Successor (BTVS)

[X] Skip

Unluckily for Buffy, Tapparich had gained some separation on her during the explosion. She started charging towards him again, but between the uneven terrain on the mountainside and the aftereffects of magical bomb-surfing, he'd have time to recover and fire on her again.

He'd taken a lot more damage in the huge blast than she had at least. He was missing an entire eye, lots of veiny skin, even part of his chest was gone: she could see right through to some ribs. Unfortunately, she could see parts of his body knitting themselves back together in real time; his ruined eye filled back out like a sped up movie and started glowing in that mok'tagar way again. He had looked down, but he wasn't even close to out.

Sure enough, he took a deep breath of the toxic air and started chanting again, waving his hands around to summon the orange ray of doom. She noticed that she couldn't hear him even though his mouth was moving, and then realized her ears were still ringing.

"Really kind of a one trick pony, aren't ya?" she griped. Instead of talking, she could've pressed on her superspeed a little, or even overextended normally to get there in time. After all, he probably couldn't hear her either, and even if he did, he couldn't understand English. But she figured distraction was the name of the game in this case.

That was because Tapparich was so focused on burning her with his big thick torture ray that he didn't notice Skip tromping up behind him. Blast deafness probably played a role too; he should've probably healed his ears before that missing eye.
BU-
Skip tackled him from behind and interrupted the spell, and her measured charge had lined her up just right to try to take his block off with her hammer. He recovered from the shock too quickly though, and it wasn't to be.

His claw waved frantically as he fell under Skip and the force wall materialized just in time, blocking the hammerblow that had been aimed at his head. He started rolling down the mountainside with Skip as she had to waste precious seconds figuring out where the magic wall began and ended; it was transparent except when it was being hit, which caused a kind of translucent glow similar to what the force bolts had.

By the time she reached them again, Tapparich had stopped the roll on top and was getting the better of Skip. A couple force bolts to the armored demon's eyes let him push himself back up to a standing position, and even as Skip tried to get up, the bolts kept coming, suppressing him while they slowly pushed Tapparich back up into the air, most of the damage from the explosion already healed off.

With no walls and no ceiling Buffy knew she couldn't let him gain altitude. She jumped up to smash him again, but there was another annoying forcewall that bonked her in midair, and this time there were no giant bookcases to use to go over the top.

"Skip, like the robbery scene!" Buffy called.

He didn't react to her idea, which wasn't a huge surprise considering that she could barely hear her own voice and that he was still being barraged with force bolts. She'd just have to hope he figured it out anyway. She made a quick slide under where she thought the wall was, slipping a little on the rocks but still managing to get to Skip without getting hit by any of the force bolts. Then, hoping he had enough time to at least process she was there, she jumped up to his head height and spun.

She'd needed to, because the bolt she predicted came and she had to frantically bat it away with her hammer. This of course sent her careening backwards, and she was going to be in for a really awful fall down the mountain if Skip didn't manage to catch her. But without some surprise, this wasn't going to work anyway; time to see if that ten grand was worth it.

She felt his hard grip on the conservatively stylish (and now probably ruined three times over or so) boots she'd worn, and knew she'd guessed right. Just like he had for that scene in the movie, he pushed her up into the air like a shot put. But this time, instead of grabbing onto a fake spaceship, she was trying to take down a hovering demon wizard. Much more realistic.

He was too surprised for another force wall, but not for a quick bolt. She managed to move her hammer to juke herself in midair though, and then a moment later she was in his face, and brought it down on his head. He was spiked back down to the earth like an errant volleyball.

Her own landing took her to the slope above, but she turned on her superspeed to capitalize on her advantage. Skip had learned from his grappling misadventures before and was just kicking the mok'tagar when he was down, but he didn't have a chance to do much on his own before Buffy was there, laying into Tapparich for all she was worth, feeling more bones shatter and break with every blow.

In a panic, he let out another of his big force waves, but this one lacked the punch the earlier examples had. Skip fell back, but was able to anchor himself from rolling down by just smashing a hand into the mountain's rock. Buffy had been attacking from above, and was just jammed back into the slope before another dose of superspeed had her back on offense. She couldn't give him a chance to heal off the damage.

He tried another wall of force to keep her back, but the weakness of his last attack emboldened her. Instead of trying to dance around or over it, she just swung her hammer at it hard.
KILL
There was a flash of orange light and an effect like breaking glass as it shattered, and she got a free hit in before he got back to his senses. This time he didn't even attempt to keep fighting, but instead shot out a force bolt to start himself rolling down the mountain, just trying to get away.

Unfortunately for Tapparich, he rolled right down into Skip, who grabbed him up and slammed him down in front of Buffy. It was an opportunity for an execution, and Buffy didn't let it go to waste. She spun her hammer around on the swing and drove the backspike straight through his neck and into the ground, letting loose a fountain of arterial blood and pinning him to rock below.

Even like that, he managed one last force bolt, right into her face. She ignored the whiplash as she choked her left hand up on her hammer to keep him pinned, and grabbed at his head just under his chin with her right. It took a little doing, but after some leverage action with the spike she managed to rip his head off his body, along with some of his spine to go with it. Let him try and regenerate that.
KILL
Even as she heard the word shouted into her head instead of whispered, the entire mountain rumbled ominously underneath her and there was a tinny alarm from something that her hearing was just recovered enough to catch.

She instinctively looked up to the summit, and saw thick black smoke rising up into the orange sky. No, it shouldn't- Skip had told her the volcano was extinct. The smoke was rising now, all the same. She could see a small avalanche of small rocks rolling down from up there too, and felt a couple pebbles hit her face. She tried to convince herself it might just be a little tremor. It wouldn't be a full eruption. There were probably more demons living on this mountain than there were people in Sunnydale.

She felt something tugging on her arm and jerked her elbow back instinctively only to realize it was just Skip. Was he saying something?

She turned to him and tried to listen harder, finally catching it. "Your watch!"

She looked down at it and realized it was the source of the alarm. The surface of the magic demon watch she'd won from Sour was flashing ominously, and there was another clock beside her poison countdown now, its hands spinning around faster than a normal clock had any right to spin. She was going to poke at it and try to get something clearer when the mountain rumbled beneath her again and another plume of deep black smoke and ash erupted from the mountaintop. She didn't have time for time, she had to get back in there somehow and save her friends.

Another burst of superspeed took her up to where they'd originally emerged from the torture ray explosion, and she frantically looked for any way into the wrecked library. Maybe Skip had noticed something? She took a quick look back at him, still climbing up after her.

She was just in time to see a swirl of magic spin around him and pop him away into nothing. Like he'd been summoned somewhere? But Andrew wasn't supposed to try that for another hour, and Skip wouldn't ditch her to answer anyone else, would he? It shouldn't have even worked, they should still be in the middle of the anti-portal wards. Whatever, she didn't have time to figure it out. She turned back to the rock, looking for a weak point to start digging into with her hammer.

Her first swing cleared out an encouraging amount of rock, but she kept digging for what seemed like way too long and didn't find anything but more rock to dig through. The volcano above wasn't calming down, but she tried to ignore it, even as the ash built up around her. It wasn't like she could just run away without them. Maybe she should try somewhere-

"Buffy!" She looked up and saw Angel's head poking out, another twenty feet up the slope.

Her hearing must've mostly recovered. "Angel! Do you have everyone else?"

His head popped back into the mountain in answer, and she scrambled up worried something else had gone wrong, but by the time she got there Bantha appeared instead. There was a small crack in the side of the mountain that seemed to lead down into the remains of the library.

"Tapparich!" He demanded, the one word he knew she'd recognize.

"Dead. Don't you have his powers yet? Get with the portals already!" Buffy pointed back down the mountain where his headless corpse was still barely visible. It was already noticeably darker with all the smoke and ash in the sky. She had no idea where the head had gone in all the chaos, but hopefully the body would be enough to shock Bantha into some semblance of useful action.

But Bantha didn't have any portals to give, and instead let out a string of what were probably obscenities and darted back down into the library. Even as he did, Angel climbed back up, handing her an unconscious Jonathan.

"Our village idiot isn't using his new promotion why? Can he not figure it out?" Buffy asked.

"He didn't get anything. No new powers. He thinks one of his nephews must have gotten them instead," Angel explained. Buffy remembered the KILL screaming in her head, and privately doubted that anyone at all had gotten the powers this time. But if Bantha found out his magic inheritance was gone, he might go from idiotic to murderous. They didn't need yet another problem, so she just kept quiet.

Instead, she looked behind Angel, and saw the path up to the crack was a kind of precarious mountain of fallen bookcases and other furniture. The library's remains were still weirdly lit by the bright moss, its presence making it obvious which surfaces were originally exposed and which used to be inside the ceiling or whatever. Books and scrolls and crystals were scattered all around, most of them looking battered or broken.

Mok'tagar bodies in various states of dismemberment were littered around, but she didn't see any of them moving. As for her teammates, Nigel was halfway up, Bantha was already squirming through a hole on the other side of the cavern, and Phillip…

"Where's Phillip?" Buffy asked, afraid.

Angel shook his head, helping Nigel up to the opening. "The explosion."

"You mean he's-?"

"He shoved your illusionist out of the way of the rocks," Nigel explained with a dead look in his eyes. "Saved him, couldn't save himself."

It hit Buffy like a punch in the gut. If she hadn't tried to fight the orange beam head on, or if she'd settled on a different attack plan, or maybe if she'd even avoided the whole stupid mess with Kathy in the first place, it wouldn't have happened. This didn't feel like the people she'd lost against the Mayor.

The mountain shook again, harder than ever. Buffy could see a stream of lava spraying up from the peak this time, along with even more ash and smoke.

"We have to go," Angel said, looking determined. She could tell he had things to say that he wasn't saying. "Where's Skip?"

Buffy forced herself to concentrate on getting everyone else out safely. "Summoned away already. Don't know why."

"Lucky guy," Angel commented. "Well, unless you want to wait for Bantha?"

"When you run back into an exploding volcano, you kind of make your bed," Buffy said, wishing she felt as flippant as she sounded. Bantha, at least, she could leave behind without guilt. The lip of the now active volcano far above them blew again, this time with a big wave of lava coming over the side. It was still pretty far away, but Angel was right. They had to get moving before it started to catch up.

Jonathan was a little awkward for Buffy to carry with the hammer taking up a hand, but Angel solved that for her by taking him back and starting on the way down. Buffy settled for keeping an eye on the shellshocked Nigel. They didn't exactly have the luxury of finding an official, or even unofficial, path down the mountain, but Angel seemed to have a knack for rock climbing, and Buffy was athletic enough to ease the way for Nigel. He gave her a few glares as she did, and she weathered them in silence.

After a few minutes of descending, Angel looked back at the mountaintop with concern. "I hope you're going to tell me we have a backup plan."

The eruption was ongoing now, with lava slowly but inexorably covering the mountain. The air was thick with ash, and Buffy was thankful the air pills from the Rat King seemed to be handling the extra work. It was piling up everywhere though, and it made the slope even more treacherous, especially for Nigel.

"Willow and Andrew will get us out," Buffy said, hoping she sounded more confident than she was. With the spontaneous volcanic eruption and the weird behavior of her special watch, she was worried that might be even harder than they'd originally thought it could be. "The wards on the mountain must be gone for Skip to have been summoned away. They just need to lock onto us. We just have to last until they can."

"Should be easy," Nigel sniffled, trying to turn it into a scoff. "Everything's gone just as planned so far."

There was a sick feeling in Buffy's stomach, but it wasn't the poisonous air yet. It wasn't even just Phillip. The market wasn't visible from this side of the mountain, but she could see in her mind's eye what it'd look like before, what it probably looked like now. She tried not to think about what she knew was going to happen to it soon.

Metavote: Buffy's losing a little time right now (in an entirely literal way), so we're going to be stepping away from her for the next episode, and giving Xander Harris a spotlight he earned in the very first vote of this quest. Before stepping into his shoes, make a choice of who his partner will be on the streets for the next few days.

[] Daniel Osborne and Xander have worked together since back in the Scooby days of yore, and his calm demeanor helps put things in perspective. Plus, he's been known to sniff out a problem or two with the werewolf nose.

[] Sam Lockett may have struck out with Buffy, but he's been a rising star in the SDCW ever since they recruited him in June. Despite lacking magic or any other special abilities, he's good in a fight and has been working hard to pick up relevant skills in everything from police work to demonology.

[] Rachel Berenson is a hotheaded potential, but she has a good heart. Probably. Sensing that leaving her with a long leash might result in problems, Xander's taking her directly under his wing for her trial period working with the SDCW.