Abandoned mansion on Crawford Street, Sunnydale March 5th 1998
Spike stared at Vamp Amy for a moment, and then burst out laughing. "Beautiful friendship, eh? Pull the other one, luv..."
Vamp Amy pouted. Then she looked around, "Where is Angelus, anyway?"
Spike shrugged. "Out. And if you were wanting blood, this ain't no supermarket - go get it yerself..."
The female fledgling *was* starving, and so left the mansion on the hunt for a human meal.
Elsewhere, the Scooby gang were at a cemetery killing some newly risen vampires - when Angelus attacked Buffy, while the others were busy dealing with the other undead. "Miss me, sweetheart?"
Enraged, Buffy kicked Angelus in the chest, he blocked it and then grabbed her leg, throwing her into a nearby tombstone.
Buffy felt pain, of course. But all of sudden, she started to feel sick! She tried not to fall over, but visibly staggered.
"Not feeling well, Buff?" Angelus laughed.
"I can still kick your ass, Angel!"
Slayer and vampire went at it, fighting each other. Not far away, Kendra high-kicked a vampire and he went flying through the air. He landed hard on the ground, before one of the Scoobies staked him in the chest. Vampire dust exploded everywhere...
Xander managed to dust some vamps as well, while Cordelia took out the others with her crossbow. For her part, the Willow-bot splashed holy water on the last couple of vampires - and the Oz-bot staked them before they could recover.
Ignoring all this, Angelus punched Buffy hard, getting through her defenses. She fell hard on the ground in pain.
"No more games, I'm ending this now!" The evil fiend was about to kill Buffy, when the others stopped him.
"I don't think so, mister!" Willow tossed a bottle's worth of holy water at Angelus' face.
"AGGHHHH! You'll pay for that, little girl!" Angelus ranted, before he disappeared into the night. Unfortunately, Kendra was too far away to stop him. Moments later, the Scooby gang and Kendra took Buffy to the closest hospital...
Once in the Sunnydale General ER, Buffy was wheeled away on a hospital gurney, now muttering deliriously to herself. The head nurse injected something to make her calm down and go to sleep, since she was talking nonsense about vampires. Of course, since this was Sunnydale, it wasn't nonsense at all, but denial ran deep – it was the only way for the town residents to maintain their sanity, after all.
Later that night in Buffy's hospital room, she was in bed seeing a demon go after a kid in the hall. "What..." the Slayer muttered to herself, before she passed out from the drug effects and the fever from the flu.
The next morning, the Scooby gang and Kendra visited Buffy at Sunnydale General. She told them about the demon she saw last night. Giles was in deep thought about this info, wondering if his Slayer was hallucinating. The Willow-bot just gave Buffy her homework.
"Thanks, Will," Buffy accepted the homework from her friend.
"Me and Xander will ask the kids if they saw this demon guy," Cordelia said, before the pair left the room. Even with Slayer hearing, Buffy was unable to listen to Harris question his girlfriend about it – and neither did she hear the Chase girl say, "It's Sunnydale. Since when is anything *not* demon-related around here?"
"Get some rest, Buffy. We'll, um, m-monitor the, uh, situation. Your mother will be here a-after work," Giles told her, before he and Kendra also left the room.
DELOS facility, summer of 1999
At a purpose-built lab where the robots for the horror theme park were being created, the first robots to be built were the Universal monsters. Granted, the Invisible Man didn't get a robot since it would be very hard to have a robot go invisible. Also on the cutting room floor was the Wolf Man, plus Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Jareth knew that the Scooby gang wouldn't be going to the horror theme park, anyway.
The Buffy-bot was rebuilt as a backup if the robot vampires failed to kill the Slayer. Other robots were being made - which included Pennywise, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface and the Killer Klowns From Outer Space….
It would be enough to give Xander Harris nightmares, when the time came.
Sunnydale General Hospital, March 5th 1998
Xander and Cordelia were talking with the hospitalised kids about the demon Buffy had glimpsed. The kids didn't want to chat at first, but they quickly opened up as Sunnydale's odd couple weren't *that* grown-up and knew how to talk to their target audience. The children mentioned a doctor that gave them shots. Then Xander and Cordy hit pay dirt, when one of the kids gave them a drawing of the demon.
"Man, that is one ugly-looking sucker. He could give Freddy Krueger a run for his money," Xander joked.
Cordelia sighed to herself, forcibly reminded of all the reasons she disliked her boyfriend's sense of humor. But putting that aside, Cordy grabbed Xander's wrist and both of them left the hospital.
Not long after sunset, Joyce arrived to check on Buffy. She even brought some of her daughter's favorite books to read. "Hello, dear. Guess what I've got?"
"Ooh, thanks, mom. Maybe I should've gotten that flu shot, huh?" Buffy semi-joked. "I heard that like half the school's out sick, from this bug..."
Joyce placed the books on the table next to the bed. "I heard that too, dear. But you concentrate on getting better, and nothing else."
At the old mansion, Angelus was pissed that using the newly turned vampires as bait didn't work in getting rid of Buffy. "GRAAGHH!" he growled incoherently, before looking around. "Where the hell is everybody?"
Good question – Drusilla was outside, digging a hole in the back yard in which to sleep whenever she wanted to, with only her dolls for company. While Spike had left, ditching the wheelchair at last – he was currently giving Vamp Amy tips on how to hunt down prey. Not something William would usually do, not even for 'family' – but it gave him the opportunity to avoid hearing Angelus bitch about the Slayer, which was always a plus.
Cursing to himself, Angelus turned on the TV and sat down on the couch – he was too angry to read a good book right now.
{ Huh, Knight Rider is on. } While watching the show, he thought Spike would make a better talking car than a vampire, immediately laughing at the idea.
At the hospital, Buffy finished her homework. She hadn't seen the demon again since she was delirious from the fever, and so she had started wondering if she had hallucinated the whole thing. The drugs have mostly worn off, and so all that Buffy knew for sure was she wanted to get out of here...she *hated* hospitals!
Sunnydale High School, March 6th 1998
At the Sunnydale High library, Giles was carefully examining the kid's drawing of the demon. "Hmm..."
"So dat's de demon goin' after de children?" Kendra asked, after looking at the drawing in Giles' hand. Both Cordelia and Xander then told them about the doctor the sick little kids had mentioned, before Willow and Oz entered the library.
"Willow, errr, see if you can find any info on, on this Dr. Backer chap," Giles asked the redhead, briefly looking up from the drawing.
Okay, Giles - I'll see if I can find any dirt on him!" the Willow-bot said eagerly, before she went straight to the computer.
In the meantime, the Oz robot, Giles, Xander, Cordelia and Kendra searched through books to try to identify the demon. Soon, Willow printed out the info on Dr. Backer to Giles, before she and the others had to leave to attend their classes.
Personally, Kendra was glad she didn't have to go to school...
Later that day saw some kids that had passed away being wheeled down the corridor, outside Buffy's hospital room. It was enough to give Buffy a chill – and convince her that she *hadn't* been hallucinating after all...
Later that night, Angelus came to visit Buffy - but both Kendra and Xander were there, standing guard outside her room.
"Oooh, touching - Buffy has a couple of bodyguards. How nice," Angelus laughed mockingly.
"Leave, creature!" Kendra snarled, she wanted nothing more than to stake the vampire right here and now – but as Xander had told her, the security guard nearby and all the people walking around could be a complication that Angelus could use as hostages or victims, and the Jamaican Slayer didn't want their blood on her hands if it could be avoided.
"What she said, Buffy doesn't want your flowers. Knowing you, you probably poisoned them or something," Xander glared daggers at him.
"Like I said, it's touching. A white knight who thinks he could stop a dragon," Angelus mocked him. "After I kill Buffy? I'll leave the flowers at her grave."
Kendra couldn't help it, she withdrew Mr. Pointy and took a step forward – which quickly encouraged Angelus to take his leave.
Later that night, Buffy looked around the hallway, seeing no one in sight. So she left her room, seeking out Dr. Backer – who was at the children's wing of the hospital. He was about to give the kids their flu shots – when something invisible attacked the man!
The invisible demon killed the doctor and dragged his body out of the children's wing. Buffy saw the corpse being dragged away by something invisible. "What the-?"
Sensing Buffy, the invisible demon dropped the body and attacked the Slayer! She did her best to fight off the demon and got in few lucky hits at it, but...
Well, it was hard, trying to hit something you couldn't see...even with Marcie the invisible girl as an object lesson, way back when.
Xander and Kendra were looking for Buffy, since she wasn't in her room. They found her fighting something they couldn't see.
{ Well, crap. } Xander threw an empty soda can, hoping it would get the invisible demon's attention. It did.
The demon, whose name was Der Kindestod, saw the two new arrivals. It didn't waste time trying to deal with them; it just went down the hall and out through the door, and was gone.
After Der Kindestod left, Kendra and Xander took Buffy back to her room. Xander also picked up the soda can, not taking any chances since there was a dead body laying on the floor. They talked, and Buffy wasn't happy to hear that Angelus had come to the hospital.
"Never mind Overbite - what are we going to do with the invisible version of Freddy Krueger?" Xander asked, looking around.
Sunnydale General Hospital, March 7th 1998
The next day was a Saturday, and the police came to question anyone who might know what had happened to Dr. Backer. Not that they tried all that hard to find out – people died all the time around here, after all. To serve and to deny, as the old saying went.
Anyway, the doctor's corpse was put in a body bag and was taken out of the hospital to the coroner's office. Elsewhere, Giles finally identified the demon.
"Good lord, Der Kindestod! It, it feeds off of children by sucking the life out of them. But afterwards, it-it-it looks as if they died from natural causes..." the Watcher semi-stammered.
"So it killed Backer, why?" Xander wanted to know.
"What if he really was trying to help those kids, and Mister Invisible Demon got annoyed about his food supply was being threatened? Ugh, I can't believe I just said that - or how gross that is," Cordelia grimaced.
The Scooby gang quickly came up with a plan on how to take out the demon and save the rest of the kids at the hospital. Elsewhere, a smirking Spike gave Dru the flowers which Angelus had thrown away into a corner of the mansion. He ignored how Vamp Amy was playing on a PS2 that one of the minions stole from a video game store...
Later that night, the Willow-bot, Cordelia, Xander and Kendra went to the hospital. While Cordelia distracted the security guard and Xander escorted the kids somewhere safe from the demon, the redhead diluted the pure flu solution in water so it would be safe – well safe enough – for Buffy and Kendra to use, in order to see Der Kindestod.
Ditching the guard once the coast was clear, Cordelia went to the basement to help Xander with the kids. Back at Dr. Backer's office, the Willow-bot poured the watered-down flu into two cups and gave them to the Slayers.
"Are ya sure dis will work?" Kendra asked, not sure she liked the idea of getting sick to fight a demon.
"I saw the demon go after a kid before I passed out from the fever, that was the only time it was ever visible," Buffy replied with a sigh. "If this doesn't work, I don't know what will..."
Elsewhere, the demon was not too happy that his evening meal wasn't in the children's wing where it was supposed to be. So Der Kindestod went to hunt the kids down! Following its nose, the demon made its way to the basement – where it ran straight into the Slayers.
"There you are!" Both of the Chosen punched it in the face. Taken completely by surprise, the demon went flying into a brick wall – impacting so hard, it left an actual hole in the wall!
Wasting no time for it to recover, Kendra killed it with a dagger right into its chest. The sick little kids nearby cheered with joy, before Xander shared a look with Cordelia and started to herd them upstairs and back to the children's wing.
It wasn't long after that that Joyce came by to take her daughter home...only to be told that her little girl had had a nasty relapse, and apparently Kendra had gotten infected as well. Buffy was just happy to have someone to talk to in her room at the hospital, while Kendra utterly *hated* being sick.
As always, when the two robots reported to Jareth what had happened, the demon couldn't help laughing wildly at all the latest Sunnydale shenanigans!