Title: Legion
Genre: Humour/Drama
Rating: Very Tame, but somebody swears, and people are rude.
1. Prologue
The plaque on the front door of the London office indicates that they are a reputable, privately funded job-placement agency for athletically inclined girls. By appointment only, please.
2. In Which Lost Things are Found.
Him? Yes, he’s here. Again. With her. Is that a surprise? There are not many career options open for non-evil vampires, so it just makes sense. And how and where did they meet again? Did she swoop in like Batman and rescue him from certain death (yet again) in a dirty Los Angeles alley? Was he conjured up from a hell dimension to appear on her doorstep, wounded, angry, and betrayed, only to fall passionately into her arms when she begged for his forgiveness? Was he charmed out of a mystic portal? Magically reconstituted from lovingly sifted ashes?
Did Buffy, after receiving a rare and cryptic phone call from Faith, find him and his brazen female companion loitering on a wintry Boston street? Well, one of those is true, and I won’t say which. Ask The Slayer if you want the story, it’s hers after all. – Andrew Wells, “A History of the New Legion of Slayers” (Rough Draft)
Spike had never been one to show her his back, so it was strange to see him walking away from her. And what was he doing with that woman? Faith hadn’t mentioned a woman. Angel, during their brief and heated conversation, hadn’t mentioned a woman. Who was this woman?
They were half a block ahead of her and hadn’t noticed her yet, so she took a few moments to figure out what she was going to do. Confront, or Leave? Run up and kiss him, or clobber him on the back of the head? Push that girl into a snowbank? All of the above?
His dark silhouette was achingly familiar, but the texture was different. That coat was heavy wool, not leather, and was disturbingly like something Angel might have picked out. It clearly hadn’t been chosen by that brunette fashion victim beside him, who despite the stinging icy swirls of the blizzard wore only a short linen jacket over a summer dress. And open-toed pumps. In the snow. When the pair walked over an icy patch on the sidewalk the woman linked her arm with his and leaned her head on his shoulder. She giggled occasionally. She must be Evil.
It took only a few moments to catch up. When Buffy called out his name it was a challenge, and it was not made to him.
The pair of them stopped instantly. She saw his shoulders tighten in surprise but it was the woman who turned and looked back at her. “You wish to challenge me for the services of my minion?” She seemed intrigued at the prospect, almost hopeful, and she didn’t seem so cute anymore. “You will be like worms crushed between my fingers. When I stride away from your mangled corpse I will trail your intestines and heart from my feet.”
“Leave her alone, Blue,” she heard him say quietly. She hadn’t heard his voice in over two years, and it was such a boring thing for him to say. When he finally turned around she saw that his hair was covered in snow. Another odd. She’d never thought of him as anything but fire and moonlight; snow was different. “This is Buffy,” he told the woman, “The Slayer. Buffy, this is Illyria, ex God King of the Universe.”
“Traded up from me I see,” said Buffy. She felt the pang of jealousy pushing through so she tried to keep her voice level. “From a Slayer to an Ex-god King. Well, she doesn’t look so tough. And I’m noticing a definite lack of style there.”
“Slayer,” said Illyria, who somehow managed to coat that single word with more than a few layers of contempt. Her small face sharpened and her brown eyes glinted with a strange blue light. “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. I have heard much boasting of your strength and victories, yet vampires are like cockroaches that fall at a glance. Only the feeble would boast of slaying such vermin. I have slain the sovereigns of a thousand dimensions, I am feared even in the hidden folds of the universe, and Gods have fallen before my wrath.”
“Whatever,” said Buffy. “I killed a God once, almost. Well, I helped. Plus, I got these boots on sale. And I won’t tell you the carnage that happened during that expedition because it would make your ex- God-King ears fall off in terror.”
“I have never fought for clothing,” said Illyria, who seemed noticeably puzzled at the concept.
“Your loss, clearly,” said Buffy. “Spike, I need to talk to you. Privately. If that’s okay with your girlfriend there.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” he said quickly. He inched slightly away from Illyria. “She works with Angel and me, that’s all.”
“But we are taking the evening off,” Illyria intoned solemnly. “Angel is not the boss of us, his puny wishes do not decree our every move, and we remind him of this often.”
Spike walked the few steps towards Buffy, but for some reason kept his eyes on the sidewalk. She turned and fell into step with him. As she took his arm she heard Illyria’s high heels clatter on the ice behind them.
“Spike is my pet,” Illyria informed her. “But he is allowed to amuse himself, if I do not require him to attend me.”
“Go away Blue,” he told her. “This is private.”
“No. She wishes to fight me for you,” Illyria protested. “We will battle.”
“Um…do you want me to fight for you?” Buffy asked. “Because I will, if that’s what it takes to get rid of her for ten minutes.”
“He would enjoy it if we fought over him.” Illyria told her. “And I am willing to oblige.”
Spike looked back over his shoulder. “Blue, there’s a tree over there. I think it wants to talk to you.” A moment later there was silence, and Buffy felt him take her hand. “Sorry luv,” he told her. “She gets a bit odd sometimes. She’s lost what she loved, and she feels out of place.”
“You know, your batty girlfriends are totally weird. Except for me, that is. I don’t know where you find them.”
“Mostly, they find me,” he said, smiling. “When I least expect it.”
“What happened to your coat,” she asked.
“Guess it used up all its lives,” Spike said sadly. “Didn’t seem right to resurrect it again.”
“Speaking of which, you’re alive. How about that. I thought you were dead,” said Buffy. “And now you’re not. And you didn’t bother to let me know, although it seems everyone else in the world knew you were back, including Andrew, for some reason. So I think someone has a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”
“You hungry?” Spike asked. “There’s a restaurant down the road, I’ll get you in out of this cold. We can talk there.”
“Well, golly!” said Illyria, from somewhere off in the distance. “Let’s go get some taquitos.”
3. In Which She Tells Her Side of it.
Yes, there are Slayers aplenty now, but don’t think you’ll find them all bunking here. It took only a few short weeks to figure out that collecting hordes of the newly Chosen and forcing them to share close quarters and inadequate bathroom time in a foreign city far from home was the first small step on the path to the Slayer Apocalypse. You think they would have learned that lesson before, having survived that last year in Sunnydale with a horde of Potentials.
Some forces are just too contrary and powerful to be gathered together in one place. Each girl has some deeply seated piece of ancient genetic coding that tells her she is the one, the true one, the only one, the girl at the centre of it all, and it’s hard to be the Special Snowflake in a blizzard of the likewise Chosen. – Andrew Wells, “A History of the New Legion of Slayers” (Rough Draft)
Spike was always morphing into some strange new caustic butterfly. Like how last week he had actually agreed to wear the cashmere sweater Dawn had given him, or how he sometimes forgot to be rude to Angel when he phoned from L.A. But almost all the incarnations were willing to listen to her whine.
“And we all know how well that turned out,” she told him. “So I was going to do it right this time. I wanted to do it properly. I was going to be Sensi Buffy. I was going to be… awesome. And very patient. And nurturing. I’m big with the nurturing, and I even have a plant now, and it’s a real plant not a silk one.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong before,” Spike insisted. “They all became Slayers; we closed the Hellmouth, worked out fine. That’s what you do, you make things right. Always have.”
“But I was Head Slayer, and I was in charge of them all, and then all of a sudden I wasn’t in charge, and Shona was. And she’s ten years older than me, but she was only a Slayer for about a month. I mean, she wasn’t even a potential, she just ended up a Slayer one day. And now I’m Senior Mentor.”
“She just took over?” he asked. “Did you fight back?”
“I tried, until Xander and Willow pointed out that her fervor for Covey organizational charts was a force best left unchallenged. And besides, she’s just so good at it, and she made it seem like it was what I wanted, and she was so nice about it. It’s like… like it was her Destiny, and she was born to it. A born leader. I don’t think I’m a born leader.”
“You’re a top-notch leader, when it counts,” he said. “Out in the field, killing things. She’s very good with those spreadsheets,” he admitted. “And those little coloured magnets that let you know where all the girls are. But she can’t fight worth a damn.”
“True,” she said. “Shona cannot fight worth a damn. And I still have the biggest office,” she pointed out. “With an antique desk, and blotter thingy, whatever that is, and a pen holder, and some of those little silver clacker balls. And Shona keeps track of them all, and sends out paychecks, but it’s me that decides who goes out on missions, and I train them.”
“You train all of them?”
“The local ones”.
“How many are there? All together?”
“Well,” she answered. “The new Legion of Slayers in fact numbers in the few hundreds.”
“The New Legion…”
“And that name comes from Andrew, who understands the word ‘Legion’ to mean ‘a lot of scary people’, and not, as Xander insists, a military organization comprised of 5000-6000 soldiers.”
“Where are they? Haven’t seen more than a dozen or so here.”
“All over the world. Most of them like to slay on their home turf. There’s a few local girls, some of whom hang around the office a lot and eat the free food. Most of them are not so local, but are willing to show up if they’re needed. Some show up occasionally, and some just do their own thing in their own little corner of the world, thank you very much. Some, if you can imagine it, choose not to slay at all, and don’t want us to contact them under any circumstance. And there are a few who proved a little too enthusiastic about it. We try to keep a close eye on them.
“Bad ones in every bunch,” he agreed. “It takes all sorts.”
“Kind of like any business corporation, really, but with fewer staplers and more swords and axes and stuff.
“And how’s the mentoring going?”
“It’s a lost art,” she admitted. “The new slayers, they’re all like Why should I fight a vamp hand to hand when I can get him 20 feet with an Uzi? And you know what? I have to agree with them sometimes.
“They don’t make them like you anymore,” he agreed. “New ones are all too flash.”
“Oh, god,” she moaned. “I’m the Establishment. I’m like the stuffy old Council now. I should start wearing tweedy things, and… and sensible flat shoes.”
They both looked down at her feet. Her shoes were in no danger of being classified as sensible.
“Give it a few years, pet,” he told her. “Maybe you can wear the heels down a bit.”
4. In Which We Learn How He Survived
The Slayer? Buffy? Activation has unleashed Slayer level potential in many girls; but has not ponied up any matching experience or skills. Buffy is still The Slayer. She is, if in light of recent events you can forgive this precise phrase, The First among Equals. She is as generally respected and appreciated as an adult can be by a bunch of mostly tweens and teenagers who have just found out that their pre-pubescent delusions of grandeur may in fact be justified. There is, naturally, some fluttering of discontent from the ranks. Undoubtedly some of the girls think Buffy is using her status and position to horde all the first-rate weapons, interesting prophecies and (many would complain) the sexy souled vampires for herself. And while this accusation may or may not be true you can hardly deny that she’s paid her dues multiple times over and deserves whatever happiness she can grab. – Andrew Wells, “A History of the New Legion of Slayers” (Rough Draft)
“Riley?” She said the name slowly, just in case she had heard it wrong. “Ri-lee. My Riley? I thought he was off in South America somewhere, using a machete or something to cut through the jungle.”
“The one and only,” he answered. “Bastard came in and saved us.”
“You let him?” she asked.
“Well, what choice did we have? There we were, facing the horde, all ready to go down fighting and then fly-boy runs in an’ rescues us. They had tanks,” he added morosely. “And missile launchers, guns and things. Took ’em out by the dozens, and they had a medic that took care of Charlie, so what were we supposed to do, tell them to bugger off and let us die the way we thought we were going to? And then they just left at the end, us standing there like idiots, and your ex all puffed up and smug-faced. Fly boy ex, not the others of us. They never said a word, ‘cept to tell us to get out the way. They got Angel’s dragon, too,” he told her. “And I had to listen to complaints about that for weeks, I’ll tell you.”
“I had a missile launcher once,” she reminded him. “I think you stole it.”
“Xander did,” he corrected her. “Kept it behind the couch, under a rug, used to polish it all the time.”
“Well, if I’d still had it you could have borrowed it. Plus, if I’d known what was happening I might of…I don’t know…been there?”
“It was our fight,” he said. “Least, it was supposed to be.”
“No,” she told him. “It’s everyone’s fight. Even Evil Spike-Saving Riley.”
“Can’t stand owing him my life,” he said. “Again. And he did it just to annoy me.”
“Remind me to send him a thank-you card,” she told him. “A nice one, with flowers.”
5. In Which They are All Together.
There is a London Headquarters in an inherited building in the less-desirable part of the very desirable Mayfair, and a tiny office in Rome for those willing to tackle any apocalypses that don’t happen in English. There is a recently acquired (though slightly battle-singed) Los Angeles annex for the few that don’t mind sharing accommodations with an brave ex-lawyer, an ex-God King of the Universe, and the taller of the two un-shanshued but still-souled vampires currently intent on saving the world from the Forces of Evil. – Andrew Wells, “A History of the New Legion of Slayers” (Rough Draft)
Stupid, expensive, vampire glass. They could have covered every floor in the building in top quality hardwood for a third of what that glass in five lousy windows cost. And it wasn’t like Spike wasn’t first-rate at dodging the rays; Xander had personally seen him navigate down a sunny Californian street without suffering more than a few singe marks.
“So you can see,” Giles announced calmly, “how this newest threat could pose a problem in the southern global regions”. In an obvious bid for dramatic effect he stopped talking, and peered knowingly at them over the top of the musty parchment. It was clear he was going to tell them about it, all about it, and possibly include every known detail about it including the pet name of the animal the parchment was made from and the amount of iron oxide that the blood contained.
“What about it, then?” Spike muttered distractedly from the back of the room. He was sitting directly in front of the shiny new window, trailing a finger over the caulk seam. Xander suspected he was appraising the craftsmanship. Like vampires knew anything about caulking, anyway. Or framing. Or anything.
Spike neglected to mention anything at all about Xander’s hard work and draped himself over the back of the chair, his head tipped back into the sunlight. Like this was the sort of thing he had been doing all his vampire life.
“Does it meet with your approval,” Xander hissed to the vampire.
Spike looked over at him, his face a mask of innocence and confusion. “I’m in front of it, aren’t I? What more do you want?” He held out a hand and stared at his fingers, perhaps looking for tell-tale signs of smoke.
“Spike, it was lucky we were able to find the phone number for that Formerly Evil Window Company,” said Andrew. “It’s so very pleasant to have you here during the day.”
“Be quiet, Andrew,” said Xander. “And Spike, I don’t want to see any more nose prints on that glass.”
Andrew ignored him, and held out a small DVD case to Spike. “I finished the revised Slayer handbook,” he said proudly. “I made it look like it’s a guidebook for an online role-playing game. You can even add new demons, and keep track of your stats.”
“There’s a guidebook?” Buffy asked. “Since when?”
“People, please,” said Giles. “Pay attention.”
Giles held up the parchment as a courtesy to those in the room who might be able to read and translate ancient MesoSquigilarrian or whatever the heck dialect it was written in. At least this one had bonus pictographs. Gloomy pictographs, with dripping blood and gore. There was always the off-chance that the bouncing severed heads and fire-breathing demons were a simple cultural metaphor for the displacement of self worth in a chaotic society, but it was more likely that they’d be sharpening up the axes before the week was out.
Epilogue
And no one’s gonna ever tear us apart cause she’s my sweetheart – The Ramones.
Fin
Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/265611.html
