Dawn and Reincarnation Part 34 (Patreon)

“What’s the situation?” Elizabeth asked as she walked through the door then froze as she saw Xander and a ridiculously tall red haired version of her sister from her memories. “You’re real?”

“Hey brown haired girl,” Xander teased then blinked as Buffy lunged forward and pulled him into a hug. “Miss me?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said as she let go enough that she could look up at his face. “What happened?” she asked as Willow walked in and shut the door behind her.

“What always happens when the heroes win, evil cheats.” Xander shrugged. “Of course, if we hadn’t ended up in another world, I wouldn’t have magic and Dawn wouldn’t have an island of naked girls, so it was probably for the best.”

“You also wouldn’t have gotten to kill a dark god,” Dawn piped up.

Elizabeth turned to look at Dawn. “You have an island of naked girls?”

Dawn snickered at the look of interest on her sister’s face. “Seriously? I tell you that Xander killed a dark god and your first question is about the tropical island of naked girls?”

“It’s Xander, the dark god probably tried to hurt someone he cared about,” Elizabeth said, knowing that he’d hit Glory with a wrecking ball and saved the world at least twice that she knew of and probably more that he hadn’t bothered to tell Buffy.

“It’s more that he was trying to destroy humanity. But yeah, my island is in a pocket dimension, you’ll like it.”

“Sounds fun,” Elizabeth agreed, picturing Xander, Dawn and Willow sprawled out on a beach towel without any clothes. “We’ll certainly have to go.”

Joyce grinned at Buffy. “Great, now I’ll never see her.”

“I’m not that bad,” Elizabeth complained.

“Just remember the rules, no touching the cute girls unless I’m there,” Willow teased as she walked over and hugged Xander.

Xander returned Willow’s hug. “So, you and Buffy?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Nope, I’m Elizabeth. I’m keeping you and Dawn because you’re hot but Buffy had sex with a corpse, who the hell does that?”

“I can’t argue with that logic Liz… A Beth?” Xander asked, testing the nickname. “Tinker Girl, She Who Doesn’t Slay Anymore?”

Elizabeth winced as she remembered how bad Buffy was at being secret identity girl. “Please don’t get in the habit of mentioning my powers, someone might overhear. So, what’s the deal, why now?” Elizabeth asked, not sure what was going on but figuring her friends would have more details.

“Do you want the short version or the long version?” Xander asked, his tone of voice shifting from joking to serious.

“Start with the short version,” Elizabeth suggested. “You can always fill in the details later.”

“The Endbringers need to die and we have a plan,” Dawn said with a grin.

Elizabeth shivered. “Don’t joke about that, we’ve tossed everything we have at them, they keep coming back.”

“That’s because you didn’t know how to kill them, we do,” Dawn assured her, annoyed that the mere mention of monsters would cause that reaction in her sister.

“How?” Elizabeth demanded, staring at her sister, suddenly wondering if everything was just a sick joke.

Willow wrapped her arm around Elizabeth’s waist and pulled her into a hug. “They’re not joking Liz. If they say they can do something, I believe them,” she assured her, knowing that balefire would likely cut right through an Endbringer even if it didn’t instantly destroy it.

Dawn shrugged. “They have control cores. The cores are immune to a lot of parahuman powers and durable as all hell but we have magic and generally speaking magic makes physics stand in a corner and cry.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “A couple of parlour tricks aren’t going to cut it, I doubt Glory could have seriously hurt any of the Endbringers and you’re not Glory.”

“You’re right, I’m not Glory, I’m a lot scarier,” Dawn admitted, hoping that her sister didn’t freak out.

“You’re still my daughter,” Joyce assured her.

“You’re more dangerous than a hell god?” Elizabeth asked in disbelief, not sure how her little sister ended up scarier than a hellgod outside of being The Key. 

“Everyone grows up,” Xander pointed out. “The Dawnster is powerful enough to level cities and call down lightning.”

“Where did you learn magic and can you teach me?” Elizabeth asked, fairly sure her sister hadn’t learned anything that impressive while in Sunnydale, either that or Buffy’s situational awareness was worse than she’d thought. 

“I picked it up in my last life.”

“You mean after Sunnydale?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yeah, I grew up as a farmer, found out I was the daughter of a princess and that I had magic.”

Elizabeth stared at her sister, trying to figure out if she was joking. “You were a princess?”

“Nah, Mom sort of ran away because of a prophecy, my brother was the poor bastard chosen by Destiny to save the world and defeat the dark god. As for magic, it takes innate talent but we might have a workaround so we’ll see how it goes.” Dawn wove the threads to create a ball of light over her hand. “This is a sphere of destruction.”

“Liar,” Joyce piped up.

Elizabeth shook her head, fairly sure her sister’s cheesy grin would have told her she was joking even without her mother’s comment. “So… how can I help? I might not have a Brute rating or any nifty Slayer abilities but I’m a Tinker. I’m good at reverse engineering tinkertech.”

“Cool, you’ll have to show me your stuff,” Dawn said as she dropped the weave and let go of the source.

“You said you had a plan, what is it?” Willow asked as she glanced between Xander and Dawn, wishing she could read them like she could everyone else.

Dawn glanced at Joyce for a second then looked between her sister and Willow. “I picked up several new powers when I got dropped in the world. In addition to having a copy of Mom’s powers, I can loan out any of my powers or parts of powers.”

“That’s bullshit,” Elizabeth complained.

“She’s actually telling the truth,” Joyce assured her.

“No, I mean her powers are bullshit,” Elizabeth grumbled.

Dawn snickered. “I’m not complaining but I’m also not disagreeing. The trick is that I can hand out the ability to temporarily copy powers.”

“Which means you can let someone copy your powers which would drastically increase the number of people in a fight that can hand out powers, right?” Elizabeth asked, seeing some interesting possibilities for fighting endbringers though there would probably be some diminishing returns, there always were.

Dawn shrugged. “Probably but the real trick involves evil clones and Xander’s power.”

“Evil clones?” Elizabeth turned to look at Xander. “What did you end up with?”

“It’s probably better if I just show you.” Xander focused and conjured Faith.

Elizabeth stared at the naked version of Faith. “Faith?”

“B,” Faith replied with amusement. “Okay, I’m not really Faith, or at least not the version you knew.”

“Explain,” Elizabeth ordered as she glanced between Xander and the attractive naked girl.

“I’m a projection of Xander’s memories of the girl you knew,” Faith explained. “Though my name is Faith.”

“Is she going to go crazy?” Elizabeth asked, not sure how she felt about the girl that Buffy had fucked over because she’d been too stupid to just tell Giles that she’d fucked up rather than trying to blame the new slayer.

“I have free will but I’m Xander’s projection, he can step in and control my body any time he wants,” Faith explained.

“Yeah, because that’s not creepy,” Elizabeth said as she looked at Xander.

Xander held up his hands. “I didn’t pick my power.”

“Hey now, I’m awesome,” Faith said with a fake pout, knowing Xander loved her.

“What powers do you have?” Willow asked, slightly annoyed that she couldn’t read Faith’s mind.

“It’s a decent list, I pick up powers when I kill things,” Faith admitted.

“What?!” Elizabeth sputtered. “You’re like the Faerie Queen?”

“Nah, it’s not always that direct and I’m not limited to a couple of powers at a time,” Faith replied smugly. “Besides, I can’t bring people back as shades or anything.”

“I don’t know which has the more bullshit power,” Elizabeth muttered as she glanced between Dawn and Xander.

“Dawn,” Xander said without any hesitation.

“Probably,” Dawn admitted. “Either way, do you want permanent powers?”

“You want me to kill someone?” Elizabeth asked, connecting the dots between Dawn’s ability to let people copy powers and Faith’s ability to copy powers permanently.

“More like evil clones,” Xander assured her.

“That’s only slightly better,” Elizabeth muttered.

“Yeah, it would be nice if we could jump into a video game and kill goblins or demons for power.” Xander grinned when he realized that killing goblins might be a viable alternative. “Actually, is there any reason you can’t twist the evil clone ability so that it creates goblins with the same powers as your targets?” he asked looking at Joyce and Dawn.

“Not that I can think of,” Joyce mused. “My power has some upper limits but it’s rather flexible within those limits.”

“In that case, I’d love to have some extra powers,” Elizabeth said eagerly, knowing that she would have been dead a couple of times over the years without her Mom loaning her a Brute rating for patrols. “Would this let me learn magic?”

Faith held her hand out and wove the threads for a ball of light. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

“You’re the best sister ever,” Elizabeth said cheerfully.

“I know,” Dawn joked.

“So modest too,” Tara teased as she walked in from the kitchen. “Hey…” she trailed off as Elizabeth practically teleported and pulled her into a hug.

“You’re alive! How are you alive?” Elizabeth asked, flashing back to Buffy’s memory of finding out that her friend had been killed by Warren. 

“Reincarnation,” Tara said as she returned Buffy’s hug. “How much do you remember?”

“Of Buffy’s life?” Elizabeth asked as she let Tara go. “Most of it or at least as much as Buffy remembered before she landed on the roof of the bus fleeing Sunnydale before everything went white. I remember Spike bursting into flames...” she trailed off, not sure what to say about Buffy’s stupid plan to wait until the last second to activate the potentials or about Spike’s death.

“On that note, we should probably show you the island and test the goblin idea on some of the dark cultists,” Xander cut in, noticing Elizabeth’s discomfort about the past.

“I wouldn’t mind grabbing powers and spending a few hours on a beach,” Elizabeth said, happy for the distraction.

“I’ll grab the sunscreen,” Willow said as she headed for the bathroom.

“Do we need suits?” Elizabeth asked.

“Only if you want them,” Xander teased. “The island is clothing optional.”

Joyce spoke up, “I made some calls about available property, I was able to grab a parking lot next to the North Ferry terminal for a steal. Mostly because a cape fight demolished the office a few months ago and it’s not worth rebuilding.”

“Why do you want a trashed parking lot?” Elizabeth asked as she glanced between Dawn and her mother.

“I have a magical item that can set up a multidimensional travel network and I need somewhere  to place our terminal,” Dawn explained with a grin.

Elizabeth stared at Dawn. “You’re serious, aren’t you? I doubt the government would let you keep it.”

Dawn shrugged. “I only really need it so I can destroy the alien abomination that created the Endbringers.”

“You know who created the Endbringers? How?” Elizabeth demanded.

“I’ll tell you about it after he’s dead, I’d rather not let him catch wind of the attempt until everything is sorted.” Dawn turned to look at Joyce as Willow walked back into the room with the bottle of sunscreen. “Speaking of, I’m going to need power copying.”

“Sure,” Joyce handed Dawn a temporary power copying ability that would let her temporarily copy the powers of anyone within a hundred yards. “What are you planning?”

“Faith’s ability has a nasty drawback, the more she uses it, the more inhuman she’ll end up looking. I should be able to let her borrow my ability to bundle powers and permanently ditch that part of her power with some shenanigans. Once that’s done, I’m going to have Tara open a door to Saint’s lair and capture him. He rigged a particularly nasty death trap for Dragon in case she gets too close.”

“He what!” Elizabeth snapped, pissed that someone would try to hurt her friend. “I knew he was a bit unhinged but that’s insane.”

Dawn turned to look at Willow. “Which is why I need Willow’s help with his computer, I don’t want any surprises.”

“Of course,” Willow agreed. “Dragon is great. When do you want to deal with him?”

“How soon can you get your costume?” Dawn asked, deciding that there was no point waiting for Faith’s ability to get fixed as he wasn’t actually a parahuman.

“I don’t need a costume, a lift to his general area,” Willow said as she vanished. “Once I’m in the area, I can bodyjack him and I’ll know where he stuck everything and how to dismantle his entire network.”

Xander scowled as he thought about someone bodyjacking him. “We’re going to have to figure out better defenses.”

Buffy nodded. “Mom and I have been working on defenses against various Master effects but there isn’t a one size fits all fix. The best we can generally do is mix in an anti Master component in the powers that Mom hands out and give her some tinkertech shields.”

“We might be able to use Crawler’s power to deal with it once we sand the rough edges off and fix the mutations,” Faith suggested.

“Crawler’s power?” Elizabeth’s eyes went wide. “That was you?”

“They had some nice powers and most of them needed to die,” Faith replied with a shrug.

“Most?” Willow asked, fairly sure that all of them needed to die.

“Burnscar escaped, her power screws with her head so I wasn’t grabbing it and Bonesaw might be worth saving considering her shard is messing with her and she’s a Tinker that can do some really interesting things.”

“Try horrifying!” Elizabeth snapped.

“She was also six when Jack grabbed her,” Dawn argued as she loaned Faith power copying so that she could copy her ability to lend out powers.

“He had a rather insidious Thinker/Master component to his powers that let him manage parahumans like a violin player,” Faith explained as she copied Dawn’s power, lending Xander her ability to get abilities back with Dawn’s power. “Which means, we might be able to fix Burnscar’s power and get Bonesaw some mental help and maybe a new life elsewhere.”

“What about the Siberian?” Willow asked, not sure how they’d managed to kill her.

“We found the person projecting her. He’s currently drugged out of his mind. I’m planning on making some goblins so that we can summon a projection.” Dawn grinned at Elizabeth. “Because nothing says go to hell to an Endbringer like 100 and some Siberian like creatures ripping them apart.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I think you’re going to cause a lot of people mental issues, especially if they look the same.”

Faith carefully worked on bundling up the part of her power acquisition power that caused her to mutate when she absorbed powers. She didn’t see a point in looking like a monster, there were changer powers or illusions if she needed to scare the crap out of someone.

“Meh, most of them probably deserve it,” Dawn said, thinking about Cauldron and Armsmaster.

“On that note, let’s grab Saint then deal with setting up the portal stone network. Ready?” Tara asked as she gestured toward the wall.

“Ready,” Willow agreed.

“I’ll stick it behind him, that should give you enough time to possess him.” Tara opened the door behind Saint.

Faith shoved the crappy bits of her power into Saint, he’d only really notice if he killed anyone and he wasn’t a nice person so him ending up looking like a monster didn’t really bother her.

Willow ran through the portal and jumped into Saint before he even realized anything was wrong. ‘What the hell? Dragon’s an AI? Okay, don’t worry about your friend being an AI, worry about screwing Saint and his team over.’ She spent a couple of minutes transferring the money in his various accounts to a shell company then worked on deleting his various contingencies and backups, most of them were easy enough to deal with because he didn’t trust anyone other than Teacher who was the one person no one should trust, ever.

Willow ran the program that he’d designed to triple erase his harddrive that would end with a small explosive charge vaporizing the physical drive then grabbed a notepad and wrote him a note. “Teacher says hello and found another way out of the cage.” She ripped the note off and grabbed the case that contained the program that would corrupt Dragon’s code beyond hope of repair and walked back to Tara’s portal. “This should have everything you need to deal with the problem.” She handed the case to Dawn. “What do you want to do with Saint?”

Tara opened another portal to a world that was about eighty years behind Earth Bet when it came to technology. “Just walk him through then fly back, he can build a life for himself or die.” She wouldn’t have been quite as nasty about things but he’d basically tortured Dragon until she’d triggered and threatened to kill people to get away in more than one confrontation. The only reason she wasn’t going to kill him was because she wasn’t sure how much was Teacher’s influence.

Willow ran through the portal and kept running for another forty feet. ‘That should be far enough.’ She spun around half a dozen times then jumped out of his body and flew back through the portal. “Close it!” she shouted as she dropped out of her ghost form.

Tara closed the portals once Willow flew through. “What about his equipment?”

“I emptied his various accounts and activated the failsafe so that his computer would frag itself. Without the killswitch and without Saint, the rest of them should be easy enough for someone to deal with.” Willow focused on Dawn. “How did you know about Dragon?”

“I got dropped in with a cheat sheet or rather a story and some notes of a possible future. Dragon was in the story. On that note, we should probably set up the portal stone network so I can kill the big bad,” Dawn muttered the last part.

“How dangerous is the big bad?” Elizabeth asked, warily.

“Nasty enough to blow up worlds with the right set up, which is why I want to deal with him before he can get everything set up.” Dawn did her best to ignore her sister’s glare. 

“Worlds? That’s worse than the first,” Elizabeth complained.

“Thus why I’d like to deal with the problem before they’re expecting a problem.” Dawn pulled her small stone cylinder out of her bag and activated it, seeding the world with hundreds of eighteen foot tall stone pillars covered with runes that would take magic users to an almost countless number of alternate timelines and worlds. “Can you open a portal to the parking lot?”

“Wait, I bought the property in costume,” Joyce cut in before they could open a portal and risk someone seeing them. “You’re going to need a mask.”

“In that case, you’re up Tara.” Dawn loaned Tara the ability to create costumes and masks. “Your shiny new power should be able to create Brute rated costumes and masks.”

“That’s cheating,” Tara teased as she created a set of black mage robes with silvery arcane symbols running down the arms in such a way as to suggest flames. “How’s that?” she asked as she handed Dawn the robes then started working on creating costumes for the rest of the group.

“I like the suggestion of flames,” Dawn assured Tara as she slipped the robe on. “How badly do you think Glory Girl would react to someone wanting to create a goblin copy of her?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Badly. Besides, her shield isn’t perfect.”

“Yeah, it has a recharge timer.” Dawn smiled as she watched Faith wiggle into her robes.

“Are you going to be able to hit him from wherever the portal stone is?” Xander asked as Tara handed out masks.

“Probably not which means I’ll need some type of long ranged flight,” Dawn admitted.

Elizabeth turned to look at Joyce. “Why aren’t you trying to talk her out of it?”

“Because doing nothing is worse than taking a chance in this case,” Joyce admitted as she swapped Dawn’s powers to a copy of Glory Girl’s without the Master rating, pushing her flight up as much as possible in exchange. “High end flight with a shield, it should protect you from one shot before it collapses but that’s better than nothing.”

Dawn gave Xander the ability to create iron shields. “I need a large tower shield Xander.”

Xander focused and created a large tower shield with his new power. “Here.”

Elizabeth looked at the iron shield that had a raised starburst on the front. “Why are you taking an iron shield into a fight?”

“Because I can make the shield nearly indestructible which should let him tank a couple of hits without getting splattered by whatever the hell the alien abomination is using.” Dawn wove the weaves to turn the iron shield into a white heartstone shield while she waited for everyone to put their costumes on. “With any luck, I won’t need it but I’d rather have it and not need it than not have it and need it.”

Joyce pulled Dawn into a hug. “Promise you’ll come back.”

“I’ll do my best,” Dawn promised.

“In that case, let’s go,” Tara said as she opened a door to the lot next to the ferry terminal. “No dying.”

“I’m not planning on it.” Dawn stepped through the portal and walked through the mostly empty lot toward the ripped apart building, rather impressed with the damage. ‘I’m going to need to armor Mom’s house if she’s going to stay in town for any length of time.’ She walked over to the gravel section and used her stone cylinder, creating an additional portal stone tied into the network.

Tara let the door close, seeing no reason to leave a door to the house in plan view if she could help it, not that anyone seemed to be around.

Elizabeth blinked as an eighteen feet rune carved pillar appeared. “This is a horrible idea.”

“I’ve heard worse,” Dawn teased, thinking of some of her sister’s plans over the years.

“I’m not responsible for Buffy’s mistakes, I just have her memories, even if I’m keeping you and Xander,” Elizabeth argued.

“Just say the word and I’ll help,” Xander offered.

“You just want to add an alien abomination to your list of creatures killed,” Dawn teased.

“And you don’t?” Xander asked with amusement.

Elizabeth shook her head. “You’re insane, you realize that right?”

“I’d go to the ends of the world for my girls, I’d kill dark gods for my girls,” Xander said matter of factly.

“Yeah, I’m the only one that can stay off his radar,” Dawn argued.

Faith coughed, “Bullshit, power copying.”

Dawn pouted. “Fine, we’ll give everyone power copying then we’ll burn him to ash.”

Joyce shook her head then started handing out a power copying ability to the rest of the group. “I’ll cover power copying for the rest of the group, you can cover mine.”

“I’ll cover enhanced sight so we can find him, various forms of durability so we can survive and combat precog so we can dodge anything he sends our way,” Dawn said as she swapped the powers she was lending out, making sure to give her mother power copying so everyone would have her protection against precog.

“What about a blaster power?” Buffy asked.

“Nah, we’re going to use magic, we’ve got that part covered,” Dawn assured her as she touched the key around her neck then walked over and touched the stone pillar. She focused on finding a portal stone near Zion’s actual body. She was a touch surprised to find a portal stone on a mountain looking down on the creature’s massive body. “I found him, we’ll slip in and blast the shit out of him.”

“Works for me,” Xander agreed as he glanced at the girls. “Is everyone ready?”

“I should probably avoid helping kill him,” Faith admitted. “No telling what strange and twisted powers he kept or if I’d get turned into an abomination.”

Dawn handed her the heartstone shield. “Jump in front of anything that he sends our way.”

“I’ll do my best,” Faith promised.

“Link.” Dawn reached out and linked with Joyce, Tara and Xander then reached through her bracer and channeled power into the symbols that would take them to Zion’s world.

“This is a horrible idea,” Elizabeth grumbled as the world flickered and they found themselves on a mountain trail looking down at an alien landscape.

Dawn wove a thin stream of balefire and struct the alien mass of flesh, blinking when the entire sea of alien flesh vanished, leaving barren rock for miles. “And that is how you kill an alien space whale, the easy way.”

“Group kill,” Xander said with amusement.

“As it should be,” Tara agreed as she scanned the area for other signs of trouble.

“Sweet,” Faith cheered, happy that everything had gone off without a hitch.

“What the hell was that?” Elizabeth asked, staring at the vast expanse of barren rock.

“That was Scion’s actual body,” Dawn said with amusement.

“So, not a hero?” Elizabeth asked, hoping they hadn’t just killed the world’s most powerful hero for no good reason.

“Think of him like the mayor, he was just pretending to be a hero,” Dawn assured her.

“In that case, this calls for ice cream,” Elizabeth said, hoping everything made sense once Dawn actually explained where she’d been after Sunnydale.

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