Chapter 8-

Kill Like a Demon

It was just like how she imagined it. There, in the library, she'd read of the Ancient Greeks, and that one battle she couldn't for the life of her remember the name of right now, and how the commander had exclaimed that they'd have some shade to fight in after he'd been told their enemies' arrows would blot out the Sun. That was the battle. That was the one where one side was heavily outnumbered too. How ironic.

Rain is all that Jenny could have said. Hundreds and thousands of the things, making their unstoppable, inevitable journey Earth-wards, to tear and puncture anything that stood in its way.

Wait. What?

The spears had reached the climax of their arc in the air, and were ever so slowly obeying the iron grip of gravity as the sharpened ends tilted down. Nothing could stop them. Anything that tried would be torn apart. Even if they somehow survived the first wave, Vastra could see men bringing more supplies out from within the structure.

"Destroy the ones that endanger you!" she roared, not taking her eyes off the spines suspended above them. "Strax...OBLITERATE THE APES!"

"SON...TAR...HAAAAAAA!"

Jenny felt helpless. Here she was, staring up at her method of potential death, with nowhere near as much skill or power or (she hated to admit it) ammunition as her comrades. But no, Jenny Flint, this is no time to cower or flee. If you're going down, you're blooming well gonna go down fighting.

The wooden shafts flew down at them relentlessly. Jenny barely managed to get her katana in position to slice the thing all down the centre before another came down from the heavens, this time aiming for her toes. It was decided about 5 seconds in that avoiding them would be the best course of action, and slicing them for the more dire situations. She could imagine them men up there, throwing the spears, chortling drunkenly as they watched the four small figures below dancing and waving about in a most antsy fashion.

Little did they expect and explosion and the stiff groaning of pine wood as the supports for their platform had been, well and truly, obliterated. Spears thrown last minute wobbled in the air before curving prematurely down, clattering off the stones to be shattered by their successfully, though not accurately, thrown brethren.

It just so happened to be one of these thrown failures that clipped the edge of a certain Sontaran's probic vent, now that his weakness was well and truly visible in his battle armour. His body jerked and went limp before the legs collapsed under the pressure of the rest of the body, which was consequently trampled on by the feet of the occupants of the platform during the collapse.

Vastra saw Strax's fall, but helping him now would jeopardise any chances they had of victory. Yes, they were heavily outnumbered, and needed all the help they could get, but she had priorities. At least he'd managed to destroy the platform supports, taking- rather literally- the enemies' 'upper grounds'. However, Vastra did also see (it took her several 'replays' in her head before what had happened truly made an impact on her) a spear catch one of the flat sides of Jenny's katana.

There are some things that reason tells you is impossible. Not highly unlikely, improbable or even purely nonsensical, but impossible. Something that could never conceivably happen, if you considered everything you had at that point in time and even tweaked the probabilities substantially. But no, it happened.

Jenny's katana bent.

To any other normal soul, they'd just shrug and think someone was over-reacting. It was just a freak accident, it should be fine. But to those who were blessed with the skill of swordsmanship, it was almost like a death.

Well, no time could be wasted just standing and gawping there now, could it? With an almost-silent hiss, Madame Vastra leapt in front of her companion to swiftly begin hacking away at the incoming dangers. Meanwhile, Jenny tested a few 'safe swings' (if any sort of swing with a sharp piece of steel could be considered 'safe') with her bent weapon; it was no use. It was like her extended arm had been broken and crippled, and the blade simply couldn't swing through the air anymore. It would glance off to the left of its own accord, a soldier turned madman. Jenny cursed as she couldn't even sheathe it, the bend stubbornly blocking the way in, so tossed it aside to be damned for all she cared at this point in time.

"Cut the grounded spears! It should terminate their use!" called Vastra over her shoulder, tossing one of her katanas to Jenny (all the while watching some men have the nerve to retrieve their used weapons whilst joking amongst themselves. The cheek! They think they can win a battle by sheer numbers?)

"Oh, and Jenny dear?"

"Yes ma'am?" came the reply, accompanied by a satisfying crack of splintering wood.

"Do utilise some grenades, and don't fear to be too liberal with how many."

"Aye ma'am, right away ma'am."

The rain of wooden shafts was slowly thinning out now, as supply failed to reach demand increasingly more frequently. However, the mass that had clung to the foot of the building was slowly expanding outwards, so it was longer than it was thick. Vastra checked her right, where less progress had been made in comparison the west of her, incidentally also where Tim was still smashing any spear within arm's reach by main force.

Whilst this tactic of slowly draining the enemies' resources did succeed, it was painfully slow. So slow that Vastra decided to take the risk of a head on charge at the men themselves. This was, to be concise, extremely effective. Scattering, very few could gather themselves again before they found that an arm or leg had been severed from their body. If they were lucky, that is. Many decapitated bodies fell on the spot, whereas others fell clutching their necks, writhing in agony at the toxins coursing through their vessels, plunging them into a black abyss of slow, but inevitable, death. Some watched as fragments of themselves danced in front of their eyes, the macabre confetti of explosives painting the world a demonic crimson. The unluckiest of them all would watch as a beast, no taller than himself, would wrench his own spear out of his grasp and plunge it straight through his mouth to firmly anchor itself in the earth underneath his head. This could be seen as a mercy, so one wouldn't, and couldn't, watch the feral devouring of their very own internal organs before them.

Weighted and weary, the atmosphere hovered stationary between the motley crew. The breeze itself daren't enter the square of unholy slaughter, instead, taking a shadowed route around the skirts of the surrounding edifices. With blood running high, in both senses, the world seemed to stand still around them, the enormity of what they'd just done still yet to crash upon them.

Slowly, silently, the curtain of realisation drew open, synchronised with the departing of all beams of natural light, plunging all into the darkest hours of the night.

They'd wiped them out.

All of them, lost in a quieting pool of blood, remains and corpses strewn throughout the area. Even Strax was...wait, where was Strax?

Darting forward into the shadows lining the square, Vastra soon found the larger-than-normal body that could only be her butler's. Plucking out the life detection scanner from its usual location on his utility belt (well, he said 'utility', but 'grenade' would be a much more fitting name by far), she scanned the stilled mass of war-given-form. It recognised the Sontaran form, and offered a 'Probic Vent Attack Recovery', which Vastra prodded excessively viciously.

With a twitch and a jerk, Strax's figure sat up at a sharp ninety degree angle, his domed head swivelling around to take in the scene. Though they'd never admit it later, the Silurian and the maid had never been so relieved to see Strax alive.

There was a slight grunt and growl behind them. Jenny and Vastra turned to see Tim, joints stiffened with a strange look in his lupine eyes. Was he...grinning?

Painfully slowly, as though a holy deity itself had thrown a spanner into the ever-churning cogs of time, he tilted forward. Only then did the two metre long wooden protrusion reveal itself, lodged in at an alarming depth in the blood-stained hide.

A/N: How about that? My personal rule: if you're going to create non-canon characters, kill them all off later so you don't have to write a sequel/tie up loose ends/leave a werewolf running rampage around London. What about you? Do you think he should have lived?