Female author's note: Please ignore EVERYTHING after Season 2 of Angel; I screwed it up royally by resurrecting Allen Francis Doyle against the wishes of the Almighty Whedon. Everything that happened after Season 5 of Buffy stays that way.
Male author's note. No lesbians are to be offended in the reading of this story. Trust me, I've been hit on by enough lesbians to respect them… and I swear to God, I wish I were joking about being hit on by lesbians. THEY'RE THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO HAVE! In any event, you can either enjoy the story or sue me, do one or the other, but just start reading. Also, read Tales of the Slayer, Volume 2, the story "The New Watcher," for certain Civil War References.
"There are certain parts of Brooklyn…"
Prologue: The Army of Darkness
May, 2002
Marco Cattalano walked through the streets of Sunnydale, annoyed again. There had been an earthquake, which meant one thing, and it wasn't tectonic activity.
Another damn apocalypse.
He spotted the target house, and stopped dead. There was yellow crime scene tape all over the front of the building.
We are not amused. He reached for one of his numerous knives. If anyone in that house was dead, hurt, or even scratched a little, he was going to make somebody pay.
Slowly.
He ran to the front door and pounded it with two efficient hammer-blows that shook the house.
The front door opened before Marco could kick it in. Anya, the local blonde vengeance demon with way too much cleavage, snapped, "What are you doing here? Go away, we're recovering."
Marco slammed his palm on the door before she could close it on him. "From what?"
He heard a groan inside and stepped in, past Anya, glancing at the couch. "Tall dark and British, what are you doing back from the great divide?"
Rupert Giles looked at him, supine on the couch. "Oh, Marco. No one's eaten you yet? Pity. I'm just here to avert the end of the world. Nothing new."
"Nice to see it was handled. Who was the bother this time?"
"Willow."
Marco pivoted out of the way of Dawn Summers, who came out of the kitchen with a tray of…tea stuff? Oy…wait a second.
"Willow as in the redhead? My Willow? What the heck happened here this time?" Marco stopped and examined Dawn. She was freshly cleaned, as though her hair had finished drying not long ago. "What did she do to you now? Or were you in the Magic Box when the earthquake hit?"
"More like when Willow hit it," Giles replied. "You might want to sit down."
"Why?"
With a cold voice, Dawn pronounced, "Tara's dead."
Marco's eyes went cold, flat, dead, and very scary. "Who should I kill?"
"You're a little late for that one, too," Anya griped.
By the end of the story, Marco sighed. "Now what happens to her?"
"I'll take her back with me to England; make sure that she can control her power. She'll need the training, the discipline in order to master all of this."
Marco nodded thoughtfully. "Well then, you think she can tolerate me in the neighborhood? I didn't cancel my Marshall Scholarship, so I'll hitch a ride…for the summer and next semester. As long as it takes for her to get better."
"Why?" Anya asked. "It's not like you have a chance to get laid."
He merely looked at her. "It's what she needs me to be…there for her. And there I will be."
Eight Months Later.
Marco looked out of his airplane window, cursing the darkness outside. Why do I always have to arrive in SunnyHell in the dark? Why me? Did I do something to offend You, Lord?
He picked up his luggage, and prayed very hard that his ride would be there, and hadn't been turned into a snack along the way.
"This the bruiser we want?"
Marco flicked his eyes left. He dropped his bags, whirled, and grabbed the woman approaching him. He lifted her up in the air like she was a leaf, a moment before kissing her.
His broad smile caught the light as he let Willow down on the floor. "Um, hi, Marco."
"How are you, sexy lady?"
Willow, who never really knew what to do with him, said, "Ah, good. Marco, I'd like to you meet one of the Potentials, Kennedy—"
He blinked. "The what?"
"Potentials," the olive-skinned brunette said. "Potential Slayers. We're being hunted down by the First Evil, how are you?"
He glanced the woman up and down, finding her very attractive. He sighed. "I'm depressed, you're probably a lesbian."
Her eyes narrowed. "You see a strong woman and you think she's gay all the time?"
He shook his head. "No, I find you sexy and attractive, therefore, you're gay. It keeps happening to me—the last woman I asked out was Willow." He smiled. "By the way, if someone is hunting you folks down, should you be out here?"
"We've got backup."
They walked Marco outside to a large black SUV with a pale skinned brunette leaning against the side door. Her deep brown eyes lit up as she looked over Marco's body. He smiled. "You must be Faith, I could smell the hormones."
She smiled. "Yeah, and you must be Marco; I can smell the attitude."
"That may just be my aftershave. What's up?"
"We're going to take you round the house, and then we're going to pack you out of here."
"Charming."
Marco carefully stepped around the minefield of women in the Summers' house. "Cozy," he muttered.
Willow tapped him on the shoulder and pointed down. He nodded and headed for the basement.
An hour later, he looked around, a half smile on his face. "So Spike has a soul, and he's just been deprogrammed from a trigger put in him by the dark side, the principal of the new high school is the son of a Slayer who likes to play stake the vamp, the First Evil wants to unleash a hoard of super vampires upon the world, not to mention having a right hand man dressed as a Catholic priest, and this place has become an armed camp filled with Potentials because we obviously like being an easy target. Have I missed something?"
"We're also the only people in town who haven't run screaming for the hills yet," Anya stated.
"Ah, yes, and why is that? That's right, we're the good guys. Except for me, of course, who you want to leave town so he doesn't get hurt. Sorry, I don't bite; I'm on my way back to the University, my dorm, and my own bed."
"Marco!" a voice snapped at him in the middle of the night. "Get up!"
Cattalano's eyes snapped open. Buffy was at his bedside. "We need to go, now!"
Marco was up, fully dressed, with a knife in his hand. "What is it?"
"No time, we have to go, now!"
He stopped, glanced at the door, fully locked and bolted. "You're really not all that omniscient, are you?"
He kicked out, his foot going through Buffy's chest. He smiled broadly as he pulled his leg back. "Wow, you is stupid."
The First smiled. "Glad to meet you, Marco. I've had my eye on you for some time. I've always wanted to meet you."
"Sure, and your minions are outside, waiting to come in?"
"Why would they?" she asked in an innocent voice.
"Because I'm a scary bastard, otherwise you wouldn't waste your time. I'm honored to know you think I'm a threat."
"Threat? To me? Really, now what sort of talk is that?"
"The sort where I know that you can be beaten, otherwise, you wouldn't be harassing anyone, you'd just come out and strike, simple as that. You want to soften us up, wear us down, so you can kill us then, and only then." He shook his head. "Which means you're terrified."
"Let's find out," she said. "You always said you are what you're needed to be. Well, I need you dead!"
An axe hit the door, to get only a clang. Marco grinned. "This is my room. I made modifications last year."
The windows smashed in as two Bringers swung in. They landed on a rug which disappeared out from under them as they fell through the floor, onto spikes in the room below.
"You mean you didn't see Xander install that over the weekend? For shame, you really must keep a better eye on people."
Her eyes narrowed. "But you just heard about me! I was in the basement, listening—"
He grinned. "Learn about e-mail. You have just been suckered. Besides, I lived in England for months; you think I didn't notice Watcher Central being blown up?"
The door fell in, and it was followed by a dozen Bringers, all of whom with knives, and two of them had axes in addition. They swarmed, taking up positions all around the room as he backed against the window, keeping the bed between him and them.
"You really have watched me, haven't you? Didn't bring your priest?"
The First shrugged. "He wasn't needed. I contacted another friend of yours, Mikhail's brother. He's upset with you."
Marco sighed. The first master vampire his family had destroyed was Mikhail the Bear, a loud Russian vampire with an attitude. Who knew he had a family?
"Well, he'll be a little heartbroken. I won't be here."
Marco flipped backwards over the windowsill and out the window, grabbing the Bringer's rope along the way. As he controlled his descent with one hand, he pulled out a cell phone with the other and hit autodial 1. The number was that of a beeper in his room, which was attached to a detonator, which was attached to large quantities of nitroglycerin, which turned his room into a fireball.
The First stood there, where the floor used to be, saying "I hate him."
Marco landed on the ground. Imagine what would have happened had they tried me in the chem lab.
He dove into the bushes, grabbing his gym bag filled with weapons. There wasn't exactly anything he could do besides run very fast. There was no way in hell that he could have had somebody outside waiting for him, otherwise the annoying little eyeless bozos would have spotted them and the plan would be cooked. The thing is, the First apparently had a way of making even more Bringers, so killing all of them would only slow it down for a little.
Doesn't mean we can't make it a cripple for a short time. And frankly, someone had to have heard that blast. This isn't like it's a large town. One Starbucks indeed…
Marco heard something and glanced left. More Bringers…how many, he couldn't tell. Directly ahead of him were the woods. He stopped and reached into the bag, slowly putting it on the ground before he withdrew two small, triple crossbows, firing all six before the first one could lunge.
Who says the bad guys have to draw first? he thought as he dropped the crossbows and drew knives from sheaths at his hips, nailing two more in the center of their chests.
Marco whirled around, drawing two knives from his sleeves. There were more Bringers. He glanced over his shoulder. Even more Bringers.
Isn't this a scene from the Kill Bill commercials?
"You killed my brother, da?" asked a deep voice.
Marco glanced over his other shoulder to find a large vampire backlit by the flames of his dying room. He had a sinking feeling that he was dead—knives couldn't be thrown faster than a vampire could move, he couldn't grab another weapon fast enough without being rushed and crushed. There was only one option left.
He ran for the woods.
The vampire's laughter followed him, and the vamp was about to follow himself, when Marco whirled in mid step and hurled a knife at his bag.
The impact set off the nitroglycerin within, turning the contents into shrapnel, killing Bringers all around and turning the vampire into a pincushion without turning him to dust, driving him off his feet.
Cattalano kept whirling, and ran straight into the woods. A Bringer leapt out, knife held high. Marco sidestepped, letting the Bringer jump past him, and he drove his other wooden dagger into the Bringer's back, around where it should have had its kidney. It fell forward as he grabbed its knife out of its hand and pivoted, blocking a knife jab from behind with one blade, stabbing into a throat with the other. He leapt back over the dead body, grabbed a second knife and continued to run through the woods.
Come on, pal, you've taken out thousand-year-old vampires, you can take these twerps.
He tripped over a rock in time to avoid being decapitated. He thrust his knife at the axe-wielding Bringer, going right into its stomach. He landed on his shoulder and rolled, hurling the other knife out into the darkness. A figure fell over, and he hoped he didn't kill a pedestrian. He rolled back, grabbed the axe, and rolled to his feet.
A knife wielder leapt in front of him, and Marco promptly slammed the butt of the axe into his face, and promptly gave him the axe. Another Bringer landed in front of him, and on either side, grabbing his arms and lifting him off the ground. He threw his arms out to either side of him; while that couldn't shake the Bringers, it released the squirt guns in his sleeves. He fired into their faces, and they fell back in pain. He drew both of them down upon the Bringer in front of him, still firing. The Bringer's mouth opened in a scream as the hydrochloric acid burned away the sealant on his mouth and the rest burned his face off.
Marco shook the squirt guns clear of any droplets and tucked the weapons away, grabbing the knives from the ground.
He straightened…ten Bringers were in front of him
Do they breed these guys to spring up like weeds?
Marco hurled the knives in front of him, the maneuver throwing the guns into his hands. As the knives reached their twin targets, he started firing at the other eight Bringers. They dodged out of the way with ease.
Come on, Buffy, save my life.
Something slammed him, hard. He dropped one gun without resistance. He looked at his shoulder, only to find an arrow sticking out of it. "Ah, damn."
Marco slowly turned, only to have his knees buckle. He fell with his back to the tree, sliding to the ground.
A Bringer stood over him. It dropped the bow and pulled out a knife.
Marco snarled, and raised his other weapon. "Die."
His hand convulsed around the handle, spraying the Bringer over and over until it fell back. He looked at the level of acid he had left. He was out.
And there's still over half a dozen Bringers out there. I'm screwed.
Marco dropped his gun, reaching for another knife. He stopped and smiled, realizing that the others were all his turpentine-soaked throwing knives with firecrackers attached.
You guys are about to become an environmental disaster.
He hurled it over his shoulder, and heard a pop, followed by the sound of fire burning.
He reached for another as he slowly pushed off the ground, onto his feet.
"You really don't know when to quit, do you?" said the Buffy look-alike standing before him.
He straightened. "That's something we have in common. Don't you ever shut up?"
"Not when you have as much time on your hands as I do."
"You don't have hands. Not real ones."
"An oversight." It smiled. "On your part," she added as Bringers drifted all around her, converging on him. "These are my hands, and they'll do quite well to shred you."
"Right." Marco grabbed a pen from his pocket with his left hand. With one quick move he broke left and rammed the pen into the nearest Bringer's eye and into the brain. He lashed out with a back-kick from his right leg, kicking one bringer in the throat behind him.
With a ferocious growl, two Bringers had their heads cut off with the single silver swipe of a sword, and the sword ended up embedded in the sides of two Bringers, pinning them to a tree before Spike leapt through the First and slammed into even more Bringers, pummeling them mercilessly. Three Bringers stepped forward, only to have arrows appear in their chests.
"Catch!" Faith screamed.
Marco caught, with his left hand, a bottle of hair spray. He smiled, flicked a lighter with his right hand, and let the spray catch the flame, turning it into a flamethrower, incinerating any Bringer that came near him.
"Oh, now this is disappointing," the First said.
Marco glared. "Shut up!"
The Bringers had the sense to run, and Cattalano smiled. With any luck, he would make it back in time to catch his flight to New York.
And he did.