Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted materials contained herein. They are the rightful property of their respective creators and/or associated companies. I make no profit from this whatsoever and I have no intention of changing this in the future. I write because it's fun and because there are those who enjoy reading my stories. Therefore no lawsuits or similar legal action please because I can promise you that whatever you get from me won't cover even a third of your legal fees.

Three Days Later

The Island Formerly Ruled by Circe

Koriand'r's POV

"It's finally done!" she declared with a smile of accomplishment as she looked at the home that had been created.

"Yep! Took us a few tries but we managed to get it to work," Xander said, looking satisfied with their work himself.

She had never tried to make a home out of so many trees, even during her training on Okaara. When her teachers there had taught lessons about surviving far away from civilization, the shelters they had taught her how to make were simple structures intended for only one. Essentially branches with a few leaf branches tied between them to keep out the rain. This had been a decidedly larger undertaking and it had taken the both of them three days in order to solve all the flaws and make something that would work. Both of them had tested the durability of their new home with what could be considered light taps until they were satisfied that even the strongest wind wouldn't blow it over. It'd taken some work to figure out a way to seal up all the gaps between the logs so that when it rained the water wouldn't trickle through but some trial and error with what was available proved successful. They both figured that it would need to be reapplied every month but that would be easy enough.

In between making their home, their 'log cabin' as Xander called it, they had also successfully managed to locate a source of clean water and confirmed that there were wild animals to hunt.

In short, the basic necessities for surviving in the wild had been met.

So now the time had come to train.

"So what do you wish to do first?" she asked, turning to fully face Xander.

"Now? Now I start my physical conditioning training while you go through whatever your normal workout routine is," he replied before walking over to where the top half of his uniform rested on the ground. "I only started fighting for real a little over a year ago and, even with the upgrade I got from the Halloween, I'm nowhere near your level. Before we can train together I need to work hard to get up to your level."

"You are not that far behind in terms of physical prowess," she said, recalling how he had managed to lift the trees with no sign of strain.

"Nice of you to say so but if half the new memories bouncing around my head are good, I've got a lot of training to do before I can make the most of what I've got now," he said, pulling on his top on. "Good thing wanting to save an entire planet and the people I love who're on it makes for great motivation."

"Indeed it does," she said with an encouraging nod.

A few moments later she was by herself and the time had come to resume the training she'd begun so long ago on Okaara. If what Xander had told her was true then the beings that had asked him to help save the planet Earth had given them twenty years to prepare. If they believed such a significant amount of time was required, then Stepponwolf truly had to be one of Apokolips' elite generals. In all likelihood he would be on par with one of her instructors on Okaara and she had never before been able to defeat one, or even force them to take her seriously when they sparred with one another.

If she was going to be of any help in the battle to come, that would have to change and, like her teachers had repeatedly told her, she would start with the basics.

Everything, from the simplest techniques to the most infamous ones, began with the basics and evolved over time into what they were now.

Master the basics and you take your first step towards both understanding as well as mastering the more complex techniques.

Taking to the air, she began to look for a suitable training ground.

As she had found out when she'd first arrived on the island, it possessed a wide variety of terrain, ranging from forests to grass covered meadows, rocky outcroppings and more. It implied that their benefactors wanted them to be able to fight effectively in a variety of environments but it also made her think that they didn't know where Stepponwolf would attack. This would make countering him difficult since they would leave them waiting to find out where he was so they would know where they needed to go. In essence, they would be reacting rather than proactively striking at the general of Apokolips before the villain could achieve any of his objectives.

Given that the failure of their efforts could mean the end of an entire world, she knew that the team would need to discuss how best to minimize the disadvantage this fact represented.

Soon she found a clearing that looked good to her and, once she sat down, she began practicing the techniques her teachers had first started her on all those years ago. Focusing on her memories, she put all her effort into performing each move precisely as her instructor had demonstrated it to her without the slightest of deviation. It wasn't easy since it was a common fallacy of any being to taint their own recollections with their personal opinions and points of view. As a result, what one remembered was not necessarily EXACTLY what happened.

Still, short of her instructors from Okaara coming to the island, it was the best she could do.

Hours passed by as she practiced each technique, scrutinizing each for flaws before moving on to the next one. Just as her instructors never gave an inch in their criticisms and pointing out of her mistakes, she did not allow herself any leniency if she detected a mistake.

She would ascend to a new level of power, of skill and of determination.

When she faced Stepponwolf and his forces, she would do so without fear and with a resolve that not even X'hal herself could break.

For the next six months the two warriors, the mystically created Saiyan and the Tamaranian princess, trained their bodies using whatever means they thought would prove effective. It was difficult since, along with forgetting to provide a building for them to live out of, their recruiters hadn't provided any training equipment whatsoever. Not weights, training dummies, nothing! As a result they'd been forced to use only what they could find on the island and since neither of them were craftsmen anything they made was unbelievably crude. Boulders became weights and tree branches became a means of doing things like chin-ups and stomach crunches. When the first became too light to be effective they had to find something larger and if there didn't exist something larger, Kori just blasted what they needed off the side of the small mountain that existed on the island.

For speed training it came down to running the entire perimeter of the island and then trying to beat your previous time by at least ten to twenty seconds. When that got boring they added in obstacles or conditions that had to be met, like using the trees to get around without touching the ground. For Kori, though, it was more along the lines of flying through the forest while maneuvering around the branches and not making anything more than the leaves flutter. She also did weight training with him but her boulders were definitely bigger than his, even if it was only by a bit.

Mix in practicing what techniques and moves they knew and they eventually were forced to begin some light sparring sessions in order to get anywhere with their training. For Xander, getting into the best possible physical condition he could manage was only part of the equation, with the rest being mastering the moves for both the turtle school of martial arts as well as King Kai's teachings. The Kai of the North's teachings were harder since he wasn't doing them under ten times Earth's normal gravity but Xander did the best he could.

However it was a couple days past the sixth month though that something changed.

The next member of their team arrived.

The Sixth Month of Training

Northern Side of the Island Formerly Ruled by Circe

Xander's POV

"You feel that?" he asked, pausing in the middle of his sparring session with Kori when his fledgling ki sensing ability pinged, indicating something new had appeared on the island.

"I… think so?" Kori replied, looking like she was still having a little trouble sensing ki.

It had been one of the new things he'd added to their usual training regime about a month ago. While working to master what they knew individually was important, it'd occurred to him that they might stand a much better chance against Stepponwolf if they shared what they knew. Sure, there were some biological differences between the two of them but their martial arts styles should be learnable, since they had the same kind of limbs and ki training could be learned by anyone. So Kori had begun teaching him the combat styles she'd been instructed in on the planet Okaara and he'd done his best to show her what he'd learned from Goku's memories. He wasn't a great teacher and the fragmented memories left sizeable gaps in both the turtle school as well as what King Kai had taught the simpleton Saiyan, but he liked to think that they were making decent progress.

Ki sensing, though, was proving to be something of a hurdle for Kori and that was understandable. She had no trouble sensing the energy she used to fly or fire off her green blasts of energy, but once his own ki sensing ability had been developed enough he could tell she wasn't firing ki energy. Because she had two types of energy in her body, it'd been tough for him to get her to separate ki from the energy her body naturally absorbed and utilized but he'd managed.

It'll still probably take the rest of the year before she has the hang of it, he thought as he extended his own senses towards where the source of the ping was.

From what he could tell it definitely wasn't an animal, since he'd gotten pretty good at detecting the various kinds of animals that lived on the island and their ki felt different, more primal, than what he was feeling from the new arrival. He might've said that this meant it was intelligent/sentient but then he'd only had him and Kori to work with in that department, so he could be mistaken. Kori was an alien and, thanks to the Halloween spell, so was he, at least from a physical standpoint.

Best not to jump to conclusions, he thought. "We should probably go check it out. Could be a teammate or an intruder."

"Good idea. Neither would be wise to leave alone for too long," Kori said as she rose into the air a good twenty feet before flying towards where the ping was.

Showoff.

Despite the dedication he'd been putting into his training, he still had not grown strong or skilled enough to be able to use his ki to fly like Goku could. Sure, in the beginning he'd been forced to use the Flying Nimbus in order to get someplace fast but by the time he'd faced off against the Ginyu Force the hero had been flying about without a problem. As a result he was now forced to chase after Kori's airborne form the old fashioned way: he ran!

Feeling the air flow through his now gravity defying hair, he couldn't help but smile a bit at how different he was from the simple Californian teenager he used to be. Right now he was running at a speed comparable to most city vehicles, speed limit and all! It was GREAT! With this kind of speed he could now outrun any one hundred percent human on the planet Earth, something no one else could claim. Strength and reflexes were of a similar higher level than could be achieved by normal human beings.

All in all he felt like he could probably kick Buffy's ass if he wanted to.

However his joy at how far he'd come was tempered by the fact that he wasn't anywhere near where he wanted to be or where he suspected he'd need to be. Anyone capable of bringing about the end of an entire planet was on a whole other level of power when compared to the demons that chose to come to Sunnydale. Still, he was sure that if he did all he could in the next nineteen years or so, he'd be ready to at the very least tip the scales further in favor of the planet Earth.

And at the very most make Stepponwolf realize that Earth was not the vulnerable target the monster probably thought that it was.

After a few minutes he made it to the area of rocky outcroppings that existed on the island and where he and Kori tended to harvest their 'weights' from. He hoped that if the new arrival was a new teammate that they hadn't been dropped from a significant height because then they might be dead unless they were surprisingly durable. Leaping into the air, he decided to make this pseudo-training by hopping from the tallest mounds of stone one after another as he continued to advance. To make it even harder he made it a personal rule to never remain in contact with any of the mounds for longer than two seconds. It made sense since in a fight against powerful beings they sometimes possessed speed to match their brute strength. As such remaining in one spot for longer than two seconds would just up the risk factor since stationary targets were often easier to hit than moving ones.

Plus, in such an environment, firm footing and traction wasn't a guarantee so that upped the difficulty nicely.

Five minutes later he got close enough to the source of the ping on his ki sense and high enough that he'd be able to see it half decently. What he saw was a woman with long black hair, skin that made him think of either white/black mixed ancestry, or maybe Indian, and clothes that were definitely native to Earth. A black shirt that left the midriff bare and sleeves that only went to the elbow combined with normal looking blue jeans made it clear she was from Earth.

Still, he didn't let his guard drop completely since just because she looked to be from Earth that didn't necessarily mean that she was from HIS Earth.

Space didn't seem to be a problem for the beings that recruited him since, according to Kori, she'd never heard of Earth, meaning it had to be pretty far from where she'd last remembered being. If space wasn't an issue then maybe alternate realities or timelines weren't out of the question either. It was hard to figure out the limits of his recruiters when he didn't really know who they were aside from being deities of some sort. Considering there seemed to be gods and goddesses for just about everything, depending on the pantheon you looked at, there was no telling where this newest teammate had come from.

All he felt strongly enough about was that she'd likely come from a time period within ten to fifteen years of his own if her clothes were any indicator.

Pushing a bit of strength into his legs he leapt the last bit of distance between him and his new teammate while Kori gracefully descended to land by his side. This startled the newbie, making him wonder if he'd somehow been a special case with the recruiters in how much they'd revealed about the coming crisis. Seemed like bad planning to him since the more info they had on Stepponwolf and the forces the evil alien would bring with him, the better they could plan to defeat him. How did the guy like to fight? What abilities did he have? Did he use any weapons? Were his minions automated machines or living beings? Neither he or Kori knew the answers to these questions.

Just the end result if they failed to defeat him.

"Hey! Welcome… to Fantasy Island!" he said with a smirk as he remembered the TV show he'd occasionally watched with Willow and Jesse.

Right up until Willow had overheard one of Jesse's more gutter worthy fantasies that their friend would've liked if the fictional island had been real. It'd definitely been one of Jesse's more… kinky… teenage fantasies, even by his standards, but it'd definitely crossed the line with Willow and pretty much made the show unwatchable so long as Willow was present.

"Nice try but you're no Mister Roarke," the woman said, catching the reference. "Now where the hell are we?"

"You mean you weren't briefed?" he asked the woman who looked to be only a couple of years older than him.

"Not really. Some relative of Puck's showed up saying that the planet was in trouble and I'd been picked to help out," the twenty-something woman replied with a shake of her head. "I told him that I'd be glad to help but before I could tell him that Goliath could help too he dropped me here."

"Sounds about right," he said, feeling a little better than Kori's departure but still less than his own. "Basically you've been drafted by gods to fight some big bad that's gonna show up in twenty years. Until then we're to train our asses off here to get as strong and as badass as we can."

"And what? We don't get a say in things?" the woman asked, sounding like she didn't like not getting a choice in the matter.

"In my case I agreed to fight as long as the gods I talked to agreed to look after and help my friends while I was gone," he replied, crossing his arms over his chest. "Kori didn't get any explanation, though, or choice. One minute she was in space the next she was here on the island."

"However if they had explained to me what was at stake, I would have agreed to help," Kori commented to show that she was not being held here against her will.

"In your case, you did tell the guy you'd help, didn't you?" he asked rhetorically, pointing out the important part of her recruitment. "So it's not like you don't want to be here. It's more like he didn't give you time to pack or invite along a friend."

"I guess… it still would've been nicer to give me some time to tie up some loose ends," the woman said, grudgingly conceding the point. "Captain Chavez is NOT going to like me pulling a disappearing act and my family is going to go nuts worrying about me."

"Yyyeeeeaaahh, I can see how that'd be a problem," he said realizing that, unlike him and Kori, the lady had a life with obligations that she'd been whisked away from, "Well, maybe the guy was thoughtful enough to come up with a cover story for you. I don't know if we're gonna get strong enough to kick a god's ass but the guy has to know that he'll get better results from us if we're in a good mood."

"What kind of cover story explains why they won't see or hear from me for twenty years?!" the woman asked with a bit of incredulity at the statement.

"Well, what was your job before getting brought here?" he asked, needing some info to work with.

"I'm a detective second grade with the NYPD," the woman replied, pulling out an official looking wallet-badge combo from her back pocket.

"Maybe he'll pull a man in black routine and say that you stumbled into a classified federal operation against a major crime organization and now you're a crucial part of it now," he said, literally thinking it up as it came to him. "Can't leave until it's done and all that. Probably wouldn't be hard for him to magic up some official looking documents to back his story up."

"What if they want to talk to me or send me letters?" the woman asked, pointing out that her family and friends wouldn't like being cut off from her entirely.

"Ummm… well, I dunno. Maybe when they pop in to see how we're doing we can convince'em to let you send a letter or make a phone call?" he replied, figuring that their 'employers' would want to see how their investment was coming along. "As long as you don't give away what we're doing or where we are, it shouldn't be a problem."

He could tell that this wasn't as good as the woman wanted but Kori had already proven that you couldn't fly off the island and there was no technology there, so remaining in constant contact with loved ones was impossible without the help of their 'employers'. He made sure to make a mental note to talk to them about it when they showed up.

"I guess we'll wait and see then," the woman said, nodding her head a bit. "By the way, the name's Elisa Maza."

"Xander Harris," he said, jerking a thumb at himself. "Welcome to the team."

"Koriand'r of Tamaran," Kori said with a smile. "Pleased to meet you."

And with that a new member of their team had arrived to train with them so that when the fated day arrived they would be ready.

Though he had to wonder looking at her; what skills or abilities did she bring to the team?

Late Afternoon

The Log Cabin Constructed by Xander and Koriand'r

Elisa Maza's POV

You've certainly gotten yourself into a mess this time, Maza, she thought, looking about the log cabin that she'd be calling home for the next twenty years.

It was enough to make her wonder when exactly her life had gotten this strange and after a moment's thought she had her answer.

It'd been a little over a year ago when she'd answered the call about a serious disturbance at the top of the Eyrie Building that her life had taken a turn for the weird. Before then she had been an ordinary police detective doing her best to protect the people of New York City while also taking down the scumbags who broke the law. Her career had experienced both ups as well as downs, its victories as well as its losses, but it hadn't been anything that she hadn't been prepared for by the Academy.

That had all changed when she'd chosen to sneak into the Eyrie building to see what David Xanatos was hiding. It was that night that she'd met Goliath and his clan of gargoyles, resulting in discovering a world she'd had no clue had existed previously. Intelligent beings that weren't human but in some ways were more honorable than the people she met every day. Magic being more than David Copperfield and vanishing monuments. All that and more caused her image of the world to grow until she began to feel like she'd been growing up in a bubble before that life changing night.

Regardless, she'd refused to retreat to what could be considered 'normal' and instead chose to stride forward alongside Goliath's clan to protect the city along with each other.

This…this was a new brand of strange and she couldn't help but think that she might've bitten off more than she could safely chew. For all the amazing things that she'd encountered since meeting Goliath, she was still just an ordinary human, a normal detective, and yet she had agreed to fight against a threat to the entire planet. Thanks to her being sent here straight from her apartment, she didn't even have her sidearm, leaving her only with her hand-to-hand combat training.

Somehow she didn't think that was going to cut it.

"Wondering what you're role in all this is?" a voice asked, causing her to turn around.

It was Xander.

The first impression she'd had of him was a consummate joker who didn't take life too seriously and always did his best to keep everyone's spirits up. After their initial greeting, though, she'd come to discover that he had some steel in his spine and, despite the stakes of what they were getting involved in, she got the impression that it was nothing new for him.

She'd have to ask him why that was.

"The thought had crossed my mind," she said, deciding to be honest. "This is shaping up to be a fight straight out of the comic books and everyone knows beat cops get wiped out pretty easily in those."

"You got a point there," Xander said, scratching the back of his head with a grin. "Still, there is a way around that if you're interested."

"What do you mean?" she asked, curious about how her powerlessness could be bypassed.

"Well, there's a form of fighting I'm training to master that anyone can learn as long as they're willing to put in the hours of training it needs," Xander replied, dropping his hand to his side. "It's basically where you can control your inner ki energy to fly, shoot energy blasts and enhance your body to do a lot more than it could before."

"You mean like the ki in martial arts?" she asked, a little dubious about what she was being told.

If she remembered what her hand-to-hand combat instructor had told her at the academy, Ki was the vital energy that a person had inside of them that if controlled allowed someone to have an unbendable arm or an unliftable body. If you took a look at how it was depicted in movies and comics, though, ki was an energy that turned someone superhuman, allowing them to do things beyond what anyone could consider normal. Her instructor had only known that much because his father had been something of an expert in the old ways of training and had passed it down to him. The teacher hadn't really believed some of the more fantastic stories his father had told him but did believe that with training it was possible to increase ones natural vitality to a respectable degree.

"Kinda. Except in this case if you train hard enough and long enough, you could demolish an entire army all by yourself," Xander replied with a smirk that almost look condescendingly cocky. "Hell, Vegeta was able to blow up a small planet with a strong ki blast!"

"Vegeta?" she asked, feeling like she'd heard the name before.

"A character from a cartoon," he replied as his smirk faded. "He was an alien prince of a race called Saiyans."

That name, Saiyans, was enough to trigger a memory of the time she'd gone to visit her sister at the university she was attending a couple of months before meeting Goliath. Beth had said it was a cartoon from Japan and her little sister had been hooked on it enough to decorate her dorm room with posters centered on it. Naturally she'd made fun of her sister for still watching cartoons at her age but Beth had taken that as a personal challenge to get her hooked on the show as well. More to humor her little sister than anything else she'd agreed to sit down and watch a few episodes to see if they could prove Beth right.

The show had been more entertaining than she'd thought but she hadn't gotten hooked on it.

"My sister Beth watched the show and I caught a few episodes, but my memory's a bit fuzzy," she said, dropping that little tidbit.

"Well, the bottom line is that if you're interested I can help train you to use ki," Xander said, sidestepping the predictable summary of the show's plot. "You'll be stronger, faster, more agile, able to fly and fire off all kinds of energy blasts. You probably won't get as strong as I will in twenty years but I can probably get you strong enough to hold your own against Stepponwolf."

She could turn into someone straight out of the comic books? There was only one answer she could give to that.

"When do we start?" she asked a tingle in her mind at how far she could possibly go.

"First thing tomorrow morning. Better to make sure you get a full night's rest," he replied, going over to a pile of rolled up furs that'd been in the corner of the room. "You're going to need every scrap of energy you can save up to make it through training tomorrow."

With those words he picked up one of the rolls of fur, one that looked like it'd been skinned off of an animal recently, and tossed it to her. Catching it, she unfurled it and from what she could see whoever had skinned the animal and then properly prepared the fur for use had done a fairly respectable job. It looked like they'd been forced to use improvised tools but it'd make for a decent enough blanket for tonight.

Looking out the crude window that'd been made in the wall of the log cabin, she could see that the sun was beginning to set and soon night would fall. She didn't know how long the days were here and a part of her felt a bit off since she usually worked the night shift at the precinct, but if she was going to be doing some intense training more sleep would be necessary. Turning from the window, she began to look about the interior of the cabin for a good place to lay down…

…when an unnatural heat began to throb beneath her skin.

She didn't know what it was and had nothing similar she could compare it to. Throughout her long relationship with Goliath and his clan she had experienced many things firsthand but nothing had ever felt like this. She opened her mouth to say something to Xander but the words were stolen from her mouth as a spike of pain caused her to double over just shy of falling to the ground. She was no stranger to pain, it was something that you learned to manage during your career as a police officer, but this was something different. Even as she recovered from the terrible upsurge in pain, she could feel the heat from the beginning start to spread like an injection through her veins before seeping into the very marrow of her bones.

Then the changes began.

She knew they were changes because she could feel the bones shifting into new positions, merging and the flesh around them flowing to accommodate the changes. Four fingers became three. Five toes became three.

Then the changes became more substantial.

The feet that had once been human shifted until it was no longer possible for her heel to touch the ground, forcing her to change how she stood to stay on her feet. Bone spikes popped out of her knees and elbows but the bleeding didn't last long since the flesh quickly adapted to make it as though the spikes had always been there. She could FEEL her canine teeth growing into fangs and the position of the rest of her teeth changing in order to allow those changes to come together smoothly, like they had when they were human in nature.

However the big finish put all that'd come before it to shame.

Like a snake slithering towards prey a tail long enough so that the bottom third could rest easily on the ground surged out of her back a little above her ass crack. Oddly enough she was peripherally aware that, instead of hearing the sound of tearing denim, the new appendage flowed into form without interference.

Then, like someone pulling the cord on a parachute, wings that bore a strong resemblance to those often depicted as belonging to Pterosaurs in Hollywood movies sprung from her shoulder blades. A few seconds at full extension and they fell into a more relaxed position but they were about the only thing that were relaxed.

The fear, the pain and the alien sensations churned within her until she gave into an instinct she knew she'd never had before and the roar of a jungle cat escaped from her open mouth.

Then, as though it had happened hours ago, the pain vanished, leaving only an ache that went from the tips of her toes all the way to the very ends of her hair. Panting from the sheer changes she had just been put through, only her sheer determination kept her on her feet but, once she was sure that the pain was not going to come back, she began trying to recover from her ordeal. Steps to steady her breathing, sitting down to ease the strain on muscles she didn't know if she could trust yet and ignoring the clues that hinted at what had just happened. Right now the most important thing was not acting like a chicken running around with its head cut off. Only once she was strong enough both mentally as well as physically would she face what'd happened to her head on, along with what it meant for her future.

"Huh. So this is why you got picked for the team," Xander said, not sounding very shocked or afraid about what'd happened. "Looks like flight, claws and probably super strength. A bit more exotic looking than Kori but kinda cool, too."

"Thanks, Xander," she groaned, now that ignorance was no longer possible. "Really."

She'd get him back for this.

A Few Nights Later

Koriand'r's POV

"She is doing quite well, don't you think?" she asked, looking up as Elisa glided through the air.

"If by well you mean like a drunken eagle, then yeah, she's doing GREAT," Xander replied, looking up just as she was.

She… reluctantly admitted that their airborne teammate's flying was not completely steady and there were a few times so far that she thought the woman had misjudged the placement of her wings. However the fact that Elisa was still in the air and had not plummeted to the ground was to be commended nonetheless. She remembered well the first attempts that she and her siblings had made to fly when they were children, with each of them at least a handful of times crashing into the ground from various distances and speeds. It was even more impressive when you took into account the fact that, according to her newest teammate, she had little prior experience with this form. Still it had been agreed by all three of them that, before Elisa could begin training to get stronger, the enforcer of the laws of New York must first fully understand her transitory body.

It had been something of a surprise when she'd rushed into the cabin after hearing a beastial roar to find a being that resembled Elisa but possessed several attributes that the woman had not mere minutes before. Once she was sure that it was indeed Elisa, the woman explained to both her and Xander what her new form was, along with what had likely happened to her. Apparently where she was from there was a race of noble beings known as gargoyles which existed alongside humans and another race referred to as Oberon's Children. They were protectors who guarded wherever they considered home, as well as those who chose to live alongside them in peace, from all that threatened them both. However, due to the darker emotions of humans, gargoyles had been rendered an endangered species, with Elisa knowing one of the few surviving clans.

One of the surviving gargoyles though had declared herself an enemy of the human race and had been working for centuries to wipe out every single human.

It was during the attempt by this gargoyle to use a member of Oberon's Children to further her goals that the woman received a 'gift'. During the day the female gargoyle would be completely human in body but from sunset to sunrise she would regain her natural gargoyle form. Elisa had speculated that since 'Demona' would never willingly or knowingly wish to be made human even temporarily, the magical gift giver had twisted the evil woman's words to allow for such a present.

The important part, though, was that Elisa had never received such a gift from the child of Oberon to the best of her recollection. The only other time she had been a gargoyle was temporarily when the magical being had twisted the words of one of Demona's wishes in order to spare the honorable woman's life. The transformation had only lasted hours before the same being had reversed all that he'd done and disappeared to 'take a llloooonnngg nap'.

Xander had speculated that the deities that were responsible for their recruitment had something to do with it since an ordinary human enforcer of the law would be of little help against Stepponwolf. Elisa had taken offense to that but the young man had been quick to explain. A normal human versed only in combat against other normal humans could not possibly pose a threat to a threat capable of bringing about the end of the world, even if they were well armed with conventional human weapons. Only those capable of feats beyond what could be considered 'normal' would stand any chance at all and only those who succeeded in reaching the upper levels of superhuman could achieve victory. As such, it was only natural that the divine beings that had recruited them would give Elisa something to give her a fighting chance in the battle to come.

"How long before you begin instructing us in ki usage?" she asked, turning to look at her male teammate.

"Pretty soon," he replied, turning to look at her. "Both of us have strengthened our bodies enough for it and, from what Elisa showed us yesterday, a gargoyle is already pretty strong with a ki to match. Even if she didn't have this new form I probably could've gotten her pretty strong by the time twenty years was up. With it and mixing in other training, it will make all of us a force to be reckoned with."

Indeed Xander had told her a few weeks before Elisa had arrived that it was his intention to teach her how to utilize her ki like he could in order to enhance her own abilities while also giving her new ones. As far as he was concerned, why should they just stick to their own individual abilities when they could share what each individual member contributed to the team to make the whole stronger? Xander would share his ki training, she would share both her aerial combat knowledge as well as the forms of Okaara hand-to-hand combat she knew and Elisa would pass on her detective skills. None of them knew precisely how large their team was intended to become but, as new allies arrived, they would add what they knew to the pool of skills to be shared.

They both knew that some skills or abilities would be impossible to share for one reason or another but, by sharing what they could, they could all become stronger.

"I admit that I am curious about how it could be different from channeling the energies my body naturally absorbs," she said, turning her gaze back to Elisa, who was attempting to soar higher on a current of air.

"Well, if you look at it one way, your green energy is power produced by your body but ki is power produced by your soul," he said, trying to put what he knew into words. "Sure, there's a connection between the two, but you can have the strongest body in the galaxy and not be able to fire off even the smallest ki blast. The toughest part will probably be figuring out how to tap into one without tapping into the other."

"Would it not be to our benefit if I could use both at the same time?" she asked since it was only logical that double the strength was more powerful than a singular strength.

"Yeah, but that'd have to wait. You'd need to make sure your body could handle the strain of using both at the same time," he replied, sounding like he knew what he was talking about. "Put too much strain on your body before it's ready and it'll break."

That made sense.

Nothing more could be said since at that moment Elisa turned towards them and began her descent, no doubt in an effort to manage a landing superior to the last one. That is not to say that the last one was poor but there had been moments of instability that almost proved to be too much for her teammate to compensate for. Watching it happen this time, she could see a marked improvement in stability of the gliding and it looked as though she was measuring her movements precisely. Seconds passed and, when the gargoyle's feet were mere inches above the ground, the woman let herself drop the rest of the way. This time only a flicker of instability but Elisa quickly smothered it, officially making this her first proper landing.

"Gliding's harder than I thought," Elisa said, caping her wings over her shoulders with barely a thought. "Sure wish Goliath or Angela were here to help with the details."

"No kidding! It'd be nice if I had Goku here to teach me but in this world wishing either doesn't do anything or it comes with one helluva catch," Xander said with his usual lopsided grin. "Still, at least we've got plenty of training time to get everything right."

"I've been meaning to ask about that," Elisa said, turning to the young man. "Why give us almost twenty years to train? If we're that weak, wouldn't it make more sense to recruit people that were already strong and have them train for half the time."

"I dunno. Never thought to ask them," Xander replied with a shrug. "Maybe aside from the first team that'll be tackling Stepponwolf there aren't any other strong people to recruit. It's also possible they're trying to do this secretly so they had to stay away from the warriors people'd have their eyes on so no one figures out what they're up to."

She almost asked why gods who were working towards creating a team to protect the planet Earth would need to hide their intentions when the truth appeared in her mind. Stepponwolf had been defeated once when he'd come to remake the Earth and would not risk failing his master again. It would only make sense that this time he would leave nothing to chance and therefore would send scouts, spies, to the planet ahead of his arrival. They would almost certainly be tasked with locating potential threats and either eliminating them immediately or studying them so that their master could slay them at a later date. If this was so then gathering, training and strengthening a team with potential to become strong was smarter than selecting from those who were already strong.

"Whatever. I'm gonna get some food," Elisa said, turning in the general direction of their log cabin. "Even when they're not doing anything, gargoyles have large appetites."

Indeed, if there was one thing that could be said about all three of them was that their bodies needed to ingest as much energy as they used up with their training. As a result they'd been forced to incorporate hunting the local wild animals into their training in order to keep their food stores as high as they needed. It also allowed them to become familiar with what the island had to offer both in wildlife as well as what herbs could be harvested to be used in preparation of the meat. Add to that the various recipes that each of them knew and it made for some rather satisfying meals. Both Elisa and Xander, however, seemed to be unused to hunting and preparing food in this manner. When she'd asked them about this, they'd told her that before now they'd only ever had to purchase what they needed from a marketplace after half the work had been done for them.

She'd never been coddled like that by the Warlords of Okaara, who insisted that every student be capable of surviving on their own with only the minimal amount of tools and materials. A true warrior knew that you could never be certain where or when you would need food in order to survive but, more often than not, it would not be anywhere near a marketplace. With that being the case she was taught how to hunt various animals, cut away the parts that couldn't or shouldn't be eaten and then prepare what remained for consumption.

At least here there is more in the way of herbs and spices, she thought with a small grin, remembering how the last meal had turned out.

On Okaara you were lucky if you could taste a non-meat flavor at all with how little of either you had to work with.

Eight Months Later

Xander's POV

"Now, I've never taught anything but trick or treat techniques a day in my life, so sorry if I make some mistakes," he said, getting everything he knew straight in his head again and again. "Even with those Okaaran meditation techniques, there're still some blank spots in the memories I got from Goku."

"We'll keep that in mind, now hurry up," Elisa said from her fallen tree log seat a dozen feet away.

It had been a good while since he'd told her about ki and how it could be used to make someone strong but in all that time she'd remained skeptical. Not surprising since to her Goku was a cartoon character and all the stuff the character could do was just too incredible to be believable. He had been tempted to perform one or more of the techniques he could call from his mind easily but had chosen to wait until he was far enough along in his own training to show her something spectacular. Now, after a year and a half of diligent training 'cause, hey, there's nothing else to do, he felt he'd progressed far enough in his training to move beyond mere physical conditioning and light sparring.

Now was the time to begin learning how to fully tap into the benefits of ki usage and to teach his teammates how to use it as well.

"Now ki energy can be translated as life force energy. Most people can't tap into it because they don't have much to begin with and don't have a clue how to get more," he explained, trying to imitate Giles when he'd told them about something from the supernatural world. "I don't know about my Earth but in Goku's world certain martial arts teachers could increase the quantity as well as quality of ki their bodies were capable of generating through training. With the right training you can use it internally to increase your strength, speed, endurance and make your blows have greater impact than they otherwise would."

Good. It looked like they both understood that.

"Before you can do anything with your ki, though, you need to learn how to tap into it and control it. Left alone it'll just flow by itself throughout your body but ki control is all about making the ki do what YOU want it to do," he explained before sitting down on the ground and crossing his legs. "So let's start off with some meditation so you can focus your mind inwards and sense your own ki. It'll be easy enough for you to pick up on your physical energy but you'll need to look even deeper to sense your ki. It's like… well, hmmm. It's like your internal speaker's on full blast and you need to filter the noise it's putting out so you can hear your soul speaking to you. Does that make sense?"

"Kinda," Elisa replied before sitting down on the ground like he was, with some adjusting for her tail and wings.

"I believe so," Kori said, being the last to assume the classic meditation position.

"Now it's important to relax because the tenser you are, the louder your body is and the harder sensing your ki'll be. Now let's give it a shot," he said, closing his eyes to begin looking inwards for his own ki. "Remember relax and focus."

Keeping only a metaphorical ear out for Kori and Elisa in case they needed further instruction, he journeyed inwards to find his own ki. He'd practiced doing so off and on since he'd begun his training to keep tabs on how strong he was getting, so it was relatively easy for him to do it. Still it'd been a while since he last checked, so he was curious to see how much stronger it'd gotten since his training had begun. Little by little he passed through the layers of distraction that hid it from his mind until it came into being like the buzzing of a wasp. Once he had a good enough grasp of it that it was almost tangible he examined it and was proud to find that it was now just about as strong as Goku's had been when he'd first defeated the evil King Piccolo. Some people might find this insulting since Goku had been a child at the time he considered it an achievement he'd managed it in under two years of hard training.

If I keep this pace, then by the time the twenty-ears is up I should be even stronger than Vegeta was when he beat Zarbon, he thought with a smile of anticipation.

Opening his eyes since he'd already completed the exercise, he looked at both Elisa and Kori to see how they were doing. Sure, he wasn't telepathic, but he'd found that both women were pretty open when it came to how they expressed their emotions. If they were getting frustrated it'd show on their faces and he'd have to think of a way to get them to calm back down so they could find their ki energy. He could sense that they both had above average ki inside of them so he didn't think it'd be as hard as it would be for an ordinary person.

From what he could tell, Kori was having some difficulty but that was to be expected since she could tap into the energy her body absorbed from the sun both to fly as well as fire off energy blasts. It was hard enough for people who couldn't do such things so he'd known from the beginning she'd have more layers of distraction to pass through than him or Elisa would. However at the same time he could see that she wasn't allowing impatience or frustration hinder her efforts but, considering her warrior training, that was to be expected. He figured it'd probably take a week of no progress before she'd begin expressing frustration and ask him for additional help. If that happened he'd try channeling some of his own ki into her body so she could feel a little more bluntly what that kind of energy felt like.

As for Elisa, she looked to be putting in a good effort and wasn't quite as impatient as he'd thought the detective would be, considering the drastic difference in her normal range of experiences. He imagined that it'd be like if he suddenly had to learn doctorate level science. For her he gave it three days tops before she asked for help, causing him to use the same method he planned to use to help Kori.

He was certain that all they needed was to get their first real taste of what ki energy felt like, and then the odds of them managing to do it on their own after that would go up. Then, just like everything else, repetition would make it as easy as breathing to detect and measure their own ki levels so they could better judge what was and what wasn't possible for them.

"Don't beat yourself up if you can't get it right away," he said, not moving from his sitting position. "On Goku's Earth it took years of training to manage it. Besides, getting mad will just make things worse."

A moment of irritation flashed over Elisa's face before she silenced her annoyance and returned to the task at hand.

Time passed but, when an hour had gone by, he figured that was good enough for an introductory course on ki and besides that there wouldn't be much more they could do until both ladies could detect their own ki.

"Let's call it a day for the ki training," he said, standing up. "It's not something you get on your first day and we've got years for you guys to get the hang of it."

"I felt as though I was getting very close to sensing my ki," Kori said, sounding optimistic about her chances in the future. "However those last few mental steps are proving to be very frustrating."

"You got that right!" Elisa declared, sounding like Snyder usually did whenever he came to harass the Scoobies. "Are you sure you're not just messing with us? I've seen you train and I haven't seen anything like energy blasts."

Typical. Like so many people, they needed proof of something spectacular before they'd truly believe it was possible.

"I guess a little demonstration wouldn't hurt," he said, since he knew that visual aids did wonders for him and Buffy during research sessions.

Looking at the area, it didn't take long for him to spot a decent sized boulder about a hundred yards away that'd do the trick.

"Pay attention, 'cause I'm a little hit or miss with this move. Sometimes it'll work perfectly and other times it'll backfire on me," he said taking up a solid stance with his left shoulder pointed at the boulder.

Both women nodded in understanding.

With that done he once more looked within for his ki but without the whole closed eye meditation bit and, once he had a strong grip on it, he began his execution of Goku's most often used ki technique.

"KKKAAAA-"

He brought the heels of both his hands together in front of him with arms fully extended.

"MMMEEEE-"

He brought both hands to his right hip, channeling his ki down each arm to the hands, where he began to concentrate it in the air between them.

"HHHAAA-"

This was one of the harder parts of the technique, since it required that he not only keep the flow of energy constant but also ensure it remained concentrated as well as contained in a spherical shape. He'd found out the first couple of tries that ki energy, once it left the body, wanted to go all over the place on its own and you needed to use willpower to make it obey you. You couldn't half-ass it either because, if your will was weak, the ki energy would slip out of containment, making it impossible to fire it off successfully.

"MMMEEEE-"

He did the best he could to pour as much ki as he could manage into spherical form between his hands until he could tell that forcing any more would make concentration and containment impossible to maintain. Once he was certain that there were no mistakes he thrust both hands forward while creating a weak spot on the side of the sphere he wanted the energy to go, while also sending a pushing surge through his arms to get the ball rolling.

"HHHAAAA!"

He could tell the instant the ki surge reached the sphere between hands that he'd successfully executed the Kamehameha Wave, and so watched as the neon blue energy shot like a cannonball towards the boulder that was its target. The impact was more thunderous than he'd been expecting but it reduced the large stone to so much gravel, even tossing some of the soil into the air. Still, it wasn't as big as Goku's had been when he'd fought against Vegeta for the first time, but that had been when the hero had been training on King Kai's planet and mastered the kaio-ken technique.

Besides that, he now felt like he'd been pounding on a punching bag nonstop for a solid hour due to the amount of ki he'd expended. His ki control wasn't good enough to make sure he could perform the technique efficiently, so he wound up wasting quite a bit of energy. Add to that the consistency issue where execution was concerned and it was safe to say that he was still a ways off from being able to use it reliably in a fight.

Turning back to Kori and Elisa, he could tell that they were more or less impressed with the technique, with the latter showing no sign of doubt now when it came to ki's combat potential.

"So, with enough training, I'll be able to do something like that?" Elisa asked, standing up while looking at the remains of the boulder.

"It'll take a while but, yeah, you will," he said, feeling his strength return to him. "Just keep in mind that my Saiyan body is pretty much built for fighting and has an awesome improvement curve. It'll probably take you longer to build up your ki reserves enough to use the Kamehameha Wave without going completely weak after."

"Something to look forward to then," Elisa said with a smile.

A smile he mirrored because a person always trained harder when they had a goal they wanted reach.

The Island Formerly Owned By Circe

Ten Months Later

Elisa's POV

"I think I'm finally getting the hang of gliding," she said as they all sat at their improvised table.

Basically it was a slab of stone that Xander had used his ki to carve out of a boulder and then told them to practice their ki control on. The exercise was to use the ki to smooth out the uneven surface of the stone slab until it was just like a table you'd buy at a store. The trick was to push out just enough ki to scrape away the bits of stone you didn't want without overdoing it and making more work for yourself by scraping out too much and having to start over. Xander, of course, practiced on it with them since, by the young man's own admission, his control could use some work when it came to efficiency.

I guess it'd be more accurate to say that this is the FOURTH slab of stone that he had to make before we finally got it right, she thought before sipping on the squeezed fruit juice residing in a crudely carved wooden cup.

"Good. It'll be nice for stealth operations and, when you need speed, the ki power you'll have by then should let you put fighter jets to shame," Xander said before shoving a good sized piece of meat into his mouth.

She had to admit that the idea of flying around like that sounded like fun and, if she could keep what she gained from this training when she went back home, her life would be that much more wonderful. Demona wouldn't be able to touch her and, if Oberon decided to cause trouble again, she just might be able to give him a fight he never would've seen coming. Her growing closeness to Goliath would also be helped along since there'd now be a time when he wouldn't have to worry about squeezing her into oblivion. He never outright said anything but she knew that, as the strongest gargoyle of his clan, the big guy had trouble with the delicate tasks he encountered. As a result, a 'fear of breaking things' occasionally cropped up, especially during moments when he knew his control could slip.

Her good mood at her current gliding level dimmed somewhat when she took into account the one downside to her new 'improvements'.

Just as Demona had no control over her transformation from gargoyle to human and back again, she had thus far shown no sign that she could control her own change. At dusk and dawn she changed regardless of how much she willed herself to remain human or remain gargoyle. That meant that she'd have to ask Captain Chavez to switch her to the day shift and make sure she wouldn't be expected to show up before sunrise. Goliath and his clan were still considered to be the delusions of people who'd been through a harrowing experience rather than anything REAL. She knew all too well that if she tried to walk into work like nothing had changed, it wouldn't end well.

Maybe I can convince that relative of Puck's to take his 'gift' back, she thought as she put another forkful of food into her mouth. This ki training of Xander's is hard but there's no arguing with the results.

Indeed as it stood now she was faster and stronger than she'd been before arriving on the island and she would only get stronger the longer she trained. Given that they still had eighteen years of training to go through before they would be expected to confront Stepponwolf, she fully expected to be capable of handling just about anything. While it'd be nice to be able to transform into a gargoyle anytime she wanted, she could do without the alternate form since it would be too bothersome to keep it around.

"So what's on the schedule for today?" she asked after finishing her morning meal.

"Nothing special, really," Xander replied nonchalantly as he too finished his meal. "Morning warm ups followed by training to make our bodies stronger and then technique training before finishing off with intense sparring."

"That sounds rather-" Kori said after swallowing the latest mouthful of her fruit juice.

"Dull. Boring," she said, putting in her own opinion.

"I was going to say predictable but those other words are accurate as well," Kori said, looking at her for a moment before returning her gaze to Xander.

"Well, it's not like we've got a lot to work with on this island," Xander said with a frown, showing that he wasn't happy either. "We've had to make everything we've been using ourselves and, of the three of us, Kori's the only one that has any idea how warrior training is supposed to go. Sure, I got some info bouncing around my head from Goku but it's a big mess and even meditation's not doing much good with over a third of the pieces missing."

"But we're not going to progress very far unless something changes," she pointed out, figuring it was common sense that when you ran out of things to learn, you stopped growing stronger.

"Then we just have to hope that the rest of our teammates have some skills they can teach us," he said with a shrug. "A team's usually five or six people, right? That means there're at least two more people that'll show up sooner or later. Maybe more."

"Maybe more?" she asked, not understanding what he meant by that.

"Basketball teams have five people play at one time, hockey has six, baseball has nine and football has eleven," he replied, letting her in on his thoughts. "When they told me about what's coming, they didn't say anything about how many people were on the A team we're supposed to be backup for or how many of us there'd be. Still, I gotta believe that they're not just choosing random people with power from all over the place. All of us will have jobs to do, a role to play, and we can figure that out based on what each of us can do or what we know."

"That makes sense. We've got your ki training and Kori has both her Tamaranian powers as well as her Okarran training," she said, mentally going over what she knew.

"And we have Elisa's detective training along with partial access to the abilities natural to a gargoyle," Kori said finishing off the summary.

"Yep! Our recruiters probably plan to have the others fill some positions, too," Xander said, nodding in agreement. "Probably won't know what they are until the others get here."

"Well, I hope they don't take too long getting here," she said, standing up to begin her morning run. "I'd also appreciate it if our recruiters at least brought us a week's worth of clothes. This outfit's starting to get a little worn out."

Indeed, ever since she'd arrived on the island and begun her training, she hadn't seen any sign that they'd be supported with shelter, food, training equipment or even replacement clothing. All they'd been given to work with was whatever they'd had on them at the time they'd been transported to the island and what they could fashion from available materials. They'd done their best to make do with this but, whether it was strengthening their bodies or sparring with each other, the wear and tear was beginning to show, along with a bit of stink.

Washing their clothes in the nearby lake with only water and a brush made with coarse animal hair could only do so much.

Personally she gave their clothes another year, maybe two, before they'd have to figure out how to make animal skin clothing to replace the rags that would be pointless to wear.

She was about to say more when she felt… something… intrude on her mind and it was not something that could be ignored. Focusing for a moment, she quickly realized that something was setting off her ki sense, causing her to put more effort into figuring out where it was relative to the cabin. It was during this effort that she discovered that it was not just one ki signal she was detecting but two signals. One was at the lake to the southeast while the other was close to the center of one of the denser forests to the west of the log cabin.

"Huh. Guess the 'bosses' decided we're far enough along in our own training to handle two new teammates instead of just one," Xander said with a look of pleasant surprise. "I'll go check out the lake if you ladies'll check out the forest. Sound good?"

It didn't really matter to her one way or the other so she nodded and a moment later Kori did so as well.

"Be careful when you find out who it is," Xander said, striding towards the door. "No telling how they were recruited or what kind of briefing they got. They might be a bit angry. Maybe enough to lash out at the first person they see."

"You sure it'll be that bad?" she asked, being a bit skeptical. "Puck's people can be a bit of a pain but even they know when to get serious. They'd make sure to tell whoever's here now how serious things are."

"Maybe, but what if the person they recruited isn't… well, isn't a hero?" Xander asked, pausing just one step shy of making it outside.

"What do you mean?" Kori asked, sounding a little confused. "Why wouldn't they make sure that these new team members were of virtuous character?"

"Because they want to win," Xander replied firmly, without a trace of idealism. "If Stepponwolf wins, it's the end of Earth and probably the end of them, too. If they think that adding someone to the team that's closer to the enemy in how they fight will help make sure we win, I have no trouble seeing them do it."

It was with those words in mind that she left with Kori for the woods and, even though she hoped that it was just Xander being a little paranoid, she'd keep her guard up just the same.

He'd shown good judgment so far, after all.