Disclaimer: Mrs. Krueger, Martin Niblick, and Cameron Kim are mine. The Buffy characters are Joss Whedon's. The Daria characters are Glenn Eichler's.
X X X X X
"You really don't have to be mean about it, Daria," Amy Barksdale said.
"Of course I do," Daria said. "And whether or not I 'have to,' I sure as hell have the right. Just because Dr. Vaughn erased Faith before you got around to it doesn't make you any less in the wrong. It's like two hit men both being assigned to kill the same person. Just because one gets there first doesn't mean the second one wasn't just as ready to commit murder."
"Really, Daria," Rita said. "This is hardly a case of murder."
"Faith was alive. Now she's dead. If that's not murder, I don't know what is."
Amy sighed. "I've had this argument before. With y-- with Faith's friend Angel."
"You should have listened to him."
X X X X X
"Well, I have to say," she said, "This is going to be one of my more unusual assassinations."
"How so, Mrs. Krueger?" the man asked. She didn't like him. He paid well, but he was unimaginative, dull, and for someone who belonged to a group that required such specialized knowledge, he was kind of stupid.
"Because," she explained patiently, "This kind ofthing usually runs the other way around. People want to break out of prisons, not into them."
"Ah," he said. "I trust this won't be a problem, though."
"Of course not," she said. "It'll be interesting to see whether I can pull this out without getting caught."
"Your abilities --"
"My abilities will help me get in and out. But I can't use them as I'm actually killing her. I might scare the shit out of her, but that's about it."
"Can't you simply grab her heart or something?"
Mrs. Krueger practically rolled her eyes. Not only was her contact an idiot, he'd read too many comic books as a child. "Dematerialization is dematerialization," she said. "I'm either completely in phase with the world, or completely out. If I rematerialize inside something --" she used her left hand to point to her right one, which was mechanical. Hadn't been, until the first and only time she'd misjudged, ever so slightly, where she was going to come out of a wall. It was at that point she'd decided to seriously up her price. One mistake, five years ago, had cost her a hand. If she was going to be risking her life, she was going to be doing it for serious coin.
The only thing the mechanical hand had given her was a hell of a nickname. Krueger was hardly her real name, but a metallic right hand and a penchant for killing her targets as they slept had proven irresistible.
The council paid well for her services; she wasn't exclusive to them by any means, but their jobs came before anything else in her life. And so when their local representative had called at a bit past 2:30 in the afternoon, she'd dropped everything she was doing, gotten her husband to pick up the kids from school, and gotten to the meeting place as fast as she could.
And now she had the pictures of her target, her name, her location, and a rough idea of when the Council wanted the job done.
"Ah. I understand," her contact said, obviously not but not being particularly interested in carrying on the conversation any further.
"The standard deal. $10,000 in cash; another $40,000 has already been deposited to your account in the Caymans. The balance will be paid upon hearing of your successful completion of the mission. Should you be caught, of course, the balance is forfeit."
"Of course," Mrs. Krueger said impatiently. She knew that already. If she got caught, she already had plans in place. It wasn't like any jail could hold her anyway.
He handed her the envelope; she nodded, stood up, and walked away.
X X X X X
"Anyway," Daria finally said. "That's all in the past. And until someone invents a practical time machine, it's going to stay there."
"Note to self: Cancel development of time machine," Amy said. Daria just glared. "Anyway, while we're on the outside dealing with the press and people who think that you're a liar, Dr. Vaughn's a moron, the DA is lazy and we're conniving to get a murderer out on the streets, your part in all this is simple."
"If it's so simple," Daria said acidly, "Let's say you do the part where you're strapped down for three weeks in a mental institution while people stick enough drugs in you to stock a city's worth of Rite Aids, and I'll do the part where I get to make smart remarks to reporters."
"Daria," Amy said, sounding almost offended. "We'd never do that to you." After a pause, "We do need to make sure that Dr. Vaughn removed all traces of Faith from you. But that should only take a few visits. None of which should require drugs or strapping you down."
"That's what you think."
X X X X X
Martin Niblick watched the Watcher's Council representative hand an envelope to the good-looking redhead; sure, the woman was about forty -- fifteen years older than Martin -- and seemed to be missing a hand, but he would have had no trouble going to bed with her.
Of course, the woman wouldn't have gone to bed with him, what with his vestigial horns and tail. Easy enough to cover up in public, but it made sleeping with women a bit of a chore. Martin was half Visula demon on his mother's side; female Visulas didn't have horns or tails, so that hadn't been an issue for Mom.
What his demonic heritage took away from him in terms of sex life, though, it made up for in terms of ability. Visulas could make themselves invisible. Martin couldn't quite do that; he had what he called a talent for "peripheral invisibility." (He'd picked up the phrase from, of all things, The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, in a description of a minor villain called "Manslaughter.) When he concentrated, Martin couldn't be seen unless someone looked directly at him. Anyone looking around a park wouldn't notice him, and he was invisible to "the corner of their eye." Didn't work with mirrors, for some reason, but it did work with cameras.
Made him useful for surveillance. So when Lilah Morgan had called and said they wanted him to keep an eye on a Jeffrey Dunwitty, British citizen living in Los Angeles, he didn't ask why; he just did what he was told. Report anything unusual, he'd been told. He doubted the man's preference for dipping his French fries in steak sauce qualified, but meeting a one-handed redhead in a city park and passing along a sealed envelope certainly did.
So he put down his binoculars and picked up his cell phone.
"Lilah Morgan speaking."
"Ms. Morgan? Martin Niblick, surveillance. Dunwitty's done something worth reporting." He explained what he'd seen.
"Give that description again," she said when he was done. He did so. "Hold on a second." When Ms. Morgan got back to the phone a minute later, she sounded uncharacteristically happy. "Good work, Niblick. That's exactly what we wanted."
"Do you want me to follow her?"
"No. We know who her target's going to be. Come in for your next assignment."
"Yes, Ms. Morgan."
He hung up the phone, risked one more look at the woman -- nice legs -- and headed for his car.
X X X X X
Lilah Morgan hung up the phone -- Niblick was worth every penny Wolfram & Hart paid him -- and let out a low whistle. When the Watcher's Council seriously wanted someone dead, they didn't mess around. The mechanical right hand and the bright red hair made the identification unmistakable.
Mrs. Krueger was one of the best assassins for hire around who wasn't associated with the Order of Taraka. (They wouldn't do business with Wolfram & Hart. Something about a broken contract back in the 1970s. It had apparently been a fierce battle between the two sides, leading to dozens of deaths, until they'd finally come to terms and agreed to stay out of each other's business from then on.)
Wolfram & Hart had hired her themselves a few times, whenever they couldn't risk something being traces back to them for any reason. And they might need her in the future, which is why she hadn't had Niblick follow her back to her house so W&H could kill her themselves tonight.
That meant that Wolfram & Hart would have to get someone inside the prison to protect Faith. Niblick was out. He was male, and couldn't fight off an angry cat.
Of course, Mrs. Krueger herself would have been ideal, but she was already spoken for. And Lilah knew better than to simply try to hire her out from under the Council. Mrs. Krueger had an annoying sense of honor. Once she was bought, she stayed bought.
Wolfram & Hart had a lot of operatives at its disposal, plus several hundred they could hire. She called up a list on her computer and rapidly removed all of those who were:
Too badly injured to do the job.
Permanently male.
Specialists in lethal combat. (Not only did Wolfram & Hart not want to kill Mrs. Krueger if they could avoid it, they didn't want to kill anyone else either. Oh, no one would miss a prisoner or two, but the authorities tended to frown when you started murdering prison guards.)
Possessed of spectacularly showy powers, whether they had the abilities to get the job done or not.
Already on assignment.
Too pricey. (The Watcher's Council might have an unlimited budget; Wolfram & Hart was interesting in preserving the life of Daria Morgendorffer, but if Lilah spent too much doing it she'd be called on the carpet. Or possibly made part of it.)
Then she found the perfect operative.
Cameron Kim.
X X X X X
"No, Aunt Amy, Aunt Rita. I get that you're doing all of this 'for my own good.' It's what's keeping me angry rather than homicidal. I give marginal credit for good intentions."
"Daria," Amy said, "Your choices were to be incarcerated with Faith, or free without her."
"I think there was a middle ground in there. No one else wanted to find it."
"Sweetie," Rita said, "I just don't get your attachment to this girl. Look what she did."
"No," Daria said, "You don't. She's part of me." She sighed. "Let me try it another way. Imagine you were lobotomized. Again."
X X X X X
Cameron Kim specialized in stealth jobs for Wolfram & Hart, but even this was a bit outside her normal line of work. So far she'd broken into government offices, other law firms, Frederick's of Hollywood, and once, just for the hell of it, the offices where they were counting the ballots for the Academy awards. (She resisted the temptation to fool around with the votes, but she did make some money betting on the winners in Vegas that year.)
She had never before broken into a prison. Women's or men's.
"So you're saying," she said to Lilah Morgan, "That I'm to somehow make my way into the LA County Jail, go to the cell where this Faith Lehane is stashed, and wait around for this Mrs. Krueger to make her move?"
"Right. Make a lot of noise. That'll draw some attention and Mrs. Krueger doesn't operate well with a lot of attention."
"Neither do I," Cameron said.
"Yes, but all she can do is run," Lilah said. "You can use your skills to blend into the crowd."
"And what, stay in jail?"
"Then you'd better make sure that doesn't happen. And remember. Your pay is halved for the week if Mrs. Krueger is killed. And if Lehane is killed, then you're better off staying in prison."
"So the usual."
"Pretty much." Cameron knew better to complain. She wasn't worried if it came down to a battle. Cameron wasn't a combat specialist, but she knew enough to get by. That plus her talent for shapechanging was enough to get her through most fights.
If she could have changed shape into anything, she could have named her own price. But she was limited to creatures of her own size and weight. No flying unless she turned herself into a pteranodon, and those were kind of noticeable. No mice; no elephants. Still let her change herself into anything or anyone weighing 120 pounds.
Figuring out how to get into the jail was going to be interesting. Not a challenge, really; but definitely interesting.
X X X X X
"So, when's my first appointment?" Daria asked resignedly.
"Tomorrow," Amy said.
"And do you have the four pro wrestlers lined up it's going to take to get me there?"
"I was hoping you'd be cooperative."
"I'm not going to do anything to get myself shot," Daria said. "Beyond that, I'll be damned if I'm going to be cooperative about anything. Get this straight, Aunt Amy, Aunt Rita. I don't like the situation, I don't like being forced to do anything, I don't like being treated legally as though I'm not competent to make my own decisions, and right now, I don't like the two of you very much either. So if whatever specialists you're arranging me to make visits to don't have a lot of happy juice to stick into me, I'd advise you to tell them to lay in a supply. Because it looks like I'm going to be going there a while."
"This is cutting off your nose to spite your face, Daria," Rita said.
"You say that as though it were a bad thing," was Daria's reply.
"Think about it, Daria," Amy said as she stood up. "I hope you'll change your mind. We really do want you to be out of here. Because whether you stay in here or leave, Faith's gone. And she's not coming back." She nodded to Daria. "Rita, come on."
"It was good seeing you, Daria," Rita said. "Sorry about the circumstances."
And they left.