SABELLA
By Rhysdux and HonorH
Rhysdux was correcting the grammar tests that she and Coach Gyrus had given earlier that day when HonorH--better known to the students of the Official Buffy and Angel Fanfiction University as Course Coordinator Miss H--staggered into the staff lounge looking distinctly ill.
Rhysdux gave her boss a sympathetic glance. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess: the female werewolf students just figured out that PMS becomes a thousand times worse when it involves body hair, two extra legs, and six extra nipples, and they want to change species. Glory and the Beast just had another one of their ‘my Apocalypse is better than your Apocalypse’ contests, and the hospital is now full of students who were caught in the crossfire. Lorne wants to hold Karaoke Night at the Student Union, and Angel insists on singing ‘Mandy.’ “ She cocked her head at HonorH. “Am I getting warm?”
HonorH ran one hand through her thick brown hair while the other clenched several pages of a printout tightly enough to tear them. “No,” she said in a hollow voice. “It’s worse. Much, much worse.”
“Worse than Angel singing ‘Mandy’?”
“Amazingly, yes.” HonorH gingerly handed the printout to Rhysdux, then wiped her hands on her pants, as if rubbing off some invisible slime. “It’s a Mary Sue.” She flopped down into an overstuffed chair. “I can’t take this anymore. Sunnydale’s full of ‘em, and they just keep. Showing. Up. And this one’s truly heinous.”
“Aren’t they always?” sighed Rhysdux, skimming the story. She remained silent for a few minutes, then looked up from the manuscript, her face oatmeal grey.
“This...this is absolutely…”
“Oh, read on,” said HonorH, the very picture of despair. “It gets worse.”
A few more minutes passed. Then Rhys very carefully dropped the manuscript onto her desk as if it were contaminated. She glared at nothing particular. “Buffy’s SISTER?”
“Buffy’s vampire sister,” HonorH confirmed in a sepulchral voice. “Not to mention at least seven major distortions of canon. By the time this Sue gets through with the Buffyverse, there’s hardly anything left that Buffy and the Scoobies would recognize as reality.”
“In other words, this is a job for the PPC. Okay, no prob. I’ve got a double-headed axe, I’ve got a flamethrower…it’s all good. Just one question: who’s my partner this time?”
“That’s the problem. The PPC is out of partners for you. You know we’re horribly understaffed, and the ones currently in training are still trying to get their diplomas from the University.” HonorH frowned worriedly at the teacher-assassin before her. “What happened to the last partner you had, anyway?”
“Liosleith? She cracked up after the last crossover we dealt with. You remember--it was a Mary Sue hurt/comfort story. Mary Sue/Willow Rosenberg/Legolas pairing, as I recall. With Buffy and Riley instigating Thranduil to beat up Legolas, and the Sue and Willow trying to save him.” Rhysdux sighed sadly. “Liosleith is a Tolkien fundamentalist.”
HonorH shuddered violently. “Oh, dear God. The poor girl.”
“Well, Psych thinks that she’ll make a full recovery. It’s just that she needs to avoid stressful situations for now. And since life at the PPC is nothing but stressful situations…”
“That leaves you without a partner.”
Rhysdux nodded.
HonorH bit her lip. “I would tell you to go alone, but you know how Upstairs gets. They think that having partners helps curb our Assassins’ more homicidal tendencies.”
“Not that I’ve noticed,” said Rhysdux in a wry tone. “Of course, I haven’t gone after any badfic authors. Lately.” A sudden thought crossed her mind. “Hey! Why don’t you come along?”
“Rhysdux,” said HonorH, infinite patience saturating her voice, “I’m a University Head. Under the Constitution of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, I’m expressly forbidden to assassinate Mary Sues.”
“You don’t have to assassinate this one,” said Rhysdux in an equally reasonable tone. “Just stand back and watch me kill her. The rest is purely observation, and I know how observant you can be.”
HonorH hesitated. “But what if Honorificus shows up? A fic like this could very well bring her out.”
Rhysdux tried to suppress a grin at the mention of HonorH’s demonic alter ego. “The PPC couldn’t be that lucky.”
“Well…all right. If it’s just this once.” She pushed herself out of her chair and followed Rhysdux to her office. “Come to think of it, it might be therapeutic.”
Rhysdux went to a storage closet in the corner of the staff lounge and fished out two black backpacks. Canon analysis device, hand-held portal generator, disguise generator, neuralyzer, notebook, pens, stakes, holy water, axes, hand-held chainsaws, flamethrowers…yes, the backpacks contained everything they needed. Rhysdux closed the backpacks, slipped one on and handed the other to HonorH.
“What are we going as?” HonorH asked curiously, adjusting the straps of the backpack before she put it on.
Rhysdux shrugged. “Generic vampires, for now; that’s a fairly reasonable choice in Sunnydale. Hopefully we won’t have to go anywhere that we need to be invited to enter. If we need to alter our disguises, we can do that once we get there.”
HonorH nodded as she began programming her desired description into her disguise generator. Rhysdux just hit one or two buttons and muttered something about “the usual.” A moment later, the semblances of two vampires--one a rather bookish-looking she-Giles (with a fabulous trenchcoat) and the other a cheerleader type with bouncy copper curls--enveloped the two agents.
HonorH punched the coordinates for the fic’s version of the Buffyverse into her hand-held portal generator and pressed ENTER. An oblong doorway formed in the air. “Ready?” she asked the assassin.
Rhysdux smiled a thoroughly unpleasant smile. “Definitely.”
And with that, they leaped through the portal.
***
A black limo pulls up the bronze, a beautiful black haired women steps out of it. Wearing a tight black leather skirt, a silver pendent shaped in an oval eye with a purple stone in the middle of it and a dark purple blouse that comes down in a V neck with a hood covering her face.
“How do you pull up the bronze?” asks HonorH. “Yank it up by its roots like a dandelion?”
Rhysdux blinks as the only teen hangout in Sunnydale transforms into a large lump of intermingled copper and tin. “Well, we have the first charge--failure to capitalize proper nouns.” She scribbles something in her notebook.
“I note we’re in present tense,” says HonorH.
“For now, yeah. It’s subject to change without notice.”
HonorH stares at the creature getting out of the limo. It appears to be one midnight-black woman from the waist down and two midnight-black women from the waist up. About all you can say is that the creature has hair of some indefinable sort and color all over its--their?--body. Despite this, it is astonishingly beautiful.
HonorH groans. “And that is why you should never confuse singular with plural or omit hyphens…”
“Love the pendant,” says Rhysdux, trying for the perkiness suitable for a vampire cheerleader and failing miserably.
The pendant is indeed remarkable, being a piece of silver embedded in an oval-shaped--and quite organic--eye. The eye also has a purple stone in its center, where the pupil should be. As the assassin and her supervisor stare at the monstrosity, it winks at them.
“How much do you want to bet that that thing turns out to be a Magical Necklace of Mary Sue-ness?” growls Rhysdux.
“The rest of the outfit is just as bad,” replies HonorH, who sounds as if she is channeling her demonic yet fashion-conscious alter ego, Honorificus. “Have you ever seen a V-shaped neckline with its own face-covering hood before?”
“Isn’t this enough to nail her?” Rhysdux says, shooting an imploring glance in HonorH’s direction.
HonorH shakes her head. “No. This just proves that the author doesn’t know how to use the English language properly. The Mary Sue hasn’t done anything to violate canon yet.”
“Her BEING here is a violation of canon!”
“But it’s steady state. She hasn’t done anything further to damage canon, or the regular characters, or the timeline. Original characters are allowed, even Sues, provided they don’t damage canon. C’mon, Rhys, you know this song--sing along!”
Rhysdux swears in what sounds like Gaelic.
HonorH glances at the Canon Analysis Device in her hand. “Uh-oh. Brace yourself. We’re about to get hit with”--
ZAP!
***
A few moments later, the two, looking pale, nauseated and disoriented, are stumbling through one of Sunnydale’s many cemeteries.
“I hate Temporal-Spatial Distortions,” groans Rhysdux, barely managing to avoid tripping over an eroding gravestone. “I wonder where we are?”
A resonating female voice from the sky seems to answer.
Seen: Graveyard.
“Believe it or not, we had figured that out,” HonorH says snappishly as she glares at the sky, all but daring the Author’s Notes to speak up once more.
“And it’s spelled ‘scene,’ ” Rhysdux mutters. “Good grief, I could spell the difference between ‘seen’ and ‘scene’ in second grade. It’s not hard, people.”
“Don’t look now,” says HonorH as she spots a battle going on about fifty feet away, “but I think we’ve found the Slayer. Oh, and Spike too, of course. The Sue ought to be along any minute.”
Buffy and Spike are fighting vampires, 5 of them to be exact. Suddenly they see the women in the leather skirt on top of a gravestone. She does a filp in the air and stakes two vampires at the same time. Then she jumps down and stakes the other three. When shes done she throws the stakes down and removes the hood from her face.
“Where did she materialize from? And how did she manage to stake two vampires at the same time?” asks HonorH, rubbing her temples as if she is getting a migraine.
“Uh--one was standing in front of the other and she had a really long stake?” Rhysdux rummages about in her pocket, finds a bottle of bleeprin and hands it to HonorH.
“While flipping--pardon me, “filpping”--in mid-air?” HonorH tosses down a couple of bleeprin and pockets a few more before handing the bottle back to Rhysdux.
“I see she left her tight leather skirt on top of a gravestone, too.”
“Well, at least she kept her executioner’s hood on ONE of her faces--and on her neckline--for the sake of modesty.”
Spike sees her face and instantly runs over to her. She runs to meet him and he lifts her a few feet off the ground and spins her around in a circle, while hugging her tightly.
"Sabella!!" Spike exclaims.
Rhysdux stares in disbelief at the scene before her. “Did this person ever watch the show? When did Spike ever rush to embrace anyone in public--including Dru?”
She pulls her Canon Analysis Device from her backpack and points it at Spike. The scarlet readout flashes solemnly.
[Spike. Male vampire. Canon. Out of Character 43.89%.]
The hugging and kissing go on for a few more moments, as Spike “contuines” to hug Sabella. When he “chatches Buffys jealous look” he “lets go of the black haired women and kisses her softly on the forehead.”
Rhysdux is moaning softly. “Dear gods, what this author’s doing to the English language…it’s obscene! Can’t you please call upon Honorificus to ‘visit’ the author and make her stop?”
“I wish. You know how Upstairs is about that kind of thing.” HonorH gazes sympathetically at her friend. “If I could, I would, you know.”
Rhysdux glances down at the readout scrolling across the Analysis Device. “Uh-oh. There’s about to be a really horrible spontaneous tense shift. Get ready.”
Sabella shivers a little bit and Spike instinktivly takes off his duster and draps it around her. Sabella thanks him with a kiss on the cheek. Then she goes over to Buffy to interduce herself.
Suddenly, the world shivered and shook, trembling between reality and unreality for a few endless moments. Then, just as suddenly, it stabilized. The agents found themselves nauseated in the past tense.
"You must be Buffy?" Sabella questioned.
"Yea, I'm Buffy. Who the hell are you and why are you all over MY boyfriend?" Buffy responded
“Yea, verily, I am Buffy,” said HonorH as she gulped another handful of bleeprin. “Because ‘yeah’ is such a difficult word to spell. It contains four whole letters.”
“How about Buffy calling Spike her boyfriend? Spike was never a boyfriend. A friend and fuck-buddy, maybe…”
“Am I going to have to put you on Swearing Restriction?”
“Sorry. Shit like this brings it out in me.”
The Sue continued to speak.
"I'm Sabella, or at least I was, Please Call me Sarah. I have some very intresting news for you Buffy Summers," she said with a little unsureness in her voice.
Buffy asked," So whats the intresting news you have for me and how did you know who I was?"
She began," Well Buffy, it just so happens that I am your sister."
Rhysdux glared at the Sue. “No, you are NOT Buffy’s sister. Buffy has ONE, count ‘em, ONE sister--Dawn. You are not Dawn. Therefore, you are not Buffy’s sister.”
“You’d think that would be a simple concept to understand, but it’s amazing how many of the Suvians think that Buffy has an older sister, or another younger sister, or a twin…”
The Sue pulled out of her pocket a peice of paper and handed it to Buffy. Buffy looked at the paper. As she read it over and over again she had a very stunned look on her face. The paper was Sarah's birthcertifcate verfying that she was infact Buffys half sister.
HonorH snorted. “Because of course there is no such thing as a fake birth certificate. Oh no.”
Rhysdux nodded. “I know. If a perfect stranger showed up out of nowhere telling me that she was my previously unknown sister, I think I would suspect a scam.”
“Well, that’s back in the real world. You have to remember that this is the Suvian Universe. Logic no longer applies.”
Sarah must of known what Buffy was thinking and said," Buffy, Mom gave me up for a reason. You see, I'm well, I am a vampire. I wasn't turned, I was BORN a vampire. Thats why mom gave me up."
HonorH rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “I can see why. I mean, breast-feeding a vampire? That would have to hurt.”
Rhysdux began banging her head against a cracked marble angel monument.
“No. No. No. You. Are. Not. Born. A. Vampire. If a vampire sucks your blood till your heart begins to slow and you are near death, and then feeds you his own blood, then, in the Jossverse, you become a vampire. There. Is. No. Other. Way.”
“Certainly not the kind of thing that would be likely to happen to a child in the womb, that’s for sure.”
“Also, vampires don’t age, not being alive, so a vampire infant would remain an infant for all of its probably brief unlife.” Rhysdux glared at the Vampire Sue, who was still trying to convince a skeptical Buffy that she was Buffy’s sibling. “Can’t we kill Sister-Sue yet?”
HonorH sighed. “We can’t kill her. Only you can. You’re the licensed assassin. I’m Course Coordinator for OBAFU, and officially, I’m not even here. Frankly, though, I think we’d better stick around. Being Buffy’s vampire sister is a major distortion of canon, but it’s only one major distortion.”
"I'm Sorry Buffy I would of been here sooner but Giles instited that I stay away until you absoultly needed me here."
"Giles? He-- he knew I had another sister? And he didnt tell me?" Buffy asked franticly.
“Giles does not keep secrets from Buffy!” snarled HonorH, lunging forward.
Rhysdux caught her just in time to keep the Course Coordinator from prematurely attacking the Sue. “Well, not since the Crucimentum test in “Helpless,” anyway.”
“That was four seasons ago!”
“Yes,” Rhysdux said quietly. “However, do you know what season this story is set in?”
HonorH thought, then scowled. “No. No, I don’t. Oh, darn these badfic writers and their imprecise timelines!”
Rhysdux scanned the Words and groaned. “Speaking of imprecise timelines, you have to hear this one.” She rolled her eyes and waited.
Spike's behavior must have been remembered despite all the excitement because Buffy then asked," What about Spike? Did he know I had another sister?"
Sarah answered," No, But Spike does know me. Not as Sarah Summers, But as Sabella, a vampire whom he met right before he was turned. Spike and I have been friends since before he became a vampire."
HonorH stared open-mouthed at the conjoined-twins-Vampire-Sue. “And Spike became a vampire when?”
“1880.”
“And when was Buffy born?” HonorH was in full professorial mode.
“January 1980. We’re not sure of the exact date.”
“Oh, of course! It all makes sense! If one of Joyce’s daughters was born more than a hundred years before the other one, obviously Joyce is an Immortal from the Highlander Universe. Except, of course, that Immortals can’t have kids, so scrap that theory.”
Rhysdux was still studying the words. “There’s about to be another Temporal/Spatial Distortion. Want to portal to the new location, or stick around and ride it out?”
“Ride it out.” HonorH’s voice was grim. “Upstairs is going to get all the evidence it needs about this one and more.”
The Sue babbled something about considering Spike a brother and hoping that Buffy had been nice to him. The two agents braced themselves. Then…
ZAP!
The two agents, still woozy and weak, all but fell forward onto kitchen linoleum as they struggled to remain conscious. It was an especially rough transition, since as vampires, they technically weren’t allowed to enter the Summers’ house without an invitation. However, the canon distortions surrounding the Sue actually worked in their favor for once. It was almost as if canon was so desperate to be rid of this Sue that it was willing to overlook itself in order to get her assassinated.
“I now officially hate this author,” said Rhysdux. She intended to sound menacing, but a woman who has been through two temporal/spatial distortions and one world-altering tense shift in the space of ten minutes is not capable of sounding anything but sick, no matter how homicidal she feels. She downed a couple of bleeprin in an attempt to regain her equilibrium.
“The Summers’ house,” HonorH said in a weak but thoughtful tone as she glanced around the kitchen. “Well, at least she brought us somewhere familiar…”
“Thank God for small favors. But we still don’t know what season it is, do we?”
“No. Damn.”
“Kind of limits what we can disguise ourselves as.” Rhys sighed. “Obviously, we can’t be generic vampires in the Summers’ house. Vampire-Sue would try to stake us, and that would draw Buffy’s attention.”
HonorH winced. The thought of facing a Slayer who was eager to defend her friends and family from vampires did not appeal to her. And when they worked together, her friends were almost as strong as Buffy herself. Quickly, she activated her hand-held disguise generator and removed the illusion of herself as a vampire.
Rhysdux sighed, fumbled for her disguise generator and switched her own appearance back to normal. “I suppose we’re just going to have to hide here in the kitchen and eavesdrop on what’s being discussed in the living room until we know what season this is supposed to be happening in. Then we can disguise ourselves. But only when we know what’s acceptable.”
The same resonant female voice that they had heard before interrupted them.
Next Seen:
Buffy, Sarah, and Spike walked into the Summer's home met by a very confused Willow. Buffy instintively interduced Sarah to her family and friends.
“Buffy’s last name is Summers, not Summer; instinctively, not instintively; introduce, not interduce,” Rhysdux chanted. “And how do you ‘instinctively introduce’ someone?”
“Actually, I was wondering when the author decided that her Sue’s name should be Sarah and not Sabella.”
“She hasn’t decided. Keep listening.”
"Guys, this is Sabella/Sarah. Depending on who you are and how long you've know her," Buffy said with a half smile while looking at Spike.
Everyone with the exception of Giles, Angel, and Faith was suprised. Giles stood against the wall cleaning his glasses in his usual style. Angel stood agaisnt the kiten door staring at Sarah. And Faith sat upon the table looking at the dark headed woman.
“Okay,” said HonorH, staring at the entrance to the kitchen, which was now both a door and an enormous orange-and-white tabby kitten. “That’s just…odd.”
“But on the plus side, the author has managed to resolve the conjoined twins issue for the moment.”
“Actually, I’m more worried about Angel noticing that he’s leaning against a huge kitten, getting an investigative fit, going behind the kitten and finding us.”
“He won’t. Canon characters never notice violations of reality when Sues are around. ‘Sides, you know the rules: we can only be seen by uncanon characters unless we draw attention to ourselves, and I, for one, have no intention of doing that.”
Angel walked over to Sarah and flung his arms around her saying, " I missed you Princess!"
Sarah huged him back and responded, " And here I thought you had forgotten all about me."
“How could he? You’re writing the stinking story, you stupid Mary Sue, you!” snarled HonorH under her breath.
Sarah walked over to Faith and said," Hi Faith."
Faith responded with a hug and, " Hello Mom. What exactly ARE you doing here?"
The agents stared at Sabella/Sarah in silent horror for several minutes.
“Mom?” HonorH finally managed to say through gritted teeth.
“Sure,” said Rhysdux in a flat voice. “Let’s just ignore the fact that Faith’s mother is a drunk in South Boston. Sure.”
Giles stood up and said, " Well, Buffy, its like this: Sarah is your sister. After she was born her father, who was a vampire took her through a time portal back in time where she was needed. I met her about 25 years ago right before she married Merick. Faith is a product of Sarah and Merick. She is their daughter. And for those of you who dont know Merick was Buffys first Watcher. A few years after Faith was born Sarah feared that she would instintvly become a slayer because her father was a watcher, as you can see her fears were warnented. So Sarah and Merick gave Faith up for adoption.”
A despairing cry arose from HonorH. “Oh, gods, what has she done to GILES?”
Rhysdux gazed pityingly at HonorH, who loved Giles desperately, and understood exactly what her erstwhile partner was feeling. “Forcing Giles to spew nonsense like that--it’s just so wrong. Look at his eyes. You can tell he knows that he’s not supposed to be talking like this.”
Faith had in the meantime mutated into rather a bizarre creature. She’d shrunk about five inches, grown small horns, and turned a pale shade of green.
“Guess that’s what happens when your mama’s a vampire and your daddy’s a mini-troll,” mused Rhysdux. HonorH was still whimpering at the un-canon distortion of Giles.
“I believe that covers all of the basise, doesnt it Sarah?"
Even as Giles spoke, revulsion and self-loathing filled his eyes.
"Yes Giles it does. All except for the fact that I do have a soul, just incase any of you potentals gets any ideas," She said while pointing to the pendent around her neck.
Rhysdux grabbed HonorH’s arm. “Potentials! It’s seventh season!”
“Right!”
A few seconds later, a petite Amerind girl with short shiny black hair and a tall girl with long blonde hair and gentle, dreamy eyes meandered past the kitten door and into the living room. They took up a position in the corner of the room, hoping to look like mere curious onlookers to the Sue. Rhysdux, in the Amerind disguise, was trying to listen to what was being said, but HonorH was obsessed with something else at the moment.
“Look at my boobs!” she said delightedly. “They’re so perky!”
“Yeah, they’re great,” said Rhysdux distractedly.
“I haven’t been a B cup since 7th grade. They’re so cute! Ooh, and look at this outfit--although, y’know, with these jeans, I really should be wearing sandals. I’ll have to remember in case I ever get to go on one of these missions again.”
“Will you shut up? The Sue’s still gassing on about her soul,” Rhysdux snapped under her breath. HonorH gave her breasts one last glance before turning her attention back to the scene.
"This NOT only holds any magic abiltys I have to tap into but it also keeps a close keep on my soul. And unlike our friend Angel, The only way for me to lose MY soul is for the necklace to be smashed," She said with convdence.
“ ‘Keeps a close keep?’ ” whispered the newly blonde HonorH.
“Are you feeling the need to steamroller the Magic Necklace of Mary Sue-ness right about now?” murmured Rhysdux, absent-mindedly tugging on a shiny black cowlick. “Because I am.”
"So whats the deal with you getting all loveydovey with her Spike?" Buffy asked with an angry look on her face.
"Well, Buffy, Sabella has always been like a sister to me and shes always meant everything to me. So theres no way in hell I'm gonna give up this chance to protect her, since shes here and all," Spike responded.
Buffy didnt believe his answer, "Spike, if shes so IMPORTANT to you then you can just sleep with her tonight, instead of me!"
Rhysdux looked puzzled. “If it’s seventh season, isn’t Buffy pretty much past the relationship with Spike thing?” she whispered to HonorH.
“Please. You know the mantra of the badfic writer as well as I do.”
“Oh, yes: ‘Canon, shmanon.’ Repeat as necessary.”
"Buffy, No-No-No its not like that you can ask the big poof over there," he guestered to Angel.
"Buffy, he's right he's never been in a "couple-relationship" with Sarah. He does however love her more then anyone else, Even Dru. He's always tried to protect her, and keep people from harming her," Angel insited.
“Riiight,” muttered Rhysdux. “After all, it’s not as if Spike EVER tried to protect Dru or keep people from harming her, much less loved her for one second of the one-hundred-and-twenty years they were together…”
"Angel, since when do you defend Spike?" Buffy asked.
HonorH applauded. No one noticed except for the Sue, who gave HonorH a dirty look.
“They’re going to be talking for a bit, but nothing else important happens till tomorrow,” said Rhysdux in an undertone. “Want to skip it?”
HonorH nodded. “Let’s portal out.”
The two headed upstairs. No one paid the slightest attention to their departure; all were focused solely on Sabella/Sarah.
Once they reached the upstairs landing, HonorH removed a small gadget that looked like a telephone from her backpack. As she glanced back and forth at the Words, she programmed the portal generator with the coordinates for the Summers house on the following day, then pressed ENTER.
An oblong doorway opened in the air at the head of the stairs.
“All set. See you tomorrow, Rhys!” Without hesitation, HonorH leapt through. After quite a bit of hesitation, so did Rhysdux.
“What took you so long?” HonorH hissed at Rhysdux when she finally arrived. “I thought that the portal generator was malfunctioning.”
“I…I don’t like stepping into space at the top of a staircase,” said Rhysdux, squirming a little. “It’s like stepping onto an escalator.” She shuddered violently.
HonorH gazed at her friend, perplexed. “You’re afraid of escalators? Why?”
“Because one tried to eat my sneaker once…while my foot was still wearing the sneaker.”
“Ah.”
The loud and penetrating voice of the Author’s Notes broke in at this point.
The next day:
Buffy began to notice that Spike was diffrent when he was around Sarah. Spike was nicer kinder sweeter and much more atentive to her then he had ever been with Buffy, not to metion protective of her. But that wasn't her concern anymore, the fight against the first was on. Buffy knew even though she didn't want her help she needed Sarahs help.
Angel showed Sarah and Spike the amulet he had that was supposed to help stop the first.
Rhysdux blinked. “Wait a second! If Angel just delivered the Amulet of Soul Sunlight…”
“Then this is taking place instead of ‘Chosen,’” HonorH realized, scowling.
Rhysdux scowled right along with her. “Hang on. Let me check something.” She scanned the Words swiftly. “Yep. She winds up volunteering to wear the amulet, saying that she’ll survive because her vampire father had a protection spell cast on her.”
HonorH groaned softly.
Rhysdux glanced at the Words, then at the scene downstairs. “I think we’ve got enough to charge her with. Let’s do it.”
“Please, let’s. My stomach’s upset.”
Buffy, Angel, Spike and the Sue were sitting on the couch and deep in conversation when two of the Potentials walked into the living room a few minutes later. The smaller of the two was carrying a very large double-headed axe.
“Hello, everyone,” said the tall blonde Potential, grinning maniacally. “Sabella, would you mind standing up for a minute and coming over here? It’s very important.”
Buffy turned away from Sabella/Sarah for a moment, then glanced at the two agents, a puzzled and suspicious expression distorting her features. “Who are you? You’re not Potentials! And what do you want with my sister?”
“She’s not your sister,” the short Amerind girl said.
Buffy looked bored. “Okay, heard that one before…”
The Amerind girl shook her head. “This isn’t like the situation with Dawn. Dawn was the Key to Glory’s Hell dimension before the monks made her human and rearranged everyone’s memories.” She nodded at the Sue, who was still sitting in the center of the couch with Spike on her left and Angel on her right, looking rather smug. “This is a parasite.”
“What th--?” Buffy stared open mouthed at the Amerind Potential. “How do you know about Dawn?”
“What the hell is going on?” demanded Spike.
“I’d like to know that myself,” said Buffy as she stood up, crossing her arms and scowling as she had been wont to do all of Season Seven.
The tall blonde Potential sighed. “Okay, you remember the time that VampWillow came into your dimension and you had to send her back where she came from? This is kind of like that. We know the dimension this . . . thing . . . comes from, and if you’ll all think for a minute, you know she’s not supposed to be here.”
“But…we could…really…use…her help,” said Angel slowly, an appalled and sickened expression sweeping over his face as he realized what he was saying. “We…love…her.”
“It’s some kind of spell, isn’t it?” asked Spike in a tense and brittle tone. He very sensibly jumped up from the couch, looking at the Sue like she was an exceptionally grotesque kind of demon--which wasn’t far from the truth. “Is she…oh, gods. I bet she’s the First.”
Buffy frowned. “Can’t be. We hugged her.” She looked as if the words tasted bad in her mouth.
Angel took several deep breaths. Not that he needed to breathe, of course, being a vampire. It was just that there were certain situations in life that demanded the intake of large gulps of air, and this was one of them.
“”Get out!” screeched the Sue, gripping the sofa cushions tightly. “You have no right to be here. Get OUT!”
The Amerind girl rolled her eyes heavenward. “Pot, this is kettle. You’re black.”
The blonde Potential pulled the Sue to her feet and regarded her sternly. “Sarah Summers, also known as Sabella the vampire, you are charged with the following: Disrupting the canon of the Buffyverse. Yanking Angel, Spike, Giles, Faith and Buffy WAY out of character. Making Xander, Willow, Anya, Andrew, Principal Wood, and Dawn simply vanish despite the fact that they all play crucial roles in the series finale. Making everyone love you and trust you on first sight. Forcing Joyce to have a love affair with a vampire so that you could be born, despite the fact that Joyce didn’t even know that vampires were real until Season Three. Being BORN a vampire, which is so flagrantly ridiculous it HURTS…and I’m sure Rhysdux is just dying to charge you with the other stuff.”
Rhysdux was indeed. “You are also charged with time traveling TWICE so that you could befriend Spike in 1880 and become Faith’s mother circa 1982, despite the fact that you were born around 1978. Creating a time portal so that VampDaddy could take you back in time as a baby. Inventing a protection spell so that you can use Angel’s amulet safely. Keeping your soul in a Magical Necklace of Mary Sue-ness. Turning Giles into an absolute IDIOT with that explanation of your existence. Temporal-spatial distortion. Cruelty to the common comma, haphazard hyphenation, random capitalization, shifting tenses so badly that it makes my teeth ache, failure to use spell-check or a beta-reader and screwing with grammar in general. Usurping Buffy’s role as a Slayer and Spike’s role as a Champion. For being the Sue-est Mary Sue that I have seen in twenty-two years, you are condemned to die!”
The Sue lifted her head proudly. “I’m immune to stakes. Crosses don’t bother me. Neither does holy water. You can’t h-“
Rhysdux swung the double-bladed axe. Hard.
“Well, that takes care of the first stage,” she said cheerfully, as she bent over to get a good look at the headless corpse. “No blood. That confirms it: bloodless characters are always Sues. There are just two things left to do. HonorH, would you mind grabbing the necklace? That’ll have to be destroyed once I cremate the body.” So saying, she put the axe into her backpack, removed what looked like a small pistol, filled it with a clear liquid, and pressed a tiny button on the handle. Flames began pouring from the muzzle. Rhysdux adjusted a setting or two so that white-hot flames would burn only in a six-feet-long area about five feet away, and then fired the small flamethrower at the body.
The flames burned, consuming clothing and shoes, searing the Sue’s flawless flesh--for even in death, she looked perfect--charring her teeth and bones, and eventually causing the entire body to crumble into a pile of greasy ash. Using a small whisk broom that she had brought for this purpose, Rhysdux swept the Sue’s ashes into a plastic baggie, tied it and put it and the whisk broom in her backpack.
“There. That’s that part of it done. Sorry to have troubled you,” she said cheerfully to Buffy, Spike and Angel, who looked as if they were waking up from a bad dream. “HonorH, you have the necklace, right?”
“Oh, yes, and talk about your fashion sins . . .” said HonorH a trifle grimly. She held the hideous necklace at arms’ length, trying not to get into a staring contest with the eye. “Tell me why this thing hasn’t vaporized by now. The Sue is dead.”
“Not…completely. We have two more things to do before she’s really most sincerely dead, as the Munchkins would say.”
“There’s MORE?”
Rhysdux shrugged. “What can I say? Vampire-Sues are hard to kill. Do you want to walk or portal?”
HonorH gazed at the dazed Slayer and the befuddled vamps. “They’ll forget all about this once canon snaps back into place. Definitely portal.”
“Right.” Rhysdux got her Portal Generator from her backpack, plugged in a few coordinates, then opened the portal.
The two leaped through.
***
“Here we are,” said Rhysdux as they emerged from the portal. “Snyder Memorial Cemetery. Dead center. Right where all the roads and pathways intersect.” She grabbed the baggie out of her backpack and began opening it.
“Ah,” said HonorH approvingly. “Scattering the ashes of a vampire at the crossroads. An old method, but a good one.”
Rhysdux scattered the ashes quite thoroughly, being careful not to inhale any. Then she turned to HonorH. “All right. It’s time for the necklace.”
“What do you want me to do with it?” HonorH asked.
“Crush it.”
HonorH looked disgusted. So, for that matter, did the eye of the necklace.
“It’s an eye,” she said finally.
“It’s the container for the Sue’s soul--and if we don’t exorcise the soul, she will just come back.”
“Oh, all right.” HonorH laid the necklace in the center of the intersecting roads, then searched about for something she could use as a weapon. Rhysdux scrambled through her backpack, looking for the weapons that she knew she would need for the last part.
After a short search, HonorH found a rock of suitable size and weight, and crushed the necklace. White mist poured out of it, shaping itself into a translucent semblance of the dead Sue.
HonorH moaned. “Oh, nooooo…”
Rhysdux sprang forward, the TV series’ logo in her hand, chanting the PPC Prayer of Exorcism. “In the name of Joss, Creator of the Buffyverse and the Angelverse, and his servants, the Powers That Be known to the faithful as Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises and Sandollar Television, I command you, O foul fiend, to depart from this world and to return to the black and Stygian imagination from whence you came, pausing neither to trouble others in this realm nor to warp the canon with your very existence, never coming back to vex the fans of this canon nor to plague the PPC with your odious and intrusive evil, RETURNING...NO...MORE!”
The ghost-Sue screamed incoherently. For a moment, its shrieking almost sounded like: “You’re so mean! I don’t care what you think!” Then, giving a final howl, it simply faded away.
There was a twanging sound as canon snapped back into place.
“Finally.” Rhysdux put her exorcism kit away. “Ready to get back home?”
“More than ready,” said HonorH. She opened a portal, and both of them stepped through to Rhysdux’s office at OBAFU. Rhysdux immediately sat down to type up her report.
“Need help with that?” asked HonorH.
“Nah. To tell you the truth, this part’s kind of fun. I love to describe the expressions on Sue faces right before I kill them.”
“Rhys, you were born to PPC.” HonorH shook her head. “You know, I’m glad I went along. This gives me a better idea of what you guys do on a regular basis. I don’t envy you.”
“I don’t envy you, either. Riding herd on all these baby writers full-time?” Rhysdux shuddered. “It’s bad enough just running Grammar Boot Camps.”
“Which you don’t have to do anymore, if you don’t want to. That’s why I recruited Mikelesq--although, come to think of it, he’d be one fine PPC agent. And don’t you dare try to steal him away. There are plenty of other people at BBF for you to recruit.” HonorH looked herself over. “I’m going to go take a shower. Being in a fic that bad made me feel all dirty.”
“I hear ya,” agreed Rhysdux heartily. “Gonna do the same once I’m finished up here. Hey, would you send Jinx or Dreg up? I need coffee.”
“No problem. See you later, Rhys.”
“Later, H.” Rhysdux settled into her chair to finish her report.