Chapter 2: Sergeants in the Army of Light.

Marco Cattalano opened his eyes and smiled. There she was, the girl of his dreams.

Unfortunately, immediately next to her was the girl of her dreams.

"Hi Willow, Kennedy, when did you get in?"

"Just now," the Slayer answered. "You know you're naked, right?"

"Yes, it's May, it's warm, it's New York. I also know that I'm not under any covers. I stopped carrying the hundred stakes to bed a few weeks ago, I kept rolling over on them, and there's no need at the moment, unless there's some vampires I know of out to get me and have been invited in—speaking of which, did you know that Spike is alive?"

"I hear he's in LA."

Marco smiled, but said nothing. I know something you don't know. "You're both here about the Slayers?"

"Yeah…" Willow's cheeks turned the color of her hair. "You know you should get dressed, right? It's two in the afternoon."

He grinned. "Yeah, nice thing about the doctoral program, when you get all your work done, you don't have to rush in. That's good when you're out at one in the morning." He stretched, then stopped to laugh. "Sorry about that, I figured that you both just saw me while I was asleep, so it's a little late for modesty. Besides, neither of you two care."

Kennedy shrugged. "Point taken. Where's the… did you say Slayers, plural?"

Marco nodded. "I suppose you didn't hear; there are apparently two of them. Did you just magically pop in here by any chance?"

Willow nodded.

"Good aim. You've never even been here before."

The redhead smiled. "Well, I focused in on you, felt around for flat surfaces, and landed here."

"So, do you have the one you were talking about?" Kennedy asked, businesslike.

He laughed. "You think I keep women in my bed? Sorry, I try not to sleep with women at all unless I'm married to them…" he paused and looked at Willow. "Or unless they're in need of something."

Kennedy looked from one to the other. Marco grinned and said, "Don't be jealous, it's nothing serious. Or at least, I don't think she took it seriously."

"And you did?"

He shrugged. "I take everything seriously, even my joking."

There was a knock on the door. "Marco, Amanda. You busy?"

He furrowed his brow and looked at the clock. "Gee she's early." He quickly tossed on a robe, fastened it. "Come in."

Amanda entered, thankfully no one behind her. She spotted the two women and smiled. "You must be Willow and Kennedy, he nailed you both perfectly."

Kennedy grinned. "Didn't nail me at all, I'm not that kind of girl."

Amanda laughed. "So I've been told." She locked her eyes on Willow. "Marco has good taste."

Willow blushed furiously. "He told?"

She nodded. "Yes, and frankly, I can see why he did what he did; even I'd consider sleeping with you."

Willow cocked her head. "I thought Marco said you were with him. You're a—"

"No, that's my point." She looked at Marco's robe. "You entertaining?"

"Not on my best day."

Amanda jerked her chin out to the door. "Cassie already took off. Melissa's supposed to see her after school, about three."

Marco grinned. "Nice to see that my sister trusts me with you in the house, supposedly alone together. Frankly, I'm alone with the woman I love, two lesbians, and I'm only wearing a bathrobe; some men have dreams like this."

Kennedy, mildly amused, knowing full well that she could take him at any moment, said, "And you don't?"

"Darlin', I don't do anything until I have my morning cup of coffee. And frankly, damn it, unless you all want me to flash you ladies, I suggest you move the bachelorette party the hell out of my bedroom!"

Once the door slammed shut, Amanda smiled, looked to Willow and said, "So, Willow, I here you almost destroyed the world once?"

"Yeah. I was kinda cranky, but I'm all better now, honest."

Kennedy smiled and ruffled Willow's hair playfully. "That's my girl." She looked to Amanda and checked her out for a split second—she had a nicely distracting chest size and red hair that could even distract from that, and glittering brown eyes—and she decided that if this was the sort of woman that Marco would be interested in, she—Kennedy—should have been flattered that Marco had found her attractive a few months ago. Heck, Kennedy even thought Amanda was better looking than she was, in fact, more attractive than most people…except for Willow, of course.

"So, Amanda," Kennedy said, "what has Marco told you?"

"As much as he could in a train ride from the Library to Brooklyn. There was something about a vampire he killed in New York, a self-healing demon in Sunnydale, and apparently, an Irish vampire he killed who might be a relative of mine, and that he…helped you when you were first in magic withdrawal."

Kennedy furrowed her brows. "Yeah, that's the part I'm interested in."

Amanda waved it away. "Don't worry, before you, and from what Marco told me, her mind was on someone else. What about the other stuff?"

"Well," Willow began, grateful to get off the other subject, "The First tried to kill him, and—"

"The What? Start with the invincible demon, and work your way up, okay?"

Cassie was finishing the last of the afternoon paperwork when Melissa came barreling through the clinic's double doors, bookbag swinging and hazel eyes shining. "Hi, Cassie!"

"Hey, Mel. You look like you had a good day."

Melissa nodded, brown hair bouncing around her head. "One of my teachers let me take a final test today," she said excitedly. She held up her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. "I am this much closer to having the summer free and clear!" She broke into a little happy dance.

Cassie felt her heart squeeze with guilt. Okay, new Slayer powers, big confidence boost, sure; but this little girl, not even double-digits in age yet, was expected to go out at night and fight vampires and demons?

Life—and Slayage—is so unfair.

"That's great news," Cassie said at last, when Melissa had stopped jumping around. She purposely adopted a serious face. "Melissa, I need to talk to you—about your dreams."

Melissa's smile dropped away as she was reminded of her nightmares—which she would, unfortunately, understand all too soon. "What about them?" she asked warily.

Cassie glanced around furtively. "Maybe we'd better take this somewhere else. Hot chocolate?"

Melissa's eyes lit up again. Mrs. Franklin was a purist; no candy or refined sugars in her home, thank you very much. Melissa would virtually sneak away for a Hershey bar.

And Cassie always made the best hot chocolate.

"There's someone I'd like you to meet," Cassie added, "but he won't be here until later." She led the way to the kitchen, letting Melissa pull out two large mugs while she prepped the milk and got the squares of real chocolate melting. Once the chocolate was nicely molten, Cassie carefully poured the hot milk over it and whisked the two together.

She poured out her concoction, smiling as Melissa topped off both mugs with the whipped cream she'd found squirreled away in the refrigerator. They sat at the small table and sipped carefully. Usually, Melissa hissed in pain as the drink scalded her tongue and throat, feeling it burn on its way down to her stomach. At which point, Cassie put a small glass of water within reach for the young one to drink—but not this time. Melissa sipped it down without a problem.

"I never learn, do I?" Melissa asked sheepishly.

"There are times I wonder," Cassie teased gently.

Combing nervous fingers through her hair, Melissa broached the subject first. "What about my dreams?"

Breathing in, Cassie started talking: the Slayer, vampires, the spell that had caused Potentials to awaken to their Slayer status worldwide. "When a Slayer first comes into her own, it sometimes starts with dreams—nightmares, really—of vampires and other evils she'll have to face, of the lives of past Slayers. Other times, the dreams are coupled with surges of the strength she'll need to fight."

She paused in her monologue, seeing that Melissa's eyes had grown steadily wider, almost comically so. "So, you're saying I'm a superhero?"

Cassie smiled gently. "Essentially."

"And the monsters I dreamed about…those were vampires?"

Cassie nodded.

Melissa tilted her head to one side. "Then what about the angel I saw, the one that saved me?" She sounded triumphant, as if this would debunk everything that Cassie had just told her.

Cassie's eyes flickered past Melissa as the kitchen's door swung open. "Here's your chance to meet him. Turn around."

She did, and looked up into Spike's deep blue eyes, sparkling as he smiled at her. "'Lo, Melissa. 'S a pleasure t' meet you."

Melissa suddenly felt dizzy, numb and frightened all at once. Emitting a short shriek, she sprang up, belting him in the stomach and getting ready to flee, ignoring Cassie's cry to wait. Spike, even doubled over in surprise if not pain, reacted by wrapping his arms around her before she could escape. He held the young Slayer close, gently whispering calming words to her even as she fought to get free. After five straight minutes, Melissa finally collapsed into tears, hearing the words from her dream echo again and again in her mind. "Take it back, take it back," she whimpered into his chest.

Cassie quickly put the cups in the microwave for later and motioned to Spike to follow her to the sleep room. Spike nodded, continuing to comfort Melissa as he carried her out of the kitchen.

He felt like he'd been worked over with a baseball bat.

"So is there any idea why the First wanted Marco dead?"

"I don't know; we just assumed it wanted all of us dead. Besides, he was real nifty with the chemical stuff, he probably would've thought of a way around the whole 'into the Hellmouth' thing."

"Not really," Marco said from immediately behind them, making all but Amanda jump. "I would've gone in with a fire hose attached to a recently-blessed reservoir, not to mention enough firebombs to level the place, and maybe a nuclear bomb, but aside from that, can't think of a thing. I know I'm annoying, but not that much. I mean, I've taken out three demons that I shouldn't have been able to kill, and unless they were close personal friends of the infinite evil, can't see a reason why It would care, and frankly, can't say that I care why It wants me either. It's over, thankfully. So, anyone know what my sister's up to?"

"She's bringing in the Slayerette," Amanda answered.

He sighed. "Great, children. Shoot me now. Please."

Amanda fluttered her eyes at him in a deliberately corny manner. "You mean you don't want to have children?"

His eyes lit up. "With you darling, as many as possible as often as possible, but let me at least buy the wedding ring first."

Kennedy looked from one to the other, then raised an eyebrow at Willow. The redhead smiled, touched the Slayer's knee and said, "Don't mind them, honey, they're Catholic. Different rules."

"And proud of it," Marco added, sitting next to Amanda, automatically sliding an arm around her waist. "Trust me, if I weren't a good little former altar boy with delusions of adequacy, and if Amanda were crazy enough to sleep with me before marriage, well, I wouldn't have the energy to do, well, um….anyone—thing! Anything else."

Kennedy laughed. "Ah, straight people, no fun at all."

Amanda's eyes glittered. She slowly straightened and gracefully slinked her way over to Kennedy, wrapped her hand around the back of the Slayer's head, and firmly planted a long lingering kiss on the right edge of her mouth, out of Willow's direct vision, so it looked to Willow like she was making out with Kennedy. She straightened, backed away and sat down.

"Who says?"

Willow stared, slack jawed for a moment, and then took Kennedy's hand. "Honey, I think we need to go, now…for a moment."

Marco looked at his watch. "You can use my room. I need to change the sheets soon anyway. Might as well be now. 'Manda, let's take a walk in the hall."

She looped his arm through his. "Good, now you can tell me all of the details that you left out of your time in Sunnydale. An invincible demon you took out more or less on your own?"

He shot a glare at the lesbians for spilling the details, but they had already closed the door to his room.

Cassie looked on helplessly as Melissa continued to shake with sobs, Spike holding on tight and murmuring to her. She couldn't quite make out what he was saying, but she could see they were having a calming effect on the young Slayer. Slowly, her tears stopped and her sobs were replaced with sniffles.

Cassie tentatively stroked Melissa's hair. "You okay, sweetie?"

Melissa shuddered, shaking her head. "I don't know," she replied in a small voice. "I'm a superhero." She sounded as if she was trying to wrap her brain around the concept as easily as her tongue around the words.

"The more popular parlance is 'Chosen', pet," Spike offered.

Melissa pulled completely from his arms, giving him a glare. "I didn't ask you."

"Down, girl," Cassie shot in return. "Believe it or not, Spike's here to help, especially concerning your new status."

Spike gave Cassie an amused look. "Y' get the feelin' the temperament comes with the Slayer package?"

Cassie grinned and shook her head. "Sorry, she had that before Willow worked her witchy ways."

"That's a tongue-twister," Melissa smiled a bit. "Willow?"

"Willow's a very powerful witch, Mel," Cassie explained. "She worked the magic a few weeks ago that made you a junior Slayer." She met Spike's eyes. "Marco must have contacted her or Giles by now. You have homework, Mel?"

Melissa shrugged. "Not much, just a few pages for history. I finished the rest earlier today."

"Looks like Red'll have someone to talk intellect with," Spike remarked with a smile. "Amanda strikes me as the 'action' type."

"Amanda's another Slayer," Cassie said at Melissa's puzzled look. "Spike's gonna teach both of you."

Spike stood and offered a hand to the young Slayer. "Ready t' meet her, kitten? Ready t' learn 'bout how special you are?"

Melissa looked at Spike, then Cassie, then his hand. Before two weeks ago, none of her friends would have called her particularly brave or courageous. Now, she couldn't imagine not taking a challenge, especially one that seemed this huge, head-on.

She reached out and wrapped her fingers around his, letting him hold her hand. "Okay, I'm ready."

Cassie looked at her young friend with unmistakable pride.

An hour later, he just finished describing the death of the late Slayer Vampire, and was about to head back inside when he heard a voice say. "You're a superhero too?"

Amanda and Marco looked down on Melissa. Amanda beamed. "Yes."

"A Slay-her?"

"Yes, a Slayer."

"Aren't you a little old for that?"

Catalano smiled tightly, looking at Amanda. "Cute, isn't she?"

"Aye, she is," Spike agreed.

Marco's eyes went dead and looked at him. "Oh, the IRS agent returns. What happened, run out of Enron people to eat?" He glanced at his watch. "Excuse me, I have to go check on something." He looked over Spike's left shoulder at his sister. "Hi, Cassie. Hold everyone out here."

He opened the door to see both women on the couch, arms casually around each other, both with big smiles on their faces.

"It's safe. You folks have fun while I rearm."

"Rearm?"

Marco nodded. "Now that fang face is here, we're going to have such a fun time. I just want to live through it. Excuse me."

Cattalano locked himself in his room, opening a window to clear out certain smells, and quickly went to work. He started by taking his gym bag out of the closet, removing wooden throwing knives, sheaths, and his dress sword from Xavier. He double-checked the tape on his stakes, to make sure the firecrackers were still attached to set off the turpentine. He carefully strapped the sheaths to his forearms, calves, ankles, and took off his shirt to assemble the full body sheath, which had slots for neck and shoulder knives. He looped the neck piece over his head, and slipped the shirt on over it so he could attend to the shoulder sheaths. He removed a large Snapple bottle of holy water, checked the load on the squirt guns, and slipped them into the small of his back. He then removed a box, carefully padded on the inside, and checked his load of nitroglycerin in vials.

"So you do this every day?" Buffy's voiced asked.

Marco sighed, closed his eyes, and reached for the crossbow in his gym bag, promptly loading it. "Has anyone ever told you that you're annoying?"

The First leapt onto his bed as though sitting on the edge. "No, I never cared enough."

"But you care about me?" he inquired, loading another set on the bow.

The First beamed in its Buffy Summers guise. "The thing is, I'm not sure what you are. Trust me, I know everything, seen everything, but not you."

He chuckled, loading the final bow. "You've got to get out more. They call me a man."

She leaned forward. "Don't you want to know why I tried so hard to kill you in January?"

"Because I was Buffy's friend? Morale killer?"

Her eyes lit up. "Oh, I intend to do more than kill your morale. I intend to use you. You see, you're what I like to call a saint in training—you don't believe in your own limits, so they don't apply. You make your own pathetic reality, only it's a scary reality because you enforce it on the rest of us. You say that you are whatever you need to be, and you are. That's your problem. I still need you dead."

Marco shook his head. "You want me dead, that's the difference. You need nothing, you're a creature who doesn't want to acknowledge that something else created you."

"Buffy's" eyes twitched with rage. "You won't like my response to that."

"Like what? You saw the last time what happens when you come to me, pal. You're just going to have your ass handed to you all over again."

Before it could say another word, he rammed the door with his shoulder and leveled his crossbow at the door to the apartment seconds before it broke open. The Bringer with an axe landed within axe-swing of Amanda's head, and no one could have moved fast enough to have avoided it, not even a Slayer.

Three arrows were pumped into the Bringer's chest before he even hit the floor.

Everyone was on their feet in a second, Marco quickly scooped up his gym bag and stuck his hand in it to check one more item.

Five more Bringers were at the door, each with two knives and an axe. Marco grabbed Spike and dragged him in front of him. Spike took the knife in the chest, Marco pulled it out and hurled it back into the hallway. Before any of the other Bringers could hurl knives, there were five distinctive little spurts of noise before they all collapsed in the hallway. Melissa, Amanda, Kennedy, Willow, Cassie and Spike looked at the dead Bringers oddly.

Marco casually stepped over to the hall, and at his side dangled a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic with a sound suppressor attached. He checked each and every one of them for signs of life. He found one still breathing, barely.

Marco smiled, looked at him where his eyes should've been, and said, "Don't fuck with the army of light," before shooting him in the forehead.

The room settled into a stunned silence until Melissa tugged on the sleeve of Cassie's shirt. Cassie looked at her blankly and bent down.

Melissa cupped her hand to Cassie's ear and whispered, "He said a bad word."