ACT THREE

            "Die?"  Spike scoffed with a furrowed brow.  He was anticipating some big long denunciation of his getting a soul and becoming good and talking about how his death would be the first herald of a long apocalypse.  He was left feeling cheated.

            "Die."  The eldest of the Ellis brothers echoed the comment of the youngest.  The three vampire brothers began to circle him like vultures circling their prey.  Spike was not phased by this approach.  He had faced off against multiple enemies before, many a great deal more intelligent than the Ellis brothers were.  He grinned, keeping eye contact with whichever of the three brothers was in front of him at the time.  "Come on now, surely whoever you're working for could think of a better speech to give, something to strike fear into my heart."

            "We'll put more than fear in your heart Spike," the middle Ellis brother tried his best to be intimidating.  Spike laughed, slowly reaching his hand into the pocket of his jacket, reaching for the stake he had concealed in it for just this type of occasion.

            "Now, now boys," Spike maintained his alarmingly calm composure despite the three homicidal demons circling him.  "Surely there's another way we can handle this.  I doubt you really want to try to kill your old buddy Spike."

            "You're not our friend," the youngest brother spoke up first.  "We don't associate with the types that have souls and fall in love with Slayers, all two of them."

            "I knew that whole Slayer mess would come back to haunt me," Spike mocked wryly.  "You know it wasn't really my fault," Spike was beginning to wonder how long is whole charade of killing time would last before the Ellis brothers grew tired of it.  "If it wasn't for some government chip in my head, I would have killed the bitch a long time before I up and fell in love with her."

            "We don't want to hear your excuses Spike," the middle brother's voice was grim, indicating to Spike that they were finished playing.  "We only want you to die."

            "All right then," Spike's tone noticeably changed as the vampire became deadly serious, dropping his facade of trying to talk the Ellis brothers out of making an attempt on his life.  "If that's how you boys want it, I'll give you a choice."  He slowly, methodically turned around, looking each of them in the eye before speaking.  "Either you tell me who sent you and get out of her right now so I can go handle them or," Spike's face shifted, showing his vampiric side.  "I can send all of you back to Texas in dust pans."  They reacted by slightly backing off from Spike, knowing from their prior experiences with him that he was not one to bluff in such situations.

            "Your choice," the vampire with a soul concluded.

            The Ellis brothers stood, silent and steady for several seconds before one final made the choice for all three.  The youngest leapt forward, sailing through the air, descending on Spike.  He reacted, in a quick motion pulling the stake from his pocket and whirling into in the heart of his approaching enemy, a pile of dust falling to the ground along with the weapon.

            Seeing their youngest brother fall before them in the blink of an eye, the other two Ellis' vowed revenge.  From behind him the middle brother charges, Spike landing back kick in his stomach, sending him crashing into a wall.  In front of him, the oldest brother charged and rammed his shoulder into Spike's chest.  Before he could be pushed all the way back, Spike brought an elbow down on his head and a knee up into his chin, sending the oldest brother to the floor.

            From behind him, the middle brother quickly rebounded, coming towards him, jabbing at him with a long piece of discarded wood.  Spike ducked the high attacks, jumped over the low ones and darted out of the way of the jabs that would have been lethal had they landed on their intended target.  As he ducked one attack, Spike remained in a prone position, grabbing the board and swinging the middle Ellis brother into the eldest who had just regained his footing.

            Spike flipped the board into his hand and flung it like a javelin into the back of the middle brother, turning him to dust in front of his older brother's eyes.  Before the eldest brother could react, Spike was already prepared.  Picking another piece of discarded wood off the floor, he threw it into his enemy's shoulder, causing him to cry out in pain.  The vampire slowly strolled towards the last remaining of his three attackers as he struggled to pull the wood from his shoulder.

            A kick from Spike took his stomach sent him back to the floor, where Spike kneeled down and punched him in the face.  Spike slowly pulled the piece of wood from his shoulder and held it over his defeated enemy's heart.  "Now, you've always been the most sensible of you and your brothers.  Surely you want to tell me what I want to know.  Don't want you to end up like your poor brothers over there do we?"

            "I won't tell you a thing!"  He spit in Spike's face.  His defiance only furthered Spike's determination to get the truth out of him.  With a grin on his face, Spike drove the wooden weapon through his enemy's other shoulder.  He screamed again as Spike twisted it in his shoulder, not allowing the pain to die.

            "I think you will," Spike's soft voice was more intimidating than a yell would have been.  "All I want is a name, not hard."  He pulled his makeshift stake from the other vampire's shoulder and quickly drove it into his hip, waiting for the next cry to die down before he continued speaking.  "Just the name of the bloke that seems to want me dead."

            "He'll kill me," the other vampire remained defiant despite Spike's torture.

            "Probably," Spike conceded.  He knew from past experience that evil masters who wanted to conceal their identities usually weren't too happy when their minions suddenly developed loose tongues as to their identities.  "But if you don't tell me, you'll die here.  So tell me what's worse, knowing you'll die here or knowing you might die if he ever catches up with you."

            "I won't talk, not to you, not to the one who betrayed our kind."

            That, although true, struck a nerve.  Spike drove his stake into the vampire's other hip, twisting and grinding it deeply into the muscle until he felt it rubbing against bone.  "And what's it say for you that the vampire with a soul kicked yours and your brother's asses all the way back to Texas and then some?"  He pulled the stake from his hip and again let it hover over his heart.  "After all, you used to be pretty feared where you come from."  Spike grinned and slightly shook his head.  "Oh wait, that was only after me and Drusilla stopped by for a visit, fitting."

            "Go to hell Spike."

            "Talk and I won't send you there faster."

            Suddenly and unexpectedly, the other vampire began to laugh loudly.  Spike was not expecting this, as was evidenced by his expression.  "You think it will stop just because you've beaten us?  You have no idea what is coming.  If I fail, more will come and more after them, until you, the Slayer and everyone who can oppose him are dead.  He is coming, he has already arrived and there is nothing –" His rant was cut short as Spike drove the stake into his heart, turning him into a lifeless pile of dust.

            Spike went back to the upper level of his crypt, sitting down to catch the last few minutes of Passions before rewinding his tape to watch what he had missed during his brief encounter with the Ellis brothers.  He could not help but think of them and the Talicar demons he had encountered earlier this week.  Spike suddenly realized this was not going to end.

***

            Lunch.  It was the one time during the school day most students generally looked forward to.  It was the time when they didn't have to tolerate teachers, principals, lectures, thirty year old film strips and note taking.  It was the one time of day they could really be themselves and enjoy being teenagers without the pressures of having to conform to standards of teach expectations and letter grading systems.

            At least that was how Dawn and described it to Kennedy before she started at Sunnydale High.  After a week however, Kennedy was seeing it as more of an excuse for students to talk loudly, publicly grope their significant other and throw things, which Dawn conceded was also true.  Both of them though admitted that it was a welcome and much needed break in the day if nothing else.

            After making their way through the crowded line at the salad bar, where the food was actually supposed to be green, the two girls were now left looking for a place to sit.  Staying an extra five minutes in their last class to discuss the homework assignment with the teacher had thrown off the possibilities of them finding a table with anyone aside from the chess club which, according to Dawn, wasn't a suitable option.

            As they strolled through the rows of crowded tables, an option presented itself, to Kennedy at least.  From the end of one of the long rectangular tables, Amber spotted the two girls walking through the rows.  She stood up, her usual perky smile on her face as she waved to them.  "Kennedy!  Dawnie!  Come sit with us!"  She gestured to two open seats at the table with her, Alyssa and Brooke.

            When Kennedy began eagerly walking towards the open chairs, Dawn grabbed her arm, giving her a hesitant expression and shaking her head in an attempt to discourage the idea as she did what she could to hold Kennedy back but the potential Slayer would not be stopped.  She almost drug Dawn the first few steps before she finally conceded and walked the rest of the way, sitting her lunch down on top of the table before pulling out a chair and cautiously sitting down.

            "So Kennedy," Amber paid no intention to her lunch, put her hands on top of Kennedy's palms and wasted no time in jumping into what was sure to be a mind-numbing conversation with her savior.  "Tell us all about you.  Where did you come from?  Why weren't you in school here last year?"

            "Yeah," Brooke immediately picked up where Amber left off.  "We want to know everything there is to know about you."

            Dawn had to restrain from laughing.  She admitted she was glad both she and Kennedy were being accepted but she knew it was just superficial.  They didn't want to be friends with her and Kennedy; they wanted to be friends with the girls who had saved Amber's life.  She thought maybe she was just being negative; her conversation with Faith about Sarah's untimely death and the killer robots definitely had her on edge.  Dawn decided, for the next few minutes, she was just going to relax.

            "Well," Kennedy realized she couldn't tell them everything about herself but decided a few minor details probably wouldn't do any harm.  "Not much to tell really.  I grew up in Europe, moved here last year and now I'm going to Sunnydale."

            "Europe, wow," it had long been a dream of Alyssa's to visit Europe.  "Why would you want to give up living in Europe to come to Sunnydale of all places?"  Everyone in the group shared the belief that this town wasn't the most exciting of places.

            Kennedy considered giving an answer something along the lines of having to come here to fight monsters and an undefeatable evil older than the world itself, just to gauge the reaction of Amber and her friends.  "Work study program," she answered dryly as she took a sip of her diet soda.  This drew expressions from the other three girls that begged for further exposition.  "Yeah, came over here on a work study program and just loved it so much I decided to stay."

            "And how do you know Dawn?"  Dawn was surprised Amber even bothered to bring her up.

            Kennedy and Dawn shared a knowing glance of eyes with each other.  She's the sister of the person who led the army to fight the evil force again didn't seem to be the most appropriate of answers to give.  "We did some work together last year."

            "While you were here on your work study program!"  Alyssa made the nonexistent connection.

            "Yeah," both Dawn and Kennedy agreed.

            "So Dawn, whatever happened to your sister?  The one who used to be a counselor here?"  That was one question of Brooke's that Dawn didn't know how to answer and neither did Kennedy.  Saying that she is traveling the world with a witch in search of all things evil also fell into the category of inappropriate answers.

            "Hey Dawn," luckily, Tyler coming up to the table carrying his lunch try, backpack slung over his shoulder, was an easy way out of answering the question.  "Mind if I sit down?"

            "Of course she minds," Amber answered harshly.  Tyler was taken aback by the comment and looked to Dawn to say something but Amber continued.  "Why would Dawn want to hang out with you?"

            "It's okay," Dawn tried to salvage the situation.  "Really, it's all right.  Tyler, it's all right."

            "Dawn please," Alyssa jumped in next.  "You don't have to stick up for him.  He's just a … nerd, a reject trying to be cool by attaching himself on to someone who is cool and sucking all cool from them."

            "Get out of here," Brooke added with seeming disgust in her voice.  Dawn began to wonder where their dislike of him came from until they realized it was just how things worked.  Looking for Dawn to say something different, Tyler turned and walked away, almost running.

            "Tyler," Dawn's plea for him to stay didn't carry well enough for him to hear.

            "You're better off without him Dawnie," Amber returned to drinking her bottle of fruit juice.

            "You didn't have to do that," Dawn stood up from the table.  She was tired of this.  "You can't just treat people like that and expect to make your way through life."  Kennedy stood and followed Dawn away, realizing that these three girls were exactly like Dawn said they were.

            "Kennedy," Amber grabbed her hand, still wearing her trademark smile on her face.  "Stay, you don't have to go with Dawn, she's a nobody."

            Kennedy grinned.  "Let go of my arm before you feel a less pleasant side of it."

            "See what I mean?"  Dawn turned and looked at her friend when she caught up to her.  Then she thought about Tyler.  She was afraid of what he might be thinking about her.  He probably thought she was no better than Amber, Alyssa and Brooke, probably thought she thought he was nothing more than a generic high school nerd.  "I need to find Tyler."

***

            "Well that was certainly a productive use of our time," Faith was not in a good mood as Robert pulled his patrol car into the parking lot at the school.  They had spent over an hour canvassing local electronic stores, checking for leads on the parts used to build the robots and coming up with nothing.

            "Could you think of a better place to start?"  Robert put the car in park and undid his seatbelt.  "Seems to me those parts would have to come from somewhere."

            "Yeah," Faith was being unusually quiet.  Not that Robert wasn't used to it, it seemed as though she was almost going out of her way to avoid talking to him since he arrived in Sunnydale.

            He finally decided to try prying to find out what was bothering her.  "You all right?"  She gave him a strange look, almost as though she didn't understand the question.

            "Five by five," she said with a shrug.

            "You seem, I don't know, kind of distant lately," he wasn't willing to let it go so easily this time.

            "You haven't exactly been Mr. Social yourself lately," Robert began to wonder if that answer was part of what was bothering Faith.

            "Is that what's wrong?"  He slightly leaned over the center console of his car, getting closer to Faith who slightly backed way, inching closer to the door, not going unnoticed by Robert who eased off slightly.  "I know you've gone through a lot lately Faith; I thought you needed some space."

            "What makes you think you know what I need?"  Though her words made it sound so, the tone of her voice betrayed the fact that she was not angry, as did her forlorn expression.  She lowered her head, closing her eyes and took several deep breaths, Robert looked at her intently.  With emotion in her eyes, she looked back up, locking gazes with him.  "What makes you think you're not what I need?" 

            She shook her head.  She didn't want to be doing this now; she didn't want to be doing this period.  "So much has changed Robert, since we knew each other.  I've changed, you've changed," he looked away from her, Faith knowing she had struck something there.

            "I care about you Faith, you know that," he didn't want her thinking his feelings had changed.

            "I know," she was confident in that.  His caring and compassion had gotten her through a great deal and she knew it would never change no matter how much they changed as people.  "But we can't do this now.  There's too much going on in both of our lives."

            "Yeah," Robert would be the first to admit they never did have the best sense of timing.  The last time they had a conversation along these lines, Faith was in prison and he was a guard.  He gazed at her for a moment and her back at him before Robert snapped himself out of it, knowing they had work to do.  "Maybe we should check some of the local demon haunts, I doubt they'd know anything but, you never know, maybe we can find some sort of crazy demon scientist who is drunkenly blabbering about his latest creation."

            Faith smiled.  Robert seemed to know the right thing to say when she needed to hear it.  He was right; they did need to get to the bottom of this, before someone else got hurt.  "Let me check with Dawn, make sure she's okay and see if she might have heard anything."

            Robert nodded.  "I'll wait here."

            After she was gone for several minutes, Robert was growing impatient waiting.  His police radio had been quiet since this morning, meaning he wasn't being negligent in his duties by going around with Faith looking for whoever was behind the robots.

            Zoning off, he was pulled back to reality by a tapping noise on his window.  He quickly looked to see Andrew feverishly rapping on the glass with his fist and an almost panicked expression on his face.  Robert rolled the window down, looked at him and waited for an explanation.

            "Officer Bloodworth … uh, Robert, take a look at this," Andrew thrust a piece of paper at him.  Robert slowly extended his hand, took the paper and looked it over.  Diagrams, drawings, mathematical equations, Robert wasn't an expert at any of this but he was beginning to understand why Andrew had brought it to him.

            "Just before she left the school, Faith told me the two of you were trying to track down the maker of some evil robotic spider things that sound like they'd be a perfect plot of a movie of the week on the Sci-Fi Channel."

            "Andrew," Robert snapped at his digression.

            "Right, right.  This piece of paper," he thumped the paper with his fingers.  "This is instructions, diagrams, components, all the direction someone would need to build one of those things.

            "Where'd you get this?"

            "I found it one of my classes."

            Robert popped his door open, almost jumping out of the car and running towards the school.  He knew he had to find Faith now.

***

            With the halls virtually empty due to most people being at lunch, Dawn was surprised it taking so long and proving so difficult to track down one person.  She and Kennedy had split up in hopes of finding Tyler faster but she for one was having no luck.  The halls were bare with the exception of closed classroom doors and rows of blue colored lockers along the walls.

            Becoming frustrated, Dawn took the one opportunity she saw, an open classroom door.  Walking inside, she instantly picked out Tyler, seated at the back of a row of desks, a black laptop computer perched in front of him.

            "Tyler," Dawn said, both excited, relieved and nervous that she had found him.

            "Go away Dawn," there was more than anger, more than disgust in his voice as he feverishly worked the keyboard on his laptop.  Dawn didn't give up.  She slowly walked towards him, trying to look into his eyes, every attempt met by him looking away.

            "Tyler," she pleaded.  "Talk to me, please.  I'm sorry, what they said, I'm sorry.  That's not how I, you've got to know that's not how I feel."

            "You're no different than the rest of them," Tyler tapped a final key on his computer then closed it up.  "I thought you were," he all but flew out of his seat, grabbing his backpack off the floor and stuffing his laptop inside.  "But you're not."

            "Tyler, I," he did not allow Dawn to continue speaking.

            "Don't try to tell me you know how I feel Dawn!  Don't try to tell me you care!  Don't try to tell me you didn't want to hurt me!"  He began storming out of the room, Dawn too emotional to try and follow him.  Tyler turned around one last time as he neared the door.  "You don't know how much pain you put people through but you will.  You'll know all about pain and suffering and torment."  Tyler walked out of the room.

            Dawn, hurting almost more than she could stand, sunk into the closest desk.  Tyler hadn't even given her a chance to explain what happened and, in reality, she couldn't really blame him.  She had the chance to say something at the lunch table, to stand up for him but she didn't do anything, she just sat there and let the three girls denounce him without saying a word.  She felt like she wasn't any better than them.

            "Dawn," when Faith came through the open door and saw her sitting at the desk, her head hung low, she became instantly concerned.  "You okay?"  She didn't answer.  "Dawn, what's wrong?"

            "It's nothing," Dawn shrugged Faith off, thinking she wouldn't understand.

            Faith wasn't going to press Dawn if she didn't want to talk.  "If you say so," she sat down at the desk next to her.  "I hate to ask but, have you heard anything about, you know, what we talked about earlier?  Robert and I have been trying to track down some information but coming up with nothing."

            Dawn had barely thought about that.  Since the encounter with Tyler at lunch and again just moments ago, Dawn hadn't thought about much else aside from him and how she had so unintentionally hurt him.  "No, haven't heard anything, haven't seen any evil robotic spiders," a noise scurrying across the floor caught her attention and she looked in its direction from the corner of her eye.  "Aside from those right there of course."

            Faith looked in the direction Dawn was looking and saw dozens of the robots crawling in from the door at the rear of the classroom.  The Slayer's instincts kicked in, springing to her feet, grabbing Dawn and pushing her behind her as she slowly backed up to the front of the classroom, facing and keeping her eyes on the spiders.  "Dawn, stay behind me," Faith was cool and collected as hundreds of spiders continued poring in, covering the floor and slowly marching towards her and Dawn.

            They reached the front of the classroom, backed up against the blackboard, between it and the large, wooden teacher's desk.  The spiders had surrounded both doors and covered the windows, Faith knew there was nowhere left to run.  "No matter what happens, stay behind me," Faith knew she had to protect Dawn, even more than she had to protect her own life.

            "Heard ya the first time," Dawn wanted to keep Faith from repeating the order a third time.  After that, as the robots slowly advanced towards them, the Slayer wasted no more time.  She brought her leg up, kicking underneath the teacher's desk, sending it flying into the air, crashing down on several other desks and the spiders underneath them.

            The speed of the spiders increased as did the speed of the Slayer.  Faith grabbed the back of the teacher's rolling chair and swept it in an arch across the floor in front of her and Dawn, rolling over the spiders as they approached, sparks flying into the air as the chair, with the strength of the Slayer behind it, crushed them into tiny parts.  The spiders persisted, crawling up the back of the chair and onto Faith's arms, causing her to halt her defense to scrape them off of her.

            "I swear!"  The Slayer exclaimed, resuming her attack with the chair against the approaching robots.  "Where's a giant can of raid when you need one!"  The battle continued.

***

            In a dark janitor's closet, the monitor from his laptop computer providing the only light, he watched the video feed from his spider's ocular sensors as they battles whoever this woman protecting Dawn was.  Not sense he had sent them to kill the two men who were talking to Dawn at The Bronze had he seen someone put up this much of a fight.  He decided it was time for it to end.

            Tapping several keys, the words 'Tranquilizer Armed' flashed across the screen in green letters.  No matter how tough she was, she wouldn't be able to keep standing, let alone fighting after an injection of his specially designed formula.  The first dart was launched from one of the spiders, sticking into her arm but it did not slow her down.  Every test of his formula against a human rendered the victim unconscious in seconds.  He launched a second dart.

***

            Faith felt another prick in her arm and then another.  Everything began to grow fuzzy, dim.  The Slayer continued the fight but she felt herself slowing down, she felt everything stopping until she toppled over into the oncoming horde.  The last thing she saw before her eyes collapse were the spiders surrounding Dawn.