A Few Key Sunnydale Alum

"That mean we're going in?" Spoon rocks forward, slightly, onto his toes and then back again. He's not helping with the whole "blend into the public" plan very well; the poor guy has been like a very dangerous dog on a very short leash since they got out here.

That's why he's standing at "heel" position to Wells.

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"Our job's to draw fire. If we do it too soon...."

Buffy stares hard at the just-visible tower, and then turns to Wells.

"It's your call."

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Now those are three words Faith's not used to hearing out of Buffy Summers' mouth. Buffy's been in charge for so long, aside from that brief little interlude that left Faith relieved not to be the boss...

She can't help but wonder if it rankles, taking orders from somebody else. She won't say it - she knows better - but part of her is thinking something along the lines of 'Welcome to my world.'

Very quietly.

"Yeah, you're in charge of this crazy bunch, Sarge. What's our move?"

Taking orders Faith is used to.

Whether she'll follow them or not, of course, depends on how much she likes them.

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"The girls are getting jittery," Kennedy reports in a low voice, coming up next to Wells. "And there's a guy I think might be a park ranger, keeps looking at us. If we're not going in now I think we gotta find somewhere else to wait."

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There's a long moment of silence. Finally:

"This smells wrong, it smells all wrong. They're in the shits deeper than they expected. We move now if we want them to have any chance at all."

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Now means now, and unless Wells counters his statement Spoon starts moving toward the building with the half-bouncing steps of someone who has somewhere very important to be, right now.

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They're in public. Very public. Barking orders loud enough for the whole team to hear, they established early on, would not be a good idea.

Buffy nods to Kennedy, who turns and mutters to the two Slayers behind her. The three of them split off and start drifting through the scattered group, gathering them into a few tighter clumps.

Only a werewolf's hearing would be able to pick out Kennedy's voice on the far side of the group, murmuring "We're good to move out, Sarge."

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Wells nods. "Right, then," he says, almost as quietly. "They're givin' our people shit- let's show 'em we brought a little of our own."

One hand comes up in a signal to the rest of the group that might be mistaken for waving someone goodbye, and he starts moving forward himself.

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There are very few people in the world Faith trusts absolutely.

Even fewer of them are male.

Two of them are named Wells.

She falls in line, not quite with the same military ease that he and Spoon have, but with her own Faith-like version of it.

Giving 'em shit?

She's all over that.

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One would have to be observing from overhead to notice that the four little bunches of people are all moving in the same direction, with the same purpose.

Until they pass through the invisible barrier that Andrew persists in referring to as a Somebody Else's Problem Field. They've all been told where it is; there's no perceptible change in stepping across it. Everything looks the same.

Except that there are no other pedestrians on this side of the street. And when they all start to coalesce into one large phalanx, nobody on the other side of the street gives them a second glance.

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About half of the windows in the office building in the middle of the block are still lit from within. The lobby, visible through the glass doors as they approach, is blazing with light.

There are two security guards flanking the doors, looking harried. One steps back as they approach, hand going to his holster; the other steps forward, raising his hand.

"Sorry, folks, the building's closed for the --"

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You want to know the fun thing about wristblades? The fun thing about wristblades is that they don't actually have to be triggered by touching the back of them with your other hand. It is, in fact, possible to simply put your arm up and slam over a foot of twin blades through a ribcage, shake it off, and keep going.

See? He can too be efficient.

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"Jesus," the other guard chokes, bringing up his gun to point at Spoon and scrabbling for his walkie-talkie with his other hand.

"Any unit, please respond. Any unit, please respond -- oh god, please --"

His other hand comes up to brace his gun, and he starts firing.

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"Sorry, mate, it's a bad day to be you," says Wells as Spoon continues forward, blithely upright and stinking of blood. And that's all he says, because without batting an eye he's putting on exactly as much speed as it takes to dart forward, grab the guard by the wrists, and twist hard. And not in the sense of 'ow', but in the sense of 'AAAGH', and, more importantly, crunch.

There may be an elbow in the face too. Depends how fast the guard reacts.

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The guard's been pretty well trained; he manages to put a bullet in his second attacker, quite accurately, before losing his gun and the use of his hands.

Shame the bullet's not going to do any good at all.

Behind Wells, the Slayers on point are trying the doors, and finding them locked. A brief exchange of glances, and two perfectly synchronized kicks splinter the locks and doorframes.

There's no alarm, any more than there was any answer to the hapless guard's walkie-talkie. Mac's done her work.

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Most of the time when Faith's in battle with things that can keep walking like that after they've been shot, she's trying to kill them before they can kill her.

If she was at all religious, she'd be thanking God that Sarge and Spoon are on their side.

As it is, she's just going to give them appraising looks, ascertain that yes, they're both still functional, and then continue on her way.

She never did stop by to formally give her former employers her resignation. Time to change that.

Maybe she'll sign it in their blood.

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There's no more gunfire.

But there's a twang-zip-WHAP sound as a crossbow bolt buries itself with hideous force in the wall barely an inch from Faith's head.

Standing in front of the elevator banks are a handful of uniformed security guards, and eight or ten young women interspersed among them. They're all armed; one, standing slightly forward from the others, is holding the crossbow that just fired.

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"Agh, fuck," is Wells' reaction to being shot- that and that was a perfectly good kidney, ya fucker!, but he's too busy grimacing and straightening up to say that. One quick glance down at the blood to verify that it's not pumping visibly or anything else distracting, and-

Fucking hell, this just keeps getting better and better. They've practised for this shit, they have.

"Take 'em down," Wells snaps. "Group-on-group day- go. Spoon, you and me- uniforms."

Not the most inspiring attack command ever, but it gets the job done, doesn't it?

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Spoon shouts something that sounds a lot like, "Dtai'kai'-dte sa-de nau'gkon dtain'aun bpi-de.", adds a descant howl, and spins toward the uniformed guards with the wristblades still out and his disk dropping into his hand.

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"Nothing but nothing gets past us," the foremost girl barks to the others, even as Spoon's charging. "We hold, hear me?"

They're braced, ready and waiting -- and then the Academy Slayers are on them and the time for talk is well and truly over.

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Group-on-group day: they've done this before on a regular basis in training, broken up into small groups and sparred with each other. It was one form of training Kennedy never thought of when she was in charge, and she took to mastering it with grim approval.

She's in the front rank now, leading her own little team, grinning fierce and gleeful in the midst of the mayhem.

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Faith doesn't like being shot at.

This would be why she's currently attempting to break the jaw of the girl who just shot at her.

She doesn't have any last-minute words of warning or encouragement for the Academy Slayers - her girls, she thinks, and though she's not the soppy type, she certainly is proud of that. Her girls, hers and Buffy's, Kennedy's and Willow's, Giles', Sarge's....

Takes a village to raise an army.

She knows her girls.

They won't let her down.

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The girls can deal with the girls, Wells is damn sure of that. They've never had to fight a human who was out to kill them, but he's come as close as he could to making it clear to them exactly what being in that position is really like. He'll have to hope that's enough to keep from slowing their reactions down.

And he'll have to hope it later, because he's got all his attention on the matter at hand. Which, in this case, involves two matt black gifts from his patron: a tanto knife, and a Sig Sauer P229-type pistol that makes neither sound nor smell, and hits only to his intention. Nobody he shoots at is going to get killed unless he fucking well WANTS them to get killed.

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The security guards can't use guns at this range for fear of hitting their own people.

What one of them fires at Spoon isn't a gun. It's a taser, at very high power.

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