"She's your what?!" disbelievingly burst from Amy Madison.
Xander Harris repeated with evident pride in his voice, "My daughter," nodding at where Mal seated with Evie, Jay, and Dawn on the Revello Drive house's other living room couch smiled in turn at her father.
Switching her bewildered gaze back and forth several times between those two, Amy was clearly at a loss all due to the obvious fact that someone she'd gone to Sunnydale High with was much too young to have a teenage purple-haired daughter.
It was true that Amy had been promised last night a complete explanation of what'd happened over the past year and a half since she'd magically turned herself into a rat, but even for the Hellmouth, this had come way out of left field for the next morning when everybody was now crammed into Buffy's living room.
Noticing this, Xander opened his mouth to yet again tell the whole story of the Descendants or to be more precise a particular one of these four young people visiting from another dimension, only for Dawn to interrupt him.
Bouncing up onto her feet, that younger Summers sister announced, "Oh, no, you don't, Xan! If we're gonna have to hear it again, let's have some fun and act it all out! Jay, you be Xander, Evie, you're Mal's mom, Mal, you narrate the high points, and I'll join in when necessary!"
For the next fifteen minutes, Xander and the rest of the living room audience comprising of Giles, Buffy, Willow, and Tara got to watch the younger kids gleefully seize the chance to overdramatically parody his adventures in the Disney Dimension.
It just barely stayed within the boundaries of good taste, according to Xander's own opinion. For example, he didn't really remember either of them being quite that drunk when Maleficent in her glamour manifestation put the moves on him back then which resulted in their daughter nearly seventeen years later delivering continuous zingers about Jay and Evie trying and failing to plant a seriously sozzled kiss onto each other's lips.
Buffy sharing the couch with Xander, on the other hand, was cheerfully heckling every second of it. Even Wils and Tara were giggling in unison. Giles, damn him, was also sardonically observing over his glasses the entire idiotic performance.
When they finished with a rousing "Descendants forever!", these same amateur thespians expectantly regarded their target, who responded with a calm, mature adult response of thoroughly sticking out his tongue at them all.
Collapsing with laughter onto their couch, Dawn, Jay, Evie, and Mal then simultaneously glanced over at where an open-mouthed Amy had been watching them all while absently giving constant head-scratches to the blissful dog-monster seated upon his haunches next to her armchair.
Eventually, Amy managed, "Uh…didn't you say there were four of you from that magical island of yours? Where's this Carlos guy?"
Every other biped in the room instantly pointed right at the hellhound.
Snatching her hand away, Amy gaped at where the fanged beast with the glowing red eyes now turned his massive canine skull towards herself to next produce a pitiful whine from deep within a burly throat. Carlos wanted those wonderful fingers back at work, getting rid of all the itches he couldn't reach even with a back paw the size of a dinner plate. Please?
Cautiously resuming her scratches which got her an appreciative groan from Carlos, Amy shook her head with sudden resignation.
She announced to the rest of the room, "Okay, there've obviously been a lot of big changes here, but at least you're all still as completely insane as I remember you from high school!"
Judging from the satisfied smirks now borne by the entire Scooby Gang, they fully agreed with Amy Madison about this.
A couple of blocks away and about twenty feet underground, Harmony Kendall paused in painting her toenails.
Looking up from the beach chair wedged into a sewer tunnel alcove at the curving concrete ceiling with its air inlet hole from which she'd been listening to everything spoken in a California suburban house's living room, this female vampire said to herself in an openly incredulous tone, "Loser Harris had a kid with Maleficent? For real?"
Skeptically shrugging her shoulders, Harmony then went back to her weekly touch-up on those ten little piggies. Today, before coming here, she'd decided to try something different this time. Maybe pretty stars or some nice rainbows. Anything to kill the boredom if as expected nobody there was around to give Harmony the opportunity to eavesdrop on anything mentioned at the Slayer's home.
It'd been a rare moment of civility shown back then by Spike when Harmony had been tagging along with him a few weeks after being turned at the SHS graduation. Going through this portion of the sewer system, the older vampire had pointed out to the fledgling that chair currently empty, how normally one of the Mayor's minions was in there full-time to take notes about anything of importance overheard being discussed by the Slayer and her bleedin' friends.
Spike didn't care or ever bothered to ask exactly how a now-deceased Mayor Wilkins arranged such a fortunate turn of events in the first place for this long-lived politician, the perfect chance to spy on one of his enemies. Once that same Sunnydale official got blown up with the high school after changing into a huge snake demon, naturally the snooping had also ended when all of Wilkins' surviving flunkies hastily decamped to greener pastures as far away from the Hellmouth and Buffy Summers as possible.
Spike himself never took the trouble to listen in onto that superhuman gel any time afterwards as long as Harmony had been relentlessly annoying this blond faux-Cockney. What was the whole bloody point he would've said, if anyone asked. It wasn't like the Scoobies regularly discussed their plans like clockwork in Buffy's living room every ten pip emma, so it'd be absolutely pure luck for any listener to sit in the alcove and learn something important.
Of course, Harmony took it for granted that today she'd have a front-row seat at the big discussion still going on there. When the conversation started again from the Slayer's house, this demoness also resumed applying with a steady hand the merest touch of Passion Red to outline the golden star on her smallest left toenail, the pink tip of a tongue peeping out from between the corner of her mouth indicating all the concentration this task required.
"Amy," Willow began, only to abruptly stop at how fast the room's cheerful atmosphere plunged into utter iciness, accompanied by that other witch's truly poisonous expression sent the redhead's way. Gulping, Willow handed over the slip of paper she'd just removed from a skirt pocket to Tara in a silent plea.
Thankfully, Tara got up from the couch and walked towards Amy warily eyeing someone she'd only had a limited acquaintance with so far as a human. Extending her hand, Tara then said in her soft voice, "Amy, we've learned your f-father and stepmother left Sunnydale soon after your d-disappearance, moving all the way across the c-country to South Carolina. Here's their address and phone number, in c-case you want to call them now. You c-can use the upstairs phone."
Arising from her armchair despite Carlos' complaining rumble, Amy eagerly accepted the slip of paper from Tara with a quick smile of gratitude bestowed to the other young woman. Heading off towards the house stairs with an impatient stride, Amy totally ignored Willow along the way.
After Amy disappeared up the stairs, Evie turned to Willow. "Why's she got such a mad against you in particular, Willow? I thought Amy turned into a rat and got stuck as one all by herself."
Xander, along with Buffy and Giles, regarded Evie with some surprise at how that Descendant knew the specific story about the long-ago MOO incident in Sunnydale. This minor mystery was swiftly cleared up by Dawn sitting by Evie jerking a thumb at her chest, indicating she'd been the one to tell all.
Turning their attention back to Willow, the room heard from this shamefaced witch, "She's got good reason, actually. I honestly thought back then I could fix things right away, but no matter what I tried, nothing worked. When I did some more magical research about that, it took up a lot of my time, and in between there was all the stuff we got involved in meanwhile: graduation, the Initiative, college, Glory, and so on. Sometimes whole weeks and even months would go by before I went back to Amy's problem, and it eventually turned into well over a year! It's no wonder she's still furious, seeing how the only thing that probably kept Amy from going crazy then was her own rat nature that didn't think about anything but food, water, and a secure habitat. A human would've gone nuts from sheer boredom alone."
Having rejoined the others on their couch, Tara comfortingly patted Willow's shoulder. Even though Tara felt her lover could've really done a much better job concerning Amy, Willow didn't deserve all the blame she was currently getting from Miss Madison. Hopefully, Amy's phone call to her father would help in patching up things around here.
During the ensuing period of when that same mentioned witch was upstairs talking with her family, the Scoobies passed the time telling the Descendants various stories having to do when Amy Madison got involved in their affairs. Even Xander reluctantly narrated to the fascinated younger generation the very embarrassing occasion when he'd teamed up with Amy to cast a miscalculated love spell which resulted in the entire female population of Sunnydale soon chasing him with out-and-out lust shining from their faces.
The relentless sniggering from the peanut gallery due to what they'd just heard ceased when Amy at last came back downstairs. Marching over to Giles, this puffy-eyed witch asked something of him which astonished both this Englishman and the other people in the room:
"Can I work for you at the Magic Box?"
Harmony flexed her toes, admiring the workmanship displayed there on the newly-finished nails. She next put back on her sandals to then settle down in the sewer alcove's beach chair while thinking over everything Harmony had overheard lately from that little bitch Buffy and her friends.
It'd been kinda interesting, particularly the whole deal with Jay being the son of Jafar, the sinister vizier of the Disney animated film Aladdin. Of course, Jay's dad was now reduced to running a pawnshop at the Isle of the Lost, a big comedown from someone who'd nearly managed to marry Princess Jasmine and rule Agrabah.
Oh, well, it wasn't likely she'd ever meet the father of someone she was planning to tear their shirt off the next time they met and start nibbling on those toned abs Harmony was absolutely sure Jay had going on there— Ahem. Get back to the important stuff. You know, slaughtering her enemies, holding sway over the entire world as Harmony the Vampire Queen, and completing her unicorn toy collection.
Harmony scratched her head. This was really hard. She could easily visualize a glorious future for herself, but just how was it supposed to happen? Maybe take a leaf from Spike's fanatically-watched soap opera Passions and do something senselessly dramatic to move things along? Too bad the Scoobies knew quite well Harmony didn't have an identical twin sister—
Abruptly straightening up in the beach chair, Harmony stared in awe at the opposite side of the sewer line concerning the sudden inspiration which had just displayed itself inside her mind. Did Amy know Harmony was a vampire now?
Frowning, Harmony thought back. Let's see, Amy vanished sometime around the start of 1999. That was obviously when she'd become a rat and lost her human marbles. And…about six months later, Harmony had been turned during the Graduation battle. It'd taken another year for Amy to return to being human once more during which Harmony had unsuccessfully gone up against the Scooby Gang several times. There was no possible way Amy-the-rat would've cared at all should these encounters had ever been mentioned by Buffy or the others within earshot of that rodent.
Best of all, none of those meddling kids were now aware of the fact Harmony had lately returned to Sunnydale. Jay definitely hadn't mentioned his recent nighttime meetings with a blonde girl having this same name, bless his dear little heart (which if he dared to leave her feeling anything less than smugly satiated in bed afterwards, Harmony was going to rip that out of his chest and snack upon it with maximum gusto).
After all, if he'd blabbed, Buffy would've surely hunted down Harmony throughout every demonic lair on the Hellmouth.
The same thing applied for Amy being unsuspecting about a former schoolmate presently possessing a distinct lack of a pulse. Though, that might change any moment if it ever occurred to the Scoobies to warn Amy about Harmony. Meaning she'd better get a move on and set up everything before sunset this evening.
Making it even more delicious, Harmony wickedly smiled, she knew exactly where Amy Madison was going to be tonight.
At the Magic Box.
Alone.
A very familiar place where Harmony had already killed one of this shop's proprietors…