p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"span style="font-size: medium;"span style="text-decoration: none;"emustrongChapter /strong/u/em/spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"emustrongseven/strong/u/em/spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"emustrong - /strong/u/em/spanspan style="text-decoration: none;"emustrongInterlude in Sunnydale/strong/u/em/span/span/span/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"span style="font-size: medium;"The washing machine had been changed again. Dawn turned on her heels and yelled: ""/span/span/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"span style="font-size: medium;"Stark naked, the blonde goddess entered the kitchen. Dawn was fuming. "How many times do I have to tell you that we like our washing machine just as it is?"/span/span/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"span style="font-size: medium;"Glory pouted; then she carelessly waved a hand. The group of imps that had been washing the dishes from the previous evening's meal vanished, and was replaced by the familiar rectangular machine with its Whirlpool brand, shaking and rattling as it did its native work./span/span/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""All right, all right," she said with the air of a frustrated child. "But if you want the ugly thing, you have to load it yourself. I get tired of it."br /br /Even Tara was at the point of exasperation. "Listen to her! Powerful enough to open and close a Hellmouth, but loading a washing machine tires her out!"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Well, it does. All the fussy little things about salt and detergent and rinsing all the dishes first."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Then Willow came in. "I'm sorry, dear. I understand your frustration. You are not tired, you are sick of all those fussy little things. And I know how much easier it is to do things by word of command, by the power of the spirits that obey us."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"With Willow's entrance, an extraordinary mood had settled on all three women. It was as if all the clashes and conflicts between them had suddenly found their logical end in her. Suddenly everything about each other that had troubled and annoyed each of them seemed to be, not lost, not corrected, but made as it were good and right. as it was taken into her. And yet, if someone from outside their household had heard their exchange, it would have seemed no more than commonplace, like the stereotyped admonitions of a mother to her children or from a boss to her employees. Willow continued: "But it is for your own good. I will not be here for ever, my dear," and here she caressed Glory's cheeks with her fingertips, "and when you come back to your own, and you are without me, I want you to know and understand how human beings live. I want you to know the little realities of their lives, because then you… will be again all of what you are."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"…./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"For a few years now, there had been a halo of mystery about the large house at 1630 Revello Drive. Young people from the local high school had long since known that the little lady who lived there with her mother and her sister was something special, and that during her last year there, she had been voted "Class Protector", though nobody wanted to discuss what that meant, or why it had been invented./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Among older people, their reputation was rather worse, especially since the handsome and popular mother of the family, Joyce Summers, had suddenly died, leaving behind two daughters, of whom only the "Class Protector" was even a legal adult. They had been joined by a shy, attractive blonde from out of town in her early twenties, Miss Maclay by name, a student at the local University of California campus, whom gossip described as a runaway from a back-of-beyond family, and (probably by the same token), homosexual. Willow Rosenberg, Buffy Summers' friend from high school, was also a frequent guest./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Nobody disliked Rosenberg, and Maclay was both too timid and too attractive to draw any real prejudice. However, there were ugly rumours about the household as a whole, possibly because of the men who visited it. There was a young man, English by the sound of him, whom nobody liked, with a sarcastic tongue, a plebeian accent, dyed silver hair and street thug outfits. Nobody knew where he lived or what he did, but he was often seen around the house in the evenings, and never anywhere else. Another dubious frequent guest at the house was Alex Harris, the layabout son of the town drunk, who was now working construction. And nobody could find a good reason for the other Englishman who haunted the place, , a former school librarian who now ran a peculiar little New Age store called The Magic Box. Mr. Giles was courteous and pleasant, but people did not understand why he was seen so often around a house full of girls of whom the oldest was half his age. And he a bachelor, too./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Legally, the house belonged to the late Joyce Summers, bought and paid for, and her daughters were her heirs and still resided there, so it was nobody's business who they had as guest or even to live with them. Bills were paid regularly and there was no obvious evidence of criminal or disorderly activity. Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay, were unarguably adult, though nobody was quite sure what their relationship with Buffy and Dawn Summers was./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Still, the child protection people had been concerned that teen-aged Dawn had nobody that they were sufficient to be in loco parentis. There had been inquiries made, Dawn and Buffy Summers had been interviewed, and then… nothing. The authorities had simply ceased to show any interest in the odd household of one teen-ager and one barely adult sister, with all their bizarre and unexplained friends./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"The household had then acquired yet another member, also young, female and gorgeous. Her name, supposedly, was Glory Summers, a cousin of Dawn's and Buffy's. She certainly shared their accent and attitude. On one of their rare appearances in Wilkins Mall, there had been a memorable scene. A group of young men had been there, chatting and laughing noisily. One of them had seen Glory Summers coming along, and, misled by her small red dress and evident lack of bra, had approached her. He started doing what he conceived to be flirting. She had let him talk on for a while, even answered once or twice. Then her hand reached out and twisted his nose, and she went "BEEEEP!"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"The boy yelped. Then, as his mind closed in on what had actually happened – on the incomprehensible thing that had actually happened – he went pale with rage, and for a second seemed about to assault the blonde. It was only then that the laughter of the blonde's friends drew his attention, and that of his friends, to them. And they recognized Dawn, Willow and Tara, each one of whom was laughing out of control. The boys went pale and almost ran away. Later they would have a quarrel about which one of them had been stupid enough not to notice that the blonde's dreaded friends./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"(But Glory had turned to Willow and asked, "Are you happy, beloved mistress?" And Willow had smiled and nodded. "You did not kill, mutilate or rape anyone. You just made them look ridiculous. That's good, my dear, that's good…." And Glory smiled joyfully.)/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"The last weird and downright inexplicable thing about 1630 Revello Drive was a rumour that ' daughter, the "Class Protector", had gone missing. What was inexplicable was that the rumour proved insistent and hard to kill off, even though Buffy Summers was repeatedly seen around town./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"At Willy's Alibi Room, the notorious dive in the bad part of town, people – and things other than people – had their own opinions. Willy himself did believe that Buffy Summers was gone, mainly because she had ceased to appear in his bar with urgent requests for information backed by very painful arguments. Not that that had made his life any easier, since almost as soon as he had realized that, he had received a visit from another young woman, that redhead whom he had seen with Summers around town. And she had put him through an experience he never wanted even to describe again. Compared with the redhead, Summers was downright civilized./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"…/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"The truth is that Sunnydale had gone through the most sinister and dangerous of its crises without even realizing it. A few people had had nightmares. A few people, out in the late night, had been drenched by the thunderstorm that Willow had conjured out of nowhere. But the troop of Glory's mind-destroyed victims had simply wandered off, without stopping to see any of the dire events that had followed, and only Buffy's friends and family had witnessed her attempted sacrifice, her disappearance, and Willow's terrible reaction. Dragons and monsters had raged in the sky above Sunnydale, an awful storm had sprung out of nowhere, the gates of death and Hell had opened and closed – and barely anyone in Sunnydale had even woken up. The following morning, they had found their streets and gardens drenched by Willow's storm, and just muttered: "Hunh. Musta rained last night."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Willow, as the storm she unnaturally started was slowly dying down at a natural rate, and as the terrible night began to fade into dawn, was trying to calm her friends down and encourage them to just go home. She was still wearing that dazzling dress that was, in some magical way, a recovering Glory; and that, itself, was hardly reassuring./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Look, nothing more will happen today. Honestly. You have nothing to fear… from me or anywhere else. I promise. Just let's all go home."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"A still-unnerved Spike was the first to leave. After all, the problem of Willow's ascension to godhood was possibly theoretical and certainly long-term, while the likely results of the very first beam of sunrise were getting uncomfortably probable and immediate. Willow took Dawn and Tara by their hands and started walking towards Dawn's home…./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"….Giles woke up to a blazing, vertical California sunshine. Without realizing it, he had collapsed and fallen asleep in the very spot he was when he watched Willow resurrect Glory and order the Hellmouth closed. The trembling tower built by insane people at Glory's command still stood in the middle of an open space, some sort of builders' merchant yard. It looked dangerous, but Giles reflected that if it had survived the shocks of the previous night, it was likely enough to last a little longer still. Next to him lay Xander and Anya, still asleep and softly snoring./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"He ached all over, in every muscle and joint. Sleeping on hard ground after collapsing in the wake of an exhausting night's struggle against the grimmest odds is no-one's idea of comfort, and having the sun beat on his face at the same time added probable sunburn to a charming total. He was starving and in urgent need of the toilet, and yet moving in any direction hurt. He needed to get himself standing and into motion slowly, carefully./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"As he was sitting up, he saw Xander, then Anya, waking up and, after a moment or two of being disoriented, realizing where they were. They quickly got on their feet. Ah, being young! He was still coaxing his aching limbs into motion. Still, there was one problem they all shared./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Mummy, I need to go potty real bad!" said Xander in a wiseacre tone. "The Magic Box is just down the road," answered Giles. "Let's go!"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"…../p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"After their urgent visit to the shop's toilet, they realized that the Magic Box had been open and in chaos all night. None of them felt like straightening it out or starting a day's work, but they put a few things in place and locked up before going home for some badly needed extra sleep./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"It was not until they met again that afternoon, at Giles' home, that they realized how peculiar that had been. To lie in the open for hours, asleep and helpless, was risky enough, but to have left the Magic Box open in the night, only to get back in carelessly the following day, without checking for uninvited guests, was madly dangerous. They wondered whether they had been somehow protected in their helplessness./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Willow, meanwhile, was turning her thoughts to those who had fallen victims of Glory's previous incarnation. Before Giles killed Glory and Willow resurrected her, the goddess had fed on the structure of human minds, leaving behind broken souls, people who, for want of a better word, were described as insane./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""We have to help them," said Willow. Glory, Tara and Dawn listened intently. "That is the first thing to do. There are 711 people whose mind-structures need restoring."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Glory shuddered, and tears sprang to her eyes. She knelt before Willow, and said: "If that is your will… Let it be done, beloved mistress."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"And Willow now showed that she was not at home with being a kind of goddess, and might never be. A divinity would have seen in advance how her worshipper would understand her words. "What? Oh, no, my dear. I'm not taking your life back from you. I love you as you are. Besides," she grinned, "I doubt there is enough essence left in you to restore more than two or three brains." She lifted the kneeling goddess in her arms and kissed her./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""No, what we need to do is set off a process that will restore their mental structures from the inside. Come with me, all of you. I will need your theurgy," (this to Glory), "your earth magic," (to Tara), "and the Key that opens world from world" (to Dawn)./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"In later days, none of the three women were able to describe what had been done with and through them. What remained in their memories, what their memories could interpret, had much to do with sex. Willow's power went throught the body, and the senses, and the powers, of each one of them, and it was like being made love to – it being made love to./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"("You know," Dawn had once said with a brooding tone, "if I had thought I would have to share a lover with any other woman, I'd probably have felt like scratching her eyes out. And now look…" Tara had just nodded; she was not the kind to scratch anyone's eyes, but she could feel where that feeling would come from. Glory said nothing.)/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"And through this sexual, sensual possession, deeply and desperately pleasurable to each of them, her magic reached out from world to world, touching, feeling, knowing, and, knowing, being able to affect. It took her hours to reach and recognize one of the minds she sought, and longer still to find the bases from which to start the rebuilding of its mental structure. The man was the same one who had begged Glory to spare him, saying that he had a wife and children; the blonde goddess remembered that moment with shame and horror, and wept uncontrollably as she felt her beloved mistress reaching through her to begin the knitting together of the soul she had shattered. And the nurse on duty in the psychiatric ward where he was being kept began, with increasing surprise and delight, to record a slow, inexplicable, bewildering recovery./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Once Willow had found the way to start the healing process, she was able to perform it with increasing speed and confidence. The only thing that slowed her down – to the extent that the work took her months instead of a few weeks – was the shattering effect each healing had on Glory. When, in her previous life, she had broken and eaten the structure of those minds, she had gained, each time, an intimate knowledge of who she was destroying, and she had not cared – she had, indeed, found joy and sensual pleasure in it. Now, with the knowledge of love given her by Willow, each experience of each ruined mind was accompanied by devastating guilt. Each time, the start of the healing process was followed by revulsion and uncontrollable tears, as Willow held Glory's naked, sobbing, shaking body, and kissed her, and made love to her, and took her pain on herself. It took four months to find all of Glory's victims and set off the restoration process, and each day had its share of grief, and horror, and shame. And yet, Willow could not take all this sum of suffering away from Glory, nor did Glory want her to. Shattered though she was, she would have found it even more intolerable, once the process had started, to leave any of those minds unhealed. It nearly broke her when she found that three of her victims had died and could no longer be cured./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Dawn and Tara perceived this process from a distance. Willow deliberately kept them away from Glory's inner turmoil, even as they worked together across the planes of reality, unwilling to share a burden that might break both women and which they had done nothing to deserve. But they knew enough of it that in days to come, if anyone were to say a bad thing about the blonde goddess, they would defend her./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"This was not the only thing that happened in those days, as Willow extended her power, through her lovers, into distant lands and other minds and, increasingly, other dimensions. One visit ended in Warren Mears kneeling on the floor of his own room, trembling with horror, and touching his arms again and again to be sure that his skin was there still. A man called Rack or Wrack was convinced to leave town, after a long chat with Willow, Glory and Tara. But in general, Sunnydale was quiet that summer, bewilderingly quiet. Vampires seemed to have lost interest in the sealed Hellmouth and its town. The only serious trouble was a brief, violent visit by a gang of biker demons, who were convinced by Willow to leave, when their bikes all had mechanical failures at the same time and then their trousers started falling down about their ankles, revealing singularly misshapen lower limbs and no underwear. Glory and Willow nearly choked themselves laughing, that time, while Tara blushed bright red with embarrassment./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"…./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"After the chaos and horror of the previous weeks, Xander found going back to work a positive relief. The comfortable details of designing and building a house, raising the framework, inserting brickwork and windows and doors, wiring and piping, laying down floors and inserting glass – these were all things he knew, that he could do with his eyes closed – well, no, not that, that would be a safety hazard, and a stupid one. A few months earlier, the foreman had sacked a man on the spot for lighting up to smoke while using an aerosol can of spray paint. Xander, on the whole, had approved. He would not have fired the guy, maybe, but he'd sure have given him one Hell of a talking-to. You had to remember that practically everything on a building site could kill you./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"At length the day's work tailed off. The foreman looked up from his toolbox, and called out time. Xander walked to the site hut. As he was taking his hard hat off, the manager and the foreman approached him./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Xander?" said the foreman./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Yes?"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""We've been talking, the boss and I. We want to be sure that you want to go on with this job."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""How do – ? No, forget it. Sure I will. I like the work."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""To be frank," said the manager, "you've got a rep for disappearing without warning. Though this is a weird town, and all. I guess what we are asking is whether we can expect you to come back every morning."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"For a second, Xander was stunned. Then he rallied./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""I know what you mean. Yeah, I will be comin' back. Besides, the town is getting quieter, they say."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""They do? That's good, if that's true."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Great. OK. So we're here to tell you that you're permanent now, and you get two bucks an hour raise. That OK with you?"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""You kidding? Of course it is. I love this work, and one day soon I want to get my own place. See you tomorrow mornin'?"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""See ya, guy."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"It was a long walk from the building site to his family's address, but Xander was young and in good shape, and did not even think about it. Of course, he was going to buy a car of some sort as soon as he could afford it, but meanwhile, Sunnydale was pleasant enough in the late summer afternoon, with people going home or walking their dogs, as the sun slowly moved towards the ocean horizon. He recognized a couple of people from school, and once, crossing a main road, he thought he saw – but naaaaah. What would his mother be doing with Willow?/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"As he approached his home, his mood sank. Going home was like running an obstace courw His father would be in, and it was always a toss-up whether he was going to be drunk and in an ugly mood. Xander was no longer the small, uncomprehending victim of his parents' alcoholic rages, but he still had fear of him built into his mind. He avoided him instinctively./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"But as he walked into the house, what he saw startled him. His father was in the front room, sitting on their old ragged sofa, his body slumped forwards, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. On the table in front of him was a single bottle of bourbon, cap still in place; and he was ing silently at it, almost as if meditating./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Xander had never seen his father in this kind of mood; and, while the fact that drunken abuse was apparently not in prospect, this strange new mood was itself, in a way, unsettling. He just quietly went to his room./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Later he heard his mom come in. He did not know why, but he had the impression that she and his father were having a long talk. He went to bed. Later, he woke up briefly in the middle of the night, and heard noises coming through the flimsy walls: thumping, creaking, and moans. The sounds were not hard to interpret, but he was so unused to the thought that it took him a few minutes to realize that his father and his mother were making love./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"…./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""She is not keeping her powers or her work hidden," said Giles to Quentin Travers one night as they discussed the rather terrifying events of the last few months. "Which might be seen as reassuring. As if she has nothing to hide. Which would be good, because if we or anyone ever have to resist her in any way for any reason at all... well, the prospects are not good. She is a goddess, and has another goddess and the Key to the Universe in her pocket – not only metaphorically. Even the evocation of great gods, in combination, might not be enough."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""In fact," said Travers grimly, "we are back to the days of Georg Faust, or of Adrian Leverkühn."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Just that."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""I've been looking it up, as far as I knew – they're not exactly well documented. Georg Faust…" - and then Travers was interrupted./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Hello, Giles. Good morning, ."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Even for these experienced sorcerers, it was an unsettling experience, as the voice came at once from everywhere, clear and somehow dominant. A second later, an image of Willow's face towered between them./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Uh… good morning, ."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""I realize that intruding in your private conversation like this is pretty rude, but I figured there was no time that would not be intrusive. And there is something you need to know… you and all the Council."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Please?" said Travers quietly./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""I've been considering the past and present of the Council, and of Slayers. And I think that, left to themselves, things would not be going well for you./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""For most of history, the vampire infestations you have been fighting have been confined to a few areas. Having one Slayer at all times was not ideal, but at least it could keep the enemy down to manageable numbers./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""But in the last couple of centuries, vampires have spread everywhere, all over the world, following Europe's political and mercantile expansion. One Slayer can only patrol one territory, so you have been forced to create actual underground armed forces to pursue vampires elsewhere. And I don't have to tell you that this is a very unsatisfactory situation."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Travers and Giles both nodded. "You cannot recruit the right kind of person in great numbers. The only people we can really trust are those who have already become freelance hunters, usually as a result of some personal tragedy, and even so, in spite of all the training and weapons we can give them… they tend to die. And all of it has to be done in secret, and that multiplies the difficulty," said Travers. "But I think you know that."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""And I take it that it's also rather expensive?"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Giles laughed bitterly. "Keeping clandestine operations going in five continents, sometimes six? You have no idea." Travers said nothing; his expression said it all. The Council had long been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, kept going mainly by the willingness of many people to work for free (and the universal belief that its resources and power were immense, a certainty that only Travers and other top mangment did not share)./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""The Slayer and her Watchers were set up seventy thousand years ago. Time to rejig the whole operation, wouldn't you say?"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"There was a silence. The two men waited to hear what the being before them would say./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""I made up my mind that all the potential Slayers across the world need to be activated. To become Slayers. From my work, I know there are exactly 2178 alive on Earth just now. A couple of thousand Slayers would put quite a different angle on the vampire problem."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""I… I'm sure they would… Are you sure – I mean, have you -?"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Willow's image smiled. "Hardly. Would it be nice, to just dump thousands of new slayers on you, to find at once, across the world, and recruit, and train? No, they will begin to appear in and around London in the next few weeks, and the revelations will slowly spread in concentric circles, further and further away. This should give you time to select new Watchers from among your own private troops, and organize support." Willow smiled cheekily. "I've also taken the liberty to nudge your shareholdings and your properties in the right direction, I mean, from the point of view of the Council's finances. Your... 'lucky streak'... won't last very long, but it should be enough to put the Council's finances on a better footing." She grinned with a mixture of shyness and cheek, looking suddenly like the nervous young student she had been. "If you have a patron goddess, she may as well have a yiddischer kopf." And then, more in earnest: "I will not be troubling you for long. One day soon, I will be gone, or so changed you will hardly know me. I may as well do what I can while I can."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"She vanished. Travers and Giles looked at each other, and turned each to his desk. There was much to do./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"…/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Xander had only begun to get used to his brand new, clean, dry parents, when they sprang another surprise on him. One fine summer evening, they waited for him to come back from work, and gave him the news – he was going to be a brother. His mother was pregnant./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"span style="font-size: medium;"The washing machine had been changed again. Dawn turned on her heels and yelled: ""/span/span/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"span style="font-size: medium;"Stark naked, the blonde goddess entered the kitchen. Dawn was fuming. "How many times do I have to tell you that we like our washing machine just as it is?"/span/span/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"span style="font-size: medium;"Glory pouted; then she carelessly waved a hand. The group of imps that had been washing the dishes from the previous evening's meal vanished, and was replaced by the familiar rectangular machine with its Whirlpool brand, shaking and rattling as it did its native work./span/span/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""All right, all right," she said with the air of a frustrated child. "But if you want the ugly thing, you have to load it yourself. I get tired of it."br /br /Even Tara was at the point of exasperation. "Listen to her! Powerful enough to open and close a Hellmouth, but loading a washing machine tires her out!"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Well, it does. All the fussy little things about salt and detergent and rinsing all the dishes first."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Then Willow came in. "I'm sorry, dear. I understand your frustration. You are not tired, you are sick of all those fussy little things. And I know how much easier it is to do things by word of command, by the power of the spirits that obey us."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"With Willow's entrance, an extraordinary mood had settled on all three women. It was as if all the clashes and conflicts between them had suddenly found their logical end in her. Suddenly everything about each other that had troubled and annoyed each of them seemed to be, not lost, not corrected, but made as it were good and right. as it was taken into her. And yet, if someone from outside their household had heard their exchange, it would have seemed no more than commonplace, like the stereotyped admonitions of a mother to her children or from a boss to her employees. Willow continued: "But it is for your own good. I will not be here for ever, my dear," and here she caressed Glory's cheeks with her fingertips, "and when you come back to your own, and you are without me, I want you to know and understand how human beings live. I want you to know the little realities of their lives, because then you… will be again all of what you are."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"…./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"For a few years now, there had been a halo of mystery about the large house at 1630 Revello Drive. Young people from the local high school had long since known that the little lady who lived there with her mother and her sister was something special, and that during her last year there, she had been voted "Class Protector", though nobody wanted to discuss what that meant, or why it had been invented./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Among older people, their reputation was rather worse, especially since the handsome and popular mother of the family, Joyce Summers, had suddenly died, leaving behind two daughters, of whom only the "Class Protector" was even a legal adult. They had been joined by a shy, attractive blonde from out of town in her early twenties, Miss Maclay by name, a student at the local University of California campus, whom gossip described as a runaway from a back-of-beyond family, and (probably by the same token), homosexual. Willow Rosenberg, Buffy Summers' friend from high school, was also a frequent guest./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Nobody disliked Rosenberg, and Maclay was both too timid and too attractive to draw any real prejudice. However, there were ugly rumours about the household as a whole, possibly because of the men who visited it. There was a young man, English by the sound of him, whom nobody liked, with a sarcastic tongue, a plebeian accent, dyed silver hair and street thug outfits. Nobody knew where he lived or what he did, but he was often seen around the house in the evenings, and never anywhere else. Another dubious frequent guest at the house was Alex Harris, the layabout son of the town drunk, who was now working construction. And nobody could find a good reason for the other Englishman who haunted the place, , a former school librarian who now ran a peculiar little New Age store called The Magic Box. Mr. Giles was courteous and pleasant, but people did not understand why he was seen so often around a house full of girls of whom the oldest was half his age. And he a bachelor, too./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Legally, the house belonged to the late Joyce Summers, bought and paid for, and her daughters were her heirs and still resided there, so it was nobody's business who they had as guest or even to live with them. Bills were paid regularly and there was no obvious evidence of criminal or disorderly activity. Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay, were unarguably adult, though nobody was quite sure what their relationship with Buffy and Dawn Summers was./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Still, the child protection people had been concerned that teen-aged Dawn had nobody that they were sufficient to be in loco parentis. There had been inquiries made, Dawn and Buffy Summers had been interviewed, and then… nothing. The authorities had simply ceased to show any interest in the odd household of one teen-ager and one barely adult sister, with all their bizarre and unexplained friends./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"The household had then acquired yet another member, also young, female and gorgeous. Her name, supposedly, was Glory Summers, a cousin of Dawn's and Buffy's. She certainly shared their accent and attitude. On one of their rare appearances in Wilkins Mall, there had been a memorable scene. A group of young men had been there, chatting and laughing noisily. One of them had seen Glory Summers coming along, and, misled by her small red dress and evident lack of bra, had approached her. He started doing what he conceived to be flirting. She had let him talk on for a while, even answered once or twice. Then her hand reached out and twisted his nose, and she went "BEEEEP!"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"The boy yelped. Then, as his mind closed in on what had actually happened – on the incomprehensible thing that had actually happened – he went pale with rage, and for a second seemed about to assault the blonde. It was only then that the laughter of the blonde's friends drew his attention, and that of his friends, to them. And they recognized Dawn, Willow and Tara, each one of whom was laughing out of control. The boys went pale and almost ran away. Later they would have a quarrel about which one of them had been stupid enough not to notice that the blonde's dreaded friends./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"(But Glory had turned to Willow and asked, "Are you happy, beloved mistress?" And Willow had smiled and nodded. "You did not kill, mutilate or rape anyone. You just made them look ridiculous. That's good, my dear, that's good…." And Glory smiled joyfully.)/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"The last weird and downright inexplicable thing about 1630 Revello Drive was a rumour that ' daughter, the "Class Protector", had gone missing. What was inexplicable was that the rumour proved insistent and hard to kill off, even though Buffy Summers was repeatedly seen around town./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"At Willy's Alibi Room, the notorious dive in the bad part of town, people – and things other than people – had their own opinions. Willy himself did believe that Buffy Summers was gone, mainly because she had ceased to appear in his bar with urgent requests for information backed by very painful arguments. Not that that had made his life any easier, since almost as soon as he had realized that, he had received a visit from another young woman, that redhead whom he had seen with Summers around town. And she had put him through an experience he never wanted even to describe again. Compared with the redhead, Summers was downright civilized./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"…/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"The truth is that Sunnydale had gone through the most sinister and dangerous of its crises without even realizing it. A few people had had nightmares. A few people, out in the late night, had been drenched by the thunderstorm that Willow had conjured out of nowhere. But the troop of Glory's mind-destroyed victims had simply wandered off, without stopping to see any of the dire events that had followed, and only Buffy's friends and family had witnessed her attempted sacrifice, her disappearance, and Willow's terrible reaction. Dragons and monsters had raged in the sky above Sunnydale, an awful storm had sprung out of nowhere, the gates of death and Hell had opened and closed – and barely anyone in Sunnydale had even woken up. The following morning, they had found their streets and gardens drenched by Willow's storm, and just muttered: "Hunh. Musta rained last night."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Willow, as the storm she unnaturally started was slowly dying down at a natural rate, and as the terrible night began to fade into dawn, was trying to calm her friends down and encourage them to just go home. She was still wearing that dazzling dress that was, in some magical way, a recovering Glory; and that, itself, was hardly reassuring./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Look, nothing more will happen today. Honestly. You have nothing to fear… from me or anywhere else. I promise. Just let's all go home."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"A still-unnerved Spike was the first to leave. After all, the problem of Willow's ascension to godhood was possibly theoretical and certainly long-term, while the likely results of the very first beam of sunrise were getting uncomfortably probable and immediate. Willow took Dawn and Tara by their hands and started walking towards Dawn's home…./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"….Giles woke up to a blazing, vertical California sunshine. Without realizing it, he had collapsed and fallen asleep in the very spot he was when he watched Willow resurrect Glory and order the Hellmouth closed. The trembling tower built by insane people at Glory's command still stood in the middle of an open space, some sort of builders' merchant yard. It looked dangerous, but Giles reflected that if it had survived the shocks of the previous night, it was likely enough to last a little longer still. Next to him lay Xander and Anya, still asleep and softly snoring./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"He ached all over, in every muscle and joint. Sleeping on hard ground after collapsing in the wake of an exhausting night's struggle against the grimmest odds is no-one's idea of comfort, and having the sun beat on his face at the same time added probable sunburn to a charming total. He was starving and in urgent need of the toilet, and yet moving in any direction hurt. He needed to get himself standing and into motion slowly, carefully./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"As he was sitting up, he saw Xander, then Anya, waking up and, after a moment or two of being disoriented, realizing where they were. They quickly got on their feet. Ah, being young! He was still coaxing his aching limbs into motion. Still, there was one problem they all shared./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Mummy, I need to go potty real bad!" said Xander in a wiseacre tone. "The Magic Box is just down the road," answered Giles. "Let's go!"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"…../p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"After their urgent visit to the shop's toilet, they realized that the Magic Box had been open and in chaos all night. None of them felt like straightening it out or starting a day's work, but they put a few things in place and locked up before going home for some badly needed extra sleep./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"It was not until they met again that afternoon, at Giles' home, that they realized how peculiar that had been. To lie in the open for hours, asleep and helpless, was risky enough, but to have left the Magic Box open in the night, only to get back in carelessly the following day, without checking for uninvited guests, was madly dangerous. They wondered whether they had been somehow protected in their helplessness./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Willow, meanwhile, was turning her thoughts to those who had fallen victims of Glory's previous incarnation. Before Giles killed Glory and Willow resurrected her, the goddess had fed on the structure of human minds, leaving behind broken souls, people who, for want of a better word, were described as insane./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""We have to help them," said Willow. Glory, Tara and Dawn listened intently. "That is the first thing to do. There are 711 people whose mind-structures need restoring."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Glory shuddered, and tears sprang to her eyes. She knelt before Willow, and said: "If that is your will… Let it be done, beloved mistress."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"And Willow now showed that she was not at home with being a kind of goddess, and might never be. A divinity would have seen in advance how her worshipper would understand her words. "What? Oh, no, my dear. I'm not taking your life back from you. I love you as you are. Besides," she grinned, "I doubt there is enough essence left in you to restore more than two or three brains." She lifted the kneeling goddess in her arms and kissed her./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""No, what we need to do is set off a process that will restore their mental structures from the inside. Come with me, all of you. I will need your theurgy," (this to Glory), "your earth magic," (to Tara), "and the Key that opens world from world" (to Dawn)./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"In later days, none of the three women were able to describe what had been done with and through them. What remained in their memories, what their memories could interpret, had much to do with sex. Willow's power went throught the body, and the senses, and the powers, of each one of them, and it was like being made love to – it being made love to./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"("You know," Dawn had once said with a brooding tone, "if I had thought I would have to share a lover with any other woman, I'd probably have felt like scratching her eyes out. And now look…" Tara had just nodded; she was not the kind to scratch anyone's eyes, but she could feel where that feeling would come from. Glory said nothing.)/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"And through this sexual, sensual possession, deeply and desperately pleasurable to each of them, her magic reached out from world to world, touching, feeling, knowing, and, knowing, being able to affect. It took her hours to reach and recognize one of the minds she sought, and longer still to find the bases from which to start the rebuilding of its mental structure. The man was the same one who had begged Glory to spare him, saying that he had a wife and children; the blonde goddess remembered that moment with shame and horror, and wept uncontrollably as she felt her beloved mistress reaching through her to begin the knitting together of the soul she had shattered. And the nurse on duty in the psychiatric ward where he was being kept began, with increasing surprise and delight, to record a slow, inexplicable, bewildering recovery./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Once Willow had found the way to start the healing process, she was able to perform it with increasing speed and confidence. The only thing that slowed her down – to the extent that the work took her months instead of a few weeks – was the shattering effect each healing had on Glory. When, in her previous life, she had broken and eaten the structure of those minds, she had gained, each time, an intimate knowledge of who she was destroying, and she had not cared – she had, indeed, found joy and sensual pleasure in it. Now, with the knowledge of love given her by Willow, each experience of each ruined mind was accompanied by devastating guilt. Each time, the start of the healing process was followed by revulsion and uncontrollable tears, as Willow held Glory's naked, sobbing, shaking body, and kissed her, and made love to her, and took her pain on herself. It took four months to find all of Glory's victims and set off the restoration process, and each day had its share of grief, and horror, and shame. And yet, Willow could not take all this sum of suffering away from Glory, nor did Glory want her to. Shattered though she was, she would have found it even more intolerable, once the process had started, to leave any of those minds unhealed. It nearly broke her when she found that three of her victims had died and could no longer be cured./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Dawn and Tara perceived this process from a distance. Willow deliberately kept them away from Glory's inner turmoil, even as they worked together across the planes of reality, unwilling to share a burden that might break both women and which they had done nothing to deserve. But they knew enough of it that in days to come, if anyone were to say a bad thing about the blonde goddess, they would defend her./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"This was not the only thing that happened in those days, as Willow extended her power, through her lovers, into distant lands and other minds and, increasingly, other dimensions. One visit ended in Warren Mears kneeling on the floor of his own room, trembling with horror, and touching his arms again and again to be sure that his skin was there still. A man called Rack or Wrack was convinced to leave town, after a long chat with Willow, Glory and Tara. But in general, Sunnydale was quiet that summer, bewilderingly quiet. Vampires seemed to have lost interest in the sealed Hellmouth and its town. The only serious trouble was a brief, violent visit by a gang of biker demons, who were convinced by Willow to leave, when their bikes all had mechanical failures at the same time and then their trousers started falling down about their ankles, revealing singularly misshapen lower limbs and no underwear. Glory and Willow nearly choked themselves laughing, that time, while Tara blushed bright red with embarrassment./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"…./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"After the chaos and horror of the previous weeks, Xander found going back to work a positive relief. The comfortable details of designing and building a house, raising the framework, inserting brickwork and windows and doors, wiring and piping, laying down floors and inserting glass – these were all things he knew, that he could do with his eyes closed – well, no, not that, that would be a safety hazard, and a stupid one. A few months earlier, the foreman had sacked a man on the spot for lighting up to smoke while using an aerosol can of spray paint. Xander, on the whole, had approved. He would not have fired the guy, maybe, but he'd sure have given him one Hell of a talking-to. You had to remember that practically everything on a building site could kill you./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"At length the day's work tailed off. The foreman looked up from his toolbox, and called out time. Xander walked to the site hut. As he was taking his hard hat off, the manager and the foreman approached him./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Xander?" said the foreman./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Yes?"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""We've been talking, the boss and I. We want to be sure that you want to go on with this job."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""How do – ? No, forget it. Sure I will. I like the work."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""To be frank," said the manager, "you've got a rep for disappearing without warning. Though this is a weird town, and all. I guess what we are asking is whether we can expect you to come back every morning."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"For a second, Xander was stunned. Then he rallied./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""I know what you mean. Yeah, I will be comin' back. Besides, the town is getting quieter, they say."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""They do? That's good, if that's true."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Great. OK. So we're here to tell you that you're permanent now, and you get two bucks an hour raise. That OK with you?"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""You kidding? Of course it is. I love this work, and one day soon I want to get my own place. See you tomorrow mornin'?"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""See ya, guy."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"It was a long walk from the building site to his family's address, but Xander was young and in good shape, and did not even think about it. Of course, he was going to buy a car of some sort as soon as he could afford it, but meanwhile, Sunnydale was pleasant enough in the late summer afternoon, with people going home or walking their dogs, as the sun slowly moved towards the ocean horizon. He recognized a couple of people from school, and once, crossing a main road, he thought he saw – but naaaaah. What would his mother be doing with Willow?/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"As he approached his home, his mood sank. Going home was like running an obstace courw His father would be in, and it was always a toss-up whether he was going to be drunk and in an ugly mood. Xander was no longer the small, uncomprehending victim of his parents' alcoholic rages, but he still had fear of him built into his mind. He avoided him instinctively./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"But as he walked into the house, what he saw startled him. His father was in the front room, sitting on their old ragged sofa, his body slumped forwards, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. On the table in front of him was a single bottle of bourbon, cap still in place; and he was ing silently at it, almost as if meditating./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Xander had never seen his father in this kind of mood; and, while the fact that drunken abuse was apparently not in prospect, this strange new mood was itself, in a way, unsettling. He just quietly went to his room./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Later he heard his mom come in. He did not know why, but he had the impression that she and his father were having a long talk. He went to bed. Later, he woke up briefly in the middle of the night, and heard noises coming through the flimsy walls: thumping, creaking, and moans. The sounds were not hard to interpret, but he was so unused to the thought that it took him a few minutes to realize that his father and his mother were making love./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"…./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""She is not keeping her powers or her work hidden," said Giles to Quentin Travers one night as they discussed the rather terrifying events of the last few months. "Which might be seen as reassuring. As if she has nothing to hide. Which would be good, because if we or anyone ever have to resist her in any way for any reason at all... well, the prospects are not good. She is a goddess, and has another goddess and the Key to the Universe in her pocket – not only metaphorically. Even the evocation of great gods, in combination, might not be enough."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""In fact," said Travers grimly, "we are back to the days of Georg Faust, or of Adrian Leverkühn."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Just that."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""I've been looking it up, as far as I knew – they're not exactly well documented. Georg Faust…" - and then Travers was interrupted./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Hello, Giles. Good morning, ."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Even for these experienced sorcerers, it was an unsettling experience, as the voice came at once from everywhere, clear and somehow dominant. A second later, an image of Willow's face towered between them./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Uh… good morning, ."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""I realize that intruding in your private conversation like this is pretty rude, but I figured there was no time that would not be intrusive. And there is something you need to know… you and all the Council."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""Please?" said Travers quietly./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""I've been considering the past and present of the Council, and of Slayers. And I think that, left to themselves, things would not be going well for you./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""For most of history, the vampire infestations you have been fighting have been confined to a few areas. Having one Slayer at all times was not ideal, but at least it could keep the enemy down to manageable numbers./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""But in the last couple of centuries, vampires have spread everywhere, all over the world, following Europe's political and mercantile expansion. One Slayer can only patrol one territory, so you have been forced to create actual underground armed forces to pursue vampires elsewhere. And I don't have to tell you that this is a very unsatisfactory situation."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Travers and Giles both nodded. "You cannot recruit the right kind of person in great numbers. The only people we can really trust are those who have already become freelance hunters, usually as a result of some personal tragedy, and even so, in spite of all the training and weapons we can give them… they tend to die. And all of it has to be done in secret, and that multiplies the difficulty," said Travers. "But I think you know that."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""And I take it that it's also rather expensive?"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Giles laughed bitterly. "Keeping clandestine operations going in five continents, sometimes six? You have no idea." Travers said nothing; his expression said it all. The Council had long been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, kept going mainly by the willingness of many people to work for free (and the universal belief that its resources and power were immense, a certainty that only Travers and other top mangment did not share)./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""The Slayer and her Watchers were set up seventy thousand years ago. Time to rejig the whole operation, wouldn't you say?"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"There was a silence. The two men waited to hear what the being before them would say./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""I made up my mind that all the potential Slayers across the world need to be activated. To become Slayers. From my work, I know there are exactly 2178 alive on Earth just now. A couple of thousand Slayers would put quite a different angle on the vampire problem."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;""I… I'm sure they would… Are you sure – I mean, have you -?"/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Willow's image smiled. "Hardly. Would it be nice, to just dump thousands of new slayers on you, to find at once, across the world, and recruit, and train? No, they will begin to appear in and around London in the next few weeks, and the revelations will slowly spread in concentric circles, further and further away. This should give you time to select new Watchers from among your own private troops, and organize support." Willow smiled cheekily. "I've also taken the liberty to nudge your shareholdings and your properties in the right direction, I mean, from the point of view of the Council's finances. Your... 'lucky streak'... won't last very long, but it should be enough to put the Council's finances on a better footing." She grinned with a mixture of shyness and cheek, looking suddenly like the nervous young student she had been. "If you have a patron goddess, she may as well have a yiddischer kopf." And then, more in earnest: "I will not be troubling you for long. One day soon, I will be gone, or so changed you will hardly know me. I may as well do what I can while I can."/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"She vanished. Travers and Giles looked at each other, and turned each to his desk. There was much to do./p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"…/p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;" /p
p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"Xander had only begun to get used to his brand new, clean, dry parents, when they sprang another surprise on him. One fine summer evening, they waited for him to come back from work, and gave him the news – he was going to be a brother. His mother was pregnant./p
