Chapter 10: Superstar

Buffy

Professor Walsh was dead, and Lucy hadn't killed her. Neither had Faith or Kendra or Giles or...Wow, Buffy had a worrying number of people who would kill someone for her. That was a problem for another time.

Professor Walsh was dead, and Forrest thought that Buffy had killed her. So, of course, Lucy had killed Forrest.

Sometimes Buffy really missed the days when her biggest worry was the Master laying waste to Sunnydale. That was much less of an emotional rollercoaster.

Giles was cleaning his glasses and pacing across his dining area. "Does she have no concept of restraint?"

"I think this was restraint." Buffy watched as Giles made a sharp turn and nearly collided with the arm of the sofa.

"Was it really?" Giles asked.

"She didn't torture anyone," Buffy said. She grimaced. "That's kind of a low bar, isn't it?"

Giles put his glasses back on. "Yes, it is. Is there anything else I should be aware of?"

"Well, Lucy and Spike sent this message to Angel through Harmony," Buffy said.

Giles took his glasses off.

Buffy gave an apologetic smile. "A seer saw the Initiative build a Frankenstein's monster robot demon thing. According to Lucy, it could destroy Sunnydale."

Giles sighed. He didn't look the least bit surprised. He gave the lenses of his glasses one last wipe before putting them on and heading for his bookshelf. He picked up a book, looked at it and put it down.

"Any idea what we should do?" Buffy asked.

Giles picked up and replaced another book. "We'll need more information, but I believe it might be time to—"

The world glitched for a split second. Buffy blinked. No, no glitch. Nothing was wrong.

"—ask Jonathan," Giles said.

Of course. That was exactly what they should do. Jonathan would have a solution. He always did.

"Do you think he'll have time?" Buffy asked. "I mean, he is very busy." She laughed nervously.

Giles patted her shoulder. "Jonathan does have a history of protecting people, such as when he braced the Erfunden Bridge long enough for the several thousand people using it to escape its collapse."

Buffy nodded. Giles was right. They had awarded Jonathan the title of Class Protector at prom for a reason. He would save Sunnydale.

"Should I go talk to him?" Buffy asked. "Me, talking to Jonathan?"

"I'll accompany you as emotional support," Giles said.

"Okay, good." Buffy tried the calming breathing her therapist had recommended and managed to reduce the panic that the idea of going to talk to Jonathan alone had caused. "I guess we should go now."

"Yes, we should," Giles said.

Neither of them moved.

"I'm calling Xander and Willow," Buffy said. "For moral support, not emotional support."

"Excellent idea," Giles said.

Xander and Willow both agreed to meet them at the end of Jonathan's driveway so they could walk up to his imposing yet welcoming mansion together. Willow was bringing Tara. Xander was bringing Anya.

Jonathan's butler let them in and escorted them to Jonathan's office. The door was open.

"You may enter," Jonathan's butler said. "Jonathan is inside."

"Thanks," Buffy said. Giles and her friends echoed her.

Buffy led the way into Jonathan's office. She stepped lightly, like she was trying to sneak up on a vampire or some other demon with really good hearing. In one of those cases her heart wouldn't be beating so fast. That would give her away in a second.

"Um, excuse me?" Buffy said to the fancy office chair behind the dark wood desk that had its back turned to them. "Jonathan, sir, we have a problem."

The chair turned around, revealing Jonathan in all his smiling, surprisingly short glory. "I'm sure I have a solution. Let's get to work, shall we?"

Jonathan's work with the military got them a few pieces of information about the monster. One, it was made by Professor Walsh. Two, Professor Walsh called it Adam. Three, it had escaped.

"I have a consultation with the Initiative next week," Jonathan said. "I'll get it moved up and find out more." He picked up his phone again.

"Moved up to, like, tonight?" Faith asked. She threw the tennis ball she'd taken out of her school bag into the air and caught it. "'Cause there are already some seriously freaked out sixth graders. Robo-Frankenstein was lurking around SMS. I had to scare him off."

Buffy sat up in the chair Jonathan's butler had brought into the office for her while they were waiting for the calls Jonathan had made to finish. "You saw Adam?"

Faith leaned against the wall by the door. "Yeah. He looks like someone stitched together a bunch of demons and a refrigerator using a stapler."

"And that's what the military is doing with our tax dollars," Xander said.

Anya frowned. "Do taxes go to the military in this country?"

Xander sighed. "Yes, An, they do."

"I don't think it's stitching if it's done with a stapler." Willow turned to Tara. "Right?"

Tara nodded.

Giles cleared his throat. "I do hope you didn't do anything too risky, Faith."

Faith shrugged. "Better me than a bunch of twelve-year-olds."

That probably meant she'd done something very risky. Something like going to the Mayor's office and pretending to change sides without telling anyone first. Buffy sighed and rolled her eyes. Mom wasn't going to be happy.

"What exactly did you do?" Kendra asked.

Faith grinned. "It doesn't matter."

"Faith," Buffy said.

"It doesn't matter," Faith repeated. "It worked."

It had definitely been very risky. Buffy really hoped she hadn't done the double agent trick again. That had been nerve-wracking.

Jonathan hung up the phone. "I'll begin consulting tomorrow. Between us and the Initiative, I'm sure we'll find a way to defeat Adam."

"Given that Adam escaped the Initiative in the first place, I have little confidence in their methods," Giles muttered.

There were nods and sounds of agreement all around.

"Jonathan will whip them into shape," Xander said.

They all looked at Jonathan. He nodded.

"Good," Buffy said. "With Jonathan on our side, we can face anything."

Jonathan smiled sheepishly. "Aw, you're going to make me blush."

They left Jonathan's mansion shortly after. There wasn't much they could do without the information Jonathan was going to get.

Buffy and Kendra had decided to do a joint patrol that night. If they ran into Adam, it would better to have both Slayers to fight him. They were talking over their route as they walked.

"The forest is a likely place for Adam to be hiding," Kendra said. "As are the sewers."

Buffy grimaced. She hated patrolling the sewers, but Kendra was right. Odds were that Adam was hiding out there, especially since he'd shown up at Sunnydale Middle School, which was pretty far from the forest.

"I'll bet on the sewers," Xander said. "Have fun with that."

"Thanks," Buffy said flatly.

Giles shook his head. "I'd suggest you avoid seeking out Adam. His capabilities are too unknown."

"Well, Professor Walsh designed him to be the perfect soldier," Willow said. "So, he's probably really strong and really good at fighting and...really smart."

All of the other conversations their group was having stopped. They exchanged worried looks.

"How smart are we talking here?" Xander asked. "Like you and Giles smart, or Jonathan smart?"

"Me and Giles, at least," Willow said.

Willow and Giles weren't people Buffy would ever want strategizing against her.

"We'll avoid him," Buffy promised.

"I don't think you'll have a choice if he finds you," Anya said. "You're Slayers and he's made of demons, so he'll probably track you down and kill you both."

Xander sighed. "A little too blunt there, An."

Kendra shrugged. "She only speaks the truth."

Buffy agreed with both of them. Anya was...not a person she was used to yet even though she and Xander had been dating for most of the year. It wasn't that she said what was on her mind (Cordelia had done that all the time before she left for L.A.), it was that she always said what was on her mind regardless of if it would make people uncomfortable or, on one memorable occasion, physically sick. Anya's former vengeance demon gig had left her with plenty of stuff in her head that could leave Devon looking green.

But, hey, at least she was honest.

"We'll do our best to avoid him," Buffy said. "If he finds us, we'll figure it out."

That was what they usually did. Having time to plan ahead, especially with Jonathan, was something of a luxury. Most of their plans were made minutes before they were acted out.

"Still, I would like to carry more weapons than usual," Kendra said. "Can we begin patrolling from home?"

Buffy nodded. She'd left enough of her weapons hidden in her room at home that she could go out as heavily armed as Kendra.

Patrol that night was dead. So was patrol the next night. And the next. Jonathan told them that Adam had a nuclear power source that would essentially kill him if they removed it, but they couldn't test that if he didn't show up.

Not that Buffy wanted the cyborg Frankindemon to show up and murder people. She was just getting antsy.

They did stumble upon a particularly tricky nest of vampires that Jonathan came up with a brilliant plan to defeat. They may even have been some of Lucy and Spike's vampires. Buffy didn't stop to ask, but they would have been so lost without Jonathan that it was definitely possible. Lucy and Spike's vampires were unfortunately smarter than average.

Going to school like everything was normal was also putting Buffy on edge. She couldn't skip her classes though. Mom would have an aneurysm if she failed and wasted a whole lot of money.

Buffy walked out of her Latin class with her head filled to bursting with declensions and verbs. It was quickly turning into a confusing mess, and she was glad she'd have at least three people who could help her remember things properly later—four if Jonathan could spare her the time.

Buffy shook her head. Jonathan was very busy. He wouldn't be helping little old her with homework.

"Hey, Buffy!" Riley jogged up beside her. "How've you been doing?"

Buffy shrugged, very conscious of the crowds of students around them. "I've been doing. Classes, you know?"

Riley nodded. "Yeah, classes. And other stuff?"

"Other stuff like cleaning up other people's messes?" Buffy asked. "We're working on it."

Riley grimaced. "Buffy, I—"

Buffy cut him off. "If you haven't figured yourself out, save it. I like you, Riley. I really like you, but I can't date a guy who'll let their superior officer try to murder me without saying anything."

A few people nearby gave them odd looks, but nobody said anything.

"Can we talk about this somewhere else?" Riley asked.

"Later," Buffy said. "I'm meeting Lucy."

They weren't going to meet on campus since the Initiative was still swarming the place, but the Espresso Pump was neutral enough that it wasn't likely that anyone would start a fight. Even demons needed their caffeine fix

Riley nodded. "Okay. Tomorrow morning, around ten? I'll bring coffee."

"Okay." Buffy opened the door at the end of the hall and blinked at the sudden sunlight. "I've got to get going. I'll see you tomorrow."

"See you," Riley said.

Lucy was already at the Espresso Pump when Buffy got there. She looked up at the door when Buffy stepped inside and waved from a table in the back corner. Buffy waved back.

"You're actually going to talk to him?" Lucy asked when Buffy joined her with her cappuccino.

"Do you mean Riley?" Buffy asked.

Lucy sighed. "Yes. He almost got you killed, bringing you to Professor Frankenstein like that."

Buffy took a sip of her coffee. "He didn't know she was going to do that."

Riley had found her after she'd killed the demons Professor Walsh had trapped her with and told her that he didn't know what was happening until he saw the gun Walsh had given her fail onscreen. He'd begged her to believe him, and Buffy did. Riley was a terrible liar.

"That's the only reason we don't have two new faces at home," Lucy said. "Well, that and because you want him alive. I wouldn't mind having another childe. If you still liked him, well, you do need a bit of monster in your man to really be happy with him."

Buffy blinked. "You've met Pike."

Lucy smiled. "Exactly. I've seen how ruthless he can be. Spike likes him."

Were they talking about the same Pike?

"See, now I'm really worried," Buffy said.

Lucy waved off her concern. "There was a baby-murdering cult involved. You'd have done the same."

That wasn't at all reassuring, but Buffy decided not to press the issue. That wasn't what they were here to talk about. She'd call Pike later and ask him what exactly had happened in New York.

"That monster you were talking about? He's called Adam," Buffy said. "Have you seen any sign of him?"

Lucy shook her head. "Nothing seen or heard. People are leaving town because of him, but the seer started that."

"And by 'people' you mean demons?" Buffy asked.

Lucy raised her eyebrows and sipped her coffee. She didn't say anything.

"Why did I even bother asking?" Buffy grumbled into her mug.

"Clarification," Lucy said. "Which is fair."

The thought that Adam was causing a demon mass exodus was scary. If Sunnydale's demonic population was running for the hills, then how bad could they expect it to be for the humans?

Probably pretty bad, considering that Amy had transferred out of state the second she'd heard the news. She hadn't been scared of anything with her mom gone.

"Faith did the right thing, getting him away from those kids," Lucy said. "What he could do isn't pretty. Well, there is plenty of blood but it's still not pretty."

"Did your seer tell you anything about how we can stop him?" Buffy asked.

Yes, Jonathan knew about the power source, but he'd also said that it was behind an armoured plate. Knowing how they could get through the armour would be a major plus.

"Don't you know anything about seers? It's always all doom and destruction," Lucy said. "I know he can be stopped but I don't know how."

She'd said the same thing last time they'd talked. Buffy had been hoping that Lucy had been lying to her for her own amusement or something.

Lucy scowled. "I don't lie to you."

Buffy gave a harsh, annoyed sigh. "Could you quit it with the mind-reading thing?"

"Nope." Lucy drained her mug and stood. "Maybe I should pay Jonathan a visit, if he knows so much."

"Try and he'll stake you," Buffy warned.

Lucy shrugged and shot a goodbye over her shoulder as she left. Buffy really hoped that she didn't ambush Jonathan. She'd be dust almost instantly.

The Espresso Pump wasn't very full, so Buffy took her time finishing her coffee. It was nice to have a moment to breathe.

And then Kendra ran into the café. "Buffy! Jonathan was attacked!"

Buffy shot to her feet. Murmurs broke out throughout the room but were drowned out by the yelling.

"Jonathan was attacked?" a girl shrieked.

"Is he okay?" a man demanded.

The old Catholic priest who hated Buffy's guts stood and shook his fists in the air. "The end is nigh! Repent! Repent!"

Buffy and Kendra looked at each other and bolted for the door in unison.

"What attacked him?" Buffy asked as she followed Kendra down the street.

"A demon of some sort." Kendra frowned. "I didn't recognize it."

That wasn't a good sign.

"Did Jonathan or Giles know what it was?" Buffy asked.

Kendra shook her head. "No."

That really wasn't a good sign. Between the three of them it seemed like they knew every demon in existence, especially Jonathan. A demon they didn't recognize could only be majorly of the bad.

"Was Jonathan hurt?" Buffy asked.

"Not at all," Kendra said.

That was a relief.

Kendra led their way to Giles and Jenny's house. When they got there, the living/dining room was packed full. Xander and Anya, the Dingoes, Jenny, Tara—everyone was there except for Mom, who was visiting Aunt Arlene, and Jonathan, which was to be expected. He was very busy after all.

Giles's books were out on the table and Jenny and Willow were bent over their laptops. A full research party was in progress.

"Any leads?" Buffy asked.

Giles shook his head. "Not as such. It feels like I should know where to look for this demon, but my mind won't allow it."

Kendra frowned. "There was a symbol on its forehead. Could you not start there?"

"There was?" Giles dug through the books in front of him. "I didn't see that. Would you be able to draw it?"

Kendra nodded and accepted the paper and pencil Giles handed to her. Buffy looked over her shoulder as she sketched what looked like an asterisk partially contained in a triangle.

"I recognize that," Buffy said.

"You do?" Giles asked. "From where?"

That was a good question. Buffy frowned. The where felt like more of a what, but the what was escaping her.

"Give me a minute," Buffy said.

"Take all the time you need," Xander said from the couch. "It's not like we're under pressure or anything."

"I thought we were under pressure," Anya said. "Oh, you were being sarcastic, weren't you?"

"Animal, vegetable or mineral?" Faith called from the other end of the table.

"Vegetable. And mineral," Buffy said.

"And is it bigger than a breadbox?" Faith asked.

How big was a breadbox? Was there a standard size for breadboxes?

"Maybe," Buffy said. "Giles, do you have...the Jonathan Swimsuit Calendar?"

Giles sputtered. "No, of course not!"

"It's in the top drawer on the left," Jenny said, gesturing towards the sideboard.

Several people laughed when Giles tried to make excuses. Buffy searched through the drawer and quickly found the calendar, which was still in its original packaging. She said a silent apology to the collector's item and carefully opened the plastic. She flipped through a few months before finding the photo that she hadn't known she was looking for.

"Have a look at this," Buffy said.

Something in her tone brought half of the group over to try to see the calendar over her shoulder. Giles managed to squeeze in right next to her.

After a few moments, Giles cleared his throat. "I believe we should speak to Jonathan."

The scar on the back of Jonathan's shoulder shaped like the symbol Kendra had drawn that was revealed in the May photograph in the calendar made his thought process clear.

"That could be a coincidence," Xander said.

Kendra raised an eyebrow. "A coincidental link to a demon?"

"Jonathan would never be connected to a demon," Willow said.

There was a twisting in Buffy's gut. "Does anyone else feel like we should be better than this?" she asked.

"Better than how?" Devon asked.

"Than this." Buffy gestured at the room at large. "We're not remembering things we should and we're trying to deny a direct link between Jonathan and a demon—and how did the guy have time to direct Star Wars and star in The Matrix before he finished high school while competing in Formula One and working with Doctors Without Borders?"

All of them exchanged looks, even Tara, who usually couldn't meet anyone's eyes in groups this big.

"He must have...really good time management," Sam said. Then he shook his head. "No, you're right. It doesn't make sense."

"He's too perfect," Kendra said. She turned to Anya. "Could someone wish to make themself perfect?"

"Or make the world perfect for them?" Buffy asked.

Anya nodded. "Definitely. There are infinite possible worlds out there. All you'd have to do is shift them around a little so the world you want is the one you're experiencing. So, you could have a world that's all of us like we are now but in the eighteen hundreds, or all of us but in the year two thousand and nineteen, or a world without shrimp."

"There's a world without shrimp?" Tara asked. She wilted slightly when everyone looked at her. "I'm allergic."

"There are infinite worlds without shrimp," Anya said. "And infinite worlds with nothing but shrimp."

That was more shrimp than Buffy was comfortable imagining.

"And it all comes back to Jonathan, so let's go interrogate him," Faith said. She started for the door.

Buffy, Kendra, Giles and all four of the Dingoes reached out to stop Faith.

"You're not interrogating anyone," Buffy said.

Faith rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to hurt him, B. It's Jonathan."

That was fair.

Buffy, Faith and Devon were the ones who ended up going to look for Jonathan at his mansion. What they found was Jonathan's butler curled up in the foyer trying to keep his blood from spilling out of a deep cut clawed across his neck and a trail of destruction that led further into the building.

Devon dropped to the butler's side and took his cell phone out of his pocket. "Calling an ambulance."

Buffy took a second to give him a nod of acknowledgment and then she and Faith headed deeper into the house. There were a few drops of blood on the floor near the door but nothing that indicated any fatal wounds. They followed the trail of wall, floor and furniture carnage until Buffy heard screaming coming from outside.

"I'll go straight to the backyard, you go around the side," Buffy said.

"Got it, B," Faith said.

They both had weapons on them—no one went anywhere unarmed anymore—but they were only knives and stakes. They'd have to fight carefully. Still, it was better than facing an unknown enemy with no weapons to fall back on.

Buffy burst out of the back door in time to see Jonathan kicking a long-armed, pointy-eared demon in the chest while two pretty blonde women ran for their lives. The demon grabbed Jonathan's ankle and twisted but Jonathan spun with the motion and landed on his feet.

The demon's back was to her, so Buffy aimed for a sneak attack. She stepped as lightly as she could, quickly closing the space between them, and stabbed one of her knives into what looked like a soft place between the demon's neck and shoulder. The demon made a sound like a chain saw and spun around. It hit Buffy hard enough that she felt ribs crack and she went flying across the lawn.

"Hey, Gremlins reject!" Faith yelled.

A stone rocketed through the air and hit the demon right in the eye. It howled again.

Buffy scrambled to her feet. "Anything you want to tell us, Jonathan?"

Jonathan dodged a swing from the demon and nearly tripped over his own feet. The tips of the demon's claws missed him by a hair.

"Um," Jonathan said. "I might have cast a spell."

"And summoned a demon?" Buffy demanded.

"I didn't know about the demon!" Jonathan once again came within an inch of getting his face sliced off.

Faith threw more rocks with accidental or deliberate pinpoint accuracy. That distracted the demon enough that Buffy was able to stab it again, this time on the other side of its neck. Black blood leaked out of both wounds. The demon swiped at Buffy reluctantly. There was a wet snapping sound and its long arms fell limply to its sides. The chain saw howl almost sounded confused.

"Finish it, B!" Faith said.

Buffy was happy to. With the demon's arms out of commission, it was one stab through the eye and then the demon was on the ground, dead.

A bright, blinding light exploded from the demon's corpse. The entire world went white.

Buffy and Willow were in their dorm room. There were no Jonathan posters on the wall, no Jonathan mugs sitting on top of the fridge and no magazines filled with Jonathan's face stacked on the desk. Everything in the room was back to normal.

"Well, that's interesting," Willow said. "I guess this is where we'd have been if Jonathan wasn't famous."

"Studying on a Friday night. Exciting," Buffy said.

Willow bounced to her feet. "I'll call Giles."

Buffy nodded. While Willow waited for her call to go through, she went out into the hall. There were several other students there, standing by their open doors and exchanging looks of confusion.

"Hey, do you know about this guy called Jonathan?" another girl asked Buffy.

"I graduated with a Jonathan," Buffy said. "Why?"

"I think the explanations are down to 'trippy hallucination caused by a gas leak' and 'collective unconscious thing that'll make the psychology grad students excited'," someone behind Buffy said.

Buffy turned and saw Larry leaning against the wall next to her neighbour's door. "That was fast," Buffy said.

Larry shrugged. "I never noticed before, but Sunnydale, right?"

Buffy cracked a smile. "Right. Do you want to know what really happened?"

Larry shook his head. "Nah, I'm good. It's date night."

That was an extremely valid answer.

"Have fun," Buffy said. "And be careful. There's graduation day stuff going on."

"Yeah, I heard," Larry said. "I'm on the mailing list."

He was talking about the Sunnydale High Class of '99 Weekly list, which most people called the Monster of the Week Update (MotWU or the Update for short). Willow kept that current for everyone who wasn't dead or in denial. It had been helping them keep up their survival rate since graduation.

When Buffy got back to their room, Willow was typing on her laptop so quickly that her hands would have been a blur to anyone with normal human vision.

"What did Giles say?" Buffy asked.

"Everything is back to normal," Willow said. "Which means that we lost all the info Jonathan got for us, so I have to get it back before the Initiative changes all their security codes because of course they're all secured files that my backdoor barely helps with."

The air around Willow began literally glowing. Buffy left her to her hacking. She and Kendra had planned to patrol tonight, and since that was of the normal she'd better not keep her sister Slayer waiting much longer.

Willow was still working on her computer when Buffy left to meet Riley in the morning. By the afternoon, Buffy had called Xander and Oz to help her intervene. Willow had already gotten all the files she wanted and more, because she was amazing and a genius, but she was hitting a wall trying to single-handedly science a way through Adam's armour.

"Take a break and then we'll all work on it together," Buffy said over Willow's protests. "Ten minutes."

"Okay, okay, fine," Willow said. "Ten minutes."

Personally, Buffy was going to aim for fifteen.

They'd been sitting out in the quad enjoying the nice weather for a little while when Jonathan came up to them. Willow cut off her passionate babbling about how Diana was not a love goddess to watch him.

"Um." Jonathan cleared his throat. "I wanted to apologize. A guy from group therapy gave me that spell and, well, I should have realized there was a reason he hadn't done it himself."

"I'm not going to say it's okay," Buffy said. "It isn't."

Jonathan looked down at his feet and nodded.

"But it's fixed now, and you got us some stuff we needed," Buffy continued. "So, apology accepted. Just don't do it again."

"Yeah, no, I'm taking a break from magic for a while." Jonathan rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "I think the comic store is hiring."

"They are?" Xander asked. "Which one?"

"Doctor C's," Jonathan said.

Xander grumbled. Buffy knew why. All of the Scoobies had been banned from Doctor C's after that night of hunting down fungus demons.

"Be careful," Willow said. "Things aren't looking good."

Jonathan nodded and left after a quick goodbye. They only managed to keep Willow outside for five minutes after that.

A/n: This is the last chapter I have prewritten. I don't know when the next one will be finished, and I'm not going to set a goal for when to have it finished because then we'll all be disappointed.

-Cynder2013