RED
A/N
Hi guys!
Well, it's official! This story now has over 100 reviews!!! ONE HUNDRED!!!!!!!!!! That's an awfully long and loud WOOHOO from me there folks!
I finally think I'm beginning to get the hang of Spiderman's one-liners. Let me know what you guys think 'kay?
Paru-chan: I take it you liked? *lol* :-D
Arekanderu: Quick enough for ya? :-)
SpitefulHope: Corny lines are the coolest! Except, of course, when they're blatantly lame. Such as "Do you know what happens to a Toad when it gets stuck by lightening? The same thing that happens to everything else!" *yawn* Oh Joss, how could you do that! On the plus side, "Prove it." "You're a dick." "Okay." kinda redeemed him.
Angeleyes: Voila!
ColdFang: I'm glad!
Dark Topaz: Two reviews begging me to write more? *blushes* Yay! And witness! Moreage! *grins*
Anyway, that's about all I got to say this time round. Talk to you all soon!
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…Spiderman pushed Willow from behind a split second before the gunshot rang out. Willow crashed into the opposite corridor wall and fell to the floor.
She shook her head to clear it, and then looked for the gunman.
His finger was tightening on the trigger…
Peter grabbed the woman with his webbing and yanked her back through the open doorway as a second shot rang out.
"Are you okay?" He asked her.
"I'm fine." She replied and closed her eyes for a brief second. "I hate guns." She told him.
Peter smiled, as she lay sprawled at his feet. "I could get used to this." He commented.
Willow frowned and then realised what a compromising position she was in. She jumped to her feet.
"I haven't heard any more gunshots." She pointed out. "And he hasn't come looking for us."
Willow and Spiderman looked at one another and then quickly poked their heads around the corner.
The gunman was dead. His gun had backfired and killed him.
Willow felt sick. It was the first human being she had ever killed. It didn't matter that she hadn't meant to. Perhaps if she had paid more attention to Xander, she would have known what would happen when she sealed the barrel of his gun. Everything that the newspapers were saying about her was true.
Willow began to sink deeper and deeper into her guilt. Given a few more seconds, she probably would have sunk deep enough not to notice what happened next. Which was why it was fortunate that it happened when it did…
The man jumped back up with a snarl and straightaway Peter could see that his face wasn't normal. It was all bumpy and was it just his imagination or did the man have fangs? Actual, honest to God, fangs?
He leaped up onto the ceiling and examined the man from his vantage point.
Nope. It wasn't his imagination.
"I'm sorry." He said to the man. "But I'm afraid you can't resurrect without a permit. Can I see your papers?"
The man growled… actually growled, and leapt at Peter. He missed by about a foot.
"Aw, c'mon!" Peter grinned. "You can do better than that." He held out an imaginary bone, just beyond the man's reach. "Here doggy. Good boy! C'mon boy, you can do it. Beg!"
The man gave an almighty leap and wrapped his fingers around Peter's wrist, using his weight to yank him off of the ceiling.
Peter landed with a bone-jarring thump.
"Ow." He commented. "Note to self. No more tormenting bad guys."
The man grinned and leant down towards Peter's neck before exploding into dust.
When the dust settled Peter made out the figure of the woman helping him, standing in the middle of the corridor, tapping something on her palm.
He sprang to his feet and opened his mouth.
"Vampire." The woman informed him before he had a chance to ask. "Bog standard villain where I come from."
"Transylvania?"
The woman laughed. "I'm willing to bet that the rest of these guys are vampires, so we're probably going to need more stakes." She tossed the piece of wood she carried to Peter and glanced down at her hands.
Peter's eyes widened as two more pieces of wood appeared in her hands. "Ready to kick some demon butt?" The woman asked before striding away.
Peter look down at the pieces of wood he held in his hands. Vampires? But still, with the dust and all. Talking of dust…
"Hey!" He called, hurrying after the woman. "One question."
"Shoot." The woman said, still walking.
"Is this dust in any way hazardous to my health?"
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Angel settled his son down in the crib just as a knock came at the door.
"Come on in." He called, tucking the covers more securely around Connor. "It's okay." He told the small baby. "Shh. I'll get you some food. You're hungry, aren't you?" He nodded to Wesley who had just entered and walked over to the kitchenette. "Have a nice walk?" He asked the former Watcher, lighting the gas stove at the same time. "How're you doing? Really?"
"I've had better days." Wesley told him hesitantly.
Angel grinned; setting a bottle into a pot of water that was beginning to boil on the stove. "I know the feeling." He turned to Wesley. "I figured it out." Angel moved over to a chair and started folding baby clothes. "How I knew about Aubrey." He elaborated. "All that pain, that rage… the only way she could deal was to join Holtz, take her revenge." He placed the shirt he was folding down and leaned forward, lightly clasping his hands together. "You know how I knew that?" He asked.
Wes sat down next to Angel. "Because you would have done the same." He said simply.
"It scares me. You know?" Angel said, starting to fold the clothes again. "If anything like that ever happened to Connor, I don't know what I'd…" Angel stared down at the laundry in his hands, lost for words. "I love my son."
"Love can be a terrible thing." Wesley told him, his mind flashing back to the prophecy he had just uncovered. 'The Father shall kill the Son'.
"I used to think that." Angel said. "I thought love was… something that swallowed you whole, ripped you up inside, but, you know, what I feel for Connor, even that fear… Wes, it's – it's not terrible. It's beautiful."
Wesley looked at Angel, and then down at his hands. He began to laugh quietly as the weight of the terror he had been carrying began to lift. Angel could no more kill his own son than he could fly! He looked up at Angel, grinning his head off.
Angel smiled back, mystified. "What's so funny?" He asked, getting up to check on the bottle.
"Life." Wesley told him. "Life is funny. Listening to stupid people talking to hamburgers is funny. Worrying about things that will never… It's all so incredibly funny and… and beautiful."
Angel smiled absently at Wesley as he dried off the bottle. Maybe Wes had gone mad or something. He was definitely spending too much time locked in the office with his books.
Suddenly, an earthquake hit. Pots and pans began to fall out of the cupboards and Angel braced himself.
The lit stove toppled over and a huge column of flame shot out, throwing Angel across the room. Despite this, he still managed to hang on to Connor's bottle.
A burning beam fell from the ceiling, cutting Connor and Angel off from Wesley.
Angel ran to Connor's crib, his child's safety paramount in his mind. He gathered small baby up.
"Come on kid." He told him as, with a mighty leap, he jumped over the beam, heading for the door.
Before he reached it's relative safety however, he noticed Wesley just standing there, staring into the flames.
"Wesley!" He called. "Get out!"
Wesley continued to stand there. Angel grabbed a hold of him and threw him out into the hallway before hurrying after him. Just in time as another chunk of ceiling came crashing down where they had been standing.
Wesley began to cough and pulled himself up into a sitting position, leaning against the wall.
Connor was bawling his eyes out.
"It's okay." Angel said to Connor, trying to soothe the screaming child. "It's okay. It's alright." Even so, he was stricken at how close he had come to losing his son.
"Earthquake. Fire. Blood." Wesley mumbled to himself, but Angel, even with his supernatural hearing didn't hear him. He was too busy trying to come to terms with how close Connor had just come to death.
"I thought we were gonna be trapped in there, huh?" He said to Wesley, trying to vocalise his fears. He looked down at the blanket Connor was wrapped in, partially soaked in blood from a cut on his forehead. "At least I would have had something to snack on."
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Still hyper-sensitive about the recent events in Sunnydale Mall, Willow had managed to convince Spiderman that it would be best if they dealt with the vampires stealthily, rather than charging into the room where the hostages were being held and annihilating all vamps on sight.
So far, they had managed to take out five of the vampires. But they had no idea how many vampires there actually were and it looked as though they'd finally wised up that their people weren't coming back, because there were no more to be found roaming the corridors.
So, as Spiderman had just rightly pointed out, it looked as though the only option left to them was to storm the citadel.
But that didn't mean that Willow had to like it.
These city vampires were just a little too high-tech for her. Whoever heard of a vampire carrying a piece? Did Angel have to put up with this kind of thing? What, were they ghetto vamps or something?
Willow and Spiderman reached the room that the vampires were keeping their hostages in. Willow focused her mutant powers and the door vanished into thin air.
Straight away they were embroiled in action as about ten vampires attacked them.
Remembering what had happened in Sunnydale, Willow was sure to make a point of stabbing them in the chest, instead of dissolving them as she had done before. That way, when the vampires dusted, there was no way anyone could say she'd killed humans.
She glanced over at Spiderman to see how he was doing.
Peter sat on the ceiling, a fine collection of guns, and his camera, webbed next to him. He dropped back down, grabbing a vampire by the neck as he fell, and pulling him backwards. The vampire fell to the ground and Peter took advantage of his weakened state to stake him. Another of the vampires roared and charged at him. Peter casually sidestepped and staked him in the back. He dusted.
Peter grinned. He was getting the hang of this whole vampire thing.
Willow grinned. Spiderman was doing just fine. She staked another vamp.
"That'll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo!" She said triumphantly. She looked around, curious to see if anyone else had noticed her achievement and was greeted by the perplexed stares of about twelve people. Even the vampires had stopped trying to fight in order to look confused.
"It's an in-joke, okay?" She said exasperatedly.
The confused expressions cleared up and fighting officially resumed.
Peter chuckled. He was going to like this new girl. He staked the last of the fighting vampires and turned around to see the leader holding a gun to a hostage's throat.
"Come one step closer and I'll blow her head off." He warned.
"Now that would just be silly." Peter told him. "Whose skirts would you hide behind then?" He asked.
Willow moved closer to Spiderman and concentrated.
The vampire's gun turned into pine.
"What the…?" He said. "How the f-"
"Simple." Willow cut him off. "On a subatomic level, molecules are constantly being created and destroyed. It is possible to manipulate them so that you can make something disappear, appear or change into something else entirely. Did you get all of that, or do you want me to write it down for you so you can look up the words?"
"What are you going to hide behind now?" Spiderman asked.
The vampire leaned in closer to the woman's neck, his fangs delicately touching her throat.
Willow shook her head at him.
"Bad vampire." She told him as his canines went the way of his gun.
The vampire whimpered and let go of the woman to feel his teeth. The woman fled to the opposite side of the room and Spiderman promptly staked the vampire.
Willow turned to the costumed superhero.
"Nice working with you." She said, holding out her hand.
Spiderman shook hands with her; the two of them left the room together and went their separate ways.
Willow retrieved her clothing, killing the vampire that they had left in the locker room by mistake, and changed back into her street clothes before crawling back through the sewer and finding Eddie.
Once found, Eddie took some convincing to allow her inside his cab, but he eventually gave in when Willow told him that she had seen Spiderman and wanted to join Eddie's fan club.
Peter was lost. Again. There was just something about the ventilation system in this building…
Next time he went out he was taking some sharp wooden objects. Maybe a crucifix or five. And some garlic. And holy water. Lots of holy water. And a map of this ventilation system!