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Doomed

Prologue

“I guess we have to talk” says Riley.

“I guess we do,” says Buffy.

Riley sits on the end of Willow’s bed, looking at Buffy. Buffy sits on her bed looking at Riley. Neither of them says anything for a long time.

“Somebody should speak before one of us graduates,” says Buffy eventually.

Riley gets to his feet and starts to pace around the room. “What are you?”

“Capricorn,” says Buffy. “On the cusp of Aquarius. You?”

That question came out a little blunter than Riley intended, but Buffy’s strength and speed is something he has never seen before. But it’s Buffy’s turn now. “Who are you?”

“You know who I am,” says Riley. “The rest—what I do—I can’t tell you.”

“Well then, let me.” Buffy gets to her feet. “You’re part of some military monster squad that captures demons, vampires. Probably have some official sounding euphemisms for them like…unfriendlies or non-sapiens.”

“Hostile Subterrestrials,” supplies Riley.

“So you deliver these…HSTs to a bunch of lab coats who perform experiments on them, which, among other things, turns some into harmless little bunnies. How am I doing so far?”

Riley has been growing more and more uncomfortable as he learns just how much Buffy knows about the Initiative. “A little too well.”

Buffy isn’t quite finished. “Meanwhile…by day, you pretend to be Riley Finn, corn-fed Iowa boy. Ever been to Iowa, Riley? God, if that’s even your name.”

“It is,” says Riley. “Born and raised. And hey, bulletin: I’m not the only one who’s been a little less than honest here.”

Buffy sits back down on her bed. “I thought a professional demon chaser like yourself would have figured it out by now. I’m the Slayer.” Riley gives her a blank look. “Slay-er. Chosen One. She who hangs out a lot in cemeteries?” Buffy doesn’t really believe he has no idea of what the Slayer is. “Ask around. Look it up: Slayer comma The.”

Riley is amazed by Buffy. He’s a walking bruise today, and Buffy doesn’t seem to have a mark on her after their battle with the Gentlemen and their minions. He wonders what they should do next.

So does Buffy. She thought Riley was a nice normal guy.

“I am a nice, normal guy.”

“Maybe by this town’s standards,” says Buffy, “but I’m not grading on a curve.” Buffy thinks that they both need some time to think about what they’ve found out about each other.

Riley starts to go, but pauses to ask that Buffy not mention any of what she knows about him to anyone. “I won’t say a word,” promises Buffy.

“Good. It’ll be safer for all—” Riley is interrupted by a squeal from Amy the Rat in her cage. He looks around at her. Amy is quite agitated. Then the entire room starts to shake. It’s an earthquake.

Riley and Buffy rush to stand in the open doorway of her closet. The trembling soon stops, without doing any real damage to the room. Just a couple of items shaken off shelves. Riley is psyched. This was the Iowa boy’s first earthquake.

Buffy is considerably less thrilled. “It’s not mine.”

Act I

Spike moves his chair out from under a leaking pipe in Xander’s basement. A fitting has been knocked loose by the earthquake. Xander sticks a bucket under the leak and tells Spike to get a wrench to tighten the coupling.

“Do I look like a plumber to you?” asks Spike.

“No. You look like a big mooch who doesn’t lift a finger around here. But I have to get to work.” Xander puts on the uniform shirt for his latest job as a pizza delivery guy.

“Yeah,” says Spike. “Delivering melted cheese on bread. Doing your part to keep America constipated.”

“Mock not. Remember who pays for the plasma around here, pal.” Xander picks up a pipe wrench off the workbench and hands it to Spike. “You earn your keep, or you don’t get kept. When you’re done fixing that leak, try cleaning up this mess.”

Xander turns and looks around his basement apartment. Spike lifts the wrench, and is about to hit Xander with it when he’s hit by a blinding headache. He clutches at his head.

“And doing a little laundry for once wouldn’t kill you.” Xander turns back to Spike. “Unfortunately.” He doesn’t seem to notice Spike’s pain.

Willow returns to their room, just as Buffy is heading out. She rode out the earthquake in the library, where she was nearly buried in some nineteenth century literature. Buffy tells her that there was no significant damage to their room. Just a couple of broken knickknacks.

Willow reports that Porter Hall wasn’t quite as lucky. Their power got knocked out, so they’re throwing an Aftershock Party. The people at Porter Hall seem to think that any reason is a good reason for a party. Willow suggests that Buffy should ask Riley.

“Riley’s, um…busy,” says Buffy. “I’m pretty sure. But you know, you go on ahead, and I’ll catch up with you there. I’m on my way for a little Giles one-on-one.”

“Anything wrong?” asks Willow.

“Wrong?” asks Buffy on her way out the door. “No. Mm-mmm. Not at all.”

“Something horrible’s going to happen Giles!” Buffy is pacing back and forth in his garden.

Giles isn’t so sure. Earthquakes aren’t uncommon in Southern California, and sometimes they are nothing more than shifting land masses. Nothing that need concern the Slayer. He understands her reaction to the earthquake, but he doesn’t think there is anything to it. In the meantime he has some theories about their mysterious commando friends. He has been charting their sightings on a map, and that, combined with Spike’s rather vague descriptions has led him to conclude that their lab is either very near or under UCSunnydale itself. He also suspects that Buffy may know some of the people involved.

Suddenly Buffy really wants to switch the topic back to possible apocalypses. She doesn’t want to talk about the commandos with Giles.

Giles gets a little exasperated with her. “Buffy, will you stop worrying about what may be and concentrate on what is? Vigilance is all very well and good, but as I feel we’re getting close, there is a much more pressing question.”

“What’s a Slayer?” Riley asks Forrest. They are walking together through a corridor in the Initiative’s labs.

“Slayer?” asks Forrest. “A thrash band. Anvil-heavy guitar rock with delusions of Black Sabbath.”

“No,” says Riley. “A girl. With powers.”

“Oh the Slayer,” says Forrest. “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard of the Slayer.”

“Fill me in.”

“Well, the way I got it figured, the Slayer’s like some kind of bogeyman for the subterrestrials. Something they tell their little spawn to make them eat their vegetables and clean up their slime pits.”

“You’re telling me she doesn’t exist,” says Riley.

“Oh, wait a sec. Am I bursting somebody’s bubble here? Maybe this is a bad time to tell you about the Easter Bunny.” Forrest starts to laugh, but he manages to get himself under control again. “Sorry. Sorry. It’s a myth, Rye, all part of that mediæval folklore garbage kooks dream up to explain things we deal with every day.”

Riley looks at a bound demon, accompanied by a lab tech and a guard that passes them in the hallway going the other way. “How do you explain the things we deal with, Forrest?”

“They’re just animals, man. Plain and simple. Granted, a little rarer than the ones you grew up with on that little farm in Smallville, but—”

Forrest is interrupted by the roar of the demon. It has broken loose and started fighting with its guard. The guard pulls a nightstick and tries to use it to subdue the demon but it just swats him to the ground.

Riley and Forrest attack the demon, and try to restrain it. It elbows Riley in the head, and knocks him to the floor. It tries to get Forrest in a choke hold.

“Where’s that hypo?” calls out Forrest as he struggles with the demon.

The lab tech fumbles with a syringe and a bottle of some drug. He’s so scared that he drops the bottle.

Riley grabs the guard’s nightstick off the floor as he gets back to his feet. He bashes the demon on the back of its head, and knocks it out. “Never mind,” he tells the lab tech, who has finally recovered his drug bottle.

“Like I said, animals.” Forrest rubs at his throat. “What’s that racket?” Now that their fight with the demon is over they can hear that there is some other sort of commotion going on all around them.

“The animals rattling in their cages,” says Riley. “Doing it all day. Wonder what’s got them all worked up?”

“Earthquakes, man. They make everybody crazy.”

Willow arrives at the Porter Hall party. The place is rocking. Wall to wall people, lit by flashlights and camp lanterns. At first she doesn’t see anyone she knows. That changes when she spots Percy—the basketball player she tutored in History back in high school—across the room. She’s surprised that Percy is there, she had heard that he was going to USC on a football scholarship. Percy is there with a girl, Laurie, who is a student at UCSunnydale.

Percy and Willow start to do a little catching up on what they’ve been up to. Laurie doesn’t seem too pleased that Percy is paying attention to this other girl, and whispers something in his ear. They excuse themselves. Percy says they’re going to get some drinks. They leave Willow alone again.

A group of students dance their way out through the back exit. Just before the door closes behind them the clawed hand of a demon grabs it.

A boy mixes some drinks for himself and his friends in a room off the main party room. He picks up the glasses, and turns to return to the party. The demon is there with him. It slashes his throat with its claws.

Act II

“Buffy, where are you?” Willow asks herself. She is not enjoying this party at all. She overhears Laurie and Percy talking together on a nearby sofa. Laurie seems to be upset that Percy was talking to “that redhead.”

“What, Rosenberg?” asks Percy. “Yeah, right. She’s just some egghead who tutored me a little in high school. I mean, she’s nice, but come on, captain of the nerd squad.”

Willow has had enough of this party. She starts to look for a quiet spot she can be by herself. She wanders off into a darkened side room. There doesn’t seem to be anybody there. She feels her way to a bed and lies down on it.

The lights at Porter Hall come back on, to the disappointment of the partiers who let out a loud groan. Willow becomes aware that she is not alone in the bed. Beside her, propped up on some pillows is the body of the dead boy. Carved into his chest is a symbol. A triangle, with an eye in it. Willow gasps in horror, and jumps out of the bed.

Xander returns from work, carrying a pizza box. He does not like what he sees. The pipe is still leaking, and the place is a worse mess than when he left.

“Don’t turn around,” says Spike menacingly. “Don’t look at me.”

Xander turns around and looks. He starts laughing. Spike is wearing one of Xander’s Hawaiian shirts, and short pants. He is holding a wet black T-shirt in front of himself.

“I shrunk them,” says Spike. “Bleeding shirt, trousers. I hate this place.”

Xander isn’t any happier that Spike is wearing his clothes than Spike is, but he draws the line at going out to get Spike some new clothes right away when Spike tells him to.

“That’s it!” says Xander. “I am way past through with you. Hate to break it to you, O Impotent One, but you’re not the ‘Big Bad’ anymore. You’re not even the ‘Kind of Naughty.’ You’re nothing but a waste of space—my space. And as much as I always got a big laugh watching Buffy kick your shiny white bum, and as much as I know I could give you a little bum-kicking myself right now, I’m here to tell you something: you’re not even worth it. I’m out of here.”

Buffy arrives at the Porter Hall party as the people from the coroner’s office are taking away the body. She finds Willow sitting on the steps. “Wow. I wasn’t sure where the party was, and then I saw the flashing lights and the ambulance, and I was, like, ‘Right, of course. Death, carnage—it’s a Buffy party!’”

Willow tells Buffy about finding the body.

“Vampire?” whispers Buffy.

Willow shakes her head. “There was so much blood…and there—there was a symbol, and Percy said I was a nerd!”

“Percy called you a nerd?”

“I guess we should report to Giles,” says Willow. “Get with the demon-tracking.”

“Does Percy even go here?” asks Buffy as they head out.

Riley and Forrest play a little nerf basketball in Riley’s room. Riley’s mind is not on the game, Forrest is trouncing him. Forrest wonders what is on Riley’s mind. Riley seems to be reluctant to talk about it. Forrest prepares to take his next shot.

“Buffy—she’s pretty cool, isn’t she?” asks Riley, interrupting Forrest’s setup.

“Yes, already,” says an exasperated Forrest. “She’s cool. She’s hot. She’s tepid. She’s all-temperature Buffy. Now, can we concentrate on the game here?” He takes his shot as Graham opens the door that their hoop is hung on. Forrest’s ball bounces off his head.

Graham is there to report the death of a civilian at the Porter Hall party. He couldn’t get close enough to tell if it was an HST attack without drawing attention to himself. Riley doesn’t think that they should mobilize until they know more. He will go check it out himself. He sends Forrest to alert Professor Walsh.

Buffy and Willow have arrived at Giles’ apartment. Xander is there too. Willow tells Xander about what Percy said. “It just made me feel like I was right back in high school.”

“Dumb jock,” says Xander. “If it wasn’t for you, he still would be.”

“Yeah,” says Willow. “I mean, I know the Percy thing isn’t really important. It’s the dead guy on the bed.”

“Yeah. That’s bad, too,” says Xander.

“Ooh, and something else,” says Willow, “He, the dead guy, was propped up, like whatever killed him wanted to drain the blood out of him. So I’m thinking, the whatever took a bunch of the guy’s blood with him. And I haven’t been a nerd for a very long time! Hello! Dating a guitarist. Or I was.”

Buffy tells Willow to tell Xander and Giles about the symbol. Willow pulls out a napkin on which she has drawn the symbol that was carved into the guy’s chest and shows it to the others. Xander thinks it looks kind of like the CBS logo.

Buffy thinks it’s familiar too, but she can’t remember where she has seen it.

“It’s the end of the world!” says Giles.

“Again?” ask the others in unison.

“Uh, the earthquake—that symbol, yes,” says Giles.

“I told you!” says Buffy. “I said ‘End of the world,’ and you’re like, ’pooh-pooh! Southern California, pooh-pooh!’”

“I’m so very sorry,” says Giles. “My contrition completely dwarfs the impending apocalypse.”

“No. It can’t be. We’ve done this already,” says Willow.

“It’s the end of the world,” says Giles. “Everyone dies. It’s rather important really.”

“So what do we do?” asks Willow.

Buffy is already headed for the door. She picks up her crossbow on the way. “I stop it.”

Buffy has remembered where she’s seen that symbol before. It’s carved into the side of a mausoleum in one of Sunnydale’s cemeteries. As she's checking it out she hears a sound coming from inside. She goes in to investigate.

She finds a demon removing the bones of a small child from a coffin and placing them into a burlap bag. She fires her crossbow at it, and hits it in the shoulder. It doesn’t seem to have much impact on the demon. Buffy throws the crossbow at it and attacks with punches and kicks. Buffy kicks the demon right out of the mausoleum. The fight continues in the cemetery outside.

The demon manages to grab hold of Buffy, picks her up, and slams her down on a headstone. It knocks the wind out of her.

Buffy lies on the ground for a few seconds, catching her breath. A shadow moves over her, and she flips to her feet, whirls and throws a punch at Riley, who manages to block it. The demon is gone.

“Wow! That flippy thing you did!” Riley rubs his arm where she hit it.

“Where did it go?” asks Buffy.

Riley tells her that it ran off into the woods. Buffy is disappointed that he didn’t chase it.

“No weapons, no backup. You don’t go after a demon that size by yourself,” says Riley.

“I do,” says Buffy.

“Yeah, well, I’m no Slayer.” Riley stops talking to Buffy and pulls out a radio. He calls in the sighting of an unidentified sub-T to his base, and calls for patrol team debriefing at 0800.

“Very commandery,” says Buffy. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” says Riley. “She Who Hangs Out in Cemeteries.”

Buffy thinks she should be chasing the demon, but Riley isn’t concerned about it. He figures they’ll bag it.

“It’s not that simple,” says Buffy. She also doesn’t think she can be with Riley any more. “It’s a huge black pit of a mistake, and I can’t go there again.”

“Again? You’ve dated me before?” Riley doesn’t understand what Buffy’s talking about. He wants to learn more about her.

“There’s too much risk,” says Buffy. “There’s too much…It’s just doomed, and I can’t do doomed again right now. Sorry.”

Riley doesn’t understand. He likes Buffy, he knows she likes him. The have stuff in common.

“But that’s not enough,” says Buffy.

“Buffy, I’m thrown by this. I’m confused,” says Riley. “But I can feel my skin humming, my hands, my every inch of me. I’ve never been this excited about anybody before. I’m not trying to scare you, and I’m not going to force myself on you, but I am, by god, not going to walk away because I think it might not work. I don’t know what’s happened in your past.”

“Pain. Death. Apocalypse. None of it fun. Do you know what a Hellmouth is? Do you have a fancy term for it? Because I went to high school on it for three years. We do not have that much in common. This is a job to you.”

“It’s not just a job,” says Riley.

“It’s an adventure, great,” says Buffy, “But for me, it’s Destiny. It is something that I can’t change, something that I can’t escape. I’m stuck.”

“You don’t have to be,” says Riley. “You’re not in high school anymore. You can change things.”

“Riley, no.”

“I know it may seem—”

Buffy stops him. “Riley! My answer is no.” She leaves.

Act III

Giles has found Buffy’s demon in his books. It is a Vahrall Demon. Along with a picture is a description which he starts to read. “Slick like gall and gird in moonlight; Father of portents and brother to blight.”

Buffy continues reading over his shoulder. “Limbs with talons, eyes like knives; Bane to the blameless, thief of lives.”

Riley describes the demon to his team in Initiative HQ using less poetic terms. “Three meters tall¹, approximately 100-120 kilograms.” He doesn’t know if this demon presents any special hazards, but doesn’t expect it to exhibit anything they don’t know how to handle. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to its actions, so he assumes it’s on a basic kill, crush, destroy.

“The thing isn’t digging up the bones of a child for fun,” says Buffy.

“Well, a demon’s got some pretty hilarious ideas about fun,” says Xander.

“The bones of a child, though. I saw that.” Willow starts flipping through one of the books on Giles’ coffee table. She finds what she’s looking for quickly. “An ancient ritual. It uses the blood of a man, the bones of a child, and something called the Word of Valios.” The Word of Valios seems familiar to Giles, but he can’t place it. “It’s all part of a sacrifice. The Sacrifice of Three.” The book is pretty vague about just what the sacrifice is, or what it’s supposed to accomplish.

“Let me guess,” says Buffy. “Ends the world.” They have to find the Word of Valios, whatever it is, before the demon does.

“If he doesn’t already have it. I mean, who knows where he’s been?” asks Willow.

Riley knows. The demon has been leaving a pheromone trail all over town. Forrest has a widget that lets them track it. It won’t tell them where it’s going though. The teams are all to hit the streets, dressed in civies, with their weapons in bags until nightfall. They aren’t trying to capture this one. They want to kill it. Forrest hands out their area assignments.

Buffy hands out assignments. Willow and Xander will check the museum archives to see if they can learn anything about the Word of Valios. She will check the magic shop. Giles will keep searching through his own book collection. Xander wants to stop by at home on the way to the museum to change out of his pizza delivery uniform, and to get some weapons.

“Good-bye, Dru. See you in Hell.” Spike tries to fall on top of a stake he has propped up against Xander’s coffee table as Willow and Xander come into the basement. Spike misses the stake, and breaks the table.

Xander is upset. Spike is wearing his shirt. He doesn’t want it dusted, and if Spike is so anxious to die, Xander wants to do it for him.

“Xander!” says Willow.

“What? He wants to die. I want to help.”

“It’s ooky,” says Willow. “We know him. We can’t just let him poof himself.”

Spike wants to die. He’s worse than pathetic. He has been reduced to washing the skivvies of a guy he wouldn’t have bothered to bite a couple of months ago. He isn’t even remotely scary any more. He mocks an attack at Willow.

Willow doesn’t even flinch. “Well, the shirt is kind of not very threatening, and the short pants…but you know it could also be ’cause I know you can’t bite, which I guess isn’t what you really need to hear right now…”

Xander has changed his shirt, and packed a bag of weapons. He’s ready to go. He warns Spike that if he breaks anything else he’ll be sleeping in the garage from now on.

Willow doesn’t think they should leave Spike alone. She wants to take Spike with them to make sure he doesn’t kill himself.

“Think of the happy,” says Xander as they go out. “If we don’t find what we’re looking for, we’re facing an apocalypse.”

“Really?” Spike sounds slightly cheered. “You’re not just saying that?”

Buffy runs into Riley again in downtown Sunnydale. He’s walking down the street looking at the display from his pheromone detector. They stop to talk outside the Espresso Pump. Buffy wonders what his gadget is, and Riley tells her. She tries to cut the conversation short. She has a big-bad to squish.

“Right,” says Riley. “I’m on it, too. It’s just—this thing, this you-and-me thing, it’s stupid.”

“I know,” says Buffy, “Which is why we can’t do it, the you-and-me thing.”

“No. I mean, you’re stupid,” says Riley. “I mean…I don’t mean that. No. I think maybe I do.”

“Wow. With sweet talk like that, you’ll definitely melt my reservations.”

“I’m serious,” says Riley. “You have this twisted way of looking at things, this doom-and-gloom mentality. You keep thinking like that, and things are probably going to turn out just the way you expect. Buffy, where is the bad here? It just turns out that we’re even more well matched than we thought we were. I mean, you’re a…” He spots a couple of people coming out of the Espresso Pump. “…fry cook, and so am I.”

“Yes, but you’re an amateur…fry cook,” says Buffy, “And I come from a long line of fry cooks that don’t live past 25.”

“Which is exactly the attitude I’m talking about,” says Riley. “I know the risks of what we do. I also know it’s more rewarding than any other job on the planet. And fun!”

“Fun?” asks Buffy. “The last person I know that believed that is in a coma right now because she had so much fun on the job.”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t take your work seriously.”

“That I should just turn my frown upside down?” asks Buffy. “Is that it? I wish I could, but this isn’t the kind of gig where you can just hang it up at the end of the night and snuggle with your honey.”

“But why? Why can’t it be?” asks Riley.

“Because I tried it, okay? And every time, it just fell apart. And then I get sucked right back into the uber evil.”

“Welcome to the story of the world. Things fall apart, Buffy. And evil—it comes and goes. But the way people manage is, they don’t do it alone. They pull each other through. If you weren’t so self-involved, you’d see that.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about. You barely know me.” Buffy starts to walk away from Riley.

Riley follows her. “I know that it’s not just the job thing. I’m sure that there’s some good-looking guy who done you wrong in there too. But mostly, I think you want to stay down in the dark place. ’Cause maybe it’s safer down there.”

“You are so out of line.”

“No. See, I don’t think so. We have an opportunity here, you and me. And the fact that you’re too scared to even give it a try—”

“Is my business.” Buffy interrupts him. “So why don’t you just leave me alone?”

“Fair enough,” says Riley. He leaves.

Xander, Willow and Spike leave the museum. They have had no luck learning anything about the Word of Valios. Spike is looking on the bright side. Soon they may all be melting in a sea of molten hellfire.

Willow doesn’t like Spike’s attitude. So he can’t kill anymore? There are other fun things he can do. He can adjust.

Spike doesn’t want to adjust. He doesn’t want to end up like Willow and Xander. Xander starts thinking maybe he should just put Spike out of his misery again.

“I should think you would be glad to greet the End of Days. Neither one of you is making much of a go at it.” Spike points at Xander. “You. Kids your age are going off to university. You’ve made it as far as the basement. And Red here, you couldn’t even keep Dog Boy happy. You can take the loser out of high school, but—”

“I see what you’re doing,” says Willow. “You’re trying to get us to dust you.”

“Am not. I don’t want pity from geeks more useless than I am.”

“We’re not useless,” says Willow. “We—we help people. We fight the forces of evil.”

“Buffy fights the forces of evil. You’re her groupies. She’d do just as well without you. Better, I’d wager, since she wouldn’t have to go about saving your hides all the time.”

“That is so not true,” says Xander. “We’re part of the team. She needs us.”

“Or…you’re just the same tenth-grade losers you’ve always been, and she’s too much of a softy to cut you loose.” Spike turns and walks away. As soon as they can’t see his face he starts to smirk. There are still ways he can have fun.

Giles finds a picture of the Word of Valios in one of his books. “Oh—as usual—dear!” He gets up, goes to his weapons trunk, and starts digging through its contents. A couple of layers down he finds a wooden box and pulls it out. The box contains an assortment of trinkets and whatnot. One of them is the Word of Valios.

Giles takes it to compare with the picture in the book, to be sure. It’s identical. Giles grabs his jacket. He has to get the Word of Valios out of there. Before he can go anywhere the Vahrall demon shows up. It has brought a couple of friends. They grab Giles and toss him to the floor.

Buffy arrives at Giles’ apartment and sees the mess from the fight. Willow, Xander and Spike are already there. Giles is battered, but still alive. She asks what happened.

“The Word of Valios…is the name of a talisman, not a book,” says Giles. “I blame myself entirely. I had it here.”

“You had it here?” asks Xander. “Okay, first I thought you were being too hard on yourself, but—”

Willow brings an ice pack and puts it against Giles’ battered head. “Thank you,” he tells her. “I bought it at a sorcerer’s estate sale. I really only glanced at it once. I thought it was a knockoff.”

The demons now have all the ingredients needed for their ritual, assuming they have rounded up three people to sacrifice—which seems likely—and Giles now knows what they are going to do. They are going to open the Hellmouth. The one in the library.

“Looks like we’re going back to high school,” says Buffy.

Act IV

Buffy, Willow, Xander and Spike arrive at the burnt out shell of Sunnydale High. Buffy warns them to be careful. It doesn’t look too stable. She also wonders what Spike is doing there.

“If we leave him alone, he’ll stake himself,” says Willow.

“And that’s bad because?” asks Buffy. “Fine. Just keep him out of the way. I don’t have time for this.”

They make their way cautiously toward the library. Xander steps on something. “Ew!” Everyone looks at him. “Mayor meat. Extra crispy.”

They reach the library. There is now a crater where the floor used to be. The three Vahrall demons are clustered around a steaming crevasse in the center of the crater, chanting. There is no sign of any people for the sacrifice.

Buffy isn’t planning on waiting for the demons to complete their ritual. She attacks them immediately, charging right in. She knocks the jar of blood away from one of the demons and it rolls across the floor. Xander spots it and picks it up. “Get the talisman. They can’t do the ritual!” he yells to Willow.

Willow darts in and grabs the sack containing the child’s bones away from one of the demons while it’s distracted fighting Buffy. She tosses it to Xander. One of the demons is coming for him, so he tosses it back to Willow. She passes it on to Spike, who had been sitting off to the side watching the show. He is not pleased to have become a participant. One of the demons goes for him.

The demon attacking Xander tries to take the blood back. Xander defends it, using his years of experience defending his lunch money from schoolyard bullies. It’s no good. The demon manages to wrestle the jar from him, and then runs away and jumps in the crevasse.

“Okay, I guess I won,” says Xander.

The school is rocked by another earthquake. “The demons! They are the sacrifice!” Xander calls out to the others.

The demon attacking Spike knocks the bag of bones away from him, and then keeps beating on him. Spike has had enough. Hitting back isn’t going to hurt any worse than what the demon is doing to him, so he winds up and belts it.

Spike clutches at his head in anticipation of the pain. Nothing happens. “No pain!” He punches the demon again. Again there’s no pain. “I can hurt a demon!”

Spike picks the demon up, and morphs into his vampire face. “That’s right!” he yells as he punches and kicks the demon. “I’m back, and I’m a bloody animal! Yeah!”

The demon falls to the ground beside the bag of bones and grabs onto it. Spike grabs the demon and lifts it over his head.

“No!” yells Xander.

“Spike, not in the hole!” yells Willow.

Spike either doesn’t hear, or doesn’t care. He tosses the demon holding the bones into the Hellmouth. The school is rocked by a second, stronger earthquake.

Spike sees the looks Willow and Xander are giving him. “What? I was helping!”

Buffy is still fighting with the third demon. She tells the others to get out before the building collapses. It’s already starting to come apart. A falling beam hits Spike on the head and knocks him down. Xander helps him get back to his feet, and he and Willow both help Spike out of the ruins of the library.

The demon knocks Buffy to the ground and gets on top of her. Buffy grabs a piece of debris off the floor, and uses it to stab the demon in the chest. The demon howls in pain, but it isn’t dead. It raises its arm for a killing blow. The arm doesn’t come down. Riley grabs it from behind and pulls the demon off Buffy. He starts to punch the demon.

“Don’t let him jump in the Hellmouth!” Buffy warns Riley. “If he does, we’re finished!”

The demon picks up Riley and tosses him aside, but Riley has given Buffy enough time to get back to her feet. She attacks the demon again.

Buffy and Riley both attack the demon, until a concrete beam shaken loose by the earthquake comes down and hits Riley. Buffy is momentarily distracted, making sure that Riley’s okay. This allows the demon the chance to grab the Word of Valios talisman, and to crawl into the Hellmouth. Another earthquake starts.

“I’m going in,” says Buffy

Riley grabs Buffy’s coat to stop her long enough for him to hook a line to her belt. It’s attached to a reel on his belt. “You’re coming back out.”

Buffy runs and dives into the crevasse after the demon.

Buffy plunges into the Hellmouth. Riley plays out line. He wraps it around a piece of rebar and braces himself against the beam. Buffy stops falling, and Riley starts to pull her back up. The school shakes around him.

Buffy appears at the lip of the crevasse, and Riley rushes forward to help her. Buffy is trying to pull herself out using only one hand. The other is holding the arm of the demon.

Riley helps Buffy pull the demon out of the hole. The school continues to shake for a few seconds. The demon collapses dead, and the earthquake stops.

Buffy and Riley run into Willow, Xander and Spike on their way out of the school. Riley is surprised to see them. “Well, hey! Willow. And Xander, right? Jeez, what are the chances, huh? Yeah, I was just passing by, and I thought I heard people inside.”

“You were just passing by in your G.I. Joe outfit?” asks Willow.

“No offense,” says Buffy quietly, “But you do look wicked conspicuous.”

“I do?” asks Riley. “But it’s…paint ball! Yeah. I was playing paint ball, and then the aftershock, and I came—”

“So you’re one of the commando guys, huh?” asks Xander.

“Oh, no, no, no, no. Commando? No, not me.” Riley spots Spike, who has been trying not to be noticed. “Don’t I know you?”

“Me? No. No, sirrr.” Spike tries faking a bad American accent, really hitting his ‘Rs’. “I’m just an old pal of Xanderrr’s herrre.” Spike leaves, putting as much space as he can between himself and Riley.

“Oh, that’s nice.” Riley heads on out, with Buffy following him. Willow and Xander bring up the rear.

Xander has one last look around. “It’s kind of weird being back, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” says Willow. “Everything seems so small…and more charred and ruiny.”

Epilogue

Riley is tossing his nerf basketball alone in his room when there’s a knock on the door. Buffy opens it. “You never called, so I didn’t know…”

“Oh. Hey…I’m sorry,” says Riley. “I’m just…I’m a dead man. Secret. Highly. Or it’s supposed to be. And then you find out. I can deal. You’re special. But last night with your friends was a disaster. Could I have been less convincing? I was trained to be sneaky and stuff, and I’m, like… ‘Hi. Paint ball, just passing by.’ I should have just given them my security code and rank.”

“You have a security code and rank?” asks Buffy.

Riley realizes that he just told Buffy something else he isn’t supposed to talk about. “No. Did I just say…this is so not good.” He sits down on the edge of his bed. “Everybody knows about me. I’m finished. It’s the end of the world.”

Buffy steps up to Riley. “No, it’s not.” She starts to kiss him.

Willow and Xander are trying to watch some TV in his basement. Spike steps in front of the screen. They try to look around him.

“What’s this? Sitting around and watching the telly while there’s evil still afoot. It’s not very industrious of you.” Spike turns off the TV and turns back to face them. “I say we go out there and kick a little demon ass.” Xander and Willow just sit and look at him, without saying anything. “Can’t go without your Buffy, is that it? Too chicken?”

Willow and Xander just look at Spike.

“Let’s find her. She is the Chosen One, after all,” says Spike. “Come on! Vampires. Grrr! Nasty. Let’s annihilate them. For justice and for…the safety of puppies…and Christmas! Right? Let’s fight that evil! Let’s kill something! Oh, come on!”

Death Toll

Notes

1. Looked more like two meters to me. Maybe Riley over-estimated because Buffy’s so short.