PREDATOR VS. SLAYER, PART 3
Title: Predator vs. Slayer, Part 3
Author: Gyrus
Email: gyrus1001@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the creation of Joss Whedon and the property of Fox Television. The story itself is my own.
Summary: A trio of alien hunters pursues the ultimate human prize.
Rating: PG, for violence.
Author's Notes: This story is set between seasons 4 and 5 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. The story is a serial; I plan to post one new part per week until the story is finished.
-----
Buffy and Riley cruised along a highway access road, sticking closely to the speed limit. If they were pulled over, the crossbow and medieval hand axe in the back seat would make for an awkward conversation with the highway patrol.
The two were heading for the state park on the outskirts of town. The park was mostly forest, and people would be few and far between. The idea was to keep anyone from getting caught in the crossfire when and if the bolt-hurling being who had nearly parboiled Buffy and Riley at the skating rink showed up.
Riley, who was driving, glanced at Buffy and pointed to his olive-drab knapsack in the back seat. "Want to unzip that and check my equipment?" Riley asked.
Ordinarily, Buffy would have made some clever response to Riley's unwitting double entendre, but the situation was too tense. They were about to face a foe about which they knew next to nothing save that it was very powerful and enjoyed taking human body parts as trophies.
Buffy grabbed the bag, unzipped it, and began rifling through the contents. "Let's see, camouflage jacket and pants, walkie-talkie, hand taser, retractable baton, and..." -- she fished a large, unfamiliar object from the bottom of the bag -- "whoa. A really big gun."
"Nine millimeter Beretta," Riley said. "I know you're not crazy about guns, but I figured, in the middle of the woods, there won't be too many innocent bystanders."
"Hey, you're talking to the gal who fired a rocket launcher in a shopping mall. When it comes to invisible demons with photon torpedoes, I don't mind having a little firepower on our side."
They drove the last few minutes of the trip in silence, until they turned into the dirt-and-gravel parking lot of Fisher State Park. They got out and grabbed their weapons, then Riley began to change into his camos.
"So, Rocket Gal, what's the strategy here?" Riley said, trying to be cheerful as he pulled on his olive-drab pants.
"We walk into the woods and wait for it to shoot at me," she said soberly.
"Will that work better for us than it did for General Custer?" Riley asked, anxiety creeping into his voice. He didn't mind taking risks himself, but the idea of Buffy in serious danger brought out the crazy in him.
"Look, whatever it is, it's gunning for the Slayer," Buffy responded. "So I get its attention. Then you shoot at it -- or towards it, anyway -- to make it keep its head down, while I circle around and nail it with the crossbow."
"That's a pretty good plan," Riley said.
"Thank you."
"Except for the fifty-fifty chance that you'll be fried where you stand."
"Believe me, I don't want to end up a McNugget. But come-and-get-me is the best plan we have. Unless you brought hummus."
"What?"
"Nothing. You about ready?"
Riley finished pulling on his camouflage clothing and put his weapons in their assigned places -- taser on his belt, retractable baton in its ankle holster, pistol in hand with an extra magazine inside his jacket. Buffy loosened her belt a notch and slipped the handle of the hand axe through so that it hung off her right hip. Then she loaded the crossbow and put a few extra quarrels in her jacket pocket.
With eyes peeled and ears perked, they headed into the woods.
They walked for perhaps fifteen minutes, then Riley looked at his watch. "Time to check in," he said, pulling his walkie-talkie from his pocket. He pushed the transmit button and said, "Riley to Giles, over."
He waited for a few seconds. There was no response.
"Giles, this is Riley, over." Again, there was nothing but static.
"Try your cell phone," Buffy suggested.
Riley pulled out his cellular phone and dialed Giles' number. The moment he pushed the SEND button, the phone's LCD read OUT OF RANGE.
"We're not out of range," Riley said. "I've made calls from this area before."
"So what do you think it is?" Buffy asked.
"I don't know. Did you notice how loud the static is from the walkie-talkie? It's like..."
"What?"
"Like we're being jammed."
Buffy felt something unpleasant in the pit of her stomach. "Riley, what the hell is going on? Demons aren't high-tech; most of them can't play Nintendo, much less jam radio signals."
"I know," Riley said. "What do you want to do?"
Buffy was divided. Part of her wanted to go back, get more information from Giles, get more weapons, get the Marines, for crying out loud. Riley could do it; he wasn't officially military anymore, but he still had friends who were.
But the other part of her defeated these arguments as quickly as they were formulated. Giles had already told her everything he knew; she and Riley already had their best weapons with them; and bringing in the government would be just as fruitless as the Initiative had been. They would come, and they would assume, as before, that they had control of the situation. And they would die.
Buffy looked at Riley, and he saw steel in her gaze.
"Let's get this done," she said.
Riley pulled back the slide on his Beretta and chambered a round. Then, silently, they moved further into the forest.
-----
Ghrall and Taghryn watched this scene from the top of a tall tree over half a mile away, using the telescopic function of their Huntmasks. They could hear none of what was said, but they could see that the humans had brought weapons, and that they had just made an attempt to use their wireless communications equipment.
"Now they know they are alone," Ghrall said. He patted the jamming device which hung from the tree branch behind them, drowning out all radio transmissions within its huge radius of effect. "They will not count on others to help them. Now the hunt begins in earnest."
Taghryn turned her head slowly to follow the humans' movements. The short barrel of the plasma weapon on her shoulder turned also, following her gaze.
"As leader of this hunt, you are entitled to your choice of prey," Taghryn said.
"I will take the female, of course," Ghrall replied.
"Then I will take the male for myself. He is large and strong-looking; his skull and vertebrae will hang nicely on the wall of our trophy den."
"There is artist in you, sibling," Ghrall said.
"The Hunt IS art," Taghryn responded. "Art, and science, and life itself."
There was nothing original in what Taghryn said; her statement merely summed up her people's driving philosophy. But, Ghrall knew, his sister's words were not mere reflections of what she had been taught. They came from her heart, her marrow. They were what she was.
"Then follow me," Ghrall said. He pushed off with his powerful legs and sailed through the air to another tree branch, then another, his sister close behind, and even Ghrall, cerebral as he was, could not deny the desire, the need, that flared within him.
The Hunt was calling them.
-----
Buffy was moving slowly through the trees, slowly panning her gaze over the forest in front of her, waiting for the slightest movement or the faintest sound. There were no squirrels or birds, not even a breeze to rustle the branches of the trees, only their footsteps, hers and Riley's. Buffy's ears rang with the silence.
And then she heard it. A deep creaking from somewhere above, as if a branch had suddenly been burdened with a great weight. As Buffy turned her head towards the sound, the dust in the air and the darkness of the heavy leaf cover enabled Buffy to see three narrow beams of red laser light sweeping as one towards her and Riley.
"DOWN!" she shouted.
Buffy's sudden cry startled Riley half out of his wits. He dropped and rolled behind a tree just in time to avoid a bolt of blue energy that exploded where he had been standing. Dry leaves on the ground ignited and floated into the air as more energy bolts followed. The blasts crashed into trees and scorched the ground; only the thick trunk of the tree that Riley was using for cover protected him.
Riley leaped halfway out from his protected position to scan for the enemy. He looked for only a split-second, just long enough to see that the deadly energy came from two separate locations in the branches above him. The ex-soldier ducked back under cover just as a blast struck the side of the tree where he had just been.
"Buffy!" Riley shouted above the din of the exploding blue bolts. "There are two of them!"
Riley ducked out from behind the tree again and fired a few rounds into the treetops, fanning the shots to increase his chances of a hit. He took cover again just in time to avoid being incinerated.
"I know!" Buffy shouted. She was faring no better. She had gotten off one blind shot with the crossbow, but it hadn't slowed the rapid succession of blasts from above.
She kept her eyes upward while her hands, guided by years of training and experience, loaded another bolt into the crossbow. They had finished pulling back the string when Buffy saw a roughly human-shaped outline leap from one branch to another, moving around to her side to get a better shot.
Her hands slapped a bolt into the crossbow and fired automatically. The bolt zipped to its nearly-invisible target and struck.
The creature gave an inhuman roar and leaped upwards, higher into the tree, to hide behind the trunk. The monster paused only for a moment before it began firing again.
The increased range and greater number of intervening branches hampered the being's accuracy, but they also made it impossible for Buffy to aim another shot. And trying to climb the tree would be suicide, Buffy thought.
"Riley!" she shouted. "We have to run!"
"Go!" Riley yelled. He ducked out and fired several more shots in the other creature's direction. The bullets hit nothing, but the threat they posed stopped the monster from shooting for a moment. As soon as Buffy was past him, Riley turned and ran as fast as his highly-conditioned body could carry him, back in the direction of the parking lot.
-----
Reghya perched high in another tree, observing the action. Once again, he found himself being terribly impressed by the prey. The female had sensed Ghrall's advance and avoided a quick death by the Hunter's plasma weapon, even though Ghrall had been as stealthy as possible in his approach. What was more, the human had actually struck Ghrall in the shoulder with one of its incredibly primitive projectiles.
Now, however, the human and its mate were fleeing, and Reghya's children were giving chase. Reghya followed, wanting to make sure that the digital recorders in his Huntmask didn't miss a single detail when Ghrall put his prey down.
-----
Buffy ran as fast as she could through the thick forest, Riley at her heels. She hoped they were going in the right direction. There were no landmarks to follow, and even the sun was blocked out by the thick canopy of leaves overhead.
Blue bolts flew at them from behind, striking all around; they burned trees and superheated the air. Because it was the height of summer, many of the trees were very dry, and readily caught fire when hit by the blasts of energy.
Smokey the Bear's going to be pissed, Buffy thought crazily as she crashed through the forest.
Suddenly, she heard a cry from behind her. Riley.
He was farther behind her now, limping madly towards her, his leg badly burned from a bolt that had struck too close behind him.
"Keep going!" he shouted, then turned and fired a few more blind shots at their pursuers.
But Buffy would have none of it. She ran back, slung Riley's arm around her shoulder, and forced him to keep pace with her as she half-dragged him towards the parking lot. Riley was getting weaker, and the blue bolts were striking closer and closer to their mark.
A familiar voice called from just ahead of her. "Buffy!"
She and Riley burst into the open, finding themselves back in the dirt and gravel of the parking lot. They also saw Xander, Giles, Anya, Willow, and Tara, standing near Giles' car, which was parked next to Riley's. They were all armed except for Tara; Giles and Willow had crossbows, and Xander and Anya had...guns?
An energy bolt struck the ground perhaps three feet to Buffy's right. Anya dropped to a kneeling position behind Giles' car and, with both hands, pointed a revolver towards the trees. She began firing, carefully and deliberately, in the general direction of the blast.
As Anya fired her pistol, Xander broke left and dropped to a prone position on the ground like a sniper. Riley had lost consciousness; with Tara's help, Buffy pushed Riley into the back seat of Giles' car. She turned just in time to see an outline-figure burst forth from the woods.
Suddenly, what appeared to be a bolt of yellow-white lightning sprang from the object in Xander's hands and hit the semi-invisible being dead on.
A blaster, Buffy thought -- Xander had an Initiative blaster!
The effect was incredible. The creature roared again, even louder than before, as electricity raced around its body. It fell to its knees as its invisibility failed, revealing the humanoid underneath.
It was like no creature Buffy had ever seen. It must have been eight feet tall, and it wore a mask that made it look serious and deadly. Its black hair, or what appeared to be hair, was braided into long cornrows that hung halfway down the creatures' back. A gun of some kind was mounted on the creature's right shoulder, projecting three laser beams that moved wherever the creature looked.
Anya pointed her revolver at the creature and pulled the trigger, but the hammer struck the firing pin without effect. All six chambers were empty.
Then a second shadowy outline emerged from the forest. As Xander turned his weapon to blast it, the creature threw a knife straight at Xander's head. Xander raised the blaster to protect himself, and the knife struck the blaster instead, causing it to spark in Xander's hands. Xander leaped to his feet and threw the weapon down, then ran toward Riley's car as the second creature grabbed its stunned companion under the arms and dragged it back into the woods.
"Buffy, come on!" Xander shouted. Buffy knew there wouldn't be room for her in Giles' car, so she grabbed Riley's keys out of his jacket pocket and sprinted to Xander's side. They leaped into Riley's car and took off right behind Giles, whose rusty old euro-bomber was moving as fast as its antiquated engine could manage.
Buffy accelerated and moved up next to Giles' car, then rolled down her window. Anya, who was in the back seat next to Tara, rolled down hers also.
"Whoo! Am I a badass or what?" Anya shouted. "I've watched all of Xander's Dirty Larry movies, but I never knew they were educational!"
"Harry, Anya, Harry!" Xander shouted for what Buffy guessed was not the first time in Xander's über-weird relationship with Anya.
"How is Riley?" Buffy called. She could see that he was still unconscious, probably from shock.
Tara, who was tending Riley, looked up. "It's a bad burn! W-we should get him to the hospital right now!"
Turning off the access road and onto the highway itself, they began the race to Sunnydale General.
-----
Ghrall grumbled as Reghya followed him into the drop ship. The human female's primitive projectile was still sticking out of Ghrall's shoulder. Reghya sat Ghrall down, mixed a healing salve from regen fluid and crushed granite, then pulled the bolt from Ghrall's shoulder and quickly applied the salve.
The pain Ghrall felt when the arrow came out was negligible compared to the anger he felt at himself. He had drastically underestimated the prey on several counts. For one thing, the female's senses were far sharper than he had expected. He had known that the female possessed strength and agility beyond what was normal for her species; he should have guessed that she might have other special abilities.
Furthermore, the humans had more advanced weaponry than the reports of other Hunters had led him to believe. The prone human's electrical weapon had melted the delicate circuitry of Ghrall's sight-shield well past the point of repair, even with Ghrall's considerable technical skills.
Worst of all, Ghrall had not realized how good the humans were at working together, and how fierce they could be in protecting one another.
But, angry though he was, Ghrall was excited, too. After all, the stronger the prey, the better the hunt.
Taghryn entered the drop ship, carrying the jamming device she had retrieved from the treetops. The device had been useful, but it was risky to employ it further; eventually, the humans would track the powerful jamming signal to its source, perhaps revealing the Hunters' presence in the process.
"So what now, sibling?" Taghryn asked.
"We must reacquire the prey," Ghrall said. "We will return to the settled area to look for it when night falls. My sight-shield is destroyed; I must use the darkness instead."
"And when we find the prey, what will we do if it is with its companions?"
"They are armed, capable creatures, Taghryn," Ghrall said, looking her in the eye. "We will kill them all."
END OF PART 3
Title: Predator vs. Slayer, Part 3
Author: Gyrus
Email: gyrus1001@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the creation of Joss Whedon and the property of Fox Television. The story itself is my own.
Summary: A trio of alien hunters pursues the ultimate human prize.
Rating: PG, for violence.
Author's Notes: This story is set between seasons 4 and 5 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. The story is a serial; I plan to post one new part per week until the story is finished.
-----
Buffy and Riley cruised along a highway access road, sticking closely to the speed limit. If they were pulled over, the crossbow and medieval hand axe in the back seat would make for an awkward conversation with the highway patrol.
The two were heading for the state park on the outskirts of town. The park was mostly forest, and people would be few and far between. The idea was to keep anyone from getting caught in the crossfire when and if the bolt-hurling being who had nearly parboiled Buffy and Riley at the skating rink showed up.
Riley, who was driving, glanced at Buffy and pointed to his olive-drab knapsack in the back seat. "Want to unzip that and check my equipment?" Riley asked.
Ordinarily, Buffy would have made some clever response to Riley's unwitting double entendre, but the situation was too tense. They were about to face a foe about which they knew next to nothing save that it was very powerful and enjoyed taking human body parts as trophies.
Buffy grabbed the bag, unzipped it, and began rifling through the contents. "Let's see, camouflage jacket and pants, walkie-talkie, hand taser, retractable baton, and..." -- she fished a large, unfamiliar object from the bottom of the bag -- "whoa. A really big gun."
"Nine millimeter Beretta," Riley said. "I know you're not crazy about guns, but I figured, in the middle of the woods, there won't be too many innocent bystanders."
"Hey, you're talking to the gal who fired a rocket launcher in a shopping mall. When it comes to invisible demons with photon torpedoes, I don't mind having a little firepower on our side."
They drove the last few minutes of the trip in silence, until they turned into the dirt-and-gravel parking lot of Fisher State Park. They got out and grabbed their weapons, then Riley began to change into his camos.
"So, Rocket Gal, what's the strategy here?" Riley said, trying to be cheerful as he pulled on his olive-drab pants.
"We walk into the woods and wait for it to shoot at me," she said soberly.
"Will that work better for us than it did for General Custer?" Riley asked, anxiety creeping into his voice. He didn't mind taking risks himself, but the idea of Buffy in serious danger brought out the crazy in him.
"Look, whatever it is, it's gunning for the Slayer," Buffy responded. "So I get its attention. Then you shoot at it -- or towards it, anyway -- to make it keep its head down, while I circle around and nail it with the crossbow."
"That's a pretty good plan," Riley said.
"Thank you."
"Except for the fifty-fifty chance that you'll be fried where you stand."
"Believe me, I don't want to end up a McNugget. But come-and-get-me is the best plan we have. Unless you brought hummus."
"What?"
"Nothing. You about ready?"
Riley finished pulling on his camouflage clothing and put his weapons in their assigned places -- taser on his belt, retractable baton in its ankle holster, pistol in hand with an extra magazine inside his jacket. Buffy loosened her belt a notch and slipped the handle of the hand axe through so that it hung off her right hip. Then she loaded the crossbow and put a few extra quarrels in her jacket pocket.
With eyes peeled and ears perked, they headed into the woods.
They walked for perhaps fifteen minutes, then Riley looked at his watch. "Time to check in," he said, pulling his walkie-talkie from his pocket. He pushed the transmit button and said, "Riley to Giles, over."
He waited for a few seconds. There was no response.
"Giles, this is Riley, over." Again, there was nothing but static.
"Try your cell phone," Buffy suggested.
Riley pulled out his cellular phone and dialed Giles' number. The moment he pushed the SEND button, the phone's LCD read OUT OF RANGE.
"We're not out of range," Riley said. "I've made calls from this area before."
"So what do you think it is?" Buffy asked.
"I don't know. Did you notice how loud the static is from the walkie-talkie? It's like..."
"What?"
"Like we're being jammed."
Buffy felt something unpleasant in the pit of her stomach. "Riley, what the hell is going on? Demons aren't high-tech; most of them can't play Nintendo, much less jam radio signals."
"I know," Riley said. "What do you want to do?"
Buffy was divided. Part of her wanted to go back, get more information from Giles, get more weapons, get the Marines, for crying out loud. Riley could do it; he wasn't officially military anymore, but he still had friends who were.
But the other part of her defeated these arguments as quickly as they were formulated. Giles had already told her everything he knew; she and Riley already had their best weapons with them; and bringing in the government would be just as fruitless as the Initiative had been. They would come, and they would assume, as before, that they had control of the situation. And they would die.
Buffy looked at Riley, and he saw steel in her gaze.
"Let's get this done," she said.
Riley pulled back the slide on his Beretta and chambered a round. Then, silently, they moved further into the forest.
-----
Ghrall and Taghryn watched this scene from the top of a tall tree over half a mile away, using the telescopic function of their Huntmasks. They could hear none of what was said, but they could see that the humans had brought weapons, and that they had just made an attempt to use their wireless communications equipment.
"Now they know they are alone," Ghrall said. He patted the jamming device which hung from the tree branch behind them, drowning out all radio transmissions within its huge radius of effect. "They will not count on others to help them. Now the hunt begins in earnest."
Taghryn turned her head slowly to follow the humans' movements. The short barrel of the plasma weapon on her shoulder turned also, following her gaze.
"As leader of this hunt, you are entitled to your choice of prey," Taghryn said.
"I will take the female, of course," Ghrall replied.
"Then I will take the male for myself. He is large and strong-looking; his skull and vertebrae will hang nicely on the wall of our trophy den."
"There is artist in you, sibling," Ghrall said.
"The Hunt IS art," Taghryn responded. "Art, and science, and life itself."
There was nothing original in what Taghryn said; her statement merely summed up her people's driving philosophy. But, Ghrall knew, his sister's words were not mere reflections of what she had been taught. They came from her heart, her marrow. They were what she was.
"Then follow me," Ghrall said. He pushed off with his powerful legs and sailed through the air to another tree branch, then another, his sister close behind, and even Ghrall, cerebral as he was, could not deny the desire, the need, that flared within him.
The Hunt was calling them.
-----
Buffy was moving slowly through the trees, slowly panning her gaze over the forest in front of her, waiting for the slightest movement or the faintest sound. There were no squirrels or birds, not even a breeze to rustle the branches of the trees, only their footsteps, hers and Riley's. Buffy's ears rang with the silence.
And then she heard it. A deep creaking from somewhere above, as if a branch had suddenly been burdened with a great weight. As Buffy turned her head towards the sound, the dust in the air and the darkness of the heavy leaf cover enabled Buffy to see three narrow beams of red laser light sweeping as one towards her and Riley.
"DOWN!" she shouted.
Buffy's sudden cry startled Riley half out of his wits. He dropped and rolled behind a tree just in time to avoid a bolt of blue energy that exploded where he had been standing. Dry leaves on the ground ignited and floated into the air as more energy bolts followed. The blasts crashed into trees and scorched the ground; only the thick trunk of the tree that Riley was using for cover protected him.
Riley leaped halfway out from his protected position to scan for the enemy. He looked for only a split-second, just long enough to see that the deadly energy came from two separate locations in the branches above him. The ex-soldier ducked back under cover just as a blast struck the side of the tree where he had just been.
"Buffy!" Riley shouted above the din of the exploding blue bolts. "There are two of them!"
Riley ducked out from behind the tree again and fired a few rounds into the treetops, fanning the shots to increase his chances of a hit. He took cover again just in time to avoid being incinerated.
"I know!" Buffy shouted. She was faring no better. She had gotten off one blind shot with the crossbow, but it hadn't slowed the rapid succession of blasts from above.
She kept her eyes upward while her hands, guided by years of training and experience, loaded another bolt into the crossbow. They had finished pulling back the string when Buffy saw a roughly human-shaped outline leap from one branch to another, moving around to her side to get a better shot.
Her hands slapped a bolt into the crossbow and fired automatically. The bolt zipped to its nearly-invisible target and struck.
The creature gave an inhuman roar and leaped upwards, higher into the tree, to hide behind the trunk. The monster paused only for a moment before it began firing again.
The increased range and greater number of intervening branches hampered the being's accuracy, but they also made it impossible for Buffy to aim another shot. And trying to climb the tree would be suicide, Buffy thought.
"Riley!" she shouted. "We have to run!"
"Go!" Riley yelled. He ducked out and fired several more shots in the other creature's direction. The bullets hit nothing, but the threat they posed stopped the monster from shooting for a moment. As soon as Buffy was past him, Riley turned and ran as fast as his highly-conditioned body could carry him, back in the direction of the parking lot.
-----
Reghya perched high in another tree, observing the action. Once again, he found himself being terribly impressed by the prey. The female had sensed Ghrall's advance and avoided a quick death by the Hunter's plasma weapon, even though Ghrall had been as stealthy as possible in his approach. What was more, the human had actually struck Ghrall in the shoulder with one of its incredibly primitive projectiles.
Now, however, the human and its mate were fleeing, and Reghya's children were giving chase. Reghya followed, wanting to make sure that the digital recorders in his Huntmask didn't miss a single detail when Ghrall put his prey down.
-----
Buffy ran as fast as she could through the thick forest, Riley at her heels. She hoped they were going in the right direction. There were no landmarks to follow, and even the sun was blocked out by the thick canopy of leaves overhead.
Blue bolts flew at them from behind, striking all around; they burned trees and superheated the air. Because it was the height of summer, many of the trees were very dry, and readily caught fire when hit by the blasts of energy.
Smokey the Bear's going to be pissed, Buffy thought crazily as she crashed through the forest.
Suddenly, she heard a cry from behind her. Riley.
He was farther behind her now, limping madly towards her, his leg badly burned from a bolt that had struck too close behind him.
"Keep going!" he shouted, then turned and fired a few more blind shots at their pursuers.
But Buffy would have none of it. She ran back, slung Riley's arm around her shoulder, and forced him to keep pace with her as she half-dragged him towards the parking lot. Riley was getting weaker, and the blue bolts were striking closer and closer to their mark.
A familiar voice called from just ahead of her. "Buffy!"
She and Riley burst into the open, finding themselves back in the dirt and gravel of the parking lot. They also saw Xander, Giles, Anya, Willow, and Tara, standing near Giles' car, which was parked next to Riley's. They were all armed except for Tara; Giles and Willow had crossbows, and Xander and Anya had...guns?
An energy bolt struck the ground perhaps three feet to Buffy's right. Anya dropped to a kneeling position behind Giles' car and, with both hands, pointed a revolver towards the trees. She began firing, carefully and deliberately, in the general direction of the blast.
As Anya fired her pistol, Xander broke left and dropped to a prone position on the ground like a sniper. Riley had lost consciousness; with Tara's help, Buffy pushed Riley into the back seat of Giles' car. She turned just in time to see an outline-figure burst forth from the woods.
Suddenly, what appeared to be a bolt of yellow-white lightning sprang from the object in Xander's hands and hit the semi-invisible being dead on.
A blaster, Buffy thought -- Xander had an Initiative blaster!
The effect was incredible. The creature roared again, even louder than before, as electricity raced around its body. It fell to its knees as its invisibility failed, revealing the humanoid underneath.
It was like no creature Buffy had ever seen. It must have been eight feet tall, and it wore a mask that made it look serious and deadly. Its black hair, or what appeared to be hair, was braided into long cornrows that hung halfway down the creatures' back. A gun of some kind was mounted on the creature's right shoulder, projecting three laser beams that moved wherever the creature looked.
Anya pointed her revolver at the creature and pulled the trigger, but the hammer struck the firing pin without effect. All six chambers were empty.
Then a second shadowy outline emerged from the forest. As Xander turned his weapon to blast it, the creature threw a knife straight at Xander's head. Xander raised the blaster to protect himself, and the knife struck the blaster instead, causing it to spark in Xander's hands. Xander leaped to his feet and threw the weapon down, then ran toward Riley's car as the second creature grabbed its stunned companion under the arms and dragged it back into the woods.
"Buffy, come on!" Xander shouted. Buffy knew there wouldn't be room for her in Giles' car, so she grabbed Riley's keys out of his jacket pocket and sprinted to Xander's side. They leaped into Riley's car and took off right behind Giles, whose rusty old euro-bomber was moving as fast as its antiquated engine could manage.
Buffy accelerated and moved up next to Giles' car, then rolled down her window. Anya, who was in the back seat next to Tara, rolled down hers also.
"Whoo! Am I a badass or what?" Anya shouted. "I've watched all of Xander's Dirty Larry movies, but I never knew they were educational!"
"Harry, Anya, Harry!" Xander shouted for what Buffy guessed was not the first time in Xander's über-weird relationship with Anya.
"How is Riley?" Buffy called. She could see that he was still unconscious, probably from shock.
Tara, who was tending Riley, looked up. "It's a bad burn! W-we should get him to the hospital right now!"
Turning off the access road and onto the highway itself, they began the race to Sunnydale General.
-----
Ghrall grumbled as Reghya followed him into the drop ship. The human female's primitive projectile was still sticking out of Ghrall's shoulder. Reghya sat Ghrall down, mixed a healing salve from regen fluid and crushed granite, then pulled the bolt from Ghrall's shoulder and quickly applied the salve.
The pain Ghrall felt when the arrow came out was negligible compared to the anger he felt at himself. He had drastically underestimated the prey on several counts. For one thing, the female's senses were far sharper than he had expected. He had known that the female possessed strength and agility beyond what was normal for her species; he should have guessed that she might have other special abilities.
Furthermore, the humans had more advanced weaponry than the reports of other Hunters had led him to believe. The prone human's electrical weapon had melted the delicate circuitry of Ghrall's sight-shield well past the point of repair, even with Ghrall's considerable technical skills.
Worst of all, Ghrall had not realized how good the humans were at working together, and how fierce they could be in protecting one another.
But, angry though he was, Ghrall was excited, too. After all, the stronger the prey, the better the hunt.
Taghryn entered the drop ship, carrying the jamming device she had retrieved from the treetops. The device had been useful, but it was risky to employ it further; eventually, the humans would track the powerful jamming signal to its source, perhaps revealing the Hunters' presence in the process.
"So what now, sibling?" Taghryn asked.
"We must reacquire the prey," Ghrall said. "We will return to the settled area to look for it when night falls. My sight-shield is destroyed; I must use the darkness instead."
"And when we find the prey, what will we do if it is with its companions?"
"They are armed, capable creatures, Taghryn," Ghrall said, looking her in the eye. "We will kill them all."
END OF PART 3