A Few Key Sunnydale Alum

It's a ripple of expectation, of delight and nervous tension all at once. What will it be like inside? Will I get in? Will she? The air is alive with energy that no one cares to subdue. Everyone there has their cards, they're special enough to have them, and now there's only one thing left. One last obstacle to overcome before they can mingle with the latest and the greatest.

A murmur spreads like wildfire from the front of the line, where the two guards make the final adjustments; some sort of technical equipment. Metal detectors? Something more difficult to get by?

And then, one by one the expectant guests start walking up to it. The first three get to go inside and do so eagerly. The fourth one... The fourth one is louder, despite his vertically challenged frame.

"I SHOT THE SHERIFF, BUT I DID NOT SHOOT THE DEPUTY--" After a moment, he dances all the way to where the party's at.

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A very different ripple goes through the few human (or formerly human) members of Lord Vayan's entourage.

"Wait, was that --"

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"Was he --?"

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"Singing," Angel finishes, his voice very low and tight.

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Tonight, Lord Vayan is dressed to impress and furthering his appearance with a regal bearing the likes of which the Queen of England would envy. He wrinkles his nose slightly at the way his hired help tenses every which way. It is unseemly.

"Is there a problem?" He asks Andrew. Pointedly.

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"An unforeseen circumstance, my lord," says Andrew; he's spent the last couple of days rereading the Gondor and Rohan sequences of Lord of the Rings to drum the right rhythm of speech into his head. "Is this customary, for those who gather here to sing before they enter?"

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"Unless one sings, one is not permitted into the club proper," Vayan explains loftily. "It is the way of things, and a small price to pay for partaking in the festivities."

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"A curious custom," Andrew observes gravely.

"But as you say, Lord Vayan," Angel puts in, "a small price to pay as a courtesy to the Host." His gaze flickers to Gunn's on the last words, and then to Spike's, and finally back to Vayan. "I don't think it will be a problem."

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"Perhaps," Lord Vayan tilts his chin up to observe the trio (down the length of his nose). Questioning the ways of this most select slice of the demonic community? It is a slight he is willing to let slide, but he isn't so sure about the host.

"But one would not, should not, call it a courtesy."

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"Is it not?" Andrew tilts his head.

The parking lot's growing ever more crowded, with the line of patrons stretching almost all the way through it and more still arriving; there's the muted rumble of a slowly approaching car, and the dark gleam of a limousine is just barely visible, turning down the spiral ramp from the next level up.

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The light in the demon lord's eyes changes, flickers like a flame, as he looks from Angel, to the firefly, to the dark one whose name he has yet to take note of, to the icy blond vampire. He leans closer, as if to share the most intricate of insights into demonic high society.

His mouth quirks into a small grin, and his voice rumbles. "It is a requirement."

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"We could just go home," Spike mutters under his nonexistent breath. Oddly, Angel's glance at him isn't quelling or exasperated; it suggests he's strongly tempted to do just that.

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But, to the great disappointment of everyone involved, the prospect of simply going home is diminishing with every tick-tock of the clock. Every second focused on the entrance, on the people arriving, is one second lost where something could be done to foresee what lies ahead.

The wind sends a lone bundle of newspaper rustling and rolling nearby – but there's something else, isn't there?

The parking lot is closed. That car is not supposed to be there.

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Suddenly, something glints in the air, slicing through the wind itself and coming to a sudden stop not even three inches from Lord Vayan's high forehead. To the left of him, his most trusted aide stares into nothing, her clawed hand reaching up to the thin, pen-like stiletto embedded between her eyebrows. Time slows down. Her eyes go blank, and she falls to the ground in a heap as several cloaked figures burst from the uninvited limousine.

Not one second later, the concrete box echoes with the sound of primal screams.

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The crowd doesn't so much scatter as explode, fragments flying everywhere. A few, including a clutch of vampires in leather and silk and a very good-looking human man in an Armani suit, stand where they are and watch with interest. Of the rest, some flee for the scant cover of the concrete pillars; some set their backs to the wall and brace to defend themselves; and by far most of them stampede for the door to the club.

Angel and Spike are moving forward, Gunn and Andrew drawing back to flank Vayan along with the rest of his pack, all of them drawing weapons.

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The dangerously thin bouncer by the door cowers behind his pin headed giant of a friend, talking frantically at his left cuff link while the chaos rages on. So much force is behind the expensively clad stampede that the bouncer only known as Jarvis almost budges from his position.

The cloaked figures swarm around their target and his flesh and blood shields, surging not only from the limousine but from every dark corner of the vast garage. Some have swords, other have more unusual weapons; some glint, some don't; but every last one of them move with purpose.

Vayan did not come unarmed, neither did his servants - one of them leaps into the air with a gut wrenching roar and unsheathed claws, using the slate gray wall as a spring board to vault over her master. She will avenge her sister with nothing but her teeth if she has to.

Edited Date: 2009-03-25 07:57 pm (UTC)

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The metallic ring of swords meeting echoes off the walls of the concrete cavern as Angel closes with two of the assassins, and then a louder clang as he sends one spinning backward to rebound off the hood of the limousine. Spike dodges a knife thrown at his throat, seizes his attacker's wrist, pivots on his heel with the momentum of the blow, and uses the assassin's arm to block another descending blade.

In the tighter huddle around Lord Vayan, Gunn and two of the younger guards are hitting a rhythm of parry and counterstrike, keeping the closer attackers at bay – but just barely. An axe blade made of what looks like black glass swings high over Gunn's unprotected head –

The assassin with the glass axe falls, with a crossbow quarrel protruding from his eye. Andrew reloads quickly and stands ready again.

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With a loud crash, the double doors come down under the pressure of the throng of people and one after the other they take their refuge within the relative sanctum of the night club.

Relative, seeing as Vayan is not to be treated like a bird in a gilded cage. He breaks formation to go after what he views as little more than insects to be crushed under his boot, and all too soon the fight is shifting towards the entrance to the club.

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This fight is not going the way the assassins expected. Barely two minutes from the initial attack and almost half of them are down, their vehicle damaged (a crossbow bolt through the front tire, and another through the gas tank), and the tide of battle shows no sign of shifting anytime soon. When Vayan breaks ranks to come for them, it looks for a moment like they may be able to surround and cut him off – but the rest of his cadre closes around him (one of his guards swearing furiously under her breath), and the brief advantage is gone before it's come.

Slowly they're getting pushed away from the minimal cover of the limousine, and toward the club entrance. If they were outdoors they could vault over their enemies' heads and make good their escape, but the roof in here's too low.

The team leader (the current team leader – third in line before this assault started) signals fall back to the rest. It's not a rout; they move in good order, covering each other toward the splintered doors. They're still professionals, after all.

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Hindsight is almost always a pain in the ass. This becomes immediately clear as half a dozen black clad demons come hurrying from a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Not all of them are demons, and not all of them are big enough to fit the generic image of Security, but the way they carry themselves speaks louder than anything. They're backup, to keep the assailants out of the club and away from the paying customers.

Unfortunately, they're half a minute too late. With half of them on each side of the entrance, it's all too easy for the assassins to get inside. In there, there's more space both vertically and horizontally, which they take advantage of. Spreading out like a fan and taking on anyone who gets between them and their target.

Unfortunately for Security, Vayan and his servants do exactly the same.

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Andrew finds himself briefly shoulder-to-shoulder with Angel in a breath of time between shoving through the doorway and diving back into the fight. It's long enough to register the interior: lavishly dressed humans and demons of various ages, most of them cowering away from the sudden incursion of violence into their midst.

"Oh frell," he breathes unhappily, "there's too many noncombatants in here."

"Best we can do for them is get this fight over with as fast as possible," Angel mutters back.

Andrew nods, lowers his crossbow and draws his tranq gun instead.

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Inside, the fight spreads quickly. Guests dive behind tables, behind hastily-flung-up magical shields, behind each other. On the little stage by the dance floor, the five-piece band is standing frozen, not sure whether they should keep playing or not. Staff members, including one server whose nametag reads EMMA, are doing much the same.

One of Angus's Security people, a large blunt being with fists the size of bowling balls, tries to put a headlock on one of the assassins and gets thrown halfway across the room for his trouble. A table shatters under the impact, splinters of glass and china and wood flying in all directions. Beth flinches away and reflexively covers her face, hearing screams go up from patrons and staff, almost drowning out the very sharp gasp right next to her.

When she lowers her arms, there's Seth, his face suddenly very white against the bright blue of his feathers, reddish-gray blood trickling from a scrape on his forehead – and trickling rather faster from between his fingers, where his hand's clapped to a jagged chunk of wood sticking out of his shoulder.

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Meanwhile, over by the bar:

In honor of this particular night, the bar itself is a barely illuminated dark creation covered in subdued, red sparkles. Despite it being Valentine's, Aequitas wouldn't and doesn't boast the baddest of kitsch decór. The kitsch starts with the band on stage, not knowing quite whether it should keep on playing and extends to the candy red vests the bartenders wear, though at this moment in time, they're nowhere to be seen.

There's a very good explanation for this. Ramon made sure everyone dived for the floor at the first sign of trouble of the crash-boom-bang variety, and is busy ushering everyone to safety further in.

"Fuck it! Terra, get over here! Go, go, go!"

Last one running huddled from behind the bar is Ramon himself, more or less dragging the young human along. "Everyone duck and cover, dammit, what's wrong with you people!"

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That's fine for the staff working the bar. For those out among the tables, Ramon's shouting is all but drowned out by the screaming, and by the incredible noise of the fight.

She stares at Seth, and then reaches out and grabs him by the elbow of his unhurt arm. "Come on," she says to him, low and tight. "Come on, we gotta get out of this mess –- hey. Hey." She shakes him, none too gently, as his eyes start to roll upward and he sways on his feet. "You can pass out in a minute, come on. Yohan -–" This to another server, frozen and staring at the melee (and if she looks at it she'll freeze up too, so don't look, just keep moving) "Yohan, help me with him -–"

It's bizarre how clear her mind is, how steady her hands are, as she tries to get as many of the others as she can to the safety of the kitchens.

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