With all their vehicles in the shop after Mal trashed them, Cordy drives the van they're leasing. Its windows are heavily tinted, and the only side windows are in the front section, so Angel has plenty of protection from the sun. "How are you supposed to get out?," Cordy asks Angel, who sits next to Connor in the third row. The sun's setting, but it's still out. "And where do you want me to park?"
"Next to the front door."
"Good thinking. That way, we can see if it's a hoax without even stepping out. Or, if it's not, we can drive away before becoming the next victims."
"We'll be fine," Angel insists. "Connor and I go first. You four grab the weapons and back us up. Even if we can't kill it, we have enough fire-power to hold it off."
"What if it ain't like anything we've ever seen before?," a nervous Fred asks.
"In the past few months, we've faced a lot of things we've never seen before. And we're still here. If something's in there – whatever it is, we can handle it." Cordy jumps the curb and drives through the crowd of Wolfram & Hart refuges at thirty miles an hour. They scream and leap to either side to avoid the maniac driver. "Cordy, watch out!"
"Calm down, Angel," she says just before slamming on the brakes and stopping so that the passenger side is four feet from the doors. "If I wanted to kill them, I would have been going a lot faster. And I wouldn't have honked the horn."
"Ready?," Angel asks Connor, who sits to his right.
"I'm here, aren't I?," he responds curtly. Wesley slides open the door. Connor jumps out, followed quickly by Angel. They take a revolving door inside. Angel holds a three foot-long broadsword, while Connor brandishes a two foot-long curved sabre. Both of them are overwhelmed by the sight of the slaughterhouse Nina has turned the lobby into. For creatures with extraordinarily sensitive noses, the stench of blood and viscera is overwhelming. Especially for Angel, who can be tempted by the smell of a few ounces of spilled human blood, to say nothing of several gallons. "Guess they weren't lying," Connor comments. Given all he's seen in his life, he's the least effected by the massive gore. Wesley, Gunn, Fred and Cordy get out and open the back doors to get at the heavier weapons. Gunn straps on his flame-thrower and puts an ax into his belt. Wesley slings his shotgun over his shoulder, holsters two pistols and places two hand grenades in his jacket pockets. "Why didn't you use those against Mal?," Gunn asks about the grenades.
"He was too fast." Cordy and Fred each take a tranquilizer gun. Fred also grabs a taser, and Cordy a short sword. They know that if this was a false alarm, Angel and Connor would be out by now. That makes all of them extra nervous about what awaits them. Cordy and Fred each grab a handle of the duffle bag that holds the rest of the weaponry. Wesley closes the van door, then opens one of the building's doors, allowing the more heavily-burdened Gunn, Cordy and Fred to go in first. Then he enters. None of them is prepared for what the find. Fred doubles over and nearly wretches. Wesley almost does likewise. Dozens of bodies lie in the front part of the lobby. Six hearts are scattered on the floor. Brains from the crushed skulls mingle with the blood. Several bodies have their chest cavities ripped clean open. Lying here and there are short strands of spinal cord, as well as a few severed heads and limbs. They've never seen anything like it. Not even Angel. The Beast could easily produce this sort of body count, but wasn't nearly as keen on dismemberment. And the creatures Angel knew of who were this keen on dismemberment didn't generate such immense volume. Cordy, Fred and Wes go pale. Along with Gunn, their stomachs are full of madly fluttering butterflies.
"Is it too late to run?," Cordelia asks, expressing the sentiments of her three friends. But Angel and Connor walk on to the middle of the lobby, taking small, careful steps so as not to slip on the blood and entrails. They have no choice by to follow. Everyone moves right, going along the edge of the hall, where the floor is still white. The one downside is it gives them all a close-up of the eyeless guard at the help desk. They hear a gunshot from the other side of the lobby. Angel checks it out. The guy manning the monitors, who Nina traumatized and forced to leave the building open, has just blown his brains out. "At least one of you bastards had a painless death," Angel comments before rejoining Connor and the rest of the gang. The back of the lobby is far less grisly. The bodies are fewer, more spaced-out, and their deaths were cleaner. The floor is strewn with hundreds of empty shells. They littered the front and middle of the hall, but practically cover it in the back. Wesley begins to seriously doubt if firearms will accomplish anything. Angel empties the bag and places the weapons on a ledge to their right. He then orders Connor to use the duffel bag to quickly sweep the shells away and create a large, clear section where there's nothing they can slip and fall on. When Connor objects, Angel says he'll do the sweeping and Connor can move the ten corpses. Connor agrees to sweep, and Angel carries the bodies off to the side.
"Psycho-catwoman my ass," Cordy declares, referring to the obscenely brutal nature of the massacre.
"Any clue what did this?," Gunn asks. Angel and Wesley look at one another and realize each of them erroneously assumed the other had a clue. Then they both look at Connor.
"Why would I know?"
"You saw demons on Quor Toth we can't imagine," Angel explains. "Do you come across any who could do this?"
"A few. But they were huge. And slow. Way too big to walk all over this building. They'd probably fall through the floor."
"That would be a no," Gunn concludes.
"What about a god?," Fred asks. "Ya know, like what Buffy and WIllow fought? Could a god do this?"
"Easy," Angel presumes. "But this was random, pointless slaughter. Gods don't kill simply for the fun of it. It's, I don't know, beneath their dignity."
"Angel, do we have a strategy?," Cordy wonders.
"I want all of you in that corner," Angel orders, pointing to his right as he faces the back doors, which weren't exposed to direct sunlight at this hour. "Gunn and Wesley, I want you two in front of Cordy and Fred to protect them. They'll cover you with their fire. Try the tranq guns. If it's demon, we can bring bring it down with enough darts. Connor and I will be front and center. We get in trouble, you bail us out. If it goes after you, we'll take it from behind. Any questions?"
Fred raises her hand. "Not to be negative, but if things aren't goin' good, when should we run?"
"If we're tossed through the glass." Connor scowls. He thinks that's giving up too easy. "Or, if I tell you to. You're fifteen feet from the nearest door. We can easily cover that retreat. But it won't come to that. We'll hold our ground." Angel puts his right arm around Connor's shoulders. Connor smiles, in part because he knows they're of one mind, but more because it showed that Angel had faith in Connor's abilities. Like he saw his son as an equal. At least that's how Connor interpreted it.
After seeing what this hideous monster could do, the gang re-equips. Wesley jettisons his two pistols. Cordy and Fred eagerly snap them up. Wesley convinces them to give him the tranq guns, at least for the first shot. Cordy also grabs Gunn's aluminum bat with the hook on the end that he used to such great effect against Angelus, though she's not aware of this detail. Fred takes a hatchet. Wes grabs a sword. All six of them have daggers. Next to Gunn and Wes are two sledgehammers lying on their heads, ready for them to either use or toss to Angel and Connor. Armed and in place, all they can do now is wait for three agonizing minute and try to ignore the carnage all around them.
It was the snake that held Nina up. She felt the need to rinse her hair clean in a third floor bathroom. Since it wasn't real hair, it quickly dried and assumed the proper shape. Her work may be ugly, but she felt an imperative to look beautiful while doing it. Connor could hear her feet stepping on a walkway forty feet up. He points at the spot. Angel can hear it, too. The steps sound surprisingly light and nimble to him. Not the plodding stomps of a monster. They back away. Nina swoops down, bending her knees as she lands in the center of the back part of the lobby. Angel and Connor are twenty feet in front of and to the right of her. The humans are fifty feet away and to her left. For a second, everyone is too startled to attack. This is not the monster they were expecting. The lawyers weren't kidding about her being a knockout. Then their fear kicks in. Human appearance, extremely super human power: she must be a god. Definitely a worst-case scenario. They frantically go to work. Wesley takes a grenade in each hand. Fred and Cordy each pull out a pin. Wesley waits three seconds before releasing them, making Fred and Cordy very nervous. He tosses them underhand. They bounce towards Nina, who pays no attention to the humans. She's fixated on Angel and Connor. "Hello killers. Show me everything you've got." Once the grenades are tossed, Connor and Angel sprint for the alley between the elevators and hit the deck, sliding into the wall. "Don't be cowards! Running can't save you. Stand up and fight!"
The grenades detonate, one of them five feet from Nina and the other one ten feet away. Angel's friends are crouched behind the ten bodies Angel piled up to form sandbags of corpses. Wesley peaks above the barrier to see what effect the grenades have. The large amounts of shrapnel that hit Nina travel right through her without causing any damage. The explosives also have no effect. Amidst the fireworks, Wesley can't see that the fragments which hit the orbs bounced off them, or that the shrapnel passing through Nina falls only a few feet behind her, her body having absorbed nearly all their energy. He knows this doesn't bode well. The others don't realize this until a couple seconds after the blasts, when they get up. Fred and Cordy quickly leave the protective corpses, with Wes in front. (None of them like the idea of crouching behind dead people, even if it does provide safety.) Gunn stands up and marches towards Nina, who is still dazed by the strange missile weapons the humans employed. She looks at Angel and Connor, who are on their feet, but still twenty five feet away. Why can't they be men and attack her like brave Buffy and tough Faith? Evidently women were the stronger gender in this species. "I'm waiting, sissy boys!," she taunts, just before getting doused with a jet of flame from Gunn, who is fifteen feet away and coming at her from the other side. She turns, looks at him and motions her hands in his direction as he closes to within ten feet. She cries out in pain. That was a good sign. Then she step towards Gunn. That was very bad sign.
"Are . . . You . . . Not . . . Men!!!" When she's a step away and winding up a right hook, Gunn turns it off. Nina lands a tremendous punch. Then she picks him up and tosses him in the direction of his friends, who try to catch him to soften the impact and prevent the tank on his back from exploding. He lands face-first on the three of them, knocking them on their backs. Wesley, who's in the center, takes the brunt Gunn's weight, though he was thrown with enough force to knock the wind out of all of them. "It's not too late. To whip you. Into shape." Wesley's struck by the Devo references. It seemed odd for a primordial deity to make pop culture references, especially these ones. The "Whip It" line was obvious enough for her to pick up after a short time on earth. But playing around with the title of their far-more-obscure debut album? That was baffling.
Connor and Angel run at Nina from the right. She's still laughing over her successful frame of demon-fighter bowling. Angel's struck by her seeming lack of concern for her flanks. Every single one of their attacks has caught her by surprise. Including this one. Connor slashes through her neck with his sword. Nothing. That was new. Weapons bounced off the Beast and Mal. They didn't go through them. Angel, who's three steps behind Connor, decides to do his son one better. He swings his broadsword downward, cleaving her head and cutting her body in two. Connor watches in horror as her flesh heals itself the moment the blade's done moving through it. Like the closing of a downward-going zipper. Except it sounded a lot different. From six feet away, Connor could hear the sucking and slurping of her flesh coming back together. It sounded like a liquid. All he could think of was the T-1000, and how much it sucked that there wasn't smelting furnace nearby. She wasn't liquid metal, but she was liquid something. Once Angel finished slicing, he looked of at her, and couldn't believe his eyes. Nina slaps him with the back of her right hand. He falls on his back. It's the first time a mere slap has knocked Angel down. Connor swings his sword down, trying to lodge it in her head. If the weapons only hurt when they're in her, then that's what had to be done. She dodges to the left. He swings for her eyes. She ducks. He's quick. She's quicker. Before Connor can bring the sword back, she leaps at him, clobbering his head with a very fast right cross-left hook combination, putting the boy on his back.
Angel steps up and tries a right hook and a left jab. She easily swerves her head out of the way before landing a right hook Angel never even saw coming. He tries a right kick. She ducks, sweeps his left leg, and, during the fraction of a second his falling body is completely in mid-air, pushes Angel with her left foot, sending him sliding along the ground into Connor, who had gotten up and was walking towards her. Wes and Gunn are blown away by the speed and precision they're witnessing. Connor wasn't directly behind Angel. To send Angel sliding at just the right angle to hit Connor required both perfect timing and exquisite touch. Wes takes aim with the tranq guns. But before he can fire, she leaps on top of Angel and Connor while they are still down. She slams their skulls together, then shoves their backs into the wall, cracking the marble. Angel senses that she's fighting with a profound personal animus. But he was mystified as to what her grudge was. While their bodies were still reverberating from getting slammed into the wall, Nina slams her left palm into Angel's nose and her right palm into Connor's, bloodying both of the them. She picks Angel up tosses him forty feet through the air in a circular arc, then does the same to Connor. They crash into the floor from a height of twenty feet. Now Nina follows the same trajectory, flying through the lobby, jackknifing her body and coming down on Angel's chest. He groans. She hops to her feet when Connor is only halfway to his feet, kicking him in the mouth and knocking him on his back.
She grabs Angel's jaw with her left hand and squeezes as she lifts him to his feet. He can feet the jaw bone straining under the stress. Nina nails his face three times with her right fist, the third blow knocking him six feet back and freeing Angel from her grasp. He goes bumpy. She smiles, while Connor attacks from her left. Without taking her eyes off Angel, she uses her left arm to block Connor's left jab. right hook, left kick and right roundhouse kick. Evidently she can easily sense flank attacks, but simply chose to ignore some. At the same time she's thwarting Connor, Nina blocks Angel's left cross with her right hand. Immediately after parrying Connor's roundhouse, Nine ducks Angel's right hook, spins clockwise and sweeps Connor's legs with her right foot, putting him back on his butt. Angel elects to go on the defensive. "Your fangs are as tiny as the other one's," Nina tells him, referring to Spike, which Angel can't possibly figure out at this point. He lands a right hook and left cross, which Nina answers with a right hook. Connor vaults to his feet. Nina decks him with a vicious leaping right roundhouse kick. She pivots and tries to hit Angel with a left reverse kick. He grabs her foot. Playing defense seems to be paying off. Nina leaps in the air off her left foot and does a back flip. It's the standard counter in that situation. He'd seen Buffy use it a number of times. But never like this. Nina seems to float more than jump, completing a full revolution on her way up and grabbing hold of a chandelier. She pulls it down in Angel's direction. He rolls out of the way. She does another flip on the downward trip. Connor leaps over the fallen chandelier and lands a flying right kick to her chest, knocking Nina on her back. Finally, they had her down.
Nina then rose in a way neither Connor nor Angel had ever seen, or even considered. While down, she spins her body around, clearing out everyone within a three foot radius, or else tripping them up. Having created some breathing space, she spins her body some more, rising to her feet as she still twirls. It was like a break dancing windmill move, except in reverse, and it allowed her to go to work before her attackers were ready, landing a right roundhouse punch to Angel's face on her final revolution. Connor connects with a left hook. Nina responds with two crushing left hooks to the right side of his jaw, staggering Connor. She goes back to Angel. "Is it true what they say about the size of a vampire's fangs?" Right now, Angel doesn't know nearly enough to make the Mal connection. He responds to the non-sensical taunt with a straight right kick to her chin. This knocks her back two steps. Angel's learned enough not to pursue. He prepares to block her next move while Connor counter-attacks. She leaps at Angel, sending her right foot for his chest. He grabs hold of her right ankle, but can't halt her momentum. The blow puts him on his back. And because he held on, Nina's standing on top of him. Such great balance. Almost like she had a gyroscope in her. Still, he has her leg with both hands, and can pull her down.
Angel does just this – but right at the moment Connor was going to land a leaping right hook kick to her head. She falls on her back, and he flies over top of her, tumbling to the floor. And once Nina's hands hit the ground, she's able to push up and back handspring her way out of Angel's grasp. He sees Connor on the ground to his left. The boy's glaring at him. Angel gets up and helps Connor to his feet. "I'm sorry. Lousy timing." Nina has the humans forty feet to her left, and the two warriors ten feet to her right. Naturally, she goes for Angel and Connor. They're the ones she blames for Mal's death. Then Nina abandons her graceful acrobatics. She simply leaps at Connor, gets on top of him and wails away like a street-fighter. He blocks two punches, But she lands four others, including two after Angel started punching her face. He had to land three blows before she even paid attention. After whiplashing the back of Connor's head into the stone and concrete floor (leaving a rounded dent two inches deep), she grabs Angel's legs and stands up, making his body parallel to the floor. Then, Nina arches her back, slamming his face into the limestone after a nearly 180-degree trip up and down.
The gang desperately wants to intervene. But Angel said they were to hang back so long as the two of them kept rising to their feet right after getting knocked down. Connor was already up. He lands a left kick to her chest and a right kick to her face, followed by a left cross to her right eye and a right uppercut to her chin. Maybe she was tiring. Still, it would be nice if her face could show signs of physical injury. At least Mal always gave them that. Nina tries a right hook. Connor blocks it. So instead of striking him, she only pushes him back. Connor could feel the strength in her right arm. It was like a spring she could load up and release. Nina charges head-first – more heedlessly than even Connor would. He lands a perfectly-timed right hook kick that causes her to spin around. She clocks Connor with a left jab as she completes her rotation. Nina follows this up with a right uppercut that sends Connor's feet six inches off the ground. She adds a left kick to his chin that takes Connor even higher and causes his body to spin sideways. Nina licks her lips as she jumps off her left foot and lands a mid-air right hook kick to his body powerful enough to send a soccer ball from one goal line into the net 120 yards away – without touching the ground. Connor doesn't touch the ground until he's flown thirty feet through the air, busted through the thin layer of marble on the walls, and fallen six feet straight down. Cordy wants to run over than help the boy, but Wes holds her back. One of Nina's lightning-quick and hammer-hard combinations could kill them.
Besides, there was still Angel to keep Nina busy. He was on his feet, he had pulled all the pieces off stone off his face, and he wanted to lay some serious hurt on Wonder Woman. While Nina is still admiring her devastation of Connor, he lands a left hook. Then a right cross. He ducks her right hook, connects with a left cross to the body, then pounds her chin with a right uppercut. As she stumbles back, he sends a right kick into her nose, blocks her left cross, and sends a left kick into her ribs, and finishes his a head butt. Nina staggers ten feet back, struggling to stay on her feet. Then she jumps up, does a forward flip and lands behind Angel. As he turns, he tries to sweep her legs with his left foot before she can throw a punch. Nina leaps up, flips sideways to her right, and lands five feet to Angel's left. He turns and awaits her attack. He blocks her left jab for his face, but she lands three powerful right jabs to his chest. He thought his ribs had fully recovered from Mal's pounding. And maybe they had. Nina may just be this punishing on her own. She boxes Angel's ears then lands a right uppercut to the stomach that nearly sends him airborne. The worst is yet to come. She pounds his swollen right eye with three monumental left crosses. It's all he can manage to land a right hook powerful enough to knock a human unconscious, but not powerful enough to even startle Nina. He blocks her left hook and lands two quick left jabs to her nose. These blows only serve to provoke her. She sticks her right index and middle fingers into Angel's nostrils, like he's a bowling ball. Then, she lifts him up, spins him around once and hurls him forty feet. He crashes into the wall and tumbles to the ground six feet to Connor's left. Angel grabs his nose. That move was new to him. And man, did it ever hurt.
Now was the time for Angel's friends to swing into action and distract Nina long enough for Angel and Connor to recover. Wesley walks towards Nina. "What now?," she asks. He aims the two tranq guns. She laughs. "More of those little pellets?"
"Not exactly." He puts two darts into her neck. Cordy and Fred come up from behind, take the guns to reload, and hand Wesley a sledgehammer. Gunn walks towards Wes, then stops six feet to his left. She's not even noticing the darts. She leaves them in and walks at both men. Granted, they are time release. And perhaps they needed a greater quantity. Which Cordy and Fred should soon be taking care of. Very soon. Nina now stands between both men and only six feet away. Neither of them dare swing, out of the fear that she could take the hammers away and pulverize the life out of them. They won't defend until she attacks. For the time being, Nina doesn't appear to be interested in doing that.
"My fight's not with you," she tells the two men. "Or with them," she adds, gesturing to Cordy and Fred as they try in vain to sneak up on Nina. "I only care about those two," she concludes, pointing at Angel and Connor with her right index and pinky fingers. They are both slowly rising to their feet. Angel seems very intent on making sure Connor's not too badly hurt.
"Well guess what, hyperbitch?," Cordy responds, standing ten feet to Nina's left. "We care about them too." She aims and puts a dart in Nina's chest from practically point-blank range. Fred sends a fourth dart into her chest from six feet further back. Still, nothing. Nina laughs, prompting Wesley to swing for her face. She backs out of the way, and laughs even harder.
"You have the most fantastic ways of trying to hurt me. The people I've been fighting, they're not even half as original as you folks. And I'm trying to KILL most of them! Which isn't quite the case, here."
"What people?," Wesley asks.
"You wouldn't know them. They live far away from here." Since she teleports, Nina doesn't have a good grasp of distances. For her, the distance between Los Angeles and Sunnydale is slightly shorter than the distance between Sunnydale and New York City, or Sunnydale and Kuala Lampur. Nina didn't want to hurt these measly humans. But they're standing up to her. And that she can't tolerate. She makes a faint at Wes, drawing Gunn closer to him. Then she lunges forward and clotheslines both of them. But instead of grabbing their weapons, Nina veers left and heads after Cordy and Fred. They quickly flee beyond her grabbing distance, and she immediately loses interest. Wes and Gunn get up, and slowly come at Nina from behind. She turns to face them. Now she has the two men in front, the two women behind, and her two prime targets on either side of her. "Is this supposed to be some sort of trap?," she asks.
"Not until you walked into it," Angel, who is to her right, responds. It was an unplaned, entirely improvised response to one of Nina's bouts of absent-mindedness. They continue winging it. Cordy fires a bullet into the glass on the back wall, hoping the bang of the gun and the crash of the glass will distract Nina for a second. Also, it's a shot which was easy to make (literally like hitting the side of a barn door) and the bullet didn't anywhere near the men. Once they hear the shot, Gunn tosses his hammer to Connor, and Wes tosses his to Angel. Nina glances back when she hears the glass shatter, worrying that Wolfram & Hart were sending in reinforcements. Connor swings for her knees while Angel goes for the head. Nina jumps above Connor's blow, but gets clobbered by Angel's. She spirals through the air and hits the ground awkwardly. Connor rushes in and tries to crush her. She avoids two blows, and he only succeeds in further damaging Wolfram & Hart's spare-yet-expensive lobby. When Nina stands up, Angel hammers her in the lower back. She winces and spins to face Connor. When he winds up, she covers her face. So he pounds her chest, knocking her back a few steps and appearing to knock the wind out of her, though she doesn't actually breathe. Now father and son come on simultaneously. Connor smashes her right knee. When she looks at the boy, Angel hits her left ear. She reaches her left hand up and grabs the hammer while it's still in contact with her skull. The pain she shows on her face doesn't prevent her from ripping the weapons out of Angel's hands. Then Nina wields the weapon, blocks Connor's swing by bashing her hammer into his with a mighty clang, and kicks him in the chest. Once he's on his back, she goes to work on Angel.
But first, he lands a left hook, ducks a swing for his head, and lands a right uppercut. Nina smashes his left pelvis. She gives Connor a quick right kick to the ribs to knock him away. Nina swings for Angel's face. He puts his hands up to block it. She stops a foot short, spins clockwise and bashes his sternum. Then, with a mighty upward swing, she sends his chin upwards with such for that when Angel's lower teeth smash into his upper teeth, his two fangs are cracked. His incisors were no longer pointy, and they hurt like hell. He was oh-so-sorry that he had ever gone bumpy in this fight. Nearly as bad as the pain caused by the exposed nerves was the uncertainty. This had never happened before to Angel. So far as he knew, it had never happened to any vampire. Would they grow back? Not that he wanted to use them. But it would make him look pretty pathetic. For the time being, he had to forget about the searing pain and his fang-less fears and help Connor. But first, he had to stand up. Which he couldn't do for the moment. The concussive blow had seriously damaged his sense of equilibrium.
Angel's friends aren't exactly sure how to help Connor, since he's standing between them and Nina, and if they tried to sneak around behind her she'd smash them to smithereens. For the time being, Connor is holding up pretty well. Turns out that when two people with super powers fight with sledgehammers, it can turn into high-impact swashbuckling. That block each other blows, jockey for position, and occasionally smash hammer into hammer, producing a loud clang. Nina decides to focus on taking take her opponent's weapon away before trying to hurt him. After their next hammer-to-hammer collision, she gets her hammer locked behind Connor's. She pulls back and uses her superior strength to rip Connor's hammer out of his hands. He immediately realizes the trouble he's in. She swings for his chin, and he avoids the blow by doing a backwards hand spring. Nina bends down and picks up the other hammer, holding one in either hand. She smiles and swings them inwards. Connor ducks in time to hear them smash together less than a foot about his skull Nina knew he'd duck. She just wanted to scare the boy. At it worked. She can see it in his face. Connor desperately backpedals towards Angel, who's on his feet, though still a little woozy.
Nina swings the hammers round and round in her hands and she pursues the boy. When he stumbles, she launches simultaneous strikes for his left pelvis and right knee. Two direct hits. She quickly moves to the left, swinging the hammer in her right hand for his sternum and the one in her left hand for his spine. The blows push the bones into Connor's heart, actually squeezing the muscle. Connor falls to his knees. Nina pounds his lower back twice with the hammer in her left hand, driving Connor down. Angel rushes to Connor's aid, sword in hand. He hopes to slice through the shafts. But Nina sees him coming and bashes his forehead with the hammer in her left hand. He goes back down. Nina swings for their faces simultaneously, and watches them cover their faces with their arms, more like victims than heroes. She shakes her head. "How Mal lost to you jokers I'll never know." For Angel, the puzzle's starting to come together. Nina tosses the hammers away. They spin end-over-end down elevator alley before bursting clear through the wall.
For the first time in the fight, Nina thinks Angel and Connor are hurt badly enough to deserve a break. She charges full speed at Gunn, Wes, Fred and Cordy. Now they completely understand why Angel wanted them to keep their distance. Fifty feet gave them a second or two of reaction time. This was the first time they have witnessed Nina's acceleration head-on. Wesley points his shotgun at her body and puts two shots into her. The pellets buy a half-second more, long enough for Wesley to cock his weapon once more and put a mess of birdshot in her face from a distance of less than a yard. The proximity allows Wesley and the others to observe the hundreds of pellets strike her face and slow down as they travel through her head. They could hear the pings of the pellets falling straight down a second later like so many ball bearings dropped out of a box. And they could watch as her skin, teeth, hair and eyes filled in the holes that existed for an instant before closing like hundreds of tiny pores.
Nina rips the gun from Wesley's grasp, uses it to block Gunn's ax swing, and kicks Charles ten feet back and to the ground with her left foot. Wes grabs his sword, but before he can stab Nina she bashes him once upside the head, knocking him down. A second strike knocks him out. She bends the barrel into a U-shape, while looking at Fred and Cordy. She loves that they know they are next. They both fire their pistols at point-blank range. The concentrated force of the bullets drives NIna back in a way the tiny pellets could not. Six direct hits, and she's twenty feet back. There was one very easy solution to this: attack someone. Nina leaps twenty five feet at Gunn. Cordy and Fred immediately cease fire. Charles lodges the ax in her chest. She pushes him fifteen feet back into the glass, cracking but not breaking the pane. Then she removes the ax and charges at Gunn, swinging the back end of the weapon for his head. He rushes to his left, towards Fred and Cordy. Nina stops in mid-swing and sticks her right leg out, tripping him up. One blow to the head with the blunt end knocks him unconscious. Nina glances to her right. Connor and Angel are approaching, but they don't look too good.
Thirty feet in front of her are Cordy and Fred. They fire a combined total of eight shots in two seconds. Three of them miss, two hit the ax head Nina holds in front of her body, two go through her stomach, and one goes through her neck. Nina responds by tossing the ax through the two foot space between them. Cordy ducks right, hitting the window, and Fred falls left, hitting the floor. When they start to get up, they see that Nina's standing next to them. "Who wants to sleep, and who wants to watch?," she asks them.
"Who wants to leave?," Connor asks as he grabs Nina from behind and flings her into the glass. But it doesn't shatter, and he hears a distinct "splat" as the viscous liquid that is Nina collides with the much more viscous liquid that is glass. He charges as she peals herself off the glass. When Nina turns, Connor lands a right hook, left hook, right uppercut and left cross to her face.
"Oh, I'll leave," she replies. Connor lands two more right hooks. Nina holds herself up by leaning her back against the glass. As Connor rests for a second or two after his flurry of blows, Nina swings her right foot forward and kicks Connor in the groin. He grimaces, whimpers and falls to his knees, then groans as his eyes go into the back of his head. Nina walks past Connor on his right and looks to her left at Cordy and Fred. "Definitely the weaker sex." Angel walks up and lands a left hook to her face. She knocks him back with a right jab. "Case in point." Nina turns to fight Angel. He kicks her in the stomach with his right foot. She tries a right roundhouse kick, but he backs out of the way. Angel hits her face with a left hook kick. Nina responds by landing a quick combination of right kicks, the first to his stomach and the second to his face. He blocks her right jab and steps forward to throw a right hook. But Nina takes a quick half-step back, spins and lands a left roundhouse kick to his chest, further aggravating his internal injuries. She follows up with a left hook kick to the right side of his face, followed by a left kick to the groin. Angel goes down as Connor had. It hurt so much worse than when Buffy kicked him there. Clearly, this woman is as bitter as she is powerful.
Cordy and Fred come at Nina from behind, bat and hatchet in hands. She spins, ducks and pushes on their chests, knocking both women twenty feet back and to the ground. They fire at Nina as she charges, hitting her six times before they both run out of bullets. But the shots kept Nina ten feet back, allowing them to stand up. She kicks Fred in the chest with her right foot, sending her into the back wall before she has a chance to hurt Nina. Then she turns to Cordy, who holds a dagger in her left hand and stabs for Nina's right eye. Nina grabs Cordy's left hand when the point is only three inches from her eyeball. She twists Cordy's wrist, causing her to drop the dagger. Nina takes hold of Cordy with both hands and tosses her head-first into a metal column in between glass window panes, knocking her out. A slap with the back of Nina's right hand puts Fred back down just after she got up.
Angel's staggered towards Nina, and now he kicks her in the lower back and clubs her upper back with both hands, putting her on her knees. Connor's also up, and he comes at Nina from her left. Angel grabs her chin and head from behind and tries to snap Nina's neck. She lets him. After a few seconds, he realizes that the harder he pulls right, the harder her neck muscles push left, producing a stalemate preventing her neck from twisting. She quickly bounds to her feet, reaches back to grab Angel's head, and flips him forward so he's on the ground. As Connor winds up to punch her, Nina puts her left hand under Angel's chin and her right hand on top of his head. She tilts his chin a few inches to the left and looks at Connor. "Careful." He holds back. A part of Angel is pleasantly surprised that the threat of daddy's death has such a strong deterrent effect on his son. "I let you try it on me. Only fair to let me try on you." She twists Angel's head a few inches more. She's on the edge of killing him. "Psyche." She picks Angel's body up and slams his back down into the floor. Connor attacks, and Nina blocks his flying right hook kick, holds onto his right ankle and flings him into the wall behind her. Angel gets up, spins and lands a left roundhouse punch and a right hook, grunting in pain as he pounds her head. She just laughs. "One of us still looks pretty on the outside. But I bet you still have an inner beauty." Nina fakes a left jab to the face. When Angel puts his right and up to block it, Nina sends the fingers on her right hand for the right side of Angel's stomach. Angel yelps as the fingers pierce his skin and start poking around. "I like to know what a man feels like on the inside." Her fingers burst through his lower back. Then her palm. Angel falls to his knees. Blood trickles out of the left side of his mouth. "Even better than blondie," Nina reports with a smile before ripping her arm out of Angel, leaving behind gigantic entry and exit wounds. He falls to his right, down for good.
By now, Connor has had plenty of time to identify Nina's smell. It was from that house Mal stayed in. Like Angel, he understands why she's doing this. He knows what he would do to someone who killed Dawn. And he knows this woman-creature has no problem killing humans. He figures she's going to do it as slowly and painfully as possible. So Connor sees no choice but to fight on, hold out as long as possible, and hope that he could pull off another miracle. He staggers at Nina from her right. As Angel keels over, she sticks her right arm out and flicks a few ounces of Angel's guts into Connor's face, temporarily blinding him (and grossing him out for far longer). Nina takes advantage of Connor's impaired vision to land two left jabs and two right crosses. Connor staggers back and wipes his eyes clean. Nina knows how hard she can hit, so she knows how hard this boy's trying to hold on. He screams as he launches and connects with a right hook kick, then grunts loudly as he continues spinning and lands a left roundhouse kick. "You are one brave fella." Connor lands a right hook. Nina shoots the tips of the fingers on her right hand into his adam's apple, causing Connor to gasp and put his left hand to his throat. Then she sends a right hook into his left eye. He tries to answer with a right hook of his own, but Nina backs up a half step, avoids the blow and lands a leaping straight right kick to his mouth, sending him into the wall once again. Still, he remains on his feet. "Not to mention durable," she concedes.
Connor tries to speak but only spits and coughs up blood. He wants to say "Why do you think I killed Mal?," unable to resist a golden opportunity for a taunt even at this late stage, and convinced he can't make her any madder. But the injuries Nina inflicted prevent him from testing that assumption. Lucky Connor. She would've broken both arms and both legs. But thanks to the throat shot, it only makes her laugh.
"Not too good with words, though." She blocks his right and left hooks, then lands a left jab, left hook, right cross, right hook, left kick to the stomach, and a right roundhouse kick to the face that puts Connor on his back for good. Nina looks at Angel and Connor, both of them beaten to a bloody pulp and unable to stand. She touches her pouch with her left hand, reminding herself that she got what she was sent for. As she walks to the door, Nina sees, from left to right, Gunn, Wes and Cordy slumped on the ground. Sitting to Cordy's right is Fred, the last conscious one. Nina walks over, causing Fred to tremble with dread. Nina grabs Fred's shirt and lifts her up. Nina stares into her eyes, a cheshire grin on her face. She gives Fred five seconds to imagine what horrible things NIna has planned. But all Nina does is sniff Fred's hair and lick the left side of her neck. Fred closes her eyes and grimaces as the evil monster does this to her. Then Nina drops her to the ground. Nina looks down at Fred. "The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy," she says before chuckling and walking out one of the back doors.
In Los Angeles, the fighting is over for today. In Sunnydale, it has yet to begin. This will be a very long and uniquely difficult night for Buffy.