Fic: One Time Visit
Author: mkcrl120
Disclaimer: All the characters mentioned in this story belong to Joss Whedon or Mutant Enemy or some other people. I own nothing and wrote this just to get it out of my system.
Summary: Part of My Missing Scenes fics. Set towards the end of the BtVS episode Chosen. What if someone else was in town on that fateful day.
Rating: 15 by English standards (mainly for language)
Author: mkcrl120
The Ford Mustang sped down the empty highway, it's flame red colouring enhanced by some black symbols across it's bonnet, roof and side doors. A less than casual observer might have noticed that the symbols weren't there to make the car appear to be more stylish, but instead to represent something more tangible. An even more observant person may have noticed that these were identical to the tattoos currently worn by the driver. Someone with enough of the right kind of education may have recognised that the symbols belonged to a language that had been dead for over three thousand years. A language, to be strictly factual, that had never been spoken aloud by any human being in the history of the Earth.
At least not until two months ago, when the driver of the car had finally discovered something that would help him in arranging his revenge. Specifically something that could help him disappear off the radar of one of the most powerful demonic companies currently operating on this particular planet.
He'd been in the middle of planning the next part of his revenge when his sources had reported something that needed his attention. The demonic group who he planned to take down, had taken an aggressive move against the person that held the second position on his list. Even if he was able to stop whatever was about to occur, he doubted he would have done so.
Lindsey skidded his car to a halt a few feet from the 'Welcome to Sunnydale' sign. 'So this is it.' He thought to himself, 'This is where the biteless one meets his demise.'
"And if I don't get to cause it, then I'm sure as hell gonna be a witness." He said aloud, wheels spinning and causing smoke before the tyres reclaimed traction as they took him towards the town centre.
The main street of the town turned out to be just as empty as the highway leading up to the area had been. 'And the suburbs that I had to cut through.' Lindsey thought curiously.
"This is where Wolfram and Heart believe Angel learned to be a hero." He mumbled as he took in the abandoned shops. "Well, loads of people here to save... him and his Slayer must have been doing a fantastic job." He added sarcastically.
"Okay. Daylight..." Lindsey reasoned, examining each alleyway as he drove around the ghost town. "So the living dead are probably hiding in a sewer or something, but shoppers... students playing truant.. where is everyone..?"
"Right." He sighed, stopping his car in the middle of the road. For a few seconds he debated whether or not he should pull over to the side, but then dismissed the option as stupidity on his part.
Getting out the car, he walked round to the trunk and examined some of the magical objects he'd collected to help him exact his revenge on the company that had destroyed his life and thought they still had some claim over his soul.
"This is the one." He mumbled, pulling out what appeared to be an electronic scanner. "Picks up any Wolfram and Hart equipment from a distance of two miles."
He remembered stealing it from one of the lackeys that were routinely sent to the homes of clients that had left this plane of existence. 'No point leaving self-incriminating evidence around.' Lindsey smiled to himself, quoting some of the company lines. 'Don't know who might find it.'
Turning it on, he quickly caught onto the local signal. 'Mobile.' He thought as he quickly slammed the trunk closed and jumped into the drivers' seat.
Starting his engine, he made his best attempt at tracking the mysterious object through the maze of streets. Soon losing his bearings.
Finally the signal stopped. Lindsey looked out of his side window watching the large group entering what appeared to be school grounds. "It's not that big a town." Lindsey reasoned to himself, "There's no way it has both a boys and a girls school."
Then he recognised one of the people gesturing the younger girls through one of the entrances, seeming splitting them into subgroups and giving orders as she did so. 'Faith..?' He questioned, mentally running over all the details from Lilah's casefile. 'I thought you'd be inside for a very long time..?'
As the final members of the group moved inside, Lindsey found somewhere to park up and waited. "Didn't see Angel, must have already arrived."
He began to think back over what his source had told him. 'So, Wolfram and Hart have arranged to give Angel something to help out his precious Buffy. Except that they'd laid a trap for him. What a surprise, you do a deal with the devil you've got to check all the fineprint.'
An hour or so later, Lindsey was disturbed when multiple teenage girls came running out the building; some carrying weapons and other supplies, others carrying injured colleagues.
'What happened in there..?' Lindsey wanted to scream but refrained from doing so in order not to attract attention to himself.
Everyone coming from the high school seemed to be piling into a yellow school bus. This time he spotted a few older people with them, one of whom Faith appeared to be virtually carrying. 'Teachers..?' He queried, watching one of them take the bus' driving seat and start the vehicle up before pulling off.
Consulting his scanner he quickly summarised that whatever Wolfram and Hart had given Angel appeared to still be within the High School. 'And so is our little wannabe detective vampire.' Lindsey thought, realising that the vampire would probably have to use the tunnels to escape.
Waiting for the school bus to be out of sight before heading towards the school, he was shocked when one of the building's wings suddenly collapsed.
"What??" He screamed, hitting the brakes before he'd driven all the way to the building. As another section toppled to the ground, he quickly found reverse gear and hit the accelerator. Looking out the back window as he drove backwards he spotted a figure leaping from building to building.
"Angel..?" He queried, before shrugging the thought off. "Daylight still... and definitely not his build- must be Buffy, can't see there being any other Slayers in the area."
As he glanced back at the school he was shocked to discover it was no longer there. Resisting the urge to panic, he spotted the growing hole in the ground moving in every direction. He turned his glance to the direction he was heading in a tried to locate the school bus.
Spotting a T-junction coming up through his rear window, Lindsey used the opportunity to spin the car through a one-eighty. Sliding it smoothly into second gear, he hit the gas again immediately trying to get his bearings.
'Dammit, spent too much time looking at the scanner. Don't recognise anything.' He thought, resigning himself to chasing after the School Bus.
Quickly finding and spotting the larger vehicle, he was about to hit sixty when he made a sudden realisation. "I'm not on the same road as them." He figured, spotting that they were running slightly over to the right and obviously parallel to where he was. "And unlike me, they probably know the fastest roads out of here."
Spotting an intersection up ahead where he could flick across to where they were, he hit the brakes preparing himself to make two very quick ninety degree turns. It was after he'd made the first right one and about to make the left that he spotted a new problem.
The ground behind the bus was cracking ahead of where the rest of the sinkhole was. And it was destroying the part of the street he was fully intending to drive onto. "They're being chased by a freaking earthquake!" He stated in disbelief, unable to stop his forward momentum in time. He drove over the crack, dropping a few feet onto the other side. He could hear the suspension strain and then a sickening crash as the car made contact with the road.
Desperately trying to locate another street running parallel to the bus's, he turned into the first left he came across. As soon as he was safely round the bend he pushed the powerful car as fast as he dared. This seemed to work well for a few hundred metres.
"Shit!!" He screamed, stamping on the brakes hard as his car skidded to a complete stop. He'd come to a dead-end, he just had enough time to turn around before the sinkhole reached him.
The car dropped from the rear end, all Lindsey was bright blue skies. Then the back of the car made contact with the ground, and as it appeared to roll downhill the airbag deployed and hit him in the face.
A while later when the dust had cleared and Lindsey had regained consciousness. He opened the driver side door and door and stumbled out as he attempted to flatten the discharged airbag with his right hand.
After successfully disentangling his legs from each other, he stood up and surveyed his surroundings.
It seemed he'd got lucky, he was only a few hundred yards from where the crater ended. Everything in the immediate vicinity had suffered the same fate he had though.
It was like the earth had just dropped ten or fifteen feet and then let everything attached to it follow it like a domino.
Lindsey took one look at the state of his car, the back end was severely dented, and the bonnet was partially hidden by the debris what looked like the side of a toppled house.
Kicking the car in frustration, he reached inside to the passenger seat and picked up the scanner. "As it doesn't look like I'm going anywhere for a while, I may as well confirm that the vampire is dust."
Wandering deeper into the crater, he soon came across what he believed to be the epicentre. Activating his scanner he began to investigate the ruins, moving aside rubble whenever he could and walking around it when he couldn't.
'Looks like some students didn't make it.' He figured, spotting a few girls that were easily identified as teenagers. Spotting an adult nearby he continued past, onwards and down. 'Looks like a student teacher from her age.' He guessed.
As he identified his surroundings it appeared that the school had collapsed onto a cavern of some sort. Warily he made his way down, not as confident now that large pieces of metal and concrete were precariously balanced on other pieces over his head.
'And I don't want to even know what they were.' He reasoned, spotting the creatures that would have looked at home in some of the meetings that Upper Management had occasionally requested.
Finally he got to the exact spot the scanner stated his opponent was.
"How can I confirm he's dead if there's nothing here!" He fumed, lashing instinctively out with his foot and hitting what remained of a nearby pillar.
"Crap." He said, automatically looking up. Luckily the only thing that came tumbling down on his was dust and small pieces of rubble.
"Unless." He muttered, immediately brushing rubble at the chosen spot aside.
Soon his fingers clasped around something metallic. Pulling it out, he lifted the amulet in the air by the chain and examined it as it span around in front of his face.
"Definitely one of Wolfram and Hart's." He commented.
"And no sign of-" He stopped mid-sentence. Looking closer at the amulet in his hand, and odd memory occured to him.
"That was a bigger box, so they couldn't... could they..?" He questioned, before deciding to make his way back to what remained of his belongings.
Stumbling his way over the uneven ground, Lindsey eventually found his way back to his wrecked car.
He looked at the trunk where all his stuff was stored. He specifically looked at the large dent where the opening mechanism was located.
"Great." He muttered, pushing the amulet into one of his pockets.
A brief examination of the ground which seemed to contain the flattened ruins of at least three separate houses quickly revealed a large piece of metal that he figured he could use as a lever.
After approximately ten minutes of stabbing, straining and on occasion battering with what appeared to be a copper pipe, he successfully got the trunk open.
Once he'd gained access to the trunk, he quickly rifled through his stuff, briefly checking each piece of equipment to see if it could be used again before locating the piece he'd been after. 'Can't hide the truth from this baby.' He thought to himself. He'd been unsure of it at first, convinced that somewhere along the line he was being teased. It had taken weeks of testing before he'd began to believe it was anything other than coincidence. But over time he'd come to realise that maybe it was blessed by a fourth generation Wiccan. And she'd obviously had a sense of humour.
Grasping the amulet in one hand and the magic 8-ball in the other he asked his question while shaking the mystical object. "Is this Angel..?"
Stopping his gesture and looking inside all he could see was the cloudy swirling mess that always greeted him.
Concentrating harder on what he remembered about his opponent, he performed the actions again. "Is this Angel..?"
The same result was visible in the 8-ball. 'What the hell is wrong with this thing..?' Lindsey thought before rewording his question.
"Is there a vampire with a soul trapped within the amulet..?" He asked as he vigourously shook the 8-ball. Bringing it to a halt, he lifted it up to where he could see inside.
The swirling mess began to re-arrange itself, eventually forming the word 'Truth'.
"Angel. Angel. Angel." Lindsey tutted, grasping the amulet firmly into his palm. "I've got you now."
The End.