago today.
Despite the circumstances and the events of the day, she fell asleep quickly enough, and soon she was back facing Buffy in the apartment. "So," Daria said. "Let's talk about my night."
"Yes, let's," Buffy said. "I see you survived."
"With flying colors. But before I give you the details -- how did you know I needed to wake up?"
Buffy said, "It's hard to explain."
"Try."
"I'm not sure I can, at least completely. Slayers, in their dreams, can sometimes predict the future. I suddenly had a vision of you being choked to death in your prison cell."
"You had a vision?" Daria said.
"Well, you did, but you you never saw it."
"So you are a separate personality."
"Nope. Just a fragment of one. If you pinched me, I wouldn't wake up in your body."
"It's not an experiment I'm planning to try," Daria said. "And next time, if you could channel the dreams of me being murdered to me?"
"Not under my control," Buffy said. "Or yours, either. Anyway, it worked. You're still alive. Now. What happened? You seem different."
And so Daria explained the events of the last couple of hours. When she was done, Buffy nodded, saying, "Not bad. I don't think I've ever had to face someone who could pop in and out like that."
"I'm fairly sure she was dematerializing, not teleporting."
"Either way, you did good."
Daria was surprised to hear unqualified praise from the echo. "Thanks."
Buffy said, "I told you you could. And I'm happy for you. Not the way I would have handled it, but that's a stylistic difference. And there are no style points in being a Slayer. You followed rule number one: You didn't die." She sounded completely sincere. "So," she went on. "Are you ready to keep training?"
"As a matter of fact, I am," Daria said. "I think I'll be able to do this now. Even without the instinct. It was something I did early on when I fought Faith, and your early successes against me somehow got me out of that rhythm. I may not have the instincts, but I have the brains. I can use them. Even in the middle of a fight. I know you say that sometimes I might not have the time -- and I agreed with you, because you're the expert. Or an unreasonable facsimile thereof. But I think fast, and I think well. It may not be instinct, but it'll make a pretty good substitute."
"Oh, really?" Buffy said. "Win one fight and you think you're ready to take on the world?" The tone was challenging, but not disparaging.
"Not the world," Daria said, smiling faintly. "Just you."
"Well, look at you," Buffy said. "All dressed up and ready to party. You think you can take me?"
"I think I can try," Daria said. "And if you quote Yoda back at me --"
Buffy's answer came in the form of a right hook to Daria's jaw.
Daria blocked it.
Buffy smiled. "This has promise," she said, and the sparring began in earnest.
X X X X X
Later on the morning of April 11, Mrs. Krueger awoke to find herself handcuffed to bed in what looked to be the prison hospital. Her head hurt, and if her nose wasn't broken it was pure luck that it wasn't.
God damn the Council for not mentioning that Faith Lehane wasn't an ordinary human being. The strength she showed, she was either part-demon or the Slayer. Either way, they'd sandbagged her.
Almost certainly unintentionally; Dunwitty was an idiot, but they had no reason to screw her over. Didn't mean she hadn't been screwed, though. The folder she'd carried, with the map bearing her nom du assassination had, of course, long since been confiscated. It didn't give her real name, of course; she wasn't that dumb. But it was enough to get her in a lot of trouble.
Saying that "this wasn't good" was a severe understatement. She had no idea how long she'd been unconscious. By now, though, she had to assume they had her photograph, fingerprints, and possibly a DNA sample. Even if she phased out of her chains and ran away immediately, her career was over. She'd need to pack up her vital documents and her family, burn her house to the ground, and get the hell out of LA before they had the chance to plaster her photo all over the news.
She got ready to dematerialize, but before she could do so, she heard a voice say, "Good. You're awake."
Unfortunately, it didn't sound like any nurse Mrs. Krueger had ever heard. Her hopes that it was, instead, the doctor, were destroyed when she turned her head and the man standing there. "I'm Detective Gannon. And you are?"
"Invoking my right to counsel," Mrs. Krueger said.
"I don't see how; we haven't charged you with anything yet. And I don't see what harm it can do for you to tell me your name."
"Of course you don't."
"Well, then, since you seem like you're dead set against answering any questions, you can just listen to me talk instead," Detective Gannon said. "I don't know how you got in here, but so far we've got you cold on breaking and entering, attempted murder, and possibly engineering a jailbreak. And if you're who we think you are --" he seemed to be waiting for her to say something; she didn't oblige him -- "Fine then. I'll tell you. You call yourself Mrs. Krueger. We've been looking for you for years. You've got a string of hits attributed to you as long as my arm. If we nail you on any of them, you're going away for life. At the very least."
Mrs. Krueger still didn't say anything. She was fairly sure they couldn't convict her on any of her earlier, successful killings; she didn't leave witnesses, and she didn't leave fingerprints. Anyway, it wasn't like any jail could hold her.
Still, as soon as she got out, she definitely would have to run.
"I see you're still bound and determined to stay quiet. Fine. But, just to make everything legal: You, whoever you are, are under arrest for breaking and entering, the attempted murder of Faith Lehane, and anything else the DA can think up to keep you in jail while we nail you on all those murders you've pulled. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will . . ."
X X X X X
Later in the morning of April 11, Cameron Kim sat in the attorney-client room of the prison, waiting for her chance to escape. She could have changed at any time, but she wasn't bulletproof. She had to wait until she was alone, or near some deep cover -- or a crowd.
When Mrs. Krueger had left her in the cell, she hadn't had a whole lot of time to change her form; the inmates in the cell across from Lehane's had already seen that she was Korean. She had, however, decreased her height by an inch, changed her facial features, made her eyes a lighter brown, and increased her bust size by a couple of inches. Her parents wouldn't recognize her if they tripped over her.
She was currently being grilled by an older cop who'd called himself Detective Provenza when he entered the room. He was doing his job, asking all the right questions, but every once in a while his gaze slipped down to Cameron's newly enlarged breasts. Not often enough that she thought she could take advantage of it to escape, unfortunately.
"So, tell me," Provenza said, "How'd you get in here, and why the hell would anyone break into a prison?"
Cameron decided to tell him the absolute truth, knowing there was no chance the old fool would ever believe it. "I walked up to the outside fence. Then I climbed it, jumped off when I got to the top, ran over to the wall of the building, climbed up the outside, snuck in through the roof access door, and made my way through the ventilation system until I got to the right cell block. Then I hid for ninety minutes or so, and jumped the redhead when she was attacking one of the prisoners. About two minutes later, the guards showed up. And you know the rest."
Provenza shot her a dirty look. "And you did this why?"
She shrugged. "Because someone paid me to."
"Now that," he said sarcastically, "I believe. Otherwise, if you're not going to answer my questions seriously, don't answer them at all."
"I did answer them seriously," Cameron said. "It's not my fault you don't believe me."
"Yeah, well, I'll know better than to ask next time," Provenza said. "So. What's your name?"
"Lucy Park," Cameron lied.
"Well, Lucy," Provenza said, "If you can't tell me how you got in, could you tell me your connection to Faith Lehane?"
"I've never heard of her before today," Cameron said. "I told you: I got paid to come here."
"Well, who paid you?" Provenza looked like he desperately wanted to be smoking a cigar while he interrogated her.
"My superiors," Cameron said.
"You think that's funny?"
"I think it's hilarious."
"We'll see how funny it is when you're locked up for assault, breaking & entering, and setting up an escape from prison. Look. I got dragged from my nice warm bed at midnight, and now I gotta put up with shit from a runty Korean chick who seems to think it's funny to make smartass comments to a man with a gun and doesn't seem to get how much trouble she's in."
"I get how much trouble I'm in," Cameron said, ignoring the other parts of Provenza's tirade. And the answer was, damned little. Her fingerprints weren't on file anywhere, so they wouldn't be able to track her down by her real name or her photo. And even if Wolfram & hart decided the situation was too embarrassing -- Cameron put those odds at about 50-50, because she knew that while she was fairly valuable she wasn't irreplaceable -- she'd still be able to get away at some point. All she needed was a moment alone. Or easy access to some woods.
"I seriously doubt that," Provenza said.
Cameron just smiled.
X X X X X
Later in the morning of April 11, Lilah Morgan was awakened from a sound sleep by her phone.
Instinctively, she knew it wasn't good. Unlike with most people, Wolfram & Hart employees sometimes got calls after midnight that were wonderful news, but she didn't have anything hanging fire where a late-night call would have been welcomed.
The voice on the other end of the phone belonged to a Wolfram & Hart flunky whose name, like most, she'd never bothered to learn. "Hell had better have either broken loose or frozen over," she said.
"Not literally, but metaphorically," the underling said. Terrific. A call at 1:47 AM and the idiot was trying to show off his intelligence. "It concerns the prison raid."
"What happened?" Lilah demanded, her sleepiness rapidly disappearing.
"Well, the good news is that Daria Morgendorffer survived the attack, and that Mrs. Krueger, as per instructions, isn't dead."
"You wouldn't be calling me now with good news," Lilah said. "At least, you'd better not be. Go on."
"Both Mrs. Krueger and our operative were captured."
"How did that happen?" Lilah asked, disbelievingly. These were ordinary prison guards. That they captured both a person who could walk through walls and one who changer her shape stretched the bounds of probability nearly to the breaking point.
"Morgendorffer somehow beat Krueger in a fight in the prison kitchen; our source says Krueger was carried out, so I'm think she got knocked out. As for our operative -- as near as I can tell, the guards caught her before she had a chance to get away."
"Okay," Lilah said. "That still doesn't explain why they haven't escaped yet." Well, in Cameron Kim's case, she understood; the young woman wasn't bulletproof.
"Anything you want me to do?" the flunky asked.
"Have either of them asked for a lawyer?"
"Krueger, yes. Our operative, no."
Cameron Kim still had plans to escape. "Send a junior associate to whatever police station Mrs. Krueger ends up at. As for Cameron Kim -- we need to arrange a distraction so she can escape." No, she hadn't fully succeeded, but the main objectives of her mission had been achieved, and she was too valuable a resource to casually throw away.
"What did you have in mind?"
"Nothing too subtle, too flashy, that points anywhere near us, or that gets anyone killed. Beyond that, it's up to you."
Lilah could hear the man gulp at the other end of the phone. Hell, why should she be the only one to suffer? The flunky knew the right answer, though.
"I'll get right on that," he said, and then Lilah hung up.
Now it was her turn to decide whether to wake someone up in the middle of the night.
X X X X X
Still later in the morning of April 11, Buffy called, "Break!" and she and Daria pulled clear of each other. Daria was breathing heavily.
But so was Buffy. "Not bad," the echo said.
"I meant what I said and I said what I meant."
"A Slayer's annoying one hundred percent."
Buffy laughed. "Take a compliment, would you? Your confidence and brains are helping you, no question."
"In the last hour or so, I've hit you almost as much as you've hit me. And don't tell me you weren't trying, or that you were taking it easy on me. Because you weren't."
Buffy shook her head. "Almost isn't good enough."
"You're 'the greatest,' you said."
"But I'm not the real Buffy. I'm a pretty fair imitation, but I doubt you could take the real me in a fight."
"Unless things go completely to hell, I'm not going to have to," Daria said.
"Well, Faith and I fought."
"Yes. But as everyone seems thrilled to point out, I'm not Faith."
"That's right; you're an improvement," Buffy said. "At least -- that's what you've told me they say. Not insulting her this time. I swear."
"I know," Daria said. "And I still have no idea how I'm going to get her back. But I'm going to. Somehow. And now I know I can handle the monster killing, if I have to. So now all I have to do is get out of here. So I'm going to play their stupid game. I'll even play it by their rules. I'll show them that, no matter how irritated I am, that in order to get out of here, to get away from these assassination attempts, I can live with what they've done to Faith." Daria took a breath, and added, "And then I'll show them how wrong they were."