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(This is original story written by Chris Kenworthy, based on the Buffy characters, who he does not own etcetera etcetara...)
"Come, on, Slayer," the vampire grumbled, softly shaking her shoulders. "Up and at 'em - we've got a world to save." But the sleeping girl didn't respond.
"Hey, what's the hold-up?" Willow called from outside the tent, then decided to poke her head in to see for herself. "Oh, man. What do you bet that she's gone back to Elysium?" she asked Angel.
"Well, I guess you'd better go in yourself, and see," Angel said with a sigh. He couldn't travel to Elysium - the mystical pocket dimension where the dearly departed friends and members of the 'scooby gang' had made their eternal home. Only Buffy, Willow, and Xander Harris could do that. Willow nodded at Angel, sat down on her own sleeping bag, closed her eyes, and made the tiny, but indescribable, mental effort.
Suddenly her eyes seemed to be open again - in the living room of Giles' apartment. Why do we always land right here, Willow wondered to herself. Might have something to do with the room being the central focus of Elysium, or some such. "Hello, hello??" Willow called out. There was no answer - until a vague voice called out something that Willow couldn't make out, upstairs. By the time that Willow got to the second-floor landing, Giles was there waiting for her.
"Nice to see..." he started, but Willow interrupted her.
"Buffy - where is she?" the student watcher asked sharply. Giles jumped in surprise, then pointed down the hall to his spare bedroom, as Willow had suspected. "Thanks," Willow muttered, dashed quickly over to the door, and announced, "I don't care what you guys are doing in there, but I'm coming in on the count of ten, so help me!"
"What??" Xander's voice rang out from behind the door. Willow didn't answer, simply counting off quietly to ten, and stepping through the door into the spare room. (One of the unusual features of Elysium was that since it existed on a ghostly plane, so to speak, mortal visitors like Willow were out of phase with their surroundings. Thus, Willow passed through walls and furniture, while the dead residents like Giles and Jenny were 'solid.')
Buffy and Xander were quite obviously putting themselves back together when Willow entered the room, Xander buttoning up his shirt, Buffy buckling her jeans and putting her shoes on, and Willow shook her head. "I don't get it," the redhead announced. "What do you guys do up here, anyways? You can't even touch each other."
"Uh, well, no," Buffy admitted, blushing furiously. "But we can talk to each other, and look at each other. People have figured out ways to have fun with less than that - over a phone line, even."
"EWWW!" Willow broke out. "Eww - forget I asked. Anyways, Buffy, I hate to spoil your fun, but we were supposed to be gone by now."
"Oh, sorry," Buffy said apologetically. "I was just taking a brief dream visit to see if Giles had anything to report, and Xander popped in at about the same time, and..."
"We got sidetracked," Xander finished, smiling over at Buffy.
"I figured," Willow said. "Well, Angel's waiting for us, and I bet someone's gonna notice soon that you don't have your eyes open, Xander."
"Oh, that reminds me," the lanky teenager said. "I wanted to tell both of you - Cordelia got a message."
"A message? From who?" Buffy asked. Obviously, Xander hadn't gotten around to telling her this before.
"It was signed 'The Sunnydale Resistance.' We know that you three are being watched, but you can still help in the fight. Do such-and-such if you agree, and we'll find a way to make contact without the vamps noticing. Something like that," Xander related.
"Hmm," Buffy said, considering this, and adding it to the rest of what she knew about 'The Sunnydale Problem...'
* * * *
It had begun the night Obayana, Buffy and Angel's evil half-vampire son, (aged to eleven years by the Hellmouth in some strange way,) intercepted the gang on that lonely trail into Sunnydale, some four weeks ago. His vampire assistants had taken Cordelia, Mister Akira Tojo, and Xander into custody, and Obayana (or the Fireking, as he often called himself,) had mounted a dome of magic darkness over the town, keeping Buffy, or anyone else, from coming in. Even daylight did not make its presence felt under the Dome.
Despite their expectations, Cordelia, Tojo, and Xander were not thrown into some dungeon to languish in despair. There was no need for that, maybe - Sunnydale was already a dungeon, for any human unlucky enough to be trapped there. The three of them had been assigned 'placements' in establishments taken over by the vampires - Cordelia and Xander waiting tables in the Bronze, and Tojo as archivist of vampire records in the old Town Courthouse - now the headquarters of the Council of the Dead. They were watched carefully, but not harassed... so far. Xander couldn't shake the feeling that the vampires were waiting patiently for the three of them to 'mess up' and be caught taking some action against the Fireking.
Most of the rest of the people of Sunnydale were not so lucky. Many had already been killed to slake the thirst of the numerous vampires massing at the Hellmouth, or been turned into vampires themselves. Others were forced to 'entertain' vampires - either sexually or by humiliating themselves. 'Labor institutes' had been set up where hopeless human slaves overexerted themselves to meet the Council's standards for weapon construction, or other similarly foreboding tasks.
Outside town, the situation was considerably quieter. Buffy, Angel and Willow had not been able to yet find an underground passage into Sunnydale that would enable them to bypass the dome. And though quite often vehicles were let into town through small openings in the dome, (hapless passenger buses or trucks, carfuls of vampires,) these were few enough that Buffy was convinced the Fireking personally arranged each one. There would be no easy way to sneak into town like that. (The question of how Buffy could defeat the Fireking when he had magic enough to erect the dome, even if she COULD get inside the dome, was forever unspoken.)
What was more confusing, was that except for those few vehicles that were let into, (or, in the case of vampires, out of,) the Hellmouth, the roads connecting Sunnydale to the rest of the world were empty. Nobody came, only to turn back or stare in shock at the unexpectedness of the Dome. There were no media reports about how Sunnydale, California had dropped off the face of the world, either. Nobody seemed to even notice.
Xander filled in a few details from inside - he'd spoken to a few bus passengers and one truck driver who had entered Sunnydale, never to leave. They hadn't even been travelling to Sunnydale. More frightening than the people brought into town were the numbers of vampires entering the Hellmouth premises, night after night. Rumor had it that Darla was 'recruiting' some of the oldest and deadliest vampires of the world into the Fireking's army, but Darla's persuasiveness couldn't accont for all of them. The undead of every corner of the world were flocking to the banners of the King of Sunnydale.
* * * *
"Uh, yeah," Buffy muttered, shaking herself out of her memories. "Well, if the Resistance thinks that the three of you can help, and that they can protect your involvement, I'd go along with it."
"That's what we were thinking," Xander agreed, "but I wanted to get your opinion. Okay, I'll tell Cordy that we're in. So, how go things on the outside?"
"Pretty much the same," Buffy told him. "No sign of a tunnel yet."
"We're letting it be for now," Willow said. "Gonna get in touch with Marea and Franco. After all, the Fireking's plans mean the end of the world, big time. And he's got all the advantages over us. Figure if there's any time we need double the Slayer, it's now."
"Yeah, I hear that," Xander agreed. "Well, it really is time to clear out, huh?" He blew a tender kiss over to Buffy with a sad smile. "On the count of three, wake up. One, two, three." Buffy didn't want to wake up. She was too aware that Xander wouldn't be there when she did. But Xander and Willow faded out, and Buffy sighed and went back.
"Welcome back," Angel grumbled at her. Willow was already standing back up. Buffy let go of the pillow and climbed back out of the sleeping bag.
* * * *
Xander groaned and stretched out on the lumpy bed in his room. He hadn't been allowed to move back in with his family - the Fireking decreed otherwise. A dumpy apartment building next to the Bronze had been 'appropriated' for the human staff of the nightclub to live in when they weren't on duty. As Xander wasn't - he had just finished up his shift, and was 'privileged' to stay in this little hellhole until the next shift started.
Cordelia had given the signal to the Resistance - leaving a glass at a particular spot on the Bronze's bar, as they had requested. Now it was a waiting game, to see when the rebels next contacted them. In the meantime, Xander would get some sleep. Maybe he'd dream about Buffy again, either in Elysium or with a good old-fashioned fantasy dream.
As Xander slid under the sheets, he thought again about the families. During the weeks that they'd been back in Sunnydale, they'd been fairly well able to find out about anyone they wanted to, including their families and the families of their friends. The news was both good and bad - everyone was still alive, except for possibly Cordelia's father, Lear Chase, who had disappeared and no-one knew where. But their fortunes reflected the ugly situation of humans in Sunnydale. Xander's family had been taken to the mine Jasper Sinclair was starting at the city limits, under the Dome - his father and brothers digging, his mother working as a cleaning lady in the mine offices. Mrs. Rosenberg had been assigned to 'Humiliation House,' and her husband was in chains for civil disobedience. Buffy's father was putting weapons together at a labor institute.
Suddenly Xander's door burst open. Xander's heart sank in fear for a second. Had the vampire guard found him out for something? Were they come to take him away?? But a moment's good look at the intruders suggested another possibility. The two young men were undoubtedly human, and though they wore knife sheaths at their sides, the weapons in their hands were wooden stakes. "Resistance forever," one of them muttered softly, confirming Xander's suspicion. "Let's go, quickly."
Xander sprang out of his bed, quickly stuffing his sock feet into sneakers, and hurried into the hall. Cordelia was there too, in soft sleeping clothes, escorted by a young Resistance lady. Quickly the rebels led them to a back door that Xander hadn't known was in the building, and out into the alleys of Sunnydale.
Unnoticed by any of them, a elegantly beautiful woman, about twenty-eight, with soft warm red hair falling around her neck and a hard look in her green eyes, watched Xander and Cordelia being led through the alley by the youths of the Resistance. The mysterious stranger quickly smoothed down her clothes - a simple blue tunic shirt and dark violet breeches - and picked up her long, thick wooden staff. Moving with the assurance of prior knowledge, not even needing to follow them, she made her way to the building Xander and Cordelia were being brought to.
* * * *
"Well, that's that," Buffy said. "Franco and Marea will be here in two days."
"Good," Angel told her, nodding. They were in Blackton, a small town a few hours' drive away from Sunnydale.
"On the other hand, that means that we have to stick around until they get here," Buffy groused, "or at least come back."
"Hey!" Willow said, bending over her laptop.
"What?" Buffy called over to her.
"I found Mister Chase!" Willow reported delightedly.
"What?"
"You know, Mister Chase, Cordelia's dad who Xander thought was missing. The nice rich man who offered to get you anything you needed to help with the Slaying, remember?"
"Oooh," Buffy sat down next to Willow, smiling. "That Mister Chase. So, cough it up, Will - where is he?"
"In Los Angeles," Willow reported. "Looks like he's been operating out of there for a few..."
"Buffy!!" a new voice rang out. Buffy looked up. Across the parking lot, two strangers had stepped into the lights of Oz's van, the same light by which Willow was working. They both looked to be in their older twenties - a man and a woman, both dark-haired. The man was rather tall, his hair cut very short. He wore a brief green tank top and army fatigue pants, and had a pistol and a knife strapped to his waist.
The woman's hair was longer - floating in a dark mane down past her shoulders. She wore tight black stretch pants and a thin, clingy, red spandex sweater, the lines of her bra clearly evident beneath it. The mysterious woman had a black tote bag slung over her shoulder, which looked very much like Buffy's weapons bag. What looked like a wooden stake poked out of the waist of her pants, at the side, near her right hip.
As Buffy looked over this strange couple, she noticed how attractive they were - the man handsome with a smoky intensity, the woman stunningly gorgeous. "I didn't think it would be this easy to find you, Buffy," the man said, repeating her name, and the significance of it sunk in. Who were these people, after all, and how did one of them know her name??
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