BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Marvel U by the parent company and its many artists/writers.
Thanks to reviewer AllenPitt for several points of inspiration for this and upcoming chapters.
I'm having Remy's Marvel U follow a sliding scale version of comic-book time where all the events happening in a decade's worth of published pages, especially if they're someone's early history, may be compressed to a year or two so the characters stay about the same age. While it all makes complete sense to a native, many 'fixed' dates are unreadable outside their frame of reference due to overlap.
It was dark inside the Sunnydale sewers.
The charged card in Remy's hand bathed the walls in a soft purple light as he trudged through the tunnels, his heavy bag secured about his chest.
Not having any particular place to go in town for the next several hours nor any substantial amount of usable money to spend once he got there, he had decided to explore the underground in hopes of finding a lair worth raiding. He was also searching for an abandoned place secure and defensible enough that he wouldn't mind storing a few items for retrieval at a later date.
"Worse come to worse," Remy said with a sigh. "I may be sleepin' down here tonight. Not going to ask Giles for help again, so soon after last night, and the petty cash I put together on my cross-country trip is running low..."
He closed his mouth abruptly and, by reabsorbing the energy running through the card in his hand, returned the sewers to a state of deep shadow.
Footsteps approached from an intersection in front of Remy. In the dim light still filtering down from somewhere, he was able to make out two small figures.
##
One was a boy who appeared to be about six years of age, presumably with dark hair.
A girl, alike enough to be his sister, walked beside the boy.
Not only were they traveling unescorted through the sewers of a Hellmouth, they were hissing to each other in a very reptilian manner... In a way that no human should be able to do without drastic surgery to the tongue.
Frowning to himself, Remy backed up a step into a small darkened alcove, no more than one or two feet deep.
The vampire who had been standing there, pressed up against the walls, unbreathing and as still as death, wasted no time in raising the board in his hands and swinging it towards the back of Remy's head.
With a loud crack, the board connected.
Remy fell forward and hit the ground with a large thud.
The vampire's blow wasn't as bad as it could have been, but the mutant was down for the count.
##
The vampire for his part was clutching his head and screaming, the chip in his head firing searing pulses of energy deep into his grey matter.
"Shut up, shut up!" Spike screamed through the pain. "How was I supposed to know a guy with eyes like that and glowing hands was human?"
After a few moments, the vampire was able to pull himself together.
Wiping his eyes, he looked up to see the boy and the girl still standing there, watching him curiously.
"Move along, snakeheads." He snarled viciously, swapping his normal human-seeming face for one with ridges and yellowed eyes. "Nothing to see here."
Hissing quietly to themselves, the two figures walked into the surrounding darkness and were quickly lost to sight.
##
When he was sure he was once again free from prying eyes, Spike bent low over Remy's unconscious form and began rifling through his pockets.
Remy had chosen to train in threat detection, strength and agility. These were important skills in a thief. He'd also built up his resistance to pain and the ability to carve out a peaceful little world for himself to retreat to in case of torture, either psychic or physical. However, at a basic level, he was human and therefore vulnerable.
To be fair, if someone with Spike's level of strength and the ability to bypass spidey-sense hit Peter Parker in the back of the head with a board, he'd go down just as hard. He'd probably also recover faster, but that's something else entirely.
"Jackpot," Spike announced as he retrieved the mutant's wallet.
Opening it, he found it thick with hundred-dollar bills.
"Now what's," he managed to say, before his words trailed off. He peered more closely at the money. "That's not right."
Staring carefully at the date of circulation on the bills, he flipped through them one by one, then opened the wallet wide enough to check the year stamped on Remy's driver's license.
Frowning, Spike dropped the wallet. It hit Remy's jacket-covered back with a soft thunk and stayed there, rising and falling slightly with each breath from his lungs.
##
Spike, for his part, turned his head towards the ceiling and asked in a loud voice: "What the Hell is going on here?"
Across town, at the campus of Sunnydale University, Willow barely had time to set her books on the floor of her dorm room before the phone rang.
"Hey, this is Willow," she spoke into the receiver. "Classes just ended and I was thinking about heading out do some sympathy shopping for Buffy. What's up?"
Her eyes widened when she realized who was on the other end of the line. "Spike? You're calling from a payphone? It's daylight. Oh, the mayor paid for some to be installed underground? That's a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money. What? Oh, I guess that demons can run businesses too. Why are you calling?"
"A map of Sunnydale with Tara's name circled in red and a pamphlet about a play she's in tonight? Oh, I remember! That's Gambit, her brother. No, a new one. Is he okay? Oh. Easy mistake. Is he... No, of course, not that. I kinda guessed from how you sounded that he's still alive - just out of it. Is he human?"
On hearing the answer, Willow let out a little squeal of excited glee. Apparently, it was loud enough to make Spike drop the phone, so she apologized before continuing with her questions.
"Thanks. Saved us a lot of trouble. What? No we don't like inflicting pain on you. If we did don't you think we'd be a lot more inventive? We're just happy the government poked around in your head so you could only hurt demons. Wait, no, that came out wrong. Look, I'm sorry. If I think about this any longer I'm going to go into epic guilt mode and start baking cookies. Sprinkles? Sure, if it'll help."
"Anyway, you'd better make sure that he's there to see her perform. Seriously, I've seen this in movies, people who invite family members who don't show get their feelings hurt. No, I'm not going. This is her project, personal space is healthy. Yeah, Grant High. He helped us save Giles last night, but I don't know him that well. I guess he's okay."
"What? All of it? Huh. Well, sounds like he fell victim to an area effect spell. His road trip must have been a lot weirder than he let on. You're worried about Dawn? Why? Oh, right. You're British. Highschool's for the four highest grades, she's headed to one of them next year. Hey, mister, I don't care that his boots are extremely heavy. You break a guy, you have to carry him around. It's polite."
Remy shook his head as the world around him swam into focus. He blinked his eyes and was rewarded with the blurry image of his sister in a pretty pink dress. Behind her and far below, he could see a curtain of closely packed golden chains menacing some people laying down on the ground. From the way the light kept playing over the metal, reflecting in brilliant flashes, and the ambient buzzing sound, he decided it was meant to represent wasps or bees. Overall, it was a nice effect.
"Alright. At a guess, dat big blurry patch over there must be th' audience." Remy rubbed the sore spot on the back of his head, grimacing as he noticed he and Tara weren't alone in the booth. "We must be at the play. Don't worry, cherie. Remy will be fine. Dis blonde fella, though? Is he some kindly passerby dat jus' happened to pull me out of the sewer or is he the one who knocked me out in th' first place?"
Spike rose from the disinterested crouch he'd been affecting. "Hey, I was down there, minding my own business. You practically charged into my hiding spot. Can't a bloke defend himself? Regardless, 'Gambit', I'm not the one who's been hiding things from his 'family'. Can you read what it says right here?"
Remy realized that the vampire was holding his ID and followed the pointing finger to the printed year of birth. He sighed. "I can read dat jus' fine. But I know dat you can't. Came as a shock to me when a sheriff pulled me over in Texas and asked me to read it for him. There's something about me reading a number that's clear to me but blurred to you that causes trouble. It gave him a splitting migraine so bad he nearly passed out."
Remy straightened up as well as he could. "Now, I know we're up out of the way and we'd be hard to hear even without the play going on, but." He waved a hand. "Do ya really want me to risk reading it out loud in a room full of kids?"
##
In the audience, two figures sat, but their attention wasn't really on the play. Instead they scanned the corners of the darkened room as if waiting for something to happen.
"Oh my God, this is so boring," one of them said in a bit too loud of a voice. He grinned when a few of the parents sitting nearby turned to shush him. "Yeah, I'm talking to you."
"Hey, quiet down," his companion said, with a gentle elbow to the ribs. "Do you want to get thrown out? Besides, we're trying to remain incognito here."
"Well, it isn't quite working is it? Most of the people here are either parents or still in highschool and while you definitely resemble the latter, I stick out like a sore thumb."
"Hey!" This prompted another round of shushing. "Look, Warren," Jonathan Levinson said, his voice softer than before. "He was a sophomore when I was a senior, you know, the year our old Sunnydale High exploded? Tucker was in my graduating class. In college, he was the one who got me into magic. If his little brother wants us here for some reason, then it's probably a good one."
Backstage, inside a hollow staircase used mainly for musicals, a summoning circle had been set up. Safe from prying eyes, Andrew Wells was following the instructions on the parchment he'd 'liberated' from the crypt. He'd set it up on a small music stand, which had seemed appropriate as part of the instructions called for the playing of a pan-flute.
"This is so cool." He grinned, spinning the green crystal a final quarter turn. "This ritual is witch magic specific, but I should be able to back engineer the principles and summon almost anything."
One last clear note from the pipes shattered the crystal in a blinding flash of light. The candles blew out, leaving the twelfth-grader in darkness, but very much not alone.
In the new and improved sound and lighting booth, the director was complaining to an underling. It was taking a lot of effort to keep his voice under control. "I can't believe this. The big summoning scene is up next and the kid hasn't even shown up for makeup."
"I know he seemed so enthusiastic before," the student said, her braids bobbing. "Think we'll have to have one of the college students fill in for him? Tara knows the play inside and out, but she really looked uncomfortable when we first brought up the idea in casting."
"We could pull it off though, we're playing this production by the book so it's not like the characters actually meet-"
His words were broken off by the sound of the girl in front of him screaming as an attacking monster got caught up in her hair.
On the stage a black-haired girl and her four companions were being menaced by yellow-suited soldiers when a horde of furry creatures burst out from behind the scenery and started attacking friend and foe alike.
"Oh, please," Warren Mears said sarcastically, leaning forward in his seat. "They're supposed to wait until after the Winkie guards are beaten. I've read the Wizard of Oz and-"
"Dude," Jonathan said, tugging on his sleeve. "I don't think they're part of the play."
"Oh... Sweet."
##
"Oh, c'mon," Spike said, from their perch above the stage in the unused and outdated soundbooth. "Just when we were getting to the good part."