He fell backwards into nothing. He was to be nothing. He fell in battle dishonorably. He was unable to best his foe, unable to kill it. So now there was only nullity and oblivion. And he accepted this completely. He had failed and died. It was his fate to fade from life and descend into the inky darkness below. He had failed in the hunt, and failure is one thing that his people refused to tolerate.
Thud.
There was a sound. No more; a force.
Thud.
He felt it again.
Thud. Thud.
The Predator looked up from the abyss and dimly saw light. The force came from there. It felt it again, more furious, more potent, more frequent. The Predator looked down to the darkness below him and roared. He would not accept fate. He would defy it.
Flying, he rose through the shadow, passing others from his race that fell in dishonorable death. He would not join them. His place was assured elsewhere. He would be in the house of honored light. He roared as he flew towards the light again and his roar pierced the dimensions. It was something to hear.
"Oh my God! You're alive!" Harmony squealed in delight as she knelt beside the alien hunter.
The Predator sat up, spitting fluorescent blood. Its eyes were weary and it struggled to breath.
"You lost your arm." Harmony said looking at the stump, "Bummer."
The Predator grunted and tried to stand of his own volition. He fell to his side before rising. Harmony reached down and gripped him. He roared at her. To his surprise she hissed back in her vampire features.
"You big idiot! I'm trying to help you!"
The Predator shoved her aside angrily and stood. He then turned his head to her. His look said what his words could not: I don't need help. Looking to the ground he lifted his spear and walked towards the sounds of battle. He wasn't done yet.
Buffy grunted hard as she punched Bacchus right in face. Bacchus returned her blow sending her flying into metal pipes. Spike leapt at the elder vampire. Bacchus caught him and threw him across the site. Twin bursts of huge guns struck Bacchus in the back blowing an immense hole in him. The Men in Black smiled when they could see Spike through the hole. Bacchus fell to his knees.
"That….HURT!" he screamed as he rose again and ran at the MIBs, the hole filling in and sealing at extraordinary speeds.
He ran into an invisible wall and stumbled back, before seeing a smiling Willow Rosenberg standing nearby, pieces of metal wafting in the air beside her. The various pieces of construction equipment flew at the vampire as he turned and leapt and span to avoid each and every one. He even ran down the length of the steel girder she shot at him.
"He's all yours Xander." Willow said mentally.
"Got ya." Xander replied, taking aim with the Noisy Cricket from a good distance away atop the hill.
He fired. He would have taken Bacchus's head off too if not for Bacchus's own intent at taking off Willow's own head. The blast just splintered one of the elder vampire's horns making it roar in rage but very little pain as he crouched and came at her.
Still the smaller story is what happened as the tiny shard of bone went flying through the air. It would be seemingly unimportant, except for the minor detail that it hit the Predator's severed arm. It spun and flipped down the arm before hitting the computer console. Before activating the explosive on it.
An alarm blared on K's watch. His eyes widened and he went uncharacteristically white.
"OH SHIT!" K yelled.
"What is it?" his partner, J, asked as his own watch beeped.
"Aren't you familiar with Ordinance A-5 9765?" K asked.
"Don't say shit like that! Just tell me what's up!" J yelled in response.
"A class three explosive has just been activated!" K roared, "We have to find that or we're pretty much going to be nuked!"
"NUKED?!" J squealed in reply.
"Well on a smaller scale." K replied, "Help me find that alien's arm!"
"What about the others?" J asked.
K regarded Bacchus choking Spike one handed as he backhanded Buffy with the other.
"They're fine. We deal with the alien aspects. They handle vampires." K said running off.
Spike slammed into K. And J turned before being slashed across the chest wildly. Blood flew and the younger Man in Black slumped backwards to the ground.
"OW! Damn!" J groaned as he dropped his gun.
Bacchus smiled and kicked him in the face. He then picked up the gun and examined it. A being of his age didn't need long to figure out how to put it at the highest setting. Bacchus turned to Willow.
"I really hate witches." The vampire smiled as he fired the weapon.
The energy recoil made Bacchus cover his eyes. Willow likewise covered her eyes when the blast impacted her shield. It buckled, and finally caved in on itself, the force sending her backwards into the small hill. The force kicked dust up violently as Willow hit her head on the hard earth, cracking it open, making the blood flow. Likewise, Xander was knocked off his feet by the blast's impact.
Bacchus smiled and looked to Spike rising above the unconscious K.
"She's mine now." Bacchus smirked, firing the weapon.
Spike had literally no time to avoid the burst of energy. Luckily Harmony was there though. She tackled her former Blondie Bear to the ground as the energy wave passed over them and obliterated the partially constructed building. Spike looked up at her in shock.
"Why?" he asked.
"What? It's not like I want you to be a ghost. That'd really suck." Harmony admitted.
"Touching. But it all matters little." Bacchus said taking aim with the gun at them.
There was a sound that sliced the air. Then there was a feeling that sliced the neck of Bacchus making him fire in the air, sending a huge wave of energy into the sky like a flare. He threw the weapon to the ground and felt the back of his head with a jerking manner. He recoiled his hand to find Xena's Chakram had been imbedded into him.
"That was lame man. If you're half as badassed as you say, you would have noticed me taking that when you knocked me away." Buffy quipped as she stood in a battle stance behind the demon.
Bacchus turned and chuckled.
"Enterprising little darling aren't you?" Bacchus asked.
"You kidding? We've got the whole first season." Buffy remarked.
"To the death then?" Bacchus asked, baring his fangs.
"You sure you know what a Slayer is?" Buffy replied.
Bacchus replied with a charge.
K coughed and sat up earning looks from Harmony.
"Hey! Snack time!" Harmony said vamping out.
"Touch him you die." Spike sighed.
"You'd kill me for that?" Harmony turned to Spike, pouting in her game face.
"No. But he would." Spike explained.
Harmony turned back and saw K pointing a Deatomizer at her.
"Well poop. I never get to feed in this town. I'm going to go to L.A. after this. Wolfram and Hart made me a sweet deal and I get all the beach bums and boy toys I can eat so meh." Harmony finished with a raspberry.
"I'd kill her but we have bigger problems. We have a very destructive bomb ready to go off in this vicinity and wipe us all out and maybe cause dimensional damage to the Revolving Door…Hellmouth…whatever." K stated as he stood.
"That sucks. How long we have?" Spike asked.
"Well…how long was I out?" K asked.
"'Bout a minute."
"Okay so this is our punishment in hell then because by all rights we should be dead now. The bomb should have gone off unless…"
"Unless what?" Spike and Harmony asked.
"Unless it was deactivated." K said, pondering the situation.
Buffy spat blood as Bacchus punched her hard. She threw a kick which was caught and she heard a snap just under her scream. Bacchus threw her hard to the ground and pounced on her. His huge hand wrapped about her face and slammed it into the ground again.
Buffy brought her knee up into Bacchus's groin, which produced the expected howl of pain followed by the glare and hiss from the large vampire. Saliva dripped into Buffy's face as Bacchus spoke.
"I really, REALLY HATE WHEN YOU DO THAT!"
Buffy headbutted him producing a slash across her forehead but also breaking the fangs of the vampire.
"If you're going to kill me, just do it and spare me your stupid talking! Not to mention your breath!" Buffy growled.
"Fine." Bacchus growled as his fangs regenerated.
He knelt in closer and began to nip at the Slayer's skin with his teeth. Yes, she was his. It would be so good now. So decadent. The blood of a Slayer was always the greatest boon of the struggle, and it would be his. Well, it WOULD have been if not for the Predator throwing his spear through the vampire.
Bacchus stood and roared at the alien having the idiocy to come back for more. Before he was floored by the Predator using its own severed arm as a bludgeoning weapon. The Predator hissed and smiled. He was glad he caught the bomb that brief moments before it would have exploded. True, it would have given him an honorable place in the halls of the afterlife, but this way gave him so much more glory. Not to mention it was much more fun!
Bacchus struck out and slashed at the throat of the alien, making it bleed and drop to its knees in pain. He growled down at this pest and went to deliver to the killing blow, the strike to rend the head from this brute. At which point Buffy leapt on the demon's back and sent Mr. Pointy down towards his heart as fast as she could. Bacchus flipped the Slayer over his back and knocked Mr. Pointy to her hand before she could deliver the killing blow. She slammed into the ground, making small clouds of dirt rise. But Mr. Pointy didn't hit the ground.
It jammed into the chest of Bacchus going deep, as the Predator's hand punched through the ribcage jamming the stake right into the disbelieving vampire's heart.
"Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic." The Predator said in a warped version of Bacchus's own.
Bacchus's flesh and skin shot out at high speeds, unraveling into dust; streams and rivers of it poured off of the demon. Bacchus screamed loud and frantic as he fell to his knees, the cyclone of dust swirling about him as more and more of his skin disappeared. Bones dropped to the ground a moment later, remnants more than any younger vampire would leave, but still it wasn't enough to serve Bacchus.
You could say the Predator smiled grotesquely before he fell onto the skeleton and into unconsciousness.
"Damn. I wanted to do that." Buffy sighed, blowing a strand of hair out of her face.
"Buffy!" Spike said diving to her side.
His lips crushed hers and they responded in kind.
"I love you." Spike said relieved she was alright.
"Love you too. Carry me home?" Buffy replied.
"Yes love." Spike smirked, "Now next time some big evil thing comes after you and threatens to kill you at a given point in me, PLEASE, tell us."
"Yes MOTHER."
"Hey! You guys okay?!" Xander called from the top of the hill.
"Yeah we're good!" Buffy replied looking up, "You?"
"Half and half." Xander called back.
"Check on Willow! She's somewhere on the hill!" Buffy said looking at the small hill, now which was pretty much loose dirt.
"Got ya!" Xander said as he tried to gracefully walk down the hill. He failed miserably and rolled down to the bottom, getting himself very dirty in the process.
A lump of dirt rose and Willow looked down at him.
"Did we win?" she asked.
"Nope. We lost. Everybody's dead."
"You're just joking aren't you?"
"Am I Wills? Am I?"
Buffy rose and held to Spike as Agent K was helping carry J along to meet them.
"Ow. Ow. Ow. OW!" J spat.
"Crybaby." K replied.
"So we won." Buffy stated.
"Yep. Looks like." K replied.
"You call this winning?" J asked, "If these damned suits weren't so durable my guts would be hanging out all over the place!"
"Actually, that stroke he hit you with wouldn't have disemboweled you, just torn into your lungs to make you drown in your own blood. Now to disembowel someone you have to…I'm doing it again aren't I?" Spike asked.
"Sweetie, shut up." Buffy said shivering at her lover's words before looking at K.
"So you going to wipe our minds now?" Buffy asked.
K looked to his pocket, then the others, then his pocket again.
"The hell with it. You live HERE; I figure you can keep a secret." K shrugged.
"Aw thanks." Buffy smiled, "What about him?"
Buffy motioned to the still breathing Predator.
"I am personally kicking his ass off planet." J sighed painfully.
"Cool." Buffy laughed with another smile.
Then she stopped smiling and looked around as if something were troubling her.
"Wasn't Harmony here?"
"Well yeah…where'd she scamper off to?" Spike asked.
"Hmm. What's this button do?" Harmony questioned herself as she drove away in the MIB car.
Then promptly screamed as the car rocketed off at lightning speeds along the highway towards Los Angeles.