Disclaimer: I own the name of the Coven, but I own none of its members, its villains, or their allies
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The Coven of Reformed Supernaturals
Angel felt something crash into him from the left, and cursed; it looked like the initial plan had failed. One of Cole's followers must have worked out what he was doing…
Then he realised that the person holding him down was Belthazor.
"What the hell!" he said, looking between Belthazor and Cole, whose neck injuries were already starting to heal, before settling his gaze on Belthazor. "What are you doing! I HAD HIM!"
Belthazor didn't bother to talk; he just grabbed Angel's wrist, there was a momentary feeling of being squeezed down and sucked backwards through a tap, and then they were standing in an empty corridor, much like the ones they'd been walking through earlier, facing each other as though they were about to fight. However, the potential combat never took place; Belthazor merely stared at Angel angrily before he shifted back into Cole.
"Oh, you had him, all right; you just didn't seem to care about the consequences of what you were planning!" he yelled at the vampire, apparently not bothered in the slightest about the possibility of them being found (Then again, practically every demon in this fortress would most likely be involved in the battle in the main hall, so that was unlikely to be an issue).
"What are you talking about; everything was under control!" Angel yelled back, looking almost ready to hit Cole as they spoke. "I'd drain your future self's blood, gain his powers, use them against him-"
"Oh, shut UP!" Cole yelled back, cutting off Angel in mid-sentence. "We both know that the only reason my future self hasn't been annihilated by the power he's got these days is both the fact that he's used to holding that kind of power and the fact that he absorbed them one at a time! You take even half of his powers into you at once, and you'll be annihilated before you can so much as blink, never mind attack him with them! The only way you'd kill him would be because the explosion when YOU died would take him with you! WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING!"
"WHAT DO YOU THINK!" Angel yelled back at his new friend, deciding that there was no point in being secretive. "I WANTED TO DIE, CAN'T YOU SEE THAT! I LED HALF OF MY CLOSEST FRIENDS TO THEIR DEATHS, THE REMAINING HALF ARE THE ONES I'M NOT ALL THAT CLOSE TO ANYWAY, AND THE WOMAN I LOVE IS SHAGGING THE FUCKING IMMORTAL! WHAT HAVE I GOT LEFT TO LIVE FOR!"
"EVERYTHING!" Cole yelled back at Angel, launching a brief punch at the vampire that threw his head off to one side (Albeit mostly from the surprise of the blow rather than the force behind it; no matter how strong he was, Cole was nowhere near physically powerful enough to do damage to a vampire of Angel's age).
As Angel looked back up at Cole, eyes blazing with a mix of confusion and anger, Cole, now slightly calmer, began to talk again; evidently, this time he was trying to stay in control of his emotions to make sure that Angel got the point he was trying to make.
"Angel, no matter how bad things seem, you can't just give up because you can only see the bad side of things at the immediate moment," he said, glaring at the vampire with a face that might as well have been set in stone. It was the expression of a man who knew what he wanted to say to you and wouldn't stop until he'd got it out. "Look, I'm not denying that things seem like complete and utter shit to you right now, but you can't just give up on life just because of some unfortunate incidents-"
"Unfortunate?" Angel asked, looking at incredulously. "I've lost everything I ever wanted, Cole! The love of my life is doing a complete bastard, my closest friends are almost all dead, and I had to sign away my prophesised humanity just to show a bunch of god-like beings of unimaginable evil- for a few fucking MOMENTS- that they didn't control everything! UNFORTUANTE IS HARDLY THE WORD I WOULD USE!"
Cole growled in his throat as he stared at Angel, as though unable to believe the minor detail that Angel seemed to have overlooked.
"Angel," he said, visibly making an effort to contain his rage at his leader, "I respect you as a friend even if I haven't known you that long, but aren't you forgetting that I have a far better reason for killing myself than you ever could?"
He jerked a thumb back down a corridor, presumably in the direction of the main hall where they'd left the other members of the Coven.
"That's me we're fighting, Angel," he said, looking back at the vampire, his voice lower than it had been earlier, as though to better emphasise his next point. "Don't you get it? That's me, or at least an alternate me. You heard Leo; that could turn out to be either an alternate version of my future self, or it could just as easily become my actual future self. I just don't know whether or not the future will be that bad…"
He sighed briefly, and then looked up at Angel with a glare.
"Don't you think I thought about killing myself when I saw that guy sitting up in his throne, lording it over an army of monsters?" he said, his eyes locked on the vampire. "Believe me, I considered doing it. Even if I didn't do it right then, then I'd do it once we'd taken him out, to ensure that I could never become him myself."
Swallowing, he looked at Angel again, locking eyes with the vampire as he spoke.
"But I didn't," he said to the vampire, as he placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. "I couldn't. And I'm not going to do it either. No matter how bad things may be in the future, I know that there will good moments in it as well as the dark ones. I know that, whatever else happens, the Power of Three will remain strong; I know that Leo, Piper, Phoebe and Paige will have a good life, and I know that demons will fall before them."
He smiled slightly as he looked at Angel. "Who knows; maybe having to fight me made them stronger?"
He transformed back into Belthazor, and looked back at Angel with a raised eyebrow.
"Think about it, Angel," he said. "Whatever bad thing happens in your life today, there is always hope for a better time tomorrow."
Then he shimmered away, leaving Angel staring in front of him with an almost vacant expression as he considered Cole's speech.
Did he still have something to live for?
Even if he seemed to have lost everything he'd spent the last few years trying to create?
As soon as Belthazor had reappeared in the throne room, he was relieved to see that all the Coven were still standing, although the number of demons in the room seemed to be staying the same no matter how many monsters were taken out by the Coven members…
Then his eyes fell on his future self, about to throw an energy ball at Spike, and he was back in action.
"Hey, Cole!" he yelled, trying not to think about how weird it was to be calling someone else Cole; he'd never encountered anyone else with that name in his life…
As his future self turned to look at him, Belthazor smiled and raised his right hand, already forming an energy ball in it.
"Think fast," he said simply, as the two of them locked eyes before the ball was released, hurtling towards the other demon at a speed that would have made sound look slow…
Then Cole reached out and caught it out of the air as though it were just a baseball. Looking at the ball in his hand, he smiled slightly, and then glanced back up at Belthazor.
"Nice try," he said, grinning at his past self as though the man had just told him a good joke.
Then the grin fell and he raised one hand, holding the ball in question.
"But it wasn't good enough," he said simply.
Then he threw the ball out of his hand. It hurtled towards Belthazor, barely leaving the half-demon with enough time to shimmer to a position nearer to his future self, leaving the ball to strike a nearby golem with such force that half the stone warrior's head was shattered.
As Cole turned to face his younger self, Belthazor knew he would only have a few moments to retaliate before his future self was in a good position to strike back. Desperately, the red-skinned demon launched a punch at his future self, but his foe just stepped off to one side, dodging the punch as though it had been in slow motion, and smiling slightly at Belthazor. Outraged, Belthazor launched another punch at his other self, but Cole, now as casual as though he'd just spent the day relaxing and watching television, simply raised his right hand and caught the demon's wrist.
"Game over, Belthazor," he said, smiling slightly at the demon's shocked expression. "I saw that one coming from over a year away."
Then he twisted the arm around behind Belthazor's back with such speed and ferocity that a sharp crack! was heard as the demon's collar bone was broken.
Belthazor roared in anguish and pain- a harsh, animalistic roar that resounded through the hall- even as he knew that it was pointless, that everyone else in the Coven was occupied with their own battles, that nobody could spare even the time to look in his direction and find out what was wrong…
"You time-hopping, red-skinned idiot," Cole almost whispered to him as he began to force Belthazor to his knees before, the younger demon trying to maintain eye contact with his foe even as he began to crouch down. "Did you honestly think you'd just dive in here and triumph, waving your foolish belief in the 'power of good' around like some kind of stupid standard?"
He laughed once, and Belthazor couldn't help but roll his eyes at the way his future self was acting. Honestly, he was starting to remind Belthazor of their old mentor on his worst days…
Then Cole twisted the arm back even further, and Belthazor collapsed to the ground in agony.
"You're out of your league, Turner," he hissed at Belthazor, as the demon looked up to realise he was almost at eye-level with Cole's crotch. "And you're out of your place; you've started getting ideas above your station. I mean, daring to challenge a God? Your arrogance beggars belief!"
Then he smiled once more. "But I'm going to put you in your place, Turner," he said, as he grabbed Belthazor's other arm and began to twist it back as well. "I'm going to-"
"Sing soprano, motor-mouth!" Belthazor yelled, as he lunged forward, seizing the chance of his other self's hands now being occupied, and bit down hard on Cole's trousers, directly between the legs.
"AARRGGHH!" Cole screamed, releasing his grip on Belthazor's arms, throwing his arms towards where Belthazor's neck was, as though to break it…
Or rather, where the neck had been; as soon as his arms were free, Belthazor had released his grip, leapt back, and launched a powerful punch at Cole that sent the older demon staggering back from sheer surprise.
Belthazor smiled as he looked down at his older self, now clutching a bleeding lip as he stared back at his younger self.
"You seem to have forgotten, Turner," he said, enjoying to the maximum the newfound feeling of being the dominant one in their fight. "I trained as a lawyer. That means I know how to find the weaknesses in my opponent's defences."
Then he lashed out with a powerful kick, sending his future self flying through the air, to be intercepted by the darkly-clad, withered form of 'Batman'.
"May I?" the moulding vampire inquired, looking over in Belthazor's direction.
"Of course," Belthazor said, nodding at the vampire. "Why should I hog all the fun?"
Then he turned around, leapt back into the fray, and began launching energy balls right and left, each shot striking a demon with varying effects. Vampires and zombies, he noted, were incinerated instantly, while most of the other demon species (including the odd werewolf or two) were merely weakened, although more often than not one of the other Coven members then took them down while they were distracted.
Up in the air, meanwhile, 'Batman' was revelling in his newfound chance to unleash his rage on a target that he had no qualms about. Even as he'd fed on the likes of Black Mask and the Riddler back in his Gotham, he'd constantly hated himself for being so weak as to give so easily to the bloodlust, but at the same time, he'd been unable to do anything to quell his bestial urges…
But this time, he had no such qualms.
This foe wasn't human. He couldn't be. No human could command such a terrible army, or casually contemplate the rape and murder of a woman he claimed to love.
As 'Batman' plunged a claw into Cole's chest, tearing a hunk of flesh away from his adversary, he couldn't help but grin at the scream of anguish that resounded through the hall as a result. Just a little more, and this man would be so badly damaged that not even his healing abilities could through it off easily…
Then something plunged deep into 'Batman's' chest, just narrowly missing the centre of his heart. Looking down, he saw that Cole had transformed his hand into a sharp hunk of metal and had jammed it straight into his chest.
'Batman' winced as Cole smiled up at him, the demon already raising the other arm as the hand on it began to shimmer and change its form.
"A bold try, vampire," he said, grinning at his adversary, who could only gasp and yell in pain as the two of them shimmered briefly and ended up standing in the middle of the room near Cole's throne, which was somehow empty despite all the carnage being waged around it. "But not good enough."
He drew back his other hand, now with an extremely sharp blade on it in place of his hand, and thrust it towards 'Batman's' neck.
As the blade dug into the decaying flesh that held the vampire detective's head onto his body, the last thing 'Batman' saw was a dark-clad form hurtling towards his new killer, with a speed and ferocity that made his earlier strikes look slow…
Then, as the 'axe' severed his brain from his body, the former Dark Knight Detective knew nothing else.
"NO!" Angel yelled, as he leapt towards Cole at his maximum speed. He'd only entered the room shortly after Cole and 'Batman' had shimmered to around the throne, but he'd hoped that he might still be fast enough to get to them before Cole finished the job, before he lost another friend to the evil that dwelt in the darkest corners of the world…
But, as 'Batman's' head flew off into the battle, his body slumping to the ground, Angel knew, with a clarity that overwhelmed anything else he'd ever thought, that he had to win this battle.
If not for himself, than for the man that 'Batman' had once been; the man who'd forsaken his humanity for the sake of the city he'd sworn to protect, and who had been driven to commit atrocities thanks to a horror and a terror that even a man as skilled as he could not defeat.
Come what may, Angel vowed as he hit Cole, sending the two of them flying to the ground, locked in what could be called an embrace if the two parties weren't glaring at each other rather than smiling, this bastard is going down…
But he's not taking me with him.
Sticking his hand into his pocket, he was relieved to find that the power-suppressing potion Leo had given him earlier was still intact; if everything went according to plan, he'd need it in a few minutes.
"YOU!" Cole yelled, as he turned to look at Angel, who merely smiled casually at the demon's expression of surprise; evidently, he'd been expecting the vampire to stay away after being pulled away from their past encounter.
"Me," Angel replied, as he thrust out an arm and grabbed Cole's throat, pinning the demon to the ground. As Cole's hands reached for his neck, determined to pull off Angel's own hand, the vampire just smiled again.
"Let's do it," he said, as he closed his eyes, focused…
And then, without any warning, the two of them had shimmered away.