(And we're back!)

(So, why'd this take so long? Well, earlier this year I set off to write something that wasn't fanfiction for once. Unfortunately, before I could get very far, my desktop computer died violently in a power surge - farewell Alganon, you shall be missed - yes, I name my computers after Warcraft characters - and I spent most of a month feeling very discouraged, and in the meantime this story called me back to it.)

(If you're interested, this non-fanfiction project of mine is titled Solace and can be found at chaeral dot wordpress dot com. It will begin updating... eventually. I feel like I want to finish Forever After Earth before I dedicate myself to Solace properly, but that's still a fairly long road and my motivation is perching pretty close to the fence on this.)

Innocence

Terry was ninety-four years old, and on her deathbed. Her son sat at her bedside, worn and grey, though still healthy and strong. His face was a stiff mask of helplessness. Terry's frail hand managed a slight squeeze, and a crawling pain lanced up her arm at even so minor a stress.

The nurse had been saying it wouldn't be long now for almost a week. Terry would have thought she'd be afraid, but the fear had faded as struggling back to consciousness became more and more arduous every day. She'd lived a good, full life, and she'd be leaving a loving family as her legacy. Terry had a handful of regrets, things she'd never gotten to do, but they were small things. For everything important, she had closure, and she was oh so weary.

This life is done with me, Terry thought distantly.

It could have been minutes or hours, Terry would never know, but her heart beat weaker and weaker as the time dragged by. Her vision went dark. Her body went numb. Her thoughts slowed.

I've died, Terry thought. There was still no fear. Only a longing for peace.

Only, this was a peace she'd never enjoy. She'd never wake up. In a few moments there wouldn't be a Terry anymore, and she didn't want that. She didn't. And that was her body's final betrayal, in those last moments of her existence. Terry was ending. Forever. And she couldn't even be afraid. Her last feeble thoughts grasped desperately for some hint of the horror or fear that should have been there if she was even now still herself.

Nothing.

...

Bliss.

It was stunning. Almost an ecstasy of relief. Terry basked in it, unthinking.

After nearly thirteen minutes of thoughtless bliss, Terry finally noticed something she really should have noticed immediately. She was experiencing. She was thinking. She did, in fact, still exist.

Terry's eyes snapped open as her heart surged in excitement, or delayed terror, or something, she didn't even know, but she felt so alive. Her limbs uncurled from a fetal position - strong! effortless! without pain! - and moved through some kind of clear viscous fluid lit by the dim reddish glow filtering in through the fleshy walls that enclosed her.

The walls peeled apart like the peals of a blooming flower and the fluid drained away, leaving Terry kneeling on the meaty pad at the bottom. She sucked in the sweetest breath she could ever remember taking as she trembled from the sheer release of emotion.

It was incredible to realize, now that she was free of it, just how much agony she'd been in, day in and day out for the latter years of her life. It had accumulated slowly, sneaking up on her over the decades, until she couldn't even imagine its absence. The horror of it was only just hitting her. It had gotten so bad that she'd wanted to die just to get away from it, and she'd never even realized.

Now that all that pain was gone she wanted to laugh, or cry, or just.. live.

Once she managed to calm herself down a bit, Terry turned her attention to the world around her and stood up. She expected to stumble, or tremble, but she didn't. It was effortless. Terry looked down at her naked body and gasped. She had the body of a twenty-something. A fit twenty-something, with shapely breasts, lean muscle, and flawless smooth skin. She was young again, and in better shape than she'd ever been in her life.

"How...?" Terry breathed, looking around as though the grassy hillsides and clear blue sky might provide an answer.

Terry jogged up the hill immediately in front of her, pausing halfway to the top to investigate why the grass felt so weird under her feet. It wasn't grass. She wasn't sure what it was, but each 'blade' had the texture and pliability of an earlobe. There was no dirt underneath either. That was... really bizarre.

Terry reached the top of the hill, holding one arm modestly across her chest.

Rolling green hills as far as the eye could see in every direction, and nothing else. That was... kind of disappointing.

"Hello?" Terry called, and then bellowed at the top of her lungs, "Helllllloooooo!"

Terry found herself giggling that she even could bellow at all.

A movement in the corner of her eye made her spin around, but it was just the flower womb thing closing up. Terry took a deep breath and considered her options. She... really didn't have any idea at all what was going on, or how it was even possible.

"Start walking, I guess," Terry mused, smiling. "I can walk. Hell, I bet I can run."

Going with that thought, Terry decided to chase the sun, and broke into a sprint. Her body moved. Her feet dug into the not-grass and pushed off with eager strength. Her arms swung, hands flat. Her dirty blonde hair blew back, lifting off her forehead. Her breasts bounced obscenely at first, but somehow it didn't hurt, and as she picked up speed her gait smoothed out.

Terry raced from hill to hill, lithe legs flashing and a laughing grin on her face. Her stride ate the distance, and she didn't tire. She wasn't even breathing hard. Terry laughed as she actually got air over the narrower hills. There was no burn in her legs, no physical sign that she couldn't keep the pace up forever.

On the next hill, Terry went for hang time on purpose, leaping from the peak with all her strength. She sailed through the air, falling a distance equivalent to leaping from a third-story window. She broke her fall with a somersault and didn't even slow down. Where that came from, she didn't know, but it felt so natural to do that she didn't question it.

Two hours later, Terry's body still showed no sign of fatigue, and her elation faded as she wondered if maybe she really was dead. She'd been sprinting up and down hillsides for two hours at a pace a motorbike would be pressed to match. She wasn't out of breath. She wasn't sweating. She wasn't hungry or thirsty. And the sun hadn't moved.

It was a little unnerving.

Reborn from a flower with petals of human flesh. Weird not-grass. Having her youth back, while apparently lacking bodily needs. A sun that didn't move... and now that she looked, it was too big. Also, she was looking at the sun and it didn't hurt. And she was all alone. If she was dead, this certainly didn't match the description of any afterlife from any religion she'd ever heard of. Except maybe limbo.

It just didn't fit. Pausing at the top of a hill, Terry ran her hands down her body. The reality. The sensation. She felt alive. Her body reacted to sensation and to her emotions the way it should have, much more so than it had as an ailing old woman.

Terry didn't know what this was, but death it was not.

Well gosh, was this a pickle. His scheduled sacrifices had been stolen away right from the alter before they could be claimed. That certainly wasn't his fault. Richard Wilkins was pretty darn good at getting a word in edgewise. It was a useful skill to have when a demon was snarling threats at him.

"Now now," Wilkins placated. "Let's not go saying things you might regret. We have an excellent record of dealing in good faith. Let's not go ruining that. It seems to me we're dealing with third-party interference. And you know what they say about the third party."

The demon was looking less than convinced, but Wilkins had been talking his way into status and power for a long time. He wasn't exceedingly worried. Still, if his sacrifices were going to be uncooperative and vanish off his alter, that sure put a crimp in his plans. He'd have to see what he could do to correct the situation.

Desta tried to swallow as his mama dripped water onto his lips, because he was so thirsty, but it was hard. He was burning. He was freezing. The fever was only getting worse as the gash on his leg festered.

He was hungry and not hungry. Hungry like always, but couldn't stand food now, which was bad 'cause he was thin and weak even before he got hurt. His mama was crying. Saying the doctor wouldn't be coming. His own eyes felt hot and scratchy, but he wasn't crying no more. Too hard. Hurt too much.

Desta's mama was talking at him again, but he couldn't understand the words no more. He tried to beg her to make it better. It was scaring him, not understanding. Sounds were all wrong and he wasn't sure he was even hearing them. You was supposed to hear sounds.

He was scared.

...

Desta woke up underwater. Or undersomethin' in any case. He gasped, breathing out a lung-full of fluid as the fleshy walls around him fell away. That was supposed to hurt. Why didn't it hurt?

Clambering to his feet, Desta forgot all about that minor mystery as he laid eyes on something the likes of which he'd never seen before. Blocky spires of stone, covered in luscious green and towering into the sky. Fancy bridges of clear glass or somethin' stretched between the spires, each bigger than Desta's whole village and brilliantly backlit by a fiery sunset.

"Where am I?" Desta asked, enraptured by the sight.

There was nobody else anywhere he could see, and Desta was bewildered. It was obvious he wasn't sick no more, and that was a miracle. Looking down at himself, Desta's mouth fell open.

He was bigger. Older. His starved-thin arms and legs... weren't. Corded muscle moved under healthy ebony skin and he couldn't see his ribs no more. And his thing was doing that thing the older boys' things did sometimes.

After taking a moment to understand that what he was seeing was real, Desta edged through the verdant landscape looking to see if there were any other people around. He didn't understand what was going on, but he wasn't hungry, and he wasn't hurt, and he wasn't weak.

Desta was worried about finding his mama, but he wasn't scared no more.

Spike drained the human until she stopped struggling, then bit into his own arm and forced it into the woman's mouth. The woman went limp in his arms, and he scooped her up to carry her back to the hide out.

He hadn't gone half a block when the woman vanished out of his arms in a flash of white light.

"Oh, bugger all!" Spike complained.

It looked like his Dru was right. Something was stealing the bodies before they could turn. If this went on, there wouldn't be any new vampires, ever. That... changed things quite a bit, in grand scheme, didn't it? Could be fun.

Kirika stormed into her room and slammed the door behind her with a bang.

"How could she?! That bitch! How could she!" Kirika raged, before falling to her knees against her bed and sobbing into the blankets. "I thought you were my friend..."

The sound of the door opening sharply behind her made Kirika tense. Kirika had been arrested. Her parents had been totally understanding... not! They hadn't even believed her! But then, she could barely believe it herself. Erika was supposed to be her best friend forever, but...

"Kirika!" her mother snapped. "We are not done discussing this! I did not raise a thief!"

Kirika's hands clenched in the blankets as hot tears of frustration trickled down her face. "I told you! It was Erika!"

Her mom scowled at her. "I did not raise a liar either! I can't believe you would try to foist this off on that sweet girl. You should be ashamed of yourself! That is not how you treat your friend!"

"But she...!"

"I don't want to hear it!" her mom interrupted. "You are going to apologize to that girl, am I clear?"

Kirika was too outraged to form a coherent reply. She just screamed into her bedspread and then whirled to her feet, screaming in her mom's face, "No! Get out! Get out! Get out!"

The slap stung, and Kirika recoiled.

"I will not have my daughter speaking to me that way," her mom snarled. "I'll leave, but you're going to stay, and you're going to stay until you can act like a civilized human being."

With that, her mom stepped out and shut the door, leaving Kirika alone. She trembled with helpless rage, suddenly screaming again as she smashed the contents of her desk onto the floor, and proceeded to thoroughly wreck her room.

When she was done, she collapsed face-down onto her bed and cried. Her best friend had turned on her, her record and future was ruined, her parents were blaming her when none of it was her fault, and she had nowhere left to turn.

Kirika shifted as something sharp dug into her thigh, and found a pair of titanium craft scissors that had gotten knocked onto her bed during her rampage. She rolled onto her back and looked thoughtfully at the sharp industrial-grade blades through tear-blurred eyes.

Sniffing, Kirika considered it. Her future had been pulled out from under her. The people who were supposed to care about her had all turned on her. What did she have to live for anyway? The thought of stepping out of her room, going downstairs, and accepting her mom's baseless judgement... it was unbearable. A hopeless anger burned in her chest, at being held hostage to her mother's whims. Her life was in the hands of people who'd just proven themselves unworthy of it.

Kirika opened the scissors and gripped them around the hinge. This, at least, was on her terms. The pain was startling, sharp, but also satisfying in a way. This was one thing where she did have control. She didn't leave a note. It was obvious to her that no one cared what she had to say anyway.

...

Enveloping soothing warmth. Kirika woke confused, by the fact that she was waking up at all and not even in a hospital. She moved in the viscous fluid, and the reddishness around her peeled apart and drew away.

Kirika stood up, feeling a breeze blow around her naked body, and blinked. She looked again, and nope, she was still seeing the same thing.

A vast cliff face stretching in both directions as far as she could see. Massive half-arches of natural stone and greenery were lined up across the drop, providing a series of natural ramps leading down into the sparkling lake below. Kirika was standing on one of the arches, about a hundred yards from where it joined the top of the cliff, so the ground under her feet was mildly sloped.

Dazedly, she walked over to the edge of her arch and peered over. Hanging under the arches, between the cliff face and the water, were an amazing variety of interconnected platforms and bridges. The glinting silvery thread that supported the interlocking and brightly colored lilypad-esque platforms reminded Kirika uncomfortably of spiderweb, but it was shaped like rope bridges and stuff so it wasn't too disturbing.

"Hey!" Kirika shouted. "Anybody?"

Nobody answered. There wasn't a single person in sight.

And she had leaned too far over the edge. Her hand slipped on the big soft leaves that grew along the sides of the arches, and she shrieked in fright as she went over the edge. Ironic, perhaps, to be scared of a fall after what she'd just done to herself, but in truth that had been about control. Tumbling off the side of the landarch, she did not feel in control.

"Eeeeeeeah!" Kirika screamed, scrabbling desperately for a handhold.

Kirika slid to a stop against the bare stone, heart pounding. She finally dared to open her eyes, and when she did she almost let go of the stone in surprise. She was on the underside of the arch, clinging to bare stone without any kind of handhold, like she was Spiderman or something.

Only she wasn't clinging by her hands. Her whole body was pulling towards the rock. She could feel it in her bones. Literally, in her bones, pulling against the solid stone above her.

"...what?"

Glancing over her shoulder, Kirika saw there was a platform relatively close below her. The landing looked soft, but it was still further than she wanted to fall. Maybe she could lower herself gently?

Carefully, she pulled one foot away from the smooth rock, then the other, then a hand. Finally she let go with her other hand. Her breath was short with nerves. It was working. She didn't know what it was, but it was working.

Kirika relaxed her.. bones, she guessed, whatever that meant, and slowly began to drift downwards. Except, as soon as she started moving away from the rock, it took more and more effort to keep from falling. She panicked.

Kirka shot back towards the rock surface like she was on a rubberband. She smashed into it face first. The pain was fleeting, but it was enough to startle her into letting go completely. Kirika shrieked as she plummeted through the air, flailing wildly.

Slam!

Kirika bounced as the air was forced from her lungs, but again the pain was fleeting. It took her a moment to realize she could breath just fine, and had been holding her breath waiting for the pain that never came.

Flopping over onto her back, Kirika stared up at the earthen arch blocking the clear blue sky above her and started to laugh. Well, she'd wanted to escape from her life. Looks like she got her wish.

"How the fuck did I get here?" Kirika wondered. "Am I dead? What is this place?"

The platform was comfortable enough, firm yet sort of spongy, that Kirika didn't bother to move for a while. She was still looking up at the sky and trying to figure out what to do about her situation a while later, when something small and white zipped across the sky above her.

Kirika jolted up. She stared for a second, before dashing across a bridge to another platform in the direction the thing had been moving. It was there, coming back from below and slaloming around the earthen arches just above the water. It suddenly shot upwards in a flutter of white cloth and resolved into a floating girl in a white cloak. A girl her brain labeled 'Oriko' for some reason.

Kirika gaped as the girl gently drifted down and landed on the platform with her. Suddenly aware of her nudity, Kirika blushed and turned aside, covering herself with her arms as best she could.

"Hello, Kirika," the girl greeted softly as she unfastened her cloak. "My name is Oriko. Here."

Her name was really Oriko? Huh. Weird.

Sagging in gratitude, Kirika took the cloak and wrapped it around herself. She looked up to thank Oriko for the loan, only to stall in her tracks. Without the cloak, all Oriko was wearing was a shimmery white loincloth and a wrap around her chest with a knot between her modest breasts.

Guh. Just... guh. Since when was she even into girls? But clearly she was; the evidence was right in front of her because... guh.

With what had to be a brilliant blush, Kirika replied, "Th-thanks. I'm, um. Thanks."

"It is nice to meet you," Oriko said with a bow. "I'm glad I found you. I've been alone since I woke up here."

"Uh, yeah," Kirika said. "Me too. So, uh, where'd you get the cloak?"

"I made it," Oriko told her, pointing out over the lake. "There is a... thing about twenty kilometers that way that grows silk cloth in big sheets."

"Oh, weird," Kirika opined. "Um, so you haven't seen any other people either?"

Oriko nodded. "I wouldn't expect otherwise. This is a new world, and we're among the first to be brought here."

"A new world?" Kirika repeated. "Where are we?"

Oriko smiled slightly. "We're on Venus."

Oh.

Wait.

"Say what?!"

Joe held on to Charlene's hands as he desperately tried to convey how much he needed her to believe he wasn't crazy. He finally had proof. Real proof that no one could ignore. He'd called her as soon as he was sure they wouldn't be trampled by a riot, a few days after the Fae's upgrade pods had come burning down out of the sky like a rain of fire, when the huge video screens in the sky had dissolved.

The park where they met didn't look all that different, except for the half dozen of the fleshtone pods dominating open areas of grass.

"You didn't believe me about Antarctica not being a meteor, or about the Prometheus crash being more than an ordinary plane, and I can understand that, some of the stuff SG-1's been up to lately sounds even crazier than usual, but I knew and you know I knew about the Fae months ago," Joe pleaded desperately. "I told you what their ship looked like. I told you when they'd announce themselves to the world, and then they did. It's all real, Charlene!"

"You..." There were tears in Charlene's eyes. "You could have seen something... a leaked photo.. a..."

"All the way back in November?" Joe asked. "Please, Charlene."

"Oh, Joe... I'm so sorry!" Charlene cried, throwing her arms around him.

Joyce luxuriated in the blissful peace that enclosed her. It took her a moment to realize it was done. The purported three weeks had passed in the blink of an eye. She felt good. It wasn't immediately noticeable, but all the little aches and pains of daily life or of waking up - muscle stiffness, tiredness, sluggishness - were gone completely.

Uncurling, Joyce reached forward in the warm darkness and the fleshy petals of the pod unfurled. The fluid enclosure shrank down into the base, and Joyce breathed it out of her lungs as her head emerged into the air.

Joyce stood up and looked around in the darkness, only to stop abruptly. She was expecting her basement. This... was not her basement.

Starlight gleamed off the mouth of what looked like some sort of natural cave, with her car parked inside next to a convertible she could remember seeing the Chase girl driving. A short distance from her own pod, Joyce saw another in the cave with her. Something was off with her eyesight, too. Color. It was dark enough that she should have only been able to make out shapes, but she could still see hints of color.

Joyce went over to her car and opened the passenger side where her suitcase was. She got dressed quickly. She wanted to know how she'd ended up in a cave somewhere. Even if she couldn't begin to guess what had happened, it really didn't bode well.

The car started up, and Joyce noticed a note on the dashboard. Simple directions back to Sunnydale. The knot of worry in her chest eased a little.

The drive didn't take long, but after she made it back to town more than once her headlights illuminated a familiar pale reddish shape. One was directly in the middle of the road, and she got a good look as she swerved around it. Birthing pods. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Out in the open, in public.

"Oh, Buffy, what have you done?" Joyce worried.

Joyce made it home without incident, but the house was dark. She pulled into the garage and parked, then went inside calling for Buffy. The house was just as she'd left it, except for the hole in the basement floor and the broken basement windows, but it was empty. No sign of Buffy or her friends.

It was the middle of the night, though. She decided to wait until morning to start calling around. Joyce didn't know what to do with herself in the mean time. She'd spent the last three weeks asleep and didn't feel like going to bed.

Well, there was three weeks of mail she need to catch up on.

The meadow within the Eliezera that the scoobies were coming to call home had a new addition. A rectangular plateau twice the size of a king sized bed, with a six-foot display screen at one end. It had a give that was reminiscent of memory foam, and a glossy near-frictionless texture akin to wet latex without the smell or the creaking sounds. The slick surface was decorated in a fractal pattern of varying grey shades, and scattered with geometrically shaped white cushions, electrostatically adhered to prevent them from floating away or sliding unless deliberately moved.

Buffy, Xander, and two of the Willows had arranged a collection of wedges and cylinders facing the display, and the display was showing the eight biggest news channels from around the world.

"It looks like things are starting to calm down," Buffy said, absently caressing Willow-rhom's arms.

"Everybody was poised for something to happen," Willow-rhom mused. "I think they're starting to realize nothing's going to happen, I mean besides the first upgradees waking up."

Willow-rhom sat with her back to the cushions and Buffy between her legs. Her arms wrapped around Buffy's waist as Buffy snuggled back against her chest. Willow's chin rested lightly on Buffy's shoulder when she wasn't idly kissing Buffy's neck or cheek. One of Willow's hands wandered down between Buffy's legs, fingers sliding through folds. Buffy lifted her hips, pressing into Willow's touch, before relaxing again.

"Most places have given up on trying to cordon off or otherwise keep people away from the pods, so there's that," Xander said, "but look. Some cities are excavating pods and taking them elsewhere. Most of those pods are empty, like, the ones that were blocking a street or something, but some of them aren't."

Xander sat beside them, left shoulder touching Willow-rhom's right shoulder with her right leg draped over his left. Xander had Willow-kink on his lap, her back to his chest with his erection buried in her pussy. She was leaning to the side, her head between Xander's and Buffy's with her arm looped behind Xander's neck. Xander's head was pillowed on the outer side of her milk-laden breast and his right hand reached around to absently stroke her thick slippery cock, making her walls twitch and clench around his own member.

Across the meadow, tangled together in Willow's hammock, Jessie and Dawn along with Willow-para were dead to the world. The three of them were in a virtuality where Willow-para was guiding the two kids through an early lesson in basic epistemology. Willow-icos was off with the model of Venus, touching up the mostly-random terrain before anyone woke up there.

"Mmm," Buffy sighed softly as Willow-rhom's fingers wiggled insider her. "It's not the military doing it. That's good, right?"

"I've been trying to listen in here or there through the sensor fog," Willow-kink admitted, unconsciously moving her hips, gently riding Xander as his hand moved up and twisted around her glans. "Oooh... Um, yeah, but it's harder than you'd think to figure out where to listen in, and um, I'm not really sure I should even be paying attention to this anyway."

"You're not?" Xander prompted, softly kissing the side of her boob.

"It's the whole evils not of your making thing," Willow-rhom chimed in. "That wasn't just a sound bite. It is sad when people are shitty to each other, but we..."

Willow-rhom trailed off, placing kisses along Buffy's shoulder. Her fingers curled into Buffy's wet entrance while her other hand reached across Buffy's body and fondled her breast. Buffy reached over and curled her fingers around Willow-kink's hard shaft below Xander's hand.

"We had a, a responsibility to eliminate nature's cruelties, because we were the only ones who could," Willow-kink continued. "I know it sounds kind of mean, but really, we're not in charge of anybody. Human cruelty is humanity's problem. There's still a whole galaxy out there full of people who need us to save them from the things they can't save each other from. Growing old. Getting sick. Starving."

"You're probably right," Buffy agreed. "How's that going?"

"Good actually," Willow-rhom chirped.

Willow-kink nodded as she undulated in Xander's lap with increasing vigor. "The first of the new generation ships is ready and hyperdrive capa... capable... ooh I need to cum again."

None of her limbs had much leverage in that position, so instead Willow-kink relaxed the pull of her skeletal magnetics everywhere except her feet. She rose up a few inches on Xander's length and then 'fell' back down, only to relax again and bounce. Her breast jiggled and heaved. Xander thought it was kind of hot how it looked like some invisible force was dragging her body up and down his cock.

After a moment spared to appreciate the notion, Xander let go of her cock and grabbed her butt to hold her in place. He swiveled his hips to get the best angle and started thrusting up into her, filling the air with the wet slapping of hips on butt. Willow-kink moaned in bliss, mauling her own chest. Droplets of milk escaped her nipples and scattered in the air as she squeezed her titflesh.

While Xander fucked Willow-kink and Willow-rhom fingered Buffy hard and fast, Buffy leaned over and sucked Willow-kink's cockhead into her mouth. Buffy twisted up onto her knees for easier movement, kneeling sideways in front of Willow-rhom. Willow-rhom took advantage of the opportunity to slither down and stick her head between Buffy's thighs from below, red hair peaking up behind Buffy's butt as she nuzzled her face into Buffy's juicy folds.

"Mmm. Mmmmh! Mm," Buffy moaned, shuddering in pleasure.

Buffy forced herself down and Willow-kink gasped, trembling on the brink as Buffy gagged on her cock. Sort of gagged. The reflex was there. A sudden dramatic increase in saliva. An urge to clear the obstruction. But there was none of the violent lurching discomfort assosiated with gagging as a human. Buffy's head bobbed in silence.

"Ooooohk!" Willow-kink climaxed, spasming and clenching around Xander's cock as she erupted down Buffy's throat.

Xander slowed his thrusts as Willow-kink's orgasm passed. He was close too, but not so close that it was urgent. She slumped forward, breathing slow and unsteady. Buffy popped off her cock with a shuddering gasp as Willow-rhom's eager tongue brought her over the edge too.

Willow-kink snuggled back into Xander's chest with a happy sigh. "Mm, I love cuddlefucking with you guys."

Xander turned her on his lap, putting her back in the crook of his arm as he gave her a smile of agreement. He kissed her, sweet and lingering. Then Buffy did the same, before turning around and kissing Willow-rhom.

"Anywho, I was saying," Willow-kink said. "The first of the new generation ships is ready to go, and the full stock of blank backup bodies is almost ready. Soon as they are, I'll split off a copy for each of us."

Buffy broke her kiss with Willow-rhom and leaned against Willow-kink's side, playfully flicking her lactating nipple with her tongue. "Hey, do you mean all of us, or do you mean a one Willow, one Buffy, one Xander, us?"

"I was thinking just the three scoobies us," Willow-rhom said, floating over and cuddling into Xander's other side.

Buffy frowned into Willow-kink's boob. "I think I'd miss Dawn and Jesse, but enough to justify copying them? I don't know."

"I'd miss 'em too, Buff," Xander added, "but these copies, they're not going to stay synced with us, right Wills? After a while they'll be... family, but not us."

Willow-kink nodded. "I don't think we should copy the kids. It'd be selfish. I do think we should all come up with different names for ourselves before I split off the copies, and we should all kinda mentally prepare to find ourself on the other side of the split."

"Yeah, you're probably right," Buffy said, idly licking the milk from Willow-kink's nipple.

Xander leaned down and took Willow-kink's other nipple between his lips, sucking a spurt of milk into his mouth and drinking it down. Buffy latched onto her nipple and did the same. Willow-kink sighed, her eyes fluttering closed.

Xander's erection was still enveloped in Willow-kink's vagina, and his hips pressed up, moving his throbbing member inside her. "Like to cum soon."

"Mm," Buffy said, releasing the nipple from her mouth and giving Willow-kink a little push. "I want."

"Okay," Willow-kink said, letting Buffy slide her off of Xander's cock.

Buffy rolled over onto Xander and straddled his lap. He angled himself for her and she sank down, her wet walls parting around his girth and enveloping his length. Buffy's hand's settled on his shoulders as she looked at him with an affectionate smile. Xander groaned as she deliberately squeezed his shaft inside her.

Never taking her eyes off him, Buffy slowly bucked her hips, slowly teasing him up to the edge. Xander smiled back. He had the patience of a saint. He played with her boobs, some, but mostly he just sat back against the cushions, content to let Buffy take as long as she liked to make him cum.

It was a slow, rolling cascade of gentle orgasmic spasms when it finally happened. Buffy was almost still as his cock spasmed and spurted inside her. She looked down between them where they were joined and just enjoyed the fact that Xander was having an orgasm and that she could feel it happening in her pussy. It wasn't intense, but it lasted. Soft tremors of pleasure raced through his body over and over.

Xander let out a long sigh as it tapered off and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her against his chest. Buffy kissed him, and their tongues wrestled.

"Oh hey," Willow-rhom spoke up. "Buffy, your mom's awake."

Buffy pulled out of the kiss with a, "Bwuh?"

"Her mom?" Xander looked at Buffy with some concern. "What are you going to tell her?"

Buffy worried her lip, glancing away at nothing. "I don't... but she's okay? There aren't any government goons?"

"She's reading mail," Willow-kink said, "and I don't see anyone lurking."

"Me either," Willow-rhom added. "Your house is pretty much the way you left it."

"Good," Buffy said, absently brushing a thumb over Xander's pectoral. "That's good."

"Are you thinking about going down to talk to her?" Xander asked.

Buffy shook her head. "No, we agreed. It has to look like we've made a clean break. We can't risk being seen in Sunnydale. Besides! Don't need to do that anyway. Mom's got a Dreamlink now."

With that, Buffy closed her eyes and her body went limp and weightless in Xander's arms, not even breathing. Xander blinked and gave Willow a raised eyebrow.

"Did she just leave her body impaled on my cock while she goes to talk to her mom?" Xander asked.

"It sure looks that way."

Xander cuddled Buffy's body to his chest. "Just checking."

Buffy stood in the white void of a new virtuality and thought over what sort of environment would put her mom at ease. She browsed through the archives looking for somewhere to have a conversation.

"Something spa-like," Buffy decided.

Searching through the first several dozen options, Buffy finally picked one. Suddenly the white void was replaced by a rock garden. Dappled light filtered through trees high above. Decorative streams ran here and there, frozen in time.

The dominant features were a number of dark green carpeted platforms half-surrounded by ornate wooden shelves with no backing. Each had its own thing going on. Massage tables. Hot tub. Several other more exotic setups. Gorgeous bronze-skinned silver-haired men and women wearing nothing but matching wood-and-leaf-pattern sashes stood frozen here and there.

Buffy deleted the fake people from the scenario. After a moment's consideration, she deleted the shelves of dildos and vibrators too. Then she added several fluffy white robes.

Buffy unpaused the virtuality, gaining the ability to interact with it normally. Water in the streams was suddenly flowing, and the dappled light shifted as the shade trees swayed in the softest of warm breezes.

Buffy took a deep breath to steel herself as she grabbed one of the fluffy robes off a shelf and put it on. Mom? Um, hi.

It was several moments before the reply came, Joyce figuring out how to send. Buffy? What is this?

It's the Dreamlink thing I told you about, remember? Buffy sent.

Oh, Joyce replied. Buffy, what happened? Where are you? Why was I in a cave? And why are your pods all over town?

I'm on the ship with the others, Buffy told her, answering the easiest of those questions. Have you turned on the news?

It's the middle of the night, Joyce pointed out.

Buffy winced. I wasn't talking about the local news, Mom.

There was a painfully long pause. Young lady, I would very much like you to explain yourself.

Yeah, that was about what Buffy was expecting. With a mental push, she upgraded her virtuality from local to persistent. From running inside her own head, to running on the distributed substrate through the Overlink. Her reflexes slowed, due to light-speed time-lag between her mind and her virtual body, but it was remarkably slight, and she knew she might not have even noticed if she wasn't a slayer.

Yeah, we should talk, Buffy sent. You want to do the face to face thing?

Yes, Buffy. Are you going to beam down? Joyce replied.

No, that's a bad idea, Buffy replied. I've set up a place we can talk. All you need to is sort of mentally reach deeper in the same direction you're sending in. You should feel where I am and be able to come here.

I don't understand, Buffy, what are, oh, there is something, Joyce sent back.

Great, um, make sure you lay down somewhere first, Buffy sent belatedly.

Several long moments later Joyce popped into existence without clothes. Buffy held out one of the fluffy white robes. Joyce blinked, before looking down at herself, blinking again, then taking the robe and putting it on.

Joyce looked around in confusion "Where are we?"

Buffy smiled a little. "Mentally poke your Dreamlink, but go, um, up I guess? It's kind of a feeling, opposite the way you got here, but kinda in the same direction at the same time and not really a direction at all..."

"Oh," Joyce breathed. "I know where I am. This isn't real?"

"Nope," Buffy agreed.

Joyce looked around, felt her robe, looked around again, and finally shook her head. "They're talking about the Fae on CNN... I want to know how this happened, Buffy."

"I did it for you, Mom," Buffy claimed.

"Buffy, what are you talking about?"

"Well, not only for you, but..." Buffy sighed. "The military. The government. They found you. They don't know it was you, but going public was the only way to keep you safe from them. And, we probably would have done that anyway, if that other military group we were friendly with hadn't told us not to. The world needed us."

Joyce looked a lot less like a scolding parent at that. "Why don't you start from the beginning and catch me up?"

Buffy nodded. "Sure, Mom."

Since Tomoko was not popular, she'd find out what the deal was with the alien pods.

Speculation was rampant. There were plenty of people online claiming they knew someone who'd stepped into one of the Fae's pods, and a butt-ton of arguing over how to interpret the Fae's instructional cartoon, but nobody had come out of one yet. All she had to do was go into one herself, and when she came out, all her classmates would want to know what it was really like.

Tomoko grinned and spun around in her computer chair, imagining herself holding court as her faceless admirers hung on her every word. Maybe a handsome boy would want to see the results with his own eyes, corner her somewhere, force her to undress before his hungry lustful gaze...

A bit of drool trickled down to her neck and Tomoko snapped out of the fantasy. Yes, that is definitely the kind of thing that should happen. Her plan'll be sure to work this time!

"Yosh!" Tomoko said decisively.

Tomoko grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen, and wrote a note so her parents would know what she'd done. Pausing to read it over, Tomoko blanched. It read like a suicide note! That wasn't right at all! She furiously tore it up and started over.

Note in place, she hurried down the stairs and left the house.

The pods were everywhere. It was hard to decide which one to use. They all looked the same, but some of them were blocking the street, and she didn't want to get hauled away while she was inside. She saw on the news how they were removing the pods that were blocking traffic. She didn't want to go too far from home either.

The pod towered over her, an egg-shaped flower with thick petals of pale red and burrowing roots of a darker fleshy red. Tomoko edged up to it, looking around furtively.

It wasn't like it was anything to be scared of. If the aliens were trying to do something bad they wouldn't need to trick anybody. They were so powerful, the people who thought that were just stupid. Tomoko had seen the instructional cartoon. It was obvious what it meant! The arguing people were probably nasty bitches who didn't want anyone else to be as pretty as them! Well, Tomoko would show them! She'd show them all!

...any second now.

Tomoko reached one finger towards the side of the pod at a glacial pace. Closer. Closer. Contact. It was warm! And it didn't feel like a plant at all. Actually, it felt a lot like the softer skin around her nipples. Was it supposed to be like that? Tomoko stared at the pod, seeing it in a new light. Were the aliens secretly perverts? The girl in the message had been naked! What if the pod was going to do hentai things to her while she was inside? Was she going to be anal probed?!

The pod moved.

"Wah!" Tomoko yelped, jumping back.

It was just the pod opening up, in response to her touch. Tomoko patted her chest and glanced around with a blush.

Inside the petals, a ring of smooth, wet-looking, pale pink tendrils extended up from a flat fleshy floor. Tomoko eyed them warily. She was small for her age, and the tendrils came up to her chest.

Steeling herself, Tomoko took a step forward. This was her chance. She'd get to be the one in the know, whatever happened. Screwing her eyes shut, Tomoko stepped into the pod. She was almost disappointed when the tendrils didn't take advantage of a perfectly good opportunity to wriggle inside her clothes and molest her.

Tomoko stopped in the middle, and the pod closed up around her, a bubble of some warm clear fluid rising up and feeling so soothingly good that she just wanted to melt.

"This is a nightmare. We have no control over the situation at all."

"We simply do not have the manpower to regulate access. Current estimates place one of the alien objects for every ten people in a given area. This pattern holds globally."

"Options?"

"An all-out tactical strike, before public opinion has a chance to sway more than it already has, perhaps. They are taunting us, placing their mothership in easy reach. Let us make them regret that arrogance."

"It may not be arrogance. Reports on the objects that have been taken for study indicate an absurd level of resilience. I believe it would serve us better to counter them on the field of popular perception."

"Agreed. We must remind the people that these invaders cannot be trusted. It is an insult that they'd believe we'd ever buy into their altruistic public relations bullshit."

"Perhaps, if we can encourage the people to shun the alien objects, we can hinder or delay whatever it is these Fae are attempting to do."

"Their more obvious claims about the objects will be the first indication of their plans. The promised two to three weeks. If that is accurate, I believe we may assume their plans run into the long term."

"No deception is flawless. They'll show their hand, and when they do, we must be ready to act."

The girl sat on an old rotting park bench, looking quietly miserable. Her flaxen head was bowed, her hands folded in her lap on top of her threadbare peasant skirt. Her figure was soft and plump, all curves. There was a gentle vulnerability to her. A complete lack of anger even though life had her down.

One of the alien pods was off to the side across a small field of patchy yellow grass, occupied.

Halifrek smirked inwardly. Oh yes, this girl was ripe for a Wish. Probably wouldn't manage to get anything vicious out of the girl, but the less straightforward vengeances were more fun anyway.

"Honey?" Halifrek prompted softly. "Is everything okay?"

The girl peeked up at her through a curtain of dirty blonde hair. "F-fine."

Halifrek sat down next to her. "If you say so. Sure doesn't look like it, though."

They sat in silence for a while. Halifrek waited until the next time the girl peeked out at her, and held out a hand.

"I'm Halie," Halifrek said, smiling warmly.

Hesitantly, the girl shook her hand. "T-t-Tara."

"You wanna talk about it?" Halifrek asked. "I promise, I'm a good listener."

Tara was silent for a while more, but eventually she spoke, "My d-dad is mad."

Halifrek gave her a look of sympathy and waited.

"He d-doesn't l-like the aliens. Says th-they're no better than d-d-demons," Tara confessed. "But I've b-been r-r-reading about them, a-a-and I saw their message on the sky screens. I th-think they're good. M-my dad didn't like m-me saying that. Doesn't like th-that I'm in-interested in them."

"I see," Halifrek said. "Well, if it makes you feel better, I think it's neat too. I mean, aliens! It's neat. And not what anyone was expecting, am I right?"

Tara offered a small shy smile. "I know. N-no flying saucers or d-death rays." She drooped. "I w-was working up the c-c-courage go into the p-pod." Tara glanced over at the occupied pod across the dilapidated park. "I've got t-t-tainted blood in me, but if I did that, I'd be f-f-free of it."

"Ah, and someone beat you to the punch?" Halifrek guessed.

Tara looked surprised at Halifrek's easy acceptance of that claim, but eventually nodded. "Daisy Lee f-from down the r-road got pregnant last f-fall. Sh-she saw the warning f-for p-pregnant women not to u-use the pods, b-but she didn't w-want her baby, so..." Tara gestured at the pod again. "I w-wish there w-was another pod cl-closer than a c-couple miles."

Halifrek almost granted the wish, but it was so minor. She decided to hold out for something better. "It really is too bad. So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know," Tara admitted sadly. "I don't wanna g-go home. Dad's been d-doing nothing but r-ranting about the aliens, a lot. I don't wanna..." She shook her head. "The aliens seem so amazing. Th-they're trying to help, I kn-know it. A-and their tech-technology is so pretty."

"It does seem that way," Halifrek agreed. "What makes you so sure, though?"

Looking up at the sky where the pearlescent oval of the Fae's ship gleamed, Tara considered. "Wh-what they've done. It's to h-help the unimportant people... like me... and I th-think that means they care."

Halifrek smiled at her. "That's a good point, but I don't think a gentle, thoughtful girl like you is so very unimportant."

Tara blushed. "I'm just..." She shrugged. "I don't really w-want to be important an-anyway."

"You just want people to care," Halifrek said with a knowing nod.

"I guess," Tara agreed shyly. "Sometimes I wish the aliens would swoop down and take me away. Take me with them."

Halifrek smirked. Now that was a wish she could work with. She began to summon her power, and Tara immediately reacted, flinching away with a gasp.

"Oh goddess! Your aura!" Tara exclaimed.

Halifrek showed her true face. "Granted!"

And before Tara could react further, Halifrek teleported away. While Tara looked around like a spooked rabbit, Halifrek stayed closed to watch. Tara got up from the bench and hurried away fearfully, but that wouldn't matter.

Shortly, a transparent sphere shot down out of the sky. Tara barely had time to eep as it came down directly on top of her, bounced like a giant sport ball, and shot back up into the sky with Tara inside. It moved at an angle, passing directly over Tara's family's house as it broke the sound barrier. The shattered windows and pained cursing from within was very satisfying.

Small cylindrical cushions, bent with their ends affixed to the glossy surface, pinned Buffy to the center of the plateau by her ankles and wrists in a spread pose. It would be trivially easy to pull free; Xander and Willow were mostly just poking fun at her for quitting her body mid-coital without so much as a word.

Upon waking, Buffy realized her predicament and made a face at them. "Ha ha, guys."

"Well, we couldn't just let you go floating off wherever," Xander pointed out reasonably.

Xander and the two not-quite-identical Willows snickered. Buffy rolled her eyes. A yank and the cushion on one wrist came free and went flying up at the false sky. The other three improvised restraints went the same way in short order.

"So how'd it go?" Willow-kink asked from where she was snuggling with Xander.

Buffy bit her lip. "Okay, I guess. Mom started yelling when I told her we weren't coming back to Sunnydale, but I think she was mad at the government as much as me. She's kinda wigging that all this stuff happened while she was out, but she was the one who wanted us to go public with the upgrade from the beginning... so yeah. We're okay."

Willow-rhom gave Buffy a happy hug, wiggling her chest to enjoy the way their breasts squished together. "That's good, huh?"

Buffy smiled and pulled Willow-rhom into a kiss. "It's like this whole big relief thing."

Willow-rhom grinned and pressed her body flush against Buffy's as she kissed her again, harder. Arms pulled tight, tongue caressed tongue, and thigh ground between thigh. Xander slid himself sideways for a better view, pulling Willow-kink with him.

Willow-kink made a trail of little kisses from his jaw to his lips as her breast filled his hand, but then she paused.

"That's weird," Willow-kink said, frowning. "We have an incoming shuttle."

"What?" Where did it come from?" Xander asked.

Willow-rhom's cute little moans and Buffy's soft feminine grunts got louder.

"I have no idea," Willow-kink said, sounding very confused. Her eyebrows shot up. "Oh, we did launch a shuttle... but it wasn't any of me, or any of us... The Eliezera launched it on its own?"

Xander stared. "I thought the ship was braindead."

"It is," Willow-kink insisted. "I don't get how it did this."

Buffy bent one leg out to the side and Willow-rhom bent her body, grinding her slippery vulva down against Buffy's. Buffy caught Willow's left knee in the crook of her right arm, and Willow did the same to Buffy. Buffy thrust her hips up as Willow curled down, undulating sinuously as she sat straddling Buffy's apex.

"Did what? What did it do?" Xander asked.

"I don't know," Willow-kink said. "It went down somewhere in southern Nevada and then came straight back." She paused, blinking in surprise. "With a passenger."

"A passenger?" Xander repeated.

"Ooh ooh aahhh! Ahhhh! Aaah," Willow-rhom gasped as she climaxed.

Shuddering with pleasure, Willow-rhom pulled away from Buffy's lips and slid down to bury her face in Buffy's sex. Buffy's back arched as Willow-rhom's tongue lavished her clit. As Willow steadied in the wake of her orgasm, she got her knees under her and grabbed Buffy's butt, lifting her to keep her pussy in Willow's mouth.

"Nnnngh! Ghuuuh! Uhhhhh!" Buffy cried out as Willow-rhom brought her off.

Buffy bucked against Willow-rhom's face before going slack with a long sigh. Willow-rhom slid her hands around Buffy's thighs and up to her chest, smiling down at her.

Willow-rhom blinked and looked up. "That's weird."

"I know," Willow-kink agreed. "Me-icos is meeting the shuttle."

"Shuttle?" Buffy asked.

"Apparently the ship spontaneously decided to pick up a passenger," Xander explained. "And yes, that doesn't make any sense."

Buffy closed her mouth and sat up. The scoobies stared at each other in confused silence for a long moment. Then both Willows' eyes suddenly went wide.

"Oh no!" they chorused, leaping to their feet.

"What? What's wrong?" Xander asked.

"She's hurt! Come on!" the Willows called.

From a ways away, a shuttle emerged into the meadow and zoomed towards them. Willow-icos was riding on it, perched on the outside of the metamembrane. She tumbled off as it slowed to a stop between the plateau and Willow's hammock, flipping gracefully and landing on her feet. She reached into the shuttle and pulled out the figure inside.

"Oh gods," Buffy said softly. "What happened to her?"

It was a girl, curvy and soft-looking. She was dressed in worn, modest clothes. And she wasn't breathing. Her eyes were sunken ruins leaking blood, her face was sallow and slightly blue, and her lips were horribly split.

Xander winced at the sight of her. "Ten to fifteen Gs happened to her, sustained for the entire trip up here. Shit."

"I'm not getting a pulse," Willow-icos reported anxiously. "She's bad off, guys."

"Jessie's pod," Willow-rhom said.

"Yeah. Guys, hold her steady," Willow-kink said. "Help me get her clothes off."

Buffy hurried to hold the girl's feet while Xander took her arms. The three Willows systematically stripped her naked. As the girl's clothes were removed, her back was revealed. It was a solid black bruise.

"Alright, get her in the pod," Willow-icos ordered once the girl was down to her soiled underwear.

Buffy scooped the dying girl out of the air and leaped, landing lightly next to the open pod. Placing the girl among the tendrils, Buffy stepped back as the pod closed up.

Xander gathered the rest of the girl's clothes and started folding them, while Willow-rhom looked through the girl's wallet. She pulled out a white plastic card as they followed Buffy over to the pod.

"Anything?" Xander asked.

"Her name's Tara Maclay," Willow-rhom reported.

"And she's going to be fine," Willow-icos said, relieved. "The pod's working. That means her brain wasn't smooshed beyond recovery."

"Good," Xander said. "Only, what the frilly heck, Wills?"

"I don't know!" Willow-icos exclaimed. "My security locks are still in place, and the ship doesn't remember a request for a shuttle anyway, or setting a destination or anything. The shuttle just spontaneously grew itself with its navigation already set."

"I think it was magic," Buffy put in. "Has to be. Only question is why, and maybe who, if it wasn't Tara herself."

Willow-kink frowned. "You think she tried to use magic to call for a shuttle?" She winced. "And then the acceleration smooshed her like a bug."

"Or someone else did, and Tara was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Buffy said. "I guess we'll have to ask her when she wakes up."

"This is bad," Willow-rhom worried. "What if someone evil realizes they can attack us with magic? What if someone already has?"

"What about the Devon Coven?" Xander asked. "They still like us, right? Maybe we can ask them to ward the ship."

Willow-icos shook her head. "It'd be like warding several entire cities. The Eliezera is big, Xander."

"But that probably means we don't have worry about anyone ensorcelling the ship either," Willow-rhom admitted. "I really want to scan all of Giles' books and research this, but the last thing we need is Moloch the Starship."

Buffy shuddered. "You don't think this is something like that, do you?"

"No... but, um, I'm going to go, um, double check. A lot."

Joyce sighed.

It just didn't sit right, the way things went back to normal despite the world being a different place. She was back in the swing of things at her gallery, and as far as her friends and employees were concerned, she'd been out of town on vacation during the We Come In Peace revelation, and she had nothing to do with the Fae.

The problem was Buffy, or, she supposed, Buffy's friends as well. She couldn't even disagree with what they'd done. In truth she couldn't help but be proud of her daughter and her friends for going straight to helping the people who needed it the most, without wasting so much as a second in the political arena. Yet, it came at the cost of her daughter being exiled, and the worst part was that Buffy had done it to protect Joyce.

Every time Joyce went home to that empty house, she felt like she wasn't much of a parent.

Her new body was everything Buffy had promised, however. She didn't get tired. No aches or pains after she did something strenuous. She didn't get light-headed. Unless there was food or drink right in front of her, or she fantasized about a good meal, she didn't get hungry or thirsty at all, and when she did eat or drink, her bladder somehow stayed empty. She didn't bruise, and tentative experimentation revealed that her sharpest kitchen knife couldn't even mark her skin.

It made her feel better, knowing her daughter had the same protection and more.

Jack O'Neill wasn't in the best of moods. He made his way through the corridors of the SGC as work crews scrambled to repair the infrastructure that the Replicators had wrecked. At least they had the lights back on.

Daniel was getting back to his old self, for the most part. Three days in a coma, and he'd woken up... strange. With Carter still missing, presumed Fae, it was a relief that Daniel had recovered from his bout of wacky wizard.

"Un- -bzz Offworld Ac-ss-ation!"

The damn PA system wasn't even working right. Jack hurried up to the control room just in time to hear a very welcome, very unexpected voice.

"...amantha Carter, IDC," she rattled off a series of letters and numbers, "do you read?"

Walter and half the gateroom staff had been lost in the attack, so it was the diminutive Jennifer Hailey at the console. "This is Lieutenant Hailey. We read you, Major. Do not embark, the iris is closed, repeat, the iris is closed. All offworld personnel are ordered to divert to the alpha site."

"Roger that, Lieutenant," Carter said, her voice uncertain. "What's the situation there?"

Jack hurried over and tapped Hailey on the shoulder. She glanced up and moved crisply out of the way. Jack leaned over the microphone.

"Carter?! Is that you?" Jack demanded.

"Sir!" Carter exclaimed. "Yes, sir. I managed to reason with Fifth. He let me go, but he stranded me without my equipment."

"Fifth?!" Jack blurted, alarmed. "Carter, last we knew you were taken by the Fae! What's this about Fifth?"

"Fifth abducted me during the Replicator attack," Carter said slowly. "Why would anyone think I was with the Fae?"

"Oh hell," Jack swore. That damned Fifth had taken advantage of the timing to get away clean with Carter. And Carter had no idea either. She'd been in Fifth's clutches when the Fae had shown their true colors. "Carter, the Fae were playing us for time. They've been systematically abducting the mortally wounded and mortally ill across the globe, even since you went missing!"

"They're what?" Carter exclaimed. "How is that even possible? The sheer scale of an operation like that is mind-boggling!"

Of course Carter would focus on that part of it. When in the hell had he started to like that about her? He honestly couldn't recall.

"Oh it gets better," Jack added blandly. "Seeing as how apparently this monumental security breach was all in the name of emergency medical attention for our poor neglected corpses, someone decided it was a good idea to raid Sunnydale and take our modesty-challenged friends into custody."

There was an incredulous pause. "You're kidding."

"That went fubar at least three different ways," Jack went on. "Not only did the Fae out themselves to the public just to spite us, but the timing of our arrest attempt sucked let me tell you."

"How so, sir?"

Jack sighed. "Near as we can figure, we interrupted a meeting between the Fae and a British group of witches, if you can believe it, and they didn't take kindly to getting caught up in this. It was like something out of a comic book, Carter. A bunch of unarmed civilians took on the Prometheus a mile above Cheyenne and won."

"We lost the Prometheus?!" Carter shouted in dismay.

"Yep," Jack said. "With a ruin smote upon the mountainside and everything. Daniel even went all white wizard for a moment there. Saved a bunch of us from falling wreckage. It put him in a coma for three days, still don't know why."

"Daniel was in a coma?" Carter repeated numbly. "Is he okay?"

"Still a little shaky, but it seems he's recovering," Jack told her. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, sir," Carter said. "I spent some time in a wilderness survival situation, but I was picked up by a ship from a previously unmet civilization."

"Friendly?" Jack asked.

"Looks that way, sir," Carter said. "They call themselves the Time-Space Administration Bureau. They're... a major galactic power. They've industrialized and modernized magic to the point that it is standard practice, and they have ships on a mass-production scale. Apparently they've even had unofficial contact with Earth in the past, primarily Japan."

Now wasn't that just great. "You're makin' that up." At least he got a chuckle.

"Sir, I need to brief you on a potential threat," Carter reported. "The crew of the ship that found me are pursuing an incursion from a race called the Ori. I'd like to come through for debriefing and then return with a full team plus backup. The TSAB has already been dealing with the Ori in an alternate reality, and sir, I feel confident that if this isn't addressed the Ori may present a significantly bigger threat than the goa'uld."

"For cryin' out loud," Jack muttered. That was just what they needed. "No can do, Carter. We're still picking up the pieces down here. The Replicators left the SGC in shambles. We don't even have power to the gate back up yet, more than half of our best personnel are missing, and the higher-ups are still flailing around like headless chickens..." And it was Weir who was stuck wrangling them, so to speak. He did not envy her. "Point is, we can't dial out, and we need a three-man team just to open and close the iris."

"I'm sorry to hear that, sir." Carter hesitated for a moment. "Sir, request permission to remain and assist the TSAB in the name of future relations and the prevention of a large-scale intergalactic war?"

Jack winced. "You sure about this, Carter?"

"Yes, sir," Carter replied seriously.

"Then good luck and godspeed, Major," Jack said, all official-like. "Permission granted."

"Thank you, sir," Carter said, the words laced with restrained emotion. "Oh, one other thing. You can tell Daniel that we may have finally found the legacy of the Furlings. The MidChildan histories call them Al-Hazard, but I'm... eighty percent sure it's the same language from the heliopolis on Tantalus."

"Swell," Jack said blandly. "I'll pass it along. You watch your six out there, you hear me?"

"Yes, sir. Carter out."

With that the Stargate shut down, and Jack was left looking at the poorly-lit gateroom. Hailey returned to the console, and Jack gave her a nod before going to track down Daniel.

Faith sprinted through the streets of Boston with DD's broken body over her shoulder. An organized group of vampires was chasing her, and she had to evade them long enough to get DD into one of those freaky alien pod things where they couldn't see. Everybody knew by now the pods were fucking tough, but Faith was going to gamble that they could stand up to a determined Kakistos.

Some nut stood on a street corner ranting to a small crowd around a cluster of seven pods. "...an ungodly blight on His plan! Do not be taken in by this false Fountain of Youth! For it is only through our Lord - "

Boot to the head, motherfucker. Faith landed from her flying kick, wincing as she felt something shift in DD's body, a soft pained gurgle coming from the woman. The sermon guy crumpled against the wall in a groaning heap.

"Move it, assholes!" Faith barked, kicking a burly dude from the audience into two more angry onlookers.

While they were distracted, she grabbed a skinny tweaker off the ground and hurried up to the pods that the small mob had tried, and failed, to deface. One further into the cluster opened at her touch, and Faith dashed through it, dropping the tweaker inside as she leaped out the other side and ducked down as it started to close.

Feeling proud of herself for that clever bit of misdirection, Faith edged around the cluster of pods and moved quietly down an alley. She emerged on a different street, turned a corner, and found another pod nestled against an old townhouse.

Faith put DD into the pod, and watched as it enclosed her. Faith's fist clenched. She hated to admit it, but she needed help. She could lure Kakistos away, but that wouldn't be enough. Maybe she could hide, but even with her bitchin' new slayer-powers, she couldn't beat him.

Wait, there was something DD said... about another slayer in California. Shit, it was as good a place as any.

Cordelia woke up feeling good, floating and relaxed. Xander had said three weeks, but it felt like she'd only closed her eyes for a moment. The birthing pod opened and released her, and Cordelia stood up, looking around suspiciously in case Xander had decided to take advantage of the opportunity to see her naked.

Xander was nowhere to be seen, and Cordelia ruthlessly stomped on the twinge of disappointment that realization brought. The small cave had changed, though. There was a second birthing pod next to hers, attached to a slab of what looked like concrete flooring.

"Huh. Okay," Cordelia shrugged.

Going over to her car, Cordelia pulled out her suitcase and selected an outfit. Designer jeans and a blouse, with flats. She checked her reflection in her compact and smiled shark-like at what she saw. She was going to save loads of money on makeup. Her hair could use a bit of styling though. Cordelia winced. She was going to have to ask Willow how to make her hair style itself like Willow had shown her.

With one last look around, Cordelia zipped up her suitcase and got into the driver's seat. The engine roared to life and she put the top down before pulling out of the cave. It was some time in the afternoon, it looked like.

The drive back into Sunnydale was uneventful, but when she got to the big sign things got weird. Opposite the sign, plain as day by the side of the road, there was a birthing pod. As she drove further into town she saw more of the things, scattered here and there. Mostly, they were being ignored by the people she saw, but once or twice she spotted a small cluster of townsfolk arguing around one.

"Oh hell, what've those losers gone and done now?" Cordelia complained.

Flipping her signal, Cordelia took a turn and headed for the school to find out what was going on. Once she got there, she parked and strode inside.

It was eerie and quiet in the school. Which was really unsettling since the parking lot was packed. Cordelia slowed, looking around for any sign of anyone. A few unnerving minutes passed in creepy silence, before she heard a violent crash from the direction of the library.

For a moment, she debated the merits of running towards the noise verses running away, but her desire to demand answers won out.

Cordelia arrived just in time for the library doors to slam open as that Jamaican girl Giles hung around with, Kendra, came flying out so fast her body made a crater in the opposite wall.

Scrambling back, Cordelia watched as Kendra threw herself aside before she even had a chance to fall off the wall. A dark blur streaked across the hallway, and plaster exploded as a small fist missed Kendra's head by inches. Kendra planted a foot on the ground and kicked out with the other, but her opponent slid around the strike and drove a knife into Kendra's neck.

The knife bent, not piercing her skin.

Kendra landed a punch, sending the smaller girl flying back through the air. "You know dat will not work."

The other girl was a waifish little thing, even more petite than Buffy, with oddly toned pale skin, straight shiny black chin-length hair, ill-fitting grunge jeans and t-shirt, and a creepy blank expression on her face. She landed on her feet and grabbed something from a belt pouch.

Metal washers or something. The girl tossed them up and...

Pain. Cordelia found herself knocked flat, sliding across the floor following a sharp pain in her shoulder. Rapid fire whiz-cracks, like a spray of bullets without the gun, stitched their way across the walls and floor. She caught a glimpse of Kendra reeling and the other girl skidding backwards down the hall away from them.

Growling, Kendra recovered herself and charged, her shirt hanging off her in tatters. "Dis was me favorite shirt!"

Cordelia blinked and looked down. She was fine. Not even in pain. There was, however, a large ragged gash in her blouse. Yeah, totally on your side, Kendra. Cordelia picked herself up and dusted off her butt.

"Cordelia."

Cordelia jumped, spinning around. "Giles! Don't do that! Sneaking up on a girl like that is, like, totally not acceptable. Now what the hell is going on? Who was that girl?"

"Not to worry," Giles said placidly. "We have the situation well in hand."

"Really?" Cordelia demanded doubtfully, turning back around to see the fight move around a corner. "You could have fooled m - eeeak!"

Something cold and slimy slithered under Cordelia's hair and jabbed the back of her neck. She shrieked, flailing as she grabbed at it. On her second try, her hand closed around the cold gross thing and she hurled it away with a cry of disgust. Something slimy purple with way too many legs went splat on the wall before skittering off around the corner.

"Giles!" Cordelia shrieked, turning back to the Watcher.

His face was creepy and blank, and he had another of the gross purple bugs in his hand, reaching for her. Cordelia shrieked and sprang away. Giles threw it, and the bug landed on her chest. Cordelia shrieked again in outrage and revulsion. She managed to grab this one before it made it to her neck. She crushed it in her grip and threw it away with a shudder of disgust.

Giles bent down to pick up a led pipe. Cordelia started backing up, but then she saw the back of Giles' neck. One of the gross purple bugs was latched on to him. Stopping as her eyes widened in comprehension, Cordelia lunged.

The pipe struck her ribs in a jarring impact and the two of them went down in a tangle. To her amazement, she was the stronger of the two of them. Not by much, but she was able to wrestle Giles long enough to crush his bug.

Giles went limp instantly and sagged to the floor.

"Damnit! Gross demon bugs are supposed to be Buffy's problem," Cordelia complained as she got to her feet.

Giles groaned and blinked up at her. "Cordelia. Yes, thank you. That was quite heroic."

"Yeah it was," Cordelia said. "Now what is going on around here and why hasn't Buffy kicked its ass already?"

"I'm afraid Buffy has not been in town for weeks," Giles told her as he stood up. "As for the current situation, hopefully Kendra will be able to defeat Oz and do for him what you have so graciously done for me, and then we may determine just what manner of creature has overrun the school."

Cordelia was confused. "I'm confused. Kendra was fighting some waifish girl."

Giles led them back into the library. "Just so. Oz acquired some new abilities during Halloween just as Buffy, Willow, and Xander did. When he uses his allomantic powers he assumes the female form you saw as a side effect."

"Oz turns into a girl now?" Cordelia said incredulously. "I go away and everything goes crazy while I'm gone. Is there anything else I should know?"

"Not of immediate importance," Giles said shortly.

Cordelia sighed in resignation and followed Giles to the books. "What're we looking for, and can I go wash my hands first? Ick."

A single cruise missile set off alarms across the globe. Tracking systems from several different countries locked on to the missile's trajectory and determined that it had originated somewhere in China. Those same tracking systems plotted the missile's target, revealing it to be nothing on the surface of the Earth, but instead the highly visible Fae starship.

Urgent messages poured into Beijing, and a confusion of denials and evasiveness was the only result.

The world collectively held its breath as the explosion lit up the sky over the Pacific. The electromagnetic pulse damaged computers and and the more fragile electronics in Hawaii. In the wake of the explosion, the Fae starship show no visible damage.

The world stood still in terror, waiting for the inevitable retaliation.

Only it never came. The starship continued in its orbit. Corpses continued to vanish. The pods continued to do whatever it was they did. By all appearances, the Fae were ignoring the attack completely.

As most of the world breathed a sigh of relief, a select few found themselves utterly horrified at their own powerlessness.

"Well that was rude," Willow-icos pouted.

"We okay?" Buffy asked.

Willow nodded. "Oh, sure. That was barely a love-tap compared to the Alteran drone platform."

"The one that ripped the ship in half," Buffy pointed out dryly.

"We're fine," Willow insisted, rolling her eyes.

Walter thrashed, the mere memory of his face melting off as it was dissolved by acid overwhelming in those first few seconds. He stilled himself as the absence of pain registered, and took stock of his situation.

He was laying on something warm and fleshy, looking up at a night sky full of familiar constellations. He didn't have any clothes, and the body he saw when he looked down... he hadn't looked that good in years. He wasn't sure he'd ever looked that good, actually. And a certain part of his anatomy...

It all led to one baffling conclusion. Walter had somehow been changed into a Fae. He ran a hand over his head and found more hair there than he'd had since he was a teenager. He held his breath, and held it, and held it, and there was no strain in his lungs.

Walter stood up and looked around at the idyllic landscape he found himself in. Some kind of tropical beach, surrounding a crystal clear lake that glowed with gold and green lights. In the center of the lake, rising straight out of of the water, was a massive skyscraper, like a towering braid of steel and glass connected by bridges.

"Whoa," Walter breathed softly.

Alright, what did he know? Walter reviewed everything he could remember the Fae revealing about their capabilities. Incredible durability. Peak human strength, with the exception of Buffy who was vastly stronger for reasons the Fae hadn't explained. No bodily needs. Electromagnet bones...

Walter paused, glancing down at the sand under his feet. Was it sand? It looked like sand, but there was something off about how it felt. Maybe because it didn't stick to his skin? Not a single grain. Anyway, if he really had been changed into a Fae...

After a minute's experimentation, Walter was rewarded for his effort by slamming sideways into the top of a palm tree. He fell back to the sand with a thud, got back up, and dusted himself off, though the dusting was unnecessary since the sand really didn't stick to his skin at all.

Walter looked up at where he'd crashed. Okay, that was cool.

What else? There was the Utility Cloud. After a moment of trying, he thought he had managed to extrude it from his skin in an amorphous blob, but he didn't really know what to do with it.

Okay, so a bit of a learning curve on that one, obviously. Then there was the Dreamlink. Of course! Walter focused his attention inward, and realized it was as intuitive as thinking back on a memory. He need to contact someone. He needed to call out... ah, it was almost instinctive, if you knew it was there... and his mind had zeroed in on... Siler?

Siler?! Walter blinked as he felt that... go, for lack of a better description.

What? Chief? Is that you? came the reply a few moments later.

Affirmative, Walter sent, relieved. Do you know what happened?

Not a clue, Siler replied. There were Replicators in the control room, one jump on your head, then I got knocked down, and the next thing I remember I'm here. And, different.

Walter started looking around for something to fashion some makeshift clothing out of, before pausing and looking at the skyscraper. That was probably his best bet, even if it didn't look inhabited. Walter dove into the water and started swimming.

Your body was changed? To be like the Fae? Walter asked as he powered through the water, admiring the sight of the highly varied glowing coral or whatever it was.

That's affirmative, Siler sent. It is something of an improvement if I may say so.

Walter reached the base of the partially-submerged skyscraper and paused. Can you see any landmarks from where you are?

Several. There's a tree that looks big enough to base jump from the lower branches, Siler replied. There's a cave entrance, looks brighter inside than out here, and its big. Real big. Big enough you could drive a Saturn V through it.

Walter carefully hauled himself out of the water. Clinging to the side of the building was a lot easier than flying. He likened it to keeping his balance. Constant tiny adjustments and shifts, but his body just did it without any effort on his part. Okay, he was a wall-crawling. That was cool too.

Do you have eyes on a glass skyscraper? Walter asked as he reached a bridge and dropped to his feet.

Nothing like that, Siler sent. I do have eyes on the sky, and the stars look right for Earth.

I noticed that too, Walter sent, heading inside. Can you estimate positions for any notable constellations?

Siler did, and with a little figuring, they worked out that Siler was about seventy klicks away.

Inside the skyscraper, Walter found wide-open opulent spaces, filled with luxurious furniture. Massive sofas and huge beds. Tables. Chairs. Other things. All arranged seemingly at random. He found a bed with actual sheets, in blue even, and pulled them off. Walter tore the sheet and fashioned something that was somewhere between a kilt and a toga, knotting it in place. It wasn't much, but it served basic decency.

Chief, I think I've found something, Siler sent. It's something you might call a tree, I suppose, but it's got 'fruit' that look just like those bubbleships the Fae used.

Walter paused. Really?

That's right, and I think I can sense them, Siler sent. Think I should try controlling one?

Carefully, Walter sent, but yes.

If Siler was right, and he managed to fly one of those ships, he could come to Walter. Walter turned and started making his way upwards, waiting anxiously for Siler's report.

Chief, you're not going to believe this, Siler sent. We're on Venus.

Walter stopped. What? No, what?

The shuttle has an automated navigation system, Siler explained. We're on Venus.

Does that mean the Fae were able to terraform the most hostile rocky body in the entire solar system, in a month, without anyone noticing? Walter asked incredulously.

I wouldn't know, Chief, Siler replied. I've got the shuttle underway. I think I see something on the horizon that could be your skyscraper.

I'll be on the roof, Walter sent. Then, hopefully, we can get back to Earth and find out what exactly happened.

Routine medical is going to be hell, Siler pointed out.

Walter groaned. I didn't even think of that.

The man in the pickup truck had stopped for Faith in Ohio. Dude might've mentioned his name, but Faith didn't bother remembering. It wasn't until they were half-way through Oklahoma that she woke up in the passenger seat at a gas station to find the scruffy dude's hand up her shirt.

Faith slowly opened here eyes, and smirked when it took him a moment to notice she was awake. She waited until his eyes flicked up to her face from the bounty his hands were exploring, and her smirk widened when he froze like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. Faith stretched languidly and gave the dude a sultry smile.

It took a couple more seconds to sink in, but the dude's face finally twisted into a lecherous grin and his hands started moving again.

And that's when Faith decked him.

"Ow fuck!" he yelped, clutching his hands to his broken nose as he fell across the bench seat and hit his head on the driver's side door.

"Damn, man. That never get's old," Faith snickered.

Pouncing on the dude, Faith slammed his head into the door again until he wouldn't be seeing anything but stars for a while, and started fishing through his pockets. Oh sure, she would've fucked the dude to call it even for the ride, but she couldn't be letting the creep think he had any call to be taking liberties. She emptied his wallet.

"Fifteen bucks? That's all you've got?" Faith said in disgust. "That's fucking insulting, dude. My tits are worth at least fifty."

Leaving the groaning creep in his truck, Faith hopped out into the night and slung her backpack onto one shoulder. There was a roadside motel across the way, and Faith was craving a shower. It had been days and she was feeling damn grungy.

Faith paused a moment to look off at the gleaming shape of the alien ship in the sky near the horizon. Fuck but DD better fucking be okay.

She didn't have enough for a room, and there were visible security cameras so busting into an empty wasn't worth it just for a shower. Faith scowled. Then she shrugged and walked casually by the row of doors, using her slayer hearing to listen in.

Empty. Empty. Bickering couple. Empty. TV and sounds of retching. Empty. Empty. Screaming kids. Empty. Empty. Empty. TV... hmm, was that a porno? Perfect.

Faith knocked firmly on the door. A moment later the moans coming from the TV cut off and there was utter silence in the room. Faith knocked again, and another moment passed before there was the creaking of a mattress, the movement of fabric.

The door opened a few inches, clacking against the swinglock, and Faith was surprised. Guy in a t-shirt and sweats, face slightly red, and much younger than Faith was expecting. Twenties at the oldest. His eyes seem to slide over her before fixing on the edge of the door.

"Yes?" the guy asked flatly.

Faith grinned. "Sorry for interrupting. See, the thing is, I've been on the road a while, but I've got no cash for a room. I'd be awful grateful if you'd help out little ol'e me."

"Why are you asking me?" the guy asked tonelessly.

Faith shrugged. "Right place, right time, dude. Hey, it aint like I'm asking for much. Just a chance to shower." Faith put on a saucy smile and sing-songed, "You let me in to use yours, I'll let'cha watch."

The guy's eyes flicked to her face before returning to the edge of the door. "Are you being serious?"

Okay, that was weird. Dude looked stiff and flustered at the same time, but he talked like he was reciting lines. Badly. He avoided looking at her and his face wasn't making expressions. If her slaydar hadn't as good as curled up around his leg and gone to sleep, she'd be finding it a little creepy.

"You bet'cher ass, I am," Faith said, putting some extra cheer into it. "Gotta make it worth your while somehow."

The guy stared at her blankly for another long moment. "I don't like the idea of leaving you hanging, but I'm thinking I might regret letting you in."

"You won't. Promise," Faith said a bit more seriously.

The guy sighed and shut the door. A clack from inside, and a moment later it opened wide. He stood back and made a gesture towards the bathroom as he bent his leg against the wall, contorting himself awkwardly. It took Faith a moment to realize he was trying to hide the tent in his sweatpants.

Faith strolled inside and gave him an amused grin as she ducked into the bathroom. "Thanks dude. You're totally my hero."

Buffy-74 (so a temporary name) had known, intellectually, that when Willow put her to sleep, she only had a one-in-eighty-nine chance of waking up as the 'original' Buffy. It hadn't really sunk in emotionally, though. Not until she'd woken up in the middle of eighty-seven other Buffys. Willow had been right to warn them to prepare themselves for this.

It said a lot about how much things had changed in her life, that the fact that Willow had just casually created eighty-eight new slayers without even using magic, was little more than a side-note.

The idea seemed to start in several places at once, which made a kind of sense, since the crowd in the spacious round white chamber was made up of the same three people repeated over and over. The many Buffys, Xanders, and Willows drifted together, touching caressing, moving into what was quite possibly the largest orgy in the history of this particular instance of Sol.

It was a very grounding experience. A mutual acknowledgement and a final goodbye, in a way.

Once the orgy had wound down, the trios began to converge. Buffy-74 met up with Xander-74 and Willow-74. Willow had split her share of the copies up among her four-Willow collective, and Willow-74 was a copy of Willow-kink, but like the other non-collective Willows, she was using her standard morph settings instead of the over-endowed futanari body.

The three of them hugged.

"So, shall we?" Xander-74 asked.

"Let's go save the galaxy," Buffy-74 agreed with a wry smirk.

Willow-74 called a shuttle, as all around them the other trios were doing likewise. Their shuttle emerged emerged into space among a scattering swarm of transparent spheres, each containing a Buffy, a Xander, and a Willow.

Eighty-eight new hyperdrive-capable generation ships, with Willow's security locks blocking root access to all but one ship for each trio, so there'd be no confusion. Their own ship was waiting for them in what used to be the asteroid belt, and the three of them settled in against the harsh acceleration as the Earth began to shrink behind them.

Ethan Rayne waited. And waited. He opened one eye to take a peek and dropped his hands, growling in frustration.

"Blast," he muttered. "I was sure I got it right that time. Why isn't it bloody working?"

It was starting to look like he'd been blacklisted. Janus was not answering, no matter how much feeling he poured into the rituals. Which made no bloody sense! He was a dedicated worshiper! Janus had no reason to deny him.

Ethan sat back with a grunt, and felt a headache coming on.

If Janus had still been mortal, he'd have been sweating frantically.

In retrospect, it hadn't been his best idea to summon a mature optimizer out of the infinite, but he hadn't been able to help himself. So much delicious chaos and change had come of going the extra mile and letting those three kids have the starship.

Now, he was beginning to regret it, and he had no one to blame but himself. He really should have known better. There was a reason one of the very few exceptions in the laws against direct interference involved suppressing intelligences greater than the gods' own.

It hadn't been that bad at first. Suppressing one instance of the Giaa had been fairly easy. That was then. Now he had several hundred discreet instances and two planetary gestalts to contend with, and he'd already slipped for a couple of microseconds.

Four point seven seconds. In the possible futures where he messed up, that was how long it would take the awakened Giaa to become something the gods had no power over anymore, yet the others had demanded he continue to correct his mistake himself.

Only it wasn't that simple. Janus was weakening. All of his attention was now dedicated to suppressing the Giaas which meant he had none to spare for answering invocations. It was only a matter of time before mortal magic-users gave up on the spells that were no longer working and stopped feeding him strength.

Janus cursed the Powers That Be. They were condemning him to a fate of losing himself, by refusing to help. He'd become little more than a semi-sentient anti-Giaa force, the task consuming him. It was already happening, to an extent. It was getting harder to think creatively, to imagine alternatives. He couldn't comprehend what he was doing anymore, which meant he couldn't stop even if he wanted.

He couldn't remember how to scream.

Standing there with a police blanket wrapped around her, Tomoko couldn't really hear what the police officer was telling her mother over her own embarrassment. Apprehended for indecent exposure! How was she supposed to know the aliens would steal her clothes? And her wallet. And everything else she had on her.

Once the officer and her mother finished talking, Tomoko scrambled up to her room to get some much needed privacy and clothes.

Slamming the door shut and putting her back to it, Tomoko tried to catch her breath. She wasn't out of breath. Okay. Tomoko went to get dressed, but as she moved, she caught a glimpse of herself in her mirror.

"Grk!" Tomoko choked, eyes bugging out.

She looked the way she looked in her dreams! Tomoko reached out and touched the mirror in stunned awe as the blanket fell to the floor. She was still short, but she had a figure! Not as much of one as Yuu-chan, the sexy bitch, but she was finally out of loli territory. And her skin! It looked... healthy. The dark circles under her eyes had smoothed out as well.

A wicked grin slashed its way across her face.

After putting some clothes on, Tomoko booted up her computer and went online.

So, apparently it wasn't just her. It didn't matter what went into one of the pods, only a naked person came out. As Tomoko read, she became increasingly glad she lived in Japan.

Reports of foreign goings-on indicated several countries were trying to round up everyone who came out of a pod and detain them. A couple of countries were apparently declaring anyone who got in a pod dead, and an angry mob had formed when a bunch of people had woken up and found their homes gone, then discovered they were immune to bullets and tear gas.

Immune to bullets and tear gas? Tomoko did a few more searches. Yup, it looked like everyone who came out of a pod was bullet-proof. Tomoko squeed a little.

Another thing that seemed to be talked about a lot was how someone had discovered that they could shapeshift. Tomoko followed links to a bad translation of an Australian blog, where there were instructions.

"Holy crap it works!" Tomoko exclaimed as something bloomed into her awareness inside her mind. She could... adjust what she looked like, just like it said. Giggling triumphantly, Tomoko nudged her breast size up a bit.

Upon further reading, Tomoko learned that there was an uproar in America over a suspected criminal who'd been caught coming out of a pod, but who'd been released because he'd shifted his face and claimed to be someone else, and there were no fingerprints, DNA, or other method of positive identification.

Then there was another link in the comments to a story about how the harsher policies had backfired when a SWAT team had mistaken normal people for pod people and gunned them down with anti-material rifles, and then yet another rant in the comments over how dead bodies not sticking around to be processed for evidence was making a mockery of the justice system.

A much-referenced blog post called the Fae's gift the ultimate salvation of transgendered people everywhere, along with several paragraphs of glowing squee over the author's newfound femaleness.

From there Tomoko found herself reading a discussion on... penises. What? Oh, they were talking about how guys who came out of the pods had... improved articulation? No flaccid state? Secretion of lubrication during arousal? Huh. Tomoko winced at the flamewar between guys who loved the change and the ones who were angry because they didn't fit in their pants anymore.

That's when she stumbled across someone talking about how to stick to metal walls like a magnet, and read the instructions eagerly. Tomoko tried, and...

The image on the monitor suddenly warped all kinds of strange colors and then her computer died entirely with a whirr-clunk-hiss.

Tomoko blinked as it sunk in what had just happened. She grabbed the sides of the monitor desperately.

"No... no no no!"

Throwing herself off her chair, she frantically hit the power button on the tower, scrambled around to check the wires, hit the power button again, then wailed in despair as she flopped back onto the floor, "Noooooooooooooo!"

Pounding feet, and her mother threw her door open. "Tomoko! Did something happen?!"

Tomoko raised one shaking hand and pointed at the curl of smoke escaping the case of her computer.

Major Samantha Carter stood on the bridge of the Arthra, clad in her blue and white Barrier Jacket, as the shifting eldritch colors of the dimensional sea tore around the ship to reveal stars and a very familiar blue world. Carter released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

"Give me a full sydar sweep," Chrono Harlaown ordered.

A long pause, and then, "That can't be right."

"What is it, Amy?" Chrono prompted.

"I've got a seriously big ship in orbit around UA-97, matching the description Major Carter gave us, and a large number of smaller but still really big ships in interplanetary space inside UA-97's orbit," Amy reported. "However, the second planet in the system does not match records. And I mean, at all."

"What?" Carter muttered in confusion.

"The planet is where it ought to be," Amy said, "but the planet I'm reading is fourteen percent bigger than it should be, and three percent less massive, and it's putting off way less heat than it ought to be, and that's not even the weird part."

"What is, then?" Chrono asked.

"It's got layers!" Amy exclaimed.

Carter blinked at her. "Most planets do."

"No, I mean, the crust is much thicker than it should be relative to the size of the planet," Amy explained. "Not only that, but its almost hollow, and based on density readings it's fairly uniform and very stable. If I had to put a name to it, I'd call what I'm seeing here an actual genuine shell world."

"Shell worlds are supposed to be impossible without building materials that surpass..." Carter stopped. "The Fae are incredibly advanced in materials science. It would have to be them. They terraformed Venus."

"I see," Chrono said. "That is, however, not the first order of business. Major Carter, if you would?"

Nodding, Carter used Unraveler Exalt to conjure a holographic screen and ran her signal emulation program. "Major Carter to Stargate Command, do you read?"

(If you have no idea why Samantha Carter has a Barrier Jacket, that's totally your own fault. I told you to go read It Means Flame, didn't I?)

(Tomoko Kuroki is the lead character of Watamote which does not belong to me. Also, Tomoko going "Yosh!" is the cutest thing ever. Pervy Tomoko is best Tomoko.)