Disclaimer: Nope, Mr. Whedon still hasn't accepted my offer to wash his car, so I still don't own Buffy, the universe she resides in, or any of the other people who reside there. This is intended as a creative exercise, so please treat it as such, no breach of trademark is intended.
Chapter 7:
"So, who won?" Anders looked at the very angry-looking black eye Oz was sporting the next morning.
Oz smiled a little, "Well, since she was the only person unconscious at the end of it, I'd say I did by default."
"She came to your house?" Anders' eyebrows raised.
"Right through the front door. Literally." Oz nodded.
"And decided to punch you upon arrival?"
Oz shrugged, "She had a rough night."
"What happened?"
"A vamp attacked her at home." Oz said, "Another of the Order."
"She invited him in?"
Oz nodded, "She has a lot to learn."
"So, how'd she do?"
"She had the crap pounded out of her. She was barely standing when she got to my place."
"But she was alive." Anders shook his head, "There's exactly one other human being who can make the claim that she's survived two assassination attempts from the Order, and she was a fully trained slayer when she was targeted."
Oz nodded, "with training, we could have a serious force to be reckoned with here."
"There's something you're not telling me." It wasn't a question.
Oz sighed, "In a lot of ways she reminds me of Faith, and not in a good way."
"How's that?"
"Part of what made Buffy the slayer she was was the amount of self-control she always exercised. Even when she was accused of murder, her mother had thrown her out, and her boyfriend was evil, she managed to keep herself together enough to win." Oz paused, "Dee doesn't have that. If she gets pushed far enough to snap, then you'd better get out of the blast radius. She doesn't hold anything back."
"That's not necessarily a bad thing." Anders pointed out.
"She nearly beat that vampire into a pulp before she staked it."
That made Anders pause for a moment: "How do you know?"
"Bruising around her thumbs and index fingers. You hit something with a club-like object, a baseball bat or a table leg, hard enough and enough times, and you get that kind of bruising. It's worse if you're gripping the club particularly tight."
"So you think she's out of control?"
"Oh, no. She's in control, except when she's not. Let's just say that I pity the guy who ever crosses her."
"Hell hath no fury…" Anders muttered under his breath. "Well, you'd know more about loss of control than just about anybody," he pointed out.
"Touché," Oz conceded.
"Untrained, she took out a vampire and a demon. Both were trained assassins. If getting her pissed off accomplished that, I'm not about to tell her not to get pissed off."
"Buffy used to say that anger gave her a fire, and that a slayer needed that. Dee's sitting on a blast furnace. She gets pissed off enough, and I'm not sure that there's any force on Earth that can stop her."
"Are you saying you don't want her trained?"
"Of course not." Oz shook his head, "Just… be careful. She looks tiny and frail, but there's a lot more to this girl than meets the eye."
"I will. Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on her." Anders stood up to leave.
The phone on Oz's desk rang. Oz picked it up.
"Hello? Angel?" He paused for a long moment, "Okay. Tell me what she is."
Dee had never been down to the basement before, and now she was beginning to understand why. The expansive area under the building had been transformed into one of the most extensive training facilities she had ever seen. The walls were lined with archaic weapons, some of which she recognized, some of which she had never seen or even heard of before.
Crossbows, swords, axes, knives, those were the easy ones. Then there were the weapons whose function she could only guess at.
"You have a basement full of God-knows-whats, and Oz gives me a stake to defend myself?" She sounded somewhat exasperated as she turned slowly around in the gigantic room.
Anders allowed a smile to cross his lips, "Actually," he told her, "the stake is probably the best weapon you have." He paused, "actually, second best. Your best weapon is your brain. Learn to use that, and the demons don't stand a chance."
"Hey, I stabbed a vam— that guy with a table leg. An axe or a sword of some description woulda been nice though."
From what I hear, you did more than stab him with it.
"Not to mention the thing I took out with a pebble." She shrugged, "I mean, heck, anything a rock'll do, a gun'll probably do better."
"Actually, in both those cases, you lucked out. If your kitchen table had metal legs, you wouldn't have accomplished anything. Vampires can be killed by a stake or projectile which was part of a living thing, wood, bone, ivory; sunlight, crosses, holy water, or decapitation. Babylonian vexhaur demons are vulnerable to projectiles that come from the earth; rocks, dirt, pure metals…"
"Is this where you trained Anne?" Dee cut him off.
"How did you…"
"Oz told me. Is this where you trained Anne?"
After a long time, Anders finally nodded.
"How'd it happen?"
"The guy who's running the show here,"
"Osiris." Dee chimed in.
"Osiris?" Anders looked confused.
"That's his name."
"How do you know?"
"The guy who accosted me in my apartment dropped that name when he was about to take a nibble of me, before I talked him out of it."
"And you didn't mention it until now?" Anders frowned.
"Nobody asked." Dee shrugged.
"You know, you could at least pretend to be on our side on this." Anders was openly scowling at her.
"Hey, until yesterday, I didn't know there was a side to take. Besides which, I just assumed you already knew. The way the guy dropped the name, it was like everybody knew."
"Either that, or he didn't think you'd live long enough to use it." Anders pointed out.
"Guess I was lucky." Dee's voice dripped with sarcasm.
"You were." Anders replied.
Dee rolled her eyes, and they say that sarcasm is wasted on the young. "So, go on."
"Hmm?"
"You were about to tell me what happened to Anne."
"Anne had made life difficult for… Osiris." Anders continued, "He'd sent a couple of his minions out to kill her on a number of occasions. Each time, she managed to fight them off." He paused, "Anne was… good at what she did."
"How'd he get her?" Dee asked.
"Sheer numbers. In a single night, he must have mobilized hundreds of demons and vampires against her. They'd attack her one at a time. Slowly wearing her down. Even Slayer stamina has its limits. Finally, she had nothing left to fight with, and she lost." Anders could feel a lump sitting uncomfortably in his throat, "we never found a body," he added.
"Well, then maybe she's still…"
"No." Anders cut her off, "Osiris isn't stupid. He wouldn't have started coming after you unless he was certain she was out of the way."
"So this guy sends hundreds of demons to kill Anne in one night, and a demon and a vampire to kill me in the space of two?" Dee frowned, "I think I'm insulted."
"Don't be insulted. Be afraid." Anders looked her straight in the eye. "When he killed Anne, the demons and vampires were essentially cannon fodder. Expendable. He knew he'd lose dozens, maybe even hundreds of them to this slayer, but he didn't care, as long as she was out of the way. With you he's sending trained assassins. The Order of Taraka has been sent after literally tens of thousands of targets since the beginning of recorded time. In all that time, they have failed to kill the target exactly once."
"Me?"
"Buffy. They haven't technically failed with you yet." Anders replied.
"Gee, thanks for that vote of confidence."
"Oh, believe me, I have no desire to see you dead. For one thing, that means that I'll have to find a new programmer."
Dee muttered something under her breath. It didn't sound terribly polite, whatever it was.
"Okay, shall we begin your training?"
Dee let out a long breath, and nodded.
