RATING: probably, PG or PG-13.
SUMMARY: A parody of My Own Armageddon by Violator and KiNeTiC.
SPOILERS: Up to season 3 is fair game.
DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon and his buddies own the characters;. Violator and
KiNeTiC own the original story.
by: Mediancat
Shadows danced on walls of stone. There was a sound of water tinkling on stone. Torches' and candles' fire in the Master's former throneroom flickered on stone. Two men desperately struggled against the senseless death of a loved one.
On stone.
Xander stared forlornly at Buffy's face. "No. She's not dead."
Angel looked at him. "Well, if she's not, this is going to be a short story." He said nothing to Xander's quizzical grunt in answer, and marvelled that, on top of all the other atrocities heaped on him, his first real chance at happiness in two centuries - if you didn't count that weekend with the hookers in the Quik'n'EZ Motel in Vegas a couple years back - was about to be taken from him so easily. "She's not breathing."
"But, if she drowned, there's a shot! CPR!" Xander was too young as of yet to have had the hope in his soul beaten out. Boy, was he due for a rude awakening.
"You have to do it," Angel answered. "I have no breath."
"Then how can you talk, smoke, or even speak?" Xander asked.
"Uh - well - if you really have to know, I never took the damn CPR class. You'll have to do it."
Xander removed his coat and laid it on top of Buffy. Kneeling down by her face, he looked at her a moment. He put his mouth to hers and began applying effort.
"Xander - breathe into her lungs. Don't just make out with her."
"OH - right. Sorry." Then he tried to breathe air into her lungs. Letting go, he pumped her chest. "C'mon! C'mon! Breathe! Breathe!"
Angel looked down in sorrow, and when his gaze rose he couldn't exactly be described as joyous either.
"C'mon!"
This continued for what either of them would honestly swear was forever, at least if they hadn't spent a more literal forever waiting for the next installment of "My Own Armageddon." Anyway, whatever Xander was doing wasn't working, and they both knew it.
"Breathe! Please!" Xander's head sank. "Please."
Angel picked up Buffy's body and cradled it close. "No!" he screamed. "No! I haven't even had sex with her yet!" Bloody tears began to drip from his eyes. He never noticed Xander get up to leave. Buffy was dead, and that meant the Master was loose. Slowly, then more quickly he began running. This could mean only one thing.
Clearly time to get the hell out of town.
* * *
Cordelia drove through the halls of the school, vampires right behind her. Her destiny was to be pursued by men. MEN, not vampires! God, couldn't the fates get these things right for once? Frightened, she, Willow and Ms. Calendar leapt from the car into the library. And smashed headlong into the doors. Recovering their wits quickly, they yanked the doors open and slammed them closed in front of a pack of snarling vampires.
Giles looked on, shocked. 'What -"
"Take a guess!"
"One of Cordelia's dates was miffed when she wouldn't go all the way?"
A vampire punched through the window in one of the doors and scrabbled around for one of them. Giles hauled a bookcase to the door, and put it there. Then he remembered that the doors, in fact, opened both ways, and prayed the vampires would be too stupid to figure this out as well.
* * *
Xander ran, his lungs on fire in his chest. That pack-a-day habit - anyway. The school was just ahead . .. and surrounded by vampires. "Oh SHIT!"
Then he turned around and ran the other way. Town limits - to the right.
* * *
Chaos ruled the library. The Dewey Decimal system was all out of whack. And, oh the octopus demon that had burst from the floor gripped Willow, as Giles tried ineffectually to fight it. The Master loved this - it was better than the soaps. "Yes," he said as he stared down through the skylight. "Come forth, my child. Welcome to my world. A world ripe for violation - a world of which I will be the one true Violator!"
A tentacle shattered the window, gently picked up the Master, and dropped him on his head on the library floor. At the same time, it swung a tentacle into Giles, slamming him into a wall. He slid down it, blood trickling from his nose. With yet one more tendril, he - not meaning Giles, but the demon - brought Willow to the Vampire King.
"Yummy. You know what they say about humans - you can't eat just one."
* * *
Xander sprinted up the stairs - how had he gotten turned around? He was headed out of town last he checked! Anyway, he ran over to the broken skylight. What he saw shattered him for the second time that night.
Then he cleared the naked photos of Jerry Stiller out of the way and watched helplessly as the Master dropped the lifeless Willow to the ground.
* * *
The air was still and silent in the library as Willow's body hit the floor. The Master began to advance on Cordelia and Jenny Calendar when he tripped over Willow's body and smashed into the floor. Getting up, cursing, he pressed his advance when a shout emanated from the hallway. Something smashed into the makeshift barricade, finally exploding it inwards, hurling the barricade away. A piece of the bookshelf hit Cordelia, FINALLY shutting her up.
The Master faced a sight that gave even him pause. Then he too cleared away the naked pictures of Jerry Stiller come fluttering down from the busted skylight, and took one look at Angel - an avenging Angel in name and body, the Master decided, and isn't it fortunate his name wasn't Bert, in which case the joke wouldn't work nearly so well. Face twisted in rage, Angel charged the Master which such ferocity that he began to gain the upper hand. Meanwhile, Jenny Calendar took the opportunity to try to get the hell out of the neighborhood.
"Angel, you were always my favorite - well, except for those two hookers in Vegas. Don't make me kill you." The Master dodged a roundhouse. By the streaks on Angel's face, he could see the young vampire had been run through a bad photocopier. Disgusting. Then Angel decked him, hard, and the fight began in earnest.
* * *
Buffy's corpse lay on the stone floor of the Master's hideout. Buffy had moved on. All the way across the room.
Heaven truly WAS a place on Earth.
Either that, or she hadn't departed for any kind of afterlife. She was disoriented. To her blurred vision, the very fabric of the world around her seemed to be warped. Then she removed the 3-D glasses she'd somehow acquired after death and her perceptions cleared, even as things around her continued to shift. Something about the motions indicated they were actual things, not seen.
"Marcie?" Buffy asked.
Then there was a tearing sound behind her. Spinning around, she saw a form taking shape. It looked like a large inhuman beast for just a second, and then a normal man, radiating menace . . . and a strong BO. Apparently demons didn't use deodorant. He gave Buffy a mock bow and smiled broadly.
"Who are you?"
"People call me KiNeTiC. Well, actually, they usually scream, but Arrrrgh-sob-please-ohgodno-pleasestop-I'llgiveyoumycondo-I'llgiveyoumyfirstborn-I'llgiveyoumysister'sphonenumber-I'llgiveyoumysister just doesn't work as a name. Anyhoo, thanks. This couldn't have happened without you. In a way, you make the Virgin Mary irrelevant. All she did was give birth to that Christ fool. You're responsible for birthing a whole new world! And the master was the obstetrician who made it all possible. You? You're just the afterbirth."
"Okay, now you're abusing a metaphor."
He turned and began to walk out. Then, looking back, he grinned widely. "By the way: I like the dress."
Then he strolled away, the footprints of his Nikes burned into the stolen floor, a fact made even more interesting by the fact that he didn't have shoes, or even feet in the proper sense. Apparently Nike was really branching out. Buffy tried to follow, but fell, able to hold her form together by sheer will alone. Again, she tried to follow, but gave up - and besides, there were already things following Judas, things that made vampires look tame.
Including a WHOLE herd of Barney the Purple Dinosaurs.
* * *
The skies sack into a blank void; the world saw its last vestiges of sunlight, every city and country received the backwash of hell itself, and every possible nightmare humankind had ever imagined was given flesh. Rivers and oceans turned into scarlet baths from the blood of the slaughtered innocents. On the plus side, however, Wal-Mart was put out of business permanently.
Buildings crumbled, people crushed within their own homes. Audible cracks and sputters were cheerfully echoed through PA systems the demons carried around. Even more horrifyingly, they prevented Allstate agents from getting to the destroyed homes and assessing the damage. People's blood gushed into pails held by mischievous monsters.
You get the picture. People were not going around singing the happy happy joy joy song.
Central park became a graveless cemetery, the blood-smeared corpses lying atop one another. The skulls of pregnant women were hung high atop the Empire State Building, where basically no one could see them. Across the world even more sickness and morbidity could be seen, worse than any human could inflict. People were flung bodily from the Sears Tower just for the joy of hearing them scream. The Kremlin became nothing more than a charnel house. San Francisco spontaneously combusted. London literally came to life and devoured its inhabitants. And, most frightening of all, Las Vegas stayed pretty much the same.
No matter what Billy Idol would have said, it was NOT a good day for a white wedding. The only people kept alive were those of rare bloodstock, preserved as prize bulls. Vampires and other demons had to eat, and cannibalism got SO boring . . . the remnants of humanity were kept in pens, like cattle, and given grass to eat, like cattle. When a lot of humans began dying the demons gave up on this as not one of their brighter ideas.
The main cattle pen was in Sunnydale. Yes, THAT Sunnydale. The monsters in charge were a demonic blood extractor, a butcher, and a deliveryman, and a whole sh*tload of Beanie Babies, their true mission revealed at last. Humans trembled in their pens when Rocha, the delivery man, Nide, the butcher, or Ether, the demon in charge, would arrive, but they held their most spectacular fears for the arrivals of the Beanie Babies, who were just so goddamned nauseatingly cute most humans vomited on the sight of them.
Reproduction of humans was entirely mechanical - a condition familiar to many women prior to the Hellmouth's opening, you understand, just not quite as literally interpreted.
All hope was lost, for the world had been changed into a nightmarish jailhouse. And ain't no one on that whole cellblock was doin' the jailhouse rock. Demons walked free, man's time was over. But humans are known for being just too damn dumb to accept the facts.
Case in point listed below.
* * *
Gunfire rattled throughout the endless night. It was a small installation, only manned by vampires, once used as storage for food for their "cattle." A perfect target for the resistance.
"Sir? In a sense, we won." Marcus brought him the report. Good man, nice, polite. At least by today's standards, by which Charles Manson would have qualified as a nice guy. The leader of the resistance was a striking figure. A dark brown beard covered much of his face, Gillette having gone out of business a long time ago. What could be seen of the rest of his face was covered in scars - some from battle, some from a pair of hookers in Vegas. He wore a long trenchcoat and carried a long wooden pole, one end sharpened to a point Hundreds of vampires had been dusted by the point of that staff. And if you don't know who is this yet, you just haven't been paying attention.
"What do you mean, in a sense? How much food did we get?"
"Enough for six months - if we were cows, sir."
"Grass again?"
"Grass again."
"Damn. How many men did we lose?"
Marcus hung his head. "Twenty-three, sir."
He laughed bitterly. "Seems like a fair trade, doesn't it? Twenty-three men for a pile of grass clippings. Show me the bodies."
They were lain out across the ground. He walked to the foot of each of them, one at a time. And kicked them awake. "Get up, you lazy bums! We're fighting a war here!" Then he turned to Marcus. "By the bodies, Marcus, I meant the corpses, not the drunks."
"Oh! Sorry, sir." Then he was taken to the pile of dead people, and looked over them, pain visible on his face.
"It's not your fault." He turned and saw a gray-haired woman in her early fifties standing nearby. Sadness was obvious in her eyes. Or maybe it was just sleep.
"The hell it's not, Jenny."
She put her hand on his arm. "You know that there are only two people responsible for this, Xander."
He looked down at the bodies, burning their faces into his mind. Jenny was right, though. Violator and KiNeTiC. Their names were what kept him from slicing open a vein or eating a bullet. Well, that and that the latter would just give him a stomachache. Xander wouldn't die until he could make them pay, and he didn't take Mastercard. "Come on," he told Marcus, "Let's get out of here." He turned, and quickly walked away. Truck engines roared to life - sometimes literally - and within minutes, the resistance was gone, leaving only the dead behind to mark their passing. And even they were soon gone as scavengers swarmed them and devoured their flesh.
And the starless, moonless night was silent once more.
Except for the unholy chittering of those DAMNED Beanie Babies!
* * * * *
Buffy had been discovering new things about her spirit state for years. One of the things she could do was fly, and she had gained a few other powers as well. They were like something out of Ghostbusters, though mercifully she resembled neither an ugly green ghost nor the Stay-Puf Marshmallow man. Also, her body would be affected by her surroundings, and would warp and twist like it had when she'd first been killed. This made her a real hit in the undead discoes, but she would have traded it for the ability to eat a corn dog. An interesting side-effect was that she glowed for five minutes after using these abilities, which made her an even bigger hit at the undead discoes.
She was also basically, with one odd exception she'd never fully explored, trapped in Sunnydale. Whenever she tried to leave, she ran into a wall of shimmering force. And about a kajillion vampires. That was finally it. She'd had enough. Whatever came of her, she had to take the chance.
She explored the exception, and vanished.
* * *
Alexander Harris sat in an old easy chair. The leather was worn through in several places, affording the many females of the Resistance and excellent view of his butt. The chair's was even worse. He stopped rocking and pulled out a picture. Him, Willow and Buffy. They were so happy in the picture, and he had difficulty remembering what happiness felt like. If you discounted those two hookers in Vegas, of course.
Some of his earliest memories were of Willow. Like this one time, when they were seven, and Larry had stolen her lunchbox. Xander caught up to him at the jungle gym and they shared the food. Later, of course, they had to pretend to fight so Willow would think that he was protecting her, but boy had those Hohos been delicious. That became his job then. Protecting Willow. Hell of a job he'd done in the meantime, eh?
He looked at Buffy. The Slayer. He'd fallen for her right away. Oh sure, he'd always tended to fall in love at the drop of a hat, but this girl was different. She wasn't inflatable. In the short time he'd known her, they'd become close. Not as close as he would have preferred, in the sweaty naked bodies sense. But close.
Once, when a guy had stood her up, he'd happened to be nearby. So he walked her home, and they watched the stars come out, and they joked, and he tried to feel her up, and she'd decked him. But basically he'd comforted her. Protected her. Failed her too, obviously.
He stared down at the photo. It hurt like Hell - or at least like a nasty slap to the face -- to look at these images, but it wouldn't let him forget. It kept his hate fresh. If he hadn't had to make up for them, he would have suicided a long time ago. One of these days, he'd get his chance at Violator. Maybe even KiNeTiC.
There was a light knock on his door. "Come in," he said, reaching for the gun holstered at his shin, not remembering that most of the monsters they faced would hardly bother to knock. The door creaked open. It was Marcus.
Marcus came to attention. "Hello, sir."
"Hello, Marcus. What's up?"
"My blood pressure, my cholesterol level, my stress level, our casualty rate . . ."
"Next time, don't take that question quite so literally."
"Sorry sir." Marcus stood at ease and began to talk. "That attack on our safe haven was nothing more than a diversion. Another band of skin-splitters ravaged the safe-haven on the other side."
Xander set his head in his hands. Then he put it back on and looked back up. "Any fatalities?"
Marcus looked at a point a foot or so above Xander's shoulder. There was a really neat Playboy Centerfold stapled to the wall there. "Two nurses were torn to shreds and a young boy was dragged off, and we don't think the skinsplitters wanted him to play Tiddlywinks. Fortunately, there were a few resistance members there, and they drove the 'splitters off."
Xander shook his head, but unfortunately, the brains inside didn't work any better. "I don't understand this."
"Well, maybe if you hadn't just rattled your brains around -" at a glance from Xander, he quieted down. "Sorry, sir."
Xander said, "No one outside our district knew of those two safe-havens."
"Well... there is...", Marcus trailed off, thinking. "I just have this suspicion that there's a traitor around here somewhere."
Behind Marcus, a soldier walked off towards the exits, carrying a big briefcase marked "LOCATION OF TOP SECRET HIDEOUTS."
Xander looked at the soldier, then up at Marcus. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
Marcus said, "Don't you think it's strange that every time we're safe, they find us? Every base is slowly but surely discovered." Behind Marcus, the same soldier walked away carrying an attache case reading "RESISTANCE WEAPON STRENGTHS."
Xander blinked. "Well . . . if you say so . . . though I still don't see any proof."
Marcus began to tick off options on his fingers. "Any of the new recruits could be tattletales, sir. And . . ."
He was interrupted as Jenny Calendar entered the room. The same soldier walked by, and his shirt read "I AM A SPY!" Xander ignored him. Jenny was in her fifties, but looked a decade older, which is to say, she looked like she was in her sixties, for those of you who have trouble doing their math. Xander quickly stood up, but didn't smile. Jenny was one of his closest friends, but she had about the same effect as the picture. Not much made him smile these days. Well, except for those hookers in Vegas. He nodded at Jenny, gestured at her to sit, and told Marcus to get out of the room. Marcus got, after sneaking a look at Jenny's cleavage and legs. Hey, she might be 52 and look 62, but these days a man couldn't afford to be too picky.
The door swung closed, and the room filled with silence. Jenny took the wooden chair in front of him, but the security guards stopped her before she could actually steal it. Furniture was at a premium these days, you see. She returned to the room and sat down.
Xander spoke first. "How've you been, Jana?"
"Not Jana. She died when Angel did."
"What?!" Xander practically exploded. "Then who the hell are you if you're not Jana?"
"Easy, Xander. It was a metaphor, that's all."
"Right. I don't deal very well with those." Xander looked down at his hands. "Anyway. I'm glad you came. There's no one else for me to find solace in. You're like my mother, since she died . . ."
Jenny frowned. "I thought your family was horribly dysfunctional and you slept outside every Christmas."
"Third season info, and this is a second season story. At least, it started at that. God only knows if the show'll even be on when it's finally completed . . ." Xander looked into her eyes, and she thought for the thousandth time about how much he'd changed. HE used to be such a happy, carefree person. Now his eyes might as well have been ice. A rock showed more emotion than he did. It was also a lot more fun to talk to, and much handier for throwing through a window.
Xander spoke in a somber tone of voice. "I don't think we can make it, Jenny. I don't think we can win. I mean, we're outnumbered about a billion to one, and the other side has all the umpires. Do you think . .."
He was interrupted by a sudden flash of light. A spirit . . . Buffy!
"It's taking a lot of energy for me to do this. Xander, Jenny - come with me. I can get you out of here."
Xander protested. "But - what about our revenge? About killing those that caused all this?"
Buffy's glowing spirit sighed. "Look. You know who's responsible for all of this, right? KiNeTiC and Violator. Now do you really think with those two in charge this little tale's going to have a HAPPY ending? Oh, please! Come with me, I tell you. I can get you both clear to where you'll never be bothered again."
Jenny grinned. "Well, I dunno about you, Xander, but Armageddon out of here."
Xander hesitated for only a second. "Sure, why not. It's not like there's anything left for me here anyway."
They joined hand and started to walk towards Buffy. Xander asked, "Hey, where does this little tunnel lead to?"
"A couple of hookers in Vegas."
Xander snorted. "Well, THAT figures."
The end.