Buffy rolled her eyes as she stood behind Giles' only half-listening to the sailor he talked with

Buffy rolled her eyes as she stood behind Giles' only half-listening to the sailor he talked with. When finally the sailor, a fellow Englishman or something she was sure, left did Giles' turn to her. "We can't board this one. We'll have to make a few more stops. Figure out who can take us and where. Come on Buffy, we don't have much time." He started walking away, toward another large sailing boat. Buffy sat down on a relatively clean looking crate.

"No way Giles'. We've looked all morning, and the only thing we found at all, is that I hate ships—and I've never even been on one!" Buffy crossed her arms, defiance shining on her features.

"Fine!" Giles' said, the toll from the days' fruitlessness pushing him far enough to lose his British stuffiness. "You believe you can get a ship to sail you anywhere? Fine! You can go look for one your way." With that he turned and stalked off, grumbling under his breath. Buffy simply rolled her eyes again, picked up her pastel pink suitcase and went the other way.

"Slayer! Slayer over here!" She stiffened and turned, hazel eyes piercing into the darkness that seemed to have befallen the marina. A short woman scuffled from behind a pile of crates. Buffy felt her nose crinkle just a bit at the sight of the woman; her smell, Buffy was sure, was hidden by the seafood in the crates. The woman had dreadlocks through her brown hair, her clothes where nothing more than rags that hung from her bony body and her eyes seemed to sparkle with something evil. "You are the Slayer?" She asked, her voice a high-pitched screech.

"Depending on who asks."

"I am Marcel. You wish to go to the Forgotten. I can take you to a ship; they will get you part of the way there. But you must come now." The woman waved a bony hand at her; skin seeming unwilling to budge from there suction of the woman's fingers. Buffy looked over her shoulder one last time before following the woman; Giles' would find her eventually. Besides, there was nothing besides human evil in the woman, so there was really nothing to fear.

The ship Marcel took her to seemed to be hidden away, further out of sight of the docks. "This is the boat?" Marcel nodded and waddled her way up the gangplank. Buffy followed after her, continuously looking over her shoulder. "Are we going to meet the captain? Or whatever, to make sure he can get me there?" Marcel turned to her then, a smile splitting her thin lips and causing a ripple through the skin of her face and showing off missing and yellow teeth.

"Right. The captain." Then she turned again and continued on her way across the deck of the ship. And like a bullet to a person's chest she felt it, the swollen ooze of evil that swamped the area—the ship. Marcel turned, eyes looking from evil to plain madness, staring Buffy in the eyes as her smile again split her lips. Buffy opened her mouth to speak but no words came, nothing of use anyway as her body seemed unable to move from to the spot. A hand rested on her back, the smell pungent with death and greed.

"Thank you, Marcel. You've done what I asked. You may go now." Another death covered hand waved at the woman and suddenly she melted. Not fast. No, no slow—seeming to take forever as Buffy watched Marcel's skin slip, layer by layer, down her skin to puddle in a mush of goop until only the bones' showed in the darkness and finally they too seemed to dissolve and break and boil into the goop until nothing was left, the clothes the last remaining thing to convey that the thing called Marcel had ever been there. "Now then, Slayer. Seems the Forgotten is your choice of getaways'." The captain slinked in front of her, a pudgy man with greedy little pig-eyes, a snicker seemed ready to fall from his swollen lips at any time as he looked her up and down. "And I will be the one to take you there." Long shadows seemed to break his attention from her as indeed the snicker spilled from his throat, shaking the fat that pooled at his neck and belly. "Take her to our," He turned to look at her one last time, snicker again slipping past him as he saw her bright pink suitcase, "visitor area."

And just like that he threw her to another man. No, a boy she saw as she looked at him. Lanky and probably younger than her, he scrambled to make sure he caught her and even grabbed her suitcase as he led her below-deck. "Sorry, but captain's orders' and such." He said, voice sounding uniquely feminine. "I'll try and come down with some proper meals." He added, locking her into the room that felt so much like a cage she briefly wondered if she should be screaming just to give them a show as the boy peered in on her one last time through the slot in the door. He sighed and walked away, leaving the slot open.

"Great." Buffy sighed out as she looked around, shivering in disgust as she saw the mold. "Now how am I getting to the prom after this is done?" Unbeknownst to her the ship slowly moved, farther and farther out to the sea and Giles' growing more and more panicked as he fought to find his Slayer.

Faith felt the Darkness inside her howl to kill the vampire before her. "You can't," She cleared her throat as the anger took her voice away, "Find her?" The bleached blonde vampire nodded, eyes looking for his next meal. She growled and had his throat under her hand before either knew it. "What do you mean you can't find her?" The non-beating heart offered no condolences for her loss as it refused to beat under her squeezing palm.

"Exactly that, captain. I can't find her. She's gone. Todd's pet 'Marcel' got her before Jenny could. Todd has her." Faith smiled then, a cruel smile that showed off her dangerous canines'. She let go of his neck and started laughing, slapping the table hard enough for the metal mugs of beer to tip over.

"You are a fool, Spike. That is better than I had thought." Spike shot her a confused look. Faith peered at him with madness in her gaze. "If Todd has her, he comes here with her. And he brings her here." She grabbed a metal mug and brought it to the middle of the table, hand squeezing with each word. "Then. She. Is. Mine." The mug crumbled easily under her hand, she let go and turned to go, settling her hat low on her brow. "Get the ship ready, we'll be leaving soon." She left the loud bar without another word.

Tara sat, swinging her legs, on the railing that outlined the bar. "Ready to go?" She turned with a smile and nodded, again clinging to the arm Faith offered. "So tell me, how would you feel on joining me when I sail this time?"

"Really?" Tara turned wide green eyes to her.

"Yes." Faith smiled down, affection the only emotion Tara would see from her.

"Yippee! Oh but," Tara's look went from excited at the prospect to not leave her sisters' side, to a sadness that pulled at Faiths' black heart, "But I only have you on the ship." Tara pulled away to look imploringly up to her sisters' black eyes'. "And I'll miss my Willow." Faith stared at her, thoughts racing through her mind as loneliness throbbed at her basic instincts. She felt the beast she'd given her soul to howl its laughter at her predicament. She clenched her teeth and forced a smile.

"We'll ask if she wants to go. But Tara," Tara looked up at her, joy again shining on her light features, "even if she can't go, you will not stay here. You will come with me." Tara nodded and leaned up to kiss her sister, forgetting the barricade that had to be between them. Faith hissed and growled, feeling the light that was her sister's soul burn at her. Tara jerked away and stared up at her in apology, lips quivering enough for Faith to fight back her primal instinct. "It's okay." She sighed out, feeling the darkness sooth her burn and wash over her body with new energy. "I'm all right. Are you?" Tara nodded, her eyes misting just a bit. "Tara?"

"I'm okay. Can I go ask Willow if she wants to come?"

"Yes." Faith watched as she skittered between the masses to get to the magic shop that held the redhead. Faith sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Arms slid around her waist and a voice whispered in her ear, breath frozen forever in the woman's chest.

"She could be a problem. That redhead your Tara is so attached to."

"Yes." The woman smiled against her ear at Faith's easy acceptance and kissed the long pale neck that Faith offered.

"Get rid of her." And just like that the woman was off, blown away to the wind—spreading darkness across the town that Faith had claimed as hers'. Faith clenched her jaw and glared at the wind, shaking her head.

"Fai! Fai, she said she'd go!" Faith turned to catch her running sister. Tara smiled up at her, Willow not far behind her. Faith nodded to Willow before smiling down at her sister.

"Good. Come, we'll pack, pick up Willow," She nodded to the redhead when she said the name, "And head to the ship. Shouldn't be long before we set sail. We're just waiting for one last thing."

"Yippee!" Faith turned as the Tara went to Willow and they talked for a bit before Tara took her sister's arm again. It didn't take long for the sister's to pack, pick up Willow, and bored the ship Faith captained. Tuck, a young boy who's twin sister sailed under Todd's flags, scampered to their rooms with the small belongings they packed. Tara lead Willow around as Faith spoke with Spike about coordination's and mappings. And the myths'.

"We can't sail into this. We'll all die. Including your pet." Faith peered at Spike for a moment before grabbing his wrist and pulling her knife out.

"Which one should I cut first, hmm?" He swallowed, eyes flickering to his right hand. And she drew the tip of her dagger from the tip of his middle finger to the back of his wrist and down his arm, blood gushing from the wound. She laid the dagger down, grabbed the table salt that rested on the dinning table, and shook at least a quarter of the contents into his wound. He fell to his knees with a scream of pain. "Good. Now, tell the sailors we'll be leaving soon. And the first to see Todd's ship will get a bonus of not dying by me in the first half of this journey." She let him go with a final smear of the salt into the wound. He scampered to the door. Just before he opened it though, she turned and smiled, the finger she used to smear the salt in her mouth. "Oh and Spike, you think, talk, eye, smell, hear, touch, or in any other way do something to Tara, or Willow, you will die." He shook as he stared into her eyes, feeling his dead heart give off a quake of fear and his instincts scream at him to hand her the stake to do it the easy way instead of anyway she could think of. He nodded and whimpered as she pulled the finger from her mouth and waved him away.

"She's bleeding crazy!" He growled to himself, not daring to cast a last look to the captains' quarters'.