Hellmouth Heroes

FIC: Hellmouth Heroes (13/?)

“Okay! Okay!” Cordelia pouted at her boyfriend, the big African-American sat smirking opposite in the diner that had become their unofficial hang-out. “You beat me once!” The former cheerleader put her elbow on the table and readied herself. “How about best of three!”

“I still say,” Xander was talking animatedly to a predictably tranquil Oz, “if you practice hard enough, you and maybe Jon should be able to pull off anything Neo did in the movie! I mean you’re Daredevil and Wolverine for crying out loud!”

”Xander,” Willow giggled even as she linked arms with her rock guitarist boyfriend, “you’re such a geek!”

”Hey!” Xander grinned as he took a gulp of his smoothie. “Tell her, Jonathan! Comics are the great American mythologies!”

Faith couldn’t stop smirking. Her life had changed so much since she’d been Chosen. Before then she’d been a worthless, friendless street trash, now she was a soon to start college student with the best friends a gal could wish for.

Yeah, apart from the constant panty-wetting danger, life was good.

“You look happy.”

Faith turned at Jonathan’s whispered comment. “Why wouldn’t I be?” she purred, unable to resist teasing her shy guy. “I got ya to warm my bed when I go home tonight, what more could a gal want?”

Her grin widened at Jonathan’s sudden crimsoning. Yeah, she had the sweetest boy-friend e-v-e-r.

* * *

Sunday giggled as she led her two childes into the shadowed college grounds. Fresher week was her favourite week of the entire year, all those parties, all those unsuspecting males, what could be better?

She stopped when a handsome, short youth stepped out from behind a tree and in front of her, a strange half-smile on his face. “We students have decided to make a stand against you creatures of the night.”

Sunday’s brow creased in confusion. What was this fool blathering about? ”A sta-.” She began to query until she heard the hauntingly familiar sound of her two companions dusting. She turned instinctively, eyes widening when she saw a geeky looking teen effortlessly sliding a blade through the neck of her second companion. And then she felt a stake enter her own back, her mouth opened in a shocked gasp, but then darkness engulfed her.

* * *

“Nice moves, Lance,” Scott complimented as he slid his stake away, the former class nerd doing the same with his katana.

The class geek grinned as their companions exited the shadows they’d been hiding in. “I still don’t see why we don’t just tell Mr. Giles about our patrols,” Larry commented, a meaty hand coming to rest on Lance’s shoulder, protectively embracing his boyfriend.

Scott pursed his lips in displeasure as Larry once again raised a point of constant contention between them. “Look,” Owen rumbled, his eyes flashing in that strange and very creepy way they’d begun to do since being possessed by the Vision. “He might not approve of us helping without supervision. Might even think we’re unneeded.”

”Any help is good help,” Michael put in.

”It’s not as if we’re amateurs!” added Theresa.

Scott sighed as the bickering began.

* * *

Faith strolled through the darkened graveyard, Jonathan, Xander, and Wesley trailing her, the others in patrol groups in other cemeteries, their new powers meaning the gang could safely split up into three groups, getting more patrolling done in a shorter time. A real sweet deal.

Faith stopped, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up as a terrible premonition struck. “Fuck,” she croaked, a terrifying chill turning her bones to ice, “what is that?”

“That is I, child. Your death.”

Faith turned to face the voice coming out of the shadows, a small gasp escaping her. The vampire, because that was what it had to be, strode towards her. It stood close to seven feet tall with the gargantuan build to match, yet for all that bulk moved like a panther. The skin was stretched across the creature’s face, giving it a skull-like appearance, its teeth elongated beyond even a normal vampire’s, and curious, diamond-shaped eyes glowing a feral red rather than the usual yellow.

Faith licked her lips before croaking out a demand. “Who the fuck are you?”

* * *

“Why,” his lips parted in a smirk as he inspected the Slayer. Beauty beyond compare and a spirit to match, she would be a worthy prize to add his legions of victims. “I am Amara,” he smiled at the oldest of the men’s gasp, it had been many centuries since he’d walked here, but at least someone remembered his blood-soaked legend.

”You’re dust waitin’ to happen!” the dark-eyed beauty snapped before surging forward.

Her speed caught him by surprise, she was fast, fast even for a Slayer. Her right was ramming into his jaw before he’d barely registered her moving. The blow knocked his head sideways, pain flaring in his jaw, strange, he’d thought he was beyond such things.

Then animal instinct took over, snatching the beauty’s flowing mane, he threw her from him, his other hand back-handing a dark-haired youth who’d leapt to tackle him. The Slayer flew into a gravestone, the force of the collision splitting the stone in two, the beauty grunting as she hit the ground.

And then another boy, smaller than the first was leaping at him, an almost bestial snarl parting his lips, the smell of a concerned mate on him. This boy was the Slayer’s lover? Amara laughed at the thought even as the knuckles of his right fist caught the youth full in the face, sending him flying back the way he’d come.

Amara’s elbow cannoned backwards, catching the first youth in the jaw as he tried to sneak up on him. Without checking the consequences of his attack, he strode towards the downed Slayer.

”Not on your bloody life!” the Englishman shot out a brass-knuckled left jab that bounced contemptuously off Amara’s shoulder. “What-.” The Englishman’s gasp turned to a gurgle when he grabbed the man by the throat and flung him into a statue of a winged Eros.

“Hey,” the Slayer rose, the earlier fear in her eyes replaced by raw fury, “those are my people you’re beatin’ on. Not smart.”

The supernatural warrior ducked under his swinging haymaker and stamped down hard on his shin, an unconventional move, but one that knocked him off balance, and left him open to a rather more traditional spinning backfist to the jaw that had him briefly seeing stars even as his own elbow caught the beauty high on her right cheek. Then suddenly the Slayer was flying through the air in a drop-kick, full locks billowing behind.

Amara glided aside, forearming the Slayer out of the air. The brunette hit the ground on her side, but rolled up in time to catch a downward right to the left eye, blood bursting out of the wound like water from a dam. Amara laughed at the girl’s shocked grunt, eyes glazing as she fell back onto her back.

Amara was still chuckling as he reached down to grab the little bitch by her throat. “Owww!” he grunted as her foot crashed into his stomach, the blow hard enough to stagger him back a step.

“Hey.”

He half turned at the voice only to gasp as a bullet exploded in his face, fire briefly burning before dousing down. He glared at his suddenly ashen-faced attacker. “You’ll pay for that,” he warned as he staggered off. “Demons themselves will shudder and thank the Old Ones that they didn’t face your fate!”

* * *

“I shot him an incendiary round, he should have been dust!” Xander shook his head.

”Given who the vampire claimed to be that is unsurprising,” Giles shot a worried look to where Faith was having her wounds dressed by Jenny. Slayer Healing would of course take care of all but the worse wounds, but one couldn’t help worry. The Slayer shot him a grin her expressive eyes seeming to say ‘thanks for caring, but I’ll be five by five’.

“Who was he?” Jonathan asked. For their part, Xander and Jonathan were both holding ice-packs to their faces while Wesley was looking considerably battered.

“Amara is a legend amongst vampires, not unlike Saint Vigeous, the Master, or Kakistos. Except far older,” Giles replied.

“Cut with the vagaries Watcher man,” Faith growled. “The bastard punched like a mach truck and like Xan said his shot should have dusted him.”

“And my blessed brass knuckles should have at least hurt,” Wesley commented. “However, the legends surrounding Amara appear true.” The younger Watcher winced. “Giles, if you don’t mind.”

”Of course,” Giles nodded. “Amara was turned somewhere in central Europe around sixteen hundred years ago.” He continued over the whistles and gasps of his gathered audience. “Rumour would have it that he was one of Atilla’s war-chieftians. The fact is, he became one of the vampire masters of Europe, known for his brutality and power until some six hundred years ago, Kaktosis, the Master, Vigeous, and Dracula got together and drove him out of Europe. After that point, Amara is reputed to have roamed the earth wrecking havoc and carnage, making no childes, only slaughtering. They called him ‘Death Of Cities’. He also reputed to have a ring that means he is no longer vulnerable to holy objects, sunlight, fire, and crosses.”

“Ah hell,” Faith groaned. “Old, grumpy, and invincible. Sounds almost like my mom.”

“If he can’t enter without an invite,” Willow raised a hand. “I’ve got an idea…”

* * *

Amara strode through the darkened graveyard, his impatience growing. All day he’d searched for the Slayer, but demons ran at just the mention of her. This wasn’t a large city, she couldn’t have hidden that well.

“Hey, I’ve been lookin’ for a party, ya known anyone who might be interested?”

Amara stared at the brunette stood on a mausoleum, framed in the half-moon. The Slayer was dressed in skin-tight leather pants tucked into cowboy boots and matching bodice under a long trenchcoat, a baldric of knives across her well-developed torso and a sword hanging on her tiny waist, her hands covered by fingerless weight-lifting gloves.

Amara smiled at the fearlessness in her brown eyes. Truly she was a victory to be savoured. Letting out a roar, he charged her.

And spun and staggered when bullets shuddered into his left and right thighs, shot from some distance, far enough he couldn’t even smell the bitch’s assistants. “Bet that stung like a bitch.”

Amara spun to face the Slayer who’d somersaulted over his head while he was being shot, catching an elbow to the face. “I’ll cripple you,” he snarled as he threw an overhand right the Slayer ducked under before delivering a left to his belly, followed up by a knee to the groin that he managed to block on his thigh, “and then I’ll torture to death and turn everyone you know.” He grabbed the girl’s hair throwing him from her, desperate for a second’s respite. “Then they’ll join me in making you scream!”

The girl just grinned at you. “Will they?”

“Ahhh!” Amara stumbled backwards when a fireball crashed into the side of his face, a normal vampire would have been dusted by the impact, his face just burnt under the impact. Even as the wound began to heal, the Slayer came in with a thrust kick that caught him in the chest, knocking him back two paces.

The girl landed in a crouch, his foot swinging up to crash into her ample chest, the girl’s high cheeks greying with the impact even as she pulled away from his attempted right cross. He shot out a hand, catching the beauty in her mouth, blood spraying as she stumbled back a step then spun into a kick to the jaw that had him stumbling back a step. The Slayer leapt forward, cannon-balling into his chest with her knees, once again knocking him back, the brunette landed in front of him, too close to get out of the way of a forearm to the face that sent her crashing onto her back.

A grin stretching his face, he charged in with a stomp to the face that the Slayer beauty blocked on her crossed forearms before rolling away and up, catching a hook to the side of her head as she rose. The Slayer’s head snapped to the side but she took the momentum and used it to flip a backwards somersault, a grin lightening her bloodied features.

“Now!” Amara gasped as his arms were grabbed from behind, an unbelievably strong black and even more staggeringly powered brunette grabbed his arms and pulled them into the crucifix position. Muscles writhed mightily as he struggled to free himself from the duo’s grips. “Jenny!”

He gasped again when a bewitching gypsy appeared by his right hand and grabbed his hand. Amara’s eyes widened in belated realisation. “No!” Panic gripped him as the gypsy grabbed his ring finger and yanked the gem off.

”Like I said,” he felt his arms being released and his ambushers leap back, but before he could react, his rival’s sword was flashing up and through his neck, “you’re just dust waitin’ to happen.”

* * *

Giles stiffened as he sensed a most unwelcome presence walking up his path. Placing down his book, he immediately sent out a number of mental messages to his fellow Sunnydale defenders while looking towards his girl-friend. “Jenny, it appears I have some most unwelcome but not particularly dangerous guests. I’d like you to go invisible if you don’t mind?”

Jenny shot him a confused gaze before nodding. “Sure, Rupert.”

Giles rose at the heavy knocking. “Coming!” He scowled as he strode out of his apartment’s small lounge. This was a bloody complication he didn’t need. Yanking the door open, he nodded at the bearded man dressed in a Saville Row suit and lodged between two fridge-sized, buzz-cut giants. “Quentin.”

”Mr. Travers if you don’t mind,” his older country-man sniffed before striding past him and into his house.

Giles would have liked to think that the older Watcher and Council head strode inside without asking because he was more than aware that another Watcher would never invite another person into the house after nightfall, especially on the Hellmouth. Would like to think, but whatever else he was, he wasn’t a bloody idiot.

He was equally unsurprised when the arsehole strode into the lounge and sat in Giles’ favourite chair, the two walking walls framing him. “Come now, Rupert,” Quentin sniffed as he reluctantly followed his ‘superior’ into the lounge. “My visit can’t be a complete surprise. You’ve done more than enough stalling on your Slayer’s Cruciamentum. The girl turned 18, months ago.”

Giles’ blood burnt at the mention of the brutal rite of passage. “It’s an arcane and poorly thought out practice,” he began his protest even as he stalled for more time.

“It’s tradition!” Travers snapped. “How else are we to satisfy ourselves to the worth of the Slayers we Watch?”

Giles shook his head, the thought of stalling now secondary to protesting his Slayer’s prowess. “I know how good she is, the good she’s done, the evil she’s balked!”

“Ha!” Travers sniffed. “It’s as I feared when forces were brought to bear to give you the position as Slayer’s Watcher. You have become too close to her!”

“And you’re not close enough!” he angrily retorted. “If you knew her, you’d recognise just how extraordinary she is!”

“Extraordinary?” Travers snorted and shook his head. “Beguiling perhaps, but extraordinary? I’ve read the girl’s file, she’s the exact opposite, why her mother-.”

“Her mother,” Giles interrupted through gritted teeth, “isn’t germane to this discussion-.”

”This isn’t a discussion,” Travers coldly corrected.

“Faith herself is.” Giles ignored the interruption. “She’s defeated any number of notable foes. William The Bloody, The Order of Taraka, The Judge, and St. Vigeous to name but a few. Not only is this test monstrous, should Faith fail it, we’d be robbing ourselves of one of the greatest Slayers in recorded history!”

“Tradition-.”

“Oh to bollocks with tradition!” Giles snarled. “Talk about cutting one’s nose off to spite your face!”

Travers half rose out of his seat before sinking back in. “This is how things have always been done, and-.”

”And maybe they should be changed!” Giles snapped, Ripper’s temper reddening the mist threatening to envelop him. He smiled as he sensed one of his charges enter his house. “Oh Cordelia, perhaps you could take out these gentlemen for me.”

”Geez, Giles.” The beautiful former school queen strode through into the lounge, walked up to the nearest of Travers’ bullet-headed thugs and back-handed the smirking man into the wall before lunging at his companion, grabbing his wrist and twisting as he went for a gun, the snap of bone breaking ringing out as her uppercut landed on his jaw, snapping his head back and putting him to the carpet. “What am I, hired muscle?”

”No mere thug ever had a mouth to match yours,” Giles murmured before raising his voice. “Jenny, dear?”

”Gah!” Travers dropped back out of the chair he’d been rising out of at Jenny’s sudden re-materialisation. “How!”

“How is unimportant,” Giles smirked as he enjoyed his ‘superior’s’ shock, “what is essential is you understand just what we can do.” He sighed as Gunn entered the room behind him. “Charles,” he reverently took the heraldic shield that constituted his family’s coat of arms off the wall and held it out in front of the African-American, bracing himself against the wall, “if you wouldn’t mind?”

The black’s eyes met his, then the former gang leader nodded and hit the shield with a sweet right cross that almost dislocated Giles’ shoulders. “Bloody hell!” Travers gasped as the shield rippled and dented as if hit by a powerfully-swung hammer.

Wincing slightly, he really should have thought that out more, Giles carefully gave the shield to Gunn who immediately went to work getting the dent out. “Alana, dear?” he turned to the black girl. “Perhaps a little water to revive these two men?”

“Oh good lord!” Travers paled still further as water dropped out of the sky to splash Travers’ hired thugs, spluttering them to consciousnesses. “How is this possible?”

”As you can see we’re more than capable of dealing with any problem caused by you or any forces you could hope to call on. Oh,” Giles smiled at the paling man. “And 009-020-033, password Susan?” He chuckled at Travers’ choked gurgle. “That’s right, I just pulled the details of your Swiss bank account out of your head. If you don’t want the others in the Ruling Body to know about your slush fund you’d be best to leave Sunnydale and never return.”

The colour drained from his fellow countryman’s face. “This isn’t over, Rupert!” he blustered.

“Oh,” Giles’ smile remained fixed even as he wondered where Xander was, “I rather think it is.” His smile evaporated. “Now get out.”

* * *

Travers’ legs were wobbly as he walked to his waiting limousine, his heart hammering and head reeling at Giles’ show of force. Just how had Giles and his accomplices attainted their powers? And why hadn’t he been informed? They were useful tools in the fight against evil, the Council needed all the weapons it could get.

Of course, he mused as he climbed inside his car, Rupert Giles would have to be eliminated first.

He stopped as he belatedly registered the man, no boy sat in his back seat. “Who the hell are you?” His body-guards stepped forward, only to stop at the click of a safety being pulled back behind them. The two men slowly raised their hands even as the tinted panel separating the driver’s seat from them was pulled back, revealing an orange-haired youth sat behind the driving seat, the limo driver sat bound and gagged beside him.

“I’m Xander Harris, maybe you’ve heard of me.” Travers scowled and nodded, one of the original bloody Scoobies. “When G-Man signalled us you were here, I figured you might need a demonstration.”

“A demonstration?” Travers’ eyes were fixed on the big handgun the youth was pointing at him.

“You see all the power in the world isn’t enough. You have to be able to get to a person to use it. I hope we’ve shown you we can get to you any time we want. This time your limo. Next time your hotel room,” Xander paused, “your home. Give me a reason and I’ll hunt you down. First your operatives, then your fellow Watchers, and finally you. There won’t be a Council left if you come back here or try and hurt Faith, Giles, or any of us. Stay out of our lives and we’ll stay out of your nightmares.” The youth’s smile evaporated. “Get out of our town, and don’t bother coming back.”

* * *

“Hello Mayor,” the peace officer strode into the darkened office.

”Hello, please take a seat.” He felt oddly confident, almost as if his possession had changed more than his physical prowess, “I’ve been doing some discreet research since the Halloween possession.”

”Oh?” his guest remained cautious.

He leaned forward in his chair. “We both have crimes to atone for. You were complicit in a number through ignorance, I through,” he paused, guilt tightening his chest, “cowardice.”

”What do you suggest?” his guest queried. “Even if we gave ourselves up, no-one would believe us.”

”I know,” he nodded. “But as I said I’ve done some research since Halloween. You were Nick Fury, I was USA Agent. We’re both changed aren’t we?” After a tense second his companion nodded. “I’ve done a little research into the comics too. We have potential, real potential. To do either great harm or great good. I want to do great good for a change, how about you?”

His guest smiled. “Great good.”