In the cavern below Sunnydale, Buffy Summers opened her mouth to yell, "Atta--", only to be interrupted by something that deserved a high position on a list of 'Top Ten Things That Can Only Happen In Sunnydale'. A stupendous lightning bolt flashed into existence there, smashing onto the cavern floor and deafening and blinding everyone there. As Buffy, Faith, Spike and the Potentials frantically blinked their eyes, expecting to see the First Evil and his horde of uber-vampires coming at their throats, the forces of good were staggered at what was instead revealed.
A group of people nobody thought would be showing up were now in front of them. Every person who had been in the school -- Andrew, Anya, Giles, Willow, Dawn, Wood, Kennedy, and other Potentials --- dazedly looked around in increasing panic, only to see the other Scoobies and rushing towards them, joining into one group. Buffy stared in astonishment at one particular individual who really shouldn't have been there.
"Angel! What are you doing here!" she shrieked at the baffled vampire.
Her former lover's head snapped around to stare disbelievingly at the blonde Slayer. He managed to speak, "I don't know! I was on my way to Los Angeles, when I appeared here, and….and….uh, Buffy, are those Turok-Han vampires over there?"
Loud laughter filled the entire cavern. As the heads of the defenders of humanity turned, they all saw a primitive-looking young woman with mud-caked dreadlocks grinning at them, standing in front of a horde of the worst monsters of the world. The First Evil, in the guise of the Primal, the first girl given the powers of the Slayer, laughed uproariously again, finally saying, "I have to admit it, this wasn't what I planned either, but I'm certainly not going to turn it down! I'm bringing all my forces here! Prepare to die!" The villain started to wave its arms as a command to attack, only to pause at a most odd noise.
"Phhhwwweeeeeeeee!" From the left side of the cavern, a certain individual strolled into the light, pulling out of his mouth the two fingers he had used to create the shrill whistle. A really offensive smirk on the man's face accompanied his shout to the First Evil, "Hey, Casper, didn't you ever read the Evil Overlord list, especially the shortest rule? I'm talking about the two-word instructions: Gloat later!"
Willow Rosenberg, who had known the man the longest, said quietly, "Xander."
All there stood frozen, every single individual on either side. It may have been the jarring events putting everyone into paralysis, the fact that a single man was casually walking towards thousands of super-strong monsters, all while keeping an insolent smile in his face, or what really drew everyone's attention.
Xander Harris was carrying on his shoulder something that was the focus of all in the cavern. He didn't have a weapon; to be specific, an instrument designed to injure or kill. What he had was….a shovel.
It was a totally ordinary long-handled scoop, with a wooden handle and a flat metal head that was slightly curved and came to a somewhat blunt point, the same kind found all over in numerous hardware stores and in tens of thousands of suburban backyards, being used for the most prosaic gardening and digging purposes.
Buffy Summers felt as if her brain had just exploded. Shaking her head, the Slayer glanced around her at the other's identical looks of disbelief, and tried to think of something --- anything! --- to do, as Xander got even closer to the unmoving multitude of monsters. One reason these hadn't yet attacked the presumably insane human was the distinct possibility that this was some kind of trick, yet Buffy knew this couldn't last long. She desperately muttered, "Willow, can you---" only to be cut off by another incomprehensible event.
Swinging around, the head of his shovel right in the face of the First Evil, who flinched away the slightest, Xander stood in front of the group of unearthly creatures, coolly showing them his bare back, and shouted at his buddies. "Hey, Buffy, guys, stay there for a couple minutes, okay? I'll be with you as soon as I deal with What's-His-Face and the Little Rascals here."
The complete silence after that was broken only by an incredulous stifled giggle by Willow, who, if she hadn't been totally terrified for her Xander-shaped friend, would have been the first to admit she'd expected nothing less from him.
That sound from the red-haired witch actually carried across the entire chamber and this might have finally been the last straw for the First Evil, who screamed, "KILL HIM!" The closest Turok-Han stepped forward, their fangs and claws ready for slaughter.
Still facing his friends, a wide grin on his face, Xander's right hand slid up the wooden handle he was grasping almost all the way up to the top, and then with a twist of his hand, wrist and arm, he spun the shovel horizontally at chest height, turning his body along with it while also extending his arm to its full length. He finally ended up facing the whole crowd of monsters as the shovel completed half of a full-circle to have the blade of the shovel facing the first uber-vampire who was just a few feet away.
Abruptly, that vampire no longer existed.
It had suddenly turned from a solid seven-foot, half-ton vicious fiend, into nothing more than a cloud of fine ash that was blasted away by an unfelt wind that still struck with tornadic force. This unfortunate vampire wasn't the only one. Behind it, all of the Turok-Han and the Bringers were also destroyed, their only remains shown as a dust cloud for a fraction of a second until this too was torn apart by an immaterial fury of wind.
The good guys watched all this in disbelief, as Xander continued spinning, sweeping the shovel through the air while keeping it directed all along the line of the Turok-Han and the Bringers, both which continued to disintegrate by the thousands. The First Evil looked around wildly, flinching as the shovel passed by it, though there was no seemingly effect on this entity. The vampires and demons directly behind their leader weren't so fortunate, with all of them also crumbling into non-existence. The shovel kept moving on, until it finally reached the left end of the line of the monsters, who dutifully departed from this plane of existence, without even requiring a dustpan.
A woman who had last lived ages ago in primordial times was in total shock. The First Evil, still wearing the form of Primal, stood there, totally alone, all of its followers gone, and stared at the man now leaning on the tool he had spun vertically to drive into the ground and stand upright. There was a truly magnificent insolent smile on this person's face as he opened his mouth while still keeping on grip on the farm implement.
"Observe. Shovel. Not a shovel. The shovel." Xander was careful about the emphasis on his words, as he continued, a maddening grin showing. "What we got here, sport, is a gift from God. Literally, ya know?"
The First Evil slowly began to back up until it stopped at the man's slow shaking of his head. "Uh-huh. My turn to gloat now, at the proper time. This thing," he casually shook the shovel, "is composed of all the shovels that are and ever were, for any loose material -- coal, snow, sand, soil -- in agriculture, construction and gardening, throughout all of humanity's time on this world. From a clump of dirt on the earliest farms to every spadeful needed to dig the Panama Canal, to all of the excavations going on right this minute throughout the entire world. And it can summon up, concentrate, and send on all the force needed throughout all of that, both the work done and the weight lifted. Every single bit of it. Your little pets just got hit with, oh, probably the entire weight of the Himalayas mountain range. Including Mount Everest."
The First Evil stared with horror at the satisfied-looking man across from it. Suddenly, its eyes narrowed, and it shimmered into a new form, beginning to say, "You've still made a mis---"
"HEY! Hey, hey!" shouted Xander, cutting off the First Evil. He stared in puzzlement at the being standing before him. "Who're you supposed to be?"
The scruffy, middle-aged man in a disheveled mid-century suit with sweat stains under the armpits, saggy jowls, increasing baldness, and beady eyes, glowered at Xander, and shaking a sheet of paper at him, the stranger blustered, "I'm Senator Joseph McCarthy!"
The young man just looked incredulous and then frowned, tilting his head to examine his enemy's current form. "Uh, I think I slept through that class. Am I supposed to be scared of you?"
On the other side of the cavern, an Englishman closed his eyes and muttered, "Dear Lord….," abruptly stopping and wondering if he should discontinue saying that, considering what had happened.
Glaring at Xander, the First Evil shimmered again, from the Wisconsin senator into a new form. A look of evil satisfaction appeared on the face of the young teenager now standing there at seeing how Xander's face had frozen into tight-lipped fury.
"Hey, bro," drawled Jesse McNally, smirking at how Xander's fist tightened around the top of the shovel, but with the one-eyed young man otherwise making no other move at the manifestation of his best friend for most of Xander's life until the Scooby member had staked his blood-brother after he'd become a vampire.
Now hugely enjoying himself, the First Evil went on, "As I began to say, you've still made a mistake. So what if my forces are gone now? I'll just try again in the future, in another way, and you won't be able to stop me. Your little toy," the teenager's voice changed to deep disdain, "might have carried the day for now, but it didn't affect me."
Xander's lips drew back in a mirthless smile. "Because you can't be touched. You're immaterial. Insubstantial. Between."
"Gee, bro, you swallowed a thesaurus? 'Course, that wasn't all you swallowed, when you were with that little former-demon bitch over there," sneered the First Evil, waving his arm at the group helplessly witnessing the confrontation between man and monster. Anya blushed, and looked down as others shifted to glance at her. There was a great difference between her saying something like that, and another doing it just to hurt Xander.
The First Evil inwardly exulted, as Xander clearly snapped. A look of rage on his face, the man jerked up the shovel out of the ground and flipped it up to hold it horizontally, the blade of the shovel pointing right at the amused fiend, as Xander took a step forward and thrust the blade directly at the First Evil.
This being held stock still, arrogantly expecting the farm tool to simply pass through its intangible form and gleefully looking forward to further taunting the mortal who had dared to oppose him. It looked down, waiting for the failure of the attack.
The shovel drove into its chest and stayed there.
The First Evil blinked. For the first time in its existence, it felt….pain.
Swaying, the monster slowly lifted its head and looked at the man at arm's length from it, receiving a steady gaze from Xander holding firmly with both hands the handle of the shovel, pitilessly keeping it embedded in the form of a being as old as the world, whose time had finally come.
"Between, remember? This thing stuck in you isn't just a weapon. It's a tool, and it's been used to turn up the soil of this world to plant farms and gardens, to bring new life and nourishment for humanity. And when the time comes for humanity to depart this world….this has been used to dig the graves to reverently bury the bodies of those who were loved. This shovel's absorbed all that. Life and death, sucker. Between."
The First Evil might have crumbled to the ground, if it wasn't still held up by the man's tool, as Xander bent forward to whisper into the monster's face now realizing it was actually facing death. "You really shouldn't have turned into Jesse, 'cause I'm gonna make this hurt."
At that, Xander leaned back up, and with a set face, he viciously twisted the shovel.
The form of the being that had named itself the First Evil, the ultimate Big Bad, convulsed, and it burst into light that exploded throughout the entire chamber, forcing all there to shield their eyes. Only Xander kept his gaze open throughout it all, narrowly watching to witness extinction. No comebacks, no sequels, no last-minute escapes. Not for this villain. He had pissed off Alexander LaVelle Harris, the Protector of Man.
After a few moments, the Scooby Gang and its friends, associates and acquaintances brought down their hands from their eyes and blinked away the last of the after-images, to see a lone Xander coming towards them across the cavern floor, a goofy grin on his face, with a jaunty walk, and a shovel held over his right shoulder.
When the one-eyed man reached his friends, he stopped before them, casually bringing down the shovel to rest vertically with the point touching the ground, and looked around the flabbergasted people, asking mock-seriously, "No hug?"
Later, nobody there could decide whether Willow or Dawn got to him first, though they all agreed that despite their overwhelming emotions, both females were careful not to touch the shovel during their embraces. The man just stood there, keeping one hand on the end of the shovel, while using his other hand to squeeze hard his bestest bud, listening with a wide grin to the babble of the women hugging him that was gradually overpowered by the uproar of the others.
Men and women crowded around him, some patting his back and shoulder, others just touching him in awe, shock, or curiosity, and beginning to ask, "What happened?"
Of course, there were exceptions to this. At one side of the crowd, a man furiously polished his glasses.
At the other side of the crowd, two beings stood by each other, who had both lost their humanity far in the past. The blonde of the pair looked with disgust at the crowd surrounding a young man, and sneered, "Bleedin' hell, poofter, there'll be no livin' with the whelp after this. I was supposed to be the soddin' Champion, not him, that snack-fetchin' wanker who never had the balls to go after Buffy---"
"Spike. Shut up," said Angel tightly. "I think he heard you." Sure enough, Xander had looked over, his face becoming immobile as his gaze settled on the two vampires. The man gently disentangled himself from his two friends and began to move through the crowd, who fell back from his path. He still carried the shovel as he approached Spike and Angel.
"Oh, I'm shakin' in my boots, here comes Mr. Screams-Like-A-Girl, who faints at a little blood," growled Spike, not lowering his voice the slightest. Still standing by Angel, the English vampire watched how Xander was looking the former native of Ireland in the face, and put on his own face his most contemptuous sneer.
Xander reached the two demons and came to a stop.
The shovel flickered twice, moving too fast even for vampire reflexes.
In the future, various reminiscences took place among those girls who had been chosen as Potential Slayers and were pursued by the First Evil's minions, in many cases seeing their loved ones being murdered, and needing to flee to Sunnydale for protection against monsters, only to find out that their defender, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, had in the past allowed herself to fall in love with a vampire, an action that had caused the deaths of numerous humans, and was now herself living and sleeping with another vampire. Who, while under the influence of the First Evil, had slaughtered a dozen of their friends, and escaped any punishment whatsoever over this. He didn't even say he was sorry.
One of the fondest Sunnydale memories for these girls would be over the fact that as Spike's severed head tumbled through the air for a second until it turned to ash, it still retained his sneer.
Another high point was seeing Angel completing nearly a full half-somersault before landing on his head and shoulders, his handsome face disfigured by being smashed with the flat of the shovel.
"NOOOOOO!!!!!" screamed Buffy, dashing through the stunned crowd, to reach Xander standing smirking before a solid vampire lying stunned on the ground and an ashy vampire drifting through the air. The Slayer grabbed the man by his shoulder, spinning him around and shrieking in his grinning face, "Why'd you do that!??"
"Hey, Buffster," Xander jovially greeted the Slayer and then looked thoughtful, as he jerked a thumb towards the spot where two vampires had been and now there was one. "Could you be a little more specific about your question?"
A shocked Buffy took a step back, trying to organize her whirling thoughts, and then she blurted out, "Wh…why did you kill Spike?"
Behind Xander, most of the crowd had come up, including Dawn, Faith and all of the Potentials. He ignored them to stare evenly at Buffy, before saying flatly, "I didn't kill anybody, Buffy. I ended the existence of a monster. William Pratt died over a hundred years ago."
"His name was Spike! He had a soul!"
The man tilted his head, looking impassively at the furious woman before him. "You really want to refer to someone who got his nickname using railroad spikes to torture people? Have you even seen a railroad spike? They're not thumbtacks! They're about a half-foot rod of solid iron, twice as wide as your thumb! I suppose you never even thought about the damage they can do to a human body, used by someone with vampire strength and enjoying what they were doing to innocents!"
Xander turned away from a taken-aback Buffy to look with compassion at a stricken Dawn, continuing, "Dawn, the only thing worse than calling that piece of shit his name was when I heard what he called you. I wanted to vomit and then stake him on the spot."
In her shock and grief, Dawn looked bewildered and murmured, "What's so wrong about---"
"Niblet?" gagged Xander. "It means a small piece of food. Dawn, he ate children."
Looks of disgust appeared throughout the crowd, as Dawn dissolved in tears, to be gathered up by Anya who glowered at Xander as the former demon took the crying young woman to the side of the crowd.
Turning his attention back to Buffy glaring at him, Xander went on, "As for the soul part, yeah, he had one. So did Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and the guy who shot the convenience store manager over at the mini-mart at Broadway and Eleventh last month. I used to get coffee there and we talked. He had two kids. Now he's dead, and the guy who murdered him is walking free, with his soul."
At that, even Buffy looked a little off-balance, but she rallied. "Sp---, he went through what you can't imagine, getting his soul!"
Xander said grimly, "He got his soul just because of you, Buffy. And maybe Dawn, a little. As for the rest of the world, and all of his victims that he tortured and murdered, he didn't care the slightest." The man grimaced, and reluctantly admitted, "But you're right. He got his soul of his own free will."
Buffy was surprised at that, and how sour-faced Xander was as he continued, "That means he didn't go straight to Hell. Not that he escaped completely. Right now, he's in Purgatory, until he sincerely regrets his actions, all of them, and begs for forgiveness, however long it takes. Eternity, I hope. Or, he can return to this world," Buffy brightened up at this, only to sober at Xander's next words, "to spend numerous lifetimes as other beings in his redemption. In any case, we're never going to see him again. Which thrills me right down to my socks---"
At that moment, an interruption was caused by someone getting to their feet, realizing they had a broken nose, a split lip, and several teeth missing, and screaming at Xander: "Go n-ithe an diabhal do cheann! Go gcreime cúnna ifrinn do bhall fearga!"
A truly pissed-off Angel took a deep breath, ignoring a startled Buffy to step right up to Xander, nearly chin-to-chin (since the Irishman swearing in Gaelic now had his nose bent over flat on his face), and delivered a last curse at the top of his lungs: "Go salaí na gráinneoga cealgrúnacha do chuid buí sneaic!"
The man blinked, and looking at where he was holding the shovel with his right hand, he softly said in astonishment, "Well, whaddya know, I understood that." Bringing back his gaze into the furious face before him, the Sunnydale native continued in an extremely dangerous tone, "Especially the last one."
Xander's right knee shot up and buried itself into Angel's groin.
