Title: A Beautiful Friendship (or How Doyle Got Better)
Summary: Here's what was really going on in Africa.
Spoilers: Up to BtVS:Choose, AtS:NFA
Rating: PG-13 (L)
Disclaimers: ME owns the characters, Warner Brothers owns the story, I own nothing.
Prologue
After The First was defeated in the Battle at Sunnydale's Hole inna' Ground (The First BaSHinG), and the minions of the Senior Partners trounced at the Battle Where Atrocious Hordes Attacked Angel and His Associates at Hyperion's Alleyway (BWAHAAHAHA) all was good in the world, badness and things generally considered evil seemingly vanquished on all fronts.
But, alas, it was not to last because then this story would be really boring.
Buffy got seriously pissed when she was dumped by the Immortal after he got tired of all her incessant and pompous speechifying, always prattling on an on about how she had defeated The First and dusted that vamp and slayed this demon and died twice and punched out a Goddess with bad hair and blew up a giant snake, and on and on ad nauseum. It just never ended!
Indignant and still full of herself, she infected her Slayer Army with the Power Lust. They wanted to run things Their Way (tm), for it was the Right Way (tm), not the wrong way. Demons would be vanquished once and for all, even the nice fluffy ones and the not quite as nice (but still cute) scaly ones. The sympathetic humans who helped them would suffer as well.
Leaving Rome, Buffy took her army to England, establishing headquarters in London. She started her campaign in Europe, slashing and burning and slaying their way through the continent, taking demon and human prisoners alike everywhere they went. Many eyes and other sensory tentacles in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, desperately toward the freedom of the Pylean dimension now that Groo had gotten his shit together and established it as a beacon of peaceful demon and human freedom and coexistence throughout the multi-dimensional universe.
Lisbon became the great embarkation point, as it was Cleveland's secret sister city, and therefore had magical association with that far-away American metropolis. That link provided the energy to transport demons and people to Cleveland and from there it was just a hop, skip and a slither onto the Pylean dimension.
But not everybody could get to Lisbon directly, and so a tortuous roundabout refugee trail sprang up. Paris to Marseilles, across the Med. to Oran, then by train, auto, foot, claw, or pseudopod across the rim of Africa to Casablanca.
Here the fortunate ones, through money, or influence, or luck, might obtain exit talismans and scurry to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to Cleveland and on to the Pylean dimension.
But the others wait in Casablanca.
And wait - and wait - and wait...
AN: But you won't have to wait too long. You should have just enough time to go rent the movie.
