It'd taken longer for Faith to warm up to her second doppelganger. This was due in part of that person's discovery being a more, um, extreme situation. At the time, Xander had been alone in one of the castle's recreation rooms, watching television on the big screen while chowing down an enormous bowl of popcorn loaded with real buttery goodness and enough salt to coat the entire U.S. Northeast road network during a historic snowstorm. ("Heart attacks? We don' need no steenkin' heart attacks!")

Growing bored with his program, the one-eyed man flipped through the channels until he came to ESPN, which was showing the preliminary rounds of a cheerleading competition. Xander enjoyed the next couple of minutes, digging a hand into the bowl of popcorn to stuff his mouth. On the screen, a dozen very athletic young ladies finished their routine, and strutted off the stage floor. Several moments later, Xander froze solid, his greasy hand stiffening motionless deep in the bowl, when he recognized a certain face newly presented on the television. Two seconds after that, the Sunnydale survivor identified yet another cheerleading participant, with resulting drastic consequences.

They never entirely got the butter stains off the recreation room ceiling.

A day afterwards, there were still enough teams in the second round of competition for the UCA National High School Cheerleading Championship to make everyone there ignore the sudden appearance of thirty more superbly fit girls dressed in colorful uniforms bearing the most generic school names possible. While waiting for their team leaders to make a quick reconnoiter, the three new cheerleader squads also made sure to hold their self-conscious practices as far away as they could from the other groups. Hopefully, any stray onlookers would only think they were watching some first-time entrants mortifyingly aware of their inexperience and resigned to coming in dead last.

Even Buffy had to accept a mere few hours of her tutelage, helped by some of the other Slayers with their own former cheerleading skills, wasn't going to do more than temporarily lull anyone's suspicions, at best. With any luck, that'd be all which was needed, because she really didn't have time for anything else. Not when there was the remotest chance a formerly vanquished skank had returned from the grave while trying to pull off what Buffy couldn't still help but to consider being probably the stupidest attempt at revenge she'd ever seen.

*I mean,* the blonde Slayer incredulously thought again when she sat in the spectators area for today's competition, *why in the world would Glory start her big comeback by disguising herself as a high school cheerleader?*

That was definitely a good point, one which had been brought up at once during the crisis conference hastily held yesterday by the New Council senior staff, after they'd seen a replay of the sports tape. Shifting in his chair at the table inside the Scots castle, Xander absently picked a piece of popcorn out of his hair and flicked it to the floor. He shrugged to his bewildered friends, "Who the hell cares? You gotta admit, that bitch was never strong on subtlety in our previous fight with her, so maybe Glory thinks she's being clever and discreet this time!"

Leaning forward in his butter-soaked shirt, the man urged, "Whatever she's up to, we still have to check this out first hand! Just the fact that Wils can't sense anything using her mojo from where those girls are staying at their competition-"

"'Cept I got another double there, remember?" interjected Faith from across the table. Her bemused comment signified that unlike the others, she was more absorbed by the existence of a several years younger doppelganger rather than the reappearance of a former adversary the Sunnydale bunch had painfully fought and defeated at a very high cost to them. To be fair, Faith had been away from the California city during the whole Glorificus conflict, so all she had to go by were her friends' stories on how dangerous the hellgoddess had been during the whole thing.

That, and how pale Dawn now looked while huddled in her chair at the table's end, shivering in constant fright. Shooting a concerned glance at Little D, Faith impulsively vowed that nobody was gonna hurt her adopted baby sis, even if she had to knife an actual deity in the back a coupla dozen times.

From the sound of it, the Scoobies tried going head-to-head with Glory, just like Faith had done with the Beast, resulting in a distinct lack of success for them both. Nope, first unload a major case of whup-ass courtesy of Red on the bitca who's scarin' Dawnie, and then if necessary, take care of things by havin' her and B and as many other Slayers in the castle as they could grab right away all work together at stompin' this Glory into a bloody smear on the ground. You wanna settle it for once and all, you don't do the single challenge, pistols at dawn, honorable duel shit. You ice the sucker at long range and disappear 'fore the body drops.

From where Buffy was sitting next to Dawn, with this older sibling's arm comfortingly around the trembling shoulders of this other terrified girl, that Slayer traded a fierce gaze with the Boston native, as if her West Coast counterpart had just guessed about and utterly approved of what Faith was thinking. Feeling inwardly a warm rush of tenderness towards her new family, Faith opened her mouth to briskly announce to them all, including Willow, Giles, and Xander, "'Kay, people, here's what I figure we should do…"

And so, three women were seated side-by-side in the stands of a stadium hosting the Nationals, all intently watching the Malibu High Toros come out to make their usual try for this year's first place trophy. This was only a look-see by Buffy, Willow, and Faith, since none of them really wanted to start their fight with Glory right away in the middle of a crowd of innocent witnesses.

The Slayers eyed their enemy doing a last-minute stretch (well, Faith had to sneak a quick, astonished glance at a certain dark-haired girl in her own red-and-black costume). Willow was sitting placidly, with her clasped hands resting in her lap. It was only because Faith and Buffy were on opposite sides of the witch that this pair of young women felt the merest tingle of mystical energies. Willow was clearly in the middle of weaving her scrying spell to irrefutably confirm the identify of their foe-

Willow unexpectedly blurted out in a tone of deepest astonishment, "That's not her!"

"What?!" erupted in unison from an equally shocked duo. Luckily, the magical wards earlier cast around this small group by the witch to avoid any chance of detection by someone who now inexplicably seemed not to be Glory also kept anyone in their vicinity from listening or even paying attention to the stunned trio of women.

Willow dazedly nodded, waving a shaky hand in the general direction of where after being launched upwards by two guys, a young girl had just completed a mid-air somersault ten feet above the floor. "I'm telling you, I did my most thorough magical scan on Courtney Elizabeth, and she's totally human! The only time that cheerleader ever did anything the least bit like supernatural stuff was during a birthday costume party when she was six! Back then, she dressed up as a Fairy Princess, including carrying a fake magic wand and waving it while singing 'Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!'"

Buffy had a note of shrill indignation in her voice when she pointed a quivering forefinger at the crowded stage filled with tumbling and dancing figures, to huffily protest, "Dammit, Wils, I've been nose-to-nose with Glory! It can't be just a big coincidence that girl looks like her identical evil twin sister!"

"Why not?" Willow shrugged. "We're due for one, anyway."

Faith contributed her own two cents right before Buffy was about to explode, "Hey, Red, maybe there's a chance you were off when you said nobody but us was gonna have doubles 'cuz of those monks. What's her name, the Glory copy, could be one of those-"

She was interrupted by Willow firmly shaking her head. "I checked, re-checked, and triple checked, Faith! Your own double down there, she's a product of that accidental spell. On the other hand, Courtney's as normal as can be, nothing like Missy Pantone-"

"WHO?!" was instantly whooped at maximum decibel level into a wincing witch's left ear.

Rubbing at this aching organ, Willow irritably turned her head, and she blinked into the ecstatic grin of a blonde showing every shiny white tooth she possessed. At the moment, Buffy Summers was doing an outstanding imitation of a gleeful Halloween jack-o'-lantern who'd just happily learned this holiday had been extended throughout all of next year.

Feeling a sudden wariness, which was helped along by the loud, doleful groan coming from her right, where Faith had just clapped her hands over her eyes, Willow hesitantly tried, "Er, yes, I think it's short for Melissa-"

"Who cares?" Buffy cackled. Starting to bounce up and down in her stadium seat, this Slayer blissfully began to chant, "Faith's got a Missy, a Missy, a Missy," keeping perfectly in time to every expression of her joy over at last running into another girl with an even more immature name than somebody called Buffy. This celebration culminated in a quick leap onto her feet, a fist triumphantly punching up in the air, and an ear-splitting screech of "GO, MISSY!" at the Toros' grand finish.

Among the crowd's applause, Willow nervously looked over at where Faith was slumped back in her own seat, arms sullenly crossed over her chest, all while glowering at a sheepish witch and her adopted sister dancing in the aisles. Eventually, Faith snarled at them both, "Yeah, yuk it up! I s'pose Dawnie and the rest back at the castle are gonna find it funny, too. Hey, at least I won't be the one to haveta tell the other Slayers with us we dragged all the way here that they don't even get to kill anything!"