Part 11

Willow stepped forward to try to help, against her better judgment. Xander held her back, and whispered, "Not yet, Will."

The three of them stood helplessly and watched as Ogha Dunver began draining Giles of his life force. His face registered horror, and then calm, as thought he initial pain were not enough to sway his faith in his Slayer's perseverance... and sense of timing.

Just as Giles was beginning to feel more than a little light-headed, he heard a loud thud, and the biting abruptly ceased. He fell to the grass, and Willow was immediately at his side with bandages and bactine, as planned.

Ogha Dunver was on the ground, and Buffy stood over her with a large branch in her left hand.

"Sorry to interrupt your mealtime," the Slayer said sarcastically. "But I have a very important announcement: you're going to die tonight."

"Hello there, fellow Daughter of Sineya," Ogha said ominously, but standing shakily. "I've been meaning to have a bit of a chat with you."

"Well, I've been meaning to give you a good pounding into the pavement, so I guess it's just kismet that we both happen to be in the cemetery tonight," Buffy said.

"Oh really? A good pounding you say."

"Yep."

Ogha smirked a bit, and then asked, "What makes you think you can do that?"

Buffy smirked back. "With a little help from my friends," she said, glancing meaningfully at Xander, "I can do anything."

Ogha had heard enough of the threats. She wound up for one of her supersonic, Slayer-flinging punches. Instead, what came was a pretty hard, but standard, punch to the face which didn't much register on Buffy's radar, followed by a hearty retaliation from the Slayer. Ogha fell to the ground once more.

When she stood up again, she looked genuinely confused. "Caught me off-guard."

"Uh-huh," Buffy said cheerfully. "Want to see me do it again?"

Another punch sent Ogha to her knees, and the vampire's retaliation, again, did not remotely match Buffy's.

The two simply stared at one another for a long moment, the vampire looking befuddled, the Slayer looking triumphant.

What followed was a fairly standard vampire/Slayer showdown, some variety of which Anya, Giles, Willow and Xander had seen a hundred times before. The vampires always got in a few good blows, but Buffy could take them and keep standing, and ultimately beat the snot out of most of the bloodsuckers. She could enfeeble them enough to stake them without much ceremony, get in a good quippy pun, and then the gang would go for ice cream. Or mochas, if it wasn't too late.

Ogha was growing more and more frustrated and impatient at her diminished strength, and did not know how to compensate for the loss of power. She began to cry out, practically sobbing out each punch, as though it was the greatest effort she had ever expended. Her anger was making her sloppy, inaccurate, inarticulate, giving Buffy a further upper hand.

Still, at one point, Ogha had Buffy off her feet, and was able to heave her over a large gravestone. However, Buffy's reprisal was much stronger and more efficient and she was able, quite literally, to take Ogha's legs out from under her with just one kick. From this, Ogha did not stand, she simply asked, "What have you done to me?" She was near tears, and if she hadn't felt so darn vindicated, Buffy might have felt sorry for her.

Buffy stood with her legs together and her arms folded across her chest. From somewhere, she had pulled a wooden stake, which now lay nestled in the folds of her elbows. Ogha Dunver, for the first time since she died, was legitimately frightened. The sight of that wooden stake threatened, tonight, to make her vomit.

"You had an eighteenth birthday, didn't you?" Buffy asked her opponent, now lying on the ground, resting on her elbows.

"Not with balloons and cake, but yes, I lived past eighteen," Ogha answered, without any irony or ire whatsoever.

"Tell me about it," Buffy said, kneeling down to Ogha's level. "Tell me about your eighteenth birthday, Ogha."

Ogha was distracted for the moment, trying to call up the memory. "It was bloody awful," she explained. "I fought a vampire who had a penchant for arson, how strange is that? Hell of a job climbing out of that burning basement without my powers."

"Without your powers?" Buffy asked her, innocently.

Ogha's face slowly filled with realization. Buffy thought she could actually hear the wheels turning as Ogha made the connection between a Slayer's eighteenth birthday and tonight's events. She stared Buffy squarely in the eye. "You bitch," she whispered.

Giles, Anya, Xander and Willow closed in near.

"You poisoned your own Watcher just to get the better of me," Ogha said to Buffy, accusingly.

"I didn't poison him. That stuff only works on Slayers. It has no effect on regular guys," Buffy said, shrugging. "If, however, someone who is a Daughter of Sineya is to drink the solution out of, say, someone else's bloodstream... then, well, you know the rest."

Ogha took stock of the situation. Eventually, she looked up at Buffy and all of her friends and said defiantly, "Well, it's not like I'm an ordinary human now."

"Nope," Buffy said. "You're an ordinary vampire now. Those, I can handle."

She brandished her stake at Ogha, who recoiled from it, and then got to her feet clumsily. "You... you've only got a few hours," she stuttered. "I'll just keep you on the ropes until my Slayer strength comes back."

"I don't think I have time for that, Ogha," Buffy sighed, annoyed and advancing. "I have class tomorrow, and I've already wasted enough time trying to figure out how to get you on the ropes. Frankly, I've had enough of the ropes. I'm done. You're done."