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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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.

Someone's kneeling on her back, and Brianna's voice hisses in her ear again -- "Stay down, bitch" -- before the heavy weight moves off of her.

Hands are closing on her wrists and shoulders, pulling her up onto her knees, holding her there with her arms behind her back in classic prisoner position. One hand presses heavily down between her shoulders, a pressure that shouldn't be hard to shrug off -- except for the alarming weakness.

A pair of high heels stops in front of her, and a hand pulls her hair back, forcing her face up to meet Emma's cold stare.

The only sorceror still standing puts back the robe's hood, and leans forward. Its face is covered with fine iridescent green-blue scales, its eyes shimmering gold; its gender is as impossible to tell at a glance as a lizard's.

"Your rogue has killed one of my apprentices, aemmabal'whinn, and injured the other." Its voice is no further clue, thin and flutelike. "I trust there shall be compensation."

"Of course," says Emma at once. "I'm deeply sorry, cliath'tah."

Her face is creased only slightly with a look of troubled concern, but there's some other emotion under it: a roiling caldera of anger and bewildered fear, a tension visible only in the flick of her eyes. A look that says how the hell could a screwup like this happen, and how can I get out of it --

Philippus honestly does not want to know its gender. And yes, she's watching Emma with well-hidden curiosity; back at the moment when the spell hit she gave up her chance to do more, and right now she's wondering what she did, and if it was worth the cost.

She doubts she'll be taken prisoner. If she is, she doubts she'll be kept one for long. She just watches, face blank with three thousand year's worth of cultivated serenity.

She has one regret, and only the one: she isn't dying for her Queen.

Emma glances down, and her eyes fix on something.

"Hold out her arm," she says abruptly.

One of the zhirelin does so, and the clawed arm is pulled forward into Phil's line of sight.

Livid red streaks are spreading up and down the arm, and the flesh around the wound has swollen and darkened to near-black.

Philippus glances down, and then her gaze swings back up again.

. . . yeah, that's all the reaction you're getting out of her, Emma.

"Toxins in the hellhound's claws." Emma's cool gaze flicks over the swollen gash. "Fairly nasty. It'll start to putrefy in a little while, and pretty soon after that you're basically going to have rotted hamburger where your elbow used to be. Either it'll spread all the way up and down your arm, or your lower arm will just kind of ... slide off when the tendons give way." A gruesomely suggestive little gesture accompanies that last.

Her tone, quite cheerful up to this point, drops and turns very sober.

"Tell me who sent you to do this, Ajani. And I'll see you get the antidote before it goes that far."

You want to play games with the Captain of the Guard of the Queen of Themyscira.

It's a thought she doesn't get angry over as much as she simply uses to poke her own resolve with, and be satisfied that her resolve couldn't be harder. (She is being restrained, but the hands on her are female and keeping serene is easier than it might be.)

But she considers that a question, considers the taste of lie after lie, considers the way she can die as who she is. And she tells the truth.

"Gaea."

A few of the zhirelin exchange startled glances.

Emma raises an eyebrow. "Gaea. The Earth-goddess."

Philippus' eyes narrow very slightly. But she nods.

Emma leans forward, her voice dropping. "Loyalty's an admirable thing. But whoever sent you -- you don't owe them anything, Ajani. This was a suicide mission, and they knew it even if you didn't."

Philippus now deigns to look bored.

An indrawn breath sounds from near the door. "That--"

No telling how long Beth has been standing there watching, but right now she's staring, looking horrified.

"That's Ms. Ryder, she's with the Council. She teaches at the Academy."

The ripple of reaction that runs through the room is audible, this time.

"Does she." Emma's eyebrows rise, and her look of enlightenment slowly fades into one of calculation. "Good catch, Beth. Thank you."

There's some pity for Beth, although she doesn't bother to look over to the door; she knows the voice.

There's no real change to her expression. She doubts it changes much for Emma's plans.

"If the Council sent you...." Emma's foot taps at the floor. "You've been here too long for this to have been your primary objective. Do they know the Scythe is here, or was this on your own initiative?"

She waits for a moment, not really expecting a response.

"You haven't got much time, you know," she adds. "Even a Slayer's healing factor won't hold off that poison for long."

"Slayer?"

One of the demon's hands comes up as though to feel the texture of the air before it, and it lets out a lilting whistle that might be laughter.

"You have been deceived, aemmabal'whinn. This one is no Slayer."