Back at the factory...
Xander Harris stood inside the hulking structure, his expression one of extreme annoyance at the two now-vanished Slayers that had taken off without even one thought of asking his opinion.
"So much for me being in charge..."
He sullenly stalked toward the front door of the pretend textile mill, "I don't get no respect, let tell you, no respect at all."
"Aw, Faith still respects you," counseled Ariel behind him, "don't hack it, Xander, she's just a bit bullheaded."
"A bit bullheaded?" he sidestepped the ruined door they'd downed to get inside and closed on the exit, "Ari, she's got horns and a ring through her nose."
"Wow, exaggerate much?" Ariel asked as they stepped free of the empty building.
He grinned over at her, "Heh, you're getting to be more like an honorary Sunnydale native every day."
"I'm sorry I'll never see the place." she frowned.
"No you're not, trust me. Hellmouths are no fun...at...all..." he trailed off at the site suddenly before him. He slipped a hand fast under his coat and typed a quick command into the multiscanner hanging from his hip.
Ariel halted with him on the factory's cement stairs and together they stared down at the line of leather-clad Oranak vampires waiting for them, fangs glinting and yellow eyes shinning like headlamps.
"Oh look, Ariel," Xander remarked sarcastically, "the Marilyn Manson lookalike competition has started, and you forgot your costume."
"That's me," she shrugged, "always coming unprepared."
"Speak for yourself." and he threw back his jacket, the cold black steel of the shotgun emerging in a blur and then he was holding it before him one-handed. His lips twisted into a grin, "Hasta la vista." and he fired nearly point-blank.
The vamp in the middle bucked back a step as he caught the shell square in the chest. Then he recovered and grinned. The other vamps chuckled darkly, the one hit the loudest, "You really didn't think that could stop us, did you?"
"Wait for it." Xander said.
And then the vampire threw back his head and howled as he suddenly exploded into pearly ash!
...
...The other Oranaks shrank away from the thinning dust cloud as the rumble of the very explosive dusting faded from their eardrums. The closest one's jaw sagged, "Wha-How?" she gawked, "What the heck just happened?"
"Essence of holy water, enhanced with fulminated wood particles." explained Xander as he stalked down the steps, "My own private recipe, I packed the shells myself. For real this time." he jacked another round into the chamber, his hands moving slowly and fluidly on the lever, as if he'd done it a thousand times. The ker-chack was thunderous in the parking lot.
"For real?" the vampiress asked in confusion.
"Sorry, wrong world and a different vamp." he leveled the shotgun at her face, "Same result though." BOOM! her head detonated in a gooey spray.
Four vamps in the back looked at each other and instantly formed the decision that they should pursue the two Slayers who had split four minutes earlier. As one they crouched then sprang into the air, morphing into bat-form in a rush of liquid flesh. They soared high and vanished into the night sky.
The rest lacked that particular Discipline, so they stayed on the ground. But not in the same shape.
Xander plunged into the middle of the group and Ariel vaulted off the steps to land back-to-back with him, as the remaining six vampires shuddered and howled, then fell to their hands-and-knees. As they transmogrified into night-wolves, the Succubus raised strobing fists and her eyes flashed incarnadine, "Kill'em all!" she declared.
Xander loved the sound of that as he rapidly fed new shells into Elsabelle from his jacket pocket, "You know what they say: if you can't lower Heaven..." he leveled the shotgun and took aim, "...then RAISE HELL!"
KA-BOOM!
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Just pulling onto Broadway...
The big Harley 1380cc FatBoy centered then thundered up New York City's most famous boulevard.
At the helm was a person who by any normal rights had no business being behind the handlebars of such a demanding vehicle. But she was far from a normal person. Her name was Faith and she was a Slayer. No, more then that, she was the Slayer, the truly Chosen One. The only woman on Earth still in her first granted life to be picked by the fates to wield the mystical strengths allowing her to stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness.
What she wasn't aware of though, was the one major difference between her and the rest of the 'enhanced' young women. Unlike her, their power had been granted them by a white wicca during the planet's last most desperate hour. They had her strength, her agility, her unnatural talents for hand-to-hand combat and weapons.
But the one thing she could do which was beyond them, was pass her destiny onto a new host. For when the two hundred plus women now playing at what Faith was born to do were dead and buried, only she would have a successor. And despite all the mistakes she had made in her six years as a supernaturally-charged warrior, she was still worthy of the title. The title of
"SLAYER!" screeched the bat-Hybrid in the lead, as the four of transmogrified vamps soared down toward her, casting hulking pterodactyl shadows across the eight lanes of ash-black asphalt.
Faith heard them come, spied their disgusting shapes in her side mirrors as they spread into a kite-formation and closed. And she did not waver.
The girl behind her did, though.
"Holy crap!" Claudia nearly screeched as she peered back over her shoulder. She tightened her grip around Faith's narrow waist and fought not to shudder, "They're coming Faith, what are we gonna do?"
"What we were born to do." she snarled and bent lower over the handlebars. She twisted the throttle and they jetted forward, the engine roaring between their thighs, "We're gonna SLAY!"
Even though this only her second time on a motorcycle, Faith was a natural on the Harley. During the trip toward Madison Square she had taken every shortcut she could find, no matter how twisting or narrow. She had leaned comfortably into all the corners, always ready for any pedestrian that might suddenly lurch into view, yet willing to take calculated risks for the sheer exhilaration of it. But now playtime was over and these airborne ghouls were putting themselves between her and getting to Hope before Rayne fed her to whatever monster his chaos-warped mind was about to dredge up from who knows what hell dimension.
That's their first and last mistake...
She zigged into an opening in the night traffic and zagged into the narrow gap separating the center lanes, then twisted the right grip all the way. The Harley's powerful engine was fed maximum throttle and it surged ahead, reaching eighty in three seconds. Claudia screamed and buried her face in Faith's hair. The Slayer grinned and looked to the mirror again.
"Duck!" and she pressed low, Claudia instantly following suit. The lead vamp swooped down, it's claws raking over them by inches, then it was past and rocketing up the middle gap ahead.
He began to rise but Faith was ready. She let go with on hand, seized the M-79 from it's cradle amongst the cables, aimed and clicked off a grenade.
Ka-CHUNK! The blooper lurched in her grip and it's muzzle blazed yellow, ejecting a shell at 75 meters per second. It screamed down the lane and struck the winged vamp just as it was beginning to swoop back upwards. It detonated into a tangerine fireball five meters in diameter and a moment later the Harley flashed through it, Faith whooping all the way.
Then they were past and Claudia was raising her head in awe, "Did...did you just do what I think you do? I mean did?"
"You bet your ASS!" and Faith opened the launcher and up-ended it, dumping the used copper casing. She let go of the handlebars with her other hand just for a second and dug out a second shell, jammed it in then snapped the breech closed with a flick of her wrist. She handed it over her shoulder to Claudia then grasped the grips two-handed again.
The younger Slayer gaped at the shotgun-shaped weapon she now held. She dug at Faith's stomach with her other hand and looked at the back of her head, "Are you nuts? I don't know what to do with this!"
"Neither did I twenty minutes ago. But you're a Slayer like me, we just know weapons, it's in our blood." she whipped them back into the right-hand lane and zigged past the rear bumper of a yellow cab, then bent to the left and dropped them into a new free section. The technicolor lights of Broadway slurred by at Eighty mph on either side, the wind in their faces was awesome.
"Now, remember, you've only got one shot with that thing, so make it count."
"Um, okay." and Claudia used her teeth to flip up the sight situated half way down the barrel.
Faith heard the metallic snick with her sharp ears and scowled as she adjusted the bike's shifter, "NO! No sights! No targeting aids!"
"Wha-What?"
"You heard me, kid! You're a Slayer, will ya just listen to me? Or do ya got corn husks stuffed between those oversized Indiana ears of yers instead of brains?"
"Hey! Watch the pokes at my home state!"
"Then you stop being a damn moron and DO WHAT I TELL YOU! Aim clean!"
"Fine!" and Claudia tongued the metal rectangle back into it's brace, "Are you happy now?"
"Ecstatic. Vamp on the right."
"What?" and Claudia wrenched around in time to see a flapping shape barnstorm sideways through the narrow gap between a rig and it's trailer, then it righted and screeched supersonic at them. She threw up her arm and yanked the trigger. The launcher jerked and the side of the trailer exploded.
And the vamp she'd missed by inches kept on coming.
"Sonofa-hold on!" Faith wrenched them to the left, went into a radical lean and brodied around the rear of a Volkswagen. The Hybrid screamed down at them, missed them by an inch and smashed through the passenger-side window of the Jetta. As the two women on the bike slid sideways and away, threatening to go down all the way, the car spun out of control and rammed into the side of a tow truck, bowling the larger vehicle into the next lane. It slammed into a corvette and everything went crazy as the cars piled up and new cars rammed into the radically growing heap over-and-over!
Faith pulled hard on the handlebars, nearly bending them with her fantastic strength, and managed to gain enough height to drive her boot down into the asphalt. Immediately they righted and the motorcycle fishtailed around in a whir that made Claudia's head spin, then they clanked to a stop facing backwards, the bike's frame vibrating dangerously beneath them.
The pile of cars exploded into a brimstone-driven thunderclap and metal shrapnel whizzed in all directions. Faith ducked her head fast to the right and a piece buzzed past her ear and buried itself in the left lense of Claudia's goggles. She shrieked and yanked them off, tossed them away. She looked back to the jagged burning carnage and felt like she was going to vomit.
"Did...did I do...did I do that..."
"No." Faith replied, her voice cool and commanding, then she looked skyward to the two remaining Hybrids looping and winging above the rising black mushroom cloud.
"They did it. All you did was miss one. So don't ever miss again. You hear me!"
"Yes!" Claudia nodded so hard her neck cracked.
Faith looked round at her, her eyes and oval face reflecting the fire of the blaze, casting her in a satanic light that the young Slayer would not forget as long as she lived.
"When we miss, when a Slayer misses, people die. This is the last lesson I'm going to teach you, do you understand? Do you?"
"Yes." Claudia replied solemnly.
"Good." said Faith, "Now get off the bike and I'll finish it."
"Okay." Claudia swung her leg over and stepped gingerly onto the pavement. Faith took back the launcher and slung it over her shoulder.
"You wanted to be a Slayer and that's the final test. When you see all the horror that this world is really filled with and you still want to use the powers you've been granted to fight them, then that means you're ready." Jeez, I sound like Buffy, but you know what? Maybe I finally get what she was tryin to do...
She gave the younger girl a rare smile of encouragement, "In the old days you never had another Slayer to tell you what's-what, so you're lucky."
"I know..." Claudia replied hoarsely.
"This world is a scary place and the worst thing somebody has to do is face it alone. But sometimes, kid, thats just the way it goes. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
"Good." and Faith grinned for a second, then drew her katanna and handed it over, "Great. 'Cause now you're going to have to do just that."
"I-I am?"
She nodded, "You are. I can't stay here any longer, I have to get to my sister and stop Rayne, too much is at stake. But those flying vamps need to be dusted right now, and I need you to distract them long enough so I can get away. Can you?"
"I can. Good-bye, Faith."
"Bye, Claude. Give'em hell." she turned away from her and did not look back. Faith flipped the choke and slammed the bike into gear. It lurched forward with a roar and she hurtled away, leaving the young teen behind. She vanished into the distance.
Claudia turned back and charged forward, lept onto the hood of a pick-up and climbed onto the roof, ignoring the driver's yells of protests. She looked to the night sky and waved the katanna madly over her head, "HEY!" she screamed in challenge at the top of her lungs, "HEY, you fang-toothed sonsabitches! Come and GET ME!"
They had already begun to loop off in Faith's direction, but now they spun back, the both of them, and they screeched at the top of their lungs as they plunged toward the diminutive sixteen year old. Every windshield and shop window for three blocks shattered under the Hybrid's ultrasonic barrage and they flung back their wings and spiraled down at a hundred miles an hour toward the truck.
And the Slayer stood her ground and let them come...
End of Part VI...