By Rhysdux and HonorH
There was nothing too surprising in this--the two had only been sharing an office for three days, and they were still getting used to each other’s habits. Honorificus had no way of knowing that Rhysdux liked to get up early and correct tests before the computer started beeping too loudly and too often for her to concentrate.
“Hello, Honorificus,” Rhysdux said absent-mindedly, nodding in the demoness’s direction as she strode in.
“Do not bother with your papers and tests this morning,” said Honorificus in a low, brittle voice. “We have something far more important to do than that.”
Rhysdux slowly put her books and papers down on her desk and took a good look at Honorificus. For the first time since Rhysdux had met her, Honorificus was in full demonic form. Her teeth were filed to sharp points, and some of them seemed to be serrated as well. Her eyes were--not looked like, but were--flaming pools of molten lava. Three of her four arms were carrying weapons--an elephant gun, a naginata and a boning knife. In the fourth was a backpack, filled with everything a PPC assassin could possibly need . . . and then some. She was also smoking. Not cigarettes--smoke was pouring out of her ears. Rhysdux deduced that something had upset her demonic partner.
Honorificus stood up and shoved the backpack at Rhysdux. “Put this on,” she ordered.
Rhysdux obeyed, surveying Honorificus as she did so. Even in what was clearly a Sue-emergency, Honorificus was elegantly garbed: a simply cut, black Gucci pantsuit of raw silk and a matching blouse of wine-red. Dressed to hide bloodstains, thought Rhys.
Honorificus surveyed Rhysdux critically. “You really are not properly dressed for such an assassination as this. And I will not be disgraced.” She waved her two free hands, and Rhysdux’s rather monotonous navy blue skirt, jacket and blouse from Marshall’s re-shaped themselves into a royal blue skirt-suit by Dior.
“Thank you! This is gorgeous,” said Rhysdux when she could catch her breath. “Now, what’s the occasion? You don’t normally insist on my dressing up to slay Sues. This Sue must be monstrous.”
Honorificus smiled. It was a smile that would make a great white shark swim backward in terror.
“Oh, it’s not a Sue,” she said, still smiling. “It’s a Stu. Buffy and Angel’s little boy. He’s special. Take a look for yourself.” She snapped her fingers at Rhysdux’s computer. It flared to life, wailing a Wagnerian aria.
Honorificus scanned the fic swiftly. “Here,” she said. Fire flared from her mouth and nostrils, barely missing the monitor. “This is it. Chapter three.”
Rhysdux read the page, her expression swiftly changing from one of bewilderment to one of outrage as she pounded on the monitor. “GILES! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
“Keep reading. It gets worse.”
Rhysdux didn’t even hear Honorificus; she’d already found the next horror. A grimace of revulsion and hatred swept across her face.
“Gods. I HATE Incestuous Buffy! It’s horrible when she has sex with Dawn or Joyce, but at least you can say ‘Dawn and Buffy would never do that’ or ‘Joyce would NEVER sexually molest her own daughter!’ But to invent a Stu just so that Buffy end up having mad hot sex with her son not five minutes after the boy murders Giles . . !” She looked up from the monitor and stared expressionlessly at Honorificus. “You’re going to kill this one.”
“Of course I am,” said Honorificus stiffly. “Was there any question?”
Rhysdux shrugged as she unlocked the office’s isometric closet door and retrieved her double-headed axe. “No, not really. I was just thinking that you should be the one to kill the Stu. You are a demon, after all, so I’m sure you can come up with a . . . properly imaginative end for this abomination. What do you think we should disguise ourselves as?”
“Not the sort of fashion victims you usually dress up as.”
“Oh, please,” Rhysdux said, retrieving a large shoulder harness from her backpack. She slipped the harness over her right shoulder and shoved the axe into it. “After all the trouble you went through to get us properly dressed? No, I was talking about your--appearance.”
“There is absolutely nothing wrong with my appearance!” snarled Honorificus.
“No, of course not. It’s just that with eyes that are on fire and four arms and all those weapons”--here Rhysdux paused as she tried to think of a courteous way to put it--“you’re a little, shall we say, conspicuous.”
“Good!”
“Honorificus…”
“Oh, all right.” Firing a sulky glare in Rhysdux’s direction, Honorificus slung the elephant gun over one perfect shoulder and slipped the boning knife into a filigreed sheath on her belt. The naginata transformed itself into a cylindrical, mutton-fat jade pendant. She snapped her fingers several times in succession. Faces and forms flickered around the demoness in dizzying succession, finally ceasing as she selected a face and figure that might have belonged Stephanie Romanov’s younger sister.
“Nice,” said Rhysdux approvingly as she herself chose the form of a slim, grey-eyed redhead. “Elegant, educated and evil. Very Lilah. Suits you.” She shoved the Disguise Device into her backpack and pulled the Portal Generator out; then, scanning the fic on the computer screen, she entered the coordinates for the author’s version of Sunnydale and activated the portal. An oblong doorway opened in the air.
The two leaped through into the living room of the Summers’ house. It looked much as it always had, save for the five human-sized holes polka-dotting the floor and the vaguely disorienting miasma that filled the room.
Rhysdux glanced at the floor in disbelief. “Those can’t be plotholes. I’ve known Sues and Stus to cause plotholes before, but not five before the story even started. And what’s with the mist? It’s nauseating!”
“They are indeed plotholes,” replied Honorificus grimly. “Five people are missing who might have participated in this story--Joyce, Spike, Tara, Anya and Riley. Thanks to the author’s misty vagueness about time, we don’t know exactly when we are or where those characters are. Dawn’s around, so this could be taking place anytime from the beginning of fifth season onwards, but as for the rest…” She shrugged.
“Lovely,” Rhysdux muttered as she shoved the Portal Generator into her backpack. “Just lovely. Do we need to hide ourselves just yet?”
“No, the first scene is strictly canon characters. The Stu won’t be coming into play for a little while.”
At this point, the Words materialized.
Buffy's long love Angel her tall dark handsome vampire boyfriend.
Rhysdux squinted at the Words. “Was there a verb in there anyplace?”
“I certainly didn’t notice one.”
“All right, first and second charges: bad grammar and bad punctuation.”
She sat on the sofa of her mother's old house staring at the television though not actually watching it just looking. Angel had left not long ago, because Dawn always got a little freaked by him.
“Yeah,” said Rhysdux, rolling her eyes. “I can’t imagine why Dawn would get freaked by her Slayer sister dating a vampire who turns into a homicidal psychopath every time he experiences a moment of perfect happiness.”
Honorificus snorted. “Please. Anyone could adjust to that. Obviously, what freaks Dawn out is Angel’s hemi-demi-semi-Irish accent.”
Rhys considered. “You have a point,” she conceded at last, as
she rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “So Buffy’s dating Angel, but Dawn
is here. Is it just me, or did the murky time just get even murkier?”
Buffy felt a slight pain in her stomach and assumed it was from
her earlier encounter with a demon. The next she knew she was clutching
her stomach and screaming in the pain she felt, this was no mark of a demon.
“Well, it depends on the demon,” said Honorificus. “The Gentlemen like taking hearts, zombies like eating brains, a few like devouring livers . . . I’m sure in some minute, hole-in-the-corner universe, that there is some lowly, petty, unevolved quasi-imp that gives people stomach cramps.” She grimaced. “Some demons just have no standards. It’s tragic.”
“And may I just say,” Rhysdux interjected, “that the second line should be broken into two sentences? ‘The next thing she knew, she was clutching her stomach and screaming from the pain she felt. This was no mark of a demon.’ Not to mention cruelty to the common comma.”
Dawn came running down the stairs and seeing her sister stood shocked not understanding what was going on.
“Let’s see,” mused Rhysdux. “Her sister is writhing on the floor, clutching her stomach and screaming her head off. I really don’t think that Dawn would have too much trouble grasping that her sister was in pain and that it might be a good idea to call 911.”
Honorificus shook her head slowly. “If I am reading this correctly, Dawn came running down the stairs and saw her sister standing in the living room. Buffy was shocked and did not understand what was going on.” She bared her teeth, which were still a bit more pointed than was strictly necessary. “I do so love authors who change the meaning of sentences by using dangling clauses. Especially sautéed, with onions.”
"Giles" panted the helpless Buffy "get Giles". At this point Dawn ran to the phone to talk to Giles, as her sister tried to keep herself quiet at this point.
“Buffy--helpless?” Rhysdux said, blinking. “That doesn’t compute.”
“Not to mention being quiet,” added Honorificus. “Buffy loves to talk. She always has.”
Rhysdux pulled her Canon Analysis Device and aimed it at Buffy.
[Buffy Anne Summers. Canon character. OOC--38.17%.]
Rhysdux frowned. Curious, she pointed the Canon Analysis Device at Dawn.
[Dawn Summers. Canon character. OOC--8.03%.]
“Honorificus,” she said hesitantly. “Buffy’s out of character, but not nightmarishly so, and Dawn’s barely out of character at all. I mean, it’s a bad fic, but I can’t see how we’re going to get from here to--“
“Murder and incest?” Honorificus glared menacingly at the writhing Buffy. “Just wait. We are about to take a left turn into Sue-dom.”
"He'll be here in a minute Buffy just hold on please Buffy". Cried Dawn. Less then 5 minutes past until a flustered Giles arrived, Ignoring Dawn and running to the side of his wounded slayer.
Rhysdux cringed. “Arrrrrrrgh! It burns…! Bad punctuation, random capitalization, numerals used in place of words, misused words--and how the HELL did the author manage to use and spell ‘flustered’ correctly and get ‘past’ and ‘passed’ mixed up?”
“And apparently Buffy is now wounded,” said Honorificus, crossing her arms. “Which is fascinating, since all she had before were exceptionally bad stomach cramps of the ‘take some Motrin and you will feel better’ variety.”
Xander followed by Willow hurried in.
"Xander take Dawn upstairs now" he ordered trying to get through to Buffy, "Buffy talk to me what's wrong".
“Xander is telling Xander to take Dawn upstairs?”
“It certainly sounds like it, does it not? Personally, though, I prefer the irony in the second sentence. Buffy wanted Giles here so that he could tell her what is wrong, and now Giles is asking Buffy what is wrong.”
Angel appeared at the door, making Xander look angrily at Willow who had obviously contacted him. He walked calmly forward his long trench coat brushing along the floor. He knelt down to the one he loved.
“Love the coat,” said Rhysdux, grinning. “It’s all about the coat.”
“ ’Kneeling down to the one he loved,’ ” Honorificus said in a dreamy voice. “You know, I can take that statement in so many evil directions…”
“Obviously, he was kneeling down to the coat he loved, gutterbrain. What I’d like to know is how Willow knew where to find Angel instantly--and by the way, what’s he doing in Sunnydale? Isn’t he supposed to be guarding Los Angeles at this point?” Rhysdux carefully avoided mentioning Angel’s usual occupation as demon hunter; her demonic partner was more than a little offended that a vampire--essentially a demon-possessed corpse-- would even think about destroying demons.
"Buffy"? He said in a hush voice.
“I presume that means he couldn’t talk at all,” said Honorificus loftily, “since people HAD no voices in ‘Hush.’ And we need to hide now.”
“The Stu?”
“Pre-Stu, actually. A Stu Bringer, as it were.”
They scurried into the kitchen, hoping the Pre-Stu wouldn’t notice them.
Then what happened next left them all on the floor, a blinding white light had hit the floor and caused all but Buffy to cry in pain and shield their eyes. Buffy had stop writhing and now stood in total silence. As the rest gained their feet and the light faded the could make out a figure in the room that was new.
The two agents, like the Scoobies, were knocked to the floor as this paragraph ended. In the agents’ case, though, it had far less to do with a blinding white light and far more to do with blindingly bad English. Both watched, horror-stricken, as screaming, writhing Buffy was magically zapped into a silent, standing position, Giles, Xander, Willow and Angel each acquired a new set of feet, and the familiar living room transmogrified into a brand new, featureless room with no furniture, windows or doors--only the equally new and featureless figure standing in the middle of the room.
"Do not fear me, I will not harm you" the figure said in a calm and somewhat uneasy voice "I am hear to give you something you will need later on in your time" The entity said to Buffy and the Scooby gang "for I am the one who can not be the saviour but I send the one who is, the one who will find a way to guild you all to save the ones you love, especially you Angelus" the figure turned his head.
Angel shuffled uneasily in his spot.
Rhysdux snorted. “Yea, do not fear me, though I am speaking to you in a self-contradictory tone--“
Honorificus bowed her head in mock solemnity. “Though I cannot tell the difference between ‘hear’ and ‘here’--“
“For, lo, though I have delusions of messianic proportions--“
“Though the one I am sending is apparently going to initiate all of you into a medieval guild of craftsmen, rather than guide you, because I think they are the same word--”
“Still, do not be afraid.”
The darkness that had been covering the stranger lightened and he walked forward, they could now see his face he was a power, the ones, the all-powerful.
“They are called ‘Powers That Be’ in the Jossverse,” snapped Honorificus. “They’ve only been mentioned for about three seasons of Buffy and four seasons of Angel. ‘
“The darkness lightened?” said Rhysdux, grimacing in pain. “And how was it covering him? Was it protecting him from a sniper attack?”
"You must all understand that I am not nearly as powerful as the fights you have to come, but with this I give you, it is the weapon we give you it is every talent you all possess into one". The power explained " it is also one that is missing from the group who will become an asset to you all". In his arms appeared a bundle and he handed it to Buffy. Lying in her arms was a small baby, with a likeness that seemed to confuse her.
“ ’I am not as powerful as the fights you have to come?’ ” echoed Rhysdux incredulously. “What does THAT mean? And ‘with this I give you’? Someone has been watching too much Star Wars--that sounds very Yoda-ish. ‘This I give you’ would be all right--it’s just ‘I give you this’ in reverse. But ‘I give you with this’ just doesn’t cut it.”
“How about that charming run-on sentence?” grumbled Honorificus. “And ‘it is the weapon we give you’? Shouldn’t a weapon shaped like a baby come with an instruction manual?”
“ ‘It is every talent you all possess into one’ is the part I like,” Rhys added. “Not ‘it HAS every talent you all possess,’ but it IS every talent. That child must be the incarnation of intelligence, witchcraft, Slayerage and Zeppo-dom . . . not that I’d think they’d need an infant who is the incarnation of these things, since that’s what the Scoobies are. And ‘a small baby, with a likeness that seemed to confuse her’ confuses me even more. What’s confusing about the fact that human babies look just like Winston Churchill, minus the cigars?”
"You can feel the power running through the boy he is the one we will return when his time is ready to prove it to you all". And with that the power was gone leaving the baby in his mothers arms.
“ ‘He is the one we will return,’ “ said Honorificus with a sneer. “The Powers That Be seem to have this infant confused with a returnable bottle.”
Rhysdux scanned the words. “Uh-oh. Brace yourself. Temporal-spatial distortion is coming up . . . now.”
ZAP!
The two agents stumbled into what looked like the Summers’ residence, coated lightly with Generic Suburban House. The living room was roughly the right shape, and the pieces of furniture were in the correct places, but all individual touches, such as paintings Joyce had liked and photographs of Buffy and Dawn, had been erased.
Strangely, the nausea and disorientation persisted long after they had arrived. They understood why after the Omniscient Author spoke up.
A few years later.
Rhysdux groaned. Honorificus snarled a few guttural curses. Very little was more sickening than a temporal-spatial distortion that hurled agents from one non-specific time and place to another non-specific time and place; the agent’s body simply didn’t know where or when it was, and consequently struggled to adapt to all times and places simultaneously. The problem was that neither human nor demon physiology was equipped for simultaneous adaptation; no one could manage it--except, a persistent rumor said, the agents who were former Goddess-Sues. Honorificus tucked away an extra arm or so and smoothed her hair, muttering about her dignity.
Buffy walked into the usually busy house to see everyone looking as glum as the whether outside. Her beloved Angel had left to LA long ago and she had stayed to raise her son who was named after his father, Liam Angelus Summers.
“It must be nice to have a house that is usually busy,” said Rhysdux, still swaying a bit with disorientation as she struggled to open a Bleeprin bottle. “It would do its own housework and its own landscaping…”
“As glum as the whether?” commented Honorificus, raising a Spockian eyebrow.
“That’s probably a spell check error. Spell check has a tendency to go through stories, pick out words that are easily confused and say, ‘Are you sure you don’t mean THIS word?’ The author probably had the word ‘weather’ in there originally, but spell check most likely asked her, “Are you sure you don’t mean ‘whether”? And she just changed it automatically.”
Honorificus scowled at Rhys. “I’ve told you and told you: stop being so logical!” She paused, peering at Words. “Buffy named her son ‘Angelus’? Why? Angelus is cruel, savage, and sadistic. Buffy would not want to name her child after such a being. She has NO appreciation for the finer things in life.”
“The author gets points for not giving the boy the surname of O’Connor, though,” Rhysdux said reluctantly.
“Even my Super-Silly Alter-Ego fell into that trap. This author might’ve avoided that Fanon Bunny, but she loses points for everything else.”
"What's happened?" she asked. Looking for a response from around the room. "Where is Liam" her voice getting ever so slightly higher as she spoke to them.
Giles was standing by the fireplace; he was the only one who answered, "He is gone" he looked to his slayer. "I'm sorry Buffy, the watchers council came they said that he had to be raised with them to fight and learn we can't get him back, I'm.. sorry". Buffy began to cry slightly in her head she was writhed with fury, but in her heart she was broken.
“’. . . in her head she was writhed with fury . . .’” Honorificus actually whimpered. “And again, commas, periods, capital letters, apostrophes--these things are our FRIENDS.”
“ ‘In her heart she was broken.’ Now that’s an interesting description, “ said Rhysdux in a dreamy tone. “I can just see a little ceramic statue of Buffy in a secret compartment in her heart, suddenly being shattered by the news of Liam’s disappearance.”
Honorificus glanced at her partner. “Rhysdux, you are very strange.”
“Why, thank you!”
Buffy inadvertently interrupted the two bantering agents with an anguished question.
"Isn't there anyway I can see him to say goodbye".
Willow spoke up "actually I have been reading a book on meeting soles of the ones you love, you can speak to Liam in the future and see he is alright, if that is any help". She paused and looked at Buffy.
" Is it the only way I can see him at the moment"? She asked.
"Yes" murmured Willow.
Both agents shuddered.
Rhysdux dropped the mocking tone in which she’d been speaking and closed her eyes. “Dear gods, the mistakes…! She’s missing periods and capital letters. She’s putting periods and question marks outside of the quotation marks instead of inside, which is what you do if the speaker is quoting someone else’s words, but at no other time. She’s using substandard words--‘alright’ is NOT all right! And ‘meeting soles of the ones you love’?”
Honorificus nodded. “One wonders if she is talking about the bottoms of feet or shoes touching, or about being introduced to a particularly beloved pair of whitefish. And Omniscient Willow is so charming, is she not? I diagnose Suvian possession.”
“I’d like to know how Willow knows that this is the only way that Buffy can see the boy. After all, Buffy knows who took him and roughly where the headquarters of the people who took him are…and if she doesn’t, Giles certainly does. She knows how to get to Great Britain. Not to mention that Giles probably has the phone number of Watcher headquarters--he has spoken to Quentin Travers, after all. I’d be making arrangements to fly to England and have it out with the Watchers, not casting a spell.”
“Yes,” Honorificus said. “Much as I loathe the Slayer, I have to say that she is a woman of action. Magic would not be her first choice, or her second, either.” She glanced at the Words. “Wonderful. Another space-time distortion coming. Can we portal there? It’s sixteen years from…well, whenever now is…at the Watcher Headquarters in England.”
Rhysdux read ahead a little, then sighed. “No, apparently we can’t. The spell sends both Buffy and her son to some sort of neutral meeting ground, not to Watcher HQ. The Portal Generator won’t take us anywhere for which it can’t find the coordinates.” She thought for a moment. “We could ride a plothole there, I suppose. Normally I wouldn’t suggest it, but the only purpose for this plothole is reunite Buffy and Marty Stu, so it should work…if we can just find the plothole.”
As the agents had been talking, Buffy and her friends had begun making complicated yet unspecified preparations for the spell. Rhysdux and Honorificus hastily broke off their conversation and started searching. Honorificus found the plothole fairly quickly. Quite honestly, it wasn’t much of a search. The plothole was wide and deep, glowed golden-white and was roughly the size and shape of an elephant.
“Here it is,” she called to her partner. “Right behind Willow.”
“Willow,” Rhysdux said in a grumpy voice. “Figures. Okay, let’s go.”
“We can’t. Not like this,” said Honorificus.
Rhysdux scanned the Words and groaned. “Great. Small place, big Stu. No way to hide.”
“One way to hide. Check your backpack.”
Rhysdux did so and discovered, much to her delight, that Honorificus had included the Geek Trio’s invisibility ray-gun with their preparations. “Good. We’ll have to be quiet, but Stus don’t notice much they’re not supposed to, anyway.” She turned them both invisible. “You first, H.”
The plothole flexed as Honorificus dove into it. Rhysdux edged around Willow, approached the plothole with timidity and studied it carefully from all angles. Then, muttering, “I HATE leaps in the dark,” she closed her eyes and jumped.
The agents landed in a small, dimly lit, stone cell--whether a monk’s cell or a prisoner’s was beyond conjecture, as the author had not bothered to describe it. After bumping into each other a couple of times, they sat against the wall, sleeves just touching. That was where they were waiting when Buffy materialized out of the plothole, “hit the cold hard floor” and “collapsed.”
As soon as Buffy collapsed, Rhysdux grabbed the plothole and stuffed it into her backpack. It fussed and whined a bit until Honorificus muttered something in Fyarl. Then it quieted down, only whimpering slightly now and then.
Then the Omniscient Author spoke:
She woke with the feeling like she had a hang over, two arms gripped her own and pulled her to her feet with incredible ease. After getting to her head she stared at the supporter to thank him and stopped.
Buffy did a headstand while staring at a young man who briefly transmogrified into an athletic supporter. Rhysdux squinched her eyes shut, shuddered violently, and downed half a bottle of Bleeprin. Honorificus, on the other hand, growled softly, as if waiting for the blows to start falling.
Buffy whispered, “Angel,” at the sight of the young man, “for it was Angel in one way a tall handsome figure, with Angels face and body but the hair was not Angels. His hair was died a light blond and slicked back with hair gel that was used in it bucket loads by the looks of it.”
Honorificus gagged and muttered, “Angel’s face and body and Draco Malfoy’s hair? Is there no end to this author’s crimes? A Marty-Stu is bad enough, but with that hair?”
Rhysdux had opened her eyes and was now staring at the words. “And his hair turned a light blond on its deathbed, it seems. ‘Died a light blond,’ indeed. Maybe the author couldn’t decide whether her lust object was Angel or Spike, so she decided to mix them.”
“Possible. Entirely possible.”
Fortunately, Buffy and the young Marty Stu were too busy to notice the extra whispering going on around them. The Stu “cockily” denied being Angel.
"You have never known me, well not really, mum,” he said.
"Liam"
"Yeah, but what am I doing here this is not were I was" he questioned.
"I did a spell to see you, but you are from the future and I am from your past". She explained to her son.
“Oh, that’s ultra-clear,” snarled Honorificus. “I’m sure he understands that explanation.”
The Stu seemed to hear Honorificus’ comment. At least, he responded in a way that showed he semi-understood what Buffy had just said.
"No wonder, I knew I hadn't done it and beside why would you care, you never have before".
“And here comes the angst…” moaned Rhysdux.
Buffy protested that she didn’t know what the Stu meant. The Stu, however, was having none of it.
"Oh come on mum you know as well as I do that you have no intention of seeing me again, you are a slayer, duty comes first". He said cruelly.
Tears welled up in her eyes "what are you on about Giles said."
"Oh that's it Giles this, Giles that, he isn't such an angel you know." he cried
“Well, of course she does,” said Honorificus impatiently. “Remember ‘The Dark Age’? The Mark of Eyghon? And there was the time that he stabbed the Mayor with a fencing foil when the Mayor threatened Buffy.”
Rhys nodded. “Not to mention the Halloween episode where he beat Ethan Rayne into a bloody pulp. I wonder if anyone ever told Buffy that Giles killed BenGlory?”
“And not to change the subject, but--commas when ending a quoted statement when the statement terminates in ‘he said’ or ‘she demanded’ or suchlike. ‘ “He isn’t such an angel, you know,” he said.’ And please! Statements end with periods, question marks or exclamation points. ‘Tears welled up in her eyes--PERIOD.’ “
“That drives me insane,” Rhysdux admitted. “I ask you, what’s so hard about putting a period at the end of a sentence to let the reader know that you’ve completed that particular thought?”
“Not to mention setting up the sentences wrong! She should have written:‘ “You are a Slayer. Duty comes first,” he said cruelly.’ The last word of the quotation, followed by a comma, followed by quotation marks, ‘he’ in small letters, period after the last word in the sentence. Really, any book the author--and I do use the term loosely--would care to pick up would follow that pattern. If she had spent any time reading, she would have learned that without being conscious of it!”
Meanwhile, the Marty-Stu was still whining on about Giles.
"You want to know why the watchers took me away it was because of Giles, he called them and said to them that you couldn't slay properly with a child" he muttered to his mother.
“No, I always thought that slaying with a stake would be more useful,” commented Rhysdux as she leaned against the damp limestone wall. “Much sharper, for one thing.”
"Giles. What are you saying"? She whispered
"He never trusted me since the day I was born he always thought that I would turn evil or something," said Liam bitterly.
“Well, Giles was RIGHT!” Honorificus snapped. “After all, you’re due to murder him in about ten minutes-- and you deserve to be damned to the Touched By An Angel heaven for that!”
Rhysdux awkwardly patted Honorificus on her arm. “Don’t worry,” she said in the most soothing tone that she could manage. “You can kill him soon.”
Honorificus sniffled. “Can it be painful?”
“Agonizing,” said Rhysdux, smiling consolingly.
In the meantime, despite the fact that everything the Stu said was quite insane, the Slayer seemed to be undergoing a dreadful mental struggle.
Buffy stood trying to take in everything that was being told to her, but some how she could not believe that Giles, her entrusted watcher would do something like this.
“Fight it, Buffy! Fight it!” shouted Rhysdux.
Buffy, of course, did not react in the slightest. The Stu twitched, looking around. Honorificus tried to give Rhysdux a dirty look, but being invisible kind of blunted the impact.
“What else happened after that?" she asked to her son.
The Stu glanced around suspiciously, then glared at Buffy, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.
"You cannot know that for you have already been told to much". With that Buffy felt the floor beneath her feet move and the room around her dissolve, before her bedroom came into view and she felt that she was alone.
Of course, she wasn’t alone. Thanks to temporal-spatial distortion, the two agents arrived in Buffy’s bedroom almost at the same instant that the Slayer herself did.
“Urrgh,” Rhysdux moaned as she swallowed convulsively to keep from throwing up. She found the gun and turned them both visible again. Buffy, as a canon, wouldn’t notice them, and being invisible was making all the plotholes and distortions even more disorienting.
Honorificus, whose complexion was a sickly oatmeal-gray when she became visible, rummaged about in her backpack and found five bottles of Bleepto-Dismal. She scrutinized them carefully, then opened and gulped down each one in quick succession. In between gulps, she seemed to be muttering an incantation. “TOO much, not to much…’with that’ should be followed by a comma…’dissolve’ should be followed by a period, not a comma…’before’ should be deleted and ‘then’ inserted and capitalized in its stead…”
Rhysdux had found a stash of Bleepka in her own backpack, and quaffed three shots before she paid any heed to her partner’s mumblings. Then she glanced at the Words and began swearing.
“Honorificus. We have about five minutes to prevent Giles’ murder. That’s not much time!”
“Don’t worry,” the demoness said, smiling beatifically. “I have the perfect execution in mind.”
Before Rhysdux could say any more, “Willow entered the room looking dispirit to know what had happened.”
“ ‘Looking dispirit to know what had happened’?” Honorificus’ beatific smile vaporized, to be replaced by a sadistic snarl. “Oh, if I could get my claws on the wench that wrote this…”
"What did he say?" said the excited Willow
Rhysdux shook her head. “One minute she’s dispirited and the next she’s excited? Very weird.”
Buffy ignored the comment and headed out of the room to find Giles and question him about the going on between him and her son.
Rhysdux pressed her right hand against her forehead as she and Honorificus followed Buffy. “And the award for Evil Mental Image I Did NOT Need goes to…” Honorificus groaned and started looking for more Bleepto-Dismal.
She found him in the living room looking over some files about demons.
"Oh your back. How did it go?" he asked hurriedly
“What does her spinal column have to do with anything?” Honorificus demanded in a very Anya-like voice.
“I found out something interesting about Liam being taken by the watchers council," Giles shuffled uneasily "yeah you did it, you took him away." She cried angrily.
“Oh, for gods’ sake!” Rhysdux burst out. “Who the hell was even talking there? I can’t tell from the context! And Giles and the Watchers’ Council are on such spiffalicious terms. I can really see Giles arranging to have the Watchers’ Council kidnap Buffy’s son--NOT.”
“Especially since he loves Buffy,” Honorificus said, grimacing. “Much as I deplore his affection for that goody-goody, I have to say that he would never do anything to hurt her, and considering how rabidly affectionate Buffy is toward her relatives and her friends, he would have to know that having her child kidnapped would not go over well.”
Giles was attempting to defend himself.
"For you, you couldn't cope with a baby." He answered.
"You wouldn't take the time to see that I could take care of him, you didn't have the right."
Rhysdux scowled. “But Liam wasn’t a baby when he was kidnapped. He was four years old, if I’ve figured the author’s timeline right. Not grown up by any means, but still out of the baby and toddler stages. Giles certainly would have seen whether or not Buffy could cope with a small child.”
“And speaking of Liam,” murmured Honorificus, “here he is.”
Buffy stopped as a figure in a sweeping black coat walked in
Liam--for it was indeed he in the sweeping black coat--was turning toward Giles when a four-armed she-demon grabbed the Stu.
Buffy rushed at the demon, fists and feet flailing. “Let go of him! That’s my SON!”
As she choked Liam with two of her four hands, the demon backhanded Buffy with a blow that would have knocked a normal person into the next country. Unfortunately, Slayers are not normal people, and the blow barely rattled Buffy’s teeth. She leapt forward again.
Rhysdux grabbed Buffy by the wrist and shoved the TV series’ logo at her. Buffy gasped with pain and fell to the floor, convulsing.
At this point, the Narrative Laws of Comedy kicked in, and Willow wandered down the stairs into the living room. Her eyes widened as she took in the scene before her. She raised her right hand and began to speak:
“Grabovio, terkantur mers--“
That was as far as she got before Honorificus snapped Liam’s neck. She surveyed the corpse critically. “Must be a Deus Dubiosus. They take forever to die, even temporarily, and shut up, Willow! I’m trying to help you all out here!”
On hearing this, Giles surged forward. Despite her convulsions, Buffy struggled to get to her feet. Willow switched from the Umbrian spell to something that sounded vaguely Greek.
Rhysdux brandished the TV series’ logo and a “Once More With Feeling” shooting script at Buffy, Willow, and Giles, and intoned the Short-Form Jossverse PPC Prayer of Exorcism: “In the name of Joss, I command thee, out, foul fiends, OUT!”
Wisps of ectoplasm materialized from Buffy, Willow, and Giles. The wisps solidified into a sluttish Slayer, white-haired Goddess-Willow from Chosen and a rigidly disapproving and stern Watcher from Season One. Willow, Giles and Buffy stared at their twins with loathing.
“Great,” muttered Rhysdux. “Honorificus, did you bring any marshmallow fluff jars?”
The demoness checked her backpack, then nodded.
“Marshmallow fluff?” asked an incredulous Buffy. “The corpse of my son is lying on the living room floor not five feet away, doubles of me, Willow and Giles are staring at us and whoever the hell you are and Miss Cut-Rate Kali over there want to make s’mores?”
As she got the jars from her backpack, Honorificus sneered at Buffy contemptuously. “I am so much more fashionable than Kali ever was, and I’m nowhere near cut-rate.”
Rhysdux continued to hold the terrified--and mercifully silent--Suvians at bay with the TV series’ logo. “One, that’s not your son. Two, the doubles are pure Suvian demons that we’re trying to capture for further study--that’s a classic Meretrix Buffia, for instance. I’m not sure what subspecies that Goddess-Willow is. Might be a Dea Delirosa, since she seems to think she knows everything, even though she doesn’t. I couldn’t even classify the Suvian Giles. And three, no, we don’t want to make s’mores, it’s just that empty marshmallow fluff jars seem to hold Suvian demons the best.”
“Classifying demons?” said Giles, frowning. “Are you with the Initiative?”
“Giles, never mind that! They killed my son!” protested Buffy.
“Well, he wasn’t really your son,” said Rhysdux, watching both Suvians and Scoobies carefully as Honorificus knelt down and began chanting the words of a binding spell. It sounded vaguely like, “Come here, you stupid, shallow, fashion-victim authorial avatars, and be bound in your own fluff for eternity, or until we decide to kill you, whichever comes first.”
Rhysdux went on. “I mean, one minute you had stomach cramps and the next minute some alleged Power was handing you a baby and telling you that this kid was going to be the savior of you all. The divine equivalent of having the child delivered by the stork, I suppose.”
A baffled look swept across Buffy’s face. “But…he was…Angel’s son,” she said slowly.
Honorificus completed her chant, and the first of the demons---the Suvian Giles--discorporated into one of the marshmallow fluff jars.
Rhysdux rolled her eyes. “Nice trick. First of all, Angel’s got all of one son, the Boy Formerly Known As Connor. Secondly, when do you last remember having sex with Angel? How old were you?”
“Seventeen…”
“Uh-huh. And Dawn was around when the child arrived, which meant that you had to be at least…what? Nineteen or twenty, minimum. Two to three years is a long time to be pregnant. I’d think you might have noticed.”
A second Suvian--this one the Meretrix Buffia--vanished into a jar.
Buffy gulped. Willow glanced anxiously at her friend.
“I presume that the young man was a demon of some sort,” said Giles thoughtfully. “Obviously one with considerable control over minds, if he was capable of manipulating us even as a child. But why didn’t you simply capture him?”
With a keening wail, the Goddess-Willow evaporated, reforming in the last remaining jar.
“I will tell you,” said Honorificus, standing up. “It is very simple. Rhysdux, sunglasses.”
“Right.”
As Giles, Willow and Buffy stared, bewildered by the non sequitur, the two agents in unison removed sunglasses from their jacket pockets and donned them.
There was a blinding white flash.
“Now,” said Rhysdux, jumping in before Honorificus could implant any post-hypnotic suggestions about serving evil willingly (something far too many Sues were doing already, as far as she was concerned), “this has all been a horrible nightmare that you can’t quite remember, and that you don’t even want to try to recall.”
She glanced at the neuralyzed Scoobies. “Willow, you feel a compulsion to go to your room, open a history book about witchcraft and fall fast asleep. Giles, you’ve checking through some extraordinarily boring files about demons here in the living room. You’re just going to close your eyes to rest them for a bit, and then you’ll doze. Buffy, you had a long night Slaying. You can’t even remember how many vamps you killed; all you know is that you’re exhausted, and that you MUST go up to your room and sleep now. When you wake up, you won’t remember any of this. Now go.”
“You waited long enough to do that,” snapped Honorificus as she snatched up the jars of Suvian demons and stuffed them in her backpack. “You could have neuralyzed them when I was capturing these pathetic little creatures.”
“Oh, right.” Rhysdux snorted loudly at the thought. “You were in the middle of a binding spell! You know how dangerous it is to interrupt magic, and if you had stopped because you were neuralyzed or because you had to put your sunglasses on--“
A groan from the newly resurrected Marty-Stu interrupted the quarrel.
“I hate God-Stus!” Honorificus growled, pulling the Stu to his feet and holding him in a titanium grip. “Strangling didn’t work, and neither did breaking his neck; perhaps this will.” As she spoke, she pressed one hand against his forehead and a second against his chest, and began draining the life force from him.
Rhysdux tapped her partner on the shoulder. “Look, I hate to interrupt you while you’re eating--“
“Then don’t.” Honorificus sounded most emphatic.
“We have to charge him!”
Honorificus regarded the rapidly weakening Stu she was gripping. “He’s not worth the trouble.”
“Come on, Honorificus. You’re a demon. You know how important it is to please diabolic superiors.”
The demoness frowned at the thought of their botanical bosses. “Oh, all right. But hurry up. I’m hungry.”
Rhysdux took a deep breath. “Liam Angelus Summers, also known as Marty Stu, you are hereby charged with the following. Attempting to kill Rupert Giles by means of magic. Succeeding in said attempt in the original fic. Likewise in the original fic, having sex with one Buffy Anne Summers on the kitchen counter about five minutes after you had murdered Rupert Giles--despite the fact that she believed you to be the son of Angel and herself. Causing three canon characters to be possessed by Suvian demons. Causing Joyce, Spike, Tara, Anya and Riley to vanish without a trace. Causing personality alterations and character ruptures. Causing an original character with special powers to join the Scooby Gang--you were given every single talent Buffy and the Scoobies possessed!”
“Causing time compression,” Honorificus interrupted. “Causing temporal-spatial distortion. Gratuitous use of a time portal to allow Buffy to see her son when all she had to do make a few arrangements to go to England and fight with the Council. Meddling with the timeline--I still have no idea when any of this is supposed to be occurring. Using deus ex machina to impose yourself on the Scoobies. A Power That Is descending to hand Buffy a prophesied savior of a baby? Please! Also, use of bad biology and bad anatomy--there is no such thing as instant pregnancy, or pregnancy that lasts two to four years! And egregious abuse of the English language, including ghastly grammar, sinful syntax, cruelty to the common comma, punitive period use, questionable use of quotation marks, random capitalization, run-on sentences, confusion of homonyms, misuse of words, muddled meaning of sentences--“
“Not to mention,” Rhysdux said, cutting in, “employing melodramatics, displaying extreme stupidity and causing others to behave with extreme stupidity, annoying the hell out of both of us with your vicious mistreatment of Giles--“
“And being a Marty Stu--“
“You are condemned to die.”
“Finally!” said Honorificus, as she began to drain him of energy once more.
The Stu struggled feebly in her grasp. “No! You can’t do this! I have a destiny…”
“Yes. To be my lunch.”
The Stu’s protests escalated to a scream for a moment, and then trailed off into a burbling whimper. Within minutes, his body was little more than a desiccated mummy.
“Okay, Honorificus,” Rhysdux said in what she hoped was a well-controlled tone. “Put the body on the floor so that I can cremate him.”
Reluctantly, Honorificus put the corpse on the floor. “There’s still a lot of good meat on his bones,” she said wistfully.
“He’s a God-Stu. Sent by the Powers That Be to save the immediate world. I’m pretty sure he would disagree with you--especially since Sues and Stus are bloodless sorts.”
“Still…”
Rhysdux rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. “Yes? What is it?”
“We really need some monsters in this universe. Living monsters. The Lord of the Rings PPC is lucky. They have that cute Shelob and Ungoliant, and the orcs, and trolls, and crebain, and dragons, and the Watcher in the Water . . . disposing of bodies is easy when you have monsters to whom you can feed the Sues. It’s not right.”
Rhysdux sighed. Honorificus had a point; PPCers generally tried to make Sue disposal as imaginative as possible. Unfortunately, it was difficult to find suitable Sue-eating monsters in Sunnydale, as the Slayer was a definite overachiever.
She mulled it over. The Sisterhood of Jhe was too committed to opening the Hellmouth and bringing demons back to earth. Grimslaw demons were useful if you wanted to have a Sue’s heart ripped out, but they weren’t keen on eating dead flesh. Voynok demons had nine lives, had to be summoned magically and were hard to get rid of. And Rhysdux really didn’t want to inflict Stu-eating duty on Oz-wolf.
Then she had it. Eagerly she punched coordinates to the Sunnydale sewers into the Portal Generator. “Honorificus, could you please grab the body?
Honorificus glanced at her partner warily. “What do you have in mind?”
“I think the Ghora demon might like a little extra protein. You know, the demon whose eggs Dawn stole to try to raise Joyce.”
“Ooh! Great idea!”
The Ghora demon was indeed grateful to the agents for the freshly killed Stu--grateful enough not to attack or eat them, at any rate--and soon it was happily munching on the treat in the sewers that it called home. Both Honorificus and Rhysdux breathed a sigh of relief when the Ghora swallowed the last scrap of Stu and canon twanged back into place.
“Finally!” Rhysdux said as she entered the coordinates for the Official Buffy and Angel Fanfiction University. “Glad you destroyed him, Honorificus. About time you got to kill one.” So saying, she activated the portal almost jauntily.
“There is only one thing I am worried about,” Honorificus said, stepping through the portal with a frown. “Just one thing.”
“What’s--“
But Honorificus had already gone. Shrugging, Rhysdux stepped through the portal…
. . . and they were back at OBAFU. “Okay, H, finish what you were saying.”
Honorificus looked pensive as she changed into a set of Body By Gap pajamas. “It’s the first time I’ve eaten a Sue or Stu, so I’m not sure what the effects will be. What if I turn into one?”
Rhysdux shook her head and sat down. “Forget it. Not happening, babe.”
“It could.” Honorificus started ticking off points on her fingers. “I’m an authorial self-insert, I can change shape, I have mad skills, I can be just as gorgeous as I want, my minions worship me . . . how much further do I have to go before I’m an all-out Sue?”
“You’re forgetting one very important point.”
“And that would be?”
Rhysdux wafted her hands. “Nobody actually likes you, H.”
“Oh.” Honorificus thought it over. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Okay. That’s a relief.” Honorificus curled up happily in her chair. “Thanks, Rhys. You’re a real pal.”
“Don’t mention it.” Rhysdux, too, decided to take a load off and relax in her chair.
And then, of course, the Narrative Laws of Comedy struck again.
BEEEEEEP!!!!
[Rhysdux’s A/N: This was a hard parody to write--harder even than “Highway to Hell.” Buffy having sex with her son while Giles’ dead body lay ten feet away was a serious turnoff.
Willow’s spell, “Grabovio, terkantur mers,” translates as “God of oak, let them see justice.” It’s from a very old Latin-related Indo-European language called Umbrian. You can find the glossary here: http://www.geocities.com/indoeurop/project/glossary/umbr.html
A Deus Dubiosus is a Marty Stu with godlike powers. The feminine form would be Dea Dubiosa. I figured that a Stu who was sent by the Powers That Be, who embodied all of the powers and abilities of the Scoobies and who was destined to save the world had to be a God-Stu.
The “Omniscient Willow” Suvian Demon in this story thinks she knows everything but really doesn’t. That’s why she was classified as a Dea Deliriosa. Godlike abilities, but not omniscient, whatever she thinks.
One Suvian Demon was dubbed “Meretrix Buffia.” “Meretrix Buffia” is a fancy way of saying “Slut Buffy,” for “meretrix” means “prostitute” in Latin.
The story of the life angel and Buffy never had by peachybabe247 was PPC’d without permission. It was at http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1458675&chapter=1 but is not longer there.]