Author's Note: This idea originally started out with Willow and Morpheus as the main characters, but then got revised into Buffy and Angel. I also drew some inspiration from an Image comic book that appeared some years ago, though I've forgotten the title. Maybe you can figure out what it was called after reading this short. Enjoy!

The Unreal Sunnydale
(X-Over with the Matrix)

Angel didn't know what had happened. A moment ago he had been with Buffy, the two of them alone in his apartment, only just finished with the most intense round of love making he had ever experienced in either world. Then everything had suddenly crashed, the world around him dissolving into the green-on-black code that was the Matrix grid, and he'd been pulled out.

Surging out of his chair, he looked around at the watching members of his crew.

"What the fuck just happened?" he yelled.

"We got caught, that's what happened," his second-in-command, Gears, told him. "We don't know how, but some Agents caught us hacking into the story program."

"Then why didn't you simply warn me?" he asked, still angry. He'd made such progress these last few days. "I could have pulled out and safely inserted myself again later."

"No go, boss," Gears said. "They weren't sending Agents after you. The story program doesn't work like the rest of the Matrix. They... best I can put is, they tried to overwrite you. I had to pull you out or your brain woulda been fried."

Angel calmed down a bit, now leaning over Gears' shoulder to study the readouts. It had been over a year since they had discovered the so-called story program, a tightly encrypted subsection of the Matrix used for special purposes. Only a few months ago they found out what those purposes were and it still horrified them, but it also provided a tremendous opportunity.

"We still got our tap inside," Gears said. "See that?"

Angel nodded. He saw just fine. When they had first managed to hack the story program, he had managed to insert himself into it as a character in this strange, fiction-styled reality the AIs had created. It was the only way not to stand out. Unlike the Matrix proper most of the humans in the story program were automations, not real humans hooked up via the power plant. The story program was a reality created for only a handful of special humans. Humans like Buffy. Angel had entered the program as a character, a vampire, in order to get close to her.

Only now it seemed the AIs had gotten wind of it and were doing their very best to undo all his good work.

"The character index shows that ‘'Angel' is still online in the story program," Gears said. "They replaced you with one of their automations, it seems. Oh, and they just renamed it, too. Angelus."

"Damn it," he yelled, striking the table with his fist. "They must have realized they couldn't simply throw me out without Buffy getting suspicious."

"You have been getting close to her," Gears chuckled. He knew, of course, what his captain had been busy doing online just a few minutes ago.

"I don't want to think what they might be doing next. According to my story background Angelus was my name when I was still a vicious monster. Gears, we need to take control of my character back before they undo all the progress I've made with Buffy."

Sadly, with the way the story program was structured, he couldn't simply walk up to Buffy and the other prisoners of that virtual reality and tell them the truth, even if he'd somehow been able to make them believe it. He could only operate within the confines of the story. So they had improvised by creating a contradicting character, a vampire with a human soul, a monster helping humans. The purpose was to make Buffy and the others like her question the reality they were being presented, so that eventually they might break them out of it.

Now it seemed they might be back at square one.

"I'll do my best, boss, but it won't be easy. And we need to get off this node soon, too, before they locate us."

Angel sighed. This was getting better and better.

"Do what you can. I'll report to Zion."

Walking to the communication room, Angel thought of Buffy. At the start of this mission she'd been just that, a mission. They'd found out that the AIs were breeding a special kind of human, one gifted with superhuman abilities, and they wanted to use them as infiltrators and assassins to finally get rid of the threat of Zion. In order to ensure their loyalty, these specials would be brainwashed via this story program, made to believe a fantastic reality that would remain in their heads even after they were disconnected from the Matrix.

Angel hadn't understood it at first, but the plan was brilliant actually. Buffy believed she was a Vampire Slayer, a human with a holy mission to eradicate vampires from the Earth. Vampires who all happened to look human, of course. So it would be easy for the AIs to seamlessly blend the unreality of the story program into the reality of Zion and make her believe that all the citizens there, or maybe just the key figures, were demons in need of killing.

He needed to stop them and he needed to free Buffy. Not just because, once free, her superhuman abilities would be a tremendous asset. No. It was also because he had fallen in love with her. He hadn't planned to, but it had happened.

And he would move heaven and earth to get her out of there and into his arms in the real world.

THE END