Author: Chris Cook
Email: alia@netspace.net.auRating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters are the property of Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy.
Challenge of the Super Friends is the property of DC Comics
Notes: All credit to Cyd (Hermitfish), who created the Special Friends in the first place.
Secret Origin of the Special Friends
‘Twas several nights before Christmas, and on the main street, a trio of asshats were shortly to meet...
And meet they did, as Jonathan, not looking where he was going because he was imagining himself promenading along being cheered and propositioned by passers-by instead of ignored, walked straight into Warren, who wasn’t looking where he was going because he was an inconsiderate jerk, the pair joined a moment later by Andrew, who had been following Warren too closely to stop once they tripped over each other, because he was staring at Warren’s backside.
“Ow!” “Hey!” “Get off me!” “That was your fault!” “You ran into me!!” “Whose hand is that on my butt?!” “Not mine!”
As the three wobbled to their feet and fixed their weaselly gazes on one another, irritation and general hostility towards everything that wasn’t themselves slowly and begrudgingly gave way to something that could be mistaken, in a poor light, for fellow feeling, as each recognised in the others a nature as petty, spiteful, and maladjusted as their own. The good folk of Snowydale, avoiding the trio on principle (and because Jonathan had spent so much time fantasising about being fashionably dressed that he hadn’t gotten around to washing the clothes he actually
had), went about their Christmas shopping, unaware that in their midst a criminal enterprise of unparalleled unpleasantness had shambled awkwardly into existence.
“And in local news,” the television which Snowydale Library’s resident librarian had, after much grousing, allowed to be installed in the common room at the behest of his assistant, droned,
“the First Bank of Snowydale fell victim to a robbery overnight.”“Good gracious!” said librarian exclaimed, in a manner which surely would have caused his monocle to pop out had he been wearing one.
“A trio of masked bandits calling themselves the ‘Legion of Malice’ broke in with the aid of a lockpicking device the security guard described as ‘some kind of nonsense science fiction crap’-”“Buffy! Prepare the Reasonably-Priced Automobile of Unassumingness!”
“Uh, okay,” Buffy, the aforementioned assistant, shrugged. “I mean I can put the keys in the ignition if you want, that’s about as prepared as a car gets?”
“The thieves stole a large safe,” the TV reporter went on,
“lifting it with their bare hands-”“That sounds kind of dangerous,” Buffy worried.
“Nevertheless,” Giles said, assuming a determined scowl, “the people of this fair township shall not have their festive cheer dampered by vile larceny!”
“-although bank officials later confirmed that it was in fact a papier-mache model used for advertising, and no actual money was taken by this Legion of Impractical
Malice,” the reporter joked.
“Oh,” Giles deflated.
“Still, that’s
attempted villainy,” Buffy pointed out. “And sounds like maybe a count of Mad Science too. I feel like we should be discouraging that sort of thing.”
“Yes, quite right,” Giles nodded, squaring his shoulders again, and striding towards a bookcase behind the library desk. A tug on the spine of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - which was convenient for the purposes of concealing super-heroic mechanisms, because Giles refused to let anyone borrow it, giving them instead one of a stack of imported Philosopher’s Stone copies he had imported in a fit of British indignation - caused the entire bookcase, heroic librarian included, to revolve around, replacing by way of your standard hero costume switching device his normal tweed suit with the different (he insisted) tweed suit of Captain Tea Cosy.
“Now then,” he said, arming the tea cannons secreted in the wrists of his jacket, “let us battle evil! In a sensible manner, naturally.”
“...by this Legion of Impractical
Malice,” an entirely different reporter was saying on the radio, demonstrating a deplorable lack of originality in journalistic quips, as a hybrid car crossed the Snowydale city limits, its roof laden with suitcases and its tyres with the dust of a cross-country trip.
“Sounds like we-all arrived jus’ in time!” the cowboy-hatted man in the passenger seat grinned, leaning back for a high-five with the leatherclad lady sprawled across the back seat.
“I was hoping to hit up some bars first,” she snickered, “but sure, one way of stretching the legs is as good as any other.”
“I still say mah buckin’ bronco would’a got us here faster,” the cowboy said. “Why, I been up to a hundred-plus miles’n hour on that varmint!”
“Yeah but you can’t
steer it, Cowboy Guy,” the brunette woman snorted.
“Yuh, I do get a mite distracted when the buckin’ starts, cain’t rightly argue with that.”
“A-and that’s not really how I’d like to travel,” the blonde driving the car put in.
“I’d give it a shot if he swung my way,” the brunette grinned. “But yeah, each to their own. Appreciate the ride, T. Any time you want me to return the favour...?”
“You d-don’t have a car.”
“But I
am a great ride,” she offered.
“Uhm, thanks, but n-no thanks.”
“Pardon me,” Captain Tea Cosy courteously enquired of a helpful-looking passerby in the festively-decorated plaza of Snowydale Mall, “but I find myself engaged in a mission to right wrongs committed by a particular individual, and pursuant to that mission I must gather certain details of their identities in order to-”
“Have you seen these idiots?” Buffy interrupted, holding up a printout of the security footage from the bank sort-of-heist.
“Uh, that one looks kind of familiar,” the passerby in question replied. “I think maybe I saw him at that Star Trek group thingy Xander dragged me along to, before he started hanging around that mansion up in the hills. They meet in the back room of the card game shop, it’s not far, I can show you if you’d like?”
“Your courteous and good-hearted assistance is most appreciated, kind ma’am.”
“Thanks,” Buffy translated. “He’s Captain Tea Cosy, I’m Buffy.”
“Willow,” the redhead introduced herself.
“Affirmative,” a man wearing plastic Vulcan ears nodded, once Willow had led the duo to him. “That’s Andrew - he applied for a posting on USS Snowydale a couple of months ago.”
“He’s a member?”
“No, he failed his Starfleet Ethics test.
Big time.”
Elsewhere in the mall a similar scene was playing out, as the out-of-town heroes likewise sought information on the Legion, which thus far had led them to Beans ‘n’ Bookworms literature coffee shop, and the weekly dramatic reading session of the Comic Book Fanfic Society therein, who were admiring Cowboy Guy’s costume.
“...an’ my pardner, Miss Overt Sexuality Gal-”
“That’s me,” the brunette grinned, ‘accidentally’ undoing another button on her already severely-unbuttoned top and mentally tallying the number of people in the room whose attention wasn’t fixed solely on Cowboy Guy’s rodeo-toned physique.
“-reckoned, these varmints sure seem ta be fixin’ theyselves to act like super-
villains, an’ who better to consult regardin’ suchlike than them who write the books on it?”
“I uh, I haven’t seen these other two, Mr Guy,” the group’s leading aficionado of wild west heroes, who had enthusiastically appointed himself spokesman of the moment, said. “But this one, yeah, we know him - his name’s Jonathan, he used to hang around here. Only nobody liked his work...”
“Every superhero he invented was just a blatant self-insert,” the nineties anti-hero expert put in, hoping to catch Overt Sexuality Gal’s roving eye.
Having gathered such intel as was available from the Trekkies, and (obviously) not yet having stumbled upon the fanfic crowd on their own, Captain Tea Cosy and Buffy had followed Willow’s suggestion of posting a notice appealing for information, which seemed to have paid off in double quick time, as no sooner had Buffy stuck their hastily-annotated printout to the noticeboard by the supermarket, a blonde stopped abruptly in front of it, and moved closer to inspect it.
“Do you know them?” Buffy leapt in at once, startling her somewhat.
“Uh, n-no. I was, actually, these are th-the Impractical Malice people, from the bank robbery?”
“Indeed, and Captain Tea Cosy shall not rest until they have been meted out just punishment for their transgressions!”
“Sorry, he’s a superhero,” Buffy grinned sheepishly. “Proclaiming’s a big thing.”
“It’s, it’s okay,” the blonde smiled shyly. “I actually know a couple myself, so... hi...” She trailed off, as Willow bustled up from the copy centre with more notices in hand, which she promptly dropped.
“Hi!” she squeaked.
“This is Willow, she’s helping us,” Buffy explained.
“Hi!” Willow squeaked again.
“H-hi. I’m, I’m Tara. Um.” She took a deep breath, and in glancing around for inspiration noticed the pile of papers swirling about Willow’s feet. “Oh um, let me help? With those?”
“With what... oh!” Willow jolted, as if noticing the pages for the first time. “Oops, I didn’t mean, was that me?” The pair both crouched down to tidy them up, ending up face to face and very close together, which seemed to slow the tidying process to a glacial crawl once their gazes locked.
“Did you say you know superheroes?” Buffy interrupted. “I didn’t know there were any others around here.”
“I’ve not encountered any previously,” Captain Tea Cosy put in, “but newfound allies in the fight against injustice would be most welcome.”
“Um, we’re, we’re from out of town,” Tara explained, reluctantly looking away from Willow, who continued to gather up the notices scattered between them as slowly as she could contrive. “They, rather, I’m not a hero, I’m just... they’re friends, and I have a car. So...” She looked back at Willow. “M-maybe we should, we should meet? I mean, them, and your heroes - join forces?”
“I’d love to,” Willow smiled in a daze. “I mean, what I mean,” she added a moment later, as realisation set in, “I’m not actually with them, myself - not that I’m
not,” she hastily assured Buffy and Captain Tea Cosy, “I’m totally pro-hero, one hundred percent support, hero ally here, I just don’t want to set myself up as, as if I’m speaking for you, because,” she looked back at Tara, “the honest truth is I just met them today and was helping show them around, and with the photocopies and stuff, but I think, what you said, we should, yes. Can we?” she appealed over her shoulder to Buffy.
She gave an accepting shrug and looked in turn at Captain Tea Cosy, but before he could reply a buzzing sound emanated from his pocket.
“The Peril Pager!” he exclaimed, taking out the device and reading its tiny screen.
“A pager?” Willow asked incredulously.
“I
know,” Buffy lamented. “I’ve tried to get him a smartphone but he just... you know heroes, you know?” she asked Tara, who nodded sympathetically.
“Ladies,” Captain Tea Cosy interrupted, “with much regret I must bid you good day - except you Buffy, obviously. It seems the miscreants have been sighted entering the Mardi Gras Muscle Gym with what can only be assumed to be nefarious intent!”
“I-I could have my friends meet you there?” Tara offered.
“I’ll keep looking for leads on them and let you know anything I find so can I give you my number so you can get in touch with me?” Willow asked in a dizzyingly rapid burst.
“
You’d need to call
us,” Buffy pointed out. “Here, lemme get my phone...”
“H-here?” Tara said, holding out her own phone, with the number showing. “In case... um, you might be battling them?” she suggested to Buffy, trying her best to make it seem like she had had that idea
before offering Willow her number.
“I will,” Willow promised. “Call I mean. With info, when I find it, which will be soon. You’re not, you won’t be doing the superhero job’s-done-vanish-into-thin-air thing?” she added, with a pleading look in her eyes.
“No vanishing,” Tara assured her.
The festive gaiety of the Mardi Gras Muscle Gym’s carols-remixed-with-Queen soundtrack screeched to a halt as Andrew flipped the stylus off the retro-chic record player (furtively glancing at his comrades to see if they might notice him pinching the record itself), while Warren and Jonathan advanced with a cumbersome homemade gadget held between them.
“Alright
losers,” Warren screeched, projecting his own faults onto others as usual, “hand over the weight sets!”
“So we can hook them up to a genetic rescrambler and give ourselves the perfectly toned bodies of the impressive alpha males we actually are on the inside and totally deserve to look like without doing any real work!” Jonathan helpfully exposited.
“Small weights, if you’ve got any?” Andrew added, since he had been voted as weight-carrier in their getaway plan.
“Oi!” a ridiculously oiled and sculpted muscleman shouted, making his way to the front of the crowd of confused fitness enthusiasts observing this bizarre spectacle. “Put me record back, and keep your greasy mitts of the hardware! If you’re not gonna do the hard work for biceps like these-” He flexed, much to the admiration of his fellows “-then you don’t deserve them. So sod off!”
“I expected one of you nancy gym bunnies might choose to antagonise us!” Warren gloated.
“Aren’t
we the antagonists?” Jonathan wondered, in a rare moment of self-awareness.
“
Shut up and aim. This is a fully functional demotivation projector,” he went on at the top of his voice, hefting his end of the weapon onto his shoulder to try to support its weight. “So if you’re not going to cooperate with us, get used to sitting on your couch all day eating potato crisps because self-improvement seems like too much work! ...not that I’d know anything about that.”
“I thought that’s why we used your brainscan to program it?” Jonathan asked.
“I’ll show you wankers Nancy Gym Bunny, take your best shot!” the muscleman dared them, hefting a surprisingly large weight in one hand like a club.
“Where’s the on switch,
Andrew where did you put the on switch?!” Warren demanded, frantically messing with his device’s control pad.
“Not so fast, villain!” Captain Tea Cosy’s voice rang out, as a biscuit tray spun across the gym and ricocheted off Warren’s head, although to little effect since as usual he wasn’t using it.
“Yeah!” Overt Sexuality Gal added, dropping ninja-like down from the skylight. “The only shot you creeps will be taking is a mug shot! One of the comic book people suggested a few quips,” she added in an undertone to Cowboy Guy, who had swung down on his lasso to land beside her.
“Well spoke, little lady,” he grinned, “but there’s a time for quippin’ and a time for wh... whhh- whuppin’, and I calkerlate it’s the latter right now!”
“Couldn’t drop the accent even for the rhyme?” Overt Sexuality Gal chuckled.
“Shucks, it just don’t feel
right not ter be
me.”
“You keep on being you,” she grinned, patting him on his farmwork-honed shoulder.
“Oh for- how many of you freaks
are there?!” Warren whined.
“Just zap them!” Andrew wailed, as the various participants lined up to do battle.
“Cop this!” “Crumpet pitch!” “Yee-haw!” “Blinding flash!” “Oh I say. Buffy did you see what that young lady did- Buffy, are you alright?” “Yyyyes, f-fine!”
Outside the gym Tara, waiting patiently in the car, jumped slightly as Willow skidded to a halt by the car door.
“Did I startle you? Sorry! I was going to ring, but I thought, you’re here, all the heroes are here, this would be quicker and I could come see you, I mean everyone, hi again. Hi.”
“Hi,” Tara grinned nervously, reaching to roll down the window, then changing her mind and opening the door instead. “I was hoping you’d come. Here, I mean. I was, was thinking about you, coming-
um, d-did you find something?”
“Two somethings actually,” Willow explained, stepping back, but not very far, as Tara got out of the car. “First, I tracked down this other guy, the one who was kind of acting like the boss of these idiots? Took some doing since, well, he doesn’t really seem to have mixed much in the usual social circles - Bronze, Espresso Pump, Magic Box-”
“You have a magic shop? You’ll have to show me around after all this.”
“Uh, okay!” Willow gasped, turning red as she glanced over Tara’s shoulder down the street, where the sign for ‘Magic Box Lesbian Emporium’ was visible in the distance. “Anyway, but no, he - thankfully - never went to any of those, but I
did finally find someone who recognised him: his name’s Warren, he used to be a member of the Snowydale Antisocial Delusional Jerk Club, but they kicked him out.”
“Did they say why?”
“Yeah uh, quote, ‘being an asshole’, end quote. Oh also, I did some sleuthing to try to figure out where they got the parts for the gadget they used to break into the bank, and it turns out various
other odds and ends went missing from local tech shops lately, which if you were to put them all together - and were a really not-very-nice person - you could make a-”
“RUN FOR IT!”Both women ducked behind the car as the demotivator beam sliced through the gym’s wall, causing the mortar to give up trying and create a hole through which the Legion of Impractical Malice beat an undignified retreat back to a poorly-maintained van double-parked in a handicap space nearby, which sped off in a cloud of poor engine maintenance smoke.
“-one of those, demotivation projector,” Willow finished, as the heroes tumbled out of the gym after them, and haphazardly divided themselves between Tara’s and Captain Tea Cosy’s cars, which owing to the latter being a compact two-seater naturally led to quite a cramped situation in Tara’s.
“Hey babe,” Overt Sexuality Gal grinned at Buffy, who had wound up between her and Cowboy Guy in the back seat, and what with the width of his shoulders taking up half the car was pressed up against her rather tightly. “So I noticed you noticing me in there?”
“N-no I didn’t,” Buffy whimpered, squirming in a way that, an observer might have noted, didn’t actually result in her moving away at all. Cowboy Guy jumped in surprise as a spark of energy leapt off Buffy’s shoulder and earthed itself on his hat.
“Y-you figured out what they built,” Tara asked Willow, “just from the parts?”
“I’m doing a degree in omniscience,” Willow said, blushing slightly. “I’m actually working on a plane based on some theories I’ve got about light refraction and dimensional bending, but that’s a ways off.”
“That sounds really advanced,” Tara said admiringly, very nearly succumbing to the temptation to take her eyes off the road and gaze at her passenger instead, but not, because she was a sensible and conscientious driver - far more so than Captain Tea Cosy, who with Nancy Gym Bunny rather than Buffy as navigator had reverted to driving on the left side of the road, and was consequently lagging behind.
“I mean, it’s kind of fancy I suppose,” Willow went on, glowing at Tara’s praise. “But, I really focus on the tech side, so there are gaps in the more, you know, natural sciences...”
“Tara here’s a right geen-yus at them,” Cowboy Guy put in helpfully. “She done got degrees in per-sychology, animal behaivyoor, anthropology...”
“It’s nice when people can fill in each other’s gaps,” Overt Sexuality Gal added, making Buffy tremble, while Willow and Tara both caught her meaning and blushed.
“I dabble,” Tara admitted, casting a brief glance Willow’s way, and finding her doing the same, tentatively smiling.
“L-looks like they’re making for the old town hall!” Buffy announced, desperately trying to distract herself from Faith, who wasn’t making it easy by murmuring “if you know what I mean” in her ear.
“Okay that didn’t go as planned,” Jonathan whimpered, hastily barricading the door of the disused old town hall as Warren and Andrew rummaged through the cardboard boxes that comprised the Legion’s lair. “But we just need a new plan, and then...”
He trailed off in the hope that somebody else would do the heavy lifting of completing the sentence with a useful idea, leaving it, as usual, to Warren to make a bad situation worse.
“We can use
this!” the Legion’s sorry excuse for a leader proclaimed, holding aloft a battered and misshapen lump of plastic.
“Is that Megatron?” Andrew enquired, with a sceptical frown.
“Yes! Kind of,” Warren temporised, as Jonathan picked up the toy’s carelessly-opened packaging and studied it.
“This says ‘Magatron’,” he pointed out.
“Okay
fine, yes it’s a cheap unlicensed knock-off,” Warren spat, as tire screeches from outside heralded the imminent arrival of the heroes, “but who cares? We zap this in Andrew’s Embiggening Chamber, and it’ll get rid of those clowns and solve all our problems for us! Without us needing to put in any effort!”
“That
is the best way to solve problems,” Andrew agreed hesitantly, flinching as the thud of a barbell shook the front door.
“...lemme lean down and try to pick the lock...” Overt Sexuality Gal’s voice came from outside.
“But- you know what,
no,” Jonathan said, shaking his head. “No, it’s a step too far - only a truly awful, irredeemable asshat-”
“-hey B, getting a good view from back there?” “No I wasn’t, I mean, didn’t look, I don’t, leather pants and, I’m not into, didn’t see you shake your hips, and, and, and-”“-would besmirch the legacy of the great and powerful Megatron-”
”Oops, these pants are so tight, and hey did you notice my mistletoe tattoo on my back down there, ‘tis the season if you want...”“-leader of the Decepticons, who I always thought were kind of misunderstood, I wrote a fanfic about it once because
actually if you ignore all the parts of canon that don’t line up with my personal biases-”
”I, I, IiiiaaaaAAAHHH REPRESSION OVERLOAD!”Warren and Jonathan ducked as a beam of suppressed desire blew the doors off their hinges and, in passing, smacked Andrew into the far wall, although luckily it was the doors that hit him not the energy itself, because nobody wants to see
that.
“Do it do it do it!” Jonathan waited, struggling with Warren to shove the shameful knock-off toy into the embiggening chamber as quickly as possible.
“...Overt Sexuality Gal wasn’t fussy,” Tara stifled a giggle as she realised the double-entendre, “she just thought it’d be nice to be on the west coast, and I’d actually had it in mind to visit Snowydale for a while, and Christmas seemed a good occasion. Does it actually snow?”
“No,” Willow admitted apologetically, “it’s just, I read the town founders wanted a ski resort, but couldn’t get any land up in the mountains, so... sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Tara smiled. “I’m glad I came anyway.”
“Me too,” Willow beamed. With the car vacated of superheroes the pair had moved to the more comfortable back seat, and had in rapid succession progressed from sitting side by side to leaning into one another to Willow resting her head in Tara’s lap as Tara stroked her hair which proved surprisingly (or, in fact, not all
that surprisingly) effective at occupying their attention despite the antics going on outside.
“I am too,” Tara smiled down at her. “So do you, do you have plans after, um...”
“After they defeat the bad guys?” Willow said at once? “No no plans, either social or romantic, in the sense that I’m not seeing anyone at the moment, at all, I’m available, there’s a little cinema downtown have you seen
Chance there’s a special showing if maybe you’d like to?”
“I uh, meant, after you graduate - with the omniscience, and all that,” Tara blushed, “but s-since you mention it-”
Unfortunately even such a ridiculous level of besotted adoration couldn’t
entirely blank out the spectacle of a giant poorly-manufactured robot bursting through the roof of the old town hall, which is what happened at that moment.
“What’n tarnation is
that?” Cowboy Guy hollered, as he and the other heroes vaulted over the car and crouched behind it, except for Captain Tea Cosy who maintained a proper carriage of himself even in retreat, simply accelerating his leisurely saunter as much as possible.
“Giant crapheap?” Overt Sexuality Gal guessed, as they made room for Willow and Tara, who bailed out of the car, to stay in the middle of the group and be shielded by them.
“I’m wonderin’ if mebbe we’ve bit off more than we can chew,” Nancy Gym Bunny admitted, watching as the robot took a shuddering step forward, through the building’s facade, with the conscious members of the Legion cheering it on from behind Andrew, who was still out of it.
“The situation does seem somewhat dire,” Captain Tea Cosy admitted.
“We got us a right pickle, thet’s fer sure,” Cowboy Guy spoke up.
“I’d rather be here with you blokes than over there with those pricks though,” Nancy Gym Bunny agreed.
“As champions of tolerance and decency toward all, it behooves us to recognise the natural bonds of bonhomie that unite us.”
“We’re friends,” Buffy translated.
“Special friends?” Overt Sexuality Gal asked, licking her lips.
“Can we help?” Willow asked.
“We’re with you,” Tara agreed, taking Willow’s hand - and as they did, time froze, and a chorus of angelic voices sounded behind them. Taking a moment to get over their shock at their suddenly-motionless friends, and the likewise still giant robot menacing them, Willow and Tara stood and slowly moved towards the source of the song, a cocoon of rainbow light slowly forming in the street.
“Hi ladies!” a cheerful voice said, and the light flowed into the form of a woman who beamed - literally - with beauty as she drifted to the ground and surveyed the temporarily paused scene. “Wow. Leave it to asshats to screw up a perfectly good day, right?”
“Wh-who are you?” Tara wondered.
“Look there,” she replied with a wink, pointing to Willow and Tara’s hands, which were still firmly joined.
“
That’s who I am,” she went on. “Since time began - that’s where I was born, and where I always am. Where any gay ladies, such as yourselves, can find me, so long as they just... love.”
“The Great Lesbian,” Tara realised.
“At your service! Embodiment of all that’s Sapphic and spectacular, and eternal ally to everyone else whose love of whatever sort makes the world go ‘round. We’re all in this together, after all. But,” she huffed, “
some people just have to ignore that and be selfish jerks, so every once in a while love has to kick some butt. By way of,” she fixed the pair with a meaningful look, “appropriately angelic champions of goodwill and hot gay love?”
Willow and Tara looked at each other, gazed, and slowly smiled.
“She’s right,” Tara said.
“Extremely right,” Willow agreed. Slowly, and reluctantly, she turned back to the shimmering figure. “What can we do?”
“Receive your gifts,” she smirked, “from the lips of the source of truest love.” The pair looked at her for a moment in confusion, then realisation dawned, and they turned back to each other.
“Yeah little test there,” the Great Lesbian admitted as they kissed. “Passed with flying colours. Now go be wonderful!”
The newly-minted Special Friends jumped in surprise as, from their point of view, Willow and Tara vanished from among them and instantly reappeared a short distance away, clad in matching blue and green superhero costumes that were exceedingly flattering to their deserving physiques, and quite oblivious to everything else as they kissed.
“Uh, you two got something you wanna share?” Overt Sexuality Gal asked, eyeing the duo in a way that made Buffy instantly contemplate getting herself a costume, then clamping down on that thought, with little success. Willow and Tara paused - reluctantly, as they were just getting to the part where their hands had started wandering in earnest - and took in the scene of the rampaging robot ahead of them.
“Let’s do this?” Willow asked, keeping hold of Tara’s hand.
“With you all the way,” Tara smiled.
“Could you all be ready to take down the malicious idiots?”
“Sure thing,” Cowboy Guy nodded, “but I hope y’all got a mighty impressive trick up yer sleeves for dealin’ with thet thar robotchamacallit critter.”
“No problem at all,” Tara said confidently, which made Willow’s knees go weak. She recovered as they held up their hands, met each other’s gazes, and sang out-
”WONDER LESBIAN POWERS ACTIVATE! FORM OF A SAPPHIC FESTIVEBOT!”In a transformation as sparkly and rainbow-hued as it was possible for a transformation to be, the pair took the form of a giant and shapely robot garbed in a metallic red dress (and matching metallic underwear, as observed by Overt Sexuality Gal who didn’t even try to resist the temptation to look up and check), sexy black rocket-boots, and a reinforced Santa hat.
Well this
is pretty cool Willow’s consciousness communicated telepathically with Tara’s within their newly-merged super-form.
How’re you doing?Not what I imagined doing with myself today, Tara thought back gleefully,
but I’m going to go out on a limb and say, coming to Snowydale was the best move of my life.Glad to hear it - because I’ve got some other ideas about what we might do with ourselves... hey can you read my thoughts while we’re like this?Oh yes
sweetie. Let’s beat up the bad guys and get to enjoying that, wow, very
ingenious imagination of yours.The fantastic fembot strode forward to meet the menacing faux-former as it lurched into the street, while the rest of the Special Friends rushed between their legs to apprehend the asshat trio as they argued about what to do about this new and demoralising (to them and only them) development. A swift rocket-boosted knee to the groin followed by a precision robot-punch to the jaw sent not-Megatron reeling, but the Festivebot clamped a hand around its wrist to conscientiously keep it from falling on the town hall and doing any further damage.
“You should have more respect for our civic buildings!” it snapped, in Willow and Tara’s combined voices. “Especially since you’ll be staying in one, as soon as we build a jail big enough-”
Actually is this thing alive? Tara wondered telepathically
Not sure, lemme just invent a way to use our combined brainpower to give us robo-sensors capable of detecting life on a soul-based level... okay done, nope, it’s just a crummy machine, let’s wreck it.I’ve got an idea, can I borrow some of your science genius to make this work?Baby, you can help yourself to anything you like.“Later, sweetie,” the Festivebot accidentally said out loud. “Oops... I mean, Dreaming of a White Christmas Generator, engaged!”
With an athletic cartwheel the adorable mecha swung its hapless opponent around and into the sky, where it made a perfect target for the molecular transmutation ray that emerged from its ample cleavage, reducing the robot to a fine mist of ice crystals that spread out above Snowydale and, at last, provided the soft blanket of Christmas snow the town had always lacked. As the snowflakes fell to the delight of citizens young and old, Warren - being led away none-too-gently by Captain Tea Cosy - muttered a derisive “Bah humdrum,” because he was too lazy to actually read books, and just repeated lines he’d picked up second-hand to try to seem cool.
“Snowydale owes you a great debt, Captain Tea Cosy,” the Chief of Police said, slightly muffled by the Santa Claus beard he was wearing because there really wasn’t much for the police to do in a town with superheroes in residence besides keep an eye on the traffic and help run fundraisers. “You’ve kept us safe for many years, but never have we seen villains so unsavoury as these Impractical Malice rogues.”
“I’d not have prevailed without my newfound Special Friends,” Giles said gracefully. “I’m just sorry we didn’t wrap up this disgraceful business sooner, before the old town hall was damaged.”
“Well we haven’t had much use for the place anyway, since the Mayor turned himself into a garden snake by accident all those years ago,” the Chief admitted. “But since you mention it, I’ve been having a word with the community leaders, and we’re agreed that - should you wish - we’d like to take advantage of the rebuilding here to create a suitably fabulous residence and headquarters for you all, to show the esteem in which we hold our Gay Guardians.”
“Can we have bunk beds?” Overt Sexuality Gal asked quickly. “Whattaya say Princess, you want to be on top or on the bottom?”
“I didn’t realise you were, um, versatile,” Buffy said, trying not to shiver.
“Oh I go all sorts of ways...”
“We got enough room for a gym?” Nancy Gym Bunny wondered, as Buffy struggled to restrain her imagination.
“Looks like plenty,” Willow mused, unrolling the old building plan the Chief had provided on the town hall’s meeting table and starting to sketch in new rooms. “Main meeting room for devising heroic strategies, laboratory here, the gym can be here-”
“Looks like enough room fer mah buckin’ bronco!” Cowboy Guy grinned. “I’ll telegraph mah folks and have ‘em send it right over!”
“Telegraph?” Buffy wondered.
“He knows about phones,” Tara clarified. “He just likes the ambience. Oh hey sweetie, look!”
“Oh wow, there’s a whole cave network under here,” Willow said, peering at the plans. “‘Cave of Non-Stop Sapphic Monkey Love’...?”
“That sounds extremely spelunkable,” Tara breathed, leaning closer.
“You do quirky verb conjugation as well,” Willow whispered, utterly entranced.
“Then it’s settled,” Giles declared. “I shall miss the familiar environs of the old library, but a greater destiny awaits! Let us erect-”
“Yee-haw!” “Oh, real mature mate.” “-our Hall of Rampant Homosexuality, and be forever the guardians of truth, justice, tolerance, and love in the land of Snowydale!”