Everything either belongs to Joss or it should, no infringement is intended and no profit is to be made. When you get right down to it I'm not really worth suing anyway unless you want a share of an underpaid civil servants wages and it just wouldn't be worth the hassle trust me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tarzana – Los Angeles – July 2003
Illyria swung the sharpened I-Beam, it was half again as long as she was tall and weighed as much as a small car but she handled it like it was made of hollow plastic instead of solid steel. This was the weapon that she had used to batter the Hellgod Glory into submission, it was the epitome of the brute force approach to problem solving, but nobody, no entity, had ever accused the God-King of the Primordium of taking the subtle route when there was a quicker and ideally more violent method available. It wasn't mindless violence, Illyria wasn't stupid or out of control, she just liked hitting things, it was cathartic, moreover it was a great deal of fun and she hadn't gotten to beat the crap out of something actually worth beating the crap out of in months.
Amalfi had much better reaction times than you would expect from a being of its size and it immediately shifted its weight and raised an arm to parry away the blow. The demon was not stupid either, and despite the Old Ones diminutive size it knew this was going to hurt and needless to say it did. In power-to-weight ratio terms Illyria was towards the top of the scale, far eclipsing such as the slayers who were barely four or five times as strong as a mere human, well if the human were a world class powerlifter anyhow. As one of the God-Kings associates commented not completely in jest, the Blue Meanie floated like a butterfly but she stung like a B-52.
Illyria's almost comically oversized weapon was deflected away from its target, which had been Amalfi's torso, but it still had plenty of kinetic energy most of which was imparted into Amalfi's left arm and it stung something fierce causing the thirty-odd foot tall demon to grimace baring a lot of very large, very sharp jagged teeth in the process.
The Old One kept moving with the sword stroke turning in place doing a complete 360 bringing her weapon back into line with Amalfi and with a smile on her face. The demon prepared to strike back before the little blue bitch could hit him with that thing again. Of course what it should have been doing was worrying instead about what the tiny mortal with the sharp shiny red thing was up to in the meanwhile.
Buffy had let Illyria draw the things ire as it were, slayers were tough but she wouldn't survive the damage from a blow from something that size especially something that size with enhanced demon strength, also if Amalfi was distracted it would give her the chance to get in some decent damage before it realised just how much harm she could inflict too.
The scythe wasn't just powerful in itself, it enhanced the power of the slayer wielding it too and having lived a lot longer than most slayers ever managed Buffy was already amongst the most dangerous slayers that have ever walked the Earth. Feeling its energy flowing through her Buffy darted in and slashed the back of Amalfi's right leg with all her might. The enchanted and razor sharp blade bit in deep with all her strength put into it and it cut far enough in to go all the way through the demons skin even though it was inches thick and tougher than crocodile hide. It locked hard and Buffy had to yank it back out with brute force, tearing it back out of Amalfi's flesh spraying herself with thick greenish-brown blood as she did so.
Amalfi howled and swung an arm to try and swat the slayer as Buffy rolled out of the way. The scale of the injury to its size was minimal but if you slashed a human with a razor blade they wouldn't enjoy the experience much either. They wouldn't enjoy someone immediately cracking them on the knee with a crowbar either which is basically what Illyria did in relative terms as she swung her I-Beam against Amalfi again as he reacted to Buffy's attack. It made a great sound as the steel cracked into bone and cartilage. The sheer shock of the blow ran back up the steel and jarred Illyria who had to strengthen her grip on the weapon as she quickly shifted to avoid a possible countermove.
'Try and slash its tendons' Illyria called out as Amalfi rocked with the impact to its knee and Buffy used the opportunity to get out of reach.
Easier said than done, Buffy thought as she rolled upright, turning and raising the scythe ready to strike again, the beast was gigantic, simply cutting through the skin was hard enough, getting the scythe in deep enough to tear up its muscles or tendons was a tall order. The slayer weapon could slice through demon flesh like a knife through butter but this time the butter was a lot thicker than the knife was long, it just wasn't able to get far enough in unless she hacked or practically sawed through the flesh and it was highly doubtful to say the least that Amalfi would stay still and compliantly let her do that. It was going to be death by a thousand cuts, not a few choice blows that would win this.
I hope someone in one of those houses is filming this, Buffy thought, because I'd love to have this fight on DVD to show people. The only thing better would be Buffy Vs. Godzilla she thought moving into the attack once again.
Warehouse – Reseda – Los Angeles – July 2003
The old standard hack and slash, Wesley thought nostalgically, swinging his collapsible sword around and slashing open the throat of the nearest Skilosh. He'd replied on his guns, and the occasional foray into magic for quite a while and it was nice to return to the basics he decided dropping the empty pistol in his other hand after firing his last shot right into the face of another demon the hollow-point bullet expanding as it went through and blowing most of the back of its head off including its third eye.
Faith was in her element, she liked to play up close and personal and with Slayer strength, her own collapsible sword in one hand and a large knife in her left she was cleaving through the Skilosh ranks far more effectively than Wesley could hope to emulate, he was just well practiced, she was a Slayer and had strength, speed and reactions he couldn't hope to match.
Not everyone was playing the short game though, Willow kept her distance and was still generating and firing fireballs into the opposition whilst keeping clear of the melee battle itself. She could use her magicks to give herself inhuman strength, once during her "Dark Willow" phase she had given Buffy a good run for her money in the physical combat stakes but she could do more damage like this, and she didn't have to embrace the darkness to anything like the same degree either.
Both of Vi's twin Glock Automatics had run dry seconds before and lacking a collapsible sword of her own she had pulled a short-sword from her belt and in lieu of another weapon a very nasty set of spiked brass knuckles for her other hand. Wes hadn't just taught her and the others to shoot, with Faiths assistance he'd also been running extra-curricular classes for those girls interested in knowing how to fight unbelievably dirty and she wanted to show him what a keen student she was. Vi waded into the Skilosh using her sword as it was supposed to be used, as a thrusting weapon slamming the blade into the guts then ripping it upwards to "open the bastard up good and proper" as Wesley had described it. Her brass knuckles and slayer strength smashed teeth and noses and cracked jaws without effort or mercy, this was what she had trained for, what her purpose in life was, slayers slew, death really was their gift.
Vi and Faith found themselves fighting with Wesley semi-sheltered between them as the weakest point in the line. They were already splattered with blood and gore and the ground was littered with Skilosh corpses. It wasn't a wholesome gentle life but it wasn't a wholesome gentle world either, the demonic barbarians were at the gate and they were the gatekeepers, or as Giles had quoted George Orwell "We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm". Faith had insisted on substituting "hot chicks with superpowers" with "rough men" but the intent was very much the same, they were the chosen ones, somebody had to stop assholes like this using human beings like an Ichneumon Wasp uses a caterpillar, as a host for its larvae killing it in the process.
Faith heard a familiar battle cry, Kennedy must rehearse that or something, she thought, because she did it really well as the slayer led the five other girls with her back into the action hitting the skilosh from the other direction swords and knives in hand. Now this was how you did it Faith thought yelling a battle cry of her own, eight slayers in the game now and the Skilosh were already whittled down to a handful.
Faith drove her forehead into a demons face, smashing its nose to pieces in a vicious headbutt, and wondered how B and the Smurf were getting on with the main event as she followed up the blow by opening up the things throat with her knife. Hopefully they were having fun too.
Tarzana – Los Angeles – July 2003
A loud report echoed in the residential street, Buffy turned to see that Connor had retrieved and reloaded his shotgun and was now trying to make his presence felt again. 'Aim for the eyes' Buffy yelled at him.
'That's what I am doing' Connor yelled back lining up his next shot. The bandolier of shotgun cartridges he'd picked up earlier had carried a mix of shells and he had reloaded with flechette rounds guessing that they'd be more likely to do damage. Even the things eyeballswere probably too tough for buckshot at any range he wanted to be at, he had decided, but the little clusters of metal darts in the flechette loads might get the job done from a relatively safe distance. 'You know if you want to make yourselves useful here you guys could help too' Connor told the closest of the three cops, who had been simply standing around gaping at the scene watching the two women, assuming the weird blue chick in the red leather gear actually was a woman, fight the monster.
Connor fired again but Amalfi was constantly moving and instead of getting it in one of its eyes he shot a pattern of tiny darts into what he assumed was an earlobe. The cop that Connor had addressed looked at him then back to Amalfi before firing his automatic at the creature. 'Aim high' Connor told him. 'Try and shoot out its eyes like the girl said, anywhere else, and it won't even notice' he told him racking the shotgun and aiming again himself.
The tiny bullets whizzing past his head, some impacting harmlessly on its skin didn't even register with Amalfi, it was too busy trying to deal with the attacks coming from two sides from Buffy and Illyria. Every time it tried to move on the Old One the damn human slashed it with that weapon she was wielding and if it tried to get rid of the human it got another blow from the I-Beam. The demon tried to ignore one or the other and concentrate on one target at a time but they were both too quick to knock out of the fight before the damage the other was doing started to hurt. In many ways it was having trouble because they were too small, it was hard to get to grips with the damn midgets. Unencumbered by anything as clumsy as an I-Beam Buffy was especially agile and found she could zip in, hack into the demon and get back out before she got stomped or crushed.
The other two Policeman joined in with the first and started firing at the monsters head, their line of fire angled too high to concern Buffy or Illyria, not that a bullet would be as dangerous to Illyria as Buffy but she would be irked if some human law-enforcement officer accidentally shot her. Having actually been shot before, almost dead as it happens, Buffy was less than happy about the notion too.
Amalfi tried a different tack and ignoring both Buffy and Illyria it stomped over to one of the Patrol Cars and with the two Policemen standing by it diving for cover it picked up the vehicle and held it overhead. Buffy and Illyria backed off, neither wanting to have three and a half thousand pounds of car dropped on them and knowing that more distance from Amalfi meant more time to dodge out of the way if the demon threw it at one of them.
'If this was a film we'd shoot out the gas tank' Connor noted wryly reloading his shotgun after several missed shots. Unfortunately in real life unless you were using tracer or incendiary rounds the thing would be highly unlikely to explode and nowhere near as impressively anyway.
'What… what the fuck is that thing? Who the fuck are you people?' one of the Cops yelled at Connor getting a firmer grip on reality as he shook off the sensory overload and the nagging suspicion this was just a really graphic and detailed nightmare.
'It's a Demon' Connor replied aiming his shotgun again. 'They don't usually come out during the day' he replied in a far more relaxed tone than the cops.
'They don't usually come that big either' Buffy observed keeping her eyes firmly on Amalfi. As soon as it threw that car she was either going to dive out of the way or give it another taste of scythey goodness.
'A demon? You mean like from Hell?' another of the three cops asked reloading his pistol. This wasn't what he joined the force to do, get smushed by a monster like an extra in a bad horror flick.
'Common misconception' Connor replied. 'Some of them come from Hell-Dimensions but lots of them are from right here. Fact is they were here before we were. Illyria, the blue chick over there with the big sword, was the original Valley Girl, well a Vahla Ha'nesh Girl anyway… not that she was actually a girl back then' he added. 'As for who we are, well let's just say we're the ones that make the monsters too afraid to come out from under the bed… well most of them'
'Protecting the Earth from the scum of the multiverse' Buffy chimed in keeping her eyes firmly on Amalfi but unable to resist the quip, she wasn't above stealing lines that she'd heard Xander modify from films either. 'I think we're really blowing our secret identities here.'
'And us without our Neuralisers' Connor replied with a half grin. 'Oh come on you didn't think the raining fire, people drained of blood and the sun going out was natural did you?' he asked the cop. 'Welcome to real life, it ain't what you thought it was' he told the cop.
Illyria roared something at Amalfi which must have really pissed it off whatever it meant, because it immediately threw the Police Car at her causing her to dive sideways to avoid it, barely avoiding the car and being forced to drop her sword in the process. Buffy sprinted in to draw the demons wrath and Connor started firing again finally getting a hit after two shots causing Amalfi to howl in pain as a pattern of flechettes ploughed into one of its eyes. The fact it had five more meant it wasn't exactly a decisive blow but at least he'd hurt the damn thing.
Amalfi lurched at Illyria, trying to get to her before she could retrieve her sword put kept a close eye, or eyes on the human with the scythe weapon. The insect bites from the human projectile weapons had finally managed to cause enough damage for him to notice but the eye wasn't destroyed only injured and would heal within hours until then Amalfi would keep that one closed, it still had all round vision, six eyes gave plenty of redundancy in the vision front.
As the human charged it Amalfi spun and swiped at it causing the diminutive figure to veer off for safety.
Illyria flipped herself to her feet and found herself looking up at a mountain of demon flesh with nothing but her fists as weaponry for now. Whatever force was emanating from the beast stopped her warping time, nor could she open a portal, it must come from a time when although the Old Ones were long gone there were still powerful demons with some of the ancient ways and it had evolved, or had learned to block them.
A huge fist crashed down as Amalfi stooped over to try and flatten her. Even without the ability to alter the flow of time around herself Illyria was still inhumanly fast and agile and with what looked like an effortless move she avoided the blow which shattered the asphalt where it landed making a small crater in the ground. Illyria feinted to go towards her abandoned sword which Amalfi moved to block and instead she darted between his legs and drove a fist as hard as she could into Amalfi's left kneecap, the gloves of her armour hardening into a steel-like gauntlet as she did. It was a blow with enough force to punch clean through a lesser-demon or shatter the jaw of even a slayer but it felt more like she had driven her fist into a fossilised tree-trunk, and the effects were none too impressive to say the least. Amalfi certainly grunted which meant he felt it but there wasn't the satisfying crack of something being broken inside there which was a shame. Crippled the demon would be much easier to subdue.
Amalfi tried to raise a foot to stomp her but again she was too fast to flatten leaping off in the other direction and spiralling into a stance that gave her the ability to move again in any direction, ready for the next move.
'Are you okay over there Blue?' Buffy called out, circling Amalfi feeling the things eyes on her at all times as she did.
'I could avoid its clumsy attacks for millennia' Illyria replied confidently. 'However I cannot injure it without my sword either.'
'Can you keep it busy trying to splat you?' Buffy asked. 'You certainly seem to know just what to say to provoke it.'
Illyria jumped aside to avoid another attempted blow from the huge beast. 'I will have to teach you some of the old tongue' she said, 'the swearwords and insults available in English pale into insignificance' she declared. 'When it goes for me again try and motivate it to move away from my sword so I can retrieve it.'
'Motivate?' Buffy questioned. 'You mean cut a chunk out of it right?'
'I suggest you hold the scythe like an axe and hack off one of its toes that should prove sufficiently painful to produce the desired result' Illyria replied. 'Connor you should run interference for Buffy and try to distract it further, it chased you for many miles it may still regard you as worth keeping an eye on.'
'It's got plenty to spare' Connor called back.
'Just because it can see from every eye does not mean it can concentrate on each visual impulse simultaneously' Illyria noted.
'Doesn't mean it can't either' Buffy replied reasonably.
'No guts, no glory' Illyria declared apparently enjoying herself far more than was healthy.
'Easy for something to say that doesn't die like we do' Buffy said quietly to herself, readying to make her move. Having died twice already, and doubting she was going to get a third extra life in the game, Buffy was a lot more cautious. Illyria just went through life with the cheatmode on and could be flat-out blasé when it came to life-or-death situations. Frankly Buffy wondered if Blue getting a good whupping once in a while might be good for her character, it certainly wouldn't go amiss in maybe introducing her to the whole "humility" concept that had so far escaped her.
Illyria bellowed something at Amalfi once again, enraging the beast as before, it was positively seething by now. Whatever she was saying to it, it was clearly reacting to the words like a red rag to a bull and it swiped at her with both arms Illyria avoiding the attempts but keeping close enough that it tried again.
Connor started running, firing his shotgun at the demon as he went. He was down to buckshot now and the effect was more aimed at noise and distraction than anything else, certainly Amalfi wouldn't know that Connor wasn't using the same ammunition as had hurt it before and that might help out.
Buffy charged in holding the scythe like an axe as suggested, gripping it as low down as she could, just barely above the wooden stake set into the bottom of the handle. As soon as she got close Buffy started to swing the scythe like she was chopping wood, putting everything she had into the blow bringing the weapon down as hard and fast as she could onto the demons massive clawed feet.
The blade bit dip and sliced through skin, muscle and tissue. Needless to say it hurt a lot even if Buffy couldn't quite sever the whole toe and had to make do with only cutting it two-thirds of the way off, held on by a scrap of flesh.
Amalfi howled in pain once again, even louder than when he was shot in the eye but instead of being distracted away from his pursuit of Illyria it directed its pain into rage and began a frenzied series of blows aimed at her spurred on by fury and its equivalent of adrenaline.
Illyria was sideswiped by a fist she just managed to avoid taken off-guard by Amalfi's reaction to its injury and having got too close to dive completely clear. The glancing impact sent her spiralling away and crashing to the ground as Buffy sprinted clear leaving a widening pool of Amalfi's blood spreading across the road surface.
Before she could get up the demon smashed its right hand down on Illyria as if squashing a bug. The blow was devastating, despite her armour absorbing much of the impact, and it knocked her momentarily senseless.
'Oh fuck no' Connor gasped as Amalfi picked up Illyria with one hand and grabbed her head with the other.
Amalfi twisted her head around and broke her neck like a twig, severing her spine with an audible crack and then throwing her away, Illyria fell to the ground limply in a broken heap unmoving. With the armour on the God-King was just too tough to make a decent meal out of, and the demon tried to look after its teeth, they were part of its trademark as it were, so it didn't see her as a snack, only refuse to be disposed of. So much for the much vaunted Old Ones Amalfi thought, their reputation was badly undeserved. Now to deal with the human insects that had overrun this world.
Buffy gaped at Illyria's corpse then with horror at Amalfi which was rounding on her grinning with its great mouth of huge razor sharp teeth. This wasn't in the plan, this wasn't in the plan at all.