Author's Note: Go figure, I'm getting this up! Woo-hoo! Short, yes, but that's why I wanted to post it at the same time as the last chapter.

Thus ends part II.

Part III lies ahead.

Something was wrong.

No, wait, everything was wrong, one great big horribly-gone-wrong apocalypse timeline. But there was something that had caught Buffy's Slayer senses. Something big. Bad. And right on top of the burnt-down vineyard.

(A vineyard which, for some inexplicable reason, still existed in this Slayer-less world, even though Buffy knew it shouldn't.)

Buffy began heading towards it. When she heard the terrified scream, she began to run.

She scanned the area ahead, her eyes searching for danger, her legs in a sprint, her body already preparing for an attack. She burst through the trees, and discovered, along the burnt and ashy ruins of a vineyard that, logically, should never have been built...

Black robed figures. Sewn up patches of skin in the shapes of X's, where their eyes should have been. Long, crooked daggers in their hands.

Bringers.

"You never give up, do you?" said the man facing them down. "You've chased me across an island, a continent, and the Atlantic Ocean." He gave them a smile, and a wink. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were coming on to me."

The Bringer nearest him lunged forwards, as two from either side swooped in. He managed to barely evade them, stumbling on his toes, but trying, very pointedly, to lead them away from something.

"I'm flattered," the man continued. "Really. But... you know what? Truth is… you're not my type."

Another Bringer darted around the man's back, and he spun around and leapt on it, tackling it to the ground. They rolled along the ground, hands at each others' throats, until another Bringer stepped in with a knife, to strike the man through.

Buffy charged forwards, and kicked the knife out of the Bringer's hand. She ducked his next punch, blocked a strike from the left, then grabbed the Bringer and flipped him back so that he knocked into the one wrestling with the man on the ground.

Buffy grabbed up a knife, and charged at the two Bringers she'd just dislodged, while the man she'd rescued leapt up, and rushed at the other two. Buffy flipped, rolled, punched, and kicked, until she managed to corner her two, and get rid of them, as her mystery-man managed to finish off a third. Buffy pivoted on her heel and sprung at the last one, twisting it into the man, who caught its shoulders in his grip, so Buffy could kill it.

Then they froze. And stared at one another. Face-to-face.

"Jack?" Buffy asked.

The last time Buffy had seen Jack Harkness, he'd been well put-together, groomed, with a suave sophistication that screamed sex appeal. This Jack was different. Bedraggled, rugged, looking as if he'd been traveling a long ways. His hair matted with mud, his greatcoat torn, his clothing telling the story of a hundred deaths, none of them pleasant.

(At least he wasn't wearing animal skins.)

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer!" Jack cried. He clutched her by the shoulders, as if he were afraid she'd melt away. "You must be the reason we're here!"

"You know I'm a Slayer?" Buffy asked. "But... how?"

"That's not important, right now," said Jack. "Look, Buffy, I need your help. I've tried, I've done my best, but... it's not enough. They need protection. Help. And I just can't give it to them."

Buffy was starting to have a weird feeling of déjà vu.

"You said the Bringers have been chasing you," she said. "Is that why? Because of this… whoever it is you've brought?" She leaned in, and whispered, "It's not an army of Potential Slayers, is it? Because I could really use that, right now."

"Better," said Jack.

Buffy raised an eyebrow at him.

"If you can remember who you are and what's happened," said Jack, "then you know how desperate the situation's become. But I've got someone. Someone important. The one person the First's been sending wave after wave of Bringers to destroy."

A pile of rubble shifted, and a chunk of wood broke off, landing at Buffy's feet. The chunk of wood that still had the charred remains of the graffitied words, "Bad Wolf." Buffy glanced back up, as the child emerged from her hiding spot therein.

A very familiar 12-year-old child.

"She's the key to our victory," Jack explained.

The girl tucked her hair behind her ears, then smiled shyly at Buffy.

"Hi," said the twelve-year-old Rose Tyler.