Chaotic Circumstances

by Joshua The Evil Guy

The gang dressed up as various Xmen, and Ethans was the only shop in town to boot so EVERYBODY changed. Buffy went as Cyclops, Willow as Jean Grey i.e. Phoenix, Xander went as Iceman, and Cordelia went as Rogue. Just another Halloween Remake.

7. Battle Royale

Battle Royale (Part 1)

Right after school was out, Jake and his friends met right outside of the Middle School, not far from the High School. Besides the rest of his Crew, Kevin, who had encountered those strange youths, the ones who had dressed up as the X-Men and were now mutants themselves, had joined them and it only took a moment to guarantee that everyone was there before they moved on in silence.

Jake looked back, double-checking for himself one more time that Ax's holographic costume imaging projector was working properly. It was still highly experimental, and it had been constructed between the six of them practically over night, yet besides the lack of an actual forcefield matrix, the holo-cloak seemed to be functioning within normal parameters.

Despite the fact that Tobias, Cassie, and Ax were all now very alien species, it was Ax alone who couldn't casually hide his 'alien-status'. There actually wasn't much difference between Betazoids and humans anyway, with the exception of the DNA, a few differences in brain-chemistry, and the fact that they were ALL telepathic, the two species could practically be called cousins. Tobias was admittedly half-human, but it was the half-Vulcan side that caused the most grief. Even a half Vulcan still had green blood, and then of course there were the ears. Thankfully, Tobias had rather long hair and it was used to cover the malformation.

Once they were to the High School, Jake noticed some of the others that had been at the meeting that morning gathering near the road. If he recalled correctly, it was Mark, the boy that had dressed as a vampire and still had certain abilities but was not a true vampire, the younger girl Sydney, who happened to be carrying Iczel around like it was a high-tech backpack. There were another three people with them that Jake did not recognize.

Even as Jake lead his group towards Mark and Sydney and the others, another two from the meeting, Scott Hope and Amy Madison, joined them. Without offering any warning, Jake simply walked up to them and asked point blank, "You guys have the address, right?"

"And the directions, Willow gave them to me," Sydney answered.

"We just finished talking with Xander," Amy spoke up as the entire group began walking down the road, "He said the rest of them would meet us there. Something about a . . ."

"Scooby meeting," Scott laughingly filled in.

The Star Fleet kids, as the older teens were beginning to think of the Middle-schoolers, shared a glance at one another before conceding to Jake, who nodded back at each of them.

"What?" Scott asked.

"They're meeting in private," the once-Star Fleet Captain answered, "Most likely in order to determine their own next course of action, as well as to decide upon the loyalties and reactions of the rest of us. I'm really not surprised. Given that those . . . X-Slayerettes you called them? Given that they've been fighting demons and vampires on this Hellmouth for the better part of a year, nearly two, of course they're a very tight-knit group, and they won't take kindly to outsiders suddenly wanting to join in. Let's just hope that they aren't as paranoid as they are brave."

Scott and the others shared their own glances, but the questions stopped.

Once they were far enough away from the crowds, Kevin announced that he was going to transform into Prime. It was a very . . . interesting, or as all the girls put it, disgusting process, but the final result left all the females just as gushy over the Ultra's inhumanly bulging muscles as much as they'd been squealing over the slime before.

Given that they now had a superhero walking with them, Ax asked permission first and then disengaged the holo-cloak and resumed his 'natural' Andorian appearance.

About a mile from where the X-Slayerettes had said the junk yard was, the rest of the older teenagers, as well as the three adults, joined the growing group of Halloween victims, and it was the girl, Buffy, leading the rest of the way to the abandoned lot.

Buffy in front, the group started heading for the small little shack they'd found in the center of the yard, the mutant Slayer fiddled with her crimson sunglasses a bit. Something was making her twitchy, and not just the fact that her mother was here, or even the fact that she tended every now and again to hear Willow's private thoughts, (or at least the thoughts that were about Buffy herself). It was something else.

"Gosh! What is that smell!" Prime exclaimed, holding his hand over his nose.

"Yeah, we're going to have to find out what's causing that. Rusted metal and junk like this doesn't typically smell," Buffy agreed.

Just as they were passing the last turn that would put them almost right in front of the shack, Buffy stopped solid, several of the others behind her bumping into her, but the Slayer didn't budge so much as an inch after stopping.

"Buffy, what . . . ?" Willow asked, and then they all noticed what the Slayer already had.

Standing right in front of the shack was a group of nine individuals, and right out in front was Harmony Kendall, in yet another tight black leather outfit, sword in hand.

"Time we finish what we started Cordelia!" she screamed.

"Crap," Buffy cursed, her eyes dancing over the group arrayed before them.

"OK, she's seriously gone off the deep end now," Brittany commented as she pulled out her own blade.

Willow's eyes were dancing just as much as Buffy's until her eyes locked onto one individual in particular, her mind almost reeling with the amount of pure psychic force she felt radiating off of the boy she was looking at. "Cassie, raise your shields and protect everyone that you can, I'll cover the rest!" she ordered.

The Betazoid nodded and a strain of concentration masked her face, and to make sure she pulled her friends, Scott, and the few others that had no hope of properly defending themselves, closer to her.

"Who are you people, what are you doing here?" Buffy shouted out.

"Meet my new friends loser," Harmony crowed. "They'll make sure nobody can interfere this time while I take Cordelia down!"

"Is she obsessed or something?" Xander asked the white-striped brunette.

"Uh, saying yes would be an understatement," the Rogue mutant responded.

"Allow me to do the introductions," an older man, maybe 30, 35 years old stepped forward, next to Harmony, and holding her shoulder to keep her quiet. "I am the Gamesmaster, and I would like to play a game with you and mine and Harmony's new friends. The eight of you willing to fight, against the eight fighters I have gathered here against you. The stakes are really quite simple, whoever wins maintains control over this ground, and decides who gets to die and who doesn't. And on the off chance that you do not play . . ."

One of the younger individuals, a boy no more than 8 or 9 years old suddenly began to fly several feet of the ground, his eyes glowing a burning red, highly similar though subtly different from when Buffy's eyes sparked with crimson energy. No doubt it was well within the boy's powers to shoot laser beams from his eyes, on top of flying there was no way for anyone else to know what all he could do just yet.

Another young boy shouted out a word, "SHAZAM!" before a bolt of lightning came down and in the boys place was a BIG man in a red and gold uniform, a giant lightning bolt on his chest. Even Buffy, one of the more fictionally-challenged of the group, recognized Captain Marvel when she saw him.

Three others stood out against the rest, mostly because of the way they were dressed and how they looked in general. One was all in green and had metal gauntlets visible on his arms, while the other two, who could have been brothers, were all in black, looking pale and if not for the bulging veins and red-eyes, making them look like they hadn't gotten any sleep since Halloween, most would think they were a pair of vampires. These two also carried familiar-looking metal hilts at their waists, but if these were weapons or not, no one could tell at the moment.

Once Gamesmaster made his threat however, the one in green put a familiar looking metal-bolted mask over his smooth un-scarred face and did something to his gauntlets to reveal several weapons coming out of them. The other two held out their hands and the two hilts at their waists practically flew into them before they activated with a snap-hiss, revealing them as two crimson lightsabres.

"Well," the Gamesmaster finished up, "I'm sure you can figure it out."

"Any rules to this game of yours?" Buffy growled out, getting into a ready stance.

"No running away, the battles must take place in this lot, and no sideline help. If one of your extras decides to interfere, they should be involved from the beginning," the man snapped out. "Now . . . begin!"

Before any of the newcomers could do anything, Harmony raced forward, screaming her head off, aiming straight for Cordelia. Buffy, Xander and Willow all made to get in her way, but Harmony wasn't the only one to charge.

Buffy was knocked off her feet by a blue and black blur, which solidified into the boy that had been flying and still had glowing eyes. Not too dissimilar from the way her own eyes glow whenever she gets angry, now that she realized it. Kipping up to her feet, the mutant Slayer faced her opponent, imagining the trigger in her mind, crimson energy beginning to flow from her optics.

The very same youth that she had felt such tremendous psychic energy flowing off of swept Willow aside with a wave of his hand. Barely managing to raise her force shield in time to protect herself, the redhead skidded along the ground like a stone on a pond before slamming painfully into a rust covered truck. She got up in time to see the blond young man flying at her in a telekinetic aura of sky-blue.

As Harmony was almost upon them, Iceman and Rogue prepared themselves for a fight, one covering himself in ice armor, the other balling her fists. Just before she could strike though, the other Cordettes rushed forward, Brittany with her katana blocking Harmony's strike while Charlotte and Erin tackled her away.

"Enough of this Harmony! We might have listened to you once, but Cordy's right! We don't have to do this! We /shouldn't/ be doing it! Now stop this before somebody gets hurt!" Brittany shouted for reason.

"Get out of my way!" Harmony screamed, getting back to her feet.

Suddenly, the three that had stood out the most attacked, the one mostly in green and with the machines, which actually turned out to be blasters connected to some kind of armor he was wearing, launched a few missiles at the bunched up group. Without a word, everyone scattered, Cordy having no choice but to go forward towards Harmony.

The spirit of Nemesis screaming within her at the underhanded tactic, Brittany cried aloud and attacked the young man, her katana clanging with each scratch against his armor.

All of a sudden, Xander found himself with Charlotte and Erin, facing off against the two brothers in black, and he began to have a bad feeling about this.

In the aftermath of the explosion and immediate fighting, Prime and Sydney with Iczel found themselves squaring off against the two that were left. The Power of Shazam incarnate, Captain Marvel, and another teenager in a blue and red cosmic uniform, glowing bands on his wrists as he hovered there.

"There's no way I can do this!" Sydney shouted.

"You can!" Iczel and Prime both shouted back at her.

"I'll take Cap, don't worry, I think I'm stronger than him," Prime winked at the girl, causing her to blush before he flew forward, leaving her alone. Well, not entirely alone.

"Let's do it Sydney!" Iczel shouted.

Sydney nodded at her partner and screamed, "CHARGING UP!"

There was a nearly blinding explosion of light around the pair before they were surrounded in a sphere of white energy, and before anybody could stop blinking enough to even bother looking again, the energy conformed around the female warrior Iczelion, yet before her opponent could comment on the fact, before the energy had fully dissipated, she was moving, striking him with an uppercut before flashing around to his back to deliver a devastating kick and then a heel-uppercut to blast him higher into the air. Only then, after that combo did anyone get a look at the cosmic warrior Iczelion.

It was still Sydney, just the girl wearing space armor made up of Iczel's body. Where the armor didn't manage to cover, thankfully a red jumpsuit seemed to have appeared over the girl's body.

"Cute," the young man said as he floated back down to the earth, rubbing his jaw slightly.

That was when Sydney noticed that the boy's costume was exactly like that of Captain Marvel's! The Captain Marvel from Marvel Comics, the Kree warrior that had Cosmic Awareness, Nega-Bands that fired destructive bolts among other things, and on top of all that, was THE most respected hero in the Marvel Universe. Until he died the third time. She also remembered that his name was MarVell.

I know you're worried about hurting an innocent person Sydney, but until we can find a way to convince him and explain everything to him, we have to defend ourselves, and our friends! Iczel telepathically reminded her.

/'That's right!'/ Sydney realized. He wasn't /really/ Captain MarVell, he was some innocent person that had just dressed as him for Halloween and now was being taken advantage of by that Gamesmaster guy!

"What's your name?" she asked as they both hovered there, standing off.

Surprised at being spoken to in anything that wasn't trash-talk, the Kree superhero startled, just hovering there for several long moments, before finally answering in a quiet voice, "Tim. Tim Smith. Who... Who are you?"

"My name is Sydney, Sydney Pierson. Let me guess, you dressed as Captain Marvel for Halloween, right?" she asked.

Tim just shrugged, looking a bit uncomfortable. "Uh, yeah. Who'd you go as?"

"Iczelion," Sydney confessed with a sly little grin.

Tim's eyes went wide, apparently having seen the anime, then he gave her a rogue grin and squinted his eyes in challenge. "This should be interesting then," he spoke, but it wasn't 'Tim's' voice. It sounded like the guy that called himself Gamesmaster had overlaid his voice on top of Tim's. Startled by this, Iczelion looked down at the ground to see the man called Gamesmaster grinning insanely up at her.

Sydney! Iczel warned just in time for the girl to see Tim firing a Nega-Blast at her. She raised her shield just in time, the energy dissipating around it.

Gamesmaster is controlling everyone, we can't hurt them Iczel! Sydney wailed in her mind.

As against my programming as it is, I suggest then that we keep it close and personal. Nagisa used to love that.

AND I ONLY TOOK 1 YEAR OF KARATE AND ONLY GOT TO YELLOW BELT! Sydney screamed back, dodging to the side instead of allowing Tim's blast to hit again.

I never said it'd be easy, but neither of us want to hurt this boy, or any of the others, so we have to take it to hand-to-hand instead of exchanging lethal energy blasts. Iczel argued back.

Grumbling to herself, Iczelion decided not to argue at the moment, instead concentrating on dodging and making sure none of the blasts Tim was shooting at her was going to hit anybody or do anything dangerous.

Back down on the ground, Cordelia and Harmony were sparring. Well, not really /sparring, as Harmony was really trying to hit and kill Cordelia, and Cordelia didn't have a sword herself, but with the damage being done to each other, it might as well have been sparring.

"Hold . . . grunt . . . STILL!" Harmony screeched as she kept missing Cordy with her wild swings.

"OK," Cordy stopped retreating and stood still, and Harmony still missed her next swing at the white-striped brunette. Smirking, she still didn't move but couldn't let the action go without comment either. "Y'know, I've heard the term, couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, but come on! I've seen Buffy swing better with a sword in her hands!"

"That loser!" Harmony screeched, getting that more pissed off. "RAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" the blonde swung with all of her might in a cross swing at Cordelia's torso, and Cordy still didn't bother moving.

It happened in a single instant, but for Harmony, that moment would be played over and over again for the rest of her life. For that one moment of absolute rage, Harmony was so adrenalized that her strength, for that one moment, actually became superhuman. And so when the rather poorly-made iron sword, thrown with unstoppable force, met with the immovable object of Cordy's skin, the inevitable happened. The sword shattered in Harmony's hand, nearly breaking said hand as well, leaving only the hilt and a couple inches of shaved iron.

Cordelia frowned and looked down at her right arm where the sword had struck and saw that the skin was unblemished and thankfully Harmony hadn't cut at her clothes. "You know," she said to her rival, rubbing at the spot on her arm for a second or two, "I actually felt that. It tickled," she grinned wickedly at Harmony and with no more warning than that, threw a left hook right at the socialite's face.

She watched with amusement as Harmony went flying back, cartwheeling through the air until she landed, painfully, with her back against the hood of a broken down Beamer. Clapping her hands to get rid of dust, Cordelia smiled to herself and drawled, "Y'know darlin', this is actually gonna be more fun than I'd thought it'd be."

In another part of the lot, Buffy was standing off against the boy that as far as she could tell so far, had all the powers of Superman. Although she had to admit, it was more the Artic Breath than anything else that had lead her to this conclusion.

"So, any chance your name is Clark, kid?" she teased, fully in Slayer-mode.

"Don't call me kid!" the young boy, no more than 10 years old, if that. "And my name is Robert Clarkson. /Not that it'll do you any good Slayer!/" The last bit was said with the Gamesmaster's voice overlaid over Robert's. Buffy had heard that trick before, and had figured out exactly what it meant, but she wasn't too worried about hurting a kid that had /Superman's/ powers! She was a little more worried about him hurting her!

"Well my name's Buffy. Buffy Summers," she said before dodging out of the way of some Heat Vision. "Nice to meet you. Kid."

"Don't call me kid!" Robert screamed again, shooting another burst of heat vision at her.

Buffy back-flipped over it and was a little surprised that the burst didn't last much longer than a few seconds. Maybe he couldn't sustain the lasers for more than that? Or was it just he didn't have that much control over his powers yet? Time to find out.

"Hey Bobby," she called, triggering her mutant power, "hate to break it to you, but you ARE a kid!" The optic blast flashed between them, electrifying the air and announcing itself with the same sound effects from the X-Men cartoons and video games.

Buffy let go of the trigger after the count of three and slowly the optic energy dissipated, and allowed her to see normally once again. And allowed her to see the devastation she had just caused. The Slayer blinked in disbelief at the scorched landscape right in front of her and even metal and cars that had been torn apart by the sheer force of her optic blast, and about 10 meters straight out, the boy, Robert, was slowly getting to his feet, his shirt torn in a couple of places, but otherwise no more harmed than if he'd rolled around in the dust on purpose.

"Crud," Buffy sighed and prepared herself for the counterattack.

It came faster and harder than she expected as the boy quite literally flew at her at near-supersonic speeds. She only had enough time to raise her arms in defense and let herself go limp when the force of his charge picked her up and blasted her backwards into a pile of junk. Once they'd stopped moving Robert hunched over her half-buried body, he raised his fist for a no doubt devastating full power Superman-strength punch, and Buffy knew if she didn't do something she'd be dead, whether Robert intended to kill her or not. So she did the only thing she could, keeping her eyes open and locked on him, she fired off another full power optic blast.

Thankfully it worked, blasting the boy high into the air in a high arch before falling back to the earth with a tremendous crash. It also allowed her the time to throw the heavier stuff off of her and struggle back to her feet. Rolling her neck and stretching her arms and legs, the Slayer growled softly to herself, "OK, no more playing around."

Moving with Slayer-enhanced speed, Buffy ran straight for the crater Robert had landed in and was only now getting out of. He looked up, surprised to see her charging him, but that surprise was nothing next to when she threw a full-Slayer-strength punch right at his face, and apparently it was enough as it knocked the boy back into crater he'd just vacated. The Slayer didn't stop there however, jumping in to pick the boy back up and then kick him back out of the crater before jumping back out herself in a smooth flip.

"That . . . that /hurt!" Robert exclaimed, holding his face and chest.

"Yeah, and it'll hurt a lot worse if you keep up this fight, now how about you giving up?" she argued with him.

"Superman wouldn't give up!" Robert shouted back, and then the Gamesmaster's voice overcame Robert's once again, "/And I'm not going to give up the game just yet my young amateur Slayer. You'll have to kill the boy to stop him from killing you!/"

"Superman doesn't kill," Buffy retorted.

"/Yes, but this boy doesn't remember it that way, plus, you just hit him. For that, you deserve to die!/" Gamesmaster spoke through Robert. Then all of a sudden, Robert's face contorted into rage, and he screamed like a child throwing a temper tantrum, "YOU HIT ME! I'M GONNA KILL YOU NOW!"

"Shouldn't that be "Gonna tell your momma now?" Buffy couldn't help teasing before jumping away, barely in time to avoid the heat vision bursts.

/'Wonder how Willow's doing?'/ Buffy thought to herself as she struggled to deal with the mind-controlled Super kid.

Willow was actually doing about as well as Buffy herself was doing, choosing to stay close to the ground, but still telekinetically flying around in attempts to subdue and defeat, without harming or killing, her opponent, who was flying around much the same way she was.

"Who the hell did this kid dress as?" Willow gasped as she raced down an alley created by the piles of cars and junk.

Before she could receive an answer, or even get to the end of the "alley" she was in, the kid in question suddenly appeared before her, his blue telekinetic aura blazing around him and holding a couple of cars that were no doubt soon to be thrown at her. "My name is Fredrick Smith," he said calmly, and only as she was a few feet from him and not running away did she finally see that the boy was barely 13 years old, if that! "And I dressed up as Franklin Richards, aka Psi-Lord from the Fantastic Five. Any other questions?"

"Yeah," Willow replied, "How come you haven't been keeping up your mental shields?"

The boy, Fred, looked confused for several seconds, giving Willow just the time and opportunity to strike, which she did. The psi-bolts hidden in waiting from multiple points around the junkyard, where Willow had hidden them around this central point, flowed forward with the speed of thought and attacked the unprotected mind of the young psychic.

Psi-bolts weren't something Jean Grey ever used that often. For one thing, they had the potential to be lethal, even with a relatively weak psychic, and Jean Grey was one of /the/ most powerful psychics in the world/THE/ most period when she was possessed by the Phoenix, but then the title went to the Universe instead of just the world. It all had to do with the intention behind the attack. If you wanted to distract, confuse, or simply knock unconscious the target, then it is relatively harmless and a very effective attack. However if the intention is to kill, control, or destroy . . .

Against other psychics, a psi-bolt is limited in its usefulness as they can block it the same way they could block a telepathic probe, though if the bolt was powerful enough it could still do its damage in cracking the psychic's shields and put a dent in their energy reserves.

Willow herself never knew a lethal thought in her entire life, not even after seeing death herself, she's never honestly wished or thought of wishing someone else dead. Jean Grey, an experienced woman who fought battles and went through things no human, mutant or normal, should ever be forced to go through, did, every once in a while, have thoughts of killing intent.

Still, Willow was a little shocked, and very grateful, that her opponent had been stupid enough to leave his mind practically unguarded, focusing entirely on telekinetic battles instead of the battles of the mind. And all she needed was him unconscious, defeated, so she could go and help the others to end this thing, and so that's what she set the psi-bolts to do, to knock him unconscious, and it was also why she set up so many, at least fifteen, because she had expected him to at least have a few mental barriers up so the first few blasts would wear him down and she could finish him off face-to-face.

Instead, all fifteen psi-bolts struck simultaneously on his completely unguarded mind, and after a few seconds of screaming and grabbing his head, Fred Smith collapsed, unconscious to the ground. And if the psi-bolts just /happened/ to look like and be shaped after the fire bird shape Phoenix was known for, well that was just one really big coincidence.

"Whew," Willow breathed a sigh of relief and lowered herself to the ground.

"/Oh, I wouldn't breath that sigh of relief just yet my dear/" a sinister voice sounded around her, originating from Fred's fallen body. Then Willow got the shock of her life as said body was raised to its feet, but not in the normal way, more like a puppet being picked up by its strings, and rather forcefully at that.

The redhead tensed immediately, immensely grateful that she hadn't lowered her other mental defenses as she'd done her physical ones. She watched as Fred, still unconscious, steadied on his feet and the blue aura returned around him.

"How . . . how . . . ?" she wanted to know.

Instead she just heard echoing laughter coming from the distance and realized who and what it was.

"Gamesmaster," she hissed, fury blinding her for a moment and she lashed out with a full telekinetic strike. Fred flew back, but only a couple of meters before the boy's own telekinesis caught him and held him steady. But Fred was still unconscious, she could feel it!

Gamesmaster must be controlling him directly now, not just influencing his reactions, she realized and knew this was going to get a lot trickier than she thought it was going to be. Taking to the air, her hot pink aura flashing around her, she retreated, knowing that there was NO WAY she could match the amount of raw psychic energy /still/ pouring off of him, even though he was unconscious and being controlled by somebody else.

Willow was no stranger to fear, but Buffy had always been there to save the day, to share her courage with her friends, and to make sure that the terror rating never reached heart-attack proportions. Willow was beginning to feel terror at very near that level at the mere thought of going in a head-to-head with the person chasing her even now.

Prime thought it'd go easier than this.

After all, how strong /was/ Hercules? Captain Marvel had the strength of Hercules, among other things, and he was still human sized, so Prime with all his bulging muscles and super strength should easily overpower him in the strength department.

Prime just forgot that Captain Marvel got smarts, speed, and durability along with that strength, all from fabled mythological sources. As he was finding out, raw strength didn't always win the fight.

Flying right towards the red and gold clad titan, Prime lead with his fists, cocking his left back in order to add as much power to the blow as he could. Before he could even get close enough though, Captain Marvel was flying his own fist right at Prime's face, knocking him back through the air almost past the fence of the abandoned lot. Thankfully, the young superhero managed to stop himself, shaking his head slightly to clear the ringing left from the hit.

"Dang, this guy's a lot tougher than I thought!" Prime muttered before flying right back into the battle.

Captain Marvel was just waiting there for him, arms crossed, cape flapping heroically behind him, it almost infuriated the Ultra, if not for the fact that he thought it looked /really/ cool! Leading in with his fists again, Prime flew in at a blurring speed right for the fictional hero that he found himself facing in battle. Despite the surrealness of it, the part of Prime that was Kevin was practically screaming in excitement and joy at what was happening. It was like a comic book come to life, and for Kevin Ozborne, that was literally a dream come true.

Surprisingly, Prime's punch was allowed to hit, yet what was even more surprising, to Prime at least, was that said punch had about as much effect as slapping a concrete block when he was still Kevin. Withdrawing his fist, Prime stared in open shock at Captain Marvel, completely unable to believe what he'd just seen.

Captain Marvel, in turn, just smirked and then cocked back his right fist, and before Prime could even say "Oh cr—!" the Ultra was falling like a meteorite, knocking down and over several mountains of junk before finally coming to a rest near the outer fence.

Groaning, Prime sat up and looked around, and when he saw that the fence was less than a foot away from where he'd landed, he came to an unmistakable conclusion. "He's holding back!" Prime exclaimed to himself.

Kevin was never much of a fighter, preferring to compromise or just avoid situations like that altogether, but his father, when he'd still been with Kevin and his family, had instilled some basic values, including the ever famous, "Don't start a fight, but always finish it", and Kevin, while not always winning, always followed that philosophy. He also didn't like it when he was being played with, which the bullies at his school quite often did.

Until he'd proved too dangerous to play with, he grinned to himself as he took to the air once again. Time he stopped holding back too.

He flew back in as fast as he could make himself move, this time not bothering with hesitating or not wanting to hurt the other kid, letting his anger guide him in. Surprisingly, Prime actually hit, yet even more surprising, given his streak so far, was that Captain Marvel was very nearly blown out of the junkyard himself!

Xander watched with amusement as Captain Marvel crashed into a mountain of junk and then dig himself out again before blazing back up to fight Prime some more. Kevin was more like his costumed character than he realized, which wasn't necessarily a good thing.

Unfortunately, the living incarnation of Iceman didn't have time to deal with that right now as he was dodging, to the best of his ability, flying debris, which somehow the two darkly dressed figures seemed to be telekinetically throwing at him and the two Cordettes he'd somehow got teamed up with. Doubly unfortunate, his capabilities weren't quite up to par, as the multiple scratches and heavy-hits he'd gotten attested to. If he wasn't now 100 sure that his ice-form was impervious to it, he'd bet that he would be covered in bruises by the time this was over.

In fact, the things being thrown aside, the only real threat those two posed was their red lightsabres, which kept Black Widow and Silver Sable far enough back from attacking the two of them directly, for fear of being sliced into itty bitty pieces of cauterized flesh. And so far Xander, not willing to kill something that wasn't demonic in some way, hadn't discovered any way that he could help them, except on occasion creating an ice wall or two when the two brothers came in swinging their lightsabres, giving the girls and himself just enough time to retreat from them.

Their hasty retreats had finally brought them closer to where Brittany, aka Nemesis was still relieving her anger on the guy in the armor, who incidentally seemed to be petrified of the enraged young woman.

"Hey BRIT-BRIT!" Xander cried as they ran from the two lightsabre-wielding maniacs, "We could use a little HELP over here!"

"Don't call me Brit-Brit!" Nemesis screamed before finally just punching the poor guy in his iron mask so hard that he actually fell down.

"You didn't break a nail, did you?" Erin asked, suddenly concerned.

"Nah, besides, I've got a manicure on Sunday," she answered casually, as though they'd just run across one another in the mall.

"LADIES! IF YOU PLEASE!" Iceman roared at them.

"Well what do you expect us to do?" Charlotte asked. "They've got those laser-sword thingies, and they took our guns away from us, and not even Brit's sword can go against a laser-sword."

"Hey!" the younger one suddenly whined as the two brothers stopped. "They're called Lightsabres! Say it with me; Light. Sabers."

"Ignore them Andrew," the older one sneered, "They're the 'Popular girls', though sycophantic pea-brained bimbos is more like it. They couldn't understand the difference between an X-Wing and a TIE, let alone properly identify a lightsabre, a tool of the Force, from a life saver! A roll of donut-shaped candies! Hahahahahah!"

The two started laughing their asses off, occasionally snorting a little, but Iceman was more paying attention to the changing expressions on the three Cordettes' faces.

"Oh, it is so on now," Brittany grated, gripping her blade a little tighter and stalking forward, Erin and Charlotte right behind her.

"Uh, yeah," Iceman backed away, knowing when to bow out. "I'm, uh, I'm gonna go and finish off that guy dressed like Dr. Doom. Uh . . . yeah."

He quickly ran the other way.

Explosions rocked the junkyard, some caused by lasers, or other things, misfiring and hitting something besides their target, or in other cases, actually hitting their target and knocking them into several mountains of junk before making a few craters here and there. Sometimes it was a supernatural body hitting the ground, or other things, with tremendous force, and still other times it was merely the effect of a power caused by one of the clashing titans in their fight. Outside all of it though, which is to say outside of the fight if not the junkyard, the remainder of the group from the Library that morning looked on with growing dread and nervousness as the forces of the Gamesmaster began to reach the upper hand against their friends and comrades.

The pair of Cordettes that dressed as and now were reincarnations of /Noir, had managed to sneak themselves and the others not fighting into the lone little shack at the center of it all. The Gamesmaster was barely ten feet out from them, standing and looking at everyone fighting around him, like some kind of psychotic referee, who tended to make the fights worse rather than calling them out. Aura had already suggested that it would be extremely easy for them to end this by simply putting a bullet in the back of the man's head, but Giles immediately vetoed the idea, quickly supported by everyone with very few exceptions, saying that the man was going through the same thing the rest of them were, and unfortunately had lost himself to either the powers and abilities he now had, or to the very personality that had possessed him on Halloween night.

It wasn't much of an argument in Noir's opinion, but it was what convinced the others.

Not willing to start an argument over it, the two young women instead just took up guard positions, handling their weapons with professionalism that seemed more surreal due to their age than the perfection of it.

In the mean time, Giles was trying to figure out how he and the others around him could even begin to help their friends and end all this fighting.

"Maybe if we could find some clue as to why all the others are taking their direction from Harmony and that . . . that . . ." he stuttered.

"Excuse me, Mr. Giles?" Aura calmly interrupted, keeping her eyes on what was outside, but no one had any doubt that she was fully aware of absolutely everything going on around her at that very moment. "But I believe that Harmony is as much a pawn in this game as any of us are. It is of course possible that the one calling himself /Gamesmaster/ is in fact somehow influencing or even outright controlling the actions of everyone out there, even our friends. Perhaps even we are being affected by his control."

"Yes, I had thought of that, but . . ." Giles began.

"Cassie," Jake interrupted, "that girl, Willow, she told you to protect us, from what? And how? Was it the Gamesmaster's influence?"

Cassie shook her head. "At the time, Willow thought the danger was one of the others, and quite frankly I agreed with her. The pure amount of raw psychic power he was exuding . . ." The young black girl trailed off, shivers running up and down her body. "But now that I'm actively blocking all outside mental energies, I /can/ feel exactly what it is that the Gamesmaster is trying to do. The thing is, it's not an actual invasion or probe like typical telepathy. It feels more like the link was always there, like a Subspace carrier wave or radio signal. He just has somehow found a way to tap into it and to a point, even control where the wave signal is going to or coming from. Although now that I've blocked it, I can't get much more information about it, or him. If I try to tap into him . . . there's no telling what could happen, and I'd really rather not try."

"That's all right. For now though . . ." Jake trailed off for a moment before his eyes lit up with inspiration.

"Marco, Ax, Tobias, can you three come up with a way to completely block this guy from using his telepathy, or whatever it is that he's using to control everyone out there?" he asked of the others.

The three mentioned all startled and stared, first at Jake, then at each other. Finally, Marco stepped forward, almost into Jake's personal space and started shouting at him, "You CAN NOT be serious! First you drag all of us down here just to 'see what they have to say', and then it turns out to be a trap for /them/ and we're in danger of being killed by some random blast or one of them crashing into us and turning us into the grimy little paste you peel off your shoe after coming out of a movie theater, and NOW! Now you want us, US to make you some random almost magical device to block the /telepathic/ transmissions of some insane psycho standing out there that is apparently controlling several /Super Heroes/ into playing his "/game/". And to top it all off we don't even /know/ what kind of telepath, IF that's what he is, what kind of brain chemistry, HECK, he could be using subspace for all we know! And to top it all off! We're stuck in the end of the 20th Century with technology I wouldn't use to MAKE A /TOY OUT OF! So, JAKE, tell me, do you /REALLY/ expect the three of us to come up with some miracle device that you need JUST FOR THIS MOMENT! HUH?"

"Yep," Jake answered with a straight face.

Marco shrugged and turned back to Tobias and Ax, calmly saying, "Give us a few minutes, let's see what we've got to work with." Then the three of them quickly got to work.

"Sometimes I wonder about his sanity," Rachel commented.

"I'm beginning to wonder as well," Giles commented after staring for a few moments.

"Cassie, how long can you keep up keeping that guy out?" Jake asked, referring to the Gamesmaster.

"As long as necessary," the girl dutifully replied, already the strain beginning to show in her body and expression.

"Well if it comes down to it, only block Marco and the others, but let us know so the rest of us can take . . . precautions," the former Star Fleet Captain ordered.

"Yes sir," the Betazoid answered.

"If she has to drop the protections around the rest of us," Jake turned to Aura and Cindy, "take the shot. We probably won't get another." Noir simply nodded their agreement and returned to their watch posts, Aura making sure she had a clear line-of-sight on the still-standing Gamesmaster at all times.

"Now wait just one moment!" Giles protested.

"You can't do that!" Joyce shouted.

The other kids looked uncomfortable with the concept, but kept their opinions to themselves for the moment, so Jake turned to the adults. Before he could explain his reasoning however, Jenny Calendar stepped forward.

"Rupert, Joyce, circumstances aside, that man is a danger to us and potentially countless others. It's a hard decision, doubly so when children are the ones forced to make it, though we can hardly call Jake and his friends children given their own circumstances," she said. "This world is NOT some happy-ending story to be read on the Internet or be made into some movie-of-the-week. This is real, hard life, and we have the right to defend ourselves. No matter the cause."

"I will not allow these children, despite circumstances, to become murderers," Giles shouted.

"Why don't I just teleport him away, if it becomes necessary?" Joyce insisted. "That way he's away from us, and I'll make sure it's some place remote so he won't be able to hurt anyone else. Anything better than killing him outright just because there's the chance he /might/ try to take over our minds!"

Jake tensed, looking at everyone in turn, save Noir and Ax, Marco, and Tobias. Then he nodded. "Very well," he finally decided. "If you can, teleport him to the Moon for all I care. But if you can't, if he's still a danger to us, if his control isn't blocked . . ." He looked over at Aura, who nodded solemnly in return, a cold look in her eyes.

"Cassie . . ." he said.

"I can still keep him out. For as long as necessary," she answered, steel-like strength in her voice. Jake simply nodded and waited for his miracle.

Xander almost felt sorry for the brothers, they'd admitted they were as much a while ago, and then when the guy dressed like Dr. Doom had jumped up to join them, he pretty much lost all sympathy as even he could see that those three were bigger dorks than he could EVER have been at his worst! But still . . . sending them up against three of the Cordettes, who themselves had the knowledge, experience, and abilities of three of the more deadly femme fatales in all Comic Book History, it was a /bit/ cruel to the young man.

But then the Trio had to go on insulting and insinuating . . . /things/ about the Cordettes that he now felt they deserved whatever they got.

Then, just as he was about to go and find someone else to fight, he saw his opening. The Darth brothers, he jokingly thought of them, had raised their lightsabres in identical overhead chop fashions, their eyes focused on their respective targets, but whichever it might have been didn't matter, their guards were down. Without conscious thought, his arms shot forward, ice beams arcing across the distance in the flash of an eye blink. Amazingly though, both of the brothers looked up in shock at the last second and stared straight at the oncoming mutant attack. Unfortunately for them they did not react quickly enough and very soon the lightsabres were covered with solid ice.

Also, in order to avoid getting their hands just as frozen, they both had to let go of their sabers, which automatically shut the crimson blades off, preventing the energy blade from thawing itself out.

"You . . . you . . . you . . ." the younger one was stuttering.

"YOU /PEON!" the older one shouted, his own hands shooting forward, arcs of pure energy shooting from his hands.

Going with instinct, Iceman formed an ice-wall at least a full meter thick between him and them. Confident he'd sufficiently tipped the scales, he crossed his arms and smirked to himself. Until he saw a spot glowing at the center and watched with a morbid fascination as the ice block he'd created began to melt very quickly. When the arcs of electricity began to race over it, he lost his curiosity and quickly ran in the opposite direction.

The sound of the ice block shattering forced him to quicken his pace, but he knew he couldn't outrace a Dark Side user using Force-Lightning with nothing but his feet.

"Screw training, gotta go with instinct," he said to himself and focused his powers, pointing his hands down and shooting out a blast of cold, focusing on creating the ice bridge that Iceman was always known to use to get around in fiction.

It happened so fast that he really didn't have time to savor the experience, but it was exhilarating nevertheless. One second he was running along the ground, the very next he was moving/sliding along the very ice he was creating beneath him and for a few moments his momentum kept up and he actually got pretty far before he lost his balance and the ice bridge became slightly skewed and he fell down on his butt. Thankfully he hadn't gotten very far off the ground, and kept enough sense to roll with the fall and landed himself behind another mound of junk, just out of sight of the Darth brothers.

"OK, so maybe I need a little bit of training," he grumbled to himself and started crawling around to get back in the fight without getting blasted the moment he stood up.

"Thanks Iceman," Silver Sable and Black Widow both muttered with thick Russian accents, moving in on the frozen lightsabres and with well-placed drop-kicks shattered the machinery while the Darth brothers were still distracted by Xander's escape.

"Looks like the tides have turned boys," Brittany, fully in her Nemesis persona, teased, stepping up behind them, her katana at her side.

The brothers turned to nervously look at the femme fatales arranged against them, suddenly realizing their predicament, and it being driven home when they saw the scattered components of their lightsabres on the ground.

Having apparently spent his anger on Iceman, the older brother huffed angrily but stayed his hand, just as nervous and fearful as his younger brother beside him. Then he caught a sight that made him smile.

Before the Cordettes could ask him what he was smiling about, or even before Tucker could taunt them further, the Dr. Doom kid appeared on the other side of the Cordettes, announcing himself with, "You haven't forgotten about me, have you Lady Nemesis?"

"No," another voice off to the side sounded, "we just figured you'd gone crying home to your mommy by now!"

Everyone turned, startled, to see Iceman standing on top of another mound of junk. Before anybody could really respond, he started shooting Icebeams at the kid in the Doom armor, never letting up for even a second. Of course, despite being startled, Warren didn't just stand there and take it. He tried to fire the lasers and other weapons on his armor, but Iceman didn't give him the chance, stopping the attacks before they even went anywhere. At some point he was actually covered in a pretty thick later of ice, but he then used the armor to shatter it a second later.

"What? You think I didn't make my armor elemental proof? I'm just as brilliant as the great Dr. Doom! More even! I won't even catch a cold from this!" he boasted.

"What's your name kid?" Iceman asked.

"Warren, why?" he answered, confused.

"Needed to know what to put on the memorial," the mutant answered, holding his hands in front of him, almost as though in prayer. "I never wanted to do this. Not to a living person, but if you idiots keep this up, you're going to kill someone. One of my friends. And I'll kill you before I let that happen." Then with a flash, a Freeze Ball more than twice the size of the ones he'd used on vamps so far formed between his hands, the pure ice-blue energy dancing in a spherical form supported by nothing anyone could see.

"Wait a sec . . ." Warren was startled by hearing a superhero say he was going to kill him. "Wait a sec, wait! WAIT!" he shouted, nervous and then outright terrified when Iceman reeled back his arm to throw the lethal attack like a softball, and then it was thrown.

At the same moment, a streak of hot pink and sky blue energy tore through the area and the Freeze Ball actually ended up hitting the sky blue part of the energy, which then slowed down enough to reveal the boy that had dressed as Psi-Lord, using his powers to destroy what remained of the ice the Freeze Ball had encased him in, completely unharmed, which startled everyone, except maybe his opponent, who was none other than Willow.

"Get out of his body Gamesmaster!" Willow shouted, as angry as Xander had ever seen her. More actually, when he thought about it.

"/No," came the dual-voice reply.

Willow's face contorted into a mask of rage no one had ever seen on the elfin face before, then the redhead growled, her pink aura flashing and sparking dangerously before she dive-bombed the other psychic, leading the charge with a psychokinetic assault that could obliterate a reinforced armored tank on power alone. They disappeared over another hill of junk as another comet of pink and blue energy.

"Wh-w-what was that?" Warren stuttered, thoroughly shaken by the encounter, as well as the threat on his life that he'd barely escaped thanks to a lucky break.

"Well, I might be guessing, but I think that was Willow fighting the Gamesmaster," Iceman answered, jumping down off the junk pile he'd been standing on.

"That was not the Gamesmaster," Tucker protested.

"Yeah," Andrew agreed, "It wasn't even the guy over there that dressed as him for Halloween and has his powers now too."

"Looks like he took over that other psychic's body somehow," Nemesis calmly pointed out.

"That should be impossible!" Warren exclaimed.

"Didn't look too impossible to me," Iceman countered.

"You guys do realize that it's that Gamesmaster that set this all up, right?" Nemesis added.

"He was the one that brought us together," Tucker began.

"You guys know what the Gamesmaster's power was, right?" Iceman interrupted.

"He was an omnipath," Andrew immediately answered. "He was a minor X-Man villain that could control . . . the . . . minds . . . of other . . . people . . ."

"And use them as minions," Xander finished for the younger boy.

Tucker's eyes went wide, as did Warren's with shock, but Andrew was already in shock over the revelation.

"NOBODY /CONTROLS/ ME!" Tucker screamed, his hands sparking a bit, but nothing on the level it was when he was shooting Force Lightning at Iceman.

"He would dare command Doom," Warren's voice changed pitch slightly and added a European accent, but that was all he did for the moment.

"Did you want to fight us before you met him?" Black Widow asked.

Tucker scowled, looking back and forth between his "enemies" and Gamesmaster who was visible a short distance away. "Y-you . . . you're trying to confuse me, confuse us!" he protested.

"You sure it is us that is trying to confuse you comrade?" Silver Sable retorted.

"/Nobody/ can control me," Tucker insisted.

"Prove it," Iceman countered.

The Sith Lord hissed in anger, scowling at everyone around him before finally stilling his features and turning sharply on his heel. "C'mon Andrew. We're going home."

"O-o-okay," he stuttered, quickly scampering after his older brother.

"Uh, hey guys, wait up!" Warren squealed and quickly began lumbering after them as quickly as the armor would allow him.

"Well . . . that was easier than I expected," Iceman commented.

An explosion announced the arrival of Buffy and the kid with Superman's powers, both looking a bit ragged and worn. Half a second later, Prime crashed into a crater of his own making, followed by Captain Marvel following up his attacks. Before the red and gold clad superhero could do as much though, he was knocked off track by the return of the blue and pink energy comet that was Psi-Lord and Willow, who both crashed into separate mounds of junk after blasting each other with another round of psionic attacks.

Another series of explosions, starting at one end of the junkyard and ending a few meters from the gathering group, went off, resulting in the appearance of Iczelion facing off against the Kree warrior Captain MarVell, or rather the boy that had dressed up as him. Sydney was breathing a little hard, but did not appear to be injured at all, whereas the boy, who was actually human-looking instead of blue-skinned, just with the same red and blue costume and then of course the Nega-bands, had a few cuts and several bruises already forming. He, however, seemed to be in better shape as far as energy though, and it was also obvious that he was the one that had just triggered that latest round of explosions.

Suddenly, almost out of nowhere, a body dropped from space, startling everyone, even the mind controlled, enough to stop everything. After a moment, they all realized that the body was Harmony, heavily injured with several broken bones and her face nothing but one big bruise and her breathing ragged even while she was unconscious. She was still alive they all noticed, but given her opponent, none of them had expected her to be anything but.

Slowly, like the drawing of a curtain on a play that was about to end, Cordelia Chase floated down from the sky, landing softly on the side where her friends were gathering, while the others automatically gathered on the other side of the imaginary line in the sand.

Buffy, given a brief respite from her opponent, stepped to the lead, watching out of the corner of her eye as Iceman helped Willow out of her pile of junk, and the Cordettes helped Prime out of his crater. Everyone else gathered behind her, for some reason automatically deferring to her as leader in this circumstance. Not that she wanted to be the Leader or anything, she just wanted to figure out what this fighting was about, stop it, and then MAYBE sit down and have the difficult conversation of what to do with a town full of super-powered and supernatural people.

Things were so much simpler when it was just demons and vampires, she realized.

"You seem to have lost a couple of players Gameboy," she snapped. "I think we win."

"/Think again Slayer,/" came a couple of voices. One came from the Gamemaster's actual body, the other from the possessed Psi-Lord. "/This game isn't over by a long shot. Besides, things are just getting interesting. I plan to play this game to its conclusion, and beyond if I can./"

"Let go of him Gamesmaster," Willow tiredly ordered, being supported by Iceman, came up beside Buffy. "You can't keep him prisoner forever. And I won't let you pervert his body anymore."

"/Oh, but thanks to you knocking him unconscious, I can stay a while yet. And your own mental defenses are beginning to wane. It won't be long before I have a whole new cadre of warriors and pawns to play new games with. I don't have to win, don't you see, I just have to wear you down until I can control each of you and catch you like so many pieces./"

"Like hell," Buffy hissed.

"I'm still fresh, I can take them," Cordelia confided.

"But not all of them," Iceman countered.

"We're in trouble, aren't we?" Prime asked tiredly, all of them watching as the remainder of the Gamesmaster's "pieces" converged on them.

Buffy, given a brief respite from her opponent, stepped to the lead, watching out of the corner of her eye as Iceman helped Willow out of her pile of junk, and the Cordettes helped Prime out of his crater. Everyone else gathered behind her, for some reason automatically deferring to her as leader in this circumstance. Not that she wanted to be the Leader or anything, she just wanted to figure out what this fighting was about, stop it, and then MAYBE sit down and have the difficult conversation of what to do with a town full of super-powered and supernatural people.

Things were so much simpler when it was just demons and vampires, she realized.

"You seem to have lost a couple of players Gameboy," she snapped. "I think we win."

"/Think again Slayer,/" came a couple of voices. One came from the Gamemaster's actual body, the other from the possessed Psi-Lord. "/This game isn't over by a long shot. Besides, things are just getting interesting. I plan to play this game to its conclusion, and beyond if I can./"

"Let go of him Gamesmaster," Willow tiredly ordered, being supported by Iceman, came up beside Buffy. "You can't keep him prisoner forever. And I won't let you pervert his body anymore."

"/Oh, but thanks to you knocking him unconscious, I can stay a while yet. And your own mental defenses are beginning to wane. It won't be long before I have a whole new cadre of warriors and pawns to play new games with. I don't have to win, don't you see, I just have to wear you down until I can control each of you and catch you like so many pieces./"

"Like hell," Buffy hissed.

"I'm still fresh, I can take them," Cordelia confidently replied.

"But not all of them," Iceman countered.

"We're in trouble, aren't we?" Prime asked tiredly, all of them watching as the remainder of the Gamesmaster's "pieces" converged on them.

"Not yet," Buffy answered. Taking another step forward she held her arms out, her hands formed into the shape of a capital T, and shouted as loud as her Slayer empowered lungs could, "TIME OUT!"

And surprisingly, every one of the Gamesmaster's forces froze where they stood, metaphorically speaking.

"Whoa," several commented while Xander whispered to Buffy, "How'd you know that would work?"

"I didn't," she confided, drawing several shocked reactions.

"So now what?" Willow demanded.

"Now . . . we improvise," the mutant Slayer shrugged.

"You can only call a timeout to . . ." the Gamesmaster started to say, but Buffy interrupted him, first by getting his attention with an optic blast to the space a few scant inches from his feet.

"We didn't agree to any of the rules, and you neglected to inform us of any, so if you want us to keep playing this game, give us a few minutes to talk why don't you!" she shouted. Seeing that she had him off balance, she continued in that vain and gestured to the others to follow her back to the shack, which had temporarily become their headquarters in this unexpected battle.

"Much as I believe we /can/ win," she said once they were close enough, a few, but not all, of the others inside of the shack coming out to hear the pow-wow, "I don't want to risk casualties. We need to break Gamesmaster's control of the others, because while those others probably were only mildly coerced or bribed into going along with this, the ones like Robert and Fred out there /are/ being directly manipulated by this guy. And he's serious about that to-the-death shit. We need a plan, and a good one."

"I've got a couple of my people working on a possibility, but it's no guarantee. More like a Plan F if everything else fails," Jake explained.

"I can take Marvel, I know I can!" Prime insisted.

"No offense Kev," Iceman input, "but he was kicking your butt into next week. But he's got a point Buff. I doubt even you and Rogue, uh, I mean Cordy, working together could take on Captain Marvel."

"I can handle Robert. Despite still being a kid, he really does have ALL of Superman's powers, including being damn near invincible. I can hold him off until somebody breaks the control, but that's what we need to be concentrating on," Buffy insisted.

"Knocking him out or forcing him into unconsciousness might work," Willow added. "But he's also got Fred, Psi-Lord. We'd have to take them both out at the same time, only the opposite for Fred. I have to wake him up somehow."

"Can you do that while fighting him?" Buffy asked, concerned.

Reluctantly, the redhead shook her head no. "I'm not that good yet. But I'll . . ."

"No," Cordy interrupted, surprising quite a few people. "I'll take on Psi-Lord. Look at you Willow, you're barely standing on you own! Besides... I owe you one, and I don't like owing Losers anything."

A few smiled to see that Cordelia hadn't /completely/ changed.

"She's right, you're out of the fight Wills," Buffy insisted.

"But..." the telepath protested.

"You'll do more good if you help Cassie with protecting the rest of us from Gamesmaster's influence or power or whatever. She's stretching herself to the limit as it is," Jake informed.

"But..." she tried again.

"We will also join the fight," Aura stepped forward.

"But..."

"Prime can always take over guard duty, since he's not exactly doing a bang-up job out there as it is," Cindy suggested. "Besides, I'm getting bored listening to all their arguing."

"What about you Sydney, how're you holding up?" Buffy asked.

"I'm OK, really," the Iczelion answered. She still seemed to be a little worn to the others though.

"All right, but let us know the second you can't keep up and we'll pull back. Don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it."

"I'll be /fine!" she hissed, though she seemed to be saying it to somebody other than Buffy.

"But Buffy," Willow tried.

"No! Wills, you're benched for this. You'll do us better good with Jake's people and protecting them. The rest of us can handle the Gamesmaster's goons. Trust me on this," Buffy assured her friend.

"O-OK," the redhead stuttered, then took a deep sigh before going to stand behind the group that would be going back into the shack.

"Buffy, I . . ." Giles began.

"Don't worry Giles, I've got this covered. And we're going to avoid death as much as we possibly can. Both among our ranks, and theirs," the Slayer assured him.

"Easier said than done," Nemesis pointed out, referring to their own ranks chances against those that remained.

"Wills, get in there," Buffy pointed and ordered with a hard glare as the redhead tried to protest once more.

"Well, we cannot just go charging in there like a herd of elephants!" Black Widow, Erin, brought the subject back around to the attack strategy. "We need a plan."

"Right, of course," the Slayer instantly agreed.

Everyone stared at her for a full twenty seconds before she broke and blurted, "Anybody got one? Cause my ideas so far have been, stay alive, don't kill them, and get somebody smarter than me to figure out the 'how' to beat this guy."

They all grumbled, but Jake stepped forward, surprising most of them. "The strategy is keep them and the Gamesmaster as occupied and as far away from this building as possible at all times. Tactics however, I'll leave up to you Buffy. Already I've seen you do some amazing things and even call together some pretty impressive moves in the heat of battle. Things that most Star Fleet Captains take years of experience before they can come up with things half as good, let alone as effective. My advice, take the situation as it comes and react accordingly. And everybody else, unless you've got a better idea that WILL work, I suggest you follow Buffy's lead."

"So not what I meant," the blonde muttered under her breath as the others that would be taking to the field of battle looked at her again, this time with questioning and analyzing looks.

"All for one and one for all?" Iceman suddenly blurted, almost as though offering it as his own suggestion.

"This isn't the musketeers," Prime complained.

"All for . . ." Buffy suddenly repeated, her eyes glazing over in thought. Then, just as suddenly her eyes went wide and she let loose a curse that had her mother, Giles and Willow shouting her name, and everyone else looking at her in shock and confusion.

"That slimy little no good DWARF!" she suddenly shouted. "I am SO gonna pound him the next time he pops up!"

"Uh, Buff, what ya talkin' about?" Iceman tentatively asked.

"Never mind right now," she snapped, her eyes already lighting up with crimson optic energy. "Everyone that's going, ready or not, behind me, everybody that's not, Willow, back in the box! MOVE!"

"Oh yeah," she added right before letting loose an intense and surprisingly larger optic blast at the Gamesmaster's pawns, "Time In!"

Sunnydale High

Meanwhile, as most of the others were fighting for their lives, two of them that had been at the meeting earlier were only just leaving the High School. Pete and Debbie hadn't actually planned on joining the others after school, but as the day wore on, Pete began to change his mind about that, and about one other thing.

"Debbie, it's just a simple question!" he shouted after her as she stormed through the halls towards the exit.

"How can you ask me that! Don't you trust me?" she screeched irrationally.

"Yes!" he jogged to get ahead of her and stopped her just before she would have gone through the double-doors to outside. "/I/ do trust you. But the others . . ."

"What about them Pete? We don't care about them. We don't need them. Don't you see? I can . . ." she said.

"That's my point!" he interrupted. "You dressed as EviLynn from He-Man! Not some random book character! She . . . it . . . the powers might be corrupting you. And I don't want that for you! I love the sweet girl I fell in love with last summer. I don't care if you have power now or not, that's not important to me. Only you are!"

Debbie's hard gaze faltered a bit, a bit of emotion filling her eyes, before she crumpled and fell into her boyfriend's arms. "Oh Pete," she whispered.

"I'm worried, that's all," he whispered back, embracing her.

"Don't be. I have control. EviLynn disappeared when the spell ended. I promise. And I promise that I won't let the powers corrupt me. I won't even use them if it'll make you feel any better."

"It would make me feel a lot better," he admitted. "But I still think that the others can help. And I mean the both of us," he quickly added as she backed away from him. "You managed to tame the Hulk a few times already, and thanks to your spell, I have control so long as I don't lose my temper too much, but it could get to the point where it won't be enough. And I don't want to hurt you. Intentionally or by accident."

"Pete, we don't need them, I can . . ." she stopped when he turned and walked out the doors. "I can control the Hulk, he won't ever hurt me!" she continued following him.

"Besides, what good would they be? Not even that kid that says he can turn into Prime can match your strength if you don't want to be stopped," she argued.

"Those other kids, they went to the future, they can . . ." he argued back, they were to the football field by now.

"They can what?" she snapped. "Put you in a force field? Find a cure? Hah! Don't make me laugh!"

"Don't knock Star Fleet technology," he grated, his temper flaring for a moment.

"You don't have to bother with them anymore anyway," she said, crossing her arms as they stopped at the fifty-yard line. "From what I hear they'll all be another 'mysterious disappearance' statistic by tomorrow."

Pete's slight anger vanished in the wave of fear that swept through him as he stared in shock at his girlfriend.

"Debbie, what did you do?" he asked, worried.

"I didn't do anything, it's what I heard," she explained. "Harmony was bragging about finally 'Taking Cordelia down a peg' after school with a bunch of new friends. I was curious, so I peeked in her mind with my telepathy, and saw that she meant she was going to kill Cordelia and anyone with her and she had a bunch of really strong and powerful minions with her, others that had been changed too."

His fear mounting, he grabbed Debbie by the shoulders and began shouting, "Where! Where are they! Debbie, if you're right then somebody could die! Not even EviLynn killed anybody! We can't let that happen!"

"Why do you care?" she shrieked, squirming out of his grip.

His temper flared, and then it wasn't just a little anger, but a full-blown rage, powered further by his mounting fear for his friends. And they were his friends.

"Scott's with them," he grated as his eyes began to glow gamma-green.

Debbie's eyes went wide with shock. Scott had been her friend first, Pete only knew him through her. She and Scott had practically grown up together. Images of Harmony or those others she'd seen in her mind standing over Scott's corpse with Amy or the others around her. And then the children... Pete was right, not even EviLynn had killed any human. But she despised violence, of any kind, done against innocent children. That much she could clearly remember.

"They're at the old junkyard on the north side of town," she whispered as Pete passed the point of no return and his body began to morph and mutate into a form far larger than her own. His shadow soon blocked the sun from her view, where before he'd been only a couple inches taller than her, he now towered over her as an adult to an infant.

As the tears over the terrifying images of losing one of her closest friends fell down her face, she watched as the bright green giant bounded away, jumping only twice before the distance he'd gone took him from her sight completely.

Battleground

Things were going good. Or at least somewhat better than before, Iceman thought as he stuck to Buffy's side, running the defense while she ran the offense.

She was firing optic blasts at the targets as they ran, ducked and dodged, while whenever one of the super-dudes ever came close he either blasted them with a freeze beam or set up an Ice Wall giving them the precious seconds needed to avoid the attack, whatever it was.

It wasn't perfect, heck it was hardly making a dent in the opposition, but it was still better than before when the one-on-one matches ended up in either even, or favoring the Gamesmaster's guys now that Harmony and the other "easy" ones were out of the fight.

He and Buffy were the roving attack team, going between all the other battles that seemed to be ratio'd at two-to-one. And despite the fact that the odds were in /their/ favor, they were still barely holding on.

Cordelia hung with Prime and was double-teaming Captain Marvel with the Ultra, although he sometimes wondered if the two might be distracted, or distracting each other considering the other was the specimen of cosmetic perfection for their respective genders.

He /really/ needed to stop channeling Willow so much.

' Hey! I heard that! ' came the telepathic message from his bestest friend.

'/Well then, concentrate on keeping the Gamesmaster out of our heads INSTEAD!/' he roared back at her silently, distracted as he and Buffy ran from the super kid's heat vision.

Sydney, or Iczelion, had switched over from the MarVell guy, to Psi-Lord, or rather Gamesmaster controlling Psi-Lord's body, and she'd teamed up with Brittany, aka Nemesis, who seemed to have her own skills in keeping the omnipath from affecting her mind and further limiting the effects of Psi-Lord's powers, save for his telekinetic ones that is. While they certainly weren't making much headway on points or hits, they're combined attack-and-run-(or teleport in Iczelion's case) did the job of further frustrating the Gamesmaster and his pawns.

So that left the four remaining Cordettes, all gun-totting vixens, two with unnatural hair and supernatural figures, to deal with Robert Clarkson and Timothy Smith, aka Superman and Captain MarVell, (even though their ages were 10 and 15 respectively). All in all, not the best of match-ups considering.

So most of the time Buffy and Iceman spent running around, was in occupying the Superman kid and Tim Smith, often ending in a stalemate until the Cordettes distracted the two titans of power, not that they could do much more than distract, and starting it all over again. Very quickly it went from a battle of who was better to who would last longer.

"They're not doing so well," Mark commented from his observation point at the window of the shack everyone else was holed up in.

Willow grumbled at him, but didn't comment otherwise, focusing on whatever it was she was focusing on that kept the Gamesmaster out of their and their friends' heads. Cassie was next to her, holding the High Schooler's hand as she added what power she could to the same task.

"Marco?" Jake asked expectantly.

"Have patience Cap. Brilliance takes time," the young Hispanic boy confidently reported.

"We're running low on time!" one of the other kids, one of Mark's friends, shouted.

"Yeah, well . . ." he said, focusing back on the device that he, Tobias, and Ax were all working desperately on. "Hey, anybody got a couple hundred copper bobby pins?"

Joyce waved her hand, not taking her eyes off of the battle scene outside and suddenly it was raining copper bobby pins on Marco and his friends.

"Uh, thanks," he said as it trickled to a stop, only a few more landing on his head.

"Hey, you could have asked for copper wire instead," Tobias pointed out, picking up a handful of the pins and adding them to the device.

"Don't go logic on me green-boy," Marco snapped, going straight back to the project.

"I'm just saying . . ."

"How much longer?" Jake demanded after seeing Iceman and the girl Buffy narrowly dodge a combined blast from the MarVell kid and the Superman kid.

"Tough to say," Marco answered honestly, manhandling the device. "Psychic-suppression technology is hardly my forte. 15, maybe 20 minutes. Half an hour on the outside. Now would be a good time to start working out a really big distraction, because even after we finish this and if, really big IF by the way, IF this works, it's going to take about five minutes before it takes full effect and you better believe that Mr. GM out there is going to notice it and is going to turn all his attention to stopping us from stopping him. So, uh, start brainstorming on that now if you please Fearless Leader."

"Why do you let him call you that?" Rachel asked, from her position beside her cousin.

"Probably because he's called me that since we were 10, and I can't get him to stop," Jake answered with a shrug, internally though already working on a number of scenarios and strategies for a 'Big Distraction'.

"Would you guys hurry up already! They're getting killed out there!" Scott Hope screamed suddenly after seeing Iczelion take a nasty hit.

Jake stepped back up to the window and stared intently at the battleground, his eyes glazed over in thought. Seemingly coming to a decision, he turned to Cassie and Willow, and asked point blank, "Which one of you can spare the energy to set up a telepathic link between me and everybody out there, the Gamesmaster and pawns not included?"

"Not a full link, but I can make it so that everybody can hear you," Willow answered. "Mostly all I'm doing right now is supporting Cassie and providing the raw power to the defenses she's got going. She's actually very skilled in defensive mental barriers, despite not having much power. I can probably learn a lot from her and . . ."

"Willow," Giles interrupted, having learned a long time ago the warning signs of a Willow-babble.

"Oh right," she sheepishly blushed and answered, "Uh, me. I can do it," she simply told Jake.

He just nodded at her and the redhead fell back into the tense silence of concentration before, after several long moments, she nodded back at the young leader and he went to the window, focusing his thoughts on the link Willow had established for him.

A moment later, they were all hearing Jake speak to them in their heads, and thankfully his first words to them kept them from giving the secret away to the Gamesmaster.

' Everybody, this is Jake, don't be alarmed, Willow is providing me the link to speak to you, but she can't make it two-way, so just listen for a moment. Don't get distracted and don't bother trying to talk back to me. Things are starting to get tense and the Gamesmaster, seeing all of you start to tire, has gotten a bit overconfident. Buffy, lets see if we can't fix that. '

Buffy smiled at the telepathic prompting and turned right around from where she had been going, and ran towards the Gamesmaster himself, Xander right on her heels. Before the shocked look could fully form on the man's face, Buffy's built-up optic blast was unleashed and exploded the ground at the man's feet. Intentionally of course, she didn't want to hurt him, and while the young boy with Superman's powers could easily handle such a blast without even flinching, she was equally sure that this man /couldn't/.

"Just curious, what happens to the rest of them when you're knocked out Gamesmaster?" she shouted over the commotion, noticing that practically all of the other 'pawns' went to stand between the Gamesmaster and all of the others, but the GM-possessed Psi-Lord went directly for Buffy herself.

Of course this distraction was exactly what the others needed to put some good hurting on their opponents. And Psi-Lord never quite made it to Buffy with both Cordy and Iczelion knocking him down to the ground.

"Y-y-you c-can't d-do-do this!" the Gamesmaster stuttered, backing away in fear, Robert Clarkson and Tim Smith, both with extremely blank and emotionless faces, came floating down right behind their "master", the Cordettes unable to contain the two for long.

"Why not?" Iceman casually asked, forming a Freeze Ball between his hands.

"I-I, I forbid it!" he hissed.

A groaning sound from the downed Psi-Lord drew most everyone's attention. "What . . . happened . . . ?" Fred Smith asked. Apparently, Gamesmaster's growing fear had interfered in whatever remaining control he had over the powerful psychic, and the double-hit Cordy and Iczelion hand landed him seemed to have been enough to wake Fred back up.

' Fred! ' Willow psi-shouted, ' Quick! Put up your mental shields! As quick and as powerful as you can! NOW! '

Having grown used to hearing voices in his head, and identifying this particular voice as another telepath, Fred decided to heed the advice, and quite literally in the nick of time put up his mental shields, blocking all telepathic, psionic, and alien-mental activity from affecting him in any way.

"What happened?" Fred asked again, getting to his feet and looking around. He felt like he'd just gotten beaten black and blue, unfortunately not a new feeling to him, given he was somewhat of a geek in school, and bullies were notorious.

"It's a long story," Cordy answered as she hovered down next to him, Prime, Iczelion and Nemesis coming to join them.

"Sydney," Nemesis ordered, "Go back up Buffy and Iceman. Prime, Cordy, take Psi-Lord here to the others. We can't afford Gamesmaster getting him again, and he's too hurt and we don't have time to explain everything to him anyway. GO!"

' Do it ' Jake's voice came over the telepathic broadcast. ' We'll take care of him, and he can add, maybe a little power to shielding everybody else. The sooner you do, the sooner you can get back out there. ' Jake added when it looked like they were about to argue. Instead, working together, the Rogue-mutant and Ultra gently picked the weakened psionic-warrior up and flew him as quickly and safely as possible to the shack.

"No, no, no, no no no no no NO!" the Gamesmaster seemed to be driving himself into a full-blown panic, seeing Psi-Lord being taken away, no longer under his control. He couldn't lose the game, his very sanity depended upon it.

Reaching out, something that took little to no effort since quite literally, for him, every mind on the planet, human or otherwise, was not only in reach but already in his grasp. A moment later, altering the base thoughts so simply it was laughable, the ground started to shake as the army of demons the Gamesmaster had just collected into his pawns struggled to make their way to the surface. There was a reason this lot was abandoned. It was just nobody knew that the reason was a clan of Fyarl demons living just beneath it in the caverns/sewers below.

After the first demon exploded from the ground, the teenagers all stared in open shock before Buffy gathered enough wits to say aloud, "Now that has /got/ to be cheating."

"Did you know he could do that! I didn't know he could do that!" one of Mark's friends, Russ shouted hysterically at Jake.

"MARCO!" Jake shouted back.

"Jake just yelled at you Marco," Rachel seethed, providing further encouragement for the Star Fleet genius.

"I'm working on it," he hissed back, now working on the device alone, Tobias and Ax just handing him what he needed.

"Oh dear," Giles muttered as Rogue and Prime finished bringing Psi-Lord in and then flying back out as fast as they could. "I'm afraid the device won't be enough anymore. Those are Fyarl demons. Even if we break the Gamesmaster's control, they'll still be there, and Fyarls are known for . . . well, violence would be the nice way of putting it."

"Joyce . . ." Jake began to ask.

"Between Amy and myself, we can send them to the middle of the sun," the sorceress/witch answered with conviction.

"Until then, they're providing us with a good distraction," Jenny pointed out. "Hopefully that means that the Gamesmaster can't even begin to get past Cassie and Willow's . . . uh, mental . . . blocks, or whatever they are."

"Doesn't mean he hasn't stopped trying," Willow announced with a strained voice.

"Uh, Buff," Iceman asked as they back up against the other fighters, including the rejoined Cordy and Prime, "what's the plan? I mean, you gotta plan, right?"

Blasting away another of the demons, only to have two more take its place, the Slayer didn't immediately answer, but shot down another three demons, making sure they wouldn't be getting up too soon, before finally saying, "How does pray for a miracle sound?"

Suddenly, there was the sound of distant thunder, and then again but closer. When it came again the ground actually shook and it was recognizable not as thunder but as a heavy impact against the ground. After the next one, which shook the ground so bad that even one of the Fyarls was knocked to the ground, everyone stopped and looked around in wonder and fear.

"Sounds good to me," Iceman belatedly replied to Buffy's question.

Half an instant later a green mountain landed in the middle of the bulk of the Fyarl demon army. One that stood up and started swinging fists the size of the bulky demons' chests, and roaring with inhuman rage.

"Well," Buffy impotently remarked as the remaining fighters just stood and watched as the Fyarls started to swarm their attacker, "better late than never, I gotta admit."

"So . . . uh, should we, y'know . . . help? Or something?" Iczelion asked after several more moments. Just then though, one demon went flying by their heads and crashed with a rather wet splat against one of the towers of rusted cars, and then another past them on the ground, a trench being dug as it was actually thrown through the dirt.

"I think he's got it pretty much covered," Buffy answered as she idly watched the demons go flying all around.

"So . . . uh, what happens if the Gamesmaster tries to take control of him?" Prime asked.

"I think our problem is more what happens if we make him angry at /us," Cordy answered.

"For right now, let's get back to the shack, rest up for as long as we can. He'll be busy for a while," Buffy suggested, leading the way.

As the teens walked away from the battleground, the /Incredible Hulk/ continued to lay waste to everything that came in his path.

"OK, that was an incredible amount of luck out there, but it's not going to last," Jake announced once everyone was gathered in the shack, Marco still working on his "miracle device" off in the corner.

"Any ideas?" Buffy asked, "Cause I'm all out of them. Wonder if Debbie's out there somewhere? She said she was some kind of shapeshifter, right?"

"That's what she said," Willow answered with a distracted tone.

"Why can't we just kill the bastard?" Cindy demanded, they all knew she was talking about Gamesmaster.

"We don't kill innocents," Buffy snapped with a hard glare, silencing the girl-assassin.

"What about knocking him out instead?" Mark asked.

"We can't get close enough. I tried to KO him with an optic blast, but after that first try at scaring him, I couldn't get close enough to try it again, not to mention all the demons popping up like daisies," Buffy answered.

"Willow?" Jake asked.

"Make up your mind," she muttered with a bit of a strain, which was shared by Cassie and Fred was beside them but might as well have been asleep himself, "Do you want us keeping Gamesmaster out of all of our heads or do you want me to /try/ and hit him with some knock-out psi-bolts?"

"Willow," Buffy exclaimed, suddenly angry, "stays in here, out of direct danger! So unless you'd be willing to go out there yourself with just your friends Mister Star Fleet Captain, don't even think about asking anybody else to go out there like that!"

"Whoa, chill Buff," Xander was immediately beside the angry Slayer trying to calm her down, "he was just asking Willow if she /could/ do it, not ordering her to do it or anything like that, OK?"

Buffy glared for a few more seconds before finally slumping down, and answering, "Yeah, OK. I-I'm sorry. I'm not sure what got into me."

"It's a high-stress situation, we're all feeling the strain, to one degree or another," Jake diplomatically responded. "We need options people. Letting the Hulk take the bulk of everything out there is at best a short term band-aid, not a solution."

"We need a strike force, a group of heavy-hitters that aren't going to and won't stop for anything until the Gamesmaster is ours," one of Mark's friends, Jaimie was his name, suggested.

"Any thoughts on who would be in this strike team?" Jake turned it around. He, and everyone else, was surprised when Mark and his friends all looked at each other and then nodded as one.

"We . . . might have a way," Russ finally answered, pulling out a pair of solid black sunglasses, Jaimie copying his movements exactly. When they both put them on, instead of wild or insane grins like some actually expected, their expressions were stony cold, almost expressionless you might say.

"It's scary when they do that," Robin whispered to her boyfriend, hugging the half-vampire close.

"All right," Jake asked, "What've you got?"

"Who did they dress as again?" Buffy asked Mark as she stood next to Sydney and Cordy.

"The original Blues Brothers," he answered nervously looking as his friends enacted their "plan". "The only things they even bought from Ethan's was the hats and the sunglasses, they already had the suits. Apparently it was enough though."

"I never watched the movie," Sydney admitted, "What're the original Blues Brothers like?"

"You don't want to know," Mark instantly replied.

"But you're about to find out," Cordy commented. "It's time," she said as the boys took off.

The plan was straightforward and as simple as it was completely insane. The boys would hotwire and then drive one of the few vehicles in the lot that still could drive at all, driving it at full speed into the mass of demons, making a big enough distraction to allow the mutant Slayer, Iczelion and Rogue-mutant strike force to barrel through what remained and KO the Gamesmaster to end this as quickly as possible. Then it was just a matter of cleaning up the demons, something all of them were confident they could handle quite easily.

Now they just needed it to work.

The roar of an engine and a flash of rusted metal, and the next thing, the boys had barreled straight through the largest chunk of the demons, quite effectively scattering them. Buffy blasted three demons in the next second, leading the charge straight for the Gamesmaster.

As expected, the few remaining pawns, which weren't demons, that the Gamesmaster still controlled immediately retaliated, targeting the trio with everything they had, from heat vision to nega-blasts, to full body assaults. Cordy punched Captain Marvel away the second he came close enough, Iczelion maintained a shield around all three of them that kept the energy blasts away, and Buffy, getting more pissed off by the second, gathered as much 'energy' to her eyes as she possibly could before letting loose with everything she had to knock them even further way than Cordy could knock them. As a result, the optic blasts were significantly bigger than her usual blasts so far, and there seemed to be a core of pink/white energy at the center instead of just through and through red energy as it usually was.

Seeing that he was rapidly losing ground and was in real danger of being attacked directly himself, the Gamesmaster tried one last gambit and sent one of his demon minions on a hasty and desperate mission.

Even while the boys' distraction had scattered the demons and made things even more confusing, the strike team still had to go through a heavy mass of the demons, even as the largest group was still amassing on the Hulk. It seemed more like any demons they did come across they came across by accident as the demon had been running around confused and when it saw them immediately attacked just because.

It was the very reason why Jake had decided that the strike team be made up of these three only, instead of just sending out the strongest or the most powerful or the most skilled, but the three with the precise combination of speed, defense, and the proper range of offense, both close and long range.

Buffy, by far, was the fastest of everyone there, due to her status as the Slayer, not that Jake knew that at first, but she was also the only one with an effective long-range offensive ability, which was the primary reason he chose her.

Cordy was a close-range brawler and while Prime certainly could match her in strength, she had a great deal more control in her strength, whereas Prime could just as easily punch one of the others by accident if they got too close. She could also fly and that made up for any speed disadvantage she might have compared to the Slayer. She played basically both offense and defense for the team, capable of rebuffing any enemies that came close enough to directly attack the team.

Sydney, however, as Iczelion was entirely defense, while she could shoot laser bolts and was just effective in long and close range as the mutant Slayer was, she knew the only reason she was on this strike team was because she could generate a powerful personal shield, which she could then extend around the entire team. So while Buffy and Cordy were plowing left and right, up and down, sideways to way sides anything that they came across, Sydney was focusing all of her concentration on the shield, trusting Iczel to stay with the others, since she too could fly.

Pete Krenzler, in the mean time, was struggling with all his might to not lose his temper. In fact he was fighting as hard as he could to calm himself down because he knew that if he got any angrier than he was at the moment, he would very quickly become the most dangerous thing on this battleground and /he/ might become the one that hurt Scott and Amy and their friends instead of protecting them from these things that had been attacking them.

These annoying little/puny/ . . . /ugly/ . . . /LITTLE/ insects . . . !

The Hulk stopped moving for a second, shook his head and then glared angrily at the Fyarl demons, and began beating them senseless once more, picking one of them up and throwing it around like a club to destroy the ones still attacking him. Puny demons.

It took more time to get to the mastermind than they would have liked, but finally the strike team stood before the Gamesmaster, the demons and even his three remaining pawns behind them and too far away to stop them from knocking him out and ending this game. Buffy really didn't see the point in taunting him about it or making any kind of speeches about how much he'd messed with their lives and stuff. So she stalked forward, intent on giving him a solid punch across the head, and maybe pound it against some really hard surfaces for a couple of minutes, however long it took to take.

"Ah ah ah!" the Gamesmaster chided with a waving finger, like someone scolding a pet, "Hold it right there Slayer. Don't take another step, or I might just not be responsible for what happens to this one," he gestured and another demon popped out of the ground just behind him. In it's grasp was Willow.

Buffy's eyes went wide in shock, freezing to the spot as an unknown fear and familiar terror shot through her entire body. The duality of her own memories and Cyclops were never so indistinct as both sides raged at Willow being held captive. Her heart almost shattered at the sight of her best friend/wife/whatever/ she was to her at the moment, so helpless and in danger.

Behind her, she heard Sydney gasp with the same shock she'd felt and heard Cordy curse in several languages. She only identified French and English though.

"You wouldn't believe just how difficult it is to keep just this one demon from killing her outright," the Gamesmaster taunted with a truly sick and disturbed look on his face. "If you, by all means, wish to 'knock me out', please go right ahead and do so. But then what's to stop this demon from snapping her neck outright afterwards?"

"I'm sorry Buffy," Willow pitifully moaned. She was fully conscious, but quite obviously she was still expending a great deal of concentration on the mental shielding covering everyone. It kept her from freeing herself with her telekinesis from the demon's inhuman grip.

Buffy shook her head, it'd happened again. The . . . insight into Willow's mind, as though they were linked somehow. Buffy still couldn't explain it and now really wasn't the time to try and bother. Right now she just had to get Willow out of danger, no matter what.

"Let. Her. Go," the Slayer spoke slowly, giving Gamesmaster /exactly/ one warning and one warning only. "Now."

"No, I don't--" he started to say, but trailed off when the mutant Slayer's eyes shifted to red and began to flash with building up optic energy.

Glaring right at the demon, the look Buffy gave it seemed to break through whatever amount of control Gamesmaster still had over it as it faltered, its grip on Willow loosening as it fearfully gargled in it's own unintelligible language "/S-s-s-Slayer!/"

"You've had your chance," she said quietly, barely audible over the mounting noise and commotion of the ongoing battle and her building energy.

Chaos never does what one /expects/ it to do. That's why it's chaos. The slimmest 1 chance of something happening, happening. Sometimes exactly when you expect it to happen, sometimes at the least expected moment, and sometimes when something should happen, it doesn't. Chaos.

Ethan Rayne expected to play a prank, a trick, on the Night of Trick-or-Treating, to make the people of Sunnydale appreciate on a whole new level the lesson of "be careful what you wish for...". Maybe on some level he even expected to get rewarded by some self-proclaimed 'chaos god' along the way too.

Rayne expected to magically turn the people /into/ their costumes for one night. How was he to expect, calculate or otherwise guess at all the random '/chaotic/' circumstances to happen that night. Circumstances that on their own might have attributed to singular changes, one or two or a small group of people having some remainder of the costumed abilities they'd had that night. Yet combine them all together, and nobody could have expected the result. The result of everyone in Sunnydale being permanently altered by the change.

Unfortunately, for some more than others, those changes went a lot further than what they woke up with the morning after Halloween. The Slayer is an enigma to most, a living contradiction on multiple levels. The perfect soldier merged with the wildest spirit imaginable, on top of being often very young and emotionally unstable girls. Combine that with mutant DNA and the X-gene . . . and though Buffy was no longer THE Slayer, the mystical changes affecting her body remained creating the combination of a gene that enhances and creates mutation within the human body, and a near-magical status that enhances all aspects of that same body to it's maximum potential.

In a way it creates an ever increasing loop of the mutant gene mutating the Slayer powers and then the Slayer powers enhancing the mutant changes. And, as facts set up by the X-Men comics and Watcher chronicles state, mutant powers often trigger due to emotional stress and the Slayer's powers become infinitely more potent whenever she taps into her anger and rage. Both of which Buffy was feeling in spades at this moment in time.

Between Cyclops affinity for Jean, whom Willow dressed as, and his memories of all the times he "lost" her, and then the same for Buffy seeing Willow in danger, again, it was an emotional nightmare in her head and was made worse as her powers began to react to her emotional state. The loop began as the trauma of seeing Willow in danger triggered her still relatively 'new' mutant DNA, even though it had already given her Cyclops' mutant power, it began to affect the young woman anew, working with what it could, namely her Slayer powers; strength, speed, endurance, and instincts. Or more specifically, her muscles, endocrine system, and portions of her brain. And her skin.

While the Slayer is an incredible organism, it's not an endless energy reactor, merely drawing twice the amount of energy from half the amount of nutrition most humans eat, even though they consume twice the amount of food. Cyclops was a unique mutant, as all mutants tend to be unique in their own right, but him even more than others, despite being limited to Alpha class, thanks to his biology of absorbing solar energy through his skin to power his optic beams, very similar to the way a plant works with its chlorophyll. The big difference that Cyclops' skin only directed that energy towards his powers and only his powers, none of it to his life support.

The changes now being elicited in Buffy, including changing her skin, that the solar energy she absorbed went towards things beyond just the same optic blasts. For example providing the necessary energy to actually elicit all the changes going on in her body right at that moment. And then on top of these new mutations, her Slayer powers turned right around and started to enhance each the moment they came into existence to 'Slayer-levels', even though in terms of strength she already was at 'Slayer' levels, boosting them even further.

But more importantly were the changes to portions of Buffy's brain, creating a direct connection between certain things and her newly acquired mutant powers, namely optic blasts. And so even while her eyes were flashing red and she was making her threat, all of these changes were happening almost in a flash inside of her body. So when her power spiked beyond the most powerful optic blast that Cyclops could ever have achieved, it could be blamed on her Slayer powers.

A deep rumble filled the ground as something seemed to change within the Slayer, the energy spewing from her optics becoming even more agitated than anyone had ever seen before. That seemed to be the final straw as the Fyarl demon, snapping free of the Gamesmaster's control at the same time, released Willow and began to run for it's life, knowing that it would die if it faced this strangely-powered Slayer in such a rage.

Knowing there was nothing she could do to calm her friend down, at the moment, Willow triggered her telekinesis and shot up into the sky, out of the mutant Slayer's line of sight, and out of the blast radius.

It happened in an instant, but it changed everything hereafter.

An optic blast that spread as wide and as far as the Slayer's vision actually went, but powerful enough that it could stop in its tracks a supersonic jet and probably even push it back a few inches too, even as it might be continuing to try and move forward. Against the mounds of sitting cars and junk and even the solid ground, beneath which the Fyarl's had carved their cavern homes, it broke apart and completely decimated everything in its path.

The ground began to actually break apart, crimson energy shooting through the cracks before blasting it away in a wave of pure optic force. And whatever else was in the path of the superhuman blast of energy was blown away, quite literally, at near-supersonic speeds on their own.

The aftermath however was a bit worst than the actual explosion of power, (which was actually visible from space), as the lot began to collapse into the caves below, destroying what few Fyarl's remained, and those that were still fighting, most of them against the Hulk, scattered and fled as the Gamesmaster's control was broken as the man himself was driven unconscious, rocks and metal hitting him across the skull helping in attributing to the case.

After the demons had finished scattering though, there was still a lot of falling going on and the ground kept trembling for a few more minutes and a dust cloud rising that actually covered the sun for several long minutes before dissipating. Once everything had settled however, the scene showed Buffy, collapsed and unconscious, standing before a trench that went a quarter of a mile deep and actually went straight out for over ten miles, but thankfully the shack where everyone was still huddled, had been behind her and was mostly undamaged.

There was a heavy silence over the battleground for a long breathless moment, until it was broken by Marco who announced, "Cool! I finally got it to work!" holding up a small device about the size of a dinner plate and was showing a single blinking light.

"A little late," Rachel pointed out, picking herself and several of the others up off the floor.

"Well, he's gonna wake back up, isn't he?" the Star Fleet genius countered.

"Let's check on everybody out there," Jake ordered, leading the way out of the shack.

Several minutes later, everyone was gathered around Buffy, Willow carefully holding on to the mutant Slayer, trying to edge her into consciousness without any detrimental side effects using her telepathic powers. So far, to Willow's point of view, and with that Jean's experience with such things, she seemed to be in a mild coma, her mind withdrawn while her body heals itself from whatever trauma it sustained. Still, Willow kept hoping, and reaching for her friend, to help pull her out of the murky depths of her mind.

"Is she going to be OK?" Joyce asked Willow, on the other side of Buffy from the telepath.

"Yeah she just needs to rest for a bit," she answered with false certainty, "Everybody should check on the others, and Marco should make sure his device is working on the Gamesmaster."

Immediately several others went to look for those that had still been the Gamesmaster's pawns, hoping to find them all right, while another group of Cassie, Marco, Rachel, and Prime approached where the Gamesmaster had fallen, buried beneath some rubble, but otherwise alive. Quickly, with Prime's strength, they dug him out and with Marco and Cassie both making sure the psionic-suppressor was working, brought him back to the others. Meanwhile the other children, Captain Marvel have reverted back to the boy that he truly was, were brought back to the shack, thankfully any injuries they suffered were entirely minor and hardly even superficial.

As they brought everyone over, the demons had finished fleeing, and Hulk, or rather Pete slowly rumbled over, with each step he calmed more until his transformation began to reverse and he was Pete Krenzler once more. Pete Krenzler in nothing but his torn jeans and underwear, but still.

"Damn," Xander, having reverted back to himself, removing the ice armor, said looking around, "And I thought it was a junk yard before!"

Besides Buffy's damage to the lot (and 10 miles further out), there was all the battle damage from the rest of the fight with the Gamesmaster's pawns. It looked quite literally like a battlefield, straight from the movies, or the history books.

"Is everyone OK?" Pete hurriedly asked the moment that he could as he joined the group. "Scott? Amy?"

"We're fine buddy," Scott answered, giving his friend a careful pat on the shoulder.

"Thank goodness you got here when you did though," Amy immediately hugged the young man.

"I tried," Pete sheepishly shrugged.

"Well, on behalf of all of us," Jake stepped forward, "thanks. I mean it, thank you. If it hadn't been for . . . well, the Hulk, those demons might have beaten us, or worse."

The young man just blushed, even if it was an adolescent saying these things to him.

"Does anybody need to go to the Hospital?" Giles asked aloud. Nobody felt they did, so he continued, "Well, then perhaps it might be best if we all retired back to the Library for the time being. I have fully equipped First Aid there and it would be a chance to rest for a moment. Joyce, if you would be so kind, I don't believe all of us are up to making the trip on foot."

"Not at all Rupert, not at all," the witch replied with a smile and then looking over everyone, including the Gamesmaster and those still unconscious, she nodded to herself and then made a grand dramatic gesture with both her arms, and in the next instant they all disappeared like they had never been there in the first place.