Caleb finally makes his appearance. Connor and Angel fret about the fate of the Summers women. Wesley thinks he's discovered how to defeat Nina. The final fight begins, the uber-vamps pour out of the Hellmouth, and Angel races back to Sunnydale.
Clenching his jaw so as to not betray his giddy excitement, Caleb walks towards the First, who has taken the form of Buffy. He holds his hands behind his back and looks down at her with utmost deference. "Consecrated ground," he says about the cemetery where she chose to see him at the crack of dawn. "A thin coating of sanctity to cover up and prettify a field of rotting flesh."
"A fitting place to see you."
"Few have been kinder to the undertaker business than I have."
"I know you had hoped to come here earlier."
"You work in mysterious ways." Buffy smirks.
"Today will begin The Fall Of Man." Caleb smiles.
"I do like gettin' straight down to business. Point me the way to the dirty girls." He sees a fist come out the front of his chest.
"Right behind you, player-hater." Caleb's mouth opens wide and his eyes bug out in pain and horror. He looks straight ahead at Buffy, who stands with her arms folded, grinning.
"Sorry. You've been cancelled," she informs her most devoted servant.
"Why have you forsaken me!?" Nina pulls her right arm out of his chest. Caleb turns around and throws a right hook that Nina calmy backs away from. Before him stands a tall, scantily-clad harlot in high heels. Only her glowing blue eyes betray her inhumanity. Well, that and the fact that she can put her fist through his chest. Caleb steps forward and tries a left roundhouse kick, but Nina ducks under it. She blocks his left jab, swerves her head to the left to avoid his right hook, then punches him in the mouth. Her left fist exits out the back of his skull. She pulls her fist free, and what's left of Caleb tumbles to ground. During the fight, the First morphed from Buffy into Darla. Nina walks up to her.
"THAT was Plan A?," she asks in disbelief. "HE was the best home-grown talent you could produce?"
"He did very well against humans. Including Slayers. But the power I filled him with makes him especially vulnerable to you." It has to do with the fact that Nina is the only one who can touch the First.
"I make everyone look bad," Nina brags. "How come he got benched?"
"He hates women. Especially the kind that fights back. I feared he would be too easily demoralized by even a minor setback."
"Rookies often are."
"I have something for you." Nina looks down on a fresh grave, and sees the tail of an arrow sticking up from the ground. She pulls it all the way out. It's one of Mal's. He used it a week ago to dust a vampire while it was still in its coffin in order to confound the patrolling Buffy. The bubbly rush of her wild night disappears, replaced by rage.
"No," Nina replies after a long, contemplative pause. "We have a present for them."
Angel parks the car and they walk towards the courtyard. "Fred, Xander is not funny in practice," Angel maintains. "Only in theory."
"What have you got against him?," Gunn asks.
"I know I'm not alone here," Angel responds as a prompt for Wesley.
"It's what Xander has against Angel," Wes explains.
"I think he likes you better than Spike," Connor offers.
"Is Spike always that sullen?," Fred wonders.
"Except when he's angry," Angel replies.
"I don't understand how anyone could dislike him," Fred declares.
"Spike!?," Wesley asks, aghast.
"Xander. Ah don't know why ya preferred Anya's company," Fred wonders with just a tinge of jealousy.
"Forgive me for preferring the company of the person who says what everyone else ISN'T thinking." They pass through the arch and enter the illuminated garden courtyard. Angel glances at the left side of Connor's neck.
"When did you get that wound?" Connor briefly puts his hand over the spot, realizes what his dad's looking at, and blushes. "The teeth marks are pretty deep. Almost looks like it was bleeding. I don't remember Nina biting you." Gunn and Fred, who are behind Angel and Connor, get a look at it, glance at each other and try to keep from laughing.
"She seems to prefer licking," Fred points out about Nina.
"Hickies ain't her style," Gunn adds. Angel looks back at them, shocked.
"That is not a – ," Connor stops to allow Angel to get a good look. He's quickly grown to relish freaking out those who disapproved of his relationship to Dawn to begin with. Angel quickly averts his eyes. It's the vampiric connotations that bother him most. "Why do I take an interest?," Angel asks himself as he quickly walks inside. Connor follows about ten feet behind, with the others a few steps behind him.
"Angel's sounding more and more like a normal parent every day," Fred says to Wes and Gunn, neither of whom have much experience with normal parenting, though for very different reasons.
"Angel-kins!," Lorne announces. "Did Buffy give you guys the rebuff like I said she would? And what happened to your eye?"
"I was ambushed by an uber-vamp. Anything happen while I was gone? Any news?"
"All quiet on the home front. Place is practically running itself."
"I meant in the city. Have you heard about an amphibious demon along the coast?"
"A sea monster? A we talkin' Loch Ness?"
"Dawn had a vision of something the size of a sea lion eating a guy under a pier. Wesley thinks that humans, or perhaps other demons, are doing the feeding."
"Sounds like Bago. But I've never heard of any this far north. They usually stay close to the equator. That's global warming for ya."
"What do you know about them?" By now, all the others have arrived, and are listening intently.
"It's a silly superstition. Summoning a Bago and then feeding him is supposed to bring good luck and protection. Like giving a portion of your harvest to the temple of the local Suns God." There being two of those where Lorne's from.
"How long does this take?," Angel asks.
"There aren't many demons who can swallow more than one human a night. So it depends on how big the cult is."
"Check for missing persons. I'm going to the beach." Angel walks back to the door. Connor follows. Angel stops. "You want to help? You want to work with me, side-by-side?," he asks with hope in his voice.
"You might miss something," Connor replies with smirk, not wanting to step out of character and show overt affection. The two of them leave.
"Were the teenage lovebirds as bad as I warned?," Lorne asks.
"Worse," Gunn replies.
"Aggressively, almost militantly, unselfconscious," Wes adds, alluding to their shameless displays of public affection.
"Happy puppy?," Lorne asks.
"Happy, slobbering puppy," Fred answers with a cringe.
"If no one minds, I was going to use the office to read this prophecy," Wesley announces before heading in there.
"Does that one come with a warning label?," Lorne asks, given Wesley's past history with prophecies.
"It's only 'bout tomorrow's fight up in Sunnydale. Nothin' 'bout any of us."
"Call me old-fashioned, but there's two things I don't wanna know about," Lorne begins. "Prophecies I can change. And prophecies I can't. They'll both drive you bonkers."
"With that in mind, ahm headin' out," Fred reports. "Gonna meet Graham for dessert at 10:30." It's currently quarter past ten. She leaves.
"I'll just check the missing persons angle before taking off," Gunn tells Lorne.
"Don't worry yourself. Knowing Fred, she probably meant food," Lorne says as Gunn opens the door and enters the office.
"How was Connor?," Amanda asks Dawn as they both lie in their beds, unable to sleep.
"You saw." They both giggle. Dawn sighs longingly. "Boy, his butt looked good in those pants."
"I miss Preston's butt. And the rest of him as well, of course. Woulda been nice to have one night with him."
"You're a Slayer all right," Dawn responds, referring to how imminent death seemed to make Amanda horny. "And you're going to see Preston again."
"That's not entirely up to me. Nina kills at will. Molly or Zora could've just as easily been me. The only reason she didn't take out more of us was because of her confidence. Once she thinks she could lose, and that her time's running out, then we're in real trouble."
Angel and Connor return just after two in the morning. A groggy Lorne sits on a couch, sipping a sea breeze. He looks over at Angel for news. Connor runs to his room. "We went from Santa Monica all the way down to Redondo. No blood in the sand. No disappearances. No one's seen anything out of the ordinary."
"That's good news, right?" Lorne asks Angel, who chases after Connor. "And I thought his papa had a habit of seeing the cloud in every silver lining."
Angel enters his son's room. "We have to go back. We're there, the fight's about to happen, they won't say no."
"Buffy would. You don't defy her. She'll beat us unconscious before she lets us risk our lives helping her out." Connor mulls over the stubbornness of the Summers women.
"Dawn does have that taser I gave her." Angel looks alarmed because it brings back certain memories. "No, she took it. Wouldn't give it back to me." Angel thinks it was very public-minded of Dawn to get that weapon out of Connor's hands.
"Nothing's changed since we left."
"Seeing Dawn makes me feel really great. It takes a few hours for the buzz to wear off. She's all I got. I can't lose her." Angel can't believe what he's hearing.
"That's not true. You have me. You have Fred, and Gunn, and Wesley – "
"They're your friends. Not mine. Buffy dies, your life doesn't change. You didn't even have a life until you left her."
"That's not why I'm not going back. And it isn't even true."
"Which part?"
"All of it."
"You were no better than Spike before you came here."
"You're only saying that to try to provoke me."
"I can't let Dawn die."
"Buffy won't let that happen. She'd give her own life before she'd ever let anything happen to her sister." Connor smiles.
"You really think so?" Angel realizes his son's taking morbid pleasure in this thought.
"She did it before."
"That's right. Dawn dies now, that sacrifice becomes pointless."
"That's putting it crassly. Insultingly so."
"What is your problem?," Connor asks, shaking his head. "I say something nice about Buffy, and you STILL jump all over me." Connor storms out. Angel stands there, pondering his progeny's many quirks. Connor storms back in ten seconds after leaving. "This is my room. You get the hell out."
After eight intense hours, a full pot of coffee and several pads full of notes, Wesley finishes. He takes off his glasses, wipes the sweat off his forehead, and reads the last page again. Then he checks and double-checks his notes. Angel, who, like Connor, couldn't sleep, knocks on the office door. "Come in," Wesley says is a shaky voice. The look on Wesley's face says everything.
"Did you find out how it ends?"
"And I quote, The world shall be at peace. The living will envy the dead.' Unquote." Naturally, Angel finds this jarring. Anyone would.
"Sounds to me like our team wins," he offers, trying to look on the bright side.
"The Forces of Evil can also bring peace. At least temporarily."
"This book was written by a priest. I think that if the Devil won, he would have put it a little differently. Anyway, I don't believe in prophecies." Wesley stares at him. "I don't believe in depressing prophecies."
"It's not a prophecy – not in the traditional sense. The author's Catholic, so he believes in individual free will. No pre-destination."
"So that makes this what, exactly? A book of probabilities?"
"It's a very confusing how-to guide, sealed until the moment it could be used. The prophecies are suitably vague. But the historical examples are quite specific. They present a variety of methods that can be used to prevent an apocalypse. Evidently the First can be defeated by the correct combination of these methods."
"Are you saying it's a crap shoot?"
"More of a multiple-choice riddle having to do with the numbers five and six." Wesley leafs through his notes. "All one needs to do is discover which of the more than one hundred methods relates to those numerals."
"I still don't like the sound of that final sentence."
"Neither did I. It either implies defeat, or victory with massive casualties."
"We're going."
"Excuse me? I've been up all night, so I might be hearing things, but it sounded to me as if – "
"Call Gunn. Call Fred. Buffy said the attack was going to be around nine. We still have time to make it."
"You and Connor have been awake all night. The rest of us are fodder for the Titan. We'd be of little use. I'm not sure you're thinking clearly."
"Nothing's set in stone. The future's ours to change. Isn't that the book's message?"
"The future is THEIRS to change. We are not the guardians of the Hellmouth."
"Which doesn't mean we can't help." Angel picks up the phone. Wesley puts his forehead to the desk in exhaustion and exasperation.
The ringing wakes Fred up. The phone is to the left of the bed, but she's on the right side, so she has to reach across Graham's body to pick it up. He opens his eyes, looks up at her and smiles. "I'll be right there. No? You'll pick me up? Yeah, that does sound better." She hangs up and gets out of bed. Graham sits up.
"Leaving so soon?," he asks, glancing at the clock.
"It's not cause of you. Last night was great," she assures him as she gets dressed. "A work-related emergency just came up."
"And in our line of work, those can't wait."
"I'm glad you understand," she replies as she walks back to the bed. She smiles at him for a few seconds. They kiss for a few more, then she's out the door. Graham gets his pants on and looks out the window. When he sees that Fred's outside, he grabs his cell phone. An emergency, eight hours after returning from a place where he knew a battle was set to happen any day. Didn't take much to figure this one out.
"Lieutenant-Colonel Anderson, sorry to call so early, but you have to put the forces on alert, establish defensive positions if things go bad, get the med-evac choppers ready to go if they don't." Graham looks disappointed and embarrassed. "You already have. The Mayor told you. That's good. Wait. Did you say zero nine hundred? That may be too late. Move everything up to zero eight hundred. How do I know? Inside intel." He cringes at the unintended entendre. "I think the Mayor will understand. You do this, I'm wrong, it's just a sixty minute wait. You don't, I'm right, it's a disaster." He hangs up.
All fifteen of them stand in front of the dry moat. The clouds that appeared fifteen minutes ago make it possible for Spike to stand there with nothing to fear. Spanning the moat in front of the entrance is a lovely arched stone bridge, built without any mortar or cement by the ever-industrious Joiners. Giles is reminded of the saying that you should build golden bridges to lead your enemy to you. Buffy also suspects a trick. "Bloody hell," Spike finally gripes, walking to the center of the bridge and jumping up and down. "It's solid. Now quit being such namby-pambies." He walks across. Andrew follows. Then Dawn. Then Xander, Anya, Faith, Giles, the six Potentials and finally Buffy. They all go one-at-a-time, in case the trick is that too much weight would cause the bridge to collapse, trapping them in the moat.
"More than an hour early," Faith notes. "Think she'll mind?"
"That's the idea," Buffy responds.
"Do-or-die time, B." Faith is the first across the threshold, with Buffy a close second. One-by-one, they enter the Arena. Andrew is the last one through the door. Once he's on the inside, the thick bronze door slams shut. It can't be opened from the inside or the outside.
"Did you see that?," Andrew asks. "I matter!" Evidently the enemy considered him an integral part of the gang. The Arena is cut in two by the Hellmouth fissure. On their half, which is a one hundred twenty foot wide, sixty feet deep semicircle, the floor has been paved with the brown stones once used to pave the walkways around the school building. Buffy sees in this an attempt to make their falls hurt more, since stone is much less forgiving than dirt. Spike and Faith walk around. They see another doorway on the opposite end. But no enemy.
"Can we summon the bird? Or will she make us wait?," he asks. Fadila takes out one of the stones she collected, puts it in her sling, spins the weapon around a few times, then shoots for the Pearl. A burst of white light appears as the stone is vaporized on contact.
"I think we just did," Giles comments. Even the smallest crack destroys the Pearl's power, so Nina can't afford to let them take pot shots or try to undermine one of the three legs the sphere rests on. The Potentials form a defensive arc along the wall to the right of the closed door. Anya, Dawn, Xander and Andrew form a screen in front. Giles stands in front of them, with Willow to his right. Buffy and Faith are up front near the Hellmouth on the right flank. Spike's up on the left. Nina enters. The door behind her slams shut. Her hair's long and purple, and she wears a navy blue leather jumpsuit, just like when they first met, and she drew first blood.
"To be honest, I was also getting sick of waiting," Nina comments about her foes' early entrance. In her right hand is the arrow. The Joiners added a heavy lead weight to the center of the shaft, adding penetrating power and a grip for throwing, thereby turning the arrow into a heavy dart. In her left hand is the bronze sickle. "Let's make this quick. Got a hot date tonight in Atlanta. I wonder if his name means he's 3000 years old? Still younger than my last boyfriend." Nine looks up at the opening in the ceiling sixty feet above the floor. Then she walks towards Faith and Buffy, stopping twenty feet away. They stare each other down from opposite sides of the fissure. "I've got so much trouble on my mind, but I refuse to lose. Known as fair square throughout my years so I growl at the livin' foul. Black to the bone, my home is your home, so Welcome To The Terrordome," she declares, picking out lines from the Public Enemy song of the same name. In addition to digging the song, she finds reciting these lines to be ironic because she's brown, not black, and she doesn't have any bones. (The flesh of a Titan is of uniform composition and consistency throughout its body, meaning, among things, that it has no vital organs or vulnerable spots.) Nina walks away. The floor starts rumbling. When it stops, Buffy, Faith and Spike can see the uber-vamps climbing out of the Hellmouth. They rush back to defend the others.
Gunn floors it as they take Interstate 5 northward. Wesley rides shotgun, rummaging through his papers. Fred's behind Gunn, Connor's behind Wes, and Angel hides from the sun on the back bench. "Did he understand? Or was he still asleep?," Angel asks Fred.
"He? Oh no. You can smell him? Eww!," she yells out, feeling as if his enhanced olfactory abilities constitute an invasion of privacy. Wes and Gunn had noticed that she appeared flush and seemed far less grim than the rest of them. This would confirm their suspicions.
"If the world is really gonna end, at least one of us didn't waste the last night," Connor comments.
"Yes, I hardly know him," Fred defensively responds, "but if you say ANYTHING - "
"It would be an unfair double standard," Wes declares.
"He ain't evil," Gunn points out approvingly, comparing Graham favorably to some of their trysts. "He ain't never been evil. He didn't ever try to kill any of us."
"Except me," Angel points out.
"You were evil, and that was self-defense," Fred reminds him.
"Kelly says Graham's a real stand-up guy," Wesley reports. Fred was most worried about his reaction. She's glad Wes chose not to be hypocritical.
"He's military. Does he know Riley?," Angel asks.
"They're best friends," Fred responds. Just perfect. "Riley's married. To a girl who don't like vampires. He's way past Buffy. So he's way past bein' mad at you."
"Kelly massively outranks all of them," Wes points out with pride. "If you wanted, she could order them all to be extremely nice to you."
"I could make Graham do that on my own," Fred responds with equal pride. Connor smiles. The thought of a girl ordering her boyfriend to place nice with her friends and loved ones reminds him of Dawn.
"Any progress, Wesley?," Angel asks.
"I've ruled out over eighty scenarios. I have around thirty left to go. You can take a look at the book, if you want," Wes suggests as he hands it to Fred, who hands it to Angel. "It's in Latin and Spanish."
"I can read Latin. And Spanish is close to Italian, so I'll manage."
"I've bookmarked passages that may be of interest to you. One on Acathla. And three, remarkably enough, about Mal."
"Hold on," Fred responds. "I thought Mal liked the world."
"And to prove it, he saved it on three occasions. In India and Central Asia with the Slayer Kandake. And in Roman Dacia with a hastily improvised force of humans, vampires and demons. The Romans referred to him as Black Hercules, presumably because of his mighty bow. And his massive strength."
"Do I get a mention?," Angel asks with wounded pride.
"It's meant to supply the Sunnydale Slayer with information she wouldn't already know. The parts on Mal show vampires and Slayers collaborating, as well as demons and humans joining forces. It's a way of dropping hints. Like this story about . . . EUREKA!! I've got it. I've got it!"
"That's okay. We understood you the first time," Fred jokes.
"I know how to kill her. I know how they can kill Nina." A hush descends over the cabin. Angel looks at the road sign.
"Santa Barbara, twenty miles. That means we're sixty miles from Sunnydale. What time is it?"
Gunn glances at the console. "Seven-fifteen."
"We're gonna make it. See Wesley. I told you it was worth going."
Six Turokh-hans emerge – on Nina's side of the Arena. She drops the dart, keeps the sickle, knocks one vamp down with a leaping left roundhouse kick and beheads him, spins around, ducks a punch, blocks a dagger stab, grabs the uber-vamp's throat with her right hand and snaps its neck. Buffy realizes she's trying to psyche them out. Nina pummels the other four, knocking them all down, letting them get back up, then knocking them down again. She gets on top of one of them, squeezes its neck with her right hand and crushes its spine, then gets up in time to avoid an attack from behind. Using her mobility to avoid getting surrounded, she blocks their attacks, administers some more punishment, then beheads two, knocks the last one on his face and shoves the heel of her boot into its back, severing the spinal column. She looks across the fissure at her opponents and smiles. "Don't worry. There's plenty more where they came from. Nina walks over to pick up her dart, whistling Stevie Wonder's "My Cheri Amore" as if she could care less about the desperate battle unfolding before her.
Buffy's ordered Dawn, Xander, Anya and Andrew to join Rona, Kennedy, Madari, Ariella, Fadila and Amanda, extending their defensive arc, with Rona anchoring the left wing and Andrew the right, both of them touching the wall. Buffy can fight a little easier knowing the enemy won't get behind her most vulnerable fighters. Three uber-vamps emerge on left wing, across the room from them. Two more climb out on the right wing, directly in in front of them. Buffy tries to hold Faith back, but she rushes out at the duo, ducking a punch from the one to her right and staking him through the heart with her four thousand year-old super-stake. She nails the other one in the face with a right roundhouse kick, backs away when it swings a crude weapon resembling a lawn mower blade, leaps forward and lands a flying left kick to its nose, then clobbers the already staggered demon with a right hook kick. She runs forward, reaches her right arm out and stakes the turokh-han just before it would have fallen back into the Hellmouth.
Buffy worried that Faith's bravado would prevent her from helping them with the other three enemies. And she was right. "Don't worry pet," Spike assures her. Two-on-three's better than three-on-five." Willow steps forward and tries to push the uber-vamps back with a spell. It fizzles. She looks to her right at the Merv Stone, realizing that its power was throwing off the magical energy in the vicinity. She retreats, feeling impotent. Giles steps up, longsword in hand.
"No," Buffy tells him.
"Look behind them," Giles suggests, referring to the uber-vamps who are now only twenty feet away. Forty feet further back, two more uber-vamps claw their way to the surface. They had to take care of the front line quick. Spike leaps at the turokh-han on the right and takes him down. "I said look!, you bloody idiot." Spike gets his right arm slashed by some sort of hacking weapon. But that only makes him madder. He wrestles the weapon away, stands up and attacks. Three swings to the neck get the job done. He looks back, hoping to attack the two remaining uber-vamps from the rear. Then he looks forward, and sees the two new arrivals bearing down. Giles slowly retreats in the face of his opponent, using his sword to keep the demon at bay for the time being. Buffy engages the other one, trades a few blows and has trouble getting a quick stake. So she runs the other way and stakes Rupert's opponent in the back, turning around in time to kick her charging opponent away. They resume their hand-to-hand single combat.
Shortly after Faith dusted her first two, another three climb out in front of her. They land a few blows and force her back. She can only keep two busy at once, so the third rushes passed her. Spike gets the snot beaten out of him by the two uber-vamps he rashly charged. They leave him on the ground and head towards the Potentials, while two more turokh-hans emerge in the center of the Arena, right underneath the Merv Stone, Save for Giles and Willow, nothing stands between five uber-vamps and the Potentials. Buffy gains the upper hand, wears her opponent down and stakes him, though it takes two tries – the first to crack the sternum, the second to penetrate it. She turns to her right, runs at the demon attacking Faith from the left, leaps up, wraps her lower legs around its neck, flips the ubervamp on its back as she rolls forward, then snaps its neck between her calves. "Sweet kill, B!," Faith exclaims. Her other opponent knocks her down with a left hook while she's distracted. Buffy hits him with a left hook and a right cross before getting knocked back by a right hook. Faith steps forward and stakes him dead. They both run back to save the rest of the gang.
Giles retreats to Rona's left, and Willow falls back to Andrew's right. The other ten stay put, holding the line. Three turokh-hans engage the six Potentials. Despite the double-teams, the uber-vamps block all the sword and ax swings that come their way. The other two demons lag behind, making sure the Potentials are not a threat to their right flank before attacking the other four humans. Willow, who threatens their left flank, appears too scared to confront them. Actually, she backs off because she's knows she's too valuable to risk death in a fight. Dawn turns to her right. "Switch places with me," she whispers to Xander when the uber-vamp is a mere six feet in front of them.
"What? Why?"
"Just do it." She grabs his left bicep with her right hand, pulls him leftward, and steps to her right. As the uber-vamp charges them, she steps forward and to the right, abandoning Xander and breaking the line. She figures the enemy expects them to stay put, and hence will be surprised. Xander sure is surprised, and terrified. Dawn swings the samauri sword Connor filched from Angel, beheading the uber-vamp to her right that was about to attack Anya and Andrew.
"Dawny, what are you doing!," Anya screams as she rushes to Xander's aide. Dawn smiles at her success, spins round and swings for the other uber-vamp. He blocks her sword and takes her down with a right roundhouse kick to the face. As usual, Dawn's attempt at playing Slayer worked better than others expected, but no as well as she herself had hoped. The turokh-han punches Xander and Anya to the ground. Andrew grabs hold of its left leg. It tries to kick him loose, but can't. Having to drag this pesky human prevents it from stepping forward and finishing off the two ex-fiances. The demon leans down and stabs Andrew in the back. Andrew takes the dagger out from between his teeth and slices into the uber-vamp's left Achilles Tendon. It yelps in pain. Only able to stand on its right foot, the turokh-han falls forward and and to the right, grabbing onto Amanda and sinking its teeth into the right side of her neck. She screams. Three seconds after digging in, the uber-vamp disappears, and before her stands Buffy, who staked it in the back. The arrival the Slayers, as well as a bruised, bloodied and supremely pissed-off Spike, in their rear causes confusion among the three remaining uber-vamps. Giles beheads the one on the Potentials' far left. The other two appear caught between the anvil of the Potentials and the hammer of the Slayers. Buffy and Faith engage them while Spike looks over his shoulder.
"Better save your strength. There's more where they came from." Six more, to be exact. One attacks Spike. Three head for the Potentials. And the other two go for the other four humans who, thanks to Dawn, were victorious but disorganized. Meanwhile, Nina's moved up to the edge of the Hellmouth, just across from where the fight's happening, waiting for the right moment to make her presence felt.
Willow tries another barrier spell, but it fails just like the last one. Andrew knows one uber-vamp could easily kill four humans who lack special powers. To say nothing of what two uber-vamps could do to them. He decides that now is the moment for his Vader-esque redemptive sacrifice. Andrew yells as he runs at the two demons. He spins round, swinging his sword like a Jedi wields his light saber. The turokh-han on his right ducks and bites the right side of his neck. Still standing and holding the sword in his left hand, Andrew swings for the back of the neck of the uber-vamp on his left who walked passed him on its way to the others. He breaks the skin, but doesn't quite cut the spinal cord. However, he gets the turokh-han's attention, and the monster turns round and bites the left side of Andrew's neck from behind. He cries out in pain as his body slowly sinks do the floor. Xander seizes the opportunity. The jokes about him getting a hook had given Xander an idea. Instead of his prosthetic, which would prove useless in a fight, Xander fashioned a six inch-long stake to wear on the end of his left arm. It was covered by a thin jacket of steel for the first five inches to keep it from breaking. Since he could put his entire arm behind the thrust, he could deliver the blow with far more force than if he were holding a stake in his hand. He runs out and jabs the uber-vamp in the back, dusting him. Anya uses an ax to behead the first turokh-han that bit Andrew, nicking Andrew's forehead on the follow-through. He falls on his back.
"Ouch! I'm sorry," Anya apologizes.
"Why? Aren't they dead?," Andrew asks, his voice weak, his eyes glassy.
"They are," Xander tells him. "And you're still here."
"Not for long. These are my last words. Listen well, you brave band of brothers and sisters in arms." Dawn screams. One of the other demons has attacked her. She does her best to protect herself with her sword as she retreats towards them.
"Dawn!," Xander yells, rushing to her aid. Anya goes for another kill. Willow picks up a sledgehammer and backs them up. Andrew dies alone. But thanks to him, three turokh-hans find themselves hemmed in on three sides by eleven mortals who make up for their lack of super-powers with teamwork, ferocity and long, sharp weapons.
Spike concludes an intense hand-to-hand fight by head-butting the uber-vamp in the nose, hurling him back into the wall to the left side of the door, landing two left and two right hooks to put the turokh-han on its knees, then snapping its neck from behind. Spike smiles, all fanged-out. Blood streams down his face. His black t-shirt is slashed in three places, one of the wounds being rather deep. And his left eye's swollen shut. He hasn't felt this good in a long while.
When Nina sees Buffy's stake come out the demon's back, she hurls her dart from forty feet away. As the turokh-han turns to dust, the dart slams into Buffy's left thigh. The point embeds itself into her femur. She grimaces and falls down. There was no way she could have seen it coming. As Buffy sits, she looks ahead and sees Nina smiling. "Compliments of my boyfriend," Nina taunts. Since Mal cast all his own arrowheads, it literally was. He made them long and heavy, thin and pointy at the front to pierce armor, but flared wide in back to rip through flesh and make them hard to pull out. Buffy takes hold and snaps off the back three feet of the shaft that was sticking out of her. She stands up and goes to help, only to discover that Faith is already taking care of that.
Like most animals, a turokh-han fights desperately when cornered. They kept their dozen opponents at bay, and actually put the humans on the defensive. The one on the left slashes Dawn across her stomach with the weapon in his right hand and stabs Fadila in the right side of her rib cage with the one in his left. The shiv goes six inches into her chest, and she falls down. Xander, Anya and Willow have already been driven back and knocked down, so only Amanda remains on that wing. She tries to kick the uber-vamp with her right foot, but it steps back and slashes her right hamstring. Barely able to stand, let alone defend herself, Amanda gets help from Fadila, whom the demon decks with a right uppercut, and Dawn, whose sword slash the demon has to turn to his left to block. They lock weapons, and the uber-vamp uses his second weapon to stab her through the right forearm, causing Dawn to drop the sword and retreat. However, she succeeded in buying Amanda another five seconds, during which time Faith dispatched her opponent. Before the victorious Turokh-han can figure out which one of his fallen opponents to slaughter first, Faith stakes him through the heart. Then she heads to her right to take out the others.
The uber-vamp on the left wing was kept busy by the coordinated attacks of Rona, Kennedy and Giles, while the one in the center was too worried about a Slayer getting him from behind to do much damage to Madari or Ariella. Now its alertness pays off, and it is able to clothesline Faith with its left arm. The two uber-vamps now attack from either side as Faith stands up. "Get back!," she tells the Potentials as they try to come to her aid. Faith uses the stake in her right hand to block the attacks from the demon on her right while she kicks the one on her left twice in the chest before putting him down with a right hook kick and a left roundhouse kick. She spins to confront the other opponent, blocks its punches and lands some of her own. Without missing a beat, she stakes the demon who attacks her from behind, then continues pummelling the opponent in front of her until it's prostrate and not able to get up right away. This is what Buffy sees when she tries to come and help. Faith stakes the final beastie.
But they barely have a chance to catch their breath before Nina leaps across the fissure and lands on their side of the Arena. "Is everybody warmed up?"
NEXT: The dramatic and tragic conclusion of this story.