A Few Key Sunnydale Alum

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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That hurts, enough that Spoon's entire face shifts; eyes gold and muzzle extending, claws forming on hands that are still gripping the disks. The giggling, however, doesn't stop; even as his body goes back to human-norm and he decapitates the guard.

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"Werewolf!" shouts the lead zhirel, from where she's fighting with Faith. She's good, to have lasted this long against her; the brief distraction costs her her footing, and very nearly that broken jaw.

The guards, though, react to that. Three bring out nightsticks, reversing the grips and shucking the outer black covering to reveal gleaming silver. A fourth reaches for his walkie-talkie (call it in, standard procedure), and drops his hand with a muttered curse.

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Spoon's eyes get rather more crazed at the sight of the silver, although he doesn't lose sight of the here and now. He sheds the long, bulky coat to expose a body coated in weaponry and explosives, howls enraged hate, and moves like the fist of an angry God.

There is no mercy, here, no pause or hesitation. No pretense at human speeds, or human strengths. The next little thing and he could, so easily, become nothing but destruction on two malformed feet.

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And as much as Wells would give an eyetooth, or an eye, to get that silver out of the picture, Spoon's just become about a thousand times more dangerous than any damn metal. Simplest thing to do?

( an attack on one shall be considered an attack on all )

There's no bang with this gun, but three times the firearm jerks in his hand and three times it spits fire and metal. There's absolutely no question of his intention now.

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There's not much question of Faith's, anymore, either.

She doesn't have a gun, hasn't willingly put her hands on one since she pointed one at Angel, but she doesn't need one, not in quarters this close.

Her opponent is good. She's better.

I know he doesn't need it, and if he ever found out I asked he'd probably shave my head or make me do push-ups or KP or something, but look after him for me, Faith.

Andrew had asked her that, made her promise, when he told her exactly how weird the situation was likely to get. Faith's not sure if he really knew it was her he was talking to, in that moment, or if part of him thinks it was the other Faith he was asking, the one he was friends with, the one who, apparently, people trusted.

(She was there for Angel when he needed her, when you weren't, and you'll never really forgive yourself, will you, for not being the Faith who helped to save him?)

But damned if she's not going to do it anyway, because Andrew asked her, and she likes the Sarge, and fighting werewolves with silver is tantamount to torture.

It's not just the leader's -jaw- she's trying to break, now.

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There's a guard trying to pick up one of the dropped silver nightsticks.

A Slayer barrels into him amidships, and the crack of his ribs splintering is audible even over the din of hand-to-hand.

Jordie pivots, draws back her arm, and hurls the nightstick out through one of the plate-glass windows -- then one of the zhirelin is at her, and she hurriedly blocks the blow.

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None of the attackers get anywhere near Buffy. This is partly her own skill, and partly the fact that there are two Slayers flanking her whose job it is to see to it that she survives.

This leaves her the breathing space long enough to notice when one of the zhirelin and one of the uniformed guards exchange a fleeting glance, and then turn to make for the stairway door next to the elevator bank.

"They're going for backup," she shouts, pointing. "Kennedy --"

"On it!"

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Spoon takes a precious moment to fight memories back, then dives back into the fray with wristblades and disk again. He didn't bring the sword because it requires too much space to swing it. He's chanting while he kills, however, and he's killing what he hits; "Payas leitjin-de Hma'mi'de. Thar'n-da s/ yin'tekai. M-di H'chak/M-di H'dlak!"

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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.

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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.

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