Welcome to the Fabulous World of Vampire Slayage:
In Giles's old office Buffy, Willow and Xander hold a meeting. They sit at the end of the table with Willow at the head and Buffy and Xander on either side of her. It's just the three of them and their topic of discussion isn't life threatening so they wanted to keep the meeting small. With the big bad making herself and her motives known Buffy has been on full alert and she knows that it's time to start getting things together.
"It's time to call in more troops," Willow says.
"And just when I was getting used to the peace and quiet," Xander says.
"Having a building full of slayers-to-be isn't on my top ten list right now either, but with Jayden involved I'll feel a lot safer knowing that I have an army here at my disposal," Buffy says.
The office door then flies open and in walks an overly enthusiastic Andrew. All faces turn to him as he stands before them with excitement written across his face and holding a paper in his hand.
"I have really important information," Andrew blurts out.
"What is it? Is something wrong?" Buffy asks.
"Look," Andrew says sticking out his hand with force and shoving the paper he was carrying in Buffy's face.
Buffy takes the paper from Andrew and reads it over. At first she's afraid that it's bad news, possibly a warning of some kind or an up coming threat, but then quickly she realizes it's not. Buffy drops the paper from her sight and looks at Andrew.
"I am a full-fledged watcher now," Andrew says proudly.
--
Kennedy sits slumped on the sofa in her and Willow's apartment, lately however, it's felt less like their place and more like a space they both occasionally visit. Kennedy grabs the remote and starts flipping through channels. There's nothing on. If Willow were there sitting around watching nothing would be no big deal, but she's not. She's working. She had been busy before throwing herself into her magic, but now that Giles has retired she's never around anymore. Kennedy thinks for a moment if only Willow weren't a witch, then she'd have some time to spare. Kennedy comes to the conclusion that magic is to blame for the distance in their relationship. Then from that conclusion Kennedy's mind wanders. Her eyes grow wide as the wheels turn within her brain. If magic has been keeping them apart then maybe it could bring them closer together.
--
The gang hovers in Willow's magic lab with a glowing world map before them. Buffy, Xander and Andrew look on at her work with awe. Glowing pencil size dots are scattered across the map in pink and yellow hues, pink for those who are already slayers and yellow for the potentials.
"Hey, look… there's me," Buffy says with excitement pointing to the brightest pink dot on the page.
"Okay so this is great and all Will, but how do we find them," Xander asks.
"I've already figured that out, and I have a list of the best candidates for the next group," Willow says handing out papers. "I've looked up every potential here and listed them based on age, location, and history… these girls are all between the ages of eighteen and twenty and they all speak English… I think."
"Willow that's great," Buffy says… "Everyone take a name on this list to recruit, we'll start with that for today… and Andrew, you're a watcher now so that means the first ones yours."
--
Dawn holds her niece in her arms and looks down at her with joy. A smile comes to her face watching the child wrapped in a pink blanket coo in her arms. Alden stands behind her watching her with a smile on his face as well and Buffy looks on at the two of them with over-protective attention to detail and worry seeping into her mind.
"I don't know, maybe I should just stay here," Buffy says.
"Buffy. Go. I'll be fine… we need some new slayeretts around here."
"I know, but… everyone will be gone… it's just… what if something happens."
"Then I'll do this," Dawn says as she disappears in a beam of light with Jayden in her arms and reappears a few feet away. "If any big uglies show I'll take her to Hawaii or something… we'll be fine."
"You can do that, take her with you?"
"Yup, see no biggie… I mean I don't have the power to drag Alden along or anything… least not yet, but bitty baby here is no problem-o."
"Uh, okay… okay, I'll go… but if something happens you'll call right?"
"Yes, we'll be fine, now go," Dawn says pushing Buffy out the door and shutting it behind her.
--
In the main office Willow disperses airline tickets to Xander, Buffy and Spike; Glasgow Scotland; Dusseldorf, Germany, and one to an obscure airport in Africa; Willow then holds on to the last ticket to Paris for herself. Tara had wanted to go to Paris she thinks as she holds the paper ticket between her fingers. Andrew and Myla are also in the room, but their charges to find are in England and they will be driving to them.
"Okay, everyone's set… so, we'll meet back here later today then."
"Uh, not me Red… I'll be back tomorrow," Spike says.
"What? Where are you going? I thought none of us were going more then an hour away," Buffy says with concern as she turns to face Spike.
"Yeah… I uh… there was a girl on that list that… she's someone I met when I went to Africa… when I got my soul… this is one I want to bring back… sides, I need to go somewhere far enough away that I'll get there after the sun sets." Spike says.
"As long as it's not me going back to Africa," Xander says, "I've spent enough time there for one lifetime."
--
All of the scoobies have left for the airport or in one of the Council cabs a short while ago. With them gone Kennedy makes her way into Willow's magic lab and begins scanning the books on the shelves. She'd never preformed a spell before, but she's observed many since she started seeing Willow and is fairly certain that she can cast one correctly. She feels rather overwhelmed with the vast amount of texts that are at her disposal but no one should be back for at least a few hours so she knows she has time to find the right one.
--
Andrew arrives at the destination of the potential slayer that he's been assigned to recruit. He's outside her apartment in London now. According to the information that Willow gave she lives with her family and is of Chinese descent. Andrew pictures her for a moment as a kung-fu ninja like slayer fighting off vampires with agility, grace, and really cool flying kicks. Andrew gets out of the car, adjusts the collar of his shirt and straightens his tweed jacked in preparation to look as watcherly as possible when he meets her.
--
Myla walks up to a small house that's located about a half hour from the Council. Helen Hirsch is the potential that lives here. Myla knocks on the black door and within seconds an older woman opens it. She has dark hair with graying highlights and while she resembles the description that Willow gave her, brown hair and brown eyes, she's obviously too old to be the women that she's looking for.
"Um, hi… is Helen here?" Myla asks and listens as the woman yells into the house in another language. Within a few seconds a younger woman comes to the door.
"I'm Helen," The woman says as she comes into view.
"I need to speak to you, can I come in?" Myla asks.
--
Andrew sits on the sofa in the well lit apartment of Li Na Yangkun. He waits patiently as Li Na argues with her mother in the other room in Chinese and looks around at the Asian floral décor of the space. Then after a few moments Li Na enters the room and sits down in a chair before Andrew. She has long black hair, brown eyes and the thinnest petite frame that Andrew's ever seen.
"I'm sorry Mr. Wells… my mother, she is very protective of me," Li Na says with a slight Chinese accent.
"What did she say?" Andrew asks.
"She say… what you do now? She thinks I'm in trouble… I'm not in trouble am I?"
"No… no, Li Na, I'm with the Watcher's Council… and you have been chosen…"
--
"…chosen to be a slayer," Myla says as she sits across from Helen in her family room. As she looks around she can tell that she lives in this small home with her Mother. There is one black and white photo with Helen as a small child, her mother and apparently her father, but that's it. Her mother then calls into the room in what Myla has now deciphered as Polish and Helen yells something back. Myla however, doesn't know what they've said.
"I don't understand what that means," Helen says turning back to Myla.
--
Willow walks into a small café in Paris. Pastries and croissants fill the window and the smell makes Willow's mouth water. She wishes she had more time to spend in this city, but this is a business trip and if she wants to see the tower she knows she'll have to come back another day. Once she's moved a few feet into the café she sees who she believes to be Amelia Barrett, the potential she's looking for. The woman has short light blonde hair and very pale skin. She's is hanging up an apron on the wall apparently just getting off her shift.
"Bonjour, est votre nom Amelia?" Willow asks as the blonde nears her remembering what little French she can from her high school French class.
"Oui," the woman responds.
"Ok good… um… Parlez-vous l'anglais?"
"Yes I do, what is zeese about?"
"I need to talk to you."
--
"…I'm from the Watcher's Council in…" Xander begins to say to the girl before him only to have the door slammed in his face. Confused he knocks again and the woman opens the door once more. She has curly red hair, but not like Willow's, hers is lighter more of a strawberry blonde and she looks at Xander with a flat expression as he stands beneath a cloudy Glasgow sky.
"I know who you are and what you do… and I know why you're here," the woman says and starts to shut the door again, but Xander sticks his hand out and stops it.
"Wait… you know… you know about the council and slayers and vampires and…"
"And all the otherworldly creatures that lurk in the shadows, yeah, and I want nothing to do with them."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa… can we just talk for a minute? Look I came all this way, at least let me give you my spiel." Xander watches the woman think over his proposal and then she opens the door and lets him in.
--
Buffy waits in a large house in Germany where Eva Haff lives. Eva's parents let Buffy in and now she looks around Eva's room and at the photos of her and her friends waiting for Eva to return from the mall. She's eighteen and still in high school. The trinkets she keeps, photos and mementos from school events remind Buffy of herself from before she was the slayer. Buffy then spins around as the door opens and in walks a young woman with light brown hair and ice blue eyes. She has a cherry sucker in her mouth and pulls it out as she looks at Buffy in confusion.
"Wer sind Sie?" The girl asks.
"I'm from the Watcher's Council… do you speak English?"
--
"And ze're all real… vampires and demons?" Amelia asks with a thick French accent as she sits across from Willow at a small iron table outside the café where she works.
"I know it's hard to believe, but yes… and I'm offering you the chance to come back with me and learn about what you are."
--
"What about money?" Li Na asks Andrew.
"The council will cover all your expenses, you'll live there while you train and then when you're ready you'll be sent somewhere with a mentor to be the slayer in that area." Andrew replies.
--
"…then we give you a Watcher," Myla explains to Helen, "He'll help train you and look over you and when your training is finished he'll go with you to wherever you're needed."
"And you've done all this; you are one of these… slayers?" The dark haired woman asks.
"Yes… except that I don't have a watcher… I um… well I'm kinda part of the group that runs the place so I finished my training but I stayed there after."
--
"And after all this training or whatever… after I see what this is like, I can leave if I want… I don't have to become a slayer?" Claire Dalling asks the one eyed man before her as she pushes her curly red hair behind her ears.
"Absolutely… look, I don't know what it's like to actually be a slayer, but I've fought beside Buffy for nine years now… after knowing the good I can do in this… line of work, after the things I've seen, I wouldn't do anything else… this is your destiny and you've got the chance to see what it's all about before you commit to anything… don't you want to at least see what it's all about?"
--
"So you're the slayer… as in the first one?" Eva asks Buffy with a thick German accent.
"Well, not the first ever… but yeah, before I changed things I was the only one." Buffy says to the young girl as she sits beside her on her bed.
"So… knowing vhat you know… vhat vould you do? If you vere me, vould you accept this offer?" The girl asks moving a strand of light brown hair behind her ears. Buffy pauses for a moment and thinks about her question and about all the things she's seen. Then she looks the girl straight in her icy blue eyes.
"Yeah… yeah I would… it's a hard gig don't get me wrong, but it's part of who I am… and it's part of you too. I can't imagine not being what I am."
"Okay… I'll go back vith you then… vhat vill I tell my parents?"
"Don't worry… we'll tell them you've been accepted to a private school, they won't know a thing."
"Maybe they vill actually be proud of me for once."
--
Kennedy sits on the floor of the living room. The gang will be returning soon with the new slayers, but Kennedy knows they'll all be meeting in the office for a short orientation and she should have enough time to perform her love spell before Willow returns. A book is set before her and candles surround her. Lying next to her is a photo of Willow, a dove's feather and other miscellaneous ingredients. As Kennedy begins to chant she thinks about having Willow back to herself the way things used to be, all she has to do is wait till morning for her spell to take effect. By daybreak she believes that everything will be better. As words in Latin flow from her lips the candles grow brighter, their fames grow higher.
--
After a twelve hour flight Spike walks through the sand toward a small village in Central Africa. The air is humid but his vampire skin is still cool to the touch. The stars and half moon above light his way as he sees the flames from the villager's torches up ahead. Those flames, acting like a beacon to the tiny village, are the only things to see for miles in the ocean of sand.
As Spike reaches the village men dressed like warriors stand to greet him or more so to keep an eye on him. They stare at him as he enters their community with wary eyes. Spike walks past them silently and begins his search for Kamili Ballo. He doesn't have to search for long. Within seconds of entering the tribe he sees her standing before him. She has short black hair and eyes that look straight through him. Kamili stands with strength and authority. Even without her powers she looks like a slayer. As Spike nears her she gives him one final look then turns and walks off, a sign to Spike that she wants him to follow her.
"I know why you are here," the dark skinned woman says with a thick African accent as she sits down before a fire.
"Is that so?" Spike says as he sits down beside her.
"I 'member you, you know… you sought da dark one."
"That I did… was looking for something only he could give me."
"Your soul… I know wat you are, you're here to take me back wit you, yes?"
"How do you know all of this?"
"I see deese things, I've been having da dreams, da slayer dreams and da spirits toll me you'd be comin for me… they say to me a dark warrior will show an dat I mus go wit him… it is my destiny."
"That it is pet, are you ready?"
"Yes… an we must go now… there is something a brewin where you come from an my help will be needed."
--
Kennedy wakes and turns to her side. A frown crosses the slayers face as she sees that Willow is already up and off working with the new potentials. She wonders for a moment if something went wrong with her spell. She had expected to wake with her lover beside her with their relationship back to the loving and joyous experience that she remembers it being in the past. Kennedy decides to look for Willow and see if her spell has had any effect.
--
The new potentials are gathered in the activities room on the sixth floor of the Council. Xander and Myla have just finished giving them a tour of the building, showing them the training room and assigning them dorms. Now Buffy plans to speak with them and give them some insight into their destiny.
Claire twists her fingers through her red curly hair and listens in on Amelia and Eva's conversation about what they expect to go through here at the Council. Andrew is there as well and carries on a conversation with Li Na meanwhile Helen is tapping her fingers across the table. Buffy then walks into the room and all eyes turn to face her; however before she can begin her speech Kennedy walks enters looking for Willow.
Buffy sees Kennedy differently then she's ever seen her before as she walks in. Kennedy looks good, really good. Buffy doesn't know what it is about the younger slayer but she finds herself unable to take her eyes off her. Her brown eyes twinkle and her lips look so soft. Buffy then looks back at the group of potentials and sees that all of them are staring at Kennedy as well. Buffy can see the lust in their eyes and jealousy rises in the pit of Buffy's stomach.
"Kennedy… hi," Buffy says sweetly.
"Um, Buffy hi… have you seen Willow?"
"Willow… no, Willow's not here, but um… maybe you could help me with something?" She asks then proceeds to bite her bottom lip and tilt her body seductively.
--
Andrew comes bursting through the doors of the office where Willow, Myla and Xander look over the credentials of the recently graduated Watchers and try to decide who to pair with who. The office door slams against the wall and startles those in the room. Xander jumps in his seat and as he sees Andrew standing there and thinks to himself that he didn't think the boy was strong enough to throw the door that hard.
"You guys, you need to come quick… something's happened," Andrew says in a frantic voice.
--
"Holy mother of… wait… I know what this is," Xander says as he stares at the cat fight before him.
The potentials tear at each other, pulling hair and dragging fingernails across skin as they try to hold one another back from reaching Kennedy. The words 'shes mine' can be heard from someone in the rumble. Kennedy holds Buffy back to keep her from hurting the other girls who don't have their slayer strength yet, but Buffy seems more interested in hitting on the younger slayer.
"This is a love spell," Xander says to Willow, Andrew and Myla, but when he looks over toward his girlfriend he sees that she's twisting he hair between her fingers and is biting her bottom lip.
"Love spell… right," Myla says, "I'm gonna go help Kennedy keep Buffy from killing the others."
Myla then saunters over to the group and Xander looks on for a moment thinking that the situation is kinda hot, then after a moment when Myla gets into a full out brawl with Buffy as they fight over Kennedy he decides that it's gone on long enough.
"Okay… we need to do something about this now."
--
Xander, Willow and Andrew rush into Willow's apartment where she searches through various drawers for the ingredients that Kennedy used for the spell. She finds nothing in the kitchen or the living room; however in one of the dresser drawers she finds numerous candles as well as a photo of herself and other witchcraft ingredients.
"Will, tell me you found something… they looked like they might kill each other when we left," Xander says.
"Yeah I got it… and I can fix it," Willow says pulling her photo and one candle from the drawer.
Willow lights the candle and burns the photo of herself, alongside soft chanting in Latin. The candle flame grows bright as it tears through her photo and Willow successfully ends the spell. Downstairs the fighting comes to a stop and the women in the room look on at each other with confusion.
--
Willow sits cross-legged on her bed with a book in her hands. The room is dark besides a single table lamp as Kennedy walks in. Willow looks up at her and sets her book down.
"You were only supposed to light one candle… that's why the spell effected everyone… you made it too strong… and it didn't affect me because, well I have too much magic in me," Willow says.
"I'm sorry," Kennedy says softly.
"I just don't understand why?"
"You've just been really busy lately… I just… I wanted us to spend some more time together."
"Kennedy, you should have just talked to me, magic is dangerous and you shouldn't use it to mess with people's minds."
"Yeah… I get that now… I'm really sorry, can you forgive me?"
Willow thinks about her situation with Kennedy and is reminded of when she placed a forgetting spell on Tara to end one of their fights.
"I forgive you."
A/N: More spuffyness by next week in "Dead Lungs don't Breathe" Thanks to all my reviewers and special thanks to Boris Yeltsin for help with the slayeretts.