Birth RightBy Alecca
2nd degree burnLos Angeles
2083
Paco's Taco Palace"Did you find what you were looking for?" Fred 2 asked a distracted Angel as she stared a little disgusted at her brother who had shoved half a taco in his mouth and now seemed ecstatic.
"No, I think it was stolen yesterday by that slayer...Mina," he answered looking around the dinner, seeming a little edgy.
"Don't worry," Fred 2 misinterpreted his nervous glares. "See," she pointed towards a big sign on the wall behind them that read "Paco's Taco Palace now VAMPIRE FRIENDLY! No more nasty burns. Necro-tinted windows. Ask for our blood cocktails."
"Oh... god... this is.... SO good," Wes 2 said in between bites.
"You know, I really think the only time he loses his British accent is when he eats," Fred 2 smiled and her brother gave her a nasty look, but didn't bother to stop eating to give her a worthy reply. "Was it something dangerous?"
"Not dangerous in a weapon-of- mass-destruction kind of dangerous, but in a I-can-change-time-if-I-want-to kind of dangerous," Angel said rubbing his face. He was tired. He hadn't been able to sleep all night or if he had it had been that sort of agitated half-sleep that did more damage than good.
"Change time?" Fred 2 was suddenly very attentive, not minding her brother's eating anymore. "A magical item that can change time..."
"A magical item that can transport you into the past," he corrected her.
"Wow," she was impressed. Wes 2 stopped eating and stared at Angel with his eyes wide. "And that's what you were looking for last night?" the vampire nodded. "But what was it doing outside?"
"Did you use it recently?" Wes 2 asked with his mouth full.
"No, I...uhm...," he didn't want to tell them the truth. Mainly because it made him look bad - irresponsible even - and he didn't want them to see him in that light, he wanted to live up to all their expectations like they were living up to his. "We were supposed to use it in a...a minor spell. Today."
"You think she might use it?" Fred 2 asked while her twin brother wiped his mouth with a napkin, suddenly interested in their conversation as well.
"I don't know. That's what's been eating me," Angel said letting out an unnecessary sigh. There was a sudden commotion in the dinner and everyone's heads turned towards the entrance. The twins and the vampire noticed it a bit later than the rest - a group of seven people were heading straight for their table. Six of them were girls lead by a young man in a tweed costume who had a very smug look on his face. As they neared them, Fred 2 noticed Lonny was among the girls and she didn't seem very pleased to be there. The young man stopped in front of their table and smiled victoriously at Angel:
"I assume you know why I'm here," he glared at the twins as he addressed Angel.
"Do I get three guesses?" the vampire acted calmly, but Wes 2 noticed his hand clutching his knee behind the table.
"Well, if you want to make a scene...," the man seemed to have actually hoped for one. "In the name of the West Coast American Slayer Association, I, Rupert MacAlistair-Giles II, place you under arrest for theft, illegal possession of private SA documents and illegal use of material found under the SA jurisdiction."
"You wanna take a wild guess who isn't in India anymore?" Lonny asked giving him a resigned look.
Los Angeles
2083
Wolfram & Hart Demon Hunting Inc.He strolled into the building like it was the most natural thing in the world, though deep inside he knew it wasn't. The staff of Wolfram & Hart seemed to freeze whenever their eyes happened to stumble upon him. Of course everyone knew him! He had worked there for over fifty years! He was a damn legend! Probably why the security people had let him enter without asking questions. At one point he had been something of a second boss to some of them. Whenever Angel had a fit, a depression - like when Fred and Wes had decided to leave Wolfram & Hart - he was the one who had replaced him until he returned. At a particularly low point even by Angel's own standards he had offered Spike the job permanently, but he had refused it and now he was glad he did. Eternity fighting evil just seemed a little too dull for him.
He took the elevator up to the floor where Angel's office was. The truth was he and Angel hadn't really parted on friendly terms. He grimaced thinking back to the reason he had left in the first place. Women, it always had to be about women... He figured that if it hadn't been for women they could've gotten along, being the only two souled vampires and all, but no...first there had been Dru, then Buffy and then of course another slayer... He snapped out of his thoughts when the doors slid open. He walked out of the elevator and headed straight for the office. When he was about to pass beyond the door to Angel's office, he was stopped by someone clearing his throat. He looked back and came face to face with Harmony.
"Harm?" he asked hesitantly. "Last time I saw you, you were wearing all black, had your nose pierced and were swearing you'd leave this place."
She kicked him in the leg hard making him bend over in pain.
"Au!" he looked up at her angrily. "What'd you do that for?"
"I was possessed by a freakin' goth, you jerk!" she said feeling hurt even after more than thirty years. "And you were sooooo busy you didn't even notice."
"Really?" he seemed surprised. But if he thought about it hard enough he hadn't noticed a lot of things back then. He had been too busy fighting with Angel.
"Do you have any idea how long it took me to get that color out of my hair?" she asked, shivering at the memory. Suddenly seeming to realize the strangeness of the fact that he was there, she added: "What are you doing here?"
"Here to see the big boss about a little crisis," he said smiling.
"Oh," Harmony looked away avoiding a proper reply.
"Oh? Well, call him, break out the red carpet, turn on the Angel-signal, get the cape crusader out here!" he said, he was in a particularly good mood. He assumed it was because he was back there. He had to admit the place held a lot of good memories. A lot of bad ones too, but the truth was the good ones always came before the bad.
"I can't," Harmony said going back behind her desk.
"And why is that, Harm?" he asked getting a tad impatient.
"He...," she continued to avoid his look. "He was arrested, okay?"
"Arrested?!" he yelled exasperated. "For what? By who?"
"The SA. There was this whole...incident," Harmony explained.
Los Angeles
2083
The LA Slayer Association HQAngel was seated in a chair at one end of the table as the young man paced in front of him with a satisfied grin playing on his face. At the other end of the table, five older men observed them with cold icy glares and emotionless faces. In a chair next to Angel, Lonny had taken a very casual position and looked at them defiantly. In the back, on two chairs right next to the wall, Fred 2 and Wes 2 seemed nervous to be there, but at the same time Angel noticed a spark of curiosity in their eyes. Somewhere between Angel and the five men, sitting at the large table there was a young redhead that constantly fidgeted and really seemed like she didn't want to be there.
"So...you deny all charges?" the young man asked, acting like he wanted the vampire to put up a fight.
"No...not exactly," Angel wasn't very precise.
"A yes or no will do just fine," one of the older men spoke up in a calm rational voice.
"There were certain circumstances you have to understand," Angel found himself wishing Gunn was at his side again. He had always had a way with twisting the law in their favor and getting him out of trouble especially with the SA. Unfortunately, now that he was alone, Angel didn't stand much of a chance. He had called the legal department asking for their top lawyer, but they had argued with him - they said it would only make him look guilty if a legal shark was talking in his name. They said the best way to approach an organization like the SA was to be as honest as he could afford to be, give them the deer in headlights routine and hope for the best. Looking over at the five men, Angel thought to himself he wasn't doing so well.
"Ah, yes, Mina Parker," the young man calling himself Rupert MacAlistair-Giles II smiled again. "The leader of the East Coast elite. You seriously expect us to believe she stole the book of Katurye? And that she broke into your private apartment?"
"I can show you the surveillance tape, I told you," Angel repeated for what seemed to be the millionth time.
"Suppose you can produce this tape - though we all know tapes can be manipulated both mystically and technologically and Wolfram & Hart certainly has the resources for it - who says Mina intended to steal something that belonged to you? Maybe she wanted to take back something she thought didn't belong to you," Rupert twisted the words in his favor.
"Wouldn't she have asked for it first?" Fred 2 asked rising her hand timidly from the back of the room. "I mean...why go ahead and steal it when there's a possibility that Angel would return the...uhm...item willingly?"
"Who says she didn't? All we have is the word of this...of this...vampire," Rupert said appearing disgusted by the very word.
"Mr. Giles, contain yourself," one of the old men warned him. The young man had a long record of hate crimes against vampires which wasn't looked fondly upon by the SA, though many of the high ranking watchers simply called him overzealous and an incurable enthusiast.
"Has Ms Parker been located?" another one of the older men spoke.
"She left the country for a week," Rupert informed them. "She's in France."
"Have you located her?" the same man asked.
"Not yet, but it won't take much longer I assure you. I have a few people working on it as we speak," Rupert said glaring at Angel, looking for some sort of reaction to his words. The vampire simply smiled amused, they could turn France upside down and still not find Mina Parker. "Moving on to other charges brought against him. Ms. Devain, is it true that you registered a breach into our system last night?"
"Yes...," the young redhead said hesitantly.
"And certain information was stolen from the electronic archives?" Rupert continued. The girl nodded. "Can you tell us exactly what?"
"The surveillance tapes from the Unnatural Museum of History, details about the book of Katurye, its index, objects needed in the incantations...things like that," the girl answered him.
"Why the sudden interest in the book of Katurye?" Rupert turned back to Angel. "You weren't perchance the one who took it from the museum..."
"That's ridiculous!" Wes 2 protested. "Why would he be looking for the index if he had the book?"
"But the question still remains," one of the older men intervened: "Why did you need the information about the book? And why didn't you simply ask for it?"
"It was late, I didn't want to bother you with something so insignificant. I didn't know you'd make such a big deal out of it," Angel said calmly.
"A security breach is always a big deal," one of the older men stared at him coldly. "What did you need the information for?"
"I needed to know what she wanted to take from my safe," Angel explained. "The people from my research department needed the information for a cross-referencing."
"And...," Rupert began, but was interrupted by the doors of the conference room swinging open and a very familiar figure walking casually inside. The older men immediately stood up when she entered the room and bowed their heads respectively. Rupert did the same and Fred 2 and Wes 2 got up from their chairs awkwardly, not really knowing who the woman was or why they should stand up in her presence. The woman smiled warmly at them before turning towards Angel.
"Every time I see you, you're always in trouble," she said cheerfully and leaned down and gave him a small quick kiss on the lips. The old men stared at her a little shocked while Rupert shook his head exasperated.
"Hello to you too Willow," Angel smiled. "How's life?"
"Bureaucratically impossible to live in. Can you believe they wouldn't let me enter India because of that little spell I made a few years ago in Calcutta?" she shook her head. "They threatened to put me in jail. Like a jail could hold me," her eyes shone dangerously. "But I couldn't risk them imprisoning Danielle too, so I turned the plane around."
"I'm sorry, your grace, but we were in the middle of a..." Rupert interrupted her.
"Rupert, you don't interrupt two old friends that are talking, especially if they haven't seen each other in a long long time," she looked at him with superiority. Lonny, who had been uncharacteristically quiet the whole time gave him a smug look. The truth was she felt a little guilty that Angel had been arrested by the SA and felt she would only do more damage if she spoke. She had a gift of pissing off authorities of any kind.
"But..." Rupert began and Willow chuckled amused.
"Okay, what is all this about?" she gestured around the conference room.
"Your friend," Rupert pressed every word. "Broke into our electronic archive and..."
"Hacking? That's it?" the witch laughed. "Don't you think you have better things to take care of then busting his ass about a little hacking job? Heck, he probably has better things to take care of, being the boss of a huge demon hunting company and all," she looked back at the old men and the light in her eyes had changed drastically as she spoke: "Actually *I know* you have better things to take care of as we speak: a boy is being attacked by a vicious horde of Morgai demons in South-East LA, a slayer is being beaten to death and needs some serious backup in a warehouse just outside the city, a family has been taken hostage by a large group of vampires, two highschool girls have accidentally stumbled upon a nest of vampires and...," she turned towards Angel and whispered in his ear so only he could hear: "Somewhere else in time Mina Parker is starting to stir up trouble."
"Is...is that true?" Rupert stuttered as three of the old men got up hurriedly and without another word left the room to check out the potential situations.
"You've been here for three years, have you learnt nothing, little watcher?" Willow asked the young man who seemed insulted by her words. "How from Giles' blood someone like you could be born, I'll never know," she said serious for a moment before turning back to the old men, smiling again. "Well?"
"It might be an insignificant detail, but we all know even a tiny pebble can make the difference between chaos and order," one of the two old men told her.
"Wise words, Ronald, and normally I would applaud you for them, but today I have a different agenda," waving her hand around the room, the two old men and Rupert fell to the floor, unconscious. Fred 2 and Wes 2 observed her with an amount of fear and admiration in their eyes. "Well, that should give you enough time."
"Time for what?" Angel asked confused.
"To get back to your office. You have a serious situation to deal with," Willow said.
"What's more serious then winding up in one of those vampire jails Lonny grimaced. The fact that people knew about vampires also implied that they could build jails capable of holding them whenever they thought a crime they committed wasn't serious enough to be punished by death. Of course it happened rarely, but it happened. Hadn't a vampire from New York pulled the biggest insurance fraud of the last decade?
"Much more important," Willow stated meeting the girl's eyes. "We're talking about time manipulation, the nastiest sort of thing that could happen and I'm afraid it's rather personal this time."
"What do you mean?" Angel asked instantly.
"You'll see," the witch seemed to have decided to not tell him more than she had already said. She looked back at Fred 2 and Wes 2 and a sort of strange smile played on her lips. "They're..."
"Fred was our great-grandmother," Fred 2 answered her question before she had a chance to phrase it.
"You look a lot like them," Willow told them before turning her head towards the young redhead sitting at the table that had followed their conversation feeling like she was intruding. "We have to leave."
"But we just got back," Danielle Devain reminded her.
"How does...Rio de Janeiro sound?" Willow said and the girl's face lighted up.
"I'll get my bathing suit," Danielle wanted to run out of the room, but Willow stopped her.
"You'll buy one there, we're taking a shortcut," she stared at Angel. "Sare vento chero!" she yelled and a cloud of powder surrounded them all, blinding most of them. Soon they felt the floor from under their feet was gone. In all the confusion and blindness, Angel heard Willow's voice whispering in his ear:
"Be careful, Angel. Come back in one piece, at least for her sake."
The next thing they knew they had hit the floor of Angel's office hard and a choking smoke had filled the room. Fred 2 and Wes 2 started coughing desperately.
"Willow?" Angel - not bothered by the smoke - asked spotting a figure sitting in his chair.
"Actually," a very familiar voice said. "I never really thought of myself as a willow, I was more of a spike."
"You!" Angel yelled now spotting Spike in his chair as the smoke cleared. "What are you doing here?"
"What? No greeting? No secret handshake?...No hug?" he asked smiling amused.
"What the hell are you doing here?!" Angel yelled even harder this time.
"Hi, Spike," Lonny saluted the blond vampire smiling.
"Hey, boss," Harmony came in trying to clear the smoke with her notepad. "Did you see who came back?" she sighed dreamily and added: "It's gonna be like in the good old times again. You, me, Lonny and Spike. The four musketeers! All for one and...uhm..."
"One for all," Wes 2 helped her.
"That's it!" Harmony really seemed happy about the event, but Angel only stared at Spike, not saying a word. Then, all of a sudden, he jumped the other vampire throwing him out of his chair while Fred 2 and Wes 2 looked on in shock and Lonny only rolled her eyes.
Sunnydale
2003
Summers houseShe was woken up by the commotion. Girls whispering things to each other somewhere near her. The sound of water running and someone screaming for someone else to get out of the bathroom already. A lot of voices talking in the kitchen. She stirred awake, slightly annoyed. When she stood up, the two girls sitting close to where she had been sleeping froze. They didn't recognize her.
"Hi, I'm Mina. I just got here last night," she told them and recovering from the shock the girls began introducing themselves as well. One was called Amanda and another Rona and they began excitingly telling her everything that had happened so far, boring Mina to near death as she knew most of the things they told her from the slayer archives and she wasn't interested in the rest, but she had no choice but to listen. She had to act like she was clueless. While they blabbered on she kept a close watch on everyone who came in and out of the kitchen. There were only potentials, then there was Andrew that was constantly complaining about a back ache, but no sign of anyone she might have recognized.
"Mina," Amanda snapped her out of her thoughts. "You wanna come eat with us or not?"
"You could meet the rest," Rona pointed out.
"Yeah, sure," Mina shook her head and followed the two girls to the kitchen. Curious heads turned towards the new arrival.
"Everyone, this is Mina," Andrew stepped next to the young slayer and introduced her to the whole group. Mina didn't remember most of the names and didn't bother to keep them in mind now. She knew who was important and who was not and those potentials were the root of the slayer kind and for that simple reason she chose to hate them like she hated all the other slayers of her time. There was no time for chit-chat - Thank god! Mina thought - as a blond girl in her twenties whom she assumed, by process of elimination, was Anya, came into the kitchen announcing there was going to be a meeting in the living room. Xander came in after her and Andrew took the time to introduce them to the new arrival.
"Another one?" Anya asked exasperated.
"The more the merrier at this point," Xander said. "Don't make the girl feel uncomfortable on her first day, An."
"I suppose. It could be her last after all," Anya shrugged. "Welcome to Sunnydale. How was your trip?"
"Bumpy," Mina said dryly.
"How did you get here?" Andrew asked curious. "Did you parachute out of an airplane?"
"She's not James Bond, Andrew," Xander told him smiling.
"My car got thrashed when I was attacked by the eyeless freaks," Mina explained. No more questions were asked as a redhead - Willow, Mina guessed instantly - entered the kitchen and told them all to come into the living room for the meeting. Mina smiled, it all sounded very familiar.
Entering the living room, she spotted her instantly: short, blond, standing imposingly in the middle of the room with her hands crossed over her chest, the legend, the myth in flesh and blood and Mina was oddly disappointed. That was it? She had beaten to a bloody pulp slayers much more tough looking than her. She tried to meet her gaze, but didn't succeed in doing so. Buffy seemed much too preoccupied by other things to notice her. Mina supposed that was for the best. She didn't want her to get suspicious until it was too late. She looked around the room and came across a person she had almost forgotten about: the other slayer, Faith and she had no problem meeting her curious gaze. Mina realized she had to be more careful around her, because Faith had the time to be suspicious, while Buffy did not. It was suddenly quiet and all eyes turned to Buffy as she began speaking:
"I hate this. I hate being here. I hate that you have to be here. I hate that there's evil and that I was chosen to fight it. I wish a whole lot of the time that I hadn't been. I know a lot of you wish I hadn't been, either. But this isn't about wishes. This is about choices. I believe we can beat this evil. Not when it comes. Not when its army is ready. Now...."
And while she spoke her famous speech, Mina held back the urge to roll her eyes. Bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, she thought to herself and felt like finishing her mission then and there, but knew it was too risky, so she simply tried not to fall asleep during the awfully long and dull speech and think of a way she could get closer to the slayer.