Disclaimer: I do not own any characters relating to either Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Stargate SG-1. This story is intended for entertainment purposes only and does not provide any financial compensation.
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Return To Normal
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Chapter Twenty Five – Part 1
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May, 1998:
ANGEL
What's
happening, Buffy?
BUFFY
Shhhhh. . . it doesn't
matter.
She pulls away to look at him. Kisses him passionately.
BUFFY
I love you.
ANGEL
I love you. . .
BUFFY
Close your eyes.
Serenely compliant, he
closes them. She kisses him softly.
She steps back and thrusts the
sword through his chest, directly into the chest of the demon behind
him. There is an unearthly roar.
Angel's eyes open wide -- he
looks down at himself impaled, at Buffy uncomprehendingly.
Buffy
can't speak -- she tries not to cry as she takes another step
back.
Angel reaches out to her -- and the vortex closes over him,
sucking him into Hell.
---
It took some time for the Key to realize that it was conscious. Alive, in a way it had never been before. For the first time in its unimaginably long existence, it could grasp the complexities of the wonders which surrounded it. Patterns of space, lines of forces, the layered structure of time; all were perceptible to its emerging senses. There were no extraneous 'things' to get in the way and confuse it; no matter, no gravity, no absolute time. A human mind would have been driven insane by the nature of the fractional-dimensional structure of the space in which it suddenly found itself, and while this close to the open portal it could see the madness in Angel's eyes. An expression of desperate, confused hope. But within seconds –or was it years?—the portal disappeared, and with it anything resembling a reference point the human mind could comprehend.
Fortunately, the Key wasn't human. It didn't need three linear dimensions, or an arrow to time, in order to comprehend its place in the universe. The Key had explored the interior of a black hole. It had witnessed the Big Bang. It had seen the very first light of the very first stars. It hadn't understood any of what it had seen, but it had seen it all.
But it had never 'seen' anything like this. There was no 'light,' at any frequency, nor anything which might reflect such light back to its eye, if it had an eye, which might correspond to vision. The space was empty, and yet, was filled with ghostly reflections; of itself, the Key finally understood, itself refracted by shifting domain walls of dimensional stress. Human senses would not have seen this, but without corporeal 'eyes' the Key had to rely on its own hitherto unused versions of sensory apparatus. Its recent experience as a corporeal being came in wonderfully handy, allowing it to adapt, as it now knew what senses could do, and now understood why they might be needed.
It was difficult to determine whether the Key still had a 'body.' Did the avatar still exist? Angel had been 'real,' in the sense that he retained corporeal structure. When it 'reached' up, with arms it could no longer feel, it experienced the interesting sensation of touching its intestines, its tongue, the heel of its left foot. There were more than three dimensions operating where it found itself, and its 'arm' might be a light-year long, or might be attached to the back of its head.
The Key found the entire experience positively delightful!
Well, not all of the Key. There was a part of itself, a tiny, annoying subset, which insisted that none of this was very important. That there was no time to play, to indulge in the wasteful luxury of experiencing its first sensations as a self-aware living creature. The First had brought it here for a purpose, and that purpose was not, could not be, benign. Something was happening to the very nature of space and time simply due to its presence, and the Key needed to discover what that was.
The Key had never previously experienced a dissenting subconscious opinion. Of course, it hadn't really ever experienced a clear conscious opinion either. With the vast majority of its experience as a unique individual occurring as Dawn Summers, it felt it should heed that subconscious voice. Especially when that dissenting voice sounded like it was Dawn's voice.
---
Back under the Mountain, all those months ago, O'Neill had kept verbally pounding away at Buffy as they tried to come up with an effective plan:
What is your
ultimate objective? Buffy wanted to kill the First.
How? Use the
Key.
How? Dunno, but the Key is only thing potentially powerful
enough to do it
Potentially? Conditions would have to be just
right.
Why? In normal space, the Key is almost powerless. It's
on an alternate time-stream. In most alternate dimensions, the fight
would destroy the very fabric of the universe. They need to move the
conflict into a place where everything was just right so that it can
be fought until one of them won.
Where? A really, really weird
space 'outside' of the normal universe.
How? Dunno, but Glory
tried to use a portal.
Their overall strategy had been build around the answers they came up with to those questions. But as the strategy took shape, constraints were imposed on the tactics they could employ in order to maintain the overall strategic vision. They were fighting a god, something smarter and faster and more adaptable than they could ever be. There had been a lot of discussion and even argument, as Buffy had assumed they could beat the First by exploiting the fact that they knew some things it did not. O'Neill had disagreed. Exploiting such facts was the way they would fight the First, but it wasn't the way they would beat the First. Gods, like AI's, almost by definition would know more 'facts' than any human. They would never win if they tried to attack their opponents' greatest strength.
Humans, on the other hand, were sneaky little bastards, and gods weren't. Probably because they didn't have to be. They would fight the First by exploiting certain facts, such as them knowing about ECF, but they would beat the First by tricking it. By exploiting the fact that it 'knew' things which were not, in fact, accurate, they would be able to catch it by surprise. O'Neill already had one such mistaken assumption in mind. It seemed likely that the First would assume everything Buffy did was intended to bring them face-to-face so that she could prevent the Key from being dragged into that portal. Which seemed pretty logical, given that no Key tossed in portal equaled no universe getting fubared. O'Neill himself felt such an outcome would be fine and dandy if they could manage it, but he'd spent a fortune on lottery tickets and hadn't won one yet. He didn't expect to hit the jackpot this time either.
Buffy had looked at him strangely, trying to look innocent, before agreeing that she fully intended to comply with the President's order that she do everything in her power to ensure that the Key wasn't used to destroy the universe.
O'Neill had snorted, unimpressed. Like Buffy, he wouldn't be overly upset if the issue was resolved, rather than simply delayed until the next time. Chances were 'next time' there would be people as competent as him around to handle things. Like Buffy he would follow orders and make every effort to prevent the First from succeeding, but unlike arm-chair warriors, O'Neill preferred to consider such contingencies as the remote possibility that Plan A would not, in fact, succeed brilliantly. If the First did somehow manage to toss the Key into the portal, what were their options?
So far as Buffy was concerned the best thing about planning the mission the way they were doing it was that it held the ultimate in security; anything she told them, they promptly forgot. So Buffy told them that years before, she had killed her boyfriend, sending him into a portal. That portal had just happened –and not by accident—to have sent him into the exact same obscure dimension which the First was seeking to reach using its own portal. He would only have a few seconds, but when the First opened her portal he would be able pull in the First if she just happened to be standing exactly in front of it. If Buffy could ensure that the timing was perfect, the First would be returned to its state of non-corporeality. By a happy coincidence, Buffy just happened to be psychic now. She would have to be present in order to ensure that the timing was exactly right.
O'Neill had smiled the sort of smile that made System Lords nervous. Even if the First did not know the reason for it, she would assume that Buffy would want to be there in person. That was a mistake. An expected one from a slayer, or even the average soldier, but a mistake none the less. Her job was not to move the First was into the right place at the right time; her job was to see to it that the First was standing in the right place at the right time.
At the time Buffy hadn't understood the difference, and it took awhile for O'Neill to explain. He had looked over at Hammond, and they had both almost sighed. "Your job isn't to 'do' things, Buffy. Your job is to ensure that things get done. Once you've figured that out, you'll understand what 'being in command' is all about."
---
Faith showed up at the Portal Facility not long after the SGC forces had pushed back the vampires and demons feeding on the ex-slayers who had been congregating in the area. O'Neill and his people were in a grim mood as they used flame throwers to incinerate the demons they had trapped between converging units. The bodies of hundreds of dead girls lying nearby ensured that nobody was of a mind to capture one of the zombies for study. The screams of the burning demons couldn't drown out the cries of the few surviving girls. The only good news was that the girls happened to be ex-slayers, which meant they used to be slayers, so even though they'd lost their powers, a lot of them had kept their heads to set up a defensive position within the main building and hold the inhuman enemy off long enough for help to arrive.
Figuring that the civilians were in good hands as his people reached the huge building and began to evacuate the survivors, O'Neill and a small team were attempting to figure out a way to get into the Portal Facility, They weren't having much luck. Knowing that his people, including Carter, were trapped within that building with their most dangerous opponent did not do much for his mood. Seeing Faith saunter up, machine gun in her one hand, did not do much to improve it. "Aren't you supposed to be coordinating the evacuation?"
She simply shrugged, giving him an insolent smile. O'Neill hadn't really needed such confirmation that it wasn't the slayer in her which had given Faith her bad attitude. "Relax, Jack. We got it covered. Mini-Riley worked out some kinda deal with the army dudes outside, and they're hauling away everyone we can send down. They found the nuke, by the way. At least the one in Cleveland. Which you probably already figured out given the lack of nearby mushroom cloud. Anyways, Admiral, I'm here to tell you not to bother trying to break into that there fortress. You couldn't without bringing down the whole damn building, and it's too late anyway. According to Buffy, 'the game is afoot!' That's a quote, by the way. The Key and the First are duking it out within the Portal. In case you're wondering, we now exist within Skrode-streaker's Universe, the way your honey told us about."
O'Neill retained just enough sense to absently mutter "Schrödinger's Universe, moron!" Mostly he was raising his eyebrow questioningly towards Jackson, not normally his go-to guy for physics issues but the closest thing available to an expert. Barely able to turn his attention away from the priceless codices and ancient manuscripts he had salvaged, their linguistics expert could only shrug. "Everything feels normal to me."
Turning back towards Faith, O'Neill asked her where Buffy was, and seeing her also shrug, he glared at the young woman. "Then how the hell do you know the game is on?! When did Buffy tell you this? You haven't seen her all day, and you were sure as hell too busy last night for physics lessons!"
His embarrassment and distaste were so obvious Faith had to smile. And being Faith, she had to push it. "Y'know, I hope I get the chance to see your world. It must be amazing, like that lake in Africa. What's it called? Lake Nakuru, I think? The one where there are like billions of flamingoes along the shoreline? I can only imagine what your world must be like, an entire world where every lake and river and shoreline must be covered in birds."
O'Neill was completely confused by the comment, which seemed to come out of left field. "What the hell are you babbling about? What birds?"
She smiled again, but this time her eyes were hard, and she really stuck in the knife. "All the goddamn storks you would need to deliver three hundred million babies to people who apparently have never gotten laid in their entire lives!" When O'Neill only looked more embarrassed and confused, Faith scowled and explained. "Every time B so much as brought up the subject of sex you covered your ears and went 'Tra-la-la, I can't hear you!' It seemed to offend your delicate little sensibilities. So while you assumed we were gettin' our freak on, Buffy was actually telling me and Spike exactly what she had planned.
"Now that it's too late for you to screw it up, she asked me to fill you in…"
----
October, 1998:
Buffy returned to the place where she killed Angel and sealed Acathla's portal, finally able to say good-bye and leave her ring. Soon afterwards, she left. Seconds later, the ring started to shake, and a bright white light appeared. When it faded, Angel, naked and shivering, was back from Hell.
----
Prompted by its newly-acquired subconscious voice, the Key 'looked' around with senses possessing no human equivalents, and realized that something was very wrong. In fact, everything was wrong. The entire mathematical order of space and time was breaking down, once-harmonious equations suddenly accepting previously-forbidden input, the false output of that data being accepted as valid by succeeding equations. The problem was cascading, building as tertiary equations accepted ever-increasingly random inputs, leading to ever more bizarre outputs. The Key found the process fascinating, and would have enjoyed studying it longer, but the voice, like a sudden pinprick to its metaphorical toe, reminded the Key that this had catastrophic repercussions.
The very building blocks of the universe were destabilizing. With no constraints on 'right' answers, natural laws were falling apart. Examining the transforms more closely, the Key realized that it not only 'knew' the correct answers, it was the correct answer. Waving its immaterial hands like a conjurer, the Key restored the balance to the nearby mathematical order, simply by imposing constraints on the acceptable inputs. It didn't have to 'think' about doing this; simply due to its mere presence, the Key imposed such order on space and time. But outside of its range, the laws continued to break down as the acceptable range of input variables cascaded, leading to ever more unbalanced results, rapidly approaching the point where the entire mathematical order which maintained the structure of the universe would completely destabilize.
For the first time the Key was starting to get a bit concerned. This was the first emotion it had ever felt, and it stopped examining that emotion only when prodded by what felt like a swat to the back of its head. The 'Dawn Summers' avatar comprised only a miniscule fraction of its entire being… but she was a bossy little wench. Only this time, given the circumstances, she probably had good reason.
Adjusting the parameters of its 'vision' to encompass the mathematical order extending further 'away' from it than its own 'reach,' the Key was overwhelmed with data, mathematical equations of such complexity it branched into multi-dimensional variables in fractal patterns. The Key was not 'seeing' as a human would even understand the concept. In this universe every dimension had its own scales, infinite length, infinite angles for every curve along that length, transfinite numbers extending into their own sub-dimensional structures with non-integer values. Even for the Key, the tiniest subset of the extended matrix was overwhelming, an infinite number of infinitesimally small data-points, each infinitely variable, each just as valid as any other, each extending into its own infinite subset.
Almost lost within the ocean of data, the Key could feel itself being overwhelmed, its own newly-emerging 'personality' being crushed by the sheer magnitude of the information being shoved into its evolving mind. Never having needed to learn such matters, the Key was unable to discriminate the incoming data, to factor relevance into the mass of raw numbers, to impose order by filtering out the garbage. Once again, that sub-component of itself which had experience with such issues came to its aid, giving it the idea that such rules were actually possible, Dawn's own education providing the basis of a simple filtering system which the Key almost instantly extended far beyond the comprehension of any merely human intelligence. Rules were imposed. Order was restored within the torrent of incoming data.
The result was even more frightening. Now that it understood what it was 'seeing,' and could manipulate subsets of the data to project as-yet unobserved results forward into the future –in itself, a mind-boggling concept to the Key!—the implications were nothing short of catastrophic. Everything was destabilizing. Every law, every component of every superset, every aspect of mathematical order, all of it was breaking down.
And all because the Key had screwed up.
---
Before Kennedy had a chance to realize that whatever had been causing Buffy to experience the shakes had suddenly disappeared, the smaller girl took advantage of her sudden recovery by striking out without warning. Had everything worked out properly the fight would have ended then and there, but Buffy was still weakened by the ECF attack, and Kennedy was more on guard than she had expected. So the punch that should have broken her jaw instead merely swiped the side of Kennedy's rapidly-moving face. It still hurt, and Buffy was experienced enough to follow it up immediately while her opponent was off-balance, but she had just blown her best shot at winning and they both knew it.
So she tried the old taunting routine. "No help from Wil? Not even after all you've meant to each other? That's harsh." There was no reaction to the gibe.
Kennedy had proven herself to be not only a better fighter, but a better tactician than Buffy had expected. She'd held back while her guards took on Buffy, not doing much damage but tiring her, and then showed unexpected patience when taking advantage of the accumulated damage to her opponent. It was unexpected, and incredibly frustrating to Buffy, who was certain she was faster and more acrobatic than the other girl, but couldn't take advantage of it so long as Kennedy was unwilling to take any risks. Not even her normal taunts or natural ability to piss people off was working this time, as Kennedy knew she had the upper hand and seemed content to wait as long as necessary until her already tired opponent fell to exhaustion.
"I mean, I dropped a bomb on her! That would just about have to piss you off at least a little bit! Yet she isn't interfering." Once again, Kennedy ignored her taunting.
This wasn't the sort of tactics Buffy was used to, especially from someone who had been a slayer. Xander had sent through some training videos, and from what Buffy had seen every girl in them had been as naturally aggressive as she had been, although most weren't quite as crazy about it as Faith had been. And still was. Kendra had been the closest Buffy had ever come to seeing an ice-cold slayer, and even she hadn't liked it when anyone insulted her. Had Kennedy been bigger –she was only slightly taller than Buffy—her tactics would have been enough to guarantee her a victory. But Buffy was hoping that sooner or later she would have to close in, if she could be convinced that Buffy was recovering from the ECF attack faster than she was tiring from the constant fighting. Sometimes patience was a virtue, but sometimes it was better to take advantage of your opportunities while the opening presented itself.
"All I gotta say, is that you must be one lousy lay." Okay, that one ticked her off!
Enough to force Kennedy to finally break her silence and speak, at least. "I don't need to beat you, moron! My job is just to delay you! Once the First takes care of business, you'll be dead and I'll be President of Australia!"
Buffy couldn't sneer as well as Faith, but she tried her best. "The First is about to have its ass reamed, you twit! The fact that I'm no longer shaking means she is gone, and the fact that we're not already dead means that the Key is kicking her butt!"
For just a few seconds Kennedy looked startled, but Buffy wasn't able to take advantage of her momentary distraction. "No way. I know you, Buffy. Christ only knows I've heard enough goddamn stories about you from my 'beloved' girlfriend over the years to make me want to vomit! No way you'd let this go down without you being there in person. That's just not the way you operate."
Shaking her head at the depth of her misunderstanding, Buffy figured it was time to explain the realities to this idiot. "Do you not understand why the First Evil does evil things, Kenn? Here's a clue: because it's fucking evil! It can't not be evil! Getting mad at it for being what it is would be a waste of time. I hate it, but it's not personal.
"You, on the other hand, had a choice. You didn't have to do what you did. You chose your side, you chose your actions, and you chose to murder Giles! Nobody gets away with messing with Giles! Anyone messes with Giles, and they had better be prepared for the greatest ass-kicking in the history of kicking asses! Messing with Giles is a one-way ticket to a post-graduate lesson in the field of Buffy-imposed ass-ology.
"And that lesson is about to fall on you, bitch!"
----
"Spike?! He's a goddamn vampire!"
Faith had to smile at the shocked outrage O'Neill managed to inject into his indignant yell. "He's her champion, dude! He would never let her down! Spike might live by a kind of fucked up code, but it's his code, and he takes it seriously. He swore an oath to her, and he'll die before going back on it."
Riley was standing nearby; their own Riley, not the young import version, and their relationship had always been strained. When she'd had sex with him by pretending to be Buffy, Faith had only looked at it as a way to hurt Buffy. 'Beefstick' or not, she'd thought it had been pretty good, and his gentle post-coital cuddling had been something she'd never previously experienced. Unfortunately Riley had always considered the act to be something close to rape, and he'd never forgiven her for it. "I know he's a Champion. So did the First. She'd have known about the 'Shanshu' prophesy and taken steps…"
Faith interrupted him. "I said her champion, not the Champion. Note the lack of a capital letter 'C' in my verbiage there, Hoss. I've been boning this guy on and off for the better part of a decade, but I never once doubted that if B ever asked Spike to do something, he'd do it, no questions asked. Well, boys, last night: she asked. She figured the First would be able to read the minds of everyone else on the insertion team, but Spike was immune to her telepathic powers. So he was the only one there who knew exactly when the portal would open and the First would be overcome by ECF."
Riley still wasn't getting it. "If he wasn't the Champion, then how in the hell did he force the First into the portal?"
Rolling her eyes in exasperation, Faith spoke to the crowd, now that most of the soldiers who had been attempting to break into the Portal Facility had given up. "He didn't! Don't you get it? Angel did!"
"Angel?! He's dead!"
"No shit, Sherlock. And a lot earlier than you're thinking he died, too."
This time it was Riley's turn to sigh in exasperation. "Well, duh, he's a vampire. He died hundreds of years ago…"
"No! Not that time! He died again fifteen years ago, before you ever came to Sunnydale. Buffy killed him, in order to close Acathla's Portal. Sent him into a quote Hell dimension, where he remained for one hundred years end quote. When he came back six months later they assumed he was sent to a place where time moved a lot faster than it does in our world, but it turns out he went to the same weird universe the First was trying to reach. He was there waiting for her. As soon as that bitch's portal opened, boom, he grabbed her from the inside.
"She never saw it coming."
---
May, 2003
LILAH
Means we give. You win. We're moving out. The senior partners are ceding this territory to you, and to prove it, they want to give you controlling interest in our L.A. Office. You get the building, assets, personnel, letterhead, paper clips, all of it. It's yours to do with as you see fit.
----
Once it understood that the lessons its Dawn avatar had learned could be used as the basis for its own explorations of the external environment, the Key quickly came up with analogues to the merely-human senses Dawn had used. There were no suns in this universe to provide light, or physical objects for such light to bounce off to provide anything to see, so its 'eyes' were like nothing a human would recognize. The fact that there were no linear dimensions, only infinitely-spiraling fractal sub-spaces packed together in infinite combinations, meant that it could not rely on anything like electro-magnetic radiation, which traveled in a straight line. Fortunately, the Avatar's sister had provided the key.
"Listen to the music, Dawn."
It wasn't quite 'music,' as a human understood it. Density waves propagating through the structure of the universe was closer, but not entirely accurate. The principle was the same, however. The Key was able to 'see' discordant 'notes' as the 'density' of transfinite compact dimensions shifted and decoupled when the governing equations broke down locally. It could now see that the problem was spreading rapidly. Unfortunately it was not spreading like a bacteria colony, since the fractal connections spanned more than two dimensions, and the equations of simple calculus did not extend in such a way as to provide consistent propagation models. What could be seen was bad enough. Worse yet remained beyond the Key's ability to sense. 'Colonies' of instability, multiplying, suddenly appearing in random locations, spreading not just like wildfire but as if each localized outbreak created a billion pyromaniacs who suddenly appeared in a billion separate remote locations, lighting additional fires, the whole chain of events cascading like fission about to unleash something vastly worse than nuclear hell.
Time did not flow in this space the way it did in other universes. For once, the Key could think as fast as anyone else. But it had much to learn, and the First had exploited its knowledge advantage ruthlessly, spreading the destabilizing code across entire dimensional structures while the Key tried to figure out what was happening. Now that it understood the danger, the Key was quick to fix what it could of the spreading 'infection,' its own mathematical nature enough to impose order anywhere it could reach.
But it couldn't reach everywhere. Anywhere it could 'touch' with its metaphorical hands was instantly 'healed,' order restored, the invalid equations absorbed and repressed as its own governing equations repaired the instability. Unfortunately the Key's reach was not infinite, and the instability was spreading much faster than it could heal the damage. Had there been a way to mathematically predict the dispersal pattern it might have been able to get ahead, but right about then the Key was reminded of the parable of the Little Dutch Boy sticking his finger in a dike. Unless it figured something out quickly, it would soon be unable to prevent the entire edifice from falling apart.
----
Neither of them had ever been in a fight like this one. Until she was Called, Buffy had never been in an actual fight, and despite all her lessons in self-defense, Kennedy had never faced anyone actually trying to kill her. It wasn't a girly-fight, with hair-pulling and slapping and the occasional kick to the shins. Both were extremely well trained, extremely experienced martial artists, but both were unfamiliar with the sort of combat they found themselves engaged in. Fighting was for slayers. And neither of them was a slayer any longer.
Mostly, they were discovering that it hurt when you got hit. A lot. When a vampire hit her hard enough to crack a rib or two a slayer was barely affected. When the same thing happened to a normal girl the pain was overwhelming. It took enormous effort to breathe, to stay on her feet, to keep fighting despite the agony. A pinched nerve meant her arm might be essentially useless for the next few minutes, and a hit to the eye meant swelling so severe she could barely see.
But both of them were also furious, filled with an overwhelming hatred for their opponent, and determined to win this final confrontation both had sought so eagerly. Both also quickly settled on tactics which they felt would let them win, and as the fight continued Buffy was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that Kennedy had been correct to hold back. The ECF episodes had taken too much out of her, left her too exhausted to continue fighting the way she had been trained, using the aggressive techniques she preferred. It wasn't the first time Buffy had been forced to fight on the defensive, and she hated it for the same reasons she had hated it the last time: you can't win fighting that way. Kennedy was doing just enough damage to ensure that she was tiring faster than she could recover from the cumulative effect of her experience suffering from ECF.
Much as she hated to admit it, Buffy realized that if she kept going with the tactics she had chosen, she was going to lose. Bra'tac had taught her as well as anyone could be taught. Her fighting technique was as good as anyone could ask for. The problem was that she was exhausted. A slayer was filled with power, hyper to the point of seeking out confrontations in order to work off some of that excess energy, but regular human beings quickly tired once the initial adrenaline rush faded. Buffy was running on empty, and only the fact that Kennedy respected her abilities too much to take the slightest unnecessary risk was keeping her from going down. Kennedy was also experienced enough to start pushing her attack as Buffy's defense faltered, without leaving herself open to the sort of last-second, desperate, 'pulled it out of my ass' counter-stroke that was Buffy's stock in trade.
No words were exchanged. No punny quips, no insults, no smart-assed remarks. Both were too tired, both desperately gulping in huge lungfuls of air, both protecting injured ribs and almost-useless arms. Quarter was neither sought nor granted. Both knew what was happening, and both knew what was about to happen. Buffy was losing, and would soon have no choice but to attempt an enormously risky gambit in order to grab a sudden victory while she still had the energy to do so. The reason Kennedy had been maintaining the defensive tactics she had settled on, even after Buffy started showing signs of exhaustion, was because of her well-known propensity for pulling off such last-second moves. She did not intend to be just another in a long line of fools who had been caught by surprise by the legendary Slayer after victory was almost within their grasp.
It was almost as if they were reading each other's mind. In terms of the strategy of the fight, they were. What mattered was the tactics Buffy intended to employ when she finally made her move, and this Kennedy did not know. Which was why Kennedy was only pushing so hard, while being very careful to never leave herself vulnerable to a sudden shift in tactics. What Buffy could only hope, however, was that her opponent was not prepared for the radical nature of the shift in styles she intended.
Like Giles, Bra'tac had trained her in the fighting techniques his people had evolved over the ages, stratagems and dexterous physical moves which had been coolly dissected by the Masters, refined and tested by their most brilliant protégés. An old man like Jack O'Neill could not have performed even one such move on his best day. Buffy had seen Jack fight, laughed at him for being dropped by one punch from Teal'c during a boxing match, insulted him for being pinned almost instantly by Fenton in a wrestling match. She'd teased him about it, because she hadn't expected anything else. He was old! Only when he had left the room had Fenton casually mentioned that in the real world, the only fighter he'd ever met –including her—who truly scared him was Jack O'Neill.
O'Neill fought dirty.
Not just 'dirty' as in 'not following the rules,' or 'pulling hair.' O'Neill quite simply did not even believe in the basic concept of a 'fair' fight. If his opponent had a knife, he wanted a gun. They had a bomb, he wanted a nuke. If it came down to hand-to-hand, nothing was off-limits. The problem with fighting techniques refined by experts was that they were intended to be 'honorable,' to prove the fighters' worth via superiority in combat. Jack didn't give a damn about 'honor' or 'superiority' or any of that other 'image' crap. If he was pushed into a fight, then only one of them would be walking away from it afterwards. O'Neill was adamantly determined that it would be him. No matter what he had to do in order to ensure that it was him.
It didn't happen often. O'Neill believed in strength through firepower, so was rarely caught without a weapon. It was just Buffy's luck that she had been a witness to it on one of the extremely rare occasions when Jack had been forced to use his hands. She'd almost thrown up afterwards. It wasn't like two great jungle beasts doing battle, or honorable Japanese samurai settling their dispute the old-fashioned way. The closest comparison she could come up with was the insect world, where ambush predators did inhumanly disgusting things to their prey. She'd never forgotten what she'd seen that day. Jack O'Neill was far closer to being a praying mantis than he was to being a civilized human being.
The slayer, in many ways, was the exact opposite. In her world, she maintained order by earning the respect of her opponents, her abilities carefully calibrated to lend her an aura of fearful awe. All of her training, all of her mental focus, was directed towards maintaining that aura among those inhuman monsters subject to her law. Oh, naturally she was prepared to do what was necessary, such as the occasionally eye gouge or boot to the crotch. But those were the exception, not the norm.
O'Neill started with a kick to his opponents balls. And after that, he got downright nasty.
What Buffy intended was something similar, and was only possible at all because not only had her opponent been trained the same way she had been, but she was one of the few opponents Buffy had ever faced who was almost the same size as she was. Normally she faced enemies much larger than herself, so had good reason to use her skills to keep them away from her, knowing that even her slayer strength might not be enough to defeat an opponent who pinned her down. This was most definitely not the case for Kennedy.
They were watching each other's eyes, both experts in their chosen-for-them field, both knowing what was happening, both psyching themselves for it. Buffy could see Kennedy's pretty brown eyes expand, her lips almost curve into a small smile as they both realized it was about to happen. At first, Buffy gave her what she was fairly certain Kennedy expected, jumping forward, a few quick thrusts –all easily defended—and then, instead of the leg sweep Kennedy was expecting, defended against Kenn's defensive move and leapt forward, wrapping the girl in the exact same grappling hold so many of her enemies had tried to use against her.
There were, of course, techniques to break such holds, and Kennedy knew them all. The most effective was the head-butt, which Kennedy proceeded to deliver right on cue. Knowing what was coming, Buffy was already moving her head aside, thrusting forward in a way that had Kennedy momentarily thinking the girl was going to kiss her, when instead, her mouth opened, and she bit down on Kennedy's surgically-sculpted nose.
Bit hard. Instinctively snapping her head back, Kennedy screamed as a big chunk of her nose was ripped off, blood spurting everywhere, desperately moving backwards but unable to beat the fist already coming forward to smash her in the open wound, crushing the exposed cartilage, more blood flying, pain almost overwhelming her. It was far from a fatal wound and Kennedy just needed a second to get herself together, so fell backwards, but Buffy was already on top of her, one hand grabbing her hair, pulling hard, the other closing on her throat. Closing, clenching like a claw. Frantically pounding away at the girl on top of her, them both now on the ground with Buffy on top, her claw-like fingers digging into her throat, Kennedy tried to scream as her larynx was being ripped from her neck. Desperately trying to roll, to get some leverage, all she could do was pound her fists into the other girls face time after time, but instead of defending herself she just took it, not even trying to avoid the blows as she held on, a horrible gurgling sound audible as the delicate cartilage of the larynx was crushed, even more blood suddenly spurting as she ripped into the flesh of her neck, fingers crushing and the raw hideous noise of the destroyed cartilage being ripped apart audible even over the sound of Kennedy's muted screams of agony and Buffy's screams of rage.
It took her awhile to die. She kept fighting to the end, hitting Buffy's pulverized face, trying to escape her grip, but that wasn't going to happen. Buffy had her locked into what was quite literally a 'death grip' and wasn't letting go. Until finally all movement stopped, all breathing stopped, all signs of life finally, mercifully, stopped. Only then, at long last, did she let go, fingers clenched so tightly it took considerable effort to release her grip, even more effort to roll away from the corpse.
Only then did she throw up, the dry heaves of her spasming stomach almost making her forget the agony from her broken nose, cut lips, and the swelling bruises around her eyes and face.
----
Riley wasn't buying it. "Acathla opened a portal to Hell. The chances of that particular Hell being the same as the one the First is using is pretty much zero! There are about a zillion alternative dimensions, and even if they were somehow the same one, Acathla didn't have enough energy to reach it, and didn't have the power to breach the seal closing it off from us even if it did! As deities go, Acathla was pretty low on the totem pole. Until Illyria turned up, only the Powers That Be had the power to do it. They didn't! The First made damned sure of it. They couldn't do anything without the First knowing about it, and if they'd tried something like that the First would have put a stop to it."
Which was all true, and Faith simply smiled at him, knowing how much it drove him up the wall, implying as it did that he was an idiot for not realizing the implications of his own words. Which of course was exactly the impression she was trying to give with that smile. "There's another group with the power to do it, Farm Boy."
Enjoying his look of irritated confusion, Faith waited until the clue-bat finally struck before telling everyone else what he had finally figured out. "The Powers didn't send Angel exactly where he needed to be in order to grab the First: the Senior Partners did!"
Few among the SGC contingent knew who these 'Senior Partners' might be, but from the expressions of shock on the faces of Finn and his crew of locals, they weren't anyone you'd expect to be willing to lend a hand to a Champion. Riley was aghast at the very suggestion. "They're evil!"
"They're lawyers!" Faith shouted it back at him as if her words explained everything, and perhaps it did. But for those who didn't get it, she explained further. "Before he went and got his soul restored, Spike was 'evil' too, but he helped Buffy stop Acathla. I won't repeat the 'happy meals on legs' speech, because I'm sure you've all heard it before. But basically what he did back then –the very fact that it was even possible for him to do it--meant the old order was breaking down. 'Evil' beings were no longer compelled to support evil; they just normally did so, because they are assholes. If it was worth their while, they could do of the good. The Senior Partners knew they were fucked if the First succeeded in its plans, and convinced themselves they were allowed to do it because it was more 'evil' to betray their own leader than it was just to mess with the human masses.
"Remember, they're lawyers. The 'evil' part is kinda redundant. They made a deal! And Angel is the sort of angst-ridden moron who would let himself be trapped in a century-long timeloop in Hell if that's what he had to do to mess up the First's plans."
----
May, 2004
Hamilton asks why Angel continues fighting when he's signed away his Shanshu and will thus gain nothing. Angel replies that the people who don't care about anything will never understand the people who do. Hamilton boasts that the power of the Senior Partners runs through his blood. Angel says, "Can you pick out the one word you probably shouldn't have said?" Rushing at Hamilton, Angel assumes his vampire form and draws Hamilton's power by drinking his blood, then snaps Hamilton's neck. Suddenly, the vast armies of the Senior Partners advance on the four survivors. As the demon army approaches, the group goes into battle.
----
The Key could see the tones and discordant notes coming from all directions as the imbalanced equations spread at an ever-increasing rate. Already the situation was dire, and unless it could figure out something pretty damned quick the entire universe was fucked. For an instant it paused, the emotional intonation of the previous thought somewhat startling, until it realized that it was absorbing ever more of the life experiences of its Dawn avatar into its own mental makeup in order to address this issue with her greater experience dealing with such challenges. The Dawn component of its emerging personality understood that it needed to do more than figuratively stick its finger in the collapsing dike; it needed to figure out the pattern behind the propagation of the effect, and get ahead of it, or everything was doomed.
The music analogy was fine, but the Key needed to 'see' far more than it could using such an analog in a universe which did not possess linear dimensions. There were no lines, or planes in this universe. But until the unstable aspect of the Key started screwing things up, this space was mathematically consistent within its own unique rules. In order to figure out those rules, the Key understood that it needed to go back to first principles.
A third dimension could be interpreted as a 'fold,' like a two-dimensional piece of paper being folder over. To a two-dimensional creature, such a fold would appear to be a shortcut from one point to another in its otherwise flat world. By crossing that 'fold,' the two-dimensional creature would appear, as if by magic, in a completely different location, with no knowledge of how it got there. The propagation of the instability was doing something similar; invalid code suddenly appearing in different locations, with no obvious mechanism as to how it arrived. The Key needed to be able to see higher-dimensional 'folds' in order to locate the path of the instability and stop it.
Time was often thought of as the 'fourth' dimension. A three-dimensional object walking through time would leave a 'strobe-lit' trail as it went about its business, but at any given moment in time it would only exist in a unique position. However Buffy had showed explicitly that there were other universes where time moved along a different path, as different choices were made not only by people, but by the arbitrary possibilities of a tossed coin or the result of a quantum fluctuation. The ability to 'see' a 'fifth' dimension would show the Key all such possible outcomes in time, like a tree branching from every decision point, each choice leading to ever-diverging alternate choices.
Almost like magic, the Key's 'vision' extended as it 'viewed' the universe in its five-dimensional glory. The path of the instability was obvious. The impact of it even more so. Unfortunately a bigger problem was also observed, as the First continued to spread the rot back through time, across all possible time streams. Even a cursory examination was enough to convince the Key that the instability could no longer be stopped in the present; it was too entrenched, the collapse inevitable. Even going back in time to fix it wouldn't be enough. There were too many branches, too many sources of what it could only call 'cross pollination' as the instability spread through dimensions the Key still could not perceive. What it needed was a way to leap across all possible time-streams from a single point, rather than having to go back in time to each branching instant and repairing that stream from its beginning. This 'six-dimensional' shortcut was possible, but as the First continued to travel back in time, the number of possible branches being impacted continued to grow.
The sheer number of possible branches in time made it impossible to fix them all, and that number was growing the further back in time the First reached, continuing to contaminate the entire timeline, all the way back to the very instant of Creation. From that single point of origin an infinitely-branching structure extended, all of it now contaminated, all of it destabilizing as history itself broke down. The Key could follow the First backwards in time, but it could not prevent the breakdown as it always extended ever further back in time, always present in at least one of the infinite possible branches of history. All that the First needed to succeed was for one branch to be contaminated, and the rot would inevitably spread, the collapse resume.
The Key needed something more. It could now see all possible timelines extending from the moment of the Big Bang, but there was no reason the initial conditions at the moment of the Big Bang had to be the same. Changing those initial conditions changed all possible time-lines extending from the moment of Creation, and finally the Key saw a possibility of actually stopping the First. The First had not been able to extend itself all the way back to the very beginning in order to cover all possible futures. A fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the First was stopped cold, and now that it was 'seeing' in seven dimensions the Key could see that the only way to change the outcome was to change those initial conditions.
If it wanted to stop the First the Key would have to go all the way back in time to do it. Back to the Period of Inflation, right after the Big Bang.
Back to the time of the Old Gods.