So, I have had this sitting on my computer for a while now (See years). I figured I might as well post it.

This is Buffy in the Marvel world. It's not quite the MCU, but it's not quite the comics either. A bit Buffy AU also, with no knowledge of Marvel. But it also could be because Buffy doesn't read comics...

Quite a few chapters of this have been written. (A first for me) I just need to clean them up, I'll post more if people want it.

Disclaimer. I do not own. I do not claim to own. I do not want to own…. seriously I wouldn't want to responsibly.

Seeing the Glass Half Full

Chapter One.

The last thing Buffy expected when she died was to wake up.

To be fair she wasn't actually sure she had died, but she had been so sure that she would. The whole swan drive through a magic portal thing, seemed like a sure exit strategy. Not to mention Glory's portal itself, entering that thing, had sure as hell felt like she was going to die.

Which was why it was so surprising for her to wake up and find herself staring up at the blue sky above her. It was quiet where she lay, the ground beneath her back felt like dirt and grass and not the concert she had been falling towards.

Wind blew through the surrounding trees, causing the long branches to sway into her line of sight. Dirt? She wondered. Her thoughts a dizzy faint thing, Trees? Where am I? She wondered dimly if she was in the woodlands outside Sunnydale. It wasn't an area she knew well, save for the occasional patrol. People tended to avoid it at night and because of that, so did the vampires.

She tried to look around to see if anything familiar stood out, but she couldn't seem to move her head. She might not be dead, but it still felt as if someone had stuffed her into a blender and hit puree.

She wondered for a moment how it was physically possible for her hair to hurt.

She gave a soft groan of exhaustion and annoyance before giving up trying to sit up. Flopping back onto the cold ground she promised herself, she would never again dive into a magic portal from a tower made by crazy people.

You know, just in case something like that happened again.

#SC#

She finally managed to will herself to her feet. And with no other direction in mind, save for a strong gut feeling, started walking through the trees.

Woodland finally headed turning into large rolling grass fields, like something out of a country painting. The grassy plains would have been a picturesque scene, had Buffy not spent the last few hours trudging across them. Just when Buffy had decided green was fast becoming her most hated colour, she came across her first sign of life.

An old dirt road. She started down the road with a little more enthusiasm then she'd had crossing the fields. Which was none. Infinitely thankful that she had been wearing her ass-kicking heels pre-portal as opposed to say any other kind of heel. Grassy fields where not friendly on heels, and the frustration of having to dig her heel out of the soft dirt would have taken its toll. But now everything else was taking its toll instead.

Her forest stained sweater, one of her favourites, for one thing. Though a comfortable wear for night time Sunnydale, wasn't really keeping out the building chill of …. wherever she was.

She turned to watch the sun, noticing it was close to setting. The night-time would only be colder. She could handle the cold, better than a regular person could. But she was still a modern girl, and a Californian one at that.

Used to warmer weather and air-conditioning.

The sun was mostly set by the time Buffy found her next sign of life. She slowed her determined march as she moved past a row of burnt out houses. Not much left of them but rubble and deep gorges in the ground. The were no bodies and no other signs that people had once been here, but there was something about the rubble that sent a shiver down Buffy's spine. It might have had something to do with the faint glow she could see in the distance. It looked like something was a on fire.

Thankfully her path led her away from the glow, and straight to her next sign of life. This time however seemed so much more promising. Houses, small and quant started appearing before a village that was almost big enough to be called a small town appeared. Buffy swallowed the urge to laugh or cry, or maybe even break into song, and doubled her speed.

Dirt roads gave way to cobblestones and larger houses. And the sound of voices started drifting through the air. There were a few people around on the cobbled paths, making their way through their tiny town. Buffy joyful at the sight of other people almost ran towards them but found after a couple of steps forward, she didn't need to.

A little old lady hobbled her way past Buffy. Her back bowed and cane tapping with each step. Buffy stepped forward to ask where they were? And could she have a phone? Or a shower maybe. When the elderly lady froze at the sight of her. Ducking down to hide her face behind the shawl she had tied over her head and fled away from Buffy as fast as she could.

The woman cried out something almost fearfully, something in another language. Something that sounded almost…

"…French?" Buffy questioned herself as she worked to identify the language from her limited sample collection. "Is that…. French?"

She may have taken French in high school and may have even somehow passed it. She might still have reoccurring nightmares about the exam that were scarier than some monsters she'd faced. But all she could remember now was how to say Hello. Yes and no, and where's the toilet.

"Heeyy…uh …huh?" Buffy was left blinking after quickly fleeing woman, vaguely surprised by the speed the old lady moved at. She huffed a huge sigh in frustration. "Great! Nice start."

"Okay…. okay." She muttered to herself trying to work out what was happening to her, or rather what had already happened. "Swirling hell god portal takes me to…. France?"

She turned her attention to the stars. "Is this the universes way of sending me on vacation? Cause I know I'm due one! but I would have preferred Hawaii!"

#SC#

She could have knocked on a door a maybe found someone that spoke English. Got her hands on a phone and called home. But she didn't. There was something going on in this town, a good number of houses looked abandoned. The whole place was putting her on edge. Not to mention the reaction the old lady had had. It wasn't annoyance that had sent her scurrying away, Buffy knew fear when she saw it. There was something weird going on, she could almost taste it.

It tasted vaguely like ashes. But that might have been the smell of smoke in the air.

She found a small alley way between two houses. It was more a passageway, then the alleys she'd hunted in back home. Plus, it was a lot cleaner. She settled down just out of sight, near the mouth of the alley. Back against the wall, knees drawn up against her chest, eyes staring into nothing.

Dawnie, she thought. The image of her little sister came clearly to mind. Right before…right before Buffy had jumped. Her tear streaked face staring after her as she ran to what she'd thought to be her death. She had been so sure she was going to die. She had accepted it. She had even been willing to, if it meant her little sister had gotten to live.

Maybe she had let Spike's annoying 'Deathwish' talks, and the whole 'Death is your gift' thing, get to her. Because of her readiness to jump. How quickly she had accepted it, as if she had expected it.

But now here she was sitting in some alley, in what she thought was rural France. Wondering what she was going to say when she saw Dawnie again. She found herself thankful that she had survived. Glad the she had lived.

I'm sorry I scared you Dawnie, Willow, Xander, Giles. She thought, But I'm okay, and I'm coming home.

Emotional exhaustion more than physically finally caught up with her, as her head dropped forward. Maybe things will be clearer in the day, she thought fuzzily, and she dropped off to sleep.

#SC#

She knew she was dreaming even if she hadn't been sitting in the theatre of Sunnydale high. As if the whole school hadn't been reduced to rubble by Buffy and her friends during their graduation. There was no one else in the audience, the seemly endless rows of seats were dark and empty.

The stage however was lit up with lights. There was a large painted backdrop of a river, surrounded by large props of rocks and shattered bones. One skull was painted red with blood.

Xander was standing in the middle of the stage, dressed like Kevin Sorbo, or rather his character from Hercules, the Legendary Journeys. He stepped forward, and with all the acting skill he had displayed during the school's talent show. His one and only Snyder forced acting experience. Proclaimed himself to be Heracles, on the second of his twelve labours.

Willow walked onto the stage next and with the same woefully wooden acting, held her sword prop up to the audience of just Buffy and introduced herself as Iolaus. She announced that they should use a firebrand on the multi headed serpent and cauterize the wounds. Preventing two more heads from taking the place of the severed one.

"Personally, I find the best way to kill something like that is to go for the heart," Spike's voice remarked next to her, and Buffy turned to look. He was leaning back in his chair watching the performance as if he was watching the best play around.

"Either that," Giles agreed from her other side, eating from a box of popcorn. "Or crush it's body. No body no heads to grow from."

A sudden fierce flare of blue light came from the corner of her eye and Buffy turned around in her chair to look. But there was nothing there, literally nothing. Just an endless expanse of nothing. Faint flashes of colours came in the distance. Along with the blue came yellow, red, purple, green and orange.

She winced slightly, even in the dream state the lights made her head hurt. She turned back to the stage. Realising as she did so Spike and Giles were gone and there were other people in the audience with her now. The seats were full of people dressed in dated military gear. The stage was different to.

Gone was Xander and Willow and the river backdrop, in its place hung a large American flag. A short skinny blond man stood in front of it. He stepped forward casting a disproportionately large shadow across the stage. He gave her a salute, before turning around and punching what looked like Adolf Hitler in the face.

#SC#

There was a strange vibration in the air, almost a humming. It jerked her from sleep to wide awake, just before something nearby exploded in a fiery flash of flames and debris. The wall behind her lurched as smoke and rubble flew past the mouth of the alley. She was on her feet and moving before the second blast it, burying the alleyway behind her in fallen rubble.

All around her people were screaming as the ran fleeing from the buildings. As more high-pitched sounds followed by explosions that lit the night up with its fury. The little town that had look so quant and picturesque was on fire, with explosions of debris and flames all around her.

Buffy watched with shocked wide eyes at the fallen bodies around her. She came to the conclusion that she had been wrong all along. She had died from the portal. She had to be dead, because this was hell.

A nearby scream knocked her out of her stupor, and into action. Snatching up a fallen young boy and running him into the arms of his screaming reaching mother. The blasts had slowed thankfully, but it didn't mean the attack was over. As the report of a rifle came, almost unnaturally loud. Almost as if it had been fired right next to Buffy's ear. Across the town square a man jerked and fell. Chaos ruled around her, and Buffy's began to shove those near her into running. Loud grinding gears echoed, and the large shape of a metal vehicle came crashing through the destroyed houses.

A tank! Buffy recognised with numb disbelief. That's a tank!

Buffy vs. a Tank was not a conflict that Buffy herself had ever really thought about. Now watching the hulking metal frame swivel its massive canon to fire its deadly shot at the town. She decided that right now was not the best time to come up with an answer to that confrontation. Especially as more armed men dressed in black combat gear, appeared through the rubble the tank had left.

Large bug like eyes, of the black gas masks, glinted with the flames around them. Staring ghoulishly as they fired into the fleeing people. Buffy didn't think, as she moved through the people towards the soldiers. The tank conflict she'd avoid for now, but the men… she could deal with them.

Taking advantage of the smoke and chaos, Buffy closed in on one of the soldiers before he even registered the counterattack. Not that they had been expecting one obviously, they had attacked a defenceless town.

The thought made her blood boil.

They might have been humans. Amoral, probably evil humans. But they were still trained soldiers. The man reacted surprisingly fast despite his initial surprise. Didn't help him much, considering he was up against a pissed off experienced Slayer. She knocked the rifle from his grasp and kicked him in the knee, dropping him to the ground. She followed it up with a stronger than necessary punch to the face.

One of his buddies noticed the attack, spinning out the aim his rifle at her. Buffy not having any weapons of her own, did what Buffy did best, and improvised. She grabbed hold of the unconscious man and threw in at the other man. The force knocked him back into a partially destroyed wall, both men tumbled to the ground out cold.

There was a shout. It was in another language and it didn't sound French to Buffy. She wasn't sure what happened next. One second, she was running towards her next target, the next her right leg jerked and gave out underneath her. She landed in an awkward tripod position as she looked down to gap at her leg. Watching as the red bloomed across the denim clad thigh.

She'd been shot.

Instinct, hearing or lucky guess had her pushing herself to the side just as a bullet bit into the ground right where her head had been. She really couldn't tell, but then again, she'd never been shot at by a sniper before.

The bullet in her leg pulled and burned in a way she'd never experienced. But she was no stranger to pain. She'd been stabbed, clawed and sliced. She had fought with master vampires and demons, not only that she had survived going toe to toe against a Hell god. On one occasion she had even fallen off a building. But she had never been shot. She decided right then and there that was didn't like it. She really, really didn't like it.

She made her feelings on the matter known when she punched another soldier so hard, he flew backward. By this time the men around her had realised that there was something different about this tiny blond and that she might be a bigger threat then they had originally thought.

More shouts erupted in that foreign language, as the men all turned their attention and rifles on her alone. A loud whirling sound signalled the tank moving to aim itself at her as well.

It seemed that the Buffy vs. The tank question might be getting an answer sooner than expected.

More shouting came, and Buffy frowned in confusion. Is that? She thought looking from gas masked soldier to gas masked soldier, Is that German?

#SC#

It took a few moments for them all to gather around her. All different distances and position, more ground then she could hope to cover before someone got another shot at her.

One gunman approached her with an almost smug walk, pulling his rifle back to slam the butt of it into her face. His smugness faded when she didn't drop as expected. Instead rolling her head slightly with the blow before turning back to glare at him.

He faltered her a moment, before pulling back to hit her again. Only to have her catch the butt before it made contact. He tugged on the weapon, trying to pull it free with no luck. The men around her started shouting at her in German again. She noticed a couple of them had villages as hostages and let go on the rifle. Not even blinking as the soldier stumbled backward with the sudden loss of her grip.

He spun the rifle and aim in right between her eyes. Even as another stepped forward, striking at her wounded leg. She went down to her knee, looking up just in time to see two rifle butts coming for her face. The world hazed out for a second, as she heard distant shouting and the sound of more people gathering around her.

Every Slayer instinct screamed at her to get up. Something landed on her wounded leg, and she cried out kicking. She was pretty sure she'd just sent someone flying. Something thin and sharp, was slammed into her arm and she felt the heady flood of drugs clouding her head.

"No!" She muttered gasping, "No-no-no-no…" Fighting spirit and body fighting the pull. Someone called out something and a second prick followed, and she felt her body slacken as her eyelids flicked. Her vision hazing in and out. She watched dazedly as gas masked soldiers leant in over her. She mumbled one last word, before she was out.

"… Jerks."

A/N:

Finding true slayer feats is actually harder than I thought. It seems Buffy is only capable of doing whatever the plot needed her to do. Breaks ropes easy one episode, can't the next. Takes a punch from a superpowered monster, goes done after one hit from a normal person's swing.

So, I am taking her abilities from their highest setting. I heard that Slayer abilities are more defined and more powerful in the comics, but I've never read them. Call it Ultimate Buffy I guess.

You might disagree, but for the sake of this story she is mostly on pair with a Super soldier. But based mostly on what Slayers were created for, she might be stronger and more resistant, also have better 'senses' (The ones that come from being a hunter). Steve has greater healing (Buffy can scar and can get drunk and has gotten sick. 'though her Mother did comment that she never got sick, and drugs don't really work on her).

Saying that one is better at something then the other doesn't mean the other isn't powerful in that feat as well. Plus, the distance between to two won't be that great, not like say between a regular human and say Thor. More like the difference between say a person and the friend they get to open a stubborn jar.

Basically, Slayers are the supernatural Super Soldiers, expect without the muscles and …y'know …the height. Also were Steve has an Eidetic Memory, higher brain function etc…. Buffy has more preternatural senses.

Ignoring sloppy and low budget 90's choreographing and going back to the bases of Slayer mythos, she has the entire history of slayer fighting skill, plus an instinctual knowledge of how to use every weapon. She definitely has the more fighting skill.