Part 2: Execution

This is where it all pays off, Xander thought. Two weeks of slaughtering every vamp or demon he could find. Every night. And then going to work the next morning.

He was kind of surprised to keep his job. Facial tattoos aren't popular with most employers and coming in tired every day didn't help. His new demonic strength and endurance saved him, along with the Sunnydale custom of not asking awkward questions.

Still, he could probably kiss that promotion goodbye.

It was on those nightly search and destroy missions that they'd finally found where Glory was holed up. The swanky atmosphere wasn't a real surprise, given how fond of herself she was.

Actually, he'd run into her personally. He'd been by himself at that point, taking out a demon nest. Coincidentally it was a nest that she'd recruited. Conscripted. Whatever. He wasn't ready to fight her at the time, but his magatama had done something when she grabbed it. It looked like it actually hurt her hand and he didn't stick around to see how badly. Fortunately she didn't chase him.

Meeting her, however briefly, was memorable. He learned the feel of her power and was able to recognize when he was near her. That made tracking her down easy. Not smart perhaps, but easy.

He wasn't sure what it was about her, but she really creeped him out. It wasn't her looks, or even how crazy she was. Drusilla made her look like Ms. Sanity. Maybe it was his freaky demon powers kicking in, because even standing outside her building he could feel how strong she was. Stronger than anything they'd ever gone up against. Maybe stronger than everything they'd ever gone up against combined.

My that's a lovely front door, he thought to himself. I should stay out here and admire it for a while.

He tried the doorknob. It was open so he let himself in.

After all, if Glory does manage to kill me I won't have to have that little talk Anya's been threatening. He took it as a seriously bad sign that she still wasn't ready to broach whatever it was. Somehow he doubted it was going to be good news. It's always the Sword of Damocles that hangs over my head, never the Pinata of Super-Happy-Funtimes.

As he walked down the lushly carpeted floors and looked at the richly furnished rooms he wondered to himself, Could this be anymore soulless? It was a classic McMansion, if that wasn't a contradiction in terms. A shrine to wealth without personality.

And it's much nicer than my place.

He made his way up the stairs and headed towards the strongest power he could sense. She turned out to be reclining in a chaise lounge chewing out her cringing lackeys for their incompetence.

He strode into the room like he owned the building and rented it because it was downwind of a stockyard. There was no need for subtlety here.

Pretend she's Cordelia and go for the throat.

"Nice dress. Not many girls go for the crack-ho look but it really suits you."

Her scruffy brown clad followers started visibly and took semi-competent defensive stances. Glorificus looked completely unfazed.

"Oh, it's the stripy kid. Shouldn't you be running away?" she asked with a condescending smirk, but he could see her eyes narrow with anger as she registered the insult.

"Sorry about that. I had to eat and run, you know how it is. Busy, busy," he grinned. "I've got some time to talk now. How's your hand?"

She glanced down, flexing the hand in question. "What was that anyway? That actually stung, you little worm."

"That'll teach you not to go grabbing a fella's horn uninvited. And trust me, a girl with your looks and personality problems isn't going to be getting any invitations. I mean seriously, do these hobbit rejects have to dress you every morning? You probably nee them to tell you which foot is which anyway." With the air of someone who had made a realization he continued,"Hey, so that's why you always wear heels! You couldn't figure out how to tie shoelaces, could you?"

He watched her face alternately darken and blanch as he continued to talk. She likes to pretend to be in control, but she has about as much self discipline as a five year old, he thought dispassionately.

He didn't even see her get up. She was so fast she wasn't even a blur as she punched him in the gut with enough force to dent a vault door.

I didn't know she was that fast.

He was probably the only one in the room to spot the flicker of force that surrounded him at the instant of impact, but the results of that flicker were patently obvious to everyone. Glory went flying backwards, scattering her robed minions like humanoid bowling pins. Xander was completely untouched.

Glory pulled herself out the drywall with an offended look on her face. "I am a divine being, you pitiful meatsack! I demand respect!"

"Told you to keep your hands to yourself." Xander shook his head in mock dismay. "Damn, and I thought Cordy was the most self-involved person I'd ever meet. The world doesn't revolve around you, you know? Although as fat as your ass is I suppose it's an easy to see why you'd make that mistake."

Her response to that was a backhanded slap that would have taken a human's head off and splattered it in a sixty foot arc. The flicker of his automatic defense threw her through a wall and into a large free standing bath tub. With an aggrieved shriek she smashed it into shards and sprang back to her feet.

"You. Are. Pond. Scum." she said with quiet fury.

"And yet you seem to be losing this fight," he pointed out. "To pond scum. Really, what does that say about you? You call yourself a god? Make with the smiting already!"

He regretted his choice of words almost as soon as he spoke them, because they made her start to think instead of just react. She circled around him slowly rather than launching another counterproductive assault.

"You haven't touched me," she said as her eyes widened in realization. "You've got some kind of spell to reflect my power back at me."

Can't let up. Gotta keep her playing my game.

"You just figured that out? And here I thought you were hitting yourself on purpose, trying to fix that ugly face."

The recoil from her savage blow drove her through two walls and out of the house entirely. She landed in the ornamental fountain in the back. Xander followed her with quick strides, covering the thirty feet from the hole in the outer wall to the fountain in a single effortless leap.

"What did I just say?" He shook his head at her in mocking reproof. In a childish sing-song he told her, "Stop hitting yourself!"

"You revolting little maggot!" she shrieked at him. "That spell can't last forever and once it wears off I'm going to hang your striped hide one my wall, you glow-in-the-dark zebra! No one trick pony is going to make a fool out of me! Minions!"

At her call the scrofulous little creatures hurried to present themselves before where she sprawled, soaking wet, half embedded in the masonry of the fountain. There were about a dozen of them still able to walk at that point.

"Oh Splendiferous One, how may we serve you?" One of them asked obsequiously.

"Attack him! I don't need you to kill him, just let me know when his defensive spell goes down."

"As you command Your Supreme Scrumptiousness."

The little idiots were actually dumb enough to draw weapons. Xander stood and let a few attack him, but after seeing one inadvertently disembowel himself, he decided to go to phase two of his plan. That was just sad. Not to mention gross.

"You called me a one trick pony? As with so many other things, getting that dye job for instance, you were mistaken. Here's my second trick: Radiance!"

Xander, using the knowledge his magatama had imparted in him, channeled the power within himself down his arm. When it reached his palm he released it. He'd done this before, but still had a feeing of unreality as he watched it bloom into a sphere of incandescent light that was far brighter and somehow purer than the sun.

The light seared the minions into ashes with a thoroughness he'd previously associated with vampires. The Hell-Goddess herself was left with what looked like the world's most terrible sunburn. She'd shielded her eyes with her arms, and the pink flesh around them looked like a mask against the blackened skin on the rest of her body.

"Ah, alone at last. What would you like to do now? Since you've had your bath and dried off, would you like me to show you how to use deodorant?"

He hadn't really expected his Radiance attack to have finished her. He had to keep her enraged, keep her attacking him, because if she ran he'd never be able to catch her. It might solve their world ending problem if she ran off to heal and missed her window of opportunity, but it wouldn't prevent her from coming back and killing everyone he'd ever met in revenge afterwards.

With a mindless scream she sprang at him, knitting her fists together in an over hand blow with her full strength behind it. The reflected force embedded her semi-conscious body six feet under the decorative cobblestones.

She looked kind of pitiful there, burned and beaten.

He reminded himself of all the people she'd killed. All the people she'd driven insane. He reminded himself that she was going to end the world and sacrifice Buffy's little sister to do it.

His sympathy faded. She'd brought this on herself. Literally. If she wasn't evil this wouldn't have been necessary. If she wasn't seriously insane it wouldn't have been possible.

"My last trick: Megidolaon."

Once again he channeled power down his arm, but in a slightly different fashion. He knew this really was his last trick. It would exhaust him and if it failed he wouldn't be able to try again. He swung his arm to point down into the hole at Glory and released the power.

The luminous hemisphere of white light that swelled around her didn't have the same overwhelming brightness of his earlier trick, but it's intensity was palpable. Suddenly the hemisphere began to expand and contract in a stuttering fashion. He distantly thought Glory looked like she'd gotten bigger but it was hard to tell in that wavering light.

It became a moot question when the dome collapsed in on itself with a thunderclap of sound and a shockwave that knocked him down. Not to mention a blinding flash that coincided with a stinging pain.

When his dazzled eyes cleared he saw the welt on his arm where a flare from Megidolaon had touched him. Okay, note to self: Do not stand on top of the target when using the only type of magic that can still hurt you. Dummy.

He got to his feet and looked into the hole. The irregular crater formed by her strike was now a perfectly round hole. Lying at the bottom was a jet black vaguely humanoid figure that crumbled into dust even as he watched.

He tensed as he saw something moving in the dust. He'd expected an enormous amount of the wiggling lights. What came to the surface was...a magatama. There was no mistaking that slender body, those whipping legs, or those big nasty mandibles.

Xander blinked, feeling kind of like Oz as he said,"Well. Huh."