FF: Seven days in Hell

["Christeen Demons" <Shyfox30@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey, Kirayoshi got me going on this nifty idea, and I thought I'd work on
it...kind of my way to bring Buffy back, so to speak. The Prologue is his.

Disclaimers; The BtVS Stuff belongs to Mutant Enemy, the Seven Days stuff
belongs to Crowe Entertainment. That's all there is, there ain't no more!

Summary; Frank Parker is sent to Sunnydale, to stop a death...

======== SEVEN DAYS IN HELL By Kirayoshi and Shyfox========

"Ever wish you could go back in time? Well, my name is Frank B. Parker and
I do it all the time. I'm part of this secret Government project they call
in when things go wrong, and I'm the guniea pig they send back to fix it.
Catch is, I can only go back Seven days."

Prologue:

"Here comes the Backstepper, Word up! I'm the original gangster, Word up!"
Frank Parker strolled into the boardroom of Operation; Backstep as though he
were strutting down the street, almost oblivious to the stares and glares of
his colleagues and superior officers. His cocky, maverick style more often
than not got on their nerves, but they all to
a man agreed that it was that same style that made him a successful
Chrononaut.

"Parker," Ramsey growled, "how nice of you to grace us with your presence.
Now, if you would sit your keyster down and leave the attitude at the door,"
he glared at Parker as he sat between Olga Vulkavitch and Craig Donovan, "we
can get on with the briefing."

"Thank you, Ramsay," Talmadge nodded to the overly contentious security
chief. It was no secret that Ramsey had little or no respect for Parker, and
vice versa. Olga and Donovan exchanged brief amused glances at their
continued feuding, as Project Director Bradley Talmadge took the floor.

"Frank," Talmadge announced, "we've authorized a Backstep for today. Your
touchdown point is a small Californian town called Sunnydale. This," he
passed a folder to Parker, "is your assignment."

Parker opened the folder, and the first thing that caught his attention was
a photograph of a young woman. No older than twenty, he thought. Blond hair
spilled over slender shoulders, and hazel-blue eyes sparkled with
intelligence. There was a trace of a smile on the girl's lips, but Parker
saw something haunted in her eyes, something in her expression
that spoke of battles won and lost, of great personal demons. Something like
his own face every morning.

"Her name is Buffy Anne Summers," Ballard continued, "and she died two days
ago, under suspicious circumstances. Cause of death was officially listed as
accidental electrocution, but that didn't explain why virtually every bone
in her body was broken. All the evidence points to her having fallen from a
great height."

"So what was she doing, anyway?" Parker asked. "Skydiving durning a
thunderstorm with a large magnet strapped to her back?"

"According to our sources," Ramsey answered, "she was killed by someone very
powerful."

"Powerful, Ramsey?" It was Olga's turn to ask. "Like a political
assassination?"

Ramsey regarded Olga balefully, as he spoke; "I'm talking powerful as in
'wrath of God' type powerful. A demon or devil. This girl went ten rounds
with a demon of some sort, and from what I gather, it ended in a draw, both
of them dead." Ramsey's words hung over their heads like storm clouds,
gathering in strength.

After five seconds of silence, Donovan raised his hand to the side, saying,
"Check, please!"

"Hey, bro," Frank motioned to his closest friend, "let's hear the man out."

"You're kidding, right?" Donovan glared at his friend. "Ramsey here is
talking about demons like they're real. What's next, partner, vampires?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, so siddown!" Ramsey regarded Donovan with a
serious stare. Donovan sat back down, and listened as Ramsey explained the
story of Buffy Summers.

"Check the folder we gave you, Parker," he explained, "and you'll find a
report written by a Lieutenant Riley Finn. Lieutenant Finn observed the
subject in action, and got to know her on a personal level."

"In other words," Parker quipped, "they did the ol' horizontal bop."

This characteristically crude remark received a sour expression from Dr.
Vulkavitch. "Mr. Parker," she sighed, "everything's about sex with you,
isn't it?"

"Wouldn't you like to find out?" he ribbed his frequent sparring partner.

"In your dreams," Olga parried, not unkindly.

"And your's no doubt," Parker returned.

Talmadge called out to stop this familiar sparring match(what Parker liked
to call 'foreplay'), to continue the briefing.

"Anyway," Ramsey continued, "Lieutenant Finn was formerly associated with a
top-secret military group called The Initiative, sort of a paranormal
black-ops. No one outside of certain circles ever heard of the Initiative,
largely because several defense budgets took a
beating when the Initiative's motives proved to be darker than anyone
suspected. There were quite a few higher-ups in the Pentagon who found
themselves transferred to Antarctic bases to count penguin eggs once the fit
hit the span." He picked up a remote control, and turned on the
closed-circuit television on the far wall. "This video footage was taken
shortly before the Initiative was finally mothballed. It shows Miss Summers
up against the end result of the Initiative's research program, a cyborg
soldier gone berzerk, name's Adam."

The image, grainy and from a single security camera, still told the story. A
short young woman fighting off a huge creature, cobbled together from
corpses, a modern-day Frankenstein's monster. This abomination should have
been capable of killing the girl as an
afterthought, but the girl was giving better than she got. After a few
seconds of footage, Ramsey shut off the VCR, and said, "You get the idea.
According to our background intell, Buffy is what's known as a Slayer. She's
physically stronger and far more agile than the average human, and is
'called', for want of a better word, to fight nasties like Adam. Demons,
vampires, ghosts, boogeymen, that sort of thing."

"And you expect me to run with that?" Donovan asked skeptically.

"Hey buddy," Parker said patiently, "more things in Heaven and Earth. Right,
Horatio?" He didn't dismiss Ramsey's statements so flippantly; not long ago,
he faced a Devil of his own, an evil power that tried to subvert the
Backstep Program to trigger Armageddon. He still had nightmares about that
incident.

"According to reports from high-level sources, Buffy Summers has taken on
more than a few such monsters in her stomping ground of Sunnydale,
California, and from the patterns that have been observed, she died fighting
a very powerful entity. And if she's dead, that means that there's a lot of
nastyness in this small town that's gonna come up, once word gets out of her
death."

"We're sitting on a paranormal powderkeg, people," Talmadge announced.
"Parker, once you Backstep, you'll have five days to aid Buffy Summers. It's
very likely that the entity that killed her died as well, because if this
entity survived, all this would be moot anyway,
since we'd all be dead. The world's literally riding on this. Saddle up,
Parker, you backstep in two hours. Dismissed."

As the others filed out, Olga turned toward Parker, a serious look crossing
her features. "Mr. Parker, I want you to promise me that you'll be careful
with this assignment."

"Why Olga," he dimpled, turning on his all-purpose smile. "I didn't know you
cared."

"I do care, Mr. Parker, I am your friend," Olga nodded. "I also know a
little about the ADAM experiments. Dr. Maggie Walsh used notes that were
lifted from former Soviet Super Soldier programs; steroid research, cyborg
implants. And we saw what ADAM was capable of on the video tape. And this
girl beat him."

"And the point is?"

"The point is, Mr. Parker," Olga answered, nearly pleading with the
chrononaut, "that whoever killed her must have been very powerful. I just
want you to promise me that you'll be careful." She leaned in closer to
Parker, who reflexively took the young scientist
in his arms. He was surprised that she was trembling in his arms, but
offered no resistance to his embrace. "Just promise me that you'll come back
to me. I do care about you, Mr. Parker. I don't know what I would do if I
lost you."

Parker lifted her chin with his finger, and smiled again, for her benefit as
much as anything else. "One of these days, I'm gonna have Donovan videotape
one of these tender moments we share before I backstep, so I can show it to
you on the other side of the trip."
This remark got a smile out of the normally reserved scientist. "Hey, I've
faced my share of demons, Olga. I can't guarentee that I'll survive this
one, any more than I can guarentee that I'll survive any backstep. But I'll
try. I can promise you that."

"Then I guess that will have to do," Olga gave Parker a watery smile, and
kissed him lightly on the cheek.

Parker straightened up and disengaged the hug. "I'd better suit up, Olga.
I'll see you last week."


to be continued...


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