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[sup][h1][b][center][color=black] B U F F Y  S U M M E R S[/color]
[color=#e6419f]B U F F Y  S U M M E R S[/color][/center]
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The tap ran cold water over shaking hands; perfectly manicured hands. A maroon red on short squared nails; a silver ring around her index finger with an opal crescent moon. Eventually the shaking stopped.

[right][i]The Master[/i][/right]

From within the mirror, a younger Buffy looked back at her present self; one in a white dress and much younger. The same version of herself that had already lived in the same fear that rose within her now, twelve years later. The fear that she thought had left after she had ground the ancient vampire’s bones to dust.

She’d faced so much more and worse since, but that fear had never left.

[right]”Buffy?" A voice from outside. "We need to get you ready–”[/right]

“I’ll be a minute,” she answered as she turned off the taps. The face that looked back at her was once again her own, and the fear subsided and left her alone again, for now.

[img]https://i.ibb.co/gbY1kN1k/The-Questing-Beast2.png[/img]

Buffy arrived in New York.

Dead centre in Times Square, amidst towers of colour glaring upward to a sky she knew, but didn’t feel familiar under. California felt further away than ever. And she’d recently been to hell.

The [i]rest[/i] of Buffy arrived seconds later; with a whoosh, it felt like her spirit aligned back with her body, her stomach having turned around on the way and she exhaled a long breath; her first teleport this far. What the Amazons had given her should have balanced her, and then it occurred to her that the Amazons had probably lied. Wouldn’t have been the first time she’d trusted the wrong people with mystical accessories. Not to mention that they never matched. The bracers around her wrists that were so garish and golden and unlike her and the headpiece even more so.

She’d felt the same way about the Scythe not too long ago; and now it fit her grip as much as any stake ever had.

Her senses settled, and she found her equilibrium in the concrete jungle as a roar rang out from her right; her head turned and she was immediately alert to it; ducking into a roll away as rubble was flung from the thrash of a tail. It all exploded outward, but the debris never hit her. It just rang out loud and metallic against the bracers. Okay, so they [i]coul[/i] be useful. With a  surprised blink, Buffy leapt back up, traces and wisps of Willow’s magic shimmering against the bracers and headpiece and pulling her back into focus to sharpen everything.

She took in the size of the beast. Cordelia’s vision had been true alright, and she hadn’t been exaggerating – this was a beast of such scale it would easily be like “Mayor-on-Ascension-Day levels of nightmare” and then some. If anything, Cordelia had undersold it Buffy decided with a shrug as her face turned to one of tightened worry. “That’s a whole lot of beast,” she murmured as a blur streaked across her vision. Something, or someone, slammed against the thing with enough force to turn it before they were immediately swatted against La Roche Posay’s latest campaign. 

Buffy blinked again. “...Huh.”

There had been no mention of others in the vision.

“Cavalry’s already here I see,” she muttered to herself as she stepped forward, the Scythe rising up into guard. “I was only… a few minutes late,” she added with a pout but before long, the beast had turned her way with an expression that wasn’t difficult to read as anger. Whatever superboy had done to it, was about to be incurred upon her and probably twofold. Its draconic face and eyes laced with hatred that bore down upon the Slayer as if for a moment it sensed the challenge of a prophetic foe and regarded her with a moment of pause, but only for a moment; the creature was set upon someone else with focus and drive and it was about to smash past her to get there. 

Buffy didn’t move. Not at first. She watched. Watched the way its left leg moved first and the way that whatever had already been done to it had weakened the weight-bearing right. The way it shifted beneath its own scale into the furred body; it’s coil before release. There was a tell in it’s shoulder.

Demons. Beasts. Apocalypse-adjacent uglies?

“Yeah,” she murmured as her grip tightened on the Scythe. “I know your type.” She moved in. Not away and not back, but she took a pivot on her heel and slipped inside the arc of its strike, a rush of displaced air whipped her hair back and then she was beneath it, and just inside its reach where something that big couldn’t easily adjust; the Scythe flashed. The blade met scale and then met fur with a ringing crack, blood flaring on the impact as she drove the blade across its forelimb. A precise, Slayer’s strike. The Beast felt it, and roared in a different pitch as it limb buckled as it stepped down onto its weight again; not broken, but not untouched.

“Alright,” she breathed out. “Good news, you’re stab-able.”

From beyond her eyeline something glinted against the lights in the near distance and drew her attention. A man with a sword. 

“Aaaaaannnd I’m guessing he knows that too,” she said, “glad someone else here does.” She readied herself for her next attack.


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