Chapter 4

"Put him down, Neo."

The Judge turned around to face the new arrival while still holding out his right hand to telekinetically grab the robed man. "What was that? You're talking to me?"

"Yeah, you, who else around here looks like a reject from the Matrix?" Buffy quickly replied.

"The Matrix? Where's that?" The Judge asked, honestly confused.

"The movie with Kea- Oh never mind. Just put the guy down!" Buffy was getting annoyed.

"No. This man deserves to die." There was a hint of amusement in the Judge's voice.

"No, he doesn't. Around here we bludgeon the badguys and hope they don't learn their lesson so we can bludgeon them again. Unless said badguys are vampires, of course. Or demons. Look, I'm not in the mood for this. You're new in town, and you apparently don't know who I am. I'm Buffy." She countered. The demon seemed talkative, but reminding loners of who she was tended to be a surefire tactic to get them to do what she wanted.

"How quaint," the Judge laughed. "Is your sister Muffy?" He chuckled again at Buffy's angry reaction. "Well, Buffy, where I come from they call me the Judge-"

"-The Judge, huh? We ran into another Judge a few years ago; big guy, blue skin, blew him up with a rocket launcher." The Judge was thrown off by the comment. "He looked scarier than you. You're a better dresser though."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, lady. Now do you mind? I still have business to attend to here." The Judge looked back to the robed man who was still frozen in mid-air. Akumi slipped into a defensive stance, never taking her eyes off of Buffy.

"HEY! Put. Him. Down!" So much for talking him out of it, this new Judge character was definitely arrogant for a demon in her territory.

"And I told you. No. You really think you're going to stop me?" The Judge looked back to Buffy, the white energy from his eyes flowing a little higher.

"She might not be able to, but we can." Kennedy spoke up as she entered the room with the cavalry. Buffy was now flanked by Kennedy on her left and Juliya on her right. Willow, with a large, brown leather bound book clutched to her chest, and the man with the eye-patch were several steps behind them.

"Enough of this," the Judge said angrily as he whipped his right arm towards the far wall of the mausoleum, sending the robed man flying towards the wall. The man hit the wall hard with his shoulder, and promptly dropped to the floor, unconscious. Kennedy then charged the Judge, and Akumi disappeared in response, reappearing clutched to Kennedy's back. As Kennedy stumbled to try and keep her balance, Akumi and Kennedy both disappeared in a white flash of light.

"What did you do to her?!" Willow yelled as she opened her book and began to chant in Latin. Hopefully the containment spell she picked would work; they just needed to stall the Judge and the girl long enough for Willow to cast the spell. They also agreed to try and avoid a fight for as long as they could, too.

"So much for that plan," Buffy mumbled as she gave a quick look to Juliya, and the two Slayers charged the Judge, Buffy on his left, Juliya to the right. The energy emanating from the Judge's eye's flowed even higher as he stepped back and took a defensive position with his arms. Buffy couldn't identify the Judge's posture as any fighting style she knew, but better to knock him out now before things got any more out of hand. She reached the Judge before Juliya, and delivered a swift kick that should have made contact with the Judge's ribs, but it felt as if she was kicking a wall a foot in front of the Judge, not human flesh. Buffy glanced over to Juliya, who seemed equally surprised by the similar results of a punch she tried to throw. "Willow! He's got some kind of wall up in front of him!"

"Got it! It's not a spell, it's telekinetic!" Willow looked up from her book, and her eyes were now black pits. So this Judge was a witch? Er, warlock? Buffy tried to think of the proper term for a male magic user between each of her punches and kicks that hit the same invisible barrier. At least her attacks, combined with Juliya's, were keeping the Judge on the defensive. The Judge barely changed his positioning to match their assault, but his invisible barrier was still there, and it also seemed to stretch around him, as Buffy discovered when she tried to circle around and kick the Judge at his left. Suddenly, the energy flowing from the Judge's eyes spiked above his head, and right after the energy burst, the Judge made a thrust with his right hand towards Juliya, sending her flying back towards a wall of the building.

"Y-you, you're not human!" The Judge blurted as Buffy could feel the wall weakening under her attacks.

"I like to think of it-" Buffy threw another kick and almost felt the wall give "-as Super-human." Buffy smiled as the Judge's anger was finally starting to show on his face. Good, when they get angry, they get sloppy. "Does wonders for the empowerment thing that way." Then the energy flowing from the Judge's eyes spiked again, twice as high this time as when he attacked Juliya. And next thing Buffy knew, she could feel her head slam into a stone wall behind her. Buffy quickly looked around, and saw Juliya slowly getting to her feet. She glanced over and saw Xander and Willow both lying on the ground several feet back from where they were, unconscious. That must have been some kind of area attack. Not good. And the Judge was still standing, with the white energy flowing high above his forehead.

"Armies can't stop me. No way a bunch of misfit -whatever you people are- are going to-" out of nowhere, the Judge was cut off by a cold female voice speaking in a language Buffy didn't recognize. It sounded like a demon tongue, but which one? She guessed by his surprised reaction, the source of the voice was no friend of the Judge's. Moments after the voice started, it stopped, and then she could hear footsteps. As Buffy made it to her feet, she heard a loud thud, and quickly looked over to where the Judge was previously standing to see him lying unconscious on the floor. Oh-kay.

Then the footsteps started again, and the source of the demony language emerged from the entrance. Now Buffy could see that it was a pale, slim woman with straight blue-tinted shoulder-length hair wearing what looked like full-body tight red leather armor. The woman-in-red also had something big slung over her far shoulder. Moments after the red woman appeared, Kennedy slowly walked in from the same doorway following behind her. It was then that Buffy noticed the thing slung over the red woman's shoulder was the body of the Japanese girl who was with the Judge. Was she knocked out too? Wonder what happened to her? Without warning, the red woman looked to Buffy with sharp yet indifferent bright blue eyes and spoke with that same cold voice. "You have encountered a far greater threat than you know, young one."