Ringworld is property of Larry Niven. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.
It took her a week to climb the side of Fist-Of-God Mountain. Buffy decided to take the low tech approach. She resisted the urge to hurl nuclear weapons at Spike's fortress because too many innocent people would die and primarily because she wanted to kill him herself with her bare hands.
He had put Dawn in danger. He had burned thousands of miles of Ringworld surface. He had killed millions in an antimatter firestorm. Spike had to die and soon.
Over the years Buffy had found excuses to keep Spike alive. She reasoned that it would be too hard to extract him from Fist-Of-God Mountain and that he was doing no real harm. The bottom line was that she still liked him. She had fond memories of the Spike that died to save the world. She still felt something for the Spike that loved her when no one else would.
She had to admit that that Spike was gone. This was Spike fresh out of the initiative. This was a version of Spike who had just taken his chip out and still wanted to kill her.
This was not the Spike that loved her. For that and a million other reasons the vampire had to die. Buffy chided herself.
"I'm more sentimental than a room full of grandmothers with baby pictures."
The thought of babies made her all squishy inside. She thought of Dawn's hundreds of children only confirmed her decision to kill Spike. Buffy removed her backpack and climbing gear and held her scythe in her hands. Ouroboros had been kind enough to recreate it for her. Buffy tore away the grill to the ventilation duct and made her way into the Fist-of-God Mountain.
She scrambled through the air ducts for days before she found him. The Fist-Of-God Mountain was huge. She could have easily have spent her whole life looking for Spike within it. Her Slayer senses guided her towards him. She could actually feel the presence Spike. He felt like a humming beneath her skin. After three days, she found him in one of the laboratory rooms. Spike was bent over a display screen which showed a series of formulas. She didn't hesitate to attack.
Buffy slithered out of the air duct behind Spike and sneaked up on him in her best ninja manner. Spike flicked a blade across her face impossibly fast. She blocked it with her scythe, pivoted and drove the blade into the spot where Spike had been. The scythe cut the metal desk in half. Spike was up and on his feet. He was wearing his vamp face.
There was a moment that passed between them when they recognized that this was the end. The game of cat and mouse played between them for years was coming to an end. Today one of them would die.
Buffy could hear the slithering of demons moving in the darkened sections of the lab. Apparently, Spike had called in reinforcements.
Spike stood relaxed and alert at the same time. His black jumpsuit, woven from the Ringworld's superconductive mesh, contrasted sharply with his blonde hair and pale skin.
"Here we are now, entertain us." He said quoting Kurt Cobain.
Buffy stared at him a moment making up her mind about something. She pulled a KAHR P380 9mm semi-automatic handgun from her waistband and showered him with wooden bullets.
"Hey Spike, did you know the Germans and the Japanese having been using wooden bullets since World War II?" Buffy dropped the gun and quickly walked over to his prone and bloody body.
She had the scythe in both hands as she prepared to decapitate him. Spike focused through the pain. He waited for Buffy to get close enough to trip. He jabbed out a leg forcing Buffy to fall on top of him. He grabbed her shoulder and sank his teeth into her neck.
Blood filled his mouth and in that moment the walls between worlds came down. In a bright and searing flash, Buffy and her vampire reflection could see the whole of creation. They swam in galaxies that glowed with the diamond hard light of a trillion stars. They felt the deepness of black space and heard the long sorrowful cry of a mournful eternity.
Spike pulled back as the vision faded. He no longer wanted to kill Buffy. He felt connected to her now. Where his hands touched her body they were on fire and didn't burn.
Spike was awe struck. He looked up into Buffy's face. There was a tear in the corner of her eye. She had been that moved.
They could hear the rustling and hissing of Spike's demon horde advancing towards them.
"Looks like we've got work to do." Buffy said as she looked at him longingly.
After a moment, Buffy rolled off of him. Her neck didn't hurt more than she could bear. A thin trickle of blood spotted her blouse. Buffy handed Spike a short blade. She could see the claws of the demon hoards moving into the room light. Buffy kissed Spike as they prepared for war.
She didn't even need a locator spell. Willow could smell the magics surrounding the Buffy-Baby and the stench from Vamp-Willow. In the blink of an eye, she teleported across town into an empty warehouse.
Willow appeared out of thin air before the monster. Its yellow eyes widened and it jumped back in shock. A woman with eyes as black as the grave and wrapped in dark power appeared out of nothing. They stood before each other like mirror images. They were derivates of a larger darkness.
"Goddess Hecate I call on thee…" Willow began to speak. Vamp Willow could feel power building around Willow. She threw the Buffy-baby at Willow and ran. Willow caught the child who appeared unharmed.
"I wasn't going to eat all of her!" Vamp Willow yelled back as a twisted form of defense.
Willow snapped and unleashed a bolt of pure mystic energy that ripped Vamp-Willow in half and then incinerating her. When her energy touched the vampire Willow could once again feel that mystic connection between her and Vamp-Willow. She had just removed any hope that the soul of her alternate self would find any redemption. Willow watched the fiery ashes that were the remains of Vamp Willow and felt compassion.
"Understand." Willow said as she closed her fist capturing the invisible sprit that was the vampire Vamp Willow in its non corporal form. Willow worked her magics so that the naked sprit was captured before it could find another dead body to inhabit.
Willow drew it into herself. She wanted to give it a taste of the memory of the Rosenberg soul.
As the sprit came into her, the walls between worlds came down. By merging with her separate self she had become closer to becoming a being that spanned universes. The knowledge that poured into her was too much. Her head threatened to explode. Willow compensated by slowing down time. Still, it was too much. She felt herself standing in a million places. She lived a million lives at once. She felt herself being born and growing old and dying on a million different Earths in a million different universes.
"That's how I feel all the time." She heard a voice in her head say.
Two hundred and fifty light years towards the galactic core Ouroboros was pleased. It had been observing the witch and now had the answer it was looking for. The witch had shown him how to get a soul of its own.
Two to the two to the one million bits of particles were whipped into a new form of quantum computation. From across the galaxy, the Ringworld teleported into Earth's orbit.
"No more dead unicorns." Ouroboros said. "This time I will succeed."
Willow looked outside and saw the checkerboard pattern of the Ringworld landscape. The moon was heating up as air rushed past it at 770 miles per second. She could feel the earthquakes beginning.
Her mind was swallowed in fear.