(Abandoned Firehouse, Sunnydale.)
Warren Meers stared at the machine with a near predatory grin. The device coming together under his hands was far bulkier than the original, yet his alter ego Lex Luthor had fallen in love with the device as soon as he had laid eyes on it. The normally whispered voice had screamed in near ecstatic glee at the sleek, deadly device and he had quickly set out to find if it was possible to build it.
Snapping the last part onto the sphere, Warren waited as the internal power cell charged before activating the black metal sphere and grinned as it slowly lifted to hover several feet above the ground. The IT-O Imperial Interrogation Droid was definitely something that Lex Luthor would have been interested in, the programming was far beyond anything the bald genius had attempted before. Of course, to simplify matters it was actually designed to be psychotic, to find the most successful manner of harming it's subjects without killing them. Drugs, Physical, Psychological, Emotional, all methods of torture were used by the droid in its attempts to break its target. It was capable of learning the different physical characteristics of its prey to maximize the pain threshold in a wide variety of 'subjects'.
Smiling to himself, Warren motioned for the robot to follow before leading it to a closed off room. Inside was a possible informant on a source of tritium, the only problem was the crazy monks that had it believed it was the only defense against some 'Beast' that they refused to name. Now while he respected their individual beliefs and practices and was even a little awed by their ability to resist his questioning, the problem was they were keeping him from achieving what he needed.
As he entered the room, Warren Meers felt a small measure of regret at what he needed to do, but if he was going to prove that humans were superior to those gathering against them, there were steps that definitely needed to be taken.
Aliens, Demons, Mutants, gods, it didn't matter who or what the threat was, Warren swore he would find a way to stop them.
Of course, it never hurt for him to make a profit while defending humanity from these coming threats, Warren decided before waving the machine forward and taking a seat nearby. Soon after Warren made a note to soundproof this section of the firehouse, it wouldn't do for someone to come by asking about the screaming.
(Junkyard – Sunnydale)
Xander ran through the obstacle course in the brand new Gear suit, it was lighter, more durable and could actually flex and bend a bit, a vast improvement over the original design that was currently sitting back at the warehouse. Dropping into a roll, the armor flexed exactly as designed and allowed him to pull off the move before he launched himself into a leap over a small wall and landed solidly on his feet again.
Smiling behind the armored mask, Xander enjoyed the relative freedom the new armor gave him before looking up into the sky. Crouching low, he leapt for the heavens as his armor activated the Jump Jets he had been testing and tweaking for the last week. While time consuming, Xander had quickly reached the same conclusion that nearly every major power and hero around had come up with, that in war, airpower was key.
Rising towards the sky, Xander made several mental notes about the lift speed and stability to work on later. He was nearly thirty feet up when the jets sputtered and died. He barely managed to bite out a curse as he plummeted back to earth.
Picking himself up off the ground, Xander dusted himself off as he checked the surrounding area for any observer before going back on his run, he was just very glad no one had seen that.
(Five Miles outside Sunnydale.)
Cordelia Chase screamed in rage as she brought the tire iron down on the demon's skull for the sixteenth time making the fallen form twitch again. It had been such a good day too; her parents had left for India on some business deal for daddy, they had apologized and promised her a new corvette if she kept her grades up while they were gone, she had managed to pay off Jonathan Levinson to make sure that happened and she had gotten a date with a totally hot college student.
That's when things had started to really go wrong.
First, Parker had taken her out to a totally lame Italian place and tried to ply her with oysters and wine, then he had gotten really grabby before kicking her out of the car when she had refused his advances, and then he had gone and gotten himself eaten in one quick bite by this snake demon thing, and he had actually had the nerve to keep the keys with him.
She had quickly decided that her options were to either kill the demon, retrieve the keys and drive herself back to town. Or walk the five miles back into Sunnydale in the rapidly approaching night, and the thought of walking five miles in her brand new Pradas was enough to tip the scales in the direction in which they currently stood.
Bringing the tire iron down again, Cordelia was pleased that the demon had stopped twitching under her impacts now and merely lay still.
Taking a deep breath Cordelia slowly pried the things mouth open and blinked at the white shoes that were currently twitching in the back of the things throat, brushing a stray lock of hair off her sweat drenched brow, Cordelia reached in and started helping the college playboy out of the demon.
(Xander's Warehouse.)
Iapetus worked diligently on his child as he wondered at the naming of himself and his father. While he had no desire to usurp Ouranos, he found it odd that his father would knowingly name him after a being that had betrayed and helped castrate his father.
Perhaps Ouranos was hinting at something.
Snapping the last component in place, the Titan construct watched as the first of his children came online. At eight feet tall, the single eyed Cyclops would serve as the first guardian of the Hellmouth, and in the coming days he would be joined by others until Ouranos was safe.
While they fed off the ambient energy of the Hellmouth itself, the weak energy signature of the sealed portal meant that they would need to stay nearly directly on top of the dimensional rift to survive.
While he felt 'sadness' at condemning his children to such an existence, he knew that his creator was a mortal, he had to sleep, to eat, to interact with others.
The Cyclops would need none of these things, they would build weapons and armor and defend the Hellmouth against all that attempted to use it.
As the first of his children left the warehouse making its way towards the sealed portal, Iapetus turned back to work.
(Rosenberg residence.)
Willow slid the gauntlet in place as she checked the notes for what seemed like the thousandth time. She had discovered that casting spells with certain metals nearby had an effect on the ease and power of her spell casting; gold, silver and platinum worked to give her a slight boast, but with a combination of aluminum and cold iron she could amplify her spells to a level unheard of before.
It had taken all of the last couple weeks of trial and error to find the right combination of metals; silver from junked jewelry and silverware, gold from old computers and palladium from a few of the older engines in the local junkyard.
She had used miniscule amounts at first until she had found the right amalgam for maximum power. With that combination she had scaled up and had first tried a necklace only to find that while it would increase her personal powers greatly, it was next to useless as anything other than wide area affect spells as there was no way to focus the energy.
Next she had stolen a page from the Llord of the Rings books and tried to work it into a ring, this had proven much better but had the drawback of only being useful for direct 'ray' attacks.
As she had outright refused to even consider a wand, she had searched through Giles' books for an answer, while belts, shoes, crowns and even contact lenses had been considered and rejected before she had found mention of a Glove of Myhnegon. Reading over the description, she had discovered that while the glove itself was a very dark artifact, the idea behind it was sound and with a full range of hand motions it would allow the wearer to access a nearly full range of spells and powers.
Thus she had set off, commandeered one of Xander's gloves and went to work on duplicating the design while adding some additions of her own in the form of protection runes and sigils within the glove itself to protect the wearer from any possible backlash.
Now, while Xander was out testing his new armor, Willow had decided to try her own. Intellectually, she knew that testing something like this alone was both dangerous and stupid, yet she could not help but think that anyone she told would likely try to stop her.
Reaching her hand out towards the pencil, Willow let a small trickle of magic flow into her hand and silently willed it to rise.
In a flash every single thing not bolted to the floor had shot into the air to hang suspended near the ceiling, surprised Willow almost let the spell drop before she caught herself and willed everything back down. She really didn't want to explain to her parent why everything in her room was broken. As the bed, desk and table all returned to their rightful places, Willow took a deep breath before squealing in glee at how well that worked. Her joy was quickly washed away as the backlash of such a powerful spell hit, exhausting the young witch.
Taking off the gauntlet, Willow tucked it safely under her bed before lying down to sleep and she was unconscious before her head hit the pillow.
Under her bed the gauntlet slowly curled into a fist before relaxing back to its normal state.
(Los Angeles)
Angel double checked that all the armor was on right before taking an unneeded breath and kicking the reinforced door.
The assembled vampires within stared in shock as he strode through the shattered entrance and flexed his right forearm. With a snap, the foot long Polgara spike jumped from its hidden holster and locked into position.
With a roar the gathered vampires rushed him.
The Knighthood of Dusk, or Night-hood as it was more commonly known, was an ancient order of Vampire Knights, originally formed from Fallen Templar's. While armored differently from his true foe, the plate mail wearing demons would give him an idea of what he truly needed to work on in his quest to bring down the armored warrior that had attacked Buffy.
Diving into the fray, Angel started to mentally take notes for future improvements.
(Night time – Pylea)
Kendra stared over the small rise at the slaver encampment with hatred. Winifred Burkle had explained how things worked in this world and the displaced slayer had grown cold with rage. She had betrayed the Council, attacked a Watcher, fled from her guardian and ignored her duty as she fled to Sunnydale.
On arriving she had met Xander, the Iron Knight. He had shown her how to fight with newer weapons, how to survive impossible odds, how to have fun and most importantly, he had shown her how to eat a Twinkie.
And then he had been killed, blown up in a Lab accident of all things, and while she didn't know if that world still existed she knew that if she ever found evidence that the explosion that had sent her here was anything other than an accident, someone was going to die.
Slipping back down the hill, Kendra started to circle around in the darkness, her face was covered in a deathly white skull mask Fred had managed to make after several disastrous trials and errors.
Kendra smiled at the memory of Fred holding up her prize on her sixteenth attempt, covered head to toe in the hardened white clay herself. While Fred had been busy with that, the slayer had focused on the task of building an armory from scratch.
Stone, Bone and Horn had come together in a collection of knives, axes and spears. Weapons of war against the demonic hoards that controlled this world and enslaved the humans, Kendra knew that the odds of her actually succeeding in this nearly one woman war were next to impossible.
Yet she could not simply hide in a cave as the cries of the people haunted her.
Hefting her secret weapon, Kendra charged the camp and with slayer strength launched the powder filled bladder directly into the campfire.
With a thunderous bang the bladder exploded in a flash of white light, blinding and deafening the guards and sleeping demons, it also scared the chained humans but at the moment she was more concerned about the armed and extremely unhappy slavers.
The slavers stood no chance.
(Graveyard – Sunnydale.)
Joyce Summers hugged her daughter as she cried; watching the coffin slowly sink into the grave drove home some hard truths for the Summers matriarch, about how hard she had been pushing Buffy to succeed recently.
As the two somber men slowly started to shovel dirt into the grave Joyce hugged Buffy again before slowly leading her away from the small gathering of friends and family that had come to pay their final respects for one Billy 'Ford' Fordham.