Successor (BTVS)

[X] Save the yeerks instead. They have useful abilities if you can get any of them to work with you, and failing that you might be able to sell them back to their empire for a cash ransom or diplomatic considerations.

It'd been another nerve wracking few hours, but the Initiative personnel had finally all drove out. And nothing had gone too wrong. Yet.

"Go home. Sleep. Then sleep more," Xander said.

"Are you sure?" Buffy said. "We still need to fully clear the place. And deal with the prisoners. Plus those yeerks. And I've been meaning to talk to Travers-"

"All of these are things that can wait, or that other people can do. People who aren't up way way way past their bedtime like you, little missy," Xander scolded.

"Yeah, we can handle it!" Andrew declared.

"I'm pretty sure you didn't get any sleep last night either," she said back to Xander.

"I didn't fight the god of Frankensteins and get my arm broken," he said.

She almost overruled him, but she really was dead on her feet. "Fine." Wait, speaking of feet, "Oh no, I totally spaced on it, what happened to my bike?"

"The paint job's seen better days, but it mostly lived through your stunt," Xander said. "We put it in City Hall parking, but that doesn't matter right now because there's no way you're Buffy-driving in your condition."

"My driving is great!" She protested. "I'm a great driver!"

"You're a Buffy driver," Xander said, without bothering to explain more. "We can just drop you off. Andrew, wanna bail out and lurk on the off chance-"

"Does this mean I have the bridge?" He asked.

"Andrew, you have the bridge," Xander said.

"Yes!" He opened up the back and jumped out as the van came to a temporary stop.

"Until I come back in twenty minutes," Xander finished.


Buffy finally stumbled through her door, more than 24 hours after she'd last left it. She was both surprised and not to see Harmony waiting for her, just out of reach of the arc of setting sun she let in.

"You're back! Are you feeling any better?" She zoomed over right as the door shut, fussing over her injuries. Her arm was still in a splint (it'd be healed quickly enough to not need to bother with a cast,) but the rest of her scrapes and other wounds were scabbed over or even gone.

"I think I'll live," Buffy said dryly. "Where are the potentials?" She probably hadn't been paying them enough attention the past few days with everything that had happened, and it was a little guilt inducing.

"Leading the afternoon patrol," Harmony said. "The A-team's all tuckered out or still busy, so it's kind of all hands on deck. Except me, because you know, sun."

She sighed in relief. No need to be responsible-Buffy right now then. "Then sleeeep!" She shuffled towards the basement door, feigning zombieness.

Harmony was quick not just to support her but to pick her up entirely, giggling as she brought her down to bed. Buffy snuggled herself into the bridal carry and shut her eyes. She could almost fall asleep just like this, but if she did Harm would probably stand around with her all night or something crazy like that. She'd just have to make it to their room.

They both had comfy pajamas, but this was not a pajamas kind of day. Harmony laid her down on the bed, undid her boots, and then carefully stored them in the shoe corner. By the time Buffy had managed to curl herself under the blankets, she jumped in right beside her, also still in her street clothes. At least she wasn't still covered in blood and mess; the stairway's otherworldly light had burned it all off.

Buffy laid calmly on her back, her messed-up left arm carefully straight, and Harmony sort of flowed and melded into her right side, with her nose tucked into the crook of her neck and all her limbs twisted into the empty spaces left by Buffy. It was an adorable habit and she grinned at it as she closed her eyes.

She saw Maggie Walsh explode under her hammer.

Her eyes opened again, but she didn't move, didn't even change her breathing. It was just an intrusive thought. She'd had them before after gross things happened during slaying. It was fine.

It wouldn't be fine for Maggie.
KILL
She'd deserved it.

Or she'd definitely deserved something. But she hadn't posed an immediate threat. She could've been detained, held captive. Just like Agent Finn and Doctor Angleman and even Oscar-not-Sam. It wouldn't have caused any problems for anything they'd done after that, they'd have still wrapped up the Initiative just the same way.
KILL
Maggie had insulted her, threatened her, turned her back. Killing her had been like being water flowing downhill.

She'd murdered her with her back turned. She'd expected a peace talk, gotten a surrender demand, and then was summarily executed when she didn't comply.
KILL
She was a threat. She'd made Adam, and he'd embarrassed her. He'd hurt her. He'd taken what was hers.

Buffy lay next to her perfect, motionless, room temperature girlfriend, Staring up at the badly painted ceiling in the faint light of the digital clock. She was so tired, but she couldn't sleep. Not after that. Not like this.

"Harmony, let's make out."

"OK!" As always, Harmony complied eagerly, immediately, completely.

Her girlfriend crawled on top of her and started with little pecks on her cheeks, very careful not to touch her bad arm but otherwise acting like the fitted sheet was lava. Before she'd been a slayer, back in LA, girls had gossiped about how terrible it was when boys carelessly put all their deadweight on top of them. But Buffy loved it.

Maybe it was that Harmony didn't weigh as much as most boys did, despite being pretty curvy. Or maybe it was because Buffy could lift four tons over her head and a hundred pounds or so didn't really matter. But either way, it felt amazing. It was like her body was very slightly pressurized, pushing into her skin from the inside while she pushed at it from the outside.

She drew Harm into a real kiss, lightly taking hold of her blonde mane of hair with her right hand and guiding her lips to hers. It was a totally different experience from kissing someone alive; the temperature gradient between their mouths was crazy. She was on fire and that was the only place she could put her heat.

It was different than kissing Angel had been, too. Aside from the whole softer-girl thing, Harmony never ever let herself go into game face when they were being intimate. She hadn't minded Angel's bumpies, but they'd been a definite thing sometimes. She'd told Harmony it was alright before, but the girl brushed her off. She said she just didn't like it, and to be fair her behavior everywhere else bore that out too.

Harmony never had to come for air, and acted like it. Buffy mostly just used her nose, only stopping for a deep breath every long while, Harmony daintily returning to her cheeks during the moments she broke away, or sometimes her nose. Buffy kind of didn't like her own nose, but Harmony always said it was very distinctive and also one hundred percent pretty.

After the fifth (sixth? seventh?) time Buffy pushed her down and presented her neck instead, and Harmony absolutely knew the drill here, licking it, nuzzling it, running completely-human teeth across it without so much as a tiny scratch. It'd taken a little while to trust her this much, but she'd never faltered, not even once, and there was a dizzy feeling it gave Buffy that was just too much to resist. She studiously didn't think about what it reminded her of.

They went on like that for ages. Harmony squirming above her. Buffy's nails and fingers combing through her hair, again and again. Harmony working one side of her neck and then the other and then they were kissing again, and the next time instead of just making faces Buffy was nuzzling the top of her head, kissing away the imaginary wounds from the rough combing treatment she'd subjected it to.

Buffy was still wearing the practical (and slightly destroyed) yoga pants she'd put on a day ago, when she'd known she was probably heading to a fight. Even through them she could feel Harmony was getting pretty wet, and decided she'd kept her waiting a little too long. Her girlfriend always let her be the one to escalate, even when she was worked up into a frenzy.

She shifted her grip and started to pull off Harmony's top; usually she did this all by herself, but with one hand it was more awkward and Harm stopped for a second to shrug it over her head, revealing a bright smile when she was done. Buffy thought she'd been made to wait long enough, so she didn't dally around at this stage, grabbing at the back of her bra and then just ripping it off when she couldn't get the clasp single-handed.

If anyone else had damaged her wardrobe, she would've been apoplectic, but whenever Buffy did it, it seemed to just draw her up to new heights of arousal. She still tried to be responsible about it, but this was probably definitely a special occasion.

Buffy didn't want her to have to wait an instant more, and pulled her up, over her head so she could take one of her breasts in her mouth. As she suckled very carefully, she worked on Harmony's other nipple with her good hand, doing the special clockwise motion that she'd discovered by dint of much practice.

Truth be told, Buffy wasn't super-duper-into breasts (though she still was into them when they were as nice as Harmony's, at least a little bit.) Really, she was kind-of-slightly-not-quite-really envious, not being nearly that well endowed herself. But she had already been super greedy with who knew, maybe a full hour or more of makeouts, and she did know Harmony absolutely loved this. It was only fair, and what it usually made Harmony do was kind of intoxicating. That was a pleasure in itself.

Harmony let out the cutest little ultra high pitched squeal and curled tightly above her, squeezing full vampire strength with her limbs and rubbing her face into the crown of Buffy's head. It was like being enthusiastically wrestled by a kitten. There was none of the heavy breathing after a human would have, just pretty little purrs that emanated from somewhere deep and secret in her body. Harmony had felt wet before, but she was drenched down there now.

It didn't take her long to recover, and she scooted back down, looking into Buffy's eyes with an adoring, manic gaze that was as close as she ever got to asking for anything in bed.

"Yeah," Buffy whispered.

Harmony almost flew down, at her waist in an instant. Usually Buffy propped herself up more on the headboard to give easier access, but she didn't have time; Harmony had her pants off in the same move as her panties and her hot little tongue was buried between her legs right away. There could be no complex movement after that; Buffy's eyes crossed and she got lost.

She didn't have the most sexual experience of anyone in the world, but what Harmony did to her down there whenever she used her mouth was beyond almost anything else she'd ever felt. She'd used to enjoy the occasional self-recreation in the shower, but it just didn't compare at all. The one time with Angel had been different, and it had felt good (at least during,) but the intensity level didn't compare at all.

There was suction and rubbing and her fingers and her nose and everything inside the right places and all over and over because it never stopped, she just kept going and going until Buffy was done, and a couple memorable times had kept going after that until she was done again. Really, she knew she was being spoiled rotten. Harmony was going to turn her into the ultimate pillow princess.

She couldn't bring herself to care. She wanted more and more and more until it blared everything else out, she didn't want to be thinking thoughts or seeing objects she wanted to be thinking Harmony and seeing crazy patterns in thoroughly messed up blonde hair. It was great. It was epic. She couldn't imagine anyone anywhere was having better sex than her right now.
KILL
She could still see Maggie Walsh exploding.

"Bite me," she whispered it impulsively, almost inaudibly. Part of her pretended she wouldn't hear, but she really knew Harmony's senses were turned up to thirteen during sex and she'd definitely pick it up.

Instead of obeying, like she had for everything else Buffy had told her to do in bed literally ever, she looked up immediately, face twisting with concern. "What?"

Buffy groaned piteously at the loss of sensation, and it gave her courage to say it again. "Bite me." She should be specific, that could help. "On the thigh. It's OK." Never once in her life had she come as hard as she had that one other time with Angel, with his fangs deep in her neck. It was the last thing she remembered before waking up in the hospital.

"I'm not allowed to drink human blood," Harmony said. "That's your rule!"

"But I'm not human, am I?" Buffy argued, half out of her mind. "I'm a goddess. And a slayer. It'll be way better. Human blood would probably taste like trash after. No problem at all."

"But, umm, you're hurt! And one of your hurts was blood loss!" She continued to argue.

"I hung out, I snacked, I listened to the Initiative fall," Buffy said. "I'm fine. I was just a little tired."

Harmony stared at her, terrified.

"I need this. I want it," Buffy said, reaching her good arm around Harmony's head again.. "Just a tiny taste. You could barely break the skin."

"What if I lose control?"

"You won't, you love me," Buffy said. "And I'm stronger than you. Much stronger." Angel had told her she'd pushed him off, after, at the end. She didn't remember that, but the strength difference now was an order of magnitude more than that had been. It'd be totally safe.

Harmony meeped, but she let Buffy push her down onto her right thigh, very high up, almost at her groin. She felt human teeth touch her skin.

"You can change. It's fine. Don't worry," Harmony still didn't change. "I think you're very pretty that way too."

Buffy felt the bumpies form where her forehead was touching her and she groaned. But Harmony still didn't bite.
KILL
She needed it. She had to stop seeing Maggie die. "Please. I love you."

Harmony bit her, and she felt the negative pressure of the blood leaving her veins, and that was enough, more than enough and her eyes rolled back and the whole world was only broken light that went on forever.

"Buffy! Wake up! Are you dead? Don't be dead! I'd need to get vengeance on myself and I don't know how!"

She needed a second to make sure of that herself, but her lungs filled and emptied, and she could still hear her heart thumping in her chest. Kind of remarkably, she hadn't even snapped her splint. "I am not even slightly dead."

Harmony was still in vamp face, and she hadn't even licked all the blood off her lips yet. Where her expression had been terrified before, now it was unreadable. She needed reassurance.

"That was really good for me Harm. Did you like it?"

"Yes?" She answered shakily.

"Great," Buffy was encouraging. "Come back up here." She pulled her up to fully on top again with the one hand and then kissed her, licking the blood off her lips and spitting it back into her mouth. It was too hot, too cold, for it to taste weird. Too perfect.

Harmony reacted, sucking instinctively, but still being extremely careful with her big fangs, even after all this. It was so endearing that Buffy made sure she got every last drop.

When the blood was gone, Harmony seemed to make an effort and then looked human again. She really must be more comfortable that way.

And Buffy realized she was tired now, really actually tired, and anticipating no bad dreams at all. Her words came out on their own. "You're Mine."

"I'm Yours," Harmony whispered.


It was amazing what the wonders of a good night's sleep could do. She almost felt chipper as she opened the door and found Travers waiting in the conference room, even though she was still hampered by her splint. They made their introductions as normal, but he was quick to move to business.

"So," he did a little dramatic pause. "I've heard there are some developments you wish to inform me of."

"It's less of a 'some' and more of a 'lots,'" Buffy admitted.

His attitude seemed a little cooler than it had been last time, even if he was hard to read. Buffy couldn't really blame him. There had been a lot going on in the past couple days, and the Watchers Council hadn't been very clued. They of course were up to date about basics like CyberWillow's spiderweb and the existence of Adam, but all the god stuff and the details of the backfired sting had been kept under their hats.

With Adam missing-presumed-plotting though, she'd reconsidered her cautious stance with them. Could they have helped her find the stairway earlier? Or maybe guessed Adam's move? If she'd had them there to threaten going over Maggie's head openly, would that meeting have still ended the way it did?

She'd been furious with the Council in particular and Travers especially over the Cruciamentum, but that was almost a year ago now, and not likely to be relevant again anytime soon. They'd been terrible again when Angel'd been poisoned just before the Ascension, and if that had been half Wesley being Wesley, it was still under the Council's orders.

But that had been the Council dealing with Buffy the independent slayer nominally representing a plucky band of teenagers, not Mayor Summers, who ran a sprawling organization and ruled the hellmouth. She was pretty sure she had them pegged. They were bullies when they thought they could get away with it, but they didn't think they could anymore. Telling them more would make them more sure of that, not less.

Travers didn't respond to her little joke, just wearing an expectant look. She'd just have to swallow the pill dry.

"There's a kind of big thing I didn't tell you about before now. I'm a god."

"I'd suspected as much," Travers didn't miss a beat. "The more open question was if you knew it yourself."

"You..." Of all the reactions she'd predicted, blasé indifference hadn't even been on the list. "How?"

He tilted his head. "You're hardly subtle flexing your power, whatever your other talents are. Neither bursts of greatly enhanced speed nor summonable weapons are something a normal slayer ever develops. Not to mention that your overall strength is quite far out of bounds, or that the destruction of Tapparich's source of power and its consequent effects suggest an absolute effect of high potency."

When he laid it all out like that, it did make her feel like she should've expected this. But something he'd said caught her attention. "What do you mean by a normal slayer? Were there other slayers that weren't normal? I know about Sineya. She was a god too."

"You didn't hear about that from Rupert," he said definitively. "And I know, or at least I dearly hope I know, that that section of the Council's archives is not computerized in any way."

"Your books are safe from us," Though maybe Willow's new spell? "Well, they probably are. But I found that out from Dracula first. I was her in his freaky magic mirror."

"Left out of the report," he tsked.

"It's not like you haven't kept some secrets too," she shot back.

"You will be more forthcoming if I tell you about these other unusual slayers then?" he half-asked, half-told. Then, without waiting for an answer he continued, "Normally, slayers are short lived, burning brightly and quickly. They fight, they lose, and they die. If they're lucky, they might win a battle or two of significance first."

"But there's been a lot of slayers. Sometimes they don't lose that fast," Buffy guessed.

"Sometimes they don't," He agreed. "Through circumstance, or skill, or even chance, the very rare slayer has survived an improbable string of difficult trials. But after enough time passes, and enough battles have been won, something changes in them."

"They turn out like I did?" Buffy asked. Something about it didn't make sense though.

"No. They do not, and that is the entirety of the problem," he said grimly. "They turn out like Sineya."

"And that's bad? Sure, her fashion sense leaves a lot to be desired, but aren't you guys all about us being the perf weapon?" She couldn't quite keep the sarcasm out of the last part.

Travers ignored it. "Sineya did incalculable good for the world by taking worse things out of it. But make no mistake, she was a monster. More demon than girl, driven by rage more than reason, and hardly caring about the difference between friend and foe. But honestly? I do her a disservice, because most of the ascended slayers after her have been even worse."

That hit a little bit close to home, considering what she'd done just yesterday. "Worse how?"

"One might decide to kill every living thing that crosses her path. Another might decide to torture half of them first. The precise details are grisly even by the standards of our duties, but if you must have them I can make the records available to you. Without exception, the Council has had to put them down, usually at great expense in both manpower and resources."

That did sound a lot worse than one or two little accidents. Almost like maybe the KILL voice was totally behind the wheel?

He continued, "Eventually in the course of time, the Council found a solution to the problem and settled on its implementation. I believe you should be capable of guessing what that is."

"Is that why you try to find the potentials young?" Something about that didn't feel right.

"The Council has always tried that, with a certain degree of success and failure," he said. "It may interest you to know that a Council-raised potential has never ascended as a slayer, for better or for worse. But that was not the solution."

What else did the Council even do? Aside from sending out live watchers to replace dead ones. Or fired ones.

And didn't that bring up a terrible realization.

"The Cruciamentum," she said.

"Such a smart girl," he said condescendingly. "Which is why you survived yours."

"And that's the point?" She didn't know what to think.

"The sort of slayer that merely revels in their power does not survive the temporary loss of it," he said. "No slayer, until you, has ever ascended before the age of twenty. No slayer who has survived the Tento di Cruciamentum has ever done so at all. Though you may find it barbaric, the purpose it serves is of the most serious necessity. It is not a 'test of torture' in execution, but one to find and snuff out such impulses before they blossom into monsters."

"You can't know that it's actually worked though! It could be a total coincidence!" She said.

"It's been in use over a millennia," he responded. "The one unfortunately divine slayer recorded in that entire length of time was Revi Tripta, in 1757, whose Watcher faked the test."

She wanted to keep arguing, but she could tell she was at a disadvantage. "And most watchers don't know this is why?"

"Precisely," he said.

"I'm gonna wanna see those records," she said. Maybe Giles would spot something, or CyberWillow could whip up some kind of probability of it all. Just killing tons of slayers the second they turned 18 couldn't be the only solution.

"Of course," he allowed. "Now, I believe I've been quite forbearing. Perhaps you could share some secrets of your own?"

Well, she'd pretty much wanted to spill anyway, and he already knew the worst of it, so she did. Really, even if some arcane Watcher law meant she was going to be declared persona-non-grata, what were they actually gonna do about it? She had worse things to worry about than them; Adam already knew practically everything already and could tell anyone he wanted in the whole multiverse. If that wasn't the cat having already eaten the bagel she didn't know what was.

She told him what Dracula had tried, how Wilkins and Sineya had been in her dreams, what Maggie had really done with Adam and how they'd boosted CyberWillow in turn, and finally the infinite stairway under City Hall and everything that had happened there. The end was the hardest part.

She told the story of Maggie's death emphasizing the threats she'd made and the ones she posed just by existing. How it paved the way for the Initiative to be neatly dismantled, and not how she'd done it because of the outraged voice in her head.

He nodded through that part, not seeming in the least concerned as she was sweating bullets. Instead, after she finished, he focused on something else.

His fingers drummed the table, "As near as I can tell, there is one unified theme to recent events, and the events of the last few months overall. Wilkins, Dracula, and Adam, all already gods or nearly so, were all convinced of this stairway's power and tried to extract it by industry, guile, or violence. Your own experts, Rosenberg's computer god and the Rat King seem to agree it is a singular artifact of worryingly dangerous power."

"Yeah, we're pretty worried about it too," Buffy agreed, happy that he didn't want to focus on the Initiative's role.

"You misunderstand my point," he said, sounding just slightly frustrated. "For nearly half a year now, you have possessed what they have sought. It's doubtless been the source of your meteoric rise in power. But despite your inarguable prowess in combat, you do not appear to have done much of note."

"What do you mean?" She said, offended. "I did a lot of things! I mean, we did a lot of things. I'm the mayor now! And do you know how much the missing persons rate is down? Between the Watch and the police-"

"Calm yourself, I don't mean to impugn your political skills," he said it in the dry English way that meant he was humoring her. "But you're a god. You said so just now yourself. Gods, when in possession of great power such as this stairway is purported to have, perform miracles. Adam now is in possession of half of its power flow, and doubtless he will be using it to further his evil ends. Before much time passes, he may return to attack again, with new powers and new allies. We cannot afford for you to leave our own bullets chambered."

"Oh, you mean that," she said. The looming ocean of potential energy she'd felt in the back of her head ever since she'd looked in the stairway slid back into her awareness. Grabbing at it directly felt super dangerous, but she didn't really know what else she could do with it. Except maybe make more hammers, if the Rat King was to be believed.

"I'm definitely feeling the power," she admitted. "But it didn't come with an instruction manual. I'm not really sure how to use it."

"Then we'd best learn. Quickly."


Next time, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: With the Initiative at least temporarily defeated and Adam on the run, Buffy has a golden opportunity to experiment with her god powers and try to figure out how they're actually supposed to work. Travers has extensive sources on the subject he can make available, but where is Buffy going to focus her efforts?

[] Gods tend to have special minions or elite followers that fit their specific themes. It's possible that for Buffy this is somehow linked to the potentials, and maybe the slayer line itself. But that's all worked in a specific way for thousands of years; messing around with it might have some unintended consequences.

[] Buffy already managed to make a dwarf hammer into a special weapon, maybe she can do more of them? Or work with other objects too? She's never been great at arts and crafts, but on the plus side the vault is practically overflowing with rare materials. Surely she isn't the type to get into a special mood and then burn a ton of money shopping for more, right?

[] The more subtle aspects of her powers have always been less of an inexact science and more of a random guessing game for Buffy. Working on them might give less tangible results, but it could have benefits all the same. What exactly goes into a slayer dream? Can Sunnydale be a place of power? And has sensing vampires ever been about more than out of date clothes?