5

Rio de Janeiro – May 3rd, 2004

"Good, good, Anastasia," Willow urged the young witch. The young woman she was coaching had her eyes tightly shut, and a look of her intense concentration on her face as she willed the petals of the rose she was controlling to sweep a small scattering of sand on the table in front of her into a tiny pile. The silky and delicate ends of the flower brush the grains gently, neatly piling them for disposal when Kennedy suddenly bursts into the room, disrupting the process and causing Anastasia to send the plant hurting across the room, its flower exploding in a puff of red petals against the cool stone of the Hacienda's wall. Kennedy however, is unabashed and gives the Deputy Head of the Council of Watchers her 'this is important" look. Willow sighs resignedly and gives the young witch a smile of commiseration. "Don't worry Anastasia, we'll try again next week." Anastasia nods and gives her instructor a curtsey before shooting Kennedy an evil look. The Slayer just waits patiently as the young witch gathers her books before making her way toward the steps leading through the broad garden fronting the house towards her bicycle.

When they had first left Sunnydale, Willow had been of the opinion that they should follow Buffy and continue the Scooby tradition. After finding out the massive scope of what needed to be done in the manner of finding and training the new Slayers however, she'd realized that keeping the gang together was going to be impossible. Faith had said it best during a particularly heated debate between Giles and Wesley's dad in London. The south Boston Slayer had spat copiously after a particularly pompous comment from Roger while leaning against a wall of the new HQ for the Watchers Council and fixed Roger with an insolent stare. "Sounds like you have it all planned out Roger. Now can you drop the whole fucking 'centuries of tradition' crap and get proactive? Last time I checked, you guys had managed to get your asses blown to kingdom come while sitting around debating form and policy, and we still have God knows how many super-chicks wandering around beating the shit out of people with no idea why they suddenly got all hulk-smash. So, my suggestion for what it's worth is that you stow it and start thinking about the people out there that need help instead of who sits to the right of whoever else during fucking afternoon tea."

Faith and Robin had then volunteered to head to Cleveland to look after the other Hellmouth which had been agreed upon with surprisingly little argument considering the Boston Slayer's track-record. Giles and Roger then began a whole new and not-so-polite argument about where the new Watchers just out of the academy needed to go. This had led to the next big question. While there had been virtually no debate about Giles' role as Head of the new Watcher's Council, Willow's appointment as deputy had been hotly contested. Roger Windham-Price in particular had been very vocal about it and Willow herself had initially resisted, but her recalcitrance had ended when she had confronted Giles point blank in a Council meeting a week later.

"Giles, I appreciate your faith in me, but honest, Roger is right. I have no experience, no training, nothing other than being terrified for 7 years in Sunnydale to qualify me. Why do you need me to move up so fast?"

The reply had been as simple as it was decisive, though its supplier had been a bit of a surprise. "Because he could die Red." Faith had said quietly. Everyone had looked shocked at this comment, but Faith had looked at the Head Watcher for confirmation and Giles had simply gazed steadily at the witch and nodded before repeating it. "Because I could die Willow."

Not the argument that won in a courtroom perhaps. Roger had snorted contemptuously at the suggestion that the young Wicca was a better choice as deputy then he, but it was enough for Buffy, Faith, and Giles. That had sealed it. Next had come Kennedy's invitation at the end of the meeting to spend some time in Brazil with her family and it turned out there had been a great many potentials in South America, so the two had stayed. The fact that Kennedy's parents were of the filthy-rich variety and owned a gorgeous thirteen room hacienda that overlooked the ocean and Mount Corcovado hadn't hurt, and they had quickly set up shop there as their HQ for Brazil. Giles had also liked the idea as it separated the two of them in case of a repeat of the destruction of the previous Council. Cell phones, satellite uplinks and the internet made instant and constant communication much simpler and upon reflection, the idea of a too centralized Council had made most of them nervous. Willow had recently discovered her ability to astral-project herself as well, and this allowed her to show up in Giles' office in astral form to talk strategy without the need of plane tickets or cellular towers. She'd done this once to Buffy in Rome and caught her and her new boyfriend "el flagrante" so-to-speak. Buffy had bitterly wondered aloud about posting an astral projected 'do not disturb' sign while snatching up the sheets to cover herself, but had decided on reflection that it was hardly practical. A 'call first' policy proved to be the easier solution.

Willow gazes wistfully at the small pile of dust and then pushes back from the glass-topped table and gives her Slayer girlfriend a rueful grin. "She's better then I was when I was at her level."

"Well kudos for the newbie, but I just got a call from England and it looks like we've got a trip laid on." Kennedy leans against the stone wall of the hacienda and returns her girlfriend's grin. "It looks like Xander found something down in Africa and Giles is calling an all-hands-to-the-pumps meeting to talk it over."

"He found it?" Kennedy replies with a nod and a shrug and Willow pushes her chair back from the table and looks excitedly at the small Slayer. "Really? I mean, not that I'm surprised he got it done but … wow." The ramifications start to sink in. "But this is good news right? We wanted to know where it was and to be able to explore it and protect it and … why do you have something-else-face?"

"Because it's not what we expected. At least not from what I got from Giles." The Slayer frowns. "Does he always make that clucking sound when he's nervous?"

Willow laughs and checks her watch. "Well we haven't been over for a while. We're a bit overdue for some fog and boiled beef for supper. Can you call the airline?" Kennedy nods and bends down for a quick kiss before departing. Willow sits quietly for a minute, wondering what Xander had found that would cause such a stir. She ponders projecting herself to England to ask Giles directly but finally decides that if he wanted her to do that, he'd have asked. Well I'll find out soon enough, she tells herself.

6

LAX Airport – May 19th 2004

The trip through the tunnels had been uneventful. Willow had healed Gunn as best she could and he'd led them down through the sewer access in the basement and after what had seemed like a maze of rights and lefts, they had emerged several blocks away from the hotel on a mostly deserted street. A homeless man had watched them come up through the manhole with mild interest before returning to his scrounging of a dumpster behind Lady Jefferson's Pitas Galore restaurant. Willow took out a cell phone and placed a quick call and the seven of them had headed up Mulcaster Drive and hung a left when a large silver utility van pulled up beside them. The sliding door opened and Angel and Spike tensed immediately for a fight, but a young Hispanic man had smiled at them politely and nodded to the witch. "Ready Ms. Rosenburg?" he asked respectfully and Willow had nodded and motioned for them to climb in. The trip to the airport passed in relative silence and soon they found themselves pulling into the private flight area of the facility. Gunn passed a card to the security guards at the gate and after they had checked it against their manifest, the van was waved through without question. They pulled up beside a Lear Jet and the steward had snapped a hasty salute to Angel as he climbed out of the passenger side of the rear of the van. A rolling staircase appeared as if by magick and within minutes they had found themselves in the cabin of the corporate jet and taxing toward a runway.

Angel glanced at the window next to him as the jet gained altitude and burst through the cloud cover into the magnificently star-cluttered sky that you only get at thirty-thousand feet above sea level or higher. His thoughts were jumbled as he tried to peace together the last few hours in his mind. He'd been prepared to die. Not just prepared, but ready for it. Almost longing for it, he admitted to himself. Around him, the others are rehashing the battle amongst themselves.

"-if it hadn't been raining like that, I'd still be ashier than I've ever been in my life, if you feel me -"

"-and we actually saw the dragon! How cool was that?"

"-anyway, the little tot's just fast asleep and -"

"-I'm still not appeased. I feel the need for more violence."

Awash in the reminiscence of her Los Angeles counterparts, it takes Faith a long time to notice that Angel is the only one not speaking. He's leaned back against his chair, looking out the window, silent.

She calls to him, interrupting Spike's graphic retelling of his standoff with a particularly vicious member of the Fell Brethren. "Angel, you okay?"

It takes him a moment to look at her, almost like he didn't hear her voice until it echoed. "It's been a long night," he says, and turns back to the window. It's starting to turn to daylight outside.

The murmur of war stories dies down, and Spike starts going through compartments, looking for something. Finally, he comes up with a handful of tiny bottles. "Excellent," he proclaims, uncapping one and downing it in its entirety in less than a breath. "It's a long flight, kids, might as well make it drunk." He passes little bottles around the collected party. Faith takes a few for herself and pours one into a heavy glass before handing it to Angel.

"How did you know about Connor?" He asks finally after taking a small sip of the whiskey.

"Brain tour, remember?" Faith shrugs and takes a pull from her own glass before pulling out her cigarettes and lighting one, ignoring the 'No Smoking' sign on the wall beside her. "I guess since I inherited your memories, I was somehow exempt from whatever mojo you pulled."

"Right," Angel's voice is hollow and tired sounding and Faith notices with some surprise that the vampire looks older. His own words echo in her mind from all those years ago when he'd saved her from herself.

"You feel young, do you Faith? You're looking pretty worn out to me."

"Angel, I gotta tell you, the whole brooding thing is taking it's toll on you." She tries to keep her tone light, but the vampire doesn't even look at her and instead takes another sip from his drink. Fuck it, Faith thinks to herself. "Oh would you just quit being such a fucking pussy?"

This gets his attention and the vampire shoots her an angry glare. The rest of the group have quieted and are listening intently while pretending to be doing other things. Spike is blowing smoke rings and Connor and Willow are feigning interest in something Gunn was showing them in a magazine. Only Illyria is not trying to hide her eavesdropping. The demon sits perfectly erect, her grey eyes locked on the Slayer and vampire completely unabashed. Faith plunges on regardless.

"Look Angel, I don't know what the fuck happened back in L.A., and to be honest, even if I did, none of that shit matters now. I liked Fred and Wesley too." She pauses, seeing him jerk involuntarily at the names but decides to go for broke anyhow. "And the thing is, that I know what they would say if they were here. Cordy too." Angel jerks again but Faith is past caring. "They'd tell you the same thing I'm about to tell you. Suck it up and get on with the mission. Once upon a time, you were the only person in the world that believed in me. Well everyone on this fucking airplane is here because they believe in you." Spike raises a hand in objection to this and opens his mouth to speak, but a withering look from Faith causes him to close it with a snap. "Now can we cut the horseshit and make with the world saving already?"

Angel looks out the window again, the constant anger and confusion he'd been feeling since awakening in the hotel gnawing at his strongly and making him want to hit the girl in front of him. He takes another sip of his drink instead and then turns to look at her. "So what's the deal?"

"Apocalypse," Faith says simply and allows herself a grin in spite of herself. "What else is new?"

Willow interjects at this point and her words cause Illyria to stiffen visibly. "The Left Hand Path."

"Kali," Illyria says with quiet anger.

"You know about Kali?" Willow asks her with some surprise.

"Isn't Kali an Indian goddess?" Gunn asks, slightly confused.

"Goddess," Illyria scoffs. "A grandiose title for a slinking piece of offal. In my day, that entity was barely above the filth that crept at the feet of the great. A whisper of power, barely more than a shadow cast by the mighty it presumed to include itself amongst."

"Kali was an old one?" Gunn leaned forward, a puzzled look on his face. "But I thought all that was left of the Old Ones were trapped in the Deeper Well."

"Not all perhaps," Illyria frowns in disgust, "There were those among us that would wallow in the pettiness of lesser creatures. Not able to influence or contribute the great, some would languish amongst the lesser beings, rather than suffer their own mediocrity amongst their peers. This Kali was such a one, a being of little talent and less imagination."

"You two weren't bar buddies I take it?" Spike asks nonchalantly, opening another bottle and tossing back the contents. "So how does the wallowing effect whether or not this bitch is still wandering around when she should have been dead and gone since before the dinosaurs?"

"For the same reasons you are here vampire," Illyria answers coldly. "Some of us, rather than live as the Titans we were, chose to lessen themselves by blending with the cattle of humanity's beginnings. As the lesser beings emerged, so the lesser of us mingled amongst them like leeches, sucking illusions of influence and power from those that knew not what real power was, and infected the world with tales of mediocrity that none the less would seem impressive to those that existed as fleas to the rest of us ." She turns her glance to Faith and then Willow. "Even those amongst you that some would call mighty are but echoes of what we would have called powerful when the world was young."

Faith bristles at that. "I maybe understood half of that, but what jist I did catch is making me a little ornery. Watch your trap Blue, or I'll be introducing you to sky-diving the hard way."

Illyria merely shrugs at the Slayer, not in the least intimidated. "What powers remain to Kali will be beyond anything you can comprehend human. She is of a time and origin where power was something measured in destruction you can't even comprehend. If this is the same Kali that I knew so long ago, despite her lack of influence in my day, the power she can wield now would be enough to crack a continent in half with a thought."

"There's a happy thought," Gunn grumbles. He touches Faith lightly on the wrist and gives her a sour smile. "What say we all calm down and hear what she's got to say."

"It makes sense," Connor says quietly and the group turns their stares to him. "Well if you think about it, if all the demon power comes from what was left of the Old Ones here on earth, the power of Slayers must come from the same place. What if this Slayermania thing you guys did last year somehow tapped into Kali and woke it up?"

"That's what Giles thinks," Willow agrees, giving Connor a nod. "And that's why we came for you folks. We need to rally all the troops we can find."

Connor doesn't understand. "But you've got all these other Slayers out there. Shouldn't they be able to take her down? I mean, it's just a demon right?"

"No," Angel answers quietly. "That's the problem."

Spike turns his pretty blue eyes to his Grand-Sire. "Something you'd like to share, Peaches?"

"I … you guys are missing some Slayers aren't you?" Willow and Faith's silence is answer enough. "There have been very few Slayers turned into vampires," he starts slowly. "Partly it's because they die in so many other ways, or it's harder to convince them to drink . . . and partly it's because so many vampires have such pure hatred for the Slayer. But mostly, it's because the few that there have been . . . they're different. They're a different breed. They're stronger, faster, they're -"

"Know this from personal experience, Angel?" Gunn asks.

The vampire wets his lips. "Yuki Makimura was a Slayer turned by the Master of the Order of Aurelius." He pauses. "My Order." He nudges Spike a bit. "And yours, too." He shakes off the bit of familial nostalgia and continues. "The year I was turned, I met her. She was maybe a whopping twenty years older than me, and my Sire had over a century on her . . . but it didn't matter. She was like a machine. We met in the middle of France, Darla and I playing the normal game and doing our things, but she … she was burning through the towns in our wake . . . I saw her slaughter twenty armed and trained men like she swatting flies. She was ruthless, immaculate. She was more of a monster than I ever was, and that's saying something."

A brief silence follows this comment. Finally, Connor sighs and looks at the witch and the Slayer glumly. "That's it isn't it? Someone is turning Slayers into vampires?"

"Well there's maybe an army of cyborgs too," Willow adds quietly.

"Cyborgs . . . what about cyborgs?"

Willow sighs. "There appears to be a faction using cyborgs to track down and capture Slayers."

Gunn creases his brow. "Wait. We had a little confrontation with some of those guys a while back. They wanted Angel. At the time we didn't know what was going on but now you're telling us that these guys are your fault?"

Angel sighs. Talk of Wolfram and Hart is sure to exhaust him. "So what are you getting at Gunn? Why is that important?"

Gunn shrugs. "Just seems like kind of a coincidence, y'know, what with Wolfram and Hart having cyborgs troubles, and now all of a sudden, these other creeps are beaucoup with the robot mojo and we get an outlaw Old One thrown into the bargain just for kicks. It just doesn't make sense as to why."

Angel brings a hand to his brow, unable to think clearly. "Let's talk about this after the in-flight movie, okay? Is there anything with Sandra Bullock maybe?"

"Screw the in-flight movie," Spike grumbles. "There's liquor left."

"And you still haven't told me about that Buffy girl yet," Connor reminds him.

Angel groans, and Willow sneaks away to phone the Council as Connor goads his father into starting a story about a girl.

"Hello? This is Willow. We're en route . . . me and four super-beings. Not a bad haul."