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The Guardians of Magic
"Oh thank God…" Willow felt like slumping down to the floor from sheer relief when a burst of flame and a series of white lights vanished to reveal the rest of the Guardians of Magic had returned to the trailer. "You're back…"
"Thanks to you," Paige said, smiling over at Willow as she waved a finger between their heads. "Neat little spell you found there, Will."
"I… well, it just… whatever works, right?" Willow smiled at her Whitelighter- was it fair to think of Paige that way?- as she walked over to help some of the others get comfortable.
"Well," Kenzi muttered as she slumped against the wall despite Bo's efforts to keep her standing, "at least we know we're getting these guys worried."
"Yeah," Nick nodded at the young woman. "The telepathic Nazi being called in to help attack us sounded like that was something they don't do that often."
"Telepathic Nazi?" Willow repeated anxiously. "That's a thing?"
"He was apparently from some world where the Nazis won the Second World War and has been working with the Empirikuul in certain cases," Nick explained, his expression grim as he carefully walked Billy towards another chair. The boy, Emma and Wanda all appeared to be particularly shaky, although the others seemed to be doing better; Willow guessed it was because the rest of the group had some kind of physical enhancement as part of their magical abilities. "The people interrogating me suggested they wanted to try and recruit me, but they… didn't really have a good argument for it."
"They wanted to recruit you?" Dave looked at Nick in surprise. "I thought the whole point of this empire was that they hated all magic?"
"Apparently my family are a bit of a grey area as our whole thing is fighting wesen rather than doing magic ourselves," Nick shrugged. "I soon made it clear I wasn't interested in the offer, particularly when they were torturing the rest of you already, but it's a good thing we had other plans to fall back on."
"Where did you even find that spell, anyway?" Angel looked curiously over at Willow. "I mean, I get that we don't exactly talk much, but Buffy said-"
"I… don't know."
"You don't know what?" Bo looked uncertainly at Willow.
"Where I… learned that spell," Willow looked awkwardly around the room, feeling as though she was telling a group of students that she'd cheated on a particular test. "I just… when we were working out a plan, I realised that I knew a spell that I could use in this situation… but I don't know how I knew that spell…"
"As in you forgot where you read it-?" Tommy began.
"As in I know I was never aware of that spell before now," Willow said firmly. "I've been reading Giles's books and practicing a few spells, but I definitely never read about a mind-reading spell like that."
"I… well, it's kind of the same here," Harry put in, holding up his wand.
"You?" Emma looked curiously at Harry. "You mean with that… ghost stag spell?"
"The Patronus Charm," Harry nodded. "I never heard of it before I cast it, but it was like… like I knew how to do it…."
"And you couldn't have just read about it somewhere before now?" Nick asked.
"Magic is not that simple," Dave said with a firm shake of his head. "I get that I have a different style of magic to the rest of you, but even I need a bit of time to properly picture what I want to happen before I can do something complicated first time out."
"And making up your own spells needs a bit of work," Paige put in. "I've had to write a few vanquishing spells since I joined my sisters, but it took a while to get something that felt right, and I'm pretty sure Harry and Willow's magic is a bit more involved than my world's rhyming pattern anyway."
"So… some of us are suddenly doing spells we did not know about?" Wanda asked, still shaky on her feet even as she looked anxiously around the room. "What is… that about?"
"Well, at least we know it can't be the Empirikuul," Angel put in.
"Yeah, they're not sophisticated enough to do this out of some weird game," Emma observed.
"Game?" Mildred looked at the sheriff in confusion.
"Maybe try to trick us into using some kind of particularly tricky spell so that we end up blowing ourselves up or something equally unpleasant," Emma explained. "These guys struck me as being pretty much blunt force all the way; they were torturing us there, but they don't strike me as the type to play that kind of sick game with their enemies."
"OK, so we're fairly sure that the Empirikuul aren't doing this…" Dave began, before he looked up at the ceiling. "Doctor Strange?"
"You have a question?" the spectral figure said as he appeared in the middle of the room in a flash of green.
"Are you the reason some of us are casting spells we don't remember learning?" Billy waved a hand at Willow and Harry.
"That is a side-effect of the nature of the spell I used to bring you all together."
"Huh?" Tommy looked at the figure in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"As you have observed, you were all assembled because you are all great magical champions in your worlds, despite all of you being relatively inexperienced in actively defending others at this point in your lives," Doctor Strange explained. "What I was not able to tell you before now is that when I brought you all together, the spell that assembled you all here also granted each of you with some degree of knowledge of the magic and skills you will acquire in your futures."
Looking around the room, a part of Willow was relieved to note that the rest of her unconventional team were just as shocked by this revelation as she was. Their reactions varied from staring at their hands or weapons to looking at each other or Strange, but all of them were clearly lost at how to react to this.
"You… taught us how to use spells we'll learn in our futures?" Merlin said.
"Only on a subconscious level, and only for the duration of your conflict with the Empirikuul," Strange affirmed. "Also, I will stress that you do not possess all the knowledge and powers of your older selves. Mr Oliver in particular would require new equipment to access his full potential, and Miss Maximoff, Miss Swan and Miss Rosenberg only achieved their peak after experiences involving dark magical artefacts that I was concerned about introducing to the current conflict, but for the rest of you…"
The ghostly figure smiled as he looked around the room. "When you face true danger, you will draw on the knowledge of your future and wield it against those who would deny magic any future."
"But… you just… you gave us knowledge from our future selves?" Bo looked at him in shock. "So… I can do that multiple chi-sucking thing in my future?"
"Yes." Strange held up a hand as he looked around the room. "I will remind you all that I can only answer so many of your questions as I am right now. My original self left me enough knowledge to answer how you would be capable of performing these spells, but not enough to explain why he chose this method rather than summoning your future selves directly."
"OK…" Merlin nodded, looking uncertainly at his own hands. "That's… well, it's an interesting concept…"
"Don't worry; time travel is something that confuses everyone," Billy shrugged over at Merlin. "I mean, Eugene's the one who's keener on the idea, but I've picked up a thing or two from watching his shows…"
"Just so we're all clear, we'll… forget these skills once we go home?" Nick asked.
"Until the time comes for you to learn those spells when you would have mastered them at the intended time," Strange nodded at Nick. "It is a matter of preserving the balance of history; these spells are necessary for you to prevail in this current conflict, but if you use them in your own time periods before you should have learnt them…"
"It's like the Prime Directive, huh?" Billy asked.
"Essentially yes."
"Prime Directive?" Merlin looked at the boy in confusion.
"It's from this… story… a friend of mine told me about," Billy explained, looking cautiously at Merlin as he thought about how to discuss this matter. "Basically… well, the idea is that if a more advanced culture meets… well, a more primitive culture…"
"Like how we're all basically from your future and… well, we know stuff you don't know," Dave put in, stepping forward to take up the story. "The whole idea behind the Prime Directive is basically arguing that if we taught how you how to do stuff that the human race learned how to do between your time and our time… I think the general argument is that your people would get so caught up in being able to do something you wouldn't have developed the cultural context to realise when you should use it."
"Oh," Merlin said with a cautious nod. "I… think that makes sense… it's like how the Great Dragon told me to hide away the sword we forged together until Arthur's ready for it…"
"Sounds like a good analogy," Paige smiled over at him.
"Well, at least we're prepared," Dave shrugged. "We can't exactly hold back when up against a whole damn army…"
"And that doesn't change the problem," Mildred put in.
"What problem?" Harry asked.
"My earlier point about how we're…" Mildred began, before she sighed. "Look, I'm not saying that they're right to do any of this, but if we keep fighting aren't we just proving the Empirikuul right?"
"Hey, we were all only trying to defend ourselves-!" Bo began.
"I get that we have to do this, but how long can we rely on that before we start having to… hurt people?" Mildred insisted. "I wanted to learn how to be a witch to stay with a new friend, I didn't want to learn magic to… to do stuff like that!"
"We already discussed this, Mildred," Emma said, even as she looked sympathetically at the young witch. "We can't stop these people attacking us by just talking to them; we have to fight back somehow."
"And it's not like we're fighting because we want to hurt these people!" Willow cut in. "We do this to keep other people safe, we're not… fighting for the sake of fighting-!"
"But how can we stop these people without just proving them right?" Mildred looked up at the older witch. "If we just fight them, we-"
"I know," Nick put in, looking over at Mildred with a cautious expression on his face. "And that's why I have a new idea for how to deal with this… if you're willing to play a very particular part in the plan."
"Me?" Mildred looked at him in shock. "But I-I'm not exactly a-"
"If this is going to work like I'm hoping, you may be the only one of us who can do this," Nick said, looking reassuringly at Mildred before he looked around at the others. "Mildred may be the key player, but if this idea is going to work, we're all going to have our part to make it all come together."
"What's the plan?" Angel asked.
"First off," Nick said as he focused his gaze on two of the group in particular, "if Vision can point us in the right direction, we're going to need Dave and Willow's technical skills…"