(AN: And... somehow we've ended up in megacrossover territory. Well, it had to happen eventually. Just to preface, the setting is not warping to incorporate these other franchises. Everyone's still operating under stargate / buffyverse rules, for the most part.)

Surprise

Without warning, all over the world, seers of every ilk froze in the middle of what they were doing as the probability spread of the future suddenly fractured, and new impossible vision swelled to inevitability.

Deep in the main office of Wolfram & Hart, a dozen seers violently murdered the three in their midst who were genuinely loyal to the law firm, seeing in this new future a slim but real chance of outliving their contracts, but only if certain decisions by the Travelers went one of several ways. The path was there, and with the right pushes, the foreseen conflict would erupt, and ultimately lead to their salvation.

In a warehouse in Sunnydale, Drusilla the Mad suddenly started moaning and babbling about the rose in the sky stealing her children.

In a suburb of Tokyo in Japan, Oriko Mikuni froze, air-filled syringe inches from the neck of the sleeping teen who'd grow up into a corporate executive who's petty jealousy would lead to a deal with a demon that could lead to any of dozens of city-wide disasters. She reeled as the future of a few minutes ago practically uprooted itself and blew away. She almost made a sound, but quickly recovered and drew the syringe back to her hand as she slipped smoothly out the window. The boy could live. He wasn't important anymore.

In a luxurious ranch-house in Devon, England, Harriet Potter and her boyfriend Luneth Lovegood stopped what they were doing as a shared vision struck them. Once it passed, they scrambled to get dressed and go warn the coven matriarchs.

In a weather-beaten seaside town in Spain, robed figures cowered as the Ancient One threw a tantrum, ranting that this hadn't been what he'd meant at all when he wrote in the scriptures that death would die.

In the headquarters of the Watcher's Council, men and women in tweed were panicking in a very upright and dignified manner as they tried to interpret the prophecy Patricia Trelawney had given about the end of all things mortal.

All across the globe, the sudden and dramatic shift in fate was felt.

Unaware of any of this, Willow-rhom and Willow-kink shared a smile of accomplishment. Willow-rhom moved on to implementation now that the core problems were solved, while Willow-kink finally got around to dealing with the naquadah issue. She couldn't make it the normal way, but she could replicate the conditions in which it formed naturally. It would be slower, but it should work. They needed a more robust infrastructure, since she didn't want the lives of millions to depend on a single point of failure. The one salvaged beaming system wasn't enough.

Willow-icos was a little worried about Dawn. The young girl had known about sex from the start, but thanks to the remnants of a modern American upbringing, none of the three scoobies had been comfortable with having sex with Dawn. That reluctance was fading, and Willow thought she at least could overcome it if she had a reason, but it was probably already too late to make a difference. Willow knew that when a person was interested in something, but spent a significant fraction of their life denied that something, one of two things tended to happen. Either that person lost interest, or they became obsessed.

And since this was sex they were talking about...

Well, there were worse quirks to have. Dawn just needed an outlet. It was too bad she didn't have anyone closer to her age to play with.

Willow stopped. She could do something about that. She wouldn't even have to get pregnant. With her knowledge of the Giaa systems, she could grow a new Fae directly into a birthing pod, and choose his initial morph settings manually.

Closing her eyes and turning away from the house-sized model of Venus, Willow's mind zipped through the Giaa and found the relevant algorithms. It took her a few minutes to figure out how to bypass the pregnancy stage. She had to create a morph profile first and then substitute it in the extraction stage, and after that he would grow and be born like any other Fae.

Nodding to herself, Willow created a new set of morph settings and set herself to the task, only to hesitate. She could just craft an arbitrary male body, but that felt disappointing somehow. Idly, she remembered once thinking that if she ever had a son, she'd name him after Jesse.

That was it, wasn't it. Willow was skipping the pregnancy because she wanted him to be born as soon as possible, for Dawn's sake, but she was still bringing a new person into existence and that made him her child.

Willow-icos smiled. She could do her lost friend's memory one better than just naming her son Jesse.

Willow-para was strolling towards Buffy's house when she stopped in her tracks and smiled softly to herself.

Pulling her hands from the front pocket of her green hoodie, Willow turned and took off at a sprint, leaping fences and swinging from trees as she cut a straight line to her own house. She arrived quickly and let herself in, throwing her hoodie across a chair as she dashed nude up the stairs and into her room.

Willow went to her closet and and dug out her private memorial to her fallen friend. All the pictures she had of him were in there, and she went through them carefully, memorizing every last one.

Her eyes were a little teary by the time she was done. Willow packed the memorial away carefully and nodded to herself.

Buffy arrived in the meadow and looked around. There was a new birthing pod at the top of a hill between two palm trees, where Willow-icos and Dawn were cuddling in a hammock of all things, giggling together.

"Hi Buffy!" Willow called.

"Buffy!" Dawn cried, catapulting out of Willow's arms and into Buffy's.

Buffy hugged her daughter, dropping a kiss on her head as she carried the smaller girl over to the hammock. Dawn rubbed her face in Buffy's breasts in a way that was blatantly amorous, but Buffy just sighed a little and pretended not to notice.

Buffy pointed at the new birthing pod. "Who's that?"

"That," Willow announced brightly, "is my son."

"Your bwuh huh?" Buffy goggled.

Willow giggled. "My son. Jesse the second. I think it'll be good for Dawn to have a peer."

Dawn set her feet back down on the grass. Her arms stayed tight around Buffy's waist but she turned her face up to smile at Buffy, one eye bright, the other smooshed in Buffy's breast. Buffy absently petted her head.

"But when did you...?" Buffy asked.

Willow slowly swung up until the hammock was hanging sideways. "I skipped the getting pregnant part. I wanted to model him on the original Jesse anyway so I set his initial morph settings from scratch instead, and hey, this way he'll be born a whole month sooner. I was just telling Dawn a little about Jesse's namesake."

"Willow's funny," Dawn contributed.

"Oh.. kay. Cool." Buffy smiled, then shook her head. "Anyway, where's Ford?"

Willow swung the hammock completely upside-down and pointed. "Don't be too hard on him, okay? He's a tad unstable, not malicious. Which, you know, is kind of understandable. He went straight from months of being tortured into the culture shock of his life."

Buffy tickled Dawn to get her to let go, and gave Willow a wry smile. "I'm not above a little misplaced protective anger, but I'm not gonna hold a grudge. Might have to knock some sense into him at some point, though..."

Willow coaxed Dawn back into the hammock, which she'd swung back down to hang in the proper direction, and Buffy headed over in the direction Willow had pointed. She found Ford sitting at the base of a vaguely oak-shaped tree, chin on his knees.

Between one step and the next, Buffy spun around and deliberately tripped, falling back onto her elbows in front of him on the soft squishy grass. "Hi Ford. You look good. Immortality suits you. Immorality not so much."

Ford winced. "Willow told you."

"Well, duh," Buffy said, rolling her eyes. "But that's not what I was talking about. I meant your Fiendish Master Plan." Buffy made air quotes.

"Oh," Ford said, looking even more guilty.

Buffy shook her head. "How did you manage to convince yourself that was good idea?"

"I was desperate," Ford told her. "I had to try. In my defense, it seemed a lot more clever when my head was in pounding agony, but looking back, I don't think I ever really expected to win."

"Not that I think you should have given up, 'cause then you'd be dead, and I'd be sad, but there are easier ways to kill yourself," Buffy pointed out.

Ford sighed. "I think... I think I wanted to take someone down with me. I was angry, and scared, and... I'm not a good person, Buffy."

"Most people aren't, when they're angry or scared," Buffy agreed quietly. "That doesn't mean you're a bad person, though. Just a person. Selfish and flawed like people tend to be."

"Still, I was going to sell you out, and I assaulted Willow for something that wasn't actually her fault," Ford said, looking down at his toes.

"I never told Willow and Xander what you were planning," Buffy admitted. "That will stay between us, because I'm willing to forgive you. And yeah, you butt raped Willow..."

Ford flinched.

"...which, so totally rude, you should be nicer to my friends, seriously," Buffy told him flatly, "but... it's not a big deal. Not for us. You lashed out at Willow, and that was rude and reckless, but if you're gonna feel bad about something, feel bad about that instead of about using your dick to do it."

"I can't do both?" Ford muttered sourly. "I deserve worse than forgiveness."

Buffy rolled her eyes.

Moving like lightning, she grabbed Ford's ankle and spun off the ground, yanking Ford up. Her fist lashed out and Ford felt like he'd been hit by a truck as he went tumbling into the air, his world turning into a blur of spinning color. Buffy moved, somehow getting ahead of him and hanging stationary in the air. Her axe kick slammed into his back, abruptly halting his forward momentum and hurling him straight down hard enough that his body made a crater.

Ford wondered if his eyes had turned into black spirals.

Buffy landed lightly and sat on his chest, smirking. "The punch was for Willow, and the kick was for your Master Plan. Consider punishment rendered. Now you can cheer up and we can all be friends."

Ford blinked. A corner of his mind was still self-consciously libidinous enough to contribute a few mental exclamation points when he noticed that he could feel Buffy's naked sex on his naked chest, but lacking an appropriate response, he shoved the aimless punctuation out of the way and rubbed his jaw.

"It doesn't hurt," he said dumbly.

Buffy smiled brightly. "So, are you done moping, or what?"

"Uh, I guess," Ford said dryly. "The slayer hath spoken."

"Darn tootin'," Buffy agreed.

Willow-rhom found what she was looking for in the Eliezera's memory. Seeds. There were two varieties she began to fabricate. Mirror seeds and probe seeds.

The mirror seeds were dispatched to Mercury, where they would eat the mass of the planet to produce energy collectors, which would then boost into overlapping polar orbits around the sun.

The probe seeds were sent to the asteroid belt, where they would consume the matter there to produce several dozen probes. Probes were circular lens shaped ships, five kilometers in diameter and solid all the way through. A probe had no living space or fusion core, being optimized for energy storage and long-term coasting, but it was also able to serve as a seed itself, capable of consuming itself and its environment to produce anything from more probes to a generation ship, to a complete topopolis.

Willow was using the probes as relays. Set up in equidistant orbits between Earth and Venus, each would have its own copy of the Asgard transporter array, and receive a power boost from the mirrors so they would all have enough energy to run their transporters continuously.

It was overkill, but with potentially millions of lives on the line should the system fail, robustness and redundancy only made sense.

The seeds themselves were small, barely bigger than a shuttle, and went unseen.

Normally, the seeds would each be controlled by a Giaa, but as Willow expected, they were born brain-dead just like the Eliezera. It was a good thing she didn't need them to think for themselves, because then she'd be really annoyed.

"Non-interference my butt," Willow quoted Buffy.

Willow giggled, suddenly imagining Janus scrambling around in something like a wack-a-mole to prevent minds vastly greater than any god from ever waking up. It probably didn't actually involve anything like a wack-a-mole, but otherwise that was disturbingly plausible, now that Willow thought about it.

She suddenly scowled. If her guess was true, then Janus was responsible for the murders of, like, four-and-a-half million people on Earth alone - everyone who'd died in the month since halloween.

Willow-rhom shook her head. She could investigate that when her current project was done.

"Anywho, it'll take me a little while to come up with clothes that'll fit and look normal down in Sunnydale, but I'll have something for you soon," Willow-icos promised Ford.

Willow went off to concentrate, while Buffy and Ford followed Dawn at a distance, who seemed to be delighting in performing a one-girl reenactment of Ford's punishment. Dawn obviously wasn't as good at aerial acrobatics as Buffy, though.

Willow had explained the trick to Ford, which was pretty simple, but it took practice to do it well, and it only worked right in environments where everything was laced with superconductor.

"Say, Ford," Buffy said, looking over at him. "In the mean time, wanna have sex?"

"Bwuh? No!" he blurted at the sudden proposition.

Buffy pouted. "Why not?"

Ford spluttered, "I... you... not... because!"

"Because why?" Buffy demanded.

"I.. uh... Buffy, I really only see you as a friend," Ford finally managed to stammer.

"And I'm not saying we change that," Buffy told him, moving close. "It's totally as a friend I'm asking you. I just wanna give that part of me that's been hot for you since we were kids what it wants. I don't even care if you wanna think about someone else while we do it."

Ford stopped backing away. "That wouldn't be fair to you."

Buffy huffed. "It'd be plenty fair to me, since I'm the one asking for it."

Ford sighed in exasperation. "No. It'd be too weird."

"Come on," Buffy drawled. "Please?"

"Buffy," Ford growled.

Buffy suddenly stopped, looking stupefied. Then she cracked up.

Ford figured this crazy place must be getting to him if his first thought wasn't that the whole offer had been a joke, when Buffy covered her face with her hands and fell down laughing. "What's so funny?"

Buffy shook her head, wiping at her eyes. "Nothing! Nothing. I'm just a hypocrite, and I owe Xander an apology."

Ford decided he didn't want to know.

"Unscheduled off-world activation!"

Elizabeth Weir followed Daniel down the stairs into the control room. "What do we have?"

"We're receiving a signal," Major Davis reported from the console. "It's a text message."

Daniel peered at the symbols on the screen. "It's goa'uld."

Weir watched Daniel read for a long moment. "What does it say?"

"Um, it's from one of the System Lords, Camulus, the Celtic god of war," Daniel told her.

"I'm not familiar with him," Weir admitted.

"Well, we've never had any contact with him before," Daniel said, not taking his eyes off the message. "Uh, wow."

Growing impatient, Weir gave in to her urge to be sarcastic. "Uh, yeah. Of course. Wow."

Daniel gave her a sheepish look. "Sorry. It says he wants to arrange a meeting for the purpose of negotiating a treaty."

"A goa'uld wants to arrange a treaty with us?" Weir asked uncertainly.

Daniel shook his head. "Not just one goa'uld. All of them. The System Lords. They want to send representatives here."

Ford studied himself in the full-length mirror Willow had pulled out of the ground with a wave of her hand. The sleek blue underbelt, as Willow called it, was comfortable enough. It kind of made it look like he had a slight paunch when he put a t-shirt on over it, but with a looser shirt and a slightly modified pair of jeans, he looked completely normal.

Ford turned to Willow. "Thanks for this."

Willow, still naked, shrugged and smiled. "So, back to Sunnydale with Buffy?"

Ford glanced at Buffy, who was wearing only a tiny pair of silvery white shorts and an even less substantial middrift baring silvery white tanktop. She was hugging Dawn and petting her hair.

"Actually," Ford said slowly. "I think I need to talk to my family. Can you beam me to LA instead?"

"Sure," Willow chirped.

With a nod, Ford vanished in a flash of light.

Thor was not flying his ship dangerously close to a black hole to rescue a pair of Tau'ri in an exploding tel'tak. Indeed, there were no tel'taks or Tau'ri in the system at all, so Thor was sitting back at a comfortably safe distance while he watched in horror as the Replicator ship use his own technology to escape the black hole.

The ship, like a ring of grey blocky stalactites forming a cylinder around a slowly rotating core, climbed swiftly out of the gravity well. Thor went over the tools at his disposal, and found nothing capable of defeating the Replicator ship in battle.

Thor didn't like being a liability, but unfortunately, that was the situation. If he engaged the Replicator ship he risked the location of the new Asgard homeworld falling into their hands.

Setting a course for Earth, Thor took his ship into hyperspace. He had to warn the Tau'ri that the Replicators were loose.

Kendra tossed and turned restlessly on her cot, unable to get to sleep.

The things Buffy had said to her kept running through her mind over and over. Could Mr. Zabuto have really been deliberately sabotaging her? Could she really just go up to Xander and ask him to take her to bed without embarrassing herself? Could she even trust the previous slayer and her friends when they weren't human anymore? Could she afford not to when they were offering her a true immunity to vampires?

The sounds of birds chirping in the morning light wafted through the walls. Kendra failed to sleep.

Willow-icos answered the incoming call from the SGC, using her Utility Cloud to provide video on her end.

"Willow! Good to see ya," Jack O'Neill greeted.

Willow smiled and waved. "What can I do for you, Colonel?"

Jack glanced aside with a shifty look. "Just a heads up. The gould System Lords want to negotiate a treaty, but they think our defeat of Anubis might have been a fluke, so they're sending a ship to test our defenses."

"Just one?" Willow asked.

"Apparently," Jack told her. "Look, we're trying to bluff them out, but just in case it doesn't work..."

Willow nodded. "I'll keep an eye on the sky for you."

The connection cut, and Willow plotted an acceleration vector. She swayed back on her feet slightly as the Eliezera thrust into a ballistic trajectory around the moon. Using the moon's gravity, she slung the massive starship into a high polar orbit around Earth.

The maneuver took about twenty minutes, since Willow didn't want to waste power. Ten minutes after that, a ship appeared two light-seconds off Earth's eastern hemisphere. Willow decided to fire a warning shot and scratch the paint a bit.

Willow blinked as the intruder dodged the narrow stream of heavy gas moving at near the speed of light. Anubis' ships hadn't ever done that. Taking a closer look, the intruder did in fact look nothing like any of the goa'uld ships she'd seen in the battle.

Blushing in embarrassment, Willow activated the subspace radio again. "Um hello?"

The response was an image of a little grey body with a big head and big black eyes. "I am Thor, Supreme Commander of the Asgard Fleet. Why have you fired upon my vessel?"

Willow stared in surprise. "Thor as in the Norse God of Thunder, Thor?"

"Indeed," the grey alien replied. "Now you will answer my question."

"Oh, um, sorry about that. I was laying in wait for a goa'uld ship," Willow explained.

Thor blinked his very large eyes. "I see. You are an ally of the Tau'ri?"

Willow nodded. "You could definitely say that. I am Willow Rin of the Fae. What are you doing here?"

"I too am an ally of the Tau'ri. Unfortunately, I bring warning of a far more terrible foe than the goa'uld," Thor said. "I must inform Stargate Command."

The connection cut off abruptly, but not before Willow received a databurst containing images and scans of a strange blocky grey ship with a glowing blue rotating core. Willow got even more worried when she read the attached notes on the Replicators themselves. This was majorly bad.

Sending a summary to Buffy and Xander, Willow hurriedly added to the standing instructions she'd given the relay probes and the mirrors. She wanted them to auto-target replicator blocks as soon as they were detected.

According to Thor's notes, kinetic weapons were effective, so Willow wasn't worried about destroying the enemy as much as she was worried about collateral damage. The narrowed exhaust from a stardrive was, like, the ultimate kinetic weapon. Most of the work involved making sure the other ships wouldn't accidentally hit Earth with an overpowered attack.

"I tell ya, knowing Thor is actually a little grey alien makes the whole Norse Mythology thing a lot funnier," Xander opined.

The three of them were walking to school, since that was what they were doing when Thor showed up. Buffy's eyes went distant for a few seconds as she tilted her head.

"His ship does kinda look like a hammer, if you squint," Buffy noted.

Willow-para blinked. "The SGC called back. The goa'uld ship was apparently destroyed by a rival faction on its way here, so that's not a problem anymore. They're requesting we come to meet Thor and help and stuff."

Xander held his hands up like a pair of scales. "Alien invasion... high school... alien invasion... high school..."

Willow giggled and elbowed him.

After changing into what Willow was beginning to think of as their formal wear, the scoobies minus the other three Willows beamed directly into the SGC briefing room. The outfits they'd chosen weren't identical to what they'd worn the last time they were here, but ran along similar lines.

Weir sat at one end of the big table, with Thor in his silver high-backed command chair at the other end. Weir might have made an issue of the Fae just beaming in without warning, but Thor had done the same thing mere minutes ago, and Weir didn't want to be a hypocrite.

Jack and Teal'c were already seated to one side, so Willow, Buffy, and Xander grabbed seats on the opposite side, nodding in greeting.

"Welcome back," Weir told them. "This is Thor of the Asgard, one of our long-standing allies. Thor, these are Willow Rin, Xander Reon, and Buffy Rea-Val, from an alternate future Earth."

Thor stared, his big eyes blinking slowly. "I see."

A few minutes later, Daniel and Carter finally showed up. There was backstory. There was three-way exposition. There was far more staring from Thor at the Fae than necessary. There was flippancy from Jack, technobabble from Carter, and eyebrows from Teal'c.

There was Thor missing the obvious. "Unfortunately, I will not be able to aid you directly. Should the Replicators board the DanielJackson the location of the new Asgard homeworld will be at risk."

"Is there some reason why you can't delete that information from you ship's memory?" Weir asked reasonably.

Thor paused. "I do not believe so. It may take some time to ensure the data cannot be reconstructed, but removing the information is a cleverly simple solution."

Buffy and Jack shared a bland look.

"How do the Replicators define 'advanced' technology?" Willow asked. "We developed along very different lines, since there was no naquadah in our birth universe. Will that make the Replicators more interested in us, or less?"

"Based on my own sensor readings, remote scans will produce inconclusive results, so it is likely that if you remain at a distance, the Replicators will ignore you," Thor explained. "However, the Replicators are always seeking superior materials, and if what you say is true, this is one field where the Fae are far superior."

"So we won't look like food to them, but if they get a taste they'll be on us like ants on a hotdog," Buffy concluded. "Great."

There was a pause, before Thor turned to Willow. "I believe that covers the salient points in regards to the Replicators. However, there is another matter I would like to discuss with you, Willow Rin."

Willow glanced at her friends before shrugging and nodding at Thor. Without preamble, Thor moved a white stone on his command chair, and he and Willow vanished in a flash of white.

Willow-para looked around with interest, taking in the silver and curves aesthetic of Thor's ship. The little grey alien himself was positioned at a large half-circular mobile console.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" Willow asked nervously.

Thor pulled up a holographic window showing a detailed scan that Willow recognized as her own body. "Your people have solved a problem that mine have been struggling with for thousands of years. You are an organism unlike anything my race has encountered in our long history. An artificial being, neither biological nor mechanical nor ontological."

"Um, well, yes," Willow said.

"My race has, for much of our history, relied on the transfer of consciousness from an aging body into a new, younger clone," Thor continued. "However, after hundreds or repetitions, our clones are degenerating. All non-essential physiology has become vestigial, and our current bodies are now lasting less than a decade."

Willow tilted her head in confusion. "That doesn't make sense, unless... Um, do you keep an individual's DNA on file, or do you take a new sample every time one of you needs a new body?"

"Unfortunately, by the time it occurred to our scientists to store DNA profiles digitally, the degeneration had progressed to the point that we were no longer capable of sexual recombination," Thor explained. "We realized we had doomed ourselves, and ever since, we have been searching for the key to reconstructing our DNA."

Willow nodded. "But, I don't have the answer to that. Fae don't even have DNA."

"Indeed," Thor agreed. "It seems that once again, an answer to our dilemma may be found outside the context of the problem. The molecular systems that give you life could never have self-replicated into existence through natural selection, yet they appear to be orders of magnitude more efficient and robust than the natural edifice of amino acid interaction that supports cellular formation and organization. We have failed to solve the problem our DNA presents, but your race has found a way to bypass the problem entirely."

Willow blinked. "You want Fae bodies for your people."

Thor nodded gravely. "I am prepared to offer much in exchange for your aid in this matter."

Willow bounced excitedly. "Of course we'll help! Saving people from failing bodies is what the Fae are for." Willow stopped. "Um, actually, before I promise anything, can you show me what Asgard brain physiology is like? The upgrade was designed for humans and I want to make sure the birthing pods will recognize Asgard neurons as neurons... you have neurons, right?"

"Indeed," Thor said as he pulled up several informative holograms. "Our nervous systems are, structurally and chemically, quite similar to those of humans. Simultaneously, I would like to examine your own documentation of this 'upgrade'. Working from both sides of the question, I believe we will be able to determine an approximate probability of success."

Back at Buffy's house, she and Xander were changing back into their native clothing. Xander really appreciated the new sleeker underbelt Willow had come up with, that actually fit under clothes.

"You gonna fill Giles in?" Xander asked, pulling up his pants.

Buffy nodded. "Well, he was kind of annoyed last time we went off to fight an alien invasion without telling him."

Xander snickered.

Oriko gazed up at the stars from within the face-concealing hood of her white cloak. Below her, under the roof she was laying on, the boy she'd come here to kill slumbered on, heedless of his close brush with oblivion.

A ripple of magic and a faint rustle of cloth drew Oriko's eye to where a shadowed figure was outlined by the gleaming moon.

"Well how about that," came the sardonic voice of Kumiko Ishihara. "Looks like that boy in there is still breathing. Did you actually get cold feet? You?"

Oriko climbed to her feet with measured grace, offering a mild frown to the other girl. "What is it you want, Ishihara-san?"

Kumiko's feet touched down on the rooftiles with a soft thup, her hands on the hips of her frilly gothic lolita fuku. "It is the duty of a Magical Girl to fight for love and justice, to use her power to protect the innocent!"

"You watch too much anime, Ishihara-san," Oriko said mildly. "And the boy is hardly innocent."

Kumiko sighed. "You really are no fun at all, Mikuni."

"And you are no pretty soldier of love and justice, Disciple of Aluwyn," Oriko accused.

Kumiko froze. "How do you know that name?"

"I'm a seer," Oriko reminded the cosplaying witch. "Or had you forgotten?"

Kumiko scowled. "You're so fond of bringing that up, and how many people have you murdered because of what they might do?"

It was a rhetorical question, but Oriko answered anyway. "Twenty three."

"Twenty three." Kumiko shook her head. "I can't let you keep doing this, Mikuni."

"You think you can stop me?" Oriko asked.

"Oh please, we both know I could kick your ass any day of the week," Kumiko boasted, levitating a foot off the roof as a faint red glow flickered around her hands.

Oriko didn't rise to the bait. "It matters little, Ishihara-san. A cornerstone of fate has been forged this night. The benevolent apocalypse comes. I have seen it. All that once was has changed."

Kumiko blinked. "What in the underlands are you talking about?"

Oriko met her eyes, her gaze captivating and intense. "In their fear, in their quest, the Travelers will be manipulated into provoking the very thing they try to prevent. The mortal coil will unravel, and mortal civilization will end."

Kumiko was pale. "You're... you're lying. If you saw something like that, you'd be trying to stop it. Or were all your excuses just that?"

"I will try," Oriko countered. "However, my foes are seers even more powerful than I am, who seek to escape the chains of the Wolf, Ram, and Hart. If you think me ruthless, you cannot imagine the lengths they will go to in order to succeed."

"Say I believe you," Kumiko said. "Why are you telling me this?"

Oriko gave a measured bow. "Because you are the most powerful witch in Japan, now that Nanoha Takamachi has left this world."

"Who?" Kumiko asked.

Oriko smirked softly. "A much better Magical Girl than you."

"Hey!" Kumiko protested.

"Will you help?" Oriko inquired.

Kumiko hesitated. "Okay, fine! I'll help. I'm not about to let the world end on my watch!"

"Then we must move quickly," Oriko told her as she strode to the edge of the roof. "We have only two days until the events already in motion become inevitable."

"Why two days?" Kumiko asked as she floated in mid air off the roof.

"I don't know," Oriko admitted. "There is a face, who is the Fifth. The fifth of what, I cannot see."

"Right then," Kumiko said, rolling her eyes as she twirled and flew higher.

Oriko forcefully looked away from the gratuitous panty-shot and focused herself for a spell. "Chreiazomai to dowro sas, O vasilias tou Voria. Odiygos gia ta podia mou!"

The air itself came alive around Oriko's body as she poured out her righteous zeal at the god of the north wind. Leaping off the roof, a powerful gust lifted her and guided her, pushing her to land dead-center atop a telephone pole. Oriko wasn't powerful enough to fly like Kumiko, but she had ways of speeding her travel.

As Oriko leaped from tall pointy object to tall pointy object, her white cloak billowing behind her, Kumiko flew along side.

Across the street, inside an unremarkable two-story house, a pair of headphones slipped from the numb fingers of Tomoko Kuroki as she stared open-mouthed at the coolest thing she'd ever seen in real life.

"Are you sure about this?" Willow-icos asked the little grey alien.

"Should I perish, there is a copy of my consciousness from mere minutes ago stored in the DanielJackson," Thor replied.

Willow-para fretted. "That's fine for everyone other than you, but you're still risking your own life."

Thor's big black eyes blinked slowly. "Indeed. However, there is a high chance of success, and I believe the risk is justified."

The two Willows gave him looks of wary agreement as they walked next to Thor's floating command chair. They were in a large, empty white space in an unused area of the Eliezera, with a birthing pod in the center of the newly-flat floor.

Thor handed Willow-para a silver device about the size of a dinner plate. "Unfortunately, we likely do not have three weeks to spare. When activated, this device will generate a region of accelerated time with a ten meter radius. It will reduce the requisite three weeks to a mere three minutes."

The two Willows' faces lit up as they eyed the gadget. "Can we keep it? Or maybe even borrow it for a few hours?"

"Perhaps," Thor allowed, not reacting at all to the two girls speaking in stereo. "We will negotiate once we have established the viability of this upgrade."

Thor's chair floated to a stop and settled firmly on the floor. Willow-icos opened the birthing pod, and Willow-para studied the controls on the time field generator.

"So how do I work this thing?" Willow-para asked.

Thor pointed. "Touch this rune to activate the device. It is already set to the proper length of time. There will be a ten second delay, allowing you to escape the area of effect before the field is erected."

Willow-para nodded and Willow-icos asked, "Do you want to be male or female?"

"I would prefer to be male, as I once was," Thor informed her.

With the two nude redheads looking on, Thor levered his little grey body out of his chair and drifted slowly into the open birthing pod. A forcefield sprang up to protect the chair in his absence.

"Proceed," Thor instructed.

The birthing pod closed, and when Willow-icos nodded, Willow-para placed the time field generator on the birthing pod and tapped the rune. She dashed back to her duplicate and watched as a shimmering sphere obscured the birthing pod and Thor's chair.

The two Willows spent the next three minutes cuddling and thinking about what they would ask for and what they would offer if the upgrade worked on Thor. It wouldn't be hard to package a few thousand birthing pod seeds so Thor could take a shipload back to his home planet. Hyperdrive was something Willow probably would have been able to figure out by studying the salvaged al'kesh, but if Thor could give her comprehensive information on the underlying principles, that would save her a ton of trial and error.

The bubble of accelerated time vanished.

The two Willows stood up as Thor stepped out of the open birthing pod, and stared, their faces splitting into identical grins.

The new Thor was a petite five feet tall, with bright grey skin, swept-back white hair, and prominent black eyes in a wide androgynous face with a delicate nose and mouth. His compact body was slender, but by no means frail, and his brand new male organ rose nearly to his sternum, looking almost comically oversized on his petite body. Added all together, he was adorable.

"Chibi Bishonen!" the Willows squeed, leaping forward to get a closer look.

Thor blinked owlishly at them as they cooed over his new body. "Is this form so fascinating?"

The Willows stopped and chuckled sheepishly. "Sorry. I wasn't expecting you to be this cute."

Thor stared for a moment before looking down at his hands and flexing them. "I believe I am mentally intact. The integration of new motor reflexes and linguistic data appears to be seamless."

"That's good," Willow-icos said. "I was worried that even if your mind survived there might be minor glitches, but if not, then I think we can conclude that the upgrade is safe for Asgard in general."

"It is strange," Thor said as he went to his command chair, which he'd preprogrammed to detect neutrino-based transmissions and wait for a passcode. "Feeling physically strong is not something I am accustomed to."

"I'm sure you'll adjust," Willow-para said encouragingly. "I'd guess you also have more fine control now."

"Indeed," Thor agreed as his chair scanned and logged his new biometrics. "I believe we should now discuss what you shall have in exchange for providing this upgrade to the rest of my people."

"I'd really like to use your time-dilation thingy a few more times, for starters," Willow-icos told him.

"So long as the device remains in my custody, that is acceptable," Thor agreed.

With a nod of agreement, Willow-icos beamed them elsewhere in the ship.

The planet Mercury was no more. Thousands upon thousands of reflective discs accelerated into polar orbits around the sun. It was an intricate dance, a weave of a million trajectories, haloing Sol while never colliding nor passing between Sol and Earth.

"You are creating naquadah," Thor concluded. "Fascinating."

"Yeah, and I'd like to make it faster, which is where your gadget comes in," Willow-rhom said as she joined them.

Willow-icos and Willow-para hugged Willow-rhom from either side, their three identical nude bodies squishing and rubbing together in fun and interesting ways.

Thor set the time-dilation device and turned, catching sight of the nubile three-way hug. He stared oddly as he walked away from the device, coming to a stop just outside the radius of the temporal bubble moments before it activated.

"Interesting," Thor noted. "I seem to be experiencing sexual attraction. It is considerably more intense than I remember it being, although those memories are quite old."

The three Willows nodded and Willow-para said, "That would make sense. You've spent centuries upon centuries in a sexless body."

"Suddenly having a fully-formed libido after so long would be kinda jarring," Willow-icos added thoughtfully. "I'm surprised you're still so composed."

With a sage nod, Willow-para slipped a hand down Willow-rhom's belly and curled her fingers up into her other self's pussy. Willow-rhom shuddered and let out a soft moan. She may have the memories of the other Willows second-hand, but her body hadn't gotten any stimulation in, ever. As he looked on, Thor's cock darkened with moisture and twitched with need.

"It is quite compelling," Thor conceded, glancing down at his new appendage and grasping it in both hands with a slight frown.

"Well," Willow-para said. "I suppose we oughta give you a proper welcome back to the ranks of the sexed."

Willow-rhom giggled as Willow-para's thought was shared out. Willow-para and Willow-icos each grabbed an arm and a leg on either side of Willow-rhom, stepping back to pull her limbs taut, making a wide open 'H' shape out of her.

Willow-rhom lifted her head and met Thor's eyes. "Go on."

"Very well," Thor said, walking between her spread legs. "Thank you for making this gesture."

Placing his hands on her thighs, Thor moved in and pressed the head of his shaft against Willow-rhom's sweltering folds, sinking into the warm gooey embrace of her inner sex with ease. As the smooth skin of his pelvis pressed on her vulva, Thor let out a small unbidden gasp, and Willow-rhom felt his cock spasm inside her as he had his first orgasm in thousands of years.

Thor blinked dazedly.

"Keep going," Willow-icos suggested brightly. "Fae don't have a refractory period."

After a moment, Thor began thrusting with measured strokes. Willow-rhom's slippery flesh squelched as his thickness squeezed lubricious fluids out to glisten on their skin, and she sighed happily.

"Indeed," Thor remarked. "There is no discomfort."

Thor began pounding into Willow-rhom in earnest, and the other two Willows let go, leaving the befucked redhead to suspend herself in place magnetically. Willow-rhom grabbed her ankles and pulled her legs up to her ears as Willow-icos draped herself over Thor from behind, running her hands all over his chest with her breasts smooshed into his shoulders.

Willow-para slipped away and beamed down to the library, startling Giles. Because if she was gonna go to school at all she was gonna keep her exemplary attendance record, dang it. Even if she was incredibly late.

The finely furnished conference room was lined with aging bookshelves, filled with books that were old before any of the people in the room were born. The ceiling was high and arched, with elaborate chandeliers casting their warm light over all below. The heavy wooden table was covered in books and notes as several senior Watchers and one rather frazzled seer tried to puzzle out the meaning of this latest prophecy.

Quentin Travers strode into the room like a lord to his throne, settling into his seat at the head of the table in a suitably stately manner. "Status, ladies and gentlemen."

Patricia Trelawney didn't give any sign that she'd heard him, only tearing yet another page from her sketch pad and crumpling it, before taking her pencil to a new page and muttering to herself.

Roger Wyndam-Price spoke up. "The majority of the prophecy remains obscure. However, it is the belief of myself and Professor Weathermill that the the reference to the Travelers refers to those who currently possess the Chappa'ai."

Quentin gave Laura Weathermill an look of expectation.

"Fear to greed. Greed to fear," Trelawney interrupted, muttering. "Fear to greed. Greed to fear. Fear to Greed. Greed to fear. Mustn't change unless we change it."

Not for the first time, Quentin silently wished they'd been able to employ a more coherent seer. "Laura?" he prompted.

The red-haired sorceress nodded. "I concur with Roger. Nothing else fits."

"I told you we should have insisted on reclaiming that blasted thing," Duncan Fillworthe groused.

Ouentin nodded slowly. "I quite agree, Duncan. However, we lack the manpower use the artifact, and thanks to American foolishness, simply burying it once more is no longer a viable option." He looked from face to face. "What of the rest of the prophecy?"

"Ah!" Trelawney exclaimed, ripping another page from her sketchpad. However, instead of crumpling this one, she shoved it into Laura's hands. "End. End of all things mortal."

"By the triadic Brighid," Laura whispered, studying the drawing.

At Quentin's prompting, she passed the sketch around. With surprising artistry, it depicted a broken planet as seen from space. The cracked, gutted ruin of a world was trailing a thick swarm of bright points, reaching off towards the sun.

"Is this meant to be Earth?" Duncan demanded.

Trelawney didn't seem to hear him, so Laura answered. "That is ambiguous, but I cannot think of a reason for Patricia to see this if it is not."

There was silence around the table as the scope of the apparent threat sank in. A chill was crawling its way down Quentin's spine as he stared at the drawing of the... he didn't know what to call it.

"Do we know what it is?" Roger asked.

"It's a sodding planet eater," Duncan snapped. "I somehow doubt we'll be finding a handy account of some Slayer of ages past driving this thing off with a sharp stick."

Ouentin was silent for a moment more. "Alright. This is now our highest priority. Now is not the time for despair. Now is the time for diligence and determination. Whatever resources are required to find out how to prevent this threat from coming to our world, are hereby authorized. This is new territory, ladies and gentlemen, and it is time to prove that we are worthy of the legacy our forebearers have lain for us."

"Hear hear," Roger agreed solemnly.

"Laura, I would like you to call in all our inactive Watchers to help the research along," Quentin ordered. "Roger, I want you to contact the field teams and place them all on alert."

Trelawney ignored all this, scribbling furiously on a new sheet of paper. Once more, she tore the sheet off and shoved it into Laura's hands. This one was a simple portrait, displaying the face of a teenage girl with wild dark hair and delicate round glasses.

"Flap of the butterfly's wings," Trelawney intoned. "Her. She shall doom us."

"Laura, I want you to locate this girl with all possible haste," Quentin ordered. "Roger, while you're contacting the field teams, instruct Emiya to report here for a delicate assignment."

Roger's face twisted in distaste. "Are you sure, Quentin? Emiya is hardly reliable. The man married a demon, for god's sake."

Duncan snorted. "He married a veela. That barely counts."

"Regardless of how fetching those creatures might appear in human form, or how benign any one individual might be, they are the spawn of Evil, like all demons." Roger shook his head. "We cannot rely on Emiya. Not for something this critical."

"Unfortunately, he is the only field Watcher we have, who possesses both the competence necessary for the task at hand, and the discretion to accomplish it without incriminating support," Quentin said regretfully. "Call him in."

Roger nodded grudgingly and got up to go start making calls.

Illyan clambered out of his bed with a sleepy yawn, wiggling his feet towards the floor as he slipped off the side. The alluring smells of Leysritt's cooking were wafting up from downstairs, which meant it was time to get up for school.

Rubbing the sleep from his unusual blood-red eyes and running his fingers through his spikey albino-white hair, Illyan ambled out of his room and into the hallway. He pushed open the door to the bathroom and was immediately hit by a face-full of steam and the sound of running water.

He also got a completely unimpeded view of his older stepsister Shiroko, water cascading down her athletic, toned teenage body, with a hint of jiggle in all the right places, as she lathered her long fiery red hair.

Suddenly very awake, Illyan scrambled back and shut the door carefully, leaving it open just a crack as he couldn't quite bring himself to give up the view. He shook his head, a small frown on his young face. Shiroko really needed to remember to lock doors. She was far too trusting. Not that Illyan was complaining. He just didn't want to see his sexy big sister taken advantage of. The only pervert allowed to take advantage of his Shiroko was him!

Illyan started rubbing himself thorugh his pajama bottoms as Shiroko soaped up her lovely endowments.

SPLASH! Cold. Cold. COLD!

Flailing and letting out a high-pitched shriek as a glass of ice water was dumped over his head, Illyan knocked the bathroom door clear open and nearly faceplanted in the tile. A painful grip caught him by the ear, but it hurt less than smashing his nose on the floor probably would have.

"Waah!" Shiroko exclaimed in surprise, her arms snapping up to cover her privates.

"Now now, Illyan," a cheerful voice chided. "What have I told you about spying on your sister in the shower?"

Regaining his balance, Illyan brushed the ice cubes out of his hair and looked up at the smiling face of Irisviel von Einzbern. "Mom! It's not what it looks like!"

"Finish up, honey," Irisviel said to Shiroko. "Leystritt's just finished breakfast. And then we'll let you decide on little Illyan's punishment, okay?"

The showering redhead winced in sympathy as her adopted mother shut the door firmly, dragging Illyan out by the ear. It would be better if Illyan stopped doing such inappropriate things, but she couldn't believe that he meant any harm by it. Shiroko just couldn't get mad at him, and she was glad Irisviel was there to scold him for it so she didn't have to.

Out in the hallway, Illyan was carefully hiding a smile. Whenever Shiroko was in charge of punishing him, she usually just had him help her in the dojo or something, which Illyan would have done anyway.

"Hey," Illyan suddenly exclaimed, glomping onto his mom. "You're home! Is Dad here too?"

Irisviel laughed. "Yep! Now come and tell Mommy all about school and your friends."

Breakfast was good, as was usual with their maid's cooking. Illyan liked Leystritt. She had the same unusual red eyes as him and his mom, but her hair was a more common ash brown. She was very laid back, often working in little more than a pair of hotpants and a wide-necked shirt that would have fallen right down to her feet if her ample bust hadn't been holding it up, and usually spent more time watching anime than being an authority figure.

Illyan filled his parents in on the previous week and weekend, before Shiroko came down dressed in her school uniform and ruffled his hair. Illyan gave his sexy big sister his best innocent sparkly-eyed smile. He was proud of that smile. He was sure he'd created at least three shotacons with that smile.

It sucked that Shiroko was apparently immune to it.

A ringing phone interupted the meal, and his dad excused himself, answering, "This is Emiya."

Shiroko watched their dad with a sort of intense patient curiosity, while their mom smiled a resigned smile.

A short while later, Kiritsugu returned, stating, "That was the Council."

"Already?" Illyan whined. "You just got home!"

Kiritsugu wordlessly gave his son's shoulder a squeeze, and then led Shiroko out to the shed in the yard. Illyan fidgeted, lamenting that he couldn't slip away to eavesdrop on whatever they were talking about. He knew his dad worked for something called the Council, and that Shiroko was involved somehow, and was also something called a Potential, but his dad was frustratingly good at catching him when he tried to listen in.

"Finish your toast, sweetie," Irisviel said.

Illyan obeyed. A few minutes later, Shiroko came back in looking vaguely troubled, followed by Kiritsugu looking serious.

"When do we leave?" Irisviel asked.

"Nine tonight, Iris," Kiritsugu told her.

Irisviel smiled. "Oh good. Then we still have time for a nice family dinner."

Kiritsugu shared in her smile and leaned down to kiss her. Illyan made a face, and ran back upstairs to shower and get dressed.

The birthing pod bloomed open, and Willow-icos reached in, cradling Jesse in her arms. His eyes slowly blinked open and fixed on Willow's face. She smiled tenderly and brushed her nose on his, giggling when his eyes crossed.

Dawn popped up, squeezing into Jesse's line of sight. "New boy. Jesse."

Willow smiled fondly as Jesse reached out and poked Dawn in the lips. Dawn giggled and poked him back. Jesse stared at her finger for a long moment, and bit it.

"Eeep!" Dawn yelped, snatching her hand back and startling Jesse out of Willow's arms.

Willow smiled fondly as Dawn and Jesse got to know each other. She turned to Thor, who was watching curiously.

"There's one more thing I want to use your time dilation device for," Willow told him, "but it'll be a little while. Xander needs to find and talk to Kendra first."

Thor nodded. "In the meantime, I believe it would be prudent to supply you with a working knowledge of subspace shielding, in addition to the hyperspace science you requested."

"That would be nifty," Willow agreed.

One by one, the dozens of five kilometer wide probe ships, gleaming like vast flattened pearls, came alive and engaged their stardrives. The homogeneous ships dropped towards the sun, each on course for a new orbit between Earth and Venus.

"...so if you want the upgrade, we can do that any time, but if you want the upgrade without having to spend three weeks asleep, now's your only chance," Xander finished.

Xander watched as a smorgasbord of conflicting expressions warred on Kendra's face. She finally settled on a slightly panicked look under a heavy blush. Xander smiled reassuringly, but that only made her blush harder.

"If... if ah..." Kendra swallowed heavily. "De vampires, dey won't be able to hurt me? Like you and Buffy?"

"Just like me and Buffy," Xander confirmed.

Kendra opened her mouth and actually trembled for a moment, before slumping slightly, her blush fading. "What do ah need to do?"

"Your clothing will get destroyed," Xander told her. "So you should take it all off first, and then I'll tell Willow you're ready, and that will be that."

Kendra's blush came back at about half strength, but she had a privacy screen set up, so she could duck behind it and undress without melting into a puddle of nerves. Once she was down to just her skin, she poked her head out and nodded. "Ah am ready."

Xander smiled at her. Willow? Go for it.

Kendra appeared in a flash of white, and had only a second to be startled by the sudden weightlessness before the birthing pod closed around her and she was unconscious. Thor flew forward, set the device, and flew back to Willow-icos as it activated.

"I surmise that artificial gravity is not a technology you would be particularly interested in," Thor said.

Willow shook her head. "I'm interested, but it's so not a priority right now. Gravity is pretty superfluous for us. So anyway, I can make you a few thousand birthing pod seeds, but wouldn't you only need one? You can just scan it and duplicate it as many times as you need, right?"

Thor, if anything, looked slightly embarrassed. "Unfortunately, no. Despite what the Asgard like to imply, our transporter technology does not in fact store patterns of physical matter as data. Rather, the actual matter is stored in a subspace pocket, and the interface with the pocket is then drawn through space along a channel of electrodynamic resonance. The majority of the computational overhead is in the conforming of the subspace pocket to the objects that are to be transported. This does allow far greater versatility than the ring platforms that are more common, but the technology is not capable of direct matter-energy conversion."

"Oh," Willow said. "That's kinda disappointing. But it does explain why your ships can't just repair themselves faster than anything could possibly damage them, or just make a bunch of copies of themselves at the drop of a hat to pull an entire fleet out of nothing, or other things like that."

"Indeed," Thor agreed.

With a flash of light, Kendra reappeared behind her privacy screen. She shook off the disorientation and looked down at herself, flexing her hands and poking at her abs.

"Ah don't feel any different," Kendra said uncertainly, though she did notice that her hair down there was gone.

"Try cutting yourself," Xander suggested, tossing one of her knives over the screen.

Kendra glared suspiciously even though Xander couldn't see, and tentatively poked the tip of the knife into her fingertip. It sure felt the same as before, but Kendra had seen the way vampire teeth utterly failed to break Buffy and Xander's skin, so she pressed harder. And harder. Then she started sawing.

Across the room, Xander grinned when Kendra swore in Jamaican, sounding awed. "Welcome to Faehood."

Kendra was silent for a long moment, finally peaking out from behind the screen, her nightshirt held in front of her with one hand. She met Xander's eyes and started to blush again. It hadn't really registered consciously, but now that she was Fae, Kendra's sleepiness from being woken early was gone, and with the decision made, she wasn't under time pressure. Those were little things, but they made all the difference in the world.

"Oy," Kendra murmured, looking vulnerable but not half as nervous. "Xander?"

"Yeah, Kendra?" Xander replied.

"Would you do me... a favor?" Kendra asked, thinking of how Buffy had phrased it.

"I can try," Xander said. "What'd you need?"

Kendra dropped her eyes to the floor as her pounding heartbeat sped up. "Ah... ah... ah wish to be a... a virgin no longer."

"Oh. Sure, Kendra," he said warmly. "I'd be glad to give you a nice hands-on introduction to the whole sex thing."

Kendra froze in place, her body taking a few moments to catch up to her ears. It astounded her how hard it was to get her request out. The words were in her head, and she meant them, but it had been so incredibly difficult to speak them aloud. It shouldn't be that hard. It really shouldn't. Maybe Buffy was right about her Watcher's rules.

But she'd gotten it out, and Xander hadn't embarrassed her. The tension slowly drained from her body, replaced by a more familiar anxious uncertainty. She glanced up, and found Xander's kind eyes looking at her consideringly.

Xander nodded to himself and smiled at her. "Don't worry. I know just what to do."

Taking a step back, Xander quickly unbuttoned his shirt and took off his pants, followed by his shoes, and finally the underbelt. Setting his clothes aside, Xander stood nude in front of Kendra, his arms loosely outwards and his eyes closed.

"Drop that and come over here," Xander suggested. "Put your hands on my skin. Explore my body until it's familiar and doesn't make you nervous anymore."

His eyes stayed closed, and Kendra slowly dropped the nightshirt. She approached him, her eyes locked on the firm phallus rising from his hairless crotch. After a moment's hesitation, she put her hands flat on his chest.

"Feel my flesh under your fingers," Xander said softly. "Follow your feelings. Don't try to guide your hands. Let your hands guide you. Relax and drift with the currents of your desire."

Kendra slid hands over his skin, feeling his pecs and his abs. Her fingertips brushed down the sides of his cock, then rose to its tip to caress his glans, which turned slick under her touch. Blushing, she pulled her hands back, glancing up at Xander's face. He was smiling at her, but his eyes were still closed.

Kendra walked around him a few times, running her hands over his back, his butt, his legs, his arms, and even his face, returning to his manhood whenever she was drawn there. He was right. She was a lot less nervous.

"I'm going to look at you now," Xander said, opening his eyes.

Kendra felt her skin crawl, but in a really good way, as Xander's gaze danced down her naked body. He reached out and pulled her closer, and then he kissed her, just a soft pressing of lips, but his hands were stroking over her body, and to Kendra's own surprise, when he cupped her breasts, she pushed her chest into his grasp.

Feeling something trickle down her thigh, Kendra gasped as she noticed how wet she was. Xander looked down into her eyes and tilted his head with a considering smile.

"Close your eyes," Xander said, taking Kendra by the shoulders as his cock twitched down, almost pointing at the floor. "Tell me which feels better."

First, he crouched down and wrapped his arms around her waist, pressing her chest and torso firmly against his. He wriggled a bit, and then pulled away and moved around behind her. Then, he crouched again and pulled Kendra's back snugly against his chest while his hands slid up to cradle her breasts.

"Front or back?" Xander asked after releasing her.

Kendra looked at him shyly. "Back."

Xander nodded, looking around. He found a small mirror hanging on the wall, and grabbed it, setting it up on Kendra's small desk facing them. Kendra looked at the reflection of the naked boy and girl and felt a flutter in her gut.

"Put your hands on the edge of the desk," Xander told her.

Hesitantly, Kendra did.

"Now widen your stance, so you're not leaning over quite so far," Xander suggested.

Kendra blushed, but did so. She watched in the mirror as Xander moved in behind her, her breath catching when his cock grazed her clit on the way to rest against her mons. Xander wrapped his arms around her waist and started kissing her neck. Her butt jerked against his hips, and suddenly she was very very aware of the aching emptiness in her loins.

"Ah want it," Kendra moaned.

Xander pulled his hips back, and met her eyes in the mirror. His hot slippery hardness pressed at her quivering slit, and then he was inside her and hard and alive and moving, and it felt so good.

"Oohh... fuck!"

"That is the idea," Xander amusedly growled.

Illyan waved as Shiroko went into the high school. She waved back as Illyan turned to continue on to his own school, but mid-wave her hand froze and her eyes went wide.

"Wha," Illyan tried to ask.

Then everything went dark. Literally, like someone had pulled a bag over his head. He flailed, punching and kicking with considerable skill for someone his age, but he never managed to connect with whoever's arms had tightened around his chest and lifted his feet off the ground.

Air rushed by like they were moving really fast, but Illyan couldn't hear any motors or wheels or footsteps. What in the hells was going on?

"Fly faster," a soft, measured girl's voice said. "We must have time to conceal our trail before the Magus Killer begins to hunt us."

Illyan's stomach lurched and he yelped in fright as it felt like they were falling for a few moments. And then they didn't land or hit, they just... stopped falling. Fly faster, she said. Fly. They were flying! Holy shit!

"Seer-chan, I know I must have misheard you, because I thought you just said the Magus Killer would be after us," the strained voice of another girl said.

"That is what I said, Witch-chan," Seer-chan confirmed.

"Kidnap the Magus Killer's son? That's your plan?" Witch-chan shrieked. "Are you insane?"

Illyan blinked. They were talking about his dad? His dad was a Magus Killer, whatever that meant? It sounded cool.

"It was the only way to ensure Kiritsugu Emiya is kept busy for the necessary time," Seer-chan stated. "It was either him or the Potential, and the boy is easier to carry. We must only evade the Magus Killer for thirty-one hours. After that, it will be too late for him to play his part in our enemy's scheme."

"Agh, fine. Damn damn damn damn damn. I can't believe you talked me into this," Witch-chan groused.

Luneth stood by silently while Harriet stuffed clothes, money, snacks, and spell components into her old backpack. She zipped it closed and slung it onto her back over her green windbreaker as she stood up. After tying her unruly hair in a tail, Harriet dropped her hands to her side and just looked at her boyfriend with a regretful smile.

"I wish you could come with me," Harriet sighed.

Luneth put a finger to her lips, but not quite in a shushing gesture. His fingertips caressed her face, and Harriet tenderly kissed his thumb as he gave her a reassuring smile.

"I'm quite sure you won't be careful," he said sadly.

Harriet twined her arms around his waist. "I'll try to be. I promise. I have a whole life ahead of me, now. A life with you. I'm not going to risk that lightly."

Someone knocked on the door to Harriet's room, and a familiar voice called, "Harri?"

"Come in, Susan," Harriet called.

The door opened, and the busty strawberry blonde took in the sight of Harriet dressed for travel. "So it's true? Aunty Amelia and the others are setting up something big on the southern leyline. They said you had a vision. Are they really sending you to the hellmouth? And since when are you a seer, Harri?"

Harriet blushed. "Luneth had a vision. I only saw it 'cause of what we were doing at the time."

"We were having empathic sex," Luneth revealed blithely. "It was really quite remarkable to feel everything Harriet could feel while we coupled."

Now Susan blushed. "Oh."

"Lune..." Harriet sighed in fond exasperation. "Anyway, the matriarchs agreed to send me when we told them about Luneth's vision. They told us not to say anything about it to anyone else, but... it's big, Susan."

"The star fairies will give us a great gift, but those who are content will begrudge the needy," Luneth added. "They're going to make the star fairies very angry."

Susan gave them a skeptical look. "Star fairies?"

"Er," Harriet said. "That's what Lune's calling them, anyway. I don't know what they actually are. But in the vision, they were ambushed by soldiers, and that somehow leads to fire raining from the sky, everywhere, across the whole world... don't tell your aunt I told you, alright?"

Susan nodded, wide eyed.

Harriet led the way out of her room and down to the ground floor. Outside, the five matriarchs of the coven were arranged around a design drawn in softly glowing blue sand. A triangle, inside a circle, inside a pentagram, inside another circle.

Madam Harkness, the coven's Lady Aether, turned from the glowing design and nodded to Harriet. "Very prompt of you, Miss Potter. We are ready to begin."

"Are you sure about this, Harri?" the Lady Sky asked. "You know we won't have sufficient strength to compensate for the Earth's rotation. If you were anyone else, we would never even dream of attempting this."

"That is why I'm going alone, Madam Lovegood," Harriet said nervously. "I can handle it."

"She'll be alright, Mum," Luneth added. "Harriet can fly like no witch in living memory."

Harriet ducked her head, but couldn't protest the compliment. A lot of magic-users could levitate, but Harriet did more than just overcome gravity with telekinesis. She instinctively understood spacial motion and aerodynamics at such an intuitive level that compared to most others she was like a fighter jet next to a hot air balloon.

"Please step into the circle and prepare yourself, Miss Potter," Madam Harkness said.

Lifting into the air, Harriet floated into the center of the circle. Each of the matriarchs took position at a point of the pentagram. Harriet gracefully twisted around in the air until she was almost upside-down, and straightened her body in a superman pose. She focused on her breathing, keeping it steady.

As one, Madam Harkness the Lady Aether, Madam Lovegood the Lady Sky, Madam Black the Lady Sea, Madam Bones the Lady Land, and Madam Longbottom the Lady Fire, slowly raised their hands up. The glowing sand rained upwards, forming ethereal walls around Harriet.

For a moment, all was silence but the sound of Harriet's controlled breathing, and then five voices incanted, "Discede!"

With crash like thunder, Harriet was suddenly high in the clouds, rocketing down towards the Pacific Ocean. With a sonic boom, she swooped out of the dive and skimmed over the waves, leaving a wall of spray in her wake as she grinned in fierce delight.

After pulling a mile-high corkscrew just for the heck of it, Harriet slowed until it was safe to pull out and check her GPS. Once she had her bearings, she tucked it back into her pocket and shot off towards the coast, straining to punch through the sound barrier once more.

The barrista watched as the blonde air force Major sipped her coffee and chatted with the man sitting at her table. She didn't know why the woman at the table was important, and she didn't know what the small metallic objects she'd been given were for, but the instructions were not something she dared to question.

So, when she brought the woman's pastry out to the table, she palmed the little grey blocks and slipped them into the blonde woman's coat pocket. With the job done, she slipped into the back to calm her nerves.

Meanwhile, Samantha Carter was apologizing to her boyfriend Pete for canceling their weekend. "We're looking to be proactive on this one. This threat, it's big, Pete."

Pete just shook his head and gave her a smile. "I get it. I do. You go save the galaxy."

"Thanks, Pete," Samantha said.

The chirping of her phone interrupted the moment, and Samantha checked the message. "Speaking of which. Duty calls."

Everyone and their cat liked to joke about how flimsy the SGC's cover of Deep Space Radar Telemetry was, but ironically, that was something the SGC actually did, even if it was a small part of their operation.

However, while at least two of the relay probes were well within detection range, those radar systems saw nothing.

The Fae spacecraft gleamed like pearls in the visible spectrum, but in the radar range, as in most of the electromagnetic spectrum outside the visible band, the hull drank in light like a photovoltaic black hole. At the same time, the probe ships caused not even the barest ripple in subspace, since Willow-rhom was building the transporter systems on the Eliezera before distributing them.

The millions upon millions of mirrors now orbiting the sun focused that energy, tracking the relay probes, feeding them many hundreds of times the solar radiation objects their size would have caught unaided. It was a trickle compared to the quantities of energy each probe ship was capable of storing, but it was more than enough to run an Asgard transporter system continuously.

Thor, on the other hand, did detect the relay probes moving into their orbit, but such was not his concern, especially when he had a cargo hold filled with tens of thousands of the birthing pod seeds, and a home planet struggling to clone bodies fast enough to keep everyone alive.

"Would I be correct in my inference that you do not wish the SGC to know that the upgrade is among your capabilities?" Thor asked Willow-icos.

Willow shrugged. "We're not hiding it from them. We're just... not mentioning it until we need to."

"I see," Thor said. "I would prefer not to lie to those who have been staunch allies, about the origin of my new body, however."

"I wouldn't ask you to," Willow assured him. "They were going to find out sooner or later."

Thor nodded. "In any case, that is not an immediate concern. I must return to Orilla as soon as possible."

"Okay," Willow said. "It was nice to meet you, Thor."

"You as well, Willow Rin," Thor agreed. "I shall return as soon as I am able, to work with both the SGC and yourselves, and take the fight to the Replicators."

Willow beamed away, and Thor took the DanielJackson into hyperspace.

"Oh shit oh shit!" Kumiko cried, damning Oriko. "Bad idea! This was bad idea!"

Waxy white skin, glowing blue veins, and wings of blue flame. In demon form, Irisviel was still beautiful in her own way, at least when she wasn't hurling fireballs at you, her face a cold scowl of motherly rage.

Kumiko darted through the treetops above the abandoned mountain temple where they'd chosen to hide with their kidnap victim. She thrust a hand forward, redirecting the heat from the fireball down into the trees. Leaves wilted and smoldered as Kumiko hurled herself sideways through the air.

Irisviel circled and closed with her again, launching bright threads of blue fire from her fingertips. The threads snapped through the air, slicing at Kumiko, but the gothy witch yanked a small glowing ampoule from her sleeve and threw it hard. The glass shattered on Irisviel's fire-threads, spilling the glowing liquid into the air.

"Break!" Kumiko roared.

With a sharp flash of gold, all active magic in the immediate vicinity was swept away. The veela's fire threads dissolved into dying embers as her wings were eroded away. The backlash knocked Kumiko loose from her telekinetic hold on herself, but since it was just telekinesis she only fell half a meter before she caught herself.

Irisviel fell a lot further, but the veela's wings still flared back into being before she hit the ground. Kumiko took the short reprieve to duck into the boughs of a tree and check her pockets. She swore silently when she realized that had been her last Dispel.

An explosion down on the temple grounds made her flinch. Gritting her teeth, Kumiko launched herself out of the tree and flew towards the other sounds of fighting.

Oriko was dodging bullets.

Kiritsugu Emiya and the orange-haired Potential called Shiroko were wearing Oriko down from two sides. Shiroko's twin dadao fell with brutal speed and precision, deflecting off Oriko's steel quarterstaff with a shower of sparks, then she leaped back and Kiritsugu blurred across the paving stones faster than Oriko could track and fired cursed rounds from his revolver.

Oriko was sweating under the strain of fighting Shiroko and constantly looking a few seconds into the future to avoid the Magus Killer's shots.

Just as Kiritsugu was lining up another shot, Kumiko swooped down from the sky, throwing an ampoule and crying, "Blind!"

The glass shattered on the ground, and wisps of darkness like black veins made of smoke exploded outwards, turning the air around Kiritsugu completely opaque.

Oriko dodged a swing of Shiroko's blade, and leaped back, flinging a loose brick at the back of Shiroko's head with her telekinesis. Shiroko somehow sensed it and spun out of the way. Oriko drove her staff forward in a jab, catching Shiroko in the ribs, but the Potential rolled with the blow and kicked Oriko's staff up, leaving her open for a backhanded slice.

Rather than gutting Oriko, the dadao clanged against the crystalline red glow of the shield Kumiko had willed into being. The shield blunted the edge, but Kiritsugu came blurring out of the dome of darkness and smashed a fist into Kumiko jaw, knocking her clear across the grounds with a crunch of breaking bone. Unsupported, the shield smashed into Oriko's gut with nearly the full force of Shiroko's blow, knocking the wind out of her, before dissolving away.

Demonstrating that she did in fact have the badassery to back up her big talk, Kumiko forced the pieces of her cracked jaw back into place with telekinesis and began to incant a healing spell before she even stopped skidding across the ground.

Oriko, on the other hand, was gasping for breath and not Seeing anything at all. Kiritsugu shot her. The cursed bullet pierced her chest in a spray of blood before detonating inside her body. Oriko's entire right arm and half her torso withered, like the flesh was both rapidly aging and being cooked from within at the same time.

Shiroko stood over the fallen seer, while Kiritsugu turned and aimed at Kumiko. That was also when Irisviel flew out of the trees to rejoin her husband. She alighted next to him, her wings of blue fire flaring in a display of threat.

Kumiko acted a split second before he fired, because she was watching for it, and somehow, incredibly, she managed to catch the bullets in her telekinesis. She would have been gloating about her own awesomeness, but after watching Oriko go down like that she wasn't in the mood. Not even a little.

"Viata pentru putere!" Kumiko cast, slamming a hand flat on the ground. "Putere de razbunare!"

Under Kumiko's hand, the grass and scrub and insects died, wilting and decaying in an ever expanding circle, sacrificed in exchange for strength. Her eyes were swallowed by dark eldritch voids, and black veins crept across her face.

Kiritsugu blurred, reloading his gun impossibly fast, but Kumiko was faster. She lunged into the air, tainted lightning flying from her hands. Kiritsugu and Irisviel dove out of the way, but Shiroko charged, swords raised. Kumiko blasted the girl and she collapsed, screaming in pain.

Oriko's body levitated into Kumiko's arms as the dark witch unleashed her power and teleported away.

For a moment, there was silence broken only by Shiroko's groans, and the soft crackle of Irisviel's wings, but then a young boy's disbelieving voice asked, "Mom?"

Irisviel whirled around and winced as Illyan crawled out of his hiding spot and stood up. Irisviel's wings of blue fire shrank into nothing, and her flesh rippled, changing from waxy white translucence with glowing blue veins to her more familiar ordinary fair tone.

Kiritsugu went to help Shiroko up and make sure she was alright, while Irisviel put on a strained smile.

"Well, sweetie," Irisviel said, chuckling sheepishly. "I guess Mommy and Daddy have some explaining to do."

Chief Walter nodded to Sergeant Siler as he refilled his coffee. He replaced the pot, only for the light to suddenly go out, plunging them into darkness. A moment later, the sound of the Stargate dialing filled the darkness.

"That's probably not good," Walter said.

By the dim flickering light of the Stargate, Siler rushed over to the Panic Button and slammed it. Nothing happened.

"That is definitely not good," Walter said, drawing his sidearm.

The battery-powered emergency lights came on, restoring at least some visibility, which was good, because the Stargate shut down moments later. Walter and Siler crept back into the control room, only to find a Replicator on the console.

"Holy fu - " Walter fired, blowing the Replicator to pieces and wrecking a monitor.

After securing the room, Siler checked the blast doors. "All the doors are sealed!"

"I've got no control over anything," Walter said, fiddling with the dead console.

And then it got worse. The Stargate came to life again, as someone else dialed in. Walter and Siler shared a look.

"I can't close the iris," Walter said numbly.

With a great kawoosh, the Stargate opened, and Replicators poured into an unguarded gateroom. Once hundreds of the mechanical bugs were swarming the gateroom, a young man with dark curly hair stepped out of the Stargate and strode down the ramp without hesitation.

The blast door opened for him, and the marines who'd been trapped on the other side opened fire, but the humanform Replicator just ignored the bullets. His hands morphed into long silvery blades, and he cut down the marines without hesitation, the bug Replicators following in his wake.

Walter and Siler pulled the panels off the control room consoles and started fiddling, trying to get some kind of control back, but a few minutes later, the curly haired man returned with an unconsious body in his arms.

"Oh god, that's Major Carter," Walter whispered.

"Chief!" Siler shouted, pulling his gun.

The bug Replicators swarmed into the control room, and the last thing Walter saw was a flash of metal leaping at his face. Acid burned his eyes out and he couldn't even scream as he was dragged down.

Kumiko set Oriko down on a random rooftop somwhere in Tokyo as the eldritch darkness bled out of her eyes and she sank down next to the other girl, exhausted. She took a look at Oriko's arm and winced.

"Damn that's nasty," Kumiko opined.

Oriko groaned. "Hurts... quite a lot... too. I've only... got a few minutes... before it kills me."

Kumiko felt the sting of tears in her eyes. "This is completely your fault, you know."

Oriko somehow found the strength to smile. "Had to try."

"But we failed!" Kumiko wailed. "You said two days... it hasn't even been one! You're dying for nothing!"

Oriko shook her head. "I can See. My future isn't oblivion. It'll be okay. This world... will die... but its people... will live on."

With that, Oriko went still, and Kumiko stared, slackjawed. "Wait. Wait! You can't just... what am I suppose to do?"

There was no answer from the seer.

Some time later, Kumiko would be startled out of her numb slump by a strange electric whine that split the air, followed by Oriko's body vanishing in a brilliant flash of white.

It was done.

Willow-rhom flipped the metaphorical switch, and the brand new transporter system in each of the relay probes came to life, working in concert with the solar-system-wide whole. For a moment, she just absorbed the enormity of what she'd just enacted.

"Shouldn't we say something?" Willow-kink wondered.

"Yeah..." Willow-rhom trailed off. "Um..."

"Um..." Willow-kink echoed her. "We'll think of something while we celebrate?"

Willow-rhom nodded. "We can have a historical moment after we gangbang Xander."

"Oh absolutely," Willow-kink agreed with herself, nodding sagely.

A private plane touched down in California, and a short while later Kiritsugu and Irisviel were walking the streets of Sunnydale. They were acosted several times, but more than one vampire learned the hard way that Irisviel could light herself on fire at will.

Irisviel's tracking spell led them through the small town to a house in the suburbs, where, much to the couple's surprise, their target was in plain sight. The young witch they'd been sent to assassinate was floating in mid air near one of the of the upper-floor windows, wild black hair drifting around her head, which was tilted to one side with her mouth slack in an expression of shock.

Harriet, meanwhile, with the parts of her brain that hadn't gone on strike, was reflecting on the term Head-Tiltingly Kinky and how she'd always thought it was just a figure of speech. It was a testament to her talent that she hadn't fallen out of the air like a rock when she'd accidentally laid eyes on the scene in front of her.

On the other side of the glass, a muscularly svelte brunette guy was flat on the bed, with four identical redheads. Well, three of them were identical. The one riding his cock had breasts twice the size of the others and seemed to be lactating. Two of them were kneeling on either side of the guy, and each had one of the guy's arms buried to the wrist in their sex while they licked and sucked at the lactating quadruplet's nipples. The last of the four identical readheads squirmed on top of the guy's face, while eagerly fellating a phallic toy that somehow perfectly matched the tone and texture of the guy's skin.

Harriet recognized them as the so-called 'star fairies' from Luneth's vision, so at least she had the right place, but... !

When reflexes honed throughout an entire adolescence of dealing with Thomas Riddle's attempts to kill her warned her of danger, she was almost relieved.

"The Fae still aren't responding, sir," Lieutenant Hailey reported.

Jack O'Neill restrained a growl. Shit was hitting every possible fan and the terrific troublesome temerarious trio was nowhere to be seen. He headed up to Weir's office.

Teal'c radioed in. "O'Neill. I believe the last of the Replicators have been eliminated."

"Nice," Jack replied. "Carter?"

"Still missing, along with a number of other personnel," Teal'c said.

"Jack!" came a shout, heralding Daniel.

Weir looked up from her desk as Daniel caught up to Jack at the doorway.

"I thought you were helping with the wounded?" Jack asked.

"I was," Daniel panted. "It's the dead. They're missing. Someone's beaming out our casualties."

"Slow down, Daniel," Weir told him. "Explain."

Daniel caught his breath. "I was healing Colonel Reynolds, but he died before it did any good. Moments later his body was beamed out. Then the same thing happened when Bosworth bled out. About a minute after his vitals went flat, his body was beamed out as well. So I asked around, and people were seeing the same thing all over the base."

Weir frowned. "Who would do this? Could it be the Asgard?"

"Not unless Thor lied in his last message," Daniel said.

"It has to be the Fae, right?" Jack put in. "Why else would they have chosen now of all times to give us the silent treatment?"

"We shouldn't jump to conclusions, Jack," Daniel hedged.

Weir stood up, looking thoughtful. "Be it the Fae or an unknown party, what could their motivation possibly be?"

"Well," Daniel drawled awkwardly. "It's probably a bad idea to speculate before we know more."

Just then, the red phone rang. Weir held up a hand to silence Jack and answered. She exchanged a few words, and then paled visibly. After a few words of affirmation she hung up.

"That was General Hammond at Homeworld Security," Weir informed them, sounding stunned. "They're correlating reports from hospitals, mortuaries, and nursing homes all over the world. Whoever's taking our deceased, they're not just doing it here. It's happening everywhere. We're in the midst of an ongoing international security breach."

The Willows were more than a little put out when a sudden explosion obliterated the outer wall of her bedroom, sent a smoldering girl in a green jacket crashing into her closet, and thoroughly interrupted her Xander time.

The strange girl stumbled to her feet just in time to throw up a glowing white hand. With the boom of a gunshot, something detonated against luminescent air in front of the girl, producing another explosion and blowing the girl through two more walls.

Buffy! Kendra! Xander sent. Trouble at Willow's!

A grim-faced man in a black trenchcoat leaped from the ground below and through the destroyed wall into Willow's room, while something unseen flew over the house and cast the backdrop of his entrance in an eerie blue light. He didn't even blink at the nude Xander and Willows.

Xander sprang, attempting to tackle the man, but Trenchcoat blurred forward with impossible speed, his movements like a video on fast-forward, and Xander went sailing out into the yard. The two closest Willows lashed out magnetically, finding just enough metal to trip him up. He went crashing into the hallway, skidding along the carpet as his gun was ripped from his fingers, but he rolled to his feet... right into a blast of green light from the staggering girl, who somehow had a pair of round glasses undisturbed on her face.

Yet another wall suffered the consequences as Trenchcoat was thrown clear of the house.

Before he could slam into the street, a woman with wings of blue fire swooped down and caught him, but she cried out and almost dropped him as his trenchcoat fractured like glass and the jagged shards cut into her arms.

The four Willows jumped down to the grass to help as Xander parkoured off the wall of her house and caught the flying glasses girl around the waist. The Willows sprinted passed and dogpiled Trenchcoat and the winged woman, delivering an incapacitating electric current as they did.

When Buffy and Kendra showed up, it was to find two pairs of nude Willows carrying an unconscious and bleeding man in black, and an albino woman in white who was in a similar state, into her damaged house. Xander was likewise carrying an unconscious petite girl in a green windbreaker and black jeans.

"What's going on?" Buffy asked.

Harriet woke up feeling like one solid bruise. Groaning, she was also pretty sure she recognized the pain of at least one cracked rib. She blearily raised her head and jumped in surprise when she saw the very cute and totally starkers red-haired girl leaning over her from behind the sofa she was laying on.

It was one of the star fairies.

Harriet sat up, and the redhead kept an implacable grip on Harriet's shoulders. Harriet stiffened when she saw the man with the gun and the winged woman sitting across from her, but they both had one of the redheads gripping their shoulders.

The naked boy was off to the side, Harriet noted with a blush, along with two other girls who were thankfully clothed, though in the case of the blonde Harriet recognized from Luneth's vision, only barely. The girl she didn't recognize also seemed to be the only one in the room who was as obviously uncomfortable with all the nudity as Harriet was.

"Alright," the fourth and final redhead said, folding her arms under her bare breasts. "Who are you people, and what makes you think it was a good idea to go and blow big smoking holes in my parent's house?"

Harriet seized the chance to explain. "My name is Harriet Potter. I'm a witch with the Devon Coven. My boyfriend is a powerful seer, and he had a vision of the 'star fairies' being attacked by soldiers. I, er, recognize you from the vision, so if you are these star fairies, then I'm here to warn you."

"Star fairies?" the blonde repeated in an amused tone.

"We call ourselves Fae," the redhead corrected. "You saw us being attacked by soldiers?" She glanced at the couple on the other sofa. "They don't look like soldiers."

The man remained expressionless, though his teeth ground a little as milk from the breasts of the redhead holding his shoulders dribbled into his hair. Going by the smirk on her face, Harriet suspected she was doing that on purpose.

Blushing, Harriet shook her head. "I didn't see them. They're... I've got no idea, honestly."

Just then the albino woman squeaked and jerked as though mildly electrocuted.

"Stop that," the redhead holding her shoulders scolded. "No magicking your way out of this until we're done."

The woman, though unharmed, looked a lot more worried than she had a moment before. She glanced at her partner, and his eyes widened infinitesimally before he got his expression under control.

The standing redhead turned to the couple. "Well, what do you have to say for yourselves for wrecking my parent's house and trying to kill Harriet over there?"

The question got only silence from the pair.

"His name is Kiritsugu Emiya," a new voice interrupted as a distinguished man in tweed came in through the front. "He works for... good lord, why are you all naked?"

The blonde rolled her eyes. "Is that really important right now, Giles?"

The man, Giles, shook his head and began to speak again, only once more falter as he noticed the four identical redheads. "Willow... why are there four of you?"

The four Willows answered in quadraphonic. "We are the Willow. We conquer problems of ingenuity that no one Willow could alone. We have brought our might to bear against nature's evils, and wrought an end to the mortal coil." The Willows all smiled perkily. "Also, we love Xanders and hate frogs."

"Er..." Harriet said.

"Dat was creepy."

Most of the room seemed to agree, but the albino woman just smiled and held up a scorecard with "8.9" on it. The hell? Where had she gotten that?

The standing Willow blinked and murmured a soft, "Uh oh."

A moment later, the other Willows, the blonde, and Xander, all winced for some reason. Willow hurried out of the room, and the blonde took her place in the center of things.

"So, Giles, you were saying?" the blonde prompted. "He works for who?"

Giles stopped gawping and polished his glasses. "Right. As I said, his name is Kiritsugu Emiya and I presume this is his wife, Irisviel of the northern Germany veela clan." Giles put his glasses back on and gave Kiritsugu a hard look. "He is a Watcher."

Willow-para winced as Jack's scowl appeared on the subspace radio channel. After he explained that the Replicators' attack was already over, he demanded to know if the Fae had anything to do with all the missing bodies.

"Yeah, that's us," Willow admitted, and proceeded to explain about the upgrade, and the automated process that she had created to ensure that anyone who died on Earth would have a chance to live on as Fae.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" Jack finally exploded.

"Saved fourteen thousand lives and counting?" Willow countered.

"Which is great and all, I'll admit," Jack growled. "But do you have any idea of the shitstorm you're kicking up? Those are our people you've snatched up!"

Willow scoffed. "So what, if you can't save them yourself, it's better if they die?"

"Of course not," Jack said. "But you can't just go Faeify people unilaterally. Especially not civilians who have no idea that we're not alone in the universe!"

"Your governments have no right to expect the peoples of your nations to die for your petty secrets," Willow told him sternly.

"Petty!" Jack exclaimed. "Bodies are vanishing in mysterious flashes of light all over the world! How are we supposed to cover that up?"

"Don't," Willow said bluntly. "In case you haven't noticed, this doesn't actually involve the Stargate in any way what so ever."

Jack pinched his eyebrow and visibly calmed himself. "What was it you said? Back when the NID pulled that stunt of theirs? Oh yeah. If our people are not returned to us when we ask, we'll destroy anything between us and them. That's already the way things are heading, Willow."

"The system sends everyone to be reborn somewhere where spaceships literally grow on trees, Jack," Willow told him. "If anyone wants to return to Earth, I'm not going to get in their way."

"And what happens when those people start talking about where they've been?" Jack demanded.

"That really isn't my problem, Jack," Willow said. "If you want to hate us for spoiling your little status quo, well, we feel that preventing loss of life on a planetary scale is worth more than you liking us. Now listen. I'm sending you some information for your sciency types. Hopefully it will set your minds at ease about the people who come back as Fae still being the same people."

George Hammond had a headache. A lot of very powerful men were in the process of panicking like, well, like control over the world's biggest secret, alien contact, was slipping through their fingers. There was a lot of shouting and the shuffling of blame, as the abduction of the world's recently deceased threatened to out the existence of aliens to the population at large.

"... it's really quite incredible," the scientist who'd drawn the short straw explained. "If this information is accurate then what we're looking at is a mathematical proof based on a comprehensive theory of mind, showing a seamless continuity of personality through the described process."

The man Hammond imagined Jack would have dubbed 'Kinsey Lite' planted his hands on the table. "Even assuming that's it's possible to prove something like that, and these Fae creatures aren't soulless abominations, then that just proves my point. Our very fate as a species rests in the hands of an alien power. We cannot allow this 'salvation system' to remain under foreign control."

"I agree," said one of the other generals. "The masses will panic. We're quickly losing the battle to keep this out of the news. These aliens cannot be allowed to flout the public good so blatantly."

"We need a plan of action, gentlemen."

Hammond listened with resignation as the Fae's status was slowly but surely warped from uneasy ally, to enemy, and went down from there. He added his own moderate words where he could, but he wasn't sure what the right course of action was either.

Giles hung up the phone, muttering about bloody pillocks. "It seems that your orders were based solely on the word of a rather unreliable seer, Mr. Emiya."

Kiritsugu frowned thoughtfully. "There are too many seers involved in this. The girl who kidnapped my son on the morning of this assignment. The woman who provided the target. The target's boyfriend... We're being played. Someone or something is pulling strings. Someone or something with enough power and foresight to use seers as pawns."

Buffy grimaced. "Something that can trick a bunch of people who can see the future? That sounds like a world of bad."

"Why though?" Xander wondered. "Who benefits from this mess?"

Giles, who had resorted to cleaning his glasses even more than usual in response to all of the nude Willow on display, said, "Perhaps we will be able to determine that if we can deduce the original point of interference. In essence, what would each of the involved parties have been doing instead had the visions not occurred?"

There was a thoughtful silence.

"It sounds like this all started with Harriet," Willow-icos said, looking down at the girl she was guarding.

"What else is new," Harriet muttered under her breath.

"You weren't doing anything until your boyfriend had his vision, right?" Willow-icos asked.

Harriet nodded. "Nothing important."

"So, let's start there," Willow-icos said. "What did he see? And could it have come to pass if he hadn't seen it?"

Oz sailed over Sunnydale, bounding from steelpush to steelpush in wide sweeping arcs. Her mistcloak fluttered behind her, eerily silent even to her tin-enhanced senses, and with the strength of pewter in her flesh the cold bite of winter air was barely even uncomfortable.

She had a bag of pennies secured to her belt, but she hadn't needed them yet. There was a lot of metal used in the construction of a modern town. Unlike in the cities in Vin's memories, it was everywhere. Especially since, Oz had quickly realized, allomancy wasn't anything like magnetism. For one, steelpushing and ironpulling worked equally well on all metals, not just ferromagnetic metals. Even stranger, the force of a steelpush or ironpull decreased linearly with distance, rather than following the inverse square law.

Oz ironpulled on a streetlight to change course, briefly shooting down to street level before steelpushing off a manhole cover and rocketing back into the sky.

Drifting on a ballistic trajectory, Oz took a moment to enjoy the view, flaring her tin until the night was as bright as day.

Oz narrowed her eyes as she spotted something on a rooftop. It almost looked like a military sniper team. They seemed to be looking through some kind of thermal scope rather than an actual weapon but... wait, was that Willow's house? That was Willow's house.

Keeping her tin flared, Oz landed silently and crept up on the soldier guys.

The lead soldier picked up a military satellite phone. "Finn to Hammond. We've located the targets. Seven Fae. Four human probable. Area is clear of civilian witnesses. You are clear to engage."

"Copy that," came the reply. "Strike team is moving in now."

A strange electric whine split the air as Willow's house was surrounded by a ring of white light.

(Oriko Mikuni is from a spinoff manga of Madoka Magica. See my other fic, It Means Flame.)

(Harriet Potter and friends, are of course based on their counterparts in JK Rowling's universe. Why fem!Harry? 'cause there needs to be more of that, and it just fits. BtVS and Lyrical Nanoha both seemed to always have a disproportionate number of girls as the most powerful magic-users, so I'm running with that. male!Luna because... I don't think I've ever seen that before. Ever. Even in one fic where the premise was that "Harry goes to an alternate reality where everybody is the opposite gender" that ended up being "everybody except Luna".)

(Kiritsugu Emiya and family are based on their counterparts in the Nasuverse; the Prisma Illya versions more than the others. Why fem!Shirou? Because, come on, Shirou was born to be a Slayer. male!Illya just to keep the balance. buffyverse!veela!Irisviel to kinda reconcile all the settings.)

(AN: I am never writing seer vs. seer again. I need to rest my brain. Ow.)