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beer_good_foamyTitle: The Return of the Son of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons
Author: Beer Good (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
beer_good_foamy)
Rating: PG13
Fandom/timeline: Buffy, s3: "Amends". Except Dawn is in it.
Word Count: ~1700
Characters: Buffy, Faith, Giles
Disclaimer:: The characters belong to Joss, yada yada.
Warning: ***Shameless national stereotyping.***
Summary: It's Christmas in Sunnydale, Angel has been talked down from the hill and awww, isn't all that snow pretty. That can't be a bad thing, can it? I mean, this is Sunnydale, where the supernatural is always helpful and it's not like magical snow instantly covering the entire town could possibly herald the arrival of... FLESH-EATING ZOMBIE SNOWMEN?!?
Awake, you scary great old ones, let everything dismay
Remember, great Cthulhu shall rise up from R'lyeh
To kill us all with tentacles if we should go his way
Oh, tidings of madness and woe, madness and woe
Oh, tidings of madness and woe!
- The Arkham Carolers
Chapter 1: It Came Upon A Morning Clear
Chapter 2: Stalkin' In A Winter Wonderland
Chapter 3: Now I Have A Machine Gun, Ho Ho Ho
"Look, what the hell is your problem, B?" The discussion had escalated to the point where Faith had almost forgotten that she was dressed like an extra from a Goldie Hawn movie. "All I'm saying is that if you'd told someone what was going on -"
"I did. I told Giles. Who else was I supposed to tell? Especially considering how you reacted last time you thought Angel might be going bad?"
"So I tried to slay a vampire. I don't know what I was thinking." Faith rolled her eyes. "'Sides, I said I was sorry."
"No you didn't."
Faith paused, rewinding. "...OK, good point. Well, I would have, but -"
"...but you just happened to leave town with a biker or whatever it is you do. And left me to clean up the mess."
"Well, you did kill my… Whatever."
"Miss Post was evil. And trying to kill both of us. I don't get why this is so confusing for you."
"You really have no idea -" Faith raised her voice and then reined herself in. "I just am, OK? Sorry. Can we leave it at that, since I can tell that you're not even gonna listen to anything else?"
"Fine by me. We still need to find your snowman."
Faith rolled her eyes heavenward and started walking again. "So once again, it's my snowman."
Buffy followed, trying to stay one pace ahead so she could look back at Faith. "I'm sorry, now it wasn't you who built it? Well, OK, my mom, and my sister, but you were supposed to -"
"And your stake."
"And my stake." Buffy stopped in front of Faith. "My stake?"
"He needed a nose."
"And you used my stake? You used Mr Pointy?"
"Yeah. So? It's not like we were expecting him to take off with it." Faith crossed her arms over her chest (with some difficulty, since the snow suit made her a little bulkier than usual). "What's the big deal with that stake, anyway? Did it keep you warm on cold nights?"
"It's..." Buffy turned and started walking again, gesturing wildly. "Let's just say that I don't know what's the point of having two Slayers if one of them's just going to go off and nearly get herself killed all the time."
"Woah, I didn't -"
"Also, ewww. And this is California, we don't have cold nights. Usually. Not to mention, oh. Blood."
"Blood?" Faith didn't seem to be sure if that was supposed to be a threat, or...
"Blood." Buffy pointed at something up the road and then quickly walked over to investigate. There was, indeed, a patch of festively red blood in the snow. And leading up to and away from it: "Are those the same tracks the snowman left on our lawn?"
"Can't be." Faith regarded the tracks. "No way I built him that big..." She looked up and down the tracks, then picked up a baseball bat that lay abandoned in the snow. She walked a few yards along the track, put the baseball bat across it as a yardstick, then stepped across and walked back with a sigh. "Great. He's growing."
"That's it," Buffy said. "I think we need Giles."
* * *
Inside Giles' apartment, a certain Christmas spirit had failed utterly to spread, despite the numerous candles burning everywhere to make up for the lack of natural light, which in turn was caused by the fact that his entire building had been snowed in. After trying and failing to get out through the 15 feet of pure white snow that pressed up against both his door and his windows, Giles had accepted his fate and settled down with a pot of tea and some old books on demonic weather conditions. He had spent the last hour finding absolutely no solid leads at all, and just when he thought Christmas would turn out exactly like any other day of the year, he suddenly heard a faint voice.
"GILES?"
He looked up. Was that...?
"GIIIILES! WAKEY WAKEY!"
"Buffy?" He looked around the dark flat, but obviously the door was still shut tight and he was still alone.
"IN THE KITCHEN, GILES. I THINK."
Giles put the book aside and walked into the kitchen, still puzzled. The kitchen was as empty as -
"GILES! UP HERE!"
Oh. He walked over to the stove and answered her. "What on Earth are you doing in my kitchen fan?"
Buffy's voice was muted since she was currently on the roof yelling into a ventilation shaft. "Merry Christmas to you too. And why don't you have a proper chimney? I pity the Santa who tries to climb down this thing."
"I assure you it's perfectly sufficient three hundred and sixty-four days a year, and given that we're in Sunnydale and the true nature of Santa Claws... I mean, Happy Christmas."
Buffy filled him in on what had been going on. "...which is when I... we decided to come see you. And since we couldn't get in, we had to climb up on your roof. Where did all this snow come from anyway?"
"Oh, uh, Canada."
"Huh?"
"Whoever summoned up the snow didn't just create it out of nowhere. According to the BBC World Service, there's a small town in Northern Canada where they suddenly began experiencing very warm weather this morning, after being snowed in for weeks. It seems their snow was sent here in some way."
"Right. So who's behind it, and how do we stop it? And this better not be some metaphorical buddy-cop thing about how me and Faith have to learn the true meaning of Christmas..."
"Oh no, perish the thought... um... did you say you found a baseball bat?"
"Yeah...?"
"A baseball bat... not a cricket bat. Simply not cricket. Hang on." Giles ran into the living room and quickly returned with one of his many tomes on the occult. "Beowulf, a name from English mythology... a snowman built from Canadian snow... a stake given to you by a Jamaican Slayer... a scarf like the one worn by Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor... ketchup, a word originating in Malaysia ... a broom, used in the Scottish game of quidditch... and on Christmas, only twelve days after the feast of Saint Lucia... Don't you see? What they all have in common is the British Commonwealth!"
"...Holy deduction, Batman."
"No, really, it fits this rather peculiar prophecy I stumbled across earlier this morning." He quickly thumbed through the old book. "Ah, yes.
At midwinter, Albion's empire's memories
Will bring a frozen beast to the bright ravine.
The essence of two warriors combined
Atop the monarch's hill the fiend shall conquer.
See?"
"Don't those things usually rhyme?"
"Well, um, it rhymes in Gaelic. But it's the only lead I've been able to find."
"But... why? Did we piss off the spirit of Queen Victoria or something?"
Giles poked his failed attempt at a Christmas pudding, which was still sitting on his stove as a reminder of American shops' lack of proper food, and uttered a silent curse. "I haven't the foggiest."
"Oh well. So does this mean Angel had nothing to do with it?"
"Hmmm? Oh yes, Angel is Irish, is he not? They're not in the commonwealth, so if my theory is correct..."
"Told ya."
"Anyway," Giles continued, "if I'm right you should find, um, Beowulf on 'the monarch's hill'... wherever that may be."
"I think I have an idea."
* * *
"Kingman's Bluff." Buffy pointed up the steep hill, which was now covered in snow and looked like it should be swarming with kids on toboggans. Then she did a couple of jumping jacks to keep warm; it was really getting cold now.
Faith wiped some snow from her face and peered up the hill. "I dunno about you, but I don't see a huge snowman anywhere. You sure there isn't a Prince's Peak or a Count's Cliff or something somewhere?"
"Maybe he's not here yet. I guess we could walk up to the peak and see if we can see anyth-"
THUMPETTY THUMP THUMP.
They had assumed they'd find Beowulf on top of the hill. They hadn't expected him to be the top of the hill. The snowman moved slowly, having grown to ridiculous proportions. The broom looked like a toothpick in one of his arms, which he'd somehow replaced with uprooted trees that he used to pile more snow onto himself.
"He's big." Faith swallowed. "Any chance you got a flamethrower in that bag of yours?"
"Ooooh. Hang on." Buffy quickly took off her mittens, unshouldered her weapons bag and unzipped it. "I brought an old birthday gift.".
"So you're, what, re-gifting now? What -" Faith's jaw dropped when she saw what Buffy pulled out of the bag. "Woah. Is that a fuckin' bazooka?"
"Yup. I had a feeling it might be useful."
Faith just stared, looking the weapon up and down with undisguised admiration. "You know, B, I may have been completely wrong about you."
Buffy smiled and lifted the rocket launcher to her shoulder, then flipped the safety switch and took aim. Which was a lot harder than last time, since the snow was once again leaking into her boots, her nose was freezing up and her fingers were going numb from the cold.
Then a soft hand closed over hers, rubbing her knuckles until the blood started flowing again. Buffy shot Faith a curious look and got a smile in return as Faith put up her other hand to steady the shaking barrel of the rocket launcher. They were so close, the mist from their breath hung like a soft fluffy cloud between them. "Essence combined, right?"
"Huh? Oh. The prophecy. Right."
They both held the rocket launcher steady, aiming it at Beowulf's head. "Yo! Wolf-face!" The snowman turned towards them and seemed to cock his head in curiosity, but had no time to do anything else before they both pushed the trigger. A long tongue of fire shot out the back of the bazooka, melting the snow behind them and singeing the grass beneath, and the armour-piercing rocket took flight, heading straight for the giant snow monster. For a fraction of a second, it seemed to almost hang in the air above the cliff
On to chapter 4: Christmas Number One
Author: Beer Good (
beer_good_foamy) Rating: PG13
Fandom/timeline: Buffy, s3: "Amends". Except Dawn is in it.
Word Count: ~1700
Characters: Buffy, Faith, Giles
Disclaimer:: The characters belong to Joss, yada yada.
Warning: ***Shameless national stereotyping.***
Summary: It's Christmas in Sunnydale, Angel has been talked down from the hill and awww, isn't all that snow pretty. That can't be a bad thing, can it? I mean, this is Sunnydale, where the supernatural is always helpful and it's not like magical snow instantly covering the entire town could possibly herald the arrival of... FLESH-EATING ZOMBIE SNOWMEN?!?
Awake, you scary great old ones, let everything dismay
Remember, great Cthulhu shall rise up from R'lyeh
To kill us all with tentacles if we should go his way
Oh, tidings of madness and woe, madness and woe
Oh, tidings of madness and woe!
- The Arkham Carolers
Chapter 1: It Came Upon A Morning Clear
Chapter 2: Stalkin' In A Winter Wonderland
Chapter 3: Now I Have A Machine Gun, Ho Ho Ho
"Look, what the hell is your problem, B?" The discussion had escalated to the point where Faith had almost forgotten that she was dressed like an extra from a Goldie Hawn movie. "All I'm saying is that if you'd told someone what was going on -"
"I did. I told Giles. Who else was I supposed to tell? Especially considering how you reacted last time you thought Angel might be going bad?"
"So I tried to slay a vampire. I don't know what I was thinking." Faith rolled her eyes. "'Sides, I said I was sorry."
"No you didn't."
Faith paused, rewinding. "...OK, good point. Well, I would have, but -"
"...but you just happened to leave town with a biker or whatever it is you do. And left me to clean up the mess."
"Well, you did kill my… Whatever."
"Miss Post was evil. And trying to kill both of us. I don't get why this is so confusing for you."
"You really have no idea -" Faith raised her voice and then reined herself in. "I just am, OK? Sorry. Can we leave it at that, since I can tell that you're not even gonna listen to anything else?"
"Fine by me. We still need to find your snowman."
Faith rolled her eyes heavenward and started walking again. "So once again, it's my snowman."
Buffy followed, trying to stay one pace ahead so she could look back at Faith. "I'm sorry, now it wasn't you who built it? Well, OK, my mom, and my sister, but you were supposed to -"
"And your stake."
"And my stake." Buffy stopped in front of Faith. "My stake?"
"He needed a nose."
"And you used my stake? You used Mr Pointy?"
"Yeah. So? It's not like we were expecting him to take off with it." Faith crossed her arms over her chest (with some difficulty, since the snow suit made her a little bulkier than usual). "What's the big deal with that stake, anyway? Did it keep you warm on cold nights?"
"It's..." Buffy turned and started walking again, gesturing wildly. "Let's just say that I don't know what's the point of having two Slayers if one of them's just going to go off and nearly get herself killed all the time."
"Woah, I didn't -"
"Also, ewww. And this is California, we don't have cold nights. Usually. Not to mention, oh. Blood."
"Blood?" Faith didn't seem to be sure if that was supposed to be a threat, or...
"Blood." Buffy pointed at something up the road and then quickly walked over to investigate. There was, indeed, a patch of festively red blood in the snow. And leading up to and away from it: "Are those the same tracks the snowman left on our lawn?"
"Can't be." Faith regarded the tracks. "No way I built him that big..." She looked up and down the tracks, then picked up a baseball bat that lay abandoned in the snow. She walked a few yards along the track, put the baseball bat across it as a yardstick, then stepped across and walked back with a sigh. "Great. He's growing."
"That's it," Buffy said. "I think we need Giles."
Inside Giles' apartment, a certain Christmas spirit had failed utterly to spread, despite the numerous candles burning everywhere to make up for the lack of natural light, which in turn was caused by the fact that his entire building had been snowed in. After trying and failing to get out through the 15 feet of pure white snow that pressed up against both his door and his windows, Giles had accepted his fate and settled down with a pot of tea and some old books on demonic weather conditions. He had spent the last hour finding absolutely no solid leads at all, and just when he thought Christmas would turn out exactly like any other day of the year, he suddenly heard a faint voice.
"GILES?"
He looked up. Was that...?
"GIIIILES! WAKEY WAKEY!"
"Buffy?" He looked around the dark flat, but obviously the door was still shut tight and he was still alone.
"IN THE KITCHEN, GILES. I THINK."
Giles put the book aside and walked into the kitchen, still puzzled. The kitchen was as empty as -
"GILES! UP HERE!"
Oh. He walked over to the stove and answered her. "What on Earth are you doing in my kitchen fan?"
Buffy's voice was muted since she was currently on the roof yelling into a ventilation shaft. "Merry Christmas to you too. And why don't you have a proper chimney? I pity the Santa who tries to climb down this thing."
"I assure you it's perfectly sufficient three hundred and sixty-four days a year, and given that we're in Sunnydale and the true nature of Santa Claws... I mean, Happy Christmas."
Buffy filled him in on what had been going on. "...which is when I... we decided to come see you. And since we couldn't get in, we had to climb up on your roof. Where did all this snow come from anyway?"
"Oh, uh, Canada."
"Huh?"
"Whoever summoned up the snow didn't just create it out of nowhere. According to the BBC World Service, there's a small town in Northern Canada where they suddenly began experiencing very warm weather this morning, after being snowed in for weeks. It seems their snow was sent here in some way."
"Right. So who's behind it, and how do we stop it? And this better not be some metaphorical buddy-cop thing about how me and Faith have to learn the true meaning of Christmas..."
"Oh no, perish the thought... um... did you say you found a baseball bat?"
"Yeah...?"
"A baseball bat... not a cricket bat. Simply not cricket. Hang on." Giles ran into the living room and quickly returned with one of his many tomes on the occult. "Beowulf, a name from English mythology... a snowman built from Canadian snow... a stake given to you by a Jamaican Slayer... a scarf like the one worn by Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor... ketchup, a word originating in Malaysia ... a broom, used in the Scottish game of quidditch... and on Christmas, only twelve days after the feast of Saint Lucia... Don't you see? What they all have in common is the British Commonwealth!"
"...Holy deduction, Batman."
"No, really, it fits this rather peculiar prophecy I stumbled across earlier this morning." He quickly thumbed through the old book. "Ah, yes.
At midwinter, Albion's empire's memories
Will bring a frozen beast to the bright ravine.
The essence of two warriors combined
Atop the monarch's hill the fiend shall conquer.
See?"
"Don't those things usually rhyme?"
"Well, um, it rhymes in Gaelic. But it's the only lead I've been able to find."
"But... why? Did we piss off the spirit of Queen Victoria or something?"
Giles poked his failed attempt at a Christmas pudding, which was still sitting on his stove as a reminder of American shops' lack of proper food, and uttered a silent curse. "I haven't the foggiest."
"Oh well. So does this mean Angel had nothing to do with it?"
"Hmmm? Oh yes, Angel is Irish, is he not? They're not in the commonwealth, so if my theory is correct..."
"Told ya."
"Anyway," Giles continued, "if I'm right you should find, um, Beowulf on 'the monarch's hill'... wherever that may be."
"I think I have an idea."
"Kingman's Bluff." Buffy pointed up the steep hill, which was now covered in snow and looked like it should be swarming with kids on toboggans. Then she did a couple of jumping jacks to keep warm; it was really getting cold now.
Faith wiped some snow from her face and peered up the hill. "I dunno about you, but I don't see a huge snowman anywhere. You sure there isn't a Prince's Peak or a Count's Cliff or something somewhere?"
"Maybe he's not here yet. I guess we could walk up to the peak and see if we can see anyth-"
THUMPETTY THUMP THUMP.
They had assumed they'd find Beowulf on top of the hill. They hadn't expected him to be the top of the hill. The snowman moved slowly, having grown to ridiculous proportions. The broom looked like a toothpick in one of his arms, which he'd somehow replaced with uprooted trees that he used to pile more snow onto himself.
"He's big." Faith swallowed. "Any chance you got a flamethrower in that bag of yours?"
"Ooooh. Hang on." Buffy quickly took off her mittens, unshouldered her weapons bag and unzipped it. "I brought an old birthday gift.".
"So you're, what, re-gifting now? What -" Faith's jaw dropped when she saw what Buffy pulled out of the bag. "Woah. Is that a fuckin' bazooka?"
"Yup. I had a feeling it might be useful."
Faith just stared, looking the weapon up and down with undisguised admiration. "You know, B, I may have been completely wrong about you."
Buffy smiled and lifted the rocket launcher to her shoulder, then flipped the safety switch and took aim. Which was a lot harder than last time, since the snow was once again leaking into her boots, her nose was freezing up and her fingers were going numb from the cold.
Then a soft hand closed over hers, rubbing her knuckles until the blood started flowing again. Buffy shot Faith a curious look and got a smile in return as Faith put up her other hand to steady the shaking barrel of the rocket launcher. They were so close, the mist from their breath hung like a soft fluffy cloud between them. "Essence combined, right?"
"Huh? Oh. The prophecy. Right."
They both held the rocket launcher steady, aiming it at Beowulf's head. "Yo! Wolf-face!" The snowman turned towards them and seemed to cock his head in curiosity, but had no time to do anything else before they both pushed the trigger. A long tongue of fire shot out the back of the bazooka, melting the snow behind them and singeing the grass beneath, and the armour-piercing rocket took flight, heading straight for the giant snow monster. For a fraction of a second, it seemed to almost hang in the air above the cliff
On to chapter 4: Christmas Number One
no subject
Date: 2009-12-15 12:04 am (UTC)Double style points for combining rocket launcher fic with a "Mister Pointy the sex toy" reference.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-15 12:54 am (UTC)But of course it is. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CYwNWHZuT0) And if anyone was going to spot it, I figured it might be you.