— Sheila The Sixth, Tennefore, Wherever Tennefore Is - One Pair of Pants and a Snack Later —

"It seems to run on some form of electricity indeed." Running a hand through my hair to clear out both the static and my newfound empathy for Captain America, I take my hand off the big metal wire thing and put the panel with what I assume is supposed to be a 'Caution: High Voltage' sign back over it. Pausing long enough to take a deep breath and confirm I still feel full now that I'm not mainlining the reactor, I duck down and shuffle backwards out of the little access tunnel at the back of the maintenance closet next to the main cargo hold.

"So!" Tromping my way down the hall so as to avoid startling Shmi, I step into the main area of the ship and stare down the loading ramp with a sigh. "Obi-Wan! Why aren't you on the boat yet? No, strike that." I wave off my own question. It was largely rhetorical anyway given that I could hear him telling Mara not to follow Shmi onto the boat because I 'might be dangerous' or whatever. Of course I'm dangerous! Even if I lack Spike's credentials as a series 'big bad,' I'm still a vampire. His legitimate point-having has no relevance to the topic at hand, but he's not wrong per se, just irrelevant. "How are you not on the boat yet? I mean, I found and put on a new pair of pants and then took my dear sweet time eating a snack and somehow you've still barely even moved."

Obi-Wan stares back up the ramp at me for a long moment, meeting my gaze with that serene jedi expression firmly in place. "Should I be insulted that whatever visions you've clearly latched onto have you convinced that I would simply allow myself to be captured?"

"Capture..? What-" I drag a hand down my face. "I'm not capt- This isn't a kidnapping."

"Something you seem to expect me to just take your word on."

"Well, yes? I mean, okay, so first of all, it is not my fault that you believe the proper way to handle a trap is to spring it. Uhbuhbuhp!" I shake my finger at him as Obi-Wan opens his mouth, presumably to try and deny reality. "Don't even. Running face first into danger is literally your order's job. But second of all, this, once again, is not a kidnapping."

"Well what would you call it then?"

"Being a responsible senior citizen?" I shrug. "And, far more importantly, being as un-Buffy-like as possible."

"What's a Buffy?" Mara squirms her way past Obi-Wan's arm to poke her head out from behind him to ask.

"One of my deputies." I start to wave her off, intending to leave it at that, but I can almost feel the phantom pains of Faith's steel-toed disapproval down in my shins at the thought. "And…" I sigh nostalgically, "my on-again, off-again, sister-in-law-slash-step-grandmother and the mother of my eldest child but that's not really…" I trail off, scratching at the back of my head. "And I just realized just how much it makes my life sound like an episode of Jerry Springer when I list it all out like that. My point was that she's a massive pain in my ass who refuses to admit that she's terrible at driving no matter how many cruisers she wrecks..." I trail off again, more than a little horrified to realize I might actually miss her too. A little. Very little. Whatever the planck-length equivalent unit of measurement is for missing someone. "Or, well, she was terrible at driving, I guess."

A quiet moment passes before I shake my head and force myself to ignore it just like I've done every other time my thoughts have tried to turn maudlin over the past decade.

"My point being that unlike Buffy, I can acknowledge the growing pile of evidence that I shouldn't be the one piloting the ship anymore." I point at one of the larger sticky-outy-bits on the back of the ship. "I have no idea if that's a decorative fin, an antenna, or some sort of radiator for the coolant system, but I do know it wasn't bent like that before we bounced off the ground." Shifting my arm so that the finger I was pointing with is now held up as 'one,' I raise a second finger. "There's a growing host of error messages on the cockpit console-thing that I can't read."

"Wait." Mara's head tilts in confusion. "You can't read?"

"I can read English just fine." I huff. "But the errors are all in that stupid 34 character Aurebeshi abomination unto Nuggen that you people call 'Basic'," I add air quotes for my own amusement before dropping my left arm back down and lifting a third finger on my right. "And thirdly, I…" I frown, pausing my count to tap my chin. "I… I could have sworn I had a third point? Whatever." Shrugging the whole thing off, I point over at Shmi. "The important thing is that I think Shmi would almost rather let Mara try flying the ship rather than me getting behind the wheel again."

"Oooh!" Mara's face lights up, the arm Obi-Wan doesn't grab to stop her from marching onto the ship waving wildly in the air. "I wanna fly the ship!"

"And where are you expecting me to deliver myself?"

"I…" As is a frustratingly common event in my unlife, I find myself acting out that Malcolm Reynolds meme. "I don't know? "

"Really?"

"Well, I wanted to go wherever the Pirates," I wave vaguely at the pile of dead mooks on the hill, "left their boat so I could decide if it would be worth claiming it as Anakin's birthday present, but you being our only pilot kind of puts a damper on that plan and you never actually got around to telling me where we're taking Mara so…" I give him my best, 'what can you do?' face.

"Oh, come on!" Mara pouts, trying once more to get past Obi-Wan and up the ramp. "I wanna fly the ship!"

"Hey now, don't point that look at me." I hold my hands up and out. "That's up to Obi-Wan."

Obi-Wan's struggles to keep her from boarding the ship stutter briefly as he blinks at me. "Oh is it now?"

"Well, yeah?" I shrug again. "It's your Knight Trial, isn't it? I don't really know how those work and I don't want to accidentally disqualify you or whatever." Slouching down, I readopt my best Yoda impression. "Your trial for you, your brother did." I shake my head faux-mournfully. "Make you a Knight, we can not. Hmmm! Wasting your talents on Bandomeer you must now go back to."

Hmmm… I'm not sure if Obi-Wan just staring blankly at me in response means my impression is very good or very bad, but I kind of wish I had a camera to capture the deer in headlights expression he has going on right now.

"Br…" He starts, then pauses and frowns at me, before then starting again. "You think you're helping me?" He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Because we're… brothers?"

"Of course! That's what brothers do." I frown. "Allegedly anyway. I'll admit most of my own experience with having a brother involves Spike showing up at my doorstep unannounced, drunk out of his gourd, and looking for a place to sleep it off any time he and Mother had a fight. But I mean, I did set aside a guest room specifically for his use even if he never seemed to make it past the couch. And if we're being honest, it's not like I had any interest in being the one responsible for Mother's safekeeping, so having him handle that was helpful in its own way." I tap my chin, feeling my thoughts start to veer off into places I don't want to go and forcing them back on topic. "Plus! I have all of Father's memories of him and his brother helping each other out so I think my point stands."

"I'm not disputing that family members help each other." Obi-Wan nods. "But rather that we aren't related."

"Oh, well no, we aren't directly related. We're cross-brothers." When there's no recognition or understanding visible on Obi-Wan's face, I opt to admit I hadn't known the word either. "Don't feel bad if you aren't familiar with the term; I had to have Shmi look it up on the Dread Machine." I point a thumb over my shoulder at the woman in question. "And-"

"D-Dread M-Machine?" Mara and Obi-Wan almost manage to interrupt in unison, despite Obi-Wan sounding concerned and Mara like she wants one of her own.

"It's what he calls the computer with holonet access." Shmi answers before I can, apparently having decided to join me at the top of the ramp. A quick glance over to meet her eyes reveals that while she isn't entirely sold on the idea of Mara taking over the task, she has decided it's worth braving my mercurial presence if it gets Obi-Wan, a Jedi, to fly the ship instead of me.

Which I think that only avoids being slander because she didn't speak the thought out loud. I'm not mercurial. I'm very consistent. Or at least… Well, whatever. I opt to let it go unchallenged since she's helping and I've been trying to get her to show some initiative and independence anyway.

"In my defense, discovering I've gone and turned into Giles really is dreadful." Shmi stares at me uncomprehendingly, having no idea who that is. "Right. Well then." Turning back to team, 'holding up the line,' they are, to no one's surprise and yet my immense disappointment, both still in the exact same places blocking the bottom of the ramp. Albeit Mara at least now looks as disappointed about it as I feel. "It was supposed to be a joke. The interface isn't that different from the computers we used back home, I just, once again, can't read any of it. But yes, I had Shmi look it up and apparently the word for people who share a half-brother in common is cross-brother. Or cross-sibling, but we're male so…" I shrug.

"And I take it that the half-brother we supposedly share is Anakin because you've badgered this poor woman into adopting you?"

"I didn't badger-" Taking a deep calming breath, I start over, focusing on the more important details. "Being adopted would make him my step-brother not my half-brother. I tracked Shmi down and freed her because Anakin I were already half-brothers on his father's side. Adopting Shmi-"

"There was no father." Shmi interrupts, revealing an unexpected downside to having given her space over the past few days. Namely that I forgot to explain… anything much at all, now that I think about it. On the plus side, now I only have to do it once. Or twice, I suppose, since it'd be rude not to tell Anakin.

"Not in the messy traditional bodily fluids aplenty way, no." I nod my head in acknowledgement. "But my revival wasn't what Dark Plagueface's ritual was actually trying to accomplish." I gesture broadly at myself and then at Shmi's midsection. "Ironically he only discovered he'd actually succeeded in doing both shortly before his apprentice did as Sith Apprentices are wont to do and murdered him."

The three of them stare at me for a moment before Obi-Wan finally responds. "You're saying you believe Anakin was created via a Sith Lord's ritual and that you're brothers because that ritual also revived you. By accident no less."

"It's a lot more complica… eh, close enough, yeah."

"While I will admit my experience with such things is fairly limited, I don't believe that's quite how families work."

"Yeah, dude." Mara points at Obi-Wan while nodding. "That seems like kind of a stretch."

"Yes. I am… aware… of that. I get that Mother's opinions on Family don't really jive well with more standard species. She etched her opinions on Family pretty firmly into my skull–" I knock a fist against the side of my head, clicking my tongue. "–right next to where she carved 'Buffy sucks and we hates her!' and even I was still caught off guard by how hard she glomped onto Dawn despite having subconsciously done basically the same thing myself." Out of air, I let the nostalgic smile take over my face while I pause to take a breath. "But the precedent remains and given that I woke up to find that everything and everyone I ever knew was gone…" I switch over from nostalgic to my best 'this is fine' smile. "So yes, I know that I'm grasping at straws here, I just don't care."

"Carved?" Shmi asks in the resulting quiet, her imagination conjuring a vague and faceless image of a woman flaying the skin off of me with a knife. Everything showing enough detail to suggest Shmi isn't inventing the scene from whole cloth.

"Not physically." I shake my head. "I've just always found it hard to describe without using that metaphor. She used magically empowered hypnosis to, as I said, carve certain grooves into my father's thinking that I then inherited when she-."

"Hold up." Mara raises her hand. "Buffy was the deputy-chick, right?"

"Yes."

"Deputies are like… the assistant teachers at school, right?"

"I always preferred to use the word 'minion' as often as possible where Buffy was concerned, but otherwise yes."

"So your mom used magic to make you hate your own assistant?" Her face scrunches up in confusion. "Why?"

"Because… because she had a vision of my brother, who was definitely her favorite childe, falling in love with the blonde menace so hard that it drove him to suicide. That her solution was to make a brand new childe she was less attached to and throw me at her… is something I generally try very hard not to dwell on." I pinch the bridge of my nose in solidarity with baby-Obi-Wan. "Not that I didn't turn right around and shove our sister at her the moment I figured it all out, but..."

"That's…"

"Yeah. Story of my unlife." I shrug. "I also try very hard to believe the ingrained distaste for Buffy was her way of protecting me from her wiles as best she could." I sigh, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly as I do battle in my mind with all the pink elephants and purple fire trucks that I'm usually more successful at just not thinking about. "Can we all just agree that my currently tenuous grip on reality is what it is, and get a move on. Just because Obi-Wan refuses to tell us all where we're going next doesn't make this empty field on a planet I've never heard of any more riveting."

"Hey!" Mara stomps her foot, pointing at me. "Rude!"

"What? Are you from here?"

"Yeah!"

"Ah..." I nod in understanding. "My condolences. I take it that's why you're eloping with Obi-Wan?"

"We're not eloping." Obi-Wan rolls his eyes at me. Progress!

"Yeah!" Mara agrees.

"Which I would know," I nod agreeably, "if somebody would just tell me what's going on, but no…"

"...What's eloping?"

"It means escaping or running away." Obi-Wan pats her on the shoulder in case his explanation reminds her that she was trying to do just that prior to being distracted.

"Oh… yeah, no." Mara shakes her head, pointing a finger at Obi-Wan and a serious expression at me. "He's taking me home."

Obi-Wan's brief wince and the swirl of regret wafting off of him into the force paints an unfortunate picture when combined with the Force's tendency toward narratively satisfying coincidences. Taking pity on him, and more importantly wanting no part in the sort of post-op conversation I suspect he's going to have to have with Mara, I opt to just plow forward. "Strictly speaking, it usually means escaping or running away from your parents in order to get married against their wishes." I shrug, trying not to laugh as Mara suddenly gives Obi-Wan a thoughtful look. "But I can see how that context would get lost at the Temple given that whole Jedi thing you all have going on there."

While Mara is busy deciding if my Brother is marriage material, I meet his eyes and push across an image of the burning barn we plowed through during our landing along with a question. 'Home wouldn't happen to be a farm a couple kilometers… uh…' I start to look around for a moment before remembering that even if this place has landmarks, I wouldn't know them and settle for just nodding my head in vaguely the same direction the trail of smashed grass Sheila left in her wake goes. 'Thattaway?'

Obi-Wan startles, staring at me with an odd expression on his face but quickly remembers to at least nod back in the affirmative.

Well…

Buggerfuck.

Pointing emphatically at him for emphasis I push one last message across. 'For the record, that barn was on fire before I drove through it.'

My innocence thus established, I smile my best smile and rev the whirling-vortex-of-distraction engine back up to speed for the tiny human we're probably going to end up keeping now. "Yes, yes… he's very pretty."

Mara's response is high pitched and unintelligible, but from the red tint on her face as she looks around and realizes we're all looking at her, I assume it's meant to be either agreement or at least serves as an admission of guilt regarding her thoughts on the topic.

"And! He'll be just as pretty once we convince him to get on the damn boat and move on to convincing him to teach you how to fly the ship. Which…" I shift my focus back to Obi-Wan. "I'm like… 90% sure the camera looking thing attached to the Dread Machine is a holo-comm if you need to call the Council to ask permission first?"

"And you would just… let me do this?" Obi-Wan asks disbelievingly.

"...Yes?" I glance at Mara and then Shmi, but they don't seem to have any idea why Obi-Wan seems to think that bit is one of the weirdest parts of our day either.

Oh… right.

He's somehow still all hung up on that silly idea that this is a kidnapping.

I mean… fuck, at this point I'm starting to wish it was. I could have just tazed him and been done with it in that case.