Willow's globe of invisibility spell had worked perfectly long enough for the three of them to sneak past the guards at the outside perimeter (human mercenaries armed with submachine guns) and the guards at the cavemouth (zombies, not armed with anything but carrying somebody's arm - possibly as a snack - mmmmm... arm...). Once inside though, Willow felt the spell starting to fade. Soon they would be visible for all to see and she would prefer to rest for a while before casting again, just in case she needed more power for the fight ahead of them. She led Buffy and Andrew to a sheltered corner away from the torches of the beaten path, then erected a sound damping field (a much simpler spell) for them to discuss strategy.

"So far this hasn't been so tough," Willow said. "I was expecting more guards and a security system or something. I don't even see any electric lights."

Buffy craned her neck. Her long, slender, creamy skinned, delicious neck. Willow looked somewhere else (or else inappropriate things might happen). "I hear a generator. Sounds like one of those emergency diesel thingies," she revealed.

Willow couldn't hear anything. "Wow. That's good Slayer hearing." The wheels started turning in her head. She then went into shock as she remembered that over the past little while in Rome she had been muttering things to herself - things about Buffy - that she now realized may not have been as private as she had thought. "Umm... so... you heard anything else interesting?"

Buffy pondered for a bit. "There's about a dozen vampires at the end of the hall," Willow's eyes were coaxing for how she knew that (yeah, that's exactly what they were doing; not staring at her lips at all) so Buffy explained. "Human shuffling noises and talking but no heartbeats. Andrew, on the other hand, has a heartrate of 160 beats per minute and he's about to explode. Calm down over there."

"Sorry. Haven't been in any real fighting action since, you know, the big boom."

"I hope you remembered to go before we left."

"Yes, thank God."

"Why did Giles want you here in the first place? No offense, but commando missions aren't exactly your thing."

"Because I have special knowledge about what we're up against?" Andrew stated, or was that asked? It's hard to tell with the inflection going up at the end of the sentence like that. But he calmed himself down and proved himself useful. "The diesel generator is a Perkins 2800 that was stolen from a construction yard in Camden three weeks ago. It only produces 542 kilowatt minutes of energy and is limited to running the computer system and Ellis' personal amenities," he recited from memory, straining his brain for the details. "That includes a laser intruder detector system for the inner sanctum, which I can deactivate without setting off any alarms if we can find the emitter and receiver of where we want to cross. I also know that we will be facing stiffer competition the closer we get. They recently made a large purchase of guns from the Fabrique Nationale firearms company and none of the guards we've seen so far have been carrying them."

"What kind of guns?"

"Assault rifles mostly. Some light machine guns and general purpose machine guns."

"Dammit. You think someone would have thought to tell me that before we charged in here without bulletproof vests."

"Anything you could wear that would stop these bullets would be pretty bulky. With your speed, you're probably better off without."

Now that the bullets and the danger were real, the whole getting injured and Florence Nightingale syndrome idea didn't seem so sane. "How did they get this stuff anyway?" she asked.

"A glamour to make the company salespeople think they were making a purchase for the Irish special forces. You've worked similar mojo before. Apparently this guy is at least as powerful as you were before well, you know. By the way, I'm really thankful that you haven't flayed me."

"Yet," mumbled Willow under her breath. Buffy giggled. Yup, she heard. Andrew hadn't. What did that mean? Willow's mind raced with the possibilities, and thus wandered away from the task at hand.

"That's enough rest, guys," said a still smirking Buffy. "Wills, kindly invisible us, and Andrew, get your electronics gear ready. We're going in."

Nobody moved. "Uh, Buff? We're already inside."

"Well that makes it more convenient then. What the hell do I look like, a rocket scientist? Just go!"