PREDATOR VS. SLAYER, PART 2
Title: Predator vs. Slayer, Part 2
Author: Gyrus
Email: gyrus1001@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the creation of Joss Whedon and the property of Fox Television. The story itself is my own.
Summary: A trio of alien hunters pursues the ultimate human prize.
Rating: PG, for violence.
Author's Notes: This story is set between seasons 4 and 5 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. The story is a serial; I plan to post one new part per week until the story is finished.
-----
Buffy stood still for nearly a minute, sweeping her gaze slowly over the silent graveyard. Her gut was telling her that there was something out there besides the dust of the two vampires she had just slain. But her five senses could find nothing to confirm that suspicion.
Fifty yards away, in a small stand of trees just outside the graveyard, the nearly-invisible hand of Taghryn, second child of Reghya, stretched out, the large fingers settling on the hand of her older brother, Ghrall. With surprising dexterity, Taghryn's fingers tapped and doodled over her sibling's palm, communicating in the Hunters' tactile stalking language.
It senses us, Taghryn said.
Ghrall's fingers spelled out a response: Maybe.
What is it? A cold human like the others? Taghryn asked.
Ghrall's hand moved away for a moment to adjust the settings of his Huntmask. Although infrared was the mask's default viewing mode, Ghrall had previously switched it to ultraviolet in order to track the two now-disintegrated humanoids in the graveyard, because the creatures seemed to have no body heat at all. Now, the Hunter reset the mask to IR mode, seeing the world once again in the reds and blues of heat and cold.
No, not cold, Ghrall communicated with a short burst of taps on Reghya's palm.
In fact, the human's heat signature was brighter than any Ghrall had ever seen, indicating an metabolic rate well above that of any human on record. But as the Hunters watched, the human's external body temperature quickly fell into the normal range for its species.
Eventually, the human seemed to give up its search of the graveyard, and walked out through the main gates of the graveyard, occasionally casting glances behind it.
A third hand, belonging to Reghya himself, came and made contact with the other two. Magnificent, he said. Better than cold humans. This one is prey, now.
Yes, was the response from both offspring. Yes, yes, yes.
-----
It had taken the three Hunters almost a month to reach Earth. Once they arrived, the faster-than-light ship that had carried them put them off in a drop ship. They would be picked up in another 29 days. But, Reghya thought, the long journey had been worthwhile.
Reghya's diligence as an archivist had produced an unexpected benefit. While perusing the records of offworld hunts from the past few centuries, Reghya had discovered something intriguing about the planet Earth. Two Hunters who had gone there on separate occasions had reported encounters with a powerful humanoid creature that was as strong as a Hunter and nearly invisible to infrared. Both Hunters claimed to have fired upon these creatures with plasma weapons, but instead of merely burning, the creatures disintegrated, leaving no trophy save a handful of dust.
In both cases, these stories had been dismissed as fabrications created to avoid the embarrassment of an unsuccessful hunt. But these incidents had occurred almost four generations apart. Reghya decided that the similarity between the two stories had to be more than just coincidence. Perhaps there was a species on Earth stronger than the humans, predators that killed humans to survive. Given what easy prey the humans were, Reghya thought, it made sense that there was a link above theirs in Earth's food chain.
And so, that night at dinner, Reghya told his family of his findings and proposed a journey to Earth to hunt the human-eaters.
Reghya's oldest, Ghrall, was fascinated, as Reghya had expected. Ghrall was much like Reghya -- thoughtful and clever, perhaps overly so. In his earlier years, while his peers practiced with their plasma weapons, Ghrall took his apart to examine its workings. Hunting known species was not terribly interesting to him, but the notion of pursuing a completely new kind of prey intrigued him.
Reghya's second child, Taghryn, was somewhat skeptical of Reghya's findings at first but willing to risk disappointment for the possibility of a challenging hunt. Taghryn was far closer to the Hunter ideal than her father or older brother; she was athletic, skilled with over two dozen different weapons, and, most importantly, she trusted her instincts rather than her intellect. And her instincts were very good. At fifteen, she had single-handedly taken down a Ulantan blade-bird. Blade-birds had killed seventeen Hunters in the past, but Taghryn slew the deadly avian without suffering so much as a scratch. Less than a year later, she took her first Iellan spineback, considered one of the hardest creatures to kill. And she had taken three more since then. Reghya knew Taghryn would do well on the Earth hunt.
Reghya had not planned to make the journey to Earth himself, however. He was too old to be allowed to hunt offworld. But Ghrall and Taghryn insisted that Reghya join them as an observer. Reghya had discovered the human-eaters, after all; he should at least have the privilege of seeing them up close. Reghya ultimately agreed, overwhelmed by his curiosity about the Earth creatures he had discovered.
The other members of the family could not make the trip. Reghya's mate, Yaar, was also retired from the Hunt, and had job responsibilities she couldn't escape; she was in the middle of her training to become a plasma weapons engineer. Their youngest child, Itagh, was not yet old enough to hunt offworld. She still held the responsibility of hunting food animals for the family.
The three Hunters decided to begin their hunt in a small, human-settled region near the coast of one of Earth's northern continents, where the most recent encounter with the human-eaters reportedly had taken place. Ghrall and Taghryn had packed a full array of weapons and equipment, not knowing what to expect from their prey. Reghya, who would only be observing the hunt, took only his stalking suit, with its mimetic sight-shield to provide camouflage, and his Huntmask.
Ghrall, as the eldest sibling, would lead the hunt. It was not without pride that Reghya snapped the yuragh, the traditional wrist band of the hunt leader, on his offspring's forearm as they boarded the craft that would take them to Earth in their quest for new prey.
But now, after watching the nighttime battle in the graveyard, it was clear that the prizes to be found on Earth were even better than the Hunters could have imagined. Not only were the human-eaters real (and, from the looks of their fangs, "human-eaters" was obviously the right term), but they, too, had an enemy that hunted them.
Reghya was immensely pleased. His own hunting career might have been less than impressive in the eyes of his people, but his children now had the chance to become figures of legend for killing a creature of such immense fierceness and skill.
-----
"Nooo!" Buffy shouted as she spilled milk all over the bottoms of her Yummi Sushi pajamas.
Great, she thought as she yanked a couple of paper towels off the roll in her mother's kitchen. I can protect the world from the undead menace, but I can't add milk to Corn Pops without adult supervision.
"Everything all right?" her mother called from upstairs.
"Fine, mom," Buffy shouted back.
Her mother came downstairs anyway, just as Buffy was wiping the last stray drops of milk from the floor.
"'Morning, sweetie," Joyce said, then noticed her daughter's milk-stained sleepwear. "Oh, dear."
"It's just spilled milk," Buffy said with false cheer. "Nothing worth crying over."
"Buffy," her mom said with some concern, "you only get clumsy when there's something on your mind. You want to talk about it?"
"It's...it's nothing, really. I was in the Ash Street graveyard last night, dealing with a couple of vamps, and I just...I felt something a little creepy."
"You were in a cemetery -- in the middle of the night -- fighting monsters from Hell -- and it felt a LITTLE creepy?"
"No, it wasn't any of that stuff. It was like...I don't know, like something was watching me. But I didn't see anybody else there."
"Are you going to tell Giles about it?"
"No. He'll respond with a lot of worrying and cautioning, and I can get that at home."
"Cute. Why don't you go upstairs and change, and I'll make us some eggs? And fresh-squeezed orange juice..." Joyce finished in a sing-song, let-me-tempt-you tone.
"Sorry," Buffy said. "No time. Me and the gang are going ice skating." She felt a twinge of guilt, going out with her friends when her mother was obviously craving some quality time.
"That's a nice idea," said Joyce. She was trying not to look hurt, but it wasn't working. "At least it will get you out of the heat."
"Yeah. I gotta go change."
Buffy ran upstairs and changed out of her pj's into jeans and a t-shirt that would be comfortable in the 90-degree heat, then grabbed a jacket to wear on the ice. She then headed back down to the kitchen for a quick glass of OJ out of the 'fridge. Her mom was still there, making herself some tea.
"Are you staying at Riley's place tonight?" Joyce asked. "Because it's all right with me if you are."
Buffy turned away from the open refrigerator, orange juice carton in hand. "OK," she said, "whatever sort of demon is inside my mother, I command it to be gone."
"No, no, I just wanted to know if I would...have the house to myself, that's all."
"And why would you want to know that?" Buffy asked, lowering her eyebrows in suspicion. Was her mother planning something without her?
Buffy felt stupid; her she was, running off and ditching her mom for the day, and then getting upset because her mother was making plans of her own.
"Well...I have a date," Joyce said.
"You have a DATE? And you weren't going to tell me?"
"It's just someone I met at the gallery. It's not a big deal."
"And have you seen Mr. Someone in direct sunlight?"
"Now who's worrying and cautioning?" Joyce asked wryly. "And yes, I have. He didn't even smolder. Well, except maybe his eyes...."
"You just said that to creep me out, didn't you?" Buffy said. Buffy preferred to believe that her mother had never had, thought about, or even heard of sex, Buffy's own existence being the result of some sort of immaculate conception.
Buffy poured some juice into a glass and swallowed it quickly, then looked at her watch. "I gotta go," she said. "If I don't see you, have fun. Oh, and if he's a demon, beep me."
-----
Xander Harris had been through some rough battles in his life. He could state in perfect honesty that he'd had his butt kicked by more unholy creatures of the night than almost anybody. But none of them had ever made his butt hurt more than the ice at the Sunnydale Skating Rink.
It was his first time on skates -- any kind of skates. The same was true for Anya, who had given up half an hour ago and was now sucking down diet soda at the snack bar and watching the kids go by.
Maybe she's wondering how they taste, he thought as he lay sprawled on the ice for the umpteenth time that morning while people skated around his prone body. Then he smacked himself mentally for thinking such a thing. Anya was a little light on social skills, but she wasn't a demon anymore. Sometimes he had to remind himself of that. Besides, she'd always reserved her vengeance for grown men.
Willow and Tara were faring little better than Xander, crashing and burning almost as often as he did, but laughing every time. At least they had each other to fall on.
Looking ahead of him, Xander saw Buffy and Riley skating hand in hand. They were moving with perfect ease, like they'd been born with blades instead of feet. Of course. Xander idly wondered if Tonya Harding's bodyguard was available for another kneecap job.
Xander wasn't sure why he was in such a foul mood as he gazed upon the Slayer and her beefy beau. It wasn't jealousy; Xander had gotten over his crush on Buffy a long time ago. And Riley was becoming his best -- really, his only -- male friend. But everything about Buffy and Riley as a couple was too perfect, too normal. And, sometimes, too cutesy for words. Even now, they were observing the pukesome boyfriend/girlfriend tradition of wearing the same outfits -- in this case, blue jeans and leather jackets.
Except that, unlike Riley's, Buffy's jacket had something shiny on the back of it. Three red points of light, forming a perfect triangle right in the middle of her back.
Laser sights.
There was no time to look to see where the gunmen were, no time to get up, no time for anything except to scream, "Buffy! GET DOWN!"
Somehow, over the bad organ music and the shouts of children, Buffy heard him. She must have, because she dove forward onto the ice, dragging Riley down with her.
At that very moment, something bright and blue shot down from above and struck right in front of Buffy and Riley, melting the ice there. Slayer and soldier slid into the hot puddle and stopped for a moment, then rolled rapidly away from each other as a second bolt flew down to hit the same spot.
Xander turned over on the ice and looked up, searching for the shooter. There was a catwalk that circled the ceiling, probably for fixing the lights and so forth, but no one was on it. Xander did notice, however, that the sliding door that permitted access to the roof was open, creating a square of blue sky in the pale green ceiling.
Xander saw a flicker of movement along the ladder that led up to the sliding door, a sort of distortion, like air over hot pavement. Xander barely saw it before it was gone.
But, whatever it was, it was real enough to close the sliding door behind it.
-----
"You missed!" Taghryn cried.
"Of course," Ghrall responded. "What fun would it be to shoot the creature in the back?"
"Then why were you sighting on it?"
"I was just getting the range. I thought a shot directly in front of the prey would be a good way to frighten it."
"Of course," Taghryn said, suddenly understanding. "It will be a better challenge if it knows it is being hunted." Her nerves tingled with excitement. As with all her species, the Hunt was what she was born for, but she loved it even more than most.
"Yes," said Reghya, who stood behind Ghrall and Taghryn on the roof of the ice rink. "No trophy is meaningful if it is acquired with too much ease."
Taghryn turned to face her father. "What was the large creature that was with the prey?"
"A male of the species," Reghya replied. "They tend to be larger, and differently-shaped."
"Their gender is so...obvious," Taghryn said. Male and female Hunters' bodies were much alike, and could only be distinguished clearly during mating season. "How is it that the mating urge is not always on them?"
"What makes you think it is not?" Ghrall cut in. "There ARE over six billion of them."
Taghryn laughed aloud.
"Come," Reghya said. "It is time to eat. We will return to the drop ship for a meal."
"What about the prey?" Taghryn asked. "Shouldn't we keep following it?"
"I do not think there is need," Reghya replied. "No doubt, the prey will soon come looking for us."
-----
Within fifteen minutes, all six of the skating Scoobies were at Giles', talking at the former Watcher a mile a minute.
"All right, all right!" Giles shouted. "Everyone calm down. Just tell me what happened, one at a time."
"Xander, you saw it first," Buffy said.
"Yeah," Xander responded. "No. I mean, I didn't really see it, just the three dots on Buffy's back."
"Three dots?" Giles asked.
"Laser dots. Like the kind they use for gun sights."
"Except this wasn't a gun," Buffy added. "Not a regular, bang-bang type gun, anyway."
"More like a big-bolt-from-the-sky-that-makes-everybody-run-screaming type gun," Anya said.
"I'm not aware of any demonic species that uses such a weapon," Giles said.
"Maybe it wasn't demons," Willow suggested. She turned towards Riley. "Maybe it was some secret government gizmo in the wrong hands. Or the right hands," she added, with a faint look of worry.
"The R and D people at the Initiative experimented with all kinds of energy weapons," Riley said. "Lasers, particle beams, plasma guns. But the power requirements were way too high; for one shot, you needed a battery the size of a shopping cart. Our blasters were the best they could manage."
"And then there's the invisibility thing," Xander cut in.
"What?" said Giles.
"I couldn't see much," Xander said, "but something climbed up the ladder and out the sliding door on the roof. It was...kind of wavy, like if you moved a bad magnifying glass in front of your face. Almost invisible, but not quite, you know?"
"Wait a moment," Giles said, standing up and going to his bookshelves. "This sounds vaguely familiar."
After a couple of minutes of poring through the Watchers' Diaries, Giles exclaimed, "Ah! Here. Father Jacob Billingsley, a Watcher who went to El Salvador as a missionary in 1703, wrote, 'The people here sometimes speak of a demon which visits the jungle, moving among the tops of trees, nearly invisible. It has many weapons, the most deadly of which is a lightning bolt it casts down from above. I have asked many of the villagers about this demon, as there is no previous record of such a creature in the Watchers' annals, but the only other piece of information they can provide is-' Oh, dear Lord."
"What?" Buffy said.
Giles continued reading. "'-that the monster always takes the skin or bones of its victims. The local name for this creature, I am told, translates as 'the demon that makes trophies of men.''"
"And now it wants to make a trophy of Buffy," Riley said. "Which means we'd better kill it first."
"Giles," Buffy said, "this thing blasted away at me in the middle of the day, in a public place full of kids. If it tries that again..."
"Someone could get hurt," Giles finished. "Well, disturbed though I am by our lack of knowledge about this creature, I believe Riley is right. We must find it before it attacks Buffy again."
"But how are you going to find it?" Anya asked. "I mean, you have no idea where it lives, or what it eats, or why it's here. You're not even at square one, you're at, like, square zero."
"An?" Xander said. "Remember what we talked about? 'If you can't say anything helpful....'"
"Well," Buffy cut in, "we know it likes trophies, right?"
"And it's pretty clear that you're the trophy de jour," Riley said.
Buffy looked at him. "So we go out in the woods, where other people can't get hurt, and wait for it."
"Oh. Goody," Willow said nervously. "We're going hunting for something we can't see. That doesn't worry me, 'cause worry...is the wrong word. Terror. That's the right word."
"Yeah, as plans go, that one sucks," Xander added. "I mean, we're talking about a monster that can turn people into corn dogs with one shot. Somehow, the 'here I am, come and get me' approach doesn't seem like the way to go."
"That's why you guys aren't going," Buffy said. "This one is strictly for me and Riley."
Giles started to object, but Riley cut him off. "Don't worry. We'll take walkie-talkies, check in every half hour." Riley took a radio unit out of his jacket pocket, switched it on, and placed it on Giles' coffee table. "And we'll bring plenty of weapons."
Buffy quickly went through Giles' stash of medieval hardware, choosing a crossbow and a small but wicked-looking hand axe. Then she and Riley headed for his place to pick up Riley's more modern armaments.
After Buffy and Riley left, the other Scoobies spent a few minutes trying to reassure one another that it was going to be all right, that Buffy and Riley had fought worse things before. It was hard to come up with many examples, though, and soon they all fell into worried silence.
After a few minutes, Tara spoke up.
"M-Mister Giles? Did you say that the Watchers didn't have any record of this demon before 1703?"
"That's right," Giles said.
"Well, isn't that sort of strange? I mean, demons have been around since before human history, right? A demon that shoots blue lightning, you'd think someone would have noticed it before the eighteenth century."
"A valid point," Giles said, the worry lines on his face deepening.
Willow added, "And Father Billingsley said that the demon VISITED the jungle right? That means it didn't live there."
"Yes, but...what are you trying to say?" Giles asked.
"Well, maybe the thing that shot at Buffy isn't a demon at all. Or a human. Maybe it's...." She turned her eyes upward.
Giles was silent for a moment. Then he said, quietly, "And if it is, then it has the ability to travel among the stars. Who knows what other technology it might have?"
Xander grabbed Riley's walkie-talkie off the coffee table and pressed the SEND button. "Buffy, Riley, are you there, over?" He waited a few seconds. "Buffy, Riley, can you hear me? We have important information, over." He waited a few more seconds, then tried again. "Guys? Are you there? Guys?"
Static was the only response.
END OF PART 2
Title: Predator vs. Slayer, Part 2
Author: Gyrus
Email: gyrus1001@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the creation of Joss Whedon and the property of Fox Television. The story itself is my own.
Summary: A trio of alien hunters pursues the ultimate human prize.
Rating: PG, for violence.
Author's Notes: This story is set between seasons 4 and 5 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. The story is a serial; I plan to post one new part per week until the story is finished.
-----
Buffy stood still for nearly a minute, sweeping her gaze slowly over the silent graveyard. Her gut was telling her that there was something out there besides the dust of the two vampires she had just slain. But her five senses could find nothing to confirm that suspicion.
Fifty yards away, in a small stand of trees just outside the graveyard, the nearly-invisible hand of Taghryn, second child of Reghya, stretched out, the large fingers settling on the hand of her older brother, Ghrall. With surprising dexterity, Taghryn's fingers tapped and doodled over her sibling's palm, communicating in the Hunters' tactile stalking language.
It senses us, Taghryn said.
Ghrall's fingers spelled out a response: Maybe.
What is it? A cold human like the others? Taghryn asked.
Ghrall's hand moved away for a moment to adjust the settings of his Huntmask. Although infrared was the mask's default viewing mode, Ghrall had previously switched it to ultraviolet in order to track the two now-disintegrated humanoids in the graveyard, because the creatures seemed to have no body heat at all. Now, the Hunter reset the mask to IR mode, seeing the world once again in the reds and blues of heat and cold.
No, not cold, Ghrall communicated with a short burst of taps on Reghya's palm.
In fact, the human's heat signature was brighter than any Ghrall had ever seen, indicating an metabolic rate well above that of any human on record. But as the Hunters watched, the human's external body temperature quickly fell into the normal range for its species.
Eventually, the human seemed to give up its search of the graveyard, and walked out through the main gates of the graveyard, occasionally casting glances behind it.
A third hand, belonging to Reghya himself, came and made contact with the other two. Magnificent, he said. Better than cold humans. This one is prey, now.
Yes, was the response from both offspring. Yes, yes, yes.
-----
It had taken the three Hunters almost a month to reach Earth. Once they arrived, the faster-than-light ship that had carried them put them off in a drop ship. They would be picked up in another 29 days. But, Reghya thought, the long journey had been worthwhile.
Reghya's diligence as an archivist had produced an unexpected benefit. While perusing the records of offworld hunts from the past few centuries, Reghya had discovered something intriguing about the planet Earth. Two Hunters who had gone there on separate occasions had reported encounters with a powerful humanoid creature that was as strong as a Hunter and nearly invisible to infrared. Both Hunters claimed to have fired upon these creatures with plasma weapons, but instead of merely burning, the creatures disintegrated, leaving no trophy save a handful of dust.
In both cases, these stories had been dismissed as fabrications created to avoid the embarrassment of an unsuccessful hunt. But these incidents had occurred almost four generations apart. Reghya decided that the similarity between the two stories had to be more than just coincidence. Perhaps there was a species on Earth stronger than the humans, predators that killed humans to survive. Given what easy prey the humans were, Reghya thought, it made sense that there was a link above theirs in Earth's food chain.
And so, that night at dinner, Reghya told his family of his findings and proposed a journey to Earth to hunt the human-eaters.
Reghya's oldest, Ghrall, was fascinated, as Reghya had expected. Ghrall was much like Reghya -- thoughtful and clever, perhaps overly so. In his earlier years, while his peers practiced with their plasma weapons, Ghrall took his apart to examine its workings. Hunting known species was not terribly interesting to him, but the notion of pursuing a completely new kind of prey intrigued him.
Reghya's second child, Taghryn, was somewhat skeptical of Reghya's findings at first but willing to risk disappointment for the possibility of a challenging hunt. Taghryn was far closer to the Hunter ideal than her father or older brother; she was athletic, skilled with over two dozen different weapons, and, most importantly, she trusted her instincts rather than her intellect. And her instincts were very good. At fifteen, she had single-handedly taken down a Ulantan blade-bird. Blade-birds had killed seventeen Hunters in the past, but Taghryn slew the deadly avian without suffering so much as a scratch. Less than a year later, she took her first Iellan spineback, considered one of the hardest creatures to kill. And she had taken three more since then. Reghya knew Taghryn would do well on the Earth hunt.
Reghya had not planned to make the journey to Earth himself, however. He was too old to be allowed to hunt offworld. But Ghrall and Taghryn insisted that Reghya join them as an observer. Reghya had discovered the human-eaters, after all; he should at least have the privilege of seeing them up close. Reghya ultimately agreed, overwhelmed by his curiosity about the Earth creatures he had discovered.
The other members of the family could not make the trip. Reghya's mate, Yaar, was also retired from the Hunt, and had job responsibilities she couldn't escape; she was in the middle of her training to become a plasma weapons engineer. Their youngest child, Itagh, was not yet old enough to hunt offworld. She still held the responsibility of hunting food animals for the family.
The three Hunters decided to begin their hunt in a small, human-settled region near the coast of one of Earth's northern continents, where the most recent encounter with the human-eaters reportedly had taken place. Ghrall and Taghryn had packed a full array of weapons and equipment, not knowing what to expect from their prey. Reghya, who would only be observing the hunt, took only his stalking suit, with its mimetic sight-shield to provide camouflage, and his Huntmask.
Ghrall, as the eldest sibling, would lead the hunt. It was not without pride that Reghya snapped the yuragh, the traditional wrist band of the hunt leader, on his offspring's forearm as they boarded the craft that would take them to Earth in their quest for new prey.
But now, after watching the nighttime battle in the graveyard, it was clear that the prizes to be found on Earth were even better than the Hunters could have imagined. Not only were the human-eaters real (and, from the looks of their fangs, "human-eaters" was obviously the right term), but they, too, had an enemy that hunted them.
Reghya was immensely pleased. His own hunting career might have been less than impressive in the eyes of his people, but his children now had the chance to become figures of legend for killing a creature of such immense fierceness and skill.
-----
"Nooo!" Buffy shouted as she spilled milk all over the bottoms of her Yummi Sushi pajamas.
Great, she thought as she yanked a couple of paper towels off the roll in her mother's kitchen. I can protect the world from the undead menace, but I can't add milk to Corn Pops without adult supervision.
"Everything all right?" her mother called from upstairs.
"Fine, mom," Buffy shouted back.
Her mother came downstairs anyway, just as Buffy was wiping the last stray drops of milk from the floor.
"'Morning, sweetie," Joyce said, then noticed her daughter's milk-stained sleepwear. "Oh, dear."
"It's just spilled milk," Buffy said with false cheer. "Nothing worth crying over."
"Buffy," her mom said with some concern, "you only get clumsy when there's something on your mind. You want to talk about it?"
"It's...it's nothing, really. I was in the Ash Street graveyard last night, dealing with a couple of vamps, and I just...I felt something a little creepy."
"You were in a cemetery -- in the middle of the night -- fighting monsters from Hell -- and it felt a LITTLE creepy?"
"No, it wasn't any of that stuff. It was like...I don't know, like something was watching me. But I didn't see anybody else there."
"Are you going to tell Giles about it?"
"No. He'll respond with a lot of worrying and cautioning, and I can get that at home."
"Cute. Why don't you go upstairs and change, and I'll make us some eggs? And fresh-squeezed orange juice..." Joyce finished in a sing-song, let-me-tempt-you tone.
"Sorry," Buffy said. "No time. Me and the gang are going ice skating." She felt a twinge of guilt, going out with her friends when her mother was obviously craving some quality time.
"That's a nice idea," said Joyce. She was trying not to look hurt, but it wasn't working. "At least it will get you out of the heat."
"Yeah. I gotta go change."
Buffy ran upstairs and changed out of her pj's into jeans and a t-shirt that would be comfortable in the 90-degree heat, then grabbed a jacket to wear on the ice. She then headed back down to the kitchen for a quick glass of OJ out of the 'fridge. Her mom was still there, making herself some tea.
"Are you staying at Riley's place tonight?" Joyce asked. "Because it's all right with me if you are."
Buffy turned away from the open refrigerator, orange juice carton in hand. "OK," she said, "whatever sort of demon is inside my mother, I command it to be gone."
"No, no, I just wanted to know if I would...have the house to myself, that's all."
"And why would you want to know that?" Buffy asked, lowering her eyebrows in suspicion. Was her mother planning something without her?
Buffy felt stupid; her she was, running off and ditching her mom for the day, and then getting upset because her mother was making plans of her own.
"Well...I have a date," Joyce said.
"You have a DATE? And you weren't going to tell me?"
"It's just someone I met at the gallery. It's not a big deal."
"And have you seen Mr. Someone in direct sunlight?"
"Now who's worrying and cautioning?" Joyce asked wryly. "And yes, I have. He didn't even smolder. Well, except maybe his eyes...."
"You just said that to creep me out, didn't you?" Buffy said. Buffy preferred to believe that her mother had never had, thought about, or even heard of sex, Buffy's own existence being the result of some sort of immaculate conception.
Buffy poured some juice into a glass and swallowed it quickly, then looked at her watch. "I gotta go," she said. "If I don't see you, have fun. Oh, and if he's a demon, beep me."
-----
Xander Harris had been through some rough battles in his life. He could state in perfect honesty that he'd had his butt kicked by more unholy creatures of the night than almost anybody. But none of them had ever made his butt hurt more than the ice at the Sunnydale Skating Rink.
It was his first time on skates -- any kind of skates. The same was true for Anya, who had given up half an hour ago and was now sucking down diet soda at the snack bar and watching the kids go by.
Maybe she's wondering how they taste, he thought as he lay sprawled on the ice for the umpteenth time that morning while people skated around his prone body. Then he smacked himself mentally for thinking such a thing. Anya was a little light on social skills, but she wasn't a demon anymore. Sometimes he had to remind himself of that. Besides, she'd always reserved her vengeance for grown men.
Willow and Tara were faring little better than Xander, crashing and burning almost as often as he did, but laughing every time. At least they had each other to fall on.
Looking ahead of him, Xander saw Buffy and Riley skating hand in hand. They were moving with perfect ease, like they'd been born with blades instead of feet. Of course. Xander idly wondered if Tonya Harding's bodyguard was available for another kneecap job.
Xander wasn't sure why he was in such a foul mood as he gazed upon the Slayer and her beefy beau. It wasn't jealousy; Xander had gotten over his crush on Buffy a long time ago. And Riley was becoming his best -- really, his only -- male friend. But everything about Buffy and Riley as a couple was too perfect, too normal. And, sometimes, too cutesy for words. Even now, they were observing the pukesome boyfriend/girlfriend tradition of wearing the same outfits -- in this case, blue jeans and leather jackets.
Except that, unlike Riley's, Buffy's jacket had something shiny on the back of it. Three red points of light, forming a perfect triangle right in the middle of her back.
Laser sights.
There was no time to look to see where the gunmen were, no time to get up, no time for anything except to scream, "Buffy! GET DOWN!"
Somehow, over the bad organ music and the shouts of children, Buffy heard him. She must have, because she dove forward onto the ice, dragging Riley down with her.
At that very moment, something bright and blue shot down from above and struck right in front of Buffy and Riley, melting the ice there. Slayer and soldier slid into the hot puddle and stopped for a moment, then rolled rapidly away from each other as a second bolt flew down to hit the same spot.
Xander turned over on the ice and looked up, searching for the shooter. There was a catwalk that circled the ceiling, probably for fixing the lights and so forth, but no one was on it. Xander did notice, however, that the sliding door that permitted access to the roof was open, creating a square of blue sky in the pale green ceiling.
Xander saw a flicker of movement along the ladder that led up to the sliding door, a sort of distortion, like air over hot pavement. Xander barely saw it before it was gone.
But, whatever it was, it was real enough to close the sliding door behind it.
-----
"You missed!" Taghryn cried.
"Of course," Ghrall responded. "What fun would it be to shoot the creature in the back?"
"Then why were you sighting on it?"
"I was just getting the range. I thought a shot directly in front of the prey would be a good way to frighten it."
"Of course," Taghryn said, suddenly understanding. "It will be a better challenge if it knows it is being hunted." Her nerves tingled with excitement. As with all her species, the Hunt was what she was born for, but she loved it even more than most.
"Yes," said Reghya, who stood behind Ghrall and Taghryn on the roof of the ice rink. "No trophy is meaningful if it is acquired with too much ease."
Taghryn turned to face her father. "What was the large creature that was with the prey?"
"A male of the species," Reghya replied. "They tend to be larger, and differently-shaped."
"Their gender is so...obvious," Taghryn said. Male and female Hunters' bodies were much alike, and could only be distinguished clearly during mating season. "How is it that the mating urge is not always on them?"
"What makes you think it is not?" Ghrall cut in. "There ARE over six billion of them."
Taghryn laughed aloud.
"Come," Reghya said. "It is time to eat. We will return to the drop ship for a meal."
"What about the prey?" Taghryn asked. "Shouldn't we keep following it?"
"I do not think there is need," Reghya replied. "No doubt, the prey will soon come looking for us."
-----
Within fifteen minutes, all six of the skating Scoobies were at Giles', talking at the former Watcher a mile a minute.
"All right, all right!" Giles shouted. "Everyone calm down. Just tell me what happened, one at a time."
"Xander, you saw it first," Buffy said.
"Yeah," Xander responded. "No. I mean, I didn't really see it, just the three dots on Buffy's back."
"Three dots?" Giles asked.
"Laser dots. Like the kind they use for gun sights."
"Except this wasn't a gun," Buffy added. "Not a regular, bang-bang type gun, anyway."
"More like a big-bolt-from-the-sky-that-makes-everybody-run-screaming type gun," Anya said.
"I'm not aware of any demonic species that uses such a weapon," Giles said.
"Maybe it wasn't demons," Willow suggested. She turned towards Riley. "Maybe it was some secret government gizmo in the wrong hands. Or the right hands," she added, with a faint look of worry.
"The R and D people at the Initiative experimented with all kinds of energy weapons," Riley said. "Lasers, particle beams, plasma guns. But the power requirements were way too high; for one shot, you needed a battery the size of a shopping cart. Our blasters were the best they could manage."
"And then there's the invisibility thing," Xander cut in.
"What?" said Giles.
"I couldn't see much," Xander said, "but something climbed up the ladder and out the sliding door on the roof. It was...kind of wavy, like if you moved a bad magnifying glass in front of your face. Almost invisible, but not quite, you know?"
"Wait a moment," Giles said, standing up and going to his bookshelves. "This sounds vaguely familiar."
After a couple of minutes of poring through the Watchers' Diaries, Giles exclaimed, "Ah! Here. Father Jacob Billingsley, a Watcher who went to El Salvador as a missionary in 1703, wrote, 'The people here sometimes speak of a demon which visits the jungle, moving among the tops of trees, nearly invisible. It has many weapons, the most deadly of which is a lightning bolt it casts down from above. I have asked many of the villagers about this demon, as there is no previous record of such a creature in the Watchers' annals, but the only other piece of information they can provide is-' Oh, dear Lord."
"What?" Buffy said.
Giles continued reading. "'-that the monster always takes the skin or bones of its victims. The local name for this creature, I am told, translates as 'the demon that makes trophies of men.''"
"And now it wants to make a trophy of Buffy," Riley said. "Which means we'd better kill it first."
"Giles," Buffy said, "this thing blasted away at me in the middle of the day, in a public place full of kids. If it tries that again..."
"Someone could get hurt," Giles finished. "Well, disturbed though I am by our lack of knowledge about this creature, I believe Riley is right. We must find it before it attacks Buffy again."
"But how are you going to find it?" Anya asked. "I mean, you have no idea where it lives, or what it eats, or why it's here. You're not even at square one, you're at, like, square zero."
"An?" Xander said. "Remember what we talked about? 'If you can't say anything helpful....'"
"Well," Buffy cut in, "we know it likes trophies, right?"
"And it's pretty clear that you're the trophy de jour," Riley said.
Buffy looked at him. "So we go out in the woods, where other people can't get hurt, and wait for it."
"Oh. Goody," Willow said nervously. "We're going hunting for something we can't see. That doesn't worry me, 'cause worry...is the wrong word. Terror. That's the right word."
"Yeah, as plans go, that one sucks," Xander added. "I mean, we're talking about a monster that can turn people into corn dogs with one shot. Somehow, the 'here I am, come and get me' approach doesn't seem like the way to go."
"That's why you guys aren't going," Buffy said. "This one is strictly for me and Riley."
Giles started to object, but Riley cut him off. "Don't worry. We'll take walkie-talkies, check in every half hour." Riley took a radio unit out of his jacket pocket, switched it on, and placed it on Giles' coffee table. "And we'll bring plenty of weapons."
Buffy quickly went through Giles' stash of medieval hardware, choosing a crossbow and a small but wicked-looking hand axe. Then she and Riley headed for his place to pick up Riley's more modern armaments.
After Buffy and Riley left, the other Scoobies spent a few minutes trying to reassure one another that it was going to be all right, that Buffy and Riley had fought worse things before. It was hard to come up with many examples, though, and soon they all fell into worried silence.
After a few minutes, Tara spoke up.
"M-Mister Giles? Did you say that the Watchers didn't have any record of this demon before 1703?"
"That's right," Giles said.
"Well, isn't that sort of strange? I mean, demons have been around since before human history, right? A demon that shoots blue lightning, you'd think someone would have noticed it before the eighteenth century."
"A valid point," Giles said, the worry lines on his face deepening.
Willow added, "And Father Billingsley said that the demon VISITED the jungle right? That means it didn't live there."
"Yes, but...what are you trying to say?" Giles asked.
"Well, maybe the thing that shot at Buffy isn't a demon at all. Or a human. Maybe it's...." She turned her eyes upward.
Giles was silent for a moment. Then he said, quietly, "And if it is, then it has the ability to travel among the stars. Who knows what other technology it might have?"
Xander grabbed Riley's walkie-talkie off the coffee table and pressed the SEND button. "Buffy, Riley, are you there, over?" He waited a few seconds. "Buffy, Riley, can you hear me? We have important information, over." He waited a few more seconds, then tried again. "Guys? Are you there? Guys?"
Static was the only response.
END OF PART 2