Chapter 2: Graduation Day

Buffy

Going on a patrol the night before graduation day probably wasn't the best idea Buffy had ever had. It wasn't like there was going to be anything to slay with the entire demonic underworld of Sunnydale holding its breath. As she'd left the house, Faith had jokingly called it stress slaying, but it was really more like wandering around the cemeteries and worrying about tomorrow. Kendra didn't have that problem. She'd already been asleep when Buffy decided to patrol, like Giles had suggested for all of them. Faith on the other hand had been working her way through a pile of comic books.

Buffy twirled a stake in one hand. One more cemetery, then she'd go home and get some sleep. She'd only gotten to stake one fledge. His family had buried him in a suit that looked almost exactly like the one Deputy Mayor Finch had been wearing the night he died. A part of Buffy had breathed a sigh of relief when the fledge had exploded into dust. Another part of her had panicked. If she could talk to a real therapist honestly about everything that had happened in the past year, her shrink could probably help her get a book and movie deal out of it.

"Are you still feeling sorry for yourself?" a familiar voice asked from the shadow of a mausoleum.

Buffy scoffed. "When did you get back in town?"

Lucy stepped out into the moonlight and smiled at her with blood red lips. "Last night. I hear there's something big going down tomorrow. Any truth to the rumours?"

"A little," Buffy said shortly. Lucy had probably picked all the details out of her mind already. "Are Spike and Drusilla with you?"

"Spike is at home. Drusilla," Lucy bared her teeth, "is having bonding time with the little brother she never knew she had."

Somehow, Buffy didn't think Lucy was talking about a brother from Drusilla's human family. It was just a suspicion. She would have asked Angel about it if he hadn't broken up with her "for her own good" right before prom.

Lucy whistled. "Wow, lots of bitterness there. When did Angel get back?"

"September." He'd escaped from the hell dimension Lucy had sent him to and brought hundreds of humans the demons in that dimension were using as slave labour with him. According to Giles, the contractors in L.A. that the Council had recruited to help those people were still having trouble getting them settled thanks to the hell dimension causing them to age years in only a few hours.

"Impressive," Lucy said. "Sooner than I expected. How are you holding up?"

Buffy wanted to stay silent—didn't Lucy already know?—but she found herself spilling out all her problems while Lucy listened quietly. Mom had practically adopted Kendra, and that was fine, more than fine really. Having Kendra in Sunnydale was fantastic, not only because she was another Slayer to help battle the Hellmouth but because she and Buffy worked together so well. Willow and Giles said that they balanced each other out. Buffy liked Kendra. Kendra wasn't a problem. Neither was Faith, the potential Slayer who'd come to Sunnydale after a super old master vampire killed her Watcher and didn't leave after the bastard was dust. Mom had actually adopted her, with a little help from Giles and some of his friends in the Council to speed things up. No, the problem was Buffy. She'd gotten Giles fired. She'd nearly gotten her friends killed. She had killed Deputy Mayor Finch and said nothing when Faith tried to take the fall for her until it was almost too late.

"So what I'm getting is that you feel guilty for a whole lot of stuff that's been completely out of your control," Lucy said when Buffy was finished. "You know I'm not the best person to talk to about this, right? I don't feel guilt."

Buffy shook her head. "Everyone thinks I'm fine, that everything's blown over and it's fine."

"But it isn't and you aren't." Lucy frowned and crossed her arms. "And you don't want to tell them."

"Duh," Buffy said, even though it wasn't a question. So not fair with the mind-reading.

Lucy's expression grew thoughtful. "I met your friend Pike."

Buffy blinked at the non-sequitur. "What?"

"Oliver Pike, your ex-boyfriend, rides a motorcycle, kind of cute in a scruffy way," Lucy said. "He got into the demon hunter business and there was this cult...long story. The point is he knows people and I have his email address, somewhere. I'll dig it up and if we survive tomorrow I'll get in contact with him. Or you can get in contact with him. We'll figure something out. He knows people."

"Like a therapist who won't throw me in a padded room when I tell them I slay vampires?" Buffy asked. "Wait. If we survive tomorrow?"

Lucy smirked. "You didn't think I was going to let you run into battle without me, did you? Any vampires fighting against you tomorrow aren't following our orders and must be disciplined. Besides, I could use a good brawl."

"Couldn't we all?" Buffy muttered, looking around the cemetery that was completely empty except for the two of them. "You know you'd be working with Angel, right?"

The grin on Lucy's face made Buffy sorry she'd asked.

They were ready. The library was cleared out, the bombs had been set and the graduating class was armed to the teeth. Kendra and Faith were seated with the parents and family members who couldn't be talked out of coming to the ceremony, ready to get them out when the fighting started.

Buffy tapped her foot impatiently. The Mayor was standing on the stage in the school courtyard giving a boring, generic speech. Was it wrong for her to wish he'd just Ascend already? Next to her, Willow hissed something in a dead and/or demon language that probably wasn't complimentary. She was as jittery as if she'd been allowed to drink two cups of coffee instead of one.

"Evil, evil man," Buffy muttered.

The sunlight began to grow dim. On stage, the Mayor stiffened and twitched. "Well this is...I was expecting to have more time. I had a whole section on civic pride." He grinned, which turned into a pained grimace. "But I guess we'll skip to the big finish."

"Here we go," someone seated further back muttered. Buffy thought that it sounded like Oz.

The Mayor ballooned, that was the only word Buffy could think of in the moment to describe what happened. His skin stretched, distorted and ripped when the demon growing under it grew too large. The demon that had been the Mayor was giant snake, larger than the one that had been eating babies in the sewer or the one that had been eating high school girls in the basement of a frat house or...well, there had been a lot of snake demons in Sunnydale and there would probably be more. The Mayor-snake made a sound that was a cross between a hiss and a roar. Screams came from the guests, but Buffy could hear Faith and Kendra shouting over top of them, trying to get them away safely.

"Now!" Buffy said. "Flame units!"

Every member of the Sunnydale High graduating class of 1999 stood and removed their robes, revealing the weapons they carried underneath. Larry and Kyle grabbed their flamethrowers. The Mayor-snake screamed as it was blasted with fire and faster than anyone could have seen coming it recoiled and snapped up Snyder in one bite.

"That's unfortunate," Jonathan squeaked.

Xander called for the first wave of attacks to begin. Arrows, crossbow bolts and other projectiles drew the Mayor-snake's attention but didn't seem to make a dent in its scales. Larry and Kyle hit it with fire again, sending it flinching back but not visibly causing any major damage.

"Xander!" Oz shouted. Buffy risked a quick look over her shoulder and saw the swarm of vampires advancing on them from behind.

"Archers!" Xander ordered.

Buffy turned her attention back to the Mayor-snake. Its head darted towards them but quickly retreated when Jonathan stabbed it in the eye with the head of a broken spear. Jonathan let out a yell. "It grew more eyes!"

Oh great. That was totally what they needed.

"Flamethrower down," Kyle said.

Too many things happened at once. Kyle was thrown across the courtyard by the snake demon's tail, crashing against a concrete pillar and falling to the ground with the back of his head caved in and his neck bent at a lethal angle. Behind the graduates, the sounds of fists hitting flesh indicated that Angel's team was fighting the vampires trying to contain them. With one flamethrower lost, the Mayor-snake snapped up two graduates before the rest of them could react.

"Fall back," Buffy said. "Fall back!"

"Fall back!" Xander repeated. "Hand-to-hand!"

Larry kept the Mayor-snake back with the last bit of fuel in his flamethrower while people with projectile weapons exchanged them for hand-to-hand weapons. Then the mass exodus of graduates began. Finally, only Buffy was left. She took Faith's knife out of her jacket pocket, the knife that the Mayor had gifted her sister when she was spying on him.

"Hey, fang-face! You recognize this?" Buffy held up the knife. "You gave it to Faith. She gave it to me, because she was never on your side. She was never yours."

Buffy definitely had the Mayor-snake's attention. It was glaring at her with all five of its eyes.

"Do you want to take it back from me, dick?" Buffy stood her ground for a heartbeat before she took off running, dodging the Mayor-snake's snapping fangs by a hair. The demon followed her as she sprinted across the courtyard and into the school. The doors crashed into the wall with a boom as the demon plowed through them. It followed her all the way to the library, making noise that sounded like the entire football team running away from a pride of lions and a herd of snakes in the hallways.

Somehow that wasn't something that had happened during her time at Sunnydale High. Go figure.

Buffy entered the library and kept going. She heard the demon crashing through the doors a second before she leapt over the explosives piled on the floor and took the quickest route out of the room, which was through a window. She had built up enough momentum that the glass and the window frame easily shattered around her. She used her arm to shield her eyes from the flying glass and had a second to think that maybe removing the glass beforehand would have been a good idea before she hit the ground and rolled.

"Now," she said when she came out of her roll into a crouch next to Giles.

Giles depressed the detonator and Sunnydale High School exploded.

A surprising number of people were standing and watching the fire. Or maybe not so surprising. Oz was right. They needed to take a moment to process that they'd survived high school. They were still the Sunnydale High class with the highest graduation rate in history.

Buffy clutched her diploma in one hand. It actually was her diploma, name and all, and she suspected that Giles had rescued it a bit earlier than he'd said he had. Maybe he'd done the same for the rest of the graduating members of their Scooby gang. That was a Giles thing to do, wasn't it? Definitely a Giles thing, though Jenny was always up for pulling one over on Snyder so she'd probably helped.

Their group drifted apart as the school burned. Kendra went to provide first aid to people who weren't injured enough for the paramedics to take care of them, dragging Faith along with her. Willow and Oz disappeared pretty soon after that, probably to take advantage of the fact that Willow's parents were somewhere on the other side of the globe. Both of them arriving to the ceremony late was a pretty big clue. Buffy meandered around watching the flames that the firefighters were slowly putting out and occasionally giving directions to panicked parents who were looking for their kids. The times that she couldn't give directions she lied through her teeth and said she was sure that whoever they were looking for was fine. She really hoped that no one had been turned during the battle. Most of the parents seemed like they'd order their kid into the house with the intention of keeping them there until collage started if they showed up on their doorstep after this.

Soul ran into Buffy as she stepped into the sidewalk. He stumbled, nearly dropping the bottled water he was carrying before Buffy helped him catch his balance. "Oh, hi Buffy. Water?"

"Thanks." Buffy took the bottle the drummer of Dingoes Ate My Baby held out to her. "Are the rest of the guys around?"

"Sam's passing out granola bars and Devon was going to look for Kendra," Soul said. He frowned. "Uh, Buffy? I saw Lucy walking around here, before the sun came back. Should we be worried?"

Buffy sighed. "I don't think so. Not yet. I talked to her last night and it was weird," in so many ways, "but I didn't get any big evil plans vibes. Pass the word around that she and Spike are back in town, and we'll figure out what to do later."

Soul nodded. "Will do."

As Soul walked away from her to find other people in need of hydration, Buffy tucked her diploma under her arm so she could open her bottle of water. She ended up guzzling half the bottle after she took her first sip. She hadn't realized how much she'd needed water.

"B!"

Buffy turned as Faith ran up behind her. "Weren't you helping Kendra?"

Faith grinned. "Vin's got her distracted. Let's head home before she finds us and makes us act like responsible people."

Buffy took one last look at the dying flames before she let Faith grab her hand and they took off running towards home.