Disclaimer: Don't own anything you recognize, and most things you don't

oOo

At the sound of the crossbows firing, all three Time Travelers leapt from their seats and effectively prevented any mortal injuries. Not to say they didn't still get hit, it's just now it was more of an annoyance rather than an, 'Oh crap I'm gonna die' sort of injury.

"Son of a…" Chris glanced down at the arrow shaft protruding from his left side and looked up and over the heads of his just-now reacting family to see a darklighter looking rather ticked at his missed shot. Before the black-clad man had a chance to attempt another shot he found himself engulfed in flames, along with his two companions, courtesy of one Wyatt Halliwell.

"Bastards." Wyatt turned to check on his siblings and noticed Chris still glaring angrily at the arrow in him while Kyara was muttering darkly to herself and trying to think of a way to pry out the poison-tipped arrow now lodged in her upper arm. "What were they? I don't think I remember ever seeing that type of demon before." Another look to Chris and Ky showed they hadn't recognized them either and so the Trinity turned their attention to the rest of the rooms' inhabitants, all of who seemed to be wondering what the hell had just happened.

"What the HELL just happened?" Ah, Piper always was one to speak her mind. Paige and Phoebe seemed to have been reduced to blinking rapidly as if trying to replay the last few seconds because they had obviously missed something. Sheila and Darrell were making rather nice impressions of fish with the way their mouths were opening and closing and Leo was starting to turn an interesting shade of red as he took in his children's reactions.

"What are you waiting for! Heal yourselves already! Hurry up before the poison spreads!" Leo was already running towards Kyara, whom he was closest to, and helping her pull out the arrow and apply the golden glow all Whitelighters were known for. Blinking down at the arrow still lodged in his side Chris idly thought to himself, so that's what that burning sensation is, poison. Hmm, I wonder if it's possible to get some and see if I can become immune to this one as well? Lost in his, admittedly somewhat morbid thoughts, Chris hardly noticed that he had been poking curiously around his sluggishly bleeding wound and that it was starting to gain the attention of the others in the room. Wyatt had already removed the arrow in his thigh and used his own healing powers to scourge out the poison and seal the wound closed. Kyara as well was finished tending to her arm and was trying to fend off the still slightly fussing Leo. Upon glancing at his little brother and seeing that he hadn't done anything to remove the offending object and heal himself, Wyatt rolled his eyes and made his way across the room to his idiot of a sibling and promptly smacked him upside the head.

"Ow! What, Wyatt?" Chris glared balefully at the taller blond and rubbed the back of his head where said blond had decided to hit him.

"Oh, sure. That hurt, but you don't seem to notice the piece of wood sticking out of your stomach?" Blinking down at himself Chris noticed that, sure enough, there was wood sticking out of him.

"Oh, right." Everyone that hadn't had experience with the second youngest Halliwell's somewhat odd disposition looked on incredulously. How do you forget something like that?

Yanking, the arrow tore free of his body with a disturbing squelch noise that had all the occupants of the room grimacing and looking away. Holding his hand over the wound until the all too familiar glow came Chris looked up at his family and again asked the question that had as of yet gone unanswered.

"So, what were those guys again?"

Staring at their nephew like he was crazy, or at least crazier than normal for their family, it took a while before the question actually registered in the sisters' minds.

"You don't know what a Darklighter is?" Paige asked somewhat incredulously. This reaction was somewhat justified seeing as Darrell was muttering about how even he knew what a Darklighter was.

"The hell's a Darklighter?" Kyara shared looks with her two siblings, face scrunched up at the odd and unfamiliar name. Chris looked just as confused as she was, though Wyatt was now gazing with unfocused eyes at the wall just behind Sheila and mouthing the name to himself. Knowing this meant he was trying to remember something Kyara let him be and instead turned back to her family.

"You're all part Whitelighter, and you don't know what a Darklighter is when you see one!" Thinking for a moment, Leo looked at the three youngest in the room suspiciously before asking, "You are all part Whitelighter, right?"

Kyara shot her Dad an exasperated look, "Yes, we're all part Whitelighter. As if Piper would cheat on you…Idiot." Leo looked somewhat chagrined as he sent a sheepish look to his wife, who happened to be glaring at him for even thinking to ask his last question.

"That's who those guy's were!"

All the occupants of the room turned to look at the older version of Wyatt, who had just snapped his fingers like a child that had just figured something incredibly difficult out. No one ever said he was the most mature Halliwell child…

"Care to explain, Wy?" Chris asked dryly, having had ample time to get used to his brother's little quirks. He would be grinning like a fool expecting you to understand what the hell he had just figured out until you actually asked him.

"Dark-whatevers. I remember something similar to what they looked like attacked you on your fifth birthday! I followed them and killed any of them that I could find, then looked for anything with their power signature and killed them too. So in our time, there's no more Darkies and, hence why we didn't recognize them!" Wyatt seemed oblivious to the incredulous stares he was getting from his family, including his siblings, as he just continued grinning like a loon.

"Wy, you were, like, six years old. You tracked down all the Darklighter's and killed them just cause they attacked me on my birthday?" Chris idly thought it was a good thing he had never pissed Wyatt off completely when they were kids, and had backed off whenever he was mildly annoyed. He happily patted himself on the back for his excellent survival instincts.

"That sounds like a good enough reason to me." Piper muttered, staring defiantly at the rest of her friends and family when they turned to look at her. "What? No one attacks my kids."

Everyone simply accepted that as fact and moved on.

"Well, yeah. I mean, it was your party, and they made you cry! No one can say no to those freaky green eyes of yours when you're sad, and you were practically begging me to go after them!"

"Wyatt, I was five. I don't think I was capable of begging you to go after anything! And my eyes are not freaky!"

"Yes, yes they are. They're not normal! Just look at them! Look!"

"Wyatt, how the hell am I supposed to look at my own eyes right now!"

"Find a way, you're the genius."

"Just cause I graduated early does not mean I'm a genius, you goody-two-shoes nerd!"

And the conversation continued to go downhill from there. Leo sidled up beside Kyara, Darrell, Sheila, and the sisters who had all congregated on one side of the room to watch with rapt attention as the brother's conversed. Taking in Kyara's slightly amused, slightly exasperated look, he moved closer to her so he could speak without disrupting the now yelling siblings.

"Are they always like that?" He asked with no little apprehension in his voice. After all, if they were than he would have to endure many years of this when the mini-versions of the Halliwell boys grew up.

Without taking her eyes off the, now wrestling, boys as they rolled into the couch and landed in a tangle of limbs and voices, Kyara answered her father blandly,

"You have no idea."

Sudden movement in the far corner of the room had Kyara snapping her head in that direction, instincts learned through most of her life not allowing her to ignore anything out of place. In her peripheral vision she saw Chris and Wyatt casually (to anyone but her anyways) roll their way to their feet and begin arguing again even as they moved to block the exits of the room, facing the corner the movement had come from. All this happened within seconds, testament to the lives the Halliwell children had lived in the not-too distant future. Even as she watched, the shadows in that corner of the room seemed to writhe and swirl in a completely abnormal way, growing larger as it seemed to join all the shadows on that side of the room into one. It covered a good four feet width-wise and was now following the shadow of a potted plant and a bookcase up the wall, creating a solid area of shadow between the two objects.

Now, obviously, this had garnered the attention of the witches, whitelighter, and mortals in the room.

"What the hell is that?" Darrell asked, rather calmly considering, as he slowly pushed Sheila behind him and began to maneuver himself so that the Halliwells were in front of him. It's not like he could do much anyways, Darrell thought semi-bitterly.

"Ah, that would be the Shadow demon we were looking up just before these three popped in. Can't believe we managed to forget about that…not very promising for the world if we can get distracted so easily…" Paige mumbled the last couple sentences to herself as she struggled to remember what exactly the Book had said about the Shadow demon. Not good for the world at all…

"Gee, thanks Paige. Now that we know it's here how about you tell us how we can get rid of it?" Piper smiled non-too nicely at her youngest sister, more baring her teeth than anything. Paige chose the oddest moments to suddenly decide they weren't doing a good enough job protecting the world. It was still here wasn't it? Besides Piper didn't like letting magic take over her life, so as long as they didn't forget anything as important as, say, the apocalypse, it was fine.

"Um, I didn't actually get that far into the page on them before Chris and Wyatt and Kyara showed up…" Paige trailed off and took an involuntary step backwards as the mass of shadows suddenly began to spin in a dizzying fashion, tendrils shooting out to touch the other shadows in the room and drag them into the larger part. " Get back! Don't let it touch your shadow!" She called out to the three from the future who were now standing closer than the others to the demon, none of them having taken any steps away from the thing.

Wyatt glanced at his little brother, happy and unsurprised to note the complete lack of any kind of worry on his or Kyara's face. They had no reason to be worried, though the sisters didn't necessarily know that. Just by glancing at the Shadow demon Wyatt was able to tell it was a lower-class Night demon; completely under Kyara's jurisdiction and not powerful enough to fight off one of her commands even if they didn't have as much control in this time as they had back in the future. The Shadow demon wouldn't touch them.

Phoebe watched as her neice and nephews just stood there, seemingly staring down the Shadow mass creeping ever closer to them. Why weren't they moving! Before she even had a chance to think about it, the words to a made-up spell were spilling from her lips.

"Shadow, shadow, black as night

Now I show you to the light

Hide no more in places dark

Be gone from here, leave no mark

Shadow, shadow, black as night

We banish you with the light"

Phoebe continued chanting, her sisters eventually picking up the easy spell and adding their power as well. They watched on as the shadow began to shrink, writhing more furiously as it sensed its demise. The black mass shriveled up until it was a small black orb floating by itself in the corner of the room. One more repetition of Phoebe's spell and the orb vanished in a loud crack and a puff of smoke.

Coughing and waving a hand to clear the air around her, Kyara shared an amused glance with her brothers before turning around to face their family. Ky stared straight at her Aunt Phoebe and her sisters, all of whom looked slightly ticked at them, most likely because they hadn't moved away from the demon. Who did they think they were? Kids? She snorted inwardly at that, though Ky supposed it wasn't their fault. They hadn't told them everything the Trinity was capable of yet so how were they supposed to know there was no danger? Planning to head off any lectures that were just waiting to explode (she could tell, Piper had that look on her face) Kyara smirked and tried to hold back a laugh.

" 'Twinkle, Twinkle little star,' Aunt Phoebe?"

Phoebe had the grace to blush lightly before defending her choice of spell rhythm. "It was the first thing I could think of!" Small snorts of laughter were heard from Leo and their guests. Even Paige and Piper were looking at the middle sister in amusement. Kyara winked at her older siblings, noting that they were outwardly looking at the others even as she felt that little tickle in her mind signaling they wanted to talk.

'Thanks Ky. Lectures successfully averted.'

'Yeah, heard enough of those before…or in the future from now…ugh, time travel…'

Snorting at Chris' typical rambling, she sent a quick reply to the two boys before returning to the conversation everyone else was involved in.

'You're welcome. We all know I perfected the art of Lecture-Avoidance. Neither of you can be subtle if your lives depended on it. You owe me.'

Sensing their grudging agreement, Ky smiled a little and turned to follow the others as they showed Sheila and Darrell to the door, the two being smart enough to get out of that mad house as soon as possible. Just in case any other unexpected guests decided to pop in. You'd think they'd be used to it by now. Besides, what else could possibly happen today?

Famous last words.

oOo

Sorry for the wait and the shortness of the chapter! I'm trying to climb over Writer's Block the size of Mt. Everest. Ick…

Pray that my muses get their bums kicked so I can keep going! Or, you know, give me some ideas if you have any and want me to write them

Hope you liked it!

Review? Pretty please with Chris on top? (or Phoebe for you guys out there)

Ta,

Nevair