Hellmouth Heroes

FIC: Hellmouth Heroes (16/?)

“This won’t do at all!” she fumed as she watched the display in her underground bunker, one of her many cameras secreted throughout Sunnydale recording the action. She was well aware of the town’s defenders, but even now was building the means to defeat them. But this threat was yet more worrying. She looked towards her computer and snapped. “Identify threat.”

Yes, she turned and glanced through her observation screen, smiling at the bodies being altered for the next stage of human evolution, the army that would ultimately see her as the world’s new ruler, with the wise bowing to her and the defiant laid waste to.

* * *

Sheila grinned and rose from her crouch as the office’s outer door’s lock clicked softly, the door swinging open. Ever since she’d gotten her powers on Halloween, she’d been on easy street. There wasn’t a lock or vault that she couldn’t break or an electronic security she couldn’t overload. And the creatures of the night weren’t a worry anymore.

Yeah, her powers were a real blast.

“Oh look, human scum.”

Sheila spun to face the three football-headed demons wearing uniforms quite like those she’d seen in World War II history books on the days she could be bothered to go to school. Sheila let out an entirely feigned gasp, hands rising as if she was begging off then laughed, her hands dropping. “Who am I kidding?” she waved her hand negligently, a steel dumpster sliding across the alley to crash into the trio and squash them against the far wall. “Oh look,” she scoffed, “three pancakes.”

No, the creatures of the night weren’t a worry at all.

* * *

“How is she?” Giles struggled vainly to free himself from his steel, and probably enchanted restraints then gave up, worried gaze settling on the Slayer. All of them bore the various wounds of their capture, but once they’d been restrained, the Marshal had coolly ordered another beating of Faith for ‘being the creature that gives the other creatures the courage to rise above the mud’.

Rather poetic for a screaming lunatic.

The beating that Faith had received without uttering a grunt or sob, had been delivered with a cold efficiency, but had been no less brutal for it. Ignoring his angry shouts and Cordelia and Gunn’s threats, the three Scourge members had first battered the Slayer’s face into a bloody mask, then repeatedly kicked her in the torso before finishing with various chains to the arms and legs.

“Not good,” Cordelia grimly reported, the former cheerleader’s own face swollen and her left shoulder hanging awkwardly.

However she’d gotten off easy next to Faith, they all had. The brunette’s nose had been flattened, her eyes bludgeoned shut, and her jaw looked to be broken from the way it hung down. Even more worrying was the way she shuddered after every breath, as if breathing was an unimaginable agony, and several of her fingers were blackened and swollen suggesting dislocations and breakings. And that was just the wounds he could see.

Giles felt a surge of anger as he looked around the darkened but very busy warehouse. Every one of these bastards was going to pay for doing this to one of his charges.

* * *

Captain Marduk beamed as he exited the bar, its mixed clientele of humans, half-demons, demons, and vampires either dead or dying. True, he’d lost six of his men in doing so, but his mission objective had been -.

His musings trailed off as he drew to a halt, eyes belatedly registering the lean man slouched against one of the alley, staring at them with disquieting poise. Shaking off his concern, he signalled three of his men forward. “Kill him.”

The men had barely covered half the distance between them and the stranger when he pulled out a box and pressed the button on top of it.

“Oh no!” Marduk gasped as the ground shuddered and the narrow alley-way’s walls imploded in where his men were, crushing the trio beneath them.

“Oh dear,” drawled the foreign-sounding man from the other side of the fallen bricks, “American architecture really isn’t up too much. By the way have you met my associates?”

Marduk started to turn, then a bolt of lightning struck him and everything went black.

* * *

“Well,” Wesley carefully re-holstered the Browning BDM he’d used to slay two of the demons who’d scrabbled over the rocks to escape his companions, “that was rather invigorating.”

“Invigorating?” Oz raised an eyebrow.

Wesley chose to ignore the rock guitarist’s stoic comment, sensing a world of scorn in the one word. “Which way to the next Scourge patrol?”

Oz tilted his head to one side before slowly nodding. “We need to head to The Bronze, they’re hitting the vamp hang-out near there.”

* * *

“Is she still-…” Giles’ voice trailed off, unable to finish the question as he stared at his greying Slayer.

Gunn nodded, the youth’s increased invulnerability meaning he was healing quicker from his beating. “Yeah,” the black nodded, ear inches from Faith’s mouth, “she’s still breathin’.”

Giles closed his eyes. “Thank god.” He stopped as he sensed a familiar presence near-by. “Jenny?”

“What did they do to her?” his still-invisible but obviously horrified girl-friend whispered.

“They decided she needed punishing for daring to be a Slayer,” Giles grated, a familiar rage building up. This time, if he was facing a human enemy, he’d release it, and gladly snap their minds, turning them into a dribbling infant. Unfortunately though, his powers didn’t seem to work on demons. “”You’ll have to unlock our manacles, they’re apparently enchanted, neither Cordelia nor Charles have been able to power out of them.”

”Where are the keys?”

Giles nodded towards the truck nearest the entrance. “Their leader threw them on the front seat.”

“Okay,” Jenny replied. “The moment the others attack, I’ll get them.”

Giles’ brow furrowed. “The others-.” The far end of the warehouse suddenly shook, the wall imploding in a chaotic spray of bricks, fire, and dust. “Oh, I see.”

* * *

The Marshal gasped as the ground trembled underfoot, spinning as the wall crashed in and a wall of fire assailed his men, the men convulsing like they’d been electrocuted, blood spurting out of their bodies as bullet after bullet hit them. Not to mention the occasional fireball from their contingent of witches.

A great terror rose in his chest as he realised he’d underestimated Sunnydale’s ‘Paladins’. Heart racing, he hurried towards the nearest truck, the sound of the firing increasing as the warehouse’s entrance also crashed open.

Carnage, utter carnage.

Leaping into the truck’s cab, he grabbed his keys, then ducked as an errant bullet shattered the windscreen, glass showering over him. Panic growing, he rammed his keys into the ignition, the engine spluttering into life.

* * *

“Oh thank god,” Giles groaned as Jenny unfastened his cuffs, the carnage largely dying down, together with the demon army, one truck lumbering out of the warehouse. “Faith, how are you dear?”

Faith stared blindly around. “Jonathan,” the girl croaked, trying but failing to raise her arms for her boyfriend to get a hold of her, “where are youse?”

Xander looked around at the Slayer’s slurred question, heart sinking when he realised the youth was missing. “Ah hell.” He looked towards Oz. “We need to hustle and fast.”

* * *

Sweat beaded into the Marshal’s eyes as he drove out of Sunnydale’s borders. The city was an insane asylum run by its inmates, but when he returned with ten times the troops, he’d turn it to a bloody charnel house. He gasped as the steering wheel spun away from him, the truck veering out of his control, first rocking to the left, then kangarooing slightly, and finally tilting to the left before crashing down on its side, his head crashing against the cab’s ceiling on impact.

Head ringing, he unfastened his seatbelt and struggled out of the cab, dropping to the road. “Amazing what barbed wire across the road can do.”

“You!” he spun around and glared down at the foot and half shorter youth who’d just strode out of the shadows, unable to believe this runt would dare attack him.

“You hurt my girl, bub.” The snarl that erupted from the boy’s mouth was practically bestial. “Now class is in session.”

Suddenly the youth was surging at him, the Marshal brought up a knee into the teen’s face. The blow snapped the boy’s face to the side, but his only reaction was hooking the Marshal’s leg, twisting at the waist and flinging him. “Aaaah!” the Marshal grunted as his head cracked against the over-turned lorry’s underside, blood bursting out of his forehead like a faucet.

“I can’t guarantee,” the youth’s heel snapped into his instep as he turned to face him, the blow knocking him back against the lorry, “you’ll live through it though.” His leg almost buckled when the boy followed up his threat with a diagonal karate chop to his outside left knee.

Ignoring the pain, he caught the on-rushing youth with a clubbing right to the head, but he might as well been using a pea-shooter. The boy caught him with a pair of unfeasibly fast lefts to the ribs, his wind bursting from him as he started to double-up only to be forced to straighten when a knee to the face impacted.

The Marshal staggered to the side, his vision a blurred red. Seeing the boy coming in, that unsettlingly coldness still in his eyes, he grabbed the youth by the collar and flung him into the side of the lorry. At least that was what was he tried to do, the youth kicking off the lorry’s side to leap back at him.

The Marshal grunted as the youth grabbed him around the waist, lifting him from his feet, his elbow to the boy’s upper-back apparently unnoticed as the teen straightened and launched him over his head like he weighed thirty pounds rather than three hundred. “Aaaagh!” the Marshal grunted as he hit the ground, face scraping across the tarmac, leaving a layer of skin across it.

He barely had time to roll away from the boy’s follow-up kick, grabbing the teen’s foot and yanking on it, the boy falling to the ground to his knees beside him. Seeing the tide of the fight turning, he rolled up onto his knees and swung a right haymaker.

He gasped as the blow bounced off the side of the boy’s head with depressingly little effect. The boy smiled darkly. “Nice try, bub.” And then the teen’s head was crashing into his face, pain blazing through it as the butt shattered his nose, blood vomiting down his face. His mouth opened in a pained scream that was cut off by the uppercut to the jaw that also lifted him off his knees and put him on his back, back of his head cracking against the unsympathetic tarmac.

And then the short human was on him, snarling, growling, and grunting like some wild animal, fists, forearms, and elbows landing even as he ignored the Marshal’s increasingly feeble attacks. And then suddenly the boy was off him. The Marshal’s relief only lasted as long as it took him to dazedly realise the youth was lifting him over his head, and then bringing him down hard, his throat coming down on the boy’s knee.

* * *

“You know, not that I know anything, but I’m really guessing he’s dead,” Xander commented.

Oz nodded. ”You really went Old Testament on his ass.”

Xander looked towards Oz. “Old Testament on his ass?”

Oz shrugged. “You want to read it. Seriously violent. Tarantino could have written it.”

Xander sighed long-sufferingly. “I need a better class of friends,” he decided, stiffening as Jonathan turned to face them, the former geek’s eyes as dark and cold as one’s could get without hopefully not losing their sanity. “How about we go back to the hospital and see how Faith and the others are doing?” he asked softly.

“Faith,” a hungry look entered the geek’s eyes.

“Oh don’t you go monosyllabic on me as well!” Xander shot Oz a glare.

“Best.” Oz paused. “Get.” The guitarist paused again. “Wire. First.”

“Oh you think you’re funny,” Xander shook his head.

* * *

Giles stalked the passageway outside Faith’s hospital room, Jenny, Cordelia, Gunn, and Alana sat on the hospital’s typically uncomfortable plastic chairs. He looked up as the door opened and Wesley walked out, a taut look in his fellow Watcher’s eyes.

“Well?” he snapped impatiently.

His country-man met his gaze, something he’d not been able to do years ago. “She has a detached retina, broken nose, three broken ribs, two broken fingers on her right hand, a fractured left wrist, and a dislocated left shoulder,” the younger man reported then paused. “There’s some kidney damage and a punctured lung.”

“Oh thank god,” Giles muttered.

“Giles!” Cordelia gasped.

Giles waved away the cheerleader’s disgust. “I only meant that those are injuries a Slayer can heal in short order and without any lasting effects, she should be alright.”

”Where’s Faith?”

Giles spun at Jonathan’s pain-choked voice behind him, briefly shuddering at the dark energy swirling around the youth, Xander and Oz behind him. “She’s in there-.” The youth swept past him and into the room, leaving Giles to look towards the others. “Faith is going to be vulnerable to attack for the next few days, we’ll have to put on a guard.”

Xander looked towards Oz who nodded silently. “We’ll do it tonight. Why don’t the rest of you go home?”

“I’m staying with my Slayer,” Wesley replied.

”Very well,” Giles nodded. “The rest-.”

”Are staying,” Cordelia interrupted.

Giles nodded again. “Very well.”