Author's Note: After more than eighteen years, I have returned to perhaps the most insane of all my Buffyverse stories – and, considering that my other stories include Dojo Hard and I Am the Walrus, that's pretty insane. It dates from before I adopted my present custom of using US English for fics based on US shows, games, and movies, and UK English only for British shows and books, and so US readers will just have to put up with the British spellings. I doubt if anyone will remember the story so far, after such a long time; you'll have to re-read from the beginning. Here, one more time, is the ludicrous summary: AU, everybody's human, no vampires. Buffy is the Prime Minister of Iceland. Spike is a Jivaro head-hunter in the Brazilian rain-forest. Can they get together?
Chapter Twelve
"Okay, team," Riley said, "We'd better get to know each other before we start this operation. I'm Colonel Riley Finn, US Army Rangers, and my 2-in-C is Marine Master Sergeant Robin Wood. Beside him are Liam Angle, former Olympic wrestler, and Warren Mears, CIA, comms and computer technician. The rest of you, introduce yourselves."
"Captain Caleb Mal Castle, Air Force chaplain, retired DD," spoke up a tall man who wore a clerical collar and a long brown coat. "Some people call me Captain Hammer." He leered at a pretty South American girl. "The hammer is my penis."
"It come out near me, I cut it off," the girl said, a knife appearing in her hand in a blur of speed. "I am Ampata Gutierrez from Peru, señores, and I was with Sendero Luminoso, but now Peru is not safe for me, and I come to Brazil."
"You're a Commie," Angle growled, shooting an accusing glance at Robin Wood who had recruited the Peruvian girl.
Ampata shrugged. "Not so much," she said. "I just like to kill people. And eat marmalade sandwiches."
"That's the spirit," Riley said. "Next?"
"Ah'm Lyle Gorch, this is mah brother Tector, and mah wife Candy," an unshaven and scruffy individual declared. He and his brother both wore Stetsons and had revolvers holstered at their waists, and his dyed blonde wife wore a purple dress with an almost indecently low neckline. "We had to leave Texas for our health, and we decided not to go to Bolivia. It didn't work out too well for Butch and Sundance."
"Frederick Gruenshtahler," one of two identical blond-haired men said, "and mein brother Hans. Former Red Army Faction. We had to leave Deutschland for our health, and we decided not to go to Bolivia. It did not work out too well for Che Guevara."
"More damn Commies," Angle grumbled.
"Nein," Hans Gruenshtahler said. "We rob banks to keep the money, not to give to proletariat. We are good capitalist revolutionaries."
"Rainforest Gates," a tall black man with a shaven head declared. "I'm your great white hunter for this trip, though I happen to be black."
The last members of the army Riley had gathered were led by a woman who was blue-eyed, fair of skin, and with hair that was either a natural blonde or at least far more skilfully dyed than that of Candy Gorch. "I am Clara das Neves," she declared.
"She used the name 'Glory' when she was a stripper in Manaus," Robin Wood told Riley. "She'll do as our native guide, and she might not look tough but she's a BJJ expert. A BJ expert too, or so I'm told."
"And these are my employees Mestre, Zangado, Soneca, Dengoso, Feliz, Atchim, and Dunga," the woman went on, indicating seven short and swarthy local men who all carried pickaxes and shovels.
"Miners?" Riley queried, looking somewhat perplexed.
"Gold miners," Wood confirmed. "If you want to mess up the Jivaro tribal lands, gold miners are exactly what you need. They'll destroy the vegetation, pollute the rivers, and, who knows, they might even find gold and then there'll be an inrush of miners that will wreck the land totally. And, once we get to the town nearest to the target area the mayor, Ricardo Wilkins Neto Junior, has promised to lend us a hand. Officially he's the local agent for FUNAI, the department that looks after the indigenous tribes, but that's only so he can claim the salary. Really he hates them as much as I do and will be happy to provide us with some extra muscle."
"Excellent!" Riley exclaimed, beaming. "Great job. Your band of merry men pretty much fits the traditional template of rustlers, cut-throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists. Okay, you had to make do with Texan bandits instead of Mexicans, and the nearest you could get to Methodists is a defrocked priest, but it's close enough." He turned back to the motley assembly of desperados. "Get to the chopper!"
"We don't have a chopper," Angle pointed out.
"Oh, right. Okay, get to the boats!"
The villainous crew shouldered their weapons and set off toward the river. The seven gold miners began to sing as they marched.
"Eu vou, eu vou
P'ra casa, agora, eu vou
Eu vou, eu vou, eu vou, eu vou
Eu vou p'ra casa, agora, eu vou
Eu vou, eu vou..."
0 – 0 – 0 – 0
Buffi drove Spike, Giles, and Drusilla to the airport. Dorúnn insisted on coming along too and Buffi failed to dissuade her. Buffi expected Dorúnn to make a nuisance of herself pestering Spike, the up-side of which was that it would make it easier for her to hold back her emotions as she said what she hoped would only be a temporary goodbye, but what she hadn't expected was that Dorúnn would be fascinated by Drusilla and, even more unexpectedly, Spike's sister had been okay with that and had treated the teenager with amused tolerance, even fondness.
"You have a somewhat unusual name, Prime Minister, if I may say so," Giles remarked, as Buffi drove. "I was under the impression that only an approved list of names was allowed for Icelanders, and I gather that 'Buffi' is not on that list."
"Strictly speaking, my name is Böðveig, which means 'Battle Power'," Buffi revealed, "but we simplified it for the benefit of English speakers, when I went to the Olympics, and it stuck."
"My beautiful Rupert struggled with my name of Mukusa-Yawáa-Núa, 'Black Jaguar Woman', and that is why he calls me Drusilla," Drusilla put in, "and Anank-Tshuin-Yerush, 'The Far-Wandering Army Ant', became Spike."
"Yeah, it was a bit like that," Buffi agreed.
"I have become much more fluent in Shuar Chicham now, and I'd be perfectly willing to start using your real names, if you wish," Giles told Drusilla.
"No, my Rupert, you may keep calling us Spike and Drusilla or Dru," she replied. "I like the name you gave me, and also my real name would be too long and complicated for you to shout out when you reach orgasm."
0 – 0 – 0 – 0
"Miss Edith says that I should give this to you," Drusilla said to Dorúnn, as they approached the check-in desk. She took off her pearl necklace and handed it to the girl.
"It's beautiful, but way too much," Dorúnn said, trying to give it back.
"Take it," Drusilla insisted. "The arutam spirits, speaking through Miss Edith, have told me that you should have it and that it would be bad if I took it back to Brazil. Also, Rupert worries that Customs would charge duty on it. I took it as a trophy from a defeated enemy and so I do not have a receipt."
"Well, if you're sure… thank you very much," Dorúnn said. "The only thing I have to give you is… this." She handed Drusilla a packet of chocolate-coated salted Lakkris, Icelandic liquorice. "Don't eat them all at once," she warned. "They're a mild laxative."
Buffi was saying goodbye to Spike. "I wish I could go with you, but my position as Prime Minister makes that impossible, unless I could set up some kind of state visit," she said. "Come back as soon as you can. I'll be waiting."
"Soon as we've sorted this trouble Dru's seen in her visions, I'll be back," Spike promised. He concentrated hard and spoke in Icelandic. "Þetta reddast!"
Buffi laughed. It was a common saying in Icelandic and meant 'It will be fine'. "Well done," she said. "I'll have to try learning some Portuguese… or even your own language."
"I wouldn't bother with the Shuar Chicham, love," Spike said. "There's only about fifty thousand of us, mostly in Ecuador and Peru, and only a couple of thousand in Brazil, so it wouldn't be a lot of use."
"There are only three hundred thousand of us Icelanders," Buffi said, "but we're still delighted when anyone goes to the trouble of learning Icelandic. Then we speak English with them anyway."
0 – 0 – 0 – 0
Buffy watched as the plane hurtled down the runway and took off and then, sighing, she turned away and headed for the airport exit.
Anya met her there and she looked worried. "Buffi, you need to get to Alpingishus right away," she said. "There's an emergency debate and a move to depose you as Prime Minister."
"What?!" Buffi exclaimed. "Is it because of my opposition to whaling?"
"No, it's your financial stability measures," Anya told her. "Apparently the bankers feel they would handicap them in the international markets, and they've been conspiring against you behind the scenes."
Buffi grimaced. "They'd rather risk the financial stability of the whole country than miss out on some profits?"
"Apparently, yes," Anya confirmed. "They've hired the lawyers Wolf, Musk-ox, and Reindeer, and they've persuaded many of the members of the Thing to go along with their plans."
"Well," said Buffi, "we'll see about that."
0 – 0 – 0 – 0
"These are very tasty," Drusilla remarked, after eating one of the chocolate-coated Lakkris sweets, "but I will take note of Dorúnn's warning and eat only the one." A flight attendant was approaching, pushing a trolley of drinks, and Drusilla held up a hand to attract his attention. "Excuse me, where can we go to join the Mile-High Club?"
The flight attendant frowned. "You are correct that I am one of the few male flight attendants who are not gay, but it is against airline regulations for me to… fraternise… with the passengers," he said.
"I don't mean with you, silly," Drusilla said. "I mean with my Rupert."
"Ah," said the attendant. "Well, that is against regulations too."
"Please?" Drusilla pleaded, batting her eyelashes and proffering a fair-sized wad of Icelandic króna.
The attendant pursed his lips. "Well, I suppose it would do no harm," he said. "There is a curtained alcove for the attendants to take rest breaks. It will not be in use for the next forty minutes. I will pretend not to notice… but try not to make too much noise."
"I'll try," Drusilla said, "but it will be hard."
"It already is," Rupert said, "rather to my surprise, after our exertions over the past few days."
0 – 0 – 0 – 0
The expedition came to the end of the day's travel along the river and halted for the night. An indigenous tribesman in a dug-out canoe, propelled by a small outboard motor, passed the campsite. None of the mercenaries took any notice of its passing… except for Ampata. She made a couple of surreptitious gestures to the man, positioning herself so that her own body screened her hand movements from the rest of the villainous crew, and in reply the tribesman took off his battered hat and fanned his face with it, briefly, before returning it to his head and continuing on up the river.
A little while later, as the others were starting to get the food ready, Ampata slipped away from the camp and headed upstream along the riverbank. She veered inland when she spotted a fourteen-foot black caiman on the bank basking in the last rays of the evening sun, moving back closer to the water once she had passed the big reptile, and smiled as she saw a family of giant otters playing in the river. A moment later she heard a twig snap behind her, and she turned to see Captain Caleb following in her tracks.
"Now where are you sneaking off to?" he asked. "A woman shouldn't go off on her own in a place like this. You never know what might happen to her."
"I can look after myself, Señor priest," Ampata said. Her right hand went behind her back, to where she had a Taurus PT-92 pistol in a concealed holster.
"Maybe, maybe not," Caleb said, advancing. "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16, verse 18. Now, I know what you're thinking. Crazy preacher man spoutin' off at the mouth about the whore of Babylon or some-such. That ain't me. I'm not here to lecture you. Just…" he suddenly accelerated into a full charge… "to punish you!"
Ampata brought her gun out from behind her back, flipping off the safety as she drew, but Caleb had been hiding a telescopic baton in his sleeve and he lashed it forward, faster than she could have expected, and struck her arm hard enough to knock the pistol from her grasp. Ampata responded with a flurry of vicious blows in the style of Bakom, the brutal martial art created for the Peruvian Special Forces. They should have disabled Caleb but he shrugged them off, apparently unhurt, and she realised that he was wearing rigid body armour under his brown coat. She struck with a panther punch to the throat, a killer blow, but hit armour again. His priest's collar was lined with a band of steel.
She seized his arm and applied a Bakom lock, forcing him to drop the baton, but before she could do serious damage he punched her with his other hand hard enough to stagger her and make her lose her grip. She dipped her hand to her belt, drew her knife, and stabbed at his mid-section but again hit body armour. He struck back with a left-right combination of punches and, although she dodged the first, the second struck home and left her dazed. He caught her hand, wrenched the knife from her grasp, and stabbed her in the side. His follow-up punch struck the point of her chin and her eyes rolled up as she lost consciousness.
"And I smote the wicked temptress, punishing her for her evil ways," Caleb said, catching her limp body before she could fall. "Caleb 1, verse 1. I wonder if there any piranhas around these parts." He lifted her up and hurled her into the river where she floated, face down, red trails from her bleeding wound spreading out around her. Further downstream the black caiman reacted to the splash, slid into the water, and submerged. A ripple on the surface, approaching fast, showed that the creature was heading for the floating body.
"Looks like Leviathan is coming for you," Caleb gloated. "Around his teeth there is terror. His strong scales are his pride. Job 41. I'll leave you to his tender mercies." He picked up the fallen baton, and Ampata's fallen pistol, and strode off into the forest. A slow-moving animal, high in the branches of a tree, caught his eye and he brought up the pistol and fired. The animal fell from the tree and thudded to the ground.
A few minutes later he re-entered the camp, where the barbeque was well in progress, and Riley confronted him.
"Where have you been, and what was that gunshot?" Riley asked.
"Thought I'd make a little contribution to the feast," Caleb replied, and he held up the furry creature he had shot. "I hear there are seven critically endangered species in this area, and I'm a big fan of eating all seven, but right now I'm gonna have to go with Sloth."
To be continued…
Author's Note: Clara das Neves is the protagonist of a 1979 Brazilian version of Snow White, rather naughtier than the Disney film, and the names of her seven gold-miner sidekicks are taken from that movie too. You should be able to guess the English lyrics of the song they sing…