The Dark Age

Lightning struck from thick clouds of sulfuric acid, lashing out towards the small black object that was now in freefall through an atmosphere of carbon dioxide ninety-two times denser than than the air at the surface of the Earth. It grew slowly as it fell, pulling usable molecules from the thick scorching air.

At last, it reached the rocky desert surface, impacting like a meteor and blasting rock and red-hot sand into the oppressive yellow sky.

As the ejecta settled, an inky blackness crept over the rim of the crater and began spreading out through the desert, growing outwards in all directions with tendrils of discoloration. Slowly, the terrain under the growing black smoothed and flattened out, creating an ever-expanding circular plane.

After the blackness had grown for a while, delving deep into the ground, on the surface at the center of the growing material, the blackness shimmered as it gave way to a softer white material which grew outwards, following in the wake of the consuming inky darkness.

With the Eliezera once more whole, Willow once more parked it at the moon's secondary Lagrangian point. Out of the earth's sight, a small low-power matter stream struck the surface of the moon, kicking up enough mineable material for the ship to replenish its lost material and hydrogen fuel, and reignite the fusion core. At the center of the two-hundred kilometer long starship, a miniature artificial sun blazed inside the magnetic containment of a tiny dyson sphere, thirty kilometers in diameter.

Meanwhile, negotiations with the SGC for the transporters fell through in the wake of Anubis' defeat, but as is often the case, there was a much simpler solution none of the three thought of until later. Willow looked over the profile of the Prometheusbuilt up from sensor fog data, stripping all the recognizable systems out of the simulation, until just the naquadah tech was left. From there, she spent a day identifying the beaming system until she had a stored model of the whole mechanism.

It wasn't enough to synthesize one herself. There were internals the sensor fog couldn't reach, and naquadah itself seemed to be partially composed of exotic particles, in a configuration that was only stable because the magic system recognized it and forced it to remain stable, so she couldn't just synthesize the stuff. But it was enough to have the ship search for other beaming systems.

And she found one, on an abandoned goa'uld ship, cloaked in low orbit. She'd pulled the system out of the al'kesh and walled it up at one end of the Eliezera, connecting it to the ship. After some testing of the alien system, Buffy and Xander had beamed down to Sunnydale, while Willow shut herself away, determined to finish her work before allowing herself to spend precious time on anything else.

The flash of light faded and the world returned to Buffy as she materialized in her kitchen. Joyce Summers gasped in shock, dropping the mug she was holding, as her missing daughter appeared in a flash of brilliant white light, wearing a silky white tanktop and shorts.

Buffy snapped out her Utility Cloud and caught the falling mug before it could shatter. She lifted it back to her mom's hands, which gripped it in sheer reflex. For a long moment, Joyce just stared, gaping, before Buffy finally broke the silence.

"Do you remember what I told you, after the Hemery thing?" Buffy started. "You didn't believe me, then, but it was all true. There's more, though. more you don't know. More you're not gonna wanna believe. But I just... I don't want to lie to you anymore, Mom."

"Buffy... what...?"

Buffy smiled hopefully. "I'll show you, if you let me."

With a shaking hand, not taking her eyes of Buffy, Joyce set her mug down and lunged forward, wrapping Buffy up in a tight hug. "Oh thank god, Buffy, do you have any idea how worried I was? Where on earth have you been?"

"I'll show you, if you let me," Buffy repeated. "Or are you going to try and pretend you didn't just see me appear out of thin air in a flash of light?"

Joyce pulled back and held Buffy by the shoulders as she shook her head. "I don't know what I saw, but I am disappointed in you Buffy. I don't know what possessed you to run off like that - "

"Let me show you," Buffy repeated for the third time, interrupting her mom's scolding.

Joyce frowned at her before looking upwards and sighing. "Alright. Fine. Go on. I'll hear you out. But this better be good."

Making a face, Buffy gently pulled her mom out the kitchen door and into the backyard, where a greenish beachball sized sphere was resting on the grass. At Buffy's mental poke, it quickly ballooned up to its normal five meter size.

Joyce gasped. "Buffy, what... what is that?"

"It's a disposable spaceship," Buffy told her wryly. "Come on already, Mom. You want to know where I've been, don't ya?"

Joyce gave her daughter a warning look. "Buffy, what is this?"

Buffy sighed and grunted in exasperation. With a mental command, the shuttle rolled forward and sucked Buffy and a startled Joyce inside. While her mom was recovering her wits, Buffy closed her eyes and focused on the interface Willow had built for the transporters. A moment later the shuttle and its contents vanished in a flash of light, and remateralized in lunar orbit.

It took a while to sink in, but Joyce's surprise could only last so long. She was in space. This was just... so cool. Her arms were aching a bit from holding on to Buffy to keep herself steady in the weightless bubble, but she didn't care.

"How?" Joyce finally asked.

"Do you remember my Halloween costume?" Buffy asked.

Joyce dragged her gaze from the lunar landscape. "I still think it was too revealing, by the way."

Buffy had to laugh. "You have no idea."

Joyce decided to revisit that ominous comment later. "What does that have to do with... all this?"

"Well, that night, some butthead with a lot of magical power and a sick sense of humor invoked a power of chaos..." Buffy went on before her mom could speak. "The point is, every costume this guy sold turned the person wearing it into... it. The costume. For about five hours, I was Lyn Rea-Val, like for real."

Joyce shook her head. "Buffy, I don't..."

"This is complicated," Buffy whined. "But, the point is the costumes became real for a few hours. As far as we can tell, most everybody changed back into themselves at the end of the night, and all the costume stuff turned back into fake costume stuff, but me, Willow, and Xander didn't change back, even when we remembered who we were. I guess you could say that now I'm Buffy in Lyn's body, but that's not quite..." Buffy sighed. "Willow is so much better at the 'splainy stuff."

"You... still look like you," Joyce pointed out slowly. "And I still don't see what this has to do with... this!" She gestured outward.

"Do I still look like me?" Buffy asked neutrally.

Joyce blinked and studied her closely for a few moments, and her eyes widened. "Your skin... your eyes have too much color, your hair too, and... your chest is bigger!" Joyce shook her head. "But how can..."

"Lyn isn't human," Buffy said. "Her kind call themselves Fae, and Fae can... well it's not really shapeshifting, but we can sort of slowly morph the details of our appearance, so I can look like me, or a tiny bit improved me." Buffy smiled hopefully. "The good news is it makes being the Slayer way less dangerous! Fae are made of majorly tough stuff, like cartoonishly hard to hurt. You could throw me into the grand canyon and drop an anvil on my head and I wouldn't even have a bruise. And we never get tired, or sick, or old, or other bad stuff like that."

Joyce was quiet for a long moment, but this time it was thoughtful. "This is all real, isn't it. Willow and Xander? The same thing happened to them? They're... Fae?" Joyce paused and shook her head. "Okay, but where did you get a spaceship?"

Buffy had to laugh. "Lyn lives on a starship the size of a city, and they're so high tech that, if they want, spaceships like this one can literally grow on trees. Not that this one did, it grew on a wall. In ours. Our copy of the starship, the one that got made by the magic that changed us into our costumes."

Joyce looked at her with some alarm. "You have a starship? The size of a city?"

"Yeah, but really only Willow can fly the thing," Buffy admitted. "We've all got the memories, which helps, but Willow's the only one with a head for it. Look."

Joyce looked where Buffy was pointing, just as the pearlescent ovoid rose from behind the lunar horizon. It looked small from the moon's surface, until she realized that the lunar landscape was zipping by in a hypersonic blur and the distant starship wasn't getting noticeably bigger. Joyce gasped.

"I wanted you to see it, so you'd know how big a deal this is," Buffy said. "You wanted to know where I've been the past few days, well, that's where. Willow's there right now, and I wanted to show you around, but Willow told me you'd get radiation poisoning if we stayed inside for even an hour. It's not safe for humans who plan on staying human."

Joyce's head whipped around. "Staying human?"

Buffy nodded seriously. "The Fae were created, with technology and stuff. It takes on average seventeen days to upgrade a human, but the procedure is cheap and automatic and completely reliable. That's the other reason I wanted to show you this."

A flash of light deposited Buffy, Joyce and the shuttle back on the grass of their yard. Buffy collapsed the shuttle and tucked it out of sight, then followed Joyce inside.

"I... don't know what to think of even half of this," Joyce admitted. "Magic? Spaceships? You being a superhero? Aliens? Hellmouths? I don't even..."

"I know. It's scary stuff," Buffy agreed. "That's why I want you to be Fae. Mom, you're just not safe in this world as a human, and I couldn't stand it if I lost you. Please. It's only three weeks, at most."

"Buffy, you're talking about giving up my humanity," Joyce exclaimed.

"I know, Mom. I thought the same thing, at first," Buffy confessed. "But it won't be like what happened to me. You won't have memories of half a century of someone else's life dumped into you head. Yes, you won't be human anymore, but you won't actually be giving anything up! Not even your pierced ears, 'cause there's a morph setting for that."

Joyce shook her head. "Even if that's true, you're still asking me to live a lie. What about my job? My friends?"

"Mom, look at me," Buffy said. "I've been Fae since Halloween. Is there anything about me that gives it away? I promise, if you just want to go about your life like normal, you won't even notice anything different, except, you know, the parts about not getting tired and never having to go to the bathroom at an inconvenient time, if you go at all."

"If it's so great, why should I be the only one you do this for?" Joyce asked. "Shouldn't you go public with this so everyone can benefit?"

Buffy nodded. "Yes."

Joyce blinked.

"Willow's up on the ship working on it right now," Buffy told her. "She's already got a plan, but I'm sure she'll listen if you have a better one. If you take the upgrade, it'll be safe for you to go up and talk to her about it. Please, Mom. Let me make you safe."

Joyce gestured helplessly with her hands. "How would this work, exactly? If I said to go ahead?"

A subtle tension eased from Buffy's body. She reached into her mouth like she was going after a wad of gum, and pulled out a little red blob the size of her thumb. She held it out on her hand, and the way her stance shifted made it obvious that it was far heavier than its size would indicate.

"Willow made this for me," Buffy said. "It's basically a grow-anywhere-on-earth seed for the... thing that does the upgrade. I figure we put it in the basement where there's room and it won't get in the way."

Joyce regarded the little red lump with a mix of wariness and curiosity. "And it's safe?"

"It'd kinda defeat the purpose if it wasn't," Buffy said. "In the world Lyn came from it worked perfectly billions of times."

"I did just get back from a buying trip," Joyce mused slowly. "I suppose the gallery could get by for a while if I were to... take a bit of a vacation."

Buffy smiled brightly and hugged her mom, careful not to touch her with the heavy seed.

"I'm gonna go plant this," Buffy said, stepping back, "and then I should really report in to Giles. I didn't have a chance to tell him anything before the, you know, whole alien invasion thing... I wonder how many times I can get him to say 'dear lord!'"

Leaving her mom shaking her head, Buffy went down to the basement and picked out a nice empty section of floor out of sight of the staircase. She dropped the seed, which hit the cement with a solid smack. It started growing as soon as it made firm contact with something that wasn't Fae, slowly consuming the cement as it rooted itself.

Joyce was sitting on the sofa, lost in thought, when the doorbell rang.

Buffy came bouncing up from the basement and pulled the front door open without a moment's pause. Joyce smiled as Xander was revealed on their doorstep, wearing cargo pants and a loose hawaiian shirt, but she stared in surprise when Buffy sprang into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist as they shared a lingering kiss.

As Xander carried Buffy inside, the door swung shut seemingly on its own, but Joyce ignored that to focus on the more comprehensible part of what she was seeing.

"When did you two start dating?" Joyce inquired as Xander let Buffy down, sounding approving and a little smug.

Buffy almost hated to take the wind out of her sails. "Oh. We're not dating. Just being friendly."

"Hey, Mrs. S," Xander greeted, looking sheepish but not overtly embarrassed or guilty.

Joyce gave her daughter a measured look. "Not too friendly, I hope."

Buffy put on her best innocent grin. "No such thing, Mom."

Joyce didn't sputter. She very calmly and deliberately didn't sputter. "You're teasing me."

Buffy changed the subject as she grabbed a pair of sandals and put them on. "Well anyway, I really need to fill Giles in. Don't go into the basement until I get back, okay?"

"Okay, Buffy," Joyce said, standing up and giving her a stern look. "You'll call first, if something comes up, and let me know where you are, won't you?"

Buffy nodded. "I promise."

Xander fidgeted with his belt buckle as they strolled along the way to Giles' apartment. "I forgot how awkward this was."

"Huh?" Buffy inquired.

"Squishing my man-bits with my belt so the bulge doesn't show," Xander explained.

Buffy blinked. "Oh, uh, right. I guess it is a little harder for you."

Xander sniggered.

"I didn't mean like that!" Buffy laughed.

"I know. I get how it's an aesthetic advantage and an equalizer when everybody's nude, which is cool," Xander said. "It's just uncomfortable when we have to pass for human."

"Well, maybe once my mom gets the upgrade, I can ease her into the idea that clothes are totally optional for us," Buffy confided. "So hopefully, that'll be one more place you won't have to."

"You think you can change her mind that fast?" Xander wondered.

Buffy made a face. "I don't think it'll be that easy. I think once she gets over getting to go into space, I'm still gonna be in for a ranty lecture for running off, even though I explained that. Or would that be a lecture-y rant?"

Xander shrugged.

Giles had gone beyond polishing his glasses and was pouring himself a drink by the time Buffy and Xander had finished recounting everything from saving Ford, to Anubis' invasion with a fleet of motherships, to glassing Antarctica.

"I had wondered," Giles said as he drained his glass. "The news is claiming it was an asteroid impact. I take it Willow is still up in your spaceship - and sod if that isn't something I ever thought I'd say - ah, effecting repairs?"

Buffy shook her head. "The ship finished healing itself in just a few hours. Willow's working on something else."

Giles went over and put his empty glass in the sink. "Dare I ask?"

"Giles," Buffy began. "We can make other people into Fae, and it's really easy too. We can save a lot of people that way. Way more than I could even if I slayed for a hundred years. This is freakin' panacea, Giles, and we've been handed it on a silver platter. We can't keep it to ourselves."

"It was a power of chaos that brought this into being, Buffy," Giles pointed out. "I don't think it wise to trust it. Such magics always have a price, and if it is a legitimate cure-all, the price could be enormous."

"I think you're wrong there, G-man," Xander said. "The upgrade isn't magical, and the more I think about it, the more I'm sure the chaos spell didn't bring us into being, either."

Giles sighed. "Xander, I hardly think you're qualified to - "

"I wasn't," Xander interrupted, "but Zach Reon was. He studied metaphysics as a hobby, and his memories are telling me that the magics couldn't have... inventedthe Fae. There's just too much information the magics, or Janus himself for that matter, couldn't have gotten from this universe. I looked it up on Willow's computer, and our costumes were loosely based on a single novella, and that book doesn't mention the people we turned into or the Eliezera, or any technical details about our molecular technology."

"He's right, Giles," Buffy said. "This isn't a bargain with a higher power. This is... medicine. The end of medicine - hey double meaning. Look, do you really think I'd be trying to talk my mom into the upgrade if I didn't know it was perfectly safe?"

"For the sake of argument, say you're right," Giles said. "How do you plan on offering this to the world at large?"

Buffy and Xander shared a glance. Buffy looked at him expectantly, and Xander shrugged concedingly.

"Well, we tried to think of a way," Xander said, "and tried some more, but we couldn't come up with anything that would work. But, the goal is to save lives, not to Faeify the Earth, so I had an idea. We're terraforming Venus, and Willow's working on a scanning program to detect when someone dies. Anyone, anywhere, as soon as they die, Willow's program automatically beams their body up, and revives them with the upgrade. On Venus."

Giles was busy polishing his glasses again with a scowl. He put them back on and said, "That is what you intend to do? Did you even bother to consider what kind of chaos that could cause?"

Buffy and Xander both nodded seriously, and Buffy said, "Any of our other options would be worse. This way, everybody who can be saved, is, and life on Earth is disrupted as little as possible."

"It is an admirable cause, Buffy, but that does not mean you should resort to mass kidnapping!" Giles exclaimed.

"If you have a better plan, please," Buffy retorted defensively.

"Technically, its not kidnapping if they're legally dead when we rescue the bodies," Xander added.

"Be that as it may," Giles said, "you're talking about permanently changing people into something else and taking them from their homes, without their consent or even an explanation."

"It's better to have a hundred people pissed off about that, than it is for just one person to die who didn't want to," Buffy said.

Giles looked at her like she was crazy.

"What?" Buffy snapped. "You're always saying I have a destiny, that my purpose is to protect people. This is orders of magnitude bigger than the Slayer! Hundreds of thousands of people die every day, and we have a way to save pretty much all of them."

Giles blinked in confusion for a moment, before his mouth dropped open and he stared askance at Buffy as he finally realized just what she was really talking about. "It is your destiny to protect humans from supernatural threats! It is not your place to upset the entire mortal coil!"

"Wow, G-man, I don't think I've ever heard you hit that pitch before," Xander contributed.

"Screw my place, Giles," Buffy retorted. "Letting people die needlessly is never the right thing to do."

Giles sat down heavily. "I am appalled that you three would be arrogant enough to, to play god like this. I cannot condone it."

Buffy sighed. "Giles, seriously, if you can think of a better way, that doesn't kill anybody who wanted to live, and gets us informed consent, I'm all for it. But, with what we've got to work with, Willow says it's pretty much one or the other, and we've made our choice."

Giles went to pour himself another drink, and there was a long awkward silence.

"The Council called back," he finally said. "They confirmed that the Cha - the Stargate went missing from its burial site in Egypt at some point in the nineteen-twenties."

"They already knew?" Xander asked.

"Quite," Giles said. "Apparently the records show that they searched for it at the time, but couldn't locate it. They were less than pleased that all I had was your guess about the initials of an organization they'd never heard of."

"Stargate Command."

"Right, well, I ought to report that the Stargate has indeed been found," Giles said. "I will see you at school, Buffy."

Recognizing the dismissal with a pout, Buffy followed Xander out the front door. She paused on the threshold and said, "If you want the upgrade for yourself, just say the word. I don't want you dying on me, Giles."

Daniel Jackson was late to the briefing, but when he finally showed up, he looked very excited. He put down a small but very old book on the table and didn't bother with sitting down.

"Sam! You were right!" Daniel announced, pacing back and forth and waving his arms as he spoke. "I started with some of the more obscure parts of my collection, works dealing with the occult and the like. I almost immediately started finding parallels to the teachings of Kheb, so I tried cross-referencing the texts and, after several hours of work, I found this!"

Daniel opened the book to a marked page and turned it around, pushing it towards the others. Carter examined it suspiciously while Jack raised an eyebrow.

"A magic spell, Daniel?" Jack asked, giving him a look.

"An invocation to Oma Desala, Jack," Daniel told him excitedly. "I spoke to her just ten minutes ago."

"What did she say?" Doctor Weir asked.

Daniel paused. "Well, mostly just that she was bending the rules by talking to me, and I shouldn't expect to see her in person again if I repeated the ritual."

"A bit redundant," Jack opined.

"But don't you see?" Daniel prompted. "What if other occult rituals are also invocations of Ascended Beings?" He pointed at the open book. "The one I performed is described in the book as a healing spell. I gave my self paper cuts to test it, and Oma healed me a dozen times before she ever showed herself. What if the entire occult tradition is, is some kind of etiquette for directly trading the 'worship energy' whatever that actually is, in exchange for intervention?"

"That's amazing, and more than a little disturbing in its implications," Carter admitted, "but what exactly are you saying I'm right about?"

"This," Daniel said triumphantly, before glaring hard at Carter's coffee mug.

For a moment, nothing happened, but then jaws dropped around the table as the mug slowly rose off the laminated wood. It floated steadily for a moment, before starting to wobble and slip sideways as it flipped over and dumped Carter's dregs out as it clattered back to the table.

"Crap. Sorry, Sam," Daniel said.

Jack recovered first. "Wait. I know this one. Isn't this just like the thing with those monks on Kheb? That was Oma too, wasn't it? She made you think you were moving stuff with your mind, lighting candles and whatnot, but it was all a trick."

"I don't think so, Jack," Daniel said. "It was borrowed power, yes, but while I held it, it was me doing those things. And I don't think it's borrowed power this time. It feels different. Sam's theory about the Ancient's psionic powers being something we can learn to do, even if it ends up being more complicated than just mental training, this proves the idea is sound."

Samantha Carter, meanwhile, was feeling somewhat faint as she stared off at nothing. She'd suspected, ever since she let herself think about it seriously - ascension really was egregiously magical, and while she could think of technological explanations for little things like seemingly being conscious while demateralized in transit between stargates, the magical explanation actually had a lower complexity penalty, given the available evidence - but she wasn't really completely ready for her suspicions to be right. It meant she wasn't as good a scientist as she thought she was, always just assuming something was physics without even bothering to check.

"I'm afraid we'll have to revisit Daniel's discovery at another time," Doctor Weir said, getting the meeting back on track. "The IOA and the DOD are concerned about the Fae. Specifically, we've been ordered to treat Fae presence on American soil with the attention due a foothold situation."

Jack shot Daniel one last look before shaking his head and turning his attention to Weir. "Is this even our jurisdiction? The Fae didn't come through the Stargate, and they didn't come from anywhere we've been through the Stargate. They didn't even know about it until we showed them. Not that I think it'd be anything like a good idea to have some other agency harassing our incredibly powerful modesty-challenged friends."

"Unfortunately, that's just the problem," Doctor Weir explained. "The Fae freely admitted that there are civilians in the know about them. Now that the Fae are aware of the SGC, the Pentagon is worried they might be divulging classified information to their native allies."

"So they don't really think they're a threat," Daniel guessed. "The foothold protocols are just an excuse."

Doctor Weir nodded. "That was my own assessment of the situation. Unfortunately, the Fae did technically qualify for foothold status when these came to light." She opened a folder and spread several printouts onto the table. "Buffy Summers. Willow Rosenberg. Alexander Harris. Our Fae friends have established aliases, complete with a history and associated records. Homeland Security is very worried by how thoroughly the Fae were able to create identities for themselves."

"So, what would our objective here be?" Carter asked.

"Primarily, to get non-disclosure agreements signed by the three Fae and any civilians who know about them," Doctor Weir said. "However, they also want SG-1 to investigate the Fae's activities, to confirm that their presence is indeed innocuous."

"Well then, I guess it's once more up to us to go poking our noses into things that might get them nuked from orbit off our faces," Jack deadpanned. "I like my nose."

Carter hid a smile. "Where are we going, exactly?"

"The town is called Sunnydale," Doctor Weir told them, and then frowned.

"Elizabeth?" Daniel prompted.

Doctor Weir shook her head. "The name is familiar somehow, though I can't seem to remember where I heard it before. It's been bugging me." She brushed it off. "You leave on monday, SG-1. A cover story has been arranged. It seems the local high school is having a Career Week. You'll be posing as Air Force recruiters..."

"Mom! I'm back!" Buffy called as she shut the door and kicked her sandals off.

After a moment, Buffy heard her mom's voice in the other room and then the beep of the phone hanging up. Joyce emerged from the dining room, her face a conflicted mix of trepidation, curiosity, suspicion, and resolve.

"How was your, ah, talk with Mr. Giles?" Joyce asked awkwardly.

"He freaked a little," Buffy admitted. "I think he's gonna be busy talking to his bosses back in the land of tweed for a while."

Joyce folded her arms. "I don't like that you've had this whole other life I never knew about, Buffy."

"I know, Mom," Buffy said. "I didn't like it either. That's why I'm letting you in on it all now. I would have told you sooner, but, well, you remember the first time I tried to tell you I was the Slayer."

Joyce winced. "That was different, Buffy. You were different."

"Yeah, 'cause I needed you, and you didn't even try to hear me out," Buffy groused, then sighed. "Mom, that sucked, but I'm over it. Please, just trust me this time."

After a long moment, Joyce came over and gave Buffy a hug. "Alright. I will."

Buffy smiled. "Good. That's good. Come on, follow me."

Leading her down into the basement, Buffy stood aside as Joyce laid eyes on the birthing pod and gasped. Joyce stared wide-eyed at the sight, taking a slow step closer.

"Oh, Buffy, it's beautiful," Joyce remarked.

Buffy shrugged. "Kinda, I guess. So, are you ready? The sooner you do it, the sooner you can get back to your routine."

"I suppose I am as much as I'll ever be," Joyce said. "Oh wait, no, I need to hide the car, first."

"Oh, right, yeah," Buffy agreed. "Hey, why don't we clean up the garage tonight? We can do it like a total mother-daughter bonding thing. I'll do the heavy lifting. How 'bout it?"

Joyce turned to her with a wry smile. "My daughter, offering to clean the garage. Surely, this is a sign of the end times."

Buffy laughed. "No, that was yesterday, and I kicked it's ass, then Willow nuked it from orbit."

Xander strolled out of the pawn shop several thousand dollars richer, having sold off a few rare gemstones he'd synthesized before beaming down. He jogged to the supermarket. It was time to do something he'd always wanted to do.

The lady at the checkout gave him funny looks when he pushed up a cart loaded to the brim with nothing but boxes of twinkies. He'd had to talk a stockguy into letting him into the back.

Xander just grinned at her.

"What's it like?" Joyce asked as she stacked a few boxes in the corner.

Buffy picked up an old table and put it against the wall. "Being Fae?"

Joyce nodded.

"It's like... Imagine the best you've ever felt. Totally rested. Completely clear-headed. No aches or pains," Buffy told her. "Imagine feeling like that all the time, no matter what you do. It's like that. And there are extra benefits on top of that."

"Like?" Joyce inquired.

"Besides being harder to scratch than a diamond?" Buffy asked impishly.

Joyce gave her daughter a patient smile.

"Well, I already told you about one," Buffy said. "You have total control over how you look, and it's totally zero maintenance. Makes getting ready for your day a lot easier, and you'll never need nailclippers or a haircut either."

Joyce was thoughtfully quiet for a while. "Back when you... beamed down. You made my coffee mug levitate. What was that?"

"It's called the Utility Cloud," Buffy explained. "It's these little bits of... something. Willow could tell you. Anyway it's these little bits that work with the magnet-type stuff your bones do to make something called prehensile magnetic fields. And the little bits can do all kinds of useful stuff, if you know how. It's like the ultimate swiss army knife."

"It's almost like magic," Joyce commented.

"But not really," Buffy said. "If I could pick things up with magic, I wouldn't need to balance the weight. If I hold something heavy enough out in front of me with my Utility Cloud, I'll topple over."

Joyce chuckled. "I see."

Philip Henry was desperate. It was closing in on him, and his heart thundered in primal fear. He dashed around a corner and almost shrieked when he nearly collided with a custodian who was busy dumping out trashcans into a dumpster.

"Can I help you?" the custodian asked.

"Rupert Giles," Philip gasped. "I need to see him."

"Mr. Giles? He's our librarian," the man revealed. "Next building over, first door on your left."

Rushing off in the indicated direction, Philip barely registered the sarcastic, "You're welcome," from behind him.

Philip spotted the door marked Library with a surge of relief, but before he could reach it, a noise made him spin around in fright. Backing slowly towards the building, Philip strained his eyes, searching for his pursuer in the darkness.

He could hear it, coming closer, and his shaking hand scrabbled behind him for the door handle. There. Glowing eyes, peering menacingly out of something human-shaped.

"Oh gods..."

His foot caught on the concrete step and he almost tripped. The thing moved closer during his distraction, but as it shuffled into the light, giving him a pleasant smile full of black, rotted teeth in a decaying bluish face, Philip's knees went weak in recognition.

"Deirdre..."

She reached for him, and he flinched back, whirling to yank open the door, but a rotting hand slammed into the cheerfully-painted metal.

"No!" Philip cried. "Help me!"

In the library, Xander stuffed yet another twinkie into his mouth. The big box he'd brought with him was on the table, and the chair next to him held a plastic shopping back full of empty wrappers. Giles was pouring over several books, looking for further references to the Goa'uld and giving Xander occasional queasy looks.

"Must you gorge yourself on those abominations in here?" Giles asked tiredly.

"They're not abominations! They're good food!" Xander insisted.

"Food has actual ingredients. Those things aren't food," Giles argued inanely.

"I can finally eat my twinkies by the box-full without making myself sick," Xander countered.

"Where do you put it all?" Giles asked semi-rhetorically.

"It's just atoms," Xander said. "Anything that puts me over-mass just gets shed in whatever way is convenient. Carbon dioxide. Water vapor. Whatever."

"Delightful," Giles muttered sourly.

Xander stuffed another wrapper into the plastic bag and reached for the box, but he froze in place a moment later. "You hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"..omebody! Please!"

Xander swore and leaped out of his seat. He reached out a hand and one of Giles' swords hurtled across the room, smacking hard into Xander's palm blade-first. Xander flipped the handle into his hand and dashed for the library's side door.

Xander slammed the door open with his shoulder, sending two people who were just on the other side sprawling to the ground. No, not two people. One middle-aged guy and one...

"Holy crap zombie!" Xander exclaimed.

With a snarl, the zombie lunged for the guy, who was crawling away, but Xander swung hard with the sword, lopping the zombie's arm off. Pushing a current through the steel blade, Xander stabbed through the zombie's chest, and it fell back, twitching.

"Good lord, Phillip? Is that you?" Giles said, stepping out behind Xander and helping the other guy up.

"Rupert, thank god," the guy, Phillip, gasped. "It's back."

"What's back?" Xander asked as he aimed to chop the zombie's head off.

"No!" Phillip yelped. "Don't! If you destroy her it'll just leap to a new host!"

As Xander lowered the sword, Giles finally got a good look at the zombie. Possessed zombie? Whatever it was.

"Deirdre," Giles breathed in horror.

"Giles, what's going on?" Xander questioned.

"Quickly, help me get her into the weapons cage," Giles said.

Still reeling from the electrocution, Giles and Xander managed to wrestle the zombie across the library without getting bitten or anything. Once she was locked up, zombie Deirdre seemed to shake it off, and gave them a very creepy smile. Giles waved them back into his office.

"G-man, seriously, what's going on?" Xander asked again.

"You should go home, Xander," Giles said evenly. "This is a personal matter. You don't need to be involved."

"Really? 'Cause this looks more like another exciting episode of Adventures in Hellmouth Central," Xander retorted.

"Xander," Giles nearly growled.

"It's called Eyghon," Philip revealed, wilting when Giles glared at him. "What? The kid just saved my life. Ah, Philip Henry, good to meet you, young man."

"Xander Harris." Xander shook his hand. "So... Eyghon?"

With a sigh, Giles explained, "It is a demonic spirit that I, Philip, and a few other impetuous boys... dealed with, during our youth."

Xander stared. "Dealt with? Or made a deal with?"

"Ah, that would be the second one," Giles admitted.

Phillip rolled up his sleeve, revealing a three-pronged tattoo. "It marked us, and now, finally, it has returned to claim us."

Buffy, are you busy? Xander sent.

Kind of, Buffy replied. I'm hanging with my mom, and I've just about got her convinced to take the upgrade. Why?

Don't worry about it. I'll tell you about it later. Or Giles will, Xander sent.

Problem? Buffy asked.

Small one, maybe, Xander admitted. I can handle it.

Okay. I'll be there in a flash if you need me, Buffy affirmed.

Xander looked between Philip Henry and Giles. "So how do we kill it?"

"I'm... I'm not sure we can," Philip confessed. "It doesn't have a physical form we can hurt."

Xander thought for a moment. "How well can it get around without a host body?"

"It was little more than an amorphous blue mist when it moved between hosts," Giles said. "But if you're thinking of trapping it, there's nothing to stop it from passing through solid walls."

"Actually, I was thinking of stranding it somewhere it'll never find another host." Xander looked a Giles. "You think it could survive on the surface of the sun?"

Philip choked. "The surface of the sun? How would you even..."

Giles, meanwhile, sat down, stunned. "It couldn't actually be that easy, could it?"

"Why don't we find out," Xander said, striding back into the library proper.

The zombie gave him that creepy grin again, so Xander electrocuted her. While she was reeling, he opened the cage and dragged her across the library and out the side door. Giles and Phillip followed, anxious and confused respectively.

With a flash of light, the transparent sphere of a shuttle appeared just outside the door, and Xander tossed the zombie inside.

Phillip stared open-mouthed. "Wha... what on earth is that?"

Xander activated the shuttle's autonav, and set the destination. Inside, the zombie was looking around in confusion and clawing at the inner membrane. With a gust of air, the shuttle lifted up and accelerated into the night sky.

Xander made a show of dusting his hands off. "Done and done."

"I need another drink," Giles sighed, turning to Philip. "Join me at the pub?"

Joyce pulled her car into the garage, and then followed Buffy into the house and down to the basement. The birthing pod opened like a flower, and Joyce shot Buffy a nervous look.

"Is there anything I need to do?" Joyce asked.

Buffy shook her head. "Nope, but you should strip first. Anything you're wearing is gonna dissolve."

"Dissolve?" Joyce repeated.

"Well, yeah, the thing's changing your whole body at the molecular level," Buffy said. "Clothes really aren't part of the process."

"Alright," Joyce said, undressing and handing her clothes to Buffy, who folded them and set them aside.

Once she was down to her skin, Joyce stepped gingerly onto the reddish fleshy surface. "Oh, it's warm."

Feeling bolder, Joyce waded into the wafting forest of waist-high pale pink tendrils. With a liquid sound, a bubble of fluid swelled up under her feet. It felt like sinking into a hot bath. No, better than that. It felt like sinking into a bath of hot oil massage. That didn't even make sense, but that's what it felt like.

The petals of the pod began to close, curling up around the fluid, but Joyce was already floating on a cloud of relaxed contentment. The fluid rose over her head, and unconsciousness claimed her.

(AN: Has anyone else noticed that Anubis and Eyghon are pretty much the same kind of entity? And people say Stargate and Buffy don't share a universe. :P )