Still watching through the window, Angel saw that crazy woman from earlier come skipping in with someone under her arm. As soon as he saw who it was, he stealthily moved out of sight.
When everyone else entered, they saw Athena sitting on the floor with the flustered Giles, who was receiving a head massage. The two of them were sitting out of easy sight of the windows, especially the main living room one. The others followed suit, sitting or lying on the living room floor.
"What happened to all the lights anyway?" Buffy asked.
"Did you turn them out so you wouldn't be noticed? I saw all the houses were dark." Willow asked.
"Actually, Dawn and I hid in the basement when the machines went berserk, then after what seemed a few hours, all the noise stopped, we snuck back upstairs, and realized the power was off when Dawn flipped a light switch because she said it was too dark." Joyce explained.
"I guess all the machines did the wacky at your school too, huh?" Xander asked Dawn.
"I guess. I was home with a tummy ache. The first clue I had that something was going on was when my stereo screamed at me to quit shaking my skinny behind at it. What do stereos know about good behinds anyway? Skinny's in." Dawn grumbled.
"If you say so." Apollo commented wryly.
Dawn beamed at Apollo because he said something to her, only to be pulled into Athena's lap and get a tummy rub.
Xander gazed longingly at Athena, wishing she would give him a tummy rub, and Cordelia pinched him on the side, causing him to almost yelp before he clamped his hand over his mouth.
"So, what could have caused this Stephen King story that came to life? Anyone?" Buffy asked.
"A demon?" Helen offered.
"Aliens?" Zeus put in.
"Skynet?" Xander threw out. He was the proud recipient of numerous raised eyebrows.
"God?" Athena joked. The others gave her a strange look.
"Neil's dark side, perhaps?" Artemis remarked thoughtfully.
"Not her style." Lilith replied.
Buffy stood up and tiptoed over to the stairs.
"Where you going Buffy?" Willow asked softly.
"To do a number one, can't hold it any longer."
As she skulked up the dim stairway, hearing the whispered conversation below, she sensed a familiar presence nearby.
Angel.
But first she really had to pee.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she entered her bedroom and saw Angel emerge from the shadows.
"Hey." Buffy said.
"Hey." Angel replied in his quiet voice.
"So…did the happy machines scare you or are you just glad to see me?" Buffy joked lamely.
"Both actually." Angel said dryly.
"Oh."
There was a long silence, filled with unresolved tension.
"Are you okay?" Angel said at last.
"Dandy. Except for the metal murderers patrolling the streets and all the electric devices going haywire. Got any clues?"
"None. I've never encountered anything like this before. No demon I know off has the power to control machinery like this, and certainly not on this scale."
"Great. Every machine in Sunnydale seems to have been affected, and we have zip, zilch, and zero. Actually, we have a Ziploc. An empty Ziploc."
Angel started to reply, when the bedroom door opened.
As the others discussed the situation, Joyce crawled over and sat beside the embarrassed yet satisfied Giles, still getting his forehead rubbed.
"You know, Mr. Giles, I wanted to tell you about this strange piece of jewelry we had gotten at the gallery."
Giles looked at her, and responded with: "Jewelry?"
"Yes, a gold amulet with a red ruby embedded in the center and strange crimson markings on it. It's the weirdest thing. I was hoping after this was over, you could come to the gallery and tell me more about it."
His eyes had widened through her description, and he quickly turned to the others with a frantic urgency that caught everyone's attention.
"We need to proceed to the art gallery immediately." Giles said worriedly.
The taken aback Angel and Buffy were frozen as the door seemed to open in slow motion.
Busted. Buffy thought numbly.
The door opened fully, and a somewhat familiar man walked through.
Who is he? I've seen him somewhere before… Angel wondered.
"Neil, what's up?" Buffy said softly, trying to keep the immense relief out of her voice.
"We just had a breakthrough, and Giles sent me up to fetch you because I was the closest to the stairs. Hi Angel, I wondered when you would show up."
"Hi." Angel said guardedly. He had perceived the way Buffy was regarding this stranger.
"I'll leave you two alone." He walked out and closed the door.
Giles saw Neil descending the stairs, and inquired, "Where's Buffy?"
"Did she fall head-first into the toilet and get stuck and accidentally hit the flush lever in her desperate yet comical struggles?" Athena snickered. Xander, Dawn, and Faith began sniggering.
"Children, please." Diana admonished.
"Not exactly. She needed to find something in her room first." Neil clarified.
The Scoobies, Joyce, and Dawn nodded and turned away, going over possible strategies to get the gallery as quickly and quietly as feasible. Neil's personalities watched him carefully and Neil put his finger over his lips in a shush motion and gestured upward with his eyes. They nodded at him. Faith observed this curiously, and started to converse, but Neil shook his head at her and made the same shush motion. Faith shut her mouth, a little surprised and hurt, but Neil sat beside her and patted her shoulder affectionately, and she relaxed, putting her head against Athena's shoulder, which Athena returned by laying her head on Faith's head.
"Well, I better get going." Buffy said. "Gotta save the world and all that jazz." She turned away and prepared to go to her bedroom door when she felt Angel's hand grasp her shoulder.
"They're going to your mother's art gallery."
"Uh, why? Strange time to gaze at abstract paintings isn't it?"
"Whatever is causing this is there, a gold amulet with a red ruby and runes."
Once she heard that, she nodded and Angel released her. As she opened the door and stepped through, she turned and looked back at him.
"Will you-"
"I will."
She left, leaving Angel standing alone in the darkness.
Everyone looked up at Buffy as she descended the stairway.
"Did you find what you needed Buffy?" Giles asked her.
She looked a little confused at first, before saying, "No. It doesn't matter." in a grim and saddened voice.
As she reached the bottom, she had a question of her own: "So, I guess we figured out what was going on?"
"Indeed." Giles replied, "The problem is an amulet, the amulet of Technus. Technus was a powerful sorcerer who despised technology, and he created this amulet to bring machinery and such to malevolent life in an effort to force humanity to revert to the old ways. Before he could utilize it, Council assassins eliminated him and claimed they had destroyed the amulet. They were obviously mistaken."
"But why hasn't it been doing this before now? I mean, it must have been to other places first before it came here." Willow pointed out.
"It needs a huge amount of mystical power, like an active Hellmouth, before it will function."
"How do we stop it?" Bellona asked, getting straight to the point (as usual).
"Smashing the ruby should suffice."
"Then let's go. Why are we just sitting here? Let's do it." Hera said impatiently.
"Quite right." Giles attempted to rise to his feet only to nearly fall down again, Athena catching him in time.
"Are you okay, Giles?" Buffy asked in alarm.
"My foot seems to be a bit more hurt than I thought, it may be best if I linger here, as I will only slow you down."
Buffy gave Neil a worried askance look, which screamed, Help me!
"We may need your knowledge Giles, you're the expert here. Bellona, since you're the closest, if you would…" Neil gestured.
Bellona picked up Giles by the scruff of his collar and placed him over her shoulder, to Giles's dismay.
"Artemis and I will stay here to look after Joyce and Dawn." Diana announced.
"Okay. Let's go put a stop to this now. That Techie amulet will be sorry it ever came to MY town." Buffy stated in her best determined voice. She marched to the front door, opened it, stomped through, came back in with a humiliated look on her face, shut the door, and snuck to the back door.
Athena made a gun gesture with her right hand, stuck it to her head, made a dubious gunshot noise, and then she and Faith followed after Buffy. The others followed after her and sighed.
The quiet of the night was broken only by the roar of helicopter blades as Apache attack helicopters patrolled the area around the gallery, and M1A2 Abrams tanks rumbled past, the ground shaking in concert with their passage. Our heroes were peeking at this scene from the mouth of an alley several hundred feet away.
"Gee, could this be the right place?" Xander mumbled.
"Xander. shush!" Willow admonished.
Bellona and Hera gave them a look, and they shut up fast.
"Keep the unnecessary noise to a minimum. The Apaches have microphones that can pick up voices." Bellona growled lowly.
"Sorry." Willow and Xander squeaked.
"Um, Bellona, if you would…?" Giles asked softly. He was facing the wrong way because he was still hanging over Bellona's massive shoulder where she had put him earlier. Bellona took him by his collar and faced him the right way.
"Oh…my." Giles breathed very quietly.
"Time for another distraction?" Athena whispered gleefully.
Xander did his patented double-take at Athena's question.
"Try it and we'll whip your ass!" everyone else hissed fiercely (and quietly).
Dawn was in the living room painting her nails when she heard a low creak upstairs.
"What was that?!" Dawn asked apprehensively, jumping up.
"I'll check. Stay here." Diana said to Dawn. Artemis and Joyce came out of the dining room in response to Dawn's alarmed tone.
"What is it?" Joyce asked Diana.
"Dawn and I heard a noise upstairs. Artemis, if you could…?"
Artemis nodded and ushered the other woman (and girl) into the dining room as Diana ascended the stairs.
"What about magic?" Willow whispered.
"The amulet will sense the mystical energies and direct those machines in our direction." Giles explained.
"So, nojo on the mojo and I'm not exactly Wonder Woman in the strength department." Buffy said.
"So what do we do?" Faith said edgily.
Before anyone could reply, they were suddenly framed in the spotlight of a police cruiser. The police car honked loudly, drawing the military vehicles' attention.
"I know what we can do. RUN LIKE HELL!" Apollo cried.
Everybody scattered as the 120mm tank shells and anti-tank rockets flew unerringly in their direction.
Diana looked warily around the corner, her ethereally green vampire eyes evaluating the corridor with a keen eye. Seeing nothing unusual, she stepped into the hallway.
All the doors were closed, which meant she would have to open each room's door to find the source of the noise.
Of course, it was highly possible that it was the house settling, but this was Sunnydale after all.
She moved toward Dawn's room when she heard the noise again.
It came from Buffy's room.
Bellona tackled the frozen Willow, Xander, Cordelia, and Oz to the ground, narrowly avoiding the tank shell as it soared toward them. It exploded somewhere behind them. The tank opened fire with its fifty-caliber.
"OW! Get off us, you big amazon!" Cordelia yelled.
"You want to die?" Bellona snarled in Cordelia's face. She shut up fast.
Bellona scooped up all four of them in her massive arms and ran for cover.
"Where's Giles?!" Willow screamed.
"Taryn and Lilith have him!" Bellona answered. She kicked a warehouse door off its hinges and began to charge through when she stiffened.
"What's wrong?!" Xander shouted.
"She's been hit." Oz answered, growing anxiety in his voice.
"Just a scratch." Bellona said soothingly.
"Oh my god…" Willow whispered.
There was blood flowing down Bellona's arms in rivulets.
"Jesus…" Cordelia breathed shallowly.
The huge woman shuffled into the warehouse, sat them down, then sank to one muscled knee, and said, "Run…"
"We're not leaving you here." Willow said firmly.
"You're not strong enough to move me, girl."
"Sure as hell gonna try." Xander replied.
Bellona staggered up, and all four teenagers ran to her and tried to hold her up, but she waved them off. She spat out blood.
"Shit." Cordelia said.
As she limped past, all the Scoobies could see her vast back looked like a vast sea of blood.
Upon witnessing this, they moved to support her again, ignoring her protests.
They moved as quietly as they could out of the warehouse and into another building, unseen.
And just in time.
The warehouse they had just left was obliterated by a salvo of tank shells and rockets.
Buffy, Neptune, and Helen almost literally ran into Lilith and Taryn and Giles, being carried fireman style over Taryn's shoulders.
"Where's Willow and Xander?! Oz?! Cordelia even?!" Buffy asked desperately.
"The last we saw of them Bellona was tackling them to the ground to avoid a shell, and then we were forced to flee from the cannon fire of an Apache." Giles elucidated.
"Damnit!" Helen swore.
"We need to go look for them!" Buffy shouted.
"What we need to do is destroy that amulet." Lilith replied, "Not go off running half-cocked in the middle of a war zone."
Buffy snorted at her, and turned away, only to feel an iron grip on her wrist. She glared back at Lilith.
"Let. Go." Buffy said, voice low and dangerous.
"Or what, Elizabeth? You'll strike me? Don't be a fool. There is no telling where they are. You can't help them by dying, now can you?"
"S-She's right, Buffy. If we don't destroy that amulet, more people will die." Giles reasoned.
"I DON'T CARE! I'M GOING TO FIND MY FRIENDS!" Buffy screamed in anger. She started trying to yank away from Lilith, only for darkness to intervene.
"Sorry, kid, but we haven't got time for this overemotional bullshit." Helen said. She draped the insensible Buffy over her powerful shoulders, and asked Giles, "Which way?"
Giles was stunned at what had just transpired, but he shook himself and looked around, and said, "This way. I think we're no-"as they emerged from the side street, his voice faltered.
Everyone (except Buffy, of course) saw what Giles saw at the same time.
A pair of semis heading straight for them, from both directions, horns blaring.
Apollo, Zeus, Ares, and Hera ran down the street, turned a corner, and somehow ended up in front of the art gallery. It appeared to be unguarded.
"Okay, this looks a little too fucking easy." Hera snarled.
They crept toward the building, looking around every few seconds, until they reached the entrance of the building.
"Now what?" Zeus asked. "You know the damn door is probably wired to an alarm, probably bring every damn machine in town on top of us."
Hera unexpectedly ripped the door off its hinges and threw it into the street.
"No power. No alarm. Right" Zeus said, taken off guard.
They slipped inside.
Faith, Athena, and Neil moved on down the passageway, looking for the amulet.
"Notice anything?" Faith whispered.
"No dice." Athena whispered back.
"Jackpot." Neil suddenly whispered.
Athena and Faith followed his pointing finger to a door with a red glow spilling out from under it.
As they moved toward the door, fanning out, a hand, without warning, clamped down on Faith's shoulder. She spun with a left hook toward the nose of whoever it was, only for the other person to bat it away.
"Easy, cowgirl. I've been hit by you enough for one night." Ares said.
"See anybody else?" Neil asked worriedly.
"No, unfortunately." Apollo answered.
"Let's get this done then." Athena nodded to the door.
Continuing to spread out, Zeus and Athena slowly opened the door.
And there it was.
The amulet of Technus.
Wrapped in an aura of crimson energy, its red ruby and markings glowing and shifting malevolently.
Athena, Zeus, Hera, and Faith jumped the gun, springing towards it.
"Wait! It might have-"Ares, Apollo, and Neil started.
Only for the four of them to bounce off an invisible barrier and fall to the floor.
"Other defenses." Ares, Apollo, and Neil finished in a monotone.
"This shit would have to get more complicated, wouldn't it?" Athena groused from the floor.
"Yep." Everybody else chorused.
With four huge semi trucks bearing down, they did what was only normal in this situation.
They hopped back into the side street and ran in the other direction like the hounds of hell were nipping at their heels.
The menacing trucks turned after them, but the street was too narrow for them to follow.
Their frustrated horn blasts rang through the night like the sound of wolves howling.
The door swung open almost lethargically, and after a moment, Diana peeped around the door frame.
She stepped into the room, her probing gaze missing nothing.
Empty, seemingly.
But that noise had come from in here.
As she glanced at the bed, the closet door opened behind her.
And the figure that emerged moved soundlessly toward the amazonian woman.
To be completely astonished when she whirled on him with surprising speed and grabbed him around the throat, lifting him from the floor.
"Hello, Liam."
"Hi." Angel gasped.
"Being a bit raucous up here, aren't we?"
"That sound didn't come from me."
That was when the monster sprang from the shadows.
"This damn thing's impenetrable! Now what?" Athena growled.
They should know, since they had spent half an hour hammering on it with everything they could find (mainly paintings and sculptures.)
"Damned if I know." Ares shrugged.
A door burst open somewhere in the building and there was the sound of running footsteps before Helen, Neptune, Lilith, Taryn, and the carried Giles and Buffy popped into view.
"Oh my god, you're still alive." Helen breathed in relief.
"So far." Zeus replied, casting a look around.
"Where's Bel? The Scoobies?" Apollo demanded.
"She was saving them from a tank. We lost contact from that point when a gunship attacked." Lilith responded.
The others cursed under their breath.
"Why is the amulet still intact?" Giles inquired.
Faith picked up a vase and chucked it at the talisman. It shattered uselessly on the forcefield.
"I see." Giles said in a small voice.
"Any ideas, Rupert?" Lilith inquired of him.
"W-Well, we will need some things from my flat, but that may prove impossible."
"Quite."
Everyone gazed at the untouchable amulet in mounting annoyance.
"Perhaps we could tr-"Giles began.
"LOOK OUT!" came Buffy's voice.
Everyone dived for cover as a tank shell exploded through the window.
And then another.
All became still.
Xander poked his head cautiously out the window and looked around.
"Anything?" Willow asked tentatively.
"Ow!" Xander yelled.
"Oh my god! Xander's been shot!" Cordelia screamed.
"Damn splinter! Ow! ow! ow!" Xander whined, shaking his hand.
"You big baby!" Cordelia bitched at him.
"Guys! Focus! We are surrounded by big nasty machines that want to make us greasy spots on the pavement of liffffe!" Willow waved her hands emphatically.
"Teenagers." Bellona grumbled from her spot against the wall as Willow, Xander, and Cordelia argued.
"How you holding up?" Oz asked.
"Not good. Good thing I manifest as a vampire or I would be dead. Hungry, and you're smelling kind of good right now." Bellona said pointedly.
"Okay. Standing over here now." Oz said, backing away and rejoining the others, who had stopped fighting.
"Why is she looking at me like I'm an ordeuve?" Xander asked nervously.
Bellona's face shifted.
"Uh oh." The Scoobies chorused.
Diana threw Angel to one side and she dodged to the other. As she jumped away, she caught details of their assailant's appearance: a bizarre blob-like being, body continuously shifting and morphing, completely mutable. As she spun to face it, she was reminded of the alien from The Thing, that John Carpenter film she had watched some time ago.
It lunged at her, claws sprouting from it and mouths snapping. The monster seemed to be ignoring Angel and focusing on her for some reason. She blocked its claw attacks and kicked it in its body. It screeched in pain. Despite its protoplasmic nature, it could feel pain at least.
I cannot fight this monstrosity here. Dawn and Joyce are inside the house. I must carry this battle outside, machines or no machines. Diana thought.
Before she could do anything else, Angel suddenly stabbed it from behind with a short sword that he had acquired from somewhere, presumably Buffy's weapon chest, if he had not been carrying it the whole time.
The creature leaped at the ensouled vampire in response, and they both went crashing through the window, Angel losing his sword.
Diana didn't hesitate. She jumped through the broken window after them.
Rubble shifted and finally fell away as Apollo, Ares, Hera, Helen, Neptune, Athena, Lilith, Taryn, Buffy, Faith, and Zeus emerged from the debris, shoving it away from them. Giles and Neil looked up gratefully.
"That was very thoughtful. It was getting rather difficult to breathe." Giles said thankfully.
"Understatement of the year, G-Man." Faith chuckled.
"Speaking of which, is everybody still breathing, relatively speaking for most of us?" Ares asked, looking around.
There were various groaned affirmations. They were all pretty beat up, with various cuts and bruises. Zeus had a nasty gash on his head, and Buffy a serious cut on her arm, but it could have been much worse.
They started at the sound they suddenly heard, that of tank treads approaching. Looking quickly at the direction of the noise, they saw a MBT, apparently the one that had just tried to murder them, approach them, and then back away, its turret pivoting quickly back and forth. It was acting erratically, to say the least.
"What the f-" Buffy began.
"Hey." Faith interrupted. She reached down and plucked something from the ruins that had caught her eye.
The amulet.
It was scorched and warped, to say the least. The ruby was barely shimmering now.
Hera took the damned thing from Faith, dropped it on the ground, and smashed it with her foot.
The tank ceased all movement.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.