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(This is original creative material copyright Chris Kenworthy, based on characters that he has no right to owned by someone else blah blah biddy blah...) Author's note: Okay, everybody's still stuck in Limbo, including Kaliya, who's trying to bring old vampires back with the help of vampire-Giles and Ethan Rayne. Buffy and co have found the ghosts of some old friends- Giles, Jenny, Kendra and Jesse, but Mister Tojo's been imprisoned by a Horror. Buffy and Xander are dating and sneaking around behind Cordelia's back, since she still thinks she's dating Xander and still has that psycho-witch thing goin' on. |
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Buffy Summers looked over the board carefully. "You can't save that piece," Xander asserted boldly. Then he looked more carefully at the situation. "Can you?"
"Nope," Buffy answered evenly. She moved a piece forward within her ranks, on the other side of the board.
"Ha!" Xander crowed, jumping the red checker and removing it from the board.
Buffy looked at him for a moment, smiling enigmatically. Calmly she hopped a red checker over the offending piece, and another in Xander's formation. "Ha-ha!" Buffy called as she removed the jumped pieces. "King me!"
Xander scowled. Buffy smiled over at Willow, who was silently reading on the couch. Willow looked back at her, but no smile passed over her somber face. Yeah, Buffy thought to herself. No joy there. Willow was steamed at Xander and her, since they had asked Oz to go over to Cordelia's house and keep her occupied while Buffy and Xander spent some time together. She was going to have to find some way to make that up to Willow. Faint voices came from upstairs - Giles and Jenny, who were in the middle of an argument and obviously having the time of their afterlives.
Buffy turned her attention back to the checkers game. But before Xander had decided on his next move, the front doorbell of the Rosenberg house rang.
"I'll get it," Willow called out, getting up from the couch. As Willow made her way to the front hall, Buffy shot Xander a curious glance.
"Who the heck's ringing on doorbells in Limbo, I wonder?" she asked him rhetorically.
Willow continued out to the front door, and opened it cautiously. "Oh! Hi!" she said, surprise evident in her voice.
"Hi, Willow," someone else answered. "I was hoping that somehow you'd be here, even though, well," the voice dropped low, self-consciously. "You know."
Willow did know. So did Buffy - when Limbo had been created, it copied all the buildings and objects of Sunnydale, but only a few people were drawn in. The result was an almost empty town that looked like the perfect setting for a post-apocalypse movie.
"Yeah," Willow agreed. "How many places did you try, before coming here, Amy?"
"Amy?" Buffy whispered. Of course, the voice had sounded familiar. "Get Giles," she whispered firmly to Xander as she stood up, smoothing her dark jeans down as she did.
Xander nodded faintly and started to stand too, but Buffy was already moving toward the door with dispatch. Shoving Willow gently aside, Buffy reached out to grab the teenaged, California-blonde girl standing just outside the door by the throat. She pulled back, yanking her inside the vestibule and shoving her back against the open front door.
"Hi, Amy," Buffy said, with an ominously cheerful smile on her face and a tone of voice to match. "Let's review. First, you got shapeswitched and shanghaied out of your life by your witch mother. My friends and I, we helped reverse the spell, saving your life in the process. Sometime later, for whatever reasons, you decide to get in on the witchcraft yourself. You cast a spell that turned the whole town upside down, in fact." Amy's face tightened in fear, but Buffy shook her head slightly and smiled. "I'm not blaming you for that - that one was Xander's idea."
Now Buffy's eyes focused more intently on Amy's, forming a hostile glare. "But then you and those others went and kidnapped our friend, (and I'm using the term loosely,) did goodness-knows-what spells on her, and made her into a real problem for me and my other friends! I'm angry about that!" And, as if to emphasize her point, Buffy shoved her hand a little bit harder into Amy's throat.
"What do you want?" Buffy asked, steel in her voice. Now she released her grip enough to let Amy answer. But Amy's gaze flicked over, out the door. Buffy glanced that way herself, and noticed for the first time that four young people were standing in a ragged circle on the porch. Buffy's face fell.
"Uh, hi there," she muttered uncertainly. "I suppose you are..."
"Amy's horrible witch friends?" one of them said. She seemed to be the oldest of the group, a beautiful woman perhaps in her mid-twenties. Her hair was shoulder length, curly, red with just a trace of strawberry blonde in it. "That we are, though I hope not as horrible as advertised."
"You'll excuse me if I remain unconvinced of that," Buffy shot back.
"Hello?" Amy squeaked, still pinned against the door. "Some help here?" Buffy considered her for a second.
"Kines!" one of the other witches called out. He was a ruggedly handsome young man in his late teens, and seemed startlingly familiar to Buffy. Suddenly an invisible something knocked her back, and she released her grip on Amy's neck as the mysterious force slammed her into the vestibule wall. Groaning weakly, she slid down to the floor and passed out.
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