A/N: New chapter. Yay! I swashbuckled my writer's block and came out victorious. Enjoy. R&R please.

Disclaimer: I own Roxanne Crichton, Mina, Kira, and Tra'lana so far. Everybody else is property of their respective creators.

Chapter 5

Willow Rosenberg had a split second to react as all hell broke loose. Because of her vantage point from the floor, she couldn't really see who was attacking who. She briefly registered that the frog-creature was firing volleys of fire from its mouth in all directions.

The alien man that Angel had brought with them was dragging a tiny form across the floor. Meanwhile the other "Peacekeeper" fired what looked to be a gun of some sort at Angel and Spike, who were attempting to charge the Empress. Willow held up a hand in the direction of the "Toadie" as she'd mentally dubbed it, and sent a wave of green energy its way. It made a choking sound and ceased fire. The gunner was a bit more difficult.

Willow had to keep hold of the magical thread that was incapacitating Toadie. Having temporarily exhausted her offensive magic stores, she threw out two magical nets that wove themselves around the two vampires to act as forcefields.

Up until that point, the Empress had just been watching the show. However, as soon as the forcefields were up, Willow felt a heat wave surge over her. Determined to maintain the forcefields and the choke hold, she had no magic at the ready to protect herself. She screamed as she felt her back being burned from the heat the Empress was emitting.

Xander attempted to tackle the pasty alien, but was shot in the shoulder for his trouble. Suddenly, the forcefields collapsed. Willow was down. The Empress let out a shriek of garbled words to her flunkies. Without the witch's hold to impede him, Toadie sent a volley of fireballs toward the ceiling and the room was suddenly covered in white dust and debris.

When the dust settled, the first thing Spike could think about was his girl. "Buffy? You alright luv?"

A groan came from his right as his Slayer pushed a rather large piece of ceiling off of herself and Will. Spike was immediately at her side. "Yeah," she nodded, "I think some of my ribs are broken, but they'll heal. Anyone else still standing?"

"Yeah here." Angel waved from the wreckage of what had been his entertainment center.

Buffy and Spike were already surveying the place for survivors and he joined them. They found Faith in the far corner below the demolished desk. She had burn marks up and down her right side, having dodged awkwardly to the left to avoid the fireball. She was covered in broken glass and cuts as well from the shattered window behind her. Luckily for the vampires present, the weather was overcast outside, so the sun wasn't a problem.

Angel dug Wesley out from under the singed, overturned sofa to find his friend relatively unharmed, outside of a cut on his head and being unconscious. The people suffering the worst injuries were Willow, Xander, and Will.

Xander had been shot in his left shoulder. Unfortunately, the weapon used on him hadn't been a simple hand gun. Firing some kind of energy round, it had blown a golf ball sized hole into his pectoral muscle, which was beginning to seep blood from under the burnt tissue. Buffy shed her jacket and ran over to him, pressing the material against the wound to stem the blood flow.

Meanwhile, Spike ran over to Willow. The redhead was lying face down. Her clothes seemed to be fused into the skin of her back, where the heat wave had hit her. The burns had to be second-degree if not third-degree. Without touching her back, Spike turned Willow onto her side so he could check the pulse in her neck. It was thready, but it was there.

Buffy took a quick look at the damage before calling to Angel. "We need medics in here now!"

Angel had been tending to Will. Spike's double had been the first to hit the ground, but he'd taken some wooden splinters in the back when the Angel's desk had exploded. They weren't very deep, but one fairly large one had embedded itself close to the spine, just behind the heart. It was enough to incapacitate any vampire. When he heard Buffy call out to him, Angel's brain clicked into motion.

"Harmony," he mumbled, scanning the office for his secretary, "Harmony!"

The blond vampiress appeared at the doorway. "Sorry boss. I ran out and hid behind my desk when …"

"We need doctors up here ASAP!" Angel cut her off. "Call down to Medical and tell them we need paramedics and any magical healers we have on staff. Go now!"

Harmony ran off to do as she was told. The med team arrived minutes later. It wasn't surprising since the Medical wing and the Infirmary were only a floor below Angel's office. Immediately, they had EMT's, mages, and shamans of all kinds working on the injured parties. They quickly wheeled Faith and Xander off on gurneys for surgery in the Infirmary.

Wes's head was being bandaged by one of the EMT's while all the magical healers were gathered around Willow. Buffy was standing nearby, answering questions about what spells her friend had been casting at the time of the attack. It took two shamans, a voodoo priestess, and a green wizard to heal Willow's back but they were able to do it fairly quickly.

"She's stable, but her magic's been disrupted." One of the shamans informed Buffy. "I don't know what could have caused that to this magnitude."

"Will she be okay?" Buffy asked, steeling herself.

"She be awl'raight." The priestess answered in a thick Haitian accent. "Wit ani'wan else, ah tinks, they'd ah died instantly. But not dat one. Child has a lot of power. One cud even say too much."

While this exchange was going on, the remaining two medics were carefully removing the splinters from Will's back. When, the one behind his heart was removed, he let out a gasp and started coughing. The EMT's gave him one last look over before heading off to the Infirmary with Wes and Willow in tow. Will looked over the office, his eyes darting around. "Mina."

Buffy, Angel, and Spike were in conference with the supervising doctor when Will ran up to them. "Has anyone seen Mina?"

All their hearts sunk at once. They'd all forgotten the little girl in their haste to tend to their friends. Buffy swallowed the lump of guilt forming in her throat. "She wasn't in the debris when we looked."

"Empress Evileen must've taken her." Spike surmised

The phone rang, jarring everyone out of thoughts of Mina. Angel quickly dug it out of the rubble and answered it. After a few grunts of understanding into the receiver, his eyes went wide. He barked an order to the person on the other end. "Keep them there. Do you understand? Engage full lock-down of the premises! Under no circumstance should they be allowed to leave the building! I'll be right down."

When he hung up, Angel greeted the anticipating looks of the others. "That was security. They're being held in the main lobby."

At once the three vampires and the Slayer were in motion. When they got to the elevator, Angel veered to a door on its left saying, "The stairs will be quicker."

The stair well was wide but it seemed to go down forever. Will grunted in frustration, murmuring something that sounded like "frell this" before jumping over the hand railing through the gap between the staircases. He landed on his feet with a slight bounce at the bottom of the stairwell, before running through the door into the main lobby. Angel arched an eyebrow. Spike and Buffy just shrugged at each other.

"After you, luv?" Spike said holding a hand out to her.

"Don't mind if I do."

Buffy let him help her up onto the hand rail and quickly jumped down. Spike and Angel were right behind her. By the time they entered the main lobby, it looked like a bedlam. The aliens were barely being held off by a dozen commandoes in black Kevlar. Apparently, the Empress had left another two soldiers in the lobby to wait for her.

The majority of the commandoes were being picked off by a white giraffe-necked alien of the Empress' species, while Will was going toe–to–toe with a butt-ugly helmeted guy sporting a huge gauntlet around his arm. He was doing his best to get to the Empress, who was holding Mina's arm in a death grip. She was standing behind Toadie while he attempted to blast through the metal security panels that had slammed down to block the windows and the exits.

"Alright boys. Einnie, Meanie, Miney, or Moe?" Buffy asked the vampires behind her.

"I'll take Einnie and Meanie." Spike pointed at the two Peacekeepers, who were shooting at the commandoes.

"Moe." Angel replied, pointing toward the towering white alien.

"Guess that leaves me with Miney." Buffy said, running towards Toadie and the Empress."

A few minutes into battle, the three fighters realized that they were seriously out-gunned.

Angel's highly trained security commandoes were down to two. Spike was on the losing end of a pair of Peacekeepers. Angel had numerous burns and had been thrown repeatedly into a large potted plant. Will was balancing atop the metal Wolfram and Hart logo sculpture, barely holding his own against gauntlet-guy. And Buffy was doing her best at dodging fireballs, while trying to get to Mina.

All of a sudden, the large skylight in the ceiling of the lobby exploded, showering them with glass and metal. Fighting ceased momentarily as a dark figure jumped through it and plummeted to the ground in the middle of the battlefield.

The figure stood up from the crouching position she'd landed in, facing Toadie and the Empress. Buffy immediately recognized her as the woman from the rooftop. Her cold blue eyes twinkled as she rose to her full height. Pulling out two energy pistols, she shot one of Spike's Peacekeepers and Will's gauntlet foe before training the guns on the Empress' head.

"So," she breathed, sounding almost bored. "Is this a private party? Or can anybody join?"

Mina's face lit up. "Mommy!"

The woman'ssmirksoftened to a smile. "Hello cutie."