Title: No Weapon Forged
Fandom: BtVS
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: The Judge, Buffy.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 585
Spoilers: Surprise / Innocence.
Summary: The Judge is invincible; no weapon forged can kill him.
Written For: Challenge 313: Iron.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters; they belong to the great Joss Whedon.



The Judge knows himself to be invincible. Cold iron holds no fear for him; nothing does. No weapon forged can kill him, he cannot be defeated; the dispensing of his justice can only be delayed for a time, never prevented. Human beings are puny creatures; they cannot hope to stand against him. Inevitably he will succeed in cleansing the world of the pestilence that is humanity.

That mankind halted him before was nothing more than chance. They showed unanticipated guile and courage, swarming over him and chopping his body to pieces, crating each piece separately and scattering them to the farthest corners of the earth. They thought that would be sufficient, and perhaps they might have been correct had he been working alone. But that was not the case.

He has allies everywhere, demon kind exists in many forms and the forces of darkness all share a common desire, to reclaim what mankind stole from them aeons ago, to make the earth their home once more, their Hell.

It has taken so long, but at last the vampires have located all the parts of his living, dismembered body and brought them together; the Judge is whole once more. He is weakened, yes, the centuries he has endured unable to feed have reduced his powers to a fraction of what they were, but his might will be soon be restored; with each life he absorbs he grows stronger. It is good to feed again, to drain the humanity out of the mortals brought before him, to watch them burn from the inside until nothing remains but ashes.

Once sufficient strength has been restored, he is ready to begin his task in earnest. He no longer needs to judge one mortal at a time, no longer requires physical contact to extract their humanity. He can rip it from dozens, hundreds, at once, growing ever stronger, becoming unstoppable, and yet still the humans resist. It is… amusing.

There’s no army sent to face him this time with their ineffectual swords and spears forged from iron. There are only a handful of foolish mortals, led by the Slayer. The crossbow bolt she fires into him is stronger than the arrows of the past, not iron-tipped wood but tempered steel, and yet it does no more damage than those long-ago shafts and he pulls it free contemptuously, sneers, reminds her of how powerless she is against him. His words fail to make her tremble; she shows no fear. Interesting.

One of the others hands her something, a large, heavy metal tube that comes to a point at the end facing him. The Judge has never seen its like before and it stirs mild curiosity. The humans and their world have changed a great deal since last he walked among them, smiting the unclean.

“What’s that do?”

Then with the flick of a switch the thing with the pointed end is headed in his direction at speed, hitting him in the chest with far greater force than the crossbow bolt, and it doesn’t merely pierce his armour to enter his flesh, it… explodes.

The Judge’s final though is, “Oh,” and then he’s nothing more than burning fragments scattering across the ground like charred hail.

Humans have come a long way in the last few centuries; their most powerful weapons are no longer forged in fire, they’re manufactured, assembled piece by piece, packed with explosives, equipped with computerised guidance systems, printed circuits, and all manner of wonderfully destructive innovations.

They’re very effective.


The End