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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...) |
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Kaliya looked up at him and smiled faintly. "My incurable weakness for strategizing, I suppose." She laughed quietly, long since having learned not to take Giles' nagging too seriously. Not that Giles didn't mean what he said, but he wouldn't dream on acting on a word of it, so Kaliya could laugh off anything that she didn't like. "I am addicted to timely news about the movements of my enemy - I cannot go an hour without it." She laughed again. "Which reminds me; I cannot seem to recall that invocation you taught me to receive sound with an image from the mirror." She handed the mirror over to him.
Giles sighed. "Very well," the Watcher-Vampire muttered under his breath before beginning the spell.
* * * *
"Okay," Willow told Xander. "Here's what we know so far. Neither of them have the witchly power matrix - that's what gave Cordelia her powers. It doesn't exist anymore."
"So all her powers went down the drain when Cordelia's magic intercepted the power spike?" Xander said.
"No, we don't think so. It, well, uh... okay, I need to give you a little background here."
"Shoot, Will."
"Everyone is born with a certain amount of internal energy - call it talent, call it drive, call it aura. The amount people get varies widely - roughly according to the bell curve."
"Bell curve?"
Willow shook her head. "Never mind - it varies from person to person. Experts in magic and the paranormal believe that application of this power accounts for a lot of what they study; they sometimes refer to it as 'psychic potential.'" Xander nodded. "But a lot of people use it for completely ordinary everyday stuff, learning a profession, or memorizing sports facts for that matter."
"Okay."
"Vanessa and her friends said that they noticed a good amount of psychic potential in Cordelia, a potential that she had never done anything with. They used a spell to focus it, to bind it tightly within her into a kind of magic spring, so that that energy could be used for magic easily and powerfully."
"Okay, with you so far."
"If that spring had just been taken out of her, as it were surgically, it would have left her with hardly any psychic potential. But the high potential that Vanessa first noticed is just as high now."
"So..." Xander thought for a second. "The spring has gotten unsprung, leaving her with her whatshmee potential just lying all over, like before."
"That's what we thought, at first. But the third test was for psychic utilization." She showed him a couple of blots on paper that made no sense to him. "Cordelia is down from the high utilization level she was at while she had the witchly powers, yes, but not nearly as far down as she used to be. And Buffy, who has a fairly high psychic level, and who Giles says normally shows a moderately high utilization because of her Slayerness, is now WAY down there..."
"And what the Limbo does that mean?" Buffy asked her.
"Well, we don't really know... Buffy? You're awake?"
"Well, what do you think, Einstein?" Buffy snapped. Willow got up to take a look at Cordelia. Xander just smiled at Buffy, glad that she was awake, that those lovely eyes of hers were open, but she scowled back at him. Hurt, Xander let his attention wander over to what he could hear of Angel's examination.
"Well, I'd have to say that I'm tending to agree with Miss Rosenberg. As far as I can tell, Angel, you're pregnant!"
"Pregnant!!" Buffy and Cordelia, (who was just coming round,) exploded at the same instant. "What, uh, huh, whose is it?" Buffy babbled out, then gave a slightly silly grin at how odd she sounded.
"Well, that would be extremely hard to tell at this point. I'd estimate, that if any mother... father, sire... whatever," Vanessa shook her head, "is involved at all, you're the number one candidate Buffy."
"Me!!"
"You were the one who touched Angel across the Hellmouth gateway - who initiated the great magic with him. And you went through the motions of 'making a baby' with Angel in the not too dim-and-distant past. Given, that was too many months ago, but it's not entirely unheard of for this kind of magic to bring the consequences of past events forward in time."
"What about Drusilla?" Buffy gazed fiercely at Angel. "You, I mean, Angelus slept with Drusilla, didn't you? He?"
Angel blushed. "Yes, I seem to recall them having fun that way a time or two. But Drusilla isn't anywhere near here this time. You are."
"Hello?" Xander called out. "I mean, is no-one actually getting that this is impossible? One, Angel's a vampire, and vampires don't have babies. Two, he's a guy, pretty much," he shot a slightly ambivalent glare in Angel's direction, "and guys do not have the equipment for this. Three, he hasn't even had sex in a period that fits without someone having to bring up time travel! Am I the only person who sees how ridiculous this is?"
"No, of course not Xander," Giles told him off. "But we are attempting to understand this particular ridiculous thing, instead of hoping that calling it impossible will make it go away. Granted, it would take some truly remarkable circumstances to justify this theory, but I think that Angel's life has been more than remarkable enough this past year."
"Uh, just asking out of a morbid sense of curiosity," Oz piped up from a corner, "but what about the 'mechanics' objection? I mean, if he's gonna have a baby, that is," he paused significantly, "how's it gonna work?"
"The male body has some cavities large enough to hold a small fetus," Vanessa remarked. "It isn't equipped to feed it, but under these circumstances that hardly seems necessary. The child would be at least half vampire, and would probably be sustained by Limbo in the same way that Angel is. When the time comes, the baby will presumably make its way out any way it can. Angel's vampire endurance should enable him to survive the torn flesh, but still," she turned a pathos-filled smile on him, "it will be excruciating."
"Well," Buffy interjected, "if we're quite done with that for now, how about figuring out what happened to the two of us over here?"
"Oh, of course," Vanessa said. "How do you feel Buffy?"
"Like I've been hit by a truck." Buffy pondered a moment. "I wasn't actually hit by a truck, was I?"
Vanessa smiled. "No. But that final defense certainly took something out of you, and we're gonna have to find out exactly what. Cordelia, how about you?"
"Me?" Cordelia's eyes closed reflectively for a moment. She looked so beautiful, Xander noticed suddenly. Why was he noticing that? Buffy was the girl he was with, the one who had risked everything to be with him. "I feel strong," Cordelia declared, opening her eyes.
"Oh no," Xander said, deja vu hitting him.
"What is it Xander?" Buffy asked
"Willow," Xander said, not yet daring to tell Buffy about his suspicion, "there's a blood test for Slayerness, right?"
"Uh, yeah," Willow answered him, nodding.
"Test them both. I've got a very ugly feeling..."
Willow produced the testing paraphernalia, already guessing what Xander was hinting at, and quickly performed the test on Buffy and Cordelia without putting them to sleep first. "Buffy, you're... testing as a normal. As in a non-Slayer. Cordelia... you've got a really weird pinky-bluey thing here. It's not the traditional white, it's not the blue thing that Buffy was getting ever since she was killed by the Master..."
"But it's not normal," Buffy finished in a toneless voice. "Which means that she's the Slayer now."
* * * *
"Strange tidings, Giles," Kaliya muttered. "The slayer's powers displaced onto the foolish one, the vampire man said to be bearing a child."
"Should we make our move now, my lady?" Giles said. "While Buffy is weak?"
"No," Kaliya answered him, shaking her head. "My reinforcements are not yet ready, and Summers will be defended by the false Slayer, and the rest of her allies. In any event, I still do not care to destroy Summers while she is helpless. I will give them time to reverse the exchange, so that I can destroy Buffy at the height of her strength, of course!"
Behind the door of Kaliya's room, which was still slightly ajar, Michelle slowly crept away. Once she was out of earshot, she whispered to herself. "Fou! Madame, she is touched not only in the body, but in the head, eh! Destroy Summers at the height of her strength? She could not destroy a badger in its nest. Well, I for one will not stand by and let this opportunity go to waste!" She strode rapidly down the corridor.
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