In a garden paradise somewhere outside the normal flow of time, a nominal god pondered. The Master wasn't supposed to have risen until something like a year after Buffy arrived, as per his memory of the show. He'd long since discovered that Savant's "perfect" memory wasn't in any way compatible with the rest of his brain. At best it made his memory extremely detailed and easy to access while increasing his data retention and mathematical skill. Washu had either half-assed it or he just wasn't mentally capable of taking advantage of it. The same could be said for the mental boosts he'd acquired from The Gamer. He swiped his hand across his face and dismissed the speculation. That wasn't the real problem, and he knew it.
The Master had appeared way ahead of schedule, which shouldn't have been possible. The changes caused by his arrival and subsequent actions shouldn't have been big enough to have such a drastic effect so soon. At least exorcising the Slayer spirit from its current host had gone as expected. A little divination had allowed him to do the same with the next host, kill the threat to the third, and track down a ton of potentially world-ending threats. The ridiculous cave full of sealed up "evils" had been emptied and returned to a somewhat reasonable geological state, with everything in it had being destroyed as best he was able and recycled for material. What little he wasn't able to reliably destroy was left in the demon dimension Pylea when he went to pick up their human slaves, then walled off so they could no longer access any other dimension. Let those assholes deal with soul-consuming god corpses. Wolfram and Hart was simply gone, including their backers. The buildings stood abandoned on consecrated ground.
The blue form of the Judge's head started yelling muted obscenities at him from the jar of fluid he'd picked up on a whim from the Futurama verse, and he absently sprinkled some fish food into it and slapped on a silencing spell. While he technically couldn't get bored anymore, he'd found there was something worse: brooding. Long dramatic periods of introspection in which his mind basically just went in circles instead of doing anything productive. He couldn't let himself fall to such an insidious foe. He needed to spice things up, somehow. Being a god was pretty great, but between knowing what was coming and having little to no trouble overcoming obstacles he'd been mostly coasting since he started in the Potter-verse. His head tilted to the side and his form shifted randomly as he considered how to make things interesting again. Slowly, a smile formed on his face. That would work. He'd have to make a few trips and finish things up here, but he was quite certain he'd never been forbidden from messing with his alternates or even the other avatars.
Buffy growled to herself. It had been weeks. The Devil had saved her life, and then he'd fucked off to God only knew where. Tara had excitedly taken over driving her and Dawn to school using Wren's car, upon which they discovered he'd apparently done something nefarious at the Department of Motor Vehicles to get them to allow Tara her license without actually attending a class for it. Nobody could quite bring themselves to care that Satan had taught her to drive, since in the meantime the newly-dubbed Scoobies had found one of their classmates possessed by her own mother, a fraternity sacrificing young women to a snake demon [1], and a weird mantis thing posing as their substitute biology teacher that tried to seduce and eat Xander. The poor boy had then been possessed himself by a primal Hyena spirit. The less said about that, the better.
There'd been a supposedly demon-possessed book that turned out to be completely free of bad guys she could punch, and instead contained a variety of recipes for different types of custard. Giles had made a sound he insisted was a dignified inhalation but sounded a lot like a squeak of fright when Willow opened the book to scan it but started reading it instead. Buffy's hair-gelled stalker had been knocked out and left mostly naked on the beach with a backpack full of papers declaring his name to be Liam Neeson and a wallet with a boatload of cash in it. She'd found out when her mother burst out laughing during the evening news, and couldn't help but grin a little herself. The guy was a creeper, even if he was cute. Spending a night or two in lockup for passing out drunk and being grilled by the police served him right.
Ethan Rayne was excited. He'd been approached with an offer too good to be true: cause chaos and prevent a threat to his own life, all for the low-low price of working with another spellcaster to put some extras into the spell he'd been planning to cast for years. He'd already travelled to California and sourced all the components he'd need plus a few extra, and his new best friend had been dropping off costumes all week. September was coming to a close, and the store would open on October first. The bust of Janus he'd been planning to use as a catalyst for the spell was joined by a decorated amulet, an iridescent white feather, and a complex diagram etched into the concrete of the back room under a rug.
The money he'd originally hoped to take away from the event was icing on the cake, as far as he was concerned. He'd asked about a few of the stranger costumes and been introduced to a bunch of Japanese cartoons [2] and some ridiculously silly versions of them that were called "abridged series." He couldn't stop himself from chuckling every time he saw the red trench coat and orange sunglasses, even a few weeks later.
The Heavenly Host was assembled, awaiting only the command of the Creator to move on the demons below. Messages from the creator appearing via lightning bolt were new, but the power matched that of the sacred flame and they obeyed. Heaven itself was changing, a massive presence wrought from the same power building from some undefinable place and pouring massive amounts of divine energy into every crack and crevice of the plane until even the lowest of divine servants were near bursting with it. The link to the material plane widened continuously, allowing the excess power to flow into the core of the universe and outward in ever-increasing waves changing the very fabric of reality there as well. Countless souls passed through, most slated for reincarnation and either immediately redistributed or placed in stasis until they were needed.
There was some resistance to the new rules, but it never lasted long. The second a servant acted against them they were denied access to the power of Heaven until they atoned, with more egregious breaches of conduct resulting in being turned human and banished to various unsavory locations until those involved had learned their lesson. New Jersey was a strangely popular banishment location, and largely considered to be a time-out for all involved.
Magic, the kind accessible to humans, demons, and lesser gods was greatly curtailed as well. The afterlife was now inaccessible with the exception of limited and strictly censored communication, transformation of living things was now impossible except to heal and return things to their natural states, and conjuration of living things was limited such that nothing conjured had a soul or any sort of intelligence beyond basic instinct. Karma and magic related to it was became easier but at the same time seemed to run through some kind of filter that moderated most of the results.
Many of the minor gods had been folded into a new largely automated administrative system, with those that refused to cooperate being reduced to powerful spirits or mortal souls depending on both their history and how politely they refused. Those with a particularly cruel bent simply vanished, not even getting a choice in the matter. The system itself would regulate magic, the moral world, and the afterlife in such a way that aside from oversight duties most supernatural entities would now be far more available to pursue their own goals. Rumors of the system being named Yggdrasil circulated regularly, and often resulted in a message via lightning bolt chastising those involved for being culturally insensitive. Apparently every afterlife was now custom built for the soul who chose not to return to the cycle by the system, and there shouldn't be any bias toward any given belief system. Some souls were even shipped out to other universes now, provided the soul itself wanted to go somewhere in particular.
There was some grumbling about how the system changeover was happening at the close of a particular holiday in October, and that showed bias in itself. Those who grumbled such were asked to pick a date that wasn't significant to any one individual or culture, and quieted quickly. The establishment of the new system proceeded, with refinements suggested and implemented as they came up. That this just happened to clear up a great number of backlogged issues and limit the number of things that needed to be brought to the attention of any individual being let alone the Creator itself seemed to be a happy side effect. Quite a few entities were now picking up hobbies like gardening, reading, and writing as a result rather than constantly worrying about who needed to intervene in what, when, why, and how.
For the moment, they waited for the signal. A particular mage would cast a particular spell with the help of Janus and an Avatar of the Creator, then the Host would flood the mortal world and scour the remaining demonic cancer from existence. Invisible to all but a select few, the purge would put an end to the conflict between those that would influence mortals to good or evil leaving only the System and the Administration.
A winged figure, invisible to all, dropped a load of electronics and blueprints into a box at the top of the highest building in Sunnydale. He was a little disappointed it was only seven stories tall, but he'd take what he could get. The projects were ready. In the first box was a collection of unusual DNA samples and a couple of guidebooks based on his own psychic techniques. In the second box was a compilation of basic spells sufficient to create a new system of magic and a few enchanted items. Finally, the last box was a basic Builder starter kit with enough data, plans, and hints to make someone a very unconventional cape.
Conjuring a nice reclining chair and a bowl of never-ending popcorn, Wren sat back to watch the chaos unfold. He'd negotiated with a the chaos mage Ethan Rayne to kick off his long-planned Halloween special a year early, adding his own safety features such that nobody would actually stay dead if they died as a result of the spell in the process. As an added bonus, Janus was more than happy to play with something that truly randomized what costumes were generated and distributed such that there were an infinite number of possible timelines to watch when one got boring. What was he forgetting? Oh! Right. With a gentle nudge from his power a message was queued up to be distributed to the Scoobies and other associated characters. Now all he had to do was wait for the festivities to begin.
"Hello, everyone! Now I'm quite sure by now you think I'm either insane, evil, or both. Some of you might just think I'm an asshole. No matter your opinion, I want you to know that I enjoyed my vacation on your world. I've arranged something as a kind of going-away gift to myself and a few more as gifts to you since you might not enjoy the night I have planned. Don't worry, nobody's going to die from it. Tara, tell your mother I loved her apple tartlet and that the house and car are paid for in her name!"
Author's final note: That last bit in italics is Wren's message to the Scoobies and associated characters. I wanted to leave this open-ended immediately prior to the events of the Halloween episode since YAHF (yet another Halloween fic) stories are some of my favorites, and I could never decide on just one. I don't like ending the story like this, but I also don't like a lot of what I did in other chapters and I don't think this would ever be truly finished unless I took the plunge and made this last post. I plan to do some follow up stories as indicated by the boxes Wren's got, but they'll most likely be pretty slow in coming and updating. One is going to be about a Builder (as per the lore used in this story) in the Worm-verse, but the other two are up for debate. I have power-sets taken from the poll, but I can't decide if I want the psychic shapeshifter in Teen Titans or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The other setting will get the beginner mage. Feel free to give me your opinion on that, and feel free to add your own Halloween episode shenanigans based on the end of Jump-chain to Godhood below!