SOLDER Return

Part one: Shimmering Water

Part: 1/?

Author: Sylenttails

Type: crossover

Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy or FF7 or Dirge of Cerberus

Authors note: I can't honestly blame this on Wulf. It's been stewing in my mind for some time. But I can blame her for kicking my muses into high gear. They've been busy trying to get me to write. As it is playing FF7 DoC had giving me the rest of the idea and now here it is!

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It was another sunny day in Sunnyhell. The sun was shinning, The First was in hiding and there was nobody around to put up a mask with. Life, Xander decided, was good. It had to be because he and the rest of the scoobies where currently in an elaborate system of caves underneath Sunnydale due to the fact that after a rather large earthquake, every single demon, monster and even rats had vacated the area nearest the caves under the mall of all places.

What they found underneath the mall was another thing.

Bright blue green glowing water. That's right, the water was glowing! It may look like water and the stuff may even feel like water but it sure wasn't water! Giles had already taken off his glasses and polished them five times. He didn't know what to make of the stuff. There was no smell and nobody wanted to taste the glowing liquid that was for sure! Giles had cautioned everyone to stay clear of the stuff until they knew more about the glowing shimmering water.

"Ohh pretty colors!" Xander muttered as he skirted around a pool of it. He continued down the path he found with careful steps. He most definitely didn't want to fall in and become mutated. Buffy had put forth the idea that the stuff was a toxic dump left over from the Mayer's plotting. Willow thought the glowing water was leftovers from the Initiative. Dawn had said the idea where plausible but why did the demon community run screaming from the strange stuff?

Spike was then prodded to go near the shimmering liquid. He was nearly ten feet away when he began to shake and back away very cautiously. He said the stuff was alive and screaming angrily at his demon. As a result Spike was now topside talking to the braver of the demons to find out what exactly happened below. Buffy had scoffed saying the water couldn't be alive.

Xander disagreed. He did that in silence though due to the fact that once again his friends where pushing him away. Citing that he was the normal one and they couldn't afford to keep looking out for him in battle. The proof? Well just look at his eye! He lost it to his carelessness. Yet the potentials he saved knew better. Without him the potentials would be dead with Spike and Buffy so much less than alive. What ever respect the girls had for the Eldest Slayer was washed away with those few hurtful comments. What's worse is that is yellow crayon loving best friend had agreed with her!

All of this just made Xander tired. Incredibly so. Tired to the point of he just didn't care anymore about anything but living to see tomorrow. And as a consequence he never told any of them that he could hear the water whispering to him. The whispers where warning him that a calamity was approaching. Someone of greater power than the First Evil was approaching. This being was so powerful in fact that there was currently nobody strong enough to defeat it. An dangerous unknown that it had to be from somewhere not of this earth.

Xander, dubbed the One-Who-Sees looked deep within the pools and knew the truth. The waters held the glow of the Planet. Her aura was what made the water shine with inner light. The voices of the long dead where trying to tell the living something important. Too bad that very few could here them and even fewer would listen. One had to have the gift Gaia gave to her people in order to hear her voice. Xander had been born with that gift. One that grew stronger the more he worked his trade. The more he slew demons and kept the other scoobies together. He could hear the Planet, a Planet that was worried about her children and fearful of the thing that wanted to destroy her. He practically worshiped her in his trade and the rest of the scoobie gang didn't even know.

Xander continued up the path he was on. The one eyed carpenter walked deeper underground until he came upon a large shimmering lake. He didn't know a deep the lake went and he didn't want to know. The farther into the cavern he went the louder the voices became. A rising and falling symphony of echoing wails. He noticed a ledge that extended over the shimmer waters and walked over to peer into the very large lake. The lake it's self extended across the huge underground cavern the size of two football fields.

The watery stuff lapped at the walls of the cavern as if moving of it's own volition. The-One-Who-Sees stopped at the edge of the rock ledge that extended of the shimmering version of water and peered in. If he looked hard enough into the stuff he could sometimes see visions a places and things come to the surface. Not clearly but clear enough that he knew he wasn't imagining things.

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High above the entranced carpenter and closer to the surface waits The First Evil. She lauphed as she felt the approaching magics of one of her allies. A Devourer Of Worlds. The stars cried out at her passage, meteors surged with a planet's might behind them in an attempt to destroy the traveling Destroyer.

The First smirked evilly at the Turok-Han that surround her presence.

"She comes." She pronounced. Around her the uber vamps tremble in fearful delight.

"When?" Voiced one of the stronger Bringers

"Now."

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Underneath the Slayers' feet the Earth trembled as she felt the predator settle it's sighs on her. Gaia understood that her time might be up but she would not go without a fight. She sent out a shattering call that caught the attention of all the supernatural creatures.

At long last Buffy and Faith felt the oncoming evil and knew fear. A fear so great that would it have suffocated them had they been any weaker. They looked at each other in shock.

"What the hell?" Faith gasped, shaking off her shock first.

Buffy just shook her head and looked up at the night time sky. She gasped and pointed.

Faith looked at the point her sister Slayer had indicated. She summed up their feelings quite nicely.

"Aw shit!"

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At long last she had come. Answering the call of the one who predated her own existence. She had arrived on this backwater planet to eat it alive.

As she entered the atmosphere of her new meal; smaller chunks of her rock hull broke off, scattering her minions all over the planet's surface. She ignored the puny defenses of the countries that tried to stop her. She shrugged off the nukes and the missiles with ease. With a large roar and a boom she crashed into the beacon The First had left. As a consequence half of Sunnydale no longer existed.

The Devourer from the Stars purred in satisfaction. She would test the strength of this Planet and then she would settle in for a long over due meal.

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The Star Destroyer's arrival rocked the very foundations of the world. Causing massive earthquakes that could be felt all the way to the opposite coast. Half of California was swallowed by the ocean in a second. But further down into the cavern where Xander looked at shimmer water, the ledge he was bending over cracked and shattered from the impact.

This caused Xander to fall into the freaky water; which in turn gave Gaia an idea.

Perhaps it was time to make her own Avatar.