sunnydalealum | (no subject)

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A door to elsewhere has opened in the heart of Wolfram & Hart's stronghold, and it's letting in one hell of a draft.

The security guards are discovering, right about now, that their internal alarm system isn't working. And neither are their walkie-talkies. Or anybody's cellphone.

It's really kind of impressive how well they're rallying in the absence of any contact with each other or their own command.

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"You can tell 'cause my bleeding hands are still on," Spike adds, irritated. He doesn't want to kill Slayers.

Well, he doesn't want to want to kill Slayers. It'll have to do.

He unclasps the length of chain wrapped round his waist and starts to whirl it, incidentally clocking one of the remaining guards on the backswing. He's not sure himself if he means to throttle the bint or just wrap her weapon and render it useless, but in the meantime the thing's radius buys him a bit of non-breathing room.

Until one of the other zhirelin steps in from the side, thrusting the sharpened baseball bat she carries into the whirling chain, sacrificing her grasp on it to break his defense.

As though it's been rehearsed, another leaps in almost at the same moment to strike.

And Harth darts forward, almost in step, to kick her legs out from under her with a snarl of effort and anticipation, raising one arm against retaliation.

For the moment, the plan's on hold. He can't resist this.

A Slayer's fast, and strong. Dangerous.

A Slayer is like anything else: a collection of targets.

River slips sideways, away from that dangerous spinning chain before it's tangled and taken out of the fight. Instead, she lashes her sword downward -- blood droplets fly -- and back up to slide it into the sheath, one-handed, in the same moment her free hand blurs towards her hip.

A Slayer's like any other human in this, too: bullets kill them sure as anyone.

Spike's nose is dripping blood; his chain is gone, and there's at least three stakes aimed in his direction. He's grinning. Bugger scruples, this is what a vampire lives for, and he gets to do it on the side of sodding motherhood and apple pie. And River.

He changes face. It's traditional. And then puts a stake through Brianna's shoulderblade, 'cause it's not, and dammit, one of them should know what it feels like.

Brianna lets out a strangled sound that's half scream of rage and half cursing in pain, and with her uninjured arm backhands Spike hard enough to send him into the opposite wall.

"Cover me," she gasps to another zhirel, who's already stepping between her and the fight to give her time to pull the thing out.

Harth shudders as he breathes in, throwing the girl he'd tripped away as hard as possible away to unbalance her as far as he can. He resists for a second before letting himself slip into game face - it's not Melaka, his own face won't throw them in the least.

Then the initial shock passes, and he grins viciously at the first girl to catch his eye, and lunges foward with a knife in one hand, and the fingers of his other hooked into a claw.

River's got her own trouble: a knot of guards and zhirelin, converging on her. Gunshots draw attention.

So do bodies.

She's fast, almost inhumanly so, and her hands know their work. But so is everybody else in this corridor, and some of them have cover or demonic natures to protect them, and every twelve shots she has to reload.

Spike's got blood on his mouth and splinters in his palm, and fuck if he exactly remembers how either got there, but there's a dead guard -- a dead human guard on his hands, literally, with a snapped neck, and the body weighs more than he remembered.

He uses it for counterweight for a spinning kick at the nearest Bad Slayer, the sort of thing Andrew could do by pressing buttons in some complicated sequence Spike couldn't be arsed to remember. She falls back but its only an organized retreat, not a rout, and from somewhere to his right is the sound of River not firing a gun.

Bloody hell. He risks a glance -- takes a punch in the cheek for it from a bint wearing entirely too many rings -- and ranges himself in front of her. Vampires only survive bullets, not stop them, but such as it is, she's got cover now.

The guard advancing on Spike right now isn't human. It's fairly easy to tell: humans don't grow that large, or come in quite that color. Or texture.

Nor, generally, are they equipped with detachable hook-tipped bone spikes all up their arms.

River ducks low to reload, using Spike's spinning darting form for what cover she can, and rises again to fire. She keeps moving, keeps spinning, kicks where she has to and shoots every target that presents itself; in a fight like this, that's its own kind of cover.

Keep canda. Shoot with your mind; kill with your heart.

Do the job.

Spike wonders what it would be like to be the sortt of person who didn't feel relieved at the sound of gunfire from behind them.

Probably dull. And it was none too soon to stop worrying about River because unless he missed his guess, the detachable hook tipped bone spikes had a particular secretion on them that -- fuck.

The skin where the hooks had caught started itching like mad. Spike took his borrowed nightstick and started swinging to snap the brittle spines before they could connect, but inevitably a couple more found lodging and Spike could feel himself start to swell and blister.

Meanwhile, Harth's being pressed hard.

There are five Slayers surrounding him, not one of which is his sister.

Which is normally something Harth really wouldn't mind, but five Slayers on one vampire - half Slayer himself or not - is really kind of wearing.

Which means that as he fights, he's letting himself get pushed back and back, ready to duck out when the time is right. 'Cause here? There's no scythe, and no Mel. Boring.

It's possible they perceive that as a weakness.

They're definitely following up on his retreat. One of them's holding back just a little, staying right outside the range of the immediate combat, holding a stake ready; she's poised to jump in as soon as one of the other zhirelin makes an opening for her.

Like, say, right --

(Instead of blocking his blow, the tall zhirel grabs his wrist in an arm-bar and hangs on like grim death --)

-- now.

Harth barely sees it.

It's certainly not long enough to pull anything fancy, or clever, barely enough for what he decides on. But despite there being more of them, their reflexes are still much the same as his, and Harth knows somehow, to duck just when he does, arm still held in the air by one girl, and the stake tears through skin and muscle along the top of his arm and shoulder, earning a hiss of agony before he twists to deliver a kick to the midsection of the girl holding him, pulling away at the same time, feeling cool blood dripping down one arm as he does so.

Close.

The repeating roar of River's guns cuts off again: leaving not silence, of course, but the marginally quieter grunts and thuds and cries of the ongoing melee. There are too many enemies, and no fortified ground to hold. It's inevitable that she'd be forced into close combat sooner or later.

Sooner is now.

With sword, with boots and fists and other people's weapons, River dances, and River wounds and River kills.

She's hard-pressed, grim and breathing hard, but so far she's managing to hold her own.

You'd think a fight for one's life (unlife, whatever) would be sufficient distraction from this bloody itch.

Mister Spiny's down for the count by now, but Spike's got his hands full with another guard plus one of the girls. He darts a glance at River, sees that she's holding her own, manages (with some effort) to keep it from turning into a much longer look, and concentrates on his own fight.

The girl he'd kicked staggers back long enough for a brief respite from that quarter, and Harth lunges forward, fangs bared, to snap at the elbow of the Slayer who'd tried to stake him and filled his world with the scent of his own blood as well as everybody else's.

It's tempting, to stay and fight, but...

There's nothing here, not really. There's a promising door at the end of this hallway, though. Soon as he's free, that's where he's headed, he decides.

The opening's about to present itself.

Right now the only one between him and that door is the tall blonde one that Spike staked through the shoulder minutes ago. She's still on her feet and still fighting, but definitely not functioning at full capacity.

Ooooo. How fascinating.

Harth grins viciously, licking one fang before spinning a knife in one hand and feinting forwards just slightly towards her injured side, aiming to shove past her if possible, and take her down and out of his way if not.

No scythe here, so it's time to find Mel.

River's head snaps over, a moment before Harth slips out the door. Her face tightens and twists, with something that might be irritation and might be more--

And then a probably-demon's stake-ended nightstick whizzes close enough to slap her flying hair against her cheek, and a definitely-demon's claws rake two bloody lines down the outside of her bicep, and anything she might have intended to say to Harth or Spike is lost in the need to survive the next few minutes.

Oh good, *says a relieved voice emanating from a faint pink fuzz in the corner, apparently to itself,* you're all still -

- wait, where's -

- oh merde!

*And the pink fuzz is gone again, presumably to find Harth.

Keeping track of this group is harder than herding cats.*

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