FIC: All Change At Halloween (14/?)

Bobby Singer steeled himself as he strode back into his home, his scrap yard holding a rare meeting involving many of the most renowned independent hunters. From Vermont, his old friend and first ever contact in the demon-hunting community, Rufus Turner, the weathered African-American looking as ornery as ever. From the South-West, reformed bank robber Seth Gecko, and his partner, Derek Bliss. From the Virginias, the exotically named Alaric Slatzman, and the grizzled Daniel Elkins from Colorado. And the rampaging angel of vengeance that was John Winchester, and his oldest son, full of piss and vinegar like only the very young and the very stupid could manage, Dean.

"So," Bobby lowered himself into to a seat with a satisfied groan, age and demon-hunting had not been kind to his battered old body. "How does everyone feel this alliance with the Slayers is going?"

Rufus Turner sipped at his coffee before speaking. "Those girls have made a believer outta me."

Elkins nodded. "My contacts tell me the vampire underworld are terrified of them after their global raids."

"Only vamp they didn't kill was Count Duckula," Dean snorted.

"They're effective that's for sure," Bobby agreed. "And their integrated network is a godsend," Bobby glanced around his cramped house, "I still got my books, but the amount of information on their network dwarfs my collection."

"Hell," Rufus supped on his coffee, "it dwarfs all our collections."

"And we couldn't have organised this meeting without the security of their network," Alaric commented. "We're more cohesive than we ever were before."

"Cohesive?" Bobby smirked at the younger man. "Whose the college graduate then?" He chuckled at the younger man's sudden flush then nodded. "But he's right, we never used to be as organised as we are now, and a lot of that's down to them."

"You've gotta wonder though," Rufus placed his mug down on his makeshift place mat, a tatty truck magazine, "nature abhors a vacuum, something's bound to try and take over the vampires' place in the demon world."

"Ha!" Bobby chuckled. "They'll have to deal with the Slayers if they try it."

"I'd like to meet a Slayer or maybe a couple," Dean leered.

"Boy," Singer shot Dean a scornfully fond look, "way I hear it 'bout those girls, they'd snap you like a twig."

"Maybe so," Dean grinned cockily, "but what a way to go, right?"

Bobby shook his head before looking towards his old friend. "Damn John, when are you gonna teach that boy of yours some sense?"

Joy grinned as the results before her solidified into the answer she'd been searching for. "I've got it!" she shouted as she hit the alert buzzer. "The Order Of Taraka has three bases, one in Montreal, one in Rome, but the main one is in Cairo, Egypt!"

"Excellent work," Giles strode in from the other room. "And you're certain about this?"

"Oh yeah," Joy nodded enthusiastically. "There's money coming in from banks all over the world – Switzerland, the Bahamas, Barbados, Nigeria, Luxembourg, all the countries with laws sympathetic to banks' privacy, but they're all going in three directions to Montreal, Rome, and Cairo, and Cairo gets the most money."

"That's indicative of Cairo being the priority base but hardly conclusive," Wesley commented as he followed Giles through the door.

"I know," Joy nodded again. "But there's also the emails going to and from Cairo from the other offices, I haven't been able to hack them, because they're mystically warded, BUT the traffic is usually to and from Cairo, Montreal and Rome very rarely interact with one another."

"I see what you're thinking," Wood nodded. "Only the chief station, in this case Cairo, that gives out the orders and generally controls things has to communicate with both of the other two." Joy nodded again.

"Excellent work," Giles praised, the eldest Watcher's eyes narrowing. "Now we have to do something about these three offices."

Montreal

The abandoned prison had seen many atrocities in its blood-stained two century old history, but all those came to an end when its steel-railinged doors crashed open, and Xander strode in. The three assassins in the alcove by the entrance dived out in an attempted ambush that ended seconds before it had truly begun, Xander tearing through his enemy before looking over his shoulders to his companions loitering in the shadows outside. "Come on guys," he whispered. "Time we put the Order out of business."

Rome

Wood splintered upwards as green light exploded out through the floor, Oz and Harri leaping out onto the floor, light-sabres buzzing into life as Jonathan levitated above them, their enemies racing in around them.

Cairo

Lightning flashed, crashing into and through the pyramid's rear entrance as Alonna Gunn flew into view, Faith flying in behind, a fully shielded Kate Lockley in her Witchblade's armour. Another lightning bolt hit the troops racing out of the pyramid's rear, but in reality, there was another team heading into the pyramid through another entrance, a sewer, to kill the Order's leader. Their job was just distraction.

Cordy and Gunn crept through the shadowy corridors, battle's chaotic roar permeating down through the levels above. An armoured knight stepped out of the darkness in front of them, but Gunn put him down with an overhand right to the jaw that snapped his neck. "Looks like the bottom," Gunn whispered as he peered up at the dead end, a ten foot high and wide stone door barring their way.

"Then let's make a way in," Cordelia's heel slammed into the thick stone, the impact echoed up her muscled thigh, but the door gave way before her ferocious power, imploding inwards in a spray of dust. The chamber inside was vast, and lit by brass braziers dangling from the high ceiling, flames flickering and incense wafting around.

The demon was tall, towering an easy three feet over the six foot plus Gunn and its thickly muscled physique was covered in green scales. Its sinewy arms ended in lobsterish pinchers that hung almost to the ground, while its elephantine legs were bow-legged, and trios of foot-high spikes grew out of its vault-wide shoulders. The creature's head was square like a box, sprouting out of a tree-trunk thick neck. Tusks grew out of the sides of its toothy maw while a horn curved out of the centre of its head between glowing red eyes.

The creature's half-moon shaped wings unfurled behind its back as they strode into its lair. "Wonderful." Its forked tongue snaked out of its mouth then flew back in. "It's so rare for my dinner to walk in without an escort."

"Yeah?" Gunn grinned at the massive monster. "And other than ugly, who the hell are you?"

"HA!" The demon's laugh seemed to suck most of the air out of the vast basement, the floor almost shaking beneath it as it stepped towards them. "I am Licentia, the Chaos God who created the Order to further my dreams of destruction and carnage. Blood and fire! Civilisations pulled down! Kingly reigns ended! Wars started!"

"Wow, even as demons go you're a long-winded one." Cordelia snarked as she rolled her head from side to side. "Our friends are busy pulling your castle to pieces, which leaves us to deal with you."

"YOU!" Flames burst from Licentia's gaping maw, engulfing them both. Cordy winced as her and Gunn's clothes burnt away from them, the flames failing to burn either of them. It was lucky that both of them had nothing to be ashamed of in the body department, imagine if it was Giles or someone else.

Ewwww, scary mental image.

"How!" the demon reared back, eyes widening.

"The human race has evolved." Gunn smirked. "And you just became obsolete." Her boyfriend leapt forward, gliding under a back-handed pincher to deliver a scale-cracking punch to the gut. The monster stumbled backwards then let out a roar, its pincher swinging down to crash on her boyfriend's head.

"Uhhh!" Cordy's eyes widened as Gunn crumpled. Her heart thundered as she launched herself into the air, flying fists first into the demon's face.

"AHHHH!" Licentia's face collapsed inwards, bones shattering as Cordy crashed blow after blow into its face, until blood dripped from her knuckles. The pincher crashed into her chest, knocking her into the far wall with enough force to crack it.

Even as Cordelia pulled herself out of the wall, Gunn leapt up and at the monster, ducking under a pincher swing then coming up in time to slam a heel into the beast's nearest knee then dive in, hooking his arms around its thigh only to be kicked off and into the wall, but by then Cordy was up and charging into the fight, leaping into the air to continue her attack.

"Owww!" Cordy squealed as a serrated pincher cut into her right leg, the blood flow to her lithely-muscled thigh cut off, but ignored the punishing constriction to kick the demon full in the throat with her free leg.

The demon crashed into the wall, but began rising only for Cordy to crash down on its chest, her fists a blur as she pummelled the thing to death.

"Looks like you didn't need me, honey."

Cordy looked up at her naked boyfriend and grinned. "It's always nice to have the eye candy."

A red rose in the young man's dark cheeks. "Let's find some clothes shall we?"

Cordy grinned. "Spoilsport."

Faith bit her nails between increasingly nervous glances at her watch. She'd been dreading this all day, hoping against hope that some crisis or other would come up. But when she wanted, really, really wanted trouble, nothing happened. With the Order gone, they were having a moment of peace.

Typical of her shitty luck.

Faith sighed and looked up at the sound of a tinted windowed, chrome-grilled SUV pulling outside. "Might as well get this over with," she muttered before picking up her wallet and stuffing it into her denim jacket's pocket then hurrying out of the house to be greeted by an opening door.

"Come on!" Cordelia bossily exclaimed as she beckoned her towards the filled to capacity vehicle. "The mall's already open, shopping time's wasting!"

"And isn't that a crime?" Faith muttered as she hurried towards the car, chest fluttering nervously at the thought of 'bonding' with other girls.

Still, friends would be nice.

"Ms. Post, I trust you're ready to demonstrate how your weapons training is going?"

"Of course," Post bit back her nervousness at Travers' demand. "Agent Hesketh is using the Grievous Gauntlet." Post looked towards Hesketh, the agent wearing a pair of forearm-long grey leather gloves. "Agent Hesketh?" The sandy crew-cutted man nodded brusquely before punching through a six inch paving tile. "The Gauntlet can crush stone and punch through a bank vault's door without any harm to its wielder's muscles and skeletal structure."

"Agent Leonard," Post looked towards a mohawked black with one eye covered by a patch, "has been practicing with the Staff Of Alaric, a staff powered by a dozen druids sacrificed on the altar of a Roman mage. Its can control the elements, expel blasts of wind, fire flames and ice, control water." Post smiled. "Leonard?"

Leonard pointed the waist-high, ebony-wooded staff at a gunmetal-grey filing cabinet that promptly flew eighteen feet to crash into a wall at the far end of the vast basement.

"Impressive," Travers looked towards Post. "Who's next?"

"Agent Carson has Soulsword," Post glanced towards a swarthy, thick-set black in his mid-thirties with deep-set grey eyes. "A sword capable of slicing through armour, stone, and bone."

"It also causes battle rage, its wielder is unable to feel pain, correct?" Travers queried.

"As long as he has the sword in his grasp he's invulnerable to pain, although any injury he suffers is immediately felt once the sword is either out of his hands or no longer scabbarded by him."

"The Thunderclap gloves embody just the powers suggested by them," Post pointed to a short, bald-headed man with a scar on his chin and a flattened nose wearing a pair of forearm-length leather gloves. "Agent Knepper has found clapping his gloves together can cause directed concussive blasts, lightning bolts, and flame gusts." At her nod, Knepper slammed his hands together, orange fire leaping six foot from them.

"The Helm Of Davros," Post looked towards a tall, lean man with cool grey eyes and a hooked nose. "When Agent Anderson began using the helm, he could barely control a single vampire, now he can control half a dozen Kaliffs at once."

"Agent Oski has been using Caliburn's Chain," Post moved onto the next agent, a thick-set Oriental with broad shoulders, thick limbs, and a fat belly. "As you see the chain now, it's barely a foot long, but Oski can will it to twenty times its length. He can also will one end to be a spike so it can be used as a flail, or stiffen it so it serves as an unbreakable staff, use it as a lasso, or break the chain off into its component links which then become shuriken-like blades, then reform them back into normal links merged back in the chain."

"Agent Starr has been using Satan's Sword." Post looked towards a tall, muscular man with intense blue eyes, blond crew-cut hair, and a square jaw with a broadsword with a four foot long red blade. "The sword fires hellfire from its tip and imbues great resistance to injury and strength to its wielder."

"Then there's Agent Bennett who uses Jericho's Horn," Post looked towards the team's only female agent, a tall, thin woman with angular features and prematurely grey hair clasping to a hollowed out bone horn. "Which has very unique sonic powers including being able to produce sonic shockwaves and sonic forcefields."

"However," Post moved to the last of her men, a square-jawed black with a receding hairline and deep-set but intense grey eyes, "I saved the best for last. Agent Turner has the Rings Of Power – Ice Blast, Firepower, Mindbreaker, Roar, Magneto, Blinding, Teleportation, and Concussion. Each ring has an unique power but only one can be used at any one time."

"An impressive array," Travers mused. "I want you ready to move against the rebels in a month. Work out your tactics and practice, practice people."