This is the final chapter of my story. Thank you to all who have read it. Big, huge, extra-special thank you to those who have reviewed it. You are the reason I write and post this stuff.
After killing two Slayers, Nina's finally hitting her stride. "That has to be some sort of record," she comments on Kennedy's thirty second tenure as a Slayer. "You know what? I'm getting bored with doing you one at a time." Nina takes two big steps forward, then leaps at the five Potentials, sickle in her outstretched left hand. Two of the girls were already badly injured, and could hardly stand up, let alone offer much resistance. Dawn, who stands to their right, steps forward and leftward so that she's five feet in front of the girls, then swings the samauri sword downward and to the left, cutting Nina diagonally from her left shoulder to her right hip. Dawn backs up a step. Nina heals within a second, but she has to put her feet on the ground and stand still for this to occur. That puts her six feet in front of the Potentials, and prevents her from beheading Rona on her way down, as she had intended. Dawn then slices right-to-left, cutting through Nina's neck. "Let me show you how it's done," Nina threatens, raising her weapon. Before she can swing it and slice open Dawn's throat, Buffy leaps at Nina from the right, taking her down. They roll one time around, then Buffy gets on top. This was the sort of fighting she could do despite her lack of mobility. The point wasn't to kill Nina, just to delay her long enough for the next Slayer to rise. At this moment, none of the quintet has yet to feel the Power.
Buffy nails Nina in the nose with five right jabs in a row. "Is that the best you got?," Nina taunts. Buffy drives her left fist into Nina's throat, squeezing her neck down so that it is momentarily only two inches thick. Buffy doesn't know it, but of all the ways to hurt a Titan, squeezing and compacting their flesh is the most painful. Nina tries a left hook as she lies on her back. Buffy moves her head up and out of range, then lands three left jabs to Nina's chest and two right hooks to her face. Nina realizes she can put an end to all this punishment by exploiting Buffy's broken left leg. She uses her own two good legs to grab hold of Buffy's waist, rock to the left and flip her so Nina's now on top. She grips Buffy's throat with her right hand. Buffy struggles with both hands to keep from getting choked. "Your boyfriend didn't put up this much of a fight. Not nearly. Ain't that just like a man?" Nina lets go of Buffy's throat. Giles hits Nina in the back of the head with the hammer that killed Kennedy and felled Willow. The Titan pretends not to notice. She throws six left roundhouse punches. Each one clobbers Buffy's face and drives the back of her head into the stone floor. During this flurry, Giles lands three more blows to Nina's head, to no avail. Nina grabs Buffy's throat with her left hand, then spins around as she stands up, putting Buffy between Giles and herself. Rupert backs up two steps. Nina launches Buffy twenty feet forward. Her back hits the wall three feet above the top of the door, and she falls face-first to the floor ten feet below.
Giles glances back at the Potentials. Nothing yet. Nina picks up the sickle, which she dropped when Buffy tackled her, and resumes her attack on the girls. Buffy comes to, opens her eyes and raises her head to watch, but she hasn't the strength to help. (All part of the Hell Nina wants to put her through. Why else didn't she kill Buffy?) Giles swings the sledgehammer downward. Nina reaches her right arm up and across her body, grabs the shaft and rips the weapon from Rupert's grasp, chucking it to her left, and to the Potentials' right. Nina raise the sickle in her left hand and puts her right foot forward. But Anya attacks from Nina's left, driving her ax through the middle of Nina's left forearm. She has to hold off on the death blow, lest her severed hand come off her arm. Nina decides instead to quickly put Giles on his back with a straight right kick to the chin. Dawn, who stands in front of Nina, swings her sword straight down, slicing Nina's body in half. Again, she must momentarily pause to allow her body to sew itself back together. Initially, Nina wanted to kill Dawn solely to get back at Connor. But the girl's proving to be such an annoying pest that now Nina wants Dawn to suffer as well. To Nina's right, in front of Giles, stands Xander. He hits the left side of Nina's face with the baseball bat in his right hand. She already felt sorry for Xander, on account of his lack of powers and the fact that her brother had cut off his left hand. Now she had to hurt the poor guy. The spectators weren't playing their part. Nina would make sure they had no choice.
Nina catches Dawn's sword with her sickle. With her left foot, she kicks Anya in the left shin, fracturing her tibia when the ax blade is nine inches from the left side of Nina's head. Anya cries out in pain, drops the weapon and falls down. Nina spins her sickle around a few times, taking Dawn's sword along for the ride. Dawn does her best to hold on, until Nina kicks her right foot up into Dawn's hands, sending the sword up in the air. Xander strikes Nina's face with the bat. Nina absorbs the blow, puts her sword in her belt, ducks down, spins clockwise and drives her left index finger into Dawn's right kneecap, shattering it like a hammer smashing into the center of a dinner plate. Dawn screams. Her sword hits the ground a fifth of a second after Nina administered the agonizing wound. Dawn falls down, her eyes watering in pain. Nina grabs Xander's bat as he swings, ripping it out of his hands. She puts her left hand under his right elbow and her right hand on his right wrist, then snaps his forearm back at an unnatural angle, breaking his ulna. Xander groans and also falls down. Nina sends a quick glance Buffy's way. She knows how much it must hurt Buffy to watch her friends get manhandled and be unable to do anything about it.
Nina brandishes the sickle in her right hand, slashing Dawn across her stomach, then driving the point into Anya's upper abdomen and towards her diaphragm. They were already down, and these wounds were meant to punish them for getting in the Titan's way. Buffy leaps at her yet again, grabbing Nina's legs and putting the Titan on her back. Nina laughs. "You got a body that won't quit." Buffy sends her left middle finger through Nina's right eye, thinking that this was the best way to say "Fuck you." Nina skewers Buffy, sending the sickle six inches into the soft tissue a few inches above her left pelvis. Nina puts her right foot against Buffy's chest and pushes her back towards the door. "Now where were we?," Nina asks the Potentials as she vaults to her feet.
Nina rushes at the girls, raising the weapon to strike Madari. Giles grabs her right arm from behind and pulls her away. Nina falls down behind Giles, who turns around, interposing himself between the Potentials and their potential murderer. Ariella rushes out to help. Giles holds her back with his right arm. "You're not ready." He knows that he couldn't restrain a Slayer that easily, hence the fact that he could restrain her proved his point. Giles stands in Nina's path, with nothing but a dagger in his right hand. Nina doesn't understand why she can't sense any desperation in him. It's because Giles no longer sees an invincible enemy in front of him. He sees a weary warrior with a battered head, a ruined right eye, a sucking chest wound he could look clear through, and a torn and tattered jumpsuit. The frizzy hair added to the look of exhaustion. "You're on your last legs, Nina," Giles declares.
"Absurdity is the last refuge of the brave," she responds. Nina steps forward, whips her right arm around, as if pitching a softball, then drives the point of her sickle into his belly button. Giles grimaces and drives his knife through her left eye. Nina growls in displeasure as she pulls her sickle eight inches upwards, slicing open his belly. "And the tragic part of this is, I really liked you." Nina pulls the sickle out, grabs Rupert's neck with her left hand and tosses him through the air so Giles lands on his back a few feet to Buffy's right. She rolls to her right and looks down at him.
"It's alright," he whispers with a smile before coughing up some blood and gasping for air. "I always thought . . . it would be more just . . . if sometimes . . . the Watcher died, and the Slayer lived."
"No. No, no, no," Buffy stammers as tears roll down her cheeks. "You can't die. I won't let you die."
"Pay attention," Giles faintly whispers, a roguish half-smile slowly creeping across his face. "Or you might miss the best part."
"That should do it," Nina concludes as she looks around and sees that every defender of these girls is either dead, dying or maimed. She had no idea ordinary humans could be such a pain. Nina stands twenty feet in front of her targets, her hands on her hips. "Who's next?," she asks them with her wicked smile. Ariella and Fadila swing their slings. Nina begins to laugh. Until the rocks hit her chest and knock her ten feet back and on her ass. "No. No!," she yells while returning to her feet. "There can't be two of you." Amanda, Rona and Madari each hurl a stone, putting Nina back on her ass.
"You're right about that," a teary-eyed Rona responds in a low, quaking growl. The girls all glance at one another. The infusion of Slayer Power has made Amanda and Fadila able to fight despite their injuries, at least temporarily. They are all extremely traumatized from watching so many people suffer and die a few few in front of them in order to keep them safe. With rage, grief and vengeance, the quintet charges Nina. Blue light projects out of her two eye sockets. Losing one eye cost her depth perception, which wasn't that much of a problem. But losing both has caused a number of difficulties. For one thing, Nina's now color-blind. Even worse, images are fuzzy. It's like seeing the world through an out-of-focus infra-red camera. Nina can spot five blobs moving very quickly towards her. But she can't tell what weapons each of them is holding, or if they are holding any at all. She can't tell which two of Slayers are badly injured. They happen to be on the outside: Fadila on Nina's far right, Amanda on her far left, Rona in the center, Madari on Nina's near left, and Ariella on her near right. Nina takes a swing with her sickle and Fadila and Ariella. Fadila moves further to her left. Ella ducks under the blade and gets behind Nina. Rona flies through the air and puts Nina on her back with a leaping right kick to the head. Before the mighty Titan can get up, Amanda grabs her left arm. Ariella grabs her right arm. Fadila stomps on Nina's right wrist with her right foot, squeezing the sickle of of her hand. Fadila picks it up with her right hand and chucks the evil weapon down into the Hellmouth.
Nina rises to her feet. Ella has her right arm. Amanda and Rona cling to her left arm. She thrashes, trying to escape their grips. When she tries to kick Madari, the newly-minted Slayer grabs her left leg. Fadila grabs right leg. Rona lets go of Nina's right shoulder and grabs the Titan's head. Nina struggles harder. But it's no use. The Slayers all look at one another for a few seconds. "NOW!!!," Rona yells. The five of them pull as hard as they can, ripping Nina's body apart. They fall down fifteen feet from where they started. Only when they see Nina's torso lying alone do they realize what they've accomplished.
Nina's eyes dart around as Rona stands up, holding the enemy's head. Nina glances downward. "This is new." Not to worry. A body was nothing more than the sum of its parts. And, lacking a conventional central nervous system, Titan body parts enjoyed a high degree of autonomy. This is why Nina had to look to see that she was disassembled: she could still feel all her parts — and control them. Nina chokes Ariella with her right hand, and Amanda with her left hand. Rona drops Nina's head and rushes over to help Amanda, who's turned beet-red. Fadila drops the right leg and tries to help Ariella. The two girls turn purple and fall to their knees. Anya grabs her ax with her right hand and slides it over to Madari. Rona is attempting to yank the left arm off of Amanda when Madari comes over and chops the arm away from the hand with Anya's ax. Amanda is then able to use her own two hands to rip Nina's hand off her throat. The other girls notice that Nina's body is trying to reassemble itself. Rona tosses the arm twenty feet behind Amanda. Madari takes her ax to Nina's two legs, which have managed to get within a few feet of the bottom of her torso. She chops up the legs. Meanwhile, Fadila helps Ariella pull Nina's right arm away from Ella's throat. She gasps for air as Fadila chops up the arm with a short sword before falling down due to her own injuries. With her two hands and one good leg, Dawn drags herself over to the sledgehammer.
"Rona!," Dawn yells. She turns around, and Dawn tosses it towards her feet. Rona grabs the bloody sledgehammer and races back to Nina's head, which lies on the ground, the face looking upwards. "This is for Kennedy," Rona says, bringing the hammer down on the now-helpless Titan. Her head quickly regains it shape. "And Faith." Another hit. "And Rupert Giles." Another hit. "And Molly!" Another hit. "And Zora!" Another hit. "Oh what the hell, even Spike." One final smash. The head is now a flattened blob of protoplasm. Meanwhile, Madari's dismembered the torso. The body parts turn liquid, and flow separately into the Hellmouth. The girls look at each other. They know they did what had to be done. But none of them feels anything close to joy or satisfaction.
The ground begins to tremble slightly. More turokh-hans rush out of the Hellmouth. Twenty more, actually. They overrun the scattered Slayers, quadruple-team each girl, punch them until they fall, kick them while they're down, then head straight for the helpless injured humans. Buffy covers Giles, who's still breathing. Xander shields Anya, who is also barely clinging to life. Dawn tries to protect Willow. The cruel reality is that the protectors are as helpless as the protected, and five Slayers can't kill twenty uber-vamps before a few of them have a chance to bite six humans who can't even stand on their own two legs. They need a miracle.
Gunn is within a quarter mile of the Arena when the ground shakes violently. The van bounces. Gunn slows down from sixty to thirty to keep from flipping over.
"Stop," Fred suggests.
"Keep going," Angel commands.
"On what?," Fred asks. "The ground that's shifting five feet in each direction every second?"
"This is a big one," Gunn says as he slows to twenty, but keeps moving. "At least a six."
"At least a seven," Fred corrects him.
"I think the world's ending," Wesley worries.
"Earthquakes precede apocalypses," Angel counters. They are less than two hundred yards away.
"There's Graham!," Fred announces. "He's goin' in." Graham blows the south door open himself and enters, demon-zapping gun in hand. He wants to get a sense of the situation before Fred and her friends arrive, and possibly provide them with converging fire. The people in peril are more than one hundred feet away, on the other side of the Arena.
"They already had a precursor earthquake," Wes reminds Angel. This is Connor first quake. That, coupled with all this apocalypse talk, and the fact that Dawn is inside, causes Connor to try to jump out the back door and run on in there. Angel grabs him.
"We go in together."
"What if that's too late?"
The girls stand up and try to run over to help the other, but these new, much stronger, trembles knock the Slayers off their feet. The uber-vamps look up at the ceiling and seem to lose interest in their tasty snacks. The Hellmouth begins to close. The demons turn around, run back and leap down into the fissure, deciding to return home now that this dimension has been lost. The Slayers watch, stunned, as the enemy races past them while they struggle back to their feet.
"Open it!," Stella orders as the ground shakes and all the soldiers and medics take cover. "Open it!!" She has no authority over them, but a soldier presses the button to detonate the C-4 that was attached to the south door. She rushes into the collapsing building, which hardly seems like a prudent course of action to everyone else outside. Bricks in the dome's ceiling start to tumble down all around the Slayers. Madari helps the injured Amanda get back to the outer wall, which is holding, keeping Buffy and the others protected. Ariella helps the injured Fadila. After a few steps, she pushes Ella away.
"I'm fine! Get Kennedy!" At first Ella thinks Fadila's in massive denial. Then she looks to her left, where Fadila is pointing. Now she understands, and runs over to the body. The falling masonry prevents Graham from getting across the Arena. He saw the uber-vamps jump into the ground. The first thing he thinks of is the apocalypse Riley helped Buffy avert, where the end of the world was caused by demons jumping into the Hellmouth as a sacrifice. But there's a lot more than three of these guys. Besides, he can't get close enough to engage them without risking being crushed.
Meanwhile, Stella sticks her head back outside. "We got six down! All critical! Hey! People are dying in here!!" Trained to risk their lives to save others, the dozen medics hurry inside, single file, carrying what equipment they can while trying to keep from falling down as the ground lurches under their feet. The Mayor looks down at Giles, whose eyes brighten when he sees her.
"Job well done," he says to her, looking to his left. He turns his head to the right to look at Buffy. "Job well done." Then he closes his eyes. They both burst into tears.
"No. No Rupert. Hold on. The doctor's here," Estella pleads. "Please hold on."
"Giles. Giles?," Buffy asks in between sobs. "You can't do this. Not now. Stay with me. Please, stay with me." She buries her head on his chest and cries. Stella backs up to let the medics help him. Two others pull Buffy off him and take a look at her own serious injuries. "I'm fine! I'm fine!," she tells them. "Help the others. They need you. I don't."
The ground on the opposite side of the Hellmouth moves forward and upward. The Merv Stone and its supports fall apart and crash to the ground. Since they're under the hole in the center of the dome, no bricks fall on them and cause damage, meaning the charmed stone is still mystically active. Rona runs away from the others in order to get Faith's body, which is on the other side of the Hellmouth. Several two or three foot-wide chunks of masonry nearly hit her. She leaps three feet up onto the other side, which is still rising. Taking Faith in her arms, she leaps back down and runs towards the gang, who lie sixty feet away. Twenty feet on, a chunk slams into her head and back, knocking her down. Madari rushes over, helps Rona up and takes the body, only to get struck down herself ten feet later. Rona picks Faith up again and makes it the rest of the way, with Madari following close behind. The lower half of the dome holds, so nothing is falling within twenty feet of the outer walls. Ariella has already brought Kennedy back to the safe area, taking a single brick to the forehead along the way without going down. She puts her right hand to the wound to keep the blood from getting on Kennedy. Fadila helps Ariella carry their former leader the last few feet.
Gunn slams on the brakes at the edge of the trench. The five of them jump out, rush across the stone bridge (which, amazingly, has held) and sprint the last forty feet to the open door. When they are twenty feet away, the tremors stop. Gunn, Fred and Wes pause, while Angel and Connor continue on. "Is this a good sign?," Fred asks Wes.
"Hellmouth stopped opening," Gunn assumes. "World's still here."
"It's over," Wesley concludes.
"Is that a yes?," Fred asks regarding her question.
"We're too late," he adds before running to the door. Gunn follows right behind.
"Also a no," Fred decides before rejoining them. Connor and Angel bound up over the debris and past Graham, who stands in the center of the room and radios a status report to the commander back at the base overlooking the ruined town three miles to the east. Connor races straight for Dawn. Angel goes over to Buffy and Giles. Wesley, when he makes it across about ten seconds after them, hurries over to Faith's body. Gunn and Fred stop thirty feet away and survey the scene: the blood, the injured, the corpses, the near-dead, and the five bleeding, shell-shocked teenage girls look like mournful, lost zombies. The good guys had prevailed. But at what cost?
The narrative will be continued in a new story entitled "Picking up the Pieces," the bulk of which will be set in Los Angeles and chronicle the beginnings of an alternate Season Five.