Order of Business

Faith lunged with the sword and swung her axe at his head, but missed. The Master of Beasts was getting stronger and faster as they fought.
"Tommy and Gideon are gettin' drained, out cold somewhere, huh?" she asked as the vampire blocked her next attack and moved before her roundhouse head-kick could score. She landed and continued the momentum into a spinning back-kick that Padma leaped over.

"My servants are performing their duty to me," he replied as the slayer's blur of sword and axe swings drove him to leap away from her. "You may yet learn to serve your master before the end." He used a burst of his vampiric speed to dodge another leaping attack from the Dark Knight.

Faith rolled to a stop and spun to find the Indian vamp on the other side of the room, so she used the opportunity to catch her breath. "Before the end of what? This battle? I got news for you, I had a master, didn't enjoy it, don't plan on going back. Certainly not with you." She stood and walked towards him, being sure to put a lot of extra sway into her movements.

Padma watched her approach. "The Dragon will end up in my service, and then I will help the woman break you in. You could be a powerful weapon for her." He dodged her diving assault and spun to deliver his own kick that sent the girl flying into the wall. She was gone a split second before his pounce to the spot.

"Nice kick," Faith said as she spit blood on the floor. "Bit my fucking lip when I hit the wall." She prowled around, matching his movements as they studied each other. "Not to defend dear old Mommy, but I would love to see the two of you get it on." She noticed his raised eyebrow and hurriedly added, "A fight, Douche. Get it on as in, you know rumble?"

"Ah, I plan to get it on then with her and also to get it on with you." He laughed and then sped away as she once again launched to the attack.

"If we do get it on, you're gonna have to stay in one place a little longer," she said, loading as much insult as she could into her words. "I never thought you'd run away like this." They circled each other again and she made a point of looking at his weapon-free hands. "Is there something you're trying to say with the whole: not drawing your sword, thing?"

"My father above would not look kindly upon me if I had to draw blade against a mere woman. It is your power that makes you dangerous, underneath it all you are nothing but a female. One does not use a family sword against something that should be serving as women do." He patted the hilt of his ancestral sword as it rode in the jeweled scabbard on his waist.

Faith shook her head. "I shouldn't be surprised. Even with Belle and the Dragon around to kill your logic, you're still just a pindick chauvinist that probably wanted to bang your mom growing up." She leaped away from his sudden lunge. "Oh, and your father above? If Daddy is anything like you, he's down somewhere. On his his knees and sucking..." She rolled and twisted away from the Indian's fury.

"I will kill you, whore," he said as he pursued her around the room. Both of their forces were heavily engaged and the screams of the dying were loud.

She struck with her axe, a quick slash that got him across the right hip as he over-pursued one of her maneuvers. "Maybe B has a point with the whole name-calling thing." She sidestepped another lunge and missed a swing at his head. "Did your mom sleep with the goats, or was she allowed in the house?"

Padma swung and rushed his attack, he knew the girl was baiting him and he would give her what she expected, for now, until she made a mistake. He roared and flew at her, causing the slayer to duck under and roll away from him. "Now who is running?"

"Not me, bitch," she answered as she exploded from her crouching position to land right in his arms. She had dropped the axe and now used both hands to drive the sword down at him. He twisted aside, and her blade sunk to the hilt down into his left shoulder.

Roaring in pain, he kept her from following up on the hit and flung her with all of his strength to fly across the room and smash into the far wall. He roared again as he drew power from his triumvirate and pulled her blade from his shoulder. As the wound immediately closed, he looked at her just now getting to her feet. "Congratulations, you have achieved about as much as a woman could manage." He broke her sword in two with only his fingers. "But of course, it is not enough."

Faith smiled at him and held his ancestral sword out in front of her. "Missing something?" she asked as his hands flew to the empty scabbard. "Fighting dirty doesn't just mean biting someone's ear off," she explained as she swung the eons old blade into the stone wall, shattering it into a dozen pieces. The vampire screamed as his movements blurred towards her.

She kept the hilt and the six remaining inches of the blade in her hand as she used all of the power of her slayer to observe the timing of his magically enhanced charge. At the absolute last moment she reacted. Padma hit the wall with the broken blade sticking out of his left eye.
Picking up a discarded battle axe, she knocked him to the ground and aimed at his neck. "Nitey nite, Paddy."

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The Slayer Queen is not as good as Faith led me to believe, the Dragon thought as she easily blunted the latest enraged charge. No true warrior would let emotion carry them through a battle.
Her anger over the dead slayers was an advantage to the Dragon. Her attacks unfocused, her charges predictable, and her every strike, aimed to kill, gave the Dragon the ability to wear the slayer out with a thousand tiny wounds.
With her dead, my servant will be their Queen, she thought as she sidestepped another assault and slashed the slayer's back with her sword.

Enys noticed the wall of observers and sneered that Rollo hadn't thought of taking the advantage to slaughter them. Honorable combat of the primaries was to be expected but the pawns could and should stop at nothing to eliminate the opposing chess pieces from the board.

An attack from Buffy that almost scored, caused the Dragon to focus back on her. The slayer blood filling her stomach and its power coursing through her veins, allowed her to feel the connection Buffy had to all of the others, both slayer and lion alike. She could feel the will and anger of the queen fueling her army, could feel the rage that the children drew on in their attempt to destroy the forum's own forces. I have to end this before she realizes that the connection can work both ways, she thought as she dodged another charge.

"Why don't you stand and fight, Bitch?!" Buffy screamed, every other syllable punctuated with a lionine growl.

The slayer obviously tried to calm herself, but Enys had led her once again to the area of the duel circle where the bodies of the dead girls were scattered on the floor amongst those of the Dragon's own bears.
Pausing to try again to add the lust of battle to Buffy's mind, as she succeeded in doing with Faith, only to have it repelled once more by the slayer's beasts, she spoke,

"I wonder what the last thoughts of these children were? Maybe, a prayer that you would be in time to save them?" She circled as the slayer snarled at her, noticing streams of fine golden fur spreading up the girl's forearms before disappearing altogether. "Why were you so slow in arriving, Buffy? Scared?"

Buffy laughed, exposing the thick pointed teeth of a lion in her mouth. "You killth your lasth sth'ayer." Her eyebrows rose as she felt the teeth with her tongue. "Moth'erthucker!"

Haven's warning caught her attention just in time to deflect the Dragon's charge.

"You are a joke, Slayer," the Dragon said as she circled the girl again. "The blood of your children will feed us for years to come." As she prepared to engage, her mind flashed to a similar scene ages ago. The victorious Roman General said much the same to her as she was forced to her knees in front of the survivors of her defeated army.
She shook her head and forced herself to clear the memories of that horrible day. The slayer was approaching and they clashed, her Roman sword deflecting the blur of strikes from Buffy's two thick-bladed fighting knives. The skill of the queen was starting to show through and Enys knew that she had to enrage the girl again.

She dodged the knife strikes and landed a harsh front kick to Buffy's stomach, launching her backwards. Judging that the slayer wasn't as hurt as she was trying to appear, instead of charging her, the Dragon walked to one of the fallen slayers and fed from the corpse. Dead blood held no value except in the mind of those that loved the victim, she thought as Buffy's lion-beast roared and the slayer charged across the room at her.

Enys met the charge and the two of them smashed into the wall behind her and fell to the ground and grappled for killing blows. The slayer was fast and strong but the Dragon thought that she was sloppy on the ground, fighting more like an animal than a trained warrior. She said a silent thank-you to the old masters in Japan and Brazil that she had made slaves of and spent decades learning their art from as she got the upper hand and wrapped the slayer up, immobilizing all of her limbs.

"Being helpless is not so much fun, is it?" she whispered to the struggling girl lying on her back beneath her. Her mind flashed to those very words being whispered into her ear by the Emperor of Rome as he used her like a teenage boy right on his own dinner table. She shuddered at the memory of the royal children laughing at her whimpers and forced the nightmare away.

She opened her eyes in time to see the headbutt from Buffy and she tried to disengage from the queen as she used her lion teeth to attack the Dragon's face. Blood and bits of torn flesh covered the blond as more fine golden fur slid around her ears and inched across her face.

The slayer was now trying to stay tangled with her and she ignored the pain and devastation happening to her face as she tried to get her hands between them to rip the girl's heart out. She managed to roll, but Buffy rolled with and the girl proved to understand the basics of Jiu Jitsu as she ended up in the Dragon's guard, the vampire's back on the floor and her legs trying to hold the slayer away from her head.

The Slayer Queen's hands, lengthened and tipped with black claws tried to get past the Dragon's blocks to dig for her heart. Enys used her clenched legs to control Buffy's body as she tried to wrangle the girl's hands. One of Buffy's arms broke free and the slayer dropped a brutal hammering punch right into the Dragon's already ravaged face.

The momentary shock gave Buffy an opening and she transitioned past the guard to bring her legs through and mount herself onto the Dragon's chest. She rained hammering blasts down, battering the blocking arms and managing to get some through to hit the vampire's face.

The Dragon tried to scream as impact after impact rattled her mind and she reached out to all of her bear clans, especially to all of those children she had connected herself to and tried to drain all of them to give herself a rush of power and kill this creature.

But the image of four young women including Faith's one-time lover Willow, filled her mind. The redhead shook her head and every memory of every failure, abuse, and atrocity that she had ever endured or made others endure overwhelmed her. In a disconnected way, she felt her arms slide to her sides and the slayer's blows impacted directly onto the bones of her skull as it was being pressed against the stone floor.

The vision of the gladiator Lucien Callo, the only true love in her life, as she was about to give him an honorable death in front of the cheering Romans, came to her. His small smile and the whispered words I will wait for you in Tartarus, my love, were her last thoughts as Buffy literally smashed her skull flat.

Somewhere disconnected from reality, but still alive, she felt the slayer ripping her heart out and she was happy.
Her spirit cried as she ran through the fields towards the gates of Tartarus, knowing that Lucien would be there and as the darkness grew, she opened the gate and looked into his eyes.

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Sienna, Blake, and Mathilda, sat in silence and stared at Willow. The flickers of their candles illuminating the swirling colors of the power circle they sat in.

"Lets wrap this up," Willow whispered as tears streamed down here face. She kept staring at the floor until she decided to explore how far she had crossed her own boundaries once they all returned safely to Seattle. She stood and took down the circle with a wave of her hand.

The static filled video monitors scattered in the banks of the hundreds that Xander and Andrew were studying gave some solace to her conscience...only some.

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The killing blow missed as Faith tumbled forward. The witches' protection wasn't enough to keep her standing as the Dragon died. She hit the ground and struggled to relearn how to breathe as she tried to slow her racing heart. I will not have a fuckin' Heart-attack! she screamed within her mind as the connection to Enys was trying to pull her along into the darkness. She watched in furious resignation as Padma lumbered back to his feet and stood over her, the sword hilt stuck through his eye and into his brain.

He murmured something she couldn't understand and her heart raced even faster as he slowly bent and picked up the battle axe. She couldn't roll, she couldn't twist, her body wouldn't respond at all and she could only watch in morbid fascination as the Master of Beasts raised the axe over his head with both of his arms and arched his back for the strike.

Jenn slammed into his chest and drove him to the floor. Rami jumped over Faith and the two slayers fell on Padma like wild animals. She managed to get her heart under control and felt her slayer reach out to the two girls. They could feel her thanks and love for them, and Faith knew in that moment that Jenn and Rami were hers now. They all were connected to the queen, but the two girls were her slayers now and as their bond clicked in to place, it felt like family.
The Dragon was right, she would never be alone again.

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"Everyone, this is Slayer Command...clean this place out, Extreme Prejudice approved," Buffy said as a medic tried to see if any of the blood covering her was her own.

Xander looked at the monitors showing the crowds of non-combatants. "Buffy, you can't..."

"Queen of the Slayers." All of their attentions moved to the previously dead vampire who was now getting back to his feet. He was a tall red haired man and as soon as he realized he was still holding a sword, he dropped it.

Buffy cautiously walked forward and warned everyone on the radio-net that Dead means head and heart.

"If you destroy the Council, humans the world over will suffer in the chaos that follows," the resurrected vamp said. "I am the Traveler, I think we can be civilized about this." He sat in a chair like they were at a family dinner and continued to explain the terms he was willing to give for the Vampire Council's surrender.

Haven's scent and his hand at the back of her neck allowed her to relax a bit and as the vampire went on, she told the slayers to stand down.
"I hate politics," she grumbled.