sunnydalealum | (no subject)

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It's not worth the effort, at this point, to make herself firmly visible.

Instead, Meg concentrates on making her voice as loud and solid and present as possible as she zips through the building, ignoring such petty obstacles as walls and floors and extremely surprised lawyers and mentally checking off sites of battle: "All out! Everybody out!" she shouts to Wells and Spoon, and "They're coming down, get ready!" to Buffy and the others in the lobby, and "We're all done, it's time to go!" to River and Spike, and "Find the others, get out now!" to Harth and Mel, and then back to the first group again, as fast as she can.

Everyone has to hear.

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Spoon picks up an interesting looking head and manages to spike it on part of the armor that didn't pop off entirely when he changed form. It will fall off when he goes back to human form, being far too big then, but for now he can keep track of new trophies.

...Morbid fucker. Anyway. His contribution to the pandemonium is the best imitation of a yautja roar that he can do. Discounting the lack of mandible chatter it's actually pretty good.

The lobby's nearly deserted by now, with the building's defenders having been pushed further in. The only people still in it are the handful of wounded Slayers and the three there to guard them.

They're already getting the wounded to their feet (and, in one case, picking up a woman too hurt to stand), poised and waiting.

"We're good," Margret shouts to them from the back of the lobby, "we're coming, just --"

The word's cut off in a yelp as a security guard breaks through the line to rush her, and she's thrown against the wall.

"Fucker," says Wells simply, and springs for the guard.

It would be nice to say that the tanto flashes in the lobby light, but Hephaestos went to a lot of trouble to make these things concealable. There's a flickering movement of his arm that could be mistaken for an incoming punch if it didn't happen to be carrying an eternally sharp bit of blackness at the end of it.

Hope that guard didn't need his arteries intact or anything.

As the lobby spreads out from the stairwell, the line of Slayers perforce has to do the same to keep from being overrun. Even though there's holes in the line of defense by now.

Tricia takes a blow to the chin and staggers. Jordie ducks under her arm and drives a vicious kick to the kneecap of the zhirel responsible, coming up to take half of Tricia's weight on her shoulder.

It's been said before, it'll be said again; Jordie is Spoon's favorite. When she picks up the other girl's weight, he's there to guard them even more than the rest. One malformed foot smashes the zhirel's throat into paste and the Brown's ears are flat against his skull and he gives all the posture of a wolf defending cubs against intruders.

Plus severed heads.

Wells steps away from the falling guard, spattered yet again with gore and worse, and whirls to face the next would-be opponent. Whatever it takes to slow these fuckers down, eh? It'd be covering fire if he had anything left to fire with.

Besides, Annie's gonna kill him if he gets back and can't say in all honesty that he didn't give everything he had to keeping those girls as safe as he could.

The next would-be opponent is a security guard, uniform ripped to reveal ridged, hardened skin underneath. It's strong enough to actually wrestle Wells, hold its own against the werewolf strength, one arm grappling each of his --

-- wait, where did that third arm come from? The one with a silver knife in its grip?

"SARGE!"

Something barrels into the demon guard from the side, knocking it just enough off-balance; a crossbow bolt stabs through the third arm at the wrist, sending the knife clattering across the floor.

Kennedy straightens, braced to attack again.

"Thanks, mate," Wells says gratefully.

Right before headbutting the three-armed son of a bitch with all his might and yanking his hands free.

Kennedy grins at him as the demon guard falls -- it's a fierce lopsided grin, a streak of blood down her face and some nasty greenish ichor staining her shirt -- and tips him a mocking half-salute.

"Almost out of the."

Her grin falters and fades, replaced with a puzzled frown.

"Wait," she says, almost calmly. "Wait, I didn't --"

She sinks to her knees, one hand going up to the damp red patch that's rapidly spreading over the green stain on her shirt, and then topples forward.

Spoon does have depths of savagery in him that he had kept under lock and key. He always does. He's got an intimate knowledge of anatomy gained from hard personal experience, and lingering remnants of hatred of life, and he has always, always been careful to keep man and wolf balanced on that dagger's edge where savagery and civilization keeps him from doing something he'd regret.

The mournful howl, uniquely Spoon in its mix of human rage and canine grief, couples with the slipping of those last few bonds.

Wells told him, once, to use the wolf so that it didn't use him. Right now...right now the Brown is using the man.

He's hurting the defenders. He's hurting them, not killing them, not even wounding them except in that it causes the maximum pain and suffering.

And the moaning howl of pain doesn't stop.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, fuck.

The girls are important but this is Spoon and Spoon was his before the girls ever were and the Infantry looks after its own, damn it all to hell.

Even if sometimes you have to do it by fucking with their heads.

FALL BACK AND STAND DOWN AT ONCE, SPOON! he roars. Or did you want Cora to grow up an orphan?

There are no words in English, Canine, Greek, or yautja to express how little Spoon wants to follow that set of orders, but there are things even deeper than his hatred, anger, fear, and pain.

His love for his family is one of them, and so he stands down. He doesn't stop moaning, but he starts retreating again.

Tricia shakes off Jordie's support, scoops up the fallen silver knife, takes two seconds to be sure of her aim (and to be sure that neither Wells nor Spoon is likely to move into her line of fire), and hurls it overhand.

The knife sinks to the hilt in the gut of the girl whose crossbow bolt hit Kennedy. Tricia doesn't see it; she's already turning away to crouch next to Jordie by Kennedy's side, helping lift her.

They're nearly back to the cover of the fallen Christmas tree, and behind that they can probably make the doors.

Faith should be crying.

She feels like she should be crying.

She and Kennedy could never have been close friends. She didn't even always like Kennedy very much. But she loves all her girls, in a way she'll never talk about. A way nobody needs her to.

She's not crying.

She's standing. It's slow and hard, but she's on her feet, helping to cover their exit.

Love is pain, and the Slayer forges strength from pain.

Jordie is crying, tears cutting through the smudges of demon blood on her face, as she and Tricia carry Kennedy's body into the cover of the tree.

Buffy's not crying either, though. Right now she's standing where she can just see over the spreading branches, crossbow aimed and ready.

Wells will do the mourning later. Right now he's got to be the hard man, and that's all there is to it.

That's right, Spoon, you keep moving- look to the living-

Wolves supposedly pick off the weak and the sick and the old, but that's not entirely true. They hunt whatever animals they can catch, and sometimes that means the healthy and scared instead. Wells knows this, which is why he's seeing to it that the tail end of their line gets a retreat free of as much incoming fire as possible. He knows what to look for.

Beats thinking.

A quick headcount shows everybody from this team present: whole, wounded, and dead.

No one's getting left.

"We get out those doors," Buffy says tightly out of the side of her mouth, "get across the street, and call for our pickup. They're standing by. We need cover for one last rush."

"You heard the Slayer, ladies," says Wells to the nearest girls. "Grab Spooney's armour and boots and I'll get your backs on the way out myself."

He glances over at Spoon expectantly to see just how much he can expect from the younger werewolf at this point.

Since they're in a somewhat safer place Spoon takes the time to force himself back into the small, weak, fragile body that can speak to everyone else, "I'll go out last." he says quietly, when he can speak again, "Can toss one of these," a mine is lifted, "And get back to Milliways on me own. Stand out a bit, out there."

What with the naked and all.

Buffy nods at Spoon. "I think you'd better -- we're running out of anything else to throw."

Sharply, she adds "They're coming --"

The two Slayers carrying Spoon's armor and boots have to break into a run to stay clear of the advancing line.

And orderly or not, in the end the retreat has to devolve into its simplest form of Everybody Run For It.

Karine hits the door first, half-expecting it to be locked, and holds it open for the others when it proves not to be. "Come on, come on, let's go," she's shouting as they pour through.

The night outside is cold and crisp, and across the silent street there's a fence adorned with strings of colored lights.

Wells will start shoving people if he has to. There's been more than enough blood tonight as far as he's concerned, and he doesn't want any collateral damage once Spoon makes his pitch.

This is taking far too long.

Back from her last whirlwind tour of the building, Meg hovers and fidgets, as much as a ghost can fidget, and tries not to look at the girl and the spreading bloodstain on the floor.

There's not much else she can do - she's not solid enough to help, not now, hardly solid enough even to distract the guards with her presence.

And of course, thanks to Wolfram and Hart, she can't go out the door.