Disclaimer: I own nothing here you recognise (and depending on what fandom drew your interest to this fic, I may not own some things you don't recognise); you know how it goes.

Feedback: Always appreciated

The Guardians of Magic

After everything else she had experienced since becoming Buffy's friend, Willow knew for a fact that this was the most terrifying thing she had ever experienced, even if it was simultaneously the most incredible thing that had ever happened to her. Being dragged to a whole other reality with only Angel as familiar company was terrifying in its own way, but there was something to be said for the idea that she was apparently going to be a particularly powerful witch in the future.

On the other hand, it was a bit annoying that she'd been drawn into this mess before she became the super-witch she was apparently destined to be, and she wished she could actually understand why this Doctor Strange guy had pulled them together without bringing them together at their best, but she supposed they'd just have to sort this mess out and try and get the answers then. As it was, right now she was focused on trying to go over some of the files that Vision had been able to access from the Empirikuul database thanks to a computer that had been found in one of the many drawers in this place, even if the science of some of these things made no real sense to her.

She had been doing a bit of training with Paige earlier, but since Paige had a few other 'kids' to help out, it had been decided that it would be best for her to spend some time with Willow, Mildred, and Harry and Ginny in a more one-on-one dynamic, based on their different styles of magic. In practical terms, since Harry was more experienced, he'd begun giving Ginny a few pointers, leaving Paige to focus on Mildred, which left Willow free to explore her other talents. Studying the available data was relatively straightforward at this point, but it was good practice in case something came up where she had to do something other than use her magic against these people.

She wasn't sure if she should be dealing with some kind of racial-religious memory after being stuck in a position that evoked memories of stories she'd heard about Jews struggling to survive in Nazi Germany, but right now Willow was just focusing on finding some way to contribute to this team. With Angel to handle the physical side of things and so many other more obviously powerful witches and wizards available (along with whatever Billy would be classified as), she felt like she had more potential than actual skill at this point, and didn't want to come across as the weak link. Nick and Emma were going over some possible plans of attack for the future, and Bo, Kenzi, Dave and Tommy were all doing their own kinds of training, leaving Willow to work on what made her feel more comfortable.

Maybe it was a mistake to focus on her computer skills rather than her magic at the moment, but Willow wanted to feel like she was making herself useful, and whatever she'd (apparently) become in the future her computer skills were her best asset right now. Vision had shown her how to access the backdoor he'd created in the Empirikuul's network, so at least she was able to get a better feel for the scope of what they were up against, but what she saw wasn't exactly encouraging. A good portion of the information available focused on the founder's anti-magic propaganda, going on about the 'danger' of magic and how anyone using it would be corrupted by that power and would have to be killed to stop them unleashing more dangerous powers on the world. There were some details about the scale of the military offensive the founder had planned for going against their next target, but Willow didn't understand enough about the technology involved or military strategy to understand what they were dealing with.

Willow supposed the propaganda would be convincing to someone who grew up hearing that magic was dangerous, but for her, she liked to think that she'd be open-minded enough to ask questions about this kind of thing even if she had grown up in this world. It put her uncomfortably in mind of Mildred's earlier question about whether they had the right to go against these people when most of these soldiers genuinely thought they were doing the right thing. Killing vampires and demons who just wanted to kill people because that was what they did was one thing, but this…

"You all right?"

"Mmm?" Willow looked up in surprise at the voice, only relaxing when she realised it was Nick (a part of her still felt like she should call him 'Detective Burkhardt', but he'd already said there was no need for that if they were working together). "Yeah, I guess; it's just… what Mildred said about how we're proving these people right…"

"I get what you mean," Nick admitted, sitting down at another chair close to her. "I've had to deal with that a few times back home; most of the wesen I meet have never even seen a Grimm before me and only heard stories, so I've had a few cases where the people I'm trying to help are baffled I'm not just cutting their heads off because of what they are. Hell, I read one diary where an ancestor talked about how easy it was to kill a species of wesen that he knew were peaceful…"

He shook his head and gave Willow an awkward smile. "I guess my point is that sometimes we don't have any good ways to deal with prejudice, but at the same time, sometimes those prejudices are valid. If we don't at least try and defend ourselves from the people who are actively trying to kill us…"

"Yeah, no point letting ourselves get killed just because we're worried about proving these people right," Willow nodded, sighing in frustration as she sat back. "It's just… I mean, most demons I end up facing back home aren't interested in anything more than killing people or being evil for the sake of it; how can anyone think we're like that?"

"Like wesen and my ancestors, the bad ones get all the press," Nick observed. "Sad fact of life when you get down to it; people notice the extreme cases more than the ones who don't do anything wrong."

"Yeah, I guess-" Willow began, before something shifted on the screen in front of her. Nick and Willow jerked back in shock as the computer let out a strange screeching sound before an orange glowing orb thing appeared in the middle of the screen, replacing the data Willow had been looking at.

"We have been attacked!" Vision's voice said, the orb-thing pulsing with a strange blue light as it spoke. "We're captured; follow my signal-!"

The strange message cut out as soon as it had started, but Willow noticed a new icon on the desktop that seemed to be a video file. Willow only had to move the mouse to hover over the new icon as Nick called out to the rest of the Guardians to join them, the group gathering around the screen as Willow played the short message again.

"OK," Tommy nodded in acknowledgement as he looked around at the others, an apprehensive expression on his face. "That… that's not good, huh?"

"We send in the powerhouses to give these guys a bloody nose and our most powerful members got captured?" Kenzi glared at the young man in green. "I don't see how that's ever a good thing, T-boy!"

"OK," Willow said, eyes narrowing as she opened another window and studied some of the new data. "This isn't the kind of thing I'm used to looking at, but from what I can tell… looking at the background data for Vision's transmission, it looks like what we were sent was the result of a microburst."

"Microburst?" Bo asked.

"Basically Vision only had a fraction of a second to send us a message, but because his mind moves faster than most people he was able to send us more data than would normally be in that microsecond," Willow explained, before her forehead furrowed. "The problem is that given what we've seen him do… if he only had this much time to send us a warning, something must have attacked him really quickly."

"So whatever captured him is probably pretty powerful," Emma observed with a grim nod. "Well, that isn't encouraging…"

"Does it change anything?" Dave pointed out. "I don't know you about you guys, but I went into a situation when I knew I'd be facing a bunch of powerful sorcerers when I thought I'd lost the only way I could perform magic."

"In other words, if we're going to at least try and stop these guys it doesn't matter how powerful they are," Nick nodded at the young man before he looked around the room. "If we have to do this, we should be practical about it. We can't all go after the others at once, but we need to be ready to hit them hard if we're going to rescue the others."

"And how do we even find them?" Tommy said. "We know where they were going, but I somehow doubt that the Empirikuul will be holding them at that military base…"

"I might be able to answer that; just give me a moment…" Willow said, turning her attention to a search bar in the bottom of the screen. This computer was a lot thinner than what she had been working on back at school, and it had such sharp graphics that she was fairly sure it came from some not-too-distant future from her perspective, but the system seemed fairly self-intuitive, and Vision was obviously good with computers if he was a machine himself (if Moloch could make a body for himself, Willow was fairly sure an actual machine could do a lot better than a demon who'd gotten an unconventional upgrade). If Vision could send her a message, she had a theory that he'd managed to set up a couple of other things in the process…

"Got it," she grinned, as she opened a particular program, which swiftly displayed a map of what she would assume was the city they were currently in, with two particular areas highlighted.

"What's that?" Paige asked.

"A 'Find Vision' program, apparently," Willow grinned at the woman who was apparently her Whitelighter (and why couldn't she have someone like that back in her home reality?). "He didn't just send us the message; his comment about following his signal gave me the idea to double-check the laptop, and it looks like he also wrote and sent us this program so that we could home in on his exact location."

"So… we're here in this warehouse, and he is…" Dave leaned over, his finger moving from the dot that indicated their current location to another dot in the heart of what looked like a rather large building in the centre of the city. "Yeah, that's not encouraging…"

"Which is why we kept you and Paige back in particular," Nick pointed out. "She can get us in there-"

"No pressure, huh?"

"You said yourself you're basically Merlin's heir in your world." Nick directed a firm state in Dave's direction. "I'm not expecting you to break them out single-handedly, but we have to strike hard and be ready for anything."

"Uh… on that topic…" Willow put in, hoping that the idea that had just occurred to her wasn't too much of a stretch, "if we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket again, I may have an idea for how we can give this another go…"

Considering that the world she'd grown up in was apparently the 'World Without Magic', Emma had been dealing with a lot of it over the last few days alone, and had to wonder if she'd ever get used to it. The spell Dave, Paige and Willow had put together to imitate the 'shield' Vision had used to protect them from being found by the Empirikuul's magic detectors should protect them long enough to find the rest of the team, but the idea that she had to worry about something like that on this scale…

She wasn't against the idea of fighting the Empirikuul, considering that she didn't like the implications of an entire society that would basically destroy the family she'd only just found just because they came from a world of magic, but she wasn't sure if she was ready to go up against a whole empire. She was glad that she wasn't expected to deal with something this big on her own, but it was still unnerving to go from having resolved the destiny she'd only just accepted to be forced to confront a different kind of challenge.

As the white light of Paige's orbs faded from around her to reveal the dark corridor that had been chosen as their target, Emma allowed herself a quick glance around to confirm that the rest of the current strike force were here. As well as herself and Paige, Nick, Angel, Bo, Dave and Tommy had also come along. Willow and Kenzi stayed with Harry, Ginny and Mildred in case they needed to set up another rescue attempt if this one didn't work, even if Emma had a feeling she wasn't the only one who wanted to keep the kids out of danger if they didn't need to be 'in the field'.

"We're in," Paige said, as everyone else took their hands off her arms. Once they'd identified where Vision had been taken, obtaining a basic plan of the building wasn't too difficult thanks to the previously-established backdoor to the Empirikuul network, but there had still been the risk that they'd run into some kind of security force immediately after arrival.

"OK," Nick said, as the group checked the weapons hanging at their sides. Tommy had left his morpher behind to be on the safe side, but he and Paige had confirmed that she could call for it if they needed the boost, and he was satisfied that his hand-to-hand skills would be enough. Dave was also unarmed, but the rest had chosen to bring swords or maces in case they needed something extra for this fight. "How far do we have to go from here?"

"It should be… that way," Paige indicated the relevant path. "A couple of corridors, but then we get to the main hall and it's fairly straightforward."

"Let's go," Angel nodded as he stepped forward to take the lead. A part of Emma disliked the idea of putting someone else in harm's way, but all agreed that it made sense for Angel to take point at this stage; so long as nobody was armed with wooden weapons or aimed for his heart directly, he was basically the safest of them all from any attempt to attack him.

The walk out of the corridor where they had arrived was at least straightforward, and their trip down the next corridor was just as simple, but Angel halted as they came up to the door at the end of the corridor.

"What?" Nick asked.

"People," Angel responded as he indicated the door.

"And I take it they're between us and… the others?" Dave asked.

"I'm not exactly a bloodhound, but I'm fairly sure nobody on the other side of this door is someone I've already met," Angel said. "Everyone smells human, but when we're in a society that's basically trained to fight magic without magic…"

"We should assume the worst," Nick nodded in understanding as he drew the sword he'd picked out from the trailer and glanced over at the others. "Once we're through the door, hit them hard and fast; Paige, Dave, keep it to hand-to-hand unless we have to escalate."

Once everyone had nodded in understanding and drawn their weapons, Angel shifted to his 'vamp face' (as Willow had called it) and kicked the door down, leading the charge into the next room. Emma was briefly surprised to see a collection of people in relatively casual clothing, rather than the Empirikuul armour they had seen so far, but the way these people drew their weapons and stood up was enough to confirm that they were dealing with people prepared for a fight. Angel took an arrow close to the chest from a tall dark-skinned man in rough clothes before the rest of the room or any of the other Guardians could react, but he just pulled it out and sniffed at the arrow in surprise.

"Blood?" He looked sceptically at the other man. "You get what I am, right? Did you honestly think that would do anything?"

"It's dead man's blood; that should hurt you!" the man protested even as he and the others pulled out various other weapons.

"It hurts your vampires, maybe," Paige stepped forward with a slight smirk. "But obviously you didn't think about how we have a vampire who doesn't follow those rules."

"And we have more options ourselves," another man said, stepping forward as his skin seemed to change into metal, his gaze fixed on Angel. "If you're here for your associates, can you save us all time and surrender?"

In response Angel charged forward, forcing the metal man back from the impact. Judging by the way the other man basically flailed his arms to try and force Angel off, Emma guessed that he didn't have much in the way of actual training in how to fight, but he was clearly strong enough to keep Angel off-balance. Emma saw Tommy engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a blonde woman in a tight white costume, while Dave was basically being hit by another guy in flannel so that he was forced to defend himself physically rather than with his magic, before a dark-skinned woman in surprisingly casual clothing stepped forward to face Emma directly.

"So," the woman said with a bitter edge to her voice, "you got dragged into this shitshow, Swan?"

"What?" Emma looked at the woman in confusion. "Do I… have we met?"

"You could say that," the woman glared at her with the kind of hostility that seemed especially personal. "I came to your town to make sure magic never threatened innocent people, and you and your freaky family acted as though you were the 'good' ones when you ruined lives just by coming to our world!"

"Really?" Emma said, suddenly wondering if this was another example of the time-travel situation where Doctor Strange had apparently recruited them from the future. "One isolated town 'ruined your life'?"

"We have a righteous duty to destroy-!" the woman began, before Emma punched her in the face.

"OK, I have no idea who you are, and I don't care," the sheriff of Storeybooke informed the other woman, her arms raised in anticipation of another attack. "Just tell me if you're going to make this easy on both of us and stand down-"

"Never!" the woman yelled as she lunged at Emma, only for Emma to grab the woman's outstretched arm and throw her into the nearest wall. Emma wasn't sure what kind of connection this woman had with her world, but she seemed to be angry about something, which meant that she was making more than a few mistakes in the fight. Emma wasn't sure if this woman had been brought here because she had skills outside of fighting or if she was just having an off day, but either way she wasn't going to complain about an easy win. She glimpsed Nick struggling with a purple-skinned woman (did she really have three breasts?) while Tommy was still holding his own against the woman in white, and the rest of the team were doing a fair job fending off the other hunters. Dave seemed to be fighting hand-to-hand rather than using his magic, but Emma guessed that he didn't want to use any spells because he was too close to the rest of the group. She was about to move over to help Dave clear the area around himself, but a new threat soon made itself clear when a large bald man in brown leather stepped forward and flames burst from his weapon to fill the room above their heads.

Forced to abandon their fights, Emma and the rest of the team dived backwards for safety before the flames could strike them, while their own opponents retreated in the other direction as though this was some kind of pre-arranged combat manoeuvre. Even Angel was forced to back away from his fight with the metal man, although Emma glimpsed Tommy making an elaborate handstand/somersault backwards to avoid both the flamethrower and a final kick from the woman in white. Dave managed to # disperse the flames with some kind of spell, but by the time he had done that Emma realised that the fiery assault had forced her and the rest of her allies into the same corner of the room. She was about to call out a warning to scatter when a man in a blue suit of some kind of armour stepped forward and raised his arms to fire some kind of energy weapon at the assembled group. Dave raised his hands as though trying to create a barrier, and Angel and Bo moved forward to try and take the brunt of the impact, but Emma felt the blast even when their efforts, feeling a moment of agony mixed in with the scream of her new allies before she and the others all fell to the ground.

"Take them to the Chamber," Emma heard someone- one of their attackers?- say, the sheriff's own fight for consciousness already faltering. "I hear that the Imperator wants to make these ones confront their sins himself…"