sunnydalealum | (no subject)

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It's five-thirty at the offices of Wolfram & Hart New York, and the regular workday is winding down.

Some people, of course, don't leave till much later, even under ordinary circumstances.

Which these are decidedly not.

"I'll need as many of you on guard as I can get." Emma's walking fast as she speaks, coming down the hall from her office, her heels clicking on the hallway floor. Brianna, soft-footed in sneakers and carrying an incongruous guitar case, keeps pace on her right; a handful of others trail in her wake. "All of you, ideally. Start calling now, and let's see if we can get everyone in by eight, start things rolling by nine -- Ajani?"

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The nearest supply closet is fortunately close. Melissa's limp body folds in under the lowest shelf with only a little difficulty.

The elevator around the corner dings just as she returns to her post by the door, and the sound of high heels clicking down the hallway is accompanied by the sound of heavy fabric brushing the floor.

Emma rounds the corner, followed by three figures hooded and robed in dark red. "Most of the framework's been set up already," she's saying over her shoulder to them. "If you want to check our preliminary work while waiting for the rest of your colleagues..."

The first robed figure bends its head in what looks like agreement, as they come to a stop by the locked doors. Emma reaches for the doorknob, shooting 'Ajani' a questioning look.

"Bathroom," Philippus mouths. What? The girl had just eaten.

She's trying to get a sense of anything from the three figures. And no guard, which made things easier and more complicated all at once. . .

The doors swing open, and Emma steps aside to let the robed figures into the room. They drift in past her, spreading out to take in the room; one gives a little ah of satisfaction.

At this close distance, their hands and faces are starting to be visible -- if that's what those disturbingly bright glints of blue-green iridescence are.

"Ajani --" Emma steps closer to speak in an undertone. "Keep the door open until Melissa gets back, will you? I want one of you inside and the other out, while they're here."

It doesn't tell her much; she already had them down, mentally, as highly dangerous by use of magic. This is going to have to be a very fast maneuver.

She nods, curt and obedient. Very obedient. This is a lot simpler than her plan of "open up, the other guard's back and you should see her so you don't fry her accidentally." And she stays in the doorway as soon as Emma steps out. Nothing's going to get by her.

Until she's busy with other things, but by that point Emma's priorities will be readjusted.

The three robed figures are carefully examining the pattern on the floor and the other things set up around it. Philippus is getting a closer look, this time.

The red smears aren't paint. The white powder isn't chalk: it's bone. Unlit black candles in shallow brass bowls stand at precise points on the pattern, smelling faintly of incense and sulfur. And on the table itself, on the black velvet altar-cloth, a bulbous pale root sits in front of the Scythe like the world's ugliest paperweight.

There's something genuinely hideous about that root; something about the sickly grayish color, the swollen shape, the cracked and flaking surface texture. Seen out of the corner of the eye, it seems to stir sluggishly, to swell and pulse as though breathing.

The elevator makes a cheery bing! sound as it starts to descend.

The sound that sorceror 1 makes as he collides unexpectedly with sorceror 2 is more like a very unhappy THWAK. (In yellow with spiky black edges.) Philippus backhands the third one, grabbing his hood as she goes by and dragging him through the lines. Her axe, off-balance and black and what she privately has always considered to be ridiculously spiky, goes down through the center of the root, and she tosses the sorceror over one of the bowls as she scoops up the Scythe.

Then she grabs the table by one leg, pivoting and dragging it with her; she'll likely need a shield or a weapon. Or, if the sorcerors are down, she can just throw it over the rest of the design and call this little ritual about as disturbed as it can get.

(It's not her imagination: the root writhes as the axe cuts into it, and there might be a shriek hovering at the edges of hearing.)

As she pivots, the table twists away from her hand.

One of the first two sorcerors is stumbling to his feet, raising his arm, hissing words in a language she doesn't recognize --

The table rises into the air, and slams broadside into her.

Ow. She roars something in a language she knows quite well: "your father was Cerberus!"

She drops down below it, one palm hitting a clear spot on the floor, hooking the Scythe on her back, grabbing the table's underside, and slinging it his way. He'll at least have to reverse its momentum; she's already fleeing for the door, fleet-footed, blessed by Artemis.

She pauses long enough to kick another sorceror as he starts to rise. Stay down, thank you.

Fleet-footed and blessed by Artemis she may be, but that won't do her any good in getting through a locked door.

The table crashes into the far wall, in splinters, and the sorceror that flung it is still standing, hand stretching towards her.

No, it won't.

She kicks the door, figuring anything short of outright paralysis beats whatever magic is about to come her way. It cracks, but doesn't give, and she pivots and charges back at him.

First drop him; then get the door.

Her first swing comes up jarringly against a barrier of pure force, sending ripples of sickly greenish light spreading through the room.

Meanwhile, the two other robed figures are slowly getting to their feet.

Clearly the thing to do is throw one sorceror at the shielded one.

Clearly!

The two go down together in a tangle of dark-red fabric, one crying out in a high-pitched whistling hiss.

The third lunges at her, fire flaring from its hands.

Oh for--she doesn't have time for this.

She moves to the door in a quick rush, watching the flame, ready to evade, and rather hoping it sets fire to it. That won't be good for the locking spell.

She really doesn't have time for this. Or much else.

The fire obscures her view of the demon itself, until it divides like someone sweeping aside curtains. And the demon's ... changed.

Red robes fall in a heap to the ground as something four-legged and gray-furred and feral leaps directly at her face.

Oh come on.

She brings the Scythe off her back, bringing it around into the path of the creature.

It's the bracelets that betray her. They're of a different work and shape, but in this moment of practiced movement they feel the same. The Sycthe smashes into it flat-first as she spins, slamming it into and through the door with a most satisfying crash. . .

. . . but its claw tore through the skin at her elbow, the bracelets the wrong shape and thickness to protect at that angle.

It's not much of a wound. Barely bleeding; in the heat of the battle it hardly even hurts, a sharp sting that fades almost immediately into a background throb. Familiar, and easily ignored.

There's a dull acidic burn to the pain that's slightly less familiar.

The hellhound moves feebly in the wreckage of the door, whining.

And before Philippus has a chance to move through the door, someone leaps over the hellhound and into the room, cannoning into her. Someone a lot stronger than an ordinary human.

Brianna's voice speaks into her ear, three short furious words: "You treacherous bitch."

There are three more Slayers -- zhirelin -- piling through the door, and charging.

Oh for the love of Aphrodite!

"Brianna." Philippus puts the Scythe back on her shoulders as she twists to take the new impact, flipping over, palm hitting the floor again and the other scraping Brianna off and shoving. "Wrong hold." She comes back up on her feet. "Connie! You never start with your hands high enough." Connie meets the floor, although she catches the back of her shirt to slow her fall. "Juliet--" she swings around to Connie's other side, knocking the zhirel's guard aside and sending her into the wall, "you've always been tricky to knock out first hit. Well done."

There's a distraction now; Brianna's getting up and there's a hellhound bounding in. Philippus is wearing something that to her whole fighting style says I am an axe! and it hits the ground, half to either side of her.

"Stand aside, Erica."

"Like hell," Erica snarls, standing braced in the doorway. "Drop the weapon."

For all her anger and bravado, she's visibly alarmed. They've all sparred with Ajani before, in the workout sessions in the company gym; she's never been this strong. Where's it coming from?

This is, of course, the point when backup arrives all over the place.

Philippus rolls her eyes. Okay, that's Mary-Anne, a demon she can't be sure is harmful; she traps her and throws her into a sorceror who's probably going to duck next time. That's Ha'krt, who she doesn't know is harmful, demon or not; she blocks a triad of bony darts thrown at her. She spins the Scythe, deflecting a nasty-looking dagger, and knocks him out with a controlled hit to the side of the head. Let's see--oh! Bob from accounting, a vampire. Dust.

Brianna again. She blocks twice and then kicks her back.

She's slowing. Her elbow's starting to report very bad sensations indeed.

She's not stopping, though.

"That's not going to happen." She starts for the door, again, purposefully.

Connie's there again, aiming a kick high to her ribs; it misses, but then Juliet manages to get a half-stranglehold, forearm pressing against her throat -- not enough to be a threat, but enough to be a distraction. And then Brianna's hands are grappling with hers on the Scythe.

She should be able to wrest it back out of the younger woman's grasp, easily, but it's not coming.

Connie's second kick, the one that doesn't miss, slams into her elbow just above where the hellhound's claw caught. The dull burn of the wound flares abruptly into white-hot corrosive pain.

Yeah, letting go now. Juliet's trying to use her weight to pull her over backwards, and she goes with it, falling on her while she's at it and planting an elbow hard enough to keep her busy.

She glances over as the sorceror raises a hand, and time does not stop as much as her muscles simply take over. The greenish dart that flies from his hand leaves concentric rings in the air, and it leaves a mark on the silver panel of her bracelet, but then it plants itself harmlessly in the ceiling.

The impact is enough for her to temporarily decide the other arm can now be distinguished as the good arm.

Which leaves Connie staring just long enough for an open-palmed smack between the eyes that has her down.

The attackers have drawn back for a moment, leaving her at the center of a ring. The brief respite gives Philippus time to notice that it's not just the arm anymore: an insidious weariness is starting to spread outward from the injury, a slackening of the muscles. The room seems to be slowly spinning about her, in uneven jerks.

Erica steps forward, visibly bracing herself. She's telegraphing her attack, that's not like her --

At the same moment two of the others strike from behind, hard and fast.

One's going back the other way; Philippus pulls the kick because the girl's charging into it, not as much as she would if she were healthy. She's about to touch down with that foot and clear the air around her with a spinning kick--that circle needs to widen--when she sees the sorceror moving his hands.

The spell this time looks different; she simply sidesteps as it approaches, fast enough to dodge.

But there's now a zhirel charging right into it.

She doesn't kill. She won't. It's a mortal girl. She's bought time and she'll do her duty as Gaea gave it. She brings her arm straight out--right in front of Juliet's face--and the spell hits her bracelet and wraps around, spreading up her good arm in a wash of pain.

Juliet hits her as she pulls it back to recover; there's a sort of general dogpile a moment later.