like it, keep the parts coming.

Like the part of Faiht getting somewhere out from under the scoobies and buffy. keep Faith from being outright evil or good but for once put herself first and have fun and live.

It would be awesome if you updated. I seriously love everything you do with Faith. It's a amazing balance that you hit of making her seem predatory while still remaining human. But also getting the grey (if dark gray) thing that Faith has going on.

The only problem I have with the movieverse really is that like the Bayformers, tech that's supposed to be sleek and sexy is rendered in overdetailed, butt ugly style. At least Batman was always more about the man, so it's not a debacle like Bay making Squishy Humans and their Robo Sidekicks pt1-3. An interesting beginning and I'll be watching where it leads.

It took me awhile to remember that this fic existed and finally get around to reviewing it. I wrote all these as I read the story, so a few of them became outdated by later chapters.

CHAPTER 1

It is always nice seeing the characters be proactive against threats, rather than largely reactive as they were in canon. Even if it is aimed at Faith.

CHAPTER 2

I really liked the line "only two, as it turned out--her stomach was still uneasy in the aftermath of whatever had brought her here". All two often nausea is something that gets referenced once in fic to show that the hero is injured and then seems to vanish.

Using (A) and (B) jarred me out of the narrative a little bit, I think it was the () that did it, but I'm not sure.

"Yessss, Annabelllllle!" - I think you might want to extend the E in yes and Annabelle rather than the S or L. Otherwise I think they are hissing the the S of yes rather than just extending the word in a taunting manner. And extending the L just sounds weird if you try saying it out loud.


Also, why didn't Faith just keep looking for some stairs, rather than get stuck waiting for people at the bottom of the elevator to leave? It seems like a weird choice even considering she is trying to stay out of sight.



CHAPTER 3

I started writing up an entire paragraph about how batman wouldn't be tossing around speeches midretreat, and then realised that it was probably one of the copycat batmen that were running around. I was very glad to be correct about that.

I'm hoping that Faith doesn't end up feeling too bad about stabbing that guy to death. I never really appreciated the idea that slayers would never kill a human, even if they are working with the supernatural or shooting them with shotguns. It just seems ridiculous to me.

The samurai sword line really worked for me. I can so easily imagine one of those guys having a sword on his wall and being incredibly hyped about finally having a chance to take it down and use it for something.

I really like little comments about motions people are making while they are talking or standing around, like the one about Faith reaching up to wipe back her hair with her knife hand. Little motions always help establish characters for me, very few people actually just stand still without any sort of tics or motion, and that seems to happen alot in fanfic.

Man, Faith is a very easily recruited sidekick. Just tell her its ok she killed a few people and you get a loyal superhuman. My one big issue with the end of this chapter is that Annabelle didn't seem to lay quite enough groundwork before shooting the two remaining bats. One line about Faith being her hero probably shouldn't have defused Faith quite enough that she would be ok with that.

CHAPTER 4

I feel kind of bad for Willow here. Sure, she dumped their problem onto someone else's world, but noone else seemed willing to permanantly deal with the Faith problem. Regardless of how much I liked Faith, I was a little bit surprised that she survived seasons 3 and 4. Also, the idea that the slayer essence would be removed from their world just because Faith was sent away is ludicrous to me. It is such an obvious weakness that someone in the Buffyverse would have had to have taken advantage of it before.

CHAPTER 5

I'm not sure if the line about the 6-7 ft stone wall being purely decorative was purely from Faith's perspective. If it was then it makes perfect sense, but a six foot wall or a lightweight iron gate are still effective if people are paying any sort of attention.

Also, I am sure I have mentioned this in other reviews of your stories, but I always like when there are commonsense expansions of the slayer package, like with the cold resistance.

I think Annabelle is a pretty interesting OC, so I am hoping that she can subtle up before she burns through all good will that her looks and accepting have provided.

Hey there.
Yeah, well, no worries about overlooking this one--it was supposed to stay hidden behind a different pen name, but someone got overzealous and ratted me out. I still fail to see the actual problem with multiple pen names so long as the site mods know who is who, to prevent rules gaming for the site awards, but whatever, nothing I can do unless I want to try and join the management (which I don't).

So, brief comments on your comments:

Chapter One--Yeah, a little late for Willow to be doing something, with Faith already heading out of town, but sure, I think it's reasonable for her to want to make sure there's not a repeat of crazy girl showing up to mess with everyone.
And of course I've already pointed out that it was highly suspicious for Faith NOT to have gotten seriously proactive on EVERYONE'S ass during Season Three. Think about how she could have killed Angel with that arrow in the back (and SHOULD have, realistically, except he had Plot Armor because of his upcoming series), and carry that through to her killing all of them, Buffy included, in a single night, before any of them ever knew it was coming.
Honestly, Faith being seriously smitten with B is the only reason I can think of for not to have gleefully murdered them all.

Chapter Two: You know, it felt like I was *underselling* the nausea thing, after having made a big thing over how rough the dimensional transition was, and how every bone in her body was aching.

I completely agree about the stretched words thing--your way reads better. Oh well, next time....

Faith vs. elevator shaft/stairs: She could have gone looking for stairs, I suppose, but that didn't *feel* like what she would do. She'd already found the way down; all she needed to do was wait for them to leave so she could use it. Also, interesting things were going on down there, and she was vaguely curious about it. Showing that glimpse, introducing Annabelle (albeit at a distance) and then having Faith just walk away... that would have been a really annoying tease, I think. Especially if she found out later that some blonde girl had been killed during a break in.

Chapter Three: Copycat Batmen tend to monologue. Okay, not so much in the movie, where they just loomed and tried to look menacing in silhouette, but in my story they can't help but spout goofy lines in their most gravelly and throat-shredding voice.

Slayers vs. Humans: Dude. I mean seriously: DUUUUDE!
Again, I've basically pounded this point into the ground in other stuff, like the Bedtime Story, but yes, absolutely, if a human being is posing a threat to you, any sort of realistic threat, then the only sane response is to tear their frakkin' throat out with your bare hands (or something to that effect).
Buffy and the others are horribly, smugly, naively certain that this is pure evil, but I just don't see it that way, and neither does Faith.

Batclone brought his sword to a gunfight: Ha! I happen to own a few swords (real ones, not just wall-hangers, though I've some of those too), and I will freely admit that if *I* was going out with my buddies to do some crime-fightin', I would HAVE to bring one along. I mean, really, how could you not? If you're crazy enough to dress up like a Bat in the first place....

Visual cues: Mm. I think movie directors call that sort of thing 'business', as in 'a bit of business' for the actor to do while speaking a line or waiting for someone else to speak theirs. I'll level with you and admit that I usually feel like I'm doing TOO much of that, along with my general tendency to overdescribe people and locations. Some of the best writers out there get by with little or NO descriptions (Zelazny springs to mind), while some other reallyreally good writers will bury you in description (David Weber is getting worse and worse as time goes by, Stirling is obsessed with relating every outdoor scene and every meal). I like to try for a happy medium, edging a little towards the 'more' side of the spectrum for people, and 'less' for everything else....
And yeah, a lot of fanfic, especially, is written totally without that sort of thing, which I think leaves it terribly flat and uninteresting. So long as you don't go crazy with it, or get too repetitive, it's all good.

Faith's issues resolve FAST: I agree with you here, also. That bit really shows the quick-and-dirty writing that was going on with this, where I was just throwing out a first draft and calling it done. It needed more, but once I had the bare bones of it I just posted it.

Chapter Four: All too easy: Yep, a handy way to end the line of Slayers for good (though I'd imagine most vampires wouldn't be equipped to throw her out of the universe!).
I'll borrow one of Joss's excuses here, and say I was just going for the funny, because I wanted to have Giles look stunned and lose his British reserve for just a moment, with the '....Shit.' comment.
And also make Willow cry, because I often find her annoying (not always, just sometimes).

I probably *could* sort of justify it with lots of handwaving, and going into 'well, in times past the Slayer power would have resisted any attempt to dislodge it from the realm where it was anchored, where it had been created, but now, with the line split between Faith and Buffy, those ties had been fatally weakened, thus allowing Willow's magick to accomplish what should have been impossible'.
So... yeah, either way.

Chapter Five
Cold Resistance: So, so many minor but exceedingly sensible things that should have been part of the Slayer package. It killed me that Buffy caught that flu in Season Two--unless it was a magical strain that came through the Hellmouth??? Or that she felt cold like a mere mortal, etc. Little things like that, dropped into a story (or episode) just make the Slayer that much cooler, without having them constantly romping and stomping everyone within arm's reach.

Annabelle... I like the idea of that character. I'll likely reuse her somewhere, even if this doesn't continue.


Anyway, as always, thank you for the insightful comments!

Through out the show, someone was going off by themselves to dig a hole. You forget sometimes that they're teenagers.
The consequences of Willow's action, will be dire.
Faith's mental state is a worry. It's a pity that Giles didn't see what was going on with her and how she was surviving.

I quite like this. I'm a fan of the Nolanverse and its aura of dirt, and I think that the S4 Faith would be an interesting addition. She's probably at her most vulnerable at the moment - in the church she seemed to be hating herself, and by the time she got to LA she was one thing going wrong away from suicide by cop/Angel. At the same time, it was the first time that she was doing fairly awful stuff - like torturing Wes - without looking at all doubtful or apprehensive.

Annabelle is nowhere near as subtle as she seems to think she is, and if (if!) Faith has time to unwind a little and find her feet then the manipulation attempts may backfire.

I hope you come back to this, I'd be interested to see more.

So, by the plague of batman wanna-be's I'm assuming this is sometime after the first movie but probably before the Joker released a video of torturing one to death and then their inspiration went through with the horrible plan of framing himself for murder (to be fair he was in a hurry and the Joker was captured on the other side of town, so HE couldn't be blamed for killing Harvey Dent and possibly kidnapping Gordon's family and with the police arriving quickly there wasn't a lot of time to think of alternate plans but it still wasn't a very good idea), both of which would probably make people less enthusiastic about the whole thing.
I find myself wondering how Batman is going to react to the slaughter of a bunch of imitators and if Faith will end up with a supervillain name (though Faith without a last name almost is one). Hopefully not Slayer that's neither original nor particularly ringing.

Ah, the story itself. Well, being seduced by the promise of love and approval by evil people is pretty much Faith's thing so that makes sense and the girl's appearance feeds into her issues with Buffy so she hardly stood a chance. I do find myself wondering if Annabelle is going to end up actually providing it or if she'll never be anything but a manipulator. Faith got astonishingly lucky with the Mayor, since she didn't know anything about him before approaching him and one can't always count on being lucky twice. Grammar and conventions and so on are decent and this is a nicely original take on a Buffy/Batman crossover.

By the way, it's always possible Faith's death in... wherever she is would activate another Slayer on her homeworld. Otherwise any Slayer who got sucked into a hell dimension would leave their world undefended forever (which makes Buffy's risk against the Season Three slave taking demons incredible).

This is set just when you speculate, yes; exactly so. In this timeline, the wanna-be's will likely lose their enthusiasm a little earlier than in the movies :-P
Faith will, I think, take on an alias; I have a good one picked out (not 'Slayer'; you're right, that's not terribly original)

Annabelle's degree of emotional investment in Faith....
Not sure yet. That's one of the things I'll find out when I write it.

As for the Slayer-lineage 'jumping' across dimensional boundaries, I'm gonna say 'No'.
Just because I want to screw with the Scoobies, and because I want Willow's actions to have real consequences.

Thanks for the interesting review; you've got me thinking about this story again.

It's interesting. While Anabelle tries to make Faith addicted to her drugs and there by dependent on her, I have to wonder how long Faith will put up with that possessive crap she is displaying. I know slayer power doesn't allow for drugs to become addictive will Faith figure out that Anabelle is trying to trap and use her like a pimp would his new prostitute. I never saw Faith as crazy so much a desperate for love and approval. How old is she in this fic but the way. I always figured she was called at 14/15 like Buffy despite what Josh says post Buffy in the comics, because then everything adds up better and make more sense in terms of her reactions and attitude.

Annabelle's motives might not be as you describe them here... at least not entirely. It's true, though, that Faith can't be addicted to drugs (she knows that from firsthand experience), and that'll be covered in an upcoming chapter.
How much she'll put up with depends, I suppose, on just HOW desperate she is for love and approval. Maybe quite a lot, or maybe she'll get past it; I'm not always in control of where a story or the characters go, so I'm not completely sure myself of where this is headed.
Faith's age: I totally agree with you here. No matter what the 'official' word is, I say she was called at 15, and was still 15 when she got to Sunnydale. She turned 16 shortly afterwards (not that any of the Scoobies noticed; they were too busy with their own oh-so-important lives to care about the new girl), and she came out of the coma sometime after her seventeenth birthday. So she's 17 here (Annabelle is at least three years older, and is therefore robbing the cradle just a bit--not that she cares).
So yes, Faith isn't as emotionally mature as she'd like to think, she just has lots of emotional damage... which isn't quite the same thing. Annabelle is manipulative, and a bit of a bitch, but there may be some genuine compassion and caring in there somewhere. We'll have to watch and see where the two of them go.

Thanks so much for the thoughtful comments.
You are teh awesome.
^_^

Good style. Plot is developing slowly which is why not commenting on each chapter.

I understand.
It's just that I'd like to have *some* kind of encouragement, to help me keep going. A few words every couple or three chapters is huge.
Thank you for YOUR words, by the way.

Poor Faithy. She just can't seem to catch a break.

Actually, Faith is feeling pretty good about how things are going, right about now.
^_^

Thank you for reviewing.

So is this set in the movie-verse, or comic-verse. Well done so far, can't wait for Faith to meet Bats.

::Hugs reviewer::

Someone said something.
Someone likes it!

::cries::

Movieverse all the way. And we'll finally see Bats next chapter, though it might be a couple more before Faith meets him.


THANK you for reviewing!

Beat me to the big question in this chapter, rats. ie, 'ok, Faith is gone-but when she dies, that's the end of the slayer line, right?' Ouch. Of course if they find the Scythe then they can activate slayers, but they have no way of knowing that.
Hm. Magic DOES work in the Bat-verse, or Faith wouldn't still be a slayer there... so Willow is going to have to find this particular verse and go looking for Faith. Someday. Probably right after she de-rats Amy. ie it's going to be a few years.
Is the girl that Faith has hooked up with.... Poison Ivy?

Hi, and thanks for leaving a review (stares at the vast emptiness where other reviews could be, but are not).

Sure, the scythe-activation thing might happen, but I prefer to think that without a reformed Faith fighting alongside them, the entire Sunnydale crew will be wiped out at some point towards the end of season 7. Which is fine, 'cause they deserve it.

Magic in the Gotham-verse? Sure. Just not anything hugely flashy or obvious, or else everyone would know about it. But yes, around the edges of things, there might be a few sorcerers and whatnot.

Annabelle is NOT poison ivy, she's just a minor crime boss in Gotham, who happens to have a particular set of skills.
And a lot of hotness.
And a Slayer, who has a massive crush on her.
^_^

Thanks again for the review; I'll take your name off the list of people who will be hunted down and killed when I finally snap due to non-reviewage stress disorder (NRSD).
::CRAZY STARE!!!!!!!!!!!!::

Oh dear. That was exactly what Faith did NOT need right now. Now the question is not how deep will she go before coming back to work for redemption but will she come back at all.

Yay, a review!
Life is worth living again!!!
:-)

And you're right, of course; with someone like Annabelle there to encourage her, she doesn't have much reason to WANT to be a 'good guy' again.
(Especially given what happened when she gave it a try, back in the church, in the Buffybody)

What still isn't certain, though, is what KIND of bad guy Faith will be... if that isn't too odd a thing to even ask in the first place.
o_O

Thanks for the comment; like Faith, I tend not to do well in the absence of positive reinforcement.

Heh, sorry about that. :D What I meant to say is that the last chapter was kind of weird to me. I personally haven't watched the newest movie, I have watched the classics though so I kind of scratched my head at the whole chapter with the Batmen. I personally stick with the comics, more interesting and mind-boggling adventures and all.

The way Faith was disgusted with herself after it all stopped was really a nice scene though it made me a little sad for her that the bad guy got to her. Which of course means that The Batman will have to kick her ass...I would have liked to have avoided that particular scene but I'll take what you have, this is certainly an intriguing beginning.

When you said there were no super-heroes like Superman and GL what exactly did you mean? That you'd stick with only humans? Because that begs the question - what kind of tech will you be introducing because it's the DCU still and it had some serious hardware. Which of course also sparked several villains and heroes.

Oooooh, okay then.
In the second movie, one of the first scenes is of a typical secret meeting between Gotham crime bosses, which is crashed by what first looks to be the Batman, but is quickly revealed to actually be a group of Batman-themed vigilantes 'inspired' by his example. These guys were tricked out in homemade Bat costumes, with Kevlar vests and what were basically hockey and football pads.
They had guns, though, and they meant business, so there was actually some danger there beneath the stupidity. That's what I was going for here; a bunch of guys who wanted to stop crime, but were going about it in a sort of redneck idiot kind of way.

As for Batman kicking her ass--I have all kinds of respect for the Batman (the real one, not the wannabees), but I'm thinking he's going to have his hands full when trying to deal with Faith.

This being set in the version of the DC verse that houses the movie Batman/Bruce Wayne, I'll stay with characters that could legitimately show up in a Nolan movie. So, super-powered Aliens and the like are out, but skill and tech-based peoples, both heroes and villains, are fair game.
Tech that could show? Haven't really thought that far ahead, but probably nothing as crazy as Iron man (or whoever the DC version would be). Blue Beetle, or someone like that, sure.

So... even though you're not completely happy with the direction of the story, I'm glad you decided to drop in a review.
Thanks!

...Weird...

...Okay...?