The Ravages Of Hell
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AtS/BtVS Crossovers › General
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
17
Views:
2,930
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Recommended:
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Currently Reading:
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Category:
AtS/BtVS Crossovers › General
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
17
Views:
2,930
Reviews:
0
Recommended:
1
Currently Reading:
1
Disclaimer:
I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or any of its characters. . Nor do I intend to make any profit from this story.
16
FIC: Ravages Of Hell (16/?)
A camp in the Chiltern Hills, England.
“Sir!”
General de Boers nodded at his second in command. “Sit!” Once his subordinate had obeyed, he continued, his harsh accent betraying his Afrikaans origins. “Your report?”
“All companies have reported in. The concealment spells held, none of them were detected,” his second in command replied, his own clipped tones indicating Sandhurst training.
“Excellent,” De Boers nodded in satisfaction. Twenty years ago he’d been the head of South Africa’s elite forces but the rise of the kaffir Malenda had put paid to that. After fleeing his homeland one step ahead of a war crimes tribunal he’d spent the next few years working as a mercenary in South America and Asia. Five years ago he’d been approached by an intermediary offering unimaginable wealth and power. Since that day he’d tirelessly recruited and trained a small army of elite soldiers drawn from numerous nations including South Africa, USA, UK, Germany, Russia, Japan, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Israel. Soldiers drawn together over national, religious, and ideological boundaries by the lure of millions. Over the past month, his men clandestinely entered the country, using the nation’s private airfields and illicit landing posts, those who had facilitated their arrival murdered to ensure there was no trail. And now was the time to strike. “We’re ready to move out?”
“Awaiting your order,” his second-in-command paused, a grimace marring his matinee idol looks. “Sir, our scouts caught a trio of hitchhikers. What are your orders?”
De Boers blinked, momentarily shocked that his subordinate would bring such a trivial matter to him. “Shoot and bury them. Dismissed!”
“Yes sir!” the junior officer, rose, saluted, and marched out. Alone in his tent again, de Boers looked around and smiled. A mansion filled with three score super-amazons? A challenge even for a General with four hundred highly trained killers under his command. He wondered if it would be enough.
In two nights he’d find out.
* * *
Giles looked up at the knock on his door. “Hello?”
“It’s me, Giles. Can I come in?”
Giles smiled as he recognised the voice coming through the door. “Door’s always open for you, Riley.”
“Thank you,” the door swung open and the Iowan farm boy walked in. Giles nodded towards the chair at the opposite side of his desk. After shooting him a grateful smile, the soldier sat down.
“And how are your duties proceeding?” he queried.
“The new security equipment has all been installed.”
“Excellent,” Giles smiled before sobering. “And how goes the new training?”
The soldier shrugged his powerful shoulders. “They’re all taking to it with the expected ease.” Giles’ proud smile dissipated at the UN military operative’s next comment. “The only question remains is how will they react if they have to shoot humans? After all Faith didn’t react at all well…” Riley paused. “But I’ve had some thoughts about that, if you’d like to hear them?”
“By all means,” Giles agreed.
“The act that pushed Faith over the edge was the accidental killing of the deputy Mayor,” Riley shrugged, his face apologetic. “Sorry, I don’t think Buffy ever told me the man’s name?”
“Allan Finch,” Giles supplied with a heavy heart.
“Thanks. And yet by this time, Buffy had killed a number of humans, including the high school swimming coach and assassins, without suffering any apparent side-effects. But,” Riley looked vaguely bemused. “Faith would seem the most hardened of the two.”
“I’d concur with that assessment,” Giles nodded.
“So why did she go off the rails?” The American continued before he could comment. “What if the Slayer spell protected Buffy from the after-effects of killing evil humans in self-defence, but not Faith from her accidental Slaying? In fact,” the soldier leaned forward, eyes gleaming, “perhaps the conflict between her Calling compelling her to protect innocents and her actions triggered her nervous breakdown.”
“Good lord,” Giles croaked as he stared at the young man sat opposite. Sometimes it took an outsider’s perspective on a conundrum to solve it. It was only a theory but to his ears it made perfect sense. “Riley, I -.”
His eyes widened in shock when an eardrum-bursting explosion shook the building, flinging him to the ground. Head swimming, he accepted Riley’s hand to struggle to his feet. Glancing up, he looked into the soldier’s troubled eyes. “We’re under attack,” the young man declared.
”No really,” Giles raised an eyebrow. “And I thought that building-shaking explosion was just an attack of wind.”
* * *
Dana’s eyes shot open. She looked wildly around her darkened room, its bare walls giving no clue as to what had awoken her. She smiled slyly as the noise continued and realisation set in. “Oh the pain.”
Soon her high-pitched cackling was echoing around her tiny cell.
* * *
De Boers nodded in clinical satisfaction as his troops swarmed over the massive building’s outer walls. Everything was going according to plan. His smile withered when the lawns surrounding the mansion erupted in a series of explosions, tearing through the first wave of men, showering their visceral body parts over those troops lucky enough to escape the mines. “Damn it,” he muttered before raising and speaking into his loud-hailer. “Advance, men!”
Eventually some of his troops reached the front door. After hurriedly but efficiently placing charges, the mercenaries withdrew to a safe distance. A few seconds later, the portal exploded inwards. His smile now returning, De Boers moved forward.
* * *
Riley looked at the dapper Englishman, seeing the tension he felt reflected in his companion’s eyes. “You get the non-combatants down to the shelter, I’ll organise our defences.”
Frustration briefly flickered in the Watcher’s eyes before he curtly nodded. Obviously being unable to be involved in the battle rankled, but the former Sunnydale High librarian knew where his duty lay. As did Riley. “Very well. And good luck.”
“Good luck to you too sir.” Exiting the office at a run, the two of them split up and hurried to their posts.
* * *
Roger Whyndham-Pryce paced his quarters, fuming over an earlier conversation with the upstart that laughingly called himself his boss. This time it had been those bloody yank intruders and their godforsaken modifications to one of England’s oldest forts. Bloody disgraceful.
“They’ll be a reckoning.” Shaking his head, he took a few calming breaths before approaching his heavily stacked book shelves and selecting a volume. Sitting down on his antique armchair, he poured himself and began to read, sipping carefully at the scalding drink as he did so.
BAAA! BAAAA! BAAAA!
“Damnation!” Roger thundered as the recently-installed alarm system blared into life. The klaxon boomed through the previously serene room, blasting his eardrums, and shocking him into spilling his piping hot tea into his lap and onto the book. “Bugger!” Roger glared down at the book. A first edition of ‘”The Pickwick Papers’ ruined, and it was all that usurper’s Giles’ fault. Like everything else that had gone wrong with the Council over the past decade.
But it ended now. Reaching into his bedside drawer, he opened the secret panel at the back and pulled out the .38 hidden there. His smile widened as he checked the weapon was loaded. He might die tonight, but that was insignificant next to using the chaos to kill Rupert Giles. Only then would the stain be removed from his family honour. He started to hum his favourite hymn as he took some spare rounds and shoved them in his pocket. It wouldn’t be long now.
* * *
De Boers followed his troops through the darkened fortress, eyes narrowing at the carnage that greeted him. Booby traps, ambushes, it was all adding up to a far higher body count than he’d originally envisaged. “Most unsatisfactory,” he muttered.
Drawing his gun, he shoved open a wooden door to his left and walked in, eyes searching for any sign of trouble. The vast chamber was dominated by a long table surrounded by a score of high-backed chairs, the room’s walls lined with portraits. He smiled slightly; he recognised this room from intelligence reports. “The Council Briefing Room,” he muttered. Deciding to search for papers, he closed the door behind him, and strode further inside.
* * *
Riley moved ghost like through the castle’s warren of secret passageways, darting out to ambush the intruders before disappearing back into the tunnels. His eyes narrowed as he recognised a brutish, thickly-built figure from the UN. wanted lists. Seeing the man enter the briefing room, he took his chance and hurried across the corridor in pursuit.
* * *
Lorne wheezed as he ran through the darkened corridors, the sound of gunfire and explosions making his head pound worse than Keith Moon’s drums during a concert. He shook his head even as he hurried around another corner. He loved a fight as much as the next cowardly empathy demon, but he was as out of place at a fire fight as DMX at the local Klan meeting.
He skidded to a halt at the sound of humming coming from a near-by room, its discordant tone jarring his senses. “Oh no,” he groaned. Just what he needed, now he’d have to be all fired stupidly noble. “If this gets me killed Angelcakes, you’ve got yourself a ghost,” he promised. Quelling the urge to ignore what he was sensing, Lorne crept to the slightly ajar door of the room the humming was coming through and peered in.
His heart flipped flopped in his butt at the sight of Roger Whyndham-Pryce loading a revolver while humming the tune to ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. “Well this isn’t good,” he murmured before turning and hurrying back in the direction he’d come, back towards the fighting.
He had to get help and fast.
A camp in the Chiltern Hills, England.
“Sir!”
General de Boers nodded at his second in command. “Sit!” Once his subordinate had obeyed, he continued, his harsh accent betraying his Afrikaans origins. “Your report?”
“All companies have reported in. The concealment spells held, none of them were detected,” his second in command replied, his own clipped tones indicating Sandhurst training.
“Excellent,” De Boers nodded in satisfaction. Twenty years ago he’d been the head of South Africa’s elite forces but the rise of the kaffir Malenda had put paid to that. After fleeing his homeland one step ahead of a war crimes tribunal he’d spent the next few years working as a mercenary in South America and Asia. Five years ago he’d been approached by an intermediary offering unimaginable wealth and power. Since that day he’d tirelessly recruited and trained a small army of elite soldiers drawn from numerous nations including South Africa, USA, UK, Germany, Russia, Japan, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Israel. Soldiers drawn together over national, religious, and ideological boundaries by the lure of millions. Over the past month, his men clandestinely entered the country, using the nation’s private airfields and illicit landing posts, those who had facilitated their arrival murdered to ensure there was no trail. And now was the time to strike. “We’re ready to move out?”
“Awaiting your order,” his second-in-command paused, a grimace marring his matinee idol looks. “Sir, our scouts caught a trio of hitchhikers. What are your orders?”
De Boers blinked, momentarily shocked that his subordinate would bring such a trivial matter to him. “Shoot and bury them. Dismissed!”
“Yes sir!” the junior officer, rose, saluted, and marched out. Alone in his tent again, de Boers looked around and smiled. A mansion filled with three score super-amazons? A challenge even for a General with four hundred highly trained killers under his command. He wondered if it would be enough.
In two nights he’d find out.
* * *
Giles looked up at the knock on his door. “Hello?”
“It’s me, Giles. Can I come in?”
Giles smiled as he recognised the voice coming through the door. “Door’s always open for you, Riley.”
“Thank you,” the door swung open and the Iowan farm boy walked in. Giles nodded towards the chair at the opposite side of his desk. After shooting him a grateful smile, the soldier sat down.
“And how are your duties proceeding?” he queried.
“The new security equipment has all been installed.”
“Excellent,” Giles smiled before sobering. “And how goes the new training?”
The soldier shrugged his powerful shoulders. “They’re all taking to it with the expected ease.” Giles’ proud smile dissipated at the UN military operative’s next comment. “The only question remains is how will they react if they have to shoot humans? After all Faith didn’t react at all well…” Riley paused. “But I’ve had some thoughts about that, if you’d like to hear them?”
“By all means,” Giles agreed.
“The act that pushed Faith over the edge was the accidental killing of the deputy Mayor,” Riley shrugged, his face apologetic. “Sorry, I don’t think Buffy ever told me the man’s name?”
“Allan Finch,” Giles supplied with a heavy heart.
“Thanks. And yet by this time, Buffy had killed a number of humans, including the high school swimming coach and assassins, without suffering any apparent side-effects. But,” Riley looked vaguely bemused. “Faith would seem the most hardened of the two.”
“I’d concur with that assessment,” Giles nodded.
“So why did she go off the rails?” The American continued before he could comment. “What if the Slayer spell protected Buffy from the after-effects of killing evil humans in self-defence, but not Faith from her accidental Slaying? In fact,” the soldier leaned forward, eyes gleaming, “perhaps the conflict between her Calling compelling her to protect innocents and her actions triggered her nervous breakdown.”
“Good lord,” Giles croaked as he stared at the young man sat opposite. Sometimes it took an outsider’s perspective on a conundrum to solve it. It was only a theory but to his ears it made perfect sense. “Riley, I -.”
His eyes widened in shock when an eardrum-bursting explosion shook the building, flinging him to the ground. Head swimming, he accepted Riley’s hand to struggle to his feet. Glancing up, he looked into the soldier’s troubled eyes. “We’re under attack,” the young man declared.
”No really,” Giles raised an eyebrow. “And I thought that building-shaking explosion was just an attack of wind.”
* * *
Dana’s eyes shot open. She looked wildly around her darkened room, its bare walls giving no clue as to what had awoken her. She smiled slyly as the noise continued and realisation set in. “Oh the pain.”
Soon her high-pitched cackling was echoing around her tiny cell.
* * *
De Boers nodded in clinical satisfaction as his troops swarmed over the massive building’s outer walls. Everything was going according to plan. His smile withered when the lawns surrounding the mansion erupted in a series of explosions, tearing through the first wave of men, showering their visceral body parts over those troops lucky enough to escape the mines. “Damn it,” he muttered before raising and speaking into his loud-hailer. “Advance, men!”
Eventually some of his troops reached the front door. After hurriedly but efficiently placing charges, the mercenaries withdrew to a safe distance. A few seconds later, the portal exploded inwards. His smile now returning, De Boers moved forward.
* * *
Riley looked at the dapper Englishman, seeing the tension he felt reflected in his companion’s eyes. “You get the non-combatants down to the shelter, I’ll organise our defences.”
Frustration briefly flickered in the Watcher’s eyes before he curtly nodded. Obviously being unable to be involved in the battle rankled, but the former Sunnydale High librarian knew where his duty lay. As did Riley. “Very well. And good luck.”
“Good luck to you too sir.” Exiting the office at a run, the two of them split up and hurried to their posts.
* * *
Roger Whyndham-Pryce paced his quarters, fuming over an earlier conversation with the upstart that laughingly called himself his boss. This time it had been those bloody yank intruders and their godforsaken modifications to one of England’s oldest forts. Bloody disgraceful.
“They’ll be a reckoning.” Shaking his head, he took a few calming breaths before approaching his heavily stacked book shelves and selecting a volume. Sitting down on his antique armchair, he poured himself and began to read, sipping carefully at the scalding drink as he did so.
BAAA! BAAAA! BAAAA!
“Damnation!” Roger thundered as the recently-installed alarm system blared into life. The klaxon boomed through the previously serene room, blasting his eardrums, and shocking him into spilling his piping hot tea into his lap and onto the book. “Bugger!” Roger glared down at the book. A first edition of ‘”The Pickwick Papers’ ruined, and it was all that usurper’s Giles’ fault. Like everything else that had gone wrong with the Council over the past decade.
But it ended now. Reaching into his bedside drawer, he opened the secret panel at the back and pulled out the .38 hidden there. His smile widened as he checked the weapon was loaded. He might die tonight, but that was insignificant next to using the chaos to kill Rupert Giles. Only then would the stain be removed from his family honour. He started to hum his favourite hymn as he took some spare rounds and shoved them in his pocket. It wouldn’t be long now.
* * *
De Boers followed his troops through the darkened fortress, eyes narrowing at the carnage that greeted him. Booby traps, ambushes, it was all adding up to a far higher body count than he’d originally envisaged. “Most unsatisfactory,” he muttered.
Drawing his gun, he shoved open a wooden door to his left and walked in, eyes searching for any sign of trouble. The vast chamber was dominated by a long table surrounded by a score of high-backed chairs, the room’s walls lined with portraits. He smiled slightly; he recognised this room from intelligence reports. “The Council Briefing Room,” he muttered. Deciding to search for papers, he closed the door behind him, and strode further inside.
* * *
Riley moved ghost like through the castle’s warren of secret passageways, darting out to ambush the intruders before disappearing back into the tunnels. His eyes narrowed as he recognised a brutish, thickly-built figure from the UN. wanted lists. Seeing the man enter the briefing room, he took his chance and hurried across the corridor in pursuit.
* * *
Lorne wheezed as he ran through the darkened corridors, the sound of gunfire and explosions making his head pound worse than Keith Moon’s drums during a concert. He shook his head even as he hurried around another corner. He loved a fight as much as the next cowardly empathy demon, but he was as out of place at a fire fight as DMX at the local Klan meeting.
He skidded to a halt at the sound of humming coming from a near-by room, its discordant tone jarring his senses. “Oh no,” he groaned. Just what he needed, now he’d have to be all fired stupidly noble. “If this gets me killed Angelcakes, you’ve got yourself a ghost,” he promised. Quelling the urge to ignore what he was sensing, Lorne crept to the slightly ajar door of the room the humming was coming through and peered in.
His heart flipped flopped in his butt at the sight of Roger Whyndham-Pryce loading a revolver while humming the tune to ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. “Well this isn’t good,” he murmured before turning and hurrying back in the direction he’d come, back towards the fighting.
He had to get help and fast.