Chapter Four

Sunnyhell

"You're not serious!" Doyle waited, watching in disbelief and panic as Faith made her way along the dark, dank, and smelly alley to the Blood Bank. "Are you unhinged? Come on, rethink this!" he tried telling her in a persuasive tone. He quickened his pace until he was only a few steps ahead of her; he turned around and held out his hands to stop her from walking. The alley was wide though, so it was easy for her to slip past him.

"Do you have any idea how many vamps are in there?" Not waiting for her to answer, he pressed on. "There's a lot, more than even you can handle! If a single Slayer could take them all out, don't you think Kendra would have done that already?"

It was sweet, in an annoying kind of way, that he was worried. On second thought, he's probably more worried about himself she scoffed inwardly. "You don't have to come -- just go back to your little army buddies while the big girl sorts out the bad guys. I want to know why a regular old guy that's been locked up by demons wants to hang around the undead." That said, Faith continued onward. She would prefer being alone anyway as Doyle would just hold her back. He didn't understand that she needed this. After being under lock and key for so long she now had a chance to release some of that pent up energy. "I live for this, and I don't need you to act like a Watcher. I've been there already." The conversation was officially over. She ran off, ignoring Doyle's protests.

The half demon watched her go; he couldn't run after her because it would be a waste of time. He was going to need reinforcements. Hopefully someone else could knock some sense into her.

Giles understood this wasn't the exact same Slayer that he had trained for a year, but seeing this Buffy gave him some idea of how she might have turned out had things been different. It gave him relief that one version of himself had done right by the Slayer assigned to him. This girl seemed more self assured, confident, stronger, and perhaps a little wiser. He had no doubts that he would see more subtle changes as time progressed. "This is remarkable; please, sit down," He pointed to a chair which she gladly sank into.

Kendra remained standing by the door and listened silently to the exchange. She hadn't seen Giles this happy since they begun planning the Blood Banks downfall -- and that had not ended very well. When she had come along after Buffy's demise, he had been reserved and detached. She would not have noticed the subtle changes to his attitude had Xander and Willow not pointed them out to her. And now Buffy was here again, and he was smiling and welcoming her. She understood why he was acting that way, but Kendra could not help feeling a little stir of jealousy.

"You will have to tell me everything about your world," Giles enthused. "The differences must be amazing. I've been trying to find out how it's possible for you to be here, but so far, I haven't been able to find anything useful."

Kendra voiced the question that Buffy had wanted to ask. "How is it that you know about her situation?"

Giles looked at his Slayer, remembering that she was in the room. He thought it fortunate that Kendra had found Buffy; he shuddered to think what would have happened had Sunnyhell's collection of more unsavory characters come across her first. Before he could respond, the phone on his table rang shrilly. He picked it up, but the caller spoke before he could get a word out. It was a couple of minutes before he set it back in its cradle and said, "That was Doyle. We have a problem."

Sunnydale

"It's all over the news! I can't believe you haven't seen it…" Cordelia paused and corrected herself as she spoke on the phone to Giles. "Wait a second -- how stupid of me -- you'd have to actually own a TV to know what's going on right now in the outside world."

"Cordelia, I assure you that I do have a TV. I just don't watch it every minute of the day." He did not mention the fact that, in his opinion, no person in their right mind would be watching the TV at such an early hour anyway. He was too tired to argue; then again, it was rather pointless arguing with Cordelia no matter what the time.

She continued on, chiding him in the manner of an adult trying to get something through to a child. "Well, those books can't tell you everything – now turn on the TV. It doesn't matter what channel it's on -- everyone's showing the same thing…" Without giving him a chance to follow her instructions, she hurried on with her briefing on the recent events in Los Angeles. "It only happened a little while ago, but something like this(,) and everyone is trying to get a piece of the action."

Cordelia had called him a few minutes ago. Ten minutes before that some official from the prison had contacted Angel. After apologising for waking him up at that hour -- like he was sleeping anyway -- he had proceeded to tell the vampire with a soul, about Faith's inexplicable disappearance.

Angel thought he could get to the bottom of it with, although he did not tell the caller that. He had thanked the other man for giving him the heads up and gathered the troops together. Gunn and Wesley had set off in search of the hotspots where Faith may have escaped to while Fred dove into research mode. Angel decided that pooling his and the Scoobies resource was a faster and more effective way of finding the once-again rogue Slayer. They would probably appreciate the advanced warning should she head back to Sunnydale, though that was unlikely in Angel's opinion.

Cordelia hushed up and passed the phone to her friend and boss, who was hovering close by and insisting she let him speak. "Giles, I don't think this is her doing. It wouldn't take somebody very powerful to open a portal of the size that was described, but Faith doesn't know magic."

'She might have had outside help," the Watcher included wearily, not wanting to rule anything out. There wasn't much brewing in Sunnydale as of late, but they could always do without having to deal with the troublesome Slayer. He poured boiling water into the drink he had been making in the hope that it would further serve to wake him.

"I don't see how; she hasn't had any visitors -- I checked -- and anybody teleporting in would've been seen." He knew it was possible really, but Angel just didn't want to believe that Faith had been planning escape, perhaps even as she told him that things were getting better. He felt a little guilty that his visits had stopped so suddenly; maybe she had decided to get out of prison somehow once he stopped checking up on her. She was capable of it, but magically capable? He didn't know how she could have contacted anyone from prison to help her, unless it was another contingency plan of the Mayor. There were too many unknowns.

"Anything is possible," Giles padded to the door as an insistent knocking drew his attention from the phone.

Angel could not hear any individual words through the phone as the voices were muffled; he discerned that there were three people, and they spoke with a sense of urgency. He knew instinctively that whatever was happening, it was connected to Faith's disappearance. "Cordelia, Fred, we're going to Sunnydale," he announced before Giles even informed him of the update that Willow, Xander, and Anya had brought.

"Buffy's gone, too." Now the Watcher sounded really worried.

Sunnyhell

The Whitehat van drove out again that night, though this time took a much smoother ride with Giles behind the wheel. The only other human in the group joined the ex-librarian in the front while Buffy, Kendra, and Oz piled in the back. The drive would be short, but Buffy figured that would be time enough for a short round of twenty questions. It irked her that Faith was free; she was in another reality and now she had to deal with her bad counterpart? And she was already causing trouble!

She saw the younger woman as her responsibility seeing as they were both from the same world. Buffy knew Faith better, and what she was capable of -- though the other Slayer always had some surprises up her sleeve. "So what did she tell you?" The question was directed at Oz since he was the only one present that had had contact with her.

"Not much," he answered, thinking back. Buffy looked frustrated; now was not the time for vagueness. "We found her when she was taking out a group of demons. They had some old guy locked in a cage(,) and she was trying to save him--."

With her eyebrows raised and her eyes widened, Buffy looked highly dubious. "She saved him? Willingly?"

Oz nodded, while at the same time Kendra voiced her confusion at why that was such a big deal. "That's what we are supposed to do -- slay the demons and the vampires and help people," she said as though Buffy needed reminding.

"Yeah, well, Faith doesn't do what we're expected to do." Buffy wasn't too keen to dredge up the past. Yet.

"She told Giles how she came to be here and then left with Doyle," The van stopped." Guess we're here."

Things had not gone as Faith expected, as if they ever did. The vampires, it turned out, had been waiting for her arrival thanks to the supposed helpless old man. She had entered through the back door earlier - or rather broken through it. The nearby area had been suspiciously devoid of the undead, and she had known instinctively that she was about to walk into a trap; nevertheless she was drawn further inside. Vampires had moved apart as she walked deeper into the building, as if she were royalty.

In the center where tables and chairs had once been was now a long machine with spiky points. Faith would have wondered what it was had she not seen the young girl laid upon it in the process of being drained. Blood sped smoothly along the transparent tubes that wound around and were fed into cylindrical tanks. Vampires stood around the edges and yet more above her on the balcony and metallic winding stairs. They eyed her hungrily and licked their lips in anticipation. There were cages too, but these were open and nobody was held within.

Faith's limbs ignored her commands to stop and leave as a hypnotizing voice inside her head pulled her forward, almost lulling her to sleep. She barely even remembered getting from the door to the stage as she halted before it. Small red eyes in a pale wrinkled face stared back at her in a calculating manner; her eyes followed his hand as it came towards her. The Master moved a bony finger, indicating for her to come forward. In the distance she heard faint music, a piano and violin; it only served to make the situation more haunting. A crazed giggling sounded next to her and immediately the voice she had heard in her head -- she heard with her ears instead. "Silence!" he was ordering.

Faith heard a feminine English accent reply sulkily, "You promised I could have our guest." She paused momentarily as she climbed the stairs to the stage. "Yet now you take her for your own," she added in an accusatory tone.

"Drusilla…" the Master answered in a singsong tone. "That was before I learned this one was special…"

The crowd parted as Drusilla sauntered through them. "Ooh, but it's been so long since I tasted a Slayer," Hearing her say that got the roomful of vampires a little more active. They didn't want to wait their turn anymore. "It would only be fair if we all joined in…" The vampires followed the Master loyally, but Drusilla knew that in a moment such as this, with a prize like the Slayer for the taking, they would charge and fight him. Most would be dust, but that would not stop them from trying. "We all want some," she hinted with a chuckle.

The Master sighed dramatically, and his arm dropped away from her neck to his side. "Take her!" he ordered and relished the cheers that followed his command. He leaned toward the old man, his trusted spy. "I want you to find out how she got here. And how to find more."

The old man nodded and watched Drusilla clapping her hands in delight as two vampires flanked Faith and another pulled her towards the instrument. The Master relinquished his hold on her; it would be no fun if he just allowed her to be bled. He hoped the Slayer put on a show; things were so boring of late. There were no challenges anymore, except for the Whitehats and the Initiative. The only problem was that most of them were human, and they were so easy for him to overcome.

A vampire cried out as a bone snapped, rudely interrupting his plotting. They are so weak, he thought of the newest vampires that had joined him. In fact, most of them were not worthy of the gift the older ones gave them; he needed them to be stronger.

Drusilla stepped back as a relatively new vampire dropped at her feet. She nudged his hand with a heeled red shoe, and he exploded into dust. Faith was mad; she hadn't taken into account that the oldest… and ugliest vampire could take control of her like that. Buffy had forgotten to mention that part, or maybe Faith hadn't listened enough. She threw another vampire onto one of the other metal 'beds' and rammed his neck onto one of the metal spikes. It wouldn't kill him, but it'd sure hurt like hell.

The vampire that guarded the back door didn't even hear Doyle creep up behind him. By the time he saw him, it was already too late, and only a cloud of dust remained. "This is a very bad idea," Doyle muttered to himself as he peered around the corner to see another vampire soar through the air. He hazarded a step forward and ducked down, but there was no way he could go in there; he wouldn't make it three paces before he was dead meat.

"You're right," A hand grabbed his shoulder and yanked him back. "You going in there is a bad idea."

If Doyle had a chance, he would have jumped at the surprise intrusion; his heart did it for him instead. He looked at the blonde haired woman that had pulled him out of the Blood Bank. "Buffy?" He couldn't be sure because he had only seen her a couple of times way back when Angel was watching her before everything went to hell.

"How about we leave the introductions 'til later," Kendra stated, and ignored the two as she got right down to business. "What happened?"

Doyle waved his arm in the general direction of the Blood Bank. "Some old guy disappeared, and she followed him here -- now she's in there! The whole family's inside -- she doesn't stand a chance."

"She's probably right at home," Buffy commented icily and ignored their questioning looks at her remark. "So what's the plan?" She turned to Kendra. It was strange for her to be asking the other Slayer back, she wasn't used to it. Usually she was the one leading but this time she knew that Kendra held that position more than her.

A furious scream stopped any further conversation, and as one they ventured closer to the still open door. "Find her!" the Master yelled at them.

It sounded to them like Faith was becoming quite adept at disappearing.