Written by Czar Fruitcake
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own them, I just smack them around a little.
SUMMARY: A multi-faceted THWACK by an invisible Anya based on the season seven episode “Dirty Girls.”
With no warning, Anya found herself sitting in a truck, next to a man wearing a preacher’s clothes. She looked at him, the lyrics to “Son of a Preacher Man” flying through her head as she wondered what she was doing there.
“Well, you’re just a dirty ho who should be gutted like a catfish, ain’t ya, darling?” the man asked, mumbling so much that Anya could barely understand him.
“I dunwun a mersege a…” the man kept mumbling, and Anya reached out her hand to smack him upside the head.
THWACK! Caleb, tilted his head slightly, and rubbed it, but continued mumbling. As he did so, a neon flashing sign that said IMBIBED WITH THE POWER OF THE FIRST started flashing above his head.
The girl in the passenger seat, completely oblivious to the fact that Caleb was holding a knife and the aforementioned flashy neon sign, smiled happily.
“Gee, I’m sure glad I’m not just a token Potential,” she said, grinning. “Maybe this way I’ll be around long enough to develop a disturbing relationship with the one they call Xander.”
Anya groaned and reached out and THWACKed that girl as well. As soon as she did, she fell into unconsciousness mumbling, “What kind of evil name is Caleb? When I was evil, I had a different name. When Angel was evil, he had a different name. When Dawn was evil…” Anya trailed off, confused as to why Dawn had been around for three whole seasons without turning evil.
As she thought of Dawn, Anya opened her eyes and found herself standing in the entryway to the Summers home, as Faith and Buffy opened the front door.
“Buffy, why are you wearing so much mascara?” Anya asked her. “You look like a raccoon.”
Buffy said nothing.
“Am I invisible here or something?” Anya asked. Suddenly, Anya had a sinking feeling in her stomach. Due to the evil contracting demon, she actually was invisible. She gritted her teeth and watched the scene in front of her.
Dawn, her hands crossed over her chest and a super-sized pout on her forehead, glared at Faith. Anya rolled her eyes.
Dawn continued glaring. Faith said something. Dawn kept glaring. A token ethnic Potenital ran by, completely stark naked. Dawn kept glaring.
THWACK! Anya smacked Dawn upside the head. Although she continued glowering at Faith, Dawn’s head jerked to the side, under the force of the invisible, though powerful, THWACK.
“Stupid-whiny-even-with-your-mouth-closed-prepubescent-acting-looks-more-like-Faith-than-Buffy-useless-no-power twit,” Anya muttered.
Dawn, with her degree in ancient linguistics from BYU, proceeded to glare at Faith in fifteen different languages.
Anya, deciding she rather liked being invisible, sauntered off to the kitchen, in time to see Andrew telling a story about Faith to a gaggle of Potentials. Anya’s hand tingled with the desire to THWACK him, but then she pictured him as a tiny dancing elf, and for the moment, the desire was abated.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to make up stuff anymore,” Amanda said, her head looking uncharacteristically normally shaped.
Subtitles appeared as Chao-An spoke, and Anya picked up one of the subtitles in her hand, surprised at how large it was, just as Molly began to speak, her hair style somehow emphasizing her horrid accent even more than usual.
THWACK! Anya smacked Molly upside the head with a subtitle reading “Comic Relief… look at the monkey.” Molly rubbed her head and looked around the room, completely bewildered.
In a delirium, Anya next found herself at Sunnydale High School, listening as Robin Wood spoke. “Buffy, you’re fired.”
“But I just refrained from kicking your ass,” Buffy said, shoving her hands into her back pockets.
“Buffy, the world is ending, and the fact that you might give guidance to young people ahs always been, quite frankly, a bit scary. Now, run along home and take just enough of your Potentials into battle that you can effectively split your group in half, leaving the powerful Wiccan at home.” Principal Wood gave her a charming smile.
Anya walked across the room, and her hand connected with his bald head with a satisfying THWACK. The sound echoed in the room, and both Buffy and Principal Wood looked around, confused as to where the sound, and the giant sore spot on the side of Wood’s head, had come from.
“That’s for underestimating the importance of money in our capitalistic society,” Anya said, even though she knew no one could hear her. “Honestly, couldn’t you just send Buffy home, while not technically firing her, such that she wouldn’t have to find an alternative form of income?” For good measure, Anya THWACKed him one more time.
“That,” she clarified, “Is because your name rhymes with Robin Hood.”
That night, the Potentials went to Xander for comfort, as their little whinier-than-Dawn hearts raced at the thought of going into battle.
Xander comforted them. “She’s great. She’s brave. She’s saved the world. She’s Buuuuuffffffyyyyyyyyyy!” Xander tap-danced, breaking into a song about the glories of Buffiness. The Potentials, their little hands kept busy making key chains, nodded. If Buffy took them into battle, they would trust her. If she told them to make key chains in a little Potential sweat shop as a means for supplemental income, they would trust her.
Molly looked down at the key chain she was making. IT WAS NICE KNOWING YOU. She read the words on the key chain, wondering how exactly they had gotten there, and after a moment of pause, when she mumbled something superficially British, she continued embroidering, because Buffy had, after all, told them to.
Anya reached her hand back to THWACK Molly again, but at the last minute, she felt bad for the poor, doomed Potential, who had been sentenced to die, like every other Potential with an accent, starting with Annabelle and Eve. Such was the natural selection process that favored, like the television market coincidentally enough, slayers without notable accents.
Buffy came into the room, Faith by her side. “Come,” she told the Potentials. “Faith and I have found his evil lair, or rather, his well-lit, uber sketchy, castle in the sky motiffed, and don’t tell me motif can’t be a verb, hideout. Willow, you stay here, because otherwise, it doesn’t make sense that Molly will die.”
“’Ey!” Molly cried, leaving the letter H off of the word “hey.” Everyone else in the room shrugged.
“Xander, you come with me for no particular reason,” Buffy said, continuing her instructions. “Dawn, keep glaring at Faith and talking in a high pitched voice. Giles, see if you can look pensive. Everyone ready?”
THWACK! Anya smacked Buffy upside the head for being a complete idiot.
As Buffy flew across the room as a result of the invisible THWACK, Spike walked in, not wearing a shirt, and came up and did the Sexual Tension Dance around Faith.
Anya sat back and enjoyed the show, thinking that this invisible bit wasn’t nearly as bad as it was cracked up to be.