BtVS: Just Another Day - 6.19 Jacks Wild
Hey. I've been in Eau Claire since Wednesday afternoon and having a quite relaxing time of it, except for when I think about the final Buffy session tomorrow. (Don't worry, I've got it mostly under control - I'd just feel better about it had my binder and notebook actually made it into my bag when I left on Wednesday!) Thanksgiving dinner was delicious as always and it was really cool that kyrryn could make it to hang out with my family. Otherwise, most of my time has been devoted to sleeping, reading, guitar shopping and practice, and writing the penultimate holy crap plot summary with which I am about to favor you tonight. See you folks tomorrow.
Previous episode here.
After the sudden and fortuitous arrival of the faeries, who bail the Slayer fragments out of a none-too-pleasant run-in with Alerion's ever-growing army, the next 36 hours are a whirlwind of activity. The Slayer fragments have approximately that long until Owen and his band of werewolves are due to arrive, and they plan to make the most of every minute. The first order of business, even before settling down for some much-needed sleep, is to deliver the hopelessly out-of-shape faeries to the National Guard base in the hopes that the remaining Initiative members can put them through a quick-and-dirty boot camp and make them more effective fighters. The Initiative agree to do their best. Then it's back to Yuk Fu for some none-too-satisfying sleep for those who can manage to grab it - though Ally prefers to enter the astral plane in search of further allies, without much success.[1]
When dawn breaks, a panicked phone call from Simon comes into the Yuk Fu landline - Teresa had originally told Simon to call her cell phone when he found Anthony, and Simon quite understandably freaked out when Jack answered the phone! He says that he's ready to be teleported back, along with what remains of his former group, although he "had to make a deal" in order to get that far. Teresa teleports everyone back, and Anthony (through the use of a pen and paper, since he's quite self-conscious about the speech impediment produced when Natalie severed his tongue) explains that he's willing to lend the aid of his demon fighters to the Slayer fragments' cause once more, on the condition that the Slayer fragments find Nat and get her to safety. To Anthony's credit, even though he says he can no longer be with Nat, he's concerned about her well-being during the coming apocalypse given that when he last saw her she was not psychologically able to care for herself.
Teresa tries to enlist the help of the other Slayer fragments to fulfill Anthony's request, but Joey is busy mixing up bombs for the coming (supposedly stealthy!) intrusion into Alerion's dimension, and Jake Shinobi is equally "busy" impressing the P'flug by cutting disposable chopsticks into tiny slices with the Edge of Twilight. Ally offers to help, however, and the two women set out for the last place Nat was known to reside: the psych ward at Good Samaritan Hospital. Luckily for them, Nat hasn't gone far, and can be found sitting under a tree in one of the hospital's partially wrecked central courtyards, singing quietly to herself. When she sees that it's the Slayer fragments who have come after her, she goes peacefully because she says she has an important message for them: "The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. If it even has hands, that is." Normally, Ally has little to no patience for crazy people rantings, particularly when they come from Nat, but this is far too reminiscent of what Louie told them the night before for her to pass it off as unimportant. She tells Nat to follow them to a place where she'll be safe.
Back at Yuk Fu, it's a tense reunion between Simon, Anthony, and Nat, who are seeing each other for the first time since the horrifying events at the campground several months earlier. Nat seems quite unaware of any lingering awkwardness, and repeats what she told Ally and Teresa to anyone else who's willing to listen. Then, while eating some canned peaches in a way that's borderline disturbing, she expands upon those ideas: "You see, it's like...a peach. Tender flesh. Soft skin. Juice that runs down your face. You can eat so much of that peach. Take it inside of you so that you'll be nourished and grow. But in the middle of every peach, there's a pit. It's hard, and it's stubborn, and you can't swallow it or even sink your teeth into it, no matter how hard you try. Whatever you do, the pit always stays. And that's kind of what's going on here."
After establishing that Simon, Anthony, and Nat, while noticeably discomforted by each other's presence, are not likely to start attacking each other anytime soon, the Slayer fragments settled down around some canned goods of their own to discuss possible meanings for what Nat said. Ideas range from the flippant ("Maybe Angela's the pit, and we have to bury her in the crevice so she'll become a tree," says Teresa, still looking for an excuse to put Angela in harm's way) to the more serious (Jack represents one "hand", and Alerion represents the other, since Jack's goals seem to be independent from the true demon's despite the fact that he's got a huge chunk of it in him?), but the theory that the Slayer fragments finally settle upon is that maybe Sabrina represents one "hand" while Jack represents the other. The Slayer fragments still haven't forgotten Sabrina's words to them in the basement of the farmhouse at Chandlers Brook ("This is the last thing I'm going to be able to do for you. Use it."), and both Sabrina and Jack have been inextricably tied in to Alerion's fate since the beginning. What this theory doesn't accomplish, however, is explaining why it would be so important for both Louie and Nat to convey that idea to the Slayer fragments in such a cryptic fashion. For now, the Slayer fragments set their theorizing aside and focus on the concrete work that needs to be done in order to prepare for their stealthy entry into Alerion's dimension.
Ally gets hard to work preparing the jar that will hold Jack's soul after the Slayer fragments have retrieved it. Joey, having finished his three small bombs, joins with Teresa to fill their small army in on their planned strategy. Although for the time being, most of the army will remain at Yuk Fu, the Slayer fragments want to send out some small recon forces to both get a sense of what Alerion's army is up to and keep said evil forces busy while the Slayer fragments are away. So they organize a few small teams consisting of one member of Anthony's group, a few Initiative agents, and a healthy number of P'flug. The idea is that the stronger fighters will take point and engage any hostile units they come across guerrilla-style, while the P'flug will cover their retreat with poisoned blowdarts and hexes. To further confuse the enemy, Teresa teleports around town to all of the Slayer fragments' notorious hangouts (the old Slayer house, peoples' individual homes, Art-Mental, Joppler's Jungle, Cafe Pretentious, and so forth) and rigs all of them up with light sources and tape recorders playing back the ambient noise of Yuk Fu, so that Alerion's own recon forces will have a tough time figuring out where the Slayer fragments and their army are really quartered. The Slayer fragments make furious preparations late into the night, then settle down for another fitful night's rest knowing that when the sun rises, Owen and his werewolves will show up and the final battle will really begin.
Sure enough, not too long after sunrise, Owen shows up with a small force of tired werewolves, which brings the number of warriors allied with the Slayer fragments to about 250 - a sizable amount, but still hopelessly outnumbered by Alerion's ever-expanding forces. The Slayer fragments stick around just long enough to distribute a few of the not-so-tired werewolves around to various guerrilla squads, then call up Jack and tell him that they're ready to accept his deal. He sounds glad of it, and tells them to meet him at a particular intersection in the sewer in an hour's time. Ally, Joey, Shinobi, and Teresa say their good-byes and get moving - as does Simon, who says that if Ally is going to face down a true demon, his place is at her side.
The Slayer fragments make the rendezvous with no problem, and after a little bit of paranoia and empty threatening from both sides, convince Jack to lie down so that Shinobi can cut the Slayer fragment out of him. Of course, what Shinobi is really doing is cutting a gateway into Alerion's dimension - but Jack doesn't realize that until it's too late. He's just beginning to raise his voice in protest when blue light envelops everyone - Jack included - and pulls them through the ragged hole that Shinobi has successful opened up.
Ally, Joey, Shinobi, Simon, and Teresa find themselves standing in a dimly lit forest that looks vaguely familiar somehow. But before they have a chance to get their bearings, there's a popping sound and some shrieking from the sky above them and Jack lands face-first on the ground. Shakily, he picks himself up, yelps a little at the sight of so many determined-looking and heavily-armed people staring him down, and crab-walks backwards to cower next to Teresa. Another pop, and a second Jack falls out of the sky, lands gracefully on his feet, looks around, pulls his hair back out of his face, and moves over to Ally's side while testing the heft of his stakes. Another pop, and a third Jack fralls; this one glowers at the Slayer fragments with bared fangs, then is pulled down into the ground by a gaggle of tentacles that suddenly appear to take him away. And then, a final pop, and a fourth Jack lands clumsily on the ground; his eyes go wide and he says, "Oh shit, that wasn't supposed to happen," then goes invisible.
Despite the fact that the Slayer fragments have indeed reached Alerion's dimension undetected, something has gone horrendously wrong with regards to the gate-cutting. The Slayer fragments try to question the first Jack, but don't get much out of him beyond a lot of freaked-out confusion. Interestingly enough, Teresa is also able to sense this Jack as a strong source of pain and anger, thus meaning he counts as someone wronged by the battle between good and evil, though she doesn't share this with the rest of the Slayer fragments. The second Jack is less talkative, but more coherent; he is willing to speak to Ally, and reveals his disdain for the other Jacks and his strong desire to destroy Alerion. "That is what you came here to do, is it not?" he asks her.
"Yes," says Ally, "although right now we're going after your soul first, eventually when that's done we're going to..."
"Excellent. In fact, I see some of Alerion's minions down there. Let's go." Without another word, the second Jack lifts both stakes and goes charging down a nearby hill, into a small encampment of Alerion's soldiers. Most of the others can only stare in horror at how quickly their stealth operation became unstealthy, but Joey, ever the gloryhound, charges down the hill after Jack, and Shinobi just goes along with it all. Ally, Simon, and Teresa decide they'd rather not get involved, and use the distraction of the battle to sneak around the encampment, dragging the original Jack along behind them.
By the time they get safely away from the fight, Ally, Simon, and Teresa have all recognized the place they've entered as a somewhat twisted and exaggerated version of the campground where Simon's people stayed, and where Alerion took over Sabrina again. On a distant hill, they can also see the farmhouse at Chandler's Brook. Since in the past that's always been the center of all badness, Ally and Teresa decide to head towards it in the hopes of finding Jack's soul trapped there. Ally and Teresa have also formulated a theory about Jack, which they discuss as they begin to walk; Shinobi's lack of experience with the Edge caused Jack to be split into several component parts when Shinobi cut him, each of which represents a different side of his personality. The Jack they're with now represents Jack's human side, while the Jack who rushed into battle is Jack's slayer fragment. The Jack who turned invisible and ran is Jack's vampire self (Jackelus, perhaps?), while the Jack who was pulled down by tentacles represents the additional Alerion that he took upon himself to return the Slayer fragments to normal. It's a very sound theory, but whatever the case may be, the simple fact is that having four Jacks running around has definitely put a kink in Ally's plan for soul restoring.
Meanwhile, Slayer!Jack, Joey, and Shinobi have ambushed a small force of Alerion's soldiers and are more or less going to town on them. They manage to kill almost ten of the soldiers before any of them can even react to defend themselves.[2] However, the tide quickly turns against them when additional waves of soldiers, responding to their companions' screams, rush in and swamp our heroes. Things go from bad to worse when Joey gets picked up by one of the soldiers he's fighting and tossed into a nearby crevice; before he can struggle out, a tentacle wraps itself around his ankle and drags him down inside it. When this happens, Slayer!Jack suggests a strategic retreat, a plan with which Shinobi is all too happy to comply. The two of them run away to safety as fast as they possibly can.
Far away from the battle, Ally, Simon, Teresa, and human!Jack are walking and discussing the current confusing situation. Human!Jack wants to know whether the separation is permanent, and if so, what Ally is going to do when she gets the soul back. Ally responds that out of the four Jacks that have appeared, human!Jack is the only one who really needs the soul, so there was never any question that he would get it if the Jacks can't be reunited (which seems to be what Ally is planning to do). However, human!Jack doesn't seem entirely convinced that he is deserving of such a gift - despite Teresa's best efforts to convince him of his worthiness by talking about her own experience with the Slayer fragments, how they've helped her when no one else would, and how she's recently realized that she'd be willing to fight and even die for them, which is something she's never been willing to do for anyone else in her life. Human!Jack is impressed by that - until he asks what Ally will do if he had decided he didn't want his soul back, even after her best efforts to persuade him (since of course it was originally her idea). Ally says that if Jack hadn't asked for it, she probably would have forced him into it anyway - which, in human!Jack's mind, doesn't speak too well for the Slayer fragments having any sort of respect for his autonomy.
The small group has been walking for more than an hour when human!Jack suddenly yelps and jumps backwards; everyone is shocked to notice that they're walking over the gigantic corpse of Bizarro Ally, and that human!Jack has just stepped in her eye. After taking a moment to be grossed out ("I think I have eye jelly in my sock," says human!Jack), the Slayer fragments decide to climb down off the corpse and walk next to it in its shadow (Just like I always am, thinks Ally).
Somewhere else entirely...Joey has been pulled down into a chasm by tentacles, but is surprised when he lands not in a disgusting puddle of slime, but on something soft and yielding. Experimentally, he opens his eyes to see that he's lying on his own bed, in the apartment he used to live in. The door opens, and in walks Kirsten. She sits down on the bed next to Joey and explains that while she isn't the Kirsten that he used to know, she can be everything that Kirsten would be to him. She can even bring the rest of the Slayer fragments there, give Joey back his baseball career, do things that would make his life much easier. All that Joey has to do is stop fighting Alerion; he won't care what happens to the world he used to know, because Alerion can replace it with something better and just as real. No matter how tempting Alerion's offer may be, Joey tells "Kirsten" that he cannot take it - but all the same, "Kirsten" says that she cannot allow him to leave the room if he is not willing to accept. Joey can't seem to move "Kirsten" out of the way, so he is forced to stab her through the heart to escape - which is rather disconcerting, since she reacts in exactly the same way that the real Kirsten would.
All three groups of Slayer fragments are heading toward the farmhouse on the ridge, and all three of them come to the same conclusion at roughly the same time: No matter how far they walk, the farmhouse is not getting any closer. A different plan is needed. Joey decides to try to meet up with one of the other groups again, while both Ally's group and Slayer!Jack's group get basically the same idea and decide to do an Alerion-finding ritual to locate the center of the demon's influence. Ally gets a pair of glasses out of Teresa's collection and enchants them to show the way to Alerion's lair, while Slayer!Jack ransacks a tent full of demons in search of a red candles and matches with which to perform the Alerion-finding ritual. Soon, Joey catches up to Ally's group, and all of the Slayer fragments (plus the two Jacks) reunite near the place where the true demon waits.
A quick recon run reveals that Jack's soul, rather than being tucked away in some fortress as the Slayer fragments were expecting, is clutched amidst about a dozen intertwined tentacles. Perhaps even worse, Alerion!Jack is lounging nearby, obviously guarding it from anyone who would try to take it away from the demon. While the Slayer fragments try to figure out how to get the soul away without attracting too much of the demon's or Alerion!Jack's attention, human!Jack takes Teresa aside and says quietly, "This is ridiculous. All of your friends are going to get themselves killed going after something I might not even deserve, and didn't even want until Ally talked me into it. I don't want you to do this. I wish my soul was just sitting right here in front of me so that I could do whatever I wanted with it." And because human!Jack counts as an innocent wronged by the fight between good and evil, Teresa has no choice but to assume her vengeance demon form and say in a tone somewhat laden with dread, "Granted."
Never one to be subtle, Teresa gets Jack's soul away from Alerion by burning away all the tentacles that surround it and then teleporting it onto the floor in front of human!Jack. The rest of the Slayer fragments are still looking on in mute, frozen horror as tentacles come toward them, when Jackelus suddenly appears out of nowhere and starts playing tug-of-war with human!Jack over the soul. Apparently he's been invisibly following the Slayer fragments all along, and now doesn't want anybody to get away with something that could ruin his fun. With the Slayer fragments tied up fighting tentacles, it's not too hard for him to wrest the soul away from the physically inferior human!Jack and start running away, stopping off just long enough to try to kill Ally on his way out of Alerion's dimension.
Ally is definitely the main target in the battle that follows. She manages to get the soul away from Jackelus, but that doesn't stop him from trying to kill her and means that plenty of tentacles are after her as well. Similarly, Alerion!Jack doesn't seem to want anybody to get out alive with the soul. Shinobi and Teresa do their best to keep the tentacles, Alerion!Jack, and Jackelus off of her, but even as they're winning out other tentacles are beginning to wear down Joey and Simon. The only person who's not interested in Ally or the soul in some way is Slayer!Jack, who's gunning specifically for Alerion to the point of acting rather crazy.
Things get even worse when Shinobi manages to get Alerion!Jack in position for a killing blow, only to stop short when Alerion!Jack smiles at him and says, "Careful there. If you kill me now, you'll never get back the Jack you know." No one can be sure if he's telling the truth, but nevertheless it would probably be safest to refrain from killing (or allowing to be killed) any of the Jacks right now. So Shinobi knocks Alerion!Jack out with a little help from Joey, while Teresa takes Jackelus down with a well-aimed staff strike to the crotch. The Slayer fragments then persuade Slayer!Jack to live to fight another day, gather up the cowering human!Jack, and leap to safety ahead of dozens of tentacles through a convenient rift to Teffelsburg that, just as promised, closes up after them.
Things in Teffelsburg are just as the Slayer fragments left them, if somewhat more tense. Upon returning to Yuk Fu with their unconscious prisoners and conscious quasi-allies, Anthony reports to the Slayer fragments that although the guerrilla operations are going well, the streets are becoming more choked with Alerion's forces and much of his army seems to be massing in front of the convention center. Jack's soul may be safely in Ally's possession, but the biggest battle of this war is yet to come. Things are about to end, right back where they started...
1 - Me, explaining why Ally is unlikely to get any help from beings from other dimensions: How would you like it if someone from another dimension showed up and said, "There's someone trying to take over a dimension you've never even heard of. Do you want to help save it?"
Iain: Do I get any experience?
2 - A toe-to-toe fight would have been more evenly matched, but because the PCs got the drop on them they couldn't defend for the first round. As dayzdark put it, this is the scene that shows you how badass the heroes have become since everything began - and so close to the end, we've gotta have a few like that, don't we?
Previous episode here.
After the sudden and fortuitous arrival of the faeries, who bail the Slayer fragments out of a none-too-pleasant run-in with Alerion's ever-growing army, the next 36 hours are a whirlwind of activity. The Slayer fragments have approximately that long until Owen and his band of werewolves are due to arrive, and they plan to make the most of every minute. The first order of business, even before settling down for some much-needed sleep, is to deliver the hopelessly out-of-shape faeries to the National Guard base in the hopes that the remaining Initiative members can put them through a quick-and-dirty boot camp and make them more effective fighters. The Initiative agree to do their best. Then it's back to Yuk Fu for some none-too-satisfying sleep for those who can manage to grab it - though Ally prefers to enter the astral plane in search of further allies, without much success.[1]
When dawn breaks, a panicked phone call from Simon comes into the Yuk Fu landline - Teresa had originally told Simon to call her cell phone when he found Anthony, and Simon quite understandably freaked out when Jack answered the phone! He says that he's ready to be teleported back, along with what remains of his former group, although he "had to make a deal" in order to get that far. Teresa teleports everyone back, and Anthony (through the use of a pen and paper, since he's quite self-conscious about the speech impediment produced when Natalie severed his tongue) explains that he's willing to lend the aid of his demon fighters to the Slayer fragments' cause once more, on the condition that the Slayer fragments find Nat and get her to safety. To Anthony's credit, even though he says he can no longer be with Nat, he's concerned about her well-being during the coming apocalypse given that when he last saw her she was not psychologically able to care for herself.
Teresa tries to enlist the help of the other Slayer fragments to fulfill Anthony's request, but Joey is busy mixing up bombs for the coming (supposedly stealthy!) intrusion into Alerion's dimension, and Jake Shinobi is equally "busy" impressing the P'flug by cutting disposable chopsticks into tiny slices with the Edge of Twilight. Ally offers to help, however, and the two women set out for the last place Nat was known to reside: the psych ward at Good Samaritan Hospital. Luckily for them, Nat hasn't gone far, and can be found sitting under a tree in one of the hospital's partially wrecked central courtyards, singing quietly to herself. When she sees that it's the Slayer fragments who have come after her, she goes peacefully because she says she has an important message for them: "The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. If it even has hands, that is." Normally, Ally has little to no patience for crazy people rantings, particularly when they come from Nat, but this is far too reminiscent of what Louie told them the night before for her to pass it off as unimportant. She tells Nat to follow them to a place where she'll be safe.
Back at Yuk Fu, it's a tense reunion between Simon, Anthony, and Nat, who are seeing each other for the first time since the horrifying events at the campground several months earlier. Nat seems quite unaware of any lingering awkwardness, and repeats what she told Ally and Teresa to anyone else who's willing to listen. Then, while eating some canned peaches in a way that's borderline disturbing, she expands upon those ideas: "You see, it's like...a peach. Tender flesh. Soft skin. Juice that runs down your face. You can eat so much of that peach. Take it inside of you so that you'll be nourished and grow. But in the middle of every peach, there's a pit. It's hard, and it's stubborn, and you can't swallow it or even sink your teeth into it, no matter how hard you try. Whatever you do, the pit always stays. And that's kind of what's going on here."
After establishing that Simon, Anthony, and Nat, while noticeably discomforted by each other's presence, are not likely to start attacking each other anytime soon, the Slayer fragments settled down around some canned goods of their own to discuss possible meanings for what Nat said. Ideas range from the flippant ("Maybe Angela's the pit, and we have to bury her in the crevice so she'll become a tree," says Teresa, still looking for an excuse to put Angela in harm's way) to the more serious (Jack represents one "hand", and Alerion represents the other, since Jack's goals seem to be independent from the true demon's despite the fact that he's got a huge chunk of it in him?), but the theory that the Slayer fragments finally settle upon is that maybe Sabrina represents one "hand" while Jack represents the other. The Slayer fragments still haven't forgotten Sabrina's words to them in the basement of the farmhouse at Chandlers Brook ("This is the last thing I'm going to be able to do for you. Use it."), and both Sabrina and Jack have been inextricably tied in to Alerion's fate since the beginning. What this theory doesn't accomplish, however, is explaining why it would be so important for both Louie and Nat to convey that idea to the Slayer fragments in such a cryptic fashion. For now, the Slayer fragments set their theorizing aside and focus on the concrete work that needs to be done in order to prepare for their stealthy entry into Alerion's dimension.
Ally gets hard to work preparing the jar that will hold Jack's soul after the Slayer fragments have retrieved it. Joey, having finished his three small bombs, joins with Teresa to fill their small army in on their planned strategy. Although for the time being, most of the army will remain at Yuk Fu, the Slayer fragments want to send out some small recon forces to both get a sense of what Alerion's army is up to and keep said evil forces busy while the Slayer fragments are away. So they organize a few small teams consisting of one member of Anthony's group, a few Initiative agents, and a healthy number of P'flug. The idea is that the stronger fighters will take point and engage any hostile units they come across guerrilla-style, while the P'flug will cover their retreat with poisoned blowdarts and hexes. To further confuse the enemy, Teresa teleports around town to all of the Slayer fragments' notorious hangouts (the old Slayer house, peoples' individual homes, Art-Mental, Joppler's Jungle, Cafe Pretentious, and so forth) and rigs all of them up with light sources and tape recorders playing back the ambient noise of Yuk Fu, so that Alerion's own recon forces will have a tough time figuring out where the Slayer fragments and their army are really quartered. The Slayer fragments make furious preparations late into the night, then settle down for another fitful night's rest knowing that when the sun rises, Owen and his werewolves will show up and the final battle will really begin.
Sure enough, not too long after sunrise, Owen shows up with a small force of tired werewolves, which brings the number of warriors allied with the Slayer fragments to about 250 - a sizable amount, but still hopelessly outnumbered by Alerion's ever-expanding forces. The Slayer fragments stick around just long enough to distribute a few of the not-so-tired werewolves around to various guerrilla squads, then call up Jack and tell him that they're ready to accept his deal. He sounds glad of it, and tells them to meet him at a particular intersection in the sewer in an hour's time. Ally, Joey, Shinobi, and Teresa say their good-byes and get moving - as does Simon, who says that if Ally is going to face down a true demon, his place is at her side.
The Slayer fragments make the rendezvous with no problem, and after a little bit of paranoia and empty threatening from both sides, convince Jack to lie down so that Shinobi can cut the Slayer fragment out of him. Of course, what Shinobi is really doing is cutting a gateway into Alerion's dimension - but Jack doesn't realize that until it's too late. He's just beginning to raise his voice in protest when blue light envelops everyone - Jack included - and pulls them through the ragged hole that Shinobi has successful opened up.
Ally, Joey, Shinobi, Simon, and Teresa find themselves standing in a dimly lit forest that looks vaguely familiar somehow. But before they have a chance to get their bearings, there's a popping sound and some shrieking from the sky above them and Jack lands face-first on the ground. Shakily, he picks himself up, yelps a little at the sight of so many determined-looking and heavily-armed people staring him down, and crab-walks backwards to cower next to Teresa. Another pop, and a second Jack falls out of the sky, lands gracefully on his feet, looks around, pulls his hair back out of his face, and moves over to Ally's side while testing the heft of his stakes. Another pop, and a third Jack fralls; this one glowers at the Slayer fragments with bared fangs, then is pulled down into the ground by a gaggle of tentacles that suddenly appear to take him away. And then, a final pop, and a fourth Jack lands clumsily on the ground; his eyes go wide and he says, "Oh shit, that wasn't supposed to happen," then goes invisible.
Despite the fact that the Slayer fragments have indeed reached Alerion's dimension undetected, something has gone horrendously wrong with regards to the gate-cutting. The Slayer fragments try to question the first Jack, but don't get much out of him beyond a lot of freaked-out confusion. Interestingly enough, Teresa is also able to sense this Jack as a strong source of pain and anger, thus meaning he counts as someone wronged by the battle between good and evil, though she doesn't share this with the rest of the Slayer fragments. The second Jack is less talkative, but more coherent; he is willing to speak to Ally, and reveals his disdain for the other Jacks and his strong desire to destroy Alerion. "That is what you came here to do, is it not?" he asks her.
"Yes," says Ally, "although right now we're going after your soul first, eventually when that's done we're going to..."
"Excellent. In fact, I see some of Alerion's minions down there. Let's go." Without another word, the second Jack lifts both stakes and goes charging down a nearby hill, into a small encampment of Alerion's soldiers. Most of the others can only stare in horror at how quickly their stealth operation became unstealthy, but Joey, ever the gloryhound, charges down the hill after Jack, and Shinobi just goes along with it all. Ally, Simon, and Teresa decide they'd rather not get involved, and use the distraction of the battle to sneak around the encampment, dragging the original Jack along behind them.
By the time they get safely away from the fight, Ally, Simon, and Teresa have all recognized the place they've entered as a somewhat twisted and exaggerated version of the campground where Simon's people stayed, and where Alerion took over Sabrina again. On a distant hill, they can also see the farmhouse at Chandler's Brook. Since in the past that's always been the center of all badness, Ally and Teresa decide to head towards it in the hopes of finding Jack's soul trapped there. Ally and Teresa have also formulated a theory about Jack, which they discuss as they begin to walk; Shinobi's lack of experience with the Edge caused Jack to be split into several component parts when Shinobi cut him, each of which represents a different side of his personality. The Jack they're with now represents Jack's human side, while the Jack who rushed into battle is Jack's slayer fragment. The Jack who turned invisible and ran is Jack's vampire self (Jackelus, perhaps?), while the Jack who was pulled down by tentacles represents the additional Alerion that he took upon himself to return the Slayer fragments to normal. It's a very sound theory, but whatever the case may be, the simple fact is that having four Jacks running around has definitely put a kink in Ally's plan for soul restoring.
Meanwhile, Slayer!Jack, Joey, and Shinobi have ambushed a small force of Alerion's soldiers and are more or less going to town on them. They manage to kill almost ten of the soldiers before any of them can even react to defend themselves.[2] However, the tide quickly turns against them when additional waves of soldiers, responding to their companions' screams, rush in and swamp our heroes. Things go from bad to worse when Joey gets picked up by one of the soldiers he's fighting and tossed into a nearby crevice; before he can struggle out, a tentacle wraps itself around his ankle and drags him down inside it. When this happens, Slayer!Jack suggests a strategic retreat, a plan with which Shinobi is all too happy to comply. The two of them run away to safety as fast as they possibly can.
Far away from the battle, Ally, Simon, Teresa, and human!Jack are walking and discussing the current confusing situation. Human!Jack wants to know whether the separation is permanent, and if so, what Ally is going to do when she gets the soul back. Ally responds that out of the four Jacks that have appeared, human!Jack is the only one who really needs the soul, so there was never any question that he would get it if the Jacks can't be reunited (which seems to be what Ally is planning to do). However, human!Jack doesn't seem entirely convinced that he is deserving of such a gift - despite Teresa's best efforts to convince him of his worthiness by talking about her own experience with the Slayer fragments, how they've helped her when no one else would, and how she's recently realized that she'd be willing to fight and even die for them, which is something she's never been willing to do for anyone else in her life. Human!Jack is impressed by that - until he asks what Ally will do if he had decided he didn't want his soul back, even after her best efforts to persuade him (since of course it was originally her idea). Ally says that if Jack hadn't asked for it, she probably would have forced him into it anyway - which, in human!Jack's mind, doesn't speak too well for the Slayer fragments having any sort of respect for his autonomy.
The small group has been walking for more than an hour when human!Jack suddenly yelps and jumps backwards; everyone is shocked to notice that they're walking over the gigantic corpse of Bizarro Ally, and that human!Jack has just stepped in her eye. After taking a moment to be grossed out ("I think I have eye jelly in my sock," says human!Jack), the Slayer fragments decide to climb down off the corpse and walk next to it in its shadow (Just like I always am, thinks Ally).
Somewhere else entirely...Joey has been pulled down into a chasm by tentacles, but is surprised when he lands not in a disgusting puddle of slime, but on something soft and yielding. Experimentally, he opens his eyes to see that he's lying on his own bed, in the apartment he used to live in. The door opens, and in walks Kirsten. She sits down on the bed next to Joey and explains that while she isn't the Kirsten that he used to know, she can be everything that Kirsten would be to him. She can even bring the rest of the Slayer fragments there, give Joey back his baseball career, do things that would make his life much easier. All that Joey has to do is stop fighting Alerion; he won't care what happens to the world he used to know, because Alerion can replace it with something better and just as real. No matter how tempting Alerion's offer may be, Joey tells "Kirsten" that he cannot take it - but all the same, "Kirsten" says that she cannot allow him to leave the room if he is not willing to accept. Joey can't seem to move "Kirsten" out of the way, so he is forced to stab her through the heart to escape - which is rather disconcerting, since she reacts in exactly the same way that the real Kirsten would.
All three groups of Slayer fragments are heading toward the farmhouse on the ridge, and all three of them come to the same conclusion at roughly the same time: No matter how far they walk, the farmhouse is not getting any closer. A different plan is needed. Joey decides to try to meet up with one of the other groups again, while both Ally's group and Slayer!Jack's group get basically the same idea and decide to do an Alerion-finding ritual to locate the center of the demon's influence. Ally gets a pair of glasses out of Teresa's collection and enchants them to show the way to Alerion's lair, while Slayer!Jack ransacks a tent full of demons in search of a red candles and matches with which to perform the Alerion-finding ritual. Soon, Joey catches up to Ally's group, and all of the Slayer fragments (plus the two Jacks) reunite near the place where the true demon waits.
A quick recon run reveals that Jack's soul, rather than being tucked away in some fortress as the Slayer fragments were expecting, is clutched amidst about a dozen intertwined tentacles. Perhaps even worse, Alerion!Jack is lounging nearby, obviously guarding it from anyone who would try to take it away from the demon. While the Slayer fragments try to figure out how to get the soul away without attracting too much of the demon's or Alerion!Jack's attention, human!Jack takes Teresa aside and says quietly, "This is ridiculous. All of your friends are going to get themselves killed going after something I might not even deserve, and didn't even want until Ally talked me into it. I don't want you to do this. I wish my soul was just sitting right here in front of me so that I could do whatever I wanted with it." And because human!Jack counts as an innocent wronged by the fight between good and evil, Teresa has no choice but to assume her vengeance demon form and say in a tone somewhat laden with dread, "Granted."
Never one to be subtle, Teresa gets Jack's soul away from Alerion by burning away all the tentacles that surround it and then teleporting it onto the floor in front of human!Jack. The rest of the Slayer fragments are still looking on in mute, frozen horror as tentacles come toward them, when Jackelus suddenly appears out of nowhere and starts playing tug-of-war with human!Jack over the soul. Apparently he's been invisibly following the Slayer fragments all along, and now doesn't want anybody to get away with something that could ruin his fun. With the Slayer fragments tied up fighting tentacles, it's not too hard for him to wrest the soul away from the physically inferior human!Jack and start running away, stopping off just long enough to try to kill Ally on his way out of Alerion's dimension.
Ally is definitely the main target in the battle that follows. She manages to get the soul away from Jackelus, but that doesn't stop him from trying to kill her and means that plenty of tentacles are after her as well. Similarly, Alerion!Jack doesn't seem to want anybody to get out alive with the soul. Shinobi and Teresa do their best to keep the tentacles, Alerion!Jack, and Jackelus off of her, but even as they're winning out other tentacles are beginning to wear down Joey and Simon. The only person who's not interested in Ally or the soul in some way is Slayer!Jack, who's gunning specifically for Alerion to the point of acting rather crazy.
Things get even worse when Shinobi manages to get Alerion!Jack in position for a killing blow, only to stop short when Alerion!Jack smiles at him and says, "Careful there. If you kill me now, you'll never get back the Jack you know." No one can be sure if he's telling the truth, but nevertheless it would probably be safest to refrain from killing (or allowing to be killed) any of the Jacks right now. So Shinobi knocks Alerion!Jack out with a little help from Joey, while Teresa takes Jackelus down with a well-aimed staff strike to the crotch. The Slayer fragments then persuade Slayer!Jack to live to fight another day, gather up the cowering human!Jack, and leap to safety ahead of dozens of tentacles through a convenient rift to Teffelsburg that, just as promised, closes up after them.
Things in Teffelsburg are just as the Slayer fragments left them, if somewhat more tense. Upon returning to Yuk Fu with their unconscious prisoners and conscious quasi-allies, Anthony reports to the Slayer fragments that although the guerrilla operations are going well, the streets are becoming more choked with Alerion's forces and much of his army seems to be massing in front of the convention center. Jack's soul may be safely in Ally's possession, but the biggest battle of this war is yet to come. Things are about to end, right back where they started...
1 - Me, explaining why Ally is unlikely to get any help from beings from other dimensions: How would you like it if someone from another dimension showed up and said, "There's someone trying to take over a dimension you've never even heard of. Do you want to help save it?"
Iain: Do I get any experience?
2 - A toe-to-toe fight would have been more evenly matched, but because the PCs got the drop on them they couldn't defend for the first round. As dayzdark put it, this is the scene that shows you how badass the heroes have become since everything began - and so close to the end, we've gotta have a few like that, don't we?