To the Power Born: A Tale of the Slayers
Part 48: The Fire Inside
Jocelyn:
It seemed like years, inside the Scythe with Buffy— because she taught me everything I had asked her to, and then some.
My being Chosen, the things the spirits of the Guardians that lived in the Scythe had said to me, those had erased all my doubts and started me back on track. I had thought I was back on track. Buffy felt differently— and proved to me that I was still not really thinking perfectly clearly, though I had recovered all of my combat skills in the process of improving them.
But when Buffy did the equivalent of Daddy's "tactical simulations" with me, I kept making little mistakes. Nothing huge, and I never succeeded less than nine times out of ten— but even in the wins, I made choices that, while they weren't wrong, weren't the best choices.
That wasn't good enough for Buffy, not with everything that was on the line. She worked me over and over, usually while we trained physically, saying that this would be how it was in the field, fighting and thinking at the same time.
I got up to her requirements eventually, and the way she grinned and nodded her approval when I did made it worth all the work.
Oh, she insisted we play some, too. We played cribbage, she taught me to play double solitaire, we played chess (she beat me a lot, at first, but eventually, we stalemated almost every time), she turned our workout space into batting cages, driving ranges, we played racquetball and handball, and Buffy thought up some truly wicked mini-golf courses while we were in there. We stayed sane, and we both took more time than we should have even had to grieve for Giles.
Buffy finally said, "Okay, Slayer— you're as good as anyone I've ever met. You're ready."
I let out a long sigh, nodded, and said, "Thank you, Buffy. I've got a real chance at getting through Catherine's little gauntlet, thanks to you and the others.
"But I'm not quite ready to make my run. There's one thing left to do first."
"What's that?" she asked when I didn't elaborate.
"Not so long ago, Daddy said something about how Piper and I should both help train other girls, and… well, I kind of like the idea." Buffy looked puzzled, and I said, very softly, "I thought I might start small… say a class of one, and all the time we could ever ask for to teach her all the stuff that Mom, Aunt Rose, Aunt Elaine, Faith and you taught me…."
Buffy got it, then— I could tell because of her sudden lunge-grab-hug-super-hard and gasped "Thank you! Thank you Jocelyn!"
"I love her, too," I said, hugging back just as hard as she was hugging me. "And even if I don't get to see it, the idea of her going all sorts of Slayer on one of Warren's asses? Yeah. I'm all over that!"
Buffy laugh-sniffled, squeezed me once more, and kissed my cheek. "Okay. Can we stay here a minute more? I want to get myself back under control before we leave."
I didn't mind, and since time didn't matter, I sat down on a stool behind the counter in the Magic Box and dealt a cribbage hand— just the one hand, not a whole game, just to give her time to gather herself. We played it, she won, then I hugged her once more— and left that place where I had become a better Slayer than I had ever been before.
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In the Trap:
"Okay, sis," Alex Harris said, and gave his sister a deliberately casual smile as she straightened from killing a Bledenth, a demon that usually put people in mind of an unholy mating between a baboon and a jellyfish. "Here we go. Room number twenty five. Inside we have a lovely Hurkulpo demon for you— you always did like purple, right?"
Joyce almost slipped and spoke aloud, clamped her mouth shut at the last second and thought at Chief, A freaking HURKULPO is the easiest of the three choices!? Seriously!?
"Yeah, it is," Alex said, and he kept his smile on. "Other choices are a freaking Turok-han and a Nezzla.
"Come on, sis— Hurkulpos are big and vicious, but they're slow and dumb. Also, he's humming and kind of dancing in place, so he's bored. You can handle him."
Well, okay, Joyce sent. Which way is he facing?
"He's facing the corner to your right, almost a perfect forty-five degrees to you," Alex said after poking his head through the door to double check. "Still humming and not so much dancing as… rocking from foot to foot, I guess. Like he's doing the 'Gotta Pee Dance,' you know?"
"Okay." Joyce went to the door and said, still aloud, "Number twenty-five.
"Here goes nothing!"
Joyce opened the door, found the Hurkulpo— a little over eight feet tall, at least four and a half feet across the shoulders, colored a not-quite-deep purple, nude and disturbingly male— standing as her brother had told her.
It didn't notice her, so Joyce did the only logical thing; she took two steps and lunged, sword at full extension, just as Lydia had taught her, body a straight line from right wrist to left heel.
The sword sank into the Hurkulpo's groin for half of the thirty-two-inch blade's length, and the Hurkulpo screamed a surprisingly high scream and doubled over, clutching at it's ruined genitals. Joyce pulled back just in time— yes, Hurkulpos were slow, but apparently, they had some analog to an adrenaline gland, and her attack had given the gigantic demon a burst of speed— and, as the thing dropped to its knees, moved to one side, leaped as high as she could, and came down swinging her sword.
The Hurkulpo's head didn't come off, but the blow severed its spinal cord just below the skull, and the demon slumped over dead.
For a moment, nothing else happened, then there came a click from the ceiling, and Warren's voice said, "Would you look at that? Baby Slayer's got some moves— not like that'll be enough.
"But you know, I'm impressed. Also, I'm generous— and I want to be sure this is… I want to make sure you have a chance, no matter how small it is.
"Take five minutes to rest, pumpkin. I'll open the door on your left when it's time to come to me, and there won't be anything between us but a short hall and one more door. Once the door opens, you have thirty seconds to come through it before I gas you, so no lollygagging!
"Five minute timer starts now."
"Guess it's time for you to get all sappy on me, sis," Alex said, his voice low and emotional. " 'Cause I'm saving my solid for the fight, and… well, I'll make it last long enough to… you know, to hug you, then… I'll have to go back, and I don't think… I don't think either of us will be real good for much talking then, you know?"
I know, Joyce sent, her mental voice calm despite the tears and sniffles of her body. She thought Warren would think those the symptoms of fear, and made no effort to control them, wanting any advantage she could get. Alex….
Joyce said what she needed to say, the things she hadn't said often enough in life, and Alex said them back, as well as telling her how proud he was that his sister had followed in their mother's footsteps and "become a badass."
They had progressed to reminiscing about the first time they saw their mother fight when the door to Joyce's left swung open.
"It's time," Alex said simply, and watched as Joyce stood and stretched, then wiped at her face with her hands. "I'll hold off on going visible and solid until you need the distraction most, sis.
"Let's go kill this thing, what do you say?"
Joyce nodded, thought Yes, let's, and turned to walk down the twenty foot long hall to the single door at the end.
She opened the door, stepped in, and found Warren, wearing his Jared-Leto-looking face, standing in the middle of a simple forty-by-forty foot room, completely unadorned save for the multiple light fixtures inset in the twenty-foot-high ceiling and a plain metal desk against the far wall. He nodded at her and said, "You know, your mom… I hate the bitch, but, wow— I gotta give her some credit. She trained you really well, considering how little time there was to do it. You did the dungeon like a champ, kid.
"But now it's time to fight the dungeon master— and this is one fight you don't have the stuff to win."
"Maybe not," Joyce said, and stretched once, trying hard to conceal her shivering. "Did you do like you said? Damp your power? Or will you cheat?"
Warren's head cocked to one side, and a click issued from somewhere inside him, followed by a female voice that she almost recognized (Jocelyn would have known it— it was the voice of the computer called "Mother" from Alien) said (without Warren's mouth moving), "Generator power at fifty percent output. Warning: At this power level, form-reconfiguration and force field utilities will not function. Please confirm."
"Confirmed," Warren said. "In addition, lock power generator at fifty percent until this mobile is destroyed, or the human being in this room is dead."
"This requires override authorization," the female voice said, again without Warren's lips moving.
"Override authorization 'Sonny, Call, Bishop, Ash,' " Warren said, grinning a disturbing grin.
"Override confirmed." There came another click, and Warren tilted his head back to upright.
"Okay, then." Joyce took a deep breath and said, her voice rather shaky, "You murdered my brother just because my mom kicked your stupid ass like, fifteen years ago. You killed Chief, his pseudo dragon friend, because he tried to make you pay for that. You tried to kill me, nearly did kill Kalyani Ravinuthala because she protected me. You killed Royal, Jocelyn's pseudo dragon when he kept you from killing her.
"You killed a lot of Watchers and Slayers and people who were just ranch hands and teachers out in Montana. You're trying to enable a crazy woman to do something that will either screw the world up completely, or outright end it.
"But for me… for me the worst of it is that YOU KILLED MY BROTHER, YOU SON OF A ROOMBA!
"For that… I'm going to kill you!"
Joyce leapt, sword back to strike—
—and Warren jumped forward and caught her by the shoulders before she could swing, squeezed hard enough that she dropped the weapon.
"Or, you know, maybe not," Warren said— and he grinned. "What have you got to say now, toots?"
Joyce opened her mouth to answer— then suddenly cocked her head and said, her voice surprised, "Jocelyn?"
"That won't do any good, kid, I'm not gonna fall for it," Warren said, smirking. "So you can just— what the HELL!?"
He was looking Joyce Harris in the eyes, and suddenly… suddenly he saw the Slayer weapon, the Scythe, glowing white in the center of Joyce's pupils!
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Jocelyn:
One last check on reality, and I'd be going to teach Joyce everything I'd learned. I opened my eyes, and this time, the vibratory shuddering went on for a good fifteen seconds as my body made acquaintance with everything that my mind had learned.
Harry Dresden and Ian were laughing at a bunch of vampires who'd decided that the lava was an illusion, and were dusting as they tried to jump through it. Piper was cheerfully beating the snot out of a half a dozen demons that looked a lot like someone crossed a cricket and a gorilla, things that could apparently jump high enough to come over Harry's lava wall. (Given the look of their hind legs, it probably hadn't even been a tough jump.)
Even as I grinned at Piper's acrobatic fighting style— she was tumbling around the gorillickets at such a sped that none of them could even begin to hit her, occasionally lashing out with fist, foot or webbing as she did so— she said, "Come on, guys— I'm just saying that if Chester Cricket could play classical music, with legs like those? You fellas ought to be able to crank out some old AC/DC!"
I laughed softly, closed my eyes— and thought of Joyce Harris. Joyce, who had been my friend for as long as I could remember. Joyce… her mother's features, her father's hair and eyes, smaller than her mother, for now, at least. Joyce, who had borne up so well under the death of her brother (at least on the outside, and at the very least, better than I would have). Joyce, who had thrown herself into learning to be a Slayer from the day after she'd been granted the power early with such fervor that she was already carrying her weight as part of a team. Joyce Samantha Harris, whom I loved dearly, and for whom I could do so much, thanks to those who had done so much for me….
"What the hell?" Joyce said, and I opened her eyes to see her staring at me in shock and maybe a trace of worry. "Jocelyn, I need to go back, Warren's got hold of me, and—"
"It's okay, Joyce," I said, and grinned at her. "Time doesn't pass at all while we're here— we're inside the Scythe, and I've been here enough to know what I'm talking about."
"Inside— huh?"
"The connection that we always feel to other Slayers?" I said, grinning. "You know, it's never very strong, but we tend to know there are other Slayers around? Well, right now, because there are so few of us, that connection is much stronger and I can use that to connect with another Slayer— and in here, the environment is under our control, and there is no such thing as time outside while we're inside.
"I've learned everything that my mom, Aunt Rose, Aunt Elaine, Faith and your mom could teach me, Joyce— and I'm about to teach it to you."
"Oh, man…" she said, smiling a smile so much like Alex's big cheesy grin that it almost hurt to see it, "I knew I could take him before, with Alex's help— but now?
"I'm going to slaughter that son of a refrigerator!"
I blinked, looked at her, and said, "With… with Alex's help!? What the heck are—?"
"Alex's ghost is helping me," Joyce said, and she gave me a smile that said that she was telling me the absolute truth. "Him and Chief both came back for… long enough to help."
She told me everything, and I grinned more and more widely, even as tears ran down my cheeks— mirroring Joyce on both counts.
"The Complete!" I laughed when she was through. "I get it— this… you've made your peace with what happened to him?"
"Almost," Joyce said, her smile still there, but kind of sad. "I've said all the things I had to, anyway, and… and that part's done.
"But now… well, you're going to make the rest of it easier, Jocelyn. Thank you for thinking of this— and for giving me a much better chance of getting to kill the miserable, misassembled microwave that killed my brother!"
"Joyce," I said, giving her a hard, hard smile, and thinking of poor Royal, who had died to save me from the misassembled microwave in question, "it'll be a pleasure!"
We went to work, and it was… I knew, from the first moments, that I liked teaching, liked it a lot. By the time I was done, I was so damned glad that I'd learned everything I had that I could barely contain myself— because now I'd be able to teach it, and not just to Joyce, to all the newbies. I was going to love that, I loved teaching.
It took a long time, subjectively— because I taught Joyce everything I could, not just the combat skills, but the things I knew about the past cases of Team Slayer, the monster-and-demon knowledge I'd picked up, the tactical wisdom that I had finally recovered completely under Buffy's tutelage.
And because we, too, needed to play, I taught her to dance in zero gravity, taught her as well as I could, I mean. I'm not Aunt Elaine, I'll never be that good— but I taught Joyce all that I could— and grinned like a madwoman when she turned out to be a little better than me. Now I understood what Aunt Sh'rin had meant when she said "no teacher can hope for more than to have the student pass them," understood it clear to my bones.
We played, we worked, she learned, I learned— teaching taught me a new perspective on some things— and we danced, and played darts, cards, chess… I managed to recreate some of Buffy's distractions, too, the batting cages, the driving ranges, and two of her more wicked mini-golf courses. Joyce sang, she taught me what she knew about singing— my voice is never going to be as good as hers or Judith's, but I can stay on key, which counts for something— she told me stories about Alex and her parents, and I told her stories about Stephen, Brianne, Danielle, and my folks.
Very early on… I hadn't been going to do it, but I couldn't not tell Joyce about Giles. She had a right to know, a right to grieve— and a right to add his death to the butcher's bill that Warren and Catherine had to pay
And finally, I had nothing left to teach my friend, now my best human friend, after years of subjective time. We hugged long and hard, I warned Joyce about the vibrating-shudder-thing of the body catching up with all the brain had learned, and she nodded. She smiled at me, then, and said, "You know… I've got something else to hit him with, too. Something I thought of a while back.
"Did you know that Warren is…."
She finished her thought, and I stood and stared at her for a long, long moment with my mouth open. I finally managed to say, "That's not true, it can't be—"
Joyce held up a hand, smiled a grim little smile, and told me why she'd said what she'd said— and I found myself gaping at her in amazement.
"Joyce, that… my god, I never thought of it like that, but… you're right!" I stared at her a moment more, then grinned. "And Daddy says I'm the brilliant one? No way, that's you!
"Honey, hit him with that! Hit him with it, and the second you can, tell another Slayer! Tell Willow, and she can— my god, Joyce, if this gets around, we might not have to worry about getting all of him. His allies will do that for us!
"Hey! Chief! His ghost is telepathic with living people, right?" Joyce nodded, and I laughed aloud. "Have him contact anyone, human or pseudo dragon that he can reach, Joyce, and pass that along to them with instructions to pass it along to everyone they can!"
Joyce busted out in a hard, cold smile at that— then that smile faded to a more Joyce-like smile and she said, "Now who's the brilliant one? Great idea, Jocelyn!"
We worked together on phrasing for a while— I'm a better smartass than Joyce, because I'm not as nice a person— and when she had what she was going to say to Warren down pat, we got ready to go back to the real world and finish the jobs ahead of us.
We hugged one more time, then Joyce said, "I'm ready. See you on the other side, okay?"
"Bet on it!" I said, and I closed my eyes— and opened them back in the real world.
Somewhere nearby, I knew that Joyce was about to open a can of destruction on Warren Mears— and I wished to hell I could see it when she did!
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In the Trap:
Joyce Harris suddenly began to shake, shudder, even vibrate in Warren's grasp, and he had to grip more tightly for a few seconds to hold on to her. The image of the Scythe continued to burn in her pupils until the shuddering stopped— and then it vanished, she smiled at Warren, and the smile made him… nervous.
"You're so screwed," Joyce said softly— then she moved.
Joyce swung herself forward sharply and her feet hit Warren's stomach. Immediately, she walked up his torso, moving at full-on combat speed. Her left heel landed on his right shoulder, levered up— and her right heel slammed into Warren's chin with a force that, despite his knowledge of Slayers and his observation of the kid as she moved through his "dungeon," managed to catch him by surprise, coming from such a tiny little thing.
She flipped over backwards as he lost his grip on her, landed in a crouch, then grabbed her dropped sword, rolled backwards and turned that into a back handspring that gave her breathing room, while Warren stood and carefully shifted his neck, making sure that his head was still connected correctly to the rest of him.
Alex's voice came from behind Joyce, saying, "Holy crap, when did you learn to do that?"
"A few seconds ago," Joyce said aloud as she slipped her sword into the sheath on her back, not caring what Warren thought of her apparently talking to herself. "Or a couple years back. Depends on how you look at it, Alex."
"Uh, okay." Alex sounded puzzled. "So… what now?"
"This isn't funny, kid," Warren said, his voice a little higher than normal, a tittering, nervous laugh escaping him, despite his words. "I mean— mental health is not a laughing matter!"
"Show him, Alex," Joyce said softly. "I need him to listen for a minute, and he's wound pretty tight. Show him, so I can tell him how badly he screwed up.
"And Chief? Echo my words to any pseudo dragons, Slayers, Watchers, Guardians or soldiers you can reach, please?"
For a second or so, Warren just stared at Joyce— then he let out a gasp and jumped back as Alex Harris, solid and seemingly very alive, appeared on his sister's left, his pseudo dragon pal Chief perched on his left shoulder.
"What the HELL!?" Warren cried. "You can't be— I KILLED YOU!"
"I got better," Alex said with a smile. "You might've noticed that sort of runs in the family, if you'd had a brain. And once you've heard my sister out? I'm gonna help her stomp your robot ass into the junkyard."
"NO!" Warren screamed, and started forward.
"You know that you're the reason there are over two thousand Slayers now, don't you?" Joyce said— and Warren froze in his tracks.
"What?" he asked, his voice honestly confused.
"Follow my reasoning— if you can," Joyce said, her voice sneering. "On May the seventh of 2002, you came to my mom's house in Sunnydale with a gun. You were going to kill her because she beat you, beat you and took away your stolen power, all while committing the unpardonable sin of being female.
"In the process of trying to kill Mom (and failing), you shot my Aunt Willow's girlfriend, Tara, killed her— and you drove Aunt Willow over the edge with grief and hurt.
"Aunt Willow went crazy for a while— and Dark. She absorbed so much magic that it made her crazier still, used it so freely that what had been a borderline addiction to magic before became full-on dependency. She killed you, your human body, despite everything my mom and dad and their friend Anya could do, all they tried to do to save your miserable life— and in the end, she nearly destroyed the whole world, before Dad stopped her.
"Aunt Willow, with the help of… of my grandpa, Rupert Giles, she got better. She learned to use the magic without giving in to addiction, she came back to the light— and a little more than year later, on May the twentieth of 2003, Aunt Willow, at Mom's suggestion, managed to use the Scythe, the power in it, and her own power… to activate every. Single. Slayer. On. Earth!
"All because, you? You couldn't handle being beat by a woman— and you couldn't even stand and watch her die after you shot her. You ran in a panic, like the miserable coward that you are— and you kept on shooting, because you're not just a coward, you're a coward who panics in the face of someone else's strength.
"You made it possible for there to be over two thousand Slayers, Warren Mears. And as of now? Every single Slayer, pseudo dragon, Watcher, Guardian and START soldier within telepathic range of a pseudo dragon who's a pretty powerful sender knows that. They're gonna make sure that every single supernatural critter they meet learns it, too, and some of those are bound to get away, to tell other demons about what you did.
"In other words, you miserable excuse for a food processor… you're screwed!"
Warren only stared for a moment— then he snarled and screamed, "BITCH!" as he lunged at Joyce.
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Cleveland, Ohio:
For a moment, Starpulse hovered maybe fifty feet in the air above where Scovill Avenue dead-ended at the wall around Woodland Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio, then went the rest of the way down when Rose Killian gave him a thumbs up. The entrance to the local Hellmouth that was the least likely to garner public notice was a little ways on the other side of the wall, and the group didn't want to draw attention to themselves. Colin set the transport down just inside the wall, as Rose had instructed, and just as he did so, Cyber Knight, silent for the entire ride, said, "Got it!"
"Got what, Knight?" Armsman asked, looking up from his deep conversation with Ballard.
"I hacked the robot-dude's code," Knight said, sounding satisfied, "and then I cracked security on this really big file— it's his original… digital personality, I guess. Like 'right out of his head.' Version one-point-zero.
"What I've got, though, is a way to restore him to that original personality."
"How's that help?" Armsman asked.
"Pretty simple, man— he's edited his personality since, you know?" Knight said, standing and following Armsman out as Starpulse opened the transport. "What he did was take out some of his faults— on purpose. Impatience, contempt for women, those he minimized, for example. But fear… look, no truly sentient being is without fear. However, he reduced his fear reactions sharply, gave himself the kind of control that… well, a veteran soldier who's seen a lot of battle might have. Or, hey, a Slayer, Watcher or a Guardian has.
"Now, though? I can reset him to 'I'm a stupidly impulsive complete coward who hates women and has the self control of a kindergartener in a candy shop.'
"I can't see a way for that to be a bad thing— but I'm not a native. Miz— Rose, sorry— Rose, you're in charge. I can send this out now, I have his working frequencies, but it'll take a while to worm itself into his operating system. What do you think?"
"Do it," Rose replied immediately. "Thanks, Cyber Knight— that ought to be a big help.
"Willow, can you reach Buffy from here, tell her that this is coming?"
"Right away," Willow said, and her eyes went distant. After a moment, she spoke very softly, more to aid in transmitting clearly than anything else. "Buffy? We're back on the ground. Warren has… what's wrong? What are you… Buffy, please, when you try to hide things, it scares me…."
A moment after she let those words trail off into nothing, Willow Rosenberg's face crumpled, and she sobbed and staggered backwards, would have fallen if not for Vincent catching her.
"What?" Rose asked, and Willow, knowing that there was nothing to do but tell her, managed to answer.
"Rose… they… Giles is… is gone."
Rose Killian's face twisted, she sobbed once— then she forced herself to calm down, even as the others in their party— minus Cyber Knight and Armsman, who had never known Buffy's Watcher-turned-father-figure, Rose's adoptive father— reacted, most with tears, all with expressions of pain.
"Dammit!" Rose snarled. "Willow, is— is there anything else we need to know?"
Willow, standing with her forehead resting lightly against the reassuring warmth and firmness of Vincent's chest, took a deep breath and said, "Just a second, I'll see. Buffy was… someone else was trying to contact her while I was, give me a moment."
It took most of a minute, but Willow finally did reach Buffy again, conversed mentally— with her own side of the conversation sub-vocalized to make the sending easier— then said, "All right— we're going in Buffy. I… well, if you guys wrap things up there, call me, Dawn and I'll get the teams back together."
Willow took a long, deep breath, then turned to Rose and said, "I'm going to short form this, okay?" Rose nodded mechanically— the only way or her to control her emotions in the wake of discovering that she'd lost a father for the second time was to over control them— and Willow said, "Jocelyn, Piper, Ian and Joyce got into the underground complex where Catherine's working, then Warren managed to separate Joyce from them. The place is now sealed, sealed on beyond tight, but before the complete lockdown, Buffy got the Scythe to Jocelyn, and…. Well, some of you know this, but Jocelyn has learned everything that every active Slayer knows about fighting— and had Buffy help her turn it into one fighting style.
"Then Jocelyn went and taught all that to Joyce."
"Oh, girl o' mine, you done good," Chantelle sniffled.
"Also… Alex's and Chief's ghosts are helping Joyce against Warren," Willow said, smiling just a little. "And Chief just sent… well, everyone at the battle site something that… it's knowledge that needs to be spread.
"Joyce, she figured out that Warren? He's the reason there's an army's worth of Slayers, nowadays."
"Holy shit," Elaine said, her face a picture in surprise. "I— Willow, not to take away from anything you've done, but—"
"But she's right," Willow said, nodding firmly. "I know. Just kinda proves that she's Buffy's daughter all the way through, you know?"
"Yes." Rose took a deep breath, then said slowly, "Okay. Any demons that surrender get told that story, all of it, then released if they aren't… if people aren't their main source of protein.
"Now, let's get in there before Warren does something else horrible."
None of the group had ever been to the Cleveland Hellmouth before, but the four most common methods for getting to it were well known to all Slayers, Watchers, Guardians, and START members— Giles had seen to that personally, because Hellmouths tended to be a necessary focus of attention for all those groups. Rose had chosen the method that would be least likely to garner attention; the neighborhood surrounding Woodland Cemetery was very bad, mostly deserted, and even the cops stayed away except when called. So there really wasn't anyone to notice the group of four Slayers, two Watchers, a Guardian, a witch and three superheroes as they entered into a crypt whose doors only appeared to be chained shut.
From there, they went directly into a very old set of storm sewers, and from there into tunnels of… undocumented origin, but that Giles had believed made by demons, in order to get around beneath the city.
It was in the tunnels that things got difficult— and that Rose's team suffered their first casualty.
They entered the first major tunnel nexus, a room forty feet across with five exits beside the one they entered through, and were suddenly set upon by demons from all six directions.
Things got heavy, and it was at a point in the battle where every single member of the team had a fight of their own going on that Chantelle Penobscot killed the Suvolte demon in front of her, looked for her next target— and saw her husband a short distance away, fighting against a pair of vampires, holding his own with a longsword, but only barely. Without thinking, she moved that way, calling, "Whitey! Back and left, sugar!" as she moved.
"Chantelle, WAIT!" Ballard Innes, who was closest to her, and had been the only one to notice what she'd seen, yelled. "That can't be—"
Chantelle heard him, realized the truth of what he was trying to say, that this couldn't be her husband, and started to backpedal— too late.
"Whitey" spun, his sword flashed out— and he opened Chantelle's throat clear to the bone.
"Sorry, sweetheart," he said— in Warren Mears's voice. "But I owed you and your kid for interfering with me killing Buffy and her brat. Her other brat, I mean." The robot let out a tittering little laugh that made Willow Rosenberg simultaneously shiver and see red at its horrifying familiarity, then continued. "This pays you both, I g—"
Suddenly, the Warren-bot wearing Whitey's face stopped in mid word, floated a few centimeters up into the air— and began to crumple like a tinfoil doll, albeit very, very slowly.
"Murderer!" Willow Rosenberg hissed as she held Warren in her telekinetic grip— and ever-so-slowly closed the mental "fist" she pictured holding him in, crushed him slowly— but inexorably. "I've tried to let go of all the things you've done, I've tried to remember the threefold rule, I've tried to remember that hating you, wanting you dead, is what nearly destroyed me.
"But I can't let this go any more. I can't let my need to try and forget what you did to me make me forget what you're doing to the people I love.
"You're going to die, Warren Mears. All of you! You're going to die, to end, to be forgotten— and I swear by the Lady herself that you're done killing the people I care about!"
Sh'rin had dodged past Willow and the Warren-bot, gone to Chantelle— and now took off the leather jacket she wore and draped it over Chantelle's upper body, tears pouring steadily from her eyes, shoulders shaking— but not quite sobbing.
"You… can't… kill… all… of… me… you… worthless… bitch!" the Warren-bot managed to grind out, even though his head and jaw were slightly deformed, now.
"You don't think so?" Willow said, tears pouring from her eyes as Sh'rin's actions told her that Chantelle was dead. She had thought so from the gout of blood and Chantelle's instant collapse, but hadn't been able to stop hoping just a little…. "Warren, you're an idiot. A big, stupid, moron. How'd you ever get to be a genius when you're so dumb?
"I managed, with the help of Sh'rin and Dawn, to put up a spell that backtracked any technology its creating intelligence, and if that intelligence was yours… destroyed the tech. You know we did that— and you float there telling me that any one of us, now that we know how to do it, couldn't work up a tracking spell for your intelligence itself, to make sure that we got every single copy of it and destroyed them all? Even if you found enough old reel-to-reel tape to make a backup on that, which, wow, that'd take enough tape to fill a small skyscraper, so, probably you didn't.
"You're no genius, Warren, and you never were. You're just an idiot savant with a talent for robotics.
"Oh— and this you? It's dead, now!"
And just that suddenly, Willow crushed the Warren-bot down to a sphere of plastic and metal only a little bit bigger than a basketball.
For a moment, Willow just stared at the remains of the robot. Then she walked over to Chantelle's body, walked around it chanting softly, and laid a protection on the corpse that would destroy any monster who tried to come within three feet of her. Whitey, Gwedolyn, Jocelyn, Stephen, Brianne and Danielle would be able to say their goodbyes properly, this way.
This battle had been won, and when Willow finished her spell, she saw that the entire team had gathered in a circle around Chantelle's body while she worked. "Nothing will disturb her while we finish this," Willow said, her voice breaking. "Nothing will… will touch her."
"Thank you, Willow," Starpulse said. "For Jocelyn's sake."
Willow could only nod.
"All right," Rose Killian said a few seconds later. "Let's go finish this.
"I've got point. Armsman, watch our backs. The rest, standard spread, Sh'rin towards the front, Willow towards the back.
"Let's get it done."
The team moved deeper into the caverns, heading steadily for the Hellmouth, and whatever Warren planned to do there.