Order of Business

"What is it, Marcus?" the Praetor Cicero asked without looking up from his journal.

Marc Antony came the rest of the way into the office and sat in one of the velvet-lined chairs. "The rumors around the forum are that Belle has left for her castle and taken a great deal of her people with."

Cicero looked up, "When was this to have occurred?"

"Last week sometime. In fact, another story I heard was that the...What do we call that slayer now?" At Cicero's impatient gesture, he continued,"The Dark Knight is to have left on her own, days before Belle departed."

"Really...what about the Dragon?" Cicero asked, his mind racing with the possible reasons, none of them very good. "Have you heard anything from her camp about her human servant?"

Marc sighed, "Nothing, they are locked up tighter than a nun's behind."

"Marcus, must you always be crude?" Cicero hated the buffoon in life, and having spent a few thousands years together hadn't changed his mind. The man was always interrupting his genius. He cleared Antony from his mind.
"The question is: why would Belle leave? Try harder to find out, talk to someone of the Dragon's if you can. If that slayer army were to come back, the Dragon would know about it through her human servant. A better question is: would the Dragon tell us if she knew they were in fact coming?" He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.

"Why wouldn't she?"

"Politics, Marcus. If they were to attack, especially with Belle gone, we would be hard pressed to stop them without a great deal of lost assets. The Dragon could reclaim her status and have us begging her to save the day."

Marc poured himself a glass of whiskey, knowing full well that Cicero disliked the taste of it he would get through their connection. "Dangerous game."

"All of politics is a game, Marcus. Without the Goddess of Combat and her warrior-bred family, can we stop them? You, if I remember correctly were some general of moderate luck, what is your opinion?" He smiled at Marcus' grimace.

"From what I learned from the delectable Valkyrie, I'd say that we would slaughter them if the battle were to be in a wide-open place. Our abilities would overwhelm their brutality if we had the room to maneuver." He downed the whiskey and smiled at the memories of his Valkyrie. "Or, if we had a lot of machine-guns, we could just annihilate them as they neared to engage."

"Wide open spaces are unlikely in the Empire of the Dead, but I do have an idea. I finally learned why the Dragon massed all of those babies when she marked the slayer. They may have a weakness for the innocents, being but girls after all. You can give them power, but you can't make them real warriors. As soon as an alarm sounds, I order all noncombatants out of their homes. I want all of those people to clog the hallways with their brats and elderly." He smiled, One did not need to be a Roman general to win a battle. Knowing that Marcus would hear him.

Marc smiled as he thought of their own soldiers trying to move through the confusion that the praetor's order would cause. One might not need to be a Roman general to win a battle, but it didn't hurt, he mused, with his shields firmly in place.

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"My Lord, Advocate Trask wishes to see you," Captain Thomas Carswell informed his master. Padma had locked himself away in his office for days now. Thomas had no clue what the old maharaj was up to, other than the guess that he was devising some scheme or game that would cost some of his servant's their lives. Even the young women that were brought for food were barely harmed. Definitely out of character, he thought.

Padma walked to the door and unlocked it, allowing Thomas and the advocate to enter. He went back to the wall that he had filled with sticky-notes and stood there staring at them.

Getting only a shrug from the human servant, Trask stepped forward. "Master, the praetor sends a few suggestions for our common defense." He waited and the Master of Beasts gave no indication that he heard his words or even cared that he was standing there. He was about to ask again, when Thomas touched his shoulder and waved him off.

Thomas walked to his master's side and looked at what he was working on. It did appear to be another one of his great plans. The goals seemed to be the enslavement of the Dragon and the appropriate uses for the Dragon's assets. Even the slayers were included in the grand scheme. According to the notes, the Slayer Queen would serve the rest of her life in his bed, possibly as his wife. Her slayers would be led by the Dark Knight and would serve him in exchange for the safety of the queen. Best of all, it appeared that he intended to use his new slayer army to dominate the entire council and personally rule the vampire world. We are all going to die, he thought with happiness. Padma finished writing a note about Anita Blake being fed to his animals and then finally sat at his desk and looked at the advocate.

"What do you want?" he said as he picked up a small comb and groomed his pointed beard.

"Sir, the praetor suggests that you might wish to deploy all of your soldiers in strategic places around the forum," Trask said. "He feels it likely that the slayer army will be returning soon, within a few days at the most." .

Padma stopped combing his beard, went to the board and added another note that Thomas could see had, Execute Advocate Trask written on it, before returning to his desk. "I will take his suggestion under advisement. Enough of that, I am not happy with you, Trask."

"Might I ask why, Sire?" The advocate looked concerned.

"When we had the two slayers as guests, you promised that I could have access. I never touched the black one, never tasted her. I am not a vampire that is accustomed to going without, especially once I've been made a promise." Padma stood and Trask took a step back in reflex.

"The blond was all I could arrange, master, Maruk had the other one occupied the whole time. I did little more than grab her and taste her blood before the late captain chased me away." He swallowed hard.

"The winds of change are approaching, Trask, before long you won't recognize this place. I hope for your sake, advocate, that when it is time for you to be judged, you are not found wanting." Padma stood and went to the wall again, he wrote a note and put it at the top and then stared at it. Have slayers kill the Dark Mother.

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"Mistress, my loyalty has never been questioned and I hope it never will," Rollo asked. "Could I send my wife and child off to your estate in Tuscany before Faith returns with their army?"

The Dragon looked up from the War-conference table. The meeting had just ended and her Captain stayed behind when the other Chieftains left with their orders. "Of course not, Rollo." She returned to the maps of the labyrinth they lived in.

Rollo only blinked a few times in complaint, before bowing and leaving the chamber.

"She knows I can see her train the army," she said to the empty table. "I can see them mustering. Do they not have magic to block me? Or is it arrogance and she does not care that I know?" She focused her mind to look in on her servant. Faith showed an amazing ability to hold her at a distance from her mind. She couldn't stop all of the images but she did manage to block any sound. "You are the best of them child and I owned you in our fight. How do you imagine your army of Newborns will fare against me?" She looked at the plan that she had marked on the map. All of the major entrances would have stopping elements to cover them and reserve forces mustered in the center would be ready to respond to wherever the assault came from. "Of course, no elements leave my territory until the praetor begs my aid." She walked to the hall and saw that the runners were there as she ordered. They would carry the offer to the praetor when she saw through Faith that the army was approaching. She shut the door and went to where the Scythe rested on a shelf. "I will soon have your master back to carry you again, broken to my will and begging to serve," she told the weapon.

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"Coven could work for both witches and slayers," Andrew said as he joined her in the SDW parking lot where over five hundred slayers were in Mission-Load Out.

"Andrew, I'm sorry I even told you about this." Buffy took a deep breath and continued her walk through the army of the excited and scared girls. If you're going to carry a stick, make it a big one, she thought as she looked at the large crowd. She touched everyone she could, sometimes just a grab of the shoulder but often even that would make the slayer she touched close her eyes and relax a notch. "I think I've got the hang of the...Alpha touch thingie," she said as she gave a thumbs up to three new slayers that had just been promoted to one of the seven strike-forces that SDW maintained and promised herself that she would remember their names the next time she saw them.

"What about a Destruction or a Pandemonium of Slayers, my Queen?" Andrew asked formally, causing Buffy to stop walking and look at him.

"Andrew, what did I say about the my Queen stuff?" she asked and noticed for the first time that he had a red and black velvet coat with tails and a ruffled white shirt on. She held up a hand as he was about to answer, and of course he bowed again when she did that. "Umm, interesting outfit, the jeans and sneakers don't go with rest, in case you were wondering."

"Fantasy Outfitters on the Inter-web will send my white officer's breeches and cavalryman boots as soon as they get them back in stock, Your Majesty," he answered.

"Why are you still bowing?" She was starting to notice all of the giggles and snickers coming from the ranks of slayers and reached over to pull him up by his golden fringed shoulder epaulets. "I'm guessing there was a 'Horatio Hornblower' tv marathon again."

"Tis a fine show, my Lady. Did you know a group of crows is called a Murder?" he asked as he flicked imaginary lint off of his coat.

"We're not crows, Andrew. Why don't you go back to your office and set up one of those really, really cool Powerpoint presentations about all of the possible choices and then when this is all over, I'll...have the Board watch it." Although she did think that it would be kind of cute if Haven were wearing that shirt.

"My Queen, before you go to heroically vanquish the scourge of the Vampyres, I would beg a considerable boon if you would be so kind?" He bowed again.

"Huh? Ah...sure, boon away." When did everything stop being Buffy see, Buffy Kill? I miss those days, she thought as Andrew straightened and dusted his coat again.

"Might I be allowed to explore the world of...Science Fiction for the answer to our naming mystery that you have entrusted me alone to solve?"

"I did? Yea, why don't you do that, in fact go do that know." She pushed him off and he walked away happily whistling something that sounded like Yankee Doodle Dandy. She cracked the bones in her neck and walked over to where her sister was sitting on a weapons case as Xander supervised the tech's as they double checked their equipment loads.

"At least he wasn't wearing the powdered wig this time," Dawn said and patted the spot on the box next to her for Buffy to sit. "You know, I was thinking about buying a pair of the cavalry boots he ordered for Xan."

"So he can geek out too?" Buffy asked as she felt the familiar urge to touch her sister. She reached out and took her hand, and was immediately hit with the fast paced sound of her baby's heartbeat. The first time that happened, Giles had called a therapist for help because she couldn't stop crying and wouldn't let go of Dawn.

"That and maybe do other things wearing them...only them." Dawn had a look on her face that...

"STOP!" Buffy let go of her hand before Dawn's fantasy jumped to her. The first time that little phenomenon happened, she called the therapist herself. "Have you told the doctor about your hormones, you hussy?"

"Buffy, don't be a dork, it's perfectly normal for pregnant women to require more..."

"STOP again. Change of subject. What did you tell Riley and the government guys about this?" She let Dawn take her hand and press it to the swollen lump that would be a sibling for Willie. A glowing smile emerged as she felt her own baby through the connection to Buffy.

"That it was a full scale training deployment off world to work on our Emergency Response Protocols. Those guys love official sounding made-up stuff like that. Riley guessed of course but he can't officially know so he said to wish you luck on the training mission."

Buffy returned Blake's enthusiastic wave and asked, "What do you think of Apocalypse or Coven for the name of a group of slayers?"

"Half the girls would mispronounce it, and we're not witches. Why do we have to come up with a name anyway? Is there like a law or something, tax reasons?"

"That's Haven, as soon as we found out that Faith, Rona, Kennedy, and some of the others could create the Hum by themselves, he got all crazy about them being alphas and that we could make a healthier structure for everyone if there was more support and so we have to define it for some reason," she answered as she watched Faith and Jenn walking towards her.

"I'd hate to be in Kennedy's pack," Dawn whispered, causing Buffy to snort water from the bottle she was drinking from.

"All seven strike-forces locked and loaded, B'," Faith asked as she stared at Buffy's hand on Dawn's belly. "Are you taking Big League or Control?

"I'll go in with Control." That earned a squeeze from Dawn's hand. "You take Big League and do your own thing."

"You can feel the baby if you want, Faith," Dawn offered quietly.

Faith paused for a moment, before answering, "What are we, the Chicks of the Traveling Pants now?" Causing Jenn to laugh out loud. "Thanks, Little D', but I'll pass."

"I thought Loverboy wasn't coming because of the vamps that call lions?" Dawn said as she noticed Haven, Pierce, Walker and a half dozen other lions all walking over, carrying several kinds of military looking weaponry.

Seeing her fiancee in leathers, surrounded by the pride males, did start something primal deep within Buffy so she pulled her hand back from Dawn before that image jumped. Giles still wasn't talking to her since they discovered that she could also send her fantasies with a touch.
Haven walked right up to her and pulled her up into his arms. Her little lion purred in happiness as Buffy felt his huge beast slide within her and lick the cub's face possessively. "What about lion calling vamps?" She didn't have the ability to be stern when he was cheating like this.

"I just told you that stuff so you wouldn't have time to knock me out and lock me up somewhere. The queen goes, we go. That's the rule. What would the pride think of a Rex that let his lover go off to war by herself." He kissed her with a fierce passion that caused all of her thinking ability to disappear. She saw her cub standing between his beast's massive forelegs and she couldn't help but smile in the middle of the kiss at the sound of the squeaky roar.

Buffy knew that she should be triple checking everything she double-checked and she should be worried about what was getting ready to jump off, but surrounded by her slayers and her lions with his beast standing over her cub and her slayer standing behind them, she just couldn't see how any group of vampires, no matter how powerful, were going to stand against that.
Buffy separated from Haven and jumped up on the case and put her hand at the back of Dawn's neck and smiled at the goosebumps on her sister's arms. "Everyone! It's time we earned our money and delivered the message."

"What message?" Faith said with a growing smile.

"We are the top predators. We are the kings of the jungle. No one fucks with us and walks away!" She gave her first ever lion roar at their thunderous response.