Chapter Text
We cornered the demon mage in Adam's old cave in the Sunnydale woods. Buffy went in first with her sword. Me and Willow followed at a safe-ish distance, me with an axe and her with a crossbow. We were kickin' it old-school, just the three of us. Dawn was home studying, Anya had been lying low ever since the cursed letterman's jacket, and Spike was busy being crazy in my apartment. Hopefully not getting blood in the peanut butter again.
Buffy and the mage were in a standoff when we caught up to them. The mage had his back against a wall, but his pet kitty was crouching at his feet, growling in our direction—and by "pet kitty," I mean "two-headed saber-toothed tiger from one of the nastier hell dimensions." Also, the mage was holding a small wooden box over his head like it meant something.
"Walk away, Slayer," the demon mage hissed through his excessively numerous pointy teeth. "If you kill me, my doomsday device will destroy your world at midnight tomorrow!"
"That'd be the shoebox?" Buffy asked. She didn't sound especially worried. Seriously, if the three of us had a dollar for every time some upstart black hat had threatened to destroy the world ... well, okay, we wouldn't be rich, but we'd definitely be able to go out for pizza. With extra toppings.
The mage laughed and shook the box. It rattled. "This shoebox? Slayer? Is a Damian's Detonator. The spell contained in it will blow the seal on the Hellmouth sky high!" In his gloating excitement he apparently lost his balance a little bit. He stumbled a step or two sideways, and stepped on his kitty friend's tail.
What came next was hard for me to follow in the dim light, especially from my strategic defensive position behind an outcropping of rock. The demon cat let out a shriek that sounded like steel girders buckling and leapt for the mage's throat. The mage batted at the cat's face in a futile attempt to save himself. The box he'd been making such a fuss about went skittering off into a corner. Buffy rushed in with her sword and cut off one of the cat's heads. The mage crumpled to the ground. The cat howled and swatted at Buffy, but she parried and sliced open the cat's remaining throat. The cat collapsed.
Willow and I moved cautiously out of cover. "Oh, I wondered where you guys were," Buffy said. She poked at the demon's fallen body with the toe of her boot. "Well, that fight sure took an unexpected turn."
"We'd better check out this Detonator thingy," Willow said. She'd already retrieved it from the floor of the cave. "Do you think he was bluffing?"
"I'm betting yeah," Buffy said, wiping her sword clean on the dead mage's burlap robe. "He seemed kind of incompetent."
"Never underestimate the destructive power of the incompetent!" I said.
"True. Okay." Willow stuffed the box in her knapsack, and then stifled a yawn. "I'll look at it tomorrow morning."