Party Crashers

By TwinEnigma

Disclaimer: For fun and no profit - obviously don't own Buffy or Naruto

Spoilers: Buffy Season 8

Sequel to "Not Quite Lost," really should read that first.

Buffy knew it had been a bad idea to take the new kids with her and she kicked herself mentally for letting them talk her into it.

It was supposed to be a routine cursed doomsday artifact run – disarm and destroy before the expiry date or next megalomaniacal demon overlord could obtain it. As a bonus, the town it was stored in was relatively small and out of the way, buried deep in the mountains of Japan. Satsu's crew was still preoccupied with the gangs and, while it was kind of awkward, Buffy had planned on asking Satsu if she could borrow one of them for a quick run down to this village for a disposal run.

That was when the new girl, Karin, suggested that she and her demon boytoy accompany her, as they not only knew the language, but apparently the village was the boytoy's former hometown and he knew it like the back of his hand.

She really, really should have listened to her instincts, asked Satsu, and left the new kids at home, awkward ex moment be damned. Instead, her intense need to avoid the awkward ex moment won out and she agreed to let them come with.

First part of the journey wasn't so bad. Karin and her boytoy got them into the country very swiftly with very little of the public displays of affection she'd been expecting of a couple their age. Refreshing, but weird, since she knew they were together – it wasn't like it was hard to tell either, with all their "this is mine" posturing. Message received, loud and clear, thank you very much.

He was a bit young for her tastes anyway.

The village itself was buried in the ass end of Nowheresville, Japan, and was nowhere near anything resembling a road. They had to hike in, which the boytoy, Sasuke, explained was part of the village's defenses. The rest of the explanation she got from them went miles over her head, venturing into the territory of Watcher-speak. The gist of it was that they had a severe sense of stranger danger regarding the rest of the world. Well, holding onto a doomsday artifact tended to do that to people.

It was when they started seeing smashed and ruined shrines featuring demons of the same kind as Sasuke that Buffy realized she probably should have asked why he'd left in the first place. Not being an idiot, she demanded the boytoy talk fast and received only a pitiable broken translation from Karin about his people being former guardians of the village, disgraced and murdered or something by one of their own when he was very small and that he'd left to find the one who did it.

Buffy hadn't liked it one bit.

She liked it even less when they'd gotten to the shrine with the doomsday artifact and the village's new guardians were waiting for them. It turns out that the villagers had cast a spell on everyone in the village from birth that basically did some Harry Potter magic map thingy and, as soon as Sasuke's name popped up on their thingy-whatsis, they hustled in the cavalry.

The cavalry being a shape-shifting, nine-tailed fox demon the size of a frigging pony and a pink-haired warrior priestess-witch combo, both of whom had a grudge on for Karin's boytoy. It seemed he hadn't left the village on very good terms.

It went rapidly downhill from there.

The two demons started fighting, full game-faces on, leaving Buffy and Karin to deal with the witch-priestess chick and the doomsday thingy. While they were fighting her, not one but two separate local Big Bads decided this was the perfect time to make their bid for the doomy artifact. The fight turned into a four-way melee brawl as they attacked and the villagers got involved. After that, it sort of all melted into a blur of violence.

When things finally slowed down, one of the Big Bads was dead, the doomsday thingy was still there but non-functional, Karin was nursing a few nice stab wounds with her overprotective game-face boytoy gone all Broody Mc Broodsalot, and the fox was now a naked blond looker – clearly taken, though, by the way he and the witch-priestess were bickering.

It took forever to find someone who spoke English and, even then, she wasn't exactly listening to his Watcher-speak. Too long, didn't listen and damn he was kinda cute, in a totally hot part-demon way. The gist of it was that the doomy rock of doomyness was a recipe for a big nasty case of apocalyptic demon surprise. Oh, and it was on the moon.

Peachy, just peachy.

Buffy decided to call for backup.