Disclaimer: Buffy: the Vampire Slayer and Thor belong to their respective owners.

x-x

The air filled with sand when they landed on the desert. Curious, Sif thought, she didn't remember Midgard with so little trees. Had the Realm changed so much in the last centuries, or had the All-father sent Thor to a faraway place on it? That would make more sense. Odin had wanted to teach Thor a lesson, sending him away from any of those that worshipped them as gods.

"Spread out. Check the sand for indentations of his boot prints," said Volstagg.

"The winds would have blown them away by now," said Fandral in disagreement before proposing his own plan. "We should look for signs of a campfire."

Hogun, as silent as always, simply ignored the discussion between his friends and started walking towards the Midgardian settlement in the distance and the only sign of civilization in this place. Sif repressed a smile at them.

The situation was a serious one, that couldn't be denied, but this was still another adventure with her old friends.

"Or we could just start there," she nodded towards Hogun.

"I guess we could take a look at it," said Fandral. Both he and Volstagg looked a bit hurt that their plans weren't useful.

"We should be quick about it," said Sif. "It won't take long for Loki to discover that we are gone. We need to find Thor before he finds us."

x-x

The tension in the room could be cut with a butter knife. This kind of situation had become familiar for Buffy in the last years, whenever she had to inform the parents of a slayer (or sometimes a very talented witch) that their children were now part of another world. There was always denial at first, and sometimes the parents preferred to believe that their kids were mutants rather than accept that the dark world existed.

Buffy supposed that it was because mutants could be rationalized, but demons and magic followed their own set of rules. Or perhaps it was a refusal to believe that the Old Ones had existed once and that humanity wasn't the first race to walk this world, that their world wasn't as safe as they believed.

However, the current situation, while it was familiar, had a small difference: Thor. Buffy considered that she was lucky, because Thor's friends had already started to believe his story. With a bit of more luck, they would also start to believe that magic was real, even if Thor was actually an alien and not a god.

"Even if we accept that you're an alien," was saying Erik. "Demons and magic are another matter."

She could always make a rabbit appear from thin air, thought Buffy. Willow had taught her how to do it for this kind of situations.

"I know it is difficult to believe, Erik Selvig."

"It is! Our race has been here for thousands of years. We should have noticed at some point that we were sharing this world with a second race."

"Races," muttered Buffy. Everyone turned to look at her. "Demon races, there's more than one. And they noticed us when we appeared."

"Wait, wait," said Darcy. "Are you implying that they were here before us? This is starting to sound like one of Lovecraft's stories."

The Slayer stared at the girl before speaking again, considering her next words.

"Actually, that man got a couple of things right."

Darcy's eyes widened at her words.

"How much?"

"Mostly, he got right the part about another race that once ruled Earth. They came from another dimension, though."

"And they're sleeping, right?"

"There's literally a hole in the Earth where they are trapped," said Buffy. "Let's hope it stays that way."

"What about Cthulhu?" Jane asked. Darcy and Buffy looked at her; Darcy looked slightly surprised. "What? You're not the only one that has read Lovecraft, Darcy."

"As far as we know, there's not an Old One by that name."

However, they had Old Ones as dangerous as that one, some even more. This piece of information Buffy decided to keep silent about, especially the part where that hole in the ground was called the Deeper Well and had two openings, one on each side of the planet.

She also kept silent about the part where sometimes they got away from their prison, and that not all of them were trapped there, some were in other dimensions.

"There's something else, isn't there?" said Jane.

"Maybe," was Buffy's answer.

"This is still crazy."

"I know it's crazy, Mr. Selvig. I also didn't want to believe that it was true when I learned about it."

"But you believe it in the end," said the man.

"Vampires are a bit difficult to discuss with," Darcy's face got a strange look at the mention of vampires. Buffy turned to speak to her. "No True Blood or Twilight, and the same goes for the Vampire Chronicles and the Diaries. These are all evil and only see you as their next meal."

"Way to kill a girl's dream."

"Just making sure that you stay alive," said Buffy seriously. "With all those books, everyone forgets that vampires are dangerous and start to think that they're just cute puppies with fangs."

"Understood," the girl smirked at her. "Does Dracula exist?"

"I'm so not talking about that one."

"You know him!"

"I..." she fell silent and her muscles tensed. There was something... off. It wasn't demons; it felt a bit like something that she had met before, but way stronger. What was it?

A series of quick knocks of a fist against a crystal made everyone turn around towards the door of the lab. There was group of four people there, three men and one woman, all dresses in strange armour and with weapons. They were pressing themselves against the crystal and there were four big smiles in their faces.

"Found you," exclaimed the redheaded one. A matching smile appeared on Thor's face and he went to hug the group of four.

"My friends!" he cried.

Ah, aliens, then. The feeling was different from what she got from Thor's; it was weaker in him, practically nonexistent. He felt very human to her, probably because of his banishment. The hammer, however it felt different, it was pure magic.

And now that she noticed the current situation, Thor's human friends may finally believe their words. That or believe that they were all sharing the same hallucinations. Buffy crossed her fingers.

She was having a good day, let it stay that way, Powers.

"I hate my life," said Erik. He sounded like Giles, he was only missing one pair of glasses to polish and then he would be a perfect American version of Giles.

"What?" Erik asked when he noticed Buffy.

"Do you use glasses?"