Peering over the till, the ex-vengeance demon harumpfed at the sight of the young red-headed witch sitting on one of the tables in deep concentration, sprinkling ingredients around in a circle.
“What is she doing?”
Sighing, and looking up from the mystical products he and Tara were arranging on the shelf, the ex-librarian and co-owner of the Magic Box answered her. “We’ve been through this before Anya. Given the nature of the magic involved and its advanced level, we agreed she should start small and with supervision, in case anything goes wrong. Teleportation is hardly easy to master, even for a witch as powerful as Willow is getting to be.” After a pause, he adds, “And besides, she did pay for all the ingredients.”
Clearly not satisfied with the answer, Anya crosses her arms. “That still doesn’t explain why she has to do it here. Why can’t she go fail at Buffy’s house? What if she teleports the wrong thing and sends my merchandise to the other side of the world?” Suddenly stricken by a horrible thought, she continues. “Or… Or what if she teleports her thing and it appears inside some of my merchandise? I’ve seen it before in my demon days. It always messy!”
“Gee, thanks Anya. I’m touched by your concern for my house,” the blonde slayer shot back sarcastically, momentarily distracted from her bored fiddling of some slightly shiny orb she found lying on a shelf.
“Well, they’re not my possessions,” Anya replies defensively. “This isn’t socialism. And stop playing with that! It’s valuable!”
Looking over from his seat, Xander reaches out and playfully grabs the orb from Buffy’s hand and movs to place it back on a shelf, receiving a happy grin from his girlfriend in return.
“Hey,” the slayer exclaims, disgruntled. “I wasn’t done with that!” She then lunges towards her friend, hoping to regain the orb so she can return to her fiddling. Startled, Xander flails backwards, almost flipping over his chair, and inadvertently throwing up the orb and the comic book he was reading.
Before the orb can smash against the ground, a hand reaches out and deftly catches it. Looking up, Buffy and Xander see the stern eyes of a watcher glaring at them. “Now, if you’re both done being a nuisance, perhaps you’d enjoy doing something helpful for once.” Gesturing towards the shelfs, he continues, “There’s no shortage of shelf sorting to be done.”
Moaning unhappily, the two friends get up to help Giles and Tara. But just at that moment the door to the shop flies open, the bell ringing loudly, and a black mass throws itself in. Smoking lightly, a blanket is dramatically tossed of, revealing a certain bleach blonde vampire underneath.
“He certainly knows how to make an entrance, doesn’t he?” Anya points out from behind the counter, a mild tone of admiration slipping into her sentence, gaining a jealous stare from her boyfriend.
“Well, hey, look who it is!” Xander exclaims loudly and sarcastically, trying to imitate a circus ringmaster. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Incredible Spike! He can’t pinch himself without giving himself a headache, he can’t take a walk in the sunshine without frying like an egg and he can’t bear to be without his safety blanket. Oh, with what inability shall he amaze us next?”
“Very funny,” the neutered vampire replies, just as sarcastically.
“So, um, why are you here Spike?” Giles asks, with a bit of a patronising tone. “Something we can help you with perhaps?”
Smiling naughtily, the vampire replies, “No. But maybe I can help you with something.” Pausing for dramatic effect, he looks around the room. “I’ve got some info on a new Big Bad that I thought you might be interested in.”
Interrupting, Xander challenges Spike with suspicion in his tone. “And I suppose your doing this out of the goodness of your heart? Your dried-up shriveled heart?”
Smirking, the vampire answers. “Well, I was thinking maybe an exchange. More specifically, I give you this important information, and you give me some of that.” He points to the large wad of money Anya is flipping through happily.
‘Or how about you give us the info, and we don’t introduce your heart to Mr. Pointy?” Xander threatens, not enjoying the vampire’s continued presence in the store.
Spike’s about to fire back, when an angry shout fills the room. “Will you all shut up?” Staring angrily from the table, Willow continues shouting. “I’m trying to concentrate!”
After everyone else shuts up, and she huffs, and lowers her voice. “Now, I’m think I’m ready to try this out.”
As the gang gathers around the table, eager to watch, Willow finalises the preparations for her spell, not noticing Xander’s comic, thrown up into the air in surprise, has landed behind her, on the table, smudging her mystical circle.
“If I’ve got everything right, I should make this soccer ball jump from here to the front door. If it works alright, I’ll start trying different things and sending them further. Eventually,” she adds with an excited smile, “I’ll even be able to teleport things without needing any preparation!”
“So, here goes nothing!”
*******
Pushing open the door to the Magic Box, the bell tinkering lightly, an elderly couple walks in, hand in hand.
“Hello?”
After no one answers, they try again.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
Still getting no answer, they shrug, and turn to leave the empty store.
“If they’re closed, they should have the decency to flip their open/closed sign. It’s the middle of the day, really! Young people these days and their lunch breaks… Though I could have sworn that I just saw somebody run in!”
*******
Yay. Lunch time. Always the highlight of my day. They make you line up, and then shuffle forward slowly so they can slap their slop onto these stupid plastic trays. I think today’s is supposed to be pasta. But hey, I guess the path to redemption isn’t supposed to be easy.
And anyways, it brings back happy memories of childhood. When she was drunk as usual, my mum would just shove whatever weeks-old crap she had in the fridge into the microwave, and then tried to get me to eat it. I figured out pretty quickly that…
Fuck.
Halfway to my usual table, I get hit by a wrenching blow to the gut, sending me collapsing face first to my knees, my tray spilled all over the floor. What the hell was that? There’s nobody even near me, and now they’re all standing up and laughing at me.
Oh god.
Loss. Deep. Painful. I’ve lost something, and now I’m so damn empty.
I barely have time to let out a strangled sob, before my gut wrenches itself again. The world goes black, and falls out from under me.
*******
“Tell me about the incident,” the stern prison chief demands in a frustrated tone.
“It’s inmate Faith Lehane, sir,” one of the guards reply nervously. “She’s doing time for murder. She’s a loner and not entirely all right up here, but she stays out of trouble. The guards like her for that, which doesn’t make her popular with the other prisoners of course. But they found out the hard way not to mess with her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so tough.”
“And now you say she’s vanished?”
Looking at each other for a moment, another guard finally finds the courage to speak up. “Well, um, that’s the thing. You might want to have a look at the security tapes, sir.”
Drawing his boss’s attention to the security monitors, the guard plays back the video of the incident, captured by the prison’s security cameras.
Looking at the footage, they all see the inmate grab her tray, get her food, and then start down the row between the tables to find a seat. She then falls to the ground, sending her tray flying, and a second later, just pops out of existence, leaving nothing behind.
“Play that again.” The chief quickly demands in an awed tone.
After a couple more replays, the chief slumps back against the wall. “How the hell are we going to explain that?”
*******
Their world having gone black just a split second ago, the Scoobies are startled when they suddenly find themselves in a very bright place. The ones sitting on chairs fall backwards onto their asses, the support of the chair now gone, and poor Willow, once sitting on a table, falls about a metre into a ground of hot, soft sand, the soccer ball falling with her, bouncing of her head.
After a second, before they have time to adjust to their new surroundings, Spike cries out in alarm. “Ah, sun! Sun!” Flailing about, both trying to find cover and to shield himself with his leather jacket, the vampire begins to smoke. A couple of the Scoobies make a start to try and help him, but they’re too late, and he bursts into flames. After one final scream, only dust remains.
After a couple of seconds, Anya finally breaks the stunned silence. “Well, he certainly knows how to make an exit!”
Snapping back to their senses, with a few shrugs and a muttered “Good riddance!” from Xander, the Scoobies look around them to appraise the situation.
They’re in the middle of a large desert, sand dunes stretching around them for ages. There’s hardly a cloud in the sky, and the sunlight is beating down hard on them.
“Hey, look!” Buffy excitedly shouts, pointing out to a break between a couple of dunes. “I think I see something over there!”
As they all gather to peer off where Buffy pointed, Giles takes lead. “Yes, I do think I see something. A city perhaps?”
After a pause to consider their options, the watcher continues, “I would propose that we start heading over there, find out where we are exactly, get some water and get out of this damn sun.”
*******
Getting to the top of the final dune before they reach the city, the Scoobies take a quick moment to catch their breath. Giles is now draping his tweed blazer over his shoulder, Buffy’s grumbling about the sand ruining her shoes, and Willow’s forlornly still carrying the soccer ball.
Before they have the chance to make the final short walk to their destination, Xander stops, and gasps. “Oh my god. The architecture. The sand. The two suns. I know where we are. We’re on Tatooine!”