Subject: [OTL]: (Buffy/X-folk) Summerswind Book 2 Chapter 2/24 (PG-13) Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 19:14:41 -0800 (PST) From: Phil Hartman will1@earthling.net Summerswind Book 2 Chapter 2 by Phil Hartman DISCLAIMER: Everyone here belongs to their owners. Etc. -------------------------------------------------------- 1/9/2003: 19:00 hrs EST: Sunnydale Cemetery, Sunnydale neighborhood of Salem Center, NY: -------------------------------------------------------- THWACK WHAM POW ! "Na-na-na-na-na-na - the Buff's baaaack," Xander tried to sing, beaming appreciatively as Buffy Summers drove a third vampire away from him. "Xander, do I have to remind you - WHOOULF - that I could do WITHOUT - WHOA ! - the nasty '60's references ?" Buffy said between punches to the vampire's head. She staked the undead fiend, then removed two more stakes from her coat and held them pointing backwards - - to stake the vampire's "friends." "Hey, Adam West went on to many respectable acting jobs because of that show," Xander said with mock seriousness. His teeth chattered a bit, and he thanked Cordelia when she handed him and Buffy cups of hot cocoa from the thermos she had brought with her. "Precog is useful," Buffy said between sips. "Just as long as it's not pre-coffee. I tried some Arabica without the water when I was 6 - my face looked like a prune for a day," Xander quipped. "Do you EVER let up ?" Cordelia sighed. "I mean, here I am, trying to get past the whole shallow stereotype, and you can't just let us have one night of patrol without a joke." "It wasn't a slam against you ! You're sweet-consumer-queen, not evil-Starbucks-hoarding-queen !" Xander begged, watching Cordelia stalk off. "Let her go, Xander. She's been haunted for the past week or so," Willow called, walking over with Oz from the other side of the graveyard. The red-haired Wiccan girl smiled at her friends, and gave Buffy an especially wide grin. "I'm just so glad to see you back to your old self," Willow gushed, hugging Buffy carefully to avoid spilling her friend's cocoa. "We were all worried about - well, you know. And it was getting hard to explain at school why you were gone." "I know. 'Gosh, Principal, it was thanatoic anemia,'" Buffy said with a straight face. "'That darn Master just couldn't be beaten unless I bled a little.' I don't think I can convince Uncle Hank to give me a doctor's excuse every time I kick some demon butt." #Although it's not like I didn't try,# Buffy thought to herself, sighing inwardly while she and the "Scoobies" headed after Cordelia. The first few days that she had rested in bed after defeating the Master had been less pleasant than Buffy had admitted to her friends. Her parents had been aghast beyond measure when the full details of Buffy's final battle against the vampire lord had been revealed. Scott had sounded more enraged than Buffy had EVER heard her father get, while Jean had almost echoed Madelyne's worst moments in her scathing indictment of Buffy's mentor. Rachel and Nate had been equally comforting and concerned, although Buffy was just as worried about her siblings. #Ray's been 'leaking' some of her dreams about the Phoenix into ME,# Buffy thought, wincing at some of the mental images she'd received from her sister during their sleep. It was a de facto agreement between the sisters that Rachel would never enter Buffy's mind telepathically in a conscious fashion unless it involved relaying a message from their parents, juicy gossip, or a dire emergency. Dream-sharing had been more of a problem when the girls had been small, and since Nate never had a psionic link with Buffy, his trial and error with telepathy had never really concerned her. #But while Ray's powers have gotten stronger, her control's been getting worse - I'm not lunging towards Frank, but I know that sometimes I'm getting her feelings,# Buffy thought, shaking her head. #And Nate ...# Nate hadn't been annoying, as far as younger brothers go, since he had been small. Even then, he had seemed to know just how far he could push Buffy and Rachel, and never went past that point. After the Akkaba Incident in 1999, however, Nate had become positively restrained. #He focused his energies on getting control over his powers, and learned to kick butt even better than I could,# Buffy remembered with a sad smile. #He was so uptight ...# Although Nate had joined the second class of New Mutants with Rachel in September 2002, he had felt out of place among the high schoolers. Petitioning his parents and Professor Xavier, Nate had opted to transfer to Salem Center Junior High School, where he'd found a surprising welcome. #He has great power control, so he doesn't really need to BE a New Mutant. Nate just needed normalcy ... but with his precognitive and chronovariant powers getting stronger, he's having the same problem Cordy's having - nasty precog visions,# Buffy thought. #And he's gotten so - closed off again -# "- Buffy ?" "Oh. Giles," Buffy said, shaking herself out of her thoughts and into looking at her mentor. Giles adjusted his glasses, then nodded at Buffy to get into his van with the rest of the Scoobies for the trip back to the X-Mansion. "Something troubling you ?" Rupert Giles asked, waiting until everyone had buckled up to pull away from the cemetery. "Just family stuff ... speaking of family, where's Madelyne ?" Buffy asked. Giles reddened a bit; it was an open secret that he had fallen head over heels for Madelyne Pryor, the younger clone of Buffy's mother, Jean Grey-Summers. Madelyne herself was a somewhat-welcome houseguest at the Summers' two-story boathouse on the X-Mansion property, since she'd helped save Buffy's life during the battle with the Master. "She - ahem - said she needed a night to herself. Something about unfinished business," Giles said. "And since she's an Omega-class psionic mutant, and a grown woman, I felt her wishes should be respected." "Can't be joined at the hip 24/7, huh, 'Ripper' ?" Xander cracked. The glare Giles gave the boy silenced all of the Scoobies. "Xander, I will thank you NOT to repeat that ... nickname ... again," Giles said coldly. "I was young, foolish and reckless when I earned that appelation, and I did things I'm still not proud of. I've told Buffy and her parents as much as I feel they are owed to know about those years, and I see no reason to dredge up painful memories for you." Xander opened his mouth, but wheezed when Cordelia elbowed him in the side. #Man, Giles, you got riled up about THAT,# Buffy thought, casting a sidelong glance at her Watcher. #So you were a member of a bad '70s Liverpool rock band and a poor-quality mage-for-hire. What's the problem ?# -------------------------------------------------------- The winter winds failed to stir much except the leftover snow around her leather boots. #So alive. So ... real,# Madelyne Pryor thought, looking into the windows of the Bronze. The teen and young-adult club was throbbing with the latest Genoshan-import mutant-power-synthesized music, intersparsed with the occasional hip-hop or rap-metal track. #So young. So ... not me,# Madelyne thought sadly. She pulled her coat more tightly about her shoulders, and headed across the street towards a small cafe-bookstore where Giles occasionally took her. #Harry's just isn't my style, and too many of the X-Men are still uncomfortable with my presence,# she thought, entering and ordering a cup of herbal tea before settling into a booth lined with faux bookcases. #I'M uncomfortable with my presence sometimes -# Madelyne's "life," such as she could describe it, had been full of bizarre occurences, misuse by supervillains, and a difficult "family" situation. Her memories told her that she had been the only survivor of a plane crash in 1985 - rather difficult for her to believe, herself, since she had allegedly been the pilot. The truth was even worse. Madelyne was a younger clone of the X-Man and Omega-class mutant psi Jean Grey, who had seemingly died and been reborn as the avatar of the cosmic Phoenix Force. Jean had fallen in love with Scott Summers, her fellow X-Man Cyclops, until she became Dark Phoenix, and had seemingly sacrificed her life to save the universe from her insane dark personality. However, the shard of the Phoenix which had comprised the "soul" of the Phoenix-Jean had been reborn, with severely-scrambled memories, in Madelyne. Empowered, albeit latently, with Jean's psionic gifts and the Phoenix's amplifying potency, Madelyne had been turned loose by her creator, the geneticist Nathaniel Essex - AKA Mister Sinister - to seduce Scott and create a mutant child capable of destroying Sinister's own master, the dreaded mutant Apocalypse. Scott had resisted Madelyne's advances, as much out of propriety (she was apparently 18 when she had been decanted) as of wariness where a Jean lookalike was concerned. Then the real Jean had been freed from stasis by the Fantastic Four, and had come back to the X-Mansion ... #Let's just say it got VERY ugly, very fast,# Madelyne remembered wryly. #Jeannie kicked my ass, I remembered who I 'was,' Sinister showed up even before the Marauders, and I went running ...# Jean and Scott had gone on to get married and have twin girls - Rachel, a psi, and Buffy, who was apparently human - as well as a son, Nathan, a psi who ironically ended up destroying Apocalypse by accident in 1999. #I wandered a good portion of the U.S., waitressing, washing clothes, and so on, getting a handle on my powers, then hiding from Operation: Zero Tolerance ... until the secretarial position opened up at Bard College,# Madelyne remembered, sighing. Her "parents," John and Elaine Grey - Jean's biological parents - had known about Madelyne for years, and had often invited her to stay with them. She had declined, not because of them but to avoid another confrontation with Jean. But curiosity - and a need for family - had betrayed Madelyne. #And I found real happiness,# Madelyne remembered, smiling. #Jean and I even reached a detente ... that was four years ago.# #And then, just a few weeks ago, I saw ... him.# Madelyne allowed herself a wicked smile, remembering the taller, middle-aged man who had walked into the coffee shop looking for Christmas presents. She had introduced herself, and he had seemed nice enough ... #We both knew Buffy, and I learned about the Watchers ... maybe a little too much,# Madelyne pondered. #Still, Rupert was so sweet, and lonely, and I was too ... and damned if we didn't hit it off.# #The fringe benefits aren't bad, either ...# Giles had respected Madelyne's request to keep their relationship quiet; she was on decent terms with Scott, and actually had quite a warm relationship with Buffy, Rachel and Nathan, mostly through holiday visits. But Jean was a rather large unknown - the older "template" was no longer openly hostile, but she was rather cool where Madelyne was concerned. They also had tried to avoid each other for another reason; their near-identical mental signatures meant that their usually-invulnerable mental defenses were nigh-useless, and telepathic leakage was something neither woman wanted. #And I really didn't want to make trouble for - oh, DAMNIT,# Madelyne thought, reflection turning to fury and near-panic when she saw them approaching the coffee shop. One was a Native American man with silver-grey hair, wearing a rather suspect trenchcoat. The second was a tall Caucasian woman with shoulder-length off-purple hair, in a nondescript coat and oddly silver boots. Madelyne threw down a 20 on the table, muttered something to the stunned waitress about keeping the change, and darted out the front door. #Marauders. Sinister's clone assassins - damnit, I thought they'd been shut DOWN -# The Marauders were, among mutants, a bane. They had annihilated an estimated 80 percent of the sewer-dwelling mutants known as the Morlocks in 1992, and had savaged the X-Men and X-Factor in that battle. Deadly whether alone or a team, the Marauders were not a group of mutants to fool around with. #Scalphunter and Arclight, I can take,# Madelyne thought, trying not to panic as she headed down a side street away from the two field leaders of the Marauders. #But if Scrambler or Vertigo show up ... or Riptide or Harpoon ...# Madelyne swore a far worse oath when an energy harpoon slammed into the garbage cans ahead of her. Its' thrower - a muscular Inuit man with red hair and a quiver of harpoons - approached her, a grinning young Asian man with black hair at his right. "Evening, Maddie," Scrambler - Kim Il Sung, the Korean power-tamperer of the Marauders - chuckled. "Fancy -" He keeled over, a bloody nose and a moan his only indication that Madelyne had even acted. Harpoon snarled wordlessly, preparing another of his energy weapons, while Scalphunter and Arclight raced towards Madelyne from behind - - and screamed, limned in greenish energy. "What the hell ?" Madelyne breathed, turning to watch a similar bolt of power strike Harpoon down. "Madelyne, GET IN THE VAN !" "Rupert ?" Madelyne whispered, beaming as her boyfriend stepped over the unconscious bodies of Scalphunter and Arclight. She ran to Giles, noting the van containing Buffy and the Scoobies behind him. "Don't ask - and Willow, don't even THINK of replicating what I just did. It's, at best, questionably grey magick, not for an apprentice to tamper with," Giles warned over his shoulder. Willow closed her spellbook with a pout, but cried out when a giant fist punched THROUGH the back door of the van. "Give us the clone, old man !" Blockbuster roared, tearing the roof off the van while Riptide, Vertigo and Prism approached from the other side of the vehicle. Giles' answer was an utterance in a language Madelyne was sure she never wanted to hear again - - especially since an instant later, the remaining Marauders screamed in primal agony, and fell unconscious. "Don't you EVER bloody well mess with the Ripper's girlfriend, you gene-trash little GITS !" Giles roared, kicking Blockbuster's shoulder. "OW ! Blasted invulnerable - come on, Maddie, let's get the children home. I don't fancy waiting around for these scum to awaken." Nobody even questioned when Madelyne found a seat in the front, and Giles headed down the road. Xander mumbled something about "free air conditioning," but even he remained quiet. None of them saw the four pairs of gleaming red eyes following them down Greymalkin Lane, from the shadows. -------------------------------------------------------- NEXT: Mummies, crazed mutant cultists, and Buffy's whacked-out family nemesis collide, while Angel and Angelus face off ... ... and Buffy suffers a loss unlike any she's faced ... --------------------------------------------------------