Author's Chapter Notes:

Do you remember how I rated this entire fic M? It wasn't just idle fancy; anyone who has a hard time seeing people - especially the major characters - suffer grievous bodily harm should go elsewhere or hold onto their stomachs... 'cause this is not gonna be pretty.

09:43, TUESDAY AUGUST 24, LIMA (17:43/24-08-99 ZULU)
OSBOURNE RESIDENCE

Willow was distinctly grateful that Oz's parents were out of town again. Scooby support aside, she wasn't ready for the questions David and Georgia Osbourne might've asked... especially about why she had a key to their door. Though, come to think of it, they could probably make a guess about that.

And they wouldn't be wrong. She blushed scarlet even at the thought, moving towards Oz's room. Okay, can we focus now? Jeez, you'd think I was Xander - or old-style Xander, anyway. I don't know what to make of new-and-improved Xander... but I think I like it. Well, okay, apart from the, the killing people thing. I mean, he's thoughtful, attentive, decisive... and he's definitely been working out, she added wickedly, remembering how she'd woken up. He'd been toned when he'd been on the swim-team; now, he felt like he was all sinew and whipcord muscle, warm and lean and -

Heeeyyyyy!!! she suddenly remembered guiltily, coming to an overly abrupt halt inside Oz's doorway. Not here to think about Xander! "Okay, what do I need?" she murmured aloud, running through the mental checklist she'd prepared. Yearbook. Those lyric sheets we were working on the other night. She mostly controlled another blush as she remembered how they'd been... distracted in the middle of that. Plus college stuff - I don't remember Oz telling me what classes he was gonna take; if he's still choosing, he'd better do it lickety-split. A change of clothes for when they let him out.

"Ooo-kay...." The yearbook was first, and the easiest to find, lying as it did atop the low rank of shelves under the window. The sheet-music lay in a crooked, half-organised pile on the bedside cabinet. Tossing the yearbook onto the bedspread, Willow shook her head at Oz's typically male messiness and gathered the papers in both hands, juggling them all straight.

Just as she got them all settled, a couple of sheets slipped through her fingers and - Awww, shoot! - went spiralling under the bed. I hate Mondays, she groused, setting the rest of the papers on the bed and lying flat on the floor to reach the wayward leaves. But most especially Mondays that pretend to be Tuesdays on the calendar but act all Monday-y when you get to them and then - hey, what's that?

'That' was a fairly thick-looking envelope, about the size you posted forms in, lying right under the centre of the bed, where you couldn't see or reach it unless you lay down flat like this. Almost like it was deliberately hidden, she mused. It was distinctly familiar-looking, and a moment later she realised why: it was just like the one she'd got her UC Sunnydale forms in.

It was a warm summer morning, but Willow suddenly felt a little too cool.

Unsure of exactly why she felt so uneasy, she fastened two fingers over one corner of the envelope and dragged it out in the open. UC Sunnydale, all right, and it's still sealed up - like it's never been opened.

She zipped the flap open with her thumb - she'd had a lot of practice with that in the 'pitching woo' stage - and tugged out the papers within; their alignment was perfect, undisturbed. What the... enrolment, student loan application, dormitory placing application, class selection forms - none of them even touched! she catalogued, with a weird sinking feeling.

It's... it's almost like he was planning on not going to UC Sunnydale, and that can't be right.

Can it?

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

09:52, AUGUST 24, LIMA (17:52/24-08-99 ZULU)
426 STENNIS AVENUE

SHRIKE-2 turned away from the parlour window and arched one eyebrow at the woman with him. "You are sure about this?" the former US Army Ranger posed, trying to keep his tone questioning instead of snide.

"Yes, Ruby." Amethyst's patient tone was just exaggerated enough to make the older operative flush in embarrassment. She shot him an understanding wink before going on. "The body in the park will have Cerian screaming 'blood magic' from the highest hill-top, and everybody who can come, will. It's part of their 'Scooby Gang' tradition. Hell, I'll be surprised if Osbourne doesn't join them before sundown."

"Isn't that nice?" he smiled, glancing back out the window.

That window looked out on Stennis Ave, and directly across the way was the Carver Condomium Complex... including a perfect view through the living-room windows of one Rupert Keith Giles, one of which was a straight shot - literally - to the front door, the other to the staircase landing. God Himself couldn't have laid out a better field of fire.

With that thought, the ex-Ranger sat down on the couch again and started inspecting the G36 he'd brought into the house in a gym-bag. Heckler and Koch's latest-generation 5.56mm assault rifle, designed for the Bundeswehr but already enjoying wider popularity, the futuristic-looking weapon was perfectly compatible with the two double-drum C-MAGs that lay next to it; a bipod lay ready for fitting. He'd removed the carrying-handle and its built-in sights, a simple task given the weapon's modular design, and replaced them with a simple reflex red-dot scope; a blind man could hit a target at thirty metres with an assault rifle. There was no need for any sort of specialised ammunition, either; at this range, a standard SS109 bullet would go clean through the concrete façade of that apartment and still retain killing power to spare, and he could empty both C-MAGs into the apartment in less than twenty seconds. Two hundred rounds going into that small a space in that short a time... nothing could conceivably survive.

Which was the problem, in Amethyst's mind. "Uh, sir, with all respect, what about Cerian?"

"What about her?" he sniffed disdainfully, locking the weapon's folding stock in the fully-extended position.

"Leaving aside the, uh, other considerations involved, her public persona's combination of relic-hunting skills and mercenary amorality is very useful, and close to irreplaceable - and I think we both know that Agate's 'embolism' wasn't the result of his injuries."

"Fuck it," he snorted. "Onyx can't argue with a clean sweep. And have you really considered how it'll look?"

"Sir?" The blonde cocked one eyebrow curiously, absently rubbing the back of her right hand over the wicked mass of scars and black speckling on her left cheek, a souvenir of the 'incident' in London three and a half years ago. It marred her otherwise haughtily attractive features, but she kept it as a reminder of past reverses. Her cover-identity explained it away, but her prideful refusal to have the mark removed was still distinctly awkward, because if you knew what to look for - and a lot of people did, especially in places like Sunnydale - it looked exactly like what it was: the result of being so close to a gunshot that the muzzle-blast had ripped her face open.

And that little bastard can't ever be dead enough, Ruby noted, raising one hand to his spectacularly broken nose. Despite four trips to the plastic surgeon he still had the worst sinus trouble in history; that prick Peter McKellar had busted his beak - twice - during the fiasco that operation had devolved into. Not to mention the seven other operatives young McKellar and that slut Tatyana had killed and wounded - Amethyst among them; though the bullet itself had missed, she'd still spent two weeks in hospital after the boy shot her - and all the other disruptions they'd caused. And the worst of it was, Zyrianova and young McKellar hadn't even realised; most of the damage they'd inflicted on the organisation had been incidental. Heaven only knew what they could've done if they'd actually known enough to focus their attentions.

Ah, well, we did stop them in the end. Permanently. He smiled thinly as he remembered a drizzly night on a Napier street, two teenaged bodies lying crumpled on the pavement, Opal standing over them with a smoking pistol in hand, watching the blood mixing with the rainwater in the gutters....

He shook himself back to the present. "Cerian McKellar prostitutes her knowledge and talents for anybody who'll pay enough. In the process of retrieving all those artifacts and other arcana over the years, she's worked for - and against - the Triads, the Yakuza, the Organizatsiya, and half a million more organisations and powerful individuals, any or all of whom might've gotten sick of her bullshit and have the resources to do something like this." He looked up at his subordinate with a smile that never approached his eyes. "So if we go over there afterwards and put a couple of just-in-case rounds through her head, the cops will think she was the target and the others were just collateral damage, now won't they?"

"True. But Onyx, for one, will know that the reverse is true."

"It's not like he'll be heartbroken: he doesn't have a heart to break," Ruby reminded his junior. Both suppressed a shiver at the thought. Opal had an evangelical fervour about their whole enterprise, the zeal of the original witch-hunters and a sadist's glee... but at the same time, it was personal to Opal. SHRIKE-1 seemed to draw some sort of perverse sustenance from torturing and murdering those who crossed their organisation. Opal's protegé, on the other hand, purged those among their own number who screwed the pooch because it was his job: no less, no more. Some of their various colleagues were, in all frankness, psychotic or worse - but Onyx's completely dispassionate ruthlessness frightened even them into obedience. "If we explain it to him afterward, I think he'll see the light." He set the rifle on the floor on its bipod and pistol-grip, leaving it unloaded for now. There'd be plenty of time for that when the time came.

"You're the boss, sir. Are we going to stay here all day?"

"Why, Margaret: do you have a date?" he teased.

She shot him a look. "I was just wondering what we were going to do about food."

Ruby looked out the window at the target area for a moment, weighing alternatives. "They probably won't all be here for a while. You go ahead; I'll keep an eye on things here, call you if I need you."

"Thanks, sir." That was the good thing about Ruby: his time in the military let him understand two-way loyalty. Opal was an academic and a sadistic power-freak, which meant leadership, in SHRIKE-1's mind, was driving people to better efforts with threats and keeping them in line with terror; Ruby knew you got better results by treating your people like people, not slaves. You never let them forget you were in charge, of course, but you still treated them as human beings. "You want me to get you something?"

Ruby blinked, taken a little off-guard by the offer. "Thanks," he nodded. "Uh, hit a burger place for me. Anything's fine, just no salad in the damn' thing, 'kay?"

"Sure. Back soon." As she left, Amethyst stepped over the cooling bodies of the house's original occupant, and her four-year-old daughter. Both operatives had been careful about using silencers with their standard-issue Walthers.

After all, the live could be downright talkative... but the dead weren't known for being chatty.

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

10:03, AUGUST 24, LIMA (18:03/24-08-99 ZULU)
SUNNYDALE BEST WESTERN HOTEL

Xander sat on the bed to finish drying his hair, still bare to the waist. Despite the eternally-happy-go-lucky front he'd put on for his friends, he was a little uneasy about this whole thing. This had all seemed so simple when it had been laid out for him - but last night's little mêlée, for a start, had definitely not been in the plan. On the other hand, there is Murphy's 16th Law of Combat: 'The plan never survives initial contact with the enemy', and its corollary 17th Law: 'There is NO SUCH THING as a perfect plan.'

Christ, I just hope things go a little better from here on, he added, on a half-sighed outward breath, then looked down at the small, spiral-bound notebook lying on the bedspread next to him, opened to a page that bore a printed list of eighteen names, divided into three groups.

{SHRIKE-1 - Opal
{ Onyx - 2 i/c
{ Topaz
{ Diamond
{ Sapphire
{ Emerald

{SHRIKE-2 - Ruby
{ Jade - 2 i/c
{ Amber
{ Garnet
{ Beryl
{ Amethyst}

Whoops... I'd better update Team 3's status, the Slayerette realised, with a thin smile of satisfaction. He took a red pen from the sheathes on his jacket's sleeve and amended the final six-name list. Now it read:

{SHRIKE-3 - Agate X
{ Turquoise - 2 i/c
{ Coral X
{ Jacinth X
{ Peridot - hospital/Faith
{ Spinel X}

It's a start, he shrugged... then his smile died. Under any other circumstances I'd say I trusted them to deal with these bastards, but with stakes like this.... Xander closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. This thing will work. It must work... 'cause I can't bear thinking about the alternative.

Opening his eyes again, he tucked the notebook into his jacket's inside pocket, then hauled on a pale grey T-shirt emblazoned with one of the better commentaries on their profession he'd ever seen: {YOU SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH, AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU ODD.} Forgoing the Nomex as simply too damn' hot, he instead hauled on a lightweight Seahawks warm-up jacket he'd acquired during his travels, idly wishing as he did so that he could carry his newfound best friend without arousing suspicion. Hard on the heels of that thought came a snort of wry disdain. If wishes were horses, beggars could ride. And let's face it, carrying a pistol is not the sort of low-profile this caper needs.

Well, that aside, I'd better get rolling back. Wouldn't want anybody getting too curious about where I might be. Next stop: Giles'. He needs to know the latest... and besides, he probably hasn't had enough aggravation in his life since I left, he smirked.

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

He was driving down Grant Terrace, almost at the Carver Complex, when he spotted a familiar figure... one that brought a familiar lump to his throat. Willow was headed the same way as he was, and he slowed for a moment to get a closer look at her. She'd changed into jeans and that impossibly cute fuzzy purple sweater of hers, and she was carrying a small gym-bag and her laptop-case slung across her body, from left shoulder to right hip. Even from this distance, she was heart-achingly lovely.

And where did that end up? he reminded himself. In cheating on two damn good people while trapped in a burned-out factory basement by a drunken lovelorn vampire. Face it, Harris, you are doomed, relationship-wise. Even your oldest friend prefers a werewolf musician to y-

Wait a minute! There was something about the set of her shoulders, her walk.... He pulled up beside her without thinking, rolling down the passenger-side window from the central control panel. "Will!"

Her head snapped around, and the look behind her eyes gave him pause. There was definitely something amiss here - well, okay, something else amiss.

"Is everything okay?"

She nodded, smiling brightly; anyone who hadn't known her forever and a day wouldn't have realised there was anything wrong, but Xander could read this woman's emotional patterns like a book, and she was a little too keyed up. "Yeah! Yeah, yeah, why wouldn't it be?"

"You sure?" he pressed, not prying but in the spirit of concern.

"I-I-I'm fine," she assured him. "Just, just a little anxious to see Oz. A-are you going back to the hospital already?"

"Actually, I was gonna raid Giles' cupboards," he half-grinned. "You want a lift?"

She nodded and pulled the Suburban's door open. "Thanks. I was just gonna stop by and see if Giles needed any help later - he's been kinda, y'know, crazed, trying to reorganise his library after the blowing-up-school thing."

And didn't that look good on my resumé, he noted, with an inward smile. "Let's roll."

When she'd settled into her seat, he checked for traffic - thoroughly, now that Willow was aboard - and pulled out again. Once they were fully up to speed, he dropped one hand from the wheel to the hands-free cellphone he'd had put in, punching the #1 quick-dial. I think reinforcements are in order, and if Will can't/won't talk to me about whatever it is....

{"Hey-llo!"} Buffy's voice chirped from the speakers.

"Yeah, hey, Buff, it's Xander," he smiled, keeping his eyes on the road the whole time. "Will and I are on our way to Giles' place right now. Can you meet us there? He's probably heard about last night, and my guess is he's polished his glasses into a whole new prescription by now."

{"Ohhh!"} A dull thud as the Slayer smacked herself on the temple opposite her cellphone. {"I can't believe I forgot to call him! Yeah, I'll be there in a few minutes."}

"See you there." *blip!*

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

10:21, AUGUST 24, LIMA (18:21/24-08-99 ZULU)
GILES RESIDENCE

"Is anybody home, as if I need to ask?" Buffy drawled, walking straight though Giles' open door without even thinking of knocking. It wasn't like he'd ever kept her out when he wasn't drunk or on band-candy, so -

She came to a screeching halt. "What the heck are you doing here?" she asked Cerian blankly. The former professor was quite comfortably nestled in one corner of the couch, her jacket lying over its back, a half-empty cup of cocoa sitting on the neighbouring shelving unit within easy reach, and what looked like - Well, there's a shocker! - a monstrous book in her lap.

"Quite apart from catching up with a colleague, there was an incident last night that may merit the Slayer's attention," the relic-hunter smiled pleasantly. "Have you read this morning's paper?"

"Only the cartoonies," the Slayer quipped.

Cerian looked at her over her glasses. "I can see this is going to be a real love-affair," she murmured.

"Good morning, Buffy," Giles interjected from the kitchen, quashing a smile. "I trust Oz will be fine?"

"You heard, huh? Yeah, all the bad stuff's fixed, he's gonna be out this afternoon. What's she mean about the paper?"

"There was another article below your, uh, front-page heroics," he observed, pushing the Chronicle across the counter towards her. "It's circled in green."

{BOY FOUND DEAD IN WEATHERLY PARK
{ Two joggers discovered the body of a young boy in Weatherly Park early this morning, the apparent victim of a ritual murder.
{ Police are yet to release the identity of the eleven-year-old, whose naked body was found lying in the bushes at the edge of a culvert, or the identities of the couple who found him. They are currently awaiting the results of a full post-mortem, but on-site investigators did reveal that the apparent cause of death is a single stab-wound to the neck and that several seemingly occult symbols had been carved into the victim's chest.}

Buffy needed to read no more. "More Hansel and Gretel?" she hazarded, half-hoping she was wrong. She really didn't need to be burned at the stake again.

Cerian shifted on the couch, turning to face the other two, and Buffy's eyebrows rose as she saw the pistol the woman was wearing. The cops had taken her gun last night for forensic purposes, but either Cerian had gotten that one back super-quick or she'd had another one just like it, and the Slayer fleetingly wondered just how many guns the woman actually had. And why she would need them. "No, I don't think so. Rupert explained the, uh, 'Gingerbread case' as he calls it, and while there were some similarities, they're merely superficial."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that unless I'm dreadfully mistaken, we're dealing with a blood magician."

"And that is?"

Buffy whirled towards the speaker, a stake coming to hand by reflex. "God, Xander, that's twice you've spooked me today!" she shrilled.

"Really? Cool," he grinned, looking very much the cocksure hotshot as he leaned back against the door-frame with crossed arms.

"Where'd you learn to be so stealthy?" she accused, tucking the stake away and trying to get her heart-rate back under control, again. God, how the hell did he do that? I'm the Slayer - even vampires can't sneak up on me!

"I could tell you, Buff, but I'd have to kill you," he winked; behind his shoulder, Willow rolled her eyes and smiled fondly at his Xander-antics. "Giles! Greetings and salutations, citizen!"

"Welcome back, Xander," Giles said, albeit without complete enthusiasm. "I'd expected you to be gone much longer."

"Time... is what you make of it," the youth said, with that same cryptic almost-smugness he'd had last night, as he stood aside to let Willow inside. A moment later, he crossed to where Cerian sat. "Mrs McKellar. How nice to see you again when we're not being shot at."

Cerian shook the offered hand, Xander's blatant attempt to charm her bringing a faint blush to her cheeks. "My, oh, my... the girls must just melt at your feet," she smiled warmly.

"Girls, ma'am? Why would I want to deal with 'girls' when I can spend time with women like yourself?" he replied easily, grinning a little as her blush deepened a shade.

Buffy blinked in amazement. "What's with the Lando Calrissian?"

"What? Is there something wrong with making a good impression? Especially after the TARFU that was our first meeting?"

"TARFU?" Giles wondered faintly.

"'Things Are Really F... Fouled Up'," Cerian supplied, taking an almost perverse delight in the phrase. "And don't worry about it, Xander, I met my husband under worse circumstances."

"That must'a been an interesting marriage."

"For all of seven years, yes. Then he had the good grace to get killed in a car accident."

"Oh-kay." The dark-haired Scooby gently guided Willow to a seat at Giles' study-desk and half-sat on the desk next to her. "So what's the scoop?"

Buffy lobbed the paper his way, and he and Willow read quickly and silently. The redhead's expression was outright appalled. Xander, on the other hand, was outwardly just a little too calm as he wondered, "And why does sliced-neck kid sound like a job for Super-Slayer?"

"I'd need to read the forensic reports to be sure, but unless I miss my guess, this is the work of someone practising blood magic." Cerian crossed to the shelves to retrieve another tome, and Buffy blinked: the woman was barefoot. Jeez, make yourself at home already!

"Uh, Bob, could I get the sub-titles here?" Xander asked, doing a passable TV Presenter voice.

Cerian sighed and fondly shook her head at him as she sat down again. "So much of magic is symbolism. Blood symbolises life - in many ways, it is life - and thus it symbolises, is, power, power of a magnitude much greater than almost any other in magic. With the right mindset and paraphenalia, a spellcaster can draw on that power to fuel their magics much more efficiently than by simply drawing ambient magical energy out of the environment about them. Some casters sacrifice themselves for their magic by inflicting wounds on themselves and using their own blood. Others take a darker path and draw their energy from other donors. Sometimes those donors are willing; but all too often" (she nodded at the paper) "they're not."

"Is that why vampires drink blood?" Xander frowned. Buffy blinked; normally he got bored with this stuff faster than she did - which was saying something - but now, he seemed almost... well, eager to learn.

His ability to make connections had apparently caught Cerian off-guard, too. "Well, yes. I'll forgo the deeper layers of metaphysics in deference to the impatience of the youthful mind, but when a human drinks vampire blood in a Turning, they're sending out a... a ritual invitation to a blood demon, which replaces their soul. The demon can stay in this reality only so long as it is bound to that human body, and they subsist on the magical energy in blood to maintain and reinforce that bond.

"Back on the subject at hand, if I could read the forensics reports I could be sure one way or the other. If it's a blood mage, the weapon used would have been silver, and the wound will have its long axis parallel to the artery to maximise the blood-flow."

"Why silver?" Willow wondered, ever the glutton for knowledge and/or punishment.

"Because silver has a certain... affinity for magical energy. It absorbs it, channels it, redirects it, in a superb manner - it's often used in enchantments to summon and command spirits, for example."

"Oh," she chirped, visibly filing away that little tidbit, then started digging out her laptop. "If we need the autopsy reports, we'll just have to get them, won't we?"

Buffy shot a glance at Xander. She'd seen the odd note in the redhead's manner. What's up with her?

He shrugged a millimetre or two, helplessly. Beats me!

Oblivious to the by-play, the Wiccan punched up the special function she'd assigned to accessing the coroner's office. As far as their computers were concerned, she wasn't there and her cyber-invasion wasn't happening, but for as long as it wasn't happening, she had user-privileges even the original installers hadn't had. She scrolled down the list of recent case files - Only nine since sunset last night, counting the boy and the gallery thing. Must've been a slow night in Demon-land. - and was about to pull up the boy's when - "Hey!" she frowned.

"What is it, Will?" Buffy wondered, standing over her friend and peering at the screen.

"There's somebody else in the coroner's system - another hacker." The redhead tapped a few keys, then peered at the code that came back in response. "And he's changing the files - he's deleting stuff out of the original autopsy records!"

"Which ones?" Giles frowned, coming over.

"It looks like the files on the robbers from last night," she murmured distractedly, turning the laptop a little so Xander could get a better look before she started rattling the keyboard again. She didn't see the amazed looks passed about above her. "I'm gonna try and save what they're cutting, at least for us."

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

"Barring Osbourne, that's all of them," Amethyst noted, lowering the video camera she'd been using for closer observation. Its zoom function wasn't as good as the magnification of a good set of binoculars, but people tended to remember binoculars; cam-corders were ubiquitous.

"Right. We won't get another chance like this, and Peridot can take care of him." Ruby picked up the G36 and crossed to his chosen firing position. They'd rearranged the living-room furniture so that a side-table was directly under the window he'd chosen, with an armchair backed onto it. It gave him some place to kneel and shoot from comfortably, while providing the bipod-equipped rifle a stable firing platform and being just far enough back from the window that its barrel didn't protrude into the open air where it might be seen. The drapes on the other windows were pulled tight and the lights were off; you'd need to be right in front of that window to see inside, and then it'd be too late.

Ruby snuggled the rifle's butt-plate tight into his shoulder and rested his cheek on the skeleton stock, getting comfortable with his weapon. The view through the sight was perfect: the red dot of the aimpoint hovered less than an inch behind Summers' neck as she leaned over Rosenberg to watch what she was doing. He didn't put it right on her just yet; if he had, those damnable Slayer instincts of hers would warn her of the threat before he could fire.

He took a deep breath, then slowly released half of it as he took the slack out of the trigger. "Say 'good night' to the folks, you traitor bitch...."

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

Even the simplest operation can be derailed by unexpected occurences, usually brought about by the intersection of your own oversights and mistakes, happenstance, fate, random factors, and pure dumb luck collectively known as Murphy's Law. In this case, Ruby had overlooked the fact that his chosen line of fire crossed a residential road, and had thus forgotten to have Amethyst look for traffic that might cross said line of fire.

A fateful miscalculation, as it turned out, because even as the former Ranger's finger exerted the eight pounds of trigger-pressure necessary to release the G36's sear, a Toyota Land Cruiser driven by a thirty-eight-year-old mother of two, with her nine-year-old daughter in the back seat, crossed between the sniper's window and Giles'.

Propelled by the gases produced by the combustion of 1.75 grams of Ball Powder, a tungsten-tipped, lead-based, full-jacketed bullet massing 4.02 grams left the G36's muzzle at a forward velocity just exceeding 929 metres per second, its forward passage stabilised by the once-every-178mm-of-travel spin imparted by the weapon's rifled barrel.

That bullet travelled approximately twenty meters before impacting on, and passing through, the passenger's door of the Land Cruiser without appreciably slowing. It struck Suzanne Henley's right thigh three inches above the knee, tearing through muscle, striking the femur dead-centre and explosively shattering it, and shredding the femoral artery as it passed out the other side.

Of course, these collisions had a significant effect on the bullet itself, deforming it, transferring much of its energy to the impacted tissue, and altering its original vector. It struck Henley's left thigh just above the mid-line, half-severing the left femoral artery and glancing off that femur, sending more bone fragments flying in all directions and taking on a distinct tumbling motion of its own. Its now distorted flight-path took it ripping out through the thigh-muscle and hammering through the Land Cruiser's driver's door, mostly sideways. It struck the window of Giles' condominium above and to the left of the originally desired point, exploding the glass into razor-edged fragments.

The bullet intended to pass through Elizabeth Anne Summers' right temple and shatter her head like a watermelon instead only exploded her top-knot before burying itself harmlessly in the wall.

Its flight, which ended one woman's life outright and irrevocably altered innumerable others, had lasted not even five one-hundreths of a second.

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

To Buffy, it was all one complex sound - CRACK/crash/BAM! - and something yanked at her hair harder than most vampires wished they could. Her instincts were moving before her brain ever caught up. "DOWN!" she bellowed, bodily flinging Willow sideways out of her seat and dropping flat beside her.

Xander was in motion just as fast, and his dive for safety 'just happened' to take Giles' knees from under the older man, sending him crumpling to the floor. Awkwardly and painfully, perhaps - his forehead bounced off the floor - but in the end, more or less safely.

Cerian, while lacking Buffy's Slayer skills or Xander's newfound reflexes, had been shot at enough to recognise it, and went sprawling on her belly in front of the couch.

"FUCK!" Ruby snarled as the four-wheel-drive crossed his sights. His first and best shot had been wasted into the side of some idiot's fucking SUV, and now the 'Scooby Gang' would be alerted! Forgoing precision (and needing to relieve his frustration at botching so simple a shot), he put into action an old Ranger saw: 'When the going gets tough... the tough go cyclic.' He thumbed the G36's selector to 'full-auto' and started squeezing the trigger, firing a series of half-second bursts into the side of the apartment building, swinging the muzzle back and forth to rake the entire room. Each squeeze sent five or six rounds down-range, and even if he couldn't see through the wall, he could sure as hell kill through it.

Inside Giles' living-room, everyone was making very good friends with his carpet, cringing as bullets cracked past overhead and the unmistakeable staccato of automatic-weapons fire hammered from across the way. Every fifth round was a tracer, and the resulting red streaks over the Scooby Gang's collective head looked like something out of Star Wars as they tracked back and forth across the room, leaving swathes of destruction in their wake. Shelving units and items of furniture were ripped to toothpicks. Two shells blasted fist-sized holes through the screen of Willow's prized laptop. Books priceless for their antiquity and virtually irreplaceable for their contents were torn into so much confetti. A reading-lamp disintegrated. Stuffing and shredded cloth exploded out of rents in the couch Cerian had so recently vacated. One bullet punched straight through the flip-file that held Giles' record collection, wrecking the lot.

His voice half-submerged by the gunfire, Giles was cursing the unseen shooter - in terms that would've made a sailor blush - as his apartment was devastated. Xander, sprawled next to him, kept tabs the former Watcher's profanity with one portion of his mind, absently impressed by his vocabulary and cataloguing some of the choicer comments for future use. Another portion of the youth's consciousness was trying to count the shooter's rounds - though at that rate of fire, the count was almost certainly out to lunch. A third portion had brought his cellphone to one ear, and he covered the other ear so he could half-hear the operator.

{"911 emergency - Jesus Christ!"} the woman exclaimed, as another burst wiped out the record player and three hundred years' worth of Watcher diaries.

"Not exactly!" Xander snorted into the receiver, half-shouting over the gunfire. Giles' grandfather clock took one right in the face with a hollow 'b-chong!' He didn't realise that Willow was staring at him, goggling at his calm. "We're at the Carver Complex, apartment seven, and some bastard's machine-gunning the place. You wanna send us all the cops you got? And an ambulance or two, while you're at it?"

{"A-absolutely, sir. Just stay on the line."}

"Not an issue," he drawled, wincing as the study-desk Willow's laptop rested on came crashing to the floor with two of its legs shot away.

"Hey, Cerian, you've still got that gun, right? You wanna think about shooting back?" Buffy suggested, her fingers exploring the wreckage of her hairstyle. Now that ticks me off!

"Shoot at what?" was the caustic response. The ex-professor had crawled across to the wall next to the window without revealing herself; now she was standing, her back flat against that wall and her pistol in hand, mouthing curses in several languages as bullets and other shrapnel ripped past her. Her hair was messed again, and she was covered in scraps of couch-material. "If I stick my head out to look for the shooter, he'll blow it off. Besides, he has to be shooting from across the street - I'd be lucky to hit the house at that range!"

"Huh?"

"Pistols are for up close, Buff," Xander supplied off-hand, his main attention still on his cellphone.

Silence from outside. Two breaths' worth. Three. Four.

Letting out a relieved breath, Giles levered himself up on his knees. "Well, that's it. We -"

"STAY DOWN, dammit, he's just -!" Xander began.

A new fusillade. The red streak of a tracer speared Giles through the left forearm, half-spinning him to the carpet with an agonised howl; even as he began falling, the following round punched through his chest, trailing blood and bone-splinters in its wake. The same burst, longer than its predecessors, raked back across the entire room; another round chewed through the meat on the outside of Cerian's right thigh and she, too, crumpled with a shriek.

- Changing magazines, Xander didn't finish. "Shit!" he hissed, almost forgetting the cellphone as he started his own crawl towards where Giles lay, staring at the ceiling in confusion and breathing in shallow gasps. "Hurry up with those cops and ambulances, goddammit, we've got two people down in here!" There was new urgency in his voice, but no panic.

{"They're on their way, sir - the lead car will be there in four minutes."}

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

Ruby released the trigger and glared at the side of the building. He'd emptied both C-MAGs into that room, all right - the wall looked like a cheese-grater - but there was no way of knowing what he'd hit, if anything, and already he could hear sirens approaching. Ah, shit! We should've timed the patrol-units' patterns and waited until there'd be the longest delay, opportunity or not, he realised in chagrin. "We're gone."

"What about cleaning up?" Amethyst wondered.

"It's go now or get into a firefight with the S.P.D.!" he snapped.

"Better them than Opal or Onyx!" she shrilled.

"I'll take my chances. Let's go!"

The blonde licked her lips fearfully, but she didn't argue any further. They left the rifle where it sat - they were both wearing surgical gloves, so fingerprints weren't an issue, and the rifle itself was 'lost' - and headed out into the garage, where an almost-new Lexus awaited them.

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

Xander absently set his cellphone down as he knelt over the fallen Englishman. Their unknown shooter might not have finished, but that concerned the Slayerette only peripherally as he took in the gravity of Giles' wounds. The upper-left quadrant of the Englishman's pale-blue shirt was already soaked with dark red blood, and every breath he drew was accompanied by a hideous sucking sound. Oh, shit. Okay, panicking will not help. He dug out his keys and back-handed them at Willow. "Will, there's an old shell-crate in the back of the Suburban, full of medical stuff. Get it." His speech was clipped, detached - commanding.

"Bu-but...." The redhead stared down at the fallen Englishman in horror, transfixed.

"MOVE!" he thundered, crossing his hands over the exit-wound and pressing, hard, to seal it as best he could. The word didn't have the volume to be called a shout, but his tone had a complex little 'don't-mess-with-me' waveform that sent Willow halfway to the door before she realised what she was doing.

For her part, Buffy had taken in the situation and half-scrambled to Cerian's side to see to her, keeping low. "How bad is it?" she asked, quasi-rhetorically. The answer was self-evident: a chunk of meat the size of her fist was missing from the woman's thigh, but the blood was streaming out, not spouting as it would if anything major had been hit.

"Didn't hit bone," Cerian shrugged, her teeth set in a grimace that, for a moment, turned into something like a smile. "Aren't I the lucky bitch?"

"I guess." The Slayer glanced around her, tore a swatch of cloth from the wrecked couch, and fashioned a rough bandage.

"I can't bloody well believe this," the relic-hunter muttered. "Thirty-five years in the field, and the first time I get wounded, I'm having cocoa in the middle of a colleague's living-room -" She broke off, then went on with an odd certainty. "Somebody is going to pay for this. In blood."

Across the room, Xander was, on one level, mentally running through all the curses he knew, and a few he'd made up, while another kept the pressure on Giles' wound. What the FUCK is keeping those ambulances? he thought frantically. He cast a quick look around the room, taking in the destruction in a single glance. "Gotta talk to your new decorator, Giles. What's this style again? Stuffy Old British Guy meets Late Beirut?"

Giles was in no condition to speak, but his glare was eloquent.

"Just between you and me, Rupert old son," the Slayerette went on, doing an oddly good imitation of a Cockney squaddy, "I fink vis might be a good time to fink about an 'oliday. Remember Murphy's Fiff Law of Combat: 'A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down.'"

Giles coughed a weak laugh, and an amount of pink froth, and winced as the laughter jarred his injuries. As much as he despised Xander's flippancy at times, it was oddly reassuring right now. If the boy could still joke, the situation - and his own wounds, as agonising as they were - couldn't possibly be the disaster they looked (and felt) like.

"Just stick with it, Giles, the EMTs are coming. Just stick with it." Willow reappeared at his side, lugging the red-cross-decorated crate in both hands, and dropped to her knees and set it between them, flipping the lid open. Xander shot her a quick 'good work' nod and rooted through it, dragging out a moderately-large Ziploc bag full of bandages and Curlex pads which he sent Buffy's way in a Hail-Mary lob; she fielded it without even looking and went to work. He straightened Giles' broken arm, stretching it out perpendicular to his body, then grabbed Willow's hands and put them over the wound, crossing them and making her press down hard. "Remember the drill for a sucking chest, Will? Keep the wound sealed so the incoming air doesn't crush his organs."

Absently noting her nod, he turned away to rummage through the kit again, pushing this and that aside until he found what he needed: a super-large Ziploc bag labelled {THORACIC, MAJOR}. Laying that on the floor, he dug out his pocket knife and sliced the older man's shirt away from the wounds so he had a clear area to work with. The part of him that was still a normal teenager recoiled from the grape-fruit-sized cavity in nauseated horror, but the rest of him was too busy. His motions were precise, swiftly certain; he knew what (and how much) he had to do and how little time he had to do it in. He yanked a large Curlex pad from the Ziploc and tore the wrapper open, flattening the wrapper out as far as he could, then slapped the plastic over the exit wound. The Curlex itself covered the wrapper, forming an airtight seal, then a bandage went over the top to secure it. "Okay, Giles, we're gonna roll you onto your side so I can get at the entry-wound, okay? It's gonna put your weight on that bad arm and hurt like a sonofabitch, but it can't be helped right now. Will, get his legs. On three: one, two, three!"

Giles let out a gurgling scream as they shifted him, and both teens winced in sympathy. Xander repeated the patch-pad process with the quarter-inch puncture on Giles' back, and the bandage went around both airtights to hold them in place. "Okay, lower him."

That's the sucking-chest dealt with, but he's looking awfully shock-y. A couple of units of blood-expanders came out of the crate next, along with another large Curlex pad and another Ziploc, this one full of splints and bandages. Xander slashed open Giles' right sleeve and prepped one of the expander-bags; without needing to be told, Willow snatched up the bag of splints, then flipped the crate's lid shut and slid it under Giles' feet, elevating them to combat the shock. That done, she turned away to tend to the broken/torn arm.

Goddamn, that woman's switched-on, Xander thought absently, grabbing Giles' good arm. "Giles, I'm gonna start an IV line to replace some of the blood you lost. Make a fist so I can find a vein." The ex-Watcher obeyed, and Xander's stick was right on the money. He held the bag high and watched Willow tend to Giles' arm with motions that were just as swift as his own had been, if less certain. "Buffy, how's Cerian?" he called sidelong.

"Pissed off!" was the Slayer's half-sarcastic answer. "It's a flesh wound, she was lucky. Giles?"

"I think... I'll be fine," the Englishman managed. His voice was weak, somehow squeezed-sounding. "Xander... where did you... learn to do all this?"

"Field Manual 21-11: 'First Aid for Soldiers'. I printed it off the Internet a while ago." It had been the morning after that thing with Jack O'Toole and his gang of psycho zombies, in point of fact, but they didn't really need to know that, did they? At Willow's amazed blink, he went on, "I had to do something with my study-time after I blew my SATs, and I figured with the way I keep getting clobbered, not to mention everybody else around me...." He shrugged his free shoulder. "I got the field-kit in a fire-sale in Vegas."

"Including the IV bags?" the ex-Watcher wondered, a little uneasily.

"There are fire-sales and there are 'fire-sales', Giles," the Slayerette half-grinned. A pair of men in white EMT uniforms appeared in the doorway, medical kits in hand - then stopped short, gaping at the scene before them. "What, ya take the scenic route?"

"You want us to leave?" the lead man demanded with matching acid, kneeling beside Giles and opening his kit, all the while taking in the scene with trained, professional eyes. "We'll take it from here, folks, y'wanna back off?"

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

Meanwhile, the metallic-green Lexus that held Ruby and Amethyst was carrying them north-west at just over the speed limit: not fast enough to draw a ticket, but enough to get them out of Sunnydale faster than the limit allowed.

For her part, Amethyst was working herself into a good, old-fashioned state of hysterical anxiety. "Ruby, just forget the safehouse and let's get the fuck out of here! If we run now, we -"

"- won't live three days," the ex-Ranger countered dourly, almost dully. "Onyx arranged all our paperwork, remember? Identities, accomodation, credit cards, the whole lot. If we try to run, if we're lucky, he'll find us and treat us no better than any other traitor. If we're not lucky, Opal will get us."

"Opal's gonna get us anyway! Did you hear about the São Paolo job eleven years ago?" she shrilled.

"I've heard rumours -"

"They're true. I was there, Ruby. We bagged the Slayer nice and easy, drugged her and tied her up, then took her out to this riverbend Opal had chosen. When we got there, Opal brought the girl around and gave her The Speech, then tossed a piece of bloody meat into the water to attract the pirahna and pushed the Slayer in after it. You should've seen Opal's face, Ruby: the expression was verdomme orgasmic. D'you really think SHRIKE-1 will be so kind to us under these circumstances?"

"Then we go back and make like it was an accident," he suggested levelly.

"An accident?"

"We got impatient, that's all. If we shade the facts a little when we report to Onyx, he can explain it to Opal and it'll be his neck, not ours."

Amethyst was far from convinced by that argument... but on the other hand, it wasn't like she had any other realistic choice.

Chapter End Notes:

US Army Rangers (as seen in 'Blackhawk Down' soon after I started writing this story) are specialist assault troops. That mission emphasis is reflected in their training and sub-culture, which prize aggression and 'smash-and-grab' thinking; subtlety or finesse are not their strong suits (as Ruby demonstrates). These are people who light their cigarettes with blowtorches.

Technical information about the Heckler and Koch G36 was originally obtained courtesy of 'Jane's Infantry Weapons' and the G36's unofficial homepage at home(dot)c2i(dot)net(slash)johnhe(slash)g36(dot)html. Sadly, that web-site is now available only through a web-archive service, but for those who want handler-opinions on the weapon as well as history and technical data (not to mention a format that isn't just 'a Wikipedia wall-of-text', even without many of its pictures), it's worth the effort. ;D There's also a useful 'go-to' quick-reference at world(dot)guns(dot)ru(slash)assault(slash)as-14e(dot)htm.)

FM 21-11 can be found at the Virtual Navy Hospital, www(dot)vnh(dot)org. These are the basic first-aid skills meant to be trained into every grunt in the US Army; how many of them can actually apply them properly when it counts is an open question, though I'd imagine folks have been getting a lot of live practice in the last few years. :S

verdomme - Goddamn. (Afrikaans)

And if I may add a personal opinion? There's probably a very good reason for this site's auto-deletion of web-links in story files, but just right now it's a pain in the ass. :P