The Chain

Plot

…with these words the fifth story of the Buffy continuation begins. A huge, ugly demon stands before his horde of underlings and holds Buffy’s dead body up high.

Now we jump back in time…

Somewhere in America, a few girls are sitting outside at school during the break, chatting. They are talking about how they have all been given detention, so to speak, because of another girl who “forgot” her knickers in the shared locker. When the boy involved in the incident, Mike Billenger, turns up – the reason Holly Braeburn forgot her knickers – one of the girls looks at him, says that maybe they were not Holly’s knickers at all, and then has a kind of fit. Her eyes turn completely white and she is thrown to the ground. And as we learn from Giles in a little jump forward in time, this is the moment she receives her Slayer powers.

Back at the school: the other girls and Mike are terrified and wonder whether this is some sick joke. The girl opens her eyes and hears, from far away, the screeching brakes of a truck that has gone out of control. The truck is racing towards the table with her friends. The girl simply kicks the table, with the two girls, out of the way, then gets up and shoves Mike so that he flies aside. The braking truck hits the girl head-on. She flies several metres through the air. The others run to her and see that she is unhurt. Mike first wants to ask how she did that, then thinks better of it and simply asks who the hell she is.

That is how the girl ends up with Giles and the other awakened Slayers. And one thing becomes clear to her: there is no answer to the question why it happened, and there is no truth that explains everything. She has no choice, just like all the others. Only the Slayers all react differently. Some do not mind; for others it is fun; this girl describes it as feeling like Mike Tyson hit her full on – and not boxing, but in the ear-biting way. At first she thought the whole thing was some kind of cult, but after a while of training she realises it is all pretty cool. She and the other Slayers learn martial arts, see their first chained-up demon and go on their first vampire hunt as a group.

On their first hunt the Slayers work together and try to put what they have learned into practice – and they succeed, killing all the vampires. The girl saves one of the others from a vampire and is bitten by a bloodsucker herself in the process. The Slayers are thrilled by their first success, and the girl does not take her injury too seriously.

Only once does the girl meet Giles. He instructs her and the others and explains how important “the chain” is – the bond between the individual Slayers and indeed between all individuals. All the more so in a fight, so that they can rely on each other completely. The girls listen to Giles’ speech, and at that point our girl only knows that Giles is someone important – who exactly she learns only later, and that is also when she first hears of the famous Buffy and her decoy in Rome. And now, thanks to the bite on her neck, she has the same scar as Buffy.

Later she is chosen to become the second decoy. She needs a haircut, has to dye her hair blonde and should pad her bra a little, but otherwise she is perfect for it. The girl – let us call her Buffy2 for simplicity – learns what her job will be: she is being sent underground, quite literally. It is extremely dangerous, since they know very little about the communities down there, only that they are strong and probably have a new leader: Yamanh. Made up to look like the real Buffy, the girl finally sets off into the underworld. She wonders in passing why she was chosen – because she is the strongest of the young Slayers, or because she is the weakest and most expendable? There is no answer, she knows.

Her first encounter underground is with an ugly little demon, whose arm she simply cuts off when he attacks her. She lets him live and sends him to Yamanh, so that he learns that Buffy Summers is there. A little fairy who watched the fight overhears this.

The fairy takes Buffy2 to a strange enclave where these fairies (who belong to the Raven clan) live with their “head”, a strange snail-like creature (who belongs to the Slime people). Buffy2 tells one of the fairies that she must go up and tell the others about Yamanh – they must not lose any time; she herself wants to go to Yamanh and the demons. The fairy tries to talk her out of this crazy undertaking, since it would kill her (here follows a strange little dialogue about fairy eggs, which the fairy then does not want to lay in Buffy2’s ear after all – nobody gets the joke, so please ask Joss). Maybe, says Buffy2, but that is what she was sent here for.

The fairies then heal Buffy2’s wounds – or rather the snake creature does: it wraps itself around Buffy and heals her with the slime it secretes. Someone has made it to this enclave once before, Buffy2 learns from them later. But he did not pass the “test” (that is, this demon attack) and ended up as a necklace of bones around the snail demon’s neck.

Buffy2 knows about the demon hordes that want to push up to the surface. She knows they only stand a chance if they work together. The fairies and the snail creature protest, but Buffy2 explains that the demon hordes will simply overrun and kill them, then reach the surface and fall upon the humans – to prevent that, they have to work together; that is just how humans do it. After all, they have each other, and they have the will to survive. Besides, it is too late to argue, Buffy2 explains, because the danger is already on its way. One of the fairies understands and explains to the others that they have the Chosen One on their side, of whom even Yamanh has heard, and that she will face the darkness. Will she? Not flee back up into the light, Buffy2 briefly wonders.

Buffy2 finally faces Yamanh and his demon horde. She fights Yamanh, while the fairy Raven clan and the Slime creatures help her by fighting the demon horde. Buffy2 has no chance against Yamanh, who finally kills her. During the fight she realises that nobody knows who she really is – only she knows. But also that this does not matter; what matters is that she bought the others time – “the chain” between her and the other people, she tried to feel it during the fight.

Just as Yamanh is about to savour his triumph over “Buffy”, a whole squad of Slayers comes down from above, rappelling towards the demon horde. With them are more fairies from the Raven clan.