Spark of Genius
Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy verse, Girl Genius verse, DC comics or any of the other smatterings of pop culture and literary ideas that I refer to in my story, I just tread through a few other sandboxes. Oh, and several names are made up, some are real, but the facts have been changed to protect the corrupt and innocent equally.
AN1. Have been traveling for business the last couple weeks, so have been writing out the chapters on paper whenever I have a chance. I'll be pulling together the garbled notes written on cocktail napkins, sticky notes and notebooks over the next couple weeks, so progress will still continue albeit not as fast as most would like. I really appreciate the comments and ideas for the scoobies portion of the story, and I'm going to use one almost verbatim that came from a reader named OLazy1. Thanks for all the comments and reviews that keep my muse churning. Cheers!
'Thought'
"Speech"
/foreign language/
Chapter 35: We Don't Need No Stinking Comic Code
"Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated."
"All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted."
"Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited."
"Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden."
"Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed."
~Excerpts from the 1954 Comic Code
Sunnydale High school was in full swing the final week before the Christmas holiday, and though the weather outside promised to stay as sunny and warm as every other December break the population of the educational institution situated on the Hellmouth mostly focused their attention on the upcoming break and not on their midterm exams. Yes, like every teenaged school environment, the students were focused more on the more enjoyable things of life. Teenaged boyfriends and girlfriends flirted and smooched in the hallways while hinting over gifts that were going to be exchanged over the upcoming holiday. Jocks joked together about the last football game before the end of the semester, and Teachers snuck sips from camouflaged flasks of high octane spirits while praying for the break from the insanity of teaching the hormonal hordes. These were the normal activities that could have taken place at any high school in any town in the United States. However there were two conversations going on that were a bit different from the norm.
In the Sunnydale High's library, Willow, her new boyfriend Oz, the sometimes friendly and always snide Cordelia Chase, Buffy the vampire slayer and her watcher met over a stack of books. Their conversation was focused on a slightly more abnormal subject than what took place at most normal high schools that were on the brink of a semester break.
"Buffy, please describe to me again the demon you witnessed robbing the liquor store. You say that the creature shot, ahem, some discharge from its overly large nose that landed on people and then absorbed the blood out of them, at which point the demon sucked up the slime again?" Giles questioned, paging down a dark brown tome with aged yellow pages.
Buffy cringed at the memory as she replied, "Yep, seriously gross. And the fact that it was the same color fluid as what was in the slurpee machine is about enough to make me swear off of quicky mart food for the rest of my life."
"Ew Buffy, could you be any more disgusting?" Cordelia griped before sighing and closing the book before her with a thump before pushing herself back away from the desk. "Well at least I won't have to worry about keeping up my diet after hearing that description, I'm no longer hungry, thanks a lot loser." Queen C finished haughtily.
Buffy scowled up at Cordelia as Cordy stood up from her chair and left towards the doors to the library. "Please, like you weren't already about to eat a plain boring salad for lunch anyway. You can thank me for saving you from that fate later." Buffy snarked back. The comeback wasn't up to the same level as Xander's past quips had been during the battle of the tongue with Queen C, but Buffy at least put in the effort ever since Xander had been sucked into that other dimension.
"Oh! Here it is!" Willow's voice broke the quickly ramping up insult battle that was about to begin. Willow pulled the book she had been reading up onto the top of the stack of tomes on the table and shared what she had found with Giles and Oz, pointing to her findings while she read out loud.
"The Epistaxis Demon, commonly called the "nose bleed" demon or Nose-feratu, makes their home in tallest structure found in the local area." Willow read before giving a brief "Eep" when she read further down the page. "Traditionally from the middle eastern region, the demon's schnoz matches the dimensions of many of the region's inhabitants and tales tell of rabbi demon hunters cutting off the nose of slain Nose-feratu as they believed the original demons had been tainted members of the lost tribe of Israel who no longer deserved to look as if they were members of the chosen people… Oh-My-God! That-Demon-Is-Related-To-Me!" Willow finished in a fast paced babble while Oz gave her a supportive pat on the back.
Before Giles or the rest of the remaining Scoobies could answer, a disturbance at the entrance to the library interrupted, and thus the other abnormal Sunnydale High School conversation waltzed its way in the door.
"Give those back to me Jonathan! That's a mint condition collector's edition first print ret-con set that I bought from a black market connection at Vertigo publishing. You can't get those books at the stores yet and DC isn't letting their secondary publishing house release those to the public! If you so much as crease those I'm going to take my +10 boot of butt kicking and stick it up your ass!" Andrew Wells yelled at Jonathan Livingston as the shorter of the duo jumped and flailed in his attempts to retrieve the brown paper wrapped bundle that Jonathan was keeping out of reach.
Jonathan was straight arming the swinging Andrew, keeping the palm of his hand pushed firmly against the shorter boy's forehead to keep him from reaching the package. Jonathan bit back, "No Andrew, Willow needs to see this and you know it. Besides, I'm wearing my +20 light armor whitey tighties today, so there."
Andrew stopped, swinging and was still, and a moment of silence settled over the library as Jonathan realized that he had an audience at the exact moment that he realized remembered what he had just admitted. To top things off, Cordelia Chase was smirking mercilessly at him.
Jonathan gulped and looked pleadingly at Cordelia, "Is there any way that we all can just forget that last statement and never mention it again?"
Cordelia's smirk grew shark like she smelled the proverbial blood in the water, "Not a chance looser, I just found my conversation piece for lunch since I'll be skipping the salad." She finished triumphantly as she crossed her arms across her chest triumphantly.
Jonathan whimpered for a second, realized that nobody was going to save him from his self abasement, so he moved towards the table with the package in his hand in the hopes that he could distract the crowd in the library.
"Well, um, I know lots of weird stuff happens around Sunnydale, and I know you all are involved in it." Jonathan started to say.
Buffy frantically interjected, "Weird stuff? I don't know about any weird stuff? We're totally normal, absolutely no weird stuff here; I'm Ms. Normal from Normal-ville California."
Jonathan stopped speaking, looked at Buffy, then down at the book that was open on the middle of the table, the book which had a big picture of a demon with an extra large nose taking up one entire page while the rest of the book looked to be written in Hebrew. Buffy looked down at what Jonathan was looking at, looked up at Jonathan and then Andrew with large eyes before using Slayer speed to close the book with a snap and quickly hide it behind her back with a guilty look on her face.
Jonathan smiled and looked at Andrew who stared back with wide eyes as apparently the shorter of the geeky duo hadn't been as aware of the things that went bump in the Sunnydale night.
Willow attempted to cover for Buffy and the gang, "Um, uh, we were just looking at mythology books and stuff for an uh… school assignment! Yes, that's right, we were merely doing some background research for a school assignment having to deal with Jewish myths." Willow babbled and stuttered out a lame excuse.
Jonathan smiled at Willow's attempt, it was nice to be in a conversation with a girl and not be the side of the conversation that was stuttering and putting their foot in their mouth; at least this one time.
"Anyway, as I was saying I know you are involved with weird stuff since I've started dabbling in magic a while back and recognize several of the books that are here in the library. Add to that when Andrew showed me his latest find, and I knew you would want to see it." Jonathan said smugly as he pulled several glossy items out of the paper bag that held them, and then fanned them out on the table on top of the books.
"I know what happened to Xander." Jonathan stated as he laid out a series of comic books that featured a futuristically armored knight slaying vampires on the cover of one of them, a black suited man with a black shiny face covering helmet hovering over a military base in another, and several pictures with Xander Harris wearing a white lab coat and laughing madly as he held up a beaker of bubbling red fluid while standing in a laboratory on different comic book.
Silence reigned for a second, and then chaos reigned supreme.
"Good Lord." Said Giles who rapidly began to polish his glasses while looking at the comic books on the table.
"Xander's in a comic book? I knew he was in a different dimension, but a comic book?" Buffy exhaled as she snagged a comic book and started leafing through it.
"Hmm, well at least he's finally learned to dress somewhat reasonably. Not as well as I could have dressed him of course, but still it's better than those horrible polyester things posing as Hawaiian shirts." Cordelia stated as she picked up one of the comic books that had Xander principally dressed as The Leviathan. "Oh, never mind, there's the Hawaiian shirt again." Cordy finished as she continued to leaf through the comic and noted that Xander still continued to wear his eye-sores in several of the pictures.
"Xander!" Willow shrieked as she snatched up a comic book and started leafing through it, only to go bright red in the face and shriek again "XANDER!" when she came to a scene that showed Xander in bed with his two female minions.
"Yeah, that's a great scene. Xander's having lots of sex, and since it's published by Vertigo and not DC comics it isn't confined by the comic code. Xander's got a great ass." Andrew stated as he looked over Willow's shoulder with a large smile on his face.
Everybody stopped and turned to slowly look at Andrew whose turn it was to turn red. "Um, I mean he's obviously put on a lot of muscle that I wish I had and I didn't mean that I was admiring his ass, um the girl's asses are great also…" Andrew looked around and saw that everybody was still staring at him blankly. "Um, I'm going to shut up now." Andrew finished and quickly picked up another comic book which he opened and used to cover his face as if he was deeply focused on it.
"Anyway," Jonathan segued in the hope to limit Andrews embarrassing statement, Cordelia already looked like Christmas had come early, as nothing made Queen C feel better than tearing down people verbally, and here was fresh ammo. "I was saying that I think I know what happened to Xander. So far there are thirty five comics published very rapidly, and the first one came out November 1st, the day after Xander disappeared." Jonathan finished explaining as he helped himself to a seat.
The Scoobies stared stunned at Jonathan, then back at the comics, then back at Jonathan.
"Sooooo… does anybody want to fill me in on what is really going on around here in Sunnydale?" Jonathan asked with a smirk.
Giles had been continuously cleaning his glasses since Jonathan had first produced the comic books, but here was a question he could answer. Putting his glasses back on his face Giles began, "Well, the world is older than you know…"
Buffy interrupted and in a blur was lifting Jonathan out of his seat by his shirt and up to stand face to face with her, "Jonathan shut up and tell me where Xander is right now." The Slayer commanded, and Jonathan gulped as his well honed nerd survival skills kicked in and he suddenly realized that the short blonde was a lot stronger than she looked.
"Um, right there," Jonathan said hesitantly in a high pitched voice as he reached around Buffy towards the table and pushed some of the comics out of the way until comic book issue 35 was exposed. There on the cover was the answer to Buffy's question.
"The Grey Knight and the Invasion of Hell!" Was written clearly across the top of the comic book, while a picture of a Xander sans Grey Knight helmet was beneath it. Xander was painted on the cover in his hulking power armor and was surrounded by snapping demons while blood and gore flew off of a glowing spear that was rammed through the chest of a tall grey colored demon.
"Xander!" Willow cried out in fear for her friend.
The Grey Knight's campsite was nearly empty by the time that the sun rose over the hell trapped city of Themyscira. Only the blackened remains of a campfire and the hulk of the Dreadknight exo-armor blocking the path through the minefield towards the camp told the tail that the Grey Knight had been there. This by no means meant that the Grey Knight had up and left the Amazons to their situation in hell, as the occasional sound of explosions echoed off of the canyon walls paid witness to the fact that Alexander was still very much active in the vicinity of the city. However the sound of muffled battles in the distance was the only herald that Xander was still about at the time that the Amazonian scavenging party left the front gates of the city.
The Island of Themyscira had originally been created to be self sufficient. Blessed by the Greek Gods, the island normally grew all of the food needed to keep the static population of the immortal island bound Amazons fully fed and watered. That said, the island was not ready to supply sustenance for the influx of Bana-Mighdall Amazons that had invaded and it certainly didn't have the needed resources to supply the combined tribes of Amazons while stuck in a hell dimension for multiple years. Thus scavenging parties were set out to harvest burnable materials for fuel to ward off the chill nights as well as to hunt for meat from the carnivorous cow like hell beasts that wandered the plains of that infernal dimension.
Hippolyta led the fifty strong mixed force of island and desert Amazons out of the gates before they hesitantly weaved their way across the winding and switchback laden path that led them safely through the mine field. Hesitant looks were shared as they traipsed through the devil's garden that Alexander had planted, but then the stoic and prideful looks regained their "proper" place on the faces of the Amazon warriors as the party of guards and gathers left the minefield behind. The Amazons entered into a ground eating lope that quickly saw them cover the ground of the valley that the city rested in and the bluffs straight out from the gates became larger as they drew closer to the edge of the valley.
The entire troop aimed for a break in the bluff's that surrounded the valley, a canyon that narrowed into a crevasse as it rose in elevation towards the plateau that overlooked the city in the center of the valley. Eyes were vigilant and hand signals silently relayed orders up and down the line of Amazons as they entered the canyon and thinned into first a double order troop before being forced into single file to reach the summit of the trail. The elevation gain from the bottom of the valley to the top of the plateau was roughly seven hundred feet that was packed into a distance of no more than half a mile, but the athletic female warriors rapidly covered the distance with only a slight quickening of breathe and heart rate to show for their endeavor.
At the top of the rise was their target for the day. A tangled thicket of hellish brambles with bladed thorns four to five inches long had been found to make excellent firewood even if it was terribly hard to harvest. Imagine tumbleweed with its wildly interconnected twigs that were twisted together, and then increase it in size to be a tumbling ball at least twelve feet tall, cover it in daggers and you can begin to understand the daunting task that it would take in order to hack it into a usable size and shape. Suffice it to say it was a two handed job, hence the presence of guards. When they reached the brambles, half of the amazons sheathed their swords or unlimbered bows while taking from their backs thick leather sheaths that would be used to roll up the harvested wood like brambles for firewood.
Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, was not the type to lead from the rear with the gear. As a true warrior queen of old, just don't call her old to her face, she believed in getting her hands dirty like the rest of her people. Thus while the workers began the task of carefully cutting off the thorns and harvesting the mix of thicker limbs and twisted thorns she worked with Artemis to deploy the guards for the best protection.
Speaking in Greek Hippolyta relayed to Artemis, "The brambles form a natural wall along our side and in front of the workers. That just leaves us one side to defend where it opens up towards the plateau." She stated as she shrugged her shoulder and shifted the leather straps of her gold shield to a more comfortable position on her left arm.
Artemis looked out in the distance along the plateau and took note of a large herd of thousands of hell cows that was passing in the distance, a small group of hell pack trotting on the outskirts of the herd to pick off stragglers. Turning to look at Hippolyta out of the corner of her eye, the Shim-Tar of the Bana-Mighdall answered in the same language, "I'll post the watch accordingly, yet we should not assume that our only threat could come from the plateau." The red haired warrior flipped her long braid over her shoulder as she turned to fully look at the queen and shifted her weight to twist the spear she was leaning on, he sword sheathed at her side.
Hippolyta nodded in understanding, "True, how about we split the duty, I will guard the path we reached the plateau by and you can strengthen the front ranks of the guards." Hippolyta commanded.
Artemis's hackles rose a bit at the command as the Bana-Mighdall still hadn't acquiesced to Hippolyta being their queen, but for the sake of continued cooperation during a bad situation she nodded her head and quietly padded off in a jog to assist the front ranks that guarded the gap between the edge of the canyon and the wall of brambles that protected their other flank.
The day was hot, and as the multiple suns rose in the sky the temperature in the hell dimension soared. The day progressed with little distraction except for the trickle of sweat off of feminine brows and across their arms and chests; whoever had said that women didn't sweat but that rather they "glowed" had obviously never been stuck wearing leather and chainmail armor in a hell dimension. As the day progressed, the sun passed over head and the piles of harvested brushwood grew taller until each leather wrapped bundle was full and securely attached to the backs of the harvesting crew. The guarding Amazons warriors flanked fore and back of the women lugging the firewood and Hippolyta led the way back into the breach in the plateau that would lead them through the crevasse and back to the valley floor.
The Amazons fully entered the pass back to the valley floor and were approximately one thousand feet in when Hippolyta decided to encourage her Amazons on the work well done.
She yelled out in Greek, "Good job Amazons. Today you have helped to make sure that we had the necessary goods to survive another dAAAAYYYYYEEEEEE!"
Hippolyta's statement shut off in a scream as the ground opened up under her feet and large grey hands grabbed her legs and pulled her into the hole that opened up to block the path. The two Amazonian guards stationed just between the Queen were shocked for a moment before the ground beneath their feet also gave way as the hole widened into a tunnel entrance beneath their feet. Before the other Amazons could come to their queen's rescue, the walls of the slender canyon fell away to disgorge two-legged ten foot tall horned monstrosities wielding claws and long demon bone spears. The grey skinned demons tore into the Amazon troop, laughing deeply and yelling out in their demonic tongue as they quickly stabbed and swiped at the ambushed women. In the middle of the pack, a bone spear went through the stomach of one of the pack carrying Amazons as her shield sister stabbed her sword into the neck of the attacking ogre sized demon. The attacking monster choked and coughed on his blood and released the spear that had skewered the woman only to be pulled roughly out of the way by several more demons who exited the hidden cave behind it in the canyon wall. The once tidy rows of marching Amazons became a chaotic warzone as demonic teeth, horns, claws and spears met Amazonian spears, daggers, swords and shields.
At the back, Artemis whirled like a dervish with a spear in one hand and a sword in the other, dancing around the openings in the earth at her feet while she stabbed, stabbed and stabbed again. The Shim-Tar was a flurry of blades, relying on the mantra that a good offense makes the best defense. Greenish black blood poured down the blood trench along her sword as it struck out and pierced one demon's side while at the same time she thrust her spear up through the chin and into the brain pan of a demon that attempted to flank her; only to break off the spear and jab the remaining sharp shards of wood into the groin of a third demon. Her sister Amazons followed suit, stabbing and hacking with reckless abandon as they literally fought for their lives against the howling tides of demons pushing out of the holes in the walls. There were so many of the hulking grey demons attempting to get at the Amazons that the monsters pushed and shoved one another for a chance to get at the pink skinned human prey.
The small size of the Amazons helped them in the small confines of the canyon, still, the Demons held the element of surprise and more than a third of the Amazon troop had been heavily burdened by their heavy packs of firewood. The Amazons were fighting a losing battle, for they had lost their queen and several warriors in the first seconds of the battle, and for every demon they killed another seemed to pour out of the cracks and hidden caves in the canyon walls.
Just then, from the top of the canyon came the sound of thousands of horns, sounding the Calvary bugle call to "CHARGE!"
"TOOT, toot TOOT TOOT toot-toot TOOOT toot toot-toot TOOT TOOT TOOOO!" Xander in his full red glowing eyed Grey Knight armor and a streaming horde of glowing red eyed little clanks crested the top of the canyon walls on both sides and dived off the sides of the crevasse right at the demons.
"NO MERCY!" The Grey Knight bellowed in rage as Xander dived head and glaive first towards the hole where the Queen and her two forward most guards had disappeared into. A burst of fire from his wrist mounted Toastmaster flash fried the three demons crawling out of the hole right before Xander's blue glowing glaive sheared a fourth in half and Xander disappeared down the gaping fissure in the canyon floor.
The tides of the battle changed in an instant, as the muscle bound and hulking demon barbarians were swept over in a tidal wave of tiny metallic rage!
Little clawed mechanical hands pincered closed and started to spin like drills while a multitude of tiny cutting lasers, buzz saws, surgical blades and welding torches sprung to life from the bodies of the legion of little clanks. They fell upon the demons like a horde of locusts, like a biblical plague that sweeps everything away before it and leaves only the bleached bones behind.
Individual demons that had previously been cackling as they attempted to slice or bite the Amazons' flesh from their bones suddenly disappeared under a sea of honking and tooting little clanks, only to be rendered into geysers of green-black blood as the clanks pureed their way through the attacking demonic force.
It was like Jack versus the Giant, Tom versus Jerry, just like the ancient battle of David and Goliath… well, that is if David had been wielding laser beams, an atom smasher and the ability to cut in half a United States Abrahams battle tank in .03 seconds. In other words, the demons didn't stand a chance.
Like using a nuke to take out a guy hiding in a canvas tent, Xander's force would have exemplified "overkill;" that is if Xander believed that such a thing existed. Further, while Xander's little clank army sliced, diced and made julienne fries out of the main host of demons, Xander was busy hacking and slashing in the tunnel beneath the canyon.
Out of the hole in the ground flew a large grey leg, and then an arm, followed by a gout of flame and a whole but bruised and slightly cut-up Queen Hippolyta who flailed through the air before impacting safely on the ground up on the canyon floor with a thump. She was quickly followed by a disembodied demon's head that smacked her in the chest before bouncing back into the hole right before Xander flew out of the fissure with one Amazonian guard over his shoulder and the other one unconscious under his arm. Quickly setting the two women down, Xander turned and unleashed a solid blast of purifying fire down the hole; forcefully sucking out the air in the cavern below as his greedy flames devoured all of the oxygen and carbon that it could get. The heat of the fire collapsed the tunnel under the feet of the struggling-to-stand Hippolyta and her guards, and dropped the floor of the canyon a good four feet lower for a span of twenty feet in length.
Turning his back and ignoring the Queen, Xander focused his attention on the main body of Amazons that was still fighting tooth and nail with the demons. Though the clanks easily carved through the first few ranks of hulking grey evil monsters, more demons continued to spew out of the cavern walls, and Xander could see that his own clanks had not come out of the battle unscarred as the twisted and crushed remains of at least a hundred clanks littered the floor of the canyon, crushed or with little wires and springs popping out of them.
In a blur, Xander disappeared from a stand still as he zipped through the throng of Amazons, leaving a blurred after image of a glowing blue blade before stopping behind Artemis just in time to block a spear that would have pierced her spine. Along Xander's blurred path, the last remaining demons who had been tying up the Amazon troop fell to pieces in spurts of blackish blood, leaving the Amazons who had been locked in battle with the monsters to stumble as their enemies literally fell apart.
Artemis dodged under a spear thrust for her face and spun, beheading the demon in front of her and spinning to attack the grey being that she saw out of the corner of her eye… only to be halted mid blow by Xander's armored gantlet on her wrist.
Artemis growled at The Grey Knight, "Man!" She spat as a curse.
"Woman." Xander replied without any emotion while still clutching Artemis's wrist like an immovable force. He quickly looked up the hill and saw an additional hundred of the tall grey and heavily muscled bipedal demons pouring into the top of the crevasse and charging down towards Xander and the Amazons behind hm.
Xander yanked Artemis towards him and over his shoulder, startling the warrior women as he turned and yelled to his army of clanks, "Strategic Retreat! Begin the crowd surfing!"
Xander yelled, and led the charge back through the troop of Amazons, grabbing several of them and throwing them over his shoulder or under his arms none too gently as he rushed down the slope. Around Xander, the little clanks swarmed the Amazons before the Amazons suddenly found themselves picked up off the ground and bodily carried on a sea of little clanks. Behind them the Demons roared as they saw their prey fleeing and picked up the pace.
"Let me down! Amazons do not retreat!" Artemis yelled at Xander from her place at the bottom of the pile of women balanced on his shoulder. She flailed at him with her one free arm, the other trapped under the weight of the other Amazons stacked on top of her.
"Sorry, a little busy at the moment saving your life again." Xander griped in a growl, "I know I make it look easy, but really, have you ever thought about going on a diet?" Xander smirked under his helmet as he snarked at the Amazon warrior.
Artemis's only reply was a feline like growl of anger before she punched him in the side of his helmeted head, only to suck in her breath in pain as her hand rebounded off his helmet without any visible reaction by Xander.
The Amazons riding on top of the sea of clanks weren't having much of a better ride than those being carried by Xander, as they tumbled forward and back, some leading ass first while others sideways, on their back or on their face and bumping up and down as they were carried like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians.
Xander and his clanks, with their Amazonian passengers along for the unasked for ride, picked up speed and quickly outstripped the tide of charging demon tribes men, monsters, evil thingies, whatever the tall brutish demons were. The pell-mell dash across the valley continued to speed up to defy human constraints with the mass of clanks carrying their passengers over their heads while Xander brought up the rear.
Exiting the canyon, the little clanks continued their mad dash pelting run towards the safety of the minefield and the city walls while Xander took a moment to drop the amazons off his shoulders and out from under his arms for a moment; depositing the ladies in a very unladylike dog pile.
Artemis huffed and threw her hair out of her face, her long ponytail of long red hair had come undone and was now sticking to her face and tangled with her armor as Xander had not so gently carried her off in the midst of battle before now dropping her face first into the red dirt. She spat out a mouthful of grit and brushed her hair out of her eyes, just in time to see The Grey Knight unclip a little metallic sphere and pressed the red button on top.
"Thank you for choosing Leviathan brand super-nova grenades." The polite feminine sounding British voice daintily stated from the grenade. The grenade continued to verbalize via a little speaker, "This device will explode in three seconds." However the last part of the sentence was probably only heard by Xander and his super hearing due to the fact that he had line drive chucked the grenade at super speed over a thousand feet and right into the face of the demon leading the charge down the canyon. Ok, so maybe the demon heard the grenade's speech also. Either way, the grenade itself or "What's that?" were probably the last things to go through that particular demon's head as Xander's aim splattered the grey demon's grey matter all over the walls of the canyon.
Xander turned back towards the pile of Amazons that was just now dizzily pulling themselves to their feet, only for Xander to once again swoop them up and start running pell-mell towards the city like the fires of hell were lapping at his heels… for they were about to be.
"Put us down you Brute!" Artemis yelled, her hair hitting her in the face again and getting trapped in her mouth. The Amazons packed onto Xander's shoulder groaned their agreement or yipped out curses as Xander was pushing for as much speed as safely possible given his load of women.
"Less talking, more letting me concentrate on running!" Xander grunted as he jumped a large divot in the valley floor. "Screw this running!" Xander finished as rather than land on the other side of the divot Xander engaged his flight ability and soared forward at faster speeds than before. In his mind, he knew he had to get past the minefield before the grenade went off.
Meanwhile, just as the little clanks had entered the path back through the minefield and out into the safety before the gate in the wall around Themyscira, the demon horde had bypassed their fallen cohort and were almost to the exit of the canyon… just as the grenade started its countdown.
"One…Two….Four. Have a nice day." The recording stated as it purposefully skipped the number three and wished those in its general vicinity well; just as the little hardened mass was fired through the containment wall of the miniature sun contained inside the grenade, and the universe's smallest supernova exploded.
"Stop Squirming DAMNIT!" Xander cursed as Artemis's wiggling was enough to get her off of his shoulder to drop towards the ground that was zipping by underneath Xander and the Amazons that were piled on his back; only to catch her by the back of her leather ring covered breastplate a foot above the minefield as he zipped over it.
His happenstance of bending his head down to grab Artemis gave Xander a perfect view of the explosion behind him, and a little voice inside his head said, 'Um, I forget, what does it mean when the explosion is so fast that it vaporizes a thousand square meters before you even hear the sound wave?'
To which the other voices in Xander's head yelled a collective, 'OH SHIT!'
Right before the blast-wave hit him.
The fact that he was wearing his helmet probably saved Xander's eyes from instantaneous blindness, and only his super speed and flight skills allowed him to pull Artemis tightly into his arms and swing around in the air so that he took the brunt of the blow of the shockwave rather than the Amazons on his back who continued flying forward due to their inertia. His subconscious and the world slowing down were also enough for Xander to quickly switch positions once again right before he and the Amazons he was carrying impacted the wall; leaving behind a strangely man-sized divot in the wall.
Light was followed by force, was followed by sound which was then followed by a wave of dust and debris as portions of the minefield also ignited and exploded due to the pressure wave and the falling bits of rock.
Of the demons who had been charging after them not even a fine mist existed as the explosion had instantly vaporized a sphere roughly three thousand feet in diameter. The rocks and raining pebbles were what had used to make up the surface of the hell dimension for the thousand or so feet around that, and basically created a basin of chewed up earth right up to the edge of the minefield that surrounded the city.
Though the Amazons were saved from the demons, they were by no means left uninjured. Blinded by the light and with blood pouring from burst eardrums, the female warriors injuries from the single explosion were added onto their already numerous marks from the ambush and battle. Xander had mostly protected the Amazons who he had been carrying, but several of those who had been hoisted along by the little clanks hadn't fully made it through the gates before the grenade had exploded. In addition to the cuts and stab wounds from the demons the women were suffering from severe contusions from falling on weapons and thorny bundles of wood along with concussions and other impact wounds from being forcefully thrown against the city gates and walls.
Xander yanked off his helmet and threw it to the ground as he quickly looked around. The intensity of the explosion had fried the visual sensors of the eye sockets, and both normally glowing red eyes were now a hazed and dull grey without the automatic repair systems which were lost along with Jarvis. All around Xander, and up on the walls where the guards had been watching towards the canyon, the Amazons moaned and groaned in anguish. There in the twenty foot safety zone between the minefield and the wall, Amazons moaned in pain or were slumped to the ground unconscious from their injuries, several of them collapsed in uncomfortable positions up against the tall grey stone walls.
Xander's mind kicked into overdrive, and the world slowed down as a plan began to form on what to do first. In less than a second the thoughts and plans collated themselves into a series of actions that he needed to take immediately.
"Triage! Shrink and repair life threatening injuries first followed by sight and hearing." Xander commanded his legion of little clanks, and suddenly swarms of little clanks became small swarms of nano-clanks that seethed across the ground and floated into the air over the fallen Amazons; where the nano-clanks passed healthy women, who blinked and began to return to their feet shakily.
Xander looked over the Amazons that he had been carrying, and noted that they were all mostly whole except for the eye and ear injuries, several had cuts and minor injuries from the battle, but they were primarily just stunned. The worse injured had been those carried back to the city by the little clanks, and of those in most need of aid was the Amazon who had received the spear through her gut and still clenched onto it in her unconscious pain.
Xander moved quickly through the Amazons and over to the young woman who had the spear sticking through where her belly button used to be and then at an angle out her back. Xander knelt down and flipped the girl on her side, the action causing fresh blood and bile to seep from the exit wound in the Amazon's back. Xander's subconscious noted that the blonde haired Amazon was a Bana-Mighdall based on her brown leather armor rather than the gold that the Themyscirian Amazons wore; not that the armor had helped her at all based on results of the long boney spear going right through one side and out the other.
Xander cringed, put two hands right on the spear where it met the woman's stomach and broke off the haft of the spear that had yet to pass through the woman. The Amazon moaned softly and shuddered in unconscious pain while Xander then took a firm hold on the bone spear at the point where it exited the girl's back, and yanked the spear out.
The shock of the spear being yanked from the woman's body caused the unnamed Amazon's eyes to dart open in unseeing pain before her body went into shock and started convulsing.
"Shit! You're not going to leave me yet." Xander cursed as he furiously threw the spear to the side and then clutched at his right gauntlet and gave it a fast series of pushes and pulls and twists to cause the locking system to unlock and allow his hand to be freed from The Grey Knight armor just as his second layer of nano-clank armor rippled and receded to bare the skin of his hand.
"Get away from her you monster!" Artemis screamed and darted at Xander's undefended back.
"SMACK!" Xander's newly bared hand shot out in a straight arm backhand that caught the diving Artemis in the face and sent her flying backwards to collide with Queen Hippolyta who had just exited the gates with several guards, causing the Amazons to get knocked over in a rolling heap.
Stunned, the Amazons all around Xander stopped and stared at him stunned, as they witnessed the blatant fury on his face and coupled that with the fact that the man who had just saved them had just attacked and knocked over both of their strongest warriors with a single blow; the Shim-Tar Artemis with the single backhand, and Queen Hippolyta via the impact with the flying Artemis.
Before the Queen and the Shim-Tar could regain their feet, before any Amazon could take umbrage with The Grey Knight's actions, Xander wheeled on them and stood to his full hulking height with a look of utter fury, for it is not wise for mere mortals to interfere in the business of a Major Spark.
"ENOUGH!" Xander's voice was radiated out from him with enough force to rock the Amazons back on their heels as the pure power and anger that poured from him made the simple statement sound like a yell that vibrated in the Amazon's bones.
"You will not attack me again! " Xander commanded with the power of the Spark in his voice, and the Amazons could do not but obey, several found themselves unconsciously nodding vigorously.
Pointing at Hippolyta and Artemis, Xander commanded, "This is your fault! I have saved your Amazons multiple times now, and it was your pride that caused your people to be here dying and injured on the ground, all because you wouldn't allow me in your walls, all because you couldn't forget a grudge from centuries ago. If not for your pride you wouldn't have had to go out today, you wouldn't have been attacked and ambushed, and you wouldn't be lying here now. And when I try to help you, you attack ME? ENOUGH!" Xander ended in a bellow of such rage that it literally caused the Amazons to shake and several of them dropped to their knees unconsciously in supplication.
"Now let me work in silence!" Xander commanded before turning his back on them and turning to the Amazon at his feet.
Xander looked at the injured woman, and realized she wasn't breathing. "Fuck!" Xander cursed and his bare hand darted down to touch the woman's throat only to find no pulse.
"NO! I will not be defeated!" Xander spat angrily as the sheen of genius and equal parts madness darkened his eyes with anger and his teeth gritted together.
Then in a blur, Xander's left hand grabbed the spear from the ground with his gauntleted fist, and then shoved the bladed point of the bone spear into his bare right hand.
Xander didn't cringe at all as the blade sliced through the meat of his palm and blood splattered over the dying Amazon before Xander yanked the spear from his palm and thrust his bloody hand at the gaping wound in the woman's stomach.
"HEAL!" Xander growled in fury as the Nano-clanks in his spilled blood obeyed.
Nicked organs fused closed as spilled liquids seemed to be sucked back into their damaged organs or blood vessels. Tissues mended, nerves connected, bones grew whole and fractured bone splinters were reunited in the world's fastest jigsaw puzzle as the Amazon's body healed and forcibly created new red blood cells beneath the Grey Knight's hand. There before the crowd of women their fallen sister's flesh and skin sealed up to leave not even a scar, right before Xander's blood and nano-clanks sucked themselves forcibly back into Xander's palm in a blink of an eye.
Less than an instant later, the black nano-clank under-armor covered Xander's hand again, as it glowed blue and electric green with tangles of energy, just as Xander forced his energy shrouded hand into the dead Amazon's chest and shouted, "NOW LIVE!"
Electricity shot from Xander's hand and danced around the Amazon whose heart had stopped.
Muscles constricted and the woman's body danced under the electrical fury as her chest darted off the ground as the woman arched her back and came back to life with a scream and with wide eyes and open mouth as Xander's Spark would not be denied.
Xander shut off the current and stepped back as the panting women fell back to the dirt and clutched her chest as she panted, wide eyed and looked around, only to see Xander above her.
Xander's fury slowly left his face and a small smile crept across it. "Be at peace. You are back among your sister Amazons." Xander said gently and patted the woman's cheek from his kneeling position over her before leaning down to help her to a sitting position while also picking up his abandoned gauntlet and standing.
By the time Xander stood, the smile had left his face as he was confronted by the sight of the now fully healed Amazons staring silently at Xander with a mix of emotions on their faces.
Xander frowned at Queen Hippolyta and Artemis who stood next to her, noting that Artemis seemed to be fighting an internal battle between wanting to run to check on the Amazon that was sitting at Xander's feet versus wanting to stay far away from The Grey Knight.
"Amazons." Xander stated, and once again the power of the Spark was in his voice as he turned to address not only the Amazons that were around him but also those that stood on the walls looking down. "Today I have saved your lives, AGAIN, and even brought one of your own back from the dead. Today I have lived up to my honor and our alliance, while you have shamed your own honor, AGAIN." Xander's statement of "again" caused the women to jump slightly as his voice hitched into almost a growl every time he said it.
Xander silently panned to look the Amazons around him in the eye, while inside Xander's mind a series of plans and arguments were being bantered back and forth, and then in a final agreement, Xander knew what he needed to do.
"I will be getting my things from my campsite, and then I will be returning to your city and entering your gates." Xander commanded with the power of the Spark fully backing his statement. Even still, he saw both Artemis and Hippolyta about to speak, but cut them off by raising his voice.
"I WILL be entering your city and bringing my gear with me whether you like it or not, and I believe you realize by now that you cannot stop me." Alexander said with a glare at Hippolyta and the Shim-Tar that shut them both up but made both frown darkly. He continued speaking before they could say anything more, "And while I go to get my things together to bring to your city, my gear that was brought to help you I might add, I want you to think on one thing."
Xander said as he pointed at Hippolyta and looked her right in the eyes while taking a step towards her menacingly, "It was a woman who threw you into hell Hippolyta."
Then Xander's finger wheeled to point at Artemis and he growled louder and his voice carried across the entire crowd and even up to the tops of the walls where the newly healed guards were looking down on Xander, "It was a woman who tricked you into attacking your sisters in the night and then betrayed you to hell and your deaths."
Then, as the swarms of nano-clanks finished their business of healing the Amazons and flew through the air towards Xander, only to reform themselves into a black cape that attached itself to his armor, Xander threw his arms wide open and shouted to the sky so that every Amazon in the city could hear him, "IT WAS A WOMAN WHO TRIED TO KILL YOU ALL, TO WIPE THE AMAZON TRIBES FROM THE FACE OF THE WORLD AND TO CAST YOUR SOULS INTO HELL!"
Then Xander looked back at the women around him and said in his normal voice, unhindered by any sound effects of his armor and only with the power of his Spark, "But it was a man who fought his way into hell and saved your lives."
Xander reached down and presented his hand to the Amazon who was still on the ground at his feet. Carefully grabbing her hand and pulling her to stand beside him, Xander looked down on her, towering over her by several feet due not only to his natural height but also that of his power armor.
Smiling at the Amazon next to him Xander stated quietly, but loud enough that every woman around him heard, "It was a MAN who brought your dead back to life."
Xander looked up at Artemis, and then down at the revived Amazon next to him before carefully pushing the woman towards Artemis.
The freshly healed Bana-Mighdall Amazon rushed towards Artemis with tears in her eyes and both girls hugged each other. Artemis looked over the saved woman's shoulder mid-embrace just in time to catch Xander's next statement.
"I want you to think about this while I go and get my stuff." Xander commanded with blank face before striding purposefully forward towards where he had abandoned his helmet and right through the throng of standing Amazons.
The Amazons moved out of his way, splitting the crowd around him and silently watching as The Grey Knight walked through their midst as if he were Moses parting and walking through the Red Sea.
Cape billowing behind him as he moved.
Head held high.
Xander halted only a moment to retrieve his glaive and helmet from where they had been abandoned on the ground before marching resolutely back towards his camp; the only sound being the heavy footfalls of the power armor on the hard packed red dirt of hell as Xander did nothing to quiet his step.
Behind him, the Amazons looked at one another, and in their eyes the seeds of self-doubt in their beliefs bloomed and grew into a harvest of regret and shame. The shame to their honor was present in the looks shared between one warrior sister to her fellow Amazon and they started to realize that they had been wrong, and had wronged The Grey Knight in particular.
The Grey Knight's words had hit their hearts and shattered their pride as not only had they been defeated that day by the demons, but also by Alexander's words.
It was a quiet bunch that reentered the walls of Themyscira, much different than the prideful troop of Amazonian warriors who had left so sure of themselves earlier that day. Silent hugs were shared and exhausted freshly healed warriors supported each other as they reentered their city but left the gate open for the return of the Grey Knight.
Much had changed for the situation between Alexander and the Amazons, yet much more was to change while they were stuck on the plains of hell.
As the Amazons picked themselves off and returned to their city, and as The Grey Knight collected his gear and moved towards the city, in the distance was first heard a single "Thud."
Xander thought nothing of it. The Amazons on the walls thought nothing of the sound.
But then there was a second "Thud." And then a third, and then a forth which was followed quickly by a fifth and a sixth just as Xander in his Dreadknight armor arrived at the gates to the city carrying his gear and turned to look off into the distance.
The thudding sounded more like controlled booms now, and a repetitive pattern began to be heard that was stuttered at certain times and louder or drawn out at others.
Xander's genius level intellect figured it out quickly as his eyebrow quirked upwards and his thoughts were summed up in one word verbal word, "Drums."
High on the walls above Xander, the guards figured out what the sound was shortly after Xander had, and word quickly passed down the wall that something was happening.
Something was coming.
"Oh well," Xander said to himself as he turned and entered the city. As the massive doors closed behind the form of the Dreadknight system Xander's voice could be heard to murmur, "Well at least I won't have to worry about being bored until we are sent back to our home dimension."
AN: BWA HA HA HA… um, sorry. I needed to get that out, but it had been too long since I was able to do that. Whew, I feel better getting this chapter out, though I'm sorry it wasn't as quickly published as I had hoped it to be; stupid real life, colds and day jobs! (*Michaelsuave shakes his fist in the air in mock furor*) If you're asking why I stopped it there at a potential cliffy, then the reason is simply that the next chapter is going to be a doozy in length in order to stop at the proper spot. Special thanks again go out to the readers and reviewers who give me ideas or commentary that helps inspire my muse. Special thanks also go out to my beta who has probably been bored since I haven't sent her anything in a long while. Ok, so thoughts? Ideas? Like it? Didn't like it? Give me your ideas people! Cheers!