BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Marvel U by the parent company and its many artists/writers.
"Blast," said Giles. "Clearly the collapsible pole isn't in the bag, it's strapped to the side of it. Now, maybe if you stopped that ridiculous searching, you could start working on retrieving the parchment, so we can summon our own creature to get us out of here."
From his own, separate, cage, Andrew looked across at Giles with a cold glare.
"It's a pole," Andrew stated. "That's a piece of paper floating in mid-air. Maybe, if I stretched, I could knock it off the pedestal, but there's no guarantee it wouldn't just drift away, far out of reach. We don't need a pole. We need a spear."
##
"Or," Giles offered, adjusting his glasses. "You could make a loop with your shoelaces."
"Huh."
As the elemental stepped forward threateningly, Buffy instinctively winced and touched her hair.
"Charcoal is definitely not a fashion statement I want to make," she said, eying the creature warily.
"I got this," Remy announced, stepping forward and shoving his staff into the elemental's chest. "Can't hurt me if you can't touch me."
The elemental grabbed its end of the staff with both burning hands.
As the metal heated up, becoming uncomfortably warm on Remy's end, the mutant sent a faint kinetic charge into his staff, but thought better of it and quickly stopped.
Stepping back suddenly, Remy pulled the staff from the monster's grip and stuck the end under its chin.
Xander saw his chance to help and ran forward, sweeping the monster's legs out from under it with his sword.
Thanks to the pressure Remy was putting under its chin, the elemental went down in a crash and stayed on the ground as Remy adjusted his weight. The metal began to heat up again, but not as quickly, because the fiery colors of the elemental were quickly fading to gray.
"It gets stronger as it turns to stone," Xander asked. "Right? Well, I don't think my blade can make rock shish-kebab but if it turns to wood, we can start nicking chunks out of it."
"Thanks for de assist, but move!" Remy yelled to Xander, who nodded and retreated to the safety of the stairs.
##
Noting that the wooden ceiling above him was free of arms - and that the monster was becoming harder and harder to hold in place - Remy threw some kinetically charged cards upwards and dove out of the way.
The cards hit the center of the large square bare patch and exploded.
Rather than breaking apart in a shower of kindling, as Remy had expected, the section of ceiling came down as a single solid piece.
When the dust cleared, Remy was shocked to see a human clinging to the surface of the boards.
"No-one said dis place had a second story," Remy said, looking up at the room above him through the gaping hole he'd made in its floor. "Those bars I see form a cage?"
"Giles?" Willow asked, surprised.
##
Giles looked up, as the elemental pinned to the floor by the boards he was sprawled on shifted its weight, moving him from side to side as well.
"Thank you for the rescue," Giles said, warily. "But I seem to be on top of something strong. Quite strong... Any tactical advantage in my position, or should I follow my first instinct and get clear?"
"Dog pile," Xander shouted and threw himself forward onto the boards, where he was shortly joined by Buffy, Willow and Remy.
"Shouldn't you," Giles said as he was rocked back and forth by the pinned elemental. "You know, be attacking it, or something?"
"First thing to try," Remy answered. "When fighting a mimic is to feed it something it may not like."
"Hey," Buffy asked as she held on to the wide piece of floor. "You come through the fall okay?"
"As well as can be considered," Giles said. "I must say I preferred the stairs on the way up."
"Yeah, about dat," Remy commented. "Dis is gettin' ridiculous. You keep sayin' the place is witch construction, but what Gambit want to know is: where'd dey get the big spending budget?"
"Government spending," Giles said. "Local government. Our Mayor... Well," he continued, tilting his head to look Remy in the eyes. "This is awkward. What the bloody hell are you?"
Before Remy could respond, the trapped elemental punched upward, the boards split and everyone went flying to the sides.
##
Buffy was up and on her feet first.
Remy and Giles tied for third.
Unfortunately, the elemental came in second.
##
Buffy took stock of the elemental, noticing how the construct's front half was wooden, while its palms and back were stone. Even as she watched, the linear facial features softened as the creature worked more air into its system.
Deciding Buffy was the greater threat, the elemental reached down by the still woozy Xander, grabbed the sword and charged for the Slayer.
Willow rolled over and, with a muttered 'Impedi', sent a tendril of energy coursing towards some debris near the elemental's leg.
She pulled, the creature tripped and the sword went flying.
##
Giles brushed himself off and started running down the narrow corridor towards the second set of stairs.
"I'll be right back," he yelled over his shoulder. "Hopefully with summoned reinforcements."
##
After sprinting upstairs, Giles ran into the heart of the complex. Absently noting that his former cellmate was still safely locked in the second cage, Giles turned his full attention to the pedestal where he'd last seen the spells he needed to...
There was nothing on the pedestal but a pile of ash.
##
Giles stood, looking in mute horror at the burnt remains. His fists clenched and unclenched several times.
He spun on his heel and, grabbing the bars of the cage, yelled into Andrew's face: "What did you do?"
"There was a third challenge," Andrew said with a sigh, adjusting the backpack strapped to his shoulders. "I think it must have been about humility. My attempt to retrieve the spell paper without raising the bars of the cage... No, wait, that's charity. Right?"
"You're saying that," Giles said, walking over to a lever on the far wall. "The parchment was spelled to explode if someone on the outside showed that they valued it more than the life of another," he continued, pulling the lever. The cages in the room raised towards the ceiling. "As shown by them reaching for it, before pulling this?"
"Exactly," Andrew said, evaluating his newfound freedom and the expression on Giles' face. As soon as the word had left his mouth, Andrew dove for the hole in the floor Remy's cards had made.
##
Giles blinked and ran forward, frowning in a mix of disapproval and anger as he realized he had moved a second too late...
Andrew gripped the side of the hole and lowered himself down, before dropping the last two feet to the floor.
Brushing himself off, he turned and found himself face to face with the elemental.
Andrew screamed like a girl, punched the monster in the face and, cradling his bruised knuckles with his other hand, bolted for the stairs leading to the surface.
Luckily for him, because the elemental had been absorbing air for several minutes he hadn't broken his fist.
##
Buffy took advantage of the distraction to run up and slide the blade of the sword through where the stone half and the wood half of the elemental met.
She put pressure on turning the hilt sideways as Remy ran up and jammed his staff into the gap she'd made.
The creature's air-infused skin stretched like jelly, but it proved to be no match for the force the Slayer and the mutant were putting in place.
With a snap, the elemental's front half fell forward as a single block. When it hit the ground, its back half crumbled into large pile of earth.
Giles peered down at the room from the hole in its ceiling and winced, because Andrew had already escaped.
"Blast," he snarled. "I didn't even get his name."
##
Sensing the elemental's death, several of the wooden arms above Giles began lowering crystals through the hole to the wooden arms in the entrance to the crypt.
The arms rolled on their tracks, presenting prizes to those present.
The crystals in front of Remy and Buffy were blue; hers a shade lighter. Xander's shone gold and the crystal in front of Willow was a fire engine red.
"Don't touch any of them," Giles quickly yelled. "Or you'll be thrown in a cage, I'll be thrown in a cage and three more crystals will be activated in defense of this place. It might be two more monsters or sets of monsters, seeing as how our erstwhile and nameless 'friend' has escaped, but without a safe way to control anything we do manage to summon, it's just not worth the risk in the slightest."
"You mean that guy just stole something," Xander asked. "Let's go and-"
"No," Giles sighed. "No. He just destroyed a parchment with activation and binding spells, the only one this crypt will produce this decade. All he left with is a crystal containing something that the crypt picked out for him, something that the crypt sensed could be used by him to further his goals. However, even if he does somehow manage to release whatever's trapped inside, without the binding spells it's quite likely to become his worst nightmare."
Far above them, Andrew fell, panting, out of the hole in the wall onto the grass of the graveyard.
He rose to his feet and stumbled onward. When he felt he was quite out of sight of the opening, he collapsed again.
Rolling over, he struggled with the straps of his backpack. When it was clear of his body he reached inside.
One hand brushed the lighter he'd used to set the piece of notebook paper aflame.
The other hand rested on the pole he'd used to set the burning piece of paper on the pedestal.
"This is what separates us from monkeys," Andrew said to himself. "Putting ourselves in someone else's shoes, understanding false belief and," he continued aloud as he pulled from his backpack a very special sheet of spell-inscribed parchment. "Turning it to our advantage."
Remy suddenly started laughing. He'd received somewhat of a beating, so the laughter wasn't as deep as it could have been, but it was heartfelt.
"Huh," Willow asked. "What's so funny?"
"Oh," Remy said, barely managing to contain himself. "And t' think I was actually worried you guys would be eye on the prize types, so completely out for success and fer the 'greater good' you'd do anything at all t' succeed."