To the Power Born: A Tale of the Slayers

Part 39: Power Play

I stared blankly for a moment as Mi Kyong, tiny, good-natured, level-headed Mi Kyong, leapt after the START soldier she'd attacked, then I went that way to restrain her— until Ripley cried in my head, *No, Jocelyn! Mi Kyong RIGHT! He not person, not have mind like person, we can't reach him!*

Even as Ripley told me that, Mi Kyong reached the soldier she'd attacked, kicked him down as he tried to stand— then went flying through the air with a "whoof" of surprise as he kicked up from the ground, kicked her in the stomach harder than any normal soldier could have done, sent her flying.

I saw Starpulse rise up into the air to catch her before she fell, and I relaxed on that count— even as I tensed up, realized exactly what I was facing and started towards the "soldier."

"Hey, look, I don't know what's going on here, b—" the 'soldier' started to say.

"Save it, you filthy, blender-boinking Ronco reject!" I said, moving into the ginga, letting the things I remembered from my last fight with Warren help me set the tone for this one. "Too late, Warren— you're busted!"

The Warren-bot— and it was a Warren, even though it looked nothing like the current or original models— stood straight, smiled an almost sunny smile, and said, "Well, okay— I want to kill you more than I want to kill GI Joe anyway, you little bitch."

"You murdered my friend," I said, still moving in the ginga, letting the inherent insanity of Capoeira pull me into steps that I didn't plan, just let happen, hoping that would confuse him. "You murdered a friend I'd had since before I can even remember— and you think you're going to kill me?

"It's not happening, you miserable excuse for a food processor!"

The Warren-bot flexed both hands and those long, razor-sharp blades he'd intended to use on Buffy, that I'd kept him from using on her the day he murdered Royal, popped out of his fingertips. I grinned, stopped the ginga, took Buffy's favorite fighting stance— and leaped.

Warren-bot moved to meet me and I knew from his first movement that I'd already won.

He planned to fight me exactly the way he'd fought Buffy the day he'd tried to fool us all into letting him attack a lot of our stations by letting us kill him, the day he'd murdered Royal. I had to be careful, in case that was some sort of lulling tactic, but I didn't think so. Warren had never been a fighter, wouldn't have thought of having a lot of different fighting routines in his memory banks, or positronic matrix or whatever.

Add in that I was furious— in-control-furious, not the blind rage I'd been in the day he'd killed my Royal— and that I knew how to use that fury, and I knew I could beat him.

I continued fighting like Buffy, went after him with a mixture of Hwa Rang Do and tiger-and-leopard kung fu, gave him something familiar to fight, at least at first, and fought to keep a grin off my face as he responded in the same ways he'd responded to Buffy that horrible day. I had to be careful of the blades on his fingers, but that didn't change all that much.

No one tried to help. No one interfered. They understood, even Buffy. Buffy and I each had a reason to hate him, and hers was, if I'm going to be honest with myself, more pressing than mine in a lot of ways. But I was only almost-fifteen, and I hadn't had her experience with dealing with losing people I cared about, didn't have her maturity to help me past it— so she let me have this Warren-bot.

(Besides, we both knew that there'd be more of him to kill.)

I let Warren run the fight for a minute or so, stayed defensive, made absolutely sure that he had nothing new in his fight routines— then I let go, turned loose that cold, hard fury that had been plotting this since the day I buried Royal, and I killed that Warren-bot.

He'd grown cocky (though I noticed that he'd not talked and insulted through our fight, as he had through Buffy's fight with him that day, and knew that the ranting and screaming had been an act, a way to disarm us, to make us reduce the threat category we put him in), and I'd let him have a few shots, all kicks, so that he wouldn't cut me with his razor-tipped hands. I changed the tone of things suddenly, stopped fighting like Buffy and started fighting like me.

Warren kicked at my stomach and I back-flipped away from him, landed in the ginga, flung myself into a cartwheel, slammed first my left foot then my right across his head, sent him staggering. I pressed him, followed in the ginga, did a series of three spinning, head-to-the-ground-foot-to-his-head kicks, drove him back farther and harder, then bounced into a back aerial, slammed my feet up under his chin, felt something break, saw his head dangling off of the back of his neck, his body staggering around as his visual sensors fell into a position where he couldn't see me.

He still didn't say anything— but I didn't mind that, I didn't need him to speak to maintain my anger.

While he staggered around, trying to work out a way to attack me and see me at the same time, I did a series of back handsprings, stopped some forty feet from him, close to where my family stood watching silently. I turned, charged him, ran for twenty feet, then did three neat handsprings, bounced into the air as high as I could go, drew my longsword in mid-leap, and came down swinging it at his torso.

I split that worthless pile of misbegotten microchips almost completely in half down the middle, took a shock in doing so, but my armor was insulated, so it was a mild one.

I stood there gulping air for a long moment, then heard approaching footsteps. I glanced back to see Buffy almost to me, reaching out to hug me, and I met her halfway, hugged her while Starpulse slagged the robot, taking no chance that it would somehow get up and hurt someone like the last one had me.

"Good job, Jocelyn," Buffy said against my ear. "You fought him smart— I saw what you were doing, letting him think you fought just like me by default, suckering him into giving you your shot.

"You did it right, Slayer."

I smiled a little, squeezed her again, then she moved to let my folks hug me, tell me they were proud of me, that I'd fought him exactly how I should have. Then my lovers all kissed me, then Mi Kyong, smiling hugely, hugged me hard.

"Part of that Slayer dream you had?" I asked when we parted.

"Yes," Mi Kyong said. "I saw Graham standing before the START soldiers in formation and that part of the dream— in which a machine killed Graham by ambushing him from the ranks— came back to me, so I had Fog try to touch each person's mind. When she could not touch that of the soldier I attacked, I knew him to be not human, and what I'd seen in the dream told me he was a robot. I hadn't expected him to be a version of Warren— but I am glad that a piece of that monster is dead."

"Thanks for saving Graham, Mi Kyong," I said, and gave her another hug and a kiss on the cheek. "And for giving me a shot at another of Warren's selves. I pick good sisters, I do."

"You are welcome," she said, and gave me a smile.

"All right, people," Xander called. "Time to move out. The Giles Academy Ranch is just over that hill and a half a mile on. Colin scouted it, and it looks like there are still a lot of critters around, even a whole lot. They seem to be focused on the barn, which leads us to believe that there may be survivors in the shelter under the barn— so we're going to focus on breaking their assault on the shelter. Giles has IDed a bunch of the nasties, he'll brief you on banes, then Buffy on battle plan.

"Graham— thanks for coming, you're going to be a big help."

"No problem, Xander," Graham said, then looked at Buffy. "My team and I are at your disposal, Buffy— you give orders, we follow them."

Buffy nodded her thanks, then pulled Graham into a huddle with her, Xander, Giles, Kelly, Daddy, Ballard, Aunt Dawn, Lydia and Vincent to make plans.

Shortly we started over the hill and into battle.

Buffy had left Giles, Kelly, Brian Keller, Mi Kyong, Judith, Ian, Joyce, Willow, Starpulse, three experienced Slayers and a squad of START soldiers behind at our gate-in point to set up a small command post (Brian had what was needed for a command post in two big briefcases— he's amazing!) and keep track of things for us via video feeds from our night-vision goggles and the info fed to them by their pseudo dragons, who'd be flying high cover for us. The baby pseudo dragons, including Ripley, Hulk and Twilight, stayed at the gate-point, too.

I was assigned to the scout group, consisting of Aunt Elaine (in charge), Aunt Rose (not in charge only because of her emotional involvement), Vi and Vincent, Graham, Aunt Sh'rin (a master sneak) and a Native American Slayer named Shanna Red Leaf who, quite frankly, could out-sneak a frightened mouse. And me, of course. Behind us by about fifty yards came the main battle group, led by Buffy, and behind that, the ranged-combat-specialists-slash-reinforcements, led by Mom. The main group had two squads of START soldiers, and Mom's group had the last of the four START squads.

The Montana branch of the Giles Academy had been started before Giles bought the old Winston Academy and took it over, before the reality of the supernatural and the existence of Slayers had become public knowledge. Back in those days, Giles had thought (reasonably, I think) that he'd have to have a lot of schools to keep things going without drawing the attention of the masses. After the Battle of Bloomington and all that came after, he'd been able to do it more simply, all the newly activated Slayers coming to Bloomington to school, but he hadn't closed the Montana branch. Instead, he'd kept it going with a smaller staff, and sent to them the girls whose lives hadn't left them well-adapted for urban life. Girls who'd spent their entire lives on farms, in the woods, in small, one-crossroad communities, those who just couldn't handle crowds yet. The big empty of Montana made a great way for those girls to adapt, and as they got more used to people, they were taken on field trips to bigger and bigger towns, and eventually sent on to the main campus of the Academy in Bloomington. In addition, every girl from the school spent two semesters out here, the timing judged by the faculty at the main campus. You learned woodcraft, survival, tracking, and the simple necessities of living off of the land, taking care of animals, riding a horse, all that stuff. I'd done my first semester here already, the first half of my seventh grade year, and Mom had said I'd probably do the first half of my sophomore year— fall of 2019— here as well.

If, of course, this disaster didn't result in the closing of the Montana campus.

We got close, and I started getting a mixture of nauseous and furious. There were bodies in a lot of places, and no few of them were our people, some Slayers— mostly too young to be fully trained— some Watchers, some support staff and normal staff, the ranch hands and the people who took care of the livestock.

And the horses. They'd killed all the horses. That made me angry on a different level. The people, they'd known this could happen. They hadn't deserved it, they probably hadn't really believed that it could happen to them, but they'd had the knowledge. The horses didn't know, couldn't understand— and that left me yet another variety of pissed off.

Then we came on our first demons, a pair of Silthiss demons, which looked a lot like somebody crossed a baboon and a cobra— unpleasant and ugly, in other words. The things were crouched over a dead horse, eating its brains.

Last meal. Aunt Elaine and Aunt Rose took them down fast, beheaded them neatly and in a single swipe each. From there, we got more careful, moved more slowly, made more effort at silence. We did okay— right up until the damned flying robot-thing swooped over the house, sensed us somehow, hit us with multiple spotlights and set off loud, annoying sirens.

At that point, it turned into a battle, a big, long, bloody battle.

Interlude: Bloomington, Illinois

"Okay, they're at the ranch," Warren said from where he sat on a couch in Catherine's little house. "The stuff is loaded into a dupe of me, one that's programmed to run from anyone but Buffy, and to run from her if she isn't using her favorite toy.

"It's on."

"Good," Catherine Madison said, standing and smoothing the black slacks she wore. "Drusilla, are you ready to go? You know how to use the charm?"

"Yes, I'm ready," Drusilla said, pulling her dyed-blond hair back into a neat ponytail and standing up. "I understand what to do with the charm, too." She held up a simple crystal necklace on a leather thong and said, "When it lights up orange, I go after Faith and touch her with it. When it lights up red after I've touched her, I smash it. Then… goodbye Faith, goodbye Angel, and hello Helena the vampire— after I've done to her the things her father did to me, at least."

"All right then," Catherine said. "My circles are ready, and by doing this on the Autumnal Equinox instead of the Winter Solstice, I've greatly reduced the bleed-over from other dimensions— thus keeping the enemy in the dark, despite some of that bleed-over landing right in their laps."

"Okay, so we're ready to roll," Warren said. He stood and looked at his two allies, nodded once and said, "I'm already aboard Asimov Station, lots of me, anyway. Catherine, four of me will stay to guard you and get the rest of my revenge, one in LA, waiting for Dru to make sure nothing interferes with her work, and there's the sacrifice fake-me at Rancho Giles. After that… well, I have a dozen of me in reserve for a second sacrifice play, just in case.

"Ladies… whatever happens, it's been a real pleasure. See you after it's done."

With that, Warren— one of him— left to go and make sure that the site for Catherine's primary spell would be ready for her to do her work, Drusilla let Catherine transfer her to Los Angeles via a gate spell (with a well-paid Urtulal demon sorcerer on the other end), and Catherine, after sending Dru to her destination, sat down to wait for the proper moment to start her spell.

Montana: Jocelyn

One second, we were sneaking along successfully, the next we had spotlights on us and sirens alerting everything within a half a mile to our presence. Before we could do anything about the flying robot-thing, a wave of demons of many varieties came at us from the direction of the big, mansion-sized ranch house to our left.

"We're made, Buffy, get up here!" Aunt Elaine snapped into her headset radio— and flung herself into the ginga as a demon that looked like a greasy-furred wasp on two legs came after her.

Even as I drew my longsword and waded into the battle, I almost got distracted by Aunt Rose and Vincent.

"Vincent, high and right!" Aunt Rose shouted— and ran right at Vincent as she drew her sword.

Vincent turned, glanced past her, nodded, and laced his big, capable hands into a stirrup. Aunt Rose leaped at him, landed with both feet in his laced hands, and Vincent flung her back and up, into the air. As I slipped into food-processor mode with my sword, Aunt Rose flew a good thirty feet up, flipped in a long, slow layout— and landed on the head of a J'mastra demon, which looks a lot like a stegosaurus and an Alien from the long-running series of movies by that name had a kid and it grew up pissed. Aunt Rose landed on its head, drove her sword down into the thing's braincase, and leapt off as it crumpled, ending the most dangerous single-critter threat on the field.

Me, I just grinned at her showoff tactics and went back to fending off the pack of four werewolves that had me surrounded. My blade had been silver-plated, so I was able to put them down. Just as the last one fell with my sword sliding out of its throat, I heard "Jocelyn, dive left!" I didn't think, just followed Vi's shouted order, and a Kreplin demon— horrible things, they look like a man-sized spider monkey with Freddy-Krueger-claws and all their fur and skin burned off— passed through the space I'd been occupying a second before. As it braked to a halt, Vi swung a battle ax into the demon's gut, cut it very nearly in half and said, "You do not mess with my girls' favorite babysitter!"

I laughed, flung a crazy-disc at a critter that had Shanna on the defensive (too many tentacles for anyone not fond of anime tentacle-rape movies [which, UGH!]), tossed a weighted wooden dagger into the heart of a vampire that had been trying to sneak up on Aunt Sh'rin, then leaped at a Hurkulpo demon (think "big purple ogre") that had been lumbering my way for a while now, tired of waiting for it.

Then the second, bigger wave of nasties hit, just as Buffy and the main battle group arrived, and things went totally chaotic. I killed the Hurkulpo, moved on to the next thing, killed an Australian crocodile-demon, beheaded three vampires that had ganged up on Vincent from behind (still reaching for that whole 'seven with one blow' thing, me!), dove past him so that he could take out another Kreplin that wanted to shish kebab me, found myself face to face with Piper (she'd come up with Buffy's group), went back-to-back with her and lost myself in killing demons while part of me watched little flickers of the battle around us.

Buffy, wielding the Scythe, split a Hurkulpo from groin to chin in one blow (making our men wince in involuntary sympathy) even as Xander, wielding a longsword, kept a pair of overlarge, steroid-freak vampires off of her back. Alina Sidorova and Rhonda McIntosh double-teaming a freaking shark-on-legs, complete with insect-like arms and pincers, keeping it busy long enough for Lydia to shove a saber into its brain. Daddy wading merrily through a bunch of vampire dust, made with one of his communion bombs, going to back up Aamira Nazari, who didn't seem to be letting the loss of vision in her left eye slow her down at all. Three younger Slayers whose names I couldn't remember doing this utterly cool tumbling-with-spears thing through the middle of the densest part of the melee, their passage leaving a lot of monsters freaked out, wounded— and easy pickings. Graham driving a halberd into the groin of a humanoid demon with bright blue, leathery skin, then flipping it over his head (muscles on his muscles, Graham) by the shaft, slamming it on the head of a tall, muscular werewolf that had been trying to get past Aunt Dawn's spinning sword to kill her. Aunt Dawn hacking the werewolf behind the knees, dropping it long enough for Graham to impale it with the apparently silvered blade of his halberd, then flinging a tiny little Bic lighter— covered with magic symbols— into the back ranks of a muddle of vampires that were surrounding Uncle Ballard. As the little lighter hit one vamp in the back, Aunt Dawn said, "H'ltok navar," and it exploded, splashing flames across all of the vamps and killing most of them. Uncle Ballard spun into the ginga at a speed that I've never seen matched by a non-Slayer, and the remaining three vampires fell to the ground, where he staked them with three stabs done as part of a single, elegant tumbling run— I felt jealous.

Then I heard Judith's voice in my headset, which almost surprised me into standing still for a second— but only almost.

"This is Judith Holmes, speaking from the command post on Giles's orders," Judith said, her voice calm and level. "Analysis of information garnered from pseudo dragon reconnaissance of the barn indicates that a magical trap has been laid on that building. When the first Slayer enters the barn, that trap will go off, summoning an unknown but very likely untenable number of demons to assault the barn.

"Giles is working with Willow to summon reinforcements. Until further notice, avoid the barn, as per Giles's orders.

"In the meantime, Jocelyn, Piper, there is a Kukastor— I do hope I'm pronouncing that right— demon approaching from Jocelyn's ten o'clock. Kukastor are capable of invisibility— but assistance in locating it is en route, simply be aware that it is approaching, about twenty paces off and moving slowly.

"Whitey, a communion bomb thrown past Buffy's position by about thirty feet would be very useful. Reinforcement and Ranged group, another group of demons is massing in the house, preparing for a charge, nearly ready, direct fire there on first breakthrough.

"Ballard, Dawn is in danger of attack from the rear, work that way."

Judith fell silent, then, having nothing else useful to say. Even as Daddy lobbed a powdered-communion-wafer-and-holy-water grenade over Buffy's head (pissing off a massive group of vampires— very briefly, before they died), I heard a familiar flapping-rustling noise, glanced up to see Phantom, Daddy's pale blue pseudo dragon, diving at a spot a ways from Piper and I and letting go of a bulging plastic bag that he carried in his claws.

The bag hit something, broke— and poured sticky mud all over the invisible Kukastor demon that had been trying to sneak up on us. It realized what had happened, threw back its elephant-like head, bellowed a challenge and charged us, all four arms wielding giant battle axes, moving with a surprising grace and speed for something nine feet tall and covered in muscle.

"See you next fall," I said to Piper, and she grinned, nodded to acknowledge my hastily-made plan, and set herself as I turned and charged the Kukastor.

It saw me coming and did the worst thing it could have done; it accelerated to meet me. I dove under the weapons it had going, curled into a ball, and somersaulted right into the thing's legs.

Even as I rolled up to my feet behind it and kicked the snot out of a Breckinth (built like a lion, but covered in alligator-like hide), Piper split the Kukastor's head with the battle axe she was using, killed it in a single blow. She then spun and covered a group of four werewolves in her webbing, pinned them down for Vi and Shanna to kill. Neat!

I heard the distinct "thrum" of a whole bunch of arrows being loosed, the whickering hiss as they flew through the air, and a lot of screams as they impacted on the horde of demons that had come out of the house, followed by the welcome "whump-WHAM!" of a grenade launcher sending demons back to their hellish homes.

"Reinforcements are arranged," Judith said in my ear. "Buffy, Giles suggests the north doors of the barn for entry, to allow the most room for the reinforcements to maneuver as they arrive."

"Understood, agreed," Buffy's voice said over the headsets. "All combatants, group for a mass push, form up behind me."

We moved as a group, killed what was close, then went to Buffy, formed up loosely behind her. Once we had all gotten to her, Buffy killed the Urtulal in front of her, looked around, saw no immediate threats, and called, "Let's go! Stay close!" before charging off toward the north doors of the trapped barn.

We arrived, and Buffy didn't play around— she motioned Rhonda McIntosh forward (Rhonda is one of the strongest Slayers around, since the power magnifies natural strength, and she's a big, muscular girl), and they each kicked one of the two big doors, sent them tumbling across the barn, knocked about thirty different demons of various sizes flying when the doors hit them.

"Avon calling," Buffy said, grinning at the shocked demons (trap or no, they hadn't expected that entrance). "Can I interest you in our new line of skincare products? 'Cause, really, I don't mean to be rude, but you have some serious skin problems, here!"

We charged— and a huge flash of dark blue light went off, a flash that filled the area all around the barn, and out from it by about a hundred feet.

When the light faded, there were demons and monsters everywhere around the barn, starting towards us even as we killed the remaining few demons inside.

"Wow, so that's what 'untenable' means," Buffy muttered. "Bunches of lots, 'untenable,' check."

The monsters charged, we turned to meet them— and the doors at the south end of the barn vanished in a flash of fire. Slayers poured in from that direction, went around geeky little Andrew Wells, who still had his arms raised from the spell he'd cast to get rid of the doors.

"Just like we talked about, girls!" Andrew called as his group poured in. "Just like in 300— they've got numbers, we've got position!"

"Four in each doorway!" Jenny Carlotti called, swinging her double-bladed halberd (a foot-long blade at each end of a five foot staff) up to guard as Andrew and his group charged in, three other girls falling in beside Jenny. "When you tire, drop back, let another replace you, when rested, get in line to fight again!"

"Ranged weapons!" Buffy yelled as I fell into the line on our door, Buffy on my right, Rhonda on my left, "Spell casters! Pile up stuff to stand on in the center, shoot and cast over us!

"Xander! Take some girls, get the shelter open!"

"On it!" Xander replied.

Then they were on us, and we didn't waste breath on talking.

I fought for three minutes, then dropped out and let Aunt Elaine take my place, grinned as she muttered, "Tag me, tag me!" as she took my place.

I went and sat down on a bale of hay for a moment, listened to everyone around me talk or fight, then got up when I was breathing normally and went to find Xander and the team working on the shelter doors. Even as I pushed to the front of the group, Piper sat up from where she'd been leaning against the door, grinned, and threw the bank-vault-like wheel that dogged the shelter door shut into a spin, then hauled it open. (Brian had discovered that her incredible dexterity made her fingers so sensitive that she could feel tumblers fall in place in a lock with ease and taught her to crack safes and pick locks.)

Nine girls and an older man stood facing us, weapons at the ready— then sighed and relaxed when they realized who we were.

"We've got wounded!" said the man, stepping forward and taking Xander's hand. "A couple are pretty bad, and we don't have a trained healer— can you help?"

"We can help, Dave," Xander said, and I took a closer look, recognized the man as David Maxwell, a veterinarian and werewolf who'd been working at the school my whole life. He'd let his hair grow, added a beard, since I was here a couple of years before— looked nice, and pretty different. "I'll bet your veterinary training kept them alive, though."

"I hope so," Dave said.

"Vincent!" Xander called. "Got a couple patients for you, since we can't spare a Guardian right now!"

Vincent shouldered his way in, and I went with him to play nurse— four hands are better than two, after all. We found five girls in various states of "oh, shit that hurts," and he went to work on the worst one with the med kit Dave tossed him while I re-bandaged one whose bandages had soaked through. I lost myself in the work, helped Vincent when he called, went with him out to the barn when we finished in the shelter, and got back in line.

I got a second stint in the front line, though never a third— we finally put down all the nasties before that, and were able to breathe and tally up our losses.

Of the thirty-five girls, three Watchers and one Guardian stationed here, we'd lost twenty-one Slayers and all of the Watchers and the Guardian. Bad, bad karma— and much for Warren and his cronies to pay for, oh, yes.

Giles and the others arrived via Willow's telekinesis and Colin's flight, and I got hugged and kissed a lot before we started trying to clean up the mess, set things to rights enough that we could take care of our injured (another fifteen girls had been hurt in that long, defensive battle, but none horribly, thank the Powers), and try to figure out what was going on.

Buffy didn't like any of this, and she told Giles so right away.

"Giles, this was a feint or a trap, or— or something," Buffy said after she hugged him. "I'm not sure what Warren hoped to accomplish, but— well, is everyone all right at home?"

"They're quite well, though they aren't at home," Giles said. "We sent the remaining trainees and the children— all under Diane's care— off to Scotland to stay with Robson's group for a time, it seemed the prudent thing to do while Willow was opening gates."

"And Italy, probably not a good idea," Andrew said from one side, coming over and shaking Giles's hand, "since Warren wants me dead, too."

"You," Buffy said, rounding on Andrew and hugging him hard. "You were awesome, buster! You were a ton of help with the magics, Andrew, and I'm so impressed by your girls that it's— well, almost scary."

"Thanks, Buffy," Andrew said. He looked horribly sad for a moment, and added, "I just wish… I wish Jonathan could have seen it, you know? But I… he's probably not anywhere where they let you watch things here, not after what I did to him."

"Jonathan," Mi Kyong said from behind me, and we all turned at the speculative sound of her voice. "Jonathan… Andrew, was Jonathan a little man? Short, stout, a rather sad expression that never quite went away?"

"Yes, that was Jonathan," Andrew said, sounding worried and puzzled. "You… you haven't seen him, have you? I'd hate to think I damned him to be a demon or someth—"

"I saw him, yes, but in a Slayer dream," Mi Kyong said, stepping forward and taking one of Andrew's hands. "He was in my dream to help us, Andrew— and he may yet, though I can't… quite recall that part yet.

"But he asked me to give you a message for him. He said to tell you that… that he 'did an Anakin,' though I don't know what that means. He seemed sure that you would, though."

"He… Jonathan did an Anakin," Andrew said, a big, geeky smile spreading over his face even as tears welled from his eyes. "Buffy, he did an Anakin! He turned back to the light! Jonathan's okay!

"Thank you, Mi Kyong!"

She laughed, hugged him, and wandered off to find something useful to do, smiling a satisfied little smile.

We cleaned things up— and just about sunup, we heard a roaring sound.

I was working at piling up robot parts for Colin to melt at the time— I hadn't even fought any, but maybe ten percent of the before-the-trap forces had been robots in several designs— when I heard it, and I glanced up to see a Warren-bot, with his original face even, landing in front of Buffy, shrugging off the jetpack he wore and starting towards her. I saw several people start towards them, intending to weigh in on Buffy's side, but she yelled, "This one's mine! Stay out of it!"

They met near the gates of the corral that had once held a lot of gorgeous, happy horses, stopped maybe ten feet apart, and Buffy said, "Well— what do you want?"

"Same thing I've wanted for the last sixteen years," Warren said. "I want to kill you. To show you that you can't screw with me.

"But mostly? I want to hurt you!"

Warren's hands came up, blurred as they did so, and sort of… morphed. Where he'd had two human looking hands, he now had a short, heavy blade in place of his right hand, and a funny-looking, multi-barreled gun where his left had been.

Buffy dove sideways, but Warren hadn't been going to shoot her. Instead, his gun hand tracked on Joyce, standing maybe thirty feet from anyone else where she'd been picking up the parts of a broken robot.

Joyce saw it coming, and she did the right thing— she ran like hell, closed in towards Warren as she did, forced him to turn with her to try and track her with his gun barrels, rather than just swinging his arm. That slowed him down, and it probably saved her life, considering how close the stream of tracers came to her.

Unfortunately for him, Warren sort of forgot something pretty important; Buffy.

She saw what he was doing, leaped back towards him and chopped off his gun arm with the Scythe. Warren spun to face her, a surprised look on his face— and Buffy spun, brought the Scythe up, around— and down. She split the Warren-bot completely in half (better than I'd done on the one I'd killed a couple-three hours before, I'd only gotten my blade down to belt level), and the halves fell in two different directions.

"You do not mess with my little girl!" Buffy snarled to the remains of the Warren-bot.

From the twin tangles of wires, metal, plastic, etc, came a slow, draggy voice that said, "Game… set… maaaaaaatch."

"Whatever," Buffy said— and went to grab and hug her daughter and her husband, who stood hugging tightly a little ways off.

We finished the clean up, Dave found everyone places to sleep— Giles didn't want to leave until we'd checked this place out with every resource we could bring to bear and figure out why they'd attacked here— and I dozed off about nine in the morning, puppy-piled in the hayloft with my lovers and Mi Kyong (a little lonely without Riley here) in a pile of hay.

When we woke up around one in the afternoon, Mi Kyong and Joyce had lost the Slayer power— as had every girl Called in the last five years, we rapidly found out.

It got worse from there.