Bludhaven Hellmouth
by Redwulf
Chapter Three
Buffy was beyond pissed. In one fell swoop she had found out that Spike was alive, and then he had been stolen from her, the thieves disappearing into the sky. She felt as if she were one of those computer icon thingies all red faced with smoke blowing out of her ears. She knew she was being irrational, that Batman and Company had been protecting him, but still she was pissed beyond measure.
"So everyone was watching Troia and that… that..." Buffy was at a loss for words.
"Kory Anders, aka, Starfire, aka, Princess Koriander of Tameraan." Andrew said in a dreamy voice.
"Hummmmph. Looked more like Billi-Jo-Bobbi-Sue-queen-slut-reject-from-the-trailer-trash-planet." Buffy said glaring at the boy.
"Meow. Phht… phht." Faith commented with a grin. "Damn B, tell us what you really think."
"Pleeease, she goes into battle in a metal bikini and high heels! What does that say about her?" Buffy answered realizing she was being 'Queen Bitch Buffy'.
"She is a member of an alien warrior race and was a sex slave for about half her life." Andrew defended the alien girl.
"Again, pleeeease, she has enough collagen in her lips and silicone in her tits to supply ten porn queens." She gritted out.
"Goooo, B." Faith was actually laughing at her.
Andrew however was sputtering, "My God, Buffy, she is… she's a Titan!"
"Weenie boy, shut it or lose it." Faith answered for her.
"C'mon, we need Will to get us home." Buffy told Faith, ignoring Andrew and the other slayers who were gawking at her.
Willow finished the spell that closed the Hellmouth, surprised at the power that had come from her coven - all the white magic she could handle and then some. She never knew they'd it in them. However, as she opened her eyes and looked around, she was surprised that a woman in a top hat and tails wearing fishnets and high heels had aided her group. Willow was in a relationship sure, but the exotic brunette was still drool worthy. Hey, she could still appreciate beauty; she wasn't dead. By the woman's side stood a bleach-blond male that looked surprisingly like Sting. Shit, shit, shit! Zantanna and John Constantine! Two major magical players.
"Oh my god, your Zantanna." Willow burst out.
"And you're, the dreaded Darth Willow." Constantine mockingly replied, already knowing exactly who the little witch was. He had little time for those he considered amateurs.
"JOHN." Zantanna stopped him. "We have our own plans to get back too."
"This will only take a few minutes love." He turned toward the amateur witch ready to start giving her a lecture.
"John," Zantanna sing-songed. "We have plans - plans that include chocolate sauce, handcuffs and beef marinade."
"Alright then." He smirked, turning back toward his love and dragging Zantanna back through a portal and towards their home.
Willow ignored his harsh tone as she thought about what Zantanna had said. It took her a full five minutes before, "Ewwww! TMI!"
Buffy had grown tired of waiting for Willow, pulling out her cell phone. "Dawn, did you guys get the live feed?"
"Oh my god, yes!" Dawn answered her. "Giles and Xander are both having hissy fits." Buffy could hear the excitement in her sister's voice. "Spike is alive, and there really is a Batman."
"Batman's an ass." Buffy answered her.
"Buffy, he was trying to protect Spike." Dawn tried to reason with her, "He doesn't know you."
"Oh yeah, and he knows Spike?" She snapped back.
"Buffy, ya think this might be the first time anyone has ever stood up for Spike?"
And that was the crux of the matter - Batman and Arsenal had come to Spike's defense even though they had never met him before, but Buffy who loved him, had never stood up for him, even with her own friends. She'd never even told him how she felt till it was too late. "But I need him Dawnie," she whined.
"Good thing for you, that you have the coolest little sister alive then." She could see in her mind's eye Dawn's smirk. "He is in the New York Star Labs, and I have three tickets on the morning flight from Cleveland to New York, aaaaannnnd, I called our lawyers in New York, so we will be staying in 'OUR' penthouse suite while we see him."
That was one thing that was verrrry new to Buffy, having literally billions at her disposal. God, how could she ever thank Spike? "Thanks Dawnie, as soon as Will gets her ass back in here, we can port home."
As Buffy hung up, Willow and the Coven walked back in and the Slayer Army soon departed.
Once again, Barbara Gordon had been left to her own devices by the men in her life. Did they know how much it hurt to watch them go into battle without her? Did they understand the pain she felt as she sat on the sidelines? Could they even contemplate the fear she felt for their lives - the lives of her second father, her kid brother, and the life of her lover on the line every night as she sat and watched? Could they ever understand the hurt she felt when they finished a battle and then turned off their coms, excluding her from their lives??
Her fist slammed down on her workstation, as she vented just a little bit. It never helped - she knew that - but she would be damned if she and Dick would become a 'Ross and freaking Rachel'. Yes, she had googled them - a more 'soap opera' pair she had never heard of. Roy Harper was a dead man, and if Dick had screwed the copy girl, she was going to take her time killing him.
"Babs." Dick's voice came over the line, "We have two casualties here."
Barbara quickly hooked herself back into the coms, "Who?" Her fear was tangible
"Seems they needed a sacrifice to open the Hellmouth, and it appears that Roland Desmond and Dudley Soames were elected." His voice was inflectionless, and Babs released the breath she was holding. It was bad when people died, but in her mind, it was always better them than us.
"We need a blood sample and photos of the bodies." Babs began, starting to recite things they would need for the files.
Dick stood over the two bodies taking pictures as Batman gathered blood samples from the two.
"We need a blood sample and photos of the bodies." Babs began, starting to recite things they would need for the files.
Bruce turned and raised his eyebrow and glanced at Dick, who just shook his head and smirked. Bruce frowned and went back to work.
Roy ran back into the room, from where he had been standing guard since the slayers had left. "Cops are on their way."
"Good. We have everything we need." Dick said as he closed a sample bag. "So, who you riding with?"
"Anybody but the runt." Roy said as he pointed back to where Tim was pulling his fender of his tire, so the Redbird could be driven away. "Guy had a wreck on an empty street, sheesh."
Dick smirked at him, and then the two of them and Batman disappeared into the night.
Babs heard their coms click off again and was so pissed off that she threw her earpiece across the room. From behind her a voice spoke.
"You know, if you just tell him the truth, you two could work it out." Dinah said as she entered the room.
"What?" Babs said as she stood up slowly, "That I can walk?"
"Well that and you're pregnant with his child."
The smile that adorned her lips was beyond chilling. For those that knew her, the smile was enough to send them running in fear. Even her 'Daddy' and her errant childe knew better than to cross her when she was like this, lucid and planning. Her family was threatened, and being the good Mommy that she was, it was her place to save them and to discipline them.
As the Bat Warriors left the Museum, she stepped from the shadows and dropped the spell that hid her from all other eyes. The Dark One had not lied. The ritual had gone perfectly, and soon her family would be together again.
All he had wanted to do was to have some time to himself to look through his files and figure out what or who was attacking his eldest, but his duties prevented that. His signal atop Police Headquarters had beckoned him. In days gone by, the signal meant a chance to stop and speak with his oldest friend, to seek solace in the fact that at least one other persona put Gotham before themselves. Now, however, most times his signal represented some idiot that had used political connections to gain the second most important position in Gotham, using the signal to try to rein Batman in, to show him 'their athority'. Perhaps Alfred wouldn't be too disappointed if he threw just one of these guys off the roof?
"What can I do for you commissioner?" Batman asked the new Commissioner of Police in Gotham. He found it sad really that the person filling the job since Jim Gordon had retired had changed so often that only Batman remembered all of them. This latest one was too intellectually challenged to last the week, perhaps not the night. Liam Wayneright was as Irish as Gorbechef's pig. His forehead looked like an ad for a ski slope; his eyes as beady as said pig's. The man was sweating in 30 degree weather.
Wayneright was nervous - this was his first meeting with the infamous Batman. "Uhhm, Arkham called, and there has been some strange visitors seeing the Joker," he quickly said knowing he was just as likely as not to urinate on himself if the Bat said 'boo'.
Batman spoke calmly concisely using small words for this imbecile that currently ran Gotham's police force. "The Joker isn't allowed visitors."
"Uhmmmm, these don't come in through the door. They just appear in his cell and start talking." Wayneright replied, just before pissing in his pants.
'So, why didn't you say that Joker is getting what appears to be Holographic messages?' Batman thought unkindly, while saying out loud, "Understood."
Bruce Wayne wondered who was trying to utilize Joker as a weapon now. But more importantly he wondered what Wayne Corp would have to give Jim Gordon in order to get the man to once again take up his old duties. Perhaps he should have Alfred talk to him?
"How did you know?" Barbara asked her best friend.
"Please you take the test, what ten... twelve times? Then just throw the stick away?" Black Canary smiled as she walked into the kitchen. Returning with two rather large tubs of ice cream and two spoons. "Annnnnd... up until about three months ago, I would just about have to pencil reminders onto your monitor to get you to eat. Now, you're all 'three meals a day' girl with desert always in the fridge."
Barbara snorted, "I keep forgetting that you only play the dumb blonde." She grabbed the gallon of Double Fudge from Dinah and pulled the Hershey Syrup from out of a drawer. "Want some pizza?"
"Pizza and Ice Cream?" Dinah raised her perfectly sculpted eyebrow, "The hell with the diet?"
"Hey, a woman only gets pregnant how many times? Once? Twice? In her whole life?" Babs dialed the phone next to her workstation, "Nine plus months of perfectly good reason to get fat?"
Dinah's head came up from her ice cream suddenly. "I hate you; I really do." Her grin belied her words, "So, you're ok with it?"
"Four years of having doctors tell me that I would never walk again? Being heartbroken that I could never have kids?" Babs hung up the phone after having placed her order. "Then, now, not only can I walk, but over the last four months my legs have gotten strong enough that I could run marathons? So, finding out that I am pregnant with the child of the man I love? Oh yeah, very ok with it." She suddenly got a thoughtful look, "But Dick is still an ass." Her smile was beatific.
"Oh, but what an ass!" Dinah said with a smile then ducked the stapler being thrown at her. "Please, there is just something about a guy that has the nerve to fight crime in a red, yellow and green bird suit."
"Soooo, you have a thing for Tim?"
"Rowr!" Dinah answered trying not to laugh.
"Dirty old Perv!" Babs said laughing at her, "He is young enough to be your son."
"Weeeellll... obviously Tim doesn't have the legs to pull off the original costume; sooooo," Dinah winked at her, "I guess not."
"Bird legs!" Babs said, then the both doubled over laughing.
Donna Troia sat next to the bed of the unnamed hero. Star Labs had him hooked up to every machine they had it seemed. She felt pity for the man. Looking down at the folder in front of her, she perused everything the most sophisticated lab work in the world could find out about the golden blond-headed man in the time they had so far. He had major traces of ephriminea in his lungs - a substance found only in hell dimensions. From that and other clues, the scientists turned doctors surmised that the hero had been their for at least five centuries.
The rips and bruises that covered his body told the story further. Over the years, Donna had the misfortune of seeing similar marks on both herself and her friends. He had whip marks - the man had been beaten past the point of human endurance and obviously more than once. Still, he had been standing and fighting when she and Kory had gotten there. No matter how many times she herself, or her fellow Titans, had been injured this bad and still fought on, it still amazed her the depth of strength that those that called themselves Titans, or now Outsiders, truly had. And to meet a demon that also went to these extremes to fight the good fight had her at her wit's end.
"Who is he?" Kory asked as she handed Donna a cup of coffee.
"Name? I don't know, but he's a major metahuman and with, get this, a vampire demon in him." Donna told her closest friend.
"You should ask Oracle." Kory told her.
"Why don't you?" Donna asked her.
"She really doesn't like me. I think she almost didn't tell me Dick was in trouble," the Tammeran answered.
"No, believe me, to her... Dick is more important than not liking you." She smiled up at her friend, while hooking up the computer and sending a request to Oracle.
Buffy had expected to have a huge argument about her going to New York. What she hadn't expected was that both Dawn and Giles were standing in the foyer of their house waiting for her when she came back through the portal. Both had their own bags and hers already packed and waiting. "Uhhhhm, Giles, you aren't going to dust him. You know that right?"
Giles actually rolled his eyes at her, "Buffy, you must learn to listen better to what people say."
Buffy stood for a few moments trying to remember when Giles had become one of Spike's friends but came up blank. "Huh?" was her eloquent response.
"The one they call Nightwing..." he stated, as if trying to jar her memories.
"Yeah, urban legend dude. I get that." Buffy trying to dig her way out of her loss of understanding.
Giles pulled off his glasses and began to polish. Since the events in Sunnydale, Buffy had kept him on the outside of her good graces. Once her closest confidant, he now was relegated to being on the outside looking in. "According to urban legend, this Nightwing is perhaps the second greatest detective of all time; second only to his father the 'Bat,' and according to the videofeed, Nightwing pronounced William as having shallow breathing and an erratic pulse."
"Spike... Spike... Spike is alive?" In everything that had been happening THAT had flown right over her head. Her eyes narrowed dangerously, "You still can't kill him."
"Dear lord!" Giles let out an explosive breath. "The wanker sacrificed himself to save us all, and the Powers have rewarded him with life. Dear God Buffy, I shan't attempt to hurt him in any way."
"Alright." Buffy said with some hesitation, though she truly wanted to believe her father figure.
After Buffy had showered, the three left for the airport.
William the Bloody's dreams were disturbed with memories of the last 500 years he'd experienced in the First Evil's hell dimension. Over and over again, he was forced to watch as the love of his life, Buffy Summers, shagged the Poofter, Captain Cardboard, the Whelp, her Watcher, Wood and any other man that happened to want a turn at her. Sometimes, he watched as two, three, four or more men shagged her at a time. All the while, the First Evil Buffy taunted him as Drusilla beat him.
Tbc
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