BackWater - Chapter 5

Both girls woke up the next morning to Cordelia knocking on both of their doors telling them that they had to get up because they had to be at school in two hours. J.J. appears first, "How are we going to school? I mean how do you have us registered?"
Cordelia grins at J.J. and Nerice who appears looking non to pleased to be up, "Let's just say Angel pulled some strings. Dawn's going to, to finish up her senior year. Now come on Buffy made waffles and there are 12 very hungry people downstairs waiting for you to eat."
Once they are settled around the table Dawn states, "So we decided that it would probably be easiest to explain if we just told everyone that we were sisters, the three of us."
Nerice and J.J. nod, "All right."
"Xander and I will take you guys today," Buffy informs.
"Buffy, unlike some people, I can drive." Dawn insists.
Buffy nods, "I know, and Dawn will be driving starting tomorrow."
"So what is everyone doing today?" J.J. questions everyone sitting around the table.
"G-man's showing Wood and I around LA today, you know I never really got to know the city when I was locked up." Faith states, "Thanks, by the way for getting me off the Most Wanted list."
Gunn shrugs, "It was nothing."
"I'm going to show Willow the science lab and Wolfram and Hart." Fred states.
"Andrew's decided to follow me around all day." Spike states.
"Wes and I will be researching for most of the day." Giles responds.
"Buffy, Kennedy and I are going to check out all of Wolfram and Hart." Xander adds.
"Sounds better than school." Nerice sighs.
"You'll have fun," Buffy insists and then glancing at her watch she jumps up, "but we should all be getting ready to leave the hotel."
"Well, have fun." Buffy offers once Nerice, J.J. and Dawn get out of the car in front of the private school Angel had enrolled them in.
"But not too much fun," Xander adds, "and avoid the basement."
The group of teenage girls roll their eyes chorusing, "Bye!"
"So we should get out schedules right away and go from there, I guess." Dawn states once Xander and Buffy have pulled out of the parking lot.
"You must be the Summers sisters." The secretary at the front desk greets them with a big smile as she sets to printing their schedules.
Dawn nods, "Yes, we are."
Reading over their made-up transcripts the secretary looks up, "Well whatever brought you to LA from Rome?"
"A family emergency." Dawn responds quickly.
"Well it must be interesting living with your sister all over the world, you live with your sister right?"
Dawn nods, "Very."
"All right well Dawn this is your schedule, we tried to reproduce your schedule from Rome as much as possible." The secretary hands Dawn a slip of gold paper, "and you two are twins correct?"
Nerice nods, "Yes, we are."
"We figured you would be most comfortable with the same schedule, transferring so far into the year and all."
"Thank you." J.J. responds accepting their schedules.
"All right, well meet me outside the cafeteria before lunch, all right?" Dawn asks once the girls leave the office.
"Yeah, see you at lunch." Nerice calls before J.J. drags her off toward their first class.
"How was the first day?" Xander is alone when he picks them up from school at the end of the day.
"It was the fine." The girls all respond.
"How was Wolfram and Hart?" Dawn questions.
"I still think that it's an evil operation, even with just one eye I can see that, Buffy sees it too, but until we can figure out what to do about Nerice and J.J. we'll be sticking around."
"How did you loose your eye?" Nerice questions, "I always wondered."
Xander and Dawn exchange glance sin the front seat and Nerice immediately realizes her mistake. Xander then gives a brief explanation of what happened.
J.J. quicky changes the topic after the explanation, "Where is everyone?"
"Back at Wolfram and Hart, that's where we are going now." Xander responds. Once Xander pulls into the parking lot he states, "I'm going to hang out here for awhile, I'll be up later."
"I'm going to go see Willow and Fred in the science lab." Dawn states when they get inside.
Nerice and J.J. continue alone on a search for their fathers and head toward Angel's office, but before they get inside they are stopped by the raised voices coming from inside. They are to late to hear Buffy's comment but Spike's come through clear, "Oh sure, like you haven't made any mistakes."
"I never claimed that I've never done anything, but how can you just tell Andrew not to tell me. I thought, God Spike I thought you loved me but to keep this from me. I can't believe you."
"Right, like that's what you wanted to hear, that I was alive and well and in LA with the love of your life, your soul mate. You have no idea what you want Buffy, I wasn't about to go mess up whatever good thing you had in Rome."
"Where do you get off making my decisions for me?" Buffy asks and the girls can hear her frustrated sigh from outside the door. "It doesn't matter Spike, the girls are coming back to Rome with me."
"You can't." Angel's voice allows the girls to know that he is in there as well.
"Excuse me?" Buffy snaps, "I'm not about to have two impressionable young teenagers raised around an evil law firm."
"We're fixing it." Angel responds.
"Right, fine, you're fixing it. But it's still evil Angel! Take you for example, you're great, the Champion of the people, but Angel, deep down Angelus is still there and every once in awhile he appears now matter how good you are." Buffy sounds sad as she says the final words.
"Eavesdropping?" Cordelia soft words cause the girls to jump. "Come with me for a minute, all right?"
The girls follow Cordelia into the empty office J.J. had found earlier that week, "What's going on?" Nerice asks.
Cordelia takes a deep breath, "The powers that be are saying that the time is coming closer, and that you need to figure out what you are going to do about changing the future. I know you know about the champion, and I know that it makes more sense now and I hate to put all of this pressure on you. You have to make a choice, you need to c hoose whether you are going to do anything at all, because you don't have to, you can choose to stay in this world or you can come up with a plan to change the future. I'm going to leave you guys to talk this over, give you some time."
"So basically they are telling us that we either have to make the choice to essentially kill our mother or make sure that one of us won't exist in the end. I don't know about you but this bites." J.J. snaps.

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