FIC: Twin Stars Over Opal City PG-13/Teen Chapter One

[red jacobson]

Title: Two Stars Over Opal City (A Sequel to A Star Over Sunnydale)
A Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Justice Society of America Crossover
Chapter: 01 - ??
Author: Red Jacobson
Rating: Teen/PG-13 (Nothing worse than the show itself)
Pairings: None
Word Count: <7,586>
Disclaimer: Come on now, if I owned these characters, do you really think I'd be writing fanfic? Joss owns the Buffyverse characters, and DC/Time Warner owns the others.
Distribution: FanFiction.Net, Archive of Our Own, Twisting the Hellmouth,
Feedback: Of course, constructive criticism is greatly appreciated, and flames will be used to
roast marshmallows when I have a cookout.
Author's Note: It's been a while, I know, since I did anything with this story, but my muse has been nudging me for a little while to dust off my notes about doings in Sunnydale and Opal City. Also, as you can see by the Rating, you won't find the characters doing the nasty on screen. There may be references to certain characters having 'sweaty snugglebunnies, but I'm not sure; the characters haven't told me that yet.
Summary: The Aftermath of Halloween, 1997 and the rest of the school year.
Author's Note on Beginning of Chapter: The first section of the chapter is an edited and updated version of A Star Over Sunnydale, both to correct errors in the day/dates and to make some adjustments in the final scene to better fit the story my muse is telling me.


Sunnydale High School
Principal Snyder's Office
Wednesday, October 29th, 1997

The mayor's silken voice came over the phone; as always, exquisitely polite, but still, Snyder found himself trembling in fear.

"Now, Romulus, I know that you have decided to ask Miss Summers and her friends to escort the children on their Trick or Treating, and I'm happy to go along with the idea; however, I do have one small addition to your instructions to them."

The mayor paused, and Snyder, although a troll, was not a stupid one, supplied the expected response.

"Of course, Mister Mayor; what would you like me to do?" Hopefully, something that will get all of them killed,' he thought. Unfortunately, his wish was not to be granted, as the Mayor made his desires quite clear.

"When you give them their assignments, tell them that you want them to dress as heroes; maybe say something about how you want them to provide proper role models to the youngsters."

Snyder knew better than to argue with his boss, no matter how much he wanted to, so he agreed as quickly as possible and allowed the Mayor to end the phone call.

As soon as he had calmed down, the Principal of Sunnydale High School hurried from his office to confront his nemesis and her gang of thugs.

The Mayor's Office
Immediately Following

As he hung up the phone, Richard Wilkins the Third (and second, and first); Honorable Mayor of Sunnydale, turned to look at the rather disheveled mage sitting in front of him.

"I appreciate your patience, Mister Rayne, as well as your courtesy in informing me of your plans. I'm going to be just as courteous in telling you that, while I have no problems with a bit of chaos running loose in my town, I don't want it to get out of hand, and that is why I want you to make sure that individuals I named for you receive Heroic costumes, I want them to be able to keep the damage and loss of life to a minimum, do you understand me?"

Ethan paled at the thinly veiled threat but smiled his most ingratiating smile as he assured the mayor that he would have no problem at all going along with the mayor's most reasonable request.

They soon completed their business, and Ethan politely thanked the mayor for his time and left the office, containing his trembling until he was safely outside of City Hall. As soon as he could, he opened his car door and got inside and allowed the fear he had been suppressing to finally surface. After shaking and trembling for several minutes, he shook his head, "Bugger me! I thought Eyghon was some scary shite, but that bloke's got him beat by a mile! Oh well, a deal's a deal; now, what costumes do I have that I can prepare for the festivities?"

Still thinking he drove to the small store he had rented for the week.

Friday, October 31st, 1997
Halloween Night

on his hood and checked to make sure that his cape was hanging properly before knocking on the door to the Summers' house. He smiled as his surrogate mother opened the door and let him inside.

"Well, that's a costume I haven't seen in a few years, Xander," Joyce said, with a smile; "In fact, since Buffy and Willow are in similar costumes, is there a theme for the evening?"

"Not so much a theme as it is following Fuhrer Snyder's instructions. I'm just glad he still had this costume; otherwise, I would have had to go as Johnny Thunder, and trust me, bow-ties are not my style."

Joyce laughed and had to agree. Hearing footsteps from upstairs, she said, "And here are a couple of more members of the Justice Society ready for a night of fighting crime and supporting tooth decay." She finished with a smile.

Xander looked up and smiled at his two closest friends, "Black Canary, Hawkgirl, it's good to see you. Are you ready for our mission?"

Buffy was still unhappy with not being able to dress as the 18th-century noblewoman she originally had planned to dress as, but decided to play along; "Of course, Starman, wouldn't miss it for the world. And I'm sure that Hawkgirl would say the same if she could ever stop blushing," she smirked.

Xander had to agree; Willow's face, what little he could see under her Hawk mask, was flushed as red as her hair. He really didn't see what she was so embarrassed about; sure, the costume was more revealing than her usual clothing, but still conservative, especially compared to Phantom Lady or some of the other heroes out there.

Later that Night

Ted Knight opened his eyes to screams all around him. "What in the world? What happened? I was just walking up to the Brownstone in Gotham City, and now I'm here?"

Shaking his head to clear the fuzziness, he activated his gravity rod and took to the skies. Looking around, he was glad to see another member of the Justice Society flying over the rooftops. Flying over, he asked Doctor Fate if he had any ideas what had happened.

"No, Starman; all I can tell is that whatever Magic drew us here, it's extremely chaotic in nature. We seem to be in California in the year 1997."

"1997? Has Degaton teamed up with a Chaos Mage? He's the only one of our foes that I can think of who likes to muck around with time."

"I'm not certain; I can tell you one other thing I've noticed; however, we got here, we are not in our own bodies; we are possessing other people."

"Then we had better find a way to stop this so that they can go back to their lives. Although from the looks of things down there, I think we'll be busy enough trying to keep these people from killing each other."

"I agree, but there is something that you should know and pass along to the rest of our teammates; there are quite a few vampires out and about tonight, and I'm certain that the residents of this town would not object if they were to meet their ends. I will be tracking the source of the magic that brought us here, but there is a great deal of interference from other realms, so it's difficult to follow."

With those final words, the Lord of Order in human form rose higher into the air and started gesturing.

"I know he says it's magic, and I've seen enough of it to believe him; but Damn! It's hard for the scientist in me to accept that!"

A scream from below was enough to pull him from his musings, and he saw a familiar form fighting against a group of what had to be vampires. Smiling to himself, he dropped down towards the fight, while enjoying watching Dinah move. Even though they were only together that one time, he still remembered her with pleasure. She was so purely physical; she was grace in motion, whether fighting or enjoying more pleasant activities.

"Need a hand, Canary?" He called out; she didn't even look up as she heard him, but smiled and said.

"Yeah, I wouldn't mind one; these mugs don't stay down long enough for me to get my sticks out and dust them!"

Adjusting the controls on the Gravity Rod, he said, "So these are vampires, are they? Well, let's see how they like concentrated Sunlight!" He aimed the rod at the two vampires who seemed to be in charge, a blond male in a leather jacket, and a dark-haired female who was babbling something about the stars as she tried to pull the male away. Two quick blasts with the stellar energy in the rod, and there were two piles of dust on the ground.

Between the two of them, Starman and Black Canary managed to dust the remaining vampires with no problem, and as they were cleaning up, the blond detective said, "I wonder what it is with vamps and their leather jackets and hair gel? There was this one who tried to sneak up on me earlier; of course, he didn't live to regret that mistake, and he was just as full of hair gel as the blond you dusted."

Any comment he was going to make was interrupted, as several other members of the Justice Society came up to them, either flying down, in the case of the Hawk's; running up like the Flash, or, more slowly, like Mister Terrific and Wonder Woman; Hawkman had just opened his mouth to say something; when a wave of magic washed over them; and Xander opened his eyes and saw Jonathon Levinson taking off Hawkman's helmet and looking around in wonder.

He looked around and saw Cordelia Chase in a very interesting-looking Wonder Woman outfit, Larry Blaisdell dressed as the Flash, a redheaded guy who went by the name Oz as Mister Terrific, and Owen Thurman taking off the Golden Helmet of Doctor Fate.

"Okay, I think I can speak for all of us when I say, 'What the hell just happened here?'" Larry said, looking at the others, and seeing awareness on a few of the faces.

Xander spoke, saying, "That's a very long story, and honestly, this isn't the time or the place to go into it." He had more he wanted to say, but then he was distracted by the sound of Buffy sobbing.

Xander rushed over to her, wondering what could have caused the problem, until he remembered the other vampire Black Canary had mentioned dusting.

'Oh crap! She dusted Angel! No wonder she's upset. Okay, Xander, you're her friend, so be her friend! You can do the Snoopy dance later when you get home.'

Wrapping Buffy in his arms, he said, "Why don't you all head on home for the evening? If you want to stop by the library on Monday, we can talk about what happened. If you don't want to know, don't worry about it; this was all just a very strange dream.

The others, except for Willow and Cordelia, turned and left. After quietly explaining to the others, they helped Buffy back home, where Willow volunteered to stay with her for the evening. Xander and Cordelia each left for their homes, having a lot of thinking to do.

Monday, November 3rd, 1997
Sunnydale High School
Library
Before Classes

When Giles arrived at 7 a.m., he was surprised to see that somebody was already in the library. Curious as to who could be in there because almost no other students other than Buffy and her friends had ever used the Library, he edged the door open and was stunned to see Xander standing at the blackboard he had stored in the back, writing what appeared to be complex mathematical equations all over the board.

"Xander? What in the devil is going on?"

The dark-haired youth turned around, and, with a most uncharacteristically serious look on his face, said, "You'd better have a seat, Giles, there's a lot you need to know about what happened Friday night."

Epilogue

It took some time, but Buffy eventually moved on from what had happened, although it was touch-and-go for a while. It finally took Giles, Miss Calendar, he and Willow, as well as, surprisingly, Cordelia, sitting down with her and helping her come to terms with Angel's final death.

Surprisingly, all the others who had dressed up as Justice Society members that night showed up at the library as soon as classes were over on November 3rd. They spent as much time as they could trying to duplicate the powers they had possessed.

Xander kept quiet about so me of the things he remembered, although he did spend a lot of time at his Uncle Rory's, using the workshop in his shed, until, just before school let out for the year, he showed Buffy and Giles what he had been working on: a fully functional Gravity Rod.

The mayor was actually quite pleased at the heroes having kept the chaos to a minimum that night; although he wasn't pleased when he found out that several of the heroes were still active, this caused some plans to be adjusted slightly, but that's another story.

TSOOC & TSOOC & TSOOC

Friday, October 31st​, 1997
Halloween Night
Late Evening

Cordelia's car was a 1997 Lexus sedan, the interior still clean from the most recent detailing, showing no signs of the cheerleader carpools or the lingering smell of too much hairspray. The back seat was half-empty, with Buffy curled into herself pressing against the door, with Willow sitting next to her, hugging the distraught Slayer. Xander was comfortable enough in the passenger seat but sat quietly, lost in thought.

Cordelia was also silent as she drove, which was very unusual for the socialite. Normally, she would be making comments about the events of the evening, but tonight she just seemed thoughtful.

Buffy said nothing the entire way. Her hands were balled so tightly in her lap that her knuckles gleamed white, and her face was drained and hollow. The only sound she made was the occasional stifled inhalation, as though she was forcing herself not to cry in front of the others. Willow, sitting next to her, seemed poised on the edge of speech a dozen times, but never actually started a sentence. She offered her hand at one point, which Buffy took without looking, and the interlacing of their fingers was the only visible comfort in the world just then.

Xander, in the passenger seat, watched the houses go by and wondered if they'd all pass through some invisible barrier and return to the world as it had been before. The night felt like it had been stitched together from the pages of comic books and horror novels, and now, with the costumes removed and the spells broken, they were supposed to slip back into their lives as reluctant high school protagonists. But the memories wouldn't slip.

Cordelia glanced in the rear view mirror, her eyes flicking from Buffy to Willow to Xander and back again. She was silent for the first two minutes, and then, unable to stand the tension, turned the radio on low, seeking some inoffensive pop song to fill the void. Instead, there was only static until she gave up and snapped it off.

They reached Buffy's house. The windows were dark except for the porch light, which cast a pool of forlorn yellow onto the leaf-littered steps. The front door was ajar, but the screen was closed, and an orange plastic pumpkin glowed dimly at the threshold.

Cordelia put the car in park and turned to look at Xander. "Are you sure you don't want to come with me the rest of the way? It's on my way home, and you really don't want to be walking by yourself tonight. Even if the monsters are gone."

Xander gave a half-smirk, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I think the only monsters left are the ones who don't even need a costume to be scary."

Willow helped Buffy out of the car. Buffy was upright, but only through sheer force of Slayer will. Willow held her arm, a miniature bodyguard dressed in most of a Hawkgirl costume, leaving the wings behind in the school library along with the mask. The two made it to the porch, and the screen door creaked open as they reached it.

Joyce Summers was already in the doorway, a bowl of half-melted fun-size Snickers in one hand. She was dressed in jeans and a faded Sunnydale Wildcats sweatshirt, her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. The smile on her face faded instantly when she realized that something was wrong.

"My god, what happened?"

Willow took charge, her voice soft but urgent. "Buffy had kind of a bad night. We'll tell you all about it, but this isn't the best location."

"It is a bit brisk, isn't it?" Joyce nodded, moving aside to let the two girls inside and shutting the door. Dropping the candy back in the bowl, her eyes examined Buffy, checking for any injuries, slightly relieved that there weren't any visible. Sitting them on the couch, she went into the kitchen to heat milk for hot chocolate, before gathering the mugs and the drink mix.

She was half listening for sounds from the living room, in case Buffy or Willow needed her, only to frown at the snippets of conversation she picked up, hearing Buffy saying that she was going to tell her mom the truth, otherwise she would never understand. Willow sounded worried, and Joyce heard a word that turned her blood to ice. Willow had mentioned Overton, the name of the private sanitarium that they put Buffy in after burning down the High School Gym at Hemry.

Finishing making the drinks without thinking, her mind going a mile a minute, Joyce brought three mugs of the chocolate drink and gave one to both of the girls and sat down, holding her mug. She waited for a long moment for Buffy to say something, but her daughter stayed silent. Willow looked like she wanted to say something, but Joyce said, "You were going to tell me what happened that upset you, Buffy, but what does tonight have to do with Overton?"

Buffy sat quietly before steeling herself, "It has everything to do with that place, Mom. You didn't believe me when I told you what had happened, so I pretended that I was cured of the delusions by all the medications they forced on me. But they weren't delusions, and Willow and Xander have been with me waiting for a newly turned vampire to climb out of its grave."

Joyce's expression changed from concern to outright worry, and Buffy said, "I know you don't want to believe me, but I can prove at least part of things right now. Do you still have the metal pipes down in the basement? Can you go get one and bring it back up here?"

Once Joyce was convinced that Buffy was the Slayer and that vampires and other uglies existed in the night, it took nearly an hour for Buffy to start describing the events of the night and what had happened to Angel.

By the time the story had been told, all three women had been crying and holding each other, eventually noticing the time, and went to bed, Willow staying with Buffy, naturally.

TSOOC & TSOOC & TSOOC

Cordelia and Xander watched the two girls go into the house, and the door closed behind them, before Cordelia put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway. Driving part of the way down the street, she pulled up to the curb and looked seriously at Xander, who hadn't moved to get out of the car. "You know, if you want to talk or whatever, I'm not going to tell anybody."

Xander laughed, but it was a hollow thing. "Thanks, Cordy. That's weirdly nice of you."

"Don't get used to it," she said, but her voice was gentle. "Everybody's allowed one nice thing per year. I've said my quota now."

They sat in silence for a moment, staring at the glowing porch. Then Cordelia put the car in drive, and the two of them cruised toward Xander's neighborhood, where the houses seemed to run more run-down and the porch lights were less likely to be on.

Several houses before Harris's place, Cordelia slowed the car. For a moment, she hesitated, as though she wasn't sure whether she should play this casual or serious. "So…how much do you remember?"

Xander took a long moment before answering. "Most of it, I think. Or at least, it feels like I do. I remember fighting the Nazis—literal, goose-stepping, supervillain Nazis. I remember the taste of New York air in 1942. I remember the smell of the lab, and the way the air gets when you're about to make a breakthrough. I remember what it's like to fly. I remember all of it."

Cordelia nodded. "Me too. And I wasn't even the Wonder Woman that Lynda Carter used to play on TV. I was her mom, Queen Hippolyta. I wore the crown and the armor, and I had a daughter, but it wasn't me, it was some other me, and I remember all of it. And it feels like the memories are just…sitting there, right behind my eyes, like a movie I can rewind."

"Yeah, that's exactly what it's like." Xander looked out the window, then back at her. "I have to wonder if any of the others are going to try and keep their memories, even if they don't want to know any more. Are we just going to forget anything Starman or Wonder Woman or the others knew, just because they were fictional characters?"

Cordelia snorted. "Are you sure that they are fictional? Because it's just something I remembered, but a few years ago, right after my mom died and I wasn't allowed to play with you anymore, I went to LA with my father and his first ex-wife, and we saw Superman and Wonder Woman fighting this guy in a bright yellow costume with a swastika on his chest! I can remember being excited about what I'd seen, and wanted to tell you about it, but by the time we got back to Sunnydale, I'd completely forgotten what I'd seen."

"That's very strange, not really surprising, considering we're living on the Hellmouth, but still strange." He sat, thinking, "Okay, this is a long shot, but would you have a problem taking a drive to Carpinteria or Oxnard tomorrow? I want to go to a library with internet outside of Sunnydale. I'll even buy lunch at Clementine's Steak House."

Cordelia gave him a genuine smile and said, "You just said the magic words, Xander! Since my father's current playmate is a vegetarian, we all must follow a vegetarian diet!"

Wincing sympathetically, Xander shook his head before the two of them made plans for the next day.

She pulled up along the curb, a few houses away from Xander's. "You should be careful," she said. "Weird stuff has a way of sticking to people like us."

"Yeah," Xander said. "I know."

He stepped out of the car, stake in hand, and watched as Cordelia drove away. She slowed up at the stop sign, gave a final wave, and then turned the corner. Xander was on his own.

He took the long way to his house, skirting the pools of shadow and keeping an eye out for any sign of movement. There was nothing—no vampires, no monsters, no demonic aftershocks. Just the occasional flicker of TV light behind a curtain, or the sound of a dog barking at nothing. It felt almost safe.

As he got closer to home, Xander noticed the lights were on, but not in the way that made a house feel warm or lived in. It was the kind of light that seemed to spill out through the windows by accident, as though the people inside had simply forgotten to turn them off. He walked up the steps, passed by the sagging Halloween decorations that had never been taken down, and paused at the door.

He could hear the TV blasting from the living room, the shrill laughter of a sitcom audience track, and, underneath it, the unmistakable sound of his father snoring. He braced himself, turned the knob, and walked inside.

His mother was nowhere to be seen, but his father was sprawled across the couch in a stained undershirt and sweatpants, dead to the world. There were two empty bottles of Old Crow on the coffee table, and the room stank of cigarettes and cheap liquor. Xander tiptoed past, careful not to disturb the snoring, and made his way up the stairs.

TSOOC & TSOOC & TSOOC

Carpinteria Public Library
Saturday, November 1st, 1997
Early Afternoon

The Carpinteria Public Library stood on the corner of Walnut and Fifth, a blocky '70s relic of brown brick and scarred plate glass, flanked on either side by palm trees with more history than the building itself. Xander and Cordelia pulled up just as the janitor was flipping the main lights and beat the opening surge of elderly patrons and harried parents to the computer terminals. The library's entire first floor buzzed with the slow, determined energy of people who had nowhere else to be; Xander felt a kinship but was determined not to join their tribe just yet.

They claimed two terminals by the copy machine, separated only by a dusty reference volume on the Dewey Decimal System. Cordelia, who had never met a librarian she respected, immediately started up her own laptop, a sleek PowerBook that made the library's clunky Dells look like relics from a dead civilization. She logged in, glancing sidelong at Xander as he stared at his terminal, already lost in the blue glow of search engines and digital archives.

Xander's first move was to look for "The Daily Planet." The search felt ridiculous even as he typed it, but the search turned up a website that looked astonishingly real, with datelines and bylines and the sort of embedded ads that would never grace the pages of a fictional paper. The front page bannered a breaking news story about an armored car robbery foiled by Superman, and there were entire verticals dedicated to "Metropolis Events," "Cape Beat," and "Editorials." Xander's heart did a little skip. For a long moment, he sat back, staring at the monitor, half expecting the screen to glitch or the browser to throw up a 404, but the site was all there, as crisp and legitimate as the LA Times.

He clicked into an opinion piece: "Should Superman Intervene in International Affairs?" The author was Lois Lane, the bio listing her as Chief Investigative Correspondent for The Daily Planet. The article was a perfectly constructed editorial, referencing United Nations charters, previous superhero interventions in "non-sovereign" states, and including a sidebar of historical incidents dating back nearly a decade. The comment section was alive, some users arguing that Superman was a necessary deterrent, others labeling him an out-of-control vigilante. Xander scrolled through the comments, searching for any hint that this was a hoax, a viral joke, or a meticulously constructed fan simulation. It was too seamless, too current. There were even banner ads for car dealerships and a pop-up inviting him to subscribe to exclusive content.

He opened a second tab and repeated the process for "Gotham Gazette." Again, the site was real—dour, gray, and written in the kind of hard-nosed prose that made most city papers seem punchless by comparison. There were references to "The Batman" in the current news cycle, with stories about arms busts, organized crime, and a mayoral campaign that was being dogged by allegations of Joker involvement. Xander found a police blotter with a PDF attachment listing "Unidentified Caped Individual" as a person of interest in half a dozen incidents. There were embedded photos, most of them blurry, but a few clear enough to see the outline of the Bat symbol.

He looked over at Cordelia, who was already typing at a ferocious clip, her face set in a mask of concentration. He decided, on a whim, to search for "Wonder Woman" in the LA Times's digital archives, filtering for the period Cordelia had mentioned, the summer after sixth grade. It took a few tries to refine the dates, but then he found it: a Sunday edition, front page above the fold, with a photograph of Superman and Wonder Woman in mid-air, bracing off against a figure in a bright yellow costume and black boots. The headline read "Superheroes Descend on Los Angeles in Unprecedented Showdown." The villain was identified as "Captain Nazi." There was a full color spread on page 5, and a sidebar on the mysterious disappearance of dozens of high-profile LA neo-Nazis in the days following the event.

He felt his mouth dry. The article about Superman and Wonder Woman was not just a one-off. He did an image search of both heroes, then cross-referenced them to news outlets in Europe, South America, and even Japan. They popped up everywhere—the "Cape Beat" in Paris, the "Costumed Vigilante" stories in São Paulo, the ongoing debate in the UK Parliament about "meta-human" rights. There were literally thousands of articles, stretching back decades, all documented like regular events in the world.

Getting Cordelia's attention was harder than expected; her focus was absolute, but when he nudged her shoulder, she snapped out of her trance. When he slid his monitor over, she stared at the LA Times article with an expression somewhere between horror and awe. "That's them," she said, tracing a finger under the headline. "No doubt about it. But why would I forget something like this?"

"That's the million-dollar question," Xander said, "or more like, the existential brain-melter. Why is it that nobody in Sunnydale, or maybe anywhere else, seems to realize that costumed super-people are just…out there? And what about Coast City getting nuked a few years ago? Shouldn't that have been, I don't know, a bigger topic at school?"

Cordelia frowned, her lips drawn tight. "It's like there's a filter on the whole town. Not just regular not-talking-about-it, but deep, military-grade amnesia. Nobody ever mentions capes; nobody even gossips about it when there are literally flying people on the news. I mean, even the death of Princess Diana couldn't get this level of blackout."

"I'm inclined to think there is an intelligence behind the whole town's blindness," Cordelia said, voice low and sharp. "It's too thorough to be random Hellmouth interruptions, and way too targeted. Somebody—or something—wants Sunnydale to stay stupid about this stuff."

"Which means," Xander said, "we need to be really careful about who we talk to, or even where we talk about it. Like, I bet if we walk into the Magic Box or the school library and start talking about Superman, everyone's going to look at us like we're on drugs. Maybe even forget the conversation the next day."

Cordelia nodded. "We'll need to warn the others. But not in Sunnydale. Maybe have a meeting out here, far enough away from the Hellmouth that we can actually say the word 'metahuman' without getting a nosebleed."

Xander looked down at his notebook, where he'd been scribbling keywords and email addresses. "Going to sound paranoid, but maybe we should make a hard copy of everything we find. Use the library copier, stash it somewhere safe. If this thing is really erasing memories, we could be the next ones to forget."

"It's not paranoia if it's true," Cordelia said, flipping her legal pad toward him. "Look at this."

She'd already compiled an entire page of contact information. At the top was THEMYSCIRAN EMBASSY, with a Washington, DC area code, an email, and even a FAX number. Below was Ted Knight, listed as "Opal City Observatory, direct line." Next came the Justice League of America, with a press contact at something called the "Watchtower"—and a note, in Cordy's sharp all-caps, "ASK FOR BLACK CANARY OR ORACLE." There were more: Midway City Museum, curators Carter and Shiera Hall; Terry Sloane, with a recent obituary from the Wall Street Journal; Jay Garrick, listed as "Professor, Keystone City College"; Kent Nelson, Professor of Archaeology at Miskatonic University.

Xander blinked. "Is this all legit? You just pulled it off the internet?"

Cordelia rolled her eyes. "You'd be surprised what people put on their LinkedIn. And, yes, most of these are filtered through public-facing channels, but it's all real. Which means there's a network here. If you know where to look, you could probably just…call Wonder Woman."

Xander shivered, the information giving him a surreal, dislocated feeling. "This is…way beyond strange," he said. "And maybe I'm being even more paranoid, but you should definitely make two copies of this. Put them in two different places. Maybe a safe deposit box, in case this memory zapping thing kicks in again."

Cordelia smirked, holding up a brass key with a blue tag. "Already thought of that. My father's Montecito branch has a box, and I keep one of the keys. We can stash whatever we find there, and if we forget why it's important, hopefully we'll remember to check the box."

"Smart," Xander said. He stared at the computer screen, then at Cordelia's notes, the weight of the situation settling over him like a lead apron. "Do you think we should try contacting any of these people? Like, what if we sent an email to the Themysciran Embassy, or called the Midway Museum? Would they even answer?"

Cordelia considered it for a moment. "I don't know. But if this thing is real—if there's a whole world out there that remembers the superheroes, and only Sunnydale is in the dark—then someone should warn them. Or maybe ask for help?"

Xander nodded. "Let's copy everything we can and then head to the bank. After we eat, we can figure out who to contact and how to reach them. Sound good?"

TSOOC & TSOOC & TSOOC

Sunnydale Library,
Monday, November 3rd​, 1997
After the last Class

Xander and Cordelia arrived at the library a full five minutes ahead of the agreed-upon time. The air outside was thick with the weight of a pre-storm, the sky bruised purple and green, as if the Hellmouth itself resented the Monday. Xander held a manila folder like it was a file of secret government documents; Cordelia wore the hard mask of someone who was prepared to be disappointed by the world again but was still willing to play along, just in case.

The library was deserted save for Giles, who was hunched behind the counter, squinting at something in a battered edition of The Aeneid. The air smelled of wood polish, recycled paper, and the faintest hint of sulfur. Xander fidgeted, trying to remember whether Giles's moods trended toward fire or ice when surprised by student presence after hours.

He and Cordelia settled at the large reading table, and Xander opened his folder with a dramatic flourish that would have been more impressive if the contents hadn't immediately scattered across the polished surface.

Cordelia rolled her eyes but helped divvy them up—a sheet for each seat at the table. The pages were typed and double-spaced to be easily read. The first line beneath was in bold: "If you are reading this, you already know that things are very different than you might believe. We will explain everything we can, but be aware, there are things it is not safe to talk about, and we will explain that as well, but not here."

Buffy and Willow arrived in a gust of conversation. Buffy's hair was still a little damp from the post-gym locker room, and Willow's cheeks were flushed with either excitement or terror, or both. Buffy scanned the table, looking for some sign of what this was about. Xander gestured her over with a little flick of his wrist. She glanced at the papers, picked one up, and started reading.

There was a moment of silence, broken only by the flutter of a dropped page and the distant hum of someone vacuuming on the other side of the school. Buffy's brow furrowed as she read, her lips moving as if she were sounding out the words in her head. When she reached the end, she looked up, caught Xander's gaze, and he saw in her eyes not confusion or disbelief, but a dark, brittle resolve like something had finally clicked.

She slid the page across the table to Willow, who read it with wide eyes and immediately started to speak. "Oh my god, Xander, are you sure you should—" was as far as she got before Buffy covered her mouth with a Slayer-quick hand. Willow's voice, muffled, became a frantic series of consonants, but Buffy just shook her head, hard, and gave her a look that said "not now, not here."

Cordelia cocked an eyebrow, looked at Xander, and then at Buffy. "Well. At least we're all on the same page. Or several pages." She leaned back in her chair, the picture of forced composure, but Xander could see the tremor in her hands as she folded them together on the table.

It took another few minutes for the others to trickle in. Oz arrived next, slipping in so quietly that nobody noticed him until he was standing at the end of the table, his arms crossed over a Ramones t-shirt and his eyes scanning the room with predatory calm. He nodded at Willow, who blushed, and then at Buffy, who nodded back. He didn't need a copy of the handout; he clearly already understood.

Then came the rest: Jonathan Levinson, his backpack stuffed so full it looked like a turtle shell, and Owen Thurman, who looked like he'd tried—and failed—to pass himself off as a normal student by wearing a letterman jacket over his usual black turtleneck. Larry Blaisdell, star athlete and low-key bully, arrived last, wearing a look of wary amusement, and took a seat at the table.

Giles looked up at the sudden influx of students, first with annoyance, then with something that might have been alarm. "Is there a meeting I was not informed of?" he asked, his accent sharpened by genuine surprise.
Buffy was already moving toward the counter. She leaned in, her voice low but intense, and the others could only hear the occasional fragment—"…can't keep lying…" "…doesn't make it go away…" "…they have to know…"—but Giles was clearly not happy about whatever she was saying. His face changed colors, from pale to pink to an alarming shade of red, and at one point, he thumped his fist so hard on the counter that the copy of The Aeneid slid out of frame.

At the table, Xander tried to ignore the drama at the counter. He started distributing the remaining pages, making sure each newcomer had a copy. "Take a look at this. Read it all the way through," he said, trying for a tone of authority and mostly achieving it, but Larry just snorted and made a big show of skimming the first page before tossing it back onto the table.

"Is this a joke?" Larry asked, but there was a hint of real fear under the bravado.

Xander shook his head. "No joke. I wish it were." He turned to Jonathan, who had already read the sheet and was now staring at the table as if the grain of the wood might offer an answer. "You remember what you were on Halloween?"

Jonathan nodded, lips pressed so tightly they were white. "Yeah. I remember everything. The wings, the voice, the mace. It was…real, wasn't it?" He glanced at Owen, who hadn't spoken yet, but whose hands were trembling under the table.

Cordelia interjected, her voice oddly gentle. "We're not the only ones. And it's not going away. So if you're here, it means you're part of this, whether you want to be or not."

Buffy returned, her face set in lines of exhaustion and something like relief. She sat down heavily, pulled her copy of the paper in front of her, and looked around the table. "We're all in this together," she said. "That's why we're here."

The conversation that followed would have sounded insane to anyone else, but to those in the room, it was oddly comforting. Each of the former Justice Society members discussed what they remembered—the way the world had felt bigger, brighter, more dangerous; the memories that seemed implanted but were also as real as anything else; how the effects, though dulled, hadn't entirely worn off.

Oz surprised everyone by speaking first. "We've talked about what happened to us, but so far I haven't heard anything that might explain what caused it, and can we be sure it won't happen again?"

Giles moved closer to the table and said, "It was caused by a chaos worshipper who performed a ritual to cause everyone who got a costume at his shop to become the actual hero they were dressed as. I was able to interrupt the ritual, returning everyone to their true selves, but the magician slipped away while I was trying to discover just how widespread the effects of the ritual were. I was very emphatic when I expressed my opposition to the arsehole performing any sort of ritual in this town. I'm confident that the same thing won't happen again."

Willow, finally allowed to speak, launched into an impromptu theory about metaphysical contamination, quantum resonance, and the possibility of a new evolutionary leap in human consciousness. She was halfway through a tangent about Jungian archetypes when Giles, who had been listening from the sidelines, finally interrupted.

"Ahem," he said, and the room fell silent. "If I might interject, I believe it is of the utmost importance that we do not allow ourselves to be swept away by, ah, hysteria or, for that matter, delusions of grandeur. What happened on Halloween was an anomaly, yes, but there are…forces at work that we cannot begin to understand. Prudence, therefore, is advisable."

Buffy gave him a look that bordered on mutiny. "Prudence won't help us if the next monster isn't something I can punch. We have to be ready for anything."

Jonathan, voice wavering but clear, said, "What if something happens and instead of having heroic personalities, we turn into Darth Vader and his stormtroopers?"

Nobody had an answer for that.

After a long silence, Larry, who had been sulking at the far end of the table, suddenly leaned forward and said, "Look, I'm not saying I buy all this, but if something weird happens again, I want to be ready. I'm not going to let some freak show get the jump on me." He thumped his chest for emphasis, then looked away, embarrassed.

Cordelia, with a rare smile, said, "That's the spirit, Larry. And if you're offering, you can help me develop a fitness plan. If we're going to be superheroes, we can't all be bench-warmers."

Willow looked less than thrilled at the prospect of physical exertion, but when Buffy gave her a supportive smile, she nodded anyway. "Okay. For science. And safety." She tried to make it sound like a joke, but it landed somewhere between terror and resignation.

Xander, emboldened, said, "I think we should have a meeting spot that's not at school, where we can talk without being overheard." He glanced at Cordelia, who tossed her hair and said, "The Carpinteria Botanical Gardens. My parents are on some kind of sustainability kick, so I end up there every other Saturday anyway. It's private, and nobody from Sunnydale High goes there unless they have to."

Everyone seemed to agree that it was a good idea, and with a surprising lack of further drama, they set the time for the following Saturday and broke up, going their separate ways, all of them with a great deal to think about.

End Chapter One

 

[red jacobson]

Title: Two Stars Over Opal City (A Sequel to A Star Over Sunnydale)
A Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Justice Society of America Crossover
Chapter: 02 of 23 Preparations
Author: Red Jacobson
Rating: Teen/PG-13 (Nothing worse than the show itself)
Pairings: None
Word Count: <7,995>
Disclaimer: Come on now, if I owned these characters, do you really think I'd be writing fanfic? Joss owns the Buffyverse characters, and DC/Time Warner owns the others.
Distribution: FanFiction.Net, Archive of Our Own, Twisting the Hellmouth,
Feedback: Of course, constructive criticism is greatly appreciated, and flames will be used to
Roast marshmallows when I have a cookout.
Author's Note: It's been a while, I know, since I did anything with this story, but my muse has been nudging me for a little while to dust off my notes about doings in Sunnydale and Opal City. Also, as you can see by the Rating, you won't find the characters doing the nasty on screen. There may be references to certain characters having 'sweaty snugglebunnies, but I'm not sure; the characters haven't told me that yet.
Summary: Things start to change


Sunnydale High School
Physical Education Department
Monday, November 3rd, 1997
After the Meeting in the Library
The Phys Ed department office was part trophy room, part morgue. Polished wood shelves overflowed with gold-plated athletes frozen in victory, but the rest of the space had the ambiance of a DMV: sickly fluorescent lights, metal file cabinets stacked two-deep, the faint, ever-present sting of chlorine from the next-door swimming pool. Coach Finstock sat behind a desk stacked with attendance sheets and what looked like an unfinished hoagie, his whistle and his authority resting on his prodigious midsection.

Larry waited at the door. He'd knocked twice—hard—then let the silence drag on. The Coach didn't bother to look up. Just kept circling names with a red pen, a slow, steady rhythm. Larry eyed the "Attitude Determines Altitude" poster, where a bald eagle soared above a mountain range that, even to him, looked suspiciously like stock art.

"Coach?" Larry said, stepping into the room. "You got a minute?"

The pen paused midair. "I always got a minute for my number one linebacker, unless you're here about your grades."

Larry shook his head. "No, sir. I wanted to talk about... like, fitness training. For beginners."

Finstock's gaze flicked up, momentarily, then dropped again. "You volunteering to run a remedial P.E. class?" He scrawled something on the roster, then reached for the sandwich.

"Sort of. It's for a, uh, mentorship thing. A couple of kids need to, you know, bulk up. Thought I'd get the real playbook instead of making it up."

This time, the Coach looked at him straight on. Eyes like two blue beads embedded in dough. "Prattling about training plans. You sick, Blaisdell?"

Larry squared his jaw. "No, sir. Just figured you'd know what works."

Finstock made a noise that might've been a chuckle or a digestion issue. He heaved himself out of the chair, waddled to the file cabinets, and rooted around inside without any sense of urgency. "All right," he said, "I got you the goods." He yanked out a folder, slapped it on the desk, and slid it over with two fingers. The cover said "PE 9 Weight Room Curriculum – Standard."

"That's it?" Larry flipped it open, half-expecting secrets or steroids. It was a spreadsheet of circuit routines, with motivational quotes in Comic Sans at the bottom of every page.

"That's it." Finstock bit into his hoagie. "You got a body, you do the work, you get results. Not rocket surgery. Every PE teacher in California's got the same crap."

From the gym on the other side of the security glass, a thin, nasal whine filtered in. Finstock gestured with his hoagie at the window. "You see that? That's a cautionary tale, Blaisdell."

Through the glass: Andrew Wells, straining beneath a bench press bar stacked with the smallest weights possible. Sweat dripped off his nose. His wrists quivered with every rep. The bar didn't so much rise and fall as tremble in place, as if Andrew was negotiating with gravity rather than defying it.

Larry snorted. "Yeah. I see it."

"Let's see if your fancy mentorship fixes that," said Finstock, already back to his paperwork. "Consider him your test subject."

Larry left the office with the folder tucked under his arm, his path taking him straight into the linoleum-bright glare of the gym. Andrew's spotter had bailed—the kid was alone, red-faced, staring up at the bar like it might collapse and crush him at any moment. Larry racked the bar in one motion, the plates clanging against the uprights.

Andrew gasped, his limbs rubber. "Was—thanks. I was doing a drop set. You know, to failure."

Larry looked at the bar, then at Andrew's biceps, which were barely thicker than the sleeves of his Sunnydale High t-shirt. "You got a death wish?"

Andrew blinked hard, pushing his glasses up his sweaty nose. "No. Yes. I mean—no. Just, uh, I read online that—never mind. It doesn't matter."

Larry didn't move. "You wanna tell me what you're actually doing here, or you just like wasting time?"

The blush crept from Andrew's neck to his ears. He sat up, rubbing his arms. "It's stupid. You'll laugh."

"Try me."

Andrew's breath shuddered out, and for a second, he looked like he might bolt. Instead, he blurted: "I dressed as the Atom for Halloween, okay? Al Pratt. The JSA guy. I thought I'd end up with the others, but I was in some... wrong place. I missed it." He looked down at his shoes. "Now I'm just regular again."

Larry frowned. "So you're here to what, get superpowers from lifting?"

Andrew shook his head. "No! Well—yeah. Not like—" He flailed, hands making meaningless gestures. "I know it doesn't work like that. But I figured, maybe if I started, something would change. Maybe I could get a little less... me."

The words came out with a bitterness that surprised Larry.

He grunted, then dropped the curriculum folder on the bench beside Andrew. "Coach says you're my guinea pig. You up for that, or you wanna keep free-styling until you snap your wrists?"

Andrew picked up the folder, staring at the cover with something like reverence. "You'd help? Really?"

Larry shrugged, which for him was like a seismic event. "Long as you're not a quitter."

"I'm not," Andrew said, with a ferocity that shocked even him. "I hate this. I want to be stronger."

The two of them stood in a silence that wasn't quite comfortable, but wasn't hostile either. Finally, Larry pointed at the squat rack. "We start tomorrow, first thing. The doors unlock at six o'clock. I'll be there. You bring your own water bottle, towel and fresh clothes, and you don't complain. Deal?"

Andrew nodded so fast his glasses nearly flew off.

"Deal," he said.

They left the gym together, the echo of their footsteps lost in the hum of the empty school.



Women's Basketball Court
Monday, November 3rd, 1997
Same Time as Previous Scene
The women's gym was a pressure cooker. Bouncing basketballs, the shriek of rubber on varnish, shouted names and numbers echoing off walls painted a shade of jaundice only a school district could love. Cordelia Chase entered the chaos like she owned the place, which—by social law, if not city ordinance—she did. Her heels clicked, then squeaked, then stuck for a split second as she made her way across the court, threading through sprints and suicide drills with the muscle memory of a girl who'd ruled every hallway she'd ever entered.

The players ignored her. Cordelia ignored them right back. She went straight to the head of the gym, where Coach Danvers stood arms-crossed, whistle hanging from her neck like a sheriff's badge, clipboard already drawn for whatever crime Cordelia was about to commit.

"Miss Chase," Danvers said, without looking up. "This better not be about cutting gym class."

Cordelia gave a polite, closed-mouth smile. "I don't cut," she said. "I delegate."

Danvers arched an eyebrow, then continued scrawling notes, fingers thick as bratwursts wrapped around a chewed yellow pencil. Cordelia cleared her throat, loud enough for three rows of bleachers to hear.

"I need gym space," she announced. "Preferably before school, unless your Amazon tryouts are sacred or something."

Danvers set the clipboard aside with the care one gives to a ticking bomb. "What for?"

Cordelia flicked an invisible fleck of dust from her sleeve. "Some girls need remedial help. Total disasters. Like, can't-tell-a-treadmill-from-a-turnip disasters."

"Names?" said Danvers, unimpressed.

Cordelia hesitated, then improvised. "Five. Maybe six." She didn't have names, not really. Most of the Cordettes were still 'under reconstruction' after Halloween, and Cordelia doubted Ilsa the She-Wolf would be willing to give her the gym time for just Buffy and Rosenberg. The number sounded official enough.

Danvers eyed her, then the girls running sprints, then back to Cordelia. "Six AM. Early only. We have the JV girls coming in after seven, so you need to be out by then."

Cordelia smiled with all her teeth, no joy. "Six is fine. I'll bring coffee if it makes you feel less homicidal."

Danvers grunted. "Just don't let them break anything. Last thing I need is another insurance form."

She reached into her battered nylon bag and produced a folder, which she handed to Cordelia like it was a subpoena. "Everything's in here. Routine, safety instructions, emergency numbers. If they pass out, roll them on their side and call Nurse Powell, not 911. Clear?"

Cordelia took the folder, her perfectly manicured nails grazing the rough skin of Danvers' palm. She held back a shiver. "Crystal."

"Attendance is mandatory," Danvers added. "I don't do second chances. If you can't commit, don't start."

Cordelia's grin shifted. "They'll be here," she said, her tone promising pain to any girl who dared miss it. She was already composing the first group text in her mind—probably something about how failure to appear would result in irrevocable social death, or at minimum, excommunication from the yearbook candid list.

Danvers blew her whistle, hard and shrill, and the gym's attention snapped from Cordelia to the next drill. Cordelia walked off, already picturing the look on the girls' faces when they realized "remedial fitness" meant six AM, five days a week.

She liked that thought—a lot.



High School Library
Giles' Office
Monday, November 3rd, 1997
Same Time
After school, Giles' office always smelled like coffee grounds and old paperbacks. The majority of the building was empty now, leaving a hush that pressed in at the windows and made every clock tick sound surgical.

Owen sat on the visitor's side of the desk, shoulders hunched, twisting the hem of his shirt. Giles had offered him tea, which Owen accepted—then forgot about, leaving it untouched, steam curling up in a thin silver wire. Ms. Calendar—Jenny, when the students weren't around—stood at the bookshelf behind Giles, her head cocked as she pretended to scan titles but actually watched the conversation in the glass reflection.

"You recognized the name when I mentioned Dr. Fate earlier," Owen said, voice so low it barely made it across the desk. "Nobody else seemed to notice."

Giles steepled his fingers. "It is... not a name one comes across in the typical educational setting. For some reason, the Justice Society's contributions during the Second World War and against the German Bund here in the United States seem to be ignored. I have a familial reason for being familiar with Doctor Fate. During the war, he saved my father and grandparents from a falling bomb, and they didn't forget it."

"That makes sense," Owen huffed, "It makes a lot more sense than my parents' theory that it's all just... archetypes and Jungian metaphors. They don't think magic is real."

Jenny snorted. "Your parents have clearly never lived in Sunnydale."

Owen managed a ghost of a smile.

He took a breath, then reached into his backpack, extracting a battered composition book. He opened it to a bookmarked page and pushed it forward. It was a sketch—a helmet, angular, ancient, with symbols ringing the crown.

"When it happened, I saw everything. I saw every spell the real Fate had ever cast. Like, the structure of the rituals. I can draw the runes from memory." He hesitated. "But when I try, it doesn't work. At all. It's like there's a lock."

Jenny moved away from the bookshelf, her arms crossed loosely over her sweater. "Maybe you need the right... context. Or a different key."

Owen shook his head. "It's not that. Watch."

He traced a quick, looping sigil in the air. For an instant, the lines glowed gold—real, palpable, hot as a sparkler—and then fizzled to nothing.

Giles removed his glasses and polished them with a practiced, almost ritual motion. "You approach it like an equation, Owen. Which is admirable. But magic, at least in my experience, is as much art as it is science. If you treat it like a computer program, you'll never achieve the necessary... intuition."

Jenny nodded, her dark hair falling into her eyes. "Magic isn't just knowledge. It's a belief."

Owen flushed, unsure whether he was being mocked or complimented. "It's just, when the Helmet was on, I was Doctor Fate. I knew everything. Now it's—" He snapped his fingers. "Like waking from a dream and trying to remember the best part."

Giles set his glasses down and leaned in. "Perhaps we've been approaching this incorrectly," he said. "Doctor Fate is a... legacy. But the individuals behind the mask—Kent Nelson, Inza, all the rest—they were human. Flawed. They made the magic their own."

He stood, walked to a shelf, and plucked an ancient, cracked volume. The leather squeaked in protest. "We will not force you into Dr. Fate's methods. Instead, we shall find what works for you." He turned to Jenny. "Ms. Calendar is quite proficient with alternative approaches, especially as they pertain to, ah, digital natives."

Jenny grinned, genuinely. "You ever code a spell before?"

Owen looked at her, puzzled. "Is that possible?"

She shrugged. "In Sunnydale? I wouldn't bet against it."

Giles returned to his seat and slid the book across the desk. "Start with these. Write down what feels right. Bring it to me tomorrow."

Owen picked up the volume, the weight of it making him sit up a little straighter.

"Thank you," he said, voice steadier. "Both of you."

Jenny watched him pack up, then offered, "You're not alone in this, Owen. The town's weird, but you're not the only one it's happened to."

He nodded, mouth set. For the first time since Halloween, the ache in his chest lightened. Maybe not hope, exactly, but the absence of despair.

He left, the book held tight against his side, and as the office door shut behind him, the golden afterimage of that failed sigil hung in the air, visible only to those who knew where to look.



Oz's Practice Space
Monday, November 3rd, 1997
After Dinner
The taste of the incense was bitter, but Oz breathed it deep anyway, a calculated act of masochism. The study had two windows, both shut tight against the night and lacquered with the residue of too many candlelit research benders. Somewhere upstairs, his mom was busy, working on the next chapter of her book. They weren't to his taste, but enough people liked the stories enough to pay for them. So that made them great literature as far as the Osborn family was concerned. Oz let the sound slip away; his world, for now, was six feet by eight, dimly lit, crosshatched with the odor of old paper and Nag Champa incense.

He sat in the center of the rug, ankles tucked, knees high, back against nothing, eyes half-closed. A green velvet cushion (stolen from who knows where) kept his bones from fusing to the floorboards, but only just. A metronome ticked on the shelf beside him, needle set for 40 bpm: slow enough to tease, too fast for sleepwalking. Oz inhaled to four, held for seven, exhaled for eight. It was a pattern he'd read somewhere, the kind of ritualized breathing they used in monasteries or psychiatric facilities. He didn't care which. His lungs caught the rhythm, and after a few cycles so did his head.

He was here to meditate, or more accurately, to practice not losing his mind. The full moon was five days out, but the wolf was already twitching behind his ribs—hungry, bored, sniffing at the leash. The first time he'd tried this, the wolf had torn loose by breath number two, and he'd come to on the porch, biting the neck off a warm six-pack of ginger ale. Now he could make it past the first minute. Progress.

Step one: visualize the animal. Name it. Feel the fur prickling at the edges of your personality, the way it stalked the periphery of thought. Oz pictured it as a silhouette, canine, hulking, with eyes that glowed not yellow or red but a weird, phosphor green. When he looked close, it was always in motion, pacing a cage that grew larger every time he sat down to do this.

Step two: introduce the other variable. Terry Sloane, also known as Mister Terrific, two-time Olympic gold medalist and a man whose personality was best described as "emergent property of compulsion." Sloane had come with a wardrobe of postures, gestures, and uselessly perfect maxims, but most of all, he'd come with a presence—a way of occupying a room, a posture that made everyone else want to stand up straighter and try harder.

Oz let the memory play. Sloane is sitting at a desk, hands steepled, thumb and forefinger forming a triangle over paperwork, face impassive except for the twitch at the corner of the mouth. Sloane lifts a cup of coffee and drains it in a single, careful tilt, as if every motion had been mapped out with an engineer's sense of efficiency. Sloane walked into a room of people who hated him and left with a signed confession and three new admirers. Sloane is moving through a gymnasium after hours, shirtless, chalked hands rapping out a set of planche pushups, the grunting replaced by a steady mantra of numbers.

On the inhale, Oz tried to mirror that presence. He pictured his own posture, adjusted. Shoulders back, chest out just enough to defy gravity, chin level. Spine upright but not rigid—alive. He could feel the difference in the way his heart beat, not just metaphorically: the pulse grew stronger, more assertive, not so easily bullied by the wolf. On the exhale, he tried to let go of anything not essential. The fidgets, the intrusive thoughts, the memory of eating something in the fridge that probably belonged to Giles. He let it all bleed out.

The wolf, for its part, noticed. Its pacing slowed. For once, it didn't gnaw at the bars or howl. It just sat, observing, waiting for the next test.

Oz continued for another two dozen cycles. It was an act of discipline, and also a minor rebellion. Willow and Jonathan got to build weird science in their own late-night echo chamber, but Oz was stuck here, dissecting the interior architecture of his own self-loathing, one breath at a time. He didn't blame anyone for that; it was the only way he'd survived this long. But sometimes he wondered how much of the "real" him would be left when the last of Sloane's programming finally faded.

On the third shelf of Giles's bookcase was a copy of some self-help paperback with a title like The Zero Point Mind. Oz had skimmed it once, unimpressed, but the phrase lingered. The idea of stripping down to nothing, of being so empty you could be filled with something new, appealed in a way nothing else did. Tonight, he aimed for zero point.

He let the wolf and the superhero cohabit for a while, observing the way they circled each other. The wolf, all appetite and adrenaline; Sloane, all logic and moral rectitude. He wondered, briefly, what would happen if he let them merge—if instead of suppressing the animal he could teach it to wear a suit, speak in Sloane's deadpan monotone, maybe even hold a conversation without biting the other party. He smiled at the image. Maybe it was possible.

The metronome ticked. The incense burned low, filling the study with a dense, resinous fog. The world outside was still black, and the only suggestion of time passing was the subtle brightening of the sky behind the curtains.

Oz's legs started to ache. He let the pain register, then imagined how Sloane would process it. Not by ignoring it, but by integrating it: converting pain into information, using that information to make the next repetition easier. He shifted his weight, rolled his ankles, and was struck by the sudden clarity of the movement. It was elegant, almost. He almost liked it.

After fifty breaths, he opened his eyes fully. The room had sharpened, every object rendered in high contrast, as if someone had turned up the resolution on reality. Oz stood, legs tingling, and flexed his hands. The tremor in his fingers was gone.

He checked the clock. Twenty-four minutes, a new record. He hadn't once imagined sinking his teeth into anyone's jugular, and for the duration of the exercise, he'd felt—if not happy—then at least in control.

The wolf would be back tomorrow, and the moon was not going anywhere, but Oz tucked those facts away for now. He swept the cushion into a corner, flicked off the metronome, and padded into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. Oz was certain his mom would be pulling an all-nighter; she usually did when the words were flowing, so coffee was a must.

On the way, he caught his reflection in the glass of the trophy case. He stopped, examining the way he stood, the line of his shoulders, the measured set of his mouth. For a fleeting second, he could have sworn he saw a second silhouette overlapping his, invisible to anyone but him: the unmistakable outline of a man in a three-piece suit, arms folded, watching him with cool, professional approval.

Oz blinked. The image was gone. But his posture didn't slip.

He poured himself a cup, black, and leaned against the kitchen counter. The sky was still gray, but the horizon hinted at pink. Oz counted his breaths, slow and even, and waited to see what the next day would bring.



High School Chemistry Lab
Monday, November 3rd, 1997
Evening
The Sunnydale High chemistry lab had moods, and tonight's was subversive. Not dangerous—not yet—but subversive in the way only a locked after-hours classroom can be: air tinged with ozone from an overtaxed fume hood, custodial bleach fighting a hopeless rear-guard action against the faintly metallic tang of unsanctioned experiment. Shadows moved in pendulum arcs, alive with the nervous swing of a lone desk lamp—brass, scuffed, top-heavy—illuminating a patch of cluttered workbench and, behind it, the hunched silhouettes of two students who took extra credit as a blood sport.

"Stop, you'll smear the nickel matrix," Willow said. Her voice had that singsong edge it got when she was about to make a point nobody wanted to hear, least of all herself. She hovered at Jonathan's shoulder, a ghost in a white lab coat two sizes too big, safety glasses pressed to the bridge of her nose and fogging with every agitated breath. The workbench between them was a disaster area: pipettes in various stages of abuse, a half-drained Red Bull can encircled by sticky rings, scattered drafts of what looked like both blueprints and breakup letters.

Jonathan ignored her—carefully, methodically. His hand trembled as he adjusted the diamond scribe, aligning the flight metal shard under the microscope objective, and for a second, Willow saw not the unimpressive fringe-kid with the untamable cowlick, but Hawkman, ancient and absolute, gripped by the certainty of a gladiator. He centered the slide, exhaled, and pressed the focus knob with the resolve of a detonator.

The lens clicked down.

Willow leaned in, bracing herself with a palm on the table (her hand, incidentally, inches from Jonathan's; the distance oscillated, never quite reaching contact). "Well?" she asked. "Are we looking at Nth metal, or just an exceptionally shiny piece of rebar?"

Jonathan didn't look up. "Matrix is weird. Lattice structure's not repeating—see, here? It starts to spiral, and then it just… wings it." He snorted at his own joke. "Like the crystal wants to change, but it can't decide if it's a solid or a gas. There are pockets of—" He adjusted the focus, blinked, went silent.

Willow waited. Patience, she'd learned, was like most chemical reactions: slow in the cold, but add heat, and something always happened.

He found his words. "There's a fluid layer. Metallic glass, probably. But it refracts… it's almost like the boundaries want to… flow." He sat back abruptly, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "Nothing in the Periodic Table does this. Not even close."

Willow grinned, the way a bomb disposal tech does when the timer pauses at:01. "Then we have to build it," she said. "If Carter Hall can do it with a chisel and a death wish, we can reverse-engineer it using a MakerBot and, you know, basic chemistry. That's what science is for."

He regarded her sideways. "And you're the one who said the printer would never survive your 'phase transition experiments.'"

She nudged his elbow, then immediately regretted the contact and overcorrected, elbowing a soldering iron off the bench. It landed on the tile with a metallic clatter, trailing a whiff of singed dust and existential dread. Jonathan rescued the iron with a tongs, set it upright, and waited for her to finish blushing.

Willow feigned composure by donning latex gloves with unnecessary flourish. "You have Carter's memory, right? What did he use for base alloy?"

Jonathan hesitated. "That was a… little more myth than metallurgy. He started with meteoric iron, but every time the stuff got destroyed, it got… weirder. Layered. Like it remembered all its past lives." He realized, a little too late, what he'd said.

Willow didn't flinch. "Sounds familiar." She stared at the fragment, the way a monk might contemplate a relic: not worshipful, but with a terror-stricken respect for its persistence. "It's possible the memory… resonance… is what's making the lattice shift. Like the more you use it, the more it wants to change you."

She looked up, searching Jonathan's face for signs of imminent transformation. "You haven't been having, like, bird dreams, right? Flashbacks to ancient Egypt? Desire to leap off tall buildings?"

He made a face. "No more than usual. Why?"

Willow shrugged, gaze dropping to the shard. "When I touched the Helm, I started seeing equations. Whole theorems. At first it was useful, then it got…" She let the sentence trail off, but it was clear from the twitch at the corner of her mouth that it was still "getting."

They both fell silent, lost in the shared, unspoken thought: What if the metal remembered more than just how to fly?

The flight metal, newly liberated from its plastic sample bag, caught the lamp's beam and fractured it into a soft spectrum—blues and yellows, icy flashes like a tiny aurora. It was barely larger than a postage stamp. Jonathan rotated it with tweezers, angling it so the edge cut through the lamp-glow. Willow, with gloved hands, traced the fracture line, mapping with her fingertips the branching pattern of stress marks.

"Maybe it's alive," she whispered, not quite joking. "Or at least reactive. If we can get it to propagate—force a growth reaction—it might self-assemble the way bone does. Or coral."

"That's just wishful thinking." Jonathan's tone was flat, but he didn't pull his hand away when she overlapped her fingers with his on the edge of the slide.

She met his gaze. "It's science. Sometimes, wishful thinking is the only way forward."

Jonathan swallowed, visibly, and something in his posture softened—shoulders drooping, chin tucking in. For a second, he looked like a kid who'd wandered into the wrong room at the wrong time and was afraid to ask for directions back. Then he set his jaw.

"We could stress it mechanically. Ultrasonic pulses, cyclic loading. Or run an electrical current—see if it changes phase."

Willow nodded, already mentally rewriting tomorrow's lab schedule. "If we start with a microgram, we might get a chain reaction. If not, we still have enough for X-ray diffraction and maybe a neutron scan, if we can get the faculty to ignore the requisition paperwork."

He leaned in. "You're the only person in this school with a neutron source, you know that?"

She grinned. "Perks of being the science nerd. Also, the Board of Ed doesn't actually know what a neutron source is."

A burst of laughter—sharp, spontaneous—cracked the tension between them. Jonathan smiled, and for a second it was an easy, honest thing, like he'd forgotten how to be nervous.

They got back to work, but the rhythm changed: instead of each operating in an orbit, they found a strange, collaborative dance. Willow assembled a makeshift electromagnet from scavenged copper wire and a physics-lab power supply. Jonathan fine-tuned the angle of the metal sample, his left hand steadying her right when the coil trembled. She prepared a notebook for data, scrawling equations with the feverish legibility of someone writing for an audience only she could see.

Each time they touched, the contact lingered a fraction too long. Maybe it was the science. Maybe it was the ghost of Carter Hall and Shiera Sanders, whose memory still echoed in the way Willow and Jonathan finished each other's sentences, or the way they could argue for hours and emerge with the same conclusion. Maybe it was just the adrenaline.

In the margin of a data sheet, Willow wrote: "Hypothesis: Residual emotional imprint influences material properties." She crossed it out, then, underneath, wrote: "Hypothesis: We're not as weird as we think."

By midnight, they'd exhausted every reasonable experiment and a handful of reckless ones. The sample hadn't done much—shifted colors, maybe, changed density by a rounding error—but it had given them a handful of clues, and more questions than they'd started with. They'd also finished a six-pack of Red Bull and most of a family-size bag of Skittles, the wrappers and cans forming a kind of ceremonial ring around the flight metal's resting place.

Jonathan capped the sample jar and pushed it towards Willow. "You take it. You're better at not losing things."

Willow accepted, tucking it into her coat's inner pocket. "We'll run the growth protocol first thing tomorrow. Maybe we'll get lucky."

He looked at her for a long time, then down at his hands. "Hey, Will?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"If the metal is a memory… if the thing it wants most is to go back to what it was… does that mean—"

She interrupted, soft but sure. "We're not them. We remember, but we don't have to… repeat." A pause, and then: "Unless we want to."

He nodded, but it was clear he didn't know which answer scared him more.

A clatter in the hallway—footsteps, a snatch of angry janitor muttering—snapped them both to attention. Willow swept the workbench clear, shoving equipment into drawers, wiping down the sample tray with the edge of her sleeve. Jonathan flicked off the desk lamp, plunging the room into a gray haze pierced only by the EXIT sign's sickly green glow.

They stood in the dark, the distance between them suddenly infinite and zero at the same time.

"Tomorrow?" Jonathan asked.

Willow hesitated, then nodded. "Tomorrow."

She left first, the echo of her footsteps fading quickly, but not the static charge she left in the air behind her. Jonathan waited a minute, collected his backpack, and padded after, down the corridor and into the uncertain night.

On the bench, in the darkness, the sample jar sat quietly. In the moment before the emergency lights flicked on, the flight metal inside seemed to shimmer—just for a second—as if, given the right conditions, it could remember how to be more than what it was.



Electronics Lab
Sunnydale High School
Monday, November 3rd, 1997
Evening
The only light in the Sunnydale High Electronics Lab was hospital-bright, the kind that drilled into your skull and left afterimages burned into your retina for hours. It was past midnight. The school's janitorial team had finished their rounds two hours ago, their mop buckets echoing down linoleum halls before silence crept in. Now the only thing alive in the lab was Xander, hunched like a mutant vulture over bench #7, surrounded by a graveyard of failed circuit boards.

Oscilloscopes blinked. Power meters hummed. Somewhere, deep inside the guts of a discarded CRT monitor, a dying fly repeatedly body-checked the glass. Xander reached for his screwdriver and nearly lost it to the shaking in his hand.

He muttered, "Yeah, because caffeine was the problem here," and popped open another can of Jolt. The taste was pure battery acid, but the real high was that moment when his hands stopped trembling for the length of one steady breath. He could almost pretend he wasn't about to pass out face-first onto the schematic. Ted Knight's cosmic rod plans, pulled from his memory, annotated in barely legible fountain pen, sprawled out before him. Xander's own notes littered the margins: equations, doodles, a crude sketch of Wildcat punching out a robot shaped suspiciously like Principal Snyder.

He couldn't tell if it was the headache or the fluorescent hum, but every ten minutes the words "gravitational lensing" started doing a little can-can at the edge of his vision. He wiped at his brow with a sleeve that used to be clean, squinted at the breadboard, and jabbed the tip of the soldering iron at the next resistor with surgical precision. Or maybe more like "amateur dentistry," considering the smell of burning epoxy.

Xander was sure there were easier ways to gain Starman's abilities, but for his own self-respect, he needed to understand exactly what the Cosmic Rod was and how it worked. Xander knew he wasn't stupid; he wouldn't be taking and passing the Advanced Placement math and science classes if he was, but this was one of the first times that he could actually use that knowledge for something besides taking tests. And if Ted Knight could jury-rig an anti-gravity field out of vacuum tubes and chewing gum, Xander Harris could build a microcoil from the school's leftover AV budget.

Probably.

He cycled power again. The coil flickered, sputtered, then guttered out with a smell like melted Legos. That made seven failed starts since 9:30 p.m. He pushed back from the bench, chair squealing. The darkness behind the locked lab door suddenly felt much less secure.

He got up and checked the corridor, careful not to trip the alarm strip rigged above the threshold. There was a light on in the faculty lounge—a staffer, maybe, or the ghosts of teachers past—but nothing headed this way. He reset the alarm, muttered a string of "don't be here, don't be here," and plopped back into his seat.

Three feet to his left, the pages of his newly purchased journal glared up at him, filled with the formulas from Ted's memories, formulas so dense they could've collapsed under their own gravity. He had written them in a daze, connecting his memories to his hands, ink flowing across the page so fast that Xander didn't know what he was writing. That had been yesterday; tonight, he was reading them with fresh, if tired, eyes. Squinting, Xander traced his finger down the margin: "If resonance persists in secondary loop, attempt doubled Faraday cage (see pg 17)." Page 17 was mostly a digression about the "tenacious mediocrity" of the American high school system, but hidden in the middle, a four-word bombshell:

Needs an emotional trigger. Test.

He snorted. "That's so on-brand it hurts."

The cosmic rod—hell, even the *Junior* version—was more than a battery with delusions of grandeur. Ted's theory: Every user left a psychic imprint in the circuitry, a thumbprint of their personality, something about the unique way they bent the field when they powered it up. Willow would've called it "techno-magic." Xander called it "another way the universe expects you to be special."

He glared at the coil, as if by force of will it would stop mocking him. Maybe that was the trigger: you had to hate it just enough. He jammed his finger onto the contacts and flipped the switch.

The world went blue.

A sphere of light rippled out, contained by the coil, and for one blinding instant, the bench levitated half an inch, screws and wire bits doing a lazy orbit around the breadboard. Xander grinned, then caught himself and slammed the switch. The field collapsed with a WHUMPF and a spray of ozone.

His hands were still shaking, but the way his face ached from smiling was new. He'd done it. Not perfect—there was a stress crack in the solder, and the meter was already dropping—but it worked.

That was when he heard the cough.

Xander jerked back, nearly sending his Jolt can flying into the glowing prototype. The lab's glass door was half-obscured by the blackout curtains he'd taped up, but there was no mistaking the silhouette in the hallway.

Giles. Of course, it was Giles. In tweed, with a briefcase, like he'd just stepped off the set of British Bureaucrats Who Judge You. His eyebrow said, "I'm not mad, just disappointed," but his voice was perfectly dry:

"Xander, I'm aware you are enthused about the possibilities we discussed earlier, but are you aware that the school is, in fact, closed at this hour?"

Xander fumbled for a reply, checked the time, and decided the best approach was the truth, or at least the high-octane, sleep-deprived version of it.

"Just testing the design, need to make sure it works as expected. We found out Friday night that a working Cosmic Rod makes Buffy's job a lot easier, and besides, science waits for no one."

Giles set down the briefcase, let the silence grow awkward. "That's… admirable, in a sense. However, most after-hours scientific endeavors do not involve surreptitious use of restricted equipment, nor the distinct aroma of what I believe to be burning insulation."

The leftover ozone in the air practically lit up at the word "restricted." Xander tried to shuffle the glowing coil behind a stack of old PC towers, but the field buzzed and sent the plastic casings rattling.

"Is that—?" Giles trailed off, then stepped forward and flicked the safety on the prototype. Xander braced for the "give me the device and see me after class" routine, but instead Giles just peered at the readout, then the schematics, then at Xander's own ragged notes.

"I'm fairly certain that's not within the district curriculum," Giles observed. His tone was cool, but he wasn't moving to confiscate anything.

"It's, uh… extra credit?" Xander ventured.

Giles studied Xander's bench with that signature English blend of disdain and curiosity. He nudged the Jolt aside with a pencil, thumbed through the open notebook, and asked, "You understand what you've built, I trust?"

"I mean, the basics? It's a gravity lens. Supposed to counteract mass on a small scale. Like a super-precise anti-gravity thing. I think. Or it'll turn my skeleton into oatmeal, depending on how you tune it."

Giles snorted. He almost smiled. "Well. Perhaps leave human testing for another day, if you please."

Xander nodded, then eyed his coil. The blue had faded, but there was a tremor in the metal—a residue, maybe. Or just his imagination.

Picking up his briefcase, Giles left with a brief smile and the surety of someone who'd seen worse, and Xander was alone again. But the fear was gone. In its place, a thin thread of hope. Or maybe just stubbornness.

He set his jaw and powered up the coil again. The blue light surged, brighter this time. The field held steady as a heartbeat.

This feeling was how it started, he thought. With junk parts, a stolen schematic, and just enough sleep deprivation to believe it might work.



High School Library
Upper Floor
Tuesday, November 4th, 1997
Early Morning
The second floor of the library was barely used; most students and staff tended to forget it existed, which made it perfect for Buffy's purposes. The floor was a patchwork of tatami mats gone uneven and glossy from years of sweat and boot polish. The only light came from a clutch of bare bulbs in wire cages overhead, which made the air look thick and bruised.

Buffy stood dead center, stripped down to leggings and a faded tank top, hair cinched tight at the nape. She'd come to the room early, before the majority of the students arrived, because the thought of anyone seeing her mess up was anathema. The only audience she tolerated was the one inside her skull.

She closed her eyes and was instantly somewhere else.

Not a dream, not exactly. More like a wormhole through her own history. In the darkness behind her eyelids, she could see the world through another's lens: Dinah Drake, the original Black Canary, legs like steel cables, jaw set, fists curled in perfect alignment. The memory of muscle tension, the echo of a training montage played on infinite loop. Buffy found herself repeating the old woman's mantra without meaning to: Hands high. Shoulders down. Exhale on impact.

In the vision, Dinah squared off against a man built like a mailbox, his face already swollen from earlier rounds. She ducked his jab, pivoted on her lead foot, and hammered a combo—right jab, left hook, spinning elbow, knee to the ribs. Every movement was economic, precise, as if the laws of physics had been written for her convenience. The man staggered. Dinah grinned, tongue curling over her lip, and beckoned him forward for more.

Buffy opened her eyes, and the real room snapped back into place. She faced an imaginary opponent, squared up, and tried to duplicate the sequence. Jab. Hook. Elbow. Knee.

She missed the rhythm, lost the balance on the spin, and nearly fell sideways into the wall. Her pulse spiked; her ears rang with embarrassment, even though nobody was watching. She took a breath, shook her arms out, and started again.

This time it flowed. Jab. Hook. Elbow. Knee. She felt the air resist her, the slap of her own breath in her chest. On the third repetition, she added a feint, just like in the memory: a little skip, a shoulder dip to telegraph a fake. The mat under her bare feet creaked, then caught.

Dinah's voice, impossible and clear, cut through her own thoughts: If you're going to hit, hit. If you're not, don't pretend.

Buffy grinned, baring her teeth. "Thanks, Mom," she said, not meaning it. She ran through the combo again, and again, until the moves bled together and her muscles stopped fighting the memory.

She pivoted to the rack along the wall and pulled down the bo staff—lightweight, smooth, maybe an inch taller than she was. She twirled it end over end, then found the midpoint and let it settle in her hands. Staff work was new; Dinah's memories came with a full library of forms and routines, but no instruction manual on how to plug them into Buffy's own body. She had to guess, mostly.

She squared up, inhaled, and launched into the sweep.

The first pass was all arms, too stiff, the arc wobbly. Buffy corrected, bent her knees, let her hips lead. The second pass was better. On the third, she nailed it: the staff sang through the air, caught the invisible attacker at the ankle, and finished with a sharp snap against the mat. The echo bounced off the window and back to her, magnified.

Buffy wiped sweat from her forehead, then let the staff rest against her shoulder. She checked her grip, flexed her fingers, and tried to conjure up the next move. In the mental replay, Dinah advanced, turned the sweep into a vault, and crashed down with a downward strike that looked like it could split a cement block. Buffy hesitated. She'd seen the move, but never done it herself.

She planted the staff, pushed off with her right foot, and tried to leap. It wasn't graceful—she was too high, too slow—but she landed on target, both feet planted, staff extended. The landing jolted her knees, sent a jolt of pain up her spine, but she stayed upright.

Not perfect. But close.

She tried it again. And again.

By the tenth rep, she could feel the pattern lock in. The staff and her body became one mechanism, the movement less conscious and more instinct. She grinned and wondered if this was how it had felt to be Dinah: knowing the exact shape of your power, and how to unleash it at will.

A bead of sweat rolled down her cheek. She ignored it, turning instead to the reflection in the glass door that led to the brownstone's hallway. She didn't quite recognize herself: flushed, loose-limbed, eyes glinting with a feral confidence she'd never owned before, not even when she was just the Slayer.

She thought of Xander and Willow, probably still asleep, or more likely building something ridiculous either in the electronics or chemistry labs. She thought of Giles, sipping tea and pretending not to eavesdrop. She thought of the old days, the vampire nests, the Saturday-night patrols, and felt a weird, distant nostalgia for a life that now seemed trivial compared to this.

With the staff balanced behind her neck, she walked the perimeter of the room, feet light, toes landing silent. She rehearsed other sequences: a shoulder throw, a forward roll, a roundhouse kick that ended in a perfect back stance. Each time, she corrected herself, made micro-adjustments, and cataloged the improvement.

After thirty minutes, she dropped the staff back on the rack and did a set of pushups, knuckles to the mat, chest brushing the ground. She went to failure, then did one more, just to spite the ghost of Dinah in her head.

When she finally stood up, her arms were numb, her face bright with exertion. She exhaled slow and felt the satisfaction settle in. She wasn't Black Canary yet, but she could see the outline—a shape drawn in negative, waiting for her to fill it.

She took a last lap around the room, hands on her hips, stretching out the fatigue. The only sound was her breathing and the slow pop of the radiator against the far wall.

"We're not so different, you and I," she muttered to the memory of the women in her head. The words sounded stupid in the echo, but she let them stand. In that moment, they felt true.

She left the training room with her head held high, sweat still drying on her skin, feeling for once like maybe—just maybe-the memory wasn't in control. Maybe she was.

She closed the door behind her, and the echo faded. The new day waited, and she was ready to meet it on her own terms.

End Chapter Two