Warning: Written when half-asleep…
Xander regained consciousness and found himself to be in great pain. He barely managed not to let out a whimper as he opened his eyes. He was surprised to that no light came in through the blinds, so it must still be night time. He could hear Giles and Angel talking in the hall, and he couldn't sense the girls any where.
"S-So did you check on the notes and map?" Giles asked the vampire.
"He really seems to have dusted nearly four dozen vampires and demons… he calls them 'hostiles,'" Angel reported, "From what I could gather, he took out Spike, Drusilla, Jackson and Demuerte…four master-level vampires."
Xander looked down and found most of his body wrapped in bandages, and snickered, causing Angel and then Giles to turn and enter the room, Willow and Buffy coming in behind them with coffee as they noticed something amiss.
"W-what's so funny Xander?" Giles asked as he stood by the left side of the young man's bed, "A-and how do you feel?"
"I was looking at myself and wondered if Ampata has a sister?" he smirked, indicating his bandaged state, "And I'll be fine. I take it you found Costume-Guy?"
"Ethan, er yes, but how did you know?" the librarian asked, "We only figured it out…an hour ago?" Xander looked up and saw it was already four in the morning.
"Let's see, I got the costume at the store at three-thirty and the next thing is…Semper Fi Guy," Xander stated as he looked at Giles.
"How do you account for your, your mission brief, mister," Willow asked, resolved as well as worried. She was still dressed in her hottie clothes.
"Hey Wills, two words," Xander smiled devilishly, "Mmmm-mmmm." The girls blushed deeply at the unexpected attention. Xander took pity on her as the mood had lightened slightly, "Okay, the two words are…Groundhog Day. Any more info will have to wait until I get some more rest." He yawned widely as his unwrapped fingers mad a shooing motion toward the door. "Oh, if you see Dawn, let her know it's okay to call or take off a couple of days…she'll understand."
When Xander opened his eyes he'd expected to be coming out of the Reset; instead he was still in the hospital. He looked up and saw the clock; twenty minutes past two. Almost time to go. He looked over and saw Dawnie sitting and reading a magazine. Four empty coffee cups beside her.
"You know, if you can hold in that coffee another ten minutes you won't have to go until next Reset?" Xander joked tiredly, causing an equally lame smile to appear on Dawn's face. She stood and walked over.
"You okay?" she asked softly, almost guiltily.
"I will be…" he replied, "I'm in an unhappy place Dawnie, and I think I'm not exactly going to be good company for a while?"
"Are we okay?"
"Yeah, Dawnie, we're okay. If you want I can pick you up and you can try another round of costumes…but I'm…not going to be a good person to be around…I'm going to be picking up skills I need to cleanse this town in case we ever do get out of here. So you'll be wanting to stay away from me."
"No hint?" she asked.
"Just that they're people whose 'mission' is killing."
Frank opened his eyes to see a 'Welcome to Sunnydale' sign. He couldn't remember taking a trip from New York; probably have to kick that web-slinger's prankstering do-gooder ass over this when he got back. He read the letter in his hand, disbelieving most of it but looking over the intel it provided.
Checking over his weapon's load, he seemed to have some of the basics" M-60, plenty of ammo, two 45s with plenty of ammo, knives checked out, combat armor, night goggles, half dozen willy-petes, half-dozen frags, pair of old Am-180s with four customized Box180 magazines each, long sword (?) and bow over his back, 'Hmmmm.'
Frank then looked in the duffle and found the quiver and some stray material; he smiled. He also found a small hand mirror and looked himself over; Frank Castle now believed the intel, and he'd keep an open mind regarding the vampires.
He marched along the road for a few minutes until he found a suitable vehicle; a mid-70s black sedan. Non-descript and if you rammed something, you were steel while the other guy's sheet metal or plastic. Breaking the window and steering column, Frank hot-wired the car into life.
It was a short ten minute drive to his first target: a bar run by organized crime with a demon clientele. He watched the various individuals going into the place. His opinion went from disbelief to indifference. He drove up to the front door of the Alibi Room. He got out of his vehicle, leaving the bow for the moment; time for justice.
He looked just up and across the street noticed a pair of large 'things' get out of a Volkswagen Beetle and attack what appeared to be two leather-clad college girls. Frank moved swiftly across the street and along the sidewalk. One of the girls saw him and cried out for help. Frank pulled out the 180s; he'd not used such weapons for a number of years. Also, any ricochet would tend to have less power behind it. The things looked up at him, and renewed their efforts, but somehow the young ladies were shaking off their attackers. Frank fired a short burst into the back of the VW to scare them away. It worked, and the two attackers raced to get into their car. The girls turned as Frank drew close up; he noticed their deformed faces, fangs and yellow eyes as they cursed at their attackers. One looked at Frank as the VW started pulling away; he watched with wide eyes as her fingernails grew out into thin blades and she charged at him.
Frank fired, starting low and walked it up as he moved closer, and her companion moved closer right behind. The VW u-turned a couple dozen feet up the street.
The American Arms 180 was a mighty little buzz saw of a weapon, and with the rounds Frank used he reenacted the promotional video from the 1970s as the two vampires were split vertically in two and dusted (that part not on the video) because Frank turned as the demons slowed to do a drive by with a pair of handguns. The AM-180s were turned to meet the new threat, an unbelievable number of rounds tearing into the driver's head to the shock of the passenger-shooter as the car stalled and choked to a halt. The pause was enough for Frank to march on the vehicle without let up, carefully buzz-sawed the vehicle from bottom to roof twice, gooing the two and slicing the car in half. Two older vampires had witnessed the situation and walked over to where the two vampiresses had dusted seconds before.
Demuerte turned to Jackson, then to see the two halves of the car separate and clank to the ground. The Punisher turned to look at them, Demuerte giving the man an impressed bow and walking away. The other bloody vampire who'd been considering action watched as the other Master Vampire walked away. Nothing to be gained Jackson also disappeared into the night rather than suffer an unhappy and immediate end.
Frank's feet carried him through the door of the Alibi Room, and before him two frag grenades introduced his presence to the denizens. Screams of pain and a couple shouts in anger greeted him as he slowly opened up with the 'slow' firing of the M60, tearing up the demons and the bar, cowardly bartender already fleeing low through the back door to avoid demise.
Demons shredded and vampires dusted from the sheer mass of the rounds passing through them. 'I guess the questionable intel is confirmable,' Frank noted as he walked toward the back door, careful to eliminate the merely wounded. He fired a couple short bursts to the sides and middle of the door, following through seconds later to find three dead demons and under the middle one the bartender trapped by a demon's sheer mass. Carefully stepping out of view of the bar, Frank looked down at the man.
"Who's the 'kingpin' in this town? Who runs the crime here?" Frank interrogated, "Tell me or I'll start shooting off parts of you." Willy's eyes went wide, but after the carnage he'd just witnessed…
"Th-there are two of them…" Willy choked out, "S-Spike's one of them, and someone in City government is the other." The gun moved closer. "W-What! I told you!"
"Where do I find Spike and this government official," Frank asked. Willy gave him the general directions to Spike's warehouse, and Willy just repeated that someone at City Hall was the other, maybe even a Warlock. Frank made as if to turn, Willy closed his eyes in relief, heard a loud noise, and then nothing.
The next morning found Xander at the computer in the library, using Willow's custom search engines to investigate the Mayor, Council and Department directors to determine the validity of Willy's statements. The Punisher had cleared out Drusilla and the left-behinds, searched through the building and found a case with nearly twenty thousand dollars in it, and the car keys to a vintage car. It'd given Xander an easier means of getting around without worrying about a car being reported as stolen.
The computer search took nearly the entire day, and only by the end of it was he getting the impression that some one way up the ladder might be involved like Willy said, but until he had more to go on he'd just remember to do more research later. Though maybe when things settled down and he had more information, he'd go as the 'Warlock,' but magic was something Xander still wasn't sure about getting involved with, since it seemed the Hell Mouth seemed particularly evil magic-wise. Petting Phil absently, he continued to stare and think.
'If there wasn't a Slayer or other group of vampire hunters to watch things on the Hell Mouth, who kept the Master's minions in check all those years he was trapped,' Xander sighed mentally, 'Another evil with a different agenda, not involving unleashing of Hell but something else? Let's see, the Master was trapped back in '37? So probably someone from then to now…not necessarily, but we can look into that first…'
The doors opened, and Xander awoke from the nap he'd fallen into. 'I guess I'm starting to fall back into depression again. Why'd I have to forget about warning Buff and Will? Dawnie was actually pulling me out of it when… everybody died again that night.' He looked up to see Giles curiously look at him.
"Hey, Giles," Xander greeted as he fully moved the mental fatigue aside, "How'd last night go for everybody?"
"As well as could be expected," the Watcher replied, checking through the pot and tray before risking Xander-made tea, "Though we were all worried about you. Hmm, excellent tea by the way." He looked questioningly at Xander, "Urm, what are you working on, on that infernal machine?"
"I was wondering who the counter-balance to The Master was for the sixty years before you and Buffy came to town," he truthfully admitted, "And squeezing an unsavory source last night indicated that someone in city government might be involved in the shady side of things, so 'they' might also be involved in what kept things relatively quiet and under wraps." He explained his thinking, and the priority of search parameters to the Watcher, who nodded in surprise and brought up possible holes and alternatives.
"In all, Xander, a-an excellent venue of consideration," Giles approved, nodding, "Perhaps if we do have a better background of the town, we can better foresee events more than a week or day before they occur."
I spent an unfortunate amount of time that next 'week' of Halloweens following up my plan from the most rudimentary levels. I researched criminal figures of the last century, mafia or cartelista didn't matter, but I'd also gone through Giles' collection and at times had him seek information on demon criminal leaders. With my increasing general knowledge, I'd pretty much determined that in Sunnydale we had either a 'capo' or a leader on the city council, as Police Chief, or as Mayor. With government pretty much closed up, and the Police not really a good choice of one-day exploration, I decided to costume myself as many of the leading human criminal organization figures while Dawnie took a more domestic route I'll tell you about in a bit.
I'd pick up Dawn if the phone rang, and headed out if it didn't. During the basic computer search week, I'd dressed as Major Vic Deakins from that John Travolta movie, Broken Arrow. There was a military sell-out guy who went through life with a major hard-on. Oops, sorry about that, both the possible pun as well as the sexual equipment reference. But those of you who saw the movie saw the attitude and the mindset. Willow had once tried to explain the 'method' style of acting. I always thought if they had any talent they should just act. But with 'Vic' I gave it a try…something, I guess, to put me more in tune with the element I was hunting.
The Punisher, Frank Castle, had been borderline in his psychosis, exacting an illegal and morally ambiguous toll from the murderous criminal populations of his New York City. Methos, and the other Horsemen, clearly were far worse. I'd heard a bit about this and that, and decided to go with three guys either 'in' with the mob at one time, or had come along in their wake and might know things from that angle. So, I started easy, with Frank Sinatra who was friends with a bunch of 'em, Jimmy Hoffa who'd done the pension thing and had been killed by them, and the billionaire who'd almost owned Vegas for a while but kinda just lived by himself and a bunch of 'Mormon Mafia' in his last years. But in succession after that, I was Jake 'Greasy Thumbs' Gusik, money mastermind of the Capone and successor organizations until the mid-50s, Capone himself, Lansky the financial side of the syndicate, Sam Giacano, and the 'Dapper Don.'
You want to know what happened, when and by whom? I know. You want to know the depth and breadth of the Latin American cartels and their partnerships in and regarding the drug business? I added Pablo Escobar, Miguel Rodriguez Orejueda, and Amado Carillo Fuentes and the Jackal.
I had the mindset of these guys down, and it led me further afield, looking at Los Angeles drug connections, the older Latino gangs dating back to the Depression years, and I came up blank. Criminally speaking, who cares about Sunnydale? Nobody. Supernaturally speaking, the demons, the good guys and/or someone in Sunnydale's older families might be interested in Sunnydale. Back to the Mayor and Council. I did find out that the Mayor, a couple of Councilmen, and many of the leading criminal figures in Los Angeles used the same legal representation: Wolfram and Hart. The Mayor's family had dealt with them for a couple of generations in fact.
Nine killers in twelve days, then I used the combined knowledge to try my hand at a little bit of mischief. Between the Jackal on the thirteenth Halloween in the set, and ol' Vic, not to mention Methos, computer operations were not as much of the problem they would have been October the 30th.
Eighteen days were spent computer-hunting after the shadows of information and fragments of criminal wealth and records still extant after all of these years. Extant, there's a word I'd never have used, ever, before this nightmare (?) began so long ago. I was able to utilize the school system and connection quite effectively. Knowing from the criminals' perspective where they'd left their private caches of money, records and other…things, I managed to trace out nearly fifty percent of the hidden 'assets.' A fortune in blood money dating back nearly a century, and with Greasy Thumb and Lansky in the back of my mind, I knew where much of it came from. Twelve Saturdays in which I discovered the syndicate involvement or non-involvement in all of the conspiracy theories since the 20s. Twelve days in which I learned the extent of high-level corruption in many governments and law enforcement organizations in the United States and the world. Twelve days in which the hyena side of me bonded the considerations if not the morality of these men into place. The mentality was the same as an alpha or at least a high beta within the pack. The interesting side…I picked up a strong cultural appreciation for the Roman Catholic Church (Latin mass, not that liberal stuff) and for traditional central European operations of the synagogue (Again, not that new Liberal stuff). I now know hymns, responses to masses, Sicilian and Neapolitan Italian, American 'street' Yiddish, and some Hebrew. Oy! And I know how to subvert the legal systems in eight states and countries. With the Asimov experience from before, the Jewish cultural stuff seemed to come to me a little easier.
Sending late-Friday emails to law enforcement agencies around the country and Interpol with the necessary evidence to make trouble for sixty still-living criminals and seventy corrupt officials led to some interesting news developments by the time of each Reset, and had cracked quite a few new accounts as others whose systems I'd infiltrated feared the worse and tried to shift funds on their preemptive way out of the country. And watching as the Feds eventually poured into the Library as the gang and I drove away to a late lunch on Ethan's money.
Other than the costume drive, Dawn'd pretty much stuck with Willow the Immortal and Buffy the 18th Century Slayer the whole time. She'd pressed me a couple of times to tell her who the costumes were, but I wasn't going to get even a junior Summers girl lecture.
Dawn had had a very domestic time of things while I'd been learning the shadowy side of modern society. Martha Stewart, Julia Childs, Gwen Stefani, Jewel, and Princess Diana, Billiards Champs Loree Jones and Ewa Laurance, and three pop singers, um, Paula Abdul, some kid named Britney Something or other I'd never heard of, and Shania Twain. She said that was as close to Country and Western as she'd ever get. I put my foot down when she wanted to go as Lita Ford or Janet Jackson: the lack of clothing on the first would get me exiled by Joyce for life and there was no way I would let her dress as the sister of that weirdo.