Act 4
Fade In:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Day
Shannon strained to hold on to the edge of the platform with one hand. Below, the machine was close to critical mass. The hydraulics pumped at full speed and sounded like a steam train. Lightning had begun to strike out in all directions from the blue ball of energy, making the area seem not entirely safe.
A single tear ran down her cheek and fell into the machine below. It instantly disintegrated. Shannon’s fingers couldn’t hold on any longer, and she began to slip.
“This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen,” she whispered.
Her fingers finally lost their grip, and Shannon fell towards the destruction below. But before she could get more than a few inches, another hand grabbed her wrist from above. Rowena’s bruised face appeared over the edge of the platform.
“I can’t leave you alone for five minutes,” Rowena chided.
“Ro!” Shannon exclaimed. “Get me up. Get me up, get me up!”
“Working on it,” Rowena said through gritted teeth. She put in an extra effort and with a grunt pulled Shannon up onto the platform. Shannon landed on her back and stayed there, breathing hard. Her eyes stared into space, half-lidded, defeated.
Then something went through her, and her eyes opened wide. She turned and rose to her knees, no longer breathing hard.
Rowena put a hand on her shoulder. “What happened? Where’s Jengar?”
“Ro…” Shannon began. Her voice took on a spacey quality. She looked at her hand, closed her fingers into a fist, and then opened them again. “He beat me. Then he left.”
“I notice we’re not dead yet,” Rowena said. She stood and took in the damaged control panel then frowned. She looked down at Shannon. “Are you okay?”
And then Shannon was on her feet. “I am.”
She ran over to the nearest strut and began to climb down.
“Wait!” Rowena called over the din of the machine. “Where are you going?”
“To get him,” Shannon called back. “You stay and keep the world from ending.”
Rowena raised both her arms, indicating the entire situation. She opened her mouth once then tried again. “How?”
Shannon pointed up. “Ask them.” Then she disappeared over the side.
Rowena looked up to see a black helicopter with the Council logo on the tail descending towards her, with two more beyond it in the distance. The din of the machine had masked their noise. Her shell-shocked face broke into a crazy grin. Amira Aziz and two other girls dressed in Black Ops gear descended from the helicopter to the platform via thick dark ropes.
“Great to see you!” Rowena shouted immediately as they touched down. “I need your sat-phone hookup five minutes ago.”
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Night
“Helicopters!” Jeff shouted, sitting up and pointing.
Lorinda sat up, too, and followed his gaze. “And Shannon’s running away from them.” Indeed, Shannon had reached the bottom and was headed into the forest. “How much time do we have?” Lorinda asked.
“I dunno. Five seconds? Two minutes?” Dawn shrugged. “There’s no big bomb clock.”
“You should…go after her,” Jeff said, groaning as he adjusted himself.
“What? I’m not…I’m not leaving you,” Lorinda told him. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “You’re my watcher.”
Jeff gave her a sloppy half-grin. “Then do what your watcher says. Really, Dawn’s here. The good guys are here. None of us should go off alone right now.”
Lorinda sighed and took off in Shannon’s general direction. She got up to a very high speed very, very quickly, and her feet started to blur.
“Guess she’s feeling better,” Dawn remarked.
Cut To:
Int.
Council HQ – Command Center – Night
Casey sat in Kennedy’s chair, cheeks red, trying to shoo another girl away from her. “I’ll be fine, really. It’s okay…no, seriously, get away from me, yeah?”
Buffy, Kennedy, and Willow huddled in the center of the room, shutting out everything else. “Guys, something weird is going on,” Buffy said.
“It’s getting worse,” Kennedy said. “Bad vibes. How you feelin’, Will?”
“Like I’m about to pass out,” Willow admitted, “but in a bad way.”
“Well, maybe that’s what happened to the slayers,” Buffy reasoned. “They got hit with the wave of mutilation.” The others just stared at her. “What? You guys don’t like the Pixies?”
Kennedy shook her head. “What are we gonna do?” she asked. “Is there like a fail-safe switch we can pull or something?”
“We are the fail-safe switch,” Buffy said. “We need to just –”
“Ohmylordit’sRo!” Grace’s shout drew the attention of everyone in the room. She had one finger to her ear and spoke on her headset. “This is Cleveland, but you knew that. How you feelin’?”
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Day
“Like it’s three AM the night of Kennedy’s bachelorette party,” Rowena said, having to nearly shout over the din of the machine. “But we have zero time, so let’s save the pleasantries for later.” She leaned over the remains of the control panel, gingerly poking at one of the levers. “Whaddaya got for me?”
Cut To:
Int.
Council HQ – Command Center – Night
Kennedy settled back into her chair, shooing Casey out of the way. Grace pressed a few buttons. “I’m gonna put her on speaker…”
The background noise of the machine filled the Council command center, and there were several uncomfortable looks. Buffy swallowed hard.
Willow picked up a few papers off the nearest table, stepped forward, and spoke up. “Okay, Baby, we have a few things here. We think we’ve figured out the spell, but usually there’s a shield.”
“Is there a shield up?” Kennedy asked. “I hear shields are in this season.”
“There’s no shield,” Rowena reported.
“Skye told me this would take way more power than should be possible,” Grace mentioned. “And I’m thinking this has something to do with the Wall of Sound?”
“You’re right,” Rowena said. “The spell’s getting its energy from this massive machine. It’s like an engine, there’re all kinds of pistons and gears and I think some really big hydraulics.”
“Well, how steampunk is that?” Grace asked.
Kennedy rolled her eyes. “How big exactly?”
“Six or seven stories,” Rowena replied. Kennedy sobered very quickly.
Buffy took a step forward, running a tired hand through her hair as she did so. “Are there any controls? If it’s a machine, can you turn it off?”
“I kind of, um…” Rowena trailed off.
“Ro, what’s going on?” Willow asked, real concern entering her voice.
“I broke them,” Rowena said.
Buffy and Willow exchanged a look.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Rainforest – Day
Despite the dense undergrowth of the rainforest, Shannon had not run this fast in her life. She leapt over logs and ferns, her eyes fixed on the trail of bent vegetation that Jengar had left her to follow. Her form was that of a world-class sprinter. Thus she could not help but look startled when Lorinda nearly ran her over, coming perpendicularly from her left.
Shannon braced herself against a tree to keep from stumbling and falling. “What are you doing here?”
“Helping you!” Lorinda exclaimed. “You took a bad trajectory, you know that? What exactly are they teaching in Cleveland these days?”
Shannon growled. “Just come on!” And then she was off again.
Cut To:
Int.
Council HQ – Command Center – Same Time
“How did you break the controls?” Kennedy asked.
“Short answer? With my head. Long answer? Jengar threw me at them,” Rowena told her.
Buffy buried her face in her hands for a moment, growing less pleased with each revelation. “Rowena, who’s Jengar?”
“Guys!” Rowena exhorted. “End of the world! Save the debriefing for later, if there even is a later. For now, how do I turn this damn thing off without the controls?”
“Somebody get Xander, now!” Buffy hissed to Casey.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Day
Shannon and Lorinda came up short at the edge of the forest. In front of them ran a swift-moving river, with more jungle on the opposite bank. On the near bank, Jengar was pushing a wooden rowboat into the river.
It took Shannon a split second to make up her mind. Then she jumped for it. Lorinda stayed rooted to the spot, mouth open in total surprise.
Shannon hit the mud of the shoreline, took one step, and leaped for the boat. It was already in the water, and Jengar didn’t see her coming until the very last moment. His eyes went wide.
She hit him on the fly, tackling him to the floor of the boat. The current caught the craft, and they began to swiftly head downstream.
Lorinda swore under her breath and took off down the shoreline after them.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Day
“…And then there’s a piston driving that, and it’s hard to tell what that’s hooked up to,” Rowena said. She was leaning carefully over the edge so she could see the machine. The entire structure was shaking now. She tried to get back up on her feet. “Guys, there’s too much here for a full description. I don’t recognize any of this.”
Cut To:
Int.
Council HQ – Command Center – Night
Willow ran a hand through her hair. “Well, it’s obviously amplifying the power levels somehow. If I was there, maybe I could see…if I did the ritual again…”
“I seriously doubt there’s time for that, Will,” Rowena’s voice came over the speakers.
Xander raced into the room on Casey’s heels in time to hear Rowena’s voice.
“Ro, it’s Xan. Give me a breakdown as best you can of what you see – the important stuff.”
“There’re five levers on this control panel, but at least three of them are broken off. There’re several meters here on the right. I think this one’s a pressure gauge. The needle’s jammed to the right.”
Kennedy sat bolt upright and gasped. “It’s a Malevolent Construct!”
“Gesundheit,” Buffy offered.
“You think so?” Grace asked.
“Yeah, the power goes in the one side and comes out the other times a gazillion,” Kennedy said, gesturing wildly to make her point. “It’s like a big feedback loop that keeps building. That’s how the energy ball can be both the source and the product.”
Willow looked dubious. “Really? No offense, but how do you know this and I don’t?”
“It was in the M’s,” Kennedy said, as if that explained it. Willow wrinkled her nose but said nothing.
“It makes sense,” Grace said. “It’s just much bigger than anything we’ve ever encountered before. Okay, Ro? The levers are broken off, right?”
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Day
“That’s right,” Rowena said. Now she was standing over the broken control panel once again, trying to stay steady on her feet as the ground shook beneath her.
Grace’s voice sounded tinny and distant over the satellite phone. “I think I know how we do this, but you’ve got to get inside the control panel.”
“Inside it?” Rowena asked, sounding very tired.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – River – Same Time
Jengar threw Shannon off. She landed awkwardly on her back in the far end of the boat. It was small and wooden, unornamented, with a curved bow and no planks or seats inside. It was sent rocking as both of them scrambled to their feet and took up fighting stances.
“Tag, you’re it,” Shannon said.
She took a step forward and tried to hit Jengar with a right jab, but he pushed her arm aside and followed up with a knee to her mid-section. She stood her ground and blocked him with her leg when she tried it a second time. Her legs held him briefly, so he tried an elbow hit to her face. She dodged but moved just enough for him to wriggle free.
“I could do this all day,” she said.
“You don’t have all day,” Jengar said, and the two of them came to blows once again.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Same Time
Rowena tried to pull up on the top of the control panel, straining but gaining no purchase. She tried again. “Rrrraaah!” Still nothing.
She got down on her hands and knees, feeling where the control panel attached to the platform. The two pieces of metal were screwed together with two large hexagonal bolts. She cupped her hands and tried to use them to turn the bolt like a big screwdriver. She slipped off without moving the bolt. She tried again, but once again failed. Her hands had cuts on them from trying to grip the metal edges.
“How’s it going, Ro?” came Buffy’s voice from the phone.
Rowena stood up, breathing hard. “Give me a minute.”
“Do we have a –” Buffy began, but Rowena was already back on her knees.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Same Time
Jeff leaned on Dawn as the two of them tried to get further from the Uncreation machine. Behind them, blue lightning, charged with eldritch energy, began to strike out at the camp from the spell at the machine’s center. One bolt hit a nearby tent, and the tent dematerialized into nothing over the course of two seconds or so. Another bolt hit the ground a few feet from Dawn and Jeff, sending dirt spiraling into the air like a mini-tornado and throwing them off their feet. The dirt disappeared into the ether, leaving only a seven-foot-deep hole in the ground.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – River – Same Time
Jengar tried a leg sweep on Shannon. She stumbled and nearly fell out of the boat, but grabbed for Jengar to keep herself steady. He tried to push her away, but both went stumbling to opposite ends of the boat instead.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Is this how the world ends? A crazy guy shaking his fist at the sky because he’s got rotten luck?”
“I’m not crazy,” Jengar replied angrily, at which Shannon scoffed. “I did all this for my people.”
“Your people are gonna be erased, too,” Shannon pointed out.
The sound of the river changed. Shannon and Jengar both cut their eyes down the river. After a while, it wasn’t the forest that could be seen in the distance, only sky.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Rainforest – Same Time
Lorinda ran up a small outcropping of rocks on the edge of the river, from which she could get more of a view. She could see the boat, pushed by the current, headed directly for a very tall waterfall.
It was so far to the bottom that the water dissipated into mist before reaching the valley floor.
“Son of a –” Lorinda swore. She raised her voice, jumped, and waved her arms over her head. “Shannon! Look out! You’re headed straight for a cliché!”
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Same Time
“Amira!” Rowena called, frantic. “Give me your gun!”
Amira ran over from the far edge of the platform. “It does not work,” she noted as she handed it over.
“Not why I need it,” Rowena said, and she slammed the butt of the gun against the hexagonal bolt. It didn’t move. With a loud, angry grunt, Rowena tried again, and the bolt budged slightly. Several more whacks followed.
“Get the other,” Rowena told Amira. She handed her the gun back and started turning the bolt with her hands, loosening it further and further. “Come on, come on!” The bolt completely came off. Amira set to work loosening the other bolt by hand. 
At this point, a blue bolt of lightning struck the helicopter hanging above them. Its blades disintegrated first, sending the vehicle into a downward spiral. The pilot tried to jump out, but he disintegrated in mid-air. Rowena, Amira, and the other slayers that still remained on the platform reacted in panic, throwing their arms over their head or diving for the floor. But by the time the helicopter reached the platform, it was only a gentle, particle-ized mist.
Rowena recovered first. She grabbed for the satellite phone with a dirty, bloodied hand. “Okay, Cleveland, we’re almost in.”
Amira lifted the cover of the control panel, sending a fountain of steam hissing into the air. Both women were forced to jump back. Several dozen polished gears whirred at high speed. The broken remains of levers attached to the gear-shafts in a few strategic locations. Amira swore in Arabic.
“Yeah, we’re gonna need some help here,” Rowena said into the phone.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – River – Same Time
Jengar and Shannon stared at each other for a long moment as the roar of the waterfall got louder. Then he moved to jump over the side of the boat. Shannon jumped, too, towards Jengar. She caught his feet and dragged him down, the side of the boat impacting his stomach. He wheezed, and the boat threatened to tip over. She pulled at his feet and rolled him back into the boat as he coughed in pain. She knelt on his legs and eyed him suspiciously.
Something clicked behind Shannon’s eyes. “You didn’t mean for any of this to happen, did you?” she ventured in a monotone.
“No,” Jengar managed between coughs.
“But the plan was always to eliminate the human race. You just couldn’t wait, could you?” Shannon asked. “You have too much of a temper.”
“My anger has…always been my greatest weakness,” Jengar said.
Cut To:
Int.
Council HQ – Command Center – Night
Buffy turned to Willow, whose eyes were wide.
“I…this is some sort of weird…mechanical…stuff. It would be better if it were more of a giant wall of energy or…”
“It’s about to be,” Kennedy commented. “What do we know about Malevolent Constructs?”
“You’re the one who’s heard of them,” Willow said. All of a sudden, everyone in the room seemed to be talking at once.
“Sorry I dragged you into this, Xander,” Buffy said with a sigh.
“I’m always glad to attend these end-of-the-world parties. You know that,” he quipped, making her grin just for a moment.
“What if we take a guess?” Kennedy said. “Is there a combination? Like we should try six-six-six or something?”
“Bloody hell, all these Watchers and nobody knows?” Casey asked.
“Everybody shut up!”
It was Grace who had done the yelling. The room went quiet, and everyone looked at her. She was on her feet, hands on her hips, her face calm. “Basic principles,” she said. “Magical principles. The more power a spell has, the harder it is to control. Right, Willow?”
“Don’t I know it,” Willow said.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – River – Day
Shannon held Jengar down as she spoke. “So why are we running away from the end of the world?” she asked.
“I’ve been living in the forest ever since the Great Crisis,” Jengar said, “and even I know who your friend with the yellow hair is. If anyone can stop the Uncreation, she can.”
“So you made a contingency plan,” she said, sounding almost impressed. The waterfall’s roar grew ever louder. “Head for the waterfall, everyone here would think you went over, when really you jumped out and disappeared.”
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Same Time
The blue lightning had greatly increased in volume. It struck trees, tents, buildings, which then proceeded to quickly blow away into nothing, particles floating into the air as if in a gust of light wind. The particles hung in the air everywhere as the forest slowly began to break down into its basic elements.
Dawn shoved Jeff into a hole made by a previous strike and threw herself on top of him protectively.
On top of the platform, Rowena and the slayers were surrounded by a magical storm.
“Give me something!” Rowena shouted.
Cut To:
Int.
Council HQ – Command Center – Night
Grace remained calm as the noise from Thailand filled the Command Center. “So if we were to design a big magical machine, where would we want to control it?”
“At the beginning?” Kennedy ventured.
“Right,” Grace said. “But this is a feedback loop. The spell is pumped through the input, and when it comes out of the, y’know, output, it’s ten times the spell. So you’d want to put the controls that close it off as close to the input as possible. Are you getting this, Ro?”
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Day
Rowena peered into the swift-moving mass of gears inside the control panel. “It makes sense,” she said. “I think these on the left would be earlier valves in the loop, if there’s any order to this madness at all. But there are spots for three different levers, and I don’t know which way to move them.”
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – River – Same Time
“There are more demons out there,” Jengar said. “Refugees driven out by the humans. I can find them, start over.”
Shannon’s eyes narrowed. She looked up and saw that the boat had drawn very close to the waterfall.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Riverbank – Same Time
Lorinda picked her way over the rocks at the river’s edge, sprinting as fast as she could, trying to make it to the waterfall before the boat did.
Cut To:
Int.
Council HQ – Command Center – Night
“Magic comes in threes,” Willow said. “See the Rule of, etcetera.”
“And if it’s a feedback loop,” Xander reasoned, “you can’t just release the pressure all at once. Well, you could, but that’s what we call in the construction business an ‘explosion,’ and that would be bad.
“That means you have to send it back in the opposite direction and let it ramp down,” Grace added, which made Xander nod in agreement.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Day
Rowena stood in the middle of a maelstrom of disembodied particles. “Grace, this isn’t a paper!”
“Happy thoughts, Rowena,” Grace said, sounding very Zen. “You have to reverse the polarity.”
“What?!” Rowena yelled. “I swear to God, Grace, if this is one of your geek references, I will –”
“No, Ro, point all three the opposite direction from where they are,” Grace said.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – River – Same Time
Shannon examined Jengar for a moment. He tried to wriggle out from under her, but she slammed him back against the floor of the boat.
“You’ll die as well,” he said. “What are you doing?”
A smile spread across Shannon’s face. “Taking a risk.”
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Same Time
Rowena looked at the gears and the three broken levers furthest to the left. The forest floated into the sky in a great whirlwind around them.
“Amira, help me out.” Rowena grabbed what remained of the first lever and pulled it towards her. Meanwhile, Amira was pulling the stump of the second lever toward her. The third had broken off completely at the base.
Below them, the lightning spread over the surface of the central blue energy ball until it was made of light. The glow spread out in all directions. Dawn looked up to see nothing but blue light above her and Jeff.
Rowena and Amira tried to work together to move the final lever, but it wouldn’t budge.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – River – Same Time
Lorinda made it to where the waterfall met the riverbank. Shannon looked over at her, no panic on her face. Lorinda’s eyes went wide.
“Shannon!” she screamed.
And then the boat went over the edge.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Same Time
Rowena grabbed Amira’s gun off the platform. Frantic, she slammed the butt of the gun against the base of the lever. It didn’t move. Around her, the sky was bright blue, and trees began to drift upwards. She yelled and smashed the gun into the gearbox again. Nothing.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – River – Same Time
Lorinda fell to her knees by the waterfall, holding a hand in front of her face.
Cut To:
Ext.
Thailand – Jengar’s Camp – Same Time
Rowena lifted the gun again. Everything turned into light.
White Out
End of Act Four