Into every generation….

Her identity card said "Rebecca." It had been a long time since anyone had called her that. They had when they were angry with her, or when they were very sad. If she thought about it, she wouldn't mind being called Rebecca now. Even if they were angry or sad. But mostly she didn't think about it.

Mostly.

There had been a noise outside, like a shuttle only higher pitched and louder and no shuttle was supposed to land this close to Hadley's Hope. And then new people had come. She spied on them from a distance. They were being noisy, and she knew what happened when you were noisy. Some of them had gone further on, to the Bad Place. No, not the "Bad Place," the Atmosphere Processing Station, she made herself think. She wasn't a child. She was almost thirteen.

Thin for her age, even before. Thinner now. Able to hide herself, at least for a while. She knew it wouldn't last. She knew that They would find her soon enough. They found everyone. There was no point warning the new people. All that could happen was that she'd be dragged down a little sooner.

But she didn't want to watch them die. She knew it was hopeless. But six months of hiding and escaping and proving that a human could survive Them — if only for a short while — had changed her way of thinking. She had only been able to react when her par…when the other people who had been here were taken. React in helpless terror. Until she was left in only a sort of blind animal apathy, a scurrying rabbit sensibility that cared only if its hidey-hole was deep enough.

She watched the new people. Posturing, dripping with machismo, so certain of themselves. Even the tall woman, the one without any guns, the one with eyes that were so old and haunted. Even she walked with a sure tread. They didn't know. There was no way they could even comprehend. When They came, all their guns wouldn't help them.

But even that…all of that…even so…Newt couldn't stop the new feeling that was in her. The feeling that made her chipped nails bite into her dirt-encrusted palms. As she closed her fists.

On Old Earth, in the dawning years of the 21st century, a woman with pure white hair placed her hands on a scythe and magic surged around her. "You are…a goddess!" exclaimed the young woman standing guard over her as the young witch cast the greatest spell of her career.

"And you," the white-haired witch informed her in turn, "are a Slayer."

That battle ended - with many casualties, some of them dear indeed. But they won and held the demons off once again.

Humanity survived that near call. And the next after that, and the next. And, in time, humanity left their first world and spread out among the stars.

And they found on shadowed planets and in the dark places between the stars new nightmares, new demons. Or, perhaps what they found were older demons than they knew, demons that had been there all along, in the most remote recesses of history.

One girl, in all the world. A Chosen One.

Newt still watched. The new people had stirred Them up. She couldn't stop watching. The tall woman with the haunted eyes, Ripley, that was her name. The soldier with the soft voice that sounded like a big brother might sound, that was Hicks. There was the funny one, and there was the big older guy with the growly voice, terribly injured now but holding on, and the tough-talking woman with the short hair. They had been suspicious and careful when they went into the Atmosphere Processing Station, but it wasn't enough. Nothing was ever enough.

She knew them all now, from where she spied on them. And she found she cared.

She'd had to explore further from her safe nest than she would have liked. She found a kitchen she hadn't remembered that still had a little food left. And something else there. A Solingen, a chef's knife in an expensive ceramic that could resist even molecular acids. Or so she hoped. She named it "Jones" and carried it always now. But she still did not have the confidence to use it.

The things didn't communicate like people. They didn't think like people. They were more like the ant colonies she vaguely remembered from when she had gone to school on a greener planet. But that didn't mean They wouldn't react if even a single one of Them was killed. They'd smell it. And the colony instincts would be to investigate. To send others. To swarm against any potential threat until it was gone.

So all she did was watch, as the now-smaller group of human survivors put useless welds across doors, checked their weapons, and waited for darkness. Something had been...damaged, out in that brooding structure across the rocky ground howling with endless winds. Newt didn't understand the technical details, but she understood that in a very short time thermonuclear fire would erupt and sear clean this side of the planet, and in her own soul there was an answering white-hot exultation. The things would die. They would never hurt another.

But she still wished...the funny one with the baby face who paced and howled now, his hands never leaving his gun. The tall blond who rarely spoke and moved in synchronization with the sparkplug with the short hair and dark eyes. Even the dweeb with the expensive hair and the stupid jacket, or the pale young officer who had not left his cot. She wished there was a way to save some of them. She wished she had the strength to do...something more.

The spell spread out across the world, touching every Potential known and unknown. In every corner of the world, it touched young women with a certain fire in their hearts. It touched those who fought for their homelands, or for their lives. It touched those who resisted quietly and desperately against the evil around them. It touched those who had all but given up. It touched them, and it granted them the same gift it had brought the First Slayer.

The strength, the speed, the healing; the power that had once belonged to only demons. Throughout history, humans had been afraid of monsters. Now there was something the monsters were afraid of.

Through the first explorations, through the tentative steps out into a large and uncaring universe, humanity moved. And so did the spell. It was not a wave or a particle, but it radiated out into space at a good fraction of the speed of light. Through the years, through the centuries, the spell continued to expand outwards from Earth. Soon enough humanity raced before it in faster-than light space ships, finding new worlds, bringing colonies, birthing new children there.

One hundred and seventy-six years after Willow Rosenberg touched the Scythe, the expanding ring of the spell was thirty-nine light-years in radius. It crossed the orbit of a gas giant in the zeta reticuli system, and its three moons.

She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight, to stop the spread of their evil, and the swell of their numbers

"Thirty meters!" the UCSM Private reported, his voice rising. "Twenty-five!" The motion tracker in his hands bleeped steadily, the upper half of the display crowded with converging dots. There were dozens of them, dozens of the things that had piled their way up against automated sentry guns, their sheer relentless weight of numbers and savagery of attack nearly winning through. And now it was down to just a handful of marines short on ammunition in a hopeless battle to stop them.

"Twenty!" Hudson said, his voice nearly a shriek. "They're right outside the door!"

"Twenty!" he reported again. "Still twenty! Wait…!" Something had changed. Two of the lights had winked out almost at the same instant. The others had froze in their advance. "Something...what the hell is happening out there?"

Newt smiled, and flicked a drop of acid blood from the nearly-indestructible Solingen. The Aliens turned, aware of something new in their experience. They stared at the small human standing there in the corridor behind them. "Hey, ugly," Newt said softly. "My turn."

She is the Slayer.