THREE STRIKES
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters except for the ones that I created.
CHAPTER 26-A TIME TO BE BORN, A TIME TO DIE
"Nice place Peaches has here…," A weary Spike started to say in jest as he pulled his DeSoto up to the curb in front of the old hotel before something caught Buffy's eye and she tightly grabbed his arm.
"Spike…are those…," Buffy asked with a confused and worried look on her face as she pointed off into the distance at a growing mass of zombies slowly moving towards them.
"This is just great…zombies, who'd Angel piss of this time," Spike replied with a nervous and frustrated frown on his face as he slumped back into his seat and shut the car off.
"What are you doing…we have to run," Jocelyn asked with a terrified look on her face as the empathy seer looked to be on the verge of tears.
"We can't run Jocelyn, Angel wanted our help and we're not going to let him down…right Spike…Spike…," Buffy started to say with a nervous smile of reassurance on her face before her countenance changed drastically and her tone changed to make the end of her statement a thinly veiled threat.
"Of course pet…soddin git always pulling me into one hopeless situation after another," Spike growled softly under his breath before he threw open the door and leapt out just as Buffy crawled out without opening her door.
"Not yet Spike, we have to get…ah forget it," Buffy started to say with an angry frown on her face before she shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. Rather than let the zombies come to him Spike took the initiative and launched himself at the first line of zombies, slipping into his game face as he went. "Connor, Jocelyn come on let's get inside while Spike keeps them distracted," Buffy added with a worried and almost frantic look on her face as she kept shifting her gaze back and forth between Spike fighting and a terrified Jocelyn being coaxed out of the backseat of the DeSoto by a nervous Connor.
"Shouldn't you…help him," Jocelyn asked with a very nervous and scared look on her face as her feet hit the sidewalk in front of the Hyperion.
"I will Jocelyn, once you're inside and safe," Buffy answered with a very serious frown on her face before she winced in pain and instantly her hand was over her stomach.
"What's wrong…Buffy," Connor asked with a panicked look on his face as he reached out and laid a hand on Buffy's shoulder.
"It's…it's nothing Connor, just the undercooked chicken that I had earlier coming back to haunt me…see all better now, come on you two let's go," Buffy mumbled back softly at first through another wince of pain before she managed a weak smile and stood up, trying to allay Connor's worries. Without another word, but unconvinced looks from Connor, Buffy managed to get the two teens into the Hyperion while Spike tore into the zombies.
* * * * * *
"Come on Wesley, we're almost there…just a bit further," Angel said with a tired edge to his voice as by the time that they reached the towers front doors he was nearly supporting all of the former watcher's weight. Even though Wesley hadn't been shot in the leg the combination of the fight earlier against Penn and his legion and the bullet and loss of blood had taken their toll.
"I don't know…if I can…," Wesley mumbled back softly in reply as he struggled to keep his feet firmly under him and to stay conscious.
"Yes you can…think about Faith…," Was all that Angel had to say before he felt a light lessening of his burdening of Wesley's weight. He could tell immediately that his words had the affect that he hoped that they would.
"Thanks…," Wesley choked out through a pained smile on his face before the two got to the edge of the sign in front of the towers and Wesley wearily sat down.
"I thought that'd help, that trick used to work with Buffy for me, but we really should get you to a doctor," Angel said with a nervous smirk on his face before he looked away to see if there was a car that he could commandeer to get Wesley to the hospital with.
"N…no, I'll make it…I've had worse…remember, you need to get back inside and make sure that Oz and Groo make it out, and stop Arthur if you can, he's not thinking straight, letting his sadness and anger blind him," Wesley sputtered out through the quick and pained breaths that he was taking before he grabbed Angel's shoulder with his free hand to further emphasize his last point.
"I'll make sure that Groo and Oz are okay, but I'm not going to leave you here…," Angel started to reply with a nervous look on his face before Wesley cut in.
"Just go Angel, I can handle things out here myself, besides I'm not entirely defenseless," Wesley interjected with a grim smile on his face before he picked up a discarded sword from the previous battle and shook it to Angel to try to further make his point.
"Right…but if you die before I get back…," Angel said with a very serious look on his face as he hesitantly started to go back towards the front doors.
"Just go…there's no telling how much longer we have," Wesley shouted as loudly as he could before Angel seemed to figure out what Wesley meant and hurried back inside.
* * * * * *
"Shit," Faith growled with an angry, and secretly petrified look on her face and tone to her voice, before she snapped out of the momentary stupor that she had been in and was able to rush forward to help Gunn.
"Fred," Gunn shouted with a voice full of all of the pain and fear of a man that had just seen the woman that he loved bitten by a zombie and with the knowledge of what that meant. He had no sooner gotten to the hospitals front doors when the zombies forced their way through them. Fred struggled as best she could against the zombies but already her strength was waning and she quickly found herself being pulled back and away from Gunn. That was the case until Faith joined the fray. Like a force of nature the formerly rogue slayer and future mother channeled all of her pent up fears about her own health and safety along with fears about Wesley through her hands and into her weapon. The first few zombies that were unlucky enough to be in her path were met with the end of the mop being jammed clean through their eye sockets and back through their brain. The back of the second zombies head exploded at the force of Faith's attack as the weapon soon became extremely close to being stuck in the creatures head as it slumped to the ground. But by gritting her teeth and pulling hard Faith had been able to dislodge her improvised weapon and continue the fight. Gunn on the other hand fought with the fury of a desperate man, using anything that he could get his hands on. An old man's walker had been turned into an item to be used to shove zombies out of the way without letting them get to close while a can had been put to good use mimicking Faith's attacks. The pair got a sudden and surprising ray of light in their efforts when Cordelia emerged out of one of the elevators with a gun in her hands.
"Get down," Cordelia shouted at the top of her lungs before she aimed the gun at the zombies that were attacking Fred and pulled the trigger, affording Faith and Gunn barely a second to dive out of the way.
* * * * * *
"What…," Spike asked with a very confused and concerned look on his face as he looked around at the devastation that confronted him in the Hyperion's lobby. Not to mention the dead demon lying sprawled out on the floor by the counter, several bullet holes clearly visible.
"That thing wasn't here when he left…something must have happened to…," Connor started to say with a look of imminent foreboding on his face before Spike, Connor, and Buffy jerked their heads upward as their heightened senses caught wind of muffled nearby gunshots and a scream that to Buffy and Spike sounded a little bit to much like Willow.
"Red…that sounded like Willow," Spike exclaimed with a shocked look on his face as he turned back to Buffy, who only nodded a quick reply before she turned and ran to what was left of the weapons room, grabbing two swords.
"I can feel fear and panic…high up, on the roof, you need to hurry," Jocelyn added with a terrified and meek look of panic on her face as she began to slowly step away from Buffy and Spike and head towards the counter.
"Yeah…come on Spike," Buffy said with at first a nervous look on her face before she tossed one sword to Spike and raced towards the stairs. As she and Spike raced up the stairs she caught sight of Connor arming himself with weapons out of the corner of her eye. Seconds after Spike and Buffy disappeared around the first corner the first of the zombies staggered to the shattered entrance of the Hyperion.
* * * * * *
Kate had been able to down the first snarling that charged towards her and Willow. Had it not been for a split second exclamation from Willow, uttering the chant to erect a temporary force field quickly enough, the two would most likely have been killed by either one of the zombies or the remaining demons.
"Do you have any bullets left…," Willow asked with a pained look on her face as she scrambled from her knees back to her feet and turned to Kate, who still stood holding the gun up in a defensive posture. The former policewoman's only answer was a trio of hollow clicks as she pulled the trigger. "Wonderful," Willow thought with sarcastic frown on her face before she began to frantically search the Hyperion's roof for anyway for her and Kate to escape once the temporary force field spell wore off and they were defenseless once more.
"Whatever you're going to do…do it quickly," Kate shouted back over her shoulder while keeping her gaze locked on the only surviving demon as it growled loudly in her direction, a murderous rage in its eyes.
"Uh…w…would this be a bad time to say that I've got nothing…," Willow replied with an overwhelmed and scared look on her face before cringing a bit as Kate threw her a very perturbed glare.
"This could get ugly," Kate slowly said with a very serious and inwardly scared silly look on her face as she turned back around to face the zombies and the remaining demon, just as Buffy and Spike ran to the bottom of the staircase leading up to the roof.
* * * * * *
"You can't kill me, if you do I'll detonate this building and you'll lose everything that you've so carefully built here," Arthur said with a very serious and hopefully threatening look on his face as he glared at the advancing Penn.
"Heh, you actually think that I care about this damn place, this building is nothing to me, only that golem cares about it, but pretty soon it won't matter anyway, if you're wondering where the golem suddenly disappeared to it went to get rid of your friends' feeble attempt to bring this building down," Penn said with a very smug grin on his face as he slipped into his game face and continued advancing towards a weary Arthur.
"You won't win, there's to much c4 stack all over this place…all I have to do is push this button and…," Arthur started to say with an angry sneer on his face before a lance shot out of the darkness from behind him, knifing through his spine and exploding out through his stomach.
"Stupid human, you should have known…when…to…quit…," Penn started to say with his usual amount of gusto before to his horror he saw Arthur using his last fleeting moments of life to push the small button on the detonator. Penn started to rush forward before everything was lost in the fire and concussion from the blast.
* * * * * *
One Year Later……………
She sighed as she slipped the strap of her bra back into place. Nursing had become an odd experience for Faith, no matter how many times that she did it. Her daughter was hungry and needed to be fed, it was as simple as that. But each time that she did it a piece of her mind thought back to all of the men that she had a similar experience with. The thoughts of her past lovers vacated her mind as she set her young child back into her basinet and turned her attention to the man currently residing in her bed. She had married Wesley on a whim or at least what she thought was a whim, days after the fateful blast that took Wolfram and Hart out of the picture, if only for a short time. Her thoughts returned to that day as she began to slowly turn her wedding ring around on her finger and hum a soft and soothing tune, one from her only happy memory of her own childhood. "Hush little baby…don't say a word…momma's gonna buy you a mockingbird…," Faith's husky voice cooed softly as she stepped away from her daughter and slipped under the covers, soon finding herself wrapped in the arms of the man that she loved more than she ever thought possible.
Wesley had managed to survive the blast by staggering into the street and almost getting run over by a passing motorist. The bill to get the blood out of the woman's upholstery had been horrendous but Angel had written it off without a second thought, just thankful that arguably his two best friends had lived through the ordeal and were finally getting a bit of the happiness that he felt that they so richly deserved. Not feeling right or fully at home in Wesley's flat Faith and Wesley had found a small home in a quiet suburb only a short drive away from downtown L.A.. The money had come from a surprising source.
When asked how he had made it through the explosion Angel's only response was to say that he had heard her voice in a warning and he had heeded her advice. When asked who the particular she was the two and a half century old vampire would only sullenly mumble out one word before leaving the room, "Darla."
Groo and Oz had only returned to the sewers and were on their way to the rallying point when the explosion happened. The two were thrown violently off of their feet via the immense shockwave and both had lain up in hospital beds for weeks afterwards trying to recover. Kate and Willow had been there ever step of the way, helping out whenever they could. After they had left the hospital Kate had been offered her old job back as from the after affects of the blast and the zombie attack had finally shaken the city leaders to no longer be able to hide and brush off the existence of the supernatural to terrified citizens. In that vein a new division of the police department had been opened to deal with the supernatural crimes in the city. Kate had been put in charge of the group after the city and the police force had agreed to her one demand, that she get to fill the group with officers and others of her own choosing. After some initial misgivings Oz had accepted her offer and joined as the unit's tracker. On his first case he had finally discovered what Wolfram and Hart had done to him, he had unintentionally transformed into his werewolf self, but unlike the many times before where his calm and easy going exterior had been drowned in a sea or rage and bloodlust Oz had discovered that he had been able to stay in full control of the beast within him. Xander had said that it made sense if Wolfram and Hart had wanted to use Oz as the guinea pig in an experiment to make their own army of werewolf shock troops. The troops would be of no use if they could not be controlled. Groo had joined the unit without a moment's hesitation, saying that as long as he could be with Kate and help protect the weak from the strong that he was in. Rounding out the list Willow had joined more out of the wanting to have something familiar in her life, as she often traveled back and forth between Sunnydale and L.A., other than constantly helping Buffy stop apocalypse's of her own. Willow had become the unit's information center, helping Oz and the others in any way that she could. She had dated a couple of fellow female officers before a near death experience had reestablished the bonds between herself and Oz. The witch and the werewolf were expecting their first child in only a matter of days.
Jocelyn and Connor had survived the fight in the Hyperion's lobby only because the destruction of the Wolfram and Hart tower had snuffed the zombie's power source in the bud. The two had moved in together into a small house that Cordelia had found on the web shortly after the Hyperion's repairs had been finally finished. Even though neither really knew much about home repair Angel and Connor had tried their best to do it themselves, often with hilarious results. A photo album had begun, filled with all of the father and son's mistakes and accidents.
Lorne had nearly run a hole straight through his shoes before he was finally able to escape his pursuer. But his escape had been more by accident that anything else. The demon that had been tracking him had run afoul of another, much larger and nastier, demon and had become lunch. Barely two months after Faith had given birth Buffy had followed her with a daughter of her own. Three months into her young daughter's life Angel and everyone else was still trying to figure out how Spike could be the father. But all that Joyce, lovingly named after Buffy's mother, had to do was open her eyes and any questions about who was the father went up in smoke. For her eyes were as radiantly blue as her father's, twinkling like her mothers. Angel had gone into a deep period of brooding during that time and had only been brought out of it when he and Cordelia had been named as the young girls godparents. After the blast Angel and Cordelia had grown as close as they could with the ramifications of the curse still in full effect, but Angel had Willow and every other knowledge seeker in the known world searching tirelessly for a way to alter the curse just enough for he and Cordelia to be happy.
Fred had almost been lost in the fighting that night. Unlike Wesley and Faith it had taken the Texan almost a full month to even begin to recover from the effects of the bites that she had received from the zombies. Many of Gunn's former crew hadn't been so lucky, over half of them had been lost that night in their valiant defense of the hospital. Gunn had briefly left Angel Investigations to get his "house" in order and take care of some family business. He and Fred had returned to the fold only after Faith and Wesley's daughter had come into the world, saying that the littlest Wyndam-Pryce needed to know who her family was.
Anne hadn't said very much after her recover from her attack by the demon that nearly destroyed her teen shelter. Over time Angel had been able to convince her to go to a demon doctor that had been able to mostly remove the jagged scar on her cheek, reducing it to one that barely measured half an inch.
When the golem's ties to him had been severed Lindsey had recovered in only a few weeks, feeling like his old self in no time. Elaine however had hovered close to death for some months after the attack, before finally pulling out of it and slowly trying to regain the life that she had once led, or at least close to the same life, with the obvious differences. Angel had offered both Lindsey and Elaine a place to stay as long as they needed, far against his initial misgivings. In that line Angel was flabbergasted when a tired and yawning Lindsey had slipped into his office late one night and let him know of his future plans.
"So…I hear that you're getting sued," Lindsey stated with an almost joking smirk on his face as he closed the door behind him and then took the chair offered him.
"Yeah…the reporter and that cameraman…," Angel mumbled back softly with a look of not wanting to believe on his face before he couldn't hold back a smile any longer.
"Well then…it looks like you're going to need a lawyer," Lindsey added with a stifled chuckle of his own at the shocked look on Angel's face.
END OF CHAPTER 26 AND THREE STRIKES
THE END---THE SMEG IT IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :LOL:
AUTHOR'S NOTE: THIS REALLY ISN'T THE END AS THERE WILL BE A SEQUEL THAT I'M GOING TO TENTATIVELY CALL "YOU'RE OUT", THAT I'LL START WRITING AFTER I FINISH REPRECUSSIONS, THE END IS ONLY THE BEGINNING, AND FUTURE IMPERFECT.