DISCLAIMER: All things Buffy are the creation and property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy Productions, and so forth. All things non-Buffy are the creation and property of many other individuals and corporate entities. This particular story is the creation of Robert A. Black (that's me). Feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think of my work. Good or bad, I'd like to hear it. TIME CONTEXT: This story takes place between the Buffy episodes, "Nightmares" and "Invisible Girl." Confused? Refer to the Readers' Guide at the end of the chapter for hints and explanations.

The streets of Sunnydale were rarely busy. There weren't that many places for people to go, and most of the places were so close together that people didn't bother driving between them. Thus it was no surprise to anyone, if anyone had been watching, that the rental car pulling into town was all alone on the road.

The car pulled over to the curb, and its driver rolled down the window to get a better look at the town. The driver's all-American looks and drab sense of fashion immediately gave away the fact that he was a government employee. An FBI Agent, to be precise.

"This is it," he said to the red-haired woman sitting in the passenger seat. "Not very impressive for a center of mystical convergence. You'd think they'd have at least put up some signs."

"I did warn you, Mulder," the woman said. "Maybe next time you won't pay so much attention to anonymous e-mails."

"It wasn't just the e-mail," Fox Mulder insisted. "You saw the articles that came with it, Scully. Cheerleaders bursting into flames. Principals being eaten. Mysterious creatures being killed on-stage at a talent show. How do you explain events like that?"

"Mulder, those were articles from the high school paper," Dana Scully pointed out. "Teenagers are notorious for exaggerating facts, and that's when they don't just make things up outright. You should have seen some of the stories I wrote for my high school paper."

"Why, Scully, you little devil."

Scully arched an eyebrow at her partner, but said nothing. Mulder opened the car door and stepped out onto the street. "As long as we're here, we might as well take a look around," he said. "We'll probably even have time to take in the sights. All two of them."

Scully rolled her eyes and got out of the car. As she followed Mulder down the street, she couldn't help wishing that just once she had let her partner go on one of his wild goose chases alone.

***

Several hundred miles away, another car sped down an equally deserted road. Another man and another woman rode inside.

At least, they used to be a man and a woman.

Driving across the Great Plains was no job for any intelligent vampire, Spike thought grimly. The flat terrain offered no protection from the daytime sun. The sparse population offered too few places to stop, and too few hitchhikers to snack on. Only a foolish vampire would try to make such a journey.

A foolish vampire, or a vampire on a quest.

"Spike?" came the small, weak voice from beside him. Spike glanced over at his paramour, Drusilla, who was looking out the car window as she spoke to him. "Do you think the cows would answer us if we stopped to talk with them? Would they sing to us in their low, soft voices?" She turned her head as if to follow one cow in particular as it receded into the distance. "Mooooo," she said quietly.

Spike shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Drusilla had been mad since before she became a vampire. After the nasty business in Prague, she had become dangerously weak as well. That was his quest - to find some way of restoring her to health. Sometimes he thought he had do it before she drove him mad as well.

"Darling, I don't think any of the cows will answer," Spike told her. "After all, they're not very smart, are they?"

"Perhaps the cows aren't what they seem," Drusilla replied. "Maybe they're visitors from other worlds, like the people who've come to Sunnydale."

Spike slammed on his brakes and brought the car to a halt. Drusilla was a seer. He'd made use of her visions on many occasions. The trouble was, her madness made the visions unpredictable. He never knew when she would have another one. "Sunnywhere?" he asked her.

"Sunnydale. People from all over are gathering at the Mouth of Hell. It'll be quite a party. Ever so fancy."

The Mouth of Hell. Spike had heard of it. It was a source of great power, but it was also a great danger. The last vampire who had tried to tap its energy hadn't been heard from in decades. But if something was happening there, perhaps there would be enough power left over to suit his needs. And if there wasn't enough left over - well, Spike had ways of making sure that there was.

"Sunnydale, you say, love?" he said to Drusilla. She nodded vacantly but said nothing. "Well, then," Spike continued, "we'll just have to join the fun. You know I wouldn't want you to miss out."

With that, Spike started the car again and drove off. He would have to find out exactly where Sunnydale was, of course. Probably quite a distance. But if it was as powerful as he believed, the trip would be worth it.

***

"This is well weird."

The girl who called herself Ace - she even had the name stitched in large letters on the back of her jacket, just in case anyone forgot - joined Buffy near the library computer terminal. Buffy may not have been familiar with the girl's way of talking, but she certainly shared the sentiment.

After several minutes of confusion, the library's many visitors were finally sorting themselves out. The Fourth and Seventh Doctors had explained that they were actually two different incarnations of the same being's thirteen-life span existence. Buffy didn't really understand that explanation, but if it made them happy, she wasn't going to worry about it.

Meanwhile, Willow had agreed to take the woman Leela off to find some more normal-looking clothes. Buffy was glad Xander hadn't been around to see Leela's jungle-girl garb. The boy wouldn't have been able to stop drooling, at least until Leela cut his tongue off with that large knife she was carrying.

As for the rest of the group, they were gathered around Giles as he pored over one of his books, looking for some explanation for the night's strange events.

"This town," Giles explained, "sits on a center of mystical convergence, a point where our Earth intersects the realm of the demons. I knew it had an effect on the local area, but I didn't think it extended to other worlds and other times."

"That doesn't explain how the Doctors can be here," said Kes. Looking at the Fourth and Seventh Doctors, she continued, "You're fictional characters in our world. I read about you in our ship's database. How can you exist in reality?"

"That's simply an example of the Heinlein effect," the Fourth Doctor replied. "If you assume that there are an infinite number of universes - or quite a lot of them, anyway - it only stands to reason that people who are fictional in some timelines are completely real in others."

"But that doesn't explain how I can exist here," objected the Doctor - the bald Doctor, that is, or the holographic one, as he had referred to himself. Buffy thought of him as the Doctor, despite what anyone else said, since he hadn't given himself a number. The man had somehow managed to change his clothes without anyone noticing. He now wore a black jumpsuit with blue shoulders instead of the bizarre outfit he was wearing when he arrived.

"I'm simply a projection of energy inside a magnetic containment field," the Doctor was saying. "A projection can't exist without some kind of projector around, and I left my portable emitter back on the ship."

"And yet you're still intact," noted the Seventh Doctor. "Clearly, whoever is responsible for our being here has a great deal of power."

"We've seen the Hellmouth cause a number of remarkable events," said Giles. "Perhaps the Master has found a way to - "

"The Master?" the Fourth and Seventh Doctors said simultaneously.

"Yes," Giles replied. "A very old and powerful vampire who's trapped in the Hellmouth. I was going to suggest that he was behind all this."

The Fourth and Seventh Doctors both appeared to relax, although Buffy didn't understand how the news that there was a vampire nearby could be so comforting.

"I rather think our culprit isn't from around here," said the Seventh Doctor. "Somehow I doubt a trapped vampire would be able to reach so far beyond your world."

"When you say 'not from around here,'" said Buffy, "you mean really not from around here." She pointed toward the ceiling. "As in, 'out there.'"

"'Out there' isn't such a bad place, really," said the Fourth Doctor. "Oh, it's dull in spots, but it's got a lot of bits that are quite interesting."

"I'm sure it does," said Giles, "but that doesn't help with our current problem. We need to find out what's happening before it happens again. I don't know how many more universes this library can handle."

"I hope we haven't arrived too late," said a new voice from the library entrance.

"Not again!" cried Buffy. She turned to see the new visitors - and suddenly stopped dead. The man who had spoken looked like an average person, from somewhere in the Middle East, she guessed. His companion, however, was definitely from someplace a lot farther away. The creature's skin was covered with scales, and his neck made him look like a large snake. Both the man and the creature were wearing tuxedos.

Concerned that snake-man was actually a demon, Buffy hurried over to the newcomers, prepared for battle. Much to her surprise, the snake-man's friend greeted her warmly. "My dear girl," he said, "I was hoping I'd find you here."

As Buffy looked at him in confusion, the man took her by the hand. "You're a bit younger than I expected - but I'm sure we'll get along famously anyway." He held her hand to his lips and kissed it, all the while giving her a look that made it very clear just how "famously" he expected them to get along.

This was simply too much. Buffy jerked her hand down quickly, then brought it back up, right into the man's nose. As he staggered backwards, she grabbed him by the arm and flipped him. His reptilian companion looked shocked, but somehow mildly amused, as the man tumbled to the floor.

Buffy turned to faced the snake-man, quickly taking a fighting stance. "Don't even think about getting your turn," she warned him.

"What did you say?" said Giles.

"Do all you people talk like that?" asked Buffy.

"Computer, end program!" shouted the man as he sat up.

"Doctor," said the snake-man, "I don't think that's going to work."

"Don't tell me he's a Doctor, too," said Buffy.

By now, the holographic Doctor had come to the man's assistance. A look of recognition spread across his face. "Doctor Julian Bashir?" he asked. "It is you, isn't it? I've read your paper on subconscious mental activity in artificial life forms. It was most illuminating."

Bashir looked up and seemed to recognize the Doctor as well. "Doctor Zimmerman?" he asked.

"I'm afraid not," said the Doctor. "I'm one of his Emergency Medical Holographic Programs. The one assigned to the starship Voyager, to be precise."

"Voyager?" Bashir exclaimed. "She's been missing for years."

"Yes, well that's a bit of a complicated story..."

"But if you're here," Bashir went on, "then we're still on a holodeck, aren't we?"

"Well, no," said the Doctor. "That's also a complicated story."

Bashir turned to look at Buffy as he stood up. Realization was dawning on his face. "Then you're a... a real person."

"What did you think I was?" Buffy asked.

Bashir suddenly looked tremendously embarrassed. "Oh, my God," he stammered. "I am so sorry. I... I don't really act like that, you know. It was just a game, you see. I was role-playing, acting as... as..." His face flushed, as if he wasn't expecting his explanation to get him out of trouble. "I was pretending to be a Secret Agent."

"A role Doctor Bashir still has much to learn about," said the snake-man. "I wish I had some advice to give him, but I really don't engage in such interesting activities."

"And you are?" Buffy asked, still eyeing him suspiciously.

"My name is Garak," the snake-man answered. "I'm Doctor Bashir's tailor."

"So you're not a demon?" Buffy said, pressing the issue.

"He's a Cardassian," the Doctor replied. "Although there are some people who would say that's the same thing."

"This is most peculiar," said Giles, joining the discussion. "You mean you all know each other?"

"We're from the same time period, and the same universe," said the Doctor, "but my ship is lost on the other side of the galaxy from where they are."

"And over here," Giles continued, turning back to the Fourth and Seventh Doctors, "we have two incarnations of the same person. I'm beginning to believe that whatever force brought you all here isn't random."

"But why would anyone want to bring us all together?" asked Kes. "Who would even be powerful enough to know we all existed, in all our different universes and time periods?"

"I don't know," said Giles, "but we're going to need to use that same kind of power if we want to get you all home. I doubt some of you will be able to remain in our world for long without drawing attention."

"MISTER GILES!" shouted yet another new voice. Unlike the evening's other arrivals, though, this one was all too familiar.

Giles winced as Principal Snyder walked into the library. He charged straight past the motley crew of visitors, apparently oblivious to the fact that there were alien beings in the group.

"Is there something I can do for you, sir?" Giles asked, trying to look as innocent as possible under the circumstances.

"I see we're having a small after-hours get-together this evening," Synder said accusingly. "It wouldn't have been too much trouble to notify me in advance, would it?"

"Well, sir, I'm afraid things happened, um, rather at the last minute."

"I don't like surprises in my school," Snyder retorted. "The children are already undisciplined and unpredictable enough without the faculty joining in. I don't want to see this kind of thing happening again."

"Believe me, sir," Giles replied, "neither do I."

"Keep it that way," Synder ordered. "And if you are going to have any pre-arranged visitors, make sure they know the proper rules of conduct on school grounds. On my way here, I ran into some big, ugly person who wouldn't stop talking. He kept asking me where the local bar was, as if I would know something like that."

"Morn!" cried Bashir. "I was wondering where he'd gone."

Snyder turned toward Bashir. "He's your friend?"

"He, uh, came here with us," Bashir replied.

"He did?" said Garak, obviously surprised.

"Well, with Chief O'Brien on Bajor, I needed someone else to play Falcon..."

"Excuse me," said Snyder. "Let's stick to my original point. If he's your friend, I expect you to keep him in line."

"Certainly, sir," Bashir promised. He looked Snyder in the eye for the first time, and suddenly looked puzzled. "By the way," he said, "this may seem like a strange question, but do I know you?"

"Don't be ridiculous," scoffed Snyder. He turned to leave, but Giles stopped him.

"One more thing, sir, if you don't mind," said Giles. "You don't seem particularly alarmed by the, uh... rather interesting looking people who are here tonight. I was wondering..."

"Mister Giles," Snyder replied, "even though I've only been the Principal for a short time, by now there's nothing I can see here that would alarm me."

He turned and left. Garak watched him go, then turned to Giles. "And you were saying something about our drawing attention?" he quipped.

End of Chapter 1

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