Buffy Summers twirled a wooden stake in her hand as she walked through one of the many dark and deserted cemeteries of Sunnydale, California. Her feet padded softly against the dew tipped grass, a smile on her face. Ever since they had cast the First back into its rightful place beneath the Earth’s top spoil, the demon and vampire activity had been on low. The Scooby Gang figured it was because they had taken a lot out of the First, and had destroyed most of its power. The regular vamps still roamed the streets though, and new fledglings popped up every now and again, but for the most part they were quiet. There had been no reports of brutal murders for the past month, and there were less suspicious deaths too. Sunnydale was becoming a safer place, and after everything that had happened…She shuddered. Thinking about the First, and big finish, the last battle – it had been hell. For everyone.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose, making the Slayer snap out of her thoughts. Vampire. She stopped walking, and listened for any noise of a dead giveaway of where the vampire was. Nothing. A single ‘ticking’ noise made her turn to her right, raise her stake, and bring it down towards the black shadow of a demon. It moved, and cursed, Buffy lowered her stake.
“Jesus, Slayer!” Spike hollered as he dropped his cigarette, “Don’t DO that!”
“Stop sneaking up on me and maybe I will.” She retorted as she turned and continued walking.
The vampire with a soul kept pace with her, lit up another cigarette, his lighter ticking as he ignited the fire in it.
“I think I’m going to head in.” Buffy told him.
“Why?”
“Because there is nothing out here. Besides, it’s getting late and I could use some sleep.” She yawned and stretched her arms above her head. She stopped and looked up at the moon – it was full. “It’s weird. There’s a full moon out and no baddies are turning up. It’s their favorite time of the month.”
“WAS, their favorite time of the month. Until we kicked the First’s arse back to where it came from.”
“No. I don’t think that’s it…”
Faith sat on top of a mausoleum watching Buffy and Spike, the cascading moon light shinning down on them. She sat in the shadows, her body crouched down close to the cement below her. Her eyes were dark, a figure emerged from behind her, and crouched down beside her angered body. The moonlight glowed on the girls face – Annabell’s face, the young dead potential.
“I told you she was always with him.” She taunted. “Never cares about anyone but him. She still loves that vile thing, and no one even cares. She is the reason you all almost died – because she had to protected him. That bitch deserves to die.”
Dawn Summers sat on the couch in the living room, her feet curled up under her body. She was attempting to read a book about spells that Willow had given her after the First had been taken care of. The Key had been complaining that she could have helped more if she knew magic like Willow had, and Buffy had told her that she was never going to learn anything. Willow had given Dawn a book on the basic history of spells to shut her up, and to keep Buffy from killing her. It had been working so far.
Kennedy sat on the couch with Dawn, her feet poking the young girl in the knees every now and then as she changed position. Dawn was trying her best to ignore it, but the young potential kept on changing the T.V. station too, the noise fading in and out of every show. Molly and Rona were also sitting in the living room, bickering with Kennedy about what to watch. From in the kitchen, Andrew called out to them.
“It’s past midnight you guys, you should all go to bed.”
“You’re not my mother.” Kennedy replied absentmindedly as she changed the T.V. station yet ago.
“Okay, well…I’m not taking the blame when you guys get in trouble. May the force be with you.”
Dawn scoffed at his lack of humor, and shut her book. She looked up and saw Andrew going up the stairs. He was probably going to try and find a vacant bed to sleep in. The rule was that if you got there first, you got the bed. Buffy, Dawn, and Willow all had dibs on their beds, and Kennedy usually slept in Willow’s bed, so the young potential need not worry about that matter. Molly and Rona both normally shared the couch, and a few other potentials slept on the floor. Dawn looked around her, five or six girls had already gone to bed down there. They were spread out on the floor, all in sleeping bags. She felt sorry for them, they all wanted to go home, but they wouldn’t. Not when there was still evil around Sunnydale. The girls had been ordered to go home by Giles and Buffy, but their words had had no effect whatsoever. Standing up, Dawn stretched and yawned.
“Move!” Kennedy complained.
Not wanting to argue, Dawn just walked past her and made her way up the stairs. She wondered if they would ever get rid of the potentials, because if they didn’t leave on their own, she would make sure that they would…and that they would never come back again.
Anya sighed as she took another sip of her coke at the Bronze. Things had been so boring around Sunnydale lately, that she just really needed some fun. After sleeping with Xander one last time, the two seemed to be on better terms. She still loved him, but she wasn’t quite sure about how he felt. There was no band playing tonight, the music was just blasting through the sound system overhead. She looked around for a familiar face, but found none. The sound system crackled over the words of some boy band that had a singer with a whiny voice, and a few people left. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was twelve thirty. Leaving her drink on the round table, she got up. As she did, the sound system crackled again, this time the music drowned out, and a few people’s shouts of complaints could be heard.
The ex-demon would not have taken notice to the fact if a flash of bright pink light wouldn’t have caught her attention. In the middle of the dance floor, neon blue, purple, and pink lightning bolts cracked, the music fuzzed above, and three forms appeared from the bolts as people in the Bronze stepped backed. Anya should have run too, but she couldn’t. Her eyes were transfixed on what was in front of her – three vampires. All were wearing leather, and she recognized all three. The Master, Xander, and Willow. The shrill sadistic voice of the Master’s words made her shiver.
“Interesting.”
Remembering her run in with the vamp-Willow before and the stories she had heard of the Master, she turned and bolted. Only when she did, a cold clammy hand grasped her by the wrist, and pulled her back.
Buffy and Spike walked into 1630 Revello Drive around four that morning. The morning sky was dark, the moon still shown above. She and Spike had been on their way home when both realized they didn’t want to head in just yet. They went to the outskirts of the small town and searched for demons in the caves by the ocean. After hours of searching, and no demons, they decided to call it quits and head home for good this time.
Upon entering the large welcoming house, the Slayer knew that something was wrong – very wrong. Potentials and original Scooby members alike were all gathered in the living room, some with dried tears on their faces. A few sobs choked out through the still air. They were all surrounding something, someone. From the cracks in between the heated bodies, she saw a hand. She pushed past a few of the young girls, and her eyes told her all she needed to know.
Anya’s body was laying on the floor, her arms stretched out, her shoulders definitely not in their sockets, her knees were bent at awkward angels, her fingers were all purple, except for the thumb on her right hand. Her eyes were closed, and dried blood was forming around two tiny holes on her neck. Buffy felt the tears creeping up into her own eyes. She looked away from the horrible scene, and she saw Xander. His eyes were glued to his ex-girlfriends body, to her blood, to her neck. His eyes were wet, his cheeks were dripping salty tears. Buffy made her way over to him, the potentials around them scattered about. Placing her hand on Xander’s shoulder, he looked up at her. They embraced in a hug, and Buffy silently vowed to find whoever did this to Ayna and kill them.
Buffy walked along the darkened alley’s of Sunndyale, searching for Anya’s killer. She had left just moments after her brief embrace with Xander, vowing to avenge the ex-demon’s death. The scent of death was thick in the air, like rats covered in oil. She knew she was nearing Anya’s murderous tomb. The smell of metallic like blood curled and heaved around her nostrils, and she wrinkled her nose in disgust. It was times like these when she wished she wasn’t the Slayer. She wished she could just accept the fact that Anya was dead, and didn’t know what killed her. She wished that she could just call the police, have them take away the young girls body and…she stopped. All thoughts in the Slayer’s mind halted as her breath escaped her.
“My Willow tells me that you killed me in this world. I killed you in mine.” His voice was just as cryptic as she remembered. He was the Master.
Buffy’s eyes were wide with fear and shock. Before her stood her murderer, her killer, the one thing that she hated with a passion more than she hated herself for letting her mother die. A slight breeze shook her blonde hair, and she moved her lips apart, trying to form words. “Wha…” She kicked out at him then, just wanting to kill him, to see if he was real.
The Master caught her foot and twirled her through the air. She landed on her feet, shock still present on her face.
“That girl…Anya, what a waste of a human. Willow told me about her adventure in this world, about you, about Anyanka. All very interesting I assure you.”
“BASTARD!” Buffy screamed at him as she took out her stake. She was about to run forward and attack when she felt two cold bodies advancing upon her. She quickly looked to her left and right, her breath once again knocked short. Willow, and Xander. They were there – with vampire faces. Their faces were wrinkled, their eyes yellow, two horrible white fangs protruding from their mouths. Looking up, she saw a pipe running between the two buildings. In one quick leap, she jumped up and grabbed it with her hands. She swung her body around it twice, just for good measure, and let go, her body sailing through the air and over the two look vamps of her best friends.
The instant her feet landed on the crumbling pavement, they were running and taking her away through the darkened alley. Away from the Master, and away from her dead friends, who were really not dead at all, because they weren’t even her friends. At least not in the world that they had come from.
Dawn sat curled up on her bed, a few potentials on the floor of her room. The tears were still fresh in her eyes, still running down her face. Her hair was in a bit of a mess, her eyes were red and puffy, and her nose was stuffed. She sniffed again and pulled the comforter on her bed up to her chin. Her body shivered, and when she sniffed again, a potential responded.
“Can you stop sniveling already?” The young girl with red hair asked.
Dawn could not honestly remember the girls name, but she had had enough of being told what to do in her own house by people she did not know or care about.
“Can’t you just shut up and leave already? You have no reason to be here! This is my house, and my room, and one of my best friends was just killed and is still lying on the floor of my living room! I’ve had enough of your stupid potential bullshit! You aren’t a Slayer yet, and you aren’t any better than me, now GET OUT!!!!!” Her last words were more of a shriek than anything else, and the young girl with red hair ran out of the room, her face buried in her hands.
A girl with dark tanned skin and brown choppy hair, Anna, climbed onto the bed next to Dawn. She had arrived a few weeks before the final fight with the First, but her and Dawn had bonded quickly. The other potentials who were in the room just curled up in a corner as the morning sun peeked through the closed blinds. Anna wrapped her arms around Dawn and rested her head on the young girls shoulder.
“It’ll all end up alright in the end. Buffy will catch whoever did this and make them pay.”
“But what if she can’t?”
“She’s the Slayer – of course she can, Dawn.”
Never before had she been this scared. Buffy was past the point of hyperventilating when she literally crawled up the front steps of the porch of her own house and collapsed on it. She had run as hard and as fast as she could from the Master and her friends who were not supposed to exist in this world. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and in this case it was that while she had not been looking where she had been running, she had tripped and slide about fifty feet on the pavement. While running so fast, her foot had managed to trip her in a pot hole, and the force of the fall made her slide. Her palms were scraped with blood, and her jeans had holes in the knees. Her hair that had once resided in a ponytail, was almost all drawn around her face. Her cheeks were flushed a deep red, and her green eyes were dull, the life in them lost, left behind for the Master and his pets. She felt the tears in her throat beginning to rise. Sharp pain shot up from her knees and hands to her brain, where it screamed out at her to take away the hurt. She had been hurt far worst in the past, but the fact that the Master was alive as he could be, and that he was in Sunnydale, it frightened her. Sure she had battled the First, a far worse creature than the Master, but it did not erase the fact that the Master in her world had killed her, and the First had not. The motion sensor light turned on, the yellow gleam flooding over the Slayer’s body made her jerk. A noise from behind made her jump helplessly to her feet even though her body screamed at her not to even move.
“Whoa, B, you okay?” Faith asked her as she slowly advanced.
Buffy shook her head, afraid that if she spoke, the tears welding up inside would come out. She breathed quickly, trying to replenish her body with oxygen as she turned and opened up the front door. Faith followed her in, and as the door closed behind her, the porch light went out.
The first thing Buffy noticed was that Anya’s body was gone, and the rug she had been lying on was also gone. The living room was vacant, no potentials would rest there tonight. A single lamp was on, but it shed half of the room with light. Buffy turned towards Faith, the dark haired Slayer’s fingers were twining in and out of each other.
“I’ve been uh, meaning to talk to you B. About something.” She paused for a moment, not quiet sure if she could go on without choking. “But I think I need to get this out. I loved you, B.”
Their eyes meet. “Faith, I…I don’t think I love you. Not…not in that way that I think you want…” She turned her back to the other Slayer.
“I said loved bitch, get it straight!” Faith didn’t hesitate. She pulled the knife from behind her back and swung it towards Buffy. The silver blade hit to the right of Buffy’s spine. She cried out when it hit, and fell forward onto her hands and knees. She turned her head in time to see Faith kicking out at her face. Buffy dropped to her stomach, and cried out for help, still catching her breath all the while.
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