Disclaimer: Joss, WB, UPN et al. own Buffy. George Lucas, Lucasfilm,
LucasArts and others own Star Wars. Michael A Stackpole owns the X-Wing
and I, Jedi novels. I do not. Title: Sunnydale Jedi: Chapter 13
Author: Paradigm Shifter
Rating: PG-13 again, people.
Pairing: Err... Xander/ Buffy (finally here, folks)
Feedback: Please, I beg.
Thanks: All my reviewers. You know who you are.
Continuity: General season 5 (Dawn)
Crossover: Buffy / Star Wars. Old Republic.
I'd like to thank the people who pointed out the formatting was screwed up. I don't know what or when did it: when I checked the chapter after upload, it was fine. Oh well, the crazy internet, huh?
Cordelia was pacing the room that Xander had not long ago departed. "You cannot be serious, Angel! Xander's not a fighter! He'll just get himself killed!" She calmed down for a few breaths. "Alright... it's not like I don't think he's capable... just that going alone into Wolfram and Hart is suicide! He must really feel strongly about that Slayer, what's her name?"
"Crystal," Dawn said with a sigh.
"We can't leave him to get himself killed!"
Angel looked hard at Cordelia. "Cor... there is one thing that you've never been able to do. You might be a seer, and you might have seen Xander for what he was in high school, rather than a dork, but you will never be able to look into someone's eyes, and see how much they've changed." He sighed. "I've seen Xander as a boy, when I was myself. I've seen him as a boy, when I was... not... myself. I've seen him again now. I can only say that whatever happened to him when he went missing... he's now powerful. Very powerful. And he knows it. It's been drilled into him. By someone who he holds in very high regard. He knows exactly what he's capable of. And I think... I think that he might just be capable of more that he thinks he is."
"But even so!" Cordelia exclaimed, "we have to help him!"
Angel shook his head. "If Xander, as powerful as he is can't free her... we don't stand a chance."
With that sobering thought, the room descended into silence again.
Xander lunged down with his blade, and stabbed his saber into the rim of a rusted shut manhole cover, before running it around the edge, causing the metal plate to drop into the sewer below.
He followed it down a couple of second later, allowing the glowing blade to light his way.
If the sewers followed the normal routes, the weakest wall should be... Xander talked to himself in his head as he walked, running one hand along the wall as he did so, his other hand allowing the tip of his saber to trail in the water of the sewer, raising a cloud of foul smelling steam as he walked.
This served two purposes: it masked his smell, if there was anything resembling the swamp dwellers of Dagobah in the water or around. He knew no Dagobah creature would be here, but demons might, and old habits died hard. The second purpose was to create a vapour in the air. What he was going to do next was going to cause some serious heat... and he didn't want to get par-boiled down here. Even though it wouldn't do much, the mist would at least help to keep him cooler. He stopped, suddenly.
Here. He nodded to himself, and drew his second light-saber, igniting it with the normal snap-hiss. The twin blades plunged into the brickwork as if it was nothing more than paper. Seconds later, Xander could see the brick start to slough off as it superheated.
"Hold on, Crys. Hold on."
The first thing that alerted Spike to the fact that something was wrong was when the wall began to glow.
It didn't fade, it continued to glow hotter and stronger until the brickwork itself was sloughing off in sheets, so white hot that it began to melt the floor that it touched.
Then Spike saw the glowing centre of the ever expanding circle of melting wall.
This quickly became the tip of glowing fire, a colour that Spike had become familiar with while he watched in the darkness of Sunnydale. He knew who was on the other end.
And he knew, too, that he was going to be far from happy.
"Guards!" Spike yelled, "get in here, now!"
Half a dozen demons bowled into the room, axes raised ready for a fight. Spike pointed at the wall.
"Kill him when he enters!"
The demons growled acknowledgement, and moved to prepare for the intruder. Spike ran out of the room and down a corridor to where Crystal was currently unconscious.
"It looks as if you and me, darlin', are going for a little drive..."
Spike slashed the ropes that bound her down, and quickly unhooked the chains that made certain she couldn't escape. Hauling her up none too gently, he threw her over his shoulder, and headed off toward the exit of the basement.
He tried to block out the screams of the guards as they died. Spike had seen what those beams of light could do. He had no wish to experience that firsthand...
Xander charged through the hole in the wall with a silent battle cry on his lips. His twin blades arced and weaved, disarming... literally, decapitating, and dismembering any opponent who stood in his way. The first demon ducked under one wide arc of a blow, but got caught when the second blade was lower, and a fraction behind the first. Instead of being taken at the waist, it lost its head.
The second died almost as quickly, its demise bringing a whole new meaning to the words "a little off the top."
The third and fourth had the joy of being victims to a flung blade, which cart-wheeled through the air, driven by Xander's Force manipulations. Both were split from forehead to crotch, each half falling in opposite directions.
The fifth heard two words "Hold this," before the light-saber was driven into its skull. The now standing demon corpse wavered for a few seconds, before tipping over backwards, the blade of the saber snapping off automatically.
The sixth ran at the sight of its compatriots dying so swiftly, and Xander reached out and gripped it with all the strength he could muster. It convulsed once as every bone in its body was atomised at once, and fell to the floor in a messy heap.
Xander's twin blades returned to his hand as he surveyed the carnage. He swore to himself before stalking off down the corridor. He knew Spike had been here. He just knew it! He could practically smell the peroxide now...
Spike skidded to a halt, staring with hatred at the sunlight pouring down outside, not realising that it was just an illusion. He was just seconds from running out of the hidden exit of Wolfram and Hart. Swearing loud enough to make a sailor blush, he spun on his heel and headed back the way he came. Hopefully, if he was quick, he could still get somewhere safe.
Hart smiled as he watched Spikes mad dash through the building, looking for an exit. He wouldn't find one. This was far too amusing to let it end so soon.
But...
Maybe he should up the ante, slightly. Hart pressed a button on his desk, and it flashed once as the countermeasures throughout the building were turned on.
This was to be a most interesting evening...
Xander stabbed his light-saber into the ceiling of the basement. It was no longer the time for subtlety: he was now running on a strict time limit.
His saber cut through the concrete and steel of the ground floor at an angle. This left the little plug sitting inside the rest of the floor, preventing it from falling on Xander. He focussed; using the Force seemed to be getting more difficult as time went by. Almost as if he was becoming detached from the part he was most familiar with.
The plug of floor fired into the air as Xander pushed it upwards, before flipping once and coming to rest next to the hole it had just come from. Then Xander jumped through, somersaulting just before he landed.
At the sound of a mocking clapping, Xander spun; his saber up at guard. As he saw the originator of the clap, his guard tensed more.
"Well done, Mr. Harris. Well done. I have need of a man with your... skills."
Xander growled. "I'm not for sale."
"Come, now..." the man smiled, "every person has a price. What is yours? Riches? Eternal fame? Or... ah, yes... your dream girl. But who is it now? Who do you dream of? Your precious Buffy? Or is it the other? What's her name...? Ta'ania?"
Xander snarled. "You leave her out of this."
"What? You're not even going to ask how I know about her? That is rather foolish, is it not, Mr. Harris?"
"It doesn't matter. She's safe."
A scathing laugh was his response. "Oh, Mr. Harris... she is far from safe!"
Xander's hands tightened on his saber's hilt, his eyes hardening. "Tell me. Now."
"You are in no position to demand anything, Mr. Harris." The man smiled disarmingly. "Perhaps you need the proper motivation..."
Xander blinked as blinding light engulfed the man, and as he looked again, he saw a mirror of himself. A fraction later, he felt his saber being torn out of his grip as his double approached with a twisted smile on his face.
"You're good, boy..." the double whispered, "but let's see how good you are against..." The double swung with vicious abandon as he screamed, "yourself!"
Xander's second saber flicked up to block the strike barely in time. The shock of seeing himself... but twisted... darker, had numbed his mind. "No!" Xander shouted as he ducked a slice designed to take his head off, before a sneaky lunge allowed the tip of his saber to kiss his doubles ribs.
The two backed off from each other, the double hissing in pain as he held a hand over the already cauterised wound. It spoke venomously, dangerously. "You'll pay for that."
Xander shrugged. "No more than I will for anything else, I imagine."
Suddenly, the doubles eyes became charged. A receptionists chair picked itself up and flew through the air, aiming straight for Xander.
Rolling out of the way, Xander watched the chair crash into the opposite wall, and smirked at his opponent. "You'll have to do better than that."
"Oh, I intend to, believe me," the double said before launching himself at Xander again. Strike after strike was blocked, parried or riposted, as Xander fought to maintain a balance between him and his opponent. Xander had the same skill as his opponent, the same techniques, and the same power. But his double had one thing Xander did not.
Ferocity. Sheer, unbridled ferocity. And that one trait was winning the fight.
Pushing himself off the ground, Xander boosted his jump with the Force, before landing safely twenty or thirty yards from his double. This slight breathing space gave him the time needed to play just that little bit dirty. Instead of blocking the next attack as his double obviously expected, Xander executed an awkward standing jump over the blade, before turning the blade to its second, longer phase.
The double screamed in agony as the saber took his arm off at the shoulder. Xander held his hand outstretched to the saber still gripped in the severed hand, and thumbed it on as it landed in his palm.
The double backed away in fear as it looked into Xander's eyes. "You... you can't... you can't kill an unarmed opponent!" Its voice was almost hysterical.
Xander's eyes were like pools of darkness, as he allowed himself to become fully one with his anger. "You," he spat, "of all people, know what I am capable of!"
The two light-saber blades seemed to bend as Xander whipped them through the neck of his double, so vicious was the twin assault.
The now headless body exploded in a cataclysm of rage.
Xander collapsed to his knees as the storm raged around him. "There is no anger. There is serenity. There is no death. There is only the Force."
The Jedi Code.
Such simple words.
So deep a meaning.
A voice sounded over the intercom. "Most impressive. Few have managed to overcome their counterpart in our mind game. The vampire you seek and his visitor are currently on the 23rd floor. His is beginning to get quite desperate. I suggest that you do not take too long in reaching him."
Xander, his anger now calmed again, spoke softly, as if he still couldn't quite believe what he had done. "Who are you?"
"I? I am merely an interested third party. Spike wished our protection, but unfortunately, he has too many powerful enemies for us to protect him. His isn't paying enough."
"This is all down to money?" Xander couldn't keep the amazement out of his voice.
"Of course." The voice sounded surprised. "It all is, in the end."
Xander sounded almost plaintive. "There must still be some honour left in the world?"
The voice laughed. "Oh, there is. You are one of the few who have that spark, and yet remain entertaining. So, therefore, I give you this one chance: you may have your Slayer, she is of little import, in the final equation. You may even have the insufferable William the Bloody, to do with as you wish. But remember this:" The voice turned sharp and deadly. "The next time you come here, there will be no â€get out of Jail free...'"
Xander nodded. "I'll remember."
The jovial voice was back. "Good. I look forward to seeing what you do to Spike, Mr. Harris. Au revoir..."
Xander stood in the reception, looking at the ceiling. "This is too weird."
Spike rounded the corner several levels above Xander, and shouted to a group of demons guarding a doorway as he ran past. "There'll be a human coming past in a few minutes! Make sure he doesn't survive!"
He felt the still unconscious form of Crystal slipping off his shoulder, and paused to reposition. Then he took off again. If he could get to the Executive offices, he stood a chance...
Xander listened to the sounds of an argument in the corridor a little way away from him. There seemed to be a lot of demons.
This was bad.
Looking around, Xander saw a grate in the wall, and smiled...
The first warning any of the demons had that their target had arrived was when one of them died from a thrown saber. It arced through the air, and cleaved the head off of one of the demons, before falling to the floor, the dead man switch cutting the blade out.
The remaining demons roared, and charged the figure standing at the end of their killing zone. The man remained unmoving, his one remaining saber held at ease by his side.
As the charge drew them within a pace or two at most from him, he moved. The step sideways brought the light-saber blade level with a demons waist, and it was calmly and dispassionately cut in two.
A gesture, nothing more, and another three were flung backwards as if they had been hit by a fully loaded 18-wheeler. They landed in a painful heap of broken bones, but still fought to regain their feet and attack once more.
A flip, and the figure was in the midst of the demons, his blade cutting through bone armour like it wasn't there, the smell of burnt flesh assaulting the noses of everyone present.
One of the two remaining demons successfully regained his feet, and pulled an evil looking axe from a strap on its back. With an inhuman roar, it buried it in the man's skull.
He went down on his knees, a pained, but above all shocked look on his features. The saber dropped from limp fingers as the body fell forward onto the carpet.
The first demon looked at the second. It grunted something, before asking, "Shouldn't humans bleed?"
The other grunted once, and shrugged. Neither noticed the two light-saber's twitching on the floor, as if something was perfecting its control of them.
They didn't have the chance to do so much as blink before both turned on with a painfully loud snap-hiss"and impaled them both through the chests, before whipping up and cleaving their heads in two.
Then the saber's dropped to the floor again. There was one thing to be said for weapons that cauterise wounds: there isn't any blood to clean up.
The grate in the ceiling moved a fraction of an inch, before it shook with an impact of some unknown thing, and fell out, hitting a demonic corpse as it landed.
A pair of legs appeared, then a body, before finally Xander emerged fully from the air conditioning vent. He bent his legs as he landed, but still he folded over in fatigue and pain.
"Oh..." Xander moaned quietly, "that took more than I thought it would..." maintaining the illusory Xander hadn't been difficult, if he had only had to do that one thing. Neither was telekinetically manipulating his twin light-saber's.
The killer had been to do them both at the same time, and maintain the image that he was a person, with how a person moved. He could have jumped the image around, but that would have let the demons know that something was wrong with what they were seeing.
He took a calming breath, and steadied himself on his feet, moving to retrieve his light-saber's manually, rather than by calling them to him.
Xander swore as he walked down the corridor to the elevator at the end. "Spike, you are going to experience some serious pain when I get through with you..."
Author: Paradigm Shifter
Rating: PG-13 again, people.
Pairing: Err... Xander/ Buffy (finally here, folks)
Feedback: Please, I beg.
Thanks: All my reviewers. You know who you are.
Continuity: General season 5 (Dawn)
Crossover: Buffy / Star Wars. Old Republic.
I'd like to thank the people who pointed out the formatting was screwed up. I don't know what or when did it: when I checked the chapter after upload, it was fine. Oh well, the crazy internet, huh?
Cordelia was pacing the room that Xander had not long ago departed. "You cannot be serious, Angel! Xander's not a fighter! He'll just get himself killed!" She calmed down for a few breaths. "Alright... it's not like I don't think he's capable... just that going alone into Wolfram and Hart is suicide! He must really feel strongly about that Slayer, what's her name?"
"Crystal," Dawn said with a sigh.
"We can't leave him to get himself killed!"
Angel looked hard at Cordelia. "Cor... there is one thing that you've never been able to do. You might be a seer, and you might have seen Xander for what he was in high school, rather than a dork, but you will never be able to look into someone's eyes, and see how much they've changed." He sighed. "I've seen Xander as a boy, when I was myself. I've seen him as a boy, when I was... not... myself. I've seen him again now. I can only say that whatever happened to him when he went missing... he's now powerful. Very powerful. And he knows it. It's been drilled into him. By someone who he holds in very high regard. He knows exactly what he's capable of. And I think... I think that he might just be capable of more that he thinks he is."
"But even so!" Cordelia exclaimed, "we have to help him!"
Angel shook his head. "If Xander, as powerful as he is can't free her... we don't stand a chance."
With that sobering thought, the room descended into silence again.
Xander lunged down with his blade, and stabbed his saber into the rim of a rusted shut manhole cover, before running it around the edge, causing the metal plate to drop into the sewer below.
He followed it down a couple of second later, allowing the glowing blade to light his way.
If the sewers followed the normal routes, the weakest wall should be... Xander talked to himself in his head as he walked, running one hand along the wall as he did so, his other hand allowing the tip of his saber to trail in the water of the sewer, raising a cloud of foul smelling steam as he walked.
This served two purposes: it masked his smell, if there was anything resembling the swamp dwellers of Dagobah in the water or around. He knew no Dagobah creature would be here, but demons might, and old habits died hard. The second purpose was to create a vapour in the air. What he was going to do next was going to cause some serious heat... and he didn't want to get par-boiled down here. Even though it wouldn't do much, the mist would at least help to keep him cooler. He stopped, suddenly.
Here. He nodded to himself, and drew his second light-saber, igniting it with the normal snap-hiss. The twin blades plunged into the brickwork as if it was nothing more than paper. Seconds later, Xander could see the brick start to slough off as it superheated.
"Hold on, Crys. Hold on."
The first thing that alerted Spike to the fact that something was wrong was when the wall began to glow.
It didn't fade, it continued to glow hotter and stronger until the brickwork itself was sloughing off in sheets, so white hot that it began to melt the floor that it touched.
Then Spike saw the glowing centre of the ever expanding circle of melting wall.
This quickly became the tip of glowing fire, a colour that Spike had become familiar with while he watched in the darkness of Sunnydale. He knew who was on the other end.
And he knew, too, that he was going to be far from happy.
"Guards!" Spike yelled, "get in here, now!"
Half a dozen demons bowled into the room, axes raised ready for a fight. Spike pointed at the wall.
"Kill him when he enters!"
The demons growled acknowledgement, and moved to prepare for the intruder. Spike ran out of the room and down a corridor to where Crystal was currently unconscious.
"It looks as if you and me, darlin', are going for a little drive..."
Spike slashed the ropes that bound her down, and quickly unhooked the chains that made certain she couldn't escape. Hauling her up none too gently, he threw her over his shoulder, and headed off toward the exit of the basement.
He tried to block out the screams of the guards as they died. Spike had seen what those beams of light could do. He had no wish to experience that firsthand...
Xander charged through the hole in the wall with a silent battle cry on his lips. His twin blades arced and weaved, disarming... literally, decapitating, and dismembering any opponent who stood in his way. The first demon ducked under one wide arc of a blow, but got caught when the second blade was lower, and a fraction behind the first. Instead of being taken at the waist, it lost its head.
The second died almost as quickly, its demise bringing a whole new meaning to the words "a little off the top."
The third and fourth had the joy of being victims to a flung blade, which cart-wheeled through the air, driven by Xander's Force manipulations. Both were split from forehead to crotch, each half falling in opposite directions.
The fifth heard two words "Hold this," before the light-saber was driven into its skull. The now standing demon corpse wavered for a few seconds, before tipping over backwards, the blade of the saber snapping off automatically.
The sixth ran at the sight of its compatriots dying so swiftly, and Xander reached out and gripped it with all the strength he could muster. It convulsed once as every bone in its body was atomised at once, and fell to the floor in a messy heap.
Xander's twin blades returned to his hand as he surveyed the carnage. He swore to himself before stalking off down the corridor. He knew Spike had been here. He just knew it! He could practically smell the peroxide now...
Spike skidded to a halt, staring with hatred at the sunlight pouring down outside, not realising that it was just an illusion. He was just seconds from running out of the hidden exit of Wolfram and Hart. Swearing loud enough to make a sailor blush, he spun on his heel and headed back the way he came. Hopefully, if he was quick, he could still get somewhere safe.
Hart smiled as he watched Spikes mad dash through the building, looking for an exit. He wouldn't find one. This was far too amusing to let it end so soon.
But...
Maybe he should up the ante, slightly. Hart pressed a button on his desk, and it flashed once as the countermeasures throughout the building were turned on.
This was to be a most interesting evening...
Xander stabbed his light-saber into the ceiling of the basement. It was no longer the time for subtlety: he was now running on a strict time limit.
His saber cut through the concrete and steel of the ground floor at an angle. This left the little plug sitting inside the rest of the floor, preventing it from falling on Xander. He focussed; using the Force seemed to be getting more difficult as time went by. Almost as if he was becoming detached from the part he was most familiar with.
The plug of floor fired into the air as Xander pushed it upwards, before flipping once and coming to rest next to the hole it had just come from. Then Xander jumped through, somersaulting just before he landed.
At the sound of a mocking clapping, Xander spun; his saber up at guard. As he saw the originator of the clap, his guard tensed more.
"Well done, Mr. Harris. Well done. I have need of a man with your... skills."
Xander growled. "I'm not for sale."
"Come, now..." the man smiled, "every person has a price. What is yours? Riches? Eternal fame? Or... ah, yes... your dream girl. But who is it now? Who do you dream of? Your precious Buffy? Or is it the other? What's her name...? Ta'ania?"
Xander snarled. "You leave her out of this."
"What? You're not even going to ask how I know about her? That is rather foolish, is it not, Mr. Harris?"
"It doesn't matter. She's safe."
A scathing laugh was his response. "Oh, Mr. Harris... she is far from safe!"
Xander's hands tightened on his saber's hilt, his eyes hardening. "Tell me. Now."
"You are in no position to demand anything, Mr. Harris." The man smiled disarmingly. "Perhaps you need the proper motivation..."
Xander blinked as blinding light engulfed the man, and as he looked again, he saw a mirror of himself. A fraction later, he felt his saber being torn out of his grip as his double approached with a twisted smile on his face.
"You're good, boy..." the double whispered, "but let's see how good you are against..." The double swung with vicious abandon as he screamed, "yourself!"
Xander's second saber flicked up to block the strike barely in time. The shock of seeing himself... but twisted... darker, had numbed his mind. "No!" Xander shouted as he ducked a slice designed to take his head off, before a sneaky lunge allowed the tip of his saber to kiss his doubles ribs.
The two backed off from each other, the double hissing in pain as he held a hand over the already cauterised wound. It spoke venomously, dangerously. "You'll pay for that."
Xander shrugged. "No more than I will for anything else, I imagine."
Suddenly, the doubles eyes became charged. A receptionists chair picked itself up and flew through the air, aiming straight for Xander.
Rolling out of the way, Xander watched the chair crash into the opposite wall, and smirked at his opponent. "You'll have to do better than that."
"Oh, I intend to, believe me," the double said before launching himself at Xander again. Strike after strike was blocked, parried or riposted, as Xander fought to maintain a balance between him and his opponent. Xander had the same skill as his opponent, the same techniques, and the same power. But his double had one thing Xander did not.
Ferocity. Sheer, unbridled ferocity. And that one trait was winning the fight.
Pushing himself off the ground, Xander boosted his jump with the Force, before landing safely twenty or thirty yards from his double. This slight breathing space gave him the time needed to play just that little bit dirty. Instead of blocking the next attack as his double obviously expected, Xander executed an awkward standing jump over the blade, before turning the blade to its second, longer phase.
The double screamed in agony as the saber took his arm off at the shoulder. Xander held his hand outstretched to the saber still gripped in the severed hand, and thumbed it on as it landed in his palm.
The double backed away in fear as it looked into Xander's eyes. "You... you can't... you can't kill an unarmed opponent!" Its voice was almost hysterical.
Xander's eyes were like pools of darkness, as he allowed himself to become fully one with his anger. "You," he spat, "of all people, know what I am capable of!"
The two light-saber blades seemed to bend as Xander whipped them through the neck of his double, so vicious was the twin assault.
The now headless body exploded in a cataclysm of rage.
Xander collapsed to his knees as the storm raged around him. "There is no anger. There is serenity. There is no death. There is only the Force."
The Jedi Code.
Such simple words.
So deep a meaning.
A voice sounded over the intercom. "Most impressive. Few have managed to overcome their counterpart in our mind game. The vampire you seek and his visitor are currently on the 23rd floor. His is beginning to get quite desperate. I suggest that you do not take too long in reaching him."
Xander, his anger now calmed again, spoke softly, as if he still couldn't quite believe what he had done. "Who are you?"
"I? I am merely an interested third party. Spike wished our protection, but unfortunately, he has too many powerful enemies for us to protect him. His isn't paying enough."
"This is all down to money?" Xander couldn't keep the amazement out of his voice.
"Of course." The voice sounded surprised. "It all is, in the end."
Xander sounded almost plaintive. "There must still be some honour left in the world?"
The voice laughed. "Oh, there is. You are one of the few who have that spark, and yet remain entertaining. So, therefore, I give you this one chance: you may have your Slayer, she is of little import, in the final equation. You may even have the insufferable William the Bloody, to do with as you wish. But remember this:" The voice turned sharp and deadly. "The next time you come here, there will be no â€get out of Jail free...'"
Xander nodded. "I'll remember."
The jovial voice was back. "Good. I look forward to seeing what you do to Spike, Mr. Harris. Au revoir..."
Xander stood in the reception, looking at the ceiling. "This is too weird."
Spike rounded the corner several levels above Xander, and shouted to a group of demons guarding a doorway as he ran past. "There'll be a human coming past in a few minutes! Make sure he doesn't survive!"
He felt the still unconscious form of Crystal slipping off his shoulder, and paused to reposition. Then he took off again. If he could get to the Executive offices, he stood a chance...
Xander listened to the sounds of an argument in the corridor a little way away from him. There seemed to be a lot of demons.
This was bad.
Looking around, Xander saw a grate in the wall, and smiled...
The first warning any of the demons had that their target had arrived was when one of them died from a thrown saber. It arced through the air, and cleaved the head off of one of the demons, before falling to the floor, the dead man switch cutting the blade out.
The remaining demons roared, and charged the figure standing at the end of their killing zone. The man remained unmoving, his one remaining saber held at ease by his side.
As the charge drew them within a pace or two at most from him, he moved. The step sideways brought the light-saber blade level with a demons waist, and it was calmly and dispassionately cut in two.
A gesture, nothing more, and another three were flung backwards as if they had been hit by a fully loaded 18-wheeler. They landed in a painful heap of broken bones, but still fought to regain their feet and attack once more.
A flip, and the figure was in the midst of the demons, his blade cutting through bone armour like it wasn't there, the smell of burnt flesh assaulting the noses of everyone present.
One of the two remaining demons successfully regained his feet, and pulled an evil looking axe from a strap on its back. With an inhuman roar, it buried it in the man's skull.
He went down on his knees, a pained, but above all shocked look on his features. The saber dropped from limp fingers as the body fell forward onto the carpet.
The first demon looked at the second. It grunted something, before asking, "Shouldn't humans bleed?"
The other grunted once, and shrugged. Neither noticed the two light-saber's twitching on the floor, as if something was perfecting its control of them.
They didn't have the chance to do so much as blink before both turned on with a painfully loud snap-hiss"and impaled them both through the chests, before whipping up and cleaving their heads in two.
Then the saber's dropped to the floor again. There was one thing to be said for weapons that cauterise wounds: there isn't any blood to clean up.
The grate in the ceiling moved a fraction of an inch, before it shook with an impact of some unknown thing, and fell out, hitting a demonic corpse as it landed.
A pair of legs appeared, then a body, before finally Xander emerged fully from the air conditioning vent. He bent his legs as he landed, but still he folded over in fatigue and pain.
"Oh..." Xander moaned quietly, "that took more than I thought it would..." maintaining the illusory Xander hadn't been difficult, if he had only had to do that one thing. Neither was telekinetically manipulating his twin light-saber's.
The killer had been to do them both at the same time, and maintain the image that he was a person, with how a person moved. He could have jumped the image around, but that would have let the demons know that something was wrong with what they were seeing.
He took a calming breath, and steadied himself on his feet, moving to retrieve his light-saber's manually, rather than by calling them to him.
Xander swore as he walked down the corridor to the elevator at the end. "Spike, you are going to experience some serious pain when I get through with you..."
