Disclaimer: OH C'MON! What's a little thing like copyright laws between friends, ehhh?!

I have been instructed to add the following:

Beta Note: *waves to the masses* Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out. It's all Winddrinker's horrible mean old beta's fault...relocating to a different office and home will mess with your free time...I don't recommend it. Thank you for you patience. Now...enjoy the read. =0)

WD-"Don't believe her! She's not old at all!! (*whimpers in abject terror* Please don't kill me!)

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Chapter 32

'They're in trouble,' the being that still recognized herself as Willow Rosenberg stated.

'They're always in trouble,' she heard a voice she recognized rebut the statement, 'that's what makes them slayers.'

'That's a little harsh,' Willow scoffed, looking over to a floating, misty Buffy. Willow cocked her head to the side, glancing around. They were both translucent, mixing with, but apart from the cool mist that surrounded them. The vapor that encompassed her felt oddly comforting. It cocooned them and dampened the sounds of the outside world.

A little niggling thought in the back of her mind told her that all of this was not normal. She shouldn't be floating next to Buffy. Floating was bad. Floating implied possible death.

'It's not harsh,' Buffy offered a sympathetic smile, her eyes soft as she continued, 'It's reality. The job they do is hard. With so many of them, one of them is always in danger.'

'Shouldn't we help them?' Guilt ate at the witch as images flashed before her. Flashes of slayers being attacked by well organized vampires. Slayers falling at their hands, but there were also images of vampires blowing to dust. Willow knew that she and Buffy could take all the vampires out without a problem.

'We can't interfere now,' Buffy reminded her.

'Rules are stupid,' Willow grumbled.

'Willow, you love rules!' Buffy laughed. 'You're like, the queen of rules.'

'Well I don't like them when they mean letting our friends get hurt,' the witch crossed her arms and pouted cutely.

'I warned you that you might not like it,' Buffy gently chastised her.

'I know, I know.' The witch sighed.

Things were starting to come back to her now. Willow couldn't quite remember it all, though she knew it was there to go back and look if she wanted. She remembered Buffy kissing her. She remembered seeing the explosion of light and passing out. A smile turned the corners of her mouth up as the kiss her and Buffy shared floated into her memory. It was joy and bliss blended together. She wasn't certain where she ended and Buffy began; they had trembled on the cusp of ecstasy for what seemed like an eternity. The next conscious thought she had, however, was of floating next to Buffy in the mist.

'So we're just going to float here like idiots?' Willow snarked.

She knew the answer to the question, even before Buffy verbalized it. She found herself knowing all kinds of things. She knew how the Universe had begun, in void and shadow, because she'd been there. She knew what the smallest insect in the world was up to right now. She also knew seemed to know what all the frogs were doing, as well. Something she was trying her best to ignore. So Willow knew exactly what she and Buffy were waiting for, though she wasn't quite sure how she knew.

'That'll come later,' Buffy assured her.

Willow reached out and grabbed Buffy's insubstantial hand with her own. The physical touch wasn't really necessary; they were with each other all the time now. It felt normal and comforting.

Buffy became her touchstone during this process, anchoring Willow through the transition. Whenever Willow felt herself being torn in so many different directions by all the information she'd absorbed and all the things she could sense and do, Buffy brought her back. It was so overwhelming, everything they'd become. Willow knew now why it had taken Buffy two years to sort through everything. Why even now, they weren't at full strength.

'If we'd been faster…,' Willow sighed regretfully.

'You mean if I'd been faster,' Buffy's voice small as Willow felt the regret and guilt as Buffy spoke.

'You're being silly again.' Willow cupped Buffy's cheek and pulled her close, assuring her partner, 'You had to do what you had to do. The guys'll understand eventually. I mean, look at it like this…if you hadn't gone undercover and gotten us together like this things could have been so much worse and we wouldn't have had had any chance against what's coming and then…well, you know.'

'It's nice to know some things don't change,' Buffy said.

The words reverberated through Willow's mind as she noted delightfully that the telepathic link allowed her and Buffy to talk even while kissing.

Buffy giggled, providing another observation on the link, the laughter kind of tickled.

Buffy pulled back from their embrace, resting her forehead against Willow's. 'Ya know Will, you're babble's a thing of wonder.' Seeing another set of images, Buffy tensed slightly and put voice to her concern, 'It can all still go so terribly wrong.' Buffy sighed, leaning into Willow for comfort.

'We won't let it,' the witch vowed, knowing it was now her turn to offer comfort. She pulled Buffy closer, tangling hands in her slayer's hair to pull her in for another soft kiss. Willow suppressed a grin as she felt Buffy calm.

'So now that we're all connecty and making with the oneness with each other that mean you're gonna follow my every whim and order?' Buffy wiggled her eyebrows at Willow suggestively, pulling back from the kiss.

'Good luck with that', Willow said dryly and patted Buffy on the head, ruffling her hair.

'Eh,' Buffy shrugged, 'can't blame a girl for trying.'

Suddenly a huge gong like sound filled the misty place, driving the images of slayers writhing in pain before it. Willow and Buffy were forced apart as pain wracked them.

'This is it,' their words intertwined, 'This is what we've been waiting for.'

……………

Dr. Elaine Pratchett rushed through the infirmary in Cleveland trying to figure out what to do. While there were only four in her ward, the rest of the school was in a giant upheaval. She was used to slayers coming in for general first aid. Healing and disinfecting scrapes, cuts and bruises or even when there were major injuries she knew what needed to be done. Controlling the girls was easy enough if she needed to stabilize a patient, but tonight all bets seemed to be off.

She quickly poked her head outside her ward's doors and blanched. There were a few slayers dotting the hallway and none of them were in good shape. The girls she saw were seizing, thrashing around the halls and on the floor. The nurses and their Watchers could do nothing but helplessly watch and try and stay out of the way of their potentially deadly charges. At first, she tried to help one of the girls out, but the idea was quickly dismissed when the girl's fist had gone through a concrete wall.

Dr. Pratchett had a healthy respect for slayer strength, her niece was one. She had also seen the work that went into learning how to control the strength and what could happen when said control was lost. Now looking down the corridor and back at the two patients she had thrashing around like fish out of water, the good doctor was at a loss. She just thanked God that one of them, the new teacher that had come in unconscious with Principal Rosenberg, wasn't experiencing the same symptoms.

Slamming the door closed, Elaine took one last glance at the new teacher and Principal Rosenberg before rushing to the locked cabinet in her office. Elaine had no idea why the slayer wasn't seizing. According to the frantic phone calls she was getting, every other slayer in the school was. Maybe it was because she'd already been unconscious. Right now Elaine didn't have the time or energy to care, she had other things to worry about. She had just come up with the idea to use the tranquilizer pistols the school kept.

She made her way into her office searching for the keys to the metal cabinet. Locating the right one, she opened the cabinet and quickly pulled out two bandoleers loaded with ammunition and the rifle. Not bothering to close the cabinet, she spun around and began loading the weapon. Her thoughts lying somewhere in the 'If it can work on werewolves, it can work on slayers' vein.

Coming out of the office, Elaine whipped her head over at the dual gasps of air. She watched slack jawed as both Principal Rosenberg and the new instructor, whose name she couldn't remember for the life of her, rose up out of their beds. Elaine actually cringed a little, the new slayer's eyes looked like a vampires!

Could she have been changed? But how could that have happened inside of the campus? Frantic thoughts were babbling their way through her mind when she realized two things. One, the girl's face hadn't morphed and two, Principal Rosenberg's eyes were glowing as well, only white.

"Dr. Pratchett," both women spoke at the same time as they got out of their beds and onto their feet.

"What?" Elaine frankly found the two of them staring at her with their glowing gazes a little eerie. Add in the fact that their body language, as well as their voices, were perfectly matched and this little episode was creeping up there in her "Very-Weird-Shit Meter".

They cocked their heads, the slayer's unbound hair slithering to her waist and giving her a rather feral look. "We have an assignment for you."

……….

"We're all going to die!"

"Shut it, Andrew," Dawn snapped at the panicking geek as he chugged down more coffee and typed frantically. "Just keep searching. I wanna be able to find the guys who started this after we're done here. They're so a big pile of dust after I kick their asses!"

Dawn was working away on her laptop as well, trying to pull in information and send her Watchers where they needed to be. Basically, she was trying to keep the incident as quiet as possible and contain the damage as much as she could.

"As much as I agree with that sentiment," Giles interrupted them, "perhaps we could focus on the task at hand, hmmm?"

"As far as I can tell every single slayer all over the world is down," Xander informed them. "Whatever type of spell these guys started was a doozy."

"How're our magick people coming on finding a solution?" Dawn asked.

"Considering they've had a whole…mmmm, five minutes to work on it? Not so good." Xander grinned at Dawn.

"Excuse me?" The Scoobies all turned from to their right to see a new screen pop up. Dr. Pratchett, the Cleveland school's chief doctor was on it, looking a little harried.

"We don't know what's going on yet, Dr. P.," Xander told the woman. "We'll contact you as soon as we do."

"That's not why I'm calling," she informed them, "I've taken care of the patients down here. I used the tranquilizer gun we had on hand to take out the girls for the time being. What I'm contacting you about is a message – I have a message for you."

"From whom?" Giles narrowed his eyes.

"Principal Rosenberg and that slayer, the one that was brought in here unconscious with her. They woke up."

"Eh?!," the group said in unison.

Dr. Pratchett flinched a little at the response, realizing she was the center of attention. "Y-Yes, they told me to tell you to concentrate on helping the girls still out in the field. That they'd take care of the Mexico situation. Something about how it was out of your jurisdiction now and-and then Principal Rosenberg said to tell you, Xander, that it wasn't a yellow crayon situation."

"O-Okay?" Xander was a little confused.

"Don't look at me," Dr. Pratchett shoved her blond hair out of her face with a trembling hand and huffed at him. "I'm having the craziest day of my life and that's saying something around here! Their eyes were glowing! And they were talking in unison. Then they disappeared in sparkles. It was very creepy! So I've delivered the message and now," she hefted the rifle into view, "I've got to get back to my normal job."

"She's a little testy, isn't she?" Xander asked after the doctor signed out.

"It's her first Apocalypse," Dawn shrugged. "At least she brought good news. Buffy and Willow are awake and obviously have some idea of how to deal with this thing."

"Buffy?" Andrew stopped his typing to look up wide-eyed, "Buffy's back?"

"Oh poop," Dawn muttered, "There goes the undercover thing."

"It's doesn't matter now." Xander shook his head. "It's not like she was doing much anyway."

"I don't know, Xander," Dawn glanced over at him, "Her and Willow were being all mysterious before this happened."

"Can we get back to the fact that Buffy's alive!" Andrew squawked and his sentiment was followed by a few murmurs from the rest of the school heads that were still signed on.

"No!" Giles slashed his hand down, drawing everyone's attention. "Buffy's rise from the dead…again, can be dealt with at another time. We still have girls in the field. Willow and Buffy said that they would deal with whatever is causing our slayers to seize. We will trust them to do so. We must hold up our end. Xander, I want you to get Dr. Pratchett's idea of using the tranquilizers out to all the Watchers and schools. Andrew, go back to your search. Dawn, I want you to rouse whatever help you can to assist in helping our girls out that are taking care of the rest of the world." Giles waited a minute anticipating a flurry of activity. When none came, he lifted his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. Glancing back up at the gob smacked crew, he sighed and barked, "Now would be a most brilliant time to start on this people! We do have a world to save."

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Author's Note:

So I'd like to take a moment to thank Beta's everywhere. All joking aside they are some awesome people, especially mine. I mean c'mon, they take the time out of their busy lives to go through our stuff (which, in my own case has been unmitigated %----- sometimes) and make it come out all clean and shiny. I find that amazing. So, thanks Whedonist! *bows slightly*

All right then, on with the note. So to answer the questions behind why Buffy went undercover in the first place...well, you'll get a full explanation later on. All I'll say now is "to decieve your enemy, you must first decieve your friends" (at least I think that's how it goes, my track record hasn't been that good lately *goofy grin*) But now I'm giving to much away so on to a different subject.

As to the subject of suggestions and mistakes noted in the story. I have tried to take people's ideas into account while on the go but I must confess that while I have been trying to go back and fix things that people have noticed and edit stuff, it's kind of a long process. So I've decided to leave the past chapters like they are on this site and then, once the story is done here, go back and repost the whole thing. All cleaned up. I realize it's not an ideal solution and that some people won't like it but I do have to go to work at some point (my boss is getting suspcious after the third grandma died!=)

OMAKE:

Buffy- I'm floating, I'm floating, I'm floating...this is getting a little boring here! Wake up, Willow!

Willow- nothing

Buffy- I love ya' here, but I am not known for my vast amounts of patience!

Willow- grumbles and yawns

Buffy- evil grin- If you won't entertain me then I'll just have to entertain myself!! -conjures marker

Willow- eyes still shut- Don't even think about it.

Buffy- freezes in mid-motion

Willow- turns over- ...not the frogs...I don't wanna...cheese...

Buffy- cocks eyebrow- She's a little scary.