Chapter Twelve:

The Attack of the 50 Foot Monsters

Bob stared at the hellish face of the Venacklondage. He had heard about these things. They had great powers. Not greater than Bob's, but really great nonetheless. Bob felt himself hurling into oblivion… and that oblivion turned out to be a brick wall.

The bricks broke apart as he crashed through them. He wound up on the floor of the spacious lobby with its linoleum floor and big, gold chandeliers. He gained his feet and jumped outside of the building. He stood gloriously in front of the Venacklondage for a moment.

He took one step forward and when his foot hit the ground time slowed to a snail's crawl. The ground felt like liquid beneath his feet and acted likewise, sending out waves in every direction. Bob took another step forward, the time slowing not having any affect on him.

Bob ran to the feet of the monstrous being and dozens of tentacles sprouted out of his arms. They looked like rat tails and were moist, soft things. They crawled up the Venacklondage's legs and tightened so hard that the Venacklondage began to screech--a very strange thing to listen to slowed down--and then Bob pulled its legs out from under it.

As time resumed as normal the demon crashed to the ground. Bob felt his right arm spray blood as it was torn off. About the Venacklondage's powers: they have telekinesis and levitation abilities, too.

"Oh, God!" Bob screamed and then shrieked as his other arm was torn off as well. Bob forced the blood to reroute itself so that it wouldn't be wasted. Several capillaries and veins formed to perform this reroute.

Then there was a giant disturbance in the air as both arms appeared in the blink of an eye. The wind level was powerful enough to knock over Connor and Drusilla, Connor trapped behind bars in his mind and screaming to be let out. Screaming to the endless, starless galaxy of his mind.

Bob redirected the wind and focused it at the Venacklondage, which was just regaining its feet. It roared as it was blown into the air and came crashing down with enough force to knock Drusilla down again, Connor hadn't gotten back up yet. Two buildings collapsed in clouds of dust as the small earthquake caused by the Venacklondage shot out.

Bob held his ground, though. He might as well have been cemented to the street.

The Venacklondage tried to get up again, but a seam appeared on its neck. The seam went all the way around, caused by Bob. Mucky, brown blood gushed out all over the place. It was like the thing was full of mud.

Then its head slipped off and the giant died.

Bob stood victoriously at the dead feet of the Venacklondage. He then bellowed his rage to it. He shouldn't have bided his time for so long. The pieces had moved and he had lost them. He was the pawn that had only moved one space forward and then sat there, forgotten.

He then turned to Drusilla and Connor. "We're going for a trip," he informed them. Connor didn't hear him from his position on the ground. Drusilla was swaying on her feet. Both Drusilla and Bob were nude, but neither cared.

"Is the little mind sick child going with?" Drusilla asked in her dreamy voice. It was like she wasn't even on the same planet as her body.

"Yes."

"Are we going to see Spike?"

"Perhaps."

Drusilla smiled. "Are we going to hurt Spike?"

Bob approached her with a smile on his face. A wooden stake materialized in his hand and he put it into her outstretched hand. "No. YOU are going to hurt him. You can hurt him all you want. Now, let's go."

Connor stood up quickly. He looked at both Bob and Drusilla. He was fighting to get out of that little cell in his mind, but he was losing. He was losing quite miserably.

"Come Connor," Bob beckoned and then began to walk away, confident that Connor would follow, and he did.

The three walked for a few minutes. Bob wanted to get to the base and confront Angel with the plan of killing Connor in front of him and then getting the hell out of there. He wanted to let Dru kill Spike. He wanted to find Lindsey, the one who was supposed to stay alive even after his body was dead for seemingly no reason.

The Venacklondages were demons from a hell dimension. The one that all Wolfram and Hart employees who don't fulfill their contracts are sent to. When Lindsey died and still lived, the Venacklondages came out to retrieve him. For what purpose Lindsey was supposed to stay alive is unclear in the prophecy--mostly because no one has been able to translate and decode that portion of it--but it was clearly for something major.

The walking stopped when Bob spotted a dome of green light above the building tops. His face went pale and his eyes became fearful.

"I've stayed dormant for too long," he muttered under his breath. "I've screwed up. She's here now. I have to… to… to seek a hiding place. I have to find one. We must go. We must go NOW!"

Bob then turned around and began walking quickly back to the apartment complex. He was fleeing, good God he had never seen that coming. Fleeing from the only human that stood a chance against him. Is that cowardice? Yes, he supposed it was. He didn't want to battle one who could possibly kill him before he could do anything else. That presented a dilemma; he wanted to stay away from her, but if he bided his time more, she would have a better chance of killing him in battle, and him a worse chance of getting some attention from the player so that he could be moved some more spaces and get involved in the game.

He stopped at the door to the apartment complex. "We'll go tomorrow."

Drusilla and Connor crowded in behind him. Bob stepped out of the way of the doorway, its door still wide open from their rushed exit, and let them file in ahead of him. He slammed the door behind him and the frame cracked. The body of the Venacklondage then began to burn like a Phoenix's, but, unlike a Phoenix, the Venacklondage would not be reborn.

Meanwhile…

In her dream, the sound sounded like the flapping of a million doves' wings as the doves flew in circles around a certain patch of grass in the middle of a futuristic city--the type of city you might see in a movie like "The Fifth Element"--that had towering buildings and floating cars that zoomed through the sky.

You wouldn't know you were a person, looking at those doves. You would feel free of body and mind. You would feel happy.

That's how Faith felt as she sat in the middle of the circling doves with Dream Robin. His bald head--reflective and oddly attractive--was glowing in the sun's bright light.

Faith smiled upon sight of Dream Robin. He smiled back.

"How do you feel, Faith?" he asked. His voice seemed to float. The doves began to speed up.

"I feel just fine," Faith replied. She felt as though she were about to cry… or burst from the swelling amount of happiness bubbling up inside of her. She imagined this is how Lester felt in "American Beauty" as he stared at the picture of him, his wife, and his daughter.

"I am glad for you then," Dream Robin replied.

Faith looked below her. She was floating. She was detached from the world. She was free. No more anger, no more fear, no more sadness. No more of anything. She liked it.

She was away from the ghosts of the innocents she had slain that usually haunted her dreams… her nightmares. She was alone with Dream Robin Wood. She loved it.

She then closed her eyes. Nothing this good comes free. Nothing. Always a price to pay.

That's when Faith realized something: the sound of the doves didn't sound like doves at all.

"What's going on?" Faith asked Dream Robin. He looked away. The sound was getting louder and more constant. It wasn't the circling doves. It was… It was….

Gunfire.

Meanwhile…

Lorne, Angel, Oz, and Toby were still talking in the mess hall tent when the shooting began on the south side of the base. It was just a few random shots, nothing to be worried about. It could've just been a Mochlackdangodenack that had wandered into the base. It could've been a few of them, even. Then the shots were growing closer and more consistent.

Lorne stood up so fast that he knocked over his chair. He thought it was a Jarlkarlone. The same went for Angel and the others. When the shots didn't stop they feared that it was a few Jarlkarlones instead of just one.

It was Lorne who realized that it wasn't a Jarlkarlone; the clicking noise was not present as it always was when one was around. Before he could tell Angel this revelation Toby noticed the absence of the sound as well.

Xander had been fast asleep in his tent when the blasting had woken him up. Dawn and Illyria were having a conversation about what it was like being human and non-human when a bullet blasted through the tent and shattered Dawn's mirror on the far side of the tent from her bed. Willow was sleeping beside Kennedy after a round in the bed when what seemed to be a very weak earthquake shook the tent around them and woke them up. The earthquake was then repeated several times before bullets began to fly. Faith was just being shocked awake as Robin left their bed and began to get dressed. Half of the tent had collapsed. Giles was in his studies when he heard faint gunfire and stepped outside to see what all the commotion was about. Gunn was in a deep sleep--deep enough for him not to wake up to the gunshots--and the sound penetrated his skull to enter his dreams much as it had Faith's dream. Monique, lying half-awake and half-asleep a few wheeled beds down, listened to the firing with a calmness that would not have been present had she not been drugged to dull the pain from the wound Zaerintoleran had delivered unto her.

Buffy was riding in the scout tank Angel had told her to send to find Riley's tank. She still felt a dim love for him that she believed would never disappear. A flame that would never be extinguished. Spike was dead to world as he marched mechanically to the mess hall tent where Lorne still resided. He wasn't going there to confront Angel; just Lorne.

He knew how Lorne was going to die and he had the chance to prevent it. He needed to warn Lorne about this strange man with a lot of muscles.

A good thirty soldiers were dead before the Venacklondage reached Lindsey. Lindsey was watching in horror (kind of strange that a dead man would be scared) as it approached him one monstrous, slow, and deliberate step after the other.

"Oh Jesus Christ," Lindsey said as the giant stopped taking steps and stood towering over him like a man towering over a hobbit in "The Lord of the Rings". It then bent down slowly and grabbed him just as slowly. It was like the thing didn't think that Lindsey would even dare run away.

A couple of stray bullets hit Lindsey in the chest instead of the colossal creature they had been aimed at--how anyone could have missed such a big target is far beyond me, but it happened. Lindsey was quite surprised to find that he hadn't felt a thing from those bullets. It wasn't until later that he found the wounds, of course; he was too scared to care about them even if he had felt them.

The Venacklondage then turned around and walked back the way it had come. Other than three or four unfortunate soldiers that were squashed under foot there were no more casualties. It left as peacefully as it had entered violently. The surviving soldiers, grasping their mostly emptied guns, mused over the fact that they didn't appear to have even hurt it. Not even give it the equivalent of a bee-sting or a splinter despite the fact that over a thousand bullets must've hit it. It was that night that most of the soldiers realized just how dangerous the situation was. Thirty abandoned the base over the night. About half of them were killed by Mochlackdangodenacks while the rest escaped.

Their abandonment dealt a great blow to Angel and his little army after the great loss of life that had been experienced that night (most notable of the deaths were those of Riley and Sam). The chances of the Apocalypse being averted were just what they had been for every other apocalypse they had ever encountered: slim to none.

Meanwhile…

The crater was gigantic. Buffy was impressed even after seeing the crater where all of Sunnydale had once been. She was partially relieved to find no bodies or machinery anywhere in the crater. No sign of Riley in this barren area. They found Ashley sitting in the center of the crater with her head against her knees and her hands grasping at the softened ground she was sitting on. She wasn't crying or anything. Buffy half-expected the girl to be insane and homicidal. She was relieved when Ashley looked up at her with a face that seemed way too clean to be true. Ashley didn't smile as you would expect any person with a clean face like that to. She knew that whatever she had done had probably eliminated the existence of several escaping soldiers--too bad for her she didn't know they had all been killed before she had unleashed her power. Her face was sad.

"Hello," she whispered to Buffy and said no more until morning.

Meanwhile…

Spike grabbed the collar of Lorne's shirt. Lorne was the only entity that seemed real to him at that point. Spike then pulled Lorne into the alley he had been waiting for him in.

"Spike!" Lorne exclaimed and sighed in relief. He had worried that it was a Jarlkarlone or that thing that had tramped through the base and taken Lindsey.

"He's going to kill you," Spike stated bluntly. "And he's going to enjoy it."

Lorne raised an eyebrow. "Too much of that special stuff, Spikey? Who are you talking about?"

"I was shown your death. He's going to kill you. I don't know when, all I know is that he's going to decapitate you."

Lorne chuckled in spite of the news. "Decapitation can't kill me."

"He's then going to burn your body."

"Oh… Who are you talking about Spike? Who's going to kill me?" his voice was growing shrill.

Spike looked both ways and then leaned in close. "H-He arrived tonight. A-A-A lot of muscles this man has. Too many bloody damn muscles."

"What's his name?"

"He arrived today in a truck he had driven down here from New York. Not the city. He came w-w-w-with this kid."

"What… is… his… name?"

"I don't know his name."

"What about the kid's?"

Spike shook his head. Then he leaned in even closer and whispered so low that Lorne had to strain to hear him. "The kid's a bloody, pure-D werewolf. Oz."

Lorne's eyes widened.

"Toby?" he whispered back.

That's when Spike returned back to reality. He looked around himself. "What the hell am I doing in this alley?"

"Lorne!" Oz called from the mouth of alley. Then he saw Spike. "Get the hell away from him!"

"Oh shove off and follow the yellow-brick road you ass."

Spike then walked past Oz and turned down the street. He had no memory of warning Lorne of his death, but he did remember that he had seen Lorne's death and assumed he had already delivered the warning.

Lorne explained Spike's situation to Oz and they rejoined Angel and Toby--Lorne kept an eye on Toby, of course. Other than those who had any business with any of those deceased, everything went back to normal for the rest of the night.

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Hey, MorbidMan here. When Spike said 'follow the yellow-brick road' to Oz, I hope you got the joke (here's a hint: it has to do with a movie called "The Wizard of Oz"). The next chapter will be up soon… I hope. And the title is mocking that of the movie that I think is called "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman". See you next chapter. Please review.

"Thank you for trying to teach me, sir. Don't give up on me, Dad." - Ricky "American Beauty"