Author: mkcrl120
Disclaimer: All the characters mentioned in this story belong to Joss Whedon or Mutant Enemy or some other people. I own nothing and wrote this just to get it out of my system.
Summary: Set two weeks after the events in Explaining Africa 3
Authors Notes: I have no clue about Africa. Which is probably always a good place to start writing a story. So if details I've used for place names, and tribal names and whatever are wrong then just (correctly) assume I have no idea what I'm doing.
Rating: 15 by English standards (mainly for language)
Chapter 11c:
"We were trying to make an immortal warrior, correct." Brouhm replied. "But we weren't trying to make a Slayer specifically."
Xander raised his eyebrows at the new information.
"We were just trying to create a warrior that could stand against the demons." Brouhm explained. "Any type of demon that happened to be a threat."
"Merkak was going to create an Enchanted Weapon for them." He continued. "I was the one that suggested it be a Soul Weapon." Brouhm shrugged. "We wanted to make it so that an immortal warrior would have an indestructible weapon at their disposal. One that would always be theirs."
"Okay." Xander agreed.
"We travelled the land collecting aspects off of demons that we thought could become useful." Brouhm explained. "A lot of the ideas belonged to the demon-tamers, apart from the obvious traits that were useful to any kind of warrior they were considering incorporating skills and talents that on their own wouldn't even rate someone as special."
"Such as..?" Xander asked, considering the Slayer package he was familiar with, he couldn't imagine which parts weren't considered special.
"You'd start with the obvious; enhanced strength, speed, endurance, reaction times." Brouhm gestured. "Variations on these came with most types of demonic aspects... when using their diluted versions, most recipients only gained maybe two or three of those traits. For this particular spell, they were going to use a diluted form from a much stronger beast."
"The creature in the other room." Xander guessed, waving his hand in the direction of the tunnel.
"That thing was bested by a vampire." Brouhm reminded him. "If they used a diluted version of it's strength, it probably wouldn't have even been much stronger than a particularly well-trained normal human. No. The demon-tamers were going to steal it from a Demon-Lord."
"Wasn't that dangerous..?" Xander asked.
Brouhm quickly agreed. "Very... but we had Merkak with us. And because of her, we all got to carry Enchanted Weapons... and we needed them."
Xander was going to ask a question but Brouhm cut him off. "It doesn't matter. We succeeded and you've never met anyone that had even heard of the Demon Lord in question. It was still complicated, they had to distill this into two separate substances. It was the only way they could provide the abilities without leaving anyone taking the enhancement also being converted into part demon."
"We collected some lesser gifts, ones that normally wouldn't have been worth the risk."
"Such as..?" Xander asked.
"The gift of memory." Brouhm responded. "Most people memories deteriorate as they get older... we'd hope that by making the warrior immortal we could get around that. But unfortunately, experience from a lot of the older Demon-Lords and man-demons showed that sometimes the human weakness got transferred to the new being."
"Where do you even get a perfect memory from..?" Xander asked confused.
"We took the ability of one of the Everliving that was willing to become a temporary sacrifice." Brouhm explained.
"Why would anything like that volunteer..?" Xander queried.
"The Everliving are basically human, much like yourself and your friends. They are simply very, very difficult to kill if you don't know how. They all seem to have a near photographic memory which considering they can in theory live forever is quite a feat." Brouhm replied. "The person volunteering knew what we needed to do, and also knew they'd recover within a few hours. As long as we offered them protection while they were down they agreed to our request."
"We took aspects from other creatures too." Brouhm continued on. "Aspects that enhanced senses, ones that helped restrict demon influences within the body."
"Wait, what..?" Xander asked. "I've seen Buffy become affected by-"
"Yes, you probably have." Brouhm agreed. "But that particular aspect is both a benefit and a curse... it's nearly impossible to turn a Slayer or make them part demon." Xander opened his mouth to protest again but Brouhm beat him to it. "But if you can infect them, the Slayer essence can spend so much time fighting off what it considers a threat against it's foothold that the Slayer may end up completely powerless, in a coma, or unable to access the demon side's own attributes that allow it control any new abilities she may have."
Xander thought back to Buffy's mind-reading ability and how it almost killed her. 'If it had been anyone else, someone not a Slayer would they have been able to access the off-switch..? Would we have had a mind-reader in our group..?' He tried to control that little bit of jealousy that always lay in his mind when he considered his friends abilities. 'Could it have been me..?' Came the unwanted silent question.
Then part of Brouhm's specific wording occurred to him. 'And why doesn't he know what happened to Buffy..?'
"It was shortly after this point that we figured we had more than enough options for creating our perfect warrior. And we needed to get the creature next door." Brouhm stated. "They wanted to kill it, knowing it would only be temporary and then attempt to create a substance that bestowed immortality upon another. I explained that that had been their short-coming when attempting this previously. The immortality resides in the living creature, not in the flesh left to rot and decay that had been removed from it. So we had to keep the creature alive at least until we performed the ceremony. And as you're aware putting it down for the count isn't that difficult if you know what you're doing. The problem is that the count only lasts long enough for the creature to be completely healed."
"Unless you can trap it." Xander stated.
"Exactly."
Xander smirked as he answered. "The magical restraints surrounding the creature were my first clue."
"That was the problem we'd spent ages discussing. We couldn't control the creature and perform the various spells required to empower someone. All three of them would be too busy concentrating on making it work and neither myself nor my wife had the necessary raw power. So Merkak tried something she'd never even heard of before." Brouhm explained in detail. "We decided that if we built a link of chains the usual way, but with Merkak adding some of the standard techniques developed for Enchanted Weaponry, we might be able to create a chain that was practically unbreakable, at least in the short term. The result wasn't exactly what we were looking for, but it worked all the same."
"So now you had all the aspects you thought you'd need, now you just needed to find the Slayer..?" Xander asked.
"I was confident that it would only work with one person, a girl I had seen in my dreams for years." Brouhm confessed. "The others were as equally confident that it could work with anyone."
"What happened..?" Xander asked.
"We argued." Brouhm shrugged. "In the end, they were more powerful than us and didn't actually rely on us to perform any part of this ceremony."
"But..." Xander began, gesturing with his hands at the scene in front of them.
"I played my trump card." Brouhm replied. "I'd told them how not to try and bestow immortality onto a human being, but I hadn't told them how it might be possible."
Unknown location
Faith didn't have a clue as to what was going on. Firstly she seemed to be crying uncontrollably, well not her exactly but the body she was currently inhabiting. She also felt restrained, not in chains as she had been previously, but this time like she was wrapped tightly in something she couldn't identify.
'Stop crying!' She tried instructed herself, but again it was to no avail.
The power she'd previously experienced was completely gone now. If she was being honest with herself she'd never felt this weak and vulnerable, certainly never since she'd become a Slayer and not for a long time before that.
The thing that confused her most was that she seemed to be sharing the emotions of the girl whose body she was in.
'Come on!' She silently screamed, praying that if she was feeling the other girl's emotions then maybe it worked both ways. 'Pull yourself together. See if you can access whatever they did to you.' She suggested, wishing that she had a more in-depth connection to the girl than some basic emotional resonance.
She wanted to scream herself when she felt herself lifted into the air, coming face to face with a giant black woman.
'She must be fifteen, maybe twenty feet tall!' Faith realised, desperately wishing she still had her Slayer powers.
The woman was accompanied by another black man, different to the three she'd been with earlier, although dressed reasonably similarly. He looked to be four maybe five feet taller than the woman who was effortlessly carrying her.
The body she was in continued to cry. Seeing as she could think of no way to defend herself, Faith was seriously considering joining in.
Back in the cave
"You hadn't..?" Xander asked.
"I was avoiding it." Brouhm confessed.
"In order to blackmail them..?" Xander looked a little shocked.
"So as not to scare my wife." Brouhm responded. "The creature had to be part of the Soul-Weapon. One that I still hadn't told her she would have to do yet."
"I thought you were part of the Soul-Weapon..?" Xander queried in a confused tone.
"This weapon would require two." Brouhm paused. "One to give the Weapon it's immortality, and another to share it with the warrior. Basically the Slayer would be able to harness the immortality of the creature wrapped in chains."
"But she's not immortal!" Xander argued.
Brouhm pressed on. "They all forced me to explain what was to happen. I reluctantly did so. Merkak was not happy with me, I tried to explain that I would never die. Which brought up further issues..."
"Such as..?" Xander questioned.
"That if we got this wrong, which was a high possibility considering we were attempting a lot of things multiple times more complicated than any of us had ever tried before. If we got this wrong we'd basically be creating something many times worse than the mindless creature in the other cave."
"And..?"
Brouhm sighed sadly, "We had to think of steps to take if such an event occurred. We had to work out how to stop this newly created warrior."
Back in the apartment
Roger lifted Amy off the ground and attempted to drag her towards the door. "Shote. Move!!" He shouted back, hoping that the man was following him.
From the instant that the portal had disappeared, Roger's brain had been stuck on one solitary thought. 'Demon!!!!!!'
Amy had eventually understand his concern and he was now merely helping to support her weight instead of carrying her, as he tried to keep her in front of him.
He knew it was coming, he believed that both the other two knew it was coming, but curiousity had gotten the better of them. 'Now's no time to be doing feline impressions!' He berated them internally for their naivety.
He could hear Shote moving in his direction, "Come on!"
"Right behind you." Came his friend's voice.
They were almost at the down when he heard the loud thud coming from the middle of the room where the portal had been.
"Shit!!!" He screamed in frustration, his own sounds soon drowned out by another.
"Grrraaaaahhhhhhhh." Came the noise which sent chill through Roger's entire being.
Amy distracted by the noise began to stumble, Roger not expecting the sudden change followed her to the ground. Grabbing her by the arms he tried to forcibly lift her to her feet even as he himself was only balanced on one foot and one knee. 'Get up girl, you've got your whole life ahead of you!' He wanted to scream, but no sound came out as he strained with the physical exertion.
"Yrrr." Came a more quieter sound, as Roger refused to look behind him.
Shote's footsteps slowed to a standstill and he could practically feel his presence as his friend stood protectively over both of them.
Roger's eyes glanced along the wall desperately trying to locate his shotgun. 'Dammit.' He thought to himself. 'If I can blow it away we might buy some time.' He reasoned, remembering what Xander had said about the creature having already been killed once back in the States. 'Unless it's a different one, then maybe a bullet could kill it permanently.'
All this was academic though, as he hadn't been able to locate weaponry of any sort. Amy fidgeted in front of him and drew a stake out of her thin jacket. 'Guess Watchers carry those thing by reflex.'
She turned and stopped open-mouthed facing over his shoulder.
"Grrrrrr-yahhhhhh." Came the inhuman sound from behind him, and suddenly the sound of heavy footsteps headed their way. The pace of which quickening as they did so.
Taking the weapon off her, he forced her back to where she was originally facing away from him and pushed her nearer the wall.
Attempting to provide as much cover for Amy as possible he reached over her shoulder and braced his right hand against the wall. His left clutching tightly onto the stake even though he assumed it would prove completely futile.
As the sound approached he could feel a light pressure on his back, his first reaction was to panic but it was too slow to be an attack. Idly he wondered if Shote was providing the same support for him that he was for Amy, but the pressure didn't feel like that of another person pressing against him, but instead more of an all-encompassing force.
As he crouched there braced for impact he could feel the same pressure working it's way along his arm and eventually reaching his hand.
The sound of footfalls were almost upon them now, and in a moment of bravery, he looked up to stare at his hand as the force moved along until it had completely traversed all of his fingers.
There was nothing he could visibly see , but he wondered if the demon had come via a portal of it's own as the both Amy and his hand, in fact all the visible wall in front of him were bathed in a light yellowish hue.
End chapter 11c