sunnydalealum | (no subject)

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Still no signal from Meg. By this time she should have shown up, even if everything else has run into a wall. Especially if everything else has run into a wall.

Twenty Slayers and two werewolves can't stay unnoticed for long. They're not inside the Somebody Else's Problem field yet. At least the winter weather means nobody will look askance at their long heavy coats -- but it's a gamble that nobody will be able to tell they're all concealing weapons under them.

Buffy's pacing back and forth in a slow prowl, shaking her head. "Something's gone wrong," she says flatly.

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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.

"Oh, fuck me sideways-"

Yeah, Wells saw it happen. He heard. And now he's smelling. Christ Almighty, he knows that stink. A wise man once told him that the basic principles of first aid were 'if it's bleeding, make it stop, if it's broken, hold it still, and if it's supposed to be INSIDE and you can see it, cover it the fuck up'...

He'll be covering Faith's position as much as he's covering the girls' retreat. Cooper didn't leave him behind, after all.

Buffy doesn't waste more than a second or two staring in shock; she's snapping orders, even while dropping to the ground to start trying to deal with the wound.

She's seen worse. She's taken worse.

(Hell, she's given Faith worse, and they're both still alive, right?)

The reception desk doesn't make for much cover. The huge Christmas tree, shoved over to land flat on its side with a musical crash of ornaments and lights, makes for slightly more.

Spoon is doing his best, and his best is very good indeed to turn as many of the things in front of him into multiple pieces. Specifically trophy-pieces and dross, but whatever. He'll retreat last.

He hasn't noticed what happened to Faith. This is probably a good thing.

The retreat's necessary; they need a minute to recover. The trouble is that it gives the defense time to recover as well.

The uniformed guards and the zhirelin are taking advantage of the brief respite to move further into the lobby -- which is a mess, the floor spattered with at least two colors of blood and littered here and there with groaning wounded and silent dead.

Their new formation's tight and close, much better prepared to defend the territory. It's not going to be easy to get past them; it might not be possible, not with their numbers right now.

No, indeed. This is going to take some work. Wells growls under his breath and looks to Buffy. "Need a hand getting her out of the way?" he says. "I've never seen how fast you lot heal from a major wound."

"Fast," she says tersely. "Not as fast as you."

A little louder: "Who's hurt? Anyone missing?"

Most of the rest of the assault team has made it to the cover of the felled tree by now, and there's a quick whispered count-off.

In the middle of the knot of fighters, an extra figure has appeared - wavering and see-through, before getting a slightly firmer grip on her outlines.

Meg glances over at the wounded, including Faith, for a brief moment, almost fades back out in her distress, and then pushes herself back into visibility and focuses her gaze strictly on Buffy.

"I'm sorry I couldn't - there was some kind of field," she explains, hasty and breathless, the words tumbling over each other, "I couldn't get out of the building - the rest are here, from Milliways, we couldn't wait. They're about to start the ritual upstairs -"

"So that's what the problem was," says Wells, looking up. "Fucking hell..."

Buffy's jaw tightens.

"Are any of our people up there yet? The other teams?"

Meg nods, and then, apparently unsure as to how visible the gesture is, says aloud, "They are - I don't know how they're doing, I came to look for you - but you'll want to catch up as soon as you can."

"Find out," Buffy says. "And get back to us as soon as you can. You're the only line of communication we've got now."

Kennedy scoots up next to them. "Everyone's accounted for," she says to Harry. "No deaths, a couple of serious injuries. At least three of us--" she looks uneasily at Faith, and finishes "-- out of the fight."

"Good. good," says Wells, who'd been worried. He glances over his shoulder, then back to Buffy. "I'm thinking from the sound of things that the upstairs bunch is gonna need backup, once we've got our wounded as close to safety as we can manage. End this fast and we've got a better chance of getting them home all right."

Meg's been waiting to leave until she hears this; now she nods again.

"I'll tell them you're coming - listen for me if you can't see me," she says, and blinks out.

Wells looks around a moment, and his eyes fall on Spoon's still-furry form.

"Oi, Spooney," he calls. "How d'you feel about being the decoy again?"

Spoon's ears perk forward and his jaw drops into a happy-canine smile. It would probably go over better if his teeth weren't bloody. "Aowghhh." he agrees contently.

Wells grins- not a nice thing at all- and looks to Buffy. "Seems to me that if he gets there first we've got a better chance of picking off the defenders, so long as we beat the silver-carriers to the punch," he says.

Buffy nods shortly. "Leah, Marina, you're with me guarding the wounded." Her lip curls a bit as she says it; hanging back is not her preferred place in a fight, and it rankles. "Kennedy --"

The other Slayer nods back. "We got it."

And grins at Harry. "Right, Sarge?"

"Too fucking right," Wells agrees. "Right- Spooney, you're on point; the rest of you, shift it, they're gonna need us up there."

Spoon nods, rolls onto all fours, and then bursts out of the relatively safe position like a sprinter headed for the finish line. He's not going for clean kills right now, that's what the girls behind can do. Spoon is going for maximum chaos, which means that scratches, bites, or picking people up and using them to hit other people. Whatever he can do, he's going to do. He'll heal anything not either instantly fatal or silver-related, and he's counting on the Slayers to keep the silver from killing him.

There is something very primal and satisfying about causing chaos instead of limiting himself to clean kills. Spoon is going to have to talk to Wells and Father Anselm about this, later, he dully knows.

Mostly he knows that he's coated in blood, most of it isn't his own, and it feels good to be doing what he's doing.

Really, really good.

Nobody's really doing clean kills right now. The object isn't to kill the enemy, it's to keep them occupied.

It's hand to hand, tight and churning and messy.

Three of the zhirelin are sideslipping the main fight, heading for the toppled tree, with the clear intention of taking out the minimal cover.

They're welcome to try. Wells knows the girls have their orders, so they don't need him in his current position. They need him where he can do the most good- between the fighters and the ones who're going to be giving them trouble.

Let's see if he can beat those girls to the tree, then, shall we?

Buffy's seen them coming.

You know what's fun about cheap tree ornaments? They shatter beautifully on impact if flung at high speed.

There's a barrage of red and gold spheres coming at the zhirelin, like some bizarre reinterpretation of a snowball fight.

This is a good time for Faith to make a 'returning-to-wakefulness' noise, right?

Well, regardless of whether or not it is, that's what she just did.

".....What.....Buffy?"

Waking up from being stabbed and seeing Buffy standing over her brings back not-so-good memories, but hey, they're past that.

Right?

"Where's the Yuppie Princess?"

That would be Kennedy.