Chapter Five
Early June 2003 ad
Los Angels, California Sol III
Xander and Faith walked into the hospital room where Cordelia Chase lay in her coma. "She looks peaceful," said Xander.
"I'd like to see you say that after you had spent eight months as a cabbage," Faith said. She had never really thought about Cordelia that much in Sunnydale, but now she felt a bond with the woman.
"I wonder if she can hear us," Xander said. "Yoo-hoo Cordy, how's it going? I heard you became part demon. Thanks for retroactively giving me an almost 100% demon girl success rate. I'm waiting for Willow to sprout horns and a tail any day now."
"That'd be the only kind of tail you'd get Harris," Faith said.
"Oh yeah I forgot about you-my record isn't as good as I thought."
"That isn't the only thing not as good as you thought," Faith said playfully.
"Well I'm not going to sit around here and take abuse from you when I can go back to the hotel and get it from everyone." He leaned over and gave Cordy a peck on the forehead. "Godspeed sweetie. You coming Faith?"
"No I'm going to stick around for awhile. I'm catch up to you later. Its been awhile since I've been out on the town by myself."
"Well I'm not one to argue with an ex-homicidal slayer. Have a good time, but let's be careful out there, ok?"
"Sure thing chief."
Faith wasn't one for retrospection, but it seeing Cordelia in this state brought some submerged thoughts to the surface. In the back of her mind Faith thought she had deserved what happened to her. But she had found it hard to believe that Cordy deserved this fate. Faith hadn't actually died like Buffy did, but being in that coma was the next best thing. She never got anything as good as Buffy did, she mused with bitter irony. That had profoundly upset her in the past. Now it was just irksome.
During her time in prison, she'd had a lot of time to think about the second chance she had gotten. The reading she'd done to get her GED and later for pleasure had helped frame her thoughts. Now she realized everyone was living their own little version of hell on earth. She wasn't unique. It may not actually make much difference in the end, but helping to ease the suffering of others instead of causing it would help her redeem herself. She wasn't sure why she cared about redemption, but she didn't want to let Angel down. And she got a small degree of satisfaction by surprising Buffy every time she did something good. That was good enough for now.
And now was the time to go to a club and hit the dance floor. Robin could join her when he got out of the hospital, but she had to have one wild night alone for old time's sake. Except this time no one would wind up dead. Not unless they really deserved it, of course.
****
Everyone had been buzzing about the big meeting for the last two days. It would be the first time the whole group had gotten together since the memorial service for the Hellmouth victims. They set it up in the hotel ballroom. Xander worked to make the space more presentable and set up a semi-circle of six large tables, Giles sent out the invitations, Dawn put out water pitchers and glasses for everyone, and Andrew set up a microphone for every second person. It would be barely possible to communicate among such a large group of people by shouting, but the organizers had agreed that raising voices would not be a good idea.
Everyone was here. All the original and new Scoobys, all the Slayers, and all of Angel's people. Giles sat at a smaller table facing the six semi-circle tables. Buffy, Angel, and Willow were at the table with him. He started the proceedings.
"I'm sure of all you are wondering why this meeting was called. Many of you have undoubtably heard rumors the last few days. But we are here to set the rumors straight and determine what our future course of action should be. Please be patient during the first part of the meeting as we talk about the challenges we face. Everyone will get a chance to contribute, but please wait until the main speakers are done. Angel will now talk about the threats we have recently faced and those which can cause trouble for us in the future."
Angel cleared his throat and began to read from some notecards. " The most recent threats we faced were Jasmine and the First Evil. We're pretty sure Jasmine is dead or at least stuck in some non-corporal form that can't do much harm. We're not sure if the First can ever not exist, but we are fairly certain it has been greatly weakened by the destruction of its Turok-Han army and of Caleb. It will be some time before its powerful enough to take us on again. Saying exactly how long that will be is impossible, but hopefully it will be quite awhile."
"We have also recently faced garden variety vampires, trouble-making demons, and evil humans. Those we pretty have to deal with as they come up. The Slayer army and the resources of Wolfram and Hart will make it easier to handle these dangers."
"In the future we can expect to face some threat from the senior partners of Wolfram and Hart, although we don't know what they are planning or when they are planning to do it. However sticking to the May-Day theory of predicting the timing of Apocalypses is always a good bet. Heck we don't even really know what the senior partners are. But its likely they have something more subtle in mind than the usual 'destroy the world' apocalypse. With their resources they've had countless chances to bring about the end of the world. No, they're after something else and we need to find out what. Being on the inside of their LA office should help with that. Separately our groups have averted many apocalypses. Hopefully by pooling our resources, we can stop this one too, but my team should take point . We started the fight and we're going to end it."
"The other major threat we face is the Posleen. We're pretty sure they aren't coming after us personally, but they will be eventually kill all the humans they can reach on Earth if they aren't stopped. According to our information, the Posleen were obviously genetically manipulated sometime in their past. If we tried to eat a Posleen or one of the other aliens, we would probably get poisoned or even die, but so far the Posleen have been able to eat every living thing on the seventy-two planets they've conquered so far. It's a good bet the Posleen will find demons as tasty as humans. So that makes it a problem for the whole planet. That's my presentation. Thanks."
Giles spoke into the microphone and said, "Now Willow will talk about the conditions we will likely face in the future." Angel wasn't the best public speaker, but Giles thought he had warmed up nicely once he had gotten started. He had certainly talked better than he had sung during his reading with Lorne. Angel had maintained the attention of the audience. He hoped Willow and Buffy could do the same. It was vitally important.
Willow shuffled some papers and thumped her microphone. "Guess its working. Now you know I'm not one for big speeches, but I think its important we get a good idea what the future has in store for us. As for the ordinary vampires, demons, and humans, it will likely be patrolling, research, and fighting pretty much as usual, although it should be much easier with our swelled numbers. We don't know what the senior partners have in store for us, but it could be something so subtle no one even realizes it." Several people looked at Dawn at that point. "Or it could be something really big like sending us all to a hell dimension. There's no way to tell until we come against it. We just have to prepare as best we can."
"But the Posleen are very predictable. They bring death. We aren't sure yet if they are inherently evil or if they were just genetically programmed to be invaders with big stomachs, but we do know that they are coming. Billions will land in five waves. They will over run the coastal areas and then try to take the plains and make brief forays into the mountains when they can. They reproduce very fast, so a few years after the invasion begins, they will outnumber the human race. And, with very few exceptions, every Posleen is an effective fighter, whereas every human isn't. Things will be grim in a few years. I have talked with Casca about this and he's related countless stories of battlefield and civilian massacres, raping and looting and bitter hunger. It can happen anywhere and to anyone. If the Posleen aren't stopped, no one will be spared. Those who don't get eaten will scamper around mountains and die from hunger, disease, or accident. I hate to be such a downer, but that's the way it is."
Giles stammered out, "Well um, yes, thank you Willow. Now Buffy will make the final presentation on what we can do about our future." He got the sense that they were starting to lose their audience. Giles felt some of the uneasiness that he had experienced during Buffy's final speeches before she had been briefly overthrown as their leader. He was certain that the First had played a big part in the feeding frenzy that had consumed Buffy's leadership, but he was equally certain that it could happen now without provocation from the First. Giles realized he had failed his former student. Over the last week he had done everything he could to make up for that. He suspected he would spend the rest of his life trying to make amends.
Buffy began her presentation. Giles hoped it would go over well. Casca had helped her prepare it. He had read an astonishing percentage of all the human books ever published, had listened to speeches from some of the greatest minds in history and written thousands of pages of his own memoirs. That helped greatly, but in the end Buffy's own experience would have to carry the day.
"I wish that my speech making days could be over, but I think we still have lots of work to do. We have to decide what our destiny is going to be. Remember what I told you in Sunnydale? How we had to change our destiny? Well now its changed and we have an army of Slayers, but we need to decide what to do with that army."
"Armies do one of three things, they fight wars, they band together and train to fight wars, or they disband. Well we have banded together and trained, and we have fought a war, but I don't think its time to disband. For one thing there are still many vampires and demons out there that need taking care of. Also we are all warriors now and traditionally warriors have never shirked their duty to fight the next war. And whether or not we decide to continue fighting the dark forces of this world, war with the Posleen is coming."
"Some of you may not want to slay vampires anymore. It's a good bet that you could avoid them the rest of your life if you wanted, but no one is going to be able to avoid the Posleen. This war is going to affect every thinking being on this planet. I didn't know this until a few days ago, but Robin Wood was in the military when he was younger and he's spoken to some of his old buddies and they all say that almost everyone who ever wore a uniform will be called up for service shortly. Also every able male of fighting age will be drafted and many females will be too. And the females who don't get called will either help the war effort in some non-combat way or end up as refugees. Casca has spoken to his military contacts and they say the same thing."
"Casca has seen more war than anyone on the planet and he knows that in wars for survival, governments and people do desperate things. The US government is going to use every resource it has to fight the Posleen. The government already knows about me and you can bet it won't take them too long to find out about the Slayer army. What do you think they are going to try and do with that army? Use it against the Posleen, that's what. Being a vampire didn't stop Angel from getting shanghaied into fighting the Nazis by the US government in World War Two. I talked on the phone to Riley Finn, an old friend who's in a demon fighting army unit and he told me to watch my back. Since his call was probably being monitored, I'm assuming he was warning about the government trying to use me again. The government is an impersonal machine and doesn't really care about the lives it uses up to do what it needs to do."
"But we care what happens to us. And we know best what we're capable of and how we should fight. So I personally believe we should organize to fight the Posleen. That doesn't mean we give up on fighting vampires. I think we should neutralize every dangerous demon we can find before the Posleen arrive and use that experience as training against the aliens. And when the war starts, we can let the younger Slayers guard the homefront. Xander tells me this would be similar to the Texas Rangers patrolling the frontier during the Civil War. I never knew he liked Larry McMurtry westerns," Buffy said as much of the audience laughed.
"To sum up everything, I believe its our destiny to fight the Posleen. It's a scary thought, but the First and Jasmine were pretty scary too. But this time we'll have more experience. And we won't be alone. Every human being on the planet will be trying their best to kill the alien sons of bitches. If we don't do the best we can against the Posleen, how will we be able to live with ourselves after the invasion? Not to mention what the rest of the world will think about us if they find out we have these special powers and didn't use them."
"But don't rely on my judgement alone. Lorne can read destinies by listening to someone sing. Angel can attest that he's pretty accurate for short term stuff. Those of you who went on the 'karoke bar patrols' with him the last few nights know that we were able to save two people from vampires, three from rapes, and return one lost pet because of his readings. The further in the future he goes, the less useful it is, but we're most worried about what's going to happen five or so years from now."
"Everyone in this room has recently had a reading from Lorne. My reading said I would be fighting Posleen in five years. Is there anyone whose reading didn't basically say the same thing?" Giles saw people searching around the room for someone with a different reading.
Casca raised his hand and said, "My reading didn't say anything about Posleen. But then again, my reading didn't say anything at all. Lorne got a blank on me, but Valkyries pulling me up to Valhalla would be the only thing that stops me from fighting the Posleen."
That drew some more laughs. Buffy got up from her chair and said, "Before we open the floor to everyone's comments, is there anyone who has already decided they don't stand with us?" No one answered. "Good, then let's talk about ways to beat the yellow monsters."