Orb Of Mentez
by Anne-Lise
[reviews]
Giles knocked tentatively on the classroom door.
"I wonder," he asked, "if I could have a quick word with you, Miss Summers?"
"Sure!" Buffy threw him a perky grin. "Class!" she commanded as she rose from her regulation wooden teacher's chair, "Can I trust you to behave yourselves for five little minutes?" She smiled sweetly and followed Giles into the corridor.
"What is it?" she demanded as soon as the classroom door was firmly shut behind her. "You know what those little bastards are like. Give 'em an inch and they take a country..."
"Willow's discovered a nest. She radioed in for backup." Giles said.
"She needs backup? Must be some serious nest." Buffy frowned. Willow hadn't requested backup on an operation since she'd discovered how to crush a vampire's heart by the power of thought alone.
"Quite so," Giles agreed. "Here's the location." He handed her a standard Watcher's Council mission brief. She flipped to page sixteen, Operation Parameters and Objectives.
"Giles! This is in Mexico!" Buffy fumed. "What's Willow doing in Quintanaroo anyway? You know its our anniversary tomorrow! I was looking forward to... unwrapping my present, not having to machete my way into the Yucatan to retrieve it!"
Giles removed his horn-rimmed glasses. "She got a lead on the Orb of Mentez," he replied as he gave his specs a cursory polish. "She thinks its located in the tomb of the High Priest buried within the Incan burial ground marked on the map. Page seventeen."
"And you were going to tell me all this... when, exactly?" Buffy snarled.
"Focus, Buffy!" Giles ordered. "The Apache will be here in twenty minutes, so grab your gear and get ready to roll."
"Yes, boss!" Buffy threw Giles an irreverent salute and ignoring his frown of consternation, marched back into her classroom.
"Class! Listen up!" She clapped her hands and called for order. "Mr. Giles will be taking you for the remainder of this week. I've got to go to Mexico to kick some vampire butt." she explained.
"Wicked!" commented an obnoxious seventh-grader from the third row.
Buffy pressed her hand against the plate set into the wall beside the blackboard. A green scan-line glowed briefly against her palm and the blackboard rose silently into the ceiling revealing her personal armoury and minibar.
Buffy grabbed the standard mission kit, a broad-brimmed hat, a machete, her whip, and an ice-chilled can of Mountain Dew. Then she sauntered back out into the classroom, palmed the access plate to seal away the armoury once more, and left the room to seek out Xander.
As soon as she'd left the room, the obnoxious pest in row three muttered, "Cool!"
"Now settle down, Class!" Giles ordered the awe-struck and enraptured students. "Josie, get rid of that bubblegum. Michael, I saw that! See me after class."
*
Buffy caught up with Xander in the old school hall, where he was attempting to teach Physical Education to truculent six-year-olds.
"I really don't care if you think I'm queer," he chanted as he led them around the mini-assault course. "Your tuition fees keep me in beer! So don't be crude or give me sass... Or my demon lover will kick your..."
"Xander?" Buffy called. "Willow's in trouble! We roll in five."
"You heard her, maggots!" Xander roared. "grab your socks and grab your... pumps! Lesson over!"
"Yay!" screamed the horde as they scampered wildly about.
"Where're we going?" Xander asked as he followed the Slayer up to the school roof. Buffy handed him the mission brief and he skipped to page sixteen.
"Do you think they have Taco Bell in the Yucatan?" he asked.
Buffy shrugged.
*
"Where're you gonna set this crate down?" Xander asked as he peered out through the gunship's window.
"We're not." The pilot, an ex-marine drafted in for this mission by the Watcher's Council, regarded him sternly. "You're parachuting down into that clearing over there. Ever done a drop into dense jungle before, man? Its harsh."
"Oh, yeah." Xander nodded. "I've racked up field time."
Buffy scanned the thick jungle below. "I don't see any clearing," she admitted.
The pilot toggled a switch, and shortly after the jungle lit up like the fourth of July.
"Shee-it!" Xander commented. "Nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning breeze."
Buffy's mouth firmed. "That area of jungle you just decimated," she growled, "contained endangered wildlife, rare trees, and maybe even the cure for cancer."
"Fucked if I care," the pilot said, displaying the pinnacle of American military training that indicated officer material. "Now you've got yourself a landing site."
"My wife cares." Buffy pointed out. "'Cos she's the caring type is my Willow. And if I find out you've made her cry with that stunt you just pulled... I'm going to come find you, wherever you are, and rip you out another asshole."
"Here's your 'chute," Xander smiled cheerfully as he passed her said item. "But I should leave that guy's sturdy butt alone. It looks like its taken more than enough punishment before now."
The Slayer's face creased into a wide grin. "Thanks, Xander." she said as she leaned forward to kiss his cheek. "I can always rely on you to keep my feet on the floor."
"And on that note..." Xander turned and stepped out into space.
Buffy shook her head as Xander's "Whee!" dopplered down into the jungle below.
*
Buffy made with the machete as she searched for Xander in the jungle.
"Up here!" Xander cried. Buffy looked up, and saw Xander hanging happily from a tree.
"Help me down?" he asked.
*
Willow sat in her own little world as she surfed the web on her laptop. The jungle held no horrors for her; She'd cast a generic protection spell around herself that only the largest of jungle mammals could penetrate, and she could hear those coming. In fact, she could hear one now.
"Hut, hut, hut, hut, hut..."
She could recognise Xander's voice anywhere. She smiled as the voice got closer, and rose to her feet as she recognised Buffy's unique whine.
"Why're you shouting 'hut' for?" Buffy moaned.
"Because I'd kill for a pizza!" Xander retorted.
More high-speed undergrowth removal.
"Over here guys!" Willow called, and her smile widened at Buffy's leaf-muffled "Yay!"
Xander's head broke through the undergrowth first, Which was unfortunate, as it wasn't enough of an initial mass to pass through her anti-snake and creepy-thing shield.
*smack*
Xander's body fell into Willow's private clearing as Buffy helped him forward with a friendly punt.
"Hi lover!" she said. "Happy anniversary!"
Buffy shared a wistful kiss, followed by a mango that Willow offered her from the tree she'd grown with the aid of a little magic.
"Its really beautiful here," Xander noted, sitting with his back to a tree-trunk and massaging his sore head.
"Yes," Willow agreed. "It really is. How was your journey?"
"Dull," Buffy described as she chewed on a mango slice. "We had to stop for fuel way too many times. Anyway, what's the sitch with this vampire nest?"
"Oh that." Willow rolled her eyes. "Nothing I couldn't handle really. But I used the excuse for some company. I missed you." She leaned over and kissed Buffy again.
"What about me?" Xander asked as he eyed the smoochies. "Didn't you miss me too?"
"Well," Willow considered, "an extra pair of hands is always useful."
"That's me!" Xander sighed. "Hands guy."
*
"Behave!" Giles cried to the miserable horde of seventh-grade monsters. They ignored him. He wondered, vaguely, how normal schoolteachers fared without Slayer strength or the ability to safely wield an axe in the classroom. A sudden thought struck him. As did a paper aeroplane.
"Field trip!" he shouted. The room went deathly silent. "Let's go to the museum!"
Let there be dust, he prayed.
"Boring!" claimed an obnoxious kid in row three.
"Will there be skellytuns?" asked a forthright little girl with a button nose.
"I do believe there will be skeletons, yes."
"Dead people?"
"I most certainly hope so." Giles agreed wittily, a dangerous act in the company of children.
"Cool!"
"Yay!"
"Yippee!"
"I wanna go weewee!"
Giles' head bounced on the wooden surface of the regulation-issue teacher's desk.
*
"So the plan is: we run blindly through the ruins, stake the vamps, nick the glowing ball, and dash back out again in time for tacos?"
Xander concentrated on The Plan.
"That's the size of it," Willow agreed.
"I like it," Buffy claimed. "Simple, straightforward."
"And insane!" Xander cheered up. "This trip could be fun after all!"
Willow picked up her crossbow and posed. "Lock 'n' load," she said.
*
In the darkness, an evil awoke. Only to fall asleep again. No, something was upsetting the ancient vampire's sleep. A litany of foreign gibberish. Best to just go drain its blood and grab an extra century. *yawn*
"This way!" a male voice called out.
"The Incan carvings say, 'Beware all ye who enter within!'" a female voice pointed out.
"Yeah, well. All pyramids say things like that, don't they?" another female voice queried.
Enough! Grr! Arg! Gah! Ugh!
*
Willow looked at Buffy as the mummified vampire collapsed into dust. "They really don't improve with age, you know."
Buffy nodded. "I noticed."
"Look what I fou..." Xander's voice seemed suddenly very far away.
Buffy looked at the dark square hole in the floor.
"Xander's found a hole," she said.
Willow peered down the hole. "Cooee!" she called.
"I'm okay!" came Xander's echoey voice.
"Did you break anything?" Buffy called down the hole.
Xander took stock. "No, I'm okay!"
Buffy rolled her eyes. "I meant the equipment, moron!"
*
Thirty youngsters threshed their way through Sunnydale's once-quiet museum, screaming like Banshees. To the untrained eye it seemed like the museum was being invaded by Tribbles, albeit with an effect not unlike a combine harvester.
"Come back," Giles whispered softly. Then, nodding at a job well done, he made his way to the curator's office for a quiet chat and a cup of tea.
*
Xander peered about. The light on his mining helmet illuminated dusty yellow walls and those silly carvings Willow kept getting all excited about. Not that he minded; anything that excited Willow was okay by him. He'd never gotten over his schoolboy crushes on the Slayer and her partner, and the fact that they were shacked up together didn't help his state of mind much either.
"What can you see?" Willow's muffled voice came from above.
"Lots of carvings of stick men doing Michael Jackson routines!" Xander shouted back. He grinned in the darkness as he heard Willow's excited squeals. "Oh, and there's a glowing football in the arms of this gooey dead guy."
A pause.
"Gooey?" Buffy shouted. "What do you mean, gooey?"
Xander considered. "You know. Like... Mostly dead."
*
Buffy looked to Willow. "Levitation spell?"
"I really shouldn't. You know I tend to drop things when I'm tired."
"Just me, then. If Xander can survive the fall, hell, I could probably jump down there and not feel it." Buffy gave her love a squeeze as she began to chant. Then her feet left the floor by an inch and she hovered above the hole.
*
Buffy was halfway to terra firma when Willow lost her mental hold and she plummeted the last fifteen feet.
"Ouch!" she cried, although she wasn't really hurt.
"Eek!" Willow shone her torch vaguely into the darkness. "Are you okay?"
"No problem!" The Slayer shouted back. "I landed on Xander! Jump down... I'll catch you."
"Promise?" Willow replied. "I still remember the last time!"
Buffy nodded. Then felt silly because it was too dark to notice. "Yes, I promise."
"Hey you," Buffy smiled as the witch landed snugly in her arms.
"Do you think," Xander asked from underneath the kissing pair, "you could stop standing on me?"
"Oh!" Buffy obliged, hopping off. "Sorry!"
Xander groaned.
*
The obnoxious kid from row three stared at the Incan relics. 'Rod of Velious' one item proclaimed itself to be. This being Sunnydale, there was very little security for such an ancient and mystical item. The little bastard nabbed it and stuffed it into his trouser pocket.
*
"Is it alive?" Willow asked staring at the accurately-described gooey dead person.
Buffy gave her well-worn Mr. Pointy a spin, then thrust it through where the heart should be. Nothing happened, except for a slightly embarrassing 'squelch'.
"Shouldn't think so," she said.
Xander peered closer. There was something about the dead mummy's face, something... he leaned closer.
The eyes on the mummy snapped open and it said, "Waurgh!"
Xander replied in kind, and back-pedalled at supersonic velocity. Buffy made with the kicking.
"Do you think," Buffy huffed as she executed a reverse spin-kick, "you could give me a hand here guys?"
Willow snapped out of her dreamy expression. She loved watching Buffy work. "What do you need?"
"Something pointy, sharp, acidic, deadly... Oof..." Buffy took a fist to her stomach that doubled her over. Willow took a hand-axe from Xander's trembling fingers and threw it on the floor in front of Buffy. The Slayer snatched it up and dismembered the mummy into many little gooey pieces. Then she stamped on the pieces for good measure, in case the religious guys of the ancient Incas'd seen Terminator 2.
"Sorted," she said.
Willow picked up the Orb of Mentez and juggled it. "Ooh! Ah! Hot! Hot!"
Xander, in a rare flash of insight and intelligence, opened a canvas sack for Willow to drop the ball into.
"Job done? Let's get out of here!" Buffy took the lead and stared up at the hole thirty feet above their heads. "Willow..."
"No way, Buffy. There's just no way. I'm too tired."
"Damn girl, we should have thought to drop a rope down." Buffy considered their next move. Then rapidly changed all her options when she heard, in unison, from around a half-dozen throats, "Waurgh!"
*
Now, the average intelligence of a dead person having been locked in the earth for a few thousand years isn't that great. Especially as these were dead priests. (A simple job with no heavy lifting.) So waking up from a rather long sleep to find a small man hiding behind a girl holding so much weaponry that she *bristled* (Buffy had spent the last ten years learning various forms of martial arts and weaponry but unfortunately forgotten to specialise), and a red-headed goddess with liquid-black pools for eyes hovering a few inches off the ground, they gave the expected reaction.
*
Buffy looked at Willow, who slumped to the floor exhausted.
"What was all that about?" she asked.
"No idea." Willow considered shrugging but wrote it off as too much work. "Lemme slee..."
Buffy gave Xander a radiant smile as Willow started to snore. "She's so cute when she sleeps," she said. "I think that's how I first fell in love with her."
Xander straightened up. "Have they gone?"
"I don't know. I hope so. Its possible they've gone to get reinforcements." Buffy stared thoughtfully up at the dimming hole above their heads. "Any ideas on how we get out of here?"
Xander frowned. "How high can you jump?"
"Not *that* high!" Buffy threw him a sardonic stare.
Xander grinned. "What about if you were standing on my shoulders, and I was standing on, say, that statue over there?"
Buffy followed his gaze, then looked back up at the hole. "Maybe," she said. Another thought struck her. "How much do you weigh?"
*
The girl stared at the obnoxious kid.
"My mommy says that obnoxious little creeps like you always get their come-uppance!" she said.
"Your mommy's a freak," the boy retorted. He stamped his foot petulantly and this seemed to cause a strange reaction from the rod in his pocket. (The girl, predictably, back-pedalled and fled.) The Rod of Velious heated up, burning its way through the young boy's clothing and scorched his leg before they both disappeared into a swirling portal.
From the shadows, a gleeful young voice said, "See, I told you so!"
*
A faint breeze swirled the dust idly around the dark square hole in the floor. The dust was disturbed further by a Slayer-strength-propelled Xander as he popped up like a scary jack-in-the-box and landed with a thump.
"Are you okay up there?" Buffy called.
"Yeah, I'm good. I just landed on my head." Xander groaned and rubbed at his sore spot for a moment.
"Don't just lie there, throw us down a rope!" called Buffy, mistress of mercy.
"Okay, okay. I'm on it."
*
Dawn offered Giles a cuppa. "So what happened next?"
Giles took a sip. "Well, she said the young boy fell into a vortex and vanished."
"Oh." Dawn shrugged and offered Rupert a biscuit.
Giles accepted it and gave it a gentle dunk. "It would've been useful if weird shit like this didn't happen around your daughter *all* the time... We might have found out something was amiss earlier."
Dawn nodded. "She's headstrong, like her father."
Giles coughed. "How is Jonathon?"
"He's fine. He's still in training in England." Dawn giggled. "Watch out, he may want your job soon!" She threw Giles an evil grin.
"If he wants the teaching role, he can have it," Giles muttered. "Little bastards!"
"The other job, silly." Dawn rolled her eyes, looking for a moment *so* much like her big sis.
"I know," Giles said with a sigh. "I know."
*
Buffy shimmied up the rope with Willow draped around her neck like a fur stole. Albeit a stole that snored. Xander helped her up out of the hole.
"What now?" he asked.
"Let's block the hole." Buffy looked around for something to do the job. Xander pushed a likely statue over which fell through the hole.
"Doesn't fit," he shrugged. A pitiful 'wuargh!' from below related to the pair how unappreciated large random objects being dropped through the hole were. Buffy managed to push over a bigger statue, which neatly blocked the hole and hammered two of the escaping mummies back down into the darkness below.
"Kinda reminds me of that weird mallet game Japanese businessmen play," Xander mused.
"So long as they don't start popping up all over the place," Buffy said. "There aren't enough statues left. Besides, Willow'd kill me if we desecrate *another* tomb..."
"I will?" Willow mumbled, coming around. Buffy set her gently down.
"You've only been out for ten minutes, love." Buffy kissed her semi-conscious partner. "Don't make with any magic or you'll get yourself hurt."
"I'll be good," Willow meeked.
"Sorry to interrupt you two," said an unapologetic Xander, "but we really ought to move... Look!"
Xander waved his torch in the general direction of a rapidly approaching darkness. A darkness caused by lots of little scurrying creatures.
"Brachypelma amelia!" Willow said, cheerfully.
"Tell me they're not dangerous!" Xander panicked.
"Only if you don't get bitten. They're tarantulas." Willow blinked. "Where'd Xander go? Eek!"
Willow felt herself going from vertical to horizontal as Buffy grabbed her clothes, in passing, and accelerated after Xander.
*
"Welcome to pain, welcome to misery! Bwahahahaha! What do you have to say for yourself, you miserable little wretch?"
"Are those horns for real?" asked Colin, the obnoxious kid from row three.
"These?" the demons eyes flicked upwards. "Of course they're real!"
"Wow. Cool!"
*
"We should be safe now," Buffy claimed.
"Yeah?" Xander's eyes bugged. "We're lost in the dark in the middle of the jungle. We're being hunted down by undead mummies... and a horde of repulsive eight-legged monstrosities that want to eat our flesh..." He trailed off as Buffy continued to point towards the neon light of civilisation.
"A McDonalds? Here?" Xander took the lead once more.
"Order me a veggieburger!" Willow cried out after the Xander-shaped hole in the undergrowth.
*
The McDonalds was spotless. Okay, it was still the crass over-commercialised red plastic we all know and hate, but it was *spotless* crass red plastic. The manager, an acne-ridden moron of indeterminable age, looked up in surprise from his laminated Playboy (wipe carefully after use) as Xander burst in. He was followed by a tired and bedraggled Slayer, with a blissfully happy Willow carried piggy-back behind her. He thumbed through the customer manual.
"Can I take your order please?" he asked.
"I'll have... Whatever this can buy!" Xander claimed, throwing down enough American currency to buy most of Quintanaroo. (The exchange rate had continued to slip massively over the last decade.)
"I'll have a veggieburger!" Willow repeated as she slipped quietly to the floor and stood behind Xander. She reflected on how, even in the middle of the jungle in a remote and isolated part of the world, she still had to queue for a veggieburger. And she *knew* there wouldn't be one ready when she got to the front.
"Can we use your phone?" Buffy asked.
*
"Good lord!" Giles said as he hung up the phone. "They found the orb!" he started to excitedly clean his glasses.
"That's nice," Dawn dutifully applied the tea-towel to Giles' cup as he put the biscuits away. Domestic life was suiting her very well. Especially as she'd failed almost every course at school by not actually attending for very long. "What does it do?"
Giles blinked. He'd not actually considered this question.
"I have no idea," he said.
*
"Eek!" Willow frowned as she felt her backpack growing exceptionally hot.
Buffy hung up the phone and came over to her. "What's wrong?"
Willow shook her head and opened her backpack. She took out the small canvas bag that held the Orb, and opened it. The Orb rolled out of the bag like a lava marble and sank a half-inch into the tatty linoleum, where it smouldered.
"That looks hot," Buffy offered.
The Orb glowed blinding-white.
*
Willow frowned (although many would say she had no choice in the matter) as reality re-asserted itself. She was back in the world of whips and chains. She could once more ride people like ponies! What fun!
Suddenly that damn white-hat Oz grabbed her by the shoulder and started pushing her backwards. How dare he! How...
The world turned blinding-white.
When she could see once more, she took stock of the crass plastic furniture and the scoobs lying unconscious on the floor. She recognised them, of course. But they were old. Well, older. The way mortals get if you leave them alone for awhile.
She considered what to do.
"Let's make this world more fun," she said. She looked down at the older, mortal version of herself. Oh... This would be *so* much fun!