Slayer Magic
Chapter Three
by Jared Ornstead
aka Skysaber
aka Perfect Lionheart
OoOoO
"But we are still not without danger. Other threats than vampires exist. We must prepare for them."
No discussion followed. None was needed. A great deal of spellcasting occurred, however. Walls of Vapor got summoned, whose special ability was to reduce all damage they took in combat to zero. Drawing on their own experience, these got combined with the walls of glare, which could block whole armies. The combination of these two made for walls who could block armies and take no damage doing so.
Asceticism, a green enchantment that prevented creatures Xander controlled from being the target of opponents' spells or special abilities, and that allowed him to regenerate them if they should somehow be killed, got deployed.
They put an Artifact Ward over themselves, so they could not be targeted or damaged by machines, of which their world had plenty. Then they followed up by putting four each of Fortified Area, Ivory Tower and Urza's Armor into play.
Until only one thing remained.
One more angel type to summon, which was the problem. Who to transform?
"Xander," Amy told him seriously. "You need this. Most of your power comes from artifacts, and you have some very impressive, rare and wonderful ones, but artifacts are stupidly easy to destroy in this game. The only thing that could save them for your future use is something like this effect, and you are insanely lucky to have a creature that offers it."
"But who are we going to change?" Willow clearly felt distressed over the moral dilemma. "None of us are available. We can't do combos of four. It's not possible!"
Harmony simply opened her cell phone and hit speed dial one. "Cordy? Hi. No, today I'm skipping, and when you hear my news you will too." A pause. "Because I'm standing next to a guy who just dispensed four necklaces whose jewels are worth more than your parent's house, and if you want one for yourself, you will bring your and the other three Cordettes' fannies here in a rush before he decides to use someone else. Oh, and you owe me a big favor that I even let you in on this opportunity."
Harmony rattled off an address, then closed the phone, grinning like a cat. "Heh, I knew that would get her. She says she's claiming family emergency to walk out of class right now. I hope you don't mind, she probably expects sex will be required of her."
"No, I don't mind!" Xander quickly protested.
"No Breaking Commandments!" Willow insisted. "We don't need anyone to become a fallen angel."
"No, that wouldn't do anyone any good," Amy admitted. "For one thing, you'd lose flying."
"I'll be good!" Xander promised, a genuine halo forming above his head.
Relaxing now that danger was passed, Willow moved on to her next concern, "Now where are we going to get another diamond this big for her? To say nothing about four of them."
"If she's anything like your stereotypical teenage girl, I'm pretty sure she'd do it for the beauty alone," the cat offered his opinion. "To say nothing of the flying or other gifts."
"That's the deal, we're angels now." Amy told her cat. "Keeping promises is kind of in the job description, I'm pretty sure. And while we didn't quite promise, we did heavily imply jewelry on arrival."
"I'd be willing to offer my own," Harmony surprised them all by declaring.
"Are you sure?" Willow now felt concerned for her friend and fellow angel, who she knew liked those jewels so much. "Have you tried the copy machine? Maybe it can duplicate one of the diamonds."
"I've tried it on my diamond, the gold ring, and pearl necklace," Harmony confessed. "I even tried it on a couple of pens, a comb, and my cell phone. Nothing. I think it only works on paper."
"Why don't you use that street vendor's jacket?" the cat suggested.
Amy quickly stalked over there, wand in hand, took hold of the lapel, told it "Diamonds," and flipped it open. After a moment's consideration, she said, "Well, we've got enough here I could use magic to combine them into the right size stones. They won't be magic, but that was never part of our offer. The only trouble will be coming up with enough cash."
"Here," Harmony handed over four stacks of bills. "I've been printing hundreds ever since Xander displaced that first twenty to print cards. Each stack is a hundred bills, so at ten thousand per, forty grand. If that's not enough, I've printed more."
Nodding a little dubiously, Amy put those bills in the overcoat's pocket and pulled out enough of the dangling diamonds to do her job, plus some. The pieces of jewelry were, as Harmony had observed earlier, offered at a substantial discount.
A few short waves of her wand and there were four copies of their mox diamond necklaces, each slightly different, and lacking the substantial magic, but real gems whose appearance was nearly the same, so they could have been offered as parts of the same set.
Then she set about turning the leftover gold into nonmagical copies of their sol rings, just to have something to improve their bargaining position, should that become necessary. But she didn't think so. Her cat was right. Just about any girl would do this for the beauty alone.
In a couple of short trips they had transferred everything of value from Ethan's shop to the closest library of Alexandria out across the back way, which was the place Harmony had set up to meet the raw material for Xander's next summon spell.
So strong had they become that even the heavy stuff, photocopier and porcelain throne included, were easily handled just between two of them.
On the plus side, they'd discovered one of the powers of their copy machine - it no longer required electricity, just paper. So they could stand it anywhere, even in a building a few millennia old, and it'd be just fine.
On the plus, plus side, the ancient empire of Constantinople had flush toilets, so apparently major civic buildings like their libraries did too. Convenient, that, as the throne they'd taken out of Ethan's shop clearly wasn't suited to do that work anymore. In fact, if they didn't know it had once been a toilet, they would've thought it ought to have been locked up in museum as a national art treasure on the level of a Faberge egg, because it was all over gold and jewels and stuff until it really looked on that level of pretty.
Xander was lounging on it when Cordelia and the rest of her Cordettes arrived. Willow and the other girls had taken time to pop the Mr Clean bottle so the old place wasn't so musty (it went from dusty to sparkly just like that) and switch into nonmagical harem-girl outfits they'd found in the shop, that not only set the tone, but displayed their gorgeous jewelry properly.
"Ok, let's cut right to the Chase," Xander announced, grinning at his intentional pun. He waved grandly in the direction of these new arrivals, "You four are here in hopes of some really expensive jewels, and I want you for my personal use. Any questions so far?"
Two of the Cordettes blushed, edging in a little further behind Cordelia, who looked borderline furious at learning who the sugar daddy was. But she held her temper long enough to hiss through gritted teeth, "Let's see these supposed jewels first."
A nod toward Amy and she came forward bearing a tray before her, on which were laid out the four new necklaces. Cordelia gave her, the pink harem outfit she was wearing and the large jewels around her throat an indecipherable glance before commanding the Cordette who'd been standing by her right hand, "Sophie."
The brunette so named stood forward and slipped on a jeweler's eyepiece, bending to examine the proffered diamonds.
"They're real," came Sophie's instant pronouncement. "High quality, too. I don't have the experience to judge stones this size, my dad never deals in anything larger than a single carat, only a handful of houses do, but my guess is up in the millions."
At this Cordelia and her entourage were shocked back on their heels for a moment, having been expecting a bad joke or prank from the instant they saw Xander. A quick huddle resulted, where Sophie actually had to be pried away from her ongoing examination of the merchandise to participate, and put down the last stone she'd been verifying with a touch of real regret.
Her voice came through powerfully as Sophie repeated with some urgency, "I'm telling you I don't have an exact dollar amount! Most pieces I can appraise just fine, but most people don't wear anything like this! Nobody does! I mean, we're talking stuff only Rockafellers, royal families, or the pope might wear! Jewels this big are on a whole different level! There are probably only a dozen people in the world who are qualified to set a price on them! And even then it could fluctuate wildly at auction! It's all really up to what the buyers feel like paying that day!"
The huddle broke only moments later, with Cordy in front as acting spokeswoman. "And what, exactly, are you expecting in return?"
"What do you think?" Xander returned with a leer.
Willow rolled her eyes and huffed, butting in to offer her own suggestion, "I still don't think she's qualified. We'd be better off with someone else." She directed a glare to the startled cluster of cheerleaders. "Someone we don't have years of animosity with to overcome."
"Agreed," Amy popped in her opinion, smirking at the Cordettes over her tray.
Xander threw his leg over one arm of his throne and rubbed his chin, appearing thoughtful. "Well, I would hate to have friction in a harem. Other than the obvious, of course."
Willow pulled on his sleeve, pleading, "Xander, you ought to know these things always go better when the girls involved get along, and Cordelia hates everyone here!"
"Hey!"
"Well, everyone except Harmony," Willow amended.
Harmony sat up from where she'd been lounging with a book and directed a glare to those aforementioned cheerleaders. "You don't say anything? Hey, Cord, I stuck my neck out for you, making the recommendation that got you here. And you won't even say a peep to make it work?"
"No! No, I'll take it!" Cordelia squeaked, seeing her opportunity for awesome jewelry about to vanish away from before her.
"What do you mean 'you'll take it'? It hasn't even been offered to you," Xander smirked at the looks on their faces, kicking back to lounge on his well-padded throne. "These aren't door prizes, to be handed out to anyone who walks in here. They are perks that come with a position for which you have yet to even apply."
Oh, the mortification on those cheerleaders faces was priceless!
"Alright, here's the deal," Xander threw off lounging and sat up straight and tall, "What this job is about is niceness, specifically niceness to me, but that includes anyone else I've got in this handy arrangement with me. Can you do it?" he asked their guests directly.
Cordelia was rocked back on her heels. Nothing about this had gone like she'd imagined since Harmony's call had first come. Not the weirdo building from out of nowhere, nor the jeweled throne, or the mousy Willow and Amy dressed up as eye candy, and especially not Xander being the man handing out priceless necklaces.
Nothing was normal, and it was all catching her a little out of her comfort zone. Worse, when she was uncomfortable she got catty, and that wasn't helping her any.
Several of her Cordettes had been eying Xander, though, and as the shock they'd felt on arrival wore off, his new handsome face and physique became more apparent. On seeing how drool-worthy he'd become, one of them called out, "Oh, hell yeah!"
"That's a word you won't be using much of if you take this position," Willow giggled at her own secret joke. Angels did not use profanity, she felt certain. And swearing by the name of Hell was right out!
"Well, if you feel you can handle it, here's the sign up sheet," Amy popped the pad of receipts onto the tray she was using to carry the jewelry. "If they have your permission, that is?" she directed that question towards Xander.
He gave a slight nod. "I am actually firmly convinced of Cordelia's ability to stick by anything she resolves to do, whether good or bad. Most of our lives her resolve has been to treat us badly, but if she agrees to change that, I can see her sticking by that, too."
Listening to her friends giggle behind her served quite well to point out to Cordy how well Xander had cleaned up lately. Yes, he was handsome, quite amazingly so. Guy had had quite a makeover recently, and frankly outshone any of the jocks at school.
Not being hard on the eyes was good. Indications he was now filthy rich were better (richer than her parents, if she was reading the indications right). That he was willing to let bygones be bygones was the real clincher, however.
She grabbed the pad and signed her name. "Alright, let's do this."
"Good." Xander hopped down from off his throne and strode towards them, plucking up the first of many necklaces to attach it around Cordelia's throat as she was first to sign.
"How long are we committing for?" Sophie asked as she signed her own name, causing Cordelia to wish she'd asked that question herself.
"There is no set end date," Xander replied with a smile.
"Harems are a lifetime commitment," Willow affirmed.
As the last of the Cordettes signed, Amy snickered at what she read on it, made a notation of her own that this was in exchange for four diamond necklaces, tore off that receipt and handed it to the nearest of them, who absently tucked it inside her purse.
Xander at that moment took out a card. "What happens now is probably best described as a magic makeover. You'll note we're all prettier than we used to be when you saw us last, that's largely due to a magic spell much like this. Our changes were a little more extensive than you'll be getting, but basically what will happen is that I'll charge this card with power, it will glow bright white, I'll then hand it over to Harmony to copy it, then I'll cast it on each of the four of you."
He smirked. "On the plus side, in addition to being more beautiful than you already are, this will enhance your muscles so that if you ever run into any vampires, beating up anything short of the real top masters won't be very hard."
"Vampires?" None of the Cordettes had any good response to that.
Cordelia rolled her eyes. "It's what the cops have been calling all those wild animal attacks, 'gangs on PCP', and barbecue fork stabbings." She snorted in disdain. "You didn't really think that hundreds of people just happened to stab themselves in the neck, did you? That would be stupid. How many people do you even know who do any barbecuing, anyway? Nobody, that's who. Not around here. But even if it was everybody that wouldn't make it our leading cause of death in town - as it it. So... Hey! Watch it with that thing!"
Cordelia threw up her arms to protect her eyesight as Xander, just as her Cordettes had been about to reassure her they were not stupid, had instead charged up his card.
"Oh, it gets worse," Harmony reassured them cheerfully as she plucked that final card out of Xander's fingers and went and did her duplicating.
"Indomitable Archangel," Amy explained, when Xander got his newly copied cards back and began transforming cheerleaders. "As strong as Serra, flies just like Serra, but instead of not tapping to attack has a special power that while he controls you, none of his artifacts can be targets of spells or effects. So destroying them becomes a *lot* harder."
Cordelia was even then completing her floating spin of self-examination. When she landed, she approached Xander kindly and tenderly, and with tears of sorrow and remorse in her eyes cradled his face between her hands and explained, "I just want you to know, Xander, how really *very* sorry I am about all of those cruel things I did to you."
"I know," he told her in equal sincerity. "For my part, I'm sorry for teasing you."
She wrapped him in a hug of gratitude and mutual forgiveness, before releasing him to go off and do the same apologizing deal to Willow. As she left, though, one of her Cordettes moved up right behind her to make her own apologies, with another behind her.
Harmony slapped her English For Dummies book closed before they were done with all of the tearful forgiveness, and tore her enchanted reading glasses off. "Wow! That was good stuff! I never thought that subject could be so interesting."
She watched as the magical For Dummies book turned to dust in her hand and blew away, disappearing into a nonexistent wind as the magic instructional tool completed the end it had been designed for.
Lucky that was only a copy she'd made of the original.
Amy chose that moment to slip her a quick peek at the store copy of the receipt Cordy had signed, and Harmony bust a gut, rolling around on the very clean floor laughing. Curious at this reaction, Willow came over for a look, and appeared mortified, blushing furiously.
Amy then waltzed over to Xander, slapping the receipt into his hand. "There you go, one receipt for the harem members you just purchased."
Xander stared down at the slip of paper, and Cordy had indeed been misled enough by their little game to sign "Harem member" beside her name, and the rest of her Cordettes had followed suit.
"Uh, you know that was a joke, right?"
"Was," Harmony emphasized, before busting out again in laughter.
"Anyway," Amy sighed. "That's the end of turn one for Xander, unless you'd like to attack something?"
The young man shook his head. "Love to, but I don't know where any of my enemies are, much less how to attack them."
"So, we'll just go with hoping they don't know you're here yet, either," Amy shrugged.
"Hey!" Willow cheered, "We should go tell Giles about Xander's awesome new magic powers!"
OoOoO
Having already checked themselves out of school for the day, none of Cordelia's group felt much like returning. So Harmony agreed to show them around, introduce the new magic stuff and explain what had been going on all morning with the summons and stuff.
A shopping trip after they'd been brought up to speed was strongly implied.
So Xander, Amy and Willow pulled up, late but nonetheless present, in a brand new convertible they'd paid cash for that morning, hopped out of the car, and were swinging their bags jauntily on their way to the doors when Xander suddenly stiffened.
"Harris!" a familiar voice shouted.
The boy's sword lashed out without even thinking of it, lodging five inches deep into the concrete post that served as doorjamb, after having cut off the person's head.
Xander carefully wet his lips and recited what he was seeing, looking down upon the man's headless corpse. "Principal Snyder, a zero-one black troll, with the special abilities of tap Snyder to tap target creature, and when used to block a creature of type 'student' neither opponent deals damage in combat."
"What's an enemy creature doing running our school?" Amy asked in distress.
Willow was on the verge of gibbering over seeing the headless form of their school principal lying on the ground next to his very recently removed head.
Xander sighed and released his sword from the concrete it was stuck in with a light tug. "Well, we always knew he wasn't friendly." He stared at his own sword, contemplating it for a moment. "We also know that our first strike ability works just fine. He came to attack, and I got to him first with enough damage he never even got to try to hurt me. It was reflexive, like sneezing. I felt his his intent to attempt to harm us, and the response was automatic."
Willow's eyes went very wide, and she stopped stuttering.
They moved on very quickly, being careful to avoid the spreading pool of blood. When they got to the Sunnydale High library all three teens were willing to instantly blurt out everything, only Giles was on the phone and waved them off, signaling it was important - And Xander wasn't the only one to stiffen at the sight of the Englishman.
"Do you see..?" Willow whispered in sudden dread.
"Rupert Giles, aka Ripper," Xander read out of the card stats he was effectively seeing superimposed over the man's image. "A one-one blue-black creature, with three special abilities: One, when Watcher is in play reduce damage taken by Slayer by one. Two, tap Watcher to give Slayer first strike until end of turn, or Three, sacrifice Watcher to give Slayer plus two to both power and toughness until end of turn."
Willow shivered in sudden dread. The image of Giles as a black creature, even only a partly black one, shattered so many illusions!
That was the moment when Giles hung up the phone. Coming out of the back room, he told them with a sigh, "That was England, my superiors in the Watcher organization, actually. They have learned of some new mage whose presence is affecting the ether, and want us to keep an eye out, as he may be in our area. They ask that we find him quickly, so he can be terminated with extreme prejudice. Apparently, this is quite a dangerous fellow, so they are even lifting, temporarily, the restriction on Slayers from taking human life. Oh, what a day for Buffy to be in the hospital." The Englishman rubbed his face.
"Couldn't you, you know? Talk to him?" Amy's eyes were bulging.
"At the levels of power they described, I couldn't trust that mage, even if I were he. No, the temptations at that level are too great. Some things are not meant to be tampered with by mortals, and most men who discover enough power to conquer the world do unspeakably horrid things, so are not to be trusted in any guise. Virtually all of them end up ascending as demon lords, so protocols have been in place since the middle ages to terminate sorcerers who accumulate even one percent of the power they report this mage as already having used only just today," Giles answered seriously. Then he brightened. "Never mind. What can I do for you three this morning?"
"Nothing, G-man," Xander temporized, fighting a sudden urge to raise his fists and say 'put 'em up'.
"Yeah. We're just here for some translation books," Amy butted in.
"It does indeed sound like time to start searching among prophecies, does it not? Well, you know where they are." The watcher waved towards the stacks, turning about to head back into his office. "I've got some calls to make to help coordinate the search."
They grabbed several books each, then rushed out of the library almost at a run. Since the warning bell for class had just rung, this did not even appear at all suspicious. So in that they got lucky.
Willow was white with shock even as they were leaving that former sanctuary to mingle among the students rushing about to classes.
Xander was marveling, most everyone he could see registering to his strange, new sight as 'zero-zero nonentities', completely irrelevant on the scale the game was played, not even a color allegiance to identify them. Although he did get quite a shock at those one or two who were different. For instance, at computer class he jumped as though pinched to see his teacher come across as 'Janna Kalderash, aka Jenny Calendar, a zero-one red gypsy'.
The rest of that school day was sort of lost in a shocked daze.
He was wandering out of school at the end of final period when Amy and Willow met up with him at their new car. Willow was in as bad a state as he, but Amy grabbed both of their shoulders and guided them into the car with some urgency. "Come on!"
"What?" the disturbed young man demanded. Wasn't it enough that his whole view of the world had been inverted? He'd been stuck all day on Giles wanting him dead. Wasn't he supposed to be one of the good guys?
But, then... where did that black moniker come from?
Amy sat him down into the passenger seat hard, filing Willow into the back, before she took hold of the keys and took her place as driver. "The game's not over yet, Xander. You're still alive, so we keep fighting. That's all there is to it. And when we loaded up on translation books, I grabbed a couple each on troll and thieves' cant. Harmony called earlier. With those reading glasses she found, she can cover about thirty pages a minute. She's already been through all of her school subjects. Cordelia and the other Cordettes, too. They say it works like a charm, like loading a program into a computer, suddenly you just know about a subject. Now we're going to go meet up with them. They're bringing that Book of Exalted Deeds and Libram of Silver Magic that level up clerics and wizards, and we've got the books that can translate them into something that we can read. So we are about to discover what magic level up books can do for us."
She put the car into gear and drove off in a rush, dodging traffic as she did so.
OoOoO
Harmony had already altered the title page of the Book of Exalted Deeds, using the magic label maker they'd found in the shop she'd printed a "for angels" to superimpose over the "for clerics" part in the subtitle of "A guide to leveling up for clerics."
The weird part was, her little alteration had sunk into the page and now looked original - A fact that made them afraid to do excessive alterations to these priceless texts, as there were quite a few of these sorts of magic books and manuals that hurt a reader who didn't meet strict requirements - Requirements that probably didn't get altered by a strip of tape.
"It looks like the one in troll is easier to translate," Cordy declared, after having glanced over the books, showing only minor distaste at that information. "That means more work for those of us who aren't wizards than if the reverse had been the case."
Harmony nodded. As all eight of them were angels, but only four were wizards, the work load got a little harder than it would be if the book for wizards was easier to read. Still, that was not entirely unexpected.
Troll was a simple language, suited to the none-too-bright trolls. Thieves' Cant, on the other hand, was a code meant to obscure meaning from any non-thieves. Since the authorities could afford to hire some pretty clever codebreakers and linguists, that meant more work to translate it, even with a guide handy.
She snorted good-naturedly, reaching for the guide on thieves' cant. "We're lucky use of this code this died out in the middle ages. If it were a current tongue, those who speak it would have made sure there weren't any easy ways to translate it."
"True," Cordelia allowed.
The way it worked out, normal reading of a Book of Exalted Deeds or similar took about a week of constant effort without significant interruption. With the reading glasses Harmony had discovered in that shop, they could do it in ten minutes, and that was even with all of the extra work of translating.
So, all told, they spent two hours that afternoon just reading those two books. Eighty minutes as all eight read the one, then forty more as four read another. And the results were fantastic, well worth the effort.
Every angel who read copies printed of that Book of Exalted Deeds improved from four-four to five-five creatures, as powerful and tough as adult dragons. That alone would have been well worth it. However, Cordelia and her three Cordettes, who'd become angel types who did not have the special ability that allowed them to attack without tapping, now could, study of the book having granted them that ability.
Xander and his three girls, who already had the ability to attack without tapping, got what they considered an even better ability, in that they could now do the Prodigal Sorcerer thing without tapping. Although they were limited in that they could only do it for free once a turn.
The Libram of Silver Magic had its own benefit in that those who read it got significantly better at wielding magic. Their powers of blowing up creatures from across the horizon now did twice as much damage, with a commensurate increase in their 'parlor trick' magic abilities.
"So what should we hit?" Harmony eagerly asked.
"No idea," Xander confessed. "I don't even know who my enemies are."
"That does kind of put a limit on blowing them up from continents away," she scolded.
"It's not like it's his fault," Amy interrupted. "The game he draws his powers from has no provision for getting information, because everything is supposed to be known at all times. He is, in that sense, very much a fish out of water. He comes from an environment where water is supposed to be everywhere all of the time. Now he is in a place without, and you are going to scold him for not having some way to summon more?"
"I didn't mean that," Harmony confessed, flouncing her shoulders. "It's just, now that I have these powers I want to use them to blow up something evil!"
Amy smiled. "Well, I can understand that. I do too."
OoOoO
In her bedroom late that night, Willow's eyes snapped open, instantly waking her from a sound sleep. Rising in her nightgown, her eyes sought out her alarm clock, finding it to be just after midnight.
Swiftly rising, she began to dress. Xander needed her!
In another part of town at the same time, yet in a much nicer bedroom, Harmony's eyes snapped open as well, filled with the same urgency. The thing that was different there was the first thing she reached for was her cell phone, and hit speed dial one.
As the clock ticked over to 12:05, seven girls arose from their sleep and began to dress, some stirred by an innate sixth sense, others by phone calls, but all for exactly the same reason.
OoOoO
Xander's eyes flew open at exactly 12:05, his body filled with energy, and he knew exactly for what purpose.
Combat was coming to his door.
He dressed in a hurry. Armor on, artifacts in place, he left nothing valuable behind, then sped off into the darkened night.
OoOoO
There were thirty of them, vampires all, soldiers from various wars. Such was the dangers of their profession that few of them were very old, by vampire standards. They still dressed in uniforms, though it was an eclectic collection, not tied to any period or locale. Mostly, they just stuck to camouflage these days.
The weapons they carried were equally varied, from top of the line, current day arms, all of the way back to sabers and one World War Two flamethrower. One might almost expect muskets, as many of these men had originally trained on them, but they were mercenaries, and mercs lived or died by their equipment and training, and nothing but the best would do.
The flamethrower, while dangerous, was especially useful as one of their two door-knocker devices. Just because vampires couldn't enter a house without an invitation didn't mean they couldn't burn it down, after all. They didn't need to enter - you'll want to come out of the burning house. And neither garlic nor holy water dealt all that well with an infusion of napalm delivered at high pressure.
So yes, while dangerous, the flamethrower was a necessary tool of doing business, knocking aside a whole plethora of the usual anti-vampire defenses. Fully automatic assault rifles dealt with most of the rest rather handily, and explosives were always handy for when you had to take on a monastery or other site with serious mystic defense.
They also wore combat vests, helmets, and body armor of chainmail layered over more modern ballistic stopping material. A few former marines in the group joked that this was the *serious* incarnation of the phrase "When it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight."
They didn't see much use, but then, they didn't need to. Having died in their prime they had little need for training, only blood. And between the prices they charged, and how thorough they were in destroying their targets, there was not much need for their services.
Anyone who could kill ten thousand demons in one night merited their attention, however.
Intel said the spell was one-night only, and chaos magic at that, so unlikely to be repeated. But despite that they really took no chances with this. Snipers got distributed around the area in concealment. Troops took up their positions, rockets, rifles and rpgs at the ready. They even had Stinger missiles poised to fire, just in case.
At the signal, four shots rang out, one into each of the parents sleeping off a drunken binge in the house, and two into the boy. Flimsy house walls gave no protection against fifty cal sniper bullets, nor concealment against thermographic scopes.
Bodies immediately started to cool. But, just to be sure, a second signal went out and their second door-knocker device began to approach - one of their number began to drive up in the street in a tremendous bulldozer.
Just because they couldn't enter a house without invitation didn't mean they couldn't knock it down. Then, in the absence of any house, they could carefully retrieve and ID the bodies. There was a reason they were professionals, and pulled in the big bucks, taking on targets even the Terakas said were 'Too Big'.
However, once the bulldozer came up, and one corner of the house had crumpled away before its blade without any sign of opposition, the overconfident vamps did as soldiers do anywhere when they feel the op is over and began to relax.
And that was what killed them.
Harmony landed behind the vamp with the flamethrower and twisted his neck, snapping it cleanly, before she turned his own flamethrower on and hosed the group of vampires that was forming around the house.
A dozen of them went up in flames at that moment.
The reaction was instant. Even before she'd begun hosing them down with the marionette-like body of the now paralyzed vampire's arms still holding the tube of his flamethrower, his buddies had turned and assault rifle fire flew at her like rain, impacting on the bracers she wore and reflecting around. Most of the vampires took ricochets of their own bullets. The pressurized tanks of fuel were also hit, and went up in a tremendous explosion.
Harmony stalked out of it sword in hand, completely unaffected by both flame and bullets, and dashed forward to behead another vamp, silently blessing that protection from artifacts ward they'd put up around themselves, as, unlike the vampires, some of the machines here could really have hurt them otherwise.
In other parts of the battlefield, Xander, Willow and Amy had appeared, doing their own damage at the same time as Harmony, using mage powers to telekinetically pop the pins out of grenades worn on vampire's vests or fire rpgs into the ground at the demon's feet before wading into those explosions with swords, unhurt by the shrapnel.
Walls of glare flashed and four vampires fell, incinerated down to ash. Willow, wielding the unnatural axe, took another two, cutting their heads clear off in a single swipe that also cut the swords they'd tried to parry with in half. The vampire snipers had already been taken out, as those creatures aren't any more prone to looking up than humans. Then the rest of the angels descended upon their foes.
The last one tried to run, racing towards the docks and a making for a shipping container in which the mercenary group had been delivered with their weapons. No sooner did he wrench the door open, however, than he went to ash, fireballed from behind, as Xander settled to the ground beside the now-dissipating cloud of dust.
"Thirty vampires," Amy stalked out of the darkness, none of the filth or smoke of battle able to cling to her, not a mote of dust on her or hair out of place as she said, "Half of them masters, all in the three to four power range, capable of doing more than a hundred points of damage to you combined, and that's *before* someone outfitted them with modern arms and all that armor." She looked at him soberly. "That's five times more than enough to kill a budding mage, even before they started to get funny about arming them. Somebody seriously wants you dead. And they want it badly."
Sophie sighed, also emerging from the darkness, and like the other angel completely spotless as she told her fellow Cordette, "If anything, I fear you understate the case. It is not *one* somebody that wants him dead. It's lots of somebodies. He's already stated he can feel there are bunches of enemy players out there. It only took one of them to order this hit."
Cordy felt less grumpy about this midnight fight than she felt she ought to be. "If not for your first strike ability alerting you to this attack, or Xander's putting an illusion of himself in his bed counting as a 'minor' magic trick... well, the results would have been scary."
"No," Xander disagreed, scared quippless. "The scary thing is that they seem to know how to find me. But I still don't have a clue about them."
"I think we're in trouble," Willow whispered softly, not wanting to say out loud her conclusion that Buffy could not have handled an attack like this - not if they'd had a dozen of her!
OoOoO
Author's Notes:
Xander's just joined in the middle of a game that's been going for a long, LONG time, and even the youngest of the other players have had centuries to get established, so control vast resources, as in, *millions* of vampires and demons and other creatures, and entire continents worth of resources.
And each one of them is going to direct resources towards Xander that really ought to kill him, just to swat down 'the new guy' before he could develop into any kind of threat.
As for Giles and the Watchers, I figure originally, back when the Watcher's council was founded, they were a Blue/White organization, concerned with doing the right thing, and with studying magic. But they got corrupted, the white turning to black over time.
As for Giles personally, he is still very much into occult studies, so Blue, but he had a history of summoning demons to get high, and that very misspent youth left its mark upon him. A stain of black leaves you black until that gets removed, and, well, he's still got that mark upon his arm.