The sun bursts through the clouds, shining down into the hole in the center of the ceiling and frying the uber-vamps as they try to climb out of the Hellmouth. The smarter ones quickly retreat, singed but still alive. Giles knows the Merv Stone must be exposed to direct sunlight in order to do its thing. The turokh-han assault may have merely been Nina's way of killing time until the weather improved. And he thought it was the First Evil's attempt to test them as they had never been tested before! "No," Rupert thinks to himself. "That would be right now."
The sickle in her left hand, Nina briskly walks towards her huddled, weary adversaries. Buffy picks up Olaf's giant hammer, runs at Nina and belts her in the chest. She flies ten feet back and lands on her butt. "Warm enough for ya?," Buffy asks. Nina flinches in pain. Clearly, she was stung and surprised by the force of the blow. Buffy tries to hit Nina while she's down, but Nina rolls to her left, and the hammer only smashes a few of the stones that pave the floor. As Nina stands up, and before she can regain her balance, Faith knocks her a few steps back with a left hook to the face. Buffy follows this up with a hammer blow right in the kisser. Nina staggers back to within a step of the fissure. Faith and Buffy stay six feet in front of her, not wanting to venture too close to the Hellmouth lest Nina toss one of them in. Nina rolls her neck and checks to make sure her head's not deformed. Even the mighty Titan had to concede that in Buffy's hands, that hammer packed quite a wallop.
"If you were a guy, I'd say you were compensating for something," she jokes before quickly glancing at Buffy's injured left thigh. "Maybe you still are." Buffy misses the reference, assuming it's something catty about her appearance. Nina does feel a Cordelia-esque need to be the prettiest belle at the ball, except Cordy couldn't rip out the hearts of people who rubbed her the wrong way. (Thank God.) Nina patiently waits for someone to attack. Faith finally obliges, taking a step forward. Nina does likewise, putting more ground between her and the Hellmouth. Faith blocks Nina's sickle slashes with the stake in her right hand, eventually catching the inside of the curved weapon and locking Nina up. As she spins her left arm around the break free, Faith connects with a left cross, followed by a right kick to the chin. Nina jumps up as if about to through a flying right hook kick. But this is merely a highly acrobatic fake. She continues spinning around and puts Faith on her back with a left roundhouse kick. Nina puts the sickle sword on the left side of her belt as she jumps at Buffy, reaching out both hands to block the hammer, absorbing enough force to crack every bone in a human being's arms. It hurts more than Nina lets on, especially in the palms. Buffy makes a quick downward swing for Nina's right foot, smashing it for an instant, though it plumps back to normal size once the hammer is removed. Still, the blow really hurts. And Nina is not accustomed to feeling pain. She growls and knocks Buffy down with a big left hook. Faith leaps at her and lands a flying right hook kick, knocking Nina towards the center of room, close to the Stone and its skinny, conical steel supports. Anyone who touches them dies. Perhaps including Nina, who's one good hammer blow away from finding out.
Go for the legs, Nina jumps. Go the head, she ducks. So Buffy goes for the hips. Nina grabs the hammer head in mid-swing with both hands, rips the handle away from Buffy and tosses the weapon behind her and to her left. It tumbles down into the abyss of the Hellmouth. Buffy had worried Nina would use it against her. Nina didn't think she needed it. Faith hits her face with a right hook kick, a right cross and a left jab. Nina jumps and, on her way up, hits Faith in the chin with a straight left kick. The quick but powerful blow sends Faith flying through the air and crashing down to the floor on her back. Buffy knocks Nina back with two quick left kicks to her face. Nina tries a left hook. Buffy blocks it. Nina sends her right foot for Buffy's left thigh, kicking what's left of the arrow shaft, which extends an inch out from Buffy's skin. By doing this, Nina drives the arrow's head even further into Buffy's femur, snapping the thigh bone in two. Buffy gasps in pain and goes down. Nina learned long ago to exploit the fact that humans and demons have these brittle things called bones, without which they can't even move, let alone fight.
Nina now devotes all her attention to Faith, who kicks the Titan in the stomach with her left foot and punches Nina in the chin with a right uppercut. Nina slashes with her sickle at frightening speeds, forcing Faith to slowly backpedal, blocking with her stake all attacks that she can't elude. Nina throws in an occasional kick, but Faith dodges these as well. Nina's disappointed that her sickle can't cut through Faith's stake. Meanwhile Spike, who Nina forgot about, sneaks up on her from behind at grabs her arms. Faith tries to stab Nina in the head, but she kicks Faith away with her right foot. Before she can free herself, Spike arches his back and drives Nina's shoulders to the ground with a suplex throw. She bounces off the floor, lands on her face, stands up, puts away her sickle and faces a newly-confident Spike. He ducks her right jab and lands a right hook and a left cross. But she easily holds her ground and blocks his next two punches before landing a right uppercut to Spike's stomach that actually lifts him three inches off the ground. Spike feels the blood he had for breakfast shoot back up his throat and into his mouth. Before he has a moment to recover, Nina picks Spike up with both hands and launches him head-first towards the door twenty five feet in front of her. His skull leaves a dent in the three inches of solid bronze, and he plops face-first to the floor, unconscious. Faith drives Nina back with a straight left kick and a right hook kick to the head. Nina does a back flip to avoid Faith's stake. She pulls out her own weapon.
"Enough of the ensemble players. I want the star." Nina tries a left roundhouse kick. Faith backs away. She jumps when Nina attempts to sweep her legs, and lands a right hook kick before coming back down. Faith blocks the sickle with her stake and hits Nina's face with a left jab and a left hook. Nina tries a right sweep kick, which Faith ducks under before kicking the Titan in the stomach with her right foot. Nina's next attack is preempted by Faith's left roundhouse kick to her head. Increasingly agitated, Nina brings her weapon down toward Faith's head with enough force to cleave her skull in half. Faith swerves her head to the left and counters with a left hook kick to Nina's (pseudo) rib cage. Nina tries a right hook, but Faith blocks it with her left hand before putting Nina on her back with a quick right roundhouse kick. Nina vaults to her feet. "Not bad," she concedes to Faith.
"Maybe you've lost your edge."
"Very poor choice of words." Nina lands a right hook, then tries to decapitate Faith. She ducks and drives her stake into Nina's unprotected chest, right where her heart would be. She groans in agony as she jabs the point of her sickle into Faith's back, piercing the Slayer's heart before she had time to pull the stake out of her opponent and take a step back. "But at least you went out in style." Faith stares straight ahead into the distance, her eyes wide open, displaying her utter shock at this sudden reversal of fortune. A stream of blood trickles out of the left side of her mouth. Nina pulls the weapon out. As Faith falls, she turns her head to the right and flings the stake in her right hand towards Willow, thirty feet away, before Nina can grab hold of it. As she hears Faith's body hit the ground, and watches the weapon twirl through the air, Nina feels gipped. Then she sees who grabs it, and feels a lot better. The witch had been rolling snake-eyes ever since Nina showed up.
Buffy leaps off her right leg towards Nina. The Titan tosses the bloody sickle in the air from her left hand to her right hand, turns to her right and gashes the left side of Buffy's face, cutting deep into her cheek. Nina puts the lame Slayer on her back with a left kick to the body. Blood flows down her temple and into her hair. Nina, clearly in command, wipes both sides of the blade against her right thigh, taking off Buffy's blood. She looks to her right, at the woozy Spike and seriously injured Buffy. Then she looks to her left at the cowering Potentials, the Watcher, and the ones Nina thinks of as the superfluous humans. All are paralyzed by fear. Nina takes a step towards them, sickle brandished menacingly in front, daring any and all of them to fight for Faith's body. Willow sits with her legs crossed and her forearms resting on the insides of her knees. The stake rests in her two palms. Her eyes are closed as she concentrates, knowing that this is her last chance to hurt Nina. The superfluous humans stand around Willow, offering some sort of last-ditch protection in case Nina wants to stop the spell. She doesn't, since she knows of no way Willow can make it work. Nina puts the sickle in her belt, puts Faith face-down over her left shoulder and begins carrying the precious burden over to what Nina calls "The Converter." No one makes a move to stop her. The Potentials stare at Faith's lifeless body, still having trouble accepting that she is dead. The eyes of everyone else are on Willow.
When Spike finally comes to, he sees Nina on the other side of the Hellmouth with Faith in her arms. Events have clearly taken a fateful turn for the worse. He rushes over to Buffy, who's lying on her back. "I couldn't do it. I failed. I failed them."
He puts his right hand under her skull to prop up Buffy's head. "Bollocks." He looks over his shoulder at Nina. "We all failed them."
"Not Willow. If Willow can do the spell, she can . . . " Buffy grimaces in pain and gasps for breath. "Save them." Spike looks to his left. Willow's face betrays the frustration of a witch still going through her first slump at the worst possible time. Looks like it's all up to William.
"Save them," he says to himself before looking at his right palm. It's covered in blood. He looks again over his shoulder at Nina. Faith faces upwards. Nina supports Faith's back with her right hand. In her left hand is the sickle, which she inserts into Faith's stomach, cutting upwards to her heart. Spike goes bumpy and looks down at Buffy. "Always knew it would come to this." Spike gets on top of her and digs his teeth into the left side of Buffy's neck. She struggles, but is too weak to push him away. Giles, Xander, Dawn, Anya and the Potentials are absolutely horrified. Things really are going to Hell. Giles assumes that Spike's finally switched sides, and sprints towards him, sword-in-hand. After six seconds of drinking, Spike stands up, turns to his left, duck's Rupert's blade, and knocks him down with a right uppercut to the chin. Nina holds her sickle – dripping with blood – up to the sun. Spike makes a dash for her toy. The Merv Stone is suspended four feet up in the air by three eight foot-long steel legs, with an eight foot-long steel pole placed on top of the Stone and pointed towards the Heavens. One tripod leg is on Spike's side. The other two are on Nina's side. He sees her bring the sickle towards the Stone. When he's fifteen feet away, Spike uses his fingers to flick the blood on his right hand toward the device. A drop of Buffy's blood hits the smooth white surface of the polished stone when a drop a Faith's blood is three inches away. When Faith's blood hits the orb, a bolt of lightning shoots out of it and hits Nina, sending her flying fifty feet back into the wall, which she hits twenty feet off the floor.
When Spike gets close, the long, thin conical steel arm bends upwards, impaling him through the stomach. The device's magical properties allow it to keep from tumbling over for a few seconds while one-third of its support is missing. The needle-like arm bends upwards, until gravity causes Spike to slide halfway down. The blood in his stomach pours out, sliding down the arm and onto the Stone, quickly covering it. Buffy lifts her head just in time to see Spike get immolated by the sun streaming in through the hole in the center of the dome. "What's happening?" To her, it feels like everything is falling apart. How could it not?
Once Nina had been rejected by her own device, Willow finally got her mojo working. She opens her eyes, which are completely dilated. "Ruh . . . Kanya . . . Shakhti." The stake catches fire, and burns in her hands.
"Of course, of course!," Giles exclaims. "I can't believe I didn't think of it before he did."
"What?," Buffy asks weakly, since she is light-headed, suffering from shock, and not yet cognizant that things are finally looking up.
"The Stone could only be activated with a Slayer's blood. From the First's point-of-view, yours is the wrong kind. It can't destroy the line of succession with the blood of a Slayer who has no successor."
"That's why Spike bit me?"
"You were the only one who could save the Slayer line." Right now, Buffy more like a hapless martyr than a heroic savior. When the stake has been consumed, and the flames go out, a burst of red light shoots out of the upwards-pointing needle on top of the ball. Willow falls on her back and sucks in air as she attempts to recover from the exertion of energy. Kennedy rushes over to her.
"I did it. I did it sweetie," she says as Kennedy puts her right hand to Willow's forehead. "There's still a chance."
"What the hell was that?," Gunn asks. He is currently two miles south of Sunnydale.
"Kinda looked like a big laser," Fred responds.
"Some sort of aiming device for a ground-to-air missile?," Wes theorizes. "Probably part of practice maneuvers."
"At this hour? On this day?," Angel points out.
"How would the military know about that?," Wesley asks. "They're not even involved."
"They will be in about another mile," Gunn points out.
"Run it," Angel orders. "They're not going to risk shooting American civilians. It would be a p.r. nightmare."
"Provided the world's still around for the six o'clock news," Wes comments. "Buffy, Faith and Spike can't pull this off without the two of you." Fred's cell phone rings.
"Fred! It's Graham!"
"Hello!"
"It's Graham!! I'm in a chopper!
"Graham? Is that you?"
"Just keep going! I've told the guards to let you pass through."
"I can't hear you!" Graham rappels down a fifty foot-rope to the ground just outside the Arena. The chopper rises up again, the pilot trying to find out what's going on by peaking through the twelve foot-wide hole at the dome's sixty foot-high apex.
"Can you hear me now?"
"Yeah."
"The guards will let you through. Don't even slow down."
"Where are you?"
"About three miles north of you. I took a chopper."
"It's Graham," Fred reports to Gunn. "He's taken care of the road block. Don't even slow down."
"Fred, the building's sealed. But we can blast open one of the doors when your friends arrive. Better hurry."
"Better hurry? Why?"
"They went in about twelve minutes ago." Fred hangs up.
"Oh no."
"He's mad you left so early?," Angel asks.
"He's here. And he says the fight's already started." Gunn floors it as Wes, Angel and Connor look horrified. A moment ago, they took it for granted that they were almost an hour early. Now they feared they might be too late.
Nina's just had enough juice put through her to liquify a normal person or incinerate all but the largest demons. She stands up, grits her teeth and slowly walks back to the center of the room. Smoke rises from her head and body. Her long, beautiful straight hair is now frizzy. And the bronze sickle is heated to about five hundred degrees fahrenheit. Smoke billows from her left hand as Nina grips the weapon tightly, so that she may feel more pain, which will spur her to exact more suffering. She leaps effortlessly over the fissure, putting her only fifty feet from the Potentials. They look at each other, wondering who it is. Each of them knows they are not the new Chosen One. By now, Giles has helped Buffy get back to the rest of the group. Dawn and Xander look down at her with concern. "I'm okay. Don't worry. I'm the last person you should be worrying about right now."
"And I'm the first," Nina says from forty feet away, unaware of her little pun. Perfect, Buffy thinks. She's even stealing my puns.
"The transfer of power is not instantaneous," Giles whispers, telling the girls something they had already figured out. "No one knows how long it takes. Perhaps a minute. Perhaps less." He looks at the floor. "Perhaps more," he whispers after allowing a few seconds for a worst-case-scenario pause.
"Which one of us gets it first?," Rona asks.
"You're all getting it," Willow reports as she slowly rises again to her feet, still feeling the effects of the spell.
"Girl's superpower grows," Dawn reports, loosely translating Willow's Sanskrit.
"Extend the girl's power," Giles adds, massaging the syntax with a bit more precision. "Extend Faith's power. Nina has ended the Slayer Line. Though, thanks to Willow, not quite as she intended."
"Wow," Willow responds, considering what she just pulled off. "Guess I shoulda known by now that whenever I start speaking a dead language and I have no idea what I'm saying, something big's about to go down."
Nina stops twenty feet away and paces back and forth. Impatience would indicate that she's lost control of the battle, and Nina believes this is certainly not the case. "Guess I'll do this the fun way: one-at-a-time. Show me the way to the next little girl," she requests with a smirk, showing that her first major setback hasn't destroyed her sense of whimsy. Ariella steps forward, swinging their sling. The stone bounces off Nina, causing no damage.
"Wait your turn," Nina says with a smile. "You'll all have a chance to be killed by me. Except for you," she adds, pointing at Buffy. "You get to feel what I went through." Though in incredible pain and missing close to half her blood, Buffy wills herself to stand up on her one good leg while using the longsword in her left hand as a makeshift crutch. Incapacitating injuries be damned. She's too tough not to go down fighting.
Nina looks at Buffy and revels in the knowledge that, in order to save the Slayer Line, her enemies had to sacrifice a Slayer, a vampire, and incapacitate the Slayer who can't be replaced. If this was their idea of a war of attrition, they weren't gonna last so long. Nina starts hoping the good guys bring in Angel and Connor to replace Spike and Buffy. Then, with the new Slayer, it would be a fair fight again: three-on-one. While Nina's distracted, Kennedy grabs the (normal-size) sledgehammer, runs at the Titan and pounds her in the chest. Nina falls on her ass. Kennedy strikes her again in the chest as Nina tries to stand up. She retreats. Kennedy leaps through the air and knocks Nina down with flying right kick to the face. On her way down, and as her opponent is falling, Kennedy pounds Nina's face with the hammer. When Nina tries to sweep her legs, Kennedy does a forward flip. Giles and Willow manage small, cautious smiles. Nina leaps at Kennedy with a flying right kick of her own. Kennedy ducks and rolls forward out of the way. She turns round to see Nina running towards her, tries to hammer the Titan's knees, but Nina does a forward flip. Kennedy avoids Nina's right kick, then knocks her down with a hammer to the left knee. The new Slayer leaps over Nina in order to place herself between the Titan and all the people she's trying to protect.
"You're liking this too much, honey," Nina says to her opponent. As Nina rises to her feet, Kennedy starts spinning the hammer in a figure-eight motion. Once she gets up to speed, Kennedy goes to work, hitting Nina in the head, body, shoulders, arms, thighs, face and neck. Eleven blows in all before Nina falls down at the edge of the Hellmouth. Kennedy catches her breath. She had forced Nina nearly thirty feet back and delivered some serious hurt: more than Buffy and Spike combined. She goes for Nina's knees, forcing her to move her legs leftward. Now that Nina's body in sideways – parallel to the Hellmouth – she aims for Nina's right hip, forcing her to roll her body towards the fissure. Kennedy kicks her in the back with her left foot. Nina rolls into the hole, grabbing onto the edge with both hands. She looks up to see Kennedy swing for her right hand. Nina pulls that hand away, rocks to the left, then rocks back to the right. Kennedy hits Nina's left hand, but she still manages to swing her body back up, landing to Kennedy's left. Now they both stand on the precipice. Nina tries a right hook kick to knock Kennedy into the Hellmouth. She ducks and spins clockwise, putting Nina's back to the hole and Kennedy's back to the Scoobies and Potentials. Nina lunges forward and lands a left cross. Then a right roundhouse kick. Kennedy stays on her feet. She could get used to this level of physical resiliency.
When Nina tries a right hook, Kennedy preempts her with a left roundhouse kick to the chest. Then an uppercut swing of the hammer to Nina's chin, followed by a powerful wallop to her left jaw. Nina spreads her feet wide to keep from falling. But this also reduces her mobility. Kennedy lands a third straight head shot, this one to the right side of Nina's skull, just above her ear. This is beginning to remind Buffy of how she finished off Glory. Nina tries a right hook kick. Kennedy backs away, and the follow-through causes a wobbly Nina to do a three-sixty. When she gets back around, Kennedy is there to greet her with a clobber to the top of her head. Nina's feeling very dizzy by now. Too much pounding messes with her gyroscopic balancing mechanisms. Kennedy winds up and literally smashes Nina's nose inside-out, at least for a moment. The next in Kennedy's series of devastating rapid-fire blows is aimed at the left side of Nina's skull. But she grabs the hammer head with her left hand, stopping it in its tracks. Nina takes hold of the handle with her right hand and swings the weapon back the other way. Barely a second after it was within two inches of Nina's head, the sledgehammer smashes through the top of Kennedy's skull. She slowly falls on her back, her body remaining perfectly straight. Like Faith, who was also a victim of one of Nina's lightning comebacks, Kennedy's final expression is one of shock. Death came so quickly, they didn't even have time to fear it.
"NOOOO!!!," Willow screams as she stares at Nina, her eyes red with fury, her hands outstretched, prepared to unleash hellish torments upon the murderer of her lover. Nina quickly raises the hammer above her head and tosses it at the angry witch thirty feet away. It spins end-over-end and smashes into Willow's skull just above her forehead. Willow couldn't muster the power to block it because she was busy marshalling her strength to attack Nina, and the Titan didn't have enough time to switch from offense to defense. Willow slumps to the floor, blood streaming out of both ears and oozing out of the skull fracture itself.
"Willow!," Xander yells out, rushing to help her. "Willow? Willow? Come on, Willow. Talk to me. Talk to me. Just give me a sign. I know you're still in there, Willow." Buffy looks at Willow, who is fifteen feet to her right. She's too hurt to hop over there, check up on Willow and still be in a position to help defend what's left of the Potentials. She couldn't help Faith. She couldn't help Kennedy. Now she couldn't even be there for her best friend. This was Hell all right.