Obviously, this is totally unofficial and based on Joss Whedon's Buffyverse. This is in no way an official story; I'm simply borrowing Joss' characters for a while. I hope he won't mind and with any luck I'll return them all in a few instalments time in one piece.
I will give most new characters that I introduce a description in the text, but I may also suggest at the beginning of each story who would be the guest star to play them if it were a real T.V. episode. For example: Holly/Quetzonatl would be played by Shannon Elizabeth as she appeared in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
This is set in an alternate Buffy verse. All of the events that have happened in Buffy have still happened in this Buffy verse with the exception of the death of the slayer Kendra who survived after series 2 but 'died' after Drusilla cut her throat in that her heart stopped, calling Faith. Events following this have been different in so far as they now include Kendra. She recovered in Sunnydale and remained there when Buffy fled to Los Angeles. She returned again after Faith's turn to evil and fought alongside Buffy against her, capturing her alive. Together, they brought her back around and the three slayers fought the mayor together at graduation. She then returned to her home and returned only sporadically after that, notably during the fight against Glory and the battle against The First's minions. Faith meanwhile went to Los Angeles to help Angel Investigations, returning to aid in the fight against Willow when she turned to evil, in which Faith was almost killed. She returned to Los Angeles again to fight evil after Angel's move to Wolfram and Hart, then returned to Sunnydale to fight The First Evil.
In this instalment, the slayer Caridad (played in season 7 of Buffy by Dania Ramirez) appears along with a new slayer not seen before on Buffy. For description purposes, Hope is being played by Alicia Witt.
Chapter 3: Hope
Dawn awoke suddenly and found herself panting. She was in her bunk in the hostel, all around her were the sounds of sleeping girls as the army of slayers slept. Slowly, she rolled to her feet and padded softly towards the kitchen to get a glass of water.
With little more than a soft creek of hinges, she opened the door and slipped through.
Dawn had been enjoying Europe. At 19 years old, she had lost her virginity to a guy in Spain. She had done it with him twice before they had moved on and try as she might, she had not been able to get enough time alone to find anyone in Italy.
Pouring herself some water from the kitchen tap, she padded softly to the communal area of the hostel and found a desk light still lit. Sitting at the table were Giles and Andrew as well as a slayer that Dawn didn't know very well but knew of by name as Hope.
'Dawn,' Giles said in a soft voice looking up. 'What are you doing up?'
'I could ask the same of you you know.' Dawn walked over to the table, her white yummy-sushi pyjamas, a size too small for her pulling tight across her breasts as she sat down in one of the low chairs around the table. 'Any ideas where my sister is?'
'She should be back soon, I think she and Kendra were patrolling.' He thought for a moment, 'as a matter of fact I need to speak with both of them and you when they get back, it's good that you're up.'
Giles turned to Hope and said 'Thank you Hope, you've been very helpful but that should be enough for now. Get some sleep.'
'Ok boss.' Dawn saw the corners of Hope's mouth twinge just a little as she said this and began to rise from the table. Dawn strongly suspected that Hope was one of the slayers who had a crush on the rugged English watcher. The difference here she was reasonably sure was that Giles himself seemed to be interested in her in kind.
As Hope left the room, Andrew rose and closed the door behind her, locking it as he did so.
'Wow, is this top secret time?' Dawn asked.
'Actually, yes,' Giles said. 'we are all of us in extremely grave danger Dawn. I need you to understand that because what must be done to bring us through this will be difficult to understand.'
Dawn felt a small flutter of butterflies in her stomach as Giles reached out and took her hand in his larger one. She had to admit, although she mocked some of the slayers in his care for having a crush on Giles, she had always harboured one of her own.
'I don't understand Giles, wha...?'
'I shall be blunt Dawn. A power has arisen. I have cast a spell that should protect the original three slayers, as well as Xander, Andrew, Willow, Kennedy, myself and you. I've also called in Robin Wood, he should be able to help us but...' he shifted his gaze guiltily. 'to ensure that the spell I've cast holds, I must enforce it with an ancient druidic ritual. The power we are facing is called Quetzonatl. It was the deity that the Incans, Aztecs and Mayans were all unwitting worshippers of. I believe it is the essence of one of the ancient pure demons that walked the Earth before the time of man.'
He took a drink of the whiskey in the glass by him on the table, Dawn hadn't noticed it when she had sat down but it seemed that Giles had been drinking fairly heavily. Gulping the mouthful of amber liquid, he continued; 'I believe it stayed here in spiritual form for many millennia and in so doing became ever more powerful, feeding off the energies of man until it found an area whose people it could bring under it's sway completely in the area now known as South America. It fed off them as thousands of lives were sacrificed to it in ritual murders and it controlled them utterly. Then the Spanish arrived from Europe. The Watcher's Council had records from Cortez's expedition itself. They had with them powerful magic adepts, those who served Christianity by fighting the darkness as they saw it, using magic that would doubtless be considered unholy by many. They encountered an ancient entity who defied their attempts to identify it. They could neither see nor detect it except as a vague but powerful essence. Unfortunately, Cortez' greed was insatiable and he slaughtered many of her people in search of gold. This, it seemed angered the entity. It began to take control of the Spaniards and force them to do it's bidding. It used them to kill in a ritualistic way and this Cortez would not abide.' He poured himself another large measure of whisky.
'The Watcher's council dispatched the slayer to the continent. Inexplicably at the time, she died after becoming a renegade. The watchers who found her body said she appeared to have been burned alive from the inside out. She had also been found with another corpse, that of a male Spanish soldier who perished with her. The next slayer was called and also dispatched to South America and she too died in much the same way. It was only then that the entity finally showed itself. It took the form of one of the Aztec emperors, only it stood much taller. It mutated him with it's power until he took on an entirely different form. None could stand against it as it dominated their minds and any who tried to fight it became thralls.' At her look of confusion he clarified: 'Drones. Zombies effectively. The Spaniards could not prevent it and it began to dominate them all. It eventually became clear that the Aztec army it controlled was comprised largely of werejaguars and almost all were thralls, feeling virtually no pain and able to fight on despite wounds that would be grievous even to a lycanthrope. The council sent in a third slayer. Her account was clearer as all of the adepts from the Spanish army as well as an entire coven of witches and warlocks from England surrounded her with a shield. A sphere of raw energy to protect her mind and she faced the creature. It shattered their shield easily and took over her mind. The coven watched this happen magically and saw her become a wanton creature. She dropped her weapons and shed her clothes and proceeded to... well, let's just say she engaged in procreative activities with several of the entity's servants. The coven sensed her physical energy being drained by the thing but could not stop it. In the last moments of her life, the slayer was able to concentrate enough with the coven's aid to break the thrall and leap to touch the creature.
'As she did this the coven saw their one chance to stop it. They ensnared her soul and as the creature was connected to it to feed they hurled her soul into a magical abyss, the region referred to by many sorcerors as the world's heart, the void at the centre of the Earth where it is believed the dimensional tear from this world to the demon world slammed shut aeons ago. An area that also housed the tomb-prison for the old ones. They sacrificed her to trap the beast there, in a sealed magical soul-prison.'
'But that's...'
'I know, it's horrifying that they sacrificed the slayer's soul but the power of this creature...' Giles shook his head. 'This thing was effectively a hell-god like Glory, but in possession of it's full power, and more attuned to this world than her as it was created here, not in another dimension. It was the only chance they would have to defeat it. Had it the chance, it would have enslaved the world. It had not travelled beyond it's land, that of the Aztecs, because they kept it well fed, but when the conquistadors arrived, they showed it that the rest of the world had developed and expanded. If they hadn't trapped it when they did, it would have happily turned the entire globe into a large-scale version of the Aztec empire. We would probably now, even to this day be performing ritual sacrifices to the creature in every major city every single day. On the long-term billions of lives would have been sacrificed and the rest of us enslaved.'
'But it's trapped now right?'
'No. The coven in England believes that it has escaped it's tomb in the planet heart but that doing so has made it very weak. They doubt it will risk killing so soon but they do know that it is still an incredibly powerful entity capable of mind-raping any it chooses who are not protected. Even those that are protected are not safe even with it at it's weakest unless they use the most powerful of protective spells, and as such we need to perform a ritual to ensure that our protective spells are strong enough to give us time to find a way to defeat it.'
'Why?' Buffy's voice emerging from the room's other doorframe startled them all.
'Buffy how long have you bee...'
'Long enough Giles. Why does it want us? There are 6 billion people on Earth, why us?'
'It has a taste for slayers. The coven, the original coven that defeated it I mean, said that they didn't think it had encountered the Slayer before and the power it found there was incredible to it.'
'And now there's an army of us for it to feast on.'
'Precisely.'
'But why slayers? Our power comes from demons and there are demons that must contain more power than slayers for it to feast upon.'
'Ah well, it's, well...' Giles face turned red.
'Spit it out Giles.'
'Well, when the slayer it last faced began to engage in, well, that is to say she um, engaged in sexual intercourse with the Aztec guards she, well...' He paused and took a deep breath. 'She, like the other two before her was being used to release her innate power. The energies of the slayer are deeply bound to her gender, she is female and her power is deeply tied to that. Ancient Aztec magics of the kind the creature seems to have caused to develop there is heavily based upon sexual acts, much like druidic magic but they are different enough that druidic magics are harder for it to counteract. This is why they were finally able to beat it.'
'But didn't you say that the ritual you needed to ensure that our minds are protected used druidic magic?'
'Well, yes.'
The room fell silent for a moment as everyone looked at Giles. Giles looked sheepish and took another large swig of whisky.
'No. There has to be another way.'
'I'm afraid not Buffy. I wish to god there were but there isn't.'
'Then who?'
'It doesn't matter who apart from me. The caster has to be one of the two in the ritual itself. The other simply has to be one from within the sphere that we wish to protect.'
'Which means, me, Faith, Kendra, Willow, Kennedy or...'
'Or Dawn yes.'
Dawn flinched her hand away from Giles' hand on instinct and a shared look of horror passed over everyone's face.
'There is no fucking way I am letting this happen!' Buffy began to stride towards Giles but Kendra placed a hand on her shouler.
'Buffy, I told ya dat dis was hard to understand, but believe me, dis is de only way we can stave off dis terror.'
'You KNEW?? You knew that Giles planned to rape my little sister and you didn't say a word!?'
'That is enough!!' Giles voice was suddenly raised and he stood bolt upright. 'I intended no such thing and I can't believe that you would ever think that I would Buffy!' his expression softened to one of regret, 'I hate this idea as much as you and I am sorry, but this is the way it has to be.'
Buffy lowered her head and closed her eyes.
'Well if you and Kendra are both agreed then I think we have our pair.' Buffy said quietly.
'I am afraid not Buffy,' Giles looked up as he said this, 'Kendra cannot because Kendra must perform the other half of the ritual. A mirror to this one with someone else. She is the other caster of this spell, the other druid if you will.'
Andrew suddenly appeared happier in the other corner of the room and opened his mouth to speak before Kendra cut him off.
'Not you Andrew. Wood is on his way 'ere now. He possesses more, magical essence, den you.'
