SHERLITON'S ARMY
Sherliton’s Army 3/? By Len Rating: R – Spike and his dirty mouth! Spoilers: ‘Gone’ – it pretty much branches off into AU at that point. Teaser: Just when you think things can’t possibly get weirder than the
Creature Who Looks Like The Things That Lived Behind The Washer In Xander’s
Basement, it surpasses itself. This part: The Powers That Be enter the
story, and suddenly everything in B:tVS since season 4 makes a certain
degree of sense to W/Sers everywhere. Note: I can’t write drama or angst to save my life. This is the result
of me attempting to keep my head from exploding in the pre-finals season.
Clichés abound, Evil Critters are borrowed from Sigourney Weaver movies,
plot weaves like a drunken man, names are silly…you know, the usual. Have
fun. Archive: Find all previous parts at my site – Blood Magic: ( /voodoobloodmagic/enter.html ), NHA,
and Chelsea’s marvelous site, Breathe. If anyone else wants it, just let
me know so I can visit. Or gloat. Same diff. More Notes: Takes place in the same universe as my two short conversation
pieces ‘Confusion, Confessions’ and ‘The Beginning’, and after these two
stories. Also: WILL FIC FOR FEEDBACK!! Part Three Xander sat with his nose in a book, turning pages with one hand, his
other holding the hand of his fiancée. Anya did the same, but nearly
jumped out of her skin when the redhead next to her sat up as suddenly as
if she had been shocked. Across the table, Spike shot up as well, and fell
out of his chair. “Ow. Bloody Hell…” he muttered from the floor. Willow yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Sorry about that. I must’ve
drifted off. What are we doing?” “Research,” Buffy answered. “There’s something weird going on.” “In good ol’ Sunnyhell? What’re the odds?” Spike muttered. Willow
ignored him, cocking her head to one side. “Oh. That demon? You know, I
think I may have seen it somewhere before…maybe in…no. It wasn’t in the
watcher’s diaries…or was it?” “Actually, Wills,” Xander interrupted. “We’re trying to figure out why
Fix-a-Dent over there was dreaming about frogs.” “Frogs?” Willow asked weakly. She shivered. Spike, who was getting to
his feet, sneered at him. “Now why in Hell would I be dreaming of frogs? I don’t dream of frogs.
Demons don’t dream of frogs. I’d much rather dream of—“ he caught Dawn’s
eye, who was listening interestedly, and trailed off. “—other things,” he
finished. “Anyhow, why the hell should you care about what I’m dreaming
about?” “Willow.” Spike blinked and set his jaw. “I haven’t been dreaming about Willow.” Buffy rolled her eyes and started pacing again. “Wills – what’s your
greatest fear?” “Um…dying?” “Other than that.” “Oh! Frogs! Especially the really fat green ones that come out after a
rain and then get run over by cars and flattened, but they don’t die – they
just sort of peel themselves off the street like a cartoon and jump onto
your leg while you’re walking—“ in her agitation, Willow had reverted back
to her old babbling habit. “—and you maybe think that the babies will be
cute but no – the babies are tadpoles and tadpoles are just scary
especially the ones that live in the birdbath at my parents house – I tried
emptying it once and someone must have told them I was coming because every
time I went near it the big fat frogs would jump at me and stick to my
pants and—“ she paused for breath. The Scoobies, plus Spike, stared at her
in in stunned silence. She smiled sheepishly. “Yeah. Frogs are scary.” Four sets of eyes then swiveled from her to look at the vampire. He
glared. “Fine, I was dreaming about frogs. What of it?” “You dream of frogs, I dream of frogs. Kinda uncommon, isn’t it? We
just got attacked by some ugly demony thing that looks like those things
behind the washer in Xander’s old basement, we conk out…” Willow answers,
and then pauses. “Dream transference?” Anya nodded. “It looks like it. I once cursed an unfaithful merchant
in Venice during the fifteenth century by transferring the dreams of his
wife onto him. She wanted to kill him. He wet the bed every night. It
was great.” “Hmm.” Willow joined Buffy in her pacing. They walked in figure eights
around the back of the shop. “There’s one thing missing, though. The dream transference isn’t one-
way. The people involved really just switch dreams. That’s what happened
to the woman in Venice, and her husband was actually dreaming about his
little trollop. She ended up killing him.” Xander gulped loudly. Anya turned and gave him a radiant smile, one
that Xander couldn’t help but respond to. For an ex-evil Vengeance Demon,
his girl was absolutely gorgeous. The fact that she enjoyed male suffering
was really only a minor drawback. “That’s too bad, hon. So that means
that Willow should be having…ick.” “Spike’s dreams. Huh.” Buffy halted her pacing and looked nervous for
a moment. “Well, how about it, Willow?” Alone. Burning. Desolation. Helpless. Alone. “Yeah,” she said
softly. “I think so.” Spike turned sharply to look at her. Fuck. What had he dreamt of? He
was willing to bet it wasn’t something as harmless as frogs. He didn’t
want her seeing any that. “Right - let’s stop this, then,” he demanded. “According to this, dream transference is a spell – not really something
your average Joe Demon can cause,” Xander said, inspecting the his book. “Unless this was some sort of vengeance demon…Willow, do you have any
scorned lovers that would want to cause you pain?” Willow blushed up to her hairline. “Anya! No!” “What? It’s possible.” “And what kind of vengeance could be achieved by making Willow and Spike
share dreams?” Buffy asked practically. They fell silent, thinking. “Sound like our best bet is figuring out what’s the what with that demon
that looks like those things that lived behind the washer in my—“ “Oh, for the love of Satan, we know what the sodding thing looked like
already!” Spike yelled. “Oh. Right.” Xander fell silent, and they all sat around, staring at
the table. “What about a location spell? We could track…” Dawn trailed off as her
sister glared at her. “Oh yeah. Um….never mind.” Willow closed her eyes and sighed. “I wish I could. But that’s
probably not the best idea, huh?” “Don’t fret, Will,” Spike said, earning surprised looks from everyone
but the redhead he addressed. “We’ll find it. There’s always more than
one way to skin a cat, after all.” She quirked a grin at him. “You have such a way with words.” “What can I say? It’s a gift.” Xander observed the whole vaguely flirty exchange curiously. There were a few small but crucial Truths that Arnold Sherliton had over-
looked while composing his plot for Sunnydale domination. The first and
most famous being: never go up against the slayer’s friends when the slayer
is alive. But no less important is this: Good plans for domination almost
always go bad. It’s a relatively simple concept, proved time and time
again throughout history. This has a great deal to do with the quality of
hired help Evil Masterminds are willing to settle for. However, in this
particular case, it was doomed to fail from the beginning. The reason was simple. Sid - a supremely powerful being who had sunken
cities beneath the waves for merely displeasing him – was back from
vacation. He had returned from his holiday in the Bahamas to find year-old
coffee on the warmer and a dense backlog of cases on his desk at the
corporate offices of The Powers That Be. And one of those cases – his pet
case, actually – was in shambles. The Almighty Sid was mightily pissed. “This is horrifying!” he bellowed to his underlings that Tuesday in one
of the conference rooms. “How on Earth did you People let things slide so
badly?!” the iridescent Being shouted, throwing a thick report onto the
table in front of him. He turned towards the other occupants of the room.
“I went on vacation for three years. Just three years! And I get back
here and the plan that was drafted by Fate and approved by the Powers That
Be has been thrown completely out the window!” He paused for dramatic
effect. “Well? What have you got to say for yourselves?” A deceptively young-looking girl answered for her colleagues. “It was
the contractor we hired – what was his name?” she wondered. “Dmitri,” a gray mist seated at the end of the table supplied. “Right. Dmitri. He went postal on us when we wouldn’t give him a
promotion. Starting making bad matches right and left. First it was the
vampire Harmony, then it was the slayer Buffy.” Sid paced back and forth, his skin switching from metallic purple to
blue to green and back again as he thought. “And what of this girl, Tara? Is she the fault of Dmitri as well?” The little girl looked sheepish. “Well, actually – she’s one of mine.
After Harmony came into the picture, I thought I could make Spike a bit
jealous by increasing her role in the scenario. It worked for a while…but
then that irritating little Russian screwed up again.” The Beings at the conference table watched apprehensively as their
supervisor mulled this information over. Then he turned a lovely swirling
pink color and looked up. “So what we have are two broken-hearted
humans—“ Somebody coughed, and Sid amended his statement. “One broken-
hearted human, one broken-hearted demon…a piddling little upstart
attempting to take over the Hellmouth, and three weeks to get this plan
back on track before we become the focus of a PTB investigation…is that
right?” One by one the Beings around the table nodded. Put like that, it just
sounded…bad. “Do want me to call Cupid in on this one? It’ll be a quick fix, and we
can make things permanent later,” the gray mist suggested. Sid shook his
head. “Nah – keep everything in this office. Understand? This case is now
confidential. And maybe,” he added, turning toward the large television
monitors that made up one wall of the conference room. The Beings in the
room watched as their clients – Willow the witch and “Spike” the vampire,
stood up from a table and moved towards the door. The witch seemed to
still be a bit dizzy from her encounter with the big black bug, and swayed
on her feet, rubbing her forehead. The vampire watched her closely for a
minute, and then guided her towards the door with a feather-light hand on
the small of her back. “Maybe things will be easier than we think.” His underlings all nodded and began to gather their files, shuffling
towards the door. Sid’s second-in-command remained behind, smiling
beatifically at the TV monitors that had just switched over to a picture of
a suspiciously non-descript man. “And I’ll take over the supervision of
this Arnold Sherliton creature, shall I?” She asked. Sid smiled. “Have fun.” TBC.. What do you think? Too weird? Should I stop while I'm behind
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