Chapter Ten

Late July 2003 ad

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Willow and Kennedy's recruiting trip had started off chilly, then gotten violent, and was now sunny. They had planned to spend a week in New York, but cut it short because Kennedy and her parents weren't getting along very well. They still hadn't forgiven her for putting a blot on their social reputation. To most of their social peers they were the parents of a gay daughter who had legally divorced them and then run off to join some cult. Kennedy had let herself cry over the hurt she felt that her parents couldn't even realize how close she had come to dying.

Hopefully her parents would accept her life at some point, but Kennedy and Willow had thought it best to go ahead with the recruiting trip. They had taken a regular airline instead of the family jet as originally planned. Columbia was their first stop. The man who rented the jeep warned them about the dangers of kidnaping for Americans, but they had shrugged it off. So they headed to the mountains, looking for traces of a Slayer.

It took a couple of days, but they found her in a small mountain village. Her name was Carlita Fernandez and she was overjoyed to get the offer to join the new Slayer school. American Citizenship and a home in the United States for her and her family came with the offer. Her family would be sad to leave their home, but realized a golden opportunity when they saw it. There was just one thing.

Carlita's family didn't want to leave the rest of the village at the mercy of a group of drug runners farther up in the mountains who had killed several men and kidnaped several women from the village over the last couple of years as well as exacting a steep toll for using the roads. Willow had protested that it was matter for the authorities until the drug runners had been described. They had bulges on their noses and blackened earlobes, which made them Farlith demons. Each clan of these demons usually abducted several human women a year to use in their rituals. What happened to the women wasn't pretty or survivable. Willow, Kennedy, and Carlita made plans to take them out.

After a couple of days of recon, it turned out the demons had laughable security. Taking out the sentries with crossbows had been a piece of cake. The rest of the demons slept in a large bunkhouse, so Willow cast a blinding spell and Kennedy and Carlita went to work with swords. With Willow watching their backs, it was over within five minutes. Carlita started to cry at the carnage she had dealt out until Kennedy showed them a back room with old bloodstains on the walls and a pit of human bones at the center. They gathered all the bodies and all the drugs they could find and set fire to the bunkhouse.

Two days later the whole village turned out for a big feast in their honor. That night Willow and Kennedy made love under the stars. It felt good to be a hero and get recognized for it. They left for Rio a couple of days later. They would pick up Carlita and her family on their return trip to the States. Wolfram and Hart would have the necessary paperwork taken care of by then.

So now Kennedy was lying on a beach in Rio with her lover. Willow had massive sunblock on and wore a big hat. She was so cute. Kennedy got up and went to the surf so she could dunk her head and cool off a little bit. She made sure Willow got a good view of the water running from her hair to her bare breasts and then to her legs.

They had a Slayer to find in Rio itself, then another one somewhere deep in the interior. They also needed to make contact with a coven here in Rio and maybe some witch doctors in the rainforest, but that was for tomorrow and afterwards. Today they had the sun and tonight they had each other.

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Mid August 2003 ad

Taraba State, Nigeria Sol III

At first Rona had been excited to visit the homeland of her people. When she had heard about the recruiting trips, she had volunteered for Africa. Now after six weeks of hot, dry conditions and seeing the brutal poverty and poor health care which wore down the people, she wasn't quite as enthusiastic. When they had found their first Slayer in Algeria, Rona hadn't been prepared for the torrent of anti-American hate she, Xander, and Casca had gotten from the girl's family. Her family seemed to think the Slayer power was some American plot to undermine their society.

Rona had managed to have a private talk with the Malika the Slayer one day in the market district of her city. The girl wasn't as anti-American as her parents and was smart enough to realize that Africa was going to get stream rolled by the Posleen and there wasn't anything anybody could do about it. She didn't want her family to die and promised to try and talk some sense into her parents, but if that didn't work, she would run away to America when the time of the invasion got closer. Rona left contact information and wished the girl luck.

Ethiopia had been the next stop for the group. They found a Slayer named Beatrice Moges. Her family was much more receptive to the idea of relocating to the United States. They spent a couple of weeks training the girl and then flew to their next destination, Nigeria.

They had found their Slayer in the central part of the country among the Fulani people. The girl and her family hadn't been very impressed with the trio. Rona thought their life of semi-nomadic cattle herding was so strenuous it didn't allow them much time for other concerns. There was also rising tension between the Fulani and their subsistence farming rivals, the Tarok.

In their fourth night in the Fulani village, Rona had been awakened by the sounds of shouts. Using their AID's translation program, the trio had quickly learned that the Tarok were attacking the village and would likely try to burn down as much as they could. Casca quickly went over their options-run and hide or fight. None of them were cowards, so they decided to fight, but wouldn't kill anyone since they were dealing with humans after all. So Rona got her sword, Casca his axe, and Xander his tranq gun and they headed for the burning buildings at the southern edge of the village.

There were six in the first Tarok group they ran into too and they were wielding large cutlasses. She and Casca waded into them and dealt disarming and wounding blows, while Xander watched their back and put down one that tried to get behind them. The Tarok were relative amateurs, so the fight didn't take long. They heard sounds of another struggle and when they got to it, they found Welti the Slayer fighting off a group of eight men. One of Welti's female friends lay dead on the ground. The new Slayer was wild and untrained with her machete, but fearsome enough to keep her attackers at bay until the calvary arrived.

Rona hit one in the back on the head with the flat of her sword and then kicked another one in the stomach and knocked the sword out of his hand when he doubled over. She finished him off with an uppercut to the jaw and then locked swords with another one. With her free hand, she grabbed the wrist on his sword hand and crushed bone until the man dropped to the ground. She looked around and the fight was over. Casca and Xander were okay, but the new Slayer was standing over the body of a man she had hacked to death.

Welti was like a zombie for days afterward, although her family was now friendly to the trio because they had helped to defend the village. Rona had several tearful conversations with Welti. She felt horrible about killing the man, but he had attacked her village, family and friends. Rona felt like she would have probably done the same thing in her place, but she told the new Slayer she needed training so she could take care of threatening humans without killing them. There would be plenty of demons ,vampires, and aliens for her to kill. The girl wanted that training and a new life in the States for her and her family.

At the next weekly AID conference-call meeting the trio consulted with Giles, Buffy, Willow, Todhunter, and the other members of the recruiting teams about the killing. Faith and Wood weren't able to attend. Everyone present agreed the killing was regrettable, but due to self-defense and inexperience. Rona wondered how the discussion would have went if Faith had been there. They thought Welti knew that killing humans was wrong and could become a fine Slayer in time. Then everyone recounted their progress during the past week, although Giles was a bit vague about his activities in China.

They were still perplexed by the not quite five year old Slayer in Georgia though. Eight was usually the youngest age a potential could be recognized, although a couple of seven year olds had been recorded. None of the other teams had found anyone younger than eight. The child's mother was reluctant to let the Watchers have anything to do with her child, although she had been relived to be given an explanation for her daughter's new found strength and dreams. Everyone agreed they should wait until the girl got a few years older and then approach the parents again.

After the meeting, Rona prepared for another restless night in the sweltering heat. She really, really missed air conditioning. She hoped the Slayer in South Africa they would start hunting next week lived in a city. It would be nice to get a taste of civilization again before they made their way back up the western part of Africa and then back home. But through all the complaining, she realized the priceless opportunity she was having to see civilizations and people that would be soon be wiped out by the Posleen. Sometimes the sadness of that really got to her. She would be a lot more thankful for home from now on.

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Late August 2003 ad

Montreal, Canada Sol III

Andrew was busier than he had ever been in his life. Warren and Jonathon had done most of the work during his evil genius period and watching tv and trying to make funnel cakes had been among his activities in his "guestage" phase, but now he was doing real work, important work. Per the rules they had made up during the Hyperion meetings, nearly every day he trained with the Slayers and other members of the group. He liked the days when David Nabbit could join in the best. He was a much gentler sparring partner than Anya. He could take Nabbit about half the time.

He and Anya frequently met with the billionaire about several ongoing projects. Anya and Nabbit had gotten really chummy lately and even went on a few dates. Andrew also helped with recruiting American Slayers. He, Wesely, and Shannon had successfully recruited Slayers in Los Angeles, San Diego and Utah. Wesley and Giles thought he was ready to tackle one in the primary Watcher role, so he, Vi, and Shannon had headed to Montreal. The confidence he felt from his new status as a Watcher and his physical training made him feel 82% more manly. He had even stopped thinking about Spike and bugging the vampire so much. Of course Spike had threatened to have Harmony drop him off the top of the Wolfram and Hart building.

The Slayer they found was really cool. Her name was Claire Downs and she was twelve. Her, Vi, Shannon and he had done some neat things like floating model boats in the pond of Montreal's big central park, having an ice cream party and painting their nails. Andrew really liked his new candy apple red toenails and started wearing sandals to show them off.

He'd regretted the sandals when they were tracking through filthy downtown alleys on the trail of a vampire. Everyone was now trained on the basic demon locating spell and they had gotten a strong vampire presence when they cast it in Montreal. Claire hadn't been too keen on going after the vampire, but Vi and Shannon were, so off they went to hunt the creature of the night.

They found him in a flea bag motel. It wasn't much of a fight. Vi and Shannon knocked the vampire around and then tasered him to keep him still while Andrew bound the vampire. They now had a policy of capturing all the North American vampires they could find rather than staking them. They would keep the vampires in welded metal coffins and on slow blood drips until the new chipping process was ready. They had tried hibizine on some LA vampires and found it hadn't worked, probably because the vampires were dead rather than alive like the humans the drug had been designed for. Hibizine was a galactic drug that lowered body functions and kept a body virtually in suspended animation for up to 180 days at a time. They had tried the drug on several other varieties of demons, including Lorne, and it worked on them.

The vampire had looked and smelled like a homeless person. They theorized that he had preyed on the city's homeless population in order to avoid drawing attention to himself. They also found empty blood bags and packages from butcher shops, so he must have been using non-human blood to stave off his cravings as much as he could.

It was going to be a pain to keep the vampire under watch at all times and get him across the Canadian border, but their connections at Wolfram and Hart would help take care of that. Claire had agreed to attend the Slayer school during the regular school year, but would stay with her family the rest of the time. The school wouldn't actually be officially in session until early next year, although most of the Slayers would relocate to Cleveland before then. Andrew and Anya were also making preparations for that move. Being good was a lot more work, but he felt better about himself these days.