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TITLE: Dual Destiny
FANDOMS: Early Edition & Buffy, the Vampire Slayer
RATING: PG-13
SETTING: After the series finales of both series.
It always made Gary nervous when the paper gave him a light day. Marissa said that he should appreciate it for what it was - a respite from his usual hectic schedule of saves and warnings. Nevertheless, tonight, Gary couldn’t stop the feeling that he’d missed something.
It was 11 pm, and Gary knew he should already be asleep. When the paper came tomorrow, he’d be cranky for sure. But he couldn’t get his mind to stop whirring. He sighed and opened the paper once again, paging through the middle section. He was stopped by an article that he knew hadn’t been there the last time he looked - “Teenager Dies Under Mysterious Circumstances”.
Gary read the article, becoming more and more concerned. Apparently, a teenage girl would die tonight in Rosehill Cemetery. What was a teenage girl doing in a cemetery at night? Gary thought. Was this some sort of goth love thing? He shook his head, pulling on his coat and scarf. He searched through a drawer and came up with a flashlight - fortunately, the batteries still worked. Folding the paper in his hands, he left for the cemetery.
Gary stamped his feet, trying to warm himself up in the chill of the night. The paper had been fairly vague on details, and he wondered how long he’d have to wait for the girl and whoever was trying to kill her. He really didn’t want to spend all night in a cemetery.
He decided to cross through the cemetery again, see if he could spot anyone. Maybe he could stop this thing even before it got started. As he rounded the corner of a mausoleum, Gary finally saw the girl - or at least a girl. Gary supposed it was the girl, because he couldn’t imagine too many teenagers came to cemeteries at night. He walked quickly in her direction, but she was walking quickly, too.
Suddenly, a man popped out of the darkness, tackling the girl to the ground.
“Hey! Hey!” Gary called, running towards the two. Maybe he’d get lucky and scare the guy off before-
The girl struggled, flipping her captor so that he was on the ground below her. Gary saw her take something - he wasn’t sure what - out of her back pocket, but the man held her hands at bay. Then, the man flipped them over again so that the girl was below him.
Gary finally reached the pair and grabbed the guy by the shoulders. Gary quickly realized that the other guy was strong - way stronger than he looked. He kept his arms locked on the girl even as Gary tried to pull him away. Gary changed tactics, swinging an elbow into the man’s abdomen. But the man reached out a hand and slapped Gary away as if he were nothing more than a fly.
Gary landed hard on the ground a few feet away. He shook his head, wondering if he was hallucinating or something. When the assailant had looked up at him, Gary could’ve sworn the guy had fangs.
The girl managed to land a knee to the guy’s groin, and she flipped them both back over, still struggling to get the hand holding whatever it was free. Gary reentered the fray, stomping down on the guy’s shoulder, causing him to release the girl’s hand. In one swift move, the girl forced what looked like a large tent peg into the man’s chest. The man disappeared into dust.
Gary blinked. Was he dreaming? As a guy who got tomorrow’s newspaper a day early, he thought he’d just about seen it all, but this was a new one on him. And then the girl looked up at him, and it got even weirder.
“Hi, Gary,” said the girl he now recognized as Lindsey Romick.
“Lindsey fights vampires?” Marissa asked. It was the next morning, and Gary had told Marissa the story over coffee.
“Yeah. I wouldn’t believe it unless I had seen it with my own eyes,” Gary said, refilling his coffee mug. “I mean, vampires and demons are supposed to just be stories.”
“Some people would say getting tomorrow’s newspaper today is just a story,” Marissa said. “My pastor talked just the other week about spiritual warfare. I never really thought of it as a physical fight before, but I guess there’s no reason it shouldn’t be.”
Gary sighed. “Yeah, I guess. I just -- I feel bad for her. The paper is plenty to deal with on its own, without having to deal with supernatural forces of evil.”
“Gary, you know you couldn’t have chosen anyone else to get the paper,” Marissa said. “It’s her destiny - just like it was yours. You can’t feel guilty about this. You didn’t even know that vampires existed, let alone that she was some sort of vampire hunter.”
Gary stirred his coffee. “I just wish she had somebody to help her out with it - all of it. I mean, I have you. And maybe I could help her out, except I don’t know anything about vampires or demons. Plus, it’s not like I’m gonna be around forever.”
Marissa laid a hand on Gary’s arm. “It’ll be okay, Gary. You’ll see.”
Gary made a non-committal noise, opening his paper again. “Oh, no,” he said.
“What is it?” Marissa asked.
“Another article about Lindsey. This time it even names her,” Gary said. He put the paper down, reading the article more closely. “She’s going to die tonight -- this article says it’s a gang riot, but...”
Marissa nodded. “Well, at least you have some forewarning of what you’ll be facing, this time.”
Gary went to visit Lindsey that afternoon. He tried to warn her about what the paper said, even explaining to her what the paper was and what it could do. However, Lindsey refused to skip her rounds of the graveyards that night.
“Gary, if I don’t go, it could be that someone else would die,” Lindsey said. “I can’t just let the vampires and other creeps have a free-for-all night.”
Gary nodded. “I don’t think I really expected you to say any different,” he said. “But I’m going with you.”
“Gary, no! I don’t want you to get hurt, too,” she said.
He just shrugged. “I get this paper for a reason, just like you have your super-strength for a reason. Where it leads, I follow.”
They reached an uneasy truce - neither wanted the other to go, but both recognized that they couldn’t stop the other from going.
That night, Gary and Lindsey walked into Graceland cemetery together. Lindsey had provided Gary with weapons - a stake and a bottle of holy water.
“Hey, follow my lead, okay?” Lindsey asked.
Gary nodded. Once again, the paper had been less forthcoming than he might have liked. He knew it would go down in this cemetery - or at least this had been where her body had been found - but otherwise, there weren’t too many details.
After an interminable time walking the graveyard, two vampires popped out of the bushes in front of them.
“Slayer,” one of them said. His smile revealed tell-tale fangs.
“Vampire,” Lindsey responded, bringing her stake up and ready.
The other vampire, a female, just smiled. “Oh, darling. Why make this hard for yourself?”
There was movement, and suddenly two more vampires appeared, one on either side of him and Lindsey. Gary turned his head and saw two vampires behind them, as well. He swallowed, nervous.
Lindsey, on the other hand, at least seemed unfazed. “You know, my grandpa used to say that all the time.” Suddenly, she sprang into action, killing the vampire nearest her right arm with one hard swing of her stake.
The vampire closest to Gary reached out to grab him, but Gary quickly ducked and wove out of the vampire’s grasp. Turning, Gary delivered a quick, fatal blow to the vampire’s heart. Just then, he was grabbed from behind. He struggled, but the vampire was a lot stronger than he was. Looking over, he saw Lindsey engaged in an intense hand-to-hand battle with the female vampire. But there was another vampire just about ready to grab Lindsey, too.
“Lindsey, look out!” Gary called. Lindsey whipped around, turning the vampire that had been behind her into dust with one thrust. Then, she turned back to the female vampire, resuming combat without missing a beat.
Gary struggled to get out of his captor’s grasp again. Suddenly, the grasp went away as the vampire turned to dust. Gary turned and saw a young man with an eyepatch holding a stake. The man grinned, waving Gary over to fight the remaining vampires.
Gary and the man with the eyepatch managed to kill two vampires without much fuss. By silent agreement, Gary threw his holy water at one vampire. The man with the eyepatch quickly staked it before it could lash out. Then, Gary tackled a vampire and held it down while the other man staked it.
Finally, they were left breathing hard with only one vampire - the female, who Lindsey was still locked in combat with. Gary got up and started walking towards the pair, but the other man stopped him. “Let her do it,” he said.
“But --” Gary said, reaching for his paper -- or at least, where his paper usually was. He realized he’d lost it somewhere in the scuffle.
The two men watched the continuing battle. Lindsey delivered a head-butt to the vampire, and then suddenly, the vampire disappeared into dust.
“Nice job,” the man with the eyepatch said. “You got a good place that sells donuts around here?”
“So, who are you? What are you doing here?” Gary said as they sat in an all-night cafe.
“I could ask the same of you,” the man with the eyepatch said. He took another bite of his donut, then carefully chewed and swallowed it before continuing. “I wish Giles were here - he was always good at that speech thing. Basically, it goes like this: Vampires, demons, werewolves... all that stuff is real. Except leprechauns. I think.”
Gary raised an eyebrow, but Lindsey smiled over her mocha.
“Right, anyway. A long, long time ago, these dudes made it so that one girl would have to fight all that bad stuff. She was called the Slayer. Through the years, the power passed from one girl to another, on and on. But then, one Slayer changed all that - my friend Buffy. She made it so that all the girls who could be Slayers, would be. They’d all share the power.”
Lindsey tilted her head. “Well, that explains why I can fight these things... but, where do you come in?”
“I’m getting to that part. The guys who created the Slayer were called Watchers. Watchers through the years researched, and trained the Slayer, and helped her fight the bad stuff. That’s what I’m here to do for you.”
The three were silent for a time, the man in the eyepatch eating his donut as the other two sipped their drinks.
“I’m Lindsey,” Lindsey said. “If you didn’t know that. This is... my friend, Gary.”
“Xander. Harris. Nice to meet you,” Xander said. “I think this is yours,” he said, handing the newspaper to Gary.
“Yeah,” Gary said, making a decision. “That’s... you’re not the only one with a destiny for Lindsey,” he said. He proceeded to tell Xander about the paper, and both of them about Lindsey's coming destiny with it.
“So, Xander’s going to train Lindsey, do research for her, and help her fight the vampires,” Gary said.
“And you?” Marissa asked.
“I’m going to stay out of it,” Gary said. “Unless they’re in the paper. Or something that seems like it might be connected. Xander told me the police like to blame it on drugs and gangs. But otherwise, I can’t keep going to bed after midnight and getting up at six-thirty.”
Marissa smiled. “It sounds to me like Xander and Lindsey have the night covered. You worry about what’s happening during the day."
Gary yawned. "Yeah. It looks like things are going kind of slow for the moment, so I'm going to catch a short nap before my next save."
"Okay," Marissa responded. Gary started out of the office. "And Gary --" Gary turned back to her-- "I told you it would turn out alright.”
FANDOMS: Early Edition & Buffy, the Vampire Slayer
RATING: PG-13
SETTING: After the series finales of both series.
It always made Gary nervous when the paper gave him a light day. Marissa said that he should appreciate it for what it was - a respite from his usual hectic schedule of saves and warnings. Nevertheless, tonight, Gary couldn’t stop the feeling that he’d missed something.
It was 11 pm, and Gary knew he should already be asleep. When the paper came tomorrow, he’d be cranky for sure. But he couldn’t get his mind to stop whirring. He sighed and opened the paper once again, paging through the middle section. He was stopped by an article that he knew hadn’t been there the last time he looked - “Teenager Dies Under Mysterious Circumstances”.
Gary read the article, becoming more and more concerned. Apparently, a teenage girl would die tonight in Rosehill Cemetery. What was a teenage girl doing in a cemetery at night? Gary thought. Was this some sort of goth love thing? He shook his head, pulling on his coat and scarf. He searched through a drawer and came up with a flashlight - fortunately, the batteries still worked. Folding the paper in his hands, he left for the cemetery.
Gary stamped his feet, trying to warm himself up in the chill of the night. The paper had been fairly vague on details, and he wondered how long he’d have to wait for the girl and whoever was trying to kill her. He really didn’t want to spend all night in a cemetery.
He decided to cross through the cemetery again, see if he could spot anyone. Maybe he could stop this thing even before it got started. As he rounded the corner of a mausoleum, Gary finally saw the girl - or at least a girl. Gary supposed it was the girl, because he couldn’t imagine too many teenagers came to cemeteries at night. He walked quickly in her direction, but she was walking quickly, too.
Suddenly, a man popped out of the darkness, tackling the girl to the ground.
“Hey! Hey!” Gary called, running towards the two. Maybe he’d get lucky and scare the guy off before-
The girl struggled, flipping her captor so that he was on the ground below her. Gary saw her take something - he wasn’t sure what - out of her back pocket, but the man held her hands at bay. Then, the man flipped them over again so that the girl was below him.
Gary finally reached the pair and grabbed the guy by the shoulders. Gary quickly realized that the other guy was strong - way stronger than he looked. He kept his arms locked on the girl even as Gary tried to pull him away. Gary changed tactics, swinging an elbow into the man’s abdomen. But the man reached out a hand and slapped Gary away as if he were nothing more than a fly.
Gary landed hard on the ground a few feet away. He shook his head, wondering if he was hallucinating or something. When the assailant had looked up at him, Gary could’ve sworn the guy had fangs.
The girl managed to land a knee to the guy’s groin, and she flipped them both back over, still struggling to get the hand holding whatever it was free. Gary reentered the fray, stomping down on the guy’s shoulder, causing him to release the girl’s hand. In one swift move, the girl forced what looked like a large tent peg into the man’s chest. The man disappeared into dust.
Gary blinked. Was he dreaming? As a guy who got tomorrow’s newspaper a day early, he thought he’d just about seen it all, but this was a new one on him. And then the girl looked up at him, and it got even weirder.
“Hi, Gary,” said the girl he now recognized as Lindsey Romick.
“Lindsey fights vampires?” Marissa asked. It was the next morning, and Gary had told Marissa the story over coffee.
“Yeah. I wouldn’t believe it unless I had seen it with my own eyes,” Gary said, refilling his coffee mug. “I mean, vampires and demons are supposed to just be stories.”
“Some people would say getting tomorrow’s newspaper today is just a story,” Marissa said. “My pastor talked just the other week about spiritual warfare. I never really thought of it as a physical fight before, but I guess there’s no reason it shouldn’t be.”
Gary sighed. “Yeah, I guess. I just -- I feel bad for her. The paper is plenty to deal with on its own, without having to deal with supernatural forces of evil.”
“Gary, you know you couldn’t have chosen anyone else to get the paper,” Marissa said. “It’s her destiny - just like it was yours. You can’t feel guilty about this. You didn’t even know that vampires existed, let alone that she was some sort of vampire hunter.”
Gary stirred his coffee. “I just wish she had somebody to help her out with it - all of it. I mean, I have you. And maybe I could help her out, except I don’t know anything about vampires or demons. Plus, it’s not like I’m gonna be around forever.”
Marissa laid a hand on Gary’s arm. “It’ll be okay, Gary. You’ll see.”
Gary made a non-committal noise, opening his paper again. “Oh, no,” he said.
“What is it?” Marissa asked.
“Another article about Lindsey. This time it even names her,” Gary said. He put the paper down, reading the article more closely. “She’s going to die tonight -- this article says it’s a gang riot, but...”
Marissa nodded. “Well, at least you have some forewarning of what you’ll be facing, this time.”
Gary went to visit Lindsey that afternoon. He tried to warn her about what the paper said, even explaining to her what the paper was and what it could do. However, Lindsey refused to skip her rounds of the graveyards that night.
“Gary, if I don’t go, it could be that someone else would die,” Lindsey said. “I can’t just let the vampires and other creeps have a free-for-all night.”
Gary nodded. “I don’t think I really expected you to say any different,” he said. “But I’m going with you.”
“Gary, no! I don’t want you to get hurt, too,” she said.
He just shrugged. “I get this paper for a reason, just like you have your super-strength for a reason. Where it leads, I follow.”
They reached an uneasy truce - neither wanted the other to go, but both recognized that they couldn’t stop the other from going.
That night, Gary and Lindsey walked into Graceland cemetery together. Lindsey had provided Gary with weapons - a stake and a bottle of holy water.
“Hey, follow my lead, okay?” Lindsey asked.
Gary nodded. Once again, the paper had been less forthcoming than he might have liked. He knew it would go down in this cemetery - or at least this had been where her body had been found - but otherwise, there weren’t too many details.
After an interminable time walking the graveyard, two vampires popped out of the bushes in front of them.
“Slayer,” one of them said. His smile revealed tell-tale fangs.
“Vampire,” Lindsey responded, bringing her stake up and ready.
The other vampire, a female, just smiled. “Oh, darling. Why make this hard for yourself?”
There was movement, and suddenly two more vampires appeared, one on either side of him and Lindsey. Gary turned his head and saw two vampires behind them, as well. He swallowed, nervous.
Lindsey, on the other hand, at least seemed unfazed. “You know, my grandpa used to say that all the time.” Suddenly, she sprang into action, killing the vampire nearest her right arm with one hard swing of her stake.
The vampire closest to Gary reached out to grab him, but Gary quickly ducked and wove out of the vampire’s grasp. Turning, Gary delivered a quick, fatal blow to the vampire’s heart. Just then, he was grabbed from behind. He struggled, but the vampire was a lot stronger than he was. Looking over, he saw Lindsey engaged in an intense hand-to-hand battle with the female vampire. But there was another vampire just about ready to grab Lindsey, too.
“Lindsey, look out!” Gary called. Lindsey whipped around, turning the vampire that had been behind her into dust with one thrust. Then, she turned back to the female vampire, resuming combat without missing a beat.
Gary struggled to get out of his captor’s grasp again. Suddenly, the grasp went away as the vampire turned to dust. Gary turned and saw a young man with an eyepatch holding a stake. The man grinned, waving Gary over to fight the remaining vampires.
Gary and the man with the eyepatch managed to kill two vampires without much fuss. By silent agreement, Gary threw his holy water at one vampire. The man with the eyepatch quickly staked it before it could lash out. Then, Gary tackled a vampire and held it down while the other man staked it.
Finally, they were left breathing hard with only one vampire - the female, who Lindsey was still locked in combat with. Gary got up and started walking towards the pair, but the other man stopped him. “Let her do it,” he said.
“But --” Gary said, reaching for his paper -- or at least, where his paper usually was. He realized he’d lost it somewhere in the scuffle.
The two men watched the continuing battle. Lindsey delivered a head-butt to the vampire, and then suddenly, the vampire disappeared into dust.
“Nice job,” the man with the eyepatch said. “You got a good place that sells donuts around here?”
“So, who are you? What are you doing here?” Gary said as they sat in an all-night cafe.
“I could ask the same of you,” the man with the eyepatch said. He took another bite of his donut, then carefully chewed and swallowed it before continuing. “I wish Giles were here - he was always good at that speech thing. Basically, it goes like this: Vampires, demons, werewolves... all that stuff is real. Except leprechauns. I think.”
Gary raised an eyebrow, but Lindsey smiled over her mocha.
“Right, anyway. A long, long time ago, these dudes made it so that one girl would have to fight all that bad stuff. She was called the Slayer. Through the years, the power passed from one girl to another, on and on. But then, one Slayer changed all that - my friend Buffy. She made it so that all the girls who could be Slayers, would be. They’d all share the power.”
Lindsey tilted her head. “Well, that explains why I can fight these things... but, where do you come in?”
“I’m getting to that part. The guys who created the Slayer were called Watchers. Watchers through the years researched, and trained the Slayer, and helped her fight the bad stuff. That’s what I’m here to do for you.”
The three were silent for a time, the man in the eyepatch eating his donut as the other two sipped their drinks.
“I’m Lindsey,” Lindsey said. “If you didn’t know that. This is... my friend, Gary.”
“Xander. Harris. Nice to meet you,” Xander said. “I think this is yours,” he said, handing the newspaper to Gary.
“Yeah,” Gary said, making a decision. “That’s... you’re not the only one with a destiny for Lindsey,” he said. He proceeded to tell Xander about the paper, and both of them about Lindsey's coming destiny with it.
“So, Xander’s going to train Lindsey, do research for her, and help her fight the vampires,” Gary said.
“And you?” Marissa asked.
“I’m going to stay out of it,” Gary said. “Unless they’re in the paper. Or something that seems like it might be connected. Xander told me the police like to blame it on drugs and gangs. But otherwise, I can’t keep going to bed after midnight and getting up at six-thirty.”
Marissa smiled. “It sounds to me like Xander and Lindsey have the night covered. You worry about what’s happening during the day."
Gary yawned. "Yeah. It looks like things are going kind of slow for the moment, so I'm going to catch a short nap before my next save."
"Okay," Marissa responded. Gary started out of the office. "And Gary --" Gary turned back to her-- "I told you it would turn out alright.”