SECOND CHANCES

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters except for the ones that I create.



CHAPTER 14-The Gang's All Here



The last thing he remembered, as his eyes fluttered open, was the wall of water bearing down on them, and then it had all gone black. He remembered that he had pushed Faith on in front of him and as a result his first instinct was to look for her. He tried to move but quickly had to double over and choke out a fair amount of water out of his body. Starting to feel as if he would suffocate he rolled his ski mask up until it only covered the top of his head. He first looked to his left but his attention was brought back to his right by coughing and choking sounds that he recognized as Faith clearing the water from her lungs.



"Faith.are you," Wesley said still gasping for air as he crawled over to her and laid a hand on her shoulder.



"What.oh.I'm fine, what the hell was that," Faith growled angrily in between coughing fits as she had to shake her head to try and clear her thoughts.



"A spell of some sort, Lilah's started the.the.," Wesley started to say with a hint of anger in his voice before it trailed off as he turned his attention to what was going on in the lobby.



"Lilah started what.Wes.Wes.oh shit.we're to late," Faith shot back with a confused and frustrated scowl on her face as she first turned and looked up at Wesley and then fully turned and followed his gaze.



The sight that greeted them was not a welcome or happy one. All throughout the lobby there were numerous heavily armed mercenaries attacking various party guests and even a few of the demons that had gotten out of control, with several large swirling portals hanging in the air. Up against the far wall Faith could see Xander staggering to his feet with Willow's help while Angel was deep into a fight with two of the mercenaries. She also noticed a brunette aiding Willow in helping Xander up but she couldn't get a good enough look to see who it was. Faith was just about to point out their status when she was interrupted from a few feet away.



"Wesley.Faith.," Giles said with an exasperated look on his face as he ripped off his fake beard and threw it to the floor. Beside him Connor could only stare in shock and confusion as he remembered the few stories that Cordelia had told him about two people named Faith and Wesley, and the people in those stories bore absolutely no resemblance to the two people staggering to their feet in front of him. The soaking wet, frazzled, grizzled and haggard looking man in front of him was the complete opposite of the meek, unassuming, clean shaven and cautious man from Cordelia's early stories. And the woman beside him looked more like a model than the evil backstabbing bitch from Cordelia's stories. Although to their credit Connor had begun to notice how, in the telling of her stories, Cordelia tended to exaggerate certain areas, mostly of how dire the situation was and how brave she was in them, all that coupled with how ineffective and annoying everyone else was.



"Lilah started earlier than we thought," Wesley said with a frustrated scowl on his face as he helped Giles up to his feet and then turned to Connor.



"No shit," Faith yelled from behind them before she was cut off by automatic weapons fire as she squeezed the trigger and fired off a few shots into a particularly ugly demon that was charging towards her. Surprisingly the demon just seemed to shrug off the bullets like they were flies and kept on charging. "A little help here.," she growled angrily with a small hint of fear in her voice that only Wesley noticed, a hint that most likely would not have been there before her incarceration. But ever since she had gotten out on parole and began her relationship with Wesley she had slowly begun to let her true feelings slip out a bit more, something that at first she was reluctant to do but then she began noticing how it made the tension between them decrease it had become easier and easier to do.



"Bloody hell," Wesley shouted under his breath as he spun away from Connor and Giles and pulled his weapon from behind his back and joined Faith in letting the demon have it. But even with both Wesley and Faith firing off everything they had the demon kept coming until it got close enough to them so that it could try and pound them into the floor.



With the quickness borne of her slayer side Faith tossed her gun to one side and slid her knife out of its sheath on her shoulder before leaping at the demon and sinking the knife hilt deep into the demon's chest. She moved to remove the knife but was halted in her progress as from behind her a portal opened up and an octopus like leg shot out and wrapped itself around her waist and pulled her back. Wesley sprinted to her defense and drew out his own knife and was about to slash into the leg but he was knocked off his feet and sent sprawling as another leg shot out of the portal and slammed into the right side of his face.



During this short sequence Connor had stood frozen in his tracks, but it was not fear that kept his feet locked onto the floor. Rather it was the sight of Faith in action, sure he had seen Cordelia fight on a number of occasions and had admired her in them but watching Faith was something different, a great deal because she did everything that Cordelia did, only better and faster. Connor was finally shaken from his stupor by the sight of one of the legs protruding from the portal shooting straight towards a startled Cordelia. With an angry shout he leapt into action and reached Cordelia just as the leg struck her in the shoulder.



* * * * * * *



The beginning of the fight between Buffy, Spike, and the two flame fisted demons hadn't gone as Buffy had planned. When she had asked Spike to trust her she really didn't have a plan but knew that Spike fought better when he thought he was following a plan of hers and that she fought better when she knew that she had his complete and unhindered trust. Buffy and Spike had managed to split the two demons up as now Spike was fighting one on one side of the room and Buffy was fighting one on the other side of the room. Whereas Buffy had been quick enough weave and dodge her way out of getting hit by either of her demons flame encased fists Spike hadn't been so lucky and was now sporting a rather nasty looking bruise on his left cheek.



Buffy desperately wanted to end this fight as quickly as possible and get back into the lobby and stop whatever hell was being unleashed in there, but the demon she was facing was making that proposition seem a long ways off. After she had landed several blows, all of which only seemed to make the demon angrier, Buffy resorted to using anything and everything that she could get her hands on as a weapon. Her first few weapons hadn't been anything more than old pots and pans, which the demon had eventually relieved her of and they had resumed using their fists.



Spike meanwhile had, after getting the large bruise on his cheek, found that the demon he was fighting wasn't as good of a fighter as the one that he had faced during his trials to get his soul back. That fact raised his hopes a bit and he then spent more time on the offensive than on the defensive. The demon then made the mistake of taking a hug swing at Spike, letting him drop down at kick the demon's legs out from under him. The demon turned slightly on the way down and ended up hitting the ground face first. Spike jumped at the opportunity provided him and leapt onto the demon's back, sliding one hand underneath its chin and the other up at the top of its head before he growled angrily and snapped the demons neck.



Buffy didn't see Spike get rid of his demon as she was to busy backing the demon that she was fighting back towards the old kitchens doors when suddenly they burst open, slamming into the demon. The demon stumbled forward awkwardly, leaving it open for Buffy to land a hard punch to its stomach, causing it to double over, before she reared back and brought the old frying pan that she held in her other hand down onto the back of the demons skull, momentarily dizzying it. Buffy started to take a step forwards but was brushed back by an overly anxious Spike as he took the opening provided him and snapped that demon's neck as well, smiling in triumph as he did it.



* * * * * * * *



Back out in the lobby Angel was holding his own against two of the mercenaries and was going on more anger and fear for his friends then actual logical planning, but in fights like these he determined logic had little if any use. He had gotten off of the floor and was instantly attacked by the two mercenaries, but what he found troubling was the feeling he had that these mercenaries weren't trying to kill him or anyone he cared about, only keeping them in the lobby. This realization only made him fight harder as he pushed the two mercenaries that he was fighting back towards the doors leading out of the lobby before he was finally able to render them both unconscious.



He spun around when he heard Fred shouting frantically. From what he could see a rather large demon had Gunn by the throat and was trying to choke the life out of him while holding Fred securely in its other hand, with her arms pinned to her side, unable to help Gunn in any way. Angel nervously scanned the floor around him for any type of weapon and was only able to come up with two knives from the two unconscious mercenaries. Shaking his head momentarily in anger he charged the demon and leapt up and drove the first dagger straight down into the demon's right shoulder, eliciting a garbled scream of pain from the demon before it loosened its grip on Gunn long enough for him to be able to break free and fall to the floor, where he quickly tried to catch his breath.



Angrily the demon glared at Angel for a second before it threw a very frightened Fred into the pile of tables. Fred screamed in fear and shock the whole way until she disappeared behind the tables, and then there was complete silence except for a faint whimpering that only Angel and the demon could hear. Smiling merrily the demon turned its angered attention to Angel as it tried to reach up and pull the knife out of its shoulder. Angel ducked under the demons arm and drove the second knife deep into the demons stomach, just after it had removed the first knife. The blood stained knife clattered to the floor as blood began to spew forth violently from the injured demons shoulder.



Now with its judgment clouded by pain the demon's thought process consisted mainly of only one thing, kill the annoying interloper that had caused it so much pain. And to that end it fought through the pain and grabbed Angel before he could duck out of the way. With a growl of both pain and anger the demon hurled Angel across the lobby in a high arc before he finally came down, smashing straight into the weapons cabinet, effectively shattering it and sending the weapons stored inside it clattering loudly to the floor. From across the room Angel could hear instead of see, as there was a fair amount of weapons and broken pieces of wood on top of him, Gunn fearfully yelling out Fred's name.



With a feeling of dread in his stomach Angel dislodged himself from the broken remains of the weapons cabinet and was about to jump back into the fight against the injured demon he heard what sounded like automatic weapons fire. Risking further injury or possibly death to Fred and Gunn Angel cautioned a quick glance over towards the direction in which the sound of weapons fire had come from. To his astonishment across the lobby he could see two mercenaries firing straight into a demon that was charging them. That fact alone was not what brought on the astonished look but what brought it on was the fact that he recognized first one of the mercenaries and then the second. He wasn't completely shocked to see Wesley there but he was alarmed to see him decked out as a mercenary, with a hope in the back of his mind being that it was all for show and not that he really was with the mercenaries.



Angel's confusion and concern levels jumped considerably when he recognized the short mercenary beside Wesley as Faith. No matter how hard he tried, in those first few fleeting seconds, Angel couldn't figure out what Faith was doing there, and why in the ensuing fight that followed after the guns proved ineffective against the charging demon did it seem like Wesley was more concerned with saving Faith's life than his own, and she likewise with him. That puzzling thought would have completely consumed his thoughts had he not then seen Connor jump past Giles and rush to the aid of Cordelia just as she was attacked by a large serpentine leg that shot out of a portal hanging several feet above their heads.



* * * * * * *



Dawn had run until her sides burned and her breath came in short painful gasps. She hadn't truly run all that far but the fact that she was running away from a seeming horde of now very angry mercenaries coupled with the entire hotel being dark and her not knowing her way around had taxed her greatly. She stopped for a breather when she felt she could run no more, but her breather didn't last long as from a far distance away she could hear the mercenaries angrily shouting at her and each other. Fighting back the pain Dawn forced herself to start running again. She hadn't gone far when she heard the sounds of a rather violent fight going on in a room near her. She was about to rush by when she remembered where she was, right outside the old kitchen, and there were the doors that she had peeked around to see Buffy and Spike sharing a stolen kiss, all before the mercenary had first grabbed her. She dropped her shoulder and charged through the doors and into the old kitchen. Her arrival was just in time as the door that she pushed on slammed into the back of the demon that Buffy was facing, breaking its concentration long enough for Buffy to knock it off of its feet with her fists.



Dawn finally stepped into the old kitchen just in time to see a furious Spike leap onto the demons back and smile as he snapped its neck. For a few sickly seconds afterwards no one spoke, Dawn happy to have found Buffy and Spike, Buffy being happy that the fight with the fire fisted demons was over and that both Dawn and Spike were at her side, and Spike being happy that the two people he loved most in the world were okay.



"Dawn.are you okay," Buffy cried with an exasperated and worried look on her face as she first looked back and forth between Spike and Dawn before she rushed over to her little sister and hugged her tightly.



"Y.yeah.sure.nothing a little rest won't cure.and maybe some new earrings," Dawn gasped through the first part before she then said the last part almost under her breath but just loud enough that both Buffy and Spike could hear it, with the two giving her their best parental look of disapproval.



"Ooh.so close.but no," Buffy said with a sly smile on her face as she smiled first at Dawn, who stuck out her bottom lip and put out her best dejected look on her face, and then at Spike, who wiped some blood from the side of his mouth with the back of his hand.



"Where's you skip off to Bit.some dark corner with some wonker that you just met," Spike said with small hints of a smile on his face as he used his best fatherly tone.



"A world of no.I got bored and came looking for you two.but then when I saw that you two had other things on your minds.," Dawn began slowly as she tried to catch her breath, all the while laughing internally at the embarrassed but excited looks on both Spike and Buffy's faces. "But just as I was leaving some smelly Rambo-wannabe grabbed me from behind and covered my mouth so I couldn't yell for help," the younger Summers said finishing with a look on her face as if she had just smelled something very rank. Buffy was just about to ask a follow up question when the old kitchen's door burst open and half a dozen angry mercenaries stormed in.



* * * * * * *



Even though he felt very dizzy and even a little nauseous Wesley staggered back to his feet and spun around to see Faith fighting valiantly against the serpentine like leg that had wrapped itself around her. She looked like she was losing the fight as her face was getting red and he could see that the leg was constricting around her like a snake would, crushing its prey. His heart skipped a beat as he angrily grabbed his knife and ran towards the leg that was wrapped around Faith. He dodged a half hearted attack from the demon that he and Faith had poured enough lead to stop a rhino into earlier and jumped up and grabbed hold of the leg that was slowly crushing Faith.



"Wes.a.little.help...here.," Faith gasped out angrily as struggled to free herself from the crushing force of the octopus like leg.



"Hold on," Wesley shouted loudly as he fought to hold onto the leg and keep possession of the knife at the same time.



"Wes.hurry," Faith shot back at him with a pained grimace on her face as she began to flail her legs around, now desperately trying anything that she could come up with to free herself and buy Wesley some more time.



"See how you like this ya bloody.," Wesley growled angrily as he firmly grabbed hold of the knife and with all his might drove it straight into the leg, hitting the nerve. The serpentine leg shook violently before it began to spasm uncontrollably, finally releasing its grip on Faith and letting her fall. The last thing Wesley thought before he hit the floor and then Faith landed on top of him was, "This is gonna hurt."



END OF CHAPTER 14