FIC: Faith Wayne (21/?)
Osaka, Japan
Riley peered down his sniper's scope and waited, eye trained on the flat roof of a twelfth floor penthouse apartment building. According to their information the present occupier of the twelfth floor, the prestige apartment, came out at 5:30 AM every morning to swim her morning laps.
And when she came out this morning, an assassin's bullet would greet her.
Killing in cold blood like this soured the taste in his mouth, but he'd read the file on today's target and Lady Shiva was far too risky for him to send two or even three Slayers against when he could do it far more easily himself. Heck, his soul could take a little sullying if it protected his Slayers.
He licked his lips as the roof door swung open and the Lady herself strode out. The tall Oriental who walked out was clad in a black one piece and her mane tied back in a ponytail, the woman was aged in her mid-forties but looked two decades younger.
The shot was just a fraction over a thousand yards and made yet more difficult by the target's relative smallness, her head. Not many more than a couple of dozen men throughout the world could make the shot.
It was lucky he was one of those two dozen.
The moment the infamous assassin clambered up onto the springboard, Riley stroked ever so gently on his trigger. A tenth of a second later the Oriental spun like a top, blood spurting from her head as she splashed into the pool. Riley kept his gaze fixed on the pool, counting slowly to three hundred before rising, satisfied that even if the woman had survived his shot, she'd have drowned in the pool by now. After putting his gun away, he strode out of the rented apartment, his unsavoury task completed.
Los Angeles, CA
Industrial metal blared out from the nightclub that Angel and Connor perched upon, the foul music aggravating Angel's already bad mood. The alley beneath them didn't help either, his enhanced nose picking up every sweat droplet, every spilt drop of booze, every vomit. In contrast Connor seemed at peace, a peace that had been all too rare until Wolfram & Hart had re-set him.
But then it wasn't Connor's protégé being hunted by the world's most notorious assassin, a man whose record for murder out-stripped even his. And a man who ran an organisation that made the Scourge of Europe seem like a Salvation Army marching band.
Angel peered into the alley running up the side of the club, noting the tall, lean man dressed in casual but smart clothing, the man having no apparent fear either of the shadows or the rough part of town he found himself in.
"That's Alpha."
Even as he growled his recognition, Angel was dropping off the roof, Connor a split-second behind him. Their descent was soundless, and yet their target spun to meet them, as if he had senses to match Angel.
Alpha caught Connor as he came in, his elbow cannoning off the side of Connor's head. Yet even as Connor stumbled away, Angel was gliding in, sliding behind the man as he spun to face him, his fist snapping into Alpha's kidney. The man's mouth opened in a pained cry. Even so, he managed to glide under Angel's follow-up right cross, his own fist crashing into Angel's jaw.
Angel stumbled back a half-step, the assassin hurried after him only to be forced to spin around to deal with Connor. Connor sidestepped the hired killer's thrust kick and attempted his own kick that Alpha blocked on his forearm.
Then Angel grabbed the hired killer in a rear triangle choke hold and squeezed, the assassin's legs buckling in seconds.
"He was good dad, one on one he'd have been tougher than most vampires," his son commented. "His moves were crisp, fast, and powerful, he knew what he was doing."
"Yeah," Angel agreed. If this was just one of the League's top assassins, he hated to think what the rest were like.
San Diego, CA
Illyria's heel crashed into the door, wood splintered under her attack, the door flying off to crash into the door opposite, both doors crashing into the far wall of the kitchen. "You," she snarled as the beefy Mohicaned man with wild staring eyes scrambled to his feet, "are the one they call Mad Dog?"
The man let out an inarticulate growl and charged at her, attempting a spin-kick that she blocked on her forearm. The assassin shook his head, eyes widening as he segued into a right cross that she batted away. The assassin let out a grunt before flinging himself forward in an attempted shoulder charge, her palms slapping up to crash into the man's shoulders, the man whitening as his collar-bones popped as he fell into the wall behind him.
The man spun away from her attempted thrust kick to the face and into an elbow to her face. Illyria smiled as she reached up, snatched the man by his hair, and flung him down onto his back, her heel coming down to crash into and through his face.
Illyria stared down dispassionately at the slain assassin as she raised her foot out of the ruins of his face. Ever since Angel had allied them with the Council after the Slayer army had rescued her companions during the battle with the Black Thorns, they and their expanded team had become part of the Council, mostly independent but funded by and allied to them. On occasion however they asked them to do jobs such as this.
The half-breed had claimed that this assassin might be a challenge. Once again he was in error.
Toronto, Canada
"You in position, Shannon?"
"We're in position," her counterpart confirmed.
Rona looked at her companion. "You ready Dana?"
The previously insane Vampire Slayer nodded. The girl's insanity was well under control these days, but she was still withdrawn, but in battle, man, the only Slayer she'd seen who could beat her one on one was Faith. Maybe Buffy too, but she'd seen Faith and Dana spar, never Buffy and Dana, on account of Summers thankfully never being around these days..
Dana's presence was a definite plus, David Cain might look like a hunk of middle-aged goodliness, but according to everything she had read he was utterly ruthless and highly skilled, in the very upper echelon of the League. That was why there were four Slayers to take down one normal. That rankled, yeah, there were plenty of metas around tougher than a Slayer, but a normal?
Except Mr. Giles had insisted on it, and if there was one man Rona didn't want to get on the wrong side of it was him.
Focusing her attention back, Rona spoke into the mike. "Go!"
Wood splintered as Dana kicked the single-storey apartment's door open and charged down the corridor towards where the building plans indicated the bedroom was.
Then suddenly the target was in the corridor, his naked upper torso rippling with muscle far more functional than a pretty-boy bodybuilder's. His foot shot out with a speed that should have impossible for a normal, catching Dana under the jaw and flinging her into the air, Rona only barely managing to sway away from the Slayer turned human missile.
In the split-second it took her to side-step Dana, Vi and Shannon arrived at the assassin's other side. Rona's eyes widened in disbelief when Cain swayed away from Vi's attempted knee to the midsection while slapping away Shannon's palm strike and kicking Vi in her grounded knee, knocking the red-headed Slayer into the wall.
"Damn it!" Rona grunted. Their whole mission was going to hell. Renewed determination not to fail sent her surging forward, slamming a heel into the back of the assassin's knee.
Except the assassin spun away from her attempted assault, lights dancing before her eyes when the killer drove an elbow into the side of her head. The assassin lunged in fast, his arm snaking around her throat in a choke hold. Rona's hand shot up, grabbing the assassin's arm at the crook even as she snapped forward at the waist and flung the killer over her shoulder.
Somehow the thickly-built human twisted like a gymnast half his size, caught the wall feet first and kicked off into a somersault, landing on one foot while his left foot snapped off in blurringly fast heel kick that caught Vi in her chest, knocking her back in the wall. Vi's mouth opened in a defiant grunt as she shot off a knee that caught the killer in his lower back, knocking him forward.
Shannon darted in with an uppercut that the assassin swayed away from, grabbing hold of the Slayer's arm and snapping forward and down, the Slayer's arm snapping as it went against the grain. The assassin spun to face her, forcing Rona to duck under a right cross.
Wind exploded from her mouth when the assassin caught her with a steel hard knee to the gut. Rona forced herself to straighten only to have to sway away from a left uppercut. "Whoa!" Rona gasped when a screaming Dana lunged over her shoulder to grab at Cain's throat, her fellow Slayer's eyes bulging with rage.
Cain attempted to fling Dana off him, but Dana held on, twisting with her bodyweight so that the assassin crashed headfirst into the bedroom's door frame, wood cracking under the impact. The assassin's pain was only compounded when Dana drove a blurring series of knees into his midsection, a rib cracking with every blow.
Cain's forearm swung up and slammed into the brunette's face, snapping her head back, knocking his pitbull-like attacker away from him. The assassin stumbled upright, right into a leg-sweep from behind from Shannon. The assassin swayed backwards, then righted himself in time for Dana to lunge at him, tackle him around the midsection and take him to the carpet. Before the assassin had time to blink, Vi, Rona, and Shannon were on him, kicking him into unconsciousness as Dana held him down.
"Wow," Rona slumped against the wall as the bloodied assassin finally slipped into unconsciousness. "That was fun."
"Let's get him restrained and teleported back to the base," Vi said.
"Yeah," Rona nodded. "I really don't want round two."
Buenos Aries, Argentina
Kennedy grinned as she trailed the statuesque red-head through Buenos Aries, the 18 and 19th century architecture of Spanish, French, and Italian design creating a beautifully cosmopolitan city. The South American branch of the International Slayers' Council was usually based in party central, also known as Rio, but when the mystics had informed them that one of Ghul's major underlings was in Argentina's capital city, Willow had instantly decided they were going to take her.
Not that Kennedy blamed her, her mood took a major downturn as her target took a turn into a less salubrious but still upwardly middle-class area of the city. Xander had been Willow's best friend since kindergarten and he'd lost an eye protecting Kennedy from Caleb. No price was too high to avenge an attack on him.
And so for the last few days they'd been running a surveillance on the assassin, Whisper D'Aire. Ironically enough they'd found in turn that the red-haired assassin was running her own observation on a businessman, presumably as a prelude to assassination.
Not that it mattered, Kennedy grinned as Whisper D'Aire entered the same alley she'd entered for the past three days, the contract was never going to be carried out.
Kennedy had barely crept into the alley's mouth when Willow appeared in the far end, blocking the assassin's progress, Willow's eyes blazing fire. "You think you can attack my best friend? Threaten his girl-friend's life? You think there wouldn't be consequences?"
The assassin didn't bother with a response or a warning, instead her head reared back, then snapped forward, spittle flying from her mouth only to hit an invisible shield scant inches from the witch's face. "You think I didn't know about your acid spit? You think I didn't know what I was dealing with?" Willow casually waved her hand to the right, the assassin gasped as she flew into the right wall, hitting the bricks with a sickening impact, then Willow waved her hand to the other wall, reversing the assassin's flight until she crashed into the left, yet more bones shattering under the force. "Down doggie." Willow snarled, her hand pointing to the cobbles as she cast the assassin facefirst to the ground, blood spewing out as her facial bones shattered.
Kennedy folded her arms and lent against the wall as she watched Willow work. "And now I'm increasing the gravity in the area surrounding you," Willow continued, her voice several degrees lower than freezing. The red-haired assassin let out a squeal. "It must feel as if you've got a car on your back." Willow paused. "Now a truck."
"Ahhhhh!" The assassin let out a wail, her breath coming in ragged pants.
"Enough fun," Willow began walking around the flattened killer. "I could cut off the blood supply to your brain with a simple click of my fingers. In fact," the witch raised a hand. "I think I will."
The assassin stilled her frenetic struggles, her lithe body lying limply on the ground. Willow muttered something under her breath then looked towards her, the righteous fury draining from her face to be replaced with her usual shy gentleness. "I've placed a mystical gag over her mouth, she can't spit at anyone now." Willow looked over her shoulder to the Slayers lurking there. "Get her cuffed and out my sight."
"Ah," Kennedy grinned as the two girls concealed in the shadows behind Willow hurried forward to restrain the unconsciousness assassin, "and I was gonna use the cuffs on you tonight."
Willow blushed and giggled. "Don't worry we have spares."
Kiev, Russia
Miller blew air on his freezing hands as he slunked in the shadows of Kiev's drably industrial area, all the buildings uniformly grey and slab-like, bereft of any decoration. He tensed as the target's blood-red Porsche sped past, Nyssa Raatko's raven-cropped locks clearly visible. "Target acquired," he muttered into the mouthpiece concealed by the scarf wrapped around his neck.
"Okay," came the whispered reply.
He watched as the car parked nine buildings down, the lithe assassin climbing out and heading up the steps leading to the building's entrance, then winced as a light flashed and the woman flew back, crashing into her car. Dazed, she struggled to her feet, turning to her car, her hand reaching down to the handle.
Then another flash erupted, this one so blinding Miller had to jerk his head away, then the woman crumpled. "It's done," Madison reported, her voice tired, "she's out."
"Colleen, Caridad," Miller ordered. "Collect the package, make sure she's restrained, then move her home."
An Unknown Location
Ghul's jaw hung slack as he stared at the screen, unable to believe the information on it. Over the past week the mystics shielding him from magical tracking had reported attempts to seek him, necessitating him to move twice in the past seven days, but his seconds had had no such protection.
And as a result, not one but six of his most significant agents were out of the game, two dead and four missing in action. His organisation's leadership destroyed in one night.
The only enemy he knew of with the will and nerve to do such a thing was the Batman, but unless his agents had grown in number and begun using lethal methods it could not be him. Which only raised the question, who was doing this?
The only answer that made the remotest sense was the mystery meta that was Faith Wayne. She'd already displayed the skills to escape two attempts on her life, could she behind this devastating strike at his organisation? What empowered her? What shadowy organisation lurked behind her?