When they’d arrived at the Magic Box after leaving Spike’s crypt Buffy’s fears and doubts had been eased by the vampire’s absolute certainty that they’d easily find a solution to her problem once the whole gang was on the case. They’d held hands the whole way to the shop, despite the reaction the closeness had gotten from Xander, and she’d begun to share his belief that things were gonna work out just fine.
At least things with her invisible status. Once that got cleared up she was gonna have a whole mess of problems to work through and who knew how the heck any of that was going to turn out.
An hour later, though, her unseen hands are throwing aside the heavy text she’d been reading till her eyes started crossing and they still hadn’t find anything even remotely similar to her situation in the books.
"This is getting us nowhere," she sighs and rises to pace the Magic Box as the others continue pouring over the volumes they were researching in.
"Buffy," Spike puts down the book he’d been holding up to his face to make up for his farsightedness and refusal to get glasses. "Don’t think like that," he gets to his feet and moves to stand beside her with a hand stroking her leather clad shoulder. "We’re gonna figure this out. These nits," he jerks his head toward Anya and Xander, "always figure something out for you just in time to save the day."
"Hey," said nits look up from the table to exclaim in sync.
"We just get lucky. What if we don’t this time?" she ignores them and focuses on Spike, turning toward him to rest her head against his chest. "We don’t know how long this process is gonna take before it kills me. It’s already been over eight hours since I got hit with this and that pylon was reduced to goo two hours ago. How much longer until that happens to me?"
His only answer is to wrap his arms around her and simply hold her against him as all of them are wondering the exact same thing as every minute ticked past.
"We need Willow," Anya says with an audible closing of the book she’d been studying. "She’s the brainy one. This kind of mess is right up her alley to figure out."
"Agreed," Buffy reaches up to lightly touch Spike’s cheek in thanks for his hug then moves away trying to get back into her Slayer mode. "Where was she going again?" she asks Xander.
"Last I saw her we were at the scene of the crime. She’d gotten some evidence of that black van that’s been stalking you and was gonna go find out whatever she could about the van to hopefully find out who it belonged to and who was behind all this," the brunette sighs. "I don’t know why she isn’t here."
"I’ll call the house again. See if anyone’s there. You guys keep reading," she turns with a swishing of Spike’s coat to go to the telephone in the shop and call home for the fifth time since arriving at the store.
Before she picks up the receiver it rings and she jumps back a bit startled at that bit of freakiness.
"Hello?" she says after answering it on the second ring.
"Slayer?" a vaguely familiar male voice asks.
"Yes," she frowns and tries to identify the speaker. "Who is this?"
"Listen. Don’t talk, just listen. You don’t have a lot of time," the voice says.
"Who is this?" she asks again with her spidey sense tingling to let her know this was a serious call. "You sound familiar."
"That’s," a throat is cleared on the other end and the speaker’s voice deepens in an attempt to disguise it. ‘That’s not important. We’ve got your friend Willow and if you don’t want something very nasty happening to her very soon you’d better meet us. Alone."
"How do I know you’re telling the truth?" she frowns at the receiver.
"How do you …," the voice stammers. "I don’t think she believes me. She wants to know how she can know I’m telling the truth," the words are muffled and he’s clearly talking to someone in the background.
"What?" another muffled voice asks incredulously. "Give me that," sounds of a struggle reach her ears and her expression turns utterly confused that this entire scenario. "Slayer," the second male voice says clearly into the phone after a moment. "This is how we’re gonna play this. You don’t question us. Just listen to what I’m telling you. We’ve got your redheaded witchy friend," she suddenly hears Willow call out her name in the background and stiffens, "and we will do very bad things to her unless you play ball. Now, you got that?"
"Yes," she answers. "Where do you want to meet?"
"The arcade on Main. Ten minutes and come alone. We see any of your friends with you and things will get ugly," he says firmly before just hanging up without another word.
Blinking at that abrupt disconnect she hangs up the receiver then moves quickly back into the main area of the shop.
"I have to go out," she informs the trio once again bent over books at the table.
"Who was on the phone?" Spike looks up with a frown to ask.
"Don’t know, but they have Willow," she flaps her invisible arms to move the leather coat she’s wearing through the air in a ghostly fashion. "I think they may have something to do with my disappearing act."
"Great," three books are slammed shut in sync as they all get to their feet with the vampire speaking. "Where we going?"
"Sorry, guys," she looks are all three of them apologetically then remembers they can’t see her expression. "There’s no ‘we going’ this time. It’s just me going. They were very specific about my going alone."
"Forget that," her lover scoffs at the idea. "It’s a bloody set up if they wanna get you alone."
"I’m meeting them at the arcade. That’s a public place. I can handle this," she assures them while shrugging off the duster and handing it to Spike. "Especially since they’re not gonna be able to see me coming."
"Buffy - " he finds her hand as it holds the leather and he gives her a speaking look that says how much he hates the idea of not going with her.
"I’ll be fine," she tosses the duster down onto the table and moves forward to take his face in her hands. "You’ll be seeing me in the flesh again in just a bit," she promises before placing her lips against his and feeling his arms slowly slide around her waist.
"Xander, are they … kissing?" she hears Anya asking in the background.
"God, I hope not," she hears her friend reply as she pulls back from the soft kiss.
"Xander, Spike is definitely kissing Buffy," the ex-vengeance demon says as Spike refuses to let Buffy go just yet and they kiss again with a bit more urgency. "Listen. You can hear their lips smacking together. Oh," Anya’s tone grows excited, "Buffy just moaned. Did you hear that? That was Buffy moaning. Since when does Spike kiss the Slayer and she moan with pleasure about it?"
"That isn’t really happening, Ahn. All of this is just a really bad dream," she almost laughs at Xander’s tone as she again breaks the kiss and this time pulls out of Spike’s embrace.
"Why are we both having the same bad dream?" his fiancée is asking as Buffy begins moving from the shop, feeling familiar blue eyes follow the sound of her feet on the floor. "And why would we dream that Buffy and Spike are having sex?"
"How did you know they were having sex?!"
"Will you gits shut up?!" she hears Spike groan loudly after Xander’s question to Anya just as she exits the shop.
~*~*~
Who knew there were so many geeks in Sunnydale, Buffy thinks as she pushes her way through the turnstile and into the video arcade filled with mostly teenaged guys playing away on the games inside.
She doesn’t bother to apologize to the kids she jostles as she moves past them with her eyes scanning the place for whoever it was she was here to meet. Her green eyes finally locate Willow standing next to a pinball machine in the back.
"You ok, Will?" she asks with her gaze continuing to search for the bad guys.
"Buffy?" her friend looks in her general direction.
"Where are the bad guys?" the invisible blonde asks and gets a ‘you wouldn’t believe me if I told you’ kinda look in response.
"We’re all around you, Slayer," a voice she recognizes as the second guy who talked to her on the phone says, "so don’t you try anything."
"He’s bluffing," Willow says quickly. "There … there’s just three of them … I think," her friend frowns apologetically and looks around.
"That’s more than enough to cause some serious carnage," the voice insists. "Right guys?" there’s no response and after a moment he repeats hesitantly, "Guys? Guys!" he says loudly.
She looks around for these ‘guys’ and her gaze lands on a game to her left on which the controls seem to be moving all on their own.
"Kick! Use the kick," she hears that vaguely familiar male voice that she’d first spoken to on the phone saying.
"I tried that," an unknown voice whines, "he keeps blocking it with his drunken monkey fist!"
"Wow," she scoffs as the quibbling continues. "Oh, yeah, it’s too bad I’m invisible ‘cause you’ve really got me shaking in my fashionable yet reasonably priced shoes. Scary video carnage," she mocks.
"Hey," the apparent leader says angrily to the others. "The Slayer’s here!"
"Sorry," says the third of the voices she’s heard. "Didn’t see her."
"Why don’t we continue this in a less crowded area, like," the leader suggests, "over there."
"Over where?" they all ask in sync.
"Over …," the man snaps then seems to remember that he’s invisible and can’t be seen pointing wherever he’s pointing. "Just follow me," he waves some kinda gun like gizmo then grabs Willow and begins pulling her toward the less busy very back of the arcade where the air hockey game is.
"Ow!" the redhead complains at how tightly she’s being held and then grunts in protest as her other arm is grabbed by one of the other unseen idiots.
"Ok, I’m gonna go out a limb here and guess you nitwits are the one’s who did this to me" Buffy says as she watches her friend struggle to try and break free of the hands restraining her.
"That was an accident," the vaguely familiar voice says protestingly and she turns with a frown in the direction of the speaker.
"I know your voice. Who are you?" she demands.
She hears a few coughs and then that faux deep voice he’d used on the phone saying, "Nobody you know."
"They’re the ones from your mystery van," Willow announces as she resigns herself to being held captive by the invisible jerks and stops struggling.
"Great. This crappy day is now complete," she sighs and crosses her arms over her chest assuming her most intimidating stance even though they can’t see it. "What annoying thing are you gonna do to me now?"
"Well if you stop being so bitchy, we’ll save your life and make you visible again," the leader replies.
"Right. And I believe that because you guys hit me with a big dose of stupid along with this invisibility thing?" she remarks sarcastically.
"They told me everything, Buffy," Willow tells her. "There’s something happening to you. Something bad. You’re - "
"Fading away, dissolving, dying, etc. Yeah, I know," she interrupts.
"I can stop that from happening," the leader says while lifting the gizmo he’s holding as it starts making a whirring sound. "I can fix it. Hold up that air hockey mallet on the table.
"What for?" she frowns in his direction then looks at the item in question.
"It’ll give me a target to aim at so I can do this," he explains as the whirring sound intensifies. "Ok," she hears him say as she picks the mallet up. "Now hold still and all your troubles will soon be gone."
"Wait a minute," she looks up sharply as Willow speaks. "You’re on the wrong setting!"
"What?" the man asks.
"The gun," the redhead looks closely at the device. "It’s not set for reversing the particle ionization. That’ll accelerate her molecular dissolution. I saw the plans, I know that’s what’ll happen."
"Mind your own business," the man snaps with the weapon wavering in his grip as he tries to shut Willow up.
"What’s she talking about?" that familiar male voice asks suspiciously from nearby.
"That’s what I’d like to know," Buffy says while looking closely at her friend. "What’s going on here, Will?"
"Buffy, he’s trying to kill you," the Wiccan exclaims just as the invisibility device is raised by an unseen hand to hit the redhead in the face and knock her down.
"Willow!" the Slayer hurls the white plastic mallet she holds in the general direction of the invisible person wielding that gun and gets a satisfying "Ow" in response as it apparently hits her target. "Play time," she says angrily as the weapon falls to the floor next to Willow, "is so over."
"You haven’t won yet, Slayer," the leader informs her.
"No, not yet," she focuses on the sound of his voice to get an idea where the idiot’s at. "That part comes after I beat the snot out of you."
"You’ll have to find me first!" he taunts as she stifles a groan as she can tell he’s moving around now. "Plus, there’s three of us against just the one of you."
"No way," says the voice she’s beginning to remember as one she knew in college. "You lied to us! We’re here to make her visible again and you were trying to kill her. This is all your fault and your problem."
"Yeah, fight her yourself," says the still totally unknown kinda whiny voice.
There’s an angrily sigh from bossy guy followed by, "You think she cares anything about that? We’re in on all of this together. I go down, we all go down!"
"Oh, yeah," she interrupts coolly. "I can promise all three of you losers are totally going down."
"We may not have your powers, Blayer, but you’ll find we are not so easy to," she picks up the other hockey mallet from the game table beside her and hurls it in the direction of his yapping. "Ow," he breaks off as she makes contact. "Get her!" he orders the others.
With that those two words, the fight was on. Not that this bumbling routine could really be called a fight compared to a lot of the throw downs she’s got listed on her extensive Slayer resume.
She’s throwing punches and on many occasions making satisfying contact with solid flesh instead of thin air as the trio she’s up against bickers amongst themselves and tries to locate her to get some hits of their own in. Considering that she had actual experience with this exact kind of situation, they didn’t stand a chance.
As the whiny one asks worriedly where she is, Buffy smiles, says "Here" to reveal her position right behind him then punches out and feels the rewarding impact of her knuckles hitting his body. He yelps and she hits him again with enough force to send him flying back. A pinball machine suddenly shatters behind a few feet in front of her and she’s gives herself a mental pat on the back as she clearly sent his ass crashing into the game.
She hears an oofing sound of the breath being knocked out of a person as the two remaining targets start talking about ‘splitting up’ then apparently walking right into each other before angrily doing a ‘you go this way’ routine.
Their bickering conveniently pinpoints their exact location for her and her fists fly out in that direction. She makes contact and sends one of the flying back into a pit area played with lots of colorful little balls. Smiling with complete satisfaction at her wicked skills her hands reach out and latch onto the last of the three jerks.
"Ow!" he complains and she realizes it’s the one she knows she knows somehow. "Watch the chest hair!"
"You … I know your voice," she racks her brain to place him. "You-you’re," a whirring kinda blasting noise is heard seconds before they’re hit with the reversing blast of the invisibility ray, "Jonathan?!" she sees she’s holding the geek who’d done that weird ‘Superstar’ spell back in college and lets him go. "You have chest hair?" she frowns at the extremely immature looking brunette now cowering on the floor.
She hears that whirring sound again and looks up to see Willow wielding the ray gun and now firing it into the ball filled room to make the man there visible once again.
"Warren?" her expression grows more confused as she recognizes the Katrina and Buffybot creating geek.
He gives her one of those menacing type glares bullies resort to when totally beaten and doesn’t answer as Willow turns to reveal the identity of the third moron.
"Who are you?" Buffy asks as she turns in that direction and sees an unfamiliar blonde guy to go with that whiny voice she didn’t recognize.
"I’m Andrew," he says like that will make it all clear and it doesn’t so she just stares at him. "I summoned the flying monkeys that attacked the high school," he adds and she looks at Willow to see if that’s ringing any bells for her. "During the school play, you remember? The flying monkeys? I did that," he says as the other two guys get up from their locations to help the blonde down from the game he’s kind of stuck in after breaking down through the glass surface.
"It’s Tucker’s brother," Warren sighs impatiently as he sets the young man on his feet.
"Oh," she and Willow both say as that sounds familiar.
"So," Buffy assumes her intimidation stance and stares dauntingly at the trio as they stand shoulder to shoulder a few feet away from her, "you three have, what, banded together to be pains in my ass?"
"We are," she frowns as Warren and the other two all begin edging to their right as he speaks, "your arch-nemesises … nemeses," she becomes distracted trying to figure out what the correct pluralization of that term would be if nemesis could be pluralized. "You may have beaten us this time, Slayer, but next time …, um …," her brow furrows with confusion as she sees the tall brunette elbowing Jonathan in the ribs, "uh, next time …"
"Next time victory shall be ours!" Jonathan declares dramatically while hurling something in her direction.
She and Willow both step back quickly as smoke suddenly billows up around them. They wave at the hazy mists as the trio rushes to the back exit of the arcade and begin fumbling and bickering over the locked door.
"These are my arch nemesises?" she scoffs as she turns to watch them pulling frantically at the door’s push to open handle.
A guard appears behind them asking about the disturbance they’d been causing and while she turns for just one second to look at the man the geeks make their getaway. Mentally cursing them she stares at the closing door before sighing tiredly.
"Oh my god, Buffy!" Willow says beside her.
"Yeah, I know, they’re gone," she sighs in frustration this time. "I guess we should probably chase them."
"No, your hair," the redhead points and smiles at the shortened ‘do Buffy had almost forgotten all about. "It is adorable."
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