Author's Note: …And one more alternative regarding johnsmith's 'Dark Tide' ficlet.

When the command deck's door closed behind Lois Lane and her escorts taking this human female back to her cell in the Black Zero's brig, she stopped fighting and let the two Kryptonians holding her arms instead drag the woman through the corridor. If they gave any thought about this, the aliens probably assumed their prisoner had accepted her fate and was resigned to whatever would come next.

Actually, Lois keeping her head down was much more preoccupied by somehow receiving a mental message blaring throughout her mind: Are you ready to be strong?

A very evil grin developed on Lois' face, missed completely by her captors continuing to manhandle her. She sent back to whoever was telepathically speaking to her: Hell, yeah!

Several moments later, Sub-Commander Faora-Ul turning the corridor corner while planning how to best carry out her orders from General Zod to speedily dispose of the weak human soon to be the last of her species found herself confronting that very same female. The Lane woman was standing between the two crumpled corpses of her guards lying on the corridor floor with both of their heads twisted nearly a half-rotation backwards. Moreover, she was giving Faora the most chilling smile the Kryptonian woman had ever received from an enemy.

That didn't matter for Faora; even if she didn't have now the incredible abilities all Kryptonians acquired staying on the primitive planet the Black Zero was currently in orbit above, Faora was still a highly skilled fighter who enjoyed using her dagger to kill any foe. Without breaking step, Faora pulled out her blade and got ready for action—

Lois rushed forward far too quickly for Faora to even begin a defensive slash with her dagger, yanking it out of Faora's hand with enough force to leave behind a couple of broken fingers for the Kryptonian. Faora barely had enough time to register the pain in her hand from this when Lois then stabbed upwards with her new dagger, directly into the soft flesh behind Faora's chin.

Pushed with overpowering strength, the dagger point easily thrust through the chin muscles, past the tongue, penetrated the soft palate, and went deep into Faora's brain, stopping only when the hilt guard slammed into the Kryptonian's skin.

Faora had only a few seconds before she finished dying, just time enough for Lois to lean forward while hissing viciously into Faora's slack face, "You lose, bitch!"

Smirking at her vanquished opponent whose entire limp body she was easily supporting with merely one hand still holding the dagger embedded in Faora's head, Lois reached down with her other hand to remove from the Sub-Commander's belt the ID-com this alien woman used daily in her duties on the Black Zero. Even if Lois had been a lot busy earlier (getting on the starship, sneaking around in a failed attempt with the Jor-El AI, learning Clark Kent had gone over to the enemy and was just fine with killing off not only his girlfriend but the rest of humanity), she was an investigative reporter and noticed things by habit. Including how that now-dead bitch used her ID pass to open this spaceship's doors.

Waving the ID-com behind herself to do exactly that for the compartment beyond, Lois heard the soft sigh of the panel sliding open, and backed up into the empty room, dragging Faora along all the while. Finally letting go of the dagger to let it and the corpse this weapon was still attached to flop onto the compartment floor, Lois went back outside and collected the other two dead bodies that joined Faora in the compartment.

Speedily stripping all of the deceased Kryptonians of everything that might be useful, Lois paused in the middle of this at finally becoming aware of just how many people were in her head now, a good number of them offering helpful advice all the while. Clipping around her waist Faora's personal energy pistol, Lois mentally eyed the eldest of them all, a dreadlocked black girl younger than her with white face painting and clad in leather rags standing in a desert mindscape.

Sineya, the other female identified herself, regarding Lois with cold ferocity. Am Slayer, you Slayer, they Slayer. Fighting there, you fight here. Fight for you, fight for sisters, fight for all.

Sineya swelled to an enormous size on the mindscape, looming over Lois, and sent a thunderous mental command to the only Chosen in space created by Willow Rosenberg's activation spell a few minutes ago from Sunnydale where an unknowing Buffy and her friends were trying to stop the First Evil.

SLAYER, SLAY!

Nobody on the command deck paid attention to the main door sliding open, supposing it marked the entrance of some other crewmember of the Black Zero going around their daily duties. Most likely, the return of Faora-Ul from her trifling task of eradicating a minor problem for her leader and reporting this to General Zod and Kal-El.

The command deck's occupants one and all learned just how wrong they were when someone then made an incredible leap from outside the corridor to the middle of the command deck. In mid-air, this person rapidly fired with superhuman skill the energy pistol they were holding, targeting and hitting with supreme accuracy the officers' heads at their posts. Their skulls exploding one-by-one, all of these fresh corpses slumped down in their chairs, leaving only two last Kryptonians standing there.

Landing next to General Zod, that older man was just starting to turn around while reaching for his own personal holstered weapon when the attacker landed lightly on their feet next to him. A swift elbow strike directly on Zod's temple rendered him unconscious but otherwise unhurt, his insensate body collapsing onto the command deck floor.

Clark/Kal was the most inexperienced fighter there, causing him to simply stand unmoving except to gape at where Lois stepped closer to him while holstering her pistol…and giving him a really unnerving smile?

Grabbing Clark by his elbows, Lois dislocated both of his arms with the merest yank, pulling him down to her head level at the same time. Opening his mouth to scream at this abrupt agony, Clark saw Lois now nearly nose-to-nose with him rear her head back and then abruptly snap her forehead right into his face.

The world burst into absolute darkness for Clark.

An unknown amount of time later, Clark opened his swollen eyes and blearily stared up at the command deck ceiling, feeling worse than ever before in his whole life from all the pain he now felt. Trying to shift into a more comfortable position that didn't hurt so much, Clark found out he was tied up with something that kept him from wiggling a single finger.

From somewhere else on the command deck, Clark heard an odd mewling noise that made his skin crawl. Just before he could look around for whatever was making that unsettling sound, Clark saw someone lean over into his field of view, causing him to recoil as much as he could in his bonds.

Lois Lane now looked exactly like Sissy Spacek as the title character of Stephen King's horror novel turned into a film entitled Carrie. To be specific the scene near the end where that actress at the high-school movie prom had a horrific prank done upon her, resulting in a bucket of pig's blood poured onto Carrie's head and coating that teenager's entire body.

Except, in the movie, the blood had been fresh and liquid. Right here and now on the Black Zero's command deck, the blood entirely covering Lois Lane was dried into cracks over her skin and clothing and was flaking off in clumps every time she moved a muscle.

That mean the red layer encrusting Lois' face presently developed even more fresh cracks when she smiled down at Clark and cheerfully told him, "Oh, good, you're awake. Just in time for the grand finale."

His eyes darting around for any possible help, Clark heard from Lois a pitying, "Forget it. They're all dead, except for you and him."

"Him?" Clark croaked, reeling inwardly from that incredible news concerning the apparent killing of the Black Zero's entire crew contingent by someone who formerly directed her entire aggressive quotient in life at being the first to get the hottest newspaper scoops for the Daily Planet.

Instead of answering, Lois just jerked her head to the side at somewhere off to the right. Turning his head with difficulty to follow her indication, Clark immediately threw up onto the command deck floor everything in his stomach.

Spitting out flecks of vomit, an appalled Clark averted his gaze from the skinless body of General Zod, stripped naked of both his clothes and entire epidermis as he also laid on the floor several yards away. Even more awful due to the continuous twitches of exposed muscles and the endless whimpering, Zod was still alive. If his current existence could actually be called 'life', anyway.

Thunk.

Faora's thrown dagger materialized at where Clark was presently avoiding looking at Zod, sinking most of the blade into the command chair's backrest. It was as heavily encrusted with brownish smears as Lois once again moving into Clark's field of view.

He heard from her a very smug, "Big, bad general, my butt. All it took was two minutes from the start, and he started singing his head off. All the codes, overrides, instructions, everything I needed to get them all. Then I came back and picked up where I left off…though, that was mostly for fun while waiting for you to wake up."

"Lois, this isn't you," Clark pleaded hoarsely, only to shut up at that named woman's totally contemptuous expression while she spat back at him.

"Why? Was I supposed to be the meek, crying heroine who knew everyone and everything on my world was going to be murdered by you fucking aliens and just accept that? Instead, I got told by what I never believed was possible, a ghost of a girl who was sacrificed thousands of years ago to stop monsters from winning, if I wanted to be strong. As you saw, I grabbed the chance with both hands, no matter the cost to me!"

Pausing to take a deep breath from her baffling rant, Lois scornfully regarded Clark gaping back at her. She informed him with utmost disdain, "Never mind. It's time to end things. Like you might expect for being a prison ship, there's a self-destruct device in it that Zod had the codes for. Problem is, he made sure someone had to set it off by hand, so it looks like we're all going together to the next life."

Clark yelped "What?!" while staring in absolute shock at Lois, who just shrugged.

"There's no way I'll risk some government or other evil bastard getting their hands on Kryptonian technology. I can't land the ship all by myself and sooner or later it'll be found in orbit. I did this to save the world, so if it needs me to completely get rid of it, I'll pay the price. As for you and Zod…I'll just say have a nice time when you both arrive in hell!"

Ignoring Clark's frantic pleas, Lois stepped up to the main command chair with its instrument console and sat there to carefully press the required keys to carry out her orders. Halfway through this, a flicker of motion on the ship's viewscreen caught Lois' eye, and she smiled sadly at the drone she'd sent from the Black Zero. A second later, the drone vanished from sight when its cloaking device engaged.

Going back to her work while paying no heed to Clark now shouting at the top of his lungs, Lois finished and made one last check of everything. Satisfied, Lois stood up and faced the viewscreen, where Earth was showing off its most beautiful panorama of blue ocean and white clouds.

In a clear, carrying voice which finally made Clark shut up, Lois recited at her world that she'd successfully defended today like an uncounted number of other young women, "In every generation, there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness."

During this, Lois reached out to lay her fingertip upon a particular switch. Continuing to proudly regard Earth, Lois finished her declaration.

"She is the Slayer."

The finger pressed, and a new star blossomed into existence in the night skies of the North American continent.

Two days later well after dark, a battered yellow school bus turned into the deserted small parking lot of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. A tide of young women flowed from the bus's opened front door, spreading out to look around with predator keenness. Last came Buffy, Faith, Dawn, Willow, Giles, and Xander also checking out their surroundings.

The latter people glanced at their leader to make sure where to go next. Indeed, Buffy pointed directly at the main lawn with its center monument dimly lit up.

The core Sunnydale group walked from the parking lot to the nearest lawn path, heading right at the monument. The newbie Slayers stayed behind, alert for any possible intruders to witness something which was now properly nobody's responsibility but the new organization taking over from the previous destroyed Watchers' Council.

Going past the large sundial, Buffy and the rest stopped in front of the Astronomer's Monument, to next look up beyond the statues of famous astronomers at the top of it where a spherical framework of metal rings known as an armillary sphere was placed.

They all took a moment to reflect what the Hellmouth survivors had learned in their dreams the first night at the Hyperion Hotel, how a single Slayer on an alien starship had also fought and won against incredible odds, all while the battle against the First Evil had been going on under Sunnydale.

A rather forlorn smile twisted Buffy's lips, with the same gratified but sorrowful expression present there on the others' faces. Evidently, just as a great deal of information had gone one way, equally as much as had gone the other way.

Lois Lane managed to leave a last personal message for the people who'd make the most of it, to be claimed by one specific code phrase now spoken out loud by Buffy, whose voice easily carried both outwards and upwards: "Scoobies rule, boys drool."

From where it'd been invisibly hovering above the armillary sphere since being sent by Lois, the alien drone decloaked at receiving the correct catchphrase. Sliding sideways in mid-air, the drone then slowly sank down to come to a rest at the open pathway space left for it by Buffy, who hadn't moved during all this.

Now that the drone was completely down, Buffy stepped forward and respectfully placed her hand against the smooth metal. Whatever else, when all the information inside the drone about Kryptonian technology and what they knew concerning the rest of the universe had been removed, the drone would be Lois Lane's own honored monument.

Coming around to the other side of the drone, Faith locked eyes with Buffy. As one, they squatted and extended their arms under the drone's lower side, to next straighten up with the drone now easily borne by the two Slayers.

Faith noted, "Don't weight more'n my Harley, B. I coulda done this on my own."

Buffy just smiled at her sister Slayer. "I know, but I wanted both of us, for Lois."

"Damn straight, B," Faith agreed. She glanced around at where the rest of the Scooby Gang had clustered behind the drone, watching them. Red and Jeeves were both studying the doohickey with actual lust, and the X-man had his arm over Little D's shoulders while she leaned into him.

Faith still thought it was kinda weird how alla 'em could now get the Slayer dreams too. Musta been one last Hellmouth up-yours goodbye present, combined with what B had told her 'bout the joining spell during the whole ADAM clusterfuck years ago. Well, can't say they don't deserve to be here, so let's get back to the hotel.

"You ready, B?" Faith asked. She got a nod from the other Slayer for that, and they began walking together with their burden towards the school bus where the back door had already been opened to receive the alien drone.

When they were almost there, Faith snickered out loud. Quizzical looks from B and the others made her admit to them what she'd just thought, "Hey, if we manage to develop really useful stuff from this tin can, are us Slay-gals gonna haveta dress up in superhero costumes to go along with that? 'Cause if we do, I'm claimin' the one with the boob window."

Faith was definitely proud how that broke the somber mood there, with the younger people guffawing in unison and Jeeves sighing to then take off his glasses and vigorously polishing these with his handkerchief.

Second Author's Note: I had an objecting review on Twisting the Hellmouth concerning this chapter saying that after years of growing up on Earth, Clark was too powerful for even a Slayer to effectively fight against. My answer was that Clark's now on the Black Zero with its Kryptonian environment, which considerably reduced his power levels for Lois to be able to take him down.