First, there was one girl in all the world..

For centuries, one girl in each generation, the Slayer, fought the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness.

Then, there were many.

The Slayer of her era, Buffy Summers, and her friend, the witch Willow Rosenberg, gave the power of the Slayer to every “potential” in the world. Then there were thousands of slayers, overseen in their fight against evil by the reborn Watchers Council.

Finally, there was everyone.

In the Crisis of 2006, the world at large found out about the existence of the supernatural, vampires, demons and magic as they watched Slayer Faith Lehane’s death and resurrection. Now the Watchers Council must fight the forces of evil while also keeping an uneasy peace between our world and those that intrude on its boundaries.

Today, the Council is the most famous organization in the world.

 It is now 2022. The Watchers Council, jointly run by the watchers, slayers and witches, seems to have beaten back the darkness further than ever before. Grace Hatherley has spent eight successful years as Chairwoman overseeing the Council’s second generation, since Buffy Summers chose her as her successor in 2014. Now the third generation has entered the fight. The Council seems to be on top of the world. But…

Things Fall Apart

 

Fade In:

Int.

Cleveland Museum of Art – Night

Cleveland

December 16, 2022

A lone woman walked across the wide open, glass-roofed atrium that connected the old and new wings of the museum. Her hair was long and dark at the top, but as it went down, the dye gradually faded in until the end of each lock was bright pink. The hair framed her round face and Asian features; she looked about college-aged. On her back she wore a large cloth guitar case, held by a strap slung over one shoulder. Her footsteps echoed as she walked from the new wing into the old.

Once inside, she passed painting after painting by Renaissance masters, but she didn’t stop to look at any of them. She walked into a larger room displaying several suits of medieval armor, with a full suit of a knight riding a horse in the center, lance held high. The walls were lined with massive, somewhat faded tapestries. Without stopping, the woman continued on through the Hall of Armor and passed through the far door.

Cut To:

Int.

Cleveland Museum of Art – Ancient World Gallery – Moments Later

The pink-haired woman walked into another gallery, this one displaying artifacts that were millenia older still. Fragments of stone wall covered with cuneiform script stood next to statues of bearded Assyrian kings. In the center of this room, in a glass case all its own, sat a small, wooden casket, about the size of a jewelry box. Small depictions of human and animal forms in rudimentary pigments marked its lid and sides, not so different from what might be found on the wall of a prehistoric cave.

Cut To:

Int.

Unknown Location – Same Time

Willow Rosenberg, around forty years old, sat watching a monitor in front of her.

“There you are,” she said. Then she called out telepathically, “I’ve got eyes on her now. She’s in the Ancient World Gallery. Over.”

Cut To:

Int.

Unknown Location – Same Time

Buffy Summers’s forehead scrunched at the voice in her head. “Copy that, Will,” she sent back. “Keep an eye on what she does next. Over.”

Cut To:

Int.

Cleveland Museum of Art – Ancient World Gallery – Moments Later

The pink-haired woman stopped in front of the box, cocking her head as she examined it.

“That’s the oldest thing in this whole place, y’know.”

A burly security guard had come up beside the young woman. She turned her head to look at him, suddenly flashing a girlish smile. “Oh yeah?” she asked.

“The Box of Nakodok,” he said. “Or at least, that’s what they call it. Nakodok’s just the town on the Kenya-South Sudan border where they found the thing a couple years back. The dating came back so old, it definitely predates written language.”

The young woman eyed the security guard, a small smile on her lips. “So, did you get all that from reading the little sign there?”

The guard chuckled. “Hey, you pick up things around this stuff. You wanna hear something cool?”

“Always,” she said.

“They say that the Box holds a dark power, more ancient than anything on Earth. The only thing stopping that power from bursting out and bleeding the world dry are those drawings on there. They’re supposed to be powerful spells.”

The woman raised an eyebrow, then looked back at the Box. “Well, don’t believe everything they say.”

The security guard sighed. “Look, I just came over here to tell you that the museum is closing. The music program is done for the day, too.” He gestured to the carrying case on her back.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll head out, don’t worry,” she said, still looking down at the ancient designs on the Box. The guard nodded and walked away. She waited several seconds, then looked over in the direction the guard had left, making sure he was gone. The smile was now completely gone from her face. Then her eyes rose to the roofline, where the room held small security cameras in each corner around the skylight in the center. Each bore a small red light below the lens, indicating the camera was operational.

Then she unslung the case from her back and pulled out a small, wallet-sized plastic container. She opened it and several small points of light floated upwards. They hung, pixie-like, in front of her face, just for a moment, and then one zipped toward each camera. One by one, the red lights blinked out.

The woman slid the case closed and put a finger to one ear. “Okay, this is One. We are a go.”

She walked to a door at the far end of the room. It was marked “Authorized Personnel Only” and had a small keypad next to it. The woman pulled out another small item from her case, a novelty keychain with a rabbit’s foot hanging from it. She held the rabbit’s foot within an inch of the keypad, and both foot and pad briefly glowed with an ethereal white light. Then, with an audible click, the door unlocked. The pink-haired woman pulled it open and disappeared within.

Cut To:

Int.

Cleveland Museum of Art – Security Center – Moments Later

She walked down a short, nondescript hallway, walking past several doors until she reached the right one. She opened the door to find a bank of computer monitors, each showing a grid of several security camera feeds. A single guard sat in front of the monitors.

He turned in his chair. “Hey, you can’t be –”

That was as far as the guard got before the woman strode forward, held out her palm and blew a small puff of blue powder from it into the guard’s face. He blinked once, then twice. Then he slumped over, his face landing on his keyboard. After a moment, he began to snore.

The young woman pulled the keyboard out from under the sleeping guard’s face, biting her lip in concentration. She made several keystrokes, and each of the grids gradually began to turn to static. She put a finger to her ear again.

“This is One. Objective two completed. Heading to rendezvous now.”

She walked back into the hallway, where she found the guard she had spoken to a few moments earlier, waiting between her and the door back into the public areas of the museum.

“Oh, I’m, um, I’m sorry,” she said, pitching a thumb over her shoulder. “Is this not the bathroom?”

“You know, I really was trying to impress you back there,” he said, stalking toward her. “It’s too bad.”

The pink-haired woman crossed her arms over her chest. “Sorry, I’m not easily impressed.”

“You sure?” the guard asked, just before his facial features suddenly morphed into the tell-tale deformed forehead, yellow eyes and fangs of a vampire. He grabbed the woman by her shoulders and growled.

She did not scream, or even appear scared. Instead, as the guard’s fangs reached a few inches from her neck, she rolled her eyes. He pulled back, slightly confused.

“I’m sorry, am I boring you?” he asked.

She sighed. “It’s just…going around, attacking vulnerable young women? What town do you think you’re in? I mean, this is Cleveland.”

The woman reached behind her into the top of her guitar case, then pulled out a long, metal baseball bat. The large end had several nasty-looking blades attached to it by means of wires. To the smaller end had been attached a wooden stake. In one motion, she slammed the business end of the bat into the guard’s face. He went flying backward, flipping head over feet. The back of his head slammed so hard into the tiles it made a dent.

“You know, Slayer Central?”

As the first guard groaned and made an initial, unsuccessful attempt to pull himself up off the floor, the pink-haired woman found herself temporarily distracted when the security guard from the video room stuck his face out from a door behind her.

“You bitch!” he called out. “You’ll pay for that.” And with that, his face morphed into that of a vampire, as well.

She turned to face him. “Seriously? Is everyone who works here a vam –” Her eyes got wider with realization. “Oh shit.”

Then she found herself grabbed from behind by the first guard, whose face was now bleeding profusely in more than one spot. “That’s right,” he growled. “You should be scared.” As he held her, the second guard moved in for the kill.

The woman sighed at this. “Yeah, you’re not who I’m worried about.” With what seemed like not very much effort, she twisted her body and turned both of them sideways. She planted both feet against one side of the hallway and slammed him back into the other wall. This bought her enough room to smack the top of her baseball bat weapon into his forehead.

The battered guard released his grip, and the woman turned and stabbed the other, sharp, wooden end of the bat into his chest. With sounds somewhere between a scream of agony and a soda can opening, the vampire’s body exploded into dust, showering to the floor.

By this point, the second guard had gotten over his shock, and he rushed forward with an enraged yell. The pink-haired woman grinned. She leapt sideways, pushing off one wall with her boot and putting all of her momentum into a swing with her bat. She slammed the weapon into the vampire’s cheek and several of his teeth spattered onto the floor, closely followed by the rest of him.

The woman spun her bat around and plunged it downward into the prone guard, and he turned to dust, as well.

She groaned and walked back down the hall to where her guitar case sat on the floor, slung it back over her shoulder and headed toward the door back to the museum.

Cut To:

Ext.

Cleveland Museum of Art – Service Entrance – Moments Later

The pink-haired woman opened a side entrance to the museum to find several figures waiting for her in winter coats and hats.

In front stood the seventeen-year-old, dark-haired Liz Giles, flanked by a fifteen-year-old, blonde Jennifer Rosenberg and her twin, Alex. A little further back waited Rowena Allister-Rosenberg and Buffy Summers, each in their forties. Buffy wore a particularly bulky coat and scarf, had her arms wrapped around herself and was shivering.

The woman held the door open for the trio of teenagers to file past her and into the building.

“Took you long enough,” Liz commented, as she pushed past the woman to escape the cold.

“Feels like I’ve been out there for sixteen years, Emma,” Jen added.

“That’s not possible. We just turned fifteen,” Alex reminded her.

“Thank you, Stephen Hawking, for ruining another joke,” Jen shot back.

Rowena, following immediately behind them, quietly but firmly said, “Enough. Focus on the mission.”

The pink-haired woman shot the three of them a displeased look, but didn’t say anything in response. She smiled, however, when she saw that Buffy was the next to rush in, looking like she was about to freeze to death.

“Had a little trouble,” Emma offered, as she watched them all shuffle past her and start walking through the hall. She stood for a moment with her arms extended and her palms upward. “And my therapist wonders why I feel no one hears me.”

Fade to Black

End of Teaser