To the Power Born: A Tale of the Slayers
Part 4: Where Tyrants Rule
After a while of various sorts of loveplay (and discovering that Colin had a regenerative power that made him a sexual Energizer Bunny, made it so he could just… keep going, which, YAY!), we got to The Moment, and I… well, I looked at Colin, and smiled to show him that I was sure that I wanted this. He squeezed me, kissed me, and almost-smiled at me. He tried, and I could tell he felt good, but… still hurt.
"Colin… you sure you want this?" I asked. "If I'm rushing things— well, don't let me."
Colin, shook his head, stroked my cheek, almost smiled again. He looked thoughtful, then rolled me off of him and sat up, sat cross-legged on the bed and looked thoughtful for a moment. Finally, he nodded just a little, and started pantomiming what he wanted to say.
Colin tapped himself on the sternum, closed his eyes and let me see the pain he felt. I almost wept at the expression on his face, that lost, hurt, hopeless expression. To be sure I understood, he mimed stabbing himself in the gut, threw his head back and opened his mouth as though screaming. Then he looked at me, made a circle of his hands, forefingers and thumbs touching, and spread them, expanded them, made the circle with his arms, spread those, expanded them— and silent-mock-screamed again. Then he pointed at me, pointed at himself, laced the fingers of both hands together, tightened them, made a double fist of them— and made that gesture of expansion again— and reversed it slowly, making the circle of his arms smaller— not going back to the circle of thumbs and forefingers, but definitely reversing it some. He looked at me, wanting me to understand— and I thought I did.
"You hurt," I said softly. "You hurt so much you can barely stand it— I don't know how you do stand it, if it can stop magic and pseudo dragon telepathy— but being here with me… that makes it less?"
Colin nodded emphatically, took my hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it. Then he simply held my hand for a long moment, and looked at me with unmistakable gratitude.
"Well, then," I said softly, "let's make it a little smaller hurt, okay?"
He reached for me, pulled me on top of him, and moments later, my world went white with pleasure, and I knew that I loved him.
When I could move again under my conscious control— took a while!— I raised up a little, rocked forward enough to kiss Colin, who met my kiss eagerly, responded as crazily as I initiated.
We did it again, and it actually got better— so much so that I actually went limp after, unable to move or think coherently in the aftermath of the pleasure.
Colin had been watching me, waiting for me to recover and look up at him— and when I did, he smiled!
It was a tiny smile, a little thing— but a huge, huge victory nonetheless. I looked at it, fell in love with him for it— then moved up a little and kissed him. That led to us doing it again, and again, he smiled at me whenever I looked at him— just a tiny little smile, but enough to make me feel wonderful.
We took a shower together after that, and made love in the shower— then we got clean, and finally went to bed. Royal was curled up on my pillow, moved to lay above our heads when we laid down, and Colin gave my best friend a head scratch that let him know he was welcome.
When we got settled in, Colin cuddled me. Not just held me, but cuddled me, cradled me to him and made me know by his touch that he was grateful for the things we'd done, and infinitely glad I was there.
Three times in the night, he woke up from nightmares, jerking awake each time with a sharp exhalation that would probably have been a scream if his subconscious mind wasn't refusing him the release of screaming. Each time I soothed him, held him, hugged him and cuddled him until he fell back asleep.
I woke in the morning to the sensation of his hand lightly stroking my hair, kissed him and never mind the morning breath. Royal, through his link with me, knew what I intended to do next, and went to the balcony door, tugged on the pseudo-dragon-friendly rope that hung from the lever type doorknob, opened it, and went out to stretch his wings. Once my dragon friend was gone, I immediately started making love to Colin— and we were in bed another hour before grabbing a brief, get-clean shower and going down to breakfast.
Slayers don't sleep as much as normal people— our bodies heal faster, so don't need as much sleep as normal peoples' bodies do— and I guess super heroes don't either. We were actually the first ones down other than Aunt Rose and Daddy, who were working together to start breakfast.
Aunt Rose took one look at me, grinned, and said, "You look like the cat that ate the canary, Jocelyn Penobscot."
"I did, Aunt Rose," I said, going over and hugging her. "Twice before we got out of bed, even."
Aunt Rose burst into helpless gales of laughter, Daddy groaned and shook his head, and Colin… Colin blushed several shades of red all at once.
He also smiled, just that tiny little smile— which made it worth it.
Breakfast was a gently chaotic affair, with all of my siblings and my "adopted cousins" being introduced to Colin, and it quickly becoming obvious that our parents and theirs had made them understand that they weren't to bug Colin— simply because they didn't. They greeted him, gaped a little— and left him alone mostly.
Mostly. Belinda, my little sister who was ten, did ask him point blank if he was my boyfriend— to which he nodded solemnly. Belinda's response made her major points with me (not like she needed them, I love her half to death).
"Good," she said. "I like you. I was afraid she'd get all together with some guy I didn't like, and then I'd have to scare him off. You she can keep. You'll be good for each other."
Colin blinked, looked at me and cocked an eyebrow.
"I don't know, I just live here," I said. He rolled his eyes, and I laughed. "No, actually, Belinda… does that. She may be a little psychic, Willow thinks— Willow is the witch who activated all us Slayers, remember. So when Belinda says something that doesn't really make sense, we just make a note and wait until it does. We're still waiting on some things to start making sense, but sometimes, it pans out."
After breakfast, Daddy took Colin shopping for clothes and stuff, and I stayed away from it. I trusted Dad not to make a thing of Colin and I sleeping together, and besides— I had work to do. Monday was Activation Day, the day the scythe would activate a new bunch of Slayers, and I had been drafted to help with the commercials and internet videos we were putting out there to let the newbies know what was going on, to try and make sure we found all of the new Slayers.
Not finding them, not reaching them, could be really awful— for them and for the world. For the newbies… it could get them killed. Some supernatural critters can sense a Slayer, and damned few of them like us, so if they found one, and she had no protection of numbers, no back up, no training… they'd kill her.
If they didn't find her and she wasn't taught how to handle her abilities, she might accidentally hurt someone. And in some cases, Slayers had gone bad— used their power for personal gain, or in the service of evil. It had happened four times that I knew about.
Faith, the first "bad Slayer," had bounced back from her own internal darkness, come back to the light, and made herself into a woman I admired and loved (and lusted after— hot, her). She had married a former vampire, made human again by magic, and worked with him training Slayers and fighting the fight out in LA.
Claudia Steele, the worst of the lot, had been working with Amy Madison, the psycho-witch-bitch responsible for the events that led up to the Battle of Bloomington, in which my parents had fought. She'd almost killed Aunt Rose and Aunt Elaine, had killed Aunt Rose's foster sister, Linnea Reardon, and nearly killed a Slayer named Brianne Dayton. Working together, Rose and Elaine had managed to kill Claudia, but it had been a near thing, and if not for some odd magic they had working for them, they'd never have pulled it off.
Heidi Kauffman had gone very bad, had become a serial killer around the time I was eight. She'd been gang-raped only weeks before getting the Slayer power, and had… snapped when she realized that she could pay back those who'd raped her— then moved on to any man she saw or heard mistreating a woman. She had killed thirty-nine men in the city of Berlin before Willow managed to track her down and Buffy, the Prime Slayer, managed to bring her in. She was in a mental institution still, probably would be for life.
N'daré Otumwara of Botswana had made of herself a queen of diamond smuggling, with arms dealing and drug smuggling on the side. She'd ended up dying at the hands of the army in Botswana, blown to hell when she attacked a diamond shipment which had been under military escort. Until her death, she was counted as one of the most ruthless and efficient female criminals in history.
Given these incidents, and the number of girls who'd died at the hands of demons and monsters before being reached, we worked our asses off to make sure that every girl on Earth knew what to do, who to contact, if she suddenly found herself with super powers on May the twentieth of any given year.
I helped however the Watchers and Guardians asked me to help. I didn't mind, no matter how much work it might be, because I knew I was helping— or at least potentially helping— girls like me.
So that Saturday, I worked on the last of the commercials and internet videos. For the video, I simply let a camera team follow me through my daily workout, film me training at the martial arts— including Capoeira, which looks gorgeous when done right, and I'd been at it since I was six, so did it right— my kung-fu-style sword training with Aunt Rose (no fencing training that day, with Lydia Heller, my fencing coach, out of town with Willow, her wife), and my targeting workout— archery, thrown knives, thrown stakes, thrown crazy-discs, then my tumbling workout… all that stuff. It made for good PR, showing girls the kind of things one of us could do, and since I look all cute and feminine, as well as looking like a girl, not a woman, it had a lot of impact.
Colin and Daddy came back and watched my sword training as it ended, then we all went in for lunch. Colin spent the afternoon watching me train and work out, watching all us Slayers, Watchers and Guardians do both, really. He seemed content to just watch, which I figured as a good thing— he needed down time.
After supper, we went to Illinois State University's Center for the Visual Arts and used one of their studios to film a commercial, the last in the series for the year, and one of about ten different series of commercials, all featuring Slayers of different ages and ethnicities. For this, the last in the series, we went all-out, and security there was heavy— all the Slayers and Slayer-support types in the area where there, including some from Peoria, Springfield and Chicago. All in all, fifteen Slayers, six Watchers and four Guardians were in the studio that night— because we were filming a "live fire" exercise, as Daddy called it. Me and two other Slayers, one older, one a little younger, would be filmed while fighting off eight vampires and killing them. Capturing eight vampires— well, I didn't envy whoever had been unlucky enough to have to do that.
So a little after eight, I found myself on a medium-sized, well-secured sound stage with two other girls, waiting for the director of the commercial— a film student, always a film student, but working from a script written by Aunt Rose and Giles— to get everything settled to his liking. While we waited, I talked to the other girls, both of whom I knew from school— which had let out for us yesterday, but neither had gone home yet.
Candace Travers was sixteen, and maybe the sexiest Black girl alive (she hates the term "African American," so I never use it around her or when referring to her), tall, slender but still very female, with a face like an angel and a dancer's grace. (Also, she was lamentably straight— but had been nice about telling me so earlier in the school year, when I'd asked her to go to the Christmas Dance with me.) Candace preferred to fight with a plain wooden spear, great against vampires, and had one now.
Jenny Glaser was just shy of thirteen, had only been active for a year, but was a prodigy— not surprising, since she'd been studying martial arts since the age of five under her father the sensei. She had scary hand to hand skills, and had already claimed ten kills and eighteen assists while on team patrols. She's one of those girls who will, like Aunt Rose, probably be mistaken for a kid until she's in her thirties— her mother is Vietnamese, and Jenny's tiny, four-nine and maybe eighty-five pounds— and cute as a button. She had no significant interest in either sex yet, but was a great friend, and a hellacious-good teammate.
"Okay, so who's the gorgeous guy with you guys tonight?" Candace asked me. "And is he spoken for?"
"That's Colin, my boyfriend," I said, grinning. "Which should answer both your questions, Candace."
"Damn, girl— where have you been hiding him and why did you bother asking me out when you had him?" Candace asked.
"He's only just become my boyfriend," I said, smirking at her. "And gorgeous man or no, he's still no girl— and I'm still bi and you're still a total babe."
"Okay, well— thanks," Candace said, grinning. "Sadly, I'm still straight— if I was bi, I'd ask you to share. That man is just beautiful."
"Yes, he is," I said. "And sweet. But since you aren't bi, you're shit out of luck— he's mine, all mine, I tell you!"
Candace laughed, gave me a playful punch in the arm and said, "You aren't just bi, you're greedy, Jocelyn. Evil brat."
"You guys are both oversexed," Jenny said. "Who cares about dating, there's vampires to kill!"
"All work and no play makes Slayers grumpy and hard to live with," Candace said, grinning.
"Yeah, but dusting vampires is playing!" Jenny said, sticking her tongue out at Candace.
"Girl's got a point," I said. "But let me say for the record— Turok-han? Not fun. All you've heard is pretty much true."
"I heard you put one down," Jenny said. "Was he really all that tough?"
"You've seen me with a sword, Jenny," I said. "You know how fast I am, right?"
"Wicked fast, yeah," Jenny said. "I'll catch up someday, though!"
"Probably," I agreed. "But— well, I had the one I killed down, crawling on just its hands— crazy-discs to the hips put his legs out of commission— and when I swung at his neck, even though he was crawling on his hands… he damned near caught the blade."
"Damn," Jenny said respectfully. "Okay, yeah— Turok-han equals run like a bunny, got it."
"Okay, ladies," called our director, "are you all ready?"
We all answered in the affirmative, and he said, "Places please… quiet on the set! All right— 'Slayer Activation; America, number ten of ten, take one. Sound, camera— all right ladies, remember, first and last we can shoot again, but the middle— get it right, and do not get hurt!
"And… action!"
"My name is Candace," the oldest of us said. "Over the last month, you've probably seen me before, seen the rest of these commercials we're doing to try and get those of you who will become Slayers aware of what to do and why to do it on the twentieth of May, if you get Called.
"My friends and fellow Slayers Jocelyn, Jenny and I have showed you a lot of what we can do and talked about why it has to be done. Jocelyn's told you as much as she could about the power you will get, since she's had it since she was born and understands it better than most.
"Now we're going to show you why you need to contact the Watcher's Council if you get the power— because you haven't had our training, and power or no, you probably couldn't handle this!"
"Cut!" the director called. "Okay, that was great, Candace— got it in one.
"You ladies want anything before we do the middle? A drink, bathroom break, anything?"
"We're good," Candace said after getting head shakes from me and Jenny. "Let's do this— I want to get my butt back to Chicago, and Jenny probably wants to get back to Detroit. And if Jocelyn doesn't want to get back to snuggling with her boyfriend, she's out of her mind."
The director laughed, called out the security precautions as they were enabled, double-checked with Dad, then started us again.
The eight vampires were in cages around the walls of the stage, and once the cameras had started again, Candace called, "Let them out!"
We made dust. Candace and her spear had nice reach, Jenny had made a stake an integral part of her martial arts, and I had my sword and my crazy-discs. I killed three, one with an assist from Jenny, who kicked him into the path of my sword, Candace killed three, and Jenny staked the last two.
We dusted them all in just under a minute, and Candace, to make it obvious that this might have been staged but it hadn't been faked, looked at the camera as soon as the last one died and spoke.
"Maybe you think that looked easy— but it wouldn't be, if we hadn't been trained. I've been at this for four years, Jenny's been taking martial arts for eight years, from Slayers and Watchers for the last year, and Jocelyn started martial arts when she was four.
"We're trained, and we had each other to rely on. If you get activated, you won't be able to say that— so remember, if you find yourself with the Slayer power any time over the next few days, call one-eight-hundred SLAYERS— that's one-eight-hundred, seven-five-two, nine-three-seven-seven— as soon as you can. There are things— monsters and demons— that may sense the changes in you, and they may try to hurt you.
"Let us help. Give us a call.
"If this happens, you've been Chosen… prove that it was the right choice."
"And… cut!" the director called. "Nice, ladies, very nice. Mr. Penobscot?"
"Let me watch the roughs to be sure," Dad said, "but I think you're right, I think that's it."
Ten minutes later, it had been approved, edited (with computers, and this being done digitally, not with film, it took most of no time at all), and electronically sent to the various television networks and stations that would be running it starting tomorrow. I hugged Candace and Jenny goodbye, said I'd see them in August, and went home with my family.
I got a surprise a few minutes after we'd gotten home. Giles, Kelly, their son Riley, and Willow and Lydia had come home early, what with the appearance of a Turok-han or four here in town— and Buffy, Xander and their kids came with.
A whole lot of hugs and introductions later, I sat with Colin in the living room and explained what had happened Friday night and what we knew about Colin to Giles, Kelly, Buffy, Xander, Willow and Lydia.
"This is fascinating," Giles said, leaning forward and looking straight at Colin. "Young man… your arrival here may have been the accident it seemed to be, but… I do not believe that. I have been dealing with the supernatural since I was a young teenager, been a Watcher since I was twenty-five, and I'm approaching my sixtieth birthday.
"I believe that your arrival here was intended by the higher forces that we who attempt to work their will on the world call 'the Powers That Be'— and I do hope that we can figure out their purpose. My first thought is that you may be in a position to aid us against an upcoming supernatural threat. My second thought is that it may be that we are meant to help you recover from the events that left you so traumatized.
"However, it is my hope that we are meant to help each other."
"What he said," Buffy said, smiling at Colin. "But without all the extra words.
"Colin, Jocelyn cares about you a lot, we can see that. Maybe more important, from our end of things, we can see that you care a lot about her. Well, around here, that translates to 'we want to help you both,' which means helping you for both of your sakes."
"Yeah," Xander said, adjusting the eye patch over his empty left socket slightly. "Jossie is one of our favorite people, we love her, and we want to help her. So you're stuck with us trying to help you. We'll probably annoy the heck out of you trying, but… that's the price you pay for loving one of ours."
"Don't call me Jossie," I scolded gently. "Remember, Xander, I know your middle name."
"Uh, yes, Jocelyn," Xander said immediately. "Whatever you say, Jocelyn."
"Willow, do you think you might try to get past Colin's barriers magically?" Giles asked, looking at Willow— red headed, small, fair, didn't look close to her thirty-seven years any more than Buffy looked her age— where she sat curled up against the side of her wife (and my fencing coach) Lydia Heller, who was forty and looking thirty.
"If push comes to shove, I will," Willow said, her head still on Lydia's shoulder. "But I don't want to if I don't have to. Giles, mind magics… really, really touchy. And dangerous. I'd rather wait, see if Diane can help him, or if just time and distance from whatever happened— and being part of our family, and Jocelyn's boyfriend— don't help him naturally."
"Hmm, yes," Giles said. He absently stroked the scales of his small, silver pseudo dragon friend, Bookmark, and nodded. "Yes, of course, you're quite correct.
"Colin, the Watcher's Council has on retainer a lady who is both a psychiatrist and a psychologist, and she is also a friend. Would you be willing to speak wi— I beg your pardon, would you be willing to work with her towards getting over your difficulties?"
Slowly, almost unwillingly, Colin nodded.
"It's the right choice," Kelly, Giles's wife and Aunt Rose's mom, said firmly. "Colin, I know that you think you've done something horrible— but think on this; won't it be worth the effort of working your way past it… to be able to say Jocelyn's name?"
Colin nodded more firmly, that time, and I hugged him hard, even as Kelly's pseudo dragon, a deep green girl named Titania (for the queen of the Faeries) flew over and landed on Colin's lap, settled down, and looked up at him until he started petting her. She then settled in completely, and soon was making the bubbling, crackling sound that is a pseudo dragon purr.
"And that says everything I need to know about whether or not I want Jocelyn dating you," Kelly said, chuckling. "Colin, our scaly friends are not just telepathic, they're empathic— they read emotions as well as thoughts. That ours all like you says you're a good, good man, young man— so welcome home.
"And on that note, we have a long tradition of 'welcome to the family' dinners— think you can work out a way to tell me what you'd like?"
Colin looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. He disentangled himself from me and Titania, stood up, bent at the knees, pulled his fists up towards his armpits, and scratched the ground with his feet while flapping his elbows and jerking his head in and out.
Xander whooped with surprised laughter as the rest laughed at a more normal volume— and Uncle Ballard fell over sideways on the couch, laughing helplessly as Colin did a really good chicken impersonation.
"Okay, do you prefer fried or baked?" Kelly said around a laugh— and Colin held up one finger, indicating the first of the two, and making the rest of us grin. (Kelly makes the absolute best fried chicken on Earth, from a recipe she got from her mom.) "And what would you like with it?"
Colin held the index fingers and thumbs of his hands a little apart, making an oval before his face— then ground one fist repeatedly into his other hand. Buffy got it first, and managed to say, "Mashed potatoes?" around a giggle.
Colin nodded, then held up an invisible ear of corn and pretend-munched the kernels off of it from left to right. For a finisher, he plucked something from an invisible container, juggled it from hand to hand, then split it open, spread something on it, closed it and munched on it.
"Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and biscuits, then?" Kelly said, still laughing.
Colin nodded, then gave her a flourishing bow.
"My god, you're good at that," Buffy said. "Were you an actor?"
Colin shook his head, held open an invisible book, flipped pages, put it aside, grabbed another off of a stack, did the same, made notes on the air, then looked at her to see if she'd gotten it.
"College student?" she asked, and Colin nodded again.
Then he pulled an imaginary coin from his pocket, flipped it, looked at it on his wrist, then polished and put on an invisible badge, drew an imaginary gun, spoke to an invisible microphone.
"You were maybe gonna be a cop?" Willow said.
Colin gave her a thumbs up, flipped and looked at his imaginary coin again, then stood and mouthed words at us all while making a broad, sweeping gesture with one arm— then dropped from his pose and pointed at Buffy.
"Either a cop or an actor?" Buffy guessed— and grinned when he gave her the thumbs up. "I'm good— and you'd be one hell of an actor. If you were half that good at the cop stuff, I can see why it'd be a hard choice."
Colin bowed to her and sat back down beside me.
We talked a while, then Colin and I went for a walk around the neighborhood— all of six houses in four BIG blocks, most of them belonging to my extended family, with Vincent and Vi living across the street from us and Willow and Lydia having the smallest house on the block on the other side of us from Scooby Mansion, where Giles, Kelly and their son shared the big mansion with Uncle Ballard, my many aunts, and their six kids.
After that, we went to bed, made love, and went to sleep— this time in my room.
Sunday was really mellow, just lots of family time, some light training— really light, mostly just sparring with Buffy and playing with crazy-discs— a dinner of Grandma Riley's fried chicken at Scooby Mansion (Colin loved it as much as the rest of us, and managed to make his delight made known to Kelly repeatedly and often), then a movie on the gigantic TV in the living room of the mansion before going home to bed. Vincent, Vi and their two girls got home from Sydney about bedtime, but we didn't see them until the next day.
Monday… Monday was Activation Day, and we made a thing of it, in a non-thing sort of way. I mean— well, big breakfast— no surprise— then we all sat and talked for a while, all of us— Mom, Dad, Gwendolyn, me, my sibs, Colin (okay, he just listened and pantomimed), Uncle Ballard, Aunt Dawn, Aunt Rose, Aunt Sh'rin and Aunt Elaine, their kids Nathaniel (thirteen and Sh'rin's bio-son), Linnea (twelve and Dawn's bio-daughter), Autumn (just short of twelve and Sh'rin's again) the twins, Graham and Erin (ten and Elaine's biologically) and Michael (eight and Rose's), Giles and Kelly and their son Riley (fourteen), Xander and Buffy and their twins, Alex and Joyce, aged not-quite thirteen, Vincent and Vi and their girls, Beth and Cathy, eleven and eight, respectively, and Willow and Lydia and their little girl (adopted, but SO well loved!) Elise, who's seven. Add in a pseudo dragon for everyone but Colin, and yowza, that's a lot of people! (Yes, pseudo dragons are people. You don't have to be human to be people!) Seventeen adults (counting Colin), sixteen kids (counting me) and thirty-two pseudo dragons. (Thirty-one pseudo dragons, actually, but I'll get to that in a minute, and with thirty-one around, you can imagine how easy it was to miss one, right?) We sat outside on the back patio-slash-veranda of Scooby mansion, most of us, though a lot of the kids played in the yard, and we just… talked. Colin listened, watched people, and I think he started to see that we really are one big family.
"Diane Hodges will be here sometime tomorrow, Colin," Giles said. "She'll start working with you as soon as you're comfortable with it, and I do hope you will give her your best efforts— she's very good, but she can't help you if you resist her overmuch."
Colin nodded somberly, then cocked his head. We'd all come to know that posture, and we waited for him to work out his pantomime. After a moment, he stood, felt along an invisible wall for a moment, then struck at it with a hammer, or maybe a pick, hard and repeatedly. He then looked at us all, waiting.
"You intend to work really hard," Lydia said. "Good."
Colin nodded, then walked over to kneel in front of me. He tapped himself on the chest, pointed at and moved his mouth, then put one hand over his heart, closed it slowly and loosely, placed it in the middle of my chest, opened it and pressed against my breastbone firmly. I got all teary and leaned forward to kiss him really hard and pretty long. Mom waited for us to part to say what she'd gotten (and others, but Mom's the one who said it, which made me love her more than usual).
"You'll work at gettin' past your hurt," Mom said slowly and in a voice that just oozed approval, "so that you can tell Jocelyn you love her, right?"
Colin kept his eyes locked on mine while he nodded— and I kissed him again, more emphatically than the last time.
"I love you, Colin," I said when we broke. "I love you, too."
"That's sweet," Aunt Dawn said, smiling. "Keep him, Jocelyn."
"Bet on it," I said.
About then, Linnea came running over to us, smiling so wide it must've hurt, and stopped in front of Dawn, her bio-mom. (All of those kids called their biological mom just "mom," and the other women in that group marriage first-name-plus-mom. So to Linnea, Dawn was "Mom," and Aunt Elaine, as example, was "Elaine-mom. It worked, and my sisters had adopted it, called Mom and Dad's girlfriend "Gwen-mom." My brother thought that too childish, and stuck with Gwendolyn, as I did.)
"Mom, everybody, guess what? You know where Lightning is?" Linnea asked, referring to her bright yellow-white pseudo dragon friend.
"No, where is she, honey?" Ballard asked.
"She's on the top shelf of the pantry off of the kitchenette on the third floor," Linnea said, dancing in place and smiling more widely. "She's in her nest!"
We whooped as one, except for Colin, and Aunt Rose hastened to explain at his puzzled look.
"Pseudo dragons don't normally nest, Colin," she told him. "They only make a nest when they're ready to lay eggs!"
"She already did, Rose-mom," Linnea bubbled. "She laid four eggs, and she says it could be just six days, since there are only four, instead of the usual seven or eight days."
Colin looked puzzled, and Giles guessed why, having thought of this himself back when I was a baby, and Glitter, Aunt Rose's pseudo dragon friend, had laid the first clutch of pseudo dragon eggs ever hatched on Earth.
"I suppose you're thinking of the gestation times of earthly birds, Colin?" Giles said, and Colin nodded. "Yes, I was puzzled by that, too, the first time. Chickens, as example, take roughly three weeks from laying to hatching, and pseudo dragons are far more complex and intelligent than any chicken will ever be, so one might expect them to take longer. However, Rose set me straight. On their native world, pseudo dragons are prized as wizards' familiars in part because they are highly magical creatures. As Rose pointed out, that magic allows for unusually quick development."
Colin nodded acceptance— and we all started talking about the impending arrival of baby pseudo dragons.
We had lunch at noon, hamburgers and hot dogs cooked on the grill, then sat, talked and waited. At a few minutes before two in the afternoon, Buffy went inside and got the case that held the Scythe, the weapon that had allowed Willow to activate all the Slayers in the world fifteen years before that day. Buffy brought it out, laid it on the ground in the shade of the patio, and we all waited and watched— all of us, adults, kids, pseudo dragons, Watchers, Slayers, Guardians.
At a couple of minutes past two, the Scythe lit up with a brilliant white light, seeming to burn from within. Even as it did so, Willow gasped quietly, smiled a "hello, old friend" smile, and leaned on Lydia a bit.
For most of thirty seconds, the scythe burned— and when it went out, we heard the sound of someone falling to the ground— not a cry-out kind of sound, like someone had been hurt, just the thump of butt on concrete and a little gasp.
We all looked around to see Autumn Jane Innes, Ballard and Sh'rin's second child, not quite twelve years old, sitting on the ground and staring at the Scythe in shock and wonder.
"Spirits of Earth and Sky!" Autumn said in a low, wondering voice. "Mom, Dad, all of you— I feel it! I feel the Scythe! I feel— I'm a SLAYER!"
We laughed, we hugged her— and the rest of the day became one long party in celebration.
At nine the next morning, Giles called everyone over to Scooby Mansion— well, not everyone, just Slayers, Watchers and Guardians. Autumn wasn't called, being totally untrained. Dad invited Colin along, too, and Willow and Lydia came.
We went to the library at Kelly's direction, and we found Giles there talking to a forty-something man in a slightly rumpled dark gray suit. The man's hair looked mussed, too, and he needed a shave, but he was handsome in a scholarly way— little round glasses made him look bookish, and he had a thin, sensitive-looking face, and a forehead that looked high, despite a full head of graying brown hair.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mr. Greg Hardesty," Giles said once we'd all sat down. "He has come to us with information that we will need to act on— but I wanted you to hear his information for yourself. Sir, if you would be so kind?"
"Certainly," Hardesty said, his voice sounding faintly British. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am a lawyer employed by Amnesty International. My normal duty station is Seoul in the Republic of Korea. I have flown from there to advise you of a situation that I believe requires your attention. I've been awake for some time, so please, forgive my less-than-stylish appearance.
"I will be direct; most of my duties for Amnesty International involve cataloguing the many human rights violations of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea— more commonly known as North Korea— and its dictator, the damnably long-lived Kim Jong Un. I have been at this work since very early in the millennium, and I have made many sympathetic contacts in these last sixteen years. Yesterday, one such contact called me and advised me of the situation that I bring to you.
"My contact is a citizen of North Korea, and works for a very large grocery supply warehouse there, driving a delivery truck for that company. The company has many government contracts— including delivering supplies to many of the prison camps in the northern part of the country. Yesterday, very early in the morning— just after four AM, local time— Minh made his first stop at a prison camp some thirty miles north of Pyongyang, the capital city of North Korea, and he witnessed… something extraordinary.
"Minh saw a young girl— twelve or so, he thought, though she's fourteen and undernourished— who was working on digging a ditch for some unknown reason, suddenly straighten, drop her shovel, and clutch her head. A moment later, she fell to the ground, and a guard went to pull her to her feet. The guard grabbed her by the arm, jerked her up— and she shoved him away.
"The guard, according to Minh, flew away from her at impossible speeds, and didn't hit the ground for a good eight meters.
"Several other guards then attacked her, and Minh said she fought them off, hospitalized four— broken bones, mostly, though one had a nasty concussion. In the end, they overpowered her— but it took nine guards to do so."
"Oh, damn," Buffy said. "Giles?"
He knew what she wanted, the two of them being as close as any father and daughter, and having worked together for years.
"Four in the morning in Pyongyang is two in the afternoon here, Buffy," Giles said. "This girl is one of ours, almost certainly."
"Oh, shit," Buffy said. "A Slayer in a prison camp… Mr. Hardesty, do you know why she's there?"
"She's in that camp because her mother married a Japanese man— and was foolish enough to bring her daughter back to North Korea with her when the father died five years ago." Hardesty said. "She's lived the last five years of her life in that camp— simply because her father was Japanese."
"Shit!" Xander said. "Is she— will they kill her?"
"They haven't yet," Hardesty said. "But they very probably will, I'm afraid."
"No way," Dad said. "Willow, can you get her out?"
"I could, maybe," Willow said. "But Whitey… it'd be big and loud and noisy. And really, really obvious that it was magic, and I'd have to have major back up to keep me safe while I worked the magic— teleporting is nasty, and over the distances involved to get her here? Or even just out of North Korea? Bad, hard, ugly work."
"Okay, so… Mr. Hardesty, can you get us maps and satellite photos of the area?" Ballard said. "I think we're looking at a frontal assault, Slayer style."
"We can't," Xander said, slamming his fist on the table. "Ballard, it'd be way, way too obvious if a bunch of girls go in and take her out. We can't cause an international incident like that, we'd lose the support of probably two-thirds of the governments that make nice with us now."
"There has to be a way," Kelly said, grimacing. "We can't leave her there— my god, what if they manage to force her to work for them? The damage she could do, and the hell they'd put her through to make her do what they want? We can't risk the first or allow the second!"
After a few more minutes, Giles had Kelly take Mr. Hardesty off to a guest room to sleep— he'd been awake and traveling for almost twenty hours by then— and when she came back, we got handed a possible solution.
"There's got to be some way to get her out," Xander said. "Something we're missing… Vincent, you're Mister Super Soldier, can you see anything?"
(Vincent is only mostly human biologically— he was genetically engineered to be the perfect soldier, and has ape, dolphin and big cat DNA mixed in with carefully chosen human DNA [Willow had to help him and Vi have kids with magic]— see Aunt Rose's book for how he hooked up with us and became a Watcher.)
"I'm sorry, Xander, but short of a military action, I can't—" Vincent started.
He was interrupted by a hand slapping the table, very loudly— and everyone looked around at Colin, who'd done the slapping.
Colin stood up— and kept going up until his head brushed the fifteen-foot ceiling. He floated there, glowing that golden-white color of his powers, crossed his arms, and cocked his head at us, plainly saying, "Will this do?"
"Oh, my," Giles said into the sudden silence. "I do believe we may have a solution…."