In the late afternoon, Andrew rushes back inside the bunker, struggling for breath and obviously excited. "Buffy! Giles! Faith! You have to see this!"
"See what, exactly?," Giles enquires.
"The Hellmouth's under construction. No. What I meant to say was, Something's under construction at the Hellmouth."
"The arena?," Giles guesses.
"I don't know. It's not done. But it's big. And metal."
The four of them rush to the site, where Xander's inspecting the First's handiwork. It's the skeleton for a dome one hundred and twenty feet wide and sixty feet high. Planted into the ground every fifteen feet to form a circle are twenty four steel columns. Each curved column is sixty feet long, reaching two-thirds of the way to the apex. The debris inside the circle has been cleared and the ground flattened to form a smooth dirt floor.
"Where the Hell did this come from?," Faith wonders.
"Right here," Xander explains. "I can tell from the markings on the beams. The school's frame was built with thirty foot I-beams. Each of these columns is made from two beams bent and riveted together. I'm guessing they did all that off-site, and surfaced at night to put it up."
"And by off-site, you mean the other side of the Hellmouth?," Buffy asks. "If that's possible. Is it, Giles?" He thinks about this.
"I suppose it would have to be," he concedes. The uber-vamp had to come from somewhere.
"They've stripped all the brick within a hundred feet of the 'Mouth," Xander points out. "I'm guessing this is just the start."
"Why would the First go to all this trouble?," Faith asks. "What's it gotta do with killing us?"
"Uber-vamps," Buffy guesses. "They might need a roof, in case the big fight's in the daytime."
"Uber-vamp?," Faith asks. "What's that?"
"Like a super-vampire," Buffy explains. "Faster, stronger, uglier."
"Damn. I thought Nina was all we had left to worry about."
"Where is she?," Xander asks. "Not that I've missed her wanton killing and maiming. But it's been a while."
"We have to get back," a suddenly anxious Giles announces. "Willow has probably finished her locator spell by now." They all rush to Xander's truck.
"Super-weapons, he we come," Buffy declares with less-than-complete conviction. "I hope."
Nina strolls into the lobby of Wolfram & Hart at half past four in the afternoon. She's wearing a black rubber jumpsuit. Her hair is pink, and about a foot shorter, going less than halfway down her back. She gets some very confused looks from the people in business suits as they catch sight of her. Nina's serene expression hides her pre-fight giddiness. She loves this time, the moment before she alters a lot of people's reality forever. Nina likes to think of herself as an artist. Right now, the building's her canvas, the people her paints. She walks up to the information desk, where a very confused security guard looks at her.
"Can I help you, ma'am?," he asks with a slight tremble in his voice. He can tell there's something very wrong about this women. And it's not just the costume. Human beings don't have eyes that glow like hers.
"Thanks," she replies, reaching her right hand out and ripping his eyeballs from their sockets. He screams. She spins the eyes around in her right hand like two metal balls. She can't take the screaming. So she reaches back and picks the man up with her left hand. Six security guards rush towards her and open fire. She holds the man's body in front of hers. The bullets put him out of his misery. "You're welcome," she adds before tossing him to the ground and flicking his eyes across the smooth stone floor like marbles. The pistol fire has no effect. She rips out one of the shooter's hearts. The other five flee in terror. She catches three, twisting the head off one, prying open the chest of another, and pulling part of the spine out of the third.
Now the firm's shock troops swing into action. Ten para-militaries in black come from the left, ten more from the right, and ten others repel down ropes from the third floor. Nina thinks it looks like they're falling from the ceiling. "It really is raining men." Nina gallops in their direction, leaps in the air, grabs one of the commandos twenty feet off the ground, snaps his neck and then lands on the ground. A little over a second later, the corpse tumbles to the floor in full view of his comrades. "Hallelujah." A man to her right opens fire. Nina turns, leaps at him and kicks him in the face. His body flies backwards into a wall, splitting the back of his head open. Nina spins around, flies at the nearest fighter, who is fifteen feet away, rips the AR-15 out of his hands and bludgeons his head with the butt of the weapon three times, killing him. "What does this do?," she asks the other men about the weapon she's holding. They keep shooting, pouring dozens of small caliber rounds through her body. She figures it out, and mimics the commandos by pointing the weapon at them and pulling the trigger of the semiautomatic again and again. Nina laughs as she empties the clip and blows away seven of her attackers. "Guess they only work against your kind," she says with an ironic shrug. Two more commandoes come at her from behind with stun guns. Nina feels a slight tingle as they pump enough current through her to take down a large bull. She reaches her arms back and hits each guy in the nose with the backs of her hands. They fall down. Nina turns and steps on their throats, crushing their tracheas. A third commando charges at her and drives a twelve inch-long dagger into her chest. She severs his adam's apple with a quick left chop. He falls to his knees and gasps for breath. "Thanks," Nina says, pulling the large knife out of her body jabbing it into the top of his skull. She holds onto her new weapon as she walks back towards the front of the lobby.
The men in that section, who've witnessed her fearsome wrath, bunch together and back away. Suddenly, ten men come out of nowhere and attack Nina from behind and to her left. Ten more charge her right flank. The men in front of her join in the attack. "I love it when they don't run away," Nina says with a smile. "Makes the killing go quicker." She kicks and punches and stabs and slashes and spins around, repelling or killing all who get within range. The front ranks fly away as the men behind them continue to charge Nina. After fighting off fifteen men in ten seconds, the rest of the attackers lose heart. They retreat in fear and confusion, then bunch together for safety and decide to protect the elevators and stairwells. Nina occupies herself finishing off the wounded. Then steel barriers come down in front of all windows and doors. "No! No!!!," Nina screams out as she eviscerates her enemies. She picks up one of the living. "Who's doing this? Where is he!!?" The terrified man points, and Nina, her hands on either side of his head, drags him along in that direction. She kicks open a locked door and sees a control room with where one man sits in front of monitors and buttons. "The building stays open," she commands. "The building stays open!" Nina brings her hands together, smushing the young man's skull. The commander sees the dead guy's eyes pop out of their sockets. He gets the message. The barriers go back up. Nina grabs his hair and tilts his head up so he's looking into her eyes. "Keep it open, and I'll let you live." Nina walks back out into the lobby. The fighters she has yet to kill know that if they flee, Wolfram & Hart will kill them. They've taken up a strong defensive position in front of the routes upstairs. They viewed the barrier going up as a good sign, an indication that their job is not to kill this thing, but to convince it to leave.
Nina's seen this a thousand times before. Human or demon, they always made their last stand huddled together for mutual protection. Six tear gas canisters are launched in her direction, falling at her feet. She finds the smell pungent, but not incapacitating in the least. Nina stops ten yards away from them. She waits for five seconds. There's a window behind the men. It's high up, but large enough for the men to climb out of. But her proximity causes none of them to waver. "What are you dying for?," she asks. The First had told her that the people in this building didn't have anything against evil. In fact, they rather liked evil. Certainly these pawns weren't fighting to protect what Nina was there to steal. They were too insignificant to know of its existence. "That's what I thought," she says in response to their terrified silence. "Don't know what you're dying for, don't deserve to live." Nina hurls the knife through the forehead of one of the commandos and leaps at the phalanx with ferocious speed, breaking straight through the center of the formation at knocking eight men to the ground, two of whose necks she snaps. Now her back's to the wall, rows of elevators on either side of this twelve foot-wide alley. The seventeen remaining men think they have her trapped. When she attacks, they stick her with daggers and stakes and tasers and anything else they have, all to no avail. As she tosses them back, they resort to using their fists and feet. She crushes a few of their hands before hurling the men back into the lobby, where she finishes off the isolated, dazed and demoralized fighters in typically gruesome fashion. Having fought to save her family and friends, Nina has nothing but contempt for those who fight simply because it's their job. People like Buffy she can respect. With resistance crushed and the building unsealed, Nina leaps in the air, does a forward flip and lands on the walkway some of the commandos came down from. It was time to make her presence known to every last person in the building.
In the sleepy Connecticut town of Star's Hollow, Rory and Paris watch tv after school in Lane's bedroom. Paris sits to Rory's left, and Lane to her right. "Talk Back Live? Please change it," Paris suggests. "I don't watch the news to listen to the lumpenproletariat spout off on issues they don't even understand. No, not Fox. That's just Pravda for Young Republicans. What's on C-Span3?" Lane ignores her and surfs through the channels.
"Stop! Go back. Go back," Rory tells her. "I don't believe it. I can't believe it. This is so surreal. It's him."
"Who?," Lane wonders.
"The boy who helped Jess and me."
"When you were in Los Angeles?"
"So he's the one who saved you from the vampire," Paris jokes.
"The joke's just as stupid and unfunny as the last fifty two times you've told it."
"Fine, Rory. From now on, I'll refer to him as the man-like creature who bit your neck, causing you to wear turtlenecks for the past eight days." Connor's on screen standing next to Angel.
"He's cute," Lane observes.
"Very cute," Paris adds. "His older brother's also very easy on the eyes."
"Actually, that's his father," Rory explains.
"So he became a father at what – age twelve? And where's the mom? Oh, and by the way, why are they on the news?"
"I don't know. Dead. Something to do with Sunnydale."
"Is that the town that supposedly was completely destroyed on Saturday with absolutely no loss of life, where the military's keeping all the journalists out and won't even let the people who lived there search the wreckage for their belongings?"
"It does raise a few questions for which there are no rational answers."
"My mom thinks the earthquake set the stage for a climactic battle between the forces of good and evil," Lane reports.
"Does she view every disaster in biblical terms?," Paris asks with mild scorn.
"No. Just this one. And she doesn't say why."
"Is California mentioned in Revelation? That would make sense," Rory quips.
"Enough about the phony apocalypse," Paris declares. "Get back to what matters. Tell us about this guy."
"Oh. Right. Connor." She ponders him for a couple seconds. Connor was . . . odd."
"He looks norman enough," Lane comments.
"He is. Until he opens his mouth."
"Cute, but dumb. A depressingly familiar combination," Paris notes.
"No. He didn't sound dumb. He sounded like, well, and I know this may sound crazy, but he sounded like a noble savage."
"I Connor, you Rory?," Lane jokes. Paris laughs.
"He wasn't that bad. He spoke in complete sentences. For the most part. And get this: He said he liked smart girls. As if that was a turn-on for him. How many guys our age say that?"
"Especially in Los Angeles, of all places," Paris adds.
Lane smiles as she sees Connor on-screen for a couple more seconds before the story ends. "Wow. He saves lives. He has that cute, puppy dog vulnerability thing going for him. And he prefers girls with brains. Did you get his phone number?"
"I've only been single for a month now. I'm a long way from being desperate enough to travel three thousand miles for a date."
"Maybe you don't have to," Paris speculates. "You said he was our age. What school is he going to?"
Rory laughs. "Connor doesn't go to school. In fact, I got the distinct sense that he never has."
"It sounds like your journalistic instincts failed you on this one," Paris argues. "Dating material or freak curiosity, there has to be one helluva story beneath those clear aqua eyes and soft ruby lips."
Rory's a little alarmed at her two best friends' interest in this odd boy they've never even met. "First of all, down girl. Don't you have a boyfriend?"
"That doesn't mean I don't still have eyes."
"Second, my journalistic instincts told me that his story was one that he didn't want to tell and I wouldn't want to hear. Sometimes scratching the surface only produces blood and pain."
Around noon, Cordelia walks into Angel's room. "Angel, there's something important I have to tell you."
"What is it?," he weakly replies, caught off-guard by her declaration.
"I'm leaving Los Angeles." This catches him even more off-guard.
"What!?," Angel exclaims as he bounds out of his chair.
"Don't act so surprised. I don't belong here, now."
"Cordy, that's ridiculous. I need you."
"You did. But not anymore."
"How can you say that?"
"How can I not? You've already gone nearly a year without me."
"And look what happened. My life was a mess."
"Thanks largely to me. Or the creature that was using my body."
"I don't know what to say. How long have you felt like this?"
"Since I came back. I've been doing a lot of thinking about my life, and about how I fit into your life. I've realized the problems started for both of us when I began trying too hard to be in your life. Ever since I chose to become part-demon. From that day on, it's been a long, freaky, painful downward spiral for both of us."
"And none of that was your fault."
"Angel, just because you have a lot to feel guilty for doesn't mean you have to feel guilty for everything. This was my screw-up. People pay a price for wanting too much power, even if that power's for doing good. Okay, I pay a price. Others can get away with it, even if they royally abuse their power, go evil and try to destroy the planet But not me. I guess I'm held to some higher standard." She's obviously alluding to Willow, not doubt with a tinge of bitterness.
"Where are you going? What do you plan to do?" Right then, the phone rings. "Hello? Fred. What did you say?" He hangs up. "We may have a small emergency on our hands."
"Off to the Batcave. We can finish this later." Cordy's relieved to postpone the rest of this difficult conversation. They both rush downstairs. First, the tantalizing possibility that the Curse has been lifted. Then, his best and oldest friend says she wants to head off to parts unknown. Angel has a lot on his mind. And that's before he learns of the new emergency. Wes, Gunn, Fred and Lorne are already in the office when Angel and Cordy enter.
"Okay. Ah see. No, you're not the first. Yes, we'll be sure to look into it." Fred hangs up the phone. Immediately, it rings. "Wolfram and Hart? Lucky guess. Uh-huh. We are aware of the situation inside your building. Yes, ah know what's inside a person's. You don't need to try to draw me a verbal picture. Oh. The jaw was removed and stuck in between the liver and stomach. And the eyes were placed where the knee caps had been. Yes, that is highly unusual behavior for a demon. Good thing you made it out. You want help? Okay. Here's some advice. Don't go back in." She hangs up the phone, and is relieved when it doesn't ring right away. "That's the eighteenth call in the past past fifteen minutes. Don't they know we're their enemies?"
"They must also know we're good at what we do," Gunn replies.
"And they must be pretty desperate," Cordy adds.
"Remember the last thing to make them this desperate?," Lorne reminds his friends.
"It could be a trick," Angel warns.
"A psychotic catwoman," Wesley recalls. "Am I the only one who found that a little – "
"Lame?," Cordy guesses.
"I was going to say dubious. But that too. If this were a real emergency, why hasn't the building been shut tight like before? And if this catwoman' is such an unstoppable killer, why has she let so many people escape?"
"If it's fake, then they've sprung for some really great actors," Fred concludes. "Angel, these people sounded scared out of their minds." The phone rings. "Hello? Yes, we know. We're working on it right now." She hangs up. "Another lawyer sounding like he just watched the Hindenburg go down in flames."
"I don't see the harm in investigating," Wesley argues. "We take a look inside. If they're lying, and the lobby is not covered with entrails, we leave before anything can harm us."
"And what if they're not lying?," Cordy asks with dread.
"Then sooner of later we'll have to fight whatever did this," Angel explains. "I vote for sooner." Lorne meekly raises his hand.
"And I vote for waiting and seeing if it attacks the good guys. Assume some monster – "
"Sexy, pink-haired monster," Fred corrects him. Wes and Gunn give her weird looks. "I'm just repeating what they told me."
Lorne continues. "Sexy or not, the first thing it did when it came to this town was go after the bad guys. The Beast took out a heckuva lot of innocents before it set its sights on the guilty. We know that firm works its very dark mojo in other dimensions. Maybe it – or she – came here to for some payback. And what happens you confront this killing machine inside Wolfram & Hart? Won't it assume that you're one of the bad guys?"
"I can't let a mass killer loose on the streets." Cordy raises her eyebrows. "Again," he clarifies, remembering how he let Darla and Drusilla chow down on those lawyers. "And I won't be alone. I'll have Connor. I'll have all of you."
"Are you and Connor even at full strength?," Cordy wonders.
"I know I am. Let me go ask him." Angel leaves. Cordelia wonders if she should have waited before springer her big news. However, it's better she told Angel before this latest assignment came up. In a few hour, he'd have even more on his mind. Including Buffy's safety. Especially Buffy's safety.
On the twenty-fifth floor, Clay walks into David's office. He's wearing a blue shirt, yellow tie and white suit, as well as white shoes so polished you could see your face in them. David wears more muted and conventional office attire. "Notice the chaos downstairs?," Clay asks Dave as he puts his hands in his pockets and strolls over to David's desk. "Things haven't been this hectic around here since, well, since before we were here."
"This isn't chaos. It's destruction."
"You sound worried. So why aren't you tucked away in your executive panic room?" This was one of the post-Beast additions.
"I haven't received the go ahead."
"Only as brave as your boss requires."
"That really means a lot coming from a snake like yourself."
"Why thank you," Clayton replies, acting as if the insult was a compliment. "I am quite serpentine." This was the other side of the glibness that infuriated colleagues and enemies alike. Clayton couldn't be bothered by any setback, or injured by any insult. It was as if he bathed every morning in teflon. Or so he wanted everyone to believe.
"I assume you received the memo on Angel."
"I knew long before the memo," Clayton replies with a sly half-smile. "Fabulous news. Wouldn't you agree?"
"Are you joking? He's lost his Achilles' Heel. The one way we could get to him has been eliminated."
"All valid points. But they miss what really matters. Angel losing his soul doesn't help us that much. He'd get it back within the week. What does help us is Angel losing the will to fight. Morale is a lot harder to to regain than a measly soul. Morale is sapped by misery. This new development ensures that Angel will be even more miserable than before."
"I don't see how," David scoffs. Clay like to play the contrarian, and he loves to b.s., but this is extravagant even by his standards.
"What's worse – not getting what you want when you know you can't have it, or not getting what you want when you know you can?"
"And what do you think will keep him from getting it?"
"The way of the world. Luck is not on his side. Things will break wrong. Events beyond our control will intervene. Angel will be denied. Face it, he's Tantalus."
"Except that now the Gods have decided to let him drink the water and eat the cakes."
"If I'm wrong about this, then Angel is not the One. The vampire in those prophecies the Senior Partners put so much stock in must earn his humanity through suffering. Perfect happiness and suffering are diametrical opposites. Either his suffering increases, or this company's been barking up the wrong tree for the last four years."
David chuckles. "Always the hypocrite. I thought you make a point of not caring about Angel?"
"I make a point of not worrying about him."
"Do you worry about anything?" The phone rings. "I understand. Will do." David hangs up and rushes out of his office. Clay follows him.
"What's the latest?"
"It's reached the twentieth floor." Clayton gasps and runs for the stairwell. "Clay! Our room's on this floor! Where the hell are you going?"
"Down."
"It's your funeral," David replies with a shrug. He makes his way for safety while Clayton sprints down seven flights of stairs and emerges on the eighteenth floor. He rushes towards a metal door guarded by two large men. Clay stops right in front of them to catch his breath.
"Can we help you?," one of them asks. He sucks in air for ten more seconds before answering.
"Yes," he replies before taking a few more breaths. "You can let me in."
"I'm sorry sir. We can't do that."
Clayton's usually serene face turns nasty. "Do you have any idea who you're talking to?"
"Yeah. A lawyer. Which means you're on the wrong floor. This is mystics and magic. However much of a big shot you are in legal, you have no authority here."
"Let me in, or you'll regret it." The two burly guards chuckle. Clayton hits the one to his left with a left uppercut to the chin. The guard to his right sticks out the stun gun that's in his right hand. Clayton grabs his right hand and pulls the stun gun to the left, hitting the other guard as he tries to attack Clay. He collapses. Clayton pulls the right wrist of the other guard behind his back and spins him around, pushing his face into the door. Clayton jams the stun gun into back, causing this guard to collapse. Clay takes the gun and shocks each man two more times to make sure they're out. "Told you." He takes out one of their cards swipes it to unlock the door, and he walks inside. Thirty feet to his left is a gray marble table, around which sit four bald women in sleeveless black gowns. Shooting out of the middle of the table is a foot-high blue flame. Standing between them and Clayton is a small man in a red robe with a golden belt. He is bald, save for single a long, black lock of hair coming out of the top of his head, falling over his left ear and resting behind his left shoulder. He is outraged by the presence of an intruder.
"Do you know what happens to men who violate our sanctity?," the outraged priest demands to know. Clayton makes his way for the table, barely noticing the man who stands in his way.
"Relax old man. I'm just here to do your job for you."
"Who do you think you are?," he asks while contemplating all the things he can do to hurt a Wolfram & Hart employee without running afoul of the Senior Partners.
"A guy who cares." He decks the priest with a right hook. "Which is much more than I can say for you." Clayton stares at the woman who sits at the back of the table. All of them have their heads down, their eyes closed. They chant as if in a deep trance. But once he gets within fifteen feet, she opens her eyes, lifts her head up, sees him, smiles and leaps to her feet. The flame turns red. The other three women cry out in agony. She pays no attention, turning away from them and wrapping her arms around Clayton's broad shoulders. He puts his hands on her bare head, smiles and touches his forehead to hers, staring into her green eyes. She's tall and powerfully built, three inches shorter than the six-foot-one Clayton. "It's okay, baby. I'm here. It's okay." But she's comforting him at least as much as he's comforting her. She rips off the tie that held his long hair in a pony tail and pulls it towards her, wrapping his mane around her head and making a sort of barrier between their two skulls and the rest of the world. Soon, they both start laughing. She lets his hair fall down his back and runs her fingers through it. They slowly move their heads from side-to-side in unison, keeping their foreheads touching. After twenty seconds of contact, she slowly pulls back, takes his hands, smiles, then slowly pulls back some more until they're no longer touching. "Don't worry, Mona," he tells her. "This won't change our dinner plans. I'll be at your place, seven-thirty sharp."
Mona turns around and walks back to the table to rejoin the others. The priest, who has a bruise on his left cheek, gives Clayton a ferocious glare. Mona sends the priest an even more menacing look. He relents, knowing that giving Clayton the punishment he deserves isn't worth risking the break up of the firm's most powerful coven in North America. Mona grins, sits down and holds hands with the women to her left and right. They settle down, no longer agitated by Mona's absence. The flame quickly goes from red to blue, then to white. Clayton gives the priest one of the smug grins that he's become so despised for. There are few things people hate more than an asshole who always wins. The white flame means they're in harmony, which means they can telepathically tell the priest what they've figured out. The priest has the information he needs – half a minute after the obnoxious, gaudy lawyer who shouldn't even be there. Never has he felt so impotent. Clayton takes off his coat and slings it over his left shoulder. "The other three just hold her back," he says as he walks past this extraordinarily powerful mystic, treating him like a glorified servant.
What's worse, the priest realizes that Mona had been holding back. She knew the answer, but wouldn't reveal it until she knew her man was all right. Against all logic, and every company rule, a sleazy lawyer who couldn't so much as float a pencil had usurped his authority. "Why does my jewel care about this walking dung heap?," the priest thinks to himself. A second later, he falls to the ground and grabs the back of his head in extraordinary agony. Clayton smiles, glances over his right shoulder and winks his right eye at Mona. She grins and winks back. Once he's left the room, the mega-migraines end and the priest stands up. If only she weren't irreplaceable. Outside, Clay steps over the bodies of the security guards, goes into one of the abandoned offices on the abandoned eighteenth floor, sits down and calmly has a cup of coffee. Now that he knows what's happening, he starts thinking about how to turn this disaster into a net gain for the firm. Experience had taught Clayton that, if you were clever enough, you could take advantage of any unforeseen development, no matter how awful.
After working her way through all thirty floors, Nina teleports into the White Room. "I'll wait in this place, where the sun never shines. Wait in this place, where the shadows run from themselves," she sings as she strolls around. She hears a growl, looks down, and sees the jaguar. It flashes its glowing green eyes at her. She flashes her glowing blue eyes back. The animal quickly stops appearing so menacing, and nuzzles up against her left leg. "That's a nice kitty." She pets it with her left hand. "That's a very nice kitty." A few seconds later, she digs her fingers under its flesh and rips out a portion of the animal's spine. It falls on its side, dead. Nina props open its mouth and sticks her right arm down its throat until she's into the animal up to her shoulder. She rips it out, holding some yellow gunk in her right palm. For once, her grotesque actions make her mildly nauseous. She tosses it on the wall, creating a small portal that she dives through head-first.
Now she's in a green room, twenty feet-cubed. The walls are dotted with yellow, red and brown spots. Nina knows they are camouflage for the demon that protects what she's after. It's a forty foot-long snake that slithers along the walls, threatening to constrict anything standing between them. "A snake. That's no fun." Nina's never liked fighting them. She looks straight up and sees a red ball next to a blue ball. "Jackpot." She bends her knees and prepares to jump, but stops right before lift-off. The snake anticipated her move and slithered up to the ceiling with astonishing quickness. It coils its massive body around the prizes. This was going to be more difficult than she expected. She could try to run up the walls, outflank the serpent and rip open its body before it could bite her. But now Nina knew the snake was too fast for that. No matter how she utilized her own speed, it would gobble her. She looks up at the demon. Its mouth is eight feet above her head. It sticks out and wiggles its two foot-long forked tongue, taunting its prey. That's when something important occurs to Nina: while there was no way to avoid getting eaten, there was also little chance that the demon could kill her.
She smiles at the snake and sticks her tongue out, playfully mimicking the predator. Nina closes her eyes and leaps straight up. The snake opens its mouth, shoots its body downwards and quickly devours Nina whole. She claws her way up to the middle of its body while the snake rests its head on the floor and keeps its back end around the goodies on the ceiling. Nina is standing in the middle section. She shoots her arms out in either direction, trying to break through the two foot-wide snake's six inch-thick skin. That's at least three inches thicker than Nina was counting on. This meant bursting free took her ten seconds instead of two. The demon squeals as her hands force their way out and tear the demon in the two. No sooner does Nina break free than the lower section of the serpent falls off the ceiling and buries her on the floor. Nina slowly pushes the bulk aside and rises to her feet. The fangs and their venom were no problem. But the hydrochloric acid in the digestive juices ate through parts of her rubber suit, which is smoking and giving off an awful odor. Even worse was the viscous slime she was covered in. Nina runs her hands through her hair, trying to wring the gunk out. Her suit was ruined.
Nina had anticipated messiness. Though not on this scale. She unzips her suit and takes it off. Underneath are kaki spandex shorts and a blue spandex short-sleeve top. She leaps up to the ceiling, taking the glowing red orb in her left hand and the glowing blue orb in her right. Each one is about two inches in diameter. She puts them both in her right hand and spins them around, then does likewise with her left. A brown belt is slung tightly across her chest from her left shoulder to her right hip and back around. On the front of the belt is a pouch. She opens the pouch and places the orbs inside. It's not exactly the most secure form of transport, but who was tough enough to take them from Nina? She zips the pouch shut and leaps through the portal back to the white room just before it closes. "Work's all done. Now for the fun."