InsaneJournal

WHO: Nikola Tesla and Willow Rosenberg
WHAT: Attempt number one to use magic to revamp Nikola.
WHEN: [Backdated] A few days before this.
WHERE: Nikola’s lab.
RATING: Kid-friendly
STATUS: Complete; log

Since Willow had expressed the idea that all that he needed in order to turn himself back into a vampire was an instance of momentary magical confusion for his system to be willing to take back what had come naturally to it before, Tesla had been readying his lab for such a process. Magic was not something that he was familiar with much less actually knew how it worked. He was pretty skeptical that ‘magic’, in the strictest sense of the word, even existed in their reality, but if it was a way to get his abnormal abilities back, he was willing to give anything to shot. So he’d done his best to clear out the extremely sensitive (and possibly dangerous) projects that he had been working on and shielded the equipment as best as he could using modified EM protection and praying that it worked like it was supposed to.

Preparing the treatment that he had long since abandoned hadn’t been a simple task, but with the sample of Source Blood that he had been provided a long time ago, he hadn’t had to worry about all of the complications that had daunted him for decades without it.

So now, all he had to do was hope that Willow’s plan worked. If not, it would just be back to the drawing board. Again.

Of course, Willow was absolutely positive her plan was going to work. Yes, it wasn’t something she’d ever tried before and no, it wasn’t something she’d ever considered trying until faced with the issue. However she specialized in thinking outside of the box, in finding magical and mystical solutions to scientific quandaries. She hadn’t been joking when she’d told Nikola that she had a hobby of combining her two favorite subjects.

She’d been taking notes since their conversation and had a few different spells in mind that she could try, depending on the results of the first few tests. Truth be told, Willow hoped the first try or two would do the trick not because she had an issue with her theories being picked apart or proven wrong, or that she hated a challenge because that certainly wasn’t true. No, she hoped it work quickly because she could only imagine how frustrating it had to be for Nikola to be stuck in the situation he was in with no real solution in sight.

What could she say? She was a sap.

She was also running a little late. Glancing at her watch, Willow gathered up the last of her supplies and shoved them into the sack she had slung over her shoulder. She disappeared from the magic shop a heartbeat later, after telling Buffy she would be back soon, magically teleporting herself to the door leading into the lab. She didn’t feel right just popping in without at least a warning knock first, so she rapped her knuckles lightly against the door then opened it enough to stick her head inside and peer around.

“Hey!” she grinned when her green-eyed gaze landed on the man she was there to see. The redhead opened the door the rest of the way and gave a slight wave before stepping over the threshold. “Sorry I’m late,” she apologized. “There was this lady who needed salamander and kept trying to substitute with newt and so didn’t want to listen when I tried explaining that they aren’t interchangeable and she’s probably going to wind up blowing up her house tonight and it was just this whole thing but I’m here now and I promise I’ll work on my babbling.”

To all honesty, Nikola didn’t mind the babbling. He’d had far worse individuals that he’d had to work with with far more annoying traits. And either way, if what she proposed worked, she could talk his ear off for all he cared. “It gave me extra time to shield the equipment, so I’m hardly going to complain about a few minutes,” He said, looking oddly hesitant and excited at the same time. On one hand, he was getting to see something entirely new, something that could potentially solve a problem that he had been working on for nearly a year now, and possibly change his entire scientific approach. And on the other, he could potentially be setting himself up for not only major disappointment but also severe damage to his lab.

He really just hoped that the latter wasn’t on the table at the moment.

“So. Exactly what do I have to do?”

Grateful that he didn't seem put out by her incessant need to yammer on and on whenever she was too wound up, or nervous, or... much of anything, really, Willow smiled perkily and set her bag on an empty counter. Reaching inside, she pulled out a notebook she'd been using to write down different ideas as they'd come to her.

"Oh! Not much, really," she answered him as she began flipping through the pages. Her brow furrowed a bit in thought as she stopped at one particular equation before she blinked and looked back to Nikola. "The tricky part is going to be figuring out exactly which spell I need to use. In theory, a basic cloak should work but we're not talking trying to fool something on the surface..." Closing the notebook abruptly, she dropped it on top of her bag and clapped her hands together.

"Okay! Let's go with a DNA sample first. I hate to be the little witch that cried, uh, really powerful but... it's just best if we start small. Trust me."

So it was just sit back and let the witch do the heavy lifting? All right, that much he could do. He was used to letting others take on the bulk of the work when there wasn’t anything that he could do about a situation. After all, unless it called for an unusual and unique solution, most others could handle it just fine. Crossing over to his storage, Nikola removed the tray of DNA samples that he’d been working with over the course of his attempts. He refreshed them as often as he could manage it, and these had been taken just this morning.

“I’ve already prepared the treatment if you need a sample of it to test as well,” Nikola said as he held out the tray to her. “The lab is at your disposal.”

Willow smiled. "Thanks!" she said, taking the tray from him and turning, setting it on the counter. "And that'd be great, a sample of the treatment," she added. Already her attention was on one of the samples of his DNA, lips moving soundlessly as she said the first of a series of incantations meant to help center her. Then she set about readying the area, not needing very much space really.

She glanced over her shoulder at Nikola, still smiling, when she was ready to get started. "I'm just going to work on making your DNA look different, molecularly-speaking. This shouldn't take too long..." She looked back to the samples in front of her. "In theory, at least," she added in a murmur before placing her palms flat on the counter and closing her eyes. A heaviness seemed to sweep over the room a heartbeat later, the air becoming thicker. Slowly, wisps of Willow's red hair began to bleed to black before there was a giant swell of energy and a bright light shot through her palms, into the table, and circled the tube containing the DNA sample.

Her eyes snapped open and she began to speak, her voice lower than normal and all but humming with power. "Conceal," she said simply before pulling her hands away and raising them up. The tube rose into the air, the light seeming to lift it before enveloping it entirely. There was a bright flash and Willow simply waved her palm at the levitating tube to make it float back toward her, catching it with ease then wordlessly preparing a sample to view under the microscope. She glanced toward an available nearby monitor and snapped her fingers, turning it on and offering an enlarged view of what the microscope revealed beneath the lens. She didn't say anything, letting him see for himself what results they'd gotten on her first go.

To say that Nikola wasn’t certain how to react to what he was witnessing was an understatement. He’d seen plenty of abnormal things in his lifetime considering the various individuals and situations that he’d had to deal with, but this was a whole other level of fascinating. The atmosphere itself seemed to change, becoming thicker, denser, and the alterations to not only her person by the area around her drew Tesla’s attention in quickly. As the power echoed out of her, he found himself transfixed so much so that it took him a moment once it was all over in order to pull his mind back together as it raced through all the possible readjustments that he was going to have to make to his world view because of what he’d just witnessed.

As the monitor snapped on, Tesla forced his attention to shift as he stared up at the monitor. As far as he could tell, the slide looked perfectly normal, and considering that usually when he was looking at his own DNA, there were clear signs of his abnormal mutation, he could only take this as a positive sign.

“Amazing,” He managed to utter before his mind clicked back into gear, and he turned on his heel to retrieve one of the syringes of the time release treatment to test. Holding it out to her, Tesla couldn’t help but smile. “After you, my dear.”

It worked. Willow blinked, faintly surprised at how simple it had been. Okay, maybe not simple, considering she'd put a good eighty hours or so into working out the finer details, but to get it on her first go like that? She grinned brightly when he handed her the syringe, her eyes sparkling brightly and the black streaks in her hair already beginning to fade back to red as she proceeded to the next step of the test: seeing if the treatment would fall for her trick.

It didn't take much introduced to the slide and a few seconds later, her attention was darting back to the monitor. What if it didn't work? Willow felt the urge to start babbling about what they'd do if this was a bust, how she had plenty of other ways she could try it that weren't so easy but would definitely work. Maybe. Probably. She thought so, at least.

However before she could even draw in a breath to begin speaking the very thoughts tumbling about inside her nerve-wracked mind, just as she was turning to Nikola to start, she saw movement on the monitor. Wide-eyed, she turned back and watched as everything she'd worked out on paper began to happen just like it should. Her breath caught in her throat and she actually crossed her fingers, wide-eyed with wonder as his sample accepted the treatment without so much as a hiccup of an issue.

"Oh, wow..." she exclaimed softly, unable to help herself. "That's... well, that's good, obviously, but wow." It was fairly clear she definitely hadn't expected it to go this smoothly and a very small, cynical part that still remembered the luck of those raised on a Hellmouth wondered when it was all going to blow up in her face. For now, though, she pushed her worry aside and looked to Nikola with a goofy smile.

"Tada!"

The cells had accepted the treatment. Obviously it was going to be more difficult than a simple injection when it came to it taking in his body, but this was definitely encouraging. Tesla couldn’t help but smile at her excitement. It was definitely infectious, and any sign that he might actually be able to get this to work for a change was more than enough to get him excited as well. “Well, then,” Tesla said, a half grin gracing his features, “I have to say. I’m impressed. It’s far more progress than I’ve managed in months of work.”

Willow flushed a little and shuffled a bit in place. It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to compliments. She was. But she still had trouble accepting them gracefully sometimes. Which was good, really, because when she’d been evil and veiny she hadn’t had any trouble tooting her own horn, so to speak. Having some humility was definitely a good thing, where she was concerned.

“It’s nothing,” she said, then her eyes went wide when she realized how that sounded. “I mean, magically speaking, it’s not much. It’s going to be a lot more... oomph, when it comes to all of you.” She stopped the babble before she could get started by turning on her heel abruptly and focusing on the sample they were studying. She exhaled slowly, tilted her head to the side a bit, and waved her hand, palm facing outward, at it, lips murmuring something inaudible.

Her attention then went to the monitor, green eyes wide with hope as she watched the process undo itself. It was her own personal failsafe, a way to make sure she could reverse things if, for whatever reason, she couldn’t finish the process once she’d gotten started. Still, to be even more on the safe side, she turned back to Nikola.

“I’m going to need another sample before we get started,” she said with a slight smile. “Just in case I have to stop. I shouldn’t, but being prepared is always of the good.”

“Well, I’ve got plenty on hand,” Tesla said, plucking another sample from the tray and extending it to Willow. “It’s one of the few things that I’m not lacking, samples of my own DNA, so use as many as you might need considering,” He said with a slight smile. He was more than confident in her abilities, seeing the demonstration that had just been at hand, and even with the extra step that would be necessary in order to complete a bonding that didn’t take thirty some years, he didn’t doubt that whatever extra oomph that might be needed to do more than a few cells would be well within her grasp.

It was really hard to doubt considering what he’d just witnessed.

“Whenever you’re ready, so am I.”

There was a slight flutter of nervousness in her stomach as Willow nodded in agreement. "Let's get started then," she replied with a smile. Yes, it was risky and definitely jumping the gun a bit but what else was there to do? She could keep working on each sample, again and again, and tap out her reserves with only a bunch of test tubes of progress or she could put everything she had into working on the man himself. That was their goal, why not go for it? She was confident, at the very least, she could halt and undo the process without any permanent damage to Nikola if something went awry.

She stepped aside to let him set things up, considering this was his procedure she was about to tweak with a magical boost. Watching as he worked, she cleared her throat a little.

"Now, so you know, if something goes wrong, I'm going to do my best to just turn you back to how you are now. It isn't that I think anything is going to go wrong, and it most likely won't, but I've seen my fair share of foibles and I'm not taking any chances so if it all goes kablooey, I'm putting on the breaks and hitting the big old magical reverse. Deal?" Her babble finished, she smiled as reassuringly as possible when it felt like a hoard of butterflies was attacking her stomach at once.

“Relax,” Tesla said, flashing Willow a smile as he finished clearing the lab and readying a full dose of the serum to use on himself when the moment was right. “Just think of it as a bit of fun. Because, really, isn’t it?”

Fun. Right. This was definitely fun. Super fun, even. She was toying with nature and science and magic all in one. What wasn't fun about that? And okay, so she could think of about a million things that could go wrong, and could practically feel Giles glaring at her from across realities, but it was still definitely, and without question, fun to even be considering doing what she was about to do.

With a somewhat more relaxed grin, she tucked some of her hair behind her ears and nodded. "Fun," she echoed. "Sure thing. And, well, get comfy, I guess, so we can get started."

Getting comfy in a lab that was designed to keep him up and keep him moving was no simple feat. There were a few chairs, but most were high, straight backed that weren’t exactly the most well designed nor the most comfortable things in existence. In the end, Tesla opted to sit in the middle of the clear space between all of his workstations, crossing his legs and folding his hands in his lap. It seemed the most practical option as well as the safest. He wasn’t entirely sure what energy such as what he’d witnessed would do to him, so if it happened to overwhelm his senses, the less area he had to fall in, the better.

Looking up at Willow, Tesla couldn’t help but smile again. If this worked, he was definitely going to owe her. “Do your worst.”

Giving a nervous little giggle as she gathered up what she'd need and sat down in front of Nikola, facing him, she shook her head slightly. "Oh no," she replied, her tone light and semi-joking. "A little molecular splicing and gene altering isn't close to my worst." She held out her hand for his, exposing his inner arm and smoothly injecting him with the syringe before flashing him a perky grin. "But a girl's gotta have some mystery, right? So we'll save all of that for another time."

Getting as comfortable as she could in the position she was in, she rested her wrists on her legs and held her palms upward. "Take my hands," she instructed, "Then let me concentrate. This could get tricky."

And with that, her eyes closed and her breathing deepened. Much as before there was a heaviness that seemed to fill the air, then a light began to emanate from all around her. It finally seemed to gather around her arms and slowly made its way toward their clasped hands. Within a few more seconds the light had enveloped Nikola. Willow released his hands and bunched her own hands into fists, eyes squeezing even more tightly shut as she tried to focus all of her energy on what was taking place inside of him.

She didn't think it hurt him too much, at least she hoped not, but she knew it wasn't likely a very pleasant experience either. Still, no pain no gain, right? She hoped so.

Unfortunately, her hope was short lived as, no sooner was she halfway through the process when she felt herself already starting to grow weary. Realizing her oversight – her own ego having made her confident she could draw from the elements around her even though they were wholly foreign to her – Willow did precisely what she said she was going to do. With her hair turning blacker by the second and her veins already starting to press against her skin and give her a dead sort of look, she began to reverse the procedure as quickly as possible.

Finally, when she was sure the process was undone and Nikola wasn't in any danger of turning into a big pile of goo or something equally disturbing, the witch let her arms drop and collapsed over onto her side with a gasp of air. "Oh Goddess," she wheezed, staring up at the ceiling in an effort to make the room stop spinning. "I... can't do it. Not on my own. I thought I could and, if we were back home it'd be easy-peasy, but there's something blocking me here. I never even felt it until just now but yep, it's definitely there and it just doesn't mesh with my magic even in a teensy tiny way."

Struggling into a sitting position, clearly weary, Willow's hair was fading once more from black back to vibrant red as she looked Nikola's way with a truly remorseful expression. "I'll figure out a way past it," she assured him as she struggled to her feet only to promptly sit back down again and flop once more onto her back.

"It might take me a bit to find somebody with enough mojo to do the trick but I'll do it and did I say I'm sorry because I really, really am..."

Tesla hadn’t expected it to be comfortable. No, he was someone with enough experience in uncomfortable situations that he knew something that was going to be touch and go when he saw it, even if he’d never seen it before, and the sensation that he was currently experiencing was not pleasant. Even so, it wasn’t as painful as some things that he’d been through. It was a constant mild discomfort with occasional shocks. He’d closed his eyes in order to focus himself against the feelings, but when all of it ebbed away, Tesla’s attention turned onto Willow, a deep concern knotting his forehead at the change in her appearance. Even if it wasn’t a complete change, it certainly didn’t look like it was a good thing to have happen.

Moving easily as her exhaustion became obvious, Tesla shifted forward and offered her a hand to help her sit up if she really wanted to as it was obvious she couldn’t under her own strength, “I’m guessing the sudden dye job is a bad sign?”

Willow took the offered hand with a slight smile that would have been far brighter if it didn’t take so much effort. Letting him help her into a sitting position, she sighed and shook her head. “The more magic I use, the darker my hair gets. It’s the veins surging to the surface that means I’m up against something big and pretty much unmovable, magically speaking.” With another sigh, this one almost morphing into a yawn in fact, she refocused her gaze and peered blearily over at him.

“I couldn’t even float a pencil right now,” she admitted. Honestly, Willow was torn between feeling sheepish about the whole thing and feeling downright frustrated. She should be able to do this. This wasn’t half as difficult as other things she’d done. However, she wasn’t joking when she said she just couldn’t do it on her own. She was going to have to get some help. She just had no idea who, right now.

“Give me a couple of days,” she went on, this time covering her mouth as she actually did yawn. “I’ll talk to a couple of my contacts and see if anyone is up for it.” She frowned slightly and studied him for a minute. “And, because being vague is never good when messing around with this kind of stuff, you’re... okay, right? Aside from really disappointed, I’m guessing, and probably none too pleased with me right now...”

Disappointed, yes, but none too pleased was taking it a bit far. Things rarely worked how you expected on the first try, even for a genius like him, and to expect them to was putting way too much pressure on the situation. “I feel perfectly normal,” Tesla said, offering her a reassuring smile. “Even if I’m not entirely sure what you’re fishing for, nothing seems off at all. You shouldn’t have to worry about me, though. You’re the one that looks like you need a rest. You really shouldn’t have pushed yourself that hard. Not for my sake.”

After all, Tesla was bad enough about breaking people in order to get things done. He didn’t need someone else breaking themselves on his account. “A couple days it is, then. And make sure you’ve fully recovered first.”

Still smiling despite the weariness that threatened to make her collapse at any given moment, Willow finally managed to get herself to her feet. “I wasn’t pushing myself,” she said as she gathered up her supplies, her strength seeming to return more and more with each passing second. She looked almost like herself again when she finally slung her bag over her shoulder and, holding her notebook to her chest, turned to face him. Her smile had even brightened a bit, looking much more like her usually perky expression rather than the ghost of one she’d been wearing for the past few minutes.

“Any other time, I could do this in my sleep. It’s this place. Something blocking my pull.” She shrugged, clearly not worried about it. Like she’d said. She just needed a few days to figure out who could help her with that extra oomph. Shaking herself out of her thoughts, she added, “But I’ll get past it. I haven’t met a magical bubble yet that I couldn’t pop and boy howdy, this is not going to be the first.” And with a waggle of her fingers and another promise to be in touch, she made her way out of the lab and back to her own apartment. She needed something to eat, a nap, and to track down someone with enough magical ability to help her out of this particular pickle of a bind.

In a way, she decided as she paused outside his door and teleported to her own and promptly collapsed inside, taking on a project much too big for her was almost like being back home again. And just like there, she would figure out a way to help Nikola Tesla if it was the last thing she did in this city.