Headmaster of Shadowfrost Part 6

Vivian pulled her attention off the grey skinned 'alien' with purple hair and a gemstone set in her forehead that was wearing black one piece swimming suit, a weird belt with large gemstones that probably cost a fortune if they were real and a blue cloak and looked at the tall girl with glowing green eyes that was hovering a couple of inches off the ground. "Let me get this straight, you're kidnapping me because you need a lift because you stick out too much in my dimension?"

"We're not kidnapping you. We're heroes and we're trying to track down some dangerous aliens that have been kidnapping people," Raven offered.

"Can you help?" Starfire asked hopefully, giving her the best puppy dog eyes expression she had.

'Why does all the weird shit happen when I have a dead body in the back?' Vivian wondered as she reached over and unlocked the passenger door of Nick's truck. 'They're way too cute for aliens.'

"Yes!" Starfire squealed then flew around to the passenger side.

"Sorry about this," Raven offered as she flew around so that she could climb aboard.

"It's fine," Vivian lied as the aliens climbed aboard. "We just need to make a stop first, it's on the way."

"No problem," Raven replied as she shut the door, happy that she was doing them a favor.

'Five minutes in and out, I'll toss Kevin in with Mr. McDonnell and start the incinerator and they'll be ash by morning,' she mused as she shifted back into drive and pulled back onto the road. "What type of aliens are you after?"

"Zorkneblins, they look reasonably close to humans but they have glowing green blood and a fascination with probing humans for reasons no one really understands," Starfire explained.

"Weird," Vivian replied. "So, do you have an alien space ship?"

"No, the ship I was on crash landed on Earth, the slavers didn't survive," Starfire explained.

"Slavers?" Vivian asked.

"The universe is a big place, not everyone is nice," Starfire admitted.

“If you don’t have a ship then how did you get out here?” Vivian asked.

"We just got to this world by portal," Raven replied as Vivian pulled into the parking lot for the crematorium.

"Cool," Vivian replied, more inclined to believe them about the portal since they could fly and Starfire had glowing eyes that would be pretty hard to fake in person. "I work at the crematorium, I just need to toss a couple of bodies into the incinerators and then I'm free to drive you around."

"No problem, you're the one doing us a favor," Raven assured her.

'Weirdest kidnapping ever,' Vivian thought as she pulled into the parking spot by the door that led into the room with the incinerator, shifted the truck into park and turned it off. "Can someone help me move a body so I don't have to drag the cart out here?"

"Of course," Starfire replied as she got out of the truck.

Vivian grabbed her keys and headed to the door. "It's in the back, under the tarp."

"You put a body in the back of the truck?" Raven asked as she got out of the truck.

"I wasn't going to drive over here and grab the hearse, just to drive back when I could just grab the body bag and go," Vivian explained as she unlocked the door, hoping they'd stop asking questions.

"Makes sense," Starfire agreed as she untied the tarp and collected the body bag.

Raven turned her attention to the music she could hear in the distance, trying to figure out how they were supposed to track the aliens and wishing Cyborg hadn't been on vacation because he could have whipped up some sort of tracker in ten minutes and then they'd be done.

Vivian felt a lot better once she had Kevin's corpse in the machine and Starfire had left while she 'quickly' finished some confidential paperwork which gave her a chance to toss Mr. McDonnell's body in the incinerator with Kevin and push the button. 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' she thought as she left, glad that Kevin was dead, even if his disappearance was going to cause a lot of trouble. "Where are we going?" she asked as she locked the door to the incinerator.

"Into town, Star should be able to see their cloaked ship," Raven explained.

"Hop in," Vivian replied as she headed for the truck.

0o0o0

Nick blinked a couple of times as he woke up tied up in the middle of a ritual circle with a bunch of people in robes chanting. "What the fuck?"

"Shut up, you're being sacrificed," one of the cultists that wasn't chanting said in a whiny voice with a bit of a fake Italian accent.

"Vinny? What the fuck?" Nick demanded, not wanting to deal with the asshole that had been trying to get in his cousin's pants since she was fourteen, despite the fact that she wasn't interested in him since he was more than a couple of years older than her.

"Shut up Nick, we're going to get power and you're getting dragged to hell where you belong," Vinny gloated as a smoking hot red skinned demon appeared wearing a short black skirt and a long sleeve shirt that was half unbuttoned, leaving a fair amount of her generous bust on display.

'Shit,' Nick thought, not particularly happy with the fact that demons were apparently real.

The demon glanced over the group of cultists then focused on Nick. "Let me guess, you pissed someone off?"

"He's a fucking cockblocker," Vinny complained, glaring at Nick.

"He's been trying to get in my cousin's pants since she was fourteen, he was nineteen at the time," Nick explained, figuring he might as well be polite.

"She's hot," Vinny replied defensively. "Just fucking kill him and give us power so I can have some fun with the girl."

The demon girl smiled at Nick. "Normally, I'd love to drag an attractive young man to hell and have my wicked way with him until he begs me to stay but I can't."

"What?" Vinny sputtered.

The demon girl shrugged. "Professional courtesy, he's a lawyer. Unless he actually makes a bad deal, he's untouchable. Now, if you don't actually have a sacrifice, I'm going to have some fun with you."

"Shit," one of the other cultists said as he shoved Vinny into the middle of the circle. "Change of plans, this asshole was looking at my younger sister too."

"Hey," Vinny complained then jumped back when the pentagram they'd drawn on the floor of his basement ignited.

"Perfectly acceptable," the demon girl replied as she snapped her fingers and teleported Nick out of the pentagram then turned it into a portal to hell causing Vinny to fall into her friend's torture chambers, figuring she'd get a lot of enjoyment out of torturing the slimy bastard.

Nick dusted himself off, rather happy that the ropes hadn't come with him. "Thanks."

"Like I said, professional courtesy," the demon girl replied with a smile. "Tell you what, I'll double the bonus if you toss two more of your friends into the portal," she offered the cultists, causing a bit of a fight to break out as they turned on each other.

Nick watched several of the cultists get pushed into the portal, wishing he was surprised by the lack of loyalty.

"I'm going to fuck you then I'm going to toss your corpse to hell," Eric told another cultist with a smirk.

"Go fuck yourself," she replied as she pulled a knife out of her pocket, ready to cut the foul mouthed bastard's throat for all of the shit he'd said over the years.

'Fuck it,' Nick thought then kicked the fat bastard in the back, sending him stumbling into the portal to hell. "Fucking idiots."

"Are we good?" the other surviving cultist asked as he shoved Kenny into the portal, not trusting his 'friend' not to go to the police or something since the ritual had actually worked.

"We're good," the demon girl smirked as she snapped her fingers and closed the portal to hell, "for a given value of good." She focused on the female cultist. "You wanted power, done. Every time you fuck someone, you'll get six months younger and you're immune to disease." She turned to look at the other cultist. "Every time you eat someone's heart, you'll get another five years of life."

"Excellent," the cultist replied, fairly sure he could get a job at the coroner's office.

The demon girl turned to look at Nick. "Normally, I'd just nod and leave but you helped deal with the annoying bastard, so I'll give you the standard package."

"Standard package?" Nick asked warily.

"Demonic contracts," she replied with a grin. "It gives you the ability to conjure magical contracts that enforce the agreement as written if they sign it of their own free will. Meaning, you can't force them to sign it, though trickery of course is perfectly acceptable."

"Is taking the deal going to damn my soul or anything?" Nick asked, figuring it was a valid question.

"Killing a murderer isn't the same as killing an innocent and making deals with demons isn't actually a Hell worthy offense, so it all depends on what you do with the power," she told him.

"Okay," Nick agreed, getting the feeling that refusing wouldn't end well.

The demon girl smiled as she snapped her fingers and gave him the ability to conjure magical contracts, making sure that any souls he sent to hell would be credited to her account. "Done."

"Great, does that mean I can get out of here…" he trailed off as he found himself lying on some type of mat or something in a pitch black room.

0o0o0

Zoe glared at her cousin. "Let me get this straight, I got abducted by aliens that wanted to probe me and you get abducted by a couple of heroic aliens?"

"Yep," Vivian replied with a smirk, rather amused by the entire situation, if only because the reports of Rose's death were shit and Jack hadn't been shot and tossed in an unmarked grave by the police. The fact that she'd picked up two new cousins out of the deal was just icing on the cake as far as she was concerned. "They were cute."

"You've got all the luck," Rose complained, still a bit bitter about getting killed by a fucking Transformer wannabee.

"That's because I'm awesome," Vivian replied smugly. "Star even let me play with her breasts to see how bouncy they were."

"I'm just glad that you managed to deal with Kevin's body," Jack admitted, hoping things died down by the time they got back.

"No worries," Vivian replied with a grin. "Friends help you move, family helps you move bodies."

Dawn pulled her gaze off the busty naked red haired teenager and pushed the button to summon Julia's other cousin. She glanced at the message that told her she'd just unlocked magic and a Demonic Contracts ability. 'That's probably going to cost an arm and a leg.'

Nick reached up and touched the lid and then pushed it open, giving him enough light to realize that he'd been in a coffin. He sat up and focused on Jack, Rose and Vivian. "What's going on?"

"You got summoned, we're in an xainxia world and we have the ability to use qi and absorb corruption," Rose offered.

"Seriously?" Nick asked as he got out of the coffin.

"I was hit by Trunk-Kun in Japan, Vicky was kidnapped by alien heroes and Jack was captured by cultists that were trying to sacrifice him," Rose offered.

"Huh," Nick muttered when he noticed that Jack wasn't laughing or shaking his head. "I guess that makes as much sense as Vinny being a cultist and summoning an actual demon to kill me so he could get in Vivian's pants."

"Is the slimeball dead?" Vivian asked hopefully, not sure why the idiot couldn't accept the fact that she wasn't interested in fucking him.

"Yeah," Nick replied. "Eric shoved him into a portal to hell when he realized the demon wasn't going to kill me."

"Wait, why wasn't the demon going to kill you?" Dawn asked.

"Professional courtesy, I'm a lawyer," Nick admitted. "She might have just been using that as an excuse so she could get the cultists to turn on each other. Out of the nine cultists, only two of them survived."

"At least you're safe," Vivian replied as she pulled Nick into a hug.

"I'm just glad that Rose is still alive," Nick said as he gave his cousin a hug. "So, can I get some names of the people I don't recognize?"

"Zoe Smith," Zoe pointed at her twin, "Sarah Smith and the mad scientist is Dawn Frankenstein."

"We're from an alternate reality where Mom had twins instead of Rose," Sarah offered.

"And aliens?" Nick asked Vivian.

"Alien heroes, they needed a local guide so I sort of got drafted," Vivian replied with a grin. "Raven and Star, they were…" she trailed off as she realized why they'd been familiar. "Son of a bitch, DC is real."

"As in Washington DC?" Nick asked as his cousin let him go.

"No, as in DC comics, I'm pretty sure I just spent a couple of hours running around town with Raven and Starfire," Vivian admitted.

“And you didn’t recognize them?” he asked in disbelief.

“Seeing them in real life is completely different than seeing them on a comic book page,” she explained, “besides those curves were very distracting. I’m just having a hard time believing they were real. Were they real?”

"It's entirely possible," Dawn offered, knowing that one of her bodies was in Star Wars.

"It took you this long to connect the dots?" Jack asked.

"I haven't seen the cartoon in years, Star's skin was only slightly orange and the trailers for the new movie have a black woman playing Starfire. I was a bit distracted worrying about the dead body in the back of the truck when I met them and trying not to stare at Star's breasts the rest of the time," Vivian argued, a bit annoyed that she hadn't put the pieces together while they were hanging out.

"That's fair," Jack admitted as he pulled his attention off his cousin's breasts, rather happy that she didn't care if people looked.

"What type of xainxia world are we in?" Nick asked, trying to get some idea of how fucked they were. "Is it like Beware of Chicken or like one of the really stupid Chinese stories where everyone is spitting blood and screaming about honor when they wouldn't understand the concept if they were staring at a dictionary definition of it?"

"I've never heard of Beware of Chicken but the world seems to be reasonable enough, mostly because accidentally killing someone that has connections to some ancient elder is a real possibility. Some of the demonic cultivators don't have any chill. The Heaven's Fist sect was brutally murdered almost to the last man a hundred years ago because one of their young masters killed the woman running a tea shop and no one could figure out where she was getting some of her tea from, meaning the grand elder couldn't have his favorite tea," Dawn explained, fairly sure Giles would understand.

Vivian shook her head. "I'm pretty sure that doesn't count as reasonable behavior."

"Compared to stories where the idiots do anything they want and barely worry about consequences, it's pretty reasonable. Alchemy generally only takes hours or days, not weeks, months or centuries like some of the stories. It's a bit like the wild west, most people are polite or at least reasonably polite because everyone is always armed and some of the grand elders like walking around in disguise and beating the shit out of cultivators that insult them."

"Wouldn't that start wars?" Jack asked.

"Only if they get caught or if the sect thinks they can get away with it, some of the grand elders can level countries," Dawn warned them. "Most of the sects have basically adopted the idea that if the idiots die because they were doing something stupid, it's not an insult to the sect, it's just karma."

"Where does that leave us?" Vivian asked.

"We're in a pocket dimension that connects to a town just outside of the Empire which means that we're not under the authority of any of the grand sects or the Empire but it also means we're pretty much on our own when it comes to bandits and rogue cultivators. Thankfully, Mist can lock the gate down which means we don't have to worry about people showing up now that the school is up and running. If we can win one of the Empire's tournaments then the headmaster will get the ability to open portals back to Earth," Dawn explained.

"Do we have a realistic chance of winning?" Nick asked.

"There are different tiers of tournaments and your corruption eating talent should let you drastically improve all of your spiritual roots which are basically training boosters for the related element and they reduce how much qi you need to spend for the techniques so yeah, I'd say we have a decent chance," Dawn assured him.

"How do we get started?" Vivian asked as a man in a green sweatshirt and jeans walked into the room with her cousin and some people that she didn't recognize that were probably in their late teens or early twenties. "Hey Julia."

"Vivian," Julia replied with a smile, not surprised that her cousin had ended up naked. "Nick, Jack. Welcome to Hell."

"Just because you hate xainxia stories, doesn't mean I'm not going to take advantage of the chance to learn magic," Nick replied as he studied the group of young adults that looked like they'd been mutated or beaten black and blue. "Who are your friends?"

Feng Wu pulled his attention off the tall naked redhead and focused on the man wearing strange clothes. "Feng Wu."

"Morrigan," Morrigan offered, having trouble taking her eyes off all the attractive people in the room.

Vala pulled her attention off Vivian. "Vala."

"Lee," the dark haired young man muttered.

Julia glanced at Han who was staring at Vivian and sort of oblivious to the world. "Victims of corruption, we're going to be trying to rip it out of them so we can fix the damage so they can go back to mining and harvesting resources."

"Cool, how?" Jack asked.

"I learned a technique," Julia replied as she walked over with the book that she'd picked up from the library that contained some of the techniques that used corrupted qi.

Mist walked over to the minion creation machine where Dawn was standing and poured half of his magic stones into Dawn's basket so that she could make more minions. "Have you tried the option for a local version?"

Dawn pulled her attention off the corrupted cultivators that looked like they'd gotten the shit kicked out of them and looked at Mist. "Not yet, I was going to summon their other cousin and then go from there. Then I spent about twenty minutes answering questions and making a notecard that I can just hand to people so I don't have to explain it every time. How many spirit stones did they actually manage to mine?"

"Thirty five from mining and forty seven from the kobolds," Mist replied as Dawn started selecting perks and flaws for her new minion. "We also picked up eleven hell stones and about twenty pounds of spirit ore, which means we can probably start making weapons if we find a halfway decent blacksmith."

"I'm a decent blacksmith but most of that comes from a different world which means I'm going to need to find a book on spiritual metals or talk to a proper spirit smith that doesn't mind sharing secrets if we want to actually take advantage of the metal." 

"I'll put it on the list," Mist assured her, wondering if the town on the other side of the portal had a blacksmith and if they knew anything about spirit metals.

Dawn finished adding in the 'standard' collection of perks and flaws that she'd added to the rest of Julia's family. She added the cheap and much saner version of the Nudist Flaw that she'd picked up from Vivian then added the Magic Perk so that she could use magic. "I can't add another stack of Teacher's Pet without her going crazy, any suggestions?"

"Do you have a way to fix missing limbs or scars?" Mist asked quietly as he glanced over the list of flaws, fairly sure most of them weren't worth the points.

"I could make a magitech replacement for limbs, they're not nearly as good as flesh and blood but there are elixirs that can regenerate lost limbs so it wouldn't be the end of the world. Scarring would be easier to fix," Dawn replied as she selected the Scarred Flaw.

"The dimensionally displaced option is worth a decent amount of points," Mist pointed out when he noticed the option.

"This is fucked up," Dawn muttered as she selected the Missing Limb option as well as the Dimensionally Displaced option, giving her just enough points to pay for her Magic Perk and cover the ability to change her hair color at will.

"I'd put up with a lot of shit for magic," Mist offered.

"Same," Dawn agreed as she tossed five marbles into the machine. She selected the Abducted by Aliens option and hit the button, causing a notice to appear on the screen. "Unlocked Cybernetic Limb, unlocked Vengeance Flaw, unlocked Techmonkey Perk."

"Hey!" Wendy shouted from inside the coffin. "Where the hell am I?!"

Dawn dashed over and opened the coffin, revealing an attractive red haired girl wearing a pair of overalls with a cybernetic limb from just below the elbow of her left arm. "Hi."

"Michelle?" Wendy asked.

"I'm Dawn Frankenstein," Dawn replied, wondering if she had a doppelganger out there.

"Huh, okay," Wendy replied as she crawled out of the coffin and looked around, surprised to see her cousins. "What's going on and how did I end up in a coffin when I was in an alien bar when I went to sleep?"

Dawn handed her the notecard. "This should be faster."

Wendy quickly read through the information on the notecard. "Nice, I've been trying to get home for two weeks."

"What happened?" Vivian asked.

Wendy focused on her cousin. "Some stupid alien mad scientist was testing a schizo-tech long range teleportation device, they left half my arm behind then gave me a really shitty replacement and tossed me off his ship on a pirate base. If I ever find the bastard, I'm going to put a couple of dozen screws in his skull, wire them with electricity and flip the switch."

"I can relate," Zoe agreed. "The aliens that grabbed me wanted to probe me."

"At least you have both arms," Wendy replied with a bit of annoyance, wishing she'd had a chance to bash the alien's skull in.

"Don't worry, I'll make you a Regeneration Potion as soon as I get the supplies," Dawn assured her as she shut the coffin.

"That would be fantastic," Wendy agreed, relieved that she'd be able to get rid of the ugly piece of shit that she'd gotten stuck with. "This is just a basic model. It's better than nothing and leagues better than anything we'd find on Earth but it doesn't even have a blaster or the ability to shock people or rip their dicks off."

"When was the last time you slept or had a decent meal?" Nick asked, trying to think of the last time he'd seen his cousin this angry. "You're sounding hungry and a bit homicidal."

"You try losing your arm because some mad scientist didn't account for weight differences between species and I've been eating energy bars that taste like artificial cherries for the last two weeks," she complained then took a breath and let it out slowly. "Okay, sorry, it's been a long two weeks. It's nice to see everyone and magic rocks, so what do I have to do to learn magic so I can murder the bastard when I get back?"

"Talk to Julia," Mist suggested, making a mental note to avoid mentioning that they might be partially responsible for her missing arm, at least until it was fixed. 

"Sure, I can do that," Wendy replied as she walked over to talk to her cousin, looking forward to learning magic.

Vivian pulled her cousin into a hug. "It's going to be okay."

'For a given value of fine,' Mist mused as Dawn selected Wendy and picked the cousin and local version options, probably hoping they'd give her some better options.

"One local version of their family coming right up," Dawn said as she quickly grabbed the right perks and flaws and took a flaw that would cause a mid tier demonic cultivator to be after the new student rather than give them the missing limb flaw. 'Chan should be able to rip him apart if he comes to the school looking for her.' She frowned slightly when she noticed the price of the new student had jumped to fifteen magic stones. 'Weird, but that sort of makes sense since they have magic.' 

"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" Mist asked.

"Because you're paranoid?" Dawn asked as she dumped the stones into the machine and pushed the button, causing the machine to beep and give her a message. "Unlocked Familiar Friends in Weird Places and Everyone is a Cousin."

"Hello?" a rather familiar and soft voice asked.

Dawn practically teleported over to the coffin and yanked the lid open, revealing a familiar blonde haired woman in her early twenties that was wearing a pair of gi pants and a brightly colored green and purple vest that revealed a decent amount of skin. "Tara?!"

"Thanks…" Tara trailed off as she recognized Dawn. "Dawn?"

"Tara? Wait, you recognize me?" Dawn asked, a bit surprised that the local version recognized her.

"Ah, yeah," Tara admitted a touch sheepishly as she glanced around the room, recognizing people that looked like family. "I was actually living two different lives, one here and one in Sunnydale."

"Let me guess, you didn't tell us because you figured we'd assume you were insane?" Dawn asked.

Tara nodded. "It was a bit weird."

"It could be worse, you could be split between half a dozen lives," Dawn replied with a grin, not sure if the machine had created her or found her but happy to see her. "It's good to see you!"

"Same and thank you for the rescue," Tara replied as she grabbed the edge of the coffin and jumped out.

Dawn stared at Tara, trying to wrap her head around the idea of Tara looking fit and athletic while keeping her curves in all the right places. 'Willow is going to freak if I figure out how to get her back home.'

"Rescue?" Mist asked, surprised that the machine had created a Tara or summoned a version of her. 'Is that because Dawn grabbed the flaw or would it have grabbed someone else if she didn't fit?'

Tara turned to look at the middle aged man wearing a green sweatshirt and jeans. "I was being chased by a demonic cultivator on my way to the River Valley sect. He kept saying that I'd be perfect for dual cultivating. I told him I wasn't interested and he flipped out and tried to grab me, so I ran. Apparently I was courting death and couldn’t see Mount Tai according to him."

"We'll have to get a description of him later so our combat instructor can keep an eye out for him," Mist told her.

"Thank you," Tara told Mist then focused on Dawn. "How did you get here?" 

Dawn shrugged. "I woke up here a couple of days ago. It happens now and then, some of my lives come and go like side adventures in a game and some of them stick around, like my adventures in Star Wars and elf land, I've been there as long as Sunnydale."

"Huh, doesn't that get confusing?" Tara asked.

"A bit but I'm used to it," Dawn admitted.

"Wait, Star Wars?" Tara asked.

Dawn laughed. "I'm Anakin Skywalker's twin, we're a couple of years from the Clone Wars starting and we're learning to be Jedi which is a lot less helpful when it comes to combat than you'd expect when you don't have the force."

"Why didn't you tell anyone?" Tara asked, figuring Dawn's friends would have understood, unlike her father's clan on Earth.

"Everyone just figured I had an overactive imagination and then my folks locked Buffy up for telling the truth about vampires, I figured I'd come clean once I had proof and then I just sort of never found the right time until Xander got dropped in the elf dimension and I had to come clean to Willow."

"How's she doing?" Tara asked warily.

"Better, it took a while," Dawn admitted. "She sort of fell off the wagon and went after Warren."

"Is that how I died?" Tara asked. "I just remember red on Willow's shirt and then darkness and then I woke up back here and started actually dreaming normally, it was weird," she admitted.

"Yeah, he shot you, Willow tracked him down. It didn't end well for him and then she went a bit crazy but Xander managed to talk her down and she took a trip to England to get some therapy, she's better," Dawn assured her.

"Good," Tara replied with a sigh, having had a while to get her feelings in order. "I love her, I don't really trust her, but I still love her."

"Love is messy," Dawn agreed. "So, you're related to Julia and Wendy's local versions?"

"And Nick, Jack, Vivian, Rose and Zoe," Tara offered as she glanced over at the group of familiar people that obviously didn't know her given the fact that they weren't really paying her any attention. "It's going to be strange getting to know my family's doppelgangers."

"Makes sense," Dawn agreed. "Let's get everyone on the same page."

"Sounds good," Tara agreed as she followed everyone over to the group.

Mist glanced at the minion creation machine, starting to wonder when the other shoe was going to drop.

0o0o0