Don't get used to this... I won't be posting daily after this
Enjoy... and please note my poor memory about how I ended up resolving some of the things that were referred to in my response to feedback above... Dealt with it a different way.
Katharyn
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Title:
Tara and Willow – Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda – Chapter Forty-NineAuthor: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but Season 4 and Season 5 of BTVS.
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: A different take on Superstar.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about.
Text convention: Use of
italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Notes: I was going to skip Superstar entirely. Because, hey, it’s the twerp and we all know where he ends up. But the story as I was writing it was leading itself in the direction of the nature of reality and at exactly this moment. Coincidence, I hadn’t been planning it at all.
Also, I don’t get to leave him untouched… and I had to redress the whole ‘Willow and Tara are as smitten with him as everyone else’ as well as ‘Tara gets beaten up’. Guess what. Not happening. (This is my 150 chapter therapy, right?)
A note about realities here… I don’t want to reshape this world, I don’t want the girls having memories of what the world was like during this time. So I’ve twisted how things work a little. That’s explained more towards the end. But chronologically, what Jonathan did was a matter of hours ago at most. The memories of the world he created are in other people… Why? Because it’d get all too disturbing if not. Just think about the implications of some of the things Jonathan had ‘done’, if they were remembered by other people?
As Faith would say that’s just ‘wrong.’
There’s a tiny little nod to Rocky Horror in this, but maybe it’s not obvious enough.
Next though… New Moon Rising and that is going to take a while.
Thanks to: The person who told me I was in writing therapy. Hmm, maybe I need to bill a certain someone. But as therapy goes, it’s not a bad way to be.
“You know, I think she’s fascinated,” Tara said, watching Diana curiously.
“She’s fascinated, I’m fascinated. We’re
all fascinated,” Willow admitted. Jonathan was… fighting. Moreover he was fighting like a Slayer.
And that was just… wrong.
Actually you might thing he was fighting
better than a Slayer. At least if you were at the movies you might think so, because he fought almost exactly like a movie star.
And someone had made him super-smooth and from what she could tell, it was Jonathan himself. This wasn’t the result of some self-improvement book though. ‘Help yourself to fame, riches and secret agent status.’
He really was that slick and capable.
The vampires that had come to attack Jonathan’s home - only moments after they’d arrived here - hadn’t stood a chance. Flood lights had illuminated the whole place and computerised defences had cut a swathe through them. Then Jonathan himself had weighed in, much to Diana’s delight.
Honest, serious, delight. She hadn’t been around the so-called Goddess as much as Tara, but it was an emotion she’d certainly never seen on Diana’s face before. And… about Jonathan?
As the penultimate vampire went poof, Diana actually applauded from her garden chair where she’d settled herself like the lady of this… considerable manor. The one that hadn’t been here only a few days ago.
Something was definitely – as they said – afoot.
Without being an actual ‘foot’.
A small number of feet, in Jonathan’s case… but, he even appeared
taller. Maybe it was the clothes?
Maybe not.
“Diana? Are you alright?”
“Worry not for me, Tara,” the Goddess replied. “His sorcery cannot touch me, nor you while you stay by my side. No more than five paces from me though, or you will fall under his spell like all the rest.”
Willow looked at the ground, mentally figured out how far five paces might be when she had teeny feet and took another step inwards. And… who were the ‘rest’?
“What’s he done?” Willow asked. That Jonathan should try magic wasn’t a shock, he’d been a part of the coven that had almost been burned at the stake by a certain Sheila Rosenberg inspired MOO.
What he’d done though?
“Shaped reality,” Diana said, but there was no time for further explanations.
The last vampire of the fifteen or so that had launched an attack on the house was fleeing, but ran right into the rest of the Scoobies. Buffy was at the head of them, as you’d expect, but they were all armed and all loaded for bear. Even Anya had a stake in her hand.
“Sorry! We’re here!” Buffy called.
“Better late than never,” Giles added. “And yes, very sorry!”
Jonathan just nodded graciously and gestured that there was still one for them. They weren’t close enough to hear Buffy’s quip, but they were all too close to hear the whoosh that followed and then… more apologies.
“Sorry we’re late,” Buffy said, “we ran into some others on the way here and we had a little trouble getting by them.”
“No apologies necessary,” Jonathan assured them. “You did the best you could, Buffy. All of you. Luckily, I could handle everything they threw at me. This time I didn’t need the help of the Slayer.”
“You
never need the Slayer,” Buffy said, just about pushing herself up against him. And she was preening… fawning. Playing with her hair, which was down rather than tied back. She never usually had it down and loose when she was slaying.
And this was… Jonathan that she was all swoony about.
“Not true, babe,” Jonathan said. “There’s always got to be one girl in all the world. For me too.”
Buffy’s delighted giggle was just all kinds of obscene.
And even that was still better than Xander. “You need a Slayer’s best friend too, right though?” He looked like he was about to press himself up against Jonathan’s other arm and Anya seemed like she wouldn’t have minded at all…
“Sure, you’re my X-Man,” Jonathan said.
“And you’re Professor Xavier,” Anya said. “Only with more hair. Lovely hair…”
Of course, Anya had used to be a vengeance demon and… No, even she couldn’t see through this… whatever it was.
Suspicion started to sneak in for her. Was it really more likely that Jonathan had changed the
whole world or that Diana had just changed them, her and Tara? Suspicion led to confusion, but when she took another step towards Diana, that felt like it was fading. Five steps, she’d said.
Yeah… this really was something Jonathan had done.
He’d always been an ambitious little witch. Pushing them to try new and dangerous things. Now he really had made himself the hero of not just his own story, but everyone else’s too.
“Who is he?” Tara asked while they watched the others all fawn over Jonathan’s prowess. Though he’d initially come out because of their arrival, now it seemed he’d momentarily forgot about them while he played to his adoring public.
Their friends who didn’t seem to know that this was all very, very wrong.
“Jonathan?” Willow asked. “He… well, he’s always been like the very definition of ‘the little guy.’ He ended up doing magic with me, you know, when… well, when I was almost burned at the stake by my Mom.”
“He’s a delightful, little troll,” Diana opined, still enthralled. “A fool, though lacking in the hey-nonny-nonny.”
“Those too. But… without the delightful part,” Willow said. “And I wouldn’t go as far as ‘troll’ but… he’s definitely little.”
“He’s shaped the entire world around himself. A familiar pattern in days gone by, but I’ve not seen the like in from a human in aeons and more to the point he’s perhaps the most undeserving who’s managed it.”
“Sounds like you’d need a lot of power,” Willow said. Her competitive side was a little irked, that he’d managed this and she didn’t even know how. Then her analytical side was definitely curious, even while she was horrified how things had changed.
Jonathan had been well read, but she didn’t remember having ‘power’ as such.
“Not really…” Diana blew her observation off without further explanation and went back to watching Jonathan as the others fawned over him and – from the outside - he was plainly delighted by the attention.
“So,” Tara started, “if we g-get too far from you then…”
“You’ll become like them. It will not last, of course, these things never can – too many people know and believe in the reality that they’ve always existed in. His method is temporary, though he might not know it since he made the attempt. There are better, lasting ways – but this… I am truly amused.”
“But we said - ” Willow stopped. The previous conversation, on the way here,
was their guide, but not in the way that she’d been about to describe. It wasn’t that belief
instantly shaped the world. More like… “It’s more like inertia, isn’t it?” she suggested.
Tara picked up on what she meant right away. Because she was just a smart, sexy cookie. “The world j-just keeps rolling forwards. You can divert it, maybe even slow it down for a while, but eventually it’s just going to roll right over you?”
“Or maybe you only divert it when it does roll over you,” Willow said, “like a bump in the road.”
“An adequate metaphor,” Diana confirmed. “At least for his methods. There are those who can change reality forever, or at least create a new one. This is not that.”
“So what’s going to roll over him?” Tara asked.
“Reality.”
“Ladies,” Jonathan said, definitely seeming smoother than he had the last time they’d met. Which… yes, he’d been screaming and running away like a girl when the tide of the battle against the Mayor turned in his direction. Up to then he’d been a big help though, plenty of others had fallen by the wayside. Or just… fallen.
“Confidence looks good on you,” Willow said. “Or at least better than running away and screaming like a girl.”
This just seemed to confuse him. “I’m a confident man,” he said. “I’ve written books on it and had them serialised on TV. You may have seen the show? I presented it too. ‘Better living with Jonathan’? It aired right after the – somewhat fictionalised – ‘Double-Oh-Jonathan’?”
“Umm… don’t seem to remember either of those. Maybe it’s one of those things that only exist in your head.”
His eyes narrowed until he realised. “Why…? You’re not seeing me as I really am? Are you?”
“Oh, I
know you as you really are,” Willow said.
“Why don’t you believe it?”
Willow wasn’t about to tell him that he was in the presence of a Goddess, even though a simple look at Tara should’ve said as much, but she didn’t want him looking at Tara anyway. So, instead of that, she shrugged. “I guess it’s one of life’s little mysteries. I think the better question is why
they’re seeing you like some sort of… I don’t know, superstar?”
“That’s who I am now.”
“All of a sudden,” Willow asked.
“You t-twisted reality,” Tara said. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“No one’s getting hurt, anything that happens – I take care of it. Bad things really don’t happen to people now. It’s better! Who are you anyway?”
Tara shook her head. “Whatever you think you did - These things aren’t stable. You can’t just shape the world as you’d like it. Reality has…” She glanced at Diana. “It has inertia. It just keeps coming at you.”
“Do I – Do I know you?” Jonathan asked. “Or you?” This last to the lazily reclining Goddess enjoying all this immensely.
In her short robe and that position, she was a more and more dangerous proposition to look at. Just what was the penalty for looking up a goddess’ dress?
But was this kind of entertainment what had passed for light entertainment on Olympus in days gone by though?
Quite possibly… If someone like Jonathan could change the entire world to fit what they wanted to be, then what might a Goddess be capable of? Or she and Tara together?
From what she remembered Jonathan was good with books, reading and finding things to help him. Rituals. He didn’t have actual power in his own right, he just knew how to get things done once he’d read it – which was a kind of power, albeit limited. Not the same kind of person as Diana was trying to attract to the Wicca Group though.
“This is Tara,” she explained since he’d asked twice now. “And… this is Diana.”
“Is she – Is she wearing underwear?” Jonathan asked conspiratorially. It wasn’t a prurient interest you’d expect of a guy his age either. More like he actually sounded quite horrified that the answer could possibly be ‘no’ while she was sat on his chairs.
It wasn’t even like they were expensive chairs, just the sort of thing you could leave out in all weathers.
“Diana? You’re not the first to wonder, but she comes from a place where it wasn’t a big issue.”
“Oh… Okay. Well, I’m quite happy with the world as it is now. Everyone else is too – look at them, look at all your friends? They’re happy to be just around me. With my skills with computers and engineering, not to mention with all sorts of weapons, I can make this town safer than it’s ever been – and I think we
all know how valuable that can be. Buffy doesn’t have to be the only one who can help anymore.”
“You’re taken away their free will,” Tara said quietly and Willow heard Diana scoff. Just as if, perhaps, she didn’t believe in that as a concept anyway.
“No. No, I haven’t,” Jonathan said, almost desperate for approval, for them to see it his way. Like everyone else would now, even if he admitted it? “I’ve only changed how they see me, how everyone sees me – isn’t it an improvement?”
“Buffy’s simpering after you,” Willow said. “And – no offence – but that’s not something she’d do… No, wait…” There was Eddie of course. Was Jonathan really that far removed from him in terms of BBM? Buffy-Boyfriend-Material? Surely not.
“I have girlfriends now,” Jonathan said. “I really don’t need – or want – Buffy reacting that way to me. The twins are all I need.”
“Twins?” Willow asked, almost impressed. Almost apart from the sinking feeling about what that might really mean.
“They adore me.”
“And… did they adore you before?” Willow asked.
“Not as such, but I lifted them out of a life that was no good for them and - ”
“Made them love you,” Tara said. Willow could just tell where that disapproval was – quite rightly – going. Twins, undoubtedly attractive, who adored him… no prizes for guessing whether he’d kept it in his pants or not. And that was just… That was beyond wrong. Plus the whole sisters thing to make it even creepier…
Jonathan frowned. “I hadn’t… I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
“Well, you should.”
“Jonathan?” Giles came forwards, looking embarrassed to be the one who did so. He kept a respectful distance though, at least ten steps from Diana, even if he was closer to Jonathan.
“Hey, G-Man. How’s it hanging?”
Willow rolled her eyes, mostly at Giles’ reaction to the easy familiarity. He was delighted just to be addressed by the big man of diminutive stature. “Very good, thank you. How’s it hanging for you?”
“To the left, to the left…”
“Excellent! To the left… Yes.” Was… was Giles really adjusting himself to match? Oh… No.
“What can I do for you G-Man?”
“Well, I – that is we - we feel that we may have made some progress on our research into the conversion of demons, vampires and the like, how Adam might be bringing them to him. I’d – that is we’d really appreciate your opinion on it? Obviously it may not be very good – by your standards.”
“I’m sure it’s great,” Jonathan said. “And absolutely, you know that the safety of the people of Sunnydale is always my absolute top priority.”
“Even when you were filming in China,” Giles said. “We were all very impressed when you flew back to deal with the Master.”
“Least I could do, least I could do. I felt guilty for leaving things that long. Some people got hurt for my film career and that’s just not right.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Giles said. “You helped a lot of people. The President didn’t make you Ambassador at large because of what you do just in Sunnydale.”
“No,” Willow said, finally so exasperated that she had to speak up, talk some sense into him. “He didn’t
do anything!”
“You’re right,” Giles said. “He did…
everything.”
“You’re undoing this,” Willow said, pulling Jonathan back to them. “Otherwise, I’m going to get Buffy to come over here and see you in the clear light of day. How would that be… think she’d be very happy?”
“Or the twins,” Tara said more pointedly.
“Or them… because I don’t even want to think about what you’ve been doing with them. I just know that it’s… so, so wrong. And it stops. Tonight.”
“What… what are you going to do?”
“End this,” Tara and Willow said at the same time.
“Just like that, don’t I get to say anything?”
“No, you don’t,” again they both said it together.
“You should not concern yourselves,” Diana said. “Reality will correct itself, in all things there are consequences and those will catch up him soon enough.”
“I think that means there’s an equal and opposite reaction,” Willow said.
“No…” Jonathan gasped. “Not again - ”
“Yes,” Diana said. “In fact… here it is.”
Stepping out of the bushes, where they’d come from, was another demon. Some sort of creature she’d never seen before. Diana appeared unconcerned and since she was so did the hounds, but Jonathan seemed to know what it was. “No…”
“What is that?” Willow asked. The dogs were both laid down, ear pricked but little else seemed to concern them and they were only mirroring the Goddess’ reaction.
“Reality,” Diana said. “He knows, though he changed things only this day, he remembers so much more… including this.”
As explanations went, it wasn’t a doozy.
“Here,” the Goddess said. “See?”
She raised her hand and a small ball of… no, not a ball. Something circular – no - more like a lens actually. And when Willow bent her head to look through it the features of the landscape were the same but different. It was still night, but the neatly trimmed lawn was a mess of brambles and weeds and scrub, what she’s expected to find here. And the creature… It was an onrushing burst of reality when viewed through there. Swirls of images, colours and… flashes that seemed familiar. A Jonathan that she recognised, not the suave, black clad gentleman who’d so impressed the others… She saw him as he really was.
But the others didn’t see him that way. “Jonathan!” Buffy sounded more panicked than she should by the presence of the giant monster.
As far as she knew though… she’d been putting her faith in a young man who’d not so long ago been so disconnected from other people that he’d taken to the clock tower with a rifle. Not exactly the most stable chocolate in the box.
“Get it, Buffy,” Willow said.
“Do you want me to Jonathan? I mean, I can – but you’re so much better and it is your house and all.”
“Why don’t you take this one, Buff?” he asked, sounding discomfited and – despite his performance against the vampires – a little afraid.
As if he couldn’t fight it…
“Do you really think I can?”
“Jonathan,” Giles said. “No offence to Buffy, who really is quite capable, but since you’re here… it really would be more productive if you were the one to deal with the creature.”
The creature in question roared its challenge, but otherwise was coming right for them in that sort of shambling walk of a movie psycho with a machete. Willow shivered; the bellow it had made was animalistic, devoid of any real understanding. And not like most demons where you knew that – in their own world – they were probably quite conversant.
This thing was just… mindless. All it had going on in there was crush, kill, destroy.
“It’s important,” Jonathan said, more nervous than he’d been in that fight with all the vampires, “that Buffy gets into the habit of dealing with these kinds of denizens of the nightmare realms. I can’t always be around, sometimes I’ll be needed elsewhere.”
“Of course, you’re right,” Giles said, then apologised to Buffy, who didn’t seem to mind. In fact she seemed to be thinking on the same lines as Giles. It was twisted and disturbing.
“Buffy…” Willow warned, the creature – whatever you wanted to call it – was getting closer.
But Buffy had found her courage, as low as it had become in an imagined reality of reliance on Jonathan, and charged into the fray. After all she
was still the Slayer. She was strong, fast and could beat on this lumbering creature all day except…
Nothing she did seemed to have much effect and eventually it caught her, throwing her backwards and leaving her rubbing her already damaged ribs.
“Don’t worry, Buffy,” Jonathan said, sounding all the more suave again now. “I’ve got your back and you’re just doing
great.”
“It’s… the other side of him,” Willow murmured to herself, but she could tell that Diana had heard her. The satisfied little smile betrayed that she’d guessed – no she’d surmised - correctly. “It’s the evil-trollish side of him.”
Tara heard her and picked up on what she meant this time. “Everything that’s bad…” They could see it through the lens that Diana had conjured. That was why not only the world looked different, but also the creature – reflecting the sides of Jonathan that she remembered and knew. All of that…
And watching the course of the fight, when Buffy had taken that terrible blow, Jonathan had appeared suave and in control again. When Buffy was up, beating on the creature like it deserved to be beaten, he appeared less assured and more of the dweeb.
“You know what this is,” Willow hissed at him. “You end this. Now.”
“I can’t!”
“Yes, you can,” she insisted. “You must be able to.”
“Okay, I’ve shaped reality, Willow. It’s changed and… this – that - that is the cost.”
“What? That people you consider your friends get to fight your alter ego? The Mr Hyde to your Dr Jackal? Would it have come after someone other than Buffy? What if it had come for Xander or Anya or… someone who couldn’t fight back?”
“Now, Willow,” he tried, wanting to sound more reasonable.
“Don’t you dare try that with me,” she said. “Your smarm doesn’t have any effect on me. You need to stop this; you need to put things right and change things back.”
“I don’t know how,” Jonathan insisted. “Destroy the creature, maybe… but there wasn’t any ‘reverse this spell’ instruction in the book.”
“Diana?” Willow asked, frustrated with him but believing that he didn’t know what to do about it. He was panicked, even when the creature was winning and he should be feeling ‘better’. Destroying the creature was a great idea but if Buffy wasn’t managing it then… Maybe a Goddess could.
“Is there something I can do for you? You have only to ask.”
“End this, please?”
“Reality will re-establish itself. It almost always does.”
“Until then, people could get hurt. People who don’t have anything to do with us. People who’d… people who might believe in you? People from the circle perhaps – starting with us!”
The creature, tossing Buffy aside once again made for her and Tara and – once it stepped within a certain distance of Diana – she didn’t even need the lens to see it as it was. A whirling phantasm, not physical at all, but in the twisted form of Jonathan. Though for something that didn’t appear physical – she jumped to the side as it smashed an arm down at her and… into Diana’s sphere of influence.
“What – what is that thing? Why did it change?” Buffy asked, chasing after it.
“Oh, it’s like the side effect of - ” Willow started to explain but was cut off. Partly by the advance of the creature, but just as much by Tara letting her know this wasn’t the time for inevitable questions, not when they could get hurt.
“Buffy, don’t step far from Diana,” Tara said. “And k-kill it. Everything will get back to normal. Right?” She looked at Diana, as did Willow, asking the question.
“But - ”
“You’re confused,” Tara said, her voice not wavering in the slightest now that time was pressing. “But you don’t have to be. Stay close to Diana and everything is real… It’s like a bubble. Out there…”
“Whackiness ensues,” Willow supplied.
“Whackiness, right,” Buffy agreed, seeming to take that at face value for now. Explanations would no doubt be required later. Now though… Monster. Beating. Quips. “Come on, big boy… let’s get this done.”
With her reliance of Jonathan seemingly lessened by proximity to the Goddess, Buffy’s attack on it was even more ferocious – but she was being careful to protect her damaged ribs all the same.
The fight did lead to her and Tara dodging around Diana and the dogs, uncertain how far away they could get but finding out when… Willow stepped outside the unseen boundary and a profound sense of… Jonathan overtook her, only to be pulled back in by Tara who she then pushed out of the way as Slayer and monster came crashing through the same space they’d occupied.
“Thanks,” Tara breathed, picking herself up.
“I want to help, I think we should help,” Willow said. But she wasn’t sure how. Anything she could do would just draw its attention, in a very confined space and might risk inconveniencing – or hurting – Buffy.
“We c-could stay -” Tara shrieked as the monster was tripped and almost fell into her. “We could stay out of the way,” she said, embarrassed by her cry of alarm
And then they saw where the creature had landed. Jonathan’s negative side, his dark side if you liked, was sprawled across Diana.
“Ohhh… shoot.”
The gentle amusement that the immortal had shown so far was replaced by something approaching anger and then by action. The creature was thrown back bodily, with Diana barely seeming to have moved. Then she unfurled herself from the chair, rising lithely to her feet. Moving in a way that wasn’t intended to be sexual, but if it had been Tara that had managed it to look that way…
Well, that would’ve been all very hubba, hubba.
“Wait - ” Tara said. Willow couldn’t see why, Diana could take care of this; she didn’t doubt it in the slightest. “Jonathan,” her girlfriend explained.
He’d slipped to his knees in the same move as the monster was thrown aside. “Might it kill him?” Willow asked.
Tara shrugged helplessly, not knowing and apparently Diana didn’t care. She’d been inconvenienced, which was about the only way of putting it. An accident had roused her to greater anger than a threat to any of them had. Much as she might want to see this ended… not at the cost of Jonathan’s life.
No matter what he’d done to the world, what people had been compelled into believing or what had actually happened…
Tara had – rightly – been very exercised about what had happened to those girls who’d found suddenly found Jonathan irresistible, but it occurred to Willow that – maybe – nothing had ‘happened’.
They
thought it had, they believed it right now – wherever they were - but they were here right at the beginning of this. Nothing had been this way even an hour before… now it was.
What Jonathan believed, what everyone else believed, hadn’t really happened. Yet… Right?
Those girls hadn’t
yet been conned into his bed, not for real. They thought they’d gone there happily. Disturbing as that might be in all sorts of other ways, it removed one more crime from the charge sheet. Protecting them and everyone else was all about what would happen if this reality was allowed to persist, if it was allowed to truly encompass the world.
Then, yes, Jonathan would have actually done some of the things that people only believed now. Memories would be real.
But would this creature rampage forever? Jonathan’s inadequacy personified?
No, because Diana was pissed now and she was no longer willing to accept the reality in which this thing existed.
Tara was helping Jonathan up, which was just like her – especially when she didn’t know him except as the man who’d conjured a reality and a monster as a consequence.
Willow was paying attention to Diana though. This was an opportunity to see what she could – and would – do when she lost her temper, having seen just how short that was when she was personally inconvenienced. Worrying much?
The creature was pure rage, it wasn’t going to run. She wouldn’t be hunting it down. Nor were the dogs either bothered or paying much attention. One of them pushed its nose at the back of her hand, more interested in licking at that than helping their mistress. Maybe there was the scent of a little bit of the sauce from dinner on her hand. Meanwhile Diana was easily beating on the thing.
It wasn’t a martial art, no leaping, no chops or flying kicks. No, it was all more practical and natural than that. Diana had probably never needed to
learn how to fight. She’d either come into being this way, or she’d just done it – won – and continued to do the same thing.
Blows from the creature that should’ve snapped someone’s arm were avoided without any obvious effect and the returned blows rocked the massively muscled creature back more than physics should’ve allowed. Equal and opposite reactions and all that… Umm, not in this case.
But then she was a Goddess (wasn’t she?) and this was a very practical demonstration of that. It was almost lazily done, if lazy could have a tinge of fury. On the other hand Diana couldn’t be ignoring the threat it posed or else she wouldn’t have to worry about being hit at all. No, she’d have waded in and ripped its head off or something.
Or… The brutal snap cut through all of them as Diana, having brought it to its knees, looped one slim around a neck that was about three times as thick and jerked and…
It was a good job that Tara had hold of Jonathan when it happened because he – and the world around them – collapsed.
“Umm,” Giles said. “Would someone like to explain exactly what was going on? And why we’re stood in a pond?"
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Good one! Glad I wasn't drinking coffee heehee...
by Kajun » Mon Jan 21, 2013 4:33 pm 
.