"Yiiii-!"

"Is that a battle cry?" TARA asked Anya, who had just been yanked off her feet and was now dangling by the wrists from TARA's grasp.

"That's an I-wasn't-expecting-to-be-grabbed yelp!" Anya retorted.

They were rocketing through the air at an incredible speed toward the huge mass of beastmen pouring over the damaged area of Gem's walls. Not quite parallel to them, a fully hulked-out Buffy was leaping across Gem's roofs, not even disturbing the tile and adobe of the poorer buildings despite her immense bulk. And ahead of them...

Ma-Ha-Suchi. It had to be him, growing even as they approached, swelling into a monstrous creature that might have been a tyrannosaur-except that its body was covered in writhing tentacles. It bellowed out a roar like a peal of thunder.

"The Exalted of old fought beasts that made these mountains look like ants," TARA said, trying to be helpful. "This bad copy of a tyrant lizard is nothing, really."

"Thank you for the reassurance," Anya muttered. "For all I know he'll turn into one of those any moment. Why is he covered in tentacles?"

"Symptom of his damaged Exaltation," TARA said sadly. "It won't come back if we kill him, not unless the next incarnation stays in the Wyld too long too, but there's no other cure. If it makes you queasy, think of something soothing. Green grass with flowers, sunny days, cheerful bunnies..."

Was that her idea of a joke? Truthfully, the tentacles just made Anya think of sex-not a good thing in this context, unfortunately. But bunnies? "Bunnies," Anya said grimly, steeling herself for the fight. "Floppy...hoppy...bunnies."

Chapter 48-Mad Max: Furry Road

Buffy ignored the animal people, which at her size wasn't healthy for them anyway. Her great brass feet pounded them into the ground as she charged.

This guy was clearly the ringleader, this creature swelling into a hybrid of T-rex and movie-monster Thing. Demon? Raksha? She wasn't sure, but she knew size mattered not. Well...not necessarily at least. She could be just as strong at five feet as she could at twenty, but this was a lot more consistent.

Buffy leapt into the air as she closed with the monster. This was her city. She'd taken it from Rankar, defended it against Mnemon and monsters, and she wasn't going to let some two-bit dinosaur freak and his hairy hordes take it away from her now. It was bigger than her, but only just by the right amount. Buffy came down atop its back, wrestling, pummeling, twisting until she was astride the thing. Its tendrils seeped acid that corroded her brass skin, but the verdigris only flaked away to reveal more brass.

Then it twisted beneath her, sank its dagger teeth into her shoulder, and flung her off into the mountainside.

"Ouch," Anya said, wincing.

"She's not even hurt," TARA said dismissively. "I know it's an instinctive response. All he did was break loose."

"Did she beat him without you in your timeline?" Anya couldn't see how. In spite of his evident difficulties controlling his form on a small scale, the Lunar elder seemed able to make his body into anything he wanted. Against that, Buffy's display of speed and brute force seemed feeble weapons.

"She did," TARA said with grudging admiration. "So far she's doing the right thing, in principle. Always make the fight go long when you're up against a Lunar. They can't sustain the exertion. Trouble is that Ma-Ha-Suchi's got enough of an advantage that it won't matter much. He has more raw power to burn."

"Well, what'd she do, then?"

"I wasn't here," TARA said. "But you were." And she let go of Anya's hands.

"The hell with this," Spike growled, and ducked back inside. Angel followed-reluctantly, but fast.

"What the hell?" Stephen asked. "You're just going to let them overrun the city? You don't want a fight?"

"I'm itching for a good fight," Spike insisted, "but I'm not going out there in these robes in the sun on an empty stomach. Buffy had a shipment of weapons she still hasn't delivered, an' I intend to find out what she's got."

"That's a plan," Angel acknowledged. "This place makes most hell dimensions look tame. I won't let the city go without a fight, but I mean to fight smart."

"An' I mean to fight dirty," Spike added.

Stephen scowled at their backs, but followed. He'd have to kill them some other way...and, hell dimension or not, this city was full of humans. They did need saving.

The idea that Anya could do anything to help Buffy suddenly felt like a joke, now that she was a couple of yards away from stinking dinosaur pseudoflesh that writhed with insane motion beneath...and frequently above...the skin. She was suddenly a mortal again, freshly stripped of her demonic powers, not having regained her old magics, and she was facing a monster. She didn't want to die.

Her ancestors were laughing at her. She'd stopped believing in Valhalla centuries ago...but then, hadn't she met the Norns in person? If the shining city of Heaven was in some sense real...but the chain of rationalization failed her there. Yu-Shan held no Odinn and no Einherjar, only a Games-addled sun god and a meaningless bureaucracy. Her once and future master, D'Hoffryn, was a pawn of greater powers, still trapped in Malfeas. Her ancestors weren't even born yet in this timeline-and if they ever were, they would drop into Hel's hall at death as it seemed everyone did. Oh, there were those who went into Lethe and forgot everything they'd ever been, but what sort of an ending was that?

A clawed tentacle lashed out at her bare arm and missed as she hurled herself aside. She was up against a thing as big as a jotun. That, at least was like the old stories, where even the gods faced impossible odds. Sometimes they came out on top and created the world. Sometimes they lost, and it ended forever. She was doomed to lose. Just like the gods.

One day the gods would face this too-would die knowing it had been for nothing, that the shining glorious moment of the world would be forgotten, without even songs to be sung, for there would be none to sing them. The gods would die. But they would die fighting...and why not, if the only alternative was to die sniveling and cowering in a corner? You died either way.

Anya resolved to die like a god. She raised her fists and took up her shears. She was an agent of the Norns. The gods were yet unborn, the prophecies yet unspoken, the world she knew yet unmade. And...though once spoken a doom was sealed...if it had yet to be sealed...could she speak it differently?

The world realigned. Before Odinn was born, Anyanka had already been. When the Norns spoke they spoke with her voice. The Doom of the Gods was hers to weave as she willed. Valhall waited for her to build it...or Arashmahar, if she preferred. She was Exalted.

She struck the edge of her open hand against Ma-Ha-Suchi's knee, and the monster stumbled and slid. It was more than his flesh that she had wounded; she had staggered his self-righteous certainty that civilization existed to be destroyed, though only for an instant. He was too far gone for reason; he was powerful almost beyond injury. But perhaps she needed neither?

A gush of stinking breath covered her, and his immense teeth closed on her waist.

TARA slammed full-tilt into Ma-Ha-Suchi's gut and blasted straight through in a mass of tentacles. Flesh held no terror for her. Anya went flying, likely unharmed or nearly so.

TARA landed, taking on the form of the girl Buffy knew, minus the scales. Not for her own benefit, but for Buffy's. Ma-Ha-Suchi was gone beyond reaching; Buffy might not be, and the shape of Tara might help her. Most of the Scoobies she remembered had little self-control, and their concern for others was wrapped up in trying to save the whole world; Tara had been the exception.

Emitters wove themselves into being on her shoulders, and a shockwave slammed into the monster. She'd reconfigured herself for this one mission, knowing she had combat ahead above what she'd known in any life before. The toroid of force also slammed into her friends, but they were down already. To her frustration, Ma-Ha-Suchi remained standing, battered but unbowed. She needed to break away, pull back and weave more elaborate magicks.

Ma-Ha-Suchi roared and shrank, melting into something that resembled his horned-and-hooved wolf war form, though rubbery tendrils still writhed where his fur should be. She wasn't going to get that time. The mad thing lunged at her, growling, clawing, and mouths opened in his palms.

TARA dissolved into motes of light on the breeze. Not quite fast enough-the monster's hands mangled some of her outer skin-but fast enough to leave him gaping, fast enough to escape serious damage. The others would buy her a few moments to weave.

Buffy staggered to her feet, slamming fists down on scrambling beastmen as she did. Some of her friends were taking on the beast-Anya...and was that Tara? Couldn't be; Tara didn't look like that any more. Or have cyborg parts.

The creature shrank back down to near human size. Should she...? No. Better to keep the advantages she had. Buffy balled her hand up into a massive fist and brought it down on the monster. "What the hell are you? Predator? Prey? Make up your mind!"

And he caught it. With visible effort, but he caught a fist as big as his torso and shoved it away. Was she even able to hurt this guy? Could any of them?

If she'd spent her time repairing the defenses destroyed by Mnemon, creating new ones...not indulging herself and her whims. No. She'd done her time. She deserved a break! She deserved better than to spend the rest of her life fighting off enemies.

Black lightning curled around, carving through wolfmen and lashing out at the big monster. Willow was here too, taking up slack while the others caught their breaths. And...was that one of her doubles? They didn't have powers! But one of them seemed to have taken up the Scythe she'd forgotten and was wielding it awkwardly against the goatmen. (It was hard to tell whether the creatures were either or both at once.) Spikes and dust erupted across the battlefield. Even her bodyguard were in on the action. They were making her look bad. Her image mattered.

Buffy charged the monster and began to pelt him with punches and kicks, any one of which could have smashed a vampire into dust on the ground. The beast caught them, one after another...and Anya caught him in the back with a vicious kick. "Killstealer!" Buffy wasn't sure how seriously she meant that, but the creature's eyes rolled about as if that one kick had shaken him when Buffy's blows had done nothing.

"We're on your side!" Anya yelled back. Never mind that she'd made it more than clear who she was working for now, and Heaven definitely didn't care about anything but what kind of Exalted she was. Buffy couldn't afford to turn on her now, but after Gem was safe? Yup.

"These things are what from where?" Angel always was a bit slow on the uptake.

"Gunzosha armor smuggled from Lookshy," Spike repeated as he struggled into the boots. "S'posed to've gone to An-Teng, but Buffy's been too busy screwing around. Thought you were the detective type now?"

Angel shrugged. "I've been a little...distracted."

"And I haven't?" Spike chuckled as he fastened the chestplate on. "This stuff's s'posed to let a mortal go toe-to-toe with Dragonblooded. Well, we aren't exactly mortal, now are we?"

Srephen waited impatiently to one side. He might be right that as a Lunar, this armor would just get in his way, but he didn't seem to want them wearing it either. Most of his glares were directed at the Poofter, but aside from the obvious Spike couldn't guess why.

"How's this stuff fit both of us?" Angel asked as he shoved his head into the helmet.

"Weren'tcha listenin'?" Spike responded. "Magic."

Anya dropped back to take potshots with her bow as TARA strolled forward. A flock of tiny diamond shuriken solidified from the glowing flecks that surrounded her. Now that was a neat trick. Maybe she could learn it. She still missed the flashy stuff.

Ma-Ha-Suchi laughed deep in his throat, knowing and contemptuous. He threw a punch at TARA.

The shuriken churned around the mad Lunar's fist like a rotary saw and gnawed it down into a bloody nub. Ma-Ha-Suchi stared at it for a long moment as if finally encountering something he couldn't quite comprehend. Then the pumping spurts of blood solidified into tendrils, the tendrils knit together into a new hand, and Ma-Ha-Suchi laughed again. Triumphantly.

"Cavemen," Anya heard TARA mutter. "Of course the cavemen win."

Anya's arrows pierced Ma-Ha-Suchi's eyes and put them out, left then right. His face churned and sprouted new eyes.

A low rumbling scream pierced through Anya's ears. Sparks flew from Buffy, firefly motes from TARA as her form briefly became solid jade, and Ma-Ha-Suchi clamped his hands over his ears and shuddered. Cuts sliced through his body like cracks in glass...then healed. Was there no end to his energy?

Anya sheathed her powerbow in the quiver and darted forward. Her punches and kicks peppered the madman in the chest and gut. A silvery crescent came to life on his forehead. His power wasn't completely inexhaustible, at least. She was already glowing violet, though, and Siaka blue. TARA was shining a brilliant yellow. Only Buffy had just a caste mark showing, and she seemed to be fiddling with her energy expenditures for effect. Anya took a moment to mentally applaud her budgetary acumen and kept punching.

Ma-Ha-Suchi seized her by the throat and lifted her off the ground. No fair! That was friggin' comic book biophysics! He gave a toothy grin and smashed her against his chest...and into it.

Everything went black.

Buffy shrank back down almost to her normal height, though she kept the hunched cave-Buffy posture that went with Infernal Monster Form for her; her hair sprouted to forty feet long or so-nice, she'd missed that one; it was easy to style-and shot out to wrap around the monster's throat. She flexed imaginary muscles and hoisted him off the ground.

"Nobody gets to hurt my friends but me," she growled. Her brass-coated hair tightened around his throat like a garotte, slicing deeper until it severed flesh, bone, and all. The creature's body sagged forward, but when it didn't release Anya, Buffy slashed her hair down it like a razor whip. She reached in and tugged out Anya-gasping for breath, skin red with the beginning of acid burns, but alive...for now.

Buffy was about to punch Anya in the face when she realized the creature's flesh was clinging to her hands and hair. Tissue and ribs surged forward,and she churned her hair like a blender, slicing and flinging off the molten flesh. That should have been that, but the gobbets grew tentacles that fused together when they touched, drank up liquified tissue, and molded itself back into the shape of a satyr-wolf hybrid. The monster cocked its head at her and grinned mockingly. Buffy felt a surge of unnatural but entirely justified fear.

"Where the hell do you get off doing that?" Buffy shook her head, pretending to shake off the experience with it. "You're worse than Dracula."

The monster only lunged forward and gouged its claws deep into her chest, drawing blood. It opened a yawning maw and bent over her face, and a pair of gunzosha troopers in full armor tackled it low and high.

"Slayer!" Spike shouted, but it was obviously lost in the roar of battle as Ma-Ha-Suchi leaned down to chew Buffy's face off. If there was one thing he didn't mind sharing with that ponce Angel, it was Buffy's survival. He leapr up and hit the beastman high as Angel tackled it around the knees.

The monster's flesh shifted underneath him and suddenly it had his armor by the helmet and breastplate. Ma-Ha-Suchi wrenched, his helmet flew off, and his breastplate gave off a huge crack as the armor's systems powered down all at once. The thing sniffed at him and murmured, "New. Next," before slamming him aside like a sack of potatoes.

Angel was still clinging to the fellow's legs, clearly not impeding him much. Ma-Ha-Suchi kicked, and Angel flew across the battlefield into a scrum of wolfmen and bizarre creatures that smelled like nothing Spike had smelled before.

Well, so much for meeting an Exalt in a fair fight. Buffy, maybe. Not this thing.

"Hey, meathead," Stephen shouted. Brave, but stupid. He strode forward to meet the other Lunar. Perspective threw Spike off, and it took a few moments to realize the boy was growing with every step, swelling into a horned, fanged thing at least as tall as Buffy had been and a lot more muscular.

"Haxil beast," Spike muttered. Maybe there was still some chance to win this fight.

Iron Siaka whaled on Ma-Ha-Suchi wuth the Dulcet Consolator for all she was worth. At least she was distracting him. And a silvery glow had finally enveloped the Lunar, but she was shining all out by now. Everyone was but Buffy and Ma-Ha-Suchi, and Buffy's anima kept flickering with shapes as if on the edge of turning iconic. Stupid girl should've brought her daikalbar, but Siaka grudgingly admitted some admiration for her. She didn't quit.

She jumped back as a gigantic foot somewhere between frog and elephant came down on Ma-Ha-Suchi. A summoned demon? A Wyld behemoth from the fae fighting down below? What was that thing? She couldn't make herself care.

Ma-Ha-Suchi rose from beneath the creature, shoving the foot up by main force until the beast toppled. Was there nothing that could stop him? TARA ran by behind the madman, firing some sort of weapon into him from point-blank range. He barely flinched. She was surrounded by the firefly specks that seemed to be ss much her as her anima, and she was panting heavily. Anya swung by after her, punching at Ma-Ha-Suchi's head. Her attack on his confidence and bravery had thus far proven the best shot they had, but he was wise to her now. If only her resplendent destiny hadn't been shredded already, she could do to him what she'd done to Buffy, but that ship had sailed.

Lightning crackled up from below again, this time encasing Ma-Ha-Suchi in a sheath of ice. That bought them a moment to breathe, and then he shattered his way out.

The battle below them seemed to be dying as the beastmen fell to a horde of raksha. But the Fair Folk would carry off anyone they could while the Exalted were occupied, if no one stopped them. They were no solution, just a different problem.

"I am really, really sick of being eaten!" Anya struggled to her feet just in time to get a good look at Dawn. "Er...you've changed."

"Haven't you?" Dawn asked. She felt uncomfortably full, for the moment, at least-bloated on beastman dreams of conquest and destruction. Just as well. She didn't want to want to nom on Anya.

"Fair point," Anya agreed. "You are on our side...right?"

"Against the crazy destructive guy? Sure. You guys seem to be having trouble with him." Most of his beastmen were wandering aimlessly now, but Ma-Ha-Suchi himself was currently pounding on Tara, despite having his hands chewed at by the diamond blades floating in her aura.

"I've got an idea," Anya said. "Can you-?" The more Dawn heard of the idea, the less she liked it. If Ma-Ha-Suchi hit her, even once, she was probably dead.

It made her look good, though.

Shadow crept up the hill. She wasn't sure how she was going to close in on Ma-Ha-Suchi enough to hit him with the Scythe Buffy had left behind, but she did know she had to try. She had a job to do, and Ma-Ha-Suchi was even more of a menace than her other self. She had a duty to the people of Gem, for her promises.

Anya, ahead of her, slipped the starmetal bow back into its quiver and charged at the mad Lunar, leaping into the air. Ma-Ha-Suchi, wary of her for whatever reason, dodged left, but Anya caught Buffy's hand and dragged herself into an arc to follow him. He ducked low, sending her flying, and opened himself to Buffy's kicks, which he evaded easily by rolling toward TARA.

And from TARA's other side, Dawn came rolling beneath the diamond blades. She reached under the Lunar's horns and jammed her fingers inside his head. Ma-Ha-Suchi's howl echoed through the mountains, and his backhand sent Dawn hurtling downslope, where she rolled several times and was still.

Shadow had yet to work out what she felt about Dawn, but both of them had been created from Buffy. With a cry whose fury surprised her, she hurtled forward with the Scythe and drove its stakepoint through Ma-Ha-Suchi's heart. The enraged Lunar struggled and began to shift form to escape his impalement...

...And from the other side, Buffy coiled her hair around the Scythe and wrenched it upward. Brass strands spun down the haft and snaked their way into the Lunar's body, erupting from every pore. Ma-Ha-Suchi screamed as Buffy began to tear him into bloody shreds once again, this time from the inside. "I toldja," Buffy said wearily, "predator and prey-"

"-can't get along in one body," Shadow finished. They'd been thinking the same thing. Buffy nodded curtly to her in grudging acknowledgement.

But Ma-Ha-Suchi had escaped such a demise once already. Her hands crackling with green-black energies, Anya brought both of them down on his head like a club. His moonsilver tattoos flared momentarily, protecting him from instant death, but the energies Anya was releasing still tore through his body.

Some sort of commotion was rising down by the palace, but Shadow had no time for it. She began to saw the haft of the Scythe sideways through Ma-Ha-Suchi's ripping tissues. TARA joined in, pummeling the Lunar from the side with reverberating shock-blows that tore through him.

It was more than even the immensely powerful Lunar could handle. In a minute or less, Ma-Ha-Suchi was reduced to gobbets of flesh all over the mountainside. This time they failed to twitch or move.

A golden blur roared up through the air on fiery pinions. A suit of power armor hovered there, shining. "Well," it said, speakers amplifying the voice. "The Dread Pirate Roberts expresses his admiration and dismay. Looks like you didn't even need me here."

As everyone turned to stare, the bits of tattered flesh sprouted tendrils and began trying to crawl away. "Never mind," Xander chuckled, and turned a pair of wrist-mounted flamethrowers on the stuff. "Looks like I'm needed for something after all."