The Predator threw down its ruined helmet in anger and disgust. It was useless now. His plasma cannon was useless now. This was not the path of a Hunt Master. It had been duped and played by one of the lesser ones: one of the unworthy things that were not acceptable under the circumstances of the hunt. Punching a concrete support column inside the Sunnydale Arms' foundation and leaving a small crater brought it little joy. It was still angry. Still furious. Still amazingly PISSED.
"I see you have anger management issues. I understand that. In high school, there was like this guy who took his mom's birth control pills and went nuts and killed his girlfriend." Harmony said, unaware as to just HOW close she was to becoming a pile of dust.
Still the Predator maintained himself and sat. His wounds needed dressing. He began to break out the "First Aid" kit, if that's what you wanted to call it. A bowl, and some crystals poured in, when added to other materials present created a fairly effective liquid poultice. Stirring the materials it tried to block out Harmony's prattling as best it could. It had no idea what she was going on about. It didn't matter. Only taking Slay-Er mattered. Only that.
Harmony watched the Predator as it applied its dressings and winced when it groaned in pain. She moved closer and dipped a few of her fingers in the liquid. Turning to the Predator she moved to apply the substance to a wound, only to have her forearm gripped tightly in the Predator's hand. Harmony winced and vamped out in pain as the Predator eyed her growling.
"I'm sorry." She cried as the pressure built on her arm, "I just want to help."
The Predator growled and tossed her backwards to the ground. Harmony instantly stood up and felt a little braver.
"You're really rude you know that?!" She yelled at the alien, "I was just trying to help you!"
The Predator tried to ignore her. What's more, Harmony noticed.
"Oh. Yeah, I see that's how it'll be. Ignore Harmony. Just like everyone else." The vampire said sitting across from the Predator, "I get that all the time. Did anyone ever look at me when Cordelia was around? No, I was just her friend. I wasn't important. Then hello, graduation happens, the Mayor turns into a big anaconda and I get bitten. That's okay for a while, killing and hurting, but it gets empty after a while you know? Of course you don't. You're ignoring me."
She sighed and leaned back into a support column.
"Then there was Spike. You know I really thought he liked me. I would have died for him, but no. He has to have his precious Gem of Amara, and he has to kill the Slayer. Then he falls in love with her and forgets about me." Harmony sighed, "I really try sometimes you know? I really try to be evil and be a villain and everything but I always screw it up. All I'm good for is getting slapped around and stripping. I really screwed up hooking up with you didn't I? You're meaner than Spike ever was to me. At least he talked to me…oh wait. You don't speak English. Right. At first I thought things were going to be cool having a demon like you helping me out, but you're just like everyone else. You ignore me because I'm not even important and I don't matter. I'm still just Cordelia's friend who happened to turn into a vampire."
Harmony sighed and looked up. The Predator was watching her quietly. It had actually been listening to her. It looked at her and started to make a sound, like a bizarre reverberation of her own voice.
"Friend." It said, cocking its head.
Harmony looked at the large alien and smiled a little through her fangs. The Predator shrugged and looked down, and began to dress it wounds again. What the hell? She was loyal after all.
"So are you sure we're inconspicuous?" Xander asked K.
"Perfectly." K replied looking through what seemed to be a child's view master.
"K, I don't know man. I'm not so sure we are." J stated.
"Why's that Slick?" K asked.
"We're sitting across the street in the car in broad daylight." J replied, "What's going to keep the Predator from coming out and filleting us?"
"Yeah, maybe it's just me but I definitely don't want to be filleted." Xander added.
"Okay, well first of all do you know the difference between a Shi'Ar travel transport and battle transport?" K asked.
"Well, no." J said.
"Then how in the hell is a Predator going to know this is a MIB car?"
"What's a Shi'Ar?" Xander asked.
"Okay, what's the second thing?" J questioned.
"What second thing?" K said, looking at J oddly.
"You said first of all. That usually means there's a second of all." J replied.
"Oh, well second of all, if you'd shut up it won't hear us." K snapped, "Sorry Tiger. The pressure's getting to me."
"So you get anything on that thermal readout?" Xander asked.
"Had to readjust it several times to work on different harmonics because Predator's have different body chemistry than us. Thermal's no good." K explained, "Ultrasonics however are another issue. We have two beings inside. One is most definitely a Predator. The other seems to be the valley girl who was helping him earlier."
"Harmony." Xander said.
"I thought her name was Buffy?" J asked.
"No Buffy's on our side. Harmony's the bad guy. Well actually Harmony's pretty much an idiot." Xander pointed out.
"Damn and here I thought the chick going after the vampire was named Harmony." J said.
"Clean your ears our Slugger." K said.
"Okay, so BUFFY is going after the big vampire guy right?" J asked.
"Yes." Xander and K said together.
"Can she handle it?" J asked.
"Not a clue." K replied.
"Oh yeah. Buffy's good. She eats ancient vampires for breakfast…well not literally. 'Cause that would be gross." Xander stated.
"Very." J said, "Still, what's she going to do to the guy? She's like eighty pounds."
"Two words. Compact muscle."
Buffy looked at the church cautiously and mused about the last time she came here. Spike had kidnapped Angel for a spell to restore Drusilla's strength. Buffy and her then Sister in Slaying, Kendra had come to the rescue. It ended with Angel saved and Spike underneath a large pipe organ. Now, almost six years later it all seemed so weird. Kendra had died and Angel was in L.A. with a permanent soul sleeping with Cordelia of all people, and Buffy was sharing a bed with Spike. This was confusing.
Slowly she rolled one sleeve of her leather jacket up and took one of the knives from her boots. She cut her arm just enough to let the skin break and the blood flow ever so slightly. She wanted Bacchus to know she was here.
Buffy walked across the street, Holy Water gun in hand. She hoped this went smoothly. Still, she had fire now. This creature had toyed with them all. It had killed children to get her attention. It was like an animal. No, animals weren't so cruel. This thing was a demon through and through. Well demons could be hunted like animals. They could be killed like them.
After all, if it can bleed it can die.
"Buffy? You doing okay?" Willow asked in her head.
"Just fine." Buffy thought back, "I'm heading over now."
"Yeah I see. I have your perspective going on here. It's like watching a movie." Willow replied.
"Well lets hope it's not horror. Maybe a cute romantic comedy with me aside Ashton Kutcher, but I'll take what I can get." Buffy thought back again.
"Are you scared?"
"Petrified."
"Want me to stop asking questions and let you focus?"
"Might be a good idea. Just stay linked up in case I need you okay Wills?"
"I got you. Over and out."
"Over and out?"
"It just seemed like the thing to say…think…whatever."
Buffy almost laughed at that, but held it in. She was going to war. Originally her Slayer senses had been weak compared to Faith, Kendra, or any other Slayer she had ever read or heard about. But now they were screaming. They were screaming the way they had when she and Faith fought Kakistos. They were screaming the way they had when she first ran into the Turok-Han AKA Ubervamp. Like they had when the Master had drowned her. That last one unnerved her. If she died this time then it might be the last. Third time's a charm after all.
She peeked into a hole that had been left by the fire that had broken out by the last battle that occurred here. She saw nothing and moved along, right before the figure moved past the hole from the inside. Her senses had her look back. And again she saw nothing. There was nothing there. Nonetheless, a stream of Holy Water went into the hole. Just in case.
Buffy walked along the perimeter, looking for any signs of the master vampire. She looked for anything she could use to her advantage in the brewing fight. She found two things: Jack and shit. Her senses still tingling, she moved on looking at a stained glass window. She remembered how little light those things actually allowed in. She made note of it.
That was right before two hands ripped through the wall of the church, pulling her inside forcefully making an entrance for her. How's that for a twist? Bet you didn't see that one coming.
Buffy flew through the air and slammed in a heap. Bacchus stood by the newly formed entrance and looked at her.
"So glad you came." Bacchus smiled.
"I'm thrilled too sweetie." Buffy said, firing a stream of Holy Water at the vampire. Unfortunately, he was no longer there.
Buffy was batted across the room into a wall, her axe coming loose and landing on the floor. Instinctively she grabbed it and lobbed it towards Bacchus's current location. It stuck into the wall that had previously been behind him. She turned and threw a kick to the oncoming Bacchus that actually made him back up.
"You guys get so predictable." Buffy said firing the Holy Water.
Bacchus effortless sidestepped it.
"I'm sorry; I'll try to be more original in the future." Bacchus said quickly disarming her and throwing the water gun to the side.
Buffy threw a punch and Bacchus blocked it. She threw another, which was also blocked. She went for a spinning roundhouse kick that Bacchus again blocked. Bacchus smiled. Then Buffy smiled back.
"I got ya." Buffy smirked.
Bacchus looked down at the stake imbedded in his chest. He merely pulled it out and snapped it in two. Buffy's smile fell.
"True, but I have quite a lot of muscle there dear Slayer. Not to mention bone. You're going to have a hard time getting one of those through to my heart." Bacchus said, backhanding her.
Buffy rolled with in and changed her momentum turning into a cartwheel righting herself before handspring backwards and landing on her feet to pull her axe out of the wall.
"More than one way to slay a vamp." Buffy quipped.
"So true. Yet it won't do you much good." Bacchus laughed demonically as he approached her.
Buffy hefted the axe and threw it, sending it tumbling towards the master vampire. He seemed very unconcerned about the attack. All the better. For a moment everything was in slow motion. The axe somersaulting towards Bacchus. Bacchus's defiant laugh and unthreatened nature. And Buffy again rolling towards her water gun. She gripped it in her hands just as Bacchus brought both palms to the blade of the axe, stopping it in mid air.
"Made ya look." Buffy said, firing a stream of Holy Water on the vampire.
This time it actually connected and Bacchus groaned in pain as the water burned him like acid. Flipping the axe in his hands, he threw it back at Buffy, who barely managed to evade it. Still her jacket suffered for it. Bacchus rushed forward and Buffy swung her water gun into one of his horns, rupturing it, and making the contents spill forth on the vampire's head. Bacchus screamed in pain as his skin began to melt.
He groaned again when Buffy successfully punched him in the jaw with her rings. Her silver rings; with crosses on them. She threw a right and then a left, and then another right, always leaving the telltale burn marks of the cross behind on the vampire's skin.
Bacchus blindly swiped with a claw and just slightly got the end of Buffy's nose as she moved back. Buffy began bleeding from the small wound and she fell backwards, lifting her legs in the air as Bacchus followed her down, hands outstretched. The Bowie knives left her boots as she fell. She turned them and stabbed one into either hand of the vampire. Bacchus roared in pain as his hands erupted into flame, and Buffy rolled back.
"MY HANDS!" Bacchus yelled in shock.
"Hurts don't it? Well that's what happens when a priest has blessed said knives." Buffy quipped.
Bacchus whimpered then laughed as he easily pulled the blades from his hands and tossed them to the floor like they were nothing. Buffy's heart skipped a beat. That was new. Before her eyes, the wounds on Bacchus's hands and face sealed up.
"You're resourceful. Very resourceful. I admire that." Bacchus said circling her, "But you'll have to do a lot better than that if you want to fight me."
"I thought we were." Buffy said throwing a punch that was caught and twisted behind her back. Bacchus held her close to him, tightly.
"No. I'm just playing with you. I want you to fight harder as I know you can." Bacchus smiled, "Stop me from making you my whore."
Buffy felt Bacchus touch her jeans in a very improper way and tried to fight back, but he merely twisted her arm tighter as his hand slipped around her waist. A claw started to unbutton her pants. Buffy felt a wave of panic. Spike had nearly raped her. Now this thing wanted to. She struggled again and only got her arm wrenched tighter. Bacchus licked her face.
"You'll beg me for more." The vampire hissed in her ear.
"Buffy! Let me bring you out!" Willow's voice filled her head.
"N-No." Buffy gritted he teeth, trying to resist the force on her arm.
"What was that lover?" Bacchus said tightening it again and playing with her zipper.
"Buffy for God's sake I'm bringing you out!" Willow shouted in her mind.
"No." Buffy said more firmly.
Bacchus chuckled.
"Nothing but a vampire's whore, but then again that's your life story isn't it?" Bacchus whispered.
"BUFFY I'M GOING TO—"
"NO!!!!" Buffy said mule kicking Bacchus right in the balls, making his grip slack and then flipping him over her front. Her hand dove into her belt and produced a bottle of Holy Water that she smashed over the fallen vampire's head, making sure it got right in her eyes, "NO ONE EVER DOES THAT TO ME YOU BASTARD! NO ONE!"
Buffy stomped Bacchus's head and zipped and buttoned her jeans.
"I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU PAY FOR EVEN THINKING ABOUT THAT!" the Slayer roared as she brought her foot down. Bacchus rolled to the side and stood backing away.
"There's the fire I spoke of." Bacchus grinned as his eyes healed, just in time to see a cross cut in the soul of a boot come for his face making him stagger.
"FIRE? I'M A FUCKING SUN RIGHT NOW!" Buffy roared as she delivered blow after blow, withdrawing stakes from her belt and slamming one after the other into the vampire's chest hoping to penetrate the heart and make this creature dust.
Bacchus backed up; so intense was Buffy's rage. She had been in her bathroom, Spike atop her trying to force himself on her. She was screaming and crying and struggling, but her back was hurt so she couldn't fight as well as she had hoped. But then something inside just snapped. Spike was thrown off and the only thing that had saved his life right then was the fact that her back was injured. Well Bacchus had made her snap again, and right now her back felt pretty damned good. No one did that to her; not Spike, not the First, and most certainly not Bacchus.
Still, the rage blinded her and using the awesome celerity of a vampire one blow penetrated her fiery tornado. And when you were as strong as Bacchus, one was all that was needed to send you flying.
"Oh you're good Slayer. This is definitely living up to expectations." Bacchus said, pulling stake after stake from his muscular chest, "You're everything you're billed as. I'm confident that were I the same age I had fought Xena at fighting you, I would be very dead. Unluckily for you, there's only one outcome in this fight."
Buffy found her axe and hefted it.
"Yeah, you're going to die too quickly so I can't get any satisfaction." Buffy growled.
There was blurring. Something forcefully cut the handle of Buffy's axe and made a small breeze as it passed her head. A round circle returned to Bacchus's hand.
"My dear Xena's chakram. I have kept it in fighting condition all these years." Bacchus said hooking the weapon to his belt.
"Yeah you're just swell at Frisbee." Buffy growled.
Buffy was rapidly running out of ammo here. She looked to her wrist. The small crossbow was ruined, snapped to pieces from one of her falls. Her water gun was nonexistent. Her axe was chopped in two. She couldn't stake him. She had bottles of Holy Water, but they were just annoyances. And garlic was out of the question at this point. She had to use the terrain to her advantage. She glanced around and saw a large wooden beam not far from the pipe organ that had fallen on Spike during that last encounter here. She looked to Bacchus and slowly positioned herself.
"You know what's sad Bacchus? Other than you claiming to be a god that is. I mean I've met gods. They're not competent and here you are a wannabe. That's sad, but not near as sad as still holding a torch for some three thousand year old dead Greek Amazon who probably never shaved an inch of her body." Buffy smirked.
"She was glorious." Bacchus growled.
"Gloriously ugly. I bet Xena means "Bitch who fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down and then got ran over by a chariot" in Greek." Buffy laughed slightly, "What's more she never gave a damn about you. Here you are, obsessed like a little puppy dog over a girl that despised you. Someone who would never touch you."
"Shut up." Bacchus said in a low voice.
Buffy mentally braced herself.
"Face it Bacchy, she never loved you. She despised looking at you. All you were to her, and still are, is a pathetic, evil little parasite without a soul." Buffy grinned, "And if that little bump I felt was all you have to offer, well no wonder you have to kill Slayers because with what you're… I hate to say "packing"… they'd never sleep with you."
Bacchus charged almost a blur. Had Buffy not been ready he would have been all but invisible, and she would be dead. But she was ready so it's moot. When he was in reach, she flipped him backwards and he flew through the air. His own momentum was his enemy and he couldn't control it.
He could right it though. And he did.
Bacchus landed on his feet right behind the beam that stuck up in the air like a giant stake. With a vicious backhand he snapped it in two and roared loudly at Buffy. She slowly backed away. She did it quickly when he started to pick up the pipe organ. She barely avoided it by ducking under it, as it slammed into the wall behind her, collapsing it. An instant later, she was in Bacchus's grip as he began to violently choke her. She reached for Mr. Pointy, the last stake on her belt, her fingers tightened over it but then they began to go limp. Her hand fell to the side, as breathing became an issue.
Then her foot hit the axe blade on the ground at just the right angle sending it up to her to her hand. She slashed Bacchus's throat, making him release her. He backed away, his throat healing almost instantly.
"You really think that would kill me, bitch?" Bacchus asked, as his voice went from gravelly and shrill to normal with each word.
"No, but I'm guessing it's not a good thing this church faces west." Buffy said, chucking the axe blade to the stained glass window from earlier. The glass shattered and the setting sun's last rays shone through the portal and fell upon Bacchus, who smoked and burned in rage. What? You didn't think she was really going to sacrifice her favorite stake just to break a window did you? S'yeah right.
"Work on your tan." Buffy said, turning and running for the front door as Bacchus dropped to one knee, burning and smoking but sadly not dusting.
"Willow I've got him subdued for a minute. I need you to do something for me!" Buffy thought as loud as she could.
"What?" Willow's voice replied.
"HIT THIS CHURCH WITH THAT FIREBALL THING!" Buffy shouted in her thoughts.
Willow sighed and walked outside to the back porch.
"Goodness gracious." She said as a small ball of fire developed in her hand, then shot into the air, growing in size as it went along, "I know there's a joke in there somewhere."
Buffy was out on the pavement just as a large ball of flame blasted the church, making it explode. The shockwave sent her tumbling to the ground. She covered her head as best she could, and inhaled the scent of her own singed hair. She looked back and smiled as an inferno stood in place of the desecrated house of worship. She slowly stood and acknowledged the good work her friend had done, just as her Slayer senses went nuts again.
"You've got to be kidding." Buffy said aloud as she saw a dark shape walking through the fire.
It came closer and closer until it exited the flames and stood recognized as the charred blackened body of Bacchus, scorched by fire, scorched by the small amount of sunlight still available. Bacchus looked at Buffy satanically.
"Not enough gun." Bacchus grunted.
"Willow? You there?" Buffy said mentally.
"Yeah?"
"We made him mad."