Legal Disclaimer: I own nothing. All rights to the Terminator or Buffy characters belong to the respective companies. No money is being made from this. It's all for fun.

Spoilers: See any of the first 3 chapters For Spoiler warnings.

Dream sequence: Italics

Thoughts: (Italics)

Distribution: Fan and Twisting the Hellmouth. If you want it your welcome to it. Simply email me so I can come visit.

Scene opens: Angel had been attacked in the previous chapter. Buffy had staged the first of her raids. Xander has found a possible entrance to the initiative base.

Chapter Seventeen

Count Down to Judgment Day:

T Minus Six (pt11):

(Your doing What!):

(See Authors Note Below.)

Giles heard Dawn on the phone and decided to see who she was speaking to.

"You need what! Are you out of your mind!" …

Giles came out from the kitchen when he heard Dawn's outburst. Dawn turned towards him and said. "Giles it's Xander. Wait until you hear this."

Giles thought to himself. (What now? I truly hope Dawn is over reacting.) "Hello Xander?"

"Yeah G-Man it's me."

Giles rubbed the bridge of his nose. "How many times have I asked you not to call me that?"

"Obviously not enough." Was Xander's reply.

"Very well. What are you calling about?" Giles was thinking he had enough headaches that he didn't need Xander adding to them.

Xander knew that Giles would react badly, so he had to set him up. "I think I've found a way into the initiative base."

'Oh then your little supply mission has born fruit?" Giles said as he put his glasses back on.

"Uhm not exactly."

Xander was sounding evasive, which worried Giles. "What do you mean? Not exactly?"

Xander knew he was skating on thin ice. "In the caves I found a metal hatchway. It looks like the sort of thing you'd see on a submarine. I couldn't get it to budge, and it looks pretty darn solid. But I think I might have a way to get through it."

Giles couldn't understand why Dawn had so over reacted to what Xander had said. Nothing he'd said indicated that it needed that kind of response. "Then why did Dawn react the way she did?"

Xander wasn't really looking forward to the way Giles was probably going to react. "All I said was that I could simply blow my way in."

At first Giles couldn't understand why Xander was talking about blowing his way in through a metal door until the other shoe dropped. "Bloody hell!" Giles normally was to much of a gentleman to swear in front of ladies but he was to incensed with Xander's crazy idea to care who was around. "Are you out of your mind!"

Xander held his cell phone away from his ear while Giles raged.

-Meanwhile-

Sunnydale docks.

Buffy had been looking for shark for a while, by taking a running jump from the roof of one warehouse to the next, so she would remain unseen. Fortunately the docks he could operate out of simply weren't that big. So she ran down his Hummer in short order. See saw Shark and his hench demons waiting outside a closed warehouse. She'd kept them under observation while casing the situation out. She'd spotted multiple goons on the top of a couple of the surrounding warehouses. (Whatever is going down it's big. Sharky looks nervous. I think I'll sneak up and take out some of those possible snipers before I decide to crash the party.)

Suiting deed to action Buffy jumped down from the roof. And crept to the far side of the ware house she was sure had a thug on top of it. She spotted a way she could scramble up one of the stacks of crates, and jump the rest of the way to the roof of the warehouse without being noticed if she was quick enough. (Here goes nothing.)

-Sharks warehouse-

Cordelia was whining to Wesley and Gunn. "What's keeping Buffy? I want to get out of here and take a shower. This place reeks."

"I'm sure she's merely being as careful as she can. Shark and his thugs aren't someone to be taken lightly. She'll be fine." Wes was hoping to reassure himself along with Cordelia. Buffy was prone to taking rash actions whenever she felt like it.

Gunn didn't know Blondie but he wanted to get their attention back on what they'd found. "Guys we hurt this shark dude. We didn't get much cash. But we got a few guns and grabbed about twenty thousand, while taking out one of the links in his drug chain. What I'd like to know is why Blondie didn't tell us what we were getting into. I thought this was a stolen luxury car ring. Not where he sold his drugs to his dealers."

Wesley winced a little bit from his bruises as he shifted around in his chair. "I have to agree there. A drug den is a much tougher nut to crack than what we were led to expect. Fortunately this was Sunnydale. The authorities here are so backward and it's so overlooked by the rest of the country that Shark never needed to step up his security measures to modern times. Or we would have had a much closer go of it, and wouldn't have gotten anything worth while."

"Before you two work your selves up. Take a closer look around you at the floor. Look at all those oil stains. They look pretty fresh don't they?" Wes and Charles looked around and nodded at Cordelia's words. "I bet this warehouse was exactly what Buffy told us it was last time she was through here. Shark probably shifted things around for some reason. So don't blame Buffy. Heavens knows were not friends. But she's more on the ball then what you two are giving her credit for. Charles I could kind of understand. He's never met her. Only heard our stories. But you Wes, you've seen her in action before." Wesley wilted under Cordelia's look.

Wes sighed. "Your right Cordelia. I should have given Mrs. Summer's more credit. I keep expecting her to be the ditzy California blonde she purports to be. Instead of being one of the greatest Slayer's ever.

-Sunny Dale Sewers-

Angel was a bloody mess. He stood surrounded by a large number of corpses. He was attempting to cover multiple entrances. So far he'd been lucky in that the Sacarrens hadn't delayed and charged him enmasse, but there were enough of them present that he would have little or no chance of surviving.

"Look I don't want to kill anymore of you. All I want to do is release you from your contract. Things have changed now. And I need the weapon your protecting to help save the world."

The most authoritively dressed of the Sacarrens present motioned for the others to wait until he had spoken with Angelus. "You should know Angelus that the contract forbids what you are asking. You could not even use the weapon, so why do you want it?"

Angel was grateful for the chance to figuratively catch his breath. "it's not for me. It's for the Slayer. The powers that be have warned her that the world will be devastated. Not by demonic kind. But by a creation of man's itself. It could be a valuable tool in saving what will be left of mankind in the coming dark times. Also I've wanted to find a way to release you from the contract you were tricked into by Angelus."

"I am a truth speaker so I know that you have told me the truth. I will contact the elders to make a decision. If you make any aggressive moves or attempt to flee you will be destroyed. Most likely the elders will have you tortured and killed .in the most painful manner they can devise."

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Authors Note:

Well it's been some time. But hopefully I will be updating Countdown much more regularly now. I was unemployed for about 5 months and didn't have any internet access for about 4 of those months. For a short period of time, I didn't even have power. I got online last week and I decided to do some writing. So I have done some writing on Scooby and Countdown and should be posting a couple of chapters to advance different stories in short order, now that I'm back online. But With being unemployed etc I simply didn't feel up to doing any writing. So I will only be posting as I complete stuff. I don't have any sort of backlog to fallback on.

Now I'll return you to your semi irregularly scheduled story.