Title: Emerald Spark (18/21)
Author: Cyclone
Feedback: Please be gentle.
Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.
Rating: Just a little bad language.
Spoilers: Anything and everything.
Disclaimer: The characters depicted herein belong to other people. I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Summary: After Halloween, everything changes. Sequel to Blackest Night. Part one of Emerald Flame.
Author's Note: Tsk. Xander simply has too many things to do and not enough time to do them.
"Wha- where am I?" Faith started awake. The last thing she remembered was getting shot...
"I had a feeling you wouldn't want official scrutiny," came a friendly, male voice, "so I took care of you myself."
"What are you, a doctor?" she asked, looking around. She was in some sort of warehouse, lying on a makeshift bed, with an IV stuck in her arm. Surgical tools were lying on a tray nearby. She frowned as she recognized her benefactor, "Wait, you're one of Phoenix's men."
"I have many skills," came the enigmatic reply.
Faith snorted, "Yeah, I'll bet. You were undercover, weren't you? Who are you supposed to be, huh? Batman?"
"Who?" he blinked at her blankly.
"Batman," she repeated.
"...Bat... man?" he frowned. "What does a flying, echo-locating mammal have to do with this?"
"Whoever you are, you've got to get out more," she said, shaking her head. "Read some comic books. I have a real good feeling they'll become a lot more relevant in the near future."
"I'll take that under advisement," he said, walking up to the IV hooked into her arm. He jabbed a syringe in the IV bag and injected its contents into it.
"Wait, what are you...?" Faith's voice was alarmed, but she never finished the question as she drifted back to unconsciousness...
An orderly headed up to the nurse's station, "Uh, nurse?"
"What?" came the bored reply.
"That Jane Doe in bed six? With the GSW?"
"What about her?"
"She's gone."
The nurse froze, then slowly looked up, "'She's gone'?"
"Yeah."
"How?"
"Dunno. Walked? Wouldn't be the first time..."
"Not with a gut shot, she didn't, and certainly not with the drugs we had her on. She just came out of O.R. She should be out for another hour."
High above, Xander was acutely aware of Faith's body, draped woozily over him in a very rough approximation of a piggyback ride. "Damn it, Faith," he muttered. "We're gonna have a long talk about this."
Still unconscious, Faith snuggled into his back a little more.
"If you were going to turn me into a comic book superhero," Buffy grouched as she and Cordelia were finishing up their patrol, "why couldn't you have made me Power Girl?"
"Can you fly?" Willow asked through the commlink, her voice quite reasonable.
"Well... no," Buffy admitted.
"Are you bulletproof?"
"...no."
"Are you strong enough to pick up a car and use it as a weapon?"
"Umm..." Buffy hedged, "maybe if the car was small enough...?"
"Do you have huuuge-?"
"Hey!" the blonde Slayer halted in indignation, but before she could begin a proper tirade, a glowing green figure descended from the heavens.
"What the-?" Xander stared. "Cordy, is that you?! Buffy? What's with the costumes, you two?"
"Don't ask," they deadpanned in stereo.
Xander slowly shook his head.
"I leave the star system for a week, and everyone goes insane."
Buffy frowned, "What are you talking about?"
"Faith," he shrugged. "According to Tara, since I left, she's been going down to L.A. and playing superhero, just like you two, except she managed to get herself shot." He shook his head, "The hospital had her listed as a Jane Doe when I picked her up, but someone patched her up pretty well before leaving her there."
"She's hurt?" Buffy said. "C'mon, where is she?" she asked. "We have to make sure she's okay."
"At the Baxter's," he replied, a little bewildered. While he knew the two Slayers had always had a strong connection to each other last time around -- albeit most of the time not a good connection -- there was nothing to link the two in this go-round. Faith's not even a Slayer this time around!
As the trio started to the house he had acquired for the Baxters, Xander was struck by another observation, "By the way, Buffy, what's with the megaphone?"
"So, she's listening in right now?" Xander asked as they finally approached the Baxter home.
"Unfortunately," Cordelia scowled.
"So, how exactly is Willow helping you out in real time?" he asked. "It's not like you're doing detective and undercover work like in the comics."
"She researches demon types," Buffy explained.
"Based on your descriptions?" he asked as he opened the door. "Or has she somehow hidden cameras in your outfits?"
"She hijacked a spy satellite," Cordy answered.
Xander goggled and followed the two into Faith's room, where the other Green Lantern was resting, with Tara watching over her in case something happened.
"Yo, X," Faith waved faintly, even as Tara ducked her head in a shy greeting.
"So..." he said hesitantly, "do either of you find it a little creepy that Willow got you into those very sexy outfits and watches you every night from a spy satellite up in orbit?"
"I try not to think about it," Buffy said.
"I told you she was a freak, Harris," Cordy sniffed. "Now do you believe me?"
Xander knew he shouldn't. He knew he was going to regret it. He just knew it. Willow was going to get him back for this and make him pay. Forget the threefold rule; he was looking at a thousandfold rule.
That didn't make it any less irresistable.
"I'm so proud," he said with a mock sniffle. He shot an exaggerated leer at all the women in the room, his gaze shifting to a warm smile and lingering on Tara for a moment, "And I certainly can't fault her taste in women."
"XANDER!!!" Willow's tinny voice screeched with an ear-piercing squeal of static through Buffy and Cordy's commlinks, which were instantly torn free. Quite a reasonable response, Xander reflected, though he decided Buffy probably went a little too far by crushing hers.
Xander chuckled, but his mirth was short-lived, slain by twin gazes of death from the two deafened costumed heroines.
He barely scampered out of the room in time. He did, however, have time to admire just how well Slayer-empowered lungs could combine with a megaphone to create an astonishing replica of the Canary Cry...
Thwip!
...and it seemed Cordy had been getting some serious range time with that hand crossbow.
Faith chuckled and shook her head, then leaned back again, resting contemplatively. Her body was still repairing herself, and she was still prone to drowsiness, even without the drugs. Slowly, she dozed off, but not before making a mental note about the look Xander had bestowed on T...
"Last time, Phoenix," John Spartan warned, aiming a pistol at Phoenix. "Where... are... the hostages?"
"To hell with the hostages!" Phoenix retorted. "This is between you and me."
"Yeah," John agreed, thumbing his pistol's manual cocking hammer back. He already had a round chambered, and the pistol was a double-action, but now, it was on a hair trigger.
Phoenix ducked low, waving the lit blowtorch near the gasoline-soaked floor. "What? What? What you got, soldier boy? Do something. Go ahead. Heheheh. You're up to your ass in gasoline," Phoenix chuckled as John lowered his gun slightly. "Set your ass on fire!"
He straightened up and used the blowtorch to light a cigarette. As he disengaged the blowtorch, John stepped forward, raising his pistol again.
"Is it cold in here," Phoenix asked, his voice eerily calm, "or is it just me?"
"It's just you," came a gravelly voice neither of them expected. A shadowy figure leaped forward and tackled Phoenix, wrapping him in a billowing black cape and carrying him away from the pools of gasoline.
John stared as the two combatants vanished through another doorway, "You've gotta be shitting me." He shook his head, "Never a dull moment in this town."
He charged after them, only to find Phoenix trussed up upside down, dangling like pinata and laughing like the maniac he was. John looked over and found himself face to face with the cowled interloper moments before said interloper turned and leaped out of the window, vanishing into the night.
"The hell?" John sputtered, staring out the window after him.
"Hoohoo!" Phoenix cackled. "That's why I love this town! Ha haaa! I'm gonna like him! Move over, Spartan. You're old news. Ha ha haha!"
"Shut up, Phoenix!" John turned and pistol-whipped him.
"Ooh! Ooh!" Phoenix called out, shaking his head clear. "Police brutality! Police brutality!"
"You have the right to remain silent," John pistol-whipped him again. "So shut up already."
"So, what've you found while I was gone?" Xander asked, looking around. Ms. Calendar had taken his funds and set up shop in one of the many unoccupied buildings in Sunnydale.
"Several interesting things, but nothing connected to your Mister Butler," she replied, wheeling around to face him, turning her back to the high-powered computer he had funded. "They all had unusual levels of security, however."
"Such as?"
She turned and brought up the first file. There was very little in it, and all of it sketchy. "A think tank with major headquarters in Blue Cove, Delaware and Tucson, Arizona. It's called the Centre. I don't think your hunch played out, though."
"Then leave it alone," he said, waving it off. "I'm familiar with it, and if Butler's operation isn't linked to them, then it's not our concern. What else?"
"An Army project referred to as DRI," she said, bringing up another file, which was even less detailed than the first. "With resources being funneled to California. Records date back to World War Two."
"Don't worry about it," Xander said. "I've got plans to take care of that."
"All right..." she said hesitantly. "I've found three others: two Army, one Navy." She brought up the rather sparse files one by one, "Manticore and UniSol are Army, while Project Spartan is Navy. I think they're some sort of super soldier programs."
"What makes you say that?" he asked, leaning over her shoulder to study the data on the screen.
"The fields they've recruited from: drill instructors, geneticists, biochemists, prosthetic specialists. Nothing supernatural I could find, though."
"Hmm," Xander said, "put Willow on those."
She gave him a sharp look, "Are you sure?"
"Honestly?" he shrugged. "No. But considering what she did the last time we left her at loose ends, I'm worried what she'll come up with next if we don't keep her busy. Anything else?"
She brought up another file. "I found something called S7, as well as a British Project Torchwood, both linked to something called the UNSC. They claim to be involved in deep space radar telemetry."
"Iiinteresting," Xander leaned back and stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I want all you can find on them."
Author's Postscript:
I've been working on a new 'fic lately, for a fandom I've never written in before, so that's taking a fair bit of my attention.
And yes, I know it's the gasoline fumes that are flammable, but I took the scene as in canon (albeit delayed a few years and altered by the new player on the scene).
Here are a few things from Xander's to do list:
1) Protect his girls.
2) Save the Earth from demons.
3) Save the Earth from aliens.
4) Save the Earth from his girls.
5) Train Faith and reestablish the Green Lantern Corps.
6) Overthrow the Goa'uld Empire and restore freedom to the galaxy.
7) Disaster relief.
8) Fight crime.
As you can see, he's got a full plate.