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Author's Note: This is the final chapter of Power Politics, paving the way for the next story arc, which will go a little deeper into the individual team characters. Also, I've just been through an online quiz on 80s cartoon series and boy, did that give me a lot of wicked ideas what universes to visit next. A few hints for those versed in the 80s cartoons. The first one to get them all right scores a guest appearance in my story.

- The protectors of the galaxy of Limbo.
- The Kherium Rush on New Texas.
- Bulletproof, top cop of Empire City.
- Matt Striker and Miles Mayhem
- Cyclonus and Scourge
- Zartan and the Dreadnoks

And now, on with the show!

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Power Politics Aftermath

#

The White House
Washington DC, USA
January 12, 2000

Parallel 047

#

Your name is Ron Butterfield and you are the senior agent in charge of the United States Secret Service. It is your job to keep the president and the rest of the cabinet alive and well. You have at your disposal some of the finest men and women any boss could wish for, equipped with the best hardware the taxpayers' money can provide. It is a sad fact of life, though, that these same men and women, whose job it is to catch bullets for other people, sometime don't make it home at the end of the night, no matter how well they're armed.

"What happened?" Leo asks, looking over the files of the two agents who were killed last night.

"We don't really know, I'm afraid," you have to admit. "They were found with their necks broken. Weapons were discharged, but we found no blood from anyone except the two of them. We found some strange sort of dust covering the service tunnels down below the Congress building, as well as some small splatters of blood. Forensics are going over it, but they don't have much hope of recovering any viable clues."

Leo sighs, looking tired and worn out. You know what he is going through right now. The press is hounding him for his alcoholism. Congress is threatening a hearing. You have known Leo for quite a while now, long before he came here to this White House as Chief of Staff. You remember years ago when he served as secretary of labor. Even then he was a hard-working man. What you didn't know was that he was emptying out entire bars at the same time.

Things have changed since then. Rehab, a very long, slow road to recovery. Leo thought he had his demons all locked up and left behind. Only things haven't quite worked out that way. And no matter how much you would like to, that is one threat you and your agents can't protect him from.

"You think someone was trying to get at the president?"

"Leo, the entire cabinet was in that building last night, excluding only secretary Tribby. I think someone was planning to do something but for some reason didn't manage to pull it off, God alone knows why."

"And no one saw anything? Anything at all?"

You shake your head, feeling as pissed about this as anyone. Two of your men are dead and you have no idea who did it and why. And with every minute that passes without any clues being found your chances of ever finding out grow smaller and smaller.

"Keep me updated on this," Leo finally says. "I don't think we need to worry the president with this just yet."

You agree with a nod.

"You'll make the arrangements for the two agents?"

You nod again. It's all you can do right now. Bury the dead and hope that whomever killed them will get what's coming to him. If, thinking of the blood in the corridors, someone else hasn't already taken care of that.

A few months from now you will have other things to worry about. An assassination attempt aimed at Charlie Young by a group of Neo Nazis will cause the president to be wounded by a gunshot. Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman will also be injured, critically so. It will be up to you to catch the perpetrators, something you will eventually accomplish. Among all that chaos the events of last night will slowly fade from your mind.

Right now, though, you can't think of anything else but those two dead agents and you hate it when things turn out as murky as this.

#

Grand Central
Time indeterminable

Parallel 000

#

Your name is Daniel 'Oz' Osborn and you are not a man of many words. Never have been, never will be. There are actually two reasons for that. The first is simply that you don't think it necessary to say something unless it really needs to be said, an attitude you know a large part of the world doesn't share. Just look at all those talk shows.

The second reason is the fact that, for the largest part of your adult life, you have had quite a few reasons to be withdrawn and stoic, for you know what will happen if you should lose your cool.

These last few days have been hectic and overwhelming. Being rescued from certain death (and the actual death of quite a few people you liked, let's not forget that) and thrust headfirst into a mission to save a world that is not your own have left you very little time to think. You would never admit it, but that fight in the tunnels beneath Congress? You relished in it. A chance to cut loose without fear of innocents paying the price. A chance to let off steam and take your frustrations out on those who should be dead already. You loved it.

Now that the mission is over, though, you have had quite a bit of time to think. And you don't particularly like the things you have come up with.

"Willow, can I talk to you for a moment?"

The living quantum computer Willow 12 turns to look at you. Even looking as she does, red chrome instead of human skin, she reminds you so much of the girl you still love, will always love. You know it's not her, not even an otherworldly doppelganger of her, but the sight of her still makes your heart ache.

"What is it Oz?" she asks. "It's okay if I call you Oz, right?"

"Yeah. I was thinking."

"About what?"

"Wilkins. Giles killed him, right? Just as we killed those vampires."

"Yes."

"You told us that the presence of these people in a world not their own caused disruptions. Won't their dead bodies, even in the form of vampire dust, cause those disruptions anyway?"

It's one of the longest sentences you have strung together in years.

"You are right, but there are no dead bodies. Giles used a special curse to kill Wilkins, one that removed his physical remains from that world and shifted them back to his original parallel."

"What about the vampires?"

"Vampires are nifty that way. When they die the explosive release of arcane energy that reduces them to dust renders the remains completely inert. No more energy, not even quantum vibration. The dust poses no threat, believe me."

You nod, filing those facts away. There is more, though.

"What about disruptions in history?"

"Oh, we kept those to a minimum. The deaths of those secret service agents and the people Trick transformed into vampires played a little havoc with the timeline, but it's settling down again and the damage is minimal."

"Actually I meant in Wilkins' home parallel. Isn't that world missing one soon-to-ascend mayor right now?"

"Actually, it is, yes." She sighs, sitting down at the conference table. "I had to make a judgment call there. Looking solely at the big picture it would have been prudent to return Wilkins and Trick to their home dimension and let things go down as they should. I have found, though, that taking something out of a timeline is doing much less damage than putting something in."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that Wilkins' home dimension will suffer some disruptions due to his absence, but those will die down soon and the timeline will reorder itself to accommodate. Without the disrupting presence of other-dimensional matter and energy that world will be none the worse for wear. And quite a few people Wilkins would have killed will live. So I made the call not to get him back home with the potentially dangerous knowledge of parallel worlds he has acquired. I thought it better to have him killed."

Hearing this being that looks so much like your ex-girlfriend speak so casually of death sends a chill down your spine. She is not human, you remind yourself. She is a computer. Deliberately made human-like by patterning its artificial personality after the Willow Rosenburg of that world, but still a computer. Capable of making cold, hard choices in the span of a microsecond and never losing sleep over it.

Sometimes you wish you could be like that.

"One more thing," you say, deciding to get it all over with in one fell swoop. "What about Angelus?"

"What about him?"

Yes, what about him? You can't dispute the fact that his skills came in handy. The Angel you knew didn't have the capability of mesmerizing people into forgetting things. You also saw him fight, at least in the first few seconds of the vampire attack before he ducked out to go after Trick. He is strong and vicious. Kind of like you, really. And he can intimidate people like no one else.

Still, you have seen his true face. Growing up on the Hellmouth you have seen more than your share of vampires and other demons. And, having been a werewolf even back then, you have always sensed a little more about them than your merely human friends. To a werewolf's senses the undead are repugnant. Unnatural. When you squint your eyes you can almost see the stain their very presence leaves on the fabric of the world.

Angelus is different, though. You doubt that even now, with your supernatural senses enhanced by genetic mutation, you have seen all there is to see about him, but what you did see is more than enough for you.

In your relatively brief life you have seen evil. You have seen it in the empty eyes of vampires. You have seen it in the utterly corrupted soul of one Richard Wilkins. You were being subjected to it at the hands of the eternal madman En Sabah Nur, a creature you still consider the most evil presence ever to walk the Earth.


Your Earth, that is.

Yesterday you have looked into the eyes of Angelus, though, and now you know that you are in the presence of true, irredeemable evil. The only thing this creature has in common with the decent man you knew in your own world is appearance. There is nothing left of the human being it once was, nothing but a few empty memories for this creature to play with. It might have started out as a mere vampire, but now it is something much more terrible.

You search for words to describe what you have seen in his eyes. Flames, destruction, an abyss devoid of all humanity and compassion, filled with nothing but a lust for pain and suffering. Your sharp ears heard how Angelus described his own becoming, how he told of the pure demon blood pumping through his heart. You know he was speaking the truth. The essence of pure malice runs in his veins and he loves it despite the drawbacks it brings with it.

"It was a mistake to bring him here," you finally say. "He is evil, nothing else. Given the chance he'll kill us all."

"I know that," Willow 12 says. "But with the task ahead of us we are going to need evil on our side as well, Oz. Not even the devil himself wants to have all of creation crumbling into nothingness and in order to prevent that we need someone willing and able to do the things that the rest of you can't do."

You shake your head. "It's still a mistake."

Willow 12 looks at you and you know that she already knows everything you could possibly tell her. She knows what he is and how he came about. She also knows what he will do to each and every single one of you the moment he thinks he can get away with it. Every argument has already been made, analyzed in cold, clinical fashion, and weighed until she reached her present decision.

"The moment he does anything," Willow 12 tries to reassure you, "he knows I will shift him back to the time and place of his death at Etrigan's hands. Believe me, not even a monster like Angelus wants that to happen to him."

You don't know who this Etrigan is and you find that you don't particularly care, either.

"Having him here is hurting the team," you make one last effort to dissuade her, though you suspect it's futile. "Have you seen how Buffy looks at him? How everyone does?"

"I have seen it. And believe me, Buffy let me hear about it at length. It's my decision, though. He stays."

You nod, pushing the anger you feel welling up inside yourself back down. She has made her choice, what else can you do? Quit? Go back to the moment of your death? Maybe it would be the better choice, but you don't want to die. There are things you have to make up for, mistakes for which you still have to pay. Maybe serving side by side with true evil in the cause of good is the universe's idea of penance.

Or maybe it's all just one big cosmic joke.

"It's still a mistake."

THE END

COMING UP NEXT: SOLO MISSIONS
With the team having gotten its feet wet, Willow 12 sends them out on individual assignments across the multiverse. Easy missions, those that can be handled by a single pair of hands. Or so it says in the job description.