By: Morrigan
It was late.
The house was quiet, and Buffy was doing her nightly walk-through, making sure that everything was locked tight and secure.
She headed for the stairs, and took one last look at the group of girls that filled her living room. Sleeping bags piled all around, their young faces relaxed in sleep, and her heart panged with hurt and worry for all of them.
She had been so focused on her role in this oncoming war, that she didn't know half of their names or anything of their lives. She knew that they looked up to her to protect them, but she also knew how they talked about her when they didn't know she was listening. They doubted her motives. They resented her. And, given their current position, she didn't feel that she could blame them.
When she heard the sobs from the far corner of the room, she approached the dark-haired girl, "Really do need to get this name-thing down," and tried to comfort her...
Some time later, she headed back for the stairs, which would take her to her room. Looking back once more, before ascending the stairs, she didn't see the creature until it hit her...
She forced herself out of that memory. A slayer dream. She should have seen it coming. It was too late, though, and guilt wouldn't change a thing. That girl was
gone. She was stupid and weak and The First had used her fear against her. She had hung herself.
Here she was. The one and only Slayer, just *bursting* with legendary power, and The First had her using her energy to bury potentials. Burying them, instead of training them. Instead of leading them. Instead of saving them.
This was the oldest, strongest Big Bad in the game, and her army wasn't very impressive.
Her troops consisted of several scared girls with potential power, a Carpenter, an ex-vengeance demon - who's new career seemed to be dramatic eye rolling and off-colored comments - a free-lance demon fighter who recently
compared her to his late mother, a Watcher who, well...watches and a captive pet nerd, who makes a mean funnel cake!
Most distressing was the state of her two strongest and best defenses. A very gifted and powerful Wicca-who-now-won't-a, and The formerly known Slayer of Slayers. A freshly-souled, recently triggered, and killing, although very repentive, back-to-reality, although, one-upon-a-time, insane, vampire who is now reluctant to let his own game face show.
So, when she became the owner of Nicholette Woods' "Emergency Kit" she had called everyone together and declared their situation to be just that. An emergency.
Inside, they found a box containing some sort of stand, with old metal figurines, resembling trees, monsters and stick-like figures that looked somewhat human.
Chuckling, Xander picked one up and made it dance around, giggling something like, "This is it!" "The First must be scared of puppets!"
Dawn, however, who had turned into quite the research girl over the past year, knew exactly what they were. "They are Shadow puppets." She explained. "You put them together, and they tell a story." She picked up a book, which she found inside the box, and read, "You can't just watch. You have to see..."
A little while later, the room was full of sound and motion. Moving images of demons, and men with a chained, screaming girl were swirling around and around the small room.
Dawn was reading from the book all the while, telling them the story of the first slayer, and how she was chained to the earth by men who gave her strength to fight the evil of
the world by forcing a demon inside of her to give her that power. Buffy's power now. Her power came from a demon?
Before she could fully absorb this new information, and the terrifying sites and sounds that were all around them, Dawn repeated that she could not only watch but she had to see... but only if she was ready to make the exchange, and with that, A blinding light filled the center of the room. A portal!
And she knew she had to go.
They all tried to stop her. Tried to tell her that she had no idea what was on the other side. How would they get her back? But Buffy knew that Willow could do it, if
she would just trust herself to do so.
Even if nothing came out of this, perhaps, it would be the thing to pull her small band of warriors together. Willow would have to face herself and learn that she could control her power. And the exchange?... She
didn't really want to think about what that meant. But, whatever it was, the rest would have to pull together and deal. It was time.
The First was coming. If they couldn't get her back, they would lose. But she also knew that if they didn't stop being so afraid of themselves, and use the strengths that they had been given, they were going to lose anyway.
And so, she jumped. And landed in the desert.
Those men. The ones from the freaky slideshow in her house. They were there.
They *offered* her more power. Or at least, that was the way they chose to see it. In reality? They clubbed her over the head, chained her to the earth and, upon her waking, they opened a stone box and released a demon spirit that attacked her!
They told her that this would make her ready for the fight. They told her that this is the way that it was done and that it was the only way, now. There was no *offer* or
*suggestion* in this scenario. They were forcing her.
As panic overtook her, she screamed and twisted while the black inky thing whispered over and around her body, insistently, trying to find it's way inside.
"These men," her mind shouted, "are violating me! Like they violated that poor girl so long ago!" These men, who were powerful enough to harness something as dark as this,
but weak and fearful enough to bestow their *gift* on some young girl instead of taking it upon themselves. "This," hermind shrieked, "is spiritual rape!"
Her fear turned to anger, then. She broke the chains from the clay that held them, and used them to beat two of the magi to the ground. She then, forcefully, grabbed the
Scepter held by the third, and snapped it it two. The demon dissipated immediately.
"It figures," she thought, inching herself slowly to peer into the unflinching eyes of the man before her. "It's always the staff."
"We offered you power," he said, to her. He talked about the great evil that she was destined to face. She waved him off and retorted, flippantly, "Yeah, tell me something I don't already know!"
And he did.
Shivering, she wraps herself up even tighter, to escape the gooseflesh crawling across her bruised and aching body and realized that she had made the most terrible of mistakes.
She wasn't just some ordinary girl. She was the Slayer. She didn't have the luxury of "choices." She had a duty. And she had selfishly, for the sake of her own pride and humanity, turned her back on it, and possibly doomed herself. And the world.
Now, the vision the 3rd Shaman gifted to her, before she was pulled back from her journey, played over and over in her head until finally, after what seemed like years, she passed into a fitful sleep.
Out there in the night, far beneath the Hellmouth, some working, some screaming, some fighting, some eating, *all* waiting, were the Turok'Khan. Their numbers so great, that they appeared, not as individuals, but as a hissing writhing mass. A menacing bloodthirsty ocean of evil stretching as far as the eye can see.
...The creature hit her full in the chest, wrapping it's arms and legs around her as they both rolled down the stairs, landing with a hard "thud" at the bottom.
Buffy stared, powerless and in shock, up at the being on top of her. Dark skin, war paint and wild eyes stared back.
The first slayer pulled back her lips in a snarl as she hissed, so close that she could feel her breath against her skin... It is NOT Enough!