This is a crossover between Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and Wildstorm Comics' series The Authority
and Jenny Sparks: The Secret History of The Authority
, involving plot elements from both. No spoilers (not exactly), just a blending of the stories of two girls who have unusual powers and eventually die to save the universe.
For those unfamiliar with Jenny Sparks, she is the spirit of the 20th century and draws on the power of its most important technology, electricity. If you do know the series, apologies for reducing
her powers so much; it was the only way to make the story work.
All characters are the property of their respective creators, and are used without permission. This story may not be distributed for profit-making purposes.Jenny the Vampire SlayerBy Marcus L. RowlandJenny Sparks1900 - 1999She Saved The World - Too Bloody OftenZurich, Switzerland, February 16th 1913. 2.30 AM
Thirteen-year-old Jenny can't sleep. Ever since her parents died and left her penniless she's been having odd dreams. Usually they seem to revolve around graves, but lately she's been seeing monsters, vampires and demons. It isn't fun, so she plans to stay awake until she's exhausted. She dresses, lights a fag, and tiptoes past Professor Einstein's bedroom - as usual her godfather is snoring loudly - and heads out for a stroll. It's a nice clear night, a bit cold but she's never minded that. As she walks the new electric street lights dim a little, and a faint nimbus of blue fire flickers around her hand. Have to watch that - she isn't sure why she has this power, but it's been getting stronger for the last couple of years. Already she can throw a bolt of lightning that will drop a horse in its tracks, she doesn't like to think what it could do to a man. Except possibly the one who's been following her for the last few blocks; she isn't sure how she knows he's there, but it's a stealthy presence on the edge of her perception.
Ahead someone is walking towards her. A heavy-set man, there's something a little odd about him. Jenny thinks for a second, then realises that she can't see the condensation from his breath. Suddenly he's a lot closer, and his face seems to be changing. He's got fangs, and he's leaping at her.
Without pausing for thought Jenny gives him everything she's got; a bolt of lightning that sears through the air, and through his chest, at the speed of electricity. He's toast, burning for a second then crumbling to dust, as all the street lights for a quarter mile around burn out.
"Here, use this stake to finish him... oh." says a panting voice behind her. She looks at the stranger, bowed down with crosses, stakes, and daggers, flicks her fag-end at his feet and walks away.
The next day, for the first of many times, she tells the Watchers where to put their council. She's buggered if she's going to let a bunch of old wankers tell her what to do with her life.Strakenz, Ruritania, December 25th 1919. 1.10 AM
Jenny walks the streets, dressed as a rather unlikely hussar with drooping false moustache and a neat goatee. If nobody looks too closely she'll be all right, if they do she has plenty of ways to keep them quiet for a few hours. About a hundred yards ahead the little mechanical match-girl Einstein built is trudging wearily down the street, trying to sell matches and pipe-cleaners to everyone it passes. She's already had to rescue it from drunken soldiers twice.
She doesn't like this country; the demons that secretly rule the place have made it into a nightmare, and in a couple of days she'll be doing something about that. Vampires are just the icing on the cake, but they're an icing she happens to be unusually qualified to deal with. Back at the hotel Hemingway is probably fretting at the waste of time, but there's no evidence that this country has even heard of the Slayer. The vampire she's seeking has been taking children, and that's something she particularly hates.
It's an demon-owned city but they don't really know her power yet; she wants to keep it that way so she's armed with a hand-crafted wooden sword - stakes are too clumsy, the blade is ebony processed to the density and strength of steel, a process Einstein invented and hasn't bothered to patent - and a half-dozen throwing knives of the same material, concealed by the tunic.
The vampire leaps at the child and tries to sink its fangs into the steel-armoured neck. It's still bellowing with pain when the sword takes its head and it crumbles to dust.Berlin, Germany, December 30th 1919. 3.30 PM
The mission to Ruritania has gone horribly wrong, and Einstein is in demon hands. A few hours ago Jenny was close to death; now she's chatting to a strange American girl who's come from the future to rescue her. A figure made of dark living metal, something she calls nanotechnology mixed (she says) with magic.
"So let me get this straight... we're not even going to meet until the nineties, then you're going to be part of this... Scooby gang... for a few years. Then I die, you inherit my diary, you find out what you did, you spend another couple of years perfecting things, then come back into the past to rescue me. Okay, it's so weird I suppose I have to believe you. What you haven't told me is why."
"Well, you do save the world a lot before I'm even born, and I kind of like being alive. Also, you're the inspiration for most of the super-heroes we have in my time. Then there's the whole thing about great power giving me great responsibility... Put it this way, I could do it so I did."
"Well, I can't say I regret it. Is there anything I can do for you before you go?"
"I'll be honest... I always did have a crush on you, even before I knew who you were, never did anything about it in the nineties. A kiss would be nice."
Jenny kisses the strange girl, watching black metal writhe around her red hair, and feels a tongue in her mouth and electricity spark between them. Somehow she knows that all of her power can't do this girl any harm. "My bedroom's this way, Willow, and it'll be a few hours before they're ready for the rescue mission. Fancy a quick snog?"Berlin, Germany, January 1st 1945. 4.25 AM
Hitler has the Spear of Destiny and there's no doubt that he's using it to open yet another Hellmouth, the fourth this century. Not for the first time Jenny regrets advising him to drop painting and take up a career in politics.
Jenny doesn't know why she stopped aging at twenty, or why her life seems to bring her into contact with everyone important in the twentieth century; she's a celebrity, of course, and even the vampire slaying isn't much of a secret any more, but she sometimes gets the impression that some kind of weird synchronicity is at work here. Maybe it's Willow the techno-pagan, pulling the strings from somewhere in the twenty-first century. Maybe it's the Watchers at work, by now they know better than to try to tell her what to do but every now and again she catches one of their agents trying to influence her. Usually she does the opposite of what they want - of course sometimes that's what they were really after...
She's fighting her way through buildings where she used to be an honoured guest, impartially slaying vampires, storm troopers, and anyone else that gets in her way. Her new friend Angel is guarding her back; he's a vampire but he has a soul so she's doing her best not to kill him by mistake.
If she comes across Hitler she'll probably kill him, but he's just a human; stupidly calling on powers he doesn't really understand, of course, but when all's said and done she remembers the tattered artist she met in Vienna, and hopes she doesn't have to hurt him.
It takes her three hours to close the Hellmouth. By the time she's done most of Berlin is in ruins. Hitler escapes, but his power base is destroyed. Within months he's killed by plotters, and Germany surrenders to the advancing British and American forces.
One of the gypsies they rescue as they fight their way back to the Allied lines explains the curse on Angel; if he's ever truly happy he will lose his soul. Later her friend Alan Turing uses one of the Bletchley Park computers to take the spell apart and recast it without that flaw. For more than fifty years she and Angel are occasional lovers, always good friends.Woodstock, New York State, August 16th 1969, 10.45 PM
Jenny is stoned out of her mind and loving it. She's stripped to Union Jack T-shirt and briefs, sharing some excellent grass and a group grope with three Hell's Angels. She's so far out of it that it takes her nearly ten seconds to spot the peroxide-blonde vampire snacking on a hippy on the far side of the stage. Then she sobers fast.
There are too many people in the way for lightning or the throwing knives, so she leaps onto the stage and runs across, zapping anyone who gets in her way. Somewhere along the way she loses the shirt to get at the sword strapped to her back. Before she can reach him the girl is dead, but he's dust a minute later. The strange mad vampire girl that tries to help him dies even faster. Most people seeing her think that it's part of the act; later the photo of her running across the stage, stripped to her briefs and glowing with blue fire, becomes one of the stock images of Woodstock.Sunnydale, California, September 12th 1995, 11.00 AM
Lately Jenny has been keeping a low profile. She's tired, and the world is getting too complex for someone whose response to most problems is a wooden sword or a lightning bolt. Let the newcomer super-heroes take the lime-light for now; she wants to take it easy. She's had plenty of years to learn how to disguise herself, and friends have got her the documents she needs to take a series of inconspicuous jobs. This one's the latest, a school that has an odd feel to it, the feeling she gets near a Hellmouth. If there's a problem she'll deal with it, of course, for now it's just a feeling that might mean nothing.
She thinks she's spotted a Watcher working in the library - he's younger than most of them, and looks kind of cute, and he's British so he may actually know how to make a cup of tea. Maybe he'll be able to tell her more about the place, if he isn't another bloody nuisance. Meanwhile she has her first class.
"Good morning. I'm your new modern history teacher, Jenny Summers. Some of you will realise that I'm British. Live with it, and live with the fact that my viewpoint will sometimes be a little different from your textbooks. Answer your names when I call them, please." When she gets to 'Rosenberg, Willow' and hears a half-remembered voice she realises that time has just bitten itself in the arse.Sunnydale, California, December 31st 1999, 11.58 PM
Jenny lights a last fag as she levitates up the Hell-God Glory's tower, propelled by electrostatics and Willow's magic. Her daughter, a girl that didn't even exist a few months ago, is twenty years old and a mystical key that's about to be sacrificed to open a gate between the worlds; if that happens the entire multiverse will probably be destroyed. On the ground Glory is dead, and Willow and the rest of the Scooby Gang are mopping up; Xander's exoskeleton and chain gun are doing the noisiest damage - she grins as she remembers the moment when he finally recognised her as "the babe from the Woodstock poster on the garage wall" - and the others are fighting with their own quieter weapons, just as deadly. She's taught them well, knowing what's coming next.
She gets there too late, of course; Elizabeth, Buffy to her friends, is bleeding from the sacrificial knives, her blood dripping into an ever-widening pool of magical energy. Jenny knows what she has to do; she's known for more than eighty years that she'll die tonight, dying with the twenty-first century as she was born with the twentieth. She fries the last demon, kisses her daughter (or whatever the hell she is - she remembers the birth, loves her and doesn't care) goodbye and leaps into the energy pool, discharging all her power in a massive pulse that blows out the circuits of every TV set for ten miles. The portal slams closed. Drained, her body plummets, but she's dead before she hits the ground, at the last stroke of twelve.Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, January 1st 2000, 12.11 AM
Born with the century, the child that will soon be called Jenny Quantum dreams of monsters. In a nearby park a tree quietly disassembles itself into thousands of lengths of wood, each roughly the size of an HB pencil. In 0.03 seconds each has teleported into the heart of a vampire. A second later there is only one within a five hundred kilometres. When the demons searching for the new Slayer find the hospital, an hour or so later, Angel is waiting for them. The Scooby Gang aren't far behind.
It's going to be a bad new millennium for the monsters.