Mist of Shadows
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Dawn and Reincarnation Part 31
🕑 Added 2019-11-09 06:37:51 +0000 UTCElizabeth Anne Summers groaned as she woke up with the memories of an annoyingly whiny college dropout dancing around her head. “What the hell was I working on?” she muttered as she sat up and looked around her bedroom. ‘Science fair trophy, bitching gaming computer, bookshelf,’ she turned to look at her girlfriend who was sprawled out on the other half of the bed, ‘and smoking hot girlfriend, check.’
She mentally reviewed her memories of the night before, ‘We had dinner, I was working on the hard light emitter I swiped from Leet then Willow danced through the wall in a barely there red dress and hauled me to bed, nothing that should have resulted in picking up a bunch of new memories. What if it’s the other way around, a spell and I’m really Buffy Anne Summers and this life is the illusion?’
She briefly considered the possibility then rejected it based on the fact that Buffy had fucked a demonically animated corpse, twice. ‘Never happened.’ She mentally reviewed her list of capes she knew of that could alter memories, most didn’t have that level of detail which meant it was probably Leet fucking with her because she’d ‘borrowed’ his hard light emitter. ‘This means war.’
Elizabeth rolled out of bed and headed for the shower, knowing that if she waited, Willow would wake up and then it would take her forever to finish her shower which was bad because she didn’t want to be late to school. ‘Of course, if Willow was a powerful witch rather than a Breaker, she could probably cast a spell to twist memories. Then again, she’d never erase Xander so it’s probably tinkertech or a new Master or Stranger,’ she mused as she turned the shower on and looked at herself in the mirror. ‘Same brown hair, blue eyes, and smile as always.’
She glanced at her breasts. ‘Buffy should have eaten better, mine are better.’ She shook her head then slipped into the shower. ‘The only annoying thing is, no Xander or Dawn because damn, I’d fuck both of them and Faith, handcuffs and a bed, Willow can run the camera.’
‘Hmm, or maybe Giles,’ Elizabeth mused as she grabbed the soap. Thankfully for her attendance record, she was already done with her shower and back in her room by the time Willow was waking up. “Hey sleepyhead.”
“Hey,” Willow replied, trying to mentally sort her memories as she suddenly had an extra life or two extra lives depending on how you looked at it. ‘Does she count as my aunt if Dawn wasn’t her sister at the time?’ she asked herself as she watched her girlfriend pull on a pair of red silk panties.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Elizabeth asked
Willow shook her head. “Just enjoying the show.”
“Breakfast in five!” Joyce called from downstairs.
Elizabeth wiggled her butt at Willow. “You should grab your shower so we’re not late.”
“Point.” Willow activated her ‘new’ breaker state, floated out of bed and headed for the bathroom, wanting a few minutes to sort out her memories. ‘Hopefully Dawn isn’t getting into too much mischief.’
Elizabeth finished getting dressed then headed downstairs to grab some food. She stumbled and grabbed the doorframe for support as saw her mother and the memory of finding her dead on the couch surfaced. She quickly stomped the memory back into the deepest pits of her mind or at least tried, happy that her mother was alive and well but suddenly worried about her health, despite the fact that her new memories shouldn’t matter. ‘I should probably bribe Amy or Fred into checking just to make sure she’s healthy, probably Fred.’
“They’re not going to eat themselves,” Joyce teased as she set the maple syrup on the table. “Any luck with your hoverboard?”
“I need a better power supply but I fixed the crossed wires,” Elizabeth said as she walked over and sat down at the table. “How did things go with the gallery?”
“We sold enough to keep us in the black for the rest of the year,” Joyce said as she loaded up Willow’s plate with pancakes. “Did you hear the news about Lung?”
“What did he do this time?” Elizabeth asked as she poured syrup on her pancakes.
“He caught a slight case of dead,” Joyce said cheerfully as she thought about the picture of Xander that one of the gang members had taken before fleeing.
Elizabeth blinked. “Who killed him?”
“An independent hero, Lung threatened his family so he put his fist through his head, it was about time that someone dealt with him.” Joyce would have dealt with Lung years ago but he’d kept an annoyingly low profile until he ramped up and sending a group of assassins to kill him while he was eating dinner in his civilian identity would have resulted in an annoying amount of issues for her security company, unwritten rules and all that.
“Powers?” Elizabeth asked, wondering if they could recruit the new cape.
“No idea, I just know that he has enough durability to survive a fall from terminal velocity and enough strength to put his fist through Lung’s head while he was ramped up enough that he didn’t need his mask.” Joyce wasn’t sure if he still had his magic or if he’d just picked up an Alexandria package.
“Are you going to try to recruit him?” Elizabeth asked between bites.
“I might, we’ll see how it goes.” Joyce smiled at Willow as she walked in. “Your pancakes are ready.”
“Thanks,” Willow said as she walked over and sat down. “Anything new?”
“Someone killed Lung,” Elizabeth said cheerfully.
“What happened?” Willow asked, glancing between Joyce and her girlfriend.
Joyce pulled her phone out of her pocket and showed her the photo of Xander that one of the gang members had taken.
“How the hell did Xander beat Lung?” Elizabeth blurted.
“He put his fist through his head, apparently Lung threatened his friends,” Joyce said.
“That would do it,” Elizabeth agreed, thinking about her friend from her new memories.
“How much do you remember?” Willow asked studying her friend’s face.
“You mean Sunnydale?” Elizabeth asked warily as she glanced at her mother, not sure she wanted to open this particular can of worms but fairly sure keeping her mouth shut wouldn’t help.
“Yeah, that,” Willow muttered, hoping that Elizabeth didn’t mention anything about her issues with magic or tragic lapses in judgement as they’d made some remarkably stupid choices back in Sunnydale.
“I remember Spike destroying the hellmouth and jumping on the bus then a flash of white,” Elizabeth said with a shrug. “It’s weird waking up with someone else’s memories.”
“We can compare notes after school, you should finish your breakfast and get going unless you want to be late.”
“No thanks, I’d rather not get another lecture,” Elizabeth grumbled, thinking about her homeroom teacher.
0o0o0
Dawn was seriously wondering if everyone in the town was stupid or just insane, it hadn’t taken her all that long to connect the dots between Coil and the cape list on the tablet. From there it was easy to start running searches on the ‘story’ document that came with her tablet. Of course, that had resulted in her reading about the clusterfuck that would have resulted without her changing things which meant the damned story was merely a guideline which was for the best because the world was really screwed up from what she could tell. “Where the hell is Superman when you need him?”
“Right, fucking Lois Lane,” she muttered as she looked at the notepad she was using to collect her thoughts on. “The first parahuman is a depressed alien abomination that wants to destroy the world because he can’t understand cooperation or continuing experiments and lacks creativity. That tracks with the various message boards thinking he’s more than a little autistic. That’s assuming the tablet is actually accurate.”
She weighed her options, the information the tablet gave fit with what she could find about the first cape, he was insanely powerful on a level not even the three next most powerful capes could match and he didn’t understand humanity on a fundamental level from what she could tell, he’d bounce between rescuing cats out of trees and dealing with forest fires while ignoring any number of other crimes. The idea of him trying to fill a void seemed to match up.
The information about the Undersiders seemed to match the sparse information she could find online and Tattletale’s family had filed a missing person’s report months ago. Of course, the selling point to her was that the PRT didn’t just call in a teleporter to transport dangerous criminals directly to the drop point for the birdcage. That implied a terminal level of stupidity or a conspiracy. She was leaning toward conspiracy because Eidolon should have been able to grab a Thinker and Stranger ability then track him down at home and kill him. Of course, if there was something more dangerous than the endbringers they wanted him around to fight, the behavior sort of made sense, if only to a degree.
“I need to kill Scion, Cauldron, the Endbringers and the Slaughterhouse Nine if I want to get things back on track. Killing the Endbringers should be as easy as hitting their cores with balefire but that would certainly get Scion’s attention. Of course, they’re obviously sandbagging to hell and back if they can sink entire islands...” she trailed off as a doorway opened against the wall. “Hello?” she asked, wondering if she’d accidentally gotten Cauldron’s attention.
“Dawn?” Tara asked as she peeked through her doorway.
“Hey Tara. New ability?” Dawn asked as Tara stepped through the doorway into her office.
“As far as I can tell. I woke up in a hotel room and saw a vision when I thought of you, from there I just sort of pushed and a door opened,” Tara explained as she glanced around the underground office, curious about why Dawn was in a concrete bunker.
“Where are we?” Tara asked as she let the doorway close.
“Brockton Bar, the lair belonged to a local villain,” Dawn explained, happy that Coil was dead considering what he’d had planned for the city.
Tara looked at Dawn. “Is he going to be needing it back?”
“No, he tried to shoot me several times and liked kidnapping children,” Dawn replied.
“Ah, that would do it. Notes?” Tara asked as she gestured toward the notepad.
“I dropped in with the tablet. There was a list of parahumans or people with special abilities and a story about what might have been that is rather depressing and concerning.”
“Might have been for this world or our last world?” Tara asked.
“This world or at least a world much like this one. Not all of the details match and I’ve already derailed some of it by taking out one of the local villains and curing a group of capes of mental issues.” Dawn wasn’t sure how accurate the story was because Taylor’s mother was alive and well according to the college’s staff list but it probably still worked as a basic guideline as she doubted the large issues would have gone away.
“You figured out a way to heal mental issues?” Tara asked in surprise.
“No but my new power lets me hand out five decent super powers at a time, one per person. I handed them an ability that quickly cured their mental issues and prevented outside influence.”
“That might be useful with the cultists,” Tara said thoughtfully.
“It might fix some of their issues but they still made the choices they made and I doubt it can fix the tainted idiots that Willow captured.”
“It’s worth a try,” Tara said thoughtfully. “Have you heard from anyone else or checked the island?”
“Not yet, I got distracted exploring the base and reading the story,” Dawn admitted.
“No time like the present.”.
Dawn walked over to the supply closet and inserted her skeleton key into the modern lock then turned the key and opened the door, more than a little surprised that her key fit in the lock. She sighed in relief as she saw her island and several naked girls running around playing some form of kickball. “Everything looks normal enough.”
“Dawn, you’re back!” Egwene called out as she ran over. “Xander vanished along with Fred and the legion with dragon tattoos. We’re also reasonably sure Ethan, William are gone but they might just be off having fun.”
Tara focused on the dragon girls, getting a decent number of locations with her new power then focused on Fred. “Fred is flying toward school and the legion is scattered around the city.” She focused on Willow and blinked as she saw a vision of her with Buffy and Joyce. “Willow is eating breakfast with Joiya and someone that looks like Buffy with brown hair.”
“Buffy is with Joiya and Willow? What about William and Ethan?” Dawn asked, wanting to make sure Spike and Ethan weren’t causing trouble and not sure what was going on with the girl that looked like her sister.
Tara focused on Spike and Ethan and found them in a house with two other people in their early twenties playing video games. “They’re playing video games with people I don’t recognize and eating pizza.”
“What about Xander?” Dawn asked, hoping he was alright.
Tara blushed as she checked on Xander and realized he was in a bed with a girl that looked a lot like Faith. “In a bed with someone that looks like Faith.”
“So they’re safe?” Egwene asked hopefully.
“Hopefully. We ended up in a strange world which means you’re going to have to sit tight for a bit.”
“Do you need help?” Egwene asked.
“Not right now but we’ll be heading back to the island once we collect everyone. Just work on getting the town set up.”
“We’ll let you know if we need help,” Tara promised.
Egwene glanced at Tara. “Good, I’ll let everyone know that you found the girls and Xander.”
“Thanks,” Dawn said and closed the door. “Can you open a door to Xander?”
Tara opened a door to his hotel room.
0o0o0
Xander blinked as he woke up in a strange location on a strange bed looking at a smirking Faith that he could feel in the back of his head for some reason. “You stole the covers.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Faith asked with a smirk.
Xander glanced over at Faith’s bare breasts then looked back at her face. “Are you real?”
“Which answer gets me pinned to the bed and fucked like a redheaded stepdaughter?” Faith teased.
Xander glanced around the hotel room then rolled out of bed. “Who are you?”
Faith let the covers fall down as she sat up and looked at Xander. “I’m your memory of Faith made manifest.”
“Why her?” Xander asked, feeling a little relieved that she’d moved the blanket which meant that she couldn’t be the First Evil and probably wasn’t an illusion. “And why now?”
“Because she’s sex on two wheels and because you picked up a new power when you jumped worlds,” Faith replied.
“Why not Anya?” Xander asked.
Faith smirked at Xander. “Probably because you know deep down that Anya wouldn’t share and that Dawn would happily fuck both of us at the same time?”
“Do you have any powers?” Xander asked, not disputing her claim.
“I get stronger when I kill anything living,” Faith admitted.
“How much stronger?” Xander asked warily.
Faith shrugged. “It depends on what I kill. If I kill an electrician, I’d probably pick up enough skill to wire a house. If I kill a parahuman or a magic user, I get their powers or at least a decent fraction of their powers.”
“Great, why did I get the morally questionable power?” Xander muttered.
“It might have something to do with eating a dark god or it might just be because you’re lucky,” Faith teased.
“No hurting innocents,” Xander ordered.
“Of course not, there are plenty of villains running around that don’t need to be alive. Speaking of, do we really need all of the cultists and sul’dam?” Faith asked, hoping he’d let her kill a few of them so that she could pick up magic.
Xander considered her question and realized he really didn’t care what happened to the various cultists and slavers they’d captured. “That depends on if they’re willing to help with construction and teaching. If they’re not willing to help then I don’t see a reason to keep them around.”
“Good. Now that we’re done with business, do you want to fuck like animals on the Discovery Channel or look up the local villains?” Faith teased.
“Sex and then information, judging by the fight last night there are lots of stupid villains walking around. I want to know what we have to work with.”
Faith smirked at Xander. “In that case, get over here and drop your boxers…” she trailed off as a gate appeared against the wall and Tara stepped out. “It’s a wild Tara, can we keep her?”
Tara glanced between Faith and Xander, fairly sure she’d have been blushing without her extra memories. “Where did you find Faith?”
“I haven’t, this version is my projection,” Xander admitted, happy that he was wearing his boxers. “New weave or new power?” he asked looking at the gateway that he couldn’t sense and didn’t look quite right.
“New power,” Tara said as she stepped forward so Dawn could step through. “She looks real enough.”
“I’m real enough, do you want to take me for a test drive?” Faith teased as she playfully leered at Tara and Dawn who had just stepped through the gate.
Dawn smiled at Xander then looked at Faith. “I’d love to take you for a test drive but we should probably discuss the strange town and world before we get distracted.”
“Right, who do I have to kill?” Faith asked cheerfully.
“Good question,” Xander said as he pulled his pants on. “We’re in Brockton Bay, it’s basically a port city that has seen better times and has a large gang presence.”
“Without Lung the ABB are likely to collapse which should cause the Empire and the Merchants to fight over territory. If we take out the Merchants’ capes, the cops should be able to deal with the rest of the gang,” Dawn explained.
“How bad are the Merchant capes?” Xander asked.
“The Merchants like grabbing people and addicting them to shit,” Dawn said, thinking about the notes she’d found on the tablet.
“In other words, they have plenty of blood on their hands,” Xander said thoughtfully.
“From what I can tell, yeah. What are you thinking?” Dawn asked, noticing the look on her friend’s face.
“Faith gets stronger and more skilled by killing people or creatures with powers,” Xander admitted, sort of glad that Buffy wasn’t in charge anymore as she wasn’t practical when it came to human evil.
“Do you think she’d pick up channeling?” Dawn asked, thinking about the tainted channelers Willow had captured in the Blight.
“You’re thinking about the cultists, aren’t you?” Xander asked.
“And the Forsaken and tainted aiel Willow captured, if Faith can get their skills and talents, there’s no reason to leave them alive.” Sure, she’d promised Aginor and Asmodean they’d eventually be allowed to retire somewhere if they helped against the Dark One and trained people but the only reason she hadn’t already killed them for war crimes was their knowledge.
Xander looked at Tara. “Ideas?”
“I’m fairly sure the rest of the group reincarnated, they should have local knowledge of how bad all of the gangs are which would let us figure out how to dismantle everything without making things worse,” Tara suggested.
“In that case, we should probably talk to Joiya first,” Dawn said, hoping that she’d have some ideas.”
Tara opened a door to Joiya’s kitchen.
Joyce’s face lit up in a smile when she saw Dawn. “Pumpkin Belly?”
“Hi Mom,” Dawn said, ecstatic to have her mother back.
Comments
Robert Buniff
Lol too many puppies.
Mist of Shadows
I'll get around to it eventually... it just had some complications.
Robert Buniff
Yup you did that in Mist in worm too. I hope you go back to that one day. I can count on one hand the number of stories that Taylor gets her mom back.
