Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is copyright © Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN, and Fox. In fact they own everything. The New Beginning Storytellers are just playing with their toys when they are not looking. We take good care of them, honest!
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The First knew it’s time was coming; it could sense it on the horizon of reality. Soon the grand balance would be thrown asunder and all hell could truly break loose. The only matters left to attend to were destroying the champions assembling against it and unleashing its messenger for the world to behold.

The Disciple, its many noxious voices wheezed, letting its consciousness slide down to the plane of existence that had for so long been its only obstacle to letting chaos reign. It knew exactly where to find the Disciple. This was the same place where it had locked away its book at the dawn of existence…the book that would bring it back to its full glory.

With all the power it had displayed when it had destroyed the Watchers’ Council, it cracked open the mountain and unleashed a terror that hadn’t been visited on this world in centuries. Then, again using this power, it quickly blocked the Disciple’s re-emergence into the world from all the various prying eyes and minds.

Soon…it thought into the ether.

Not if we have anything to say about it…the Powers’ voices replied.

Our players are in position. We can do nothing but let them decide the outcome, it replied vehemently. Such are the rules that were established before existence.

Yes, and by those rules, we shall prevail, the Powers countered. And the First shall finally meet its end.

We shall see, it whispered.

*

In Sunnydale and Los Angeles two feminine screams rang out. The First hadn’t shielded its activities soon enough. The champions knew the Disciple had been freed. They also knew the final battle approached…the battle which would usher in either destruction or redemption.