sunnydalealum | (no subject)

Faith hates killing people.

Hates it even worse when they're just young, misguided Slayers, like she was once, and she thinks that maybe, maybe, if they had the time, if she had a chance, she could just talk.....

Every time she sees the light go out in a pair of human eyes, she feels something inside her dim in unison, just that one step closer to the absolute blackness that's been haunting her for so long.

They don't have a choice. She knows that.

But people probably said that about her once too.

No one's saying that about her right now.

Definitely not the young woman who's shrieking a name over and over as she fights her way through the mêlée to the side of the girl Faith just dropped.

Desperate fury is in her face when she looks up from the body, and launches herself at Faith with a blade in each hand.

When someone sounds as if they have nothing left to lose, they are probably at their most dangerous. Wells leaves off what he's doing and lunges for the girl himself as soon as she starts shouting. He's going for a flying tackle, if he can- like the one that once brought down a wolfed-out Ryan, although the one that snapped Ace's neck would do just as well under the circumstances.

The flying tackle carries them both into one of the room's support pillars, ripping free about half of the festive pine-and-ribbon swags and sending them to the floor in a shower of needles.

One of the blades in her hand scores up Wells's shoulder before they land, but it's not silver; the wound's already healing before he gets to his feet.

(She doesn't.)

Spoon is still doing his very best impression of yautja versus demonic bunnies through the uniforms. The next one in his sights gets a shot high and to the right on Spoon's chest, getting a growled; "Fuckin' sold out to the cows, didn't you?" in return. Also a sucking chest wound.

Something heavy and blunt hits Spoon on the back of the head, shattering about his shoulders.

(It is, in fact, the office chair from behind the reception desk.)

"Who're you callin' a cow, dog?" snaps the young woman who threw it, in an accent not entirely dissimilar to Spoon's own.

The door to the stairway opens again, and Kennedy staggers out, favoring one foot.

"Sarge," she yells across the mayhem, "I lost 'em, we're gonna have company --"

And breaks off, to block a kick aimed at her face.

Faith, not being Buffy, is not given to making pithy remarks in the heat of battle, so commentary on Sarge's tackle will not be forthcoming.

She might be thinking something about werewolf dung, motorcycles, and why it's a good thing they can't fly, but she won't say it.

(Maybe later, though.)

She spins around, just in time to block a knife headed for her throat, driving her own blade into the hand of the girl wielding it. The girl hits the floor on her knees, her expression stunned, and Faith hits her over the head before moving to the next
Slayer
target.

Wells' head comes up sharply at that and he rolls to his feet, taking only so long as necessary to grab the weapons off the downed girl. No sense leaving them for someone else to put in his back. "You heard her!" he bellows to the others. "Put your backs into it, ladies, I fucking plan to!"

At which point he demonstrates by turning and going after the nearest of the enemy women with the knives of the fallen at a speed he learned from Bar-born practice sessions with Cassandra Cain..

Spoon rips the head off of his latest dance partner and sends it back at the girl who broke a chair over his back at speed. "Not girls you bloody brainwashed bint, COWS! The fuckin' Bovine Menace! Cows are the fuckin' leading cause of," whoops, someone to the left. He should hit that person with sharp things, "evil in the entire bloody world! Werewolves? The cows did it! Cybermen? There'll be cows! Even the cybernetic fear monkeys had a bloody BULLET PROOF COW!"

... okay, now some of the zhirelin are starting to back off from Spoon.

Until the leader (shirt torn on one shoulder, blood streaking her face and matting her hair) shouts hoarsely at them to hold their ground. "You heard her, we've got backup coming --"

Correction: they've got backup here, pouring out of the stairway door. Another half-dozen zhirelin, and a full twenty Security uniforms ... this group not nearly as human-looking.

Three of them have crossbows, with silver-tipped quarrels already nocked and aiming as they come in.

"Again with the fucking cows."

Yes, Faith takes a second to actually facepalm.

"Swear to fuck, Spoon, if you don't stop it with the cows I'm gonna kidnap you to Iowa and leave you there."

Of course, while she's saying this, she's also still killing people. And things.

And things that are also people.

"Shit!" Wells swears under his breath. Those crossbows are bad fucking news. He checks his gun- two rounds left- well, the girls will just have to make up for that.

Some men have catechisms for when they shoot, and some have litanies.

( each of them will assist the party or parties so attacked by taking such action as it deems necessary including the use of armed force )

Wells just has a handful of treaties. But they work really well when he needs to focus. Those two bullets find their marks, and then he's back into the fray, the god's black knife slipping through the air and seeking its own targets quick as an inhuman hand can make it go.

The third crossbow-wielding guard is hit by two Slayers at once, high and low. He manages to throw both of them off, but only at the cost of losing his weapon. It slides across the floor, and one of the zhirelin dives for it.

Before she's quite gotten to her feet, Jordie slams into her. There's a moment's tangle of arms and legs, and both girls are now grappling for the silver-shafted crossbow.

The zhirel -- it's the same one who threw the chair at Spoon a few minutes ago -- is taller than Jordie, and has the reach on her.

She's damn well keeping that crossbow, though. Which is why when she manages to dislodge her it's with a thrust, rather than a blow.

That was a mistake, she realizes a second later, as the green-haired Slayer comes right back at her. A more decisive blow with the stock of the crossbow itself sends the smaller girl reeling back, blood streaming from her face.

It would be poetic, you know, to say that Spoon howls Jordie's name. He doesn't. He dives for the zhirel who touched Jordie - Spoon's favorite - with murder in his eyes.

His golden eyes. And his claws, his shoulders, and every single other line of his no-longer-clothed body as in mid-leap he loses his grip on a human form. Fast, they called him, and loud. He's faster, and louder, and quite frankly the only way it could be worse is if he were a bitch and Jordie his cub.

The zhirel's neck snaps with a dull crack a merciful instant before the Brown Wolf, uncaring of wounds taken, rips her throat out and turns for another victim.

"Oh, fucking hell- SPOON! SPIT! RIGHT NOW!"

Spoon spits. Some things transcend murderous rage. Even if he is also dealing with the pain of the SILVER TO HIS FACE that has him reeling back at the same time.

The new guards are proving a lot tougher than the first batch.

One's successfully fending off three Slayers at once; a third, along with two of the zhirelin, is pressing Kennedy and another girl hard.

Xander's fond of pointing out to the girls that everything has eyes.

Faith....isn't sure where, exactly, they'd be found on the thing she's fighting, but they're certainly not in the usual place.

She just poked it there, and its reaction...

Well, like they said on the one episode of Star Trek Xand ever got her to watch.

Not all species keep their genitals in the same place.

The difficult thing about this sort of fight is that essentially, all they're doing is stalling. They've got no goal to focus on beyond keeping the enemy busy and staying alive.

That latter goal is growing increasingly difficult. Already there are a few Slayers down with injuries; one of them, huddled in the scant cover of the reception desk, hasn't moved in a while.

Buffy catches Sarge's eye and signals fall back?, with a look that makes it a question.

Wells scans the area, then drops his head fractionally. He and Spoon'll cover the retreat. Or, rather, he'll cover Spoon, and they'll likely wind up between the girls and the enemy forces.

Buffy doesn't even return the nod before she's shouting "Fall back!", pitched to carry through the noise.

The Slayers hear her, and start gradually pulling away from the tight little tangles of combat. It's a retreat in good order, covering each other and not letting the enemy press the advantage too much.

(Kennedy and two other girls are the furthest in, and in danger of being cut off.)

If Spoon were thinking that way he'd be worried about finding a safe place for the painful transformation back to human. If he were thinking that way he'd be upset with himself for the gnawing hunger at the human blood-smell in the air. If he were thinking that way he'd suggest someone arm one of the mines and lob it deeper into the building.

He's not. He's just thinking that there are a lot of (cubs) girls here who need to be protected while they fall back.

Say what you want about his sanity, Spoon has good paternal instincts.

Faith has been slowly making her way toward Kennedy and the other girls - they're in the most danger, and she's fond of them (Okay, not Kennedy, but Red would be way upset if yet another of her girls got iced, and Faith owes Red a lot).

So when the call is sounded, she's closer to Kennedy than to Buffy.

And she wants to retreat with the others - really, she does - but...danger to her girls.

Better her life than theirs - they, at least, still have a chance at a real life.

A good life.

And Kennedy, for all her tendency to be annoying, at least isn't a murderer.

Which is why, when Kennedy glances over at Buffy for a half-second to heed the retreat and her opponent seeks to press the advantage, it's Faith who takes the brunt of the blow.

Faith who flies back from the force of the blow, smacking into the wall with enough force to make even a Slayer hurt like Hell.

Faith who hits the ground and slides, ending at Buffy's feet, eyes closed, a bloody ruin where her stomach used to be.

She glances up, just for a brief time, just long enough to see Kennedy and her girls start to make it to safety.

There's a smile on her lips when her eyes close.