12
Chapter 12
Eddie's Ice Cream Hut
A few seconds after the previous chapter
All six Scoobies had been enjoying the conversation and the opportunity to relax after the rather nerve-racking events earlier in the night when the relative tranquility of the ice cream shop was shattered as the outer wall of the shop abruptly seemed to explode inward, and a twisted mass of automotive steel pushed its way into the store at an oblique angle, tossing the occupants of their table and the next across the interior of the student-filled room.
Xander opened his eyes to find himself sprawled across two struggling, cursing bodies, both of whom were trying to push him off them. Quickly scrambling to his feet, he ignored the pain throbbing through his right arm and searched the area for his Packmates and Marcie and Cordy, trying to ascertain everyone's current location and determine what exactly had happened and whether they were under attack. One moment they were all talking and joking, the next - BOOM! he found himself flying through the air.
Using the subconscious empathic link they all shared, he sought out his Packmates and his eyes immediately shifted left and fastened on Dawn as she dazedly pushed herself to her feet and began checking the area around her, just as he was doing.
Off to Dawn's left, Willow's brilliant red hair could be seen as she bent over a moaning, apparently semi-conscious and now very visible Marcie and the loud and virulent invective filling the air to his immediate right could be none other than Cordy, letting everyone in her vicinity know of her righteous ire and extreme displeasure at whoever was responsible for whatever it was that had just happened.
Buffy's connection, however wasn't detectable and worry began hammering at the detached and analytical segment of his mind currently in control as he scanned the debris filling the shop looking for her, the same way that Dawn and Willow were doing.
Another second's evaluation of the scene finally located her, lying limply off to the side, and he and Dawn were instantly rushing to her side, while Willow nodded her acknowledgement of their actions as she continued tending to the apparently seriously injured Marcie and shouted orders at the shop owner to call 911 even as she worried at the lack of connection to their Pack sister.
A quick examination of the petite blonde showed she was not breathing and had no detectable pulse. Dawn, reacting in accordance with the first aid training course they had all taken at the beginning of the year, immediately began straightening out her sister's limp body in preparation for CPR as she called over to Xander, "You do the breathing for her, Xand, and I'll do the compressions. I don't think you'll be able to do them properly with your arm like that."
Nodding his understanding, and noticing for the first time the way his arm seemed to be bent unnaturally in two extra places, Xander awkwardly managed to adjust Buffy's head and then inspect and clear her mouth of any potential obstructions before pressing his lips against hers and beginning to blow air into her lungs as Dawn started the compressions necessary to maintain the blonde's blood circulation.
"Come on, Buffy, stop being a bitch and cooperate and start breathing again," Xander could hear the younger brunette muttering under her breath as she pressed her intertwined palms down on her sister's sternum.
"We just took out the Master and we all walked away without a scratch, so there's no way you're gonna die from this! Think how embarrassing it would be to have your grave marker say 'Died while eating a Super Double Chocolate Fudge Sundae.' It'll make anyone reading it think you're a pudge! Come on, Buffy, breath, dammit! If you die, I won't have anyone around to blame for things when Mom gets mad about stuff! And I swear, I'll make sure your epitaph says, 'Her ass was too big!' " Dawn continued her plea/diatribe even as she relentlessly maintained the rhythm of the compressions.
A quick glance at his Packmate's face let Xander see the tears streaming down Dawn's face as she worked but he couldn't afford to waste any breath on irrelevant things like reassuring words while they labored to save Buffy's life, so he turned back and continued forcing air into her unresponsive lungs.
It seemed to the two of them as though they had been repeating their actions for hours by the time two teams of paramedics arrived, but Willow assured both her Packmates that it had been no more than three minutes after the 911 call had been made before they were unceremoniously shoved aside by a paramedic who began examining Buffy's limp and unmoving form with a professional casualness while three others began triaging the other injured customers scattered across the shop's floor.
"No apparent signs of pulse or respiration. Pupils are not fixed, I have a reaction," the paramedic stated calmly as she began pulling open the diminutive blonde's blouse and connecting a portable defibrillator to her chest.
"No detectable heartbeat. Shock advised," the woman announced after checking the device's readout panel.
"Clear," she ordered, making sure no one was in contact with the young woman's body before pressing a button on the defibrillator's panel.
Buffy's petite form seemed to tremble slightly, but showed no other response to the electrical shock that had coursed through her.
"Repeating," the woman coolly declared after rechecking the readout panel.
"Clear," she repeated her previous order before again pressing a button on the panel.
Again, Buffy's body quivered, but again, there was no indication of any change in her condition.
"Shock advised," the paramedic repeated the readout's recommendation.
Clear," she repeated a third time, then pressed the button once more.
~~~
Buffy opened her eyes to find herself sitting in the school library.
< What the hell's going on ? > she thought to herself as she looked around and couldn't find anyone else.
To the best of her recollection, she had just been scarfing down ice cream with the rest of the Pack, along with Marcie and Cordy, after killing the Master and wiping out a bunch of his minions - and Willow had managed to take out Drusilla, too, as a bonus, she remembered - and now, all of a sudden, she was here in the library all by herself.
Something smelled distinctly funny with this situation. And not in the joke-y humorous way Xander or Dawn would use trying to relieve tension, either.
"Hello? Anyone here?" she called out, as she reflexively pulled out a stake from the sheath she and the other Pack members had each taken to wearing at the small of their backs.
"Hey there, Slayer."
Buffy whirled around at the sound of the unexpected voice issuing from between two of the stacks, to find herself facing a short, kinda stocky-looking guy, who was dressed like he had just been thrown off the set of some movie dedicated to chronicling the various psychedelic experiences of 1960's drug users, since no sane person would have willingly donned the outfit he was currently wearing, she decided with a faint wave of disgust.
"Who are you?" she immediately demanded, her eyes narrowing with near-pain at the garish and clashing colors and combination of patterns of the clothes he was wearing as she glanced around the room for any sign of other possible occupants. "And what are we doing here?"
"My name's Whistler," the extremely unfashionably dressed guy said as he looked at her expectantly. "I'm what's called a Balance Demon. I work to try and keep things from getting too far out of whack here on the mortal plane."
"Good for you. What are we doing here?" she repeated her question, relaxing slightly as she didn't sense anyone else around.
"I've been waiting to talk to you."
"Why?"
" 'Cause I - I - I need a date to the prom."
Wirth an annoyed expression that showed she was clearly *not* in the mood for jokes right now, Buffy crossed the distance separating her from her new and unfamiliar companion in two quick steps, grabbed him by the throat and shoved him up against the wall while holding her stake in a vague but unmistakably threatening position somewhat below his waist.
"Listen up, okay, smart guy?" she growled in a low, dangerous voice. "I have had a *really* bad evening, 'cause a very good friend of mine just died a little while ago, and you are *not* helping make the night any better. If you have information worth hearing, then I'll be grateful for it. But if you're gonna crack jokes, then I'm probably gonna rip out your ribcage and wear it as a hat," she finished up as she then released him and lightly shoved him away.
"Hello to the imagery! Very descriptive," the other half-joked nervously as he made a rather drawn-out show of straightening his jacket, before the expression on his face turned serious as he looked at her.
"I'm not gonna ask again," Buffy growled at the demon's evasion of answering her question.
"Okay, okay! Sheesh, relax a little, willya?" Whistler said as he held up his hands. "This is just a waiting room before ya head off to your final reward, Slayer. Your body hasn't been officially declared dead yet by the appropriate authority, so we hafta wait until you're officially declared out of the game. Don't worry, it shouldn't be too long a wait."
"Dead? I can't be dead! Wait a minute! You said, you're waiting for official word about my death! That means I'm still technically alive, right?" Buffy demanded.
"Well, yeah, if ya really want to press the point. The Big Boss hasn't punched your ticket to your final destination yet, so you're not officially dead yet," Whistler admitted.
"Well then, if I'm not dead, send me back. If I'm not dead, then I'm alive, so you have to send me back!" Buffy ordered him.
"That's not really the orders I got given, kid. And lemme tell ya right up front, things weren't supposed to go down like this, at all." He almost seemed to be apologizing to her, Buffy decided, listening to his tone of voice.
"If everything had gone the way they were supposed to, according to the Codex, you woulda met the Master all by your lonesome, and he woulda killed you and then tried to open the Hellmouth, only to meet Angel and have the Souled One take him down while acting out his righteous rage at your death.
"But you and your friends ended up getting possessed by those Primals and started screwing things up royally, and we almost didn't get things headed down the right path again," he went on, apparently missing the narrow-eyed look of anger growing on Buffy's face as she listened to his little soliloquy.
"It took a little bit of tweaking, an early heart attack, actually, but we've finally managed to things back on track again, so once the Powers can get your friends in line, everything's gonna be fine," he finished up with a satisfied smile, only to suddenly find himself flying through the air without benefit of wings.
"AAAHHHHHH!" he screamed as he was abruptly slammed down on the large mahogany table the Pack usually used for research on whatever problem they might currently be facing, Buffy's petite hand firmly wrapped around his throat, her stake hovering above where his heart was and an outraged expression turning her normally lovely features into a fierce looking visage more appropriate to a goddess of war.
"What do you mean, once the Powers get my friends in line, everything's gonna be fine? And who is this 'we' you keep mentioning?" she snarled at him, her teeth bared with barely restrained anger.
"Who are these people who're trying to mess with my life and my Pack?" she demanded.
"They - they - they're my bosses, the Powers That Be," Whistler quavered, his eyes wide with fear as he looked up into the blonde's angry eyes.
"The powers that be what?" she asked, her grip not loosening in the least.
"They - they're the guys in charge," he answered immediately. "The ones who are directing everything going on in the battle against the Darkness."
"You're telling me that they're the ones responsible for me and the guys getting possessed by the coyote Primal Spirits?"
"Uhm, yeah. I think so," was the immediate answer.
"He is a liar. Do not take anything he might tell you as anything approaching the full truth," a second unfamiliar voice issuing from a different section of the stacks declared. "Whatever he tells you will be phrased to provide him and his masters with the maximum benefit possible while giving you as little information as they can manage, in order to better limit your choices and actions."
Turning her head in an effort to see the speaker, Buffy was dumbfounded to see a *huge* coyote silently glide from between two of the shelves. The beast had to stand at least six feet high at the shoulder, she realized with surprise, and the eyes that were staring at her and this Whistler character were not merely those of some overly large animal. They twinkled as they looked at her with both intelligence and wisdom.
And humor, too, she realized after another moment's consideration, as the coyote's jaws parted and seemed to curl back in what might be considered a much larger version of the grin she'd seen plastered so often on Xander's face over the course of the past several months.
"Who are you?" she asked, although based on all the research they had all performed during the first few weeks after their merging, she believed she had a fairly good idea of whom it was standing before her
"You already know who I am, daughter," the animal told her, as it sat down and grinned at her, its tongue hanging out of its mouth like some overly friendly, albeit extremely large, puppy.
"Some have called me Trickster, while others have referred me to me as Coyote," the coyote's mouth didn't seem to move but Buffy could hear his words plainly. "There are even some, in far distant lands I visited, who have called me Loki. You, however, may use whatever name you feel most at ease using.
"If you'll hold on a moment, I'll change into something a little more comfortable for you, since I can tell you're a little 'wigged,' I believe your expression is, about talking to me when I look like this" she heard the voice continue.
Before Buffy could say anything (and she had to admit, the other was right - she might be just a little bit unnerved about holding a conversation with a coyote the size of a small elephant), the massive creature seemed to blur slightly for a moment as its form flowed and shrank as it reshaped itself, leaving in its place a medium-tall, black-haired and dark-eyed man of possibly Hispanic or Amerindian ancestry wearing worn jeans and a tee-shirt with Wile E. Coyote's smiling face on it.
"Is this form more suitable for me to talk to you in, Little One?" he asked with a grin that simply *had* to be some great-great-great-ancestor of the one Xander was usually wearing, Buffy decided immediately upon seeing it.
"That's fine, sir," she smiled back at the newcomer, unconsciously relaxing from her defensive stance. The vibes she was getting this guy were much more reassuring than any she'd gotten from the fashion disaster she'd first met upon finding herself here. Wherever this particular 'here' might be.
"Uh, not to be rude or anything, sir," she said as politely as she could, "but what exactly should I call you? Considering who you are, it would be kinda rude to call you Coyote or Trickster or something like that."
"I've been called many things in my time, young one. Most of them not nearly as polite as either of those two names," the apparent coyote-turned-man smiled at her. "Would 'grandfather' be a more acceptable name for you to call me?"
"Uh, sure," Buffy nodded her acceptance of his suggestion, recognizing the term of respect the various tribes had used for their elders from their research. "That would be plenty okay...
"...Grandfather," she smiled as she used the new appellation for the first time, getting an equally wide smile from the man in return, "can you tell me what's going on here? Especially since you told me not to believe anything this bozo here says," she said as she indicated the guy who'd made Xander's former clothing selections look like they came off a top designer's rack. "He told me that there's some kind of problem about sending me back, even though I haven't officially been declared dead yet!"
"There are some who would contest your chance to return and join your Pack, young one," Coyote informed her with a small frown as the two of them both turned to glare at the being who'd introduced himself as Whistler.
"Hey, don't shoot the messenger," the balance Demon instantly protested, holding up his hands and reflexively taking a few steps back in an instinctive self-defensive move upon seeing the others' looks.
"And I mean that literally! I'm just following instructions, that's all!" he half-whined, a thin patina of sweat breaking out on his forehead.
"Exactly who are these Powers That Be guys who are saying that I can't go back?" Buffy asked Coyote as she focused a narrow-eyed stare on the cringing demon with them.
"They are relatively minor Powers whose responsibilities have apparently gone to their heads, and who now consider themselves the main arbiters of power for the forces of Light on this plane, as the little weasel over there said earlier," was the reply. "For some reason I really can't understand, they seem to think that your return will prove too unbalancing when compared against all the demons and the undead currently running loose in the world.
"I guess that means you're more than a match for most of those candy-asses the Dark Side's got out there, kiddo," Coyote grinned at her. "I suppose it's a good thing for them you're only sixteen. If you and the rest of your Pack were older, they'd be wetting themselves just thinking about you."
"No, our decision merely means that she doesn't get a second chance to try and thwart her betters' plans," another new voice announced.
By this time, Buffy wasn't at all surprised to see the Master shove the double doors of the library's main entrance apart, a scowl on his misshapen face.
"You're just mad that I get another chance and you don't, fang face," she sneered at her instinctive enemy as she reflexively tensed at the sight of him.
"The Infernal Powers do not wish to allow you an opportunity to return and resume your - previous occupation," the former Master of the Hellmouth declared somewhat pompously.
"And they have reached agreement with your masters, bitch, so that you will not be permitted to return," he sneered back at the blonde Slayer, an expression of triumph on his deformed face as he looked at her. "Just sit back and rest, bitch, and enjoy your retirement while you watch my brethren slaughter your friends."
"Stuff it, asshole," Buffy snapped back, taking a step towards her apparently now-permanently deceased foe. "I'm going back and nothing's going to stop me; least of all you!"
"Relax, daughter," Coyote advised as he stepped forward to block her advance towards the Master. "Are you saying that you don't want a chance to stop fighting and take the opportunity you're being offered to continue on to your final reward?"
"No, grandfather, I don't," Buffy immediately shook her head in an emphatic 'No!' "I'm not gonna leave the guys alone back there, especially not after hearing that these Powers guys think we've been screwing up whatever their plans for things might have been. I don't know how much good I can do back there, but I'm not just gonna quit and sit back and do nothing!"
"You forget, you don't have any say in the matter, Slayer," the Master laughed at her, a superior look on his face. "The matter has already been decided."
"Actually, the decision made was made by those who are not empowered to do so," Coyote noted in a calm voice. "Since her death has not yet been mandated by the One Above All, they have no right to attempt to interfere in my child's destiny."
"I represent the Infernal Powers here, fool," the Master scowled at the being disagreeing with him. "Your inactivity shows that you relinquished your interests in this plane ages ago, and no longer have any say in the matter."
"Even though your masters have not recognized any actions I may have taken in any of the various contests they have been involved in over the course of the past few millennia, that does not mean I have renounced my interests in this plane, puppet," Coyote replied quietly as he stared at the Master across a distance of a few feet with a seemingly placid expression on his face.
Then, in the space of an instant, the man was abruptly replaced by the form of the enormous animal that had first entered the library a few short minutes before, and Coyote's jaws snapped out to close around the vampire's neck, ripping out the demon's throat and causing its body to vanish in a short burst of black light.
A fraction of a second later, he had reassumed his human form and turned to look at the balance Demon with the same placid expression on his face he had worn prior to his 'discussion' with the Master.
"My daughter wishes to return home, now, demon," he informed the now blanching demon. "Do you have a problem with that?"
"N-n-n-no! Not at all, your lordship," Whistler managed to quaver out as he backed up a few additional steps. "No problem at all!"
"Good," Coyote smiled at the answer. "And tell your masters to tend to their own affairs and not meddle with my children. To quote a mortal television show, 'Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry'."
The Trickster's grin had more than a bit of tooth showing as he advised the clearly unnerved Balance Demon, Buffy noticed as she looked on with a pleased smile.
"Thank you, Grandfather," she beamed as she impulsively threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. "You are the best!"
"Thank you, Little One," he looked at her with a benevolent expression. "Now, I don't want to see you hanging around here for a good many years yet, you hear me?"
"Loud and clear," she agreed.
"All right, then. You head on home, now. And tell your packmates that I said 'Hi!' when you see them," he told Buffy, and suddenly everything went black around her.
"And take care of your new hunt sisters when they show up," she thought she heard him telling her in her last instant of consciousness.
~~~
The Cherub Simon watched the action from across 'the Library' glad that he didn't have to interfere with Coyote's handling of the situation. Trying to get a godling off his eternal tukus and rejoining the fight was not his idea of a good time. The PTBs had seriously lost their way and the Boss decided that a little competition was just the motivation they needed to get back on track. He idly wondered who else the Trickster would pick as a champion as he took flight and disappeared into the ether.
~~~
"Buffy, can you hear me?"
"Hey, Buff, talk to us, okay?"
"Buffy? Can you answer me?"
"Miss Summers, can you answer me, please?"
"Lemme 'lone," Buffy mumbled as she blearily looked up into a handful of out-of-focus and seriously rotating faces apparently staring down at her.
"Jus' wanna sleep some more..." she complained as she tried to turn over onto her side and pull her blanket up over her head.
What were all these people doing in her bedroom, interrupting her sleep, anyway? she wondered dazedly. And what the hell happened to her blanket?
"How do you feel, Miss Summers?"
Some annoyingly insistent voice kept pestering her and wouldn't do away and let her rest quietly. Maybe if she squeezed their throat closed for a couple of minutes, they'd think twice about disturbing her the next time, she mused.
"My chest hurts," Buffy replied as she finally became conscious of a massive ache that seemed to center itself around her solar plexus and sternum.
"You're extremely lucky, Miss," the annoying voice commented. "It looks like a big chunk of the cinderblock wall hit you in the chest and the impact disrupted your heart's rhythm and caused it to stop beating, You're fortunate it didn't cave your whole chest in."
"Yeah, sure feels that way," Buffy grumbled sarcastically, wondering what the hell this idiot was on, telling her she was lucky to get hit in the chest with a piece of wall.
Give her a day or so to heal up, and she'd be glad show this jerk just exactly what something that felt like.
Moron.
The petite blonde's mental grumbling was interrupted by the her Packmates' semi-politely shoving their way past the paramedic and enveloping her in a group hug that felt immensely comforting and reassuring despite the pressure it put on her still aching chest. The intensity of their worry over her injury, relief and happiness at her awakening and their general jubilation that she was reacting to them, both physically and empathically, in exactly the same manner she had before the accident was almost overwhelming.
"You had us really scared there for a minute, Buffy," Dawn admitted in a voice that sounded as though it were still possible she might break into tears at any moment.
"Don't ever do anything like that again!" she ordered as she leaned back momentarily and smacked her sister on the shoulder in warning.
"Hey!" Buffy protested reflexively. "You're not supposed to hit injured people. Even I know that much about medicine!'
"We were all really worried about you Buffy 'cause you weren't breathing and neither Dawn or Xander could find a pulse and we thought you might have died after that section of wall hit you and if you did die after killing the Master tonight it would have been really ironic and not something that any of us wanted to even think about so like Dawn said don't ever do anything like that again okay and I'm really start to babble now so I'm going to shut up for a while but I am really glad you're okay and that there isn't anything wrong with you and I'm really shutting up now," Willow managed to get out all in a single breath, impressing everyone in the area who heard her speak, even if they couldn't actually understand the entirety of what she had said.
"What they said, Buff," Xander grinned at her as the blonde turned to smile at him and Dawn after their redheaded Packmate's almost breathless chatter left her smiling in embarrassed semi-bemusement. "Glad to see you're okay, now, though."
"I'm kinda glad I am, too," she smiled at her Packmate for an instant as she struggled to sit up, before she noticed the way Xander's arm was hanging in a completely non-normal way, what with the two additional bends in it that he hadn't had when they sat down to eat a couple minutes ago.
"Ohmigod, Xand! You're hurt!" she exclaimed, he eyes going wide with alarm at his injuries. "Is anyone else hurt?" she asked as she immediately began looking around for Cordy and Marcie after a quick mental check over of her other Packmates.
"Aw, it's not much more than a scratch, Buff," Xander tried to shrug off the seriousness of his injuries. "Give me a day or so and I'll be fine."
"Guys, make sure he's looked at as soon as possible, okay?" Buffy instructed the other two women, as she suddenly felt a bit lightheaded and had to lie back down on the gurney on which she was currently lying. "I'm starting to feel really tired, now."
"We need to transport both of you, as well as the other young lady, to the hospital now," the woman paramedic standing next to Buffy's gurney announced authoritatively. "You need some X-ray taken, young lady, and you need that arm set properly, young man."
"Okay," Buffy heard Dawn and Willow both agree, as a sense of lassitude overcame her, and she nodded agreeably as she heard the paramedic ordering her to settle back and for Xander to follow them to the ambulance.
A moment later, she was dozing peacefully under Xander's watchful eye, the hand of his uninjured arm held in a firm grasp, as Dawn and Willow followed Cordy out to her car on their way to the hospital.
~~~
Summers residence
The following afternoon
"So you're saying that the being responsible for all of your possessions by, and eventual mergers with, the coyote Primal Spirits actually appeared to argue your case with the representatives of the other Powers?"
Giles' voice was filled with a combination of wonder and awe at the story Buffy had told them, once Joyce had gotten her daughter comfortably settled to her own satisfaction on the rec room couch after the petite blonde's discharge from the hospital a few hours earlier.
The other three Pack members, Joyce, Giles and Jenny were all seated in a semi-circle around the tiny blonde's current resting place, listening with rapt fascination to the Slayer's recitation regarding everything that had transpired during the moments before the paramedic's successful resumption of her heart. Cordy was absent from the gathering, having called and informed her friends that she would be by later, after she stopped by the hospital and verified for herself the quality of care being given to the thankfully still visible Marcie, the young woman having suffered a collapsed lung, several fractured ribs and a broken leg as a result of the previous night's accident. Aside from Xander's broken arm and a wide assortment of bruises and contusions, none of the other three Pack members had been injured and everyone else in the shop had suffered remarkably little other damage, too.
Looking at things from a paranoid point of view, it would almost appear as though the accident that had occurred had been arranged specifically to remove Buffy from the mystical playing field.
And following that line of reasoning and adding to it their knowledge of the circumstances concerning the initial possessions, the various events subsequent to the Packs' merger with the Primals and the extensive research he and Jenny had performed when not involved with researching the current 'Big Bad,' the Watcher was personally left with few doubts regarding the veracity of his Slayer's story, despite the apparently hallucinatory nature of Buffy's narrative.
"Actually, Giles, Grandfather Coyote didn't so much argue with the Master as he just simply destroyed his essence there and then kinda challenged the Powers' rep there to do anything about it," Buffy replied, a pleased smile on her face as she remembered the events she was describing.
"He pretty much flat out said that the Powers should stop trying to interfere in anything he was involved in, or else!" she stated, the smile becoming even brighter.
"And I got the definite impression that if they do try anything else, their upper management is gonna be looking for replacements for them real soon."
~~~
As the group discussed the possible ramifications of the metaphysical meeting Buffy had attended, a dark-haired man watched from his location in a distant multi-dimensional matrix.
"Very good, daughter," he smiled with pride and gratification at the girl's analysis of the events she had been privy to.
"I knew my selection of you and your Packmates would take them unaware," he murmured to himself. "The others may be willing to concede your section of the Cascade to the Darkness in return for a temporary advantage, but I refuse to do so, my children.
"There is a greatness you may yet achieve, despite their abandonment of their responsibilities, and I will prove that to them once and for all, when you and your fellows shoulder them out of your way and take your rightful place by my side," he predicted.
"Until then, I am content to merely watch and allow you to discover the hidden truths, yourselves, in your own time and at your own pace."
~~~
FIN
