Title: The Ultimate Scooby Gang, Part 1
Author: Nopporn Wongrassamee aka the Evil Author
EMail Address: EvilAuthor@aol.com
Archive: Anywhere and everywhere. Just tell me if you do.
Spoilers: Anything goes
Summary: From across the multiverse, the most powerful
incarnations of the Scooby Gang have been gathered to
battle the Ultimate Evil. But first, they have to get
along with each other.
Disclaimer: Characters and concepts belong to their
owners who I'm too lazy to list. So shoot me. Wait! I
didn't mean that lit... *BANG*
She remembered dying.
Okay, what she really remembered was dying many, many
times. There was the vampire who drained her on their
first date, the Knight of Byzantium who impaled her with
a lucky arrow, Ben slitting her throat in a fit of pique,
jumping from Glory's ramshackle tower. Those were the
deaths she could attribute to the bad guys.
Then there were the more embarrasing deaths. Her slipping
in the tub. Car accidents. There were inumerable times
of choking on her breakfast cereal!
And then there were the deaths inflicted by her sister.
The disturbing part was that several of her deaths had
been when she had not been turned into a vampire.
Now at least she knew what had been going on in Buffy's
mind. That was because for every memory she had of dying,
there were more of her surviving those deaths. Every
eternal instant that passed resulted in more memories
popping up, each chunk contributing just a little more
memory of living.
To the entity that had once been Dawn Summers, it was all
very confusing.
***
Stepping over the corpses that had once been the Scooby
Gang, the Mother of All Vampires effortlessly held the
Slayer by the throat with her right hand. Behind Buffy,
a temporal portal was open leading into the deep past.
With a flicker of her wrist, the Mother tossed Buffy into
the portal. Upon the passage of the Slayer, the portal
closed and disappeared as if it had never existed.
"No..." someone moaned. Apparently one of the Scoobies
wasn't quite dead. The Mother saw that it was the
Watcher. "You've... you've altered the past..." Giles
whispered, stammering more from the weakness of blood
loss that social ineptitude. "Why? I thought... you
wanted... to... go. A Slayer... back then... could
stop... the creation... of the... first... Vampire..."
"No, Giles, it won't," the Mother replied, speaking for
the first time with a horribly familiar voice as she
stepped in front of him. She knelt so that they were face
to face, or more appropriately, face to mask. "I haven't
altered time," she said lazily, removing her mask to
reveal the twisted but still recognizable face of Buffy
Summers. "I've made sure it'll all happen."
"Noooo..." Giles moaned in despair. Then he joined the
rest of the Scoobies in oblivion.
"Okay, now that was just mean," someone said behind the
vampire Buffy. That someone spoke with her own voice and
sounded like she disapproved.
Buffy turned to her etherial twin. "You're supposed to be
the First Evil," Buffy the vampire replied, somewhat
annoyed. "What do you care?"
Another Buffy apparition appeared beside vampire Buffy.
"That's not me," the First Evil told her. Had she been
paying attention, the Mother might have noticed that the
First was disturbed. "It's the ghost of your former
self."
"Ooh, a ghost," the Mother of Vampires mocked. "I am so
not impressed." She strode forward until she was face to
face with her double. "What are you going to do, Caspar,
say 'Boo'?"
In reply, Buffy the Ghost hit Buffy the Vampire with an
upper cut. With unexpected solidity, the former sent the
latter through the ceiling into the now late Robin Wood's
office.
"Boo," she added.
***
It took a while, but the entity that had once been Dawn
Summers finally figured out what was going on. As time
passed, things happened and choices were made. In one
universe Dawn made one choice and died. In another, she
had made a different decision and lived. Multiply by
infinity.
Once Dawn died, the part of her that was the Key was
released into the ether. But the Key was not the same
pure energy it had been before it had been made into the
Slayer's sister. There were contaminants in the energy
now, the fragments that had been Dawn's soul. Instead of
spreading into the void, the energy of the Key accreted
around these soul fragments like a pearl. Eventually, she
(there was a definite femaleness to the Key's self
identity now) woke up.
This left one inevitable question.
"Where the heck am I?" she asked no one in particular.
There appeared to be nothing but an infinite void here...
wherever "here" was.
So she was kind of surprised to get an answer.
***
Willow had botched the Slayer activation spell. It was
nothing she did. Like her ensouling Angel years before,
she had simply started too late. Willow finished the
spell just in time to see Kennedy torn to bloody shreds
when the swarm Turok-han found their hidey hole.
In an instant, Willow felt despair. For the Turok'han to
have found her hiding place, they had to get past Buffy
and the others. That meant Buffy, Xander, Giles, and
everyone else she knew was dead. True, ever potential
Slayer in the world was now activated... but none of them
were HERE.
As the neander-vamps pounced on Willow, the young witch
reached deep into her connection with the Earth and
pulled out all the stops.
In the following days, the destruction of Sunnydale would
be blamed on terrorists who had smuggled a nuclear weapon
onto American soil. Why a nearly empty backwater was
nuked instead of nearby Los Angeles was a mystery that
would be endlessly speculated over.
But it was not the only thing speculated over. There was
the Miracle. A survivor had been pulled out of what was
practically ground zero: a young woman with hair that had
been bleached white by the explosion.
***
"Hi, Dawn," the visitor said as she appeared from out of
literally nowhere. "Welcome to the Outside." The visitor
was one of the Powers that Be. Somehow, the Key was very
sure of that. What was surprising was that she new this
particular Power.
"Cordelia?" the Key exclaimed in surprise. "What are you
doing here? For that matter, where's here?"
"Well, let's answer your last question first," Cordelia
replied. She ticked off one of her fingers. "One, we're
quite literally between the walls of dimensions. It's
like those spaces in houses where Jerry the Mouse lives."
"There are mice here?" the Key asked, looking around. She
saw nothing else.
"Sure, and rats and bugs and all sorts of icky crawly
things," Cordelia told her with a shudder. "But they stay
away from things that can squash them like... well, bugs.
That would be us by the way."
"Cool," the Key said, relieved.
"Oh, and if it helps, it's okay for you to think of
yourself as 'Dawn' if it helps," Cordelia suggested.
"Okay," the Ke... Dawn replied.
"Now then," Cordelia began, then stopped. She looked down
at her own hands. "Uh, where was I?"
***
"I am Polethemus of Byzantium," the immortal proclaimed,
not drawing his weapon.
"Hi, nice to meetcha. I'm Xander Harris of Sunnydale,"
Xander replied, drawing his sword from the folds of his
long coat. "Maybe you've heard of it? Turned into the
world's biggest pothole yesterday. I shoulda been there
to help my friends."
Feeling the other immortal nearby, Xander had ducked into
a nearby warehouse, Odd how Oxnard seemed to have alot of
them.
"I would offer my condolences," Polethemus said with a
mocking smile, "...but I'd be lying."
"Yeah, yeah, you're all heart," Xander replied. "So are
we gonna trade insults all day or are you going to
challenge me? Cuz the way I'm feeling right now, taking
your head ought to relieve some tension."
"Oh, but the witty banter is such fun," Polethemus told
Xander jovially, "but if you insist," He drew an Uzi from
his own coat and emptied half the clip into Xander's
chest, "I challenge."
***
"What are you doing here?" Dawn prompted.
"Oh, right! Thanks," Cordelia said brightly. "Anyway,
what I'd like to say is that the other Powers thought it
might be a good idea that a familiar face helped you get
used to..." she waved vaguely at their surroundings,
"...this."
"But? I hear a 'but' in there somewhere."
"Yeah, there is," Cordelia admitted. "See, I'm kinda like
a Power that Be intern. 'Go get that, Cordy'. 'Take this
head-splitting vision to some poor sap, Cordy'. 'Ferry
this senior Power back to the mortal world so that you
can be a passenger in your own body, Cordy'. And here I
thought Ascending to a higher plane would be different."
"Not all it's cracked up to be, huh?" Dawn sympathized.
"You said it, kiddo," Cordelia agreed. "Would it be too
much to ask if I could get Daniel's deal. He got to look
in on his friends from time to time."
"Who's Daniel?"
"Some science geek. Used to wear glasses before he
Ascended while playing Spock," Cordelia replied absently
before going to back to her rant. "Y'know, the only
reason I can fit in here with you is that my body got
left behind on the lower worlds. That was so not fair."
***
"How are you doing this?" demanded the vampire Buffy.
"You're a spirit! A shadow! You shouldn't have that much
solidity let alone that much strength."
"Oh, I'm not just some garden variety ghost, sister," the
ghostly Buffy replied confidently as she stode toward
herself. A quick morph and suddenly she was Kendra. "I've
been building strength ever since I died." Another morph
and she was Nikki Wood. "I am the force that gives the
Slayers their power, jumping from one to another as each
dies, each one's strength added to my own." A shift and
she was a grinning Faith. "Wicked cool, huh?"
"You might not have noticed, but there are no more
Slayers or Slayer wannabes. You won't be able to hold
onto all that power without a physical vessel," vampBuffy
pointed out smugly. "And I can wait you out. By the way,
does the First know you stole that trick?"
"Hey, the First Evil can sue me," the spirit of Slayerdom
replied as she changed into the First Slayer. "But there
is a vessel that can hold me."
"Really?" vampire Buffy said skeptically. "Where?"
"Right here!" snarled the spirit as she slunged her a
hand deep into the vampire's torso and shifted back to
Buffy. "I want my body back, you bitch!"
***
"So you're here to keep me company?" Dawn asked.
"Not really," Cordelia sighed. "I'm just messenger girl.
Again. I really need a new line of work."
"So, you're here to give me a message?" Dawn guessed.
"Yup," Cordelia confirmed. "The Powers have something
that only you, as the Key, are capable of doing."
"Me? What can I do that they can't?" Dawn asked.
"Well, you could bring the whole multiverse crashing down
on itself like the Twin Towers," Cordelia replied. "But
that's not what they have in mind."
"Whoa, really?"
"Really," Cordelia confirmed. "Glory didn't know what she
was messing with."
"So what do they want me to do?" Dawn asked.
***
"Hi, Willow, can we come in?"
"Riley. Sam. Sure, come on in," Willow replied to her
visitors. She had been crying, obviously grieving for her
lost friends.
"We came to see how you were doing," Riley said as he
and his wife sat by Willow's hospital bed. He had the
decency to be embarrassed as he added, "And, um, to find
out what happened in Sunnydale."
"I'll be okay," Willow whispered. The louder, "It was the
same old thing, a Sunnydale Apocalypse." She decided to
change the topic to something else before she broke down
again. "Where were you guys? Buffy tried to contact you,
but you were out of contact."
"The Yucatan," Riley replied. "Someone was trying to
start an Apocalypse of the classic kind by raising the
dead all over the world as flesh eating zombies."
"Wow, an Apocalypse of your very own," Willow mused, a
tremor in her voice. This was not a subject she wanted to
dwell on. "There seems to be alot of that going around."
"You sure you're okay?" Sam asked, concerned.
"It's just..." Willow began., then burst into tears.
"It's all my fault!"
***
"Keep in mind that in your current state, you're an
eternal being that's been around since time began,"
Cordelia began. "That means you're subject to certain
rules."
"Oh, joy," Dawn scowled.
"Don't get snarky yet," Cordelia remonstrated. "You'll
get plenty of time and reason later. Just listen for
now. Where was I?"
"Rules."
"Right. Anyway," Cordelia continued, "While you CAN pull
deus ex machina shenanigans on the lower worlds, so can
the other side. So if 'Good'" here Cordelia raised her
fingers in the universal gestures of quote marks, "does
something directly, the baddies can do the same. This has
worked out into a tit for tat kind of deal."
"Tit for tat?" Dawn asked, not quite following.
"Sure, it's like this," Cordelia said, thinking about
examples to illustrate her point. "Okay, if the First
pulls a souled vampire out of a hell to use for his own
nefarious purposes, then the Powers that Be can pull a
snowstorm out of nowhere to save his sorry self when he
tries to commit suicide by sunrise. Or if a Slayer gets
resurrected by the good guys, the bad guys are free to
off all the Slayers in Waiting 'cuz the Slayer succession
is obviously worthless now."
"Okay, I get it," Dawn said quickly before Cordelia could
pull any more examples from her life. Or was it lives?
"And the Powers want ME to do something like this? What's
the other side going to do?"
"I dunno," Cordelia admitted. "Both sides like to save up
their deus ex machinas until they can be used to their
best advantage."
"Oh. that is sooo not comforting."
***
Hit by bullets at full auto, Xander reeled back into the
shadows that filled the warehouse. He fell behind a crate
and momentarily disappeared from view.
Full of arrogant confidence, Polethemus strolled around
the crate to behead the immortal and take his quickening.
He was shocked to discover there was no body lying where
there should be one. In fact, there wasn't even any
blood.
"What the..." he began.
"Y'know, Polly, it never ceases to amaze me," Xander's
voice said, coming from somewhere in the shadows. "Alot
of immortals consider guns to be cheating. Me? I was
raised in the modern world."
"How..." Polethemus began again.
"Kevlar vest with embedded steel plate reinforcement,"
Xander replied to Polethemus' partially formed question.
"Anyway, if an immortal wants to challenge me with a
sword, that's fine; I'll meet him with a sword. However,
if an immortal prefers guns..."
A click was all the warning Polethemus had before he was
riddled with automatic fire. Unlike Xander, he wasn't
wearing body armor.
"...I'm happy to oblige," Xander concluded as he stepped
out of the shadows. He secreted his own Mac10 under his
coat and pulled his sword back out. "Why is it that
immortals like you never expect other immortals to carry
guns?" He raised his sword. "Oh by the way, there can be
only one."
***
"Relax, Dawn," Cordelia reassured her. "This time it's
the bad guys who went first."
"Oh, okay," Dawn said, relaxing. "So what do you want me
to do?"
"Get the Scooby Gang back together."
"Okay, I, uh, huh?" Dawn looked at Cordelia in confusion.
"Which Scooby Gang? I kinda remember alot of different
versions of them and I'm sure there's more."
"Relax, we got it covered," Cordelia told her. "You see,
we get the most powerful version of each Scooby we can
find and deposit them in striking distance of the Big
Bad we want them to take on."
"Okay. Um, how do I do that?" Dawn asked, uncertain.
"Here, let me show you what to do. Start by..."
***
Alive. That wasn't what she quite expected. When she had
retaken her old body, millenia of accumalated power had
apparently reanimated her body while driving out the
demon. She could feel that most of that power still
remained. Buffy wondered what she ought to do with her
life now.
But first, she decided to pay her respects to her old
friends. It hurt to watch them die again, unable to
intervene until her other self had closed the temporal
loop. She laid their bodies out as best she could before
she buried them. Then picking up the Scythe, Buffy
struck several strategic blows, bringing the remains of
the school down on top of them.
As she departed, The First Evil appeared to Buffy, still
wearing her own appearance.
"You think you've won?" the First asked.
"Y'know, if this is the cliched speech about getting me
next time, save it," Buffy replied. "And get your own
look. That one's taken."
"Whatever," the First said, shrugging. "Still, no more
Slayers in this world. I call that a win."
"There's me," Buffy pointed out.
"You sure?" the First asked.
A glowing green mist crackling with arcing lightning
enveloped Buffy before she could reply. For long moments,
she couldn't see a thing. Then the mist cleared and she
was looking at herself again. Only, her other self had
Willow colored hair and was wearing a hideous shade of
purple.
"Wow, Daphne!" exclaimed the blond hottie next to Buffy's
almost mirror image. "She looks just like you!"
***
Willow felt it an instant before it arrived. Whatever it
was felt... familiar, friendly even. Perhaps that was why
she let it snatch her up. She was certain that had she
tried, she could have stopped that whatever-it-was. She
just didn't feel too motivated to try.
The next thing she knew, she was in Wonderland. And this
place fit Lewis Carroll's description to Wonderland to
a tee. There were still a few surprises.
Willow was being roughly manhandled by vampires dressed
as playing cards. All the other card soldiers were
vampires too. In quick succession, she identified Buffy
as Alice, Xander as the King of Hearts, Anya in a white
rabbit suit, and even Giles as the Cheshire cat. And then
there was the most disturbing one of all.
"How dare she look like me!" Willow's twin shouted
indignantly. Her tiara and gown was red, black, and white
decked out with hearts. Those weren't not Valentine-style
hearts, but the literal organs fresh from the body.
The feel of magic here was so alien. Willow wondered if
she would be able to defend herself.
***
When Xander opened his eyes after the Quickening ended,
he found himself no longer in the Oxnard warehouse. He
was... somewhere else.
The first thing he noticed were the guns. There were alot
of them of the military rifle variety. There were also a
pair of gun turrets sporting what appeared to be heavy
.50 caliber machine guns. All of these were pointed at
him.
Next thing his mind registered was that these guns were
all being handled by guys in military fatigues. There was
an observation window set in the concrete wall behind
them. Inside, he could make out more military beople,
although those guys were wearing dress uniforms.
He barely noticed the blue glow coming from behind him.
The guns in front seemed way more important.
Acutely aware that he was standing on a raised ramp with
both arms held high and a bloody sword in one hand,
Xander said the first thing that came to mind.
"I come in peace?" he said weakly. The soldiers were not
impressed.
Something went gloomp behind him, followed by more. A
soldier tumbled past him on his left. Another, this one
had a vaguely feminine figure on his right; her head was
bare of any hair, but there was some kind of mottled
pattern across the skin.
The third soldier coming behind Xander tackled him and
they went down in a heap. They came to a stop at the foot
of the ramp where the soldiers with the guns were.
Xander also got a good look at the guy who tackled him.
It was like looking at the spitting image of himself.
"Aw, not again!" they both said at the same time.
***
"Oops," was Dawn's only comment.
Author: Nopporn Wongrassamee aka the Evil Author
EMail Address: EvilAuthor@aol.com
Archive: Anywhere and everywhere. Just tell me if you do.
Spoilers: Anything goes
Summary: From across the multiverse, the most powerful
incarnations of the Scooby Gang have been gathered to
battle the Ultimate Evil. But first, they have to get
along with each other.
Disclaimer: Characters and concepts belong to their
owners who I'm too lazy to list. So shoot me. Wait! I
didn't mean that lit... *BANG*
She remembered dying.
Okay, what she really remembered was dying many, many
times. There was the vampire who drained her on their
first date, the Knight of Byzantium who impaled her with
a lucky arrow, Ben slitting her throat in a fit of pique,
jumping from Glory's ramshackle tower. Those were the
deaths she could attribute to the bad guys.
Then there were the more embarrasing deaths. Her slipping
in the tub. Car accidents. There were inumerable times
of choking on her breakfast cereal!
And then there were the deaths inflicted by her sister.
The disturbing part was that several of her deaths had
been when she had not been turned into a vampire.
Now at least she knew what had been going on in Buffy's
mind. That was because for every memory she had of dying,
there were more of her surviving those deaths. Every
eternal instant that passed resulted in more memories
popping up, each chunk contributing just a little more
memory of living.
To the entity that had once been Dawn Summers, it was all
very confusing.
***
Stepping over the corpses that had once been the Scooby
Gang, the Mother of All Vampires effortlessly held the
Slayer by the throat with her right hand. Behind Buffy,
a temporal portal was open leading into the deep past.
With a flicker of her wrist, the Mother tossed Buffy into
the portal. Upon the passage of the Slayer, the portal
closed and disappeared as if it had never existed.
"No..." someone moaned. Apparently one of the Scoobies
wasn't quite dead. The Mother saw that it was the
Watcher. "You've... you've altered the past..." Giles
whispered, stammering more from the weakness of blood
loss that social ineptitude. "Why? I thought... you
wanted... to... go. A Slayer... back then... could
stop... the creation... of the... first... Vampire..."
"No, Giles, it won't," the Mother replied, speaking for
the first time with a horribly familiar voice as she
stepped in front of him. She knelt so that they were face
to face, or more appropriately, face to mask. "I haven't
altered time," she said lazily, removing her mask to
reveal the twisted but still recognizable face of Buffy
Summers. "I've made sure it'll all happen."
"Noooo..." Giles moaned in despair. Then he joined the
rest of the Scoobies in oblivion.
"Okay, now that was just mean," someone said behind the
vampire Buffy. That someone spoke with her own voice and
sounded like she disapproved.
Buffy turned to her etherial twin. "You're supposed to be
the First Evil," Buffy the vampire replied, somewhat
annoyed. "What do you care?"
Another Buffy apparition appeared beside vampire Buffy.
"That's not me," the First Evil told her. Had she been
paying attention, the Mother might have noticed that the
First was disturbed. "It's the ghost of your former
self."
"Ooh, a ghost," the Mother of Vampires mocked. "I am so
not impressed." She strode forward until she was face to
face with her double. "What are you going to do, Caspar,
say 'Boo'?"
In reply, Buffy the Ghost hit Buffy the Vampire with an
upper cut. With unexpected solidity, the former sent the
latter through the ceiling into the now late Robin Wood's
office.
"Boo," she added.
***
It took a while, but the entity that had once been Dawn
Summers finally figured out what was going on. As time
passed, things happened and choices were made. In one
universe Dawn made one choice and died. In another, she
had made a different decision and lived. Multiply by
infinity.
Once Dawn died, the part of her that was the Key was
released into the ether. But the Key was not the same
pure energy it had been before it had been made into the
Slayer's sister. There were contaminants in the energy
now, the fragments that had been Dawn's soul. Instead of
spreading into the void, the energy of the Key accreted
around these soul fragments like a pearl. Eventually, she
(there was a definite femaleness to the Key's self
identity now) woke up.
This left one inevitable question.
"Where the heck am I?" she asked no one in particular.
There appeared to be nothing but an infinite void here...
wherever "here" was.
So she was kind of surprised to get an answer.
***
Willow had botched the Slayer activation spell. It was
nothing she did. Like her ensouling Angel years before,
she had simply started too late. Willow finished the
spell just in time to see Kennedy torn to bloody shreds
when the swarm Turok-han found their hidey hole.
In an instant, Willow felt despair. For the Turok'han to
have found her hiding place, they had to get past Buffy
and the others. That meant Buffy, Xander, Giles, and
everyone else she knew was dead. True, ever potential
Slayer in the world was now activated... but none of them
were HERE.
As the neander-vamps pounced on Willow, the young witch
reached deep into her connection with the Earth and
pulled out all the stops.
In the following days, the destruction of Sunnydale would
be blamed on terrorists who had smuggled a nuclear weapon
onto American soil. Why a nearly empty backwater was
nuked instead of nearby Los Angeles was a mystery that
would be endlessly speculated over.
But it was not the only thing speculated over. There was
the Miracle. A survivor had been pulled out of what was
practically ground zero: a young woman with hair that had
been bleached white by the explosion.
***
"Hi, Dawn," the visitor said as she appeared from out of
literally nowhere. "Welcome to the Outside." The visitor
was one of the Powers that Be. Somehow, the Key was very
sure of that. What was surprising was that she new this
particular Power.
"Cordelia?" the Key exclaimed in surprise. "What are you
doing here? For that matter, where's here?"
"Well, let's answer your last question first," Cordelia
replied. She ticked off one of her fingers. "One, we're
quite literally between the walls of dimensions. It's
like those spaces in houses where Jerry the Mouse lives."
"There are mice here?" the Key asked, looking around. She
saw nothing else.
"Sure, and rats and bugs and all sorts of icky crawly
things," Cordelia told her with a shudder. "But they stay
away from things that can squash them like... well, bugs.
That would be us by the way."
"Cool," the Key said, relieved.
"Oh, and if it helps, it's okay for you to think of
yourself as 'Dawn' if it helps," Cordelia suggested.
"Okay," the Ke... Dawn replied.
"Now then," Cordelia began, then stopped. She looked down
at her own hands. "Uh, where was I?"
***
"I am Polethemus of Byzantium," the immortal proclaimed,
not drawing his weapon.
"Hi, nice to meetcha. I'm Xander Harris of Sunnydale,"
Xander replied, drawing his sword from the folds of his
long coat. "Maybe you've heard of it? Turned into the
world's biggest pothole yesterday. I shoulda been there
to help my friends."
Feeling the other immortal nearby, Xander had ducked into
a nearby warehouse, Odd how Oxnard seemed to have alot of
them.
"I would offer my condolences," Polethemus said with a
mocking smile, "...but I'd be lying."
"Yeah, yeah, you're all heart," Xander replied. "So are
we gonna trade insults all day or are you going to
challenge me? Cuz the way I'm feeling right now, taking
your head ought to relieve some tension."
"Oh, but the witty banter is such fun," Polethemus told
Xander jovially, "but if you insist," He drew an Uzi from
his own coat and emptied half the clip into Xander's
chest, "I challenge."
***
"What are you doing here?" Dawn prompted.
"Oh, right! Thanks," Cordelia said brightly. "Anyway,
what I'd like to say is that the other Powers thought it
might be a good idea that a familiar face helped you get
used to..." she waved vaguely at their surroundings,
"...this."
"But? I hear a 'but' in there somewhere."
"Yeah, there is," Cordelia admitted. "See, I'm kinda like
a Power that Be intern. 'Go get that, Cordy'. 'Take this
head-splitting vision to some poor sap, Cordy'. 'Ferry
this senior Power back to the mortal world so that you
can be a passenger in your own body, Cordy'. And here I
thought Ascending to a higher plane would be different."
"Not all it's cracked up to be, huh?" Dawn sympathized.
"You said it, kiddo," Cordelia agreed. "Would it be too
much to ask if I could get Daniel's deal. He got to look
in on his friends from time to time."
"Who's Daniel?"
"Some science geek. Used to wear glasses before he
Ascended while playing Spock," Cordelia replied absently
before going to back to her rant. "Y'know, the only
reason I can fit in here with you is that my body got
left behind on the lower worlds. That was so not fair."
***
"How are you doing this?" demanded the vampire Buffy.
"You're a spirit! A shadow! You shouldn't have that much
solidity let alone that much strength."
"Oh, I'm not just some garden variety ghost, sister," the
ghostly Buffy replied confidently as she stode toward
herself. A quick morph and suddenly she was Kendra. "I've
been building strength ever since I died." Another morph
and she was Nikki Wood. "I am the force that gives the
Slayers their power, jumping from one to another as each
dies, each one's strength added to my own." A shift and
she was a grinning Faith. "Wicked cool, huh?"
"You might not have noticed, but there are no more
Slayers or Slayer wannabes. You won't be able to hold
onto all that power without a physical vessel," vampBuffy
pointed out smugly. "And I can wait you out. By the way,
does the First know you stole that trick?"
"Hey, the First Evil can sue me," the spirit of Slayerdom
replied as she changed into the First Slayer. "But there
is a vessel that can hold me."
"Really?" vampire Buffy said skeptically. "Where?"
"Right here!" snarled the spirit as she slunged her a
hand deep into the vampire's torso and shifted back to
Buffy. "I want my body back, you bitch!"
***
"So you're here to keep me company?" Dawn asked.
"Not really," Cordelia sighed. "I'm just messenger girl.
Again. I really need a new line of work."
"So, you're here to give me a message?" Dawn guessed.
"Yup," Cordelia confirmed. "The Powers have something
that only you, as the Key, are capable of doing."
"Me? What can I do that they can't?" Dawn asked.
"Well, you could bring the whole multiverse crashing down
on itself like the Twin Towers," Cordelia replied. "But
that's not what they have in mind."
"Whoa, really?"
"Really," Cordelia confirmed. "Glory didn't know what she
was messing with."
"So what do they want me to do?" Dawn asked.
***
"Hi, Willow, can we come in?"
"Riley. Sam. Sure, come on in," Willow replied to her
visitors. She had been crying, obviously grieving for her
lost friends.
"We came to see how you were doing," Riley said as he
and his wife sat by Willow's hospital bed. He had the
decency to be embarrassed as he added, "And, um, to find
out what happened in Sunnydale."
"I'll be okay," Willow whispered. The louder, "It was the
same old thing, a Sunnydale Apocalypse." She decided to
change the topic to something else before she broke down
again. "Where were you guys? Buffy tried to contact you,
but you were out of contact."
"The Yucatan," Riley replied. "Someone was trying to
start an Apocalypse of the classic kind by raising the
dead all over the world as flesh eating zombies."
"Wow, an Apocalypse of your very own," Willow mused, a
tremor in her voice. This was not a subject she wanted to
dwell on. "There seems to be alot of that going around."
"You sure you're okay?" Sam asked, concerned.
"It's just..." Willow began., then burst into tears.
"It's all my fault!"
***
"Keep in mind that in your current state, you're an
eternal being that's been around since time began,"
Cordelia began. "That means you're subject to certain
rules."
"Oh, joy," Dawn scowled.
"Don't get snarky yet," Cordelia remonstrated. "You'll
get plenty of time and reason later. Just listen for
now. Where was I?"
"Rules."
"Right. Anyway," Cordelia continued, "While you CAN pull
deus ex machina shenanigans on the lower worlds, so can
the other side. So if 'Good'" here Cordelia raised her
fingers in the universal gestures of quote marks, "does
something directly, the baddies can do the same. This has
worked out into a tit for tat kind of deal."
"Tit for tat?" Dawn asked, not quite following.
"Sure, it's like this," Cordelia said, thinking about
examples to illustrate her point. "Okay, if the First
pulls a souled vampire out of a hell to use for his own
nefarious purposes, then the Powers that Be can pull a
snowstorm out of nowhere to save his sorry self when he
tries to commit suicide by sunrise. Or if a Slayer gets
resurrected by the good guys, the bad guys are free to
off all the Slayers in Waiting 'cuz the Slayer succession
is obviously worthless now."
"Okay, I get it," Dawn said quickly before Cordelia could
pull any more examples from her life. Or was it lives?
"And the Powers want ME to do something like this? What's
the other side going to do?"
"I dunno," Cordelia admitted. "Both sides like to save up
their deus ex machinas until they can be used to their
best advantage."
"Oh. that is sooo not comforting."
***
Hit by bullets at full auto, Xander reeled back into the
shadows that filled the warehouse. He fell behind a crate
and momentarily disappeared from view.
Full of arrogant confidence, Polethemus strolled around
the crate to behead the immortal and take his quickening.
He was shocked to discover there was no body lying where
there should be one. In fact, there wasn't even any
blood.
"What the..." he began.
"Y'know, Polly, it never ceases to amaze me," Xander's
voice said, coming from somewhere in the shadows. "Alot
of immortals consider guns to be cheating. Me? I was
raised in the modern world."
"How..." Polethemus began again.
"Kevlar vest with embedded steel plate reinforcement,"
Xander replied to Polethemus' partially formed question.
"Anyway, if an immortal wants to challenge me with a
sword, that's fine; I'll meet him with a sword. However,
if an immortal prefers guns..."
A click was all the warning Polethemus had before he was
riddled with automatic fire. Unlike Xander, he wasn't
wearing body armor.
"...I'm happy to oblige," Xander concluded as he stepped
out of the shadows. He secreted his own Mac10 under his
coat and pulled his sword back out. "Why is it that
immortals like you never expect other immortals to carry
guns?" He raised his sword. "Oh by the way, there can be
only one."
***
"Relax, Dawn," Cordelia reassured her. "This time it's
the bad guys who went first."
"Oh, okay," Dawn said, relaxing. "So what do you want me
to do?"
"Get the Scooby Gang back together."
"Okay, I, uh, huh?" Dawn looked at Cordelia in confusion.
"Which Scooby Gang? I kinda remember alot of different
versions of them and I'm sure there's more."
"Relax, we got it covered," Cordelia told her. "You see,
we get the most powerful version of each Scooby we can
find and deposit them in striking distance of the Big
Bad we want them to take on."
"Okay. Um, how do I do that?" Dawn asked, uncertain.
"Here, let me show you what to do. Start by..."
***
Alive. That wasn't what she quite expected. When she had
retaken her old body, millenia of accumalated power had
apparently reanimated her body while driving out the
demon. She could feel that most of that power still
remained. Buffy wondered what she ought to do with her
life now.
But first, she decided to pay her respects to her old
friends. It hurt to watch them die again, unable to
intervene until her other self had closed the temporal
loop. She laid their bodies out as best she could before
she buried them. Then picking up the Scythe, Buffy
struck several strategic blows, bringing the remains of
the school down on top of them.
As she departed, The First Evil appeared to Buffy, still
wearing her own appearance.
"You think you've won?" the First asked.
"Y'know, if this is the cliched speech about getting me
next time, save it," Buffy replied. "And get your own
look. That one's taken."
"Whatever," the First said, shrugging. "Still, no more
Slayers in this world. I call that a win."
"There's me," Buffy pointed out.
"You sure?" the First asked.
A glowing green mist crackling with arcing lightning
enveloped Buffy before she could reply. For long moments,
she couldn't see a thing. Then the mist cleared and she
was looking at herself again. Only, her other self had
Willow colored hair and was wearing a hideous shade of
purple.
"Wow, Daphne!" exclaimed the blond hottie next to Buffy's
almost mirror image. "She looks just like you!"
***
Willow felt it an instant before it arrived. Whatever it
was felt... familiar, friendly even. Perhaps that was why
she let it snatch her up. She was certain that had she
tried, she could have stopped that whatever-it-was. She
just didn't feel too motivated to try.
The next thing she knew, she was in Wonderland. And this
place fit Lewis Carroll's description to Wonderland to
a tee. There were still a few surprises.
Willow was being roughly manhandled by vampires dressed
as playing cards. All the other card soldiers were
vampires too. In quick succession, she identified Buffy
as Alice, Xander as the King of Hearts, Anya in a white
rabbit suit, and even Giles as the Cheshire cat. And then
there was the most disturbing one of all.
"How dare she look like me!" Willow's twin shouted
indignantly. Her tiara and gown was red, black, and white
decked out with hearts. Those weren't not Valentine-style
hearts, but the literal organs fresh from the body.
The feel of magic here was so alien. Willow wondered if
she would be able to defend herself.
***
When Xander opened his eyes after the Quickening ended,
he found himself no longer in the Oxnard warehouse. He
was... somewhere else.
The first thing he noticed were the guns. There were alot
of them of the military rifle variety. There were also a
pair of gun turrets sporting what appeared to be heavy
.50 caliber machine guns. All of these were pointed at
him.
Next thing his mind registered was that these guns were
all being handled by guys in military fatigues. There was
an observation window set in the concrete wall behind
them. Inside, he could make out more military beople,
although those guys were wearing dress uniforms.
He barely noticed the blue glow coming from behind him.
The guns in front seemed way more important.
Acutely aware that he was standing on a raised ramp with
both arms held high and a bloody sword in one hand,
Xander said the first thing that came to mind.
"I come in peace?" he said weakly. The soldiers were not
impressed.
Something went gloomp behind him, followed by more. A
soldier tumbled past him on his left. Another, this one
had a vaguely feminine figure on his right; her head was
bare of any hair, but there was some kind of mottled
pattern across the skin.
The third soldier coming behind Xander tackled him and
they went down in a heap. They came to a stop at the foot
of the ramp where the soldiers with the guns were.
Xander also got a good look at the guy who tackled him.
It was like looking at the spitting image of himself.
"Aw, not again!" they both said at the same time.
***
"Oops," was Dawn's only comment.
