BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Marvel U by the parent company and its many artists/writers.

Tara turned her head away slightly and began studying the lines of Remy's jacket. "Don't get me wrong," she said, her breathing steady and even. "I'm still somewhat hurt. I can't hold it against you as I spent a year holding information that was actually relevant from people that already trusted me."

Spike opened the door, dressed in his normal clothes. He had been preparing to say something about her 'demon' issue and how he'd helped resolve it, but Tara met his eyes and gave a quick shake of her head, 'no.'

She sighed. "I'm going to need time to think."

"After this, Gambit will be keeping his head low and staying out of your sight for a few days," Remy said. "Meet you and Willow for lunch on Tuesday, pick up the pieces?"

"Sounds like a plan."

##

Tara's eyes traced the folds of the leather jacket and down across a sleeve to the hand that was still holding the prop broom. She gave Remy an odd look as an idea clicked in her head.

Grinning sheepishly, Remy tossed the broom into the dressing room where it landed with a clatter.

"Spike," she said, startling the vampire who had begun to edge away. "I saw a guy whose head was completely covered in razor burns. If you didn't shave him, who did?"

"Not me. The hair was in the sink when I, uh, came through the door. He could've been trying to fix the chunks in a haircut left by a monkey attack, or prevent them from picking him as a target." Spike's words lacked assurance as he could see the questions raised by the order of events.

"Wouldn't have helped him anyway," Remy said, his voice dark.

The cast onstage during the attack had suffered the worst. Once they were pinned to the ground and their head hair removed, the demons had started in on the light coating covering the rest of their skin. The teenagers were masses of scratches and bruises, with bright scarlet pinpricks of blood where the demons hadn't been careful enough.

Tara shuddered at the thought of sharp teeth severing her eyelashes, of strong hands holding her head in place. She could only imagine what it would've been like to have been a victim instead of a hero. "If I'd been attacked like that, I would be having nightmares for weeks. I'm glad they left Sarah's shirt alone, I know when I was her age..." Tara pictured the pawprint-shaped bruise she'd seen on the girl's neck. She was sure it had extended down below the collar, but the point was - she hadn't been able to see it. "Wait. Why on Earth would they have any concept of modesty? They were animated hair. It's not like they didn't rip through the guys' armor."

Remy leaned against a wall, his eyes hard. "Th' only reason th' monkeys would've had for leaving her decent and for leaving pants intact, well, a few inches above the knee, I mean, is that they were told to. Specifically by someone who thinks that's all it takes to make everything be okay, even if he's caught."

"So, we're looking for a young bloke with fantasies, who's taking steps to censor himself." Spike glanced back into the dressing room. "Specifically a guy who used to have dark blonde hair. Not that we have any monkeys to test it on, but I'm willing to bet that was his that burned them and it wouldn't have worked with anyone else's. He must have worked that into the summoning contract, so that the creepy little things couldn't mob him."

Tara closed her eyes and tried to picture who the kid she'd seen might've been, but the shape of the skull was throwing her off. Hearing something, she opened her eyes to see that Remy had begun pacing back and forth, muttering to himself words like 'parchment' and 'monkey theme' and 'green.'

Spike decided he'd had enough. "What are you going on about?"

Remy straightened his shoulders and stared off, down the hallway. "I take it that, in this reality, you still need a summoning circle to keep things from blowing up in your face?"

Tara nodded. "It helps."

Remy suggested they split up and search.

"Right-o! I'll start with my crypt," Spike called, sarcastically, from his position by the back door, before he left the building.

Remy and Tara rolled their eyes. Noticing their shared response, they smiled warmly at each other for a second. Tara was the first to break it off.

While searching her section, Tara bumped into one of the remaining cast members who was breaking things down for the night. A short conversation netted her the fact that the guy who had been supposed to play the Wicked Witch had disappeared shortly before the attack.

Deciding to pass on the information, Tara found her brother kneeling inside a movable staircase, the light from the panel he'd left ajar revealing an ornate design of red paint coated by shards of green crystal.

"So," she said, remembering his muttered words. "How'd you know they'd be green?"

Remy looked up, smiling. "Giles filled me in on the details. T' make a long story short, if we can find dis guy and th' binding spell he stole, things should be getting better."

Tara passed on the likely culprit's role in the play. "Sorry," she said. "He has the right hair color, but neither of us could remember his name."

Remy hunched low on his perch, studying a house that had, apparently, gone to bed.

His feet were resting on one of the boards that helped the high fence surrounding the back of the house keep its shape.

His hand brushing just above the pamphlet Spike had slipped back into his jacket, the one with the name 'Andrew Wells' printed on it, Remy silently leapt into the yard, leaving the house's view of the suburban night once more quiet and unbroken.

##

Remy carefully examined the backpack, which looked like Indiana Jones had exploded.

Hauling it onto the desk, he began an appraisal of its contents. The most important thing, to him, was an intact copy of the binding spell the Maddox crystal witches used in controlling their creatures. This he quickly folded and slipped into one of his pockets.

He also found a couple of white oblong things, the color and texture of frog bellies, inside of a clear plastic baggie marked 'Knockout Gas.' Not wanting to take chances, he tossed the baggie out of the window, hoping to take care of it later.

"Oh, this is too easy," Remy said quietly to himself as he flicked on the desk lamp.

##

Breaking into the house had been a matter of routine. Not many people made a habit of locking second-story bedroom windows. Beyond his appraisal of the lackluster security system, finding the right one had been the trickiest part.

Easing himself into a chair, he cast a glance over at the sleeping form of Andrew Wells, the young man's chest rising and falling steadily. Remy shook his head, angled the chair so he would notice any changes in breathing, and began leafing through Andrew's diary.

The first thing he had noticed about the thin book, which had unimaginatively been hidden in a sock drawer, was the odd amount of space between the binding and the pages. There was a memory card taped to the inside of the front cover, with the words 'Video Journal Behind The Scenes Of My School Play' written across the white space above.

Deciding he didn't have time to fiddle around with the data, Remy focused on the text.

##

Remy had entered the house, not only to find the stolen parchment, but to deal with the young man who, directly and indirectly, had been causing trouble for his sister and her friends. Being fairly confident in his ability to plan his way around most things, given enough time, Remy was gathering as much information as he could on Andrew, especially whether or not the young man's premeditated act had been a first offense.

"If push comes to shove," Remy murmured, tapping the bulge in his jacket lightly. "Gambit has come armed."

##

The first inkling that Andrew had that anything was wrong was the feeling of suffocation as a pillow was thrust into his face. With a muffled yelp he began thrashing in bed as a strong hand grabbed his wrist and started tying an arm to the bedpost. Opening his eyes, he could just make out a man's shoulder pressing down on the pillow, brown hair swinging wildly as he continued his work.

Once the arm was restrained, the man shifted his weight and, suddenly, Andrew was staring up into a pair of eyes - what should have been the whites were jet-black and the irises resembled burning coals.

Andrew freaked out even further. After a few seconds, sweat beading down his forehead, he forced himself to relax.

"Good." Remy nodded. "I'm going to move th' pillow soon. I know the traditional thing to do here is to say that bad things will happen to your family if you scream, but I'm not going to do that. The fact is, I'm only here because of you. Keep that in mind. I'm here, right now, because of you, and they're out there. Trust me now, you don't want me getting creative."

Andrew spent a few seconds gasping for air when the pillow was removed. When his eyes had stopped watering he turned to Remy with a large grin on his face. "Oh, my God! Your eyes are so cool. If I overdose on magic, can I get them too?"

Shaking his head in disgust, Remy sat down in the chair he'd moved into position. "I believe you may be overlooking th' seriousness of dis conversation." He held up Andrew's diary, charging it until it glowed purple. "You want to lose this?"

"So, what?" Andrew's eyes involuntarily flicked over to his Star Wars collectibles. "It's just words."

"Yeah. And what words dey are." After reversing the charge, Remy started leafing through the diary, tearing out pages that he felt were appropriate.

"Hey! Stop that!"

Remy sneered. "Dis is not a time for you to be setting rules." He folded two pages in such a way that certain paragraphs were clearly shown, then flicked them over to Andrew condescendingly. He leaned back in the chair, rested his boots on Andrew's Millennium Falcon sheets and waited for a response.

Clearly from those items she was experienced with at least some form of magic, read the first page. It was dated Tuesday, three days before. I decided then I'd catch a ride with Cyrus the same time she did and see where she was dropped off. The second page described how he'd snuck out of the play rehearsal the next day. I'd timed my raid on Tara's apartment for when I knew she'd be occupied awhile. Even so, I donned my mask of Gribblet skin and slid one of their gas bladders down the hallway towards her door. The resultant explosion resulted in a Ker-Thunk! from the apartment facing hers. Apparently the occupant there had been standing close enough to his or her door to receive a full dose of the gas.

Moving through the clouds, I proceeded to finesse the lock. Inside I found, to my disappointment, that she was a practitioner of Wicca. Stupid, wishy-washy, tree-huggers. Give me internal darkness, internal might, any day. More importantly, I found from the picture on her dresser that she was a follower of Willow the Red, hacker extraordinaire, who had helped save my old highschool from meanies like my brother before it was blown up. I found it shameful I wasn't as technically minded. That would have been a great opportunity to install a spycam...

"Ha!" Andrew sneered and tossed the pages to the floor. "You're more interested in that than the play? And you call yourself a hero. Yeah, that's right, I saw you. I may not have had the best view of the play but it was good enough to see the role you played in the final battle against the monkeys!" He rose to his feet dramatically, but a glare from Remy had him sitting back down.

Remy shook his head. From what it said in the diary, after Andrew had summoned the monkeys, his next action had been to shave his head to 'avoid suspicion.' He'd then taken the long way around to the old elevated soundbooth, sometime after Remy, Tara and Spike had vacated it.

Something dark crept into Remy's eyes and he leaned in to show it off better. "She's my sister."

The blood drained from Andrew's face. "Oh, shit."

On a bluff overlooking Andrew's house, a fair distance away, Ben dropped the paper he was holding. Frustrated, he began kicking spell materials around the rough ground, but kept enough control that he didn't send any flying over the edge. Most of the items he'd been able to scrounge from his sister's goons, fear of Glory had been enough to keep them in line, but the rest he'd had to buy at the magic store in town.

"I can't believe it," he groaned. "I have to summon this thing twice? I guess an alien demon has to be arriving from pretty far away. You'd think it'd be able to home in on the initial signal, but no..."

Sighing, Ben held his head in his hands and sat down in the moist earth. He had worked his way through medical school despite the rumbling of his sister's power. He had worked hard and now he was having to clean up his sister's mess. He had enough trouble getting sleep as it was without having to do magic.

His trip to the Magic Box had been weird enough even without the red-eyed demon arguing with the owner. Ben had hovered quietly enough in the background until it was time to purchase his supplies that he doubted either of them would be able to recognize him. Grimacing, he pictured waking up one morning to find that demon in his living room as part of Glory's recruiting drive.

"At least the demon I'm summoning has the good grace not to look human." Glancing at the paper lying on the ground and its sketch of the grub-like demon, Ben shuddered. "Seems I'll have to restock and come back here tomorrow. Definitely not a trip I'm looking forward to."

"Also," Remy said, his face a few inches from Andrew's. "I find the dream you had about my sister t' be completely unnecessary."

Andrew felt the edges of his vision go blurry. Gulping, he pulled himself back from the brink of fainting.

Remy leaned back and fished out a page. "May I quote? You're a winged monkey, straight out of the movie, except you're a little bit bulkier. Tara's in her Glinda dress and she doesn't have any hands. You force her to the ground and, pressing your weight into her, you rip-"

"Hey," Andrew shouted, the color rushing back into his cheeks.

Remy flapped the paper directly in front of Andrew's face, shocking him into silence.

They both remained quiet for a few seconds, listening for signs that someone had heard the sudden noise.

There weren't any.

"Hey," Andrew continued in a softer tone. "If it weren't for that dream I wouldn't have known how to make the monkeys safe. I didn't want anything like that to happen. I'm doing this for fun. For practice. I want to impress people. If I acted like that in real life... I mean, uh, if I let that happen, then people would run from me, leave me, and not in a good way."

"For one thing, th' appearance of safety has nuthin' to do with the actuality. For another, you know the little sketch you drew of that scene?" Remy paused, waiting for a 'yeh' from Andrew before continuing. "I was looking at the winged monkey and his victim. The long-haired one in the dress? It isn't Tara. It's you."

"What!" Andrew reached out and grabbed the paper from Remy's hand, suddenly oblivious to any danger. "Let me see. Huh. Oh, my God..."

Tara came home to find Willow in bed, already waiting for her.

She woke up as Tara snuggled in next to her.

"Where've you been?" Willow smiled sleepily. "I mean I was out patrolling with Xander and Giles and you've been out even later. I couldn't even stay awake until you got here and the kitten was lonely."

Tara sighed. "I had to take Remy by Sunnydale Memorial," she said, referring to the main hospital in town. "He's fine. I'm fine. We weren't the ones who... Long story. We can go over it later. How was your day?"

"Sucky. Exhausting. I mean I was so awesome! I dusted two vampires." Willow started swinging her arms around, completely messing up the bedcovers. "Like that! Take that! But we shouldn't have been so worn out by the end of it. I mean it's bad enough that Buffy's spending the night with her mom in the hospital, hoping she doesn't get worse before the doctors can do everything they can do to make her better, but that stupid Riley Finn was supposed to go patrolling with us - and he never even showed up!"