Disclaimer: I own none of the Mutant Enemy characters. Joss owns them all and I assure everyone that I am getting no money whatsoever from this story.
Ajaya the Vampire Slayer
Chapter One
"Cordelia, get down!" Angel shouted as he jumped over a gray tentacle while making sure that he didn't lose his grip on the sword in his hand. While still in mid-air, Angel managed to cut deep into the tentacle and fell into a roll while another tentacle came crashing towards him.
"Okay," Cordelia said, very annoyed, as she barely ducked in time to avoid the sweeping tentacle that would have smacked directly with her head. Another tentacle came towards her but, before it could reach her, it was engulfed in a soft yellow light and was forced to the ground. "Who is the moron who turned off the Interdimensional Barrier System?"
"Why don't you ask Liz 'It-will-only-be-for-a-minute-what-could-possibly-happen' Rowan?" A man who looked to be about thirty with dark brown hair and piercing brown eyes asked Cordelia as he leapt into the air. Making it about twenty feet into the air, he dug both of the curved blades in his hands into a swinging tentacle. Building his momentum by swinging back and forth on the tentacle, he pulled the blades out and at the same time propelled himself towards what he could only guess was the head of the demon emerging from the small dimensional disturbance. Before he could get close to the hole in space, another tentacle hit him like a bat connecting with a ball, and he was sent on a collision course with a wall.
"Thanks for covering for me, Duncan," a woman in her mid-twenties with highlighted brown hair said when she suddenly appeared beside Duncan and grabbed him in mid-air. Less than a second after she grabbed him, they both vanished again, this time reappearing on the floor. "And correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you the one that did the code punching to turn off the protocol?"
Duncan spotted another tentacle less than a yard away from them, and with incredible reflexes he grabbed Liz by her shoulders and pulled her to the ground with him. "I wouldn't have done it if I would have known how slow you are at dimension hopping," Duncan retorted to Liz.
"Fight now, blame later," Angel said between swings of his sword. "Someone reactivate the system."
"No good," a tall blonde woman who was also in her early thirties told Angel while she punched away at a keypad on the wall. She closed the panel covering the pad and reclaimed her gun before turning back towards the massive demon. "The system is armed, but it's not going to come back up until the hole is closed."
"Terrific," Cordelia said as she continued to avoid the endless barrage of tentacles. "Liz, can you close the gate?"
A blue light seemed to stream from Liz's eyes as she looked up towards the hole the creature was half extruding from. The circle also seemed to glow the same blue color. Although the glow became brighter, the hole wasn't shrinking.
"Nope," Liz said as her eyes returned to their normal blue, non-glowing color. "I can't close it while there's still mass inside of it."
"So we either need to get this thing in or out," Angel said while continuing to swing his sword.
"Thanks for stating the obvious," Cordelia said as she managed to get a hand on the end of one of the flailing tentacles. The familiar yellow glow now engulfed Cordelia and passed into the demon. "No good," Cordelia said, her face contorted in concentration. "There's not even a trace of humanity to reach out to." There was sadness in Cordelia's voice as she spoke. Suddenly, she was caught in the side by another tentacle and was pressed against another wall.
"Cordelia!" Angel yelled in concern as he raced towards the former higher being. Swinging his sword from high above his head, he cut through the tentacle that had been trying to crush Cordelia. Catching her breath, Cordelia fell into Angel's arms. "Allison or Fiona or anyone else, now would be a good time to do something."
"You know," another woman in her mid-twenties with strands of blue braided into her blonde hair began to gather a mass of white energy at her finger tips. "It wouldn't hurt you to say please. Or at least ask."
"That's not fair Allison," a vampire with sandy brown hair told the witch while he swung a large battle axe into a tentacle that had been snaking its way towards her. "You know that Angel was tragically born without a sense of humor," he said with a smile as he shifted his features from demon to human.
Allison smiled at Collin's joke as she finally gathered enough energy to pull the demon fully into this dimension. The demon was nothing more than a central orb with one eyeball and a countless mass of tentacles. Supporting itself on its tentacles, the creature was tall enough to have to crouch beneath the fifty foot high ceiling of the entrance hall of SCBI Tokyo.
"It's sealed," Liz said as her eyes flashed blue one final time before once again returning to normal.
"Now we just have to clean up," Angel said once he had made sure that Cordelia was okay.
"I have a clear shot," the woman who had restarted the security system reported as she took aim through her rifle. She pulled the trigger and, just before the projectile could make contact with the eye, the central portion of the demon moved more quickly than anyone would have thought possible.
"Nice try, Rebecca," Duncan said to her while he lost one of his daggers in a swinging tentacle. "Hey!" Duncan said, suddenly outraged. "That's mine!" Duncan ran at full speed and dove towards the tentacle. Grabbing onto the tentacle with one hand, he reclaimed his dagger with the other. "It's my favorite," Duncan said as he wiped the blade clean.
Angel was starting to lose his patience with this demon. Grabbing his sword with both hands, he waited for the right moment before he leapt towards the massive eyeball. Pulling the sword back and preparing to plunge it into the eye, Angel didn't even see the tentacle that wrapped him up a second before he could have delivered the blow.
"Great," Angel said while he struggled to free himself from the grip of the demon. "Mason, do you think you could restrain this thing?"
"I'm growing, I'm growing," Mason said while his body began to stretch and grow. Different parts of his body would grow at different rates which gave him an almost oozing quality. Once he was about fifty feet tall, Mason's features returned to their normal composition and no longer seemed to ooze.
Mason wrapped his massive arms around the creature and held him tight so that he couldn't move. "Oh God," Mason said while he held the demon. "Somebody do something quick, this thing smells even worse up close."
"I'm on it," Rebecca reassured Mason. She was down on one knee loading some sort of capsule into her rifle. "Everybody get down," Rebecca announced as she looked through the scope of her rifle and took aim at the eye. It didn't take long for everyone in the room, with the exception of Mason, to dive to the ground with their hands firmly covering their ears.
"Becky, hold on a second," Mason said with panic in his voice. "Just let me see if I can push him down or knock him out or—"
Rebecca didn't wait for Mason to finish. Once she had the eyeball targeted she pulled the trigger. The capsule, which was slightly larger than a grenade, flew through the air and embedded itself in the demon's eye. There was a moment of silence before the device went off creating a very small scale explosion. When all of the assembled members of SCBI looked up, they discovered that the entrance hall was now littered not only with gray demon parts and black demon blood but also with a green slime.
"God damnit, Becky," Mason, standing at a very normal height of around six feet, said as he stood up from a very large glob of green slime. He was completely covered in the green substance. "You could have at least let me get clear."
"Oh, quit your bitching," Collin said to Mason as he slapped him on the back, sending some of the slime spattering. "You're none the worse for wear."
"It doesn't mean that it wasn't unnecessarily painful," Mason said while shaking his head.
"And the room smells all Masony," Liz commented as she left to go to her room, ringing the slime out of her hair as she went.
"I don't smell!" Mason yelled after Liz as he and Collin left through a door on the opposite side of the hall. He turned to Collin and lowered his voice as they walked through the doorway. "Do I?"
Suddenly, a tone went off in the hall, indicating that there was someone at the door. Cordelia slapped her head. "I almost forgot," she said as she turned to Angel. "Ajaya."
"Well, this should make for an interesting first impression," Angel told Cordelia with a smile.
"More like an accurate first impression," Cordelia added with a laugh. Cordy and Angel walked over to the oversized double doors together and opened the one on the right. Ajaya Gupta looked into the entrance hall and her eyes went wide. "Hello Ajaya," Cordy said while she offered Ajaya her slime-covered hand to shake. "I'm Cordelia. Welcome to SCBI Tokyo."
* * *
Ajaya was playing with a paperclip she had found on the floor of the office she had been led into. When she had first met everyone over in New York, she had been nowhere near this nervous. Of course, when she had met everyone there, she had had Buffy with her to guide her through the process. Now she felt like she was doing everything by herself.
Cordelia had seemed very nice. She had also been very apologetic when she had to excuse herself to get cleaned up. Ajaya understood. After all, she was covered head to foot in green slime as well as other things that Ajaya couldn't even begin to try to identify. She made a mental note to find out what had happened in the entrance hall.
Ajaya looked around the office. Although it wasn't really messy, it definitely didn't strike her as well organized. She wondered what the owner of this office was like. She bit her tongue while she tried to remember what Cordelia said his name was. It was something like Keith or Keither or something like that. Ajaya wished that she wasn't so horrible with names.
Looking down at the desk, Ajaya noticed what could have been a name plate behind a few data pads and an impossibly high stack of papers. Ajaya needed to stand up in order to look over the papers and down at the plate. In black letters on a gold background, the name written on the piece of wood was Keifer Price.
"Keifer Price!" Ajaya said while she did a double take at the name plate. Although Ajaya knew that SCBI had a large emphasis on family, this had to be one of the coincidences. In a world wide organization as large as SCBI, there had to be a few incidents where people just happened to have the same last name.
"See anything interesting?" Ajaya jumped nearly a foot when she was confronted with an unfamiliar voice. She looked to the source of the voice and saw a man in his mid-forties. He had dark brown hair that was a little unruly and he looked as if he hadn't shaved in days. He was wearing a suit but the coat was underneath his arm. The sleeves of his untucked blue dress shirt were rolled up, the neck unbuttoned, and his tie remained untied around his neck. Despite all of this, he had an uncanny resemblance to Fletcher Price. He was Fletcher Price after waking up on the wrong side of the bed for two weeks straight, but he was still Fletcher Price.
"I'm sorry," Ajaya quickly apologized. "I was just looking around."
Keifer flashed her a warm smile to let her know that he wasn't offended. "Have a seat," he told her as he motioned for her to sit in the chair in front of his desk. Ajaya sat down but still couldn't really get over the fact that the person in front of her was even distantly related to the almost unbearably stiff Fletcher Price.
"Ajaya Gupta, right?" Keifer asked Ajaya. She nodded. "I'm Keifer Price. I'm in charge of this division of SCBI." Keifer reached over his desk and extended his hand towards Ajaya.
"I'm pleased to meet you," Ajaya politely responded as she shook Keifer's hand.
"So you've met my brother Fletch," Keifer said as he sat down. He kept his eyes on the drawer he was rummaging though. "What a ponce, right?" When Keifer made the comment about his brother, he looked up and gave Ajaya a wink. Ajaya couldn't help but giggle.
"According to his policies I should have about a dozen or so official looking people flanking my side," Keifer continued to talk while going through all the different materials on his desk. He read over several different papers while he spoke, occasionally signing something or entering information into a data pad. "But since a lot of the higher ranking staff is currently busy scrubbing Atlore demon plasma off of themselves right now, we're just going to skip that part." Ajaya was surprised at how well Keifer could talk to her and go over his paperwork at the same time.
"Besides," Keifer said as he looked up at Ajaya again, "That's all just a bunch of pomp and show. Fletch just likes to hear himself talk." Keifer finally came across a data pad that had Ajaya's information on it. "And judging from your file, it's even more unnecessary than usual." Keifer put the pad into a growing pile of things that he didn't need to worry about. He had read her information a while ago. He began to go through the few remaining unsorted items on his desk.
"A level five fighter after only a few weeks," Keifer commented on Ajaya's abilities. "It's no wonder the council gives us such Hell over you Slayers."
"Did you work for the council, too?" Ajaya spoke for the first time.
"For a while," Keifer told Ajaya as he got through the last of his paperwork. "But I quit a long time ago." He thought about it for a second. "Way before Fletcher jumped on the bandwagon."
"Hah." Ajaya turned around when she heard another voice behind her. Standing in the doorway was a girl a few years older than herself. She had a dark complexion and dark hair with red streaks running through it. "No need to lie to the girl Kiefer. There's a big difference between quitting and getting kicked out."
"You were fired from the Watchers?" Ajaya asked Keifer.
"It was a mutual decision that my talents would better serve me in a different field," Keifer said as he made a small gesture with his hands.
"Please," the girl said as she sat down in the chair next to Ajaya, rolling her eyes. She turned to talk to Ajaya. "He was expelled from the academy when he was seventeen. What was it, Keifer? Something about turning a Mystics Professor's hair green?"
"I maintain that he dyed his own hair," Keifer said with a smile that let Ajaya know that Keifer was more than capable of pulling a stunt like that. "Ajaya Gupta, this is Paige Gunn."
"It's nice to meet you," Ajaya said as she shook hands with Paige.
"Pleasure is all mine," Paige told Ajaya. "We don't get too many Slayers out here."
"Since our more senior agents are currently occupied," Keifer said with another sly grin. He was currently tucking in his shirt and tying his tie. "Paige is going to show you around the compound."
"Be glad that Angel couldn't do it," Paige told Ajaya. "You would have had to stop about every five seconds while he pointed to some work of art or column or something and explain in unbelievably boring detail who made it, what era it came from, and a whole lot of other things that you'll never need to know."
Ajaya laughed but deep down she knew that she would have been interested. Of course, she had thought the same thing the first time she had met Xeris.
"Everyone in New York told me bits and pieces about Angel," Ajaya told Keifer and Paige.
"We know much more hilarious stories and we can tease him a lot better," Keifer told Ajaya as he stood up and walked towards a mirror on the wall of his office. He grabbed an industrial-sized bottle of hair gel and poured some into his hands. "I stole this from his room this morning."
"That's our Angel," Paige said with a laugh. "The powers of a vampire, the soul of a champion, and hair that defies gravity."
Ajaya laughed out loud yet again. "That's about all I've heard about him," Ajaya told them. "That and that he is always brooding."
Keifer and Paige both started cracking up at Ajaya's comment. "It's unbelievable," Paige said as she wiped a tear from her eye. "He won't admit it, but we know that he's jealous that he's not the only vampire with a soul anymore. It's been over fifty years, and he's still pissed about it."
"Well, on that note, I'm going to end this introduction," Keifer said as he stood behind his desk putting his suit coat on. Ajaya couldn't believe that the well-dressed man who stood before her now was the same one she had met a few minutes ago. "I have to run to another meeting," Keifer told Ajaya as he shook her hand. "It was a pleasure meeting you, though, and I'll call you down later for a slightly more formal meeting."
"That just means that he won't be dressing himself during half the meeting," Paige told Ajaya after Ajaya had said goodbye and they had left Keifer's office. "So you're coming from the New York office, right?" The Indian Slayer nodded. "So you met Fletcher, right? Can you believe that they're related?"
Ajaya laughed. "If it weren't for the fact that they're almost physically identical, I wouldn't believe it. I can't wait to tell my friend Isabelle about him."
Paige grinned. "Do you have a lot of friends over at New York?"
"Yeah," Ajaya told her. "A lot of my best friends are there."
"They're good people," Paige told her as they were beginning Ajaya's tour of SCBI Tokyo. "A little over-sexed at times, but good people."
* * *
Todd whistled as he got his first look at the SCBI Tokyo compound.
"You said it," Dade said to his friend. "Well, actually you whistled it, but you get the idea."
Todd, Dade, Heath, and Rocky, all with bags and hands, made their way to the door of the palace which SCBI resided in. Ringing the doorbell, a very familiar face greeted them on the other side of the door.
"Well, look what the cat drug in," Duncan Angel smiled at his younger brother. Heath smiled at him and gave him a hug. "How have you been?"
"Good," Heath said to his brother as everyone walked into the now clean entrance hall. "Fairly busy."
"As I've heard," Duncan said as he gave his brother a teasing grin. "As everyone here as heard."
Heath sighed, hoping what he already knew wasn't true. "Everyone?" he asked his brother.
"Everyone," Duncan confirmed with a nod and a grin. "Even Angel."
"Fantastic," Heath said sarcastically.
Duncan turned towards Rocky who was eyeing some of the artwork. There were green smudges on the painting that confused Rocky slightly.
"And I suppose that you had absolutely nothing to do this bar fight?" Duncan asked Rocky. Even though he was ten years older than Rocky, Duncan knew about the Brit's drinking habits.
"Not sure why you would think that," Rocky told Duncan. Rocky had never really cared much for Heath's eldest brother. "I wouldn't think you would understand concepts like a bar or fun, what with the more pressing matter of brown-nosing taking priority. Oh, and I heard that you're a team leader here. Congratulations. I wonder how that happened."
"Thank you Rocky," Duncan said, ignoring his sarcasm. "I am field leader of Sigma Team. Oh, and guess what team that you got assigned too?" Rocky's face was immediately purged of its small smile and shifted into a look of disbelief. Duncan smiled to himself as he turned and began to walk towards the door. "Follow me," Duncan said as he began to walk towards Keifer's office. "Keifer has been waiting all day to bust your balls."
Everyone's good moods were suddenly deflated as they begrudgingly followed Duncan through the door.
"What's that smell?" Dade asked Duncan as they were leaving.
Author's Note: Come on, you know you want to review...