Welcome to Buffyness and Nightlurkers Presents: Fray, Issue #8 – “Chapter Eight: All Hell”! We’ve reached the end of this fantastic miniseries! I hope everything works out well for all parties involved! In the previous installment, Melaka Frays gears up for battle and finds out there are many who are willing to fight the good fight alongside, including the folks from the warren AND the police! Even the police! Those guys hate doing anything, so that really must mean something.

Harth has awoken a whole army of vampires and demons from the dead, and they outnumber Fray’s people about 1,000 to 1. Not only that, but Harth himself swoops into town on a giant demon dinosaur. The all-knowing Urkonn realizes that the Gateway is in the dinosaur’s womb, and it’s ready to give birth to a dimension full of demons! The time for the evil ones to return to Earth is nigh!

Then Melaka gets eaten by the dinosaur. The end.

Fray, Issue #8 [August, 2002]
Written by: Joss Whedon
“Chapter Eight: All Hell”

“I’m just one girl. No big hero, no protector of justice, not even a bonafide one-hundred-percent Slayer.”

Fray catches us all up on the goings-on of the debacle that is the Rage Against the Lurks. She struggles to keep from being swallowed by the dinosaur, and its breath smells like Ed Sheeran’s hair so she’s struggling not to breathe in. Its saliva is burning her clothes. With effort, she grips her axe and plunges it hard through the roof of the creature’s mouth, up into the brain.

Erin looks on in horror while Broder radios in. He needs her to make a call quickly before the fire-breathing dinosaur fries the warren to a crispy crisp. Erin’s catatonic with fear. Harth rides the beast like he’s on a surfboard.

Urkonn is ripping Lurks to shreds while his mind reels. “The Slayer is gone,” he thinks. “The Gateway is opening. Hell’s own womb will disgorge the horde. And they will eat this Earth.”

Sounds pretty dramatic, Urkel. Chill. Smoke this blunt. Settle down.

Meanwhile, Harth and Erin have a little family reunion.

No, not the spiked cleats! Have mercy!

Harth stomps Erin’s face with so much force that I’m surprised she’s not fucking dead. “It’s so right that you’re here. That you should die here with Mel, the whole family together…”

Loo’s parents are becoming overwhelmed by the vampires. They’re planning on murder/suiciding their way out of this, which is exactly how I got out of jury duty last year! The suicide part, not the murder part.

“I loved the way you blamed Mel for my death. The way you shut her out. Was it rocketship, watching her bleed for your love…” Harth is now gripping her throat, tossing out tubular slang like “rocketship”. “How did watching her die feel? Big rush? Little rush? One to ten.”

I’m beginning to think this Harth guy ain’t no good at all! I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he’s at two strikes now. He doesn’t want to know what happens when we get to Strike Three.

Suddenly, there’s a giant “HHHRRAAARGH!!” The dinosaur flails and slams its head into a few of the taller buildings. Then, like the alien bursting out of that guy’s chest, Fray bursts right out of this reptilian fucker’s eyeball. Splorch, etc. “Hey guys,” she says, covered in orange goo. The dinosaur crashes to the ground as people leap out of the way. Erin lands on her head and gets knocked out cold.

“Melaka… you think this is over?” Harth doesn’t look particularly happy that his dinosaur buddy just ate it. “You closed the Gateway. Saved the warren. Maybe even all of Haddyn. Maybe the world. You’ll never guess what’s coming next.

And yeah, neither did I.

Ahhh, good old fashioned twincest. Totally rocketship. Jaime and Cersei would be proud.

The baffled Melaka Fray watches as her brother dashes off into an alley, disappearing among the shadows. The dinosaur creature having been successfully subdued, Broder calls in for med teams to help the injured. Head trauma Erin gets whisked away in a flying ambulance. Loo’s parents didn’t kill themselves after all. Not at all an unsettling end to the battle, that’s for sure.

“He’ll not be able to draw force like this again,” Urkonn says of Harth. “Not for years at best. It’s over.”

“No it’s not,” Fray responds. There’s still some unfinished Gunther business to attend to. (with Gunther)

*intermission*

*Doublemint gum commercial where the twins kiss*

“Melahhhka, please, be sssensible,” Gunther hisses while Fray threatens the glass floor with her axe. He swears that he had no idea who Fray was grabbing for, honest to the sea monster god. “When I found out who they were buying for, and why they asked for you… I tried to warn you!”

Fray finds this funny. She doesn’t remember any warnings. “That’s why I paid you sssooo handsomely, so you would know something was wrong.” Again, flimsy. “You turned me into the Laws,” she spits back. “To keep you ssssafe!” Gunther responds. Flimsy, flimsy, flimsy.

This ain’t even about Harth. Ain’t about Erin. It ain’t even about Melaka. It’s about Loo. “Little girl. Friend of mine. She was killed. That’s gotta be answered for.”

And it’s not Gunther. It’s not even Ed Sheeran and his stinky hair. Someone else was responsible for this little girl’s death. Someone else caused this to happen.

“You did.” Fray turns her head, eyeballing the culprit. “Vampires can’t come in unless you ask ‘em. I sure as hell never did. And they didn’t feed.”

Urkonn looks shifty.

Fray surmises that training wasn’t going well. That Vrill and Boluz needed to be reassured that the Chosen One was going to be able to rise into action when the time came. “So you snapped a five-year-old’s neck ‘cause, hey, you’re a demon, right? What’s one small human life, we got a war coming! Am I right?”

Urkonn looks shifty.

…

“We would have lost,” he responds simply.

Well, that’s hunky dory! Thank you for explaining yourself, good sir, and – what in tarnation?! Wait a dagnabbed minute! That reason sucks!

There aren’t very good panels in this issue. Have this one.

This wasn’t the only thing Fray figured out. She also noticed that Urkonn never gave her a hand every time she was thrown into the river. He didn’t follow Icarus when he dove into the water. Hell, he didn’t even want to go through the sewers, a direct beeline to Harth’s Vampire HQ. “You’re a powerful demon, I know. A great warrior. Could snap me in two. Someone gave you orders to. Could pull apart any living man…”

“…but I don’t think you can swim.”

HOTCHA! With all her might, Fray breaks her axe through the glass under Urkonn’s hoofy feet. She drops in and drags him with her down through Gunther’s corridor to the other side of the glass case. They crash through into the next room, with Gunther following suit all flip-floppin’ and gasping for air.

“He was a good teacher. Even a friend. For a friend, I make it quick.”

SHHHNK. Pointy stick right through the head. Bye bye, Urkel. Then Fray picks Gunther up and throws him back into what’s left of the water in the tank. “Vixen,” he rasps. “Mammal. I hate you.” But he can’t do anything about it, can he? Fray’s the best grabber he’s got! Watch this grab! *grabs his junk*

Elsewhere, Urkonn’s bosses have a little pow-wow:

“She lives,” says Boluz. “She wins for us, closes the Gateway, but she lives.”

“As does her brother,” Vrill agrees, “danger to us in many configurations.”

“Urkonn will be unremembered. Stricken from our warrior’s books for his failure to end her.”

“As usual, you fixate on the unimportant. The girl. We have to watch the girl. For a while she will be busied… rebuilding.”

The folk of the warren clean up the mess.

Erin wakes up in the hospital next to a sleeping Melaka.

“She may even continue her old life. But she has found a new one. And as long as she heeds its call… they’ll be watching.”

“The demons, Harth… things I don’t even know about yet. They’ll all be waiting,” Fray thinks, closing up the story! “Waiting for me to fall.”

“So come on, guys. I’m just one girl. No big hero, no protector of justice, not even a bonafide one-hundred-percent Slayer. So what are you waiting for?”

“Take me on. Hurt my world.”

*burp*

“I dare you.”

Final Thoughts

Kind of anticlimactic, no? Melaka busts through the lizard’s eyeball, the beast dies, and Harth runs away into the shadows like a little bitch (after kissing his sister)? And the threat is neutralized for years to come?

Urkonn killing the girl was a surprise. I’m glad he got got, yo.

And so ends the beginning of my long, long Buffyverse project. Stay tuned, much more is on the way.