FIC: CC: Battle Royale Part 2

["jab21kill" <the.evil.guy@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Title:	Chaotic Circumstances

Author:	Joshua

Disclaimer:	Yet another post-Halloween costume AU BtVS crossover.

Summary:	The gang, on a whim, dressed up as various X-men, and Ethan's
was the only shop in town to boot so EVERYBODY changed.  Buffy, as a
joke, went as Cyclops, Willow as Jean Grey i.e. Phoenix, Xander went
as Iceman, and Cordelia went as Rogue.  And rather than demons,
everybody else dressed up in hundreds of *OTHER* costumes ranging from
books, movies, stereotypes ("Pirates", "Nurses", "Army", "Strippers",
"Cops", etc, etc, etc) to animes, comics, and historical figures.

Part Summary:   OK, last time we left our intrepid, burgeoning heroes
in the middle of a junkyard, the mind-controlled pawns of a man that
had dressed as the Marvel Comics villain "Gamesmaster" surrounding the
few that /could/ fight.  Needless to say, things looked pretty bleak.
Will they make it?  And if they can defeat the Gamesmaster, then what?

AN:	I blame ziziggy123 author of "Sunnydale Berserker" and Anime Ronin
author of "Of Scoobies and X-Men" for the inspiration, if you want to
call it that, for this little piece of fanfiction.  Mostly it came
from Berserker in seeing how Buffy and the brand new Xander aka
Wolverine were getting along and it struck me as peculiar that
"Wolverine" just NEVER gets along with a person named "Summers".  Then
I started brainstorming 'What if' Buffy did dress up as Cyclops, and
it became permanent the same way Xander dressing up as Wolverine did?
Then I went further, and further, and further still and came up with
all that follows.  If you like, GREAT!  If you don't, <shrug> eh,
that's ok too.

AN2:	I am always open to input, that is not pure uneducated dribble
that is often referred to as "Flames" and usually involve cursing. 
Sometimes in numerous languages as well.  But if you have constructive
criticism, I always listen and try to reply to such, and if you have
suggestions about where to go from here, those I *REALLY* listen too
and enjoy and always reply back to.

Also, some minor, very minor but very definite, B/W shipping
interspersed in this part.

E-mail/Reviews:	the.evil.guy@xxxxxxxxxx and jab21kill@xxxxxxxxx 

Story:

Battle Royale (Part 2)

Buffy, given a brief respite from her opponent, stepped to the lead,
watching out of the corner of her eye as Iceman helped Willow out of
her pile of junk, and the Cordettes helped Prime out of his crater. 
Everyone else gathered behind her, for some reason automatically
deferring to her as leader in this circumstance.  Not that she wanted
to be the Leader or anything, she just wanted to figure out what this
fighting was about, stop it, and then MAYBE sit down and have the
difficult conversation of what to do with a town full of super-powered
and supernatural people.

	Things were so much simpler when it was just demons and vampires, she
realized.

	"You seem to have lost a couple of players Gameboy," she snapped.  "I
think we win."

	"/Think again Slayer,/" came a couple of voices.  One came from the
Gamemaster's actual body, the other from the possessed Psi-Lord. 
"/This game isn't over by a long shot.  Besides, things are just
getting interesting.  I plan to play this game to its conclusion, and
beyond if I can./"

	"Let go of him Gamesmaster," Willow tiredly ordered, being supported
by Iceman, came up beside Buffy.  "You can't keep him prisoner
forever.  And I won't let you pervert his body anymore."

	"/Oh, but thanks to you knocking him unconscious, I can stay a while
yet.  And your own mental defenses are beginning to wane.  It won't be
long before I have a whole new cadre of warriors and pawns to play new
games with.  I don't have to win, don't you see, I just have to wear
you down until I can control each of you and catch you like so many
pieces./"

	"Like hell," Buffy hissed.

	"I'm still fresh, I can take them," Cordelia confidently replied.

	"But not all of them," Iceman countered.

	"We're in trouble, aren't we?" Prime asked tiredly, all of them
watching as the remainder of the Gamesmaster's "pieces" converged on them.

	"Not yet," Buffy answered.  Taking another step forward she held her
arms out, her hands formed into the shape of a capital T, and shouted
as loud as her Slayer empowered lungs could, "TIME OUT!"

	And surprisingly, every one of the Gamesmaster's forces froze where
they stood, metaphorically speaking.

	"Whoa," several commented while Xander whispered to Buffy, "How'd you
know that would work?"

	"I didn't," she confided, drawing several shocked reactions.

	"So now what?" Willow demanded.

	"Now . . . we improvise," the mutant Slayer shrugged.

	"You can only call a timeout to . . ." the Gamesmaster started to
say, but Buffy interrupted him, first by getting his attention with an
optic blast to the space a few scant inches from his feet.

	"We didn't agree to any of the rules, and you neglected to inform us
of any, so if you want us to keep playing this game, give us a few
minutes to talk why don't you!!" she shouted.  Seeing that she had him
off balance, she continued in that vain and gestured to the others to
follow her back to the shack, which had temporarily become their
headquarters in this unexpected battle.

	"Much as I believe we /can/ win," she said once they were close
enough, a few, but not all, of the others inside of the shack coming
out to hear the pow-wow, "I don't want to risk casualties.  We need to
break Gamesmaster's control of the others, because while those others
probably were only mildly coerced or bribed into going along with
this, the ones like Robert and Fred out there /are/ being directly
manipulated by this guy.  And he's serious about that to-the-death
shit.  We need a plan, and a good one."

	"I've got a couple of my people working on a possibility, but it's no
guarantee.  More like a Plan F if everything else fails," Jake explained.

	"I can take Marvel, I know I can!" Prime insisted.

	"No offense Kev," Iceman input, "but he was kicking your butt into
next week.  But he's got a point Buff.  I doubt even you and Rogue,
uh, I mean Cordy, working together could take on Captain Marvel."

	"I can handle Robert.  Despite still being a kid, he really does have
ALL of Superman's powers, including being damn near invincible.  I can
hold him off until somebody breaks the control, but that's what we
need to be concentrating on," Buffy insisted.

	"Knocking him out or forcing him into unconsciousness might work,"
Willow added.  "But he's also got Fred, Psi-Lord.  We'd have to take
them both out at the same time, only the opposite for Fred.  I have to
wake him up somehow."

	"Can you do that while fighting him?" Buffy asked, concerned.

	Reluctantly, the redhead shook her head no.  "I'm not that good yet.
But I'll . . ."

	"No," Cordy interrupted, surprising quite a few people.  "I'll take
on Psi-Lord.  Look at you Willow, you're barely standing on you own! 
Besides... I owe you one, and I don't like owing Losers anything."

	A few smiled to see that Cordelia hadn't /completely/ changed.

	"She's right, you're out of the fight Wills," Buffy insisted.

	"But..." the telepath protested.

	"You'll do more good if you help Cassie with protecting the rest of
us from Gamesmaster's influence or power or whatever.  She's
stretching herself to the limit as it is," Jake informed.

	"But..." she tried again.

	"We will also join the fight," Aura stepped forward.

	"But..."

	"Prime can always take over guard duty, since he's not exactly doing
a bang-up job out there as it is," Cindy suggested.  "Besides, I'm
getting bored listening to all their arguing."

	"What about you Sydney, how're you holding up?" Buffy asked.

	"I'm OK, really," the Iczelion answered.  She still seemed to be a
little worn to the others though.

	"All right, but let us know the second you can't keep up and we'll
pull back.  Don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it."

	"I'll be /fine/!" she hissed, though she seemed to be saying it to
somebody other than Buffy.

	"But Buffy," Willow tried.

	"No!  Wills, you're benched for this.  You'll do us better good with
Jake's people and protecting them.  The rest of us can handle the
Gamesmaster's goons.  Trust me on this," Buffy assured her friend.

	"O-OK," the redhead stuttered, then took a deep sigh before going to
stand behind the group that would be going back into the shack.

	"Buffy, I . . ." Giles began.

	"Don't worry Giles, I've got this covered.  And we're going to avoid
death as much as we possibly can.  Both among our ranks, and theirs,"
the Slayer assured him.

	"Easier said than done," Nemesis pointed out, referring to their own
ranks chances against those that remained.

	"Wills, get in there," Buffy pointed and ordered with a hard glare as
the redhead tried to protest once more.

	"Well, we cannot just go charging in there like a herd of elephants!"
Black Widow, Erin, brought the subject back around to the attack
strategy.  "We need a plan."

	"Right, of course," the Slayer instantly agreed.

	Everyone stared at her for a full twenty seconds before she broke and
blurted, "Anybody got one?  Cause my ideas so far have been, stay
alive, don't kill them, and get somebody smarter than me to figure out
the 'how' to beat this guy."

	They all grumbled, but Jake stepped forward, surprising most of them.
"The strategy is keep them and the Gamesmaster as occupied and as far
away from this building as possible at all times.  Tactics however,
I'll leave up to you Buffy.  Already I've seen you do some amazing
things and even call together some pretty impressive moves in the heat
of battle.  Things that most Star Fleet Captains take years of
experience before they can come up with things half as good, let alone
as effective.  My advice, take the situation as it comes and react
accordingly.  And everybody else, unless you've got a better idea that
WILL work, I suggest you follow Buffy's lead."

	"So not what I meant," the blonde muttered under her breath as the
others that would be taking to the field of battle looked at her
again, this time with questioning and analyzing looks.

	"All for one and one for all?" Iceman suddenly blurted, almost as
though offering it as his own suggestion.

	"This isn't the musketeers," Prime complained.

	"All for . . ." Buffy suddenly repeated, her eyes glazing over in
thought.  Then, just as suddenly her eyes went wide and she let loose
a curse that had her mother, Giles and Willow shouting her name, and
everyone else looking at her in shock and confusion.

	"That slimy little no good DWARF!!" she suddenly shouted.  "I am SO
gonna pound him the next time he pops up!"

	"Uh, Buff, what ya talkin' about?" Iceman tentatively asked.

	"Never mind right now," she snapped, her eyes already lighting up
with crimson optic energy.  "Everyone that's going, ready or not,
behind me, everybody that's not, Willow, back in the box!  MOVE!"

	"Oh yeah," she added right before letting loose an intense and
surprisingly larger optic blast at the Gamesmaster's pawns, "Time In!"

Sunnydale High

Meanwhile, as most of the others were fighting for their lives, two of
them that had been at the meeting earlier were only just leaving the
High School.  Pete and Debbie hadn't actually planned on joining the
others after school, but as the day wore on, Pete began to change his
mind about that, and about one other thing.

	"Debbie, it's just a simple question!" he shouted after her as she
stormed through the halls towards the exit.

	"How can you ask me that?!  Don't you trust me?" she screeched
irrationally.

	"Yes!" he jogged to get ahead of her and stopped her just before she
would have gone through the double-doors to outside.  "/I/ do trust
you.  But the others . . ."

	"What about them Pete?  We don't care about them.  We don't need
them.  Don't you see?  I can . . ." she said.

	"That's my point!" he interrupted.  "You dressed as EviLynn from
He-Man!  Not some random book character!  She . . . it . . . the
powers might be corrupting you.  And I don't want that for you!  I
love the sweet girl I fell in love with last summer.  I don't care if
you have power now or not, that's not important to me.  Only you are!"

	Debbie's hard gaze faltered a bit, a bit of emotion filling her eyes,
before she crumpled and fell into her boyfriend's arms.  "Oh Pete,"
she whispered.

	"I'm worried, that's all," he whispered back, embracing her.

	"Don't be.  I have control.  EviLynn disappeared when the spell
ended.  I promise.  And I promise that I won't let the powers corrupt
me.  I won't even use them if it'll make you feel any better."

	"It would make me feel a lot better," he admitted.  "But I still
think that the others can help.  And I mean the both of us," he
quickly added as she backed away from him.  "You managed to tame the
Hulk a few times already, and thanks to your spell, I have control so
long as I don't lose my temper too much, but it could get to the point
where it won't be enough.  And I don't want to hurt you. 
Intentionally or by accident."

	"Pete, we don't need them, I can . . ." she stopped when he turned
and walked out the doors.  "I can control the Hulk, he won't ever hurt
me!" she continued following him.

	"Besides, what good would they be?  Not even that kid that says he
can turn into Prime can match your strength if you don't want to be
stopped," she argued.

	"Those other kids, they went to the future, they can . . ." he argued
back, they were to the football field by now.

	"They can what?" she snapped.  "Put you in a force field?  Find a
cure?  Hah!  Don't make me laugh!"

	"Don't knock Star Fleet technology," he grated, his temper flaring
for a moment.

	"You don't have to bother with them anymore anyway," she said,
crossing her arms as they stopped at the fifty-yard line.  "From what
I hear they'll all be another 'mysterious disappearance' statistic by
tomorrow."

	Pete's slight anger vanished in the wave of fear that swept through
him as he stared in shock at his girlfriend.

	"Debbie, what did you do?" he asked, worried.

	"I didn't do anything, it's what I heard," she explained.  "Harmony
was bragging about finally 'Taking Cordelia down a peg' after school
with a bunch of new friends.  I was curious, so I peeked in her mind
with my telepathy, and saw that she meant she was going to kill
Cordelia and anyone with her and she had a bunch of really strong and
powerful minions with her, others that had been changed too."

	His fear mounting, he grabbed Debbie by the shoulders and began
shouting, "Where!  Where are they?!  Debbie, if you're right then
somebody could die!  Not even EviLynn killed anybody!  We can't let
that happen!!"

	"Why do you care?" she shrieked, squirming out of his grip.

	His temper flared, and then it wasn't just a little anger, but a
full-blown rage, powered further by his mounting fear for his friends.
And they were his friends.

	"Scott's with them," he grated as his eyes began to glow gamma-green.

	Debbie's eyes went wide with shock.  Scott had been her friend first,
Pete only knew him through her.  She and Scott had practically grown
up together.  Images of Harmony or those others she'd seen in her mind
standing over Scott's corpse with Amy or the others around her.  And
then the children...  Pete was right, not even EviLynn had killed any
human.  But she despised violence, of any kind, done against innocent
children.  That much she could clearly remember.

	"They're at the old junkyard on the north side of town," she
whispered as Pete passed the point of no return and his body began to
morph and mutate into a form far larger than her own.  His shadow soon
blocked the sun from her view, where before he'd been only a couple
inches taller than her, he now towered over her as an adult to an infant.

	As the tears over the terrifying images of losing one of her closest
friends fell down her face, she watched as the bright green giant
bounded away, jumping only twice before the distance he'd gone took
him from her sight completely.

Battleground

Things were going good.  Or at least somewhat better than before,
Iceman thought as he stuck to Buffy's side, running the defense while
she ran the offense.

	She was firing optic blasts at the targets as they ran, ducked and
dodged, while whenever one of the super-dudes ever came close he
either blasted them with a freeze beam or set up an Ice Wall giving
them the precious seconds needed to avoid the attack, whatever it was.

	It wasn't perfect, heck it was hardly making a dent in the
opposition, but it was still better than before when the one-on-one
matches ended up in either even, or favoring the Gamesmaster's guys
now that Harmony and the other "easy" ones were out of the fight.

	He and Buffy were the roving attack team, going between all the other
battles that seemed to be ratio'd at two-to-one.  And despite the fact
that the odds were in /their/ favor, they were still barely holding on.

	Cordelia hung with Prime and was double-teaming Captain Marvel with
the Ultra, although he sometimes wondered if the two might be
distracted, or distracting each other considering the other was the
specimen of cosmetic perfection for their respective genders.

	...

	He /really/ needed to stop channeling Willow so much.

	'<Hey!  I heard that!>' came the telepathic message from his bestest
friend.

	'/Well then, concentrate on keeping the Gamesmaster out of our heads
INSTEAD!!/' he roared back at her silently, distracted as he and Buffy
ran from the super kid's heat vision.

	Sydney, or Iczelion, had switched over from the MarVell guy, to
Psi-Lord, or rather Gamesmaster controlling Psi-Lord's body, and she'd
teamed up with Brittany, aka Nemesis, who seemed to have her own
skills in keeping the omnipath from affecting her mind and further
limiting the effects of Psi-Lord's powers, save for his telekinetic
ones that is.  While they certainly weren't making much headway on
points or hits, they're combined attack-and-run-(or teleport in
Iczelion's case) did the job of further frustrating the Gamesmaster
and his pawns.

	So that left the four remaining Cordettes, all gun-totting vixens,
two with unnatural hair and supernatural figures, to deal with Robert
Clarkson and Timothy Smith, aka Superman and Captain MarVell, (even
though their ages were 10 and 15 respectively).  All in all, not the
best of match-ups considering.

	So most of the time Buffy and Iceman spent running around, was in
occupying the Superman kid and Tim Smith, often ending in a stalemate
until the Cordettes distracted the two titans of power, not that they
could do much more than distract, and starting it all over again. 
Very quickly it went from a battle of who was better to who would last
longer.

	"They're not doing so well," Mark commented from his observation
point at the window of the shack everyone else was holed up in.

	Willow grumbled at him, but didn't comment otherwise, focusing on
whatever it was she was focusing on that kept the Gamesmaster out of
their and their friends' heads.  Cassie was next to her, holding the
High Schooler's hand as she added what power she could to the same task.

	"Marco?" Jake asked expectantly.

	"Have patience Cap.  Brilliance takes time," the young Hispanic boy
confidently reported.

	"We're running low on time!" one of the other kids, one of Mark's
friends, shouted.

	"Yeah, well . . ." he said, focusing back on the device that he,
Tobias, and Ax were all working desperately on.  "Hey, anybody got a
couple hundred copper bobby pins?"

	Joyce waved her hand, not taking her eyes off of the battle scene
outside and suddenly it was raining copper bobby pins on Marco and his
friends.

	"Uh, thanks," he said as it trickled to a stop, only a few more
landing on his head.

	"Hey, you could have asked for copper wire instead," Tobias pointed
out, picking up a handful of the pins and adding them to the device.

	"Don't go logic on me green-boy," Marco snapped, going straight back
to the project.

	"I'm just saying . . ."

	"How much longer?" Jake demanded after seeing Iceman and the girl
Buffy narrowly dodge a combined blast from the MarVell kid and the
Superman kid.

	"Tough to say," Marco answered honestly, manhandling the device. 
"Psychic-suppression technology is hardly my forte.  15, maybe 20
minutes.  Half an hour on the outside.  Now would be a good time to
start working out a really big distraction, because even after we
finish this and if, really big IF by the way, IF this works, it's
going to take about five minutes before it takes full effect and you
better believe that Mr. GM out there is going to notice it and is
going to turn all his attention to stopping us from stopping him.  So,
uh, start brainstorming on that now if you please Fearless Leader."

	"Why do you let him call you that?" Rachel asked, from her position
beside her cousin.

	"Probably because he's called me that since we were 10, and I can't
get him to stop," Jake answered with a shrug, internally though
already working on a number of scenarios and strategies for a 'Big
Distraction'.

	"Would you guys hurry up already?!  They're getting killed out
there!" Scott Hope screamed suddenly after seeing Iczelion take a
nasty hit.

	Jake stepped back up to the window and stared intently at the
battleground, his eyes glazed over in thought.  Seemingly coming to a
decision, he turned to Cassie and Willow, and asked point blank,
"Which one of you can spare the energy to set up a telepathic link
between me and everybody out there, the Gamesmaster and pawns not
included?"

	"Not a full link, but I can make it so that everybody can hear you,"
Willow answered.  "Mostly all I'm doing right now is supporting Cassie
and providing the raw power to the defenses she's got going.  She's
actually very skilled in defensive mental barriers, despite not having
much power.  I can probably learn a lot from her and . . ."

	"Willow," Giles interrupted, having learned a long time ago the
warning signs of a Willow-babble.

	"Oh right," she sheepishly blushed and answered, "Uh, me.  I can do
it," she simply told Jake.

	He just nodded at her and the redhead fell back into the tense
silence of concentration before, after several long moments, she
nodded back at the young leader and he went to the window, focusing
his thoughts on the link Willow had established for him.

	A moment later, they were all hearing Jake speak to them in their
heads, and thankfully his first words to them kept them from giving
the secret away to the Gamesmaster.

	'<Everybody, this is Jake, don't be alarmed, Willow is providing me
the link to speak to you, but she can't make it two-way, so just
listen for a moment.  Don't get distracted and don't bother trying to
talk back to me.  Things are starting to get tense and the
Gamesmaster, seeing all of you start to tire, has gotten a bit
overconfident.  Buffy, lets see if we can't fix that.>'

	Buffy smiled at the telepathic prompting and turned right around from
where she had been going, and ran towards the Gamesmaster himself,
Xander right on her heels.  Before the shocked look could fully form
on the man's face, Buffy's built-up optic blast was unleashed and
exploded the ground at the man's feet.  Intentionally of course, she
didn't want to hurt him, and while the young boy with Superman's
powers could easily handle such a blast without even flinching, she
was equally sure that this man /couldn't/.

	"Just curious, what happens to the rest of them when you're knocked
out Gamesmaster?" she shouted over the commotion, noticing that
practically all of the other 'pawns' went to stand between the
Gamesmaster and all of the others, but the GM-possessed Psi-Lord went
directly for Buffy herself.

	Of course this distraction was exactly what the others needed to put
some good hurting on their opponents.  And Psi-Lord never quite made
it to Buffy with both Cordy and Iczelion knocking him down to the ground.

	"Y-y-you c-can't d-do-do this!" the Gamesmaster stuttered, backing
away in fear, Robert Clarkson and Tim Smith, both with extremely blank
and emotionless faces, came floating down right behind their "master",
the Cordettes unable to contain the two for long.

	"Why not?" Iceman casually asked, forming a Freeze Ball between his
hands.

	"I-I, I forbid it!" he hissed.

	A groaning sound from the downed Psi-Lord drew most everyone's
attention.  "What . . . happened . . . ?" Fred Smith asked. 
Apparently, Gamesmaster's growing fear had interfered in whatever
remaining control he had over the powerful psychic, and the double-hit
Cordy and Iczelion hand landed him seemed to have been enough to wake
Fred back up.

	'<Fred!>' Willow psi-shouted, '<Quick!  Put up your mental shields! 
As quick and as powerful as you can!  NOW!>'

	Having grown used to hearing voices in his head, and identifying this
particular voice as another telepath, Fred decided to heed the advice,
and quite literally in the nick of time put up his mental shields,
blocking all telepathic, psionic, and alien-mental activity from
affecting him in any way.

	"What happened?" Fred asked again, getting to his feet and looking
around.  He felt like he'd just gotten beaten black and blue,
unfortunately not a new feeling to him, given he was somewhat of a
geek in school, and bullies were notorious.

	"It's a long story," Cordy answered as she hovered down next to him,
Prime, Iczelion and Nemesis coming to join them.

	"Sydney," Nemesis ordered, "Go back up Buffy and Iceman.  Prime,
Cordy, take Psi-Lord here to the others.  We can't afford Gamesmaster
getting him again, and he's too hurt and we don't have time to explain
everything to him anyway.  GO!"

	'<Do it>' Jake's voice came over the telepathic broadcast.  '<We'll
take care of him, and he can add, maybe a little power to shielding
everybody else.  The sooner you do, the sooner you can get back out
there.>' Jake added when it looked like they were about to argue. 
Instead, working together, the Rogue-mutant and Ultra gently picked
the weakened psionic-warrior up and flew him as quickly and safely as
possible to the shack.

	"No, no, no, no no no no no NO!" the Gamesmaster seemed to be driving
himself into a full-blown panic, seeing Psi-Lord being taken away, no
longer under his control.  He couldn't lose the game, his very sanity
depended upon it.

	Reaching out, something that took little to no effort since quite
literally, for him, every mind on the planet, human or otherwise, was
not only in reach but already in his grasp.  A moment later, altering
the base thoughts so simply it was laughable, the ground started to
shake as the army of demons the Gamesmaster had just collected into
his pawns struggled to make their way to the surface.  There was a
reason this lot was abandoned.  It was just nobody knew that the
reason was a clan of Fyarl demons living just beneath it in the
caverns/sewers below.

	After the first demon exploded from the ground, the teenagers all
stared in open shock before Buffy gathered enough wits to say aloud,
"Now that has /got/ to be cheating."

	"Did you know he could do that?!  I didn't know he could do that!"
one of Mark's friends, Russ shouted hysterically at Jake.

	"MARCO!!" Jake shouted back.

	"Jake just yelled at you Marco," Rachel seethed, providing further
encouragement for the Star Fleet genius.

	"I'm working on it," he hissed back, now working on the device alone,
Tobias and Ax just handing him what he needed.

	"Oh dear," Giles muttered as Rogue and Prime finished bringing
Psi-Lord in and then flying back out as fast as they could.  "I'm
afraid the device won't be enough anymore.  Those are Fyarl demons. 
Even if we break the Gamesmaster's control, they'll still be there,
and Fyarls are known for . . . well, violence would be the nice way of
putting it."

	"Joyce . . ." Jake began to ask.

	"Between Amy and myself, we can send them to the middle of the sun,"
the sorceress/witch answered with conviction.

	"Until then, they're providing us with a good distraction," Jenny
pointed out.  "Hopefully that means that the Gamesmaster can't even
begin to get past Cassie and Willow's . . . uh, mental . . . blocks,
or whatever they are."

	"Doesn't mean he hasn't stopped trying," Willow announced with a
strained voice.

	"Uh, Buff," Iceman asked as they back up against the other fighters,
including the rejoined Cordy and Prime, "what's the plan?  I mean, you
gotta plan, right?"

	Blasting away another of the demons, only to have two more take its
place, the Slayer didn't immediately answer, but shot down another
three demons, making sure they wouldn't be getting up too soon, before
finally saying, "How does pray for a miracle sound?"

	Suddenly, there was the sound of distant thunder, and then again but
closer.  When it came again the ground actually shook and it was
recognizable not as thunder but as a heavy impact against the ground.
After the next one, which shook the ground so bad that even one of
the Fyarls was knocked to the ground, everyone stopped and looked
around in wonder and fear.

	"Sounds good to me," Iceman belatedly replied to Buffy's question.

	Half an instant later a green mountain landed in the middle of the
bulk of the Fyarl demon army.  One that stood up and started swinging
fists the size of the bulky demons' chests, and roaring with inhuman rage.

	"Well," Buffy impotently remarked as the remaining fighters just
stood and watched as the Fyarls started to swarm their attacker,
"better late than never, I gotta admit."

	"So . . . uh, should we, y'know . . . help?  Or something?" Iczelion
asked after several more moments.  Just then though, one demon went
flying by their heads and crashed with a rather wet splat against one
of the towers of rusted cars, and then another past them on the
ground, a trench being dug as it was actually thrown through the dirt.

	"I think he's got it pretty much covered," Buffy answered as she idly
watched the demons go flying all around.

	"So . . . uh, what happens if the Gamesmaster tries to take control
of him?" Prime asked.

	"I think our problem is more what happens if we make him angry at
/us/," Cordy answered.

	"For right now, let's get back to the shack, rest up for as long as
we can.  He'll be busy for a while," Buffy suggested, leading the way.

	As the teens walked away from the battleground, the /Incredible Hulk/
continued to lay waste to everything that came in his path.

*		*		*

"OK, that was an incredible amount of luck out there, but it's not
going to last," Jake announced once everyone was gathered in the
shack, Marco still working on his "miracle device" off in the corner.

	"Any ideas?" Buffy asked, "Cause I'm all out of them.  Wonder if
Debbie's out there somewhere?  She said she was some kind of
shapeshifter, right?"

	"That's what she said," Willow answered with a distracted tone.

	"Why can't we just kill the bastard?" Cindy demanded, they all knew
she was talking about Gamesmaster.

	"We don't kill innocents," Buffy snapped with a hard glare, silencing
the girl-assassin.

	"What about knocking him out instead?" Mark asked.

	"We can't get close enough.  I tried to KO him with an optic blast,
but after that first try at scaring him, I couldn't get close enough
to try it again, not to mention all the demons popping up like
daisies," Buffy answered.

	"Willow?" Jake asked.

	"Make up your mind," she muttered with a bit of a strain, which was
shared by Cassie and Fred was beside them but might as well have been
asleep himself, "Do you want us keeping Gamesmaster out of all of our
heads or do you want me to /try/ and hit him with some knock-out
psi-bolts?"

	"Willow," Buffy exclaimed, suddenly angry, "stays in here, out of
direct danger!  So unless you'd be willing to go out there yourself
with just your friends Mister Star Fleet Captain, don't even think
about asking anybody else to go out there like that!!"

	"Whoa, chill Buff," Xander was immediately beside the angry Slayer
trying to calm her down, "he was just asking Willow if she /could/ do
it, not ordering her to do it or anything like that, OK?"

	Buffy glared for a few more seconds before finally slumping down, and
answering, "Yeah, OK.  I-I'm sorry.  I'm not sure what got into me."

	"It's a high-stress situation, we're all feeling the strain, to one
degree or another," Jake diplomatically responded.  "We need options
people.  Letting the Hulk take the bulk of everything out there is at
best a short term band-aid, not a solution."

	"We need a strike force, a group of heavy-hitters that aren't going
to and won't stop for anything until the Gamesmaster is ours," one of
Mark's friends, Jaimie was his name, suggested.

	"Any thoughts on who would be in this strike team?" Jake turned it
around.  He, and everyone else, was surprised when Mark and his
friends all looked at each other and then nodded as one.

	"We . . . might have a way," Russ finally answered, pulling out a
pair of solid black sunglasses, Jaimie copying his movements exactly.
When they both put them on, instead of wild or insane grins like some
actually expected, their expressions were stony cold, almost
expressionless you might say.

	"It's scary when they do that," Robin whispered to her boyfriend,
hugging the half-vampire close.

	"All right," Jake asked, "What've you got?"

*		*		*

"Who did they dress as again?" Buffy asked Mark as she stood next to
Sydney and Cordy.

	"The original Blues Brothers," he answered nervously looking as his
friends enacted their "plan".  "The only things they even bought from
Ethan's was the hats and the sunglasses, they already had the suits. 
Apparently it was enough though."

	"I never watched the movie," Sydney admitted, "What're the original
Blues Brothers like?"

	"You don't want to know," Mark instantly replied.

	"But you're about to find out," Cordy commented.  "It's time," she
said as the boys took off.

	The plan was straightforward and as simple as it was completely
insane.  The boys would hotwire and then drive one of the few vehicles
in the lot that still could drive at all, driving it at full speed
into the mass of demons, making a big enough distraction to allow the
mutant Slayer, Iczelion and Rogue-mutant strike force to barrel
through what remained and KO the Gamesmaster to end this as quickly as
possible.  Then it was just a matter of cleaning up the demons,
something all of them were confident they could handle quite easily.

	Now they just needed it to work.

	The roar of an engine and a flash of rusted metal, and the next
thing, the boys had barreled straight through the largest chunk of the
demons, quite effectively scattering them.  Buffy blasted three demons
in the next second, leading the charge straight for the Gamesmaster.

	As expected, the few remaining pawns, which weren't demons, that the
Gamesmaster still controlled immediately retaliated, targeting the
trio with everything they had, from heat vision to nega-blasts, to
full body assaults.  Cordy punched Captain Marvel away the second he
came close enough, Iczelion maintained a shield around all three of
them that kept the energy blasts away, and Buffy, getting more pissed
off by the second, gathered as much 'energy' to her eyes as she
possibly could before letting loose with everything she had to knock
them even further way than Cordy could knock them.  As a result, the
optic blasts were significantly bigger than her usual blasts so far,
and there seemed to be a core of pink/white energy at the center
instead of just through and through red energy as it usually was.

	Seeing that he was rapidly losing ground and was in real danger of
being attacked directly himself, the Gamesmaster tried one last gambit
and sent one of his demon minions on a hasty and desperate mission.

	Even while the boys' distraction had scattered the demons and made
things even more confusing, the strike team still had to go through a
heavy mass of the demons, even as the largest group was still amassing
on the Hulk.  It seemed more like any demons they did come across they
came across by accident as the demon had been running around confused
and when it saw them  immediately attacked just because.

	It was the very reason why Jake had decided that the strike team be
made up of these three only, instead of just sending out the strongest
or the most powerful or the most skilled, but the three with the
precise combination of speed, defense, and the proper range of
offense, both close and long range.

	Buffy, by far, was the fastest of everyone there, due to her status
as the Slayer, not that Jake knew that at first, but she was also the
only one with an effective long-range offensive ability, which was the
primary reason he chose her.

	Cordy was a close-range brawler and while Prime certainly could match
her in strength, she had a great deal more control in her strength,
whereas Prime could just as easily punch one of the others by accident
if they got too close.  She could also fly and that made up for any
speed disadvantage she might have compared to the Slayer.  She played
basically both offense and defense for the team, capable of rebuffing
any enemies that came close enough to directly attack the team.

	Sydney, however, as Iczelion was entirely defense, while she could
shoot laser bolts and was just effective in long and close range as
the mutant Slayer was, she knew the only reason she was on this strike
team was because she could generate a powerful personal shield, which
she could then extend around the entire team.  So while Buffy and
Cordy were plowing left and right, up and down, sideways to way sides
anything that they came across, Sydney was focusing all of her
concentration on the shield, trusting Iczel to stay with the others,
since she too could fly.

	Pete Krenzler, in the mean time, was struggling with all his might to
not lose his temper.  In fact he was fighting as hard as he could to
calm himself down because he knew that if he got any angrier than he
was at the moment, he would very quickly become the most dangerous
thing on this battleground and /he/ might become the one that hurt
Scott and Amy and their friends instead of protecting them from these
things that had been attacking them.

	These annoying little, /puny/ . . . /ugly/ . . . /LITTLE/ insects . . . !

	The Hulk stopped moving for a second, shook his head and then glared
angrily at the Fyarl demons, and began beating them senseless once
more, picking one of them up and throwing it around like a club to
destroy the ones still attacking him.  Puny demons.

	It took more time to get to the mastermind than they would have
liked, but finally the strike team stood before the Gamesmaster, the
demons and even his three remaining pawns behind them and too far away
to stop them from knocking him out and ending this game.  Buffy really
didn't see the point in taunting him about it or making any kind of
speeches about how much he'd messed with their lives and stuff.  So
she stalked forward, intent on giving him a solid punch across the
head, and maybe pound it against some really hard surfaces for a
couple of minutes, however long it took to take.

	"Ah ah ah!" the Gamesmaster chided with a waving finger, like someone
scolding a pet, "Hold it right there Slayer.  Don't take another step,
or I might just not be responsible for what happens to this one," he
gestured and another demon popped out of the ground just behind him. 
In it's grasp was Willow.

	Buffy's eyes went wide in shock, freezing to the spot as an unknown
fear and familiar terror shot through her entire body.  The duality of
her own memories and Cyclops were never so indistinct as both sides
raged at Willow being held captive.  Her heart almost shattered at the
sight of her best friend/wife, /whatever/ she was to her at the
moment, so helpless and in danger.

	Behind her, she heard Sydney gasp with the same shock she'd felt and
heard Cordy curse in several languages.  She only identified French
and English though.

	"You wouldn't believe just how difficult it is to keep just this one
demon from killing her outright," the Gamesmaster taunted with a truly
sick and disturbed look on his face.  "If you, by all means, wish to
'knock me out', please go right ahead and do so.  But then what's to
stop this demon from snapping her neck outright afterwards?"

	"I'm sorry Buffy," Willow pitifully moaned.  She was fully conscious,
but quite obviously she was still expending a great deal of
concentration on the mental shielding covering everyone.  It kept her
from freeing herself with her telekinesis from the demon's inhuman grip.

	Buffy shook her head, it'd happened again.  The . . . insight into
Willow's mind, as though they were linked somehow.  Buffy still
couldn't explain it and now really wasn't the time to try and bother.
Right now she just had to get Willow out of danger, no matter what.

	"Let.  Her.  Go," the Slayer spoke slowly, giving Gamesmaster
/exactly/ one warning and one warning only.  "Now."

	"No, I don't--" he started to say, but trailed off when the mutant
Slayer's eyes shifted to red and began to flash with building up optic
energy.

	Glaring right at the demon, the look Buffy gave it seemed to break
through whatever amount of control Gamesmaster still had over it as it
faltered, its grip on Willow loosening as it fearfully gargled in it's
own unintelligible language "/S-s-s-Slayer!/"

	"You've had your chance," she said quietly, barely audible over the
mounting noise and commotion of the ongoing battle and her building
energy.

*		*		*

Chaos never does what one /expects/ it to do.  That's why it's chaos.
The slimmest 1% chance of something happening, happening.  Sometimes
exactly when you expect it to happen, sometimes at the least expected
moment, and sometimes when something should happen, it doesn't.  Chaos.

	Ethan Rayne expected to play a prank, a trick, on the Night of
Trick-or-Treating, to make the people of Sunnydale appreciate on a
whole new level the lesson of "be careful what you wish for...". 
Maybe on some level he even expected to get rewarded by some
self-proclaimed 'chaos god' along the way too.

	Rayne expected to magically turn the people /into/ their costumes for
one night.  How was he to expect, calculate or otherwise guess at all
the random '/chaotic/' circumstances to happen that night. 
Circumstances that on their own might have attributed to singular
changes, one or two or a small group of people having some remainder
of the costumed abilities they'd had that night.  Yet combine them all
together, and nobody could have expected the result.  The result of
everyone in Sunnydale being permanently altered by the change.

	Unfortunately, for some more than others, those changes went a lot
further than what they woke up with the morning after Halloween.  The
Slayer is an enigma to most, a living contradiction on multiple
levels.  The perfect soldier merged with the wildest spirit
imaginable, on top of being often very young and emotionally unstable
girls.  Combine that with mutant DNA and the X-gene . . . and though
Buffy was no longer THE Slayer, the mystical changes affecting her
body remained creating the combination of a gene that enhances and
creates mutation within the human body, and a near-magical status that
enhances all aspects of that same body to it's maximum potential.

	In a way it creates an ever increasing loop of the mutant gene
mutating the Slayer powers and then the Slayer powers enhancing the
mutant changes.  And, as facts set up by the X-Men comics and Watcher
chronicles state, mutant powers often trigger due to emotional stress
and the Slayer's powers become infinitely more potent whenever she
taps into her anger and rage.  Both of which Buffy was feeling in
spades at this moment in time.

	Between Cyclops affinity for Jean, whom Willow dressed as, and his
memories of all the times he "lost" her, and then the same for Buffy
seeing Willow in danger, again, it was an emotional nightmare in her
head and was made worse as her powers began to react to her emotional
state.  The loop began as the trauma of seeing Willow in danger
triggered her still relatively 'new' mutant DNA, even though it had
already given her Cyclops' mutant power, it began to affect the young
woman anew, working with what it could, namely her Slayer powers;
strength, speed, endurance, and instincts.  Or more specifically, her
muscles, endocrine system, and portions of her brain.  And her skin.

	While the Slayer is an incredible organism, it's not an endless
energy reactor, merely drawing twice the amount of energy from half
the amount of nutrition most humans eat, even though they consume
twice the amount of food.  Cyclops was a unique mutant, as all mutants
tend to be unique in their own right, but him even more than others,
despite being limited to Alpha class, thanks to his biology of
absorbing solar energy through his skin to power his optic beams, very
similar to the way a plant works with its chlorophyll.  The big
difference that Cyclops' skin only directed that energy towards his
powers and only his powers, none of it to his life support.

	The changes now being elicited in Buffy, including changing her skin,
that the solar energy she absorbed went towards things beyond just the
same optic blasts.  For example providing the necessary energy to
actually elicit all the changes going on in her body right at that
moment.  And then on top of these new mutations, her Slayer powers
turned right around and started to enhance each the moment they came
into existence to 'Slayer-levels', even though in terms of strength
she already was at 'Slayer' levels, boosting them even further.

	But more importantly were the changes to portions of Buffy's brain,
creating a direct connection between certain things and her newly
acquired mutant powers, namely optic blasts.  And so even while her
eyes were flashing red and she was making her threat, all of these
changes were happening almost in a flash inside of her body.  So when
her power spiked beyond the most powerful optic blast that Cyclops
could ever have achieved, it could be blamed on her Slayer powers.

*		*		*

A deep rumble filled the ground as something seemed to change within
the Slayer, the energy spewing from her optics becoming even more
agitated than anyone had ever seen before.  That seemed to be the
final straw as the Fyarl demon, snapping free of the Gamesmaster's
control at the same time, released Willow and began to run for it's
life, knowing that it would die if it faced this strangely-powered
Slayer in such a rage.

	Knowing there was nothing she could do to calm her friend down, at
the moment, Willow triggered her telekinesis and shot up into the sky,
out of the mutant Slayer's line of sight, and out of the blast radius.

	It happened in an instant, but it changed everything hereafter.

	An optic blast that spread as wide and as far as the Slayer's vision
actually went, but powerful enough that it could stop in its tracks a
supersonic jet and probably even push it back a few inches too, even
as it might be continuing to try and move forward.  Against the mounds
of sitting cars and junk and even the solid ground, beneath which the
Fyarl's had carved their cavern homes, it broke apart and completely
decimated everything in its path.

	The ground began to actually break apart, crimson energy shooting
through the cracks before blasting it away in a wave of pure optic
force.  And whatever else was in the path of the superhuman blast of
energy was blown away, quite literally, at near-supersonic speeds on
their own.

	The aftermath however was a bit worst than the actual explosion of
power, (which was actually visible from space), as the lot began to
collapse into the caves below, destroying what few Fyarl's remained,
and those that were still fighting, most of them against the Hulk,
scattered and fled as the Gamesmaster's control was broken as the man
himself was driven unconscious, rocks and metal hitting him across the
skull helping in attributing to the case.

	After the demons had finished scattering though, there was still a
lot of falling going on and the ground kept trembling for a few more
minutes and a dust cloud rising that actually covered the sun for
several long minutes before dissipating.  Once everything had settled
however, the scene showed Buffy, collapsed and unconscious, standing
before a trench that went a quarter of a mile deep and actually went
straight out for over ten miles, but thankfully the shack where
everyone was still huddled, had been behind her and was mostly undamaged.

	There was a heavy silence over the battleground for a long breathless
moment, until it was broken by Marco who announced, "Cool!  I finally
got it to work!" holding up a small device about the size of a dinner
plate and was showing a single blinking light.

	"A little late," Rachel pointed out, picking herself and several of
the others up off the floor.

	"Well, he's gonna wake back up, isn't he?" the Star Fleet genius
countered.

	"Let's check on everybody out there," Jake ordered, leading the way
out of the shack.

	Several minutes later, everyone was gathered around Buffy, Willow
carefully holding on to the mutant Slayer, trying to edge her into
consciousness without any detrimental side effects using her
telepathic powers.  So far, to Willow's point of view, and with that
Jean's experience with such things, she seemed to be in a mild coma,
her mind withdrawn while her body heals itself from whatever trauma it
sustained.  Still, Willow kept hoping, and reaching for her friend, to
help pull her out of the murky depths of her mind.

	"Is she going to be OK?" Joyce asked Willow, on the other side of
Buffy from the telepath.

	"Yeah she just needs to rest for a bit," she answered with false
certainty, "Everybody should check on the others, and Marco should
make sure his device is working on the Gamesmaster."

	Immediately several others went to look for those that had still been
the Gamesmaster's pawns, hoping to find them all right, while another
group of Cassie, Marco, Rachel, and Prime approached where the
Gamesmaster had fallen, buried beneath some rubble, but otherwise
alive.  Quickly, with Prime's strength, they dug him out and with
Marco and Cassie both making sure the psionic-suppressor was working,
brought him back to the others.  Meanwhile the other children, Captain
Marvel have reverted back to the boy that he truly was, were brought
back to the shack, thankfully any injuries they suffered were entirely
minor and hardly even superficial.

	As they brought everyone over, the demons had finished fleeing, and
Hulk, or rather Pete slowly rumbled over, with each step he calmed
more until his transformation began to reverse and he was Pete
Krenzler once more.  Pete Krenzler in nothing but his torn jeans and
underwear, but still.

	"Damn," Xander, having reverted back to himself, removing the ice
armor, said looking around, "And I thought it was a junk yard before!"

	Besides Buffy's damage to the lot (and 10 miles further out), there
was all the battle damage from the rest of the fight with the
Gamesmaster's pawns.  It looked quite literally like a battlefield,
straight from the movies, or the history books.

	"Is everyone OK?" Pete hurriedly asked the moment that he could as he
joined the group.  "Scott?  Amy?"

	"We're fine buddy," Scott answered, giving his friend a careful pat
on the shoulder.

	"Thank goodness you got here when you did though," Amy immediately
hugged the young man.

	"I tried," Pete sheepishly shrugged.

	"Well, on behalf of all of us," Jake stepped forward, "thanks.  I
mean it, thank you.  If it hadn't been for . . . well, the Hulk, those
demons might have beaten us, or worse."

	The young man just blushed, even if it was an adolescent saying these
things to him.

	"Does anybody need to go to the Hospital?" Giles asked aloud.  Nobody
felt they did, so he continued, "Well, then perhaps it might be best
if we all retired back to the Library for the time being.  I have
fully equipped First Aid there and it would be a chance to rest for a
moment.  Joyce, if you would be so kind, I don't believe all of us are
up to making the trip on foot."

	"Not at all Rupert, not at all," the witch replied with a smile and
then looking over everyone, including the Gamesmaster and those still
unconscious, she nodded to herself and then made a grand dramatic
gesture with both her arms, and in the next instant they all
disappeared like they had never been there in the first place.

TBC...





"It's a good fight, Buffy, and I want in."
"I kinda love you."
Buffy & Willow, 'Choices'

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