Order of Business

Author's Note: MAJOR WARNING for language and violence.

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"Alright, Aldo, I'll meet you at the hangar in twenty minutes," Meyer snapped his cell phone shut as he walked towards the northeast entrance. He stopped suddenly, having felt something. He looked around...for a moment he had felt someone watching, he had felt danger. The old Marine Sergeant Major had a great sense for danger. He cleared his mind and searched for it...nothing.

"Meyer!" Clarissa yelled as she jogged to catch up with him. "Were you waiting for me?" she asked, wondering why he was just standing there when she came around the corner.

"I guess it was nothing. What do you want?" He looked at the red haired Scot. He thought that she looked recovered from losing Hermes. For all of their games, she actually had cared for the Brazilian slacker and was out of shape over his death for several days now.

"Hey, didya hear? The Destroyer might be our new captain." She hoped that he hated the idea as much as she did. He was close to his master Morte D'Amour and maybe he could get the councilor to squash the idea.

"So?" was all he said, wondering why she didn't like the idea.

"So! That's it! So..." Her hopes were fading quickly.

"They command, we follow. It's the way things work. It's better not to question, just adapt and move on." He left her there, shaking her head, and made his way up the stairs and through the hatch to the outside world.
He walked towards the sedan that his master had assigned him and felt it again... He didn't change his pace, he could hear the heartbeat coming closer to him. Impressive, he thought, he could barely hear the footfalls echoing his. He casually drew his new combat knife from inside his coat...and spun in an instant circle, stabbing into thin air. No one was there. He cleared his mind and focused on his senses. He could smell leather and a soft flowery perfume. Female, a Slayer.

"Meyer."

Her voice sounded in a whisper behind him. He spun around again and stabbed at nothing for the second time. He looked behind him and the first and most important thing he noticed was the black leather boot smashing into his face. God and the Corps gave him a hard head and he rolled with the kick, coming up in a crouch and looked at her. The queen, she had to be. The Valkyrie was an impressive warrior, but when he looked at the kid, she only reminded him of his daughter Julie. This woman, who was crouched a small ways away from him, mirroring his pose, was in a different league. His sense for danger told him that she was death, stone cold death. He watched the black leather jacket she was wearing to get a better sense of when she would move.

"Someone up there must like me," Buffy said in slow whisper. "Just as I find the Evil lair, a rapist comes walking into my arms." She studied him, waiting for his vampire speed to be launched at the hatch. She made a show of brushing off her leather pant leg. "How 'bout it? You want to try that with me?"

"Nothing personal, just following orders." He sidled gently towards the hatch, watching her as he did it.

"She's mine and you touched her. It's personal to me." She suddenly exploded when he made a move towards the hatch. She rolled to a stop and spun around on it... He was running with this world's crazy vamp speed in the other direction, across the street and between two buildings.

"Fudge!" she screamed as she burst up running after him. He had a good headstart but she didn't think he could maintain that, Jenn had thought it was a sprinting type of power. She poured on the strength, her high velocity slayer heart pumping for all it's worth as she came out from between the buildings into another street. He was a block away, throwing a man out of a SUV. She pounded after him and was less than thirty feet away when he slammed the accelerator and sped off.

She kept running, and waited for his blue Mercedes Suv to turn a corner before cutting across lawns and over fences to try to stay even with him. She flew between two apartment houses and the walkway she was on ended in stairs going up to a second floor apartment. She kept going and screamed as she launched herself at full speed off of the top of the stairs. She cartwheeled her arms as she flew and brought her legs up in time to absorb the impact as she smashed through a wooden fence and rolled into another street in a shower of splinters and garbage cans. The blue SUV was just passing the intersection, a block to the side of her and she jumped up and took off in the same direction.

"He touched her!" she screamed for motivation as she noticed a piece of wood from the fence stuck in her forearm, right through her leather sleeve, her four hundred dollar jacket's leather sleeve. "Mother Fucker!"

At the next street, she turned in the direction of the road that he was driving on and was almost there as the Suv swerved around slower traffic and when he passed, they had a moment to look into each other's eyes. She seen fear and as he pounded the gas pedal again, she put everything she had left into the race.

He slid around the next corner and she cut off the distance by flying through a small park, jumping over two wrought iron fences. He barreled through stopped traffic at a stoplight, causing the other vehicles to bunch up and close off her path. She jumped and ran right on the tops the cars, bouncing from roof to hood to roof and then right into cross traffic where she dodged a city bus. He was turning the next corner and she was off again, ignoring a police car that turned his lights on behind her.

She turned down a dead-end alley and screamed as she went at full speed to leap up and kick off of the building wall and bounce to the high security wall and launch up to grab the edge of the roof. She pulled herself up, completely out of breath but ignoring it and raced to the other side of the roof. The SUV was just coming by underneath and she screamed again as she jumped down towards it. She smashed onto the hood of the car right behind him and bounced into a tuck and roll on the street.

The car she had landed on careened into a parked vehicle and she could hear the driver yelling as she took off after Meyer again. He must not have noticed the accident behind him because he wasn't going as fast as before and she felt hope that he thought he lost her. Her lungs were screaming, she was bleeding and something in her right leg felt messed up but she poured it on. She ran on the adjacent sidewalk so he wouldn't see her in the rearview mirror.

She guessed at his next turn and prayed as she started to cut the distance early. He turned the way she wanted him to and she ran at full speed and leaped to a city bench and then to the roof of a parked car before flying through the air and landing on the roof of the Suv. She almost slid right off of the other side and thanked god that whoever owned this vehicle put the ugliest luggage rack on it's roof and used the side bars to stop herself.

Of course, he felt the impact and slammed the gas again and drove off the road to fly down the sidewalk, smashing through cafe overhangs and other store signs. She pulled herself to the front edge of the roof and kept her head down as a shower of sparks from a lighted sign exploded around them. She took a much needed deep breath and started pounding her fist over and over into the roof. "Fudging Hollywood!" she screamed as the roof didn't peel open as easy as tv always made it seem it should.

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He was breathing like a madman. His body only knew the one way to deal with the adrenaline and he'd laugh about it later, but right now he struggled to catch his breath. This Bitch is the Terminator, he thought as he smashed into some low hanging branches as he raced down the sidewalk. He could hear sirens chasing him but the police would have to wait, he had little to fear from them.

He almost drove right into a tree as he fumbled around in the glove box. His cell phone must still be in the parking lot because he couldn't find it in his pockets. His hand closed over something maybe more useful. As the headliner kept inching towards him with her punches, he raised the 9mm from the glove box. He emptied the whole clip into a loose pattern around the ceiling. His sensitive ears were screaming from the noise enclosed inside the cab, but he couldn't feel anymore movement from the roof. He blasted through some more branches and sideswiped a police car as he got back on the road. As his hearing came back, he strained to listen for her but couldn't find any clue to her whereabouts.

He kept cutting through traffic in the oncoming lane to keep the pursuing police cars from boxing him in. The Mercedes was harder to control and he guessed that one of the tires didn't survive their sidewalk trek. He would have to dump the vehicle and run for it to keep the cops from getting in the way. He swerved hard back and forth but heard no reaction from the roof. Maybe I killed the bitch, he thought over the needless pounding of his heart. Or maybe she fell off...

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She swallowed the blood that was building up in her mouth from the bullet that ripped through her cheek and the right side of her face. The slayer loved the taste of blood.

She probably had a bullet in her left thigh and guessed that if the femoral artery was cut, she would already have been dead. The slayer loved the taste of blood.

She was crouched on her knees at the rear of the luggage rack and holding on to each side as they flew down the streets of Paris with a convoy of cop cars trying to keep up.
The slayer loved the taste of blood.

She was in a different place, all her wounds forgotten. She was behind bars, watching Meyer rape Rami again. She felt the same way that she did when her girl sat at the therapist's table and told them what had happened without any emotion what so ever. Mama was crying but Rami reported it like it was nothing special. The Slayer loved the taste of blood.

She could taste the saltiness from a few tears dripping into her opened cheek. She was closing in on the time when her injuries would overtake her ability and she swore that she would have the taste of blood and screamed a primal roar as she exploded into a leap forward as the Suv was slowing down to turn a corner.

She grabbed the front crossbar at the last moment and brought her knees up tight as the momentum swung her smashing back into the windshield. She could hear him scream as he slammed the brakes and she kicked to get free of the glass as he bolted through the door and ran for his life.

She was out a heartbeat later and when his vampire speed ran out, he was only ten yards in front of her. She closed the distance and dove into him and they both rolled to a stop. Before she even righted herself, he had stabbed her twice with the knife, in her left leg and waist and once more in her stomach before she grabbed his hands, preventing the strike meant for her neck. They grappled and rolled in the alley as sirens flew by without noticing them in their mortal duel. He roared like a lion as he stuck his thumb in her ravaged cheek and tore at her flesh. She bit him on the neck and fought to overpower his other arm preventing her from tearing his throat out. She managed to deliver a knee to his testicles and yanked the knife from him during his reaction to it. She plunged it into his throat upwards, so that the tip of the blade had to end up behind his eyes.

She noticed him rotting and his skin turning black but as beastial as she was reduced to, she couldn't smell it and knew it was fake. He tried to punch through her chest and almost succeeded because she had thought the fight was over. As she landed on her back, she could feel that her breastbone was shattered and her ability to breath was diminishing. She crawled back to him as he was feebly trying to pull the knife out of his throat. She spit out the red foam from a punctured lung and crawled right up on him. She grabbed the handle of the knife with both of her hands and leaned on it, cranking it back and forth until his head fell off. She tasted his blood as she dug for his heart.

She loved the taste of blood.