Title: Sunnydale Heroes – Part 2 of 7

Author: Wicked Raygun

Summary: AU. Superpowers change everything in this reinterpretation of "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "The Harvest". Mild B/A, B/X and W/X.

Disclaimer: Based on characters created by Joss Whedon. I am merely borrowing them to put on a puppet show. Watch them dance.

Notes: This is not a crossover with the show 'Heroes.' This is merely me borrowing a concept I find intriguing and adding it to characters I love.

Also I have very little desire to do a word-for-word rewrite of the first two episodes of BTVS. Those kinds of stories seem a little pointless to me. Anyways, any inaccuracies that come up between my story and the actual episodes have to do with either a deliberate choice on my part, or me just not caring that much. Part 1 will have the most in common with the script, since it's slightly inevitable. After that the story really does become mine.

Also, thanks go out to my beta readers, Grey Wizard and Alun Lewis.

Distribution: Ask and you shall receive. Just email me and I'll get back to you quickly using new-fangled technology. See, I get email on my phone now. Surely jet packs and flying cars are just around the corner.

"Fly?" Xander said, denying Angel's words unconvincingly. "That's impossible. No one can fly!"

Angel didn't react, allowing him to babble on.

"That's a crazy thing to say," Xander said. "You're a crazy person, with crazy thoughts and crazy words coming out of their crazy mouth."

"I can draw the future."

"See?"

Angel reached for a piece of paper inside of his pocket and handed it to Xander, who stared at the folded item before saying, "What? I'm supposed to look at this and think you're not crazy?"

"Yes," Angel replied calmly.

"Well, okay, then." Xander made no move to unfold the paper, and Angel made no move to force him, which only served to further unnerve him.

"If I, uh, look at this, will you go away?" Xander said while taking a few steps backwards.

Angel said nothing.

"I'll just go ahead and take your silence to mean 'yes'."

Xander stopped backing away and began unfolding the paper in his hands. He noticed that there were actually two sheets of paper. When he opened them fully and saw the first one, he gasped.

It was a pencil drawing of him from the skateboard accident that morning, suspended in the air, inches from the ground with a stunned look on his face. Every detail of the moment was perfect, right down to the clothes he was still wearing. He stared at the picture for a long time, taking in every inch of the drawing, before he looked back to Angel.

"Now do you believe me?"

Xander said nothing.

"I'll just go ahead and take your silence to mean 'yes'," Angel said in a way that somehow managed to not actually sound humorous.

"I, I," Xander tried to speak, but found he had nothing to say.

"The Harvest is coming. The Master will rise. And the world is going to end. Do I have your attention?"

Xander nodded.

"There's a girl: blonde, strong, surprisingly spry. She's the Slayer. If that doesn't mean anything to you now, it will soon. When the time is right, give her this." Angel pulled out a black box and gave it to Xander.

"Wait! How will I—"

"You'll figure it out," Angel interrupted. He turned around and began to walk away. As he turned a corner, he spoke again. "And get off the streets. It's not safe at night."

Xander just stood there feeling overwhelmed for a few moments before going after Angel.

"Wait! I don't understand any of this!" He turned the same corner Angel had and couldn't find him anywhere.

Finally, Xander turned his attention to the black box in his hands. He opened it and found a silver cross necklace.

Finding the Bronze was less trouble than Buffy would have thought. Cordelia hadn't been kidding when she had said that Sunnydale didn't have a whole lot of town. The bouncer waved her through after stamping an X on her hand.

Given the bleak exterior, the atmosphere inside the Bronze was unsurprisingly dark and foreboding. The shadows that lingered in every nook and cranny of the place seemed almost strategically placed. And, indeed, she saw many teenagers taking advantage of them by groping and fondling one another in relative obscurity. Had it not been for her own Slayer-enhanced vision, she wouldn't have noticed them at all.

Buffy went around the place trying to find anyone from the school, when she noticed someone waving to her. She didn't recognize the boy, but waved back anyway excitedly, desperate to mingle with someone, only to realize to her horror that he had been waving to someone just behind her. She lowered her arm and awkwardly made her way away from the crowd.

Once she broke through the crowds, a flash of red hair caught her attention from the corner of her eye. Willow was sitting at a table, looking dejected and miserable. And it wasn't hard to see why. Cordelia and some other girls who were obviously her cronies were pestering Willow to relinquish her table.

Despite the fact that they hadn't established any deep emotional bond earlier that day – in fact, the whole thing had exploded spectacularly – Buffy felt moved to defend her.

"Cordelia, I've been giving some thought about your advice this morning." The girl and her pack turned their attention to Buffy. "And you're right, it's definitely important to be able to identify the losers around the school."

"What do you say, Willow?" Buffy asked. "Let's leave these losers to their vapid existence."

"Excuse you much!" Cordelia shot back. "We were just leaving, anyway. This table reeks of dweeb." And with that Cordelia and her cohorts left, muttering what were no doubt unpleasant things about Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg.

"Thanks," Willow said, gratefully, forgetting that she had meant to be defensive around this new girl. But anyone who could stand up to Cordelia Chase like that was definitely a person worthy of reconsideration.

Given the good mood, Buffy decided to test her luck.

"You know, a year ago if I had seen what you did," Buffy began. "I probably would have just thought that I was having a brain hiccup and let it go. But I know what I saw, and believe me when I say that out of all the weird things I've seen this year, that doesn't even rate."

Willow stared at the girl nervously.

"So you can move things with your mind," Buffy continued without pausing. She took a seat next to Willow. "That's not something to freak out over. I think it's pretty cool."

Willow slowly started to smile.

"I was kind of hoping you and I could hang out. That's why I came over this afternoon in the first place. You see, I've got this burning desire to not flunk all my classes and your name kept coming up as someone who could help me catch up. That's when I caught the float-y apple show."

Willow took a deep breath. "I'm sorry about that. Not the apple floating, because that's kind of new, but my freaking out post-apple." Willow sighed. "I don't really have someone to talk to about this. Until you saw me, I just thought I was going crazy."

"Well, you're not, as far as I can tell. You're just going through something intense. I can relate. Believe me. Because the thing is," Buffy took a deep breath to compose herself. "The thing is, I'm different too, in the power-y kind of way."

"You can float stuff, too?" Willow asked amazed.

"No. But I can bench press a Harley."

Willow blinked. "What?"

"I'm strong. Like superhero strong. And pretty fast, too. Oh! And I can do back flips and stuff. Well, okay, I could do that before, too, but now it's way easier. I mean, it's not as showy as telepathy or anything, but, you know, it comes in handy."

"Telekinesis."

"What?"

"Telekinesis is moving things with your mind. Telepathy is like mind-reading and stuff." Willow frowned. "And, wow, am I the single most boring person on earth?"

Buffy smiled. "Not at all."

After a quiet moment, Willow spoke again. "Did you know there are a lot of crazy rumors going on about you?"

"Oh? Anything specific?" Buffy asked with a grimace.

"Uh, yeah. Did you really burn down your old school?"

Buffy smiled sheepishly. "Not all of it."

"Okay, Number Four definitely sucked. Not as bad as Two, though, and miles better than Number Three. But Five? Yeah. Five feels like a winner. Five is respectable. Five is significant. A prime number, that's what's needed here."

Xander closed his eyes and tried to remember his dreams. That feeling of freedom, where flying had been about will alone, as thoughtless as lifting your arm. He was convinced that the dreams were the key. He opened his eyes once again, and felt something stir within him, something powerful, something that ached to be unleashed.

He started running. That powerful feeling in his gut shifted, prepared itself. He placed a foot on the ground, and all his weight shifted onto it. Propelled by his forward momentum, he braced himself against his leg and leapt forward with outstretched arms.

And then he was flying. Somehow his body willed itself forward beyond the reach of gravity. A profound joy gripped him.

No, wait. That was gravity.

He fell back to the earth gracelessly. His body rolled head-over-heels before he came to a complete, and painful, stop.

"Prime numbers are overrated," he said with a dragged-out groan.

He stayed there for a couple minutes, in that awkward, tangled heap of limbs, pondering Attempt Number Five.

It had certainly hurt more than Two and Four, but definitely no more than Three, the reigning champion of pain and humiliation. Of course, the real question was: had he actually started to fly that last time, or was that just his imagination?

He smirked. Of course, there was the distant possibility that after Attempt Number Three he had knocked himself unconscious and had simply dreamed the last two attempts. A twinge of pain when he shifted his weight killed that thought quickly. Somehow, he doubted unconsciousness would hurt this much.

Xander frowned. He was mostly sure that the strange powerful feeling had been more than just inertia. He could swear something had clicked, or at least, almost clicked in those final tenths of a second.

"Okay," he said to himself. "Time for Number Six."

He got up slowly, but determinedly. After a limb-by-limb inspection of himself to prove that everything was still attached and functioning, he tried to capture that feeling again.

And failed miserably. Again.

To hell with it.

After the crash from Attempt Number Six, he got up quickly. Somehow, his anger and frustration had blown past all his aches and pains. He marched over to his backpack and pulled out the two pictures that Angel had given him earlier.

The first picture had shown him hovering inches from the ground after he had collided with a railing, an event that had happened that morning.

The second picture, though, was different. It didn't show the past. It showed the future. Or at least, he thought it did.

In the picture, he was wearing the same clothes he had on now. But he was flying. And not just hovering, either. No, he was actually flying. According to the picture, he was easily a couple hundred feet off the ground. And it was definitely him in the picture, too. The goofy grin plastered onto his face was far too unflattering to be merely an artist's whimsical interpretation.

Xander sighed while looking at the picture. A big part of him wanted to crush the pieces of paper in his hands into a ball and forget everything about this day.

Instead, he folded the papers neatly and put them in his backpack. Home, he decided. He would fly another day. For now, what he needed was sleep – and possibly a chiropractor.

He left the dark, empty playground.

In any other town, it might seem odd to have cemeteries next to public parks. But the people of Sunnydale rarely gave it a second thought, anymore. There were twelve cemeteries in good old Sunny D, and nearly as many public parks – the Mayor of Sunnydale had never met a public works project he didn't like – there was only so much town to go around and, well, you had to put the things somewhere, after all.

Besides, thanks to the zoning laws, most of them were beautiful, well-kept places and were open to the public, anyway.

So, with all that in mind, it was understandable that Xander would cut through a cemetery to get back home. He'd done it many times in the past and it had never been a problem before.

But tonight would be different.

They just seemed to appear in front of him. One moment he was by himself, the next moment, they were there. Two of them: a man wearing a white jacket that was straight out of Miami Vice, rolled up sleeves and all, and a blonde girl wearing an honest-to-God catholic school girl uniform. They both smiled at him.

"Hi," the girl said in a shy voice. "We're kind of lost. Do you know how to get to The Bronze?" The girl leveled a look at Xander that nearly made him trip over himself. He never did well when he was suddenly confronted by a pretty girl.

But the Don Johnson lookalike just rolled his eyes. "Oh, give me a break, Darla. There's nobody around. Let's just grab the schmuck, and take him to the Master."

"Ugh, Thomas, haven't I taught you anything? You should never miss an opportunity," the girl said, trailing off. She smiled, and her face changed into something out of a nightmare.

"To play with your food," she finished.

Suddenly, Xander was hoisted into the air. Thomas had just suddenly seemed to appear right in front of him and lifted him by his shirt. His face was the same as Darla's. Only know Xander noticed something else.

His teeth were now fangs.

"Who says I don't like to play with my food?"

And then Thomas threw Xander into a tree. There was a thud, sudden pain, and then he fell to the grass.

Thomas picked him up again, this time by the neck, only for Xander to knee him in the groin. He let go of him and stumbled backwards a few steps, cradling the sensitive area as he whimpered.

"You ass!" Thomas said after a few seconds, his voice seething in frustration as he heard Darla laugh. "Who does that?"

Instead of defending his manliness, Xander started to run.

He didn't get very far, before Darla caught up to him. She gripped him by the shoulder and yanked back hard, sending him crashing onto his back. Then she launched a kick into his stomach that knocked the air out of his lungs and sent him careening onto a fresh grave.

When she got close, Xander had enough foresight to grasp some dirt and throw it at her face. She sputtered, and took a few steps back. He took a shaky breath and got to his feet.

Thomas had recovered by then and closed in on them at incredible speed. But Darla stopped him with a powerful hand to his chest.

"No, wait. He's got spirit. I think I'll keep him and beat it out of him."

A jealous look crossed Thomas's face, and he snarled at her. "We're supposed to bring offerings to the Master."

"And we will. But first, I want a new toy."

"No! Guys who knee me in the junk get killed hard. They don't get eternal life."

"I hardly think we should hold good aim against him. And besides," Darla said, turning a hard look on him, "since when do I let you make decisions?"

Thomas just scoffed, pretending not to be afraid of her. "Fine. Whatever."

"Good, boy." She turned back to Xander. "As for you, how about some fun?" She sauntered over to him.

"You're vampires," Xander said shakily.

Darla smiled. "Yes, we are."

Xander looked within himself, desperately thinking back to those moments where he felt something stir within him.

"Can you fly?" Xander asked.

Darla frowned at him. "I think I may have hit you too hard. And, no, we can't fly."

Xander felt a powerful sensation surge through his body. He smiled at her.

"Good."

And then he shot up into the night sky.

After about a half hour of talking about their respective super powers, the girls decided to walk home from The Bronze.

"Vampires are real?"

"Yes," Buffy answered patiently for the third time. Willow looked like she was about to hyperventilate.

After a long pause, Willow asked, "Now when you say 'vampires', are we talking full-on Dracula here, or is it more like Anne Rice?"

"Actually, it's a little bit closer to Lost Boys. Only they don't blow up when you kill them. Well, okay, that's not exactly true. But instead of a shower of blood, they get all dusty."

"Okay," Willow said slowly, "So, no explosions of blood. That sounds like a good thing, I guess. Especially in this day and age. The last thing you want to do is catch, um, you know, certain stuff."

"Ugh, I try not to think about that part too much. I actually asked my Watcher about that once, and he assured me that vampires can't transmit diseases. But still—" Buffy shivered visibly.

"And," she continued, "where slaying is really brutal is in the fashion. I've had to sacrifice many a cute blouse to the cause. Vamp dust may come out with a little bit of baking soda, and even blood comes out of certain things if you know what you're doing. That doesn't protect my clothes from getting ripped to shreds, though. And I can't sew to save my life. So, for a while there, I was wearing my ex-boyfriend's letter-man jacket. Those things are shockingly sturdy – really helped cut back on the wardrobe fatalities."

Willow had smiled and remained quiet throughout Buffy's rambling. After a while, she noticed.

"I'm freaking you out, aren't I?"

"Completely the opposite. I'm just amazed that I'm actually having a conversation with someone about the more practical aspects of vampire hunting."

"Slaying."

"Right, I meant, 'slaying'." Willow looked thoughtful. "The Slayer – that's such a cool codename."

"Technically, it's more of a title."

"It does sound very officious."

"Actually, it sounds like a death metal band. But I've learned to cope. Mostly."

The two girls giggled.

Willow quieted down and then asked, "Do your parents know?"

Buffy shook her head sadly. "No. Not really. I tried to tell them after the fire, but that didn't work out too well for me. They had me committed for a while," she finished quietly.

"Oh, god," Willow said quietly, a stricken look on her face.

"Yeah. After that, my parents started to fight a lot more. I mean, they always fought, but after that, they didn't even bother to try to hide it anymore. The divorce should be finalized in the next couple of months."

They walked in silence for a few moments, before Buffy began to talk again.

"You were right not to tell your parents. They probably wouldn't understand. Even if you tried to show them what you can do, they might not even notice it. In my experience, most people go into major denial when confronted with this kind of stuff. I mean, I killed a vampire in front of the entire graduating class that year. But all anyone seems to remember is me lighting the place on fire, which I didn't even do on purpose."

Willow looked at her skeptically, but nodded anyway.

Darla was furious, confused as well, but mostly, she was just enraged. Her Prey had gotten away from her. She couldn't remember the last time that happened. Admittedly, it was the most unique escape she had ever seen. But nevertheless, she prided herself on being an artist of death. And what had happened at the cemetery made her feel like an amateur. She had been getting sloppy lately.

And the worst part would have to be that she was going to have to report her failure to The Master who should be rising even now.

What a great way to greet the newly risen doom of humanity, she thought sarcastically.

She turned a glare on her hunting partner Thomas, who still had a bewildered look on his face. "Go," she ordered him. "Find food. And stop looking like such a simpleton."

He nodded and left, still looking dazed. Darla frowned at his clothes. She really needed to speak to him about them. He was starting to stand out too much with his dated clothing. What a vacuum for fashion the 1980's had been.

Darla took a moment to compose herself, getting into character, and then made her way to the bar, searching for an easy mark. It wasn't long before she struck up a conversation with a teenager named Jesse.

"So, um, what did you say your name was?"

"Darla."

"Darla. You know, I haven't seen you around before. Are you from around here?"

"No, but I have family here."

"Have I met them?"

She grinned at him hungrily. "You probably will."

Giles was thoroughly unhappy. He had botched this entire day miserably. Weeks of planning and not a small amount of string pulling from the Council, completely gone to waste in one day.

A Slayer who didn't want to fulfill her calling? Who had ever heard of such a thing?

Once again, Giles found himself wishing he could get his hands on the journals of the girl's previous Watcher. But the Council still hadn't located them all. The man had been far too paranoid and kept his notes in many different places, without informing the Council.

Giles winced at the thought of how they found the man with an apparent gunshot wound to the head. He then shook the thought from his mind, focusing on his ire.

In complete desperation, he had even gone to that damn club and found nothing. Bloody teenagers and their pathetic excuses for music, he fumed. And to top it all off, he realized that he had some reports to finish. His cover at the library wasn't a particularly difficult job, but it did generate an obscene amount of paperwork. And now he had to make his way back to the school.

He had been crossing the campus grounds when it happened.

Someone landed, or rather crashed into the ground. His momentum caused him to skid on the grass, almost bouncing along it before he tumbled to the ground in what looked to be a painful heap.

The flying man stood up on shaky legs and then fell over again, laughing hysterically.

"Bloody hell."

End of Part 2