Archive of Our Own ^beta

A very cute box of baby wipes wandered into Sunnydale's Magic Box one day.

No... That's not right.

The cardboard box was upside-down and, from the two voices coming from underneath, probably wasn't moving under its own power.

Unless it did impressions.

"Watch it, Pinky! That's the second time you've nearly touched the artifact!"

"But Brain! I want to be the evil genius for a while. What does it do again?"

The deeper voice released a very put upon sigh. "As you just said, Pinky, it switches the powers of any two beings who touch it. We have come here because I want to steal the healing factor and speed of the one human who has the most acceptable rate of powers per lack of restrictions. The Slayer."

"But that's a female-only line... Zoinks, you aren't-"

"No, Brain. This will allow me to take her powers directly, working around even that little restriction."

Anya wandered by, going about her business in the shop she ran.

"Why do you want to do that, Brain?"

"To win the blasted contest and rule our world, Pinky."

"And why am I here?"

He sighed again. "Comic relief."

Anya wandered back and actually paid attention to the cute cardboard box.

"Please, oh please, oh please!"

"No!"

"C'mon, now, Brain," shouted the wheedling member of the pair. "Just one little rub?"

Anya was terribly paranoid about certain kinds of rodents known for their breeding habits, so this bit of conversation triggered her terror response. As fast as she could, she jumped forward and grabbed the box before it could scamper away.

There was nothing underneath, so she flipped it over.

There were two little white mice on bicycles strapped to the inside of the box through a complex harness of rubber bands. She'd just turned them on their backs and they didn't look too happy about it.

"Oh, good." Anya sighed, relieved. "I was afraid you were... You wouldn't happen to be rabbits in disguise, would you?"

"I don't know," said the tall, lanky one. "Brain, are we?"

"No, Pinky," said Brain, with a shake of his oversized head. "If we were, I have hopes that even you would've noticed by now. And you, whomever you are, put us down now!"

"Oh, right." Anya rolled her eyes. "Like I'm about to let two rodents run around a magic shop without some very serious truth and anti-gnawing spells in place. It'd be different if you'd come in as customers, but no, you had to be sneaky about it."

"My dear," Brain began, in a polite drawl. "With all due respect... Bugger off! We're looking for the Slayer and you, whoever you are, are not her!"

"I don't think so," she said, turning the box at angle to get a better look at the shiny thing strapped to the back of the shorter mouse. "What do you have here?"

"No!" Brain yelled in vain. "Don't touch the-" He trailed off, Anya's fingers already having made contact with the object. If anything had just happened, it wasn't visible.

Anya, ignoring the mouse's words, freed the amulet from the little leather strap that secured it to his waist.

"Well, it's shiny," she stated, turning it over in her free hand. Her attention was firmly fixed on it at the moment Brain vanished. "I don't really know what it is... Wait, where'd the big-headed one go?"

"Albuquerque?" guessed Pinky. He'd seen his buddy disappear, but-

"Why would he go to New Mexico? It's awful dry and his hair would probably friz."

"Then his tail would match the rest of him! Poit!"

"You know... I like you," Anya said, moving the box and the strapped-in mouse closer to her face. "But, that's not going to stop me from prying every little bit of information about your plot against the Slayer from your rodent lips."

Once he'd managed to regain his focus, Brain spent several seconds experimenting with Anya's vengeance demon powers of transportation.

Unexpected, but... Useful.

He jumped back into the Magic Box just in time to hear her threatening Pinky.

"It's just as well," Pinky gulped. "I've sworn off larger women."

"What did you call me?" she yelled, shaking the box.

"Put him down!" Brain screamed. Furious, he teleported to Anya's right ankle and sank his teeth into her skin.  His strength had been enhanced by the stolen powers, so it packed quite a wallop.

Anya screamed and, kicking with her wounded foot, dropped both the box and the amulet.

As the box fell to the ground, Brain appeared in it.  The amount of teleportation power Anya had been assigned was a fixed amount based loosely on her human female mass. It was not scaled down to rodent size, so when Brain tried to take everything with him, the two rodents, their bikes and the box disappeared easily enough.

Anya ran off to tend to her wounds.  In her pain, she completely forgot about the amulet, which had fallen somewhere on the floor of her shop.

A bit of time passed before Halfrek, Anya's fellow vengeance demon, walked into the Magic Box to find her recently repowered colleague crying behind the cash register.

"Oh honey, is it Xander again?"

"No, worse," Anya sobbed. "I have all these ideas for Rube Goldberg devices filling up my head, but... I've forgotten how to handle money!"

 Summers' Residence

"Hey, Dawn, the girls still at it?"

"Yep, Xander, it could take them awhile to crack the system of cameras those three guys installed to spy on us. Oh, hey! You hear about Anya's phone call? Two white mice are trying to capture Buffy, so if you see her, you need to warn her."

"Really? They human size?"

"Nah, regular, but they can teleport and bite real hard."

"Weird. So where's our favorite Slayer at?"

"Chasing down the usual suspect."

 A Cemetery in Sunnydale

On discovering hidden cameras spying on herself and her friends, Buffy had decided to question Spike. That hadn't panned out so the conversation had led to other things.  ".... you have to move on, okay? You have to get over-" Buffy said to the vampire she'd fought alongside, who had filled in for her when she'd died, who had loved her for a long time...

"Get out!" Spike snarled, halfway-justified. Maybe three-quarters.

Buffy stopped smiling her calm, collected smile (meant to show off her honest honesty).  Turning away, she walked up the short steps to the door of Spike's retro-fitted crypt, then opened it and walked through.

She ran straight into a certain young man named Oz.  The werewolf, ex-boyfriend of her best friend, looked particularly embarrassed about being in Sunnydale after his long absence.  And he'd brought 'friends'.

 Magic Box

"I even feel like a completely normal, albeit outspoken, human again!" Anya complained.

"No, Anyanka," Halfrek stated reassuringly. "The magic that D'Hoffryn assigned to you is still assigned to you. I can feel the drain on the system like an extra ring on my finger."

"Well, I can't."

"Calm yourself. What we need is someone recently scorned with very low morals."

The bell rang as Spike walks in the door, leather jacket swinging. "Hey, I need a thing." After he'd caught a glimpse of who Oz had brought with him, Spike had decided to sneak away, very, very quietly.

Anya immediately locked eyes with Halfrek. "I didn't do it," the brunette stated, spreading her hands. "These things happen."

The recently blonde Anya shrugged, before yelling: "Spike! Hurry! I need to find out if I'm a vengeance demon or not! Wish something harmless and mean-spirited!"

"Hmm...." Spike spent a second in thought. "I wish Buffy would spend the next week bald. Then give her hair that changes color based on her mood."

"Granted," Anya yelled, waving her arms. "Oh, no! It's not! I'm not an awful veiny demon!"

"Well, that's good... Right?"

"No, it's horrible!"

"Will you make up your bloody mind!"

"Maybe it's because he's male," Anya guessed. "Hallie! Wish he was female so I can grant his wish!"

"Uh no..." Halfrek said. "You should be able to grant everyone's wishes, it's only taste that's held you back so far."

"I might add that, if you turned me female, I wouldn't be giving you a sodding wish. You'd be a demon, so I'd be able to drain you dry without this blasted chip in my head caring a whit."

"You know," Halfrek interrupted, somewhat fearful for her own demony neck. "I'll just go ahead and investigate this somewhere else."  The brunette nodded to the male vampire and carefully left the shop by the door, before teleporting away.

"Look, obviously you have things on your mind. I care, but I'm not in the mood. Rain check, alright?" Spike said.  As he stalked away, he accidentally kicked the amulet across the floor. "Oh, what's this?" he asked, picking it up and turning it over. "Some sort of hairclip... No price tag."

"Just keep it!" the distraught Anya gestured as she sat down behind the counter, returning to the complex physics problems she had suddenly found herself scribbling instead of dollar signs. "Some white mice, who could quite possibly have been midget rabbits, left it here and I don't have the slightest clue what it is!"

"Cartoons have come to Sunnydale, miss," Spike said as he rubbed the amulet with his patterned shirt. "If I were you, I'd stay inside."  With that, he left.

A little bit later and a bit too late, it occurred to Anya that the mouse... The other one had called him Brain... Just might have used the shiny thing to steal her powers and bookkeeping ability.  "Wait!" she yelled to the empty shop.

 Just Outside Spike's Crypt

When the harrowing conversation was finally over, the one in brown and the one in blue leaped upon Buffy and planted kisses on both sides of her face, while the pink one launched herself at a particularly embarrassed Oz, throwing her arms about his head and her legs around his chest.  Staring directly into his eyes, she kissed him smack on the lips.

After landing on the ground at exactly the same time -a certain perfection only found among cartoons- the two brothers waved goodbye as their sister curtsied neatly.

Yakko, Wakko and Dot joined their gloved hands and begin spinning around in a circle.

The oddly named Animaniacs spun faster and faster until they were just a blur.  Soon, they weren't their black and white selves anymore... But three little orbs of red, blue and green.

The three points of light whirled in a tight loop, circling around the heads of Buffy and Oz, before zooming off into the night sky.

Zot!

The word hung there, for a second, before evaporating into mist.

"I couldn't help but overhear what you were saying to Spike in that crypt," Oz began, turning to face Buffy. "I-"

"No, uh-uh, me first," the Slayer interrupted her werewolf buddy. "Let me get this straight. You're in Cleveland. You smell a rip in space-time. You investigate a deserted factory and find that someone left a dimensional portal on and, if left unchecked, it would shortly destroy the world."

"These things happen," he replied.

"You tried to shut it down, but were getting nowhere," Buffy continued, frowning. "When three monochrome creatures jumped out from the hole and offer to help save both worlds. You have an adventure. The four of you turn the machine off. They hop in the portal, just as it closes. But, it isn't over."

"Nope."

"They show up, about an hour later, saying that they have studied the designs and have figured out how to cross dimensions completely on their own. Then they say that you owe them and they won't leave you alone until they get my autograph. And you still don't know who created the portal in the first place."

"That pretty much sums it up."

"Okay, I can see why you want me to keep my mouth shut about your coming back to town for this very short visit." Buffy nodded. "You didn't come back by choice and feel that meeting up with Willow would not be healthful for either of you. She'd find your reason for being here to be both understandable and completely unbelievable."

"Right."

"Coffee?"

 Somewhere in Sunnydale

"In case you're wondering, I've still got my personality. I seem to have lost some of my knowledge of the inner workings of the universe... and gained some business sense... but my evil genius soul and dry wit are completely intact and with me still."

"That's good, Brain. Uh, I guess this is kind of fun for you, but could you please untie me now?"

"Oh, alright."

After Brain freed Pinky from the straps they decided to teleport somewhere for an iced mocha.

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" the big-headed mouse asked the tall and lanky one.

"I think so, Brain, but even if vampires had chlorophyll in their skin they'd still need the same amount of blood. It's not like they'd be able to get enough sun for the little green things to do any good."

"No, Pinky," Brain sighed in resignation. "I was thinking that we should teleport inside the coffee shop's cash register, then buy our drink with their money."

"Why don't we just wait for someone to order what we want, then steal it?"

"Good idea, Pinky! I must finally be rubbing off on you."

"Uh, you now, or you before you traded up?"

"Shut up," Brain said, grabbing Pinky's long tail and teleporting them...

... This was a place of pure blackness... Definitely not part of the food service industry.

They were standing there, the only things of color in the place. Before them was a wall made of soft ebony foam.

"Zoinks," said Pinky, liking the effect.

Brain put his hands into the foam. "This is... This is... Something that wants to look inside of us... A Memory Soak!"

He turned to his gangly friend, saying: "Okay, Pinky. Reality is on the other side of this. It must be some stupid restriction on the use of this power. When we enter it, it should simply read our minds and let us through. I'll go first."

Before Pinky could reply, Brain flung himself forward.

The Memory Soak received a detailed description of the mouse's first encounter with a version of himself able to use magic. Of how this had only whetted his appetite for power and how he had built his portal and scoured dimensions for the means to obtain it... How they'd heard of the contest and why they had come to this reality...

Pinky saw the record of events form in the surface of the wall. When it finished playing, he held his nose, closed his eyes, and jumped in.

He left the black foam with an impression of some of the women he loved...

The horse he had lost his heart to and the sea lion that had never really understood him...

Language barrier.

...

They materialized on a fire-hydrant-occupied Sunnydale street corner.

"There it is, Pinky," laughed Brain. "The place which houses the decaffeinated treasures we now seek."

"Um, Brain, I'm worried," Pinky said, scratching his head. "Should our portal machine really be left on this long?"

"Don't worry, Pinky," the large-headed mouse replied, comfortingly. "Yes, the dimensional breach should have brought us directly to this version of California... Only the presence of multiple Hellmouths left us stranded in Ohio..."

He continued, frowning. "Nonetheless, it's a finely calibrated piece of equipment. Besides... It performed well in the test run... Maybe a bit too well..."

"But Brain," countered Pinky. "What if it, Poit, begins to absorb mystical energies from the Hellmouth... Goes Woo-hoo, Woo-hoo... And threatens to destroy multiple realities? Narf."

"Nonsense, Pinky," Brain replied, bending over and drawing several shapes in the cement sidewalk with his vengeance-demon enhanced strength. "There are safeguards in place."

Shivering, Brain rose to his feet and dusted himself off. "Besides, if you look here, you'll clearly see that if anything was going to go wrong with it, we'd all be dead by now."  He suddenly realized that he was alone on the corner. He turned around, searching the sidewalk...

No, his fellow mouse wasn't racing for coffee...

"Pinky, Pinky? Where did you-?" he broke off, hearing a strange sound. He spun to face the fire hydrant.

A small pink thing was running itself around the rim of the hydrant. Then the lid flipped open completely.

Brain only had time for a short 'No-', before a giant tongue shot out from the hydrant, grabbing the stunned mouse.

The possessed hydrant happily reeled in its easy meal and the lid clanged shut, covering the gaping maw of the life-saving device.  After a self-satisfied burp, the corner was once again silent.

Buffy and Oz walked by, talking.

They crossed the street and entered the coffee shop.

It was quiet outside.

Little pink things extended from the rim of the hydrant, just before the metallic top was nearly completely ripped away.

Brain reached back, grabbed Pinky's hand and pulled them both out of the predator's maw.  After they'd jumped down to the sidewalk, Brain turned around and kicked the thing, yelling: "Bad, bad demon hydrant!"

It yelped in pain and confusion, then scuttled away, down the street.

"That's funny, Brain," the lanky mouse stated, wiping himself clean of the digestive juices. "The things back home usually won't swallow us because we're genetically-modified."

"Well, apparently they're more GM-tolerant in this version of California," Brain replied. "Come, Pinky. To coffee!"

 Having nothing better to do, Spike returned to his crypt and picked up Buffy and the wolf's trail.  It left him standing at a somewhat unpopular coffee shop, as they'd picked a place where the wolf's ex-girlfriend was unlikely to find them.

Breezing into the place, Spike interrupted Oz's conversation with the Slayer and dropped the amulet onto the small table just as their iced mocha and green tea frappuccino arrived.  Seeing the confusion on their faces, he explained: "I picked this up for you, Buffy. I hope you like it."

Buffy picked it up, then handed it to Oz.

He took it, sniffed it and passed it back to her.

As she held it up to the light, she told Spike, in no uncertain terms, that she didn't want it.

Ignoring her, Spike asked: "Hello, werewolf, still barking up all the wrong trees for happiness?"

"Hello vampire, still madly in lust for Buffy?" Oz said, then grinned at their shocked expressions, tapping the side of his nose.

"We broke up," Buffy stated, blushing. Then she got angry. "If you tell Xander anything about that, I'll track down the members of your band and torture them with Hanson records."

Oz shrugged nonchalantly and sipped his drink.

Buffy looked again at the amulet in her hand, then glared up at Spike. "Where'd you get the hairclip?"

"Metaphorical steal at the Magic Box. Full permission of the owner, by the way."

Frowning at her disgusted expression, he moved to take it. "If don't want it, then give it back."

Fortunately, she pulled it out of reach before his hand could make contact.

"No. It's probably got some twisted enchantment or love spell on it."

"You hand it to him," she continued saying as she dropped it on the smooth table and pushed it back in the direction of Oz.

Oz picked it up and held it out for the vampire.

Completely disgusted by her distrust, Spike grabbed the amulet and stormed out of the cafe.

When Buffy was finished glaring after her most recent undead ex-lover, she examined Oz carefully. "Well, are you madly in love with Spike?"

"Nope," he replied calmly and returned to sipping his drink.

"So... Tell me more about Cleveland. If it's an American Hellmouth, I better know all about it."

He opened his mouth to speak, but a sudden tingling sensation threw him into a state of near panic. Well-hewn instinct had him pushing his chair back, covering his face with his hands and shoving his head below table-level.

If his eyes had been open, he'd be staring directly into the stunned faces of Pinky and the Brain, but his eyes were squinched shut.

When the unexpected transformation had finished he, with a muttered apology, hands still protecting his disfigured face from view, ran from the coffee shop.

Running along the side of the building, he threw open the bathroom door and slammed it shut behind him.

The bathrooms being on the outside were another reason the 'Daley Sun' was less popular than the 'Espresso Pump'.

Pinky had actually been paying attention to what was going on but, before he could mention the amulet's antics to Brain, Buffy stood up.

"Quiet, Pinky," Brain whispered, throwing one arm around the taller mouse and the other arm around a table leg. "This is our chance."

Brain concentrated. His stolen powers, free from Anya's greater mass, easily whisked the mice and the small table away.

Buffy had risen to her feet when Oz made his escape, but she quickly shook her head and sat back down at her chair, convinced she knew what was happening.

She reached for her cold drink, but -

Her drink, and Oz's drink, not to mention the entire table, had simply disappeared.

She stood up abruptly enough to send her chair clattering to the white tile floor.  Several heads turned to look at her.  She shrugged, embarrassed, then picked up both chairs and hid them against another table.

Emotion. Am awake. No longer mind captivity. Hunger for blood. Blood flows within me. I giggle in delight.

Oz's beast, for its part, was quite happy with the change. It was still trapped within the young man's flesh, but the combination of new vampiric powers and his living host was making it quite drunk.

Oz stood at the bathroom mirror blinking. Yep, he definitely wasn't invisible. His reflection was just gone.

He checked his pulse. Still a surprised, but steady, beat.  He felt his head, but instead of the familiar hairiness of his half-wolf face he found the ridged brow and, yep, pointy fangs, of a vampire's game face.

This was unexpected. It wasn't good.

Then again, he still had his heightened senses, he had gained the enhanced agility of the vampire package, plus, hey, he'd kept his pulse.

"Okay, I admit I kind of had the shaft as far as useful powers went, but you didn't have to go to this extent," he muttered to the empty room.

He shifted back and forth between vamp and normal face a bit, listening to the noise it made.  He considered working the sound into some audio playback, but dismissed it as a bad idea.

Rubbing his freshly human features, he left the room.

"What's up?" asked a concerned Buffy. She had been waiting outside the shop.

"It's strange, but my inner demon just mutated..." he said, before frowning, sniffing the air, and looking up. "Why did you set our coffee table up on the roof?"

"I'm blaming it either on the normal demons, those weird cartoons you brought with you, or Spike."

"Ah."

Pinky jumped down from his perch on the straw, then ran over and threw his arms about Brain. "Oh, no, Brain. Narf! We've been spotted."

"Hush," Brain muttered, then teleported the two of them downward. He had them appear inside the food display case.

They walked around for several seconds before picking out a large banana nut muffin.

Brain shoved a hand through the thin crust and grabbed Pinky's arm in an attempt to teleport them to a dark place just outside the building, where they could eat in peace.

...

They emerged in a much darker place than he'd expected.

They looked around at the bleak blackness and the ebony wall of the 'Memory Soak'.

"Oh, no," Brain groaned. "Not again."

"Troz!" Pinky agreed.

Revello Drive

Just outside of the Summers' home, his destination at the time, Spike suddenly froze in his steps and began muttering to himself. He looked rather out of sorts.

"Great, just bloomin' terrific. You're curious all of a sudden? You stay quiet for a century or two and then out of the blue you want to come out and play? No you bloody well can't. You're my bloodthirsty soulless inner demon, not some puppy. It's just those cartoons rubbing off on you. I'm not going to turn into a bleedin' cartoon, so shut up. Blasted Hellmouth."

Shaking it off, Spike entered the house and walked directly into the dining room where the laptop had been set up on the large table.

Tara and Willow - well, mainly Willow - were there, hard at work hacking into the recently discovered video feed.

"So," Spike said, announcing his presence. "This'd be the spying that got the Slayer's knickers in a twist."

"Yep," Willow confirmed, typing away.

"Hey, Red," he said, pleasantly enough, as he tapped Willow on the shoulder and pressed the amulet into her surprised palm. "Don't say I never got you anything."

She turned it, examining the detail, then handed it over to Tara.

Her fellow Wiccan stated that it was pretty, then shrugged and set it down on the table.

"Thanks but, this is a job that requires enormous concentration and snack foods. I'm about to finally get the hidden address of the Trio, but..." Willow trailed off, frowning, her fingers hovering above the keyboard. "They've spotted me, they're trying to kill my tracer program and, by the Goddess... I've forgotten what to do!"

"Here let me try," Spike offered, hovering over the frustrated witch's shoulder. "Something about that... routing code... seems familiar."

Willow stood up abruptly, spun around and shoved the surprised vampire across the room.

"Get out!" she panted angrily. She grabbed the amulet, from where Tara had set it on the table, and flung it directly at his chest. "And take your stupid and distracting piece of jewelry with you!"

Spike caught it and frowned, trying to put on his vamp-face. He was too annoyed at her to notice that his features didn't transform.

He turned on his heel, leather jacket spreading out, and left the room and the house in a huff.

His muttered words trailed behind him: "Try to do a woman a favor..."

Willow took several breaths to calm herself, then raised an eyebrow at Tara's offer to take her place at the computer.

"Go ahead," Willow nodded, embarrassed by her sudden inability to think in binary.

Tara sat down, grinning, and entered into a fierce coding battle with the hackers hidden inside the Trio's lair.

Willow gasped, amazed at the brilliancy of the final strokes...

Tara laughed and leaned back in the chair, triumphant.

"I did it, Willow! I tracked the Trio to their Secret Lair! That's the address!"

"Tara! I can't believe it! Your hacking skills! They're on a par with... Oz!"

Willow froze at the words coming out of her mouth. She blushed at the reference to her ex-boyfriend.

The one that had nearly bitten her current girlfriend.

Tara, however, seemed to take the awkwardly given praise in a good way...  She even tilted her head back and let loose a glorious howl.

Willow gawked at this, amused and slightly worried, but then her eyes widened in fear as hairs dark and canine had begun to crawl up her lover's face.

Xander and Dawn heard Willow's scream and ran into the dining room, just in time to see Tara's head and arms finish going completely wolfy.

Dawn gasped.

Xander immediately grabbed a silver tray and held it in front of him... A very small shield.

Willow telekinetically opened a drawer across the room and, within seconds, had four tranquilizer darts hovering and ready to strike.

Tara, for her part, looked at them with a confused expression on her distorted face and growled: "What?"

 A Dark, Dark, Space

After a few seconds of deliberation, Brain grabbed Pinky's wrist and dove into the ebony wall.

They braced themselves for a flashback, and weren't disappointed.

"There it is, Pinky! The sacred statue of the MacGuffin! See that shiny hair clip stuck into his stone braid? That is the tool I need to win this Mr. LabMouse Multiverse contest and finally rule a world!"

"But Brain, why are we even entering a contest if we can take over a planet ourselves? What do we need one-hundred-ninety-eight extra versions of us for?"

"Prestige Pinky... Prestige and honor! If I can triumph over ninety-nine Brains and win their help in my endeavors, why... the world will be my oyster!"

"I don't know Brain, if it closes, won't it be kind of dark? Although, a pearl the size of the moon? By golly, that'd be-"

"No. It's a metaphor."

"Oh. Poit."

"I am merely trying to say that if I use that pearl... Gah! That amulet... And absorb the abilities of a strong and powerful Champion for Good, one with no weaknesses mind you, then I with my renowned intelligence and newly acquired fighting skills will beat all the other chosen Brains both in the testing laboratory and in that ridiculous arena they've set up."

"I don't know Brain, holographic death traps, gauntlets of flame, grand swords of stabbity-stab... It kinda reminds me of home," Pinky said, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.

He thought a second longer, then gasped: "Brain! You mean you're going to cheat?"

Brain grabbed Pinky by the ears and stared him directly in the eyes. "No, I simply want to enter the ring in the best condition possible. One of those mice we have been pitted against is Robin Brain, a mouse with immense physical skills, whose only ambition up until now, has been to improve his nation's hygiene. Pinky, I need the edge."

Brain let go of Pinky, then pulled some climbing gear out of a nearby pack.

"Besides," Brain commented as he began his long climb up the seated statue. "I'm not doing anything not specifically allowed by the rules of this contest."

After watching the shorter mouse climb for a bit, Pinky began to dance around the feet of the statue.

"Lolly-lolly Lolly... Oooh, Shiny," he said, grinning. He'd found a large button.

"Hey, Brain!"

"Not now!"

"But, Brain!"

"Not now, Pinky! This climb requires immense concentration!"

"But-"

"Shut up!"

An exhausted Brain finally made it to the stone shoulder, only...

"Pinky, what are you doing up here?"

"I took the elevator."

"Gah!" Brain said, before swinging his grappling hook over to the amulet.

A simple tug later and he had it in his grasp.

His gloating was interrupted by a curious Pinky. "Where to now, Brain?"

"Back to our lab, then through our portal machine to a hellish town called... Sunnydale!"

"I don't understand, Brain, why don't we just go after that Samson fellow?"

"Because, Pinky, I'd have to get his hair surgically implanted. Besides, he has such an obvious weakness, even you could figure it out."

"No, no, Brain. Narf. Gregory Samson! You could have the proportionate strength, no that's an ant," he trailed off, thinking, while Brain grimaced. "Yes, the proportional durability of a cockroach! Troz!"

He was hit over the head by the smaller mouse.

"That's Gregor Samsa! Samsa," Brain yelled into Pinky's ear. "Come, Pinky... Oh, yes, you did mention an elevator?"

When the flashback ended abruptly, the rodents found themselves inside the alleyway, as if their trip had never been interrupted...

...

However, the quiet perfection of the dark on dark place they left behind was still marred by one spot of color.

Someone tall walked by and, frowning, kicked the large muffin through, after the mice.

 Somewhere in Sunnydale

Back inside the 'Daley Sun', no-one had yet noticed the disappearing table, so Buffy and Oz felt free to order fresh drinks.  Fortunately, they finished them in peace.

After a good, long, talk, Oz offered Buffy a lift home in his van... Or, at least most of the way there.  Buffy politely declined the offer, then took off on her own.

Oz left a tip, then exited the coffee shop, only to run into a certain blond vampire.

"I know you're leaving town so take this thing," Spike said, handing the amulet to the surprised Oz. "And destroy it. Drop it in the ocean, or something. I'm beginning to believe it's a bad luck charm. Just take it far away from here, please."

Oz shrugged and walked away.

Spike took a few steps, then stopped, growling at himself. Without realizing it, he'd unconsciously been following Buffy's trail, again. "I can't take this anymore!" he yelled into the night. "I stalk the bit, wait outside her place, smoking dozens of packs in the hopes of a glimpse of her! I shag her, she shags me, we bloody well shag each other, then she leaves!"

"She says she doesn't love me," he paused before continuing in a sing-song voice: "She doesn't care for me like I care for her. Oh, sodding hell! She's got every right to be honest. Not even sure I want the whole... Why can't I get over her, get on with this stupid, pointless, chipped life... It's her sight and her smell and her opinions and the bloody awful wonderful stench of her soul..."

He broke the speech off, leaning against the wall, directly above where the mice were trying to finish their muffin in peace.

Spike was too involved in himself to notice their smell... The scent they'd left at the magic shop when they'd stolen Anya's powers... The smell coating the amulet that had caused him such a headache... Oh, well. He had other things on his mind.

Finally, to Pinky's immense relief, Spike just stood up, brushed himself off and walked away, muttering: "I wish I could just move on..."

At those words, Pinky fell off the pastry in absolute shock.

Brain had just raised his face into view.

The mouse's white fur had suddenly become horribly disfigured by a mass of pulsing blue veins.

A completely different, monstrous voice boomed from the little mouse's throat. "Granted."

Spike was surprised when Anya suddenly ran around the corner, yelling: "Spike, I need to talk to you! That thing you picked up, I think it's-"

She was completely shocked when she felt his lips covering her mouth, cutting off her request.

She found herself responding in kind.

When he broke it off, she was flustered and panting and sweaty.  Not a single hair was out of place on his bleached blond head.

"I'm sorry," he began to apologize. "Whatever just came over me, I-"

She threw her arms about him, moved her hands up and down his back, up his neck, mussing up his annoyingly-perfect hair - but her attention was mainly focused on the kissing.

When she ended it, that time, she took a step backwards.  Keeping her hands on his waist, she asked, breathlessly: "What are we doing?"

"Moving on," he breathed, smiling roguishly, until something brushed against his leg. He looked down. "Why, what do we have here?"

At his feet was an awfully cute metal puppy with a barrel-shaped chest, which yelped happily at the attention.

"Oh, that's my robot dog," Anya answered with a smug smile. "I used it to track you. I build things now."

When he was sure the new lovebirds were out of earshot, Pinky turned to his normal-faced companion, commenting: "Oh, Brain, that was so... Awesome! Sk'nioz!"

"Thank you, and... Pinky!" Brain hit the large mouse over the head (though he didn't use his enhanced strength). "Never say that or 'Zoinks' ever again."

"Sure, Brain!" Pinky yelled, in complete agreement. "Poit! Fjord!"

 Summers' Residence

The hair rushed down Tara's arms, then back up again. Then back down again.

Up again.

Back down again in a zig-zag pattern.

"Wow! Can you spell my name!"

"Dawn!"

"But, Willow, it's just awesome!"

"Look, we can't just ask her to test out the limits of her powers in an unsecure location."

"She's right," Tara cautioned. "This power has dangerous roots... But it is rather cool. And... being on the inside now? I can't see why they call these guys were-'wolves'. This form is more like a demonic sasquatch than anything canine..."

Willow thought a second, then replied: "It could be a bleed-over from some other myth. Also, they were much, much more canine that first full moon, maybe accumulated contamination from the Hellmouth? I'll research, just as soon as we figure out how you got these powers."

"Did you drink out of a wolf's footprint?" Xander helpfully supplied. "Did you fall into a spring that a wolf drowned in a thousand years ago?"

"Xander!"

"What? Helping here."

"Do you think it was that hair clip?" Tara asked.

As Willow thought, she was interrupted by a profound idea.

"Oh, cool, I get it now! Why you're not attacking us! You've turned into one of those werewolves that you see on TV," Xander said, excitedly. "You know, the ones that don't have a ravenous bloodthirsty beast trapped inside of them."

 Somewhere in Sunnydale

As he approached his van, Oz doubled over, grabbing his skull as if something was trying to claw its way out.

Trapped. No outlet exists. Way out... Gone... No light... Must see!

Barely managing to stay on his feet, he stumbled into an alleyway...

... Where he finally fell to the ground writhing in pain.

Since Oz had begun to control his powers, his beast had been, not quite hibernating... More like a fisherman with his line in the water, not really caring if it ever got a bite or not... Not minding if it missed the chance to reel something in.

His beast had been relaxed.

A short bit ago, its mood had changed. It had become calm, collected, focused.

Aware of its surroundings in a way that it had never really been.

When Oz's body had been in vamp-face, his beast had been both at peace and filled with a curiosity about the world outside the flesh, outside the mind it was bound in...

Not to mention that the blood flowing through the body had made it slightly drunk.

Now it was smothered, trapped in a body that couldn't transform, that had no outlet.

No room for it to breathe, to run.

Oz shuddered and nearly stopped breathing, his lungs and his heart trying to move, trying to change, caught up in the beast's fight for survival.

Suddenly, his beast spotted an opening - a newly created one - and poured itself into it.

After wandering aimlessly for a bit, between make-out sessions and some really twisted conversations about movies, Anya finally got around to explaining why she had tracked down Spike.

It took a bit longer to explain how she'd managed to get her vengeance demon powers back in the first place, let alone lose them again, but eventually they got back to the topic at hand.

"Well, why didn't you just have your robot buddy track their scent?"

"They're teleporters. I couldn't rely on getting a clean trail, but now I've found you I can get a clear scent off that hairclip and start sniffing around the usual places, like the Slayer's house or something."

"The hairclip? Bloody 'ell..."

 After finishing their meal, the mice decided to spend a bit longer testing Brain's stolen powers, in case any extra weakness added themselves to the anomaly of the 'Memory Soak'.

They wound up walking down a darkened street corner.

Coincidentally it was the one the fire hydrant had ran to.

It whimpered to itself, very quietly...

"Oh hey, you'll never guess what I just found out," a shortish thing, mainly black-and-white, with loose brown pants pulled up above his waist exclaimed as he ran into view. "Pinky and I have the same voice actor!"

"Oh, wow!" Pinky yelled. "Yakko, that's amazing... What about Brain?"

"Pinky, I really don't think we have time for-"

"Oh, he has the same voice as these guys," Yakko interrupted, pulling several photos out of a small brown bag.

"But, most notably, he does Wakko's burp," he said, pulling out a pair of lips.

"And this pigeon," he continued, holding up a bird with a brownish-grey head and big white teeth. "His name's Squit."

The bird wiggled out of his grasp and fluttered to the ground.

"Well, this is an interesting place," it said, in a broad and perky voice. "But I don't think I'd want to live here..."

"This is ridiculous," Brain said, angrily. "We sound nothing alike."

"What," asked Yakko, waving a hand. "You think I sound like Pinky?"

The pigeon opened its mouth to reply, but was immediately caught by the fire hydrant's tongue.

The tongue pulled the bird into the waiting mouth, and the lid clanged shut.

"Look, I've had enough of this nonsense," Brain griped. "Come-"

He was interrupted by a loud voice from way down the street.

It was shouting: "Oooh! Cute!"

The fire hydrant turned to face the short red-headed girl charging towards it.

As the metallic demon freaked the lid flipped open.

The pink tongue stretched to its full length, flapping in the air as the fire hydrant yelped: "Yipe, yipe, yipe!"

The thing continued to yelp as it turned and ran down the street.

The pigeon struggled to hold onto the very tip of the tongue, but the pursuing girl drew closer, closer, and had nearly caught up to her prey...

... When the chase went around a corner and out of sight.

A very shocked Brain turned to face the tallest Warner Brother. "I can't believe you actually brought her along with you."

"Hey, don't look at me," Yakko answered, spreading his hands. "Elmyra's a native. This is her hometown."

"You know, Brain," Pinky stated, thinking hard. "That actually explains a lot. Poit."

"Oh, just go away!" Brain yelled, stomping hard on Yakko's white toes. "I had enough of your incessant cameos back in our own reality, you have no right to bother me in this one!"

"Okay..." Yakko frowned, after his foot popped back into shape. "But... You've gotten yourself into a little pickle and I just thought you'd like the help of the Warner Brothers, I mean a few extra friends in the fire..."

"No, I don't want your or the Warner sister's help! Just go away! Come, Pinky."

Pinky shrugged, then followed after the shorter mouse.

"Okay," Yakko called after them. "But don't say I didn't warn you."

Oz was still sprawled on the ground.

He was breathing, but shallowly.

Suddenly, the pieces of debris and litter that were scattered around him began to vibrate.

They scuttled across the ground, as if blown by a wind.

There was a wind. It was a wind you could see. A pure white aura.

As Oz began to straighten, to return to a standing position, the wind lifted the litter off of the ground.

Everything began to circle around his body as his feet left the ground...

There was a whirlwind. He was it.

His shirt was the first thing to be ripped to shreds, torn off his body, by the swirling white force.

The rest of his clothes followed.

He hung there. A young man. A short man.

A man filled with a terrible power not his own.

A beast that had just found a new way into the world.

Finally, his eyes opened.

They burned pure white.

"Us? In trouble? Balderdash! I don't know what got into his head, Pinky, but, as you can see we are clearly not-" Brain trailed off as the immense white whirlwind with the naked Oz hanging in the center burst out of an alleyway. "... Well."

Both mice turned as one to look back across the street. The oldest Warner brother was nowhere to be seen.

"Egad, Brain!" Pinky yelled. "We saw that red-head holding the amulet! You don't suppose he got ahold of some power that doesn't agree with him?"

"My Lord... In my mad quest to win this contest and rule a world, I might have accidentally set in motion a plot thread that could consume this one!" Brain yelled, then turned around and grabbed Pinky by the shoulders. "Pinky, think fast! What do we do back home when we have a problem this big?"

"Well... We usually drop an anvil on it."

"Calm yourself, Pinky," the smaller mouse said as he let go and brushed himself off. "Where are we going to get an anvil... Quick! Pinky! Wish there was an anvil fairy!"

"Okay, Brain... But wait? How did Yakko follow us here?"

"Good question... But right now, you need to make that blasted wish!"

"Okay! Troz! I wish there was an Anvil Fairy."

Brain's face went veiny and he boomed: "Granted."

"Good," he continued, in his normal deep voice. "That's done with, now where-"

He was interrupted by a foot-long anvil falling on his head.

A purple suited guy with little silver wings flitted above, said 'oops', and sped off.

"Ouch," said Brain, from under the anvil.

Pinky, very carefully, pulled his flat friend free, shook him out, and held him steady until he popped back into shape. "Uh, Brain, do you want to track down Yakko and say we changed our minds?"

"No. Absolutely not. The last time they tried to save a kingdom they destroyed it with a music cue," Brain panted in reply. "This bit is up to the Slayer, wherever she is."

"What's the chances of Giles solving the mystery by the time we get there?" Xander asked as he drove Dawn, Willow and Tara across town.

"Almost none. Why am I having Scooby Doo flashbacks?"

"No idea."

"Holy-" Xander yelled, slamming on the brakes. The car skidded to a stop, barely missing the scared and very mobile fire hydrant barreling across the road.

As it passed, a very dazed pigeon landed on the hood of the car.

The bird hesitantly waved a wing. When it grinned it showed a full set of teeth.

Finally, a little red-headed girl in a green dress raced into the middle of the street.

She came to a dead stop in front of the car.

The pigeon freaked out and pretended to be an oversized hood ornament.

The girl turned on her heel, faced the passengers, and raised an eyebrow.

Some deep, suppressed, instincts kicked in and, much to Tara's surprise, she found her body turning completely wolfy. A little voice in the back of her mind was also screaming: Run, Run, Run!

The girl that inspired this reaction burst into a big grin. She began to sing-song in some valkyrie-inspired tune: "Oh, my. Oh my, the choice I have - Oh where oh where should I go? Should I take the little bird in hand, oh should instead I go for.... CUTE!!!"

When the echoes from the immense volume of the last word faded into the distance, the oddly-shaped girl had already run out of sight, in pursuit of the hydrant.

"What was that?"

"I have no idea."

"Oh my God!" Dawn yelled, nearly hyperventilating. "That was Elmyra, from TV! Cartoons are running loose in Sunnydale! Oh, hey. If there's a leak from the Tiny Toons show, does that mean that Buffy can do a Babs impression and change outfits by spinning around?"

Xander took his foot off the brake, only to stop the car, again, because a little black-and-white thing in a blue shirt was suddenly standing in front of them. This one was holding a stop sign and blowing a whistle.

An odd music cue started blaring from the radio as a figure in brown and one in pink ran by with large nets, scooping up the one in blue and the grinning pigeon and carrying them out of sight.

Everyone in the car sat in stunned silence for several seconds.

As he, hesitantly, began to drive again, Xander came up with a safe conversation topic.

"So, those little balls of magic should catch up with Spike and Buffy and lead them to the Magic Box?"

"Yes, or to our current location, I'm not sure which..."

"Oh hey guys," Buffy yelled, spotting them. "I was wondering why the little thing was hurrying so fast."

"Apparently the latter," Willow stated as they pulled over, next to the Slayer.

"Oh, hey, Buffy," Dawn asked, bouncing up and down in her seat. "Can you spin around real fast and try to be wearing a different outfit when you stop spinning?"

"Uh," Buffy frowned as she hopped in and buckled her seatbelt. "No."

"Buffy, you won't believe what we just saw!"

"Oz," Xander said, slowly braking the car. "Naked?"

"No surreal or silly guesses Xander, you were there. The game's for Buff-"

"Oh, my God."

Tara blushed. "Willow, I guess I understand a bigger amount of what you saw in him."

"From the underage ears in the car," Xander said, reproachfully. "I can safely assume that you're talking about the white whirlwind and his newfound flying ability-"

"Buffy," Dawn said, trying to pull her sister's hands off her eyes. "You're probably going to need those for holding weapons."

"Is it really him?"

"Yep, when he was clothed, we had coffee," Buffy stated, then spent a second in thought. "Spike?"

"Spike."

"He is so dead," Buffy said as the car, ever so slightly, attempted to lift off the ground.

Xander quickly reversed out of the area of effect. "Is it just me, or does it look like no-one's home in there right now?"

"The big question is how mindless his beast actually is."

"A smaller question is: Who invited Rack to the party?"

"Huh?"

They craned their heads to see the scarred figure of the neighborhood power broker challenging the whirlwind's maker.

"I can feel you," Rack intoned. "You're using all this power, but you have no direction. If you keep up like this, you're going to drain yourself, a dry and used up leaf crumbling in the wind. Let me help you. Mold you. Give you a purpose. It'd be a fair trade. I have power. I can sustain you. Come with me."

Oz's beast was confused by the dark figure, whose power was casting a terrible shadow...  The 'man' smelled vaguely like food and if Oz's beast were insane it might have attacked, maybe even won, fed, and moved on.

However, the animal was put off by the display of power, so it turned around and floated away.

No grand fight for dominance there. Simple acceptance of territorial boundaries.

The dismissal, however, really set Rack off.

Rack walked forward, yelling invectives after the nude body of Oz. As he did so, the power broker stepped within the boundaries of the retreating whirlwind and was neatly decapitated by a high-speed mailbox.

Cries of 'ewww' came from the car as the headless body fell to the ground.

Gulping, Xander nosed the vehicle forward and they followed the whirlwind, at a safe distance.

"I'm sure we're all vaguely happy that happened," Buffy drawled. "But we still need to bring Oz down before anyone else gets hurt."

"Hey, Slayer mobile!" yelled Spike, who was doing his best hitchhiker impression.

"Except maybe him."

"You need to get those flashing bugs fixed. Led us on a wild goose chase all over town."

"Us?"

"Yes, I know, little puppy, I made you with short legs," said Anya as she came around the corner carrying the metal dog. "I didn't expect there'd be all this running. Maybe next time, I'll make you out of a motorcycle. Oh, hello."

"Listen," Spike stated, firmly. "We need to track down Oz... A couple mice have stolen my girl's knack for money and that amulet I gave him may be the key to getting it back."

"Your girl?" Xander asked, confused, until he saw Spike protectively putting his arm around Anya's shoulders. "Ah, c'mon."

Everybody compared notes.

"You went back to being a vengeance demon? What, couldn't stand what three years of aging had done to your figure?"

"You were going to hide Oz from me? I mean, I can understand Buffy doing it, but-"

"I was a witch for ten minutes? Well, if I'd known I sure wouldn't be standing here right now. Goodbye Sunnydale. Hello Hawaii and magical sun-block."

"Do you think the Warner Siblings do birthday parties? I can't believe you didn't get their autographs when you gave them yours."

"So there's a white cartoon mouse, out there, somewhere, running around granting wishes. Yay, Hellmouth. Never a dull moment"

"So they were after me? Why would Pinky and the Brain want to slay vampires?"

"Maybe they're trying to break into an undead cheese factory."

"Xander."

"What?"

"So, he's me. If I went all power-bad, how would you guys stop me?"

"Throw a bus at you?"

"Good idea, but it'd probably leave him with broken bones... or neck... Any others?"

"So, he's spent years repressing his beast," said Anya. "And it getting loose is one of his biggest fears, as seen by the bunny costume incident. So... It what, just runs around and jumps people? Not very constructive if you ask me."

"Hey, we have Warren's hideout," Willow perked up. "Maybe we could break in and steal some ray guns."

"Have you tried giving it a name? I always give my monsters names and it seems to help," said Dot, descending from the sky in an umbrella.

The pink-dressed Warner sister landed neatly, then held out a small blue box. "This one's Murphy. Wanna see?"

They just stared at her.

"Don't open the box," Dawn warned, eventually.

"Okay, so, he's a battery," Buffy stated, after deciding to ignore the cartoon. "He's running around, not recharging, so he's gonna wear out eventually. We just need it to happen sooner..."

"I've got it! We've just got to get him into a dinosaur costume!"

"Dawn, uh, are you okay?"

"No, it's perfect. Just... Tara, do you think your powers will let Willow do some serious levitation?"

"It's worth a shot."

"I've got one of those here," announced Dot, holding up a large orange suit, complete with head.

"Of course you do..."

"Uh, guys," said brown-suited Yakko, turning to his family. "I... Just don't like this, it's dealing with atomic weaponry."

"Funny," Dot said, slightly annoyed. "That's exactly what they said about us."

"Why do I have to be the bait?" asked blue-suited Wakko as he held up a bullhorn.

"Because you're funny," stated Yakko. "Now get down there and do your stuff."

"Oh, alright," Wakko said, as he jumped off the rooftop.

Unphased by the fall, Wakko walked to the middle of the street, booming: "Baloney convention, this way, come see the silly dinosaur!"

Oz's beast was annoyed when the levitating costume approached and pulled itself over his legs, but he couldn't see anyone to lash out at.

He was even more annoyed when the lights went out.

So he was floating there in mid-air trying to pull the dinosaur head off his shoulders when he was suddenly tackled by Elmyra.

"Oh, the humanity," Dot said, cringing at the ensuing battle.

"There's some of my finest work," Anya said, waving a hand at the superpowered cartoon girl.

"You'd better not let that get around," Yakko cautioned. "There's a lot of furry animals out there, myself included... I mean the price they'd put on your head... Hmmm... Hey guys, wanna go into the bounty hunting business next?"

"I don't know, Yakko," answered Wakko. "Think we'd be any good at it?"

"C'mon, I mean after meeting us they'd be begging to be thrown in jail."

"You got that right," Dot said, snidely.

As Oz's borrowed power drained from Elmyra's assault on his physical body, there was an epic battle happening inside his brain with himself on one side and the beast on the other.

Finally, they looked at each other and -for the first time ever- simply acknowledged each other's existence rather than battling for control.

Joining forces, they turned on Elmyra.

With the focus the end of the internal battle had given them, they were able to change the random display of power into an actual directed force and blast Elmyra across the country.

Panting, they sniffed tails, inside the little world of Oz's head and sank to the ground, exhausted.

The much weakened trickle of Willow's power finally shut off.

Around them, back in the real world, the whirlwind suddenly stopped and a huge amount of random items thumped and tinkled to the ground. Including, the glittering enchanted hair clip.

So, finally, everybody, including Giles and not including the dimension-hopping Animaniacs, headed to the dining room of the Summers' home to regroup.

They'd rescued the amulet from the rubble and decided to return powers to their rightful owners.

... And everything would've gone well, if Brain hadn't chosen to test out Anya's teleportation just one more time...

 A Dark, Dark Place

"Oh, great, Pinky..." frowned Brain. "Here we are at the Memory Soak again. I'll go first."

Pinky watched the smaller mouse disappear into the black foam of the 'wall'. He was about to follow, but a gnarled pair of hands emerged from the darkness behind him and picked him up.

"Hey there little guy, don't worry, I won't hurt you," said the owner of the hands. "You've already been weighed and measured enough. You're unacceptable for my purposes, but I have a friend who'd be just happy to welcome you into his little organization. It's alright, now off you go... While I take care of your little friend."

The tall figure pushed Pinky into another reality, before bending down and blowing away the memory-reading puffs of black foam. This revealed the suddenly frightened Brain cowering underneath.

"Who... Who are you?"

"D'Hoffyrn, and you should be afraid. You've been interfering with my selection process long enough. I've read you and I frankly don't like you. Now be a good mouse and run along and give my dear Anyanka back that bit of my power, before I bite your head off."

"Yes sir..." Brain said, backing across the ground. "Not a problem at all."

 Summers' Residence

"Darn it," Brain muttered to himself as he abruptly fell through the 'ground', into the Summers' living room. "That feeling of fear, it's unnatural, it must be a restriction of this power... A bond to the one who gives it to his minions. I've got to get the Slayer's power and get out of this reality, but how? I don't even know..."

He heard voices and looked into the next room.

At that moment, the Scoobies were exchanging the powers of Oz and Willow (reverting her to 'normalcy', but leaving Oz with Tara's powers).

"Yes! Now, come Pinky... Pinky?"

"Right here, Brain. Whoa, kinda unsteady on my feet here. They didn't go over that in the manual."

Brain did a double-take. "Egad, Pinky? What happened to you?"

"I have now been recruited to the proud order of Gremlins!" announced the brown and white Mogwai-Pinky.

"You mean that the real reason all my plans blow up in my face is that there are actually teams of gremlins jumping around with 'fingers in their ears'?" Brain asked, referring to a previous attempt at an explanation.

"No, Brain. It's still you," he answered, referring to the real reason.

Brain growled furiously at this confirmation. "I can't believe you actually got the most useless powers ever! Can't eat food after midnight! Can't get near water!"

"Well, actually..."

"Shut up, Mogwai-Pinky, we need to get that amulet now!"

Oz was reaching across the table to hand the amulet to Tara, everybody standing clear to not interfere with the transferring process...

Suddenly the table exploded upwards, thanks to the enormous borrowed strength of Brain and the amulet went flying.

Spike immediately moved with the instinct of a true predator and Brain found himself dangling by his tail from the vampire's fist.  "You're lucky I'm not Angel," Spike affirmed. "Or I'd eat you."

"Put him down!" someone yelled.

Spike suddenly was swarmed by a mob of brown-and-white fuzzy things, each looking like each other and Mogwai-Pinky, but not quite identical...

"I've got the amulet! Woohoo!" Mogwai-Pinky yelled from around the corner as Spike dropped Brain and began to try and save his jacket from the clinging troops.

"Blast! You idiot," Brain yelled, falling into the arms of a Mogwai that had eyes set just a bit too far apart. "Am I going to have to kill all of your clones, so they don't organize and destroy this world?"

"With all due respect, Brain... Shut up," the clone holding him replied, in Pinky's exact voice. "I'm not a representation of those animals called Gremlins."

All the clones announced, as one voice: "I'm the Concept."

A quite unfair match of catch and toss between the linked Mogwai and the Scoobies shortly began - made all the harder because no-one actually wanted to grab it directly from their little pink hands...

Unnoticed in the confusion, Brain was able to catch the amulet and, driving one paw after another into the wall, work his way straight up.

At his signal, all of Pinky's clones merged back into the original. The critter spread his empty hands and grinned.

Dawn had the presence of mind to grab a bowl and trap him under it, while the rest of the Scoobies began turning over furniture, trying to locate Brain.

Buffy looked up, but she was a second too late as Brain was already falling towards her, amulet at the ready - his strength having allowed him to crawl across the ceiling.

The amulet made contact and-

Brain continued to fall towards the ground.

Buffy tried to grab him but, suddenly deprived of her Slayer skills, her aim was slightly off.

Before she could recover - before anyone else could move to trap Brain - D'Hoffryn teleported into the room, incensed at the new transfer.

The head of the Vengeance Demons grabbed the short blond girl by the neck and began to lift her off the ground.  "I've had enough of these incessant transfers and it is well within my rights as patriarch to kill," he snarled... He trailed off, his eyes focusing on the young woman struggling in his grasp.

"Oh, it is you, Slayer. My apologies. I had no idea," he said, then shrugged and tightened his grip on Buffy's throat as he lifted the former-Slayer higher into the air. "Well, this is just going to make your death all the more sweeter...  Now, should I simply snap your neck... Slam you against the wall until your head caves in... Or should I consume you, body and soul? It is my right, you know. You are now drawing power through me. I sometimes slaughter those under my control who have displeased me and, Miss Summers... That is something you have done."

Xander decided he needed the strength of a Slayer to rescue Buffy so he dove toward Brain.

He fell short.

The large-headed mouse realized he couldn't keep ahead of his pursuers for much longer, so he made up his mind and threw the amulet.  With precise Slayer aim, the shiny hairclip shattered the bowl holding Mogwai-Pinky prisoner, then embedded itself in the far wall.

Anya pulled the amulet free and raced towards D'Hoffryn just as Spike leaped on the back of the head Vengeance Demon and sank his teeth deep into his leathery skin.

D'Hoffryn flung the vampire off, screaming bloody murder, which gave Buffy the opportunity to wrest free, but, the instant her feet touched the ground, her shoes burst into flame.

The new power that had been forced into her was obeying its true master and she was being destroyed, both body and soul.

A few moments before the cascade reaction became unstoppable, Anya punched D'Hoffryn with all her strength.

D'Hoffryn laughed at the blow, backed as it was by the strength of a human female, until blood began pouring down his face. He reached up to feel the cut, caused by the hard metal edge of the amulet...

The little damage that had been done to Buffy suddenly reversed itself.

Using one of his new powers, Mogwai-Pinky grabbed Brain and pulled him through, to another level of reality.

After struggling to his feet, Xander was completely floored when Anya pressed a piece of cool metal into his hand.

He looked down, saw the oval shape of the hairclip, then looked up into the eyes of his ex-fiance. He held her gaze only for a second before she was flung across the room, the enraged D'Hoffryn having charged forward, grabbing for the amulet.

A short game of toss-and-pass-and carry ensued among the Scoobies.

It eventually ended with Buffy facing down D'Hoffryn in front of the house's back door.

As D'Hoffryn made his final, frustrated advance, Buffy realized that Anya was making a small snapping motion with her hands.

Willow began to rise off the ground, eyes burning black from the emotions running through her.  The powerful witch yelled, furiously: "This ends now!"

"Yes, it does," Buffy announced. Then snapped the amulet in two.

D'Hoffryn stood still, in shock, long enough for a single punch from Buffy to send him flying.  He crashed through the back door and the fences and yards of several neighbors.

"Wow," the ex-Slayer breathed, staring at her clenched fist. "That punch had more power than I've... You know, being a Vengeance Demon might not be so bad, after all."

"Speak for yourself," Xander said, favoring the leg he'd hurt during the chase. "You're not the resident carpenter... Hey, why don't we have everybody try to fix the door, so we can figure out where my skills went."

"I'm trying to cast a spell right now," said Dawn. "But I'm getting nothing."

"Me either, niblet."

"Flora floreo," chanted Xander. A beautiful flower bloomed on the kitchen counter.

"Ooh," shouted Dawn. "You must have Tara's powers!"

"No," stated Oz, as he rose a foot off the ground. "That'd still be me."

Everybody turned to glare at Xander.

"What? I can do magic. You remember the books and the singing, right? I just refuse to train in it, 'cause can everybody say hyena, soldier and Dracula? Especially Dracula. I'm the one here most likely to be possessed and I don't want an evil version of me slaughtering you with magic powers."

"Xander, we take that risk everyday," Tara said, hanging onto Willow. "But, with training in magic comes a better ability to defend against it. If you decide the risk is worth it, we would be glad to help. Now, Anya, Oz may be holding my ability to see but... I have good instincts of my own... You have the real amulet, right?"

"Yes, I do," Anya said cheerfully as she pulled it out of her pocket, along with a small metal box. "For a while there I had the brain of a cartoon genius, so I made a back-up plan."  She set the box down and pushed a button. Lights flashed and a rough duplicate of the hairclip popped out one end.

"Ooooh," went the impressed members of the group.

"So all we need to do now is switch Oz and Tara back, find that big-headed mouse and turn Buffy back into the Slayer and we're-"

"I'm afraid it's not going to be that simple," interrupted the brunette figure of Halfrek as she walked into the room. "The new Gremlin Avatar has asked his faction for asylum and taken his friend with him. They're out of reach. Even trying to break that barrier would be a major diplomatic breach."

"Yeah." Spike shook his head, frowning. "Still can't believe you're a bloody demon."

"Darn right, I am," said Halfrek proudly. "With hands nearly as red as the new leader of our clan."

"Wait, you mean I'm-" Anya started.

"Yes, you're the channel through which our power flows." Halfrek grinned. "It might be nice after all these years to have a Dark Queen."

"About that, if Buffy's going to be my second-in-command, some things are going to have to change."

"I'm what?"

"She's what?"

Dawn grabbed a wooden spoon from a drawer and banged it on the counter until everyone turned to look at her. "Discussion can wait, we need to track down Warren's gang fast, because they know we've found their hide-out. I mean it's pretty cool that my sister can grant wishes, but this argument doesn't have a time-limit. Chasing them, before someone gets hurt, has to be done now. Then we teleport to Hawaii."

"Dawn!"

"What?"

Tara walked across the room and grabbed hold of Oz's hands.

The man with the beast stared into the eyes of the young woman with his wolf.

"She's right," Tara said firmly. "We track them down and put them away, fast. Then, as long as Oz has my skills, he'll have time to do something I'm sure he's always wanted to do..."

The Next Day, what would have been "Seeing Red"

It was night again. The raid that morning on the abandoned hide-out of the Trio that had been causing trouble for months had been somewhat successful, but the scraps recovered had taken all day to piece together and decode.

Worse, according to Xander, they'd actually not started their crime spree until after they'd hit the Bronze. All the places the Scoobies had checked before needed to be rehit.

"What, you think this is easy?" griped Anya as they materialized in yet another parking lot. "Teleportation was intended to take us from a place of danger to a place of safety, not the other way around! I'm having to budget this energy flow and this excessive use my first day on the job is not going to look good on the balance sheet. If any of my underlings wishes for a two-ton anvil and gets a paperweight, it's going to be your fault! I don't even know why I'm on patrol when I could be having guilt-ridden orgasms with my wish-induced boyfriend."

"Anya," Buffy stated, as she pointed at the Trio of geeks tearing into the armored car. "We're here. Shut up."

"Hmph."

"You know," Buffy yelled as she advanced on the young men. "Normally I'd come at you with a brilliantly worded quip, but your booby trap ruined my jacket and I've had a really long day, so I think I'll just skip straight to mopping the floor with you."

Warren, their leader, sneered. "Somehow, I don't think so."

The fight was brutal and fierce, without either side gaining much ground. Warren was able to absorb the first volley of punches and kicks. He even gloated about it. But when it came time to dish out the pain, she took it as well as he had. She barely went back a couple steps and before recovering quickly.

"Impossible!" muttered Andrew to Jonathan. "My calculations clearly stated that the orbs would make Warren stronger than the Slayer. There's no way she could be taking that much damage."

"I don't think she's the Slayer," Jonathan replied. "I mean, watch her. Those moves are made by someone stronger, less coordinated and with a higher defense rating. No, I think that's the Buffybot."

"Well, that's good then. All Warren has to do is shout one of the commands hard-coded into its system and this fight will be over."

Warren quickly came to the same conclusion and shouted the proper phrase into Buffy's face.

She responded with a swift kick to the crotch.

The male onlookers winced.

Warren responded by tearing the door off the armored car and hitting Buffy across the parking lot, into a stone arch, which collapsed.

Despite the amount of rubble on top of her, she was able to dig her way out.

Jonathan made up his mind. Warren had treated him like a jerk, Warren was a murderer and Warren was clearly hounding the orbs of Nezzla. Worse, from the way Andrew had been eying him all day, Warren had probably made covert plans to ditch Jonathan at the first opportunity.

When Buffy had worked her way free and was brushing herself off, Jonathan jumped and clung like a monkey to her back, intending to tell her about the orbs.

Warren's words of appreciation at the sudden backbone shown by his sidekick at attacking the Slayer were cut short when Anya ran up, grabbed Jonathan by the collar and -somewhat gently- flung him into a wall.

Jonathan hadn't managed to tell them a word.

"Okay, Anya," Buffy said, catching her breath. "I made a mistake here by starting this battle alone. You've been around a lot longer than I have, what am I up against?"

"It's clearly not a shared enchantment, or that nerd would have put up a bigger fight. This sudden boost in strength apparently happened over one night while they were on the run, which rules out the bigger rituals. Therefore, we're going to have to strip him."

"What?"

"If we take off his clothes and he becomes weak, it's an enchanted piece of clothing or an item hidden on his person. If we see a giant tattoo that's glowing with magic, well, at least we know what we're up against. There's some stuff that could account for his strength, but the majority either leave a mark on his body or are still physical items."

"Gotcha."

Between punches and kicks, Warren was quickly stripped by a couple of women with professional level skills - Buffy being a young woman with a keen fashion sense who had often been splattered in demon goo mere hours before a date and Anya being a perfectionist about things she was interested in.  His jacket came off first.

By the time the leather pouch containing the orbs was ripped from Warren's body, Andrew had caught on to what was happening and put a hasty plan into action.  Activating the jetpack that was hidden under his clothes, Andrew zoomed straight forward, parallel with the ground, in hopes of crashing into the girls and saving his friend and mentor.

Unfortunately a similar thought had just occurred to Warren and he activated his own jetpack at exactly the wrong second.

*CRASH*

The bruised and battered Jonathan skulking in a shadowy corner was understandably annoyed by the turn of events. His 'friends' had never told him about the jet-packs, let alone given him one.

Late as usual, sirens began to be heard in the distance.  Anya and Buffy barely had time to firmly bind Warren and Andrew before they had to flee themselves, or be placed in an awkward situation.

"Wait, what about the short and somewhat cute one?" Anya asked, peering into the darkness.

"Jonathan? He's not important," answered Buffy. "Besides, we if we stick around here, we could miss Tara and Oz's surprise."

Then they were gone.

As the sirens drew closer, Jonathan thought about racing forward, finding the pouch and breaking the metal bonds securing his 'friends' to what was left of the armored car, before the cops could arrive.

Instead he waited.

Warren and Andrew deserved whatever would happen to them.

When the flurry of activity around the crime scene had finally cleared and the cops had left with their prisoners in tow, Jonathan ducked under the yellow crime scene tape and began to sift through the torn fabric and assorted rubble.

Eventually, he was able to find what he was looking for.

After he had pulled on Warren's discarded jacket and secured the pouch containing the orbs of super-strength and near invulnerability to his waist, the sole free member of the Trio walked away, into the night.

Backup Site A

Jonathan went to his temporary hide-out and, with his new super-strength, began to put things in order. He was interrupted in his cleaning by someone entering the room.

He took in the general look of the taller demon, from his flowing robes to his goatee and decided that the guy's appearance was a bit over the top.

"You must be Jonathan," D'Hoffryn stated. "My name is D'Hoffryn and I used to be the head of a select group of Justice Demons, but thanks to the Slayer I have been depowered. All I have been left with is the immense brain power of an evil genius..."

"Huh," Jonathan stated, scratching his head. "You might be useful... But how did you find me?"

"I led him to you," said a lithe brunette as she stepped out from the shadows.

"Katrina?" Jonathan gasped, staring in shock at the appearance of Warren's murdered ex-girlfriend.

"Not quite," she laughed as she shimmered between the outward forms of many dead people. "I'm known by many names, but you can call me the First Evil."

In a place better known as 'Elsewhere'

In the fog and gear and cloud filled plane, which was just a bit too light and fluffy for Brain's taste, Mogwai-Pinky was trying to explain his new responsibilities as a Chaos Gremlin.

The newly mottled and fuzzy rodent slash anthropomorphic personification was droning on about how they went about the multiverse causing both mechanical systems and ephemeral works of thought to go out of whack in varying degrees. It might have made more sense if he didn't stop to say 'Poit' or 'Narf' or 'Zort' every few sentences.

By that point, Brain was fed up - veins bulging on his forehead - but he had finally figured out the metaphysical circuitry of a nearby cloud portal. After a few more seconds of making connections, Brain started spying on the other Brains in the contest. It seemed that most of the other ninety-nine were already present at the Training Grounds, although it seemed that others, like his son Romy, were filling in for him here and there.

After he'd spent some time studying the moves and acquired powers of the alternate versions of himself, he checked out several attractive female companions that some of him had brought with them.

Brain was having fun with the spying device, until Mogwai-Pinky decided to test out his new powers.

*KaPOW*

The cloud portal began to cycle randomly through different realities.

"Pinky! I was watching that! Why! No... Oh no!" He stared into the portal, watching in horror as realities that had been abandoned by their Brains in favor of the contest slowly but surely succumbed to an evil flood of alternate versions of the hamster Snowball, Brain's friend-now-turned-enemy.

"Egad, Pinky, do you know what this means?"

"Snowball's going to have his own flavor of ice cream?"

"Well, yes, probably... But more importantly, this entire stupid contest was probably set up so our home realities would be undefended! We've got to warn the other versions of myself and show them the truth!"

Without another word, Brain grabbed Mogwai-Pinky by the arm.

Together, they jumped through the portal and disappeared completely from the Buffyverse.

With them went Buffy's personal Slayer power, the power that had been altered by Willow's resurrection spell.

Things began to change...

Backup Site A

"Oh, pooh!" the First Evil yelled, stomping her foot. "The essence of the oldest Slayer has vanished from this reality. If she'd simply just died I could have kept on using her as a wedge, but no... So much for clawing my way to the surface this century."

She spent the next couple moments cursing her luck. She wasn't an individual, but actually the surface thoughts of a much greater entity. Now that its chance at freedom had been removed, there wasn't any reason left for the immense slumbering force to be even this much awake...

When she had finally faded from view, the two men in the room looked at each other, shrugged, and began to discuss their plans...

The Bronze, Sunnydale's premier nightclub

Most of the Scoobies gathered themselves in the audience, awaiting their surprise. Even though word had gone out on such short notice, the place was packed.

Backstage, Spike was still discussing song choices with Oz.

"Wolf, I still don't know about these lyrics, they just seem too bloody wordy for my tastes."

"If you want we can finish with a few pub songs, something the whole audience can join in and sing to... Anyway, we're up."

The audience was packed because Oz had called in a few favors. He'd asked his old band, Dingoes Ate My Baby, to come back to Sunnydale. They had moved away, changed their name and become famous, but they were glad to do a favor for an old friend. Especially when the request was as interesting as this one.

Spike was onstage, singing his British heart out.

Tara was filling in for Oz on the guitar, her arms empowered by unfamiliar technical skill.

Oz was otherwise occupied.

Thanks to the talent and stage presence he'd borrowed from the red-headed witch, the normally subdued man was onstage singing lead vocals along with Spike... Surprising the hell out of his former bandmates.

They were all gathered together that night, under the group name of 'Bloody Mary', and the audience was loving it.

After running through 'Believe' and 'Bad Rain' they launched into their cover of Kim Richey's 'A Place Called Home.'

By the end of the piece, Xander had become completely disgusted by the soppingly romantic looks Spike was throwing Anya, especially because vampire kept singing directly to her like there was no-one else in the room...

Xander voiced his complaints to the Slayer, but he was grateful that Anya hadn't yet done anything more than make out with the handsome Brit.

"I mean, I'm sure if she'd gotten physical with him she'd have babbled about it right? You remember how she was always telling stuff about us when we were together? I mean, I'm sure that nothing's happened yet. I mean if you'd been with Spike you'd have come over immediately and told me, right?"

Sure, he was distracted by the show, especially as Spike started leading the group in a cover of an angry British song that quickly had half the audience singing along, but not enough that Xander didn't notice Buffy's blush.

As soon as he'd put two and two together, Xander raised his voice in anger. "I can't believe that you slept with a soulless vampire! Of all the disgusting things-"

He trailed off, impressed again by Spike's performance.

As the audience applauded, Xander asked, somewhat softly: "Hey, Buffy?"

"Hmm?"

"... Please tell me he at least sang to you first..."

When they'd finished having their fun, Tara and Oz switched their powers back.

The amulet was hidden away in a very safe place. A place they could retrieve it from if it was ever needed again.

Anya had other things to worry about.

When she'd become Head Vengeance Demon she'd developed an immunity to granted wishes, past and future.

After much deliberation, she removed the magical romantic compulsion from Spike.

They continued to date anyway.

They're still together.

The Duo's New Lair

"Man, it's nearly morning," Jonathan said, as he stared at all the scribbled plans and pieces of paper flung around the room. "We've been at this all night... So, what do you want to do today, D'Hoffryn?"

"I don't know about you," D'Hoffryn answered, as he turned to watch the first rays of the sun light up the sky. "But I would like to take over the world..."