Ringworld is property of Larry Niven. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.
The Hellmouth-Protector stared into the darkness.
The Hellmouth, formally located on Earth, had found its way here to the Ringworld. It showed itself as a slow dark swirling vortex of evil. It was located inside the hollow mountain named Fist-of-God. Before, the bottom of the mountain had led into empty space. Now, a dimensional rift had replaced the bottom of the mountain with a gateway to a Hell dimension thousands of miles across.
The Hellmouth-Protector had arrived on the Ringworld simultaneously with the Buffy-Protector and the Hellmouth. It seems that there were things in the world that would always be connected.
The magic that kept the Hellmouth-Protector alive also gave him a metabolism and did not prevent him from partaking of the Tree-Of-Life fruit which transformed him into a Protector. With his greatly amplified intelligence it was a simple matter of neutralizing the chip in his head that had stolen his power and made him a plaything of the slayer.
Spike of old was back and he was a million times smarter and commanded the Hellmouth.
His hands worked over the control panels adjusting the energies that flowed over the gateway to the Hell dimension that was now at his to command. The last thing he wanted was to have the Ringworld over run with demons, that is, until he decided to let them loose.
He would have Armageddon on his time table.
The first field test had gone well. He had released a few dozen vampires into the Ringworld. In a few months their numbers had reached thousands. It took the slayer another year to even notice them. Her moving the shadow-squares and exposing the entire surface of the ringworld to daylight was pure genius.
Now he knew what he was dealing with. He had an idea of how far her mastery of the Ringworld had come. But there were secrets to the Ringworld that only he knew. The Buffy-Protector would die.
Spike would have himself a real good day.
Puppeteers only appear to be cowards.
They were territorial herbivores who lived in packs numbering thousands. Because of their caution they had managed to avoid the destructive wars found in other species. They had managed to build a technologically advanced society based on the overwhelming desire not to have the universe kill them.
As their numbers increased into the hundreds of Billions the Puppeteers cleaned out their solar system of asteroids and comets and then moved the other planets in their solar system inward to be used as food planets. The Puppeteers home worlds were five planets arranged in a perfect Klemperer rosette around their home star. The gravity of each planet was perfectly balanced by the others.
They were happy, content and safe until they met the Humans.
Spaceflight and other high risk activity were insanely dangerous. The monkeys from Earth enjoyed throwing themselves into danger.
They even walked by falling forward then catching themselves! From the Puppeteer point of view Humans were insane. They were the perfect species to subcontract the exploration of the galaxy.
Some years ago the Puppeteers had contracted the Human Beowulf Shaeffer to explore the center of the galaxy. What he found shattered the Puppeteers peace of mind.
The galaxy had exploded.
The density of stars at the core of the galaxy is upwards of hundreds of thousands of stars per parsec. All it took were a few stars going supernova at the same time to set off a massive chain reaction. Within a quarter of a million years, all life in the Galaxy will be extinguished.
When Beowulf Shaeffer returned from the core the Puppeteers were gone. They had taken their worlds with them.
The Puppeteers were headed to the Andromeda galaxy. On their way out of the galaxy a signal embedded in a coherent burst of dark matter had been detected.
Its message was simple: Save the Ringworld.
The Puppeteers followed the instructions embedded in the signal and found the ringworld. The ringworld floor stopped all subatomic particles cold. It would be the perfect place to ride out the explosion of the core.
There was one problem. The Ringworld scared the piss out of them.
Whoever build the Ringworld could still be around. The Puppeteers did what they've always done. They hired the Human Louis Wu to explore it. Along with the Human was a Kzin, a feline humanoid, and the woman Teela Brown who had been bred for luck by the Puppeteers.
The Ringworld ended up being saved by Louis Wu after he killed the protector Teela brown and turned a solar flare from the meteor defense system on a populated landscape killing trillions in order to feed the bussard fusion engines mounted on the Ringworld rim.
The events that occurred at the Ringworld were covered up and the current leader was removed from power. Puppeteers scientist had traced the signal leading them to the Ringworld back to the last place they would ever look. They traced it back to Earth.
Over two hundred years ago something had known about the Ringworld and had the intelligence and power to send a signal to the Puppeteers fleet. Now, whatever that thing was occupied the Ringworld control center under the one to one ratio Map of Mars and for reasons of its own moved the shadow rings and then moved them back.
The Puppeteers stepped up their efforts to kill it.