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Jenny Calender took great deep breaths of fresh air once she arrived on Avalon's surface. It wasn't that the base was stuffy or anything, it was just.... She'd never breathed in anything so pure in her life. She...
Wasn't alone.
A small white haired woman stood at the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean. Her head was tipped back as if she were looking at the sky as the skirt of her calf-length green dress blew around her legs.
Looking at said legs made Jenny realize that the other woman wasn't standing at the edge of the cliff. She was hovering just past it.
Her jaw shut with an almost audible click.
The Gypsy frowned slightly as the woman raised her hands in the air, tracing glyphs and sigals that hung in the air before her, glowing a silver tinged green. Some of the glyphs and sigals Jenny recognized from her own magical training. A few she could guess at from their similarities to other runes and symbols.
The magic being simply pulled from nowhere Jenny could sense made her stomach roll uncomfortably. The small woman was calling up tremendous amounts of power.
And she wasn't doing anything with it.
The magical energy seemed to reach a crescendo, crashing in on the white haired female, surging around and through her as the glyphs and sigals burned brightly before winking out.
Jenny hissed a stream of foul words in her native language as she braced for the expected mystical shock wave that never came.
The tiny white haired woman looked over her shoulder. A long pointed ear twitching in concert with the very annoyed look in her too green to be human eyes.
"Janna Kaldarish of the Rom, I presume," the smaller woman said calmly. "Is there something I can do for you, Miss Calander?"
"What the hell were you doing calling up that much power?"
Jacks Standish blinked slowly as she completed turning toward the human technopagan. "I was reaffirming my connection to the magical warp and waft of this reality, Miss Calander."
Jenny took several deep breaths, both to calm herself and shake off the after effects of such a powerful surge in magic. "Where exactly where you pulling all that power from anyway?"
That question earned another deeply annoyed look. "I already said the warp and waft of this reality. Honestly. The weave maybe looser in here, causing it to flow along lines and tangle into pools of energy, it is still there and I am still connected to it as a magical being native to this plane."
"Well, at least this answers the question of why they don't want you teaching Willow magic," Jenny snapped. "Do you even know anything about human magicks?"
"There are many answers to that particular question," Jacks said, carefully modulating her tone. "Most of which you wouldn't understand, so I think I'll answer the bit about Willow first. After my brief acquaintance with Willow, I would not teach her magic even if Xander wanted me to do so."
That brought the technopagan up short. "You wouldn't? What's wrong with her?"
"Nothing is wrong with her," Jacks sighed. "After she has a stronger grip on magic, I might reconsider."
"Yet you're teaching a much younger girl magic."
Large neon green eyes blinked slowly. "From one point of view, yes. I am. But my relationship with Dawn Summers is vastly different from my relationship with Willow."
"How so?" Jenny demanded.
"To start with, Dawn is my best friend." Jacks began to turn in lazy circles in the air. "She knows the price of the magic she needs to learn to control, and it comes from within her."
The Gypsy computer teacher raised her carefully groomed eyebrows. "So you're just waiting for me to lay down the foundation with Willow before you take over."
"Not hardly, Miss Calandar. Willow will have to request lessons from me in specific areas once she is much farther along in her studies than merely the basics." The half-fey landed lightly and stood before the taller human. "I understand that Willow is a genius. Learning comes quickly to her, the sort of knowledge she will need to be a student of mine will not."
"And that little girl has that kind of knowledge?" Jenny asked sarcastically.
Jacks narrowed impossibly, inhumanly green eyes. "Dawn understands things far beyond the years you believe she has, and far beyond the years she could rightfully number. No one has told you who I am, have they?"
"I know who you are, everyone was using your name back in Sunnydale."
Laughter echoed out like a thousand silver bells ringing joyfully. "Only as Jacks Standish. No one once told you who I am, nor has anyone since we arrived here or there would be a different tone in your voice, child of the traveling ones."
Dark eyes narrowed at the laughter directed at her. "Then who the hell are you?"
"I am Jacqueline Patience Warren Standish, daughter of Melinda Warren and the Puck," Jacks said with laughter still dancing behind her eyes. "I am Coyote's Shadow of the Apache. I am the Heir of Avalon. Do trust that I know what I'm doing with my student, and tend to your own."
"Of all the arrogant..." Jenny muttered, glaring at the inhuman woman still floating before her. "Do you think that all of that makes you a better witch than I am?"
"Not hardly," Jacks said brightly. "Just a more powerful one. And you're certainly a better teacher for such a student as Willow. As I am better suited as a teacher for Dawn."
"I get the feeling that you shouldn't be teaching anyone," retorted the human techno pagan.
Jacks snorted. "Obviously you haven't spoken with Dawn. With her temperament, I'm likely the only one who can teach her."
"Should I be asking what's wrong with Dawn Summers?"
"She's a very angry young woman," Jacks told her after a moment. "Dawn is also a very focused young woman. She knows what she wants and even has a very good idea of how to get it. Eventually, she'll settle down, but right now she needs a teacher who has a stronger hold on her than you or even Giles would."
"A teacher shouldn't need a hold over their student!"
Jacks snorted. "Really? Then what are grades and detention for? What is between Dawn and myself is far more effective."
"What kind of hold could her best friend have over her?" Jenny demanded.
"She knows I'll kill her if I have to," Jacks said flatly.
Even the wind seemed to stop at that statement of cold fact.
Finally Jacks continued, her green gaze gone icy never left the mortal woman's eyes. "I was forced to kill another friend and student when she decided that taking my blood was the only way she would ever be as powerful as she wanted to be. Dawn... is a very different girl, but she knows what will happen if she crosses the line. It will destroy a part of me, but I will not have another power mad bloodmage loosed on the world because of me. I will blast her to ashes first."
Jenny continued to stare at the inhuman woman hovering before her, eyes wide with horror. "Then... why teach her at all?"
"Because she'll learn it anyway she can if I don't," Jacks explained softly. "She wants it bad enough to taste it like the iron tang of blood in the back of her throat. Eventually, Dawn will seek her own paths, but until then I will continue teaching her. Regardless of what the Commander thinks of the matter."
"Nice to know what you really think of me," Xander said as he stepped out of the thick jungle behind Jenny.
The computer teacher started at his sudden appearance, wondering how the hell he'd done it.
Jacks shook her head with a small smile. "You have given me a cause to fight for again. You led me back to one I had believed lost to me. You have gifted me with sisters, and allow me to stand at the rebirth of our ancient order. For any of those reason I would cheerfully follow you into the very gates of Hell itself. But Dawn is more like me than any of us want to admit, Xander."
That earned her a supremely annoyed glare. "If you and Faith hadn't taken her clubbing in Panama this wouldn't have come up for years."
"If Faith and I hadn't taken her clubbing in Panama she would have exploded with frustration," Jacks retorted. "That would have been far messier than her battle with the Countess. This was coming, Xander. And we all knew it."
Xander scowled. "I am not happy."
"You don't have to be. Neither does Joyce. And frankly I don't care one way or another if Buffy is pleased with the situation." Jacks paused then shrugged. "Either Buffy. Elanthielle should know enough about magic to tell you that I'm the only one we have who can train Dawn properly."
"And if Giles can?" Xander snapped.
"Then he already would be," Jacks snapped back. "You may rank me as a Knight, m'lord Commander, but don't presume to scold me on matters of the archane. What you've only known to exist for less that two decades is my flesh and blood, my breath and bone. Just. Like. Dawn."
That brought both the leader of the Knighthood and the Gypsy woman up short.
"You're going to keep fighting me on this aren't you?" Xander asked calmly.
Jacks grinned. "With my last breath. And you won't order me not to teach her."
"Why won't you?" Jenny asked the young leader.
Xander smiled tightly. Maybe Jacks was right, Dawn had just used that against him. "Never give an order you know won't be followed."
"You did order me to protect her." Jacks shrugged. "This is simply another way for me to do so. Would you really trust anyone else with Dawn's training?"
It seemed Xander had found the one thing Jacks Standish wouldn't concede to him as her Commander. And there wasn't much he could do to make her teaching Dawn as unpleasant as possible.
"Dawn has agreed to rules I've set down, Jacks," Xander finally said. "If she can't handle it, I want you to bind her powers."
Jacks shook her head. "She can handle it. Which may be more of a problem. Dawn and I have already had this discussion. My consequences are much... harsher than yours. And my rules more demanding."
"Yet you haven't done anything to stop her little bout of self destruction," Xander grumbled.
"She isn't being self destructive," Jacks said mildly. "She's separating the wheat from the chaff as it were. To walk the path she is most inclined to, Dawn must be certain as to who she is beyond other's expectations of her. Even mine."
"She has time to figure that out," Jenny said mildly.
Jacks sent her an icy look. "No. She really doesn't, Miss Calander. Keep your attention to your student and leave Dawn to me."
"I was going to ask Miss Calander think about teaching Dawn as well," Xander interrupted before the half-fey witch could go on a rant.
"That will go over like a lead balloon." Jacks scowled thoughtfully. "Dawn is a very different situation than Willow is, Commander. She understands limits and has always had rules whether she's always followed them or not. Willow has... dabbled. Dawn's first use of magic was under combat conditions. She won't be able to turn away from that."
"...." Xander stared at Jacks for a long moment. "What are you saying?"
"I'd like to submit for your approval that Dawn Summers become my Squire, Commander Harris," Jacks finally said. "To train as I see fit and discipline as I see fit."
Even the birds fell silent at that calm, formally worded statement.
Well, except for that laughter that rang in the back of Xander's mind. He was so entirely screwed.
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