What follows is a crossover amongst Angel, Buffy, and Extreme Ghostbusters (henceforth known as XGB). For the sake of my fans that may not be familiar with all of these franchises or my previous XGB fic, I am going to take a few moments to explain where all the characters are "at" when the story opens. SPOILERS ARE INCLUDED IN THIS INTRODUCTION. If you haven't seen the last episode of Buffy or the first five episodes of season 5 of Angel, you may not want to continue. You also might want to be wary if you haven't read my XGB fic, "Embrace the Night", but were planning to. If not, well hey, I'll tell you all you need to know right here. ^_^
Still here? All right, then! First let me explain what XGB is, since I'm sure more of my readers are familiar with Angel and Buffy than that. I hope you have at least seen the first Ghostbusters movie, about four men, Ray Stantz, Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddemore, who run a ghost-catching business out of an old firehouse in New York (with a little help from their secretary, Janine Melnitz, who was obviously attracted to Egon). There was an animated spin-off of the movie, calledThe Real Ghostbusters (RGB), in which the characters designs were changed a little and a green ghost from the film, Slimer, became a pet of sorts. That series continued their stories for many years.
Long after it went off the air, a new series was launched, XGB, in which a twelve-years-older Egon Spengler, now living alone in the firehouse with Slimer, took four college students, Kylie, Eduardo, Garrett, and Roland, under his wing and turned them into the next generation of Ghostbusters (with a little more help from Janine). The series only lasted one season (with a whopping 39 episodes! Most first seasons in animation only have 12), but has a strong, very devoted following on the net - particularly in regards to the hinted sexual tension between Kylie (Egon's protégé) and Eduardo ("the slacker"). (I should probably also mention that Garrett is "the guy in a wheelchair" - although he doesn't let that deter him from being a daredevil -- while Roland is the resident techno-geek.) It should be noted that, in the series, Garret had a brief infatuation with a girl named Steffi, who lived with the Mole People underground, and Roland was at one point bespelled by an otherwise good spirit named Siren who was being controlled by her evil Banshee sister.
In "Embrace the Night", I had Kylie come out of the closet as a Wiccan (it was hinted at in the show that she "dabbled"), and Eduardo get bitten by a werewolf. They also finally admitted their feelings for each other (and Janine and Egon are definitely a full-fledged couple in my work). It should be noted, for the purposes of the following fiction, that my version of werewolves are not killed by silver. Instead, silver makes their lupine self come to the fore -- that is, if they touch it, they become the wolf. Wolfsbane makes them human again, and silver and wolfsbane together puts their body into a state of confusion that eventually kills them. At the end of "Embrace the Night", Kylie gives Eduardo a wonga bag (a small pouch worn from a chain around the neck) filled with wolfsbane so that he won't shapeshift willy-nilly anymore.
And now, for you Ghostbusters fans who actually don't know anything about Buffy or Angel ... Buffy was once an ordinary girl -- until someone died, making Buffy the new Chosen One, the Slayer of vampires and other demons. She fought a wide assortment of monsters in Sunnydale, home to a "Hellmouth", a place where evil is released into the world. Alongside her fought: Giles, Buffy's Watcher (the Watchers Council was a mystical organization that trained Slayers and Potential Slayers, and researched mystical phenomenon. Their headquarters and most of their members were blown up in the last season); Willow, a techno-geek and eventually a (so-called) Wiccan; Xander, a normal guy except that at one point, do to a spell, he had extensive knowledge of the military put in his head; Angel, a vampire who was given back his soul thanks to a gypsy curse, only to loose it again in a "moment of ultimate happiness" with Buffy and became the evil Angelus until he got it back (he and Buffy decided they couldn't risk being together if it might turn him evil again, so he left town); Spike, a vampire protégé of Angelus who eventually fell in love with Buffy, which led to his actively seeking out a soul, earning it, and becoming the Champion whose death destroyed Sunnydale's hellmouth; Cordelia, yuppie princess who hated Buffy but eventually joined the team when she started dating Xander, and left for LA shortly after he broke her heart; Dawn, a mystical key given form as Buffy's "sister" by some monks, and who has a knack for arcane knowledge; Oz, a werewolf (Lon Cheney-style) and Willow's former lover before he decided he was too dangerous to have around and left; Tara, another Wiccan and Willow's post-Oz lover until her own demise; Anya, an ex-Vengeance Demon that Xander left standing at the altar and who died in the final battle; Faith, another Slayer (thanks to a clinically-dead moment of Buffy's) who went rogue for a time but was ultimately redeemed -- and is wanted for murder; Wesley, Faith's former Watcher, who was kicked out of the Council after his failure with aforementioned Rogue Slayer; Robin Wood (no, not the tarot-deck designer), ex-Sunnydale High Principle and a vampire-slayer whose mother was a Slayer that Spike killed in the 70s; Clem, a demon-friend and "kitten poker" playing-buddy of Spike; Andrew, a chronic-storyteller and demonology-loving geek and would-be bad-guy that ended up siding with Buffy's crew, Anya befriending Anya in particular, after both his partners were killed; Kennedy, a gung-ho Potential Slayer and Willow's third lover; and a gaggle of other characters that we don't need to go into. At the end of the series, Angel gave Buffy an amulet with the cryptic message that it "must be worn by a champion". Spike wore it, and became a channel for the power of the Sun to enter the Hellmouth and dust all the "ubervamps" there (it also caused the collapse of the entire town, as the Hellmouth closed.) Buffy and Willow also found a way to use the Scythe, an ancient Slayer artifact, to release the power of the Slayer so that all Potentials would become real Slayers, instead of there being just a chosen ONE. After the Hellmouth was destroyed, Giles suggested there was another one they could go to, in Cleveland, but no definite plans were made. According to Angel (in his series), Buffy went to Europe after the battle.
In Angel: the Series, Angel moved on to LA, where he started up a private investigation agency, with Cordelia as his secretary, and a half-human, half demon named Doyle as his assistant investigator. Doyle received visions from The Powers That Be, until he was killed in action, but, before he died, he passed his powers on to Cordelia. Then Wesley came into their lives, as a Rogue Demon Hunter that eventually took Doyle's place. Next to be added to the team was Gunn, former leader of a street gang of vampire hunters. Together they battled the evils of the night, including the uber-corrupt multidimensional law firm known as Wolfram and Hart. They gained a friend in Lorne, the Host of the demon-friendly karaoke bar Caritas; he's an empath demon that can tell what a person's like by reading their aura when they sing. Thanks to a magic book, Angel and Co. got transported to Lorne's home dimension of Pylea, where they rescued Fred (Winifred), a young physicist that had been trapped there, alone in a world where humans are hunted, for five years. She completed their group (and became the center of a love triangle with Wes and Gunn, choosing Gunn). Enter Angelus' old love, the vampire Darla, who came to them pregnant with a human child by Angel (don't ask). She killed herself so that her son might be saved, as he became sought after by various factions who believed he would fulfill some great prophecy, as well as a madman from Angelus' past who was seeking revenge for the slaughter of his own family. Thanks to the trickery of a demon, Wesley was led to believe that Angel was prophesized to kill his own son, and kidnapped the child. He was attacked by an associate of Holtz, who then took the child and brought him to her master. Chases and accusations flew, leaving Angel childless as Holtz escaped with the babe to another dimension, and Wesley friendless for his perceived betrayal (save for his ending up in a steamy relationship with their enemy, lawyer Lilah). But the babe, Connor, came back, aged 16 years older as time passed differently in the other dimension. He had been raised to hate Angel by Holtz, and eventually sentenced the vampire to a supposed eternity underwater, in a metal coffin. But Wesley found and resurrected Angel. Cordelia, meanwhile, had evolved into a "higher being" and ascended to another plane of existence, just as she and Angel had finally come to realise how they felt for one another. After a time, she returned to earth, but she was a bit off, and circumstances never worked out for her and Angel to act upon their feelings. In fact, in a moment when it seemed the world was going to end, she ended up sleeping with CONNOR instead. A new evil had come upon the earth, one that even sought to destroy Wolfram and Hart! But the real kicker is that the one they thought was the great evil, The Beast, was really just WORKING for the Big Bad, which was actually growing inside Cordelia, as her and Connor's baby. She gave birth to the child fully-grown, and then lapsed into a coma. The evil child, Jasmine, somehow convinced all who came in contact with her that she was there to bring them peace and joy, but anyone who came in contact with her BLOOD saw her for the evil she truly was. Starting with Fred, one by one Angel's gang came to know the truth, and fought against her -- all save Connor, who, by lack of a proper role model in his youth, thought the false reality Jasmine created was preferable to the truth. But in the end, Connor killed his own daughter -- and then went psycho. Wolfram and Hart, meanwhile, in thanks for Angel's crew getting rid of their enemy, gave the gang their L.A. office to do with as they chose (with the catch that, in order to have it stay running so that they could use it for good, they needed to preserve some of the evil clientele and turn a blind eye to lesser crimes). Working through their new "Senior Partner Liaison", Eve, Angel used his new authority to have Connor's reality reprogrammed, so that it seemed to him he had spent his whole life with the new family he was given. Angel also saw to it that all memories of their time with Connor were erased from the minds of every being save himself. The fallout of this decision remains to be seen, but already we see relationships slightly altered -- the gang have all forgotten Wes' "betrayal", Wes has forgotten his time loving Lilah (but remembers his crush on Fred), and Fred and Gunn don't seem to have ever become an item, by their reck. And then the amulet Angel had given Buffy was mailed back to Angel (presumably Wolfram and Hart's agents must have dug it up out of the rubble of the Hellmouth). When Angel opened the package and the amulet fell to the ground, Spike rematerialized -- as a quasi ghost who is trapped inside a space just a few miles in diameter around the amulet (basically, he's confined to LA). Spike has recently learned to focus his ectoplasmic energies enough to touch things, and Fred is trying to find a way to make him corporeal. And Cordy is still comatose.
So that's where all the characters are at now, at the start of our story, and all you need to know about their backgrounds.