Everything either belongs to Joss or it should, no infringement is intended and no profit is to be made. When you get right down to it I'm not really worth suing anyway unless you want a share of an underpaid civil servants wages and it just wouldn't be worth the hassle trust me.

WARNING - THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE SEASON 8 COMICS - READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Great Northern Forest – Pylea – May 2004

The advance had started out in good order, the demons in formation and well organised. When properly led Sebassis Troops were not rabble by any means, indeed by demon standards they were practically disciplined, this of course being the reason that as soon as they got into range Vi's sniper team started blowing holes in their officers, unruly leaderless mobs may seem more ferocious but they lack the ability to properly react to changing circumstances and more than that they'll be more likely to break and run when properly motivated.

Groosalug the Undefeated strode along the line, the enemy would soon be upon them but until they were he would continue to make his way from bunker to bunker, trench to stockade to make sure his own troops were in high spirits and prepared for glorious and bloody battle. Coming to a familiar face, though one wearing an unusually determined expression the Pylean Champion squatted down beside a dug-out and raised a clenched fist to greet the occupant as warrior to warrior. 'Numfar you are well met' he said, greeting the brother of his friend Lorne. 'As are you all' he added for the benefit of the three others in the hastily constructed fortification.

One of the dug-out occupants was a human and although of Pylean birth he returned the Groosalugs greeting with a salute in the style of the armies of Earth. 'Good day for a fight Sir' the human declared looking up at the clear sky.

'Better than if it was raining my brother' the Groosalug replied in agreement. 'Untold hordes of enemies fill me with little dread, and offers the opportunity for glory everlasting on victory, but standing around in wet clothes with water dripping down the back of my neck takes all the joy out of it' he told them with a sigh then stood back up. 'They will soon be within range of our rifles' he said. 'Mark your targets well and keep a steady hand and a stout heart and we will vanquish our foe this day' he declared then raised his voice so that it echoed along the line. 'We stand together, demon clans and human but we are Pyleans all' he boomed. 'The invader came to take our lands and make us chattels to foreign masters, but today we will show them that the price in blood to take our freedom is higher than they would ever choose to pay.'

The Groosalug watched as the demon army of Sebassis and the allied traitors of his lapdog Narwek continued to surge up the valley closing on the defenders. Few on the line would have ever seen a fraction so many beings at one time before, only the very largest cities on Pylea could boast more than a few thousand inhabitants. 'And if any of you can manage to miss hitting something out there we will be having harsh words this evening' he declared loudly, sparking laughter amongst the defenders.

They had measured out the effective range for the rifles and marked it with white painted stones some three hundred yards out as soon as the enemy crossed that point hundreds of Kalashnikov Rifles in the hands of Pylean volunteers would begin to rip into them. The rifle lacked the range of the more precision built rifles the slayers carried but it had a more powerful cartridge and was far better suited to being handled by members of a pre-industrial society which did not necessarily treat mechanical devices with the respect or care they might deserve.

Before they faced the PDF rifles they would have to contend with something much nastier however.

Half way along the line Douglas Ashton told the Pyleans with him to clear the firing line and they responded by seizing hold of the large bushes that had been placed there to conceal the position and throwing them aside.

The mercenary stuffed hearing protectors in his ears and then pulled back the oversized cocking handle on the heavy machinegun in front of him. It was the one Illyria had taken from the Armoured Personnel Carrier Glory had wrecked and now mounted on an improvised heavy tripod made by a local blacksmith it was finally going to get some use, though not against the intended side it had been transported to Pylea to do so.

The Russian made KPV heavy machinegun fired an oversized 14.5 millimetre cartridge which had nearly twice the muzzle energy as its much vaunted American .50 Calibre equivalent. Originally designed for Anti-Tank Rifles it could easily penetrate an inch of armoured plate at a distance of half a kilometre, or as it happens at the same range it would tear a gaping wound in one demon, keep going through the next and continue ploughing its way forward until eventually running out of steam several demons later on leaving an impressive hole in each of them en-route.

Holding his jaw clenched shut because otherwise the jarring recoil would have caused him to bite his tongue or shaken his teeth loose in his head Ashton held down the firing lever and swept the heavy machinegun in an arc across the valley. The weapon thundered and tore its way through the demon ranks for a few glorious seconds until the forty round belt of ammunition ran dry, quickly exhausted by the long continuous burst.

As another Pylean dashed in to load the next belt Ashton paused to appreciate the carnage he had just caused, knocking hundreds of demons out of the fight almost at once. The PDF troops were already cheering, or in some cases doing some wildly gyrating silent dance moves as the next belt was loaded and after giving the loader time to get clear Ashton pulled back the cocking handle again and started firing once more, this time in a series of short bursts into the still advancing horde, slowing sweeping the barrel of the heavy machinegun across the enemy lines.

After another forty rounds the machinegun fell silent once again. They only had a few belts of ammunition, not enough to do more than give the demons a very unpleasant hello but a familiar 'crump' noise told the mercenary that there was even nastier ordinance about to fall upon the opposition as the girls up on the hill there started up with the mortar fire.

Airburst shrapnel, white phosphorus and the occasion cluster fire-spell round began falling onto the enemy, like the heavy machinegun it wasn't enough to stop them but it broke up the formation and helped reduce discipline and order even more as demons fell, bled, screamed and burned and were them trampled underfoot by those following behind.

They were nearly at the row of white painted stones when Ashton fired off his third ammunition belt in one go straight into the heart of the demon column then reached for his own rifle saving the rest of the 14.5mm in case it was needed to break a sudden enemy surge towards the line later on.

Four hundred Pyleans, both human and demon, chambered a round in their AK-47's, bought their rifles to their shoulders and took aim as the thousands of snarling beasts finally got close enough to warrant shooting at them. Boxes full of loaded magazines rested beside them as they looked down their gunsights, steadied their aim and waited for the order to fire.

Kneeling behind a log stockade the Groosalug raised his own rifle and pulled back the cocking lever. He much preferred to employ a true warriors weapon such as sword or battleaxe but he knew he needed to set an example to the others and show that it was not a betrayal of their culture to utilise the weapons of the Earth humans, the true betrayal would be to not use them and allow their people to continue to live as slaves, if they fought in the old manner they could not hope to match the forces of the Wolf, Ram and Hart.

Of all the sentient races across the dimensional divide only the humans with their methodical, systematic and technological approach to war had truly raised it from a warriors art to a soldiers science and it was this shift on emphasis from the individual to the group as a whole that was almost as telling in the field as their hideously effective weaponry. The mercenary Ashton had repeatedly drummed it into the heads of the recruits that war was not a game, or some kind of heroic sport played by so-called "Champions", it was pure bloody industrial scale murder and the objective was to destroy both the enemies will and means to fight.

The Groosalug took aim and considered the weapon and the people that had made it. As individuals the humans were nothing special, they were weaker than nearly all demon races, they were slower than most, lacked sharp teeth or claws and they could be cowardly, deceitful, treacherous and self-serving so it was little wonder they were often so despised. As a group however they were the most dangerous, vicious, cunning and inventive race imaginable, it took years to master a sword but within weeks you could take someone with no prior knowledge of even the existence of firearms, give them such a device as this Kalashnikov and they could easily defeat the greatest swordsman that ever lived. Arm a few hundred with these weapons and they could meet a mighty foe that outnumbered them twenty to one and laugh at the odds. It was terrible to contemplate that anyone could wield such power without having to truly earn it.

The first rank of demons crossed the line of white painted stones. 'Open fire' the Groosalug bellowed at the top of his lungs and squeezed the trigger on his rifle. As the valley thundered to the sound of five hundred rifles he wondered where it was all going to end.

To the first rank of demons in the oncoming army it ended a split second later in a storm of supersonic copper jacketed lead.

Hyperion Hotel – Los Angeles – May 2004

Willow looked out of the window down to the street below, it looked so normal out their she thought before turning back to face into her room where Buffy sat on the edge of her bed and Illyria as usual preferred to stand wearing her armour. 'Amy Madison' she repeated eventually in disbelief, it had taken her a while to get to grips with the notion. 'You want to recruit Amy Madison?' she asked incredulously 'She's - - she's an evil bitch' she stated with a quite un-Willow-like hiss of venom in her voice.

Illyria crossed her arms. 'It would be more accurate to say that she is petty, vengeful and under the influence of her addiction to dark magicks than she is evil in the classic sense' the God-king replied, 'though she does harbour an almost irrational hatred of you in particular.'

'There's got to be better choices surely?' Buffy argued.

'Amy Madison is amongst the most powerful non-aligned mages to be found in this world, although not I fear as strong at this point as she was in the original timeline' Illyria responded, 'her hatred and entrapment fuelled her mystical energies and even prompted her to initiate a scheme of revenge against you all in league with elements of your government.'

'She what?' Willow exclaimed.

'Do not be concerned, I made sure to warn her of the impending collapse of the Hellmouth and she fled changing the timeline irrevocably for her from that point' Illyria told her. 'It is also likely she lacks either the mystical strength or motivation to formulate her ludicrous frankly transparent ruse that you all seemed to fall for despite the fact it made no logical sense at all' she added rolling her eyes. She never had been able to get Buffy and Willow in the original timeline to grasp that the whole business with Warren Mears was just 'bollocks' as Spike would say. They persisted in not accepting that it was a simple fabrication by the Madison girl, who had already proven herself powerful enough before to play tricks on even Willows mind. Amy's magicks had zero effect on Illyria and she could see right through it all but they just wouldn't accept the truth no matter how many times she laid it all out in simple terms. For a while there before coming back in time the God-King had an insight into what it must have been like for the blond half-breed when only he could see through Glory's memory spell that made everyone but him instantly forget that she and Ben were the same person, frankly it sucked worse than a portal into the most quicksand infested area of the Quartoth.

'What about the government?' Buffy asked. 'Where do they come into all of this?' she demanded to know.

'They don't' Illyria replied, 'not anymore, at least not as they did before' she told them. 'By now they will already be involved in serious inter-factional disputes with elements seeing us as either a useful ally or a far too dangerous threat to confront directly, severely weakening the hand of those who would otherwise move against us' she maintained. 'Both my demonstration with the Fort Knox reserves and my offer to act in their interests in the geopolitical sphere will have hamstrung General Voll and his command.'

Buffy opened her mouth to ask who the hell "General Voll" was, he sounded like a evil villain from a Sci-Fi B movie, but decided that if Illyria wasn't going to say there was no point in asking. 'Okay so let's get back to the subject of Amy, why do you want us to go get her?'

'She has useful skills and would be an asset' Illyria replied simply. 'We are lacking in effective magic users and she is the most powerful I know of that we can readily add to our personnel.'

Willow breathed out slowly, getting upset about it wouldn't impress Illyria one bit, in fact it would guarantee that the God-King would decide she was only objecting on irrational emotional grounds. 'What makes you think she'd cooperate?' she asked in a calm, considered tone of voice.

Illyria smirked. 'What makes you think she need do more than be merely obedient?' she countered. 'I was not planning to give her a say in the matter, she either serves the cause willingly or I will find a twin to the collar I make Glory wear, place it around Amy's neck and make her serve regardless.'

'Dammit Illyria you can't go around enslaving people' Buffy exclaimed. 'It's not' she paused for a second, '… legal' she said eventually.

'A great statesman and orator called Cicero once said that "Laws are silent in times of war", and we are at war' Illyria responded flatly. 'If you wish to salve your conscience by choosing to call it "conscription" instead of slavery you may do so, but regardless of whether she wears a collar or dog-tags around her neck Amy is both too valuable a potential ally, and too dangerous a potential foe to allow her free reign outside our control' she continued. 'We either draft her or we arrange her demise, either one would be unpleasant for you both to contemplate I am sure, but at least the former both benefits us and perhaps offers her the chance for redemption.'

Willow closed her eyes she could feel a headache approaching and she rubbed the bridge of her nose. 'Are you saying if I don't help you capture Amy you'll kill her?' she asked. 'Because I'm betting us saying we wouldn't, or shouldn't, won't stop you going it alone.'

'Yes' Illyria replied simply. 'I assume that you collectively are unlikely to take a scythe to me if I try and that would be the only way you could prevent it.'

Buffy glared at the God-King. 'What give you the right to do whatever the hell you want?'

'Might' Illyria replied honestly. 'And I am right in any case' she added. 'There is no fundamental reason to excessively mistreat Amy once under our control, merely to restrict her freedom to some extent unless chastisement or some mental conditioning proves necessary.'

'Oh so now we're going to brainwash her' Willow responded. 'Aversion therapy a la Clockwork Orange maybe?' she asked sarcastically.

'It would be better not to do so' Illyria replied. 'Whilst having her more docile may be beneficial in some cases it would likely strip her of her "edge" and make her a less effective warrior mage overall, better a caged tiger than a free but tame kitten.'

'No feelings at all' Willow muttered under her breath.

'More than I would care to have' Illyria replied honestly, having excellent hearing. 'For one thing it would be liberating not to care that you as my friends thought ill of me but I do despite my best efforts to remain indifferent' she told them. 'My logic is undeniable and from the broader perspective my recommendation is the moral choice' she continued. 'Fighting under our banner Amy could save countless lives and provide incalculable help in the campaign against our enemies.'

'And I suppose that I have to keep her in check' Willow asked coldly.

'As I do Glory and Dana increasingly seems to for Drusilla' the God-King replied. 'In each case we are simply the best people for the job' she argued. 'For that matter Buffy is perhaps the anchor for Faith as well.'

Buffy leaned back. 'I've got to ask' she began, 'but is it your intention to conscript every single miscellaneous bad guy you can think of and create the supernatural Dirty Dozen?' she asked sardonically.

'Only the controllable ones' Illyria replied. 'Thinking of which Knox mentioned that we had a reply to our email offering protection from Wolfram and Hart to any employee that wished to leave but had not done so for fear of retaliation from the company.'

Buffy couldn't help but laugh. 'I thought that was just us trying to yank Lilah's chain' she replied. 'We sent it to every single employee they had with an email account' she explained to Willow who hadn't heard about it before. 'Hey if anyone wants out of that place we'll keep their former employer off their back' she said.

Illyria smiled. 'I am gratified to hear it, although vacuous and annoying we are short of administrative staff and Harmony was a surprisingly effective Assistant to Angel during his time at Wolfram and Hart.'

Buffy blinked. 'Harmony?' she repeated. 'Harmony "I'm a vampire without a soul" Kendall?' she queried, 'the Harmony that kidnapped my sister and was sleeping with my boyf… with Spike?'

'Yes' Illyria replied. 'She apparently mentioned in her email a great desire to spend time with all her old friends from Sunnydale' she explained. 'I think that was part of the reason for wishing to leave her current job, plus of course the Hyperion is now fitted with necro-tempered Glass and we can offer an excellent dental plan.'

'This is a joke right?' Buffy asked hopefully.

Illyria shook her head. 'She types like a superhero' she told the slayer, 'and did prove willing to give up the consumption of human blood before.'

Willow's eyes widened as something occurred to her. 'Cordelia, Buffy and now Amy and Harmony' she said. 'It's the reunion of the old Sunnydale High Cheerleading Squad' she declared. 'Hey maybe you could get Faith to join in to fill in for one of the missing members that got eaten?' she suggested sardonically.

'Somehow I just don't see Faith as the cheerleading type' Buffy told her with a shrug.

Great Northern Forest – Pylea – May 2004

Even firing only semi-automatic and roughly aiming each shot the Pylean riflemen still managed to empty their first magazines in less than half a minute. Such was the size of their target, a mass of demons hundreds deep it seemed almost impossible not to hit something worthwhile with every shot, although quite a few managed rto do so shooting too low so that their bullets ploughed into the ground in front of the enemy or else too high whizzing over the tops of their heads. However given that in those first thirty seconds or so the five hundred Pyleans, the reserves having been bought into play already, fired off fifteen thousand rounds between them they still succeeded in wreaking absolute carnage.

Demons are built tougher than humans and a single round will only rarely bring one down especially given that many were wearing plate armour that could often stop a rifle bullet at that range but the demons in the first few ranks were riddled with holes and they started falling in waves as the Pyleans poured fire at them. As the first ranks fell so they not only stopped soaking up rounds that now started to hit their compatriots behind but they also became an obstacle that tripped others up and slowed down the advance which had become a charge as they closed with the Pylean line.

Vi watched in amazement as the demons almost seemed to hit a solid wall of rifle fire like waves crashing against the rocks, somehow, either out of courage or sheer stupidity they kept going, lacking leadership to order them to stop the apparently suicidal charge and some of them were closer than two hundred yards to the Pyleans when the first of the defenders reloaded and began firing off their second magazines even faster than the first as the targets became closer and it took less time to aim. The firing rate rose and rose as enraged demons clawed their way over or through the corpses and writhing wounded bodies of their own getting closer and closer all the time as more and more of them fell beneath the blazing guns.

'Jesus Christ' one of the other slayers exclaimed.

'I do not think so' Perković commented, his ever present crucifix hanging around his neck along with his dog-tags, both those of the Legion and the Croatian Army. They had all stopped sniping the moment the main fighting began down in the valley, all that is except Rika who was still taking out any unfortunate demon that entered the crosshairs on her telescopic sight.

'They've got to break and run' Vi declared. 'They've got to' she said wondering if she was right as the demons continued to close on the Pyleans, dropping like flies as the rate of firing continued to rise to a crescendo the locals starting to fire almost blindly into the mob, proper aiming becoming little more than optional if you wanted to perforate something.

At a hundred yards even demons wearing plate armour were utterly unprotected against the supersonic projectiles that punched right through the steel, the demon within it and sometimes even back out the other side to strike another. They fell like wheat before the scythe but they kept coming.

Ashton dropped his rifle and got back behind the heavy machinegun firing off the belt in one go sweeping the barrel from left to right in an arc, the heavy rounds barely noticing the demons they passed through at this range but they kept coming.

'ROCK AND ROLL' the mercenary screamed as the machine-gun ran dry and he snatched up his rifle again. The Pyleans within earshot, their own hearts pounding as fast as the rifles in either chests or backsides switched their AK-47's over from semi-automatic to fully automatic gripped the rifles as hard as they could and depressed the triggers once again.

Even full magazines emptied themselves in three seconds flat as the PDF troops opened up with everything they had, more and more of them switching their rifles over to its maximum rate of fire as the enemy seemed to be getting close enough to reach out and touch.

Even at close, almost point-blank range, the numbers of rounds missing completely escalated as rifles jumped around almost controllably under the gyrating recoil but the volume of fire had risen so much higher that the number of bullets hitting demons still rose exponentially.

The Groosalug gritted his teeth and burned off yet another thirty rounds, ejecting the empty clip to join the growing pile of pressed steel magazines lying by his feet before hastily reloading. This was slaughter, unadulterated butchery pure and simple, no honour, no glory just killing he thought. It was barely more than murder he decided as he began to fire again.

Under the withering, unceasing fire, between them all now thousands of rounds every second the demons could not advance, they were being gunned down faster than the ones further back could replace them, the gap between the Pyleans and the invaders began to widen despite the greatest efforts of their foe to press forward.

An instant later Sebassis Troops began to break and run, firstly in small groups but then as a mass, the rump survivors of what had been a colossal army the likes of which Pylea had never before seen concentrated in one place simply fled, completely broken in spirit as they ran for their lives over a carpet of their own.

Over eight thousand demons lay bleeding, dead or dying on the fields of Pylea, and somewhere close to ninety-five thousand spent brass bullet casings littered the ground before them.

Douglas Ashton looked around, blood of all conceivable colours from a dozen different demon species flowed together and ran like a river towards the lower ground, the sounds of screaming and groaning wounded replaced the cacophony of firing, the smell of white phosphorus and gunfire filled the lungs and for the first time the hell dimension of Pylea was really living up to its name, it was a scene from the mind of Dante or the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.

The mercenary grimaced as he reached for his radio. 'I'm not helping to bury this lot' he declared. 'I vote we leave them here for the vultures and see if the brewery in that little town three klicks to the East makes anything worth drinking' he suggested.

Note from the Author:

Joss retconned with all his Amy/Warren stuff in the Season 8 comics so I've damn well retconned it back again so that it actually makes sense with the whole thing being a collosal trick by Amy not actual reality... the difference between us is that I've apparently got more respect for canon and basic logic :-p

That was the last of the big set-piece battles in Pylea for now, they'll be more concentration on the situation back on Earth for a while so anyone that doesn't enjoy huge bloody gunfights can breathe a sigh of relief ;-)

And finally as ever this fanfic runs on reviews.