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The End of the Circus: A Tale of the Yizibajohei
Shipgirl Short Stories: Taffy Three Returns: Demons Run When Shipgirls Go To War!
By Fred Herriot
Based on characters and situations from Katekyō Hitman Reborn, created by Amano Akira; Azumanga Daiō, created by Azuma Kiyohiko; Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, created by Seth Grahame-Smith; Kantai Collection, created by Kadokawa Games; Rome, created by John Milius, William J. MacDonald and Bruno Heller; RWBY, created by Monty Oum; Sweet Valley High, created by Francine Pascal; Harry Potter, created by Joanna K. Rowling; Azur Lane, created by Shanghai Manjuu and Xiamen Yongshi; The West Wing, created by Allan Sorkin; Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2, created by Takahashi Rumiko; normalman, created by Jim Valentino; Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon; and Stargate SG-1, created by Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner.
Also including characters and situations from Urusei Yatsura — The Senior Year, created by Mike Smith and Fred Herriot.
Sunnydale General Hospital, the last Sunday of October in 2012, two hours after breakfast (Tōkyō time: The last Monday in October, two hours after midnight)...
"Did you know him well?"
Hearing that question from Detective Inspector Carla Winslow — who hadn't introduced herself to him as "acting chief", no doubt to not raise any alarm among the innocents in town concerning what the Vindice did late on Friday evening — Rupert Giles took a deep breath as he slipped off his glasses to wipe them down. He had seen the tattoo on his friend's cadaver which told him things over the Hellmouth could soon get even MORE complicated. "We were close some years ago, shortly after I left university," the native of Camden in London reported, shaking his head. He had seen the bleeding mark — resembling a mixture of a twisted sword with a horn and a treble clef musical mark attached to either side of the crossguard — that told him a certain Etruscan-age possessing demon had come to town. "Have no idea why he'd come see me now of all times..."
"No contact at all?" Winslow asked.
"Not for the last few years," Giles affirmed. Much that he was grateful for the woman beside him for telling him what just happened to Philip Henry, he also knew that the inspector wasn't clued into many things that happened in Sunnydale, thus wouldn't understand the ugly significance of his friend's death. "We were a bunch of idiots back when we were in university. Philip, myself and a tonne of other friends. Doing things we shouldn't have, played with drugs and the like." As Winslow nodded, Giles replaced his glasses before reaching over to gently draw the blanket over his friend's corpse. "One of our friends — Randall Murray — overdosed on something whose actual name I never learned. Too much of a damned shock to us..."
She nodded. "Thought you were all invincible, huh?"
"Don't we all when we're that age?" he wondered in turn.
Both people morbidly laughed before a knock echoed from the door leading into the city morgue. "Excuse me, Inspector, Mister Giles," Anthony Kessler, one of the town's small but often very busy crowd of morticians, called in. "There's a Commodore Young here to see you, sir," the man then said as he gave the Englishman a knowing look.
"'Commodore' Young?" Giles asked before he perked. "As in Commodore Velma Young, Anthony?"
"Same repair ship, sir."
Another chuckle escaped the man once known as "Ripper" as Winslow looked his way. "You know shipgirls?!" she demanded.
"Known them for quite some time, Inspector. Practically since after Captain Haight-Ashbury returned to duty."
That made her start as Kessler tried not to grin too much; having dealt with corpses that had got away from him over the last few years, the man was quite aware of the issues concerning Sunnydale's "nightlife". "Why would Mama Cass of all people want to know of you?" she sternly demanded. "Or is it because of Summers or Lehane or Hayashi? What's going on?"
"That, Inspector, is a FEDERAL affair now."
Both turned as a grumpy-looking yet still-strikingly beautiful woman appearing to be in her early thirties walked in. Possessing silvery salt-and-pepper hair in a stylish ponytail over her right shoulder, she had fair skin blotted in several places by dark stains; seeing that, Giles then recalled that the reborn USS Vestal had been a collier before she was converted to a repair ship just before the start of the Great War. An adopted native of Erie in Pennsylvania (which she had been planned to be named after in her days as a coal-hauling ship) and Brooklyn in New York (where she was built), Velma Young was the first support ship of the United States Navy to become a shipgirl, that having been done at Yvonne Swanson's request in late April within Elizabeth Wakefield's private dimensionally-displaced laboratory accessible through her house in Sweet Valley; the whole of the Scooby Gang had known about her since the return of a warship spirit THAT OLD made things VERY quiet over the Hellmouth for a couple of weeks before vampire hunger for blood got the nightlife back out on the streets. These days, Velma was in charge of all health issues for shipgirls as well as keeping watch over the Navy's expanding starship fleet; her starship-self had been built right away by the Avalonians at that impossibly vast spacedock of theirs on Mars' orbit opposite the Sun from the red planet, said starship now in geosynchronous orbit at the meridian of her old namesake city on the shores of the shallowest of the Great Lakes.
"Admiral," she said with a casual salute after pulling out the sailor's pipe from her mouth; like other metahumans who were smokers — Dean Raeburn being the classic example of same — the adopted Pennsylvanian projected a barely visible energy field around her head to ensure people weren't bothered by the smell of nicotine around her. "Ma'am. What happened here?"
"Strangulation case, Commodore," Kessler explained. Given that he himself had a relative who had been turned a year before — said person having been rescued by the Scooby Gang and reverted back to true humanity with the injection of mesonium-heavy blood — he was fully in on the many secrets behind people like Buffy Summers. "He was found early yesterday morning on the steps of Sunnydale High School. He's a friend of Mister Giles, though they haven't seen each other for quite a while."
"Oh! My condolences, Admiral," Velma said with honesty as she came over, gently pulling back the blanket over Henry's corpse to see the discoloration around the neck indicative of how he had been killed. "Ouch! Nasty way to go..."
"It's a murder investigation, Commodore," Winslow explained; she had seen the four stripes of a captain on the lower cuffs of the newcomer's traditional uniform — such was a white affair with splotched grey all over the surface with black belt and boots, large splotches on the leg allowing her hull number 4 with the auxiliary letter code R in superscript off to the viewer's left to be seen quite visibly — and knew through social media that several full captains among America's shipgirls had been accorded the honorary formation commander title for specific purposes. "Mister Giles was called in as Mister Henry here had his contact address and most likely was at the school to see him when he was attacked and murdered. As to the why..."
"I personally can't say," Giles noted with a straight face.
"Yeah," Velma breathed out as she reached over to gently squeeze the man's shoulder before slipping the blanket over Henry's face. "Sad to see. Again my condolences, Admiral. Anything you need here before we get out of your way, Tony?"
"No, ma'am. Just need to fill out the damned paperwork now," Kessler confessed.
That made the repair ship wince. "Ouch! The bane of all administration. C'mon, Admiral, let's go for a walk."
"Certainly, Commodore," Giles affirmed as he offered his arm, which she took.
Shocked by such an act, Winslow was frozen in place. "Er...!"
Velma gazed at her. "We know about your missing co-workers, Inspector Winslow. A couple subgirls noted what happened, so the FBI will be called into it as soon as possible. It's a federal investigation now, so you can relax."
That made the poor woman blink in surprise as the repair ship guided the Watcher out of the morgue...
On Broadway approaching Sunnydale Cemetery, minutes later...
"So who's in town now, Rupert?"
"Most likely Eyghon, Velma."
That made Velma Young blink. "Possessing demon, right? He killed your pal Randall some years back, right?"
"Yes," Rupert Giles breathed out as he pulled off his glasses to wipe them again, the two walking calmly down the street. As the reborn Vestal shook her head in amusement at the Englishman's actions — his spectacles were practically admiral's white glove inspection worthy with the way he went at them whenever something stupid happened — he added, "I thought that I was done with the whole thing after I had the tattoo — you would have seen it on Philip's arm — taken off with a laser sometime after Randall died and my friends and I went our separate ways. Wonder if it was something Ethan did that provoked that thing."
Velma hummed. "Relax, Rip." As he smirked on hearing her nickname for him — being as old as she was spiritually, the adopted Pennsylvanian was the only one who could call him that without him getting angry in return — she added, "Soon as we found out about your 'friend' Rayne, we put a subgirl watch on him, never mind Naomi also keeping an eye on the guy. He's nowhere near town, so I doubt it was him wanting to carry on with what he did last Hallowe'en." As Giles nodded in gratitude — given their abilities to sneak into and out of places totally unseen, the submarine girls of the USN were the prefect spies to keep an eye on anyone of interest — she took in a draw from her pipe. "How powerful is this jerk, anyway? Nothing like what Wilkins wants to become if what the folks on the other side of the Hudson think is going to happen on Wednesday, I hope."
He chuckled on hearing that common metronym for the headquarters of the Department of Magic in downtown Manhattan. "Quite powerful, but as stealthy as someone like Dyan Morton, I believe. As to the 'why' he'd want to go after people now, I can't say. He didn't care for what happened when we had to kill poor Randall to get rid of the damned monster..."
"How many folks have that tattoo that you know of?"
"A few of us." Here, Giles pulled up his own PAA — a Gift to him from Willow Rosenberg — to tap the control button, allowing a small list of names to appear which would transmit right away into the former collier's device for her own perusal. "Of course, if we didn't have the issue with the Mayor to deal with, we have another old demon in town: Balthazar."
"Yeah, saw the interrogation reports from the El Eliminati," she noted before snorting. "God! Don't you just LOVE the way that people like to butcher Latin all the time? Wonder what President Lincoln's friend would say to that."
Giles laughed; learning of what REALLY had befallen Gaius Julius Caesar after his murder in 44 BCE had been quite the eye-opener. "Where is that man, by the way? I know Isaac's still busy on Remnant dealing with that Salem woman..."
"He's with the President aboard old 'Frisco Maru right now," Velma answered, referring to the starship version of the heavy cruiser USS San Francisco — now Michiko Norton, the adopted daughter of the city's most famous eccentric, "Emperor" Joshua Norton, whose ghost haunted the grounds of the Presidio at the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge — which now held station over the City by the Bay in low orbit to prevent people coming in from the various worlds of the Galactic Federation of Planet-States from spotting her or others like her. "Don't tell Michi's dad that I called that ship that. He hates that."
"Well, good for His Majesty for trying to teach you colonials about proper English," he snidely declared with a knowing smirk.
Both people — quite experienced in their own way — shared a wry chuckle as they continued towards the apartment block where Giles currently resided, which was close to the town catacombs, the oldest of the several cemeteries in the city. "Needed to get off the ship for a bit?" he then wondered. "Rare for a support ship to literally walk into a potential battle zone."
"Oi, this old hull here tore apart ha'tak with style back when the second Healer made it to deal with the lar'beke," Velma added as she flexed an arm. "Just because I'm a healer now doesn't mean I can't rip off demon's heads if I have to...huh?"
The screech of an eagle made both people looked up and to the north. "Mister Grim?" he noted on recognizing the beautiful bald eagle now flying in the late morning sky in an orbit in the space between Revello Drive and C Street. "Oh, bloody hell!" he then declared as his face paled, then remembering they had just walked across the intersection of Union Street, which intersected Revello Drive right beside Buffy Summers' home. "Something must be happening with Joyce!"
Velma grunted as she grabbed him from behind, then boosted them into the air, making the few passers-by look at them for a moment before carrying on; they had seen the battlesuit the shipgirl had been wearing, but paid it no mind, Sunnydale Syndrome being what it was. With a mortar shot-like leap, the former collier was able to drop down on the lawn of 1638 Revello Drive...
...to see a silver-haired woman wearing a modern red jumpsuit with black trim and the hull number 5 on her upper thighs sitting calmly on the front steps as a clearly amused Joyce Summers came out with a tray of lemonade. "Oh! Captain Livingston!" Giles greeted the reborn USS Yorktown, who was one of several shipgirls now based out of Fort San Antonio whom the beautiful avian now moving to come down to join them got along with easily; said eagle — who was magical, the Watcher knew — was named in honour of the "Grim Reapers", the nickname of Fighting Squadron 10 who flew off USS Enterprise from just after her sister was sunk at the Battle of Midway to until near the end of World War Two. "Odd to see you...eh?"
He stopped before a snarl escaped him on seeing the expertly hogtied man on the ground at Eleanor's feet. "Travers...!"
In a hotel just outside Sunnydale...
You DARE defy me...!
"Oh, shut up, you wanker...!" the chuckling woman with the purple-tinted black hair said as she staggered around the small room she had rented — or had been MADE to rent, Diedre Page then wryly mused — while the screeching being inside her tried to wrestle control over her body once more. "You didn't think that after those nice folk from Yiziba got involved with Ripper's friends that I wouldn't take precautions against you. Nice of dear old Ethan to tell me about this...!"
Here, the native of Cambridge looked down at her exposed left arm, which had the mark of Eyghon on it...even if said mark was now glazed over by glowing bits of ruby crystals whose power prevented the ancient demon from totally taking control of her. Impertinence! the ancient being now screeched inside her mind. You summoned me! You BELONG to me...!
"Batae Erba...!"
DO NOT SAY THAT NAME!
"Why not?!" Diedre — whether she was dead or alive, she really didn't know — then coyly asked. "Were you in on your friends' attempts at trying to possess the Forge of the Seekers of all things?! Did you get your ARSE whipped by HIM when the old Conservator decided he wasn't going to put up to your shite and threw you back to where you belong...!"
YOU ARE MINE!
"Batae Erba...!"
DO NOT SAY THAT NAME!
"Batae Erba...!"
SILENCE!
"Batae Erba...!"
YOU WILL BE...!
"Oh, do be quiet, you coward!"
Diedre gasped before she turned around...
...then she squawked as something literally was punched right through her breastbone into her heart!
Tene lomher'buo, Diedre Wendy Page...!
As the screeching demon inside her found itself forcefully EJECTED from her body, the Cantabrigian laughed...
"Taeim letam...!"
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...!
Nesu...FUKROTI YUODATO!
As Eyghon felt himself literally ejected out of the reborn corpse — the demon had actually possessed some other idiot who had put his mark on his body, allowing him to catch up to the would-be musical composer; like most of the others who had been part of Rupert Giles' gang before the turn of the millennium, Diedre was fully knowledgeable about magic since her parents were also part of the Watcher Society — her body glowed as bright as the Sun itself as the power of She Who Destroys the Unnecessary, Fukroti Yuodato ("Punk Rock"), flooded her from head to toe. Naturally, her clothes were burned away by the surge of energy that went into the Gifting, allowing her to be draped in a uniform common to "radical" natives of Yiziba like Takino Tomo of Itabashi in Tōkyō and Molly Hecht of nearby Sweet Valley; the former was the Wild Warrior of Passion, Rimbo'o ("Warwind"), while the latter was the Mistress of Pain and Pleasure, Kanae Matotukhebae (the "Dominatrix"): A VERY racy one-piece swimsuit-like affair in onyx black studded in silver chain-like insignia with bicep-length gloves and thigh-high boots, also in black with the same type of trimming. Fortunately for Diedre's sense of pride, she still had the body to show off so much skin to anyone who might take interest in her in an "intimate" sort of way; as she was quick to note on seeing the mark of the demon whose avarice had seen her old boyfriend Randall Murray killed burned away to leave healthy tissue behind, the Gifting gladly rejuvenating her to make her look like she had been back when she ran with people like Rupert Giles and Ethan Rayne.
And the power...!
Growling with a mixture of lust and delight, the reborn heavy metal musician — such types of music had barely begun to appear in the more liberal nations of Yiziba such as Nesetimtuto in the decade prior to the start of the Dawn of Power — began to sway as a storm of thunderous sounds echoed through her mind. "Oh, yeah...!" she cooed while the last wisps of energy that heralded her effective REBIRTH as a metahuman, forever free of demonic influence, vanished into the ether...
...then she perked on sensing someone behind her, making Diedre turn...
...before she relaxed on recognizing the middle-aged man in the purple traditional jumpsuit standing there gazing in fond amusement at her. "Many thanks for doing this for me, Reverend," she said with a polite curtsy.
Leno Lu'umlo nodded in return. "My sincerest pleasure, my dear," the Mad Prophet of the Future, Rimmim ("Millennium"), returned. "May the fight scene go your way. Oh, you'll want to know that Warwind and the Dominatrix have returned as well."
That made her dark eyes light up with delight. "Oh, how wonderful...!"
United States Starship Murphy (in anchorage west of Santa Rosa Island), an hour later...
"The prisoner's secured in the brig, Admiral. The vampire he had brought with him..." Here, the just-reborn thirty-seventh of the Casablanca-class escort carriers now known as the Spicy Hare of the Straits, Makassar Taedyuo ("Makassar Strait"), stopped on seeing the uneasy look on the face of the Mighty Maid of the Mountains. "Um...are you okay, ma'am?"
Buffy Summers perked before she gazed over her shoulder at Kelley Berner before she gave the adopted Alaskan a reassuring smile. "Felt someone get Gifted sometime ago nearby here," she said before gazing to the northeast towards the small passage of waters that separated Santa Rosa from nearby San Miguel Island; both the leader of the Scooby Gang and the latest shipgirl to rejoin the United States Navy were on the quarterdeck of the starship replica of the sixteenth of the Benson-class fleet destroyers, such fortunately hidden from the view of passing ships heading in and out of the port of Los Angeles thanks to magical masking screens similar to what had been fitted on eighteen incredible battleships built over the previous century in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. "Just outside Sunnydale if my empathic 'radar' is right on, but no updates over the Great Show networks."
Kelley nodded in understanding. Being a shipgirl effectively "raised" in a military environment, the rather ultra-free nature of Yizibajohei communications unnerved her a lot. It had taken Jenn McLeod Murphy — who was STILL pissed at the reborn aircraft carrier for attacking her starship-self the previous evening shortly after her salvage and Gifting; such had been put aright quite easily even if the reborn destroyer sent her resentful looks from time to time — and Brenda Laffey some time to explain the communications of the World of the Forge was quite secure, both by its physical nature (being transmitted via hyperwarp-capable mesonium transmitter crystals) and because of outsider fear of "they who must never be named" not making even the most curious of the neighbouring powers probe too deep into what was happening with people like themselves. That someone could learn all sorts of personal — even intimate! — details about another person just with a touch of the finger on the control crystal of one's PAA stunned the heck out of the adopted Alaskan; searching for THOSE sorts of things were quite verboten back in her day as an active warship on the high seas. Sure, that whole Dawn of Power revolution really went far in eliminating all the fascist nonsense that had become quite the vogue on that planet two millennia before, but there had to be SOME standards...!
"If you're picking whoever that is up all the way from here, doesn't that make this one really powerful?" she asked.
"Possibly," Buffy affirmed with a nod. "I've gotten used to the mixed messages my empathy gives me ever since I moved into Sunnydale two years ago. Sometimes it works wonders. Sometimes, it doesn't work at all. Luck of the fight scene in the end." At the other woman's curious look, the Angelino senior student added, "Shit happens." Getting an understanding nod from the shipgirl, the elder Slayer took a deep breath. "I take it the vampire 'recruited' by Travers for my 'test' didn't make it."
A shake of the head responded. "No, ma'am. Instant Admiral Rosenberg and Admiral Maclay moved to revive the guy, he recognized them off the bat, then threw himself out of the hotel room that limey bastard 'rented' for him right into the sun."
That earned her a wince of sympathy. "Ouch! Ugly way to die..." she breathed out.
"What are you going to do with that limey, anyway?" Kelley asked. "Laffey made noise about the President getting involved."
Buffy snorted. "Uncle Jed takes his responsibilities in the ISWT pretty seriously." As Kelley nodded — even if she had been in mothballs at the time the International Specialized Warfare Treaty had been signed in 1957, her caretaker crew at the Pacific Reserve Fleet's storage yards in Tacoma all knew of the passage of said treaty given that it was the only living non-American to be awarded the Medal of Honour who WROTE said treaty — the younger woman added, "If some idiot tweed decides to protest our stopping Travis from doing that Cruciamentum thing with either Faith or me, he can send Margo Black over there to teach them something called 'common courtesy' or else he can contact the Queen and she can come down on them if she has to."
"No Brit shipgirls are back, ma'am. If these idiots don't want to bend the knee to her — from what I've heard the Marines on the ship say about them, they're even MORE stuffier than the idiots that were running things on the other side of the Hudson before the Übermenschen cleared that bunch of fools out in '42 — she'll need some major horsepower to back her up."
Buffy nodded. "Oh, trust me on this one, Kelley, the Queen's got LOADS of help there..."
Her cell phone then rang. "Summers! What's the what?" she called out after drawing it out of her utility pouch. "Huh? Tony? What...?!" She then gaped. "WHAT?! You were attacked?! You okay?!" As Kelley tensed, the empathic adopted native of Nesetimtuto nodded. "One of the corpses is MISSING?! Which one?!" She then shook her head. "No, never heard of him. One of Giles' friends?" She then nodded after Anthony Kessler explained what happened earlier that morning. "Right! Right! I'll tell him! Stay safe, okay?! I'll get one of the subgirls over there to stay on your butt until we figure this out! Right! 'Bye!" Cutting the link with the only mortician the Scooby Gang had on their side, she looked forward. "OI! JENN! I NEED YOU!"
A flash of PAA teleportation energy soon produced the Amphibious Engineer of the Lënapehòkink. Much to the amusement of the Mighty Maid of the Mountains and the Spicy Hare of the Straits, Jenn McLeod Murphy had an escort from the First Battalion of the 75th Marine Regiment (Magical), a fresh-faced private first class from nearby Santa Barbara who just graduated from basic infantryman training at Camp Pendleton a year before before reporting to his new regiment for magical infantryman advanced training. "Hey, you okay, Paul?" Buffy asked as she came over to help PFC Paul Jones to his feet.
"Pretty okay, Mistress Summers," the fresh-faced leatherneck said with a blush as the adopted Army engineer colonel patted his shoulder. "Tried to match my apparation to the colonel's PAA portkey coming aft! Didn't get it exactly right."
As Buffy blushed — given her being a Slayer, she automatically was accorded the highest levels of respect by most American magicals, even the conservatives who wanted Rappaport's Law reimposed on the Union to the ugly extent it had been from the Panic of 1914 to the first Battle of New York twenty-eight years later when the Übermenschen Gruppe wrecked the Magical Congress of the United States of America during the early part of the Wars of Liberation — Jenn nodded. "You'll get the hang of it sooner or later, Marine," she said with an approving look; even if she was an Army girl administratively, she was like any American shipgirl who always doted over the devil dogs in their sister service. "So what's the problem, Admiral?"
"Can I get a subgirl to watch over Tony Kessler at the morgue, Jenn?" Buffy asked. "A corpse ran away."
That made Jones hiss as Jenn blinked. "Don't they normally do that at nighttime, ma'am?"
"Unless it's a demon possessing that corpse, ma'am," her current "batman" — a British tradition that the Magical Wing of the United States Marine Corps had borrowed from their Canadian brothers in the Royal Regiment of Canadian Foresters when the magicals of the Union mobilized to fight against Gellert Grindelwald and Yomigawa Tsukiko — noted.
"Buffy!"
Buffy turned, then breathed out. "Friend of yours ran away from the morgue, Giles!" she playfully scolded.
"Philip Henry?" Rupert Giles asked, he accompanied by Joyce Summers, who had relocated herself aboard the Murphy in the wake of an attempted kidnapping by Quentin Travers which was stopped by the reborn USS Yorktown.
"Same guy! Heard he was a friend of yours. Watcher?"
A tired sigh escaped the older man. "No, from my 'Ripper' days, Buffy. I told you this after Ethan came to town last fall. He was there when we tried to summon Eyghon. Fell out of contact when I went on the straight and narrow..."
"Went back to the 'tweed', you mean?" she playfully asked.
A tired nod answered. "Yes, that as well..."
Everyone then jerked as a heavy wave slammed into the star destroyer's stern from the west, making the deck heave under people's feet. While some of those on the quarterdeck stumbled about, the more experienced people remained erect. "What the hell?!" Jenn snapped as she looked around for the source of such a huge tidal surge. "If there was a quake...!"
"LOOK!" Joyce shrieked, pointing to the northwest.
Heads turned...
...then jaws dropped on seeing the HUGE shark fin surging through the water towards the mainland. "Oh, shit...!" Buffy moaned.
Seeing that made PFC Jones turn as white as a sheet. "Samiloluto...!"
A certain warehouse in Sunnydale, minutes later...
"It has been a while, Balthazar!"
Hearing that echoing voice, the obese demon turned in his large pool to look...
...before a delighted smile crossed his chubby face. "Eyghon! Come in, my friend! Come in!" he bade on sensing the echo of the golden-scaled and horned humanoid beast around the somewhat cold corpse of a normal human in business wear. "What are you doing here?! Why are you forced to possess a corpse? Don't you have a living human to make use of?"
"I did...until someone from the accursed Forge World went and had the ungrateful girl GIFTED of all things! Just like HE became when he chased us all off that accursed planet after we discovered what the Master of Entropy had done in the Battle of Toghmoghbiki!" the Sleepwalker answered through the lips of Philip Henry as he walked over to grasp the other demon's hand; even if both beings saw themselves as far SUPERIOR to the normal filth that inhabited the world they and those like them once tried to claim as their own, certain human mannerisms had bled through over the ages since the End War. And while they both were grateful to the Undying Lord for his show of mercy at the end of that conflict, they didn't care for humans at all, seeing them as mere sources of the necessary "faith" energy to sustain them; much that both Eyghon and Balthazar were quite powerful, they still paled in comparison to the REAL Old Ones the man born Tash Ri in a fishing village on the isle of Rügen during the last Ice Age gladly slaughtered and banished wholesale. "It is a matter than needs resolution since she and her friends — including the one whose body I'm using now — decided to DEFY me after they tried to entreaty with me!"
An understanding snort answered him. "Rude, aren't they?" Balthazar wondered. "No different than the accursed human who actually STOLE an amulet of mine some years ago! He's the 'mayor' of the city here; he's the one who actually established it over the Gateway over a century ago!" At the surprised look from the other demon, the portly creature added, "From what those of my spies in town have reported to me, he now seeks to merge himself with one of the Old Ones who fell here."
That earned him a horrified look. "A human dares to become THAT?!"
"Yes! I'm hoping to stop him but...!"
A tsking sound echoed from nearby. "Golly, Balthazar! You actually think you can stop me from saving my own LIFE?"
Both jolted before turning...
...then they gaped on seeing the dapper man in the business suit standing nearby. "WILKINS?!" Balthazar shrieked.
Richard Wilkins lightly smiled, such an action not touching his eyes...
Outside...
The blue-skinned man with the scales and the beautiful tattoos reminiscent of those worn by the Māori and the Sāmoa ignored the bystanders as he marched down Sixteenth Avenue from the direction of the city's bus station; the Lord of the Deep managed to get as close as he could to shoreline before shifting from his native Carcharocles megalodon form to a more convenient shape to operate on land. While some of the more adventurous humans who were quick to suspect "metahuman" on seeing such a person walk among them — especially young females who were instantly attracted to the sheer ACRES of muscled skin he displayed since he was dressed in just a scaled lavalava that went below his knees — none got in his way as he approached a large, empty building that was recessed into the forest surrounding Sunnydale near the intersection with F Street...
Inside said warehouse...
"My amulet, Richard! I want it back!"
The would-be Old One tsked. "You should learn some manners, Balthazar!" he teasingly chided as he allowed a beautiful dark crystal amulet to drop down from under his jacket sleeves to hang from his hand. "You didn't say 'please'."
"Impertinence!" Eyghon screamed, sending a blast of energy right at Richard Wilkins' head.
Said bolt of power literally cleaved the man's skull in twain vertically...
...though the body didn't collapse from such a mortal strike. As both demons gaped in shock, the mayor's arms came around to gently shove his head back together, the skin and underlying flesh instantly resealing as if there had been no injury in the first place. Ignoring Balthazar's and Eyghon's horrified gasps on realizing this human had undergone a ceremony to render himself effectively invulnerable to all forms of harm — one of the major steps before making a proper Ascension — the Bavarian-descent native of Boston shook his head as the last of his skin resealed. "Just like my wife was at times...!" he lamented...
...before the whole front of the warehouse was literally RIPPED OPEN by a dark-skinned humanoid whose spiritual aura made both demons shriek in terror and Wilkins gape in shock. "Oh, fudge...!" he moaned, dropping the amulet he had retrieved from the crypt of an old "friend" from the early days of Sunnydale, Douglas Gleaves; the wealthy landowner who helped finance the town's development in the years leading to the Great War had been buried in the Catacombs at the western end of the city.
As both Balthazar and Eyghon fired bolts of energy at the oncoming Lord of the Deep, a black shadow zipped past Wilkins unseen, a hand snaring the amulet before said blur merged anew with the shadows. Realizing WHAT had just stormed into his city like that and knowing that he was nowhere NEAR as powerful enough to lock horns with a creature who had lived for THREE MILLION YEARS, the mayor teleported himself clear of the warehouse, confident enough that if these two idiot demons had been stupid enough to earn the attention of Samiloluto of all beings, they'd be soon VERY dead! At the same time, the whistles of air whipping past human bodies made the demons look up before they gargled on seeing who was coming down on their literal heads. "SLAYER!" the Sleepwalker shrieked in outrage on recognizing the Belle of the Wilderness...
...before two black-and-silver blurs surged past Faith Lehane to smash right down on Balthazar's head!
Sensing help was at hand, the Lord of the Deep stopped himself, crossing his arms in amusement as Faith — accompanied by Hayashi Kanami and April Mears — landed on the ground nearby, all three gaping on seeing who else had joined in on the fun.
"Oi, Molly...!"
"Yeah, Tomo?"
"You EVER seen a guy as fat as this character?!"
"Not in all my lifetimes!"
As Balthazar moaned from nearly being made a pancake after having both the Wild Warrior of Passion and the Mistress of Pain and Pleasure drop down like meteors on his head, the quite-awake native of Itabashi — who should be asleep in preparation for school in the next few hours, the Americans mused — snared him by one arm. "Let's DANCE, Fatty!" Takino Tomo laughed.
She then virtually PULLED the screaming demon out of his bath to slam him HARD on quite unyielding concrete nearby! As Molly Hecht lunged over to help her friend/rival out with Balthazar, PAA flashes went off all around to allow the rest of the Scooby Gang and their new shipgirl friends to quickly join in. "Impertinence!" a bellowing Eyghon bellowed...
...before he was nearly burned alive by a solid wall of screeching noise. "HOW'S THIS FOR IMPERTINENCE, WANKER!"
Jaws dropped as She Who Destroys the Unnecessary landed nearby, then lunged in to snare her possessed and dead friend by the neck before pitching him through the air into a nearby wall, causing the Sleepwalker to screech as he felt his hold over Philip Henry's corpse vanish. "YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE ME, GIRL!" Eyghon bellowed as he spun around to face her...
...before he gargled as a blue, scaly hand snared him by the neck!
People turned to look...
...then everyone in the warehouse collectively winced as Samiloluto transformed right before their eyes into his birth form, a mouth that was big enough to take a whole man standing up opening wide...!
GULP!
And in a flash of energy, the Lord of the Deep vanished from Sunnydale!
Silence.
More silence.
Still more silence.
Then...
"Hope that doesn't give him cramps," Buffy Summers noted, lowering her swords as the others in the room relaxed themselves.
"Must have done something to piss off the Big Fish personally," Xander Harris concluded as he allowed his ki claws to fade. "Oi! Tomo! Molly! New girl! You guys need some help with Fats Domino over there?!"
By then, Balthazar was a moaning heap of flesh on the floor, many of his bones snapped and greenish ichor escaping many of the wounds delivered to him by two of Yiziba's strongest warriors. "Nah, he's down, Xan-man!" Molly assured the Wild Scavenger as she cracked her knuckles. "You'd figure that for a demon, he'd be a lot tougher than this! This is SAD!"
"Yeah! I was hoping for a good workout before classes!" Tomo added as she straightened herself before looking over as Diedre Page came over to join them. "Oi, Punky! Nice to see you back! Who got you Gifted anyway?!"
"A very nice preacher man did that for me, Tomo," the native of Cambridge noted as she jovially waved.
Jaws dropped. "Millennium was here?!" Willow Rosenberg demanded.
"Yeah...and bloody good it did me when he came, too!"
Buffy blinked before she perked. "Wait! You're one of Giles' friends?"
"Yeah!" Here, the rejuvenated forty-something looked around. "Oi! Where is old Ripper anyway?"
"Back on our base ship, ma'am," Jenn McLeod Murphy said as she came over along with Brooke Roberts, Chloe Zitzewitz and Kelley Berner. "So what do we do with Blotto here?" the adopted New Yorker then asked, jutting her jaw at the demon.
Everyone gazed at the two Slayers in their midst — metahumans or not, both Buffy and Faith had been well trained by their watchers to deal with all sorts of things that went "bump" in the night, especially when it came to those creatures who didn't instantly turn into dust when they were killed — then the Belle of the Wilderness smirked. "Oi, Scrappy!"
The Escort Who Fights Line Warriors perked. "Yes, ma'am?!"
"Get your PAA! I'm gonna teach you something neat about tossing out garbage like this!"
Knowing smirks crossed the faces of the other non-shipgirls present...
City Hall, that moment...
"Oh, fudge!"
Richard Wilkins was now staring at his EMPTY hand...!
To Be Continued...
WRITER'S NOTES
This omake continues the Taffy 3 storyline from the previous stories, now putting things nineteen days prior to the start of Boy Meets Girl Meets Metahuman.
The list of shipgirls introduced here...
Captain Anna Eleanor Livingston USN (United States Ship Yorktown [CV-5])
Captain Michiko Francine Norton USN (United States Ship San Francisco [CA-38])
Captain Velma Young USN (United States Ship Vestal [AR-4, formerly AC-1])
Lieutenant Commander Dyan Wanda Morton USN (United States Ship Wahoo [SS-238])
Eleanor Livingston (USS Yorktown) takes after her Azur Lane self. Michiko Norton (USS San Francisco) takes after the interpretation of her in the KanColle fan art series Pacific; such can be seen on Danbooru at post #2798408. She is ethnically Japanese in respect to the version of her which appeared in the JMPer's wonderful fanfic Belated Battleships, which can be read on Space Battles and Sufficient Velocity. Speaking of BelBat, that's where the interpretation of Velma Young (USS Vestal) hails; based on fan art done by PJMoyer, such can be seen on Space Battles at post #28331549. While no version of Dyan Morton (USS Wahoo) has appeared in any of the shipgirl games such as KanColle, I see her as having hair and eyes the same shade as her namesake fish, the wahoo AKA the ono (Acanthocybium solandri); this gives her black-fringed silver hair and pale blue eyes.
As an aside, the term Commodore in the United States Navy used to be a rank title equivalent now to the rank of Rear Admiral Lower Half (short-formed RMDL). Such came into effect in 1862 during the Civil War, being removed from active rank lists in 1899; the rank was restored in 1943 only to be removed again in 1983 to be replaced on the official pay scales by RMDL at pay level O-7. Traditionally in the USN, the position of commodore was assigned to senior captains in charge of a small formation of units. With shipgirls, those appointed as commodores such as Velma Young (USS Vestal) are placed in charge of certain areas of responsibility (such as medical services) with one "senior commodore" in charge of all shipgirls in the person of Yvonne Swanson (USS Enterprise); as noted above, all have the honorary rank of Captain (short-form CAPT) at pay level O-6.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer notes: Randall Murray (family name my invention), Anthony Kessler (first name my invention), Eyghon the Sleepwalker and Diedre Page (Punk Rock) all appeared in "The Dark Age" (second season, episode eight). Of course, Ethan Rayne first appeared in the famous episode "Hallowe'en" (second season, episode six). And Douglas Gleaves (first name my invention) was mentioned in "Bad Girls" (third season, episode 14).
The version of Gaius Julius Caesar who appears in the universe of these stories is based on the version of him from HBO's series Rome, appearing in 2005-2007. Think of the "Immortal Warrior Consul" (as he is nicknamed by those in the know of the last of the Triumvirate to impact the history of the Roman Republic/Empire) as what was played by Irish actor Ciarán Hinds, though de-aged to be a man appearing in his twenties in lieu of the fifty-six year-old warrior who was killed on the Ides of March in 44 BCE. He would first appear in Part 31 of BmGmM and will have an impact on events in the side story Out Of The Past.
Yes, Michiko Norton (USS San Francisco) is the effective adopted daughter of the City by the Bay's most famous eccentric, the "Emperor of the United States and the Protector of Mexico" himself Joshua Abraham Norton (1818-1880). A rice merchant born in England who lived in South Africa for a time, Norton arrived in San Francisco in 1849 to become one of the city's richest residents...only to lose said fortune because a famine in China caused the price of rice to wildly fluctuate. He styled himself as "Emperor Norton I" in 1859, attracting torrents of affection from fellow San Franciscans for his prophetic proclamations meant to improve life in the city; he would suggest the construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (built in 1933-1936), lobbied against inherent racism and — as noted by Rupert Giles above — "forbade" people from referring to their city by the diminutive 'Frisco. Of course, his "daughter" gets around that because one of her nicknames as a warship was 'Frisco Maru.
In the TEOTC stories, I rarely reference other shipgirl video games such as Azur Lane in the creative credits. I do it this time due to the presence of Mister Grim, the fan-given nickname for Enterprise's beautiful bald eagle in the series. He gets his name, as noted above, from the nickname bestowed to Fighting Squadron 10 (VF-10), the Grim Reapers; said squadron was active from mid-1942 to just after the end of World War Two and has yet to be perpetuated by a current USN operational squadron.
Leno Lu'umlo (Millennium) first appeared in Regina Magia's omake A "Quiet" Time in Delaware. Takino Tomo (Warwind) is one of the stars of Azumanga Daiō. Molly Hecht (the Dominatrix) is a minor character from the Sweet Valley High novel series, first appearing in On the Edge (novel #40) and prominently starring in Outcast (novel #41).
The 75th Marine Regiment (Magical) is one of five such regiments composing the fighting elements of the Seventh Marine Division (Magical), the operational formation of the Magical Wing of the United States Marine Corps. Formed in 1942 as the first of two magical military fighting divisions (the other being the Seventh Cavalry Division [Magical], the fighting element of the Magical Corps of the United States Army), this formation was inspired by its Canadian counterparts as noted above, the Royal Regiment of Canadian Foresters; the history of that regiment is covered in Magic and Canada. During the Wars of Liberation (the magical side of World War Two), the magical Marines were involved in dealing with magical Japanese forces under the command of the "Dark Lady of the Orient" Yomigawa Tsukiko AKA Tsukuyomi; she was first mentioned in the Icemaidens series and appeared for the first time in the second Wizards and Avalonians side story to Phoenix From the Ashes.
Samiloluto is based on Polynesian legends of the Lord of the Deep, which is rumoured to be a still-living megalodon shark (Carcharocles megalodon) who survived that species' effective extinction around 2.5 million years ago in the Pliocene Epoch; this would be around the time the first of the Great Old Ones became immortal and sentient in the universe of my stories. He was introduced to me by Harry Leferts in his Harry and the Shipgirls story collection on Space Battles; said being appeared at post #24907046 to EAT an Abyssal princess! This is of course where I get the idea of allowing Samiloluto to actually EAT Eyghon here...much less eat the Marvel universe demon N'astirh in Part Eight of Extreme Shipgirls.